Games Completed in 2011, #29 – Fallout: New Vegas, Old World Blues DLC

First, some Grinding Down linkage as I’ve already written a bit about this third DLC package for Fallout: New Vegas. Go on and catch up; I’ll wait:

• Old World Blues is all talk, no action so far, and that’s fine
• Meet The Sink’s numerous personality modules from Fallout: New Vegas

There ya go.

After completing Old World Blues, I had decided that it was the vanilla game’s finest add-on, having not even played Lonesome Road yet at that point. With all four DLC now finished off, I can confirm that, yes, it is still the best of the bunch. Further proof: no other DLC to date dares call your fingers and toes penises.

Old World Blues begins with the Courier being transported to the Big MT research crater, a place thriving with robots and Old World mentality. A strange group of post-human researchers collectively known as the Think Tank take your brain out of your skull and then ask for your help. Cue Michelle Tanner: “How rude!” Off you go to explore the Big Empty, which is not as barren as you might expect, battle dangerous foes–such as robo-scorpions, nightstalkers, cyberdogs, lobotomites, and, if you have a certain trait turned on, one freakishly small, but deadly Deathclaw–and find the craziest equipment science can think up. It’s a grand ol’ time.

The DLC opens up with one extremely lengthy cut of chatter, but the writing and voice-acting make it worth sitting through. Kudos to Jim Ward, Cam Clarke, Jocelyn Blue, and James Urbaniak for really selling these robots as once human beings. After all that talking, the Courier then gets to go out and explore, but it’s no place to just go gallivanting about. Recommended for Couriers around LV 15 or higher, I found parts pretty difficult still at LV 28. Getting attacked by three nightstalkers is no walk through the park, and there’s a severe lack of available ammo to begin with; thankfully, one does eventually pick up the X-2 Antenna, a unique melee weapon that works wonders against enemies with either soft or hard skin. As you play, you’ll begin to upgrade the Sink, your home away from home, and the amount of new things is astounding; I now actively seek out random junk like cameras, hot plates, and irons because Toaster, which is an evil toaster, can break them down for me into microfusion and energy cells.

Both the DLC’s main quest and side quests are equally rewarding. “Picking Your Brains” is a side quest that has you talking to all the robotic doctors in the Think Tank, and while you may be tired of chatting with these super egos after the long intro, I suggest still doing it. You can gain some decent XP with skill checks, as well as early information about Ulysses and Father Elijah. “Field Research” will help make your biological research station and Blind Diode Jefferson even better–like that’s possible, you quip. “Sonic Emitter Upgrade” does exactly what it says on the tin, but it’s well worth the time as the Sonic Emitter is a powerful Energy gun that has a variety of mods to it, my favorite being Gabriel’s Bark, which rocks a unique “critical strike knockback” effect.

I’m hesitant to dive back into the Big Empty so soon on my fourth playthrough, but once I’m around, say, LV 20, I think I’ll risk it. It’s a pity to let such an awesome base go to waste for too long into Fallout: New Vegas, plus many of the perks gained from completing the DLC are important to creating a strong character. If there’s one DLC to get, this is it. Also raises your level cap by 5. Science!

FIRST HOUR REVIEW – Deus Ex: Human Revolution

A little later on this than I hoped to be, but my coverage of Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘s first hour is now yours for the reading over at The First Hour. Either click the previous sentence or the image above to get there. Go ahead. I’d rather you read my article than the toss-able two paragraphs below.

I struggled–and am still struggling–with the game’s difficulty, even on that middle difficulty choice, which I guess some folks would call “normal.” A lot has to do with the in-game radar and how troublesome it is to walk creep the stealthy route. I have to imagine that going into a room and popping everyone in the head with a pistol shot before an alarm can be sounded would make things a lot easier…but that’s not how I like to play. Hopefully I get better as the game goes on and Jensen gets crazily customized, but I’m not holding my breath. Currently stuck on the very first boss battle, which I’ll save all ranting about for another post.

But yeah, Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘s opening sixty minutes. I died five times. Top that!

HALF-HOUR REVIEW – Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

Attention fans of monsters and monster-collecting!

My review of the first thirty minutes of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is now up over at The First Hour. Do check it out, as well as click the link on minute #30 to get the full impact of the loss of my goo friend Blues.

It’s not a terribly long experience, the review, but that has to do with the fact that the game’s opening is basically “run up a mountain and grind monsters to a pulp.” I’ve gone a little further since then, getting a platypunk onto my team and equipping everyone with better weapons; however, still haven’t made it through that cave. I’ll be sure to sing it loud and proud the moment Hodor and Team Dream Beam make it to the mountaintop. Until then, heroes!

Games Completed in 2011, #27 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One

Hey, remember when I played a little bit of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One for the Nintendo DS last month? Well, immediately after the alloted 30 minutes of review coverage was up, I actually came down with a severe case of sadisticaurus meh, a horrible fever-inducing infection that makes gamers play horrible videogames simply to add them to a “completed games” list.

Yes, I continued to play Deathly Hallows, Part One, all the way to the end credits, simply because I knew I could polish it off in a few hours, not at all because I was having a good time. If I was having a good time, I’d have played it to the end as well, but I wouldn’t feel so guilty, much like I do right now. Well, the first step in admitting you’re a completionist-whore is…admitting you’re a completionist-whore. Hi, my name is Paul, and I like to complete things.

What else can I say about Deathly Hallows, Part One that wasn’t said so viciously in my half-hour review?

Not much. It sucks. It doesn’t even try to grasp some of that Rowling magic, and it is beyond a waste of material. Throughout the game, there is still a lack of music, a lack of innovation, a lack of fun. I have to wonder if anyone outside the development team gave it a look before it shipped. Probably not. If you’re looking for a fun Harry Potter game on the Nintendo DS, this is not it. Go for the LEGO version instead. I beg you.

And that’s it. I refuse to spend more time and words on this matter.

::Apparates the funk outta here::

Half-hour review of the horrible Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows DS game

Firstly, while on vacation, I played Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One for the Nintendo DS for thirty Crucio-worthy minutes, as well as took notes on the rotten thing. You can read them by clicking this very sentence or the image above. You’re choice, and you’re also very welcome. So far, LEGO Harry Potter, Years 1-4 has been the finest and grandest treatment of the source material, and that’s a fact both amazing and sad.

Secondly, I’m sorry for the lack of content here at Grinding Down this past week, and the lack of content is certainly not due to…a lack of content. I have plenty of videogame thingies to talk about, such as the four most recent games I’ve completed (#25 – Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville, #26 – Super Mario Land , #27 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One, #28 – L.A. Noire), as well as more topics from that 30 Days of Gaming meme. And, uh, Netflix on the 3DS. So what’s the hold-up then?

Me. Crippling depression and bouts of meh. Overall exhaustion. George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons. Moving from a tiny attic apartment into an awesome house. And the day jobbery. July is without a doubt our busiest month, and I’m up to my neck in work, which gives me little time to ponder about the silly and frustrating aspects of gaming and its industry, much as I want to. As always, the moment Grinding Down begins to feel like work is the moment I abandon it completely; just stay tuned, dear readers, and I promise some more content soonish. Until then, please do head over to The First Hour for great videogame coverage!

Games Completed in 2011, #23 – Borderlands, Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution DLC

Okay, time to be honest. Not that I’ve never not been honest with y’all, but it’s a good, catchy phrase to start a post, and I guess the honest part here stems from the fact that I feel very guilty about not remembering very much about the last DLC for Borderlands, the one all about Claptraps, the one awesomely titled Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution. I do remember that I had to collect a boatload of Claptrap parts, which was not very fun, and then after that it gets fuzzy. Think there were some boss fights with bosses I had already defeated in the main game, but this time they were Claptrapped, but not any harder or different from their true, former selfs. At the end, I took down a giant Claptrap that spawned an endless army of Claptraps with a few shots from my always helpful turret, a couple grenades, and a tiny pistol that sent shocking bolts of electricity from bot to bot to bot. Credits rolled.

That’s kind of it. It’s mostly one large fetch quest, and then several crawls across the map to fight a boss you already once fought.

The add-on’s biggest re-playability comes in the form of its Achievements, many of which I will not unlock for many, many months. Several are based on collecting special dropped loot from Claptraps, and while there are plenty of chattering robots to shoot, the drop rate of panties, 3D glasses, pizza slices, oil cans, bobbleheads, and fish in bags is amazingly low. Like, staggeringly low. I once spent half an hour and shot up over 50+ Claptraps to only earn a single pair of 3D glasses, and at that point, I had already unlocked It’s so realistic!, the Achievement for getting five 3D glasses. I’ve gone back several times to see if I can inch closer to collecting all these bizarre items, and each time it’s only one or two of the desired loot, more often than not stupid 3D glasses, of which I NEED NO MORE. So that’s annoying.

I guess if there’s anything to be remembered about Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution is that it’s…annoying. Bring it on, Borderlands 2!

Check out my coverage of the first 30 minutes of Link’s Awakening

Hey! That Ocarina of Time game is being released again for like the seventh time today, now gracing the Nintendo 3DS with its legendariness and N64 graphics. I’m still unsure if I even care enough to want to check it out; more than likely, my second Big Name retail purchase for the 3DS is gonna be the next Animal Crossing title. Which, evidently, lets your character dress up like Link. Life’s a funny thing.

But another Zelda game was re-released in the last week or so, and that one I’ve actually played a bit. It’s called The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and I covered the game’s first 30 minutes for The First Hour. CLICK THIS SENTENCE TO READ ABOUT ME FAILING TO REALIZE I COULD MOVE SEA URCHINS OUT OF THE WAY WITH THE SHIELD.

That was posted a few days ago, but I forgot to link to it. My bad. Yeah, Link’s Awakening is a lot of fun. Easy to pick up, easy to put down for a little break. The music, my gods…the music. I’ve progressed a little further too; now I’m trying to collect enough golden leaves to appease some dude who–I’m assuming–will help Link on his journey to make the world’s largest omelette. I’ve gotten four down, but still need one more. Hopefully I won’t have to resort to using a walkthrough, but the overworld map is pretty big, and Link–a.k.a. me–can get lost fairly quickly.

Fail to the king, baby, and PR blacklisting ballyhoo

I’ve only ever played a single Duke Nukem title in my entire gaming life, and that was Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, and even then it wasn’t for terribly long as it was just a snippet of the game included on some free demo disc. Think it might’ve been shipped to me thanks to my die-hard subscription to PSM. Can’t remember. Might have to search through boxes later to see if I even still have it. I remember it opening in a strip club, having to fight off piggish cops (literally), and that the titular Duke never ran out of one-liners. He was like a manlier version of Gex that reveled in crude violence and raunchy topics. I was 14 or 15, and even then I didn’t think he was too c0ol. Gex and Bubsy and Blasto were more my style.

And so, while the fact that Duke Nukem Forever, a game long burdened with problems, was finally released this week, I couldn’t care less. It’s getting ripped apart left and right. What’s truly fascinating though is watching the industry unfold as bad reviews pepper the Internet and PR companies get cranky. Take Jim Redner of The Redner Group, a PR company that is trying to promote Duke Nukem Forever. Just the other day, in response to numerous bad reviews, he tweeted the following:

Ah, the distinct scent of blacklisting. It stinks, for sure. And usually, it’s a behind-the-scenes sort of thing in the gaming industry; websites surely get blacklisted all the time, but it’s done with a cold shoulder, a lack of email responses and no more review copies sent over. That sort of thing. Here, however, was a public threat, and Jim Redner quickly saw the error of his ways, delivering an apology:

“I have to apologize to the community. I acted out of pure emotion. I will be sending each of you a private apology. I need to state for the record that 2K had nothing to do with this. I will be calling each of you tomorrow to apologize. Again, I want everyone to know that I was acting on my own. 2K had nothing to do with this. I am so very sorry for what I said.”

Shortly after, The Redner Group was dropped by 2K Games as a representative of their games. Good for them.

In all my many months here at Grinding Down, I’ve only ever been sent one review copy, and that was for Monster Tale. I really enjoyed the game, and I wrote a nice review for it, giving it good praise while still pointing out its flaws. If I had hated the game or thought it to be a pile of monster poo, I would’ve said so, and maybe I might have been blacklisted for such “venom.” Hard to say. The point is, you gotta stay objective and can’t let online bullying and threats of being locked out stop you from doing your job, which, as game journalists, is telling the public whether X game is truly worth $59.99. This is why I trust websites like GiantBomb or smaller gaming blogs over corporate headliners like GameSpot.com and IGN.com; I’d rather someone tell it to me straight than dance the line by upping a review from bad to mediocre because of fear and want of SWAG and cool perks.

Games Completed in 2011, #19 – LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game

“A LEGO pirate’s life for me” would’ve made for a good post title. I’m just saying…

Traveller’s Tales has pretty much cemented their LEGO videogame formula, and it seems like they like what they have in the blueprints and are probably not going to stray from it too much. This is both good and bad. The good comes from the aspect that, nine times out of ten, the formula is fun and silly and an OCD gamer’s utopia, with a billion different things to collect and tasks to complete. The bad is that if you’ve played one LEGO videogame, you’ve played every LEGO videogame, whether it came out today or five years back.

LEGO Pirates doesn’t do anything new or shiny, but it is probably the second most appropriate franchise for LEGO-izing next to Star Wars because the Pirates of the Caribbean films are fun, light-hearted, goofy, epic, and made up of a variety of wild locations. Plus, there’s the character of Jack Sparrow, a man that sways and sways your attention towards him immediately; I still can’t believe how perfectly they nailed him and his persona in LEGO form, right down to the drunken swagger. It truly is a sight to see.

LEGO Pirates covers the main cinematic trilogy, as well as the newest film On Stranger Tides. The cutscenes do a great job of moving the plot along humorously, but a lot of giggles were lost on the fourth movie as I didn’t really understand what was happening and why; these games certainly do benefit from a gamer already knowing the tales in and out, allowing the jokes to resonate more without losing out on crucial plot details. Here’s my guess for the fourth film: Jack Sparrow doesn’t want to grow old so he’s off to find the Fountain of Youth. Blackbeard feels the same way. However, for the Fountain to work, they need to make mermaids cry or something. Then some stupid wannabe pirate girl gets stabbed, and we need to use the Fountain to heal her. Oh, and Captain Barbossa has a peg leg now. Maybe a mermaid ate it. The end.

As mentioned before, the gameplay remains the same. You play through a level by yourself or with a co-op partner, smashing everything in your path to collect studs and open new places to explore. Some new tricks include using Jack’s magical compass to find hidden treasures or looking through a telescope and tracking a certain someone as they move around. Other than that, the game is much more puzzle-heavy than combat-heavy, and sometimes the puzzles can be a little difficult to solve, especially when one requires you to have destroyed X over there to complete. I was particularly stuck on the final level of On Stranger Tides, mad to discover that all I was missing was pushing in a block that did not look, um, pushable. Grrr.

Strangely, I noticed that Traveller’s Tales did not include a level editor this time around, which previously showed up in LEGO Harry Potter, Years 1-4 and LEGO Indiana Jones 2. That’s fine. I only tinkered with it a few times and just didn’t find it too much fun, especially since there was no way to share levels online or download new ones. No big loss. I still think drop-in, drop-out co-op via online would be marvelous, as the screen splitting up is often headache-inducing.

If you’re not a fan of the LEGO videogames, this one won’t certainly convince you. However, if you do love collecting studs and building items from broken LEGO bits and listening to dozens of characters mumble their way through a scene or riding giant crabs, then you’ll love LEGO Pirates. There’s plenty to do, to see, to be, and if you love carrots you’ll be especially pleased to know that there’s a lot of carrot humor. Whatever that means.

Games Completed in 2011, #18 – Back to the Future: The Game – Episode 1, “It’s About Time”

Taking place six months after the conclusion of Back to the Future III, Back to the Future: The Game – Episode 1, “It’s About Time”–from here on out known as BttF EP1–does a wonderful job of keeping the story strong and inventive, as well as recreating that special wonder that made the trilogy such a blast. Heck, they even managed to snag Christopher Lloyd to provide the voice-over work for Doc Brown; alas, we get a new kid trying to do “the Marty,” and it’s mostly fine. Throw in contributions from Bob Gale, co-creator, co-writer, and co-producer of the original film trilogy, and you’ve got gold nurturing gold.

Telltale Games is known for their episodic adventures with the Sam & Max series, and the same formula is applied here, with five episodes representing a full season. The first episode was released for free to everybody with an Internet connection back in early April, and I greedily downloaded the game as quickly as possible. Still, it took me several weeks to actually install the thing and play it, but once I did, I played it all the way through, giddy to be back in this universe.

It’s May 1986, and Doc Brown is nowhere to be found. The bank plans to sell off all of Brown’s items at an estate sale, which Marty is very upset over; however, without warning, the DeLorean reappears at Doc’s house with Einstein in it, as well as mysteriously single shoe. This shoe will be the clue to unraveling what happened to Doc and where–or should I say when?–he is. I won’t say much more as it quickly leads into a spoiler zone shortly after that.

As a point-and-click adventure, BttF EP1‘s puzzles were disappointingly easy, but that did not detract from how great the story was, as well as the character interaction and dialogue. I laughed out loud several times, and, despite having no mirror in front of me to confirm this, suspect I was smiling for the majority of my playthrough. Plus, I was playing a new game on my Mac–that never happens. It ends on a cliffhanger, and I’m definitely curious about the other episodes, just not in a rush to buy ’em. However, I do now have a hankering to watch the films again; yes, yes, even the third one.