Alundra dreams about one obtuse puzzle at a time

According to an online walkthrough, I’m just about halfway through Alundra. And yes, I’m playing with a guide at my side; if I didn’t, I would have given up on the action-adventure Legend of Zelda wannabe sometime back during the saint puzzles in Lars’ Crypt. Or maybe even in the Coal Mine. No doubt about it. But like a bad dream, I’m jumping around and getting ahead of myself. Let’s take it back to the start, just after the awesomely anime cutscene that reinforces the fact that this was most definitely made in the 1990s by Matrix Software, a Japanese video game development company from Tokyo.

The story, while cliché in places, like collecting a bunch of crystals via one dungeon at a time to stop a big baddie, is actually kind of interesting: Alundra, the silent protagonist you control and name of the game, is an elf from the Elna clan of Dreamwalkers. He comes to Inoa after getting shipwrecked, but also because of a recurring dream where a mysterious figure calls him “Releaser” and says he must save the villagers from the evil wizard Melzas. After a while, the people of Inoa begin blaming Alundra for all of the terrible happenings despite his earnest attempts to save them. It’s a pretty straightforward and rather serious story, with some goofy moments and characters now and then, such as Bonaire, the surfer dude and his dream of winning over Sara, a bodacious babe.

I can’t recall if Alundra was ever called “the Zelda killer” though I do know that phrase was used around Dark Cloud, which was not at all a Zelda killer, but did eventually lead to a fantastic sequel that I still need to beat one day, but only after I restart and get all the vital photos along the way. Sorry, got distracted. To get to the point: Alundra is no Zelda killer. Far from it. If anything, it’s a Landstalker/Zelda clone, but much harsher, with subpar controls, and doesn’t give a lick if you can’t figure out its puzzles. Sure, you are traveling across an open world, slashing grass, tossing bombs and pots, charging your sword up for a more powerful attack, and gaining new powers after specific dungeons that can help you advance in the next one, but that doesn’t mean you can toss away your yellowing copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past now that Alundra is in your life. We all know that Charles Caleb Colton said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and I’ll leave it at that.

Just kidding. Alundra is not terrible, but it’s probably one of the more frustrating games I’ve played in a long time, and I really don’t know how people played this back in 1997 without a helpful walkthrough at their side. I’ve had to look up just about every puzzle past the first few dreams Alundra jumps into, and it’s not because I’m a mindless idiot; in fact, I’d like to think I’m fairly smart, intelligent enough to figure out many point-and-click game puzzles. For many of Alundra‘s puzzles, it’s not all about figuring out the solution, but also executing the moves to get the job done. There’s a lot of platforming- and timing-based moves you have to do to open the door to the next room, and unfortunately, Alundra does not move very well. You can only walk in four directions, and the jumping never feels good. Run is assigned to the triangle button, but it is useless because you can’t run and jump–only run. Plus, there’s a lot of depth perception going on in hopping from one column to another, and oftentimes, if you miss a landing, it means starting the jumping all over again, usually from much earlier in the process. That’s my biggest hurdle here: identifying what jumps can and cannot be made.

A couple of negative nitpicks include that while you pick up new armor, like boots and chestplates, these are not visible on Alundra. Fine, I can let that slide. Not every game is about that, but unlike The Legend of Zelda, you can’t even see what gear you have collected in your inventory menu. You just have to remember. It is automatically found and applied, which is disappointing, especially since you get a decent jingle when opening treasure chests and defeating dungeon bosses. I like seeing everything I’ve found along the journey, whether it is useable or not. Fighting enemies is tedious due to Alundra’s inadequate ability to move fast, as well as move and attack at the same time, leading me to avoid combat in most cases.

But despite all that, I’m still really curious. About everything. Just to see what happens next, what special tool Alundra will earn, and so on. It’s probably because I’ve been dreaming myself of playing this game for so long, ever since I read about it in some nascent issue of PSM, but by the time I got around to being able to buy videogames at my leisure, stores no longer carried PS1 games. Flash-forward many, many years, and you can now find Alundra on the PSN for a couple of bucks, and dang it, I really need to know if it was worth all the waiting, all the hoping. Given how much frustration I’ve already encountered eight or nine hours in, I’m thinking no, but one never knows, and I’d rather see it to the end and know for sure then spend some more years living in uncertainty.

Ys I and its beautifully bodacious bump combat

Let’s all laugh at the great irony that I can’t actually confidently pronounce my favorite JRPG franchise out loud. I mean, is it SOO-ECK-AH-DIN? SOO-EEK-ADIN? SUE-EE-KO-DEN? I dunno. Luckily enough, I’ve not had to talk about Suikoden too many times in public, and when I do, it’s usually with people who have no idea how it is supposed to be said and probably assume I know what I’m doing since, y’know, I’ve been playing games for all my life. Spoiler: I don’t. And now we can add the Ys franchise to my collection of games I will never be sure of, but I’m going to pronounce it like EASE and move on.

I’ve always been curious about the Ys games, but never enough to take the plunge. Heck, I even have a copy of Ys: The Ark of Napishtim in my collection, which I guess I forgot about immediately after purchasing. Anyways, there was a good deal on Ys I & II on Steam over the holidays, and so I entered my credit card info, clicked purchase, and actually installed and played a game I bought instead of just collecting stuff forever. I know, crazy talk. A little researching shows that Ys I & II are pretty old JRPGs, first releasing back in 1989 and eventually coming to all the following platforms in some form or another: PC, PlayStation 2, Virtual Console, Nintendo DS, and PSP. Ys I & II are actually enhanced remakes of the respective Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished and Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter, meant to be played one after the other. So far, I’ve completed Ys I and started the second half only a wee bit.

In both games, you play as a red-haired swordsman named Adol Christin, who, from what I can tell, is the main protagonist for every Ys game. That dude either really gets around or something else is afoot. For the first adventure, he has to collect the six Books of Ys, which contain the history of the ancient, vanished land of Ys and will give Adol the vital knowledge he needs to defeat the caped evilness sweeping the land of Esteria. This means you go from town to town and dungeon to dungeon, talking with villagers and fighting enemies, respectively, gaining clues as to where to find the next book. The last chunk of the game takes place in the astronomically tall and somewhat tedious Darm Tower, which has you ascending floor after floor of bad guys and mazes to eventually fight…um, I think people in Minea called him Dark Cape and complete the first fifty percent of Ys I & II.

If that sounds like your typical JRPG adventure, you’re right. The story and its characters are nothing to write home about, and that’s because the real charm of the Ys franchise is in its combat system. It’s called bumping, and basically, when out in the field, Adol can run into enemies to deal damage directly to them. There’s no attack button. You bump, they take damage, they explode, you gain XP. Rinse, lather, repeat until you hit the level cap and have enough gold to buy all the best armor/weapons. And yet, there’s still strategy to this, as you don’t ever want to attack anything head-on, so you must come at enemies at an angle or from behind, making you feel very ninja-like. It was definitely one of the more unique combat systems I’ve come across lately, and it, along with regenerating health, made for speedy grinding, something I always appreciate.

Despite the gloriously joyful and smile-creating combat, I still ran into some problems. Like, there’s a specific boss that transforms into a swarm of bats and then back to human form for a split second, and you have even less time than that to hit him, which made for a very frustrating boss battle. Later on, there’s a room in Darm Tower filled with poison-like music that drains Adol’s health fast, and the only way to clear out the room is by exiting, finding a specific pillar outside, and hitting it with a hammer you found a few levels down; the game does not really make this clear, and I had to look up the solution online. And speaking of not making a lot clear, I wasn’t sure what a lot of the items in my inventory did, so I mostly refrained from ever equipping any of them.

Glancing at the Steam Achievements for Ys II, I get the impression that the second part of this series is…a little weirder. Also, looks like there’s magic spells to be cast. I’m down with that, as well as some more bumping. Maybe I should change my blog’s name is Bumping Down? Maybe.

The deep, beautiful dark of Knytt Underground

I couldn’t tell you when Knytt Underground got added to my long list of untouched PlayStation 3 games, but it did at some point. Thanks to PlayStation Plus, of course, a service that lets me download a high number of titles to collect digital dust until I randomly decide to play them or am inspired by an outside source to see what the deal is. This time around, I was inspired, greatly so, and we can look to Matt Mason’s posts over at Obtain Potion for the push, specifically Living Under a Rock and Let’s Find Another Deux Machina, as I really had no idea what Kyntt Underground was for the longest time. I figured it was some indie puzzle game, and it definitely is that–but so much more.

At its most basic form, Knytt Underground is about subterranean exploration. You play as a young woman called Mi Sprocket who is mysteriously mute, as well as, eventually, Bob, a magical bouncing ball. Naturally, the two characters play very differently from each other; you use Mi to climb up/down walls, and Bob can bounce around the room and reach previously unattainable areas, as well as tether himself to certain robots. For Bob, it’s all about physics, and sometimes that can be a bit tricky to master, especially when a single bounce can send you zooming across the screen, possibly to a new area, before you even have a moment to react. The game is split into three chapters and an interlude, with chapter one focusing on getting Mi to the fairy village and chapter two focusing on becoming Bob and learning what he can do. Chapter three seems to be the real meat of the game and is both awesome and intimidating.

See, it’s easy to get lost in Knytt Underground, both metaphorically and literally. There are a lot of rooms to explore, with a number of exits, and while some of them are simply dark, narrow corridors to run through, others are expansive openings, with high ceilings that any spelunker would love and, more times than not, something absolutely stunning to look at in the background. Take the purple forest, for instance. The first time I arrived there, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was underground, and yet here is this string of large trees, swaying in a reddish-purple haze, dancing with the cavern wind. It got a little Inception-like there, this other world in this other world, and I just stood there, unmoving, absorbing it all. Other backgrounds are just as gorgeous, with plant life literally glowing in the darkness, lava that looks devilishly hot, and mushrooms that look too beautiful to eat.

However, something about Knytt Underground has me greatly conflicted. Really, I’m just not sure how I feel about it. It’s a stunningly gorgeous game, rife with bright and vibrant flora, the kind of nature you’d expect to see examined in close detail on the newest BBC documentary about the planet Earth, all backed by a soft, ambient soundtrack of rushing waterfalls, dripping ceilings, and gentle breezes. Yet..it’s goofy. The characters are silly and look like someone’s first attempt at webcomic art in the early 2000s, and the things they say are inane, such as obscure discussions about the Internet. I’m namely talking about the two fairies that accompany Mi after you reach the village and speak for her during her muteness. Visually, it’s extremely jarring. Tonally, too, though I suspect something is trying to be said here. Also, most of the quests you take on are pointless, with Mi going to great lengths to find certain people or keys for locked doors only for it all not to matter; the person you were looking for already returned home, and the door magically opened by itself.

At this point, I’ve dabbled in chapter three for only a bit, but eventually felt overwhelmed, especially considering the size of the map is roughly ten times that of the previous chapters. I mean, I can see areas highlighted in red on the map as places of interest to go–most likely these are the bells that Mi needs to ring to stop the apocalypse–but getting there isn’t a simple hike. You have to now use both Mi and Bob the ball in combination to reach new pathways, and sometimes doing that can be a lot of trial and error. I’m sure I’ll pop back into this visually stunning underground realm soon enough, but I need a little breather in the meantime.

Most of us have Gears of War we never use

Let me be blunt and say this: I can’t believe that Gears of War became a series, and a popular one at that. Well, according to Wikipedia, which probably needs some updating, the game has since sold over 5 million copies as of September 2008–meaning it’s probably much higher–and currently stands as the fifth best-selling Xbox 360 game. Yowza. Really? Really? Y’all on crazy pills.

Gears of War takes place on the planet Sera, but it might as well be Earth. The Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) is a minor political party there, and its soldiers are called gears, despite the obvious coggers sounds a whole lot cooler. The Locust, an alien race, suddenly attacks humanity, a day infamously known as E-Day, and the COG gears do what they can to ensure the survival of human civilization. Flash-forward fourteen years, and the COG is the only human government left on the planet. Former COG soldier Marcus Fenix is reinstated into the military after spending some years in prison for abandoning his military post for…personal reasons. His friend Dominic “Dom” Santiago successfully extracts Fenix from prison, reuniting him with the rest of the Delta Squad in hopes of finding a special device that will help eradicate the Locust’s underground caverns.

So…more or less, the film version of Starship Troopers. Which should not be a problem for me, as I actively enjoy both the film and Robert A. Heinlein’s futuristic military YA romp where soldiers with guns shoot opposing alien bugs. Yes, even the chapters devoted to simply describing powered armor. Alas, Gears of War, despite that grandiose plot summary, is devoid of life, character, characters, and details to make everything greatly interesting.

Right. Let’s do this. I played through Gears of War over the course of several sittings and on the lowest difficulty setting of Casual. It’s highly linear despite the occasional choice of going left or going right, and you, as Fenix, move forward, hide behind shattered walls and car husks, and peek out to shoot at alien monsters also doing the same thing. Once all the shooting is done, you’ll get some story beats, with either a cutscene or Fenix listening to someone tell him what to do via an earpiece. Basically, it’s all about moving forward, finding other members of the Delta Squad–who are constantly getting split up so that it can be just you and one other dude for co-op reasons–eventually leading to Fenix returning to his father’s house to find something a potent anti-Locust weapon. Somewhere in the middle of all that there’s a single vehicle mission, which has you driving and shooting light via a turret at Kryll, highly aggressive flying carnivores that thrive in the darkness. Throw in a couple of boss fights, a few of which don’t actually have you fighting something directly, and that’s the game in a nutshell, replete with a tease for more to come.

Ugh, I don’t know. I just found the entire campaign to be a hollow experience. Fenix and his fellow men are simply big shoulders and massive arm muscles that occasionally grunt and ask a question or make an action movie-like one-liner, but never strive to be real. Fenix, especially. I couldn’t care one bit about him because he just comes across as a brooding mass that refuses to say anything. This was especially apparent when we get to the part where he returns to his family’s home, which is being destroyed by the Locust, and there isn’t a single comment from him. Like, come on. Emote. Be a human being. But no, this is machoism all over again and shares the same problems I saw in Vanquish.

Here, have some positive talk. My favorite thing about Gears of War is the active reload. When you reload your weapon, you have a split-hair second chance to hit the button again and have your gun immediately back in action with a full clip. If you fail this, your gun jams and it takes longer to fix. Each weapon has a different active reload bar, and it made the firefights much more exciting than they actually were, even if it was just a little mini-game between Fenix and his weaponry. I found the sniper rifle to be the trickiest to reload speedily, and that was my key to victory at the end of Act 5.

Strangely, I’m curious about Gears of War‘s higher difficulty settings–Hardcore and Insanity–though I have to imagine it results in just Fenix taking more damage faster and enemies being bigger bullet sponges. I might at least try to play Act 1 again on a higher challenge, to see what that’s all about, as Casual was very much that–an easy walk with the occasional death, mostly because I lingered too long in the open or didn’t run through the Kryll-infested darkness fast enough. I don’t expect to do very well though, but I at least want to try because immediately after that I will be uninstalling the game from my Xbox 360’s hard-drive and moving on to greener pastures. Yes, there’s the multiplayer element to consider, but I was only able to get into one match after many, many attempts, and that’s because I don’t have certain DLC that others do and man, that’s stupid. Borderlands 2 really spoiled me with those compatibility patches.

I’ve never been and never will be a Mega Man

Before I talk about my lackluster performance so far in Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge, which I picked up for a cheap deal of two bucks on the Nintendo 3DS the other night, let me share with y’all my history with Keiji Inafune’s robotic humanoid servant-turned-hero franchise, which I like greatly from a distance, but have never really enjoyed playing most of the games, save for Mega Man Legends, the shiniest diamond in the dirtiest rough.

Shocking as this may read, I didn’t pick up my first Mega Man game until I had my SNES. Yup, my first experience of running and jumping and shooting enemy bots with balls of energy didn’t happen until Mega Man X, some ten iterations after, uh…I don’t know. And maybe not exactly ten, given the number of spin-offs and such, but whatever. I’m not going to go through the list and count them up, but I’m sure many started somewhere else in its early years, with either the original game or maybe Mega Man 3. I do remember hanging out at a neighbor’s house, watching them play one of these earlier games–whatever one had you in the clouds, jumping on those floating faces that had spikes rising up from the sides of its head–but I was always a quiet, timid kid, and so I simply watched them try to reach the level’s Robot Master and did nothing more until many years later when I had a Super Nintendo console of all my own.

Call me kooky, but I find it rather fitting that the first Mega Man game for the SNES was also my first Mega Man game. I mean, that system and me–to use this generation’s language: SO MANY FEELS. From what I can tell, there’s also a more substantial story in the X series to follow than the older games gave out, which was basically a handful of levels to run through, get to the boss, beat it, and use its power on other bosses. Good job, robot. You win. Mega Man X takes place in a futuristic world inhabited by both humans and Reploids, which are robots capable of emotions. Alas, because of that, Reploids are prone to criminal activity, and those bad boys are labelled Mavericks and no longer invited to Bots Night Out, which happens every Thursday after work. Anyway, you play as Mega Man X, an android member of the military task force Maverick Hunters, and it’s up to you–along with the help of Zero–to stop Sigma, a Maverick leader intent on human extinction. It’s pretty fun and relatively easy when compared to other adventures, but I remember it fondly, especially finding all the hidden suit upgrade chambers.

Since the Mega Man X days, the only other traditional Mega Man games I’ve dabbled in would be Mega Man 8 for the PS1, Mega Man 9 for the PS3, and Mega Man 10 for the PS3. When I say dabbled, I mean that. I pick a level, make a decent attempt at it, and don’t get very far, especially when disappearing platforms are involved. There’s just always been something about the platforming that I’ve never been good at. Or maybe it has to do with how quickly our blue-suited hero loses health. Yeah, let’s go with both of those for escape goats. Other related titles in my collection include Mega Man X7…and that’s it. Sadly, there will be no Mega Man Legends 3. Ever.

Hmm. I guess I should get back to talking about Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge now. I mean, really, that’s the true topic at hand. Sometimes I get lost reminiscing. My bad. This spin-off title originally for the Game Boy continues Mega Man’s adventures as he once again confronts Dr. Wily and his slew of revived Robot Masters, as well as a special “Mega Man Killer” called Enker. There are four initial stages and bosses (Cut Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, and Elec Man), all from the original Mega Man. Later, you can take on another four levels and bosses from Mega Man 2–if you get that far. And then, if you’ve gotten that far, I believe there’s one more level to go to stop Dr. Wily for the time being.

Like I said, I’m strangely rubbish at these games, and I really don’t understand why. I do just fine in other platformers, though I can’t really think of any at the moment that specifically follow Mega Man in style and skill. Duck Tales for the NES? Cave Story? But these levels here are exceptionally difficult, and I haven’t even made it to a boss fight yet. Little to no room for error. Also, whenever Mega Man takes damage, he slides back a teensy bit, which means don’t get hit when standing on a thin, narrow ledge. There’s no actual save slot, but a built-in password system will help you keep your progress intact; however, as soon as I get far enough that I feel proud of, I’m going to also rightly abuse the Nintendo 3DS’s Restore function. One other complaint I have is that the sprites are huge. Massively so. Which can be problematic as you can only fit so much on one screen and can’t see what dangers lie ahead, leading me to jump and shoot at the same time for nearly every jump at the far right side of the screen. This was fine in Metroid II where you’re not going to lose a ton of progress from falling into an open pit. But no, not here. The screen needs to be zoomed out by another 25%.

So, two dollars well spent? Probably not. Just two dollars spent.

Journey of a Roach will have you climbing walls

When you think about it, Journey of a Roach is a puzzle game built entirely around a single gimmick: you play a roach, able to climb up walls and skitter across the ceiling. This change in perspective plays a key part in the majority of the puzzles. It’s not the worst way to see the world, upside-down, though it can be a bit disorienting from time to time, especially when you accidentally mean to return to the floor but hit the wall instead and the camera sharply tilts one way and then the other and all you can do is make audible gasps until you right yourself. Given that I just spent a long time playing as Scree the gargoyle in Primal, who can also climb walls, you’d think my tolerance would be higher, but I’m pretty tired of the mechanic. Thankfully, Journey of a Roach doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The insects in Journey of a Roach live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, though how the world actually got to that point is not addressed or necessary to know. Bugs will simply outlive us all, and this is their realm now. As a young roach hurries across the ruined earth, he gets a glimpse of something in the distance: a flower. Delicate, standing tall: a sign of rare vegetation, a sign of life still to come. If you’ve seen Pixar’s WALL-E, you know this is important stuff. Unfortunately, the little roach ends up getting pinned beneath a barrel of toxic waste. We then cut to a smaller, childlike roach, being awoken by the sound of the crash. Off he goes to help his bug buddy get free and find this mightily desired flower of power.

Visually, the game has two different looks, and unfortunately they don’t mesh nicely. There’s the cutscenes, which are flat, hand-drawn images with minimal coloring, background art, and animation. They work, but they could’ve been so much more, especially since a lot of the key story beats unfold/resolve using these. Conversely, there’s the in-game graphics, which you’ll spend more time looking at, and they are rather nice, a mix of cel shading and 3D models. Think Borderlands, but from the perspective of an inch off the ground. Environments are relatively detailed, with a good number of non-interactive items to fill in all the gaps, and everything comes across as really there, with depth. If you can imagine bugs living beneath the ground, smoking cigars and lounging in bars, then you can imagine it even more with Journey of a Roach.

Just like with Machinarium, there’s no spoken language, at least not one that I, as a non-bug, can understand. Instead, all the ants and roaches and flies speak to each other via animated speech bubbles or tinny nonsensical squeaks, giving you an idea of what they want without actually spelling it out for you. Hope you’re good at charades. You’ll explore environments, speak to some other insects, and use items in your inventory to solve puzzles. Since you’re a cockroach, exploration is not just limited to the floor; climb up the walls and the ceiling to see what else you can find. Most of the time, it’s a vital item or a collectible grub, which you can click to claim. The environments themselves often hold a ton of clues, too, so paying attention to every sign or lever is important.

Annoyingly, there are several red herring items, which disappear when you move from one isolated scenario to another. Let me state here and now that I do not enjoy pointless, time-wasting items. Yes, Deponia, you had a few too. In your inventory, items are presented in silhouette form only, making it hard to tell what some items actually are. For example, later in the game, the tiny little roach picks up the sole of a shoe, which I thought was perfect for the tired caterpillar being forced to run on a wheel to produce electricity. Nope. This item was better fit to take the place of meat in a makeshift burger. Go figure.

As mentioned before, Journey of a Roach is not very long, and I think that’s just fine for a puzzle game that really has only one trick up its sleeve. In fact, there’s a Steam achievement for completing the whole game within 18 minutes, which if you know all the puzzle solutions I’m sure is possible, but you have to seriously truck it and probably not make a single mistake. I think it took me more around two to three hours to finish, but I liked playing it slower, clicking on everything and trying to noodle out the solution to the roach’s latest roadblock before ultimately glancing at a walkthrough. The ending was, naturally, predictable and unexciting, but there really wasn’t any other direction the developers could go with it. The roaches wanted the flower, the roaches got the flower. But then it goes to credits, and you’re left wondering why. What’s this one little flower going to do for their well-being? I dunno. It’s not a puzzle game to set the world on fire, but it does have some personality and a different way to view things.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #57 – Isaac’s Odyssey

Comic Con party
Must make it, stuck inside dorm
Text needs editing

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

A pirate’s life for me and the sassy Nelly Cootalot

So far, just clicking around on the number of downloaded-but-not-yet-extracted zip files in my laptop’s videogames folder has proved pretty good. As of late, in there, I found Tower of Heaven, Ballads of Reemus: When the Beds Bite, and a number of wee little adventure games from Ben Chandler. Well, let’s add another to the list, with Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy!, an artistically impressive point-and-click game starring a female pirate hot on the case of missing spoonbeaks, which are punny versions of spoonbills. You know, the large, long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae. Yeah, them.

Again, I like weird names, and that’s what drew me to unzip and play Spoonbeaks Ahoy! over a number of other puppy-eyed indie games yipping for my attention. I knew nothing about it before double-clicking its executable; in fact, I don’t even remember downloading it or from where. Maybe a ghost did it. Going forward, for anything that can’t be explained, let’s just blame ghosts. Anyways, it’s an olden day point-and-click game obviously taking many cues from Guybrush Threepwood’s previous exploits, with a focus on puns, smarmy and sarcastic dialogue, silly-looking folk, beards, birds, and cute, colorful visuals done in a labor of love hand-drawn style. I kind of fell for the game from its very first screen. It was a combo of the visuals, the confidence brimming in Nelly, and the music (by Mark Lovegrove); right there and then, I knew this was going to be a fun, light-hearted adventure worth a few hours of my time. Evidently, designer Alasdair Beckett-King made it for–and about–his girlfriend, which is just the cutest.

Let me give you a few more details on the story, since this is an adventure game, and story is the legs keeping the gameplay table standing. The ghost of Captain Bloodbeard awakens Nelly Cootalot, the sleeping, red-headed greenhorn pirate, with grave news. Dun dun dunnn. The nearby Barony of Meeth is in trouble, with the region’s trademark species of bird spoonbeaks vanishing. Nelly’s always been a bird lover and immediately decides to unearth what’s going on there. Once she’s on the island, she can explore, talk to the locals, pick up items, solve puzzles, and open up new places via her fast-travel map before eventually putting an end to the missing spoonbeaks mystery. It does not stray far from the adventure game formula, and that’s just fine.

Puzzles generally follow the “use this item on that item” path, though a couple of inventive minigames appear now and again. One has Nelly deciphering a coded message scrawled on the bar’s wall and another is a carnival game where your goal is to hook a duck. I got through those using elbow grease and diligence, same as the final puzzle of the game, though that last one confused me for a bit until I figured out how the levers worked. I knew what I had to do, just couldn’t do it. There’s also some dialogue-based puzzles where you have to select the right response to progress, which basically leads to me trying every single dialogue option/combination I see. Thankfully, it’s not annoying, as the silly writing and one-liners are pretty enjoyable, sometimes even endearing. I found myself only looking up one or two solutions, mostly because I was on the right track, but still missing a key item or step, which left me stymied. I’m pretty much talking about the part where Nelly has to impersonate a charming Italian man booked for a flight around the world.

Alas, I missed out on the chance to participate in helping fund Beckett-King’s next game Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet!, but I’m eagerly awaiting it all the same. Kinda bummed to see the change in art direction, as I found more to appreciate there and let my imagination take over for the parts less detailed, and the new art is pretty, but looks maybe a little unidentifiable. Curious how the voice acting will turn out as I kind of already know what these fictional characters sound like in my head, and any diversion from that course will be met with punishment, walk-the-plank style. We’ll see though. I’ll keep my eyes on the horizon.

Must repair the Thievius Raccoonus in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

When I got my PlayStation 3 earlier this year, it was mostly because of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, a game I’ve dabbled in here and there, but just don’t have the time to commit to properly. However, all along, I’ve had my sights on Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, the long-awaited fourth game in the comically colorful sneakfest franchise that I’ve ate up since the PS2 days. Well, it took me some time, but I finally ended up nabbing a copy, along with Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, several weeks back for a pretty good deal from GameStop, but I told myself I couldn’t play until I at least put Primal to bed. And lo, that also finally happened.

Right, okay. Thieves in Time picks up immediately after the final events of 2005’s Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, so you best brush up on that game’s story details or you’ll be a bit confused as to why Penelope is not hanging out with her new boyfriend Bentley. Anyways, something is wrong with the Thievius Raccoonus, a book containing all Cooper history and secrets; words are just vanishing from its pages, forcing Bentley to get the gang back together and uncover who is behind the wrongdoing. This eventually leads to them using their iconic van, which can now travel through time thanks to some nifty enhancements by Bentley and Penelope, going back to different specific periods to rescue some of Cooper’s ancestors.

I’m actually burning through Thieves in Time as I’m wont to do with these types of mission-based collectathon sneak-platformers, now just starting in the third world, which is stuck in the cold, frigid Ice Age. There’s dinosaurs and penguins, so it’s pretty much like Pennsylvania right now. The previous two worlds were set in the Wild West and Feudal Japan, and you are basically given a large hub world to run around, collect things like bottles and Sly masks, return treasures to your HQ, and pick up missions. Or you can also just kind of run around and explore, which I like to do for a little bit before starting the first mission. Get a lay of the land, y’know. Find as many clinking bottles as I can because I must have all the bottles.

The original PS2 games were developed by Sucker Punch Productions, but the company eventually moved away from the master raccoon thief to shooting aliens with guns and men with superpowers. Thieves in Time was developed by Sanzaru Games, the same company that previously ported the original games into HD versions for a special PlayStation 3 collection. I might have to get those one day, despite already having all the games. Grrr, but Trophies. Hmm. Anyways, Sanzaru Games seems to have the right touch, as one might not even realize the switch in developers, as Sly Cooper runs, talks, and plays just like he always has, with a bombastic story, zany, anthropomorphic characters, and goofy one-liners and puns that many might sigh at, but I enjoy greatly.

Other than lengthy load times, I’m loving everything Thieves in Time is throwing at me. Well, maybe not the Grizz, just yet. But the missions are varied and short enough to gobble up quickly, and I can’t truly express the joy I feel when Sly jumps in the air and I press the O button and he instantly lands on a roof edge or wire or pointy thing. Sneaking is fun, as is pick-pocketing. You can go out into the hub world as Sly, Bentley, Murray, Carmelita, and one of the Cooper ancestors, regardless if they have a mission to attend to, and they all play very differently. Maybe, if anything, there are too many different special moves to remember across the slew of playable characters, plus Sly can put on time period costumes to perform additional actions. I like the jailbird outfit, because he can roll around on the ball and chain.

My plan is to get all the way to the final world and its final boss mission, and then go back to all the previous worlds to collect the remaining treasure, bottles, Sly masks, and locked safes. I collected all the stuff in the previous games despite not having Trophies to prove it, but I swear I did, and this one must follow suit. Perfect for putting on a podcast and just collecting leisurely. I suspect I’ll get there soon enough, as Thieves in Time does not appear to be very long considering I’m already halfway through it, but that’s okay. Quality over quantity, really. And the quality here is strong.

Unfortunately, Primal is a realm of both good and bad

Evidently, I got my copy of Primal at the now officially defunct Blockbuster chain of video rent stores. It has two fugly stickers on the front cover, one beneath the plastic and the other on top. The first shouts directly at me that this is a “previously rented game,” and the other is a medium-size red circle highlighting how much I purchased this gem for back in June 2003 as a financially struggling college sophomore–a cool $14.99. I can’t believe it has taken me ten years to finish this game for the very first time. A part of me kind of wishes I hadn’t because, I’m sad to say, it was certainly better remembered than experienced.

Primal is the story of a cafe waitress named Jennifer Tate and her rock-n-roll boyfriend Lewis and a teeny, but totally keen gargoyle called Scree. See, Lewis ends up getting kidnapped after one of his band’s concerts by some demonic being from another realm, and Jen is badly wounded during this, leaving her comatose in a hospital bed. While unconscious, Jen is visited by Scree, who takes her on a soul journey of sorts to the Nexus, where they discover Chaos is engulfing everything. To save her boyfriend, Jen must discover who she really is and help fight off Abaddon, the embodiment of Chaos.

It’s standard third-person action adventure fanfare, and with Jen and Scree exploring four very different realms for answers, the Nexus acting as a hub for story beats between all the happenings. In all my years of starting Primal over and over, I only ever saw the opening snowy realm of Solum. Truthfully, I kind of assumed this is where the entire game took place and was bummed to not see that be the case, because Solum has personality, much more than any other realm, though Aetha comes close. You can control both Jen and Scree, switching between them freely with the push of a button–take that, Grand Theft Auto V–and you’ll explore rooms, find locked doors and ways around them, fight off enemies, collect items, and meet a bunch of colorful characters, like Arella, who is championing for Jen to win.

And that’s Primal‘s best part–the story. The people you meet, the ones that support your cause, the ones that hinder it. You really do feel like you’re playing an active role in some special episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Veronica Mars. Jen is spunky and compassionate yet always ready to crack a joke, and Scree refuses to let up his seriousness; together, the two make quite a pair. By the end of the game, their relationship has grown beyond just helping each other out. From a glance, a lot of the world-building could seem superfluous, but I think enough is said to make all the realms come across as real places, even if they are mostly devoid of life and signs of life, save for Solum, which I mention again as I think its frigid landscape littered with stone buildings and campfires came off quite well. The story told there of a fallen prince in a society where the king, at the height of his power, sacrifices himself worked better than some later plots, which were uninspired.

Okay, now the bad parts, and it’s more or less everything else in Primal: combat, swimming, getting lost, no mini-map, camera, the music, the lack of music. I’ll try to cover each topic briefly.

Combat is oddly mapped to the PS2 controller’s shoulder buttons, which makes for weird, clunky fighting, and I found countering–hitting the block button just as an enemy strikes–to be impossible to nail consistently. Some enemies can only be killed with a finishing move, which you do by pressing L2 and R2 at the same time, a technique that worked only one-third of the time. Jen can regain health by absorbing it from Scree, and Scree can store up more energy to give Jen from fallen enemies (and some other places), so it’s a constant cycle of fight, absorb, refill, move on.

The second realm of Aquis has Jen and Scree spending the majority of their time underwater; that’s fine for Scree as he controls just the same, since stone sinks. But Jen’s swimming controls are unintuitive, and the camera is constantly getting frazzled at trying to keep up with her POV, flipping high and low. I can’t imagine many people got to this section and continued playing. The original Tomb Raider had better swimming controls than this, and I think that’s saying a lot. Oh, and did I mention that you still get into combat situations while underwater? Yeah, I found the whole realm maddening, as well as a wee depressing. There’s very little music, so you are just swimming around listening to nothing but the swoosh of Jen’s feet, wondering why you’re still here playing this underwater step back.

There’s a map, but no mini-map. There really should’ve been a mini-map, because it’s extremely easy to get lost due to erratic camera movements and most of everything looking identical. Especially when swimming or using Scree as he climbs up walls and across ceilings. You can press start at any point to view the map, but only if Scree is near you. Occasionally, the map wouldn’t even load. Just a dark, black screen. So, it’s glitchy and hard to follow as you can only see the section you’re on currently, but if your destination marker is in another building further down you won’t see the marker until you are close enough to pop that part of the map. Make sense? Absolutely not. Since Primal is very much about exploring, this aspect could’ve been stronger. I ended up using a walkthrough from time to time to get me back on track, especially in Aquis.

Music in Primal is all done by electronic rock band 16Volt. Not my thing, personally, but they fit the story and look and have a videogamey sound, I guess. Their music appears mostly during fight scenes and boss battles, but also in cutscenes and the opening of the game. That said, when you’re not fighting, all is silent, which can kind of unnerving, but mostly boring, as even just some light instrumental would’ve helped fill the void.

As they travel about, Jen and Scree can find Tarot Cards, which unlock concept art from the main menu. That’s nice and all, but nothing to go crazy over. I think I found maybe half of the Tarot Cards by the end. However, as you progress, the game itself unlocks behind-the-scene and making of movies, interviews, and special trailers, which are fantastic, mostly for being stuck in the past. They might come across as cheesy or overdramatic in how Primal was trying to be sold, but they’re interesting nonetheless. Especially the interviews with Hudson Leick and Andreas Katsulas.

I don’t know. Like I said, there’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t gone through and seen the rest of what Primal had to offer, as I found a lot of it frustrating and disappointing from the gameplay side, but I guess I ultimately needed to know. Now I can speak more confidently about the game, about its good parts, while also warning those that are making their way to the Nexus for the very first time about things like an entire realm devoted to just swimming and janky camera control and the atrociously repetitive combat and and and…