One Piece 655 & 656

Well the Straw Hats have landed on their first New World island, "Punk Hazard". My first guess about this island is obvious, it must have something to do with Dr. Vegapunk. An old abandoned research facility, perhaps?

I am really loving Oda and his Robin and Nami fan service. Oh my. First Nami in the bath then a sweating, stripping Robin? Good grief.

Luffy and co. encounter a dragon and promptly cut its head off. Then encounter the lower half of what appears to be a samurai and Luffy promptly invites him to join the crew. Typical Luffy.

Also the half-samurai mentions that a Shichibukai is present on the island too.

The rest of the crew on the Sunny get gassed and kidnapped, except for Brook who the kidnappers assumed was dead. The kidnappers appear to work for Punk Hazard.

So far in this arc we have 4 different faction as far as I can tell.

• Straw Hats
• Punk Hazard workers
• Shichibukai
• Samurai

Add to that the inevitable appearance of Smoker and this arc is shaping up to be pretty epic.

My guess is that the Shichibukai is Trafalgar Law. How else could you explain the samurai being cut in half and still being alive?

Lack of updates

Sorry for the shabby rate of updates I've been posting. My adsense account was approved for review 5 weeks ago and still has not been fully approved. They said it would take 4 days.

Oh well, I'll have a big One Piece based update on Wednesday since it will be covering 2 chapters.

Also, I still want to get in the TERA beta :(

Tera BETA

Today BETA invites for the MMO Tera are supposed to be going out. I signed up and have my fingers crossed. Anyone that gets in please drop me a line because I have a lot of questions about the NA release of the game.

Return from Hiatus

I've been in the hospital for a while battling a DVT (blood clot). Apparently I have a blood disorder that makes me prone to getting blood clots. It sucks but I'm OK now.

There has been at least two new chapters of One Piece since I updated last. First and foremost, SMOKER is back! Smoker is definitely one of my favorite Marines and I'd very much like his rivalry with Luffy to take off from now on. Their fights in the past have pretty much consisted of Luffy running away from him. Now that Luffy can actually hit him, I suspect the running is over.

Sadly, the Straw Hats were "warp zoned" away from Smoker. Oh well.

The place where the Straw Hats surfaced is interesting. It looks similar to the location the "Mad Monk" Urouge was last seen. I'm very curious to see what Oda has in store for us in the New World.

A True Heir to X-Com?

According to this, there is a true successor to X-Com being made by Firaxis! The same guys that made Civilization 5. I fucking love this news! Civilization 5 is a game I'm sunk over 400 hours into.

Anyway, X-Com was a truly awesome game. I spent many hours playing it as a kid and I believe its gameplay would hold up today. Hopefully Firaxis doesn't change too much and only adds to the original formula and, of course, updates the graphics.

Holy crap I'm excited! I hope this comes out soon, but I want Firaxis to get this perfect. I'm so tired of the garbage-quality of games these days. Maybe developers are learning that fans are good to them if they are good to the fans.

Game Informer Cover

No One Piece this week

I am very sad. One Piece was off for ANOTHER week this week. That really sucks.

I am very excited for the arc that's about to start. Fishman Island was nice but I want to see the Straw Hats fight some more powerful enemies. Hodi Jones and gang just weren't tough enough.

Big Mom looks like a very interesting character. I can't wait to see what surprises Oda has in store for us!

From maxkeiser.com