True facts about Dead Money DLC for Fallout: New Vegas

Evidently, there’s new facts about the recently announced DLC Dead Money for Fallout: New Vegas, and one tidbit really surprised me. Spoiler: it’s the level cap increase to 35. A-whaaaaat? Anyways, here’s a better summary of everything y’all should now know (taken directly from Bethesda’s website):

Description:

As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance as you face new terrain, foes, and choices. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.

Story:

Welcome to the Sierra Madre Casino! The casino’s mythical contents are lusted after by desperate wasteland scavengers, who tell stories of intact treasure of the old world buried deep within its vault. Lured here by a mysterious radio signal advertising the long-awaited grand opening of the casino, you are thrown into a high stakes game where you’ll have to work with three other lost souls if you want to survive.

Key Features:

• Take part in a suspenseful post-apocalyptic casino heist in which you’ll need to work with three companions, each of whom has their own motivation for helping you.
• Add hours of extended gameplay where you’ll encounter the mysterious Ghost People, pre-war death traps and the holographic security system of the Sierra Madre.
• Navigate your way through a challenging new storyline, with even tougher choices.
• New perks, achievements, and a raised level cap to 35!

Okay. Perks and Achievements are expected, but this level cap increase feels…odd. Oddly absurd. Not that I’m complaining. I have no reason to complain about a game that wants me to keep playing it, but back in the day, back during vanilla Fallout 3, the level cap was 20, and I think a lot of players felt that threshold was reached far too quickly. So they increased it with the Broken Steel DLC to 30, which felt more natural. Around level 10 you’re doing okay, by level 20 you’ve got some great perks and weapons, and once level 30 rings its bell you are basically considered a god among wastelanders.

So it made sense to see Fallout: New Vegas ship with the level cap already to 30. Many gamers got used to that cap, and I guess now many will have to get used to 35, but it still just doesn’t feel right. Maybe Borderlands put too much pressure on game devs to continuously climb higher?

Dead Money, the first DLC announced for Fallout: New Vegas

Bethesda Softworks just announced the first piece of downloadable content for their bug-happy Fallout: New Vegas. It’s called Dead Money, is exclusive to Xbox 360 as of the moment, and sounds a little something like so:

As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance as you face new terrain, foes, and choices. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.

Definitely comes off as a bit ho-hum, especially considering just how different each piece of DLC in Fallout 3 strived to be. I mean, one took you to Alaska, the other to a slave factory in Pennsylvania, another to backwater hickville, and a fourth to freakin’ outer space. Granted, Dead Money does seem to promise new terrain and foes, but I have a stinky feeling that it will kind of be more of the same Nevada landscape and enemy types with new skins. Actually, maybe more like just an elaborated sidequest or something, rather than DLC priced at 800 Microsoft Points. We’ll have to wait and see. Hits Xbox 360 on December 21, 2010.

The full press release with corporate talky talk is available here.

The Top Five Most Annoying Videogame Sidekicks

Two’s a party, three’s a crowd. And sometimes even two is too much.

Naturally, I’m talking about sidekicks, and more often than not, they are annoying and useless and just there to get in the way. I mean, how often did Batman really truly need Robin tagging along? Or Wolverine with Jubilee? Granted, those are comic book examples, and videogames handle sidekicks much differently. Often, they are used to help give a tutorial on gameplay mechanics, offer up possible sidequest missions (think about Ratchet’s Clank here), or are just there to chat and fill in story gaps with heavy-handed exposition.

So, as we close in on the time of thanks and giving, Grinding Down would like to spin the world the other way around and moan and groan about some of the worst videogame sidekicks out there with hope that they never come to our aid ever, ever again.

5. The Adoring Fan (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Meet the Adoring Fan. Amazingly, this guy is your “reward” for becoming the Grand Champion in the Arena. He’s nothing special. He just follows you around and lovingly praises you. He won’t fight by your side as even a single rat is enough to get him running away. His voice is the very reason there is terrorism, and one can find countless videos on YouTube of players pushing him off the land’s tallest mountain. Frustratingly, he does not ever “die.” If killed, he reappears at the Arena a few days later, ready to follow you again, whether it is to his death or not. How annoying!

4. Navi (a whole bunch of Zelda games)

I think many gamers would agree that a box of scrolling text would’ve been a much better choice as a companion for Link than a hyped-up fairy that never shuts its airpiece. I mean, they’d both accomplish the same thing, but one is less obtrusive than the other. I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve yet to actually play any N64 Zelda games (gasp!), but I got to partially know Navi through The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and the small time spent with it was more than enough to convince me that Navi is Satan’s child, all razzed up on speed and insanity and the power to cling and never uncling. How annoying!

3. Daxter (Jak and Daxter series)

My PlayStation 2 days were filled with platformers. A trilogy of trilogies, I guess you could say. They were the Sly Cooper series, the Ratchet and Clank series, and the Jak and Daxter series. Now, all of them had sidekicks–Sly had Bently feeding him advice, Ratchet had Clank and all his crazy gizmos, and Jak had Daxter who…did absolutely nothing. Except get himself turned into a chatty rodent through the power of Dark Eco. For the first game–and, well, probably the next two–Daxter did little but make small quips when Jak “died,” as well as start trouble during in-game cinematics.

Unfortunately, Jak is one of those silent lead characters, forcing much of the talk on Daxter. How annoying!

2. Stella (Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies)

Not to be outdone by Navi, here’s another annoying fairy, this one more of an actual fairy…if inspired heavily by the now out-of-date ganguro craze. She has a horrible flappin’ accent, only cares about herself, and is constantly berating our main hero, as well as her old boss fatguts. There is no good to her, and she’s there for the entire ride through Dragon Quest IX. Occasionally, she awards you Accolades, but that’s nothing to get excited about. If you tap her on the DS touchscreen, she does not explode into a thousand fairy pieces, only gets slightly miffed. How annoying!

1. Your Mother (Pokemon HeartGold)

She tries to do good. She really does. See, in Pokemon HeartGold, one can give your mother some extra money and, while you’re out combing through tall grass for every last ‘mon, she’ll buy you some items. And then call you to tell you that these items can be picked up at the local store. This might seem all cool and great at first, but it’s only after awhile do you realize that the items she is buying you are stupid and a waste of money, and that it would break her heart if you told her to stop, considering it’s all she can do for you, and so you let her waste your earnings. It’s hard to even ignore her phone calls because…well, it’s a call from your mother. You can’t ignore something like that. How annoying!

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P.S. This top five article was inspired by this early morning tweet.

Getting closer to “beating” Dragon Quest IX…maybe

You know, I really am a crazy person to play three epic RPGs–Fallout: New Vegas, Chrono Trigger, and Dragon Quest IX–all at the same time. It basically means that I can only make tiny bits of progress on each of them, and that I want to play them all extensively, but I just can’t. There’s not enough time this side of New Jersey, and alas, it hurts, because all three are really deep RPGs with tons to do and see.

That said, thanks to some idleness over the weekend as Tara and I dog-sat Tucker and Chewy, I cut a bit deeper into DQIX. Finally completed the sidequest A Masky Task, which reads as so: Malinda from Stornway wants to see if you can make a malleable mask even more beautiful with alchemy. She said she would be happy enough just to see the result, but if you give it to her, she’ll swap it for a jaguarment. Sounds kind of easy, right?

Wrong.

First of all, I’ve had this sidequest in my log since the beginning of August, and it’s been annoying me since then. Had to look up exactly what was needed, and I found out that there was a lot of alchemy involved. As well as grinding for ingredients. I finally got the last set of butterfly wings needed this weekend, and ta-da, quest completed. My reward was a jaguarment, which I don’t think I’ll ever use. How wonderful!

[Some spoilers about final boss stuff coming up. You’ve been warned!]

That grinding did help though, getting three of my characters to LV 47, and my fourth, the priest, to LV 45. I figured that was pretty good for the final boss fight, and thus flew directly to the Realm of the Almighty to do battle with Corvus. He’s a Celestrian gone bad. Very bad. My first fight against him did not go well, but this second time, my team of four took him down thoughtfully and carefully, thanks to spells like Egg On and Multiheal. No one died, and we all lived to see another day.

That is…until Corvus sent a dragon after us! So, a second boss fight. Fine. That’s pretty much the standard with RPGs. The dragon itself wasn’t very challenging thanks to the fact that it did not use a lot of group attacks. He fell in due time, and again, Hadwynnn, Juniper, Tarla, and Kingsley all made it out alive.

Is it over now? Did I win? Time for cake and confetti? Nope.

Time to fight Corvus again. Only this time he’s mutated and taken on a new form. Evil form 2.0. And his attacks are extremely tough, much more damaging than before. Around 80 HP to 130 HP depending on what attack he chooses. Killed my priest really fast with a divebomb thingy, which left me struggling to keep it together. The fight ended as expected, with everyone’s name in red.

So, looks like I have some more grinding to do for money and alchemy items to make better weapons. I guess I’m going to try to wait until everyone is around LV 52 or so before tackling Corvus again. Hopefully by then, they’ll be rockin’ some crazy good gear, as well as some new spells. I’m pretty anxious to “beat” DQIX just so I can get to all the extra content I know is there waiting for me.

Back online, back in the know-how

I had to unplug my Xbox 360 from the Internet many weeks ago. It was sad, as if I was cutting off the very vein that pumped blood into my videogame baby’s heart. How would I know what games my friends were playing? How would my Achievements get tracked? How would I know what new demos and patches were available to make my gaming time that much better?

The short answer: I wouldn’t know anything.

That’s changed though as Tara and I recently got Internet set up in the Leaky Cauldron. However, we didn’t pick up a wireless Internet router yet–though we most certainly will soon–thus forcing me to constantly switch wires in and out from laptops and such to give the ol’ Xbox 360 online access. And so yesterday I took the time and patience to get online, and I’m glad I did because there’s been a small backlog of things I wanted to get done. You want a list? You like lists? Well then…here, have a teeny list.

New dashboard, ew dashboard: Before I could do anything, I was prompted with a notification that a new system update was available. I downloaded it and was treated to a very Wii-like tutorial on how to go through menus and push buttons; I quickly quit out as I’m not that big of an idiot. The style of the dashboard is very much in line with that of the new Xbox.com, meaning I don’t really love it. A lot of…white space. Oh well. Flipping between menus seems quicker though.

Fallout: New Vegas patch 1 of 4,506: Popped in the game’s disc and was quickly alerted that an update was available. Downloaded it rather quickly, and I’m not sure what exactly it fixed (or unfixed), but the game’s been playing about the same for me since I got it. Though last night my gun went invisible again on me. Grr.

Bonus content code confusion: So, I bought Fallout: New Vegas brand new a week or so after it was released at GameStop. I did not pre-order it. However, when I opened up the case, there was a postcard in there with a download code for the Classic Pack, which includes the following:

• Armored Vault 13 Suit – Extensively patched up and dotted with piecemeal armor, this outfit is an homage to the classic ending of the original Fallout.
• Vault 13 Canteen – This handy device is useful for staving off dehydration and providing a small amount of healing in the Mojave Wasteland.
• Weathered 10mm Pistol – A well-worn 10mm pistol that packs an extra punch despite its modest size.
• 5 Stimpaks – Food and water are good for long-term healing, but when the fighting is fierce, Stimpaks help keep Wastelanders upright.

So, yeah. Uh, I got a pre-order bonus buying the game brand new a week later. Good job, GameStop? Either way, the code worked fine, and the canteen is cool even though I’m not playing Hardcore mode just yet.

Expanding Borderlands’ lands: Had to also get the latest patch for Borderlands which gives players a brand new–and free–level cap, as well as rebalancing some of the enemies and fixing glitches with the last piece of DLC. Since I have the Secret Armory DLC, my new level cap is a crazy sexy 69. Sad, I’m still a mid-50ish Soldier, but I’m working on it. Nice to just have it though in case I can get back online and play some rounds with the First Hourers. What’s interesting is that I figured I should play a bit too and not just get the free patch, but I died horribly right away to some brutes because I was trying to play Borderlands using the control scheme from Fallout: New Vegas. Oi!

And that’s kinda it. Oh, and my Achievements finally updated so that I could correct my counts here on Grinding Down. Yes, very important. I know, I know. Pulled the Internet plug on the Xbox 360 again last night, but it felt good to be back, if only for a little bit. Got a lot done, too. This has not been a very exciting post, but I’m not gonna apologize for it; you either love my craziness or you go eat something harmful.

One man’s journey to skip all dialogue in Fallout: New Vegas

It’s probably obvious, but I love to read.

And so it pained me, deeply, both emotionally and physically, to watch a good friend of mine play some Fallout: New Vegas over the weekend. Why? Well…he ran through dialogue options with Sonic the Hedgehog-like speed, more often than not just selecting the top dialogue choice to get through the entire tree with the push of a single button. Optional quest objectives popped up on the left and faded just as fast, and he even ended up turning in a quest, too, with little interest in hearing what so-and-so had to say about the job he did.

On the flip, that’s what I care about most.

Take, for instance, the quest Ghost Town Gunfight, wherein the Courier is tasked with either siding with the dangerous Powder Gangers or protecting Goodsprings from them. I played the part of Guardian Angel, wanting to help out the town that helped me out. But there’s more. By speaking to a number of townspeople, the Courier could convince them to join the fight, thus turning the tide greatly. This took some charm and quick work, and I got everyone’s help except for Easy Pete’s. All attacking Powder Gangers died during the attack, and no one from Goodsprings lost their lives. I was so proud of this that I immediately went to each and every one of them to chat about the fight, to see if they cared at all that I went above and beyond to save their dusty skin. To dig as deep as I could.

Most merely said a line or two of dialogue, and that was it. We’ve never spoken of the incident since. However, it was still important to me to find out.

Now, this post’s subject line is a bit misleading. I wouldn’t say it’s my friend’s journey to barely invest in the story and spoken words of the Mojave Wastelanders; heck, it might have just been because Tara and I were over late and he didn’t want to bog down the gaming time with a lot of sitting around and listening to exposition. His dude looks a bit like Tony Stark with a beret, and I was eager to see him shoot some raiders up. I’m sure every now and then he takes the time to get into the quests from more than just the quest log descriptions; if not, alas, there’s a lot to be missed.

Or maybe that’s just me. I love words, after all. And when compared to Fallout 3‘s 40,000 lines of recorded dialogue, Fallout: New Vegas really does give me a lot to take in with over 65,000 lines.

Kinect–or what’s so wrong with pressing buttons?

Lately, when I think about Kinect, Microsoft’s new piece of tech to power up their Xbox 360 and directly compete with the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move, the oil cans scene from The Jerk comes to mind. Except, instead of someone hating cans, they really hate buttons. Stay away from buttons!

I mean, really. What’s so wrong with pushing buttons?

Wait, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s talk about Kinect. Now, I have not experienced first hand this $150 add-on to the Xbox 360, but I’ve kept tabs on it and its plethora of games released this week, and it seems that the whole thing is rather…okay. Like, it sort of works, and when it works, it works, but other than that, this is not the spark of a revolution where gamers worldwide meet up in large fields, toss all their console controllers onto a stack of firewood, and spend the night singing hokey songs as the burdens of their past burn out a-mighty.

Right. So, Kinect is a camera, which tracks movement to turn the player into a living, breathing controller. The camera also comes with a built-in microphone to detect voice recognition. Sounds like something straight out of Minority Report. It could very well be. The point of Kinect is to introduce a new way gamers play games: hands-free. Or, rather, all about their hands. And feet. And entire body, too. You are the controller now, and you are in control. Swat at flying balls with your Xbox Live Avatar, play with pet tigers, and drive a videogame car like you would drive a real car, hands out and on the wheel.

These are all videogame tasks you could do the way it’s been for several decades, with a controller, some buttons, and thumbs. Also, sitting down. So why then is Kinect so insistent you do them without a controller? What’s so wrong with pushing buttons, anyways?

Strangely, I was never as skeptical as I am now when the Nintendo Wii came out. Sure, I didn’t really get it or fall in love with the concept, but the fact remained that, for most games, if one wanted to, one could turn the Wiimote sideways and play traditionally. I think that safety blanket was all I needed to be okay with the whole thing; and I do enjoy a couple rounds of Wii Sports, but never enough to do me in.

Back in the day, before every single game had some kind of tutorial level to teach you the basics, one had to figure out what each button did by pressing it. Hmm, how do I jump? Oh, this button. How do I run? Ahhh, hold down this one. Now, I wonder if I can run and jump for extra distance…

With Kinect, if you want your character to jump, you jump. I guess I just don’t see that as revolutionary. Or an upgrade. Pressing a button to jump is dang near a standard and, despite wonky physics at times (::ahem:: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind ::cough::), it’s perfected as a cause/reaction happening.

I’m not here to say that controller-free gaming isn’t fun or without a purpose; I just don’t see it as better than what we have now, and I do worry that a select portion of gamers are going to be completed ignored–unless one can imagine playing an entire first-person shooter by holding an imaginary gun in our hands and pulling the imaginary trigger a thousand times over. Also, will we see an epic Kinect RPG in the future? Will there ever be a mix of things where one can play with a controller and still do Kinect-like actions, or is it gonna be all or nothing from here on out? These are important questions, and I’m not the only ones thinking about them; reviews this week have been rather mild with excitement over the tech, criticizing its space neediness and glitchy recognition, as well as the lack of depth overall in its launch titles. All of this comes at a hefty price, too–$150 to $400, depending on what one already has in stock. Others, however, seem to be enjoying Kinect Adventures and navigating the dashboard like a superbeing with a swoosh of a hand.

For as long as I can though, I’m gonna push a button.

I don’t love zombies, but I’m probably gonna eat up I Love Zombies

Gotta be honest here…I’m not a huge fan of zombies.

Nowadays, the gaming trends seems to be “add zombies.” They’re coming soon to Red Dead Redemption, they’re swarming about in Borderlands, they’re funnily enough in PopCap puzzle games, they’re in Crackdown 2, they’re sort of in Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas, they’re in Mass Effect (don’t try and deny it, Husks), they are most definitely in the Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising series, and they are most likely not going away any time soon.

Hey, some people really dig ’em. Me? Not so much, and not just because I’d totally die super fast during a zombie outbreak.

Of course, there are exceptions. I’m totally in love with Cherie Priest’s books Boneshaker and Dreadnought, which feature zombie-like minions, nicely dubbed rotters, and I also happen to have really enjoyed Tobias Buckell’s Sly Mongoose. Guess I don’t mind the undead too much in fiction form.

That said, Zombie Daisuki (“I Love Zombies”) looks like a lot of fun. It’s a recently announced new Nintendo DS game that puts the player to the task of rebuilding one’s farm during a mass zombie outbreak. So, a survival farming sim? That’s gotta be twenty-six times better than a boring fantasy dungeon crawler farming sim, right? Check out how adorable it looks so far:

I Love Zombies will be released in Japan on January 20, 2011, for JPY 5,040 (approx. USD 62.36), with a B rating (12 and up). There’s not a lot of information out currently, but I’m definitely going to be keeping tabs on this one. It could very well be the title that changes my snobbiness towards zombie-heavy videogames for me.

Inching closer to Ramona’s final evil ex

Twins are cool. That’s just a fact.

And over the weekend, Tara and I took down two of ’em, at the same time, thus earning ourselves the following Achievement from Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game:

Twin Dragons (10G): Defeated the Twins simultaneously.

To be honest, it happened too fast and too easily. I mean, we had so much trouble staying alive against Todd and Roxie; I figured the Twins were gonna be a handful of ass-whoopin’, but no. I got both of them cornered up in the top left part of the screen and slashed away with a stolen ninja sword while Tara took care of any nearby goons. Within seconds, one of the Twins was flashing yellow, an indication of his low health, and then boom–KO!!! Both dead. Both within milliseconds of each other. I really thought killing two bosses at the exact same time would’ve been tougher than that, but it was almost mindless how it went down.

Here’s hoping NegaScott or Gideon toss up a better challenge. Granted, there’s no Achievements tied to them so all Tara and I need to worry about is staying alive. I’ve hit the level cap with Scott, but she’s still climbing the experience ladder with Kim. I have to wonder if maybe I was a bit overpowered for the Twins? I doubt that though because just the level’s regular enemies put up one stink of a fight. Hmm. Can’t wait for the DLC and patch to help balance out the difficulty issues. Still need to get online access though…

Here’s a bunch of links to cool Fallout: New Vegas thingies

So, there’s this game out that I’m currently obsessed over. I’m sure you can figure out which one it is. No, it’s not Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction. Anyways, let me share some nifty links with y’all…

Over at Grimly Enthusiatic, a journal of the Courier’s days in the Mojave Wasteland. It’s not really an actual journal journal, as in “dear world, here’s what I did today, I am so lonely,” but rather a loglist of odd bugs and glitches. Looks like some desert folk can’t tell the difference between a male/female Courier.

Over at 1Up, read and take in their Fallout: New Vegas survival guide. Some very good tips, especially the whole “play to your strenths” one. Quick note: the guide contradicts itself by saying that Science, Repair, and Lock-picking are the best skills to tag and then says in the text that Science, Lock-picking, and Speech are the best. I’ve yet to really find a good use for lock-picking, but having a good Speech skill is nearly essential. Oh so essential. Tag it. TAG IT RIGHT NOW, KIDS.

Over at Popmatters, two interesting articles: Sex Workers and Sex Slavery in Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout: The Scrounging Simulator. I can’t really comment on the first one as I haven’t done any quests related to slavery and prostitutes in the latest game, but I do wholeheartedly agreed with the second article. During these tough times, it is important to learn to carry only what you need, only what will keep you going forward.

Over at G4TV, there’s a Fallout Fall Fashion Show. Pretty hilarious stuff. Actually, after watching, most of the outfits seem inspired more from Fallout 3 happenings rather than Fallout: New Vegas. Oh well. I’m sure many will still dig ’em. “Seriously, I’m gonna loot that body.”

Lastly, over at Kotaku, actor/rapper Ice-T is also dealing with the bugs and quirks in the Mojave Wasteland. Don’t really get it, but that’s just me. I’m still waiting for someone more like Zooey Deschanel to openly admit how much of a Fallout fan she is…

Okay, that’s all for now. Happy reading!