Hot spots only for Lilly Looking Through

Look, it happened. I previously mentioned Lilly Looking Through in the post about Windosill in hopes that it would stay in my mind and get me to play it sooner than later, and I ended up playing it sooner than later. Woo, go me. Alas, that trick doesn’t work every time–sorry, games like Silent Hill 3, ???, and ???. I guess it doesn’t matter how many times I type your names. Sigh. Anyways, I probably don’t have too much to say about this Kickstarted point-and-click adventure game from Geeta Games, but I want to give it its spot in the limelight regardless.

Lilly Looking Through tells a somewhat straightforward story the basically boils down to an adventurous childhood day gone tipsy-turvy. Lilly is playing in the woods with her younger brother Row when, suddenly, he gets tangled in a strange red piece of fabric and is whisked away on an extremely strong breeze. Armed only with a pair of magical goggles, Lilly must make her way past crumbling bridges, pitch-black caverns, and deep, icy lakes to rescue him. See, when Lilly puts on the goggles, she is transported backwards in time, with her surroundings revert to their former state. By affecting things in the past, she can change the layout of the future, and get to where she needs to be.

It’s a good mechanic, watching cause and reaction play out, and something that I fuzzily remember from that one time I watched a neighbor play Day of the Tentacle when I was just a kid, switching between different characters in various time periods to affect each other’s environments or help pass essential items to solve puzzles. Except one of the nice things about Lilly Looking Through is there is no inventory; you are not picking up every stick, rock, and piece of rope in hopes of using them either logically or ironically down the road. Instead, it is all about the hot spots and figuring out what order levers should be pulled in or if you need to pull that lever first in the older realm and see what it does to the current realm. Occasionally, there will be an item to pick up in an environment, like a flaming torch, but you will use it almost immediately and then be done with it, which is comforting.

Interestingly, Lilly Looking Through is able to establish a palpable sense of place, with next to no words or dialogue. For the most part, Lilly is alone and doesn’t have anyone to talk to or interact with. All you get are screams of surprise or the desperate call for her brother. However, as she explores and searches for Row, you’ll see signs of civilization are all around. Except there are no people, no leftovers lingering about, save for their creations. It’s a lonely experience, but I connected with it, as I often had a lonely childhood, wandering the woods by myself in search of cool bugs or a dirty magazine. There’s a lot to wonder about here, but the story is light on details, focusing rather on the task at hand and sprinkling story details on the sides.

Lilly Looking Through is a short, but enjoyable couple hours of clicking. There’s a limited number of areas, and each spot focuses mostly on a singular puzzle to solve, and none of them are too tricky. Even if they are, with enough clicking, you’ll power through them. I also really dug the bits of beautiful animation throughout, and the ending leaves our characters in a strange, new world, one that, maybe, some day down the road, we’ll get to explore. Until then, I’ll continue searching for hot spots, like the one that lets me make this blog post go live so I can start playing something else. I think it is…this one…right…here.

Adding to the Backlog – Three More PlayStation 2 Titles, Woo

I’m not out to collect every single PlayStation 2 game ever made, because they sure did make a whole lot of them, but I have a list of several titles that I missed during the console’s heydays and am genuinely interested in acquiring and, when the time is right, playing. Yes, playing, because I love games of varying ages, especially JRPGs from this specific era in the industry, for reasons I’m not totally clear on just yet. They don’t make them like they used to, and when they try, they don’t always succeed. Anyways, for a good while there, I was able to find some PlayStation 2 cases at my local GameStops, but they eventually needed more shelf-space for other things, like amiibos and virtual reality gear, and stopped stocking them.

Recently, at a comic convention last April, I was able to grab a working copy of Dark Cloud, which I once had and was actually the very first game I got for my system as a young boy with some steady income before being dumb and trading it in for something else. The game, not the system. I’m still rocking my original PlayStation 2 because I take good care of my stuff. Right, the last time I added a bunch of old-ish games in one solid lump was back in February 2016, with me stocking up on an astounding ten games for my collection; you’ll not be surprised to learn I’ve not tried a single one of them yet. Sigh. One day, when the world is full of free time and no consequences or guilt-laden clouds.

Over the weekend, while Melanie was taking a buttercream flowers class, I had an hour or so to kill in Somerville, NJ, and so I stopped in Retro Classics to peruse their wares. I’ve been in the store before, picking up PS2 copies of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and The Hobbit for my constantly growing assemblage of all things related to The Lord of the Rings, but the last time I went I forgot to bring a list and found myself second-guessing whether or not I had this or that copy of said title and was reluctant to make any purchases. It’s always good to be prepared, and this time I totally was.

Here’s what I got:

That might not seem all that exciting of a haul to you, but Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse is something I’ve never seen out in the wild, and my love for strange JRPGs from this era was too strong to resist grabbing a copy for around $15.00. Perhaps I now have more of a reason than ever to finally play through the first game, eating up those lengthy anime-driven cutscenes and e-mails and card-based minigames, knowing there is actually more to follow. The store also has a retail copy of Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra, but it was a little too pricey for me at the moment. You can see that I also nabbed Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo, which pairs nicely with my case-less copy of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and X-Men Legends so that I can go back to the beginning of when these comic book hero videogames became more RPG than mindless punching and optic blasting. I’m pretty pleased with the trio.

Anyways, that’s all for now. Alas, most of my list of desired PS2 games are really obscure beasts, like Summoner 2, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Legaia 2: Duel Saga, and I just don’t think I’ll ever run into them at a store and I’m too timid to try and find them online for a “good” price and deal with trusting a stranger somewhere in the world to deliver on their promises. I’ll keep looking, but I won’t hold my breath. Because I’ll run out of air rather quickly. Until then, looks like I have some other things I can play. Y’know, when I find the time.

Windosill’s interactive environmental objects are a joy to click

At some point last year while I was deep into Alto’s Adventure, the stylishly difficult endless snowboarder with runaway llamas, and conducting research on it for this blog post, I discovered a sensory-tingling clicky sojourn called Windosill, which clearly had an impact and influence on Snowman’s developers. Not necessarily from a gameplay perspective, as Windosill is all about logic/illogical puzzles and clicking around and less about collecting escaped llamas and nailing that third backflip in a row, but certainly from a visual standpoint. There’s a colorful, crispness to the flat, almost childish shapes in both games, and I think the simplicity works great and adds a surprising amount of character to the environments and their surrounding objects.

Anyways, I only played the first few levels of Windosill for free via the game’s website. I filed it away in my brain as a delight and something I should check out fully…y’know, down the road. Well, that finally happened. I got a copy of the game on Steam during the most recent summer sale for $0.98, along with Lilly Looking Through, Disney Mega Pack: Wave 2, and Voodoo Garden. I’m only calling those additional purchases out here so that I don’t forget about them because, until I just went through my purchase history now to figure out when I had acquired a copy of Windosill, I totally forgot about them. Oops. That’s the trouble these days, if you are me.

In short, Patrick Smith’s Windosill is a puzzle game with no instructions or words, other than the title screen text. You’re left to figure out how to unlock each level’s door and move the main character, which is a wooden, toy locomotive, on to the next level by sliding it through the opening. Which, by the way, is immensely satisfying. The end goal is the same for each level, but the journey to it varies greatly. You’ll have to interact with numerous items in the environment by clicking on them and seeing what happens. It’s all about experimenting and being curious, observing what happens when you click once versus holding down the mouse button or holding it down and dragging. What’s nice is knowing that everything you need to unlock the door is contained in the single level, and you will eventually solve the puzzle. It’s more of a drag, tug, and spin adventure game than a point and clicker.

Windosill is joyous. The game’s tone is friendly and dreamlike, and there’s a absurd creativeness to each environment that will leave a smile on your face and keep you guessing moment to moment. I both didn’t want to complete a level and also was super excited to see what came next. Each object you encounter, whether it’s a big ball on a tiny stem or a window in the wall or a plain-looking cone, has character, with its own weight and ability to be squished or stretched or manipulated. I messed with every single thing I could. I had some minor problems playing this on Steam rather than an iPad when trying to stretch or spin some items intensely or drag the cursor too far to the edge of the screen. Nothing major, but it definitely seems better designed for a touch-based interface. Evidently, the iPad version also has a sketchbook gallery, a level selection, and a translucent mode that allows players to see how levels are put together with 3D polygons. That’s pretty cool.

There’s a bunch of other strange, click-heavy freebies to try out on Vectorpark’s website, which certainly all look intriguing and similar to Windosill. However, with this sort of experience, where discovery is better than completion and experimentation is king, I might need to pace myself accordingly. Otherwise, I’ll end up in an alternate universe where I’m tugging, poking, twisting, flicking everything in my path, and no one wants that.

80,000 Gamerscore lies in the joy of achievement

Hello, my few dear readers. I’m sure you all realize that it’s been about eight months since I hit 70,000 Gamerscore perfectly on the head. Well, the good news is that I’m back with another ten grand. Go me, go my fingers and thumbs, and go creating a silly goal for popping these numerous Achievements, which, ultimately, in the end do not mean much. Eh, that’s okay. I’m having fun doing what I’m doing…if you need a refresher on all of the milestone markers I’ve touched during this journey of mine since early 2010, just follow this tag.

Anyways, videogames. I played them, they rewarded me with digital pictures and numbers, and now I have for you the latest tally hammered hard on the mark, in all its beauty and refinement:

Boom. Click the image if you want to see that number closer up. Getting this was a little trickier than expected, with only having 25 Gamerscore to work with. I thought, at first, I could pop this easily in Rare Replay, but was struggling with some of those Snapshot challenges. Those older games, like Digger T. Rock and Snake Rattle n Roll, are not the easiest to control. Which then lead me to dive deep into my Xbox One’s digital games library folder to see if there was anything easy in a new game to unlock. Such as “finish the tutorial” or “watch the credits” Achievements. I opened a bunch of games, such as Grow Up, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, and Kameo: Elements of Power. I thought the former would work out since it is kind of a collectathon, but nope, too many Achievements with high scores. All of the Achievements in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, which I do need to play sooner than later, were hidden, and I was too lazy to look up their descriptions. And that last one, that Kameo, seemed to have a bunch of Achievements worth 0 Gamerscore, which I will never understand the point of, but I’m no designer. But here’s proof I did open Rare’s launch title for the Xbox 360 and will now probably have to actually play some of it down the road:

Finally, after opening several more games and getting nowhere, I discovered an early Achievement in Super Dungeon Bros, which is a rock-themed dungeon brawler where a band of mighty rock bros must navigate the fantasy realm of Rökheim and its hellish dungeons. Uh huh. Deep breath. Right, the Achievement was for completing the your first mission in the game, worth exactly 25 Gamerscore, and 8.65% had already unlocked it. I only needed to be careful to not unlock anything else along the way. Which, naturally, I did. This thing, fortuitously worth the same amount of points, popped at the tally screen at the end of the level:

Time Management (25G) – You beat a level before reaching threat level 3

I was worried that hitting any more buttons would “complete” the first mission and ruin my perfect 80,000 number, so I quickly bounced back to the dashboard and closed the game before anything else could happen. I’m crazy, but these are the things I do for this fleeting moments of fun. I’m sure I’ll have another hurdle to cross to nail 90,000. I predict that I’ll be getting an easy 2,000 soon since Mel got me two LEGO videogames for my birferday recently, specifically LEGO Worlds and LEGO Jurassic World. And I always unlock everything in them. I’ll go ahead and be bold and make a prediction for hitting another ten grand, which will happen by…March 2018. Mel is going with April 2018. We’ll see.

And now, to stay on theme, please leave me either exactly 80,000 comments below or one comment with exactly 80,000 words. I’m fine with whatever happens first. You all now have the power.

Let’s all go exploring with Breath of the Wild

It took me a little over four hours to complete the initial opening chunk of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and that’s perfectly fine. I’m talking about the part when Link, after emerging from the mystical cave of resurrecting people after 100 years because it’s cool to do so, must go complete four shrines to acquire all the necessary powers and hang-glider to start him proper on his journey to destroy Calamity Ganon. I’m not mad. Really, not even the slightest. Those opening hours helped teach me tricks and techniques that I’m still using currently to survive and puzzle my way to victory in Hyrule, some twenty-ish hours later.

Right. I got a copy of Breath of the Wild for my Wii U back in June, after I finally finished putting together the second chapter of my ongoing journal comic project Death, Divorce, and Disney. I’ll use this very sentence to plug it hard, so please click and read away. I’m not going to talk too much about the game’s plot, for two reasons. One, from a summary stance, it’s pretty bare bones. And two, there’s a lot I don’t understand yet, like Link’s relationship to Zelda and Hyrule’s people or why these shrines exist, and so on. That all said, we’re playing as an amnesiac Link, who awakens from a hundred-year slumber to a mysterious voice that guides him to defeat Calamity Ganon before he can destroy the kingdom of Hyrule. It’s not too far off from A Link to the Past, where a non-amnesiac Link awakens during a nightly thunderstorm, summoned to the castle by Princess Zelda’s voice to stop…uh, Ganon.

Back to my original point, about how long I spent in the “tutorial” section of Breath of the Wild. I got hung up for a while on how to access the two shrines located in the colder, snowy section of the Great Plateau. I assumed I needed better clothing to keep Link warm, and I was mostly right. It turned out I needed to figure out a recipe for the helpful Old Man and, once satisfied, he’d pass over some magical shirt to keep Link from freezing his nipples off. The problem was I didn’t know how to cook, and in a very non-Nintendo way, the game did not provide me with a hand-holding walkthrough to ensure I knew how to do this. I figured I just walked up to a pot on an open flame and there would be a prompt waiting for me, kind of like what happens in Fallout 4. Nope. All I kept seeing was “sit,” and so I sat, stuck. Turns out, you need to go into your inventory, pick a bunch of ingredients to hold, exit the menu, and then stand by the pot to get the prompt–so far, it’s one of two things I’ve had to look up for the game, and I deeply regret it.

I’m now much deeper into the story and map, but also totally not. It just feels that way to me because the hour count on the game’s save slot has gone way up. There’s still a lot to discover. In truth, I’ve completed a smidgen of shrines, found a few Korok seeds, climbed a couple tall towers, unearthed three lost memory spots, and haven’t taken down a single Divine Beast, though I do have the quest from the shark-people to do so whenever I please. But that’s up to me and my discretion. Personally, I like the less intense side quests, like finding horses or returning chickens to a pen, or just collecting ingredients to try my hand at cooking. Also, taking pictures of weapons and bugs and flowers to fill out the Hyrule compendium is good, wholesome fun that reminds me dearly of Beyond Good & Evil.

When it comes to waging war, I’m not great at combat, and part of that is me feeling like I’m missing a dodge button or something. Early on, I remapped the jump button, and that has helped a bunch, but timing your way around an enemy’s attacks is still a bit tricky, which has, naturally, made me rely more on loosing arrows from afar and being a sneaky elf. Y’know, just about how I play every RPG I get my grubby mitts on. Like many, the idea of breakable weapons breaks my heart, but at least unlike in Dark Cloud, Link isn’t far from a full inventory of things to use when one weapon breaks. It does, however, mess with your head a bit because you’ll find a cool, powerful weapon as a reward in a shrine and then be reluctant to use it in the field because you don’t want it to disappear. I don’t know. It’s a weird system, and I need to learn to not love my gear because nothing is permanent.

Also, Breath of the Wild is the game that actually got me to admit defeat and buy one of these plastic things:

I kind of want more, which is a dangerous thing to say out loud. And not just because they make a magical chest full of fish and raw meat fall from the sky once a day. I have a love for tiny figurines.

Anyways, Breath of the Wild. It’s really good, and I’m completely content to take my time with it. Sometimes I’ll play it for several hours in a night and then not return to it for a few days. That’s okay. Despite having a quest called “Destroy Ganon” since the start of the game, the in-game world is seemingly in no rush to see that actually happen. At least that’s the vibe I’m getting. If anything, my current adventures are leading me far away from Calamity Ganon for the time being and into the fins of a bunch of shark-people that taught me how to swim up waterfalls.

We live in a rainbow of chaos in Runbow

To me, there are two kinds of platformers: good and bad. Just kidding. I’m talking about ones where the platforming exists as a means to get you from point A to point B so you can do action C, and ones where the platforming itself, the jumping and landing and getting from spot to spot safely, is the entire crux of the game.

I like both to varying degrees, though I certainly prefer the former, enjoying more laid-back jumping like in Sound Shapes, Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, and Sugar Cube Bittersweet Factory over punishing affairs like So Many Me, Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, and Super Mario Brothers: The Lost Levels. Those are almost instantly frustrating and what I like to call un-fun, though there is a masochistic side of me that continues to return to them, to see if I maybe have the twitch-based skills to jump quick with godly precision. Runbow is a mix of these two platformer types, with some levels being a breeze and others being the sort of wall I bang my head against for fifteen minutes, dying over and over and over until I get the pattern down perfectly.

First off, I didn’t choose Runbow, it chose me by being one of July’s freebies on Xbox One and its bright, colorful appearance. I believe it originally came out for the Wii U a couple years back and was later ported to PC, New Nintendo 3DS, and Xbox One from 13AM Games, an indie team based in Canada. Its origin stems from the 2014 Global Game Jam, and the quick elevator pitch is that it’s an action platformer focused on players trying to reach a trophy at the end of each level, dealing with obstacles, enemies, and vanishing platforms along the way. Players can perform a double jump as well as a punch attack to defeat enemies or gain extra reach while jumping up or horizontally. The rub is that the background of each level constantly shifts between a cycle of colors, causing platforms and hindrances of the same color as the background, such as blockades and spikes, to disappear/reappear. Levels are timed, and you are awarded either one, two, or three coins for beating it under a specific time.

I’m currently working my way through the singe-player Adventure mode, which tasks you with saving Poster District from the evil Satura. Why? Not sure, and it doesn’t really matter. This is just an excuse to complete a bunch of levels–140 in total–until you can take her on yourself four separate times. What is nice is that if you are mainly gunning for Satura, you can forge your own path to her, sticking to green (easier) levels instead of following yellow or red ones (harder). The map is broken into four quadrants, with each one its own theme containing unique challenges and dangers. You can play as a number of different characters, some from famous indie games, like Shantae and Shovel Knight, but they all jump the same as far as I can tell so it doesn’t really matter who you go with; I like male Red Hue dressed as a lumberjack, personally, but you do you.

I’ve not tried it yet, but there’s a mode called The Bowhemoth, which is described as a single, ultra-difficult challenge that takes place in the belly of a colossal beast. Evidently, it will test the skills of even the toughest platforming veterans, so I’m greatly concerned. I’ll give it a shot, but might have to *ahem* bow out if the jumping is too tough. I have, however, tried out the online competitive modes of Arena and King of the Hill, both of which were too chaotic for me to grasp and enjoy. I often found myself unable to find myself on the screen and just hoped for the best, which went as well as you can expect.

 

 

My goal for Runbow is to complete all 140 levels. Yup, you heard me. Not three-star every one, but at least complete them and fill in the poster map. After that, I think I’ll be done with it altogether as I’m not interested in its online competitive modes or its co-op action. Still, it’s a fun, seemingly friendly product, with good tunes and a neat gameplay mechanic that has you strategizing each and every jump. Stay tuned for the eventual game review haiku, hopefully.

It’s lights out for the Destiny 2 open beta

I never got into the original Destiny, but I sure watched a good amount of coverage on that game via those chuckleheads over at Giant Bomb, enough so that I felt like I understood the ups and downs of Bungie’s latest sci-fi first-person shooter that wanted to be a big ol’ massive multiplayer extravaganza, but was severely lacking in the story department. Still, people went ga-ga for this thing and constantly cried out “The shooting feels great!” to any naysayers while I contently hacked away at Borderlands 2 and the online multiplayer aspect for Gears of War 4. That all said, I may be interested in checking out Destiny 2, especially now that I got to nibble a bit off the larger loaf via the recent free and open beta.

What was in the Destiny 2 Beta, you ask, probably already knowing the answer, but helping me segue into a new paragraph nonetheless? Well, it features activities from three core experiences to use the company’s own words: Campaign, Cooperative, and Competitive play. I’ll talk a bit about each below and my experience with shooting alien monsters that were shooting at me and accidentally hitting the “dance” button one too many times. Mmm-hmm. Evidently, you could visit a specifically hub section called the Farm, but only at a special time, that which I did not know. That’s fine. I prefer not to be social.

The campaign mission is called “Homecoming,” and it’s a mix of single-player action with some wave-based enemy elimination near its end where other real-life players can join in to help out. You are responding to an emergency distress call from the last safe city on Earth. Also, I forgot to mention, you get to pick an already decked-out character at the start of the Destiny 2 Beta, and I went with the Hunter class. I also tried out its two subclasses, namely Arcstrider and Gunslinger, preferring the latter greatly, but only after I figured out how to activate my super ability; I’m sure original Destiny players had no trouble with that, but the game never instructed me on how to pull this off, so I had to look it up in the control options menu. Anyways, it’s a short, linear, and perfunctory mission, where nothing goes wrong, with some story stuff at the end involving the word “light,” sometimes capitalized as “Light,” that went completely over my teeny tiny head.

Next up is the Cooperative Strike called “The Inverted Spire,” which tasks you with infiltrating an enemy stronghold alongside two other Guardians to take down all active threats. Also, here’s a bit of descriptive text that is lost on me–The Cabal awoke something deep beneath Nessus’ surface. Right. So, I went into this with two other players, one of who spent a long time jumping around the milk waterfall and trying to reach out-of-reach platforms. Eventually, you get to a big boss fight at the end, which is where everything went to crap, especially because communication was non-existent. I died, they died, we all died, and I eventually dropped out (sorry, peeps with gamertags I can’t remember). I can imagine this being easier and more fun, as well as rewarding, with a dedicated group of friends that are able to issue commands to one another. Plus, there wasn’t any loot to pick up, which is an important element for a loot shooter.

Lastly, there’s Competitive Multiplayer, and several versions of it to try out. I don’t think I could tell you what mode I played, but it was one team versus another, and we were trying to control certain points, indicated by capital letters, on the map and keep the opposing team from getting them. I wasn’t great at this, but I did manage to shoot a few guys and hold a flag for some seconds. It’s very quick and somewhat chaotic, and despite my constantly changing affection for Gears of War 4 online multiplayer, this was most certainly not for me. I felt like I barely had a chance to do anything, and when I finally did and something went wrong, it went bad fast. I’m sure there’s a whole cut of the population that loves this, but if I’m to play any Destiny 2 down the space road, it’ll likely be campaign stuff and Strikes, but only when I’m with a trusted group of Guardians. If such a group can exist.

So we’ll see come September if I’m interested in picking Destiny 2 up. I can concur with those that shouted about the shooting feeling good. It does. It really, truly does. I also like its overall look and the names of the weapons and pieces of armor and the tougher enemies, but I also want a good story, sue me. I don’t want to have to piece things together via websites and an app on my phone. I want characters, and I want those characters to interact with me in a meaningful way to get me to care about Earth blowing up or things going dark or whatever the plot turns out to be. Perhaps I’ll wait a bit and see what people have to say about it. Maybe while I do that I’ll play through all of Halo: Reach. Er, maybe.

Waking Mars educates one about an alien planet’s ecosystem

I’ve never been to Mars and probably never will in my lifetime, but I’ve both read and seen a lot of hot takes on the red planet, such as Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, The Martian by Andy Weir, and 1990’s Total Recall. I’ve even played a few games set there, like all the Red Faction joints. Chances are I wouldn’t survive long, knowing only how to make hot dog rice and a slumber party tent using two chairs and an old bedsheet, but that’s expected. Also, if hostile alien lifeforms exist, I wouldn’t know what to do to keep them from eating my Earthly flesh. Related to that, one is still trying to survive the harsh landscape in Waking Mars, but the true focus is on study and education, on discovering what makes this world alive and function.

Tiger Style put out Waking Mars in early 2012, but I only discovered it the other night in my Steam library, way at the bottom of the list. I honestly have no recollection of how it got there, but I’m going to assume it was through a Humble Bundle of sorts. Without knowing too much about the game other than some of the Achievement descriptions, I loaded it up and was surprised to discover that it is…a science-fiction adventure game with light platforming in the veins of a jetpack. Also, it’s totally about gardening. The year is 2097, and life has been discovered on Mars. Your mission of first contact takes a real bad turn, with American astronaut Liang becoming trapped by a cave-in. He must master the alien ecosystem to better survive and progress, as well as discover the secrets of the planet’s past.

Right. First off, instead of shooting your way to safety, Liang must grow a lively ecosytem to open passageways and redirect water to the areas that need it most. This was a great surprise. Much like The Swapper, combat is not the focus; instead, exploring your surroundings and puzzling out what to do next is the main mechanic fueling progression and storytelling, and that has actually made the jet-packing all the more fun because you are not trying to fire a blaster and dodge acid bombs at the same time, but rather zip around in search of places to grow some local life. Instead, you are looking for plant seeds and fertile ground, as well as scientific remnants of a co-worker that has gone missing. Each area has a Biomass rating, which you must raise to open up new areas to explore, and you do this by making life thrive. Plant seeds in the right spot, cultivate them, mix seeds with other seeds, avoid dangerous plants, and watch how everything interacts.

Waking Mars, so far, has a somewhat compelling story, but I’m more interested in the diversity of its cast, as well as the strong voice acting, which gives more meaning and urgency to the search for alien life and a way back to the headquarters. Liang is quiet and curious, but also physically alone in these Mars caves. In his ear are two support team members: Armani, an upbeat scientist, and ART, a humorous and glitch AI (think TARS from Interstellar). At different points, you’ll stop for conversation and figure out what to do next. These are linear moments, but they do reveal a lot about each character and provide hints at what is really going on here.

The gardening is fun. I generally always have fun growing digital plants, but the fact that everything interacts with each other to either raise or lower your Biomass rating is fascinating and much different than other games. Makes me feel like a scientist doing scientist-y things. You are also encouraged to get creative and research each plant fully, figuring out how it reproduces or reacts to prey. Once you know more about each respective plant, you can create a highly efficient zone, one that almost takes care of itself. It’s difficult but not impossible to reach five-star Biomass rating, and I suspect doing so will have a unique result on the current environment; alas, I’ve not been able to do this yet.

According to the Internet, Waking Mars takes about six to eight hours to complete. I’ve only put in two hours so far, which means there’s plenty of Mars left to explore and turn into my personal zoa garden. We’ll see if I have a green or red thumb.

Get it?

Y’know, because the iron oxide prevalent on the planet’s surface gives it a reddish appearance?

Ever Oasis, a refuge from the hardness of life

Ever Oasis comes to us from the studio Grezzo and is Koichi Ishii’s latest project, who you might know as the designer who created the Mana series of action, fantasy-based role-playing games, of which I’ve dabbled in Secret of Mana back on the SNES, own an untouched digital copy of the PlayStation 1’s Legend of Mana on my PlayStation 3, and have no further experience with any other games in the series. Boo to that, boo to me. Ishii is also tied to the creation of those adorable Chocobo and Moogle characters, and the Noots found in Ever Oasis, with their rotund figure, feathery eyebrows, and bouncy walks, are sure to become another beloved trademark. Any way you slice it, there’s pedigree here and a whole heap of ambition.

In Ever Oasis, you play as either Tethu or Tethi, a young seedling, who with the help of a water spirit named Esna creates an oasis after your brother’s oasis falls victim to the evil force known as Chaos. I went with Tethi and gave her purple skin. Your main goal is to find more residents that can help fight these Chaos creatures, as well as create a safe and functional oasis for all to live in. That often requires doing specific tasks for wannabe residents and, once they’re in, setting up shops, called bloom booths, for them to sell their wares and keeping those shops well-stocked. Alas, the story is cookie-cutter basic and far from ambitious, yet the character designs are fun and memorable, and seeing a new possible resident show up in your oasis is exciting, even if the most they can offer you is a fetch quest.

However, it’s not enough to build a new oasis in Ever Oasis. No, no, it has to be prosperous, absolutely perfect. You hit this goal by completing missions in dungeons and caves outside the oasis, in the dangerous desert. Players can form a party of up to three characters and battle a range of enemies possessed by Chaos, but more on that in a bit. Dungeons also contain puzzles and treasure chests full of materials needed to restock bloom booths. Shopkeepers with popular products produce dewadems, this realm’s strangely named currency, which you can spend on various things, like building more booths or crafting new weapons/bits of armor. Bloom booths can also be upgraded by re-stocking them and completing quests for their operators.

Something the Mana games all have in common that is also found in Ever Oasis is a seamless, real-time battle system. One nice option is the ability to switch between any of your three party members at any given time, providing options for weapons and abilities, though I have mostly stuck with Tethi. Combat is a mix of light strategy and button-mashing, with an emphasis on rolling away from an enemy’s attack. You yourself have a Normal Attack, a Special Attack, and unlock combos as you level up. Because you can’t move after landing an attack, you want to ensure you don’t leave yourself open for damage; thankfully, so far, all the encountered enemies have a tell just before they lunge at you, which allows you to time your rolls and keep your HP up. One nice bonus of maintaining a healthy and happy oasis is that your health, when out in dungeons, is extended because of this. As more people swarm to your oasis, it grows and levels up, providing you with new crafting recipes and more safety net HP.

There’s little bits and pieces of things I love very much in Ever Oasis, but they are currently not enough to get me jumping for joy. Like, you can plant seeds and assign an unemployed Seedling to tend to your crops, but this is no Stardew Valley or even Disney Magical World 2. The farming aspect seems ultra basic. You plant seeds, you can either spend dewadems to help them grow faster or not, and wait for them to grow. An oasis of loyal and almost-loyal Seedlings sounds lovely, but this is no Animal Crossing, as they don’t have much to say other than their initial questline and just sort of wander down the road aimlessly. Also, the menus are clean and fine, though I found the section on main quests to be lacking; I want to be able to select a quest as a priority over others and have it drop the necessary waypoints on my map screen or at least see how I’m progressing towards it.

I do worry that Ever Oasis will turn into a grind, something I’m beginning to see as I prepare to throw my first festival, which first requires obtaining a number of stamps from happy shopkeepers. I’ll keep at it for the near future because I simply cannot fall back down the wormhole that is upping my completion rate in Disney Magical World 2, which would basically require me to craft a ton of princess dresses and outfits for girls.

LEGO Star Wars is from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away

I’ve not played every single LEGO video game out there, but I’ve gone through a good amount, most of which were in order of release. For me, it began with LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game back on the PlayStation 2, but it’s probably more accurate to say that the starting point for the evolution of these LEGO video games from TT Games began with LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. That’s where you began to see things like an enlarged hub world to explore and a split-screen camera option for when playing with a co-op partner, both of which have become mainstays for the series. Going back to play LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga recently has shown me just how far the series has come, for better or…no, just better. It’s only gotten better.

That’s not to say LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is a bad game or un-fun. Mel and I have been having a good time completing levels, collecting studs, unlocking red bricks, buying multipliers, and revisiting areas for hidden collectibles. We chip away at the larger beast. The LEGO grind is here, but it’s enjoyable because, compared to LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, not every level takes upwards of an hour to complete. Not every door requires you to solve a minigame to open it. Not every puzzle is dastardly obtuse. I guess there’s some worse in the newer entries after all.

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is basically a compilation of LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game and its sequel LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, that way you can play through them all together using one single product. Which is good for us because I only ever played through the former of those two, and Mel played the latter with her brother many moons ago. So we both got to experience some new areas together. Also, the game incorporates two previously deleted levels–“Anakin’s Flight” and “Bounty Hunter Pursuit”–though I’m only finding out about this now. Many other levels were redesigned and updated so that both games worked with each other and felt unified. Either way, the games follow the movies, which means you’ll get to see the exciting Trade Federation negotiations go down, young Anakin grow up, watch Luke learn about his father and The Force, and see Ewoks take down the Empire with sticks and stones. Since this is an older entry in the series, the cutscenes are wordless reproductions, but still silly when they want to be.

Here’s something I didn’t expect to ever say: Jar Jar Binks is essential. Early on, his ability to both double jump and jump high is pivotal for getting some hidden minikits, red bricks, or blue studs, which are the ones worth the most money. We brought him into every level we could during Free Play. I do miss the camera that would split in half and allow both players to do their own desires; here, you are stuck to each other, and often it made things easier for one player to simply drop out then for both to jump across sinking platforms floating in red-hot lava. Also, the flying levels are a struggle, especially when you need to get from point A to point B with missiles or a bomb being dragged behind you, and the whole world is out to make you explode. Later, we managed to make a door glitch out and not open despite doing everything right because glitches need stitches. Or something like that. Sorry, I didn’t know how to end that sentence.

We’re currently around the 65% completion mark, with several more levels to fully finish. Then there are special levels to do after you complete everything else, as well as challenges, arcade mode, playing online, gold bricks to buy, characters and vehicles to unlock, special cross-over Achievements to pop, and so on. Only after all that, after we see that 100.0% high in the sky, can we happily put LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga to bed. Still, this has been good co-op fun, which is not bad in July 2017 for the 23rd greatest video game of all time, according to the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition in 2009.