Think and Whine

Animation modelling with physics

2011-06-26T18:33:00.004+02:00

This is an old video: Marisa, Reimu and Sakuya from Touhou dancing to Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal.

This is a newer one. A bunch of silhouettes in a remix/rearrangement of a Touhou song.

I believe both have been done by using some 3D modelling program that can use physics models to model how the hair etc go.

I'm very impressed with the latter one. No clipping - for obvious reasons and it looks great. Now if I only cared about that piece of music...

Several New Drawings

2011-05-25T05:33:00.003+02:00

Wow.

I decided to try partaking in the Daily Drawing Challenge over at Misfile's forum. You can see many of the fruits of my work over at my deviantArt account.

Transformers: Cybertron Adventures vs Dead Space: Extraction

2011-03-12T20:23:00.000+02:00

... or why I consider DS:E way more fun than T:CA.

On paper, there are some similarities between Transformers: Cybertron Adventures and Dead Space: Extraction. Both are based on an existing franchise. Both are rail shooters. And, of course, both are on Wii. But, that's not much.

I'm on the fence of whether T:CA has more plot to go with it than usual rail shooters. The missions string together to form a sequential plot rather than a bunch of missions you can pick in any order (Ghost Squad). There can also be other team mates going with you (with an actual name and not being cannon fodders). There's plenty of talk over the radio about what is happening, often when your Transformer is moving to a different place.

Nonetheless, there are few idle moments, especially when compared to DS:E.

When it comes to emotional impact, I see no contest. If you're old enough to play the game, DS:E's story is more emotionally gripping, even if you know the outcome before even starting the game. At the moment, I'm (probably) in the last mission of the Autobot campaign and haven't touched the Decepticon campaign yet. The first chapter of DS:E had more feeling to it than all of T:CA I've played so far.

Music. I didn't notice what kind of music DS:E had, but it definitely wasn't anything that stood out on itself. And that was the way it was supposed to be. T:CA also has almost nonexistent music. Why? Like Geltonz said in his YouTube review, "the music is there but it's muted, quiet, atmospheric; that doesn't work for a game like this." I don't think there is much of an atmosphere for the music to create or emphasize. It's shiny metal men shooting at each other and cleanly blowing up in rapidly disappearing pieces when they die.

Well, DS:E also has the fallen enemies quickly vanishing, but they take visible damage, unlike the robots in T:CA.

In DS:E, you have the telekinesis and the stasis abilities, together with a nice selection of weapons, although you can carry only four at a time. In T:CA in the on-foot parts, you... have no pickups, have otherwise the same four weapons in each mission except for a cannon replacing the rapid-fire blaster in some levels and the ability hide behind a cover and recover your health. On the other hand, in T:CA there are also the vehicle sections in which you fly more or less in a pipe or drive a vehicle on a junctionless road and shoot things with lock-on missiles or a blaster. So it might balance things out a bit.

Extras. T:CA has static artwork as extras you gain access to by leveling your characters. DS:E has an 'animated' comic with voiceovers. Sure, there are more artwork in T:CA than there are issues of the comic on DS:E, but I don't see that really making it up.

There are some extra modes beside the main storyline, but I don't think I'll be bothering with them.

I'd definitely pick Dead Space: Extraction over Transformers: Cybertron Adventures.

Some links...

2011-03-08T22:00:00.002+02:00

First off, a video of a 'creepy' girl scaring people in hotel corridors.

Second... You know what this pic refers to.

Impressions: Overlord: Dark Legend

2011-03-02T22:26:00.004+02:00

I bought Overlord: Dark Legend (Wii) a little while back since it was rather cheap and one of the games I had briefly thought of buying.

The game pretty much resembles Pikmin. A bunch of minions buzz around you and you command them to do different things, typically attack an enemy.

Blah, you can read these things in just about any review. Instead, I'll just say what caught my eyes in the game.

First, the bugs. Not even an hour into the game (maybe 30 minutes), the game stalled for good. Then, in the third boss the game had (I think), the enemy gets stuck where my minions nor I can attack her physically. Thankfully, I had spells to do it. Note that this happened twice, and on both times that I tried to beat the boss.

Second, the shortness. It took me less than 6 hours to finish the story. All that was left was a side quest to find small statues hidden around the world. Thank goodness I didn't pay full price for the game.

I'm currently playing My Fitness Coach: Cardio Workout, Red Steel 2, Ultimate Band and Rygar: The Battle of Argus. At least the last one feels pretty bad at this point (I'm at the first boss currently). Expect to get more comments on these later on.

More Fan Films: Fallout: Nuka Break

2011-01-27T02:40:00.001+02:00

Here's another game-inspired fan film: Fallout: Nuka Break.

Again, it's pretty good.

Video: Beyond Black Mesa

2011-01-25T20:38:00.003+02:00

I was given a link to this fan film by a friend in IRC today: Beyond Black Mesa. If the name doesn't immediately hint what it is, it's a Half-Life fan film. It's about 12 minutes long and in my opinion, very much worth seeing at least once.

I'm not a real expert on acting, but honestly, watching this beats reading the majority of fanfics I've read in the past months. The ending is not as obvious as it could've been, and I'm quite happy that the only lines are spoken by the narrator, but no one on screen says a single line. I think this takes away a lot of chance for poor acting/ overacting.

The budget for it was $1200, which is definitely more than the budget of an average fanfic. I wonder, if writing fanfics cost more, would the fanfics that were actually written be on average of higher quality than they are now?

Seeing such a thing makes me wonder, if I could participate in doing something similar as well... the answer is mostly likely "Never in a hundred years." :-)

Surge of Tron fanfics

2011-01-15T13:53:00.003+02:00

I suppose this wasn't a surprise to anyone, but at the moment, Fanfiction.net lists 156 Tron fanfics.

I remember when there was only ten or so of them. The category also now has characters from the original movie, Tron 2.0 and Tron: Legacy.

In a way, I might have wanted that there would've been even more Tron fanfics around there... or rather, the new movie would've been a great one instead of just a passable one. Maybe then my fanfic would've gained more reviews. Heh, I sound like a review whore :)

Impressions: Onechanbara Bikini Zombie Slayers

2011-01-07T21:43:00.003+02:00

This has been a long time coming. I decided to give Onechanbara another chance - the previous time I got permanently stuck in Aya's campaign as I couldn't handle mud men at all. Honestly, tying attack combos to Wiimote motions sounds - and is - a bad idea in my opinion.

So, I restarted the game from beginning and to my surprise, this time I managed to do the heart extraction to the mud men easily enough. Whaddya know.

I just finished Aya's campaign on normal. I don't know if I am going to finish the game with other characters.

The plot... just ignore it, since there's not much to make sense of anyway. As far as I can figure, the plot is a sequel to a bunch of PS2 games or so (possibly the XBox360 game Onechanbara - Bikini Samurai Squad as well). And based on the dialogue at the end of Aya's (as far as I know, she's one of the two main protagonists) story, she still doesn't know an important thing about herself (and it isn't revealed to the player in her story either).

Still... it's a mindless wagglefest. I didn't use much strategy in fighting the baddies. I didn't even need to. The bosses didn't require it either. And I definitely didn't learn to use the fancy combos the game has... I think. Waggle waggle waggle, and the enemies fell before me. You can already check other reviews to see that the music, level design, graphics and whatnot is not particularly great in this game.

The scary thing is that I am tempted to try writing Ranmachanbara to try out the sexploitation genre. I doubt I'll be doing that, though.

Impressions: MySims SkyHeroes

2010-12-30T18:17:00.004+02:00

This is the second Christmas in a row when I have bought a MySims game for myself. Last year's MySims Agents was a fun game with enjoyable, small puzzles and a sufficient amount of variation in the content.

MySims SkyHeroes, however, is quite repetitive and boring, and I say this also in comparison to MySims Racing.

I'll be talking about the solo campaign alone in this post. The missions in the game are just about all of only two variants: dogfights against several others with a team or without, and races with or without powerups. This definitely gets boring quickly.

The writing in the game is also rather boring. The dialogue lacks a lot of the jokes earlier MySims games had.

For aerial racing, the game is OK enough. You got some powerups and gates that nicely tell you in which direction you should be flying to get to the next gate, beside the pointer. Unfortunately, in dogfights the game gets messy in my opinion. As far as I know, you cannot lock onto a single character. Then again, I'm not certain this feature is in Sky Crawlers either.

Compared to the earlier entries in the series, I call this game a disappointment.

RanmaTronic Cover and Holiday Greetings

2010-12-22T03:03:00.003+02:00

I did a drawing for RanmaTronic (my Ranma/Tron crossover fanfic); find it here.

Then I also did a card for this holiday season; find it here.

Happy holidays!

Seasonal Greetings

2010-12-21T13:14:00.002+02:00

Since I have a bit of free time now, here's something I cooked up for the season.

Tron: Legacy was a disappointment

2010-12-19T15:02:00.002+02:00

I saw Tron: Legacy yesterday.

I'm highly disappointed. For one, I'd like to see in movies images of future that are not dystopias. The feel of the movie was more like Blade Runner with the black and darkness all around. The world of the original movie was, in my opinion, more compelling.

The plot was unsurprising. They toss in the open source movement, but don't take it anywhere. They also had a few nods to the original movie, but they were left mostly simple references with the exception of Tron (the character), who could've just as well be dropped from the movie altogether, I think.

I've read that the movie should've been cut shorter -- I didn't feel it like that. There were not many 'wow'-3D moments in the movie.

The movie also seems to invalidate Tron 2.0 pretty completely from the continuum. At the same time, it also invalidates the epilogue of RanmaTronic.

For a moment, I had thought of writing a sequel to RanmaTronic (RanmaTronic: Purge) but now that I think about it, I can't bring Ranma and Nabiki into the equation without the whole setup drastically changing and making the necessary plot development into an impossibility. I don't know if I'll ever start writing the fic, even if I got across the problems.

Impressions: Trackmania Wii

2010-12-05T18:15:00.003+02:00

I went and bought Trackmania Wii last week or so. That makes it the third Trackmania game I've bought - Trackmania Sunrise and Trackmania United also adorn my shelves. Too bad at least the latter one doesn't work on my current computer for some reason.

In brief, Trackmania is a racing game with no car-to-car collisions. There's the time attack mode (the main beef in the game, I think), where you compete against three shadows to win medals. There's the puzzle mode, in which you build the missing parts of the track (I've never tried this mode). Finally, there's the platform mode, in which you need to reach the goal with minimum number of restarts. If you want to learn more of Trackmania overall, see professional reviews by other people.

So, how does Trackmania Wii compare to Trackmania United? I'd call Trackmania Wii Trackmania Lite. It lacks one environment (Bay, leaving six more environments in the game) and it also lacks two of the three block schemes (daybreak/night) for each environment. So it's always daytime in the game, or so it would seem at this point. There are different sky textures, but I think that's about the extent of it.

There isn't much different music to go around. I got quickly tired of the repeating background music.

The backcover of the game case says there are over 200 tracks with the game. Of course, you'd do well to remember that the first half of tracks take roughly 20 seconds to one minute to clear if you do them right. I do not like the naming convention for the tracks. "StadiumB2" is supposed to stand for the second "Stadium"-environment track on the second difficulty level. I think Trackmania Sunrise had actual names for the tracks, not these automatically-generated labels that kill so much of the personality of the game.

I haven't been able to test the online capabilities of the game. The game comes with a track editor, which has, I figure, been a major selling point for the game. However, I hear the track sharing aspect in Trackmania Wii is nowhere as good as in other versions. I don't remember why; please check other reviews of the game.

Thankfully, you can use the D-pad on the Wiimote to control the car. Apparently also Classic Controller is supported, which should make the game easier with accurate analog controls. Turning the Wii Wheel is not, in my opinion, sufficiently accurate for this type of game where one slightly misaligned jump will make you restart the race. And of course, there's a button to do just that with no extra promptings "Are you sure?"

The graphics look OK to me. They are (at least essentially) the same environments and blocks as on Trackmania United, although I'm not certain if all the blocks are still in.

On one hand, I'm happy that I can play the game again. On the other, I wonder why the game has been cut down from the Trackmania United / Trackmania United Forever versions on PC.

Figuring out Fic Preferences

2010-11-28T20:29:00.004+02:00

I think I have now figured out the type of fic I like to read and write.

The biggest problem in the Making a Heroine opening chapter for my prereader was that it was too bare bones after I had first written it.

Just yesterday or so, I favourited my first Harry Potter fanfic on Fanfiction.net, A Squib Worth. It has a basic premise, it builds on that, and it doesn't spend too many words on material that isn't necessary. There are no sideplots, there isn't much description of things.

That is how I want my fanfic -- to convey a new idea. The fic I mentioned is just shy of 22,000 words, so it's not a terribly long fic. Yet it presents a nice plot spanning a long time period, in my opinion addresses most of the points necessary and feels complete.

In many cases, I skim through the fic, not even reading every sentence. I usually get the idea of the general plot progression well enough. I don't focus on the finer nuances of text. This probably means that I'm not a fan of fine literature but more of a consumer of cheap fiction.

Maybe my opinions of what constitutes a good fic are influenced by my past work, but still...

Making a Heroine

2010-11-24T20:57:00.003+02:00

So I started up a new fanfic. It's currently being preread and if it gets the green light, I'll be uploading it on Fanfiction.net.

Let's see what I can say about it before actually revealing the plot. It'll be a multichapter fic, as if I didn't get enough of those with RanmaTronic. It'll be a Ranma/Akane fic, or at least it'll have clear tendencies to that direction, which is probably a surprise to everyone who has read my previous works, in which I pretty unashamedly bash Akane. I think I've been treating her now too kindly, but you'll be the judge of that when I upload the story.

A major concern for me is that the fic will involve plenty of fighting. The thing is, I don't know the first thing about fighting. As such, I wouldn't be surprised if there's going to be a few major delays when I'm struggling with fight scenes or that those scenes will be pretty bad. Oh well, we'll see how things go.

Oh, and me participating in NaNoWriMo was a complete failure.

RanmaTronic is finally finished

2010-11-14T15:36:00.004+02:00

Whoa. It took over four years, but I have finally finished my first (and quite possibly the last) long fanfic. Over 70,000 words.

What now? I'm hesitant to start writing a sequel, since the plans I have would require me to know another anime series much better than I do.

Then I have a few ideas for fanfics, but starting another project that would take years to finish doesn't really entice me.

I could try writing original fiction... maybe.

National Novel Writing Month

2010-10-29T06:10:00.002+02:00

In a few days, it's time for NaNoWriMo again. I think I'll be participating this time. I've never done this before since I hadn't known of it in advance and I had enough things to do.

I doubt I'll be posting the story here, though.

New Long-Time Goal

2010-10-13T16:09:00.002+02:00

Last weekend I came to a decision... I want to learn to write original fiction well enough to be able to get a book of my own creation published.

This definitely won't happen overnight and I am quite aware that I need a lot of practice before I can even consider submitting a collection of novelettes to a potential publisher. Furthermore, I need practice in writing in Finnish, as all my fanfiction thus far has been in English only.

Unfortunately, I don't know Finns who might be interested in reading my fiction in Finnish. I suppose I should try to find someone to do this nonetheless.

Violin in Pop Music

2010-08-28T21:48:00.004+02:00

I'm a sucker for violins in pop music. There's just something I like about the sound.

Today, I happened to stumble in YouTube upon David Garrett's cover of Smooth Criminal.

The result is that I'm seriously contemplating of purchasing one of his CDs.

LEGOs

2010-08-15T12:55:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I was in a supermarket and saw several shelves of LEGO packages of different kind. What especially caught my eye was a packet 'dispenser' of a sort -- a tall transparent tube that feeds the smallest packages into a small pool at the bottom. I didn't pay much attention to it, but afterwards when I was already at home I began to reminisce the times I used to play with LEGOs... very many years ago.

I decided that I'd go and buy a packet of LEGOs for myself the next time I was there. And today I was. I bought a mini bulldozer - a Technic series brickset (8259).

Building it was a nice diversion. It felt different from what it was when I was a teenager, but just following the given instructions was nice. Then again, now that I think about it, more than half of the fun should be in building not according to any instructions but creating something new. But I'm not certain if I still have the imagination left to come up with original designs.

There are several new different types of blocks in very different colours. Many beams no longer have the nubs on top, giving them a bit smoother look but possibly limiting the way Technic series can be combined with other series.

I think I'll be buying a larger set at some point. Sure, it's expensive, but it's a nice throwback into the worryless childhood days.

Why Ill-Fitting Glasses Don't Work with Wii

2010-07-12T16:53:00.004+03:00

I've been playing a little Super Mario Galaxy 2, and I was just in a galaxy where the floor tiles flipped when you shook the Wiimote.

Unfortunately, the game also registered me raising my hand to adjust my glasses as a shake, resulting in Mario plummeting to his death.

Motion-sensitive controllers really makes playing different, not only by opening new ways to play but also removing things you could previously do.

Wonders Can Happen

2010-07-12T15:02:00.005+03:00

Yesterday was a day of small wonders for me.

First, I was actually inspired about something - in this case, scriptwriting my webcomic. It's been a long time since I last had several ideas in my head about anything. We'll see if I manage to do anything about the actual comic then. I still need about two dozen strip scripts before I am ready to start drawing it.

Second, I was seriously considering reuploading my fanfics. However, I decided that as long as I am still working at the same place I am now, I'm not going to do that... the risk of me pulling my fanfics back is too high. If I really get some of my self-confidence back for good, it's very possible that I'll be uploading the fics and also the "dead fic concepts" ("Three Ain't Trouble Enough", "Origami Horse", "Waking Dream") I never uploaded on Fanfiction.net.

Modern Non-fiction

2010-07-10T18:14:00.002+03:00

Last year, I got acquainted with a book by Ari Turunen on the history of lying. This year, I bought three more of his books, of which I've read so far only one on the history of arrogance.

As an impulse purchase, I bought A History of Diplomacy by Jeremy Black as well.

I wondered why do I like the writing of Turunen so much and came to a conclusion.

One could call his books superficial - they cite a long list of related incidents and then analyse these events together only briefly. But these incidents are put forward at such a rapid pace and at such a way that makes reading them enjoyable. I'd almost call them Tweets of non-fiction.

I'll choose a random opening in the book and list what the paragraphs are about.

Common theme: bad/different language as a sign of inferiority. Paragraph zero (continued from the previous page) is on this event. First paragraph is on Hindus, second on Berbers in North Africa and other nations Rome considered barbarians. Paragraph three on how sometimes a foreign language is not called a language at all: Christoffer Columbus and the Dutch who called the members of the Khoikhoi as Hottentots. Paragraph four is about how difficult it is for Swedes to write Finnish (correctly). Paragraph five is about how native speakers of large languages are naturally arrogant. Case in point: Ian Fleming and his attitude towards other countries. Paragraph six is on tourists who are annoyed if their mother tongue is spoken with an accent and even worse, not spoken at all. Case in point: the French.

I get the feeling this book is very much suited for those with a limited attention span. Sure, the things listed in the book are interesting, but if they hadn't been given in such bite-sized parts, I don't know how I would've read through it.

Now that I should start reading the book on diplomacy, I expect that reading it will be much more of a chore. I blame my short attention span :)

And Nothing Bad Happened

2010-06-19T20:17:00.005+03:00

I was mostly watching the World Cup games while the royal wedding of Victoria and Daniel was underway, but I did take a few quick looks at the procession as well, especially when they were moving towards the ship.

The commentator said things like, this stretch is a risky one, if something untoward would happen.

Sorry but was the chance of potential attack such a big thing to mention repeatedly during the programme? Of course, there is the risk of something happening, but I think this commentary was partially blowing it out of proportion.

Impressions: Rabbids Go Home

2010-06-06T17:43:00.003+03:00

A good while ago, I decided to give Rabbids Go Home a spin. It had gotten pretty decent reviews, and once it got cheap enough, I bought it. It certainly helped that it was in IGN's top 25 Wii games list (which is, admittedly, already pretty old, since I have 15 games from that list).

So, the plot premise... Rabbids apparently want to go to sleep on the Moon, but they need the way to get there. Solution? Gather all sorts of junk into a huge pile to bridge the gap.

The art style is good -- I especially like the way people have been drawn. It's minimalistic, but it works.

As for the music, I'm not too fond of the brass band, but that can be chalked up to my personal preferences. Besides, Rabbids are loud and the brass band certainly fits the picture.

The problems, in my opinion, are in the missions. They feel rather self-repeating: you collect stuff by driving your shopping cart into them and at the end of the level, you find the large item to be added to the pile. Truth be told, there are a few different levels, but for some reason, the lack of variety annoys me more than it did in de Blob. Actually, de Blob is probably even more monotonous with only a few different mission base types.

Then again, maybe my tastes in gaming have changed since I played de Blob.

Eurovision Song Contest 2010

2010-05-30T20:04:00.003+03:00

And so one of the highlights of my year, the Eurovision Song Contest, is over.

Right now, I'm stuck listening to one of the more memorable parts of this year's songs... the saxophone solo from Moldova's entry.

I wasn't paying enough attention in the actual final to have noticed the outsider jumping on the stage during the presentation of the Spanish entry. You can see that part here.

I'm surprised by Germany's victory, as that song didn't particularly strike me as anything special. Or maybe I'm so out of what goes for music today. In any case, it's great that any of the big four won for a change.

At least Turkey, Greece and Romania did well.

Modern Sonic vs Mario, My Thoughts

2010-05-23T19:12:00.003+03:00

After talking with a friend about Sonic the Hedgehog 4 coming soonish and it being a sidescroller, I began to wonder just how bad these present-day Sonics are.

So, I went and bought a preowned Sonic Unleashed. Based on the reviews that I had seen, I expected it to be one of the better 3D Sonics, with the exception of the night levels (which account for the majority of time).

I am not impressed.

The daytime levels are pretty fun, maybe a bit too fast-paced for my tastes. The 2D Sonics weren't anywhere this fast, I think. I don't think they could've been; there wasn't that much more of the playing field visible.

The nighttime levels, on the comparison, are mostly boring and in my opinion, the platforming in some places is infuriating.

This game pretty much killed my interest in getting any other modern 3D Sonic game.

The post subject says Mario, so let's talk about Mario then. Both are famous videogame characters, but why is it that Mario seems to have succeeded better than Sonic in the transition from 2D to 3D? I can't say for sure, but pretty much all main Mario games have gotten high ratings in the press -- Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy and now SMG2. Then there are the New Super Mario Bros games, Paper Mario games and then a few sports games, at the very least.

Many would probably disagree on Super Mario Sunshine, but many would also consider it a great game. I haven't played it enough to form a solid opinion on the game.

What was there in the 2D Sonics that made them good? And does Sonic 4 have any chance of returning to the roots in a way that will please the gamers? I guess SEGA would love to know the answer to the former question or at least have a better luck adding it to their 3D Sonics, because they're apparently quite lacking.

For me, I'm starting to turn over to prefering Mario to Sonic based on their games. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a really tough act to follow, but I wasn't particularly fond of New Super Mario Bros Wii. Maybe Sonic 4 can win over NSMBWii, then?

2001 and 2010, the Movies and the Books

2010-05-15T19:19:00.004+03:00

These past weeks, I've been reading Arthur C. Clarke's books 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two. I also watched the corresponding movies after reading the books.

In hindsight, I shouldn't have watched 2010 the movie. In my opinion, the book was much better than the movie. The book didn't have nearly as many if any cold war themes or a clear positioning of the US vs the USSR.

The movie also felt like a "run-of-the-mill" scifi movie. I felt that 2001 was a much more unique/realistic movie with regard to the space travel and I think the equipment in the world of 2001 was more advanced than in 2010. Then again, 2001 didn't show us the everyday life like the shots of Dr Heywood Floyd's family on Earth.

In the case of 2001, I can't decide which I like better, the book or the movie. I like them both quite much.

I'll be reading 2061 and 3001 later on... we'll see how I like them. It's been ages since I last read them.

Finished Syberia

2010-03-20T16:48:00.003+02:00

I finished Syberia just a moment ago. It's a point-and-click adventure game from 2002. The backgrounds are (mostly) static renders and the characters are polygonal. Not much unlike The Longest Journey.

The puzzles are, for the most part, quite simple and straightforward. One telling fact is that you cannot combine items in your inventory and you don't gather a huge inventory during the game. For the most part, the number of items stays at only a few. The puzzles typically don't require going through several combinations either. So, the game was rather easy, if you had noticed all the appropriate exits and small cues. The hotspots you could click on were typically large enough, but at least in one case it was hard to realize that it actually was a hotspot. At times, also the hints to the solutions were... open. If you read

I recall reading a few reviews of the game not long ago. One of them called it a sad game or something similar.

I definitely have to agree. Note that this definitely doesn't mean the game is bad. Sure, it's not perfect, but the sense of loss and loneliness is quite prominent in the game. The music fits well into the mould.

But the ending was so abrupt that it was a disappointment. Well, I should be getting the sequel soon, so I hope that game will be a longer one and not any worse. Still, it's possibly the second-best adventure game I've played; The Longest Journey is still the best and Fahrenheit was great as well.

Indiana Jones games and Syberia

2010-03-13T19:54:00.003+02:00

I've been now playing Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings on Wii for some time now and also tried out the unlockable Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Beside that, I've been playing some Syberia on my PC.

I haven't played all that much FoA yet (only maybe 30 min - 1 h or so), but so far I'd have to say I don't really appreciate the humor in the game. In fact, I like SoK's approach far better.

Unfortunately, I find the controls of SoK pretty bad. Camera is a pain and the game feels like a 2.5D game, since you can jump only in specific locations. So no climbing on tables unless the way further goes that way. There's plenty of fist fights and I'm not too fond of how the controls have been assigned. A swing of the Nunchuk can be done in three different ways and will result in three different attacks on the left hand (I think). Same goes with the Wiimote and the right hand. This is what I'd call a waggle game. Still, they're manageable, unlike in Onechanbara.

Like I said, Indy's adventures aren't the only ones I've been following. I've played some of Syberia, an old (2002?) adventure game from Microïds. I am quite happy with the game so far, except for the puzzle I am currently in. I have found the various items necessary to solve the puzzles quite handily thus far, which is in my opinion just good.

There's plenty of interesting things going on in the pretty game world. Unfortunately, they're just the backdrop. There's very few things you can actually interact with in the world. Then there's also plenty of "empty places" that seem to have nothing to interact with.

Still, of these three games, I think Syberia might be in my opinion the best. Granted, playing some more FoA might change my opinion, but we'll see about that.

Robot Unicorn Attack

2010-03-07T11:38:00.003+02:00

A friend of mine gave me this link earlier ths week to Robot Unicorn Attack -Flash game. It's a simple, fun game with only one downside... the music playing at the background will get stuck in your head if you play the game for any meaningful length of time.

Expect my impressions of Opoona (good), Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (bad) and BlastWorks: Build, Trade, Destroy (bad) coming some time soonish.

Impressions: MadWorld

2010-02-07T19:32:00.002+02:00

I caved in and bought MadWorld for under 10 euros. Beforehand, I knew the game had plenty of violence and three basic colours: black, white and red, mostly due to the blood of the player's enemies.

The graphical style doesn't hinder the gameplay, even if most everything beside blood is either black, white or both, typically both. You can still make sense of your environment.

I've played through only one level so far, so it's hardly indicative of the whole game. As we walk around a cornered-off city, we have a bunch of "killseeker" people to kill in various gruesome manners to gain points, and once enough points have been accumulated, we can challenge the level boss or attempt other level challenges. For instance, the first level included throwing people into a jet engine and in front of a speeding train.

The sounds in the game didn't leave a lasting impression on me. There are commentators prattling, but I didn't really pay attention to what they were saying.

A bit too early for me to write a definitive opinion on the game, but it doesn't feel like the sort of game I'd like to play. Oh well, I'll write later impressions when I've cleared a few more stages... if that point comes up anytime soon.

Finished with MySims Agents

2010-01-23T20:21:00.003+02:00

Finally, I got through all the dispatch missions in MySims Agents. In the end, it cost me over five hours. Now I can get to play Trauma Center: New Blood, Metroid Prime Trilogy and New Super Mario Bros Wii.

Honestly, though... I don't think doing all the dispatch missions was fun. Sure, I got something of a closure to the game plot-wise (which is good), but it was also rather boring.

Impressions: MySims Agents

2010-01-10T17:58:00.004+02:00

And it's yet another MySims game. In case I hadn't mentioned it earlier, I like them overall.

First off, the game has a whole of different language options available... but no Finnish. I'm disappointed. But I intend to try and play it again in German to brush up on my language skills.

This time you don't collect essences at all. Instead, you can redecorate the floors of your headquarters with different items you've found around to boost the stats of your agent teams on six scales. You then send your agents to solve 'low-priority' missions, which mean for you getting periodical message updates and an occasional decision-making chance from two choices. The higher the team's skills on the fields related to the task, the more likely it is that the mission is a success.

The puzzles are occasionally surprisingly difficult. They come in the form of four different minigames: hacking (essentially tracing the path with your Wiimote), the gearworks/pipeworks/powerlines from MySims Kingdom but only with a limited number of objects to use per puzzle, lockpicking (in which you clear a path for a key by moving blocks that can move only either vertically or horizontally) and finally chemical analysis, in which you place atoms/molecules so that each has a specified number of neighbors in a rectangular grid.

The game looks very typical for a MySims game. There are no repeating long loadtimes like in MySims. Aurally, the game offers nothing new. Not a bad thing.

Overall, the game took 10 hours for me to complete (or at least get the credits rolling). By this I mean the missions that are not done by the agent teams; there's still a lot of them for me to do. Completing all the latter missions means waiting for the status updates (as in several minutes) while doing something else in the meantime. Such as writing a blog.

The ending left open the possibility of a sequel. I don't think I'd mind.

Impressions: MySims Racing

2009-12-20T21:32:00.004+02:00

Since MySims Racing was for sale at about 20 euros, I decided to splurge and try it out. Whether I like it or not, the MySims characters in the series have won me over.

I typically don't play games in multiplayer, so I'll just give an opinion on the single-player side of the game.

Let's start with an overview of the game. The actual gameplay is cart racing, but with a story attached. A town has lost its popularity as its racing scene has all but vanished, but now the player has come to make things alive again. At the bottom of the story is an old bet and how the player must win the championship to rescue the town.

The story is definitely not a complex one, but it's still there and gives a point to racing. In this respect, MSR is better than Mario Kart Wii. Whether that means anything to you is not my problem.

The player moves around on a map and meets various MySims characters who have several challenges for the player. For completing the challenges, the player gains new items for their car, both performance-boosting and visual enhancements.

The challenges are of a few different types: one-lap time attack, beat-the-clock (think Outrun), one-on-one race, obstacle course, item collection, a race with multiple competitors and a championship with more than one race. There's about one of these events per each track. I didn't count how many different tracks there were, but I'd guess it was at about 10 or a bit more.

I tried to play the game a bit with the Wiimote, but soon gave up. Mario Kart Wii definitely did the controlling better in my opinion. Instead, I opted to use a Gamecube controller to play the game, and the game felt instantly a whole lot better. It made the game easier, since I lost only one challenge completely in the course of the game. Still, I'd recommend using GC controller instead of Wiimote. I didn't try the game with other control options (Classic controller, Nunchuk).

The powerups in the game are pretty similar to those of Mario Kart Wii. I guess that's just what to expect, since Mario Kart is such an important game model in this genre. I didn't pay all that much attention to the different weapons or use them tactically, so I'll skip their description.

I didn't like the overall UI of the game outside the races. When you entered the garage, you had a choice of different areas of the car to change. But you didn't have a simple 'pull-down box' or similar; you had to select the area, then press a button repeatedly until you got to the item you wanted and then pressed a separate "Install" or "Build" button. And if you accidentally pressed the button again, you had to go through all the options again.

The sound effects of the game are sort of what to expect. The race music just is there, not really doing much. Simlish is still here as well.

I bought my game from the UK, which might explain why the game was -- again -- not translated. I hope MySims Agents is translated... impressions on that one coming up probably early next year.

As an overall opinion of MySims Racing... I liked it better than MySims, but not as much as MySims Kingdom. But Mario Kart Wii is by far a better racing game with more meaningful stuff to unlock.

Impressions: Spectrobes Origins

2009-12-12T18:33:00.003+02:00

This is my first time playing anything similar to Pokemon -- I presume Spectrobes is of that kind.

Anyway, I had read IGN's mostly positive review, and since Tales of Symphonia II had not yet arrived in Europe, I decided to give Spectrobes a spin.

I've played the game for about ten hours now, and while it doesn't appear to be overly short -- a good thing -- I have trouble motivating myself to play it. And this is not only because of me shifting towards casual games.

Like so many reviews I've seen tell, the plot of the game appears to be nothing special. In fact, it's very boring and I already posted a remark about the plot earlier here.

The dialogue with key characters is only partially read aloud; the rest of the dialogue with them and the other people is just text. Beside that, the music doesn't leave an impression. In it goes, out it goes.

I don't know if the other games in the series have a similar way of collecting the Spectrobes; in this game, you send a child Spectrobe that is following you to scan for the immediate vicinity. Small sparkles that you see without the scan will then transform into HP-restoring potions, other items or possibly a chunk of rock that contains a Spectrobe fossil. These fossils are cleaned in a minigame and then awakened to life. A skilled excavator can get the Spectrobe to awaken in the same level the player is; otherwise, their levels are lower.

Your storage room will soon overflow with the different spectrobes you come across if you go through the areas carefully. You can either discard a fossil to make room for the new one or excavate the fossil and then exchange it for goods. Also, you level up rather quickly and by visiting planets where some Spectrobes are at a disadvantage due to their elemental weaknesses, you're probably better off later excavating a new Spectrobe (maybe of the same kind) with a higher level rather than leveling up the existing Spectrobe and discarding the old one. But as fun as the excavation-minigame might be, it still gets old rather quickly.

The battles in the game are nothing particularly exciting. You have different weapons that affect the way you do battle and you can command your Spectrobe with two different shakes of your Wiimote (essentially, "attack" and "retreat"). There's not much variety in the battles, and the majority of what there is comes from selecting a Spectrobe with an appropriate elemental alignment.

To conclude: the game is a bore. It's not terrible, but it just is.

Research-group-focused 'hero' story?

2009-11-22T14:41:00.002+02:00

I've been playing some Spectrobes: Origins now and it has one thing that really started bugging me.

Ancient civilizations and their ruins.

Looting them just conveniently saves the day, you know? All you need is a somewhat triggerhappy person gunning down whatever enemies there are, pushing a few buttons and the country/world/solar system/galaxy is saved.

Why does the answer so often come in from ruins instead of scientists/researchers doing the research at present? Is the faith in humankind's innovativeness so limited even when the focus is directed to solving a single problem?

The closest thing similar to this I can recall in reality is the Manhattan project, which, to my surprise, apparently needs some explanation. Well, in short, this was the project that resulted in the first nuclear bombs that ended the World War II.

I've never read Da Vinci Code, but based on what I have heard of it, it is remotely similar to what I'm looking for... a story where the focus is on the scholar and the research process.

I think I'll read some books on Manhattan project and then begin considering if writing such a book (not one like DVC) would be impossible to me.

Impressions: Sayonara, Zetsubo-sensei

2009-11-01T18:56:00.004+02:00

After hearing a friend of mine repeatedly tell me how I act like the main character in the manga/anime Sayonara, Zetsubo-sensei, I decided to give it a go and bought the first volume. For a review far better than I could write, go here.

Right now, I'm very happy to have spent 11€ on it. The first volume is great fun and I see a lot of myself mirrored in the character.

If you know me in real life, chances are I'll make you read the first two chapters. If you don't, I'll just recommend it. It's the first manga in a good while beside Oh! My Goddess and Yotsuba&! that I really want to read.

Right now, I actually want to start writing fanfiction for the series... I wonder how it'll go if I get into that business again.

I expect to read the next volumes after Christmas.

Impressions: MySims

2009-10-13T16:35:00.003+02:00

I've now played MySims for some 6-7 hours and I think I can give a somewhat informed opinion on the game.

I really like MySims Kingdom better. It has less noticeable loading times and less frequently, more versatile building mode (of course, some might miss the option to create your own items in your workshop) and finally, more interesting puzzles. The loading times really start to grate on your nerves after a while, since to get a task, you go to the MySim's house; load once. You talk with them and leave to gather essences; load second time, You get to your workshop, load third time. Get back to the MySim's house, load the fourth time. Each of these loadings typically take several seconds, with the possible exception of opening the item-crafting screen in your workshop (I don't remember).

Item-crafting in MySims feels more like a chore, or maybe I should learn to colour outside the lines. For an item to be recognized, e.g., a sofa, you need to include specific pieces in specific places and likewise keep specific places empty of blocks. The tasks in the game are twofold: collection of essences and building furniture. You're given a blueprint which defines the use of the resulting item. The essences are then used to paint the item or hung around it to meet the required criteria: the MySims say they want this many essences of this and that used in the item they've requested.

Honesty, I liked the gear puzzles of MySims Kingdom better, even if they got repetitive after a while.

Many of the MySims in MySims Kingdom make their debut in MySims; more characters were not met in MySims Kingdom. Some of these dropped characters are rather plain. This makes sense.

And finally, MySims was not localized to Finnish, which is a big minus in my book. The great use of language in MSK was what captivated me in that game.

In the end, I can only recommend you to skip MySims and get MySims Kingdom instead, if you have these two to pick from.

Doodle: Bird Ride

2009-10-04T08:48:00.003+02:00

Yet another drawing; this time, it's fanart.

Bird Ride

I'm very surprised by how many Finns -- and Germans -- have recognized which series inspired this picture. Very surprised.

First Impressions: MySims

2009-10-03T09:59:00.002+02:00

That's right -- not MySims Agents, which I hope to get at some point, but the original MySims I bought yesterday.

Frankly, I think MySims Kingdom is by far the better game of the two. For one, MSK is localized into several European languages; the copy I have of MS is only in English. The manual was in Swedish. Second, the loading times are too frequent and too long. Third, the item creation, which was dropped in MSK, seems to be the biggest beef in the game. Sure, it's fun to create your own items by following given blueprints, but it's rather cumbersome.

Collecting essences is not much of a chore, at least not yet. It might get to that point if their number comes close to what MSK had.

In my opinion, if you buy only one of these two MySims games, make it MySims Kingdom.

Once I've played the game some more, I'll post further impressions. I also bought Monster Lab; we'll see how that game turns out later on.

Doodle: Dancing Girl

2009-09-27T17:38:00.002+02:00

I was supposed draw a dancing girl / a dance girl / whatever it is supposed to be in English... preferably a hot one.

Well, this is what I managed to draw instead. Not a good one, but honestly, there was little chance of one since I haven't drawn anything since May.

Apologies

2009-08-30T11:47:00.002+02:00

Sorry for not having posted anything lately, but I'm rather swamped with work and haven't truly played anything in a few weeks. I do have Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 to give impressions on... when I find the time. The current situation is likely to last at least to mid-September or so.

Changing Residence

2009-08-09T18:31:00.002+03:00

I've been in the process of moving this week (and the week before that) and things are pretty much done now. But then I began wondering... where is my home?

We're all familiar with the phrase "Home is where the heart is"; people who like the warmth and comfort of a fireplace might say "home is where the hearth is", but me... I'd say my home is where my computer is.

I'm still missing a sofa or any other comfortable seat on which to watch TV, but I definitely don't miss them as much as I'd miss a computer which I now have. What does that tell about me? Nothing flattering, I presume. But I think it's still better than longing after a TV.

Impressions: Minon: Everyday Hero

2009-07-26T18:34:00.004+03:00

I just finished Minon: Everyday Hero... meaning, I cleared all of the eight stages. I can't say I'm impressed.

First the graphics... they are very simple. Some might consider them an experiment in cubism -- the blockiness has had to be deliberate. To an extent, it worked. But not enough in my opinion.

The music in the game was J-pop that hadn't been dubbed over, with the exception of the last level with a very familiar tune that I considered appropriate for it. Some levels had it better than the others.

The voices were dubbed in English by... honestly, I can't tell. They were definitely strange, but that might have been the purpose.

The gameplay was very simple. Basically, there are strings of domino blocks across the playing field, and you can move only by running on these blocks or creating your own blocks that can turn you 90 degrees or go straight forward. These blocks can be, e.g., trees, archways, buildings, grass or people. If you beat with the Wiimote in time with the pace you're toppling the blocks, you gain speed and Minonaide -- the energy with which you can create domino blocks of your own.

Above some domino blocks are manual entries and memories. The entries typically explain a specific thing in the level, such as the fanboys in the concert, and you can read these in the middle of the level. The memories, on the other hand, you can read only outside the game level. They are screens with some associated story to them. They're nothing special. Supposedly you can't unlock all of them on the first time you finish the level, but I didn't care to go back to unlock them.

Each of the eight game levels had some small variation to what you had to do in the game. Each level also takes about ten to twenty minutes (twenty minutes being the typical time limit) to clear. Simple calculation thus gives us about two hours of gameplay.

Bottom line: The gameplay is extremely simple and short. The unlockable extras aren't anything compelling either, so unless you get this dirt cheap, it's not going to be worth your money.

Finished MySims Kingdom

2009-07-15T15:14:00.003+03:00

It took me eleven hours to get to the point in MySims Kingdom that the credits started rolling. After this, I still have about just as many tasks left to do, I believe: most characters I've met so far have new things for me to do, although they are no longer puzzles. Instead, they're of the sort that I need to redecorate their home/house/bridge and possibly cheer them up by talking to them. I think I have maybe about five hours more of gameplay time left, since I don't have to collect things to unlock scrolls any longer. Well, I still have about four scrolls left to open, but I don't have to open them.

In hindsight, this game has been a very enjoyable experience. I don't like the UI, but the gameplay was harmless fun. The puzzles were not particularly difficult either.

Bottom line: I am now something of a MySims fan. If I see the original MySims in a bargain bin, I'll be sure to pick it up. The same probably goes for the upcoming MySims Agents. But not for MySims Party or MySims Racing.

Impressions: MySims Kingdom

2009-07-11T16:16:00.006+03:00

Since MySims Kingdom was on sale, I decided to try it out. For a long time, I constantly mixed up Little King's Story and MySims Kingdom... but now I have them both and I really can tell the difference.

Anyway, about MSK... I haven't played other MySims games, so I don't know what they are like. I also play the game with the Finnish translation (more about that later), so my English terminology is probably somewhat off.

The game is divided into several islands, and each island has a couple of people you are supposed to help in different ways: finding items for them, repairing bridges, being an electrician/plumber/engineer (by laying out wires/pipes/cogs and axels), building houses and so on. You move your avatar (with a highly customizable look) around with two Sims (MySims?). You talk with people, sweet-talk your way to make them do what you're wanted to make them do and get assignments and scrolls from them. These scrolls give you new choices of items you can build.

To unlock the power of the scrolls, you need to collect enough various Essences: cherries, metal, wood, sadness and so on. I've noticed quite a few reviews say that you spend a lot of your time collecting these Essences. In my opinion, it's not that bad. You get the essence of wood by chopping it -- thankfully, you don't have to swing your wiimote but you can just press A to the same effect.

When you have enough essences, you give them to one of your friends who help you unlock the new power (i.e., blueprints).

I've been playing the game for maybe five hours now, and I've liked it, even if placing the blocks in the world is a bit difficult with the Wiimote. The pipes are rather small and you need to turn them to the correct position; unfortunately, the cursor is rather large and can hide too effectively the block you're trying to fit into the machinery.

The game is definitely not as customizable as The Sims. There are only limited regions where you can change the world. So don't expect this to compare to The Sims 2, 3 or even the first Sims.

The looks of the game are nice; it doesn't even aim for realism but settles for a stylized world where the characters are slightly... "blocky" like LEGO characters. And it works. The speech of the MySims is the typical Simlish gibberish.

Finally, I really need to thank EA for translating this game. The Finnish translation is simply wonderful. The language is very living and varying: it utilizes rare words, words that can't be found in dictionaries but whose meaning you can easily guess.

So if you're a Finn playing this game then play it with the Finnish version unless you want to improve your English. I truly love the translation.

Once I finish the game, I'll post more of my opinions on it.

Impressions: The Munchables

2009-07-04T23:02:00.004+03:00

I finished The Munchables just a while ago. Overall, not a bad game. In total the game was loaded for six hours. There's still the mirror mode left and finishing each level with highest rank and finding all the acorns, but I'm not particularly interested in doing that.

So, what is the game about? You're a regular eating machine that likes to eat all the tasty enemies, Tabemon, that come your way (Japanese: "taberu" means "to eat", "tabemono" means food/edible things as far as I know). You grow larger (i.e., you gain levels) as you eat, and the larger you are, the larger the enemies you can eat are. If you come across an enemy that is too large for you to eat as it is (you can see the level of the Tabemon above it, if it is too large), you can smash at it to break it into smaller pieces and repeat this until you have Tabemon you can eat. Mind you, at some point they'll come together again to form the original (or a slightly smaller) Tabemon.

The part about growing in size is done very nicely; typically, I don't really even notice as the game character grows because the camera also zooms out at the time, making it appear as if the world shrank. The difference becomes clear when you come back to your starting position and just see the difference.

You don't have lives in the game per se. If you fall down to the abyss, eat a bomb, get blasted by a bomb, try swimming in lava or get beaned by enemies such as apples with hockey masks and sharp weapons you return to your original size (very small) and need to waggle the Wiimote until you return back to your original size. If you still get hit another time when you're small, it's game over. This is a rather rare occurrence: once I died by accident, and in the second-to-last world I died maybe three times when I tried to get one particularly difficult acorn (collect all of these in a level and you unlock some character gear). I never got that acorn, by the way.

The game has eight worlds, each with two "normal" levels and one "boss" level, with the exception of the last world. The boss fights are rather similar and your guide constantly tells you what you should do just in case you forget about it. This is in stark contrast to NyxQuest, in which you got such a piece of advice only when you gained a new skill, after which you had to use your brain to figure out how to get past the obstacles. In The Munchables, this sort of guidance is just an example that the game is geared towards the younger audience.

Other signs of the aimed audience is how the game tells you to clean up after you've eaten and to brush your teeth after eating sweets. I considered it nice, and if this makes children eat more vegetables to grow up, even better.

The visuals are nothing particularly groovy. The Tabemon are inventive -- maybe the robot whales you eat in one level reminded me a bit about Japan's stance on whaling -- but overall, they're very fun to see. The sounds were never a problem, although they weren't particularly memorable either.

So, what did I think about this game? Like I said, it wasn't a bad one by any means. It's also a cheap game. It felt just the right length for me, since I had a feeling that the game would become boring about the time I finished the game. The game didn't feel nearly as short as Klonoa, probably because this game is so much more hectic. If I had to choose which of these two games I'd rather have, I'd choose The Munchables, even if the plot sounds rather stupid and gameplay is simple and straightforward.

EA Sports Active 30 Day Challenge Completed

2009-06-30T20:42:00.005+03:00

Yesterday I finished the 30 Day Challenge of EA Sports Active. In the end, I'm left with a favourable impression of the game. I don't know if there are better exercise programs for Wii, but with another resistance band it should be enough.

I got the Munchables in mail today; I'll post my impressions next weekend at the latest.

Cheerleader Sequels

2009-06-25T21:41:00.003+03:00

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that All Star Cheerleader and We Cheer are both getting sequels. Right now, I'm waiting We Cheer 2 rather than All Star Cheerleader 2.

As for the song list in We Cheer 2... I don't know nearly as many of them as I knew of the songs in the original. I recall reading somewhere that the sequel won't be as difficult as the first one. Mind you, even I could clear all the songs on normal difficulty -- even if some took me all too many tries.

So far, I don't know much of the changes in We Cheer 2. They have added male cheerleaders into the picture as well.

By comparison, All Star Cheerleader 2 will now permit the use of two Wiimotes to avoid the Nunchuk-cord-constrained movement, which is a very welcome addition. Hopefully the gameplay will be tighter than before; the lag before the system recognized the poses was far too long.

Impressions: EA Sports Active

2009-06-21T21:13:00.006+03:00

I've been trying out EA Sports Active for 20 days now -- more specifically, the 30 Day Challenge it has. For simplicity, I'll call the program "a game", even if it can barely be considered one.

EASA corrects quite a few problems Wii Fit had. First off, it has organized exercises into programs that you can create yourself or use the programs the game comes with. This is a major change to the better, as at least I find it much less likely to stop performing an exercise program once I've started it than when I would have to always pick the next exercise. It streamlines things a lot.

Speaking of exercises, they are exercises and not some games as Wii Fit had for balance exercises. You do lunges, bicep curls, jumps, running and so on. Even the 'games' EASA has (baseball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, inline skating) are not nearly as fun as the games in Wii Fit, because they are all about repeating the same movements. Tossing a basketball? Take a ball from your left, then throw it to the basket. Repeat. If you have Wii Balance Board, you'll be asked to make a lunge to your side and then throw the ball towards a target.

Speaking of Wii Balance Board, you definitely don't need it to get the most out of EASA. The biggest thing I can think of to actually use the board is cardio boxing, where you'll be asked to kick and knee the heavy bag at times. Other than that, it's nothing else than taking a lunge to the side or, in the case of inline skating, lifting your other foot over bales of hay.

But honestly, EASA has something much better than the Wii Balance Board: a resistance band (as soft and unresisting as it is) and a pouch for Nunchuk to tie around your upper thigh. This is used in a number of ways, especially to measure the depth of your squats and lunges, check how you're running or jumping and so on.

Of course, the game can't see exactly how you're doing the exercises. Hence I'd really suggest you go visit a gym to learn how to perform the exercises correctly rather than relying on a video tape. It's very easy to cheat on these exercises and I've noted that a few times myself when I've forgotten to place the Nunchuk in the thigh pouch when doing lunges.

I recall one review saying that this is not a substitute for a gym pass. I can imagine that, but for hermits such as me, it's definitely better than nothing -- especially if you get a new, sturdier resistance band.

What will happen once the 30 Day Challenge is over? I'm thinking of maybe trying it again, but this time on medium level (there are three levels to it). Hopefully, this will keep my interest up longer than Wii Fit did and keep me from buying more fitness games for Wii... there's quite a few of them around already and more keep on coming.

Impressions: NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits

2009-06-21T15:03:00.006+03:00

I haven't bought any WiiWare since Onslaught, but this game sounded fun enough after reading the initial impressions over at Nintendo Life; here's their review of the game.

In brief, the game is a platformer with a definite puzzle theme. Some have compared it to Klonoa and LostWinds... unfortunately this applies in both the bad and the good.

The gameplay is fun enough and doesn't get old in the course of the game -- however, this is because the game is short at only three hours to finish all the storyline levels (I hear there's one more level to unlock). In the course of the game, you gain three different powers from the gods and proceed to utilize them in a number of manners.

Visually and aurally the game is beautiful.

I've heard at least one reviewer saying the game is very difficult to play alone without another player helping with the Wiimote to activate the powers. I don't quite agree. There were a few difficult places in which I frequently died, but that was not because of juggling both the Wiimote and the Nunchuk simultaneously, except for maybe one position.

So, in the end, the first question you need to ask yourself is whether three hours of gameplay is enough for 1000 Wii Points ($10 or 10€). In my opinion, not really.

Many have compared this game to eating a steak rather than six cheeseburgers. Well, I'd rather compare it to half a steak -- of course, I find that full-priced retail games with less than ten hours of game play are equally bad. Although I do need to give it to the developers for not making the game much longer, since you can do only so much with the different powers the player is given over the course of the game before it get monotonous.

Impressions: House of the Dead Overkill

2009-05-23T10:36:00.004+03:00

I bought House of the Dead: Overkill at discount a few weeks back. I recall only briefly trying out House of the Dead 2 and 3 and even that not on Wii, so I don't really have any real HotD experiences to compare this game with. Still, I expected the game to be with (relatively) high production values.

In the end, I definitely like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles better.

In HotD:O, the pace of the game is much faster and you can shoot the mutants in their limbs to hinder them, unlike in RE:UC. In most of the cases, your camera turns away as soon as you kill the mutants in the view. I don't remember how it worked in RE:UC, but I get the feeling the camera didn't move at such a hurried pace.

The environment is very static in HotD:O. In RE:UC, you can destroy all lights and what not. I feel even Ghost Squad has more destructible stuff in the levels. Not fun. Instead the hidden Golden Brains (collectibles in the game) are mostly in plain sight. You just have to be fast enough to shoot them.

RE:UC is also a whole lot prettier than HotD:O. And the plot... well, the plot and the dialogue in HotD:O were definitely not to my taste. Maybe I've moved on from a hardcore gamer into a casual gamer, but I would've much preferred an approach in the vein of I Was an Atomic Mutant instead of this... this.

Maybe I merely don't like being grossed out, but I didn't like it.

Eurovision Song Contest 2009: The Semifinal 1

2009-05-14T21:48:00.004+03:00

I completely forgot to write about the first semifinal. Well, two days after the show, I had a few songs I liked... let's tackle them in the order of performance.

First off, Montenegro. "Can't get you outta my outta my outta my head" has been stuck in my head for a good while now. Indeed. Didn't qualify to the finals.

Then, Belgium. At first, I considered an Elvis-imitator a bad idea... but now, I really like the song. Didn't qualify.

Third, Switzerland. The singer in the live performance was not good, but in a studio recording, I seem to like the song a lot more. Didn't qualify.

Fourth, Israel. Qualified.

Fifth, Iceland. Qualified.

And that's it.

Darkfall Online / EuroGamer Debacle?

2009-05-07T21:04:00.005+03:00

Once again, I read on Dubious Quality this post on Eurogamer / Darkfall Online argument. In short, the game review site Eurogamer posted a review of the MMORPG in question, Darkfall Online. The review was very negative and gave the game in the end 2/10.

So what?

The game developers said that according to their logs, the reviewer spent total of two hours in the game.

Then Eurogamer offered to have the game re-reviewed by an apparently famous reviewer (I don't really pay attention to who reviews the games).

Now the game developers decline the offer of a re-review.

Meanwhile... a huge forum war goes on.

Sometimes, truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Whoever is right, this is a mess I doubt the craziest screenwriters could have come up with. Right now, I'm very happy being outside the whole mess.

Revised Opinion on "Subbed"

2009-05-04T11:46:00.002+03:00

Now that I've had Subbed out of my hair for a week, I can see the fic differently... and I definitely hate what I see. In hindsight, I should not have written the story for the ending but the ending for the story. In effect, the fic is a type example of Ozzallos's rule 4 of Rules of Fanfiction Failure.

And I'm angry at myself for it.

Fanfiction: Subbed

2009-04-28T17:03:00.004+03:00

I finally managed to upload my latest fanfic, Subbed, onto Fanfiction.net. Summary, thanks to weebee:

Love and obsession are hard to tell apart. Ranma's living proof of that, but some obsessions are less obvious than others.

Coming up with a good summary was a damn chore.

So, something of a post mortem on the fic. It took me two years to write, and it was inspired by weebee's Character Reconstruction, in which Ranma has a little sister, Ranko, who looks very much like her "new" big brother's cursed form. So, I figured, why not make "Ranko" Ranma's big sister for a change. And so the fic was born. The focus on Ranma and Kasumi's relationship became only later.

At least one (anonymous) reviewer has commented on that I was more "telling and not showing" in the fic. I admit to that. But I didn't see much of a choice. I wanted to keep the fic compact so that the end would not be completely obvious by the time the readers reached it, yet also be able to stand relatively well on its own feet in the AU.

Corner one: Ranma and Kasumi's progressing relationship.

Corner two: Everything else.

The more I focused on the former, the more obvious the ending would've become. The more I focused on the latter, the less relevant the ending would've become. And in this fic, the ending was the king. Overall, I think I did sufficiently well.

The ending... I wanted to leave it open, because I feel that the best endings leave the story hanging in the reader's mind. If you've seen the Sixth Sense, that's the type of ending I was gunning for. Granted, I couldn't reach anywhere near that, but I deliberately left many questions for the reader to think about. Whodunit? What will Ranma think? How many will die when Ranma finds out whodunit?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that most of the reviews have taken a shot at "Whodunit". Still, already at this point, of the stories I currently have uploaded on FF.net, this has second-most hits for the latest chapter (RanmaTronic being the first). I guess that explains in a way how absolutely pathetic my other fics are :D

RanmaTronic Updated

2009-04-11T15:04:00.004+02:00

Whoa. It took almost 8 months to a day to write RanmaTronic chapter 7 and publish it. In the end, it was 9,264 words (according to Fanfiction.Net's word counter).

At this rate, I'll have the story finished in early 2010; now that I have done a storyline for the rest of the fic, I can see it'll have only one full-length chapter and one combined final chapter and epilogue; the final chapter being rather short.

FanFiction.Net also added support for crossovers in their system. While the support was absolutely necessary, I'm not too fond of it... first off, crossovers and noncrossovers are now separated. Also, for instance in the case of RanmaTronic, if I label the story as a crossover, I cannot select the pairing from one series only; in other words, I cannot classify RanmaTronic as Ranma/Nabiki story if I classify it as a crossover.

On the plus side, after some requests, the site staff added an option to browse all crossovers relating to a series without having to go through all the different series. In that case, very few would've found RanmaTronic as the sole occupant of Ranma and Tron crossover category. Well, after I move the story to the crossover section, I believe very few will find it for reading... since more readers seem to read it for the promised Ranma/Nabiki pairing than the crossover.

Still... to my surprised, I started planning chapter 8 already this month. Maybe, just maybe, the next chapter will be done before December... but that's assuming that I fail to resurrect Do Not Forget Him.

Impressions: Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors

2009-04-04T19:34:00.004+02:00

I'm still waiting for good RPGs to hit Wii. I had heard that Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors was a very simple RPG, and since I managed to get it cheap, I bought it.

Before we get talking about the game, try this out: The Linear RPG by Sophie Houlden.

Now we can talk about DGS. It's not much more complex than that game. In fact, this is the first time I've seen an on-rails RPG. Really. In the town you can move a bit more freely, but in the dungeons, it's pressing A, B or D-pad up to move forward on a predetermined path. Occasionally, you can decide which path you take by clicking on an on-screen arrow when the choice is possible. At at least two points when you go on water, you're even moving forward without prompting from you.

The battle has some merit. You click to select a "focal point" for your strike, and then you swing your Wiimote to slash or thrust around that point. If you move your hand sideways, the slash goes sideways. This is good, since properly oriented slashes will have you hit multiple enemies at the same time or deflect multiple projectiles shot at you.

You also have a shield you can use to block attacks of various kinds: melee, magic and projectiles.

What I don't like about the swordplay, however, is that you're told to move your hand so that the Wiimote's upside face (the one with D-pad) always faces up. If this is because Square Enix wanted to add some challenge, well, they succeeded. I just find it ridiculous and annoying.

So far, I've clocked in maybe five hours of gameplay, which includes going through earlier dungeons for extra money and experience. I just hope I'm still far enough from the end of the game, since I've seen this game called an eight- to ten-hour game.

As repetitive as the battle mechanic might soon get, it has certain merit to it. The biggest problem is this is "My First RPG" kind of game. I definitely favour Chocobo's Dungeon to this game in terms of depth and content.

Bottom line... if you get this game for about 10€, it might be worth it.

Impressions: Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles

2009-03-21T16:15:00.005+02:00

I've been playing quite a lot of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles now with Nyko Perfect Shot shell. I cannot say that I'm terribly satisfied with the pistol shell for this game.

And in case someone doesn't know or remember, this is a on-rails shooter game like Virtua Cop 2.

Maybe I got just too soft skin, but at this rate, I'll have a blister right underneath my index finger -- all because of the repeated pressing of the trigger. You'll be pulling the trigger many many times at a high pace, especially since you're just about all the time fighting zombies or other foes. And if your aim is as bad as mine, you'll spend several rounds on a single zombie. On the other hand, if you use other weapons beside the basic handgun more often, then they won't be as much of a problem.

That said, the game looks good. You can upgrade your weapons with points you get from passing the missions. I'm not happy that the stuff I can unlock in the game is just a small picture and text; maybe if I were a RE fan, I'd get more out of them, but I don't.

I think my initial impressions still stand: looks better than Ghost Squad, but I think Ghost Squad is more fun to play.

Impressions: We Cheer

2009-03-16T20:53:00.005+02:00

Just now, I unlocked all thirty songs in the game. After the very steep initial learning curve, the game got fun as I cleared two- and three-star songs (scale: one thru five). In fact, Erasure's Star was probably the most difficult song for me to clear of all songs with at most three stars -- and it's a one-star song (the easiest class).

Overall, I'm very happy with the game, considering it wasn't even an expensive one. The music is good, and once you learn to mimic the cheerleader movements and use the cheer lines just for timing help, it's not all that difficult either in the end.

Of course, I still haven't even tried any song on hard difficulty. So there's definitely still something left for me to accomplish in the game.

I actually consider it nice that the songs can be unlocked already at this point; in Samba de Amigo, I think I'm playing already on superhard difficulty, and I still haven't unlocked all (and I doubt I ever will). And I think that the moves in We Cheer are easier to perform than in Samba de Amigo so that they properly register.

Also, my opinion on the two Wii cheerleader games: We Cheer is more fun than All Star Cheerleader. The two games are completely different.

First Impressions: We Cheer and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles

2009-03-11T21:22:00.005+02:00

Got two new games, but I haven't been able to put in enough hours to give solid impressions yet.

However... I've managed to clear some of the easiest songs in We Cheer, thus outdoing the person doing 1up.com's review on the game. However, I'm not all happy with the game either. That's because a lot of my handwaves go unrecognized. Now, I'm not saying I should be scoring 100% from the start, but rather that if, like one review suggested, I should be following the hand movements of the cheerleader, why is her hands buried under so much glitter and other stuff that hide a lot of what she's doing (such as the pom-pons)?

To be frank, I'm starting to agree more with how Helix was done: one robot avatar smack down in the middle of the screen and you follow up what he's doing with a slight delay. I really can't say that solution is worse than the one in We Cheer. I'd need to watch the routine at least once with focus in We Cheer before attempting to pass the song. That's not really fun.

Oh well. At least I like the music.

As for Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, the on-rails shooter game that will be having a sequel of sorts... it looks better than Ghost Squad, but I'd rather play Ghost Squad or Virtua Cop 2 rather than RE:UC. Or maybe it's in part due to the Nyko Perfect Shot shell I've been using.

A Dancing Bear

2009-03-07T19:22:00.003+02:00

I recall reading in "Inmates Running the Asylum" of a dancing bear as an analogy to poor UI design. When people see a dancing bear, they're all "Oooh" and "Aaah" and they watch it enraptured... but they forget to ask if there can be better dancing than what the clumsy bear can do.

Onslaught is the clumsy bear.

If this is sign of what FPS games can be on WiiWare, then what could games not constrained by the WiiWare size limit do? I've been playing Onslaught for 13 hours now, and I'm still playing it if only to unlock more weapons in the game (I need to finish half a dozen missions with S-rank, the best rank there is to unlock some weapons). So Onslaught has definitely not been a bad game. But where are more of these games? At this rate, I'll end up getting some of those WW2 FPS games that are already on Wii.

Unfortunately, they're not of this "quantity over quality" shooter type in the vein of Serious Sam.

And I doubt the upcoming The Conduit will be one either. Even worse, I fear the game will be a letdown. As far as I hear, the company making the game hasn't got a particularly impressive track record. Sure, it's not bad either, but they've made a number of WiiWare games already and none of them have been particularly well-received. (I can't comment on any of those games since they haven't been released in Europe.)

IGN had quite a few hype-building previews of The Conduit, but most of them focused on the graphics. Sure, the game might look unbelievably good (I'm not saying it does), but how is the gameplay? Onslaught definitely doesn't look all that good, but it's real fun to play.

Speaking of looks... Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time actually uses the same graphics engine as the DS version of the same game. And since DS has two screens and Wii only one, then the result of showing two screens at the same time on Wii doesn't look too good. I only hope the 3D models won't be the same.

And finally on the topic of Final Fantasy we get back to WiiWare. Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders is a tower defense game for iPhone. Yet its WiiWare port has to be split in two parts because of the size constraints Nintendo set on WiiWare.

Something must be wrong.

Doodles: Fishybird and "Friendship is..."

2009-03-06T14:27:00.002+02:00

Here's two colouring book drawings.

First off, a fish-bird hybrid. This is actually fanart for Innortal's "No Need for Destiny", although I doubt this is anywhere near what people imagine ghoples to be like.

Then, a pic on friendship. I know I'm rather... pessimistic about life in general, and I guess this picture just goes to prove it. The text, which is in Finnish, says "Friendship means that you do not need to cry alone."

The Importance of Free Movement

2009-02-22T10:05:00.004+02:00

Since there still are so few RPGs for Wii, I am now playing VC games beside Onslaught (which definitely is not an RPG).

Today I played some Phantasy Star 4 -- one of the definitive Sega Megadrive RPGs. And I got annoyed by the limitation of the characters moving one square at a time and only in four main directions. It feels so positively archaic compared to Squaresoft's and Enix's SNES RPGs in which you can move in any of the eight directions.

But there's something I consider even worse... Startropics, which also has limited the movement to exact squares, but is also an action game. Granted, it's for the 8-bit NES, but...

Impressions: Onslaught (WiiWare)

2009-02-19T23:08:00.006+02:00

An FPS squeezed into the small size fit for WiiWare games? Rare. An FPS from Japan? Rare.

Yet that's what Onslaught is.

Since WiiWareWorld gave it 9/10, I wanted to give it a shot.

Controlwise, it's decent. You strafe with your Nunchuk thumbstick and aim and turn with the Wiimote. You shake your Wiimote to reload wherease shaking your Nunchuk wipes the insect goo off your visor. What annoys me is that you tap the thumbstick twice to make your character dash in that direction for a brief while. For me, that's not an easy thing to do and I fail doing it more often that not.

Graphics are understandably downstated. It's sand and stone everywhere. There are four or five "normal" enemy models, and four of them appear in different sizes and textures for variety. So far I've seen two bosses in the game, and they're again the same model but with partly different animations and texture.

I'm not too fond of the music; the music playing in menus is, in my opinion, annoying. And it keeps looping when you're waiting for people to join your game. Thankfully, you can turn the music off. The sound effects are nothing spectacular, I feel.

Many have wondered on what does "That's why you're still kid" means since you hear it repeated very often: apparently it's played when you do only a short combo attack.

The single-player part definitely isn't easy, or at least I don't think so.

I also gave the multiplayer a short try, but only in the Free Battle mode, in which you play co-operatively the single-player missions. In particular, there is no deathmatch in this game. Anyway, back to Free Battle. You search for other players and when you find them, you can propose a map to play. Unfortunately, you don't have any clue how good the other players are (so you probably should pick only easy game maps; something experience taught me), and once the game is on, you cannot communicate with them at all. This would've greatly benefited from Wii Speak, if it's anything what I think it is.

The multiplayer is also WiFi only, so no local multiplayer. Beside that, you might have to wait for longish times before you can find another player... so it's definitely a case different from Mario Kart Wii (as should be expected).

My suggestion: wait for a few more reviews before buying.

Drawing: Valentine's Day 2009

2009-02-15T12:36:00.002+02:00

So I forgot to post the drawing I had done on Friday, just in time for Valentine's Day. If you're not a Finn, it's "friend's day" in Finnish, so it doesn't have only the same romantical connotations as American Valentine's Day.

Still, here's the drawing.

Impressions: F.E.A.R.

2009-02-07T10:53:00.003+02:00

Two weeks ago, I bought a re-release of F.E.A.R., the shoot-em-up from 2005. It was an impulse purchase, brought on by the impending release of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin.

Colour me disappointed.

Monolith has made my favourite FPS games: No One Lives Forever 1+2 and Tron 2.0. I can't say I didn't like Aliens vs Predator 2 either, but it wasn't as good as the aforementioned games.

The levels in F.E.A.R. were uninspired, and I felt that running up and down the Armacham building was ridiculous. The supernatural aspect got slightly interesting only in the last couple of interludes. And slow-motion gimmicks have never managed to snare me; it didn't work with Max Payne and it didn't work with F.E.A.R. either.

I'm not complaining about the length of the game and the graphics were good enough.

One thing I did like of the game was the easter egg of a radio that started playing Shogo: Mobile Armor Division's theme music. (I hope they'd make another such game...)

In a way, I guess this must be how I would've felt if I tried playing Contract J.A.C.K., the game that was set in the NOLF universe but lacked the charm and humor of the true NOLF games.

Sad.

Dearth of Good Racers for Wii

2009-01-25T18:27:00.005+02:00

What decent racing games are there for Wii anyway? I ended up buying second-hand Excite Truck, but I'm not too impressed with it.

Let's look at the racing games I recognize on Metacritic (meaning there might still be more that I missed).

Without average score listed: Bigfoot: Collision Course, Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing, Cars Mater-National, Chrysler Classic Racing, Classic British Motor Racing, Cocoto Kart Racer, High Voltage Hot Rod Show, Hot Wheels: Beat That!, Jeep Thrills, Kawasaki Jet Ski, Kawasaki Quad Bikes, Kawasaki Snowmobiles, London Taxi Rush Hour, M&M's Kart Racing, Mini Desktop Racing, Monster Jam, Monster Jam: Urban Assault, Monster Trux Arenas, Myth Makers: Super Kart GP, NASCAR Kart Racing, Offroad Extreme: Special Edition, Penny Racers Party: Turbo-Q Speedway and Rig Racer 2.

Quite a few of these are shovelware, at least according to IGN.com's reviewers. There are some that are not unanimously such (at least High Voltage Hot Rod Show, Hot Wheels: Beat That!, Cocoto Kart Racer and NASCAR Kart Racing), but still...

After this, we have still in alphabetical order:
Cars (65), Cruis'n (25), Driver: Parallel Lines (59), Emergency Heroes (41), Emergency Mayhem (40), Excite Truck (72), Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (66), Ford Racing Off Road (37), GT Pro Series (41), Indianapolis 500 Legends (47), Mario Kart Wii (82), Monster 4x4 World Circuit (51), MX vs ATV Untamed (70), Need for Speed Carbon (67), Need for Speed ProStreet (61), Need for Speed Undercover (54), Nitrobike (49), Speed Racer (69), SPOGS Racing (18), SSX Blur (74)
Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (56) and We Ski (67).

The top five would then be Mario Kart Wii (82), SSX Blur (74), Excite Truck (72), MX vs ATV Untamed (70) and Speed Racer (69).

Of these five, I have three. Of those three, Mario Kart Wii easily deserves its top position. Speed Racer has too little to play, and Excite Truck just isn't to my taste (I'll post impressions on it later on), despite some good comments I've heard of it.

I'm not a fan of snowboarding, but at this rate, it looks like I should give SSX Blur a chance... except that based on the reviews I've seen, it seems to lack a career mode as well. Gonna have to read MX vs ATV Untamed reviews as well... sigh.

Annoying.

Doodle: Supine Lady

2009-01-24T22:27:00.003+02:00

As Ibis named this, here's Supine Lady. I'm not too happy about her hand, arms and the back of her head, but they'll have to do. Colouring is again a quick&dirty one without great care.

It divides opinions: some think the pose is natural, some think it's unnatural. Whichever might be the case...

Annoying Console Regions

2009-01-17T17:57:00.004+02:00

Today, I found out the first Wii game I would like to import from Japan... if it worked on my console. But it doesn't.

The game in question: Happy Dance Collection. Based on a gameplay video, it looks a lot like We Cheer... except with Japanese music, including Go My Way, which I believe to be originally from Idolm@ster.

I don't see there much chance of ever getting this game to Europe. It's simply too "Japanese" to make it here.

Seems like I'm a sucker for music-based games. I think I've already mentioned that before...

Updated Impressions on ASCS

2009-01-10T16:20:00.004+02:00

I've been playing All Star Cheerleader (or All Star Cheer Squad) now more with the balance board. The difference between with and without the board is like night and day.

Without the board, you just press a key to change your pose. Easy.

With the board, you get more actions (walking on your place) and definitely more difficulty as some actions you need to do standing on one leg, one foot outside the board or both feet on the board.

And when the game gets hectic, you'll easily mess up.

The balance board pose detection is definitely adjusted to be more forgiving than not... or maybe it's because I play on the easiest difficulty level :)

No matter; with the balance board the game gets a lot of more depth. It's only unfortunate that the game might've needed a "dance mat" of its own to work better; slipping off the board is possible.

One annoying thing that follows from adding the board to the game is that at the beginning of each routine, you get three (or so) windows of warnings and then you calibrate the board. Well, Wii Fit calibrated the board also quite frequently, but you cannot bypass these windows; you can only wait for them to run their course. Which is annoying.

Impressions: All Star Cheerleader

2009-01-06T20:59:00.006+02:00

As weird as it may sound, I decided to buy All Star Cheerleader for Wii. I was hoping for a game that would give a light workout.

Alas, that was not to be, at least not without the Balance Board. I haven't tried it with the board yet, because I didn't have loaded batteries for it. However, that still doesn't help much.

The biggest problem is that the game cannot be played with two Wiimotes and no Nunchuks. This is problem because if you're an adult, chances are you can't hold a Wiimote and a Nunchuck and spread your arms wide without the cord limiting your movements. That's why the game degenerated for me into mere a wrist-twisting game. I certainly don't want to break the nunchuk by pulling the cords out. Another thing is that when a move tells you to move the controllers back over your elbows, I tend to get the cord swung over my head. Annoying.

The position-sensing, however, seems to work rather well. Sure, occasionally you get a misread, but most of the time it seems to work just fine. Overall, there aren't many moves per hand (less than in Helix), and these moves appear to be read solely by the position of the controllers. Because of the somewhat low number of them, the sensing is also pretty specific. Of course, it doesn't distinguish between you holding your arms crossed at the elbows or your arms stretched out diagonally, but they aren't 'similar' moves, so you'd be 'cheating' if you used this to your advantage.

Some review I read complained about the loading times. They are indeed somewhat longer than I'd like, but I don't feel they're absolutely out of the park. An unfortunate thing is that at least in the first day, the single routines take less than a minute. I wouldn't have minded longer pieces.

Speaking of routines and their music, like some reviews mentioned, the music is for the most part something you've probably never heard before. Can't say it's a problem for me, though.

There are some rewards you get from certain accomplishments in the game. However, why exactly is it so that the game posts the button codes to get the rewards to your Wii message board, from where you need to enter the codes in the game yourself. Why not directly unlock the rewards?

I plan on getting some fashion of cordless Nunchuk so that I can check the game out better and also with the Balance Board. I'll post new impressions once I get to that point.

I hear the motion sensing in We Cheer is a lot more picky. If I can get the game cheap, I'll give it a shot and run a comparison between the two. Although, if We Cheer is indeed as frustrating as some reviews say... well, maybe we'll see.

As things stand now, All Star Cheer Squad's (or All Star Cheerleader in Europe) biggest problem is the cord between the Nunchuk and the Wiimote.

Focused Banner Advertising?

2009-01-02T15:04:00.002+02:00

Checking the ads you get when reading fanfics is an interesting proposition. Lately, I've been spammed with Perfect World International ads. Before that there were a number of other free online game ads (Shaiya, Last Chaos, Dream of Mirror Online, ...) and all sorts of dating services (interracial dating, Asian women, chubby gays, something about finding a partner in the same caste as me).

Only this time, I was reading a Star Trek / Stargate crossover... and got an ad for gay military dating. In a way, I find that fitting.

I wonder which part is derived from which crossover... or is it?

Doodle: Promise

2008-12-30T12:54:00.002+02:00

Yes, it's that time of the year again - to make resolutions that more often than not are broken pretty soon.

With that theme, here's my first drawing in four months... it's bad, but I didn't expect more.

Impressions: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon

2008-12-28T01:21:00.003+02:00

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon is an odd bird to categorize.

The overall style of the game, such as the cute and cuddly Chocobo leading the star role, suggests that the game is aimed for rather small children.

The actual game just outside the main plot, however, reveals a rather hard turn-based roguelike dungeon crawler; some might call this game "Mystery Dungeon Lite", and there's some strategy involved in what to do on each of your turn in a fight (avoiding fights on multiple fronts is generally a good idea).

In case you are unfamiliar with that term, I believe "Mystery Dungeon" genre means games in which you are thrown in random-generated dungeons, and are expected to die... in which case you are thrown out of the dungeon and lose your belongings, your experience levels and whatnot, except for some exceptions. If you die in FF:CD, you only lose your unequipped belongings and are tossed out of the dungeon; this is indeed a rather forgiving introduction to this genre of games.

As you might guess, the random-generated dungeons are absolutely nothing spectacular. The tilesets used get boring, and the level generator isn't particularly versatile either. Outside the dungeons, however, the city of Lostime (the place in which serves as your base when you do your adventuring) is very well modelled.

The game has a rather limited set of items: saddles (armor), talons (weapons), collars (enchanted necklaces), books, greens, potions and miscellaneous items that can be used to cast spells. As in Nethack, potions and greens are originally of unknown type before you identify them by a tool or experimentation.

One definitely fun part of the game is the weapon and armor fusing and honing system. You can fuse items, transferring seals (such as "rustproof" and "poison damage") to another item of the same type to improve on it. Honing means simply adding +1 to the counter by the item name, up to a constant dependent on the item. It doesn't sound like much, but fusing your own dream gear is just too fun.

Another nice aspect are the jobs. When entering a dungeon, Chocobo can take on one job, such as Dark Mage, White Mage, Dragoon, Knight, etc. and gain "job points" for that particular job. With enough of the points accrued, Chocobo can use new abilities, such as "Cure" or "Flare".

This game has possibly converted me into a follower of Mystery Dungeon games. Well, that's a bit too much to say now... but if Shiren the Wanderer 3 ever comes here, I'd like to try it out. After 20 hours of gameplay, FF:CD certainly isn't a bad game in my opinion.

Tonttu

2008-12-23T14:34:00.003+02:00

With Christmas coming around once again, I couldn't help but to listen to my favourite Christmas song: Tonttu. Like quite a few other things, the lyrics at the very least are originally from Sweden, based on a poem by Viktor Rydberg. Apparently the melody, however, is by Lyyli Wartiovaara-Kallioniemi and Finnish.

I'm pretty surprised that "Tomten" didn't return on the first page any Swedish renditions of this song... they already got the original lyrics. Well, on the other hand, I think the general mood is too depressing for Swedes, so maybe that's the real reason :) Wikipedia did say that the poem can also be sung... but didn't mention the tune.

There's no other season for being depressed like Christmas.

... and now I'm stuck trying to sing the original Swedish poem to the same melody. Argh.

Lies

2008-11-14T22:32:00.003+02:00

In a moment of weakness, I bought a small book on lies in Finnish from Kirjatori ("Tosi on! Valheiden, vääristelyn ja vilpin historiaa", written by Ari Turunen).

So far, the book has been a great read. The Yes Men hijink in Tampere in 2001, and this rumour about Microsoft are just two of the things I've learned about. Bonsai cats and Prester John are there as well... not to mention Napoleon, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Kekkonen, Martin Luther, Baron von Münchhausen... to name but a few.

Impressions: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

2008-11-08T21:31:00.002+02:00

You might be wondering why am I posting impressions now, a very long time after the initial release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The reason I got the game only now was that I had bought the original two Metroid Primes for GameCube, and was planning on playing through them first. Well, as it happened... I didn't. I'm still stuck maybe halfway through the first one, and I haven't really started on the second one.

Anyway... how did the original FPS translate to Wii? The controls appear to feel much better than in the MP1... except for the lock-on. And that might change if I switched lock-on/free-aim feature off. Essentially, you use the Wiimote to turn by moving the pointer to the edge of the screen, and you shoot where you point at.

Wiimote/Nunchuk combination has less buttons than the GameCube controller; I have the feeling this was one reason why they decreased the number of visors and beams to make swapping them more manageable. So far, I haven't noticed that you actually swap weapons; instead, I got an ice missile upgrade to your missile launcher. I presume the high-temperature weapon will replace the standard beam.

There are apparently only three visors: scan visor (the same as in GC Metroids), combat(?) visor (the normal one you go and shoot things up with) and command visor, which will let you remotely command your ship to, for instance, land at your position if you're at a new landing pad or blast an annoying wall to smithereens, not unlike in Star Trek: Elite Force 2.

I don't know how much there is left for me to play in this game, but I get the feeling the total game play time isn't as much as in MP1.

As for graphics and sound... I have no problem with those.

One other thing that has been bugging me... why are the game plots so... obvious? The moment Samus awoke after activating the turrets, it was clear that what had happened to the others. Some might have known it even earlier when they were introduced.

Tested: Coca Cola Light plus Green Tea

2008-11-04T09:11:00.002+02:00

Now that I saw in store Coca Cola Light plus Green Tea bottle, I wanted to give it a shot. Quite a long time ago, over a year, I think, I gave my impressions on grape/jasmine/lime/ginger/green tea juice mix... which was good.

Apparently, green tea does not fit in with Coca Cola Light. It doesn't immediatly taste bad, but after a fraction of a second the green tea flavour attempts to overwhelm the cola, but the mixture of the two becomes quite awful. Watch out and avoid.

Electronic Voting in Finland... Failed

2008-10-28T15:30:00.003+02:00

The municipal elections here in Finland are now done with... except in the towns where the new electronic voting system was being tested. The voting system worked as follows (as far as I've managed to piece together):

Insert a card in the voting machine.
Select your candidate.
Press OK to confirm.
Eject card, you're done.

Apparently there are no hardcopy receipts of the vote being submitted (stupid!).

The problem was when people didn't press OK and only ejected the card after selecting their candidate. About two per cent of the voters in those test areas did thus. In the end, the vote didn't register.

Helsingin Sanomat writes "Over 200 electronic votes wasted":

Ministeriö lupaa selvittää kokeilutulosten puntaroinnin yhteydessä, miten järjestelmää voitaisiin kehittää niin, että äänestäjä saa tiedon äänestyksen keskeytymisestä tai mahdollisesti tositteen prosessin onnistumisesta.

Kauppalehti, on the other hand, writes "Two out of hundred does not recognize OK-button":

Vaikka toiminto on sama kuin tavallisessa pankkiautomaatissa, jostain syystä 122 vihtiläistä, 61 kauniaislaista ja 49 karkkilalaista koneäänestyksen kokeilijaa käveli tiehensä painamatta OK-näppäintä.

And a bit later in the same story...

TietoEnator ja Oikeusministeriö joutuvat nyt pohtimaan, millainen valistuskampanja OK-näppäimen käytöstä on järjestettävä, ennen kuin sähköistä äänestämistä seuraavan kerran voidaan kokeilla.

Okay, while I admit I could be considered one of the "inmates running the asylum", I definitely would not place blame on the users in this case like Kauppalehti seems to be doing. The electronic devices are here to help us, not make us adapt to their limitations!

Manga and What?

2008-10-25T18:17:00.005+02:00

As I was trying to figure out just what yukkuri are and how many yukkuri plushies there are (now that I know how they came to be, I definitely don't want to know what they came to be... link withheld for that reason), I happened upon this blog entry, which indirectly lead me to this page -- yes, the same O'Reilly who made the "animal books" that were quite popular amongst software developers at least during the Dot Com boom. And for some samples from within the book, go here.

Well, maybe I shouldn't complain of such books since I have bought Kana de Manga and Kanji de Manga books... but to see manga as a selling gimmick for statistics? Come to think of it... maybe I could start embedding such drawings also in my work :)

Impressions: de Blob

2008-10-24T20:18:00.004+02:00

I don't know what Mario Sunshine was like. I do recall hearing how you were supposed to wash out something in the game... well, that aspect isn't as different from de Blob. I ended up buying the game after the praise by Bill Harris... the man whose articles and blog entries let me know of Space Rangers 2, Dwarf Fortress, Europa 1400: The Guild, to name just three.

In this game, you are a paint blob. The colour varies as you roll over paint containers of different colours, mixing red, yellow, and blue to get also orange, purple, green, and brown.

The background story of the game is pretty wacky. The INKT Corporation has taken over and has sucked the world dry of colours... and now it's the Colour Underground and Blob's turn to bring back the colour in the world by painting it. The cutscenes at the beginning of each level are fun enough to watch.

Presentation-wise, I like the simplistic look of the game. A good tradeoff between accuracy and playability, I would say. You can easily tell where one building ends and another starts, and whether they have been painted already or not.

What I don't like are the controls. So far, I really hate watching Blob slide down a wall and the jumping mechanic the game has: swing the Wiimote downwards. In a way, I'd place a lot of blame on the Nunchuk... I haven't learned to use it for reliably moving around so far, and I doubt de Blob is the game with which I will learn to do so.

I wouldn't buy this game at full price, though. I hear it has only ten levels, and I've finished four of them already. True, there are all sorts of different goals for completionists, but I doubt I'm going to go that far.

Impressions: Samba de Amigo

2008-10-17T20:37:00.003+02:00

Okay then; now I've completed all the easy and normal tracks in Samba de Amigo. To that point, the game was fun... except for the beats lost on my right-hand Wiimote when swinging up.

Peculiar.

Anyway, it was fun to see how many songs I had definitely heard before but didn't know the name of, Sway, Samba de Janeiro, Tequila, and La Bamba to name but a few.

It was less fun to see how the control scheme fails the game concept. If I shake the Wiimote while I'm pointing it at an even level (the middle target), the 'pointer' flips briefly to point at the top target. Is my shaking truly that bad? In any case, you can imagine how bad the game becomes to play when you have to move your hands from one pose to the opposite in an instant. It's not only your coordination you're fighting against, it's the controls. And that is a sign of a failed game.

Before moving onto "hard"-difficulty level, though, the game is fun enough to play. Except that the "easy" and "normal" levels are both in general too easy. I find it quite easy to score "Perfect" on at least some of the songs on "normal" levels ("Perfect" means you didn't miss a single note; all of them could've been just "Yeah"-hits.) Once you move onto "hard", you hit the wall. In Dance Dance Revolution, I can play some of the songs on "difficult"-level with some success. I haven't tried out all the options in Samba de Amigo yet, but I really expect the control problems to be a major problem for me.

Still, the shakes go with the beat, making the shaking of the "maracas" much more sensible than the moves in Helix. Overall, I like Samba de Amigo a lot more than Helix... but it's far from perfect.

What I Think Is Wrong with Wii

2008-10-16T20:54:00.004+02:00

Today I finally got to play Samba de Amigo. Overall... I'm disappointed.

I just don't know in what.

The game could be fun, if it could read my hand positions better. But that's the problem: it can't read how high my hands are, except by dead reckoning (which is NOT a good idea in the long run). And as a result, the hand wavings are misread.

Who dropped the ball?

Gearbox for not making a better position sensing scheme? (I hear that in the original Dreamcast version, the positions of the maracas were triangulated or something.) Hardly -- there is no good position sensing scheme for Wii that doesn't need you to point with the Wiimote.

Nintendo for not making position-tracking sensors in the Wiimote? Maybe they'll be coming in the next generation. But I think the current sensors already should be enough for innovative games.

Gearbox for deciding to port the game from Dreamcast to Wii using only Wii standard Wiimotes? Now we're talking.

I think the reason both Samba de Amigo and Helix fell short of their goal because they were overzealous: they thought it was possible for them to do motion sensing with the needed accuracy with the computational and sensor resources they had in Wii and Wiimote. I think it's close enough to impossible. Of course, when someone shows me wrong, I'll be very glad to admit that.

Of the games in the top-5 ranking in Metacritic for Wii games right now, I've played Super Mario Galaxy, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition, and Okami. In none of these has the position of the wiimote played any role at all, at least as far as I know. The angle etc the Wiimote is, yes, but not where it lies in the 3D space.

I'll be posting more opinions on Samba de Amigo at a later date.

Life-Like Saga

2008-10-14T15:06:00.002+02:00

What I am feeling right now can be summarized into one 'sentence':

Today's experiment: Failed

I'm probably just a no-good whiner, but some things I keep on trying really start to resemble a series of bad jokes. Unlike Excel Saga, however, they're not amusing in the least.

Impressions: Helix (WiiWare)

2008-10-12T08:22:00.004+02:00

Like the sucker for rhythm-based games I am, I bought Helix for WiiWare some time ago despite the not-so-favourable reviews. Here's the official trailer.

A bit like Samba de Amigo (which I haven't got yet; some commercial here), the game is about moving two controllers (two Wiimotes) with your hands to some predefined pattern. There are 26 (or so I've read) different songs, all electronica. Not really my cup of tea, but at least Ilona Europa's songs are nice to listen to. Indeed, all the songs are from indie artists as far as I know, probably in an effort to keep the licensing costs down. That's not a problem.

What is a problem is that the music has not much variability. So the music selection is either hit or miss, all depending on your own taste. Before buying the game, check out if the ingame music matches your taste by searching i.e. YouTube for gameplay videos.

Then, the gameplay. In theory, you've got a bit under ten different moves for each hand, and some two-handed moves as well. In practice, I feel the game cannot correctly pick up all of them. It's likely a case of too ambitious game design. How could the game pick on whether I'm punching the controller forward or straight to my side with the sensors it has? I doubt even WiiMotion Plus could do it.

Also, the motion sensing is very forgiving. This might be a blessing, since often it's the other way around. Unfortunately this also means that you can swing your arms in panic when you forget what you're supposed to do and the game won't mind it. In practice, after you've had a few of these panic attacks and still pass the game with a B rank, you really don't get much feeling of satisfation. Big minus.

Getting lost is unfortunately very easy on the more difficult levels. You follow the instructions of an avatar, a robot, swinging his arms in front of you. The thing is, you don't do the moves in synch with him, but in synch with the rhythm track set at the top of the screen. Each move is represented by a bar with a bubble in the middle, telling you when you should do the move. But the move bar doesn't tell what the move is.

Furthermore, the bars follow the avatar's moves with a delay. This means that you need to read both the avatar and the rhythm track at the same time. This becomes a chore on the hardest of the three difficulty levels. This doesn't mean that you won't pass those tracks; you just don't feel like it was thanks to you but the motion reading.

The delay raises also a different question: in rhythm-based games, you're supposed to be doing the moves to the music. On the lower difficulty levels there's a delay between successive sets of moves the avatar shows you. This breaks the flow. Also, while I admit that I hardly have any sense of rhythm, in only a few cases I felt the moves went in beat with the music.

Graphics are simple, but do their job. With the relatively small maximum size for WiiWare downloads, it's not a surprise. And I think this was the right decision.

Change of Website Address

2008-09-21T16:58:00.004+02:00

Back in Finland... and apparently, the domain of mine.nu is now a reported attack site, at least so Firefox says. This means that the address of my homepage has changed. Note that I seriously doubt hirvitys.mine.nu has been involved in the malware.

The new address is www.banditrevolver.com/kadunta (the site name is from Guilty Gear XX, I'm told).

Out of Country

2008-09-13T21:03:00.001+02:00

I'll be out of country this week, but if you're reading this, you probably already knew that :) The trip had better go better than I expect...

Announcement That Negates Itself

2008-09-08T19:10:00.003+02:00

Johanna Tukiainen has now announced that she is now planning on leaving the public eye. (For those of you who don't know who she is, she's one reason the former Finnish Secretary of Foreign Affairs is now indeed a former one due to an SMS scandal.)

Okay... why make that into an announcement... and why do the Finnish media need to report it?

Impressions: Super Mario RPG

2008-09-07T15:12:00.004+02:00

I downloaded Super Mario RPG for Wii. Since it had gotten so high reviews, it had to be good, right?

Well, it's better than Phantasy Star 3, but I'd definitely call it worse than Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3, and Phantasy Star 4.

Maybe it's because of what I expect from a RPG, but I feel both Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario both are too simple. If you consider the demographic, it's probably best this way... but I don't remember the reviews mentioning the game isn't as complex as the aforementioned games.

Another thing I don't like about the game is the use of prerendered art. I definitely would've liked the art to be stylistically similar to CT, FF3, PS4, or Super Mario World, instead of Donkey Kong Country. The crippled antialiasing artifacts at the edge of the various objects (palm tree leaves, for instance) are just plain ugly. Also the first two team members Mario gets are mostly just a mess of pixels. Fail.

I hope the VC will get the better SNES RPGs coming out at some point... FF3, CT, Legend of Mana, Terranigma...

Physics-Based Flash Game

2008-08-23T18:58:00.003+03:00

I got a link to this physics-based Flash puzzler: Fantastic Contraption.

If I were smarter, I'd probably enjoy it a lot more. And even as it is, it's real fun.

Doodle: On a Throne

2008-08-17T10:44:00.005+03:00

Well, I spent over half of last week to make a new piece of fanart for a fanfic. I also had created myself a DeviantArt account, and uploaded the pic there. Since it seems to be available only for those with a DA account, here's an alternative link.

This was the first time I spent this much time on the background. The character itself is nothing spectacular... but the throne was a pain to colour with GIMP. Not that I managed to draw the roots in a flash on paper, either.

Overall, I should be satisfied. But I feel just spent. This probably is a good sign that I shouldn't even joke about getting more serious with drawing.

20 Hours of Gameplay

2008-08-16T09:40:00.003+03:00

I just watched PyroBlazer's trailer. It says, 20 vehicles, 20 weapons, 14 tracks and what not... but also, 20 hours of gameplay.

20 hours sounds awfully little. It took me almost 50 hours to finish Twilight Princess at a leisurely pace.

Granted, Max Payne had less than ten.

The scary thing is.. "3 different worlds, 50 levels based on 14 tracks" sounds a lot like Speed Racer and its five tracks. Well, it sounds better... assuming 20 hours of gameplay, we get 24 minutes per level.

I just hope that doesn't mean only grinding the same level over and over again until you win the race, but also some replayability. Unfortunately, "epic story" hints otherwise. Maybe there's an online multiplayer also on Wii... Well, I'm still hoping for the best; after Speed Racer, I really want more good futuristic racing games.

Tr2n

2008-08-08T09:53:00.002+03:00

Whoa, I really wanted to see a Tron sequel coming. And now I did. I hope to see the film here in Finland, too, when it's done.

Also, I just got RanmaTronic chapter 6 released on Fanfiction.net. That took its time, too... eight months. I write real slow.

Failed Ads

2008-07-31T22:44:00.002+03:00

Today, I happened to see poster ads of Axe "Dark Temptation"... which involves chocolate somehow. I don't know if the ad is also on the Net, so I don't have a link to it.

To be honest, I found the posters just awful. For me, they look like their lips bleed from a number of wounds. Definitely not good in my opinion... plus the TV ad isn't helping their case much.

Game Finished: Speed Racer

2008-07-26T15:46:00.002+03:00

It took me a while to finish Speed Racer, but it wasn't because the game was difficult. Far from it. Instead, I had put it on an indefinite pause, lacking only the last three championships. In total, I don't think I had to repeat a championship round more than four times over all -- and I never repeated a race.

Of course, if the players were as old as those who wanted to watch the movie, then it might not have been as easy.

But for now, I'll try to list things how Sidhe (the game developer) could improve on the game and make a truly worthwhile racing game -- in my opinion.

More variety to tracks. If they all feel like they're one and the same long pipeline because of the speeds involved, then cut down the speed and the guiding help a bit.
Keep the Car-Fu methods. The physical fighting with the other cars was more than half of the fun in this game. Honestly, playing a round of Mario Kart Wii after Speed Racer felt... clinical and not nearly as fun when you couldn't shunt the other drivers.
A worthwhile championship campaign. I didn't like two- or three-track championships.
A custom character the players can generate for themselves. The Mii racers in Mario Kart Wii were definitely a step in the right direction. Maybe car tuning?
Less rubberbanded AI.
Online multiplayer. Or multiplayer with more than two players. Definitely.
More tracks. More to content to the game. The number of racers was a good one, though... I think.

If it weren't for these oversights, in my opinion, the game would definitely have stood on its own two feet (even) without the license.

Darn shame.

A New Doodle

2008-07-24T19:55:00.002+03:00

I haven't been drawing much lately... here's one incomplete sketch I made, though. It's my inattention to details that makes me angry... and bad folding of clothes, too.

Getting Bored with Wii

2008-07-19T12:22:00.002+03:00

Now, a year and a half after I got my Wii, I've noticed how little I've played it after all. And it makes me wonder just why.

One thing that might be the reason is the lack of games that hold my interest. Right now, I've been playing mostly Dancing Stage (or DDR just about everywhere else but here), but that I could've played on any other console. And I'm still waiting for it to overstay its welcome soon enough.

Right now, if I hadn't bought a Wii back then, I'd probably be without any game console well into next year, and probably beyond.

The first problem I see with the Wii is that I apparently fall between casual and hardcore gamers so that neither camp satisfies me. On one hand, I want games that aren't the usual "best played with Classic Controller" stuff, but on the other hand I don't want it to be any cardplaying or so.

So far, I feel the best match outside sports games I've tried are Speed Racer and Super Monkeyball. SM relies on the tilt control well, but don't get me started on the host of minigames in the pack. SR relies so little on the Wiimote for steering and focuses on Car-Fu so that you don't need a gamepad and the Car-Fu moves are better with motion sensing than clinical "press these buttons in order" style controls.

Perhaps I'm merely an outlier, but it doesn't mean I can't dislike the state of things.