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.

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! *_*

Sound Shapes

I'm usually staying away from platformers, as I really, really suck at them. But add some creative options, like making your own levels and composing music at the same time - oh well, I can't help but get curious...

And since the Vita hasn't seen much love and since I like to support indie developers.. and the game is 20% off for PS+ users, I just couldn't resist and pre-ordered it last week. 8) (It's also for both Vita & PS3, no matter which version you buy, you'll get the other as well.)

So on Tuesday the game was finally available to download and since then I've been spending quite a bit of time with it. And not just me, the little one is rather fond of it as well - which is just awesome, since he can go and do all the jumping and running to unlock more items and sounds, so I can fiddle around even more with the level creator.. ;>

But admittingly, the stages aren't actually that hard (at least not all the time) and there's no game over, you just respawn at your last checkpoint and merely have to collect the coins you gathered after the checkpoint again - luckily you can use the checkpoints again after picking up coins, so you won't lose them any more after dying. So all in all I am actually having a lot of fun with the platforming as well - which is mainly due to the awesome artwork and music in this little gem. 

                                                                          A few of the different stages

The level creation mode

Most of the levels feel more like an artsy interactive music video than just a platformer, especially Beck's "Cities" was a lot of fun to play through since everything was so perfectly synched to the song's rythmn and even after ten minutes (I died A LOT ;>) I didn't get bored of the song.. :)

I'd recommend this to anyone who likes artsy stuff, good music and doesn't hate platformers with a passion.. the 20% discount for PS+ still lasts til Tuesday as well! :)

Ciel no Surge Patch 1.3 released

http://social.gust.co.jp/pc/support/ciel/index_p11.htm

Seems like most of the major bugs have been fixed now. :)

[review] Ciel no Surge

...or "Menu Navigation - The Game".

Limited Edition

I just pre-ordered the limited edition of Ciel no Surge from CDJapan AmiAmi. I'm not sure if this was really smart, since I don't think the game is very non-Japanese friendly, menu-wise and all, but I really want this game. And the extras. Especially the PS Vita front sticker:

The rest of the LE is nothing that special, a soundtrack CD and "documents" which are probably containing info on characters, the world etc.. 

Definitely not as awesome as my last LE, the Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4 Treasure Box, which included a CG collection book, a character design book, a bunch of postcards with art from the game and a flower necklace with replaceable stones, 8 of them, one of each for the romanceable guys in the game. <3

But the Ciel no Surge LE is tempting enough with that sticker thingy, I really find it rather pretty and would love to stick it on my Vita... ^^; It's also been quite a while since I bought Haruka4 (and back then I was lucky enough to have a friend stay over in Japan, so he bought it for me and brought it back over here when he got back... no customs, no hundred years of shipping, no shipping fees... yay!) so I'm somewhat excited even tho the extras aren't that awesome. it It still seems pretty shiny to me and about 60 Euro for a LE from Japan is quite cheap actually. Can't wait for early May when the game arrives here.. or rather when I get my notification from the customs office.. orz

Some more Vita backgrounds

I made a few more Vita backgrounds, since I'm currently very much into Natsume Yuujinchou again and just saw the very lovely Hotarubi no Mori e a few days ago, so I made some backgrounds from fanart of these two... Thought I'd share them again. :)

PS Vita Background Images

I made some PS Vita background / lockscreen images, which everyone can freely use. <3

I haven't tested any of them yet, but they should work just fine. ;>

Images after the break. 

On other news: Devil Survivor 2 has been leaked and the impatient me (okay, actually I'm just desperate for some other games besides Corpse Party, right now I'm not very much in a running away mood... XD) decided to not wait for my import copy to arrive... It's probably one of those games I'll never release from the shrink wrap as I'm already done with it by the time my copy of the game arrives. :>

I might post a little about it later. For now I can say, that Daichi is an annoying bestie. And a wuss. What's with all the wusses in Japanese media all the time? That dude from Mirai Nikki (I already blocked his name from my memory) is by far the worst I've seen in anime lately... I dropped the series after 5 episodes.. can't bear to watch that idiot whine. Which is a pity since the series has such a nice concept.. :(

Oh well, now on to the bckground images:

[Let's Play] Corpse Party is killing me... (Part 01)

... literally.

I decided to write a detailed, very spoilery review along to me playing the game... that way my memory will still be fresh and I'll be less angsty about playing on... XD


Sorry for the varying quality of the images - as it's not possible to make screenshots of PSP games (at least not this one) with the Vita I have to make do with screenshots from youtube videos and whatever I can find via google. ;>

Useful PS Vita Links

Just a quick list of links that might be useful to PS Vita owners or those that intend to buy one in the future. :>


http://www.buttoncombo.com/?p=7184
Short descriptions of some useful functions of the Vita like taking screenshots (Note that this doesn't work with (all?) PSP games as they can't be watermarked) and changing settings for PSP games etc.


http://gbatemp.net/forum/214-sony-ps-vita-discussions/
The PS Vita section of GBAtemp, my favourite forum. Since members there are usually helpful and lots of questions have already been asked and answered there, I think this might be helpful to get some more info and it's a nice community in general. :)


http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/psvita/cm/installcma.html
The official manual page for the Content Manager, which also has the link for the DL - when I manually entered it the page wouldn't load, so I had to go to this page first to start the DL. 


http://www.psvitavlog.com/ps-vita-remote-play-tutorial/
Short simple tutorial for Remote Play.


http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/02/13/grading-the-playstation-vita.aspx
Good review about the Vita with lots of information. :)




Hope these will prove useful to anyone. ;>

PS Vita - First Impressions

Since there's not really anything besides a total waste of paper and the charger / usb cable inside the Vita's box I won't take any unboxing pictures... this was seriously the most disappointing unboxing I ever did. The Vita itself tho, is not disappointing at all.. <3

The Samsung OLED screen is bright and sharp and the colours look awesome. Browsing through the menus on the Vita is very intuitive and fun. It's relatively simple to figure out how to do stuff. For example, pressing on the front screen for a bit enters the menu editing mode where you can change the backgrounds or sort your apps and games. Sorting you do with pressing on the icon for a bit and then sliding them around, if you tap on them it opens the options (delete and/or information in most cases).

Navigating through the Vita's PSN store is rather annoying tho... there's no option to sort by genre (yet, I hope.) and browsing through all PSP games is a little annoying. There's also no option to sort stuff by price or list stuff that's on sale. I really hope the store will get a little more organised... :/ (I have no idea how the store looked on PSP, I can only compare it to the PS3 store, which is way cooler.)

Something else that's bothering me is that some PSP games aren't yet available for the Vita on the EU stores. Like Corpse Party. Which was one of the games announced as compatible for the Vita in the US at launch. Is there a difference between the US and EU version of the game? I'd really like to use my 20 Euro PSN code to get it, but first I'd like to find out if the EU version can be played on the Vita at all.. if anybody owns that and a Vita, would love to get some input on that. ;>

Uh yeah well, I didn't do much with the Vita yet.. tried the demo of Little Deviants, totally not my kind of thing. I also downloaded the Dungeon Hunter: Alliance demo, but didn't get much further than selecting a Mage and then realising that I have to restart the Vita for the rear touchpad to work..

But all in all, it's shiny and awesome and I am pretty sure that there's gonna be a bunch of gamese that will rock in the next few years. <3

Right now I am very much looking forward to Persona 4 The Golden and Extreme Escape Adventure: Good People Die, if that's gonna be released for the Vita as well, as the leaky news of it getting localised by Aksys only go for the 3DS version.

And now I'll go back to fiddling around with the Vita some more and watch some Fringe, I finally started watching it yesterday and I love it. It's like X-Files, just with less aliens and more mad doctors instead. XD

PS Vita, get!

Just went to get my pre-ordered PS Vita - I might do a little review on it later today. If I'm not totally busy playing Corpse Party or Hakuouki (I have no PSP, so I haven't played those yet... and there's not much out for the Vita that I'm interested in yet, LBP and Katamari being the only games of interest to me so far.. Can't wait for P4 Golden tho... *__*)

Anyways, got some unboxing to do now! <3