My computer’s acting kinda funny and Photoshop runs obscenely slowly while I scan for gremlins and the like, so I thought I’d check in on the status of my current games:

Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations– Smack dab in case 2 (haven’t had as much qt with it as I’d like), and already it seems like the deepest of the three. Their imaginary legal system is still pretty hilarious, though. I suspect we’ll have at least one more instance of accidental death or manslaughter that is ruled as outright murder. I wonder if the fourth installment will be worth getting in the absence of Wright, though…

Soul Nomad– Still not a horrible chore yet! But I believe in Nippon Ichi!

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann(NDS) Just starting playing yesterday, sadly I don’t know how much time I’ll be investing in it. On the one hand, it has great graphics and tons of art and dialogue lifted straight from the show. On the other hand, I’m three fights in and the best word to describe them is ‘repetitive.’ Or possibly awkward. Or repetitively awkward. Each fight consists of fighting an enemy within a small, circular arena. You point your constantly-jogging self at the enemy, press whatever attack button lights up, then complete a brief minigame to inflict the most damage possible. Then you are wailed on for a while as you wait for your special attack to recharge. Passable if you’re not a fan. Hell, passable if you are. Kamina’s voice urging you to save and load your game files is only a draw for so long.

Front Mission- A very faithful adaption of what I remember the SNES version being, in fact it even uses the same style font as the unofficial translation from way back when. (It does not, however, use the more sensical ‘Lloyd’ for the hero’s name, instead calling him ‘Royd’ by default. My feelings on this can best be summarized as ‘Royd Rage.’) With wi-fi battling and an entirely-new (well, not entirely;) campaign from the enemy’s point of view, this one comes reccomended.

Mega Man ZX Advent– I’m the only one who gives a shit, aren’t I? Capcom gave in to pressure after eliminating most of the dialog for the localized ZX and redubbed this one, making it harder to ignore the awkward overuse of the prefix ‘Megamerge’ and other inexplicable changes of vocabulary. Other than that though, it pretty much improves on the already-good ZX in nearly every way, and you can actually morph into bosses instead of just jack their weapons.

Transformers: Decepticons– Finally got G1-style Starscream skin after letting my Allspark account idle a while. Messed with a while, put it back away.

Assuming there’s nothing wrong with this thing, I should have today’s strip up by this evening at the latest. I’ve penciled the whole week ahead, so there shouldn’t be any more delays.
Remember, I just said I would be updating three times a week. I never specified what days!

I’m not normally a HUGE complainer about localization- I understand the need for it and all, but I groaned pretty loud when Mia Fey referenced “My Milkshake” in the opening case of Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations. I’m still waiting on Front Mission and ZX:Advent to hit the local Gamestop. Getting PW3 this early sure makes online ordering all the time tempting, but looking at it another way- can I really play all three at any length at the same time? I usually focus on pushing through one at a time, barring getting stuck.

That said, I appreciate one tweak in PW3 already: they don’t force you to re-read the internal monologue bit EVERY time you need to loop through a cross-examination now. I guess they only spared us in the intro chapter, or else I didn’t need to go through the repeats.

I’m sad to say I lost a lot of steam with the game project especially now that I can’t do sprite work on the work PC’s, which is where the bulk of what I had was done. It’s not been a total loss, however; the recent coloring/drawing style I’ve been employing is essentially a larger-scale version of how I had been doing the sprite artwork combined with limited painting techniques and whatnot.

Guardian Spirits is thusly; pretty unlikely to be DONE any time soon, but I still hope to have some related demo material by years’ end. It doesn’t help much that I’ve been running other game ideas through my head, but I suppose it’s all ultimately moot before my utter lack of programming skill. For example, CSS tweaking for new WordPress skins gives me a mild head-throb.

Just to sum up and possibly gauge interest in said ventures, here’s a handful of things I’ve been musing:

• A strategy rpg featuring the Revolver Knight setting has been a pipe dream of mine for some time. Where the player can assume one of the major factions like say, GunCon or the TomaH-Tech and play out a scenario allowing them to recruit all sorts of characters and creatures.
• The announcement of Bangai-Oh Spirits, awesome as it may be, makes me long for a more open ended mass-destruction experience, and it seems like a good premise for my nixed “KillJoy” shmup setting, wherein the player takes the role of Chloe, the Angel of Woe, who comes to earth to keep it from becoming too happy a place. Collateral damage will be a must, pain as it’d be to render… it’d be worth it to send a Ferris Wheel careening through a crowded amusement park.
• As alluded to once before, there’s also an old-fashioned pen-and-paper mecha campaign I’ve been messing with, loosely inspired by SRW: Original Generation. The setting is pretty much complete, but my (probably ill-advised) choice of Dream Pod 9’s Silhouette System as the engine is hampering me at several turns with its obtuse construction rules. I’m attempting a retrofit wherein basic weapons are made available and more elaborate versions can be created by combining numerous Perks and enhancements; this also will be accompanied by a new set of mech-specific generation rules essentially turning the building of mecha into large-scale character creation (turning Agility into a Manuever score, etc.)

Well, this has been astronomically nerdy of me. I’d better eat some red meat or pretend to care about football now.