Oh look, another gaming blog.

So what am I playing?

Mostly, I've been playing lots of games for a short while each: grazing, one could say. A mixture of being busy with other things, low attention span at present and drifting from game to game.


On the PC

Aside from the various contents of the Humble Indie Bundle, my PC gaming focus has been scattered with the usual Minecraft making an appearance here and there, particularly when I'm semi-distracted and thinking about/watching other things (mostly I'm invading others' servers to poke around their creations).

For a bit of destressing and distraction, I was playing a bit of Zen Bound 2. It's an indie 'puzzler' game that's meant to be something calm and relaxing to play. I say puzzle game in the loosest sense: you have a wood carving of something that has beads of paint on nails sticking out at various points. Attached to it is a rope which you wind around it (by spinning and rotating the carving with your mouse) that splashes paint where it touches the surfaces, and also triggers the paint blobs. You complete a level by covering a carving in at least 95% paint. It's a weird little game that doesn't hold my attention for too long but for a change of pace it's very nifty. Out now on Steam.



On the other end of the spectrum is the action-packed and fast-paced Diablo-clone dungeon crawler RPG known as Torchlight: it has a cutesy graphics scheme, game play and music almost entirely ripped off from Diablo II but overall is quite polished if somewhat easy. There's a mod to allow multiplayer but it's quite buggy, sadly. Where Diablo II is hardcore, Torchlight is much more casual gamer friendly. Where Diablo II has 7 classes, Torchlight has 3. Where Diablo II has hired mercenaries, Torchlight has pet wolves/lynxes that can nip off to sell your junk whilst you continue to bash through a dungeon. It's a nifty little game but it's nothing groundbreaking. A native multiplayer option would increase its interest and longevity enormously.





Finally, I seemed to have acquired a copy of Breath of Death VII through Steam and after ignoring it for a while decided to fire it up on a whim, not having read anything about it. Immediately I was entertained at it's faux-8bit (with bits of up to 16bit!) graphics, the tropes and stereotypes that are at once both gleefully hammed up and spun on their heads and the incongruously modern music. The gameplay is classic RPG with convenience added, like being able to run without having to collect a magic item, being able to pick a fight whenever instead of running round in circles on the world map waiting for a random encounter, MP regain being a function of how few turns it takes to kill stuff and leveling up giving you an option to pick one of two extra sets of stat bonuses. The dialogue is brilliant and every moment (so far) has been a giant tongue-in-cheek parody of every 8 and 16bit RPG I've ever played. Absolute gold and well well worth the price on Steam.



On the 3DS

I have to admit that in my 'ooh shiny new toy!' phase of Droid ownership, my poor 3DS has taken a back seat. Aside from regular maintenance of my Streetpass Plaza and Pokedex, I've had a bit of a play with Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, one of the first Dragon Quest games released outside of Japan. As I got past the pompously orchestral opening theme it brought back that warm 'n' fuzzy retrogame feeling as it harked back to the 16bit RPGs of yore. None of this was a surprise, however, given it was originally released for the SNES back in 1995 and re-released for the (regular) DS in May 2011. It's a classic Japanese RPG and so far has been quite fun to play.





On the Android

My Snes9x EX revival continues almost unabated, hampered only by the slight awkwardness of the sensitive touch controls. I'm slowly getting the hang of it but it's taking time as I'm used to lightly resting my thumbs on the controllers as default with button pressing being the application of a bit of force. I'm avoiding twitcher games for the moment for this reason.


To the future!

I'm eying up the potential expansion of Minecraft for the 'Droid. Currently it's only for the Sony Xperia Play phones which is a huge shame as there's plenty of Android phones out there that have the power to pull it off and it's all because of this exclusivity deal that the rest of us have to wait. No word on an iOS version as yet.

From the earliest days of the Nintendo Game Boy, I've been a fan of handheld gaming. Travelling around London is an endurance test for children and commuters alike and the entertainment offered much needed respite and interaction. Sneaking it into school in my bag and using the old linkup cable to duel others at breaktime used to be a favourite past-time of mine and to my credit I was only ever caught once.

My best friend pursuaded her parents to buy her a Sega Game Gear when they were released and after my initial jealousy was overtaken by curiosity, I was satisfied to find it's games were mostly lacklustre and battery life was horrible. An Atari Lynx was the pride and joy of one of the boys in my class but it was heavy and clunky, with over-hyped games to boot. I didn't budge from my position when the new wave of slimmer, coloured case Game Boys hit and even the Game Boy Colour didn't impress me enough to begin the long negotiations with my parents to acquire one. Besides which, by then I was a total SNES head and eagerly awaiting further news of the Super CD. I could live with the ol' classic handheld when out and about.

The Game Boy Advance was the first to budge me from my trench, translucent casing and all. Handheld SNES - win! By then, Nintendo was in full handheld refinement swing and was releasing a new model every other year; limited editions, different shapes, different colours, smaller, bigger, backlit, frontlit, folding and so on (most notable of which was the popular Game Boy Advance SP) finally culminating in the Game Boy Micro. A business model they've kept up to this day. My cynical side kept me using that old GBA unit for years until after Sony had entered the console market and Sega bowed out. By this time, the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP were here.

I really rather liked the DS with it's touchscreen and dual screen capability because I could instantly see all sorts of uses for it to provide a different gaming experience. The PSP continued along the upping power and graphics stakes whilst Nintendo took a step to the left. I was gifted with a blue DS chunky not long before the DS Lite was released and was happy about it because in my opinion, the DS lite looked like it was some plastic thing found at the bottom of a cereal box (or would be if they hadn't banned cereal box toys as being a health and saferty hazard) and couldn't play my GBA games.

That ol' blue brick served me well through the DS Lite, the DSi and the DSi XL years until finally the next step was taken and Nintendo announced the 3DS.

3-D handheld gaming sounded to me like a total gimmick. 3-D vid cards needed glasses and the prototype 3D TVs demanded you sit pretty still in order to see the effects. I was moderately intrigued but most of the hype passed me by. That is, until I got the chance to test one out shortly before christmas 2010: I was hooked. The displays were clear, the stylus was a lot less crappy than the original DS stylus and above all the 3D effects were very robust. My only major complaint was the introduction of region locking, in my opinion a real downer but not enough to put me off the handheld entirely.

I eagerly awaited it's official release in April and I remember that hot and sunny friday well as I took an extended lunchbreak to snap up the last Aqua unit in the square mile. If I'm out of the house, it comes with me; London being packed full of people, I'm almost guaranteed a Streetpass hit once I hit the tube. Think I'm up to 74 Miis I've met by Streetpass wireless, mostly on my commute. It's such a daft thing, but it's funny to see what people have come up with (the best one I've collected is a scarily accurate Admiral Ackbar), to trade puzzle pieces and to take part in the incredibly silly castle adventure. That sort of thing isn't normally my style but for some reason I've found it compelling...
The 3D camera is fun. Low resolution but some of the images I've got have captured the depth of a scene extremely well. The wireless setup is mostly easy to use if a bit short range, and the Opera-based web browser is quite alright though nothing to write home about.

Most of all, the 3D function itself works extremely well in my view; my eyes 'lock in' very easily to find the 3D and I can move the DS around without losing the 3D depth unless it's a sudden sharp jolt. It's certainly enough to deal with average bumping about on the bus, but not if it gets smacked by someone's elbow. I've used mine a ton so far and not had eyestrain issues, so I've no idea where the 'OMG MY EYES R BLEEDING!!1!' fuss came from.

The biggest downside is battery consumption. In sleep mode it's fine and will last ages even with the occasional infrared pulse for Streetpass. The annoyance is if it's suspended because a game is on pause, or it's connecting over wifi even if you're not actively using the wifi function. Other irritations include original DS games not suspending if you want to hop to the Home menu - you have to quit out, strong light glaring off the glassy screens and the aforementioned region locking. But aside from those, I less-than-three my 3DS easily as much as I did my original ol' Game Boy.


So, is that a 3DS?



I play on my commute, and over quiet lunchtimes in a shaded spot. I get asked now and then if the blue thing I'm playing with is a 3DS, usually followed up with a request to look at the 3D. On the release day as I was standing on the northbound Northern Line platform at Bank on my way home, I had no fewer than 3 people come over and ask me questions about it. I've succeeded in getting the 3D effect in action to work for everyone who's asked too. Yesterday, a young girl in a wheelchair squealed in delight when she saw me sitting on a bench playing with it, having instantly recognised what it was a mile off, and after I'd demonstrated it to her with Ghost Recon was begging her mother to buy her one. Heh, oops... It seems as if people are intrigued at what the 3D effect looks like, and often are surprised that they don't have to wear 3D glasses in order to see it. It amuses me at any rate.

And now I'm off home, hopefully collecting another Mii on the way...