Ni no Kuni : Wrath of the White Witch - Wizard's Edition - PS3

Well, Ni no Kuni is coming out in the UK.

It's a video game that's a co-production between Level 5 (who make the Professor Layton games among other things), and Studio Ghibli (who make critically acclaimed boring films about heroic young girls befriending strange things).

I'm not that interested in it myself, but it's supposed to have had some good reviews and my boyfriend has asked for the super special edition for his birthday present. Even though his birthday is in November and the game doesn't come out until mid January. Ah well, that's his choice.

It's up for preorder on Amazon UK for £69.99: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - Wizard's Edition (PS3)

And comes with the game, an uncute cuddly toy, some exclusive DLC codes, and a 300 page hardcover book. Very pretty.

Rose Of Versailles is licenced by Rightstuf / Nozomi Entertainment!

Rose Of Versailles is one of my all-time favourite anime series, I've been hoping someone would license it for an official English subtitled release for years.

Rightstuf / Nozomi Entertainment have just announced that they've got the license - it'll be streamed via viki.com this winter, and be out on DVD sometime next year.

The moment I hear of a DVD release, I'm going to preorder it!

They are also taking questions from the general public to ask Riyoko Ikeda - the original author of the manga - until 1st Nov.

Official Site

Never7 -the end of infinity- english translation patch is out!

If you happen to be a fan of the visual novel Ever 17, you may be interested to know that an english language translation patch of another game in the series - Never7 - has been made. ^_^

There are details as to how to obtain the patch, buy a copy of the game (it's under 1000 yen), and apply the path here:

http://tlwiki.org/index.php?title=Never_7

Adventure Bar Story - initial thoughts

This morning, I bought myself Adventure Bar Story on Android, after trying out the free "Lite" version the day before. This game has been out on iOS for ages, apparently, but is new to Android and as such is on cheap special offer at the moment. :)

It's a cheap and cheerful JRPG; sort of Recettear / Atelier type game. Graphically quasi-16-bit style, reminding me of things like Ragnarok Online.

You run a "bar" (though I'd say it seems more like a restaurant). You buy / collect ingredients, discover recipes, set restaurant prices and stock levels, fight old-school turn-based RPG style. You only level up by eating food, not for killing things (though it seems like you do learn combat skills from battle). So you have to decide what your priorities are, because eating most of your shop's stock is probably not the most profitable way to run a business!

It's got some flaws - sometimes the text seems to skip quickly, the interface is a little annoying - as though they added a virtual d-pad as an afterthought then made it the default control system.

So for example, you're holding your device with thumbs on the screen in d-pad position and it changes to menu options that need you to select via touchscreen, with a "cancel" button placed right under your left thumb where the d-pad was a second ago. Oops, cancelled it, start over. No big deal but it gets annoying.

Seems well worth the £0.81p it's priced at on the Android Marketplace, all the same. :)

Lots of water

It's been raining lots and lots today. This is what the river by my house looked like when I came home earlier. The water has risen several feet in just one day!

It's not raining right now, in fact, the sun has come out. The sky is still quite dark, though.

I went to the shop across the road to stock up on essentials in case it rains overnight (toilet roll, canned food, water). It's funny; I was up in the north-east last week where there was a big flood and people were stranded and the power went out. When we went to the shops, there were no potatoes, not much choice of bread, I think people had gone out to stock up and prepare for worse.

Here, on the other hand, the shelves are full and a lot of things have been heavily reduced. I think it's a case of "it's raining - I can't be bothered to go to the shops!"

Just by the river here, some police vans have turned up along with many onlookers and a helicopter overheard. I hope no-one's fallen in. :(

A tasty recipe (Mr Men cookies)

9oz /250g Butter
7oz / 200g Caster sugar
9oz / 250g Cornflour
12oz / 350g Plain flour
2 eggs
4 drops vanilla essence
4 - 5 tablespoons milk

Method

Cream butter and sugar, gradually mix in sifted flour, cornflour, eggs and vanilla essence.
Mix and add milk gradually until a firm dough is obtained .
Roll the dough to the correct thickness, using the dough gauge
Flour the moulds and then cut out the cookies by pressing firmly into the rolled dough
If painting the cookies before baking mix the food colour with an equal part of egg yolk
If painting after baking, brush the uncooked cookies with 1 part egg / 1 part water glaze
Place the cookies on a baking tray
Bake in a preheated oven for 12 - 15 minutes at 220°C / 425°F / gas mark 7

Chocolate Marble Cake recipe

225g (8oz) English butter
225g (8oz) caster sugar
3 (size 3) eggs
350g (12oz) self raising flour
Pinch salt
225ml (7floz) milk
25g (1oz) cocoa

Method

1 Cream together the butter and sugar
2 Add the eggs one at a time, beating well
3 Fold in the flour and salt, and the milk
4 Divide the mixture into two bowls, add the cocoa to one and mix well
5 Spoon mixtures alternately into a prepared 20cm (8 inch) cake tin to get the "marbled" effect
6 Bake - 160°c (325°F) mark 3 for 1 1/2 hour, until well risen. Cool and turn onto a cake rack.

Fez is really really great

Fez is a really really great game. I bought it last Friday on Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft points.

It's a 2D platformer set in a cube shaped universe.

So you run and jump in a 2D landscape, rotate the landscape through 90 degrees left or right to change the perspective, and see new platforms to jump on, doors to go through and explore, etc.

It's a completely peaceful world, well, almost, apart from the distortion and the universe ripping apart.

There's no killing to do, no monsters after you, no penalty for falling off the bottom of the world and dying.

Just exploring, discovering, sometimes encountering strange monuments and levers for you to work out.

It's all about the feeling. It's a game that captures you by luring you in with sheer curiosity at every point. It rewards you by giving you a world far richer than you thought you'd see, and more curious things to explore.

It's all presented in a retro-style; 16-bit-esque to go with the 2D world.

There are a few different areas of landscape, each with their own style. You witness dawn and dusk every few minutes, and it's all very pretty. There's an atmospheric chiptune soundtrack as well, which I quite like despite being by "Disasterpiece" who made a few albums I got with bundles of games - and none of those I particularly enjoyed.

As you adventure, it populates a map so you know what you've found so far, and what's left to find. It's an enormous map, and it kind of reminds me of the huge and horrendously complicated maps that would take up pages and pages in old magazines back in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Earlier today, I saw some patterns on a stone and a larger stone lit up in tetrominoes depending on which buttons I pressed on the joypad. And I thought to myself "I need to replicate that pattern in these movements, don't I?" followed by "I wonder if I have any graph paper".

Which, oddly enough, was a good feeling. So I came here and wrote this blog post instead. :)

EDIT: I think I should mention... sometimes this game is downright creepy!

Android VNDS Interpreter is really good

Remember the VNDS Visual Novel Reader for Nintendo DS? It was super. It still is, and now there's an Android version too.

It seems a bit no-strings at first, not much in the way of instructions from within the app itself, but it turns out when you get it going, it works really well!

Useful Links:

• The VNDS site, this is the main site for the DS version - it has some free novels there.
• Discussion boards, to see what's being developed at the moment.
• Weeaboo.nl is the main site for the person who developed the Android VNDS Interpreter app. There are loads of resources here, special Android high-res packs for tablets, and convertors for games you already own. I guess they can't just give away retail games, so there we are - convertors.

At the moment I'm running the convertor for Ever 17. It's taking a while so I'm blogging in the meantime. :)

The process is... install the retail game on PC (which I happen to have right here, all 4 discs...), run the convertor application - which is really friendly and detailed and lets you select whatever screen size and colour depth you think is best for your device, and it not only includes a separate tool to convert the voice data into .wav files but it pops up a dialog box to tell you how to use that tool as well!

There are over 14000 of these little wav files btw, so it's taking ages. I think it's actually converting the .wav files into .ogg files. Ho hum, I think I'll come back when it's done.

One Piece Unlimited Cruise 3DS - watch out!

One Piece Unlimited Cruise first came out on Wii here in Europe a few years ago. A two-part action RPG game, based on the manga / anime series One Piece.

It is the only Wii game I have seen to have its price skyrocket to double its original price like that - copies trading for up to around £80 per part. When the first part came out, it was around £30 and climbed, then the price of the 2nd one was reasonable in preorder... but quickly grew to the same high price levels as the first part. Then the first part got a bit of a reprint, but it only lowered the price for a short while. I managed to snag both parts at a reasonable price, actually buying the 2nd part first!

And then, a few years passed and the 3DS came out. Soon after, I heard of a remake of One Piece Unlimited Cruise for 3DS. When it came out in Japan, it contained parts 1 and 2 redone in 3D and a bonus Marineford mode. Then it was announced that it would be coming to Europe!

Then a limited edition was announced, coming with a funny little Portagas D. Ace figure. For around that same £30 - £35 price mark that most new full-size games are.

So lots of people preordered.

And when it came out.... oh, I noticed a lot of disappointed and angry people reviewing the game on Amazon!

You see, the 3DS European version is completely missing part 2. And it doesn't mention this omission anywhere on the box or anything. People found out by playing it and it finishing all of a sudden, advertising a part 2 which isn't present in the game.

So if anyone is reading this, wondering about buying One Piece Unlimited Cruise on 3DS, well, know what you're getting - it might only be half the game you were expecting!