The world is tilting…

I arrived back late UK time on Friday, and went straight out to Tech Noir. It was a really good night, although again I drank too much and felt horrible on Saturday. I think it was a lot to do with the jet lag though, as I’d not slept for 34 hours, and then ended up going to bed about lunchtime Tokyo time. I slept on the sofa at Emma’s during the afternoon a bit, and couldn’t really even face the Japanese food we’d got.

While I was in Tokyo, I bought a PSP as I found a shop selling them for about £40 in Nakano. I got Monster Hunter Portable for it and played that on the way back, although it’s the Japanese version and I had to try to translate the kanji, but it’s a great game. Yesterday I bought a few more games for it; Loco Roco (ロコロコ Rokoroko), Lumines II and Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. I’ve blogged in another blog about Puzzle Quest, but Loco Roco and Lumines II are brilliant games too! Lumines II is like Tetris on crack, with an amazing soundtrack, and Loco Roco is just the strangest, cutest, weirdest and best game I’ve ever played. In the game you use the L and R buttons to tilt the world, moving a little blob (Loco Roco) around the world using gravity and little jumps to pick up berries, but you also need to find “Mui Muis” and “pickories”, while avoiding the spikey “burrs” and “Moja” that eat Loco Roco. You can also use the circle button to split the big Loco Roco into loads of little ones to fit into little gaps.

There are also mini-games such as Mui Mui Crane where you use a arcade crane to pick up Loco Rocos and Chuppa Chuppa where you control a “Chuppa” and launch Loco Rocos to another Chuppa and that one launches it too.

It’s just so addictive, and last night when I went to bed, I could see tilting worlds and jelly-like Loco Rocos jumping about. Like all great games, Loco Roco is really simple, although gets really difficult at higher levels. It’s control mechanism is simple, but brilliant. Also the game designers have put in the ability to edit worlds, and even using the underlying signal architecture, see the Crazy Secrets in Loco Roco.

Strangely the tilting world metaphor is quite apt too, as my world does seem to have tilted recently…

Guitar Hero

In preparation for Japan, I thought I needed to get some experience with traditional Japanese cultural pastimes, so today I got Guitar Hero II for my Playstation 2. I’ve fancied it for ages, especially after watching some wicked videos on YouTube.

I’ve been playing it now for about 7 hours, and I’ve (in the worlds of Dire Straits) “got a blister on my thumb”, and whenever I close my eyes, all I can see are dots flying around. I’m pretty sure I’ll be dreaming about it tonight. It’s such a cool game though, and I’m sure will be good when I have people over, as the music is great. I went through the game on easy mode, and now going through on medium. Some of the tracks are really hard, but the ones I find easier are the ones I know a bit better; Anthrax, Lamb of God, Rage Against the Machine etc.

Rock on!