10.23.07
Revenant Wings!
I doubt I’ve ever bought 6 games in 2 weeks before going back to Tokyo this year. Theta (pronounced Sheeta, due to lack of the ‘th’ sound) and Panel de Pon DS are fairly good puzzle games – kind of like Tetris, with enough frustrating moments to keep you going back to it. For the other half, presented him with Game&Watch Collection (seeing it cheap, albeit used), and also got myself 2 language-based DS software and FF Revenant Wings. The latter’s flipping excellent! Enough side-quests should you need levelling, though I’ve managed to so far progress without doing much of that (twice, I think). Fairly straight-forward and easy to play, and no turn-based stuff :) Good enough for me. You do have to have strategy though, once you get past the 45% mark (it’ll tell you how much you’ve done in the save screen) – up until then, brute force will get you through, pretty much. Actually, most of my time since coming back has been spent on that game, and holding a DS for long will give you some aching fingers (try holding down the direction button and using the stylus simultaneously for a couple of hours). At least, there are enough save points unlike some of the FF games in the past.
And no, it wasn’t all game-filled or toy-filled holiday. We actually turned a bit serious and did a lot of walking, partly because the other half had an SLR he wanted to experiment with, but partly because during my time in Japan, I didn’t exactly have time to go wandering around exploring places. So, we ended up going to the Ueno Park Zoo (and ended up looking long and hard at the lazy panda) and went to a lot of shops around Tokyo… oh, and I nearly had it out of my head… Disney Sea. About £25 each to get in, for the whole day, though the food cost was outrageous. Saw some weird people there too – you know, those cosplay types that wear bright pink or full-on frills, acting as if they’re the cutest girls in the world – blech! And really, quite a fair bit of Chinese tourists, who strangely enough were quite old (Disney stuff kind of makes me think it’d only appeal to younger people) and were unable to go on some of those rides.
And yes, for the second time (I think) in my life, I can now proudly say I’ve been to Kyoto and saw some sights like a proper tourist. This time, I can actually remember it, considering the last time was when I was fairly young. It’s a historical city, and also rather religious going by the Japanese ‘norm’, that for a young child, it’s hard to grasp the significance of what you’re seeing. Must say I was so very glad other half had an English map though. As with most old-fashioned things, I was a bit lost with my own Japanese copy as to how to pronounce some of the place names. Kanji isn’t the most helpful of things in that respect. Ponto-cho was probably what perplexed me most. That area’s located down a fairly small alleyway just before the Kamo river (coming from the Shijo Kawara-machi junction) and is full of the most tempting restaurants, that mainly open only after 5pm. I’ve never seen so many eateries crammed onto one street, and it made me wish I had a month to go through it all.
Ah… the food! Excuse me… let’s get back to some news, shall we?
There’s a list of songs included in the much-hyped title Guitar Hero III here if you want to take a peek. There’s apparently going to be a Wii version, but when the release date is, or how much it’ll cost is still unconfirmed.
Out 13th Dec. for £30 on Wii. Also coming out on 20th Dec. is another Wii title: Crazy Climber for £26.50, which was originally an arcade game in the ’80s. In this screenshot, the smaller one is you, and the other big one’s King Kong, who aims to keep you from going higher.
I heard that Mario Strikers got several bad reviews. Somehow, after seeing the promo vid for it, I just can’t agree. Same with Mario Party 8, actually. They both looked like fairly decent multi-player games. This unfairness probably resulted from most reviewers having not played these games with others, rather than, I hope, some anti-Mario attitudes that is supposedly vogue. I mean, look at Yoshi’s angry face!
