Greeting somewhat warmly The Sims 3 on my Verizon cell phone

I can’t go into the specifics, but over the weekend I was fretting and waiting and worrying and trying very hard to pass the time in a mildly distracting way, but all I had was my cell phone and football on in the background. Ew, ball-foots. So, yeah, sports wasn’t helping, nor was watching the crazies around me. There was a very weak WiFi connection available, limiting the time I could fiddle around on Twitter and Facebook to a minimal. Yet probably enough time to download a mobile game…

…which I’ve never done before in my life.

I have a Verzion Reality cell phone, and that’s exactly what it is–a cell phone. I use it to make calls, text my wife that I made it safely to work, update Twitter rarely, and sometimes take pictures. Other than that, I don’t use it much as a piece of entertainment or gaming device. In fact, the Verizon Reality doesn’t even come with any free games. There’s three trial games for Tetris, Pac-Man, and Oregon Trail, as well as Dice…which just has you shaking the phone and rolling dice around. Exciting. But yeah, I perused the list curiously to see what was available and found myself surprised at some of the titles–Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, and Guitar Hero to name a few. How bizarre that tiny iterations of these big blockbusters exist on such an underpowered piece of equipment.

I ended up putting all my chips on The Sims 3, figuring it was the genre best suited to filling voids of time and performing mindless actions. It was $9.99. The only Sims game I ever played was the very first one, way back when, and I had a good time with it during college. My neighbors were my roommates, and I had a family, as well as a bad habit of setting myself on fire in the kitchen. I know that since The Sims released there’s been about 9,723 more editions, but that’s okay…they all play about the same, right? Sort of.

The Sims 3 mobile version plays vertically, with a mouse arrow stuck in the middle of the screen. You then slide the screen left, right, up, and down until the arrow is on whatever you desire (stove, shower, bed, your neighbor’s uncouth wife) and then tap on it to bring up a list of options (quick snack, shower, nap, seduce her and steal all her jewelry when she’s asleep, respectively). Honestly, it takes a bit of getting used to, and I do worry about not being able to get Sim Pauly over to the bathroom quick enough when he’s got to read a novel.

You start out as a jobless Sim in a modest home with a tad bit of money. It’s up to you to then form your Sim’s life. I gave mine such traits as shy and calm, and I plan to be that way as long as possible. As you play, Wishes pop up randomly–these are kind of like in-game Achievements in that they are specific tasks (example: sleep in another Sim’s bed). There are 75 in all to do…which definitely adds to the time-wasting quality here.

At this point, I spent all my money on a coffee pot and better kitchen table. Now my fridge is broken, and I don’t have the cash money to buy a repair kit. So I did some fishing (caught two catfish!), and applied for a job at the local quickmarket. Haven’t shown up yet to work. My neighbors think I’m a bit creepy. And , just like me, Sim Pauly seems to never not be hungry. Greaaaaaat…

Oh, and here’s what the game looks like if you were as curious as I was:

But yeah, I don’t foresee myself playing this a lot in my free time. I have the Nintendo DS for handheld gaming, but if I’m ever stuck somewhere and need to desperately get my mind off one thing and onto another, this should do the trick just fine. Also, I’m gonna try my bestest to set Sim Pauly on fire in the kitchen, in honor of nostalgia, as well as an excuse to blog about it on Grinding Down.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to arrive with a new engine

Will a lot of people be getting married on November 11, 2011 (11/11/11) or buying Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? Well, I think I know my answer…

But yeah. This new entry in the Elder Scrolls series was just announced over the weekend at some videogame award thingy that I didn’t watch. However, many already speculated that a fifth game was in the works. I mean, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was a huge hit; how does one not follow up on it? I personally think it’s a good thing that it’s taken five years (Oblivion came out in 2006 for the Xbox 360) to come into the public view. A lot has changed in terms of gaming prowess, and a lot is seemingly going to change as Bethesda is reporting that Skyrim is not going to be running on its infamous Gamebyro engine. Instead, it’s using a brand new one, and let’s quote a dude here:

“We can now confirm that the TES V: Skyrim engine is all-new. And it looks fantastic.” – Nick Breckon, community manager at Bethesda

This is good. Very good. The Gamebyro engine, which fueled Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas, is definitely showing its age. It’s been showing its faults and glitches for many years, and the time for change is upon us. I can naturally only hope that this new engine is in the same vision of Gamebyro, but more beautiful, more capable, more durable. First-person RPGs are all about seeing the world all at once, and when that world is a fantasy world, a place lush with flowers and trees and rocky hills and blazing sunsets, it’s vital that the system can handle everything. I have to also wonder if the fighting/magic system will get an overhaul–I hope it does.

Nonetheless, we have a bit of a wait. So while we all consider how the skill system will work or how X will do Y to Z, we can check out the teaser trailer below:

Dragons! Take that, Dragon Age!

The Worst Box Art of 2010

If only everything in the world was beautiful. Alas, not all can claim such a stature. Especially not videogames. So I came up with a small handful of 2010 videogames with horrible box art, and you can see my delightful picks over at The First Hour.

Go read and tell me which one wins the ultimate Frown Crown!

Don’t forget to ::make beeping noise::, ED-E

It is with great frustration and disappointment that I make this announcement: I’ve dropped ED-E as a companion in Fallout: New Vegas. Not that I wanted to; the blasted thing worked hard as heck to make me hate it, and hate it in a way not like the opposite of love it, because I do love it, especially the sounds it oozes during battle, but it has to stay with me long enough to find battle, and that became a frequent problem after awhile. I hate ED-E because it is constantly getting “lost.” What does that mean? Well…

When you take on a companion in Fallout: New Vegas, you gain a special perk. ED-E’s gives you a longer range for spotting enemies, as well as targeting Nightkin in V.A.T.S. It’s a good one, especially when tag-teamed with a sniper like Boone. Anyways, ED-E likes to trail behind and alert me to dangers, but sometimes–and by sometimes I mean nine times out of ten–ED-E gets stuck on a piece of landscape or ends up unmovable. I’ve tried to talk to it, get it motivated, but alas…nothing. And then I’ll fast travel, and only Boone will come along. Yet ED-E’s perk is still activated. It’s frustraging, especially during the last few quests in which I was relying on it to help kill a hive of cazadors. Finding ED-E again is a guessing game; I’ve found it inside Lucky 38’s casino once, another time I had to go back to Primm, and another it just randomly came back to the party after several fast travels.

So, the little flying bot that couldn’t…is gone. And Rex, the cyber-dog, is in. Not a huge fan of the dog (as it’s not a huge fan of Jareth and his hat collection), but we’ll see how him and Boone work together as I close in on the…whatever the end battle thing is gonna be.

Hopefully, all above problems (and more) will be fixed with the upcoming patch, which has hopes of doing a number of good things. Such as:

• Companions now show up as waypoints on the map
• Companions will always fast travel with you, unless told to wait or sent away
• Fix: DLC error/save corruption
• Fix: Entering the strip after Debt Collector causes crash and autosave corruption
• Fix: Using Mojave Express dropbox can cause DLC warnings
• Crafting menu now filters valid (bright) recipes to the top of the list
• Weathered pistol no longer glitches when applying mods

Map waypoints for companions is going to be super sweet. So long as it works, naturally.

Don’t judge Doritos Crash Course by the Doritos part

The holidays are almost here, and even the Xbox LIVE Marketplace is celebrating with gifts by giving gamers TWO free games to download: Doritos Crash Course and Harm’s Way. I’ll talk about the latter in another post as I’d like to focus most of my time today on Doritos Crash Course, a game that is sure to surprise just about everyone.

Doritos Crash Course is a bouncy mix of Wipeout, American Gladiators, and ‘Splosion Man. Yes, all of those. Lumped together. With bonus Michael Jackson dance moves added in. Basically, you have to get your Xbox LIVE avatar from one side of the screen to the other by jumping over ledges, swinging from ropes, dodging hammers, and bouncing on trampolines, as well as avoiding a bunch of other typical platformer perils, the most nefarious being water balloons. Oh, how I loathe ’em.

Unlike Harm’s Way, which more or less hands you Achievements on a silver Achievement platter, the 12 in Doritos Crash Course do require commitment. As of this post, I’ve gotten three:

That’s Gotta Hurt (10G): Got smashed by 3 hammers in a row

Roadrunner (10G): Run at top speed when you’re about to wipe out

American Hero (20G): Finished the USA Levels

Hero of the Americas is right! Hope to get some more Achievements tonight. A few require your avatar to do some silly in-game tasks; these are easy things like swinging back and forth on a rope X number of times, but they definitely slow you down and then your chances at the gold medal disappear. So I will save ’em for later.

Played a round online against some Xboxers, as well as raced against Tara’s avatar via local multiplayer. It’s a surprisingly well done game, with the constant threat of failure on every jump, swing, float, and bounce always overhead, and the controls are really tight. One doesn’t need supreme platforming skills, but if you really struggled with ‘Splosion Man then this might not be for you. But you should still get it anyways. Why? The game is FREE, packed with Achievements, too. So, yeah. Download it and have fun watching yourself getting smacked into the TV’s screen or doing a little dance–the avatar animations are the best use of avatars so far.

On a more personal note, I don’t really like Doritos chips. Not since that day way back in 2008 that I got violently ill after having some ranch-flavored ones with my lunch. I’ve vowed to never eat ’em again ever since…so when I say this is the most fun I’ve had with Doritos in a long time, I really do mean it!

QWOP, the hardest game you’ll ever watch somone else play

Okay. So there’s a game called QWOP. Which might stand for Quit When Opening Program. Or maybe Quizzically Weak Obstinate Pinion. Actually, no. None of those. It’s called QWOP because that’s the keyboard keys you use to move a runner’s calves and thighs in order to get from one side of the screen to the other.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, according to the below video that’s spreading like wildfire, it’s pretty much impossible to do. Thankfully, it’s pretty much hilarious to watch someone try though. Enjoy!

Ragdolls have more anatomy than this!

A roundup of lately achieved Achievements

I’ve been adding to my Gamerscore as of late via multiple games, and I think now’s a good time to share with you some of my grand accomplishments. I’m talking about Achievements, naturally. Y’know, those little blooping bloops that pop up now and then when gaming on the Xbox 360 and doing something, um, specific. I love ’em. And hate ’em, too. Facebook lists my relationship with them as “complicated.”

Moving along…

From Borderlands, I pinged–or rather dinged–this one last night after clearing out three to four “trivial” difficulty quests:

Ding! Overleveled (15G): Reached Level 51

The game’s a bit dull now that I’m a pretty high level, playing solo, and on my second run through the same ol’ quests. I do sincerely doubt I’ll climb much higher with Roland, but maybe I should try playing as Lilith to mix things up for a bit.

From Fallout: New Vegas, I completed a number of quests recently, but only one was actually tied to an Achievement:

Return to Sender (20G): Completed Return to Sender

This quest was…a bit of a downer. In many ways. First, you have to find a bunch of ranger stations and tell them about fixing their radios. Then you have to go back to each ranger station again to ask about odd reports coming over their radios. This means a lot of fast traveling, which doubly means a lot of loading screen. I swear I’ve stared at that spinning roulette wheel so much that I’ve seen its very soul. And then it ends sadly with a cloud of confusion over Jareth’s head.

From Street Fighter IV, I got a couple Achievements recently as I continue the long climb to the top, but this one is a goodie:

Super Combo Master (10G): Perform 100 Super Combos.

Why is this a goodie? Weeeeeeeell…super combos are hard to perform! There. I said it. Now you know just how much of a fighting game n00b I am.

From Mini Ninjas, a not-so mini (ninja) amount of Gamerscore for a grindy Achievement:

Now You See Me… (40G): Defeat 100 enemies with stealth attack

And lastly, from Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, we have this one from Super Thunder Blade, a game I never played and never will play again:

Get to the Chopper (15G): Super Thunder Blade: Score over 1,500,000 points in the first level

This ol’ shoot and flying as frantic as possible game is horrible. You have a limited number of lives and must dodge an array of bullets–the biggest problem is the controls as moving the chopper out of death’s way is tougher than expected. But the Achievement’s name gets points, both from me and the Governator.

Okay, that’s all for now. Quite a roundup, eh?

Lara Croft is the new Lara Croft

It seems that nowadays one can’t sneeze without getting a little snot on a videogame series reboot. And strangely, Tomb Raider has had…um, multiple reboots, all within a relatively close timeframe. Tomb Raider: Underworld, available on most current gen consoles, gave the game a new polish and set of tools. And then there’s the recent release of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which was a download-only game that focused on co-op play and did not look like a traditional 3rd person action adventure. Each one tried to better the previous version, and yet none seemed to really capture that awe and wonder of exploration and isolation that the original PlayStation title did so effortlessly.

And so the world is trying again with…Tomb Raider!

Yup, that’s the name of the new, forthcoming game from Crystal Dynamics. Don’t get it confused with Tomb Raider. That‘s the original one. So, there’s Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider. Easy enough to set apart, right? Good, good. Oh, and Lara gets a makeover, or rather a dirtyover:

More details about this new rebirth will be revealed in the next issue of Game Informer. I’m interested to see what changes are made to rewrite Lara’s origins, and whether it’ll be faithful to the original aim of the series and not an Uncharted clone, which, funnily enough, is in itself a Tomb Raider wannabe. Time will tell. Bonus points: bow and arrows are badass.

It should really be called New Coin Battle Mario Bros.

New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Wii is all about co-op play, as well as co-op murder rampages spawned from the nine-times-out-of-ten frustrating co-op play. But that’s actually only accurate towards traditional co-op. Let me explain further.

Recently, Tara and I visited her brother and played some New Super Mario Bros together. He was Mario, and Tara and I each played as the mushroom dudes. We picked a few levels, and it was clear that we were not destined to get to the flagpole together. Maybe one could make it, but not all of us. We ended up hitting each other with thrown turtle shells or knocking each other down death-holes. Sometimes power-ups would get stolen or friends left behind. It was especially tough on levels that moved, especially ones in the clouds where timing jumps was crucial to survival. Having your co-op partner blocking your way never helped. Eventually, we just gave up on all of this and switched over to the Coin Battle co-op thingy.

In this, the goal was not necessarily to make it to the end, but rather to collect as many coins as possible. Once all players were dead…or all hit the flagpole, coins were counted up and the player with the most won that “round.” We set an attainable goal of winning 11 rounds, and went right to it. Well, first, I switched over to Luigi, but otherwise we went right to it!

Coin Battle can be described in one word: murder.

Yup. Murder is key. Pick up once-your-friend Mario, throw him down a hole, and steal all the coins he was after. Then, if you got more than everyone else, kill yourself and win the round. It was amazing to see strategies forming on the spot; for instance, getting Yoshi can be an extremely winning tactic. That dino you ride can swallow up another player in his mouth until you are comfortable enough to spit them out where they most certainly don’t want to go. This Coin Battle game turned out to be a blast, chaotic as anything, and I think it ended like so:

Sean: 11 wins
Paul: 10 wins
Tara: 4 wins

I’ll win next time, I swear!

But yeah, I have a hard time believing that anyone can actually play successfully the main game with co-op partners. And if they can, well…they deserve a medal.

Round one, fight–I mean, mash those buttons!

After getting some snazzy new haircuts on Black Friday, Tara and I headed over to GameStop to see if they had any crazy-as-crazy-gets deals. Well, they didn’t…just their usual “buy two used games, get one used game free” thing, and we’d been talking a bit about trying to find more two-player games for the Xbox 360 since it’s usually just me playing solo stuff like Fallout: New Vegas while she looks on earnestly. We browsed, I got hit on by an employee who was very impressed with my authentic Ravenclaw scarf, and then we left the store with three games in tow: Sonic’s Ultimate Game Collection, Street Fighter IV, and Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies.

Sonic’s UGC actually doesn’t have as many two-player games in it, but there’s a few good ones, such as all Sonic 2, Golden Axe, and all iterations of Streets of Rage. We played a bunch and got all nostalgic over the graphics and gameplay. Tara wanted a copy of DQIX for herself since each cartridge only has one save slot, and I was nowhere near ready to delete mine and make space; guess she’s seen me enjoying it a lot for over 85 logged hours now and suspects she’ll have a good time, too. Spoiler: she will! She’s gonna make me her priest character.

But we mostly decided on a new fighting game, as those are really easy to pick up and play together. I’m a big Tekken fan, much more than Street Fighter, but alas that series is still stuck on the PlayStation 3. We were not left with many other choices, and so we picked Street Fighter IV, not even bothering to “upgrade” to Super Street Fighter IV for like $10 more. Extra stages, colors, and characters are not that exciting in the end.

Early impressions of the game are that…well, it’s basically the same ol’ Street Fighter II we’ve all come to know and love, just with flashy graphics, some new moves, and really horrible cutscenes. I try to do special moves and cool throws, and Tara button-mashes her way to victory. We’re an amazing mix, and it’s a lot of fun–I’m looking forward to unlocking more characters though. To do that, however, one has to beat the Arcade mode with specific characters. That’s easy enough when you set the fights to Easiest difficulty, one round, and 30 seconds on the clock. Easy peasy…until Seth, that is. He’s the final boss, a sort of Dr. Manhattan wannabe with everyone’s special moves, and the spike in difficulty from him and the fight before is mountainous. Sometimes he clobbers me in a perfect round, and other times I can get a few hits in. My best strategy is to spam ranged attacks (like fireballs) and keep my distance. Which is why it is astounding to me that I was able to unlock this Achievement two difficulty levels higher:

Arcade Rat (20G): Clear Arcade Mode with 1 character on Medium or higher difficulty.

Not sure about a lot of the remaining Achievements. A lot involve grinding fights online. Hmm…

Oh, and we’re absolutely terrified of Rufus, but that’s an entire post in itself.