March 30, 2009

Why I’m Becoming a DS Pirate

When I went to Japan last year and asked the girl working at the hostel to help me translate the menu screens of my newly purchased Japanese version of Tetris DS, she asked “why did you buy the Japanese version?” I explained that this was no longer available in the U.S., and Tetris is the same in any language.

“You should just get an R4,” she told me.

I’ve never been secretive about the fact that I download music like crazy. All I do these days is illegal downloading and buying vinyl. There’s hardly any CDs in my present, and even fewer in my future. That said, I’ve always been anti-pirating when it comes to videogames. It’s always seemed like too much work? I’ve always felt dirty about it for some reason? I can’t explain why this is so, but I’ve never pirated a game before.

Until now.

And here’s why.

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Filed under State of the Blog

March 10, 2009

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

To start this review, I’m going to quote my review of the original Puzzle Quest game for DS:

Puzzle Quest: This one had me seeing circles for weeks! This is an RPG, but instead of fighting with swords, you fight with Bejeweled. Brilliant! The story is so bad, I was just begging for opportunities to skip past it, but the actual battles were puzzlerific! And the system to get new spells and character upgrades was fantastic. I beat this game, collected all the spells, captured all the monsters, and realized I would never play it again. So to eBay it went. But before then, I had a great time with it.

So if you read that last sentence, it says I had a great time with it before it went on eBay. Puzzle Quest Galactrix is going on eBay before having a great time with it. There’s no great time to be had here.

This game moves along so incredibly slowly. To get from one puzzle to the next takes 2-3 minutes. There’s a load time (a load time on a DS game!), the autosave, the incredibly poor navigation system, and the crap story. This is just miserable.

Then there’s the gameplay itself which is really clunky. There’s a mode where you race against time, and you have to wait for a couple of seconds after your previous move to make your next move. And the puzzle pieces break so slowly, which also counts against your time. If you’re in a battle, and you make a mistake, you lose your turn. At one point, I was trying to move a piece in the middle of my screen, and the game had some sort of bug that always made me choose a piece that was far away from where I was pointing. Finally, I chose a different piece and it moved the right one. Was this thing playtested?

I just hate this game. I hate playing it. I hate the look of it, the feel of it, and the speed of it. I am never playing this thing again.

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Filed under Puzzle Games

February 27, 2009

I’ve been listening to this album a lot.

Wordle: Titus Andronicus

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January 22, 2009

Prince of Persia and I both suck

I recently got a PS3, and while I’ve been sucking at other games, I’m still working through them so I’ll comment on those later. I did, however, get Prince of Persia from Gamefly (quick before I cancel this crappy service again), and I’m ready to report on it.

I hate it; it hates me.

When I played Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for the OXB (Original X-Box — can we see if this acronym catches on?), I was defeated by that game’s awful camera. You’d be running across some wall, or leaping across some gap, and the camera would change angles just enough to have me fall to my death. The good news on Prince of Persia for PS3? You can’t die. The bad news? The camera changes angles just enough to have me nearly fall to my death.

This whole “you can’t die” thing supposedly makes this game easy, and yeah it really does. The combat is lame button mashing, and if you do manage to “die,” the character you’re traveling with will pull you out of death with her magic. What’s the point in that?

And the bits stolen from other games? Hello! Upon defeating a boss, you refertilize fertile lands (or something equally lame) by bringing color and flowers back to the world. The cut scene is basically a less artistic bite of Okami. What’s the point? If I want to do that, I’ll play Okami. It’s a better game.

As for the dialogue, oh goodness gracious, it hurts. If you can handle it, you can see what I mean in this video, part of a series that shows the entire game being played all the way through.

I don’t think this would be the worst game I could play right now, but I definitely don’t intend to finish it. It’s going back in the mail today.

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Filed under Adventure Games

January 3, 2009

Gordon’s Best Music of 2008

Every year, I produce a Best Of list for the albums of the year, and every year I have to talk about how I make my selections. In a year where the Fleet Foxes are appearing near the top of everyone’s list, I think I should emphasize my criteria. I chose albums based on what I not only liked to listen to during the past year, but what I’m really likely to continue listening to. I think the Fleet Foxes album is excellent; it’s very pretty. But for something to really touch me, I have to know I am going to keep on singing, dancing or playing my drums along with the album for some time to come.

This is always the longest thing I write every year. Comments of “tl;dr” will not be appreciated.

I also do this thing where I don’t choose my favorite album of the year until two years later. Maybe I haven’t heard it yet! I don’t have time to buy pirate every album that comes out during a year. So look for bonus content at the end, where I select my favorite album of 2006. The 2008 albums–11 of them–are listed in alphabetical order by artist.

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October 12, 2008

Before I leave Japan, a moment of Zen

Daily Show style for sure …

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October 2, 2008

Living Arcade Mania!

Edamame Toy!

As reported previously, I went to a book launch party for a book called Arcade Mania, which is subtitled “The Turbo-Charged World of Japan’s Game Centers.” I’ve finished this book, and then used what I learned inside to go look around the game centers of Tokyo. I’m going to follow the format of the book, and report on my experiences with these games as a gonzo-style review of sorts of the book. As the book is sorted by game type, I’ll be sorting by the exact same format. Inside, we’ll find details on:

1. Crane Games
2. Sticker-Picture Machines
3. Rhythm Games
4. Shooting Games
5. Fighting Games
6. Games of Chance
7. Dedicated Cabinets
8. Retro Games
9. Card-Based Games

Warning: there is a lot of gaming content within. I suggest reading it anyway, even if you’re not interested, because there is also a lot of Japan content within. Now join me as I game in Japan!

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Filed under Japan, Rhythm Games

October 2, 2008

A Quick Update From the Heart of the City

Hi all of you readers back in the states, and welcome to any International visitors!

Joel gave me a great idea. He said I should write a mailbag column where I answer people’s questions about Japan. This is a great idea. Now I just need some darned questions. Comment them below, please, and I will answer them in a future post.

Here’s some questions I’ve already received:

Gordon from Oakland asks, “How can the streets be so clean when it’s impossible to find a trash can?” That’s a great question, Gordon! I have absolutely no idea. There’s no litter, yet if I have something to throw away, I need to carry it around with me for an hour until I find a place to toss it. That’s the trick, apparently. Japanese people simply cart their trash around with them until they have an opportunity to throw it away.

Gordon from Oakland asks, “How crazy are the vending machines anyway?” Not really that crazy, Gordon, at least not that I’ve seen. There are certainly a lot of them, both for drinks and cigarettes, and the number of brands and varieties of water-based drinks and coffee drinks is staggering. Also, some of the machines have both hot and cold drinks, which is really neat. My favorite thing to buy out of a vending machine is plain old bottled water. Got to keep myself hydrated with all of the walking I’ve been doing.

OK, now let’s get some questions from someone other than Gordon!

Today I went to the Tokyo National Museum, which was a very nice museum, but I was pretty bored pretty quickly. The coolest stuff in there was the Kofun burial sculptures. When I get my camera hooked up to my Mac, I may add a photo if one came out. They keep it awfully dark in the museum, and no flash photography is allowed, natch.

I’m at the Apple Store in Ginza right now, and I am using a Japanese keyboard. What this means is that a lot of the punctuation is in the wrong place, if I type an incorrect key I switch the keyboard to Japanese, and worst of all, the space bar is REALLY tiny. It makes it difficult to type. So that’s going to be the whole post.

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October 1, 2008

Free Seating? Sweet!

Asahi!

Finding Jingu Stadium, where the Tokyo Yakult Swallows were playing the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, was easy enough. I just got off of the train station and followed the row of food vendors toward the bright lights in the distance. I still had no clue how to go about getting tickets, but I was about to get a great deal of help.

“Are you going to the Swallows game?” asked a British child who could clearly see I was seeming a bit confused. I replied that I was, and he and his brother told me — both decked out in their full Swallows gear — that they were also going. I asked about tickets. They said I could sit close up, but the cheapest seats are the Swallows Free Seating. Free tickets! Nice.

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September 30, 2008

Let’s Talk Sumo!

I really wanted to see Sumo, so I ended up paying an agency an extra $25 on top of the ticket price ($35) to get the tickets. I had tickets in the second-to-last row. Sophranes, from Cypress, really wanted to see Sumo, so he left the hostel at 7:30, walked to the Sumo venue (about 15 minutes from this hostel), paid $21, and sat in the last row. Oh well. I was even up when he left!

The bouts start with the lowest class of rikishi, and work their way upwards. When the first group is going, there is hardly anyone there. 300-400 tops. So they let us go down to the very very front. We sat only a few feet away, and boy are these guys huge! You think I’m huge?

Anyway, there is a lot of ceremony for a very short bout. Some of them last a few seconds tops. In the second level, called Juryo, the guy who won beat his opponent in about 2 seconds. He just stepped backwards and tossed the guy down. This was one of the times the fans laughed. Laughed! I must say that this was the most surprising thing about this event: the fans did not act like I expected. They basically cheer for the popular wrestlers, but it seems no one is even paying attention most of the time.

The funniest part of the entire event was the awards ceremony. Hakuho, the champion, is given some awards. It starts with the Emperor’s Cup, which is gigantic. Then there’s another trophy. And another. And a proclamation. And more trophies. Then there was a giant hookah. Then there was a statue of a cow on a pedastal. A huge line-up of Japanese men in dark suits were presenting these trophies. Then a representative from Toyota gave him a truck to take home all of his trophies! (No, not really.)

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