Animal Crossing: Odyssey

No, that's not the title of a newly announced Animal Crossing game. That's me trying to join the club and failing hard at it.

After everyone has been writing so much about their Animal Crossing: New Leaf adventures and especially after reading Bryan's adorable Animal Crossing diaries I knew I could no longer wait. I wanted my own town with it's own quirky bunch of citizens to go all "aww" over. So I went out to get it yesterday... and it just wasn't meant to be, it seems. ;_;

So, none of the stores within my immediate reach had the game available, two of them awfully big electronic's stores, I also checked the toy store, book store and even our equivalent of Walmart, just for the heck of it. There's no trace of this game. Hopefully that means all the crazy AC addicts live right around the corner. 8)

But guess what? That other store, right next to the main central station, in the heart of the city, where thousands of ppl go shopping each day... those guys still got the Premium Edition available, the one with the stylus und stickers... for the same price as the normal version. Guess where I'll go now?

So, hopefully I can soon tell everyone about my New Leaf adventures as well... :)

[10 Things I Love] Indie Games

I love lists. I love indie games. So here's a list of my ten favourite indie games.

Today Last week I talked to an online acquaintance of mine, who told me he's never played an indie game, becau the majority of them always looked so amateurish to him. A few years ago I probably would have agreed with him, but in the last 3 years I've found myself to have much more fun with indie games than most titles from big publishers.

Commercial indie games have made a big jump in quality and polish in the last few years and nowadays it's hard to see a difference in quality between a $60 big-name game and a less than $20 indie game. And while most of the big-name games are just more of the same old stuff we've already seen dozens of times, most indie games actually do something innovative that really makes them different. And usually also much more fun to play.

So without further ado, here are my ten favourite indie games in no particular order:

[Review] Reus

For the last 6 months I've been on the lookout for any new development-sims that cater to my tastes, something fun, not too stressful & action-y, yet challenging & rewarding. And preferably in cute 2D. Imagine my surprise when Reus got released on Steam a couple of days ago. "This is it!", I thought. And I was right.

[Review] The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

Part of me really wants to love this game and the other part just wants to puke from all the motion sickness this game has caused me, simply because of bad camera control. 

Just two more weeks...

... until Fire Emblem finally gets released over here and let me tell you, I'm seriously in danger of getting a heart attack from all my excitement.

I can't wait.


On other news, I've been catching up with a few TV series in the past few days since I didn't really feel like gaming... and had to do some serious cleaning. And what's more perfect than watching your favourite series while folding the laundry and sorting your paper work?

So I finished season 3 of Haven and all I can say is wth is going on there!? I seriously have no idea what to expect from the next season, but if it's as weird and exciting as the third was then I'll be pleased. :>

And Doctor Who started off just perfect. I love the new companion! Can't wait for Saturday's new episode. Can't wait for that damn 50th anniversary special. It's gonna be so good! *_*

Psych is as adorable as always. I'm still amazed how it never gets boring to watch Shawn and Gus be, well,  Shawn and Gus. I really hope this series will stay for another two or three seasons. It's just so perfect. 8)

I'm still a bit on the fence about Community so far, you definitely notice the change of direction in the new season with Dan Harmon gone, but I wouldn't say it's as bad as a lot of people been claiming. It's still funny and weird. And it still got Abed. It's just a little different... well, I'll wait til the end of the season until I decide what I think of it. :)

And then there's Lost Girl... you know, it took me two seasons to decide if I like this series or not and I was a little bit disappointed about the whole Bo x Lauren outcome (I just agree too much with Kenz about Bo's romantic life ;>) but season 3 keeps delivering pretty well. Now if Vex would finally return I'd be all pleased.

Now all there's left is catching up with New Girl, Grimm, Being Human (UK) & Fringe (I kinda keep pushing the latter away, since I'm scared I'll hate the end of the series.) And of course there's that new episode of Elementary that needs some serious watching right now. So, I'll do just that.

p.s.: Is anyone else as excited as I am about the Veronica Mars movie project?

[Review] Atelier Ayesha - The Alchemist of Dusk

By now I've played through the game twice, did everything there is to do and watched all the endings. And while Meruru is still my number one when it comes to Atelier games, Ayesha is a pretty close second.

Installing Atelier Ayesha...

... and while I'm waiting for that to finish (oh, why are you so damn slow at installing games, PS3?) I'd like to share my thoughts on Ayesha before playing the game and then we'll see how much they might change (or not) while I'm playing through it... ;>

- I'm a little disappointed that the game has no dual-audio. I'm not exactly that much into Japanese dubs, tho I admittedly have this huge crush on Takehito Koyasu's voice, but I do find a lot of American dubs rather unpleasing to the ears. It's mostly the girl characters, with way older woman trying to voice a teenage girl, that get annoying to me easily... Japanese voice actresses can somehow pull this off, but I've never heard a good dub in a non-Asian language where a 30+ old woman can pull off a 16 y/o girl's voice. I haven't heard any of the US voice actors besides Ayesha's so far, but I'm a little scared that I won't like the voices much. I think British voice actors would suit the Atelier series' style so much more, since the city designs always have such a European style (and I think the original PSOne games were set in Germany?) - but oh well, let's see how I feel about the voice acting when I play the game... maybe it's not that bad. :)

- I really love the new art style. As I've seen many mention before, I agree that the new artist's style suits the 3D cel shading models a lot more! The animations of the characters still feel a little bland tho, from what I've seen in videos and lip synching is pretty much non-existent. But still, I think it looks the best out of all the Atelier games so far and I like the simplistic menu design a lot as well.

- I'm looking forward to the story and characters a lot, since this time the theme is a bit more mature compared to the Arland series... not that I didn't find the cuteness of the Arland series charming and all, but I really like me some good drama, so yay!

Well, game's installed, so let's see how much I'll love this game then... :)

The Curse of the Typist's Cramp...

Or maybe we should call it a gamer's cramp in my case. Why is it even called a "typist's" cramp? I never get cramps from typing... writing with a pen, yeah, but typing? Anyway, got me an awful tenosynovitis (TSV) in my right wrist. This is nothing new for me, as I've had plenty in the past and I've got a splint at home in case I get another one anyway.. 

I didn't get one for quite a few years tho and this time it's from playing on the Vita. I already noticed the past couple of days that playing on the Vita for more than an hour or two would make my right thumb hurt a lot.  

And you know why?

Just because some awful idiot in the US thought that back whenever the PSOne came over to the West switching the confirmation button from O to X would be a greaaaat idea. WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK THAT?

I've been bothered by this for years, but now my annoyance has reached it's peak... as I've been playing a lot on the Vita lately I've noticed how extremely awkwardly your thumb is placed if you rest it on the X button. You have to either keep it in an extremely uncomfortable crooked position or rest it on the right stick as well... both of these methods start getting painful after a few minutes. .__.

Now if you try resting your thumb on the O button, which in general is the confirmation button in all Japanese developed games, you notice it's a lot more comfortable and natural:

I feel like writing a long letter to Sony in hopes they'll offer to reconfigure my O and X buttons input, so that O would be linked to X and X to O..  I wonder if they'd actually do it. I mean, I could probably do it myself and I will if Sony doesn't do anything as soon as my warranty expires... for now I'll take a break from P4G, which is sad, since I just beat the last boss and only got a month of in-game time left to wrap things up. ;_;

But oh well, in the mean time I'll just amuse myself (and maybe some of you as well?) with a probably NSFW screenshot collection of Personae resembling genitals and other dirty stuff that made me grin while playing Persona 4 Golden..  pretty much spoiler free.

And more games I want got announced...

I'll be piss poor this year...

Playstation 4? Surprisingly, I'm sold.

PlatinumGames, Level-5, Nippon Ichi Software, Gust, Chunsoft, Marvelous AQL, Imageepoch and Atlus amongst others are developing for the PS4. It seems there's no way I won't be getting this system then.

Persona 5 for PS4. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. :>

Keiji Inafune's otome game... in English!?

So, I heard about this before... Keiji Inafune in charge of designing an otome game. I saw the characters (art by the dude who did the art for the Ace Attorney series) and started to desperately hope for a localisation.

Now it totally took me by surprise when Aksys announced the game yesterday... just like that. Bam! In your face. Awesome. 

*coughs*

I'm especially excited since it's not just a straight VN otome game with your usual choices that define which ending you get, no... there's PUZZLES to solve!

And just look at this crazy cast of characters:

I totally want to date them all. Especially the glasses dude on the far left that totally reminds me of the crazy priest vampire hunter in Hellsing. Bwaha. I also really like the heroine's design. The thought of playing as Inafune's niece ist just... well, I think this game will make me grin a lot. 

Good thing it's coming no sooner than summer, hopefully I'll have all those other games finished by then. I'm 8 hours into the game, but I've skipped quite a bit of the story since I still remember it all quite well. But I'm at Kanji's introduction now and since he's my favourite character in the game I'll probably read & listen to a lot more of the dialogue now. 8)

Fire Emblem: Awakening also finally got an official EU release date yesterday: April 19th! 

Really can't wait for that game... any of you guys in the US playing it already? But you know, the good thing about getting a game a little later is that there's already lots of strategy guides and helpful hints out in the internet when you start playing. I really like to plan a little bit ahead when it comes to strategic games... I usually spent a couple of hours reading various forum discussions about various strategies about gameplay and what to be careful of early in the game. I also hate missing characters/quests/etc. Persona 4 is my personal hell of planning ahead in games. 

I actually printed out various lists and tables with information about social links and quests before starting to play thegame. Sometimes I think I should make strategy guide design my profession. I even modified my Ni no Kuni guide book a little to make it more efficent, haha. :>

So that's that. And now back to P4G. 

Sometimes.. impatience does pay off!

Today I got this sudden urge of wanting Persona 4 Golden like RIGHT NOW! So I went to check Ebay.. and actually found some dude from Hamburg who'd been selling the US version, so I mailed him, we agreed to do the whole thing "out-of-ebay" and he said I could come over and get it immediately if I wanted to... and of course I wanted to! 

But I was pretty low on cash and paying with your credit card doesn't really work when you're not using Ebay or shopping in a real store. (unless you know someone with a credit card reader / charger, but err yeaaaah.......) Anyway.

So I called Dad to ask if he could lend me some moneys til next week and guess what he said.... 
"It's on the house." 

Technically I just got P4G ten days early (compared to the EU release) and for free.

Which means I can spend Valentine's Day with my most favourite game in the world. I also got me my favourite sweets and some of that Lipton Sparkling I'm so addicted to. 

Can't wait for the Weekend! *_*

A little rant about Ni no Kuni...

So, as I said I'm gonna rant a little.


This will be a little spoiler-y (I won't spoil the ending or deep plot twists tho), so stay away if you haven't finished the game yet and don't want to know some story related things before having seem them yourself (I won't talk much about anything post-Hamelin, so if you've reached that part you're pretty much save anyway.)

[Review] Ni no Kuni (& Gold Hurly Familiar Give Away)

I'll try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible for those who haven't played the game yet... I'll make another post with rants and a few in-depth hints for those that are interested later on. ;>

I've put a good 75+ hours into the game now (tho I think around 5 hours of those are just me leaving the PS3 on while doing other stuff. ;>) and finished the main story. I still got quite a bit of the post-end content left to finish (monster hunts, quests, catching all familiars just because I can...) and not one minute of it felt like wasted time.

I love this game. A lot. But I have to admit that this game has its flaws. Most of them are no big deal and if you're able to overlook them you'll have plenty of fun with this game.

It finally arrived... *_* (Ni No Kuni Wizard's Edition)

Even tho I was already prepared for it, I was still a little disappointed that the Wizard's Companion is so tiny...

 And after playing the hell out of it, I'll also share my thoughts on the game with you~

What I'm looking forward to...

While 2012 was a bit lacking for me (even tho they were a few incredibly great games, as mentioned in the post before...), 2013 seems to be more than promising. There's tons of stuff I'm looking forward to and I'd like to share my excitement with you guys. ;>

First of all there's Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch coming up in a mere 15 23 days (just as I was writing this, Amazon informed me that the game has been delayed to the first of February... orz) - I've been wanting to play this game ever since the DS version got announced. I was severely disappointed when they announced a localisation for the PS3 version but not the DS one... I had no PS3 then and I didn't think I'd be getting one so soon either. But then I did and after playing through the demo once, I immediately pre-ordered the Limited Edition of Ni No Kuni. It's so fun and so pretty! The story seems to be promising too (but I didn't expect anything else, I mean.. it's Ghibli!) and Level 5's cel shading is marvelous as always... hell yeah. I'm excited for this game!

Next up is Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Escape (Vita version), which gets released on the same day as Ni No Kuni over here in Germany. I decided to not import the game, when I saw it's only gonna cost 28 Euro over here - a price I'm certainly willing to pay for that game. :D (Usually prices in Germany have the same numbers as in the US, just with a € behind instead of a $ in front of them... so, a 40 USD game suddenly turns into a 40 Euro game which is about $52. How is that fair? ;_;) 

In February I'll finally get to play Persona 4 Golden too! The main reason I got the Vita, as I was never able to finish the game on my shiny pink PS2! The little one deleted my 90% complete save game and ever since I just couldn't bring myself to start from the beginning... after enough time had passed to make me wanna play the game from scratch again, the upgraded Vita version got announced and I decided that if I'm gonna play the game again, then I'm playing that version! So I got me a Vita.. and it has been waiting ever since... waiting for me to finally push the game's cartridge into the game slot and play til the battery runs dry... 8) And that I will do in February!

The game I'm probably most excited about tho, is probably Atelier Ayesha - I've been drooling over this game ever since it got announced and after Tecmo-Koei bought Gust I was a little scared that we won't see this game localised or that it would take ages at least. But what's that? A European release, you say? In April? Pre-ordered. WANT NOW!

Don't Starve will also finally see it's official release soon! The Beta has been available for purchase for a while now and it's pretty fun to see the game expand and give you more options to die every few days... 8) It's also 20% off if you buy it now before it's released. :)

Then there's Deponia 3, The Rabbit's Apprentice (another P&C Adventure game by Daedelic & the awesome Matthias Kempke of lassiegames!), Pokemon X & Y just got announced for this year too...

And of course Fire Emblem: Awakening! Finally a Fire Emblem game that has no perma death! And oh, how I look forward to marrying off all my characters to each other, haha.... 8)

Last but not least there is also the release of GTA V to look forward to sometime this year... who knows when exactly that is, but it's gonna be awesome!

So many games I'm looking forward to... I wonder if I'll even have the time to play them all.

If you haven't yet, you can also check out what 2012 games I'm looking back on... ;>

What I'm looking back on...

So I'm a little late with the list of my ten favourite games of the year 2012, but let's do this anyway: