HALF-HOUR REVIEW – Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

Attention fans of monsters and monster-collecting!

My review of the first thirty minutes of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is now up over at The First Hour. Do check it out, as well as click the link on minute #30 to get the full impact of the loss of my goo friend Blues.

It’s not a terribly long experience, the review, but that has to do with the fact that the game’s opening is basically “run up a mountain and grind monsters to a pulp.” I’ve gone a little further since then, getting a platypunk onto my team and equipping everyone with better weapons; however, still haven’t made it through that cave. I’ll be sure to sing it loud and proud the moment Hodor and Team Dream Beam make it to the mountaintop. Until then, heroes!

Samus Aran against the nefarious Space Pirates is no stroll through Zebeth

Yesterday, a day earlier than originally touted to be available, the 10 NES games from the 3DS Ambassador Program were ready for downloading. Let’s name ’em all: Wrecking Crew, NES Open Tournament Golf, Yoshi, Metroid, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, and The Legend of Zelda. Whew. That’s a lot of titles, and  several of them are straight up ancient and esteemed relics of the past. However, getting them onto one’s 3DS was a tricky, convoluted process.

I was excited to give each of them a try, especially since–and this is where I lose all street cred as any kind of gaming fanatic–I’ve never played the original Metroid or The Legend of Zelda (1 and 2). I know. That’s like…crazy talk, right? I also don’t drink milk; deal with it. Well, that’s just how life went; I was never into emulating games on my computer throughout college and post-college, and since I missed setting sail on the NES boat from actually back in the day, that was it. Strangely, I did devour the later installments of these games on the SNES, and consider them to be absolute favorites. Fast-forward many, many years, and here I am, stretched out on a guest room bed, face merely inches from the screen, playing these games for the very first time on a shiny, battery-drained 3DS.

To start, Metroid is freaking hard. You elevator down onto Zebeth (later installments change this to Zebes) with a meager 30 health and can quickly lose all of that if you don’t proceed carefully. There’s also no solid save system, just a wonky password thing that I’m too lazy to try. So, you grab the morph ball immediately to your left–also known as maru mari–and move ahead in baby steps. I managed to get my health up to about 70 before getting stuck near those tubes that release an endless swarm of flying enemies; coupled with the fact that Samus can’t shoot in a downwards direction and that her shots actually can only go so far…well, she didn’t last long. Had to restart from the beginning. I think I was relying too much on my Super Metroid skills here, not grasping that both games play very differently.

Quick deaths and total restarts. This is a reoccurring theme with these freebie NES games. They are tough cookies. Except NES Open Tournament Golf, which is more terrible than tough. I got a 9 on the very first hole, and that’s not cool. I know how to golf. I got a birdie and two pars this summer in real life golf, swinging a real club and hitting a real ball. I should be even stronger in the pixelated version. But yeah…

I’m definitely going to give Metroid another fair go, and might have to actually rely on this password-saving feature once I get deep enough. Imagine getting all the way to Tourian and dying and having to begin all over again? ::shudders:: Oh, and the music is still amazingly powerful, wriggling its way into my very soul. Love, love, love it.

Rock of Ages is weird and not the latest add-on from AC/DC for Rock Band

Little did you know, dear Grinding Down readers, but I used to collect rocks as a young lad. Mostly from my own driveway. Laugh all you want, but I had a bucket kept deep in the garage of the most special, most weirdly shaped, most coolest of cool solid minerals. No collection was greater than mine, and I was constantly adding to it, picking up “rarer” items like feldspar, milky quartz, and tiger’s eye from road-side travel shops when out vacationing with the family. Can’t recall what ultimately happened to it, but I suspect the rocks were dumped back into the driveway, from whence they came, like the One Ring, and are now no longer part of my collection, but that of the driveway’s, at the house I grew up in, but no longer see. It’s all kinds of sad.

Anyways, I’m thinking about rocks and my once beloved rock collection because I just watched a Quick Look of Rock of Ages, a game I saw mentioned from time to time online and completely assumed it had something to do with the Rock Band franchise. Um, nope. Evidently, it’s a…um…a tower defense title where the player rolls a boulder across a map and tries to knock down an opposing team’s castle’s doors. The majority of the action takes place from the boulder’s perspective, and you roll this rock through such ages as Ancient Greek, Medieval, Renaissance, Rococo, and Romanticism. Such a serious game requires such serious undertones, with a Monty Python-like humor, quirky music, and fart noises when you lose a match. Toot!

Yeah, it’s weird, but it actually makes more sense when you realize this creation is coming from the makers of Monkey Ball and Zeno Clash. I’m not a huge fan of the tower defense genre, as it always feels like a lot of waiting and planning, little action and doing. However, putting you in the role of the boulder tumbling down the hill is genius, and worrying about things like momentum while watching out for angry cows or sneaky catapults helps to keep things tense despite all the goofiness. If anything, I’d definitely give the demo a shot–if there is one–as this could be a fun time for Tara and I.

Maybe this is the start of my new (videogame only) rock collection?

For a nameless story, Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 – From the Abyss is quite a mouthful

I think I’m losing my mind. Also, not sure if the above screenshot is correct for the game I’m going to be talking about, but whatever–mind lost, deal with it. The house Tara and I just moved into over the weekend is still without power, with a guesstimate of maybe coming back on some time over the next five days; the basement is no longer flooded and it seems like those deadly branches have stopped falling from the sky, but we’ve yet to get back there and truly start living. I’m without all my comforts, my staples, my coffee pot–my console gaming systems. Yeah, no Deus Ex: Human Revolution yet. And trust me, I’m grateful for having a place to stay at Tara’s parents’ house, but time is moving forward, and all I want to do is get back to the house. Snargle-dargle-blargle.

Last night, while waiting to go out for Tara’s birthday dinner, I hopped online to the 3DS eShop to see if there was any new info about the forthcoming Ambassador NES games. There wasn’t. However, I did notice an irksome $3.67 in my account, which is not enough to get a big name game, but definitely enough for an indie thing or a calculator or one of those grouped under the $1.99 category. Remember, these downloads still get taxed after you select to purchase ’em. And something about Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 – From the Abyss caught my eyes, most certainly not its title. I’m guessing its look, which evokes that charming, 16-bit era of dungeon crawlers of yesteryear like Children of Mana and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You kill monsters, get better equipment, and protect your hometown–that kind of experience.

So far, I’ve hacked and slashed some a whole lot of monsters, gathered some items into my inventory, got killed, and lost all of my items. Wee! It’s hard to tell if this is its own game, or just like a snippet plucked from the full DS retail release, just called From the Abyss. Disappointingly, I haven’t found a single anonymous note. The plot involves a guy conveniently named Raid meeting up with a girl named…Helen and then fighting down screen after screen of monsters and trying to destroy the monster boss to keep the lands safe and sound. Rinse and repeat. You can absorb abilities from monsters too, maybe just like in the wonderful Brave Fencer Musashi, but I haven’t really gotten the hang of it yet. As this is merely a single chapter in a longer story, I’m not expecting much, but then again, the game cost just about as much as my morning cup of hazelnut coffee (cream and sugar), and satisfied me for long enough. We’ll see if I keep grinding. Probably not considering tomorrow I’m getting 10 free NES games for my Nintendo 3DS. That’s all well and good, but I really just want to go home.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter to open up a new trilogy

Oh my, looks like we have another new release coming out this year for the Nintendo DS, not the Nintendo 3DS. That’s right. The 3D-less system is still kicking, and it’s gonna be kicking even higher with the fact that we’re getting another Layton title, a prequel that, um, kicks off a new trilogy. Professor Layton and the Last Specter–known as Professor Layton and the Specter’s Flute in Japan and Professor Layton and the Specter’s Call in Europe/Australia–hits North American shores on October 17, 2011.

Professor Layton, newly appointed, receives a letter from an old fried requesting his assistance at the village of Mist Haley. According to the letter, a giant specter is appearing at night and wreaking havoc. It looks like everything we’ve come to expect from the series, such as top-notch animation, intriguing puzzles, and a story that is gripping and mysterious and probably not without a twist or two:

Mmm. Oh, and something else to take note of. The North American version is coming bundled with London Life, a previously unlockable RPG that looks and plays a lot like Mother 3, but is set in Luke and Layton’s universe. Yeah…jump for joy on that ticket. Supposedly, it’s of the 100+ hours ilk, and that absolutely rocks especially because it is no longer only available to those that beat the game, coming unlocked from the get-go. Not sure which I’d want to try first.

Really, at some point, I should finish up the original trilogy. I absolutely loved everything about Professor Layton and the Curious Village, and actually used that game as full-blown proof that a girl I was kinda seeing at the time should pick up a DS of her own. And she did. Those mathy puzzles, while not my thing, were definitely hers. Haven’t gotten to try the other two in the series, Diabolical Box and Unwound Flute, but maybe they’ll be a bit cheaper now that time has come to pass and a new entry is about to debut. Will have to keep my eyes peeled…

Hurricane Irene, the weekend, and gaming

Well, we all knew she was coming ahead of time, and thankfully many of us paid heed to the warnings, but things were still pretty rough this weekend. In terms of things hitting close to home, the house we literally just moved into on Friday…well, it’s currently without power and hot water and the basement had about two to three inches of water in it. Plus, branches of deadly size were breaking off and dropping on the back deck:

Ugh. Yeah…don’t even know what’s going on in our other place–the Leaky Cauldron–but most likely not much, just power loss. Or extensive leakage. Trying not to think that way. Won’t be able to check on that for a little bit though. Pray that the remainder of our stuff remains dry and safe and…dry. Dry is the important factor here.

Tara and I spent the entire weekend at her parents’ place in Sparta, NJ, which still got hit with a lot of rain, heavy winds, and power loss. Honestly, prior, I thought that there was too much media hype about Hurricane Irene–my mother would’ve called me days ago and told me to pay attention and be prepared and that there was no hype, that this was a major storm rolling up the East Coast–and I probably would’ve just carried on as business as usual. Thankfully, everyone else freaking out began freaking me out and we smarted up, moved as much as we could into the new home, and then hunkered down elsewhere.

Before the storm rolled in, I made a quick swing by GameStop, interested in picking up a “get me through the hurricane” game, as well as rewarding myself for all that heavy lifting and stress that comes with physically moving from one place to another. I figured that if the power went out, I’d at least have my fully charged 3DS for a few hours of distraction/entertainment. I had a slight interest in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, the first true Japanese RPG for the Nintendo 3DS since its launch, and that’s interesting, considering the DS was always playing host to this JRPG and that JRPG. So I grabbed it, looking forlornly at the numerous copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the shelves behind the counter. My friend Greg had ordered me a copy, and I was hoping to get it in time for some weekend gaming, but Amazon was late shipping it, and then factor in the slim chance of being at the house to actually play it…wah.

But then DE:HR arrived on Saturday! I have read the game’s manual twice. That’s kind of like playing it, right?

Other than that, I played some Braid, VVVVVV, and more The Sims Social to help pass time as we *ahem* weathered the storm. Will probably have some posts up this week about these games, as well as some other goodies. Stay tuned. And please, please…stay away from falling branches.

Achievements of the Week – The Legend of the Boar Edition

Posting this very early on this bright and sunny Friday as I’ll be spending it mostly moving, sweating, and moving and sweating at the same time. And who knows when we’ll have Internet again. Pray for Tara and I’s well-being as we leave the attic known as the Leaky Cauldron and head to the house in the woods, which she calls Godric’s Hollow and I call Grimmauld Place. Should be a crazy time…

Anyways, this week, I unlocked two Achievements with legend in their title and then sat idly on a boar for five minutes while checking my email. This is the very definition of excitement, I know.

From Fallout: New Vegas…

The Legend of the Star (20G): Completed The Legend of the Star.

Not going to say too much about this here as I am working on a big boy blog post, as this quest was a bit demanding, and I obviously didn’t ping this baby until my third character, wherein I really had to concentrate and pay attention to the fact that these Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle caps were not gonna find themselves. Also, the quest’s reward is nothing great. Oi. Regardless, glad this one’s done as it was the last Achievements left for sidequests.

Caravan Master (30G): Won 30 games of Caravan.

Way back in June 2011, I wrote a rather informative blog post about how to play Caravan; you’d think, with that knowledge, that I’d have knocked this Achievement out a lot sooner than this. The problem is that the game got patched shortly after that, and the patch did things to Caravan. Cruel, nasty things. They made it so that opposing players could play cards such as kings, queens, and jacks against your own stacks, thus ruining your hard work to 26. The guy near Gun Runners was impossible, doing this every other turn. Fed up, I went back to my old staple of NCR ambassador Dennis Crocker, and while he occasionally messed up a stack of mine, it was less frequent. Six won games later, and there ya go.

Tara said,”Wham, bam, Caravan!” when I unlocked this. Love that dork.

From Nier…

The Book of Legend (20G): Grimoire Weiss joined your party.

All Aboared! (10G): You rode a boar for at least five minutes.

One of the early sidequests in Nier, given to you by some no-name villager, involves taking down a wild boar terrorizing…uh, sheep. Or people. It doesn’t matter. You just need to go kill a boar. After you do that, it seems other boars have heard of Nier’s horrible deed and are now tame around him, ready for riding. The Achievement’s descriptions says to ride the boar for five minutes, but I merely climbed on its back, put the controller down, checked what was up with Gmail and Twitter, peed, and came back to that oh-so-sweet pinging sound. All aboared indeed.

—

And that’s it. Depending on our Internet status at the new house, there may or may not be an Achievements of the Week for next week. We’ll see.

Unlock any good ones lately, Grinding Down readers? Tell me in the comments below.

The Sims Social and simulating social spamming

As I’m wont to do, I’ve drifted away from many of the silly Facebook games I was into months ago, such as CityVille and Pet Society and even–gasp!—Chocobo’s Crystal Tower. In my mind, you can only click on things for so long, and I’ve never been into the social elements of social gaming, always feeling like I’m pestering my friends or spamming their newsfeeds. Which is odd then because I played a little bit of The Sims Social last night…and actually liked it. Guess others like it too since there’s over 10,000,000 monthly active players at the moment; Leigh Alexander probably not included in that count.

I’ve always enjoyed the gameplay of The Sims, taking the mundane tasks of daily life and turning them into something a wee bit more rewarding. Having a job, peeing, calling friends over for some TV and pizza…it’s all fun, and generally one wouldn’t think so. I mean, the social elements in games like Grand Theft Auto IV drove me absolutely batty, but that’s because the developers were trying to juggle too much at once. Here, it works…up until you accidentally set your Sim on fire or lose on your money in a bad spout of furniture purchasing. Which happens a lot for me. That’s been the biggest stresser and deterrent for me for The Sims franchise, the fact that you can work so hard making your house rock, your job awesome, and your circle of friends top-notch, and then can lose it all in a small kitchen fire.

Well, with The Sims Social, that fear is gone…seemingly. From what I can tell, your Sim can’t die. It can get unhappy and down and low on key meters like social, fun, and hygiene, but that’s okay. Just click around and visit some neighbors, and you’re back to sparkling goodness. And all the other elements of the The Sims is there, such as multiple tasks, traits, house construction, customization, and whatnot. Granted, everything is limited by a select amount of energy points used for actions, but it’s not too big of a hassle all in all. So far, spamming has been slight, and I’ve added my wife as a neighbor, but nobody else in my Facebook universe seems to be playing. No big deal. Like I said before, I’m not here for the social part of the browser-based game’s title. I’m here to click around and wear digital version of clothes I am wearing now and try to reconstruct my house into places I’ve actually lived in before, and I probably will for a little bit and then lose interest. Don’t be sad, Facebook. That’s just the way these things go. Here, have 1,000 simoleons!

JC Denton versus byzantine global conspiracies and time

Everyone was playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution last night, as well as tweeting some funny things about that East Coast earthquake. If anything, when the end of the world does come, it’s going to be freaking hilarious. Thank you, my fellow tweeters. But yeah, earthquakes. And Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Between all the positive reviews and extensive coverage at GiantBomb, I’m salivating.

Well, my copy is on the way, thanks to the generous Greg Noe, and it should hopefully arrive by weekend time so that I can sneak and augment and take notes like a cyberpunk pro after moving a hundred boxes and heavy furniture. Will be doing a first-hour review, as well as some random musings here at Grinding Down. Until then, there’s always…Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. Y’know, that PlayStation 2 port of the 2000 PC classic, featuring horrible load times, awful model animation, and strange sounds when you walk across grass. Yes, it’s true. I have a copy. See:

If you’re curious, my hand has the following augmentations: extra glow, resistance to radiation,+2 damage, and death chop.

I’ve played the opening of Deus Ex: The Conspiracy at least three or four times since purchasing it for a sweet $8.99 way back in the day, and there’s a good reason for that: many paths. For me, the Liberty Island mission is what sums up the Deus Ex experience (Deus Experience?) the best, with a ton of options and variety. Your goal is to locate and interrogate the NSF commander, most likely atop the Statue of Liberty. You can go in guns blazing, you can sneak around the back, or you can kind of do both. And then once you’re inside the Statue of Liberty, there’s even more things you can do. The game is always asking you to decide, sometimes on the fly. Like, this time around, I used my crossbow with tranquilizer darts to sneak around the back to the docks, climb my way up to the statue’s base itself, and creep on in; unfortunately, I set off a gas grenade, alerting two guards to my position, and had to switch from non-lethal tactics to oh-so-lethal. I could’ve reloaded a save file, but it’s a better experience to just roll with things.

I always end up trying for stealth…for as long as it’s possible. Sometimes, when the going gets rough, I have to shoot it out, which is not fun because the game’s shooting mechanics are iffy. It’s a more rewarding experience to lockpick doors, hack security cameras, and crouch around corners. There seems to be a point where I stop playing though, and that is right after the LaGuardia Airport mission. Can’t really pinpoint why that happens, but it does. You’re supposed to head off to Hong Kong, but instead find out your brother Paul (hey, that’s me!) is in trouble, and off you go to Hell’s Kitchen. Despite me trying to save me, I lose interest here. Or something more shiny distracts me.

More than likely, this time around, I’ll stop playing Deus Ex: The Conspiracy the moment my copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution arrives, and that’s okay. It was a nice refresher of what I like about the franchise, as well as what I hope gets an upgrade in the new prequel from Eidos Montreal.

About time I got my slime on with Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

I finally got to play a bit of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker last night despite purchasing the game a couple weeks ago. That seems to happen a lot with Nintendo DS titles for me. I buy them…and then don’t play them for a bit. I think it’s because I’m less excited to play my portable gaming device when in my own home, as I consider it more of a traveling thing, a road-side companion, a portal that helps pass time. Also, DQM: J was an impulse buy, something I picked up while waiting for Bullet to get an oil change; it’s not like I’ve been dying to try it out, just figured it would be interesting to see how it compared against its forefather, the mighty Pokémon franchise.

From what I’ve seen so far, there’s more visible depth in DQM: J than, say, Pokémon White. The key word is visible. We’ve all heard about the crazy amount of stats and breeding spreadsheets and EV madness and so on for those pocket monsters, but a good majority of that is behind the curtain. You have to go online and read. For DQM: J, it’s all right there. Stats, weapons, learning abilities, and what’s next for your mischievous mole or platypunk. There’s even a monster synthesis option, allowing you to fuse two monsters together in hopes of creating a better fighter. I like that, even if there’s not much I can do yet with my two-monster team. Hopefully things really open up after Infant Isle, and I can focus on grinding my team into something truly monstrous.

Also, while I love the classic sounds and elements from many of the Dragon Quest games…do they constantly need to get reused over and over? Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, Dragon Quest IX, Dragon Quest Wars, this –they all sound exactly the same. Granted, catchy tunes and soundbits, but not after the eightieth time. Save for the level up tune. That one always warms my cockles.

Anyways, I took notes of my first half-hour playing DQM: J. You’ll be able to read what kind of crazy adventures I got into with our young monster trainer Hodor over at The First Hour. Um , soonish. Just gotta, uh, type up my hand-written notes–scribbles, truly–and clean up the review. Not to get too spoilery, but the last two minutes are basically me channeling Darth Vader. Yup. Until then, goo luck scouting those slimes!