Arbalest Oscar Mike! Full Metal Panic video game Announced!

I thought I never would see this happening in real life but here it is: Full Metal Panic is getting a video game, specifically a strategy RPG of sorts. Like hot damn, one of my dreams is becoming true right in front of my eyes as I'm typing this.

Now to understand why I'm happy about this, you have to know that I am a big fan of the Full Metal Panic franchise since I watched the first few episodes on Hulu (at a time before they decided it was a "great" idea to be paid subscription only recently and outsource the free part to Yahoo TV for some idiotic, Lickboot-ite reason). I mean I'm quite impressed with a show that combines military sensibilities with cliché anime high school highjinks and that alone is gold in my book, though I'm not much of a mecha person (I prefer the types like the Level Armors from Metal Slug) but I digress. And it seems like FMP is making a comeback 12 years after that disappointing mediocrity that was Second Raid, like seriously that show disappointed in many ways despite its return to the military related intrigue and stuff after the lighthearted high jinks of Fumoffu (though that season alone is enjoyable in its right); though I am aware of the manga adaptations and the light novels continuing after Second Raid but I never read them as of now. In addition, not only are we FMP fans getting a video game adaptation of which I longed for some five years now, but also a new season for the TV anime series, called Invisible Victory; like it better have the voice actors from the previous season reprise their roles or I ain't gonna be happy.

Anyway, I'll do a little analysis of the teaser being shown on the article in question and I'll post my predictions just afterwards. So we get some exposition lines as we see some tire tracks in the snow, surprisingly voiced in English with Japanese subtitles (it's as if Bandai-Namco knew that the FMP series has fans in the English speaking West), then we cut to some snapshots from the show with the two main protagonists, and then we see the gameplay and it looks alright. I mean this is a beta of sorts and hopefully not the final product; it'd be stupid of Bamco to so but moving on. So what we see so far is something that allows you to freely roam around the battlefield as long as its in some circular limit and that it looks like a turned based RPG of sorts and I'm fine with that given that I excel at turn based stuff than real time ones. That and you have the ability to use firearm and melee weapons since that's how it is in the show, though I wonder if the game allows you to master the Landadrive thing that Sosuke struggled with in Second Raid? That'd be something. That and the armslaves (the robots the characters use to fight with) are chibi looking for some reason. And from what I know, the game is being made by the same folks behind the Super Robot Wars series of which funnily enough featured FMP in it and I have never played the SRW franchise in particular. Already the game is promising yet it looks like it needs polish before we see a full trailer in the future.

Given that the show had featured some good share of stuff happening in the high school the protagonists go to (especially in Fumoffu), my good guess is that at least a third of the game is spent doing stuff in high school, just like how it is in the Persona games, and that it can have an effect on the missions Sosuke undertakes outside of high school. Though come to think of it, that Fumoffu suit, the one where it looks like some yellow bearish creature with a green bowler hat, should be a usuable armslave just for s--ts and giggles; it'd make some great let's play material and Pew Die Pie better utilize it if he's gonna play the game in the future (and p--- off the haters from places like the Wall Street Journal for the mudslinging they did early this year) but I'm getting ahead of myself. Another good possibility is the addition of new characters specifically for the game in question and hopefully more interesting than most of the ones from Second Raid, though it'd be pretty odd for the antagonists from both the first and third seasons to show up as some sort of bonus boss fights or somethin'. With all of that said, I'm looking forward to what this FMP video game that I have long clamored for, though admittedly in my own head, will bring us when more details arrive in the future.

My only big concern is the platform of choice right now, the PS4, of which I said time and time again, I'll never invest in unless Sony throws in disc based backwards compatibility with PS1 and 2 games but sadly they're too stupid and greedy to do so, rather making us wrongly rebuy them on PSN and this Gaikai garbage but that's another story for another time. And of course, no Vita, because again Sony is too stupid to care for that underrated and awesome device and unwisely gave up on it in the West (sometimes making me wondering why I bothered getting it in the first place last year) but again I digress. Hopefully there might be a chance for a PC release, albeit on Steam but that's okay, better there for me than not given that I have a Steam account (though I prefer to buy them digitally now since I'm not bothering getting physical PC disks since they require Steam stuff and I do not wish to contribute to perpetuating this stupidity but that's another story for another time). Oh yeah and it might have DLC (or rather will possibly have) because EVERY game's GOTTA have it for some reason...can't they just not and leave it up to the developers to give their games some or not yet it should be MANDATORY for ALL games to have a complete edition with ALL the DLC by now (otherwise the developers should stop making games, nuff said); but hopefully the best case scenario is that they're like add on post launch content and not like horse armor and s--t.

But anyway, the fact that we FMP fans are getting a video game and a fourth season is a sign that good times are ahead for the franchise in question and that's a good sign in my book; that and it was something I just woke up too before making this post so better wake up to good news than bad I guess.

The New Kerfuffle: Why the Politics and Marketing Should not Mix

In light of the uproar about the marketing campaign behind Wolfenstein: Shadow of the Colossus and the misrepresentation of the uproar by the mainstream media to be some neo-Nazi shenanigans and Micah Curtis's somewhat understandable response, I'd figure I put my two cents on this issue and let me warn you this can get political but I have to say it.

Now before continuing, I must stress that I am clearly against Nazism and its ilk (talking about the Nazi Party, the SS, the Waffen-SS, and some likeminded Wehrmacht fellows), like 100% against them and that I'm perfectly okay with killing them in video games since well they are what that guy from South Park said, "very very bad people" (paraphrasing here but you get the idea). Even if they have some good ideas like opposing capitalism and communism (and pro-animal rights), it doesn't matter since those small bits of good will never outweigh their bad ideas and their actions since they believed that solving the problems of mankind was to either exterminate and/or enslave those that are "racially" inferior; small wonder why they are rightly considered the slime of humanity and often considered the villain by default. Though I'm not too gung ho on the Nazi-killing business these days since it's been done before and that I have other equally evil targets to go after than a common dead, evil horse; I mean they are the ultimate generic villain to use in pop culture (though at least it's justified mind you given what they are and did) that at least almost no one in the world can get offended at (compared to say Communists but that's another story for another time) and rightly so. In addition, I'm fine with this more darker and mature direction the new Wolfenstein series takes in that they remind us that the Nazis aren't just some people with different uniforms on the different side of the conflict but really bad people just as they are in real life (though they lack a lot of interesting contraptions in their arsenals), though to be honest they are somewhat more relatable (or rather barely) than demons but it doesn't matter at this point. Same can be said of vice versa, but it again it doesn't matter, they are acceptable targets after all and that's that.

Now to this marketing controversy; and as you know, a recent tweet said, "Make America Nazi-Free Again" and of course the internet is in an uproar; outsiders may look at this as a sign of "rising Neo/AlterRighter/Nazism" and get upset or at least groan but a closer look reveals that the community has a problem with just the marketing, not the fact that you fight Nazis. I mean the gaming community is pretty much A-Okay on that and rightly so; it's just that headline that clearly copies Trump's campaign slogan of which actually originated from Regan's old 1980 campaign slogan (making wonder if we should make him "evil" because of that phrase). And to be fair it's somewhat understandable to be not comfy with that phrase of "make something great/something again", far too often it's been used to mock Trump and/or equate villains in fiction with him because the mainstream media says so. Thought at least Mr. Curtis on reddit argues that the phrase is part of pop culture now and the least people can do is use it in a neutral and maybe positive way and I think he has a good point; it'd make me more comfier to see it used less to spite Trump. As for my view on the marketing line about "making America Nazi-free again", I just wish they gotten a better line since that one would end up dating itself, like "Take Back America from Nazi Tyranny" or "Free USA/Smash the Reich" or something like that.

Edit: In hindsight, I think the marking line in question is probably the least offensive the idiotic twitter handler spouted given the game's objective of freeing the USA from Nazi tyranny.

But of course I need to get into the bigger scope of things regarding the politics going on as of this writing; see, this admittedly unnecessary freak out over this tweet is a symptom of this idiotic tying in current politics in the US to the dystopian setting of the game by the mainstream media and their sympathizers, especially the likes of Polygon and their ilk as well as the leftist attempts to label anyone to the right of far-left as a "Nazi", thus ending up diluting the meaning of the term and taking Godwin's Law to the extreme. And as you can see, it really isn't helping, considering how VASTLY different the Trump Administration (for all of its flaws...especially that d--k Paj) and an ACTUAL Nazi occupation of the USA are, and it isn't just Wolfenstein getting unnecessarily politicized (at least in the marketing section), Man in the High Castle and A Handmaid's Tale are getting this too and it needs to stop. All this does is show how immature the media are when it comes to handling current politics, making me take them very less seriously to the point of mocking them (there's a good reason I made two maps making fun of this idea of Trump causing a MITHC situation though and I'm not bothering to upload them to AH.com ever) but thankfully I'm too smart to waste my time with these idiots, especially their followers who retweet whatever garbage tries to tie Trump to X and watch stupid late night "comedies" bashing him nonstop (of which make me question their statuses as "adults" if they're over the age of consent); hell, I rather deal with people who retweet stuff about Metal Slug Ass-tack and make stupid videos about something something MSA crank-artichoke deck of cards stuff over anything politics related but I digress. However, I have one thing to say to all of you mainstream "news" sites (both gaming and non-gaming) and the people  believing the idiotic narrative of [insert dystopic work of fiction] being "comparable" to Trump and the USA: go f--k yourselves! Please, take your dumb, kiddy grade fantasies of today's USA being something something dystopic and shove them up your asses and put a spin on them.

Now I usually don't say stuff like that but I must stress how little patience I have for this politics nonsense, especially when we should be more concerned with stuff like ISIS, radical Islamic terrorism, alt-left antics, figuring out the motive of the Las Vegas shooter, and when the hell will SNK (the company) make something non-KOF and non-mobile? Those are more important than trying to "relate" how Trump being president is to something truly bad like actual Nazi Germans taking over and messing up the U.S. of A.