Achievements of the Week – The Debunked Mr. Oddjob Smells Funny Edition

Last edition of Achievements of the Week was all about Saints Row: The Third. That makes sense to me, but I do aim for variety throughout the week despite my limited hours, and so I am pleased to announce that this week’s entry is about Saints Row: The Third…and Rage. Hmm. So, two games is better than one. Maybe I’ll cover three next week as I am itching to play a little more Mass Effect 2, what with that newest space romp hitting stores a few days ago and everyone talking about it like there’s no tomorrow. Spoiler: there’s a tomorrow.

All right. Let’s get this non-televised show on the road.

From Saints Row: The Third…

Flash the Pan (10G): Destroyed all Gang Operations.

With the F-69 VTOL, this was easy clean-up work, though it did take me some time to figure out there was one gang operation on the roof of a tall building.

Your Backseat Smells Funny (20G): Completed all instances of Escort.

There, there. Nice, tiger. Calm, tiger.

Bright Lights, Big City (80G): Completed all City Takeover, Steelport is yours!

From Rage…

Passive Aggressive (30G): Get 3 kills with a single Sentry Bot

I love the name of this Achievement as it describes me and my play style perfectly.

Debunked (10G): Complete Shrouded Bunker in the Campaign

Mr. Oddjob (40G): Complete 5 Job Board Quests in one play-through

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I have now crossed the 29,000 Gamerscore checkmark, with a perfect 30,000 definitely in sight. Less than 1,000 points to go. As I’m wont to do, I’m going to try to hit that number on the spot, so watch from afar as I creep closer and closer and pay even more attention to the number of points each Achievement gives me. Oh yeah, it’s gonna be wild.

What have y’all been up to? Want to share any cool Achievements from Mass Effect 3? If so, you know where to do it. Psst. Right below here.

Munchkin 8 card previews take over the Internet

Yesterday, March 8, was deemed Munchkin 8: Half Horse, Will Travel preview day, which should be in or heading to stores right around now. I’ll let you figure out the clever connection between the two. But either way, this meant previews of the newest expansion to original Munchkin, and while I am growing tired and running out of room for more fantasy-based Munchkin antics, I am always excited to see new cards and gameplay mechanics. But before one could feast, one must find, and the preview cards went up all over the Internet: Twitpic, Facebook, Dork Tower, Wired GeekDad, and so on. It was like a little treasure hunt, and if you’re a true Munchkin then you know how fun getting treasure is.

I think I found them all and have collected them together nicely in this preview post for y’all to devour. We’ve already seen what Lizard Guy and Centaur look like, but check out some of the new cards below cut, because all the cards are super large…

Slowly making progress in Rage

I knew going in that I wasn’t going to love Rage, seeing that its focus is mostly on precise shooting and excessive driving, but I figured it would find a way into my heart through its barren, bandit-infested wasteland, crazy character designs, and handful of minigames. Alas, that has not been the case. Though I do totally dig some of these characters, like race announcer Jackie Weeks and the humming, hat-wearing Coffer. Talking to NPCs and watching their unique animations has been, surprisingly, the best part of coming out of that Ark so far.

Instead, it’s been a game I’ve picked up to play only three or four times since buying it post-Christmas, with a large span of at least a month between one of those sessions. Just hasn’t grabbed me like other games have. I know one reason why is because I’m more reluctant to actual do any story missions seeing as how the last time I ran out of ammo early on due to me lacking them shootin’ skillz, and that made completely that mission above and beyond the call of duty. For some, that’s probably enjoyable, but I just wanted to get to a town, talk to folk, buy some stuff, pick up miscellaneous jobs, and do some side minigames. Eventually, I got there, but meh. Two of the three games are annoying.

In Tombstones, you play a holographic sheriff surrounded by four holographic mutants who advance over the course of three turns. Each turn you roll four dice; crosshairs mean you make a kill, and skulls mean the mutants get one step closer to the sheriff. If you kill all four mutants, you win, and depending on what turn you kill them all, you will win higher amounts of money. It’s easy to comprehend, but all based around luck. There’s an Achievement for killing all four mutants on the first roll, which I’ve tried getting an uncountable number of times now. Grrr. Luck.

In Five Finger Fillet, you place your hand on a table and stab at the spaces between your fingers with a knife. Hit your digits three times, and you lose. The first four rounds are scripted and easy to get into the rhythm of, but the final round is random and fast and is driving me nuts. Especially since, when you cut one too many fingers, you have to start all over again from round one. Grrr. Fingers. 

Rage Frenzy, the minigame that got me over the curiosity line for Rage, is a turn-based card combat thing against an opponent’s deck. I’m still collecting cards for my deck, but this is the most fun minigame of the bunch (I think there’s a fourth I’ve not yet unearthed), requiring strategy and reminding me of the good ol’ Magic: The Gathering days.

At some point, I stopped playing silly fluff fillers with fellow Wellspring neighbors and went out into the wild to shoot some nasties.

Here’s what I’ve unlocked Achievements-wise since my last spurt of activity, which mainly stemmed from online multiplayer action:

Open Minded (15G): Get 10 Headshot kills with the Sniper Rifle

Gladiator (10G): Complete Mutant Bash TV in the Campaign

Arts and Crafts (10G): Construct 10 Engineering Items

Oh, and I found a Vault Boy bobble-head on the mayor’s desk in Wellspring, but there’s no Achievement for that even though there totally should be. Ahem.

Right now, I’m inside some bunker using speedy bomb-laden RC cars to blow up caches of…something. Man, I wish I paid more attention to what these characters were saying sometimes, but all I can do is pay attention to the way they move their arms or head while doling out a new mission objective. Hopefully it won’t be another month until I play again…

What I disliked about Chrono Trigger

I know that the previous post to this one was a game review haiku and for Chrono Trigger itself, meaning that that was going to be it in terms of “reviewing,” but I do want to talk about this powerful RPG from the SNES heydays a little more at length. I mean, I finished it up in early January 2012 a few days after GiantBomb completed their Endurance Run and have been rather silent since then, letting my thoughts and feelings about Crono, his friends, time, and Lavos stir and grow inside my mind. And don’t worry. While in this one I will be moaning and groaning about the parts I found disappointing, there will be another post devoted to what Chrono Trigger did right and why it is, many years later, still an amazing game.

Okay, let’s break this down for easy peasy squawking.

The writing (at times)

Chrono Trigger, despite all the destruction and malice that Lavos brings to the table, is actually a lighthearted tale. It opens with a festival, there’s a lot of bouncy music, and characters exaggerate in large and loud ways to get home their personalities. The writing also reflects this with Ayla, Robo, and Frog speaking with heavy dialects, which is not fun to digest. The biggest problem with the writing is that, when it came to quests and where to go next, nothing was clear. There’s no quest log, and so you just have to talk to everyone, and sometimes they will say something important, but it’s hard to decipher what is worth following and what carrot is not. I had to look up the solution to the Rainbow Shell quest because there was no way I’d ever figure it out on my own; I just can’t think that abstractly.

The old man at the End of Time could’ve been a bigger help, too.

Unclear stats

You can obtain a variety of accessories to put on your pals, but I never really changed them out too much as it was never clear what a lot of these things did. A MuscleRing gives its bearer Vigor +6, but in no way is it made known what Vigor means. Is that the same as Power? Stamina? Strike? Tickle? Your guess is as good as mine. I did not do a ton of weapon/armor switching, focusing only on whatever pumped up my people’s Power and Defense the most. Sometimes that meant everyone wearing Nova Armors and being boring clones.

Overpowered

The point after this one might seem contradicting, but about halfway through the  time-traveling adventure, fights became super easy. Like, just mashing the attack command for all three party members and never even glancing at dual techs or higher skills.

The final battle

Boss fight after boss fight after boss fight after boss fight. I had plenty of Elixirs and Full Elixirs and all my dudes leveled up, but man…it was grueling. No breaks or chances between to save and breath meant it was tense, and on my first real attempt to end it all I died midway through due to not paying attention intensely. My fault, but still…

DS bonus stuff

Yes, that’s right. I did not find a creepy pawn shop, sift through countless boxes of moth-ridden clothes and old VHS tapes to find a dusty–yet still workable–copy of Chrono Trigger for the SNES. Instead, I picked up the Nintendo DS version, which contains a translated version of the 1995 gem rainbow shell, as well as some bonus content. Namely, this:

• Anime cutscenes from the PlayStation 1 port
• The Lost Sanctum
• The Dimensional Vortex
• Arena of the Ages
• A new ending (bringing the total to…17, ugh)

None of it is stellar. The anime cutscenes are a weird and kinda jarring, especially when you see Crono and his goofy hair in motion. The bonus areas…well, I didn’t even find them. Unless they only pop up in New Game+. So, good job there. I tried Arena of the Ages for a pinch, but it’s basically Pokemon diet, and not even near as gripping. Otherwise, it’s easy to not miss it, but at least I was able to have a copy of the game for portable purposes.

Multiple endings

I only toss this under the bus because I really don’t have time to play this game more than once, and I definitely don’t want to do that final battle again just to see a new ending. Maybe I’ll YouTube some of ’em…

—

And that’s it. I basically enjoyed everything else about Chrono Trigger, but I’ll call those aspects out in a separate post down the road. If you’re a Chrono Trigger fan, did any of these above points ring true for you as well or is it perfection from beginning to end? Let me know below in the comments. And don’t hate me too hard; I loved Chrono Trigger, but I’m still able to see its faults. That’s just one of the problems stemming from me playing the game as a 28-year-old man versus a young boyconstantly high on Mode 7 and Super Mario World.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #2 – Chrono Trigger

Fine traveling time
With friends, foes, and turn-based fights
Lavos is no more

–

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

Game of Thrones: The Game has got me worried

I am not a trusted scholar and saucebox of all things A Song of Ice and Fire. Sure, I love the books immensely, am a big fan of HBO’s take on blood and dragons and heraldy and fine-ass beards, and am a dude that’s attempting to draw just about every character ever named by George R.R. Martin–but I don’t know everything. However, I do know that there’s no place called Riverspring in Westeros. Except, thanks to the forthcoming Game of Thrones: The Game (ugh, what a name), now there is. Here’s how the developers describe it:

Bordering the Riverlands, the interests of this town and surrounding countryside are held in the name of Sarwyck as bannermen to the Lannisters. From their family keep, they have presided over their people for generations, but now unrest begins to grow in wake of the death of the reigning Lord Raynard Sarwyck.

All right. That’s believable enough, given just how many houses, big and small, there are, and the Lannisters do have a lot of support. And Sarwyck is a fine, Martin-esque name, but I got problems with Riverspring. Here’s why. In Fallout: New Vegas, upon emerging from a premature shallow grave, you discover the town of Goodsprings. In Rage, the first true city you come to call home is Wellspring. EverQuest fans might remember a halfling city called Rivervale. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, after stepping out of a cave, so long as you follow the path, the first settlement you unearth is called Riverwood. And in…y’know, I’m just going to list all of these forgettable names in bullet format to really drive home the point:

• Goodsprings
• Wellspring
• Rivervale
• Riverwood
• Riverspring

The videogames market is currently inundated with spring places, and yes, pun freakin’ intended. Also, don’t forget about Riverrun, the ancestral stronghold of House Tully. The place that actually matters. But yeah, I get that the devs wanted to A) create a new location to do with whatever they wanted and B) keep it in line with Martin’s naming schematics, but seven hells, they picked the most generic thing ever. I think if I ever make a robust RPG set in a typical fantasy land, the first town I name will be called Good Riverwater Springs. You heard it here first, people.

Okay, fine. I have problems with Riverspring and just how little it adds to a world brimming with detail and construction. Moving on, thanks to Greg Noe, a new trailer has hit the Interwebz:

Wow. Look, no one–and I do mean no one–is playing Game of Thrones: The Game for its story. You just can’t outdo or even come close to the story-telling power of GRRM, so don’t bother trying. Instead, give us the goods on the videogaming side. Make it fun to play, fun to swing a sword or dabble in seedy politics or create some kind of unique dialogue tree system, but don’t pretend to be all high and mighty. This trailer tries to sound exciting, but even the narrator sounds bored–and rightly so. I’d rather see how the game will play, whether it will be more like Dragon Age: Origins or Dragon Age II, as that difference is vital. Certainly it won’t be anything original, but if it is closer to DA:O then I’m in. If it’s DAII…well, I’m probably still in as I am a huge fanboy of the source material, but man, it’s just going to be one letdown after the other. Granted, there still seems to be a second storyline to follow based around the Wall and the Night’s Watch. Maybe that tale will be more inspiring.

A release date of May 2012 is being tossed around. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more details before I take the black. Ugh. Between this, that RTS flop from Cyanide Studio, and an upcoming MMORPG, it just doesn’t seem like A Song of Ice and Fire can get the videogame treatment it truly deserves. At this point, I’d be down for something like this.

Playing the Ludum Dare 22 Winners, #3 – Last Breath

Oh man. I gotta hurry up and finish playing the top 10 from Ludum Dare 22 before the next Ludum Dare challenge takes place. Which is around the end of April 2012, and I think I can do it, as I only have three more games to try out: Last Breath, Abandoned, and Frostbite. All of them look simply fantastic in visual terms and are definitely platforms higher than those that came before them, which might just mean a pinch more of reflecting on my part. I can and will do this, and if Ludum Dare 23 goes well, I’d like to do it again as it’s a great push on myself to try out some smaller games I’d otherwise not even notice.

Like in Stray Whisker, Last Breath features an animal as your protagonist. This time it’s a dog, and it’s unclear if it’s a dead dog or a dog in limbo or a dog that was hit by a truck so hard that it flew into a hole in the ground which then opened up into a maze-like cavern–oh, and it also survived the impact. I guess all signs point more towards a limbo-based Canis lupus familiaris given this bit of text from creator deepnight:

The story of a dog trapped between life & death.
I can’t say much more, it would spoil the story 🙂

Anyways, after exploring this cavern a bit, you’ll discover multiple red balls and a shadow version of yourself, with eyes full of hatred. As soon as you begin to collect the balls, your shadow duplicate comes after you, literally shadowing your every move and eviscerating you upon touch. Your goal, from what I can tell as I was unable to even complete this part, is to collect all ten balls without the shadow dog killing you. This involves some planning as you can find yourself at a dead end for some balls, with no way out and the shadow beast closing in. The closest I got was a total of eight balls.

Last Breath, much like that silhouette XBLA darling Limbo, nails a lot of things: atmosphere, suspense, and gameplay. The pixel art and animation work is immediately charming, and I’ve had a deep love for that floating particle effect ever since I first played Fallout 3. The controls are simple, as the dog can move, jump, and cling–in a rather funny way–to ledges, and you’ll quickly go from exploring casually to running and jumping for your very being. The ambient music doesn’t change to reflect this, which is a shame, but it’s tense nonetheless. There’s obviously a best path to walk, but I didn’t figure it out after ten minutes or so.

Do try it, and good luck getting all those balls.

Achievements of the Week – The Who Loves the American Dream Edition

Due to some recent traveling, I was unable to do an Achievements of the Week post two times in a row. Which is fine, actually, as during those car- and con-laden days I was most definitely not gaming on my Xbox 360, but rather standing behind a table and selling copies of my bad comics to curious onlookers. With that said, today’s entry is going to be a little lean on variety as all I’ve really played on the ol’ Xbox 360 over the past twenty-one days is Saints Row: The Third–and in short spurts at that. Usually while waiting for water to boil for tea or Ramen. Sure, I’ve dabbled in a lot of Steam games as of late, but I don’t think I am going to include those ones much in these weekly roundups.

Okay, here we go with the purple pics then.

From Saints Row: The Third…

The American Dream (10G): Pimped out 10 vehicles.

Who Loves Ya Baby (10G): Killed 50 brutes, they just wanted hugs you jerk!

Hanging With Mr. Pierce (25G): Took control of the entire Downtown district for the Saints.

There’s a couple more, but that’s good enough for now. Besides, I kinda already covered them right over here.

—

This weekend is all about comics and scripting and getting my car registered in Pennsylvania, but I am sure I will sneak away for some gaming time. I mean, I’m about an hour and a half away from the Achievement that you get for playing Saints Row: The Third for at least thirty hours. Oh boy. I can do it.

What are your Achievement goals this week? Trying to finish up Mass Effect 2 in preparation for Mass Effect 3? If so, I’m jealous. I will probably finish my Mass Effect 2 playthrough by early 2056 at this rate. Well, let me know.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #1 – Saints Row: The Third

Insane saint, no rules
Shootin’, drivin’, fallin’ down
Happy as tiger

—

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

Starting Shank’s story of sadistic and senseless slashing

The story of Shank: gang kills former gang member’s wife, said man kills everyone in the gang. At least that’s how I assume this will all go down. I’ve only just begun, but I mean, yeah. It’s all there. I’ve seen Kill Bill plenty of times to know what a tale of vengeance looks like. And I guess that’s fine. Really, this could be the story of a man named Shank that suffers from dementia and whittles pretty birdhouses during his flex time at Brookside Senior Citizens–so long as it looks this pretty.

As an artist, I love a game that revels in its artness. Like Prince of Persia and Bastion and Limbo and Odin Sphere and so on. If it looks hand-drawn, I’m in. If it’s colorful or has hints of cross-hatching or bold, thick outlines, I’m also in. Highly realistic graphics are uninteresting to me, and only help to make me feel more uncomfortable when shooting people that look like real, honest-to-goodness people in games like Call of Duty or Battlefield 3. No thanks. I’d prefer to blast apart something with tentacles.

But man, Shank. It’s a visual treat and like playing an episode of something—Samurai Jack, perhaps–on Cartoon Network or Adult Swim. You control Shank in 2D, moving from left to right and jumping up and from platforms; the background goes deeper than that, with details like graffiti on buildings and telephone poles and a dreary and muted skyline that look absolutely gorgeous, especially to see it all in motion. Character models pop in that they are much more colorful and animated than everything else, slick with polish and personality. And story beats are covered in dramatic cutscenes and smaller scenes that actually take place directly during gameplay, which is a fun little trick that keeps the game’s pace frantic and fun.

Playing Shank on normal allows for unlimited continues and nicely placed checkpoints, which means I can just try again after Shank gets overwhelmed by too many goons. Which happens a lot. See, I have to learn to not get locked into a crazy-cool 15x combo when baddies are also standing behind me. So it’s a learning process, seeing what weapons work best and when to grab someone and how to toss grenades and so on. There’s a surprising amount of depth here, and I can’t even begin to imagine anyone playing without a gamepad. Like, really. It has to be nigh impossible.

Hmm. Okay, it’s Steam Achievements in your face time!

Just Getting Started: Take out 20 enemies

Making a Name for Yourself: Take out 100 enemies

The Wrong Guy: Defeat El Raton

My hands cramped up during the moving train level due to too many dogs and not enough health drinks, but I’ll be hopping back into it soon. It’s fun and fluid and immensely stylized and even though I kinda know where it’s all going it sure is a blast juggling enemies with knives, guns, and a chainsaw finisher. The only complaint I have with Shank is that the developers gave names to all the dog enemies, and it is ten times more hard to chainsaw a mutt’s face off when you know he’s called Thrasher to someone. Poor, poor, mutilated Thrasher. You probably didn’t mean to be so evil.