Away game special: 'Where the Xerneas and Yveltal play'

So Pokemon X (and Y) have integrated farming into their gameplay. Not the sort of farming you usually find in an RPG - fighting monsters to fatten your wallet or collect items - but actual farming. We're talking Harvest Moon-style here.

Adding this feature makes sense. Berries have become prrretty important to the Pokemon games. Being able to grow your own definitely puts more agency into the players' hands. Is that a good thing, though?

Giving players more agency also gives them more responsibility. When you had to find berries in Pokemon games all you had to do was remember where the bush was and return to it every now and then. But growing them yourself means you need to mulch the soil, water your plants, pluck out weeds and shake out bugs.

How far can such a feature go before something like farming berries becomes more chore than play?

A raising, snow-ladened wind

Of all things, what's just happened in Infinite Jest brings the SNES version of Harvest Moon to mind.

It's currently snowing on the morning of 18 November in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, and the way Wallace focuses on this weather is evocative for me of the 16-bit farm/romance simulator. His descriptions of the snowfall and the coldness of the outside world call up the same feelings as that game's background music for the last season of the year. That's what I think the relation comes down to.

But this part of the book's apparent obsession with weather is also odd in and of itself.

Aside from the odd mention of rain or cold or sunshine here and there, I don't recall weather ever being so foregrounded in the book. The weather's just been there. But now it's been given nearly center stage. Hal is still front and center as the last few sections' "I" after all. 

Things with Hal are coming to a head, it seems. He contradicts what his wraith of a dad told Gately about his being perpetually silent, claiming that he would speak but his dad wouldn't hear. Though later it's implied that Hal's face is starting to express without his conscious consent.

Along with Gately dreaming about the alleged point of J.O. Incandenza's Infinite Jest (V) (based on nothing other than his knowing Joelle V.D. (who happens to star in the film)), it's pretty clear that this book is bound for a whirlwind wrap-up.

Feeling a little Tingly

Aside from Link's Awakening, I've been playing Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland of late. This is a DS game that's technically part of the Zelda franchise, though, up to the end of the second dungeon I've yet to meet any direct cameos from more mainstream Zelda games.

But, Nick, I hear you say, Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland was never released in North America.

Well. You're right.

But the European edition of the game works just as well. You can find it through a quick eBay search.

Now, anyone (and everyone whom I've told I'm playing this game) is rightfully wonders what you even do in Tingle's very own game.

As the title suggests, it's very rupee-centric. You play as a young man who wants to escape from the daily grind. He's approached by the mysterious Uncle Rupee who promises a land of ease, women, and relaxation for the paltry sum of many many rupees. For you see, this game's central mechanic is that almost every interaction (with the exception of fights, for now) requires you to guess at how much someone wants for information, an item, or the time of day, or at how much you deserve for bringing someone an item or rendering them a service.

This completely capitalist mechanic is far less terrible than it sounds, since rupees can be found just about anywhere, and it's possible to make valuable items from item drops. Back in your house you've got what you need to mix ingredients and to create more valuable items. Of course, showing its connections to the Zelda franchise, you need bottles to move these potions and these bottles aren't easy to come by at first.

The reason I've gotten as far as I have in the game is that I find it fun. Some items found in certain locales grow back or return, and coming back to harvest them reminds me more of Harvest Moon than of some game where you tediously toil away for an unknown reward.

Though, having seen Uncle Rupee go from pauper to fop makes me feel pretty confident about where this game's going.