Can you feel the magic?

I am more excited about the Nintendo DS than I am about the PSP. The reason is simple: it will allow for a lot of never-before-seen situations. Case in point: Feel the Magic: XY-XX, a launch title from Sega.

From IGN, a few of the segments of the game, in which you play some guy trying to win the love of a girl:

Challenge one: Through a ridiculous circumstance, you must rescue an assortment of marine animals that have been accidentally swallowed by one of the characters. By using the touch screen of the DS, you must push the fish around the stomach and try to force them up the esophagus before they escape down the "other end." The lower screen shows the quivering stomach, while the upper screen shows the creatures escaping out of the character's mouth when he "gags."

Challenge two: Wash the girl. The girl of your affection gets dirt all over her, and, being the gentleman that you are, you must wipe her clean of the crud. By using the touch screen, you'll wash the dirt spots off her arms and face...but don't rub too forcefully or she'll get irritated in more ways than one. She coos and grunts at you as you clean her off, which should get you some glances if you play this game in public.

Challenge three: Show your lung power in this unique challenge where you must blow out a series of candles. Blow onto the system...your breath power and duration will be registered by the Nintendo DS' microphone, and represented on the screen as you watch the candles extinguish by the wind. Don't blow too long or your on-screen persona will get lightheaded and dizzy, wasting precious candle-blowing time.

Challenge four: Scorpions! Your girl is suddenly covered in creepy crawly, dangerous bugs, and you'll need to pick 'em off one by one. Since she doesn't trust you, she'll get extremely upset at you if you touch her instead of the scorpions. So it has to be a careful but quick task of tapping the stylus on the scorpions and ONLY the scorpions. Don't let her get mad!

Challenge five: Treasure hunting! Your "girlfriend" has tripped on the beach and lost a lot of her possessions. It's you to the rescue again, as you'll need to dig through the sand to get each of the items she's looking for. On the upper screen, she'll call out the exact item in mind...and on the lower screen, you'll need to scratch at the sand to reveal several hidden items. Uncover the right item and she'll love you for it. Uncover the wrong item, and she'll get mad. It's key to look at the details of the item, because several object look the same when covered by sand.

Challenge six: It's the running of the bulls! In this boss "battle", a stampede is taking place and you'll need to eliminate charging bulls as they're running towards you. Tapping them will remove them from play, but some bulls are stronger than others and require much more tapping to get rid of them. You'll be penalized if you tap on a human that happens to get in the way...so make sure your aim is true.

This game is being released under the Sonic Team label, but it's really made by the people formerly from United Game Artists (Makers of Rez and Space Channel 5).

Also... since we are speaking of the DS... some Funny linkage is in order.

Post-modern life

I know, it's been a while. Tokyo Game Show took more from me than I expected, and putting the house back on track demands a lot of effort (more so from Melissa than me... but whatever).

I finally managed to get a decent keyboard for my PlayStation 2 and plan to set up Final Fantasy XI. After translating Ragnarok Online, online RPGs have caught my attention more and more. The community aspect of them is truly mind-boggling - I can't stress that enough. Community has been something I've been praising since I started working with games... and even if it does put storytelling on the backseat, it still results in some incredibly novel game sessions. You just have to play to see.

The stack of games to be reviewed is slowly getting smaller, and even though I still have a behemoth of a RPG (Star Ocean, which I have yet to START playing), the feared *cue scary music* HOLIDAY SEASON *TA-TA-TAM* is upon us. I just KNOW it's going to be crazy... I can think of a ton of games OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD that will demand hours of attention - and just plain make my life even crazier. Sure, it sounds like a dream job to a lot of people... but not when you are playing games from midnight to 4am so you can fit it in your daily routine, and NOT playing the titles you'd REALLY wanted to be playing (you hear that, Fable?).

Anyways... I will get some interesting things I came across posted later. In the meantime... someone else apparently agrees with me that Earthbound and Metal Gear Solid 2 are some of the games that have most pushed the envelope of the medium:

Link of the Day: Games as post-modern art (don't forget to read ALL the pages - the links to go forward are a bit hidden)