PixlBit

I downloaded and played the Yo-Kai Watch Demo on 3DS the other day. I liked it. It's totally an RPG with exploration and item gathering and battles with Yo-Kai, who sometimes become your friend. The battle system is kind of neat. You have six Yo-Kai that you use to battle set in a wheel with the top three being the ones battling and the other three in reserve. You can rotate the wheel at any time to bring a different set of Yo-Kai tot he battle line. Then the Yo-Kai battle automatically, but you can build up their special moves by playing simple mini games during battle like tapping targets with the stylus, or tracing a pattern, or drawing circles very fast. These come up randomly it seems. Then you can Purify a Yo-Kai if they get a status effect that immobilizes them by rotating the wheel and putting them in the back line where the Purify button becomes active. My only issue with the battle system is that I can't see what's going on while I'm doing mini games to build up a special move. I could be getting my butt kicked during that time, but it's not very long, so it could only be an issue against a tough opponent, I guess.

Last night I felt a bit bored with Pokemon Shuffle, and too tired from work to consider M&L: Paper Jam, so I downloaded Pokemon Picross. Usually I don't like these number puzzle games because they get boring to me pretty quickly, but I tried it anyway, it's free.

In poking around the internet for more games set in the 17th century, I came across this winning submission to the British Library's annual "Off the Map" videogame design competition (http://www.bl.uk/projects/off-the-map) by six students calling themselves Puddling Lane Productions (http://puddinglanedmuga.blogspot.com/). It's a 3D render of 17th century London before The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed it all. Here's the video:

In looking at games set in the 17th century, my theme for February, I came across this 2001 PS2 game Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse. It's full of dark gothic fantasy visuals and supposedly set in 1670. Gothic fantasy was created in the 18th century in literature and it looks back to medieval times for its feelings of horror. So is this game really set in 17th century? No, only in its own world's timeline. Whatevs, It takes as it's influence Diablo and Fallout, enough said. I got my retro store to mail it to me from New York for $8. Here's a pic:

Since 11am this morning I've been waiting for Destiny to install on my Xbox 360. It's been just over 2 hours so far. Mark tells me it took him 2.5 hours, so it should be done soon, but WHAT A WAIT! This is by far the longest install I've ever experienced for a game. I hope it's worth it.

In preperation for February, and my study of the seventeenth century, I made a list of games that take place in that period from the wiki pages on the subject. I ordered one from my retro store, Jay Street Video Games (which I'll mention when it comes in the mail) and picked up Port Royale 3: Pirates & Merchants from Gamestop for $9. Here's a pic:

Yeah. This screen shot sums up Monday. Horses to ride during the day, and dogs to help me control the mobs at night. What a life it is. 

I started the download of Assassin's Creed II on Xbox 360. I wanted to play it because I'm kind of studying the 16th century right now and want to see how they rendered Italy and the various famous characters in the game. While I waited, I played Minecraft with my friend, and well, I got really carried away with that, and it ate up the whole day. 

I'm sitting here in Eastern PA watching snowmageddon and putting together the paper craft figures that came with my preorder of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. I just finished them and took a picture. See below.

Picked this up today and got the paper craft characters as a preorder bonus. See pic below: