Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

Dragon’s Dogma

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

I’ve been ignoring my PS3 recently, including almost the entire summer, mostly because I haven’t had the time to play anything. Portable games, including on the iPad, fill in the spare time well enough.

There are precious few PS3 games on the horizon that have caught my eye, but one of them is Dragon’s Dogma, by Capcom.

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This is their attempt to make an open-world fantasy RPG that (apparently) matches the approach of Monster Hunter with the appeal of a western game. “Monster Hunter meets Dragon Age” in other words. I don’t think for a second it will be as good as Monster Hunter – or even very similar, based on recent views – but it does look impressive.

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My interest has risen in recent days with the news that Dragon’s Dogma will contain weapons and gear based on those in the upcoming Berserk motion picture. Capcom has toyed with Berserk-looking gear in the MH games; it seems now we’ll get to use the real stuff πŸ™‚

GoatUp

Friday, September 16th, 2011

This week has been depressing for various reasons. At a time when I probably need them most, the last thing I can succumb to are distractions.

And yet a bright spot has been the new Jeff Minter iOS game, called GoatUp. Here’s a screenshot:

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Gameplay is tough to describe… An infinite climbing platform game with a high level of challenge and yet an equally high level of “just one more time”. My highest score is 680,000 so far.

At $2 it’s a no brainer if you like arcade games. Another winner from Llamasoft πŸ™‚

Monster Hunter

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Well it seems the 3DS just beat the Vita in the next handheld war even before the Vita was released. In the last week two new Monster Hunter games have been announced for the 3DS. These two games alone guarantee mega sales in Japan, and a boatload of very excited fans in the rest of the world.

Here’s the trailer for Monster Hunter Tri-G

And here’s the ‘concept trailer’ for the next numbered entry in the series, Monster Hunter 4

Both are loading very slow right now. I recommend reducing the quality to 240 if they stagger.

MH Tri-G is released in Japan this year! No news yet on (what I consider) an inevitable US released.

Here’s a shot of how the game looks running on 3DS:

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Diehards like myself will undoubtedly get excited by such trivialities as the persistent map on the lower screen πŸ™‚

Look What I Found!

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

This particular blog has been going now for over five years, all the way back to July 2006.

However it was preceded by another blog, which is still lurking online.

Check it out here!

Yep, that’s the blog I kept during out third Japan trip, back in 2006. It looks like we had a lot of fun.

And, for no reason other than it made me smile…

Check out something crazy I did 4 years ago πŸ™‚

It’s rare I re-read any of my blog entries (951 and counting!). Maybe I should start digging through them. Who knows, it may make for a good blog entry πŸ˜‰

Magic Celebration

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Today I played in a free MTG ‘Mini masters’ tourney which was held by a local game store to promote MTG.

Each player received one free booster, which he combined with 15 lands (3 per colour) to form a deck. It was to be a four round tournament, with each round best of three. Every time you win you get a new (free) booster to refine your deck, so the ultimate winner would end up getting four boosters. There were no additional prizes.

I lost first round 0-2 πŸ™‚

The cards in my booster were a bad match. My rare was this:

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and my biggest creature was a serpent that couldn’t even attack! My opponent had a lot of fast fliers and beat me handily each game.

I played at a store different from the ones I usually go to for pre releases. I wasn’t much of a fan of their organization, or how long everything took, so I left after the first round πŸ™‚

However before I left I was happy to find in their binders a card I had been looking for for a while. This is it:

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Why did I need this? It’s a perfect fit in one of my Commander decks πŸ™‚