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Tekken6-Box-Front_PS3

Video game arcades are all but dead here in America but in a magical place called Japan not only do they still exist, but they are still the place to check out the newest games before they hit the console market. Tekken 6 for instance was released in Japanese arcades November 2007, and was later revised in 2008 as Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion. Tekken 6 was originally scheduled for a 2008 PS3 console debut, but was delayed an entire year when a very controversial announcement in the world of Tekken was made at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show which was: that this would be the first installment of Tekken NOT to be exclusive to the Playstation hardware. I know as far as I can remember, all the way back to the PS1 Tekken was Sony’s flagship fighter much like DOA became for the Xbox hardware. This all just seemed weird to me and it was just like the first time I saw Sonic in a Nintendo game.

Tekken 6 which combines both Japanese arcade releases was released in the US October 26 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 and will later this month be released for the Sony PSP. For this review I will be covering the PS3 version exclusively, and I will tell you how to win a copy of the Xbox 360 version later in my review. The first thing you notice when you put in your disc is the gorgeous intro which being an old-school Tekken fan, it was great to see my favorite characters updated for the current console generation. It’s been 3 years since Tekken 5 graced the PS2 and a lot has changed. This game looks gorgeous to say the least. I remember seeing screenshots and thinking it can’t look that good, but it does indeed. The background as well are amazingly rendered and very interactive at times.

There are 3 main modes of play in Tekken 6: scenario campaign (Similar to Tekken Force) which is a story mode beat’em up style fighter that not only manages recap every Tekken game’s storyline but makes it coherent and make sense as well, which is a feat in and within itself. Then there are 2 arcade modes online and offline, which should be familiar to anyone that has played Street Fighter 4. The online play I found really smooth and the load times were pretty good even if you didn’t have the game installed on your HD. The matching system is based on a very well instituted ranking system so you don’t get in a match you have no chance of winning.

Screen shot 2009-11-09 at 11.46.48 PM

The offline play is what you would expect from a Tekken game with your normal Arcade and practice modes that usually come standard. I am a huge fighter fan and I think it’s great all these older franchises; when they are updating their games for the new consoles are doing the smart thing and not trying to reinvent the wheel. Unlike that transition period when 3D first became a big deal and everyone was trying to implement it differently, and almost none of them getting it right. Tekken 6 starts you off with an insane roster of 40 characters to choose from, I mean that’s 10 years worth of characters if you think about it. Most are returning characters with the exception of Alisa Boskonovitch, Bob, Lars Alexanderson, Leo, Miguel Caballero Rojo, Zafina, Azazel and NANCY-MI847J. Of note is Alisa Boskonovitch who is a little pink haired robot girl who has chainsaws that come out of her arms and jets that come out of her back, how cool is that?

The game play and fighting engine is classic Tekken and there is not a huge learning curve, where Tekken 5 was a return to the roots of the franchise Tekken 6 just irons out the game play a little bit making it better. That’s why I love fighting games so much, its the ability to be able to easily pick it up the game and put it down when your done, and Tekken 6 does that beautifully. Additions to the Tekken fighting engine I did notice were some enhancements with stringing together of combos within the game, and a rage mode which allows you to do more damage as your vitality gets lower which can cause quite few upsets when you think you have a match won.

Screen shot 2009-11-09 at 11.49.41 PM

One thing they have added to Tekken 6 as a completely new feature is a very elaborate character customization mode, nowadays you can’t seem to have a successful fighter these days without one. It’s very much in line with Soul Calibur IV where you the more you fight the more you earn, and the more you can customize. But unlike Soul Calibur IV you really have to put in sometime to even begin to customize your character, so that really helps replay value even if you’re just into the arcade mode.But I honestly felt the prices were just a little high, like 240,000 gold for a pair of glasses and 640,00 for a pair of colored battle shorts(i.e. underwear) you can also buy tatoos and new hairstyles as well.

Overall I have to say if you’re a fan of the franchise like me you need this game and if you’ve played through Street Fighter 4 or a fan of fighting games and your looking for something new, you should really give this a try. The character customization and scenario campaign modes really help this title giving it a bit more replay value than your typical fighter, and the online modes don’t hurt either. If I had to rate Tekken 6 it would be a 4.5 out of 5, the only reason its not a solid 5 out of 5 is I felt the character animations weren’t quite as fluid as they could be, they were beautiful but they seemed a bit wooden at times. Other than that I can’t recommend this game highly enough I mean its Tekken.

Now the great people over at Bandai were nice enough to give us a copy of Tekken 6 for the Xbox 360 to give away to a lucky reader. To qualify, simply leave a comment with your favorite Tekken character and why, and if you already have a copy – this would make a great Christmas present and they would totally thank you for it. Winners will be chosen next Friday the 20th! Good Luck!

Screen shot 2009-11-09 at 11.51.32 PM

sundries never sleep

ladysisyphus is reading evangelical Protestant sex manuals so you don't have to. Is this where fandom got its obsession with the simultaneous orgasm? That's what I want to know. (I jest people, I jest!)

One of the neighborhood garden cats died; it was hit by a car. We are all sad.

Hip-hop about Alexander Hamilton in the voice of Aaron Burr. Um, it's actually more awesome than bizarre, which is saying something, because it's pretty bizarre. Found through

kalichan who grew up with the guy (the dude performing, not Alexander Hamilton or Aaron Burr, because that would be weird).

Patty has alerted me to Sarkozy Facebook shenanigans.

She also sent me a link to the New York Times explaning current unemployment rates. If people need an illustration to understand the idea of 1 in 10, our problems are more epic than I can possibly imagine. After that, the charts actually attempt to tell us something we don't know.

We're talking about Falco on Twitter.

Tomorrow the utter clusterfuck of New York State politics meets the ongoing horror of the struggle for equal marriage rights. Ugh.

Also, gay couple kicked out of cab.

Hundred of Lions! Cheap!
Today only, Erin McKeown's new album Hundreds of Lions is featured as today's MP3 Daily Deal on Amazon! The WHOLE album for a whopping $1.99!

Download it here

I know I have exposed some of you to Erin before, so I hope you'll consider downloading her new record. For $2, you don't have much to loose!!

Hundred of Lions! Cheap!
Today only, Erin McKeown's new album Hundreds of Lions is featured as today's MP3 Daily Deal on Amazon! The WHOLE album for a whopping $1.99!

Download it here

i had a dream i stood beneath an orange sky

http://prettyhowtown.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/i-had-a-dream-i-stood-beneath-an-orange-sky/

http://prettyhowtown.wordpress.com/?p=286

It’s been an unexpectedly busy few weeks: I left my job, promptly found two new ones, and dove headfirst into National Novel Writing Month for the first time in four years. Already pumpkin spice lattes and hot apple cider drinks are making way for peppermint mochas, but Chicago spent all weekend thinking it was summer. [...]

sundries

Classmates threaten to beat Richmond gang-rape survivor since it will be her fault if her attackers go to jail.

U. of Sydney students set up pro-rape Facebook page.

(this and previous link via

gwyd)

Gay couple banned from Wal-Mart for life for _not_ shoplifting, trying to care for their special needs kids, and being unwilling to go into some sort of security area with employees who they say were behaving in a threatening manner.

Fandom strife I'm glad to have mostly missed: the ongoing stuff with the ST:U creators; so much stuff that seems to happen around the Supernatural fandom; and something I still can't even make sense of related to Girl Number 9 -- the blessings of being days behind on episodes there.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War -- all of that was the end of my childhood. I had just started my senior year of high school and had not gotten to study abroad in Germany as I had wanted (my mother loved German and Austrian art, but I was not to go to such places, was one explanation; cost was another, less likely one; the general lack of autonomy I had a kid was probably high on the list too).

I remember how much I wished I was brave and had the nerve to just steal my parents' credit cards and run away from home and fly to Berlin. I remember how much I wished my parents were brave and would abruptly decide to take me there to see history happen. The entire 20th-century it sometimes seems, happened in Berlin.

We watched it on TV at dinner-time instead. And it felt oddly personal to me, but whether it was because of the Jewish daughter of scientists pen-pal I had in the USSR who never wrote back or because I had listened to the begging, desperate sound of David Bowie singing Heroes for possibly every single moment of adolescent anguish I could summon up (an emotional act, oddly, not dissimilar form my obsession with The Pogues -- I could have been someone / well so could anyone / you took my dreams from me when I first found you) I don't know.

I remember those were the beginning of the years where my parents hated me: for having a boyfriend, for leaving home, for fucking up the way college kids do. A little over a year later I was home from a university not prestigious enough to brag to their friends about and my mother was explaining to me that bisexual people were sluts and my father was accusing me of being a heroin addict because I slept for 27 hours after I'd been awake for over 72 to finish a school project.

Other things happened too, they threw a friend of mine out who came so as not to be alone on Thanksgiving because they thought he was gay. Later, they did the same with a boyfriend of mine (with whom I was not allowed to be in any room with, even with the door open, without my parents' presence) whom they decided must be gay because he was too thin, and that wasn't what they wanted for me. I wonder how often girls are raised to have no desires but those gifted to them by others; I wonder how often it works.

After all that, I tried never to go home again -- I took summer classes or stayed with friends as much as I could.

When the coup in Russia happened in August 1991, though, I was back in my parents' house and my father got up at 4am to yell at me for being so irresponsible as to still be up watching TV.

"There's a coup in Russia," I said. "They don't know who has the nuclear codes."

My father got up to watch TV with me then, and woke my mother in case we were all about to die, but he has still never apologized to me for anything in my entire life.

My parents don't hate me any more, perhaps because the world is less full of the things that scare them; I grew up, and they couldn't stop it -- stuff like that.

But when the Berlin Wall fell, when the world I grew up with fell apart, I had really wanted it to save me too.

Coffee Talk: The Future of Music Games As Educational Tools

http://geekadelphia.com/2009/11/09/coffee-talk-the-future-of-music-games-as-educational-tools/

http://geekadelphia.com/?p=9785

Dhani Harrison, son of the late Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison, recently revealed the goals of his work with Harmonix on Rock Band 3 to the Chicago Tribune. Dhani discusses Thenewno2, his awesomely trippy jam band first featured in previous Rock Band titles, and later his more direct connections with the Rock Band franchise (i.e. his work on The Beatles: Rock Band).

“I’m working on Rock Band 3 and making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game,” he confidently claims. “Give me a couple years, it’s going to happen.” More after the break. rockband03

Dhani seemingly wants to take music games in a new direction where they truly contribute to musical education. Musicians like Prince have turned down being featured in music games for this very reason: while music games are entertaining, they generally don’t emulate the process in a way that educates or sparks interest in the creation of music.

If done correctly and in a way that is still entertaining, would this be a good direction for music games? Would you want to play an edition of Rock Band that attempted to teach you (in a way that’s somehow fun) how to play an instrument or even train your vocals on your own? In a broader context, how do you feel about the potential of video games as educational tools? Give us your two cents in the comments section.

(Images via ESDMusic and Wonder Wall Web)

Is there an easy way to track people who access files on an NFS share? I'd like to know who's accessed a file, and when. I'm hoping there's a way to get an http style usage log.

Q & A with the writers/directors of Up coming out tomorrow on DVD and Blu-ray

http://geekadelphia.com/2009/11/09/q-a-with-the-writersdirectors-of-up-coming-out-tomorrow-on-dvd-and-blu-ray/

http://geekadelphia.com/?p=9805

“Up” Pixar’s newest masterpiece comes out tomorrow on DVD and Blu-ray and if you haven’t seen this film I highly suggest you check it out, or since it is Pixar – just buy it already. You do know: anything put out buy Pixar should have reserved shelf space in any self-respecting geek’s household, after all this is the company that gave us one the of the greatest superhero films of all-time The Incredibles.

“Up” if your not familiar with the story, is the tale of a grumpy old man named Carl Fredricksen and an overeager Wilderness Explorer named Russell who fly to South America in a floating house suspended from helium balloons. Oh yeah, and there dogs that talk with the aid of high tech collars in the film as well. Up to me seemed like one of the more original Pixar films they have done, and one you simply have to see to believe how great it is. I can’t believe I almost passed this by originally when I read the synopsis, but after watching it I wondered how I could have ever doubted them after-all most studios would kill for Pixar’s track record of releases.

I recently had the opportunity to sit in on a junket with Director and Writer, Pete Docter(Toy Story 1+2, Monsters Inc. and Wall-E) and Co-Director and Writer, Bob Peterson(Finding Nemo and Ratatouille) and get some answers to some of my burning questions about “Up” in anticipation for tomorrow’s DVD and Blu-ray release of the film. Warning spoilers are after the jump.

“Up” became the first animated film to open the Cannes Film Festival. Do you believe animated features are becoming accepted as a more serious artistic platform?

Pete Docter: We were very honored to be the first animated film to open the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Walking around there, I kept picturing Hitchcock, Coppola, Truffaut; these big time directors… and US?!?! It seemed like some sort of mistake! But we do look at our work as filmmaking, just like any other film. And it’s nice to see the world looking at it that way as well.

What inspired the story of “Up”?

Bob Peterson: Various things, including the lives of our own grandparents. For example, I had a grandfather who always wanted to go west from Ohio, but never got the chance. I had the foresight to videotape my grandparents’ home after they had passed 20 years ago. There are the side-by-side chairs – one soft and one hard, which absolutely paralleled who they were as people. Many of our life experiences with our wives and children were put into play in the script, and of course living with our dogs gave us great insight into dog behavior!

As far as the animation style of “Up” goes, instead of going for “as close to realism as possible” kind of visuals, “Up” has an almost caricatured style, especially with the facial features highlighting big points, rather than looking like a human head. What influenced the style of “Up,” and why did you decide to go this route?

Pete Docter: The story called for Carl to float his house into the air buoyed by balloons. For that to be believable, we felt it would be necessary to caricature the world — and therefore the characters as well. I think if we made it look photo-real, you wouldn’t believe it as readily. We work in animation, so we can do things that can’t be done in any other medium. So the idea of simplifying and caricature is always exciting to me.

Up movie image Pixar (8)

Was the choice of presenting the film in 3D a conscious decision from the beginning? How does it affect the production process?

Pete Docter: We started the process for “Up” in 2D, with the focus just on the story and the characters. It was about three years in that John Lasseter came to us and said, “Hey, there are some really cool new developments that have happened with 3D,” and of course Pixar had a long history of interest in 3D, John being one of the prime cheerleaders. He shot pictures of his own wedding in 3D, as well as “Knick Knack,” which is in 3D as well. So we did a ton of research, watching other 3D films, and made a list of things we liked and things we didn’t. I wanted to use 3D in a more subtle way. We used 3D as another tool to communicate the emotion of the scene, like you would use color, lighting, or cinematography. In the end, we didn’t let it affect the way we approached the story at all. I didn’t want to compromise the 2D version, which is the way it will be seen most often, considering DVD and Blu-ray.

Were you concerned at all with delivering such an emotional gut-punch so early in the first act?

Bob Peterson: We weren’t concerned as much as we were vigilant. We knew that we were traversing deep emotional terrain early in the film and we wanted to keep that thread of emotion alive as the film progressed. The reason we went so deep was because we wanted the audience to buy that Carl would lift his house and go on such an audacious adventure. We wanted to keep Ellie alive in the second and third acts, as if she were along for the journey, and so we created a few “talismans” to do so – objects with symbolic meanings – such as the adventure book, the house itself, the colorful sash on Russell (and his Ellie-like sense of adventure) and the colorful bird. At the end of the second act, when Carl reads the adventure book, Ellie is there to give him the wisdom to keep going. It was our hope that in keeping Ellie’s spirit alive throughout the film, her passing earlier would be more poignant.

What was your favorite sequence in the film, and why?

Pete Docter: I personally like the part we call “Married Life” — the wordless section showing Carl and Ellie’s life together. I think it plays to the strengths of film and animation in general, letting the visuals tell the story. And it seems to hit home for people. The bookend to this sequence is also one of my favorites — where Carl looks through Ellie’s adventure book (toward the end of the film).

Bob Peterson: Great question. The love story was the spine of the movie. When we develop these films we look for themes that guide us in how we tell the story. As the process of writing progressed, we realized that our main theme was “How does a person define adventure?” Is adventure out there in great deeds, or can it also be between people in the small moments that make up a life. Carl and Ellie’s love story helped us tell that theme – that small moments lead to a life’s adventure.

up_8-535x336

Of all the exotic locales in the world, why did you choose South America as the place of Carl and Russell’s big adventure?

Bob Peterson: We wanted our locale to reflect and resonate with Carl’s emotional state in the film. The tepuis, or table top mountains, of South America are old, isolated, rugged, and dangerous but with a soulful beauty – a pretty good description of Carl. Going there gave us a good sense of what it would be like for Carl and his friends to be up there. In the film, we used a great many plants and rock shapes that we saw from the tepui.

How was the idea for collars enabling dogs to talk arrived at? How much of it was comedy and how much of it was inspired by fact?

Bob Peterson: We knew we wanted to give Carl a new family including a new “grandson” and “family dog.” It was a gauntlet laid down in front of him to accept new people into his life. Before Russell was invented, we just had Dug along for the journey and it turned out to a pretty quiet journey. So we invented the collars. We love comedy and we knew that the collars would provide plenty of laughs, peering into our beloved canine friends’ brains. But more importantly, Dug is a mentor for Carl in that new relationships are always offered to us, and it is up to us to act on them.

What’s the most rewarding thing you’ve learned or taken from making this movie?

Pete Docter: Hmm, tough question. Overall I’d have to say that the best thing was the experience of making it — the research, the work, and most of all the amazing people we got to work with.

Pick up the film here! SQUIRREL!

the Internet knows, surely
What's harder, washing cats or herding cats?

Discuss.

:P
Chris Leavins is taking over the internet. That's the third mention I've seen of him in the last week. Someone posted The Hanging Garden to one of my comms and said they'd gone out and watched it because they are such a huge Cute With Chris fan.

So weird.

I am way behind (like 3 full days or so) on Nano, and it takes me AGES to convince myself to work on it, but when I'm working on it, it's fun. If only for the, like, five minutes at a time that I'm typing a paragraph, it's fun. How annoying is my brain?

Out in the Cornfields of Delaware, Pumpkins Fly Into the Sky

http://www.moundalexis.com/tm/2009/11/08/out-in-the-cornfields-of-delaware-pumpkins-fly-into-the-sky/

http://www.moundalexis.com/tm/?p=1326

On a chilly Sunday morning, a small carload of folks drove out to Bridgeville, Delaware, for the 24th Annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin. Soon after we arrived, the morning gave way to an uncharacteristically warm November afternoon. We soon discovered firsthand some true marvels of engineering; air cannons, trebuchets, catapults, and centrifuges, all designed and built by amateur teams to fight the forces of gravity and chuck whitish pumpkins as far as mechanically possible.

It’s so simple, but it’s fascinating to watch a pumpkin rocketing out of sight into the blue sky. More entertaining is seeing them vaporizing upon impact with the ground.

There’s a line of these machines, each in its own pit. Each day for three days it starts at one end and progresses down the line, each team having three minutes to launch their pumpkin into the sky. After each device fires (or flings) its pumpkin, the whole crowd moves along down the line to follow the action. Pumpkins that hit the ground intact are measured for distance; exploding pumpkins (or pies) aren’t scored and are met with lots of “oohs” and “oh nos.”

Some of these pumpkins are being chucked several thousand feet, being propelled by nothing more than compressed air. One or two of the machines from this year cleared 4,000 feet. It’s generally believed that someone will eventually pass the one mile mark. As for the other machines, many are based on devices that were built and used in medieval times; the physics still work and seeing them in action is incredible.

The whole thing takes place in a cornfield. A twenty acre square cornfield. There’s a carnival-like atmosphere that pervades the grounds. There’s a Ferris wheel, games, live music, and raffles, all suitable for families with kids. There are food vendors, but some people choose to bring their own groceries. Many people bring their own beverages and coolers, rolling them along as they progress down the line. There aren’t many rules about what you can bring along, since the event takes place on private property. Everyone was incredibly friendly. It feels like amazement is a universal calming force.

The scale of everything makes it hard to document photographically. The machinery goes from silent and dormant to loud to spent and done in less than a second, so even video isn’t going to cut it a lot of the time. But it’s cool and definitely worth a trip out if the weather is good.

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Is that really Altons daughter in the show? I seem to remember her showing up in other shows.

sundries

And home Internet is working again!

Need a job?

copperbadge set up a networking post in his journal.

I'm out of my horrible NaNo funk and over 10K. Which like 3K behind, but hey. I ight be able to do more tonight after I work on other deadlines.

Am I just hideously old-fashioned for refusing to put up holiday card or wish list things before the day after Thanksgiving? Is everyone else already holiday shopping? Is that why my book is suddenly regularly being ranked better than 2K on Amazon.com? (WHERE IS MY ROYALTY CHECK?)

"When the Berlin Wall fell, dear Frau Schubert, I began dreaming migraines": Berlin poems.

In America I feel we have often made an art form of selling our souls for meager safety. This whole health care situation is no exception.

Looks like New York is the next big gay marriage battleground. I'm not looking forward to this.

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Gender expression and high school: "When a principal asks a boy to leave his handbag at home, is the request an attempt to protect a student from harassment or harassment itself?"

cats!
1.

Patty cuddles with Pretty Kitty, who is very sweet, but very nervous so if you try to hold her she stands up and walks around. Pretty is a skinny, delicate, normal (as far as it goes) cat. After this photo, the other cat feels neglected and comes over, causing Pretty Kitty to skitter away.

( Next, meet Little Kitty. She's a bit scary. )

Suppose I have a bunch of a particular kind of file with scrambled names (ABCD.jpg CDBA.jpg BBCA.jpg, etc) all from www.website.com/foo/

Suppose then I would like to wget replacements for all of the files.
Who knows why? Maybe they're growing mold. Not the important part of the scenario.

Is it possible to make a bash script using grep to get the file names and insert them into a wget command? I am not very familiar with bash or grep, so assuming this scenario is possible how might one do it?

Thanks.
-bmach