On the off chance that anyone's actually wondered why I haven't been posting so much here over the past couple of weeks, it's probably because my new DSi has been gobbling up such a huge portion of my free time. Up until now, I missed out on the whole Nintendo DS revolution, so I'm aware that none of these games are really anything new - but hell, they're new and exciting to me, so please bear with me here.
Nintendogs - Chihuahua and Friends
Addictive, adorable, wonderful. In concept, this isn't terribly dissimilar to the
Dogz and
Catz PC games which were popular in the 90s, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of them in terms of graphics, technology and all the things that you can do with your digital chum. Your puppy will recognise her name and respond to all the vocal commands that you teach her throughout, you pet her, train her and care for her with use of your stylus, enter her in various canine-related contests and get her to bond with the neighbourhood pooches. I must say, they did a really impressive job of replicating all those little canine movements and mannerisms, and as far as I can tell the cries are authentic to each breed - you'd have to be pretty darn hard-hearted to play this game and not feel some degree of emotional attachment to that little lolloping mass of pixels. It's too bad that the DSi camera doesn't allow you to take in-game pictures, or I'd post a few snapshots of my little Latin American friend Flurry - I'm getting to be so freakin' proud of her.
Incidentally, while there are a few different versions of this game available, the only real difference between them is the order in which the various breeds become available to you - as you progress through the game, you earn trainer points, which enable you to unlock around twenty or so different wolf mutations to take home with you. I still have a loooong way to go before I get my (already well-chewed) stylus on the beagle and shih tzu companions which I'm craving to purchase for Flurry.
Pokemon Pearl
Great to be back in the Pokemon loop again (oh, and incidentally, am I the only person here who plays Pearl, as opposed to Diamond?) If I recall correctly, there was a thread here in the Other Entertainment section in which we were able to compare our pokemon teams and exchange wi-fi friend codes for battles. I wouldn't mind digging that up at some point, though obviously I still need time to build up a team that I'm happy with. So far, this is definitely proving to be the best Pokemon Generation yet - nice to see that all of the positive innovations of Ruby and Sapphire have been retained while all the shortcomings of those particular games (loss of the day/night feature, absence of older pokemon species) have been graciously ammended. The introduction of the Wi-Fi trading system has definitely made my life a heck of a lot easier (I remember the old days when, in certain circles, playing Pokemon came with some kind of stigma attached, so I often shyed away from finding people I could trade with. Hence, my Pokedex was never complete, and I never got to battle with a Zangoose or a Gligar). The earliest gym leaders have been pretty challenging this time around (remember how big a pushover Falkner was in Gold/Silver?), or at least they have been according to my own methodology (it's a particular quirk of mine, but I always prefer to battle with only the exact same number of pokemon that the gym leader does, a la the TV show). And best of all, I finally have a Bidoof of my very own (except that he's long since evolved into a Bibarel - I call him Socrates).
Spore Creatures
Actually, I haven't gotten round to playing this one yet. My head has just been stuck so much in the aforementioned two. Well, soon enough I'm sure.