no sunlight

i'm supposed to be working my way through my 8 page reading list for my master's course, which starts far too soon for me to get through it all. of course the result of feeling the need to do homework is doing nothing, and i definitely made it worse this week when i convinced my brother to go halves on a second-hand playstation 2. what this means is that we've been able to play all of the ps1 and ps2 games which have been left incomplete since his original ps2 gave up the ghost a year ago (tho saying that he's totally been going behind by back and completing games on his flatmate's ps2 at uni..)

as a result of this purchase i've been ignoring the (sometimes) lovely weather and holing up in my bedroom with final fantasy XII:

just me, my cat and my playstation. alf's particular favourite is the battle music, even though it freaks him out and wakes him up. you'd think he'd just go and find another bed to chill on but he doesn't think like that - he's a sucker for gaming, too.

here are some other sweet games which have/will be keeping me busy:

1. hotel dusk: room 215

this is an insanely underrated game for nintendo ds. you play a washed up former detective called Karl Hyde and solve the mystery of hotel dusk by snooping around and talking to shifty characters in their hotel rooms. the best thing about it is the way it looks like a comic, and that the characters move like they're on pages being flicked through. our hero hyde is also a complete badass: he's got a backstory, he's quiet and brooding, he wears a slick suit and a trench coat - basically he's much cooler than your average game detective, and in the process of finding the above image i found out that he's got a lively internet following complete with fan art, which makes me like the game that much more: 

2. pandemonium

pandemonium is a really old platform game for ps1. i remember being obsessed with this and getting annoyed that i couldn't do the levels where you get chased by a giant ball of electricity because i wasn't quick enough with my thumbs. in it, you play nikki, a sassy sorceress with jazzy tights, and spend the game being annoyed by her sidekick fargus, who is apparently a jester, though it's never really explained why (his jester's stick as boomerang is one of the more imaginative weapons i've seen). for some reason, when we were about 10 my brother and i agreed to swop our copy of this game for our cousin's copy of the (waaaay inferior) pandemonium 2, and it hasn't been seen since, but i live in hope of finding the original in a charity shop someday. i once found a picture disc edition of final fantasy 8 in oxfam for £4.99 so charity shop miracles do happen.

3. star wars episode 1: the phantom menace

i'm not going into this too much because anything i say about the phantom menace film not actually being that bad usually results in a combination of abuse and terrible jar-jar binks impressions. however, i love this game. it's not a straight playthrough of the film but there's enough ewan mcgregor-as-obi-wan soundbites to keep me happy. also, most other star wars video games are either rubbish or far too difficult, so i'm definitely into one which isn't too boring/hard.

4. the fifth element

this is basically tomb raider with milla jovovich instead of angelina jolie, but since the fifth element is waaaay cooler than tomb raider i definitely prefer this game, even though it is THE MOST DIFFICULT GAME IN THE ENTIRE WORLD (apart from the SNES game of home alone 2, but that is genuinely off the scale). i would really like to meet someone who's completed it, but just in case this never happens i figure having the means to play it again is a good reason to have another crack at it. 

5. final fantasy VII

this is officially my favourite game ever. which is weird because i've yet to actually complete it, despite having played it through to the final boss twice. it's one of those annoying games where you get to the end fairly easily then realise you've got to train up a hella lot before you stand any chance of beating the final baddie, and you've already completed the story up to there so there's nothing to interest you while you train, resulting in an incomplete game. it's the only videogame that's ever made me cry, and also the most frustrating game ever because when we first played it there was a rumour that you could gameshark your ps1 and bring the dead character back (untrue - and one you've gamesharked your ps1 it's never the same again). as i write this my brother is just finding out that our save game right before the final boss has been wiped off his memory card, taking me that much further away from my reading list for the rest of the summer...