Tell me a monster of a tale, Monster Tale

Without warning, I have a new game to add to my list of DO WANTS for 2011. Enter Monster Tale! It’s an adorable platformer for the Nintendo 3DS made by the creators of Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure that’s a mix of an RPG, a Metroidvania, and a throwback to SNES classics. Beautiful sprites suck me in every single time.

Anyways, you play as Ellie, the blue-haired heroine above as she explores a mysterious world with her pet Chomp. A fairly hollow setup, but it’s more than enough to start with, and the gameplay seems to be the most unique thing about Monster Tale. See, Chomp can assist Ellie during combat and gain EXP (from eating cookies from one instance that I saw) and use items you pick up on the top screen. These items are dropped to the bottom screen–the “Pet Sanctuary”–where Chomp can hang out, regenerate health, learn skills from scrolls, and use items to help you out in battle. Chomp also comes with his/her own skill tree and seems to be customizable in terms of skills and actions.

Imagine if all monsters could gain experience and strength bonuses from eating cookies:

::shudder::

Today is the first I’ve ever heard of this game, but I guess I’m late to the party as some Googling shows a few sites doing previews and all that jazz dating back to early January 2011. However, what really hooked me was the Quick Look over at Giant Bomb, which does spoil a bit of the beginning, but does wonders to show you why it’s gonna be a great addition to anyone’s DS collection. It comes out some time in March. Between this and Radiant Historia, my DS is gonna be cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

Here’s a few more screens to slober over, too:

Here are some videogames I want in 2011

Good morning, February! One month down for 2011, and eleven to go. A few big retail games came out in January, but none really interested me. Sorry, Dead Space 2…I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to enjoy you. Maybe when I finally conquer Silent Hill 2 we can talk? Maybe, maybe. Heck, there were even parts of Fallout: New Vegas that made me jump! Survival-horror is just a genre I don’t feel comfortable walking around in. And that’s kind of funny, considering that’s mostly what one does in a survival-horror game. Moving on…

There are some other games coming out this year that I do want, and I do want them badly. These are most likely automatic purchases. Goodbye money, hello sweet entertainment.

Radiant Historia

Release date: February 22, 2011
Why I do want badly: Being a solid Atlus fan, as well as an admirer of tri-Ace’s work, I’m excited about a time-traveling RPG that, from the sounds of it, really does let you mess around with its timeline. I’ve got a GameStop gift card saved from Christmas just for this! My deepest apologies, Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation and Pokemon Black/White, but you’re too much of the same-old, same-old RPG to light up my eyes at the moment.

Torchlight

Release date: Spring 2011
Why I do want badly: It’s been a long time since I played Diablo II, and this seems to be an excellent, current gen console take on the whole kill, quest, loot gameplay. I’ve heard only good things about the game, and I’m excited to see it being ported to the Xbox 360 as I don’t have–and never will–a decent gaming PC.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Release date: November 11, 2011
Why I do want badly: I was surprised to find myself so bored with Oblivion early on. This next entry seems to be all about randomly generated quests and caves, and that could keep things spicy. Plus, it’s the next entry in the Elder Scrolls series. You just know it’s gonna be an epic epic of epic epicness, especially now that we know it’s using a brand new engine. Plus, you get to shout at dragons.

And here’s a couple other games I do want this year, but who knows if they are even in the works: Mass Effect 2: Game of the Year Edition, Borderlands 2, and LEGO Harry Potter, Years 5-7. And I’m sure I’ll be picking up some older, used titles here and there. Case in point, I’ve been enjoying the heck out of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and I know a new copy of Assassin’s Creed II is only running for about $20.00.

I can’t believe I ever told my wife that I wanted to play less videogames in 2011. Who the frak was I fooling?!

Skyrim, the land of rare beards

Truthfully, I’m not a big fan of people that scan print magazine articles and then pass them around the Internet without a shred of guilt. I’ve spent a good number of years working in the print industry, and it’s sad to see such progress stolen and spread arrogantly. That said, the latest issue of Game Informer has hit the World Wide Web via scans, and if anyone wants to look at them, they can. I openly admit to glancing at them; they aren’t worth it in terms of getting a good read or strong take on how Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim looks and plays. For that, I’m gonna need to wait for video. And I can wait. I mean, screenshot-wise, the game looks to be using the Gamebryo engine when all reports say otherwise.

But with scans comes great responsibility write-ups. These have gone over various changes and plot details and skill system settings and so on. Some sounds good, some sounds extremely lame (::cough cough:: level scaling), and some sounds undecided. I’ll continue to wait for more details to emerge before digging deeper into Skyrim‘s plausibility to be a better game than Oblivion.

However, there’s one detail that has knocked me over like a great troll swinging a mallet. And it is this: beards. Skyrim is going to be sporting beards.

BEARDS!

Now, shall I make Merlin, Gandalf, or Dumbledore as my first character come 11/11/11? You’re right. I’ll just make one super wizard named Merdalfdore and be done with it. Thanks!

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to arrive with a new engine

Will a lot of people be getting married on November 11, 2011 (11/11/11) or buying Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? Well, I think I know my answer…

But yeah. This new entry in the Elder Scrolls series was just announced over the weekend at some videogame award thingy that I didn’t watch. However, many already speculated that a fifth game was in the works. I mean, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was a huge hit; how does one not follow up on it? I personally think it’s a good thing that it’s taken five years (Oblivion came out in 2006 for the Xbox 360) to come into the public view. A lot has changed in terms of gaming prowess, and a lot is seemingly going to change as Bethesda is reporting that Skyrim is not going to be running on its infamous Gamebyro engine. Instead, it’s using a brand new one, and let’s quote a dude here:

“We can now confirm that the TES V: Skyrim engine is all-new. And it looks fantastic.” – Nick Breckon, community manager at Bethesda

This is good. Very good. The Gamebyro engine, which fueled Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas, is definitely showing its age. It’s been showing its faults and glitches for many years, and the time for change is upon us. I can naturally only hope that this new engine is in the same vision of Gamebyro, but more beautiful, more capable, more durable. First-person RPGs are all about seeing the world all at once, and when that world is a fantasy world, a place lush with flowers and trees and rocky hills and blazing sunsets, it’s vital that the system can handle everything. I have to also wonder if the fighting/magic system will get an overhaul–I hope it does.

Nonetheless, we have a bit of a wait. So while we all consider how the skill system will work or how X will do Y to Z, we can check out the teaser trailer below:

Dragons! Take that, Dragon Age!

Clearing up the confusion between Radiant Historia and Radiata Stories

There’s a new Nintendo DS RPG from Atlus USA coming out in February 2011, at least according to a 1UP article, called Radiant Historia. I know nothing about it, but I want it, and I think I can sort of explain where this “do want” impulse is coming from.

It stems from a love/hate relationship I have with a rather unknown PlayStation 2 RPG dubbed Radiata Stories. Not really sure if these two are connected in the slightest; Radiata Stories was developed by tri-Ace and then published by Square Enix, and Radiant Historia is in the deft hands of Atlus USA. All previews go without mentioning a connection, but something about their names forces me to think of them as siblings–or rather just close friends. If anything, Radiant Historia is likened more towards that of Chrono Trigger, with its style and focus on time traveling. Oh well. Let’s sequeway back to that other RPG then…

Right. Radiata Stories. It’s a game my sister passed along to me after she found herself giving up on it; I think I gave her Dark Cloud 2 and Suikoden V to fix her RPG slump. I hope to one day get those babies back (are you reading this, Bitsy?). Anyways, Radiata Stories is a punny, action-based RPG, with a huge focus on character recruiting, kicking things, and a day/night system. You are Jack Russell, a fiesty teenager who just joined the Knights of Radiata to make his not-around-anymore father proud. Things go as expected until things go unexpectantly amiss, forcing Jack and his friends Ridley and Ganz Rothchild out of the army and on their own. Supposedly, it all eventually leads up to a point where Jack has to choose sides in a waging war; I never made it that far, and I’ve restarted my save slot at least three times.

Like the Suikoden series, the biggest draw here, for me, is in character recruitment. In total, 175 characters can be recruited and added to Jack’s friend list. From this, he can add them to his active party to help gain levels, money, and experience. Some characters are better than others, but the OCD nature of “gotta collect ’em all” is enough to get me scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of strong, worthy fighters. It’s gets even more tricky though as some characters can only be recruited at specific times or places with specific people in your party. Others might give you a quest or ask that you visit them X number of times. It’s imposible to recruit everyone on one’s first playthrough, and if the Internet is to be trusted, Radiata Stories has post-game content as well as a new game+ feature where they allow all previously recruited characters to stick around for game #2. I want that so bad.

But I seem to lose steam and motivation in all three playthroughs right around the same part. Eventually, the plot will fizzle down slowly, and Jack is given freedom to do what he wants for a bit–explore the city, surrounding landscapes, level up, gather friends, and so on. This is where it all falls apart for me. I start gathering friends and quickly forget about the bigger picture, and after struggling to get some specific dudes, I put the game down and never come back. And that’s a shame. The three main characters are greatly designed, especially Ganz, and I’d love to know what happens with the main storyline more.

Maybe playthrough #4 should be a straight beeline to the end, with whatever recruited characters I can get easily. Maybe…

Anyways, this rambling post is supposed to be me about making a connection–if any–from Radiata Stories to Radiant Historia, and it seems like there isn’t one at all. Except for maybe some tri-Ace designers having worked on both games. Oh well. Still, I want to play both, each for their own reasons. Even though the battle system in Radiata Stories is lame and horrible. Here’s to some motivation to hook up the PlayStation 2 again…

Sly 4 sneaks in a teaser trailer

One of Grinding Down‘s most active posts is Sly Cooper 4…, wherein I ponder the existence of this game and talk a teeny bit about how much I need it sooner than later. Guess I’m not the only one in love with this series and wondering when it’s going to pop back into our collective gaming hearts.

Well, good news, dear readers! Turns out that the recently released Sly Collection for the PlayStation 3 also had a teaser trailer for Sly 4 included deep within the game, available only to those that unlocked all the Trophies. Well, the video has, naturally, hit the Internet, and here it is:

Not much to dissect, but the visuals look both impressive and about the same, which is a good thing; the cel-shaded look of the characters and world was what initially drew me in, and the great stealth and open-world gameplay kept me around for the longhaul. I’m also going to guess that Sly 4: Question Mark of Doom will still be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, which is bad news for me. Looks like I’ll have to start saving up for that system now too.

Oh, hey, I’m back and you can now all cheer

Hi.

::hooray yippee woohoo:::

Okay, settle down. It’s not like I’m–

::wahoooooo::

Aw, so you did miss me, dear readers? That’s swell. I missed–

::so much frakkin’ confetti everywhere::

–you, too. But not too much–I was on my honeymoon in Walt Disney World after all. Hard to miss nearly anything when you’re in the happiest place on Earth.

Now…since this is a videogame blog and not a wedding blog, let’s see what I got to play over the last numerous days: Dragon Quest IX and Picross 3D.

THAT’S IT. I had my entire DS collection with me, and I only ever switched out the cartridges twice. Unless you want to count me not going crazy over missing out on Fallout: New Vegas fun as a game. Cause I played that a lot. A LOT. But I did a good job about not pestering Tara over it. And we’re still married! Hooray!

But yeah…I grinded in DQIX like never before thanks to airplane rides. I was able to raise my party of four by four whole levels from roughly 41 to 45, taking down both nasty forms of  King Godwyn, and have now made my way to the Realm of the Almighty for what I suspect is the final boss battle. I say that like it means something, but with DQIX, it really  doesn’t. Beating the final boss does not mean completing the game, but it will open up a slew of more sidequests, as well as give me more breathing room for grinding new characters and completing all those lists (alchemy, item, clothing, so on). Speaking of sidequests, I finished a couple of ’em, the most frustrating being Prat’s the Way to Do It, wherein I needed to get my Minstrel character to land two critical hits with the Pratfall ability. No easy task. Grinding helped though, and when I nailed the second one I was genuinely surprised and happy; I hate giving up a sidequest to make room for another one that seems impossible to do (uh, like that metal slime one). I also ended up completing two treasure maps, killing some legendary bosses like Shogum and Nemean–I think those are references to previous DQ games, but I don’t recognize ’em.

Oh, and the tally of completed puzzles in Picross 3D is now 279. Impressed? Well…you should be!

So, yeah. Not an amazing amout of gaming got done during the wedding/honeymoon time, as was to be expected. But that’s all about to change. Here I come, Fallout: New Vegas!

Knives Chau DLC announced for Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game

I’ve still not gotten past Roxie in Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game, but the makers of said title care very little for my insufficient gaming skills as new DLC has just been announced for the game. For about $1.99, the new DLC will give us a new character to play as–Knives Chau, 17 years old, Chinese–and two new modes to experience: Dodge Ball and Battle Royale. The former is more or less what you think it is, and the latter is more akin to a Super Smash Bros style gameplay. This DLC should supposedly coincide with the film’s November 2010 release on DVD, which I’m totally buying Day One.

More Scott Pilgrim goodness for a measly two bucks? Count me in.

Also, there’s going to be a patch released soon to help fix the difficulty level of “Average Joe” as well as knock out some annoying bugs found throughout. The first time SPVTWTG froze on me I thought it was the devs having a laugh at how old games like that would crash all the time. The third and fourth time it froze, I was no longer smiling. So this is a must-need-now sort of thingy. I really like bitesize DLC and free patches, all in all.

Want some early screenshots? Click below…

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: Donkey Kong Country

Ah, Donkey Kong Country…Only for Nintendo. And they meant it.

I was, in fact, never a subscriber to Nintendo Power (sorry, Greg Noe!), but somehow still got access to a VHS tape called Donkey Kong Country: Exposed, which was a behind-the-scenes tour of Nintendo of America’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, with bonus early game footage and tips from testers on how to access hidden bonus stages. Think I “borrowed” the tape from a friend’s house. Ahem. “Borrowed.” And it, much like the game itself, ended up parting with me some time during my switch from SNES to PlayStation 1. I have a strong feeling though that the VHS tape sold at a neighborhood yardsale for 50 cents. Oh yeah, made a profit.

Moving on, this plus about four other SNES titles more or less were my collection for the longest time. Money was tight, and if I didn’t get a game for Christmas, well…I was just a wee lad then that would water the grass or wash a neighbor’s car for pocket money. Was not rolling it, as they say. I relied a lot on renting games for a few days or borrowing them from a friend. Notice I said borrow and not “borrow”; no way I would’ve gotten away with something like that, not when a kid’s SNES or Sega Genesis was his or her only friend. Oh, and those other games consisted of Super Metroid, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, and–don’t laugh, kids–Jurassic Park. I’ll talk about Jurassic Park for the SNES one day, but I am just not ready yet; the scars have not healed.

It’s clear that Donkey Kong Country came to be from other platformers of that day and age, most namely Super Mario Bros. The plot is essentially the same. Instead of saving the princess, you need to save DK’s stolen banana loot. The game has you collecting bananas in levels for extra lives; you can die by falling down holes in the level or getting touched by enemies; and you use a world map to select where you want to go. Sure, sure, the game did some original things too, but it pays a lot of homage to its elders.

But Donkey Kong Country is a very memorable game, and I think fondly about it a lot. The music, the jumping, the level progression, the mine carts, and the shooting from barrel to barrel to moving barrel. There was a lot going on within, and it was very successful in pushing the SNES to its limits and then mocking rival 32-bit and CD-ROM based consoles with purported superior processing power. I think many will first remember the pre-rendered 3D graphics, which really helped bring the 2D side-scrolling platformer to life; the early jungle levels are full of green and treetops and towering hills while the snow levels are replete with blizzards and glistening ledges. This engine was also used on Rare’s other title Killer Instinct, still in my collection now.

By and far though, my favorite stages in Donkey Kong Country were any where you rode an animal. These included Rambi the Rhino, Expresso the Ostrich, Enguarde the Swordfish, Winky the Frog, and Squawks the Parrot, and all were tied to a specifically themed level. Yup, even as frustrating as the underwater levels were, once you got on that swordfish it was ::ahem:: clear swimming from there. Later games would introduce even more animals, and those also were worth looking forward to.

The only negatives I ever put on Donkey Kong Country‘s shoulders were its coin-based save system and boss battles. The boss battles all followed a very repetitive strategy and once you figured that out, it was hit ’em, hit ’em, an hit ’em dead. I ate everything else up with wide eyes and an open heart.

Tara and I combined our SNES collections back when we first started dating in 2008, and she had Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, a pleasant surprise, as well as a decent filler for the time being. That said, I’m definitely interested in seeing how Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii plays out despite having a paper-flat title.

—

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH is a regular feature here at Grinding Down where I reminisce about videogames I either sold or traded in when I was young and dumb. To read up on other games I parted with, follow the tag.

Sly Cooper 4…

…where, oh where, art thou?

Please hurry up and come into existence. It’s been way too long since I’ve played a really fun, stealthy platformer. I know there’s a new HD/3D package getting worked up for the PlayStation 3, but that doesn’t cut it for me. I want a new adventure; I want to get the gang back together; I want to tip-toe across city roofs in a gorgeous, expansive open world à la Grand Theft Auto IV or The Saboteur. I know it can be done. Especially with the cel-shading. I’m just waiting, waiting, waiting, and I’d like to think I’m not the only one here. Let’s go, guys at Sucker Punch Productions. Don’t make me get The Murray to come over and rough y’all up…