Now Playing - "turn green from sleepiness"

So this week its been mainly Tales of Eternia (PSP) I've been playing. Trying to get through the game (I'm around 26 or so hours in I think) and I've got all the primary Craymels (Seriously, I hate some of the terms in this game) and don't really know what to do next. I'm slowly starting to enjoy the game more, but the combat still feels pretty boring at times. I mean the other day I must've played for a good 8 or 10 hours, just jamming on X in battle, must've killed that button... Eesh. I might play an srpg or something with more depth next.

Seriously, I can't find a picture related to Tales of Eternia that isn't horrible. So if in doubt, get some SotN on there ;D

So other than those games, I've played little bits here and there of Super Mario: Sunshine,  Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Halo 3 and Golden Sun. I just more or less started SoTN's Richter mode and I pretty much suck at it. I reckon if I put enough time into it I'll get used to the different speeds and animations of Richter's (more clunky) gameplay. Golden Sun is still boring me as I've not put much more time into my Completion run. Halo 3 was a bit of a laugh today acting like jerks; teamkilling and annoying our own dudes on Big Team games. XD

That was a bit of a pathetic Now Playing, hopefully in my next one in a few weeks I will have to more to talk about. Its pretty evident from this that I haven't been that bothered about games recently. 

Gaming funk or something..

Recently I've not been that interested in games, I mean I've been playing some here and there but something hasn't been right.. I don't know, maybe I'm just kind of getting burnt out, maybe its the games I have not interesting me much or maybe gaming quality has gone down hill recently. Maybe its because I've been ill or not in a vastly hardcore mode. Maybe its more to do with my focus on the RPG genre, maybe I need a change from them. Who knows?

Sometimes I get this feeling, can never tell why or what to do to remedy it.

To be honest I think there have been a lot of good games recently. I've been playing some quite innovative RPGs(at least compared to what we've already seen in the west): Demon's Souls and Sakura Wars: So Long My Love are the two that jump to mind immediately. I blasted through Sakura Wars and had a lot of fun with that to be honest, but some of the other games I've been trying out haven't impressed me much.

Tales of Eternia is a fairly generic RPG from what I can tell so far. Nothing has jumped out at me from it so far. The graphics are boring (I mean, it is a remake of a PS1 game I think, so I'll let that one slip), the voice acting is average, not too bad but not brilliant either, the story lacks any real interesting stuff, the minigames and a lot of the gameplay mechanics are poorly explained (even with multiple tutorials they are still confusing and awkward) and have terrible controls. The characters are pretty boring for the most part, and the character designs are some of the worst I've seen. Why am I still playing this? God knows, I am slowly getting through it somehow.

Other than that I'm playing Golden Sun and I'm at the start more or less. Just got the first djinn after leaving the starting town. I've played this game so many times and last time I played it (a few months ago) I just got past this bit and then my data deleted itself. So thats kind of putting me off playing any more, and I can't really be bothered going for 100% completion either. I do need some kind of clear data so I can go onto the 2nd game sometime soon. I never did finish it, and want to before Dark Dawn comes out on the DS. Just so I have shit down in terms of story (unfortunately they won't be doing anything with the GBA game slots since they've slowly phased them out of the DS consoles.)

Demon's Souls is pretty damn awesome, such good atmosphere and it does feel really rewarding when you get the stage memorised and get through it. Feels really like you've achieved something in the game, as some of the stages can be really tough at first. But I've not played this in a couple days as I've been ill and not really felt like it right now.

I've tried playing games I really like, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, some Super Mario Sunshine, Dissidia: Final Fantasy (I am not a huge fan of this game tbh), but none of them have held my attention for long. So my main aim is to get through Tales of Eternia, I think I'm at least half way in that. I dunno, I might just watch more TV and some anime if I can't bebothered playing many games at the moment.

OMG though, today Dragon Age 2 just got its official release date. March 2011. Now that  will be a game I will look forward to. Bloody loved the first game. 

Playstation Plus rant!

So..what is the point in this service? You pay quite a bit per year: $49.99, £39.99 per year in the UK. 

What do you get for that? 

"What does PlayStation Plus include?
PlayStation Plus includes premium gaming features such as Full Game Trials and Automatic Download of demos, game updates and system software updates. PlayStation Plus also includes PlayStation Store special offers, such as game downloads, discounts, early access to demos and beta trials and other exclusive goodies."

Full game trials? No thanks Sony they were free before you introduced this. Demos? Really? I don't want to pay for them, so get to f**k! Game Updates and System Software updates? Wow. Wow, that sounds AMAZING! Seriously Sony, get a grip! You just started turning a profit on each of your ps3s, you have slowly started getting there, but this is not a good idea. Neither is Move. Sony is going to start losing money again soon if they don't realise they are fuckin idiots to have given stuff like this the go ahead. Discounts and exclusive stuff perhaps could be good, but over here there is a lot of stuff that looks shitty that they could just give away on this scheme.

http://uk.playstation.com/playstationplus/

http://us.playstation.com/psn/playstation-plus/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Plus#PlayStation_Plus

Seriously, why did I buy a PS3? They don't have that many good games I think yet, the online support is inferior to xbox live, Sony don't give a damn about Europeans, why can't we get the same fucking shit that American PSN users get? FUCKING idiotic pricks!

In fact a lot of the stuff Sony does at the moment pisses me off. Example, the latest official system update for the PSP, 6.20 or 30 I'm not entirely sure. You'd think since they don't release these that often, they'd include important patches or stuff that actually matters. Wrong. What does this one include? 

"The PSP® system software version 6.30 update includes the following:

Game

[By Format] has been added to the options menu for [Group Content].
Games can now be grouped and displayed in folders based on format under [Game].
To sort games by format, select a game icon, and then press the button."

Was that really worth 10 or 15 minutes of my time and a goddamn compulsory download before I could access the PSN store on my PSP? Seriously, are the people working at Sony feeling alright? Are they mentally ill? Are they even human, or have they decided to employ invertebrates who squish their boneless foreheads against the keyboard to program these updates?

Quick Update.

Just to say that I've been ill the past few days T_T I don't know why I've got ill during the summer (probably my diet not being healthy enough or something) anyway, not really related to that but I might not be posting much in the next few weeks. I'll probably do a Now Playing this Sunday and perhaps an Anime Impressions post on Angel Beats! if I get a bit further through it (I've only watched the 1st 2 eps so far.)

But after that, I'll be away on holiday either a week on Thursday or Friday (we are currently deciding whether we should go a day earlier or not) I'll be away to Chamonix in the French Alps for a bit longer than 2 weeks. Should be good! I'll be bringing my DS and PSP so I'll crack on with a couple of my handheld games but I don't think I'll be posting on here much during that time (not entirely sure on that, as I might bring my laptop if I can get wifi over there, but I dunno, might just take a break without interwebs for a while)

Anyway, enjoy these pics to make up for this crappy post and my probable lack of content in the weeks to come. I'm actually a bit more into Tales of Eternia today as opposed to just playing little bits yesterday, so I might actually manage to finish it before I go on holiday. Thats my aim for now! *Strikes heroic pose*

I have tonnes of motivationals, might post some another time =3

Hope you all have a good summer!

Now Playing - "No God, no Buddha, no Angels"

So another week goes by and time for my Sunday post on what I've been playing (in between watching Wimbledon and the World Cup~go Germany!)

I finished up Sakura Wars: So Long My Love (Wii) yesterday after getting through the final battles (one or two of which were quite tough.) Its not the longest game to get through, took me between 19 and 20 hours to finish up. Although there is scope for a bit of replayability: I think there are 6 endings to get (one for each of the girls), bromides to collect and the extra chapter (I think called "A free and easy day in New York.") but I'm not too sure what that is or entails to be honest. 

Before I played this I hadn't really played anything similar, or with such strong dating simulator aspects as this. I was a bit sceptical before I got this game as to whether it would be to my liking. Certain jrpgs and dating sim type games can be kinda perverted and wrong and that is something that makes me quite apprehensive. I'm not entirely sold on the idea of dating lolis... But I am glad I got this: I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Its well-written, well voice acted, cheery, cheesy and overall good fun. I'd probably pick up more of the Sakura Wars/Taisen games if they are released here. I don't think I'd import though as this one seemed to have a lot of dialogue (which worked really well to build the characters and develop the links between the characters.)

I'm around 5 or so hours into Demon's Souls (PS3) now, and I've done 4 of the stages, 1-1, 1-2, 2-1 and 2-2. I'm slowly getting more and more into it. It actually sucked the majority of my day away today-aside from watching the Men's final of Wimbledon, I pretty much just played this game. And man, its atmosphere is intense in places-I really found the 2-2 stage creepy and claustrophobic at times. All those tunnels...*shudder* The threat of getting horribly owned seems to be everpresent in this game..and I hate losing all my souls... I actually got all the way to the boss on 2-2 on my first run through, only for the camera to end up pwning my ass. I must've backed too close to a wall when jumping backwards, and then due to the auto-lock I couldn't see the boss (specifically his arms) to see what attack he was going to do. Definitely enjoying this, but it does leave me freaked out and drained after not terribly long periods of play. I'll slowly and cautiously get through it (thats my way for the individual levels as well.) Oh, this site has been very helpful for me, if there is anyone else out there interested in the game, or playing through it etc, check it out for some really useful stuff. Link.

Its a game with some pretty cool ideas and inspiration. Its like there are big aspects commonly seen in roguelikes, dungeon crawlers like Diablo and stuff. The exp, currency etc is all in one form, souls. You can use these to level up (getting stat points to distribute), upgrade weapons, buy items, spells, miracles (I don't really get what these are yet) and other stuff. You get these souls on killing enemies, but it can be hard to keep a hold of them. If you die, you can still get them back if you reach the spot where you died previously before. But if you die before reaching your corpse, damn...the souls are gone. I kind of wish that the equivalent of the Town Portal wouldn't take away your souls on use. Seems like an extra harsh drawback..anyway, enough on the gameplay of this game, I realise many people will have already played it as the US and Japanese releases came out ages ago.

I hadn't touched Tales of Eternia (PSP) for quite a while now due to being annoyed with one of the dungeons (relatively early on-the Forest of Temptation) but decided to get some pointers on youtube and in guides the other day. So I pressed on through there with not as many problems as I anticipated. It reminds me of Star Ocean 1 & 2 actually (I played the psp remakes)..something about the camera angles, the towns and probably the battles as well. I think I am getting more used to the battle difficulty, I've now got the AI set up so they don't do anything stupid really.

If I put a couple more hours into this, I'll be able to make up my mind whether I like it (or not as the case may be.)

I might actually start another game up, something..easier maybe. Demon's Souls and Tales are pretty brutal in places.

World Cup 2010 Quarter-final predictions

So now that the World cup is just about to go into the quarter final stage, thought I'd do another prediction post.

So for my last one just before the group stages ended, I got 12 out of 16 teams right. Not too bad, there were some upsets that threw me off quite a bit, but I still should've done better as there was only a few games left to play in the group stage at the time I posted.

Anyway now that we know the quarter final teams I'll make some more predictions on who will be making it to the semi-finals. 

World Cup 2010 Quarter-Finals

Netherlands vs Brazil ~ Friday 2nd July. Brazil will win this, but it looks to be a very good match.

Uruguay vs Ghana ~ Friday 2nd July. I'd like Ghana to progress, but I reckon Uruguay will.

Argentina vs Germany ~ Saturday 3rd July. This one is probably hardest to call for me, but I reckon Argentina will win due to their strength in defence as well as going forward.

Paraguay vs Spain ~ Saturday 3rd July. Paraguay didn't impress me much against Japan, then again Spain haven't impressed me overly. Spain will probably win however.

The most impressive teams so far I reckon are Brazil, Argentina and Germany, so I think one of them will go on win the entire competition.

Games resume tomorrow, should be good!