[REVIEW] Harvest Moon - Grand Bazaar (DS)

Harvest Moon Grand Bazaar was a game I didn't originally intend to buy straight away. I've been a fan of the farm-em-up series for a while, but was intending to hold off for the 3DS version, when it eventually surfaces. After the traditional summer dead period for game releases, I was infuriated to find out that my beloved Tropico 4 had been put back a few weeks, so I scanned the new release sheets for something else to do, and Harvest Moon caught my eye. Well, I shan't recount the full story but that was put back too, and I was left wringing my hands in fury for a FULL MONTH, but now finally I have a new game to play! (Still waiting for Tropico 4, despite the PC version being out already. *sigh*)

This particular title in the Harvest Moon franchise sees you as a new farmer in the backwater Zephyr Town, a small town in a rural area that used to be a thriving commercial hub, but in recent years has seen a decline in trade in the area. One can only assume that recent council cuts and extortionate parking fees are choking the town and leaving it dying on it's ass. As the new kid in town, it's down to you to grow some excellent produce and reinject some life into the weekly market. As with any Harvest Moon game, the first thing to do at 6am on your first day is grab some tools from the Mayor, have a quick chat with the chap (yeah yeah, sales targets, growth, etc) and then quickly dash around the village looking for anything that's not nailed down that can be sold to the local seed merchant in exchange for a pocket full of turnip seeds.

And turnips is all you're likely to see for the first season! Like the rest of the games in the Harvest Moon series, this one is a slow builder, and relies on you getting your foundations right before it lets you go wild with too many different types of produce. In fact, if you tried to grow everything at once, and care for too many animals, you'd rapidly find yourself with not enough hours in the day and a woefully empty stamina bar.

The Bazaar adds an interesting angle to the formula, as you can fetch a much higher price for your produce there than selling them to the seed man in the village. This then leads to the need for carefully controlling your budgets, as the main bulk of your income will be coming in once a week rather than every day. Many items can only be bought at the market - such as livestock! No longer can chickens be incubated from eggs, which is a bit of a pain, but I must admit to being concerned about the inbred nature of my flock in previous games. At least this way, the gene pool might possibly be a bit deeper!

So far, I'm enjoying Harvest Moon an awful lot. It's familiar, yet challenging, with enough new ideas to keep the franchise fresh but still giving the tried and tested HM experience.

All in all, a rather happy, fed, groomed and watered 4/5

REVIEW: Pokemon Black (DS) - Part One



Oshawott. My starter Pokemon. Cute!



Firstly, a disclaimer. I am only seven hours into Pokemon Black. For some games, this might provide a full spectrum of everything the game has to offer (Bulletstorm being one of the most recent offenders, so I've heard) but just to put things into perspective, my Pokemon Pearl cartridge has clocked up around 350 hours, my Platinum about 100, my Diamond never really got past 20, but I did play it through twice to harvest the Legendaries and my SoulSilver clocked up around 40 hours but in my defence, I had started my chemistry degree by this point and that 40 hours might possibly have been better spent reading the last book in my second year course, Mechanism and Synthesis. Vital stuff. Still on my to-do list. One of my dear friends managed to put over a THOUSAND hours into one cart, with a few other Poke-freaks not far behind. (You know who you are!)

However, it's not all academic doom and gloom. Anyone who claims that Pokemon is a kids game is a) sorely mistaken, b) unable to grasp the complex statistics that underlie the gameplay, c) a chav, or d) all of the above. Yes, kids, Pokemon is at heart a MATHS game. Even at the most basic level of understanding, more powerful pokemon (with the bigger numbers) have a tendancy to be stronger than weaker pokemon (with the smaller numbers) before factoring in the multipliers for effectiveness. If I were so inclined to have children, I would INSIST that they play Pokemon. Me and Dad would be the harshest gym leaders they'd ever encountered. And by god they'd LEARN.

All of this makes me sound a little psychotic, so let's get to the nitty gritty. 150ish new pokemon, and this time, none of the old ones seem to be available in the first half of the game! This is a good thing, as everything is NEW and EXCITING. The starter Pokemon consist of a fire pig, a water otter and some kind of grass snake, who looks sort of like a smug weasel at the same time. So far, all my friends seem to have chosen Tepig, the fire pig. I'm not sure what this says about my friends, or the fact that I chose Oshawott, the water otter. Gameplay seems fairly quick to get into, the story is laid out quickly and easily, and it's then up to you to get into that long grass and seeking out Pokemon. After the first gym, multiplayer is opened up, although I haven't experiemented much with that yet.

So far, a worthy sequel. This review is entitled Part One for a reason - I'll get back to you in a hundred hours or so!

Scoring: 5/5 - Not even Fallout is this addictive. I may actually require medication at some point. If you're talking to me, and I've got my face buried in my DS, please don't think I'm being rude. I need help. Please help me.

[SNIPPETS] A round-up of February's activity.

Seems like real life's been keeping me busy for the past couple of weeks, not giving me an awful lot of time to get stuck into as many games as I'd like. In spite of that, here are a few snippets that kept me amused throughout the month:

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Would you let this tit anywhere near your car? I mean, seriously, look at him. Tim Westwood is, at 53 years of age, old enough to be my father. Whilst my own father (and many of your fathers, I suspect) is prone to bouts of daft behaviour, none have lasted as long as Westwood's delusion that he is some kind of "gangsta". I will not dispute the fact that the man has an unmatchable love for hiphop and rap music, nor the good work that he has done in bringing this to the people of the UK (for 25 years, no less!) but if he came anywhere near my car I'd go spare. Just as well then, that he doesn't feature whatsoever in Pimp My Ride DS, a game which was bought for me as a joke present by my lovely husband.

It is widely known in gaming circles that the Pimp My Ride game on the 360 is a massive pile of gash, and I expected no less from the DS version. Amusingly enough, however, I've found it strangely addictive, and keep popping it into my DS every now and again for a quick race. The massive downside to this game - can't be played for more than 20 minutes at a time, as it makes my eyeballs feel like they're about to bleed from the badly animated backgrounds. But hey ho! Not bad for £1.39!

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Oh dear, speaking of let-down games, I picked up a copy of Venetica on the 360 having read some crap reviews of how the graphics are appalling, but the game oddly charming. (For those wondering, yes, I AM some kind of masochist.) The story is cute, "orphan" girl's village is attacked by supernatural fellas, foster family reveals girl is Death's daughter, Death is in trouble, daughter must come to Daddy's aid. There were two major factors in me not giving this game a fair chance. The first was the fact that I had a migraine coming on, the second (which exacerbated the first point somewhat) is that this game is CLUNKY. The graphics, the controls, the menu system, all of it. At this point, I made a sad noise, gave up and went to bed. :(

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Other things that have kept me occupied this month:

Little Big Planet 2 multiplayer - Finally rediscovered the joy of 4-player 1-screen gaming. Even though I was the Sack Thing that died/got stuck/got left behind the most I found it exciting and not too frustrating. Not that I'd deliberately suicide myself at the difficult bits and wait to respawn at the next point when my chums had got there or anything...

Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money - After adding 8 levels to my character and summoning up the balls to finally go for it, I descended on the Sierra Madre. Yep, I'm still finding it pretty terrifying, but a new challenge as resources are limited for the first time in the game. Finding myself relying on my Unarmed skill, which I've never really used before.

Looking forward to the new Pokemon - By this time next week, it'll be in my sweaty little hands. Who will I choose as my starter pokemon? How will it compare with the other games? And how the hell will I get 300+ pokemon off my other carts onto this one? The fun and games, they begin again. *sigh*