Spring! ...sort of.

It seems like winter has (for the most part) finally come to an end, which I'm infinitely pleased about. It's been really warm lately, by which I mean it's been about 45-50 degrees on most days. Today is no exception, but it's also windy with pouring rain so I'm thinking I'll just stay home all day. And you know what that means... pointless blog-update time!

What have I been up to in the past month and a half? Embarrassingly little, as usual. In no particular order, I...

• worked
• worked
• figured out how the hell sudoku works
• worked
• started raw-feeding the cats, because they are fatties
• worked some more
• consistently spent more money on clothing and food than my salary sustains
• etc.

There was probably more, but nothing was really noteworthy enough for me to remember. Now that the weather is finally getting nice, I'm thinking I'll try to get out more, if not only because I want to take pictures of things other than my cats.



...adorable as they may be.


A road trip would be nice, but I don't think there's really anywhere within driving distance of here that's worth going to. I'll have to research this. D:


...I think that's about all I have to write about, how pathetic is that? This wasn't even a legit update! Let's see what else I can think of in the next, like, 30 seconds.

I finally got around to playing the Nintendo DS game "999: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors". This game was unexpectedly one of the most awesome things I've ever played, it's right up there with Phoenix Wright and Layton on my list of favorites now. I need to make a proper review at some point, though I don't know what I can say about it that other reviewers haven't already said. I've also recently started playing Okamiden, which I'll hold off on forming any opinions about until I've finished.

Kaz is playing The House of the Dead: Overkill on the Wii right now, and one of the main characters totally sounds like Fat Tony from the Simpsons. It's a little distracting.

I dyed my hair a sort of reddish-blonde that looked really ginger when I first did it about 2 weeks ago, but it's already faded out. Goddamn L'oreal Preference, it always lures me away from Feria, and it never works like it's supposed to.

Oh yeah! And I'm totally going to Mexico in exactly 6 weeks. Stoked as shiat!




And now that's really about all I can think of. Guess I'll go see if there are any new Korean dramas worth watching. But who am I kidding? Even if there aren't, I'll probably watch them anyway.

[end transmission]

寒くなってきた…

We've been having really weird weather the past few days. First it was cold, then it went back up to the 90's, then we had a bunch of strong storms, and now it's cold again and obnoxiously windy. Why is it always so windy here?! I'm already having bouts of Raynaud's, even though it's only been in the mid 60's. I'm really dreading how this is going to play out once winter gets here. ヾ（。＞＜）シ

Kaz is finally home from his extensive business trips now, it's nice to finally have things back to normal. We were thinking about actually going somewhere this weekend, but I have no ideas as to where. We could feasibly go to Chicago, or to Wisconsin, but what the hell is in Wisconsin? I'm asking because I genuinely don't know. There's not much of anything in the Midwest, really. Hopefully we can think of something, I'd like to be able to get out of the apartment for a little while. But check out the sweet t-shirt that Kaz got for me while he was gone!



Hah, every picture of me always looks the same, but at least I have an awesome t-shirt in this one. For those not in the know, it's the same t-shirt worn occasionally by the main character in True Blood. I like it because it makes me a total dork, but no one except people as dorky as I am would realize it. It's the perfect crime. ( ﾟ▽ﾟ)/


Now that I've finished Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, I've started playing 牧場物語「双子の村」/Harvest Moon (Twin Villages). This may end up being review-worthy at some point, if I actually finish it. I have a bad history of not finishing Harvest Moon games, or at least taking forever with them. This one seems a little different, though, because time in the game goes by so much faster. The one really annoying thing is that you can only save the game before sleeping, it's SO ANNOYING. Hopefully it doesn't ruin the game for me. I think the fact that it has alpacas will make everything better, though.

I'm finally getting around to watching all the episodes I missed of the last season of House, I forgot how much I love this show. I'm going to need to have a marathon to catch up before the next new episode on Monday. Still not entirely sure why House and Wilson are living together, all I know is that I love it. 8D

Ugh, I really don't have much else to write about, I really REALLY hope I get a job soon. I went on another interview this morning, which was preceded by a phone interview and one with HR. With any luck, I'll hear something good next week. No one should ever be unemployed this long unless they want to be. D:

Okay, time for more Harvest Moon! The best part about having to go to interviews is the feeling of relief you get once they're over. (￣▽￣)ノ

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future [Review]

I beat Professor Layton and the Unwound Future last night. I think that had to be some kind of record, because I only started playing it on Sunday night. I can't deny that I have way too much time on my hands right now, though. I don't know that I have enough to say about it to warrant a straight-up review, so this is more of a collection of my disjointed observations and impressions of the game. You're welcome.




[For the record, this contains SPOILERS, so if you haven't played it yet but plan to at some point, you might want to skip this. You've been warned!]


I haven't really read any other reviews of this game yet, but the general consensus of the few I have seen has been that this one was slightly better than the first two installments. This actually surprises me a little. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent game, as I knew it would be, but there are a few things about it that I felt made the game slightly less endearing than the others. I'll address those things first, in no particular order.




#5. The Environment

Okay, this is a pretty nit-picky beef I had with the game, but this here is MY blog and I'll be as finicky as I please. -_=

So Professor Layton and the Curious Village had a nice quaint town as it's locale, and that was fine. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box had a fancy train (the layout of which was very annoying to navigate, but I liked it anyway because it reminds me of Paper Mario 2 or the Orient Express or something) and a really neat-looking city, and that was also fine. So I'm not entirely sure what the makers of this game were thinking when they were designing the locations for Unwound Future.

I have to imagine that someone suggested it just take place in London, but then someone else was like "No, that's too predictable... I know! How about this: London, but dirtier." And that's what they went with. It would have been okay if that was just one portion of the game, but the dirty, grimy, and quite possibly smelly theme is pretty pervasive throughout. Even the Chinatown area, while sort of neat-looking, is very bleak. If you somehow managed to overlook it, don't worry, because the characters (usually Luke) will incessantly remind you through their repetitive dialogue. "Gee, Professor, this alley sure is dirty!"

That Luke is such an insightful scamp.


#4. Sorry, were you going somewhere with that?

Oh, you weren't? Okay, cool.

I don't recall any instances of this in the previous games, but it's been a while since I played them, so I have to apologize if I'm being unduly harsh on Unwound Future. There are several points in this game that are given enough unwarranted emphasis as to suggest that they would play a bigger role in the plot. When they don't, it's just confusing and it makes you feel like you've missed something.

[Case #1]
There's a pet-shop in Chinatown that's run by a weird old woman who looks like a turtle. There aren't any pets there, just empty cages/tanks/etc. She's friendly to Layton and Co., but then starts going off on a tirade about how her husband is always wandering around like a deadbeat and not eating lunch with her. When you talk to her husband, he's all "Oh no, I don't know why she's mad at me, what ever should I do?" There's way too much dialogue about this to just be a random conversation. So naturally, you go back and forth, talking to both of them and expecting something to happen, but that's it! And each time you talk to the husband, it starts this ridiculously long conversation in which Layton tries his hand at being a marriage counselor (to no avail, apparently.) All things considered, there might be something I'm missing here, since I haven't completed 100% of the mini-games and all that. If not... what was the point of adding that in?!

[Case #2]
A shorter example of the above phenomenon, at one point there's a scientist standing around waiting for his friend, who is very late. He gives you a relevant puzzle, and if it had been left at that, I would have had no issues with this. Later, you run into his friend, who's standing around in a different location, also wondering why he's been stood up. The Hippocratic Oath of video games says that at this point, you should do the right thing and somehow help them to meet up. This proves to be impossible, they'll just stay in the same spot waiting for all eternity, despite the game leading you to believe otherwise.

[Case #3]
One final example is the introduction of Beasley as the replacement for Granny Riddleton. He's a bee (ew), and they put enough thought into it to give him a voice actor and everything. For some reason, he hangs out in a shack with a big old sunflower for about half the game. Later, he's spontaneously murdered and replaced by Puzzlette, Granny Riddleton's obnoxiously-voiced granddaughter. Her thirst for blood knows no boundaries, and she goes as far as to smash the sunflower, and it lies crushed on the floor whenever you visit it's previous locations. I can't understand why they didn't just introduce her from the beginning. Why was there a talking bee?! Why was he hanging out with a sunflower? So many questions left unanswered.


#3. The Toy Car Mini-game
This mini-game seems like pure laziness on someone's part, as it brings absolutely nothing new to the table. All they did for this was take the hamster mini-game from Diabolical Box and make it slightly less fun. In the hamster game, you had several different items that you could use to make the hamster react in different ways. The toy car game takes a step backwards, as you can only choose to move forward in various directions or to jump.

It's not that it's terrible, it's just redundant.


#2. The Picture Book Mini-game
Okay, I know I just complained about the unoriginality of the toy car game. The picture book is certainly novel, it's just a little... boring. You occasionally get stickers from people after you solve their puzzles, and you can insert these stickers into the picture books to complete the stories. The stories themselves are very simple and not especially interesting, they either read like incomplete Mad Libs or reading comprehension excerpts from an ESL handbook. In any case, this one isn't terrible, either, but it's hardly an improvement upon the earlier games.


#1. The Parrot
WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN...

Unwound Future introduces a parrot that gets it's own mini-game, not unlike the hamster in Diabolical Box. They even consider it to be a part of your party, and there's a little parrot icon next to Luke/Layton/Flora/whoever's with you at the time. "Oh fantastic!" you say, "The parrot is a noble animal, please tell me more!" I normally am a big fan of anything parrot-related, because parrots are fabulous, but this mini-game is anything but. The objective is to arrange a certain limited number of ropes to form perches. The parrot then uses the perches you've made to navigate his way through an obstacle course and deliver items to people within a short time limit. There's a good chance that I'm just retarded, because I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that are good at and enjoy this game, but it only serves to frustrate me. It all comes down to how well you understand trajectory, which is too much like math for my liking.

I completed a total of ONE of these missions, and I don't really have the patience to figure out the others.

*****

By reading all that, you may find it hard to believe that I actually liked the game; but believe me, I did! I think that most of my mini-game related bitterness is due to the fact that I loved the camera mini-game in Diabolical Box. Spot the Difference is more interesting than obstacle courses any day, but it really comes down to personal preference. So now, for some praise...

First of all, despite the fact that I didn't care for the environment, Unwound Future is notably less claustrophobic than Curious Village or Diabolical Box. Both of these games have very distinct boundaries. In the first game, you spend most if not all of the game inside the village, and it's very closed-off. The second one has several different locations (the train, Dropstone, Folsense), but once you finish that part of the storyline, you generally can't return to previous areas. Unwound Future is different in that you can move about freely between locations whenever you want. It also adds a subway/bus system for added mobility.

Another great improvement was the renovation of the memo feature. Now, not only can you scribble notes over the puzzles, you can make notes in 8 different colors, change the thickness of the pencil tool, and even erase! It's extremely helpful, if not necessary, for solving some of those trickier puzzles. The puzzles themselves are about on par with all of the previous ones, though some do seem a little too familiar, and others are straight-up MATH PROBLEMS. But I digress.

Last, but not least, the plot was pretty decent in this game. IMHO, it was better than Curious Village, but I'm not sure whether I liked it more/less/the same as Diabolical Box. It was certainly interesting, and I kind of liked that at the end, they were like "lol jk guys, time travel doesn't actually exist!" At first I thought it was going to end up being totally predictable, but as it turned out, they actually had me going with some of the plot twists. I never did fully trust future Luke, though, there were just too many times where he wanted me to follow him into storage closets and creepy wooded areas. The ending was sad, and now I'm confused because it seemed like they were leading into another game, despite Wikipedia listing it as the last one (chronologically, I know there's 2 prequels coming out.)


So there you have it. That turned out to be way more long-winded than I intended, though I feel like I say that about every blog entry I write. I should just come to terms with the fact that I ramble when writing and be done with it. Cheers!

By the way

Congratulations to my sister, Shay, for winning the Team Fortress 2 Polycount Pack contest!  I didn't know there was such a thing, but a set of items she designed for the Spy are going to be made available to use in-game.  Pretty neat! Haven't played TF2 in ages, but if anyone else does and would like to be friends on Steam, my ID there is is Tarynnosaurus.  Feel free to add me! =)