Like a tilting iPod...

What's the best way to overcome a Monday back at work?

Spend most of it playing your new iPod game.
I bought "Rolando" at the weekend, for only £2.99. I'm pretty sure that it used to be £5.99, but I assume no-one was buying it for that much. So... yeah, three quid, ch-ching and all that.

Rolando is actually pretty good. Dunno why I say actually, I was expecting it to be good, it got 9 out of 10 on IGN for christ sake. But I'm enjoying it so far. The graphic style is very nice, although it's kinda annoying it looks a bit like Loco Rocco, cause people will think that it's a cheap knock off, which I can safely say that it isn't. The controls are some of the best I've seen on the iPod, with the tilt controls working really well. The little Rolandos who can stick to walls have a strange control method but once you get past that, it works really well. The variety of puzzles I've tackled so far have been pretty challenging, but nothing impossible. Still got three worlds to go though, so things can only get better. Or worse. Obviously.

Makes me wonder though, if the iPod touch gets a wave of good games like this, could it come to be considered a "proper" games console? I got Spore: Origins, and well... it was pretty crap. de Blob was alright for about 10 minutes, and the tilt didn't work. But those were early games, and now, maybe it's time for the iPod touch to mature. It just needs its killer app, which is a term incredibly appropriate for the context.

GREAT NEWS! I've completed Phantom Hourglass! So no more blogs about Zelda! I really enjoyed the last boss, although his final form really had me stumped for a while. Here was me trying out all my availiable weapons, and it never occured to me to USE THE BLOODY SWORD I SPENT THE ENTIRE SECOND HALF OF THE GAME GETTING! I really am a grade A Noob. Or is that grade F? I dunno.
The ending was alright. I felt a bit cheated by it if I'm honest. I won't ruin it for anyone who wants to actually play it, but, you know, ever played Link's Awakening?

Actually it reminds me of a comic I saw once... Hold on, lemme just trawl the net for it... Heh trawl, that works cause it's about the sea... Okay, it's dreadful...

Ah-ha! I didn't do this clearly. But if you ignore the weird "art" and the slightly surrealness of it all, it's vaguely borderline humourous. Also, it won't make a lick of sense unless you've played Link's Awakening;

http://ganonstower.com/comics/eponacomic14.jpg

Enjoy!

And with this I bid you adieu, farewell, and other goodbyes until Thursday cometh.

I'm honestly not a Zelda fanboy...

I picked up Phantom Hourglass the other day, primarily because it was only £12.99 in Blockbuster, and in this recession that's going on, I need cheap games. I'm also trying to buy an XBox, but you gotta spend money to make money. Or gamer points. Whatever.

Yeah Phantom Hourglass... I'll be honest when I first saw it, I was immediately put off by it's top-down... ness. I'd been playing every top down Zelda game on handheld consoles since I'd got Link's Awakening back in... blimey, 1998. First PROPER game I got for the Gameboy Colour (the first game I got for the GBC was Men In Black; The Game, and the less said about it, the better) So, yeah I was really expecting a third person adventure game for the DS. They'd managed to put an N64 game onto the DS cartridge, and make it better, so I didn't see why we couldn't have Majora's Mask on the DS. I do now actually realise Majora's Mask used the Expansion Pak, and so it might have been a bit too big, but whatever dude.

Finally I get to the point. Phantom Hourglass. It's better than I thought. I was unsure of the control scheme when I saw it first, and I'm still not sure about it. There's not a lot of skill in swordplay, and spin attacks are kinda tricky to initiate... But I can live with it. I like the Wind Waker-esque naval exploration, and the cannon stuff is alright. The whole "drawing on the map" gets repetative. It's a clever idea, but lets face it, we all draw like retards on the DS, so you end up circling anything of importance and hoping you remember what the hell you need to do there.

Also, why the hell would a octopus be able to control winds? Okay, I'm playing a game about a boy accompanied by a fairy, but a flying cephalopod? I could do without that, Nintendo.

And yes, I wouldn't be lame unless I admitted to being stuck already. The second time you go into the Ocean King temple with the Hourglass. I've just blown up the wall to a safe zone, but now I can't work out what to do. There's a hole in the wall, I figure I need to get a bomb through there somehow...

Until next time, stay awesome =)