No service for you!

EA is shutting down online servers for its older and less popular games, such as The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II, Sims Carnival, and a great number of sports titles for various systems. The full list and killswitch dates can be found over at Giant Bomb.

I don’t own or play any of these games; this all-consuming shutdown does not affect me.

And yet it does.

I’ve always been a single-player game kind of fella. Online gaming is something that I never thought I’d get into, and so I didn’t. A few times during college, after working out a lot of firewall kinks, I would play some Command & Conquer: Red Alert late at night with my best friend a few states away, but other than that…didn’t ever see the point. I also never had a gaming PC so-to-say or any consoles that thrived on online gaming, such as an Xbox at that time. Just a PlayStation 2, and I think you needed a special degree to get that hooked up to the Interwebz. There were, of course, a few games I would’ve loved to try playing online, namely Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Diablo II, but the stars were not meant to align.

So, how does server shutdowns for games I don’t even play affect me? It only makes me more bitter and cautious towards online gaming. I want games to last forever, and nowadays there’s a heavy focus on social gaming (hello, Facebook!)–and without actual people, there’s nothing to play. That kind of perspective is dangerous and insulting, especially for hardened RPG fanatics that have spent countless hours alone grinding characters to perfection. In fact, some games’ multiplayer trumps single-player campaigns in terms of length and content and love. Boo to that. I’ve dabbled in GTA IV‘s online activity and found it bland and annoying; so far, the only current online experience I’ve had that was pretty successful was in Borderlands. I purposely steer clear of online, multiplayer-heavy games, and with the constant threat of server shutdown, it seems, to me, a pointless thing to invest in.

Goodbye, EA Sports FIFA Manager 10. I hardly knew ya.

Fallout: New Vegas – Dead Money DLC is more like deadweight

I really wish I could properly review the first bite of DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, but alas…I cannot. Why? Well, I was unfortunately stuck in the DLC at an unbeatable section with truly little hope to hope for and had to reload an old save from many hours ago (and levels, grrr). Dropped from level 30 to level 26 in a matter of seconds. I absolutely hate doing that as it totally ruins my perception of roleplaying; undoing all my actions, changing my stats and gear and perks yet again, retconning, allowing me to know forthwith what could and could not potentially happen in future locales before I even get there…that’s just not right. But I had to do it. I’ve not yet beaten the main game with my first character, and if I hadn’t made the early save slot, I’d have lost everything.

For shame.

But let me set up Dead Money first. Because, storywise, it’s pretty potent, sinking its hooks in right from the start. The DLC starts like all previous Fallout 3 add-ons, with a mysterious radio signal leading you to a specific location. In this one’s case, it takes you to a hidden bunker where your character is gassed, stripped of all possessions, and forced to wear an explosive slave collar. You wake up near the Sierra Madre hotel before the hologram of Father Elijah. He gives you the big mission: break into the Sierra Madre casino, get into the vault, and pull off a heist. You’ll need to recruit three others for the Ocean’s 11 job, and they also have exploding slave collars on them. They die; you die. The first part of the big mission is to round up the companions; the second part is to open the hotel; and the third is, I assume, raiding it for whatever good loot is available.

I was only able to complete the first two parts…never even making it inside the Sierra Madre. What a crock of Blanco mac and cheese!

The problem with the Dead Money DLC is its gameplay. In the same fashion that Fallout 3’s first add-on of Operation Anchorage was a completely different direction (Call of Duty wannabe), Dead Money is more like a survival horror game with a heavy emphasis on melee and unarmed weaponry. That foretold bad news for my character who, going in at level 26, never put a single point into melee, unarmed, or survival. I’m a stealthy guns dude. The villa around the Sierra Madre is filled with traps, a poisonous cloud, and Ghost People, who are very hard to kill without weapons that dismember. Also, health supplies, ammo, and food are very limited, and the Mojave Wasteland caps currency are tossed aside for Sierra Madre casino chips which, while at first seem bountiful, quickly lessen. So yeah…I got screwed pretty fast.

I’m probably not gonna try this DLC again with my current character. Sadly, it’s the sort of add-on very specific for a type of character, one I’m not ready to build. I can only imagine how impossible survival the villa is in Hardcore mode. No thanks.

That said, God/Dog is a marvelous companion, with topline writing. I wish Dead Money let you take them back with you to the Mojave Wasteland, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that in the last chunk of the heist mission some vital decisions about your comrades-in-collars are made. I’m currently now working on some other side missions like Crazy, Crazy, Crazy and trying to recruit Raul as my last main companion. If anything,for 800 Microsoft Points, Dead Money does boost the level cap from 30 to 35, which will give me a bigger excuse to explore before trying to protect the Hoover Dam from destruction.

Grinding Down and the limelight

So, just before 2010 was kicked to the curb by the spicy and brand new 2011, I had a nice surprise thrown my way: Grinding Down got featured on the front page of WordPress.com! (In fact, as of this post’s writing, it’s still being featured. Go, sad pug, go!)

And just in case you are reading this post long in the future and a bunch of different blogs are being featured, here’s a quick screencap:

So freakin’ awesome.

And thanks to everyone that clicked “like” for the post, left a comment, or subscribed to my wee little gaming blog. That sure was kind of you. You certainly deserve some Princess Peach love for that! I have a lot of videogames to catch up on during this new year, and I hope to have a good time here talking about them, whether it’s ranting over Fallout: New Vegas‘s first bit of DLC or Epic Mickey‘s horrible excuse for a camera to praising the guys and gals behind Super Scribblenauts for actually listening to customer complaints and then going about fixing them. Hope you all stick around and join in on the discussions.

The Top 10 Games I Didn’t Get to Play in 2010

Well, another year is coming to a close, and this is the time I like to look back and see which games I wanted to play, but really never got to. This is because I’m usually always late to the party and am willing to wait out big blockbuster releases until they drop in price or GOTY editions are released so I don’t have to scrounge around for miscellaneous add-ons and such. Plus, I mostly play RPGs, meaning that I could potentially play a single game for a very long time (i.e., Fallout: New Vegas).

In short, 2010 was quite a year for videogames. Lots of AAA titles, lots of indie tryouts, lots of RPGs for handheld devices. I didn’t play many of them. Trust me, I wanted to. Oh so many of them. But there’s only so many hours in a day, as well as so many dollar bills in a bank account. Thankfully, I do have some Christmas money for GameStop, but I think I’m gonna actually save it for Radiant Historia, which comes out in February 2011 and looks to be right up my alley. Yay, another RPG to sink my teeth into!

And so, without any further fluffing, here’s the 10 games I didn’t get to play in 2010:

10. Shantae: Risky’s Revenge

Classic platformer gameplay and some of the most gorgeous looking animation work for a videogame–supposedly that’s what Shantae: Risky’s Revenge is. It initially didn’t jump out as me as something I’d like for my Nintendo DS collection, but I’ve seen its name constantly referenced over the last few months, in a good way, and now I’m pretty put off that I didn’t seek it out sooner. If anything, the Super Metroid-like map in the bottom right corner is appetizing.

9. Final Fantasy XIII

Now here’s something ironical. Final Fantasy XIII was one of my most anticipated games for 2010, and then it came out and I completely paid no attention to its existence for awhile. When I did start to read up on it, the news wasn’t good. It seems like the game didn’t start to get “good” until about 17 hours in, and that it was linear, town-less, and uninventive. A shame really, as I always used to want to play the next Final Fantasy game no matter what; going forward, I’m gonna have to be more cautious with the series.

8. Red Dead Redemption

I love the freedom and span of Grand Theft Auto IV. That said, I absolutely hate the story, its characters, and the frustrating-as-all-gets mission structure. A switch to the Wild West had me from the get-go, and it seems like a lot of cowboys and cowgirls really enjoyed riding horses and shootin’ vermin. Oh well. Maybe in 2011.

7. Heavy Rain

Sure, I’m not thrilled about a game that is brimming with mundane actions, but I love the suspense around the edges and the weight of one’s decisions and how they factor into the murder mystery slowly unfolding. Granted, a stupid message board poster already spoiled the game for me, but I’d still love to play it and see for myself if everything clicks.

6. The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest

Shut up. I love anything LOTR-related.

5. Fable III

Fable III, like Final Fantasy XIII, was also a game I was eagerly anticipating for this year. Alas, it was released right around the same time as Fallout: New Vegas, and between those two, I’d rather shoot ghouls in the face than fart on citizens. And so the kingdom of Albion will have to wait.

4. Costume Quest

A bite-size RPG? And I didn’t gobble it up? For shame! Granted, this was released around the time I had just gotten married and gone on my honeymoon. It’s about kids on Halloween dressing up and turning into their actual costumes when it comes time to do battle. A fun, quirky idea, and it’s also been getting some DLC love as of late, which is good for the longterm.

3. Alan Wake

It’s been awhile since I’ve played a scary game, and so Alan Wake would be right up that alley. It’s also about writing. Well, a writer writing. A writer writing about a writer also writing about a writer. I think. I don’t know. This is just stuff I’ve heard. But I heard it’s pretty good. Reminds me a bit of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones, but only loosely.

2. Donkey Kong Country Returns

2010 was heavy on nostalgia, giving us games like the retro Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game, as well as updated versions of Kirby and Donkey Kong Country. As an SNES kid, I was a Donkey Kong Country junkie. I played the levels again and again, learning all their secrets, trying hard to get that elusive 100% (or was it like 103%?). And so this new version looks to be much of the same, if a bit more difficult. Would be a perfect game for Tara and I to tackle together.

1. Mass Effect 2

This being #1 on the list will either make Greg Noe very happy or very angry. He loves his massive effects. Anyways, I did play through Mass Effect once, enjoying its story and world. The sequel came out and was instantly loved by fans. It seems as BioWare knocked it out of the park galaxy. The only thing that concerns me is that the RPG elements were turned way down for simplifying purposes. I did play Mass Effect 2‘s demo and had a good time, but now I think I’m just waiting for a Game of the Year edition to drop before Mass Effect 3 surfaces since there’s like 196 pieces of DLC floating around, and I’d hate to miss anything cool or stellar.

—

Okay, that’s it for the list. Here’s to 2011 and the games I won’t play then as well!

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!

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.

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.