Yet Another Renegade Angel

My recent purchases

2011-12-04T22:01:00.001Z

'Tis the season to think about buying things for other people, but...

Here are some things I've bought for myself recently. :)

* Plants vs Zombies soundtrack

I really like this soundtrack, I'm glad it's available to buy and download (with no DRM, hooray!). I've played through the whole game on PC and on Xbox 360, it's one of the few "defense" games I like, and I really like it. The music is really cute and easy to listen to on a loop forever without getting boring!

* Shatter soundtrack

I really like this soundtrack too. But, um...... I started this game on PS3 then played it on PC (because the PC version was going really cheap). It's breakout / Arkanoid with different shaped levels and a "suck" and "blow" function. Never finished it on either platform, but I like the soundtrack a lot. :)

Over the last weekend in November - which is a time for big sales in America, the weather was awful so I stayed in and bought myself lots of games in the sales.

PC games on Steam:

- Alien Zombie Megadeath
- Ion Assault
- Runespell: Overture
- Astro Tripper
- Tobe's Vertical Adventure
- Star Ruler
- The Witcher: Enhanced Edition + Director's Cut DLC
- Gundemonium Recollection
- Hitogata Happa
- GundeadliGne
- Demolition, Inc.
- Dungeons of Dredmor

Another PC independantly:

* a 2D platform "Metroidvania" style game called Celestial Mechanica which was going especially cheap (1 US dollar).

A preorder for a bundle of games:

Indie Royale Really Big Bundle

(which ended up containing some games I already owned but it was cheap enough - about £3 - and ended up containing a lot of free soundtracks for the games, so I didn't mind)

And downloadable games on Xbox 360 Live Arcade:

* Stacking (it was half price at 600 points, it's a game by Doublefine so I expect it to be charming and/or funny)

and

* Beyond Good and Evil HD (it was down to 240 points)

...I've hardly made a dent in playing these games!

The only one I regret out of all these is "The Witcher", and that is not down to the game, but because Steam is an annoying system that won't let me install my games wherever I want - and there isn't enough room on my SSD to install all 15GB of it, so I can't play it unless I reinstall Steam somewhere else or buy a bigger hard drive or something. :/

My Gundam RX-78-2!

2011-11-02T21:13:00.000Z

Look what I assembled!

It's a Gundam RX-78-2 and it's a High-Grade Model Kit. Nicely articulated! ^_^

My camera is not doing too well, so these are the only photos I could squeeze out tonight. One picture, stick the batteries in the recharger, another picture... it drains the battery so fast!

2012 anime calendar time!

2011-09-19T22:59:00.001+01:00

It's mid-September, so it's time to think about the new year. Time flies you know.

As always, I'm shopping at CD Japan. There's a special offer there at the moment: spend 5000 yen (paying by PayPal) and get 1000yen's worth of loyalty points back, which works out as kind of 20% off, so that's good. There is a catch that the points are only valid for 90 days though, so it's not as good an offer as it could have been. Still, it's fairly good. It's valid until the 8th of October 8 2011 (Japan Standard Time GMT+9).

Anime calendars my brother is interested in:

ONE PIECE Release date: 2011/09/17, Price: 1500yen
SUITE PRECURE Release date: 2011/09/17, Price: 1500yen
Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu 2 Release date: 2011/10/01, Price: 1600yen
Shinryaku! Ika Musume Release date: 2011/10/22, Price: 1600yen

Some fun (and some funny) series ^_^

I want either the "Yotsuba to" one, or the "Chi's Sweet Home" one, but... I can't tell whether the Yotsuba one is another one that's full artwork or photos with Yotsuba being cute in them like it was the other year, and I can't tell what the Chi's Sweet Home one is like either, aside form being a wall calendar and slightly more expensive than the other calendars.
Yotsuba to (aka Yotsuba&) Release date: 2011/11 (sometime), Price: 1500yen
Chi's Sweet Home Wall Calendar 2012 from Kodansha Release date: 2011/11 (sometime), Price: 2200yen

I normally get myself an "All That's Ultraman" calendar as well, but I am not sure about that this year. I think I just want a super cute calendar. Decisions decisions!

One thing I have decided is that I want a copy of MIO (MIQ) The Perfect Best with the rebate points I get. :)

Kingdom Of Loathing

2011-09-19T22:03:00.001+01:00

I've been playing Kingdom Of Loathing a lot over recent months. I'm nearly done with my second ascension (i.e. I finished the game and died, and got reborn, and have nearly finished it again).

It's... a web-based RPG that's free-to-play (though there is premium content), where all the graphics are stick people, just about all interaction is done via clicking links and things in menus, and it's all implemented in php, javascript and html forms. It's also several years old, but I only really discovered it about 2 months ago.

It's very tongue-in-cheek and funny; most of the time it's word-play and absurdity, a lot of the jokes are referential, some are just plain crude. I spent a lot of time just having fun reading battle text and descriptions of items.

And it's kind of an MMO but really not very at all. You don't really directly interect with any other players for the main core play of the game, you only really talk directly to others in chat (which is ever present but optional). There are clans and PvP but it's all optional. You can buy a shop in the mall or sell items through the marketplace to other players, so it does have an economy too.

All the same, it seems to have a friendly and active community, and it receives regular updates. It was even advertising a KoL convention and comic book coming out, recently.

Related links:
wiki,
fan site,
forum,
calendar,
foodstuff chart,
buffbot

"Russian Unicorn" video is funny :)

2011-08-19T21:46:00.000+01:00

This music video is great.

Russian Unicorn - a bad lip reading of Michael Bublé

Some people took the music video to Michael Bublé's song "Haven't Met You Yet" and placed a complately different song over it, perfectly timed and lip-synched to match the original.

I really like the Russian Unicorn song. I had heard the original song a lot on the radio, and... I really don't like Michael Bublé's style of singing; it's more like talking in a smug way, in different tones. I had never seen the music video until today.

Ah, I like the way the Russian Unicorn song has such a different style and attitude to it, so you can interpret the pictures to mean such different things. Maybe... maybe the Russian Unicorn song actually fits the video better than the original! :D

Tramlines - Sheffield music festival

2011-07-22T23:19:00.003+01:00

Well, I just made it back home after the first night of the Tramlines free music festival.

I went out tonight and...

* Visited the Kid Acne exhibition in the Millenium Gallery (mostly I went into there because it was cold outside and warm inside but it turned out to be a cool exhibition). There's a lot of his street art around town. I really like his drawings, especially his warrior women dotted around the place, but hate the slogans he's painted around town. Especially on Paternoster Row. There used to be some cool art on one wall - which was his own - but he painted over it with "You'll thank me one day". And it's rubbish in comparison! :(

* Went to a pub called Henry's because my colleagues had told me that our friend (another ex-colleague) was playing there later. I bought a drink and sat about 9ft from the stage (a very small and slightly wobbly stage), and I heard:

- a lady called Emily who was really excellent, and seemed really sweet and nice and friendly, and somewhat shocked at how much the audience liked her. Which was A LOT. :) But most of her songs were about being angry at someone, and she was certainly expressive about it!

facebook
myspace

She was much better than on her myspace recordings! She said she's playing Soyo tomorrow, then taking a break from gigging for a while to record an EP with a record label. :D

During one of the songs, one of my friends - Ali - was on the phone and there was a quiet moment in a song and all anyone heard was "I'M IN THE BEER GARDEN - IN HENRY'S". Everyone laughed and eventually she did too. At the end of the song everyone in the place was laughing, and she thanked everyone in the room.... EXCEPT HIM.

XD

And the next time started off with lyrics that were along the lines of "you don't care and you never listen" and everyone was in stitches.

XD

Carried on like a pro after that, pretty super awesome. :)

- the Don Barrel Gents. A two-piece guitar group who are cool and always good to listen to.

http://donbarrellgents.co.uk/

I used to work with Lee, the one of the two who doesn't sing and likes tuning his guitar. Even if I didn't know Lee, I'd still like them. :) The one of the two who sings has a really unusual way of playing his guitar - he uses it as a percussion instrument sometimes, and Lee does twiddly bits. :)

* Then I went out to the area in front of City Hall and saw Heaven 17 perform "Temptation"!

Well, they had a set starting at 9pm but we decided to stay and listen to our friend... well, no-one could remember more than one song, so we figured if we arrived at 9:45 we'd get that song. And our plan worked! :D

It was better than the original, but... well, the original is a good song, I like it a lot, but the vocals were a bit out of tune, and they've got better since. :)

So they played that and everyone jumped around and cheered, and then they performed "Being Boiled" (which is a Human League song)... and that was it. The guy who's lead shouted "Up the Owls!" and there was a lot of booing, but maybe it helped make everyone clear off sharpish. :P

And then I came home. A friend mentioned they plan to meet up a The Shakespeare tomorrow to attend Lee's gig, but I have no specific plans I am dedicated to at the moment. There's tons going on, and I can only be at one place at a time!

I can hear live music coming from outside still, I guess it must be at the Riverside Cafe. I am too tired to venture any further though.

Capcom, oh Capcom...

2011-07-22T22:00:00.051+01:00

It's funny... almost seems like a lot of Japanese companies that used to be kings of the video game world about 10 - 15 years ago have kind of imploded in recent years... destroying themselves from within.

In recent times, Capcom have:

* Implemented DRM on certain downloadable PS3 games so you need to be connected to the playstation network in order to play them, even games with no online features. See: source. This is because they don't like people "sharing" games by logging onto more than one PS3 with their account and downloading the game so it can be played on both consoles. Really didn't work out well when PSN was taken offline for several weeks.

* As far as I know, they're not going to publish any more Ace Attorney games in English. :(

* Implemented Evil DRM for the new Resident Evil spin-off game on 3DS, where you can't restart the game over from the start. Source. This is because they make no money on 2nd hand games and don't like that. So you can't ever replay the game you bought from the start. If there's any point where you mess up and want to start over and do it better you can't. If you want to go back and replay the early parts of the game with the knowledge of what you know in later stages to see how it pans out, you can't.

* Took some characters out of Marvel vs Capcom 3 that people were really looking forward to, just so they can sell DLC..... but that's turned into another version that comes out in a few months time. To make loyal fans buy the same thing twice.

* Streetfighter IV DRM

and now.... cancelled Megaman Legends 3, which I was kind of looking forward to; I liked the PS1 Megaman Legends games (and the Tron Bonne game... actually I just like Servbots!)

And they blame the fans for not creating content for the game.

There are various online campaigns running at the moment; fans begging for the game.

I'm thinking if Capcom don't want to continue the project, and the original creator has jumped ship already, it's a bad idea to force them to make it just for the money. They might just take the name of the thing you liked, put a "3" on the end, and release something heartlessly created - derivative but without the magic. And then people will spend money, but they won't like what they've bought and will complain even more.

I can't think of an appropriate equivalent in videogames at the moment. I'm thinking we'd end up with Bat out of Hell 3. But with Servbots.

Ys 6 - PC version - free until 30th June (JPN time)

2011-06-18T11:38:00.001+01:00

See: Offer information

and: English fan translation patch

New Dancing Eyes game announced for PS3 Move

2011-06-16T08:24:00.000+01:00

official Dancing Eyes website

Yesssss. :D

Coincidentally, I was playing the 1996 version on the arcade machine at work last week to the vast amusement of a crowd of braying colleagues, staring on in disbelief and rapture, and suggesting "choose the schoolgirl! Yes, he's nice".

I was just browsing the list of games and someone was "what is that??" so I started it up at his request.

It's that lovely mixture of bizarre and somewhat NSFW-ness that added to everyone's entertainment.

Did anyone suspect that this is one of my all-time favourite arcade games? That it wasn't just luck and I have played it through to the end before? ...well, I forgot myself and picked it up straight off without instructions, so, er, something something something. ^_^

I was thinking at the time "I wish they'd made another game like this. Maybe someone like Tecmo would pick it up"

And here we are.

I dunno what's with this website, though; it seems to repeat the some things over and over, and I don't see any release date or price.

And I still kind of have a wish for Tecmo ladies.

This, and the Time Crisis / Razing Storm / Deadstorm Pirates pack (also from Namco) are the only things that are making me think "maybe there is something on PS3 / Move I'd like to play after all".

Thoughts on the recent gaming website hacking incidents

2011-06-11T00:20:00.000+01:00

The website for the computer game company Codemasters got hacked and announced it earlier today - a friend of mine at work was pretty miffed when he got an email about it. He was complaining that gaming platforms have been targetted by hackers so much his same details must have been stolen about 4 times now.

Another developer joined in and started lamenting the fact that the same rules that apply to online financial institutions (PCI DSS) don't seem apply to other websites who hold personal data.

Things are difficult to secure these days. Soon after PSN was hacked, Bloomberg reported that Amazon's EC2 elastic cloud servers had been used. For a small amount of money, a person can use a huge amount of processing power, and this includes brute force attacks on passwords - last year, SHA-1 was shown to be broken within 40 seconds. I suppose it is to be expected that if you allow people to hire Superman as a cheap labourer, someone will get him to rob a bank.

I've seen people seriously suggest that bcrypt is used to store passwords simply because the algorithm is slow to execute, in order to slow down attackers.

You can try and put in all the stops you can think of - for example, if they get 20 passwords wrong in quick succession, lock the account. That sort of thing. But if the attackers have already got in and can attempt to decrypt your data at their leisure, slowing them down is all you can do.

I still think when you're buying digital property, you shouldn't need to give out all this information. Why should you need to hand over your address etc, and why do these companies think they should be keeping this information?

All they need is temporary use of payment - perhaps an external payment provider - and perhaps some login credentials to their system. If card details need to be stored, tokenization will help (but note what I said earlier).

Earlier this week, the 3DS eshop came online and I added some funds onto the wallet for my 3DS to buy Legend Of Zelda : Link's Awakening DX (which is as brilliant as it always was!), and all it asked for were card details. They put through the transaction and Nintendo don't retain the card number, because they have no need to.

So a few weeks ago when the hackers broke in to Nintendo's systems, there was nothing there for them to take. And they said there was "no harm" meant, but it sort of seems more like "no paydirt".

It's a bit like... if there's no way to fully secure things, or you don't want to put money into seriously beefing up security, don't store anything valuable. Same as - if you're going to park your car somewhere you know people are likely to break a window to steal stuff, you don't leave your sat nav, wallet, ipad, work tools, or other valuables on display.

I also read that three people in Spain have been arrested for allegedly hacking the Playstation network. I hope they have the right people, and if so, that justice is fully served!

Watching Utena in remembrance...

2011-06-10T23:46:00.000+01:00

I read in the news on ANN earlier today that an actress had died. It was Kawakami Tomoko (nb: lastname, forename). According to the news article, she was 41 years old, and retired suddenly in 2008 with a hospitalisation, and has now died of ovarian cancer. It is terrible, very tragic indeed. She used to be quite prolific.

It's also quite tragic when I think of some of the characters she played, also dying young.

I wonder whether she was aware she was seriously ill in the run up to her sudden retirement.

This evening, I decided to begin watching the new remastered DVDs of Shoujo Kakumei Utena which she starred in. A great series, one of my all time favourites, one that was really instrumental in getting me into anime many years ago. Yet, I haven't watched it in years.

These new Nozomi version DVDs really do the series justice. The 5.1 Japanese sound works really well, and the picture is far, far better than the old Software Sculptors DVDs... though those are some of the worst official US DVDs I own (the VHS version was better than those DVDs!)

There's been far too much death this year. But it's best to remember in life.

2 player play using 3D TV tech

2011-06-09T08:12:00.000+01:00

At E3, Sony demonstrated a way that 2 people can play a game on the same TV and look at 2 complete different images, without split screen.

When we saw it (watching a video at lunch at work), we all guessed how it could be done.

I found something that mentions how it's done: It works on any 3D TV; each person wears 3D glasses, one sees "left" the other sees "right" but they are two different 2D pictures.

Sounds like a cool use of existing technology! :)

Nintendo 3DS

2011-06-05T21:02:00.000+01:00

I ended up buying a 3DS when it came out. Mostly because it was heavily discounted on Amazon. It still costs a lot more than other consoles in the DS range.

I quite like the machine, I just wish it had some great games out for it. It doesn't even have a game as good as "Project Rub" for showing off the features. Mostly what is out are sequels, ports and the most anticipated game is a remake of Legend Of Zelda Ocarina Of Time. I'd like something truly new, showing off some innovation.

The eshop comes out tomorrow, everyone gets a free copy of Excitebike 3D (which I imagine will be like the visualiser in the 3DS's MP3 player - an 8-bit game with 3D in layers, découpage style), and a free 3D Pokedex application compatible with Pokemon Black and White.

Quite fun, but still not quite the killer app.

I have played two 3DS games on cartridge:

* Lego Star Wars III The Clone Wars, which I borrowed from a colleague and finished really quickly (71% overall completion). It's not bad, but feels quite shallow and bland - not nearly as good as the Lego Star Wars games on Xbox 360.

* Puzzle Bobble Universe, which I bought for £12.99 on Amazon thinking "it's puzzle bobble, how could it go wrong?" but... it's far too easy, and there's no Arcade mode. I've started playing "endless mode" and it truly is endless - I've been going 7 hours now, I've gone past level 2700 now, and it's not getting difficult. I am quite bored, but it's against my nature to simply give up. :(

Super Street Fighter IV seems to be the most popular game around, from what I have detected on players I have passed in town, but I don't think I need another copy of that game. I already own it on my home consoles and haven't played it that much. Dead Or Alive Dimensions might be good, but I will wait for the price to drop.

The built in software is much better. Streetpass is kind of a meta-game, you seek out other people in the real world carrying 3DSes, to pass by and collect puzzle pieces, or work as RPG characters in a simulated quest. The games don't have much substance, but it's fun to think about where in town you're likely to find people with 3DSes. The detection seems a bit flaky though - sometimes it would pick up a friend's 3DS, other times not. Even if they were right next to each other, and could pick up other people's consoles!

Face Raiders - where you take a photo of someone and shoot little balls at it, as it's stretched to pull funny faces - is far more fun than I thought it would be. It's genuinely funny!

The 3D... I usually leave it on minimum setting, the less I notice it, the better it works, is my opinion. Overdone 3D is just annoying - I am hoping that people will "grow out of" doing it like that - a bit like when they first invented colour films and dressed everyone up in the most outgrageously gaudy clothes to show the technology off. It'll be better when they forget to show it off.

The 3D technology doesn't work at all on my brother, he finds it immediately irritating. Fortunately, all the applications and games look great with the 3D switched off. :)

3DS games are all region locked, but DS games appear not to be. I've been happily playing both European and American DS games. The screen size is larger on 3DS than on DS, so it's upscaled via software, and as with all different models of DS, the colours are a bit different. Some games (e.g. Ghost Trick) look great on 3DS, other games (e.g. Pokemon White) look a lot better to me on DS.

Battery life on 3DS seems great when leaving it on sleep mode for Streetpass, when playing DS games, and Puzzle Bobble Universe (but it does appear to be a very simple game). It was not so good with Lego Star Wars III, and I understand it's very short with some other games. I am mainly using it as a DS these days, so it's not much of an issue for me.

So, that's all I have to say about 3DS so far. Seems a good little machine, I use it every day, but is so lacking in retail games that sometimes I can't help but feel like I am the proud owner of a brand new Neo Geo Color Pocket. :/

Harsh reality...

2011-06-05T20:27:00.000+01:00

Occasionally, I see news articles about such and such a person complaining that video games are unrealistic about death. That people do not turn into shiny gold coins.

But...

As a very rare drop, I have a shiny gold coin. Or rather, a cheque for a shiny gold coin, bequeathed to me. It took a lot of work, mostly from my aunts.

A human being, 8 decades of life, and of memories, and what does it turn into in the end? A collection of shiny gold coins. That's all.

I'd trade any number of them to get my granny back. R.I.P.

Marvel Pinball Soundtrack available for free

2011-05-08T09:49:00.000+01:00

The soundtrack to Zen Studios' Marvel Pinball is now available for free:

Marvel Pinball Soundtrack

I like the Spider-Man tracks best. Well.... the Spider-Man table is my favourite to play too.

I'm looking forward to the Fantastic Four table in a few weeks, and apparently Zen are getting ready to release one table per month after that! I have high hopes for them!

PSN got hacked...

2011-04-26T23:20:00.000+01:00

PSN went down over the weekend. That's no big deal, people can't play games online... well, it also meant that people can't download the games they own on PSN - which is not so good.

The news got worse. Lovefilm and Netflix - entertainment delivery providers who have services on PSN - also went down.

Now it has emerged that all PSN data has been stolen!

Here is the data that Sony is sure has been compromised if you have a PlayStation Network Account:

* Your name
* Your address (city, state, and zip)
* Country
* E-mail address
* Birthday
* PSN password and login name

"It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained," Sony announced. While the company claims that there is "no evidence" that credit card information has been compromised, it won't rule out the possibility.

Source: Ars Technica

If you use the same password on PSN as other services or whatever online, I suggest you change that password. Also, keep an eye on your credit card account and on the lookout for evidence of identity theft.

Now, I had a think and for me.... I think they have stolen one out of date home address, and two fake overseas addresses.

All the same, I'm furious at Sony for this. The thieves should not know people's passwords. It's the absolute basics - you one-way encrypt passwords. You seed encryption so hackers won't be able to crack the encryption by just having a look at the data. You compare hashes, not passwords. That way it should be impossible for hackers who've just got the data to know what people's passwords are.

If they haven't been doing that, what kind of yahoos are these?

I'd expect hackers who've gotten onto the servers to be able to crack credit card numbers before they know everyone's passwords!

A year of pokewalking

2011-04-22T11:31:00.000+01:00

1944690 steps - that's how far I've walked in the past year. Well, when I've been carrying a pokewalker, anyway. Very nearly 2 million steps. No wonder my boots are so worn out.

It averages out as only about half as far as people are supposed to walk in a day to be considered healthy and active...

Osamu Dezaki has passed away

2011-04-19T03:41:00.000+01:00

Osamu Dezaki died recently, at the age of only 67 - of lung cancer.

When I found out the news, I momentarily turned into a detailed painting at the shock of it all.

There's a nice obituary for him on the Manga Entertainment website. They've published quite a few of his films in English, for example Golgo 13, Black Jack, and Space Adventure Cobra.

He is my all-time favourite anime director. He had a long and distinguished career spanning from the 1960s to almost the present day (as a result, I thought he would be older than he was). I'd been slowly making my way through his works, and enjoy the vast majority of what he's done, if not all. I'm currently watching "Hakugei: Legend Of The Moby Dick" and am really enjoying it.

His best works out of what I've seen so far:

* Rose of Versailles (he did the 2nd half of the series)
* Oniisama e
* Ace o Nerae
* Ashita no Joe
* Air (the movie adaptation)

I haven't seen the whole of Ace o Nerae or Ashita no Joe.

I'm feeling quite a sense of loss. May he rest in peace.

Free .NET MVC 3 training videos

2011-03-14T19:02:00.003Z

I'm watching some .NET MVC training videos here:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/03/09/free-video-training-asp-net-mvc-3-features.aspx

They're free to view until the 18th of March 2011.

Pokemon Black and White - UK events

2011-02-22T20:11:00.005Z

Here's the list of remaining events for Pokemon Black and White in the UK:

Pokemon UK Black & White events

26/02/2011 - 27/02/2011:

Glasgow Fort - 285 Provan Walk, Glasgow Fort Shopping Centre, Junction 10 - M8, Glasgow, G34 9DY
Brighton - 43-44 Western Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 2EB
Preston - Unit 8, Fishergate Centre, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8HJ
London Hamleys - 188-196 Regent Street, , London, , W1B 5BT
Reading - Unit 18, Oracle Shopping Centre Reading, Berkshire, RG1 2AQ

I went to one at a branch of GAME in Meadowhall, Sheffield last weekend. Mainly because everyone who brought along their DS and a recent pokemon game could download a free celebi. I got three of them - one for HeartGold, one for SoulSilver and one for Diamond. :)

This celebi unlocks a cool story event in HG and SS. Also, when a player transfers this celebi and the three shiny HG/SS legendaries to whichever version they choose of the new game, some kind of special event happens. I wish I could store more than 3 Wonder Cards. I've currently got one for Mew, one for Jirachi and one for Celebi, and it seems a pity to have to delete one just for the Johto trio. :/

There were four pokemon Black & White demo machines available. They weren't demonstrating the game on Nintendo 3DS, but on DS lites. (Though they had one in the store and the games have special features that are enabled on 3DS). The demo cartridges were unusually long!

I played the demo of Black (it was too crowded to choose which to play). The demo was quite short; you are a trainer with a level 25 [starter pokemon]. All the menus seemed to be disabled except for one that detected other B & W players nearby. You battle someone, someone else, and go to Dragonspiral Tower to see the legendary of the game. It says "The legendary pokemon have appeared at last. What could they want? A new adventure awaits!" and fades to black, and restarts itself with a different random trainer and starter pokemon.

I didn't learn much from the demo other than there are new pokemon, new legendaries, new setting.

But is there really anything more you could want in a pokemon demo? :)

There was also a special pokemon artist at the event who was painting pictures of the new game starters on people. She was really really good! I didn't ask for one to be painted on me, though!

The only shop I have seen in the UK selling Pokemon Black and White with preorder bonuses is Toys R Us (online), so I have preordered a copy of each game from them. It's just an accessory pack, but that might be good. :)

Nintendo 3DS - first impressions

2011-02-22T20:04:00.002Z

I had a chance to try a 3DS in a shop over the weekend.

It didn't have any games for it, the lady demoing it was just taking 3D pictures with the built-in camera, and there was a little Augmented Reality game where you shoot a floating head in the room where you're standing.

It was kind of ok, but I didn't really like it.

It's got a 3D effect and if you move your head a little to the sides, it moves along with that, but if you move too far it really breaks the picture and you see two completely different ones.

I ended up feeling a bit odd after looking at it for a while. Mildly disoriented.

I don't really like it.

I found myself thinking.... it's really not going to be good as a proper portable like that; I mean, if you're planning on using it while on a bus or train - the bumps as you travel are going to mess things up.

Oh and it probably won't be the same for proper games, but when you switch the console from 3D to 2D, and you're looking at a photo, it makes the photo seem horribly fuzzy and low res.

So now I've seen one, I am definitely thinking [no thanks].

I dunno, when all you have to compare is *actual reality*, the fake 3D effect just isn't impressive.

My new PC

2011-02-22T19:48:00.005Z

It took a few months, but I bought myself a new PC. Here it is:

It's one of these:

3XS H55 Performance GTS - Custom Series

...except that I customised it so it's got a 40GB SSD drive as the main hard drive, there are a 1TB and a 2TB drive as well for storage, there's a card reader in the front which can also hot-plug SSD drives (!!!), there's a Creative soundcard (mainly because I want to rip my vinyl record collection, and Creative cards come with good features and tools), and I went with Windows 7 Pro rather than the default home edition.

This is the first desktop PC I've bought in nearly 10 years, so I went to a shop that would offer a good system at a mid-range price, then let me customise it with fancy stuff.

...and then they took a month to build it, but I don't really mind. They also got my name wrong almost every time, and gave the courier the wrong address. I don't really mind that either. Well, not much. Well.... enough to mention it in public. :P

This is the first time I've had a PC where the graphics card is almost as big as the motherboard! :)

Things to note:

I didn't specifically choose the boy-racer style case with a window and lights inside, but it is a good case and has lots of ventilation.

It's speedy and quiet. :)

Technical difficulties

2010-10-01T08:21:00.002+01:00

Ah, shocking.

My PC is kinda dead at the moment (no power, maybe it's the PSU). My netbook and my router don't seem to like each other much when talking via wifi. I have cables draped across the room and the network cable is broken at the clip so it keeps falling out of the network port.

My Nintendo DSi XL wouldn't play anything one morning when I was away earlier this week, it was really slow and gave me an error message: "An error has occured. Press and hold the POWER button to turn the system off. Please refer to the Nintendo DSi operations manual for details". When I got a chance to look at the manual, it just said to try it again and if that didn't work, call support. Support were shirty and said that there is no warranty unless you have the original receipt (even though the console hasn't been out long enough for the 1 year warranty to be up), so they would repair it for £30.

Then it came back to life! I hope it continues to work...

I'm moving house soon so some of my consoles are in my boyfriend's house for convenience (somehow), including my PS3 and original Xbox.

It's quiet here.

I miss my PC. I can't even watch import DVDs now.

I finished Recettear and it was a great game. Was it too much for my old machine? XD

Deadly Premonition (Xbox 360) coming to the UK!

2010-09-13T18:27:00.004+01:00

Rising Star games are bringing Deadly Premonition to the UK!

Official announcement

I want this game because I have seen videos from it on youtube and it seems... uh, pretty eccentric! And... very funny for a horror story. It's received some extremely mixed reviews...

It's on preorder on Amazon UK and play.com for £17.99 - if only I could be sure of my postal address on its release date, I'd preorder it right away!

2011 anime calendars up for preorder

2010-09-06T22:13:00.002+01:00

It's that time of year! The time of year when CD Japan put up calendars for preorder... and minutes later, they're sold out!

CD Japan Calendar section

Calendars I'm looking at:

One Piece

Heart Catch Pre Cure!

Digimon Xros Wars

TV anime calendar

TV tokusatsu hero calendar

All that's Ultraman

I kind of wish there were more calendars with old series known for their great artwork. There's Ashita no Joe but I haven't seen much of it and the front cover is a terrible series spoiler. Ultraman calendars always make me smile, though. Every year. :D

Recettear now available for preorder

2010-09-06T21:54:00.005+01:00

As I mentioned in my post about companies translating and releasing doujin games in English, Recettear by EGS is coming out soon through a company called Carpe Fulgur.

official English website
EasyGameStation website

I've played the demo, and I really like it.

You play as a little girl who is running an item shop in an RPG world. She can buy and sell things in town and haggle with customers, she can hire people to go into dungeons to get new stuff for her to sell. And I love random dungeoning! :)

I've got it preordered on Steam even though it's the only version with DRM. It's 10% off for the preorder, and Carpe Fulgur made a point of being nice and fair when it comes to international pricing!

Telltale Great Adventure Bundle

2010-09-06T20:58:00.002+01:00

Special offer from Telltale Games at the moment:

The Great Adventure Bundle

For $19.99 US dollars, you get The Whispered World, Jack Keane, a collection of the King's Quest games, both of the Penny Arcade games, and if they sell enough copies you also get Puzzle Agent and the Sam & Max Season Two.

They also give some money to charity.

I'm not sure I like this.

I mean, it seems a fairly good offer, probably, but the emphasis of the sale seems to be that it's a way to give to charity and you also get some games. People are talking about it like all the money goes to charity.

But that's not the case. 25% of the money for this goes to charity.

It just seems like they are using charitable causes to advertise their products, rather than wholeheartedly doing this for charity. It doesn't sit well with me.

Telltale Games have made a lot of good games, funny adventure games, I don't have anything against them, I'm not sure about their marketing though. Anyway, if you think it sounds good, this special offer is now on so you can buy those games cheap. :)

My impressions of raptr

2010-09-06T18:57:00.002+01:00

I signed up with raptr, the videogaming social network.

Here's my profile: tenshi_a's Profile

My opinions of it:

Good:

* It can automatically track what you're playing on XBLA, PSN and Steam
* You can see what all your friends are playing on the various gaming networks
* You can chat to your friends across the various networks
* You can add your own collection of games manually

Bad:

* I was really reluctant to hand over my login details for the various gaming networks to them.
* It doesn't track what you're playing on XBLA / PSN / Steam if it doesn't have achievements / trophies.
* It says it has 40000 games in their database, but I think most of them are flash games.
* I can't seem to get it to track me playing the flash games it lists.
* It's really bad if you own a lot of old games / obscure games / import games from Japan / you're in Europe and own a lot of Europe-exclusive games. And I have a lot of all of those! I just can't find my games in their database. :(
* They have a page for adding games, and I tried it but the game I added hasn't shown up after about a week or two, so I can't be bothered.

So yeah, it's much more of a social tool than a game collection / playing tracker. It's not ideal for me, but I might as well stick with it for now.

Japanese indie (doujin) game English localisation companies

2010-07-29T00:51:00.008+01:00

I decided to start a list because I think the little guys need a shout out. ^_^

I have:

http://rockinandroid.com/

* GUNDEMONIUM Collection
* Flying Red Barrel ~ Diary of a Little Aviator ~
* QLIONE (Qualia)
* SUGURI Perfect Edition

http://www.carpefulgur.com/

* Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

(There's only a demo out so far, but I like it. I don't like some of the language they have used in localisation, but the game seems good fun nevertheless. I'll probably buy it when it's out if they do digital download sales)

http://www.dhm-interactive.com/en/home/

* Chantelise
* Gunners Heart

This is a French company, and I haven't bought from them, but they seem to publish in English as well as French.

EDIT: 6th Sept 2010
I placed an order with them via the website. At first, nothing arrived, so I wrote to the company to complain. A few minutes later, the director of the company had sent me an apology by email and put the order in the post the next day. He had received the payment but had not got the order, somehow! So, I guess I have to call that... good customer service but poor website!

http://www.mangagamer.com/allages/

* Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni
* other stuff. ;)

(though, I think they have massively overpriced Higurashi...)

http://www.nicalis.com

* Cave Story
* La Mulana

I'm kind of reluctant to put the last one in because those games used to be freeware with fan-translation patches, and they are just releasing the games on wiiware which I don't trust. But, I thought I might as well include them.

--

Some Japanese game creators like to release their games in English/Japanese on Xbox indie games, too. They are usually pretty cheap and often have pretty interesting game mechanics.

(Note: Recettear, Chantelise and Gunners Heart were originally made by the same group - EasyGameStation. They seem quite varied!)

Cardcaptor Sakura manga to be rereleased

2010-07-29T00:45:00.003+01:00

I just noticed this evening that Dark Horse are going to release the Cardcaptor Sakura manga this Autumn, in omnibus editions.

Dark Horse website

I really enjoyed the anime version of Cardcaptor Sakura but I haven't read the manga (well, not much of it).

Seeing that I went and bought their omnibus edition of Clover mainly because I thought it was printed and bound so nicely, I've decided to put in a preorder! ^_^

Pizza Express - create a pizza competition

2010-07-29T00:44:00.003+01:00

http://www.pizzaexpress.com/create-your-pizza/

There's a £5000 prize, so if you're so inclined, might be worth having a go. :)

1Goal

2010-06-14T19:24:00.005+01:00

This seems a really good project. It's petitioning world leaders to bring education to children around the world. It was set up by Queen Rania of Jordan, and Sepp Blatter the FIFA president. Over 9 million people have signed up, including lots of footballers and celebrities. Not specifically to do with the World Cup, though it's using that to grab people's attention. :)

You can also get a free 1GOAL t-shirt for your avatar to wear, on Xbox live. :D

Digital: A Love Story

2010-05-30T00:52:00.003+01:00

I played through a little freeware game called Digital: A Love Story, which is available here:

http://www.scoutshonour.com/digital/

I really liked it. It's a story that'll stick with me for a while yet, I imagine.

Its execution was really interesting; it's set on the desktop of an Amiga-esque home computer in 1988, and is a story that unfolds through reading various BBS boards... looking for new numbers of boards to dial onto and read...

I'd recommend it to anyone who craves a spot of .hack or cyberpunk or simply anyone who is just very very nosey.

I got an Xbox 360 from Microsoft

2010-05-30T00:48:00.003+01:00

I came home on Friday evening to see a large box containing an Xbox 360. It's not the one I sent off to them, it's a replacement one. Seems to be a refurbished old model because it doesn't have an HDMI port on the back.

Pretty quick turnaround! :)

I've tried it out and it seems to work fine (but is maybe even noisier then the last one!), but I have been too busy playing Uplink and Pokemon SS to think about playing anything on Xbox 360 anyway.

Things you should never think about while playing pokemon

2010-05-30T00:34:00.002+01:00

1. The people in the pokemon world are sometimes seen playing pokemon, sometimes even trading pokemon with each other. Does the game they are playing contain a pokemon world where people play pokemon? And does that world contain another a pokemon world where people play pokemon? Where does it end?

2. Is it really ok to let children think it's ok to go off on a journey around the world, giving out their phone number to just anyone... especially people who want to fight them?

3. Cubone is a pokemon who is described as wearing the skull of its deceased mother on its head. How come they can come out of an egg like that?

My Pokémon SoulSilver / Pokéwalker adventures

2010-05-29T23:40:00.005+01:00

I bought myself a copy of Pokemon SoulSilver when it came out... and a month of waiting and an insurance claim with the postal service later... [sigh...] I got the game (and HeartGold for my brother).

I really like this remake. Well, I confess - I never actually played Pokemon Silver on Gameboy Color, I started playing Pokemon Crystal sometime last year, which was the culmination / enhanced version of Gold and Silver. And still, that game is so clumsy and the interfaces are so bad compared with recent pokemon games. So, compared to Pokemon Crystal, this is a great remake.

The original games on the Gameboy Color were severely restricted due to memory constraints on the cartridge, and it really showed. Names of items were abbreviated, making them somewhat cryptic sometimes. I found myself having to choose what to discard from my backpack far too often. I found myself having to choose which people to delete from my phone book, not knowing whether the next person would be a useful contact. And there wasn't nearly enough space to store pokemon if you were seriously collecting them. Biggest of all - and I might be wrong about it because I didn't play far enough to see and this is what I've heard - the story in the game included a massive disaster in the Pokemon world... because it was a convenient way to exclude half a region from appearing in the game.

It was clear to me that Pokemon Crystal is a really good pokemon game, and it was massive and advanced for a Gameboy Color game, but here in the 21st century, the awkwardnesses of the interface meant that after a while I stopped playing and waited for these remakes to come out in English.

Pokemon SoulSilver was worth the wait. The game is just that much more pleasant to play, and the balance has been struck well - everything from the original is retained and mini-games and things have been added for fun (I am addicted to the Pokeathlon), but they are completely optional if you don't feel like doing them or want to play in the same way as with the old games. The memory restrictions I mentioned are lifted. And, there is the Pokewalker accessory, for exercise and free pokemon / items!

So today, I finished the Johto region Pokemon League for the first time. I even spent the last week carefully training up a "swinub" from hatching from an egg right the way through and looked up how to evolve it through a "piloswine" to becoming a "mamoswine", just to defeat a trainer with dragon pokemon. (My mamoswine is named Calippo, but I think I should have called it SlushPuppy because its type is ground ice).

And... I watched the end credits, but I still have a long way to go in the game! I have earned one more badge since then, in the Kanto region.

Fun times! The Pokemon world is just such a nice place. The pokemon fit in their environment for the most part very thoughtfully (considering real-world wildlife habitats and behaviors), everyone in the pokemon world is so obsessed with pokemon... but that is an important part of the magic of making the pokemon world constantly feel like somewhere really special.

And so, onto the Pokewalker. I love the pokewalker. It's a little pedometer that you can download one of your pokemon to, and go for "a stroll" together. You can catch pokemon or search for items in exchange for "watts", which are kind of like a payment you are rewarded for walking. Very simple interface, three buttons and an old-style black-on-silver screen. All the same, it comes with a 200+ page manual if you're in Europe, telling you how to change the batteries in every language ever. :P

The pokewalker is just a brilliant device, for me. In my mind, as I walk in the real world with my pokemon literally being a "pocket monster", it gives the real world a little bit of the pleasantness and magic of the pokemon world which just makes me feel lighthearted. And, you get rarer / better items from walking further each day. There has never been quite as good a motivator for a bit of exercise than being given free rare pokemon items! Haha, this beats Wii Fit hands down! I've walked nearly 200000 steps already! Ok, maybe I'm a bit pokemon-crazy, but I really think the Pokewalker is a great addition to this game. :)

Too much faith in Microsoft

2010-05-18T22:12:00.004+01:00

Over the past weekend and up to today, I've been reading up on the ASP.NET MVC framework and trying it out using Visual Studio 2008 at work, and marvelling at how nice it is, how nice the tools are, and how together Microsoft are about development compared with their attitudes just a few years ago.

It used to be a case of "do things our way or not at all!", but now it's "do things the proper way, here are some tools to help make it easier!"

After a long time battling with certain other technologies to try and do things in a well structured way [sideways glance at php], where you have to jump through firey hoops to get things done in a way that can best be described as a compromised and roundabout way of intending to do things properly, it's just... beautiful.

I feel like... I've been building houses out of toothpicks, and all of a sudden I get to design and build skyscrapers where they just get a crane and pick up entire staircases and slot them in. Y'know?

So I come home, have some dinner, talk on the phone, switch on my Xbox 360 and... hmm. I seem to have one of these. So I start swapping round AV cables... but later notice that because the red flashing lights were so bright, I had not noticed that only three of them were flashing, which means it's one of these.

So I went to the website, tried filling in a form to get it repaired... the website is a bit clunky and the area I live in isn't in the drop-down menu of counties so I am forced to select "England". That goes to an error page, which gives me some phone numbers.

"Oh..." I thought to myself. "I have been showing too much faith in Microsoft! There must be a god sitting somewhere on a cloud going 'see, you have been getting far too enthusiastic about Microsoft things today! I will show you the painful truth of how bad their systems are!'"

The phone number gives me an automatic machine to talk to, encouraging me to use the website. Argh!

Eventually I got to talk to a woman. She was so nice and friendly, and I had no trouble at all! I read out the serial number and some details, and she said the console was going to be repaired under warranty, and that they will pay to have it shipped to them, repaired and sent back, via UPS as a courier service. All for free. With a turnaround of probably 2 - 3 weeks. Plus they'd give me a new 90 day warranty and a month's gold Xbox live subscription as a bonus. I thanked her a lot and told her I was very impressed, and she was just really nice to talk to.

I am actually glad I got the infamous RROD error rather than the 4 light "your AV cable is broken" error, because I get it fixed for free rather than having to buy a new cable!

What can I say? My faith was tested and already it has been restored! XD

Green Man Gaming launches with 1p games

2010-05-10T22:35:00.009+01:00

There's a new PC game digital download service available, the site is called Green Man Gaming. Their special gimmick is that you can buy games via their site, download and play them through a special app, then trade them in for store credit.

This means you always have to play the game through their client (called capsule) and I suppose that also means that playing offline must be impossible? I don't know.

I do know that they have some special offers for the launch of the site; certain games are going for only 1 penny. The games are:

Darwinia, High School Dreams, NecroVisioN: Lost Company, Uplink, World of Goo.

Now, I already owned Darwinia and World of Goo, and they are pretty good games. I especially like Darwinia! (note that World Of Goo was also available in the Humble Indie Bundle from Wolfire the other day... DRM free! That offer is still available for the next few hours!)

I just bought Uplink and it's pretty interesting. It's pretty much the way that hacking is depicted in films. You have an account and a server and some software, you get missions to break into remote servers and do stuff, delete all traces of your visit, and get your reward and reputation. Use the money to buy new software and servers, etc. If you get caught, you might get fined or have your server confiscated, or get put in prison.

It's got retro-futuristic interfaces and cute little password breakers that decode one character at a time, and percentage bars to show you how close authority is to catching up with you, giving you that cosy Hollywood-fiction feeling. Sweet!

I would feel far too cautious about handing over my card details to Green Man Gaming since I had never heard of them and the offer sounds too good to be true, but I have seen this promoted on some mainstream news sites so I am inclined to believe that this company is above board.

My PS3...

2010-05-06T21:22:00.003+01:00

I haven't switched my PS3 on in a long while. It's going to seem a bit weird, but... I just can't bring myself to let it connect to PSN and upgrade the firmware. It's been ages since the firmware came out that removed the ability to install "Other OS" (i.e. linux), and I have never used that feature, nor am I sure I ever want to, but...

I just feel bad about knowingly disabling a feature on my console.

I mean, I try and look after my possessions, make sure they don't overheat or get scratched up, and I have a nice import console that can even play PS2 games natively... I can't bring myself to let this console... harm itself like this.

I know it's kind of like... removing its appendix, and I know that not using it at all is worse than having one unused feature removed, but, ugh. I can't do it. :(

I keep hoping it'll get over its self-destructive phase and go back to normal. And hopefully before 3D Dot Heroes comes out.

The Humble Indie Bundle

2010-05-06T18:36:00.002+01:00

http://www.wolfire.com/humble

This is a really good deal. As in, financially good. Ethically good. Diversity good.

You get award-winning games and you give money to charity. Cross platform. DRM free. As much as you want. The money is divided any way you like.

The games are: World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru and Penumbra Overture.

I already owned World Of Goo and Gish through some deals on Steam but I put in $10 anyway with the full donation to charity just because it's nice idea.

UK general election candidates in 3D Dot Heroes

2010-04-30T08:13:00.005+01:00

If you go to the European website for the upcoming PS3 game 3D Dot Heroes:

http://www.3ddotgameheroes.eu/
-> vault
-> characters

You can download David Cameron, Gordon Brown, and Nick Clegg characters for your game. Little 3D blocky versions of them.

The game's not out yet, in fact it's not out until after the election, but eh, I think it's cute anyway. :)

You can make your own characters on the official website too, but I went to make something... and couldn't think what to make!

I spotted this on another site where they have a slideshow of the characters in action. Aww, sweet!

Living In The Future

2010-04-22T21:59:00.003+01:00

I thought it's about time I made a "stupid person on the internet" type blog post. :P

Even though it's nearing the end of April, I still can't quite get over the fact that I am living in the year 2010. Every now and again when I write down the date, I think to myself "Oh my god! I'm living in the future!"

I hear news reports, and I have a dramatic announcer voice in my head repeating everything as though it was a cheesy old movie.

"IT WAS THE YEAR 2010 AND HUGE EARTHQUAKES BROUGHT CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION TO COUNTRIES ALL OVER THE GLOBE. VOLCANOES - DORMANT FOR DECADES - ERUPTED, POLLUTING THE SKIES. PLANES WOULD NO LONGER FLY. THIS WAS THE YEAR 2010"

and I'm all giddy, like "omg omg omg what happened next????" :O

Haha! I dunno, I keep expecting dinosaurs to suddenly appear and start eating people, or for the world to turn to desert and all we have left is musclemen riding round on huge oil-guzzling vehicles, somehow. Something like that. -_-;

Beat Hazard - indie game for Xbox 360 and PC

2010-04-21T23:28:00.006+01:00

This week, I discovered a really really fun game called Beat Hazard. It's a game that came out on Xbox 360 indie games, but has now also come out on PC.

I read the description and it sounded fun, but there is no PC demo so I decided to trial the Xbox 360 version. It was fun! So I bought myself a copy for PC via Steam. On Xbox 360 it costs 400 MS Points, but I took the more expensive option - a special offer price of £5.24 - so that works out about £2 more. Various reasons: because I can't get my Xbox 360 and PC to talk to each other properly and my MP3s are on my PC. Oh and my internet connection is being flaky and Xbox Live won't let me play indie games offline. It turns out that the PC version is a more enhanced version of the game anyway. :)

Beat Hazard is a twin-stick top-down-view shoot-em-up that generates enemy wave patterns and bullets from files in your MP3 collection. So you choose a song, it starts playing, and you shoot wave after wave of enemies until the song is over. The gameplay is not rhythm based as such, it's just a shoot-em-up which is listening to the music. It's not just the enemy firing patterns which are dictated by the music, it's your ship's firing patterns too. I have noticed that if there's a quiet bit in a song, my ship's mighty flood of bullets will become trickle from a peashooter, so I end up having to evade the bullets until the music ramps up again.

There are two modes: "play" mode where you can play one track, and get rated on that, and "survival" mode where you just play whatever's in the folder you're looking at until you run out of lives.

It is definitely not a good game to play if you are sensitive to flashing lights. It might literally kill you off, it flashes so much. At first I found it difficult to tell where the bullets were being shot at my ship because of all the visual effects, but I think I got used to it.

I can see myself coming back to this over and over just to try new songs, even though in reality there is still a limited amount of variation (otherwise the leaderboards just wouldn't be fair, would they?). I suppose a player's enjoyment in this game is going to really differ if they only like music that does not create interesting stages. It looks like the developer is still busy maintaining the game and adding new updates to this game too, so that is likely to keep interest up!

One thing I personally have discovered while playing this game is that it's really great to play while listening to old mecha anime songs. Some of these songs will make you really super powered (I have found that FIRE WARS by JAM Project is one example that is good for this). Even better than that, in some songs, the shouting of special attacks sometimes actually causes a huge attack with which you can defeat your enemies! *_* That's just so much fun!

So you can put on Macross 7 music and get Fire Bomber / Nekki Basara to rock everything to death! (er, yeah, perhaps that's abusing his music against his intentions...) You can put some Animetal on and have Eizo Sakamoto scream things to death! This game is just so amusing!

(Actually, the Animetal Marathons are really great for Survival Mode. Not because they make it easy, but because it makes it very varied and there are no pronounced gaps between tracks. I think the 4th marathon is most effective).

The album "EROTIC & HERETIC" by ALI Project is also really good for playing through. It makes exciting stages, some are just full of bosses!

Soulcaster, Xbox 360 Indie Game - review

2010-04-14T22:23:00.000+01:00

This evening I decided to try, then buy, a game called Soulcaster. I think it was 240 points.

I really enjoyed it.

The gameplay is... imagine if Gauntlet was an amalgam of action, strategy, RPG and tower defense. Without an energy timer or food to shoot.

So you control a wizard who can't fight directly, and he can summon a lady Elf to stand and shoot arrows, a warrior who can take a lot of damage and can't do ranged attacks, and a lobber who can kill various things over walls that others can't, but blows up if he gets killed. The wizard can also use a scroll to attack everything on screen, if he picks one up and you use the right trigger.

I really like this because I am a somewhat frustrated Gauntlet player. I like the game but... it's so repetitive, there are lots of narrow passages where you want the warrior to lead but the weak characters end up tanking... he walks into a Grim Reaper and then becomes a pile of bones and more enemies... and if you're playing online you end up playing with silly people who shoot food and wander off so the map won't scroll, and don't understand switches and teleports, etc etc.

Maybe I did always want it to be single player if I can't communicate what everyone should do. I can finally get my warrior to stand in front and have the others do a lot of damage from further back. I can power up my characters. I can maneuver when chased by things I can't kill without help. There isn't too much repetition in map layouts. And finally, it really does have an ending!

So, I found this a very satisfying game. I really liked it!

I finished the game, it says...

Completion time: 1:21:47

Normal Mode

Died: 3 times.

Summon Count:

"Elf" x 221
"Warrior" x 349
"Lobber" x 262

(well, it has graphics representing the summons, but.. I can't help but think of them with Gauntlet character names!)

The Oneechanbara movie, aka "Chanbara Beauty"

2010-03-30T23:53:00.004+01:00

I bought a copy of this film from HMV online on DVD for £2.99 with free shipping, that's cheaper than a bus into town and back.

I was thinking to mayself: "these games are terrible! Terrible! The film is probably also going to be terrible, but I'm sure it will at least be enjoyably brainless and hilariously bad. Surely it cannot be worse than the games which are terrible!"

The jury is still out.

See, I think it's just plain bad.

The woman they have playing Aya (the girl in a cowboy hat and bikini) is all of three things:

* A bad actress who always looks terrified when swinging a sword. She's supposed to be the moody silent type, and a master with a sword, but she always looks like she is thinking "eek! I'm holding a sword! I hope no-one gets hurt!"

* Cannot swordfight. I think she trained for swordfighting via 10 minutes with a wiimote. She does not move in a way that is fulfilling to watch - she just flails hopelessly.

* Isn't that nice to look at (not when compared to the women playing Reiko and Saki, or how Aya looks in the games) and she's supposed to be the "beauty".

So, er, that fails.

And, well, there's just not enough action really, or rather there is but it's not generally very exciting. Zombies move so slowly and clumsily, you see. One of them doesn't - rather than lumbering, she has a weapon and seems competent with it - but that scene became a dramatic plot scene, which made it a bit clunky. I thought that in a lot of scenes that the zombies seemed to be waiting around for people to stop talking.

To me, the CGI looked worse than in the actual Oneechanbara games, by which I mean the first few PS2 budget games that are made with no money at all.

In the end the fighting goes all Dragon Ball Z style which is a bit boring.... and goes on for ages. :/

The games give people a sexy lady to watch as she swordfights and there is nothing but action, so much that it gets repetitive. Very repetitive! This film kind of does the exact opposite. So, they are both bad, but in different ways!

Bayonetta (Xbox 360 version) video game review

2010-03-28T22:56:00.007+01:00

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I LOVE THIS GAME.

Hahahahahaha. I can't start this post off by saying anything else.

This... this is a game written (i.e. the story) and directed by the same man who directed the Devil May Cry games, it has similar gameplay, but is even more spectacular to look at.

The protagonist is a witch by the name of Bayonetta, a strangely proportioned woman (extremely long legs!), in squared glasses and skintight black catsuit, who speaks in a very posh RP/London English accent with an air of seduction and schoolmistress about her. She offers much titilation through her manner, her poses, her curves, the way whe moves, the way her costume sometimes becomes living hair and then moulds itself around her again... and the way she is untouchable and a complete badass at fighting. I cannot deny that this game is erotic. In fact, it may be the most erotic game I have ever played, and I feel a little ashamed because it's so loaded with obvious ploys that I know I have willingly put my brain on a shelf, walked into a trap and then been extremely happy to be there. But... it's just great. I can't help but like Bayonetta. She shoots things with high kicks with guns in her shoes, and pole-dances monstrous "angels" to death.

The story... the story is one of those great stories where people in Japan have read about hundreds of years of religious tension and Christianity and then feel free to act like it's all a nice bit of fiction they can add to. So you have the main character who is a witch, she fights off "angels" and travels to a place in Europe that's closest to "Paradiso" - it begins with a V but is definitely not Vatican. I think this game could really annoy some Catholics.

On top of the plot, you have a lot of hilarious and outrageously over the top and funny cutscenes. I mean, a lot of the time my eyes were out on stalks and I had a stupid grin on my face just down to how cool Bayonetta is, and I just laughed out loud really often.

The gameplay is mainly dodging and jumping and hacking and slashing. The combinations of buttons make up different moves and combos, and equipping different combinations of types of weapons creates new selections of moves and combos, so there is a lot of variety in the gameplay. There are big boss fights, and not only that, sometimes something you thought was a boss early in the game will come back as "just another monster" later on, you get the feeling that Bayonetta is so amazing and always becoming more awesome that eventually what you thought were boss fights mean little; they just become another routine thing to fight.

There are also some game diversions. The game contains various references to SEGA games, as it is published by SEGA. They talk about Eggman, Bayonetta collects halos that happen to look like Sonic rings. This also adds special gameplay styles as there's a motorbike racing segment (like Hang-On) which features remixed Outrun music, and her "fantasy zone" (?) which plays like Space Harrier. I also noticed that Enzo's car in the end scene is yellow so it looks like Crazy Taxi. Haha! I thought these little touches were very cute. :)

I only played the game on "Easy (Automatic)" mode because I don't normally play DMC style games, and it was indeed fairly easy. I finished the game this morning with just over 10 hours on the clock (I think it stops for cutscenes). Then I went back to attempt "normal mode", and with all the extras and items from my completed game, but after 8 more hours I have only done the prologue and 4 chapters! I'm so bad at these games! XD (Actually I found some tough bonus "Alfheim" challenges and they took up a lot of time...)

But for me to come back to a game immediately after completing it is a rarity. I just like this game so much! I think I would genuinely give this game a 10 out of 10. It's just packed with so much fun.

Ace Attorney Apollo Justice (Nintendo DS) video game review

2010-03-28T21:14:00.002+01:00

This is the fourth Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban) game, and since the 5th one came out recently (the Miles Edgeworth game), I thought I would hurry up and play this one before tackling that!

This was the first one that doesn't have Phoenix Wright as the titular protagonist, so that is something that I know puts a lot of people off. Perhaps it put me off? I can't say. I just know I only play a new game when I feel like playing that kind of game. I really like these games, they are about the only visual novel style games that have really become mainstream in English, and the stories are usually good mysteries to play through, and the characters funny and memorable. But, I have to be in the right mood to play them.

So, Apollo Justice was a really really good game.

Apollo's special gimmick in court is... a bit ridiculous really, and staring at people to look at their sweaty armpits is not my idea of good fun, but those moments are thankfully rather few.

There was really only one investigation I could consider weak in the whole game, but it was still a lot more fun than most of the stories in the second game. All of the stories seemed logical, maybe even more than in previous games where you know what is going on and you know what you need to say but are not sure what evidence to present in the given situation.

In the end, everything tied together really well. The story is really tight, loose ends are tied up well. The only thing I had a problem with at the end was that one character's back-story didn't really fit together and seemed artificially included at the end to making a happy ending. Still, overall it was really really good.

I don't think I'll start up the Miles Edgeworth game just yet; I may well start up one of the remake Pokemon Gold/Silver games as soon as the end of next week.

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (Xbox 360) video game review

2010-03-28T20:12:00.003+01:00

It's a long time since I first heard of the Winterbottom game, but "The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom" came out on Xbox Live Arcade at the end of February 2010.

I played a little, then decided to buy a copy of my own and played through to the end.

Take a look at the external links above if you want to see some screenshots.

It's a collaborate-with-yourself puzzle/2D platformer with time manipulation elements, wrapped up in 1920s silent-film style graphics and a story about stealing pies. I like the style and the comedic simplicity of the story makes it charming.

Think Cursor*10, The Company Of Myself, and Braid (minus the annoying self-serving story) combined together... and you'll be almost there.

It's part action game and part puzzle game, but neither is compromised. Unlike the games I mentioned, your copies are not just ghosts - you can change what they do by hitting your copies to propel them, or get them to propel you by having them repeatedly strike thin air, then walking into them. There are also time trial and minimum-copies-made trials in the bonus levels, for those most interested in the action aspect, and those most interested in the puzzle aspect.

Overall, for a commercial game it is a bit short, but the levels have been well crafted. Maybe it could have done with a level editor and some way to share levels via Xbox Live Arcade.

Earth Hour

2010-03-26T18:36:00.004Z

8:30pm tomorrow, turn off all your electric. :)

Info: http://earthhour.wwf.org.uk/

I'm going to!

Well, it's about time my fridge had a bit of a defrost. :P

(I'm not going to take the batteries out of my fire alarm or clock or watch though, since I have no other way of finding out when the hour is over, so it's not like I will be completely free from the use of electric...)

I am undecided as to whether or not to sit in the dark, or actually try and produce some light. I think I left my dynamo-powered torch in my parents' house (which is kind of electric anyway, it's just me generating it) so I'd have to think about burning something instead, which isn't a good idea either...

Heavy Rain (PS3) video game review

2010-03-24T23:30:00.003Z

I played and completed Heavy Rain last night. What a turbulent ride that was!

I was looking forward to this game for a very long time, since I heard about it after playing Fahrenheit last year, in fact.

It's a thriller interactive movie, about hunting for a serial killer who drowns children in rainwater. Pretty bleak subject material! Also, I guess it's pretty strange as something to ask for as a birthday present but that's what I requested and received from my boyfriend. Collector's Edition, yay! :)

I started it up, played through bit by bit until I came to two scenes which were really intense... at that point I decided to stop and play something more relaxing, and continued with the "more relaxing" games for about a fortnight before getting back to the game and finishing the rest in one run last night.

Gameplay is similar to Fahrenheit - most are in third person and you can walk and explore scenes and interact with in-game characters, switching between controllable characters as fits the story, with action sequences played out using on-screen instructions.

The main differences in gameplay are that you can press L2 to look into the mind of the person you're controlling and select different thoughts, and that the game uses motion controls (sixaxis) for some actions. In most games I've played on PS3 that use sixaxis, they have felt more of a hinderance than anything else, but they do work quite well in Heavy Rain.

The game promised many branches throughout the story, as it was said that your main protagonists can die depending on the choices you make. I have only played through the game once, but I did happen to see some very different outcomes of scenes depending on what I did (then I reloaded the game), and some people have told me they got really different endings, so that's quite cool.

The graphics in this game are really amazing, and that's not normally something I would praise a game for right from the start, but this is so good that I have to mention it. The faces of characters are especially detailed and expressive, I thought. The face of one shopkeeper in particular stands out in my mind. He had incredibly dark eyes and his performance was genuinely moving. There's also a "Making of" casting video included as an unlockable extra to the game, and it's obvious that many of the characters really do look a lot like the actors that played them (but altered accordingly).

Aside from the characters, the art direction in this game was really good, I thought. It's not often that you think of art direction in a game, but there it was; settings for each scenario that push you into one emotion or another, and another unlockable bonus is concept artwork which is really good artwork in its own right, realistic... perhaps even hyper realistic mundane scenes. Seems strange, but that's the only way I can think of describing them.

The atmosphere was really well set up in each scene, I know it must have been difficult to get this just right because it is a game and the game uses techniques normally employed in film. That is, the player can decide what to do in most scenes that are not cut-scenes, which means they can dawdle, they can move artificially slowly or goofily, so it must have been difficult to capture atmosphere, and yet it succeeded. I was completely drawn in.

Even moments where the game had me (the player) flustered and I couldn't decide what to do, so I made my character pace around the room. Even those moments looked right for the scene. It was just really well made.

The story.... I found compelling, but at the end I had a lot of things I wanted to discuss with other people who had played the game! Are they plot holes or would they be revealed if I played different branches through the game? I cannot say yet. But it's been fun just talking to people about their experiences, their choices, and what they made of various bits and pieces in the game, and characters.

So, overall I was very satisfied with Heavy Rain.

It managed to surpass not only my expectations from playing the studio's previous game, but my general expectations of acting and expression from CGI characters and of the use of film techniques to create emotion and atmosphere in video games.

Although I have access to the DLC chapter of this game, I have not downloaded it yet. I was busy this evening! :)

Very Very Minor Gripe: There was a pre-launch fun little augmented reality game (ARG) to play via the web using Twitter and Facebook and special little websites they'd set up, it was called the "4 Days Challenge". That's all good and well, and it was a nice marketing gesture to give us that ARG game, but the initial "prize" for getting it right was a trailer which managed to spoil me in knowing the start of a scene (one of the scenes which made me put down the game for a fortnight, in fact). That was pretty bad, I thought. Also, I managed to stupidly sign up for the 4 Days Challenge website with my language set as Spanish and couldn't log in again to change it, so they kept sending me emails I had to run through a translator! Lastly, I only got the prize for the event this morning via email, which I thought was quite late. It's an XMB theme for the PS3 dashboard. It's all free so I shouldn't really complain, haha!

Ada Lovelace Day

2010-03-24T22:27:00.004Z

I've spent all day trying to think of a single woman to nominate in celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, but I couldn't think of one. Celebrating women in science and technology, one that's inspired me into working in technology, hmm.

I went off to an event and spent half the evening talking to a woman who seemed to know everything about everything. We talked about women working with science, tecnology and mathematics, of encryption, passport technology and identity theft, atomic science, relationships and conformity, youth and reliance on technology, of societies and hardship, wicker baskets and autocad, archaeology and history... wow, what a knowledgeable person! *_*

At first I didn't want to go to the event at all, because I thought it sounded a bit too gimmicky, and... there is always the threat of the type of feminism that's about dominance rather than equality. Especially these days where equality is the norm, you get people saying all sorts of foolish old-fashioned things, you know? But, it turned out to be a fascinating and inspirational event after all.

I still have no idea who to nominate.

When it comes to science or technology, it's easier to recognise a method, a product, a service as being something that's a breakthrough... not so easy to recognise individuals. Do I nominate Ada Lovelace herself as the inventor of programming, since that's what I do every working day of my life? How about Marie Curie? Or those women who did vital intelligence work in World War II?

I think overall, the women in science and technology who have helped me the most to get where I am today, and have inspired me further in technology, are probably the teachers I had at the various schools I attended, my maths teacher in college, the female lecturers, faculty and staff in the Comp Sci department at the University of Durham and (as it was) 3F Ltd, and all my colleagues at TechnoPhobia Ltd.

Oh what a cop out! :P

But I have to make this clear: most of the men working at all those places were great too! :D

Katamari Forever (PS3) videogame review

2010-03-24T20:23:00.006Z

I really could play Katamari Forever.

Since I played the first one, Katamari Damacy has been one of my favourite games.

The first Katamari Damacy game is truly a masterpiece, in my eyes. Roll, roll, roll your clump of stuff round and pick up more and more things. Such a tactile game. Such a happy feeling. Such detail! Each level is crafted so that you start off small and scales up wonderfully, barely noticeably... you play it first of all to discover your landscape, then to figure out the best paths around the course so that you can end up with the biggest katamari possible. There were different goals on different levels.

The music was so good too. It would loop round to infinity - without a pause to restart tracks, and I couldn't get bored of it. It sang happy songs to you. Nonsensical songs about rolling things up and love and joy.

That first game had some magic which I think the later games could not capture. They possessed an almost maniacal attention to detail in creating memorable objects and worlds to roll around, arranging objects amusingly, and yet having level design that meant there was a distinct element of getting to grasp with the environment, learning your surroundings, figuring out what the best path through to success is.

In later games... the second game (We Love Katamari) was very good but didn't have the feeling of scaling up and felt a little too self-congratulory in places. Not only that, the first game feels eccentric but the second felt like it was trying to be weird and that just wasn't cool. The third game (Me & My Katamari) suffered from poor controls, levels that were just junk scattered willy-nilly leaving the game far too easy and levels far too short (I'd roll around with nothing left to roll up for the last few minutes) - plus, it was becoming for too into itself for comfort. The fourth game (Beautiful Katamari) is better than the PSP game, but is far, far, far too short and asks the player for too much downloadable content - plus its Xbox Live achievements system contains achievements for playing for 100 hours or something, which isn't an achievement, it's a waste of electricity. I wrote a little review of Beautiful Katamari in the past.

This new game is called "Katamari Tribute" in Japan. Perhaps that is a more descriptive title than Katamari Forever as this game is like a "Greatest Hits" of the older games. Various hand-picked levels from all of the previous games (including some that were paid-extra DLC) are in this game. There are also a few new levels, but not enough to really class the game as something new. It's on the PS3 so it's all in HD (in fact, it wil not let you play it on a standard definition screen, which was really annoying because it meant I had to buy a new monitor). You play the levels as before but with the ability to jump and with the inclusion of "broken hearts" which help you pick up lots more stuff. There is also a graphical filter on by default, which makes everything look like a chalk cartoon, which actually works really nicely. Later on you can unlock "drive mode" (the katamari moves faster and levels have shorter time limits), "classic mode" where appropriate (looks more like the older games and plays like them too).

It really is a game that I think serves as a good tribute. There's not much new content but I think they have chosen mainly good levels from the previous games and that to me is better than a slew of poor levels. The new gameplay modes do breathe new life into old levels as it sometimes encourages you to think up new strategies. The new graphical filters are mainly quite good looking. The music is mainly made up of remixes of old songs, and while it would have been nice for them to include the original versions of songs, these remixes are for the most part quite pleasant. Certainly there has been worse music in the 2nd to 4th Katamari games.

I do have some gripes with the game though.

The first is that the scoring system on the game seems quite harsh at first so even a seasoned katamari player like me got some not-excellent scores through my first playthrough. This is ok, it means you have to try harder and get better! What is not ok, however, is that the "King Of All Cosmos" and his robotic counterpart in this game use language in a way that seems far too abusive for what is otherwise a nice happy relaxing game. Even if you do reasonably well, they will insult and bully you. I just feel like... this game would be perfect for little children to play apart from that element. I would rather buy the Japanese version of the game and give it to them in a language they couldn't read than have them be abused in such a fashion.

In the past games... I used to really like the King Of All Cosmos, when I played the first and second games in Japanese. He spoke nonsense. Even though what he says is all in a language I am not fluent in, I could tell that a lot of his dialogue was often nonsense. And it sounded like someone messing round on a turntable, wiki wiki wah wah. When localised to English, his dialogue became proud and haughty as well as being random gibberish, and he would talk down to his son. I took a slight dislike to him, really. As time has gone on though, things have become steadily worse and in this game, he's just a jerk.

Maybe some people find that funny. I find it disharmonious to the rest of the game.

Plus, as the scoring system is stricter, you are more likely to have to suffer their abuse as you start, which is just plain unwelcoming.

My second gripe is that it's not entirely made clear how to unlock other modes, so the game ends up feeling a bit more repetitive than it ought to (even though I'm replaying levels I have replayed many times before).

I think I did originally have more gripes, but I can't remember them right now. Hehe!

Overall, I really like this game as a tribute to Katamari. I'm satisfied with it. I did wait and buy it for roughly 1/3rd of the original asking price though!

I'll leave this post with links I found to (yay!) translated stuff about the first game, just for the sake of golden memories.

Interview

How to build a King Of All Cosmos Kite

Tornado Outbreak (Xbox 360) video game review

2010-03-24T20:17:00.004Z

Well... this is a game in which you build big tornadoes and destroy cities. I bought it in the hope that it could be another take on Katamari style gaming, but overall I have to say this game just isn't that good.

Graphically it's very much like what you see from American TV cartoons these days. That's not so bad. Voice acting wasn't bad but all the same I wasn't fond of the way the main character spoke like a snarky American soldier though he's an alien. Maybe that's just me. I just find it to be a dispassionate and annoying style of speech. Still, it's what it's intended to be.

Gameplay: You start off as a little tornado, you run over stuff and build into a bigger tornado. Not so bad. Then you do these little gate-run sequences (called a Vortex Race), followed by a boss battle (Totem Battle).

The main portion of each mission is the level - where you grow your tornado and collect "fire fliers".

My issues with the main game:

1) Camera angles. It's either almost-overhead when you are a small tornado, and from directly behind when you are big. I don't know, maybe they don't want you to see what you're doing due to limitations with draw distances, but I always felt that I was being hindered by not really being able to see what I was running over. I also felt lost due to not being able to see enough to get a feeling from where I was in the overall landscape. I wished I could tilt the vertical camera axis just a little or somehow get a view from further away. Especially when in a hurry to return to base.

2) Certain objects on levels contain these little orange flames called Fire Fliers which you have to collect to complete the level. There are 100 but you only need to collect 50 and go back to base. Collecting of fire fliers makes the game's speed uneven and clunky. You press right trigger to suck them in and hold it as you run over more things containing fire fliers to keep up the combo. Keeping up the combo adds seconds to the game level timer. Problem is... they give you a minor speed boost (for a split second) then you get gradually slower and slower as you run out of their power. So if you try for big combos, it's really irritating as you constantly feel like you're running out and powerless to do any better, and when you are feeling against the time it seems counterintuitive to combo things to make you ever slower when you're in a hurry. It just made the game feel almost suffocating at times.

3) I didn't feel like the objects on each stage were done evenly. Objects that appeared like they would be quickly uprooted in a tornado stuck strong, beyond other objects that would remain on the ground until you were the next level in size. So you have to play and replay relying on memory rather than intuition.

The other portions of the game:

"Vortex races" seem familiar from somewhere - an old Sonic The Hedgehog game, maybe? I am not sure. They aren't really races, you pass through gates in front of you as you fly forwards, and I don't know, maybe it's just me but I found it almost impossible to get worse than a gold medal for each race. I had to force myself into a silver medal to get an Xbox achievement. These sequences were much less difficult than the rest of the game.

The boss battles themselves weren't so interesting, but the getting to each boss was the interesting part, usually using a new move to help you. The battles themselves are usually a case of [wait for the visual clue] [push a direction] [hammer a button] until done. I felt that they could have done with more variety.

Not a bad game as such, but overall I found it quite annoying and joyless to play. I only finished it because I felt I ought to, having started it.

Maybe if you have an 6 year old son that wants to play Call Of Duty you can give him this instead, since it's all kiddy-style war-glory soldier stories... I don't know who else could really truly appreciate this game.

Way Of The Samurai 3 - out in the UK, free artbook PDF

2010-03-15T21:09:00.002Z

Way Of The Samurai 3 on PS3 is out here in the UK today.

I have enjoyed the previous Way Of The Samurai games for the ability to free roam and get involved with the game world, finding your way to what you consider to be the best conclusion to the events that unfold. I've had an import copy for a while (I got it as a Christmas present!), but I haven't actually started playing it yet.

If you would like the PDF of the artbook for Way Of The Samurai 3, sign up with Rising Star Games (the UK publisher for the game), and you can download it for free.

That's a 6MB PDF at low quality, or a whopping 240MB PDF at high quality.

There's also exclusive art and a guide. It's nice of them to give this away, I thought.

http://www.risingstargames.com/games/way-of-the-samurai-3-ps3.html

I went to watch the film "Ponyo"

2010-02-16T20:31:00.007Z

I went out to the cinema to watch a film this evening. It was the newest Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki film "Ponyo".

I saw it at the Showroom cinema, right next door to where I work, so that was convenient. The ticket cost me £6.90 and I was slightly late but there were so many adverts that I ended up waiting around for the film to start. The picture was out of focus when it started but the seats were comfy.

The film started, and... it's a really good film!

It was dubbed into English, but as you'd expect from the localisation of a Studio Ghibli title, it's top quality and uses great actors - no complaints from me!

The film broke halfway through. The lights came up and some music started playing. I counted the number of people in the audience; 18 people in total. Wow. I had thought it was nice to have two entire rows to myself to lounge around and perch with my head on the seat in front! After a few minutes, someone from the audience went to fetch someone, and after a few minutes I followed to investigate... and the other person came back. A member of staff told us to sit tight and wait for the film to come back.

"Excuse me", I piped up with a question which had been burning within me. Which was going to distract me from the rest of the film if I did not get an answer right away: "You don't happen to know what the music we're listening to at the moment is?" :D
"It's... from a soundtrack, um, another Japanese film..."
"Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence" spoke a voice from behind me in the audience.
"Ah! I knew I'd heard it from somewhere! Thanks!" :D
See, this is the kind of cinema The Showroom is. ^_^

The film started again, and lasted about a minute before the film stuck on one frame and we watched it warp and melt away.

"OMG! Ponyo just burst into flames!!!" T_T came a cry from the audience.

And we waited again, but the film restarted after much less of a delay this time. The sound was still a little messed up, making a somewhat surreal film even moreso.

But, this experience didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film at all; as I said, it's a wonderful film. As always with Miyazaki films, it's got the same old undercurrent of "children are cute", "hey kids - befriend weird things; it's ok!", "destroying the environment is super-bad", and "females are the more-amazing of the two genders". That's not a bad thing, it's just what I expected, I suppose. Some parts are very odd and never end up being explained, which is also to be expected. Hmm, I guess there's not much more I can say really without giving anything away. It's a good film, I liked it more than Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, I'll leave it at that. ^_^

I might well get it on DVD when a home version comes out, so I can watch it uninterrupted and in focus. ^_^

If you don't care about watching this whole film, watch the trailer, and you'll know the entire plot to the film! That's terrible! T_T Just as well I only looked at that after seeing the film! I'm only linking to it so that anyone who's seen the film can see what I mean!

Sherlock Hound series now available in the UK on DVD

2010-01-29T20:01:00.005Z

In the 1980s, there was a cartoon series that was a Japanese-Italian co-production, very loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. In Japan, it was known as "Meitantei Holmes".

Like "Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds" and "Around the World with Willy Fogg", it features animals as the main characters.

The series was dubbed into English and was renamed "Sherlock Hound", and is now being released by Manga Entertainment on DVD after all these years. It's an exclusive to the shop HMV, and although the release date is the 1st of February 2010, my preorder copy arrived today.

It cost £17.99 for this 26 episode 5 DVD box set, and the series is presented as dub-only. The cast aren't so bad, they're voice actors whose names I recognise from US cartoons, not specifically as anime dub actors. There are only 4 names so they're doubling up, but it's very good considering that they are also probably from the 1980s. The British accents don't sound overdone, which was a concern I had. Well, actually Inspector Lestrade might take some getting used to, hehe.

I've only watched 2 episodes so far. The first episode seemed to be quite action oriented, but the second episode had more eagle-eyed detective work. Sherlock Hound's car seems to be as much of an assistant as Watson!

The DVD box says on the side: "Hayao Miyazaki and Kyousuke Mikuriya's Sherlock Hound The Complete Series", though it appears that Miyazaki only had involvement in a few episodes. There are typos on the back of the box. :/

I'm just interested because it looks like another Dogtanian or Willy Fogg. :)

It seems quite fun. :)

Sherlock Holmes VS Jack The Ripper - review

2010-01-27T21:30:00.008Z

The title of this game almost put me off it. "Sherlock Holmes VS Jack The Ripper" sounds too much like a "I wonder what would happen if you get these two famous names..." type simple fanfic. It was going cheap in the January sales though, and I felt like playing a detective game as a warm-up before Heavy Rain comes out. ^_^

I played the Xbox 360 version of this from start to end, gaining all 1000 achievement points in the process. It was quite a short game, and not that difficult.

It's a pure puzzle adventure game in which Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's famous fictional sleuthing duo of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate the real-life case of Jack The Ripper, which was contemporary to when the stories were set.

The game is played with you playing as Holmes or Watson (whichever is appropriate to the scene), in either 3rd person fixed-camera perspective or 1st person view - switchable at the press of a button. I played in 3rd person all the way through. Most of the gameplay is walking around examining and picking up objects and talking to people, with many minigame puzzles to solve. I liked it, but if you are the type of gamer who feels like a game requires action scenes in order to be enjoyable, you probably ought to give this game a miss.

The authenticity of this game is excellent. It seems like a great deal of research went into this game. Graphically, the streets of late 19th century London have been faithfully recreated (well, from what I imagine from historical pictures and from living around English buildings of around the right age). The street furniture, the smog and filth, the prostitution, the gin-soaked population, the clothing, the prevalance of illness and medical practices of the time, and quietly negative attitudes between different people towards each other, all seem to fit well. There is a lot of detail, and it really gave the game the right atmopshere for investigating this mystery. To me, even though I had seen a documentary on Jack The Ripper in the past, it never conjured up the world and setting and hopelessness of the surroundings that this game got across.

Many of the actors seem to speak in London accents which don't seem to quite fit, or have an accent which sounds too modern, but I suppose that is hard to mask. I expect that barely anyone would notice apart from me anyway. It's really my one gripe.

I don't remember much of any Sherlock Holmes stories to know whether the representation of those characters was accurate, but there are small references to make me think that this Holmes is based on the one in the books rather than based on an actor's portrayal of the character. He speaks very quickly and is quite eccentric, loves searching for facts, hates journalists making up stories - all appears consistent with what I know about the character.

I also appreciated the ease of use of the game; it has nice little touches, like when you are examining all objects in a room, and could select from many things to look at in a small area, the game will automatically select the next thing you haven't already examined. You're not often hearing repeated dialogue as a result, and that's just nice. Holmes and Watson often announced where they needed to go next; on one hand this was useful and saved frustration, on the other hand, maybe it felt like it was holding my hand too much - in a game as linear as this, perhaps I should be working that out?

Most of the investigation, examination and deduction parts of the game are similarly structured (as is Holmes' methodology), but the little logic puzzles are all different, so there's a lot of welcome variety in the game.

The game is rated suitable for ages 16+, and you don't see a lot of graphic horror (thank goodness!), and a lot of what you need to investigate closely is done with cartoony drawings rather than the game's more realistic looking engine, but you do have to stomach reading reports on Jack The Ripper's deeds and other sordid goings on in the area.

There is certainly a blur between fact and fiction in this game. The murders did certainly take place in the ways they describe. If you have watched a documentary on Jack The Ripper you might have a good idea how this is all going to turn out, but... the involvement of Holmes and Watson, the exact dialogue from the suspects, some of the incidental characters, must all be fictional. I did also wonder at the end whether the authors of the story in this game told this tale in this way in order to express what attitudes were like and a small amount of a political view, but do it in such a way that it appears to be fact.

For me, just knowing that the terrible acts I was reading about were really carried out on women, that these things really did take place, made it a lot harder to get through. I'm hearing place names and looking at a map and thinking "I've been near there". It brought it all home. Some parts of this game really made me cringe and feel ill in a way that much 18 rated horror has not.

Without giving too much away, my final verdict is that this was a really good game but... not only is there absolutely no replayability in this (which I expected), and by the end, the exploits of Jack The Ripper had become so gruesome and vile that I was wishing the game to wrap up as soon as possible.

I think that it may have been the intention of the makers of this game to make me feel that way, because the feeling of characters in-game matched mine. So maybe that's actually their success. The effect it had on me was quite powerful. The conclusion of the story seems entirely plausable from the facts presented, though I don't know whether anything was left out to make it seem more definite or anything like that.

After this post, I don't really want to think about this ever again.

Grand Theft Auto - Episodes From Liberty City - review

2010-01-26T21:58:00.003Z

This is a compilation of two side-stories set in the world of Grand Theft Auto IV, exclusive to Xbox 360 even though the game is out on many platforms.

The first part - The Lost And Damned - had been available as downloadable content for GTA IV for quite a long time, but the second part - The Ballad Of Gay Tony - only became available at the same time as this compilation.

The compilation is out as a standalone game, available on discs in shops. I decided to buy my copy this way as I could find a better price this way, and because there is limited space available for DLC on my Xbox 360 hard drive.

I played it last year, before Christmas, but only decided to do a write-up today. ^_^

My opinion:

The Lost And Damned (TLAD) was horrible to play. It's all about a biker gang and its members. I didn't find the story interesting, I hated the way those big American Choppers (i.e. motorcycles) handle (it's realistic! They handle like armchairs! Armchairs with broken wheels!), I didn't like the scenario, I didn't enjoy the random abusiveness of characters, and after the main GTA IV game it was just depressing to play another protagonist whose life just gets worse and worse as you play the game. The additions to the main game are not too good, and a lot of things seemed like they were made deliberately inconvenient. By the end of the episode, 10 in-game hours had passed and I was thinking "60% done? Oh no! there's so much more to go!" :( That sums up my feeling about the game.

Tips about TLAD: the moment you get a chance, switch off the movie camera effect, and the game is far more playable - you will actually be able to see well enough to aim! Also, use handbrake turns everywhere and the bikes become a little more bearable.

The Ballad Of Gay Tony (TBoGT) however, was a lot of fun. Maybe even more fun than even the main game (GTA IV). It's got an overall more uplifting story, much much funnier side characters, and I got to like the cool music a lot more than the biker's rock station, which was a surprise to me. In TBoGT, you play as a man who works for a nightclub owner, in fact, he's more of a business partner. You're the straight man; the one who keeps Tony from going over-the-top, as his personality leads him to. That's not to say you are boring; you're his man for driving, racing, piloting, skydiving / base jumping, gunfights and other exciting action type things. Plus as pastimes you can be a cage fighter, or get drunk and dance with women and have casual sex with them... which might not be your thing but it's a lot better than what they gave you in TLAD: arm wrestling and playing a card game which I can only think of as "Play Your Cards Right" after the TV game show. ^_^;;

There's also a system in TBoGT where you can go back and replay levels after you've finished the game, in order to get a better score. I thought that was a good idea.

Overall: I really like the way that a lot of the stories in the main game and these episodes are interlinked and woven together. However, I could honestly have done without TLAD. TBoGT is definitely a star game though, and I think it made up for the price of the compilation (NB: I got it half price!)

Fatal Frame 4 / Project Zero 4 fanmade English translation patch out

2010-01-26T20:20:00.003Z

If you happen to be a person who really liked playing the Fatal Frame / Project Zero games in English, and were disappointed that the 4th game out on Wii was not going to be officially released in English, so decided to buy a copy of the game in Japanese anyway, just in case...

...chances are you already know about this fan-translation project!

But here's a link to it anyway: http://zero4.higashinoeden.com/

It's pretty cool in that even though the wii is region restricted, you don't have to modify your console in order to use it. You just put their patch onto an SD card, put a copy of the Japanese game and the SD card into the wii, and it will play the game and add subtitles on-the-fly direct from the SD card.

Sakura Wars: So Long My Love - language options

2010-01-26T19:52:00.007Z

A while ago, I blogged that Nippon Ichi America are taking Sakura Taisen V to the US.

Well, it's now due out in March 2010, and will be released in North America on PS2 and Wii (which we already knew), and is also coming out in Europe on Wii only.

Preorders are up in various online retailers, and I've placed my order for the American PS2 version with my favourite and most trusted Canadian videogame shop: VG+. I already own an imported USA PS2 and now I own an American PS3 that plays PS2 games as well, you see. ^_^

Then, a few months after my preorder, the Nippon Ichi America shop - aptly named Rosenqueen - put the game up for preorder, including a special edition. The PS2 special edition mentioned a Japanese language option, but the others didn't. They also changed the release date from January to March 2010.

I didn't want to cancel my existing order because I like VG+ and Rosenqueen's international shipping charges are awful - often more expensive than the items you order.

So I sent an email to Nippon Ichi America to ask about language options - BTW this is partly because even though it's set in America, I prefer to experience something close "the original", and partly because I watched the official trailer and decided there and then I never ever in my life want to play "SOCCERWARS" (as she pronounces it). Hehehe, really - the accent is totally overdone, I suspect it might be the same actress that is the replacement dub Etna in the recent Disgaea games. It would be too irritating to play the game with her, haha!

A few days after I contacted them, they emailed me back to say that ALL retail copies of the PS2 game will come with two discs: one is the English language version, the other is a Japanese sub version. So I stuck with my existing preorder. :)

Official site: www.sakurawars.us

Free Tea!

2010-01-26T19:31:00.002Z

Do you know what my favourite drink is in the whole wide world? It's a cup of tea on a Sunday morning. Tea always tastes nicest on Sundays, and I don't know why.

I prefer Tetley tea, made with fresh boiling water, with milk. ^__^

However, free tea is also good. :)

Twinings have a promotion on at the moment where they send you 2 teabags and a 20p off voucher, if you just give them your name and address so they can send it to you! I signed up a few weeks ago and got a bag of Ceylon and a bag of Lady Grey, then they sent me an email for this current promotion and I've asked for some varieties of green tea - though they are offering fruit infusions as well.

Website: http://www.twinings.co.uk/free-tea/

Go now! It's free tea! *_*

My SD Sazabi model kit

2010-01-21T20:46:00.005Z

I just put together my first ever mecha model kit! It's from SD Gundam G Generation-0 (SD Gundam G Zero), and it's Mobile Suit MSN-04 Sazabi. A shrunken version of the mecha Char used in the Gundam film Char's Counterattack.

Of all the model kits in the world, why a SD Gundam series kit, and why Char's Sazabi, you ask? I know, I know, I haven't even seen that.

Well it was cheap, I thought it was cute and I wanted to start small. ;)

It's so dinky! It's only about 7cm tall and 7cm wide (and a lot of that is the crest of the helmet!)

Aw, it's so cute! *_*

There's a little spring in the gun so it can fire whatever is loaded into it, too. It came with a range of weapons. :)

Guilty Gear 2: Overture - review

2009-12-10T23:59:00.004Z

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

2009-11-28T09:44:00.005Z

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...

Keita Takahashi's new project

2009-11-06T05:35:00.007Z

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

2009-11-03T18:42:00.005Z

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

2009-10-31T08:20:00.006Z

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

2009-10-29T19:36:00.006Z

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!

2009-10-26T23:16:00.003Z

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

2009-10-26T23:13:00.002Z

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!

2009-10-26T23:07:00.003Z

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

2009-10-26T22:55:00.004Z

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

2009-10-26T22:08:00.004Z

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

2009-10-26T20:52:00.007Z

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

2009-10-26T20:12:00.001Z

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

2009-09-22T20:45:00.002+01:00

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!

2009-09-20T12:18:00.006+01:00

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)

2009-09-19T08:59:00.010+01:00

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!

2009-09-01T22:23:00.005+01:00

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)

2009-08-26T10:00:00.003+01:00

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

2009-08-22T18:55:00.011+01:00

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

2009-07-25T00:40:00.006+01:00

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

2009-07-14T23:31:00.016+01:00

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

2009-07-14T22:03:00.010+01:00

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.

2009-06-29T21:28:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-29T21:19:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-29T08:16:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-25T07:54:00.004+01:00

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

2009-05-24T12:25:00.005+01:00

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.

2009-05-23T00:16:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-17T19:52:00.005+01:00

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

2009-05-17T10:09:00.004+01:00

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

2009-05-12T07:54:00.004+01:00

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

2009-05-08T21:40:00.005+01:00

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)

2009-04-30T07:08:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-30T06:43:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-30T06:03:00.002+01:00

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

2009-04-29T20:54:00.007+01:00

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

2009-04-28T08:11:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-28T06:59:00.003+01:00

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...