Brandon’s #2 Game of 09.
;)
I made a post the other day over at Smoking Apples about Bitboxland for iPhone. Bitboxland is a retro game/music toy box that you can play with. Click here to buy it from the App Store.
We get on the couch this week, and do some therapy. We find out about Alex’s sexual frustration and Brandon’s lack of morals.
Remember all those PSN friends you have? Yeah, I know, all your friends are on Xbox Live. But seriously, you see which way the winds blowing, right? Achievement points are yesterday’s news. The future is in trophies. Who cares if you have 10,000 points? I’m a Lv. 7 PS3 gamer with a whopping 15 friends online.
But seriously, you care about your trophies. You care about your friends’ trophies. You want to know how you rank against them. And you wanna know what games they’re playing, even when you’re not at home to check them out from your XMB. So, I was sitting on the toilet, thinking about that very same thing the other day, so I whipped out my informationPhone and searched the App Store for PSN. I found two apps, one hadn’t been updated in six months, so I assumed it was dead. Luckily, there was a second PSN app that had just been updated. That app was iTrophies, an app for checking in on your PSN buddies and their trophies.
With iTrophies, you can see your own profile, listing your current number of trophies, your level, and images of your recently acquired trophies. You can also check your friends list, see who’s online, and see what they’re playing. It’s laid out very well. The menus are clutter-free and attractive. But aside from looking at just what your friends are playing now, you can take a look at their complete trophy collections, and you can compare theirs with your own. You can do the same thing on your PS3, right? Well, with iTrophies, you can also filter out games that you don’t both have, or games that only one of you doesn’t have. It’s much easier to compare your trophies against your friend’s when you’re not looking at a bunch of games that you haven’t played, but are getting in your way in the list.
You can also check out a leader board that lists you and your friends with a comprehensive breakdown of trophies by type (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and total) and you can tap on category headers to sort the ranking. So if your buddy tells you how many total trophies he has, you can see that you have more platinums than he does, and then go through his collection to see that most of his trophies came from Hannah Montana and Guitar Hero: Van Halen.
The only problem I had with iTrophies was that loading all the PSN data when starting the app took a long time occasionally. I don’t think this has anything to do with the app, but with Sony’s slow servers. Once the initial load is done, the app is speedy and easy to navigate. It’s by far the best PSN-centric app I’ve come across. If you’re a trophy whore, you should probably pick up iTrophies. It’s $1.99 in the App Store.
I wasn’t gonna write about the Battle of Forli DLC for Assassin’s Creed II that came out on January 28th. But I was listening to a podcast (Rebel FM), and they were definitely not fans of the DLC. I know most of the guys on the show loved the main game, and it shocked me that they didn’t like the DLC. For the same reason they seemed to dislike it, I loved it. Sequence 12 of AC II is extremely linear. For the first half of it (45 minutes or so), each mission is immediately followed by the next. While it’s true that AC II let you finish a mission, and then run around doing side mission and collecting stuff, the DLC doesn’t really. And to be honest, I don’t think it needs to.
At the end of Sequence 11, I was ready to end the game on my playthrough. I thought the way 11 ended was weird, and the transition to 14 was awkward at best. Also, I had done nearly all of the collecting in the game by the time I finished the story mode, and what little I had left (of collecting those fucking feathers), I finished up after clearing the game. So it was nice to see that the DLC was constantly pushing you forward. Sequence 12 moves quickly, and is full of action. It’s mostly big action scenes; interspersed with relatively short dialogue pieces. Since I had nothing left to do in between missions, as I had during the main playthrough, the constant push forward was perfect. And I can’t see how guys who had already finished the game, and done all the collecting stuff like me need a “break” from a 90 minute sequence.
I’m actually glad I played the DLC after the game was “over.” Sequence 12 doesn’t do much for the story. I mean, it does show how the piece of Eden was lost, and why what you had at the end of 11 is gone in 14, but I think Ubisoft did a fine job ruining the story even before that. So that’s why I didn’t mind Sequence 12 being short on story and heavy on the action, because I loved fighting in AC II, and I was happy to be back in its world.
Snatchcast 028 is here, and it’s action-packed. We cover new Assassin’s Creed II DLC, Professor Layton, and Shiren the Wanderer on DS. We talk a little bit about what kind of gaming we’re looking forward to over the course of this year, and lastly, we do Part 1 of a Dragon Quest vs. Final Fantasy debate, and how they target different markets. We promise to get to Dragon Quest VI next week.
This edition of “Drinking By the Fountain” includes talks of Batman, marching band, and Alex’s lack of religion. We also taste test some chocolate beer.
She’s got guns in her vag.
Translator Gabe Glick joins us this week to talk about Bayonetta, other games we’ve been playing, Brandon bought Braid on PS3 for cheap and we do a mini-review of Avatar in IMAX 3D. This week’s Top 5 is about side-scrollers. We wrap up with listener email. Buy games from this week’s show on Amazon.com.
Music in this episode includes:
Jew jokes abound this week!
I hadn’t been to an arcade recently, so I went down to King Joy in Sakae yesterday. After going up the escalators, passing a group of high school girls that were pointing and laughing at a cosplay nerd that was also walking by, I turned right to head into the “causual gaming” area. Here you’ll find racing games, Rhythm Heaven arcade, the light gun games, and surprisingly, this Tetris game. It’s called Dekaris (a combo of giant and Tetris). Up to two players can use the oversized joysticks to play a simplified version of Tetris. Since I was alone, I couldn’t actually see how 2-player mode worked. One of these days, I’ll drag someone over there and actually see what’s up. But it’s worth posting the photo just to show you the giant joysticks.
I came across Revolve in the App Store the other day and thought I’d check it out. It’s a simple game where you touch the colored balls when they pass through a be of colored light. It’s a bit of a baby game that only becomes challenging after waiting through a lot of rounds. For the first 50 rounds or so, the revolutions of the circles you touch are slow and don’t pose any challenge. If there was a way to increase speed earlier it might be a better game for someone with quick reflexes. I think anyone used to twitchy games will get bored with Revole after five minutes. If you have young children though, or a handicapped adult in your life, they might get a kick out of Revolve. It’s available for $0.99 in the App Store.
I knew it would happen eventually. Square-Enix is finally putting out the first two Final Fantasies for iPhone. There’s no date (cause Apple’s approval process is like a trip to a doctor’s waiting room). There’s been no price announced. I’m gonna bet they start at $9.99. We know that won’t last. In six months, it’ll be $3.99 with a Final Fantasy Lite right next to it in the App Store. My question is: is anyone going to buy it? People who know the games have already played them on three different systems, and the kids who don’t know them aren’t gonna want to play archaic RPGs that don’t have any zippers. And forget about the user reviews in the store. It’ll be all ones and fives with lots of emoji and “tHis ShiT SUX!!!!” comments.
On the bright side, the graphics look crisp, and a touch interface will work well for slow-paced RPGs. You can check out Famitsu’s post here. There’s also an official site, with facebook and Twitter links here.
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