Games on Nanikore

Pokemon and One Piece

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:08:52 +0000

Just a bit of a random post here, based on a couple of snaps for Pokemon and One Piece. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say photos.

We ordered some pizza the other day from Dominos.jp and it arrived not only in a One Piece box, but also with a free mug! It doesn’t get much better than that for the average One Piece fan.

As I get older and I have kids, I decided to pick up a cheap English language copy of Pokemon Soulsilver for my DS and within the first thirty minutes, what seemed to be an exercise in game grind took and unexpected upswing:

“There’s a large, formidable tree that looks like it can be headbutted!”

You know, you’re right; I should approach more immovable objects with that kind of attitude.

RRoDeathed

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:28:34 +0000

Well, it had to come I suppose. The Xbox 360 I bought in late February 2007 finally Red Ring of Death’d tonight. Actually, it’s been crashing a bit over the last week, but tonight, it’s totally d.e.a.d. or rather RRoDeathed. (Note the second image is a Flickr! video.)

I’ll call them up tonight and see if I can get it replaced before my copy of Dead Space arrives.

City of Heroes, no more.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:01:47 +0000

Just a short post on this - after three and a half years, I’ve finally unsubscribed to the MMORPG City of Heroes’ a grinding level game. I only made it to level 32 with my top character.

alt=“City of Heroes - Obaka lives (but not soon)” caption=“City of Heroes - Obaka lives (but not soon)”

Don’t misunderstand; I think it’s a great game, and would encourage people to go and try it out, whether or not you’re of the super hero inclination. It looks nice, plays well, and most of the other people online are fairly civil and accommodating, which is an absolute revelation after years of playing Counter Strike. Part of my problem has always been that being here in Japan, the population density in my evening was low, as the roaring lion’s share of players are in North America and to a lesser extent, Europe. That means that picking up teams or even partners for missions wasn’t easy when I was on, except at the weekend, which has increasingly become family time.

I would say I really enjoyed it for the first two and a bit years, then I would only play a bit now and again, and last month I just decided to cut my losses, or at least my subscription fee, and cancel it. I had about six characters I would play with because I was more into trying out all the different powers than advancing much higher. Ultimately, in 42 months, I burned 544 hours on it. For stats freaks, and as an example, I clocked up only 18 hours in the last year. Still, that’s an absurd amount of time when I think about it.

So that’s where I am. I won’t be going to WoW, or EVE or any other pay as you go game per se, I’ll be spending what little gaming time I have on shorter term completion projects like console games, solo or co-op, and the odd DS game.

alt=“City of Heroes brawl” caption=“City of Heroes brawl”

Finished: Bioshock

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:58:36 +0000

I finally finished Bioshock; well one of the endings. It was fantastic - definitely worth the time and effort. I played the nice guy and rescued all the Little Sisters. See? I’m not as bad as people would have you believe.

Despite a small amount of grind, this really is a magnificently designed game, where the story keeps you going as much as the action, and there’s just enough twists to keep each level interesting.

I think this is more of a shooter than the strategy 2K were pushing, but that doesn’t detract from the game itself, which looks beautiful, sounds really quite disturbing, and reminds you that not all first person shooters these days are generic. Each level has a slightly different feel to it, with only one of them - Proving Grounds - to be on rails. The rest you’re pretty free to wander, and splicer spawn points don’t feel too orchestrated. The voice acting is excellent too, and there’s some very nice set pieces, and some nice voice diaries next to set up rooms. The water effects truly were excellent all the way through, but so was the fire, and even the electrical bolts didn’t look too cheesy. This has definitely been the best looking game on the 360 for me so far. Even better than Gears of War.

It’s a shame there wasn’t any multi-player, as the level design is very tight, but since the single player goes on for about twenty hours, you wont regret the outlay in time or money. Maybe the designers felt that multi-player would’ve diluted the mythology of the game itself.

Bye Bye Mr. Bubbles.

Tokyo Game Show 2007

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:21:23 +0000

I managed to drag myself to Makuhari Messe yesterday for the final day of the Tokyo Game Show 2007. I’ve uploaded a few pics here to add to the thousands already on the net. Overall I thought it was OK. Not fantastic, but OK, and worth the trip and the 1,000yen entrance fee (1,200 on the door).

I’m getting kind of tired of watching Metal Gear Solid previews and CG films, I just wish they would finally release it. Nintendo did pretty well considering they weren’t officially at the show, judging by how many stands has DS and Wii games; Microsoft had a good booth, though the ‘Games for Windows’ section looked bare (Crysis being the star and only on a couple of stations), but more than ever this was a console and mobile gaming show.

Also, the cosplay section between the two main halls was as ever, amazing, impressive and only a little disturbing, but star prize goes to the Katamari cosplayers. Roll on!

Bioshock[ed]

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:10:30 +0000

I’ve been playing Bioshock on the 360 for the last few days, and yes, it is ‘just a shooter’, but the style of it is very well executed - an alternate reality 1950s gone amok with DNA splicing at the bottom of the ocean, in Rapture. Truly I am Bioshock[ed]. Sry.

Perhaps somewhat steampunk; the sound effects, voice acting and everything are superb, better than the graphics for impact.

That said the water effects are very impressive if a little uneven - for every impressive cascading torrent of water down a staircase, there’s a rather dull looking ‘wave’ effect through some of the windows. Anyway, I’m about three hours into it and we’ll see if they’ve managed to keep it as taught till the end. I’m kind of hoping to see Cthulu in the last level as some kind of demented boss, but maybe not.

Parallels may be drawn to games such as FEAR, but this takes it much further than that game, which I found a rather overrated, one trick pony. Still the two games, on the PC at least, share the loathsome SecuROM system of copy protection.

Finished: Katamari Damacy

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 04:18:34 +0000

I just finished Katama r i Damacy on the PS2 [ English link] which a friend [LH] lent me a month or two ago. It’s a great little game, and since it’s been out a while, you might be able to pick it up cheap. Basically, you roll a ball around a home, then town, then country then world, picking up objects, which as your ball gets bigger, means you can pick up bigger objects. On each level, you have to achieve a certain size in a set time, or pick up a certain number of types of objects to complete the level.

The game itself is made in a very funky style with great tunes, weird sound effects, and a bizarre cartoon story between each level. It’s definitely a game you can burn a few hours away with on a rainy afternoon. Though not a very long game in itself, it as a lot of fun to go from rolling small erasers and such on the first level, to rolling Fuji-san and Godzilla in the last level to make a new moon.

Fortunately, last month Namco released the sequel " Minna Daisuki Katamari" (English title is" We love Katamari") which I’ve already bought, so now it’s time to get stuck into that!

Finished: Half Life 2 - Lost Coast*

Sun, 22 Jan 2006 02:10:21 +0000

The best thing about asterisks [*] in titles is that they convey this: ‘There’s something else you need to know about this statement which will probably lessen the impact and therefore we want to hide it away at the bottom of the page in a tiny font, which you either wont go looking for, or wont find’. So, in that theme, here’s the caveat for those who don’t know, Half Life 2 - The Lost Coast is a single level, and more than that, it’s a technology demo to boot, in this case, for Valve’s implementation of High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting effects.

I say their implementation, because other game engines have done it differently. Bit-Tech did a nice summary of the Valve system, and why it’s different to say, Far Cry here. Basically, HDR makes bright things look brighter, adds contrast, and gives you that ‘blinded’ feeling when you do from a dark to light area, which of course in me provokes random gun fire in all directions, which I think is a left over from playing too much Counter Strike.

Tech bits aside, it’s just a level, and a short one at that. After I stopped playing with the HDR and looking around, you can finish the level in about 30 mins. Seriously, there’s not much to it, it’s a fairly straight HL2 level-ette. Where it does score is via it’s HDR as you might expect, the church at the top of the cliff looks amazing inside, really nice. One other interesting feature though is that in the options panel for the level, you can select ‘commentary’ and when you start the game, there are several small speech bubbles dotted around which you can activate and listen to one of the design team explaining how and why they did things the way they did. I have to say that I quite like this, kind of like the director’s commentary on a DVD. You should definitely try this after you finish the level, but it is pretty funny shooting Combine troops through little which spinning speech bubbles.

OK, so given my enormous lack of gaming talent, I’m claiming this as my first ‘finish’ of 2006. Lost Coast will also pave the way not just for HDR on the Steam engine, but also for Valve’s ’episodic’ release of chapters extending HL2, paid for and distributed via Steam - not full games, but chapters. The first of these will be ‘Aftermath’, and though I don’t know how much it’ll cost, I’m already wondering whether I’ll be buying into this system.

Palm Space Trader

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 06:17:42 +0000

In these days of PSPs, Nintendo DSs and all that, it says something that my favourite portable game right now is on my Palm. I’ve been playing Space Trader on and off for about 3 years. It’s just what it says it is: a space trading game for the Palm where you have skill scores and buy sell, fight and flee around a galaxy trying to get as much cash as you can to retire. Just a note then that it’s been updated to version 1.2.2, which since I’m running the three year old version 1.2, I’ll be upgrading to. The news page for the game is here.

My tip: don’t get the tribbles. They’re a pain in the neck to get rid of although it’s a great Star Trek in joke.

Palm Space Trader

Tokyo Game Show 2005

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 07:14:03 +0000

Yesterday I went down to Makuhari Messe to check out the last day of the Tokyo Game Show 2005. The big events this year were the XBox 360 as it ramps to launch in a couple of months, and a preview of the PS3, due out in about 6 months.

Overall, I think the Xbox outflanked Sony on the home console side. It was obvious that Sony had virtually no games ready to preview and relied heavily on CG rendered movies, especially for Metal Gear Solid 4, which ran to nearly 10 minutes, but which featured virtually no in game footage, though Sony claimed the movie used the game engine.

Despite it’s revelation of the Revolution controller on Friday (Press Day), Nintendo didn’t really have a presence, leaving Sony a clear run on the handhelds, which they took, offering ‘shared versions’ of some upcoming games, providing you had the 2.0 firmware in, and if you didn’t you could download that there and then too. I’m still yet to be impressed with a lot of PSP titles - many are badly shoe-horned PS2 titles, and often don’t take account or advantage of the mobile form factor. However, Metal Gear Acid 2 looked interesting, as did Puposaru Academy 2. DS owners can at least look forward to ‘Akachan wa doko kara kuru no?’ (literally, ‘where do babies come from?’. To be honest, It looked more like a variant of the dating games which are getting more and more popular.

Of course, the booth girls were there, and provided a good distraction to their legions of fans, whilst others tried to squeeze past to actually check the games out. Of course there were the amateur cosplay people there too, as usual holding court between the two halls, and as usual they ranked from amazingly authentic to wacky, to just downright odd (the girl in the junior high school swimsuit - I’m talking to you).

Anyway, I’ll stick a full review up on Brightblack.net at some point. Needless to say, it’s always worth going and all the more so as it’s only 1000yen if you get a ticket before hand, so it’s quite a cheap day out.

2005 Tokyo Game Show

PSP vs. DS (Part 1 of many)

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:52:08 +0000

I’ve been kind of avoiding this topic as the office has been buzzing with it for weeks.

I’ve played with both for a couple of hours each, and as many have pointed out, they’re both great, but for wildly different reasons.

The PSP has a great single screen, and is virtually a portable PS2, it’s only drawback being a weak battery, but it’s swappable, so that’s not too bad. Video playback on my friend’s PSP he downloaded to MS looked good, but where is the ability to record to the UMD, or connect to the web via Wi-Fi?

The DS, despite it’s wrong-headed ‘Game and Watch’ (too old to catch many I suspect) design has 2 screens, one being the touch screen, which is gagging for RPGs and some dodgy mahjong games. Also, an oft overlooked feature of the DS is that it can hold a GBA and a DS game at once, so effectively having 2 games in there to play at any time - that’s a lot of Zelda.

Personally, I judge a console by games, not spec, and so far there’s nothing I want right now - Ridge Racers bored me in handheld format after about 10 minutes just like every other version of it. Same goes on the DS … Mario 64, great. I finished that on the 64 and learned hiragana in the process.

In summary, I’m waiting to see what new games come out, and how each company tweaks their hardwares’ feature set. I think the PSP has the sex appeal, but the DS is just so odd, it might pull out the more interesting games, after all, a great home game may not make a great mobile game.

As for Microsoft, the X-Pod will be out next week, dual Pentium 4 with er…40gb hard drive built in, ATI X800XT graphics and er…a gig of RAM but if you buy another mobile console before then you can’t buy an X-Pod. They’ll be designing this to look like a novelty VCR too.

Snowboard owari :(

Wed, 26 Mar 2003 01:18:24 +0000

Well, that was the final weekend of snowboarding for the season - snowboard owari! Two days at Joetsu kokusai in Niigata. The weather was beautiful, such that not only could I snowboard in a T-shirt, but I could get a nice pink sunburn effect too (despite my massive application of sun-cream).

I’m seriously thinking of going to New Zealand later this year to get MORE snowboarding - maybe Mt. Hutt this time. Good NZ snow site here. A couple of years ago I went to a small club ski field called Temple Basin near Christchurch, staying in a wooden cabin hanging off the side of a mountain, and have to say that I had a great time.

I must stop playing C&C Generals too actually… check here…. Maybe it’s not tasteful playing a war game in the middle of the middle-east situation, but I can’t see it making it any worse either.