After getting a bit tired with my very long reviews, and having to wait until finishing a game to do one, I decided to write more shorter posts. Actually I was inspired by starting listening to a new gaming podcast (Midnight Resistance), and hearing their “what have you played this week” segment. Not really unique to them but I thought: “That sounds fun, I should do that too”.

So this is the first new format post, I’ll probably keep the reviews as well. I don’t know what to call this kind of post yet, I’ll work that out. But enough meta-blogging, let’s do some blogging!

I didn’t mention this in my Metroid Prime 3 review, but I got one (1) reply to all my various queries for PAL Friend Voucher trading. Slicer1000 was a very nice trading partner. Friendly, reliable, and I got my credits so yay! Apparently there were plans on the Gamefaqs board to make a save file with the 15 credits that you can download, so that you’ll be able to unlock the stuff even after NIntendo switches off WiiConnect24. I also realised, thanks to my lovely wife everbloom, that I was doing it the sucker’s way, and that I could transfer my save to the WiiU by SD card, then send myself the vouchers to the Wii. 1) Good point, but 2) it was fun to do it the way they intended, even if the intended way is annoying. What I mean is seeking out other people who love the game enough to unlock the bonus content, using the features of the console (creaky and underutilised as they are), connecting with other gamers. Kind of like this blog, in a way.

Anyway that was cool, but since Rayman Legends Challenges App came out, that has hooked me in completely. At the moment that’s the majority of my console gaming time, while Prime Hunters continued for handheld gaming time. Every day I’m on there, at least until I get a trophy. The one downside to seeing friends and family in my hometown this weekend was missing three days of challenges. It’s so much fun! An issue I see is that it’s maybe not a relevant representation of what the actual game will be like, which the included demo levels are. But what it is doing is very well executed and very addictive (see that Internet, I said “addictive"—"addicting” is not a word). It’s just a great example of what you can do with the WiiU, with the Gamepad controls, the online stuff with NNID friends, etc. It’s super smooth, very finely tuned, looks like a great successor to Origins while fixing some of the issues that game had. Plus, it’s got me to use my WiiU which had been looking a little sad. Now my PS3 looks sad! You can’t win.

Since Rayman has me logging on everyday, I’ve been using the other features more as a consequence. I’ve made friends with everyone on DKVine who’s posted their NNID, I’ve been checking the shop for new releases (eve though I don’t buy any—got enough games for now, thank you), and I’ve been checking out the Miiverse. It’s pretty cool, if a little slow and the interface is a little clunky. Social stuff has never been my strong suit (my friends can tell you that), so I don’t use the thing for that. My favourite part of Miiverse is looking at Juliusaurus’s awesome cool art. Seriously, go check him out. It’s on browsers now. Here you go: https://miiverse.nintendo.net/users/Juliusaurus. The quality of that drawing and the breadth of Nintendo fandom there is breathtaking.

So I mentioned console gaming time and handheld gaming time, but there’s also mobile gaming time around here. I use my iPhone a fair bit for games, although to my regret I have a lot of “proper” games on there that I often pass over for the more casual, throwaway ones. For instance, this week instead of playing Lego Harry Potter 2, Ghost Trick, Carmageddon, or Mega Man X, I fired up Doodle God after its update and had some fun combining elements to make new ones. I finished it a while ago but there’s new stuff now, also at some point I restored my iPhone from a backup and consequently lost a lot of save data. Stupid developers store it in the wrong places, and stupid backup doesn’t backup the right subfolders. Anyway I’ve also been playing my secret shame game, Rockman Xover. Every day. It’s so bad, but I can’t stop! Fortunately, the spell was partially broken recently when I read some comments on how the game becomes impossible after a while unless you buy special items for real money. I think I’m at that point now, and also it revealed to me just how much of a cynical, money-grubbing, dirty-feeling, in-app-purchase-powered free-to-play it is. Think if Zynga made a Rockman game. I hope to give it up soon.

Oh and I had a huge windfall this weekend as a result of said family visit. I managed to convince my brother to let me take away our childhood gaming consoles, our SNES and N64, which to be fair were sitting in a bag in the corner of a room so I don’t think anyone’s going to miss them. I’ve mentioned before how the SNES was the one time my parents got into gaming beyond Freecell and Words with Friends. We played a lot of Tetris & Dr. Mario in the day. Point is, they don’t play anymore and neither does anyone else so I took them to cement my place as a Ninty fanboy. It’s also a good place to play Yoshi’s Island as it was never given the VC treatment. Laziness, I say. But yeah once I work out the connections and stuff I can bring back some sweet childhood memories, and now we have more storage space under the bed to stash them in as well! I’m very happy to have these pieces of history here.

And that’s that so I hope you enjoyed this new format post, I’ll be back soon with some comic news! EDIT: oh the comic stuff posted from my queue before this post, so er yeah it’s below this one now!