Bang! Splash! Kaboom! Boom!

Despite the bulk of activities in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, I can easily name my favorite quests. And that’s pretty bold of me, considering I’ve not yet completed the game and am only around DNA Sequence 5, meaning I’ve not experienced everything there is to experience just yet. I mean, who knows…maybe Ezio is tasked with assassinating some distant relative of Julius Caesar. That’d be cool. Et tu, Brute? But it matters not! For Leonardo da Vinci is in da house!

That’s right. The da Vinci, that very dude that painted Mona Lisa and invented things like the hang glider and thought about many-a-things and inspired Dan Brown to write a really hokey novel. I guess he was also in Assassin’s Creed II, but I skipped that game and went right on to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Right now, the Borgia soldiers are forcing da Vinci to create war machines for them, and the famed Florentine painter seeks out Ezio’s help in destroying these devices. Glad to be of service!

Bang! (20G): Destroy the Machine Gun.

Splash! (20G): Destroy the Naval Cannon.

Kaboom! (20G): Destroy the Tank.

Boom! (20G): Destroy the Bomber.

I will, for the sake of Grinding Down‘s dear readers, not reveal too much about each mission da Vinci gives to Ezio to destroy one of his inventions, but man-oh-man-oh-man. They are fun. I think part of the reason they’re so enjoyable is because you’re taken away to a new location, stripped of your recruited assassins’ help, and forced to really think about how you move about the land. For each mission, being spotted by a guard is an instant desynch. This taught me how to assassinate while hanging from a ledge more, as well as the potent power of smoke bombs and the crossbow. On main storyline missions, I’d either rush in for the kill or just summon an arrow storm and sit back to watch all the mayhem. Each da Vinci mission is threefold: (1) find the war machine’s blueprints without being detected, (2) locate the war machine, and (3) use said war machine against its makers to show them who is boss. The last part of each mission is very cinematic, especially the one for destroying the machine gun. Pew pew pew! Sorry, horsies!

Ezio’s reward, besides bringing the Borgia movement down a notch, for destroying all of da Vinci’s war machines is another invention from the man of the hour: a parachute. I’ve yet to try it out, but I imagine it’ll be great for silent, death-from-above assassinations. However, I’m sad that there’s no more da Vinci missions left. Guess it’s back to burning Borgia towers and unearthing treasures for Ezio…

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and the honeydew list

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is a perfect game for me. It allows me to do a bajillion things at once…or nothing at all. And along the way, I’m rewarded profusely, no matter which path I take. Progression is always building, and this progression is never lost as the game auto-saves like a nervous cokehead stuck fortuitously inside police headquarters. I love it. I can play it in quick chunks of 15 minutes or for hours at length.

Just like in The Saboteur, the overworld map is key to getting things done. Instead of just being bloated with countless white dots, Ezio has to stare at…countless icons. All of them different, all of them something to see, to do, to stab. Here’s just a small taste of everything I can do at this point in the game (DNA sequence 3):

• Kill Borgia captains
• Burn Borgia towers to the ground
• Collect Borgia flags
• Recruit assassins to the brotherhood
• Train assassins by sending them on missions across Europe or having them take out Borgia soldiers
• Buy famous locations
• Do mini quests for arts merchants, tailors, and weapons dealers to unlock special items
• Collect feathers
• Remove posters to lower one’s notoriety
• Take on assassin contracts
• Do sidequest missions for locals
• Start memory sequences to continue Ezio/Desmond’s story
• Read emails
• Replay memories for fuller synchronizations
• Purchase stores to upgrade Rome
• Buy paintings to fill out Ezio’s hideout
• Hire prostitutes, thieves, or mercanaries to help with missions
• Find and search the numerous hidden tombs of Romulus
• Solve Subject 16’s puzzles
• Collect from numerous treasure chests hidden throughout
• Destroy Leonardo’s creations
• Climb buildings and complete viewpoint synchs
• Train and earn medals via virtual reality sessions

Honestly, I’m sure that’s not everything. And I’ve excluded online multiplayer from the list. Seriously…this game gives you a run for your money, especially considering that I got it on sale for $39.99. And as I mentioned before, you can do all the above, a few things, or none at all. Sometimes I just like to climb buildings and look out at the city; other times, I enjoy riding horseback through the countryside. On occasion, I will simply sit and people-watch. Everyone everywhere is fascinating. The game can be, all at once, the most peaceful and violent experience presented, and I can’t wait to chip away it more and more.

Nice to meet you, 20,000 Gamerscore

So, I used to have this little widget thing over in my sidebar that kept track of my Achievements and recently played games. It was a nice thing to have, a quick reminder of where I sat Gamerscore-wise. However, I guess Microsoft recently updated its system, changing the way players’ gamercards looked, and all the code in my widget got thrown for a wild ride. In short, it ended up looking like this hot mess:

Don’t y’all just love my new hair color? Matches my eyes, I’m told.

Anyways, this wasn’t very upsetting, and I figured it would either fix itself in due time or I’d go looking for a new widget. No rush, no rush at all. Except, suddenly, without warning, there was a great need to make sure the world could see my Gamerscore! Great need indeed.

Last night, while playing some Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, I noticed that I was sitting comfy at 19,990 Gamerscore, ten points off from a perfectly pretty whole number. Well, looks like I had a new mission to accomplish then, one not involving finding treasure or assassinating bad dudes or even burning Borgia towers.

Scanning the list of still-locked Achievements in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, I found only two worth 10 Gamerscore points exactly. One involved using a parachute, which I did not have yet, and the other required me to win some hand-to-hand fights. I knew exactly where that took place, headed over via the lovely fast-traveling tunnel entrances, fought my way through five easy rounds, and unlocked the following with little challenge:

The Gloves Come Off (10G): Win the highest bet at the Fights.

Mmm. So, math time! 19,990 plus 10 equals…uh…hmm. Hold on. Let me get some scratch paper. Let’s see. Carry the…one, and times everything by the denominator. Factor in the ratio of pi versus the radius. Wait, wait. No, I got it! It’s 20,000 Gamerscore! Look, look, thanks to the widget brainiacs over at mygamercard.net:

Sure, pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but I have fun paying attention to it all. In fact, if any of my dear readers will recall, I was also able to perfectly achieve 10,000 Gamerscore when the time came near. Can’t wait for 30,000 Gamerscore to show up next!

Nintendo 3DS is now priced, dated, and overconfident

Long have we all wanted to know, and now that the day has come, I wish I could un-know all the details about the forthcoming Nintendo 3DS. See, before I learned that Nintendo’s newest piece of future tech was releasing on March 27, 2011 for a disgustingly gross $249.99, I was curious about the system. Genuinely interested in seeing how the glasses-free 3D worked, and whether any of the games were worth pursuing, in 3D, in 2D, in 1D. And now…not so much.

Alas, it comes down to price. No surprise there, as I’m always conscious about spending money and getting what money is worth. Two hundred and fifty bucks is about seventy-five to fifty bucks too much. I was very shocked to see a portable handheld gaming device priced higher than home-based consoles. The new wireless Xbox 360 is, I think, only $199.99 right now. I guess the 3D gimmick was enough to rack on some more dollar signs than needed. Also, analysts are suggesting that 3DS games could retail for $40 to $50. That’s sickening. Heart-breaking. I already feel grumbly enough buying a new Nintendo DS game for $35, believing that to actually be too much.

For the curious, here’s a list of confirmed launch titles:

• Pilotwings Resort
• Nintendogs + Cats
• Steel Driver
• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked
• Super Street Fighter 4 3D Edition
• Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
• Madden NFL Football
• The Sims 3
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D
• Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars
• Ridge Racer 3D
• Dual Pen Sports
• Super Monkey Ball 3D
• Thor: God of Thunder
• Crush 3D
• Bust-a-Move Universe
• Samurai Warriors: Chronicles
• Dead or Alive Dimensions
• Asphalt 3D
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Shadow Wars
• Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell 3D
• Rayman 3D
• Rabbids Travel in Time

Yowza. A lot of pre-existing games with the 3D tacked on the end. Where’s Kid Icarus or that Zelda remake? Nothing there really shouts “launch title” or “killer first-party game,” demanding that this hardware being a must purchase. Least not for me. Maybe the world is full of closet Nintendogs & Cats fanatics, and all of them will buy out every Nintendo 3DS in every store in every state, starting riots and chaos and the end of the world sooner than predicted. We’ll find out in only a matter of weeks, and I’ll be watching very cautiously. I do hope to eat my own words.

The road goes ever on, but only if you have a GameCube memory card

Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
Blunt the knives and bend the forks!
That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates –
Smash the bottles and burn the corks!

Bilbo Baggins also most definitely hates the entire population of Hobbiton. As he should. They’re nothing but a bunch of silly fetch quest givers, and shame on them for that. I mean, don’t they have better things to worry about? Like fourth breakfast or picking lice out of their hairy feet? Hogwash, I say. But I’m getting ahead of myself, even though, truthfully, I don’t get very far. You’ll see what that means in just a moment.

Tara and I were able to borrow an old GameCube controller from her brother so that we could test out the waters on Animal Crossing, LEGO Star Wars II, and The Hobbit. I literally looked everywhere on the Nintendo Wii to figure out where to plug this blasted thing in; the slots were hidden under a flap, next to another hidden flap; then, after starting the Wii up, I sat there pressing A on the GameCube controller like some kind of human reject, not realizing that we still needed to use a Wii controller to get to the main menu screen. Yup, smells like dragon dung already. Two very awkward controllers sat on my lap. Why can the Wii use a controller to play an earlier console’s games, but not allow it to function as a menu selecting tool? Is the science really that hard? Ugh.

Anyways, The Hobbit. It’s the prelude to The Lord of the Rings, and I know it in and out, up and down, left and right, troll and orc, wolve and eagle, and so on. I’m mostly playing it to see how they handle the story, which is its most important aspect. The 2003 title hits the high and low end in the graphics department. In-game cutscenes and graphics are horrific and bland, with Bilbo’s mouth moving as if his jaw is ready to fall off any minute. Yet, there’s these storytelling sequences that use hand-drawn art and are voiced over by a decent Gandalf, which are surprisingly potent. I almost want to just watch them all in chronological order and call it the movie we’ve all been waiting for. Sorry, Rankin/Bass.

Alas, I did not play much of The Hobbit. I could not. Only got through Bilbo’s dream sequence and then wandered around Hobbiton for a bit, accepting stupid quests from stupid hobbity neighbors. Seriously, Hobbiton natives. Bilbo is not your bitch. That should be on a t-shirt. What was holding me back, you ask? It’s not like the difficulty is cranked up higher than Ciroth Ungol on a day when every orc has off. Memory, dear readers. Memory held me back. To be more specific, not having a GameCube memory card. Again, the Nintendo Wii fails to impress me as a piece of future tech in that it also can’t save data from GameCube games to its own, built-in harddrive. The dragon dung pile gets smellier.

Saving one’s progress is very important to me. Even if it’s only 30 minutes worth, or 15 minutes worth, or even five minutes worth. I want that experience locked in so I don’t have to repeat myself. And so I knew that I needed to stop sooner than later in The Hobbit, not wanting to get too far, to lose too much.

I visited the local GameStop during my lunchbreak to see if they sold any GameCube memory cards. Nothing was visible out on the floor, and they only had one guy working behind the counter. He was pretty busy with a line of middle-aged women, one asking about something called Dead Spaced Tools. Seriously, that’s what she asked for. Dead Space 2 much? So I’ll try again tomorrow. Once I do get hold of this legendary GameCube memory card, it’s go time for Bilbo and his gaggle of dwarves. Also, I can’t help but feel like this would make for an interesting review over at The First Hour. Do I even need to call dibs?

Hide in hay, sit on bench, get stabbed in the back

…rinse and repeat!

That’s how my three sessions with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s multiplayer went last night, with me striking down the occasional foe and running across rooftops to freedom (and points for escaping!). I guess I did somewhat decent as I managed to progress from a weak level 1 Templar to a…still weak level 2 Templar. Only now I unlocked an ability called “disguise,” which I haven’t gotten to try out just yet. I’m assuming I get to change outfits at whim or something to that effect. Could help me on my latest quest: To Not Get Stabbed in the Back Anymore.

All the complaints about Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood‘s matchmaking prowess ring true. It takes a long time to get enough players to join up, and even when it does look like you’ve got 8/8 ready to play, you still have to wait. However, once you’re in a match, it’s pretty clear it’s worth it. This sort of multiplayer experience doesn’t come along a lot, and I absolutely love the idea of hiding in plain sight. Pretending to be part of a crowd, chatting with a merchant, taking a break on a bench–these are actual strategies to surviving. Running up a ladder is a sure-fire way to get noticed, get killed. I’m still not good at figuring out who my targets are, and the assassinate button likes to, uh, sometimes not work. Or maybe I’m not supposed to stab other Templars when they are stabbing their targets. Don’t really know. But yeah, it’s a fun time once you get a good group of people that like to click “rematch” right away.

Sadly, I’ll probably never get any of the multiplayer Achievements. Or, if I do, it’ll be just one. Like killing a target while hiding in a pile of hay. That’s probably the easiest of the bunch. The rest? Very specific, very skill-heavy. Oh well. Sometimes it’s not always about Achievements. Guess I will just do my best to unlock everything in the single player mode, which, by the way, is going good. I am, however, feeling extremely overwhelmed; the map is getting more and more littered with icons and things to see, and Etzio (i.e., me) just kind of wants to run around, climb buildings, and fill his secret hideout with awesome, authentic paintings. Mmm artwork…

Chez Cthulhu will drive you mad from a good time

Over the years, my gaming group has occasionally branched out from the Steve Jackson Games staple of Munchkin (and its bajillion incarnations). We’ve tried things like Elixir and Descent and the ever-so-slow Settlers of Catan, but probably my second favorite party board game is another product from SJG called Chez Geek, and not just cause everyone in my group thinks I look like the game’s main slacker:

Um…no. I only have one tattoo.

Basically, Chez Geek is about an apartment of roommates all striving for one thing, and one thing only: to reach their Slack goal. Players are given Job cards to represent how much Income and Free Time they have for activities like shopping, watching TV, or having loud nookie, and other cards help towards achieving one’s Slack goal via clear-cut means. It’s every roommate for themselves, and backstabbery is plentiful. All in all, it’s frantic, frenetic, funny, and fun.

So I was doubly excited when Chez Cthulhu came out! I mean, it’s the gameplay of Chez Geek mixed with the dark craziness of the Lovecraft mythos. I was drooling tentacles and preparing for a life of servitude before I knew it!

There is, however, a new gameplay mechanic introduced into Chez Cthulhu, and alas, it’s the one that hurt the group’s enjoyment the most: Madness. Sure, the High Priest to the Great Old Ones and madness go hand in hand, but for this board game it looks a lot more like befuddlement. See, some cards give players Madness tokens, which count against their Slack goal.  If you get enough Madness tokens you can go Stark Raving Mad, and then any further tokens count for your Slack goal. The confusion comes from the time between one Madness token and, say, eight Madness tokens. We were running out of markers and a little unsure of how to count everything, but wine and a whole lot of beercheese fondue could also be to blame for that. I’ve yet to win using the Madness strategy, but then again…I’ve yet to win at all. I take more pleasure in reading the flavor text, finding all the tiny details in John Kovalic’s drawings, and watching as cards demonically interact with each other.

It’s a good time, really; just don’t get mad at all the Madness.

Check out some sample cards from Chez Cthulhu below:

Scared for your sanity? Go on over to the game’s main website for more then: http://www.sjgames.com/chezcthulhu/

Stop worrying and love the Giant Bomb

I understand the point for most people creating a blog is to attract readers to their blog, to keep these readers, build an army, gain fame and love and lots of cash-money, to maybe, just maybe get videogame companies to send over free review copies (HINT! HINT!), and then retire early, and that linking to a much cooler videogame website counteracts all of this. But still. I gotta do it.

The website is called Giant Bomb, and I only really discovered it a few weeks ago. Truthfully, I’ve been aware of it for some time now, seeing many on Twitter linking to it. It’s from former GameSpot editors Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis in collaboration with Whiskey Media. Actually, calling it a videogame website is a bit misleading; it’s a videogame hub, operating as a wiki first and a traditional website second. It strives to be fun rather than all about business, and they’ve succeeded hands-down. Perusing Giant Bomb is fun. Minigame-like fun, with an addicting nature covering everything you click on. Videogames have Achievements, and Giant Bomb has Quests. These are presented with vague clues, and then you’re off to search for, say, the five locations most “improved” by the Fallout franchise. A lot of these Quests really test your videogame knowledge, and sure, a lot of answers can be Googled, but most can’t. Thankfully, the Quests forum is brimming with more hints and clues, and no simple spoilers, making each completed Quest feeling like a piece of hard work well earned.

But yeah. There’s lots to do. One’s profile can have its own blog, lists, forums, images, and so on. Even the site’s wiki entries can be edited by users to further better the world. In fact, I did one edit already, changing “buddys” to “buddies.” Yes, I’m an editor, and yes, it shows in everything I do. However, the Quests are what keeps me coming back!

If you’re reading this and also a Giant Bomb member, please help me inch closer to completing the Viva la Revolucion! Quest by following me: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/pabba/

No service for you!

EA is shutting down online servers for its older and less popular games, such as The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II, Sims Carnival, and a great number of sports titles for various systems. The full list and killswitch dates can be found over at Giant Bomb.

I don’t own or play any of these games; this all-consuming shutdown does not affect me.

And yet it does.

I’ve always been a single-player game kind of fella. Online gaming is something that I never thought I’d get into, and so I didn’t. A few times during college, after working out a lot of firewall kinks, I would play some Command & Conquer: Red Alert late at night with my best friend a few states away, but other than that…didn’t ever see the point. I also never had a gaming PC so-to-say or any consoles that thrived on online gaming, such as an Xbox at that time. Just a PlayStation 2, and I think you needed a special degree to get that hooked up to the Interwebz. There were, of course, a few games I would’ve loved to try playing online, namely Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Diablo II, but the stars were not meant to align.

So, how does server shutdowns for games I don’t even play affect me? It only makes me more bitter and cautious towards online gaming. I want games to last forever, and nowadays there’s a heavy focus on social gaming (hello, Facebook!)–and without actual people, there’s nothing to play. That kind of perspective is dangerous and insulting, especially for hardened RPG fanatics that have spent countless hours alone grinding characters to perfection. In fact, some games’ multiplayer trumps single-player campaigns in terms of length and content and love. Boo to that. I’ve dabbled in GTA IV‘s online activity and found it bland and annoying; so far, the only current online experience I’ve had that was pretty successful was in Borderlands. I purposely steer clear of online, multiplayer-heavy games, and with the constant threat of server shutdown, it seems, to me, a pointless thing to invest in.

Goodbye, EA Sports FIFA Manager 10. I hardly knew ya.

If Radiant Historia and Radiata Stories had a baby, it’d be called Radiatant Histories

History lesson time!

Atlus made Radiant Historia, which comes out in February 2011 and looks to be a delicious new addition to my Nintendo DS RPG collection. A few members from tri-Ace also worked on it. Tri-Ace made Radiata Stories, a PlayStation 2 RPG that never got a ton of love, but enough love to be remembered. And thus confused over now that a similarly titled game is coming out. How do I know this? Well, here’s two search terms that constantly brought readers to Grinding Down over the last week or so:

• radiata historia
• radiant stories

If you’ve been paying attention so far, you’ll know that both of those titles are incorrect and do not exist. Good thing Radiant Historia and Radiata Stories aren’t releasing at the same time; I can only imagine the looks of disappointment on young gamers’ faces as their parents purchase the wrong title for them, and then they’re stuck roleplaying the life of one snippy Jack Russell.

Either way, there better be a third game called Radiatant Histories that’s not even related to the first two games. If not, the world is missing out on a golden opportunity to actually infect consumers with small doses of dementia.

Sorry, I know…words are confusing. It’s a problem. Best of luck searching for the correct game title!