A broad array of PlayStation characters are ready to fight

This past Sunday turned out to be “download all those new PlayStation Plus freebies for the month” day, which saw me adding Hoard, Sportsfriends, and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale in one big gulp to my ever-growing list of untouched games. I glanced at the first two after installing them and decided that, before I get back into some lengthy Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty sessions, I should try out PS All-Stars and see what all the hubbub was about.

First, my history with these kind of all-out rumble in the jungle multiplayer mayhem games: I’ve never, ever ever played Super Smash Brothers. In any form. And I don’t see that changing any time soon, even with the newest ones looking stock full of franchises I adore, like Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Fire Emblem: Awakening. Oh well. I’ve also never touched Power Stone or Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring. They’ve just never really appealed to me, and I can’t exactly pinpoint why because I do enjoy Nintendo and its characters, but I guess I felt like the fighting overall appeared rather superfluous and it was simply a bunch of fan service. Plus, considering how bad my eyes are, I’m not a big supporter of when games pull the camera back really far, making it hard to see your character and the supposedly cool fighting moves they are done, something that PS All-Stars definitely does frequently. Especially when there’s four mascots fighting at once.

So far, I’ve run through PS All-Stars‘ story mode once and immediately picked Sly Cooper as my man raccoon of action. His story mode has you playing through several fights as you try to figure out who stole some pages from the ancient family heirloom Thievius Raccoonus. Some fights were one on one, asking you to get the most kills over a three-minute time period, and others task you with being the first player to reach three kills first. Eventually, you get to the story reveal, which is that Nathan Drake stole those pages. Sure, you might see the connection that both Sly and Nathan are thieves, but it’s even more ironic when you realize that Nolan North voiced Le Paradox and El Jefe in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. Anyways, you battle him, and then you battle Polygon Man, the original PlayStation mascot. I did not find any of this challenging at all, but it is fun pulling out multi-kill specials, especially the level 3 one; for Sly, Bentley hooks you up with some kind of missile launcher, which you target opponents with via a first-person mode.

As you play–and win–battles, the chosen character levels up, unlocking various things, such as new backgrounds, icons, titles, belts, minions, and costumes. I can now happily dress Sly Cooper in his Arabian outfit. By the end of the Story mode, Sly was something like level 11 or 12, and it seems like there’s plenty more to unlock and see for him alone. I guess I can either replay the Story mode (most unlikely) or take the character online. We’ll see. There’s really only a few other PlayStation characters I’m interested in playing as, and they are as follows: Jak and Daxter, Parappa, Raiden, Ratchet and Clank, and Sir Daniel Fortesque. Sorry spiky-haired dude from Ape Escape, but I never got to play you way back when. Also, sorry everyone else, but you’re either too new or too dark and brooding to care about in this goofy, carefree brawler.

I suspect I’ll play this a few more to see what some of those other characters can do and some more of the zany, always-changing and interactive backgrounds. The fighting doesn’t feel 100% great, but maybe that had more to do with Sly, who can’t even block (he turns invisible for a bit instead). I can appreciate the idea behind this game, but I think Sony missed some chances to really include a few larger known entities than Fat Princess (pun intended), such as Crash Bandicoot, the robot bunny from Jumping Flash!, old-school and super pointy Lara Croft, and maybe even that dude from Wild 9. I don’t know; the inclusion of two versions of Cole from inFAMOUS  2 seems a bit uninspired.

At least I got another good–if extremely minor–dose of Sly Cooper, Murray, and Bentley. Really, you can’t go wrong with that trio. Sly’s level 2 special tosses Murray out at enemies in this sliding body slam, and it’s a great way to clear the path before you with the click of a button. I ended up using it more than his level 3 special in the end.

Who’s your favorite character in All-Stars? Again, it’s free right now for PlayStation Plus subscribers, so grab it, and maybe we’ll play together some day down the online road. Hint: I’ll be the raccoon hitting you on the head with a cane.

Solid Snake struggles with investigating the development of a new Metal Gear

Well, with Suikoden done, I’m moving on to my next target for 2014, which is coincidentally another Konami title–replaying Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. You might’ve assumed I’d go right into Suikoden II, but there is a wee time-crunch hanging over my head. See, Dan Ryckert and Drew Scanlon are playing through the original Metal Gear Solid over at Giant Bomb, with hints that they’ll be tackling more tactical espionage action titles in the series afterwards. And they’re moving forward swiftly. Personally, I’d love to watch them replay Solid Snake’s first outing on the PlayStation 2 after I get to re-experience it myself. Call me selfish, but I don’t want my replay to be tainted by their actions or thoughts in any way whatsoever. Thus, I loaded up Metal Gear Solid 2 the other night via my disc copy of Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection 1987 – 2012.

To open, it didn’t go well, and I’m going to call my first hour or so with the game a complete wash. I didn’t even bother saving it once, knowing I’d like to try again and not immediately goof up and get spotted every few steps. I’m not sure exactly where everything went wrong, but the controls are a huge change from the–well, what now seems rudimentary–controls from Metal Gear Solid. The biggest addition is a useful first-person POV, one where you can aim your gun in and strafe. Before, you merely used it to look around the environment, but this new angle becomes vital when using the M9 tranquilizer gun because guards will fall asleep faster based on where you hit them with darts (go for the heads, Snake, not the knees). However, every time I went to use it, I kept trying to hit the Triangle button instead of the now used R1 button, causing Snake to stand still out in the open a few seconds longer than I’d like. I also found it harder to stick to surfaces using the analog stick, with Snake often slipping off cover and getting spotted. Ugh.

Wait, wait, wait. I guess I should actually try to some up the story before getting into the trials and triumphs of my replay. Metal Gear Solid 2 opens with a flashback in 2007, two years after the Shadow Moses incident that went down in the original Metal Gear Solid. Solid Snake and Otacon, now members of the non-governmental organization Philanthropy, are investigating the development of a new Metal Gear by American marines. To do this, Snake sneaks on to the tanker transporting the weapon and must produce legitimate pictures of it.

Of course, as many fans of the series already knows, this was a bait and switch tactic by Konami, and the tanker section is only a prologue, with the main meat of the game starring FOXHOUND’s newest recruit Raiden two years later. His objectives are to infiltrate the Big Shell clean-up facility to rescue hostages, including the U.S. president, from the terrorist group Sons of Liberty. This terrorist group is purported to be lead by Solid Snake and backed up by Dead Cell, a rogue anti-terror training unit. They are also threatening to destroy the facility they have seized.

So, I had trouble on the tanker. I played for an hour, got spotted a lot, tried to fight my way out of alert mode, died, and so on. At one point, because I didn’t remember how hanging worked, I dropped Snake right into the cold, unrelenting mistress known as the ocean. Thinking back to my VR days, I decided to try a few training sessions out and see if they helped any. Once I felt ready, I went back in to Metal Gear Solid 2 with the following repeating loudly and clearly in my mind: getting caught is not the end. See, games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mark of the Ninja really pushed for non-lethal playthroughs, the perfect kind, where you don’t even get spotted once. Well, that seems really hard and also not fun, so I’m not going to worry too much if things go awry rather fast because I darted by some guard’s vision cone too soon. Plus, I’ve found it is easier to simply let Raiden die than try to take out five or six guards or, even more impossible, hide from them; the game does a good job of auto-saving when you enter a new area.

Metal Gear Solid and its earlier brethren spoiled me by providing the radar from the get-go. Here, you have to first find a terminal and download a radar for each new area, which means when you first arrive somewhere, you can only see what you can see, and have to use the AP sensor as much as possible. This makes each new area tougher to initially run through, but also more exciting. There’s some strange new items, like pornographic magazines and coolant sprays, to use, and I am still horrible at holding up soldiers and getting them to shake dog tags free. Well, that’s only partially true; I can consistently sneak up behind a guard and get them to freeze, but then trying to reposition Raiden to take advantage of this always leads to mayhem.

If there is one thing I forgot about Metal Gear Solid 2, it’s that its color scheme, specifically once you get to Big Shell, is phenomenal. I know teal and orange is a bit overdone, but maybe it is used over and over for a reason–it works. I love traveling from one strut to another and being outside on the bridges with the sea gulls and blue sky. The music is intense and stirring, and while there is the occasional bit of still awkward and robotic dialogue (ironically from the Colonel), the voice acting still draws you in despite the ridiculous characters and situations. I particularly like the Rosemary and Jack stuff, which I somehow forgot entirely since I last played this back in college.

Right now, I’ve infiltrated Raiden’s way into Shell 1’s core by wearing an enemy’s disguise and carrying an assault rifle. Now I need to figure out how to work around a retinal scan in hopes of learning the location of the captured U.S. president from a man or woman named Ames, who apparently has a pacemaker. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the rest of this zany plot unravels as I really only remember the most zany moments–naked cartwheels–and not the quiet stuff, like Fortune’s affection for Vamp and the silly detail of Fatman drinking a fruity drink before starting the boss fight.

The end has arrived for Suikoden’s cruel Imperial regime

Well, I did it. I beat Suikoden…again. I suspect this is probably my third time through as I most likely beat the game back around when my neighbor helped buy it for me from Kay Bee Toys in 1996, stumbling through it blind as Morgan, the eyeless slave swordsman from Falena, and only recruiting two-thirds of the 108 Stars of Destiny. Then a copy of PSM hit my parents’ mailbox, hinting that a certain character called Gremio could be revived before the end fight if you gathered everybody possible first. Well, I just had to try again, and so I did, successful in my endeavors, but never really returning to the troubled political strugglings of the Scarlet Moon Empire since then.

I decided to go back to Suikoden–and hopefully Suikoden II soonish–for a variety of reasons, one of which I’m still not ready to talk about. However, back when I played these games, I was not a writer. Or even an aspiring writer. I was just a goofy kid that listened to way too much ska music and rode his bike around the neighborhood after dark and liked games that seemed to last forever, mostly JRPG juggernauts, like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Cross. Nowadays, a lot of what I play sits in my brain, swirling this way and that until I put it down here on Grinding Down, really thinking about mechanics and pacing and how effective or non-effective a transition was, etc. I often make the claim that Suikoden and its much more loved sequel are my favorite games, but I always worried that nostalgia played a big part behind that, and so it is healthy and informative to replay your old favorites every now and then, that way you can truly see if they stand the test of time.

Overall, I’d say that Suikoden is still an immensely enjoyable JRPG, if a little kooky and surprisingly easy. The first hour is very slow in terms of action and challenge, though once you get your castle headquarters and can begin traipsing from town to town looking for recruits, the pace picks up tremendously. Almost too fast. My save slot just before the end battle with Emperor Barbarossa is a nick over twenty-two hours, but please remember that at least two of those hours were spent simply grinding for a nameless urn. Once you get the castle, you kind of go from one big story event to another, with no push to take things slow and go do your own thing for a bit. I mean, you totally can, and I did, but many might not realize the importance of growing your army and just charge through every story beat. All you have to do is keep returning to Mathiu and he’ll always have some plan in the works.

Suikoden might be one of the easiest JRPGs out there. There is no difficulty setting, so it is what it is, and you can, more or less, simply press attack on every character in battle without seeing much resistance from the enemy. In truth, you don’t have many options during the turn-based combat: attack, rune (magic spells), and, depending on who is in your six-member party, unite. There are not as many unite attacks as I originally thought, and many force you to use some less than ideal characters to pull them off–no thanks, every blacksmith ever. Eventually, I ended up using “free will” a lot, especially when grinding, and there were only a few moments when things would go really poorly. So long as you are on top of healing, boss fights are straightforward. I can say that I only saw one “game over” screen, and that was during the second fight with Neclord up in his castle, and it was my fault for not having enough “heal all” spells or mega medicines. Not even Emperor Barbarossa in his true three-headed dragon form proved troublesome.

Recruiting men and women for the Liberation Army barely requires any extra legwork, not counting the two you need to grind for an item for. Most will immediately join up after you speak to them once. A few ask you to be a certain level or, such as in the case of Rubi and Kirkis, another character to be higher up before they’ll throw their bag in the fight. Occasionally, you need to bring a specific character with you to convince someone else to join. I’m looking forward to seeing if the requirements in Suikoden II are a bit more trickier. Gathering recruits is twofold: one, it is fun watching them move into the castle and claim a space for themselves, and two, it ups your army count during the larger-scaled battles, so it does have an effect on gameplay.

I ended up using the following characters as my main mission-goers: Cleo, Victor, Pahn, Valeria, Kirkis, Flik, Stallion, and Ronnie Bell, exchanging them when the situation dictated so. While there are 108 Stars of Destiny to recruit, not all of them are able to fight in the turn-based battles. Like pointless, nose-upturned Onil. Not many of the characters end up playing differently from others despite visible stat differences. They all have different weapons, but you can attach any rune you want to them, turning that martial artist into a healer or that pacifist farmer a wielder of fire spells. I made a mild attempt at trying a few peeps out that I normally ignored, but still found that they lacked personality, especially when you consider that Cleo and Victor are involved in story moments and others, like Lotte and Lester, just aren’t.

All right, here are a couple of other small Suikoden points I’d like to comment on. Just like as in Chrono Cross, you can collect new window frames, but all of them are disgusting and hard to actually look at, though I did end up at least changing the color of the transparency part of the text box to a light brown. The music, when not sampling elephant noises and strange banjo-plucking tunes for mini-games, is memorable and moving, especially that one scene at night when Odessa and Tir McDohl are having a little heart-to-heart moment. Here, have a listen. I ended up spending all my bits on sharpening weapons, rarely purchasing armor or items; you gain so many as you scour dungeons anyways, and the armor is not reflected on the character sprites, so whatever.

So yeah, Suikoden. Still a charming, enjoyable adventure of a boy who unknowingly takes up the call to fight back against an evil empire with the help of an assortment of characters of all different relationships, colors, and races. I wonder what George Lucas thinks of it. It’s perhaps a bit too easy of a game from beginning to end, making things like Costume Quest seem like a hardcore gamer’s nightmare, and the story is not as epic or deep as I remember–or grammatically correct–but it plants all the right seeds for the series to grow from, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Suikoden II plays in 2014. All I remember from it is the cooking mini-game.

Line of sight works against me in Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine

When it comes to stealth games, I can accept the stretch on the limitations of reality to allow the character I’m controlling to gain the upper hand. For instance, in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I always upgrade Adam Jensen with the Augmentations that gives enemies vision cones and allows him to see through walls. Actually, maybe in that scenario, it works fine within the fiction. Also take Mark of the Ninja, where you can use Focus to freeze time and better survey the environment, especially when most of it is shrouded in shadow. Truthfully, I’m not asking for much, but having a slight perk above your enemies makes dealing with them and the situation all the more fun.

None of that is the case with Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine, a deceptively tough stealth action indie title from Pocketwatch Games and Majesco Entertainment that puts pressure on co-operative play for success. The game has four main story campaigns, two of which tell the same story but through different styles. You can choose from eight pixelated characters, all of which have unique abilities: the locksmith, the pickpocket, the cleaner, the lookout, the mole, the gentleman, the hacker, and the redhead. Just by the names alone you might be able to figure out their perks. Certain characters are better suited for specific levels, though I’ve only gotten to play the first few levels in the opening campaign story at this point, using mostly the locksmith and mole.

So, Monaco is presented via a top-down view of blueprint style levels where players can only see things through their “line of sight.” Everything else is shrouded in a thick, gray fog that indicates where rooms are, but not the details within. Unfortunately, your character’s vision cone is narrow and limited, offering up only a tiny slice of what is ahead of you, making it extremely easy to walk through wires or even right into guards on patrol. You can unlock doors, hack ATMs, and hide in bushes by simply pressing up against them, waiting for a meter bar to fill. There are also weapon pick-ups, such as smoke bombs and C4, scattered throughout the level, which you can use against nosy guards.

I got a copy of Monaco some time back for the PC, though I couldn’t tell you how it ended up on my list of Steam games. Probably some kind of bundle. I played through a level or two before determining that this style of infiltration gaming was not for me. For September 2014, it’s now free for Gold members on the Xbox 360, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to try one more time. Well, I got just as far as I did on the PC–the bank heist level–before putting the controller down. I really do struggle with seeing the big picture of the level, and the moment a guard spots me, I just panic and run around like a headless chicken. There’s something not connecting with my eyes and brain, especially when a lot of the mission objectives and tips are presented within the level, hidden until you swing your vision cone over them.

It sounds like Monaco is intended to be played cooperatively, with friends. I don’t have three other friends I can invite over, and so there’s an option to link up with strangers via Xbox Live. Eh…no thanks. I’m not one for putting on a headset and chatting with new people in a game that clearly requires teamwork and strategic planning. From what I’ve gathered through forum chatter, a lot of problems crop up with co-op play in that everyone just runs ahead and does what they want, setting off alarms left and right and leaving every other player to fend for themselves.

Monaco certainly has a cool style to it, but part of that style inhibits the gameplay. For me. Others seem to have no problem whatsoever, and goodie for them. But it’s why I struggle with horror games, of not knowing what is ahead and to the left and right and even behind my character. Or it is like those mirror mazes, where I have to take it slow and one step at a time, unsure of what is only a foot in front of me; the last one I did was both a mirror maze and clown-themed, and I was in my early twenties and I’ve still not gotten over the experience. Perhaps I’ll try some online heisting–though I refuse to bust out a headset–and perhaps I’ll attempt another solo run, but regardless I just don’t think this is the stealth action I’m looking for.

My demon hunter Whisper in Diablo III is one to fear

Here’s the thing: I’m a sucker for “complete package” versions of videogames, especially in this era of post-game DLC and pre-order bonus bull-doody items and unlocks. This gels well with my high patience stat, meaning I can wait the many months–and sometimes even up to a year or so later–for the games’ developers to realize they need another quick burst of cash-money, thus releasing some kind of Game of the Year edition which packs all the extra bits and bobs in with the main game for one, more often than not, easy-to-swallow price. That said, I’ve still not picked up the latest GOTY versions for Borderlands 2 and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but my heart rests easy knowing they are out there; truthfully, it’s all about preservation because, one day, you might not be able to purchase that slice of DLC separately off Xbox Live or PSN if–and I dearly hope not–they no longer exist.

All of those words were written so that I could totally tell you that I picked up Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition over the fine Labor Day weekend, and it was priced nicely at just under $40. Mmm mm good. This package includes the original Diablo III campaign, its expansion Reaper of Souls, and some other new goodies, all of which I’ve never touched up to this point. The PC mouse-driven action RPG has been updated for consoles and console controls, just like how Torchlight was, and I have to say, besides a bit of clumsiness when sifting through inventory menus, it all feels really good and intuitive. Especially the combat, where it matters most. But more on all that in a hot cooldown.

Before you can even begin killing and looting legendary gear in Diablo III, you have to pick from one of six available character classes: the witch doctor, the barbarian, the wizard, the monk, the demon hunter, and the crusader. What is appreciated is that you can play all of these classes as either a man or a woman. I went with a female demon hunter as I’m big on crossbows and rolling away from enemies in these kind of games, and the random name generator eventually came up with Whisper, which I think is the most badass name a demon hunter can claim. In truth, all the other classes seem like a lot of fun (the monk was a close second), but like with Borderlands 2 and Dead Island, I need to just pick one and focus on it all the way to the end.

Well, let’s quickly cover the weakest and easiest to ignore aspect of Diablo III: its story. The game takes place in Sanctuary about twenty years after the events of Diablo II, a game I played a bunch of, but never really got far in, though organizing your inventory was a masochistic joy. Deckard Cain and his niece Leah are in Tristram’s cathedral, investigating a bunch of loose pages from ancient texts regarding yet another ominous prophecy. Then, without warning, a mysterious star falls from the sky and crashes through the Cathedral, creating a deep crater and sucking Deckard Cain down. Evil monsters quickly reveal themselves, and your character is on his or her way to Tristram to see how you can help. It’s good versus evil and pretty generic at best, but at least the voice acting is enjoyable; I’m proud that I rightly recognized Jennifer Hale’s voice for Leah after a minute or two.

But one doesn’t play Diablo III for its novel stab at videogame literature, right? You play to click on things, lot of things. Well, in my case, hit the A button on things, lots of things. And the right trigger a lot, too. The left analog stick moves your character, and the right analog stick is a dodge move for whatever direction you push it in. The face buttons all relate to a skill move, and right now Whisper can drop a handful of caltrops to slow enemies, as well as get herself out of a mob of enemies with some swift gymnastic flips. Right trigger is for my favorite active skill so far–Rapid Fire. This uses up Hatred–regenerating mana for demon hunters, basically–but is able to take out a ton of enemies in one gulp, often revealing a yellow orb for killing at least ten of them and doubling Whisper’s damage for a short window of time. Even though she is using a bow for it, the attack sounds like she’s wielding a machine gun.

I’m still fairly early in Act I, and all I want to do is go home right now and play some more. Yeah, it’s that kind of game, where you’re always close to leveling up or you just found a new weapon or piece of gear and want to see it in action, and before you know what is what, you’re five levels deep in some dank crypt, killing zombies and ghosts and having a blast. Given that this is both Diablo III and its expansion, which offers up Adventure Mode and more, I’ve got plenty of road still to travel with Whisper. Also, I’m using followers, and unlike in Skyrim, I am not 100% hating them, though I still think they could be a bit more proactive in battle and a whole lot less whiny.

Stay tuned for further updates about Whisper and the many denizens of Hell that she’ll be slaughtering…

Grammar is not Suikoden’s greatest joy in life

During my recent replaying time with Suikoden, I noticed that the translation work, well…it needed some work. Meaning that there were a constant number of grammar and punctuation mistakes across my logged twenty-two hours of grinding and recruiting, enough that I eventually began snapping crappy photos via my cell phone–when I could. For documentation’s sake, of course. I mean, it might be another ten-plus years before I touch this RPG again, and maybe the world won’t even care a lick about good grammar by then–the horror!

I’d love to tell you that I noticed all of these errors back when I was a freckly, green-haired teenager with ska patches covering my backpack, but that probably wouldn’t be true. I don’t think my editing skills really blossomed until college, until I was told to stop pursuing art. Nonetheless, the spelling mistakes and grammar errors don’t detract one bit from Suikoden‘s fun gameplay, then and now; they’re just easier to spot in 2014 when playing on a larger TV screen, and once you spy one, you’ll be constantly looking for more.

Anyways, below are only four examples, but trust me when I say there were many others that I accidentally button-pressed through too fast or the text on the screen disappeared before I could ready my phone. This was especially the case during the final montage before the credits, where every single 108 Star of Destiny you recruited before the final battle with Barbarossa gets a tiny sentence about what they did after the war was over. Unfortunately, these little blips of text don’t stay on the screen for very long, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Or, y’know, you could play Suikoden all the way through. Or just watch here. The most common problem I spotted was subject-verb agreement, such as “Become the Commander-in-Chief and protect the border” for Kasim and “Embark on a journey to improve his imperfect self” for Pahn. They also end up spelling Barbarossa as Barbarosa on several accounts.

Right. Check these goofs out:

Can’t stop ripping out eyeballs in Tentacles: Enter the Mind

It really seems like the Windows 8 phone just lumps a bunch of freemium games together and publishes them all closely together in one big spurt. I mean, Throne Together, Hungry Shark Evolution, and now Tentacles: Enter the Mind all came out in just the last few weeks alone, and this is following another burst of free-to-play experiences with Hexic, Snap Attack, and that trilogy of Microsoft-themed classics like Mahjong, Minesweeper, and Solitaire. Oh boy, my phone might be filling up a little too fast. There’s even a few other free games to download that I’ve held back on simply because I don’t want to overdo it, though clearly that is not a thought in Microsoft’s mind.

That said, so far, Tentacles: Enter the Mind from Microsoft’s very own Press Play studio seems like the most traditional videogame of all these freebie titles I’ve touched of late, even if there are still options to purchase digital money with real-life money. Thankfully, they really don’t get in the way of playing the game, which I’m a thousand times thankful for, since playing the game is a lot of fun and I don’t want anything coming between me and my fun. Perhaps the best missing element is any form of an energy system, which means I can keep stretching from one brain shop to another for as long as I like, or as long as I want to run my phone’s battery into the ground.

To begin, Tentacles: Enter the Mind features a fully 3D and colorful landscape that you can explore via your tentacle-laden monster called Lemmy by tapping all over the screen. Basically, each tap moves a tentacle, so if you quickly tap four times in a row, the monster will zip over to where you want…or you can stretch it out across a bunch of different spots and see how far it’ll go. The story goes that you’re inside the mind of the mad scientist Dr. Phluff, fighting off invading enemies in his subconscious. How do you do this, you ask, probably already knowing the answer based on this blog post’s title? Simple: you pluck their eyeballs out from their heads. You can also use special powers, like a AOE bomb that hits all nearby enemies, by swiping down on the screen. There seems to be 15 areas in total, but each area–or level of subconscious–is made up of multiple stages, which may or may not be randomly generated. I’m currently on one themed around kitty cats, meow.

As you travel from one stage to another and aren’t too busy ripping the eyes from your enemies–yes, I’m a big fan of that scene from Kill Bill: Vol. 2, how did you know?–you can also pick up gold coins, hammers, eggs, and revive tokens. In between each stage, you pause at a shop menu to purchase upgrades for your monster, including new tentacle effects, different eyeballs, and additional power skills. You use your gold coins on this, and so far, the amounts are not too crazy high that you immediately see the unnecessary need to purchase gold with real money. Everything will come in time, plus you can earn more gold from cracking colored eggs with the matching colored hammer, as well as completing side objectives, like ripping the eyeballs from X monsters in a row without taking any damage.

The feeling of moving Lemmy one tentacle at a time is actually quite satisfying. I mean, after all these years of watching octopus videos, and I finally sort of know how it feels. Throw in that plus dodging and attacking enemies simultaneously, which you also have to tap on, and your phone and your index finger are going to become quite close friends. The only parts I’m struggling with are having Lemmy move to a really specific point in the level; for instance, there’s a part inside a confined tube, where these rotating dividers block your way forward, save for a small hole in them that you have to dart through when the moment is right. If you don’t, you get electrocuted, which is usually a whole heart gone. I can’t get past it, but at least I get to keep the gold coins and eggs I find along the way.

I look forward to seeing more of Tentacles: Enter the Mind and growing Lemmy into an even more fearsome eyeball-ripping monster. Y’all best stay out of my tentacles’ way now.

It is only through Motocross Madness that the soul is revealed

Trials Evolution is a game I both love and hate, one with extremely hard swings, where one minute I’m leaping off a ramp high in the sky across a gorgeous vista and doing sick backflips and the next grumbling curse word after curse word as I try to get up an extremely steep hill and hit the next checkpoint. It’s really been my only toe-dip into the videogaming world of dirt bike racing–I guess since Excitebike–and its focus on hyper sensitive controls really means that only the driven and dedicated will continue on. Alas, I have not; think the last time I touched it was last fall, and even then it was only for goofing around in the user-created levels, which are, nine times out of nine, absolutely bonkers.

Well, I got the itch to gas a bike up a steep ramp and do silly tricks, and so I turned to Motocross Madness. No, no, not that Motocross Madness, the one from 1998. This is Microsoft’s Avatar-spearheaded take on arcade style and open sandbox motorbiking, and it was given out for free this month to Gold accounts, along with Dishonored, which I continue to be terrible at. More on that somewhere down the line…

To be honest, I’m enjoying Motocross Madness. A lot. While there may not be a ton of variety in the courses, there’s certainly variety to the things you can do in them. First, you can partake in a standard race via Career mode, aiming for that first place gold medal each time. Rivals mode has you competing against developer avatar ghosts. There’s a Trick mode that tests your aerial button-pressing skills and rewards you with new trick combos. Lastly, and probably my favorite part of Motocross Madness, is Exploration mode, which lets you hop off the track’s main path and explore every corner of the environment for gold coins and collectibles, all at your own leisurely pace. The courses are spread across three differently themed worlds, though I’ve only gotten to bike around Egypt and Australia for now; Iceland is still to come.

Unlike Trials Evolution, the racing here is much looser and more forgiving, meaning you can spill a few times and still stay in the lead or, with enough time, catch back up with everybody. I appreciate this greatly. If that’s not the case, then you probably need to lightly grind for some more coins and upgrade your bike a bit, which is easily done via Exploration mode or playing an older race again. The physics are not entirely arcade-ish, as landing after a jump or trick does require you to maintain some balance or skid out, and you eventually are able to ride behind another biker and coast within their wake, which is silly fun.

Much like with Doritos Crash Course 2 and, maybe, World Series of Poker: Full House Pro, seeing your Avatar in action is a blast. It’s a shame that the game encourages you to cover up my silly, bearded face with riding helmets, but sometimes you need to do that to look super stylish. While the outfits are cosmetics, you can make stat changes to your bike, purchasing new engine parts, tires, and brakes, and you will occasionally need to up a bike to perform better in a higher-tiered race. The cartoony graphics all around work well, though there’s some strange pop-in after each race is finished, when your Avatar hops of his or her bike and greets the crowd of cheering fans.

For another monthly freebie, Motocross Madness is a great addition to anyone’s digital collection on the Xbox 360. Perhaps a bit small in scope, but still brimming with things to do. You can also race competitively online though, if y’all know me like I hope y’all would know me by now, I’ve made no attempts to try this as of yet. Personally, I end up spending most of my time in Exploration mode, staring at coins and skulls in the sky and trying to figure how best to get ’em. It’s certainly more enjoyable than hitting restart every few seconds on a tough-as-nails track in Trials Evolution.

The lengthy grind for an urn without a name

I find it both bizarre and amusing that Suikoden gives the player two extremely similar recruit requirements at nearly the exact time in the plot, and both ask that a specific creature be killed in hopes that it drops a certain item. Nothing too out of the ordinary in a JRPG. However, from what I can gather, the drop rates for both of these monsters range dramatically from one player to another, and some people find the item after the first battle and others, like me, end up grinding for two hours just to see its name pop up. As the Brits say, that’s a bunch of bollocks.

Okay, details. The first side recruit involves killing Nightmares, which are floating casino-card like enemies, in the Soniere Prison; one will eventually leave behind an opal, which you can then give to Esmeralda to get her to sign up with the Liberation Army. The second recruit quest has you murdering Holly Fairies for a nameless urn, which will most likely stump even Jabba, a wizened appraiser from Rikon. The objective couldn’t be clearer: kill X until X drops Y. The problem is, there is no way to tell when you’ll see that item. Might be within minutes, hours, or–the horror!–days.

In fact, I had almost left Soniere Prison entirely and started that really tough Gremio scene, but I purposefully back-tracked for a bit to get into a few more fights starring Nightmares. I would wager it only took four or five more rounds until an opal hit my inventory, so that was nice and had me thinking optimistic thoughts about future grinding quests even though I knew what story beat was coming, but hey, at least I didn’t have to grind for two hours first.

So after gathering up a few more recruits for Castle Castle, I double-checked my list to see who I could still get on the non-Imperial side before serving Milich his just desserts, and I noticed that Jabba the appraiser was still calling Rikon home. So off I went, to grind outside on the world map for a bit, searching for that nameless urn. I skipped all battles not involving Holly Fairies and, given how well the opal hunt went, figured I’d maybe spend fifteen minutes at most doing this before getting the urn and moving on with the game. Nope. I grinded Holly Fairy fight after Holly Fairy fight for at least an hour and a half, having to even mute the game’s sound and listen to a podcast so that I didn’t lose my mind. Eventually, I gave up for the night. Upon returning to Suikoden in the morning, it took another thirty minutes or so of fighting the same fights before those magical words appeared on screen: Obtained Nameless urn. My heart swelled, I shoved it right under Jabba’s whiskery nose, and saved my game twice because I was so ecstatic and distracted that I immediately forgot if I had saved or not after just choosing to save. Oh man.

I don’t remember if there are any further “grind for item” quests in Suikoden, but I certainly hope not. Two hours is much too long to devote to such a mundane and trivial quest. My logged playtime is now in the twelve-hour range, and I think this is one of those early JRPGs that you can probably complete in under twenty hours. We’ll see. I am a bit obsessive about getting all 108 Stars of Destiny, no matter what it takes. If any good came out of this, it’s that Pauly McDohl got mega-rich and sharpened all his friends’ weapons, and it wasn’t even any of their birthdays. What a nice, army-raising boy he is…

Hungry Shark Evolution wants you to experience life as a shark

I know I’ve covered this before, but if your videogame has a ridiculously weird name, there’s an even greater chance that I’ll check it out. Which leads us to Hungry Shark Evolution, from Future Games of London and, strangely, Ubisoft, the powerhouse behind time-standing franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, and Rayman. It’s okay to be curious; I know I was the minute I saw the name scroll by on my Windows 8 phone. However, after playing about fifteen to twenty minutes and not really getting anywhere great in this digital shark life of mine, I think this is one strange title that probably shouldn’t have surfaced. Hey, look at that…a totally unplanned Microsoft-themed pun!

The short of it is that, in Hungry Shark Evolution, which I’m playing on my Windows 8 phone, you are a shark that is very hungry. No, really. Like starving. Your hunger meter–which is basically your health bar–depletes extremely fast, and so the shark is never satisfied despite eating an entire school of fish in one gulp. Your goal is to survive as long as you can, which means constantly swimming around, looking for your next meal. This can be easy targets, like tiny fish that don’t fight back, or other sharks…or even unaware swimmers if you head towards the beachy area. Along the way, you can complete side objectives specific to each shark type, and these generally boil down to things like “eat four turtles” and “survive for at least six minutes.” Nothing terribly difficult, seeing as I have already unlocked one of the six total Achievements for the game:

Reef Shark (20G): Complete Super Mission 1 using Reef shark.

To complete the Super Mission, you have to first finish all the side missions and do whatever is asked of you next. For this, it was hitting a high score of 25,000 points. Not too hard. The other five Achievements are tied to the other five sharks–Mako, Hammerhead, Tiger, Great White, and Megaladon–which you unlock by first leveling up the prior shark to its fullest. I’ve got the Mako shark next on my evolve list.

The challenge in Hungry Shark Evolution comes from enemies, like sting rays, other sharks, scuba divers, etc, which attack you and significantly lower your food meter. I’ve found some enemy aquatic life harder to kill than others, specifically the sting rays, and if you miss on your first chomp, chances are the shark is taking a hit of health. If you go too long without eating something, that’s it. Your score and gold coins are added up, you watch your shark’s XP grow, and you get returned to the start mission menu, where you can enhance your shark’s swim, bite, and boost abilities, as well as purchase one-use items, accessories, and treasure maps. Some parts of the underwater map are also gated depending on what shark you are using; for example, the reef shark can only swim down so deep.

Much like in Throne Together, I’m finding my finger to be a hindrance to performing a great run. To move the shark, you simply press on the screen and move your finger in the direction you want it to swim. I find it easier to keep my finger in the middle of the screen, because if I move it too far over to the right then I risk the danger of hitting one of the buttons to return me to my phone’s home screen. Keeping it on the left means my wrist is now covering the screen. Again, my finger ends up obstructing a good portion of my view of the shark. Also, while moving with one finger, you can tap the screen with another finger to perform a boost of speed, which is easier said than done, considering I’m using my other hand to cradle the phone in place.

It’s a strange game, for sure. It looks nice, with cartoony, World of Warcraft-like graphics that help flesh out a colorful underwater realm. And it is teeming with puns, like when you eat a scuba diver, the words AQUALUNCH pop up, or VITAMIN SEA after gobbling up a bunch of fish. I think I even saw SUN SCREAM when you leap from the water onto the beach to steal away some clueless sun-tanner. As a cartoonist that lives and dies on pun-related humor, I can’t help but squeal and smile at all this. Goofy name and goofy humor currently outweigh all the free-to-play elements here, which, so far, are easy enough to ignore.

Life as a reef shark was fairly perfunctory, so I’m looking forward to what I can do as a Mako shark. At some point, I also need to Google whether Megaladon is a real shark or one from dinosaur times; it looks ridiculous.