Cause I already ate them all. Damn.

I just ate a late night sandwich. With cheese. Realized halfway through that the cheese was moldy. Hmm. So far no side-effects. Maybe this is what they used to toughen themselves up in the old days.

At the start of this year I bought a NDS Lite (view post), and I've been using it feverishly since then. I thought I'd take a few minutes to jot down my experience with it so far, and write quick reviews for the second trilogy of games I've bought.

The Second Trilogy

The first games I bought were Pokemon HeartGold, Advanced Wars Dark Conflict And COP - The Recruit. I've been playing the former two of those a LOT. I sold the third one. The firstly mentioned just keeps getting better and better, though I'm on a hiatus now, and the second was pretty good, though when compared to the original Advance Wars game for the DS it's not quite so amazing. The only really great feat this game has is a bunch of extra save files for custom levels. Otherwise the Dual Strike edition beats it in all aspects. Of course I bought it. Here's the ratings. :)

I've been waiting to buy Advance Wars DS for a few months. It took a while before I found a reasonable price for it and swallowed the bait. That was before summer btw, and I haven't regretted it since. I've played through the campaign multiple times, both in easy and hard mode. I've played through at least a hundred other levels in the War Room or Versus category, made a few levels of my own, tried survival, tried combat, and gathered medals like there was no tomorrow. I'm currently at silver status, having attained all medals for units destroyed and units manufactured, and slowly progressing on the other medalular aspects. Advance Wars DS is what I thought the sequel to the GBA versions of the game would never be - even more feature-packed than before. The campaign seems about the same lengthwise, yet the number of COs has increased, as have the overall number of included levels. There are also two new game modes. There's survival, in which you either survive by a limited amount of time, funds or turns. There's also combat, in which the battle isn't turn-based but live, and not just a little different from the real game. They're not major parts of the game, but they're appreciated specials.

The gallery and the music room make a return from the GBA, too, and of course there's a lot of multiplayer capability. Both using the same device, or using different devices, or by trading maps and other stuff. The music is great, the graphics are great, the level designs are smart and creative, the campaign is entertaining, the extras and medals all give extended playability the right sense of achievement. If you have the old GBA games, you can insert those and gain an extra level and background for each one. Unfortunately my AW1 broke, but I'm seriously contemplating buying it again. Problem is, it seems to be rather rare. Nevertheless though, this is a great series, and this continuation of the game is nothing half-assed. It's perfection as always. It's one of the best games for the NDS, a must-have for anyone with strategical interest.

Or not. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't benefit from owning this game though. Maybe the creators got a bit ahead of themselves in the sequel. This is how the game really should be. It has everything from the old games, and all the news it needs to be a great sequel without missing any of the content that made the old games the greatness they were. How awesome wouldn't it be with one game including all three game campaigns so far btw? That would blow my mind.

Second priority on my list of games to buy was TrackMania. As soon as I found out there was a NDS version I bought it. Well, almost, as soon as the price dropped. It's not as perfect as AWDS, but it's a great game regardless. There are a hundred unique tracks made for the DS, in three environments (stadium, rally and desert - desert being my favorite, rally second). These are just 3/6 of the environments included in the computer version, but as long as it isn't a port I'm not disappointed. The tracks are all new. The menus are easy to navigate. Winning medals is just as challenging as it should be, and you can buy new tracks, skins and blocks at the shop for all medals you win. There's a built-in editor too, so you can make your own tracks, and there's a lot of space to save tracks on. The music reminds of the computer music, as do all graphical aspects of the game except the menu. It's nothing new, it's just a lotta new tracks to race on and a victory to achieve through winning everything Gold.

If you're not a patient person it might be too much for you as the harder tracks can really get annoying after a hundred tries or so without success, but on the other hand this seems to be one of the better racing games for the DS overall, difficulty excluded. It may not have the most cars (there's one for each environment + a bunch of skins) but 100 levels is a lot of levels. Also, there's the editor, which means there's a potential 100000 levels yet unmade.

The one big flaw in this game is the buggy physics. At times you can see the edges between building blocks (where the ground is supposed to be merged) and if you hit the ground at the wrong angle you can sometimes go through it, especially on the more complex tracks where levels don't tend to be very flat. The car can also land bad and slow you down for no reason sometimes. The controls are good, but the game is otherwise a bit buggy. If gameplay had been perfect it would have been a definite 5 though, cause it's a great game. And I'm not just saying that cause I'm a TM fan. ;)

One more thing to mention about these two games is that you can navigate the menus through the buttons instead of by stylus, something I prefer. I bought Worms - Open Warfare with great expectations, and it turns out this was one thing you couldn't do in Worms. All menus HAVE to be navigated by stylus, as well as certain features of the game, which greatly reduces playability. The game otherwise is like a quick port of the computer version with a few hundred features removed. There are barely any game modes to chose from. Missions? Training? None of that. You can either have a quick game, or you can try the editor. Wait, maybe there was deathmatch... or not... but even if there was it's not enough. The menus are simple. There's barely any customization options. You can't change attire or gravestones or sounds or anything. There are no extra settings when you start a custom game. There's nothing. If you're playing against someone, sure, it'll always be fun, but the lack of customization is awful. This game is about as flexible as a ball of fire. It's also glitchy and very simplistic in terms of graphics. I didn't own this game for more than a week before I sold it again. Maybe the sequel is better, IDK, but this at least was a disappointment.

The DS Otherwise?

It has sharp edges. They cut into your palms if you hold it the wrong way. You may have to angle either the DS or your hands a bit to keep the pain away. The screen has also appeared blank a couple of times after I accidentally pushed the monitor back too far. I knew since the GBA SP that making a console with a vulnerable joint was an idiotic choice, but I guess it'll hold as long as I don't do anything stupid like stepping on it. The GBA would hold for being stepped on though. You must admit that these devices were a lot more reliable in the good old days. Like... 5 years ago. It's still a great device though.

I haven't tried out a very large selection of games for this specific console, and I don't intend to. The NDS is the first console I've owned to which I am only buying games I really want to play or need. Currently, those games include Advance Wars, Trackmania and Pokemon. They would have included Worms and GTA as well, but Worms sucked, and I'm not sure I like the top-down view in portable GTA, so I'm not buying that. The Trackmania sequel? The Worms sequel? Time will tell. Oh wait, I already bought TM Turbo. ;) I'll leave a review as soon as I get two more games...

Also, Mario Cart is a must. I'll get that eventually.

Yes, I did just switch to Chrome, but it seems that old habits die hard. I guess the only way to fully migrate to a new browser is to remove the old one, but since I work with websites I saved this one for testing. Who am I kidding. I saved it cause I still like FireFox and I hope they solve their functionary issues so I can go back to using it. Browsing around in Chrome makes me all the more aware that there really is no perfect browser. What's wrong with Chrome?

• The biggest flaw is the download bar. It shows on all pages. As soon as you download a file the bar pops up at the bottom of the page, listing the files you just downloaded. Of course it's a great feature if you want to open those files or view the progress specifics of files being downloaded, but mostly I don't, so it's just a box that is in the way.
• The second biggest flaw I can come up with is the lack of customizable design. If they could add a feature where you chose your own gradient for the blue bar at the top of the page, that would be awesome. I don't want to change the rest of the browser, I just want to change the color of that one bar. For some reason, don't ask me why, it disturbs me greatly.
• Third, as you start running separate apps through the browser, the browser starts running a shitload of processes. I opened up the Task Manager (the Windows one, not the built-in-Chrome edition) to shut down something else and for some reason I didn't like seeing Chrome hogging most of the task space, even if most processes are only about 1MB big.

Otherwise it still is a great browser. With all the competition between browsers going on I'm surprised they haven't fixed the number one issue with their browser. I looked around, and I'm far from the only one who doesn't like this limitation is customization. In fact, it's been the most popular feature request since 2009. For some reason the fact that they still haven't fixed it kind of brings down my overall trust in Chrome. Ok. That's all I have to say. Now maybe I should remove the FireFox link from the quicklaunch menu or I'll probably keep clicking it without thinking...

Aint that a shame? I posted a post about this service way back in 2006. It was a pretty groovy tool while it lasted. This is what it looked like last I saw it. Old screenshot btw.

If you're looking for a program to quickly compress images, or change dimensions, or even to rename files - this one works pretty well. It's simple and batch processes files. It handles thousands of files at a time easily. Just be sure the files aren't copy-protected or it won't work! I tried that once, and it took a while before I figured out why it wasn't working. Neutral error messages is the only program flaw I can think of right now. :)