I finally managed to find another used copy of Chibi-Robo, and decided to take a break from serious Disney business to clean up the house a little. I'm not entirely sure why - maybe it has to do with the familiarity of it - but games in a domestic setting (e.g. the inside levels in Elebits) have a real charm about them, such that even tedious tasks seem fun. I think I've cleaned up around 300 floor stains so far!

Progress: 2270 Happy Points

I used to think I was good at the Panel. When Hiroto showed me what a real block-swapper can do, I thought that, given time, I might be able to stand up to that skill level. But now that I've completed the Active Puzzle mode I have glimpsed my limitations - and the miles of ability beyond them.

The early Active Puzzles are simply a test of paying attention, and introduce the idea of "cheating" the timing of the system to bring blocks to the right place at the right time. The middle courses stress these concepts further. But the last courses present challenges which I had to pause inbetween every block movement just to see what was going on, and even then I failed dozens of times on several of them. The final scenarios consist of full or nearly-full screens of blocks, all of which must be matched and cleared without stopping a constant stream of block matches! It is pure madness and I am amazed that I was able to survive it.

I now live in fear, in absolute terror, of the chance of encountering someone who is able to process such tasks naturally. But I'll still keep PPL around for wireless multiplayer with my more realistically-skilled buddies.

Progress: All puzzles complete

I put a ton of engines, extra wings, and laser cannons on my gummi ship. It is awesome. Building a cool ship is kind of expensive, but now that I can cure myself with magic (and regain MP just by hitting things), buying parts is the only thing I even spend Munny on. I know for a fact that you don't even have to build onto your ship to complete the game, but I enjoy it a lot.

The combat keeps getting deeper: new magic spells, new abilities, new enemies and scenarios. There are even new weapons, although not very many. And what really keeps things fresh are the plentiful world locations. The Disney franchising made the game seem very weird at first, but the numerous atmospheres are really great at maintaining variety throughout the gameplay hours. Even the "plot" is becoming more interesting.

Progress: Atlantica

Unfortunately I still haven't figured out the convoluted airship hanger deal. This is a side-effect of one of Kingdom Hearts' greatest strengths: pacing. Even at times when the next goal is not explicitly declared, it is easy enough to figure out by wherever you haven't already been, and the game's events proceed one after the other in rapid fashion. Never a dull moment.

Progress: Deep Jungle

I haven't played a Pokémon since Red. And before I started playing Pearl, I was of the opinion that today's punk kids didn't know what the real 150 Pokémon were all about. Now that I've sampled what the new iteration has to offer, I know better - it really hasn't changed at all.

This is good, because the core Pokémon game is simple and fun. You've got levels and stats, types that are super- or not-very-effective against one another, and special abilities with different powers and effects. Don't have the right type? Go catch one! The story? Who cares! Any excuse to have little creatures beat the shit out of each other is fine with me.

Sure there is more to the game than there once was - a clock, for one, with different monsters appearing at different times; more items, more types, more abilities, obviously more Pokémon. And I'm sure there are a ton of special features that I haven't really bothered looking at. But the basic gameplay remains intact, and, ten years later, is fun all over again.

Progress: 1/8 badges

I decided to finish the Mission Mode today, and definitely used some hints toward the end. One of the missions was, here's a big stack of blocks, make a chain with red as the tenth matching color! Jesus.

Where the Basic and Advanced puzzles are split into 60 individual scenarios, Mission and Active Puzzle mode are in six parts, each part consisting of ten sequential challenges. It is possible to put the DS in closed sleep mode at any time, but you can't up and quit playing and jump back in the middle of the "mission" or "course," which makes it at least seem more intense. What's more, the Active puzzle mode doesn't have any hints!

I'm only halfway through it and it's already starting to kick my ass. Very cool.

Progress: Active Puzzle Course 4

At the NOA employee store, remotes are $30, and Wii Play (bundled with a remote) is $36. I needed a replacement remote - and I figured, for six bucks, what could the harm be? Now, having seen all that Wii Play has to offer, I think I would rather have kept my $6.

Wii Play consists of nine minigames. In order of appearance (from a fresh save file, the games must be played sequentially in order to unlock them all):

Shooting Range
Oh sweet! Duck Hunt! Wait... where are the ducks going? No! Come back ducks! Damn it. As it turns out, Shooting Range is a dullish and rather long series of aiming and firing challenges.

Find Mii
Where's Waldo would make an awful video game. But if you take the basic concepts of pattern recognition and apply them to more creative premises - finding duplicate Miis, searching for specific Miis, looking for Miis exhibiting a particular behavior - wouldn't it be a lot more fun? Well, no, it isn't.

Table Tennis
Take the Tennis game from Wii Sports, make the playing field much smaller, and replace the ability to control the orientation of the racket with manual paddle movement. Don't try to move the paddle faster to make a more powerful shot; you will only overshoot your target and miss completely. Really, little more than a graphically sophisticated Pong.

Pose Mii
The only interesting part of this game is figuring out what the hell you're supposed to be doing, so I won't ruin the fun for you.

Laser Hockey
Surprisingly tolerable! Move air-hockey mallets around to knock the puck into your opponent's goal. Pro: the whole thing is stylized with colorful lasers and particle effects. Con: the puck does not react to force, so playing it fast is simply impossible.

Billiards
Nine-ball!?

Fishing
Difficult to understand, and even more difficult to pull off, especially when the huge warning text that claims you're not close enough to the television covers half the fish pond. First fish I caught gave me -50 points. Negative 50 points!

Charge!
Tilt remote forward, wait for game to end.

Tanks!
A game of satisfying complexity and reasonable control, but is just too damn hard. It plays like a two-axis shooter, ala Robotron: 2084 or Geometry Wars, with movement controlled by the D-pad, or the stick if you've got a nunchuck, and aiming controlled by simply pointing the remote (I expect the Alien Syndrome (2007) remake to use a similar scheme). The problem is that just as you take out enemy tanks in one shot, so too do they defeat you in a single blow. So between the impossibility of moving fast enough to dodge an incoming shot, the fact that the rounds ricochet off walls, and splash damage, everything past the first handful of stages is an exceedingly difficult endeavor.

All of these games can be played by one or two players. I played through them all with a friend, and each game had both of us almost invariably begging for the end. We actually played Laser Hockey and Tanks! twice each, but even that was pushing it.

It's not the production values, it's not the execution, and in most cases it isn't even the control setup. The bottom line is that Wii Play is just fundamentally flawed: all of its games suck. They aren't fun. Buying it for any reason other than the controller inside is a mistake.

Progress: Complete

It's a real shame that massively multiplayer games have to have other people in them. No matter how good Burning Crusade is - and it is good - it cannot overcome John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Even discounting players who are total asshats, there is no shortage of bad players, healers who can't keep anyone alive, tanks who can't keep a monster away from the party, damage classes who seem to have misplaced their damage abilities. I know I'm far from the best Mage in the world, but some people I've grouped with for should-have-been-easy dungeon runs make me look like the goddamn king of Sparta.

Nevertheless I still enjoy galavanting around Outland, burning ogres and earning dough. An aspect of BC that the designers clearly worked very hard to improve upon is endgame solo and small-group play. As I have hit upon previously, there is a ton of stuff to do at level 70, and unlike the level 60 content in the original game, much of it seems attainable. Whereas before I was a little bitter about bleeding money every month for little gain, I feel better about recurring payment this time (though I am still in my first month).

Progress: Level 70, 388 Engineering

Frankly, the intro was awful. First there was a nonsensical cutscene that was really a music video; then a tutorial section which takes forever; then a series of vague errands in the starting area, mixed in with ridiculously difficult minigames that command absolute perfection over the very controls that have just been introduced. And I shouldn't have to say that the mix of Final Fantasy and Disney characters makes for a very awkward narrative, but it certainly doesn't help matters.

Luckily, Kingdom Hearts has excellent gameplay mechanics on its side. It's a welcome approach to an action RPG - most of the numerics, like health and mana, are replaced by simple gauges that are much easier to approach. Movement and camera orientation felt rough in the beginning but I'm starting to get used to it. And, hell, there's magic! Magic is cool. The combat is fun even before the main character (Sora) meets his party members (Donald and Goofy), and party combat is even more exciting.

I'm just scratching the surface of the game and I can already see incredible depth. Highly customizable party AI; a wealth of items, for using, equipping, and collecting; and the Gummi Ship workshop, which I still don't understand much of, but given my airship fetish I fully intend to explore.

Progress: Wonderland

Sometimes, the game can be fairly fast-paced, with stages of engaging space robots in mortal combat flowing one after the other. But all too often, levels are interrupted by vague missions that require backtracking to search for a specific, but ambiguous item. And though it seemed like the cutscenes and dialog were letting up for a while, as the game reached its final phases they came back in full force.

There are a slew of secondary weapons, that could, in theory, spice up the otherwise repetitive gameplay. But the majority of them are completely useless. A lot of them don't even have a good chance of hitting the enemy, let alone doing more damage than a primary attack.

The ending? So bad, it's funny. Over the course of the game, the Orbital Frame (the fighting robot)'s AI, "ADA," is developed as a robotic character gradually learning humanity. After defeating the final boss - then being accosted by another, more powerful robot, but escaping (the final scene is a challenge to survive for about 30 seconds until the last cutscene jumps in) - the main character asks ADA what she is going to do next. She's going on a mission to Mars. Main character asks, maybe, if after the mission-- but ADA clarifies, that the mission to Mars is a suicide bombing, where the orbital frame will be detonated to take out an enemy base. The main character is upset by this for a few seconds, then leaves the robot and reunites with the game's other two-and-a-half characters.

In total ZOE was about 4 or 5 hours long. Being introduced to the game was exciting, and the later boss battles were challenging and pretty cool - other than that, it's just bad. Worth the $10 I bought it for, but probably not much more.

Progress: Complete