Gaming, 2013
Feb. 3rd, 2013 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI stopped gaming in order to write my Yuletide fic, or at least stopped playing anything with a lengthy storyline - I have been able to free hundreds of tiny cubes from increasingly complex block structures in Unblocked, and I've also been slowly bashing my way through the dungeons on Thunderstone (which is a deeply annoying port of the Facebook app, meaning that I can only play it on my iPad when I'm online). I picked up The Walking Dead somewhere in the middle there and am really enjoying it, but I'm still only on the first (free) episode.
However. I am now playing Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (I have terrible trouble with the English title, which for some reason I just can't say without ending up with ws everywhere), which is a JRPG with art by Studio Ghibli. It looks gorgeous and I love the game mechanics, and these delights are so far getting me through the bits of 1950s gender roles the storylines keep banging me into (one of the gimmicks is that people are having pieces of their hearts stolen. A man loses his enthusiasm for "day-to-day life"; a woman loses her enthusiasm for "keeping her house in order" (her husband, not offering to help: "What's become of that energetic young woman I married?").). All the wife characters I've seen so far have, in fact, been oddly Stepfordian. If it all gets too much, expect sudden updates on FFIX, which has great female characters.
. I am playing Oliver, a young pure-hearted boy growing up in Motorville, a 50s style small town with a malt shop and a weird mix of English and American accents. Oliver takes his friend Phil's hot rod out for a spin and it ends up in the river; his mother rescues him, but then her heart gives out and she dies. I shut myself in my room for three days, but then cry all over a stuffed toy and break the spell on it, returning it to life as Drippy, Lord High Lord of the Fairies from another world (Drippy is voiced by one of the supporting cast from Gavin and Stacey - one of the Welsh ones - and is brilliant). Drippy gets me to go over to his world, where I may be able to free my mother's soulmate (as in shared souls, not relationship get togethers) from imprisonment by the dark Djinn, and this may somehow help my mother (who is, yes, still dead at this time).
In the other world I end up at Ding Dong Dell, ruled over by a Cat King (with a soulmate in my world who is the grocery owner's cat), fight through a few dungeon style encounters (the woods, the well in Ding Dong Dell), get taught spells, how to fight with familiars (hmm. This has elements of Pokemon, in that I can now go out and catch familiars by fighting them and then evolve them into more effective opponents), heart swapping etc. I went through Golden Grove (and I just note here that I found a giant robot spider, although I have yet to work out what to do with it) and into the desert (where I died a lot before I got across - the enemies have been beefed up, because once I got through I end up with a companion, Esther, who has her own familiars, and thus my fighting abilities get a significant boost. I have just completed some rather nifty trials and am on my way to stop a volcano erupting by shoving a boulder back down its vent (actually, at this point, I went "hmm", and took the dog for a walk round one of my nearest volcanic cones). Onwards.
However. I am now playing Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (I have terrible trouble with the English title, which for some reason I just can't say without ending up with ws everywhere), which is a JRPG with art by Studio Ghibli. It looks gorgeous and I love the game mechanics, and these delights are so far getting me through the bits of 1950s gender roles the storylines keep banging me into (one of the gimmicks is that people are having pieces of their hearts stolen. A man loses his enthusiasm for "day-to-day life"; a woman loses her enthusiasm for "keeping her house in order" (her husband, not offering to help: "What's become of that energetic young woman I married?").). All the wife characters I've seen so far have, in fact, been oddly Stepfordian. If it all gets too much, expect sudden updates on FFIX, which has great female characters.
. I am playing Oliver, a young pure-hearted boy growing up in Motorville, a 50s style small town with a malt shop and a weird mix of English and American accents. Oliver takes his friend Phil's hot rod out for a spin and it ends up in the river; his mother rescues him, but then her heart gives out and she dies. I shut myself in my room for three days, but then cry all over a stuffed toy and break the spell on it, returning it to life as Drippy, Lord High Lord of the Fairies from another world (Drippy is voiced by one of the supporting cast from Gavin and Stacey - one of the Welsh ones - and is brilliant). Drippy gets me to go over to his world, where I may be able to free my mother's soulmate (as in shared souls, not relationship get togethers) from imprisonment by the dark Djinn, and this may somehow help my mother (who is, yes, still dead at this time).
In the other world I end up at Ding Dong Dell, ruled over by a Cat King (with a soulmate in my world who is the grocery owner's cat), fight through a few dungeon style encounters (the woods, the well in Ding Dong Dell), get taught spells, how to fight with familiars (hmm. This has elements of Pokemon, in that I can now go out and catch familiars by fighting them and then evolve them into more effective opponents), heart swapping etc. I went through Golden Grove (and I just note here that I found a giant robot spider, although I have yet to work out what to do with it) and into the desert (where I died a lot before I got across - the enemies have been beefed up, because once I got through I end up with a companion, Esther, who has her own familiars, and thus my fighting abilities get a significant boost. I have just completed some rather nifty trials and am on my way to stop a volcano erupting by shoving a boulder back down its vent (actually, at this point, I went "hmm", and took the dog for a walk round one of my nearest volcanic cones). Onwards.
