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... :)