Scraping the bottom of the awards barrel

Achievements. I like ’em, and so do a number of other gamers. They add extra replay value to certain videogames, as well as reward you for doing something out of the ordinary or, in the case story-related Achievements, just continuing to play the game. Often times, they have fun titles or reference pop culture or a neat picture attached to them.

However, there’s also an entire population of gamers that ignore them and see them as nothing more than graphics to measure one’s e-peen with. Which I totally understand. Really, I do.

To me, getting all Achievements in a game is more of a personal mission rather than a bragging one. It’s something I want to accomplish because I want to see if I’m able to do it. That’s all. As you can see from my list to the right, it’s mostly LEGO games. I’m clearly not an Achievement whore. I just like getting them and talking about the hows and whys.

That said, soon after Achievements became all the rage, other systems and non-Xbox 360 games started looking into ways to hop on the trend wagon. PlayStation 3 introduced Trophies, which are, most of the time, exactly the same concept of Achievements. Little pings awarded for ping hunters.

And then came the Nintendo DS games. With no shared online community, they were less worried about branding a new concept than just coming up with tasks and rewards for players playing their games. Spore Creatures had Badges, Touchmaster 3 had its own versions of trophies, Scribblenauts had Merits, and now we come to Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel with…Accolades.

Yes…Accolades. A word originating back to 1615.

ac·co·lade

–noun

1. any award, honor, or laudatory notice: The play received accolades from the press.

2. a light touch on the shoulder with the flat side of the sword or formerly by an embrace, done in the ceremony of conferring knighthood.

3. the ceremony itself.

4. Music a brace joining several staves.

5. Architecture

a. an archivolt or hood molding having more or less the form of an ogee arch.

b. a decoration having more or less the form of an ogee arch, cut into a lintel or flat arch.

Hmm. I guess I can’t argue with that first definition there, but something about this word screams ridiculous to me. I mean, maybe calling them Honors would’ve been a better fit. And it fits the medieval fantasy world, but I think Nintendo needs to just get the ball rolling and solidify some kind of in-game rewards system for both their Nintendo Wii and Nintendo 3DS/DSi/DS systems.

My suggestion?

Laudatory Notices.

Just think about it. You’re playing Mario Kart DS, you’re in second place on the final lap, and you just zoomed through an item box. Lucky, lucky you…it’s a red turtle shell! Waluigi is a few feet in front of you, and you let the red death fly, zipping by to seal the deal and win the race. <insert catchy musical sound> Laudatory Notice! Shell Shock

It’s gold, Jerry. Gold!

So far, Dragon Quest IX is fun and familiar

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King…just scrunched down for the Nintendo DS. There, I said it. Y’all were thinking it. But I put it to e-paper.

At least, that’s my first impression of the game. I’ve not gotten very far, but the music, the graphics, the battle system, the character models, the church menu, the story progression, the towns, the skill trees, the everything–it’s right there with DQVIII. That’s not a slight. I love and loved DQVIII despite never beating it; I got the game back in late 2005 shortly after it released. I had just moved out of my parents’ house to an apartment in North Jersey for my first post-college job. Since money was tight then, I decided not to get cable/Internet for the first three months. Suffice to say, I saved some money and read a lot of books and played my PlayStation 2 every chance I could. DQVIII helped with this.

A massive world, lush colors and graphics, a steep learning curve, lots to do and see, character designs from Dragon Ball mastermind Akira Toriyama, a demo for the much-wanted-at-the-time Final Fantasy XII—DQVIII had it all! And it kept me good and busy.

This all seems to be said-able about DQIX. Everything you could basically do in the previous game, you can do here, just on a smaller screen. In fact, customization is even more developed on the Nintendo DS, with a slew of clothing and weapons to pick from, all of which do affect the way your character looks and fights.

The story so far goes that you’re a Celestian (guardian angel) tasked with protecting humans down below on Earth wherever. Something goes terribly wrong though and you’re cast down with the mortals, stripped of your wings and angelic power. Then you meet some people and get caught up in their quests as you try to journey your way back sky-high. Very religious, even more so than DQVIII was, and some of the writing is too archaic at times, dancing on the edge of ridiculously unreadable. The most I’ve really done at this point is built a team–minstrel, thief, spellcaster, healer–and grinded to get them closer to my main character’s level. Then we defeated a knight terrorizing a local kingdom. Haven’t got to try multiplayer/tag mode yet, but hopefully soon because my sister is also playing DQIX though most likely very far ahead because, when it comes to traditional, turn-based RPGs, she’s a bit of a nut. Gotta catch up. Gotta find time for the slime.

GTA: Chinatown Wars is winning me over

This is going to sound a little crazy, especially if you’ve been keeping up with my hate-limned posts about that masochistic beast Grand Theft Auto IV, but I’m absolutely having a blast with Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Yes, I’m actually enjoying a GTA game, and even more surprising is that it is one made specifically for an underpowered system like the Nintendo DS. Let’s all take a moment to let that sink in.

Dipping even further into the pool of insanity is the fact that GTA: Chinatown Wars shares a whole lot more with GTA IV than the first iterations in the series. Sure, it’s got a bird’s eye view/top-down camera to it, but that’s kind of it in terms of comparisons to Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2. Otherwise, you’re back in Liberty City, a world instantly recognizable if when it is presented in a completely different medium, and you take control of Huang Lee who arrives with an ancient sword to discover what happened to his father. Alas, he takes a bullet and gets dumped in the river by his assailants. The story is basically about a bunch of Triad gang members all trying to become Top Dog with Lee helping out where he can and digging his grave deeper. It’s pretty good so far, even if it still relies too much on dick jokes.

Drugs play a big part here, and I was instantly transported back to math class in high school when everyone had that drug-selling game on their fancy, hi-tech calculators. Well, everyone but me. But I borrowed a friend’s copy every now and then to help survive study hall. So, in GTA: Chinatown Wars, you acquire drugs, and then seek out the best deal for selling/buying more. This is the best way to make money as missions only pay out around $25 to $200; not enough to get by for too long in dangerous Liberty City. Cops might also randomly bust in on a hot deal you’re making, but you can safely store excess drugs in your apartment. I will admit to, at first, being a little put off by the drug dealing as I’ve never played anything so adult-like on the Nintendo DS, but now I’m right at home with the crooks and creeps in the alleys, buying low and selling high.

One of my favorite changes to gameplay involves the cops. In Grand Theft Auto IV, if the cops saw you hijacking a car or shooting a man on his cell phone in the face for just annoying you, they’d come after you. You had two options then: fight back or flee. Fighting back generally only made things worse as you would in turn just get a higher star rating and bring about more cops. So you’d flee, driving desperately down streets and flying through alleys in hopes of losing those men in blue. In GTA: Chinatown Wars, you’re better off fighting back. That’s the main way to lower your wanted star rating, and it’s devilishly awesome to swerve one way and force a cop car to crash itself into a wall, its siren dying out with a whimper. Makes the chases really exciting and nerve-enducing, especially when trying to complete a mission or make it home to your HQ.

There’s actually a lot more to talk about here, like how awesome the PDA is and how much better it is than a cell phone, but I’ll save it for another day.

Usually there’s one mission in every Grand Theft Auto game that gets me to quit. In Vice City, it was one that involved racing a boat. Gah. Hopefully one of those sorts doesn’t pop up here, but for some reason, even if it did, I suspect I’d eventually be able to overcome it and just keep on keeping on.

P.S. Bonus points awarded to anyone that can name the awesome human being that said those words in the pic above. Don’t Google it, ya bums!

Depressed gamer is depressed

Clearly, I’m depressed. Well, it might not be all that clear to you, my silent readers, but to me, it’s beyond evident. I know this because I bought more videogames this week after buying some videogames the previous week, and all I look forward to now at the end of the day is coming home from work and immersing myself in another world. Any world but this one. It could be Nazi-occupied Paris or Pandora littered with skags and psycho bandits or even a fantasy farming game that also houses caves of monsters. It does not matter. So long as it passes the hours until I can pass out and do it all over again, that’s fine.

While getting my oil changed over the weekend, I walked around the mall, finally stepping into GameStop. I just meant to wander, really, but then I noticed they had a “buy two pre-owned games, get one free” deal going on. So I did some searching. I knew that I wanted to get my mother a new Nintendo DS game, and I found Dream Day Wedding Destinations for fairly cheap, but now I needed to more games to seal the deal. Seeing as how I was going to be traveling that weekend (and the next 796 weekends), I decided to pick out two DS games for myself. Still haven’t had the energy to beat The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and while Picross 3D is fun, it’s not really a story-driven game, just the same thing over and over and over. I needed a little more drive (pun intended, as you’ll soon see) in my games, and I grabbed Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for about $15.00 each, thus picking up Mom’s game for free.

Both games are pretty good so far, but that’s not what I’m here to write about.

Depression. It sucks.

In high school, I handled it with an outburst of creativity, drawing furiously or scribbling in my notebooks ideas that would never come to fruition (like that one about a school of magical centaurs), but getting them down on paper nonetheless. I almost over-created, in some sense, staying locked away in my bedroom and just letting it all out. My small circle of friends quickly dubbed me “a hermit,” further leading to more depression sinking it, and I later turned the tables on them (though they most certainly have no awareness of this) by writing and selling a little short story about a hermit.

College was much harder in terms of depression. I did not like my college experience; I hid it really well though. If you called me a fake, I would not argue. There were dozens of reasons not to get down, and dozens of reasons countering this. I had a hard time dealing with issues of identity and friends, and ultimately turned to rum and booze and drinking my nights away. Sounds like a cliché, but it’s not at all. My PlayStation 2 was always there, but I never really needed it to comfort me. I did find a way to release my creativity via my guitar, playing “open mic” nights at local cafes and such, which was scary and fun and kept me on my toes, but it didn’t stop the bad thoughts from coming.

Now that I’m out on my own and mostly alone during the workweek, I rely a lot on mindless (and not-at-all mindless) entertainment like videogames. They are both a treat and savior to me come the evening, as I don’t watch any TV shows right now, can’t stand anything that I write short story-wise, and am so turned off by drawing that I have to wonder why I even try. Yet videogames are easy. Push the A button, watch something explode, reap the reward. Instant gratification, instant satisfaction. Lots of goals and Achievements and things to obtain, keeping me focused on something. Sure, some videogames let me down now and then, but never in a sense that my chest wants to cave in or that I want to scream at the sky, “Failure!”

What’s really terrible is the fact that I can’t openly discuss the reasons behind this depression. They are heavy and personal, complicated and unnerving, multiple and multiplying, a total dose of mindfuckery, and I can only imagine what this looks like from the outside looking in: hollow, emo whining. It’s not; that much I can assure you. Depression as depicted on TV commercials is not always how it has to be. You can smile through the day and think the worst things on the inside, and nobody would have a clue. You can still play videogames and have a convivial time, and you can still be the saddest hobbit this side of Middle-Earth.

Talking about the hey days, olden times, way back when, the good old days

One thing that I’ve sadly slipped into here at Grinding Down is a routine, and that routine involves talking about all the new videogames I’m playing currently or the new games I want to really play once they are released to us savage animals the public. I mean, this isn’t the worst thing, as some times it’s fun to muse on about how much Niko Bellic is a jerk or what life is like in a little game called Fallout 3, but I also started up this videogame blog to talk about all kinds of games, especially ones from the yonder years, not necessarily Pong era, but older games of the last two decades that just don’t get touched upon much more because of all the 3D bullshit and hands-free console apps and whatever new shiny thing is put on a pedestal for us to look up at in awe and wonder. Can you tell I’m not terribly impressed with 3D witchcraft?

Maybe it’s thanks to E3 and its global domination plans to win over all gamers with nostalgia-limned titles like Donkey Kong Country Returns! and a Kid Icarus title for the Nintendo 3DS or that adorable and quirky Kirby’s Epic Yarn…you know what? Too many to list. I’m sure many of you can name the rest. Maybe it’s from all the “let’s play” articles I’ve been reading lately. Or it might have to do with my recent string of purchases on Xbox Live, with Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting and the arcade-like throwback of ‘Splosion Man. Lastly, maybe it’s because I can sometimes hear my yellow-faded SNES in the back of my closet calling my name from time to time to bust him out and have a go.

Either way, these games exist.

And I want to talk about them. Sure, every now and then I do a piece on games I regret parting with, but that’s not enough. And this is where it gets hard because you’d think there’d be nothing new left to write about, oh, say Final Fantasy VII or Super Mario Bros. or Suikoden II. Actually, I bet Greg Noe would agree that there’s not enough written about Suikoden II at this point; it is, after all, one of my top five games OF ALL TIME. Still, it’s not like you can write up preview reports for PlayStation 1 games or speculate about how awesome it’s going to be to play as Solid Snake all the way through Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I kind of like how things are done occasionally over at Verbal Spew, with articles more or less just exploring these games of the past, comparing them to the nowadays, maybe not even.

But yeah, hopefully soon I can put down some words about videogames that most likely aren’t even being thought about during this crazy E3 black-hole. I love my Xbox 360 and many of the current generation games, but I also love my SNES and PlayStation 1, a system I bought all on my own, as well as every game I got for it, making it extra special to me, a working boy in high school; these loves do not outbid the other; they are the same, as they really should be, and I just don’t ever want to forget the building blocks that got us to today.

P.S. I got the strangest sense of déjà vu when writing this post. It’s still tickling me now.

The great escape plan

I’ve been having an extremely terrible week. There’s a lot of bad stuff happening right now in my life, none of which I want to speak about publicly though I do keeping asking this question of the great being above. Thankfully, there are ways I can escape these horrible thoughts in my mind, if only for a couple of hours, but it’s needed regardless. I’m talking about videogames, and you’re not surprised one bit.

So this is gonna be a, more or less, summary of my week with gaming. Not sure how exciting it’ll be for you to read, but it’s important for me because these are some of the things that have helped keep me sane while everything else falls apart.

Earlier this week I got to try out co-op in Borderlands with Greg Noe. This was a lot of fun, and now I see what I’ve been missing out on. He came into my game at level 50 (capped because of no DLC) and helped me climb from a level 34 to level 39 very quickly. Shockingly fast to be honest. Guess that’s what they call power leveling. We rushed through the main storyline missions and took down Sledge before calling it a night. We chatted and casually shot up skags and bandits, and though he handled most of the fighting I really didn’t mind as I still racked up experience points. Got a bunch of co-op Achievements as well, and I’m one away from getting all of them in Borderlands (minus the DLC ones naturally). Just gotta ping level 50, which I might save for (hopefully) another session of co-op with Greg!

I also spent some Microsoft Points, snagging namely Peggle and Street Fight II Hyper Fighting as of the moment. Still have 800 Points to go. I contemplated getting the recently remade Earthworm Jim HD, but after playing the trial version decided otherwise. As Jim, you can’t jump and shoot at the same time, nor can you jump up off of ropes, only down. These design choices have been there from the beginning, but I’ve been spoiled by much better platformers since then and can’t get past these kinds of hiccups.

Peggle is great fun, and I am now working my way through each challenge level; my favorite power-ups are the dragon’s bouncing fireball and the owl’s zen shot. A lot of the game relies on luck, but there’s also a serious amount of planning and preparation to put into each level.

As per Street Fighter II HF, I don’t have any fighters on my Xbox 360 so I figured why not get one of the classics. Even on a difficulty of two stars out of seven, the game seriously mopped the floor with me. Guess I need more practice, but it’s fun nonetheless and really brings me back to those mall arcades. However, Dhalsim’s level is atrocious. The elephants in the background do not stop making noise the entire time. I had to put it on mute. Yoga flame!

After getting stuck on an Act II mission in The Saboteur last night, I said “feck it” and just ran around blowing stuff up. In other words, taking out some more white dots from the map. I also ended up unlocking two Achievements around the same time: the one for blowing up 50 vehicles and the one for stealth killing 50 Nazis. Guess those two were neck and neck for awhile. Hopefully I can get past this mission real soon. An online guide suggests doing it undercover, but the problem is I get caught too soon each and every time. Not sure what I’m doing wrong or if there’s another way around it all. Will keep plugging at it; unlike GTA IV, dying during a mission doesn’t make you start all the way back across the city. So there’s no reason not to keep trying.

Right. I’m visiting home-home for the weekend so I’ll probably just bring my DS to distract me. Picross 3D puzzles and more Pokemon HeartGold to sift through. Other than that, Tara and I will most likely play the LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 demo together tonight, which I really think she’s going to love. We watched a dev diary video recently that showed off Mad-Eye Moody in LEGO form. He looks simply splendid. This world is so perfect for the LEGO build; I can’t stress that enough.

So yeah, that’s my week of escaping. It’s all I can do at the moment.

Battling the darkness with my Nintendo DS

Last night, after I got home from a grueling day, the power went out for around 30 minutes. The storm was mostly to blame. I listened to the rain for a bit, then strummed a few songs on the guitar, and then, magically, found my Nintendo DS in the darkness. I was actually trying to find my cell phone, but this worked out much better. After safely making it to my bed, I passed the next 20 minutes or so blissfully, doing puzzle after puzzle after puzzle in Picross 3D. That game is so simple yet at the same time equally hard and rewarding. Perfect for blackouts.

They should add this feature as a bullet point though on the Nintendo 3DS or whatever: Perfect for blackouts!

In fact, I was so immersed in my block-breaking that when the power did flicker back on, I was kind of annoyed. The lights made Picross 3D less colorful, and did not help make the 0s pop as well as before. And somehow, the music seemed lower. I’m sure it’s all in my head, but there really was something special about cozying up in the darkness with the Nintendo DS to really let the system shine.

For those curious, I’ve completed over 175 puzzes in Picross 3D at the moment, as well as downloaded like 30 more thanks to WiFi wizardry. I really can’t stress this enough, but this $20 game is going a long way.

Color me content with these three new Nintendo DSi XL colors

Man, Japan just has the best Nintendo DS colors. And now they are getting three more: green, blue, and yellow. Try not to compare them to three easy-to-guess Pokemon. But still, the green one, with its black trim, looks fantastic. Alas, I have no reason to need another handheld, and I just picked up a DS Lite for Tara for her graduation. It’s the cobalt blue one, which, honestly, is okay and certainly the best of the bunch, but not the greatest color scheme under the sun. So, uh, yeah. Japan. Hurry on up and ship these across the sea. Maybe by the time they get here, I’ll have a reason to upgrade to a DSi XL. Most likely not, given the behemoth’s size, but stranger things have happened…

The guessing game within Picross 3D

There’s not actually a “guessing minigame” in Picross 3D, but this is rather just something I do as I play along. It’s silly fun, and more or less leads to wrong-if-amusing results, but it’s a compulsion, I guess, sort of like when people yell out answers to TV shows like Wheel of Fortune and Deal or No Deal. They want to be right, and they want to hear themselves being right before the point is proven (or not).

Basically, once you successfully complete a puzzle, you’re shown the basic blocky outline of the item before color and details are added, as well as the name of what it is below. During this time, a mere three seconds, I like to guess as to what it is that I just created. I’ve been wrong many, many times so far. Some examples:

I guessed helicopter; it was a bunch of grapes.

I guessed throne; it was a hand giving the peace sign.

I guessed calculator; it was a travel suitcase.

See? Pure fun. Many of the puzzles fall into themes; like, you will ultimately make all the letters of the alphabet or items that belong in an office or, much to my extreme happiness, items from Japanese culture. The backgrounds can help clue you in on things, but sometimes my mind forgets they are there and I just see what I see. I’ve done about 65 puzzles now, still on level one difficulty, but I’m enjoying them more and more as I progress, getting better and quicker at figuring out their tricks. I just gotta work on my guessing…

PURCHASES OF THE MONTH: Picross 3D and The Saboteur

Well, I caved over the weekend. Had to pick up something new before May ended, and so I nabbed Picross 3D for a cool $20.00 and a used copy of The Saboteur for $15.00. Yeah, not two games I’d really ever think of pairing together, but good deals nonetheless.

Picross 3D is a unique puzzler that, a bit to my dismay, relies heavily on math skills to solve. Me? I’m no good with the multiplication tables and such. But I’m getting the hang of it despite have trouble on some of the Beginner and Level 1 puzzles. There’s over 350 in the game, and I’ve gotten through about 50 or so at this point. Presentation is nice and unobtrusive, and you can change the game’s overall soundtrack to whatever you want…Latin, twinkly (?), calm. I locked it down on the 8-bit selection. Doot doot doot beet boot…

Also, evidently there’s a commercial for the game. And it shows a group of girls playing the game, having a blast, solving puzzles. Is this being marketed as a girl’s game and easy one, too? I should hope not. I think anyone can play it so long as they have patience.

Oh, and one puzzle solved resulted in creating a blocky dachshund. Tara liked that.

As for The Saboteur, it’s an open-world game set in Paris, France during World War II. Yup, a WWII that is not a first-person shooter. Crazy, right? What it is though is stylish and arcade-like. You play an Irishman named Sean who hates Nazis and ends up in France due to an earlier run-in with the Aryan race. He meets some other fellow Nazi haters, and the plot is on: uh, kill Nazis. Haven’t gotten too far in this one yet, but it seems like there’s a ton of things to see, do, and collect. Looking forward to exploring the world a bit more, but I can already tell that I like the map in black, white, yellow, and red much more than in full color. Once color returns, the game world sort of loses something.

Also, I ended up buying one month of Xbox Live Gold for $1.00 thanks to a spotlight advertisement. I mean, that’s a pretty rockin’ deal and so I figured to give it a shot. Now I have exactly a month to try and get some more multiplayer-only Achievements in some of my games and maybe try out co-op in Borderlands. Will have to plan accordingly.

Either way, that’s it for May. No more purchases until the end of June hits with LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4.