As much as I like things with wires and motherboards and jangling metal bits, I’m also kind of a nature-freak. So when I saw the results of this year’s National Geographic Microscopic Images contest, I fell in love.
Here they are, in slideshow form (if it doesn’t work right away, just refresh your browser)
For more information on the photos and the people who took them, take a look at the Nat. Geo. website.
Which photo is your favorite?
-BM
(post idea courtesy of Boing Boing)
So first off, so many people are SO incredibly pissed off about Little Big Planet’s release date being pushed back a week that I want to say – I don’t care. It’s just a few more days, it’s not that big of a deal. It sucks but GET OVER IT.
Second, I played the demo for Eternal Sonata for the PS3.
Conclusion? Not very good.
Yes, the music is nice (all renditions of Chopin) and graphics are good (pretty, colorful anime-style), but that doesn’t make up for fundamental faults.
1) You know a game is mediocre when the most exciting part about it is exploring the towns. Sure, I felt that way about a lot of the older Zelda games but that was for Super NES – AND that was 10 years ago. Plus, Zelda had puzzles and dungeons and other cool stuff that made up for the boring traveling parts. I saw nothing like that in the ES demo.
2) The fighting is turn-based, which is fine, but it’s also fairly boring because all you have to do is button-mash and properly time attacks and you’re almost gauranteed to win. Plus, when your traveling around the forest you can see the enemies from a mile away (so no surprises) and you can avoid them completely if you want to by either not allowing them to see you, or running away (so no forced fights, i.e. no challenge).
A pretty game doesn’t make for a fun game, which is definitely a bummer because I was so excited about this one.
It can be as magical looking as it wants, but Eternal Sonata is still more suited for my 12-year-old cousin than it is for me.
-BM
I haven’t played PuzzleQuest in over a week and it’s kind of starting to get to me.
Yes, it’s a nerdy game* but it’s a game that I love unabashedly. After three hours of playing it, everything even remotely geometric turns into lines of jewels. I daydream about ways to get 6 skulls in a row (like that’s even possible). It gets bad.
And now I’m without it. I don’t technically own it or the PSP, they both belong to my boyfriend. So when I don’t go over to his house there is no PQ.
No PQ = cranky and bored Biff.
Is it bad that I’m tempted to make the 1/2 hour walk to his house, through one of the worst neighborhoods in town JUST to play a goddamned game?
But I’m not buying it for myself – that would be the end of my social/school lives. I’ll just hold out.
Come on Elizabeth, you can do it.
* FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE NO CLUE WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT
Puzzle Quest – a battle-based RPG similar to BeJeweled (only not, b/c BeJeweled sucks).
The game follows a consistent story line that brings you to face a variety of things (orcs, wasps, sandworms (!), etc.). Both you and the things you battle have abilities you can use to kick each other’s asses. Your abilities depend on what class you choose (wizard, druid, warrior, etc.).
In battle mode, you try to match like-colored jewels (these raise your mana and allow you to perform spells), skulls (these do automatic damage), experience (duh.), and gold (double-duh.).
Still confused? Look at this screenshot.
Or just look at PlayStation’s website description/video.
-BM
And it’s called LittleBigPlanet.
Ok, so I know I’m not the first person to SQUEE over this game. In fact, buzz has been building up around it for at least the past year or so. But the concept is so incredible that even a casual gamer like me can’t help but get excited about it.
THE PREMISE – Each player builds their own character (called a sackboy) and then, using a multitude of items and dangerous obstacles, builds a level .
Also cool – It’s all customizable. Your level can be a simple or complex, as hard or easy as you want it to be. You can make it out of any material (e.g. wood, felt, cloth, etc.) or with any dangers or decorations you want.
The best part? It’s all ONLINE, so your levels can be shared with the entire PlayStation online community. You and your friends can even interact with each other within a particular world (co-op OR battle) with any variety of objectives (e.g. timed runs or item collection).
The more that I think about it, the more LBP seems like the citizen journalism of PS3 games. An odd comparison, probably, but true. Like blogs did with the internet, this game is going to introduce the concept of user-generated content into video games, and as far as I know it’s never been done before. There’s even been some talk about a PSP version coming out where you can add your own music to the levels.
I don’t know if LBP will change the future of games or create demand for more custom content. That’s to be seen later. I do know that I can’t wait to play it.
-BM
**********************EDIT****************
Apparently the looming release date of LBP has caused several other bloggers to write about it, most more eloquently than me. One of my favorite comics/blogs, Penny-Arcade, wrote about it this morning AND included a pretty funny strip about it. And apparently Duke Nukem was the first to have user-generated content? That’s news to me – but I’m also a good decade younger than the guys at P-A.
-Meister
…but I felt like it had to be shared.
I’ve never been obsessed with video games, but I’ve always enjoyed them a lot. My problem is that I try to focus on one game (and one system) at a time, but I usually graduate to something else before I’ve even mastered the game I’m currently working on.
First, it was Super NES.Castlevania made my 12-year-old brain implode and all the Mario games were teasers – I thought that I could beat them, I even got most of the way through,but as soon as I stepped foot in King Koopa’s crib I kept losing until my morale was in the negatives.
I think Bubsy II was the only game I ever beat on that system, and I didn’t beat that until I was 20.
Then it was the N64. I only had two games – Harvest Moon and Golden Eye.
One was easy and fun and the other scared the crap out of me.
I’ll let you guess which was which.
I didn’t get another system until college, when I bought a banged up x-box from some dirty kid who I’m sure used the money for Xanax. It came with Halo and Morrowind. I played Morrowind like a trailer park widow in a casino. Halo… not so much. I’m pretty sure I used that disc as a beer coaster.
But then, THEN I discovered Fable. It was the most beautiful and engaging game I had ever seen, although it seems pretty mediocre now. But you have to understand something – up until that point, the most detailed game I had ever seen anyone play was Bard’s Tale (for all you who haven’t played it, be satisfied knowing that its graphics were god-awful). Fable was a whole ‘nother beast. It spoke to me, telling me that not all games were insufferably hard to beat or look at. It gave me hope.
That hope was justified with the Prince of Persia series. The Sands of Time was supremely fun, relatively easy to master, and splendid to look at. I beat it without much of a problem and quickly proceeded to The Warrior Within, which was a lot like the first one, only more death metal. But at the end of the game, the main boss proved to be too much for me to handle. I still haven’t beaten her. Worse yet is the fact that I own the third Prince of Persia game, but I refuse to play it until I beat the second one. Too bad I probably never will – I’m already too entrenched in Sony products to even remember what x-box means.
Sure, there was a brief interval with the Wii, but didn’t everyone have that? It was novel and sleek, but was incredibly shallow. It had a few good games but was, for the most part, just a distraction from the PS3.
Now, I don’t own a PS3 – it belongs to my boyfriend. This creates two problems: 1) He buys new games so often that I never have a chance to beat one before I want to start another one, and 2) I usually want to play one of said new games while he’s playing Metal Gear survival mode, so I rarely get a chance to play at all (unless I want to sacrifice sleep for the effort, which is only sometimes worth it).
AND he just got a PSP. So now I have a list of (literally!) 20 games that I want/need to finish before I start something else but I know it won’t happen until have a little more time on my hands, i.e. I’m old and waiting to die.
I’m done writing. Time for some PSP Puzzlequest (bad graphics, addicting gameplay).
-Biffmeister
