Ys I and its beautifully bodacious bump combat

Let’s all laugh at the great irony that I can’t actually confidently pronounce my favorite JRPG franchise out loud. I mean, is it SOO-ECK-AH-DIN? SOO-EEK-ADIN? SUE-EE-KO-DEN? I dunno. Luckily enough, I’ve not had to talk about Suikoden too many times in public, and when I do, it’s usually with people who have no idea how it is supposed to be said and probably assume I know what I’m doing since, y’know, I’ve been playing games for all my life. Spoiler: I don’t. And now we can add the Ys franchise to my collection of games I will never be sure of, but I’m going to pronounce it like EASE and move on.

I’ve always been curious about the Ys games, but never enough to take the plunge. Heck, I even have a copy of Ys: The Ark of Napishtim in my collection, which I guess I forgot about immediately after purchasing. Anyways, there was a good deal on Ys I & II on Steam over the holidays, and so I entered my credit card info, clicked purchase, and actually installed and played a game I bought instead of just collecting stuff forever. I know, crazy talk. A little researching shows that Ys I & II are pretty old JRPGs, first releasing back in 1989 and eventually coming to all the following platforms in some form or another: PC, PlayStation 2, Virtual Console, Nintendo DS, and PSP. Ys I & II are actually enhanced remakes of the respective Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished and Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter, meant to be played one after the other. So far, I’ve completed Ys I and started the second half only a wee bit.

In both games, you play as a red-haired swordsman named Adol Christin, who, from what I can tell, is the main protagonist for every Ys game. That dude either really gets around or something else is afoot. For the first adventure, he has to collect the six Books of Ys, which contain the history of the ancient, vanished land of Ys and will give Adol the vital knowledge he needs to defeat the caped evilness sweeping the land of Esteria. This means you go from town to town and dungeon to dungeon, talking with villagers and fighting enemies, respectively, gaining clues as to where to find the next book. The last chunk of the game takes place in the astronomically tall and somewhat tedious Darm Tower, which has you ascending floor after floor of bad guys and mazes to eventually fight…um, I think people in Minea called him Dark Cape and complete the first fifty percent of Ys I & II.

If that sounds like your typical JRPG adventure, you’re right. The story and its characters are nothing to write home about, and that’s because the real charm of the Ys franchise is in its combat system. It’s called bumping, and basically, when out in the field, Adol can run into enemies to deal damage directly to them. There’s no attack button. You bump, they take damage, they explode, you gain XP. Rinse, lather, repeat until you hit the level cap and have enough gold to buy all the best armor/weapons. And yet, there’s still strategy to this, as you don’t ever want to attack anything head-on, so you must come at enemies at an angle or from behind, making you feel very ninja-like. It was definitely one of the more unique combat systems I’ve come across lately, and it, along with regenerating health, made for speedy grinding, something I always appreciate.

Despite the gloriously joyful and smile-creating combat, I still ran into some problems. Like, there’s a specific boss that transforms into a swarm of bats and then back to human form for a split second, and you have even less time than that to hit him, which made for a very frustrating boss battle. Later on, there’s a room in Darm Tower filled with poison-like music that drains Adol’s health fast, and the only way to clear out the room is by exiting, finding a specific pillar outside, and hitting it with a hammer you found a few levels down; the game does not really make this clear, and I had to look up the solution online. And speaking of not making a lot clear, I wasn’t sure what a lot of the items in my inventory did, so I mostly refrained from ever equipping any of them.

Glancing at the Steam Achievements for Ys II, I get the impression that the second part of this series is…a little weirder. Also, looks like there’s magic spells to be cast. I’m down with that, as well as some more bumping. Maybe I should change my blog’s name is Bumping Down? Maybe.

The deep, beautiful dark of Knytt Underground

I couldn’t tell you when Knytt Underground got added to my long list of untouched PlayStation 3 games, but it did at some point. Thanks to PlayStation Plus, of course, a service that lets me download a high number of titles to collect digital dust until I randomly decide to play them or am inspired by an outside source to see what the deal is. This time around, I was inspired, greatly so, and we can look to Matt Mason’s posts over at Obtain Potion for the push, specifically Living Under a Rock and Let’s Find Another Deux Machina, as I really had no idea what Kyntt Underground was for the longest time. I figured it was some indie puzzle game, and it definitely is that–but so much more.

At its most basic form, Knytt Underground is about subterranean exploration. You play as a young woman called Mi Sprocket who is mysteriously mute, as well as, eventually, Bob, a magical bouncing ball. Naturally, the two characters play very differently from each other; you use Mi to climb up/down walls, and Bob can bounce around the room and reach previously unattainable areas, as well as tether himself to certain robots. For Bob, it’s all about physics, and sometimes that can be a bit tricky to master, especially when a single bounce can send you zooming across the screen, possibly to a new area, before you even have a moment to react. The game is split into three chapters and an interlude, with chapter one focusing on getting Mi to the fairy village and chapter two focusing on becoming Bob and learning what he can do. Chapter three seems to be the real meat of the game and is both awesome and intimidating.

See, it’s easy to get lost in Knytt Underground, both metaphorically and literally. There are a lot of rooms to explore, with a number of exits, and while some of them are simply dark, narrow corridors to run through, others are expansive openings, with high ceilings that any spelunker would love and, more times than not, something absolutely stunning to look at in the background. Take the purple forest, for instance. The first time I arrived there, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was underground, and yet here is this string of large trees, swaying in a reddish-purple haze, dancing with the cavern wind. It got a little Inception-like there, this other world in this other world, and I just stood there, unmoving, absorbing it all. Other backgrounds are just as gorgeous, with plant life literally glowing in the darkness, lava that looks devilishly hot, and mushrooms that look too beautiful to eat.

However, something about Knytt Underground has me greatly conflicted. Really, I’m just not sure how I feel about it. It’s a stunningly gorgeous game, rife with bright and vibrant flora, the kind of nature you’d expect to see examined in close detail on the newest BBC documentary about the planet Earth, all backed by a soft, ambient soundtrack of rushing waterfalls, dripping ceilings, and gentle breezes. Yet..it’s goofy. The characters are silly and look like someone’s first attempt at webcomic art in the early 2000s, and the things they say are inane, such as obscure discussions about the Internet. I’m namely talking about the two fairies that accompany Mi after you reach the village and speak for her during her muteness. Visually, it’s extremely jarring. Tonally, too, though I suspect something is trying to be said here. Also, most of the quests you take on are pointless, with Mi going to great lengths to find certain people or keys for locked doors only for it all not to matter; the person you were looking for already returned home, and the door magically opened by itself.

At this point, I’ve dabbled in chapter three for only a bit, but eventually felt overwhelmed, especially considering the size of the map is roughly ten times that of the previous chapters. I mean, I can see areas highlighted in red on the map as places of interest to go–most likely these are the bells that Mi needs to ring to stop the apocalypse–but getting there isn’t a simple hike. You have to now use both Mi and Bob the ball in combination to reach new pathways, and sometimes doing that can be a lot of trial and error. I’m sure I’ll pop back into this visually stunning underground realm soon enough, but I need a little breather in the meantime.

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: Treasures of the Deep

My childhood best friend loved animals, especially reptiles and all kinds of fish. I don’t know if he still does, as our relationship fell apart during the college years, and one day he just vanished from my life. I’d like to imagine he works at a zoo or is a veterinarian, but thanks to the magic of Facebook stalking…I know that’s not true. For most of his birthdays, I’d get him a couple packs of whatever new set of Magic: The Gathering was out (the Invasion block era if you want to pinpoint it), but one year I got him a videogame, one that I thought played directly to his interests–Treasures of the Deep.

I don’t think he liked it or played it very much, as eventually I ended up borrowing it from him–y’know, like people do all the time with the gifts they give loved ones–and then later traded it in with a bunch of my other PlayStation 1 games when it was clear the birthday gift was not missed, not a winner. Hence, it being a game I regret parting with.

In Treasures of the Deep, which kind of sounds like an Indiana Jones subtitle that I’m sure Shia LaBeouf would love to steal without crediting, you play the part of Jack Runyan, an ex-Navy Seal who has become, naturally, a freelance underwater treasure hunter.  Your main objective is to complete 14 varied missions ranging from disasters, such as things going awry on oil rigs or a plane crash, to simple exploration type missions, like scouring the wreckage of a sunken ship for goodies. Along the way, you can pick up as much treasure as you can find; once a mission is complete, Runyan can use this golden booty to buy more weapons, equipment, and upgrades for SDVs (swimmer delivery vehicles) or submarines. By capturing rare sea creatures in nets, you can also earn extra money.

Similar to Colony Wars, another game I regret parting with (post still forthcoming), the game had a real sense of place. You’re underwater, and you felt that constantly. Plus, you’re not just in some ocean; there’s real-life locations to see, like the Bermuda Triangle, the Puerto Rico coast, and the Marina Trench. Dolphins sing, your radar beeps, bubbles escape, and the water swooshes to create a laid-back atmosphere, backed by a moody soundtrack-stirring ambience. I have both a fear and fascination with large bodies of water, able to find it extremely relaxing and also terrifying and full of unseen monsters. I don’t want to dive too deep, though I do want to know what’s down there. That probably explains why I can only remember the very early levels in Treasures of the Deep, as I played it extremely safe, keeping close to the surface. My recent time with Hero in the Ocean reminded me warmly of those early missions.

Unfortunately, the sad truth hidden in this post is that it’s currently a lot easier to get a copy of Treasures of the Deep back in my life, but it’s really the childhood best friend I want. Unfortunately, that priceless treasure sunk to the dark bottom of the ocean years ago, that fateful Thanksgiving break, and is now buried and irrevocable, with no radar map to help.

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GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH is a regular feature here at Grinding Down where I reminisce about videogames I either sold or traded in when I was young and dumb. To read up on other games I parted with, follow the tag.

The Half-hour Hitbox: December 2013

Some inside baseball: I put this post together piecemeal across the whole month. That means that when I play a game and find myself not interested in writing a large post about it–or suspect that I won’t down the line–I add it here, find a picture, and write a quick sentence or two about it. Alas, sometimes I don’t do that last part though, as I’m just not in the mood at that exact moment, and so I’ll have to come back to it, which can be hard, especially for smaller experiences, such as Isaac’s Odyssey, a game I am finding it hard to remember what happened, save for the atrocious grammar I had to read.

Truthfully, I’d rather put this all together in one go, to keep the writing thematic and consistent, but that seems like an impossible task. I get exhausted just searching for Google for decent screenshots. And then there’s too much to juggle in terms of what each game is and does, and I’d be super worried I’d forget something. I want to be able to give everything its due, y’know.

Maybe I will rethink how The Half-hour Hitbox looks for 2014, but for now, let’s end the last month of the year as we have with all the months that came before it since this feature began. To the games!

Oíche Mhaith

What a horrifying experience. I’m not even sure how it qualifies as a game because all you basically do, as a young girl, is walk around your house, get berated by everyone, watch your father go on a murdering spree, and then play with some strange device that allows you to swap personalities between your father, mother, and dog in hopes of making everything right. We’ve already seen the darker side of Terry Cavanagh’s mind in Hero’s Adventure, but this goes nineteen levels deeper, and I’m very put off. You might get more out of this than I did, but if you do, well…I’m now concerned for your state of being.

Annie Android: Automated Affection

Evidently, one of the first little games Ben Chandler ever made, and it certainly is little. I mean, like a resolution size of 320X200. I had to tinker with my computer to make it larger so I could actually read the text and find items, but it still looked good to me. It’s about an android called Annie and the love she wants, which is a fella called Mailbot. Unfortunately, RoboHQ has assigned her someone else as a partner, and off she goes, to control her destiny. It’s pretty fun with some silly characters, like the robot pretending to walk the dog in the park, and the puzzles aren’t too tough, though one required precise timing, and sometimes my clicks missed the mark. An 80s-esque soundtrack full of bumps and thumps plays in the background, and there’s even vocals for the title screen song. You can download the game right now.

Gears of War

Well, I played the first Gears of War game, and I hunkered down and ran through it on the easiest of difficulty settings. Whatever, don’t judge me. Or you totally can. I don’t care, because I don’t really care about Gears of Wars. It’s macho shoot alien monsters in the face tough guy stuff, and all the dialogue is trite and predictable, and every male character is this unshapely mass of muscle and armor. Same goes for the Locust. In fact, on a few occasions, I mixed up one of my allies with an enemy because they look almost identical, and it’s hard to keep track of everyone when they are so drab looking and moving around an even drabber scene of ruined rubble. I was able to play a single online match–surprisingly, not many people are still playing this game despite it being a freebie for December for Gold members–and that was simply okay. Just like with Battlefield 3 over the summer, I can now confidently say that this is not my thing.

Samsara Room

A strange, otherworldly point-and-click game that sees you traveling from one dimension to another all while still being stuck in the same room. The puzzles are intuitive enough to keep you at it, and I enjoyed how the perspective changed each time. Samsara Room‘s ending is abrupt and completely unsatisfying, but getting there is intriguing enough for me to make up my own conclusion. Plus, music by Kevin MacLeod, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite indie game composers. It’s just so relaxing.

Isaac’s Odyssey

You are a guy trying to escape your dorm room to go to a late-night Comic-Con party. Maybe there’s some Game of Thrones actors boozing it up there or something. Isaac’s Odyssey consists of only two screens and a lot of tiny objects to find and use. It’s not bad in the gameplay department–if a bit old-school–but the writing is simply unbearable. Every sentence either contains a spelling error or strange turn of phrase, and eventually all this overtook my like for clicking on items and using them to solve puzzles. I did eventually escape the dorm room, but that’s the end of the game. Yup, you don’t even get to go to the fancy party. What a dud.

Calm Time

Chances are, if I had known what Calm Time was ultimately going to be about before I clicked “play,” I probably would’ve skipped it. Instead, I watched in horror as a party went to shambles, and I was the driving force behind the chaos. There’s some direct storytelling here, as well as a basement full of indirect–and all of it is creepy. There’s minimal music throughout save for a creepy piano tingle and some jarring TV-like static, but less is more here, and I can honestly say that the whole experience gave me the shivers. The uncomfortable, I’m-a-monster shivers. Whether that makes Calm Time a good game or a bad game, I really don’t know.

Shoot Many Robots

I think the name Shoot Many Robots is awesome and does a fun job of explaining exactly what you do in this wee downloadable freebie for the Xbox 360. Some levels have you going left to right, and other levels are a single room where you have to survive wave after wave of attacking robots. In short, you shoot robots. Sometimes you punch bullets, too. There’s two main weapons and different kind of backpacks to equip for your dude, which grant various bonuses, and it’s all well and good, but there isn’t much else to do otherwise. I do however enjoy the cartoony graphics and honky-tonk slash metal soundtrack.

Hero in the Ocean

A really cute puzzler set underwater. You control a tiny, yellow submarine in search of stars–three per level–and a helpless sea-diver. Each level adds a new puzzle element, such as lasers and unlockable doors, but it’s never overwhelming. By the end, you’ll be a pro at each thing, able to swim swiftly past all the dangers and pick up those shiny trinkets. I found all 45 stars and saved everybody, so go me. Alas, there’s some clunky writing like “you found secret area,” but that can be overlooked for a solid little game that never becomes too much to handle. Plus, the single music track that keeps looping is awesome, starting off slow and somber and building into something bigger than that. In fact, I’ve been listening to it on repeat as I put this paragraph together. I also hope this isn’t taken as an insult to those that made it, but Hero in the Ocean would make a perfect mobile game, too.

Temple Run 2

Speaking of mobile games…this kind of came out of nowhere. The day before Christmas–or was it actually on Christmas day?–Temple Run 2 was released for free on the Windows 8 phone. Mmm. I love free games, especially ones with relatively easy Achievements. And that’s what Temple Run 2 is–a fun, easy-to-pick-up endless runner with a handful of poppable Achievements and enough challenge to keep you going and try for one more run. I played this a lot during my Christmas vacation, mostly because my sister was squeezing the most out of her time with my Nintendo 3DS. It’s pretty good, though I probably couldn’t tell you the differences between this one and the original. I’ll probably end up removing both from my phone soon enough, once I’ve had my fill of running, jumping, sliding, and tilting.

The Walking Dead, Episode 1 – “All That Remains” (season 2)

I just finished this up on Sunday and haven’t even gotten around to writing a haiku for it, but I will soon and will probably write a bigger post about the newest season and how brutal it has already started, but for recording’s sake, it’s here. I also bought the The Walking Dead‘s season 2 pass and am excited for more, if that gives you an early indication of my impressions.

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The Half-hour Hitbox is a new monthly feature for Grinding Down, covering a handful of videogames that I’ve only gotten to play for less than an hour so far. My hopes in doing this is to remind myself that I played a wee bit of these games at one time or another, and I should hop back into them, if I liked that first bite.

The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2013

Well, I’m not gonna deny it–this year went fast. Except for June through July, but that always seems to drag by due to non-gaming reasons I won’t get into, but otherwise, the months really did seem to slip by. This was extremely noticeable once I began to actually work at my “five games I want to beat in 2013” checklist, and it seems like I was only able to polish off three out of five: Chrono Cross, Silent Hill 2, and Primal. I’m pretty proud of that, but I probably should have started much earlier than the summer. However, I did complete a good number of games over the past three hundred and sixty-five days, and one might consider some of them big AAA titles that are probably going to be on everyone’s final praise list, such as BioShock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V, though they absolutely won’t make mine. Sorry, Animal Crossing: New Leaf is my game of the year; just deal with it.

Once more, here’s what I didn’t get to play last year, the year before that, and the year before that:

• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2012
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2011
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2010

Also, do not worry: I have plenty of sad puppy photos to do this kind of post for many more years, so long as videogames keep coming out and I keep not playing ’em. That sounded more threatening than I originally wanted. But enough behind-the-scenes talk. Let’s get into the meat of this yearly post, shall we? The meaty meat, I mean.

10. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Sounds like this is a return to form, though the last Assassin’s Creed game I played was Brotherhood, so hopefully people are meaning that game. I’ve kept my distance from the franchise since then for good reasoning, as the later games have seemed repetitive, clunky, and sub-par, but I do enjoy pirates and the ship-based combat looks kind of neat. I wonder if the multiplayer is still there, as that is surprisingly an enjoyable slice of cat-and-mouse. This could be a really perfect summer time-sink for 2014, though I still also have an untouched copy of Assassin’s Creed II in my backlog to get to as well. Hmm.

9. Saints Row IV

Originally, the Saints Row series was just another take on Grand Theft Auto, if a bit more ambitious and zany. I never got into it until Saints Row: The Third, and that was only after hearing the Giant Bomb staff praise and praise and praise it. I’m glad I finally listened to them, as I absolutely loved my role as the leader of the purple-clad gang on the rise, but I haven’t made the jump to Saints Row IV yet, as this year I gave my time and money to Grand Theft Auto V instead. I probably choose poorly. In this one, you can literally jump up to rooftops, thanks to alien superpowers. However, the console versions don’t sound up to par to the PC, but I don’t have a great gaming computer so I might just let this one slip by entirely.

8. Tomb Raider

Here’s a little known fact about me: I’ve only played the original Tomb Raider. That’s right. Just the first one, and I remember it fondly, despite it probably aging terribly. My copy sits proudly next to Suikoden and Suikoden II. The sense of exploration was fully realized–for the time–and I loved how the game slowly revealed its supernatural hand with each level. Like Indiana Jones, a perfect mix of serious and silly. This 2013 reboot looks gritty and grimy and throws Lara in one terrible situation after the next, but sounds well done. Plus, she can use a bow for stealth kills. Mmm. Stealthy. Rhianna Pratchett wrote the script, which gives me hope that Lara, as a person, is more fleshed out here as well.

7. Rogue Legacy

I enjoy rogue-likes because, for me, they don’t ask for much. You can do a run, and if things end terribly, then that’s it. Try again. Conversely, if you’re on a hot streak, every action, jump, and sword swing becomes stressfully vital. This is why I continue to poke at The Binding of Isaac, in hopes of hitting a lucky note and making it to Mom easily, brimming with powers and extra hearts. Alas, that’s not happened yet–but it totally could one day. Rogue Legacy seems to share a lot of that, with the neat mechanic of playing as the children of whatever character you just got killed. These kids acquire different traits–such as colorblindness and vertigo–which affects how you move through the main castle. It’ll probably end up in a Humble Bundle some time in 2014.

6. The Last of Us

Look, I barely got through Silent Hill 2 this year. Horror-themed games are very difficult for me to keep my cool in, and it sounds like the majority of the combat scenarios have you creeping around enemies, trying not to make a sound. That sounds fine to me, actually, but the monster designs and sounds they make are very unnerving, and I just don’t think I could ever get through The Last of Us, which is a dang shame, as it certainly sounds like an amazing–if depressing–experience.

5. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

The last Mario-based RPG I played, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I remained skeptic when a new one came out, even though it lives in an entirely different franchise. However, according to some reviews, it sounded like this one was maybe too hand-holdy, which is funny because Sticker Star couldn’t lift a finger to help you out. When I bought Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time and Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, I also grabbed a used copy of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story on the Nintendo DS for free. I suspect I’ll give that one a go and if I love the mechanics and all that jazz will move on to the newer iteration.

4. Super Mario 3D World

Super Mario 3D Land is one of the rare 3DS titles that I continue to pop back into the handheld and fart around in for a few minutes, always with the hope of earning a couple more stars. See, I’m in the post-completion content, but only halfway through it, so there’s still plenty more to see. And it sounds like Super Mario 3D World is all that and more…and on a console, which is where I’d truly rather be playing my plumber-based platformers. Throw in a silly cat theme, and I’m salivating from the mouth. Alas, no Wii U in this house, and still no interest in getting one any time soon unless there’s a big price drop or more interesting games in the pipeline. Sorry, I have no interest in the Smashing Bros.

3. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes

Love me my LEGO videogames, and I haven’t played one since LEGO Lord of the Rings, which means Tara and I are severely overdue for some co-op funtimes. Any will do, really, but I’d rather side with Iron Man and Wolverine over Batman and Superman. That’s right. I’ve always been a Marvel fan before a DC one. The formula doesn’t look to have changed one block–hub world, individual levels, a billion things to collect and unlock–but that’s okay, because at least I know what I’m getting here.

2. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

The subject matter of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, two siblings on a mission to save their deathly ill father, hits a little too close to home for me, and so I doubt I’ll ever get around to playing it. It’s not a direct parallel to my life, but there are enough elements present to put more weight on my shoulders, push me closer to the ground. Yes, I suffer from depression and would rather avoid mediums that enhance my feelings of hopelessness. I do love the idea of controlling two separate players with both analog sticks, but ibb and obb showed me just how difficult this could be for my brain to wrap its mind around. Also, Ni no Kuni did it first. I suspect the Giant Bomb podcasts will end up spoiling the story’s key moments and ending.

1. Gone Home

Sigh. My gaming laptop is really great for playing indie Flash games or point-and-click adventure games that don’t require too much in terms of software. In the past, I’ve been able to play bigger productions, like Red Faction: Armageddon, but only if I turned down every setting, and even then it’s a bit rubbish. Same goes for Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim; there is no draw distance because I can only see a few inches in front of my character. All of that is to say that I don’t think I can run Gone Home at the required settings to do it justice. Evidently, the game is loaded with high resolution posters, pictures, notes, and so on, and a big part is exploring the house and looking at stuff up close. I have no other way to play Gone Home, so hopefully it’ll come to consoles at some point, but I kind of doubt it.

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Well, there you go. Or rather, there I go, not playing all these games. Of course, there’s more that didn’t make the list, such as Papers, Please and The Stanley Parable, but I had to draw a line somewhere. Given that I still haven’t played a few games from the previous lists yet–hello, Portal 2!–I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting to see me get to all of these next year. Maybe one or two. Plus a ton of older games. Can’t forget about the PS1 and PS2.

Anyways, what games did you miss out on this year? Shout ’em out in despair in the comments section below.

Journey of a Roach will have you climbing walls

When you think about it, Journey of a Roach is a puzzle game built entirely around a single gimmick: you play a roach, able to climb up walls and skitter across the ceiling. This change in perspective plays a key part in the majority of the puzzles. It’s not the worst way to see the world, upside-down, though it can be a bit disorienting from time to time, especially when you accidentally mean to return to the floor but hit the wall instead and the camera sharply tilts one way and then the other and all you can do is make audible gasps until you right yourself. Given that I just spent a long time playing as Scree the gargoyle in Primal, who can also climb walls, you’d think my tolerance would be higher, but I’m pretty tired of the mechanic. Thankfully, Journey of a Roach doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The insects in Journey of a Roach live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, though how the world actually got to that point is not addressed or necessary to know. Bugs will simply outlive us all, and this is their realm now. As a young roach hurries across the ruined earth, he gets a glimpse of something in the distance: a flower. Delicate, standing tall: a sign of rare vegetation, a sign of life still to come. If you’ve seen Pixar’s WALL-E, you know this is important stuff. Unfortunately, the little roach ends up getting pinned beneath a barrel of toxic waste. We then cut to a smaller, childlike roach, being awoken by the sound of the crash. Off he goes to help his bug buddy get free and find this mightily desired flower of power.

Visually, the game has two different looks, and unfortunately they don’t mesh nicely. There’s the cutscenes, which are flat, hand-drawn images with minimal coloring, background art, and animation. They work, but they could’ve been so much more, especially since a lot of the key story beats unfold/resolve using these. Conversely, there’s the in-game graphics, which you’ll spend more time looking at, and they are rather nice, a mix of cel shading and 3D models. Think Borderlands, but from the perspective of an inch off the ground. Environments are relatively detailed, with a good number of non-interactive items to fill in all the gaps, and everything comes across as really there, with depth. If you can imagine bugs living beneath the ground, smoking cigars and lounging in bars, then you can imagine it even more with Journey of a Roach.

Just like with Machinarium, there’s no spoken language, at least not one that I, as a non-bug, can understand. Instead, all the ants and roaches and flies speak to each other via animated speech bubbles or tinny nonsensical squeaks, giving you an idea of what they want without actually spelling it out for you. Hope you’re good at charades. You’ll explore environments, speak to some other insects, and use items in your inventory to solve puzzles. Since you’re a cockroach, exploration is not just limited to the floor; climb up the walls and the ceiling to see what else you can find. Most of the time, it’s a vital item or a collectible grub, which you can click to claim. The environments themselves often hold a ton of clues, too, so paying attention to every sign or lever is important.

Annoyingly, there are several red herring items, which disappear when you move from one isolated scenario to another. Let me state here and now that I do not enjoy pointless, time-wasting items. Yes, Deponia, you had a few too. In your inventory, items are presented in silhouette form only, making it hard to tell what some items actually are. For example, later in the game, the tiny little roach picks up the sole of a shoe, which I thought was perfect for the tired caterpillar being forced to run on a wheel to produce electricity. Nope. This item was better fit to take the place of meat in a makeshift burger. Go figure.

As mentioned before, Journey of a Roach is not very long, and I think that’s just fine for a puzzle game that really has only one trick up its sleeve. In fact, there’s a Steam achievement for completing the whole game within 18 minutes, which if you know all the puzzle solutions I’m sure is possible, but you have to seriously truck it and probably not make a single mistake. I think it took me more around two to three hours to finish, but I liked playing it slower, clicking on everything and trying to noodle out the solution to the roach’s latest roadblock before ultimately glancing at a walkthrough. The ending was, naturally, predictable and unexciting, but there really wasn’t any other direction the developers could go with it. The roaches wanted the flower, the roaches got the flower. But then it goes to credits, and you’re left wondering why. What’s this one little flower going to do for their well-being? I dunno. It’s not a puzzle game to set the world on fire, but it does have some personality and a different way to view things.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #56 – Jurassic Heart

Girl meets large T-Rex
Find a new ukulele
Got the “good” ending

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These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

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.

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:

SPLASH DAMAGE: Videogaming in “Undeclared”

Unlike my videogaming habit, I try to stick to watching a single TV show at a time. This allows me to stay immersed and connected with the characters and storylines and not have to juggle a billion different happenings in my limited headspace; of course, due to the wealth of shows out there and number of places you can watch stuff for free or relatively cheap, I’m juggling three to four shows at the moment, namely Downton Abbey, The Walking Dead, Top of the Lake, and, lastly, Undeclared. Actually, I’m only one episode away from finishing Top of the Lake, which is a hauntingly beautiful and sad show filmed and set in New Zealand, and Tara and I only catch up with The Walking Dead every week and Downton Abbey every few weeks. So really, for me, it’s just been Undeclared over the last few days because I wanted something light and breezy after finishing up Breaking Bad recently–hey, check out my newest comic if you’re a Heisenberg fan–and that third season of Louie did not cut it.

Undeclared comes from cult favorite Judd Apatow and closely follows up on Freaks and Geeks, a show I very much adored. But instead of high school and hour-long episodes, we’re now in college with a potpourri of freshmen and 30-minute long episodes. A lot of the same themes are present here, such as taking responsibility and accepting who you are, but they are buried pretty deep beneath general goofiness, zany character motivations, and bombastic plots. At one point Adam Sandler playing Adam Sandler shows up. It’s not amazing, but it’s okay and bite-size, and I’m enjoying seeing many actors in their prime that I follow now, such as Lizzy Caplan, Seth Rogen, and Amy Poehler. Will Ferrell also appears in episode 7, “Addicts”, and his performance and script and the way he acts when it comes to videogames only confirms for me that Elf was and will always be his best, as well as that most people in TV have no idea how to portray entertainment gaming or those that like it.

In “Addicts”, Ferrell plays a townie called Dave who, for a small fee, will write papers on any subject for struggling–or lazy–college students. This works out well the first time, getting our leading lad a high mark, but the next set of papers turn out simply terrible, and it’s then that we realize that Dave is supremely messed up, on drugs, and unable to distinguish reality from videogames. See, Dave just got a PlayStation 2, and you can clearly see him enjoying Kessen, a real-time tactics simulator set in feudal Japan. As he plays, he is literally mashing on every button and moving the controller in his hands as if it covered in butter and he can barely hold on. When confronted about how bad the papers were, Dave says it’s because he was “this close to getting to level 24.”

As far as I can tell, in Kessen, there are no levels, not at least in the traditional sense. The game is broken up into different events, such as the Skirmish at Kuzegawa or Escape from Minakuchi, each with their own objectives, and I don’t think if you even added up everything in the game you’d come up with 24 somethings to do. Though I could be wrong. Still, it comes across as Dave just shouting gibberish, a phrase better associated with something like Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog–though not perfectly. If Dave was really into the game, as they show he is, he could’ve been more specific, like saying the name of the final war encounter. Later, he also refers to it as “that ninja game” when he is out of his mind on speed and trying combat the trio of college freshmen in his own house. It’s over-the-top and embarrassing, and only reinforces negative stereotypes of what a gamer looks like (well, in 2001)–college dropout, skeezy, on drugs, hyperactive, and unable to keep a grip.

If you’ll remember, I also ran into some problems with how games like Crash Bandicoot were handled in Felicity, and many of the same stereotypical dramatizations happened there as well. I wonder if Judd Apatow and J.J. Abrams shared emails with one another.

Anyways, you can watch clips of Dave being a loosely wired videogame freak from the show here, but the action really starts around the 4:00 mark:

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SPLASH DAMAGE is a non-scheduled feature on Grinding Down that examines the way videogames are handled in different types of media, such as comics, movies, and TV shows. Basically, whenever I see them being grossly misrepresented, I’ll write about it. Expect a lot of grumbling over people thrashing around like wild beasts when holding a controller and shouting out strange things that many non-gamers might assume a gamer would say. Also: obvious links to drug addiction tendencies. Seriously, we can do much better than this.