What I Played Today: September 12

Dance Dance Revolution, Puzzle Agent, Red Dead Redemption, Persona 3

A day of small wonders, I played a bit of DDR, going to try that every chance I get, if only to get myself moving again. I wish the Kinect would come out already so that I can play Dance Central instead; the songs will be better and the amount of dancing required will actually look like dancing rather than pathetic feet flailing. I can’t believe I used to be fairly good at this, because I topple if the song moves too fast.

Also played about five minutes of both Red Dead Redemption and Persona 3, trying to grab a couple of old sparks, but instead finding myself getting a bit bored. In Red Dead, I was suddenly pulled into a raid on a town that I didn’t actually want to participate in, and just as suddenly my feet touched a small patch of water that I could have waded out of and I died instantly. Guess that foot drop off the pier lead to deadly decompression. And in Persona 3 I ran around that damn tower some more. By the end of the game, you come to hate that damn tower.

But in terms of new and non-exhausting experiences, I picked up Puzzle Agent for the iPhone, and I like it so far, even if the puzzles take a lot of lead-in to get around to and when they do appear, they are a bit simple. I mean, there’s this build-up to some number being written in code, only for it to be an impossible-to-miss white space picture. I did get a bit stupid and screw up the last couple of puzzles I’ve done, including one that should have been obvious, but I went too far in assuming what the puzzle meant. “Maybe all the icons are supposed to be closed symmetric loops with a solid baseline. Oh wait, no, it’s just the numbers 1-4 put next to their mirror images. Well, don’t I feel stupid.” But the game makes up for the crappy puzzles by the building of atmosphere and voice acting, with a very Twin Peaks feeling to the game (which was exactly what they were going for, of course). I look forward to playing it through, as I enjoy most of what Telltale works on.