There are a lot of youtube videos showing you how to apply InvisibleShield on your game consoles or ipod/iphones but that’s about it. Just the usual spray the solution, paste it on your device and remove the excess solution. What they failed to mention are the preparations needed before, during and after the application.

Some of you might be thinking “I can just ask the shop or someone else to apply it for me.” Although i don’t disagree with you there but after my experience of having someone else apply the shield (another brand of shield but similar) for me, I have concluded it is best I do the job myself.  For the record a lot of forumers recommended him for his good and fast service.

After having gone through 5 InvisibleShields, I find that these few tips are helpful in getting a real good, clean application.

Clean Hands
Give your hands a good scrub before you start to remove any dirt, dust or oil. These things will hinder your shield from setting properly.

Remove the Battery
Make sure your electronic device is switched off and the batteries removed. I always make it a habit to let my device sit for 5 minutes to remove any static. Static attracts dust and that’s a no no.

Turn Off The Fan
Air circulation brings dust around and it might get stuck on your shield / surface / hand. Best is to work in an air-conditioned room or just turn off the fan. I usually choose the latter.

Ignore the Solution, Use Soap & Water
This was the downfall during my first application. The shield came with a tinyyyyyy solution bottle and it was barely enough for the PSP. Thinking that it would be end of the world if I used up the solution, I sprayed as minimal as possible. Bad mistake.

So what can we use as a substitute? The answer is soap with water. No really, I’m not kidding. It actually works better compared to the solution provided. Just take a small pail, filled it with some water and add a drop of hand soap.

Take Your Time
I know shops can get the whole thing done within 45 minutes but seriously, don’t rush. Apply the shield one piece at a time and make sure that piece is set before moving on to the next piece. For example the face piece for the PSP is pretty big. Therefore once the shield is pasted, I will leave it on my table for a couple of hours before continuing.

Keep Things Moist
Make sure you dunk your hands in soap water (mentioned above) regularly or when you feel its getting dry. Keeping your hands moist will prevent finger prints or dirt being left on the shield.

Also dab the shield with as much soap water as you can. It makes it easier to align and any small dirt particles will flow right out when you remove the excess water.

Let Things Settle Down for At Least 24 Hours
Why the long hours you might asked. It allows any excess water left behind in the device and the shield to be completely dried up. Friction might cause the shield to peel off if isn’t set properly. Not to mention water will cause your device to short-circuit. Optimum would be 48 hours but usually 24 hours is sufficient.

Hope you find my tips useful. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

It has been more than a year since I applied Invisible Shield on my NDS and PSP and it is time to find out how well the shield fares after that long period.

One of the most common complains I heard bout Invisible Shield is that it tends to turn yellowish after some time. Judging by the look of my NDS, that complain stands true.

You can see that the color difference between the area marked in red with the area marked in green. Even the stylus looks brighter compared to the areas covered with Invisible Shield.

Discoloration is very apparent on bright colors, especially white.

Dust & dirt is the next mutual enemy of the Invisible Shield. Take a look at the next picture.

Notice that one nice line of dust? Yeap that’s what happen when you leave your devices out in the open. My PSP on the other hand suffered less damage as it is always inside the Capdase casing.  With that I came up with this conclusion; always keep your devices inside a pouch or a bag. It really helps to reduce significant amount of dust collected.

Apart from the two issues mentioned above, the shield still looks good with no apparent ‘peeling’ after many months of usage. As long as the shield is applied properly, chances of that happening is relatively rare.

Here are a few more pictures of the shield, a year later;

Everyone of any importance is in this image. And I mean everyone.

Everything Nomura touches seems to turn into gold and The World Ends With You is no exception. Excellent character design (although Neku looks a hell lot like Sora), intuitive gameplay, plenty of mini-games and side quests to keep yourself busy and an unpredictable plot. If I were to explain the plot, you will find it extremely confusing since the plot appears to be contradicting itself at every turn. It’s so full of twist that even a pretzel looks straight in comparison. Finish the game, think about it and get back to me. You will know I’m right.

You would think he’s yawning. I know otherwise

Here’s an example: The game lasts for 7 days. Your partner, Shiki, stays with you for the entire 7 days duration of the game, from start to finish. But she will only be with you for less than half the game. Confusing? This is just the tip of the iceberg, and is the only example I can think of right now without spoiling any other parts of the game. Everything will make perfect sense once you’ve played the game.

While the main plot is quite linear and there’s really no way for you to get lost, there are actually a few alternatives on how you want to take the side story on. There are plenty of side stories where you can choose to help others out and help them make decisions on what they should do. These usually have less restrictions and have more open ended results based on the choices you made.

You’re controlling BOTH screens at once. Kool, eh?

The gameplay itself is fresh and something new. Like Phantom Hourglass and Ninja Gaiden, The World Ends With You relies very heavily on stylus. But the twist here is, you can actually make use of the D-Pad and buttons to take control of the battle that’s happening on the upper screen simultaneously. Talk about multitasking – it’s no easy feat for sure and most of the time you’re forced to concentrate on either one while blindly spamming buttons or sliding your stylus around like mad.

Another unique feature of this game is you can adjust the difficulty level on the fly. Some items can only be dropped from noises (enemies in TWEWY are called noise) with specific difficulty level. You can also set handicap on yourself by lowering your level and stats in order to get better drops.

Everything in the game revolves around pins. Your attacks and abilities mostly comes from the pin you are wearing. Different pin have different ways to activate, such as the Pyrokinses pin (the first attack pin you receive) which allows you to create fire along the path drawn by your stylus.

Other pins requires you to drag obstacles, tap on enemies, slashing enemies and a variety of other ways to activate the pins using just your stylus. It might sound confusing at first, but it’s very intuitive and you will be able to pick it up in no time. Fortunately, you will be given practice battles if the game requires you to learn more complicated moves or combos, so you can take your time to test and play around before you face an actual battle.

This would be the perfect image if Shiki were in it…

The light sounding BGM’s doesn’t really stand out during the game and blends in perfectly with the mood and situation that you might not even realize it’s there. It’s really not a bad thing since it just results in a better flow of the game. That’s not to say the BGM is poor and forgettable, since it’s really quite good. It’s just that the game itself seems to have the music volume down lower than the voice and special effects audio in order to allow players to absorb all the small details you would normally miss due to noise (pun intended).

The in-game graphics is nothing to shout about since all the characters are rendered with sprites and look extremely pixelated when brought up close to the front of the screen. But Shibuya itself and during character interactions where “pop-out” art is being used, they look great. I used the word “pop-out” because the characters seems to be static, cut-out images that needs to be swapped out every time they someone’s expression changed. Not to mention the use of speech bubbles that overlaps each other feels a lot like reading a comic or manga.

Before playing the game, I’ve read countless good reviews about TWEWY about it being “refreshing”. While I didn’t doubt that the game wouldn’t be anything short than awesome, I’ve played a bit of the Japanese version before and didn’t find it all that refreshing. Sure, the game play is something new, but still it wasn’t that different from the likes of Phantom Hourglass or Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword. It wasn’t until I’ve finished the game the first time that I thought, “Ah, that was a very refreshing game…” I mean, where else can you cross-dress the main character into skirts and high heels for some of the BEST STATS in the game?

That said, you must definitely check out The World Ends With You! Btw, The World Begins With You

I admit that this is one section of my blog which have been neglected …. badly. To be more precise my last post in this category was back in July 2007! That’s like half a year ago. My bad …

I will try my best to do this as a weekly feature. Seeing that there are tons of games, finding one to use as a design isn’t a problem. Just a matter of my time management. Pray that I don’t stop half way again heh.

Enjoy the Super Mario Galaxy NDS Skins!

Previous skins

Right … if you notice I have done some minor updates to the sidebar of this blog. Probably you will notice that the Google search has been moved to the bottom and I uploaded some of my “game tags” I spend the whole night creating. Those tags are not the same like the ones featured for Xbox Live. It doesn’t auto update itself so it wouldn’t change the game images automatically.

Nothing much to update other than that. The games coming out for DS and PSP are kinda slow for this month and I’m spending most of my time playing Phoenix Wright. At the same time, I’m trying to finish off Killzone Liberation for the PSP which I got it second hand. Why am I trying? Well initial game-play don’t seem to attract me so much and I didn’t want to waste my money buying that game and ended up not finishing it. Hmmm might have been a good idea to pick up Daxter instead. Hopefully I will find the game interesting when I reach mid-point. Over and out!