It’s Monday morning, and I’ve just discovered I am the only one in my office today (there are normally three of us). What fun.
I’ve written down 1 hour for sorting out email, timesheets and so on (the usual Monday morning trudge), and now find myself with 10 minutes left over. Rather than get on with anything, I’m having a cup of tea and writing this…
The weekend was actually pretty good. I took Saturday off (based on the fact that I had done over 50 hours work from Monday to Friday), and we went shopping. I ended up (as ever) coming home with a number of second hand computer games from the bargain bin at Game Station.
This weekend’s trawl included “Dot Hack:Infection”, “Megaman X8”, and “Metal Slug 4”. MegaMan and Metal Slug are both shooters (very good too), whereas Dot Hack is a very different animal indeed.
Based on a series of comic books, Dot Hack is a role playing game where you play as a girl who’s friend is in a coma after playing an online role playing game, called “The World”. With the help of a man who is investigating “The World”, you both enter the game, and try to find out what has been happening.
Yes - that’s right - you play a game inside the game. It’s very, very clever. I got rather confused at one point when I tried to exit the game to let W have a go, and had to be told by W that I was only exiting the game within the game - not the game itself. My poor little brain blew to pieces at that point.
It’s an amazingly designed game. The look and feel is very manga, and there are some wonderful touches, such as the 45 minute anime movie that comes with it, explaining the pre-amble to the game (the meeting of the girl with the investigator, and their entry into “The World”).
The most worrying this is that this game is in 4 parts, and this is only the first… I may be putting some searches out on E-Bay over the coming weeks to find the next chapters in the story.