Bethesda delivers more anticlimactic endings with Fallout 4

After barely paying attention to Fallout 4‘s main campaign storyline for nearly two months, I rushed through it over the course of two days during my holiday time off at the end of December 2015. Not necessarily because I wanted to, but I wanted to experience it, at the very least, for myself before having any details unearthed while listening to the numerous “Game of the Year” podcasts popping up online right around now. Unfortunately, I really disliked the ending I got and, strangely enough, wasn’t even aware that I was moving through the final mission, similar to what happened in Rage, wherein I think things are just beginning to unravel, but in reality they are winding down.

Let it be known here and now that I’ll be talking a bit about my Fallout 4 playthrough, and there will be spoilers in terms of factions and quests and quests for factions and how there are no more quests for specific factions because of the quests I decided to do. Got it? Okay, let’s roll out. I’m speaking to Dogmeat, by the way, not you.

The sole survivor of Vault 111 in my Fallout 4 is a bearded man who prefers to use a silenced pistol until things go haywire, and then any gun–usually a damage-heavy shotgun–will do the trick when the bad guys/girls/monsters get too close for comfort. He also loves collecting coffee mugs out in the wild, hanging up paintings of cats everywhere, and, most importantly, befriended Nick Valentine early on, before the quests became the sort that demand you make separate save sessions. Y’know, in case everything goes wrong.

Anyways, when I play a roleplaying game, I roleplay–shocking, I know. So, for my character, a reasonable man who ensured that Nick Valentine got answers to the questions nibbling away at his synthetic mind, I ended up siding the Institute. From the very start, the Institute is portrayed as evil incarnate, kidnapping people from the Commonwealth and replacing humans with metal lookalikes. That said, I had already seen the good that Synths could be by the time I reached the Institute in my playthrough, some fifty-plus hours in, and after exploring the facilities beneath C.I.T., I was a believer that the world above needed these people to thrive. Sorry, Brotherhood of Steel, but it’s true.

No, really sorry, Brotherhood of Steel. See, by siding with the Institute, the final missions for this decision demand you murder and eradicate every last member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Ugh. As well as everybody in The Railroad, an organization I had only briefly interacted with via the main quest. The Minute Men were allowed to continue existing, not viewed as any tangible threat. I looked up what happens when siding with the other factions, and you, more or less, are forced to killed others to ensure the strength and longevity of your chosen faction. I’m not a fan of this–at all. Sure, my sole survivor has killed bandits and raiders and plenty of too-far-gone ghouls, but has never once shot an innocent bystander. That’s not the type of person he is.

I will say, murdering all of the Brotherhood of Steel was a whole lot easier to do–gameplay-wise and morally–than the Railroad. Perhaps it is due to all their armor and weapons and advancements that they feel like a foe on equal footing with my sole survivor and his brood of Synth assassins. Murdering all of the Railroad really hit a disgusting chord with me; I walked into their base as a friend and left as a ghost, bodies piled here and there. I did not loot a single soul. I did not take anything from anywhere. I did what I had to do, apologizing before each and every V.A.T.S. headshot, and I got out of there. I wish there was some other way. In Fallout: New Vegas, and I think Fallout 3 as well, if your charisma and speech skills are strong enough, you can basically talk your way to the end and around a big ol’ bloodbath. Doesn’t seem to be the case here, and that is a major bummer, especially since I unlocked a ton of perks related to these skills, thinking there would be some options down the line.

Here’s the thing. Bethesda does not have a strong history with the main campaigns and conclusions to its games. You are scarcely involved in the final fight of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I barely remember what happened in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, though I think it had to do with speaking with a dragon atop a mountain and then leaving you to stand there afterwards completely dumbfounded as to what to do next. Fallout 3 did not take into consideration logical solutions to entering that radiation-filled room, and only DLC allowed you to keep playing after fixing the water situation in the Capital Wasteland. Fallout 4 concludes with a lot of seemingly unnecessary killing–your pick of who gets it–and the departure of your child. It’s a boring ending, to be honest, and it feels like little thought went into it based around your character’s actions and decisions leading up to the final blasts. The loss of choice is overwhelming.

This is what I do know though. When I restart Fallout 4 with a new character, which I will definitely do some time in the future, most likely an evil woman with a penchant for melee weapons modded to the extreme, I will only go so far into the main quest. Only to the point where you are on good terms with every faction, where you can help everyone out…to a point. Crossing that murder line is something I’m not interested in doing again, unless it is to murder Deathclaws or a swarm of Bloatflies. Not people, not humans (or human-like humans) that you can converse with and grow close to and revisit from time to time to regale with your wild, crazy adventures out in the Commonwealth.

Ultimately, Fallout 4 is a much better game to play and live in than conclude.

You cannot mindlessly play Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition

GameStop’s PowerUp Reward points are stupid. Or maybe I’m stupid. Certainly one of us is to blame, and, as a human stuffed with ridiculous emotions like pride and shame and deep-seated embarrassment, I’m inclined to place the fault on someone other than myself. So there. Well, no…let me explain more. Trust me, this story will eventually lead to both the reason why this blog post is about Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition and my early impressions on it, up to the end of World 1.

See, I recently noticed I had a ton of “points” in my PowerUp Rewards account, seeing as I’ve bought a number of things over the last few months, like an Xbox One, and decided to cash some of these points in for a single $25.00 redeemable coupon. In my mind, I was planning on burning this to buy four more amiibo card packs for Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer because I’m broken inside. No, really, I am. Utterly and completely damaged. Animal Crossing is one of my all-time favorite series, and now there are collectible cards out there that one can collect and caress and cherish until the end of time. Insert that Futurama meme hard as heck right here.

Anyways, this did not work out. Evidently, the $25 coupon can only be applied to a single item, not your final bill. Sure, that means I could waste it all on one $5.99 pack of amiibo cards, but I wouldn’t get any of that leftover credit. It would just vanish. Seems both like a waste of points and effort. So, instead, I looked around the store for something that was more than $25.00, and so a new copy of Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition for $30.00. Fine. I mean, after all, it was a game I wanted to play last year, but did not get to. Still, that $25.00 credit coupon is beyond misleading, and, unfortunately, it seemed like there was no way for me to return to the points to my account; doing that would have allowed me to at least create two $10.00 credit coupons, and thus two more amiibo card packs. Oh well–lesson stupidly learned.

Anyways, Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition takes the super popular in Japan free-to-play mobile model of Puzzle & Dragons and coats it in a cutesy, colorful Nintendo skin. I say that as if I know anything about Puzzle & Dragons vanilla, which I don’t. I’ll do my best now to explain it in mechanical terms. Gameplay revolves around matching three or more orbs of the same color/element by displacing one orb around the board to attack enemies. Each turn you conduct counts down as a timer for the monsters to attack your party. The goal is to complete the dungeon/level you enter by defeating every foe and surviving until the end. Also, skilled players can create chained combos for massive damage in a single turn.

I’ve only gone through the first world, which obviously loads up some tutorial stuff, but it’s pretty fun. Creating those big combos feels so dang good; also, missing those combos hurts more than I can explain. It’s not as simple as moving one orb over to another like in Pokemon Shuffle or Frozen Free Fall, since sliding the orb around the field affects other orbs in its path, and I don’t have the best handle on how this actually works. Plus, you’re timed. It can be a bit stressful, but truly satisfying too. Sometimes I score big, and sometimes my party of goombas and red winged turtles simply sit there, frozen in regret, bracing for the worst.

There’s actually a lot of options for you from early on to help build up a strong, capable team that will help you rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. Oh, did I not mention that she is kidnapped again? Good job, Nintendo. Really stretching those creativity muscles. Basically, you can sacrifice weaker teams members you aren’t using to power up a single team member. There are also items to find to help with this, as well as lot of experience points to earn along the way. Right now, I have three separate teams created, all of which have their strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what those are and picking a compatible leader is key to surviving some of the later fights, which deal out a ton of damage to your team if you don’t combo fast and early enough. There’s also a few grayed out options on the menu still to open up.

I’ve not gotten to try Puzzle & Dragons Z yet, which is the other game packed in, but I suspect I will eventually. Want to continue on this path for now so that I’m not trying to juggle two sets of similar teams in my mind. I also have to imagine it’s the weaker of the two titles in this nifty 3DS bundle though I’m curious to see how they work in a JRPG story around all these orbs. We’ll see in due time.

Congratulations to me, for I found the year 2016

In hindsight, I really should have put forth a larger effort to make Where is 2016? the first game I completed this year instead of Rain. It only makes sense to ring in the new year with a game about…unearthing 2016 by flipping a bunch of hidden red switches to green, time-traveling to other countryside locations to repeat this endeavor, and then pulling a lever to release some jarring, chipper cartoon character from behind a locked door. Yeah, that only makes sense.

From independent game developer Mateusz Skutnik, Where is 2016? is a short point-and-click hidden object adventure set somewhere in France. I make that broad and dangerous assumption from the spatter of French words I saw on signage and rusty pipes. If this is set in, say, Middle-earth, please correct me in the comments below, but I’m more certain that it is not in Middle-earth than I am it is in France. Either way, it’s the countryside and small-town suburbia for your exploring. You do this by clicking areas of a static image, going deeper; in actuality, this is all you do, as well as lose yourself in the minute details of high resolution photographs of foliage and machinery.

There’s no traditional puzzle solving here. Simply find all the switches, turn them to green, return to the main switch hub thing, twist the knob–hey now, this is a family blog, people–and return to the main screen, which features a locked door, a rope to pull, and a clock with hands to manipulate. Do that a total of four times, with each scenario asking you to discover more red lights to switch, and you’ll complete the game. Easy enough. The struggle is discovering what you can click on and what you can’t, though the cursor will change when you are over a hot spot; still, there’s a bit of pixel hunting to do, and here’s a free tip–sometimes you can click in a section you’ve already zoomed in on for an even closer look at things.

I’m more than fine with Where is 2016?‘s length, as it was perfect to get through in ten to fifteen minutes and felt satisfying, in terms of finding all the gadgets to click, when I reached the end. Still don’t understand who that cartoon character was and why he was congratulating me on finding 2016. Perhaps he stars in one of Skutnik’s other games, of which there seem to be many. Sounds like the Submachine series is one worth examining. Also, he’s evidently been at this awhile, creating Where is 2015?, Where is 2014?, and so on for the respective past few years.

Where is 2016? features high resolution photographs for you to click on and dive into. You might think looking at a rusty, old farm plow is beyond tedious, but the closer you get to it, the better you see how it is put together. Then you notice the words etched into the metal, or the small scratches. The flecks of dirty, time. I don’t know if Skutnik took these photos himself for the game or if they come from some stock-based website, but they are crisp and energized, as well as perfunctory and plain. Adding gameplay mechanics on top of them definitely at first feels wrong, but eventually the two elements mesh together without much noise.

If you’d also like to start your year off right by releasing 2016 from its locked, dark chamber, begin click, click, clicking all up on Where is 2016? in your browser over here.

Sorry, there are no more skulls left in Motocross Madness

Motocross Madness is a game I played for a bit after getting it as a freebie back in August 2014, but then drifted away from for a good chunk of time. Many months, in fact. Truthfully, I really only enjoyed the heck out of the game’s Exploration mode, which plopped you down in the world where the game’s race tracks exist, but gives you freedom to explore off the tracks as you please to collect gold coins and skulls. These feed into the medals you get, as well as provide money and XP, so they are more than just shiny trinkets to grab. The standard races and trick sessions are fine enough, but a bit too perfunctory and easy to perfect. My heart can’t resist collecting things; for further proof, see games like LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, Disney Magical World, and Kung Fu Rabbit.

Right. So, over the last few months, I’ve been noodling away at Motocross Madness, playing for a bit and collecting a skull or two. Incrementally edging my way up to a 100% completion rate. It became a thing I did to fill in the gaps between other games or if I had fifteen to twenty minutes to kill before I had to make dinner. However, it became more of a hassle–in my mind than in reality–to turn on my Xbox 360 now that I had a shiny Xbox One to slobber over, and so Motocross Madness got visited less and less. That is until a few weeks back, when it was announced to now be backwards-compatible on the new console. I’m probably the only person in the world that saw that news and genuinely felt warmth in my heart, but whatever.

I recently had some time off of work over the holidays, and I used some of it to, besides draw and go see the ultra cute and sing-songy Elf the Musical in New York City, well…play more Motocross Madness. I’m totally fine with this. Never let anyone tell you what to do on your days off. Along the way, I also sat down and figured out how to use the streaming programs on the Xbox One, which lead to me recording about four hours of me getting the last flaming skulls and Achievements for all the Internet to see. If you’ve got time to kill, feel free to watch the archived videos over at my YouTube. Please understand before going into these vids that I’m still relatively new to this and am figuring out microphone/gameplay audio settings, but I’m thinking 2016 will be the year I put more effort into this venue.

Collecting skulls was fun despite a few frustrations. It’s multi-part; first, you have to find the skull in the environment, and then you have to figure out how to get it. Sometimes they are on the ground, and you just ride your bike up to it, but the majority are high in the sky, requiring a sick jump to grab. It’s only when you get down to having a single skull left in a large environment that it becomes maddening as you search every nook and cranny, desperate to catch the flicker of orange flames. Eventually, I caved and looked up a walkthrough online, quickly scribbling down locations on a hand-drawn map so that I’d, at least, still not know exactly where these skulls were and have some involvement in their capture.

When examined without the Exploration mode, Motocross Madness is actually a substandard racing game with bikes. The races themselves aren’t all that challenging, especially once you upgrade your hog, and the trick system is not in-depth, allowing you to only do a few moves in the air…unless you’re into crashing. Once you are on “fire,” which happens after building a meter for successfully doing tricks, you can do another set for more points. I highly recommend performing the Rodeo Cowboy each and every time. It probably gets a pass overall because it uses your avatar, which makes the costumes and tricks more fun to see than some generic-looking dude or dudette. Still, once I got all the skulls, I didn’t really know what to do; online racing was no more exciting than the single-player stuff, unfortunately.

Oh, if you were curious what my crudely drawn maps actually looked like, they looked like this:

Yup–my art skills are wildly good. Now to figure out what I can stream next. I like the idea of having a goal for streaming, not just playing through the game’s main campaign, though I understand a lot of people do that. Perhaps I can capture getting the remainder of Fallout 4‘s Bobbleheads or causing some random chaos to happen in Just Cause 2. Must think on this. One thing I know for certain is that, just like when I finished up LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, an invisible weight has been lifted off my shoulders (and mind), and I don’t have to return to this digital world ever again. Unless I want to.

RIDICULOUS MARATHON HAS CANDY, TOFFEE, SWEETS, AND CONFETTI

If you have an eye for detail or are anal about words being in all capital letters when perhaps they have no reason to be, you might be wondering why this blog post about Ridiculous Marathon has such style elements enforced in its title. I assure you this is not a clickbait attempt or new thing for Grinding Down in 2016. I assure you. This stems from looking up further details about the game on Microsoft’s website and discovering that the only text provided before the “read more” link is as follows:

GET READY TO RUN A CRAZY MARATHON FILLED WITH CANDY, TOFFEE, SWEETS AND CONFETTI

Er, yeah. Settle down, copy writer. Also, even after playing Ridiculous Marathon for a bit, I can’t agree that the game is filled with these items. You’ll see a piece of candy every few feet, but only until you complete the Daily Challenge, and then you’ll never see another sliver of candy again until the next day. As for the toffee and sweets–no idea where they are. Confetti appears from time to time as you morph into a powered-up piñata, but this isn’t a game about hitting the crap out of a stuffed container often made of papier-mâché. It’s an endless runner, through and through.

I’ll say with certainty that Ridiculous Marathon is an easier and more forgiving endless runner than Temple Run 2 and Lara Croft: Relic Run–put together. There are fewer turns and obstacles to avoid, with a larger focus on jumping over construction signs and avoiding trucks carrying long wooden logs. Your move set includes jumping, moving left to right, and sliding–that’s kind of it. There’s no turning corners or running along walls to not fall in pits, but you can double tap the screen to turn into an invincible piñata that will, I believe, save you from one crash. I’ve gotten pretty far without much outside help, hitting around 150,000 points in score. With the help of some revive diamonds, I expect to hit 500,000 points rather easily.

Naturally, with this being a free-to-play endless runner, there’s microtransactions available that could help each of your runs be more successful, but only if you plop down some cash. So far, I’ve ignored all of those options and am doing just fine. You can buy single use power-ups with the gold you collect as you move through the Amazon rainforest, as well as upgrade power-ups or purchase costumes for your characters, though those are simply cosmetic in nature. There are ads, but they are easy to dismiss, though I don’t understand why I have to sign in with my Microsoft account every single time I load it up to play; other mobile games don’t ask me to do this.

There are two systems at work to keep one coming back to Ridiculous Marathon, and they are the Daily and Weekly Challenges. The Daily Challenge tasks you with collecting a number of candy as you run, which is easy enough because, just like with all the game’s power-ups, you can spot them from a distance as a beam of light shoots up and out of them. Do this for five days in a row, and you’ll unlock a mystery box, which gave me some free piñata power-ups. The Weekly Challenge wants you to collect golden palm trees, and the one I’m on is for finding 21, of which I’ve gotten nine. They show up a whole lot less, so we’ll see if I get any reward by the end of the countdown, which stands at 34 hours left. Hmm.

In the end, Ridiculous Marathon is fine. It’s not as ridiculous as one might think, nor as tiring as running an actual marathon. Well, I actually can’t speak officially on that last part. Perhaps this is a runner better suited for younger gamers or those just getting into the genre. Anyways, I expect to play it for another week or two until I’ve wrung every ounce of fun from it, and by fun I naturally mean Achievements.

Rain’s filled with rain, but also monsters and unsettling experiences

The afternoon after 2015 became 2016, and the world was completely different/the same, something inside me stirred and demanded that I at least complete one game on this very first day of the new year. Like a ceremonial ship launching, of setting out to sea and beginning an unfamiliar voyage. I can’t really explain compulsions like this; surely you don’t want to have convince me why you grabbed that Snickers bar while in the check-out line at the market when you weren’t even hungry.

Anyways, I felt like I had been ignoring my PlayStation 3 these last few months since Fallout 4 came out and I got an Xbox One, so I powered it on and began to scroll down my lengthy list of games. A handful of which I purchased, with the majority being downloaded “freebies” for being a PlayStation Plus subscriber. It’s a hodgepodge of big and small games, and I stopped on Rain, an atmospheric platforming adventure game based around precipitation. I only wish it had been raining in real life as I played, in one single session, but it was a cold, quiet winter afternoon outside. A digital rain soundtrack had to suffice, plus the purring of two cats on my couch.

Rain is set in a nameless Western European-inspired city, in an invisible world revealed only by never-ending falling rain. You play as a little boy who finds himself lost amongst the rain-slicked cobblestone streets and chasing after a young girl. She herself is being pursued, for reasons not immediately known, by ethereal monstrous beasts hidden in the rain. For half of the game, you are simply trying to make contact with this girl, always ending up a few steps behind her with some roadblock in the way; the second half of the game sees the two kids working in tandem to defeat these monsters and the Unknown–a leader amongst all the baddies–and make their way home. The story itself is minimal and actually hard to decipher by the end, told only in blatant text on the screen. It kind of becomes a tale of literal light versus dark, health versus sickness, familiarity versus foreign, but I’m sure there are other ways to interpret things.

The twist to Rain‘s mechanics of hiding from monsters and using the environment to solve platform puzzles is that the little boy becomes visible to the monsters when standing in the open rain. If he finds shelter under a roof, he is invisible. This creates some stealth sequences, which are honestly full of tension as you creep past the monster, only able to see the light splashes in a puddle or wet footprints the little boy leaves behind on the ground as a clue to where he is. Yup, when you are invisible, you are invisible. It can be daunting at first, but you’ll get used to it over time and learn how to control somebody you can’t see. Other than that, you’ll do some running away, you’ll push and pull items to make new platforms, and you’ll work with the little girl to lift her to unreachable ledges.

One aspect of Rain that I actively disliked and even began rolling my eyes and muttering under my breath at is that the Unknown, that stalking, leader of the rain baddies that chases after you from chapter one, just kept coming back from the dead. Every time you think you’ve stopped it and can safely resume your journey, it rises from the grave with an ominous soundtrack in tow. This happens even two or three times during the game’s ending, which is already far too long as is and not very clear on what these little ghost kids were up to. Lastly, and this might be a minor complaint or a major complaint depending on your feelings towards collecting things as you play, but Rain‘s collectibles are only available after you complete the game. I went back via chapter select and got a few, but they really aren’t even worth collecting unless you want the three Trophies associated with nabbing them all.

From a concept perspective, Rain is really cool. It has style, a gorgeous soundtrack peppered with piano and accordion, and a lot of potential, but it doesn’t really deliver. The puzzles are at first neat and interesting, but they repeat in every chapter and often don’t do much with other elements, like the muddy water that makes you visible even when out of the rain. The game itself is fairly short, around three to four hours to finish, but poorly paced. I did enjoy staring at the imaginative, spindly monsters one could possibly picture emerging from the mist in…well, Stephen King’s The Mist. When compared with the likes of other short, narrative-centric experiences like Journey, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and Botanicula, this could have been so much more.

Perishing is progress for Temple of Yog’s tributes

Let’s get the nitty-gritty out of the way: I’m buddies with Lee Bretschneider, the artist from ChudChud Industries and main pixel-morpher on the company’s first release Temple of Yog, which dropped on the Nintendo Wii U’s eShop last week, alongside something called Mimecrass. Real quick aside, spellcheck suggests the following instead of nitty-gritty, which I find amusing–bitty-gritty, nutty-gritty, natty-gritty, titty-gritty, and ditty-gritty. Also, I paid for Temple of Yog with my own hard-earned digital dollars, so don’t go thinking I’m on the take here. The last and only free game I got for review purposes was Monster Tale…a game that had you looking between two screens in the middle of all the action. Hmm, coincidence.

Temple of Yog‘s lore is thick with murky ancient history and told through a somewhat difficult font to read. Here’s what I’ve grokked so far: after Ao the Original, the leader of a small band of villagers, sacrificed himself for the greater good, things have been pretty good for said band of villagers. They found refuge outside a large temple’s base, finding great returns in terms of ripe fruit and fresh fish. The settlement prospered in the Zenith Portal’s protective glow. However, in appreciation for the temple’s generosity, the villagers provide a sacrificial offering via someone‘s life. Depending on how great of a warrior this someone is will affect how the village continues to grow.

Basically: get as far as you can and collect as many Boon points before you die so that you can upgrade your different classes to be stronger, better, more prepared for the next run. Think Rogue Legacy, but without the castle or hereditary traits. Or replace the castle with guilds. It’s a twin-stick shooter, so you move your character with the left stick and fire magic projectiles with the right. Everything you kill and do earns you Boon points, including moving on to the next area, which means players that can’t help but clear out every enemy in both the Light and Shadow realms will benefit the most. Right, there’s two realms, which you can switch between at will: one is on your TV screen, and the other below on the Wii U GamePad. However, you can only linger in the Shadow world for so long until your meter drains.

Before heading through the Zenith Portal to begin racking up Boon points, you’ll have to pick one of four classes: Holy Augur, Cult of the Magi, Livid Blade, or Rogue’s Nest. Each has their own stats and special abilities, and I’ve tried every one now, but found that I’m only interested in the Holy Augur guild. Why? Its special power is healing, a necessity when making headway through a jungle full of dangerous creatures. They also have fantastic reach. I’ve spent a lot of Boon points enhancing this guild the most. As you explore, you can find special items–like boots that make you move faster–as well as crystals that will give you side objectives for a chance to earn extra Boon. I wish there was more of the latter, or that the crystals showed up more frequently, as it gives me something to work towards, other than just eventually buying the farm.

Look, I’m not great at Temple of Yog. This has been my best run yet, getting as far as fighting the first giant wolf (warg?), but Fromage the Beloved hit the ground fast with one bite from its snout. Turns out, you should attack wolves from behind. Since the floors are randomly generated, some areas are tougher than others. I’ve encountered empty Light worlds, a Light world with one static plant monster, and then another filled with six to seven spiders, all bent on spitting in my face. This randomization greatly affects, at least for me, how far I’ll make it in a run. It also helps feed the “one more run” mentality.

Not every element here is a worthy sacrifice. This might be a problem only specific to me, but I had to “pause” the game a few times during runs, either to get a phone call or clean up surprise kitty cat vomit, and my natural inclination is to hit the “+” button. Nope. That doesn’t pause; it automatically sacrifices your character, and yes, I did this a few times before learning from my mistake. Still, when you are in a world where everything wants to murder you, a pause button would be welcome. I’ve also spawned inside a spider or right next to a spider when moving on to a new level, which is not ideal. Lastly, I play with the Wii U GamePad in my lap, which makes looking down at it and away from the TV screen a dangerous and unnerving task. Others might be better at it, but I’m still hesitant to do it often.

So, this first slice of Temple of Yog falls under the label of “The First Epoch,” with three further updates forthcoming next year. Early investors, like me, will get those for free, but others will have to suffer with the game’s base price increasing with each new add-on. Regardless, I’m going to keep playing, because death is progress, even for meager Boon points, and, theoretically, I’ll only get better as the guilds grow stronger and can take on and dish out more damage. Let’s check back later when I can take down a clutter of spiders like a pro.

Also: Temple of Yog‘s soundtrack is killer, probably something like 805,967 in Boon points. Sacrifice gladly accepted.

Campfire’s scary ghost story is told by matching four

I’ve gone camping a few times, when I was younger, but never in the stereotypical manner depicted on television or in movies. You know, when everyone gathers round a roaring flame in one big circle, roasting marshmallows on sticks and whispering the beginnings of stories whose only purpose is to ensure you have even more difficulty falling asleep on the ground in a sleeping bag possibly crawling with critters. Instead, I slept in a cabin and had lights out by like nine p.m. or it was with my father, and we’d eat hot dogs and beans and then I’d play my guitar in the murky darkness of the woods before the sound of its strings–the guitar’s, not the wood’s–would quickly freak me out. Yup, I’m kind of a big scaredy-cat.

Campfire was created by Adam Hartling (XenosNS) and Chris Last-Name-Not Known (rogueNoodle) for the Halifax Game Collective back in February 2015, which sported the theme “ghost stories,” and the player weaves these spooky tales by matching four icons on a grid and increasing the meter on the bottom of the screen. Seems easy enough. If you don’t match four similar-looking monsters, the meter will deplete and those around the campfire will grow bored, even sleepy. Basically, like a multiplier, you’ll want to keep matching four after four after four to ensure all are properly frightened from start to finish.

Honestly, it’s a bare bones match four puzzle game, but I’m in love with its design and aesthetic. The crackling campfire, the sounds the monsters make when matched, and the cute, children’s book-esque illustrations are a sight to behold. They remind me of someone‘s artwork that I look at weekly, though the name refuses to hop off the tip of my tongue. Unfortunately, you don’t really get to view what is going on with the campfire and kids as you match, since your focus and eyes are looked into the grid, always searching for the next set to clear. Okay, I went back to see, and all that happens is the main bear thingy, the one with the darker fur, just speaks a speech balloon featuring the monster you matched. Be cool if the monsters changed expressions as they grew more scared or bored.

I’ve not played anything else from rogueNoodle, but looking through his games list gets me excited to try out a few others. The same can be said about Adam Hartling. Gah, too many cool-looking indie experiences to experience, and not enough time in this universe. Curse you, Warp Door, for revealing yourself to me today. Curse you, and also thank you.

Anyways, if you enjoy matching adorable vampire bats and often listen to a soothing soundtrack that is burning wood on loop, give Campfire a try–in your browser, mind you–right over this way.

Patience you must have, my young Star Wars: Commander

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think some new Star Wars talkie comes out this week in theaters. The Force Awakens or something like that. Personally, I’m excited for it, as I love all things space opera, but am going to hold back and wait until the crowds and madness fade, though hopefully I can remain relatively spoiler-free during those dark, lonely days. Perhaps I’ll fill that void with my massive collection of Star Wars-related videogames, of which I actually don’t have many. There’s Star Wars: Tiny Death Star on my phone, which is stellar, but mostly an elevator simulator, LEGO Star Wars, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which I’ve played the opening tutorial bits twice and never gone any further than that.

Well, let’s see what Star Wars: Commander is all about. It’s from Disney Interactive and available on a bunch of different devices. For this impressions piece, I’m hanging out with my boys Han Solo and Chewbacca on my ASUS laptop that now rocks Windows 10. In hindsight, this is not the best decision I’ve ever made, and I’ll get to why in just a bit. It’s a free-to-play strategy game in the slight veins of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Age of Empires, a genre I’ve had some reservations over for years, but you’ll notice I didn’t say “real-time” there, as you’ll do a whole lot more waiting around if you wanted to play it just like those games.

Here’s the gist, story-wise. In Star Wars: Commander, you must first to decide to fight for the Rebellion or Empire, train your troops, build up a bunch of units and vehicles, defend your base, and complete story-tinted missions. As you do this, you’ll level up your heroes and vehicles, battle on different worlds, and team up with friends to take on larger, more difficult scenarios. For what it’s worth, I went with the good guys, which most certainly means I’m on Darth Vader’s naughty list this year for Christmas. I can’t help rooting for the good-natured guys and girls in this universe that don’t want to see entire planets vaporized. I’ve also killed a bunch of womp rats on Tatooine already.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, which is from around an hour or so with the game, Star Wars: Commander is not great. It might be good, but probably falls more around the middling category. It holds your hand for far too long in the beginning, is too corny with its ads for rating the app and buying extra goodies with hard-earned cash, and doesn’t seem all that engaging from the get-go. This is certainly not helped by the fact that I’m playing it on a laptop, when it is clearly better suited for mobile, where one can easily check in on their base, tap the things that need tapping, and close out to get back to dreary life tasks, like blocking people on Facebook you know are foaming at the mouth to reveal Mark Hamill’s role in Episode VII.

Immediately after the game stopped holding my hand and actually allowed me to click around and spend coins/ore as I pleased, I began to explore the user interface. There’s a bunch of icons, and one should ideally know what each does before getting into the thick of things. The second icon I clicked on, which brought up a menu for purchasing resources with my precious diamond currency, nearly froze the game. I say nearly because I could continue to click the “back” and “X” buttons, but they didn’t do anything. I didn’t try actually buying any resources, though the cynical side of me suspects those buttons would have worked just fine. Eventually, I just tabbed out and shut the whole thing down, but I’m forever tainted by this experience, afraid to even open up the settings menu.

I’ll probably check in on Star Wars: Commander a few more times this week, though I don’t expect to stick with it. I was surprised by just how little you can actually do while building your base and prepping for the next mission, and so maybe I need to give Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a third chance and start exploring the galaxy, no cooldown timer needed. Also, if you’re checking out Star Wars: The Force Awakens this week, enjoy–but keep the details to yourself. Sincerely, everyone not seeing it immediately.

Matching pairs of tiles and rotating never felt so good

I’ve been a huge fan of all things mahjong since the good ol’ college days when I discovered some Flash-based version online that I could play in a resized browser while having AIM conversations next to it with friends and girlfriends into the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning. It kept me active at a moment’s glance despite my angry eyelids wanting to shut and bring in Mr. Sandman. Conversely, I also adored the time I spent with Picross 3D. You might be wondering what the two of those have in common, and it is beyond evident once you sit down and give Microsoft’s Taptiles a go.

Taptiles, beside being a free download on Windows 10, is mahjong, but with a twist. Usually, a mahjong field is static, either from a top-down perspective or three-quarters view, meaning you can’t see what is behind a number of tiles until you clear the ones on top away first, working only with what is before you. This time around, you can rotate the stack of tiles Fez-like to see every clickable, decorated rectangle, which means you can’t ever really get stuck. Can’t find another tile with those squiggly blue water lines on it? Turn, turn, turn, and you’ll either see it on the other side or find another pair to make to clear the path forward. I’ve only run into a few spots where I ran out of moves, but the game just auto-shuffles the tiles for you.

There are three modes of play in Taptiles: Dash, Origins, and Relaxation. Allow me to sum each of them up in a few sentences. For Dash mode, it’s a race against the clock, with the only way to add more time to it by quickly matching tiles and using special power-ups to help you finish more rounds faster. Truthfully, I found this too stressful and not what I’m looking for when it comes to a game of mahjong. Origins mode contains larger, more challenging puzzles, as well as more relaxed time limit, though the later stages still expect you to move fast. This mode requires some quick thinking and reflexes, but is more enjoyable in the end. Lastly, there’s Relaxation mode, a.k.a. my mode, which offers calming puzzles without the pressure of a ticking clock.

There are also daily challenges. Five, to be exact. Each day, of every month. They range from easy to difficult, and the better you do at them, the more points you’ll earn, which helps increase a progress bar towards acquiring bronze, silver, and gold medals. To be honest, I’ve only logged into the daily challenges a few times to do the easy puzzles; I’m not finding anything worth investing heavily in with this feature, though, for some, I’m sure it’s a cool addition for bragging rights.

I’ve noodled with a few of the timed modes, but my main go-to in Taptiles is Relaxation mode because it lets me play like the good ol’ days, where I can leave it open and do some mindless Internetting, returning to it now and then to clear out a few tiles and watch the board get smaller. Sure, I’m not racking up any sweet non-stop matching bonuses, but that’s never been what mahjong is about. At least to me. I clicked really fast for a bit there and got the Achievement for a speed bonus chain of 30; that said, don’t expect me to pop the one for 150, as that is far too stressful on both my heart and eyes.

How do you prefer to match up a whole bunch of bamboo, character, and circle tiles? With or without a timer? In real life, on a tabletop? As a means of therapy for battling dementia? I honestly want to know.