Five things make a post, and Suikoden III is an undeniable PlayStation 2 classic

Activity on Grinding Down has been sparse as of late, which is pretty much par for the course when it comes to the summer months. Truth be told, between moving from one state to another, working, burning the midnight oil, frowning over piles of paperwork, living a life, and eating up several episodes of House of Cards on Netflix every night, I’ve not been juggling many games at once, continuing to focus on my current mainstays: Pokémon Shuffle, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and a handful of mobile entries, one of which I’m not even ready to openly admit to “playing.” What a tease!

Anyways, here’s a few–well, five, if the title of this post is to be believed–short topics I have enough words to spew about. Perhaps I’ll get back to longer, more traditional posts sooner than later, but I promise to make no promises. Except for that promise.

Onwards!

Steam Sale Has Shipped

I always imagine myself going crazy and buying game after game after game during Steam’s annual Summer Sale…but that never seems to happen. It should, as there are plenty of great sales, and I checked in on the marketplace at least once a day, almost pulling the trigger on Grow Home, but nope. This year, I spent a total of $0.74 for the Developer Alliance bundle, and of them, I’ve only got to enjoy one outing so far. The other titles are at least installed on my machine. Also, I tried out that weird meta “keep on clicking” mini-game about monsters battling, but had no idea really what the point of it was, other than contributing to unlocking additional sales.

Well, there’s always the end-of-year Holiday Sale to look forward to. Maybe I’ll spend over a dollar for that event. Maybe I’ll finally grab a copy of Grow Home before 2015 concludes. Maybe.

Welcome to tactical alien shooting

Naturally, I have a longer, much more detailed post in the works for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, but the videogame-musing words have not been very forthcoming these last few weeks. Anyways, I finally beat this last night, but the final fight took–ready for this–nine attempts. Seven with my team of agents that I’ve been playing with since perhaps the second or third mission of the game, which was frustrating as the last fight seemed designed to undermine every one of their abilities. Instead, I had to swap out my generic-but-loyal dudes for two other dudes with different classes, and yes I totally understand that these are personality-less soldiers, but, to me, to CIA Agent William Carter’s journey as a whole, it made more sense that his long-standing comrades should’ve finished the fight with him than these newbies. Oh well.

The Flame Champion once more

The Suikoden franchise, as much as it hurts to write it, is dead. And this time, there’s no late-game manner of reviving it like there was with a certain Young Master’s friend. Clearly, Konami doesn’t even want to make videogames anymore.

Thankfully, there’s been a few gasps of air over the last couple of months with the bringing of Suikoden II to the PlayStation Network as a digital download. This fantastic trend is continuing, with Suikoden III popping up this week for fans of Konami’s star-studded RPG series to eat up. Yes, I purchased a digital copy immediately for a whopping $9.99; y’all might remember the time and length it took me to finally snag a (used) retail copy, but it turns out that my used discs are a wee bit scratched and unreliable. Now I don’t have to worry about that, though I’ll have to start the adventure over. Methinks I will once I get through Final Fantasy IX.

What in the world was that?

I burned through a guessing game on my non-fancy Windows 8 phone the other week called What in the World?, which basically presents you with a category, a low detailed drawing, and a bunch of letters at the bottom. Your goal is to guess what it is, and, for the most part, the answers are pretty obvious. Harry Potter, Madonna, Paris, Spider-Man, and so on. I struggled mostly with celebrity names and automobile brands, but if you get stuck you can use power-ups to remove unused letters or even put several correct letters in their final places. In the end, I unlocked all the Achievements and then deleted the thing from my phone.

Quote the raven

Once again, I’m tasked with making room on my fledgling of an Xbox 360, as I’d really like to download Just Cause 2 and see some chaos unfold. But first, let’s complete some other Games with Gold freebies from my hard-drive. Like…um, The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief. Well, Episode 1 at least. It’s a point-and-click adventure game…on a console. Grrr. So far, I’m glad that this was free, but generally once I start something, I need to finish it, even if it is only the first episode. My favorite subtitle typo currently has been about a train patron when she “looses” her purse, but the next line contaiedn the correct use of “lose.” Can’t win ’em all, the creators of The Book of Unwritten Tales.

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That’s all for now! I have to go find some lady’s lost purse, as well as trick a violinist into opening up his violin case. Videogames–am I right?

2015 Game Review Haiku, #37 – The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

William Carter must
Destroy the Outsiders threat
Tactical shoot, hide

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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.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #36 – Out There (Somewhere)

Time those jumps, fix ship
End boss is out there somewhere
Don’t ignore the trees

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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.

Your broken spaceship’s parts are Out There (Somewhere)

Well, the Steam Summer Sale kicked off the other day, and so far, I’ve produced a haiku about it, as well as bought a bundle of four games for $0.74. I’d also like to note that the money used to purchase this bundle was generated from selling digital trading cards on the Steam marketplace, so this is a big win–in my mind–from multiple angles. The Developer Alliance bundle, which was marked down to 95% off, contained the following, all of which seemed interesting and were not already in my library at the time of purchase: Polarity, Beep, Camera Obscura, and Out There (Somewhere). Today, I’ll be waxing on and off about the last listed title there, but I do expect to try out the other three sooner than later.

Out There (Somewhere), a name that feels like it should be attached to a long-lost Asimov short story, is an action-based puzzle platformer clearly inspired by adventures like Cave Story, Super Metroid, and Portal. See, you play an explorer named Yuri stranded on a dangerous alien planet after your spaceship is damaged. Low on fuel and in desperate need of key spaceship parts, your only hope for escape is to explore and see what this planet holds. Thankfully, you have a teleportation gun, though its use is limited based on your environment. I’ll explain.

In this platformer, you can jump, as well as shoot your teleportation gun, which fires a ball of blue light. Technically, that’s you. Once that blue light hits a surface, you’ll be instantly transported there. Of course, there are some exceptions, as different colored beams of light will get in your way: red cancels your shot, blue will teleport you like any other surface, and green takes you for a ride first. This is where a lot of the puzzles come into play, figuring out how to get from one place to another using your gun. Often, you’ll have to factor in momentum too when landing a teleporting shot. Fairly early on you’ll acquire a more weapony gun, a real pea-shooter, which will help you take out enemies like bats and monster slime thingies; alas, having two different guns confused me at first, and I ended up firing the wrong one at the right time far too many times.

Evidently, I’m a sucker for games where every screen you traverse gets a name. I loved this in VVVVVV and You Have to Win the Game, and I like it here as well, though the screen names, so far, are not highly titillating (for example, Basement). The story is fairly thin, but enough to go on. As you explore, you’ll come across NPCs in the form of alien treefolk; they don’t say much, but there’s an Achievement for speaking to every one of them, and so I’ll do it. However, Out There (Somewhere) is more about the action and nifty mechanics, and the difficulty curve is surprisingly tough–but rewarding.

Part of me is bummed to learn that Out There (Somewhere) was released back in 2012. That means I’ve been missing out on this good, wholesome, teleport-your-body fun for three years. There once was a time when only a handful of games came out, and you could keep track of them all; now, not so much. Well, I’m glad then that this Developer Alliance bundle for the Steam Summer Sale caught my eye, and I’m looking forward to checking out the other titles, but only after I finish Yuri’s mission. For the meantime, I have to get back to work, and by that I mean collecting those vital spaceship parts with style.

Alfie Banks and his great opportunity in A Golden Wake

More so than movies or books, videogames transport us to other worlds and let us interact–with things, whether they are people, plants, or places. Oftentimes, these worlds are fictional or, in the case when they are not, the narrative surrounding it or the era are created whole cloth. I’m struggling to think of a game built around something so real and true, an experience where you just recreate the past as it happened. No, the Assassin’s Creed series definitely does not count. Now, A Golden Wake doesn’t do this per se, but many of the people in it are pieces of history, as is the land boom in Florida and the illegal happenings around Prohibition. I mean, you simply can’t make up a thing like the Roaring Twenties.

You take control of Alfie Banks, a realtor for Morris & Banks in New York. Unfortunately, his realtor days are up because his coworkers concoct a cunning plot to frame him, which subsequently results in his ejection from the company. With not much to go on, Banks purchases a newspaper–with his last dime, mind you–and reads an article about the land boom in Florida. For him, a fresh start is simply a long train ride away. And off he goes, to meet an array of new characters and find his place in the big ol’ world.

A Golden Wake dives deep into its setting. You can see this from the reworked Wadjet Eye logo when the game loads up to the playful menu text when you quit back to the desktop. Despite being a work of speculative fiction, Grundislav Games makes a massive effort to be historically accurate, including notable figures from the era, such as real estate developer George Merrick and mobster Fatty Walsh. period dialogue, and a retro, ragtime soundtrack that is still stuck in my head as of this writing. This high attention to detail really helps bring the old-school and, to be honest, somewhat crude graphics to life. To put it bluntly, there were a few screens, such as the boat dock and a few one-off locations, like the golf course, that felt unfinished. Or rather, uninteresting and distant, and existing only for Alfie to click on something and go to an additional screen, where things were much more refined.

Here’s a bummer: Alfie Banks is not very likeable. The game likes to build up his so-called charm and way with words, but I found him grating, whiney, and selfish from the very first scene. There’s nothing you can do about this. It is how he is written, and when the time comes for him to make a major decision, you just sit back and watch, helping to put the pieces together afterwards. The problem is that we never get a whole lot of backstory on the man, not even when his brother shows up for a chat. Which makes a lot of his journey and grumbling as an errand boy feel a bit empty. He certainly has an impact, but ultimately feels quite unnecessary in the long run. A shame, as I did enjoy many other characters, such as Marjory Stoneman Douglas, voiced by none other than Rebecca Whittaker. Another problem is that because Alfie is constantly jumping ship, you never get to hang around with the same side characters for too long.

In stark contrast to the previous point-and-click adventure game I played, A Golden Wake‘s puzzles across Alfie Banks’ sojourn for a better life are shockingly simple. Your inventory never becomes too full, and every solution stems from a logical conclusion. Need an antenna for a toy tramcar? Use that antenna you broke off that radio earlier. There are a few spots where the “action” switches from standard pointing and clicking, with you finding “hidden objects” in a picture to condemn a house or steering a car to help Mabel Cody hop on her flying stunt plane. These certainly do break up the action, but are far from enjoyable. In the end, I only had to look up the solution to an obtuse bookcase secret passage puzzle (hint: how would a V.I.P. enter?), figuring everything out on my own. There’s also a questioning minigame–think L.A. Noire, but toned way down–where you can use Alfie’s charm and wits to unearth answers or cheat by clicking the Seller’s Intuition button; I never felt like I was doing it right, though the story just continues on regardless of the outcomes.

A few years ago, I replayed Blackwell Deception with the developer’s commentary on, and it was just as enjoyable as the first time through. I’m not ready to go back into A Golden Wake–aw, horsefeathers!–but when I do, I suspect I’ll partake of this option, as well as go for some of the trickier Achievements. There’s no difficulty setting for the puzzles, but it’ll be interesting to hear some thoughts about what went into them or why this location was used this way or that. A Golden Wake dreams big, and while it is not successfully in every corner, it is still a pretty good adventure that fans of traditional pointing and clicking can eat up, all while drowning in that deliciously sweet jitterbugging soundtrack.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #35 – A Golden Wake

The Roaring Twenties
A time of crime, greed, land booms
Use intuition

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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.

Five things I still haven’t done in the Fallout series

Well, Fallout 4 got officially announced the other day, and I couldn’t be more excited. I’m hoping this is another Skyrim case for Bethesda, where they both reveal and release the game in a short window of time. I mean, we all have to imagine that this is pretty far along in the development pipeline, so here’s hoping for a Holiday 2015 release window. Granted, that means I’m going to have to eventually pony up and purchase a next-gen console, picking either the Xbox One or PlayStation 4, and I’m not yet ready to make that call. Heck, I’m still rocking my PlayStation 2 (and PlayStation 1) games, and there’s only so much room in my entertainment stand. I know, first-world problems.

These open-world games from Bethesda are massive, and I often find it impossible to see and do everything there is to see and do. For example, here’s a post I did on five things yet to experience in Skyrim, and nearly three years later I’ve still not checked most of them off. Yup, zero desire to ride a horse. Anyways, I realized that there are plenty of other objectives for me to complete in the Fallout series, and so here’s another to-do list, hopefully one I can work at while waiting for that sweet Fallout 4 release date to drop. The majority of the list relates to Fallout: New Vegas considering I did 100% Fallout 3 in terms of Achievements, but I tried to think more broadly too.

Let’s get to it, fellow Vault dwellers!

Hardcore chore

I’ve started at least ten new games in Fallout: New Vegas, and each time before I leave Doc Mitchell’s house at the start, I pause and consider the message that asks if I want to play with “Hardcore” difficulty on. This difficulty setting always seems so interesting, but also so annoying. You have to constantly eat and drink, your health is not healed instantly or when you sleep, and bullets now count towards your weight limit. Plus, companions can permanently die, and all I can think of is how many times E-DE would charge into battle and knock itself out in a few hits. Sure, one can construct a character in terms of perks and abilities to get around some of these negatives, but it feels like a hassle. I need to–pun intended–bite the bullet and just give it a shot sometime soon, though I doubt I could ever devote the time and patience to beating the whole game with this mode on.

Break the bank

I’m not much of a true gambler, but my friend has a Blackjack table in his house, and we like to play from time to time with fake money. That said, even in videogame form, I’m not much of a gambler, and so I never really invested any time or effort into the casinos on the New Vegas strip. There’s an Achievement for being so good and winning so much that causes you to be banned by all of them. I assume one needs to have a high luck stat, but also be generally good at Poker, Blackjack, and Roulette. I’ll be happy if I can win enough bottle caps to get kicked out of one casino.

Back to its Roots

I have attempted to play the original Fallout, but only once, and even then, only slightly. It’s definitely a little harder to get into that the more modern versions, but I’d like to try again and see where this all began, seeing as the stories are constantly connected and referenced, and the gameplay, though from a different perspective, is pretty similar. As it happens, I have two copies–one cheaply acquired from a yard sale, and a digital copy given out for free from GOG some years back.

One-two Deathclaw punch

I once tried to sneak attack a Deathclaw from behind with a golf club, and it didn’t go well, so I can only imagine how punching one would turn out. That said, I kind of have this craving to do it, an unnatural desire.

Pacifist Pauly

I’m not sure if you can do it entirely in Fallout 3, but in Fallout: New Vegas you can equip boxing gloves to knock opponents out–versus kill them–as well as up your speech and barter skills to avoid unnecessary brawls. And so you can play as a pacifist, harming nobody while completing the main quest. Much like with the Hardcore difficulty, this is totally possible, but seems like a slow, tricky way to play, and it reminds me not fondly of my time trying to play a pacifist in Deus Ex: Human Revolution where I didn’t harm a single human, but then accidentally rewired a robot to fight for me, killing a few people as well as my chance for that Achievement.

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What are some of your favorite things to do in the Wasteland? Or things you want to do, but haven’t yet? I’m open for more ideas, especially since I just set up my Xbox 360 in my new apartment and dug out my copies of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Going back in real soon.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #34 – Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Story of Silas
And the bad men he’s hunting
Listen up, Old West

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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.

The full Broken Age, now with trickier, disheartening puzzles

At Tim Schafer’s urging, I restarted Broken Age entirely once “Act 2” was released last month. I hadn’t touched the game since I burned through “Act 1” in 2014, so it made sense to refresh myself on the minor story beats, seeing as Act 1’s doozy of a cliffhanger closing has stayed bouncing around in my mind all this time. Magically, I remembered the majority of solutions to puzzles and dialogue navigation, so the first chunk of the game didn’t take too long to get through once again. Plus, the full game now comes stocked with Achievements to pop, many of which are rewarded for exploring all options, something I do often in adventure games.

Look, here’s the thing. I’m a backer of Broken Age. I did not contribute much to the Kickstarter–in fact, I got in on the action after Double Fine already met its goal–but I was still one of many that helped bring this adventuring air bubble to the surface. I feel a closeness to it, a connection, certainly reinforced by watching the documentary as each unfiltered episode was released, seeing the problems and answers to game development unfold. It’s a special game, and while I loved the story from beginning to end, especially the vibrant, unique characters, I just found myself depressed over the spike in puzzle difficulty for the second half.

Because I hold the story in such high regards, I will spoil very little of it here. For those that don’t know what the four-one-one is, let me steal some words from Broken Age‘s official website:

Broken Age is a timeless coming-of-age story of barfing trees and talking spoons. Vella Tartine and Shay Volta are two teenagers in strangely similar situations, but radically different worlds. The player can freely switch between the characters and their individual stories, helping them take control of their own lives, and dealing with the unexpected adventures that follow.

Right. Let’s talk about puzzles. In the first half of Broken Age–and yes, it is hard to think of the game as a single entity after it was cut in half to get it out to the public even though now one can play it and never realize that there ever was a cliffhanger to hang on to for months–the majority of the puzzles involved using an item on something. Pretty typical point-and-click adventuring stuff, and occasionally you’d have to navigate through some specific dialogue lines or combine items with one another. The number of screens and people to interact with for both Shay and Vella were severely limited or doled out in small chunks to not overwhelm players.

Once Broken Half‘s second half starts, the puzzles raise the difficulty up to eleven. That’s a Spinal Tap reference, I think. I’m not even kidding when I reveal that I couldn’t get past Vella’s first screen, eventually having to look up an answer. It turns out that this puzzle required you clicking on a specific part of the rope, whereas all previous puzzles never asked for such specificity. I figured just highlighting the rope would’ve been enough, but nope. Later on, there’s another rope puzzle that I’ve seen many on the Interwebz complain about, but I actually got through it just fine, as well as found it amusing. The puzzles I really struggled with involved wiring Hexipals for various purposes, as well as tricking someone into believing Vella was somebody else. Both involved a lot of remembering numerous, highly specific details and backtracking. They are also randomized and tiresome, and it is extremely frustrating when you know what you need to do, but can’t do it because you can’t remember if the boy in that faded family picture is wearing red or green shoes.

That all said, I do think Broken Age is a good game, if not the most fun to play during the later parts. Go to it for the characters and dialogue and the jokes you get to tell a barfing tree. Don’t be afraid to try those chatty utensils are everything and everyone, as some of the best writing is hidden in their responses. I urge you to look up puzzle solutions for the later section of the game, if only to remain in the world and see how everything ends. I do have to wonder if this made any non-fans of point-and-click adventure games into fans or if it was just a one-off for them. Time will tell, and you never know…maybe in twenty years–y’know, after adventure games are claimed dead and done once again–we’ll get another crowd-funded game from Schafer & Company. I’ll play it, but no more wire-based puzzles please.