logicbutton | Entries tagged with ds

Attention everyone! Just this minute I finished playing Ghost Trick, which is a newly-released puzzle/adventure game created by the same dude who came up with Phoenix Wright. Behold, my assessment!

Art style: 7/10.
Not my favorite, but unique!

Music: 5/10.
The credits revealed that the composer is the same person who did the first Phoenix Wright game. Better luck next time, Sugimori Masakazu!

Characters: 7/10.
This is a gift! Until the last quarter or so of the game, I would have given this aspect a 3.

Length: 2/10.
I bought this game on Friday! Come on, Capcom!

Gameplay: 9/10.
I took off a point for the learning curve, but the puzzle style is innovative, and I like the idea of playing as a ghost who travels by possessing and manipulating objects!

Bechdel test: 2/10.
Shape up, Capcom!

Plot: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000/10.
HOLY CRAP! DEAR ( OTHER GAME ): THIS IS HOW YOU DO A STORY ABOUT ( SOMETHING )!

In conclusion, I somewhat recommend this game. If puzzle or adventure games are your bag, I can definitely recommend it as a rental. I would not necessarily recommend it as a purchase, but it's not the worst video game investment I've ever made by far. I will be playing it again. If they make a sequel, I'll buy it. And the music did grow on me; it just took a little while. Oh, and the above cuts are non-spoilers for all but the biggest spoilerphobes.

I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs and worrying, for like the thirtieth day in a row, about what my next livejournal post is going to be about. "I have so much to talk about!" I think. "But I haven't updated in forever and that's always so awkward because then I feel like I have to be epic and cover everything, and what if I leave something out? Then I'll feel like I was rude to the thing I left out! And what if I don't leave anything out but the post is like eighty thousand words long, I mean, nobody's going to read that. And it's not like I'm going to spam people with eighty thousand-word posts. Or a thousand eighty-word posts. Or, wait, what are some other factor pairs of eighty thousand? Let me get a pen."

Luckily, as has happened eventually every time I go for awhile without posting, something comes along to make me decide that I can wait no longer. In this case: the really-real-for-serious yes-this-is-actually-happening announcement of an Ace Attorney/Professor Layton crossover game. Well, having two people contact me independently to make sure I knew about it was what made me decide to post, if you want to get technical. But still.

Okay, so, let's not kid ourselves here. I'm going to buy this. Probably on the day of release if I don't preorder it. If I can't afford a 3DS before it comes out, I'll buy it anyway and wait to play it until I can.

But

but

...

Not sure if want.

Maybe I just...don't know what to think? I dunno, I feel like I should be going to bars and buying everyone a round of drinks in celebration, but...not sure. It feels kinda exploitative? Okay, rephrase. I know it's exploitative. And exploitative doesn't necessarily mean evil, and it certainly doesn't necessarily mean bad, especially if Shu Takumi is actually writing it, but but but the styles! Gameplay, plot, tone, art! They're so different! What if, what if they don't actually combine well? What if they make no sense? What if...it's just not a very good game?

I guess I'll find out when I play it. Which I will. Sooner or later. Probably sooner.

I do expect the music to be amazing, though.

So if my radio is telling the truth, apparently there are some new sitcoms premiering on CBS tonight? And I guess in one of them, a woman says "I never do anything I don't want to do. Except on the second date, but that's just good manners." Followed by uproarious laughter. I kind of hate everything. Oh god, especially myself, because did I just waste energy thinking about a sitcom on CBS? Ew ew ew. The other sitcom they were advertising in the same commercial is called "Gary Unmarried," and without knowing anything else about it at all, I can tell you right now how it's going to end, assuming it survives long enough for the writers to give it a proper conclusion. Which it probably won't. Man, TV sucks. Heroes was pretty decent the other night, though, even though ( spoiler ) was sort of insulting to my intelligence. Still, I wasn't anywhere near as insulted by that as I was by ( spoiler from last season ), so hey, progress! Oh, and also, I've watched the last two episodes of House, but I kind of think this could end up being a problem of the hypochondria-inducing variety. It didn't help that I look younger than I am and have this gigantic, mysterious bruise on my leg, which last week's episode tells me means that I have leprosy.

I have my couch now. All of you should definitely come over at the earliest possible opportunity and crash on it. Except you should let me know first so that I can actually put up my curtains rather than having them all over the floor like they are now, and let me tell you internet, I am really fucking sick of thinking about curtains. I thought it was over when I bought these ones from Ikea, but noooo, they ended up making my living room look like a hotel room. I got some different ones from Target today, so we'll see how those turn out.

I got Hotel Dusk like two weeks ago, but I've been so busy that I only started playing it last night. So okay, I'm a total neurotic weirdo, right? And as such, I have this aversion to comparing things that aren't nominally related to begin with (saying that Book Series X is "just like Harry Potter" gives me hives), but the extent to which I feel that playing Hotel Dusk is REALLY REALLY A LOT like playing Phoenix Wright with significantly better graphics transcends my neuroses. It's actually kind of alleviating my Phoenix Wright withdrawal, no thanks to the release date announcement of Gyakuten Kenji and this opera thing all the kids are talking about these days. I can't wait to see how they do Gumshoe.

I got Professor Layton and the Curious Village because I liked what

useless_espers had to say about it; it sounded like it would be up my alley. It turned out to be pretty much everything I want in a DS game. (Which I guess means that point-and-click adventure games based on logic puzzles are everything I want in a DS game. That and cute animation.) Today's Penny Arcade amuses me very, very much, although if I have trouble seeing Layton as anything other than Tycho from now on, that amusement will cease.

Mostly, I'm just glad to have something good to distract me from my gay lawyer withdrawal. One more week!

I have a lot to say lately. :D

Edit: My computer is home! Oh, I missed you so much. ♥

Pop quiz: What was I this Halloween?

a. A dead bird
b. Mia Fey
c. The moon, with my costume from high school
d. A Target employee

If you said "I see what you did there," to (a) and (b), thought (c) was likely, and then decided the answer was probably (d), you are completely wrong. At the Halloween party I went to on Saturday, I was, in fact, a dead bird. I had these feather wings and a bird beak, and I was going to use fake blood on my forehead to represent the point of impact with the window, but I couldn't get it to look right, so I just told everybody that I didn't need it because the little buggers never show marks anyway.

Today I went to the Mall of America, as is my custom. They've got all these Halloween decorations in the rotunda, although I'm not sure whether they have something to do with the Park After Dark thing going on right now, or if they're for something else. Anyway, one of the decorations is a skeleton riding a broom. Um, no. YOU ARE MIXING YOUR METAPHORS. Unless there's some obscure legend out there about broom-riding skeletons that, now that I've complained about it, probably actually does exist, in which case I look like a jackass.

I finally picked up Trials and Tribulations! It is good. A full reaction post is in the works, and will be up whenever I finish. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the copy I ordered from Capcom, assuming it ever gets here. I swear to God, the only modicum of satisfaction I have received from this stupid company to date is in their wonderful, wonderful games. ARGH. I don't like you, Capcom; why must your games be so awesome?

I also got Prism, because I liked what Tycho on PA said about it. It sounded like the kind of game I'd be into. I've only played a bit of it so far, but it's pretty cute, and the music, although it consists of only one song as far as I can tell, is completely and utterly adorable.

So I bought the first Phoenix Wright game today.

It is exciting.

Also, damn, I'm such an accessories whore--seriously, I buy some gadget, and then I spend the next several months buying accessories for the gadget. Using the gadget is great, of course (if it weren't, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place), but shopping for accessories is literally just as much fun.

Actually, I'm going to make a list right here.

( ...yeah. )

Anyway, one thing I've been seriously looking at for the DS is a skin. I've narrowed it down to ( these two. )

I've been thinking about this one for the Wii. I particularly like the matching Classic Controller skin.

Anyway, yeah, so Phoenix Wright. I'm working on the second (first? Is the first case a real case or a tutorial? Or what? Whatever) case, and I'm already having fun with it. I FORESEE GREAT THINGS IN MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS GAME. I'm going to have to hurry up and finish this so that I can get the next one before the third comes out.

Current Mood: crazy

Guys, I'm weak. I really, really am. For months I swore I wasn't going to buy a DS, and what did I do? I went and bought one anyway. Fucking Brain Age. And my next fandom's going to be Phoenix Wright; I can feel it. Even though I haven't actually bought any of the games yet, my lack of a DS was pretty much the only thing standing between me and Phoenix Wright fandom.

It sure is pretty, though. And smooth and shiny. And so little! I got the white one, because it'll look better with a skin, but I'd been thinking about the black one too, to go with my iPod. I guess this one goes with my Wii. My coworker tried to convince me to get the Brain Age bundle, but I told him that not even the lure of a free carrying case could make me get a two-tone game system. Too bad; if it had been just red, I would have been all over it.

I got new glasses, too! I've had the old frames for five years, so it was a good time for a change. Pictures may be forthcoming. They're pretty different from the old ones, but since my prescription actually hasn't changed since my last eye exam (woohoo!), I can always wear the old ones if I'm feeling timid. Not that I wear glasses in public very often...so this is largely hypothetical, I guess.