10.18.06
Posted in Reviews, UK at 11:13 am by yuka
On E4 last night (11pm), they showed a BAFTA for games. “Games are increasingly becoming mainstream” and hence, they felt that doing such award ceremonies (sponsored by PCWorld) was positive. Yeah, right. We watched it, and no justice to games was done whatsoever.
How many times did we hear “Games are for geeks” kind of commentary! Surely the successes of Nintendogs, Animal Crossing and many MMORPGs got so many girls interested in gaming itself? But no, none of these ever got even a mention. Oh hang on… the only online game to get a mention and an award for Best Online category was Dungeons & Dragons… good, but hardly the best, according to gamers. And would you vote Ghost Recon as the Best Game?
No, this whole “we are open to gaming and gamers” farce was sheer perpetration of aggressive marketing and nothing more. How very disappointing that games do not yet get the recognition they deserve in this country.
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08.19.06
Posted in Japanese, News, Reviews at 6:10 am by yuka
That Cooking cartridge I mocked earlier on… apologies Nintendo, I was wrong! Got it, scanned through it, and now ready to start cooking with it. Wonder if there’ll be sequels, preferably in the form of Japanese sweets… Meanwhile, my other half is hooked on his two Bit Generation games. Due to its popularity, most of them were sold out, but checking some smaller stores proved fruitful.
Mario Basketball 3on3 was surprisingly difficult to get hold of. After trawling through several shops, I located one – yep, that popular this game is proving to be. It’s actually quite playable after getting to grips with the occasionally temperamental controls, and of course, you can unlock all those Square Enix characters… Play it like Mario Kart basically.
Site translation is needed, methinks. From top to bottom, left column, then right column: What is Mario Basketball 3on3?, Game mode, Battle mode 3on3, Other Battle modes, (then ‘Coming soon’ at the bottom… so over onto right column) Character, Item and Court, Introduction movie, TV ad. Click on the bottom screen of the mock DS to start a trailer. There are quite a few characters and items to unlock, by the looks of the site and the game itself, so plenty of playing time – well worth the money (4,800yen = approx. £24). Actually, anything that’s got Moogle in it, is worth the money.
Talking of Moogle, FF III is due out on 24th this month for the DS. Looks good. If you are lucky enough to be staying in Japan at the right time (and you have the required linguistic skills), you have the option of reservation. Obviously, a lot of promotional stuff will be out at the same time, so get yourself something before you have to bid for them on eBay.
On that note, I’m going to cuddle up to my cuddly Yoshi and Rabi.
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02.27.06
Posted in Online gaming, Reviews, UK at 5:09 pm by yuka
As first impressions go, it’s not a bad game. Those Ticket Agents are way too cute. I sat staring at them for a good five minutes…
Done in the style of a Japanese anime, I thought. Lo and behold, it’s by Koreans – ‘manhwa’ then. So obviously, cute characters, rather than sexy or macho or anything in between. I am still a bit put out though that you can’t have a female Accretian (robot people). After being used to WoW and Guild Wars, it does feel a bit tame – lots of killing monsters, not much in the way of plots: runs along the line of ‘as long as you kill lots, you’ll get the xp and level easily’. Still, money is easy enough to come by, by going to the vendors, so no one there is asking ‘Plz giv me sum money’ like in SW or IF, thankfully. Plus, if you can get through the tutorial without the whole thing crashing (it kept on crashing for me), it’s fairly easy to play.
But… as ever, there is a huge ‘But’…there can be some stuff that’s fairly irritating. If you think you can ignore them, play by all means.
1) What happened to the translation process?! It’s not so much bad translation as bad organisation, actually. Words are chopped randomly because there isn’t enough space on the line – and that’s without using hyphens. It does make reading the channels a chore. (I can appreciate how that happened, but I’m sure the game translators aren’t that blind as to think Roman Alphabet works the same way as one of our Oriental scripts!)
2) The chat itself… well, depending on the servers as much as what race you quest with, they can be somewhat trying. ‘W00t’, ‘lol’, ‘leet’, ‘noob’ – none of these terms should be used in excess. Anywhere. I mean for fuck’s sake, if someone’s new to the game and asks a simple question (like where a particular item may be bought), it’s only fair to answer them rather than taunt them with repeated cries of ‘noob’ and ‘I’m so glad I was never a noob’… how inane is that? So far, the most helpful of the races to play with has been Accretians, though admittedly the range of names made me laugh – c’mon, Gundam-related ones?
3) Don’t play as Rangers… until the game makers fix that bug where none of the purple items can be used (affects all guns and bows). That just sucks.
I’ll have to see if this is a game that I can really get into though. Got a 30day free pass, so might as well. Community is just as important as plots et al, I believe, so if that’s going to be letting me down every time I log on, well, needless to say, I’ll be looking out for better communities in other games.
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01.30.06
Posted in Japanese, Links, News, Reviews at 3:11 pm by yuka
The Okami site has been upgraded – go to the last tab that has 戦闘 written on it, and the third and fourth pages will have clickable movies for the character’s moves.
Baten Kaitos II has a new site up. From left: Story, Characters, Battle, Movie. It’ll be out 23rd Feb. for approx. £34 for the GC. It’ll need 6 memory blocks, and is playable by one only.
Lost Magic translation then. From left: Summary, World View, Story, How to play, Battle, Character, Creatures… second row, from left: Novel, and Gallery.
Story: A world where the Creator has already died. The Creator passed away but left 6 ‘magic’s and 7 staves. The staves were long held by the wise men of the world and was passed from master to apprentice and so on. Over a thousand years had passed since the death when this story begins. All that had gone wrong over the years, the boy (main character) will have to set right, by using the magics and the stave left him.
Character: 3 main characters on the right, 7 characters they meet on the way at bottom.
This game has been out since 19th Jan. on the DS for approx. £25 (Action RPG/1-2 player) and seems to be quite popular. It is well noted that the DS touch screen usage is much in evidence in game-play (draw a ‘rune’ or two to perform magic), and it can be played over the Wi-fi connection, albeit, up to two players. You never know… it might make it outside Japan. From what can be divulged from the interview (from Nintendo Inside), the world and characters are done with the help of Yoshiharu Sato (art director) who has helped make many of the Ghibli films successful. One to watch out for, perhaps?
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12.07.05
Posted in Japanese, Reviews at 12:14 pm by yuka
My countrymen has a special place in their hearts for ‘things that go with gadgetry’. So obviously they had to get all excited by the Soft Jacket for GBMicro sooner or later. Comes in 6 colours: black, clear, blue, green, orange and pink; and costs £6.
Thanks to my boyfriend for getting me well acquainted with these cute flash games, I can’t get enough of them. In between my various daily activities, I find myself going back to it to find a better combination. The Grow RPG especially is entertaining in its slightly tricky way. Still with no DS, Zookeeper (flash version) nonetheless keeps me happy enough.
Obviously being the mischief maker that he is, he also introduced me to a dodgy Zelda ad from the ’80s. With acute embarassment, I’ve managed to translate the jist of it – don’t expect me to translate in rap-fashion however!
“Legend of Zelda is out soon, Adventure is gorgeous, Experience is real, And loads of puzzle-solving action. Don’t ever hesitate (your next move) and have fun on the Super Famicon. Careful! There it is! Go Link!”
Adventure is gorgeous?! The Japanese have had a history of mangling words but, “Oh my, no”… to quote Professor Farnsworth.
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10.25.05
Posted in Online gaming, Reviews at 7:01 am by yuka
After leaving everything on all night, it’s finally ready to play, and so I’ve spent the last hour or so happily figuring out my somewhat rusty City of Heroes techniques. Yep, it’s pretty much the same (so far). You don’t have those faithful citizens cowering in terror or thanking you for saving their lives however, and the background is aptly lacking in colour. And of course, instead of beating up the thugs, you get to batter giant snakes and (possibly well-meaning) officials and guards.
Obviously this is just a first impression (of a Beta to boot), but I feel that there needs to be something fundamentally different to Heroes for it to be a success in its own right. I’ll play it some more of course, and I hope that I won’t tire of its simplicity too soon to go back to (inevitably) Warcraft Online.
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