Guilty Gear 2: Overture - review

Guilty Gear 2: Overture for Xbox 360 only just came out here recently, and I found it half price. It seemed curious, so I picked it up.

I started up this game today and finished all of Campaign Mode on easy, with the console handling all the RTS elements after I tried them and couldn't deal with handling both the action and strategy at once. So I suppose that's no real achievement for me as a player, haha! I mostly wanted to see what this game has to offer, running through it today.

3D action + strategy is how it's advertised on the box, so I was expecting it to be like a Dynasty Warriors series game, but the strategy play is actually... there are bases on each map - your main one and then lots of minor ones, and you try and capture the enemy's main base.

There are other styles of play in the levels of campaign mode, so it's not too repetitive - where you dash around as though you had Gundam thrusters on your back (well, my boyfriend has been talking to me about building Gundams all day, so that's what I thought, haha!), one where you seek out treasures on a map by given photos, boss fights - including one which played out in top-down view, dodging projectiles while fighting (a bit like "Wartech: Senko no Ronde"), etc.

It's actually not so bad. Well, considering that it's average review score on metacritic is 58%. It's got some interesting ideas. I really can't see myself coming back to the game time and time again, though.

The story... ah. The story was really difficult to follow! For about half the game each cutscene is one huge headache of in-game jargon and vagueness. Sentences contain words which individually make sense in English - including musical terminology and digital world type language (think: .hack) but together, they are just placeholders for you to look up in the in-game world glossary in the menu options...

Maybe it's something which will be easier to understand if I replay it again... though I'm not sure if I really want to...

The relationships between characters ended up being the only intelligable part of the story for me, and even then, a small amount of that was difficult to follow. The characters seemed kind of bland, overall. The only two carried over from Guilty Gear are Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske.

The character designs and stage scenery are nice though.

The music is mostly orchestral, with some electronic and some tribal styles too, which for the most part fit scenes, though there are a few "Guilty Gear like" rock tracks in there too. I thought the best track in the entire game was an arrangement of Ky Kiske's theme "Holy Orders (Be Just Or Be Dead)", it's rock + classical string instruments - the interesting thing is that the strings are played more in the style of Irish folk than orchestral.

I want to write a Guilty Gear rock song in honour of the game's strange story jargon and call it "That guy is going to do something with a cube in the back yard (and it's not making gravy)".

I guess it sounds more like a country song title though. :P

The Music Of Frogger

I couldn't find a page on the internet about this, so I thought I would make one.

The music to the 1981 arcade version of Frogger features a medley containing:

* Children's song Inu No Omawarisan (the dog policeman)

* Children's anime Araigumi Rascal OP theme Rock River e

* Children's anime Hana no Ko Lunlun OP theme

* Children's anime Alps no shoujo Heidi OP theme Oshiete

* Children's anime Mahou Shoujo Lalabelu OP theme Hello Lalabelu

* Traditional American song Yankee Doodle

* Traditional American song Camptown Races

These are the ones I recognise. Let me know if you recognise any more!

Japanese wikipedia doesn't list Lalabelu, it lists the Moero Arthur Hakuba no Ouji anime OP theme instead. It's a Mizuki Ichirou theme, and I do own a CD of 1980s anime themes with both that song and Lalabelu in the same compilation! I personally have never heard anything recognisable as that song in Frogger, so I thought I would just mention that that's what wikipedia says but I have heard no proof.

The later ports of Frogger don't use any anime music in the soundtrack (probably copyright / licensing issues), they just don't seem right...

EDIT 2014-07-27 : I heard the Moero Arthur Hakuba no Ouji OP in there! It is a tiny snippet that plays very rarely, here it is.

Keita Takahashi's new project

Last week, the city of Nottingham became Gamecity with events dotted around the town through the duration of a few days. I wish I had known they were putting this event on this year, before it started; I'd have tried to get some time off and would have happily gone along to build Elite origami because these are so cool!

Anyway. Somewhere near the start of that, it was announced that Keita Takahashi is starting work on designing a children's playground for Nottingham City Council. He expressed an interest in doing that four years ago, and was approached by Nottingham City Council two years ago. So it's good that that's underway.

"I'll go along when it's finished, and take a load of photos!" was what I thought. ^_^

I just read an interview with him yesterday about it though... it sounds like he's glad to be away from Namco-Bandai to work on this, and he seems to have a lot of ideas, but at the same time he sounds a bit lost - like he doesn't know what's going to work and which of his ideas are good or bad.

He says that he's not suited to the games industry, which did seem evident before he said it. It's like Jeff Minter says he isn't suited to the games industry, but at least he's suited to the medium of making-machines-play-awesome-games so it eventually works for him and we do get a good game once every few years. Maybe as the article suggests, Mr Takahashi is just not suited to working for a giant company like Namco; he'd be better off with indie games or as a freelancer.

I read a comment from someone saying he's the kind of artist who is not suited to any kind of industry and it constraints - if that's true, I don't know if working for Nottingham City Council is going to be any better of a ride for him. He's only got 8 weeks to work in. It sounds like he could do with a bit more support than he's been given too; I think that he would benefit from working in a team, collaborating with (for example) a translator, a structural engineer, a landscaper, a materials specialist engineer (e.g. one who knows about the best kind of plastic, rubber, metal etc for a given situation), a child psychologist and possibly a sound engineer. Or, something like that. So that he can discover what's possible, impossible, good, bad, and the limitations of this medium, and in a short amount of time.

I do feel a little worried about him after that interview.

Part of me thinks that he would be better off starting small again, and building up from that. Perhaps designing toys for toddlers, something with soft material and no hard edges, which they can grab onto and chew on, accidentally change and discover new ways to play, and have fun. For example something like sticklebricks that aren't a choke hazard and some kind of elastic velcro hybrid without the annoying "road rash" kids get from brushing against it too fast. Give him the right materials and you'll have 100 strange cute random fun things made before you know it. ^_^ Then build up from around that.

Though I guess if there's one thing I have found out from Katamari Damacy and Nobi Nobi Boy, is that he's definitely one to realise the grand scale of things, and in great detail!

My extra life

I was browsing games in a branch of Gamestation today, decided to buy a second-hand copy of Super Mario Galaxy for £14.99 because it was on special offer, and when I got to the till I saw they were selling Zelda Mints (a tin of mints shaped like Link's shield), and Mario Mushrooms with sweets in. I thought to myself "I could do with an extra life" so I bought a green mario mushroom (£2.49). ^_^



There were red ones and blue ones available too, but I thought "I am big enough already, and... aren't the blue ones poison mushrooms??"

The red ones are strawberry flavour sweets, the blue ones are raspberry and the green one is apple. Mostly the tin is cool, though!

You take it's lid off and eat its brains, like a good little zombie. ^_^

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney manga

I've been reading the Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright manga published by Del Rey.



If you read the blurb on the back of the books you'll think you're going to read some mystery stories, but it's actually little random / comedy stories from loads of different authors and different artists (most of whom aren't that great) - it seems like a doujin compilation.

It requires you to have read (er, played) the 3 Phoenix Wright Nintendo DS games in order to know who everyone is and get the jokes. The first volume is Phoenix Wright based, and the second is Miles Edgeworth based, but both volumes contain the full range of cast from the games; it's just a case of the focus of the story.



They are pleasant enough for a quick read and a few chuckles, but even though it looks like a lot to read with the number of pages, there's no real depth and you'll run through them; they're rather expensive for what they are (but I am still quite glad they were translated and published in English).

Agarest - Generations Of War is out

Well, my copy of Agarest - Generations of War (Agarest Senki) arrived in the post today. The retailer sent it early because of the postal strikes, I think, so it's arrived a day before it's available in shops!

Here are some photos (sorry they're wonky and dark):




Horrible choice of fonts, aren't they? -_-;

Unfortunately, when I try to play it, it just says "You cannot play this game at the current video output setting. (80028F10)", which means "I hate SDTVs! Plug me into an HDTV or high resolution monitor!", booooooooooo. :(

I can't remember where I put the cables... I really doubt it absolutely needs HDTV.... it's just trying to show off....

BTW this game is heading for America too, here's the official website:
http://www.aksysgames.com/agarest_war/

Embarassing advertisement, isn't it?

2010 Calendar time!

It's time for me to go shopping with calendar order / preorders! :D

Here are the ones I'm aiming for this year:

Shugo Chara! [Calendar 2010 (Kodansha Ltd.)]

Fresh Pretty Cure! [Calendar 2010 (Try-X Ltd.)]

ONE PIECE [Calendar 2010 (Try-X Ltd.)]

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (When They Cry) [Calendar 2010 (Try-X Ltd.)]

TV Animation [Calendar 2010 (Try-X Ltd.)]
(it seems to contain Precure, One Piece, Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, Saint Seiya, GeGeGe no Kitaro, etc)

All That's Ultraman

^_^

Small Worlds by David Shute

This is a little game made in Flash, it plays in your browser, and only takes 10 mins. I found it an emotional experience. A picture says a thousand words.

Small Worlds

Ben There, Dan That!

Ben There, Dan That! is a freeware point and click adventure for PC which you can download from the makers here.

I liked it; it was funny and the descriptions for items were good clues as to what was useful and what was not, so I didn't waste too much time being infuriated.

I would recommend this to anyone, as long as they like point and click adventures, have a sense of humour, aren't just into games for the graphics, and don't mind a bit of strong language. It's comedy based around unlikely things happening, and humourous banter between two English lads.

The makers (Ben and Dan / Zombie Cow) have also announced that they're making a third one in the series, so that'll be something for me to look forward to.

Puzzle Quest - review

I bought this on Xbox 360 Live Arcade when it was going cheap a few weeks ago.

All you do is switch round coloured balls so they match, three or more in a row. Most of the time you play one-on-one CPU battles, where you sometimes use special moves to defeat the opponent, you can also forge items and train mounts in variations on the basic game.

I bought it, I played it, I didn't sleep much, I came back to it even when I didn't want to, and I finished it. And I was glad to finish, because that meant the addiction was over, and I could go back to normal.

This game is mercilessly addictive.

By which I mean that I was playing the game beyond the point where it stops being fun, just as a "default thing to do" - whiling away hours and suddenly wondering where the time went, in the early hours of the morning. Oops!

You play and play and play and then when you're done... you're tired but unsatisfied.

I don't think I'll buy the expansion pack!

The Maw - review

Earlier this month, I decided to buy the game: The Maw, which was the first game made by the company who made Splosion Man, which is still my favourite game this year. I bought it on Xbox 360 Live Arcade.

Three hours after buying it, I had finished it. The following day I played for another hour and 100% completed it. I then visited my boyfriend who had bought the DLC levels (I thought they cost too much, considering the main game was so short), and 100% completed them too, though I admit that they were more substantial.

So...

Pros:

• I liked the scenario; alien worlds, getting this monster to eat everything


• Really cute and funny characters, animations and voices


• Gorgeous graphics

Cons:

• Very short game, not great value for money


• The main character walks too slowly, and I felt I was backtracking too much over grassy areas to find hidden creatures for the maw to eat


• (Xbox 360) Bizarre leaderboards - averaging out amount eaten over time.
  

I can see why it won independant game awards, and I am glad they made enough money on it to make Splosion Man!

Saints Row 2 - review

I played this game over about a week (Xbox 360 version), and completed it with 91%, which means all the missions, most of the minigames, all chop shop cars, most hitman targets, and some diversions. It took me about 41 hours.

It's what they call a "sandbox game" these days, which means you get to run around in third person in a 3D environment, doing what you like. For example, a modern GTA game (but not Chinatown Wars).

I didn't play the first game, though I do own a copy (I got it in a special offer). I saw my boyfriend playing it for a bit and it didn't pull me in. The 2nd one got much more praise, including from some people I didn't expect to praise it, so I decided to give this one a go... when the price had dropped enough. I got it in a "2 for £25" deal. :D

The first thing that struck me with this game was that it is completely immoral. You start off waking up in a prison and shoot your way out, killing loads of police on the way. You then get to go off and play some mini-games to earn "respect" to play more plot missions, so I tried one called "Fuzz". You dress up as a police officer and go round hunting down criminals (e.g. litterers, peaceful protesters) and assault them until they lie on the floor in a puddle of blood. One example that was quite memorable was when we dragged a naked couple out of a closed van for having sex, then beat them to death. I then decided to play a minigame called "crowd control" where you are a bodyguard and need to protect a star from crazy people (who will beat the star with baseball bats or whatever). To do this, you need to do things like pick them up and throw them in front of trains, off of tall buildings, into baggage handlers that shred them, etc.

It's all rather over the top, but it's so far gone that it's just cartoon violence. The game does glorify the gangsta lifestyle, but it's cartoon gangsta doing cartoon murder and extortion and such, doing cartoon drugs and watching cartoon pole dancers... well, actually, no, those last things aren't so cartoony. I do see it as completely unbelievable fantasy and as such can only see it as comic, though. The constant need for minigames and points popping up on screen everywhere make it constantly clear to the player that this is all just a stupid game, which I suppose stops you from feeling guilty.

It seems too obvious and too easy to compare this game to Grand Theft Auto IV, but it's the easiest way to show the games strengths and weaknesses.

GTA IV is really well written, contains lots of hilarious satire and irony, but the core story is complex, sobering, maybe even depressing. I can't say the story was everything, but I have to respect the way it was written. The city teems with life and personality. Drugs and alcohol drive people crazy, and the protagonist just gets himself deeper and deeper into trouble by messing with gangsters.

Saints Row 2 has a perfunctory story - the type you get in brainless Hollywood action movies, the humour is very low brow (e.g. flinging poo at rich people's houses). The city is large and has different districts each with a different look, but the city and its occupants don't feel real; the gangsters are divided by race but don't seem like inhabitants of the areas they control, and relies too much on simple race/class stereotyping. Drugs play a BIG part in the story but never harm anyone (apart from getting shot at if they're in the wrong gang), and as the story progresses you just get more and more influence and freedom to do whatever you like, in your badass gangsta way.

On one hand that makes it a lot of fun, but on the other hand it leaves it feeling shallow, a little dissatisfying and empty. That and the fact it was a pretty easy game. I'm going to finish up with a list of pros and cons:

Pros:

* The character customisation features are incredibly good - you can change just about anything about the appearance of your character (face, body, hair, tattoos, clothing, ethnicity, voice).
* I like how the character you created is in all cutscenes as though it was pre-made, and dialogue is tailored to your character (gender / ethnicity / etc)
* Most minigames and diversions are fun
* Really friendly interface in a lot of ways, I especially liked building up a garage of cars, and the unlockable where you can call up and get them delivered to you wherever you are.
* Really nice character modelling. I'm not just talking about the pole dancers, but... yes, they were fun to watch too.
* Really nice diversity of vehicles available to use, and with different working functionality too.
* I was surprised just how many buildings they let you go into. Well detailed world.

Cons:

* BUGGY. You wouldn't believe the number of times it froze up on me, and all I could do was manually switch off the console. >:(
* The GPS is really stupid, a lot of the time.
* The stories in the game are really cliché, though the Saints gang member's personalities and banter somehow manage to keep it amusing.
* The minigames were more fun than the plot-forwarding missions.
* (Xbox 360) : You can't get most of the achievement points in single player mode!
* It's very easy, at least, on "normal" difficulty.... until you try and pilot a helicopter, in which case it becomes nasty because you cannot avoid one-shot-kill homing missiles. So the last mission took me ages!
* The comedy is very low brow, most of it wasn't funny but strangely enough I found it inoffensively unfunny, not complete turn-off unfunny. I mean like it's a million years before it's as good as GTA IV radio / TV comedy.
* Not enough to listen to on the radio, it got boring.
* After playing GTA IV, I wished I could taxi across the city.

Videogame developers dirty code confessions

This is an article from August, but I only just read it today. It's a collection of anecdotes from videogame developers about dirty code and last-minute hacks they needed to do just as the product was about to ship. There's some funny stuff in there, some interesting stuff, and some slightly terrifying stuff.

Gamasutra: Dirty Coding Tricks

Elite (the computer game) is 25 years old

Happy Birthday to one of the greatest games of all time, Elite. (slightly belated)

BBC article

If only modern games which claim to have huge free-roaming worlds to explore could stand up to you. If only modern games that claim you can choose to play as you'd like and form your own destiny were truly as wide open to play as you were.

I played the C64 version, and I played it a lot! I didn't get too far in rank, I think it was because I shot down a weird ship, and then got to a base, saved my game, and was given a mission to shoot it down. I couldn't, so I was unable to get a new rank. I carried on playing though. Still plenty to do, plenty to explore, upgrades to make, trading and mining and pirates and notoriety...

I played the sequels on PC too. They were pretty good. :)

Nowadays... I probably wouldn't even be able to dock without a docking computer...

Arrrrr!

Yesterday was talk like a pirate day, so I decided to play some pirate-centric games. Steam has a special offer this weekend for the remade "Secret Of Monkey Island" special edition point and click adventure for only £3.49, so I bought it, and Telltale Games had a special on their new Monkey Island spin off games, where you could have the first episode of Tales Of Monkey Island for free. So I grabbed that too. I also decided to play some Sid Meier's Pirates! because it's my all time favourite pirate game.

So, here are my thoughts:

* Tales Of Monkey Island pt 1

It runs pretty badly on my computer, I know my PC is a bit old but lowering the graphical quality didn't seem to help that much and is it really necessary for this kind of game? The game is no longer 2D and I don't like the movement /looking round / item using interfaces - I didn't like having to drag the mouse to navigate a 3D plane, and I didn't like the way that objects would move on a boat so that you'd end up clicking on the wrong thing and have to go through a dialogue scene again.

I think, at least from what I've seen at the start of the game, the script could really use some tidying up. i.e. it could do with them removing all the jokes that aren't funny, even if that means cutting the jokes down to one per paragraph. It's no good trying rapid-fire comedy if most of your jokes miss the target.

Also, I could tell that in some places they were just being self-referential in place of there being a joke - so lines are delivered like they're funny but it's really just repetition out of context of something that was amusing elsewhere. It just fell flat, reminding me of the recent Red Dwarf "Back To Earth" special I watched an episode of (and didn't go back for more).

I didn't play very far into the game though. I think I should replay an earlier game and return to this later.

* Sid Meier's Pirates!

Did you know that if you play this game on Talk Like A Pirate day, all the menus and stuff are displayed in pirate speak? :D

I have loved this game since the C64 version; this game and Elite both gave the player a sense of having a huge amount of space to explore, traverse and profit from. I also played the PC version from around 15 years ago. The version I played yesterday was a newer version for PC (it's still a few years old now!), which I bought in a bundle on Steam a few weeks ago. A lot of games really suffer when it comes to remakes or spin-offs; someone who doesn't quite underatand certain aspects of the original game decide to "improve" it by tweaking things... [sighs at the Katamari games, and some game franchises with large numbers at the end of the titles...] This remake is spot on though, and the new features and enhancements do work really well. I really got back into this game!

* Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition
For some reason, this game is over 1GB to download! (Compared with under 200MB for the episode of the new spinoff game) So, I haven't played this yet. I'm hoping I've forgotten enough of it so that I don't whiz through the game! :D

As an aside:

The game One Piece Unlimited Cruise (PAL version) for Wii is the rarest Wii game I know of. It's a multi-part adventure based on the pirate anime/manga series. As far as I know it's available as subtitled Japanese only (which I see as a good thing!). The first part came out in June and I have not seen a single copy in shops. It is sold out / out of stock everywhere, and copies are selling for very high prices on ebay - roughly twice the original price, sometimes more. The second part is due out now or in the near future, and I placed an order for it at £17.99 on Amazon (I thought I might as well), but they say it's now out of stock and aren't sure if they'll get it - though this was a preorder! Copies of the 2nd part are on ebay for £30 already, which is about £20 less than the 1st part. It's stupid, the fact that they have totally underestimated the demand for these games, and aren't observing the market to see that they need to get more copies made!

Much as I prefer to have a solid copy of the games that I own, I have to admit, at least they can never run out of copies to sell!

So, there you go, my games-about-pirates day is done.

I love Splosion Man! (2)

Well, the competition event came and went on Splosion Man last weekend. I am not normally a person who tries speed runs, but I thought I would give this a go. I managed a time of 2:52:11 which put me just outside the top 100 when I got it, and 135 when the competition ended. I retried the level so many times, but could not beat that time. I don't think I did too badly; the par time for the level is 3:30:00, so I beat that by over 30 seconds.

The top time was something like 2:10, which is an amazing time.

The person who was 2nd overall with a time of 2:11 posted a video of their best run on youtube, and it was truly breathtaking to watch. I have total respect for this player!

I hadn't worked out how to avoid the spikes at the end like that; if I had, I would have been able to shave more off of my time, but there were still a lot of points where I just couldn't make it through quickly enough.

Overall it was a fun event. More games should feature this knd of worldwide competition event! :)

A few days later, I beat HARDCORE MODE, which I think of as being a great achievement.



Some levels did give me a lot of trouble, and I played them again and again to complete them... other levels which I dreaded after spending ages on them the first time round, I beat on my first or second go, surprising myself. The last boss took me about an hour to defeat the first time I played it, but only took me about 3 attempts on hardcore mode! I guess I levelled up as a player. :)

The only thing left for me in the game is to improve my scores and times (but I am already in the top 150 worldwide for overall game time), and to finish multiplayer and get all the cakes... but multiplayer isn't working out for me.

• There's too much lag. I have talked to other people who have much faster internet connections, and they still experience the same out-of-sync problems that I experienced.


• It seems that most other players I have found aren't very good and it's impossible to get them to cooperate on in game puzzles and sploding simultaneously.


• I was playing with several people, they kept jumping off of a ledge into a vat of acid... making the level incompletable unless everyone suicides as well, so after a large number of times, the dreaded "you can take the Way Of The Coward to skip this level" popped up. Someone immediately selected it and skipped the level, even though I was hosting the game. I quit out of it immediately but I now have that level skipped on my scores, and that annoys me. I have never ever chosen the way of the coward. It's not my way of playing. >:(

So, online multimplayer is not for me. :(

I still love this game though. I think it might well be "Game of the year" for me. :)

I love Splosion Man!

Over the last month or so, I've been playing a game I bought on Xbox Live Arcade called Splosion Man.

It's a simple, fast paced, colourful 2D platformer. The premise is simple, you are a little orange guy who was some kind of science experiment and wants to get to the exit of each level or defeat one of the game's three bosses. Splosion Man's natural state is on fire, and he can run left and right, and "splode" (explode). That's all he can do. Every face button on the joypad is mapped to "splode", and Splosion Man uses his explosions to jump, blow up scientists and furniture, to deflect bullets, set animals free, and throw switches.

There are naturally lots of obstacles, scientists throwing switches to make barriers, robots and guns attacking you, etc, as you try and make your way through each level. Also, Splosion Man can only "splode" three times before he needs to charge up again (either by standing on the ground or holding a wall for a while). So, the game can be quite tricky.

There is also a bonus item on each level - a huge cake - for people to hunt down and collect, if they like doing that sort of thing. I made it my mission to collect every single one on single-player mode before finishing the game!

The game to me is just pure fun. I really do love this game, to me it seems the perfect 2D platformer.

Things I like:

• Only one button! It's as though I'm back in the days of the arcade with a joystick and one button, or grasping an Atari 2600 joystick in my hands. It's so simple and even though the one button performs so many roles, I never have contextual use issues. All it does is "splode", and the objects in the world interpret that however they see fit.


• The controls are friendly. You tend to only need wide movements to move, platforms are laid out generously so that jumping isn't so difficult that you won't get things nailed before you give up out of frustration.


• Timed sections aren't really timed. Sometimes you'll have a level containing ever rising cold water - instant death for Splosion Man! So you need to run through these levels.... but I did notice that sometimes the water will seem to "wait for you" before getting higher, in certain parts. It's just friendly like that.


• The graphics are nice and bright, platforms and switches are nice and clear, there are never any foreground / background visual problems for me. It looks great. Splosion Man does cute little animations when he's moving or standing as well. He seems such a sweet little kid as well as a complete psycho blowing up scientists everywhere.


• The game makes me laugh. Splosion Man's cute little animations are funny, the way scientists blow up into pieces of cooked meat that look like they're from a delicatessen counter is funny, Splosion Man's erratic speech - muttering weird things about meat between levels is also kind of funny. The ending credits segment was hilarious!


• The sound is great. The soundtrack for the single player and multi player modes were written by two different composers but both suit the game well. There's also a funny song about eating doughnuts. The soundtrack is available for free download on the official website, which is a nice gesture. I like the jazzy tracks, they sound like they're from a 1960s spy film or something by Henry Mancini.


• There are loads of levels. 50 in single player mode spanning three whole worlds, then the same again in multi player mode. (NB: entirely different levels, 100 in total)


• Loads of Leaderboards. Each level has a best time leaderboard and a best score leaderboard. There are also the overall best score and best time leaderboards, so there's always reason to retry levels to try and better your scores, if you like that sort of competition.


• Level design is really tight. You usually know where to go, and the levels seem really well thought out.


• Hardcore Mode. When you finish the single player game, you unlock Hardcore Mode, whereby you can go through the game again, but this time there are no in-level checkpoints and enemies / lasers kill you in one shot. I like that, because it's not a case of "we made the game harder by adding more enemies", it's just a case of "the game was perfect as you played it, we're not going to change it - to prove your mastery, you have to go through playing a perfect game".

I'm still battling through Hardcore Mode on single player, I'm on level 2-6 as of this evening.

I've hardly made a dent in multiplayer mode really, I'm only on level 1-11; the game goes really weird if a player is suffering lag; the platforms appear in different places for each player and it seems really glitchy. Fortunately there's local multiplayer! ^_^



When I finished the game, as well as the end credits, it told me about a competition which the developers (Twisted Pixel) are setting - whoever gets the best time on level 3-8 between September the 6th to the 12th will get a trophy and a signed poster. :) I like the sound of that! I don't think I'll be anywhere near good enough to win though, I'm in the thousands on most of the leaderboards.

Darwinia (PC game)

I already owned a boxed retail copy of Darwinia (with a little key chain), but I didn't get round to installing it for years, then I ended up buying it again on steam through a special offer bundle on indie games, so I decided now was the right time to get round to playing it!

I will tell you, to me it was by far the best game I bought in that pack of indie games! (though some of the others are great too)

It plays a bit like Cannon Fodder (which I used to like), but your troops are completely disposable and mostly you are doing missions to assist an A.I. race called Darwinians, fighting to survive from a virus which has infected their world.

It may not sound that good, but the execution of this game is really great.

I really do feel like I am accessing a very small world built for the Darwinians, I am under the impression that this is their long-established home land I do feel like they have their little ways and beliefs and in a way I do feel like they are just wanting to live out their lives in peace, devoted to learning and exploring.

And so, I feel a strong form of compassion and desire to protect them.

It's a game that gave me interesting feelings; fixing the structure of their digital world and even more, their digital but tangible religion, is something that was mind blowing when I stopped to think about it.

The graphics are simple but completely effective, digitally generated landscapes populated with menacing viruses. The sound is also very effective. Most of the music is by someone called Trash80 and you can download some tracks used in Darwinia from his website, it's really good electronic music, a little retro chiptune in places.

The various startup screens for the game are fun references to old gamer geekery too, from watching the Darwinians play out life to the old 8-bit demo scene splash screens, I liked that touch to the game.

The game has a small amount of levels but some of them did take a very long time to do, so the whole game took about 7 hours to complete (according to the clock on steam) but that's over a duration of a few weeks.

I really really enjoyed this game, especially as an experience.

Cowboy Bebop CD-BOX Original Sound Track Limited Edition

This is an old CD box set which I bought when it came out, back in 2002 (well, that's what the box says, I don't actually remember!). I'm making this post because it's still a popular compilation which fans want to buy, but it's out of print so the price has risen and it is known that there are lots of bootlegs available, and they contact me asking "is the product I am looking at a bootleg?"

So I thought I would help by taking some photos and making a post here of the genuine item.

The box set was released by Victor Entertainment, and has a catalogue number of VIZL-64. There is a release date on the box of 2002-06-21. The original price was 10290 yen including tax or 9800 yen without tax.

It comes in a long box, the box is cardboard and has a picture of Spike on the front, and there is an imprint of the title of the collection on the cardboard: "COWBOY BEBOP CD-BOX Original Soundtrack Limited Edition featuring YOKO KANNO / SEATBELTS". It's difficult to see that on the photos, but the same words are also in the circle in the top left corner.



Turn over the box, and you see a CD single taped to the box. The tape has the very long title on it again. It's actually taped to a plastic sleeve around the box, and a plastic sleeve around the single CD so don't worry about the tape doing any damage. I managed to remove the single CD to listen to without disturbing the box, keeping the protective plastic on the box, but it was tricky! If you are looking at a second hand copy, the box and the single CD may be separate.




Inside the box is a foldout cardboard and plastic case with the CDs, and a huge 52 page booklet sandwiched between them. The foldout case has a picture of the main cast on one side, but I forgot to take a picture. :P

The booklet has a picture of a handgun on the side. Most of the text is in Japanese (interviews, etc) but the contents page and credits are in English, as well as any of the song lyrics that are in English.



Other details, tracklisting etc, can be found on Wikipedia.

I don't know whether there have been any reissues in different formats, but I know that this is what my 100% definitely genuine limited edition copy looks like! If you are looking to buy a copy, good luck!

Agarest Senki (PS3 game) coming to the UK

I noticed "Agarest: Generations Of War" up for preorder on GAME (UK retailer) for only £24.99 - that's like a budget title, in PS3 terms. The full price for videogames has been steadily rising over the last few months so normal RRP for a retail PS3 game is about twice that. T_T

It's Agarest Senki, and is going to be published by Ghostlight, subsidiary company of Midas Entertainment. The page for this game on their website doesn't work yet. They have a press release available to read, if you want a look.

As far as I know, this is the only release outside of Japan that the game is getting. Not that it really matters; the PS3 is region free after all.

I wonder if you will still be labelled a hikkikomori for getting the game's platinum trophy.

I don't have high expectations for the game because it's an Idea Factory game, so it's probably best placed as a budget title. Still, SRPG with dating sim elements is probably worth a look...

It comes out in about a month's time.

Momoi Halko in Minon Everyday Hero

Last Friday, I decided to watch the trailer for the wii game "Minon: Everyday Hero", which is out in the UK now.

Minon: Everyday Hero trailer.

It's a game where you run around each stage knocking down dominoes to succeed. It's the sequel to a PS1 game which came out in the UK under the name of "No one can stop Mr Domino". Looks like it could be fun, to a Katamari Damacy obsessed person like me. :D

I noticed that the song playing in the trailer is a Momoi Halko song! This is backed up on this website. The Japanese version of this game is called "Go!Go!Minon" (with Minon written in katakana).

If you want to download a sound effects free MP3 of the song, you'll have to grab it from Nico Nico Douga: http://nicosound.anyap.info/sound/sm527992 because as far as I can see, there is no soundtrack on sale for this game. That surprised me, because the reviews I saw for the game mentioned that there is a lot of licensed jpop in the game.

I didn't find any mention in English on the internet about Momoi singing for this game, so I thought I had better write it up in my blog. :D It's an energetic little 2 minute song.

I've ordered a copy of the game via an online shop but it hasn't arrived yet, so I don't actually know if this song is in the actual game, but according to the videos on youtube it should be. The game isn't out in America and gets pretty mediocre reviews, and I haven't seen it around much so it might never be released there.

BTW Momoi Halko is coming to the UK next month! She's a guest at Ayacon and will be performing live: http://www.ayacon.org.uk/guests. I won't be going; it's just to let you know. ^_^

EDIT: 2009-07-15 20:37pm

My copy arrived and I can confirm that the Momoi song is in the PAL version of the game!




The game features a comically bad dub with voice work like you only ever hear in British cartoons for very very small children. I don't know where they get these people, I don't hear people talking like this in England. -_-; However, every level features cheerful jpop songs, unaltered. ^_^

The Momoi song is in level 4. Pop idol Michiko Momota is giving a secret concert, and her "fans" turn up, but they're all "Oh, she's past it." "I heard she's 10 years older than she says she is" (which made me laugh, thinking that Momoi is a few months older than me - older than Gundam! - she just looks and behaves much younger than she is. When she was in UNDER 17 she was definitely over 17 years old!).

That's a terrible reason to stop liking her! We have to change their minds about Michiko!

While she sings the song, you have to run over the heads of disgruntled fans in the audience to stop them from leaving! It's a hoot.

The song is longer in the game than in the clip I found on NicoNico - the stage is 4 mins 50 seconds long, and there's another verse.

In the PAL version of the game, they call the song something that sounds like "Lalala Lamikus", but in the NicoNico video I found, it was labelled "Galge (Lalala Namida no Totsugeki Lemon Kiss)".

Overall, the game is perhaps taking a bit of getting used to, it is perhaps a little too quirky for its own good and although you can change the camera angles none of them seem very helpful... but it is proving to be amusing! :D

The Japanese rape game controversy and getting round website blocking

There was a big hoohah in the news a few weeks ago about some British MP being really offended that 3rd party sellers on Amazon.com were selling copies of the (rather offensive) Rapelay computer game, where players rape women and girls, and, well that's the whole game. Horrific and distasteful and wholly unerotic stuff, imho.

That started a huge controversy, and the initial outcome was that one of the main videogame ratings bodies (EOCS) decided to ban games from having "rape" in the title, as well as banning games containing mostly rape. Hooray! This stopped Rapelay from being sold, and other knock-on positive effects are:

* Rape victims really suffer in Japan as it's not seen as a terrible crime, and the victims are not given much help, and are stigmatised. I read some articles citing government reports saying that although the official crime rate of rape appears low, estimates are that 10 times as many rapes are unreported. It's a really bad problem there. A lot of these games trivialise rape (e.g. "that was a surprise!" then they go about their normal life), and/or show women appearing to have really enjoyed it when it's over, so it's good to stop the positive reinforcement of rape that these games give.

* Rape has become a worn-out cliché of the adult-only erotic game genre in Japan, and there are often a lot of unavoidable rape scenes in games. I am thinking that maybe if makers are forced to stop using boring old rape scenes, they might be forced to dream up new pleasing erotic content using only consenting adults, and attract a bigger and more mainstream audience. I know that when a PC erogame proves popular enough to warrant a mainstream release, all sex scenes are removed for a home console version. I'm thinking that if erogames became less extreme in content they might appeal to more people, and if they clean themselves up they won't have such a bad reputation. So I'm thinking that in the long run, the industry could actually benefit from this action.

However, the controversy continued beyond the subject of rape and some online shops decided to stop selling certain games with other types of extreme sexual content, and it's all still a hot topic and various other things could stop being permitted by the two main ratings bodies.

One way that a few Japanese game companies have decided to react is to block all access to their official websites by all people outside of Japan. Instead, we get holding pages telling us to go away, or perhaps write to the Japanese government in support of erogames. Unfortunately, this action is even being taken by some companies which don't make or sell extreme pornographic games. This is highly annoying, as an official website is often the only (reliable) place to find information about games, and it appears to be nothing but an unhelpful xenophobic overreaction.

If you want to get round the blocks to Japanese websites, use this intermediate website to access them: http://www.ijapan.org/red/

I bought a wii.

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, along with the lack of photos. My camera is being weird at the moment. No matter whether I put in new batteries, or fully recharged batteries straight out of he charger, all it can manage to do is open it's lens..... then a few seconds later, close and shut down. I suppose I could try using the camera on my netbook, but that would be a bit weird and awkward to use.

I have bought a wii console. In fact, I bought it slightly before my PS3, but I didn't write it up. It's second hand but in impeccable condition, as the previous owner seems to have only played with it once or twice, according to the internal log.

I have bought a whole load of games for it; Baroque, Blast Works, Dewy's Adventure, Disaster Day Of Crisis, Dragon Quest Swords, FFF Chocobo's Dungeon, Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, Geometry Wars Galaxies, Guilty Gear /\ Core, The House Of The Dead 2 & 3 Return, Little King's Story, Madworld, The Munchables, No More Heroes, Opoona, Samba de Amigo, Samurai Warriors Katana, SNK Arcade Classics 1, Soul Calibur Legends, Super Paper Mario, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Wario Land: The Shake Dimension, Warioware: Smooth Moves, Wii Music, Zack & Wiki.

All of those are PAL version games, apart from Tatsunoko vs Capcom which is a Japanese game. Most of them cost around £10 or less, and I am happy with the selection I have chosen. I've played a bit of most of them, but there are still some I haven't even taken out of the wrapper yet!

I haven't bought any wiiware downloadable games because I do not trust Nintendo with purely digital ownership thanks to them revoking most of my loyalty points which I had spent years building up, complete faith in them. There is no personal ownership for wiiware games - you download them to your console without it being tied to any form of identity. So if your wii breaks, you can't transfer your games to another console without phoning Nintendo and begging, and they are very reluctant to cooperate, from what I have heard. Plus, they do not offer any demos for games, and there's not much internal memory in the console, nor much in the way of online play, so it doesn't seem very good.

I held off buying a wii for a few years because there didn't appear to be that many games for the platform which appeal to me, and the price of games was too high - for a long time they retained their prices very well. Buying a second hand console for £50 less than the standard price, and picking up games fairly cheaply, now that I have this console, I'm quite pleased with it.

The speciality of the wii seems to be games which you can pick up easily, play in short bursts, and laugh with. This is what I really appreciate the console for. There are some games which seem like normal home console games, but I would say that a great deal of games are more like amusement arcade games. For example, you can go mini-bowling with friends. You can wave a stick around and play swordfighting. You can play accurate ports of one-on-one fighting games. You can move about with music / rhythm games. Amusement arcades are becoming more and more scarce as the years pass, and they contain more and more gambling machines and fewer arcade games, so I really appreciate the fact that the wii seems to replace and regain part of what has been lost.

And, even if the games are short, they don't cost too much anymore, so I don't mind.

The wii does suffer the same overall problems with its game catalogue that the DS does - there are are a lot of gimmick control games (use this control method because it's new, not because it is the best or most useable), and there is a lot of software for the console that is not a game but self-help training software. These appeal to a broad market and bring in a lot of money, so that kind of stuff is what people have come to associate with the console, but there are some really decent games for the platform too.

500 yen discount voucher for CD Japan

There's a special offer on at CD Japan at the moment: put in your email address and they will send you a voucher for 500 yen off of any order of 5000 yen or more, to spend before the 30th of July 2009.

Special Offer coupon page

I guess 10% isn't that much, but it's more than welcome. (See my previous 2 posts, I have some preorders to place...)

I Senshi - upcoming Anniversary Gundam album

Have you ever liked a song so much that you think that an album containing 6 cover versions of it would be a great thing? I think I'm unusual. I own the album with 18 versions of "Yuusha Ou Tanjou!", the Gaogaigar opening theme.

Now I've heard about this upcoming Ai Senshi cover album, I'm really thinking of buying this too.

Gundam 30th Anniversary I,Senshi Tribute

Catalog No.: VTCL-60161
Label/Distributor: Victor Entertainment
Format: CD
Number of discs (or other units): 1
Release Date: 2009/07/22
Price: 2000yen (2100yen Tax incl.)

I've also seen a tracklist:

1. Ai Senshi (Andrew W.K.)
2. Ai Senshi (MIQ)
3. Ai Senshi (Daisuke Inoue (original singer), 1999 version)
4. Ai Senshi (Gackt)
5. Ai Senshi (Richie Kotzen)
6. Ai Senshi (Matsuhiro Oikawa)

Source. As it's another blog, I can't tell if that tracklist is finalised.

Preorder on: Gundam 30th Anniversary I,Senshi Tribute

I really like this song! I think it's definitely my favourite song to come out of Mobile Suit Gundam. It's from one of the films, which I haven't seen. I just really like the song. I think the album would have been better rounding off with the original version, as I think it's the best. The Andrew W.K. version is in English and it's a good translation; accurate and with a lot of impact. I haven't heard the MIQ version, I'm hoping it's new as I like all of her covers. I haven't heard the self cover... I don't much like the Gackt cover (even though I like a lot of his music), the Ritchie Kotzen cover is another English cover but the lyrics aren't as good, and I haven't heard the Matsuhiro Oikawa version but I have enjoyed some of his past music too.

Not listed is this live cover of Ai Senshi: Super Robot Spirits Acoustic version, with Mizuki Ichirou, Kageyama Hironobu, Endoh Masaaki, Horie Mitsuko and MIQ. It's really good, and is another reason I have to look forward to a MIQ version.

EIZO JAPAN - upcoming album

This is one to look forward to! Anyone who is a fan of Sakamoto Eizo (lead singer of Anthem, Animetal and an ex member of JAM Project) should look into this!

He's got a new album of covers of anime songs coming out at the end of August 2009 in Japan - it's available to preorder on CD Japan.

Tracklisting from his official website

Engine Sentai Go-onger
Pegasus Fantasy (Saint Seiya)
Butter-Fly (Digimon)
Unbalance na Kiss o Shite (Yu Yu Hakusho)
Turn A Turn (Turn A Gundam)
Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan (Sakura Wars)
Kimi o Nosete (Laputa: Castle in the Sky)
DELUGE(Instrumental)
Dengeki Sentai Changeman
Aiai Mikochan (Norakuro)
Kioku no Umi (School Days)
Hana - Shinomori Aoshi no Theme (Rurouni Kenshin)
Towa no Mirai (Rurouni Kenshin)
Pegasus Fantasy Acoustic Ver (Saint Seiya)

It'll be good to hear the self-cover of Animetal's Towa no Mirai (presuming it is a cover). I saw a video on youtube of him singing Butter-Fly live at an anime song event, it seems to be a song with a resurgence in popularity, which is great because it's always been a fun song. ^_^ I have wanted to hear him sing the Sakura Taisen theme for ages too. ^_^

It mentions on his English MySpace page that "We are also promoting overseas. Working hard to bring the album to your countries!!", I think that means concerts rather than the CD being released internationally, but I can't be sure. I think I'll put an order in for the Japanese version anyway.

EDIT: 2009-07-15

Keep an eye on his official myspace page! It now contains clips from the album to listen to, and he'd revealed that he will start recording EIZO JAPAN 2 next month! :D

King Of Fighters XI

My left thumb is worn out today. I spent last evening playing King Of Fighters XI on PS2 (PAL version) with my brother. There are loads of characters to choose from, and I've only managed to unlock one extra character so far.

If I turn the difficulty to minimum and damage to maximum, I can sometimes get lucky and beat the game! ^_^;; Yeah, last bosses in these games are so dispropotionately difficult compared with all the other fights leading up to the end.

There seem to be slowdown issues, especially on the final boss. It's quite annoying. And, the text in story sequences flows off the side of the screen, so you can't read what's going on. Especially bad when the only story you get about the characters is their ending sequence! Buggy, buggy, buggy.

I bought a PS3.

I have a PS3 now; I bought myself a 2nd hand one - a USA 60GB import model because that's the most fully featured and because my American PS2 makes worrying disc-eating noises and there are more US PS2 games I want to play than PS3 games.

So far, I've had some fun with it playing "LittleBigPlanet", "Noby Noby Boy", "Rag Doll Kung Fu", "Riff: Everyday Shooter", "Pixel Junk Eden" and "The Last Guy".

I've also bought "Disgaea 3" and "Valkyria Chronicles", as well as "Flower" and "Pixel Junk Monsters". I haven't tried them yet.

I might also get "Hakuna Matata" (Afrika), which is a game about filming wildlife in Africa.

There aren't too many games in shops for PS3 that I want to buy - its range is so limited it's almost as bad as the Xbox in the last generation of consoles.

The range of downloadable games is more appealing to me. Not so much the selection of PS1 games as I own all of the games I'm interested in already, but the new titles. Apparently there are a lot more games on the USA and Japan versions of the PSN store than what I see in the European store, so I might have to set up foreign accounts and buy prepaid cards to use. There are no prepaid cards available for the European PSN shop; you have to use a credit card which is a bit annoying, so I am still a bit reluctant. I wish there were more game demos available too, even if it is a few £s to buy downloadable games, it seems like too much of a risk to buy a game based on its name and a very short paragraph of text to describe it. I have been looking up reviews of the games, but you don't really get a feel for a game like you do with a demo.

I have enjoyed the games I've played, though.

LittleBigPlanet is an extremely customisable platform game which has some great levels built in, plus you can create and play levels and play other player's levels too. All the objects in the game look and feel like they are made out of small bits and bobs; painted cardboard, various kinds of cloth, cotton reels for wheels, burning coals, etc. Some player levels I've seen have been really inventive; I've seen a roller coaster, a piano, a side-scrolling shoot-em-up... I'm really impressed.

Noby Noby Boy is a little downloadable game that costs £3.19 and is the latest thing that the guy who created Katamari Damacy has been working on. You're this little caterpillar-like thing who eats stuff. He's called BOY. You can stretch him, and by eating more, you can make him very long. When you're done, you report the length to GIRL, which is a global total among all players in the (real) world. So far she's stretched long enough to reach the moon (which opened up a new stage). The first time I played it was just before there was a huge update to the game which is bigger than the original size of the game! It added a lot of music and sound effects and multiplayer support, and somehow seems a lot more professional now. The take-up of this game has been a lot lower than expected, so I think in response to that, there have been multipliers to reported lengths all this week. It was up to 765 times yesterday, and is down to 523 times today. I think we will get GIRL to stretch to Mars soon! I'm looking forward to it!

Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists Of Plastic... I only have because they are giving this game away for free on US PSN at the moment so I got someone with a US account to log in and download it. It still costs £7.99 in Europe, even though it's made my Sony Europe! :/ It's a pretty fun and amusing little fighting game, again with little objects as the main characters (reminding me of LittleBigPlanet), though some of the controls use motion sensing in the controller, and I found those controls too imprecise and hard to use. :(

Riff: Everyday Shooter is a two-stick shoot-em-up. Robotron / Smash TV / Geometry Wars style controls. Each stage has its own way of playing, and best tactics to score the highest points, so you aren't just shooting wildly - you are waiting to destroy the targets which will benefit you the most, and chain the destruction. It feels like Every Extend in that respect. Each level is the length of a song, rather than until you have destroyed X boss or whatever, and the music is realy tied in with what you are shooting. Some people describe it as "an album you play" because of this. I think it just makes a terrible racket, though. One of the most annoying soundtracks I've heard. Think: autogenerated amateur American grunge.

Pixel Junk Eden is a fun little 2D game where you jump around a large landscape trying to hit floating circles that release pollen to make other plants, to jump around.... and you can swing on some silk for a while to help... um, I don't know if that's a very good description. It took a while to work out the best way to play the game, even with tutorial messages, because the game is hard to describe. It's fun once you've worked it out, though. Fun to play local multi-player as well. :)

The Last Guy is... well, if you ever played the "Demonstration Roundup" minigame in WTF (Work Time Fun / Baito Hell 2000) for the PSP, it's basically an updated version of that. I think I even heard some sound effects from the PSP game reused, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was made by the same team. In this game, you have to run around a city (these are accurate real world aerial shots, like what you see in google maps), and when you pass by buildings, the people inside come out and join a line behind you. You need to take the people to the safety zones in the city to be rescued, without them being chased away by zombies or giant monsters. It's quite fun.

Megami Tensei / SMT / Persona / DDS / Demikids info

Someone posted a link to this on a forum I was reading. It contains a lot of information about the Megami Tensei series that I didn't know.

http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/megaten/megaten.htm

I didn't even know that the Megami Tensei anime OAV that I saw was based on the novel which the Megaten games are based on. I thought it must have been based on the first game just because I don't know anything about it. ^_^;;

See how little I knew?

See also:
Digital Devil Story novels by Nishitani Aya, translated into English

Shin Megami Tensei game translation patch

Shin Megami Tensei II game translation patch

Wikipedia page

Clover - Xbox 360 Community Game

During the week, I played the trial of, bought, and completed the game Clover on Xbox 360. It's a community game, so a small independant company made the game, and, well, it does show. The graphics are nicely coloured (watercolours) but the character designs look to me like they were doodled by a teenager on a lunchbreak, or during a particularly boring maths class. The music... well normally I really like piano music, but this was particularly bad.

I was torn between whether to buy the game or not, when I played the trial. I could see that there were some good points to the game, but wasn't sure whether they were strong enough to warrant a purchase. Also, I kept unlocking bonus artwork and sketches and frankly that put me off! In the end I gave in because it is only 400 Microsoft points (which is a little over £3, I think), along with a mixture of curiosity and nostalgia.

It's a game with a style of gameplay that I haven't seen in a commercial release for many years. It's a 2D platform adventure, like the old Dizzy games I used to play on C64. You have a little character, he goes round picking up items, and jumps around on platforms trying not to get killed, talking to people, and trading or using items in the correct context to progress. This was the most major factor in why I bought the game; simply because I had been starved of this genre, and to see what they had done with it.

The gameplay isn't as hard or demanding as the old Dizzy games; in general it is not easy to die, and if you do, you just get placed outside the jail with all your items.

The save function in the game... well, there is only auto-save. It automatically saves when you solve a puzzle. I asked the developer on the project and he said he built it that way deliberately because when he had a manual save implemented, people were trying to use objects, failing, and reloading, which he said broke up gameplay. However my observation is that it also means that if the player has spent a while running and jumping to get an item from a platform, then want to stop playing, they have to actually solve the puzzle before quitting if they want to keep that item.

The story in the game... is heavily inspired by events leading up the the war in Iraq in 2003, and it is pretty obvious... at the beginning I didn't mind at all, just demonstrating the power of spin in the media to work up a frenzy, but towards the end I felt that the veil was too thin. The metaphor too clean. The tale too simplified.

I was not satisfied with the end of the game. It was abrupt and felt like I got the "Bad Ending" where there is no multiple ending. All you get as a reward for finishing the game is a two page quote about manipulating the public, which you learn on the second page was spoken by a person unrelated to Iraq but known as one of history's "bad guys". It isn't anything shocking at this point as the sentiment has been repeated several times leading up to the end - it just felt preachy rather than thought provoking. And it's not like this game could not be accused of bias, or conveniently telling the story just to influence the player in a certain way. You don't even get a new piece of music and scrolling credits. (the credits can be read as optional overlays in the artwork)

Overall, I don't object to having played through this game and it was refreshing to see that this old genre of videogame can still survive. However, I feel a little bit cheated, like I intended to buy a game but ended up paying for a propaganda pamphlet from the UK Respect political party.

Plants vs Zombies

Ohhhhh I got so addicted to this game!

See, first of all I saw the music video, oh so cute, oh so catchy... and it has a dancing sunflower and zombies!

So I went to the official website and downloaded the MP3, both the English version and the Japanese version (since the singer recorded two versions).

"Haha!", I thought. "Popcap Games made a mistake. They let me download this catchy catchy song as an MP3 rather than bundling it with the game!"

...and I listened to it, and listened to it, and listened to it...

and on Saturday, after seeing a lot of top reviews for the game, I decided to download the demo and install it on my PC. It was an hour long trial.

"Oh ho ho", I thought. "This game seems so simple, I am sure I will be bored of it after an hour!"

...an hour later, I was looking for the cheapest place to buy the game. I signed up to Steam and bought it for £5.99... and I started playing....

...

...

...

...then I looked up. "It's 1am??? Where did Saturday go?"

Wow, this game is a huge time drain.

"I'll just have one more little go..."

...

...

...

A chat window signed up, a friend of mine on Steam.

"OMG! It's 4am! I think I should go to bed..."

I tried to limit myself a bit on Sunday, bought myself another game on Steam called "The Wonderful End Of The World", which is a Katamari Damacy clone game for PC. I played it for a little bit and then got really terribly violently sick (simulator sickness). I stopped and took a break and when I'd recovered, did my recycling.......... then came back to Plants VS Zombies. ^_^;;

I'm nearly finished with this game, yeah. I've completed Adventure mode (you get the music video as a reward! <3) and unlocked all puzzle modes and nearly unlocked all mini games...

Desktop flower defense, oh why is this game so addictive???

Disgaea 2 PSP and Sakura Wars 5 - heading to America

Two bits of happy news today: NIS America have announced that they will be releasing "Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days" (Disgaea 2 Portable for PSP), and "Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love" (Sakura Taisen 5 on PS2 and ported to wii) in America.

This is good news!

Well, apart from that NIS America have released some pretty bad localisations recently; adding bugs that weren't there (in the case of Ar Tonelico 2 it is game-breaking). But, we have to be optimistic!

Sakura Taisen news source

Disgaea 2 Portable news source

I've wanted to play a localised Sakura Taisen game for quite a few years now. I've tried playing games 1-3 raw, and with the helpful translation guides on gameFAQs, but I found it very difficult to find the bit I'm up to and read quickly enough on the website to catch up with the LIPS system... but I didn't want to read ahead because that carries too much risk of spoilers (or at least stopping the impact of comedy options)... so it was a bit halting, that way.

My favourite thing about the series has been the songs and stage shows; I've got the huge box set of CDs that contains (just about) all the songs for the first few games, some game OSTs, some drama CDs, some of the live performance DVDs... though nothing for the 5th game; only really for the first three / four.

Tanaka Kouhei is a great composer, and most of the seiyuu are pretty good singers, or at least very entertaining performers. :D

And Disgaea 2 Portable? Well, I thought the portable version of Disgaea was a lot better than the PS2 version, mainly because of the "sleep" function the game has (handy in item worlds!), but also because of the various enhancements and Etna mode.

Disgaea 2 has gameplay enhancements from Disgaea 3 (which I have stopped myself from beginning until I own a PS3 for my self), and Akutare mode. Well, it's Axel mode now because it's NIS America, but... got to look on the bright side! It's being released in English, hooray!

Psychic Detective (PS1 game)

Psychic Detective is a game for Playstation 1. Here's my copy, it's PAL, 18 rated and 3 disks long.

I've been meaning to write something up about it for a while but have been putting it off... I never got a "good" ending to the story, though I kind of worked out how to get one (find out the secret of the old woman, save her, use her in the end game...)

It's an interactive movie. As in, actual film footage. The picture quality is not great but it's a lot better than most; it's about what you expect from PS1 era technology. The main character is a psychic, he gets roped into being a detective. His power is that he can get into the mind of people he can see. This means that you can switch the game flow to the viewpoint of other characters, and view their interactions, if they leave the room you can switch to other characters, etc etc etc. You also have a small amount of influence, so you can try and save people or find out things, or whatever.

In terms of technical achievement... well, it must have taken ages to film and re-film scenes from different viewpoints, and the transition is quite believeable. You would not think that the same scene had been re-filmed from another angle when playing.

In terms of story and gameplay... the first time I played through the story I got to the end and was "wha???". It made no sense. Well, it made a bit of sense but not really. It doesn't take too long to play through the game again, so I played it through a few times, took different routes, found out some more and then I knew what is going on in the story.

I still have some gripes:

* The story, when unravelled, is still not that amazing.
* It's really annoying to have to change disks on Playstation every 10 minutes.
* It's boring to watch the same scene lots of times just to choose a different path in the story.

So, I know what to do to get a good ending but I have run out of motivation to go and watch it again to get better endings.

A lot of story-based games these days (e.g. visual novels) have a "skip" option so you can quickly run through bits you've read before, and choose an alternate path in the story. It would be difficult to put that in this game though, because paths are taken in a more organic fashion - the film never stops to let you choose, you have to hop to the next person or perform an action when the chance arrives.

So one of the game's strong points also leads to its weak point. I could use a lot of save files, I suppose...

Pizza Suicide

A mere photo cannot show how intense this pizza was.

I'd had my eye on this for a while but wasn't brave enough to try it. A fast-food takeaway shop near my workplace sells these as their speciality. "Pizza Suicide". It is a pizza topped with fresh green chilli, jalepeno chillis, chilli beef, tandoori chicken, and it's probably hot sauce as the base too. And some black pepper. Cheese on top.

I bought one on Thursday, knowing I had Friday off work, a small one just for myself, and started walking home with it. It's probably about 2 miles, usually takes 40 minutes. Yay! Pizza! By the time I was walking past the football ground, I was too impatient, so I opened the box and tried a slice. "Ohhhhhhhhhh that's nice. Not so hot after all!" I thought. And I walked on. By the time I was walking through the school playing fields, I was impatient again. So I tried another slice. This time it really hit hard! Oh so hot! So intense! Haaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!! I was in the middle of a park, no access to water or drinks... I walked on as fast as I could with my tongue hanging out. Must get home! Oh but this pizza.... so addictive!

By the time I got home, all the way up the hill, I'd eaten half of the pizza and was completely insane. Joyous, rapturous, intense, floaty, immortal, chilli high.

So, er, that was quite a fun meal. :)

Puzzle Quest Galactrix

I've recently been playing a lot of Puzzle Quest Galactrix, the XBLA version.

It's a puzzle game where you match up differently coloured hexagons in a sci-fi setting. There are battles against others (both in the game and online) where you try and use weapons and match up bombs to defeat the opponent. There are variations on the game in mining mode, hacking leap-gates mode, discovering rumours mode. There's an overall universe map and an overarching story to the game together with little bonus missions. There's a trading system which lets you buy new ships and weapons and sell things which you mined from asteroids to make you more popular within a territory as well.

So, it's quite full-featured for a puzzle game.

I love the artwork. Really good, really detailed artwork. Reminds me of the covers of old sci-fi novels and magazines my dad owns from the 1960s-1980s, when people would draw photorealistic sci-fi art on books, before computer graphics could render this kind of thing at all.

There's not much more to say about it really!

It's good for playing while chatting to a friend on XBLA. Engaging and addictive but for the most part you can play at your own pace and it's not too taxing.

Braid Soundtrack - out now

Well, Braid was a big hit on Xbox Live Arcade last year, and it's out on PC now... I tried the demo when it first came out and I hated it with a passion, not for the gameplay but for the story. So, I never went back to play the game.

As I mentioned when I first played it, though... the music is quite nice.

So when the soundtrack came out, I went to listen to it. You can too! It's here:

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/braid-soundtrack/

It's kind of peaceful but at times very dark, lingering, unsettling. Like when you feel the air becomes charged just before a big thunderstorm, though it appears to be nice weather at the moment.

I listened to it constantly for a few days while at work, so I decided to give in and buy a copy. :)

Magnatune are great BTW. You can choose how much you want to pay for the album (there's a fee on top if you want them to send you a copy on CD), then you can download the album (even if you bought the CD) in any of a range of DRM-free formats: WAV, MP3 (high quality or low), FLAC, OGG, and AAC. On top of that, they let you legally give away a copy of the album to three of your friends. (Well you could give away more but that just wouldn't be sporting).

So, haha, I bought the soundtrack but not the game. Better than that, I get to listen to the music when I want and don't have to endure the ego of the protagonist in that game! Hurrah! :D

Beneath a Steel Sky

I first played this game when it came out, a PC game which I bought in a double pack with Cannon Fodder. It's a sci-fi point and click adventure game.

I came back to play this the other week, as it's freeware now.

A lot of these old point and click adventures run on an engine called SCUMM, so now that engine has been remade and ported to a ton of different platforms under the name of SCUMMVM. It's really good, because you don't need to emulate an old operating system, this engine works as its own standalone machine for these games, making them far more portable than other older games.

You can get SCUMMVM and Beneath a Steel Sky here:
SCUMMVM downloads page

I couldn't remember very much at all about this game, so I had to refer to the manual to find out: if you want to access your items, move the pointer to the top of the screen.

It's a really good adventure. The script is very funny at times, gets far more serious near the end, and when it's infuruating it tends to be at the nature of the characters or whatever, rather than at obscurity of puzzles or game mechanics. There are a few points where it's hard to proceed because you simply haven't seen an object you should have picked up to use. There's a section near the end of the game where it's suddenly really really easy to die, as well. Apart from that, it's fairly straightforward.

The graphics are good, detailed, atmospheric and largely clear to see objects in. The sound... well, the voices are good, it's unusual to hear strong Northern English accents in a sci-fi game... the music really seems outdated and a bit annoying, though.

Overall, well worth my time playing. :)

My World My Way

This is a Nintendo DS game by Global A Entertainment, originally called "Sekai wa Atashi de Mawatteru" (the world revolves around me), and localised by Atlus USA for North America.

It's a solid light-hearted turn-based RPG. Battles use a face-on view, e.g. like Dragon Quest games. The player is not forced to use the touch screen. It has fairly simple mechanics, open to be fully exploited by the player for maximum reward!

It's very funny, never really takes itself seriously. An actual motive / plot never emerges until right at the end of the game! XD

You really get the feeling that you are powering up your characters on your own terms. Whether you are grinding exp for levels or grinding money for meals for stat boosts or grinding high level monsters for powering up your mimic partner or grinding monsters for rare drops... it feels like you're in control, doing things in your own way. And I love that.

It's certainly not for everyone, but I think it's my favourite DS game this year so far! The last last boss is SO DIFFICULT! The game would have been really short if it wasn't for the last area - I think the in-game clock was at under 40 hours before I went to the last area, and over 50 hours by the time I had finished, and I got wiped out a lot.

(reflecting the attacks from the last boss is the way to go!)

I wish there was some post-game content, "new game +" or something. :/

Global A Entertainment also made the Dungeon Maker games, which I really like. A lot of monsters and dungeon rooms / corridors are shared between this game and those ones. All good fun. ^_^

(I have a game by them called "Innocent Tears" for Xbox... comes in a huge box, which I've never opened... I get the feeling that I can't read enough Japanese to play it though...)

I only just found out that there is a Dungeon Maker 2 game released in English for PSP, so maybe I will try that next.

I noticed another game related to this "My World My Way" game on the Global A's website, for PSP and with a dark version of the princess. I wonder how that one is...

Japanese Spider-Man - free episodes from Marvel!

Marveller, Change Leopardon!

You can now watch subtitled episodes of the 1970s Japanese tokusatsu adaptation of Spider-Man on the Marvel Comics Website! They seem to be releasing one episode a week, and they're onto the third one now. :D

Everything I knew about this series up to now was pretty much from the opening and ending sequences, as I have then on a Yuki Hide compilation album, and saw the videos on youtube. The music in this series is composed by Watanabe Chuumei, so <3 <3 <3. :D I'm very grateful to be able to see this series, especially for free!

Don't expect it to be anything like the story of Spider-Man that you have read in Marvel comics, it's a standard tokusatsu type plot. It is about as far away from the original as any sentai series becoming a Power Rangers series. Perhaps moreso! I found myself thinking "hey, this concept was stolen from Ultraman / Kamen Rider!", though according to wikipedia this series pioneered the concept of having a giant robot to fight giant enemies. (though, hmm, Ultraman being giant for 3 minutes is very similar, he's just not a robot...) There is a lot of overacting and the special effects are.... well, not so bad for something that's the same age as me... but somehow, that's part of its charm. It is very entertaining! :D