A pirate’s life for me and the sassy Nelly Cootalot

So far, just clicking around on the number of downloaded-but-not-yet-extracted zip files in my laptop’s videogames folder has proved pretty good. As of late, in there, I found Tower of Heaven, Ballads of Reemus: When the Beds Bite, and a number of wee little adventure games from Ben Chandler. Well, let’s add another to the list, with Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy!, an artistically impressive point-and-click game starring a female pirate hot on the case of missing spoonbeaks, which are punny versions of spoonbills. You know, the large, long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae. Yeah, them.

Again, I like weird names, and that’s what drew me to unzip and play Spoonbeaks Ahoy! over a number of other puppy-eyed indie games yipping for my attention. I knew nothing about it before double-clicking its executable; in fact, I don’t even remember downloading it or from where. Maybe a ghost did it. Going forward, for anything that can’t be explained, let’s just blame ghosts. Anyways, it’s an olden day point-and-click game obviously taking many cues from Guybrush Threepwood’s previous exploits, with a focus on puns, smarmy and sarcastic dialogue, silly-looking folk, beards, birds, and cute, colorful visuals done in a labor of love hand-drawn style. I kind of fell for the game from its very first screen. It was a combo of the visuals, the confidence brimming in Nelly, and the music (by Mark Lovegrove); right there and then, I knew this was going to be a fun, light-hearted adventure worth a few hours of my time. Evidently, designer Alasdair Beckett-King made it for–and about–his girlfriend, which is just the cutest.

Let me give you a few more details on the story, since this is an adventure game, and story is the legs keeping the gameplay table standing. The ghost of Captain Bloodbeard awakens Nelly Cootalot, the sleeping, red-headed greenhorn pirate, with grave news. Dun dun dunnn. The nearby Barony of Meeth is in trouble, with the region’s trademark species of bird spoonbeaks vanishing. Nelly’s always been a bird lover and immediately decides to unearth what’s going on there. Once she’s on the island, she can explore, talk to the locals, pick up items, solve puzzles, and open up new places via her fast-travel map before eventually putting an end to the missing spoonbeaks mystery. It does not stray far from the adventure game formula, and that’s just fine.

Puzzles generally follow the “use this item on that item” path, though a couple of inventive minigames appear now and again. One has Nelly deciphering a coded message scrawled on the bar’s wall and another is a carnival game where your goal is to hook a duck. I got through those using elbow grease and diligence, same as the final puzzle of the game, though that last one confused me for a bit until I figured out how the levers worked. I knew what I had to do, just couldn’t do it. There’s also some dialogue-based puzzles where you have to select the right response to progress, which basically leads to me trying every single dialogue option/combination I see. Thankfully, it’s not annoying, as the silly writing and one-liners are pretty enjoyable, sometimes even endearing. I found myself only looking up one or two solutions, mostly because I was on the right track, but still missing a key item or step, which left me stymied. I’m pretty much talking about the part where Nelly has to impersonate a charming Italian man booked for a flight around the world.

Alas, I missed out on the chance to participate in helping fund Beckett-King’s next game Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet!, but I’m eagerly awaiting it all the same. Kinda bummed to see the change in art direction, as I found more to appreciate there and let my imagination take over for the parts less detailed, and the new art is pretty, but looks maybe a little unidentifiable. Curious how the voice acting will turn out as I kind of already know what these fictional characters sound like in my head, and any diversion from that course will be met with punishment, walk-the-plank style. We’ll see though. I’ll keep my eyes on the horizon.

Must repair the Thievius Raccoonus in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

When I got my PlayStation 3 earlier this year, it was mostly because of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, a game I’ve dabbled in here and there, but just don’t have the time to commit to properly. However, all along, I’ve had my sights on Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, the long-awaited fourth game in the comically colorful sneakfest franchise that I’ve ate up since the PS2 days. Well, it took me some time, but I finally ended up nabbing a copy, along with Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, several weeks back for a pretty good deal from GameStop, but I told myself I couldn’t play until I at least put Primal to bed. And lo, that also finally happened.

Right, okay. Thieves in Time picks up immediately after the final events of 2005’s Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, so you best brush up on that game’s story details or you’ll be a bit confused as to why Penelope is not hanging out with her new boyfriend Bentley. Anyways, something is wrong with the Thievius Raccoonus, a book containing all Cooper history and secrets; words are just vanishing from its pages, forcing Bentley to get the gang back together and uncover who is behind the wrongdoing. This eventually leads to them using their iconic van, which can now travel through time thanks to some nifty enhancements by Bentley and Penelope, going back to different specific periods to rescue some of Cooper’s ancestors.

I’m actually burning through Thieves in Time as I’m wont to do with these types of mission-based collectathon sneak-platformers, now just starting in the third world, which is stuck in the cold, frigid Ice Age. There’s dinosaurs and penguins, so it’s pretty much like Pennsylvania right now. The previous two worlds were set in the Wild West and Feudal Japan, and you are basically given a large hub world to run around, collect things like bottles and Sly masks, return treasures to your HQ, and pick up missions. Or you can also just kind of run around and explore, which I like to do for a little bit before starting the first mission. Get a lay of the land, y’know. Find as many clinking bottles as I can because I must have all the bottles.

The original PS2 games were developed by Sucker Punch Productions, but the company eventually moved away from the master raccoon thief to shooting aliens with guns and men with superpowers. Thieves in Time was developed by Sanzaru Games, the same company that previously ported the original games into HD versions for a special PlayStation 3 collection. I might have to get those one day, despite already having all the games. Grrr, but Trophies. Hmm. Anyways, Sanzaru Games seems to have the right touch, as one might not even realize the switch in developers, as Sly Cooper runs, talks, and plays just like he always has, with a bombastic story, zany, anthropomorphic characters, and goofy one-liners and puns that many might sigh at, but I enjoy greatly.

Other than lengthy load times, I’m loving everything Thieves in Time is throwing at me. Well, maybe not the Grizz, just yet. But the missions are varied and short enough to gobble up quickly, and I can’t truly express the joy I feel when Sly jumps in the air and I press the O button and he instantly lands on a roof edge or wire or pointy thing. Sneaking is fun, as is pick-pocketing. You can go out into the hub world as Sly, Bentley, Murray, Carmelita, and one of the Cooper ancestors, regardless if they have a mission to attend to, and they all play very differently. Maybe, if anything, there are too many different special moves to remember across the slew of playable characters, plus Sly can put on time period costumes to perform additional actions. I like the jailbird outfit, because he can roll around on the ball and chain.

My plan is to get all the way to the final world and its final boss mission, and then go back to all the previous worlds to collect the remaining treasure, bottles, Sly masks, and locked safes. I collected all the stuff in the previous games despite not having Trophies to prove it, but I swear I did, and this one must follow suit. Perfect for putting on a podcast and just collecting leisurely. I suspect I’ll get there soon enough, as Thieves in Time does not appear to be very long considering I’m already halfway through it, but that’s okay. Quality over quantity, really. And the quality here is strong.

Unfortunately, Primal is a realm of both good and bad

Evidently, I got my copy of Primal at the now officially defunct Blockbuster chain of video rent stores. It has two fugly stickers on the front cover, one beneath the plastic and the other on top. The first shouts directly at me that this is a “previously rented game,” and the other is a medium-size red circle highlighting how much I purchased this gem for back in June 2003 as a financially struggling college sophomore–a cool $14.99. I can’t believe it has taken me ten years to finish this game for the very first time. A part of me kind of wishes I hadn’t because, I’m sad to say, it was certainly better remembered than experienced.

Primal is the story of a cafe waitress named Jennifer Tate and her rock-n-roll boyfriend Lewis and a teeny, but totally keen gargoyle called Scree. See, Lewis ends up getting kidnapped after one of his band’s concerts by some demonic being from another realm, and Jen is badly wounded during this, leaving her comatose in a hospital bed. While unconscious, Jen is visited by Scree, who takes her on a soul journey of sorts to the Nexus, where they discover Chaos is engulfing everything. To save her boyfriend, Jen must discover who she really is and help fight off Abaddon, the embodiment of Chaos.

It’s standard third-person action adventure fanfare, and with Jen and Scree exploring four very different realms for answers, the Nexus acting as a hub for story beats between all the happenings. In all my years of starting Primal over and over, I only ever saw the opening snowy realm of Solum. Truthfully, I kind of assumed this is where the entire game took place and was bummed to not see that be the case, because Solum has personality, much more than any other realm, though Aetha comes close. You can control both Jen and Scree, switching between them freely with the push of a button–take that, Grand Theft Auto V–and you’ll explore rooms, find locked doors and ways around them, fight off enemies, collect items, and meet a bunch of colorful characters, like Arella, who is championing for Jen to win.

And that’s Primal‘s best part–the story. The people you meet, the ones that support your cause, the ones that hinder it. You really do feel like you’re playing an active role in some special episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Veronica Mars. Jen is spunky and compassionate yet always ready to crack a joke, and Scree refuses to let up his seriousness; together, the two make quite a pair. By the end of the game, their relationship has grown beyond just helping each other out. From a glance, a lot of the world-building could seem superfluous, but I think enough is said to make all the realms come across as real places, even if they are mostly devoid of life and signs of life, save for Solum, which I mention again as I think its frigid landscape littered with stone buildings and campfires came off quite well. The story told there of a fallen prince in a society where the king, at the height of his power, sacrifices himself worked better than some later plots, which were uninspired.

Okay, now the bad parts, and it’s more or less everything else in Primal: combat, swimming, getting lost, no mini-map, camera, the music, the lack of music. I’ll try to cover each topic briefly.

Combat is oddly mapped to the PS2 controller’s shoulder buttons, which makes for weird, clunky fighting, and I found countering–hitting the block button just as an enemy strikes–to be impossible to nail consistently. Some enemies can only be killed with a finishing move, which you do by pressing L2 and R2 at the same time, a technique that worked only one-third of the time. Jen can regain health by absorbing it from Scree, and Scree can store up more energy to give Jen from fallen enemies (and some other places), so it’s a constant cycle of fight, absorb, refill, move on.

The second realm of Aquis has Jen and Scree spending the majority of their time underwater; that’s fine for Scree as he controls just the same, since stone sinks. But Jen’s swimming controls are unintuitive, and the camera is constantly getting frazzled at trying to keep up with her POV, flipping high and low. I can’t imagine many people got to this section and continued playing. The original Tomb Raider had better swimming controls than this, and I think that’s saying a lot. Oh, and did I mention that you still get into combat situations while underwater? Yeah, I found the whole realm maddening, as well as a wee depressing. There’s very little music, so you are just swimming around listening to nothing but the swoosh of Jen’s feet, wondering why you’re still here playing this underwater step back.

There’s a map, but no mini-map. There really should’ve been a mini-map, because it’s extremely easy to get lost due to erratic camera movements and most of everything looking identical. Especially when swimming or using Scree as he climbs up walls and across ceilings. You can press start at any point to view the map, but only if Scree is near you. Occasionally, the map wouldn’t even load. Just a dark, black screen. So, it’s glitchy and hard to follow as you can only see the section you’re on currently, but if your destination marker is in another building further down you won’t see the marker until you are close enough to pop that part of the map. Make sense? Absolutely not. Since Primal is very much about exploring, this aspect could’ve been stronger. I ended up using a walkthrough from time to time to get me back on track, especially in Aquis.

Music in Primal is all done by electronic rock band 16Volt. Not my thing, personally, but they fit the story and look and have a videogamey sound, I guess. Their music appears mostly during fight scenes and boss battles, but also in cutscenes and the opening of the game. That said, when you’re not fighting, all is silent, which can kind of unnerving, but mostly boring, as even just some light instrumental would’ve helped fill the void.

As they travel about, Jen and Scree can find Tarot Cards, which unlock concept art from the main menu. That’s nice and all, but nothing to go crazy over. I think I found maybe half of the Tarot Cards by the end. However, as you progress, the game itself unlocks behind-the-scene and making of movies, interviews, and special trailers, which are fantastic, mostly for being stuck in the past. They might come across as cheesy or overdramatic in how Primal was trying to be sold, but they’re interesting nonetheless. Especially the interviews with Hudson Leick and Andreas Katsulas.

I don’t know. Like I said, there’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t gone through and seen the rest of what Primal had to offer, as I found a lot of it frustrating and disappointing from the gameplay side, but I guess I ultimately needed to know. Now I can speak more confidently about the game, about its good parts, while also warning those that are making their way to the Nexus for the very first time about things like an entire realm devoted to just swimming and janky camera control and the atrociously repetitive combat and and and…

Not eliminating the memories of loss in Eternally Us

Grief is natural; we’ve all experienced the emotional suffering one feels when something or someone truly cherished is taken away, and if for some reason you haven’t, bless your lucky, cold-as-steel soul. No, really. I hope you never have to feel the lingering twist of a broken heart, but I kind of doubt you’ll avoid it in one form or another. It’s dark subject matter, sure, but worth exploring just as much as any other adventure game plot based around escapism, making a name for yourself, and standing up against persecution.

Eternally Us is about grieving. I didn’t know this immediately going into it, but by the end, all is made explicitly clear. It’s self-described as a tale of love, life, and friendship. Created for the April 2010 MAGS competition by Infinite Grace Games, this somber story from Steven Poulton (writer, programmer, scorer) and Ben Chandler (designer, artist) starts innocently enough, with two young girls sitting on a park bench. Amber and Fio, short for Fionna, are feeding the pigeons, enjoying the nice weather as friends are wont to do. Alas, just as Fio is about to hit her childhood best friend with some very bad news, a magical door appears and opens, revealing some monstrous zombie-like being. And then, just like that…Fio is gone.

Amber now has to travel across five strikingly different locations in search of her stolen friend, solving puzzles and speaking her mind to any that will listen. The scenes are diverse, with one set in a dark, marshy swamp and another in the quiet snow and the final one in the middle of some tranquil, autumnal woods. Chandler’s colorful art makes each place highly expressive and detailed, with the supernatural mixing with the natural in a fairy tale way that had me immediately thinking of The Neverending Story. It’s amazing what adding glowing eyes can do to personalizing bark and branches, but it’s extremely effective here. There’s also a weather effect on top of the painted backgrounds in every scene, with my favorites being the rain and falling leaves. Small details, but they matter. They help you–and maybe even Amber too–forget that this place is not real, that you are traveling through portals and doorways, trapped in the otherworld, looking for someone you actually lost long ago.

Sound-wise, there’s falling rain and peaceful bird-chirping, as well as some surprisingly strong voice acting. Naturally, Amber is the one voice we hear the most, and her voice actress Miranda Gauvin does a fine job of playing someone that is unable to cope, that is begging for answers, but would also rather not hear them. The more inhuman characters dance the line between creepy and ridiculous, but again, I like them talkative trees. A soft, unobtrusive melody plays on a few of the scenes, too.

It’s a point-and-click game, and fairly limited in what you can actually do. The left mouse button lets Amber use items, and the right button examines things, which is the standard we’ve all come to know these days. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Two of a Kind. Found items immediately go to her inventory, which can be accessed by moving the mouse cursor to the top of the screen. Any items you find relate to that scene only and vanish when you move on to the next area, so if you get stuck, just keep trying every possible combination/tactic. I only ran into problems with the squirrel at the end, and that was more of technical issues than not understanding what I was supposed to do. I did not see a strong connection in some of the puzzles to what was happening in Amber’s mind, but maybe others will.

Eternally Us is ultimately a downer, but a fantastic way to fall. The puzzles are not terribly difficult and contained to a single scene to make things easier, but it’s the dialogue that you want to hear and the way Amber grows over the course of the short game. There’s also some cleverness afoot, such as how Amber “sinks” through the swamp to the depression area. Basically, you should play this short adventure game to put her and her friend at peace–and maybe find some solace yourself. It’s free and can be downloaded here.

Takes two to solve puzzles in Two of a Kind

Chances are high that I would probably enjoy being an archaeologist, digging deep and surveying, excavating, and analyzing collected data to learn more about the past. As a kid, I had more than just rocks in my rock collection, occasionally finding some broken piece of clay or a weirdly shaped hunk of metal, and a small part of me always believed I had stumbled upon greatness. Now, the true purpose of archaeology is to learn more about past societies and the development of the human race, but I think we can also apply the science to videogames. However, I’ll pass on all the constant danger that Indiana Jones finds nipping at his heels, like rolling boulders, pits of snakes, and Nazis.

Which leads us to Two of a Kind by Dave Gilbert, the man who has given us numerous adventure games over the years from his small, but growing Wadget Eye Games. If you’ve not been paying attention to the most recent activity on Grinding Down, I’ve been on a point-and-click kick as of late, finishing up Machinarium, Deponia, and a number of smaller, shorter adventure games. Plus some Ben Chandler joints that I’ve yet to talk about, but will be doing so next week. Truthfully, this is all in preparation for two forthcoming titles: The Blackwell Epiphany from Wadget Eye Games and Broken Age from Double Fine, which I both expect to have some tricky, dastardly puzzles, and I plan to play them as soon as they release, with no chance of an online walkthrough handy. Gotta brush up on my pixel-hunting and inventory management skills.

Anyways, Two of a Kind is a small adventure game released for free at Adventure Game Studio in November 2004. It’s about an unusual town called Bluff City, which is full of people with unusual abilities. For instance, Tim and Tiffany Walters, fraternal twins operating a struggling independent private investigation business. Tim has the power to float off the ground, and Tiffany can communicate with animals. Other townspeople you’ll bump into also have powers, and it’s kind of like X-Men, but without all the smoke and rubble and misshapen limbs. The Walters siblings are very close to each other after experiencing a traumatic childhood, which they no longer discuss. Bills have been tough to pay as of late, but a new case offers a great financial opportunity. A priceless crystal was stolen from the local museum, and it’s up to them to find out the who, the how, and the why before the press gets wind.

Now, in all my years of gaming, I’ve not actually played many old-school adventure titles, the kind controlled by means of text icons like “look,” “open,” “use,” and so on. Think LucasArts started this trend. When I played Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge back in 2011, it was an enhanced version, updated to be more convenient for a controller. Basically, I came into the genre really late, and so my experience in using these text-based commands is quite limited, rusty. This was more than evident when I struggled to have Tim leave his apartment building; first I tried using “use” on the door, but that did nothing. Turns out, I had to use “open/close” on the door, and then “use” to walk through it. Oi. Like I said before: archaeology. Playing a text command-heavy game in 2013 was a slow process for me, as I found myself trying everything on everything. Can’t “use” that trash can? Well, let’s try “talking” to it and “opening” it and “giving” it to Tiffany. Been coddled for too long with just a right and left mouse button clicks.

After getting used to have to do things the archaic way, puzzles in Two of a Kind are fairly easy to deduce, especially if you’ve played some of the Blackwell games. Because just like in those, you control both Tim and Tiffany independently, just like Rosangela and Joey had their own things to do. I got stuck in a few spots, but only because I missed picking up an item earlier, and there is actually a walkthrough out there still for the game. Otherwise, so long as you keep trying items and different combinations, the solutions will come. Every item gets used; yes, even the ones Tiffany holds in her pockets from the very beginning of the game. Ironically enough, I was not aware that the final puzzle was being timed, and actually got a GAME OVER screen after failing to solve fast enough.

There’s no voice acting, which is all right, as there is a lot of text to digest, and I just can’t imagine anyone reading for the part of Tiffany doing it any kind of bearable justice. She’s a teenager that acts like a child–probably because of that previously mentioned traumatic childhood–and is constantly talking in kiddy gibberish to animals and being overexcited about literally everything. At one point, inside a mansion, I had her examine the most mundane items like a toaster or sink, and she responded to each with genuine excitement, a being of pure innocence. That aside, Gilbert’s writing is fun and personable, and his characters do come alive from it, especially the quiet bartender, the soaps-loving Oracle, and the drunk bum with the funny hat. The plot, which revolves around open sleuthing and chatting with animals and using magical powers, moves forward at a reasonably logical pace, but kind of jumps the (acid water) gun at the very end and fizzles out with a Candy-Land joke. I was hoping for more resolution, maybe a trip back to the museum to see Tim and Tiffany explain all the crazy antics to the concerned curator.

Overall, I think Two of the Kind is still a solid experience some nine years later, definitely worth playing for the solid writing and killer soundtrack, and I think Wadget Eye Games should re-release it like they did recently with The Shivah and get Ben Chandler to do all new art for it. C’mon, think about it. I know you’re reading this.

Grand Theft Auto V, crass comedy in a crazy world

Grand Theft Auto V is the first game in Rockstar’s entire hooker-killing franchise that I’ve actually completed, and by that I mean I successfully played all of its main story missions, picked my A, B, or C choice for the finale, and watched the lengthy end credits–over thirty-five minutes long–scroll by as I pondered my collective time and experience as three unsavory souls stuck in Los Santos. And…exhale. Considering I still can’t even get past the second mission in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, this is a real, genuine accomplishment, a feat worth featuring.

To be honest, I don’t think much overall about GTA V. Now, please be sure to read that sentence a second time before you blow a blood vessel; I did not say “I don’t think much overall of GTA V,” but rather about. It’s kind of everything I expected it to be based on past experiences with the franchise, and I feel like it went through all the motions, and I went with it, a mute player. If you must know, I enjoyed what I played of Grand Theft Auto III, really dug Vice City for its vibe and tunes, and never got too far in San Andreas. Also, Chinatown Wars is a surprisingly good time, but quite a different beast from its bigger siblings. Truthfully, Saints Row: The Third is more my kind of freedom.

The story in GTA V revolves around three men: former bank robber Michael Townley, repo man Franklin Clinton, and uncontrollable psychopath Trevor Philips. They have their own personal stories to see unfold, but they also eventually all get mixed up in the same nefarious business, which involves running a bunch of heists and making some serious moolah. It’s clearly a videogame story, as things happen so that the player can take part in extravagant setups and scenarios and leap from tall buildings and blow up important locations and all that. A few missions feel like they just came up with some third part to play, spur of the moment, so all three protagonists could be there, even if there was absolutely no need to bring the greenhorn Franklin along. Of the three main characters, I was most disappointed in Franklin’s overall journey, as it seemed like the whole “other guy got the girl” subplot fizzled within the game’s first hour. Michael has heavy family stuff that gets resolved, but not in a way that fills me with confidence. And Trevor…well, he’s pure crazy, a lot of fun to watch, but just walking insanity, and GTA V would actually be a lesser game without him to keep everyone on their toes.

The open-world gameplay in GTA V is everything you’d come to expect from the company that certainly had a big hand in creating the genre. When you’re not accepting main story missions as either of the three gruff dudes, you can drive around the sprawling city and its outskirts, play a round of golf or tennis, do some yoga, get a haircut, shop for new clothes, invest in buildings, visit the strip club, surf the Internet, watch TV or a movie, take the dog for a walk, and so on and so on. There’s quite a lot of miscellaneous, nontrivial time-wasters for those wanting just a bite of action, as well as larger side missions in the forms of Strangers and Freaks. Random events like “Stop that purse snatcher!” occur from time to time, and you can also just stand still and watch the world go by or sit in your car listening to your favorite station. I found a lot of the side stuff more interesting than the main missions, as they are clearly trying to be big and bombastic, and there’s always an excuse for a gunfight, no matter what the scenario. Thankfully, thanks to a rather easy auto-aim feature, shooting down gang member after gang member is no big thing, and probably the biggest aid I had for completing this game next to Franklin’s bullet time mode when driving.

Let me talk briefly about the collectibles scattered around and outside of Los Santos, as I only stumbled across one during my entire criminal career. Which is very similar to my experience in finding those golden film reels in L.A. Noire. Either they are extremely well-hidden or I’m going blind, a likely case. According to the Internet, there’s a ton of things to find: Spaceship Parts, Stunt Jumps, Letter Scraps, Hidden Packages, and more. I found a single Letter Scrap, which ties into the Mystery of Leonora Johnson side quest–and that’s it. I started the missions that opened up the ability to find Spaceship Parts, but never came across them, and I felt like I did a lot of “off the path” exploring, mostly because I was trying to hide from cops, and changing elevation is a vital tactic.

A lot of material in GTA V is extremely off-putting, and for good reason. Rockstar’s treatment and regard of women is abysmal. If they aren’t there to either have sex with the main characters or sex with someone else to anger the main characters, then they are on their way. Take Michael’s family. He has a wife and a daughter. His wife is sleeping with her yoga instructor, and his daughter wants to get into porn. Take Trevor. Past the early intro scenes, you first truly meet him as he’s having sex with meth head Ashley, who never plays a further part in the game. Later, he kidnaps a man’s wife and begins to have a relationship with her. And lastly, take Franklin. He lives with his aunt, who self-describes herself as a “new age feminist,” and the two are constantly bickering. I don’t recall a single time that I returned home as Franklin that she wasn’t whining or complaining loudly from the other room. He has a childhood friend Tonya Wiggins, who is a crack addict. At first, it seems like he’s a man all about winning back his ex-girlfriend Tanisha Jackson, but that plot fizzles very quickly, so much that her sudden appearance near the game’s end was befuddling. Aside from these, there’s a few other women that stand out: Devin Weston’s lawyer Molly Schultz, the athletic MaryAnne Quinn, and celebrity-crazy old Mrs. Thornhill. In short, why couldn’t there have been a female gang leader or a woman working closely with Michael to keep his identity better hidden? Or some role more involved. Because to Rockstar, men do the ruling.

Early on, I actually watched some in-game TV, something I never even attempted before in Grand Theft Auto IV, despite a lot of people going gaga over the fact that such a large and completely skippable thing existed way back then. I ended up watching “Gordon Moorehead”, an animated detective drama radio show that looks innocent enough, that is until anyone starts speaking. I don’t recall the specifics of the episode’s story, just the constant degradation of Gordon Moorehead’s assistant Molly Malmstein, who Moorehead constantly treating her as a woman of little intelligence, often slapping her. I think the show is trying to to poke fun at sexism and misogyny, but actually just reinforces it all the way. It’s extremely disappointing; you literally can’t go anywhere in Los Santos without some knock against women.

I dunno. Looking back over this post, maybe I do think a lot about GTA V, just nothing too great. It’s got its problems, but it also felt very routine and predictable and crass for no good reason. The use of crude language, especially. I played a single post-credits mission, but haven’t really gone back to do any further exploring or money spending, and I just don’t really see myself getting back into the swing of things. I guess I’ve had my fill.

A mysterious hatch leads to trouble in BNKR

I’m attracted to games with strange names or, at the very least, strangely written names. For instance, ^_^, XIII, Viewtiful Joe, and Big Mutha Truckers 2: Truck Me Harder. Some quick complete transparency though: I’ve never played that last title, but just the sound of it alone, the way it rolls off your tongue and hangs in the air like some glowing, ethereal angel, has me curious. But yeah, if your game’s title is non-traditional and a bit bizarre, then you already have my attention, which is really helpful when sorting through game jam lists, too. And all that is just to slip into talking about BNKR, a point-and-click game by Piter Games not from Philip K. Dick and not from some recent jam, but just out there, waiting for you to devour.

Here’s the deal: the world was once populated by humans, but now only androids roam the bereft towns and buildings, constantly searching for fuel vital for survival. One day, a hatch opens, demanding whatever lies beneath it to be explored. You play as an unnamed–yet numbered–android with a digitalized male voice who goes down the ladder to see if there is anything worth salvaging.

Not counting the first hub area, which is a small, closed off town in the form of an overhead map with a few buildings to explore, most of BNKR is played from first person perspective. Er, I mean…first android perspective. Thank you, thank you. No, please, I’m happy to sign autographs. Anyways, you can click to move from scene to scene or interact with your surroundings and items in the inventory. A changing cursor alerts you if there’s something worth investigating. And that’s it gameplay-wise, which is fine, as it’s very short, though I’ll admit it took me much longer than probably others to complete it as I got stuck on two less-than-clear puzzles. Spoiler: you can find the third piece of mirror glass hidden between a desk’s drawers, as well as the other half of the broken key in a vent near the ceiling out in the main hallway. There, that should help greatly.

BNKR is a beautiful, desolate world. Also: very gray. You wouldn’t be wrong to immediately think of Machinarium or Primordia immediately, to compare in looks. There’s some light narration atop some striking artwork, and the voice of the robot you control is both human and not, which only helped draw me in more. It’s a strange combination of familiar and foreign, with the robot’s comments on things like levers and desks and photos of once-living humans little puzzles themselves. You can tell that the robot is a little sad, a little unsure. You can mildly interact with another android at the beginning of the game, but other than that, you’re searching solo; I think more droid-on-droid interaction would have been nice–hey now–as well as some dialogue trees to help fill in story gaps. Other than a couple of really well hidden items, the puzzles are pretty easy to figure out if you keep on clicking, and you can probably breeze through the game in about ten or fifteen minutes.

Alas, BNKR ends right as it just starts getting good plot-wise, and so I’ll have to keep looking for whatever comes from the people at Piter Games, as finding out what’s actually inside that opened hatch is just the tip of the post-apocalyptic iceberg.

Dead Rising 2 should not have returned from the grave

There are some games I loathe from the very beginning, but a terrible, masochistic part of my brain keeps me playing, as I have to see them through to the end, hopeful that there is maybe still some aspect or single element I haven’t seen yet that can be called enjoyable or mildly so and see the whole experience retrofitted just a wee bit. Here, let me name a few: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Overclocked, Mafia II, and Game of Thrones: The Game. They all have their problems, but I kept playing them save for Cyanide’s take on Westeros, blind with false hope. Well, I think we can also now officially add Dead Rising 2 to this selective category.

In Dead Rising 2, you play as Chuck Greene, a former motocross champion now housing it up in the fictional casino town of Fortune City, Nevada. He is an active member of Terror Is Reality, a controversial game show where contestants kill zombies for money and fame. Chuck only does this because he needs the prize money to buy Zombrex, which is a daily medication that magically suppresses the zombification process, for his bitten daughter Katey. However, while backstage after the show, Terror Is Reality’s supply of disposable zombies is released, creating havoc and panic and bringing everything good to a shambling halt. Chuck is able to rescue his daughter and reach an emergency shelter, but has to keep her supplied with Zombrex until the military arrives in three days.

That’s the story setup, and from there you can explore Fortune City at, more or less, your leisure. So long as you don’t suffer too many zombie bites, of course. Main missions and side missions are constantly available, but some won’t begin until a specific time and others only last so long before you lose out on whatever prize they offer. Basically, you have to choose what you can do in the time that you have, and I found myself, after restarting the story twice due to boss fight difficulties, skipping all the side missions and just grinding out PP from zombies near the safehouse until a main story mission began. By the end of the game, I had only killed five Psychopaths and rescued 12 survivors, which is just a drop in the bucket for both of those optional endeavors. I only fought a Psychopath or saved someone if the description mentioned Zombrex. When not killing zombies, you can also look around for items to make combo weapons and mixed drinks to further help you kill zombies later, which is both fun and frustrating, especially when some items are terribly huge and have to be carried all the way back to a maintenance room, which is across a sea of biters. I stuck with a few staples over the course of the game, namely spiked baseball bat, the Defiler, and whatever it is called when you mix MMA gloves and a box of nails.

Other than smacking a zombie in the face with a spiked baseball bat or running over a horde of them with a mobile trash bin, I did not enjoy much of anything that Dead Rising 2 had to offer. Chuck purposely moves slow and clunky, especially if you try to jump and then keep moving. His speed increases and additional melee moves are unlocked as you level up, but it’s a slow and seemingly random process, as by level 26 I still was missing a lot of abilities that would have made running around more convenient and a bit easier. You can only save at bathrooms, which are not surprisingly everywhere you turn, so I found myself constantly losing a lot of progress if Chuck accidentally bought the farm. Can’t set waypoints on the map. Weapons break after some time, and I understand why that has to be, but man do I not enjoy it, especially after it took so long to find the right pieces and construct it. Wearing goofy clothes is okay and thankfully completely cosmetic, and I do appreciate that Chuck has them still on in all cutscenes, but Dead Rising 2 is a very goofy game with batshit crazy side quests and zany survivor-saving missions, but then also a main storyline that really does want to be taken dead serious, with its twists and turns and real-life drama of a child potentially being turned into a monster and a man being wrongly framed. It’s all very conflicting.

That previously mentioned masochistic part of my brain wants to load up my last Dead Rising 2 save, which is right before what I thought was the final boss fight, and see if I can get the other ending, but I know it won’t enhance my experience any more. Hmm. In fact, after reading a bit about it, seems like quite a bother, and for what, a silly Achievement. Meh, no thanks. However, I’m pretty close to crossing the 5,000 mark for killed zombies, so maybe I’ll put on a favorite podcast and go out swinging.

Deponia’s English translation is the trickiest puzzle yet

It’s a bummer to have to be so hard on Deponia simply for its atrocious German to English translation work, as everything else is actually quite good–if a bit too straightforward for the point-and-click genre–but text is a large, vital part of many adventure games. They say every man carries a sword, and sometimes they need to fall on them to remain honorable, and so I say “On your knees!” to all that work/worked at Daedalic, not just the one wearing the “proofreader” badge. Your shoddy QA job cannot be ignored. But let’s get some of the other stuff out of the way first, like story and gameplay and pretty, pretty pictures.

In Deponia, you play as a rude little lay-about called Rufus. He’s a bit like Guybrush Threepwood, except completely unlikeable. He’s smarmy, arrogant, cruel, and inconsiderate, and I got all that from within the first few opening scenes of the game. I guess that’s fine since we now live in an age of many anti-heroes, such as Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones and Walter White in Breaking Bad. But man, he’s a bother. Anyways, Rufus is tired of living life on a literal junk pile of a planet and sets his eyes to the sky, specifically a place called Elysium, which one can assume is where the rich, clean folk spend their days drinking white wine and looking down from balconies. As he makes his way sky-ward, he accidentally bumps into a young girl named Goal being bullied by some men. Inadvertently, he knocks her down to Trash Town below and is tossed overboard after her. And thus begins the epic quest to get the girl and get going.

Gameplay in Deponia is traditional inventory management stuff. You talk to people, collect things, combines items, and use those items on people and other items to solve puzzles and move the story along. What’s really nice is that, at any time, you can press the space bar to highlight all the items Rufus can interact with, so there’s no pixel-hunting roadblocks. Occasionally, just like in Machinarium, there’s some other kinds of puzzles to play with, like fitting all the broken pieces of a glass mosaic back together or highlighting which spots to bomb in the mine via a map or flipping switches to get the tracks perfectly aligned so your vehicle can drive away to safety. Acts are divided up by brightly animated cutscenes, which only ask that you watch them.

Let it be known that the greatest reason to play Deponia is to look at it and get to the next scene and look at that. It is gorgeous, through and through, with a fantastic sense of imagination. Vibrant, colorful art makes up a lot of the screen, and the design of the trashy town areas are pretty original. The characters themselves range greatly in looks, though I guess you could say Goal and Rufus’s ex-girlfriend resemble each other somewhat. The inventory menu takes up your entire screen, though I never recall filling more than two or three rows with items, so it seems like wasted space, but nevertheless you can see everything you are carrying clearly thanks to the vivid artwork. And as I mentioned, the cutscenes are well-animated, though maybe some extra frames of animation are needed when Rufus interacts with certain items or mixes stuff together.

Alas, not all is whistles and whoops. Take, for instance, the treatment of women in Deponia. First of all, there’s not many to begin with. It’s a male-inhabited realm, with men being the forefront of everything: work, science, law, freedom, the upperclass. Obviously there’s Goal, the mumbling, brain-damaged goal of the game, who Rufus wants in the same way a kid on Christmas wants a new toy, and then the whole town tries to win her over through some strange lottery system with the mayor. Then there is Toni, Rufus’s ex-girlfriend, who exists to nag and bemoan the boy, and eventually ends up getting drugged. Oh boy. Subtlety. Lastly, there’s Lotti, who works at the mayor’s office and is constantly switching from her obviously deeper male voice to a fake, over-exaggerated high-pitch voice, time after time, because, y’know, repetition is funny.

Here we are, the real stick in the mud for this adventure game, which was clearly made overseas. Localization and copyediting. They are two different things, and both were not done adequately enough to ensure that Deponia was a quality product. Some German to English translations make no sense, as if some kind of app like Google Translate was used and nothing else, because I found myself scratching my head at some descriptions or clues. Then there’s the lack of consistency across the board, with some words capped and others not, as well as improper grammar. I spotted many wrongly used apostrophes, as well as several sentences ending in commas, not periods. Some might not notice stuff like, but I like to read along as I listen to the voice acting, mostly because I read faster than I listen and can skip ahead if I’m ready. I also ran into a couple of technical problems, such as dialogue choices appearing above the text box and the game not always responding to double-clicking to hop to the next scene instantly. Small stuff, those ones, but there nonetheless.

Deponia is an undoubtably pretty point-and-click adventure game hindered by a number of localization and technical problems. I didn’t have the worst time getting through it, nor did I find myself foaming at the mouth in general excitement over it unfolding, save for the next gorgeous piece of background art to gawk at. I simply played, looked up a puzzle solution when I got stuck several times, frowned, smiled, frowned some more, and finished it off. There are two sequels already out in the series, but I’m in no rush to see what happens next to Rufus and Goal. I’m still not over all the random capitalized “if”s in the middle of sentences.

Everybody loves Raymus, not Reemus

In The Ballads of Reemus: When the Bed Bites, one simple bug job leads to many bugs and bigger problems, and Reemus and his companion Liam, a purple bear that plays the lute, are all to blame. Naturally, it’s now up to them to save the town and do mundane tasks for people to get key items that will help them move forward with their exterminating business, as well as put them in the limelight, the perfect spot for the stars of a ballad or two. Unfortunately, everybody in Fredricus loves Raymus, Reemus’s more successful brother, and so the unlikely duo have a lot to prove.

When the Bed Bites has a certain familiarity to it, and I think I’m just digging deep into my point-and-click gaming history and recalling the fond time I had solving puzzles in Blazing Dragons, though the humor found there was ten times more British. Still, both games are extremely colorful and filled with zany, wacky characters and fun, Xanth-like ideas, such as the noserpillar, ice cream cactus, and the condiments forest, which shows that the people behind it aren’t afraid to open up their imagination for all to see. It definitely made getting to a new scene all that more exciting because, truly, anything could show up.

The game is divided into a number of scenes–maybe eight to twelve in total, and if I was a better game journalist I’d work harder to confirm the actual number, but meh, it’s almost time to take a holiday break–and each is its own contained mini-adventure, which I appreciate greatly. You’ll find all the items and puzzles that need those items for solving in one scene only, so you don’t find yourself still holding an unusable flyswatter by the end of the game. These tiny story arcs play a continuous part of the whole story–which is Reemus and Liam trying to right their wrongs and get people to listen to their ballads–but make for convenient gaming, as I played When the Bed Bites in three separate sittings, never feeling exhausted or lost.

Puzzles range from unbelievably easy to fairly difficult, though sometimes the fault was mine, and I just didn’t try clicking on every combination possible. In certain scenes, you can switch between Reemus and Liam to have each handle their own slice of puzzles before reuniting. Occasionally, I found it difficult to call out the interactive objects from the backgrounds, and I ended up stuck in the condiments forest for a good while until I realized that to get the metallic bark for cooking that sweet, savory bacon, you have to click near the bottom of it, as clicking towards the top only gets you an item description. Also, due to the developers doing a bang-up job of really hiding their hidden item: was unable to make the seagull’s headstone or finish the moth’s poster, both missing two pieces before I moved on. Thankfully, you can pause the game at any time and bring up a walkthrough from the options menu that doesn’t spoil story stuff, but guides you in the right direction for puzzle solutions to keep things moving. I will admit to using the walkthrough several times, though I kind of wish it didn’t open to a separate browser window and was contained within the game itself somewhere. Immersion must be kept.

Audio-wise, I found the game’s soundtrack to be pretty pleasing, save for one song near the end that was repetitive and slow to build, and even after it went somewhere, it was still the same notes over and over and over. It’s the kind of light, fantasy tunes you’d expect to hear at your local Renaissance fair. Liam and another bard early on sings some silly songs, and they are short and enjoyable. However, the voice acting throughout didn’t sit well with me on a constant rate. I found the leading man Reemus sounding a bit too Steve Blum, which did not match the art, and there are some Irish-sounding lovebirds that seem really out of place. And a lot of the female voices are overdramatic and absurd, almost as if men are trying to do a woman’s voice. Surprisingly, Liam the purple bear’s voice was perfectly acceptable and easy to listen to. Sound effects are minimal overall, though the squish sound for finding the hidden bug collectibles is pretty satisfying, even in a gross way.

For those that don’t like reading, you can watch me play some When the Bed Bites in this “Paul Plays…” vid, but be aware that you can’t really hear me too well when I foolishly attempt to talk over some of the game’s dialogue, which is very loud. Balance, balance, balance–it’s tough to get. Again, I’m still learning. But please take a look/listen nonetheless: