A bedtime story
Of ghosts, snowmen, forest gods
Gorgeous, childish
–
From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.
Posted in 2015 completed games, entertainment, haiku review, just beat, videogames
Tagged cats, haiku, haikus, Infinite Ammo, Lost Constellation, Night in the Woods, NITW, poetry
I have no nostalgia for DuckTales on the NES. I can’t; I’ve never played it. Like many other classic NES titles, such as Blaster Master, Kid Icarus, and Bionic Commando, since I never had a Nintendo Entertainment System as a kid and had limited access to cool kid neighbors with the console, I missed out on a lot. Thankfully, due to the industry’s love for remaking and re-releasing oldies and better access to ports these days, I’m catching up. Slowly. For example, I beat both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake last year, tough as they got. I’m also progressing at a snail’s pace in The Legend of Zelda, but more on that in another post.
Alas, I don’t actually know and have to assume that gameplay in DuckTales Remastered is relatively the same as the NES original. Scrooge only has a few abilities at hand, such as jumping, pogo jumping, and whacking objects with his cane. All of these mechanics are relatively simple to use, though I am far from a pro at continuously pogo jumping from one side of the screen to the other; Scrooge often lands on the edge of a platform, causing him to, well, land, and put his cane away. Anyways, through these limited abilities, you’ll hop around a series of level, bouncing on the heads of enemies, unearthing treasure, and collecting whatever maguffin is needed to open up the level’s final boss.
From what I’ve read, it seems like all the original 8-bit levels from the NES days are here–Amazon, Transylvania, The Moon, etc. Except now they are remastered, which means they are colorful and cartoony and a little jarring at times. I found the juxtaposition of sprites and polygonal items (like that treasure chest in the image above) to be constantly at odds with one another. I mean, sure, it looks prettier than what came out in 1989, but I actually think screenshots for that dinosaur still hold up really well. If anything, I’d say more attention was paid in the remastered version on backgrounds, which really help sell the levels more. The Amazon looks and feels like a jungle opposed to some blades of grass and a bland blue sky. That said, while the levels look different, purists can probably breathe a sigh of relief as the map layouts are the same.
However, WayForward Technologies has added an actual story to what was, I’m assuming, a pretty lifeless story. Or totes nonexistent. Basically, Scrooge McDuck has to find five priceless artifacts. Why? Well, um, he’s a greedy ol’ man-duck. A map left behind after a failed Beagle Boy raid of his bank reveals five locations to scour. Despite a still paper-thin plot, there’s a surprisingly amount of cutscenes to get through, a few of which do feel unnecessary and invasive. Same goes for some of the cameos, though I could never say anything negative about Fenton Crackshell, also known as Gizmoduck. I understand the original voice actors returned to reprise many of the roles, and while that’s awesome, it didn’t result in great performances; Scrooge himself sounds tired, uninterested, and going through the motions.
At this point, I’ve only completed two of the five levels, specifically the Amazon and the Himalayas. I’ll get to the others soon, but I kind of have been just nibbling at DuckTales Remastered in-between using shivs on Clickers in The Last of Us and getting heavily back into Rogue Legacy thanks to it being one of this month’s free PlayStation Plus downloads. Money you earn in every level can be spent to buy concept art and soundtrack songs, as well as fill up Scrooge’s money bin to the brim; I’ve not felt inspired to purchase many pieces of concept art. I won’t get too far into here, but I’m generally of the mindshare that concept art is not a reward, not something characters should be unlocking or purchasing. It should be there, probably before the credits option. That’s it.
Maybe I’d be more gushing if I had played DuckTales as a wee lad and spent hours unearthing every single hidden gem, that this reheat of a much-loved classic was everything and then some, but no. I wasn’t very impressed with another remake as of late either–Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. Perhaps developers need to reconsider the reasons behind taking older games and putting them in new clothes and ponder if it is worth all the dressing up or not. For DuckTales Remastered, so far, I’m thinking no.
I feel bad for anyone who isn’t still fascinated with balloons. It might mean you’ve lost your innocence, your childish wonder at the originally incomprehensible. Just fill this flexible bag with a gas, such as helium or air, and watch it expand, float, fly. Even now, I sometimes can’t understand it, and this probably plays into my fear of planes, big hulking machines of metal soaring through the sky and staying there for hours. A good chunk of media that I love heavily features balloons of all shapes, colors, and sizes, such as Nena’s “99 Luftballoons”, The Red Balloon, which I first watched in my high school French class, the robot’s best friend in Doki Doki Universe, and the balloons that debuff your characters in Suikoden, curable only by using a Needle. That’s only to name a few; I’m sure more balloons exist in my mind, floating just out of memory’s reach.
Balloon Diaspora, clearly by its name alone, is about balloons–hot air balloons, to be specific–but only in terms of plot. It’s really more about chatting with locals, strange stick figure folk whose culture is instantly foreign. I mean, they hunt for seagulls with fishing poles to begin with. But yeah, you, who I ended up naming K, arrived in a broken hot air balloon basket–which could be a reference to the strangeness that we know as Oz–and is looking to patch it up. K needs six pieces of cloth to patch the balloon up, and exiles from a place called the Balloon Archipelago are willing to help, for a little help in return. Fetch quests and dialogue trees abound; it’s like a JRPG minus the combat and boom anime babes.
Look, it all boils down to this: Balloon Diaspora is a series of interesting choices. Not right, not wrong, just choices–yours, whoever you believe yourself to be. My version of K came from across the Gusty Sea and was a very reserved, secretive, and compliant adventurer; I gave up little and went along with a lot. The game continuously asks questions that carry weight, but no tangible consequences. It evokes emotional agency and is an extremely effective way of empowering the player in a short period of time. Often in games where you are given a list of choices, it is easy to see them separates into different categories at a glance: friendly, unfriendly, neutral. Not here. I found myself hesitating at nearly every question tossed K’s way, thinking over the answers, considering all the options. One conversation resulted in only negative responses, and I had to determine which way was more in line with my thinking…and no, I wasn’t pleased with the pick.
Visually, Balloon Diaspora is a dark place. A void with little life, though what life lives there does stand out. The trees are unique, the non-playable characters, while similar in structure, do stand apart, and I love the way the camera zooms and turns as you point and click to maneuver through the levels. Color pops up now and then, used effectively. Equally sparse though is the soundtrack; sparse, but delightful. A somber, beautiful piano-driven piece plays as you travel from location to location in a friend’s balloon basket, and some text at the corner of the screen tells you that you can skip ahead any time you want. I never did. It’s too pretty not to hear. Other than that, I can’t recall too many other music pieces standing out as I searched around for a really good joke to trade for cloth.
The creators of Balloon Diaspora also have another game out, currently still in the works–the episodic Kentucky Route Zero. It looks atmospheric and astounding, heavy on the narrative, but I think I am growing weary of the episodic format. Life is Strange and Telltale’s Game of Thrones both seem really cool too, but I’d now rather wait until the entire season is done and can be played in a single sitting–or as close together as I like. That said, I’ll keep Kentucky Route Zero in mind for down the road and continue to look at balloons in childlike wonder.
If you want to give Balloon Diaspora a try, it’s free to download over here.
My original and only intent for heading to the local GameStop over the weekend was to pick up a used copy of The Last of Us, that way I could continue onwards from where I left of after playing a friend’s copy during that overly hyped blizzard last week. As I’m wont to do, I checked out the mini-section for PlayStation 2 games, since I think this shop and one other in the area are the last of their kind to still sell these case-less games for real cheap. It’s certainly only a matter of months until they stop. So, I saw a sign, a literal one hanging right in front of me–all PS2 games were 75% off. Oh boy.
I stopped doing these “adding to the backlog” posts long ago as it just didn’t interest me to call out every new game that I either got or downloaded for free. Which happens pretty frequently with me, thanks to indie bundles and PlayStation Plus and so on. Some purchasing occasions are more exciting than others, like this one. I can’t expect many to care, though SlickGaming might take note to see if his local GameStops are also running a similar promotion. Right. Here’s what I nabbed, and for future reference I’m going to include how much each one cost me after taking 75% off the listed price tag:
Bought for $0.67. Yup, that’s sixty-seven cents. Be prepared to see others in this listed around the same price. Anyways, I had no idea what this was, but after some quick research, it seems to be an action RPG inspired by titles like Diablo and Fallout. Okay, sounds good. Though I’m quite puzzled over how the main character’s anatomy works on the case’s cover, which, thankfully, did not come with my purchase.
Bought for $0.45. A mini-game collection with a plot involving you being the new kid in the neighborhood and beating an infamous bully to the ground before the first day of school starts. Yeah, I can get behind that, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a ton to My Street. I feel like I played a demo of it way back in the day and liked what I saw, but the memory for that is extremely fuzzy. Call me crazy, but I’m more inclined to try this one out first of the whole group.
Bought for $2.25, which was the highest of the bunch, but that makes sense when you realize that Sonic Mega Collection Plus is actually twelve to fourteen games on a single disc. A few of those copy over to my copy of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, but that’s okay. A collection is a collection, and there’s some rarer Sonic titles here, though I promise to never touch Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine again. Still bummed to hear about Sega leaving the gaming business.
Bought for $0.45. Funny enough, 007: Agent Under Fire was eventually going to be a Games I Regret Parting With post, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. Now I never will. It was actually my first Bond game, though I have no memory of how it went, save for some weird wristwatch shooting sections.
Bought for $0.45. Skating!
Bought for $0.67. More skating!
Bought for $0.67. I NOW HAVE ALL THE SKATEBOARDING GAMES, I WILL NEVER TIRE OR GROW WEARY OF SKATEZ AND HALFPIPES AND SICK, SWEET OLLI TRICKS NO NEVER!
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Woo, seven more games to…well, not play right away. Yup, you know me, I have a few other things to attend to first, such as finishing up The Last of Us, DuckTales Remastered, and possibly starting either Final Fantasy IX or Silent Hill 3, both of which are on my to-do list for 2015. Also, now I want to pop over to the other local GameStop and see what PS2 games they have for super cheap before the deal vanishes and they just toss everything into a bin and set it ablaze. Gah, it never ends.
Let me just say this: I am terrified of the Cordyceps fungus. This is a fungus that infects insects and arthropods. It attacks its host, replacing tissue and sprouting ominous stems that grow outside of its body. Eventually, these stems release spores into the air, infecting other hosts, and the cycle repeats ad nauseam. It’s rather special, like the work of a mad scientist whose only goal is to eradicate everything. So far, the fungus has no negative effect on humans and is even used in some medicine and recipes, though I have no desire to nom nom on creepy shrooms.
The Last of Us imagines a world where this is not the case. Where one unlucky dude got infected–and then millions did. I ended up dog-sitting for some friends during that recent, so-called storm of the century, and I took The Last of Us, Destiny, and Red Dead Redemption off my friend’s PS3 gaming shelf, intending to give all a whirl in between petting dogs and letting dogs go outside to do their canine business. Alas, I only ended up playing the first of the three, and it really took me by surprise. Yeah, I know, I’m pretty late to this train, but, based off all the talk in 2013 during “game of the year” time, I’m well aware that many are thrilled with how The Last of Us turned out. That it is a good, possibly great game. That’s not what surprised me. Let me explain.
I thought The Last of Us was going to be scarier than it is. I mean, its ideas and the inevitable actions of man in a post-apocalyptic world are horrifying, but that actual sneaking around enemies, both human and mutated, is more mechanical–and often frustrating–than anything frightening. Sure, I’m still not a fan of the sound Clickers make, but I can get past it. Literally. It just takes patience and willpower. For the longest time, I stayed away from The Last of Us, liking it to things like Dead Space and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, horror adventures built mostly around jump scares, tension, and a sense of hopeless dread. The Last of Us does feature the latter two elements heavily, but there are no cheap scares here. At least as far as I’ve gotten, which is up to when Joel and Ellie arrive at Eastern Colorado University.
I’m playing The Last of Us on its normal difficulty, but have found several sections extremely frustrating. Namely, navigating a room full of shiv-only Clickers, running from a noise-making generator, and that suburban sniper sequence. I may or may not bump it down to easy, which is not the worst thing in the world, seeing as I’m really just going through the combat scenarios to see the next cutscene or interaction between characters. This could’ve totally been a highly polished point-and-click adventure game sans guns and action-driven conflict, and I’d be enjoying my time all the same. Or maybe not. Maybe these combat sections are imperative to the plot, to see how violent Joel gets, how violent he has to be to stay alive. All I know is that playing The Last of Us is not what I look forward to most.
That said, possibly one of my favorite trends in videogames over the last decade is being able to see enemies–and track them–through walls. This was one of the early upgrades I got in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I know tagging enemies in Far Cry 3 and 4 is important to keeping tabs on everyone, and that very same tagging system helped keep me alive in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Here, in The Last of Us, Joel can enter “listening” mode any time he wants; this puts him in a crouch, turns the world black and white, and pops up visible silhouettes of enemies in the area. I find myself walking around in this mode so often that I forget how colorful Naughty Dog’s world is, how lush with greenery and rust and blood it actually is. I hide by listening.
I suspect I’ll be back for some post-The Last of Us writing, given how powerful the narrative is turning out and unfolding. Plus, I think, unlike with Tomb Raider and Dragon Age: Inquisition, I will give the online multiplayer a shot. A sneaky, stealthy bow shot, that is. Er, hopefully.
Posted in entertainment, impressions, musings, playstation 3, videogames, weather
Tagged Clickers, Cordyceps, Ellie, Joel, Naughty Dog, The Last of Us, zombies
