A Bust or Must? | Final Fantasy 13

Well I'm back with my second post of the week like I said I would. There are two more posts I plan to put up after this. The reason I'm putting them up so fast is because I will probably forget later on. Anyway I played lots of different types of games throughout the years and enjoyed most of them. I say most because I also played some stupid ones like Too Human. I shudder just remembering that painful experience. However this post is not about that. No, this post is about one of the best RPG series out there. That game is the Final Fantasy Series. So sit back and relax and get ready to read about the latest game in a series that has been around since the Nintendo era and is still going strong....

RedDragon's TV Series Update | Smallvile, Bones, Psych

I know it's been awhile since I put up a post. I just wanted to say sorry, I've just been busy playing my games and catching up on shows I missed through out the week. Then of course there's my jobs crappy scheduling. So I decided to up this post today and hopefully two more through the week to make up for my absence. This post will deal with how TV shows are going. This post will cover the following shows: Smallville, Bones, and Psych. Now I was originally supposed to review each episode as it aired, but kinda been busy so this is how its going to go. I am going to tell you how I think the season is going so far and I will review the next episode in full next week for all shows.

Review | Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

You wake up sitting on a seat inside a train, look down and notice you're bleeding... a lot. A box falls straight at your face and you realize your train car is hanging off of a cliff. Your seat breaks and you tumble out of the train car and, luckily, slam onto the guardrail and grab on before you tumble off. You start to climb your way back up along the bottom of the train but a giant boulder falls from the cliff and nearly takes you with it. After a few more tense moments climbing you emerge in the next car that is perched right on the edge. In concert with your experience so far, it yields to the weight of the hanging car and starts to slide off the edge. You start running as fast as you can and make a desperate leap to the cliff edge just as the two doomed train cars fall into the oblivion below you.

That is the beginning of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves for the PlayStation 3, and believe me, the rest of the game gets even better. Let me put it simply; play this game. If you own a PS3, play this game. If you don't own a PS3, buy one right now, and play this game. Read on for the details.

Review | To Aru Majutsu no Index

Technology versus magic, or more accurately, science versus religion; this is the main hook of To Aru Majutsu no Index (literally: A Certain Magical Index), one of the latest series from J.C Staff. They have a pretty nice track record, including some of my favorites such as the amazing ROD The TV, Ghost Hunt, Ai Yori Aoshi and Shakugan no Shana. On top of that, the series has an interesting premise, so it was no question I'd be watching. The real question is, does this series stand up to all the others? Read on to find out!

A Bust or Must? | Ninja Assassin

I have been thinking for the last three days on how to start this post. I went from trying to think of a catchy opening to just flat out typing something. I'm sure you could probably tell what choice I made, but I'll still try to make it not too boring or rushed. Anyway about a month or so back SlowMotionKarma was telling me about the movies being released later on this year. However, the one that caught my interest was Ninja Assassin.

New Sound | I Fight Dragons

Chiptune music. Ever heard of it? Well, I have, thanks to the high levels of nerd running through my system. Chiptune music is original music made using the sound cards from old 8/16bit consoles. NES and Game Boy are the two most popular, but you can find music made from the Ataris, Genesis, SNES and others. I love it because it takes me back to those days of my youth, spent staring at my 8-bit sprite running around the screen. On top of that, I get amazing original music. It's a very underground genre of music at the moment, but it's growing. One of the coolest chiptune-infused bands out there right now is I Fight Dragons. Keep reading to find out why...

Review | Batman: Arkham Asylum

Here is the first every review from Unhealthy Habits being bought to you by RedDragon. I remember when I was just a kid my mom took me to the movies to see Batman which stared Micheal Keaton and Jack Nicholson. That movie instantly became a classic for me just because I thought Batman was awesome and of course Jack Nicholson was funny. Not to long after that a cartoon series came out called Batman: The Animated Series. It aired during the weekdays after school. I loved the series. However that was not the only thing made after the movie starring the Dark Knight. There where also lots of games made through out the years, but unfortunately none of them held my interest. I found that either the story sucked or game play sucked. So every time a Batman game was announced I would ignore it cause I knew they wouldn't give it the justice it deserved. That was until Batman: Arkham Asylum was announced. I could tell from the start that they where trying real hard to take the time to make sure that they had a good story. Then finally I played the demo after that I was hooked. I couldn't wait till the release date. I have to say the game did not disappoint. Anyway without further delay I bring you Batman Arkham Asylum: The Review!!!!

The Inaugural Address: RedDragon's Introduction

Yo! RedDragon here. As you can probably tell from intro, I like to cut straight to the point and don't spend to much time ironing out the details when it comes to explaining myself. Anyway where to start? I'm the second half of Unhealthy Habits. I have known Slowmotionkarma since elementary school. A few months back he mentioned that instead of having our own separate blogging page, I know he hates that word, we should make one page consisting of what we each know best. At first I admitted to being too lazy,but finally a couple weeks ago after having a, I guess you could say debate, with my mom about Chuck Norris and Jet Li I decided that he had a point. So finally Unhealthy Habits was born. This page will consist of a lot of what America loves today , but is looked down on by plenty of people who don't understand entertainment. I am of course speaking of anime and video games.

Now that you know what this page is all about I should let you know a little about me. I am 25 and have played video games since the Nintendo was released. However the Nintendo wasn't my first system to own. The first system i ever owned was the PlayStation. I would play the hell out of that system everyday after school. As time went on I would later move on to bigger and better consoles. Now I could go on and give a long list of every consoled i owned over the years,but I like to keep things short and simple as I can. I owned all three generation playstations, Xbox and Xbox 360, Wii, and Dreamcast. There you have short and simple. Here is a few of the games I played over the years and loved.

• Final Fantasy 7
• Resident Evil series
• Shenmue 1&2 (ended to soon)
• Sonic Adventure 1&2

Second thing I have grown to love over the years is anime. I watched my fair share of anime over the years. I still remember the first anime I saw was Dragonball Z. I would rush home and turn my TV straight to Cartoon Network. Unfortunately that eventually lead to me hating the show. Don't worry I'll explain the reason some other time. Eventually I would be introduced to another anime that to this day in my opinion is still awesome Fullmetal Alchemist. There are, of course, a lot of other awesome anime that I would hopefully someday like to own. I think I'll stop here before I start getting carried away. I will post my opinion more in the anime section.

The last and final American pastime I love is movies and television. I guess I'll start with the movies. I can watch almost any movie genre except for horror. Sorry I just find horror movies funny and predictable. I think the last horror movie I saw was...damn...I can't remember. I guess I'll say Halloween. So you can safely bet that I will probably never do a review for a horror film. Now time to move on to television. I will admit that television networks had hit a wall for the last couple of years. What that means is they don't have a lot of new shows coming out like they used to. Now every time you turn the channel it's some stupid reality show. That's not to say that there is nothing on anymore. Some of my favorite shows are Bones, Supernatural, Psych, and probably a few others I forgot to mention.

There you go people. I hope you have enjoyed this little tour of my likes and dislikes. One other thing you should know is I have a hard time closing a post...so...yeah...

The Inaugural Address: SlowMotionKarma's Introduction

Welcome to Unhealthy Habits. I'm going to start off with a little anecdote:

I despise the term “blog”. Don't ask me why, because I really can't explain. I suppose it has something to do with the word beginning with “b” and ending with “g”, giving it the sound of a pre-vomit vocalization. You know, how it just starts coming up and all you can do it let out this guttural yelp before the deluge? I'm thinking that may be it. Anyway, I've had a few weblogs in the past, and I referred to them as that, weblogs. While it was a great alternative to the abbreviation blog, it presented another problem that ended up even more annoying. 9 out of 10 people which I used weblog during a conversation replied with, “Weblog? What's that, kinda like a blog?”

Now that that's out of the way, hi. I'm SlowMotionKarma and I'm part 1 (or A if you prefer) of this dynamic duo of a weblog team. I've known RedDragon for going on 19 years now, and we were talking a few weeks ago and decided the world would be a better place if we could somehow get our thoughts out there. This is the result. Here you'll find a growing list of articles dedicated to all the best stuff “The Man” says is a waste of time. I'm a huge fan of anime (otaku desu! But don't tell anyone...). At present I'm watching about 10 anime series and reading 4 manga series, along with re-watching the anime I buy every few weeks. I'm also a guy, and under 40, so I'm a big gamer too. Throw in a healthy dose of “film buff” and I'm sure its easy for you to infer what I'm going to be writing about most of the time. Beyond that there might be an occasional “side-story” or two; something not really in any of the main categories but what I consider worthy of being immortalized here.

Now for a little personal background.
-The first “real” anime I saw was DragonBall Z, way back in '96 I think. It was, funnily enough, when I was hanging out at RedDragon's house. We were flipping the channels and came across this awesomeness (at the time. I'm no longer a fan. More on that some other time.) We figured out what it was and started watching. Almost immediately after the wonderful Toonami block on Cartoon Network started airing Gundam Wing and Rurouni Kenshin. I fell in love with anime and started watching as much as I could. Gundam: 08th MS Team and Outlaw Star started airing on Toonami's “Midnight Run” block, the precursor for [Adult Swim] a little later. By that time I had the “super cool” 56k internet and began researching and watching, albeit in terrible quality, all the anime I could find. Today I have a HUGE list of anime I've seen and I'm watching and collecting even more.
-Video games, I've been playing since the mid-eighties. Good 'ol NES was my first platform. I still have fond memories of playing Super Mario Bros. 3 over and over again. Heck, I still can't get enough of it. From there it went:

1. Game Boy
2. Sega Genesis
3. Sega Genesis' Sega Channel
4. Sega Saturn
5. Game Boy Pocket
6. PC (The Ultimate Gaming System!)
7. Sega Dreamcast
8. Sony Playstation 2
9. Microsoft Xbox
10. Nintendo Wii
11. Microsoft Xbox 360
12. Nintendo DS lite
13. Sony PlayStation 3

So now I own all the major systems this generation and I have quite a nice collection of games. My favorite genres are: FPS, RPG and action adventure, with an undying love of Rock Band (yeah, I consider it in a genre of it's own) thrown in. For the most part, as long as the game appeals to me, I don't care what genre it is. My favorite game list includes:

• Panzer Dragoon Azel
• Half-Life 1/2/Episodes
• Baldur's Gate 1/2/Throne of Bhaal
• Xenosaga 1/2/3
• Every Zelda Game Ever Made
• Super Mario 64
• The Smash Bros. Series
• Prince of Persia Sands of Time Trilogy
• System Shock 2
• Deus Ex
• And the list goes on and on...

-Finally, movies and TV. I love movies, as I'm sure many people do. I'll watch pretty much any movie once, and do, so this is something else I'm sure you'll be reading from me quite often. I have a nice little collection of DVD's and an even nicer growing collection of Blu-Ray movies. Television, on the other hand (for me) consists of: House, Burn Notice, True Blood, and Supernatural. And everything else is terrible, or a spin-off of a spin-off, so that's about all I'll be talking about regarding that subject.
There you have it. I'll fill you in with other necessary information in future posts, but that's all you'll need to get a feel from this half of Unhealthy Habits.

-Cheers.

The Inaugural Address: About Unhealthy Habits

Throughout the course of our history there have been “hot button” issues those in power used to keep others on their side. From dancing to art to books to music to television to movies to anime and video games, once one subject became tired they moved on to another. It was always the same argument, “(subject) is polluting our children's minds and causing our society to fall into a cesspool of debauchery and sin.”... or something along those lines. The term, then, is the perfect name for this piece of the interweb because that is exactly what you'll find here.

RedDragon and SlowMotionKarma share a love of these “modern” forms of entertainment and they have decided to talk about them. Friends since childhood, these two gentlemen have a wealth of knowledge and an even greater amount of opinion, perfect for you. You who might be wondering about the latest $65 video game, or $10-a-ticket movie. You who are wondering what the really good anime is or who out there is making some great music. These two patrons of pastimes, these honored men of hobbies, these curators of the creative are more than happy to share with you the knowledge and expertise they have cultivated throughout the years. And you, you will be grateful.

Alright ladies and gentlemen, here's how things are going to work here. We've talked and have decided it would be best to keep things organized here. Too many times have we seen a great weblog struck down by the unforgiving beast that is disorganization. Man invented the “tag” for a reason. That reason was an easy and intuitive way to find information. So why do so many people abuse it? Using “game” in one post, then “video game” in another only splits everything up.

So this is how we're going to do it.

On the right you'll see a list of our Main Categories. These are, and contain:

• Anime – Anything relating to anime. From reviews, initial impressions, recommendations, and “now watching” lists to character info or cool anecdotes. As long as it's about anime, it will be tagged as such.
• Video Games – Like above, except with video games. This will also include talk about the latest hardware (new systems, accessories, etc.) relating directly to video games as well.
• Film – Both for new-in-theater and DVD/Blu Ray, this covers the world of film. There will be another tag to let you know whether we were talking about the theater or home video release (and there may be two versions when regarding reviews.).
• Music – This will be mostly about music we've discovered. New artists or little known older artists, we'll write about them in this category.
• Television – All the latest about our favorite shows. Follow along with our thoughts about how the series are progressing.
• Culture – Anything relating to the above categories, but not directly about them. You'll find talk about the latest conventions, expos and parties as well as little tidbits of other stuff (like cool anime cosplay, or collectibles).
• Side Story – Where our personal stories will fall. Life, love, the fried chicken we ate last night; you can read all about it here.

In addition to that there will be the regular tags, available from our tag cloud. These will always be the same, no “shana” then “Shakugan no Shana” to confuse you. Reviews will always be tagged “review”, and so on. Ease of use is the name of the game.

So keep tuned to this URL and follow along with us. Comments are always welcome, and we'd love to hear what you like as well.