I mean really… automatic doors at train station not working for an entire year, then they finally get them fixed, and a week later they’re broken again. How hard can it be to just make sure a door opens and closes, lol, other places don’t seem to have such fundamental problems with basic tasks like this.

(and wtf is a “delivery manager” anyway… is that like a “solutions provider”, or a “synergy organizer” or something? lol)

Indie 360 games yes, the games made by independent developers and released for consumption on xbox live, usually available for very cheap indeed. Got bored at the weekend so ended up spending some time going through all of the games that are available and playing some demo’s and stuff.

Now let’s be honest here, out of 400+ games there’s an *incredible* amount of crap. Yes, you too can pay money to turn your 360 into the image of a fireplace, or a crappy aquarium, or some perverse masturbatory aid (“remote massage”… yeah… of course…). But amongst the huge steaming piles of crap (a bit like the iphone app store i’d imagine) there are a few that i found worthy of downloading the trial versions of.

Brief summary of everything I played here starting with the average going down to the more interesting titles:

The Ballet of Light and Shadows:
Well it was very colourful, but not very exciting, fly around a small rainbow coloured screen avoiding the shadows (in several different ways depending on the level) in order to make your score increase. Kind of amusing for about 10 minutes, but not much life in it… unless you enjoy sitting there spending hours trying to get your score higher.
Would i buy it: No.

sin(Surfing):
You’re a small pixel man that surfs along a sin wave. Can’t fault it for artistic style, it certainly does what it says on the tin. Surf that sin wave, jump and spin and do tricks. Kinda amusing, but about 40 years too late i think.
Would i buy it: No.

Slime Volleyball 2.5D:
Oh wow, does anyone remember the web based slime volleyball (and all of it’s spin-off’s) from all those years ago? Those that went to 6th form with me should certainly remember (and the page with all of them on my site, lol)… all of us spending entire lunchtimes for months trying to beat the damn game, it gets impossible once you get to the slime that can basically ace you on every serve, unless you’re incredibly lucky. This game was certainly a blast from the past, but i think i’ll keep it simple and stick to the web game thankyou.
Would i buy it: No, but after the hours years ago i put into the web game someone probably deserves my money.

(original slime volleyball)

Clover:
Adventure puzzle game, interesting art style, it actually looked pretty good. Didn’t play it for too long though, because it basically felt like it was just going to be a game with an ultimately average plot, and incredibly boring puzzles throughout (bring the key from here all the way to the other side of the world to open that door… etc.). Nice art and style, gameplay felt boring though.
Would i buy it: No.

a Fading Melody:
Now this i thought looked really good. Girl in coma, you’re in her dream world walking through the woods, being attacked by monstrosities that she’s imagined. Every monster you kill adds light to the world, and as you progress you gradually learn more about your condition and why you’re in a coma. Didn’t play it for too long as i got frustrated at dying repeatedly at a particular point, but i’ll probably continue it at some point.
Would i buy it: Haven’t done so yet, but probably will. Nice (hopefully) short game with a simple concept and intriguing plot.

Minds Eye of Jupiter – 01:
Well it’s basically a Myst type game. First person 3D puzzle adventure. Except you’re just thrown into the game with no explanaition of what’s going on, and the puzzles aren’t very exciting (“collect 16 jugs of water” lol). Was expecting some sort of deep exciting plot seeing as it said it was chapter 01, but was instead met with a rather mediocre 3D landscape, and no plot, playing hide and seek with jugs of water.
Would i buy it: No… well maybe if the plot gets exciting in future parts.

Madrism:
I lol’d. Japanese game, no English instructions, absolutely no idea what the hell is going on. Basically from what i gathered by playing it; you have to design the floor plans for houses, you get a new piece to place down on the drawing board after placing the old one, quite fast paced. The bigger/better your house is the higher your score, but if you get it wrong your entire design inexplicably explodes into a shower of pixels. I have no idea what actions caused the house to explode, and i could never figure out how to place the doors, or place a room inside a house. So basically all i done was sit there randomly placing shapes and watching my house explode every few turns. It was very entertaining though, lol.
Would i buy it: Only if it came with instructions.

Machiavelli’s Ascent:
Ahh now this was nice and relaxing, you’re a jellyfish that wants to reach the surface, but the only way to reach the surface is to bounce yourself off of other objects in the sea. Miss one object and you sink back down to the bottom again. Score is based on how high you can get (i wonder if there actually is a “surface”). Now it doesn’t sound great, and to be honest it’s not a great game on it’s own. But what makes it really nice is the art style, and the music/sound effects, it really just is relaxing watching this jellyfish bounce off of other objects making little sounds and adding to the ambient noises of the sea.
Would i pay for it: No, well maybe, but i’m definitely keeping the trial version, it’s a nice game to throw 10 minutes at occasionally.

Time Flows But Does Not Return:
Ok lets face it, it’s not a game, it’s simply a way the creator chose to express himself. So instead of reviewing it based on it’s gaming qualities (of which it has close to none), all i’ll say is that after playing it, it did indeed manage to express the creator’s thoughts well. People will probably dismiss it as utter bollocks, some perhaps even going so far as to call it pretentious, but i thought it was really well executed, nice idea.
Would i buy it: No, all you need to do is play the trial version and you’ll get what he is trying to say.

Crescendo Symphony:
Japanese game (yes it is available on western 360′s, no it’s not in english, but it’s simple enough). Side scrolling anime styled shooter, looks really nice, even has some cute voice acting. Sadly the game is incredibly repetitive, there’s basically only one enemy that appears in the same pattern over and over again, and occasionally a bigger version appears as a boss. It has so much promise, but it just feels like he gave up making it 20 seconds into the first level and just decided to hit the repeat button, lol. I have to admit though that it is good we’re getting these sort of games instead of them being restricted by region though. Hopefully there’ll be better ones down the line.
Would i buy it: No, too repetitive.

Crescendo Symphony – Kagami no Kishi:
Obviously set in the same world as the previous game, and made by the same guy, but an entirely different game. This time it’s a tactical turn based battle. Basically you get a grid underneath your character and 3 turns to flip the tiles using a certain pattern. Shield tiles defend against attacks and sword tiles do damage. The aim of the game is to flip the tiles to attack tiles based on where your opponent doesn’t have any defence, and then flip the tiles to defence tiles based on where the opponent has his attack tiles. Simple concept, pretty game, fully voiced with cuteness (i believe this is the voice actress: Yuri Nashimoto). But yet again feels like it’s not a full game, it just feels like he’s taken the battle system out of an rpg and made it into a standalone game. Whoever made it should just spend some time making a full game with all of these bits of games he’s got.
Would i buy it: Maybe.

Colon de Jump:
Another Japanese game, the artwork in this game is great. Perfect, simple, crisp, clear, and cute. It’s got the feel of playing an old school platformer but revamped for the modern age. Really nice sweet game.
Would i buy it: Haven’t done so yet, but probably will do.

Mithra Episode 1:
You wake up in a cell, there’s a strange glowing blob telling you you must escape, and that the planet is doomed. Crazy scientests all around performing strange experiments on your people. It’s got the right balance of an interesting world, slight amount of comedy, and a plot that makes me want to carry on playing the game to find out what’s going on. It’s almost reminiscent of Abe’s Oddysee in terms of it’s peculiar setting (does anyone else actually remember that game… a true classic). Gameplay is puzzle based, and to be fair, not very challenging puzzles either, but oh well. The one complaint i do have about it though is that the movement/controls feel incredibly sluggish. But, it does look quite interesting. And it’s obviously part 1 of more to come!
Would i buy it: Yes, and i already have.

Conclusion: Out of 400+ games, there’s really only a very very small handful that are even worth spending time downloading, let alone paying for. And while the number of good games on the indie section of the 360 will improve over time, so will the numbers of utter shite. And it’s only going to make it worse to actually find those decent games amongst everything else. Hopefully microsoft can one day find a way to filter out the crap, even if it means a team of people manually reviewing and accepting/rejecting each game x-factor style (note to self: never use a reference to x-factor when writing anything again).

Ok, lets start writing this thing (really should start considering internet access when i’m away *before* leaving). Photos in the photo section. And because i don’t particularly want to write it underneath every picture… “click for fullsize” (isn’t it obvious these days on the internet though?).

   

Thursday 13th August:

Unwrapping glowsticks, lol…

   

Friday 14th August:

Arrived pretty early (like 9.45), got to Ayacon and trying find registration we were struck with an odd feeling “lots of people seem to have their bags/badges… they surely can’t all be gophers?”, got to the registration place and again rather odd feeling, so had to ask one of the guys at the desk… “is registration actually open?”, to which the amazing answer of “yes” was received……….. a convention opening registration 2 hours early, unheard of, lol. *applause*

After registration attempted to lug the heaviest case known to mankind up to ops to find Mr Chairman aka P-Chan so he could take the glowsticks off of our hands. And then after that, headed off to the hotel with a suitcase that funnily enough felt almost empty. ^_^

Despite the hotel looking actually pretty expensive, it was in fact the cheapest hotel in Coventry… £13.50 per night. It was really quite nice. Had an en-suite bath and everything, even a set of twinings tea in the room… no nameless low quality brands there.

Met up with the other Momoi fans that had made the journey over to England, then went off to the opening ceremony, yay, Momoi in England. Yet again her English has improved since the last time I saw her, lol. ^_^

Off to name that tune. Our leisurely stroll over to the building resulted in us missing the start, missing getting a table, and being in a spot where we could barely hear anything. At least there was a bar, lol. Eventually some team left so we grabbed their table (and evidently took over running their team) quickly. Their answer sheet had the following written on it, lol: “Gave up, gone to yaoi panel”. Sadly we didn’t actually do much better than them and also quickly gave up. Oh, and the background they had on the screen was amusingly appropriate.

Can’t actually remember what was next, so i’ll skip straight to the Momoi concert. 5 minutes before the concert was supposed to start we were dragged by P-Chan to run to ops as they’d left all the glowsticks there, lol. Ran back, they then let people in, helped hand out glowsticks and call books (i think half of the people ended up with 2 glowsticks each, but there weren’t any left over at the end). Sadly they didn’t have enough time for us to do the wotagei instruction thingy as the concert was already running a bit late.

Band came out, Momoi came out, epic concert. As Momoi said at her panel, it felt a little different to the other conventions i’ve seen her play at, felt more “rock”-like, as it was relatively small and dark. She described it as being similar to a live house in Japan (which i’d basically say it was exactly the same as one). One critical failure on my part was forgetting to bring in liquid… very very thirsty by the end, could barely speak. Everyone seemed to enjoy the concert, and the crowd went pretty mad when she sung Video Killed The Radio Star in the encore, even her band looked really into the song.

“Followed by party”… at that point i was tired, so more sitting, less party, lol.

   

Saturday 15th August:

Momoi panel at 10am… far far too early for an event at a UK convention. More people would have turned up if it were later. Quite a few people turned up eventually, but it was looking pretty light right at the beginning, lol. Momoi in cosplay, nice! Someone else posted a pretty comprehensive transcript so no sense repeating it here.

Autograph session after panel, then off to find food… hadn’t eaten since some sort of noodles at midday the day before (i notice they’d replaced the pizza place that gave everyone food poisoning in 2005, lol).

Went to the JPop lounge event as it was almost finishing to find it incredibly empty, felt really bad about going to eat first now, so… SORRY FOR MISSING 90% OF IT. orz This then turned out to be one of the most amusing events of the weekend (behind Momoi of course), basically all that were left were 5 hello project fans, and the people that were supposed to be running the next event didn’t turn up to run it. So what resulted was 5 hello project fans there for the next 4 hours with a projector, huge screen, and a bar with alcohol………. Hello Project music marathon!!!

And then of course the pub quiz was starting right after, so we were pretty damn well drunk by that point and quite possibly being far too loud at the quiz. And it gets better………. one particular round of the quiz had a “guess whether these girls are loli or legal” round, what was hilarious was that 3 out of the 5 girls were hello project members. Yeah… sorry to anyone if they thought we were far too loud, but after being there for 5 hours watching hello project and drinking, and then seeing more on screen in the quiz i think we got a bit too excited. And not only that, Matt happened to have his signed Reina towel on him, who wouldn’t have stood up if she appeared on screen in a room full of people that had no idea who she was and you had it in your bag, lol. Suffice to say the teams i’m on are always masters at that round. o.o

We got 39.5 points officially, or 43.5 points if you include the bonus round we made up and marked ourselves, lol. Not bad i’d say.

Then party, party was ok, though i still say needs less bleach/naruto etc, but then i guess the floor would just be empty for most of the night, lol.

   

Sunday 16th August:

Got to convention in time for that stage clear recording. Those guys are funny. Uhh, other than that……. nothing. Literally hours of sitting around waiting for sunday night live to start. AAArgh, those wasps!!!!! Momoi wanted to go sightseeing i think so wasn’t at the convention on Sunday.

Sunday night live… ahh, good old pictochat, nice to see it hasn’t changed since the last UK convention i was at. ^_^ Whoever was Canada was funny, lol. I believe someone summed it up best when they said “pictochat hates everything”. Damn wireless rapidly killing the battery. Can’t believe people are still going on about chair though, so 2007, lol.

Admittedly in my opinion the box was the best thing at the auction (far better than the dodgy looking posters), purely for it’s combination of genius yet lazy cosplay. And whoever made it clearly has taste in anime… Sora wo kakeru shoujo… still the best show of the year so far.

So, if there’s no anime with a box between now and next year, someone should get an orange box, just carry it around and see how many other people are actually playing the game of spot the orange box in anime, it’s a mind virus like the game (sorry )… once you know about the orange boxes you can’t help but notice them (and announce that you’ve noticed one) whenever you see a new one in anime, lol. But yes… orange box… sell at auction… $$$.

And finally the end of con party, yay, go chococat (lol, speaking of Mikan above… she sung Mikan… great song). Somehow the hello project group ended up meeting up again (possibly because we were like the only people in the room for the first few minutes).

Convention over.

   

All in all a pretty good convention. Best convention in the UK ever. Momoi concert was epic, and the JPop Hello Project chill room was hilarious. Only complaint is still a lack of things to do at times….. yeah yeah, “run your own event” etc. Hello Project chill room as an official event next time? lol

Thankyou everyone that made Ayacon fun; Momoi, people that came from overseas, thankyou coverman for doing the call books, the hello project fans, the pictochat people (apart from that one guy >_>), and of course the comittee.

   

Fully packed and ready to go!

Looks like Momoi made it here safely judging by her blog and mixi posts.