Good Christmas with the family this year. My youngest brother and I got matching cameras (expect some photos of the office when I get back). Also picked up a rice cooker, which I'm seriously looking forward to getting some use out of. Most of the rest was clothing... you know you're getting old when you're happy to get socks and underwear -because they were on your list-.

Also have Fallout 3 en route - the other brother bought it for me and then forgot to bring it to Houston. D'oh.

I've been taking advantage of the absence of Lucky Star work and the away-from-the-computer time to play some Valkyria Chronicles. Definitely a fun game for the PS3! It's a semi-fantasy WW2-era altverse, no flying machines, lots of stuff powered by "ragnite" (useful mostly to explain how the tanks have vulnerable radiators at the back, why all your troopers have a healing item, etc.) Some fantasy elements, winged pigs, all that jazz. Your nation is plainly intended to be the Netherlands (there are windmills everywhere, in case the other metaphors don't clue you in.)

Interesting mix of turn-based and real-time, in that your units take turns, are vulnerable to enemy counter-fire while moving, but the aiming pauses the action, so you don't ever miss because you were under pressure from incoming fire. (You do, however, miss because the character just plumb missed - you get an accuracy cone and some of them just aren't that good at shooting to start off.) One nice feature is that you get "command points" to order each unit's turn with, and you can order a unit to take multiple actions in the same turn, so if you've got one gunman behind the enemy advance, they can go to town, for example.

A very odd cast of characters. Your lieutenant main character is a naturalist, your sergeant is a moe baker, your most experienced veteran has a vegetable mania, and various of your troops like their friends in the squad, or hate individuals, classes, the straight-dark-hair phenotype which is the game's Jew-equivalent, or indeed all other people. I've brought units on missions and then had them underperform because they had an allergy, or because they're country folk and not comfortable in urban combat. For all that, though, I've only had one KIA; the game's pretty generous about giving you a big window to get someone to a fallen comrade for med-evac, and the only one I lost got stampeded by the stern girl from the game's cover and her mystic spiral lance of utterly blowing my forces away in one shot.

Check out the demo if you have a PS3 and like that sort of thing. The graphics have a fun kind of aesthetic that's easy to appreciate.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 03:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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