So, once again returning to the blog after a break means I’m faced with the difficult task of filling the blanks. Well, events in no particular chronological order:
I bought Mario Galaxy for the Wii and I’m about 50 stars into it. I hear you can complete the game once you get 60, although there are 120 stars to be found in total. The game is a joy to play, its colourful, well designed and really nice to look at. This time, along with Mario’s usual repertoire of moves and silly noises, the Wii remote is used to shoot. I personally love this feature and it seems so natural although kind of like playing two games at once. The shooting will stun enemies and the cursor is also used to pick up items which you can use as space monies. The game has some of the best plat forming game playing sequences I have played. Although I don’t know if it can be described as plat forming since you run around spheres and planets for the most part. I especially like the way the Wiimote is used to pull and catapult you about the galaxy like a pinball.
Other stuff I have been briefly messing around with is the “Mii contest channel”, yes it’s not called “Check Mii Out” here either and the super difficult “Castlevania Dracula X chronicles” for the PSP. I really like the idea of the new channel and I do find some of the creations to be incredible based on the limitations, but the same limitations are present in the options available. Everything put out seems so simplistic and restrictive, which although user friendly, I’d rather have a more tangible online service, maybe it will shape up over time.
Castlevania has three games built into it and the 3D one is so much fun to play through, it just so unforgiving from the outset, especially the bosses and the fact that there are almost no health items. The controls of the main character are pretty alien to me and take some getting used to, like the way you cannot aim your whip up or down or diagonally only forward, and the way you traverse stairs is a pain. Aside from that it’s clearly a game of substance and the dialogue is so fantastically cheesy. For the PSP version they have rendered new 3D cut sequences which look great. That along with Crisis core, and Metal Gear are games I really need to invest more time in. Perhaps it’s because I don’t take it outside much and most of my playing is done here in the apartment plugged in the wall.
Well, aside from gaming which actually amounts to just sitting moving my fingers I have been out and about since I last posted. My friend out here makes music and wanted to put together a kind of stop motion music video and for the location he chose one of the coolest places I have ever visited on this Island. About a half an hour’s drive out from Taichung central lies an amusement park that time forgot. It is overgrown, ravaged by earthquakes and abandoned for years but aside from that, amazingly intact and a great place to wander around. The ghost house, the roller coaster, big wheels, bumper cars, carrousel are all still there and the whole place has this post apocalyptic feeling as if you are the last people on earth. Check out the pictures of Flikr as soon as I throw them up.
Yesterday we had an open house of sorts at the school and once it was done we all went for something to eat. The restaurant was in an area of the city called "First Square" or the old hub of Taichung before the action moved down here. This area is where all the Thai, Vietnamese and Pilipino workers live, shop, eat and drink after a very hard day’s work. On Sundays the area is awash with this people all finding ways to relax and socialize. The area then is host to some of the greatest foreign food Taichung can offer and a work colleague who speaks fluent Thai brought us to a tiny but popular restaurant tucked away in one of the tiny corridors on a third floor of somewhere. That end of town has a completely different feeling to the area where I live. It has such a great atmosphere, grimy, disorientating and noisy but great and the food we ate was superb.
Of course the food we ate was about five times cheaper than in town, I had a Thai curry and some imported Singha beer. Even for me the spices were almost too hot and my face was so red, luckily the dusky loft lighting meant the only thing we could really see was the glowing screens of the Thai karaoke. The whole area was so huge and packed to the rafters with stalls selling everything from spices to mobile phones that being whisked through it all didn’t really give me a chance to take half of it in so I’ll head back there soon with my camera.
I’m back home now after quite a busy weekend gallivanting about visiting new places. None of this would have been possible without my trusty scooter and I’m so glad I bought a decent full helmet despite it costing me about 45 quid, it makes me look like a spaceman but a safe on at least. Now it’s time to relax at home doing nothing. A weekend should never go by without a fair share of home time and I think I hit just the right balance this weekend and once I have had a hot shower and a cup of tea, everything is going to be just right. I hear a high pitched Italian voice calling me from that white box next to TV.
Hope everyone is doing great back westward as I always look forward to your comments and any information about what has been going on in the UK. I am more than a little disconnected from life and events back home and I keep thinking I am going to wake up any second in the queue at Sainsbury’s having dosed of temporarily having all this been a dream. Getting out of the house to rural areas always reminds me where I am and how different it can be at times.
Til next time,
This has been MMI
