Please select player in SPVTWTG

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, or SPVTWTG if you like those easy-to-figure-out acronyms, comes out for the PlayStation 3 network in early August, just a pinch before the movie drops on August 13, 2010. That’s cool, but of course I don’t have a PlayStation 3 and must then wait it out until it makes its way over to Xbox Live. However, if there’s one thing I do know, it is this: I’m playing as Kim Pine. And will most likely have to fight over her with my fiancée as she will want to play as Kim Pine also. No one likes Ramona anyways:

Hmm…does that look familiar to you? It should, n00b. I’ll wait while you figure it out. No, it’s not from the Glee finale. C’mon…think.

Meh, you’re taking too long. It’s an homage to Super Mario Bros. 2, duhhh:

Ha, that means Ramona is really Luigi, and that’s funny because he kicks so goofily when he tries to jump super high. Not sure how Stephen Stills would feel about being compared to a mushroom-head, but I bet he’d not like it. But yeah, Kim is totally a princess. May she float for a few seconds through my dreams night in, night out. I want this game so bad, and dang it, I might have to start considering a PlayStation 3 fund if it takes longer than a few weeks to port over to the Xbox 360.

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.

Gift cards, and Microsoft Points, and bears! Oh, my!

I have a love/hate relationship with gift cards. Many people probably find them to be the greatest gift ever in that they can now go out and buy anything. I have the exact opposite problem; with a gift card, I can now go out and buy anything. That anything, in my mind, is really anything, an extremely broad selection that comprises books, movies, games, art supplies, clothes, food, and so on.

That said, I’ve had an Amazon gift card sitting in my desk drawer since last Christmas. You know, that holiday from six months yonder. Yeah, I’m just not good at spending those things, and I guess I was waiting for something to really grab my attention, but it hasn’t yet. So I instead used it to–and here comes the irony–to buy 1600 Microsoft Points (MSP) for Xbox Live. Yes, I used a gift card to essentially buy another gift card. Do you dare ask why?

Well, there’s a special deal going on this week to get Peggle at 50% off, meaning 400 Microsoft Points. This deal is only good for Gold members, which I just currently happen to be. I’ve always been interested in the colorful, bubbly addictive puzzle since I played the trial version, and the deal was too good to pass up.

But now I have a problem. I have 1200 MSP remaining, and just like I had trouble spending my Amazon gift card, I’m struggling to decide what to do with them. I could get three more 400 MSP games, or an 800 MSP and a 400 MSP combo, or I could buy some add-ons to games already in my collection (i.e., Borderlands, GTA IV, Mass Effect). I’m not really interested in wasting the points on TV shows, Avatar items, or silly things like themes and gamerpics. So, any ideas? I heard Braid is pretty good, currently priced at 800 MSP. I guess I could ultimately hold on to them and wait for something else to come out (will LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 have DLC? I doubt it), but then I’m just doing what I’ve always done with these things: procrastinating.

One thing I know is that I most certainly will not be buying the Midnight Show DLC for The Saboteur despite how much fun I’m having with the game. The comment at the end of The First Hour‘s review of the game seals the deal; I’m not playing The Saboteur for the nudity, I’m playing it to blow up Nazis and sabotage the bleep out of enemy headquarters.

But yeah. I need ideas for Xbox Live games. Remember, I have 1200 to spend. Please don’t suggest anything that is solely multiplayer as who knows how long I will keep my Gold account locked in. Thanks in advance! Phooey on you in advance too if you suggest nothing.

Do not invite Crusty Demons to your Dream Day Wedding Destination

Tara and I went to GameStop yesterday to pick up a gift card for my mother as it’s her birthday real soon. The original plan was to find her a new Nintendo DS game, but she seems to buy more games than I do, and I have to admit to losing track of what she has in her collection versus what she used to have, but traded in. So…a GC it was. That way, she can pick what she wants, and I do believe a yardsale hidden objects game comes out on her very day of birth…so there we go. Though Tara and I did see a hidden objects game all about planning one’s perfect wedding:

Oh man. Doesn’t that look exciting?! We thought this would be hilarious to give to her, but I told Tara that I didn’t think I could physically carry the case over to the counter and then pay money for it. Maybe next time? Most likely not.

Also, while perusing the shelves of old Xbox games (they had a deal of buy one, get two free, but I didn’t buy anything as I really have no clue what games are backwards compatible on the Xbox 360), a title caught my attention. And made me laugh. Out loud. In front of total strangers. Now, these games were lined up like books, spine out, so all I had to go off of was the title alone, but man did it make me pick up the game. Are you ready? I don’t think you’re ready for it.

…

What? You’re dying to know? Hmm…

Okay, okay. Here it is:

Ah ahahahahaha. Crusty Demons.

Sadly, this was not a videogame about a fantasy land dastardly overrun by…crusty demons. Instead, it’s about–I guess–some people riding bikes and doing daredevil-like tricks. What a tease!

In short, some videogame covers are just plain silly.

It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s Super Scribblenauts!

Honestly, I totally expected the sequel to last year’s fun-but-flawed Scribblenauts to be…Scribblenauts 2. Completely boring, but that’s usually how this industry works. Thankfully, that’s not the case. It’s titled Super Scribblenauts, and that title should key you in on the game’s new focus of adjectives.

Throwing in words like fuzzy and purple and incandescent will now allow your rooster hat-wearing character to modify the things you create to solve the numerous puzzles the game will toss at you. This could definitely be a recipe for even more random fun, but the core problems found in the original Scribblenauts need to be fixed, and they need to be fixed hard before I even come close to considering picking up this sequel. Namely, the controls. Just let us use the d-pad…please! Puh-lease!

That said, enjoy some new screenshots below, which show off the love of adjectives:

Naturally, people are scared of zombie dumptrucks.

Telekinetic-Man, Telekinetic-Man, does whatever a Telekinetic-Man can.

An update of many things

Apologies for the lack of an update yesterday. See, I had a crazy busy weekend and was really nothing more than a puddle of ooze come Monday. If I had tried to type any words, they most likely would’ve came out like so, “Ghkfer eere yh jkyyu isood kgkgkgx zzdfzzzzZZzZzz.” Yeah, a good time for all.

For starters, I became an uncle. And then I also celebrated with my fiancée Tara as she graduated from college. Woo on both fronts!

To keep this videogame-oriented, I got her a super shiny cobalt blue Nintendo DS Lite as a graduation present. I think she likes it (see above). But you can’t really have a DS and not have a game to play so I picked up Boing! Docomodake DS for her, which is a decidely odd little puzzle-platformer starring…fungi. Love the music though. And then my mother hooked her up with some “find hidden objects” game from her collection, meaning she’ll have plenty to do now that she has some freedom.

But yeah, given the weekend’s events, I did not get to do much gaming. But I surprisingly did some. Like more grinding in Pokemon HeartGold so I can beat the Elite Four (my Ho-Oh is at LV. 55, and I plan to stop grinding when it gets to LV. 60). I also played some more of Aquaria–surprisingly well too, considering I was without a mouse while traveling–and though I originally thought I was going to review the first hour for you-know-who, I’m passing that torch along to another writer for the site. Which is fine, really. My time and creative mind space is extremely limited at the moment, but trust me–I will have a lot to say about this game in the near future. And yesterday, shortly before my brain leaked out of my head, I put another hour into Borderlands and just about did every quest in my log save for the one to take out Sledge. So that’s next on the list…

Oh, and one more thing. That Humble Indie Bundle I wrote about a few posts back? Yeah, they added a sixth game to the collection, readily available for those that already purchased the bundle: Samorost 2. I only downloaded and ran it to make sure it worked, but it seems like a very stylized point-and-click adventure. Aliens took my dog? Will definitely check it out soon.

If the Humble Indie Bundle reaches donations of $1,000,000, the developers will release the source code for several of the games. It’s currently at $949,491 as of 1:oo PM today, and there’s only so much time left. If you haven’t checked into this yet, PLEASE DO IT RIGHT NOW. It’s a wonderful collection of games with no restrictions as to where you play ’em and how you share them. I can’t recommend it enough…

Happy anniversary for Grinding Down!

That’s right, my silent and stalky readers. Grinding Down is now celebrating its one-year anniversary. Woo-hoo!

::confetti and Daft Punk tunes::

Back in March 2009, I decided I wanted to take another stab at videogame journalism, but at a much more relaxed pace. Well, maybe too relaxed in the beginning. See, I posted a few times in March 2009 and then quickly forgot about the blog until the summer hit, wherein I found myself with a lot of topics to muse about online. And since then, I’ve been pretty good at keeping this thing lively (just not on the weekends, which is fine by me). There’s some reviews here and there, but it’s more of a home for randomness, reflecting on older games, and having a bit of fun with pictures and words. That really doesn’t plan to change much.

But yeah, a whole year of grinding. Bow-chicka bow-wow! Er, forget I just wrote that. There’s cake and punch in the back.

Spring draws near for my Xbox Live Avatar

Well, the weather is changing in New Jersey from cold to not-so-cold, and that means it is time for another update to Avatar Evolution. I switched out for some new digs, specifically a button-down shirt I’d sooo wear in real life, some khaki shorts, and moccasins. Also got a free grill prop. Turkey burger, anyone?

And that, dear readers, has been today’s exciting post about…digitial clothing.

Size matters, but not to me

For Fallout 3, there’s a varied choice of weaponry: you can go unarmed, you can wield melee weapons like the über awesome Deathclaw Glove, you can toss and set explosives, you can use an array of small guns,you can zap enemies into piles of ash and green goo thanks to energy weapons like the Plasma Rifle, and you can totally demolish just about anything with big guns. Seriously, a Raider is not going to get up after you set a mini nuke off on his/her head.

But get ready for a humdinger.

Of those weapon types just listed and after a collective total of 120 hours spent scouring the Wasteland, I’ve never used a big gun. Not even once. Both my good karma and evil karma characters have instantly attached themselves to smaller weaponry, Chinese Assault Rifle and energy weapons, respectively, and any time I come across a big gun in the wild or off a bullet-infested Super Mutant, I either leave it where it is or sell it as soon as possible. Even missiles, which do not take up inventory space, get sold because I know that, no matter the what and when of the situation, I will never launch them.

I wonder what Sigmund Freud would have to say about this pic.

For one to roleplay Fallout 3 using only big guns…well, that’s a bit challenge at the start. They are hard to come by, weigh a lot, and are often usually in bad condition upon first looting. There’s only a couple of perks to help you on your way to mastering them as well. When you leave Vault 101, you will most likely have a pistol, a police baton, and your jumpsuit. From there, finding or purchasing a good one will take time and a lot of effort. But ammo is scarce, they are not the best weapons in close quarters or when being sneaky is vital, and they even have a greater chance of injuring the Lone Wanderer.

One might assume that some of the tougher enemies like Deathclaws and Super Mutant Behemoths can only be killed via big guns. Those folks are wrong. I’ve dropped a ‘Claw or two thanks to a well-placed bottlecap mine and some undetected shots to the head with Lincoln’s Repeater.

I appreciate that big guns are there in the world and love taking down those that wield gatling guns and such, but I don’t ever really expect to use them. They don’t fit my playing style, now or ever really. After all, Paul means small. And yes, I know I just set myself up there. Go on, try me.