welcome to the compound
I downloaded and played a good chunk of The World Ends With You on an M3 card- however, as I liked it and it is easily available domestically, I later went out and bought the physical cartridge!
It kind of makes me feel like less of a filthy pirate and more like a modern-day gamer Robin Hood or something. Except I suppose I ultimately just give money to the rich. Yyyeah.
So, as I often do, I wrote my feature on The World Ends With You a bit prematurely. I still stand by most of it, though I like it quite a bit more overall now that I’ve gone from ‘used to’ the mechanics of it to ‘ensnared hopelessly.’ It’s been a while since I’ve run across a game with such a rewarding learning curve- starting out, every battle was an E-Rank, skin-of-my-teeth experience and if I won any items from the ordeal, then whoopty doo. Now I’m effortlessly dancing the two fighters around the screen, defeating Noise by the threes and fours, and all but showered by rare drops and pins at the end of every battle. The only tough decision now lies in whether to start over and pick up all the stuff I missed early on- or whether to plow through the rest of the game before doing so.
Little by little, I feel a bit better~
Just checking in to shoot the shangola and deliver another status report as such. Halfway through No More Heroes now, which I have to say is a game that has the common decency to be totally clear as to how the hell long it’s going to take you. Having beaten #6 and watching gawky loser Travis confess that he ‘loved the soul’ of the chick now missing her head marks the halfway point of the game excluding postgame content. And as much as I’m enjoying it, I think I might actually do some of the postgame content, which is a rarity. Hunting down Lovikov Balls and buried treasure throughout the city is inexplicably more fun than doing the same exact thing in many, many other games. Maybe it’s the retro-gaming veneer slathered all over that makes them feel more like “OH! DISCOVERY!” than “Ok if I do this nine more times I can unlock a flannel jacket.” I keep wanting to compare it to Kill Bill Pt. 1, mainly due to the hit list and over-the-top bloody swordfights, though sadly Travis has yet to kill Quentin Tarentino in cameo.
The thing that gets me- and I’m not even sure myself if it’s in a good or bad way, is how utterly disconnected Travis seems to be from his opponents. Most of them plain don’t exist until he’s actively hunting them down, whereas most games would slap you about the face and mouth with foreshadowing along the lines of “HOLY CRAP, DID YOU HEAR ________ KILLED A HUNDRED MEN WITHOUT A SCRATCH ON HIM ON LIVE TELEVISION?!” On the other hand, the bulk of the play time is spent raising funds at menial jobs around town, which works fine for a guy like Travis, but brings to mind the weird mental image of the likes of Dr. Peace picking up trash and pumping gas.
And singing. Of course.
One of the more unsavory side effects of the game on my psyche is I think I just might watch Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly if it were made into a real show, and I’ve spend a chunk of today attempting to Google for images of the Glastons/Glastonbury so I might try to cobble together Lego mock-ups of said robots.
Speaking of Lego, the Exo-Force Arachnoid Stalker is awesome. I want an army of them.
My dad seems way too amused by the title to the World Ends With You Review (as he read it over my shoulder) and I haven’t the heart to give up the joke, as dumb and easily-missed as it might be (Sounds like a Bond film!) I figured I oughta catch up on my impromptu posting hiatus. You could blame the Wii for it, but it’s actually more my DS’s fault since I downloaded and have since been playing the daylights out of Chosoju Mecha MG. It’s a damn shame that it wasn’t brought over to the States in spite of the niche appeal- the controls are responsive and diverse, and even if it’s a bit dialogue heavy and bogged down by a clumsy overworld map. It’s by far the best giant robot sim on the NDS, though that’s damning it with faint praise since the competition is pretty much Gurren-Lagann and Mechassault. If you have the means and like giant robots, give it a whirl. Remember, the DS isn’t regionified so you don’t need to take a monkey wrench to your system in order to play a Japanese cart. Or a flash cart, if you’re into that kind of thing.
(I am. *cough*)
I find myself enamored with the little things about the Wii, though the motion sensor gimmick isn’t really one of them. Being able to power the system off and on with the Wiimote from the comfort of my bed is one of my favorite features as well as once again being able to plop down in front of the TV set with a buddy and play River City Ransom among others. If only they’d make a remote disc changer, too. After hearing about the legendary battery drain of the ‘motes, I also decided to invest in rechargeable batteries. My MP3 player was burning through them pretty much weekly anyway, so I figure it’ll pay for itself in time.
One question/issue for the bunch out there- does anybody else have screen troubles while running Virtual Console? Mine periodically blinks out to a “Signal Unavailable” error (what my TV does instead of blasting static), aggravatingly enough timed exactly to when an annoying enemy is tailing me in Gradius or when a difficult jump is needed. I’ve heard about the wonderful things VC games do on HD, but mine’s an old fashioned normal set.
I’ll be back soon enough with a new layout and a random bit about a forgotten SNK character. The idea hit me before I found out that there’s an Urban Dictionary entry about the matter.
(For the record I don’t hate Capcom fighters, I’m just virulently indifferent to them)
I’ve added a Reviews category that’ll sort out the actual ‘feature length’ reviews from all the gaming-related blog posts.