I’ve got a Ho-Oh in my pocket

There are most likely a number of ways one can consider “beating” Pokemon HeartGold. There’s the boss battle against the respective game’s legendary pocket monster (Ho-Oh for HeartGold, and Lugia for SoulSilver), there’s defeating the Elite 4 after smiting the previously mentioned legendaries, there’s collecting all 493 (?!) Pokemon and completing your Pokedex to the max, and lastly there’s hardcore breeding and building the perfect team with the perfect stats for perfectly kicking other Pokemon in the face during online battles and such. I guess that last one’s more of a goal than anything else, but I’m sure there are some players that use it as a measuring stick for beating the game.

Anyways, of those, I just ticked off the first one. And alas, it was a huge disappointment.

See, every time you start HeartGold, you’re treated to a 3D model of the legendary phoenix ‘mon Ho-Oh flying through the sky, looking all majestic and bad-ass. Obviously, you will meet him/her/it in mortal combat. It’s only a matter of time. The graphics used here get you excited for more lively-looking Pokemon, but unfortunately that never comes to fruition. It’s sprites through and through, with 8-bit sound effects, too. So, just before you do battle with Ho-Oh, you visit Professor Elm (or is it Oak? Dogwood? JUNIPER?!) and he gives you a single Master Ball. This is a special, extremely limited Pokeball that will catch a Pokemon with 100% accuracy, no fail, no problems. Use it wisely.

I used it on Ho-Oh on my very first turn. Fight over. He/she/it is mine, and Ho-Oh now proudly owns the nickname of Bombadil. Sure, I could have used this opportunity to test my skills and probably earn some killer EXP, but I also wanted it for my collection. The timing and convenience of the Master Ball naturally played into my plans.

I was expecting something more epic. I had the opportunity to make it so. Then again, Game Freak made it so easy to go the other way.

Up next, the fight against the Elite 4. From the few postings I’ve read online, this set of battles will definitely test my skills. As well as open up a whole new cut of land to explore. Hmm. Wish me luck, fellow Trainers.

Admitting to videogame rage

I think it’s official: Grand Theft Auto IV makes me videogame rage. Not like this or this, mind you, but it seriously gets on my nerves and even has gotten me uttering phrases like “Oh come on!” and “Fuuuuck!” when alone in my apartment. That’s not a good sign. Just ask my neighbors.

Last night, I spent 40 minutes on a single mission–it’s called “Museum Piece” and it involves escaping a museum heavy with enemies and then avoiding further detection from them once outside in the public park–and then failed thanks to unclear directions. Inside the mansion, I meticulously took out every goon shooting a gun my way, a process which took some patience and a lot of crouching.  I’d already previously failed the mission for running blindly around a corner and was not going to let that happen yet again. But it was worth it because I had a full thing of body armor still and was ready to venture outside.

So I exited the park in hopes of hi-jacking a car for getaway purposes. My original ride got blown to bits from a tossed grenade. I don’t get three steps across the street before two black cars zoom by and run me over. As Niko slowly gets to his feet after this traumatic event two goons pump shotgun blasts into him. Body armor and health vanish instantly.

When you die, you are revived back at the hospital and pay a small fee. Not only that, but all the ammo I used on the mission is gone, as well as that 40 minutes of my time. I can restart via a text message or reload to at least get my ammo back. Neither option sounds appetizing after all that worthless work.

Seeing as I’ve done several posts on GTA IV and my hating on it, some might be wondering why I keep playing. It’s simple. I’m a masochist. Also, I bought the game with hard-earned money (eh, it was $12.00 used)  so I might as well experience it.

Honestly, I’ve never griped about so much in a single game before. I could go on for days about GTA IV‘s faults. For instance, why did Rockstar design the Xbox 360 controls to be horrible? You press Y to steal a vehicle, but if you want to say take a tour or cab ride…you hold Y. But if you don’t press it down hard and fast enough, guess what? You just stole a helicopter and taxi cab when you were just trying to play the game. Fun, fun, fun dumb. Why not instead, just like when you want to buy a hot dog or soda, press the left bumper? WHY NOT?!

I enjoy Liberty City’s openess and the sandbox potential, but maybe I just have to take off the blinders and see GTA IV for what it is: not a game for me. The mission structure and harshness of lost time, money, and bullets for failure is just too punishing. Maybe Saint’s Row is more up my alley?

Things I’ve yet to do in some videogames

Videogames, if we’re lucky, are full of things to do. Main missions, side quests, collecting items like coins or flags or severed heads, Easter eggs, mini-games, and so on. I realized the other day though that for some games from my collection–games I’ve played for many, many hours–there’s at least one thing I’ve yet to even try…or experience. For certain gamers, these missed elements are probably really big deals…

Fallout 3 – Find Dogmeat and use him/her as a companion

To be honest, I’ve never used a companion in Fallout 3 unless the quest required me to do so. Both of my playthroughs at this point have been very ninja-like, requiring me to slink around corners and slip through darkness with skill and silence. Bringing a dog with me would be like inviting a marching band along. I’ve yet to even go to the junkyard and get the chance to dismiss this puppy. Many tout the beast as a literal beast, a fighting tank at your side that, so long as you keep him alive, is just brutal and powerful and your BFF. I know I’d get him killed in a split so it’s best just not to even go after him. The only Dogmeat I’ve seen at this point is the kind I loot off fallen Super Mutants.

Grand Theft Auto IV – Purchase a hooker

I think I might have done this once in Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice City, just to see what it was like. I suspect I wasn’t terribly impressed, and then ran her over to get my money back. In GTA IV, I don’t even know where to look for hookers. They were much less subtle in previous iterations, and I’m always too busy trying to go from mission to mission to slow down and have some fun. Rather eat a hot dog than have my hot dog eaten, if y’know what I’m saying.

Pokemon HeartGold – Breed my very own pocket monster

Every message board/forum I come across for Pokemon talks fervently about breeding these little guys/gals into perfect babies. I don’t know what they’re talking about because I have yet to figure out how to do this. I guess it’s something that happens after you beat all the gyms? I’m on the eighth of the first set of gyms at the moment.

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Having not done these things has certainly not taken away any enjoyment from the above games (well, not that I really enjoy GTA IV all that much). I’ve just not found time to fit them into my gaming schedule…

Niko Bellic, the jerkiest jerk that ever jerked

Niko Bellic: Life is complicated. I… I never thought I’d live like this.
Ileyna Faustin: No?
Niko Bellic: When the war came, I did bad things, but after the war I thought nothing of doing bad things. I killed people, smuggled people, sold people.
Ileyna Faustin: And you don’t worry about your soul?
Niko Bellic: After you walk into a village and you see 50 children, all sitting neatly in a row, against a church wall, each with their throats cut and their hands chopped off, you realize that the creature that could do this doesn’t have a soul.

I really do loathe him. How could someone not? The above passage–so far–is about as honest and human as Niko gets, and even then it’s not saying much. See, we’re supposed to feel bad for the 30-year-old mysterious ex-soldier pursuing “the American dream” in Liberty City, but with each subsequent mission it becomes harder and harder to take him for more than anything but a cartoony videogame avatar controlled by us to explore a city, shoot people in the face, and generally cause havoc. He is not real. He is that creature without a soul.

Some seem to think Niko’s a real charmer. Especially every girl he dates. Must be heroin in the soda. All I see is cynicism and a down-to-business attitude, which would not be the worst thing in the world…y’know, if said business was not extreme violence. He came to Liberty City to see his cousin Roman for a better life, and now he’s all tangled up in a dozen different plots, all full of murder and betrayal and heartbreak. Boo hoo. He could stop at any point. Really, there’s enough Internet cafes and TV shows to keep him busy 9 to 5. But he doesn’t because, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I need the money, and I’m good at what I do.”

That is, being Mr. Jerk.

It’s not like other protagonists for Grand Theft Auto haven’t been cruel and unkind. It’s just that this one is unwilling to be anything else. Even his chuckling is malevolent.

I suspect I’m halfway through Grand Theft Auto IV now. It’s kind of hard to tell, especially since I haven’t had a Roman-centric mission in awhile. I’m guessing those are more of the main storyline ilk while everything else I’ve been doing is like side missions and BS time. I’m trying to complete the game as straightforward as possible, saving all the silly exploration and stunt jumps for later. I’m even actively avoiding hanging out with friends in-game to keep the momentum going, but now that I think about it, we can just chalk that up to Niko continuing to be the jerkiest jerk that ever jerked.

Roger Ebert, videogames, and art walk into a bar

Recently, possibly out of boredom or for trolling, Roger Ebert decided to bring back his thoughts on the whole “videogames as art” topic, further cementing that, to him, in principle, games can never be art. You can read his full article here, which is in fact a faulty critique of Kellee Santiago’s TEDxUSC talk given back in March 2009. She responds back, echoing a lot my thoughts on the matter.

One could easily dismiss Ebert for being old and “not getting it,” and his tone throughout is rather that of a cranky curmudgeon, which does not help things. “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets,” he repeats. Ouch. Maybe it’s because…he is a movie critic with movie critic friends? Seriously, talk to anyone in the videogaming business, and I’m sure they could make mention a few titles that would be hard to describe as anything but artsy. Yet it is his comments at the end of this critique that prove him beyond faulty and out of place to deem such claims, namely the ones about Flower. It’s evident he has never played the game, let alone many videogames.

Wow, that’s like me saying yoga isn’t a sport and having the world listen.

The question at the heart of this debate, now and forever, is can videogames be art?

And the answer is: of course.

Name-dropping Shadow of the Colossus, Heavy Rain, Katamari Damacy, Suikoden II, BioShock, and Myst, the harder question that continues to stomp around my brain every time this topic comes up is…how could they not be art?

Too cool to Cool Board?

The fiancée and I hit up her PS1 games collection this past weekend, enjoying some time with Wheel of Fortune and Cool Boarders 4. I’m not ready to talk about the emotional roller-coaster that is Vanna White plus categories called IN THE KITCHEN…so let’s have a laugh at Cool Boarders 4.

This is a snowboarding game sequel to a snowboarding game sequel to a snowboarding game sequel to the original that started it all back in 1996. In this one, you are trying to solve the mystery of the Origami Killer snowboard. You can go downhill or back and forth in a half-pipe. Or, if you’re feeling very skilled, attempt to grab some big air (and tricks) and land safely at the bottom. We even dabbled in split-screen action. Warning: don’t ever play Cool Boarders via split-screen.

Graphically, it’s seen better days, but the game is a barrel of laughs. It’s not funny like the Terry Pratchett book I’m reading currently is (Making Money), but you’ll still find yourself chuckling, maybe even to the point of near-tears. Tara and I first took turns doing trick runs, but I kept falling head first into broken tree limbs, and she loved punching the sky repeatedly. The more we did our respective actions, the funnier they got.

Also, you can create a character, and so I decked my dude out in all purple attire, gave him so much girth his ass stuck out, and named him Killer P, but alas, it was not meant to be and the disc froze. All my hard work was lost to Father Time. Or the snow gods. Whoever it is you worship in this Cool Boarding world.

So yeah, fun for thirty minutes. I’m sure we got more out of it than those that really care about snowboarding games and landing 180 indie flips…

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: The Granstream Saga

If anything, many gamers will know of The Granstream Saga for one glaring quirk: all its in-game characters are faceless. They have no faces. Something ate them. Instead, there’s just this round thing of flesh on top of their necks with some colored hair to sort of the young and the old, the male and the female, the smart and the dumb. Still, despite this oddity, the game featured animated cutscenes of the anime kind, a talking bird companion, and great sword-swinging action (for its time). Oh, and it is also purported to be the very first full 3D RPG for the PlayStation. Cool, cool.

The plot is pretty typical “save the world” stuff. Except, this time around, you have to save multiple worlds. See, once upon a time in this alt Earth, the entire planet was covered entirely in water. Then, thanks to magic and aftereffects from the war between the Allied Spirit Army and the Imperial Wizardry, numerous continents lifted up from the water and out into the air to float fine for years and years until you loaded up the game disc. Now they are slowly sinking back down. Way to go, gamer.

This is where Eon comes into play. He’s the hero of The Granstream Saga, a boy not so ready for his coming-of-age tale, but he’ll meet a varied bunch of folks along his travels who will help him save his floating homeland, as well as all the others. After all, faceless friends are always generous. You’ll spend a good portion of the game staring at his bright red hair.

Gameplay is very standard RPG fare, with exploration of towns and dungeons just about equal to each other. While roaming around a cave, you’ll find enemies and duke it out in real time. Eon carries a sword and a shield, and you’ll take Zelda-like swipes at the enemy, engaging it fully. All in all, kind of bland now…but the system worked great in 1998, and things got much better with upgraded equipment and the ability to cast magic. You eventually learned strategies, too, like side-stepping behind an enemy for a stronger attack.

The Granstream Saga was not the first RPG I played on the PlayStation, but it has strangely had a lasting effect on me. Images of faceless villagers—as well as that uncomfortable shower scene—flash in my mind from time to time. And the details about the game’s ending have always been fuzzy, something to do with that bird companion. And yes, I could easily just watch an entire playthrough on YouTube, but that would totally ruin my gaming nostalgia. Instead, I’ll just miss the heck out of my copy and yearn for the return of the faceless.

NOTE: I could not find any great screenshots of these faceless game models so I whipped up some examples below so you can get a feel for things. Enjoy!

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GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH is a regular feature here at Grinding Down where I reminisce about videogames I either sold or traded in when I was young and dumb. To read up on other games I parted with, follow the tag.

In-game relationships need to get out

Unless I’m playing The Sims, I don’t really want to do buddy-buddy things like playing darts and going for a walk and having a beer with someone in-game. Especially when we’re talking about Grand Theft Auto IV, where the majority of the focus is on…well, shooting drug dealers in the mouth and running over hot dog stands. Nor do I want to go on dates, but that mostly has to do with Niko Bellic not being the suave gentlemen your dates might think he is. Seriously, how can anyone be charmed by this masochistic, hollow shell of a goon? His response to every demonic task put on him is: how much will I get paid? Right.

I wish there was a way you could lose your cell phone in GTA IV and then have to go to a local Sprint store (I bet those Rockstar devs would be hilarious and call it, I dunno, Splint) to get a new one. After losing it, I would never get another. I don’t even care if that meant no more missions; I just want to walk and drive around in peace, listen to the radio, take in the sights. No, I don’t want to get shit-faced with you, Roman; you’re a horrible human being, possibly less horrible when drunk, but horrible nonetheless, and to have some drinky drinks with you would take up the following:

1. Time
2. Money

Plus, these in-game friends always call at the worst time ever. Like, you’re sneaking around a building, getting ready for a shootout, and then you have Little Jacob mumbling something about hanging out in your ear. Sorry, can’t. Why didn’t you call me during the 15 minutes it took me to get to this location? Chump.

Another example of bad cell phone usage in videogames: Pokemon HeartGold. During your course across the many regions, you will meet a bunch of trainers and strangers all eager to give you their phone number. In return, you must offer them yours–and your very soul. Seriously, if I could turn back time, I’d give my phone number to NO ONE. Not even my mother, that money-tossing fiend. Stand still for a minute or so, and ring ring ring, it’s Joey to tell you all about his RATTATA. Great. Just about every phone call I’ve gotten has been pointless; there’s no reward, no missions, just a bunch of BS and wasted time tapping through. I’m guessing this is the game’s way of making you feel connected to more than just pocket monsters, but it is an empty mechanic, beyond annoying, and a waste of precious time.

Dragon Age: Origins handles in-game relationships better…but not great. For one, thanks to Ferelden’s serious lack of technogadgetry, the Grey Warden does not have a cell phone. Instead, he/she has a mouth and two ears, and using them they can affect how other characters feel. Some might grow to hate the Grey Warden, others will fall in love, and a couple will remain indifferent no matter what you do. You can give gifts and listen to their stories to maybe pick up an important sidequest. Also, depending on who you are traveling with, certain key events will lead them to voicing their opinions, and it’s up to the Grey Warden to decide how to react. At least there’s rewards here: useful skills are unlocked as companions grow in friendship.

So unless in-game relationships do more than just annoy and waste time, they need to get out…and get out fast.

Sex and videogames, oh la la

Last night, I had sex…twice. First with a forest witch, and then immediately afterward with a bisexual assassin.

Before you start spreading crazy rumors around the Interwebz, let me be more specific: I wiggled my way into Morrigan’s arms after giving her 943 gifts and then easily (almost shockingly easy) convinced Zevran to have his way with me in Dragon Age: Origins. Yes, this game offers the chance to have sex with women, men, and even multiple partners at once if you plot enough. That’s great and all. Too bad the actual sex is silly and uncomfortable to sit through.

However, I like that sex is there and that BioWare is willing to make it a part of the game, whether vital or not. So far, it’s all been optional. Getting someone in bed naturally raises their liking of you, but you also have to be careful because your camp is open to all eyes, and certain someones might be disappointed in seeing the Grey Warden put the moves on somebody else.

But back to the uncomfortableness. In Mass Effect, you could woo some of your female/male companions (depending on your gender) and have an intimate moment before things really hit the fan at the Citadel. This made the sex emotional and important, and it was a short scene, with quick glimpses of positions and fingers running here and there and a sense that bodies were in motion. Nothing too crazy, and certainly not worthy of major news channels freaking out. The same could almost be said of Dragon Age: Origins except this time it’s not emotional and important, and with the already weak Xbox 360 graphics…it’s laughable.

I don’t have so much a problem with undressed Morrigan…though her breasts seem to remain magically motionless throughout all the turning and bouncing. Heck, even Zevran was fine. It’s the Grey Warden. He/she is always ugly no matter how hard you try to design them during the character creation phase, and they never look like they are enjoying anything. At one point, with Zevran, my mage grimaced in pain (I’ll let you speculate why). Add to this cheesy “romantic” music and campfire, and well, you’ve got silly sex. Which is a shame because the dialogue leading up to and after the penultimate act is superb, full of life and wit and shy flirting. I’d almost wish they’d faded to black à la Fable II and just let our imaginations run wild.

Well, that’s two out of four:

Witch Gone Wild (10G): Experienced the thrill of romance with Morrigan

Easy Lover (10G): Experienced the thrill of romance with Zevran

All that’s left now is to woo Alistair and Leliana. Poor Shale gets no action…

I want to ride the Sushi-Go-Round

First came Sushi Academy, and now this:

Yup, Sushi Go-Round! You know, like the amusement park ride the spinny conveyor belt table? This cover pulls the carpet out from under my feet by showing me that cops enjoy sashimi just as much as us low-class knuckle-draggers. Donuts are so 1990s.

Honestly, I’m surprised at the severe lack of sushi games on the Nintendo DS. Only two so far. Sure, the system’s flooded with Cooking Mamas and Diner Dash wannabes, but where’s the love for raw fish? Hmm? WHERE IS THE LOVE?

So, in the spirit of being super helpful and just wanting to get this party started, allow me to throw out some names for the next, say, dozen sushi-themed Nintendo DS games that could potentially hit shelves soon: Sushi City, Sushi Soooo Cute, Sushi Fantasy XIII, Sushi Om Nom Nom, Tower of Sushi Terror, Let’s Eat Sushi!, Phoenix Wright: So Su(shi) Me, Tom Clancy’s Dinner Order: Spicy Tuna Rolls, SUSHI (that’s a LOST parody there), Sue Shi, Femme Fatale: The Game, and Sushi Age: Origins.

You’re welcome.

Love,