Rihards Unplugged

As I already mentioned in the Contra 4 post, I recently bought “Hotel Dusk: Room 215″ for the DS and have been having a lot of fun with it. “Hotel Dusk” is a detective adventure game, and one of the coolest things about it are the graphics, not the 3D view, or the top view, but the story panels and also the dialogue bits.

Another really cool thing about it, which you can see by looking at the screenshots, is that you hold your DS like a book, that is sideways, as opposed to pretty much all other games. It’s small things like this that make the game really interesting. That and of course the fact that this game isn’t kiddy oriented either.

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After breaking my Avixe i-Rock Cube (no idea how, or why, but it just stopped working) I was on the lookout for a new MP3 player. What I wanted was basically, a small player, with built in memory, and a built in rechargeable battery. Screen was really an optional thing.

My first thought of course was the Apple Shuffle, but just for the hell of it, I decided to have a look at Creative’s site if they had anything like the Shuffle. Surely enough they did, and not just something like the Shuffle, but something better than the Shuffle.

The biggest selling point of the Zen Stone is its price, I bought mine from Amazon for 33 EUR, which is about half the price of an Apple Shuffle. Other than that, the two players are pretty much identical. Both of them look really nice, though personally I really like the black (very shiny and sexy) Zen Stone more.

The player has just 1GB capacity, which is about enough to hold 12 to 14 albums. I find that more than enough if you have access to a PC/Mac on a regular basis, and can just swap out the music. Speaking of putting music on the player, it is really simple, just connect it to your PC/Mac with the USB cable and you can add/delete songs from it just like from a normal USB stick, no additional software needed.

The only thing where the Shuffle is nicer is the little clip that it has that lets you attach the Shuffle to your clothing. Sadly the Zen Stone doesn’t have that, but I haven’t had the need for it yet anyway, as it fits in perfectly in a beltloop.

For its price, the Zen Stone is really a brilliant piece of gadget, one couldn’t really want for more if one wants a small MP3 player which you can take with you wherever you go. Not to mention the fact that if something happens to it, you won’t be as sad as if it were a 300+ EUR MP3 player.

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Sixteen hours and forty minutes later I find myself watching the closing scenes of the very excellent game that is Jade Empire. Yes, sixteen hours on medium difficulty does seem quite little in terms of gameplay, especially considering that this was my first time playing it. But you know what they say, better short and sweet than long and boring.

Let’s start with the things that make this game a good game. First of all, BioWare was involved with Jade Empire. Now for some it may not mean much, but for me it does, even more than say if a game was made by Blizzard. BioWare is one of those companies that if you see their name on a game, then you can buy the game without thinking about it too much.

As with most (all?) BioWare games, the world, the characters and the story are what make the game really great. They aren’t just some sort of boring 2D personalities, or some half-assed setting. Things have been very well thought out and designed. The locations in the game are also pretty much the best that I have seen from BioWare yet and they really do design the best looking ones out there.

The great atmosphere in the game can also be attributed to the excellent voice actors that really did a great job. It makes me cringe when I think about voice actors in other games. While we are on topic of sound, I’d also like to add that the music is top notch as well, and it comes and goes at the right points.

There are only two things that one could say disappointed me in the game, well actually it would be three, but one of them isn’t really that noticeable or even that bad as a matter of fact. The first thing would be the limited character customization options, there are only so many models that you can pick from, and the same goes for the character level up options as well. While yes there are many fighting styles, you usually just pick three or four and stick to those, and just balance your attributes out.

The second thing would be the slightly predictable plot. At least that’s how it seemed to me. I talked to a few other people who have played it and they actually thought that things really panned out differently than they were expecting. Not so much for me, I was already expecting most of the things that happened.

And finally the third thing would be that this is a console port. It’s a game that was made for consoles, so it comes with quite a lot of console limitations, but they aren’t that bad really. Things like big interface when looking at your character attributes, styles, inventory, or for that matter any menu. And of course the simple control scheme. Now as I said, this isn’t really a bad thing as such, because sometimes simple is good, and it’s certainly better than overcomplicating things needlessly.

Overall rating? If I had to give it a rating out of five, I’d give it a four and half. It really is a very enjoyable, if short game. So go out and pick it up if you are looking to spend some excellent time. I’d even recommend it to people who aren’t too fond of RPG games in general.

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I actually finished watching Wolf’s Rain quite a while ago, I have been hesitating to post this review, or rather my thoughts on this anime for a while now. Why? Because I don’t know what to make of it. Or rather, so far I have pretty much reviewed only really great stuff, without any glaring bad things.

I guess I’m one of those people for whom it’s important that a show keeps its quality going at the same level. Now I know that some of you are going to say, “But you watch Stargate!” yes I do, and I know that the later seasons got worse, but they were still a lot of fun. But back to Wolf’s Rain. The anime itself is actually great, I loved every single episode of it, until the very last one that is, and that’s where shit really hit the fan for me.

Maybe it’s just me, but I really hated the end of this anime. It’s not that people died, but rather the fact of how abrup it was. Everything basically happens in the last two minutes of the last episode, and you are (or at least I was) left in the dark as to what the hell just happened. The ending really freaked me out in this one, I can’t actually think of a worse ending to a show offhand.

Other than the ending, the anime is great and I’d recommend it people who like action oriented animes.

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