Girl Time! Review: John Frieda Precision Foam Colour

Okay, the rumors are true. For those of you who keep gazing at my Blogger profile, wondering how I got my hair to be such a vibrant yellow, gaze and wonder no more: Yellow is not my natural hair color.

It's actually this awful golden brown, like perfectly done toast.

So, I dye it semi-regularly. Usually it's the golden blond of my childhood. Or of Thor, but mostly my childhood, and sometimes I deviate from that with the help of my awesome hairdresser.

The complete kit. Simple and easy.

Today, I decided not to use my hairdresser for the first time in five years and dye it myself. The color I chose was Medium Burgundy from John Frieda's foam-based haircolor line.

"Foam?" I asked myself in the middle of the aisle whilst people milled around me. "How will this work, I wonder?" You have to remember, when I was dying my hair in high school, "foam" was not an option. It was a messy cream-based crap the got everywhere except in my hair and left huge undyed patches everywhere. Gross.

So I picked up this... "foam" and went about my merry way.

So, what's the point of this vignette? The point is this: HOLY CRAP I LOVE THIS FOAM HAIR DYE. WTF.

This stuff is so easy to use. I'm no stranger to hair dyes and hair dying supplies: I regularly dye my friends' hair all the time, I know my way around equipment. But this was so easy to use by myself that I was a little bit amazed. Foam doesn't get all over the place like the cream-based colors did. It's foam; it stays roughly where you put it. That's what I did with it, and it worked beautifully.

The other thing I really liked about the stuff? It covered all of my hair. My hair's long - it goes to the small of my back - and it's thick, to boot, so with cream based colors I was always getting two boxes of stuff. Not with this shit. I had extra in the container when I was done. That just doesn't happen! It was awesome.

And the results are amazing. I can't stress it enough. All the superlatives in the entire world are useless when describing my pleasure of having bought this. I'm sure that it would have been the same for any foam-based color, but this stuff is pretty. And oh my god is it red or what? I mean, really, the reds that I was looking at were like copper orange and strawberry blondes. But this is a really beautiful deep red. Look at it:

You're looking at the Color of Awesome, right there.

Yeah, that's me rockin' that new red. Oh man, so much better than that blonde I was just keeping around.

So, yeah, totes look at foam color next time you do your hair. And if you're looking for a red with depth, you can't go wrong with this stuff. It's pretty, it's vibrant, and it's really easy to use. It's a little more expensive ($11.99) than the L'Oreal or Herbal Essences dyes (which are both around $8.50 where I am,) but it really is worth it for its vibrant color and shine.

You can visit the John Frieda website here.

Weekend Flashback #5: Crash Bandicoot (PSO, 1996)

Title: Crash Bandicoot
Original Release Date: August 31, 1996
Platform: Playstation 
ESRB Rating: K-A (Current ESRB: E)

Crash Bandicoot used to be fun. When Naughty Dog was still in charge of it, it was a fairly entertaining, albeit basic, action platformer. The characters were mostly memorable, the levels pretty, and the music good.

Oh, wait, Crash Bandicoot was none of those things. Actually, it was exactly the opposite.

Before all my other friends were having fun with Spyro the Dragon, I was busy hating myself with the original Crash Bandicoot. It was a decent enough platformer for its time, I suppose, but it hasn't aged well at all. The controls are buggy at best, the camera angles suck, and it varies wildly between being impossibly difficult and simply too easy to bear. And yet, when it came out, it was given generally positive reviews.

But that was 1996. It's 2012 now, and that's the point. Trying to replay this was torturous at its worst and tedious at best. It's almost tough to believe that I ever had a good time with this game as a kid, especially enough to buy the later games in the series. Like I said above, the cameras are buggy now that I've grown accustomed to tight cameras, and the game's controls seem loose and unresponsive, which I believe was Dave's complaint about the game back when we first got it. This game introduces the major characters - Dr. Cortex, Aku Aku, Uka Uka, and Crash himself (obviously) - but they really came into their own in later games. The platforming isn't anything special and could actually be considered mediocre at best, even among platformers of its time.

I'm almost surprised that this game was successful enough to spawn sequels at all. I'm not saying that I'm not glad: I am, because the series would later become one of my favorites, starting with Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. The series got a rough start, but it vastly improved with later installments.

Verdict: Unless you want a bout of nostalgia, skip it. Go for Crash Bandicoot 2 instead.

Notes: Crash Bandicoot is available on PSN for both PS3 and PSP play.

Review: Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One (PS3)

Title: Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One
System: Playatation 3
ESRB Rating: E 10+
Number of Players: 1-4 player co-op, online capabilities
Buy It: Amazon | GameStop |

By this point, everyone is sick of me talking incessantly about how much I love Ratchet & Clank. Well, call me honey badger because I don't care. I've been a fan of the Ratchet and Clank series since its launch in 2002. With each of the main games that came out, I liked the series even more. It was a mix of insanely bizarre weapons, an engaging story, completely loveable characters, and modern platforming (done right!) that drew me to the series in the first place. Even as the series evolved and moved onto the PS3, I still loved the series. I even enjoyed (thoroughly) the spinoffs Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, despite their flaws.

So, despite the fan attack, I'm going to say this right out in the open, unashamed: I thoroughly enjoyed the shit out of Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One.

I know, I know. Fans of the series typically hated this game because it deviated from the R&C norm that we've come to expect from the series. But that was part of what really drew me to it: it was different than what I'd come to expect, and for the first time, I could play a game from this series with another person. Or, as luck would have it, a group of people. (I wasn't lucky enough to have anyone to play Deadlocked with me as a kid.)

The story isn't quite as deep as I've come to expect from a Ratchet and Clank game. We're greeted with a beautifully-rendered cutscene of Ratchet and Clank escorting Qwark to an awards ceremony that seems (to our titular heroes) to be a fishy. When they finally get to the podium that's been set up for Qwark, it's revealed that Nefarious is the villain behind the "ceremony," and our heroes prepare themselves for a Class-A beatdown. Unfortunately for Nefarious, he gets caught up in the chaos unleashed by his own plan and gets himself abandoned by Lawrence, leaving him to work with Qwark, Clank, and Ratchet. They all then get captured by the real threat, and the four of them have to work together while they await rescue from Cronk and Zephyr.

A lot of the complaints that I've read about the game talk about how it's not really a "co-op" game because you're working against your teammates as much as you're working with them. That's true, so my friends and I affectionately call these kinds of games "competitive co-op" games. It's the same kind of classification we give to Castle Crashers. As much as you'll be working with friends to complete puzzles and unlock doors, you'll be competing for bolts (the R&C universe's currency) and critters, cute little creatures that unlock bonus puzzles. If your friends are already competitive by nature, then this is already right up your alley. The winner at the end of the round gets a bonus in bolts, and every character gets a title after the battle. (For example, if you collected the most bolts, you'd be the Bolt Master, whereas if you died the most, you'd get the title Noob.)

One of my biggest qualms with the game doesn't lie in the "co-op vs. not co-op" debate, but in the fact that you can't level up your weapons like fans have grown accustomed to over the course of the series. You have to buy your upgrades instead of earning them, and sometimes, the upgrades really don't feel worth the bolts I have to pour into them. The other is that, while you can play the game by yourself, the AI that you get paired up with isn't always smart enough to get the hint. Sometimes, it gets caught and runs itself into circles while driving the player character crazy.

Other times, working with other players isn't much better. The range for working on the level is very narrow, making it frustrating for someone in the party to go back and get something when everyone else is trying to move forward. Other times, someone's clumsiness causes everyone else to commit mass party-suicide when they slip off of a hookshot point or when they pull someone off the edge while they try to tether forward to the rest of the party. And on grind rail levels, try to make sure whoever is playing as Quark stays in the back, because he's almost impossible to see around. The other characters - even Nefarious, despite his height - are narrow and easy to see past, but Quark is a wall of body mass. Most of these things are overlooked, though, while we're busy laughing at each other for being so unbelievably stupid. (Not that thing about Quark, though, we all really hate that guy.)

The weapons system is difficult at times, as well, especially when not working with the AI. Players can choose which of their weapons to use, and while that's great most of the time, damage bonuses are awarded when two or more players use the same weapon against an enemy. Many times - especially against bosses - that damage bonus is the deciding factor between winning the battle and resurrecting your friends. But unless you and your teammates are really good at guessing each other's movements and weapon preferences, it's easy to get caught up in using nothing but your blaster. That's a shame, because some of the other weapons (I'm looking pointedly at the Frost Cannon and Warmonger, here) are absolutely devastating against enemies when used wisely, and become indispensable later in the game.

Overall, the game isn't as bad as some members of the fanbase want you to think it is. It's entirely too short (we've blown through the entire story in an afternoon) and some of the things we have to go through don't feel worth it for the payout, but we've each found a character we love using and when we don't have anything better to do, we automatically default onto All 4 One. If you've liked the rest of the games in the series, but you'd like a multiplayer option, then you really can do worse than this game.

Bottom Line: Certainly co-op, but competitive co-op. Awkward camera angles and character sizes make some levels really difficult, but overall not a bad experience.

Final Score: 8/10

Weekend Flashback #4: Paper Mario (N64, 2001)

Title: Paper Mario
Original Release Date: February 5, 2001
Platform: Nintendo 64 
ESRB Rating: E

Ever encounter a game that you picked up for no other reason than because the art was unusual? I think we've all done it at one time or another. (My most recent encounter with this was The World Ends With You, for example.) That's what I did with the original Paper Mario. I wasn't really into most of the titles in the Mario franchise as a kid; I'd play them if they were there, but they were far from my first choice. So everyone was a little shocked when I picked this title up as a kid.

I didn't finish this game the first time I played through it. I got stuck on the final fight with Bowser, got frustrated, and gave up entirely. I remember doing that, and my own save file on the N64 cartridge confirmed it. So, instead of picking it up from where I left off, I played through it again. Completely, all the way through. Then I bought it from the Virtual Console store on the Wii and played it through again to see how it stacked up against the original version. Two playthroughs in about a week and a half, and I still wanted more.

Needless to say, I'm pleased all the way around.

There's something about this title that makes it truly timeless. The graphics hold up, the music is just as fun and bubbly as I always remembered it being, the worlds Mario travels through are still beautiful, and the partners he picks up are still wonderfully characterized and different. This game is still so amazing and fun to play that I honestly believe it should be in everyone's Nintendo library, and that's not something I say often. The other entries in the Paper Mario franchise are all okay, but none of them seem to live up to the standard that this one set. In terms of accessibility, anyone can play it. My nieces had a blast playing through it, as did Dave. This is one of those rare titles that, no matter what your experience level is with gaming, you can pick up and play like a pro in just a few short scenes. 

The story isn't fast-paced, per se, but it does flow very well and move fairly constantly. There's not really a lot of idle time for Mario and his friends, but it never feels like you're being rushed. There's always something to see, do, and find in every level that makes going back really rewarding (and trust me, I'm still not at 100% with my files.) Leveling up my partners is still a bit of a challenge - you don't level them up with experience, you do it by finding ultra blocks - and I spend quite a bit of time just wandering around looking for them. I know there's walkthroughs out there, I even have the original guidebook in my room, but finding them myself is half the fun. 

As for the Virtual Console version, it's been left, for the most part, untouched. Most of the controls are the same, save for commands that use the "Z" button. (On the Gamecube controller, which is what I use to play Virtual Console games on, you use the "R" button.) The game is smooth and clear on the Wii, and doesn't leave remnants if you're using a standard-def Wii on an HDTV. Overall, an enjoyable experience.

Verdict: No one should miss the original Paper Mario. It's a game that none of its sequels have matched in story, gameplay, or charm. 

Notes: As I mentioned above, this title is available on the Wii as a re-release for 1000 Wii Points. ($10)

Series Recap: Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe

So, there are no more Wednesdays in August, and that meas that the Marvel limited series Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe has come to an end. For those of you who read my review of issue #1, you'll notice that I didn't write anything about issues 2-4. Because this was a limited series, and because I didn't want to spoil anything for anybody, I decided to keep my mouth blissfully shut until the series had come to an end and talk about the series as a whole instead of issue-by-issue.

FOR MY READERS THAT HAVE NOT READ THE SERIES: This post contains spoilers. That's what the jump is for! If you intend on reading this series, and don't want important details about it ruined for you, DO NOT read this post! For everyone else, the post continues after the jump!

Weekend Flashback #3 - Pokemon Snap (1999, N64)

Title: Pokemon Snap
Original Release Date: June 30, 1999
Platform: Nintendo 64
ESRB Rating: E

One of the fastest ways to shut me up as a kid was to slap a Pokemon game in front of me. Something about the mix of turn-based combat and its simple - yet very broad - storyline kept my interest for literal hours on end. Pokemon Snap was the series' first spinoff game for a home console, and though it was extremely short, I remember it being incredibly fun.

You play as a Pokemon photographer named Todd whose job is to... well, capture pictures of Pokemon. You team up with Professor Oak, who needs help with a scientific project on an island where Pokemon live fairly undisturbed by humans. The island in the game is home to a lot of different geographic regions, which makes it an ideal place to go to research all sorts of Pokemon. Over the course of the game, Oak will rate your photos on a point system and puts them into an album that you can reference back again later. That's about as complex as the story gets.

The game starts with one stage, and as you progress through, you unlock more by meeting certain conditions or figuring out how to unlock the stages yourself. You'll also get a few nifty items, like a Pokeflute and pester balls, which will allow certain Pokemon to come out of hiding, do something special, or both. You'll also get bait to lure Pokemon out into the open. How you use these items is entirely up to you, and I'll get to that in a minute.

See, I remember this game as being fairly long. My younger cousin and I spent months playing it. Literal months. We could compete to get the best picture scores, spend hours trying to find all the different Pokemon and framing the best shot, use a complex trial-and-error system to get all the special Pokemon. It seemed like every time we thought we were done, we would discover something new.

So, how does it feel thirteen years later? Well, it feels...

...it feels stagnant, unfortunately. See, I remember this game being really long and really complex and having a lot of hours poured into it, but when my friend Nikki and I played it together while we were revisiting it, I knew how to get everything. Every new stage, every hidden Pokemon, every nuance behind getting the "perfect shot." I remembered it all. It took a lot of the excitement and fun out of the game for me. Nikki, on the other hand, had a lot of fun playing it, and once I was able to turn my brain off, I enjoyed myself as well.

The "fun component" that I always seem to be talking about is severely lacking here, though, as far as following the story goes. While both Crash Team Racing and Ratchet and Clank feel timeless, Pokemon Snap feels tedious and tired. And oh my God the music. May God himself have mercy on your soul when you replay this game. As Dave pointed out, the music is tedious, tired, repetitive, and just plain awful. It did not, by any means, age well. Even CTR, which came out in the same year, had better music behind it than this. My great grandmother's funeral had better music behind it than this.

The part that was fun, though, wasn't the game itself, but the results screen when we were done taking pictures. See, now that Nikki and I are older, we pick up on certain things that we didn't notice then.

Like what a pervert Professor Oak really is.

We didn't alter this at all. This really happened in-game.

Seriously, we took a lot of oddball pictures, and soon the game wasn't about taking the best picture, it was taking the strangest, most effed up pictures we could manage within the one stage and sixty pictures we were allotted. We had more fun pelting Pikachu with bait and making Electabuzz fall flat on his face than we did trying to get Snorlax to wake the hell up. We tormented poor Meowth by making him fall off his platform, then worsened the blow by whacking him relentlessly with pester balls. We bounced apples off of a herd of Charmanders' heads to see them cringe, then laughed and made fun of them as they roared at us in their cute little Charmander voices. We knocked Charmeleon into a vat of lava, not to see him evolve, but because we could knock him into a vat of lava. We made two Magmar fight each other just to see one get knocked out.

This one was more a victim of
circumstance. Still comedy gold,
though.

We did countless other things to these poor, friendly Pokemon that would make PETA shit their pants in horror. And we did it because we could, and because the option was there.

And, really, what more fun is there than that in this universe?

Verdict: Taking the perfect picture of a Pokemon isn't fun. Having Professor Oak laugh at fainted Pokemon is.

Notes: If you want to relive Snap and have your own hours of hilarity, you can purchase this title again in the Wii's Virtual Console store for 1000 Wii Points (or, you know, ten dolla holla in real money.)

Weekend Flashback #2 - Crash Team Racing (1999, PSOne)

Title: Crash Team Racing

Original Release Date: September 30, 1999
Platform: Playstation
ESRB Rating: E

Remember when the Crash Bandicoot series was fun? Yeah, me too, and let me guarantee you that it had everything to do with its developer, Naughty Dog. The proof for that became clear as soon as they stopped developing the games themselves and the franchise got passed around from developer to developer like a hooker at a frat party. The quality and overall playability of the games went downhill pretty steadily until finally I just gave up hope entirely.

When I bought this game, it came in a three-pack "Collector's Edition" of Crash Bandicoot titles. Those titles were Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Crash Team Racing, and Crash Bash. Out of the three games that the collector's edition box I bought, the only two I still have are CB:W and CTR.

Care to guess what the only one I still play is?

That's right, CTR. The game is so simple, yet so undeniably fun that it almost should be criminal. Dave and I spent a good year playing through the story, doing all the time trials, gathering crystals, and playing against one another for no benefit or prize other than "we can." Even now, I'm the only one out of the two of us to have a perfect 100% completion in the game. But I'm not the only one who still plays it. 

Just a couple of days ago, my friend Nicole and I sat down with nothing better to do than play a good time-wasting game. We mutually picked out CTR because we remembered how fun it was. Hoping that it wasn't just a case of rose-colored glasses, we popped it into my PSOne and away we went.

Crash Team Racing is another example of a timeless, fun game, as far as playability goes. This game is as easy to pick up and play now as it was when it came out in '99. The music is a little dated, and the graphics are much more angular than anything we'd see today outside of catching a Porygon in Pokemon. But there are no game-breaking bugs, no annoying clipping errors or awkward camera angles to speak of. There's just the ability to beat another friend in a race and some infuriatingly difficult boss races in story mode.

Verdict: Still incredibly fun after all these years, even though the music, sound effects, and visuals haven't aged very well. Worth a play for story mode alone, but it's more fun with other people.

Notes: You can purchase the game on PSN if you want to relive the experience on your PS3. The original game also plays really well on the PS2 without problem.

Weekend Flashback #1 - Ratchet and Clank (2002, PS2)

Title: Ratchet and Clank
Original Release Date: November 4, 2002
Platform: Playstation 2
ESRB Rating: T

There's a couple of reasons why I've decided to choose Ratchet and Clank  as the first "Weekend Flashback" installment. First off, it's because this year is the franchise's tenth anniversary. (Oh my god, I'm so old.) Second of all, it's because the Ratchet and Clank Collection is coming out later this year, and it's a re-release of the first three games in the series in pretty high-def. (I've included a link to preorder it at the end of this post.) I'm just not patient enough to wait until then to play R&C again. I'm like Veruca Salt; I want it now.

So, I reached into the handy gaming cabinet and got it.

I have a lot of fond memories of playing this game with Dave when it came out. Parts of it were frustratingly difficult, and others I breezed right through. There were moments that I would eventually give up on and actually have him complete for me because I was sick of spending days stuck on the same planet and watching him progress way ahead of me. To me, this is the perfect game to revisit first because of both its anniversary and because of the memories that it evokes.

And the greatest thing about this game, I think, is that it's aged fairly well. It's definitely cruder than the pretty R&C: Future installments we've grown used to seeing, but it doesn't - by any means - look outdated, old, or poor. Even being played on my PS2, on the family's flat-screen HDTV, the game looks nice. I've seen modern Wii games that look worse than this does.

Though that might just say something about the Wii.

And the gameplay, while sometimes more irritating than I remember it being, also isn't bad. It's mostly being used to tighter gameplay mechanics than the PS2 could really offer ten years ago. The rest of it is just being used to the way the series works now and forgetting how it worked when I was thirteen. It's sometimes tough to get my jumps timed right from platform to platform or over a long distance. That's gameplay mechanics. But the rest of it is me trying to shoot with the R1 button instead of the circle and getting my ass unfortunately handed to me. It's led to a lot of laughing and good-natured swearing between both my father and myself as we tried to play through the game, recalling the places that gave us a hard time ten years ago.

I did happen to notice a couple things now (probably because I'm older) than I did then. The biggest one, for me, was how completely obnoxious Ratchet is. In later games, namely the Future arc, he took more to the battle-weary hero archetype. In R&C, I found him to be selfish and childish, and found myself fairly short-tempered at his attitude - the constant backtalking, his needless overuse of snark - and honestly couldn't wait for him to shut up. After the original R&C, he was much more likable, more "mature" I guess, and it's his current personae that I attribute with today's Ratchet. If he'd stayed the same from this game to the next onee, I can't imagine the series being nearly as successful.

Verdict: Overall, the original Ratchet and Clank, the one that started it all, is still a solid game. It's still fun to play, getting all the hidden golden bolts still drives me crazy, and unlocking all the skill points still keeps me up until ungodly hours of the morning. Some of the controls seem clunky and awkward in retrospect, and moving around in the overworld doesn't seem as tight now as it did then. But it's still a great way to pass a couple of days to revisit the story if you don't have anything better to do and you can stand Ratchet's douchebaggery for more than a few hours at a time.

Notes:  You can pre-order The Ratchet and Clank Collection from Amazon.com.

Review: Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Issue #1

Picture from Marvel.com

Little known fact: I love comics. I have since I was a little kid. Here's another little known fact: Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth,  was my first ever superhero. I discovered him around issue three or four of his '97 run and it's been love ever since.

So I was understandably excited when news of Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe started to circulate. It took the same 'Pool that I'd grown up reading and gave him a decidedly dark, sinister turn. My only hope was that it was going to be convincing, that all of Deadpool's wit and snark could still fit within a darker universe.

All my dreams have come true within the first issue. Wade is still witty and snide, but thanks to the writing and his own underlying insanity, he's just short of completely despicable. We're introduced to the same Deadpool that most readers will be used to, but thanks to the "intervention" of the X-Men, we get to see a side of Wade that isn't usually apparent. By the end of the issue, all the pieces are in play and, thanks to Deadpool's trademark fourth-wall breaking, the reader gets to feel the threat level of the Marvel 'verse rising to critical levels firsthand by being indirectly addressed themselves.

We don't get to see a lot of bloodshed yet, but the promise is there for much more to come in the following three weeks as the series plays out. Given how it's started, I've been hooked and I'm ready to go along for the ride.

Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe #1 is written by Cullen Bunn, drawn by Dalibor Talajić, and colored by Lee Loughridge. Issue one is available now, and new issues will be released weekly.

Review: Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns (3DS)

Title: Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns
System: Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1
Buy It:

• Nintendo DS version - Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com
• Nintendo 3DS version - Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com

Before we start off, let me say this: for all intents and purposes, this review is for the 3DS version of Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns. Other than 3D effects, an animal-petting minigame, and the 3DS region-locking, I know of no differences between the two versions. Now, with that out of the way, let's get to talking about HM:ToTT!

The Harvest Moon games have remained mostly unchanged since the franchise started in 1996 on the SNES. As much a dating simulation as it is a farming simulation, it has a niche following in the United States, making it a small - but successful - franchise. Other than some graphic re-hauling over the years, the main HM franchise has always been about two things: rising up to create a successful farm, and finding yourself a spouse. In that regard, HM: Two Towns does nothing new. But the new things it does bring has kept me interested and occupied.

The most interesting part of Two Towns is that you can choose which town you want to live in at the beginning of the game. The first choice is the farming village Konohana, a tranquil and pretty Japanese-inspired town that centers around raising crops over livestock. On the other side of the mountain, you have your second option: the town of Bluebell, a more European-looking town that centers its income on raising livestock. No matter which town you choose, you can utilize the land on both farms. (This makes it easy to live in Bluebell and raise a lot of livestock and still use the fields in Konohana to raise long-lasting crops like soybeans, corn, tomatoes, etc.) Living in Bluebell is almost like cheating. Living in Konohana is a lot more typical of other Harvest Moon games: being broke all the time and struggling to get the money needed for important things like seeds, fertilizer, and pet food.

Other activities - fishing, bug gathering, and foraging - are back from other games and work just as well as they ever have. Fishing has a new option, though: you can now wade into shallow water and catch fish with your hands by walking up to them and hitting the "A" button. These tiny fish can't be used in cooking, but they can be sold for ten to thirty gold and be used to fulfill requests for villagers.

The 3D graphics add a cute shadow effect to the game, but overall isn't worth the ten dollars extra you have to plunk down for it. The 3DS-exclusive animal petting minigame, however, makes your animals friendlier faster, and is an interesting benefit to getting the enhanced version.

In spite of everything that Two Towns is doing right, though, classic HM bugs are still present. The game freezes periodically and at random times, and when your only option for saving is before you go to bed, a lot of things can be lost. Additionally, the game lags when there's a lot of things going on: riding your horse while other livestock roams around in their pens will cause the game to slow a little bit. In 3D mode, it's motion-sick inducing. In 2D, it's just annoying. The last thing that this game has wrong with it - really, really wrong - is that the weather system only kind of works. Listen to the radio before you go to bed, and it will tell you what the weather for the present day and the next day will be. There's about a 45% chance that the weather forecast for the next day will be wrong, making it confusing and difficult to plan ahead for the next day, especially for weather-specific events like flower events and figuring out what to do with your livestock for the day.

Overall, Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns is fun and addicting. The typical bugs are still present, but are as much a part of the Harvest Moon experience as courting a villager.

Bottom Line: Mostly the same Harvest Moon, but with an interesting addition of choosing where you can specialize. It's a welcome - and interesting - change. Typical HM bugs are still present and more annoying than ever.

Final Score: 8/10

Review: Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) PART TWO

Title: Professor Layton and the Last Specter
System: Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+
Number of Players: 1
Buy It: Amazon | GameStop | PlayAsia (Japanese) (English)
Other Notes: Soundtrack available on PlayAsia | Read my review of London Life, the mini-RPG bonus game here if you missed it.

If you had asked me what I thought of brain teasers circa 2008, I'd have told you that they were a waste of time. Because they were never something I was ever good at, unlike my father, they were something actively dismissed. Worse, if an assignment called for them for homework in school (and it did, on a few occasions,) I would take an F for the homework grade rather than sit there and suffer through a bunch of puzzles that would infuriate me.

Then Professor Layton walked by, and all that changed. Between the first game's enchanting art style and charming music, I was immediately hooked, puzzles be damned. I was more enchanted by the story, characters, and settings than I was by the puzzles, but they grew on me. Now, at the fourth game in the series, I can say (without sarcasm) that I'm really glad that I took the first step into the puzzle-solving franchise. Professor Layton and the Last Specter takes everything about the series up a notch: story, puzzles, characters, and music, and keeps the entire experience as charming and magical as it was in the first game. But better.

This game (and, yes, the next two,) act as the prequel chapters towards Curious Village and give players an insight to what the gentlemanly Professor Layton was doing before St. Mystere ever became an issue and before Luke started wearing that adorable periwinkle sweater vest he always wears. The game kicks off with a few wonderfully rendered animated scenes and a few easy puzzles to get you going before you start getting kicked in the pants with new, more difficult puzzles. Veterans of the series know what to expect: puzzles ramp up in difficulty the more you play, plot twists come out of nowhere, and hint coins are still hiding in elusive spots. Newcomers to the series won't be disappointed, and the Professor walks through how everything works himself early on so that you don't get confused.

While plot twists and red herrings can still be somewhat frustrating, the story kept me engaged throughout so that I didn't get flustered enough to throw in the towel without seeing things through to the end. Even with the tomfoolery with the plot twists, I can't dock too many points from the game. It's remarkably solid, fun, and still a great way to waste a weekend. If you've been putting off getting the game, stop. Just go get it. If you've been interested in taking the series for a spin and never have, there has never been a better time to join the Professor in solving a mystery.

Bottom Line: Same Professor, but more. More cutscenes, more puzzles, more enchantment. You know, more. And bigger.

Final Score: 9/10

Review: Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) PART ONE - London Life

London Life title screen

Title: Professor Layton's London Life (mini-RPG bonus game)
System: Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: E 10+
Number of Players: 1
Buy It: Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com (English version) (Japanese Version)

I'll say this first: this is a review in two parts. Why? That comes next.

I bought this game the day it came out, and as of right this very second, I have not yet started the main game. That's because of this nifty little bonus RPG that Last Specter came with, called London Life. What is LL? It's one part Animal Crossing, one part Professor Layton, and one part Mother 3 (I think it was called EarthBound in English? Don't quote me on that, though.) And it's one hell of a great time.

You start off by creating a character from the top-down: looks, personality, style, the whole nine yards. Like in Animal Crossing, you start off by getting off a train in a new town and moving into your new apartment. Your furnishings are sparse at first: all you've got is a bed. Over the course of your time in Little London, though, you can buy new things and add to your room, though doing fetch quests for the other Londoners can get you some pretty nifty items that either can't be found anywhere else or are very expensive.

The game operates on two different levels: one is Wealth, the in-game currency. The other is Happiness, which affects almost everything else in the game: what kinds of fish you catch (and how often), what kinds of flowers you find in flower boxes, how much you get paid on jobs, and how well others respond to you. Of course, your happiness goes down if someone in town yells at you, but you can replenish it by making or buying food and eating it. Happiness, in most cases for London Life, is more important than Wealth, but the two are so well intertwined that sometimes it's hard to tell.

London Life player character (center) seen with
Luke Triton (left) and Flora (right)

But by now you're probably wondering where the Mother/EarthBound part comes in, right? It's all in the graphics, baby. Cute sprites looks like they could've been lifted right out of one franchise and plopped onto the other. It's not a bad thing by a long shot, either: London Life really benefits from sprite usage.

The biggest part about this game though is the part that I fear will turn players off of really playing it: it's all mission based. Don't be turned off by the fact that this is all built on fetch quests. I'm not normally a fan of mission-based games - my dislike of them kept me from really enjoying Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - but I literally couldn't put this down. My inner completionist went balls to the walls with this and had a great time learning all the recipes, completing every single mission, and making my million-Wealth apartment all my own.

While the complete mini-story can be completed in around two hours, I had a lot of fun sinking hours upon hours into completing all the quests and helping out all the familiar faces from other Professor Layton titles.

I have no complaints with this game, at all, except maybe that it's too short. In all honesty, I would have bought this as a stand-alone game. It's that good.

Bottom Line: Mini-RPG that comes with Last Specter. Shockingly fun, lots to do, and extremely customizable.

Final Score: London Life gets a solid, well-deserved 10/10

Special Note: You can buy the game's full soundtrack here. It's beautiful, as I'd expect from a Professor Layton game.

Review: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS)

Title: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
System: Nintendo 3DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1
Buy It: Amazon.com | GameStop

Go ask a gamer about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I'll bet that they've played it. It's one of the single-most influential games that's ever come out, and quite possibly the most well-known Zelda title to date. There's a reason why this game is successful every time it gets remade. Something like that isn't an accident. That's because this game is a timeless classic, and it will remain that way for quite some time. That said, let's go and talk about its most recent incarnation: Ocarina of Time 3D.


Let's start with graphics. They've been updated for the 3DS outing; pots and jugs decorate what used to be barren shelves in houses and shops on earlier editions. It's a little tougher to see the seams in texturing, the harsh lines making up buildings and trees have been softened; clipping errors are harder to come by. The graphics are pretty, they work well, they're more fully developed and everything feels alive. The update was necessary, and what has been done doesn't at all disappoint. Ocarina's Hyrule feels more fully realized now than it ever has before. The 3D option adds a depth of field that wasn't possible before, making it even more possible to get sucked in to the action.

Gameplay has gotten an overhaul as well. The addition of gyroscopic targeting allows for less slingshot fumbling and more shooting Skulltulas. And the gyroscopic targeting system is quite impressive. It allows a full 360-degree targeting range (provided, of course, you're able to turn that far,) and has completely eliminated the need for joystick-based targeting. Plus, the touch screen now has all your map- and inventory-based needs so you don't have to ever interrupt the action on the top screen. And, with the unlockable addition of Master Quest, the game goes much farther and gets much tougher on subsequent playthroughs.

Of course, through all this glowing praise comes the bad news, right? Well, unless you're like me and get motion sick with those 3D graphics, there's no bad news. At all. Ocarina is as fun, frustrating (water temple, anyone?), and engaging as it was when it first came out. If you haven't played it yet, go out there and grab yourself a copy.

Bottom Line: Play it again. For Hyrule! And, you know, for Master Quest.

Final Score: 9/10

Review: Chocolatier (DS)

Title: Chocolatier
System: Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1
Buy It: Amazon.com


This is more of a job lot review than a real review, but here goes. Last time I went to Five Below, I decided to let the gamer inside me loose, and check out the games. Usually, there's only a handful of lame movie tie-in games for the Gameboy Advance, but this last time was a jackpot: DS games, PS2 games, and even a few Wii games lined the video game bin.


Among the games I found there was an unassuming DS game by the name of "Chocolatier" where you, the player, became a - you guessed it - chocolatier to revive a once-famous brand name to its former glory. By haggling for ingredients and travelling the world to get only the finest goods, you were able to make better chocolates, and as you got better, you were able to make more and more kinds of chocolates. As you progress, you gained the ability to buy new factories  (and therefore make more chocolates at once) and by running errands for people, you'll be able to get new recipes. The premise was simple, yet engaging. And for five bucks, I figured I really had nothing to lose.


Making the chocolates had an interesting game mechanic: plates with notches revolved around a "cannon" in the center of the screen with an ingredient on it. Shoot the correct ingredients onto the plate you wanted to by touching it with the DS stylus. Once the plate was full, it'd vanish and get replaced by a new one until your time ran out. (It was something like 60 seconds per round.) The better you did, the faster the wheel with the plates would spin, and the more chocolates you could pump out. Plus, the better a recipe you were using, the more ingredients you'd need to make the chocolate and the tougher it'd be.


The game was much more addicting than I thought it'd be. The entire campaign only took me about six hours to complete, but it was a fast-paced, fun six hours. And I did it almost straight because I couldn't put it down. Completely worth my five dollars.

Bottom Line: Fun, fast-paced game about reviving a chocolate company to their former glory. Look in the right places, get it for $5 or less. (Trust me, it's worth your $5.)

Final Score: 8/10

Review: Princess Debut (DS)

Title: Princess Debut
System: DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1

If you read my post about gaming that segued into a post about my bizarre love of otome games, you remember me mentioning Princess Debut, the otome game about the girl who swaps places with the princess from a fantasy land that looks just like her. She then goes on to spend the next month in this fantasy land, learning to dance and looking for a prince to act as her dance partner, all the while trying to pose as the real princess. Oh, and the princes all look like the cute guys from her school in the real world.

Yeah, I know. The story kind of sucks. But this is an otome game, where the only thing that really matters is the boys.

Above: The only thing that matters in an otome game. (Minus furry.)

So, you have six boys to pick from, not including Tony (the rabbit) up there, though he does get an ending of his own. The sixth guy never actually shows up until your second playthrough. But those guys up there, from left to right, are: Prince Luciano, Prince Liam, Prince Klaus, Prince Cesar, and Prince Vince (lol, rhymes.) The last prince, tastefully clad in purple, is Prince Kiefer. Each of these guys falls into one (or more) of the stereotypical otome game male categories: the doting big brother (Liam, or "the ridiculously kind one who likes plants" in the "real" world), the "perfect" one (Klaus, or the basketball star in the real world), the aloof one (Luciano, or the childhood friend in the real world), the flamboyant flirt (Cesar, or the playboy in the real world), the bookworm (Kiefer, who's still the bookworm), and the mischievous one (Vince, who's still the mischievous one).

The point of the game is to get a partner and wow the crowd at an important ball at the end of the month. The gameplay is a decently-implemented rhythm game, Ouendan-style. (Or, Elite Beat Agents, if you have no idea what "Ouendan" is.) The game gets progressively tougher as it advences throughout the month, and gameplay is pretty fun. The synthesized tracks are annoying from the get-go, and don't really get any less annoying, but they're not annoying enough to make me put it down. However, the game isn't without its downsides.

First, if you're not using a DS lite or a DSi (this doesn't include the XL; I'm getting to that), the game doesn't always register your tap as an accurate tap, and marks you points off (if it even credits you at all for it.) We have at least one of every DS incarnation in my house, and I've noticed that songs that I've gotten perfect scores on countless times always come up short on the 3DS and on the DSiXL. I'm not sure why that is, but I'd wager that it has something to do with the increased touch screen size on both. Second of all are, unsurprisingly, the guys. Well, not them specifically, but the dating cutscenes tend to drag out and could be cut by three or four rounds of conversation and still get the point across. Not only that, but one of the boys is frustratingly hard to get: Prince Luciano takes off about halfway through the game. If you're already dating him, and don't answer his questionnaire just right, he won't come back at the end of the month, and if you're single before he leaves and don't answer his questionnaire just right - you guessed it - he won't come back at the end of the month. And, given his personality type is tough to figure out what a "right" and "wrong" answer is, there's going to be a lot of rebooting and cursing on your end.

Bottom Line: Typical otome game story line, with a pretty decently implemented rhythm game embedded into it. Oh, and Luciano is a douche, but that doesn't really affect points.

Final Score: 7/10

Review: BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2 (3DS)

Title: BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2
System: 3DS
ESRB Rating: Teen for blood, language, partial nudity, sexual themes, and violence.
Number of Players: 1 player mode, local 2-4 (no global online play)
Buy It: Here.

It shouldn't have taken me this long to get on playing Continuum Shift 2. There really isn't an excuse for it, and that's because even though I historically loathe fighting games, I can freely admit that I adore the BlazBlue franchise. It's the only fighting game (Super Smash Brothers aside) that I can say that I've sat down and memorized combos for; I've invested more time in 2009's Calamity Trigger alone that it rivals the amount of time I've sunk into We Love Katamari on the PS2. And that's a lot of time.

So, how does Continuum Shift 2 stack up against its predecessors? And how well does it play on the 3DS? Well, that's a mixed bag, unfortunately.

CS2's fighting style plays out wonderfully on the 3DS, and that's a huge plus for it. Because it's a four-button fighting system to begin with, it feels natural on the 3DS, and the D-pad makes launching attacks in a specific direction feel crisp and clean because of its "clicky" feel. And the 2D sprites look fairly decent on the handheld as well. Granted, it doesn't look anywhere as nice as the PSP's offering of BB: Portable, but the 3DS isn't an HD system. So aside from looking nice and playing greatly, what went wrong?

The 3D went wrong, for starters. Playing in 3D mode lowers the game's frame rate and makes combos harder to time than when you have the slider set to turn 3D off because you can't always compensate for lag. Secondly, the 3D gives me incredible motion sickness and a headache I've never felt before in a game. I can't play more than a round or two without feeling ridiculously gorky, and I'm not the only one of my friends that's said that. Other 3D games for the system that I've played haven't given me this sensation (though 3D movies give me massive headaches - that's why I'll never watch a 3D movie.)

There's two other cons that the game has. Fitst of all, the game allows local wireless matches for two to four people, but has no Nintendo Wi-fi Connection link for global play. The second is that it doesn't go into sleep mode. Shut the lid, and it just pauses (and drains your battery) until you open it back up again. Seriously. That's kind of inexcusable, because every other DS game has a sleep mode built in. That was just laziness on Aksys' part.

Other than the frame rate being off and the sleep mode being nonexistant, the game has everything the original console version of Continuum Shift had, including Legion Mode and the Tutorial Mode, which is perfect for casual and beginning players. But this game really doesn't do anything that other 3DS fighters don't do just as well, or better, like Super Street Fighter IV.

Bottom Line: Unless you're a hardcore BlazBlue fan, bypass this 3DS installment. Even though it plays naturally, the 3D was implemented ineffectively and the lack of even a sleep mode gets it points off. It's still a great fighter by itself, but after SSFIV, there's nothing to see here.

Final Score: 6-7

Job Lot Reads 2: Holdup

Title: Holdup
Author: Terri Fields
Publisher: FSG/Square Fish
Category: Young Adult Fiction

Photo from Macmillan.com

This book is interesting. Instead of starting with a summary, like I usually would, I'm going to just go ahead and say it: This is one of those unique, multi-narrator-telling-the-same-event kinds of stories that are quite hard to pull off well.

Terri Fields pulls this off well.

Even saying that, though, I didn't like this book. The story was fluid and had an amazingly steady pace; every narrator had their own unique, defined voice (I never once got confused with a who's who moment); and transitioning between narrators never seemed awkward or clunky. So even knowing and realizing that the book was well-written, flowed amazingly well, and had a compelling storyline, why didn't I like it?

Perhaps it was the same thing that made this book so interesting to me in the first place: the multi-narrator format of it. There's something both compelling and annoying about books with many perspectives. On one hand, they let every major character tell their own take on the things happening, their opinions of other characters, and their outlook on the situation on the whole. On the other hand, you have the same exact thing.

In the end, Holdup is an amazingly well-written novel that tells the story from nine points of view about a burger-joint holdup. Its best feature is also what irks me most about it, even though it's done incredibly well. I suppose that I just don't like the multiple narrator writing style. If you're looking for an interesting read, though, Holdup might definitely be for you.

Rating: 6-7/10

Job Lot Reads 1: Full Service

Title: Full Service

Photo from Macmillan.com

Author: Will Weaver

Publisher: FSG

Category: Young Adult fiction

It's the summer of 1965, and Paul Sutton is getting his first full-time job off of the family farm. Convinced that it would be good for him, his mother takes him around their small town of Hawk Bend, Minnesota looking for a job before he lands a job pumping gas at the local Shell station. For the next two hundred pages, Will learns the secrets of his small town, befriends the local regulars, and makes a few important decisions about where he's headed in life while trying to stay true to his roots.

This book had me pretty wrapped up in it from about the second chapter onward. I was pretty interested in it from the very beginning, but it wasn't until Paul started actually started interacting with the other characters around him that it caught my interest. Will Weaver's writing style is realistic and paints a vivid picture of what's going on in the small town of Hawk Bend, and I found myself really looking forward to picking it back up when I had to put it down for whatever reason. The characters were realistic (which is important to me, both as a writer myself and as a reader,) and the ending didn't leave me hanging or feeling like something was missing.


Final score: 8/10