Ghost Trick

I read about this puzzle game a few years ago in a magazine and was extremely interested, but couldn't find it anywhere at the time. About two months back I finally stumbled upon this gem amidst Zhu-Zhu Pets -games and the like. I was delighted, especially as the price was very low. After trying it for the first time, I knew I  had spent my money well.

Ghost Trick was developed by Capcom and released in Japan in June 2010, and released in Europe and the States in January 2011. It was developed for the Nintendo DS and iOS systems.  I myself played the game on my DS, so I can't give any comments on the iOS version. The puzzle game was developed by Shu Takumi, the creator of the Ace Attorney series.

As the title suggests, Ghost Trick has a lot to do with spirits. Most importantly, you're a spirit yourself. It didn't come off as a surprise, since it states so on the back of the game box, but it was a tad weird to start the game with a dead character. You wake up as spirit and you remember nothing, not even your name. You find a corpse nearby, and assume it is yours, taking it's appearance. Before the game really begins, a shady lamp guides you through the controls. As a spirit, you can possess anything that has a core and move through areas utilising this skill. Some objects can also be manipulated in certain ways.

Right away you get to save a life, which is what you'll be doing for the majority of the game. A policewoman, Lynne, gets shot, and you can save her with another of your skills. When encountering a dead body, you are able to turn back time and return to 4 minutes before the person's demise. In that time you can manipulate objects and attempt to change the person's fate. 

During the game your ultimate objective is to regain your memories and find out who you truly are and how you died. In the process you end up saving a lot of people, especially Lynne, who seems to keep dying. Even though it may feel repetitive to save lives over and over, the ways to do it vary. In several cases you really need to use your noodle or you'll never come up with the right solution. That's what, in my opinion, keeps the game fresh despite the repetition. 

The plot in itself is very intriguing, and it's difficult to know what the next twist will bring along. Every now and then a new tidbit of information is revealed, which pretty much turns everything upside down. My only critique on it is that everything is unfurled right at the end instead of the plot beginning to unravel itself on its own accord. I felt like the latter would have been more interesting, but I still enjoyed the story greatly, despite some poor execution at the end.

Gameplay, being on the DS, was pretty much poking things. The actual methods weren't groundbreaking, but I guess most of the interesting tricks have already been used. The DS after all isn't endlessly versatile. Though a bit monotonous, the controls still worked well. My only real complaint was that sometimes the game didn't register my taps, but that may have been my old console and it's battered touch-screen.

Before I wrap this up, I just want to point out that the characters are wonderfully wacky, and the animation in the game is mindbogglingly smooth. The game just looks fantastic, contributing further to how much I actually enjoyed it.

Ghost Trick has an interesting plot, a good concept, basic controls that are easy to learn and the game looks terrific. However some puzzles are insanely difficult and the plot unravels to slow, dumping all out at the end and the game doesn't always respond to the touch-screen. That's why I'd give this one a 9/10.

Art final

About two weeks ago our school handed out the instructions and subjects for the high school art diploma, and out of the six subjects two sounded interesting, one related to dreams and the other to games. Luckily I'll only get to start on it in the autumn, so no hurry on making decisions.

Another artsy thing is much more urgent, though. It's possible to make a work of art as your "final" work at our high school, and it's often recommended to be done before the diploma. It's a piece where the artist can still fumble and try out new techniques, whereas the diploma should exhibit the artist's strengths. That's why I'll be completing my final during the summer break, and possibly experiment on different styles. It'll still probably be watercolours, since I just can't seem to get enough of them. Look forward to seeing finished pieces and updates here!

I decided I'd rather do many smaller pieces instead of a big one, so I finally settled on a subject that allows me to do so. My friend helped me come up with it, which was surprisingly difficult, as in the final, we are allowed to do anything as opposed to the diplomas 6 given subjects. I decided I'd illustrate a book. Not a comic of it, but old fashioned illustrations, or leaning to comics, two or three panels of certain moments. As I love books, I have no trouble with finding a source, but the problem is which book to choose. I've singled out a few candidates, and also decided I'd exclude all books with illustrations already in them, as they might affect my art.

Dealing With Dragons (Patricia C Wrede), a story of a rebellious princess who doesn't get kidnapped by a dragon, but goes to live with one because she can. I got this as a gift when I was 8, and loved it greatly. I collected the rest of the series as well, but this book remained the best of them for me. I'd love to do this one as it has a lot of fond memories associated, and to top it off, dragons!

Boneshaker (Cherie Priest) was one of the best books I've read in a while. A gripping steampunk tale with zombies and wonderful characters. I can't really explain why I'd want to do this one, I just found the book so good.

A Discworld novel (Terry Pratchett). Any Discworld novel. They're quirky, wacky and everything in between, and would be spiffing to illustrate with all the fantasy creatures and characters that have been part of my life for years now. It would be my tribute to these wonderful books and author.

The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud), the first in the Bartimaeus trilogy, a series my mom bought me as a gift. She thought the books sounded cool, and sure, they were fantastic. They were a bit slow for me to read at first, but I still couldn't stop. I chose the first book only because it's the first, and I'd rather start from the beginning.

Even though I have gotten this far, I still have no clue which I'll pick. If any of my few readers (you) have a preference, don't be afraid to comment and tell me which and why. It might help me choose, and it's always interesting to hear other's opinions.

XBox One

Okay, I'm probably a tad late for this by now, but due to the lack of owning a proper blog I haven't had the chance to complain on the web. Anyone who is even remotely interested in this topic surely knows what I'm going to talk about, but for those not yet on the bandwagon: Microsoft revealed the new Xbox-console this week, and in short, it's outrageous.

Before people call me anti-Microsoft, let me get this straight: I own an Xbox and my family owns an Xbox 360. I love both consoles and thoroughly enjoy playing with them. I eagerly awaited for the release of the next console, but it turned out to be a disaster to me.

Starting off with the obvious, I think the name is ridiculous. Xbox One? Yeah, I understand they're trying to brand it as the "One and Only Home Entertainment System", but it's still a bit weird. To me it feels like they're trying to write off the Xbox and the 360 as "prototypes" or something similar, as if they were just practice for the great Xbox One. Or maybe they weren't very good at math, I don't really know.

Next up, registering games. Oh yes, back to the old PC-times, when faking codes was the thing when borrowing games. Once you've bought a game, you have to register it onto your console before you are able to play it. After it's registered, it can only be played on the console it's registered on. No more borrowing from friends. This also means that if you buy games secondhand, you have to pay an extra fee when registering it into your Xbox One, because it was originally registered on someone else's. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand this fee would be the same price as buying the game brand new. After you've already payed at the store. I know buying secondhand doesn't profit the original seller, and I kind of understand where Microsoft is coming from, but full price for a used game you already payed for once? No thank you, I'll fire up my emulator.

What I especially love about the 360 is that I can play most of my Xbox games on it. The two consoles are hooked onto two different TVs, the Xbox onto my tiny 10-year old telly and the 360 into my dad's magnificent widescreen TV. It's awesome to be able to play Fable every once in a while so that I can actually see what I'm doing. I expected it'd be the same with Xbox One, but no. Not backwards compatible. We were planning on buying the new Xbox with my boyfriend after moving together (I only own Xbox, so I can't take our 360 with me) so that I could keep playing my 360 games. I guess we'll just buy Xbox 360, maybe think about PS 4. And it's obviously not about the technology being too difficult, it's about money.

I personally think Kinect is pretty awesome, despite obvious faults. That's why I thought built-in Kinect would be one of the rare good points in the new console. Wrong again! The Kinect, which is basically a motion sensing camera, is on all the time in Xbox One. You can say Xbox on, and the console turns on, thanks to the Kinect, but do I want a camera that's constantly monitoring me? Sure as hell I don't. It's cool that you can control it without touching the remote, but forcing the Kinect onto people isn't the solution. 

I'm not even going to go into the "Xbox Live still costs!" or the TV-features, because they're not of interest and I haven't got much to say about them, except why, Microsoft, why? Anyway, here was my thoughts on this madness, feel free to comment and agree or disagree.

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Also, hello everybody, I started a blog!

Nakkilapsi here, young woman from Finland. I do games, art, books, movies, music and a lot of other things. I'm going to write about anything I feel like writing about in this blog, so expect anything and everything.

-Nakkilapsi