The past few months in gaming
(Starting to xpost to LJ again)
I have read approximately 1.8 books in the past five months or so. Okay, probably more, but that's how it feels. I mostly blame CB, particularly for siccing Sims Social on me, but here's a gaming report if anyone is interested.
Please note that I am extremely idiosyncratic re: what I can play. Ex. I dislike first-person 3D perspectives, 3D navigating in general, fighting, stress, anything that depends on too much physical coordination/real world physics, and I get fixated and bored by odd things. So I am not sure how useful any of these will be...
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS) - I am very fond of this series in general, since it's one of the very first narrative games I've played personally (as opposed to watching). As usual per the series, some of the puzzles are entirely too easy, some involve "how carefully did you read the question," and some are just a lot of trial and error for me (usually anything involving moving shapes). I would be more annoyed by how marginalized Flora is if I were more emotionally invested, as well as Spoilery Aspect, but I admit, I'm mostly in it for the puzzles. That said, the parrot minigame is incredibly annoying for me, since I am apparently terrible at anything that even remotely simulates physics. I think I had to look up almost all the answers online.
Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) - I found this story much less interesting and twisty than the previous game's, and although I enjoyed getting Professor Layton and Luke's origin story, it annoys me that Emmy is yet another female character who gets sidelined by the Layton-Luke partnership. The train and fish minigames are fun, and the included London Life sim game is amusing, but the "direct a play" minigame is not nearly as interesting as the "fill out the story" from Unwound Future.
Glitch (Flash) - I feel sad that I have largely been neglecting this. I like that I can practice platform jumping without time constraints or worrying about dying, and I like the overall aesthetic of the game. But after getting the house I wanted, planting trees, planting crops, and raising piggies, I'm a little bored. I'm currently learning more of the engineering-type skills, but really, all I want are more recipes and ingredients. I liked the Zilloween update, but I think I want more new content.
Murder in Venice (DS) - I think this is what people call an interactive story? It has a lot of "find hidden objects," which I greatly enjoyed, but the story itself was so-so and the controls were extremely frustrating.
Chronicles of Mystery: The Secret Tree of Life (DS) - Same genre and publisher as Murder in Venice, but as they attempted to add more than "find hidden objects" to the game, they actually made it worse. I had a near-impossible time figuring out what to do, and I hate the interface. Didn't finish.
Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS) - The camera perspective on this frustrated me so much that I gave up. It's a 3D world, and you can see your character, though the camera kind of hangs above your head and tilts at a bit of an angle so you aren't looking straight at the horizon. I constantly felt like the top view was being cut off, and I cannot figure out directions that way.
MySims (DS) - Apparently I am not interested in Sims games that don't come with decorating! I had the same perspective issues as I did with Animal Crossing, and I would much rather decorate my room and get new clothes than simulate getting a job and talking with neighbors.
Ilo Milo (Xbox Live) - Incredibly cute puzzly game! I love the world and the graphics. Unfortunately, the 3D-ness of walking around the cubes makes the puzzles almost impossible for me to solve in a non-random fashion, and there is the added downside that it makes me faintly nauseous. So cute though!
Dr. Mario (WiiWare) - OMG IT IS ON WII LOVE!!!!! The Virus Buster bit is new, and it's difficult to maneuver pills around with the Wii remote, but it has led to some very hilarious scenes. I.e. my sister and I sort pills in a very similar way, whereas CB wants to put them in what I consider very unintuitive places. My sister also yelled a ton at her fiance, who was laughing so hard he couldn't put pills in good places, and because he stacks them in (what I think are) weird places.
Super Puzzle Fighter II (Xbox Live) - Still the BEST. GAME. EVAR. You have no idea how excited my sister and I were when CB told us it was available again online; I think my entire high school played it during break time for a year or so.
Sims Social (Facebook) - Damn you Sims Social! I am mostly bored of it now that I have maxed out almost all the skills and levels, but they keep adding new stuff that I want in my house. Clearly house decorating is one of those things I can endlessly do, and I am embarrassingly excited to put up Christmas stuff.
Gardens of Time (Facebook) - I played for a bit, but while I like the hidden object finding, the social aspects annoy me. Creating a Time Garden is not nearly as motivating as decorating as house, and after I spent some time playing certain scenes over and over looking for different things, I mostly got bored.
And I realized this is actually getting kind of long (! now I feel guilty spending so much time on non-reading things!), so interactive fiction gets its own post.
Stuff CB plays that I watch
Bayonetta (Xbox 360) - Or: In Which CB Discovers I Was Not Exaggerating about My Bad Video Game Skills. I.e. he set this in the easiest mode possible and I got stuck around level 2 because I couldn't master the timing to do a double jump out of a pit. This has a lot of cheesecake and gratuitous boobage and cleavage and whatnot for the title character. On the other hand, she's very much the heroine, the love interest does nothing useful, and the other best character is a frenemy rival witch. I don't quite think it's feminist, but I very much like how it dismisses some annoying story tropes. Apparently it is also incredibly fun if you used to be a Sega gamer because it has all these play references, but I didn't catch any of those.
Super Paper Mario (Wii) - CB hasn't finished this yet, but we're nearing the end. I like the fun of flipping dimensions, and the writing is pretty hilarious. I think I nearly fell off the sofa during a self-referential Geek Boss battle, and I love the graphics for the negative world bits. I totally guessed the reveals way ahead of time though. Also, it still bugs me that the Pixls look like bad 90s clip art.
Portal 2 (PC) - CB hasn't finished this either. I mostly don't watch, because the first-person perspective + 3D makes me dizzy, but the dialogue is hilarious and snarky. I also love all the random bits of corporate culture and the evil, evil sense of humor + infographic design.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword CB has just started this, and so far, the art style and the story aren't as interesting as Wind Waker (My First Zelda). Still! New Zelda game! (Zelda at least seems to get to do things off-screen. I now understand much more why just having a female protagonist in a game is such a big deal OMG.)
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I have read approximately 1.8 books in the past five months or so. Okay, probably more, but that's how it feels. I mostly blame CB, particularly for siccing Sims Social on me, but here's a gaming report if anyone is interested.
Please note that I am extremely idiosyncratic re: what I can play. Ex. I dislike first-person 3D perspectives, 3D navigating in general, fighting, stress, anything that depends on too much physical coordination/real world physics, and I get fixated and bored by odd things. So I am not sure how useful any of these will be...
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS) - I am very fond of this series in general, since it's one of the very first narrative games I've played personally (as opposed to watching). As usual per the series, some of the puzzles are entirely too easy, some involve "how carefully did you read the question," and some are just a lot of trial and error for me (usually anything involving moving shapes). I would be more annoyed by how marginalized Flora is if I were more emotionally invested, as well as Spoilery Aspect, but I admit, I'm mostly in it for the puzzles. That said, the parrot minigame is incredibly annoying for me, since I am apparently terrible at anything that even remotely simulates physics. I think I had to look up almost all the answers online.
Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) - I found this story much less interesting and twisty than the previous game's, and although I enjoyed getting Professor Layton and Luke's origin story, it annoys me that Emmy is yet another female character who gets sidelined by the Layton-Luke partnership. The train and fish minigames are fun, and the included London Life sim game is amusing, but the "direct a play" minigame is not nearly as interesting as the "fill out the story" from Unwound Future.
Glitch (Flash) - I feel sad that I have largely been neglecting this. I like that I can practice platform jumping without time constraints or worrying about dying, and I like the overall aesthetic of the game. But after getting the house I wanted, planting trees, planting crops, and raising piggies, I'm a little bored. I'm currently learning more of the engineering-type skills, but really, all I want are more recipes and ingredients. I liked the Zilloween update, but I think I want more new content.
Murder in Venice (DS) - I think this is what people call an interactive story? It has a lot of "find hidden objects," which I greatly enjoyed, but the story itself was so-so and the controls were extremely frustrating.
Chronicles of Mystery: The Secret Tree of Life (DS) - Same genre and publisher as Murder in Venice, but as they attempted to add more than "find hidden objects" to the game, they actually made it worse. I had a near-impossible time figuring out what to do, and I hate the interface. Didn't finish.
Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS) - The camera perspective on this frustrated me so much that I gave up. It's a 3D world, and you can see your character, though the camera kind of hangs above your head and tilts at a bit of an angle so you aren't looking straight at the horizon. I constantly felt like the top view was being cut off, and I cannot figure out directions that way.
MySims (DS) - Apparently I am not interested in Sims games that don't come with decorating! I had the same perspective issues as I did with Animal Crossing, and I would much rather decorate my room and get new clothes than simulate getting a job and talking with neighbors.
Ilo Milo (Xbox Live) - Incredibly cute puzzly game! I love the world and the graphics. Unfortunately, the 3D-ness of walking around the cubes makes the puzzles almost impossible for me to solve in a non-random fashion, and there is the added downside that it makes me faintly nauseous. So cute though!
Dr. Mario (WiiWare) - OMG IT IS ON WII LOVE!!!!! The Virus Buster bit is new, and it's difficult to maneuver pills around with the Wii remote, but it has led to some very hilarious scenes. I.e. my sister and I sort pills in a very similar way, whereas CB wants to put them in what I consider very unintuitive places. My sister also yelled a ton at her fiance, who was laughing so hard he couldn't put pills in good places, and because he stacks them in (what I think are) weird places.
Super Puzzle Fighter II (Xbox Live) - Still the BEST. GAME. EVAR. You have no idea how excited my sister and I were when CB told us it was available again online; I think my entire high school played it during break time for a year or so.
Sims Social (Facebook) - Damn you Sims Social! I am mostly bored of it now that I have maxed out almost all the skills and levels, but they keep adding new stuff that I want in my house. Clearly house decorating is one of those things I can endlessly do, and I am embarrassingly excited to put up Christmas stuff.
Gardens of Time (Facebook) - I played for a bit, but while I like the hidden object finding, the social aspects annoy me. Creating a Time Garden is not nearly as motivating as decorating as house, and after I spent some time playing certain scenes over and over looking for different things, I mostly got bored.
And I realized this is actually getting kind of long (! now I feel guilty spending so much time on non-reading things!), so interactive fiction gets its own post.
Stuff CB plays that I watch
Bayonetta (Xbox 360) - Or: In Which CB Discovers I Was Not Exaggerating about My Bad Video Game Skills. I.e. he set this in the easiest mode possible and I got stuck around level 2 because I couldn't master the timing to do a double jump out of a pit. This has a lot of cheesecake and gratuitous boobage and cleavage and whatnot for the title character. On the other hand, she's very much the heroine, the love interest does nothing useful, and the other best character is a frenemy rival witch. I don't quite think it's feminist, but I very much like how it dismisses some annoying story tropes. Apparently it is also incredibly fun if you used to be a Sega gamer because it has all these play references, but I didn't catch any of those.
Super Paper Mario (Wii) - CB hasn't finished this yet, but we're nearing the end. I like the fun of flipping dimensions, and the writing is pretty hilarious. I think I nearly fell off the sofa during a self-referential Geek Boss battle, and I love the graphics for the negative world bits. I totally guessed the reveals way ahead of time though. Also, it still bugs me that the Pixls look like bad 90s clip art.
Portal 2 (PC) - CB hasn't finished this either. I mostly don't watch, because the first-person perspective + 3D makes me dizzy, but the dialogue is hilarious and snarky. I also love all the random bits of corporate culture and the evil, evil sense of humor + infographic design.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword CB has just started this, and so far, the art style and the story aren't as interesting as Wind Waker (My First Zelda). Still! New Zelda game! (Zelda at least seems to get to do things off-screen. I now understand much more why just having a female protagonist in a game is such a big deal OMG.)
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