Adding to the Backlog – A whole bunch of drastically different videogames

Suddenly, without warning, my backlog grew tremendously over the last couple of weeks. Actually, no, not without warning–I’ve been buying games pretty frequently, mostly because I’m trying to fill out my PlayStation 2 games collection before all copies of anything PS2-related disappear like pay-phones, cassette tapes, and music videos on MTV. Also, Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger’s pride.

Here’s a little summary of my recent additions:

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

I actually ended up buying a new copy of this game for around $15.00. This totally confused the GameStop employee as he claimed that he had not sold a new copy of a PlayStation game in many, many months. He had no idea where they kept them. He called three people on the phone. Time passed, and I shuffled back and forth on my feet, waiting, wondering. Anyways, I’ve yet to pop this baby into the disc tray. Soon, I’m sure.

Mafia

This is okay. Not quite a GTA clone, but there’s bits and pieces there, as well as a character named Pauly. However, I’m stuck on the third mission. Like, I’ve tried it six times, and I can’t get past it. You’re supposed to bash a bunch of cars up with a baseball bat and then ignite them in a blaze of glory with a molotov cocktail; the problem is that once you’ve smashed up two and a half cars, a bunch of goons with guns attack you, and within a few shots, the main character is dead. I’ve tried it a bunch of different ways, but can’t seem to avoid their shots and finish up the job at the same time.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit

Haven’t played it yet, but the store clerk was excited to see me getting this game. Seems to be more of a platformer than an adventure game, but I’ll give it a shot.

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue

Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly…those were the staples of PS2 platforming titles. However, another series existed, one about a not-so-crazy Tasmanian tiger that kept a nifty collection of boomerangs. I have and enjoyed beating the first game in the series so I picked this one up for super cheap. Shame it has a laughingly bad name. Can’t wait to rescue some bush.

The Simpsons: Road Rage

Tara saw this and said something to the effect of, “The Grand Theft Auto Simpsons!” And she’s a huge fan of the show, much more than I am, so I grabbed it for her for $4.99. However, it turns out it’s more like Crazy Taxi than GTA, but it’s still pretty fun. Love that it has all the true voice actors in it. I got to be Ottoman and drive around a topless school bus.

Tokobot Plus: Mysteries of the Karakuri

No idea what this is, but the Capcom-esque art style and inclusion of a mini army of robots was enough to sell me. It was like $4.00. Haven’t gotten to try it yet.

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Now, if I just complete all six of these games in the next week, that’ll bring me up to 25 total for 2011, and then I can gleefully go out and purchase L.A. Noire for the extended holiday weekend. Ha, not likely. Besides, I’ve got a bunch of artsy projects I really should work on instead of playing with pixels. However, I’ll still be searching for other PS2 titles I want…if you have any, please send them to me as soon as possible, and I’ll repay you with a silly drawing. Seriously, that’s the deal. Unless you have Suikoden III. Then I’ll do you a silly drawing…in my very own blood.

Got the itch to Quidditch

I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, and everything from the books to the movies to the LEGO-ized videogames to the tiny, but fantastic theme parks are laced with pure joy because once I interact with them, I’m beyond content. Here’s some photographic proof too, of Tara and I enjoying some frozen butterbeer on our honeymoon, even if it’s probably overpriced:

I think the world and lore and workings of the Harry Potter universe are stellar, with J.K. Rowling going the extra seventy-seven miles to make sure that everything clicked and made sense in a magical manner. She even made up her very own sport, which, contrarily to what you may believe, is not a simple task: you need rules, goals, strategy, players, teams, fields, designs, logos, tournaments, history, and so on. Quidditch is no Calvinball.

Quidditch is a mix of soccer, basketball, and football, with the most striking difference being that it’s played by witches and wizards on brooms and not on the ground. There’s a lot happening at once, with multiple balls to pay attention to: the Quaffle is a large red ball used for scoring points by tossing it through an opposing team’s hoops; Bludgers are angry, enchanted balls that Beaters hit away or at other players; and the Golden Snitch is a small, golden ball the size of a walnut that, when caught by a team’s Seeker, rewards that team with 150 points, ultimately ending the match. It’s fast-paced and anyone’s game all the way down to the Snitch.

And so it’s strange that, for all these years of Harry Potter’s growing popularity, there’s only been one videogame take on the magical Quidditch. I mean, what with the big push of online multiplayer and socializing these days, I find it amazing that Quidditch hasn’t been bundled in with the latest Harry Potter game as a multiplayer option. Instead, we just have Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, PC, and Game Boy Advance. Recently, as I searched high and low for PS2 games to add to my collection, I found the Ps2 version of Quidditch World Cup for $2.99 and said, “Bloody brilliant!” Well, no, I didn’t actually say that. But if Ron was with me, surely he would’ve.

The game’s okay. You start out doing some broom challenges, which teach you the basics of passing, shooting, stealing, catching the Snitch, and so on. Then you pick a House team, and it’s off to try to win the Hogwarts cup. I went with Ravenclaw since that’s the House I belong to, and I found beating Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Gryffindor to be extremely easy. Like, they never scored a point against me. Maybe I was just really awesome at virtual broom-flying? Nah, that’s not it. After the Hogwarts cup, it’s on to the Quidditch World Cup, and I chose Japan, dueling it out with good ol’ USA. The spike in difficulty was sharp, and the game was super close, ultimately coming down to whoever caught the Snitch first. Thankfully, Cho did her thing, and we won, a victory surely earned unlike those back in the Hogwarts days. After that intense match, I took a break and checked out some of the Chocolate Frog cards I unlocked throughout play.

If anything, Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup showed how much of a Muggle I actually am. The game taught me about the Golden Snidget, a small, golden-yellow bird previous used in Quidditch before it became deemed too cruel and unsafe for the animals. I never knew about this backstory to the wizarding sport, and in all seriousness, I just assumed Electric Arts decided to spell Snitch wrong or in a special British way. Go figure.

30 Days of Gaming, #16 – Game with the best cutscenes

Revenge and redemption: two concepts not to be handled lightly. But Jak 3 was up to the challenge of showing us how far Jak had fallen and how far he’d climb back up, and Naughty Dog did this so effectively with the use of some great cutscenes. Despite growing up on a healthy diet–or maybe that’s unhealthy–of games brimming with over-stylized FMV for cutscenes, I much prefer when a game keeps the cutscenes in line with in-game graphics, and that seemed to happen more often than not with PlayStation 2 era games. It’s less jarring and really stops the immersion from breaking.

Jak 3 opens up with basically a 10-minute cutscene that sets up the final game in the trilogy. Jak has been banished from Haven City, the very same city he saved in Jak II, to the Wasteland by Veger. As he, Daxter, and a talking bird whose name escapes me wander the desert, we are shown flashbacks leading up to our main man’s banishing. After too long in the sun, all three pass out and are eventually found by some scavengers thanks to a homing beacon in Jak’s hand. Turns out one of those scavengers is actually Damas, King of Spargus, an isolated city hidden in the Wasteland, and he’s taken Jak in, but only to see if he can prove himself in their battle arena.

The animation, voice-work, and framing is fantastic, on par with anything considered professionally cinematic. There’s not just a series of talking head shots; we get actual camera angles here. Even though it’s 10 minutes long, the game’s intro is well-paced, jumping from the present to the past, and giving every character their worth. Yup, even Daxter, who, at this point, is not too annoying. Amazingly, this is solely the beginning, and future cutscenes only get better, really showing characters emoting and plotting and moving with heart. Jak 3‘s ending scene is shocking, funny, concluding, and memorable–just like a Pixar film, which can be argued is like an hour and a half of pretty cutscenes. “Oh yeah,” Daxter says at the very end, “life is good.” So are your cutscenes, yo.

In fact, the cutscenes from the entire Jak and Daxter scenes were so fantastic that Naughty Dog put out a DVD of them and sent them to…uh, people. Fans all around. I got a copy in the mail, but I can’t recall why. Maybe I signed up for it? Or maybe it was part of being a subscriber to PSM magazine? Either way, I have a mass produced DVD disc that has all of the game’s cutscenes, and that’s not something that can be said about many games, now and from the past.

Five things make a post, or it’s time to Ragnarök!

5. The next Assassin’s Creed game has been revealed, and it’s titled Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Please note that it, like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, is missing a number in it. What does that mean? ::shrugs:: The newest game is rumored to be the last for Italian superstar Ezio, bringing his journey full circle to line up with Altair and Desmond. And the multiplayer aspect is coming back, too, which I think is fantastic. I never expected myself to become so interested in this series after its lukewarm first game experience, but here I am, waiting and wondering. Comes out this November, probably right around the same time as TES V: Skyrim, just to mess with me.

4. The Arbiter, upgraded to level 3 and rocking a tingling Shock Omega mod, is currently my weapon of choice in Ratchet: Deadlocked. This thing is just a beast, taking out dropships in two shots. Mmm:

3. As much as I adore Norse mythology, I’m not interested in the slightest over this new movie Thor. I mean, if I want to look at cheese, I’ll open my refrigerator. That said, there’s a browser-based game called Thor: Bring the Thunder! and it looks simply gorgeous. Colorful 16-bit sprites in what one could describe as Mega Man with a lightning-fused hammer. However, I think a better title would’ve been Thor: Time to Ragnarök!

2. I downloaded two demos on the Xbox 360 yesterday: LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean and Red Faction: Armageddon. Unfortunately, due to time restraints and the constant distraction that is Netflix, I’ve not been able to try either of these yet, but will most likely give ’em a run over the weekend. Not expecting much from the latest Red Faction title, but I do love me some LEGO action. Hope it’s as fun as the movies were (well, the first movie at least).

1. I finally earned the highest amount of G in the latest bazaar in Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar. This meant selling everything I had in my bag, including a huge piece of gold I was lucky enough to find attached to my body after jumping into the river seven times. I was so excited for this as I knew that the highest seller won a prize from the mayor. Maybe it was a trophy? Or a huge bag of gold? Or his daughter’s hand in marriage? No. No, it wasn’t any of those. I won a bottle of milk. Ffffffffffffff.

And that, dear Grinding Down readers, has certainly been a post.

Busting out the guns in Ratchet: Deadlocked

When Ratchet: Deadlocked was first announced, I had my concerns. Just like with Jak X: Combat Racing, here was a game that focused on one of the weaker aspect of the game series it was born from: the shooting. Pew pew pewing in the Ratchet & Clank games was never its strong spot, which is funny to think about because the weapons and battle tools Insomniac came up with were fantastically futuristic and a blast to toy with. They were so unique that entire commercials were based on ’em. Still, precise shooting never stood tall back then, and just exploring each planet and finding secrets and unlocking Skill Points and watching hilarious, almost Pixar-esque cutscenes was more than enough to carry each game to the end.

Surprisingly, Ratchet: Deadlocked is actually not all about the shooting. Sadly, it’s still not mainly about platforming. Instead, we get a mix of shooting, action sequences, and the occasional hop from platform to platform. And this is all done without our little robo-buddy Clank. Why’s that? Well, see, the lord of “Dreadzone,” a televised reality show that pits warriors against crazy odds, has kidnapped Ratchet and Clank (and, uh, Al), and is forcing Ratchet to fight his and his friends’ way to freedom. What comes next is a selection of mini missions ranging from going from point A to point B, piloting some kind of vehicle, killing all enemies within a closed-in area, and taking on addition challenges to earn more points and bolts. They are pretty short so far, but you can also spend time outside of planets upgrading your robot helpers and buying new weapons.

I’ve only tackled the first two planets so far–Catacrom and Sarathos–and am enjoying myself despite the constant pressure of shooting at things that are shooting at me. It’s not as relaxing as taking a stroll through Marcadia from Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, but it’s close enough to what I love that I’m liking it nonetheless. And the addiction to collect bolts and upgrade weapons through constant use is there again, as well as Skill Points, which are basically early forms of Achievements, but these will actually help pay for secrets and new character skins, making them slightly more than just things to be proud over.

Between this and Secret Agent Clank, I’m probably going to finish Ratchet: Deadlocked first, and not just because its load screens are better. The story here is just more amusing and compelling, and while I love Clank, he’s really much stronger as either a companion to our furry friend Ratchet or as a robot that gives advice and narrates menu screens.

Also, another thing that surprised me in Ratchet: Deadlocked was the amount of (censored) swearing, mainly from evil Dreadzone bossman Gleeman Vox. Like, he bleeped…a lot. Really seemed out of place, but I’ll save that for another f*cking post.

Zero money budgeted to Secret Agent Clank’s loading screens

For a good while last night, I believed my PlayStation 2 was dead. I was trying to get some play time in before our usual run of Thursday night TV hit–Community, The Office, Parks and Recreation–but the blasted thing just wouldn’t turn on. I checked multiple times that everything was plugged in, and to my horrible eyes, it seemed so. Grumbling, I gave up, watched some TV, and figured I’d try again; the reason I didn’t want to keep plugging and unplugging wires the whole night was that it might throw off our cable or Internet; we have a lot of wires behind our entertainment stand, too many to remember which one goes with what technology.

In the end, I did actually miss plugging in a single plug, and once I did, my PlayStation 2, which “I’ve had since I bought it,” powered on. Whew. I take really good care of my videogame systems, and to see one almost kick the bucket was a little unnerving. Heck, even my original SNES, all yellowed and dusty, still plays catridges. But that’s besides the point. I got my PlayStation 2 working, and it was now time to play some of my newest purchases.

First up was Secret Agent Clank, but before I could truly play I had to free up space on my sole PS2 memory card. Kind of a tough quest actually. I mean, I don’t even have my copy of Suikoden V anymore, but my save data shows some 65+ hours put into it, and I’d hate to delete it simply because I never beat the final boss, and there’s hope that maybe, possibly, hopefully, one day I might get the chance to try again. So I deleted save data for XIII, Killzone, and Odin Sphere. That seemed to do the ticket, as now I have enough available for Clank’s top-secret adventure.

After selecting NEW GAME, Secret Agent Clank opens up…with a loading screen. It’s of a spaceship flying across the screen through space. There’s no music, just a soft whooshing sound as it passes by. This happens about nine more times, with the only change being new angles. Each pass takes about three to four seconds, so we’re looking at almost 30 seconds of just sitting and staring and, unfortunately, zoning out. Those whooshes need to be bottled and sold as nonprescription sleeping pills. From what I can tell, there’s zero to little loading time on the original PSP version, meaning this port is all for the worse. Now, in previous Ratchet and Clank titles for the PlayStation 2, there were similar loading screens when traveling from planet to planet, but I swear it was never more than three instances of a spaceship flying past. Not nine or ten. Ugh.

Once we’re past the happy, happy, joy, joy loading fun-times, we see Clank trying to infiltrate the Boltaire Museum Mission Impossible style, tethered to a wire and dropping down through cut glass. He looks pretty freakin’ adorable in his tuxedo. However, he witnesses his ol’ buddy Ratchet stealing from the museum. PLOT TWIST! I played through the game’s first level, which introduces some of Clank’s abilities and skills and kind of ends on some weird Guitar Hero-esque QTEs, and then, after another stretch of loading screens and getting stuck at the part where I have to control three mini-Clankbots, called it quits. Not because I hated what was happening, but I was tired and wanted to watch some more Party Down.

I dunno. As always, the gameplay is fun and varied, but these loading screens might just cause me to go insane. Stay tuned for drooling and inconhesive rambling.

30 Days of Gaming, #10 – Best gameplay

I’m used to doing the same things over and over again, in true life and in videogames, and this never-ending cycle is a big part of why Grinding Down is called what it is because grinding is the art of repetition. However, and I doubt I’m alone here, I always prefer variety to the same ol’ in the end. Especially in terms of gameplay. Videogames that are simply fetch quest after fetch quest after fetch quest—like the latest DLC from Borderlands—are beyond boring, and I guess I find many FPS titles to be of the same ilk. You just, uh, shoot things. Pew pew pew. Cue credits.

So, the best gameplay is potpourri gameplay. And the best example of this made-up terminology is Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.

In his third adventure, Sly Cooper and his brainy pal Bentley are trying to open the Cooper Vault on Kaine Island, which is said to hold the entire wealth of the Cooper family. However, Dr. M built a mean lair around the vault as he has gold coins for eyes. Sly will have to recruit a whole gaggle of people to help out with this end-all, be-all robbery, some who are actually old enemies from the Fiendish Five. Each mystery person recruitment arc serves as a level, with it usually beginning on some light reconnaissance before the team whips up a battle plan and then acts upon it. Set in an open hub world, Sly and his friends will do more than just go from place to place; they’ll have to sneak on rooftops, win skyplane races, row boats through sewers, mess with security systems, lure animals and people around using multiple choice answers, climb windmills, successfully parachute to the ground, drive an RC car, shoot darts at incoming rockets, take pictures, steer a van, fire cannons, discover hidden treasures, recover sea-diving equipment, and more.

::deep exhale::

I wasn’t just saying and more to end the sentence sooner than later. There’s still plenty of stuff I haven’t even talked about yet. Like Gold Coins and Loot to spend over Thief Net or how, after you beat the game, there’s a master thief challenge to tackle. Yeah, there’s a lot of different things to do on top of my favorite for the Sly games: exploration. Sly Cooper is nimble and quick, perfect for running around a cityscape either noticed or unnoticed, and there always seems to be something to climb; he definitely gives the Assassin Creed games a run for their climbin’, and the open hub world is just so dang inviting. My personal favorite is chapter five, Dead Men Tell No Tales, heavy on the pirates and ships and booty. Each mission makes use of every place in the hub world, but it was always fun to go explore everything first, and then when it’s time to go back, I’d know what to expect.

For what could easily be summarily dismissed as just another platformer, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves is all about a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. It’d be hard to get bored with so many strikingly different things to do, even if some are not as fun as others—the RC car’s controls made for frustrating nights. That said, potpourri really is the best kind of gameplay. Go on, take a whiff.

30 Days of Gaming, #7 – Favorite game couple

Mario and Princess Peach, Sonic and Amy, Solid Snake and Meryl Silverburgh, Cloud Strife and Aeris Gainsborough, Mr. Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man. These are some of the most famous gaming couples. Many are borderline platonic; others are not.

It’s unclear to me, and maybe most of the Internet, if my favorite gaming couple loves one another romantically, or if their friendship, their dependence on each other is what rings truer in their hearts. Certainly there’s some past adventures they do not speak of, some tension and flirting. Hard not to charm it up when one half of this equation is the suave, cocky Balthier, and the other is the super old, but super vivacious viera warrior Fran. Together, they try to rule the skies.

First, some Final Fantasy XII backstory. Balthier is a young sky pirate and the pilot of the airship Strahl. His copilot is seemingly the complete opposite, an otherworldly viera—that means rabbit-like—woman named Fran that is extremely sensitive to Mist magic, as well as a truly seductive lisp. They depend on each other, and they depend even more on their ability to take from anyone what they want, and it’s this blatant thievery that gets them mixed up with Vaan and Ashe during the chaos of a rebel assault on the palace.

And so they are a team, a couple. Pilot and copilot. Voice and reason. Hume and viera. It’s never openly said that they love each other, that their feelings drop deep, but the subtle looks they share speak volumes:

You meet them as one entity, and you’ll never see them as anything else but together. There is no Fran without Balthier, and the other way around. When out grinding for bazaar items and experience points, you’re allowed to use a three-person team. This usually meant Vaan and two others: Ashe, Basch, Balthier, and Fran. Sorry, Penelo. Battling monsters and using gambits isn’t for kids. Anyways, I never separated the combo, and they worked well with each other, both offering ranged attacks and strong Quickenings. However, come the end of the game, I had to rely on Basch the Tank for most of my boss slaying. Still, these two characters remain my favorite gaming couple for what they don’t say and are only closely followed in the franchise by Zidane and Garnet from Final Fantasy IX.

30 Days of Gaming, #3 – A game that is underrated

This was a tough one to narrow down, and I’ll let slip the tidbit that I almost went with Chrono Cross for today’s 30 Days of Gaming topic. Like, it was a coin toss, only I didn’t have a coin handy and decided to go with the game that had the most lovable gargoyle ever. In that regards, Primal won through and through.

But what is Primal, you might understandably ask?

Other than a game I consider very underrated and overlooked, it’s the story of love, demons, and alternate planes. Jennifer Tate is dating Lewis, a tribal tattooed lead singer for a lame metal band, and everything is going peachy until a tall, shadowy man shows up at the Nexus nightclub one evening when Lewis and his mates are jammin’ and jivin’. Suddenly, the shadowy man reveals itself to be a freaky-deaky demon, attacks, and leaves both of them unconscious in an alley. Jen is moved to a hospital room where she is in a coma and given a fifty/fifty shot of making it. As she sleeps, a gargoyle named Scree slips into her room and separates her spirit from her body, claiming that he was sent to find her and needs her assistance. Together, they will travel to an alternate plane known as Oblivion to restore balance.

Yeah…it’s a crazy whacky opening, but at least it gets everything in place to get truly videogamey. I can’t help but imagine Joss Whedon approving of it though.

Primal is divided into roughly three aspects: exploration, combat, and puzzles. Naturally, the weakest of these three is combat, and one can’t, unfortunately, simply get by with button-mashing. It can be very frustrating, especially since combat is solely Jen’s responsibility; Scree turns into a statue when danger shows up. Jen can take on different demonic forms–Ferai, Undine, Wraith, and Djinn–and each have their ups and downs, but none really make anything easier. Once all enemies on screen are killed, Scree softens and is able to heal Jen’s wounds. 

Both characters can be controlled, and using Scree to hold a torch and scout ahead always comforted me because I knew nothing could hurt him. Search away, little stone buddy!

Like I mentioned though, the joy to be found in Primal sits not in fighting werewolves, but exploring the otherworldly planes, solving puzzles, and talking. Yes, there’s some great chatter here. Scree is voiced by Andreas Katsulas and Jen by Hudson Leick, and together, the two make one enthralling team. Scree is 99% seriously serious, and Jen plays the role of a sarcastic goth perfectly, bouncing off each other. She’d fit fine in a snooty book club consisting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins.

I’ve read that some consider Primal to be the British Ico. I don’t really get that comparison. Instead, I like to think of it as Tomb Raider With a Twist. You play as a strong, intelligent, well-capable woman searching for mysterious artifacts and trying to keep evil at bay. Sure, Jen does it for love, and Lara Croft does it because, well, it’s her job, but the two titles seem very similar to me. However, Primal‘s world and its characters are must more imagined, and I’d rather climb walls as a gargoyle than climb walls as an archaeologist. Oooooh snap!

So, yeah. That’s my pick–2003’s underrated Primal. Eight years later, it’s still an excellent, engrossing adventure. If you can find a used copy, grab it.

And now I will just keep refreshing the Internet, praying that one day it will spoil me all about that forthcoming Primal HD remake…

If Radiant Historia and Radiata Stories had a baby, it’d be called Radiatant Histories

History lesson time!

Atlus made Radiant Historia, which comes out in February 2011 and looks to be a delicious new addition to my Nintendo DS RPG collection. A few members from tri-Ace also worked on it. Tri-Ace made Radiata Stories, a PlayStation 2 RPG that never got a ton of love, but enough love to be remembered. And thus confused over now that a similarly titled game is coming out. How do I know this? Well, here’s two search terms that constantly brought readers to Grinding Down over the last week or so:

• radiata historia
• radiant stories

If you’ve been paying attention so far, you’ll know that both of those titles are incorrect and do not exist. Good thing Radiant Historia and Radiata Stories aren’t releasing at the same time; I can only imagine the looks of disappointment on young gamers’ faces as their parents purchase the wrong title for them, and then they’re stuck roleplaying the life of one snippy Jack Russell.

Either way, there better be a third game called Radiatant Histories that’s not even related to the first two games. If not, the world is missing out on a golden opportunity to actually infect consumers with small doses of dementia.

Sorry, I know…words are confusing. It’s a problem. Best of luck searching for the correct game title!