Me and My Katamari

As a portable interpolation of Katamari Damacy, Me and My Katamari pretty much makes good. With hundreds of unlockable items, plenty of new challenges, and some downright zany environments, the Katamari series is surely going out on a good note.

At the beginning of Me and My Katamari, the King and the rest of the royal family go for beach-blanket fun, splashing about in the ocean. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of a chain of small islands nearby, the King gets a little too rambunctious, causing a tidal wave that wipes the islands off the map. He then makes amends by sending his son, the Prince, out to collect matter out of which to create new islands. This is where you come in. The opening cinematic sequence for Me and My Katamari establishes the delightfully irreverent and mildly insane tone that the series is best known for, though the game is pretty lean on cinematic sequences through the rest of the game, which is a little disappointing.

The game uses an island interface that allows you to view the islands you've created while also allowing you to see what needs to be done. Animals will start popping up on Prince Island asking the Prince for help. Every mission you receive on said island has the same objective; you'll have X amount of time to get a katamari X meters wide. Even though it seems like this would get repetitive and boring, the diversified environments generally help the game stay fresh. The Prince can also travel to the Volcano Island, where creatures will present him with strange requests. Instead of constructing a katamari of a certain size, these missions require you to build a katamari containing the right products. For instance, one gorilla needs enough energy to fuel his rocket, so it makes much more sense to run over power plants than trees. Even so, it doesn't hurt to build up a large katamari simply because you'll be able to obtain more objects, which therefore adds a whole new element to the game. The final isle is the Beanstalk Island, which allows you to switch between characters you've collected throughout the levels.

While it might not have as many wonderful cinematic sequences as the Katamari games for the PS2, Me and My Katamari nails the overall look and feel of the series almost perfectly. The environments, which start you off inside a tiny room in a tiny Japanese home and eventually reaches the scope of a decent-sized metropolis, feature purposely blocky designs and a random selection and placement of items, both common and exotic, and often straight-up imaginary. The game has an incredible color palette of bright primaries and subdued pastels, and its unique sense of design saturates everything from status screens to the bear that walks around wearing a T-shirt that says "bear" on it.

While it almost perfectly captures the Katamari style, it makes also a few technical sacrifices in the form of midlevel load times, but are never more than a few seconds long. During these loads the game also kind of fudges the scale of the katamari to its surroundings, making the ball itself bigger while shedding much of the complicated geometry of the items stuck to it. Me and My Katamari's sound design matches suit, providing a catchy and eclectic soundtrack for the surreal action. A lot of the music is identical to that found in past Katamari games, which makes it an easy fit, though it would have been nice if the game featured a little more original music. Though the soundtrack is largely dominant, it's regularly punctuated with the confused, panicky cries of people and animals that you pick up with your katamari, which can be hysterical.

If you know what you're doing, you can play through Me and My Katamari in just a few hours, and it feels slightly shorter than its predecessors. Part of the sense of brevity can probably be attributed to the fact that there just aren't that many different environments, and they get recycled often, so that by the time you get to the end, you've pretty much had your fill. If you're looking for a reason to go back, there are gifts from the King hidden throughout the game that you can pick up and outfit the Prince with, as well as a small army of cousins that you can pick up and then choose to play as. There's also a pretty simple multiplayer mode, in which up to four players, each with their own copy of the game, can play a competitive game in which everyone tries to collect more items while knocking items off the other players' katamaris. Or, for the less competitive, you can exchange royal gifts with the other players.

The paltry number of levels in Me and My Katamari proves to be its biggest shortcoming, as the game otherwise does a pretty phenomenal job of re-creating the Katamari Damacy experience on the psp. The game's refreshing aesthetic, fun and simple gameplay, and its unhinged sense of humor is unlike anything else on the psp. If you've never played a Katamari game before, you owe it to yourself to try this one out. For fans of the series, this is a must-have.

Chocolatier

Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away, now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of casual games, we have Chocolatier, where a chocolatier sim that has you jet setting around the world, trying to find the best ingredients, and selling off your product to make the highest profit you can. Thanks to Sheya for the game =)

The story is that two sisters who have been fighting over their family's chocolate business, but neither could decide on what the other wanted to do. So, they splintered off, becoming business rivals, though one wants to restore the honour to her family. To do so, she is passing along what she knows to you, so that you may make the family business grow and prosper once more. In the beginning you will be handed a factory and a recipe for simple chocolate bars. With the recipe in hand, you will need to gather and maintain ingredients, ensure the fatory is in production, and sell the products to increase wealth and ranking in the chocolate world.

Ingredients can be found at every port city in the game that you can land at, though they would not offer the same goods. Though sugar is constantly prevalent, other ingredients like cocoa beans, coffee beans, cashews, lemons, vanilla sticks etc. can only be found at certain specific ports. You can choose to pay the full price for what the merchants are asking for, or you can attempt to haggle with them, but too much haggling can anger them them and cause their prices to soar. Prices at the various markets are also determined by things such as shortages or too much supply. Get news of demand and supply shortages or hikes from random characters at the bars or inns. In the factories, you will get to determine how many chocolates of that type that factory will make each week. You will have various revolving circles on a machine moving around, and how many complete firing of the required ingredients into each circle determines how many boxes of chocolate that factory will produce each week, as long as you have all the required ingredients. With the goods on hand, you can now head to the chocolate boutiques to sell them off. Now, there are several factors at play when selling your goods. For starters, sometimes people just get tired of eating your same chocolates over and over, so the longer you have one single chocolate bar going over and over, the lower and lower the cost you will be able to sell them at. Also, though people from an area might still love a specific type of chocolate, another port like London might be tiring of them. Throughout the game, you will be able to purchase some shops as your own, and there you will always get better than usual prices.

Along the way in the game, you will be stumbling upon odd quests, such as delivering a letter to someone or producing certain amount of chocolate boxes for a person and delivering them to them. Completing quests will net you more money or things like new recipes. Recipes come in four different flavors, such as bars, squares, infusions, and truffles, with each generally more valuable the one before. Still, you will have to spend quite an amount at each factory for upgrading to allow the making of more valuable candies.

Switching between ports costs you money and weeks , so plan your inventory full of supplies before you wander on an adventure. Graphically and visually the game is alright, simply doing what it needs to do to get its gameplay across. Music comes in several forms, such as the tense "factory out of cocoa beans" quickened paces to the more leisurely "explore as long as you want" background sounds. The sounds are pretty good though, featuring things like trains and ships going on voyages, the sound of a ringing cash register, and others. I found myself throwing away hours (one full day =\) to this game when I really should have been doing some work. I'm sure that not only will you have fun with this casual tycoon game, but you might just learn something too (chocolate history and facts).

I have also tried a few hours of the sequel to Chocolatier, which is called Chocolatier 2 (obviously). You can even get to create new recipes in Chocolatier 2 using secret ingredients from hidden ports around the world. And the game now track prices of chocolates and ingredients for you so a mouse-over would reveal past transactions. Also, instead of spinning circles in the factories (which made me dizzy), the circles don’t spin and instead flow differently on the product line. The game is as addicting as chocolate, and I’m all for a third edition of the game if it’s done right.

菊花台 Lyrics

This is for me and angl and yuqin so we can sing during practices! (yes, huangsheng is doing the pop thing again)...

你的泪光 柔弱中带伤
惨白的月弯弯 勾住过往
夜太漫长 凝结成了霜
是谁在阁楼上冰冷的绝望

雨轻轻淌 朱红色的窗
我一生在纸上 被风吹乱
梦在远方 化成一缕霞
随风飘散 你的模样

菊花惨 澹地伤 你的笑容已泛黄
花落人断肠 我心事静静淌
北风乱 夜未央 你的影子剪不断
徒留我孤单在湖面生霜

花亦相挽 飘落了灿烂
凋谢的石道上 命运不堪
愁没都江 秋心在两畔
怕你上不了岸 一辈子摇晃

谁的江山 马蹄声慌乱
我一身的戎装 呼啸苍苍
天微微凉 你轻声地叹
一夜惆怅如此委婉

菊花惨 澹地伤 你的笑容已泛黄
花落人断肠 我心事静静淌
北风乱 夜未央 你的影子剪不断
徒留我孤单在湖面生霜

菊花惨 澹地伤 你的笑容已泛黄
花落人断肠 我心事静静淌
北风乱夜未央 你的影子剪不断
徒留我孤单在湖面生霜

credits:
song by jay chou
菊花 by angl and chryssie

Brave Story: New Traveler

Yuqin's been playing Brave Story: New Traveler recently, yes, neglecting her school work hah... I've caught quite a few glimpse of the game when she's playing and thought it looked interesting enough. Will try it out soon, it's recess week after tomorrow!!

On a day that starts out like any other, an 11-year-old boy's life is changed forever. As the main character, Tatsuya, and his friend Miki pass a leisurely afternoon, Miki suddenly collapses from an unknown illness. When the girl shows no sign of waking, the main character grows distraught over not being a better friend and not having the means to save her. Suddenly, a strange voice offers him a second chance: "Beyond the door you can change your destiny!" He soon leaves the real world and journeys to the world of Vision, where, as a novice "Traveler", he will surmount myriad ordeals in hopes of ultimately meeting with the Goddess of Fortune to have a single wish granted. The would-be hero quickly makes friends both strange and fascinating as he finds himself blossoming into a successful Traveler. The battles you'll run into (there will be a lot as you crisscross forests and beaches) are set up for the traditional turn-based, party battle. You'll have three slots to fill on your team, and as you get used to the game you'll get used to having Yuno (a half-kitten/half-girl) and Sogreth (a beefy lizard) as your backup.

Although your sword, Yuno's bow and Sogreth's battleaxe will be the primary way you crack the skulls of the gimblewolves and seductresses you come across, Brave Story features three concepts, friendship, courage and growth, that will greatly affect the way you beat baddies. The longer you toil away with the same set of combatants, the better friends your group gets to be. That sounds nice in the lovey-dovey way, but what it means is that the longer you're together the more ways you get to kick ass together. Unity moves open up as you go and involve everything from Tatsuya and Yuno pulling a pick-pocket, or stab routine to Meena and Tatsuya running to one side of the screen and bombarding the enemies with craziness. These team-up moves will be critical to beating dungeon bosses, but need to be implemented with some forethought because they drain your Brave Power (BP) meter. BP is the light pink meter onscreen that governs what kind of special moves you can pull off, which is that courage thing in the game. As you battle, the pink meter fills. When it's your turn to attack you can select one of those cool unity moves, or Bravura moves, which are similarly devastating attacks that you can do without another party member. The final element of the battle system is growth. Sure, your characters are going to get bigger and better through experience points and new equipment, but for Tatsuya to get an audience with the goddess, he has got to find these magical gemstones that fit into the faceplate of his sword. Each time he finds one, the sword changes forms and gets stronger.

The graphic during battles is something different in a normal RPG game. You get to see 3d views of the characters' strokes and moves instead of the typical top view of their heads. Still, after a few battles you get sick of them, especially when you're simply training them to be up for the boss fights. Sometimes you would wish that the noisy half-kitten would talk lesser. Afterall, Brave Story's pastel color scheme and menu system is that it makes me feel like I could be playing any RPG. Enter a dungeon, beat the randoms, beat the boss, upgrade your weapons and so on... Well, it's a solid RPG that's sure to appeal to fans who want a fun yet simple romp through the genre they love.

For walkthroughs: http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/psp/game/932265.html

Ultimate Block Party

We finally booked our tickets to Paris! Reserved actually.. And we didnt even need to produce our passport or ic at STA -.-" Tentatively we're flying off on 6th May, and coming back on 10th June, but the dates are flexible so we can extend if we really want to stay there longer! The lady at STA was really nice and she made us excited about planning the trip all over again. She even taught us how to swear at scary londoners if they try to rob us..

Yuwei got his interview slot to major in Hospitality and Tourism Management le! It's on coming Tuesday. I really hope he gets in. BnF is so boring; marketing and HR are abit too bimbo; he cannot make it for IT and Actuarial.. Please say good luck to him whenever you see him!

Now for the game.. Similar to Tetris, Ultimate Block Party is an addictive and extremely frantic puzzle game with a bright, flamboyant style to match. The focus of this game is on competitive battles, not solitary point chases. And those battles tend to get heated quickly, serving up quick and intense matches without forcing you through a protracted progression of levels.

Ultimate Block Party is a very simple game, starting out with a screen that is about a third of the way filled with colorful blocks. Every so often, a new row of blocks pushes up from the bottom, and you lose when the blocks reach the top of the screen. As time goes on, the blocks start adding up a lot faster. You can remove blocks by lining at least four blocks of the same color together in a square, at which point they'll disappear. There is a slight delay between when you match up the like-colored blocks and when they disappear, and during this time you can attach other blocks of the same color to make them disappear as well. That's all pretty simple, but the game offers a lot of room for advancement once you're ready to move beyond the basic four-block strategy. As blocks disappear, any blocks above will fall down, and if they're properly arranged, they'll create chains of disappearing blocks. Creating chains will get you various magic blocks. Arrow blocks will turn all blocks in their path the same color once they are activated; bomb blocks will change all adjacent blocks the same color; and flush blocks will clear all like-colored blocks on the screen. These magic blocks can be used simultaneously as well, and once you learn to use them to their full potential you can clear dozens of blocks at a time.

Clearing several blocks at a time not only helps keep your screen clear, but it launches attacks at your opponents. There are several different types of attacks, depending on the color of the blocks you clear. Clearing several red blocks will make your opponent's cursor bigger, which makes it difficult to arrange blocks with any precision; clearing orange blocks will turn the inside of your opponent's cursor black and white, making it difficult to match up colored blocks; clearing yellow blocks will prevent your opponent from seeing the bottom few rows of his or her screen; and so on. There are six different attacks in all, and while they're difficult enough to handle one at a time, things really get crazy when you get hit with several attacks in rapid succession. When your screen is almost full, and you're struggling with some odd-shaped or immobile blocks while your cursor is showing only black and white, and all of a sudden your controls are reversed, it's easy to get overwhelmed and quickly lose a match. Each attack varies in severity as well, so while you may be able to survive smaller attacks without much difficulty, the more powerful attacks can stop you in a matter of seconds.

There are several modes to choose from in Ultimate Block Party, but a lot of them are identical. You can play the game single-player, in which you forget about the attacks and just clear blocks to reach the highest level possible. However, the best way to play is in multiplayer mode. You can play against the computer in arcade mode, campaign mode, or versus mode. Arcade mode and campaign mode are almost identical, except in arcade mode you get to choose which character you want to play as, whereas in campaign mode you're stuck with Kollon, the generic main character. In both modes you play through a series of battles against the game's eight characters, who each have their own style of play. The characters are silly and generic, and they don't seem to behave much differently from one another. There's Kollon and Marinne, who are sort of little-girl versions of Ken and Ryu, an overweight superhero, a hitman, a burglar, an actress, an aristocrat, and the president of wherever it is this game takes place. There are some brief pantomimed skits between battles in campaign mode, but otherwise the characters don't interact.

The visual style of Ultimate Block Party is quintessentially Japanese. The characters are obviously inspired by the lighter side of anime, with humorously disproportionate bodies and exaggerated expressions. During the battles they dance in place on the side of the screen until you're about to lose, at which point they start to get nervous. The backgrounds consist of simple city skylines and such, and you could easily play the entire game without noticing them. The blocks themselves are bright and colorful with happy little faces. The special effects that accompany the various attacks all look good, but they aren't so flashy that they detract from the game. The sound here is about what you'd expect from a puzzle game. There are the requisite blips and beeps as you flip blocks and move the cursor around the screen, as well as an annoying but probably necessary alarm to let you know when you are in danger of losing. The music has a very arcade feel to it, with catchy electronic beats that keep the action moving without getting annoying or repetitive. There are only a dozen or so different tunes, so it doesn't take long to hear them all. Regardless, the sound is good here, but if you play it muted you won't miss out on much.

Ultimate Block Party is a fun and addictive puzzle game that will keep you entertained for five minutes or a couple of hours, depending on how much time you have to burn. It's a refreshing change of pace since you can pick it up and get right into the thick of the action without plodding through a lot of tedious buildup. If you've hit the level cap on Lumines and are looking for a new puzzle game to while away the time, you should definitely check out Ultimate Block Party.

I MISS JIAKAI

I miss jiakai so muchhh. It's only been about a month and I've been sobbing under the sheets every night since she left for paris. My eyes are so swollen they can match jingwan's abalone. I feel sickly if I dont talk to her online at least twice a day. I only had one phone call from her and that was since many many weeks before boohoohoo. Jiakai will you call me more often pleasee.. I cant concentrate in class cos i'm too busy missing her. And on weekends, I cant concentrate on playing psp too, my spongebob keeps falling into spiky plants =\ When are u coming back, siew jiakai, my bitchy fren??

muahhhahah so lame..

Busy day today.. Woke up late. Fetched mummy to admiralty pri school. Went to airport to pick jiejie up. Thought I was 10min late but in the end it was 35min early (noted the wrong time plus flight delay). Met xizhu at T1. She's interning there and she spent half her lunch time waiting with me. Jiakai: pls note, another NICE fren of mine hahahah. Rushed jiejie back home cos meeting yuqin to go down to STA to get our flight tickets and student pass. Yes, we're going europe to visit our dearest jiakai.. BUT.. *thunder and storm (晴天霹雳)*.. yuqin suddenly realise her i/c, together with her passport, are all locked up in a drawer, which she lost the key to last week =( Searched around for locksmith number. Too late to make it to bugis now le so.. postpone again muahahaha. We should really book the tickets soon, the prices are as volatile as the stock market..

Will wait for jiejie to return so I can wash her car. It's seriously in quite a bad shape from squeezing 7 people in for half a day of travelling muahhahah. The carpets are grossss, there were even cigarette butts and random paper/plastic strips stuck to it. Managed to remove most of them before going to airport today. Shhhh dun tell jiejie =\ Meanwhile, will mug for next week's audit quiz. 7 seminars of readings more to go, with about 2 chapters + 2 SSAs per seminar.

Enough updates eh?

Khaiqing and grace, I miss you guys too!

Work Time Fun

Naming your game WTF (Work Time Fun) will surely get attention. That is one of many things D3 Publisher did right when bringing this Sony-developed game stateside. This quirky mini-game laden game has you playing a temp worker. You visit a placement office where your goal is to earn money. And that's it.

There are 40 mini-games in all; you start with a menu of four. One of the game, Pendemonium, has you capping pens on an assembly line. Sometimes the pens are backwards, so you must flip them over before you can cap them. This game, as you will discover after awhile, does not end! You just play it until you get tired of it. It's seriously just a no brainer game if pressing the same few buttons.

By earning money, you can visit vending machines that dispense capsules that either get you a new mini-game, a useless trinket, or a tool. The tools you unlock in the game are really lame. Handy Light is nothing more than a white (or other color) "light" for your PSP. It just brings up a white picture on screen. You can turn the light on/off, and change the light pattern. Really handy hurr.. Eye Spy is another one you unlock. You can hold this up to your eyes, pointing away from you. Using the shoulder buttons, you can blink (move the analog nub to move the pupils, too). Use Eye Spy the next time you are in a long queue.

You will also get random emails from co-workers, and sometimes, bonuses from WTFNet. Your co-workers ramble on about useless stuff, just like in real life. It's the type of game that makes you scratch your head in amazement, wondering how this made it out of Japan. But the reason the game is a success is because it is so offbeat and is a total time waster.

WTF also supports ad-hoc multiplayer. You can trade trinkets, but the most fun comes by "outsourcing" work, where you can subject your unsuspecting friends to doing menial tasks from the Sub-Contract menu. You can perform single or multiplayer jobs in ad-hoc mode. Keeping with the nonsense of it all, you "interview" potential workers, and can even reject them if you wish.

As with a lot of great software that rarely makes it stateside, this game is going to be a total turn off to some. Work is hell, part-time jobs are hell, but what better way to get through your day than by counting chicks into baskets? Yes the game is odd, and funny. And it gets a little more challenging as you start unlocking more and more games. This is definitely not a game for everyone. It's one of those love-it-or-hate-it games. If you're fascinated by the wacky side of Japanese culture, you'll definitely want to have a go at this game. Likewise if you prefer your games easy to learn and playable in short sessions, or if you adore retro gaming. However, if you like a little more complexity or brain work in your gaming, this is probably not the game for you.

City Shrinker

This is so cooooolll... dont they look like some super detailed models of some cities... wonder how they do the ripples..

more at http://www.cityshrinker.com/

hahahh and the answer is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt-shift_photography

**************************************update**************************************

whooo pekpek can take pictures like these too!

picture by pek when he was PR-ing in Bintan (courtesy of pek):

not bad huh, i thought all pek knew was taking flowers muahahhaha =p