Checking back in with Pokemon Y and my team of monsters

For the last few weeks, it’s been a mini-game of swap city on my Nintendo 3DS. I’ll play a little bit of Animal Crossing: New Leaf before bed, take the cartridge out, pop in Pokemon Y, and play a little bit of that. Eventually, I’ll remember that I have a loan to pay off and quite an important job to do as mayor of Arni, and so the cycle returns to where it started. It’s not the worst problem in the world, but I am beginning to see the benefits of owning digital copies of these large portable games as, strangely, I find removing carts from the 3DS to be a troublesome process. In my mind, it’s as laborious as lifting boulders over your head. One day, I’ll have to look deeper at this quirk of mine.

When last I talked about Pokemon Y here on Grinding Down, I had played maybe about five hours. That meant starting out slow and perfunctory as has been the case in all previous Pokemon game romps I’ve experienced, taking care of the first gym and doing some story-related stuff that blocked forward progress. Truthfully, it mostly involved wandering around tall grass and collecting as many fun-looking pocket monsters as I could with my limited amount of money and Pokeballs, as that Pokedex simply won’t fill itself out. The jerk.

But now I’ve played for a total of fifteen hours and have gotten the chance to see the Kalos region a bit more. Okay, okay–fifteen hours and seven minutes, for those that must really know. After kicking the butts of four gym leaders and earning their respective badges, as well as providing a swift beatdown to Team Flare to get the power back on in Lumiose City, my team looks like so:

• Delphox, LV 45 – nicknamed Fenny
• Talonflame, LV. 43 – nicknamed Flit
• Blastoise, LV 42 – nicknamed Urtle
• Roselia, LV. 41 – nicknamed Rosebud

There are two other spots on my team that are, for lack of a better way to say it, temporarily filled. I couldn’t even tell you what two Pokemon are there–as they don’t matter. They are just there to fill the gaps just in case and gain some EXP after battles thanks to the new rules of EXP Share. However, I do hope before the end-game fights start to find better replacements. I’m most definitely, no doubt in all the galaxy, saving a spot for a Garbodor, but the other slot is open territory. I guess I probably need to pick a Fairy-type Pokemon soon and stick with it, as I’m sure a Dragon-based gym is on the horizon, but I don’t have one that I really like just yet. Please suggest something other than Jigglypuff.

I don’t know if the gyms have been designed to feature easier progress-blocking Trainers with fewer challenging Pokemon to throw at you or if I’m a lot better at Pokemon Y than I originally thought, but it’s been smooth sailing since Day 1. I’ve not died once yet, and maybe that means my team is a bit overpowered. My starter Delphox is ferocious, able to wipe an opponent out in a single breath (of fire). Should they all be more around LV 35-37? Well, you can blame the EXP Share for that then, as it helps keep everyone growing, everyone improving. But yeah, it’s been extremely easy, which makes for a very lax gaming experience. I’m not terribly bothered by this, as I found Pokemon Black 2 to be pretty difficult and off-putting in its later half, and maybe Pokemon Y will get there too, though I kind of doubt it. This is the game Nintendo needed to sell a lot of 2DS and 3DS systems, and no one likes a game too difficult to play, unless you’re a sicko and into things like Dark Souls.

So, I’m about halfway through Pokemon Y‘s main story stuff, but after all that is dead and done this might be the first game in the franchise I spend some solid time tracking down all the collectible Pokemon. Granted, I like to think that about each iteration I play, and it never seems to pan out in the end. However, it really helps seeing them in 3D models even if by then I’ll never use them or battle against strangers online. Though I do need to try this Wonder Trade thing out sometime soon. Maybe I can pick up a cool ‘mon to fill that sixth slot void.

A slow, torturous train ride to nowhere in Sepulchre

If you know the definition of sepulchre, then you know how Sepulchre will play out after its first few opening moments. Regardless of that, it’s still an effective and enjoyable slice of old-fashioned horror, a playable short story that is all about tension and creating an unsettling atmosphere rather than having you run from some ghoulish monster, your heavy breathing the only soundtrack to carry you to some kind of momentary safety. It’s a slow, torturous ride, and  greater for it.

The story is as follows: you play as Dr. Harold Lang, a short-tempered museum curator low on primary memory aboard a moving train on its way to Augur Peak Island. He’d like some food and a drink before reaching his destination, and so he leaves his book and room, off on a mighty quest, only to discover that things–and people–are not exactly right on this train. It’s very hard to say much more without spoiling what unfolds, but let’s just say that you’ll talk to some characters, specifically a bartender and an attendant named Don, solve a few straightforward puzzles, and grow worrisome as the truth becomes clearer with each click of your mouse.

I’ve read elsewhere that the amateurish voice acting lessened the experience in Sepulchre; for me, it was just the opposite. Plus, I’m a sucker for anyone–or anything–with a Scottish accent. Sure, the bartender’s audio was noticeably lower than Lang’s, and there’s an airiness to everything spoken, but I felt that helped build immersion. When you learn the game-ending twist, the tinny voice recordings and distant feeling throughout maybe makes more sense. I also liked how naturally everyone spoke; it never came across as actors reading lines from a script, especially Don and Lang who, occasionally, had to talk to himself, to work things out. Yes, even Ben Chandler’s performance as the mumbling Grub is worth appreciating.

However, I will admit that Sepulchre does have some problems. Due to the limited number of screens making up the train Lang is stuck on, there’s a lot of walking from one side back to the other. It can feel a little tedious. The sound effect that plays when going to your inventory is a very loud thunk and was jarring each and every time I popped in there to see what Lang was holding. Some elements are maybe a bit too vague, such as the main painting and the name Lang says at the very end. Also: didn’t get whatever joke was hiding behind the “huge bags” though they were effectively creepy.

For awhile there, I thought there was going to be some strong revelation based around… dogs. The theme is pretty prominent–the bartender, after Dr. Lang gets verbally upset, tells him to let it out like “a good little puppy”; you find origami dogs in one passenger cart and give it to Grub, admitting it is not exactly man’s best friend, but should do just fine; there’s also a non-interactive painting on the wall of what looks like a small dog. Alas, nothing came of all this, but it was something I noticed nonetheless.

Sepulchre comes from Owl Cave and is written by Ashton Raze (Richard & Alice), with artwork by point-and-click connoisseur Ben Chandler (upcoming The Blackwell Epiphany and ^_^). You can play for totally zero dollars by downloading it from Owl Cave’s website, but you can also pick up a special edition for $2.99, which includes the soundtrack and some other extras. If you have a half hour to kill and want to lose yourself on an unnerving train ride, I highly recommend taking this short, but puzzling trip.

Having trouble surveying the score in Grand Theft Auto V

I slip back into Grand Theft Auto V every now and then to drive around aimlessly, look at a few jokey billboards and websites on the game’s internal Internet, and do a main story mission or, at the very least, a random event. Truthfully, I’m always on the lookout for a new Strangers and Freaks mission, really zany one-offs, but they seem few and far between these days, especially since I’m maybe now halfway through the story. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell without looking up online and spoiling myself percentage-wise, so we’ll just pretend like I know what I’m talking about and say that GTA V‘s glass is currently half empty. Or half full. Whatever.

As much as I hate glitches, especially ones that bring a gaming session to a halt, such as Half-Life 2‘s Nova Prospekt level and the randomly spawning Alpha Male Deathclaw in Fallout: New Vegas, I still do find them fascinating pieces of broken tech and marvel at what they can do to a system, both visibly and behind the scenes. So far, throughout my decent amount of time with Grand Theft Auto V, I’ve not come across many, and if I did, they were pretty minor stuff, like a pedestrian getting caught in a walking animation against a wall or being unable to switch characters for seemingly no good reason. Nothing game-breaking, and so I continued to carry on, little by little. Please note that I’m not including my troublesome time in the early days of Grand Theft Auto Online in this analysis, which was a hot mess of server problems, but also some strange connectivity glitches.

While Giant Bomb streamed for 48 hours over the weekend to raise money for Extra Life, I tried to do my part at home as well, staying up with them and playing some games. Granted, I didn’t last terribly long, but I tried to keep things fresh, jumping between my Nintendo 3DS, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Ni no Kuni, and, our topic du jour, Grand Theft Auto V. I haven’t really played in a couple of weeks from the look of things, and as far as I can tell, the next main story mission is called “Surveying the Score,” which involves all three of our colorful characters–Trevor, Franklin, and Michael. It’s basically a reconnaissance mission, there for the characters to observe their next target, the Union Depository, and plan how to strike it based on the number of guards they see and its alarm system. That’s all well and good, but I can’t seem to start the mission, and the one time I did, my game glitched hard, with Franklin literally standing inside the car, unable to leave, unable to switch out over to Trevor or Michael.

Basically, you have to go to the Vanilla Unicorn, which Trevor owns, and find him in the back office to kick things off. However, something is seriously wrong in my game. The outside door that supposedly leads directly to the back office is locked, and I don’t think that’s right. If you try to go through the strip club, body guards will chance you when you cross into the back room area, and they shoot to kill. I died three times trying attempting this, but was once able to reach Trevor’s office to begin “Surveying the Score”–with body guards still in tow. I think that had a serious effect on the mission going forward, the system confusing itself, which led to Franklin stuck in the car, kind of clipping out of it, but unable to do much else. Grrr.

I turned on the DownloadStation 3 this morning to snatch up my free copy of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and noticed that there was a new patch available for Grand Theft Auto V. Alas, I think that’s mostly for Grand Theft Auto Online stuff, but maybe there’s a Vanilla Unicorn fix in there, too. We’ll see. I’ll keep playing until I run out of other missions on the map to do, and then I’ll try again; if I can’t get through Trevor’s strip club unscathed, I guess my dream of completing a GTA game for the very first time ever will come to a sad, but inevitable conclusion.

Pretty late to the Joker’s party in Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum came out in 2009 to nearly unanimous praise, and four years later, during a PSN summer sale, after consecutively not experiencing Rocksteady Studios’ take on the Dark Knight year after year after year after year, I bought it for a silky smooth $5.00. And then a couple months later, simply because everyone was getting back to praising the place where it all began after seeing how lackluster Batman: Arkham Origins turned out to be, I installed the game, booted it up, and saw the errors of my ways over these past few years. It’s more or less Deus Ex: The Bats Revolution.

First things first, the story setup: in Arkham Asylum, the Joker instigates an elaborate plot to seize control of Arkham Asylum and trap Batman inside with many of his incarcerated foes. Subsequently, the Joker also holds the power to detonate hidden bombs he placed around Gotham City before getting himself captured. Batman must now fight his way through the asylum’s loose inmates, save some named people, and put an end to the Joker’s plans. He’ll do this by playing detective, being sneaky, hanging from gargoyles, and punching rhythmically when the scenario says so.

Before I get into my impressions, here’s a bunch of silly comics about Bats from my recently completed 365 BAD COMICS project:

Right. Couldn’t resist the chance to shamelessly plug my art.

Anyways, I’m having a lot of fun in Arkham Asylum, and I’m only at a 14% completion rate. This is even more surprising when you realize that, as a superhero comic book character, I don’t find Batman very interesting. Definitely more so than Superman, but that’s it. Everybody else comes ahead. I’m more of an X-Men follower, but Bruce Wayne is kind of just a rich man in a costume beating up poor criminals with fancy gadgets and a throaty voice. I’m sure I just made a lot of people angry with that statement. However, all his toys do make for fantastic gameplay, which is what this game delivers on tenfold.

Batman is trapped in Arkham Asylum, which is actually called the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane and found isolated just outside Gotham City. Has hints of Alcatraz prison. You’ll come across good guys and bad guys as you move from building to building, all while the Joker teases you from afar, promising a party you’ll never forget. It’s a mix of open-world-like areas and more linear hallways and rooms, and I think it works great. You can explore a bit and find interview audio logs and Riddler trophies or you can stick to the pretty obvious path to see the story unfold at a healthy clip. I’ve done a little bit of both, but I think I’ll just keep pushing the story forward from now on, even though those Riddler trophies sure are dang tempting and do at least reward Batman with a pinch of XP. And you need XP to unlock gadgets, combat moves, and armor upgrades.

Combat requires rhythm and reminds me of what the Assassin’s Creed series has been doing as of late, with countering attacks simply keeping the flow going so you can chain together attack after attack for bonus XP. Personally, I’ve tried getting through most scenarios as a silent pounder, loving the inverted takedowns from gargoyles. But unfortunately, you can’t play the game the whole way in that fashion, especially when boss fights pop up. Detective Mode really helps, which makes enemies appear as visible skeletal frames on the map, so you know exactly where everyone is. Reminds me warmly of the good times in Deus Ex: Human Revolution–see: not the boss fights–of sneaking through vents and using the augmentation that lets you look through walls for enemies.

So call me surprised. Call me stupid. I wish I had started playing Arkham Asylum a long time ago, but I’m pretty okay with seeing it now and enjoying a slower pace through the halls of this creepy psychiatric hospital. I might be late as frak to the party, but I’m still celebrating.

Wake up or just keep dreaming in Deep Sleep

I apologize for being late to the party–though I’m always late to the party or never invited to begin with, cue the industry standard wah wah waaaaah sound effect–but I’ve just discovered this Game Jolt website, which is full of free-to-play Flash and downloadable games, spanning all the genre categories we’ve come to embrace over the decades, such as action, adventure, platformer, and so on. Basically, it is stuffed with stuff, and I’m sure not everything is the height of excellence, but one will never know until they look. I already examined my fear of lakes with Lakeview Cabin, which I found to be really engaging despite the lack of a clear goal, and now I’m here to share with y’all the point-and-click spookiness that is Deep Sleep.

No surprise here, but the game is about lucid dreaming. That’s the rare phenomenon when a person becomes aware that they are dreaming, existing in a peculiar place between consciousness and not. I can’t really say I’ve experienced it myself, though I do occasionally have dreams where a bell or phone is making noise only to snap immediately out of it and realize my alarm clock is going off. Don’t think that’s the same thing, but the queer feeling taking over my body a second after all that goes down is still hard to shake. It’s not explicitly clear who you are playing as in scriptwelder’s adventure-horror game, but you have somehow gained consciousness within a nightmare and must find a way to wake up.

As a point-and-click adventure game, Deep Sleep works just fine. You move across various static screens and click on items to pick them up or receive a description. Some puzzles block your progress forward, but they’re designed logically, so you basically just have to think about how you would, in real life, open a very hot crank handle to a boiler. Oh, and there’s a wee bit of pixel hunting, as some screens are very dark before you get the flashlight, and even then you might miss some key detail nestled in the corner. I did finish the game without using all the items, so I’m not sure if I just missed the spot to use the piece of coal, golden statue, and hook or if they were superfluous to begin with.

As a horror game, Deep Sleep is pretty effective, though I found it more unnerving the entire way through than downright scary. The “you have to wake up” recording is exceptionally creepy, as is the monster design and unsafe feeling you get as it follows you from room to room. There’s some fantastic sound design, with locked doors still shaking me on the inside thanks to my recent journey through Silent 2‘s apartment complex hallways. The game has a grainy look to it, which actually works better than you might initially suspect. And like a dream, it is piecemeal and littered with gaps in its storytelling, as well as a dab of uncertain world-building, but that’s okay–that’s ultimately the point. It is meant to keep you guessing, a mix of the real and unreal.

It’s clear why Deep Sleep earned first place for the Casual Gameplay Design Competition #10. If the stars ever align, I hope to be able to show you, too. Evidently there’s already a sequel ready for me to play, called Deeper Sleep. I’ll probably check it out soon, or maybe I should hold out for Even More Deeper Sleep. Thank you, thank you–try the fish.

Not bluffing over Poker Night 2’s poor performance

Last month, I dipped my big toe into the videogaming poker pool with World Series of Poker: Full House Pro, which is basically a poker game captained by Avatars with some cosmetic-only items to earn to pretty up your table while you wait for other players to make their moves. It’s all right, though the camera is wonky and I found it quite easy to lose all my money in a single gulp, but maybe that latter part is my fault and not directly the game’s. I haven’t gone back since I first touched it because, well…poker. But also because it just wasn’t very exciting and actually a bit of a technical mess, freezing up on me a handful of times, enough to birth an audible groan.

Anyways, for October, PlayStation Plus was offering Poker Night 2 for free for subscribers, and I will literally snatch up anything on the DownloadStation 3 so long as the price on the store is crossed off and replaced by the word free and isn’t 145 GB big (sorry, Uncharted 3, not gonna happen–ever). I never touched the original Poker Night at the Inventory and–wait a second. Hold up, everybody. I just noticed something. Is the second game called Poker Night 2 or Poker Night at the Inventory 2? I am finding it written both ways rather consistently across the board on this strange, uncontrollable mass of data we call the Internet. Whatever, I’ll stick with the shorter title for posting purposes. Sometimes it really sucks being a copyeditor because you can’t unsee some things.

Poker Night 2 is both your standard poker game and not. Yes, you play a tournament of Texas Hold ‘Em (or Omaha) until you eliminate the other players or see yourself turning out empty pockets, and the rules remain the same. There are small blinds and betting and checking and folding and all that jazz. It’s who you play with that is strange and beautiful; these are not randomly created Avatars or even real players via online multiplayer. No, you are going head to head with Sam from the Sam & Max franchise, Brock Samson from The Venture Bros., Ash Williams from The Evil Dead franchise, and Claptrap from the Borderlands series. Oh, and Portal‘s GLaDOS takes a supporting role as the dealer and player insulter. It’s a bizarre group of guys (well, not counting Mad Moxxi as the bartender and GLaDOS), but that’s where the game gets interesting, watching them interact with each other. That feeling of just hanging out, shooting the shit, and playing some poker is nailed expertly here, and any time I got eliminated from a tournament, I selected to watch the rest play out instead of skipping to the next round, as I cannot get enough of Brock’s dry humor and Claptrap’s overzealous attitude.

But here’s a question: why is every product Telltale Games puts out glitchy as frak? Jurassic Park: The Game and The Walking Dead suffer from constant hitching and weird transitions from gameplay to loading screens. It doesn’t make sense to me, and you’d think a company like them, at this point down the line, would’ve figured it out. I mean, I’m no programmer, but from the outside looking in, Poker Night 2‘s engine does not look very taxing, and yet the game would constantly freeze for ten to fifteen seconds before a new conversation would start, which is long enough for me to consider powering down the PlayStation 3. This became a regular aspect of playing Telltale’s poker and now I’ve learned to live with it, but what a shame.

As you play and win, you can earn tokens, which can be spent on cosmetic items, like themed decks and table felts. I’ve unlocked all the Borderlands items so far, which not only change how things look, but also prompt some new dialogue from our gaggle of goofy guests. You can also buy drinks for everyone, which will loosen them up and help reveal their tells; I tried this, but I’m no better at telling when digital characters are lying–thanks, L.A. Noire–than I am at with real-life people. It’s definitely skill, one I will always lack.

But otherwise, Poker Night 2 is at least a more original poker game, standing heads above its competition, and I give Telltale credit for selecting zany as its main attribute and turning it up to 11. I’d certainly rather listen to these characters chit and chat than simply hear nothing at all or, perhaps worst, some generic, uninteresting music looping. I’ll probably play a few more rounds in hopes of unlocking some other themed items, but after that, there’s not much else to do here. I’ll walk away poorer than ever before, but rich with great stories.

The gloomiest night in Lakeview Cabin will wear on to a morning

In Lakeview Cabin, as a burly, orange mustached manly man, you can drink beer, get naked, and use an outhouse. You can also mow the lawn, chop some firewood, or hunt a deer for food. Docks on either side of a small, summer island let you take in the lake’s tranquility and contemplate skinny-dipping, which you ultimately can’t actually do, as hopping in the water just spits you right back out onto land. Boo to that. Birds and bugs provide a calm, predictable soundtrack one might expect to hear at such a place. Really, a faultless postcard-esque vacation spot–that is until the sun sets.

Controls are straightforward, mostly because this is a Flash game. You move around left to right with the arrow keys. Z picks up and drops items, while X uses an item or throws it if possible. From what I played and saw after about twenty or thirty minutes, there’s no story text or narration. You just do things until you can no longer do things, and sometimes you’ll die from walking into a bear trap twice, and other times a nightmarish monster–who I suspect is maybe our leading lumberjack’s dead wife or girlfriend–will hop out of the lake and finish the job. Then you press R to retry…or O to “summon her,” whatever that means. I was able to accomplish various tasks, like killing the deer after perfectly setting the bear trap down and then chasing the animal into it, but never defeating the monster. Oh well.

Lakeview Cabin begins more like a puzzle game than anything else. I spent my first day/night cycle just interacting with everything I could, seeing how I could use items I interacted worked with other items. Such as filling up a bucket with water or using the axe to cut a wire in half, exposing electric danger. I also frustratingly stared at items I couldn’t get, like a key and shotgun. Nothing is immediately clear, and only through experimentation and retrying will you progress, but that’s kind of the name of the genre. Do what you must to survive; do anything.

I find lake-based horror to be very effective. Maybe there was a moment from my childhood that I’m just not ready to deal with personally and publicly, but I find the isolation and restriction to be the most crippling aspect of the ordeal, the most traumatizing. Truth be told, I’d rather run from a monster in the woods or even a building, but on a small island you have nowhere to go but underwater. Over the years, I’ve read a good number of Stephen King books and short stories, but Bag of Bones has stuck with me the most, as it is based around an author with writer’s block sequestering himself at his vacation house on Dark Score Lake. The movie What Lies Beneath, which I saw in Las Vegas all by my lonesome as a young lad, has some very effective scenes set around a lakeside home. Also, you can see me writing about this fear of mine in “The Feet Eaters”, a short story  published back in…oh, January 2007. The page seems gone from the Aberrant Dreams website, so maybe I should get around to reprinting it on my own sooner than later. But yeah: horror and lakes. Much as I don’t want them to, they go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I think developer Roope Tamminen has made something special here and could totally see Lakeview Cabin being expanded a bit–perhaps add an inventory to allow for multiple items and maybe some text-based guidance here and there–and put on Steam in the future. That’d be cool, even if I probably never survive past the first night. It’s a funny horror for sure, and one that doesn’t say everything it’s doing, which makes it simultaneously unnerving. Laugh while you die, I guess.

Flipping and flopping in VVVVVV

I had to double-check, but I don’t think I’ve written about playing VVVVVV on the Nintendo 3DS yet. Sure, I excitedly put down some words when it was announced that it was coming to the little-handheld-that-could, but that doesn’t really do the thing justice, as that was more about me moving from playing a control-heavy puzzle platformer on my lackluster Mac’s mouse and keyboard to on something a bit more viable, like the Nintendo 3DS. Yes, I like jumping by pushing a button, not clicking a mouse; don’t sue me. Though, in VVVVVV‘s case, it’s more like flipping than jumping.

I’ll do y’all a solid and re-summarize the short, but sturdy story: Captain Viridian has to both save a dimension on the brink of collapse and find his spaceship’s missing crew members–all of whose names begin with the letter V. There’s six of ’em. See the connection to the game’s title yet? No? Well, just keep trying, and remember that it’s always good to have goals. Anyways, you save friends and the dimension by having Captain Viridian traverse around a somewhat Metroidvania-like map, flipping to the ceiling and across moving platforms and avoiding deadly spikes and getting lost. A retro-inspired chiptune soundtrack fuels the wind beneath Viridian’s feet as you explore space and the weird rooms and buildings filling in the gaps.

I’ve definitely gotten farther playing VVVVVV on the 3DS than the computer, and that’s to say that I’ve rescued a total of four out of the six lost crew members, as well as found three trinkets (out of twenty), which I’m not actively hunting down. Flipping gravity on its head is a simple button press, but there have been a few tough spots that have taken time and practice to nail perfectly, especially when the levels move and you can’t see what is ahead of you before you jump; thankfully, just like in Super Meat Boy, death is quick, and the music never stops, so you always feel like you’re progressing, even if you’re technically not. It definitely helps to keep you in the game, as a long death and reload animation would have been both cumbersome and off-putting. Instead, you just get up and try again.

However, I’ve reached my “stuck” point, and that is the levels called “Do As I Say” and “Not As I Do”, which involve Captain Viridian leading a found crew member to, hopefully, a teleporter that will bring them back to the ship’s control room. Unfortunately, any time Captain Viridian is standing on the ground, the crew member will walk over to him, and you have to lead them across moving platforms and over spikes–and it is no easy thang. I watched someone on YouTube do it in about 45 seconds, but I spent about ten minutes alone going at it, only to frustratingly give up and turn the 3DS off before I threw it in a blender and went to Smoothie Town.

As with my recent roadblock in Mutant Mudds, I’ll just put the game aside for a bit and come back to it later with a clean aura. Only two more crew members to save, and one is currently following me around. That has to mean I’m close to the end, right? Well, time will tell, unless I can’t get past this part, in which case I’ll just have to track down that person on YouTube, invite them over for dinner,  beg them to do it for me, and the shove them in a special barrel and dissolve them into goo so no one will ever know….oh, sorry about that last part. Been catching up on Breaking Bad, you see. I would never do that. But the problem is that I can’t go back and explore more of the map until this part is complete, so it really is this or never seeing any more of VVVVVV, which would be a bummer.

Survive three different planes of platforming in Mutant Mudds

Don’t let Mutant Mudds‘ colorful sprites, cute critters, and bouncy tunes fool you; this is one tough cookie. Well, technically it’s a platformer. And a serious test of one’s patience and ability to soldier on. Also, don’t be surprised to know there’s a story behind all that jumping, hovering, and shooting: Max, the blonde-haired, glasses-wearing main protagonist, is sitting in his living room playing videogames when a large meteor suddenly hits the planet. A TV news station then reports that there’s been a “Muddy” invasion. Equipped with only his water gun and jetpack, Max takes it upon himself to stop these Mutant Mudds…by collecting, um…y’know, end-of-level Water Sprites and gold diamonds. The stuff mutant piles of mud(d) hate the most.

Originally, I played a bit of Mutant Mudds on my laptop, using an Xbox 360 controller, as I find platformers extremely difficult with mouse and keyboard. I did not get very far though, maybe only earning 10 to 15 Water Sprites. But then, thanks to a swell promotion from Nintendo for purchasing both Fire Emblem: Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV with a set time period, I came into $30 worth of eShop money, just begging to be spent. I purchased Attack of the Friday Monsters! and Super Mario Bros. 2 some time back, but stopped there, unsure of what else to get. Then, without warning, I realized I needed two very difficult puzzle platformers for on-the-go gaming, and so I bought Mutant Mudds and VVVVVV; I’ll write about the latter later.

Anyways, I’ve actually done much better playing on the handheld than the PC, completing all the main levels in Mutant Mudds and collecting 20 Water Sprites and all the gold diamonds. The game actually uses 3D smartly, and I turned it on in several spots to help differentiate between the three planes of platforming. After completing the main-ish levels, I opened up four more levels dubbed “In Space No One Can Hear You Screaming In Frustration After Getting Hit By That Mud Monster That Spits.” At least that’s what I’ve been calling them. I’ve actually completed the first of the four new levels, but after many, many attempts, I just don’t see myself beating the rest. Timing is so essential, both in landing your jumps and moving fast to beat the ticking clock, and Max can only take three hits before its lights out; I thought level 4-4 was masochistically tough, but these space levels are that and then some.

While I avoid dying in space–and no, I’m not talking about Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity–there are a couple other ways to distract myself in Mutant Mudds. Within each level, there are two alternative exits. One takes you to a mini-level stylized after the Virtual Boy and another goes to a place paying love and homage to the Game Boy. There are no gold diamonds in these, but if you complete them you can still acquire a Water Sprite at the end. These are nifty, and I’ve done a few, but finding the alt exits in the main level seems to require a specific power-up equipped, and I refuse to use anything other than the extended hover item. That’s right. I refuse.

I might try the lingering, menacingly taunting three space levels a few more times here and there, but don’t expect a “just beat” haiku any time soon. Which stinks, as I’m pretty close to the end.

Lastly: vanishing platforms can burn in Hell.

Los Santos, a virtual playground for Grand Theft Auto V’s motley crew

Originally, I had no plans to get Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve not had a great track record with the franchise over the years, though I always enjoy the scope of the games, especially Vice City and Chinatown Wars. The mission structures and high level of difficulty have always worked against me, and thus I’ve never completed any GTA games. More or less, I play them for a bit, do what few missions I can, and then explore randomly, taking in the radio and sights and all the wee details that Rockstar throw in to make up one living, breathing city, the kind that can feel downright sentient in some spots.

But then, out of nowhere, I suddenly wanted to be in on all the GTA discussion spreading across the Interwebz, and so I went out and bought a copy for the PlayStation 3, which I think speaks oodles for how much I care about my Xbox 360 these days. You could also blame it on the mandatory 8 GB install one needed to perform to play the game on either system, and I have a ton of more free space on the PlayStation 3 than on my dwindling 360’s internal 20 GB, which is nearly full. Another bonus to getting the game on the PS3 is that I can fly some blimp, but I’ve not yet punched in the code to unlock it.

You could normally sum up a GTA game like so: the life of a criminal. Except in this case, it’s the lives of three criminals–Franklin, Michael, and Trevor. At the start of the game, you come to learn about Franklin and Michael a bit, eventually seeing how they become amiable with one another. Franklin has some gang history problems, and Michael is a retired bank-robber with a difficult family. They are difficult in that his wife, his daughter, and his son are all extremely shitty people. Michael also has a history with Trevor, a wild-eyed man that is the very definition of unstable. Eventually, through a series of crimes and plot twists, the three come together to…well, I still don’t actually know. Pull off more crimes? Bury the hatchet? Stick it to the Man? I guess I’ll find out in a few more missions, as I’m just before the second heist, which seems like a doozy, the sort that goes bad from the first breath. But we’ll see. I don’t expect Grand Theft Auto V‘s story to go anywhere astounding; I’m more interested if they resolve a lot of the sub-plots they keep hinting at (Michael’s troubles with his family, Franklin’s love not feeling the love, Trevor’s drug problems).

At only just over 25% completion, I actually think it is safe to say that Grand Theft Auto V might be the first GTA game I will ever complete. This is due to a better checkpoint system, as well as auto-aiming when firing weapons, which helps me immensely. The missions vary from chasing after someone in a vehicle, to sneaking through a building, to flying planes, to performing mundane tasks like towing cars and using a crane to lift cargo crates, and so on. Some missions are more fun than others. There’s also side missions, which venture into stranger territory, as well as random events. You can totally just not do anything specifically, too, and I’ve speak some good time just walking around, looking at graffiti and store signs and so on. Golf, tennis, barber shops, TV, movies, yoga, the Internet, strip clubs–there are a lot of non-mission distractions to spice up your mindless exploring. The heists are neat as a concept, but from the sound of it, there aren’t many in the game, which is a shame, as positioning everyone and setting up the perfect plan is surprisingly enjoyable.

At some point, I will also talk about Grand Theft Auto V and how it portrays women, but today is not the day.

And as for Grand Theft Auto Online, well…there really isn’t much to say. For two days now, I’ve tried connecting and getting online to play, but I kept hitting black screens of death or endless loading animations that eventually just give up and dump me back into the story mode. More frustrating than that is that I can’t even get the game to save the character I create for online play, so I’ve had to recreate her–yes, I said her–each time, and each time I just put less and less care into the matter. Pretty sure by the time I do get to create a character and have it save, I’ll just hit the “randomize” button and go with whatever first pops up. Truthfully, I doubt I’ll do much with the multiplayer stuff, but I am curious to see how it plays out; I can get into my own fun in the main game just fine, thank you very much.

UPDATE: I was able to get online last night, and it looks like the game saved the second character I created, which is a woman named Paula with fiery red hair and no reservation about tossing up the birds. I did the first mission, which was a car race against Lamar and no other players. I beat Lamar, got a bunch of experience for things like RP and JP, ranked up, and then found myself sitting on a loading screen that never went away. My only option after five or six minutes was to quit the game entirely and reload into story mode. I’ve not tried hopping back online since though.