Caution: Yet another near/beyond midnight blog. Read at the risk of your own sanity.

Warnings aside, I feel quite alright (I think). I've consumed a cup of cheap instant-coffee, so I should be coherent enough to blog what I want to blog about.

First of all, I submitted an interesting app (That'll probably take a while to be processed),

properly for once. It has to do with Music, and a fancy wave-spectrum analyzer.

Warning: Don't look at it directly for too long

If you do: You will obey me from now on, until I click my fingers or somebody types an all-caps message on IRC. D E S T R O Y. EVERYTHING. RESTORE ORDER TO TIME. :3

So… eh… how about a commercial game review?

Game review

Name: Solatorobo: Red the Hunter

Platform: DS

Genre: Action RPG

Published: 2010

Regions: USA, EUROPE, JAPAN

So, I picked this one up out of curiosity, mostly because it was a non Square-Enix RPG, and decided to give it a whirl. So, I switched on, and was met with a world filled with floating islands, ridable robot-suits and lots of cat-girls. (Keep Cyrus away from this game). Oh. And furries. :P

Anyway, I LOVE this game. Spent ages playing through the storyline, and just finished it tonight.

It works on a quest based system, where you perform quests for various NPC's. Some of these are story-related (They're clearly marked too) and others are just for currency/experience/laughs.

To be honest, at first I thought the game was good. I played through the story, and defeated what was presented to me as the final boss. The usual 'second form' gimmick was missing for once.

The credits rolled, but then something awesome happened. I won't spoil it unless you copy the below undersized text and copy/paste it into notepad.

Basically, I defeat the 'final' boss. The credits roll, the game ends with what appears to be a plug for the 'next' game: Shadowy figure laughing evilly to himself in front of two capsules. The game then gives me the 'to be continued' sign. I was just about ready to turn off, but then decided to see if I could save my clear-game data. I did that, and was informed 'The story isn't finished yet! Save your data to access a whole new story!'. And a whole new story it was. Literally. Same playable character, but new robot to play around with, new towns, new enemies, new quests, fresh music AND cutscenes. Now that is the way you handle sequels. Give 'em to the player immediately :P

The game has a few interesting gimmicks. You ride a robot called the Dahak. This robot doesn't attack by firing lasers (sorry PY) and other weaponry. No. That's too old-school for this game.

Instead, you physically pick up your enemies by tapping the A button, and throw them to the ground (or into other enemies) to defeat them. This extends to any energy/missile shots that happen to get too close to your 'bot.

The customisation of the robot is limited at first, but still useful. It reminds me of the Battle Network Navi Customization screen.

Anyway, I will not spoil any story, but I insist that you find and buy the game. 'tis cool. And it's 3D with 2D elements (3D gameplay, some sprites are rendered in 2D. Just wait 'til you see some of the massive flying areas…)

So, final rating:

Gameplay: 4/5 (If you fail certain boss-battles with lots of pre-battle dialogue, you get to hear it all over again if you have to 'try again'. >:{)

Graphics: 5/5 Some of the best looking visuals I've seen on the DS. Note, DS, NOT 3DS.

Audio : 4/5 Music: Epic. Sounds: OK. Some sounds seemed a bit overused.

Story : 5/5 Epic. Won't spoil it.

Replay value: 3/5 Depends if you want to go playing the quests that are offered after the game

or not, and possibly unlock some new stuff.

Anyway, with that done, on to the:

EXCUSES LIST

I may or may not actually finish an entry in time for Scary-four digits. Definitely not my original idea.

You see, after seeing the last electricity bill, I have had to forcibly cut down on my time on the PC, since it appears that I'm directly causing a large part of the aforementioned bill. It's a lot, believe me.

Secondly, I'm going for a few job interviews this week. With any luck, I WON'T HAVE THE TIME to enter the comp. I want a solid job more than I want the first-place prize =3

But I want to enter something, even if it's not much. My original idea was a Castlevania type game. Had a lot of things going for it (A level, a lycanthrope for a first boss, a tileset) and then all this stuff came up. Oh well.

Books

Since I'm going on a typing rampage here, let me make mention of what I'm reading: The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Great books. Great author. Read 5 out of 12 of them already. My local librarian is ordering in the other 7 for me =P

Let me put the size of the books into perspective for you: Each volume on it's own is larger than the combined Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's a lot of reading, and very little sleeping.

And with that…

I'll leave you with an interesting idea I'm investigating.

I've been studying Java for a few months now, and also J2ME. I haven't determined if it's possible yet, but I intend to create an NSF player for low/medium-end cellphones (The APU emulation has very little overhead).

If that's successful, I might be able to extend it to a VGM/SPC player.

For now, think like this:

OK, not quite 8000 songs on a Nokia 2760. That only has 15MB of memory, and no SD card slot.

But even that can store about 500+ multi track songs. :P

Consider what a Samsung Star can do with a 1GB SD card… get's interesting.

Well, good night 64digits….