The rest is up to me, Assassin’s Creed II

It’s a little weird to be completing Assassin’s Creed II in 2015 when there are now a bajillion more entries in the series, some of which are universally praised and others, such as Assassin’s Creed III, are pretty much loathed. My storied history for this series created by a multicultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs has been playing Assassin’s Creed, then skipping right to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and now finally go back to see Assassin’s Creed II‘s lengthy credits roll. I’ve been dabbling at the game piecemeal over the last few months, but was driven to see it off my “still playing” list since getting wind of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag being a freebie for Xbox 360 users at the end of this month. Frustratingly, that means I’ll be skipping two more games in the “as released by Ubisoft” timeline, but neither of them sound highly recommended.

Anyways, Assassin’s Creed II–it’s pretty good. It’s definitely better than the original Assassin’s Creed game, though I fuzzily remember very little from that original outing save for frustrating climbing, annoying collectibles, and repetitive missions. Hey, wait. Some of that junk is still here in this one. Hmm, I guess it is the other elements that make the game stand a few rooftops higher, such as more nuanced and engaging combat, better climbing mechanics, and building up your home base with shops, paintings, and loot to earn some sweet coin. Plus, the locations you visit are more interesting to explore, and stabbing dudes from on a horse is never boring though I still prefer smoke bombing and making a hasty exit.

I won’t really go into too much story stuff, as the story in the Assassin’s Creed series–both in and outside the Animus–has never really interested me. I’m more into the exploring and climbing of buildings and running from rooftop to rooftop, with the occasional cool-looking assassination. Naturally, I did all the tombs as fast as I could, as the platforming puzzles, while frustrating and unclear in spots, are really the most enjoyable aspect to me. I will always hate tailing missions and chase missions, which thankfully only made up a small portion of the game. I prefer going from point A to point B and stabbing a dude in the neck, and I’m sorry if that concerns you. At least now I understand why it felt like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood picked up immediately after the conclusion of the previous game–that’s because it did.

Alas, come the end, I only found…42 of 100 feathers. I will not be going back to find the remainder of the flags. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood spoiled me with its ability to purchase maps of flag locations–though I still never went out and grabbed them all–but here you have only your ears and eyes to guide you on your collecting path. They tinkle and sparkle, but that’s not enough. No thanks. That means I will also miss out on the Auditore cape, which is unlocked for finding all the feathers. One last task for me to handle before deleting the game from my Xbox 360’s hard-drive is finding the remainder of the hidden symbols on select buildings, and I suspect I might grab a feather or two along the way, but not enough to finish the side quest.

Lastly, I do enjoy end credits sequences where you, the player, are still involved in some way. One standout favorite is shooting asteroids with developers’ faces and names on them in Vanquish to add to your final score tally. While not as cool as that, the end credits sequence in Assassin’s Creed II has you running around as Desmond outside the Animus as he and others try to escape the modern-day Templars. It’s more of the same from the main gameplay, but it is fun to see the names of the game’s creators scroll by as you punch, counter, and run from danger.

Well, I’ll be back to my assassinating ways very soon once Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag becomes free for Gold users at the end of April. Until then, the rest is up to me.

Jolly Rover’s got a sea’s worth of canine scallywags and spiritual magic

Through the power of Gmail and its determination to never truly delete anything from your inbox, I have discovered exactly when I got hold of my copy of Brawsome’s Jolly Rover, a comedic pirate-themed point-and-click adventuring starring literal dogs of the sea. It became my treasured booty back in March 2012 when it ran as part of “The St. Patrick’s Day Bundle,” which was the ninth bundle from Indie Royale. That bundle also provided me with copies of Hard Reset, Vertex Dispenser, DLC Quest, and Lair of the Evildoer, of which I’ve dabbled in a few of them over the years.

The plot in Jolly Rover is both engaging and easy to grok, a stab at the swashbuckling classics with a side of silliness à la Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! or Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. Gaius James Rover is a nicer-than-nice dachshund who, after escaping from indentured servitude on an enemy pirate ship, finds himself caught up in a number of quests involving lost treasure, family secrets, cannibals, cannonballs, and coconut-dropping magic–among other things. In order to reclaim his stolen cargo, save the girl dog, and fulfill his lifelong dream of juggling balls in his very own circus show, Rover must travel around a series of islands, speak to the inhabitants, click on items, and solve puzzles, either logically or via the magical ways of pirate voodoo, which runs the gamut from scaring away beasts to heating up anything made of iron. Pretty standard stuff.

The most interesting aspect of Rover’s abilities involves using a book of magical spells, as well as a voodoo “cheat sheet” that basically lets you do any spell you’ve already successfully performed without going through every step again. A few spells required me to take a picture of my laptop’s screen with my cell phone as I just couldn’t remember the specific steps clearly, though the similar gesture-based pictures are designed that way to confuse you. Ultimately, it’s fairly clear where and when you need to use a voodoo spell, but I do wish the game allowed for more creative uses or rewarded the player for experimenting now and then. For example, I thought melting the iron bars off a jail window to free some prisoners would’ve done the trick just fine–nope, didn’t work.

There’s really not too much else that stands out here from other traditional 2D point-and-click adventure games other than the previously discussed voodoo, but I do want to draw attention to both the rank and quest labeling system. These sit at the top of the screen and update constantly as you gain score–upped from doing stuff, whether it is examining items or advancing the story–and hit big events. The ranks are quite amusing, with Rover starting out as a “Blistering Barnacle” and working his way up past nicknames like “Nefarious Trickster” and “Dog-o-war.” For the quests, the objective is always amusingly changing, even during dialogue, so suddenly instead of “find X, Y, and Z” you’ll now have “think fast” when being questioned hard by the governor. It’s a really small detail that adds a lot of color and humor to Rover and his interactions with all the other dogs.

Alas, by the end of Jolly Rover, I did not find all the collectibles, which include pieces of eight, crackers, and scraps of flags. Phooey on that, as I won’t be replaying the game, even though I did unlock developer commentary for completing it once. Hitting set tiers for each of the listed collectibles unlocked music tracks and concept art. Not the biggest loss, but I do aim to be a completionist as I play, and so some treasure will just have to stay buried if you get my pirate talk.

I mostly came to Jolly Rover for its dog and pirate puns, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least. That said, I also found the game to be charming, cute, colorful, and crafty. The voice acting is also quite good, which always help in drawing me into a point-and-click adventure game; I don’t mind reading all this text, but it helps paint a stronger picture of each character to hear how they describe an oily rag or coldly served salamagundi. I will admit that I had to look up the puzzle involving a wheel and birthday dates, but otherwise it’s a simple, easy, and enjoyable few hours. As they say, a dog pirate’s life for me.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #26 – Assassin’s Creed II

Desmond, Ezio
Caught in political plot
Stab stab climb jump stab

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

If Salvador Dalí ever made a videogame, it’d be Off-Peak

There’s nothing to be ashamed about here, but I love the so-called “walking simulators,” a sub-genre dubbed during the Gone Home debates of 2013 over whether such-and-such was worthy of being called a videogame. I get that these more methodical, gun-less experiences are not every gamer’s cup of button-pushing tea. I can understand that, but for me, plopping me down in some new and untouched world and asking me to simply walk around it, slowly, and see how it ticks is one of the greatest joys videogames can give me. Heck, for most of my many early hours in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, I just walked from town to town via the king’s road, scouring houses and bookshelves and talking to citizens, avoiding fights at all cost. I didn’t actually want to be a wizard or warrior, simply a man or woman (or cat being) with plenty of curiosity and the means to travel the world.

That said, not all walking simulators are equal, as I found Dear Esther beautiful but boring. Seems like I need either a lot of things to examine in close detail as in Gone Home or something zany to happen every three footsteps like in Jazzpunk to keep me actively engaged. Off-Peak from Archie Pelago cellist Cosmo D is more of the former than the latter of that previous statement, but the stuff you are examining is so bizarre and jarring that you can’t help but walk around in a daze–eyes wide, mouth agape, brain nearly breaking. It instantly reminded me of the first time, as a wee boy, I got my hands on a book of paintings by Salvador Dalí, the Spanish artist and Surrealist movement leader best known for his depictions of melting clocks. I was young, a dedicated reader to all things cute, cuddly, and in the comics section of the Sunday newspaper, and then suddenly I was slept away into a foreign land, where the common quickly became uncommon.

Off-Peak is a short first-person adventure game, centered around a train station. You, whoever you are, must gather up pieces of a torn train ticket and move on with your life; as you search this giant area and its subsequent nooks, crannies, and hidden passageways, you’ll run into a number of colorful characters, as well as witness equally as colorful art, whether in statue, painting, or graffiti form. What’s really nice is that this world is yours to explore at your own speed, in any direction–the ticket pieces can be collected in any order. Quickly, you’ll discover that things in Off-Peak are a bit…off (peak), a world where the fate of musicians and artists is unclear, but their tools are highly praised and desired. Meanwhile, the sprawling train station provides a handful of food and entertainment spots for every kind of commuter to help pass the time between rides. Naturally, someone is reaping the benefits of such a money-making hub, and you’ll end up crossing paths with this element before the end.

I did not understand the story, nor the dressings around it, but it all remained fascinating nonetheless. The board game room, the ramen noodle shop, the Chinese garden filled with strange shapes and statues…I couldn’t help but drink it all in. Even the part where you climb a set of stairs for seemingly forever with nothing much to see, only a smooth electronica jazz soundtrack to pepper your footsteps. Considering the game was made by a musician, music plays a vital part to both the narrative and exploration, and I found nothing to dislike.

Undoubtedly, Off-Peak is not for everyone. It is a collage of sights and sounds, with nothing traditional to it, unless you believe walking around a space to be a standard classic of the industry. Um, which I do. The game’s conclusion didn’t satisfy me from a story perspective, but again, that wasn’t what I was digging for here from step one. However, if any of what I’ve written about has got you all tingly on the inside, then do yourself a favor, grab a copy of the game over at itch.io, and lose yourself in another realm for an hour or so. Wall art will never be the same afterwards.

Case #31 will have you going in circles

There’s something undeniably amazing about Case #31, but it’s actually unfortunately a sub-par gaming experience, severely hampered by things like pace and grammar and competent controls. However, the hint of goodness–possibly even greatness–is there, but you have to travel around in a circle for a good while to even begin to see it. There’s a fluidity to this wee game that is striking, like a mix of Bastion‘s levels zooming up from nowhere and Puppeteer‘s puppet show aesthetic, with background and foreground elements plopping down and getting pulled away as if all on strings. It certainly plays within the jam’s theme of “a game on a single screen,” wherein the screen is, more or less, stationary, but the dressings change to alter its look.

First, the nitty gritty. Case #31 was developed for Ludum Dare 31 in 46 hours using Unity3D through a team of six people. It revolves around–see what I did there?–a murder mystery in a dark, seedy town, though it ultimately feels like an unexplained excuse to shoot some cops. Basically, you, as a detective, end up upon a dead body and ultimately become a leading suspect, resulting in no other choice but to shoot down cops and make a break for freedom. Possibly answers, too, but I never saw Case #31 to completion despite several restarts. I’m writing most of this post a few days after actually playing Case #31 so it doesn’t bode well for the narrative when I can’t really remember any vital details.

The controls are fairly limited. You can move left and right with the arrow keys, sliding along the screen as if being carried by a merry-go-round. You can also jump with up or duck with down, as well as shoot your shooty thing. That’s kind of it. Your goal is to push forward to the right without taking too many hits. Unfortunately, there are no checkpoints. Or perhaps they are spaced far, far apart and I never hit one. Either way, once you die, you start over from the very beginning, which means button-mashing your way past the grammatically poor dialogue to test your skills again at shooting men of the law while not taking any hits yourself. It’s disappointing and off-putting, which is why I closed my browser after buying the farm three or four times.

In the end, there isn’t much here in Case #31, but a single strong concept. That said, it came in fifth place for the overall jam. With better controls, varied gameplay, enhanced AI, and copy-edited text with a more engaging story, this could be something really cool. I’d love to see a game with this style on the Nintendo 3DS, as the moving, cardboard cutout background elements would look stellar with the 3D slider turned up a bit. Until then, I’ll just go round and round and round, and you can do so yourself by giving it a go.

Five things make a post, so please stop uppercutting me to death

Things have been a little quiet over here at Grinding Down, and there’s a good reason for it, though I can’t reveal much at this time. Basically, I’m neck-deep in comic work and have been severely limiting my ferocious playing of videogames. Crazy, I know, especially since I’m right in the middle of my 2015 goal of seeing Final Fantasy IX‘s end credits–hey, remember when I wrote about how something always comes by and pushes me away during the second or third disc? Yeah, that’s what’s going on at the moment, but I have the fullest of intentions to get back to solving what’s really going on in that Black Mage Village.

That said, there has still been a few glimmers of activity, which brings us to this style of post.

FINISH HIM/HER, I CAN’T

I picked up the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection the other week during that crazy good PSN flash sale and have been inching away at it slowly. There’s not much to actually inch away at, seeing as these are literally just a column of enemies to three-round fight until you get to the end. Naturally, I remember everything a little different, back when I used to play these on my neighbor’s Genesis, and I don’t recall the computer AI being so difficult. I’ve even dropped the difficulty settings down to “very easy,” seeing little change. I won’t feel satisfied until they are all best, but for now I’ve only beaten the original Mortal Kombat (using Raiden, of course), though Goro still took a number of tries in the double digits.

Free-to-Pokemon nightly

I continue to use up my allotted five hearts in Pokemon Shuffle once a day, at night actually, just before Mr. Sandman comes calling. Strangely, since changing the system clock on my 3DS due to Daylight’s Saving Time, the game thinks I’m trying to pull one out from under it and has restricted my access to the “Special” levels. Unless I want to do blah blah blah–whatever, game. It’s not my fault you and the system don’t grok how the practice of advancing clocks during summer months by one hour works. Currently, I’m stuck on level 120, unable to take down a Mega Glalie, which is forcing me to go backwards, grind my hearts away while occasionally capturing a new Pokemon. It’s fine, really. So long as my captured pocket monsters are slowly gaining XP every night, I’ll eventually be strong enough to hit level 121. You gotta believe!

Greetings to Gracie

This should be no surprise to anyone, but I’m still playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf religiously and continuing to unlock slash see new elements of the game some years after its release. Such as finishing up Gracie’s Fashion Check quest four times, which results in the fashionista giraffe opening up a store of her own and upgrading your department store to fit all her swanky merchandise. Still need to pay off my house in full, fill the museum with more bugs, fish, and pieces of art, and get Katrina to open up a stationary fortune-telling shop in the town square. There’s always something to do, and even when there isn’t, just chatting up neighbors and pulling weeds is enough to satisfy me for fifteen minutes.

Not epic text, but bigger

Several weeks back, I saw word of another Dragon Age: Inquisition patch incoming, and usually these patches are just a long list of very specific catches/fixes that I might not ever notice or come across, but one item in this update stood out to me: Added an option to control the font size of subtitles. I’ve run into a lot of problems with the latest entry in the Dragon Age series–see here, as well as see here–but nothing got me to quit that game hard after only a few hours than its teeny tiny–nearly unreadable–text size. I’ve since loaded up the game again to discover that, yes, the text is much bigger and easier to read. Perhaps I’ll continue on with Girgna’s journey and actually leave the Hinterlands after Final Fantasy IX.

Unsuccessful hunter of monsters

Three times I’ve entered a physical store and tried to buy a copy of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate only to be told to scram. Well, no, not that. But mainly that such-and-such didn’t have a retail copy for sale. Now, I know I totally could go and order one from Amazon or download it via the eShop (actually, I can’t, as I doubt I have enough free blocks space for it), but that’s not my main operative. I want to go into a store and buy a thing and then have that thing in my hand, ready to be consumed. Me being me, I’m going to take this as a sign that I probably shouldn’t buy MH4U even though it seems like an interesting action game brimming with cats and cat-fed puns. This also happened when I tried to get Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Fire Emblem: Awakening, though I did procure a copy of the latter eventually. Meh, time will tell.

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And there you go. Five random thoughts for a Friday.

Adding to the Backlog – A Mortal Game of Ages Beyond Time and Space Starring PAC-MAN

Well, Sony went and did it again, putting a crazy good sale in front of my face for the entire weekend, demanding I get in on the “I’d buy that for less than a dollar” action before time ran out. Naturally, this flash sale went live just as I was heading out of town, but once I was home, I scanned through all the deals and picked out five to add to my never stopping, never not growing backlog. Here, take a look at my grabs:

• Game of Thrones – $0.80
• Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection – $0.90
• PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+ – $0.90
• Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space (Episodes 1-5) – $0.80
• Rock of Ages – $0.45

For a grand total of…$3.85. Which, if you want a measuring stick, is less than my cup of coffee and breakfast sandwich from this morning. Hmm. Not a bad deal one bit, though, again, I can’t even begin to see the end of the tunnel where I get to sit down and seriously play some of these titles.

At this point, I haven’t even downloaded all the items, as I might need to delete a few things and make space–seems like those five Sam & Max episodes are large in size, as is Game of Thrones. Between these kind of sales and years of PlayStation Plus, my PS3’s hard-drive space is pretty bloated, and I know that Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots has a mandatory install thingy to plan for once I return to the series. Ugh. I’m forever dealing with juggling space, whether it is on my phone, my 3DS, my PS1/PS2 memory cards, or my other gaming consoles. It’s almost a game in itself.

That said, I did download and install Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection first, load it up, select Rayden (or is it Raiden?), beat a few peeps to their knees, and electrocuted Lui Kang for my first Fatality in some years. Probably since I was a teenager over a friend’s house or getting lucky in the mall’s arcade. I did have to look up how to do it, as both my muscle memory and regular memory for final moves has faded, but it still satisfied, even if that original Mortal Kombat both looks and operates like garbage.

Well, more games. At least these don’t take up any shelf space.

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: Home Alone

Here’s a pretty good example of my lack of focus lately, or, rather, my more passionate and dedicated focus on other projects; I was hoping to both write and post this edition of Games I Regret Parting With before Christmas hit a few months back, especially when you consider that Home Alone is the classic family comedy about a young boy surviving a home invasion during the holiday season. Well, here we are at the end of March, the first day of spring, though it is supposed to snow today, so there’s at least a paper-thin connection to go on.

Home Alone is one of those rare game franchises where it is a different beast for the various systems it popped up on, to the point that you need a wiki to figure out where each one differs. Think like how Jurassic Park on the SNES and Jurassic Park on the Genesis were DNA-created reptiles from totally opposite prehistoric eras. Heck, one let you play as a velociraptor, and the other tried to use a Wolfenstein 3D look when inside buildings. Either way, I only ever played Home Alone on one system, the legendary Game Boy, and while I can remember that detail clearly, I still have no memory over what happened to my Game Boy and collection of tiny, gray game cartridges. All I know is that, unlike my SNES and small handful of classics (minus Mario Paint), they are all gone. Probably sold at a yard sale or traded in during my dumb trade in phase.

The Home Alone Game Boy version, while similar to the SNES and NES versions, required the player controlling pixelated Kevin McCallister to evade confrontation with the Wet Bandits. While hiding from the house robbing baddies, you have to gather up valuable items and then dump them into a laundry chute to deposit them into a protective safe. You could also resort to using these items against the Wet Bandits, by dropping them on their heads or setting up elaborate traps. Y’know, just like in the movie. In total, there are four levels, with each taking place in a different area of the larger-than-life McCallister abode. The first level pertains to gathering up jewelry/gold/silver items, the second level has toys, the third focuses on various electronics, and the fourth level has various exotic pets that are both rare and expensive. I feel like I never got past the second level, as I really don’t remember collecting electronics or exotic pets.

Evidently, after collecting the minimum amount of items and dumping them into the chute, you can go into the basement to fight a boss before locking up the safe. This is where things take a strange turn. A videogame-y turn, if you will. The first level’s boss is a giant spider, then a massive rat, and so on. Kevin eventually battles against Marv and Harry, but the true final fight is against the fearsome and deadly basement furnace. Again, I can’t recall any of these end-of-level encounters, but I was probably rubbish at Home Alone, content to simply run around the house and collect a few things.

For those too afraid to look into the matter, there are currently five films in the Home Alone franchise. Naturally, only the first two are worth watching. I feel like I might’ve dabbled in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York on the Game Boy as well, though it could have been a rental or borrowed copy from a friend. The games never controlled too way, especially when it came to Kevin’s jumping and later sliding mechanic, and could be pretty unforgiving, but the chiptune versions of some of the movie’s iconic songs were all I really needed. Plus, finding a slice of pizza inside a dresser drawer never got old.

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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.

There’s always A Place in Space for shooting aliens

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number just came out, and while I’m definitely interested in more chaotic, gun-tossing mayhem set to electronic beats that thump deep in your chest, from the coverage I’ve seen of it, the game doesn’t really seem to be that much different from the now cult hit. Which means I can wait, there’s no rush. If anything–if the itch becomes too strong to resist scratching–I can simply return to the original game on either Steam or PlayStation 3, as surely I haven’t seen everything there was to see, especially when you consider I went through the trippy tale of revenge wearing nothing but the “doors kill” mask.

Or, if you prefer blowing alien monsters into piles of bloody mush rather than nameless goons at a strip club or seedy apartment complex, there’s A Place in Space, another high-listed entry from Ludum Dare 31. You all remember me dipping my toes into this jam competition’s creations with Kram Keep from a few days ago, right? Right? Well, good. Glad to see your collective memories are in fine shape.

There’s no story here, and there doesn’t need to be a story. Keeping with the jam’s theme of “entire game on one screen,” you move a little, gun-toting astronaut warrior between blackened out rooms, blasting everything that moves until it stops moving, opening the door to the next room. Rinse and repeat, moving clockwise around the same set of rooms, which are randomly generated a la The Binding of Isaac when you step on in. You use the WASD keys to move around and the mouse to both aim and fire whatever gun is currently equipped. The miniscule and crudely pixelated astronaut can only take so many hits from enemies, which means you definitely don’t want to back yourself into a corner. As you create pools of bloody mush, you can also pick up health refills and new weapon types, which immediately change how you both fire and play, just like in Contra.

A couple of problems I ran into, and these might only apply to me, as I’m sure I’m using the worst browser ever designed for Internet browsing. No, I won’t tell you what it is. Whenever I was in the bottom two rooms and tried to walk my astronaut up using the W key, the entire page I was on would shift up, cutting off half my view and forcing me to quickly use the mouse to scroll it back down. When this happened in the middle of a tense shootout, things often didn’t go well. Also, for some reason, every death caused A Place in Space to crash, which wasn’t the biggest deal since it only took a quick refresh to get back into the groove of things…but still. Lastly, and this is more of a nitpick than anything, there didn’t seem to be any way to know how long power-ups lasted, whether it was for a specific number of shots or only for one room; it would certainly help with planning the next room’s attack to know whether I’m going to lose that laser beam add-on early into the skirmish or not.

Give A Place in Space a try in your browser, and I guarantee that you’ll do at least a few runs in a row. If only there was a more killer soundtrack to go along with all that alien monster killing. If only.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #25 – Off-Peak

Search for ripped ticket
In the strangest transit hub
This side of oddness

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