PewPew 2.0 - Blogs about gaming

Iron DS Players.

I'm going to take a break from jQuery to state that I'm very pleased. Today I successfully cajoled some coworkers into playing Nintendo DS with me during lunch. Billy won some tightly fought Mario vs. Luigi battles in NSMB. But my Tetris skills still reign supreme in a 4 player battle. It was so much fun. I hope everyone comes back to play next week.

Also, the soup place at the bottom of my office building has left. Bamph! The simply vacated over the long weekend. Now I'll have to leave the building for a lazy person's lunch.

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Won't Someone Please Play with Me?

I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the rift. A lot. I've been playing on the bus, during televised soccer matches and before bedtime.

Once again, I find the FFTA's job system (with skills learned via equipment) very addictive. The gameplay additions in this sequel aren't revolutionary, but I'm enjoying them. If you would like a hand-held tactical game, particularly if you skipped the first FFTA, I encourage you to pick this up.

There are some features of this game that I can't use until I find some real life friends with FFTA 2. There's some kind of raffle available if I can hook up with someone else over local wi-fi. Not on-line, though.

Does anyone else have this game? It'd be pretty darn sad if I had to hang out outside of PAX and accost strangers during lunch next month.

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FFXII Early Impressions.

The husband was gone last weekend, so I played a crapload of Final Fantasy XII. It has the familiar trappings of the whole FF series (moogles, crystals, a blue command menu). But the new battle system, visible enemies and full 3D environment gives it a different flavor. The combat system in particular is crazy fast and a bit unpredictable. I'm really enjoying it though - the gameplay is compelling and rewarding.

In the early game, I saw many more Game Over screens than I'm used to. I had to do a bit of level grinding, and more carefully program my characters for automatic combat.

The story and localization are quite a bit more sophisticated and accessible than the traditional 'Save the crystals; Save the world' story. This tale of resistance and empire is also perfectly localized; with it's own believable period voice.

In other gaming news, I've picked up The World Ends With You. Penny Arcade's Tycho gave it a strong recommendation. I've actually been to Shibuya, and other Tokyo districts; so I may find some pleasant memories. Next week I'll pick up FFTA 2. (I'll earn bonuses by showing it my old FFTA game cart, so it's a good thing I've kept that.) I've always enjoyed the Final Fantasy Tactics titles.

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Literally Not Enough Room.

Wired's Game|Life reported on the feasibility of LucasArts' porting their classic adventure games, such as Maniac Mansion, to the Nintendo DS. Says assistant producer Jeffrey Gullett:

"The cart size of the DS makes it impossible to put out ports of any of our old graphic adventures. There's literally not enough room on those carts to put the games out."

I cannot abide such obvious idiocy. Here are the facts:

• LucasArts' Classic Adventures ships on 7 high density floppy disks. This compilation includes Maniac Mansion, Zak McCracken, Loom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the Secret of Monkey Island. That's 5 games, with Maniac Mansion probably taking the LEAST disk space, on about 10 megabytes of space.
• The entire Monkey Island CD, which contains Monkey Island 1 and Monkey Island 2 and a demo of Monkey Island 3 with video and voice, contains only 120 megabytes of data.
• The classic LucasArts CD-ROMS games, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Sam & Max Hit the Road, each fit on one old fashioned 650MB disc.
• The Nintendo DS game cards support capacity up to 256 megabytes.

Clearly Maniac Mansion and the first Monkey Islands will fit on a DS game card. Things like Sam & Max might be too big, but I bet the voice data could be trimmed or significantly compressed to fit. Perhaps Mr. Gullett was indeed considering the situation literally, like so:

Well, yes, clearly those don't fit in a DS.

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Ambassador or Pusher?

We went down to Portland this weekend. On the way there, and back home, we stopped at Burgerville to get fresh strawberry milkshakes - yummy. We also got some of the new Yukon Gold waffle cut fries - delicious. I highly recommend both, if you can get them. (By the way - bad choice on the Flash menu on your website, Burgerville.)

We stayed with the parents' in law, and I had fun playing Clubhouse Games on the Nintendo DS with both of them while the husband worked on some photos. We had fun walking through the various games - Word Balloon and Darts proved to be favorites. I'm especially pleased that it was easy for mom-in-law to pick things right up, and that she was enjoying herself. I think I'll have to bring out the DS for all family gatherings.

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