Dead Money, the first DLC announced for Fallout: New Vegas

Bethesda Softworks just announced the first piece of downloadable content for their bug-happy Fallout: New Vegas. It’s called Dead Money, is exclusive to Xbox 360 as of the moment, and sounds a little something like so:

As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance as you face new terrain, foes, and choices. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.

Definitely comes off as a bit ho-hum, especially considering just how different each piece of DLC in Fallout 3 strived to be. I mean, one took you to Alaska, the other to a slave factory in Pennsylvania, another to backwater hickville, and a fourth to freakin’ outer space. Granted, Dead Money does seem to promise new terrain and foes, but I have a stinky feeling that it will kind of be more of the same Nevada landscape and enemy types with new skins. Actually, maybe more like just an elaborated sidequest or something, rather than DLC priced at 800 Microsoft Points. We’ll have to wait and see. Hits Xbox 360 on December 21, 2010.

The full press release with corporate talky talk is available here.

PURCHASE OF THE MONTH: Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

Woah, woah, woah…two games for the Purchase of the Month? Yes. Let me explain.

For about the past year or so, I’ve allowed myself to make one videogame purchase every month. This keeps my wallet safe, this keep my brain at ease during these crazy retail seasons, and this keeps this blog active and alive with new content–well, considering that I’m often late to the party and buy mostly “old” games these posts are not necessarily new content about new content, but new content nonetheless.

Also, a Purchase of the Month does not necessarily mean a top-dog, AAA product retailing for $60 or more. In fact, here’s a rundown of my purchases from this year, as best as I can recall or find out thanks to Grinding Down‘s search function:

• January 2010 – Nothing
• February 2010 – Dragon Age: Origins
• March 2010 – Pokemon HeartGold
• April 2010 – Borderlands
• May 2010 – Picross 3D, The Saboteur
• June 2010 – Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• July 2010 – Limbo, Dragon Quest IX, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• August 2010 –  Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game
• September 2010 – Mini Ninjas
• October 2010 – Chrono Trigger DS, Fallout: New Vegas
• November 2010 – Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
• December 2010 – ???

Hmm. Might have forgotten some XBLA titles in there. Now, of those listed, only a few were brand new retail copies; about 75% were purchased for less than $25 each, which I think is a great amount to spend on a videogame that may or may not give you a good amount of playtime. So, if I’m not looking for a big name retail game, I’m looking more for something in my secondary price range. The fact that both purchases of this month were released well over three years ago definitely helped with this–DQH: Rocket Slime was $6.99, and FFXII: Revenant Wings was $14.99. Perfect, I said to myself and not out loud as that would be a bit weird.

Right now, with the way life is–married, working, stressing, worrying, not drawing, not writing, worrying, worrying, wondering, sleeping more, band practice, worrying–it seems I have a lot less time for console gaming and much more time available for DS gaming on the go. These two games, plus the epic RPGs of Chrono Trigger and DQIX, should help fight back the lack-of-serious-Fallout: New Vegas shakes. I’ll also go into the reasons I picked each of these up in another post later on. Because, yes, I do have my reasons!

The Top Five Most Annoying Videogame Sidekicks

Two’s a party, three’s a crowd. And sometimes even two is too much.

Naturally, I’m talking about sidekicks, and more often than not, they are annoying and useless and just there to get in the way. I mean, how often did Batman really truly need Robin tagging along? Or Wolverine with Jubilee? Granted, those are comic book examples, and videogames handle sidekicks much differently. Often, they are used to help give a tutorial on gameplay mechanics, offer up possible sidequest missions (think about Ratchet’s Clank here), or are just there to chat and fill in story gaps with heavy-handed exposition.

So, as we close in on the time of thanks and giving, Grinding Down would like to spin the world the other way around and moan and groan about some of the worst videogame sidekicks out there with hope that they never come to our aid ever, ever again.

5. The Adoring Fan (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Meet the Adoring Fan. Amazingly, this guy is your “reward” for becoming the Grand Champion in the Arena. He’s nothing special. He just follows you around and lovingly praises you. He won’t fight by your side as even a single rat is enough to get him running away. His voice is the very reason there is terrorism, and one can find countless videos on YouTube of players pushing him off the land’s tallest mountain. Frustratingly, he does not ever “die.” If killed, he reappears at the Arena a few days later, ready to follow you again, whether it is to his death or not. How annoying!

4. Navi (a whole bunch of Zelda games)

I think many gamers would agree that a box of scrolling text would’ve been a much better choice as a companion for Link than a hyped-up fairy that never shuts its airpiece. I mean, they’d both accomplish the same thing, but one is less obtrusive than the other. I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve yet to actually play any N64 Zelda games (gasp!), but I got to partially know Navi through The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and the small time spent with it was more than enough to convince me that Navi is Satan’s child, all razzed up on speed and insanity and the power to cling and never uncling. How annoying!

3. Daxter (Jak and Daxter series)

My PlayStation 2 days were filled with platformers. A trilogy of trilogies, I guess you could say. They were the Sly Cooper series, the Ratchet and Clank series, and the Jak and Daxter series. Now, all of them had sidekicks–Sly had Bently feeding him advice, Ratchet had Clank and all his crazy gizmos, and Jak had Daxter who…did absolutely nothing. Except get himself turned into a chatty rodent through the power of Dark Eco. For the first game–and, well, probably the next two–Daxter did little but make small quips when Jak “died,” as well as start trouble during in-game cinematics.

Unfortunately, Jak is one of those silent lead characters, forcing much of the talk on Daxter. How annoying!

2. Stella (Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies)

Not to be outdone by Navi, here’s another annoying fairy, this one more of an actual fairy…if inspired heavily by the now out-of-date ganguro craze. She has a horrible flappin’ accent, only cares about herself, and is constantly berating our main hero, as well as her old boss fatguts. There is no good to her, and she’s there for the entire ride through Dragon Quest IX. Occasionally, she awards you Accolades, but that’s nothing to get excited about. If you tap her on the DS touchscreen, she does not explode into a thousand fairy pieces, only gets slightly miffed. How annoying!

1. Your Mother (Pokemon HeartGold)

She tries to do good. She really does. See, in Pokemon HeartGold, one can give your mother some extra money and, while you’re out combing through tall grass for every last ‘mon, she’ll buy you some items. And then call you to tell you that these items can be picked up at the local store. This might seem all cool and great at first, but it’s only after awhile do you realize that the items she is buying you are stupid and a waste of money, and that it would break her heart if you told her to stop, considering it’s all she can do for you, and so you let her waste your earnings. It’s hard to even ignore her phone calls because…well, it’s a call from your mother. You can’t ignore something like that. How annoying!

—

P.S. This top five article was inspired by this early morning tweet.

Getting closer to “beating” Dragon Quest IX…maybe

You know, I really am a crazy person to play three epic RPGs–Fallout: New Vegas, Chrono Trigger, and Dragon Quest IX–all at the same time. It basically means that I can only make tiny bits of progress on each of them, and that I want to play them all extensively, but I just can’t. There’s not enough time this side of New Jersey, and alas, it hurts, because all three are really deep RPGs with tons to do and see.

That said, thanks to some idleness over the weekend as Tara and I dog-sat Tucker and Chewy, I cut a bit deeper into DQIX. Finally completed the sidequest A Masky Task, which reads as so: Malinda from Stornway wants to see if you can make a malleable mask even more beautiful with alchemy. She said she would be happy enough just to see the result, but if you give it to her, she’ll swap it for a jaguarment. Sounds kind of easy, right?

Wrong.

First of all, I’ve had this sidequest in my log since the beginning of August, and it’s been annoying me since then. Had to look up exactly what was needed, and I found out that there was a lot of alchemy involved. As well as grinding for ingredients. I finally got the last set of butterfly wings needed this weekend, and ta-da, quest completed. My reward was a jaguarment, which I don’t think I’ll ever use. How wonderful!

[Some spoilers about final boss stuff coming up. You’ve been warned!]

That grinding did help though, getting three of my characters to LV 47, and my fourth, the priest, to LV 45. I figured that was pretty good for the final boss fight, and thus flew directly to the Realm of the Almighty to do battle with Corvus. He’s a Celestrian gone bad. Very bad. My first fight against him did not go well, but this second time, my team of four took him down thoughtfully and carefully, thanks to spells like Egg On and Multiheal. No one died, and we all lived to see another day.

That is…until Corvus sent a dragon after us! So, a second boss fight. Fine. That’s pretty much the standard with RPGs. The dragon itself wasn’t very challenging thanks to the fact that it did not use a lot of group attacks. He fell in due time, and again, Hadwynnn, Juniper, Tarla, and Kingsley all made it out alive.

Is it over now? Did I win? Time for cake and confetti? Nope.

Time to fight Corvus again. Only this time he’s mutated and taken on a new form. Evil form 2.0. And his attacks are extremely tough, much more damaging than before. Around 80 HP to 130 HP depending on what attack he chooses. Killed my priest really fast with a divebomb thingy, which left me struggling to keep it together. The fight ended as expected, with everyone’s name in red.

So, looks like I have some more grinding to do for money and alchemy items to make better weapons. I guess I’m going to try to wait until everyone is around LV 52 or so before tackling Corvus again. Hopefully by then, they’ll be rockin’ some crazy good gear, as well as some new spells. I’m pretty anxious to “beat” DQIX just so I can get to all the extra content I know is there waiting for me.

Some RPGs I’ve never gotten to play and maybe never will (PART ONE)

I once lived only on wishful thinking, and one of those gleaming nuggets was this: to play every videogame that came out. That hope quickly dashed itself into non-existence when I learned about time and money and headspace and all that jazz that keeps us from spending hour after hour in a digital world. And so, as it often happens, a good number of videogames get released and pass on by. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can test a demo out and get a feel for whether I really need to play more or not. Most of the time–eh, no. And back in the day, back before online Let’s Play forums and countless YouTube videos, not playing a game yourself really meant not experiencing it all, save for some magazine articles, tiny screenshots, lunchroom gossip, and whatever magic your imagination could work.

And that’s sad. I’ve missed out on a lot of videogames over the years; there’s just not enough time to play ’em all, as much as we’d all wish there was. RPGs especially, considering the majority of these are 3o+ hour games versus the more standard 8+ hour adventures of non-RPGs. They take so long of a time to play that when you do finally hit the end credits, a good four or five new RPGs were already released and taken off the shelves for other new releases. Oi.

Anyways, here’s some RPGs that I, unfortunately, missed the boat on:

Final Fantasy X

Something happened here, and I still don’t understand it. See, I played pre-ordered Final Fantasy VII and started playing it the very day I got it. Same goes with Final Fantasy VIII. I did not buy Final Fantasy IX immediately, but I really didn’t wait too long to get that one. Then I went to college–the very same time Final Fantasy X dropped for the PlayStation 2. Oh man, was there hype! This one was sporting voices. People were going crazy over it, and I just didn’t have the time or money to invest in it. Alas, I did not know many other gamers in my dorm, and so this passed on by without a beep. By the time Final Fantasy X-2 came out, I was over the idea of going back to see what made it so special. Was it 95% soccer under water and 5% fun? Can’t say. But I feel like I should try to play it eventually considering just how many of these Final Fantasy games I’ve already played at this point. Funny enough, a used copy still comes in at like $20.00.

Alundra

Modeled very much after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Alundra was about a boy with the power to go into people’s dreams and fight back their nightmares. It was released for the original PlayStation in 1997 and went with the exact opposite of what that system was trying to push. 2D sprites and anime-inspired FMV were its most obvious strong points in terms of visuals. Heard the puzzles got hard, and the music very repetitive. However, I distinctly recall never seeing this game on store shelves when I’d be browsing.

Suikoden III

This is the series that truly started it all for me. Loved the first game, loved the second game even more. That seems to be the status quo for just about everyone that set off to collect 108 Stars of Destiny. And then I completely missed out on III and IV (the latter is supposedly a good thing)…again, I blame college. I had very little time to play back then despite my continuous subscription to PSM for all four years of learning. Anyways, heard that this one kept up the grand tradition of an epic story of war and waging politics, but this time did it through several different POVs. Not sure if the 3D models have aged well–I mean, they were only just okay in Suikoden V–but I still feel like I missed something solid here.

Secret of Evermore

There’s traditional fantasy RPGs, like Final Fantasy, and then there’s this. Like Earthbound, Secret of Evermore strives to be quirky. That’s kind of all I really know of the game. Oh, and that you follow a boy and his shape-shifting dog (yes!!!) through a fantasy world reflecting different periods of time and the magic system throughout is focused on alchemy. Sounds good to me. Really good, actually. A shame I knew nothing about it back when I owned an SNES and spent all my car-washing money on Shaq-Fu. No, really. I bought Shaq-Fu. I’m saving that juicy story for another time on Grinding Down; y’all will just have to wait. Insert evil laughter.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Wait, what? You’re shouting at me? Grand Theft Auto isn’t a role-playing game series! There’s no turn-based action gameplay or any stats to worry about! Hmm…maybe not the first four games or so, but from what I’ve gathered, that all changed with GTA: San Andreas. Character development is totally a thing, with clothes and accessories affecting how the streets see the main protagonist. One also has to eat and work out to stay slim and fit, and there’s skills to work towards (driving skills, firing skills, lung capacity skills, bowstaff skills). Sounds like quite an RPG! I’ve always had trouble staying interested in these sorts of games, but if the above is true and solid, well…this might be the GTA for me.

Well, that’s all for this post. Certainly there’s about a hundred more RPGs I’ve yet to play, and you’ll find out about them down the road. Have you played any of the above? Tell me in the comments below. I’d love to know if any of these are worth tracking down–if possible–and playing this day and age.

One man’s journey to skip all dialogue in Fallout: New Vegas

It’s probably obvious, but I love to read.

And so it pained me, deeply, both emotionally and physically, to watch a good friend of mine play some Fallout: New Vegas over the weekend. Why? Well…he ran through dialogue options with Sonic the Hedgehog-like speed, more often than not just selecting the top dialogue choice to get through the entire tree with the push of a single button. Optional quest objectives popped up on the left and faded just as fast, and he even ended up turning in a quest, too, with little interest in hearing what so-and-so had to say about the job he did.

On the flip, that’s what I care about most.

Take, for instance, the quest Ghost Town Gunfight, wherein the Courier is tasked with either siding with the dangerous Powder Gangers or protecting Goodsprings from them. I played the part of Guardian Angel, wanting to help out the town that helped me out. But there’s more. By speaking to a number of townspeople, the Courier could convince them to join the fight, thus turning the tide greatly. This took some charm and quick work, and I got everyone’s help except for Easy Pete’s. All attacking Powder Gangers died during the attack, and no one from Goodsprings lost their lives. I was so proud of this that I immediately went to each and every one of them to chat about the fight, to see if they cared at all that I went above and beyond to save their dusty skin. To dig as deep as I could.

Most merely said a line or two of dialogue, and that was it. We’ve never spoken of the incident since. However, it was still important to me to find out.

Now, this post’s subject line is a bit misleading. I wouldn’t say it’s my friend’s journey to barely invest in the story and spoken words of the Mojave Wastelanders; heck, it might have just been because Tara and I were over late and he didn’t want to bog down the gaming time with a lot of sitting around and listening to exposition. His dude looks a bit like Tony Stark with a beret, and I was eager to see him shoot some raiders up. I’m sure every now and then he takes the time to get into the quests from more than just the quest log descriptions; if not, alas, there’s a lot to be missed.

Or maybe that’s just me. I love words, after all. And when compared to Fallout 3‘s 40,000 lines of recorded dialogue, Fallout: New Vegas really does give me a lot to take in with over 65,000 lines.

Here’s a bunch of links to cool Fallout: New Vegas thingies

So, there’s this game out that I’m currently obsessed over. I’m sure you can figure out which one it is. No, it’s not Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction. Anyways, let me share some nifty links with y’all…

Over at Grimly Enthusiatic, a journal of the Courier’s days in the Mojave Wasteland. It’s not really an actual journal journal, as in “dear world, here’s what I did today, I am so lonely,” but rather a loglist of odd bugs and glitches. Looks like some desert folk can’t tell the difference between a male/female Courier.

Over at 1Up, read and take in their Fallout: New Vegas survival guide. Some very good tips, especially the whole “play to your strenths” one. Quick note: the guide contradicts itself by saying that Science, Repair, and Lock-picking are the best skills to tag and then says in the text that Science, Lock-picking, and Speech are the best. I’ve yet to really find a good use for lock-picking, but having a good Speech skill is nearly essential. Oh so essential. Tag it. TAG IT RIGHT NOW, KIDS.

Over at Popmatters, two interesting articles: Sex Workers and Sex Slavery in Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout: The Scrounging Simulator. I can’t really comment on the first one as I haven’t done any quests related to slavery and prostitutes in the latest game, but I do wholeheartedly agreed with the second article. During these tough times, it is important to learn to carry only what you need, only what will keep you going forward.

Over at G4TV, there’s a Fallout Fall Fashion Show. Pretty hilarious stuff. Actually, after watching, most of the outfits seem inspired more from Fallout 3 happenings rather than Fallout: New Vegas. Oh well. I’m sure many will still dig ’em. “Seriously, I’m gonna loot that body.”

Lastly, over at Kotaku, actor/rapper Ice-T is also dealing with the bugs and quirks in the Mojave Wasteland. Don’t really get it, but that’s just me. I’m still waiting for someone more like Zooey Deschanel to openly admit how much of a Fallout fan she is…

Okay, that’s all for now. Happy reading!

Found my first bugs in Fallout: New Vegas, and I’m not talking about radroaches or bloatflies

Fallout: New Vegas was only released like two weeks ago, and the world mostly knows it for being an extremely buggy game. And we’re not talking about a wasteland full of mutated swarms of praying mantises or radroaches; no, these are programming bugs, wonky coding and scripting that can totally ruin one’s gameplay session. Or, in my case, help keep me alive for a few more minutes. More on that later. But yeah, bugs. LET ME SHOW YOU THEM, says LOLCAT.

How bad can it be? Well, the game shipped, and several players found a rather unsettling bug in the very first few minutes. Not a good start. Luckily, Doc Mitchell’s head stayed put for my first playthrough. Over the past few days, thanks to a patch, Obsidian Entertainment passed along 200 scripting and quest bug fixes for those connected to the Internet. Me? Nope, no Web yet. Still gotta call Comcast and get it all set up at the Leaky Cauldron, which means I’m playing vanilla Fallout: New Vegas, the true layer, broken and spotty, the way it was meant to be played because, well, the game shipped like this, and that’s actually a little sad. They had like two years to toy with that engine. But Fallout 3 prepared me for glitchy gameplay, and there’s nothing too terrible to really get me to put this game aside.

So, last night, while working on the quest My Kind of Town I came across three different bugs.

Buggy bug #1: I entered an NCR tent near Primm to find a trooper standing on top of a chair as if she was five years old and throwing a tantrum for a cookie before dinner. Tara and I laughed out loud and waited for her to walk off the chair back to the floor. Which she did quickly. Odd, all in all.

Buggy bug #2: Being chased by two radscorpions, which, if both hit me, would be certain death. Thankfully, one of the radscorpions walked into a rock…and got stuck there. Like…inside the rock. I could target it with V.A.T.S. and all, but it was not moving from that rock. Sweet. I took care of its brother and then left it to die a rocky death.

Buggy bug #3: Now, this is the one that worries me. Was in the NCRCF, taking out Powder Gangers left and right in search of a new sheriff when all of a sudden…my gun disappeared. Poof. Gone. No more 9mm pistol. Yet I could still fire and damage enemies. I just had no way of aiming, but V.A.T.S. still worked as well. I tried putting my weapon away and taking it back out so to speak, but nothing showed. So I hid in a corner, freaking out with a bunch of corpses and bent cans. Then, without reason or sound, the gun came back. Thankfully, the room was already cleared out by then. This kind of bug can be very damaging though, and I hope I don’t see it happen again.

But at least no quests have wonked out on me…yet. That would be the saddest thing ever, like not being able to finish one’s favorite meal. I love quests. I love starting them, following them, and finishing them. Especially Fallout quests; they are so inventive and open, and they can be done this way or that way or not even done at all.

So, yeah. Fallout: New Vegas is kind of a crappy game from a programming bird’s eye view. However, that won’t stop me from having a good time. Think I might even head to the strip soon…

Oh, the folks you’ll meet in New Vegas: Doc Mitchell

Doc Mitchell is the very first in-game character you’ll meet in Fallout: New Vegas. He’s the surgeon in the small town of Goodsprings, as well as possibly a former vault dweller from years past. His main role is to help you, the Courier, with the character creation process, and he does this in a number of ways. First, he asks you for your name, which I told him was Jareth; he did not seem too impressed with this choice. Next he asks you to examine the Vit-O-Matic Vigor-Tester, which is how you assign your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points. Lastly, he runs you through a word association quiz and some Rorschach tests to determine which three skills to tag you with. This system works much better than it did in Fallout 3, streamlining the process and just chugging along at a better clip.

Before you leave the doctor’s house, Mitchell will give you some items: a Pip-Boy 3000, pistol, and  a jumpsuit from Vault 21 (thus the reason I suspect he once lived in a vault for a bit). You can also find a number of items in his house. I found some ammo, a doctor’s bag, and miscellaneou junk that was ripe for selling. If you need to heal up or cure some radiation poisoning and want to pay a lot of caps for it (100 and 50, respectively), he’s the man to see, but I know there’s cheaper options available. Just go drink out of the rad-free toilet in his bathroom a couple dozen times.

Doc Mitchell is voiced by Michael Hogan who is most notably known as everyone’s favorite one-eyed XO Colonel Saul Tigh from frakkin’ Battlestar Galactica. He’s not as rough-sounding in Fallout: New Vegas, and definitely slows down his words a bit, as if he has all the time in the world to tell you what you need to hear. Also, I love that Tigh and Mitchell even look very much alike:

Just throw a cowboy mustache on him and we’re good to go!

Currently, I’m gearing up to convince the doctor to help me in aiding the town against some nasty gang of escaped prisoners. I’m looking forward to seeing his role expand over time, but I suspect he might just be a one-shot deal, there only to help the Courier get started and nothing more. Time will tell, of course.

Not sure if this whole “oh, the characters you’ll meet in New Vegas” feature will be a thing or not, but I might write a bit more about other characters I meet as I traverse the Mojave Wasteland. Heck, there’s enough interesting folk in Goodsprings alone (come on, Ringo!) for at least four or five more posts…

Oh, hey, I’m back and you can now all cheer

Hi.

::hooray yippee woohoo:::

Okay, settle down. It’s not like I’m–

::wahoooooo::

Aw, so you did miss me, dear readers? That’s swell. I missed–

::so much frakkin’ confetti everywhere::

–you, too. But not too much–I was on my honeymoon in Walt Disney World after all. Hard to miss nearly anything when you’re in the happiest place on Earth.

Now…since this is a videogame blog and not a wedding blog, let’s see what I got to play over the last numerous days: Dragon Quest IX and Picross 3D.

THAT’S IT. I had my entire DS collection with me, and I only ever switched out the cartridges twice. Unless you want to count me not going crazy over missing out on Fallout: New Vegas fun as a game. Cause I played that a lot. A LOT. But I did a good job about not pestering Tara over it. And we’re still married! Hooray!

But yeah…I grinded in DQIX like never before thanks to airplane rides. I was able to raise my party of four by four whole levels from roughly 41 to 45, taking down both nasty forms of  King Godwyn, and have now made my way to the Realm of the Almighty for what I suspect is the final boss battle. I say that like it means something, but with DQIX, it really  doesn’t. Beating the final boss does not mean completing the game, but it will open up a slew of more sidequests, as well as give me more breathing room for grinding new characters and completing all those lists (alchemy, item, clothing, so on). Speaking of sidequests, I finished a couple of ’em, the most frustrating being Prat’s the Way to Do It, wherein I needed to get my Minstrel character to land two critical hits with the Pratfall ability. No easy task. Grinding helped though, and when I nailed the second one I was genuinely surprised and happy; I hate giving up a sidequest to make room for another one that seems impossible to do (uh, like that metal slime one). I also ended up completing two treasure maps, killing some legendary bosses like Shogum and Nemean–I think those are references to previous DQ games, but I don’t recognize ’em.

Oh, and the tally of completed puzzles in Picross 3D is now 279. Impressed? Well…you should be!

So, yeah. Not an amazing amout of gaming got done during the wedding/honeymoon time, as was to be expected. But that’s all about to change. Here I come, Fallout: New Vegas!