Suikoden III is forever “now loading”

I…I think I have some bad news. I say it like that because I don’t want to admit to myself that any of this is true, as I am a man that holds on and hopes, even as everything around me crumbles, but things do look a little dire. My PlayStation 2 disc for Suikoden III, a game I have been searching for high and low over a number of years and only finally just acquired last year, is busted. Has to be. If you’ll recall, I ran into a nasty loading problem during the first hour of the game, wherein the disc spun unremittingly while the words NOW LOADING flashed at me with malice. Well, it happened again, different spot. And once again after that.

Currently, I’m in this weird place. I spent a week or two burning through all four Blackwell point-and-click games with Tara and then proceeded to kick Mass Effect 2‘s ass to the curb and then systemically achieved 30,000 Gamerscore on the nose. And then…well, I haven’t really known what to do with myself when a moment of spare time opens up. I’ve dabbled a bit more in Rage, played some more Cave Story on my 3DS, and watched maybe too many episodes of Felicity at once. Eh, let me take that back; I could watch Felicity all day long, but only up until the episode when she chops all her delicious hair off.

And so, the other night, I decided to hop back into Suikoden III and see what was happening; I had played beyond the first hour for maybe another forty-five minutes, stopping at an impasse where my party had to wait a little bit before they could meet with the higher-ups of Vinay del Zexay. Turns out, we just needed to stay at the inn two or three more times, which is kind of annoying as the inn–seeing as it has no competition in town–charges a hefty 300 suikobucks each time. After your party has rested enough, Sergeant Joe suggests heading back to the town hall to see if we can deliver our message. And we can. Hugo and friends are invited inside, there’s some small talk, and then the screen goes dark to–I assume–load an important cutscene. Only, the game goes nowhere–it just sits on that loading screen, and I sit staring at it until I realized I’ve sat for probably too long. I don’t immediately think it’s locked up, as Secret Agent Clank taught me that some PS2 games take forever and then some.

Disappointed, I shut off the PS2, examined the game’s disc, and then turned the system back on. That kind of worked the last time. I stayed at the inn two more times again, went back to the town hall again, chatted again, and watched as the NOW LOADING screen mocked me again. Well, boo to that. I have to suspect that the discoloration on the disc is problematic for loading cutscenes. That said, I’m not giving up yet. I’ll keep trying to play for as long it lets me play, and whether that means going off on one of the other main characters’ adventures, then so be it. Maybe Hugo and I weren’t meant to be. Maybe I’ll run into the same problems elsewhere. Maybe, maybe.

It might just be worse to have an unusable copy of Suikoden III in my collection.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #8 – Mass Effect 2

Making space friends for
A true suicide mission
All survived, big deal

–

For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

Disney Epic Mickey: The Power of Illusion for the 3DS is a videogame I now want

Okay, I’m all in.

To start, I found Disney Epic Mickey on the Nintendo Wii to be severely flawed, with horrible camera jank, empty houses that made me angry, and a really slow pace. Charm and atmosphere was there, but that’s it. Which is a shame, as I love Mickey Mouse and animation of golden times and all things Disney–I mean, for our honeymoon, Tara and I geeked out in Disney World for a week, and it was sublime. There’s just something so charming about Disney’s universe, and we’ve had a couple of good games based off Ser Walt’s creations in the past, namely Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Kingdom Hearts.

And so, while wearing trepidation-laden armor, I am excited to see how Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two turns out, what with its focus on co-op and music, but the real reason to be overjoyed that Junction Point Studios is giving it another go is that there will be a retail release for the 3DS…and it’s totally different.

Made by DreamRift, the fine beings behind 2011’s underrated Monster Tale, Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is a 2D platformer that harkens back to the previously mentioned Castle of Illusion. In fact, some are straight up calling it a sequel. Nothing’s been formally announced, but the Internet has provided a number of game details and a single screenshot scan, and from all that…I’m in. It sounds amazing, and might very well be the third 3DS game I buy in 2012 (the first was Super Mario 3D Land, and the second will be Animal Crossing 3DS). Here’s a couple of bullet points supposedly from the newest issue of Nintendo Power:

• Use stylus to tap item icons
• “Paint” (trace) those items into existence to create cliffs, cannons, and floating platforms
• Use thinner to erase objects
• Scrolling parallax backgrounds
• Every level in the game is based on an animated Disney adventure, which includes Sleeping Beauty to Tangled
• Every character that Mickey saves will take up residence in the fortress that Mickey uses as his home base
• The witch from Snow White is the main villain
• Scrooge McDuck, Minnie, and Oswald also make appearances

Did you see the bullet point I highlighted in red font? Check again. I did so because that basically confirms that Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is part Suikoden. Oh em gee. Give me a base, let me recruit people, and I will play that game, no matter what it ultimately is. I can’t wait to see how the fortress evolves with each cartoony pal that Mickey brings back. People are guessing Fall 2012 for a release date, and I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for more delicious-looking screenshots.

Welcome to Jurassic Park: The Game

If you know me well enough, or have had the golden opportunity to hang out with my wife Tara, then chances are you know how obsessed we are with Jurassic Park. Not the film series, but the first film–in truth, the only film. Actually, I’m also extremely fond of Michael Crichton’s novel, where it all began, as it was one of the first books I read as a youngling; I think I last reread it a few years ago and it still managed to impress. But you’d really know how dino crazy we are because when a perfect spot opens up for a Jurassic Park quote, we fill it, and we fill it fast. Occasionally, we don’t even need a reason. She likes these zingers:

• “Maybe it’s the power trying to come back on?”
• “Mr. Hammond, the phones are working.”

I usually go with:

• “Hold on to your butts.”

What then follows is us reenacting about every other line of dialogue from the film and then a heavy sadness as we don’t actually own a copy and can’t watch the glorious gem at any given point. These days, you have to buy a box set of all three films, and that’s not up our alley. Anyways, we love Jurassic Park, and so when in GameStop the other day we saw Jurassic Park: The Game for relatively cheap and picked it up. I’ve had some experience with other works from Telltale Games and enjoyed what they did there, but I did head back to Isla Nublar with trepidation.

It’s an adventure game akin to Heavy Rain more than an adventure game akin to Back to the Future: The Game. The action scenes are all about Quick Time Events (QTE), and the rest of the playing involves looking around scenes, talking to whoever is with you, and figuring out the right combination of actions. So far, from what I can tell, the story is split between Gerry Harding and his daughter and the mysterious Nima Cruz who is trying to find Nedry’s Barbasol can of dino DNA, and there are constant nods to the movie, which is always great. Sadly, the game looks pretty terrible, but not enough to scare us away immediately.

Just getting started with these, many of which are awesomely named:

Welcome to Jurassic Park (20G): Escaped the jungle.

I’m a Hacker (20G): Showed your jungle hacking chops.

The First Dinosaurs on our Tour (20G): Survived the two-crested lizard.

Looking forward to playing more, but just like Kirby’s Epic Yarn and LEGO Harry Potter, Years 5-7, this is a game best played with a partner, and so I will wait until Tara has some more free time. Right now, she’s hard at work on a short comic that I wrote, and we will hopefully be able to share it with the universe very soon. Sorry, no, it’s not about dinosaurs. This time.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #7 – Blackwell Deception

Psychic says move on
To where, from who, check MyPhone
Still don’t trust Joey

–

For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

30,000 Gamerscore, and I feel fine

I never really planned to hit 10,000 Gamerscore on the mark, but it happened, and I thought that was kind of a neat milestone. Then came the time for 20,000, and I actually went out of my way to figure out the best combo of Achievements to hit that nice ol’ rounded number on the dot. It became very meta, and that’s okay, as doing some math and using these fickle things called Achievements for an actual purpose was certainly refreshing. Also, as someone in the comments mentioned, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas played a crucial part in both sets of fireworks, and there’s no beating that. Now, here we are again, a year and change later, some 10,0o0 Gamerscore richer, with a total paperweight of…30,000. Take a look:

Yowza.

Alas, I didn’t get there with the help of Fallout: New Vegas, instead using the recently acquired Jurassic Park: The Game to up the ante and then two planned Achievements from Rage to seal the deal. Unfortunately, the last Achievement to tip the scale was based on luck: in Rage, there’s a mini-game called Tombstones, and if you roll four attacks on your very first turn, you get an Achievement. Since rolling is random, it just required sitting on the couch, petting my kitty cat, and hitting A over and over until the dang thing popped. When it did, I shouted in jubilation to Tara that I was successful and immediately shut off the Xbox 360, worried that I might accidentally unlock something else and ruin such a pretty, pretty number.

And I know–I mean, I kn0w–none of this matters. Some of you have probably already pre-judged me as an Achievement whore, but I think there is most definitely a difference between someone playing Rapala Tournament Fishing! just to get more Gamerscore points and somebody who looks at the whole process as a mini-game in itself, going after the ones worth going after, and celebrating little milestones along the way. I have to wonder if I’ll hit 40,000 in about one year or so as well. Maybe not as there just does not seem to be too much coming out this year on my “must buy” list, other than The Witcher 2 and A Game of Thrones: The Game. Keep following Grinding Down to find out how my turtle race to the top continues on…

Achievements of the Week – The Blood Oath for a Paramour Brawler Edition

Achievements, Achievements, Achievements. They came in droves this week from one game, and I just happened to ping another during my lunchbreak. Go me.

All right, let’s just do this.

From Mass Effect 2…

If you’re a daily reader of Grinding Down, then you know this week was my “falling back into Mass Effect 2 hard and now need to beat it like woah” week. And, uh, in the last week, I’ve unlocked 26 Achievements for the game. You can see others by clicking the links in the previous sentence. Here are a few more that I liked, too.

Paramour (50G): Successfully pursue a relationship with a teammate

Shepard totally got some grinding action from Miranda before the suicide mission went forward, and it was awkward and silly, as these sequences often are, but whatever. Good for them. My biggest gripe was that Miranda was in her white outfit instead of her darker one I earned from gaining her loyalty. At least she wasn’t wearing it for too long…

Brawler (10G): Shoot and kill 20 enemies while they’re knocked back by a punch

Weapon Specialist (15G): Fully upgrade a weapon

From The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim…

Blood Oath (10G): Become a member of the Circle

Just working my way down the questline for The Companions. Ah-woooo!

—

That’s it. I have a friend visiting this weekend and a family dinner to go to so I don’t expect too much gaming time to happen. And then I’ll be drawing comics all week to finish up my 31 Lovingly Bad Love Comics challenge. I do, however, have an itch to go back to Dragon Age: Origins or L.A. Noire, but we’ll see. Still have a ton of games to play on Steam and such.

For now, my Shepard has saved humanity throughout the galaxy from certain annihilation

With not much left to do in terms of side missions for Mass Effect 2, I decided it was high time Commander Shepard and his crew ate their last meal of space turkey and jumped deep into unfriendly territories, to go on what everyone kept calling “a suicide mission.” The Collectors were just past the Omega 4 Relay, and it seemed like we were ready; all members on my crew were labeled loyal, and all upgrades for The Normandy were purchased. We only had to move our feet. And so we did, grim and quiet, kickstarting the end of all things.

And it was…an okay final fight. Kind of underwhelming, really. I went in as virgin-like as possible, not knowing much of the specifics, just that any or all team members could die during these explosive events. My goal, despite how uninterested I was in many of my squadmates, was to keep everybody alive, including my simian Commander Shepard. Just had to watch out for those husk swarms, as melee takedowns was not a strong point.

But first, here’s all the end-game Achievements that popped in a nice succession:

Suicide Mission (50G): Use the Omega 4 Relay

Against All Odds (15G): Survive suicide mission

Long Service Medal (75G): Complete Mass Effect 2 twice, or complete it once with a character imported from Mass Effect 1

Mission Accomplished (125G): Save humanity throughout the galaxy from certain annihilation

No One Left Behind (75G): Keep your team alive through the suicide mission

Um…whew. That’s a lot of Gamerscore all at once, more or less. But as you can see, I was very successful on this final mission, kept myself alive, and kept everyone on my team alive. Honestly, after looking up exactly all the number of things that could go wrong on the suicide mission and everything that is taken into consideration, I am surprised I did so well. I mean, I just played the same way I played for the whole game (around 23 hours or so), using my supped-up assault rifle and a ton of Unity and Incinerate and Heavy Overload. When it came time to picking specific squad members to do certain tasks, I went with the obvious choices: Tali for crawling through tubes, Garrus for leading the side-team, Jacob for escorting the miscellaneous crew back to the ship, and Samara for creating a strong biotic barrier. And they all survived. As did my personal two squadmates–Mordin and Miranda–though my brain almost burst during that last boss fight, which is pretty ridiculous.

But yeah, the team and Shepard is alive–and is also done. Other than some story elements and all of the world’s lore, I did not enjoy a ton of Mass Effect 2, and if memory serves me right…I did not have a fantastic time with Mass Effect. There’s a lot to like, but ultimately, it’s not my kind of RPG-in-space. I really dislike the repetitive nature of starting a mission, running down a hallway, encountering enemies, and rinse/repeating until you reach the end, where you have to then make a Big Choice™. Chances are very high that I won’t be moving on to Mass Effect 3, certainly not any time soon, though I am curious to learn how the story plays out. Might just have to spoil myself down the line.

Reading books and stealth-killing mudcrabs like a true Dovahkiin

Recently, Bethesda put word out about yet another patch to one of their patchy videogames–this time, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim–and usually I just glance these over as all they ever contain are a long list of fixes to buggy quests, many of which I can’t actually recall by name alone. However, something was different this time around, and included in this batch of bug-squashing code was the addition of new kill animations for melee weapons and stylized kill cameras for ranged weapons, such as bows and magic. To that, I say: about…freaking…time.

Being the meshuggenah man-boy that I am, I immediately turned on my Xbox 360, downloaded a patch–note that I said a patch, not the patch–and began traipsing across Skyrim, searching for my first kill. Found some bandits in a cave and shot them all down from afar in single hits…with no cool camera action. And with an Archery skill of like 78 or something. Hmm. What gives? This sense of confusion went on for awhile until I went back to the pooter and realized that the patch was only for PC/Steam, and even then, it wasn’t available yet.

Boo.

Nonetheless, I was back in the realm of Skyrim, looting, looking, and living. Checking my stats, I noticed that I was four dragon souls away from 20 and…one skill book away from 50. Surely I could find one more measly skill book, and then I remembered a small hideout right near Whiterun that I had discovered while playing the game on Steam the other night. It was guarded by some bandits and a lonely horse, but otherwise, no trouble–and there was definitely a skill book there. Off I went. Tra la la. All was going to plan until a freakin’ FROST DRAGON SHOWED UP AND TRIED TO ICE ME! After cooling off, I looted the hideout and walked away with one more book in my ever-growing bag of shtuff.

Honestly, I don’t need an Achievement to tell the world I’m a reader, but here it is regardless:

Reader (20G): Read 50 Skill Books

Also, the latest patch just went live on PC/Steam, and so again, I headed back on in, dying to see a ranged weapon kill camera in action. And so it happened. Um…I shot at a mudcrab from quite a distance and watched, in slow motion, as it thunked back into the water, an orcish arrow deep within its shell. It was both lame and exciting, and clearly something that should have been implemented from the very start.

And now I wait for the Xbox 360 version to get updated before I go about finishing up some more quests. Heck, I might even get married soon or pick a Civil War side. There are no limits to my wandering.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #5 – Super Mario 3D Land

Classic platforming
New isometric platform
Tanooki for all

–

For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.