Stroll down the Winner’s Path in the latest Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver DLC

Sure, it’s still a little weird to have downloadable content for the Nintendo DS–and a pedometer game accessory, at that–but I’m never gonna knock free content.

So, from May 6 to June 25, Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver players can download via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection the Winner’s Path, a new course for their Pokewalker that gives way to more special Pokemon and items. Such as a “Bouncy” Magikarp, an explodable Munchlax (hee), and holdable goodies. Actually, to be more specific, here’s what one can find when out on a stroll:

Catchable Pokemon: Munchlax, Beldum, Horsea, Duskull, Bronzor, and Magikarp
Pokemon hold items: Leftovers (Munchlax), Shuca Berry (Beldum), Dragon Scale (Horsea), Reaper Cloth (Duskull), and Occa Berry (Magikarp)
Items: Focus Sash, Choice Scarf, Choice Band, Choice Specs, and Power Herb

For those not in the know, to download these special paths you have to select Mystery Gift from the main menu’s options. After that, you gotta head into the game and visit the closest Pokemart, as if you were to pick up one of your mother’s purchases. There you’ll find a dude who will pass along the path to you.

So start downloading, and then start walking.

My brother is an Italian plumber, ask anyone

It’s always nice when an Achievement can surprise you.

Was shooting some skags in Borderlands last night. Pew pew pew splat. Most of them outside of the home base in the Arid Badlands go down pretty easy now that I’m a burly LV. 18 Soldier with some wicked assault rifles and grenades that actually regenerate my health upon killing enemies. A couple took a few more shots than others, and I moved in to finish them off with some melee swipes since I wanted to conserve ammo. And then, unexpectantly, this Achievement popped up on screen:

My Brother is an Italian Plumber (15G): Killed an enemy plumber-style

I wasn’t 100% sure how I unlocked this, but after looking it up, you evidently do damage when jumping on enemies, and I must have taken a skag out in this manner. I seriously thought it had something to do with fire weapons in relationship to picking up the fire flower power (say that out loud, it’s fun). Still, neat and fun, and I’m glad it happened with me oblivious to the fact. Sure, sure, I scanned the list of Achievements for Borderlands, but I didn’t read all of them, and the majority seemed to be unlockable as you gradually proceeded further in the game. No worries then. Play it, and they will come.

All in all, I really like Borderlands…despite its faults. And trust me, I could list them. There are many. A lot of them boggle my mind, and I know that a few more months of development might have polished the game some more. But the shooting is fun, and it needs to be considering, well, that’s basically all you do. Achievement-wise, it’s a great mix of story-based ones, general exploration, do X a number of times, and random gameplay ones (like above). They are unlocking at a nice clip (pun intended), and I’m looking forward to taking on the game’s first major boss: Sledge. Considering how much trouble I had with skag legends Moe and Marley though, I might not be ready for him. Will have to do some more sidequests until I’m at least a LV. 20…

The slow death of videogame manuals

At the end of April 2010, Ubisoft announced it was no longer printing videogame manuals as part of a green initiative to save paper and reduce the publisher’s carbon footprint. Good for them! Boo for us that actually like manuals (in other words, me) and not just for nostalgia’s sake. This is a first for the industry, with no other publisher following suit just yet, but while I can see the pros and cons in this action, I also know that, ultimately, videogame manuals are going the way of the dinosaur.

Thankfully, there’s a site called Replacement Docs, which allows you to download manuals of many, many games, some bereft and others not. The archive is well worth scouring. Do check it out.

Right. So I like videogame manuals. I like them a lot. Some nostalgia points slip into this factoring in that, during both the middle school and high school days, I used to get dropped off at the mall, buy an SNES or PS1 game with allowance money/job money, and then sit in a predetermined meeting area until my mother came to pick me up. I’d use this time wisely by devouring the game’s manual page by page, word by word, image by image. Some times I even read the manual more than once. Trap Gunner comes to mind instantly, and after reading about the game for 20 minutes, I just couldn’t wait to get home and play. At that point, I felt like, thanks to the manual, I was more than prepared for whatever the game was going to throw at me.

And even though nowadays we have extensive previews and reviews online, on-screen button prompts, and in-game opening tutorials, the straightforwardness of “training” yourself page after page feels much more natural. You usually see a picture of the control scheme, some plot background details, learning the menus, maybe some pages devoted to key characters, and so on. Also, some tips and tricks are only mentioned in the manual, like how to crouch in Maximo, a game I bought used and without a manual, leading me down a dark and destined-for-failure path until the Internet told me what I was doing wrong. Thanks, Internet, you big manual yourself.

Also, brand new manuals smell, and you know it. Sure, it’s an acquired taste much like a new car or a really old bookstore, but I tell you this, and I tell you this in all seriousness…it’s a smell I’m going to miss. Ripping off the plastic sealing and stickers to crack open the case and give the game manual its first breath into this world is truly a great feeling. So is taking it out and fanning yourself with it during the summer months. I kid on that front, but I love videogame manuals so much that when I bought Fallout 3: Game of the Year edition back in November 2009, I still read the manual front to end before popping the game disc into my Xbox 360 despite waiting over 12 months to get the game. I think that says something.

Will have to look through my collection later for some examples of great and not-so-great videogame manuals. Cause some are truly a waste of paper, but others…well, they’ve got personality. And do more than just tell us how to play the game; they show us what it’s all about.

Baby, you can drive my car…in Borderlands (cause I don’t want to)

I’m beginning to wonder what videogames with vehicles would be like without their vehicles. Most likely better, to start.

The Mako in Mass Effect was frustrating to control, and unsatisfying when you finally did get the hang out it because then you’re mostly standing still, bunny-hopping incoming rockets, and firing your own weaponry off into the great distance. Not fun, and it might have just been easier–and more fun–to walk the path from Mako point A to Make point B then drive like a loon. I was extremely glad to hear it got the ax for Mass Effect 2 though they seemed to have added in a flying ship of sorts. Not sure how it controls.

In Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, if a single block was off or the wrong type of fuel was attached, the vehicle would be classified in the local paper as 100% jalopy/clunker/hooptie. This made making your own vehicles un-fun, and using the ones provided by the game until you hit a spot where none of them would work. Wish it was a platformer again instead of a car circus.

And Grand Theft Auto IV‘s vehicles are just hahahahaaa ahaha ahahahahah ha. Ahem.

But I’m not here to harp on Mass Effect‘s shoddy future tank or Banjo Kazooie‘s pickiness. No, no. This blog post is all about the vehicles in Borderlands.

To start: WHAT ON PANDORA IS WRONG WITH THEM?

Actually, nothing. But there is something terribly wrong with the control scheme for them. So, once you’re inside the driver seat after accidentally climbing into the gunner seat a few times, you’re ready to burn some rubber around the wasteland. To do so, on the Xbox 360, you have to press forward on the left analog stick. Okay, weird. Old-school design. So how do you steer then? Oh, you also use the left analog stick. “But,” you ask, dear reader, “how can you effectively hold it forward to drive and tilt left/right to steer the vehicle away from sharp rocks?” You can’t.

I really had a lot of trouble figuring out how to use the vehicle once I got in it. And so far, after trying to use it on two missions to speed up travel time, I’ve found myself stuck on a rock or down a ditch thanks to hard-as-vault controls. It really boggles my mind, and I can’t seem to find a way to change the scheme myself. Why couldn’t you hold A for gas and steer with the analog stick? Makes no sense, I tell you.

Now I’m just waiting to unlock fast travel because driving vehicles, especially in a solo game where no one is watching my back or driving for me, is not a good time. Of all time. NOT A GOOD TIME OF ALL TIME. Shooting bandits is much more desired.

Yet somehow–and I assure you there was no skill involved here thanks to previous mentioned controls–I unlocked the following Achievement:

Get a Little Blood on the Tires (20G): Killed 25 enemies by ramming them with any vehicle

Seriously, at this point, I think the only game with vehicles I’ve ever greatly enjoyed is Super Mario Kart. Those things handled perfectly.

Pay what you want for the Humble Indie Bundle

I stumbled across the Humble Indie Bundle yesterday, and I’m now here to tell you this is one helluva deal.

I’m gonna steal words from the give-awayers themselves since they can better explain what’s going on here:

The Humble Indie Bundle is a unique kind of bundle that we are trying out.

Pay what you want. If you bought these five games separately, it would cost around $80 but we’re letting you set the price!

All of the games work great on Mac, Windows, and Linux. We didn’t want to leave anyone out.

There is no middle-man. You can rest assured that 100% of your purchase goes directly to the developers and non-profits as you specify (minus credit card fees).

We don’t use DRM. When you buy these games, they are yours. Feel free to play them without an internet connection, back them up, and install them on all of your Macs and PCs freely.

Your contribution supports the amazing Child’s Play charity and Electronic Frontier Foundation. By default, the amount is split equally between the seven participants (including Child’s Play and EFF), but you can tweak the split any way you’d like.

I use a Mac laptop at home, and it’s definitely not a gaming computer (in my mind), save for some Facebook applications and…er, Chess. But they said “all of the games work great on Mac,” which immediately piqued my interest. Plus, I have a Wacom tablet for drawing, and it comes with a mouse that now finally has a purpose. So I plopped down a couple of bucks (more than a penny, less than $10.00 because I’m not made of money, kids), got an email, and immediately started downloading World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture.

Now, of these five games, I’d previously heard of two, and then of those two, I’d played one of them before on the Wii. That game being World of Goo. But the screenshots for Aquaria really stood out, and so I loaded that one up first and found myself falling in love. Hard. I can already tell that it was lovingly created, and the hand-painted scenery and aquatic life are really impressive. I mean really impressive. As are the shafts of light bursting down from cave walls. Graphics-aside, the gameplay is simple but gradually growing more complex as songs are learned and recipes are found. I’m liking it very much so far, as it’s a genuine mix of Super Metroid and Ecco the Dolphin, a mix unlike any other, a mix that is relaxing and fun, surprising and mysterious. I know this game–and many of the others in the bundle–came out some time back, and I’m a bit bummed to only be discovering it now.

I was gonna talk a bit more about Aquaria here, but this blog post has run a little long. Will save it for next time! So, yeah, the Humble Indie Bundle. Get to it before time runs out!

The Elite Four wall

Well, I gotta come clean. The Elite Four, more specifically the first member of the league with his/her psychic-themed Pokemon, completely pwned me. Of my six Pokemon I’m currently using, only three are over LV. 40, which seems to be where the Elite Four’s Pokemon start out at. Plus, psychic attacks had my Ho-Oh eating dirt fast, and it’s my strongest fighter at this point.

So you know what that means, right?

Time to grind.

I don’t have a huge problem with this because grinding in Pokemon HeartGold is relatively simple and easy not to pay attention to. What do I mean? Well, you basically find the cave or spot of grass with decent leveled Pokemon, equip the Pokemon you’re not using as your lead-in with the EXP share item, walk around until you get into a fight, spam your hardest attack, repeat until you run low on health or PP, heal up at the closest free healthcare center, and then do it all again. You can also watch TV during all of this.

No, what bothers me more is this severe spike in difficulty. Because if the first member of the Elite Four is trouble enough, you then have to take on three more without a chance for free healing and such. That means…I need all six of my ‘mon in great shape, most likely around LV. 50 to LV. 60. Oh boy. That’s a lot of experience to go around. Or maybe I can get by earlier than that. I will most certainly try, as I really just want to “beat” the game and open up more paths on my Pokewalker (wow, that’s kind of a sad goal).

And I dunno…given the length of the plot and major storyline events, I don’t expect many players to reach the league battle with extremely high level pocket monsters. Maybe one or two, but not a full team. Unless they played previous games before and just loaded in their super powerful team and whooped some major butt. But then phooey on them. It’s us newcomers meant to suffer.

So we’ll see. I’m definitely at a standstill currently. Maybe I can get through them with just four strong ‘mon or maybe I can see if anyone is willing to trade something good my way. The problem, naturally, is I have nothing great to give back, unless HeartGold exclusives count.

Slaying dragons and taking names

Let’s talk about this Achievement I unlocked last night from Dragon Age: Origins, with some light spoilers:

Dragonslayer (30G): Defeated the dragon guarding the Urn of Sacred Ashes

So, the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest is one of the major story-driven quests you can take on whenever you want once you’ve completed the shitstorm at Ostagar. I ended up doing it as my second quest after handling things at Redcliffe, and various forum posters frequently mentioned TO NOT RING THE GONG ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP UNLESS YOU ARE READY FOR A CRAZY BATTLE. I’m paraphrasing there, but the all caps aspect is 100% true. Hmm okay. So I didn’t ring said gong, as I was just a very low level at the time (and playing on Normal difficulty), and then completely forgot about that cutscene where the dragon flew overhead and roared. However, I still got the Urn of Sacred Ashes so…uh, the dragon kind of failed that “guarding” part. Oh well.

But after the Landsmeet, you’re basically told to do anything else you want to do because once you head to Redcliffe again, you’ll be entering the point of no return. Eep. So, last night, I instead ran around to do some more sidequests sitting idle in my questlog, and then remembered the gong. Seeing as my mage was a level 18, and Shale, Alistair, and Morrigan were level 17s, I figured we had a decent shot of taking down a dragon.

And we did, obviously, but it was still a pretty grueling battle. I can only imagine that frustration and heartbreak one might feel taking this dragon on too early in the game. There’s some really great animation work here though, which I hadn’t seen a lot of before because it’s mostly been fights with small-time enemies like bandits, darkspawn, and wolves. The coolest part of the battle happened at the end when Alistair (who I was not controlling) leaped atop the dragon’s head and swung deep with his electrified axe, striking the killing blow. Not sure if that’s scripted or not, but either way, it made the win all the more awesome.

Got some killer loot, too.

With this done, there’s nothing else so major that I want to do before heading for No Return City. Lots of sidequests are still incomplete, but none of them interest me currently, and a couple are based in Redcliffe, meaning…they are impossible to finish at this stage. Woo. So I’m gonna gather my army, try and smooch Leliana one last time, and make a final stand against the darkspawn. For Ferelden!

More Fallout: New Vegas previews are here

There’s been some more preview coverage of Fallout: New Vegas as of late, and I’m here to drool and provide you linky links to all the hot action.

First, IGN has a lengthy look at the beginning of the game and how you’ll come to create your character and so. There’s actually not a whole lot of new details that weren’t already spoiled in print magazine articles a couple months back, but at least we get to see some new pics. Love the one-wheeled robots. And sniping from a dino’s mouth. Can’t beat that with a nine iron.

Then MTV Multiplayer talks a bit how the shooting mechanics from Fallout 3 are being updated to better fit FPS players. For one thing, much like in Borderlands and BioShock, you’ll be able to bring up the weapon’s iron sights to help improve aim and accuracy. And there will be weapon mods available such as extended magazines, mountable scopes, and recoil dampeners. These upgrades will surely help out those that prefer to shoot outside the VATS system (not me).

Regardless, it all sounds good to me. The IGN article took a swing at the fact that, graphically, one might confuse Fallout: New Vegas as simply an expansion of Fallout 3. True, true. But I’m more than willing to give up some graphics polish to have just as much (and most likely more) of the same great content that makes the world fun to play and explore. Hurry on up, Fall 2010!

I’ve got a Ho-Oh in my pocket

There are most likely a number of ways one can consider “beating” Pokemon HeartGold. There’s the boss battle against the respective game’s legendary pocket monster (Ho-Oh for HeartGold, and Lugia for SoulSilver), there’s defeating the Elite 4 after smiting the previously mentioned legendaries, there’s collecting all 493 (?!) Pokemon and completing your Pokedex to the max, and lastly there’s hardcore breeding and building the perfect team with the perfect stats for perfectly kicking other Pokemon in the face during online battles and such. I guess that last one’s more of a goal than anything else, but I’m sure there are some players that use it as a measuring stick for beating the game.

Anyways, of those, I just ticked off the first one. And alas, it was a huge disappointment.

See, every time you start HeartGold, you’re treated to a 3D model of the legendary phoenix ‘mon Ho-Oh flying through the sky, looking all majestic and bad-ass. Obviously, you will meet him/her/it in mortal combat. It’s only a matter of time. The graphics used here get you excited for more lively-looking Pokemon, but unfortunately that never comes to fruition. It’s sprites through and through, with 8-bit sound effects, too. So, just before you do battle with Ho-Oh, you visit Professor Elm (or is it Oak? Dogwood? JUNIPER?!) and he gives you a single Master Ball. This is a special, extremely limited Pokeball that will catch a Pokemon with 100% accuracy, no fail, no problems. Use it wisely.

I used it on Ho-Oh on my very first turn. Fight over. He/she/it is mine, and Ho-Oh now proudly owns the nickname of Bombadil. Sure, I could have used this opportunity to test my skills and probably earn some killer EXP, but I also wanted it for my collection. The timing and convenience of the Master Ball naturally played into my plans.

I was expecting something more epic. I had the opportunity to make it so. Then again, Game Freak made it so easy to go the other way.

Up next, the fight against the Elite 4. From the few postings I’ve read online, this set of battles will definitely test my skills. As well as open up a whole new cut of land to explore. Hmm. Wish me luck, fellow Trainers.