My stupid phone, for all its beautiful swivel screen goodness, will not accept ANY microSD card in this whole country, making my pictures stuck in the veritable bog that is the Sony Ericson W64S or whatever it is.
Until that time, I'll try to describe as best I can.
So to combat the most important matter first, yes I did really, actually have swine flu. I have also only just today finished the mad form scramble that was required to tell the teachers where I was that whole week. Only just. The stupidity of the matter boggled my brain. I still have a copy of the doctor's form if people still don't believe me.
Now, the week off. Starting with the earliest event, Tuesday afternoon, I dashed like a, well, an over-enthusiastic foreign langauges student to pick up the PS2 at GEO I had my eye on, as well as 2 games. I'll get to the games in a minute, so let me just say this.
The PS2 is a beautiful, beautiful machine.
Say what you like about it being a little outdated, it is staggering. Simply staggering. I was playing it into the small hours of Tuesday night, and then after some sleep the early hours of Wednesday morning. I have since collected 2 further games to add to the collection (they are so cheap it makes me cry sometimes) and will now talk about them. I enjoyed the Pokemon fiasco so much that I'm going to do a quick review of each, but feel free to skip if you have no interest, as Yahzee proved that reviews are usually only any good if the reviewer hates the game. I'll say this first, I hate none of these games. I love each and every one.
In order of which I played first:
We Love Katamari
Quite possibly the simplest game ever devised. The Katamari franchise, as you may remember, has you rolling about big sticky balls picking up smaller objects to make the ball bigger, all in order to complete some megalomaniacal request from some eccentric member of the general public. One of my personal favourites so far was a mission set by a lonely dog who has no friends, and asks you to go get some for him, so you roll up the whole zoo. The whole thing!
There is a lot of text in this game, which is quite possibly the biggest (and only) drawback, as a lot of it is not only in Japanese, but in weird Japanese. It's a weird game, so it makes sense, but it also makes my head hurt. Having said that, it is the only game I can think of during which I was aware from the mission start to the mission end of how much outrageous fun I was having rolling this ball around town. It's a staggeringly fun game. I've also had the privelidge of multiplayer, which either has the two of you competing to make the biggest Katamari in either a bedroom, a city, or across the face of the planet (rolling up countries and mountain ranges), or cooperatively controlling one Katamari between you. Competetive mode is hysterical, as if you ger yours big enough, you can roll up your opponent, forcing them to wiggle the analogue sticks around as they frantically try to free themselves.
The music is fun, the graphics simple but effective, and the gameplay is just incredible. Superb game.
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: Rengou vs ZAFT II Plus
Never gonna get used to that ridiculous name. I'd actually played this game before, its still making a highly successful tour of the arcades after all, but this version differs a great deal from its joysticked cousin. It's a lot harder for one thing. The premise is simple: you pick a robot from the Gundam SEED series and a pilot to go inside it (you can even choose yourself, if by yourself you mean a faceless mute with your name) and are set off with an optional wingman to blow up the enemy and his wingman more times than they blow up you.
The choice in this game is pretty shocking. I haven't counted, but there's somewhere in the region of 30 Mobile Suits to choose from, and 30 pilots, though the pilots only really choose what it sounds like when you get blown up. Each suit has up to 5 weapons to use, with many needing a very specific touch to get the most out of them. Buster Gundam and the Zaku Warrior, for example, have giant beam cannons that require a charge-up; GaZOuTs can transform into tanks; Destroy Gundam is about 10 times the size of any other suit and can shoot lasers from its fingers, or just shoot its hands off altogether. That one's a bit of a cheeky one to pick unless you don't mind going up against everyone else in the game.
Action is fast and frantic, and a great deal of fun. Even when I got shot in the back however many times by my own teammate and his stupid rifle, it was still a hugely fun game. Mark and I did actually lose track of time when trying to think up new canonical (or not) combinations to try out. Can the two evil masked characters beat TWO Athrun Zalas? What if Team Athrun were in small flying battleships?
Superb game, even if single player can get a bit frustrating when the AI gets cheeky. Seriously, sometimes the odds stacked against you are just stupid, but because the game assumes I'm Japanese it thinks I can do it nice and easy. Think again, Bandai. Regardless, stellar game (no pun intended).
Super Robot Wars a3: To the End of the Galaxy
Quick description of the game series that was made especially for me. Every played Final Fantasy Tactics? Or maybe Disgaea? It's the same thing. You have a small team of plucky individuals with names, who have to go up against a big, evil force and their army of weaker individuals without names. The quirk behind SWR is that all of the characters in the game are from famous super robot mecha animes such as the Gundam universe, but mostly older series such as King of Braves GaoGaiGar (hahahaha!) or the Mazinger meta-series. Move you r guys and attack if you can, then the enemy moves theirs, and you keep going until everybody's dead.
One of the initial drawbacks with the series was that I had absolutely no idea what, say, a Steel Jeeg was, or why I should care about it, and as this Steel Jeeg was a very famous character in 80s anime-loving Japan he had his own huge plot arcs that I wasn't very interested in. But let me tell you this: I now love Steel Jeeg, and his crazy eye lasers, his drill hands and his ability to fight even when he's just a floating head. That is the true power of the Super Robot Wars series: the power to instill the passion of ages into people such as myself who have never seen a Jeeg Beam before.
This goes especially for GaoGaiGar (hahahaha! Such a daft name!) which has a penchant for overdoing things. The last mission I played, for example, was the awakening episode for comedy character Mike Sounders XIII, a sort of lovably dense robot in a flying rubber ring who occasionally switches over to English (or an approximation thereof). He was appallingly weak in the missions beforehand, but in this one he unlocked a new set of powers which had him multiply himself, transform, and then pull a giant robo-Gibson Flying V guitar out of seemingly nowhere, and rock out to the extent that lasers come out of the moon and melt the enemy robots! I was gobsmacked! The battle animations for this game are just... they're just works of art! I will never get sick of watching a Goldion Hammer. And the best is yet to come, as I still haven't acquired Gunbuster, which can create black holes and destroy worlds, the Eva series, which have human souls and end up ending the world, or Ideon, which has a megalomaniacal entity with a God complex living inside it, and ends up ending the world. I'm looking forward to a game in which the world could potentially end three times.
And now for the newer games:
Sengoku Basara 2: Heroes
For those not familiar with the Sengoku period of Japanese history, I'll quickly explain in very simple detail. When the standard system of government collapsed in, I think the 1600s at some point, the position of Ruler of All Japan was open for the taking and literally anyone was fit to take the job. This lead to about 50 years of fighting between everyone in the whole country, every last person, until some bigger and stronger people became generals and took over. The Sengoku Basara series attempts to recreate this intense period, and poses a number of 'what-ifs', such as 'What if instead of Honda Tadakatsu being just abnormally strong, he was a giant robot?'
Gameplay is a direct copy of Dynasty Warriors, another set of games set in ancient China, in that your one guy goes up against the whole army of another character, and has to charge his way through torrents of enemy soldiers only to find a fair fight in the guise of the level's boss. The characters and their equipment level up the more you use them, and this carries over across the whole game, so in multiplayer you can show off your giant golden thunder drill to your friends. And wow is multiplayer fun! There's no real competetive element to it, you tend to always be on the same side facing off against one, probably very scared boss character, but there's a sense of competition in that whoever deals the final blow to the boss gets all the experience and money him, which is usually a lot. It's also stunning to watch both characters pull off their final attacks together, especially with Honda's being this giant laser. Gosh Sengoku-era Japan must have been a fun time to live.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Now, let me just get this out of the way first: I do not claim to be that good at the Metal Gear series. I tend to rank at Elephant more often than not, and have only ever barely scratched the surface of MGS2, having only finished it once. So to all of you who insist of belittling my skill level, shut up. Sure, its very impressive taking out an enemy soldier with your bare hands, distracting him with a poisonous animal and then using the opportunity to push him off a bridge or something, but sometimes shooting him with a tranquilizer from range is just more sensible, you know?
Anyway, quick explanation. Metal Gear Solid puts you as legendary spy Solid Snake as he attempts, time and time again, to blow up giant nuclear robots called Metal Gears. The main body of the game focusses heavily on stealth, and at the end you are rewarded for not being spotted very often, or not saving often, or not killing many people. These rewards, by the way, are one of the best elements of the game, ranging from a tuxedo that makes you look cool, to a device that turns you invisible.
Snake Eater has Snake in the jungle, and adds a lot to my beloved MGS2. You have to eat regularly, for example, and can trap most anything to eat (though you may need an analgesic soon after) or to use as an aforementioned distraction. You need to do this often, as well, as when Snake gets hungry his tummy starts a'rumbling, and that's a dead giveaway if you're hiding in a cardboard box.
A lot of fun to play, despite initial frustration. As Noah said, you need to have fun with the game, so its best not to worry about high scores and so on until you finish it the first time, at least. Wise words.
And that's it.
Other than that there's not been a massive deal going on. Doshisha's Cultural Festival was the same week at the PS2, and was a lot of fun, even if many of the stall vendors were so enthusiastic it was difficult to say 'no'. The phrase 'I'm full' was a life-saver. There are pictures somewhere, I'm sure, but not on my phone.
Which, by the way, has just decided to accept my microSD. Expect another entry in just a little while featuring pictures and videos of something. Something interesting, I'm sure...
Anyway, thanks for reading!
***
ら・り・る・れ・ろ
わはははははっ！ 逃げられない！
スネーーーーーーーーーク！！
わはははははっ！ 逃げられない！
スネーーーーーーーーーク！！
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