“Life In The So-Called Space Age”
This message is from a Virgin Mobile user. Enjoy.
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I got a new cell phone. A camera phone no less. My phone number (and text message address) is the same, so continue to use them. But now I can send photos, and I may do just that from Hawaii.
Within a day of getting the phone, I had of course replaced the wallpaper with a new one of my own creation. Here it is, in 128×160 resolution. If you have a better phone than mine (likely, since I know a few of you are in Australia) I could provide a higher res version…
Some time ago, I made a post about Wizardry games and mentioned a new one that had entered my radar named Yggdrasil Labyrinth. That game, now named Etrian Odyssey came out this past week (for the DS), and it’s fantastic.
Gameplay is very Wizardry – create a party from scratch (there are nine classes) and explore a dangerous dungeon. Improvements on the usual formula include character skills that you can customize (and of course you have far less points to spend than there are good skills to learn), wandering powerful monsters you can see on the map, and – of course – the fact that you draw the map yourself on the touchscreen.
Take a look at the screenshots above. The top DS screen shows the game action and the bottom shows the map. Using a simple editor, the player draws the map themselves, marking in floors and walls and the various obstacles encountered in the dungeon. A gimmick perhaps, but a delightful one for the gamer like myself that can remember doing the same thing on graph paper as I played.
What makes Etrian extra special is the game has a very high level of polish. Graphics and sound are beautiful (spell effects are remarkable actually), and the interface design is perfect on the DS. The developers comment on the game’s website that they were striving to create ‘the last great dungeon crawl’, and, although I hope it’s not the last one, it certainly seems so far that they have nailed the ‘great’ part of their goal.