Some kind of Zelda pun...

I am actually going to have to stop this blog soon, since all I'm bloody ever playing is Zelda. I mean, I like it but I'm not an effing fanboy. Me and a gaming friend of mine were chatting about it a lot the other day, and I was saying how I didn't really enjoy it that much. He argued that it was a lot better than Twilight Princess because there was so much to do, but I said I found it really dull. I promised him that I would go back to play it, and so yesterday, I started it up on the Wii.
Don't get me wrong I don't think that it's a crap game. I can see how at the time it would have been the best thing since... well since "A Link to the Past" got released. No-one had ever seen Hyrule in 3D, and I'll be honest, Nintendo did a pretty decent job of it. But I just don't really get it. When I played Twilight Princess (which I really enjoyed, by the way) I always felt really driven to get to the next area. Even when I would arrive at a new area, I'd still storm straight through it on Epona, because I actually felt that if I didn't get to where I was supposed to be, the thing I was trying to stop might actually happen. But in Ocarina of Time, I don't feel driven to do anything. There's no sense of urgency. It's partly because the storyline is really dull, but partly because Link walks so bloody slowly. How I am I supposed to be motivated and rushing when I don't have a horse? I went to Lon Lon Ranch, there's like twelve of them there! I could really easily steal one but no, the game won't let me. Damn Nintendo with all their wholesome values.
I'm sure the game will eventually pick up for me. I know that about half way through the game you do the whole Master Sword thing and you become Adult Link and so on, but that seems like an age away... That’s totally an unintended pun right there.

In other news, I'm still playing Rolando. It's still good, if not a tad samey. But I'm still enjoying it, which is the important thing. Good to know that my £3 wasn't wasted.

I've been thinking about retro games a lot recently. I did a random Google images search the other day for Monkey Island, which if you don't know about, you don't deserve the Internet, frankly. I found a really cool fan-made image of what the Monkey Island DS box might look like;

http://vgboxart.com/view/11547/the.secret.of.monkey.island.ds/?replies=20

Remember, people, FAN-MADE. Not official. Probably never gonna happen. Might, but probably won't.

If anyone is interested, I'm learning to play the harmonica at the moment. I can now play "Blowin' in The Wind" pretty well, so there we go.

Oh, and Majora's Mask is available now on VC, which is annoying since I only have 100 Wii Points, and I really want it. You might be thinking this is a tad hypocritical after my dislike of OoT, but you have to understand that this is my Holy Grail of games. Link's Awakening got me into gaming, and at the time, Majora's Mask was just coming out. The concept of playing Zelda in three dimensions blew my seven year-old mind right out the window. So that's why I want it so much. Oh, and fish bone guitar FTW.

Finally, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 looks awesome. But more about that on Thursday.
End Communication, y'all.

Welcome any newcomers!

I guess this is slightly odd but what the hey.

If you are visiting this blog for the first time because of its being mentioned on Gamespot UK, I bid you a hearty hello! I don't usually talk like that, but I thought I might as well go all out. I'm really grateful to the guys over at Gamespot for mentioning me, and I hoping that it will lead to an increase in my followers... An increase from zero =) But I update every Monday and Thursday (hopefully) and talk about games, games and occasionally my boring personal life. But it'll be mainly games, thankfully

Right, back to our regularly scheduled blog. What have I been playing recently? Well I'll tell you what it isn't. It's definately not a game about a green-tuniced young boy washing up on a mysterious island and fighting hordes of monsters to get to a giant egg. Definately not.

I'm still doing a bit of Rolando, and I've been getting quite aggrivated with it, but in a good way, if that's not an oxymoron. The puzzles are tough, which is good as it provides a challenge. I can't just roll my way through it HAR HAR HAR.

I read today on Gamespot that a new Jak and Daxter game is on the horizon, which made me a little sad. The original "Jak and Daxter" was the game that begun my love affair with the platform genre. Jak 2 taught me the best word in the English language (renegade) and was also brilliant. And Jak 3 had confusing time paradoxes and gladiatoral battles, a winning combination in anyone's book. But then I gave up my PS2 (well it broke actually, but same thing in essence) and I left Jak and Daxter behind. It wasn't that I didn't like it any more, simply I didn't have the resources to play them. When Daxter came out on the PSP I flirted breiefly with the idea of getting it and the console, but this was back in my simple Nintendo fanboy days, and I would never have considered lowering myself to the "evil men" of SONY.

But now Jak's back (baby) and he has a new game coming out on the PS2 and PSP. It's being made by High Impact Games as opposed to Naughty Dog, so it should be interesting to see where they go with it. The subtitle "Lost Frontier" suggests a new big explorable world for you to... uh, explore. I would love to get this game, but alas, I do not have the capability to play it... Unless I buy either a PSP or a PS2, which I guess isn't entirely out of the question... You never know.

My laptop's interent is awful tonight, I'm really gonna have to sort it out. Or just get a MacBook. Yeah, that's a better option, a MacBook...

Ah, webcomics. If only I knew how to make one... NO, BAD EDD! DON'T GET INVOLVED IN ANOTHER HALF BAKED INTERNET PROJECT LIKE WHEN YOU DID ALL THOSE VLOGS ON YOUTUBE!!!

Pretend I didn't say that...

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.

Zuvembies! Also Zelda, but shhhh...

In two days, I watched two videos about Resident Evil 5. I don't really care about Resident Evil as a series, mainly due to;

a) Lack of a games console till I was about 13

b) Incredibly strict parents who wouldn't be too keen on me playing a game where you butcher innocent(ish) zombies


But I kinda followed Resident Evil 5, and not just because of the racism. Well, partly cause of the racism, but also because my gaming colleague Oisin said he really enjoyed Resi 4. That and zombies. Unless they aren't zombies, although I say that the zombies from R4 are zombies. Go look at a dictionary. Grr.

But R5 seems alright. I cannot for the life of me understand why Chris Redfield has such MASSIVE arms. If they were any bigger, he'd need scaffolding for them. Also, why doesn't he get a new job? They always moan about "Oh why do we always fight zombies blah blah blah". Have we ever seen them do anything else? No. So I vote Chris and everyone else go and take early retirement in Florida. The end.

It's GDC at the moment, which I believe stands for Game Developer's Convention, and BIG NEWS! There's a new Zelda game (honest to God, I've only done three blogs and they've all been about Zelda... I guess that means more hits for me hopefully...) called The Legend of Zelda; Spirit Tracks, and it's about trains...

Yeah trains...
Link is wearing a train driver's outfit and seen handing a message to Zelda, leading me to three conclusions;

a) This game is set before Wind Waker, due to the presence of Zelda and amount of land
b) Your role in this game; messenger. The Legend of Zelda; Mail Clerk anyone?
c) The next game will be LoZ; Ghostly Balloon and will involve firing a cannon off a blimp

And finally I leave you with this thought;

Gamer 1; D'ya wanna play Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix?

Gamer 2; No.

Gamer 1; Well, wasted my breath then.

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 =)

The Legend of Zelda; Twilight Fisherman

For no clear reason, I've starting playing Twilight Princess again. I beat the game once, back when the Wii first came out (although I'll be honest it took a while).

So yeah, I rode around on Epona for a while, shooting arrows at random vultures, killing Poes, swearing when I ran out of arrows in the big dungeon challenge. But then I decided to pay a visit to the Fishing Hole, just to see what it was like there. When I played the game the first time, I found that I was too rushed to stop and smell the metaphorical roses because the storyline was really dragging me along. In a good way.

So yes I've starting fishing in Twilight Princess. Not that's there's a lot of skill to it. It's just throw, wait, splash, wait, splash, pull, wind, pull, tip, wind, A + B, disappointment. Just for once I want to see Link take the fish and bite into it, just like I saw Bear Grylls do once. That was pretty gross. But the fishing itself is very relaxing. The area itself looks nice on my 480p television (because I'm just that awesome =D) I totally think that Hena is awesome. Rollgoal is officially the world's most aggrivating minigame, and you know I'm stuck on the level just before you get the Frog Lure. Heh. Frog.

In other news, I still want an Xbox 360, but I need a job first... My last job made me want to die, so hopefully the one I have lined up will be better. For no apparent reason, I really want Resistance: Retribution. No idea why. I've never played either Resistance games. I haven't even got a PSP. I may just get one though, just to play Retribution... There we go then.

Frog. That's a great word...