2015 Game Review Haiku, #7 – Coma

Don’t ring the doorbell
Some comas are eternal
The bird’s a liar

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From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #6 – Barely Floating

Pirates want ransom
Negotiations go wrong
Old man must point, click

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From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #3 – A Boney Night

Here come the zombies
Undra knows a spell or two
Use thoughts on items

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From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.

Meowgical Tower covers some fur-miliar adventuring ground

I have to imagine that, for anyone new to reading Grinding Down, this blog is a bit all over the map. In the past few posts alone, I’ve talked about an old PlayStation 1 car combat-limned racer, a game all things DLC, my latest progress on replaying Suikoden II, finally getting around to Botanicula, with a few additional posts about tiny, indie, very far off the radar titles that are more about exploration than gameplay mechanics. In many ways, I’m kind of a cat; I move about the gaming industry at my own pace and course, taking great interest in various things along the way while ignoring others. Sometimes it’s a stuffed mouse to chase, and other times it’s a piece of food I carried over by the couch and forgot to previously eat. This analogy got weird.

Which brings us to Meowgical Tower, created by Neon Deity Games for GameBoy Jam 3, a happening that happened back in August 2014. The rules for the jam were simple though I couldn’t even make a sandwich out of these guidelines, but then again I’m no coder:

1. The aim of GBJam is to create a GameBoy themed game
2. All assets must be created during the duration of the Jam
3. Keep in the original GameBoy screen resolution of 160px x 144px
4. Use only 4 colors in your game

I think Meowgical Tower covers all those requirements. It stars Catte, an intrepid, inquisitive cat. While out adventuring one evening, Catte must take shelter inside a rather ominous tower to avoid getting wet from a sudden rainstorm. Unfortunately, this tower holds secrets, as well as danger, behind every door.

You use the arrow keys to move in four directions, the X key to inspect or advance text, Z to attack or meow if you are weaponless, and Space to paws…er, pause the game. Pretty simple stuff, and you’ll explore rooms that feel ripped right from a Legend of Zelda dungeon of old. What I found neat is that the key or levers you pick up act like weapons, but only until you use them; then it’s back to being a meowy, defenseless kitty cat.

All this exploration eventually leads to a single, three-step final boss fight. With who, you ask? The Labradoom Deceiver, naturally, which is accompanied by an amusing Borderlands style title card. There’s a pattern to learn with this boss, and it took me a few tries before I realized I had to be patient with my attacks, because trying to rush him for damage after gaining a key/lever meant instant death for the bold, brave Catte. After you take down the Labradoom Deceiver, you get a short cutscene that seems to say this was all done for…well, I’ll let you decide on that.

My two biggest gripes for Meowgical Tower are that you can’t attack diagonally, but your enemies can, which means you have to position yourself just right to make contact. Also, to enter a door, you really have to go at it square-on, otherwise you’ll hit its doorframe and get locked in the “push” animation, often taking damage from an enemy following up behind Catte. Knowing those two critiques is important when viewing my final statistics:

Deaths: 9
Game Time: 21:48

Right. This is just one of many, many entries for GameBoy Jam 3. You can play it online so long as you have Unity installed, for zero dollars. I’d like to check out some other creations from the jam, but with around 240 in total out there, it just might not ever happen. After all, I am a cat, and cats do what cats wanna do; you can’t change their minds.

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.

Disney Magical World is now closed for sticker business

Last night, which I’ll dub Fantasy Life‘s Eve, I finally got the last 100th sticker in Disney Magical World, the one that asks you to acquire a bajillion different pairs of shoes. Yes, this sticker was more difficult to unlock than crafting a secret wand. Go figs. Anyways, there’s still plenty of items to find, recipes to make, parties to throw, crops to harvest, and so on, but I feel fine putting Disney Magical World aside now, accomplishing all the main tasks the game throws at you. I still have a lot to say about this game, though some of it I can’t speak about just yet, as it is still too raw to peel back and examine.

To be honest, I gave up on trying to dungeon grind for the rarer ingredients to make new kicks and turned to a less-than-traditional method to get three more stinky pairs of shoes for my avatar to wear. Evidently, if you use the Spotpass functionality, you can visit other players’ cafés, giving them a “Nice!” if you dig their design work. Giving out one nice earns you an entire new outfit, with shoes to boot (pun intended). Three nices gets you another outfit, and then, at last, five nices nets you a third. And so, instead of spending over an hour grinding away in dungeons for maybe even just the chance to get a Mystic Thread or rare gemstone, I simply visited a bunch of cafés and got what I needed in under ten minutes. Feel free to also hop over to my café, which is called The Drinkpad, and give me a nice as well.

There–I did it. Just popped the cartridge out of my Nintendo 3DS and returned it to its case on my shelf. Well, no, it’s actually in a shoebox on top of my dresser, but it sounds way more normal to say shelf despite me now revealing my strange organizational skills. Grrr. That said, I hesitated for a moment and considered at least putting the cartridge back in my travel case, but really…I could probably play this game off and on for a good long while, much to the dismay of other bereft 3DS/DS titles I’ve barely scraped the surface on, such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. It’s better if Disney Magical World is out of sight.

And here’s some of my final stats (for now) for the myriad collectibles:

• 69/148 outfits
• 17/23 wands
• 169/303 furniture
• 82/126 food
• 20/21 fish
• 68/70 farming
• 212/300 cards collected

Oh man, there are SO MANY outfits to create in this game, and I barely saw half of them. Boo to that. Dressing up is one of my favorite things to do in games, whether it is Grand Theft Auto V or Dragon Quest IX, just give me fun clothes to mix and match. I have no idea what single fish I missed pulling out of the pond, but one can only fish for so long, as the fishing minigame is perfunctory, not amazingly engaging. Lastly, those cards…mmm, probably my favorite collectible to gather in Disney Magical World. Some are concept art-style drawings of the expected cast members, but others are old-timey posters, like of Steamboat Willy and such. I don’t know. I could look at them for days.

Lastly, look at the insane amount of hours I’ve logged in this thing since getting it way back in April:

Clearly, I wouldn’t play a game I didn’t enjoy for such a length, even if it has its dry spell sections, where you are just waiting for crops to grow and people to eat in your café. Again, there’s more to this story than I’m ready to reveal, but this is the only game currently on the 3DS that even comes close to matching logged hours with Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I’m looking forward to discovering if Fantasy Life can overtake that coveted spot, but alas I probably won’t get to play until after Extra Life this weekend.

2014 Game Completed Comics, #21 – Thomas Was Alone

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Every videogame that I complete in 2014 will now get its very own wee comic here on Grinding Down. It’s about time I fused my art with my unprofessional games journalism. I can’t guarantee that these comics will be funny or even attempt to be funny. Or look the same from one to another. Some might even aim for thoughtfulness. Comics are a versatile form, so expect the unexpected.

2014 Game Completed Comics, #2 – Disposabot

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Every videogame that I complete in 2014 will now get its very own wee comic here on Grinding Down. It’s about time I fused my art with my unprofessional games journalism. I can’t guarantee that these comics will be funny or even attempt to be funny. Or look the same from one to another. Some might even aim for thoughtfulness. Comics are a versatile form, so expect the unexpected.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #62 – Gears of War

Big, burly bro-men
Out to stop the Locust Horde
Take cover, fire

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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.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #61 – Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

The Cooper fam book
In peril, time-hop to fix
Collect those bottles

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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.