127 ace attorney 6 - allergy and tragedy

Dear Readers,

With the udon dough argued as the murder weapon, Nahyuta challenged me to find evidence of it and how Geiru got rid of it.

This was the only answer I knew for quite a while! I was waiting for the chance to point out the dumplings fed to the dog when Simon praised my barking and wondered if I had the bite to back it up. He knew of course and his remarks made me laugh!

I presented Simon's statement with a "Take that!" and requested we find the dumplings that Geiru made out of udon that had her blood in it. I drove the point home that it was HER balloons that were going pop now that the truth was out.

Nahyuta's beads broke and hit him again in the face. Yeeeehaaa! Never fails to be satisfying!

Geiru's balloons all popped one by one, all the balloons she made up until now popped. With one last dramatic scream she pulled on her braces and made the balloons on her chest pop as well, revealing her to be much more petite.

She then took off her wig, revealing a devastatingly sad bandaged face. She finally revealed her tragic story. She desperately wanted to inherit her father's name but it went to his disciple instead. Her balloon thing failed her and she was so desperate she carried out the murder and tried to pin it on Uendo, who in turn tried to shift the blame onto Bucky with the cards.

Simon talked to her for a bit. She didn't know about the udon and risked her allergy to carry out the murder impulsively without thinking. She wasn't clearheaded enough to worry about it. Simon said how could she do all this... and called her an idiot.

I said to Geiru that I understood her desire to inherit her father's name but she really should've inherited his heart.

Nahyuta had no objections. He said he would remember my name. I was expecting him to say something else that was smug but Simon said it seemed he accepted me as a worthy adversary.

The judge called Bucky, who made a full recovery, to the stand and declared him... not guilty!

126 ace attorney 6 - logical path to the dough!

Dear Readers,

Geiru went on to testify about her buckwheat allergy. I couldn't find anything wrong with it, even when pressing her.

Things looked really bad until I changed my thinking around about a certain piece of evidence that proved Geiru could've killed her master, even with her soba allergy.

I didn't know what it was for sure, so I brute forced it until I got to Taifu's note. Resting referred to the dough for noodles and from this I concluded that Taifu was making udon noodles, which uses ordinary wheat flour. I had to guess this as well as I had no idea what to pick.

Nahyuta objected, bringing up Geiru's reaction and the fact that Taifu's face was in soba noodles.

It was time for me to gather my thoughts and do that logical path to the finish that Apollo does!

What was Master Toneido making in his dressing room? Udon!

What was found in the bowl on the table? Soba!

Where did the soba in the bowl on the table come from? The master's soba stock!

Why did the culprit cook the soba noodles and put them in the broth? To hide the udon dough!

But why did the culprit take the udon away and hide it? It must've been because she killed him with the udon dough!

Udon dough was the murder weapon!

125 ace attorney 6 - another bandage

Dear Readers,

Geiru came back to the stand in her cheerful showbiz manner. She was alarmed when I brought up Owen's testimony about the perfume. Nahyuta kept insisting that she could leave.

All of a sudden, Simon suggested she complete her performance and used a feather to deflate one of her balloons, which revealed a bandage on her forehead! Dun dun dunnn!

I had a choice between whether I wanted to indict her or not with a risk of huge consequences. Threats from Nahyuta of course, trying to intimidate me. Screw him!

I was over and back with Geiru for a while. She was playing innocent until her pupils shrunk and she got fierce. The judge wondered if this was another personality emerging.

Geiru went on to testify about what she did before the murder. She said she went to visit, but both Taifu and Owen were snoring in there. When pressing, she said she didn't see anything odd or unusual. I objected with the karuta cards. I argued she was the only one who could've left the dying message and thus could be the killer.

She got so frustrated she started chewing on her balloons! Nahyuta jumped in and in his smug fashion, said he was going to bring me back down to earth. He asked Geiru to show me something and she did. She took off her glove and revealed a swollen red hand. She then revealed she was allergic to buckwheat!

This made things topsy turvy and against me again. Simon called Nahyuta out on his withholding of this information. Nahyuta replied smugly that he was simply trying to protect her privacy. Lying jerk. No one told me and Simon had no idea about her allergy either.

124 ace attorney 6 - bucky's perfume-free soba

Dear Readers,

In all of Owen's trauma, I had to pinpoint and discuss one positive emotion he was feeling, possibly relief? Nahyuta said it was from seeing the familiar face of the accused, making absolutely no sense at all.

I asked Owen who it was and he started talking about perfume, the noise level in him going down to zero. I encouraged him to keep going but after that he collapsed! He was then taken to the infirmary. Dang it!

Nahyuta continued, saying the perfume could be the hair product that Bucky uses and went on with his case. I was at a loss again until Bucky himself spoke up!

Bucky insisted he never used hair product or anything that had a smell because if he did, it would get into the soba. He then skated around, giving everyone a dish of food. I asked him about his need for rest and he said he had a duty now to prove his soba didn't smell of perfume.

The judge obliged, for examination purposes. He took a moment so we could all slurp some soba.

We all loved it! Simon did comment however that it paled in comparison to Bucky's late father's cuisine, which made him sad.

Bucky insisted he didn't need rest but eventually he had to leave again to take some.

I then dwelled on the phrase "smelly perfume" and brought up Geiru. I suggested the judge could see her "balloons" again if we called her back to the witness stand. Nahyuta said this was vulgar! The judge obliged, being sure to mention it was because of the circumstances and not just about the balloons.

123 ace attorney 6 - settling on the unsettled murder weapon

Dear Readers,

Simon asked me to remember what I said to Bucky this morning and how moved he was when I said I believed in him to the very end. Then Simon did something I didn't expect - he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me like he was trying to get some sense into me. I've never seen anything like it in the series.

I was ready to go again. Owen seemed like he was telling the truth and I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but Simon noted I was too focused on his emotions to notice he was being vague about something.

I had to brute force a few answers, because nothing seemed to match with what Owen was saying, but I finally got it when I used the crime photo on the statement about the face smooshing. Then I pointed out the soba underneath Taifu's face in the photo. I then argued that raw soba dough was used to suffocate him.

Nahyuta was ready to strike. He said I summed up everything... that Bucky did! He wanted to drive it home again when I slammed my bench and disagreed, saying there was still discord in Owen's heart and I needed to continue the therapy.

Owen saw the killer's face! The thing is, he was feeling something unexpected, a happy emotion. I pinpointed it with a "Got it!"

122 ace attorney 6 - owen testifies!

Dear Readers,

Finally it was Owen's turn to testify! He claimed to have witnessed Taifu's murder so it was great to finally have this chance.

Owen talked about a knife and some blood as well. This was the moment of murder and he saw it! His emotions were all over the place so I recommended a therapy session immediately.

Fear overwhelmed every emotion he had and his memory didn't seem clear. What was the blood about? I tried probing at the blood on Taifu's face.

Nahyuta said this was something he dreamed up. Whatever. He can shut right up. 

Simon said something about rotating my thinking around like we all do at the agency. I corrected him, saying it was turning my thinking around, but thought about the word "rotate" and got an idea.

I came up with a theory that Owen must've been lying on the floor when he saw his master and that his master must've been doing the same when there was blood being spilled on his face.

Owen said he remembered someone on top of Taifu all of a sudden. The noise dissipated somewhat. I said the blood must've come from the one on top of Taifu.

Nahyuta then chimed in and seemed to be going along with it, along with it too well in fact. He then brought up Bucky's face bandage and argued this was conclusive that he was the killer! Nooooo! He said I dug this pit for myself without being able to crawl out of it.

Things looked bad. The gallery chattered about things being all over for me, at least until Simon shot back with a "Silence!"

1 control - trying out cloud gaming for the first time

Dear Readers,

Cloud gaming is back isn't it? Well, that's that some game companies really want at least. I thought I'd try it out when Control was announced in a recent Nintendo Direct.

I got lots of warnings and gatekeeping stuff. I had to have a Nintendo Account, though not the subscription, and I only had limited access without an Access Pass.

I had the option to choose between enhanced performance or enhanced graphics. I chose performance.

I went through quite a few logos and prompts, but the title screen loaded quickly enough. The text was really tiny.

I turned the brightness up to 80, the speaker to headphones, the subtitles on.

I found myself in the reception of an American government building. The front desk has a typewriter and an older phone on it, so it looks like this takes place in the 90s?

There's no one here so I just goof around here for a while, feeling the online connection to the game. Some interesting stuff here. The game stutters the odd time, but nothing too major, then the game gave me messages saying the online connection wasn't strong enough, so it did this weird lo-res YouTube thing with the graphics. After a few more minutes I got another message telling me the game was gonna quit automatically because of the connection and I was back at the title screen.

I tried again and messed around less. I went through the hallways of the building and met a janitor. The piece of dialogue about me being a night shift lone wolf was pretty cool. Then I took an elevator. Performance was better this time and I stayed connected, but the trial ran out when I got to the office with the talking gun thingy.

I tried again with an aim to goof around even less, but I was told I had no more play sessions available! Oops! I wasn't warned about that!

And yeah, you still gotta go through the logos and the loading and that weird greenish crystal graphic thing must be the cloud loading thing. I can see that becoming annoying.

As for Control itself, I only got a brief taste of the narrative and had a bit of a traipse around some offices. May be a good game who knows! It was recommended to me by a friend, so maybe another time on another system.