the big thaw
Wouldn't you know that two hours after I whine about not having heat, the guy comes and fixes our heater and everything is A-OK again?
What happened was this:
2:00am Sunday: Heat shuts off.
10:00am Sunday: Heat still off, it's discovered we have no oil.
9:00am Monday: Oil is delivered, since they don't deliver on Sundays.
9:15am Monday: Heater won't start, can't afford to have somebody fix it until Friday.
3:00pm Tuesday: Mother calls a guy to see if he can fix it Friday, he says he can come out Wednesday after 5pm for free and then finish up Friday.
6:00pm Wednesday: Guy says he couldn't make it out, maybe Thursday afternoon.
3:00pm Thursday: Guy says he can't make it out, will definitely be out Friday.
6:43pm Thursday: Last entry.
8:00pm Thursday: Guy calls, says he's on his way.
So he got the heater in working order to last us the night, and then he finished cleaning it out yesterday morning. So everything's OK and it's very warm here. I apologize for the scare.
Between working and waiting around for that guy to call or come fix the heater, I hadn't been able to pick up my preordered copy of Moon for DS until this morning, and I was glad they still had the little bonus dealies around. With a preorder at GameStop, it included a telescoping stylus and little plastic single-cart case, emblazoned with a Moon sticker. They're both mostly useless, but seem to be of fairly decent quality, being manufactured by Hori.
As for the game, it's basically what you'd expect a first-person shooter version of Metroid for DS [link] to end up being, except they turned the game map on its side and instead of platforming everywhere, your feet never actually leave terra firma. So not really Metroid at all, I guess, apart from the way the stages are laid out and the game progresses. There's even a timed escape from the first area, in between taking down the first boss and the entire stage detonating.
It sports some really bang-zoom in-game graphics, thanks to what they're calling the Renegade 2.0 Engine, but it seems like they put all of their work into the way it LOOKS, and none of it into how it SOUNDS. Every BGM tune and soundbyte sounds like it was downsampled from a GameBoy Mono game to the inexplicable chirps and grumbles of the old Intellivision. The music composition ranges from absolutely terrible to uninspired, and for the entire first stage, each song sounds like a slightly different variation of the electroclash Peaches single Fuck The Pain Away, which I hope was at least partially intentional.
The controls are, as you'd expect from a DS FPS, a little cumbersome. You're given a choice of two control methods: Right-handed or Left-handed. Right-handed has you using the left hand to move and fire with the d-pad and left shoulder button, and the right to use the stylus for look/aiming and triggering on-screen prompts like switching weapons, opening doors, etcetera. After around ten to fifteen minutes of play, your moving/firing hand will be in a good deal of pain, as it's also holding the DS aloft and countering the weight of your touch screening while pinching the buttons in your mangled claw.
On the other hand, using the stylus to aim and navigate the on-screen menus is a breeze, and the double-length telescoping stylus is rather comfortable when held about mid-way down the shaft. It also keeps your hand from covering bits of the map when you're glancing at the bottom screen for the area layout, so that's pretty coo. I wonder if that'd help any in Elite Beat Agents, when bubbles sometimes appear on the right side while your hand is moved over to the left. Hmmmmmm.
But yeah, it seems like a competent enough FPS, though the glaring flaws are enough for me to recommend not buying it until the price drops significantly. And it will most certainly drop soon, I'd wager, as it's a DS game without "Mario", "Final Fantasy", or "Zelda" in the title.
Overall: 459 out of 1200 points.
What happened was this:
2:00am Sunday: Heat shuts off.
10:00am Sunday: Heat still off, it's discovered we have no oil.
9:00am Monday: Oil is delivered, since they don't deliver on Sundays.
9:15am Monday: Heater won't start, can't afford to have somebody fix it until Friday.
3:00pm Tuesday: Mother calls a guy to see if he can fix it Friday, he says he can come out Wednesday after 5pm for free and then finish up Friday.
6:00pm Wednesday: Guy says he couldn't make it out, maybe Thursday afternoon.
3:00pm Thursday: Guy says he can't make it out, will definitely be out Friday.
6:43pm Thursday: Last entry.
8:00pm Thursday: Guy calls, says he's on his way.
So he got the heater in working order to last us the night, and then he finished cleaning it out yesterday morning. So everything's OK and it's very warm here. I apologize for the scare.
Between working and waiting around for that guy to call or come fix the heater, I hadn't been able to pick up my preordered copy of Moon for DS until this morning, and I was glad they still had the little bonus dealies around. With a preorder at GameStop, it included a telescoping stylus and little plastic single-cart case, emblazoned with a Moon sticker. They're both mostly useless, but seem to be of fairly decent quality, being manufactured by Hori.
As for the game, it's basically what you'd expect a first-person shooter version of Metroid for DS [link] to end up being, except they turned the game map on its side and instead of platforming everywhere, your feet never actually leave terra firma. So not really Metroid at all, I guess, apart from the way the stages are laid out and the game progresses. There's even a timed escape from the first area, in between taking down the first boss and the entire stage detonating.
It sports some really bang-zoom in-game graphics, thanks to what they're calling the Renegade 2.0 Engine, but it seems like they put all of their work into the way it LOOKS, and none of it into how it SOUNDS. Every BGM tune and soundbyte sounds like it was downsampled from a GameBoy Mono game to the inexplicable chirps and grumbles of the old Intellivision. The music composition ranges from absolutely terrible to uninspired, and for the entire first stage, each song sounds like a slightly different variation of the electroclash Peaches single Fuck The Pain Away, which I hope was at least partially intentional.
The controls are, as you'd expect from a DS FPS, a little cumbersome. You're given a choice of two control methods: Right-handed or Left-handed. Right-handed has you using the left hand to move and fire with the d-pad and left shoulder button, and the right to use the stylus for look/aiming and triggering on-screen prompts like switching weapons, opening doors, etcetera. After around ten to fifteen minutes of play, your moving/firing hand will be in a good deal of pain, as it's also holding the DS aloft and countering the weight of your touch screening while pinching the buttons in your mangled claw.
On the other hand, using the stylus to aim and navigate the on-screen menus is a breeze, and the double-length telescoping stylus is rather comfortable when held about mid-way down the shaft. It also keeps your hand from covering bits of the map when you're glancing at the bottom screen for the area layout, so that's pretty coo. I wonder if that'd help any in Elite Beat Agents, when bubbles sometimes appear on the right side while your hand is moved over to the left. Hmmmmmm.
But yeah, it seems like a competent enough FPS, though the glaring flaws are enough for me to recommend not buying it until the price drops significantly. And it will most certainly drop soon, I'd wager, as it's a DS game without "Mario", "Final Fantasy", or "Zelda" in the title.
Overall: 459 out of 1200 points.