A Few Things

06/14/08 09:19:38 pm

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First we'll talk skins, since that's probably what most of you here are interested in. The skin seen below is in progress... and the balance slider has it in for me. I can't seem to find any functionality in Winamp's MAKI language that'll let me control the pan value... so I can't have it mimic the volume slider and update the animated layer frame as it goes... If anyone knows better, let me know. Otherwise I'll probably have to redo that area (put something different there, or change the slider design).

Second, most of my day at work yesterday was wasted when we had to clean up the database after an SQL injection attack inserted a few thousand lines linking to a malicious Javascript file. Apparently hundreds of sites running MSSQL were hit around the same time. Ugh.

Finally, a bit of anime. I haven't been watching much lately for two key reasons. One is that I have simply chosen to spend my limited free time on other activities (most prominently, more gaming), but the other is that there hasn't been much to trumpet in recent series, it seems. But lately we've been starved for some short, enjoyable video content to watch with meals or while relaxing. So we picked out two to try: Soul Eater and Baccano.

Soul Eater, with 51 supposed episodes, may be pushing the envelope on my tolerance for long series (I know I've watched hundreds of One Piece, Inuyasha and Naruto episodes, but if anything they prove my point: 50 episodes is the approximate maximum for consistently decent quality, I think), but it has been enjoyable thus far. The characters and plot are kinda cookie-cutter: students at shinigami academy - including the archetypical bookworm, headstrong boy, loudmouth, pushover, and perfectionist - must fight together as partners against various evil things and collect souls to become the big cheese. *shrug* Nothing really to complain about, just nothing stellar about it either, I guess.

Baccano, however, I am crazy for. The gore level was a bit higher than my usual taste, but the show's about mafia guys, assassins and otherwise shady characters... so it's not out of place. The story is told non-chronologically, mostly jumping around between a few years in the 1930s, and focusing on suspenseful incidents that intertwine its characters. This manner of presentation allows for numerous cliff-hangers - once you start watching, it's hard to turn it off. The characters are the main driving force of the story though, and I found myself endeared to and interested in all of them (even if they seriously creeped me out at times as well). The music is also catchy - try the opening for a taste.

And that's all for now. Hopefully the aforementioned skin will be done within a day or so...

Gaming: The World Ends With You

06/07/08 07:01:23 pm

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• The World Ends With You
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Rirath and I recently signed up for GameFly, so I may be musing about random games more often. Today's entry is about the Nintendo DS JRPG, The World Ends With You (originally "Subarashii Kono Sekai" in Japanese, but since that translates to "it's a wonderful world," potential copyright issues apparently prevented it from being released under that title in English).

In the game, you play as Neku Sakuraba, a misanthropic teen who finds himself in an alternate reality Shibuya where he must complete daily objectives to stay alive amidst something called a "Reaper's Game." He meets other "players" trapped in the game, as well as enemies called Noise, and the reapers themselves.

The World Ends With You sets itself apart from so many DS games with its style and depth. Derived from their urban setting, characters and enemies sport trendy fashions or graffiti-like tattoos. The music throughout the game is lyrical, and likewise adds to the atmosphere by sticking mostly to pop and rap, as well as interchanging between English and Japanese language versions of the songs.

The battle system is refreshingly unique, as you fight enemies with a partner on both of the DS' screens at once - on the bottom screen with your stylus, and the top screen with the D-pad. This is certainly not without its flaws though, as it's somewhat difficult to divide your attention between the two. Fortunately they've accounted for this in two ways, the first of which is that your partner will always have an attack that consists of simply pressing the same button several times, and also that you can choose to ignore your partner and s/he'll be auto-controlled instead.

The abilities you wield in battles are decided by pins - you can wear between one and six pins, each one with a power that's activated by a stylus motion (or a shout into your DS' mic). There are hundreds of pins to choose from, though there's a quite smaller range of stylus actions between them; this can get annoying if you pick two or more pins with the same or similar activation methods and end up using the wrong attack.

Trends will also affect your battles - both pins and clothing are associated with brands, and the more popular the brand in a given area, the more powerful the items of that brand will be. While this adds another layer of depth, I found myself ignoring it more often than not. The areas you move between are too small to be concerned with changing all your pins and clothes every few minutes. You can also influence which brand is popular by wearing that brand's items, but locking oneself into a single brand seems more hindering than beneficial.

The game has its downsides too, of course. Gameplay is very linear, to the point where I occasionally felt rushed by the story when I would've liked to wander around a bit. Long chunks of dialog with no option skip will also bog you down sometimes. It's hard to organize your pins and it gets more cumbersome to find the one you want as your collection grows; why couldn't there have been some sorting options (by brand, by level, by effect, etc.)? Also, there's no map. Okay, technically there is, but it only shows you the fashion trends for each area, not the names of the areas... making it useless as a map.

Overall it's an entertaining and fun game though. ... Expect a skin of it.