Prepare to be surprised by Barely Floating’s unlikely hero

Barely Floating likes to challenge your expectations, almost immediately from the get-go. This alone makes it worth seeing, though then you’ll quickly realize it’s a pretty standard point-and-click adventure game once the adventuring begins. Still, kudos where kudos are deserved, and I applaud Stemshock Interactive’s decision to make the star of their game Joseph Lancaster, an old, whiny grandpa, cane in hand and medication pills in his pockets–for certain, he’s no spry Guybrush Threepwood or quick-witted American tourist George Stobbart. Then again, not many can be.

Right. Pirates have taken hostages off a cruise ship, holding them for ransom on The Sea Krait. In comes Agent Morris on a helicopter, a true professional with cool sunglasses and plenty of hostage-saving in his history. However, negotiations quickly take a turn for the worse, forcing Joe–he prefers to be called this–to take actions into his own wrinkled hands. Thankfully, since everyone views him as non-threatening he gets more freedom than the other hostages, allowing him to go from room to room, pointing and clicking to solve puzzles and put his plans into movement.

It’s an adventure game, so expect to collect a lot of items–some traditional, some silly, such as Barbara, an inflatable sex doll–and then use those items on people and other things in a creative manner. There’s also a very large dialogue element to Barely Floating. You can pick from options, but, once in a dialogue with someone, you can also click on things outside the list to ask about them. So, even though the cloth-covered machine isn’t a topic of choice when speaking with Igon, my favorite non-pirate-turned-pirate, selecting it still brings up a reaction and clues. I thought this was implemented really well and even becomes a key part of a puzzle’s solution when it becomes karaoke time.

Everyone on The Sea Krait, except for maybe the captain, directly counter the straightforwardness of Joe and the Wheat family. There’s Igon, who keeps items in his empty eye socket; there’s Pex, an idiot with too much muscle; there’s the bartender with the strange creature living in his dirty beard; there’s horny and severely obese Herr Hindenberg; and so on. This is where Barely Floating sees most of its color and humor shine through, and you strangely become more interested and invested in these lighthearted characters than the rich family actually held hostage.

Here are the parts I got stuck at, forcing me to dig up an online walkthrough. Some puzzles are timing-based, like getting the bartender to wash his beard by accident or having the recently fired geek lob a drink directly into the jukebox. I also struggled to fully comprehend how to handle the karaoke puzzle, though I wasn’t too far off course. Speaking of that, one of the more final puzzles involves using the pirate ship’s navigation system and speaking via text inputs to other ships in the area. Unfortunately, here, the game is looking for very specific phrases and sentences, and though I was close on a few of them, you can’t solve it unless you put in exactly what is desired. Felt this was a bit unfair, and there should’ve been more wiggle room.

I really like Barely Floating‘s look, though some backgrounds could be more detailed than others, and much of the animations are shortchanged. Still, every character is unique and stands out, and the text sort of bobs up and down, like it is floating on the water’s surface, which is a fantastic touch. You don’t have to do any “pixel hunting” as everything essential pretty much pops off the screen. In terms of music, there isn’t a lot of variety, but what is there is good, though it can get tiresome, especially when you realize how much backtracking you have to do–it is, after all, a tiny ship.

Seems like this was originally part of the Summerbatch Volume 1 bundle, which also featured Jailbreak, Nancy the Happy Whore, Patchwork, and PISS. Now, I did not purchase the bundle back in the day, ending up nabbing Barely Floating for free from its AGS page. Of those in the bundle, I’ve already played Patchwork and downloaded a copy of Ben Chandler’s PISS–there really is no good way to say that–but have yet to try out the latter. I wonder if I can find the other two titles elsewhere, though neither are giving me the warm fuzzies from screenshots.

Heads up, this is no short adventure either, with plenty to click on and read. Voice acting would’ve helped in spots, but the writing is fun and mostly to the point. You can, however, go pretty deep in some conversations. I think it took me about an hour and change to see Barely Floating‘s credits roll as the sun set. You can download a copy of the game and see for yourself how long it takes an old geezer to become a hero.

A Boney Night casts spells and sings songs about beer

Heavily inspired by the LucasArts and Sierra classics of yesteryear, A Boney Night does not do much to stand out in the crowd. That said, it’s still an enjoyably short, retro point-and-click adventure, featuring hand-drawn backgrounds and original music. Plus, there’s a talking mushroom that you basically pepper-spray in order to bottle its tears. I know I have your attention now.

A Boney Night‘s story is something akin to a one-off episode of a Saturday morning cartoon. For some reason, I keep thinking about The Smurfs, for whatever its worth. Undra, a witch witnessing her later years in life, is suddenly awoken to her talking mushroom making a racket outside. Unfortunately, she needs to create a potion to be able to comprehend its words, and so the quest begins there. Once you do hear what it has to say, you’ll learn that a great evil is taking over the land. Spoilers: it’s zombies. Help Undra stop the undead by teaming her up with Kijo the surprisingly sensitive orc and creating more powerful potions.

Your clickable actions are threefold: examine, touch, and talk. You can do this for every item, person, and noun you come across in the wild, as well as whatever thoughts you have in your inventory. I suggest examining everything at least once, as it sometimes does advance the plot or give you a hint about what you need to do next. All of the puzzles are fairly logical, though I stumbled for a moment on “a dash of honesty” during the first repel aura potion Undra had to make. Here’s a clue: look inside the orc. Despite there only being three actions, I still found it tiring to cycle through them, but I guess that’s just part of that old-school adventuring charm.

A couple small critiques. Strangely, there’s a save/load function included in A Boney Night, but the game seems like you can complete it under an hour. I think I was probably around the thirty-five or forty minute mark, taking my time to read everything and explore all areas. Not really sure if you’d ever need to save your progress, especially since you can’t lose or screw anything up by missing an item. While the game features some catchy original songs, especially the one that plays at Undra’s home, it also does not contain any sound effects, which is a little jarring. I really wanted to hear some loud whooshing when I released that wind potion on the walnut tree. Pretty sure those old LucasArts/Sierra games had sound effects…right?

I ended up downloading A Boney Night to enjoy on my laptop in bed under the heated blanket (what, too much information?), but it looks like you can now play an HTML version of it right in your browser. If you’re looking for a retro point-and-click adventure game starring a witch sporting an attitude and wicked beehive hairdo, here you go.

New ways to celebrate mediocrity with The Incredibles

I ended up getting a copy of The Incredibles videogame for the PlayStation 2 last summer as part of a small birthday celebration for myself. Please note, I also snagged Suikoden Tactics and Star Ocean Till the End of Time with this, and, of the three, it’s the first one I’ve actually put into my system to play since that package arrived. Yup, some seven months later, I’m just blindly trusting that these used videogames from Amazon arrived in working condition. I mean, yeah, I’ll find out eventually.

Anyways, The Incredibles is my favorite Pixar film. I say that now, in 2015, with total confidence, and have been saying it since the movie saw release in 2004. Y’know, a decade ago. I also suspect that I will continue saying this for many more years, possibly all the years. There’s a lot of reasons why The Incredibles is incredible, and I’ll list a few for those in the know: Brad Bird, monologues, subsurface scattering, Syndrome’s hair, that little kid on the tricycle, capes, no capes, the colors, 1960s homages, the mysterious Mirage, and so on. It’s a funny story about superheroes, but also about family and what it can cost to stay together, to be happy. I watch it every few months as it is one of my top 31 favorite ways to eat up time.

I promise I’ll talk about the letdown that, so far, is The Incredibles on the PlayStation 2, but I first need to lay some groundwork. First, the movie. I was in college and saw it on or around its opening weekend with a girl I was dating then, who we will call the Giraffe, and it instantly blew me my mind. Like, sure, I understood the concept of a “children’s film for adults,” but here was something else, something bigger. It didn’t dumb itself down for the wee ones, and it kept the serious moments super serious. Fast forward a bit, and I’m on my way home from a Spring Break trip in Las Vegas, NV, unfortunately taking a red-eye flight back to Camden. Now, I’m already terrified of planes, and so while everyone else slept, I sat staring at the back of the seat in front of me, sweating like a pig. Until I discovered my girlfriend’s GameBoy Advance and a copy of The Incredibles for it. It didn’t pass all the hours, but it definitely helped; alas, the GBA version is quite different from those released for consoles, playing it as a straightforward side-scrolling beat-em-up, and you can see it in action over here.

I knew that The Incredibles for PlayStation 2 was not the same game I had played on that flight many years back, but it still seemed promising. The movie’s entire makeup is perfectly designed for a videogame: you have a small cast of characters, each with varying special powers, ending up in dangerous situations, all trying to save the world from a man-boy gone mad who has an army of goons and robots to toss at you. Alas, it turned out to be a vapid, uninspired retread of the movie, with an out-of-nowhere difficulty spike, which forces one to use cheat codes to get through it. Hate to remind Syndrome of this yet again, but you do need special powers to be super.

Here are my biggest problems so far with The Incredibles, and mind you, I only just completed stage 8 (of 18 total), meaning I’m a little bit over one-third of the way through it, but boy howdy I’m not thrilled about what’s to come.

It’s boring. The levels are extremely linear, and the one or two occasions it allows you to explore reveal nothing, save for maybe a single “secret bonus item” unlock collectible, which devolves into uninteresting concept art. It’s certainly no this. At this point, I’ve played as Mr. Incredible six times, once as Elastigirl, and once as Dash. Wait, real quick–the game and its manual seem to go out of its way to never refer to Elastigirl as such, calling her Helen or Mrs. Incredible only, strangely stripping her of her identity, even labeling her this in a level that takes place before she gets married. The levels for Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl are of the action adventure style, with slivers of variety, such as a turret sequence, and the Dash level was an atrocious free-runner style thing that I’ll have more on in a sec.

It’s confusing. Look, I know the movie inside and out. I have to imagine anyone coming to this game also knows the movie pretty well or would at least see it first before playing the action game based on it. If they didn’t, well…this will make zero sense. Small, condensed scenes from Pixar’s film are used between levels to bridge the gaps, but it does little to explain why so-and-so is here, doing this, wearing that. One level you are playing as an overweight Mr. Incredible in his old-timey blue costume, and the very next level you have him looking fit and all donned up in Edna’s new design. I know how he got there, but many won’t if they are relying on this for plot. Also, you rarely get told what to do in a level or where to go next, though there are only so many options at hand.

It’s too difficult. Maybe this is my fault, coming to The Incredibles and assuming it was a child-friendly beat-em-up with additional elements, but certainly something easy. Most levels, based on a quick scan of YouTube replays, take about eight to ten minutes to finish, while I was averaging more around 30 minutes. This is due to many deaths, but also frustration at overly difficult sections, sequences I just can’t imagine a young gamer getting through without repeated tries or external help. In some levels, if you miss a platform jump, you have to return to the start of the scenario yourself and start again, and it doesn’t help that the camera makes it challenging to tell how far a jump is. In that level where Dash has to race the school bus, the checkpoint systems seems oddly tiered, often working against progress. The only way I was able to beat the Omnidroid in stage 8 “Volcanic Eruption” was to spam health replenish and Incredi-move cheat codes. I don’t know, maybe I’m just terrible at games, thinks the dude that did beat Yama on a Daily Challenge last year.

The short of it is this: The Incredibles is not as incredible as the movie. I’m going to finish playing it, because that’s who I am, but like that tricycle kid hanging around the Parr’s driveway, I’ll still be waiting for something amazing to happen.

Sense the evil, never see it in All the Way Down

All the Way Down is a short, dark tale of dread and death set in Yorkshire, England during an ominous snowstorm. It’s openly inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s work, though I can’t pinpoint an exact story of his where it is drawing directly from, but “The Whisperer in Darkness” is probably a good place to start. Still, a lot of his themes are represented here, such as personal madness and fear of the unknown, the unnamable.

Our nameless young man, a hiker, is simply trying to find a place to spend the night and get out of the snowy cold. He stumbles across a convenience store in a small mining village called Millvale; alas, he is not warmly welcomed, since he is far from a local. However, the clerk at the convenience store suggests he check out The Miner’s Arms, a small bar just down the road, known for occasionally putting up stragglers in need. Naturally, things go downhill from there.

I love that All the Way Down is picking up the dropped faceless in-game models torch last seen held by The Granstream Saga. The character portraits themselves are actually more detailed, left black and white save for rosy cheeks, that warm orange-red someone’s nose turns when they’ve had a bit too much to drink. It’s a strong effect, gelling well with the often pleasant, colorfully warm backdrops, despite everything somehow silently screaming terror and mayhem. You never end up seeing the Deep Ones, the monsters feared by all of Millvale, but that’s fine. You don’t need to see them to believe and sense their presence, but I did find the main guy’s switch from stark disbelief to pure panic a little too convenient; he goes to bed, wakes up to a pounding on his door, and now swears that it is pure evil coming for him. There should’ve been a dream sequence scene to help sell that better.

Puzzle-wise, there’s unfortunately not much here. In fact, I can only recall four sections where you actually are tasked with pointing on items, clicking, and clicking somewhere else: the miner flashback, escaping your bedroom, freeing yourself from the basement, and using the minecart to flee. That might sound like a lot, but it’s not; the amount of interaction and exploration is slim to none, with the puzzle solutions extremely easy to spot, save for a tin can that I missed during my initial pixel scan of the screen. At the start, while the hiker is conversing with the convenience store worker, there’s dialogue options, but that never appears again, not even with the barkeeper or old man filling him in on the village’s grim history. A missed opportunity, but given that there’s voice acting involved, I can understand if words had to be limited to a specific amount. Just felt like a tease, that’s all.

I really dug the look and feel of All the Way Down, but wanted more interaction, more poking and prodding. Let me find the madness; then, let me run from it, blindly, arms flailing, my only direction away.

Survival is the name of the game for Rein

Rein is another small adventure game I downloaded some time back, but only came across recently while trying to delete games I’ve already played off my hard-drive. This laptop of mine is filling up fast, and I have no one to blame but myself. Stop all the downloading. It’s probably a stretch to compare it to surviving, but there is an element of choice at play: keep this, delete that, move here, grab that. You never know what to save, what might come in handy down the line, in some unpredictable scenario. Thankfully, in real life, I can move at a slower clip than Darius Poyer’s Rein demands because even a single pause is enough to get yourself flattened, though you can always try again.

Here’s why you, a scientist, must survive: your research facility is crumbling after an experiment goes wrong. That’s all you get, and all you’ll get, unfortunately, as much of the story is left clouded in a chemical fog. Instead, the focus is on escaping, reaching fresh air while everyone else around you succumbs to Death’s cruel touch. I died within seconds of starting Rein. Then I died within seconds of restarting Rein. Died on the next screen almost instantly. You are probably seeing a pattern by now. This is not a game where you have time to right-click on items and read their descriptions; it’s all about moving, thrusting forward, thinking on your feet, no loitering.

Alas, Rein ends right once you get a hang of how it operates. Seriously, it’s short. Maybe ten minutes long tops, and I’m only grumbling about this fact because I wanted more. I wanted the research facility to be larger, to have more rooms to explore and discover the ingredients behind its downfall. Was not a big fan of the puzzle solution where you use a handgun to shoot off a padlock, something that MythBusters debunked a good while back. Rein‘s claustrophobic nature is extremely effective, so much that when you get to the “safe” room, the one where you won’t die by lingering too long, it does feel like a pinch of relief, a weight off. There is a lot of solid animation here–really liked the one for our leading scientist opening a powered-down door with a metal pipe–and an atmospheric piano tune that sets the tone.

Historically, I’ve not played too many point-and-click adventure games where death is an option, one lingering just above the protagonist’s head, waiting to strike. If I recall, you can get yourself shot quite easily in Beneath a Steel Sky. There’s also the numerous missteps you can make in Another World/Out of This World, which one might not classify as an adventure game, but I think it is Rein‘s biggest inspirational drawing point. Other than those examples, I can’t come up with any others I’ve experienced that punish sloppy pointing and clicking, but it is an interesting concept in a genre generally regarded as infallible, unless you can’t find a specific pixel or determine the logic behind the developers’ minds.

Go on. Try your luck at surviving within a crumbling research by downloading Rein over here. I bet you’ll do better than me.

Abobo’s Big Adventure is a risible romp through the NES era

I’m now at the point that I no longer remember where I download these strange little games. Could be a random website, some sort of bundle, or even just a blog post pointing me to something interesting. I just stumble across them in my “videogames” folder on my desktop days, weeks, and months later, with new names popping up left and right, often giving me pause. Maybe I accidentally fed one after midnight, and now they are spreading like wildfire, threatening to take over my time with so-called bigger games, despite many of these wee indie oddballs working a thousand times better than anything produced by an actual studio these days. Mm-hmm. Still annoyed about that.

Thankfully, Abobo’s Big Adventure helped put a smile on my face and keep me distracted while Dragon Age: Inquisition continued to fold in upon itself. And that’s surprising, because, while I appreciate the NES for what it was and still is today, I have little nostalgia for it. I never had one as a wee boy, though some neighbors did; videogaming didn’t truly happen for me until that Christmas morning when I unwrapped a Super Nintendo, which came pre-packed with a copy of Super Mario World. That said, Abobo’s Big Adventure is a loving tribute to the NES era, and I get a lot of the references and sprites and winking nods, but there’s also some more obscure elements zipping right on by. It’s an odd mix of old and new, but is thankfully a ton of fun to play, even rekindling my desire to trek through the original Legend of Zelda.

For those that don’t know–and I didn’t know upon starting up this free Flash game–Abobo comes from Double Dragon, appearing multiple times, often as a boss character. I played some Double Dragon in my early days, but this character never stood out to me; I guess the developers behind Abobo’s Big Adventure felt otherwise, thrusting him upon a quest to rescue his son, the hilariously named Aboboy. To do this, Abobo must travel through eight different levels, all themed to a classic NES title. I got as far as the one based around Mega Man, but more on that soon.

The controls are very simple, though they obviously change a bit from level to level. Basically, you move with the arrow keys and execute techniques with “A” and “S,” giving you the sensation of using an NES controller in terms of complexity. You can fill up a meter and tap both A and S together for a special move of sorts. Abobo’s actions change with each level, going from fighting goons in scummy alleyways to exploring a top-down dungeon to floating right to left thanks to some helium-pumped balloons. Abobo’s Big Adventure does a good job of mimicking how these old games looked and played, while also infusing them with modern mechanics and less-than-inspired teenage-level humor. Yup, looking at you, penis-shaped Zelda dungeon map. It’s probably silly to call this out in 2014, but the built-in Achievements system is quite flashy and reminded me of the days when Achievements were designed to be fun, rewarding, and experimental. After reading some descriptions, I went back and got a few out-of-the-way ones.

Much like their original counterparts, some parts of Abobo’s Big Adventure are tough, real challenges of skill. This mostly relates to the boss battles, such as the Old Man in the Zelda-themed one, but I found the entire Balloon Fight flight to be a tough grind, as well as the underwater level. The difficulty became too much once I hit the Mega Man level, which features everyone’s favorite off-screen laser beams to narrowly avoid. If you’ll recall, I’ve never been even mediocre at Mega Man games, and so, after multiple attempts of trying to take down the second form of the boss here, I’ve walked away. The keyboard’s not cutting it. And that’s okay. I got through most of Abobo’s Big Adventure, had a pretty good time, and saw plenty; I can’t imagine what comes later is too surprising, though I might find a Let’s Play to see what the last few levels act like.

While games like Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge are obviously deeply inspired by the classics from gaming’s so-called Golden Age, Abobo’s Big Adventure is them. Just slightly warped and more accessible. If you’re itching for something kind of like an NES game, but also not, I say give this a go. Watch out for that damaging TMNT seaweed in the underwater level though.

Bouncing from era to era for key items in TimeSplitters

Get ready, but I’ve never played Perfect Dark, and the only time I’ve spent with GoldenEye 007 was something like ten years after its release, being all illegal…with an emulator. Don’t think I even got past the first level, that oh-so-iconic dam. Shh, don’t tell anyone. Good thing I’m only posting this on my secret, private NotePad blog on my computer’s desktop and not a powerful, crippling entity like the Internet. The fact is I never had a Nintendo 64–I went the PlayStation 1 route, see–and so I missed out on just about every single big release from that system; my childhood BF-not-F had one, but we mostly ate up  wrestling games, as well as the multiplayer mode in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.

And so when I read or hear the comparisons of TimeSplitters for the PlayStation 2 to those two previously mentioned name-heavy franchises, I kind of just shrug my shoulders. Because I don’t know left from right. That said, TimeSplitters is a bunch of goofy fun, even if it is a first-person shooter boiled down to a mostly multiplayer focus. Speaking of that, here’s the modes you can expect to hit X on at least once: Story, Arcade, and Challenge. I didn’t include the map editor there because map editing on the PlayStation 2 is a little scary, so I’ll just advise y’all to keep your distance and fire with precision.

Story mode in TimeSplitters is a big lie, even more so than in The Tiny Bang Story. The levels work more in a “time attack” manner than following a narrative and exploring at your own pace. Basically, you pick your level and difficulty (easy, medium, hard), and either a male or female character to play as. These levels are themed across nine fictional locations spanning the years between 1935 and 2035. The goal of each level is to grab an item–let’s just go ahead and call it a MacGuffin–and then make your way to the exit, which is generally not where you started. The split second you pick up the item, deadlier monsters begin warping into the level, making the return trip that much more hazardous. On easy, you can complete each level in a matter of minutes, and the main point of this mode is to unlock Arcade mode elements, like multiplayer bots, additional multiplayer modes, and so on.

Arcade is the multiplayer hub, and you can play against bots, but it’s still pretty soulless. Yes, that’s a remark coming from someone who ate up bot multiplayer sessions in Red Faction II and Killzone. The bot AI can be tweaked to five different levels of smarty-pants, but it still just feels like mindless chaos, like there’s no strategy at work. I imagine four-player multiplayer sessions are more lively. The standard modes are there in various forms, like capture the flag (well, capture the bag here) and deathmatch.

The Challenge mode can only be unlocked by beating all the Story missions on at least the easiest of difficulties, which is, obviously, pretty easy to do. It’s the best thing in TimeSplitters. Right now, I have three challenges in total unlocked: one involving killing zombies in specific ways with a time limit, another is murdering a bunch of duck-men before time runs out, and the other tasks you with holding onto a bag for a total of a minute in a three-minute arena filled with opponents. These are neat and fun; however, the difficulty in these challenges is beyond believable. So far, I have only beaten the zombie one, and it literally came down to beheading the last zombie a second before time ran out. For the bag one, I don’t think I’ve held onto it for longer than a total of twenty seconds so far. Bah humbug.

If there’s one thing that still stands out with TimeSplitters some fourteen years later, it’s that the game moves fast. Like cheetah speeds. The action moves at at extremely spiffy frame-rate and high resolution, still looking good for its day. In fact, it moves faster than more recent first-person shooters–sorry, BioShock Infinite, but you dropped your walking cane–and almost feels like your character is skating on ice, blasting away enemies and monsters with polish.

Something to not praise though are the outrageous character designs, which often have the men looking macho and powerful, while the women are given Twizzler-sized waists, large breasts, and sexual poses. Even the robotic forms. Still, there are some funny names to smile at, like Hick Hyde and Ravelle Velvet, but none of the characters, as far as I can tell, play differently from each other. The choice is welcome, but the gender portrayals are too stereotypical.

At this point, I’ve unlocked a good amount of TimeSplitters‘ content, but other than giving a few more Challenge missions another go I think I might call it quits. Again, the multiplayer isn’t filling me with joy or excitement, and I have no interest in replaying the Story levels on tougher difficulties because it just feels unbalanced and punishing. It sounds like later games in the TimeSplitters series, of which I have none, treat the story more traditionally and weave it better into the action.

There is no story in The Tiny Bang Story

I think I ended up getting The Tiny Bang Story in one of the first Steam sales I ever participated in, grabbing it because it was über inexpensive and had a fantastic, whimsical art style, similar to Machinarium. I then allowed the casual point-and-clicker to sit quietly and ignored in my Steam library for a good while, eventually giving it an unsuccessful go during my Extra Life stream this past October. Yeah, turns out, playing slow-moving, atmospheric puzzlers does not make for thrilling entertainment, nor does getting stuck in the opening chapter because I couldn’t locate X, Y, and Z. Still, something was there, and so I returned to Colibri Games’ indie mosquito-catching simulator recently to solve every puzzle it contained.

But first, here’s the most disappointing thing about The Tiny Bang Story–there is no story. At least not a solid narrative throughout. Sure, there’s some light setup, but it is just window dressing for…item gathering and random puzzles. See, life on Tiny Planet was pretty relaxing until a great disaster struck–a meteor, that is! Now everything is a mess, and it’s up to, the player, the one with the power to click a mouse button, to restore Tiny Planet back to its peacefulness. You do this by fixing a variety of machines and mechanisms, as well as collecting hidden jigsaw puzzle pieces. That’s the story, and that’s all you get. The rest is left up to your imagination because you’ll get absolutely zero clues no matter how many times you click on those characters.

The gist of the gameplay involves clicking. Click on stuff until a sidebar pops up to tell you what to collect and how many in order for the selected item to work. In reality, The Tiny Bang Story is a very pretty “find the hidden items” game, the kind my mother and I used to play together on the Nintendo DS. There’s no time limit to any of the puzzles, and the game autosaves at nearly every turn, so if you are tired of straining your eyes in search of that one, teeny, tiny light-bulb you can always come back to it later. Which I did. Many puzzles are logic-based while others just ask to you click around enough times; I found a few to be initially difficult because, since there is no story or even text in this game, I did not know what was desired. I struggled the most with the puzzles based around sliding or rearranging tiles because I’ve never been any good at those.

Okay, besides the lack of story, I do have another peeve to pick: the hint system is tedious. In games like Professor Layton, you can collect hidden coins in the screen to spend on clues to help you solve puzzles. That idea is here, too. Sort of. On every screen you visit, there are blue mosquitoes that softly buzz around; if you click on them, you’ll collect them in a bubble at the top right corner, and once you have enough, you can summon a single mosquito to circle around a specific area if you missed something or don’t know where to click next. Fine, fine. Except clicking on the tiny bugs is harder than you first imagine, and then you quickly realize you’re going to need to click on far too many of them just to get a single hint. Like, I think maybe at 14 or 15. No thank you, I’ll just look up an online walkthrough.

Now, while many of the puzzles were hit or miss, the enchanting soundtrack was always spot on. After you complete a chapter, you get to play with the jigsaw puzzle pieces you collected along the way, filling in the picture of Tiny Planet itself. These moments are so soothing that I found myself moving each piece into its slot slower and slower, not wanting it to end. Some might see this as a rather boring task in a game, but the soundtrack and visuals work in unison here to really create something atmospherically pleasing. Plus, the picture in the puzzle moves–kind of like photos in the Harry Potter universe–which helps keep you immersed in completing it.

I thought The Tiny Bang Story was going to be something else, a more narrative-driven adventure game. What it ultimately is isn’t bad; in fact, I had a pretty good time in its kooky and unexplainable world, especially playing around with those jigsaw puzzle pieces at the close of every chapter, but I think this means I need to whet my point-and-click adventuring appetite and finally get around to Beneath a Steel Sky or To the Moon. Or just be content that I recently played Botanicula and it was everything I wanted it to be.

Jazzpunk reminds you to never overclock your underwear

Over the weekend, after discovering I don’t have any tape in the house and thus can’t begin wrapping Christmas gifts, I played through Jazzpunk by Necrophone Games and published by Adult Swim Games. It only took about two hours, but it was two hours that flew by way too fast, that had me smiling and chuckling to myself every few steps. It’s been on my list to play this year for some time now and I snagged a copy from Humble Indie Bundle 13, but with “game of the year” discussions popping up soon everywhere I wanted to experience it for myself unspoiled. Really glad I did.

Jazzpunk is a comedic adventure videogame that really makes me want to rewatch Airplane! or Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. The plot is centered around a top-secret espionage agency, which, for some reason, is operating out of an abandoned, Japanese subway station in the late 1950s. You control Polyblank, a spy-for-hire, as well as a silent protagonist. The game is made up of several missions given to Polyblank by the head of the organization, and you start each initially straightforward quest by ingesting a dose of prescription medicine; interpret that as you want. Anyways, while the mission might read “infiltrate a Soviet consulate,” things quickly become bizarre and nonsensical, and that’s where Jazzpunk shines, both at its strangeness and the speed it dishes out jokes.

The main focus is on exploration and comedy over solving puzzles or combat. While each mission has a single central objective, Polyblank is free to explore the zone’s world at his own pace, and I did this for each level, saving the main path for last. As you explore, you’ll come across a number of interactive NPCs, some lined with a single gag or even a separate side quest, like degaussing three pigeons for a pie, just like how meemaw used to do it. I won’t spoil every minigame you can find, but let’s just say that the Frogger clone is the most tame of the bunch. That said, if you see a wedding cake at the Kai Tak Resort, I urge you to examine it.

Control-wise, Jazzpunk is pretty simplistic. I plugged in an Xbox 360 controller to play, and you can walk around with the analog stick, jump, and examine highlighted objects/people. Your inventory never gets too big–I think it had three or four items in it at most–and you can cycle through each item as you stroll. The game is equally as simplistic in its visuals, but I really dug the cartoony, thick outlines. There are moments where real meets digital, and those are fun, but a platforming section towards the end was a strain on the eyes due to an overload of white, white, white. Many have compared the graphic style to Thirty Flights of Loving, but I’ve not played that one yet. Oh, and though I’d never drop my Showcard Gothic font here at Grinding Down, the font used in the game is fantastic, whatever it is.

I don’t know what the name Jazzpunk means, but I do know it’s a ton of fun to play and experience firsthand. Guess it gives off the vibe of 1980s cyberpunk or bombastic spying in the vein of Roger Moore. I’m so glad I got around to it this year, as it is definitely making my top five games list, and I have a few more Achievements to pop so I’ll drop back into it sooner than later, to do things like jump into a pool incorrectly and help someone with a saliva problem. Yup. That’s what I need to do.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is concerned with the fate of the world, not text size

Like many, the millisecond I saw that one of Amazon’s major Cyber Monday bargains was for $15.00 off the very still new Dragon Age: Inquisition, I dropped whatever I was holding/doing and purchased a copy…for the PlayStation 3. It arrived a few days later and sat on my kitchen table, waiting patiently for me to finish up some artwork projects, as well as Suikoden II. Here’s a quick life lesson for y’all that I’ve learned over my thirty-one years of doing this grind called living: don’t start one massive RPG before completing another.

Anyways, over the weekend, I put about an hour and a half into Dragon Age: Inquisition, and all I got to show for it is this t-shirt that says “Leave the Hinterlands” in big, bold, bloody lettering. Nah, that’s not true. What I actually got is a female dwarven warrior named Girgna, who likes to charge right into the thick of things and even taunt enemies as she swings a sword into their necks. This style of fighting is very much the opposite of my usual path, but my friend Tom is also playing the game, walking the good, wholesome path of a nice wizard lady named Dandelion, and I wanted us to have different experiences to talk about.

Dragon Age: Inquisition evidently picks up immediately the events of Dragon Age II, where mages and Templars are finally at ends with each other. However, there are talks of a peace treaty in the works, but those deals and promises are interrupted by a magical explosion, leaving a single survivor. Yup, that’s you, the one with the green-colored hand. Some believe you caused this explosion, while others think you’re a blessing from the prophet Andraste. Either way, demons are now emerging from the rift in the sky, and you are the only one who can do anything about it. Get ready to age a dragon or something.

So far, I’m finding my return to Ferelden…a bit underwhelming. Granted, I’ve not touched the series seriously since Dragon Age: Origins, deciding after trying the demo and listening to the Internet that Dragon Age II was not for me. Now, I really really liked Dragon Age: Origins; it had characters and scope and deeply integrated lore and tough, but rewarding combat. It also had some problems, such as tiny text, glitched Achievements because I know I killed at least 500 darkspawn (though not 1,000), clunky inventory menus, and that whole side quest surrounding the Fade. Still, the good outweighed the bad, and that banter while wandering around towns or the forest really gave me the warmest of warm feelings.

However, in just an hour and a half with Dragon Age: Inquisition, I’m experiencing a ton of issues. The graphics on the PlayStation 3 version are sub-par; I mean, it looks like the first game, which came out four years ago, and I know we can have nicer visuals at this point thanks to Grand Theft Auto V and even Destiny. Many textures are garbled and flat or late to load in when a cutscene starts. Again, graphics are certainly not everything to me, but working graphics is a whole different issue. Audio sync is also off, and there was one moment where characters left the scene, but the camera remained fixed on the forest for a few extra seconds, while nothing happened. And this all brings me to the thorniest of roadblocks: the tiny text. I cannot sit on the couch and read most of the text, which is, y’know, frustrating for a roleplaying game where you make important decisions. I cannot read weapon descriptions or newly added lore blurbs. I cannot see the numbers for my character’s experience bar. Sounds like it doesn’t matter if you have an SD or HD television either, and I’m not the only one upset about this.

I’ll hold out hope (but not much) for a future patch to increase the font size. Until then, I’m relying on other elements to tell me what’s going on. When you examine an item, you’ll see some bars below your character go up in green or down in red, thus telling you if it is helpful or not. That said, I don’t know exactly what each bar is measuring. Some dialogue choices are accompanied by a small graphic, indicating what kind of response you are about to give, even if you can’t read it. Girgna has now finished the prologue section and been told about the Hinterlands, but I’m still hanging around the opening area, trying to find some crafting items to make weapons and armor before I move ahead to the zone everyone says to not linger in. Plus, there’s plenty of hairless nugs running around, begging to be target practice.

Not the best start for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Call me crazy, but I like reading the text in my videogames, even if it is badly translated.