malvasia bianca

Forget Halo 3, GTA IV, and all that: it’s starting to look like the real reason I’ll get an Xbox 360 this year is that there’s an RPG coming out for it starring Frederic Chopin. Yes, that Chopin. From IGN’s capsule summary: Three hours prior to [his death], Chopin saw a dream of a fairy-tale […]

I felt a bit uncultured never having played Grand Theft Auto III. I’d played GTA: SA, and was quite impressed by it, but I thought I should go back and see where the series really took off. And, for a while, I wished I hadn’t. GTA: SA drops you off right in the middle of […]

Lego Star Wars II is a very lightweight adventure game based on the original trilogy of movies, with everything made out of Lego. Mostly fluff, but a fair amount of humor, and the whole package is really quite fun. The best part, for me: it’s very easy, and has a cooperative multiplayer mode. This meant […]

As presentations about how the world is changing go, this one is well done.

Wii Sports is supposed to be key to the system’s mass appeal. Rather than targeting gamers, it’s designed to appeal to everybody; rather than forcing you to control the game by manipulating two joysticks, a D-pad, six face buttons, and four shoulder buttons, it lets you just swing the controller back and forth. (Side note: […]

I was pretty nonplussed when I first started playing Elebits. It’s sort of a weird mix of Katamari with a first-person shooter: on the one hand, you have a gun that you use to “capture” these elebit creatures that are hiding and running around, but on the other hand you can also use the gun […]

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is an old-style courtroom-based adventure game for the DS. It’s set in the near future, and apparently legal norms have changed somewhat: as far as I can tell, rather than people being innocent until proven guilty, they’re guilty unless you can prove during the (at most three-day trial) that some specific […]

I was kind of looking forward to the Xbox 360 Elite announcement. I’m almost positive I’ll buy a 360 at some point this year: I doubt the Wii and DS will be enough to keep me happy this year, and it even seems likely that the 360 willl have more games I’m really interested in […]

Elite Beat Agents is a music game for the DS. It takes its mechanics and much of its style from a Japanese game called Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan; apparently, however, Nintendo of America thought that my country’s youth would prefer secret agents to male cheerleaders dressed in black, and American pop to J-pop. (Imagine that.) The […]

The life of a Mii. Neat pictures. (And a bit more discussion.) Line Rider Super Mario Bros. 1-1. I do not like that my government does evil. Planarity is a neat idea. Though I admittedly didn’t feel like playing it for too long. I played Boomshine for a while, though: it’s sort of a humane […]

A few short flash games that I’ve run into recently. (All via Game|Life.) Nothing fabulous, but I enjoyed spending a bit of time with each. Binary turns out to be kind of fun. Not great: aside from the limitations of the subject matter, I found it went too quickly from a bit too easy to […]

Given that I’ve been back from vacation for a week, I suppose I should get around to blogging about what I did during those two weeks. After all, there’s nothing more fascinating to read than bloggers talking about trips they’ve taken! Which, among other things, included playing video games. Bringing us to the topic of […]

I am happy: I’ve managed to max out everything on Grow Cube.

I didn’t realize it was possible to beatbox while playing the flute. Gyoza stadium sounds awesome. Star Wars in ASCII. I spent a pleasant hour last weekend watching Ben and Fitz’s poisonous people talk. (And then caught myself exhibiting one of those symptoms on a mailing list last week. Sigh…) I suppose you’ve already seen […]

I just finished the latest Zelda. Summary: a good game, quite well done. But not a great game, for two reasons: the previous games in the series, and a certain other game in the genre that came out the same year and that is much much better. The good: it’s a Zelda game, with all […]

Miranda’s reading rather more comfortably now than she was in the past; at least partly because of this, she’s noticeably expanded the range of her desired sphere of competence. Examples: We’re finally letting her play Animal Crossing, because she’s reading well enough that she won’t constantly be nagging us to help her play. And she […]

Bully is the latest free-roaming game from Rockstar, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. A quite pleasant experience. Lower-key in many ways compared to the only exemplar of the latter that I’ve had the pleasure of playing. A smaller environment, not as long a game, much less over the top in terms of […]

I seem to have been letting Wii experiences build up; time for a dump. I’ll probably forget some things, but hopefully I’ve remembered most of the things I want to say. I’m not planning to go out and buy more minigame compilations, but I’m definitely glad I got Rayman. The minigames vary in quality, but […]

Random Wii thoughts one week later: I would have expected to feel stupid saying “Wii” all the time, but I actually don’t mind. I guess Nintendo wasn’t completely insane when they decided on that name. Zelda is very good so far, except for the early fishing sequence. (I’m seven hours in, I think I’m a […]

I didn’t manage to get a Wii on launch day, but I was more successful today. I got to a Best Buy at around 7:10, a mere 2 hours and 50 minutes before it opened; that was good enough to get me the 19th of 26 Wiis that they were handing out. Fortunately, I had […]