Games Completed in 2011, #10 – X-MEN Arcade

My mother absolutely loved Walt Disney World, and it seemed like no more than two to three years would pass in my youth before we’d drive down to sunny Florida from buggy New Jersey yet again to spend a week walking the parks, seeing the sights, and eating like royalty. We always stayed inside Walt Disney World, but rarely at the same resort, and for all intents and purposes of today’s post I’m going to be talking about the time we stayed at Disney’s Coronado Springs. I was definitely under ten years old then, but many details remain fuzzy. I do, however, remember there being an arcade at the resort, an arcade with air hockey and Pac-Man and, most importantly, an X-MEN Arcade cabinet. I think the game itself was just called X-MEN, but that can be rather misleading and generalizing so we’re tossing in arcade for good measure. So, this arcade…it used quarters, not tokens or playcards, truly a relic of the past. I never had to beg for change from my parents, and I have this sort of LOST-style flashback of myself running up to my mother on one of the bike paths, watching in boyish anticipation as she fished around in her vacation belly-bag, and pulled out a handful of quarters—all mine.

As a kid, I thought the X-Men were just the coolest. Nothing cooler than a team of crazy-looking superheroes fighting even crazier-looking supervillains, in fact. I had the comics, the collectible cards, the TV series recorded every Saturday morning. And if I had my way, I would totally have been born a Mutant. My power? A cross between Kitty Pryde and Colossus, which is funny if you know anything about their history together. I’d basically like to either phase through walls or simply bust through ’em. But yeah…videogames. The X-MEN Arcade cabinet always had a crowd thanks to its ability for six people to play at once. It was definitely the most popular cabinet at the resort’s arcade—at least in my eyes it was—but it was worth the wait.

X-MEN Arcade is the continuation of the plot from 1989’s Pryde of the X-Men, an animated film I watched so many times that the VHS tape eventually disintegrated, wherein the X-Men go after Magneto for kidnapping Professor Xavier and Shadowcat. Six characters are available to play as—Wolverine, Cyclops, Dazzler, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus—and each plays pretty much the same save for their special moves. I usually selected Nightcrawler because his superpower could easily clear the screen of enemies. However, I never completed the game in the arcade—didn’t have enough quarters, didn’t have enough other players to help out, didn’t have the skills to beat the Blob without using up all my lives. Many, many reasons. And I never did find another X-MEN cabinet back home in New Jersey, and so that was that. Other X-Men games came out, but none quite like the arcade version.

Jump ahead in time like Bishop to 2011, and I’m playing X-Men Arcade again. This time, it’s very different. It’s silly, it’s easy even on the highest difficulty setting, and it’s unbelievably short. I beat it twice so far. When I played the game in the arcade, I never got farther than beating Wendigo, and I was surprised to see there was only a couple more levels to go. You have unlimited continues, which seems weird, and each level is more or less the same: walk left to right, beat up every enemy, continue on until you hit the level’s boss. It’s a perfunctory brawler and bland, but because it’s the X-Men, I’m okay with that.

Last October, my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Walt Disney World. Amazingly, we stayed at Coronado Springs, too. Here’s us waiting for the bus:

The arcade is no longer located in the resort’s main building. Instead, it’s been moved over to one of the pool areas, and we did see signs for the arcade, but we just never got over to see it. The hot tub was too soothing, too comforting. I’d like to imagine that the X-MEN Arcade cabinet is still there, still eating quarters.

The XBLA version is both a port and completely different take on the game. Go in for nostalgia’s sake, and you’ll have a good time. Otherwise, it’s nothing amazing these days. However, the experience of playing it again some twenty years later means a lot to me. I just wish I could tell my mom how much.

Xtreme shopping sales on Xbox Live today

There’s some crazy deals happening on Xbox Live today for tons of games. Seriously, there’s a lot of content marked down, way too much for little ol’ me to type up, but Major Nelson has a good summary of it all.

Having only 400 Microsoft Space Bucks left over from when I recently purchased Torchlight (well, 410 if you wanna be specific), I figured I’d grab one game for a good price and be done with it. Then I started to peruse all the deals, and well…I caved. There’s also one-day only sales happening today, the day of fools, and I just couldn’t pass one up at the discounted price. I purchased another 1600 Microsoft Space Bucks and have now downloaded five arcade games in the past 12 hours. Check ’em out:

A Kingdom for Keflings – Marked down by 50% to 400 Microsoft Space Bucks. I don’t really know what this game is…an RTS with your Avatars? Interested to find out even if I’m probably late to the multiplayer aspects and all that.

3D Ultra Minigolf 2 – Marked down by 50% to 400 Microsoft Space Bucks. Golfing season approaches, but one probably couldn’t tell considering it is SNOWING outside right now. Maybe this will help pass the time.

Costume Quest – Marked down to 600 Microsoft Space Bucks. I’ve heard many great things about this bite-size RPG. It looks freakin’ adorable to say the least. Might feel a little weird to play a Halloween game in April, but that’s not enough to stop me from charging forward.

X-MEN – Marked down by some insane percentage to a mere 200 Microsoft Space Bucks. WELCOME TO DIE!

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (Special Edition) – Marked down by 50% to 400 Microsoft Space Bucks. I missed out on an entire generation of point-and-click adventures, and this one seems like a fun time. I like that it can be switched between new art and the original screens. Hope it’s not too confusing since I never played the previous title. Oh well. I’m sure the Internet could help me there.

I normally don’t splurge like this, but honestly, these were some great deals. I’m most excited about Costume Quest and seeing what I’ve missed out on in Monkey Island 2.

If you too are interested some of these titles, you’d better act fast. This foolish day is almost done.

30 Days of Gaming, #5 – Character you feel most like

This is gonna be a tough one, Grinding Down readers.

Mass Effect‘s Joker, real name Jeff Moreau, suffers from brittle bone disease, which is more scientifically called osteogenesis imperfecta. It’s the sort of disease that steers your life, causing extreme brittleness in the bones. Ultimately, Joker was born with severe fractures to his legs, and, as an adult now, he can barely walk. That didn’t stop him from excelling at flight school though and becoming a pilot. The Normandy‘s bridge is his home, his heart.

I don’t suffer from osteogenesis imperfecta. I do, however, have a bad left knee prone to popping out of place, and I walked on my tippy-toes for the longest time as a young child, but other than that, Joker and I are far from physically alike. Save for the beard. We both have sexy beards. I’m not gonna be a beardhole and claim that mine is the better. You can make that call yourself. But yeah, we’re total beard buds.

So, Joker and I are not alike physically. Wherein our sameness sits is in how we interact with people. Seth Green voices Joker, and 97.6% of Green’s acting work has been in comedy. He’s got a funny voice, a funny way of replying, good snark, all that. It’s natural then that Joker is, like Firefly‘s Wash, a funny pilot, often cracking jokes and commenting light-heartedly about Commander Shepard’s actions outside of the spaceship. He’s both comic relief and a rock that keeps everybody soaring safely through the galaxy. Depending on how you play Mass Effect, that’s all he could be, too. Paul Shepard, however, was a good guy, an everyman, and took the time to talk to Joker, to listen to the sad story of his upbringing, to understand where the bitterness lining his jokes came from. And he kept coming back after every mission, to include him, to hear his thoughts…to make sure he was doing a-okay.

I can be sarcastic; I can make nearly anyone laugh; I can bottle everything up and do my job–because it’s my job–and resent things I have absolutely no control over, and I can dance around topics with the swiftest feet this side of the Atlantic Ocean. We both wield humor as armor and wear it well, fully, careful to show no gaps. Unfortunately, we don’t need to wear it all the time, but lack the strength to undress ourselves, to show our companions and comrades who we are, to sit quiet and still, in the buff, brittle and scared, ripe for the reaping. With his weakened legs, he can only go so far; with my damaged heart, so can I.

All Achievements Achieved – The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

Mmm…pie.

And that random observation transitions nicely into the deliciously cool fact that I finally unlocked all the Achievements in The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom over the weekend. I had, for some time, had most of them unlocked, but one was constantly keeping its distance, constantly pesky. Really, really pesky. Like, gee, solve every single challenge ever made if you love pie so much. See here:

Greedy Bottom (40G): Completed all recording and time challenges in the bonus shorts.

Greedy bottom indeed. The bonus levels in The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom require you to solve the puzzle using a set number of clones and within a given time limit. Most often, you have to play the levels twice to get these, but I did grab both of them at once every now and then. The world 5 bonus levels were definitely the trickiest, as they often required six clones to get six pies, meaning if you messed up just once, you lost your shot and had to restart. This, inevitably, got very frustrating, and I had to use an online guide for several of them, which hurt more than you know.

Truthfully, I’m kind of glad to be all said and done with this puzzler. The music can become extremely grating, especially after you’ve failed to steal that last pie for the nineteenth time.

Have a ★, Mr. Winterbottom. Just don’t eat it.

Tiny text is the plan, the plan is death

The Xbox 360 version of Torchlight was my breaking point, and so I wrote a little editorial about tiny text in videogames, which is one of the worst new gaming trends currently invading this industry, and you can read my sophisticated rantings over at The First Hour. I’ve also linked the image above, which will hopefully help you with your clicking.

And thanks goes to the late and great James Tiptree, Jr. for help with the article’s title.

So, yeah, read on. Don’t worry; the font size over at The First Hour is perfectly fine. Let me know what you think. I can’t really imagine there’s many people out there in the world that actually enjoy squinting at their TV screens, but hey…some people are oddjobs.

Take the Dead Money and run

Man, Dead Money, the first DLC add-on for Fallout: New Vegas, had the potential to be great, to sit somewhere between Fallout 3’s Broken Steel and Point Lookout in terms of quality and content for the right price point. Alas, it does not get to sit on such a pedestal, but rather in a dark, desolate corner where it will wait to be slowly poisoned to death by an unforgiving toxic cloud.

My first go at exploring the canorous Sierra Madre and its nefarious surroundings did not go well. The DLC is tough, like end-assault-on-the-dam tough, and seems to slant more towards stealthy players that use melee and unarmed weapons, as well as having a high survival skill. Alas, my initial playthrough character relied too much on guns and stimpacks to make it very far. I quit out to an old save before even leaving the Villa, which is where roughly half of the DLC takes place. I would not experience the second half for awhile, waiting until my second playthrough character was high enough in skills and levels to tackle Father Elijah’s cruel maze once again. Having already played this part made it much easier to progress through, and there were new surprises here. The only thing I did differently was let Dog out of his cage, keeping the voice locked away inside; he ate a lot of Ghost People, except for that one time when he glitched across the screen and ate a trash can instead. Sigh.

Once inside the actual Sierra Madre casino, the Courier needs to locate the three companions used to help get inside and…deal with them. You may interpret that any way you want. To spoil, I ended up murdering Dog/God and Dean, but kept Christine alive. Zelda probably felt some kind of connection with her, I guess. Only after you’ve dealt with them can you sneak beneath the casino to find Father Elijah’s vault and the secrets its holds. And sadly, it’s nothing too exciting.

Each of Fallout 3’s DLC gave the player something to look forward to. Operation Anchorage strayed too far from the path of familiar gameplay, but rewarded the player greatly at the end with some unique weapons and armor; The Pitt plays home to some cool melee weapons like the auto-ax; Broken Steel introduced a new level cap, harder Super Mutant enemies, and removed the game’s ending; Point Lookout gave players a huge new place to explore; and Mothership Zeta, despite its linearity, showcased some fine alien tech. You will most likely leave Dead Money for the Mojave Wasteland empty-handed. There’s no amazingly unique weapons or gear to be found here, and much of the secrets inside Father Elijah’s vault is moot, weighing too much to be properly carried out. A dang shame. Seems like the greatest thing Dead Money gives players is a new level cap of 35, and they don’t even need to visit the Sierra Madre to get it.

Dead Money is not fun to play. Yup, it’s true. There is always something to stress over: broken limbs, lack of food, poison toxic cloud, Ghost People, setting off traps, crazy deadly holograms, radios and speakers setting off your explosive collar. It’s a hefty list, and I’m sure one Obsidian guy was like, “Hey, do you think we could throw in some Deathclaws, too?” I felt immense relief upon returning to Arizona’s colorful sky, and stood still outside for some time, taking it in, and not just because I had to wait for the game to recount, one by frakking one, every single thing it was adding back into my inventory. I couldn’t fast travel to Gun Runners because I was overweight, but the walk there did a lot of good for Zelda, and the air had never tasted sweeter.

Oh, and I saved and then reloaded to get both of these Achievements at the end because I truly never want to go back to Dead Money:

Cash Out (30G): Confronted Father Elijah in the Sierra Madre’s Vault

Safety Deposit Box (40G): Trapped Father Elijah in the Sierra Madre’s Vault

The Courier, signing off!

All my greatest critics in the Mojave Wasteland think I’m a hack

Still working my way through Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money. I’ve realized one reason why this DLC is so dang slow, and that is because, if you’re playing anything like I am, you are sneaking all over the Villa, careful to scan every square of ground for traps, careful to hear that terrible beeping, careful to not end up taking on two or more Ghost People at once by yourself. I can’t ever really imagine moving fast through this one, and I even know what to expect (at least for the first half of things), but I will forever err to the side of caution.

Anyways, thanks to some locked doors and unfriendly turret systems, I was able to get this little pinger:

Hack the Mojave (15G): Hacked 25 terminals.

Woo, science! Actually, nah to that. I never tag science as a skill, and only did it because, just like in Fallout 3, knew there would be an Achievement tied to it. And thank goodness this one wasn’t just a carbon copy of the Achievement in the former game. That was called Data Miner and required the player to hack 50 terminals. Fifty…I swear I don’t even think that many exist in the Mojave Wasteland (and Sierra Madre section). It really felt like slim pickings in terms of hacking computers. At least the science skill came in handy a few more times during my playthrough, but otherwise…it’s not very exciting. And I kind of wished Obsidian had updated the minigame for hacking a terminal; it’s too easy to just save before you hack in case you mess up, and obviously they don’t love it immensely otherwise there would’ve been a whole ton more throughout our travels.

Well, in the end, that’s another Achievement done for Fallout: New Vegas. Now to, uh, simultaneously confront and trap a certain someone in a certain something. Maybe the science skill will help me again? Maybe, baby.

Games Completed in 2011, #9 – Torchlight

Back in the day, ranging somewhere between my senior year of high school and my sophomore year of college, I played a lot of Diablo and Diablo II. However, I never beat either game, and constantly restarted new characters. My absolute favorite aspect of these now legendary dungeon-crawlers was organizing my inventory. See, Diablo and Diablo II strived for a more realistic inventory system, meaning if you couldn’t fit it in your bag with your dozen of other goodies, well…you’re not taking it with you. Simple as that. Here, let me show you:

Oh man. That image is beyond delicious. It’s like a puzzle minigame!

Anyways, I mention this because Torchlight, despite being heavily influenced by its Diablo big brothers, does not support this kind of inventory. At least not in the XBLA version. PC players get to enjoy this deliciousness:

Instead, us Xbox 360 doods get lists. Lists after lists after lists. Many of which are unreadable. And that makes it difficult to even determine if your character is fully armed. Oh boy.

What’s the story? Well, it all revolves around a mysterious ore called Ember, which is the essence of magic, as well as the keystone in alchemy. Deep below the small excuse for a town called Torchlight, miners dig, searching for the coveted ore. However, these miners quickly discover that there’s more below Torchlight than shiny, special rocks: a dangerous labyrinth of caverns and ruined civilizations, brimming with monstrous creatures. Evil begins to surface, and a champion is needed. Players can pick between three classes–Destroyer, Alchemist, or Vanquisher–and then begin slaughtering evil enemies, collecting loot, defeating bosses, and progressing further below the town. It’s a pretty typical storyline, with 100% shallow characters; in fact, the most creative character exists only to hand out sidequests, and yes, I’m talking about Trill-Bot 4000, that one-man band/aspiring bard/robot. Why can’t I have him as a pet?!

Like its Diablo brothers, Torchlight‘s greatest appeal is its loot. Killing special enemies drops a ton of gear, most of which will need identifying scrolls to truly get, and it’s an addicting thing. Grabbing loot, selling loot, grabbing loot, harboring unwearable loot for later–it’s truly what drove me forward, the promise of an even better staff for my Alchemist. What’s also nice is that, much like Dragon Quest IX, you can see everything your character is wearing or wielding, which gives reason for trying out a lot of odd gear. The graphics are colorful and cartoony, taking a page from World of Warcraft, and they seem right at place in Torchlight‘s less than serious world.

And now let’s discuss what I passionately disliked about Torchlight. We’ll start small. Whenever your pet loses all its health, it will flee from battle until it heals itself. You know this is happening because the voiceover dude goes, “Your pet is fleeing.” He says it even flatter than I’ve typed it. The problem is, sometimes your party is surrounded by enemies, meaning your pet is fleeing from one group to another, and the voiceover guy will just not shut up. “Your pet is fleeing,” he says, and then nine seconds later he says it again. Oh, is it? WELL, FLEE ALREADY THEN! GO AWAY! Sheesh.

I also discovered a sharp increase in difficulty from the Black Palace (levels 31-34) to when you have to fight the final boss in the Lair of Ordak (level 35). Playing on Normal difficulty, I have never died until then, and rarely had to use health potions as my Alchemist knew a Heal All spell which did the job just fine. However, towards the end, I found myself guzzling bottles of red faster than probably possible.

Lastly, my biggest gripe about Torchlight is its love for tiny text. Most of the dialogue between characters is readable, but when a weapon or special piece of gear comes jam-packed with abilities, the text drops to really tiny, making it hard to figure out what is what. Does that armor require my defense skill to be 27 or 29? It gets even worse if you try to compare it with another piece of armor in your inventory. I ended up selling most of my gear because I couldn’t read what it did. At the top left corner of all items is either a green dot, a red dot, or both. Green means it is greatly better than what you’re currently using; red is worse; and green plus red means it’s a mix of both. I used this as my guideline on what to wear, what to sell. A shame really, as I know I missed out on a lot of strong purple-colored loot.

Hate tiny text, too? Good news for you then! I’m working on an article about it for The First Hour. Stay tuned, fellow blind people.

So, is Torchlight worth getting on consoles? I’d say no. It’s a good game, but better suited for a mouse and keyboard, as well as a screen mere centimeters from your face.

March 2011’s flotsam and jetsam

It seems like, at least a few times every year, I am a little overwhelmed with multiple games at once and little time to play ’em to their fullest. Such is March 2011 then, a month where I’m playing three to four new titles, as well as working on older games or miscellaneous purchases. Throw into the fight the fact that I’m also scrambling to get Supertown minicomics drawn and printed for MoCCA 2011, and well, yeah, there’s a lot to juggle. Here’s kind of a short rundown on what I’m currently playing:

Torchlight (XBLA)

Right. Diablo II on a console, but much more cartoony and fast. I’m digging it, and normally by now I’d have written up some early impressions of the title, but the truth is that I’m almost at the end, meaning all my big boy thoughts will have to wait for the final review. Still, I like a lot of it except for one big caveat–the tiny font size. And when a game stands on a mechanic such as loot, being able to read and compare magical spears is vital. I’m pretty sure I’ve sold a lot of excellent gear simply because I couldn’t read what it did or its requirements for wielding.

Pokémon White (Nintendo DS)

Only have two gym badges so far, but that’s okay. It’s not a race, no matter what my rivals say. I like finding a good team of ‘mon and then training them to be, roughly, around the same levels. Right now I’m rocking Victini, Snivy, Timburr, and Audino, and the other two spots haven’t been truly filled yet. I’m giving that trash bag Pokémon a chance though since many others probably won’t. Its Sludge move is pretty good. But man, oh man…it’s a trash bag?

Radiant Historia (Nintendo DS)

I was stuck for awhile in this one, unsure of which timeline node to jump back to, but Greg Noe steered me in the right direction. Now I’m working my way through the Closed Mine in hopes of learning a sword dancing move from somebody to help Stocke progress with a circus act in the alternate timeline. Yeah, it can be a bit confusing. Still, the combat is fantastic. Really do need to schedule more time with this one.

Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money (Xbox 360)

Having now beaten this game twice, my second character, an evil woman named Zelda that loved hitting enemies with s-weapons only–sticks and shovels and sledges–was perfect for attempting the DLC add-on again. My first fly with Dead Money didn’t go very well. But it’s going much smoother now that I can handle the Ghost People more effectively, as well as heal better from radiated food. Just finished gathering Dog, Dean, and the mute. Now to get each of them where they need to be…

Penumbra Overture (Mac)

Started this on a whim, and have only played a wee bit of it, but I dig its mood and atmosphere and the way opening a drawer feels. Seriously. It feels good, true, like I’m actually doing it myself and not with a mouse. I would have loved to see this technique used more in games like Fallout, as it makes searching a room actually feel like searching. There’s a special kind of warmth that comes from opening countless empty drawers and then opening one to find batteries there, yours for the taking.

FlingSmash (Nintendo Wii)

Every week, usually Friday, sometimes Saturday night, Tara and I go visit her brother to play some videogames. We call it “games night,” and we focus mainly on all things Wii (but I swear to teach him Munchkin before too long). Wii Sports Resorts is so much fun with a good group, but two players had to share one remote, and I got tired of this after several weeks. So I purchased FlingSmash, which is basically a Wii MotionPlus controller ($40) with a game thrown in for good measure ($10). The game is just an excuse to shake the remote around, but I hope to examine it more closely soon.

::deep exhale::

Whew. Too many games. There’s the possibility that I’m not even writing about more.

Also, a friendly reminder that by the end of this month I’ll also be picking up Monster Tale and a Nintendo 3DS…so yeah, more to come. Woe is me? Naaaaaaaaaah.

All Achievements Achieved – Fallout 3

Gee, that didn’t take long, right? I mean, I only got my first Achievement in Fallout 3 on October 14, 2009…and my final one last night. Let’s not actually count those days up. Instead, let’s talk about why it took me so long to unlock everything Fallout 3 had to offer Achievement-wise because none of the 72 ding-pings are terribly difficult to get–they just require time and, sadly, online guides.

For the longest while, I had unlocked just about everything but five Achievements: the four for playing as a neutral karma player, and the one for finding 100 steel ingots in The Pitt DLC. Again, nothing terribly difficult, but very time-consuming, especially when more and more new games were coming out. Did I really want to play Fallout 3, a game I really do enjoy and love despite its clunkiness, for a third freakin’ time? Well, no. So I didn’t go at it with the same ferocity as previous playthroughs, playing only a little bit at a time. Neutral karma is a juggling act, and not as easy to maintain as straight good or evil, constantly requiring me to realign my character as I inched closer to those magical Achievement levels of 8, 14, 20, and 30. Actually, not for 30. I got the Achievement for level 30 neutral karma another way, one I’m not proud of.

Moving on…I found myself many hours later with only one to go: the dreaded Mill Worker. This requires the player to locate and turn in 100 steel ingots to Everett, the Mill’s foreman and a lazy one at that. Sounds easy, but it’s not. The 100 steel ingots are scattered across a decent sized map brimming with trogs and wildmen, and one can quickly become confused as to how many they’ve collected and where they’ve already looked. I’ve tried twice before during playthroughs one and two, but was unsuccessful. This time, however, I had a strategy: I wouldn’t trade in any ingots until I had them all.

You’re required to turn in 10 as part of a quest, meaning I needed to have 90 in my inventory to truly know I had found them all. This also meant opening up 90 lb of space, since each ingot weighs 1 lb. I dropped a bunch of armor and set off to find those lucky pieces of steel. It didn’t take long to find 85 of them, but then I was at a lost for the remaining five. Didn’t I already look there? Would I have to go back through the whole map, corner by corner, space by space? Ah, no. These five were right under my nose; well, to be more precise, right behind a fence. After I found them all, I went back to Everett, turned them in 10 by 10, got rewarded with prizes I didn’t care about, and unlocked this:

Mill Worker (20G): Found All 100 Steel Ingots

Then I put the auto-ax against Everett’s face and gave him a haircut.

And that’s that. Have a ★, Fallout 3. You earned it.