Died four times during Shin Megami Tensei IV’s first hour

So, yesterday, I picked up Shin Megami Tensei IV. At first, I couldn’t find it on the shelf at my local GameStop, not realizing that SMT IV got the special Atlus love, seeing it packaged it with a nice art/strategy book and soundtrack CD, placing it in a larger-than-norm 3DS box. Regardless, I got my copy and was able to play around an hour or so last night before I passed out before I could even enjoy the absurdity that is the Feedback Booth on Antiques Roadshow. Anyways, Atlus’ new role-playing adventure is cool, but I died four times and am not even out of the training tutorial thingy yet. Looks like it’s gonna be Devil Summoner Overclocked all over again.

SMT IV begins with a booming voice telling you that your choices will not just affect yourself. Yeah, that’s obvious. We call that living. And then, suddenly, your first choice is upon you: name the protagonist. I deleted Flynn and typed in Pauly. What happens next is unclear, but has you running around a destroyed landscape speaking with some folks that say cryptic things. It’s probably a dream. When you speak to a young girl who asks you to revive her, you are transported elsewhere, to the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado. Your buddy Isshachar introduces himself and tells you a bit about the Gauntlet Rite, which allows people to become Samurai.

To cut to the chase, Pauly is successful in becoming a Samurai. Afterwards, he meets some other graduates: Walter, Jonathan, Navarre, and Isabeau. Under the stern guidance of a man ironically named Hope, we five must endure some training exercises in Naraku, the Hall of Flame. These are basically tutorial stuff, which help you learn the basics of moving around an environment, how your chit-chatty menu device Burroughs works, and various aspects of combat (press turn, recruiting, leveling up). I was able to get through the first few quests just fine, but the last one–well, I assume it is the last one–which involves finding a specific item for Hope has consequently kicked my butt four times in a row. That’s because there’s a boss guarding the item, and it’s able to wipe out Pauly and company in two turns. We’re either underpowered, it’s either overpowered, or the game is just ridiculously hard from the get-go.

Now, when you die in SMT IV, you are transported to the Underworld. The Nether Realm. The Deadlands. I dunno. It’s a place of lost souls, and a man named Charon there will offer to revive you to the point just before where you died…for a price. Basically, some of your Macca, maybe about 75%. If you don’t have enough, he’ll still revive you, but put your bill on a tab, which you’ll have to pay later. I think I saw a forum thread somewhere mentioning that you can eventually use Play Coins too. The second time I died I was taken elsewhere, since Charon was busy sucking souls or something, and offered the ability to now change the difficulty level. Two more deaths after that have just resulted in a large tab.

I’m really looking forward to more demon recruiting though, as that aspect seems completely zany and random and wonderful. That’s where the real quirk shows up so far, followed by Burroughs calling me, “Hot stuff.” Recruiting is a multiple choice guessing game, wherein you might gain a friend, make an enemy, or just cause a demon to run away. I’ve not had much luck, getting only a…you know, I don’t really know the names of these demons. One is two centaurs joined, another is a gooey zombie, and the other is some kind of creepy doll. Have not opened up the ability to fuse and stuff, but I’m sure that’ll be soon enough.

A rough start, but I’m not deterred. Tonight I will do some more grinding and running back to the barracks to rest up and heal for free before I try to take on the item-guarding boss again. Ideally, I’d like Pauly to be around level 6, as well as my team of demons. That said, I need to recruit a few more, especially one with some healing magic. Don’t know if those thrive in Naraku or not. We’ll see, SMT IV. Pray for my soul.

Mean gnomes, friendly fire, tenacious towers, extra elements, and goliath beetles

Alas, I’m still not in a place to really write at length about the videogames I’m playing (or thinking about playing). Y’know, unless that writing is really short and in the form of a haiku. This hard swing seems to happen every summer, and it’s mostly because I’m extremely stressed to day jobbery things that I won’t ever go into publicly and working on laying out a book of my 365 BAD COMICS, but I am still Pauly, which means I am playing games whether there are words to attach to them or not because they help soothe my soul. I figured it’d be easier to give y’all a little rundown on what I’m playing as of late and how it’s going than waiting for the inevitable to never happen.

And away we go.

Fable III

Well, this is not a very good game, in all aspects of something being a game. No, sir. It’s janky and lazy and poorly paced and unclear in its directions and overly interested in telling the player silly data, and I hate the “no menu” mentality, as there is nothing wrong with menus, so long as the menus are designed properly. The dog is pointless to the point of annoying and should have been left behind; that was Fable 2‘s thing. Being the king of Albion is not as cool or special as one might assume. I’m currently right near the end-all battle, but I want to clean up all the remaining side quests (finding gnomes, silver keys, gold keys) because I am never going to play this again. I’m glad it was free, but I’m sad to see how dry and drained it is compared to the previous adventure, something I enjoyed. There are still some very pretty locales and cool beard options though.

Battlefield 3

This is a game I really do want to write more about at length, as I’m playing it for educational purposes, to figure out what it is about realistic, war-themed FPS titles that I find so uninteresting and off-putting. So far, this game has all of that–whatever it is–and then some. I’m also finding it extremely difficult to see due to how real and dark the environments are, accidentally shooting my own teammates. Thankfully, friendly fire is in play–though the game openly states such actions will not be tolerated–so I’m not ruining missions at every turn. But yeah. I’ve done ground fights, tank fights, sky fights, sniper stuff, and so on. It’s pretty boring.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

This is the first free game for us Xbox 360 players with Gold accounts. It’s an old, downloadable RTS game from a few years back, with upgradable towers. It’s slow, as slow as if I was to actually build a tower myself, but I was able to play a few levels past the tutorial stuff. Not sure if I’ll hop back into it, as it is almost the exact opposite of the only RTS game I’ve really enjoyed recently: Kingdom Rush. Oh well.

Chrono Cross

I’m now at the turning point of my sorta re-play of Chrono Cross where I’m experiencing parts I’ve never gotten to before. This is exciting. I always got to the moment in time where Serge and Lynx do the Freaky Friday and then lost interest quickly after that. Despite some hiccups, this replay has been pretty steadily chugging along, and I’m now working on beating a bunch of dragon gods into submission. I still absolutely love the music and the battle system with a passion unlike anything else. More about Chrono Cross later, I promise.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

I am loving my new daily life as mayor of Arni in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but am taking it pretty slow. In fact, I’ve only gone to the island four or five times now, and that’s the place many players hop to and from to earn big bells thanks to the special beetles they got there. Just finished expanding the museum with a second floor and gift shop, and am now working on increasingly my house to have a larger second room. That’s gonna be where I put all my Japanese furniture. Other than that, it’s the same ol’ addiction and easygoing gameplay from the previous game, and the emergent gameplay in multiplayer is a joy to watch unfold.

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So that’s the handful of games I’m currently playing. Pretty exciting, I know. I’m also contemplating if I’ll pick up Shin Megami Tensei IV or not tomorrow. Hmm, we’ll see…

Mario VS. Donkey Kong VS. Paul’s puzzle skills

Though they’ve been locked and loaded on my Nintendo 3DS for almost two years now, I’ve still not gotten around to playing all the 10 free GBA Ambassador games awarded to us early supporters of the system. For the record, I did beat both Metroid Fusion and Yoshi’s Island. I tried my luck with Kirby and The Amazing Mirror and Wario Land 4, both of which did not hold me for very long due to their lack of direction and unfair difficulty and horrible map designs. And I remember playing Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for like five minutes before putting it aside, but that was long before I got to experience Fire Emblem: Awakening, and I definitely plan to start FE: TSS up again now that I (kind of) get what that franchise is all about. So that just leaves us with the following pretty much untouched titles:

• F-Zero: Maximum Velocity
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
• Mario Kart: Super Circuit
• Mario vs Donkey Kong
• WarioWare Inc: Mega Microgame$

We can discount the F-Zero and Mario Kart titles as something to “play” as all those games really ask of you is to run a track for a few minutes and try to place higher than fourth, which is fine and good for a bathroom break, but nothing you have to actually sink your teeth into and really dig deep to understand the lore and plot. I know next to nothing about the WarioWare game, and I’ve heard many a praises about The Minish Cap, but I need to be in a Zelda mood for a Zelda game, and I’m just not there yet. No idea when I’ll be either. All of this lengthy intro setup is to basically say this: I played Mario VS. Donkey Kong yesterday.

It’s surprisingly good, and a bit weird. Evidently, there are a bunch of MiniMario toys, and banana-crazy Donkey Kong falls in love with the idea of collecting them all after seeing a commercial for ’em. Unfortunately, the local toy store is all sold out. Now, here is where I am confused. The game part has you playing as Mario, trying to collect various MiniMarios and then battling Donkey Kong as the boss of each thematic world. Does this mean that you are trying to save these MiniMarios from getting into DK’s paws? Or are these somehow already in DK’s possession and you are trying to steal them back? Not sure. Either way, you do this by…solving platforming-based puzzles, and I’ve completed the first two worlds so far, with the puzzles ramping up with each level. Basically, you need to get a key into a door, and from there you are transported to a sub-level, where you must then reach a MiniMario safely and collect it. You can also grab presents along the way for a bonus game where you can win extra lives.

One aspect in Mario VS. Donkey Kong that I’m really worried about is that, so far, every single level introduces a new mechanic or twist on an already revealed mechanic, which leads me to believe that the final levels are just going to be a mess of things to keep track of. Or maybe not. I dunno. It hasn’t been too difficult so far, and the only times I’ve died is from carelessness and not from misunderstanding how to solve the puzzle. Mario does not control like he does in his platforming counterparts; here he is much slower and only able to jump so far, often relying on an odd, handstand-to-double jump trick to get to normally unreachable places. Also, while in this handstand, he doesn’t take damage from falling object, because plumber boots are made of indestructible material.

It’s a really quirky puzzle game that I’m interested in seeing where it goes. I just hope my skills are up to the later challenges. Otherwise, Mario will be falling over and crying “Mama-mia!” more than he cares to.

You say you want a Tekken Revolution

Last night, I switched on my DownloadStation 3 to see what I should grab next and add to my growing digital collection of games that I worry I’ll never get time to actually play. Yes, first-world pains and all that, but really now, the amount of free games being tossed into my face on a weekly basis is staggeringly frustrating. And now the Xbox 360 is getting in on the action with Fable III and more to come. Please pray for my well-being. Anyways, upon seeing that Uncharted 3 is a…40 gig download, which would probably take me an entire weekend to download and then install, I scanned the store for something smaller. First I grabbed Machinarium for free thanks to my PlayStation Plus subscription, and then noticed that there’s a new Tekken game available for all to enjoy. Me like Tekken. Of all the fighting franchises, it’s the one I feel most in sync with, and I think it has to do with the throws.

So, what exactly is Tekken Revolution? Well, in short, it’s a very simplified, non-serious version of the age-old Tekken utilizing a “free-to-play” business model. This mostly involves avatar leveling mechanics in order to lure new players to the franchise, as well as a regenerating token system to limit just how many online fights one can participate in over a given period of time. Currently, there are only three modes: arcade, online player match, and online ranked match. That’s it. No training mode, no silly bowling mode, no local competitive “vs. player 2” mode. You either fight a random roster of opponents up to the boss Ogre or you test your luck against online combatants.

Again, since this is not a full Tekken game in all senses of the phrase, the roster is quite small. You begin with eight default characters, plus four more which you unlock in a random order by earning gift points at specific amounts. In short, here’s who you can use: Kazuya, King, Paul, Law, Asuka, Lili, Lars, Jack, Leo, Steve, Alisa, and Bryan.

I played through the arcade mode twice and found the experience to be just fine. It’s the same ol’ fighting you know from previous Tekken editions, and it feels good. I played as Asuka and watched as she earned experience points by defeating enemies, eventually leveling up to LV 3. This meant I now had some skill points to assign, boosting her health total, the damage she deals, and her chance of nailing a critical hit. This felt beyond foreign and tacked on, and I have to wonder what the whole point of it is. Probably to make actual money, in that maybe players can purchase more skill points to be one step ahead of the curve, and then their Asuka will always be a slightly bit more powerful than mine. I don’t know. Again, it feels unnecessary. Oh, and once you assign points, there’s no going back.

After that, I was able to log on once to play an online match against someone using Law. The fight was very close, each of use winning two rounds, but I was defeated in round 5. I did not try to play any further rounds after that, but it seems like you have tokens that regenerate slowly over time that allow you to play arcade or online matches. If you run out, you have to wait to play more. Or you can bypass this roadblock by purchasing gold tokens via real money. In the short time I played Tekken Revolution, nothing got in my way of fun, but I suspect if I tried to play a few more rounds I would have hit a wall.

Probably the biggest bummer is the lack of story here. There are no intro videos for characters and, more depressing, no end videos after you take down Ogre in the last fight. These zany pieces of cinema were always a treat and made trudging through the arcade mode over and over worth it. Now it feels kind of pointless, and earning experience points is not enough to satisfy. I want to see Paul and Kuma hanging out and doing flips or something. I want Jack to blow up a planet. I want people tossed into volcanoes.

It’s certainly not a revolution, but it is something to play now and then if you like Tekken and, for some reason, don’t have a copy of Tekken II or Tekken Tag to enjoy. Well, you know.

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon took me for a chilly ride

Some two months after getting it, I’m almost done with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, which is good seeing that Animal Crossing: New Leaf drops in just a few days and will continue to take up most of my portable gaming time for both the near and far-flung future, but I came very, very close to taking the cartridge out of my 3DS and never looking back. Why? Let’s blame the possessor ghost boss fight from the Secret Mine mansion, and let’s blame it coldly.

While the main levels within a mansion all follow a formula of slowing making progress to the house’s final area, ghost by ghost, piece by piece, there’s definitely not one tied to the boss fights at the end. Each has been drastically different, and the one hoarding the dark moon fragment in Chilly Ride took me by surprise for its difficulty and unrealistic expectations.

For starters, the game switches to a first-person shooter perspective, having you toss bombs at a looming monster face covered in slabs of ice while you race down a slippery ice tunnel. Once you break away each slab, you then have two chances to toss a flaming bomb into the monster’s open mouth; do that, and you return to more traditional grounds, sucking up the possessor ghost as usual in third-person perspective before being thrown back into the shooting formula two more times. Each subsequent time adds more slabs around the monster’s face, and you only have so much time to clear them off the boss before your sledding/shooting machine malfunctions. If that happens, you have to redo the entire fight from the beginning. Which sucks.

Trust me, I know. It took me eight attempts to finally beat this boss, roughly around 40 minutes. That’s the equivalent of two missions in Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, wherein you are collecting ghosts, finding gems, earning money for unlocks, and seeing story beats unfold. I definitely have more fun exploring rooms than tossing bombs down ice tunnels and hoping for the best. Luck and a lot of timing played into this boss fight, which is what makes it so frustrating. When I finally did take down the possessor ghost, I didn’t feel like it was through genuine skill, just something I managed to sneak by.

But whatevs. I beat the Chilly Ride boss–cue Luigi’s adorable line, “I do it!”–collected the fourth Dark Moon fragment, and moved on to the final mansion to see this story to a close. Which I hope to do tonight or tomorrow. No really. I’m almost there, and I’ll probably have some final thoughts on the game, as there is, just like with Paper Mario: Sticker Star, a lot to enjoy here, but the frustrations are truly that, and this boss fight was almost bad enough to drive me away. Hopefully the final boss fight won’t kick me out for good.

Men in distress, and the women who save them

Have y’all been keeping up with Anita Sarkeesian’s Damsel in Distress video series, which “explores how the damsel in distress became one of the most widely used gendered clichés in the history of gaming and why the trope has been core to the popularization and development of the medium itself.” The second episode was just released yesterday, and it covers violence against women in videogames within the previously mentioned trope. Sarkeesian’s analysis is very interesting and well-executed (save for one moment where she breaks professionalism for a snarky jab of Bionic Commando‘s main dude’s arm), but be warned, there are graphic scenes of violence against women used throughout, and spoilers are an unconcerned thing of the past, for games both new (Pandora’s Tower) and old (Breath of Fire IV).

I do hope that Sarkeesian eventually examines that games that do–or try to–steer away from the blatant damsel in distress trope, whether successfully or not. I agree fully with her point that you can like and love something immensely while at the same time also be critical of its problematic parts. Heck, take Fallout: New Vegas, a game that literally freezes or glitches out every time I play it, but I just enjoy the world so much that I keep coming back. That said, I also think there is something beneficial to be gained from praising the games that try to go a different route.

Before we get going, let me come clean. I am a writer and an artist, a creator if you will, and some of my previously published work might possibly have hints of the damsel in distress. I say hints as I don’t believe I have it exactly on the nose, often using the trope as a base and then spinning it so that the damsel ends up saving herself. Most importantly is The Stolen Lovelight, a short graphic novel that I wrote and my wife Tara Abbamondi drew. It is about a young woman named Arisia Randir who is trapped in a terrible relationship. With seemingly no way out, she ends up paying for her own kidnapping. Men and men-like things will try to save her from further trouble, but she’d rather handle things on her own and find a new place to call home. And that’s my pitch, I guess.

Originally, I tried to come up with some kind of cute, whimsical title to counter the whole damsel in distress thing (like Distressed Dudes), but my short analysis is better served with a straightforward approach, and so listed below are a few videogames that I’m aware of where you play as a woman, and you’re off to rescue a man…a man in distress.

Beyond Good & Evil

One of the earlier missions in Beyond Good & Evil has green-lipped, photo-snapping Jade sneaking into a DomZ facility to rescue Double H, a heavily built IRIS operative who has been kidnapped and tortured to the point of incompetence. His physical appearance against Jade is striking, what with him fully decked out in a knight’s suit of armor. I suspect that Michel Ancel was having some fun here, as now you are the knight in metaphorically shining armor in this scenario, plucking him from harm’s way to get him on your team. Later on, Pey’j, the father figure in Jade’s life, also gets kidnapped, giving you a reason to fly to the moon.

Primal

Man, I really love Primal, and yet it’s a game I’ve never completed. Grrr. It’s on my wishlist for 2013, but we’re almost halfway through the year, and I’ve made zero progress on putting the game’s disc in my PlayStation 2. Granted, I am working on Chrono Cross at the moment, so there’s at least that. Anyways, in Primal, you play as Jennifer Tate, a 21-year-old woman who has to travel through various demonic realms to retrieve her stolen boyfriend. Lewis is in a band, but a bunch of demons believe that they need him to…uh, create chaos. So he is abducted, and Jen is hospitalized. A tiny gargoyle helps her on her path to saving her boyfriend and, ultimately, the world.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest has the evil pirate Kaptain K. Rool nabbing the titular hero of the first game. You know who I speak of. Turns out, despite being a crocodile, he really loves his fruit, and won’t hand Donkey Kong back over unless Diddy returns his previously stolen hoard of bananas. More importantly, you can play as Dixie Kong, Diddy’s girlfriend, who can use her ponytail as both a weapon and way to glide across large gaps.

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I know it’s only three examples, but those are all I can think of at the moment where the man is in distress, and you play as the woman (er, female monkey in Dixie’s case) rescuing him.

Can y’all think of any others? Inform me in the comments section below.

Nowi and Norne are no more as Fire Emblem: Awakening marches on

In actuality, Fire Emblem: Awakening‘s Chapter 23 “Invisible Ties” could have ended with several other deaths, but only Nowi and Norne fell down, never to get back up. That now brings the total to…21 dead characters in this permadeath playthrough. I am unstoppable.

One of those two that kicked the bucket is a main story character, who I recently married to Kellam and saw have a half-mime, half-dragon child with, and the other came from the Bonus Box, which means she is, alas, nonessential. But she was pretty special to me, seeing that I had leveled Norne up to 20, then reclassed her to a Sniper, and had her hit the level cap for a second time. She was wicked killer with all kinds of bows and had excellent range, so seeing her struck swiftly down was not easy to endure. Nowi, as a Manakete, which is the Fire Emblem way of saying dragon, was not very active in battle, having only the ability to breath a fireball now and then via Dragonstones. I used her enough to form a relationship with Kellam and bring forth her future kid, but that was about it. She “retired” at the ripe age of over 1,000 years old.

::pours one out for the bow and the beast::

However, as I’ve come to experience in Fire Emblem: Awakening, everything balances out. So while I lost two members of the Shepherds, I also gained two new ones. Alas, for extremely story-related reasons, I can’t say who I got, and hopefully I can keep them alive long enough to not have to spoil y’all over their reveal. I like them flavor-wise, but neither seem to be anything great in terms of weapons and skills, and seeing how late they are joining my team, I won’t have many more chances to grind them up in levels and relationships. I wonder if I can get a future child from them though…

Anyways, based on what happens in Chapter 23 and how it relates to the opening level of the game, I kind of thought it was the final battle, but it looks like there are a few more to go. Despite all my losses, I think I can do it. The Shepherds will  be victorious. I know, famous last words.

How do you pronounce Serge in Chrono Cross?

Yesterday, I finally got around to kickstarting my goal of finishing these five videogames some time this year, starting off with Chrono Cross. It’s an RPG I’ve played countless times before, but always only up to a specific point; generally, it is around the time you switch, for story-related reasons, from controlling Serge to controlling Lynx. Tara recently replayed, too–well, back in October 2011–but she ended up getting stuck somewhere. I don’t remember where. Maybe she can elaborate in the comments below. I dunno…I just lose interest after awhile, and then something new and shiny takes hold of me, and I never return, which is a shame as it is one of my favorite gaming adventures thanks to its stellar soundtrack and versatile combat system. I blame myself more than the Frozen Flame.

I’ve got just about four hours under my re-playing belt at this point, but I’ll save my musings and love and admiration stuff for a separate post. For now, let’s talk about something that Tara and I can’t agree on: how to pronounce Serge’s name. To me, I say it like “surge of water,” and given what happens to him in the alternate realm…well, that fits. Tara, however, pronounces it like “ser gey,” with a flair to the whole thing. I’m not so sure how I like that. Since this is the PlayStation 1 and voice acting was extremely limited back in the day, we don’t ever hear anyone say his name out loud, especially since the player can also change it to Pauly or Potasio or whatever they feel like calling our blue-haired silent protagonist. And so I turn to you, dear Grinding Down readers, to voice your opinions.

All right, hopefully there’s a poll below for you to click on. I don’t make many of these so I’m not too confident on how to embed ’em. If it’s there, say your peace:

Had to kill off Cordelia in Fire Emblem: Awakening to make room for future kids

All right, another one down and out–by that I mean “retired” this time, not dead dead–in Fire Emblem: Awakening. No surprise, really: it’s Cordelia, a member of Ylisse’s Pegasus Knight Squad. And that means a single thrown stone can take her out, and since the enemy AI loves to attack the most vulnerable character at any given chance, even if it makes no sense strategy-wise, she fell fast after I accidentally moved her too close to a horseback archer’s range. A shame, really, as things were turning around for the Shepherds. Well, in my eyes, at least; everyone totally understands that, at this point, I’ve now killed 20 of my loyal friends, which irrefutably means I’m a terrible tactician. But we were growing closer, like a family.

Speaking of that, I got myself married. Woo! Well, for a second time. Don’t tell Tara. Her name is Say’ri, an old-fashioned princess if there ever was one, and we’re pretty pleased as punch to become one. From that, we were able to create our future kid Morgan. Kellam and Nowi also hooked up, producing a future dragon baby with the best name ever: Nah. Unfortunately, I flubbed up; long before these two marriages came and happened, with me learning how the future kid paralogues worked, I had Stahl and Panne unite in true love. However, during their kid’s paralogue battle, I accidentally picked the wrong side, and the only other rabbit beast thing left the realm for good, slain by what could have been her new companions and parents. My bad. I didn’t know…though I totally should have known.

So, lost one, but gained two. I also managed to complete both Chapter 19 and Chapter 20 with everyone safe and sound. Alas, at this point, I can’t really make many more kids because most of the story-related characters needed for pairing up with those that still remain and are kidless…are dead. See, I knew there would be drastic consequences to this whole permadeath thing. Poor Frederick must now cut off his genitals and become a eunuch.

Collected all those scattered Blast Shards in inFAMOUS 2

I’m nearing the end of inFAMOUS 2–sorry, quick aside, but I previously wrote the game’s name as inFamous 2, and the copyeditor in me will not rest until I owned up to the error and corrected it going forward even if it is a weird way to write something–and I don’t expect to ever play it again despite their being two paths to go down. One is good and saintly with ice powers in tow, and the other is evil and dark, circled by fire. If you know me, you know which way I’m playing; for those that are new, I’m always a good Samaritan first. It’s not that I don’t enjoy playing evil from time to time, but I get the sense that the game doesn’t change a whole lot by doing a few missions morally different.

With the last mission, I assume it’s the last since it is called “The Final Decision,” in sight, I’m trying to wrap up a number of side stuff before I close the book on Cole’s second chapter. My main objectives are finding all the Dead Drops, liberating the second island fully, and collecting all the Blast Shards. Maaaaaybe play a few more user-generated levels. Out of those three dreams, I’ve now found all hidden Blast Shards, and as a collectible, they are both a lot of fun to collect, as well as extremely rewarding in that a set number of them increase the amount of electricity power Cole can use. They remind me a bit of Precursor Orbs from the Jak and Daxter franchise, and nothing of those dumb flags from Assassin’s Creed. There is certainly an art to collectibles, something I’d like to explore down the line.

Basically, any time you ping the New Marais map for sources of electricity, Blast Shards appear for a second or two as a blue dot. Then you gotta find them, and they are relatively easy to see as they are glowing crystals, but most of them are tucked up high on rooftops or ledges, meaning you have to do some climbing. In total, there’s 305 of them, and you’ll come across them every step of the way early on in the game. It’s only after you’ve found about three-fourths of them that you have to begin paying attention and hunting them down, which is not as tiresome as one might think, thanks to Cole’s superhero powers of zipping up buildings and gliding across telephone wires. I found my 305th one out in the water last night, and upon collecting it, Cole accidentally took a dip, dying from the splash. Regardless, I got the Trophy, and I do believe it’s my first Gold one, unless I got one in Vanquish.

Tonight’s goal is to find three (or maybe it’s four?) more flying birds for the rest of the Dead Drops. I think I have run out of side missions though, meaning I can’t free the second island from enemy oppression. Might be wrong, might have to check online to see if there’s anything else I can do. After that, it’s off for Cole to fight the Beast, use the RFI, and watch another classic ol’ Western with his best bud Zeke. Mostly because then I can download Sleeping Dogs (free this month for PlayStation Plus users!) and have some more zany open-world fun, though probably with a lot less zapping and sticky ice grenades. Can’t say that for sure though.