Games – Page 56 – Robot Claw

Dazed & Confused

January 4, 2013

The title refers to the fact that, once again, I am trying to write this after taking my ‘night time drugs’. Please excuse any brevity or incoherence.

And since many have emailed/texted me, the drugs seem to be working and I’m optimistic for a full recovery within a few days!

Now on to the business I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s entry. It concerns this man:

Just a few days ago he won a Letterpress game by playing the word ‘gromwells’. Yesterday I innocently asked him what it meant. Not only did he not know, he didn’t even remember playing it! Turns out that this clever shark was utilizing a dictionary while playing the game. I ask you readers, is this fair play?

Sue picked me up this morning, and we spent a few hours driving around the city and visiting Blackbutt. The shot above is the Pacific Ocean view from the Newcastle cliffs. We also went to see the newly renovated ‘Bogey Hole’ (a colonial ocean bath):

As you can see, it was a beautiful day.

Blackbutt is a free nature reserve in the heart of the greater Newcastle area. It’s changed a lot since we were kids, but I’d not visited since the last major renovation after the Pasha Bulker storm.

That’s a pair of Emus. As in ‘eem-yous’! They’re big and scary, and at Blackbutt you can buy food in an ice cream cone to feed them. Here’s proof:

Look at that! It’s almost as big as Sue!

Although I am the image of bravery in the picture, I’m not afraid to admit I was a little bit scared of the big bird. This is half because I’ve always been leery of emus, and half because of:

That’s a bush turkey. It’s not very big, and when I spied him on the way to the emus I felt generous and offered him some food. Moments after this photo was taken he hammered down on the cone, knocking all the food out, taking off a chunk of the cone and nearly making me wet myself with startlement! And then he walked away from the food scattered everywhere. Silly turkey!

Some of the new displays at Blackbutt include a nocturnal quoll house, some frogs (as shown above) and an improved wombat house. They also retain their great Koala habitat, which also houses many birds including the tawny frogmouths:

The afternoon was a mixture of resting, used bookstore shopping (including finding some gamebooks I didn’t have!) and my eternal favorite: window shopping the weird and wonderful Australian produce and grocery stores. For instance, this was at a butcher today:

I can’t think of anything that would make me eat that!

Last but not least, a photo for my brother. Do you recognize this place?

Quite different, isn’t it?

Wreck-It Robert

January 2, 2013

Let me get this out of the way, this is me right now:

Yessir, I’m still sick. Putting aside the fact I may have tried to look as miserable as possible in the above shot, the truth is I’m still fighting off an evil Australian bug. And you know what they say about Aussie bugs!!!

I had a dilemma yesterday. I discovered that both pairs of shorts I brought with me to Australia were splitting! Since (I assume) it’s illegal in Australia to stroll around with one’s wedding tackle visible, I needed to buy some short pants!

OMG clothes are expensive here! As in $100+ for a pair of name brand cargo shorts, and ~$75 for something normal. I settled for ugly Chinos that were on sale at $30 🙂

Here’s the smallest cinema in the universe:

Only 61 seats! This is in the local independent Randwick cinema, and it was in this tiny room we saw Wreck-It Ralph yesterday. What a delightful film! If you have even a passing interest in video gaming of any kind you’ll love this movie, so go see it!

Dinner was an Australian rip-off of Chipotle Grill:

And then during the evening I consumed criminal amounts of cheese & onion chips and mini cherry ripes. This was because I felt better at the time, but I’m paying for it now (the next morning).

Adam says “Starve a cold; feed a fever.” I should listen to him 🙁

Game Over?

December 20, 2012

I won’t be buying any more games this year, so now is as good a time as any for my annual review of my game-buying habits.

The news isn’t good. In 2012 my game buying dropped to a fifteen-year low, with only 64 games purchased during the year. Dollars spent on gaming dropped to a twenty-year low, with those 64 games costing me just a few pennies over $1k in total. Have I lost the gaming spark?

Here are the much beloved plots:

^ The above shows purchases by % of totals. With 34 games bought, iOS leads the pack by far.

^ The above shows % by dollars spent. Mac is a surprising contender here, mostly due to World of Warcraft.

Here are some observations I can make from my game buying this past year:

1) The PSP and DS are very much on the way out. Only three years ago I bought an average of 1.25 DS games per week. In 2012 I only bought four in total.
2) Although I still buy a lot of iOS games, I bought much less in 2012 than I did in 2011.
3) The 3DS has taken off nicely. I expect to see strong growth in my purchasing of 3DS games in the next few years.
4) The Ps3 fell off a cliff, as far as I am concerned.

So what happened? Well I theorize a few things, foremost among them being work. As my job takes up more and more of my time, I obviously have less free time. In addition, I do a great deal of work at home, often spending at least a couple of hours working on email and various administrative tasks almost every single day during the semester. Add to this the fact I taught a summer class and I simply ended up with less free time in 2012.

Secondly, I went on two vacations over the summer (Florida, and NM/CA).

Thirdly, even though I am buying fewer games, I find myself spending more time on average playing those that I purchased this past year. Warcraft counts in this category.

The fact remains that gaming is still by far my favourite hobby, and I still play games essentially every single day, it’s just that I don’t seem to be buying as many!

So what were the highlights this year? Well, let’s start with the years biggest disappointments in reverse order:

3) Bug Princess 2 Black Label (iOS) – A massive ripoff from Cave, in which they add a difficulty level to an existing game and deceptively repackage it as a brand new game. I bought this on the strength of all their other titles, and couldn’t believe I’d paid $15 for basically nothing I didn’t already have (even the achievements are identical!)
2) New Super Mario Brothers 2 (3DS) – Don’t get me wrong, this is a great game. But it’s too familiar, too identical to the Wii game. Nintendo did this once before (compare the DS and Wii Animal Crossing games), and I wish they hadn’t done it again.
1) Diablo 3 (Mac) – Not just the biggest disappointment of 2012, once of the biggest game disappointments of all time. I played Diablo 2 for hundreds and hundreds of hours. This one, I could barely manage a hundred. Upon release it was full of mind-bogglingly unusual design decisions that stymied fun at every turn. Patch after patch failed to remedy the situation, and I eventually turned my back on it forever I suspect.

For every bad game there must be a good one, and here’s the best of the year in my opinion:

3) World Of Warcraft: Mists Of Pandaria (Mac) – How do you breath new life into an 8 year old game? Release an expansion as good as this one. WoW feels as fresh as it ever does, and I’ve enjoyed every minute I’ve spent running around Pandaria (especially with Fyrenze the bear!)
2) Kid Icarus Uprising (3DS) – Nintendo has been slight on brand new games in many years, and I’ll admit I had few expectations for this on-rails 3DS shooter based on a 30 year old NES game. But holy cow, this one ate me up and just wouldn’t spit me out. In some ways, it was Monsterhunterian in it’s addictiveness, and I reckon many years from now I’ll still be pointing to this one as amongst the very best 3DS games. The online modes are awesome as well 🙂

1) Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)

This one isn’t just the best of 2012. It’s not even just the best Wii RPG, or even Wii game. This one goes beyond all that, and I don’t hesitate when I label it as one of the very best RPGs I have ever played. It was crafted by a team that included people that had worked on various legendary RPGs (Xenosaga, Baiten Kaitos, others) and uses an MMO-style exploration and combat system to tell a truly amazing story involving two gargantuan warring robot-continents and the races that live on them. With twists and turns aplenty, and a genuinely likeable cast of characters, I could barely put this one down and when I finally put the controller down after the final boss battle almost 125 hours had passed. I only wish it has lasted longer. If you have a Wii and like RPGs, this game is a no brainer.