me and nidas on the world cup top 16:

well this is just copy/pastes of myself and Nidas on the top 16 of the world cup on MSN.

Urugauy vs South Korea

jarvis says:
*I reckon Urugauy , it's gonna take a better team to beat that Uruguay defense ? xD
Nidas says:
*yeah uruguay easy i reckon, i still peg them as potential champs xD

Verdict - Urugauy

USA vs Ghana

jarvis says:
*Yanks/Ghana ? xD
*I reckon Yanks , I don't really rate Ghana , from what I've seen they got thru with luck xD
*tho I haven't seen enough of ghana to judge xD
Nidas says:
*yanks and ghana are both pretty meh tbh xD

Verdict - USA

Germany vs England

jarvis says:
*yeah xD
*Germany/England should be us , we've been Improving as they've been getting worse xD
Nidas says:
*yeah, tho in before penalties xD
jarvis says:
*god , yeah , we've been practicing this time tho =P
Nidas says:
*hopefully that actually makes a difference, i have no faith in james' penalty saving xD

Verdict - England

Argentina vs Mexico

jarvis says:
*in b4 maradonna fucks up ? xD
*do they have random drugs tests for coaches ? :P
Nidas says:
*rofl xD
*i REALLY hope that prick doesnt go too far... xD
jarvis says:
*but yeah , it will prob be his yr ... without needing the hand of god xD

Verdict - Argentina

Netherlands vs Slovakia

jarvis says:
*but yeah , it will prob be his yr ... without needing the hand of god xD
*as great a footballing Nation Slovakia is I just can't see them beating Holland :P
*10-0 Holland ? xD
Nidas says:
*yeah holland will win that easy xD

Verdict - Netherlands

Brazil vs Chile

jarvis says:
*Chile got rly unlucky with the draw , poor sods don't stand a chance after how well they did xD
Nidas says:
*yeah, no way did spain deserve to top that group xd
jarvis says:
*u never know with football but we can almost certainly say the game of the next round would be Holland/Brazil ? xD
Nidas says:
*o yeah xD
*netherlands may pull off a surprise win, who knows /XD

Verdict - Brazil

Paraguay vs Japan

jarvis says:
*Paraguay/Japan - not seen enough of either but I'm thinking Japan ? xD
Nidas says:
*judging by how shit para were against NZ, im guessing japan indeed on that one xD
jarvis says:
*well whoever is gonna get killed by the winner of Spain/Port xD


Verdict - Japan

Spain vs Portugal

Nidas says:
*prob gonna be spain xD
*now theyve cleared their group, they should be port comfortably really /XD
jarvis says:
*yeah ronaldo is not enough to beat spain on his own :P
Nidas says:
*hes only scored 1 goal so far xD
*he's like an overrated version of owen, fast, but thats it xD
*international defences are too canny and just shut him down /XD
jarvis says:
*and wears alot of hair gel :P
*hair gel + ego = ronaldo :P
Nidas says:
*he always attacks down the left side all the time ive watched him, and usually theres like 3 defenders waiting there for him when he gets there, and they just bully him off the ball, leaving him diving and whining for a free kick xD


Verdict - Spain

let's see how many we get right lol.

Thanks to Nidas for his part in this , Shameless overbooru plug for him.

My Personal Anime Hell (pt1 ?)

Image found on Sankaku Complex

I am writing this out because at the time of writing my net connection has been down for like 8 hours now and I am so bored I am reduced to writing silly blog entries in notepad...

so in the theme of hell I decided to name and some shame animes that I personally hate and what I wouldn't reccomend to anyone ... no matter how desperate you are ( so I'm counting out my personal hates that I know other people like such as Evangelion , pardise kiss and 5cm per second ) , so lets begin

Happy Seven

Just finished this now and I have to say if I had the internet to distract me I would have prob split this into 2 viewings as the net would have distracted me away from this garbage ... so the story goes there are basically 7 magic girls , another magic girl who's powers are dormant ... and a magic boy who everyone wants a piece of because he's a nice guy (you know the type ...) and it's down to them to save the world from ... I didn't really get it , most of it was spent exterminating enemies that had pretty much nothing to do with or loosely related with the bigger picture , yeah I do have to say as much as I don't like Nanoha it stuck to the story and made the characters kinda their own characters instead of cliches and there was only like 3/4 main characters , not like 8/9 in the immeadiate front cast, avoid this , there has been better anime made since this (without the internet I can't look up how old it is but going off the artwork it predates like 90% of the anime I've seen) and avoid this if you can.

EDIT: it was actually made in 2005 , it just looks cheap , I don't think the 4:3 ratio helped it there.

Okusama wa Jouseki (My wife is a highschool girl)

when I read this I thought Onegai Teacher but Genders swapped ... how wrong was I ? Onegai had some humour , Onegai had likeable characters and Onegai wasn't just sheer painful to watch. All this anime boils down to is a young teacher (average nice guy again) and a schoolgirl having to hide the fact they are married while they go to school together ... every girl wants the teacher which makes the schoolgirl extremely jealous (most of her time is spent whining) ... and that is about it really , they try to make it funny but it's just ruined by the unrealistic situation that takes itself too seriously and some characters finding out and being okay with it ... if this was In real life if he gave away as much signals as he did in there he'd be facing a jail sentence before anyone can say PE-DO-PH-IL-A. This was so bad even the subbers (lime) left a message saying that they hoped people liked it as much as they hated subbing it and if you couldn't have just found something better to watch.

Haruhi Second Season

This is Second Season Syndrome at it's finest, Haruhi shows up again after a okay first episode (not quite hitting Season 1 standards but fairly good) Endless Eight happens , then 4 episodes of not much else happens ... then that is all. I just hope the dissapearance movie makes up for it and Endless Eight can be erased from the memory.

as the title says this is a part 1 , may do another one if I can be bothered to.

oi , England ... wtf are you doin' ?

1-1 to USA ... okay , I recognise they are a fairly good team , it's one of the youngest teams they've ever fielded and alot of them have had premiership experience and they did well in the confederations cup , but still it's no excuse not to win against a team that football isn't even their main sport and 'football' is something different to an American and they call it 'soccer' and a girl's sport.

0-0 to Algeria ... yeah , this is a team that only just made it through on the African ticket ... only just and I have to say looking at the African teams I have to imagine that qualifying on the Africa ticket is alot easier than qualifying through UEFA , this is basically a team of France rejects , a team that has a Italian Serie B player in it ... this is a team we should be dismissing 3 or 4 - 0 but for the most part they looked to dominate us.

Where did it all go wrong , if England doesn't pull a convincing result against Slovenia and come out of this Group Fabio Capello has alot to answer for ... how could a team go from a pre-tournament favourite to a side that loses possession at the slightest pressure and seems very lack lustre and silly on the attack.

come on England , I hope for you cus on this form we are probably going to lose to Slovenia , if England go out I will probably support Brazil as they are the only realistic team that aren't Argentina.

some of my wall folder

Well , nothing more to say about these than I like Touhou alot and most of them were found on Konachan , Sankaku Complex and other boorus which could be found on the overbooru linked on the right of the page

... credit due to the respective artists of these images.

GTA vs Bully vs Red Dead Redemption

and now that I have 100% completed Red Dead redemption I can make my first entry in like 9 days and what better use is it to compare the game I just 100%-ed

Story

Red Dead has a fairly good cowboy story that would make for a good cowboy movie if it was a little shorter , the main guy as yahtzee said he's pretty much Niko Belic without the accent but the ending is quite the shock and well done , it's just a shame on how you have to continue after not giving anything away. GTA was very similar but in the big city , there was certainly more going on and more stories at the smaller space and the ending I have to say was also good but on Balance I prefer the red dead one and as for the Bully one it does not stand up really , they are all cliched characters , I just can't take controlling a school too seriously ... especially when the cliques are Brainless , Jokes ,inbreds and 60's throwbacks respectively so on balance this is 1-0-0 to Red Dead

Gameplay

All 3 are sandboxes with 3rd person shooters and driving , Bully's aim is a semi manual and the weapons look more in the place in a Dennis the menace cartoon rather of a sandbox game aimed at adults and of course bully is aimed at adults this was made clear when Rockstar defended it from real kids being inspired to bullying from playing the game. In Bully since your in school you have to attend classes and take tests which in some subjects can get rather tedious. Bully also has a fair where games can be played like shoot the bottle , test of strength and other games you'd expect at the fair , they don't really add much but then again neither does GTA with it's Strip Clubs and Bowling alleys and they slightly do more than that. GTA's Aim system is fully automatic but the difficulty is that much higher than bully's to make up for it and the aim system is nice to use and you can get away with fancy diving that looks good. Red Dead redemption has a system similar to GTA but the snap system is made a fair bit harder to use which is good because in places the GTA system got too easy cycling between targets with the right analogue stick is kinda too easy and the dead-eye bullet time system prevents it from being too hard , as for the side stuff Red Dead Redemption easily has the most enjoyable of the three , nothing like hunting bears and cougars, since when could you do that in the other 2 and clearing criminal hideouts and the like. so in short Bully is baby's first sandbox , GTA is flashy and more about the spectacle most the time and Red Dead is balanced and functional , I will give GTA the point for being the most fun and Red Dead for having the best things to do making it 2-1-0 to Red Dead

Vehicles

Bully has a skateboard , a bike and a go-kart ... and that is about it really , the go kart handles way too fast for how small the map is , the Bike is okay but a bit bad at cornering and the skateboard is good around a small area but in the whole map it does take quite a while to get anywhere you want in it. Red Dead Redemption has mainly horses which are good that when you whistle they come running but that said some of the horses can be dim-witted and when you whistle for them they do sometimes run away from you and if they are near a sheer drop and you whistle for them some of them wouldn't think twice about throwing themselves off the drop killing themselves which can be a little irritating as a new horse takes a while to come. GTA sticks to the proven formula of Cars and Motorbikes ... and helicopters and I for one like the GTA car controls once you get used to it , they did feel a little heavy at first but it was kinda what I expected of a real car, 1 more for GTA, so it's 2-2-0 now.

Online Play

Bully has none so this is a zero for this by default a zero for bully , GTA has a free-roam mode which can be played with friends and online play-lists which can be played on versus , there is not much to do but mess about on the free-roam and auto-aim is turned off in the ranked play-lists which is a real struggle to see the targets and Americans can seem to draw a headshot on you before you even see them. whereas Red Dead Redemption has a free-roam mode where you can clear out gang hideouts and do other challenges with other people and over the internet and unlike the GTA player levels they actually mean something by unlocking new guns , characters and mounts and the like , overall it feels more complete and better made than the online GTA. so since this is the last one I can be bothered to do right now that makes it RDR 3 - GTA 2 - Bully 0

I will close by saying if you new to sandboxes play bully , it's ridiculous , it's cliched , it's a laugh and not much more. If you are not planning to play online too much go with GTA , it's more enjoyable and it has more expansion games which you could download and use your GTA disc for and if you want a good short blast with alot to do and good alternative to GTA which difficulty curve's is enough to pose a challenge and good online mode which I recommend playing with your friends go for Red Dead Redemption.

Red Dead Redemption - First Impressions

(( Pic found on Some Wordpress that Google image search pointed me to. ))

Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto circa 1910 , played a 5 hour all-nighter on it last night and so far it seems so far so good.

Lets get the GTA similarities out the way first , you are a ex-criminal from Serbia The east coast , who wants to set things right so you come into Liberty City the wild west to settle down into a life of luxury with your cousin make a last hit because the government is threatening your family or something (didn't really pay the story too much mind). you get a range of weapons (like GTA) you go round completing missions for various people (like GTA) , but so far as I can see that's where the similarities to GTA end.

No Auto-targeting on this like GTA (considering how small some of the targets are this can become an issue) but they thought about this and gave you a new mode called Dead-eye where you can slow things down to bullet-time (yes,yes I know ... matrix cliché again lol) but it does help , especially when chasing things on horseback and I suppose Auto-Targeting would have made horse-chases too easy. Another obvious difference is technology levels which has it's advantages and disadvantages no more mobile phones so no more "NNNIIIKKOOO , IT'S YA COUSIN ... WANNA DO SOMETHING COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO THE GAME !?!?!" which wound alot of people up. No more cars , well I'm sure cars existed back then but they were nothing much past model Ts so for the purpose of this game as far as I can see they are totally omitted and replaced by horses which is good in the way that you can whistle for your horse and it would come running but I personally find it worse as I found horse controls unintuitive and it took me a long while to get used to. Speaking of the side games unrelated to the game they have gotten better in my opinion instead of bowling which if you knew how to do it you could get a strike every time or Darts where the aiming was way too slow you get throwing horseshoes which is actually fairly hard to start with but once you get the hang of it is fun. Five Finger Fillet which is stabbing in-between your fingers using buttons and the old western cliché of Poker , well it had to be done really. Unlike the big city setting of liberty city it is set in the wilderness with various wildlife like wild horses you can lasso and tame wild deer that you can shoot and skin and sell the meat and hide to the shops ... and wild Coyotes that you can shoot and skin and sell it to shops ... well your seeing a pattern here.

So Far only playing the first few mission and playing all the side distractions it is pretty fun so far , I miss the Radio stations of GTA but the new stuff the put in and some of the old stuff they left out makes it worth it , Might make another entry on the online mode when I go on it or when I Complete the game.

New car

Yes my new car is a R reg (that's 1998 I think) Vauxhall Corsa , like the one pictured ... except it's blue ... and the right way up ... at the minute.

had to take some time to get used to the pedals as my old car was very different , my old car being a L red (that's 1994) Purgeot 106. My main nagging complaint with the pedals is that the surface of the clutch pedal feels too slippery and my foot tends to slide across it which when last time I checked is not a good health and safety feature of modern cars , oh but this is balanced out by the accelerator pedal being way too close to the car wall in my opinion so when I push down on the throttle I have to twist my ankle to the left a little and I can see that getting a bit harmful to me on longer journeys and as with the clutch if I twist too fast my foot would slip so yeah may have to do some rally type braking using my left foot on the brake and right on the accelerator and left on the brake if need lol.

My other complaints for this car are there is no power steering , but then again neither did the Purgeot and the in it's defence the Vauxhall's steering does feel much lighter , no central locking ... but neither did the Purgeot , there's a massive dent on the passenger side front door but then again my driver's side back window didn't open on the Purgeot after a dodgy repair job by autoglass. The Vauxhall has that stupid reverse gear change all Vuaxhalls seem to have (well the Vauxhall van I drove had one) and after being used to having the reverse at the bottom-right it will take me a while to adjust to having it on the top-left with a catch again and I can't have keys cut cheaply that means that me and my dad have to share the same key for a while which means I have to leave the house with 2 sets of keys (car and other keys)

The three big things that are good about this are the ride comfort , it feels alot smoother than the Purgeot. The acceleration is much quicker than the Purgeot (tho it still seems to struggle to get past 60-70ish) and it was a cheap car , not as cheap as the Purgeot which I got for £200 but hey £300 isn't too bad for a car.