“Dance like it hurts,
Love like you need money,
Work when people are watching.”
~Scott Adams, The Way of the Weasel

If you don’t already know, Dilbert Blog is one of my favorite blog ;D. I need a boost of humor every day or two.

Been wanting to write a few times since my last post, but feel like I’m waiting for something bigger to happen first. But since nothing much is happening (not as big as I want anyway, the rest is not something I can discuss on public blog), I’m writing now.

I actually miss writing. There was time when I wrote a lot. Stories, thoughts, half-fiction reflection of life, pages and pages of them. I thought of challenging myself to write a post EVERY DAY, just to see what I can come out of it. But the laziness got the better of me, so nope, nothing to see here.

So I’m stuck here in Singapore on Chinese New Year. The time when everything just CLOSES. I wandered around Orchard Rd today and almost watched movies twice because there’s so little to see and do. Well at least I wasn’t the only one. A lot of people wandered around on the street OUTSIDE of the malls, because they all closed.

On a random note, as a game developer, I feel the need to play all sort of games, as many as I can put my hands on. I was constantly confused as to how I could find time to play even a FRACTION of all the games out there. Seriously. There are so many platforms, so many genres, and so many whatever. I have to have my hands on XBox360, PS3, and Wii when I don’t currently own any of them. Plus all the old platforms like DS, PSP, PS2, PC, and heaps others. There are genres like FPS and action adventure that I don’t like, MMORPG that I’m not willing to spare time or money to play, casual games, then too-much-testosterone type of games, too westernized type of games, scary games, the last three I just cannot make myself to play. I watch people play though.

I asked my friend how he does it. How he can find all the time in the world to play all those games he plays (assuming that he still has a little bit of life, takes occasional shower and eats). So he told me the secret, “I don’t finish playing most of them..” and suddenly it became clear to me. Well you would say it’s quite obvious. You should just dip your toes in as many games as possible and should feel no obligation to continue after a few minutes or an hour unless it’s worth it. But I’m funny about finishing things. Happens for movies or books too. When I start something I feel the need to finish it. Even when it means I should fight myself not to doze off during those tormenting hours watching helpless movies or reading unbearably boring books. On the sentimental side, I feel guilty when I skip chapters, like I’m being unfair to some scenes or words. I’m dead serious. I imagine if words have feelings, they’d cry if I skip them. Is it the result of watching Unyil series when I was small about rice crying if I didn’t finish them?

But since a couple of years back, I learned to NOT finish my food when I think I shouldn’t. For example when I’m full, or when I think that piece of food would do me more harm than good (too much oil, fat, carb, etc). Which is good, because I learned to think about my own wellbeing rather than possibility of rice crying (or some kids in under developed countries crying over rice wasted in land far far away). I think it’s just part of growing up. To decide NOT to finish your food when you don’t need to or want to, and realize that the starving children has really nothing to do with food you eat day by day. Not even a little connection. Everyone knows it’s Governments’ faults. It’s always them.

So now as part of my growing up, I reckon I should be able to play as many games as possible without finishing them. Just touch them, get as much as I want out of it, and move on. I feel liberated. Like a relationship-virgin who finally got over her first love to start dating guys again. Just remember, the game doesn’t have to be important. You don’t need to get attached. You can just have some fun with it for short period of time without commitment. If it doesn’t meet your expectation, there are always other games in the sea. Knowing when to move on is the key.

In practice, I brought back my office’s XBox360 home to play Viva Pinata over the long weekend. So four nights is all I have. I knew from the beginning that this wouldn’t last. If I don’t like it, too bad, move on. If I love it, it would just be a good experience, and still I have to move on, because I won’t buy a 360 just to play Viva Pinata (I dislike XBox-ish games in general).

I LOVE IT! This game is genius! I think the only reason it doesn’t sell amazingly well is that the game is out on the wrong platform. Had this game been out on PS2, DS, or Wii, I think it would soar so high up in the sky. It’s just the wrong audience if you ask me.

Anyway, Viva Pinata is a game where you tend a garden full of pinatas. It’s like a mixed between Pokemon and the Sims, sort of. Definitely better than Animal Crossing. You try to have as many different pinatas to visit your garden, become residents, then breed them, by growing types of trees, flowers, and develop your land in certain way. Beautiful beautiful graphics, just love it. The game is quite complex and will definitely keep you busy for months. The only drawback I found was the in-game text. They’re SMALL and HARD TO READ. But this is a problem for almost all 360 games, cause they’re designed for HDTV, which most people don’t have yet, people like me. So in result, instead of clear sharp crisp text, it’s blurry and painfully too small. Seriously, didn’t anybody consider this when they developed the games?

At this moment, my garden is too full of pinatas. I need to kick out some of them before I can breed more. It was such a hard time for me to pick the pinatas to sell. Come on, there are rules you know. Any creature that you have named, fed, tended when its sick, made happy, spent hours watching, cannot just go without taking a piece of your heart with it. Lucky I didn’t name any of them. I knew it’s a trick. They’re gonna make me all soft with lovey dovey flying in the air before they get taken away, or worse, EATEN! Yeah, the pinatas eat each other. Like a normal food chain, that is, with predators and preys, and you can’t control it. Of course they can soften the blow by saying the pinata’s soul just gets “recycled”, it leaves the sweets for others to eat and will be reincarnated outside of your garden (you can literally see the glimmering soul flying away leaving your garden). When it’s time you can attract it back to your garden. Hell, how do you know it’s still your same pinata that has gone through reincarnation or a totally different one?! It reminds me of an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, of which Raymond finds his daughter’s hamster dead and decides to replace it by new hamster without telling her the truth. Well you can’t fool me! When a pinata’s gone it’s just gone forever! *sob*

Great game! Try it if you can. I totally enjoyed my 10 hours or so and wish to continue if I have both the game and the console. I give it 8.5 out of 10. Very possible to go higher to 9, just that I feel I haven’t played this game long enough to do it justice.

PS: I have sweet spot for pinatas. I used to work at a children entertainment center where on birthday parties we sometimes had pinatas to hit. I used to order them from this one South American lady, decided what to have (We had Pikachu, Nemo, Hulk, Batman, Spiderman, and many others. The last two were always popular.), hung them all around the cashier area, and stuck candies inside them. Our pinatas were big, pretty, and full of characters, not like the ones in Toys ‘R’ Us - small, more expensive, generic. I love it when it’s time to hit the pinatas, almost as excited as the kids LOL (I just watched, mind you, never really hit). We usually had a line where the kids could hit once or twice one by one (before they go back to the end of the line and start queuing again). We could feel the anticipation kept building up, until eventually one hit blew the pinata open and candies pour out, along with all the happy squeal and excited yell, from both kids and adults alike. Happy times, those times ;).