The official D.C. Girl’s Symphony website has been updated early today with a new downloadable demo movie, which you can get from here. In case you don’t want to bother to download the whole thing, here are some screenshots from the video:

The twins Ryouhei and Kouhei…

The guys with glasses…

And, finally, the guy with long hair and the shota.

…

lol Isn’t that Suginami?

OMG what is Nanaka doing here? XD

*drools* Can’t wait to play this game!

HELL YEAH

Screw Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and everything else, this is the main REASON I got a Wii in the first place… so I’m glad to see the game has been officially announced and that is finally coming out this year. Hurray!

Well,  other than the whole animal city thing and the new add-on for online voice chatting called Wii Speaker, they didn’t really give us that many details about the new features that’ll get included on this version… but I was still pretty happy to see all the stuff they’re planning on bringing back from the previous games on this series, such as the constellations and the Halloween event (which, much to my dismay, got removed from the DS sequel… just like the rest of the real-life holiday events. Hopefully, most of them will also be back on this one!).

Source

Apparently, this game is gonna be called Cooking Mama World Kitchen, and it’ll be, what, already the fourth installment in the Cooking Mama series… which is gonna be available in stores sometime later this year. It looks like now you’ll be able to see your own character performing the different cooking tasks during the minigames… and, well, that’s the only new addition I’ve managed to come up by looking at the screens above. The rest seems like the usual slicing, grinding, egg-cracking stuff we’re already familiarized with.

I’d say something like “Hopefully, they’ll fix most of the flaws from the first Wii game!”… but they didn’t do anything of the sort with the DS sequel, so it’s safer to think that they won’t solve anything on this one either.

Thanks to one of my friends, I was able to try out this game called Nanatsuiro * Drops: Touch de Hajimaru Hatsukoi Monogatari for the Nintendo DS. First, let me start by saying that yes, this is a visual novel, and no, it’s not really a port of the PC game.

Well, even if the interface is pretty much like a visual novel, you don’t really have to make that many choices (and I don’t really think it matters what you choose anyways), so instead, in order to progress through the game you have to play various minigames and get certain scores and stuff. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with this… however, there are only like 6 or 7 different minigames, and ALL of them are pretty boring and stupid.

The other worth mentioning aspect about this game is that it’s heavily based on the anime series (which wasn’t that good of an adaptation to begin with)… so heavily, in fact, that most (if not all) of the CGs are screencaps from the TV show. I mean, yeah, sure, it’s nice to have a bunch of animated CGs and movie clips, but… what’s the point if I’ve seen the exact same stuff before? What makes it even worse is that the producers thought it would be a good idea to remove all the romantic and cute scenes from the anime and just leave everything that was required for the lame plot of the game. Which means no hugging, no kissing (unless you count the photoshopped screenshots of Sumomo facing the screen with her eyes closed as kissing)… nothing. Heck, it even feels like they carefully picked the screens they’d use and even edited some clips in order to make Tsuwabuki show up as little as possible, as if he were one of these eroge male protagonist without a face or something. WTF WHY WOULD THEY DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!

So, yeah, the story was also made even shorter than the anime so I was able to finish the game in maybe less than an hour. After that, I unlocked something called “If Story” which had Haru going after a new stellar spinner called Yulissia or something like that. Seeing how the whole thing was so random and idiotic, I finally said “screw it” and decided that it was time to stop torturing myself with this joke of a visual novel.

And that’s it. Moral of the story: it sucks, don’t bother with rare imports, can’t believe they still make games like these, etc etc.

So, yeah, Itou Kanako’s Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kizuna OP theme Tsuisou no Despair single has been out for a while now, which is great considering I really like this song. Probably my favorite Higurashi opening theme so far. The other song included on this one, called Toppuu, is also pretty good, I guess.

The official site has also been updated with two new CM videos and a CM generator where you can create your own Higurashi commercial using some random character and background animations and short clips from the movie. Nothing too special, but I actually did one… which you can see below (think you need to use Internet Explorer in order to able to watch it, not sure).

I don’t know why, but lately I’ve been pretty crazy about the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni series. Like, suddenly, for some reason I began listening to a lot of Drama CDs and started reading all the manga chapters I could find, and even though I’ve watched both seasons of the TV adaptation I haven’t really gotten tired of reading/hearing the same stories again.

Anyways, now that there’s only a week left until the release of the first game from the Higurashi Kizuna series (which includes the first three question arcs as well as an original arc based on the Onisarashi-hen manga), I’m pretty excited and I’ve been checking the official website daily looking for new videos and updates since I can’t really wait. So, today, it looks like the site got a redesign… and now you can play an online demo of the scene where Rena yells USO DA! for the first time, like seen above. Hurray.

Well, after a few hours of gameplay, I’ve managed to complete this little Nintendo DS game called Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends (which is actually the third one on the series since a sequel for the Wii came out before this one), and now I guess I can safely this: if you really enjoy cooking… avoid these kind of games!

At first, it feels like it’s gonna be a lot of fun since you’ll be able to cook a lot of different international dishes and stuff, but the truth is that most of the time you’ll find yourself feeling either tired of doing the same things over and over again, or annoyed at how the food always ends up looking like total crap no matter how well or badly you did on the minigames.

Also, Mama seems to think that pounding my own hand while making mochi is reason enough to give me a silver medal… even if I managed to complete the minigame on time. Maybe a little blood fell into the rice without me noticing and that ruined the whole dish, or maybe Mama is actually judging my levels of stupidity, but I don’t really care anymore since I’m finally done with this game.

Whatever. I think it’s about time for me to move on to better stuff… or at least better games (like the upcoming Higurashi no Naku Koro ni DS remake or that one JP-only game that’s actually like a recipe book and it shows you how to cook for real).

…is coming out tomorrow. (or maybe it’s already out, I dunno)

Now, I haven’t played any of the previous Hiiro no Kakera titles before… but I guess it doesn’t really matter that much since I’ve heard this is gonna include both the original “Hiiro no Kakera” and the “Hiiro no Kakera: Ano Sora no Shita de” fandisk (as well as some new additions such as minigames and a special scenario), so this should be a good place to start. As for the game itself, all I know it’s an otome game with full voice acting… which is a good enough reason for me to get this one for my DS. Woo.

Makoto: Magnet for disaster and dumb girls.

That’s right, in the School Days game, if you screw up badly, you could end in one of the following bloody situations:

• a) Eternally. Kotonoha becomes an emo zombie and kills herself.
• b) To my Children aka THE BEST END. Sekai stabs Makoto.
• c) The Bloody Conclusion. Kotonoha pwns Sekai with a saw.

Now, I’m not sure why they’re called bad endings since all of the main characters really deserve to be dead, not just Makoto. I’ve never played the game, but after having watched the anime, I can safely say this is one of the worst harem cast I’ve ever seen.

Kotonoha: I think I felt bad for her once, but she was literally crazy for Makoto so I didn’t care for her in the end.

The TV adaptation started out pretty normal, so people still were wondering if the producers were going to use the BAD ENDs or not. At first, I was clueless as well, but when Makoto said “Dating Kotonoha is getting tiring.”, I knew they just had to go for it.

So, after that episode, the morals in this show just kept going downhill, while the chances for justice to be done increased each week. I mean, the guy practically screws everyone except his girlfriend. And WTH is with the females sleeping with such a loser. It was so unbelievable that I couldn’t take this series seriously anymore. “What drama? This is a comedy show! LOLz”

Sekai: Thought she had a nice personality at first, but now I just see her as another *****.

Then, when the long awaited week came, some girl killed her dad in real life and the final episode got canceled. So, instead of some Higurashi-like conclusion, we got the show about nice boats. I know it kinda ruined the surprise, but at least we had some laughs with that.

And now, here’s the ultimate nice boat ending!

Nice job, girl!

Nice, uh… killing?

Not-so-nice baby confirmation scene…

Nice Boat!!!shift+one