Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (360)

A bit of a mammoth gaming session on this today, in several segments rather than in one go, however. In now particular order, I managed the following: Got the Mist transformation, quickly followed by the Bat transformation and then all five Familiars. It seems the familiars all level up too, as you use them, starting out crap (where they don’t attack anything) slowly becoming more intelligent. My pet sword is actually pretty helpful now, especially when I was killing Legion. …

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime (DS)

Rescued another slime person thing, and generally got a bit lost. I’m not actually all that sure I’m enjoying this yet, but then, I haven’t played it much and as such it’s a bit early to make any decisions. I also don’t seem to be able to kill the “digging baddies” in the mine thing I’ve found. They just get dazed for a bit, and then all their chums gang up on me – I had 9 of them surrounding …

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime (DS)

With Touch Detective out of the way, it was time to move on to yet another DS game. And it isn’t exactly what I was expecting… I thought, considering both it’s pedigree and reviews I’ve read, that Rocket Slime was going to be an RPG. But it seems that it isn’t. It’s a sort of arcade adventure with puzzles, not unlike Zelda, but with a little bit of Pokémon mentality chucked in. My character (the big blue slime on the …

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (360)

Aha! Double-jump GET! That opened up huge amounts of map for me to get to, although lots of items are still out of reach. I suspect a flying or super-jumping ability to become available at some point. I’m really loving this, although I think I’ve found the entrance to Dracula’s room already. I can’t get there yet (there’s a jump I can’t make), but I’m running out of places to go. I did find out that my save file data …

Touch Detective (DS): COMPLETED!

Although I’m not really sure I understand all the motives behind the final case, nor about the “earthquake!” scene. I’m still very confused. But after doing the last case, I spent an hour or so clearing up the Bonus Episode, which although I seem to have finished (no-one else is giving me tasks), I haven’t filled the Investigation Journal. I wonder why? Anyway. The game is done and the touch log is at almost 100% done, so it’s not like …

Touch Detective (DS)

Ahhh – so you have to click on that exact pixel at the hot-dog stand. Grr. How irritating. Anyway, so I sorted the hot-dog problem, and did a few more things, and then Penelope turned into an angel (no, she didn’t die), and I completed Episode 3. I’ve made a brief start on Episode 4 (Chloe seems to be able to walk through walls…) and it’s a murder case. Or isn’t. It’s all very confusing…

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (360)

Being so like Circle of the Moon is actually disturbing me somewhat now, as I feel I’ve played the game before, but not quite. It’s odd. I had a go flicking the “enhanced graphics” off and on, but aside from Som–uh, Alucard, it doesn’t make a lot of difference to my eyes. I killed my clone, who was somewhat easy, found a thing that turns me into a wolf (which I haven’t found a use for yet) and braved the …

Brown’s new budget

At first this may seem to be a bit of a departure from the usual sort of blog topics I post about here, but hold on – there’s a pay-off… So yesterday saw the new budget plans by the government. As usual, the “nasties” got a tax rise (that’s fags, booze and fuel), but somewhat surprisingly, income tax dropped. Sort of. Of course, it depends on your tax bracket and stuff, and other rises may counter anything you might gain …

Worms (360)

Some more two-player Worms with my wife again this evening. It’s actually pretty much the only two-player game we can play on the 360. Anyway. I won all 5 games. Only just on at least one though, when a badly aimed banana bomb rebounded and killed two of my own worms leaving her totally unscathed. Tch.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (360)

Finally! Symphony of the Night is in my grasp! Well, sort of – it’s on my Xbox 360’s hard drive. This is the first of the “Metroidvania” style Castlevania games, and I’ve just been playing it. As always (well, except for that GB one and the PS2 one…), it’s great. I’m Alucard, who plays much like Soma did in Aria of Sorrow, and the graphical style is much like Circle of the Moon, so it’s like a kind of mish …

Touch Detective (DS)

Hmm. I’m stuck. The walrus who lives in the skating rink won’t turn the air conditioning on (to keep the snow fairy cool) until he’s too hot. He’s also hungry, and I have some hot sauce in my inventory, and there’s a hot-dog stand outside… So you’d expect you get a hot-dog, put the hot sauce on it, and give it to the walrus yes? Of course you would. But no. Everything I try at the hot-dog stand does nothing. …

Touch Detective (DS)

And now I’m onto Part 2 of Case 3. There are four cases in total, it seems, which lots of “mini-episodes” to play too, so I’m not sure how far in that is overall. I don’t even know if the mini-episodes count. This case is about a snow fairy who lives in a skating rink. Yes, really.

Touch Detective (DS)

Completed the first case, which was total lunacy, and then moved onto the second case. This time, instead of dreams being stolen, Penelope herself has been! The Planetarium is now open for visiting too, and there’s a creepy guy who stands outside it with a wind-up music box thing. He’s quite scary. I’ve managed to get onto the second part of this case. I have, however, started to notice a few niggley things about Touch Detective. Firstly, some of the …

Gadget wantage

I’m not really the sort of person who buys stacks of gadgets. I don’t have satnav, I don’t have a fancy digital camera, and it’s only in the last two years I’ve had a mobile phone. Computers, yeah (although I don’t upgrade them every five seconds like I used to), and consoles, of course. But gadgets? Not really my thing. Until I saw this. It’s a HTC “Athena”, which is now being sold as the T-Mobile Ameo over here in …