I swear, sometimes it’s like game designers don’t even test their games out to see if they are actually fun. I’ve been playing the newest Mini Monsters (Minimon) game over the last week or so, ever since it came out. I’ve got this great team of Minimon that can beat pretty much any opponent, at least in theory. The problem is that this game has a brutal poisoning condition, which causes your Minimon to lose health outside of battle. Basically every fight ends up with your Minimon being poisoned, which means you’ve got to haul it back to the Minimon centre for healing in a hyperbaric chamber all the dang time. It’s so frustrating.

Like, come on! We have portable hyperbaric chambers within Melbourne. How hard would it be to put one in the game, which lets you heal your Mimimon on the go? You can’t tell me that the game designers tested this thing and thought it was fun. Running between towns after every battle, wasting hours of your time, is not compelling gameplay.

It wasn’t always like this, you know. In the previous games, there used to be items that would heal your poisoned furry friends, but it seems they’ve removed that from this game. The team at Freaky Games said poison healing was a “gimmick” which wouldn’t be reused. That would be fine if it wasn’t a total lie. Every Minimon game has had poison healing items, including the spinoffs.

I don’t understand. Did anyone at Freaky Games even test this product? You can’t tell me they kept running between towns for healing and thought it was totally fine. It’s not fine. It’s boring at best and infuriating at worst.

If I, a regular consumer of the game, can tell that there are these massive issues in the product, then why can’t the company creating it? Don’t they have playtesters? Quality assurance managers or something? Surely somebody could have pointed out that the game is no longer fun without items that can heal the poisoned condition. I feel like I’m going crazy here!

I just watched a feature on ‘Melbourne Minutes’, and they had a guy on who was talking about the best kind of windows to keep out space probes. I’m pretty sure they had him on to make light fun of him on Tweeter after the show, but he did raise some valid points: aluminium windows DO heat up in the sun a little more than wooden sash windows. Awesome; I’m always looking for little home alterations that’ll make the place a bit more comfortable. I’ve seen a few people with aluminium windows here in Melbourne, so it’s a pre-existing style.

I guess if I ever lose my marbles and believe that either lizard people, or the government or an insidious combination of all both is trying to steal secrets from my brain, I’ll take all that advice to heart. He said that sash windows are the best kind because they have a solid base and the break up the signals by their design. So that’s nuts, but I’ve always liked the look of sash windows, so maybe they’re something to consider. I was in London recently, and it seemed like everyone had sash windows; maybe it’s a British thing? This guy on TV seemed to think that splattering the back of them with lead paint would also disrupt the signal from taking control of the minds of you and your family, because a race so advanced that they can travel from a distant galaxy and take control of human minds from their spaceship is really going to be stopped by a splash of lead paint.

Oh, paint! I was going to paint the ridges of the awnings. They must have rusted away in the winter and now they make an awful sound when I pull them down. So that’s on the to-do list for tomorrow: paint awnings, look up really good places in Melbourne offering sash window replacement, and maybe make myself a hat from burlap and tin foil. The perfect combination to stop the lizard men from eating my brain while I sleep. Apparently.

-Glen

OH. MY. TRIGGER POINTS.

And speaking of which, oh…my trigger points sure could use a good triggering. I did something to my back while I was vacuuming this week, and now I keep having to disappoint Michael when he wants me to pick him up. It’s funny how little children just don’t understand injuries, but you know what’s even funnier?

It’s Vicky on Week of Our Lives, who is now living in her car because her ultra-fundamentalist family tossed her out on the street after she said that she’d like to do a dry needling course. Sydney is proving to be much more challenging for Vicky than she originally thought. Obviously, this was a great affront to their faith, because not only would Vicky be leaving the house before she was married, she would also be engaging in medical practices that haven’t been approved by the family head.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Vicky is set on becoming the greatest dry needling expert in the world. Turns out that when she was a little girl she watched her beloved brother die from an unfortunate incident while he was playing football. “If only someone here knew the fundamentals of dry needling, oh, woe upon this day!” cried the coach as he threw his hands to the heavens. Since that day, Vicky has vowed to learn all about dry needling and the like.

Of course, complicating matters is her secret half-twin-sister who is also one of a set of triplets, who has been whispering in her parents’ ears for years about how all slightly alternative medicine is bad, and also how Vicky has been prophesied to bring doom upon the family name upon the day she leaves the home. It’s a is a very specific prophecy but there you go.

Vicky is undeterred, however, even with her evil half-sister inserting a cardboard tube into her window one night and speaking into it, pretending to be the Spirit of Not Doing a Trigger Point Dry Needling Course, who promised great bounty if Vicky would give up her dream. But Vicky never gives up! She’s a great character.

-Leticia

I grew up with the same boring fairy-tales, just like everyone else. Same old cautionary messages, same old tired morals. Don’t trust strangers! Don’t eat things without a comprehensive list of available ingredients! Straw and sticks are not viable building materials when being stalked by a serial killer with improbable lung capacity!

All true, in the end. I’ll grant them that. But kids nowadays are more switched on than ever. They have tablets and internet culture; if they don’t have common sense pounded into their heads by age six, then it’s not going in at all. No, what we need are cautionary tales for a modern generation, things that kids won’t learn from trite storybook and cartoons. Or perhaps we could update some old tales to have new, more relevant morals? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been scared stiff by all those posters and radio ads about the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning. Used to be a lady in my apartment block who left her stove on. Her apartment filled with gas, made her quite sick in the end. She had to go and get oxygen therapy. Melbourne has options available for people suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, sure, but it’s a silent killer. Oxygen therapy can only help you if you’re still alive! I think!

How about…The Three Little Housemates and the Big Bad Faulty Carbon Monoxide Alarm. One of them smells something funny, doesn’t do anything about it, has to get hyperbaric treatments. Another one comes in, smells something funny and just opens a window. Has to get hyperbaric treatments. A then the third and wisest realises that their alarm is faulty, and the gas heater on the wall is leaking, so he actually does something about it. It’s not as fantastical as a wolf blowing a house down, but it’s a cautionary tale for a new generation. Not to deprive Melbourne’s hyperbaric medicine industry of clients- you’re great, no lie- but it’s better for people to know this stuff from childhood.

It’s not every day that I make a booking to see a midnight showing. Actually, if it WAS every day then it’d be a terrible decision, because I’d put my circadian rhythm clock thing out of whack. So no, just an occasional thing.

I don’t consider myself a movie buff, but I can appreciate a good bit of cinema. The flavour of the month is Chill: A Monk’s Story, which is all about this fictional monk who brings his people’s great relaxation techniques to the outside world and his fish-out-of-water story trying to build a business empire when he’s never actually purchased anything in his life. Brilliant stuff, and it’s probably going to win a load of academy awards. It’s also pretty good for people who run dry needling courses, because there’s a compelling B-plot where the main character (Ocelot Moon) tries his hand at business for the first time and teaches a class the ancient art of dry needling. It’s one of those scenes that marks a true turning point in his character, as despite not speaking a lot of English and being nervous in front of a crowd, he finally applies his relaxation techniques to himself and gives a flawless display of dry needling prowess that leaves everyone spellbound.

I think a lot of it is in the camera techniques. There’s an uninterrupted shot of needling that goes for something like three minutes, juxtaposed with a quick series of flashes showing Ocelot Moon’s nimble fingers, showing that dry needling takes the skills of both patience and dexterity. Pretty sure that’s going to be one of those ‘Top X Greatest Moments in Cinema’ scenes in years to come.

Looking forward to seeing what more people think, but it gets two thumbs up from me. Almost made me want to look up a dry needling course in New Zealand…if I didn’t have one of the worst cases of butter-fingers known to man.

-Tyson