Continue reading »]]> I love trains. However, I don’t quite love this train game. I would be the person who would love this game, but I’m going to explain why even I don’t like Densha de Go! 64.

I think most people wouldn’t have the patience for this game. While I am not writing this review for said “most people”, it still needs to be said that this is a game that was made for a certain audience. There’s a reason this game was never released in America-it wouldn’t sell. But even in Japan, I can see some train freaks like me not feeling like this is a great game. There are a few reasons why.

Apparently, this is one of the first renditions of the series that features a Beginner’s Mode. Here, the rules can be explained and you can then practice a few of the missions with practically no score limit (I’ll explain that in a second). While these are helpful to get acquainted with the controls and operation of the trains, the practice mode is surprisingly  not helpful overall. Nothing is really explained. You’re better off revisiting the ‘study’ mode to be guided through the rules again. Perhaps this game’s instruction booklet does an excellent job of explaining things. That’s too bad because it’s too difficult to find this game with one anyways. Besides, a game cannot expect to fall back on an instruction booklet that many people are not going to read (although I certainly would if I had one).

The scoring system should be explained. It’s basically a health bar, that begins at 60 seconds. For every second you are behind schedule when either stopping at a scheduled stop at a station or passing a train station on the faster trains, you are penalized one second from your 60 seconds. This’ health’ needs to last for the entire mission. There are other penalties, like stopping too far ahead of the proper position to stop and accelerating at the train station that you are supposed to be stopping at (i.e. you should only use the breaks). These penalties become harsher as the difficulty increases.

Those rules are understandable. However, here is where the game gets particularly frustrating. There are two types of speed limits that may suddenly be required. One is a signal limit and another is a track restriction. The latter is consistent and expected because since obviously any particular track will not change and the restriction will have to apply. If that doesn’t make sense, think of it in this way-a sharp turn in the track will require a slower speed to compensate for the turn. Again, this is understandable. However, here is where the game is nearly broken in my opinion. It involves the signal limits. At random, a particular signal that you may be approaching can suddenly change to a dreaded yellow light, which is a deceleration signal, requiring a speed no greater than 70 km/h. If you pass this signal going even just a few km over, an emergency system kicks in to stop the train. While they may not be designed this way in real life, you’d think that it would simply apply the emergency breaks to get the train to below 70 km/h, and then perhaps require the player to apply an override to that system that would then penalize them.

So that doesn’t even bother me. The real issue is this-if you are going over 100 km/h or so, you can forget about getting to below 70 km/h for that signal limit. That means a sudden emergency stop. Once again, this doesn’t necessarily bother me. However, it is basically a Game Over. The reason is because it’s absolutely impossible to catch up to the schedule after that. In fact, the game then encourages the driver (you) to then rush to the next station just to make the schedule. As much as rushing is probably a part of the real thing, it’s somewhat nonsensical here. It’s one thing for a game to throw an obstacle in your way that is hard to dodge. It’s another thing when a game throws an obstacle that is essentially impossible to dodge. And what makes it particularly frustrating is that instead of just killing you right away, you have to slowly make trod your way to the next station where your ‘health’ will surely be depleted for being late.

That’s not quite the end of it. If you are running late simply passing a station, you lose health. That makes no sense whatsoever. Shouldn’t that be more of a guide to tell you, for example, that if you are 5 seconds behind you should consider speeding up a little bit to make the actual scheduled stop? It doesn’t make sense to penalize you during the journey; should it not at least see if you can catch up to the destination station (which I usually do)? It simply is asinine.

In real life, there is at least some amount of grace for these circumstances. Nobody can help if the signals say 70 km/h, or in some even harsher cases, 45 or 25. But I am still expected to make the stops on time. Of course, if these signal limits pop up, and they truly are random, I will inevitably fall behind schedule. Why in the world should the player be penalized for this? In real life, if I get a signal of 45 km/h when I am used to going upwards of 110 km/h, it would not be realistic to make the stop on time. Surely there is some understanding for this? But if this game is telling of real life, then I would never want to be a train driver. I hate to think that any amount of pressure like this could cause a train accident, but it already has in Japan. Perhaps these kind of circumstances could apply to harder difficulties, but I am playing on Easy mode for crying out loud.

All of that being said, I happen to have a lot of patience for this game because I like trains so much. There are still unfortunately a few other flaws. I personally don’t think the graphics are that bad considering the time (1999 or so), but you can certainly see where the cut corners. While it’s nice to see all of the scenery, it loses a little bit of consistency when you see a certain part in the distance just fade away with no explanation other than the animators got lazy. Other than that, they actually got the areas pretty accurate to their real-life counterparts.

But accuracy is one thing. This is a minor flaw, perhaps to make the missions less drawn out, but some of the stations are too close to each other. The Yamanote Line feels accurate, but particularly, the Tokaido Line from Osaka to Kobe is very wrong. Having commuted from about half of the latter part of this section of the line every day for 9 months, I happen to know firsthand that some of the distances are incredibly short, sometimes half of what they are in real life. Again, this may be to relieve the player of the boredom of long stretches of straight sections of the lines, but it does make it less realistic.

Having the train controller is actually quite fun, and I really cannot imagine playing without it. It allows for precise control of the breaks and accelerator. It perfectly complements this game, and may in fact be the best part of the game, which is sad. That’s all I have to say about that.

The gameplay has probably been thoroughly revealed by my ranting about how poorly it is designed. I want to use this example-imagine fighting a boss in any given adventure game-say, Super Mario 64-and that boss, at random, used a theoretically unavoidable attack that froze the player and then killed the player very slowly. Imagine that this freeze attack only occurs some times that you fight the boss. Other times, this attack is not used and you can just beat the boss normally. This is in effect what Densha de Go! 64 does to the player. If this signal appears and I am going 120 km/h (because the game told me to go around that speed to stay on track with the scheduled time), then I just quit so I spare myself the shame of what IGN calls a blood-curdling alarm and sudden stop of the train that will, like I said in the example, kill me slowly. It would be one thing if this was present every time you play, but it isn’t so I can’t even prepare for it in advance. This is extremely frustrating. If I have invested 10 minutes or so into a mission, why should I be screwed by the game?

The Yamanote Line has become my favorite mission because of this fatal flaw of the game, The stops are so close that I rarely have to worry about this random, unavoidable occurrence. But a game cannot be just one mission. Some people might still not see why this is such a big deal. One of my favorite games, Perfect Dark, gets very difficult on the hardest setting, where I might have been playing a particular mission for 15 minutes and then am killed by an enemy. However, I always have a chance to get myself out of a hard situation in that game. It’s part of the challenge to be able to survive a mission that long. There are avoidable things, even if they are hard to avoid. In this game, unlike Perfect Dark, these signals are simply unavoidable. How can a game be so unforgiving?

This game would also be better if it had a little bit more variety. How about instead of driving the train, having another mode of being the operator in the back who controls opening and closing the doors on time and as to avoid hitting a rushing passenger. Since this rendition of Densha de Go! also uses the Japanese voice recgonition unit (VRS in Japan, for whatever reason), this would also give players a little bit more usage out of it. I got tired of trying to use that microphone and also trying to control the train, to be honest. Even if it wasn’t a full-fledged mode, perhaps having a bonus mini-game of closing the doors properly would suffice. Speaking of which, there are bonus missions that are also, not surprisingly, triggered randomly that allow the player a chance at extra health. The developers are once again fools for making it random rather than consistently available.

This game is one to be hated if only because it has so much potential that is thrown away with broken game design. I will still continue to play at least the Yamanote Line mission, but that gives the game a much more limited replay value. That is sad considering it doesn’t have all too much to begin with. However, like I said, this game is designed with a particular audience in mind. You really have to be an extreme train freak-more than I am, which is probably a feat in itself-to like this game. How unfortunate!

Continue reading »]]> One of the recent posts on Desiring God quotes G.K. Chesterton. I can’t quite figure out what the point is, yet I think it is interesting.

I understand the first three paragraphs, and I thought that was interesting enough. But the final paragraph just throws me through a loop. Here is the quote:

“When we are very young children we don’t need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough.

A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is exicted by being told that Tommy opened a door.

Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales — because they find them romantic. . . . This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement.

These tales say that apples are golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”

Here is the link to the original post, which interestingly didn’t provide any further development on the quote. You decide what it means (though when I figure it out, you’ll be wrong and I’ll be right, hehe…)

Continue reading »]]> As the Oscars approaches, I thought I would do some posts leading up to it. Mainly, I thought it appropriate to talk about some of the contenders for certain categories beforehand. Since I like to talk a lot about my own predictions of the winners after the nominations are announced, now I would like to talk about one movie’s possibility if landing an Oscar.

Of course, if any justice is to be done, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, directed by David Fincher, will probably land several nominations and go home with at least one. One of those that it could go home with is Original Score. I was under the impression that it was difficult or even near impossible for somebody to walk away with an Oscar two years in a row. Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor may do that this year with their score for this movie. While it may be rare, recent history tells an interesting story of this Oscar. Gustavo Santaolalla went home with a win for his score in Brokeback Mountain for the Oscars for movies of 2005. To some people’s surprise, he also won again the following year with Babel. Some even argued that of the two, Babel was worse. This makes for an interesting case. It would be one thing if Gustavo won for Brokeback and then Babel was a lot better of a score, and then he proceeded to win for that one. That isn’t necessarily the case. And yet, he won two Oscars back-to-back.

This may be the case this year with Ross and Reznor’s score for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I have only heard the soundtrack sampler for the movie, and while it is good, it might not be better than The Social Network’s soundtrack. What I am hearing from this soundtrack is that it sounds as if it fits the mood of the movie perfectly, which is important. That doesn’t necessarily equal an Oscar win. All of that being said though, it should be interesting when The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is nominated for this category. Yes, I am basically betting that it will happen. I don’t care so much if I am wrong as the actual predictions of the winners of the Oscars is more important to me.

There’s a reason The Social Network won. One of my favorite websites, FilmTracks, despised both Babel’s and The Social Network’s score. With at least The Social Network, there is no denying that the score is original. We really may have moved from an age that requires sweeping orchestral scores for movies to be considered great. There really is something to this new kind of music that Ross and Reznor seem to almost be pioneering.

Therefore, let them win again this year. Of course, I have no idea what other movies have great scores this year, having been mostly away from movies. So, I can’t wait to see what comes up on the list of nominees for this category come the end of this month when they are announced.

Continue reading »]]> I have been to more than I think I have been to. It might not be fair to count Shizuoka, but I will count it anyways. Here they are (and the reasons, however strange or ‘unfair’)

Chiba: If you’ve only been to Narita Airport, I think that doesn’t count. But if you have ever been to Tokyo Disneyland, that does count toward Chiba because Tokyo Disneyland is not in Tokyo-it’s in Chiba. So, I went to Chiba for a day trip to Tokyo Disney Sea in 2008.

Tokyo: I went to Tokyo a few times, the major one being a short-term missions trip for 5 weeks, living just a tad west of Shinjuku. The first visit in 2006 was very short, but I have been back for several days in 2009 during winter time and again in 2010.

Kanagawa: Besides a very short trip to Yokohama in 2006, I went to Hakone for a night. Very nice.

Shizuoka: If any on this list is ‘cheating’, this might be the one. But the fact is that I did actually get off the train here, if only for an hour. It was at Atami, for a quick lunch.

Aichi: Two very short trips to Nagoya and Toyohashi.

Gifu: Stayed several days in Gifu with a very nice homestay family. I actually knew one of the children from his trip to Ohio in 2004. I really like Gifu.

Nagano: Before I move further west, I have been to Nagano for a couple days. This was the first time I went snowboarding. Definitely learned a few things during the trip.

Ishikawa: Stayed a night (or was it two?) in Kanagawa. I liked it enough to go back, but it did seem kind of far.

Fukui: I go to Fukui almost every weekend. Tsuruga is way closer than Kyoto.

Shiga: I live here, so this one is easy.

Kyoto: Kyoto is an interesting one; I feel like I have been here too many times to count. I go about once a month now, and I probably went once a month when I studied abroad in Kobe.

Osaka: Osaka wasn’t too far from Kobe, so I have been here. I have actually been to quite a few places in Osaka.

Wakayama: I forgot that I had been here. Koyasan is, in fact, in Wakayama. It is very close to my next one:

Nara: I have been here twice, both for just one day trips. Gotta love those deer.

Hyogo: Home of Kobe. I lived here for nine months when I studied abroad, so I feel as if I know the Kobe area inside-out.

Tokushima: I have been here a couple of times for day trips. I really like the feel of Tokushima, actually. Wouldn’t mind going back.

Hiroshima: I have somehow never been to Okayama, but I have been to Hiroshima. I really, really like Hiroshima; at least for one night.

Yamaguchi: This is the farthest west I have been, but I also like Yamaguchi. To be honest, it did feel very rural, though…

What’s the count then? Let’s see…that comes to…18. That’s actually more than I thought. A high guess would have been 15; a low guess would have been 10. But if there’s 47 prefectures, then there’s actually nearly 30 I haven’t been to in any capacity.

Continue reading »]]> Now that we are at the end of November, I’d like to use this post as a reflection of the wide range of posts that I ended up creating for this month’s ‘experiment’ of making a blog post every day. I talked about some experiences I had in college, I talked about some Christianity-related things, I talked about a lot of different Nintendo-related topics and a post about jubeat. I also talked about Wendy’s in Japan, Hulu in Japan, Escalators in Japan and, of course, me in Japan. I also made a somewhat major graphical update to the blog. I think it had been a couple years since I have changed the look, and I am most impressed with the way things are looking on my blog now.

Doing these daily posts was not intended to increase the amount of visitors to my site. Actually, I have had one of the lowest amounts of visitors this month, which is a little bit surprising. My impression of how visitor counts fluctuate is that posting about certain topics at times in which that topic is popular will generally see a rise in the amount of visitors. So flooding my website with so many posts doesn’t give one good post enough time to have its day on the front page, so to speak. Some of my better posts were quickly pushed lower and lower on the homepage simply because the newer posts will take precedent.

The quality of the posts varied. Actually, a lot of them were kind of half-baked, especially towards the end of the month. It became difficult to think of meaningful posts every day. I was extremely busy last week, being gone almost all day Tuesday-Friday and also Sunday. I think the nap I took today was 3 hours long, and I still feel like I have not caught up from last week. It’s not all work-related, but certainly I was busy. It’s interesting that there is an option to make a post like a status, but that also makes it easy to make short posts that are likely not meaningful. Yet, I could probably make an entire post about the phenomenon of status updates that Facebook and Twitter helped to foster.

I think I learned a couple things. One is that I essentially can come up with many ideas and talk about them. The other is that it’s probably best to not do as many posts as I did in the same period of time. However, I can certainly do one post a week, and I hope to be able to stick to at least that much. I have a feeling I won’t do a post tomorrow just to say I can finally have a day off.

Continue reading »]]> Many of the reviews for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword feature perfect scores for the game. However, it is two major outlets that score the game at about 75% and 85% (when factored into a system of 0-100%) that make this case interesting. The reason it is interesting is because I cannot ignore these reviews as they are sites I also trust. The lower of the two scores is the site I trust more than the other. The lower score of 75% is from GameSpot, where the original score was 7.5 out of 10. Is it just a fluke? I don’t think so. Does it mean that the game is really just a 75% type of game? Perhaps not. Likewise, 1UP gave the game a B+, which equals 85% on GameRankings.com.

Here’s the point I am trying to make with mentioning these two lower than 90% scores-these reviews cannot be ignored. If this Zelda game really is the best Zelda game, as many are claiming, it is odd to have a score as low as 75%. What I mean is that, if another website is making the claim that it is perfect with a perfect score such as 10/10, 100% or what have you, it make one wonder how another reviewer can rate the game significantly lower. This cannot be ignored-if I scored a 97% in a Japanese language class at my university, I would pass with an A. If I scored a 72% in that class (a 25% difference), I not only would receive a C-, but would fail the course.

What really matters is how each player who plays the game feels. If you feel it’s the best Zelda ever, then by all means share that opinion with others. However, when I say that I am not buying the game right now, it shouldn’t be seen as a bashing of the game or the series. I am just not convinced that if I am to spend $50-$60 on one video game this holiday season that this is the one to get. This comes after my disappointment of Twilight Princess. Overall, Twilight Princess is not a bad game. For a Zelda game, I felt that it was lacking, however.

I wrote a reply to a comment on 1UP’s review of the game. I want to copy it here to share:

“GameTrailers did the same thing by reviewing the game and scoring it a 9.1. I was shocked, almost out of my seat in surprise. I am not saying that Skyward Sword isn’t a 9.1-it may very well be deserving of that or more, but what I am saying is that based on how they were describing the game in GT’s review, it did not sound like a 9.1 until they showed the score. It sounded more like a 8.5 or so.

This brings into the question the importance of both reviews and scores. I was one who looked very closely at scores and not always the content of the review. Clearly, I need to be more vigilant to read a review’s content and possibly ignore the scores a little bit. What I mean is that a 9.1 alone would be enough to merit a purchase of the game by me. The content of the review before the score would not have. And that’s what you have to ask yourself-does the review affect your purchase? Greater fans of Zelda than I undoubtedly own the game, and probably were going to buy it no matter how the reviews went. Nothing wrong with that. The question is now do I buy the game.

We’ll see, but with my disappointment of Twilight Princess and a few ‘bad apple’ reviews among the perfect scores that I can’t ignore, it’s not looking too good.”

That’s how I feel. And the contents of my comment that I pasted above also bring up the point that reviews are more than their scores. Again, GT gave the game a 9.1, but if I had stopped the video before I saw the score, I would have been convinced not to buy the game. Basically, the 9.1 score feels like a cop out to say that they don’t hate the game neither will they give the game a perfect score like other outlets are.

My final point is this-to say that the new Zelda game is better than Ocarina of Time is an extraordinary claim. There were so many elements that made Ocarina of Time an incredible game, and easily my favorite of the series. Does Skyward Sword really top OoT’s music, graphics, and play control as well as the gameplay and storyline? To top any of these aspects that OoT did so well would indeed be an accomplishment. Simply put, I don’t think I will be a believer until I get to play around with Skyward Sword for a bit. However, I just have to say that I am not a big enough Zelda fan to warrant an automatic purchase. If it was a console Star Fox game that was just released, I would own it without question. As evidenced by my reviews and scores for Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault, I’d like to think I am not biased. I gave those games 8.6 and 7.4 respectively, and that is hardly anywhere near perfect. All I am saying is that I hope that these slew of perfect scores are not simply coming from people who would love to give a Zelda game such a score, and may do so, dare I say, blindly. I would love to say, for example, that Pikmin 2 is a perfect game, but it simply is not. There are flaws and I recognize them. Are the flaws properly recognized in Skyward Sword? Perhaps not.

Continue reading »]]> In a nutshell, I was inspired to even do these daily posts by Tim Challies. Not directly, but I was indirectly inspired when I read one of his own posts in late October celebrating the anniversary of his blog. His blog is rather successful, I would think, and while I am not aiming for success, I thought making a post every day would be a good start. I’ll have a reflection post in two days at the end of the month.

You can visit his blog here: challies.com

Continue reading »]]> I had a really good day today, and while I will talk about the rest of the day, I’d like to first mention about the highlight of my day. So there’s this ticket gate at JR Kyoto station that is quite unique. Most ticket gates (exits of stations) lead to streets, and occasionally underground areas. These are likely considered normal. However, Nishinotoin gate is special because the ticket gates are actually located inside a store. Imagine walking down an aisle of Best Buy and looking to your left and seeing an electronic ticket gate for a train station actually leading into the station. I was in shock. It worked out that I would use that gate to leave Kyoto today, and I definitely would have missed my once-an-hour train had I not been able to go directly from Bic Camera (a close counterpart to Best Buy in Japan) to the station, I wouldn’t have been able to get to my train in 5 minutes. I was stoked. I’ll get a good picture next time and post in on here.

Before that occurred, another very peculiar event occurred. I was looking at a new jacket like shirt thing and thought I should try it on. I thought it looked pretty good on me-at least a little bit stylish. While I was facing a mirror, another man from almost behind me tried to get my attention by asking if I worked at the store. As soon as I turned his way, which was probably mid-sentence, he probably realized quite quickly that I, in fact, did not work there. This was a Japanese man, and he quickly dismissed himself saying something to the affect of, “ah, never mind, sorry”.

Waking up at 5:20 AM was not a highlight of the day, but it is totally fine because I had planned to meet with a friend in Osaka anyways. It was good to see him again, and hear of his troubles. I am glad I could be someone to hear what his feelings were. Having breakfast with him, lunch with another friend, and nice ol’ soba in my room makes the day rather complete. But since it’s almost 9, and I will have been awake for nearly 16 hours, it is about time I sign off for now. Just a few more days in November!

Continue reading »]]> This may be the second time I have taken this kind of survey. The survey was 95% about other things than religion, but then it asked this question: “What makes you a Christian”. The answers are interesting. I tried to answer it in my mind before looking at the choices. Here were some of the choices:

-”My family is Christian”
-”Going to church”
-”Converting to Christianity”
-”Being raised as a Christian”
-”Being baptized”
-”Believing in God”
-”Doing good things”

There are some problems with these choices, and I chose none of them as my answer. To be fair, some of these situations help. Obviously, if your family is Christian, then they will have an influence on you (whether that is a good or bad thing is up to you). Going to church will obviously have a Christian influence, and hopefully positive. “Being baptized” is an interesting choice. If you were baptized as an infant, it doesn’t mean as much as someone who chose to be baptized as an adult. In that case, it wouldn’t make one a Christian, but it would at least point to a specific time in one’s life when they at least intended to be or thought they were a Christian, so it is helpful inn that sense.

One choice I need to dispel is simply doing good things. The thing is, most people believe they are good, so if doing good things made one a Christian, we would have to say to many people are. Actually, that answer is extremely vague. Surely even Hitler did some good things in his life. So, really, the choice should be broken down to explain whether it includes people who do more bad than good. But even that is vague-how could you classify someone in those terms? There are serious problems with that choice, and I really hope that no Christian would think to choose that as a qualification for Christianity.

There were a few choices that were closer; one was “Accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior”. This one is interesting because I don’t know it it’s entirely Biblical. For that matter, how does one go about ‘accepting’ Jesus? There are many people who accept Jesus as a good person, but not necessarily God. There are people who accept Jesus’ teachings as admirable and good, but that doesn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things.

I selected one answer, besides “Other”, being “Believing that Jesus is the Son of God”. That latter belief alone is not enough to be a Christian, but it is crucial. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe those words, but they don’t believe that Jesus is God. That is another prerequisite. But even Lucifer believes that Jesus is God. He knows it. He doesn’t follow God. So, I believe we can follow God by bridging one gap between us and God, which is mainly our sin. If we repent of our sin, truly, then we are one very important step closer to becoming a Christian. In a sense, Christianity is having a personal relationship with Jesus. But it is also more than that. It’s being wholly God’s, and living one’s life for God in the most complete sense possible. It can’t be just a part of a Christian’s life. It must be the entirety of their life.