For a nameless story, Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 – From the Abyss is quite a mouthful

I think I’m losing my mind. Also, not sure if the above screenshot is correct for the game I’m going to be talking about, but whatever–mind lost, deal with it. The house Tara and I just moved into over the weekend is still without power, with a guesstimate of maybe coming back on some time over the next five days; the basement is no longer flooded and it seems like those deadly branches have stopped falling from the sky, but we’ve yet to get back there and truly start living. I’m without all my comforts, my staples, my coffee pot–my console gaming systems. Yeah, no Deus Ex: Human Revolution yet. And trust me, I’m grateful for having a place to stay at Tara’s parents’ house, but time is moving forward, and all I want to do is get back to the house. Snargle-dargle-blargle.

Last night, while waiting to go out for Tara’s birthday dinner, I hopped online to the 3DS eShop to see if there was any new info about the forthcoming Ambassador NES games. There wasn’t. However, I did notice an irksome $3.67 in my account, which is not enough to get a big name game, but definitely enough for an indie thing or a calculator or one of those grouped under the $1.99 category. Remember, these downloads still get taxed after you select to purchase ’em. And something about Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 – From the Abyss caught my eyes, most certainly not its title. I’m guessing its look, which evokes that charming, 16-bit era of dungeon crawlers of yesteryear like Children of Mana and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You kill monsters, get better equipment, and protect your hometown–that kind of experience.

So far, I’ve hacked and slashed some a whole lot of monsters, gathered some items into my inventory, got killed, and lost all of my items. Wee! It’s hard to tell if this is its own game, or just like a snippet plucked from the full DS retail release, just called From the Abyss. Disappointingly, I haven’t found a single anonymous note. The plot involves a guy conveniently named Raid meeting up with a girl named…Helen and then fighting down screen after screen of monsters and trying to destroy the monster boss to keep the lands safe and sound. Rinse and repeat. You can absorb abilities from monsters too, maybe just like in the wonderful Brave Fencer Musashi, but I haven’t really gotten the hang of it yet. As this is merely a single chapter in a longer story, I’m not expecting much, but then again, the game cost just about as much as my morning cup of hazelnut coffee (cream and sugar), and satisfied me for long enough. We’ll see if I keep grinding. Probably not considering tomorrow I’m getting 10 free NES games for my Nintendo 3DS. That’s all well and good, but I really just want to go home.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter to open up a new trilogy

Oh my, looks like we have another new release coming out this year for the Nintendo DS, not the Nintendo 3DS. That’s right. The 3D-less system is still kicking, and it’s gonna be kicking even higher with the fact that we’re getting another Layton title, a prequel that, um, kicks off a new trilogy. Professor Layton and the Last Specter–known as Professor Layton and the Specter’s Flute in Japan and Professor Layton and the Specter’s Call in Europe/Australia–hits North American shores on October 17, 2011.

Professor Layton, newly appointed, receives a letter from an old fried requesting his assistance at the village of Mist Haley. According to the letter, a giant specter is appearing at night and wreaking havoc. It looks like everything we’ve come to expect from the series, such as top-notch animation, intriguing puzzles, and a story that is gripping and mysterious and probably not without a twist or two:

Mmm. Oh, and something else to take note of. The North American version is coming bundled with London Life, a previously unlockable RPG that looks and plays a lot like Mother 3, but is set in Luke and Layton’s universe. Yeah…jump for joy on that ticket. Supposedly, it’s of the 100+ hours ilk, and that absolutely rocks especially because it is no longer only available to those that beat the game, coming unlocked from the get-go. Not sure which I’d want to try first.

Really, at some point, I should finish up the original trilogy. I absolutely loved everything about Professor Layton and the Curious Village, and actually used that game as full-blown proof that a girl I was kinda seeing at the time should pick up a DS of her own. And she did. Those mathy puzzles, while not my thing, were definitely hers. Haven’t gotten to try the other two in the series, Diabolical Box and Unwound Flute, but maybe they’ll be a bit cheaper now that time has come to pass and a new entry is about to debut. Will have to keep my eyes peeled…

Hurricane Irene, the weekend, and gaming

Well, we all knew she was coming ahead of time, and thankfully many of us paid heed to the warnings, but things were still pretty rough this weekend. In terms of things hitting close to home, the house we literally just moved into on Friday…well, it’s currently without power and hot water and the basement had about two to three inches of water in it. Plus, branches of deadly size were breaking off and dropping on the back deck:

Ugh. Yeah…don’t even know what’s going on in our other place–the Leaky Cauldron–but most likely not much, just power loss. Or extensive leakage. Trying not to think that way. Won’t be able to check on that for a little bit though. Pray that the remainder of our stuff remains dry and safe and…dry. Dry is the important factor here.

Tara and I spent the entire weekend at her parents’ place in Sparta, NJ, which still got hit with a lot of rain, heavy winds, and power loss. Honestly, prior, I thought that there was too much media hype about Hurricane Irene–my mother would’ve called me days ago and told me to pay attention and be prepared and that there was no hype, that this was a major storm rolling up the East Coast–and I probably would’ve just carried on as business as usual. Thankfully, everyone else freaking out began freaking me out and we smarted up, moved as much as we could into the new home, and then hunkered down elsewhere.

Before the storm rolled in, I made a quick swing by GameStop, interested in picking up a “get me through the hurricane” game, as well as rewarding myself for all that heavy lifting and stress that comes with physically moving from one place to another. I figured that if the power went out, I’d at least have my fully charged 3DS for a few hours of distraction/entertainment. I had a slight interest in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, the first true Japanese RPG for the Nintendo 3DS since its launch, and that’s interesting, considering the DS was always playing host to this JRPG and that JRPG. So I grabbed it, looking forlornly at the numerous copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the shelves behind the counter. My friend Greg had ordered me a copy, and I was hoping to get it in time for some weekend gaming, but Amazon was late shipping it, and then factor in the slim chance of being at the house to actually play it…wah.

But then DE:HR arrived on Saturday! I have read the game’s manual twice. That’s kind of like playing it, right?

Other than that, I played some Braid, VVVVVV, and more The Sims Social to help pass time as we *ahem* weathered the storm. Will probably have some posts up this week about these games, as well as some other goodies. Stay tuned. And please, please…stay away from falling branches.

Achievements of the Week – The Legend of the Boar Edition

Posting this very early on this bright and sunny Friday as I’ll be spending it mostly moving, sweating, and moving and sweating at the same time. And who knows when we’ll have Internet again. Pray for Tara and I’s well-being as we leave the attic known as the Leaky Cauldron and head to the house in the woods, which she calls Godric’s Hollow and I call Grimmauld Place. Should be a crazy time…

Anyways, this week, I unlocked two Achievements with legend in their title and then sat idly on a boar for five minutes while checking my email. This is the very definition of excitement, I know.

From Fallout: New Vegas…

The Legend of the Star (20G): Completed The Legend of the Star.

Not going to say too much about this here as I am working on a big boy blog post, as this quest was a bit demanding, and I obviously didn’t ping this baby until my third character, wherein I really had to concentrate and pay attention to the fact that these Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle caps were not gonna find themselves. Also, the quest’s reward is nothing great. Oi. Regardless, glad this one’s done as it was the last Achievements left for sidequests.

Caravan Master (30G): Won 30 games of Caravan.

Way back in June 2011, I wrote a rather informative blog post about how to play Caravan; you’d think, with that knowledge, that I’d have knocked this Achievement out a lot sooner than this. The problem is that the game got patched shortly after that, and the patch did things to Caravan. Cruel, nasty things. They made it so that opposing players could play cards such as kings, queens, and jacks against your own stacks, thus ruining your hard work to 26. The guy near Gun Runners was impossible, doing this every other turn. Fed up, I went back to my old staple of NCR ambassador Dennis Crocker, and while he occasionally messed up a stack of mine, it was less frequent. Six won games later, and there ya go.

Tara said,”Wham, bam, Caravan!” when I unlocked this. Love that dork.

From Nier…

The Book of Legend (20G): Grimoire Weiss joined your party.

All Aboared! (10G): You rode a boar for at least five minutes.

One of the early sidequests in Nier, given to you by some no-name villager, involves taking down a wild boar terrorizing…uh, sheep. Or people. It doesn’t matter. You just need to go kill a boar. After you do that, it seems other boars have heard of Nier’s horrible deed and are now tame around him, ready for riding. The Achievement’s descriptions says to ride the boar for five minutes, but I merely climbed on its back, put the controller down, checked what was up with Gmail and Twitter, peed, and came back to that oh-so-sweet pinging sound. All aboared indeed.

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And that’s it. Depending on our Internet status at the new house, there may or may not be an Achievements of the Week for next week. We’ll see.

Unlock any good ones lately, Grinding Down readers? Tell me in the comments below.

The Sims Social and simulating social spamming

As I’m wont to do, I’ve drifted away from many of the silly Facebook games I was into months ago, such as CityVille and Pet Society and even–gasp!—Chocobo’s Crystal Tower. In my mind, you can only click on things for so long, and I’ve never been into the social elements of social gaming, always feeling like I’m pestering my friends or spamming their newsfeeds. Which is odd then because I played a little bit of The Sims Social last night…and actually liked it. Guess others like it too since there’s over 10,000,000 monthly active players at the moment; Leigh Alexander probably not included in that count.

I’ve always enjoyed the gameplay of The Sims, taking the mundane tasks of daily life and turning them into something a wee bit more rewarding. Having a job, peeing, calling friends over for some TV and pizza…it’s all fun, and generally one wouldn’t think so. I mean, the social elements in games like Grand Theft Auto IV drove me absolutely batty, but that’s because the developers were trying to juggle too much at once. Here, it works…up until you accidentally set your Sim on fire or lose on your money in a bad spout of furniture purchasing. Which happens a lot for me. That’s been the biggest stresser and deterrent for me for The Sims franchise, the fact that you can work so hard making your house rock, your job awesome, and your circle of friends top-notch, and then can lose it all in a small kitchen fire.

Well, with The Sims Social, that fear is gone…seemingly. From what I can tell, your Sim can’t die. It can get unhappy and down and low on key meters like social, fun, and hygiene, but that’s okay. Just click around and visit some neighbors, and you’re back to sparkling goodness. And all the other elements of the The Sims is there, such as multiple tasks, traits, house construction, customization, and whatnot. Granted, everything is limited by a select amount of energy points used for actions, but it’s not too big of a hassle all in all. So far, spamming has been slight, and I’ve added my wife as a neighbor, but nobody else in my Facebook universe seems to be playing. No big deal. Like I said before, I’m not here for the social part of the browser-based game’s title. I’m here to click around and wear digital version of clothes I am wearing now and try to reconstruct my house into places I’ve actually lived in before, and I probably will for a little bit and then lose interest. Don’t be sad, Facebook. That’s just the way these things go. Here, have 1,000 simoleons!

JC Denton versus byzantine global conspiracies and time

Everyone was playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution last night, as well as tweeting some funny things about that East Coast earthquake. If anything, when the end of the world does come, it’s going to be freaking hilarious. Thank you, my fellow tweeters. But yeah, earthquakes. And Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Between all the positive reviews and extensive coverage at GiantBomb, I’m salivating.

Well, my copy is on the way, thanks to the generous Greg Noe, and it should hopefully arrive by weekend time so that I can sneak and augment and take notes like a cyberpunk pro after moving a hundred boxes and heavy furniture. Will be doing a first-hour review, as well as some random musings here at Grinding Down. Until then, there’s always…Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. Y’know, that PlayStation 2 port of the 2000 PC classic, featuring horrible load times, awful model animation, and strange sounds when you walk across grass. Yes, it’s true. I have a copy. See:

If you’re curious, my hand has the following augmentations: extra glow, resistance to radiation,+2 damage, and death chop.

I’ve played the opening of Deus Ex: The Conspiracy at least three or four times since purchasing it for a sweet $8.99 way back in the day, and there’s a good reason for that: many paths. For me, the Liberty Island mission is what sums up the Deus Ex experience (Deus Experience?) the best, with a ton of options and variety. Your goal is to locate and interrogate the NSF commander, most likely atop the Statue of Liberty. You can go in guns blazing, you can sneak around the back, or you can kind of do both. And then once you’re inside the Statue of Liberty, there’s even more things you can do. The game is always asking you to decide, sometimes on the fly. Like, this time around, I used my crossbow with tranquilizer darts to sneak around the back to the docks, climb my way up to the statue’s base itself, and creep on in; unfortunately, I set off a gas grenade, alerting two guards to my position, and had to switch from non-lethal tactics to oh-so-lethal. I could’ve reloaded a save file, but it’s a better experience to just roll with things.

I always end up trying for stealth…for as long as it’s possible. Sometimes, when the going gets rough, I have to shoot it out, which is not fun because the game’s shooting mechanics are iffy. It’s a more rewarding experience to lockpick doors, hack security cameras, and crouch around corners. There seems to be a point where I stop playing though, and that is right after the LaGuardia Airport mission. Can’t really pinpoint why that happens, but it does. You’re supposed to head off to Hong Kong, but instead find out your brother Paul (hey, that’s me!) is in trouble, and off you go to Hell’s Kitchen. Despite me trying to save me, I lose interest here. Or something more shiny distracts me.

More than likely, this time around, I’ll stop playing Deus Ex: The Conspiracy the moment my copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution arrives, and that’s okay. It was a nice refresher of what I like about the franchise, as well as what I hope gets an upgrade in the new prequel from Eidos Montreal.

About time I got my slime on with Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

I finally got to play a bit of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker last night despite purchasing the game a couple weeks ago. That seems to happen a lot with Nintendo DS titles for me. I buy them…and then don’t play them for a bit. I think it’s because I’m less excited to play my portable gaming device when in my own home, as I consider it more of a traveling thing, a road-side companion, a portal that helps pass time. Also, DQM: J was an impulse buy, something I picked up while waiting for Bullet to get an oil change; it’s not like I’ve been dying to try it out, just figured it would be interesting to see how it compared against its forefather, the mighty Pokémon franchise.

From what I’ve seen so far, there’s more visible depth in DQM: J than, say, Pokémon White. The key word is visible. We’ve all heard about the crazy amount of stats and breeding spreadsheets and EV madness and so on for those pocket monsters, but a good majority of that is behind the curtain. You have to go online and read. For DQM: J, it’s all right there. Stats, weapons, learning abilities, and what’s next for your mischievous mole or platypunk. There’s even a monster synthesis option, allowing you to fuse two monsters together in hopes of creating a better fighter. I like that, even if there’s not much I can do yet with my two-monster team. Hopefully things really open up after Infant Isle, and I can focus on grinding my team into something truly monstrous.

Also, while I love the classic sounds and elements from many of the Dragon Quest games…do they constantly need to get reused over and over? Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, Dragon Quest IX, Dragon Quest Wars, this –they all sound exactly the same. Granted, catchy tunes and soundbits, but not after the eightieth time. Save for the level up tune. That one always warms my cockles.

Anyways, I took notes of my first half-hour playing DQM: J. You’ll be able to read what kind of crazy adventures I got into with our young monster trainer Hodor over at The First Hour. Um , soonish. Just gotta, uh, type up my hand-written notes–scribbles, truly–and clean up the review. Not to get too spoilery, but the last two minutes are basically me channeling Darth Vader. Yup. Until then, goo luck scouting those slimes!

Can’t escape smiling at this Ludum Dare game called BATHOS

If it wasn’t for Notch, I would have never even known about this crazy thing that recently took charge, known to indie game developers worldwide as the Ludum Dare. Basically, participants develop games from scratch in a single weekend–that’s 48 hours, okay–based on a theme suggested by community. This time around the theme is escape. Browsing through the 500+ finished entries is a bit daunting; some of them really do look great, and others…well, not so much. Unfortunately, a good chunk of them blur together.

The first submission I clicked on to check out was BATHOS by Johan Peitz, mostly because it looked like a SCUMM title, and those experiences always pull at my heartstrings. Seriously, there’s a Maniac Mansion vibe here. I’m super pleased to announce that the very first Ludum Dare title I’ve tried…is a winner! Well, in my book. I’m sure Notch’s entry is stellar too, but I haven’t attempted it yet, considering I barely understand Minecraft still, and I’ve been playing that for several weeks now. Anyways…

In BATHOS, the player wakes up in a supervised prison cell, naturally wanting to escape. The door is locked, but he quickly discovers many keys in his tiny, depressing cell room. Surely one of them will work on the door. And that’s it. Find the right key and get out of there. It sounds simple, but it took me about fifteen minutes on my lunch break to figure out, and the solution is delightful, obvious, turning this little indie bit of Flash wizardry into something truly charming. The graphics are clean and unobtrusive, and the game controls smoothly. There’s only so much our pixelated hero can do, but it all works. Picking up keys that don’t work and flinging them under your bed never felt so good.

One of the definitions for bathos is “an anticlimax,” and yes, Johan Peitz’s take on solitude, yearning, and escape most certainly is that. However, it might be the first time something so ludicrous has made me smile.

You can play BATHOS in your web browser by clicking this very sentence. Or, if you’re looking to download it for Windows/OSX/Linux, go here…just don’t read any of the comments below otherwise you’ll spoil a perfectly genuine gaming experience. And remember, this was created in under 48 hours. To me, that’s mighty impressive–and gives me hope that maybe one day I could make a videogame, too.

Achievements of the Week – The Medal to the Pedal Edition

I was kind of hoping that by voicing my Achievements goals last week that I’d be more aware of them and into, y’know, getting things done. Alas, this was another mindtrip of a week, and I spent a good amount of it in a serious funk, a place where concentration is unwanted. Games with stories and things to constantly pay attention to were not my speed currently, and all I kind of was capable of doing was button mashing and going through the motions. Let’s take a trip down Memory Lane and recall what I wanted to get done this week:

My goals for this upcoming week are to beat Bastion, grind LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean to completion, and maybe give the extremely silly Nier a few more minutes of my time.

So, did I do any of that? Nope. Instead, I played a lot of Street Fighter IV.

From Street Fighter IV…

Medal Hunter (10G): Collect 500 Medals.

Medals Gets! (30G): Collect all Medal types.

The Road to Battle (10G): Play 100 Xbox LIVE battles. (Ranked match or player match)

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I’ve never been great at fighting games, and I think that’s because I try to hard to learn combos and special moves instead of relying on good ol’ cheap tactics, like sweeping kicks and cornering opponents to death. In the Tekken franchise, I just wanted to learn all the special throw moves, as I thought the animations for them was awesome. Especially when watching a giant bear hug an old man to death.

Throws are less important in Street Fighter IV, as quick combos and projectiles and ultra combo finishes are the name of the game. I’m not amazing at these things, except projectiles, but throwing Hadoken after Hadoken after Hadoken is tiring. So earning medals after each match was a slow grind, as I would only get two to three per fight, given that I constantly got low grades. Out of the 100 Xbox LIVE battles played, I’ve won around 34. Not a terribly impressive amount.

But yeah, Street Fighter IV. Seems like the only Achievements left that I could probably unlock involve playing more online battles. The trial, survival, and challenge modes are brutal and hard, unless you cheat with Zangief’s Lariat move, which I have been doing, little by little, but it’s gonna take some time. Will let y’all know when I’ve collected 1,000 medals and played 200 Xbox LIVE battles. Probably will happen some time next year.

Not gonna bother trying to voice any Achievements goals this time around. Pretty sure it’s gonna be another crappy week. Just K.O. me now, please.

New screenshots for LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 are magical

We know, Umbridge. We totally know. But do you hate these new screenshots of LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7? Me thinks no.

And I don’t hate them either. In fact, I think they are quite magical, really showing off just how far these LEGO games have come in terms of quality and polish. The lighting effects in the room where Dumbledore and Harry are searching for Professor Slughorn are simply stunning.

Unfortunately, I kind of keep forgetting this game comes out this year. Soon, I think. Late fall or just before the holidays hit. Maybe the blame could fall on the fact that the theatrical series is now over and done, and I was none-too-pleased with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two, confident that it lacked emotion and soul and was just there to end things, not resonate with a core audience. I mean, we’ve seen Hagrid cry over a hippogriff and a spider, and yet when it comes time to shed waterworks over The Boy Who Lived…well, they are strangely not there. He’s a soaking mess in the book, but not the film. Unexplainable. But I digress…

I’m very much looking forward to the coverage of the last book in LEGO form, and no, I’m not a fan of camping. It’s just that…well, I exhausted a lot of time exploring Hogwarts in LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4, and I know that castle in and out, up and down, diagonally and all around. Maybe the only person who knows it better is Peeves, but you can ask him that yourself. I can only pray that we don’t have to do all that over for years 5 and 6, re-learning spells we already learned back when kids at this school still wore robes. Places of interest I’m stoked for include Grimmauld Place (not the house Tara and I are moving into next month), Godric’s Hollow, and the Ministry of Magic. Years 1-4 did a great job of making the castle an ever-evolving hub world, but that doesn’t mean the same trick needs repeating.

That said, I think the above shot is irrefutable proof that Traveller’s Tales can make any villain–no matter how cruel, how sadistic, how villainous–truly adorable. Hem-hem!