Animal Crossing New Leaf: FLO IS A CUNT & SHE HAS RUINED EVERYTHING

I am SOOOO pissed off right now.

I've recently been playing a lot of Animal Crossing: New Leaf ever since thanks to Nintendo's sexy promotion, Shelly managed to nab me a free download code when she bought a 3DSXL and a copy of New Leaf. I love the way you can customise your town and make it exactly how you want it. With that in mind, I've made fruit orchards, a mushroom farm, a Japanese-style park with a hot spring, sand garden and lots of bamboo shoots and a communal garden area with a stone tablet in the centre, surrounded by flowerbeds.

I've also put down a lot of paths so I can stop wrecking my grass when I'm running about everywhere. Anyway, in the middle of a square of paths, I built my flower garden, everything was nice and decorative. Until THIS HAPPENED:

(My town currently has snow because I'm playing the game day-by-day, starting from January 1st.)

 

As you can see, this little bitch took it upon herself to build her fucking house right in the middle of my damn paths. The path to the right is also the ONLY path that goes around my house, as I built it a little too close to the river. So she's fucked up my garden area, my access to my house and just generally RUINED EVERYTHING. I've previously had a villager build their house in the middle of a fruit orchard, but that wasn't so bad - I just planted a new one elsewhere. This however cannot be corrected - there's ponds and public works projects in the way. The way I had it was the only way it could work. And she has RUINED EVERYTHING.

 

I decided to let her know what I thought:

 

And then informed any potential new villagers of my mayoral policies on building shitty houses:

 

She has now moved in and I've taken it upon myself to INGORE her. If she asks for favours, I will open all of her gifts, mail and time capsules. If she asks me to think up a new phrase for her, it will be "I'm a stupid cunt!" (This actually works because Broffina, the transvestite chicken currently has "I'm a slag!" as her phrase. I love the fact you can input swear words in New Leaf. :D)

 

I'll also take it upon myself to bash her in the head with my bug net every time she comes near me and make lots of noise when she's fishing or catching bugs. Let's see how long she lasts...

Europe VS USA: Virtue's Last Reward - English & Japanese Voice Differences

I LOVE Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. It holds pride of place in my top 20 games of all time. (Look to your right and scroll down a bit. :P) I loved the prequel 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, but as it wasn't released in Europe, my version is a US import copy. Thank the lord for the Nintendo DS being region-free.

Anyway, for some reason, despite the first game in the Zero Escape series not being released here in Europe, the sequel Virtue's Last Reward was, on the PS Vita and the Nintendo 3DS. From what I've heard, the PS Vita version is better, due to the infamous save-erasing crash bug that is present in the 3DS version (which I've never ever come across and I've finished it twice) and because you can choose between the original Japanese voice acting and the English dub version. The 3DS version only has the Japanese audio.

In North America, both versions came with the English dubbed audio set as standard, with the CHOICE to change it to the original Japanese. There shouldn't BE A CHOICE. The original Japanese voice acting is AMAZING. The English dub is FUCKING AWFUL. Just like most animes and Japanese films, any dub is just terrible.

Here's my reasons as to why the Japanese audio is vastly superior:

1) The original was recorded with the original script. Some lines had to be changed for the English translation. Some examples are the character Zero III ending his lines of dialogue with "usa", the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound a rabbit makes. In the English subtitles, he simply makes funny rabbit puns.

2) The voice actors are AMERICAN. They ham it up far too much and make the funnier lines simply cheesy and the more serious lines cannot be taken seriously at all.

3) In the original Japanese voice acting, the character Dio has a slick, sinister sounding voice. In the English dub, he just sounds like some American douchebag who is trying too hard.

4) In the original Japanese voice acting, the character Zero III manages a cute sounding voice while still managing to be evil and cruel. In the English version, it's just cheesy and makes me dry heave.

5) When the English voice actors swear, there's no feeling in their dialogue. It's like a little kid saying a bad word in front of their grandma.

6) The character models' mouths are synched to the original Japanese dialogue. Thus making for oddly synched mouth movements when they are "speaking" English.

7) The game is Japanese. It has a very Japanese art-style, storyline and characters. Why ruin the integrity by replacing the original lines of dialogue?

Just to prove my point, I've recorded a sound clip of the same point in the game of both the English dub and the original Japanese voice acting. The English one was recorded from a YouTube video, the Japanese one was recorded from my 3DS speakers. (They're embedded below, the Japanese one on the left, the English one on the right.)

I hope you agree with the points I've made and if you buy this game, change the DEFAULT fucking language to what it actually should be. You'll enjoy the game much more. I could NOT play it with the awful English dub, a serious game with dark tones like Virtue's Last Reward does not work with cheesy American voice actors.

Video Games In The Real World: The Powerpuff Girls Atari Easter Egg

Say hello to another frequent feature on my lovely blog.
 
Being a hardcore gamer, I'm less in touch with the world than most people - so I get very excited when I see references to video games in the real world. It is common to see real-world references in video games - but who says it can't go the other way too?
 
I'm a massive fan of The Powerpuff Girls, which is brimming with references to pop culture and weird little Easter eggs in every single series. I have the full box set of all 6 series (which I ordered from the US) and when watching it recently with my fiancée Shelly, we found this one.
 
I'd heard of this Easter egg before, but never actually seen it for myself. In episode 6A from series 3, 'Three Girls And A Monster', The Powerpuff Girls are arguing with one another over the best way to tackle this giant orange dinosaur monster. At one point when Blossom takes the lead, she calls out an attack pattern: "ALPHA, OMEGA, ATARI!"
 
And then they do this:
 

Yes, that's an upside-down Atari logo. And as Shelly is a huge fan of the Atari 2600, she squealed. I felt warm inside, seeing a perfect connection between The Powerpuff Girls and video games - two of my favourite things. Awesome. It's in the episode for only several seconds, but it's still awesome.
 

Video Game iPod Tracks: Sloprano (HEAVY METAL COVER!)

This is a song I've had on my iPod every since I first discovered it - and recently hammering out some old playlists, I've regained my love for it and listened to it on repeat for hours on end.

When anybody mentions Conker's Bad Fur Day, the first thing most people thing of is THE GREAT MIGHTY POO and his awesome opera singing. I loved the game, I loved that song and took it upon myself to replay the boss battle several times to educate all of my friends on this game's awesomeness.

Anyway. This song. Two words. HEAVY METAL. It's a heavy metal version of The Great Mighty Poo's theme song, A.K.A. Sloprano. It's by an awesome guitarist who goes by the YouTube name of Ensigeetard with sweet vocals by lowalkoroc. It's fucking amazing.

Ensigeetard is also cool - he responded to my comments practically instantly and said he was cool with me embedding this awesome song on my blog. He also does other heavy metal covers of other video game music like Pokémon. :)