What you should be watching this season (Autumn 2012)

New Shows:

Psycho Pass

A future world where law enforcers can arrest/kill individuals based on their likelihood of committing a crime in the future, and the law enforcers are criminals themselves. Im enjoying this one mostly for the universe it has been set in, where you can change outfits at the press of a button, and your future can be dictated to you by the system. Its a slow moving action sci-fi with great art. Also gore if you get shot in the arm by one of those enforcer guns...

Tonari no Kaibutsu Kun (My little monster)

This is my personal favourite of the season by a landslide.
Romantic comedy with a very lovable cast of characters. not really much else to say here, Romantic comedies are pretty standard in their method but this one is well executed. Also an amazing Ska intro.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Follows the first series of manga (the phantom blood arc), Its fucking Jojo vs Dio at its best, the art style is pretty cool in that it goes all manga style every now and then. The anime thankfully skips most of the boring stuff in the manga and condenses it mostly into the first episode, bare this in mind if you start watching in that the first episode is pretty boring but necessary to establish Dio as a complete asshole. I've read this arc in the manga and the action is going to keep ramping up until people are setting their hands the fuck on fire and punching through people.

Robotics;Notes

Another season, another school club. This time the robotics club in their attempt to build GUNVARREL, a giant robot, to enter into a competition. Seems pretty slow starting for now but is very watchable. This is also from the same writers as Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate, both of which contain some ridiculous twists as the series goes on, its been revealed in episode 2 of robo;notes that the main girl suffers from a syndrome where occasionally 5 minutes will pass by in a second for her - so something tells me shit is going to get crazy later on.

Suki-tte ii na yo (Say I love you)

A Romantic drama, which seems to be progressing pretty damn fast with confessions flying by 2nd episode, which is a nice change of pace for anyone who watches these sort of series (for comparison in Kimi ni todoke I think it took a 26 episode season). Its a decent watch so far, although the central male in this seems like kind of a rapist. This one is mostly a serious show, so if you want something more lighthearted watch Tonari no kaibutsu (above) instead.

Those fucking eyes.

Chuunibyou demo koi ga shitai
Regardless of my adolescent delusions, I want a date!

Moeblob of the season, from the studio that made K-on I believe. A comedy which reminds me a little of haruhi, with a straight man and a girl who is obviously high as hell. A fun watch if you can stomach the moeeeee~
Also, she has an eyepatch, because people are into that apparently.

Sequels:

Hidamari Sketch Honeycomb (S4)
Season 4 of hidamari apartments, if you've watched any of the previous seasons  you know what to expect, if you havent, and want a very chill slice of life comedy, check out the previous 3 seasons first.
When I started watching from S1 I finished all 3 seasons in 3 months (that is to say, it was good enough for me to come back for more)

Bakuman S3
Its Baku again. Still good. This is the one that was originally based on a manga about making manga.


'Okay' Tier:

Zetsuen No Tempest 
Semi-generic battle style anime, watch magical talismans. Guy trying to avenge his dead sister. Its okay. I'm probably going to stop watching this after watching episode 3 this morning.

The Pet Girl of Sakurasou
Comedy about.... Honestly I've watched 2 episodes and i dont have a clue what im watching. Its not bad, but its not very memorable either

Shin Sekai yori (from the new world)
From a future world where people have esper like abilities, bad students get murdered? Or something? Its okay. I've stopped watching though.


Hot Garbage Tier:

Onii-chan dakedo ai sae areba kankei nai yo ne!
Anything with onii-chan in the name is generally trash, this reaffirms.

Hayate no gotoku: Cant take my eyes off you
A reboot of a series which used to be good. Watch the original instead of this crap.

Btoom!
Guy gets sucked into a desert island which is also a call of duty 4 server, that is to say, everyone its battle royale and everyone has grenades.

K
Fuck knows what this is. Watched 2 episodes and I want my 45 minutes back.

Payday: The Heist

Note: Readers in the UK can get this game for cheaps/free by buying/photographing this months edition of PC Gamer magazine. There is another code in there for DOTA2 beta invite too.

Payday has been out for about a year now, and is probably a game you've heard of, but never tried playing or felt interested in looking into. I was the same, until I activated my copy of the game and started my first heist.

The game premise can be simplifed down to something along the lines of...
Get in -> Get the money -> Get the fuck out
However, 'get the money' is usually easier said than done, being protected by vault doors, keycodes, buildings and so on.

Gameplay feels like a very objective focused Left 4 Dead, those who have tried gas grab mode (or whatever its called) will have the best idea of what to expect here, the difference of course being that instead of fighting off waves of undead, you fight off gunmen, and instead of special infected you have special forces (SWAT, Shields, Snipers, CoD Juggernauts).
Its fun and frantic, fighting off police assaulting the building whilst juggling health, ammo, teammates, objectives and trying your best to keep hostages detained, all the while drum and bass is pounding your desk (if you're playing with the volume up like I was anyway)

Music sample from the 'panic room' level - where you blow a hole in the top of a building and have a helicopter airlift their safe out
Music sample from 'Diamonds' - pictured below, where you rob a vault for diamonds

As far as replayability goes, The upgrades system is sort of cool, where you can level up to 145 (or maybe higher) and can pick what upgrade path you want to take for unlocks, skill upgrades and gear upgrades. The game also seems to use something similar to the director AI in L4D, changing up the level slightly each time - an example I encountered is one of the helicopter pilots who drops C4 for you, he is supposed to drop it on the roof but sometimes he is completely shit and drops it off the side of the building, whereby you'll have to go from the roof down into the alley on the side before you can continue. Its also worth noting that the game is hard as balls, the game announces the average success rate for each heist on each difficulty, the average success for normal across all heists is around 35%, and with 4 difficulties, 'overkill' mode (the hardest) drops that down to single digits.

If you have 3 friends and are looking for co-op style games similar to L4D, Payday is a pretty fun and surprisingly difficult excursion. Defo worth it if you ever see it on sale, and possibly worth it as long as you have a dedicated group up for a challenge.