The Price for falling in love with the baron’s daughter

The Price is not a happy story, which is more than clear from the opening scene, but it is beyond gorgeous to behold. Set in the American South during the time of slavery, a nameless field laborer has fallen in love hard with the baron’s daughter. Naturally, the baron and his men are none too pleased to learn of this and come after him, shooting first, not asking questions later. The baron’s daughter ends up taking a bullet for her secret lover, who must run off to stay safe. He then ends up meeting a shaman who promises he can save her life, but only if our overalls-wearing protagonist, who I’ll call Overalls, can reap three wicked souls, for everything comes at a price. Killing evil characters is surprisingly not difficult for Overalls, but controlling the bloodthirsty anger deep within is.

The Price tells its depressing story at a deliberately slow pace despite its short length, mostly through the use of expository intertitles of the silent film era, somber piano-heavy music, and gorgeously painted scenes. No, really. Look up at this post’s leading image; that’s some serious beauty, as well as the main driver for me to keep playing. As previously mentioned, this is not a story full of smiles and warm emotions, and it’s easy to see what Overalls’ ultimate fate will be–along with the baron’s daughter’s–once you solve the first puzzle area, so I wasn’t playing for any kind of startling revelations, but rather to see more of the art in motion. I kind of felt the same way about Machinarium as of late.

Puzzles mostly involve pulling levers or clicking on spinning circles, and everything is relatively straightforward, which is good because there’s no hint system, as well as no inventory management. However, as Overalls explores the American South, you can pick up white flowers, which I guess unlock something, but I never found all of them. The only two tricky areas involve a spinning clock that is separated into three sections that you need to align to make an image and then grok a door code from and a hungry alligator. Everything else is simple clicking–and sometimes you aren’t supposed to make all the clicks that the game is asking you to make. The puzzles and locations vary based on the three souls Overalls need to reap, and once you have them for the shaman, you can return to the baron and his daughter to see this woeful story to a close.

So, this look at two lovers destined to struggle comes from…Flip N Tale, a developer that does not seem to be active any more. Think they made something called Loondon, too. Well, from what I can tell by Googling, at least. Its webpage is dead in the water, and the dev’s official Twitter account has only two tweets to date, both back in March 2013. Strange. I really wanted to find out more about who made The Price and such, but there’s not much info out there, and with such a generic title, it’s nigh impossible to find anything with a simple search term. And dang it, this game deserves being credited.

If you like beautifully sad stories, then give The Price a click. It’s roughly 15 to 20 minutes long, depending on how stuck you get with the clock or alligator puzzle. But be warned, it takes a bit to load at first. If you find out what the flowers ultimately end up doing, please let me know. I can’t imagine it leads to much, but maybe there’s an alternate ending hidden behind those pristine petals.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #40 – The Price

The baron’s daughter
A slave’s love, his rage, red with
Passion, pays the price

–

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.

Josef the robot’s journey to stop the Black Cap Brotherhood

In a perfect world, I would’ve continued playing Machinarium on the PC and without a walkthrough minimized on my laptop, hidden but always there at the ready. However, the deed is done, and I finally played through Amanita Design’s gorgeous automaton-themed point-and-click adventure game on the PS3, using a visual (and sometimes video) guide at nearly every step. This makes me hesitate to say that I “beat” it, but I guess I did, as I saw all there was to see, including the credits, and managed to solve a puzzle or two all on my own though I know in my heart of hearts that I never would have escaped the titular city without outside assistance.

Machinarium starts with our little robot Josef disassembled and tossed aside outside the city. As he puts himself together and makes his way back to mechanical civilization, a plot appears: the Black Cap Brotherhood is up to no good, bullying many and keeping Josef’s girl kidnapped in a small kitchen, as well as planting a bomb somewhere else in the city. At least that’s what I’ve put together based on playing the whole game all the way through, as well as some secondary sources to fill in the gaps. Since the game lacks any kind of straightforward narration, both in text and voice, it’s a lot of guessing what’s going on, though the single screen plot problems are generally very obvious.

To progress, you point and click. Except I’m playing Machinarium on the PlayStation 3, so instead you move a cursor with the analog stick and press a button. However, the end results are still the same. Unlike many other adventure games, you can’t just swoop the cursor across a screen to see where all the interactive items are and click until all have been grabbed; everything is relative to Josef, and items only light up if he is next to it and the right height. See, Josef can stretch up to be taller or squat down to be smaller, and finding certain items or solutions is often dependent on his size. I really like this, as it adds a certain realism to a game stark with sci-fi and steampunk, but it also makes for very challenging, sometimes frustrating gameplay. To learn that you were on the right track with a puzzle solution, but because Josef was standing a foot to the left was unable to see your idea come to fruition is a big bummer.

I appreciate the commitment by Amanita Design to a voiceless world, which shows in the hint and in-game walkthrough systems. If you select “hint,” Josef will use a think-bubble animation to show a clue for one of the puzzles on the screen, though the clue itself is not always clear and direct. For the “in-game walkthrough,” you have to play a mini-game wherein you control a key and shoot spiders in your way towards a keyhole; once beaten, you open up a book to an illustrated walkthrough that, again, is not always clear and direct, and because I’m playing on the PS3 and not sitting directly in front of my monitor, it can be hard to see what is what and what is where. The zoom function is nice, but it doesn’t zoom in far enough, if you ask me and my bad eyes.

I found most of the item-based puzzles to be relatively straightforward, if a bit tricky if you didn’t spot that one item you needed hidden in the corner of the room. However, the logic puzzles to open doors, locks, elevators, projectors, etc were beyond stumping. Took me back to my high school math class days, where I’d sit staring at a piece of graph paper, no idea how to even begin. Many broke my brain and detracted from the experience because as soon as I saw a panel of switches or knobs or lights and wires, I went right to the Internet to watch somebody else do it for me.

That grudgingly said, this game is worth seeing. Yes, yes, yes it is. Whether you have to pound your head against a wall until the solutions ooze out your ears, “cheat” and play the key mini-game to unlock the illustrated walkthrough provided by Amanita Design, or simply use an outside walkthrough that clearly says “use object A with object F to see the robot do a Hadoken.” However you need to go about it–go about it. Machinarium‘s visuals are a pure delight to take in; hand-drawn visuals mixed with fun, Pixar-like robot designs, and a soft, rusty color scheme really help sell the world as a cohesive state. There’s always stuff in the foreground and background to observe, and I love how rooms would just appear if you poked Josef’s head through a window or hole, materializing right before your eyes. If you can, let Josef go idle, and you’ll get to take a glimpse into some of his happier memories.

I guess now I just have to wait for Samorost 3 to come out. Hopefully the puzzle-solving areas of my brain have recovered by then…

2013 Game Review Haiku, #39 – Machinarium

Josef the robot
Out to stop a bomb, only
If it’s in his reach

–

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.

Checking back in with Pokemon Y and my team of monsters

For the last few weeks, it’s been a mini-game of swap city on my Nintendo 3DS. I’ll play a little bit of Animal Crossing: New Leaf before bed, take the cartridge out, pop in Pokemon Y, and play a little bit of that. Eventually, I’ll remember that I have a loan to pay off and quite an important job to do as mayor of Arni, and so the cycle returns to where it started. It’s not the worst problem in the world, but I am beginning to see the benefits of owning digital copies of these large portable games as, strangely, I find removing carts from the 3DS to be a troublesome process. In my mind, it’s as laborious as lifting boulders over your head. One day, I’ll have to look deeper at this quirk of mine.

When last I talked about Pokemon Y here on Grinding Down, I had played maybe about five hours. That meant starting out slow and perfunctory as has been the case in all previous Pokemon game romps I’ve experienced, taking care of the first gym and doing some story-related stuff that blocked forward progress. Truthfully, it mostly involved wandering around tall grass and collecting as many fun-looking pocket monsters as I could with my limited amount of money and Pokeballs, as that Pokedex simply won’t fill itself out. The jerk.

But now I’ve played for a total of fifteen hours and have gotten the chance to see the Kalos region a bit more. Okay, okay–fifteen hours and seven minutes, for those that must really know. After kicking the butts of four gym leaders and earning their respective badges, as well as providing a swift beatdown to Team Flare to get the power back on in Lumiose City, my team looks like so:

• Delphox, LV 45 – nicknamed Fenny
• Talonflame, LV. 43 – nicknamed Flit
• Blastoise, LV 42 – nicknamed Urtle
• Roselia, LV. 41 – nicknamed Rosebud

There are two other spots on my team that are, for lack of a better way to say it, temporarily filled. I couldn’t even tell you what two Pokemon are there–as they don’t matter. They are just there to fill the gaps just in case and gain some EXP after battles thanks to the new rules of EXP Share. However, I do hope before the end-game fights start to find better replacements. I’m most definitely, no doubt in all the galaxy, saving a spot for a Garbodor, but the other slot is open territory. I guess I probably need to pick a Fairy-type Pokemon soon and stick with it, as I’m sure a Dragon-based gym is on the horizon, but I don’t have one that I really like just yet. Please suggest something other than Jigglypuff.

I don’t know if the gyms have been designed to feature easier progress-blocking Trainers with fewer challenging Pokemon to throw at you or if I’m a lot better at Pokemon Y than I originally thought, but it’s been smooth sailing since Day 1. I’ve not died once yet, and maybe that means my team is a bit overpowered. My starter Delphox is ferocious, able to wipe an opponent out in a single breath (of fire). Should they all be more around LV 35-37? Well, you can blame the EXP Share for that then, as it helps keep everyone growing, everyone improving. But yeah, it’s been extremely easy, which makes for a very lax gaming experience. I’m not terribly bothered by this, as I found Pokemon Black 2 to be pretty difficult and off-putting in its later half, and maybe Pokemon Y will get there too, though I kind of doubt it. This is the game Nintendo needed to sell a lot of 2DS and 3DS systems, and no one likes a game too difficult to play, unless you’re a sicko and into things like Dark Souls.

So, I’m about halfway through Pokemon Y‘s main story stuff, but after all that is dead and done this might be the first game in the franchise I spend some solid time tracking down all the collectible Pokemon. Granted, I like to think that about each iteration I play, and it never seems to pan out in the end. However, it really helps seeing them in 3D models even if by then I’ll never use them or battle against strangers online. Though I do need to try this Wonder Trade thing out sometime soon. Maybe I can pick up a cool ‘mon to fill that sixth slot void.

Mixing items with items to make more items in Ni no Kuni

Of all the videogame-based alchemy systems, I can confidently say that I like the one in Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch the least. Which is a shame, as Level-5 generally knows what its doing with its item synthesizing mechanics, a gameplay element that warms me greatly. Seriously, I love it. You take one item, mix it with another, and get something–more often than not–greater than the sum of its parts. My feverish appreciation probably all dates back to mixing herbs together for stronger health potions in Resident Evil 2, but if a game has any kind of alchemy element, I’m in. Heck, I bought Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny solely on this reasoning, even though its very name scares the life out of me and I’ve not played it yet.

In Dragon Quest VIII and Dragon Quest IX, you have a magical pot for all your brewing needs. In the former, it travels with you, riding on the princess-drawn carriage with her goblin father. In the latter, it stays put at the Quester’s Rest inn, which you must visit to do your mixing thing. Either way, you put items together and hope for the best, or you can pick up recipes (or clues) along your journey for killer gear. In VIII, you had to wait a bit for the pot to create the item–maybe about ten or fifteen minutes–which made grinding more bearable, as you battled for XP while waiting to hear that salivating ding that indicated your item was done. They took this away for IX, probably because it was on the DS and meant to be played in short, portable bursts, so waiting was not an option.

In Rogue Galaxy, you have two different ways to create new items: Weapon Fusion and the Factory. Basically, all weapons gain XP from battle until they are maxed out, wherein they can then be synthesized along with a similar weapon to create something new. Toady, a strange frog monster, helps with this by swallowing both weapons and spitting out something new; one could argue it is an alchemy pot. However, you don’t really know if something is going to turn out great and just have to chance it, though Toady will also warn you if the results are really negative. For the Factory, it’s more of a puzzle system, where you have to line up machine parts to get it running properly to create a special item from a set of blueprints.

For non-Level-5 joints with alchemy-based systems, it’s a mixed bag, with most alchemy systems fairly uninteresting or just bad altogether.

Odin Sphere has the player combining two items to generate a new item during gameplay, which is then stored in a “Material” bottle. These bottles can be improved as well by alchemizing two of them together to get a material bottle valued at the multiplicative product of the two original bottles (e.g., Material 2 combined with Material 3 results in a Material 6 bottle). It’s a bit complicated, and I don’t even remember getting to it during my first hour with the game, and I’ve not gone back since. I remember more about various plants you grow during battle than the alchemy, which says a lot, I guess.

And then there’s Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, all of which with systems that are nothing more than perfunctory.

However, in Ni no Kuni, the alchemy system is unnecessarily clunky. You have two options once you obtain the alchemy pot and its genie master Al-Khemi in Castaway Cove: use a recipe or mix and match. If you have all the right ingredients, simply click “use a recipe” and Al-Khemi with automatically take care of it for you. For mixing and matching, you are either guessing or looking up the select few recipes available in your Wizard’s Tome, a tedious process that involves you backing out of the alchemy menu, into the tome menu, zooming down on the page for alchemy, zooming in more to find the recipe you want, mumble it to yourself a few times so you don’t forget, exiting back out to the main menu, back into the alchemy menu, and trying to create something based off of what you were mumbling to yourself.

The sad part of all that? Even if you are successful and create an item, the recipe does not appear in your list of “acquired” recipes; you can only get ones added there from completing errands or earning ’em as the story progresses. That means, even though I successfully made a Fishburger from White Bread (x2), a Dumbflounder, and Crispy Lettuce, I can’t quickly select it again down the line from my recipes list; I have to either remember how to do it from scratch or go back into my tome to remind myself of what is actually in a Fishburger. In short–I really don’t like this. All it means is that I now have to play Ni on Kuni with my laptop next to me open to some recipe wiki page, instead of staying immersed in the game.

What a bummer. At this point, I’d rather just have a repeat of Dragon Quest IX‘s system.

A slow, torturous train ride to nowhere in Sepulchre

If you know the definition of sepulchre, then you know how Sepulchre will play out after its first few opening moments. Regardless of that, it’s still an effective and enjoyable slice of old-fashioned horror, a playable short story that is all about tension and creating an unsettling atmosphere rather than having you run from some ghoulish monster, your heavy breathing the only soundtrack to carry you to some kind of momentary safety. It’s a slow, torturous ride, and  greater for it.

The story is as follows: you play as Dr. Harold Lang, a short-tempered museum curator low on primary memory aboard a moving train on its way to Augur Peak Island. He’d like some food and a drink before reaching his destination, and so he leaves his book and room, off on a mighty quest, only to discover that things–and people–are not exactly right on this train. It’s very hard to say much more without spoiling what unfolds, but let’s just say that you’ll talk to some characters, specifically a bartender and an attendant named Don, solve a few straightforward puzzles, and grow worrisome as the truth becomes clearer with each click of your mouse.

I’ve read elsewhere that the amateurish voice acting lessened the experience in Sepulchre; for me, it was just the opposite. Plus, I’m a sucker for anyone–or anything–with a Scottish accent. Sure, the bartender’s audio was noticeably lower than Lang’s, and there’s an airiness to everything spoken, but I felt that helped build immersion. When you learn the game-ending twist, the tinny voice recordings and distant feeling throughout maybe makes more sense. I also liked how naturally everyone spoke; it never came across as actors reading lines from a script, especially Don and Lang who, occasionally, had to talk to himself, to work things out. Yes, even Ben Chandler’s performance as the mumbling Grub is worth appreciating.

However, I will admit that Sepulchre does have some problems. Due to the limited number of screens making up the train Lang is stuck on, there’s a lot of walking from one side back to the other. It can feel a little tedious. The sound effect that plays when going to your inventory is a very loud thunk and was jarring each and every time I popped in there to see what Lang was holding. Some elements are maybe a bit too vague, such as the main painting and the name Lang says at the very end. Also: didn’t get whatever joke was hiding behind the “huge bags” though they were effectively creepy.

For awhile there, I thought there was going to be some strong revelation based around… dogs. The theme is pretty prominent–the bartender, after Dr. Lang gets verbally upset, tells him to let it out like “a good little puppy”; you find origami dogs in one passenger cart and give it to Grub, admitting it is not exactly man’s best friend, but should do just fine; there’s also a non-interactive painting on the wall of what looks like a small dog. Alas, nothing came of all this, but it was something I noticed nonetheless.

Sepulchre comes from Owl Cave and is written by Ashton Raze (Richard & Alice), with artwork by point-and-click connoisseur Ben Chandler (upcoming The Blackwell Epiphany and ^_^). You can play for totally zero dollars by downloading it from Owl Cave’s website, but you can also pick up a special edition for $2.99, which includes the soundtrack and some other extras. If you have a half hour to kill and want to lose yourself on an unnerving train ride, I highly recommend taking this short, but puzzling trip.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #38 – Sepulchre

Cannae stop this train
For Dr. Lang is hungry
Wants answers, not worms

–

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.

Having trouble surveying the score in Grand Theft Auto V

I slip back into Grand Theft Auto V every now and then to drive around aimlessly, look at a few jokey billboards and websites on the game’s internal Internet, and do a main story mission or, at the very least, a random event. Truthfully, I’m always on the lookout for a new Strangers and Freaks mission, really zany one-offs, but they seem few and far between these days, especially since I’m maybe now halfway through the story. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell without looking up online and spoiling myself percentage-wise, so we’ll just pretend like I know what I’m talking about and say that GTA V‘s glass is currently half empty. Or half full. Whatever.

As much as I hate glitches, especially ones that bring a gaming session to a halt, such as Half-Life 2‘s Nova Prospekt level and the randomly spawning Alpha Male Deathclaw in Fallout: New Vegas, I still do find them fascinating pieces of broken tech and marvel at what they can do to a system, both visibly and behind the scenes. So far, throughout my decent amount of time with Grand Theft Auto V, I’ve not come across many, and if I did, they were pretty minor stuff, like a pedestrian getting caught in a walking animation against a wall or being unable to switch characters for seemingly no good reason. Nothing game-breaking, and so I continued to carry on, little by little. Please note that I’m not including my troublesome time in the early days of Grand Theft Auto Online in this analysis, which was a hot mess of server problems, but also some strange connectivity glitches.

While Giant Bomb streamed for 48 hours over the weekend to raise money for Extra Life, I tried to do my part at home as well, staying up with them and playing some games. Granted, I didn’t last terribly long, but I tried to keep things fresh, jumping between my Nintendo 3DS, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Ni no Kuni, and, our topic du jour, Grand Theft Auto V. I haven’t really played in a couple of weeks from the look of things, and as far as I can tell, the next main story mission is called “Surveying the Score,” which involves all three of our colorful characters–Trevor, Franklin, and Michael. It’s basically a reconnaissance mission, there for the characters to observe their next target, the Union Depository, and plan how to strike it based on the number of guards they see and its alarm system. That’s all well and good, but I can’t seem to start the mission, and the one time I did, my game glitched hard, with Franklin literally standing inside the car, unable to leave, unable to switch out over to Trevor or Michael.

Basically, you have to go to the Vanilla Unicorn, which Trevor owns, and find him in the back office to kick things off. However, something is seriously wrong in my game. The outside door that supposedly leads directly to the back office is locked, and I don’t think that’s right. If you try to go through the strip club, body guards will chance you when you cross into the back room area, and they shoot to kill. I died three times trying attempting this, but was once able to reach Trevor’s office to begin “Surveying the Score”–with body guards still in tow. I think that had a serious effect on the mission going forward, the system confusing itself, which led to Franklin stuck in the car, kind of clipping out of it, but unable to do much else. Grrr.

I turned on the DownloadStation 3 this morning to snatch up my free copy of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and noticed that there was a new patch available for Grand Theft Auto V. Alas, I think that’s mostly for Grand Theft Auto Online stuff, but maybe there’s a Vanilla Unicorn fix in there, too. We’ll see. I’ll keep playing until I run out of other missions on the map to do, and then I’ll try again; if I can’t get through Trevor’s strip club unscathed, I guess my dream of completing a GTA game for the very first time ever will come to a sad, but inevitable conclusion.

Persist, a backwards platformer with spirit

First you lose your arms, stripping away your ability to swim. Next, the Goddess takes your legs, leaving you as a simple head, only able to roll left or right, deeper down into a dark abyss. And she doesn’t stop there either, relishing in your torture. Persist is a backwards kind of platformer; basically, the further you get, the more standard abilities you lose, reducing you down to nearly nothing, and as the story plays out, it sort of makes some sense why such a being would do this. Don’t be deceived by the game’s retro look and minimalist gameplay–it was designed that way for a reason, and it is totally worth playing.

Again, Persist follows the story of a lone spirit, trying to reach a mysterious Goddess to ask for forgiveness for his past sins so he can ascend to the higher plane of existence. Unfortunately, this Goddess really resents him, which becomes somewhat clearer by the end, and constantly puts him into increasingly dangerous situations, both as a test and a bit of torture. This game was created in just under 48 hours by @AdventIslands for Ludum Dare 26, wherein the theme was minimalism. A couple of other games to come out of that jam that I talked about here on Grinding Down were TOOM and Gods Will Be Watching. It’s absolutely awesome how much can be crafted from the idea of “how little,” and I suspect I’ll keep finding little gems from this jam as time marches on.

For those interested, I played a bit of Persist in my new speculative YouTube adventure called Paul Plays…, and you can check out my lackluster jumping skills in the video below:

 

I did immediately keep playing after the video ends, as there were only two sections left to complete, the one where you’re just a detached head and another that I won’t spoil here. They are very enjoyable and more puzzle-based than everything before it, which is more classic platforming of the Mario kind. The story comes to a head immediately after the last level, and it takes a surprising turn, but it really could have been something more if the writing was stronger and more effectively narrated throughout. I understand that there was a time limit to abide by, but I’d love to have seen a few more levels added or lengthened to stretch Persist out, especially when you’re just a head, as figuring out how to time your rolls from platform to platform was a lot of fun. The small amount of music in the game is quite good; not loud enough to be distracting, but soft enough to jump against, and helps create a rather somber ambiance, which is quite fitting once you learn what the spirit did.

Either way, give Persist a play, and do it sooner than later or else the Goddess might take away your hands, and you’ll have to give up gaming entirely.