I wasn’t going to buy this. It didn’t interest me as much as previous GTA games, or as much as Saints Row 2, but then I saw I could get it for 22 quid at Play-Asia and, well… Weakness. At least I didn’t break the ¬¨¬£25 Rule, I suppose. It arrived today. Yay!
I didn’t play this yesterday. It made me feel suitably guilty for not playing it yesterday too. Evil thing. I did, however, manage 34 minutes today. About 10 of those minutes were doing the Muscle things. They’re like the Yoga ones, only involve you moving. Those I tried were actually pretty easy. Spent about 10 minutes on Yoga too, and the rest was on Rhythm Boxing (I’ve just unlocked a 10 minute version too!), Step, and assorted balance games.
Another attempt at this today, and another horrible failure. I managed one puzzle, but the problem was that all the remaining things I had to search required a Snooze to get to. And I had no Snoozes. And I couldn’t get any more Snoozes as all the remaining things I had to search required a Snooze to get to. Which was a bit of a problem. There’s also one room which is completely impossible, Snooze or no Snooze.
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 …
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 …
Progress! Finally! I seem to have spent the last four or more hours (in the game over a period of days, not in one sitting today!) essentially doing nothing. I’ve hunted, hunted some more, made some new Patapons, hunted, killed some bosses again, and hunted. But today I finished off two more levels and another boss. Phew! And then I went and hunted some more. And killed some previous bosses. Then hunted a bit. Erm.
32 minutes today! Although the final two hardly count – as they were from the final balance “game”: sit on your arse. No, really. The other 30 minutes were mostly from the long Rhythm Boxing, the whole island lap jogging, and the Step game, bolstered by more snowboarding and some of the shorter games. Oh! And I ran up a MASSIVE 376m on the Ski Jump!
It’s be a week or so since I last played this, and I’d actually forgotten the Pon-Pata-Pon-Pata retreat song. Not that I intend using it, as I’m not a coward. Spend ages redoing hunting levels in order to get more Kerching, so I could create some new “special” Rarepon Patapons. I have this amazing Mogyoon-Yaripon now which has mad damage skillz, something like 50 damage compared to the normal 20 my other Yaripons are capable of. I still need more …
By popular demand, here are some more snippets from the MP3 player manual I was talking about the other day.
I’d forgotten just how fantastic this game was. OK, so it’s the inferior (but possible) C64 version and not the amazing Spectrum version, but you can’t have everything. I could have played the Speccy version on an emulator for free though. Hmm. Anyway! I spent two hours playing this today, which comprised just three games in total. The first one saw me die before even uncovering half the map, the second without completing a single puzzle, and the final attempt …
30 minutes! Gasp! And it was mostly on the energetic stuff too – jogging, Advanced Hula Hoop, Step Plus (which is really pretty difficult) and Advanced Rhythm Boxing, as well as a few goes on Snowboarding, Advanced Slalom, Penguin Feeding Thing (88 points!) and Ski Jump (matching my best of 338). I did feel throughly worked out afterwards. Which is the point, really.
Yay! That’s PSP Game #2 completed! And very good it was too. Even if the last level was pretty tricky (in comparison to the previous levels, anyway). I only had three levels left to complete today, and with them done the overly-cute and ten minute long end sequence played. All the LocoRocos of assorted colours sang together! Aces.
I’ve been having an annoying problem with my internet banking all week. Although I can chuck money between my accounts with gay abandon, actually making a payment has thrown up some error about incorrect message authentication codes. Every single time. All week. It just happened again just now. I rang their technical support and they asked me some questions and put me on hold. So I tried again just fr fun while I waited. And it worked. And they’d not …
Only 15 minutes tonight, but I did mainly stick to energetic games (like Rhythm Boxing and Step), and Advanced versions of other games (like Slalom). I unlocked Snowboarding today too, which is just like Slalom, only side-on. Managed a HUGE 338 on the Ski Jump too. Aces!
We got some rubbish new MP3 players at work today. For ¬¨¬£10 they’ll do the job, but they’re not exactly iPod killers. That isn’t the point of this post, however. Oh no. The point is: AMAZING ENGRISH. That’s right! The badly-translated Chinese manual is fantastic! Every page is a delight to read. In incomprehensible delight to read, yes, and in some cases totally baffling. Here are a couple of pages to entertain you: Edit @ 20:11: Oooh, that’s a bit …