PixlBit

     I cancelled my preorder for Muramasa Rebirth and bought Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask for 3DS to play on my family trip to Ohio on Friday to see my niece graduate high school. It’s the perfect thing for being stuck in a car for seven plus hours. Also, it makes me look slightly more mature to my family than playing Shadow Wars, Etrian Odyessy, Fire Emblem or Luigi’s Mansion, all of which are gamer games. It’s like I’m saying, “Don’t mind me, I’m just a casual gamer like yourselves. No hard core gamer to worry about here.”

     I bailed on saving for a PSVita the other day and instead went and picked up Bioshock Infinite and God of War Ascention brand new at Gamestop for $40 each. Happily the saleswoman didn’t try to convince me to buy the used versions. In fact we got into a long, and genuine, conversation about games and comics, not the usual Gamestop BS where the salesperson chats you up and then tries to get you to preorder something. I’ll gut the pig that does that to me next time. Kidding! I’m a friendly guy. I like pigs too. When they’re bacon of course. Kidding! I hardly ever eat bacon.

        50 Hours into Enchanted Arms I had pretty much sailed through the game without too much trouble. Then came the Ice Castle and the final fight with the Ice Queen. I failed the first time, returned to the area just outside the main chamber, and quickly trained up a few choice Golems to execute a particular defensive plan I had combining the use of Healing, Power Up and Barrier spells in support of the brawlers Atsuma and Rygar. It took an hour or so of grinding to practice my strategy and all the TB (cash) I had to buy Mega Skill Gems to increase the Golem’s HP parameters so they would both be over 1000 HP. The result was success! I beat the Ice Queen and her alternate form. The Close achievement popped up and I breathed a sigh of relief.  

      Video games try to tell you about themselves through their ads. Sometimes they tell you about their attitude, or their humor, or their special subject matter. Each ad tells you what's most important about the game in order to spark your interest. Here are ads for Twisted Metal Black, Worms World Party, and Zone of the Enders I scanned recently from some old Spectre comics.

     I was watching the Don Knotts movie The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (see trailer below) and the segments in the haunted house, with its small and densly detailed rooms, and all the cliches such as secret passages, cobwebs everywhere, pictures that change, and a creepy organ that plays by itself all made me think of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.

     I heard that there was an agility orb in the lower left of the dashboard shown in this still from the Xbox One reveal show on Major Nelson's podcast. Look below to see it. E said it could just be a place holder image that means nothing, but I can only hope. Crackdown 1 was my favorite game on the Xbox 360 and if #3 is coming to Xbox One, it could be a system seller for me. I guess I'll have to wait for the coverage of E3 starting Monday night June 11th to find out for sure.

     Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to watch this Mission Impossible episode "Odds on Evil", linked below, from 50 sec to about 1:40 and observe the 1966 arcade.

     I finished The Cave Tuesday afternoon and by finish I mean I got the last achievement. So really, I finished the game about seven times. That's 56 levels because each playthrough has eight levels. You would think that would be boring but it's not because three of those eight levels are character specific so three levels are always different depending on which three characters you choose at the beginning. Repeat plays are definitely not boring. Once I knew each puzzle well, I tried to figure out the fastest way to finish each one.