Just thought I’d put up one more blog before Christmas. Just to talk briefly about the games I’ve been dabbling in lately, and give out holiday wishes to everyone. You know, that sort of stuff. Cue the sleigh bells…

PSP Fun
One of my really good friends got a PSP Slim, so he helped me set up my old PSP to where I can play PS1 games on it. I bought a bigger memory stick for it. He was a big help in setting up my PSP to do all this. I certainly couldn’t figure out how to do it on my own. I have a lot of really smart friends. One of the things he put on it was a demo of a Japanese PSP game that just came out. I don’t know what it’s called, but my friend says it translates directly to English as “You have a big mouth for such a small hero.” In this game, you play as the bad guy, and you build a dungeon and try to kill any heroes that happen to explore it. The graphics are all presented in 8-bit, classic RPG Dragon Quest/Warrior style. All you do is use a pickaxe to break blocks to make your dungeon maze. This part of the game reminded me of Dig Dug or Mr. Driller. Under some blocks are slimes, and other blocks have more powerful creatures that can eat the slimes to level up. Once the hero comes, just hope and pray that your monsters beat him, and you can still use your pickaxe to make new monsters and create corridors to get the hero off the right path. Revive the skeletons of past heroes to beat the new ones. You can place your devil king anywhere in the dungeon, hopefully in the deepest, darkest parts behind a bunch of monsters. If the hero drags your king up to the surface, it’s game over. The demo has three levels, and on the last one you must fend off a knight and a wizard! Since it’s all in Japanese, there may be some other gameplay tidbits that I may have missed, since I didn’t know what I was doing. But it seemed pretty fun. Don’t know if it’ll come to the US or not, but I have doubts that it will. But who knows? Because of the language barrier, I may not import it. Oh well.

Jumping Flash 2
I also downloaded some PSOne games to play on my PSP. Since my friend owns hard copies of these games already, I don’t think we did anything illegal, but if we did, I’ll delete these games off my PSP immediately. I have the first Klonoa game on my PSP, which in my opinion, is the best 2-D platformer on the PSOne. I love it. I also got Jumping Flash 2. I rented the first Jumping Flash game when I got my PSOne back in college, and enjoyed it, but I never got a chance to play the sequel. Jumping Flash was a 3-D shooter/platformer that was actually out before Mario 64. It took a different direction on platforming than Mario did, though. You viewed the action through the cockpit ‘eyes’ of a robot rabbit who could shoot and triple jump really high. But since you automatically looked down at your feet when you jumped, you could see where to land easier. I have to say, though, that I don’t like Jumping Flash 2 as much as I remember liking the first one. I’m so spoiled with good 3-D graphics today that the old, garish 3-D visuals in Jumping Flash 2 gave me a headache. Plus, in the second level, there are way too many instant death pits, and if you lose all your lives you have to start back at the very first stage. I don’t remember the first Jumping Flash game being this hard and unforgiving. I think it would be neat if Sony would make a updated Jumping Flash game, with decent 3-D graphics and more refined gameplay.

Klonoa Beach Volleyball
Another PSOne game I downloaded to my PSP was Klonoa Beach Volleyball. It’s a volleyball game with Klonoa characters that only came out in Japan and Europe. Even though I’m glad I got to try it, me being a big Klonoa fan and all, I can see why Namco US didn’t release it here. It’s really not that good. You never feel like you have control of where the ball is going, and special attacks are useless most of the time. Since this is the European version, Klonoa and friends speak with British accents, which is weird since they spoke only gibberish in the other Klonoa games. At least it’s not as awful as the Dead or Alive Volleyball games. The only good volleyball video game I ever played was Beach Spikers for the GameCube. It had easy to understand controls and fun arcade gameplay. Plus you could be Ulala from Space Channel 5. She’s one of my favorite video game characters.

Cave Story
Another game that my friend downloaded to my PSP is a PC freeware game called Cave Story. It’s called something else in Japanese but I’m not going to try and spell it. And it also came out in 2004 so I’m a little late to the game. It was done in Japan by an indie studio named Studio Pixel and translated to English by, um, some other people. It has 8-bit style graphics and sound, but plays like a more modern 2-D Metroid-ish title. It’s insanely fun with lots of classic, yet still refined, gameplay. While most people compare Cave Story to Metroid or Castlevania, there are two other games that it reminds me of. It reminds me of the first Lemmings game graphically. Same navy blue background, cave-y forgrounds, and tee-tiny sprites. Cave Story also reminds me of a NES game called Legacy of the Wizard. I thought that game was awesome when I was a kid. At any rate, while I’m playing Cave Story on my PSP, you can also download it for free on your PC, so if you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend it.

Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles
I had some extra game store credit, so my friend convinced me to snag this game. I’ve never been a big fan of Castlevania games, but seeing as how everyone’s been raving about Symphony of the Night for so long, I figured I had better try it sometime. And this Castlevania PSP game has Symphony on it. But unfortunately, what the back of the box (and my friend) neglected to tell me, was that you have to UNLOCK Symphony of the Night in this game by playing a really crappy 3-D remake of Dracula X (a Castlevania game that was on the Turbo CD and SNES).

This remake of Dracula X is crappy for two main reasons. One, the 3-D graphics are garish and it’s hard to see some enemies that blend in the background. The massive screen blur when you move along doesn’t help matters either. One reason why I like 2-D sprite games better is it’s easier to distinguish the moving objects from the background. The other reason why this game is bad is because of the Belmont’s curse. No, I don’t mean Dracula, I mean the Belmonts are cursed with lead foot. I was reminded why I don’t play Castlevania games because Richter Belmont plods along in this game very slowly, and has very limited jumping and attack range. He’s not very nimble. And what gets me is that nearly all the enemies can just do carwheels and loop around our pokey hero with ease. Sure you can unlock a faster girl character early on, but to unlock Symphony of the Night, from what I’ve read, you have to play as Richter. I don’t mind challenging games, but when they make a game challenging by stifling the play control (see also Ghosts N Goblins games), then I have a problem. So now I’m sure I’ve made all you Castlevania fans really MAD at me.

I just think that game collections should let you play more than just one game, that’s all. All I want to do is play Symphony of the Night on my PSP. Maybe I’ll just snag my friend’s save file. I didn’t get Symphony of the Night when I was in college because I had no money back then. Plus, my college roommate’s girlfriend (now wife) was in our room all the time (I enjoyed both their company in college). But she really likes horses, and one video of Symphony that I saw had you fighting undead horses with their bottom halves chopped off, and I thought that might bother her if she saw that. So I never got the game. But even though I don’t like the action-oriented Castlevania games, I’ve never tried one of the more “Metroid-ish” ones like Symphony, so I’d like to try that kind, too. I just don’t want to waste my time plodding through the crappy Dracula X remake when I could be playing a more fun game instead, like Cave Story!

But you know what my favorite Castlevania game is? Some may not see it as part of the series, but Kid Dracula is like the Parodius of the Castlevania games. It was for the Famicom in Japan and made it to the US Game Boy. It was a silly yet fun game, and I liked it a lot, of course. The only good thing that I really like about Castlevania games is the music is usually really good in them.

Sonic Rivals 2
This other PSP game kind of fell in my lap, so I tried it. It sucks worse than the first Rivals game. Sonic Rivals sounds like a good idea at first. 2.5-D Klonoa style graphics in a platformer/racer game. Only problem is everything bad about the first game is worse here. Rivals are too unforgiving, you get penalized for running too fast by hitting walls and other obstacles you can’t see, and even the graphics are blurrier. Not even having Tails (the best Sonic character) as a playable character this time around can save the game. When did Sonic games start to suck?

Actually, if you want my honest opinion, I think most Sonic games have ALWAYS sucked. I never understood the draw of the first Sonic game. The only 2-D Sonic games I remotely liked were Sonic 3 and the first and third Advance titles. I do like some of the spin-off Sonic games like Sonic Spinball (I like pinball), and Sonic 3-D Blast (it mixes two arcade games I really like: Flicky and Marble Madness). I kinda liked the first 3-D Sonic Adventure game, and Sonic Heroes had some good ideas that were very poorly excecuted. But all other Sonic games are crap. And Sonic himself isn’t a very likable character to me anyway. Tails is way cooler. Sega should have Tails or Ristar be their mascots instead of Sonic. Ristar’s game was better anyway. OK, now I’ve successfully made both Castlevania and Sonic fans REALLY mad at me!

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Speaking of games that kind of suck, I also played the Sonic and Mario Olympic game on the Wii. Actually I’m not going to claim that it sucks just yet, since I haven’t played it as much, but my first general impressions of it are rather ‘meh.’ Some of the events are kind of fun, like moving the remote up and down to run in the track events, and flipping the remote to jump on the trampoline (which I didn’t think was an Olympic sport to begin with). But there are some events that are just plain awful. In the skeet shooting event, it’s really hard to see the tee-tiny orange skeets that come out. I imagine that skeets are hard to see and shoot in real life, but come on, this is a video game. Another annoying event is the javelin throw. You can do the motion to throw the javelin, but your character still takes a few steps before actually throwing it. Bad play control right there. Kind of reminds me of some of the crappy mini-games in the Wii Super Monkey Ball game. I know that having Mario & Sonic characters in the same game is supposed to be monumental, but the game itself should be really fun, too, and I’m not convinced yet that it is. But then, I really shouldn’t be surprised since Sega made the game. I don’t think Sega’s made a truly good game since, well, Crazy Taxi. Even though Sonic & Mario Olympics has multiplayer and more games, it doesn’t really do anything better than Wii Sports already does. And if you have the combination of Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Link’s Crossbow Training, you really don’t even need to mess with Sonic & Mario Olympics at all! Oh, by the way, I usually always pick Tails in the Olympic game because that’s my favorite Sonic character. Too bad you can’t play as Toad. Or Kirby.

Cooking Mama 2
OK, enough of the negativity out of me, time for some fun games! I picked up Cooking Mama 2 for DS, and while it’s still just more of the same, it’s still pretty fun. You play touch screen mini-games that simulate cooking and preparing food. There’s more recipes this time around, and a wider variety of foods, too. There’s also a new mode where you cook a dish for one of Mama’s friends, but in this mode, you can’t mess up one step or you’ll have to start over! Kind of annoying on some recipes. You can also unlock outfits for Mama, accessories for your kitchen, and stickers to put in yuur diary. Some of the recipes made me hungry! There’s one where you make homemade peanut butter. Have you ever tried homemade peanut butter? If made right, it’s really good. Well after making peanut butter in Cooking Mama 2, I had to go and fix me a half of a peanut butter sandwich! And just like the Wii Cooking Mama game, the DS sequel has Mama talking to you in her super ultra HOT AND SEXY VOICE. Just kidding, her voice isn’t hot and sexy, I just like to say stuff sometimes to throw you guys off. Keeps you on your toes. The only problem I have with Cooking Mama 2 is that it pulled a Katamari. I think one of the big draws about the first Cooking Mama DS game was that it was only 20 bucks, and the sequel is just the same game essentially, but it’s at full price. But at least it’s not as bad as the Wii version, which was a full priced Wii game with worse play control.

Flash Focus
It’s a direct rip-off of the Brain Age games, except instead of testing your brain, you test your eyes. Of course, Nintendo published it, so I guess they’re just ripping off themselves. I also wanted to try it because it was made by Namco, and I wanted to see if there were any classic arcade Namco references in it. Unfortunately there’s not any. It’s just a bunch of mini-games that test your eyes. Some of the games have sports themes in them, with photo realistic graphics. It’s pretty basic, but I still think it’s kind of interesting and I really can’t complain too much since it was only 20 bucks. Only problem I have with the game is that many of the tests can be found in regular video games (how many ‘shell’ games have you played?), and don’t ALL video games test your eyes anyway? I guess they didn’t want to intimidate non-gamers with Flash Focus, so I’m all for games that reach out to other markets. But I can think of lots of other fun DS games that test your eyes just as well as Flash Focus. One good example is another 20 dollar Namco DS game called QuickSpot. That’s the one where you find the difference in two pictures. I’ll probably name that game my best puzzle game of 2007, and I think that non-gamers will enjoy it, too. So definitely pick up QuickSpot when you can.

Another reason why I wanted to try Flash Focus is because of my own vision handicap. I’ve been blind in my left eye since birth, and while I knew the Flash Focus test results may not be accurate for me because of this, I was curious to see how they would do vision tests anyway. Going to special eye doctors all my life, I’m pretty familiar with all the eye tests. The two main problems with my vision is that I have little to no depth perception, and my periphreal vision isn’t very wide at all. But my centralized vision is pretty good. If you want a good idea about how I see, cover your left eye with one hand, and look through your right hand like a telescope. Flash Focus can’t test depth perception, since it’s on a flat screen, and the only periphreal vision tests it does are centrailized ones, so I haven’t had too many problems with the tests in Flash Focus. Really the only hard ones for me are the tests where you have to look at both the top and bottom screens. But my ‘eye age’ is still in the 30’s, which is a heck of a lot lower than my ‘brain age!’ Really the only things that being blind in my left eye keep me from doing are driving a car and playing most sports really well. But I can do most everything else just fine.

Playing Flash Focus got me thinking about eye saftey and how important it is to gamers. You know, because we use our eyes to see the things on screen. So I think it’s especially important to take care of our eyes, otherwise we may not be able to do the things we enjoy most. One thing I think is important to gamers’ eye safety is to NOT play games as much. At least not in long marathon sections anyway. I always take a break and rest my eyes after an hour or so of gaming. Another thing I do is that when I’m working outside in the yard or whatever, I always wear safety glasses. I may look a little silly out there, but I’d rather look silly than have a stray tree limb or grass blade fly up and hit my good eye. Another thing I think we should all do, including myself, is make sure to go to the eye doctor regularly, since peoples’ vision can change over time. Especially as we get older. So anyway, Flash Focus isn’t the best game in the world, but for 20 bucks, I think it’s kind of interesting.

Christmas Conclusions
And that’s all I’ve been playing lately. This Christmas has been a little harried for me. As you may know, my mom broke her foot a couple of months ago, and she’s just now starting to be able to walk with one of those safety boots. It’s been pretty tough on her and the rest of the family. I’ve had to take care of her, Jeff, and the home repair preparations we had already put in motion before all this happened. Luckily I got all my Christmas shopping done nearly before all this happened, but with all the stuff going on, I haven’t had time to decorate or anything! We don’t even have our tree up yet! But it got me to thinking. It’s amazing how a children’s book can have more meaning as an adult than when you’re a kid. Because, like in How The Grinch Stole Christmas, we don’t need a tree or as many presents and decorations to have Christmas. Christmas comes, no matter what, and as long as we have our friends and family with us and everyone in regularly good health, so to speak, that’s all we really need. And maybe a couple of new video games. Ha ha! Just kidding on that last one! But really, I’m also feeling thankful and happy that we still have it as good as we do. It could have been a lot worse, and a lot of other people have much harder times at Christmas than what we do. Take, for instance, my uncle, who had to have his leg up to his knee amputated over Thanksgiving. That’s been pretty hard as well. So please pray for him, too.

Well, enough of that sentimental stuff. What do YOU want for Christmas? Of course, the thing I want most right now is for my mom’s foot to get better. But there are also a couple of new video games that I’d like to get. One is a Wii game called Zach and Wiki. It’s a cartoony pirate game that supposedly is like a point and click puzzle adventure. I’d also like to try Soul Calibur Legends and the new NIGHTS Wii game, if I don’t get to review them for GamerDad.com, that is. One gift that I’m going to give myself AFTER Christmas is a new, big flat screen, HDTV. I hoping in a couple of months, I’ll have one. Then my Xbox 360 games will look oh so good. But at any rate, I hope everyone reading this far has a Marry Christmas, and a happy and safe holiday season!

Tags: Misc