We're the Kids in America

So Christmas just happened, here's the loot rundown.

• Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP)
• Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)
• Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles (DS)
• Rhythm Paradise (DS)
• Geneforge 1-5 (PC) thanks Dave!
• Frozen Synapse (PC) thanks Void!
• grey jumper
• various marvel characters t-shirt, glows apparently?
• batman t-shirt
• 2 big bags of Beef Jerky
• deep pan chunky choc pizza!!!1
• bag of chocolate coins
• vimto skedaddles
• 2 Hershey's chocolate bells
• A SCIFI BOOK I FORGOT THE NAME OF by John Bear
• XNA 4.0 Developer Guide
• some kind of book about sci-fi myths
• Origami Calendar, i.e. a fold to do every day
• Cats Calendar!!!!!!!!!!!!!21

Aside from that, I'm now in America with Emily! We're here to see the in-laws and also so we can attend Awesome Games Done Quick 2012 and raise a ton of money for charity.

A Visit to the Matriarchy

I've been away this past couple of days down south a little, to where (most of) my mother's family lives. It's a lovely area, right next to the Forest of Dean. It's been some time since I was there (at least 8 years or so), seeing everybody change in small ways was quite interesting and I'm glad I went. Of course, Emily got to see the other half of the family and enjoyed it plenty too!

Now that's over, back to Quake practice.

Honung

Today a package arrived covered in Swedish stamps and I'm now a proud owner of some genuine home-grown honung!

Quoth the label: "En naturprodukt utan tillsatser. Förvaras svalt."

This cool gift comes courtesy of one Daniel Wikell, better known as moooh to Speed Demos Archive. I'm sure it'll be of great use for quite some time.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

I didn't play the base MvC3 because I was waiting for this one, so, what do I think?

It's still crazy fun like MvC2, but the inclusion of now-standard features like the mission combos gives some way of actually learning to play it without resorting to wikis and forums. Some of the mission combos are also hella flashy and fun to do, so they're worth the thumbstrain. The last boss fight against Galactus is hilariously over the top and plays out just like it should. There's lots of pretty hard achievements to get, too, so this one will be out for a while.

I'd write more but this is a pretty good description; it's like MvC2. If you liked that, get this.

Anypet (Dream)

So for some reason I move out into the country (I think it's someplace in China or Tibet) where a distant relative of mine lives in a very old farm. I often notice the farm has lots of animals around (not too unusual) but the variation is crazy, with lots of birds I've never seen before and also llamas and giant horned turtles etc. One night I'm helping out in the big barn on the property and it suddenly gets dark so I decide to sleep there. When I wake up the next morning there's a huuuuuuge bright pink cat cuddled up to me so I decide to keep it as a pet. Stuff like this happens again and again, with yet odder animals being found, and I come to the conclusion that this barn is some kind of... portal to THE ANIMAL PLANE or something.

I decide to set up an exotic pet shop and have it built on the farm. People come from pretty much everywhere to see my crazy stock so I make a website for it and I get ridiculous amounts of hits and orders. To fill quotas I start training some of the animals to do the catching for me. I dinstictly remember watching a large parrot nudge a smaller bird into a cage and closing it for me. Clever parrot! Also a grizzly bear very daintily picking up a jerboa or something and brushing its fur for some reason.

My well-trained animals hit the headlines and a circus director comes to ask me if he could use them in his acts but I say no because I don't want them mistreated or anything. For some reason this provokes him to have my distant-family-member-who-I-don't-remember-at-all assassinated so I buy the land with my newfound wealth and live there forever cataloguing the stranger and stranger animals that appear from my barn.

Tekken 6 (360)

I recently grabbed Tekken 6 because I wanted a new PSP memory card to replace that infeasibly small one, and decided to buy a game at the same time. I've wanted to see how the series has come out for a long time; the last game I played was Tekken 4 which I kinda enjoyed, but the massive focus on wallhits was annoying. So, how's 6?

Pretty similar. Wallhits are still important but juggling is far more so; even the standard AI will take time out to juggle the crap out of you if it hits a launcher, so one hit turns into a lot of damage quickly. It's still a fun game to just pull out and play, though. Everyone has a zillion moves as ever.

The main difference in 6 is the addition of the 'Scenario Mode', which has a horrible and nonsensical plot tied together with voice actors all speaking different languages for no apparent reason but all able to understand each other perfectly. Alisa has to have some of the most horrible visual design I've ever seen (and I've played Final Fantasy 10/12/13) but the campaign is actually pretty fun once you get used to the strange hybrid controls. I mostly played through with Lei instead of Lars because Lars is an idiot. The optional stages are a large leap in difficulty, especially the well-named Nightmare Train which took me over 2 hours to beat.

You also unlock a crapload of different clothes for your character to wear by playing Scenario, although most of them are just palette swaps. The potential is there to make people look rather dashing or completely stupid, which is always welcome.

Haven't tried online play yet.

PlayStation Blues

My PS2 which I've had since 2002 gave up the ghost yesterday, so I went on a mission to find a new one. Fortunately I didn't have to go far, because GAME actually had a preowned PS2 slim for only £30. Holy cow, what a find!

So yeah, finished Disc 2 of Final Fantasy VIII for Emily today. Funny how you get given a massive plot dump then you immediately fly over and kick the crap out of the one person who everybody loved in the space of about 15 minutes. The garden fight FMVs are still as spectacular as I remember. Disc 3 finally explains all the Laguna crap that's been happening so Emily might appreciate that one a bit more.