Battling the darkness with my Nintendo DS

Last night, after I got home from a grueling day, the power went out for around 30 minutes. The storm was mostly to blame. I listened to the rain for a bit, then strummed a few songs on the guitar, and then, magically, found my Nintendo DS in the darkness. I was actually trying to find my cell phone, but this worked out much better. After safely making it to my bed, I passed the next 20 minutes or so blissfully, doing puzzle after puzzle after puzzle in Picross 3D. That game is so simple yet at the same time equally hard and rewarding. Perfect for blackouts.

They should add this feature as a bullet point though on the Nintendo 3DS or whatever: Perfect for blackouts!

In fact, I was so immersed in my block-breaking that when the power did flicker back on, I was kind of annoyed. The lights made Picross 3D less colorful, and did not help make the 0s pop as well as before. And somehow, the music seemed lower. I’m sure it’s all in my head, but there really was something special about cozying up in the darkness with the Nintendo DS to really let the system shine.

For those curious, I’ve completed over 175 puzzes in Picross 3D at the moment, as well as downloaded like 30 more thanks to WiFi wizardry. I really can’t stress this enough, but this $20 game is going a long way.

Gift cards, and Microsoft Points, and bears! Oh, my!

I have a love/hate relationship with gift cards. Many people probably find them to be the greatest gift ever in that they can now go out and buy anything. I have the exact opposite problem; with a gift card, I can now go out and buy anything. That anything, in my mind, is really anything, an extremely broad selection that comprises books, movies, games, art supplies, clothes, food, and so on.

That said, I’ve had an Amazon gift card sitting in my desk drawer since last Christmas. You know, that holiday from six months yonder. Yeah, I’m just not good at spending those things, and I guess I was waiting for something to really grab my attention, but it hasn’t yet. So I instead used it to–and here comes the irony–to buy 1600 Microsoft Points (MSP) for Xbox Live. Yes, I used a gift card to essentially buy another gift card. Do you dare ask why?

Well, there’s a special deal going on this week to get Peggle at 50% off, meaning 400 Microsoft Points. This deal is only good for Gold members, which I just currently happen to be. I’ve always been interested in the colorful, bubbly addictive puzzle since I played the trial version, and the deal was too good to pass up.

But now I have a problem. I have 1200 MSP remaining, and just like I had trouble spending my Amazon gift card, I’m struggling to decide what to do with them. I could get three more 400 MSP games, or an 800 MSP and a 400 MSP combo, or I could buy some add-ons to games already in my collection (i.e., Borderlands, GTA IV, Mass Effect). I’m not really interested in wasting the points on TV shows, Avatar items, or silly things like themes and gamerpics. So, any ideas? I heard Braid is pretty good, currently priced at 800 MSP. I guess I could ultimately hold on to them and wait for something else to come out (will LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 have DLC? I doubt it), but then I’m just doing what I’ve always done with these things: procrastinating.

One thing I know is that I most certainly will not be buying the Midnight Show DLC for The Saboteur despite how much fun I’m having with the game. The comment at the end of The First Hour‘s review of the game seals the deal; I’m not playing The Saboteur for the nudity, I’m playing it to blow up Nazis and sabotage the bleep out of enemy headquarters.

But yeah. I need ideas for Xbox Live games. Remember, I have 1200 to spend. Please don’t suggest anything that is solely multiplayer as who knows how long I will keep my Gold account locked in. Thanks in advance! Phooey on you in advance too if you suggest nothing.

Smoking cigs and killing Nazis

The Saboteur is far from perfect. Far far far far far. That’s five fars for those not counting. It is littered with glitches and bad control schemes, suffers from unclear mission objectives at times, and fails graphically once France starts slipping back into color. But I can put that all aside because–and this is important here–the game is a lot of fun. And it’s more forgiving than Grand Theft Auto IV ever tried to be.

So yeah, here’s the summary so far. You’re Sean Devlin, an Irishman now living in Paris, France, who gets sucked into a plot to take down some Nazis. Revenge is the fire in his blood, and along the way he’ll meet a cultured cast of characters, as well as strengthen the resistance of the people to the Nazi regime. I’m not too far into the main missions yet so that’s kind of all I know at this point. Maybe he’ll meet Brad Pitt…I mean Lt. Aldo Raine at some point. No one can predict the future.

The main missions so far are of the usual open-world ilk. There’s one where you follow another car, but don’t get too close to it. There’s another that charges you with escorting a lady friend around. There’s one that puts you into the sniper role, handing out death from high above. A lot of the missions are just set before you with a generic objective: kill the Nazis, for instance. It’s up to you to figure out how to make the end happen. You can either be sneaky and go around the enemy base or charge right in, guns a-blazing. I don’t recommend the latter. While Sean can certainly handle guns and grenades and setting off timebombs, he’s a much stronger assassin. It might take an extra ten minutes or so, but sometimes it is safer to walk the long and slow road, creeping by, silencing those that need it.

But the best thing about The Saboteur, for me at least, is the ambient freeplay missions. These show up on your map as tiny white dots, indicating that something there is important. It might be a Nazi sniper tower you have to destroy or a lookout point (a la Assassin’s Creed) or even just a perfectly placed spot to do a wicked car jump. Either way, there are hundreds of these. Maybe thousands. Remember, I can’t count higher than five. Just check this image out, which is only a tiny part of the world map:

Yeaaaaaaaah. But what is so nice about this is that it caters to my completionist OCD and allows me to just pop into the game for thirty minutes, take out a few ambient freeplay missions, save, and shut down for the night, fully knowing that I at least accomplished something. That I whittled the number of white dots down a sliver.

There’s always something to do in The Saboteur. Going after perks, ambient freeplay missions, collecting cars, playing the game’s main missions, just exploring, smoking cigs, saving citizens. It kind of goes on and on.

That said, Sean, just like Niko, is hard to like. He curses a little too much and a little too dramatically; there was one comment he made about eating a nun’s arse. I don’t know. I cringed? Yes, I cringed. Then again, he’s easy to like because he kills Nazis. And we all dream about going back in time and doing that ourselves. Well, maybe I do. Can’t speak for you, silent reader.

But all in all, a fun game. Maybe even an underappreciated one. Will come back to that claim once I’m further through it.

The guessing game within Picross 3D

There’s not actually a “guessing minigame” in Picross 3D, but this is rather just something I do as I play along. It’s silly fun, and more or less leads to wrong-if-amusing results, but it’s a compulsion, I guess, sort of like when people yell out answers to TV shows like Wheel of Fortune and Deal or No Deal. They want to be right, and they want to hear themselves being right before the point is proven (or not).

Basically, once you successfully complete a puzzle, you’re shown the basic blocky outline of the item before color and details are added, as well as the name of what it is below. During this time, a mere three seconds, I like to guess as to what it is that I just created. I’ve been wrong many, many times so far. Some examples:

I guessed helicopter; it was a bunch of grapes.

I guessed throne; it was a hand giving the peace sign.

I guessed calculator; it was a travel suitcase.

See? Pure fun. Many of the puzzles fall into themes; like, you will ultimately make all the letters of the alphabet or items that belong in an office or, much to my extreme happiness, items from Japanese culture. The backgrounds can help clue you in on things, but sometimes my mind forgets they are there and I just see what I see. I’ve done about 65 puzzles now, still on level one difficulty, but I’m enjoying them more and more as I progress, getting better and quicker at figuring out their tricks. I just gotta work on my guessing…

One, the loneliest of numbers

Running around by myself and shooting skags, bandits, and spiderants in Borderlands is fine…if a bit repetitive, a bit predictable. A little lonesome. But the game clearly demands co-op action during it’s boss battles, something I don’t have access to, making these grand set pieces either extremely hard or totally lame.

Take for instance the Rakk Hive, the wondrous beast shown above. I love it’s design, and the eyes on the thing remind me a lot of the Ohmu from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Except this is no gentle beast; it’s a monster of a monster and will attack you in a variety of ways, spewing Rakk from its body, too. I’m guessing a great co-op strategy would be to divulge tasks, meaning one player handles the flying Rakk, the other goes for the thing’s eyes for critical hits, and the rest can move around to distract it or protect their fellow teammates. What did I do all by my little soldier self? I stood behind a rock and shot. Then I reloaded. Then I shot some more. Reloaded. Shot. Reloaded. Pew pew pew. Reloaded. Shot. Shot. Shot. One more shot. Oh good, it’s falling over now, dead. Level up!

It was not very exciting, I’m sad to say.

Let’s look at another boss battle: Baron Flynt. Man, what a toughie. And the quest was marked at a difficulty of normal, but still…a toughie. Flynt wields The Boom Stick, a deadly combat shotgun that can deplete your shield in about two hits. He’s also quick on his feet. The battle zone is multi-tiered, making it easy to avoid him by dropping low or running high, but if you don’t attack him constantly he shield recharges and then what’s the point of it all. This would have been a good time–nay, a vital time–to have another player in the mix to shoot him from behind or toss grenades or whatever, but alas I had to resort to a lot of hiding and running. Thankfully, I’m Roland and have the turret action skill, which, as he says from time to time, “It’s like having another soldier on the field!”

Yes, my co-op partner is a stationary turret gun. Wee!

It took me about 30 levels to truly see that Borderlands is a co-op game, through and through. When I bought it, I was hoping it had a deep enough–and fun enough–single-player mode to warrant the purchase. Alas, it’s thin. Rakk wing thin.

But I’m soldiering on (pun intended) because the numerous quests do keep me busy, and I do see myself becoming a much better FPS player with each level earned. That or I have just found powerful enough guns to keep me alive and well through most firefights. Also, as of last night, I found my first orange-colored weapon. That’s pretty exciting…except it was a shotgun, and I am not interested in using close-range weaponry. I prefer shooting from a distance. But I think I’m getting closer to the Vault; I just hope I can make it through by myself.

Planning out the next set of purchases

So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about time and money and videogames. Because, as most of us know, they all go hand-in-hand with each other. You need money to play games; you need time to play games. You also most likely need a job, but the Catch 22 of that is if you have a job, you have less time, but more money.

To be truthful, I have enough money for games, but not enough time, and that therein causes me to feel guilt about buying new games when I’ve yet to get through a good chunk of my collection. I mean, I did toss down $5.00 for six games thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle, and of them, I’ve only played a few hours of Aquaria. Haven’t even touched the others yet. Problem? Problem. Plus, I’m still working on Borderlands, Pokemon HeartGold, playing Dragon Age: Origins a second time, and a slew of other abandoned children.

Right. Chances are I’m just babbling here, but basically, I’m not going to be making a Purchase of the Month for May 2010. Generally, I allow myself to buy one new videogame–often ranging in the $30 to $40 range–each month as a reward for working hard and staying alive. However, I have more than enough on my plate right now, and there’s actually nothing terribly new calling out to me…save for Red Dead Redemption, which a lot of reviews are giving the thumbs up on. Yet…I still do not enjoy GTA IV and think maybe, just maybe, I should stay away. Who knows. I might cave over summer; I’ve always wanted to ride a donkey into the sunset.

I do, however, know with certainty some of my next purchases. And here they are:

• June 2010: LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• July 2010: Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
• August 2010: ???
• September 2010: ???
• October 2010: Fallout: New Vegas

And that’s really all I know at this point. Nothing else on the radar. Nope, not even Fable III. Feeling kind of meh about it at this point. But I do like having a battle plan and things to look forward to…

Do not invite Crusty Demons to your Dream Day Wedding Destination

Tara and I went to GameStop yesterday to pick up a gift card for my mother as it’s her birthday real soon. The original plan was to find her a new Nintendo DS game, but she seems to buy more games than I do, and I have to admit to losing track of what she has in her collection versus what she used to have, but traded in. So…a GC it was. That way, she can pick what she wants, and I do believe a yardsale hidden objects game comes out on her very day of birth…so there we go. Though Tara and I did see a hidden objects game all about planning one’s perfect wedding:

Oh man. Doesn’t that look exciting?! We thought this would be hilarious to give to her, but I told Tara that I didn’t think I could physically carry the case over to the counter and then pay money for it. Maybe next time? Most likely not.

Also, while perusing the shelves of old Xbox games (they had a deal of buy one, get two free, but I didn’t buy anything as I really have no clue what games are backwards compatible on the Xbox 360), a title caught my attention. And made me laugh. Out loud. In front of total strangers. Now, these games were lined up like books, spine out, so all I had to go off of was the title alone, but man did it make me pick up the game. Are you ready? I don’t think you’re ready for it.

…

What? You’re dying to know? Hmm…

Okay, okay. Here it is:

Ah ahahahahaha. Crusty Demons.

Sadly, this was not a videogame about a fantasy land dastardly overrun by…crusty demons. Instead, it’s about–I guess–some people riding bikes and doing daredevil-like tricks. What a tease!

In short, some videogame covers are just plain silly.

Two videogames beaten, but not over with yet

Over the past couple of days, I beat two videogames. Namely, Dragon Age: Origins and Pokemon HeartGold. Both will be getting full reviews from me in the near future, one most likely here and one most likely over at The First Hour, but I still want to talk a little bit about them at the moment…since their deaths are so fresh in my mind.

Both of these games are now beaten. I have seen the end credits roll. And yet, against my power, both of these games demand I continue playing them. In different manners, of course.

For Pokemon HeartGold, they are asking me to play the same game again. The only difference is a new skin to it with new Pokemon to collect, but the fundamentals are all the same: explore the land, collect pocket monsters, defeat gym leaders, and rise to the top of another league for ultimate bragging rights. I’m going to do it, but considering that I just did exactly that for 49 hours…well, I’m not terribly excited for déjà vu to set in.

For Dragon Age: Origins, it’s all about playing the game as drastically different as possible. Because what’s done is done. My Grey Warden character defeated the darkspawn (I don’t consider this a spoiler as, duh, you knew it was going to happen) and now there’s nothing else to do. Can’t reload and venture about Ferelden to do sidequests until the cows come home. Instead, thanks to the numerous origins and different classes and varied dialogue choices, one can play BioWare’s fantasy RPG a second time and experience the complete opposite of what they did before. That’s nice. And also, I didn’t do that Achievement boosting trick where you save before you make a big decision, unlock the Achievement, reload, and then unlock the other one. So I’ll be heading back in to side with the werewolves and help the mages in the Circle Tower and so on. To be honest, I’m looking forward to experiencing it all over again.

Now…about these games’ endings. They were totally lame, especially considering the hours spent to get there.

Pokemon HeartGold tossed an extremely tough battle in your face unlike anything your Trainer ever fought against, and I suspect a lot of players were in the same boat as me. Meaning…lots of grinding to catch up and be halfway formidable. And once that’s said and done, you’re treated to a short scene stating your awesomeness and then credits with little animated Pokesprites running around and being silly. Fade to black. Reload to discover you basically only “beat” 50% of the actual game. Laaame.

Talking about the ending in Dragon Age: Origins is a bit more challenging. I don’t want to spoil specifics, but I really felt like there was a lack of imagination in the final battle. Honestly, your team just moves from zone to zone, fighting wave after wave of darkspawn until you make it to the archdemon, and then you fight it and it releases wave after wave of support enemies and then you kill it and then you’re done. And treated to–and I’m not kidding here–static paintings with some tiny text boxes telling you about what happened to people and places in the years to come. BioWare couldn’t even shell out for some voice actor here after all the speaking that when down during my 41 hours of gameplay. Sigh. There may or may not be more to the game’s ending though depending on some choices you previously made. Time will tell in that department. Either way, it felt kind of lame. Like, that boss battle with that giant tentacle-wielding woman-thing was much more exciting (and original) than this. Oh well. Maybe my second playthrough will reveal something else.

But yeah, despite the fact I’m still going to be playing these for some time, they’re definitely getting crossed off the backlog list as completed.

Picking the best origins in Dragon Age: Origins

Having now played through all six opening origin stories in Dragon Age: Origins, I can confidently tell you that some are better than others. In fact, there’s really only two that stand out as great, and the others are more or less perfunctory, a means to an end to learn the ropes and then get your character traipsing along next to Duncan and the path to Grey Wardendom. But first, let me tell you a bit about each…

City Elf

Being a City Elf is no fun at all. Your race has been rendered second class citizens, basically amounting to generations of slavery. However, things aren’t all bad. You’re about to wed some unknown Elf. Hooray! Marriage and bliss! Oh wait. An encounter with a human lord totally rains on your parade.

Dalish Elf

Dalish Elves are the complete opposite of City Elves, in that they are totally free. And they live in the woods. Stereotypically awesome. After you ambush a group of humans trespassing, your character learns of some ruins containing Elven treasure. Ooh shiny.

Dwarf Commoner

You are a Dwarven commoner and also part of the mafia. That is, if Dwarves can have mafias. But yeah, you’ll be going after a guy that tried to swindle your boss. You also don’t want your sister being taken advantage of. Just another typical day under the mountains…

Dwarf Noble

You are second in line to the throne. Not too shabby. However, there’s some darkspawn in the Deep Roads, and you’re put to the task of clearing them out thanks to having  just received a military commission. However, Dwarven politics are the very definition of dangerous, and things do not go as planned.

Human Noble

Your big brother is about to head off to join King Cailan at Ostagar to help fight the darkspawn. After saying goodbye, you tuck yourself in for a good night’s sleep in Castle Cousland, hoping to dream about apple pies and playing in a field with your violent doggy. Then, without warning, you’re awoken in the middle of the night. The castle is under attack. Eep!

Mage

You’ve studied long and hard (hey now!) at the Circle Tower to become a kick-ass mage, learning all the strict laws about governing magic. And you’re now ready to perform the ritual called the Harrowing that will determine whether you are ready to become a full mage. Not all is as it seems in the Fade though.

—

Right. So those are the six origins you can pick from. Of them, the two I’d most recommend to beginning players are the Mage origin and the Dwarf Noble origin. The other four are extremely bland and linear; in fact, I was downright surprised at just how bare bones the Human Noble story was. In that one, you basically talk to your family, go to sleep, kill some assassins, and escape with Duncan. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. Nothing to it.

However, the Mage origin really offers up a unique setting with the Fade and some tough choices that will directly impact a quest later on in Redcliffe. And the Dwarven noble origin was just full of betrayal and sick politics a la George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. It really pulled the chair out from under me, and gave me a lot of motivation to see how things turned out. Plus, the layout of the Dwarven setting is pretty fascinating, and their culture is rich with lore about Paragons and such. Fortuitously, these two origins also seemed to take a little longer to complete than others, give or take half an hour.

But really, all the origins kind of follow the same idea–live your life as normal until shit hits the fan–and it’s sort of fun to see how Duncan factors into each story. He mostly just acts like the boss of Ferelden and gives crazy orders in a very calm manner, even if they go against everyone else’s wishes. Oh well. That’s how the Grey Wardens roll, I guess.

So that’s the origins for…Dragon Age: Origins. I have no idea if there are new additional ones in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening though. Not even sure if I’m going to be interested in more darkspawn-slaying after getting through all of the above. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The slow death of videogame manuals

At the end of April 2010, Ubisoft announced it was no longer printing videogame manuals as part of a green initiative to save paper and reduce the publisher’s carbon footprint. Good for them! Boo for us that actually like manuals (in other words, me) and not just for nostalgia’s sake. This is a first for the industry, with no other publisher following suit just yet, but while I can see the pros and cons in this action, I also know that, ultimately, videogame manuals are going the way of the dinosaur.

Thankfully, there’s a site called Replacement Docs, which allows you to download manuals of many, many games, some bereft and others not. The archive is well worth scouring. Do check it out.

Right. So I like videogame manuals. I like them a lot. Some nostalgia points slip into this factoring in that, during both the middle school and high school days, I used to get dropped off at the mall, buy an SNES or PS1 game with allowance money/job money, and then sit in a predetermined meeting area until my mother came to pick me up. I’d use this time wisely by devouring the game’s manual page by page, word by word, image by image. Some times I even read the manual more than once. Trap Gunner comes to mind instantly, and after reading about the game for 20 minutes, I just couldn’t wait to get home and play. At that point, I felt like, thanks to the manual, I was more than prepared for whatever the game was going to throw at me.

And even though nowadays we have extensive previews and reviews online, on-screen button prompts, and in-game opening tutorials, the straightforwardness of “training” yourself page after page feels much more natural. You usually see a picture of the control scheme, some plot background details, learning the menus, maybe some pages devoted to key characters, and so on. Also, some tips and tricks are only mentioned in the manual, like how to crouch in Maximo, a game I bought used and without a manual, leading me down a dark and destined-for-failure path until the Internet told me what I was doing wrong. Thanks, Internet, you big manual yourself.

Also, brand new manuals smell, and you know it. Sure, it’s an acquired taste much like a new car or a really old bookstore, but I tell you this, and I tell you this in all seriousness…it’s a smell I’m going to miss. Ripping off the plastic sealing and stickers to crack open the case and give the game manual its first breath into this world is truly a great feeling. So is taking it out and fanning yourself with it during the summer months. I kid on that front, but I love videogame manuals so much that when I bought Fallout 3: Game of the Year edition back in November 2009, I still read the manual front to end before popping the game disc into my Xbox 360 despite waiting over 12 months to get the game. I think that says something.

Will have to look through my collection later for some examples of great and not-so-great videogame manuals. Cause some are truly a waste of paper, but others…well, they’ve got personality. And do more than just tell us how to play the game; they show us what it’s all about.