Donkey Kong Country Returns

Another day, another slim chance of finding a friend. I boot up my fully charged DS Lite to the familiar but empty sight of Stornway Inn in Dragon Quest 9, and select the canvass mode, today I was going to find a guest. I watch the screen for a few moments in the hope of a minor miracle. Maybe my neighbour had the game? Nah. I put the console in my bag and head off into the world, uncertain where the day will take me, but hopeful.

Sydney is a big place, there’s got to be quite a few people here who own Dragon Quest 9. It’s not the most successful game in the world, but it’s a damn good one, and a lot of people can’t resist a good RPG. I just had to find them. DS is quite popular too, I see them everywhere. At least a few of them must have DQ9. Surely. Even if nobody bought it, at least ten copies that I know of were given away in competitions.

Continue reading “Canvass Quest 9 – Journey of a Lonely Traveler” →

The game is fine. Many “vocal” gamers are simply ape-shit awful players who’ve lost their quick-learning intellectual gamer edge over years of “soft” action games holding their hands thru non-challenges and waterfalls of rewards that celebrate their mediocrity. You have the displeasure of identifying them cuz they still go to the forums and blogs you go to and whine about “moving the controller” being something inexplicably difficult. “I just don’t get it,” one might say right before his 2,000 word essay (a waggle complaint; rather, his failure to waggle) used to exert the might of his lifelong gamer cred, the same cred that crumbled with his preceding statement.

Continue reading “Donkey Kong Control Rectology” →