Idiot...

I am such a dunce... I never knew that you could actually turn off the WiFi on Jerry the Berry. As a result my battery has been draining faster than water down a plughole. Before actually being told that you have to turn it off to make the battery last I had to charge the thing 3 times since Saturday, which probably would have been more if I'd kept it on during the night as well. So now that I've turned it off, the battery is steady eddie.

Ahem, I need to think logically about these things in future.

Slightly Dimmed Down - What Did I Expect?

So finally here's the last review - of "Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings". It's a little toned down from the old heyday of the brilliant "FFXII" but what did I expect? Absolutely amazingly realistic graphics on a console that can't handle that many pixels?

Actually, the CGI cut-scenes are pretty special. You have to kind of hold your DS about a foot away from your own body to get the full impact but it's there and it's special, possibly the most realistic graphics of all the games that were there.

I have to admit though that it took me a while to get into this. The whole idea of it being set in a world away from Ivalice seemed a little strange, since that world worked so well and was so diverse - there was a million and one things you could do with its wonderful landscape. Once you get used to the new floating world of Lemures though, it grows on you as well. I just wish there were more towns and quests - new quests are available after every chapter you complete (so for me I've been able to complete two sets of missions, since I've just completed Chapter 3 - Chapter 1 doesn't count). Although you do have access to the Sky Saloon after a certain point in the game, there aren't enough towns and people to interact with! I enjoyed the fact that there were so many people to talk to and little mini-tasks to complete in cities like Rabanastre and Archades on FFXII. Maybe I'm just not giving this one enough time to heat up.

Gameplay is a little fiddly and a little bit difficult to get a hold of. Your characters also level up very very very slowly so in order for them to be strong enough to progress, you have to undertake a lot of Monster Melees in areas that you've completed. Luckily you do have the power of little monsters known as the Yahri to aid you, although even for them to come to your aid you have to collect Auracite from the various missions in the game.

Simply speaking: it's difficult. It's a bit long-winded. But it's really fun, if not frustrating at times when your little Yahri die for no apparent reason when a massive dragon comes out of nowhere and breathe fire on them... The story is a lot less political and violent than FFXII although the DS is marketed at younger people, so they had to tone down some of the violence (FFXII was full of wars, killings and murders, so much different to the previous installments)...

When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade!

So here's the thing: I screwed up a little bit at work on something that was super-important and I went crying to my mum down the phone. That weekend I go shopping with her and dad and the next thing I know they're saying they're going to buy me a BlackBerry despite the screw-up and for getting that far anywhere.

So now Jerry the Berry and I are completely in sync, I don't have to worry about the money on my old phone running out and I can e-mail anyone I want anywhere I want and oh, I've got complete Internet access (I was thinking of writing this post on Jerry but then I thought nah, I don't want to rub it in people's faces!).

Oh happy day! Three days on from this and I keep wanting people to text and e-mail me just so I can try out the little keypad or if it's someone I haven't talked to in ages just to tell them that I have a new phone... Whee, this is so cool...

They're really supposed to be used for business purposes but I suppose as long as you've got a few friends and a bunch of e-mail addresses then you're good to go - I can still make use of the other functions somehow...

Olympics 08

After not caring for ages about the Olympics I've finally come around to watching quite a bit of it over the last few days. For some reason you get sucked in if you watch one event (for me it was the women's double diving from 10m, in which some of the smallest divers you've ever seen competed).

Yesterday I found myself watching the majority of the men's gymnastics and spending most of that thinking "how on earth do they make it look so effortless?" I have a certain admiration for anyone who is any good at sports because I've never come around to it - I was practically out of breath yesterday when I had to run for the bus. Just getting to the Olympics must be a heck of an achievement because the competition is so fierce - winning a medal in it must be a dream come true, something I would only be able to achieve in my dreams.

This lunchtime I started to gasp at the track and field events through my peanut butter sandwich. I wish I hadn't watched the unbelievable performance of Jamaica's Usain Bolt in the Men's 100m race. It wasn't human - I know it was only on the passage to the semis, but still the guy didn't break sweat and was only jogging, jogging I tell you! He even looked casually from side to side, had practically no movement in his arms and probably could have waved to the crowd and still won the race super-comfortably and under 10 seconds. A super-scary performance. A bit like Michael "Baltimore Bullet" Phelps but on land and running... Eek, you may as well just give him the gold now.

Stylus Trouble... Blame Producers...

Okay so ages ago I said I'd review the three games I bought for my new DS, and here's the second about a month overdue (what?).

"The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass" is a return to the controversial days of "The Wind Waker" where everyone was up in arms about the fact that the producers had moved away from the realistic Zelda world into a cartoonish land coloured in by cel-shading. Nevertheless, it made the whole experience rather unique. It was the funniest Zelda, and this promises to be the same. Once you got past the "dodgy" graphics, it was brilliant.

Basically, it's a follow-on story from "Wind Waker" and Link is sailing the high seas with his pirate friends, including Tetra. Tetra is curious about the ghost ship and so orders her crew to go and look for it - with disastrous consequences. She is abducted and Link washes up on a far away island after he falls in the sea trying to save her (he should be used to that after washing ashore on Windmill Island after being catapulted over the Forbidden Fortress by Helvinek at the beginning of "Wind Waker". What luck). So begins a massive quest to find and invade the ghostly ship.

Everything you do is controlled by the stylus and this is incredibly difficult. The reason why this game is taking me so long just to complete the second (yes, second) island is because the controls are so fiddly. I still haven't grasped how to make Link roll, although I'm quite good at killing the jelly-like ChuChus. Also, I was stuck at sea for a while when I couldn't work out how to make the ship move (major problem!).

I just think that the other buttons could have been used more to make it easier to control. I never want to buy easy games but then I don't want ones that are so hard I can't fathom for a month. I'm a master at the other Zelda games (although anyone who knows the locations of all the poes on "Twilight Princess" should alert me) so I won't let this beat me. The characters are funny, the story, though simple, is completely engaging and the world is rendered to the same quality of "Wind Waker" - don't let the stylus put you off. Just try your best. That's what I'm doing.

Lad Mag/Girl Mag

There's a debate raging at the minute about whether lads' mags encourage a lack of responsibility amongst young men and teach them that women are cheap and will do anything (i.e. that we're all brainless airheads!). Of course, I hate to think that these gross publications are making men believe that women are just objects - but it's true.

Then I watched Channel 4 News the other night and a former editor of such vile magazines (I'm not even going to give the names the time of day) came on and said that women's magazines do the same but use words instead of soft porn to talk to women about sex.

Then I realised that this was really true! I suppose this could be taken as a backhanded compliment that we can use our imaginations and brains instead of having it all laid out in front of us so graphically. You know by now that I hate Cosmopolitan because it's just sex, sex, sex so I wonder if these sorts of mags are sending out a bad message to women about being promiscuous?

The ex-editor of the lads mags claimed that mags like this don't shape the society we live in but then if lots of young men between the age of 16 and 25 "read" these things then they're obviously going to be affected by it. Plenty of the men I know think in this way but then so do the women - they're obsessed with getting a boyfriend, afraid of being alone and have over-active sex lives. It's all they think about.

Society must be going downhill... please tell me that this is the case elsewhere as well because it's a bit scary and it's not likely to change soon!

Music Meets... Video Games

Okay so a few months ago I published a short post about Quentin Tarantino being inspired by Kate Bush to direct Kill Bill because the lyrics of "The Wedding List" are so similar to the storyline of his cult bloodfest. Of course, it was a fat chance but fun!

So now I've come to you with another little musical mash-up: readers of Jamjarsuperstar will know that I've recently purchased "A Kiss in the Dreamhouse" by Siouxsie and the Banshees. If you examine that cover, near to where the images of Siouxsie Sioux's backing band are placed there is clearly the symbol of the Triforce, a recurring divine object in the Legend of Zelda series. Did Shigeru Miyamoto and his colleagues stumble upon this symbol on this album cover?

Coincidence? You decide...