The Commuter Review: Professor Layton
April 05, 11:15 AM
Every day I spend approximately an hour on trains commuting back and forth between work and home. Certainly that’s not a lot of time, unless you’re trying very hard to not stare at other passengers for 30 swaying minutes. Reading is a popular past-time on these trains. So is portable gaming. I admit I’ve been jealous of another female passenger who had an import light gray DS instead of the standard gleaming white or black, just because it was so… imported, man. That’s cred. I decided it would be fun to take my DS along with me, as per usual, and put the time to good use by playing through DS games in these commute-sized chunks and seeing how they hold up. There are plenty of games out there that are wonderful but require significant time commitments per session. As an example, see pretty much every MMO in the world, and most western RPGs a la Mass Effect. Portable games really should follow different rules since people playing in these situations are usually like me. We have a bit of time, we’d like to squeeze some gaming in, but we have to close the top when our stop comes up. So it would be great to know which titles make it easy for commuters to play, right? Sweet! Let’s do a commuter review. First up--Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I’ve seen this game all over since it came out …
April 05, 11:15 AM
Every day I spend approximately an hour on trains commuting back and forth between work and home. Certainly that’s not a lot of time, unless you’re trying very hard to not stare at other passengers for 30 swaying minutes. Reading is a popular past-time on these trains. So is portable gaming. I admit I’ve been jealous of another female passenger who had an import light gray DS instead of the standard gleaming white or black, just because it was so… imported, man. That’s cred. I decided it would be fun to take my DS along with me, as per usual, and put the time to good use by playing through DS games in these commute-sized chunks and seeing how they hold up. There are plenty of games out there that are wonderful but require significant time commitments per session. As an example, see pretty much every MMO in the world, and most western RPGs a la Mass Effect. Portable games really should follow different rules since people playing in these situations are usually like me. We have a bit of time, we’d like to squeeze some gaming in, but we have to close the top when our stop comes up. So it would be great to know which titles make it easy for commuters to play, right? Sweet! Let’s do a commuter review. First up--Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I’ve seen this game all over since it came out …
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XBOX LIVE GAMERTAG: jinx FD
GAMES I'M PLAYING
* Oblivion
* Rainbow Six Vegas
* Assassin's Creed
* Mass Effect
HEIGHT: 5'5"
EYES: Hazel
HAIR: sort of brown blond and hairy
LOCATION: Northern California
HOMETOWN: Ogden, UT
FAVORITE GENRES: adventure, rpg, rts
FAVORITE GAMES: Final Fantasy X, Homeworld, Prince of Persia: SOT, Morrowind, Psychonauts, Splinter Cell: CT
FAVORITE SNACK: Ben & Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream
FAVORITE CHARACTER: Link from Zelda
FAVORITE EMOTE: /tackle
FAVORITE QUOTE: "What fun is destruction if no precious lives are lost?" - Kefka (FFVI)
FAVORITE MUSIC: Tori Amos, The Killers, Garbage, Thievery Corp Eskimo Joe, The Cat Empire, Powderfinger, Arcade Fire
FAVORITE TV SHOWS: The Brak Show, The Daily Show, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Spaced, Heroes, Entourage
FAVORITE BOOKS: Kushiel's Legacy, Sevenwaters, Harry Potter, Ender's Game, Diamond Age, His Dark Materials
FAVORITE COLOR: Orange
FIRST GAME ADDICTION: Super Mario Bros, Myst
FIRST CONSOLE: Nintendo Entertainment System
GREATEST MOMENT: 2 bullets, 2 headshots
LONGEST SPREE: 12 hour days on Final Fantasy X for over a week
OBSESSIONS: video games, board games, snowboarding, yoga, IRC, hardcover novels, calvin & hobbes, nerd cred
I HATE: grit at the bottom of my tea
I LOOK LIKE: the last thing you see before you have to respawn
GAMES I'M PLAYING
* Oblivion
* Rainbow Six Vegas
* Assassin's Creed
* Mass Effect
HEIGHT: 5'5"
EYES: Hazel
HAIR: sort of brown blond and hairy
LOCATION: Northern California
HOMETOWN: Ogden, UT
FAVORITE GENRES: adventure, rpg, rts
FAVORITE GAMES: Final Fantasy X, Homeworld, Prince of Persia: SOT, Morrowind, Psychonauts, Splinter Cell: CT
FAVORITE SNACK: Ben & Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream
FAVORITE CHARACTER: Link from Zelda
FAVORITE EMOTE: /tackle
FAVORITE QUOTE: "What fun is destruction if no precious lives are lost?" - Kefka (FFVI)
FAVORITE MUSIC: Tori Amos, The Killers, Garbage, Thievery Corp Eskimo Joe, The Cat Empire, Powderfinger, Arcade Fire
FAVORITE TV SHOWS: The Brak Show, The Daily Show, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Spaced, Heroes, Entourage
FAVORITE BOOKS: Kushiel's Legacy, Sevenwaters, Harry Potter, Ender's Game, Diamond Age, His Dark Materials
FAVORITE COLOR: Orange
FIRST GAME ADDICTION: Super Mario Bros, Myst
FIRST CONSOLE: Nintendo Entertainment System
GREATEST MOMENT: 2 bullets, 2 headshots
LONGEST SPREE: 12 hour days on Final Fantasy X for over a week
OBSESSIONS: video games, board games, snowboarding, yoga, IRC, hardcover novels, calvin & hobbes, nerd cred
I HATE: grit at the bottom of my tea
I LOOK LIKE: the last thing you see before you have to respawn
Ashley Jenkins, more commonly known to fellow gamers as Jinx, is one of the Frag Dolls, a team of professional gamers owned by game publisher Ubisoft. Jenkins, originally from Ogden, Utah, now lives in San Francisco, California and works full-time for Ubisoft developing online communities and facilitating communication between the developers and their fans. She has helped to launch major titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and Red Steel, and is currently working on Splinter Cell Conviction, Far Cry 2, and Haze.
Jenkins, a gamer since she was young, began playing videogames on the Nintendo Entertainment System. She discovered PC puzzle games with Myst and moved on to Massively Multiplayer Online Games with EverQuest. Since then she has sampled from nearly every genre, including: RPG, Adventure, Strategy, Platformer, and FPS.
In 2000 Jenkins began making the transition from average gamer to industry expert when she began creating fansites for niche titles like American McGee’s Alice, Black & White, and Shadowbane. Through her work on fansites, Jenkins began community writing and was quickly offered a position as a professional writer for Shadowbane. As a Herald she wrote regular articles on events and the political state of the virtual world.
In 2004 she applied to become one of the seven original members of the Frag Dolls team, and left her programming job to begin traveling as a professional gamer. She has played as a member of the competitive team for Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and has traveled with the team to nearly all of the major videogame industry events since the team formed. A fascination with the minds behind the games has led her to pursue the journalistic side of the team, and she has travelled internationally to interview developers about the games they are creating. She currently acts as the creative director, webmaster, and PC hardware expert for the Frag Dolls.
