A missed opportunity known as Greenhill’s New Leaf Academy

Between playing some more Assassin’s Creed II this weekend and something else I’m not yet ready to reveal, I put a couple more hours into Suikoden II. When last I wrote about Hodor and his friends, they had just gained control of Dah Castle, with plans to fill it with friendly, like-minded people to assist them in taking Luca Blight deep down to the underground. Alas, not much of that actually happened, as the towns I revisited were short of recruitable Stars of Destiny, and so I got back on the main story path, settling a dispute between humans, kobolds, and winged demons, before eventually making my way to Greenhill, the newest of the five city-states and a strong believer in higher education.

Why is our colorful gang of warriors and wizards going to a college town, you ask? Well, army strategist Shu has informed us that the Highland army has taken Greenhill. Unfortunately, the Dornish army is in no shape to re-take Greenhill, but Shu wants us to rescue Teresa Wisemail, the town’s mayor, as we could greatly use her on our side. Our best bet for sneaking in is to use a party of college-age Stars of Destiny, with Flik as a bodyguard. I went with Hodor, Nanami, Gengen, Millie, Chaco, and someone else that I’m blanking on now. Um, dang. No, no–wait. Flik was an actual party member too, with Pilika in the convoy to boot. Right. Okay, it’s off to Greenhill, to learn!

Now, I’ve never played Persona 4, but I did watch the entire Endurance Run over at Giant Bomb, and my favorite parts generally involved Charlie going to school and actually participating in classes, quizzes, and socializing. There was also a good chunk of my life devoted to daily wizard lessons in Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times. I don’t know. Maybe I just miss being in school, having that structure and chance to prove yourself, but I was hoping for a similar experience here in Suikoden II. Instead, it’s all fade-to-black summaries and talk of delicious cafeteria food instead of actually experiencing it. Let me explain.

Before you even truly enter Greenhill, Fitcher, who went ahead to scout the situation, recommends everyone come up with fake names to use while playing phony high school graduates. For Hodor, I went with Bubba. Nanami liked the name Beth, and Flik got Blue Thunder. No one else in the party was special enough to warrant a name change. Naturally, this is a callback to Suikoden when everyone picked new names while escaping Gregminster and crossing a guarded border, but a part of me actually hoped I would get to roleplay Bubba while I roleplayed Hodor in this Japanese roleplaying game. Considering that only a single scene later Nanami drops Flik’s real name out in the open for all to hear and the other fake names aren’t even brought up…well, no. It was just window dressing.

Once you’re inside New Leaf Academy, you’ll meet Emilia, who will review your group’s paperwork and show you around some of the classrooms. This equates to quickly walking around the school area and some light talk before a man named Shin interrupts everything. You are then free to explore on your own before returning to the dorms for the evening. There are a few items to find, namely Old Book Vol. 5 and Recipe #20, but little interaction. In fact, most of the classrooms are empty of professors, with kids simply sitting listlessly at desks. It’s easy to imagine them brimming with activity. It’s so easy.

Much to my dismay, you never actually attend a class or do anything school-like while you are pretending to be college freshmen and learning about what ultimately happened to Teresa and the townsfolk. Instead, you’ll do some investigation stuff while Flik is avoiding a young girl’s smooches and then retire to the dorms for the evening so that you can kickstart another day of plot-vital happenings. There’s even a warning about misbehaving and getting expelled, but there is nothing you can do to affect any kind of system. You can’t even behave. All I was hoping for was maybe an interactive class or two, a chance to earn a special item or learn a new recipe by listening to what the teacher said and selecting an appropriate response.

In summary, I think the idea of pretending to be students at New Leaf Academy is a missed opportunity for Suikoden II, one that can’t be undone as I’ve now left the school behind, eager to get back to Dah Castle and see what story beat is next. At least I know there’s still cooking competitions to look forward to.

Murder is an endless loop of murder

Keeping with the theme of stabbing dudes in the back thanks to me finally getting around to playing Assassin’s Creed II, I figured a free little Flash game about stabbing a king in the back–and then foiling all future attempts–was rather apropos. I don’t know. I had some time to kill on my lunch-break (pun intended), and this took up a few minutes, made me smile, and gave me something to write about here on Grinding Down; I say that like I don’t have ten-plus drafts of other posts already in the works, but whatever. You can’t stifle inspiration.

Exot Working’s Murder only uses the spacebar key, but puts it work. The deadly stroll opens with you, a dastardly looking prince all in purple, carrying a dagger and tiptoeing behind the king. You hold down the spacebar key to charge up your dagger strike, but must left go if the king turns around before you are ready to strike; if you don’t, you’re caught by guards and tossed in a cell to rot to your bones. Once you kill the king, it becomes your turn to be paranoid, now donning his clothes and using the spacebar key to catch potential murderers in their tracks. You’ll do this enough to eventually fill up your prison with skeletons, but time is passing all the while, and you’ll ultimately succumb to nature’s cruel call. Then the loop begins anew.

That’s it. One button, one goal. On my first run, I got to be king once, but got stabbed in the back by some javelin-wielding jester before old age could claim me. The second run saw me live out the entire lives of two kings, though it ended after that. I wonder if that’s as far as you can go. Alas, not much changes the further you progress, and I’d have liked to see an aging king’s reflexes factor into pressing the spacebar key. Obviously, he should not be as swift as his younger self. Also, though I never saw if they do murder you or not, I feel bad about tossing all those wrinkly butlers into prison; I have to assume it was poison in their bottles, but it also totally could’ve been a vintage Shiraz, my favorite.

Murder is darkly humorous, but Saturday morning cartoon fun. Er, wait. Maybe not Saturday morning exactly, but of the Ren & Stimpy time slot. Entertaining, but with a seedier slant. I found the artwork to be cute, the animation to be better–especially when the guards come to haul you away and kick you into a skeleton-infested dungeon cell–and the looping drumbeat to be in line with a good march down a royal hallway. This will not blow you away or even take up more than ten minutes of your existence, but it’ll at least give you some training in not getting stabbed in the back by those closest to you.

Doing the assassin thing during the Italian Renaissance

Yesterday, everyone was all atwitter over Assassin’s Creed: Unity–though not really over Assassin’s Creed: Rogue–mostly due to Ubisoft’s strange limitations on its review embargoes, as well as the resounding conclusion that the newest stabby-stab title for new consoles in the age-ol’ franchise from a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs is nothing more than mediocre. Naturally, I got the itch to run around rooftops and pierce jerks with hidden blades, so I finally loaded up Assassin’s Creed II for the first time, which Xbox gave out for free many moons ago. Please remember that I played the original Assassin’s Creed and then followed it up with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, so I’m jumping to the middle chapter mega-late, but that’s all right.

What is Assassin’s Creed II all about? Well, the outside-the-Animus narrative is set in the 21st century and follows Desmond Miles after he escapes Abstergo Industries and relives the genetic memories of his ancestor Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The main narrative takes place at the height of the Italian Renaissance during the 15th and early 16th century. Ezio, a young, charming fellow very much in love with the ladies, is on a vengeance quest against those responsible for betraying his family. That’s all I know so far, having completed everything in sequence 1 and now just running around the map in search of treasure boxes and feathers (when I hear them twinkling).

The game came out in 2009, and it still looks really good, just not in cutscenes. Moving around the world still feels mightily impressive, with a good number of people roaming the streets below, though it is more fun to leap around on the rooftops. However, cutscenes show a lot of dead-eye stares and flat expressions, but it’s not a deal-breaker. I remember Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood fixing a lot of gameplay problems I had with the original title, and I suspect those changes actually started here. Looks like the side missions mostly consist of beating up faithless husbands/boyfriends, racing thieves across rooftops, and killing targets for money, and then there’s the collectibles: hundreds of treasure chests, eagle feathers, semi-mystical glyphs, and statuettes hidden throughout the world. The fact that some of these collectibles appear on the mini-map (after you buy a treasure map) is truly all I needed.

There’s still some open-world jank and lousy platforming to wrangle with, but that’s kind of the same ol’ baggage every Assassin’s Creed carries with it, and the good generally outweighs the bad. However, I do not like trying to climb a building only to accidentally cause Ezio to leap from a window off to the street below and his synchronization death. It’s happened a few times. The combat is not as refined or fluid as Brotherhood‘s was, but still enjoyable to counter a soldier’s sword swipe and knee them in the gut. I’m still early into the adventure, so I don’t have any other fun combat tools at my disposal, but hopefully Leonardo da Vinci can help freshen up the fights.

People are all up in arms over Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s “Press X to pay respects” prompt, but maybe many have forgotten how, early on here, you press buttons to make baby Ezio move his limbs. I’ve also run into a few strange QTE-like moments in Assassin’s Creed II that leave me feeling very uninspired. Every now and then, during a cutscene, there’s a button prompt to do something, like show off your newly acquired hidden blade, but these button prompts are on the screen for less than a second. Generally, I put the controller down during a cutscene, not expecting to be asked to remain involved, and so I’ve missed every single one of these moments. Even when I suspected one might be incoming, I still missed it, being too slow and distracted by my kitty cat. I don’t know, they are strange additions.

I wonder if Assassin’s Creed II will sustain my open-world, rooftop-running itch for a while or if I’ll need to acquire another title down the line. If so, I think everyone likes Black Flag the most currently. Until then, may no one see you stab someone in the neck.

One Fantasy Life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it

I never thought this day would arrive, but, yeah, I’m totally playing Fantasy Life. It’s not some fever dream; I’m actually running around Castele, raising skills, unlocking Bliss, gaining Dosh, earning XP, doing quests, and having a really grand, relaxing time. As of this writing, I’ve logged just about 12 hours in the game, which is akin to maybe gaining your first dragon shout in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I’m not exaggerating.

If you are wondering why I would open on such disbelief and/or are new to Grinding Down…well, Fantasy Life is a game I’ve been pining after and trumpeting for a good long while now. Let’s see, let’s see–boy, am I thankful for the “search” function on this ol’ blog of mine. I first wrote about it in August 2009, back when it was originally geared for the Nintendo DS and was all about them sprites. After that, not much word surfaced until July 2012, when the game took a big visual shift to be more accessible for the Nintendo 3DS. And then time marched on some more, though gamers in Japan got to see it released while everyone else waited with collectively held breaths. With zero to even zero-er fanfare, a North American release was announced during this year’s E3 after Nintendo finished announcing all the things they felt were cooler and more worthy of air time than a multi-job cartoony life sim. Well, let’s put all that behind us, because the game is out, the game is mine, and the game is good.

For those that really ate up Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, you’ll immediately notice a lot in common here. Let’s first touch upon the story, or rather the overarching story. See, each Life has its own set of main characters, problems, and resolutions, but the main path is different. One day, the ever-peaceful Reveria is shaken when a meteorite falls into your character’s house, setting off a chain of events foretold in an ancient prophecy involving the land’s goddess and the moon Lunares. Castele’s King Erik asks the main player to investigate these strange occurrences, and he or she is joined in this quest by Flutter, a strange glowing butterfly that has the ability to speak. Later on, you learn that the butterfly is really the daughter of Celestia, the goddess of Reveria, and she fell from heaven to help people. Not exactly Stella–but it does sound a little familiar, yes?

At the beginning of Fantasy Life, you get to customize your character a bit and then must select what Life you’d like to start on. I picked Alchemist as I’ve always been a big fan of alchemy pots in previous Level-5 games, and I wanted to see how addicting it would be here. There are twelve Life types in total. The Alchemist is a mix of gathering items and some light combat out in the field, though I actually can’t remember many story details from the early Alchemist-only quests. After eleven hours of this, I finally decided to switch over to a new Life–you can freely switch between Lives when not on a main path mission and learn universal skills–but I made the mistake of picking Cook, a Life that is perhaps too similar to Alchemist to feel different. I mean, they both use the very same mini-game for creating items. I suspect I’ll try for a Woodsman or Paladin next to get out into the wild more.

So far, at least for Alchemists, combat is real simple. You have a three-hit combo by mashing the attack button, but no dodge or twirl away from danger like in Disney Magical Castle‘s dungeons, which often leads to getting stuck in the combo animation and taking a few hits from enemies. I found it works well enough to hit twice, back off, and repeat, though it doesn’t make for exciting combat. However, many quests are of the MMORPG ilk, meaning kill X wolves or X bandit leaders, and your list will eventually fill fast just like that miscellaneous quests tab in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that you have to get out there and kick some monster butt. In addition to these side quests, you also have Life challenges to complete and Bliss objectives to move the story forward. There is always something to do or work towards in Fantasy Life.

Great news–the writing is funny. Very amusing, but then again, just about everyone in the game is speaking my language. Even when it isn’t diving into puns like a fiend, it handles everything else lightly, but still in an entertaining fashion. Even the quiet moments that Flutter has to herself are soft and poignant, with a pinch of fun. I’m not deeply invested in the world or its characters yet, but just about everything they say is interesting. Oh, and animals talk and say the silliest of things, so make sure you speak to each and every cow, chicken, and cat you come across.

I don’t doubt I’ll be back to write more about Fantasy Life, but probably not until I’ve tried out a few more Lives and figured out which is my true calling. Alchemy is good fun, but I need a little more adventuring under my belt.

Dragon Crystal is floor after floor of mazes and monsters

If Dragon Crystal teaches me one thing, and one thing only, it is this: don’t touch mysteriously glowing crystals inside equally mysterious antique shops. If you do, you just might end up getting teleported elsewhere like the nameless hero of this Game Gear title, forced to drag a large egg behind him and fight his way through mazes of monsters in hope of getting back home…to his bicycle. Yeah, it came out in the early 1990s; how’d you guess?

Well, that’s literally all the plot you get (and need), so here’s how Dragon Crystal actually plays. It’s a roguelike, with Bicycle Hero-Man beginning in the middle of a maze level covered mostly by fog. The first few levels are a mix of trees, cacti, sunflowers, and Easter Island style statues, though I couldn’t tell you what shows up later in the game. Maybe dragons, maybe crystals. You progress by finding a warp tile somewhere in the maze, stepping on it to advance to the next floor. While you search for this warp tile, you’ll come across a number of items to add to your inventory, as well as enemies to battle.

Battles are turn-based and remind me very much of Hack, Slash, Loot, given how many times Bicycle Hero-Man missed with the swing of his dagger. Anyways, you face the target monster and press in its direction to attack. Sometimes you’ll do damage, sometimes you’ll miss, and the same goes for the monsters fighting you. Text at the bottom of the screen fills in the details. But nothing happens until you hit a button, so you can stand completely still and really think about your next move or dump into your inventory and see what potions you can use. It’s not very deep combat, but it works well enough, and several enemies can cause status effects, such as poison or dizziness. You don’t gain experience points in the traditional sense, but your HP increases with each new floor you find, and equipping new gear raises your power and defense stats.

Dragon Crystal is all about the bass items. Just like how Bicycle Hero-Man had to touch the mysterious crystal in the antique shop, you too will have to use most items to learn what they can do. This is my least favorite part of roguelikes, something that always made my heart skip a beat when using unknown pills in The Binding of Isaac. However, once you use an item and know what it is and can do, all future instances of that item will be acquired with everything spelled out. Thank goodness for that. Each item is color-coded, though the color doesn’t necessarily correlate to the effect, so be prepared to toss green books, purple rods, yellow pots, and cyan rings at enemies to see what the 401 is. Careful though as I discovered a cursed ring through this process and was unable to remove it once I put it on. Oh, and certain pieces of armor will affect how your character looks, so this immediately gets two thumbs up from me. All that said, I’m still not sure what money is good for given that I haven’t found a shop or merchant out in the wild.

So, that egg that is just immediately trailing behind you at the start of the game…well, by the time I had died, it had hatched into a small, tiny dragon. I’d like to imagine that it grows even larger over time and eventually helps you fight other monsters. That’s the dream, really. I read that there about 30 floors in total to get through.

Well, here’s as far as Bicycle Hero-Man got on my first run:

Dragon Crystal‘s a fun little maze-crawler, with good replayability to it. I expect to return to the color-coded items and foggy forest trees real soon. You hear that, Siro Me? I’M COMING FOR YOU.

LUFTRAUSERS gives you the power to set the skies aflame

Some of my favorite Peanuts strips revolve around Snoopy’s alter ego of a World War I flying ace battling the likes of the Red Baron or the Austro-Hungarian Empire high up in the sky, his doghouse an adequate stand-in for a time-appropriate biplane capable of intense dogfighting. I even found the Xbox Live arcade title Snoopy Flying Ace to be decent fun. Anyways, I’ve always been a big fan of when comic strips get imaginative, which is why it won’t surprise you to learn I eat up other strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Rose is Rose, and Big Nate. In many ways, Vlambeer’s LUFTRAUSERS feels a lot like these comic strips, where the real and unreal mix in a manner that can only result in bold, sparkling joy.

The premise to LUFTRAUSERS is simple: select a combination of parts to complete your Rauser plane, take off into the sky, and shoot everything that shoots at you. Don’t worry, it’s not confusing–everything shoots at you. Depending on your plane’s build, you’ll have different amounts of HP, but you can recover damage by not shooting anything for a bit. Each part–gun, body, engine–has its own set of missions to complete, such as blowing up submarines or destroying ten enemies while boosting, and you can mix and match your build to create the perfect plane for completing each task. I personally found the Nuke body to be perfect for taking down those nasty submarines post-death. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to get the blimp to spawn, as many missions are locked until I can take one of those bloated airbags down.

Visually, LUFTRAUSERS has a minimalistic look, but it works extremely well, because once you are up and about flying around like a madman, doing loops over dozens of on-screen enemies, the flat, muted graphics help make each enemy and bullet pop whereas something more detailed might cause these elements to become lost in the action. The sprites get more detailed in the menu options, such as in the bunker or statistics, where an actual member of your team is standing there, watching your every move. There’s also tiny cutscenes as well, which will make you fondly think of your childhood SNES adventures. From the sounds of it, you can collect other color variations for the game, too, so if sepia isn’t your thing, something else might sink your battleship.

The experience of zooming up into the sky, dropping down into the water, and blasting everything in sight would be less of a thrill if the soundtrack wasn’t as killer as it is. For one thing, the soundtrack morphs based on how you construct your plane, so there’s both plenty to hear, plenty to see, but regardless of that, every song exists to pump you up about getting into some intense aerial combat–and it works. I can’t tell you the number of times I caught myself unconsciously bobbing my head as I played, only to realize how into the tunes I was after my plane blew up.

I originally played LUFTRAUSERS on Steam, even streamed it a bit as I figured out my setup for Extra Life, though that video is now gone from my archives, but the game is now a November freebie for PlayStation Plus subscribers on PlayStation 3. No surprise, but it plays the same on both systems, but this arcade-inspired “one more run” style of game is more enjoyable on the couch, so that’s where I’ll continue on with my dogfighting plans. Watch out, blimps–I’m gunning for you!

The real Diablo III adventuring begins after defeating Malthael

There were a few hours during my Extra Life live-stream that I didn’t actually stream anything live, and that was around 3 AM to 5 AM. I moved over to my couch to play some Xbox 360, most notably more Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. I’d been picking away at it for a good while now, inching closer to the conclusion of Act V, which was never part of the original Diablo III campaign. For this act, you are chasing after Malthael, a former member and leader of the Angiris Council. He has claimed the Soulstone for himself and plans to eradicate humanity. Short story even shorter: I couldn’t keep my eyes open and ended up putting it aside for a quick cat nap instead.

Zoom forward a week, and I finished up the remainder of the campaign for Diablo III: ROS while my father visited and took a quick nap himself after we hiked a bit over at Bushkill Falls. Taking Malthael down was not very tough, but then again, no fight in the game really was considering I was rocking the lowest difficulty setting possible from the very beginning. I don’t know, I liked the casual nature of beating up swarms of dudes and getting gear without constantly using a health potion every few seconds. Regardless, everything ended in a whimper and fountain of mediocre loot, with a menu prompt pop-up saying that the story was over, but Adventure mode had now been unlocked. Strangely jarring, this lead to credits–my father couldn’t believe how many people worked on a videogame–and then back to the main menu.

With Act 5’s six hours or so of story content done, I had the choice to either start Diablo III: ROS all over with a new character/class or continue on with my demon hunter Whisper in Adventure mode. Given that she hasn’t even hit level 50 yet and the cap is 70, I wanted to see her grow some more. The newfangled Adventure mode removes nearly every single story aspect–so long lengthy dialogue chats that I only listened to in order to check off a challenge–and instead simply assigns you with specific quests (called bounties) across each act’s map, giving the player the freedom to do as they please. There’s even a new currency to acquire, which you can use to purchase mystery items; I bought one, found it to be complete garbage, and most likely will never take the chance again, but hey, options are options. At this point, I’ve knocked off five bounties, though there is an Achievement for clearing 500 of them. Eep.

In addition to bounties in Adventure mode, there are also Nephalem Rifts, which are randomized gauntlets that ramp the chaos meter all the way up. You can only open a rift after collecting five key shards, which you seem to get with each bounty you complete, so the two are interconnected deeply. Basically, you run around these dungeons killing X amount of enemies until a super difficult elite boss shows up. Shortly before doing my first rift, I switched the difficulty setting from normal to whatever the next one was…maybe hardcore. That said, Whisper the demon hunter died for the very first time so far in one of these rifts. They mean big business, but they also provide unpredictable fun and empowerment unlike anything seen in the main campaign. For example, I came across a new Pylon shrine that filled my character with lightening bolts that struck out at anything within a few feet. It’s really cool. Looked like after you beat the Nephalem Rift boss, you can continue exploring the dungeon, but I popped back to town to sell some mediocre gear; as I did, the rift’s portal closed after thirty seconds, so you have to choose wisely what you want to do.

Like I said earlier, I want to see Whisper hit the level cap and check out some of the high-end gear, but I will probably now only play this in sporadic bursts. Like while waiting for the laundry to finish or kettle water to whistle, which is just enough time to do a bounty or two. I really don’t know how interested I am in playing through the campaign ever again, even with a completely different class, which is a shame because it means I’m missing out on experiencing like five-sixths of Diablo III: ROS in terms of abilities, dialogue, and specified loot. Granted, I really ate up the one-sixth I got, and you can’t shake your head at things that made you happy, even if only for a sliver of time.

Mining my experiences as a cowboy steambot in SteamWorld Dig

I’ve never gone very far underground in my thirty-one insipid years on this planet we share, and that’s fine. A few family vacation one-offs where we’d explore a cave with a tour group or something like that, but never any personal expeditions. Much like the ocean, the underground is terrifyingly expansive and filled with too much unknown. Also–very dark. There’s a 2006 horror movie called The Descent that seems like the most scariest thing possible, as it follows a group of British spelunkers down into the deep dank depths of some labyrinthine caves in North Carolina; on top of that alone, they get pursued by flesh-eating monsters. No thanks.

If I was to go underground, I’d hope it would look more like SteamWorld Dig, all colorful and bouncy and peppered with kooky characters like Lola, who runs the bar in Tumbleton and acts as a respawn point, and Hank “Cranky” McCrank, a repairbot who helps you upgrade your digging tools. I mean, just look at the game’s hero Rusty; with his cowboy hat and big, green metal hands, he appears more than confident to handle whatever is lurking deep beneath the town, and so I’d go with him, though still not too far down.

The story here is slight, but solid enough to give Rusty a reason to dig deeper into the mineral-infested ground. Rusty the steambot wannabe-cowboy has inherited his uncle Joe’s mine after Joe apparently lost his life plunging into its depths for secrets. Naturally, curiosity screams, and Rusty takes up the call (and pickaxe) to continue his uncle’s journey. That’s it for now, and the characters aboveground in Tumbleton are essentially menu options and quest-givers at this point, but that could all potentially change down the line.

There’s a cycle to Rusty’s cavernous adventuring, and it is thus: dig down into the mine, gather as many minerals as you can hold, return to town, sell your stash, purchase upgrades to help you dig deeper, gather more resources, and survive longer. Much like Rogue Legacy and Spelunky, it has that “one more run” vibe to it, because even if you don’t get far or gather too much, every piece of trashium or copper sold is all feeding back into making Rusty better, stronger, more awesome, which promotes sojourning a wee further. You can really only go so far as your tools allow, and eventually you’ll run out of lantern light or hit dirt you can’t dig through yet. Or maybe even some tough critter-crawly enemies. Either way, you have to hightail back to sunlight, and you can either climb back up the hole you dug or find a fast travel point along the way.

On your way down below, you’ll also come across special cavern entrances that basically lead to a platforming section or ability-testing area. You can find some good valuables in these spots, as well as new abilities, like special drill arms, wall-jumping, or boosting upwards from a stationary position, which uses steam, a finite resource to also keep an eye on. These aren’t very tricky so far, and often give you a reason to travel up, left, or right rather than simply down all the time.

Right. I’m one of those crackpots that thinks Super Mario Bros 2 is a more enjoyable time than Super Mario Bros 3, and a favorite section of mine is when you have to travel downwards through layers and layers of sand. You do this by digging, by hitting the “pick up object” button, and the Princess–who else would you even bother playing as, honestly–will lift the sand beneath her feet away, causing her to fall into the next line. Keep doing this, and eventually you’ll get through it. You make your own path, and the enemies will even follow along it just like you. That same idea applies to SteamWorld Dig; how you dig down to the caves or map indicator is customizable, but you also have to be thinking about reverse directions too, about what would make it easier for Rusty with no light to find his way to Tumbleton. Unfortunately, returning to the surface, especially once you really get deep down, is where things become less fun and more of a slog. I thought I read that the underground is randomly generated, so if that’s true, the replayability is at least very strong with this one.

For those with a PlayStation 4 and subscription to PlayStation Plus, SteamWorld Dig is a freebie for the month of November. Even if it wasn’t free, I’d heartily suggest checking it out. So long as you don’t mind a whole lot of digging.

Regrettably, I lost the game in You Have to Win the Game

A few days before my Extra Life stream was to start, I scanned through the “free-to-play” tag on Steam to see if there was anything worth downloading and trying live on the day of the event. Turns out, no…not much. A bunch of off-putting MMORPGs, a couple of MOBAs, and some frightening swamp monster called Fistful of Frags, but there was one title that certainly stood out from the pack, both on its name and looks.

Enter You Have to Win the Game, a deceptively tough platformer with a retro 1980s PC aesthetic from J. Kyle Pittman, who I believe either works or worked at Gearbox Studios. Can’t quite confirm that at the moment. It now seems like he and his brother founded Minor Key Games last year to create its sequel Super Win the Game, so kudos to them. I will definitely be checking that out once I go back through YHTWTG one more time.

There’s no solid story here, but that’s fine–think back to the good ol’ days of when action platformers needed no story. I mean, yeah…maybe there was one in DuckTales or Mystery Quest, but I can’t recall a single detail; all I know is there was jumping and exploring and jump-exploring to do. Granted, those games had enemies to deal with and ways to dish out damage, but YHTWTG is much more isolated, with you controlling a little sprite person as you explore a map and gain abilities, such as wall climbing and double jumping, that will eventually help you explore even more. Actually, wait. There are enemies, but your only course of action is to avoid them, not get in their face(s). There’s a continuing thread throughout the game’s progression about learning a magic word, but more on that in a moment.

Just like in VVVVVV, each screen feels like its own contained space, especially given that each screen gets its own quirky name at the bottom, like KISS Principle or Hardcore Prawn. This helps drive the desire to see what is up next. Some of these screens are simply there for you to walk through, some contain a save checkpoint or bag of money (which you collect to raise your 100% completion percentage), but many of them center around a deadly pitfall or crazy set of jumps or orb-tossing untouchable boss encounter. This is where this cutesy, retro platformer becomes something else–a challenge. But very rewarding, especially when it comes to rooms requiring precision-based timing to make it through in one piece.

Visually, the game is what you see above, using four-color CGA graphics and a lot of black space, but curved around a fake monitor screen, with monotonic PC speaker sounds to boot. That faux screen curve is a really cool effect that, after a minute or two of playing, you don’t even realize is there. At least I didn’t. Not much changes in terms of graphics overall as you progress, but it is fun entering a new area and seeing the layout change or where new traps are added or spotting a new way to go. The orb-tossing boss enemies–there are a few in total–are much larger sprites, detailed just enough to be threatening. If you can, search for the secret cat room.

At the end of YHTVTG, you are given the chance to enter in a password, which is whatever the magic word ultimately is. Unfortunately, I had only loosely paid attention to the scribbling on the walls, so I was unable to make a good guess and thus “lost” the game. I plan to go back and try again, as well as get the rest of those money bags, though there are a few sections I’m not looking forward to repeating, like that one where you have to jump down to a portal, cling to a wall, and then double-jump over a line of spikes. Yeah, I spent a good while on that part during Extra Life. Granted, I should be able to speedrun the first few parts now that I’m on the up-and-up, and I think there’s even an Achievement for completing the game (any %) in under ten minutes. Good luck there.

And good luck to anyone inspired by this post to win the game. I mean, you have to. You Have to Win the Game.

A summary of my Extra Life 2014 stream

Well…my first Extra Life came to a close yesterday at 9:00 AM, after nearly 24 hours of playing videogames nonstop. By “nearly” I mean that I ended up taking a half-hour power cat nap around 4:30 AM because I simply couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough, not even to attack monster after monster after monster in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. Moving over to the couch for a bit might have been a grave mistake because–and I don’t know if you know this or not–couches are way more comfy than kitchen table chairs. That said, I did it, and I’m glad I did it, though I certainly learned some things through the process which I hope to put to use for next year’s go at the charity thang.

A couple of quick thoughts then.

First, promotion is hard, and promoting yourself solo is even harder, especially when you have to also play the role of driver/entertainer. I tried Tweeting/Facebooking every couple of hours during my stream in hopes of increasing viewers and leading to more donations, but I did not earn a single new donation during my entire 24 hours of streaming. I love that I got so much early support before the action went down ($280 for my little goal of $100!), but I was also hoping to see some support come in as everything pushed forward. I can’t downplay what I already earned because money for children’s hospitals is money for children’s hospitals, but I can’t also can’t deny that I had higher hopes to climb over $300.

Second, I need either a better plan of action or have to check first that my plan of action can work as, well…work as planned. By that I mean I had originally thought I’d play a game an hour for 24 hours, but that scheme quickly unfolded after I discovered that some games were crashing when I tried to stream them and others just wouldn’t even capture in OBS. Heck, I wanted to open with Aquaria, but had to instantly switch over to Hack, Slash, Loot when it kept crashing on me, which was a frustrating start to things. I should’ve checked to make sure each game would work properly before putting together my list; that, or come up with some kind of theme, like playing a bunch of platformers for a bit, then some puzzle games, then horror titles, etc. Either way, this all boils down to one element–better preparation.

Third, streaming from my laptop does not make for a quality stream. The recorded videos are fine and I might upload them to YouTube one day, but reviewing the Twitch archives show that the videos stutter every few seconds. Sorry if that made it not great to watch; I’ll hopefully have some better equipment for next time around, which could potentially mean even larger games played.

With that, let me remind y’all that there is still plenty of time to donate, and you can do so by hitting up the following link: http://www.extra-life.org/participant/pabba

And now, some light blurbage of the many games I touched, in the order that I touched them. Don’t report me for that. I can guarantee a few of these will get larger blog posts here on Grinding Down down the line.

Hack, Slash, Loot – For a game that I get nowhere in, I still keep coming back to this one. I don’t know. I like its laidback feel and look, though I did get pretty far with an archer on one of the runs I did.

The Legend of Grimrock – A first-person dungeon-crawling adventure with an old school vibe. It took some time for me to learn how to actually attack monsters, but I really dig the look and feel of the game. Plan to go back to it at some point, though my current party is not long for the underworld.

You Have to Win the Game – I didn’t realize this until after the fact, but this little free-to-play throwback platformer was actually made by a Gearbox employee, which makes me adore it even more. It’s the first game on the stream that I beat entirely even if I got the “bad” ending. I plan to write more on this soon.

The Tiny Bang Story – Meh. I had really high hopes for this, but I couldn’t even get past the first two screens. Not sure where the last ladder rung was hidden, and I grew tired rapidly of clicking bugs to fill up a hint meter, which didn’t even help me too much in the end. A shame.

SteamWorld Dig – A neat game about digging down deep into the earth and taking resources back to the surface. Plus, it stars a robotic cowboy! You really can’t knock that. Though I do worry about how much fun it’ll be having to climb back up once you’re really deep underground.

Proteus – Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I had no idea what this game was all about other than exploring an island, so discovering the little music cues and bouncy animals live on the stream was a pure joy. As it turns out, Proteus is one depressing experience, though beautiful too. I plan to examine this more in the near future.

Super Meat Boy – I did a few levels and even managed to beat a boss in one of the worlds, but this grueling action platformer can get a bit too difficult for me to handle. Especially when the current world I’m in is called…Hell.

Spelunky – I tried to play the original freeware version of Spelunky since my copy is on the PlayStation 3, but the buttons were all wonky and I couldn’t remap them, so this did not last very long.

Rogue Legacy – This game is so much fun, as well as so hard to put down. It has that “one more run!” mentality to it, as every bit of gold helps you expand your castle, which ultimately helps improve your characters. I ended up beating Khidr for the first time and unlocked a few new classes like the lich to try out.

The Bridge – I took another swing at playing puzzles live before people, and this one worked out better than The Tiny Bang Story. I still had to look up a single puzzle solution, but I solved the rest myself. Ended up getting into chapter 4 or so before my friend came to visit me. I dig the drawn look of The Bridge the most though I couldn’t tell you a single story beat behind it.

Civilization V – My friend Pam came over with donuts, chips, and more importantly coffee. Then she schooled me on Civilization V, a game that is very deep and full of menus, but also a lot of fun. Evidently, we played Civ V for like two to three hours. Oops. Nah, it was great, especially having a real-life human being to talk to for a bit.

System Shock 2 – Man, this game is just freaky. The audio still holds up, and when the alarms went off and those space zombie freaks kept coming at me saying whatever it was they said…well, I just couldn’t keep going. It did wake me up a bit though, so there was that.

FTL: Faster Than Light – This is a game of systems, and even though I went through the tutorial, I don’t think I grok all the systems yet. I zoomed about in space for a bit, helped out some stranded ships, and that got destroyed by some larger, much more prepared ship. Really cool soundtrack.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls – I ended up playing this off air, as I can’t stream from my Xbox 360. Plus, my butt hurt from sitting in that chair for so long, and the couch was calling out to me, though that might have just been the delirium taking over. Alas, I did not last long in chapter five for my demon hunter Whisper before my eyes kept closing and my head kept falling backwards.

DLC Quest – A very cute and easy platformer with a single hook. Thankfully, it’s short, so it doesn’t become tiresome, but I needed some easy platforming at like 4:00 AM, and this was it.

Papers, Please – At one point, I said this out loud–“I could do this job.” Reflecting on that, no. No I totally could not. There’s too much to check on passports and entry permits and body scans and so on, but it is a lot of fun and really gives you a sense of power, of control. It’s also kind of dark, considering both of my playthroughs ended with me in debt, going to jail, and my entire family cold and hungry. I did get an Achievement though.

FEZ – You know I’m super sleepy and unable to concentrate when I could even find all the cube bits in the first section of FEZ, a game I’ve already completed before. My bad.

Race the Sun – Here was a great little pick-me-up that forced me to pay attention. It’s a speedy racer with a gimmick that you need to remain in the sun’s rays to move fast. You have to also avoid a ton of obstacles, some of which move, and there’s a really good head-bobbing soundtrack to keep you pumped for more action.

Fallout: New Vegas – I ended it here, on my dearest, dearest New Vegas. I made a really horrible character (stats-wise) called Pumpkin Pete, but he was at least rocking a sick, green-tinted pompadour. Ran around a bit, used the rifle grenade launcher to cause some chaos in Goodsprings, and then called it a show. Not a grand finish, but a finish nonetheless.

…and that was my Extra Life experience in 2014. Not gonna lie, already thinking about what I could do–and do better!–for next October. Until then, may I catch up on sleep.