God of War 4: Ascension Officially Announced. We'll learn more at E3 2012.
God of War 4, or rather “God of War: Ascension” has been exclusively announced for PlayStation 3!
This is the long-awaited newest game in the series, which looks like it will be a prequel, and a game we are sure to learn real details about once E3 2012 hits in June. The game has yet to be officially announced (or formally, rather), but info including the official trailer has leaked early.
“Join Kratos as he seeks freedom, redemption, and the clarity to avenge his family in the most ambitious God of War adventure in the series so far.”
The game is being developed by Sony Santa Monica and Todd Papy will be directing the game, previously he was the Game Designer for God of War 1, God of War 2, and God of War 3, so it sounds like the game’s development is in good hands. Todd worked on Scenario Design for Combat, Level Design and Scripting for past games, so it sounds like he knows the game well enough to become the producer this time.
“There was a time before Kratos became the monster known as the Ghost of Sparta. A time when something other than rage consumed him. A time when in spite of the madness that plagued him, Kratos would break his blood oath to an unjust God. A time when he was only bound by blood.”
Sounds awesome huh, now watch the God of War 4: Ascension trailer:
In another example of my ABSOLUTE gaming failure, I’ve yet to play a single one of the God of War games…. *sigh* *sits in corner*
The U.S. National Debt Is Currently 15 trillion (April 2012)
The late, great, Andy Rooney had no shortage of opinions on all subjects under the Sun. When the financial crisis first hit under President George W. Bush during 2008, he did a series of different segments on the financial problems this nation faced.
Funny to realize (actually not) that “financial crisis” and “the economy” and the troubles facing it are still buzzwords, and headline staples many years later in 2012 at the end of President Barack Obama’s first term in office.
Andy Rooney has some advice to give on these situations, from someone who was born before the Great Depression!
In this video Andy Rooney discusses the financial situation and what it all means… Or rather, how most Americans DON’T know what it means and how hard it is for any American, even one as rich as Andy, to even begin to grasp it.
What does Andy Rooney do to pinch pennies and save every dollar he can during this time of economic hardship? Watch this video to find out.
Finally, Andy Rooney discusses the ballooning National Debt itself in this segment.
This is a website that allows you to get things professionally translated from either Spanish to English or from English to Spanish. As I live in the southwest of the United States myself, there’s lots of Spanish-speaking folk we need help. So this website can be a big benefit to those who’ve yet to master the English language (or Spanish language, for that matter).
Whatever it is you need, a government document, something to hand in at a school, a work-related document, etc., will be professionally translated and notarized by people fluent in both languages.
If you need that type of job done, then look into it! :)
The brilliant J.R.R. Tolkien. Always with a cigar in his mouth. He reminds me of US President Roosevelt.
J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy among many other fantastic works, is an absolutely fascinating person.
How can you not be fascinated by a man who could speak over 20 languages and CREATED over 20 languages himself! Who does that?! NO ONE. Except this man.
As such, a wise man can learn to be wiser still by studying Tolkien and the works he created. What is most interesting to me was Tolkien’s Christian faith, the man was a strong Catholic. I want you to name someone who can speak over 20 languages and who has created over 5 languages who is not a Christian. Well, this man was, and he was one HELL of a wise man. For me, it is hard to argue with someone who was so brilliant, and yet came to the conclusion that God was real, and Jesus was the only way to the Father.
I was even more fascinated to discover that it was J.R.R. Tolkien who led C.S. Lewis to Christ, and not the other way around! Although C.S. Lewis was brought up Christian, he abandoned the faith in his teen years and become a devout Atheist and heavily interested in the occult. That all changed once he met Tolkien. I’ll bet you he used his power of reasoning to understand that anyone who was an even greater master of the craft of writing and language than he [Lewis] was, and who could speak more languages than Lewis could even fathom, was probably someone worth listening to… Someone whose faith was well founded. Right? After all, most of us probably would have to dedicate a lifetime to even begin reading the Bible in Hebrew. Tolkien probably would have it done and the Hebrew Bible memorized in a year. :/ He’d follow that up by writing the whole thing out in Farsi and Arabic, which he would’ve learned in his offtime during the times he WASN’T mastering Hebrew. *the mind wobbles*
Here are the languages Tolkien mastered and could both speak and write: Latin, French, German, Middle English, Old English, Finnish, Gothic, Greek, Italian, Old Norse, Spanish, Welsh, and Medieval Welsh. He also could speak and write in: Danish, Dutch, Lombardic, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Swedish and modern forms of other Germanic and Slavonic languages. He created the following languages himself: Elvish, Primitive Quendian (the proto-language), Common Eldarin, Quenya, Goldogrin, Telerin, Sindarin, Ilkorin, Nandorin, Avarin, Taliska, Adunaic, Soval Phare (Common Speech known as Westron in English), Dalish, Rohirric (representing Anglo-Saxon), Rhovanion (representing Gothic), Haladin, Dunlendish, Drug, Haradrim, Easterling, Khuzdul, Iglishmek, Entish, Valarin, Orcish, Black Speech (Sauron’s evil language), Naffarin, Gautisk (in which Tolkien’s name was spelled “Undarhruimenitupp” :P) and Mago/Magol…. And these are only the languages with full grammar and a vocabulary that we puny humans have written records of. He created many more incomplete and/or incomprehensible languages, and many documents that Tolkien wrote have still yet to be published in any form. Who knows what else was kicking around in Tolkien’s head, for all we know he knew and had created 50 more languages and had them all inside his brain… but never put pen to paper…. Absolutely insane.
Here is the FULL interview with JRR Tolkien first recorded in 1968! Tolkien died in 1973 at the age of 81 (he was born in 1892 as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien). Too bad no one ever had the foresight to record an interview of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis TOGETHER. Only imagine the fascinating conversations they must’ve had….
BBC Archival Footage -In Their Own Words British Authors, J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1
BBC Archival Footage -In Their Own Words British Authors, J.R.R. Tolkien Part 2
One of my life mottos, and arguably the most important one, is that life is all about perspective; as this hilarious Turtle falling/seeing himself as FLYING piece of art illustrates.
And this fact really is true. The Bible even tells us to speak what isn’t as though it is, and that the power of life and death is in the tongue. It goes so far as to tell us that speaking negatively will negatively impact us and those around us. Remember to try and always be an eternal optimist. It is not that hard.
A good example is my life right now. I’m 27 years old. I cannot drive yet. I’ve never had a girlfriend, never been kissed, never been on a date, I live with my parents, we have no money with a barren fridge, are struggling to pay rent and get a business/online website/creative idea/invention off the ground, and I personally feel like I have absolutely zero memories from my teen years. Because of the reasons mentioned above…
Reason to be pretty damn pessimistic right? Of course it is, and that is all the more reason to be optimistic instead. God gives us life afterall, and tomorrow is not promised to us… even though things are rough right now, they will get better. And even if they didn’t, I have eternal life in Christ Jesus and will one day see God. That is something to celebrate, even if the walls were to crumble around me and crush me alive.
I’ll end with a quote from my favorite Christian metal band, Demon Hunter, from their song “Carry Me Down”:
Beautiful artwork from the Wii-exclusive RPG Pandora's Tower
WOW. Talk about an exciting development! Operation Rainfall is raising money and taking donations that will be used to pitch Pandora’s Tower to videogame publishers themselves! Basically, Operation Rainfall is now bypassing Nintendo entirely and going to the publishers on their own, with a kit of information on Pandora’s Tower, in order to convince these publishers that they are the ones who should pick up the North American release of the Wii RPG and take things into their own hands!
If successful, this would mean that one of these publishers would see the light in regards to the worth of releasing Pandora’s Tower in the United States, and would then come to Nintendo and say “We are willing to invest the funds necessary to publish Pandora’s Tower in North America”, effectively giving a win to Operation Rainfall’s whole initial point of existance… to get all three great Wii RPGs published in major English-speaking markets.
Here is a trailer for Pandora’s Tower.
Operation Rainfall was successful in this endeavor with two of the the three games: Xenoblade Chronicles was co-published by GameStop in collaboration with Nintendo, and has seen great sales success in the United States (The Xenoblade Chronicles release date was on April 6, 2012). That was game #1 of the Operation Rainfall campaign. Game #2 was The Last Story, which XSeed Games approached Nintendo about in regards to publishing, and Nintendo announced the game for a June 19th, 2012 release date in North America (co-published by both Xseed Games & Nintendo).
That left one more game… Pandora’s Tower. All three of these highly anticipated Wii RPGs were picked up and published across the pond by Nintendo Europe themselves (who are even being rewarded with the awesome Collector’s Operation Rainfall Wii RPG Coin Set Offered by Club Nintendo Europe), so most of the world has already gotten the games… except for North America. As of right now, Pandora’s Tower has yet to be announced for an American release, much to the dismay of Operation Rainfall members and gamers of all stripes who have been calling, writing, petitioning and praying that Nintendo would wake up to their senses and publish the game in America. But to no avail. Enter PHASE 2!
This is a mockup of what the Pitch to A Publisher Operation Rainfall Campaign Award will look like for those who donate $10 to the cause! A collector's case that holds the entire "Operation Rainfall Collection": Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower.
If you donate $5 to this “Pitch To A Publisher” cause, Operation Rainfall will reward you with exclusive Pandora’s Tower wallpapers. If you donate $10 to the cause, Operation Rainfall will reward you even more greatly with a very snazzy “Operation Rainfall Collection” 3-disc collector’s case to hold Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower! Very, very cool!
If you can afford to donate to the Operation Rainfall Pitch To A Publisher Campaign PLEASE do so! I urge you, as this may be the ABSOLUTE solution to finally getting the last of the three AAA quality RPGs published in America! And time is running out, because soon we will have the Wii U on our hands and Wii games will be completely obsolete!
Operation Rainfall only needs to raise a paltry $600 in order to completely fulfill what they want to do. That will give them enough money to create their “kits” that they will send to each of the following publishers:
The kit will contain the following: A physical copy of the PAL (European) version of Pandora’s Tower, hi-res printouts of concept art for the game, printed copies of the many glowing reviews for the game, and possibly even a full printout of the original Operation Rainfall petition sent to Nintendo. The publishers were selected in order of likelihood to accept this proposal to publish Pandora’s Tower, based on this criteria:
1. The publisher must have a working relationship on the Wii console (i.e., they have published at least one game on the Wii, either to North America or Europe).
2. The publisher must have experience with localizing titles that were developed in Japan.
3. The publisher must have experience publishing action/role-playing games.
So come on videogamers! Let’s band together and do the work needed to get Pandora’s Tower released! DONATE NOW! Even if Operation Rainfall meets the $600 threshold needed, any additional funds will go towards continuing their campaign to get all worth games that have never been released outside of Japan or released in America, localized and published! This includes games that fans have been long-clamoring for, such as EarthBound, Mother 1, Mother 3, Fatal Frame 4 (Wii), etc.!
