deKay's Gaming Diary

What’s this? A game that isn’t on the Wii? Amazing!

It’s been around for a while, but for several reasons I never picked it up. I saw it for under £12 this week though, so couldn’t resist.

And, like every other “Metroidvania” game ever, it’s excellent. So far at least – I’m only about an hour in.

It differs to most others by not being almost entirely set within Dracula’s Castle. I’ve not even been near it yet. This makes for more variety in the “levels” (yeah, they’re pretty much levels rather than one huge map now), which is a good thing.

It does feel like an amalgamation of the ideas behind earlier Castlevania titles – the levels are a bit like Portrait of Ruin’s paintings and the glyphs are akin to Soma’s soul-catching from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow. Which isn’t a complaint, as they’re some of the best bits of recent games.

121 puzzles in, and I have just completed the story. There’s loads left to do, of course, but the main bit is done.

Since this is the first entry in my diary for this game, I should probably say I’ve only been playing it for a week or so. I got it for Christmas with $hlmun other games, so I didn’t play it right away.

It’s very much the same as the first game. There seem to be fewer puzzles of certain types (eg chess based, “one of these is a liar” and matchstick ones) and more solitaire based ones, but it’s not a vast departure. There’s a big improvement in the UI, in that there is now a menu function where you can write over the puzzle – very handy for maze based and maths puzzles.

I’m not sure I liked the big reveal near the end, where the mystery of the town was explained, but then, the same silliness was in the first game.

I’ll be picking off the remaining puzzles and tasks soon!

I’ve just completed this. And it was aces. The story was a proper GTA story, the missions were proper GTA missions, and the feel was proper GTA.

It was probably easier than most previous games in the series, but that wasn’t a problem. It was just GTA in your hand, and that’s excellent.

It would actually appear that the point I saved at yesterday was actually immediately before the final conversation in the game, so technically I completed it then.

It took me ages (a couple of months, I think) to finish, but it’s not through lack of interest – more lack of time. I played it for 20 to 30 minutes a night, most nights, for that time.

Anyway, the verdict on the game? Excellent. It’s Phoenix Wright only different only the same. Only different. That doesn’t make sense unless you’ve played it.

Most of the loose ends were tied up in the last bit of the game, although some new questions were opened up in the final section. There’d best be a sequel!

Played a bit more of this over the week, and I’m now into the first day’s trial of the fourth (and, I believe, final) case. I’m really hoping for some expansion of the Phoenix Wright/Seven Years Ago backstory here, because being drip-fed tantalising snippits of it is driving me nuts (in a good way!).

I finished the first case, which yes, was pretty short. It didn’t really explain a lot about Phoenix and Trucy, but I expect later cases will do that.

Now I’m onto the second case, and have done all the pre-trial investigations, and am cross-examining the witness, who is a stuck-up student. I think he did it. Maybe.

I’ve had this for aaaaages, but haven’t played it. Then I forgot I had it. Then, this week, I was looking for something I could play for reasonably short bursts on my DS and I stumbled across it on my shelf. Game get!

And, it’s more of the same. Only different. Sort of. The first trial is more tutorial than anything else, but it has some Phoenix Wright backstory, introduces Apollo, and implicates his mentor. So, quite a bit in such a short time.

And, of course, it is totally acebest.

Downloaded all the downloadable weekly puzzles since whenever it was I last played it, and then set about completing them all. There was one that was a real pain, as I was convinced I had the answer right but it wasn’t. Then I realised it was a trick question!

Before going away for the weekend, I downloaded all the weekly puzzles since the last time I played it (back in January, I think). Over the weekend, I completed them all.

Well, all bar one. You have to find the net of a die in a load of die faces. And it is impossible. Fact.

And here’s one of my posts about a new game. I started playing Shiren the Wanderer a few days ago, and I’m already hooked.

You can look at the game as one of two types. It’s either a shockingly difficult RPG, where dying means starting all over again, or it’s a simplified and easier Roguelike, where you can stockpile items for later games. It just depends on how you’re playing it, really. This, however, is clear: completing it without preparing for death and later attempts is highly unlikely.

The game is, mainly, a dungeon crawler with turn-based, tile-based navigation and combat. You find items, weapons, magic staves and spell scrolls as you progress through the randomly generated mazes. Along the way, there are a few villages that provide respite, and storerooms where you can stash goodies to be used on a later runthrough. Should you use your new powerful sword to press on now, or store it for another time? Decisions!

If you’ve played a Roguelike (such as my favourite, Angband), Shiren will be somewhat familiar. OK, so you don’t have character classes, you don’t loot corpses or chests, you have the plan-for-later stuff, and it isn’t all in glorious ASCII, but the soul is the same.

So far, I’ve managed to reach area 25. According to one of the characters in the game, there are 30, but at 25 it all got terribly terribly difficult. I’ve therefore spent a few attempts trying to shuffle supplies to later villages, and obtain some decent starting equipment by completing Fey’s Puzzles – a set of short dungeons you can complete from the opening village.

Overall, it’s no Angband, but since I’ve become allergic to playing computer games in recent years, it’s a great, simple, alternative.

Hurrah! My first game of the year completed, and the first since the birth of my daughter. It seems fatherhood and gaming can co-exist after all!

Some of the final puzzles were very hard, but I’m pleased I managed to complete all of them (well, the 113 of the 120 I found) without losing any Picorats or spending any Hint Coins. After completing the game, I went back to find some more puzzles, managing to locate all bar one. I also completed some of the bonus puzzles, and some of the weekly downloadable puzzles.

Look what Santa brought for me today!

And very nice it is too! Not had any puzzles totally stump me yet, thankfully, but I’ve had a few where I’ve thought “What?!” before realising a simpler solution exists.

So far I’ve completed 30 or so puzzles, and am on the hunt for Ramon, whereever he may be.

Well, hand cramp or no, I completed it this afternoon. It had to be done in three sittings as it hurt so much, but eventually I managed it.

So, yeah. Not a bad game, just not really suited for the DS. And the track list is, aside from a few songs, somewhat worse than other Guitar Hero games. But I only paid £12 for it, so I’m not going to complain too much.

It’s Guitar Hero! On the DS! With added hand cramp!

That’s right – hand cramp. It’s pretty much all the DS version brings to the game, actually. No matter which way I hold it, I get cramp on my little finger and wrist. Not that my little finger is of much use, as I can barely reach the blue button with it, meaning I have no hope at all with the harder difficulty levels.

But I persevered with it, and it is really just more of the same. Actually, the way you strum (with a pick-stylus) is probably better than in the “grown up” console versions, but that doesn’t really make up for the hand cramps… Oh, and the track list isn’t all that great.

Anyway, I made it to half-way through the third “level”, which, if the menu screens are anything to go by, is half-way through the game.

Still Alive DS is a freeware game you can run on your DS if you have one of those evil, obviously only used for piracy, flash cards. Like an R4 or something. It’s a 2D sort-of remake of Portal, featuring the same sorts of puzzles, turrets, cubes and plasma balls, as well as the two-portal gameplay.

It’s a bit fiddly to control, and it doesn’t look all that amazing, but it’s a solid, clever puzzler. Unfortunately, I’ve now come to an impass, being totally unable to complete the level I’ve reached (29, I think). There’s a narrow shaft I have to fall down, but there’s a plasma ball bouncing back and forth in it, and I can’t time the drop to miss it. Bah.

If you want to play it yourself, you can find it here.

That’s right – a DS demo! The new Nintendo Channel on the Wii allows the download of DS game demos, which is pretty ace. Well, except I had all the games already. Apart from this one!

And it’s pretty good. It seems very similar in style to the Ninja Gaiden II demo on the 360 I played last week, only you do everything with the stylus. And it works better than you’d expect too. I was quite impressed, although I don’t think I’ll be buying it.

Erm, yeah. Already.

After just another half and hour’s play, I reached the final performance, in which it was revealed that virtually all the other characters in the game are, in fact, the orchestra. I imagine you’d know that if you’d seen the anime the game is based on, or can read Japanese. And then there were the credits.

After that, racoonhamsterbear thing played a Special Stage (the game’s theme tune), and it was all over. And! Shock! Racoonhamsterbear was just someone in a suit! OMG!

So, a game that’s excellent fun, but very short. However, Ouendan is also very short (albeit a lot harder than this), so I can’t really hold that against it. And it was only four quid. It’s gone up in price a bit now, but Play Asia still have it pretty cheap if you want it.

So I’ve had this for ages, but because we were redoing our lounge and ditching old bookcases and stuff, it got packed in a box soon after arriving. It was unpacked a few weeks ago, and I remembered it today. So I thought I’d give it a quick go.

Two hours later, I had to put it down. Yes, it is very good.

If you haven’t heard of it (and that’s pretty likely – I hadn’t and only bought it because it was really cheap), then I will try to explain. You’re a bear. Or possibly a giant hamster. Or a racoon. Something like that. Or maybe even a man in a costume. I DON’T KNOW. And you seem to play some sort of mouth-keyboard-organ-recorder instrument, you know, like off of the 80s.

Anyway. You’re in a school, or college. Or university. And you talk to people, who talk back. I don’t know what you or they say, as it’s all in Japanese. There’s quite a bit of talking too, but you can skip it all. After some talking, you’re asked Hai or Iie. That’s yes and no, if you didn’t know. Replying Hai takes you onto a game. And the game is… Ouendan! Sort of. Only a bit different (notes come in from the right and pair with note symbols – you tap them as they pair up). And all the music is classical music. But it’s ace! Honest!

And it goes on. Different characters, different (or possibly the same – who can tell?) chats, different ye olde bangin’ choons.

Then… it went a bit odd. I had a tune I had to drum along to, like that Namco drumming game. In fact, with the Namco drumming game drum in it. And then I had to cook a meal by chucking ingredients into a frying pan (like Cooking Mama). And then, most bizarre of all, it turning into a side scrolling jumping game on the moon where you control a boy who has to jump and duck bears, rabbits, fireballs and spikes, whilst The Can Can plays in the background. WTF? Then I had to sort books and laundry and rubbish for some girl?

But it is excellent. I never knew so much fun could be had from tapping along to The William Tell Overture.

With virtually no rupees left at all, I needed some quite badly. I went back to the Deku Tree and filled all my bottles with Life Dew, hoping to make BIG CAHS MONEY$, only to find they’re worth just 80 rupees each. Pff.

I then made a few new foods, selling one to the creepy fat trader on the pirate ship for quite a lot of money, and the others to people in the town. This netted me quite a lot, so I braved the Gooey Marsh once more, although I couldn’t find anywhere to hire a bodyguard from so had to do lots of running away.

Found the three butterflies for the exploration party, netting me 15,000 rupees, meaning I could buy back the map of the previous area, buy the Queen Juice recipe for reviving the journalist (again), and buy the map of the marsh. And still have enough left over for the bus fare home!

I seems I only needed a couple of thousand more rupees in the pool for it to grow another level – to so high I’ve opened up a whole new continent. There, I found an island covered in marsh gas, and spent a fair while blowing up the vents spewing the gas into the air.

With that done, I’d pleased a queen bee (as the flowers could grow again). I also found a hole to fall in, to find it was actually a giant bottle. With a man in it, who claimed to be the inventor of empty bottles. I’m sure he is.

He also found being in the cramped space with Tingle a little uncomfortable in more ways than just it being a tight squeeze. Amazing.

After all that, and cooking some stuff with my newly available ingredients from the marsh and Deku Forest, I went back and did some stuff for Junglo and finished off a couple of maps. With all my made money, I managed to “grow” the tower some more, and open up yet another island – with lots of really hard baddies that I don’t want to take on yet as my bodyguard died and I didn’t have enough money to revive her. Yeah, her – I ditched Titch and hired Valerie or whatever her name is. She has a tache like Hitler.

Just a bit more wandering on this today, and went off to find the kid who’d gone walkabout.

Made some more money selling things I’d cooked as well, but despite chucking all my rupees (almost 15,000 in total) into the pool the tower didn’t actually grow any further.

Had a wander around the Deku Forest for a while, digging lots of holes, and finding Junglo – an aging Tarzan type who, although advertising himself as strong and brave, needed rescuing from some dung beetles.

No, really.

I then went back to some earlier areas to stock up on some more ingredients, made some more things and sold them.

After eventually figuring out how much Duke the Gay Workman wanted for his spade, I could start digging stuff up. Stuff like sweet potatoes and rupees! Well, OK – only sweet potatoes and rupees. Although I did dig some holes I could fall through and found some treasure chests with more rupees in.

Then the tower shrunk! I didn’t know it did that! It seems if you don’t keep chucking rupees in, it shrinks again, undoing all your rupee-earning. Rubbish!

Thankfully, I made a pile of rupees from the jeweller for saving his daughter from the Oinkers in Lon Lon Meadow, so I could grow it again, and then grow it some more. Phew! I’ve unlocked Deku Forest now too.

First off today I went and cooked a load of stuff using up most of my ingredients. Then I wandered round the map for a while picking more ingredients, and collecting some Snatched Pearls and other stuff of value.

Selling these things, and more food, I scraped together enough rupees to make the tower grow another stage. This gave me access to Lon Lon Meadow, which is full of evil cows and mushroom things. Wandered round there for a bit, but became a bit low on rupees so retreated to my house.

24. Grr.