theCollectiveUs

Deathspank, Monkey Island 2 Special Edition, Limbo. Will get them the moment I’m not too lazy to connect my Xbox to the internet.

The expectation was there, really. Videogame movies are crappy and how should Prince of Persia be any different? But this was a movie raved about by Kotaku, featuring the latest hot young stars like Jake Gyllenhowdoyouspellhisnameandwhoknowsbecauseitssodamnlong so surely it has to be an exception.

Nope. It is crap.

To begin with, it isn’t even a Prince of Persia movie. It’s Assassin’s Creed: The Movie. From the villians (hassassins!) to leaping over roofs to even falling off from the top of buildings in so similar a manner to Assassin’s Creed, you’d be wondering why the story didn’t involve the protagonist being cloaked to blend in with the crowd while guards are lurking around every corner, on the hunt for him. Oh wait, the story DID involve exactly that. For a movie called Sands of Time, there isn’t a lot of time travelling happening except maybe the anti-climatic ending which featured every cliche you can think of.

• Like a wilful spoilt princess who later becomes the protagonist’s love interest.
• Like the loyal unassuming (but evil-looking) ally who later turns out to be the baddest guy this side of Persia.
• Like the totally redundant token sidekick whose role is strictly for comic relief.
• Like how the hero is really this humble, rugged People’s Prince who’s as righteous as that guy in your Good Neighbor handbook.
• Like the side characters who, for some reason, believe so greatly in the protagonist’s cause they’re willing to die for him even though they don’t really know him.
• Like the end of the world theme.
• Like the unnecessary but spectacular collapse of some sacred, holy place that heralds the rise of the villain’s power.

Movies like this give videogames a bad name. Let’s put it this way, while fans of the game may be drawn to watching the movie, movie-goers who’ve never played the game will probably now never will.

Today it rained. We didn’t unicycle.

We will unicycle on Saturday at some crazy downhill trail* at Kent Ridge. I will bring my 20″ trials unicycle because that’s what I’m most comfortable with (On a side note, I’m about 70% proficient with recovery from wheelwalking on that thing). I’m going to play unicycle deliverywoman on Saturday apparently. I wonder how many unicycles I can lug around before the taxis don’t want to stop for me. For the record, taxis will not want to stop for you if you’re lugging around… ONE BICYCLE. I’ve brought 6 unicycles on a cab before without problem.

I borrowed a couple of games home that I’ll be playing for uhm… research. I’ve still got Halo 3, I’ve got Fallout 3 and I’ve got LEGO Indy which I’ve lost interest in because the controls are stupid and I met with one non-prog. My favorite LEGO title has still got to be the Star Wars trilogy for the PSP – the controls were just nice, the game didn’t scrimp on the pretty graphics and gameplay just because it was a portable platform and it was really addictive. I played through more than enough of the Xbox 360 variations but I haven’t found one I enjoyed as much.

There’s No More Heroes and De Blob that I really have to finish playing as well because they’re on my shelf for too long. Recently, Zelda The Spirit Tracks has been my train game (pun! pun!). I’m not impressed with it at all though – the characters and gameplay is all very similar to the previous Zelda title complete with the travelling from place to place on now, a train and previously, a ship. The puzzles are more innovative – there’s good theoretical use of the mic to operate a fan among other things and there’s a music minigame that you’ll play where you blow into the different holes of a flute. Again, it’s all a very cool concept except that the mic is over sensitive so you end up doing stupid things you don’t intend to. I’m also a little bored with the dungeon-crawling, mostly because too much of the previous game revolved around that. Still, 50% down and I will finish it.

I hope I do get some time this weekend to go to the beach and slackline a bit.

Apparently, I learn that committing something like 20 random names and their associated details to memory is not such a good idea because I forgot one and trying to recap 3 months of daily events hurts my head. I then did the next best thing and went off to play this new Wii game I got, de Blob.

It’s a pretty interesting game, very casual and kid-friendly. The controls are a bit sketchy at times but it’s acceptable. I’m trying to 100% levels on my first playthrough and I’m surprised it doesn’t get boring despite each level taking something like 45 minutes. Still, definitely not a $40 game; $30 would be fair. Maybe it’s just me but I’m not convinced that any Wii game should cost more than $40 and that’s the only reason why I haven’t bought any Mario games yet. Super Mario Galaxy for $70? That’s a bit steep. I’d pay $50 for it. The New Super Mario Bros costs between $70-80 in stores. I could get No More Heroes and de Blob with that and still have a bit of change.

I finished Lego Batman for the 360 last week and am trying to unlock everything. It’s still as fun as the previous Lego titles but I remember being much more impressed with Lego Star Wars on the PSP. I was actually quite wary of breaking the game and made an effort to play through the levels the expected way just so I don’t screw up my progress. A very real fear mind, considering that I managed to freeze the last game I played and encountered a non-progression 10 minutes into Batman.

Batman came as a dual disc set with PURE, this ATV race/stunt game. I don’t quite know what to make of it – I’d usually like games like that but I got impatient after about 15 minutes.

In the last fortnight, I also got to try out Kingdom Hearts 365/7 which bored me immensely from the onset. I don’t think I can ever play a Square RPG anymore without evoking bad memories of FFX-2. Yeesh.

I meant also to talk a bit about The Force Unleashed. I popped the Sith Edition disc in my 360 and wondered why I stopped playing the game when it was quite a fun shoot-em-up. The level ended and the load screen showed some details about a later level. And then I remembered the massive headache the cameras in that level induced. THAT was why I stopped playing.

This is actually a game I’ve wanted to try out since I read its review. It sounded really like my sort of game on paper. It’s minimalist to a fault with no fancy-pansy story or graphics and no need for instructions or complicated button combos. It’s one of those games where you hit Start and get down to business. IGN gave it a 9.0 in its one-page review too if that’s the sort of thing that’s sway your vote.

In it, you play as a ninja dude who runs and jumps his way across a 2D maze filled with coins (get), mines (don’t get) and simple enemies (don’t touch). Your objective is to activate a switch somewhere in the level to open a door so you can advance.

Sure enough, it is pretty fun. Each level is a 30 second affair – good because my attention span is usually only 1.5 times of that – and when you’re through with it, you can create your own levels and laugh hysterically as Ninja Dude falls to his doom for the n-th time. Pun intentional. What I really hate is that the Suicide button is just slightly away from the Jump button – X and A respectively so there’s a good chance you’d hit the wrong button mid-level.

Nonetheless, I quit about 6 minutes into playing the game. As my luck with games go, in Minute 5, I managed to produce a bug that cause controls to be disabled. Restarting bored me.

I think Scribblenauts is overhyped. It’s funny and exciting because you can type all sorts of things and see them onscreen. After the first few levels though, you’ll be hacking your way through the puzzles because there’s so much room for loopholes. Not that it’s the fault of the testers of course because I’d imagine the solutions to be limitless and hence impossible to comprehensively test. The responsibility then lies with the player to play the game ‘correctly’ like you’re supposed to.

I don’t like the inprecise controls either. Some of the items are so small, you can’t point at them correctly onscreen and your character keeps walking into them, blocking them. The “Pick up item X and drop them in Y” tasks are the worst. Half the time, you’ll end up picking them up and throwing them around because you can’t precisely poke at them onscreen.

It’s such an ambitious game I do want to think it is as amazing as we imagined it is. It’s just disappointing when I’m attracting unicorns with hay, my plane doesn’t fly and my gopher doesn’t want to chew down a tree.

All I need now is a short skirt, preferably rolled up at the waist, sleeves folded up and a compulsive urge to dance along in the backdrop when my friends are playing Dance Dance Revolution.

This is uber fun. It’s a rhythm game where you press buttons as they light up, all to cheery J-Pop tunes. It’s SG$1.50 a pop and you get 4 songs of your choosing. It’s so addictive, we bought one of those saved game cards that didn’t exist back in my time and that has never caught on with me because they’re too expensive to maintain. I feel like I’m part of a group. I belong. When teens strut around, card in hand, waiting to blow their money on the new arcade machine, I can raise mine in my fist and declare that I have one too.

It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day today.

Arrrr.

But if you, like me, have no one to talk to because you haven’t got friends and your stuffed teddy is throwing a tantrum, you can Play Like a Pirate and get a free copy of episode 1 of Tales of Monkey Island.

Here.

There’s also an offer for the whole season for US$29.95 and if you’ve already grabbed your copies from day 1, there’s a promise of some freebie. Mike, care to share what?

Unfortunately, I’m running a Mac and I’m reading some pretty average reviews of the first two chapters…. hm.

Because you asked.

I had the 1st Gen iPod Touch because it was part of a deal where I bought an iMac and paid an extra $20 or so for one. It was excellent for travel. I brought it along to Japan last year where I’d use Google Maps in the middle of a random street to get directions to my destination. I could send emails and surf the net AND I used it extensively as an mp3 player on my rides and runs.

But it wasn’t adequate.

The software upgrades were released but 1st gen owners had to pay to have new functionalities. We couldn’t play games or install useful applications without an upgrade and I didn’t want to jailbreak my device. I later bought a Nike+ iPod device, a running trainer that links your iPod to a wireless pedometer of sorts thinking it was supported. Turns out it was only supported on 2nd Gen devices because 1st Gen iPod Touches didn’t have Bluetooth enabled.

So I sold it.

The 3rd Gen iPod Touch has as far as I can tell, the same hardware as the 2nd Gen one. It might be slightly faster but I can’t tell so it doesn’t make a difference. The only upgrade for the Touch this time round is the largest available capacity is now 160GB. I bought the 8GB one because I needed storage only for 2 main purposes – to store about 3 hours worth of songs to run with and to store games and apps. Most apps are made to be only a few MB large (you’re downloading through iTunes after all) and I could always sync playlists so 8GB is really more than sufficient. The price is definitely a draw – this release comes with a price cut and mine costs only US$199.

I like how the apps are turning out. I’ve been playing Mafia Wars on it and tried to use the Nike+ on it today but the device wasn’t working very well. iTunes doesn’t work at all because ‘my location is not supported’ but the App Store is alive and well and I can install applications and games directly into my iPod. The battery life seems to have improved vastly; Wi-Fi doesn’t sap as much energy as my previous iPod. There’s now an inbuilt speaker (I think this was a 2nd Gen addition) but the best part though is that it seems to hint at the availability of an official add-on microphone. There’s a voice memo application (which may have been on the 2nd gen iPod, I don’t know) which I can’t use because there’s no mic attached, the program tells me. There’s already a version of Skype available which I haven’t tried but if it works like I think it would, that would make the iPod Touch a waaay better bargain than the iPhone.

One of the few things I didn’t like about it though is the sensitivity of the shake detection. There’s probably an option to turn this off but by default, shake seems to be the cue to skip to the next song when you’re listening to music. I didn’t realise this until I was running today and skipped through probably half my playlist before I got it to stop. I also haven’t found a way to get rid of the default icons yet – I don’t see the need for iTunes on the main page when it doesn’t work in my country. While the 1st gen Touch had a flat back, this one shares the same design as the 2nd gen Touch and features a concave back. It looks sleeker for some reason though I doubt if it is but I’m quite sure the rounded back will be harder to protect against scratches.

I haven’t many grouses about the new iPod Touch as yet. More problems will probably surface as I get into more of its functions but for now, all the faults I can find with it aren’t major annoyances.

So this week, I bought the new iPod Touch, Rock Band, The Beatles Rock Band game and Fable II.

Next week I’ll be eating grass for lunch.

Stay tuned for an overexcited monologue of the games coming your way soon.