Achievements of the Week – The Sideways Explorer Turns the Tables Edition

I’m too lazy to check if this is actually a first, but a goal I made on last week’s edition of Achievements of the Week was actually met. Which one? Um, keep on reading, loyal readers. I also did fairly well in some other videogames, but they don’t deserve the spotlight quite like Rhaegar does for hanging out in the Mojave Wasteland and shooting the crap out of evil automatons. Oops, guess I spoiled it.

Here we go!

From Fallout: New Vegas…

Curios and Relics (15G): Cause 10,000 damage with unique Mojave Wasteland weapons.

Last week, I knew I wanted to get this Achievement, but I had no idea how close I was to the actual 10,000 threshold mark. I’d been playing for some time at that point–maybe around 25 to 30 hours–and while I wasn’t using unique Mojave Wasteland weapons all the time, I was making a conscious effort to whip out That Gun as much as possible. Guess I was right near the finish line as it was only within an hour or so of playing again that this baby popped.

From Marvel VS. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds…

Excelsior! (10G): Perform 10 Team Aerial Combos. (Arcade/Xbox LIVE only)

Turn the Tables (10G): Land a Team Aerial Counter in a match. (Arcade/Xbox LIVE only)

No idea how I got these; I just mash those buttons like a crazy man.

From The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim…

Explorer (40G): Discover 100 Locations

Sideways (20G): Complete 10 side quests

Sure, these two Achievements seem like natural fits for unlocking after playing a game for over seventy-five hours. I can understand the location-based one, as I’m a homebody and creature of comfort and do not enjoy venturing out into the wild too much, content to spend time in my Whiterun house or within the secretive lair for the Thieves Guild.

The side quests one? Hmm, maybe that needs a whole blog post for explaining. Yeah, that’s it. More content spread out over this hip and happening place of mine. Stay tuned.

From Quarrel…

Just blogged about this wonderful wordy game and the three Achievements I unlocked this morning.

—

That’s it for this week’s edition. It seems like, with each week, Friday gets here faster than before. Go figure. And it looks like yet another busy weekend. We’ll see if I make any further progress with the almighty, all powerful, and all too important Achievements list.

For those readers out there playing Skyrim, have you hit 100 locations yet? Do you remember your 100th one? Mine was Broken Oar Grotto.

I have no quarrel with Quarrel

I am a word nerd. Always have been, always will be. I guess this is obvious if you know me in real life, as I’ve been a copyeditor for the past seven to eight years. I see letters, I see words, and for the last chunk of life, I’ve been correcting misspelled words. It’s a disease. I just can’t help but notice errors or better ways to write something. And so I was very delighted to see a Quick Look of Quarrel over at GiantBomb, which is a game that’s been out on other platforms for some time now, but I’ve never heard of it because my cell phone is pre-600 B.C. I was sold immediately, especially at the appealing price tag of $5.00 (or 400 Microsoft Points) on Xbox Live.

Anyways, Quarrel…it’s a mix of Scrabble and Risk. Maybe some Boggle, too. Basically, each player is given different cuts of land on a shared map, and to capture enemy territory, you have to create a better word than them from a mix of random letters. The size of the word is limited to the number of soldiers you have when attacking, which can be increased by making kick-ass words or recruiting them from other controlled slices. It’s also a race against time, as sometimes you and your opponent will enter words worth the same value, with the winner being decided by who was the fastest.

Check out the three Achievements I’ve unlocked so far, which clearly show off my supreme wordage skills:

A Rag Man (5G): You made your first ever Quarrel anagram.

Unbeaten! (20G): You capably captured Starfish Bay in Domination without losing a single quarrel.

Incrediword! (15G): You made a whale of a word worth at least 20 points.

The aspect that I’m loving about Quarrel so far is how quickly a match can swing from being in your favor to being your worst nightmare. Last night, before bed, I decided to do one more match, a four-way between me and three computer-controlled opponents: Malik, Caprice, and Dwayne. I got picked to go last, so I sat, watching as the other players duked it out, trying to make anagrams  during their fights. When my turn came, I began dominating, since most of my enemies’ territories were now down in size, squashing their “OH” and “IT” with “SCRUB” and “LAZY”. I was able to take out Caprice and Dwayne, stopping to earn some new recruits. Then it was a back and forth between Malik and I, with me eventually flubbing up one too many times, and then he destroyed me. Even if you have eight troops to make an eight-letter word, a player with a four-letter word can still pull the rug out from under you.

But yeah, Quarrel! I’m gonna play some more this weekend, hopefully. Seems like a great chaser between stress and trying to get done a thousand and five artsy things for MegaCon and MOCCA. It costs $5.00, and you should get it, and then we should wage war against each other with words. Seriously, find me. Message me at PaulyAulyWog. Word!

Animal Crossing 3DS and what we know

When the Nintendo 3DS and its potential blockbusters were first announced, the forthcoming game I was most excited for was Animal Crossing 3DS, which is not its official title, but could probably end up being so. The no-battery life handheld came out in March 2011, and GameStop, along with a number of other retailers, were claiming that the next iteration of the cutesy, addicting life sim was slated for Fall 2011. Right, so it didn’t make the launch lineup, wasn’t primed for summer, but an autumn release wasn’t too far off; I could wait. And I have.

Currently, it’s late January 2012, and there’s still no Animal Crossing 3DS. When’s it coming out? Who knows. There’s nothing. Nintendo is being extra quiet about this game–and I have absolutely no idea why. Just tell us it’s true name and when we can expect to play it. Simple as that. A new tentative release window says Summer 2012, but I no longer trust anything unless it is backed by Nintendo reps themselves.

Okay, I guess we do know some gameplay tidbits, which are enough to nibble on, but I’m hungry. I’m ready to eat. True fact: I’m always ready to eat.

The biggest gameplay detail that is known is that you are no longer a mere resident of the animal-filled town you come to call your own. No, you are its mayor, a man or woman with power and dominating control. It’s not clear if you start out in this role or have to earn it by a number of miscellaneous character-building tasks, but whatever. And as mayor of all of Hobbitontown, you’ll certainly need some assistance. So, meet your new, private secretary:

Aw, she’s kind of adorable. And nameless currently. Alas, rumor has it that she can be extremely clumsy, but her role remains vital nonetheless. As your secretary, she’ll help point out parts of the village that look particularly good and parts that may need some extra work. So if there’s ever a lull in your daily minutiae, check in with her and find out what you can be doing to improve your town and your ratings before the re-election circuit hits.

Everybody’s arch-nemesis from previous Animal Crossings is back, but this time wearing some new attire. That’s right. Tom Nook is no longer selling stock. Instead, he’s selling houses. Not sure what this ultimately means, but maybe it has something to do with StreetPassing other towns. I suspect that you’ll still have to deal with him on a daily basis for some reason or another. I mean, he sells houses, and you’re in charge of a bunch of houses.

Other confirmed tidbits in a nice bulleted list because I’m getting tired of trying to think of interesting ways to phrase all of this:

• Benches and outdoor items, such as lamps, are now available
• Nintendo-themed items aplenty
• Players can go swimming
• Customization of the outside of houses is now allowed, and we’re not just talking about changing the roof’s color
• You can live in a tent
• Furniture customization to rule all
• There’s a mall, which I guess is akin to visiting the city as in Animal Crossing: City Folk
• You can take your shoes off
• YOU CAN TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF
• YOU CAN TAKE YOUR F*CKING SHOES OFF!!!

Woah.

Well, that’s all I got for now. I’m tired of speculating. Just give us some dang, honest-to-goodness solid details, Nintendo. I promise you, no matter what you say, I am buying this game the day it comes out. I just hope it comes out soon.

Wreaking havoc with unique Mojave Wasteland weapons in Fallout: New Vegas

Last week, I received some bad news. Which I misinterpreted greatly. The bad news remained bad news, but now I was all conflicted and confused and mad and angry and depressed with myself as a person, as a Pauly. I felt disgusted and in fear of a public shaming. So, desperate for some kind of comfort, I opened the disc tray for my Xbox 360, removed whatever game was currently in there, and quickly replaced it with Fallout: New Vegas. I needed a little time in the shadow of the valley, so to speak. Tara literally gasped with excitement when she came out to the living room and discovered I was back in the Mojave Wasteland.

At first, I just meandered around, no quests tagged as current, trying to remember who my character was and what he was trying to do. It slowly came back to me: a Mr. House run. But before that could happen, I took care of Boone’s personal sidequest to get him his new armor and such, and then headed back to the strip to begin the lengthy affair that is known as  The House Always Wins quests. I did most of these before during my first playthrough, but switched sides to Yes Man at the very end. You can’t tell from reading a blog post, but I got them shifty eyes. For The House Always Wins, II, the Courier needs to enter a secret bunker within Caesar’s Legion’s main base to turn some Securitrons to the dark side. Easy peasy, really, even with all the radiation creeping in.

Well, after shooting some guard robots in their metallic faces with That Gun, I finally earned this little zinger:

Curios and Relics (15G): Cause 10,000 damage with unique Mojave Wasteland weapons.

Don’t get the above confused with the Master of the Arsenal Achievement, which I popped way back in October 2011. Oh, and I also ticked off a one-star challenge. Woo, progress. Small progress, but still–it’s there.

At this point, now that I’ve unlocked Curios and Relics, I can hop back to using whatever weapon I desire, as I was constantly making a conscious effort to use only unique Mojave Wasteland weapons for as much as possible. That’s not to say I won’t use That Gun again–I will, as it packs a pretty (bullet) punch. But there’s some really nice rifles and shotguns in my inventory collecting digital dust. For The House Always Wins, III, I need to gain the help of the Boomers, which requires a number of mini-quests to earn their loyalty. Can’t wait to use some new weaponry to blow up a bunch of mutated ants.

Games Completed in 2011, #37 – Professor Layton and the Last Specter

I bought Professor Layton and the Last Specter back in October 2011 and had to almost immediately give it over to my wife, after her curious levels reached a brand new high. She ate up the game and then had to keep quiet as I finished my playthrough, which I did slowly and in small pieces. Not my fault. Some other heavy-hitters came out around the same time, as well as my continued quest to beat Chrono Trigger. Plus, that little mini-RPG thing London Life was fairly distracting. But I did see it through the end, solving the mystery of the ravenous specter and the disquieted town of Misthallery.

In Professor Layton and the Last Specter, which is set before the other games in the franchise, Hershel Layton and his new assistant Emmy Altava head off to Misthallery after receiving a concerning letter from an old friend. Seems like a mysterious monster–a specter, if the townsfolk are to be believed–is rampaging through the town at night. There, they meet a young boy who is able to predict where and when the specter will strike next. And the plot gets more complicated–and spoilery–after that, so there’s my summary. You wanna know more? Play the game, you puzzlin’ fool.

Story-wise, just like Professor Layton and the Curious Village, twists and turns aplenty. But this time, things get sadder. Even made my wife cry. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t cry, but can understand why she did; it’s like, you know what’s going to happen to your equestrian partner in Shadow of the Colossus, you can feel it in your gut from the very beginning, and then you still feel sick and shocked when the moment hits. There was some confusion towards the end of the game, where a revealed character implies he already knows Layton intimately, but maybe that’s a detail I’m missing from not playing games #2 and #3. Or it’s just a big tease to come for further prequels. Either way, whatever. Mystery solved, new friends acquired, and puzzle skills enhanced by +15.

As it is a Professor Layton and the Adjective Noun title, all is where it should be: puzzles, high quality animated cutscenes, minigames, hidden hint coins, so much dang charm, oh so creepy characters, and infectious music. I played Professor Layton and the Curious Village right when it released, but never touched the other two games, putting a span of a few years between my first adventure and this new one. Surprisingly, not much has changed–and that’s okay. It was a little like going home.

As for the minigames, unfortunately, they are not as much fun as the ones in Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Maybe the inclusion of a massive minigame–Professor Layton’s London Life–is to blame. What we have is the following:

• Miracle Fish: Bouncing fish around an underwater room, trying to collect a number of  bubbles in a locked amount of time. Trial and error is ultimately one way to solve these, though a few of them are extremely tricky. I did the majority of them.
• Miniature Train: Players must lay out train tracks on game boards of increasing difficulty that will allow a toy train to go from a starting point to the finish line while passing through every station on the board. These were too frustrating to be fun, so I did the first one and never went back.
• Puppet Theatre: A group of puppets perform short plays, and players must help them fill in the blanks with words they collect during the main game. I really enjoyed doing these and trying out different phrases in hopes of getting it right. The plays themselves are cute and down in a nice art style.

The puzzles in Professor Layton and the Last Specter range from super easy to super hard, with the super easy ones sometimes being a mindf*ck in the way that it will seem so easy that you will start second-guessing yourself. Boo to that. But the game’s pacing and charm are top-notch, and I loved being able to play for a half hour before bed, knocking out a few puzzles and progressing the story, but being able to stop for the night and pick it up the next day. You always get a summary of what’s been happening, and if you ever get really lost, you can re-read Layton’s journal for extremely detailed retellings.

I am looking forward to the first iteration of Layton on the 3DS, as well as maybe picking up the other two–hopefully for cheap–over the year for when I need a little more puzzlin’ in my life.

Playing the Ludum Dare 22 Winners, #6 – Split Party!

With Split Party!, you just have to ruin all the fun. See, your goal for each level is to separate different colored boxes so that each one switches from a smiley face to a frowny face. It’s like these blocks are your teenage kids and their punky, disrespectful friends, and you just came home from a long day at the blocks factory to discover your liquor cabinet wide open and emptied. Time to put your foot down, undo your belt menacingly, and get everyone to clear out. Well, that’s how I read it, but let’s see how its maker Ishisoft describes it:

A short puzzle game. Rotate the blocks to split them up from their friends, we don’t want them partying too hard!

I played up to the tenth level and got stuck. Not sure if there are ten levels in total, as there seemed to be more room available on the select screen, but nine successfully completed levels and a tough tenth one still encompassed a good time. The graphics are simple, but likable, though one caveat was that the ultra pink-purple background never changed with each level. A missed opportunity, for sure. And it’s amazing how effective a happy block to a sad block is. Music’s good and the puzzle mechanics of rotating, while initially confusing, quickly become secondhand nature. Early on, it was hard to wrap my mind around how to rotate the blocks to precisely cut them up and/or move them elsewhere within the level.

A great little gem of a puzzle game made in under 48 hours. Do give it a look, I say. And put back any liquor you took.

Achievements of the Week – The Be Gone All Fresh Meat Edition

Y’know, I just don’t have any witty or elaborate intro to this week’s edition of Achievements of the Week. I played a few games on the ol’ Xbox 360 when the living room wasn’t terribly frigid, like Saints Row: The Third and more Fallout: New Vegas after too long of a hiatus, but nothing popped in those titles despite my hardest efforts. So yeah, normally, I’d pick a bunch of my favorites to show off, but I only unlocked three Achievements over the last seven days and so I have to dub these as the best of the bunch for no other reason then them being all that’s there.

Enjoy, readers.

From Rage…

Fresh Meat (10G): Complete a public Road RAGE match

MVP (20G): Get first place in a public Road RAGE match

I already wrote about how I cheesed my way to earning these nuggets earlier this week. Mmm cheese.

From Marvel VS. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds…

Be Gone! (10G): Perform 10 Snap Backs. (Arcade/Xbox LIVE only)

Instead of using your filled up super bar thingy to unleash a flashy special attack, you can spend it completely to knock a character from your opponent’s team off the screen and out of the match for a short time. I think I did this each time by accident as MVC3 is a button-mashing game for me. Be gone, Deadpool! You are annoying!

—

That’s it. My one goal for this week is to earn the Curios and Relics Achievement in Fallout: New Vegas, but my problem is actually finding a unique Mojave Wasteland weapon that I like to use. Rhaegar has no points put into melee or Energy weapons. I’ve been rocking That Gun for awhile now, but have no idea if I’m even close to the 10,000 damage threshold. Wish there was a way to check, but I’ll just keep soldering on down the path of Mr. House and see if it’ll just pop on its own.

What about y’all? Any goals during the slowest month of new releases ever? Tell me about them in glorious details below in the comments.

The Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning demo is brimming with color

Chances are high that, thanks to some quality time with the demo for Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, I won’t be getting the full release when it drops next month. Boo hoo. And that has nothing to do with how the game plays, as it’s quite a fun action-adventure RPG with bright colors and the potential to be huge and vast and a total timesink. Nope, that’s all well and good. Alas, it suffers from tiny text syndrome.

Why can’t every game just be like Saints Row: The Third? I mean, when that game tells me to drive a tiger around the city and keep it calm and relaxed by not running into other cars, I can totally read those instructions on the screen with no problem whatsoever. Big and bold font versus what seems to be a growing standard of tiny and scrunched. It’s all I ever want

But let’s start at the beginning. The beginning of the demo, that is. It opens with a lore-heavy cutscene, voiced by a woman that desperately wants to evoke Galadriel telling the tale of those rings forged in darkness. Amalur is a world of many races–gnomes, elves, magical beings called Fae, and smelly ol’ humans–and, from what I can tell, a Winter Fae named Gadflow and his followers, the Tuatha, have decided to kill all the younger races. I think it has something to do with a prophecy. And you, whoever you are. You are dead at the beginning of the game–SPOILERS!–brought back to life by the Well of Souls, something the Tuatha also want to see destroyed. Plot-wise, it seems like you will be investigating how exactly you came to be reborn, as well as get mixed up in all this bitter conflict.

The escape from the pit of dead bodies is clearly a tutorial level, wherein you’ll learn how to use weapons, equip stuff, kill rats and giant spiders, have some dialogue, and fight a rock troll. Afterwards, you are given 45 minutes to explore as much of Amalur as you want, doing whatever you want. The game even makes it explicitly clear that the 45 minutes will pause during dialogue so nothing needs to be skipped. Regardless, I skipped a lot of dialogue; it’s not the game’s strongest bullet point.

The game looks like Fable II and plays like Dragon Age II, and you can interpret that how you like. Vibrant colors abound and combat is fast, heavy on action and rolling. I really like the visuals in Amalur, with all the flowers and colorful trees and billowing grass. Even dungeons look nice and non-gloomy. In an industry washed with browns and grays, it is nice to see something a little brighter, even if it draws comparison to World of Warcraft‘s cartoony style. I did notice some odd quirks during the demo that have me worried about the game as a whole: my avatar glitched in and out of cutscenes a few times and everything seems to glow, which can be overwhelming once outside in the wild.

I mentioned combat is fast, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s a play style here for everyone. You can do range with bows and staff spells or stealthy with sneaky daggers or full-on force with swords and such. From the selection of weapons so far, I actually prefer to just go in swinging contrary to my normal stealthy ways. Third-person stealth is always harder to do for me than first-person. The magic spells and Fate Combo Thingies look pretty fantastic, with nice particle effects all around.

By the end of my 45 minutes of free time, I had killed some smugglers, froze a bear to death, found a magical sword, and stole some peasant clothes from a stranger’s house. Y’know…RPG stuff. I liked the demo a lot and can see the potential here, but alas, I won’t be picking it up until I get a new TV, which might never happen. Sorry, citizens of Amalur. Save yourselves.

Queen Zeal says I need to finish up some more sidequests

As per my last update on Chrono Trigger, I was feeling iffy over the remaining sidequests and decided to just bite the bullet and attempt to end the game via storming into The Black Omen, slicing and dicing and dual teching, and taking down Lavos for all of humanity. But after watching Crono, Marle, and Ayla fall to pieces three times in a row, I’m thinking that I’m not ready to beat the big baddie. Or rather, the smaller baddies before the big baddie. Well, I’m ready, truly, with all my heart and soul, but my characters are not despite all three being around level 45 or 46.

So, The Black Omen. It’s linear and draining, featuring normal enemies that could potentially be labeled mini-bosses, as well as Flyclops, which are these one-eyed flying monstrosities that can literally empty your character’s stock of MP in a few turns. I hate them deeply and have to take them down fast with Falcon Strike or all hope is lost. A number of save points are thankfully available, as there is a constant need to heal up prior and post the numerous boss fights. It’s not the most exciting push towards an ending; the bigger problem I’m having is with the boss fights in rapid succession near the end of The Black Omen and not being fast enough to heal up before Queen Zeal flicks everyone to death after lowering my team’s collective HP to a measly 1. Yup, you have to endure three fights, one after the other, with no time to recover. It’s a bummer when that “you have died” music plays, bringing you back to the main menu screen and showing you that you just lost 15 minutes of playtime.

So I talked to one of those weird Nu things and escaped from the floating ship of death and depression, getting back to fights I could handle. Namely, Retinite in the Sunken Desert, who went down with ease now that my team was significantly higher in power and gear than the last time they fought it. I then brought that forest back to life, save a sad moment in Lucca’s life, got a cool accessory that I don’t want to use as I have cooler accessories already equipped, and…that’s it.

Let’s update my list of sidequests then:

• Ozzie’s Fort
• Northern Ruins
• The Sunken Desert
• The Sun Stone
• The Rainbow Shell
• King Guardia’s Trial
• Geno Dome
• The Black Omen/The Final Battle

Four down! Three more to figure out.

Also, I have to come to terms with the fact that my team of Crono, Marle, and Ayla is not good enough for the final fight. Firstly, I know Marle could use a stronger weapon as she’s still rocking a Robin Bow, but her purpose in the group is for healing and adding on to some dual tech attacks; rarely does she go in shooting solo. My only group heal spell is the dual tech Aura Whirl between Crono and Marle, but I really don’t want to give up the princess. With a Gold Stud and a lot of Magic Tabs, I’ve made her a cheap healing beast. Which makes me think that maybe Ayla needs to go. Her Charm tech is nice, but she lacks an elemental aura, which can hurt in some fights. Maybe Frog? I don’t know. I like my girls so there’s also Lucca who, if I’m to be honest here, I’ve used minimally since beginning Chrono Trigger. I just find her…uninteresting.

I also have the option–I think–to skip The Black Omen entirely and just fight Lavos via the bucket at the End of Time.

Hmm. Decisions, decisions. I hope to have a more successful update next time.

^_^ will shout at you until you are a smiling fool

I can understand that this blog post’s title might be a little confusing to read, but that’s how it is. Like Prince’s unpronounceable Love Symbol #2, ^_^ is a name that’s easier to type than say outloud. In my mind, I refer to it as Smiley Face or The Wererabbit, but your mileage may vary. However you want to say it can be argued this way and that, but one thing is clear: y’all need to play this.

I discovered ^_^–and subsequently further work by Ben Chandler–from the Gnome’s Lair blog, which focuses its coverage heavily on point-and-click adventure games, a genre that I’ve been enjoying more and more thanks to my recent times with Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge and Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. Initially, I was attracted to ^_^ by a single screenshot, which, almost immediately, made me want to click on everything, from the cart to the crow to the coatrack. Turns out that single screenshot makes up the entire space of the game, so it’s a relief that it is simply gorgeous. The lighting on the grass from the lamp is worth noting.

So, Julian is a wererabbit–the first of his kind, too–but wasn’t always that way. He’s trying to get a witch to help change him back, but first, he must retrieve her hair, which keeps running away from her. Also, there’s a verbally-challenged vampire and enough jazzy records to keep one from selling their ol’ gramophone for one of them newfangled cee-dee players. Yeah, it’s kind of weird and random, but cohesively sound, with a clear goal to achieve. Puzzles involve a lot of clicking and dialogue options and using the right item from your inventory at the right time and place. Standard adventure game stuff, but it’s all very charming here. My favorite running gag within ^_^ is all the shouting, which also nicely plays a pivotal part in getting that magical hair back to its master. The small addition of a screen shake each time is quite effective.

I played for about an hour last night, getting stuck a couple of times. ^_^ is no walk in the park, or a walk outside a witch’s house at that. Trial and error will get you there, as well as paying attention to how the game operates early on. Generally, if Julian uses a certain trick to advance the plot, he’ll do it at least once more before credits roll. Oh, and speaking of credits, Chandler handles them as nothing more than in-game dialogue, which I found pretty amusing and appropriate. After that, the game ends. It literally shuts itself down, leaving you left to stare at whatever image is gracing your desktop, heartstrings tugging for just one more thing to click on.

^_^ is a charming short story, with many moments worth remembering. The graphics and animations are surreal and surpass many quote-unquote professional games of the same ilk, and the funny moments are genuinely funny. Play it for the vampire tongue-twisters and all the shouting and the revelation from where the game gets name. Play it because it’s freeware, but made with skill and style. Play it.