Paul’s Preeminent PlayStation Plus Purge – Payday: The Heist and Payday 2

If you have Netflix, I highly recommend you check out Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist. It’s a 2018 true crime documentary series about the murder of Brian Wells, a high-profile 2003 incident often referred to as the “collar bomb” or “pizza bomber” case. I didn’t really have a great intro planned here, seeing as I myself have never once robbed a bank or attempted to, but I am fascinated by those that put these actions into motion. I figured I’d use this time to recommend a new show for y’all to watch, as if there aren’t enough of those out there right now. Also, Reservoir Dogs.

Payday: The Heist and Payday 2 are cooperative first-person shooters developed by Overkill Software and published by Sony Online Entertainment. In them, players use a variety of firearms to complete objectives, which are usually centered around stealing a certain object, person, or a particular amount of money. This is not a run and gun ’em all down kind of game. Killing civilians is punished; players instead may take a limited number as hostages. Should any player get arrested, which happens after taking enough damage and not being revived in time, during the heist, one of their teammates may release a hostage, allowing a trade to take place. While playing the levels, players will notice a lot of variation in a single level, as there are often a large number of random events programmed in.

Payday: The Heist focuses on four robbers–Dallas, Hoxton, Chains, and Wolf. Their first heist takes place at the First World Bank, where they enter a vault by using thermite hidden on the inside of a photocopier and try to steal a large amount of money. A post-game message congratulates the group, telling them that they are “set for life,” but recommends more heists, including robbing drug junkies in an abandoned apartment complex and ambushing a prisoner transport in heavy rain weather, simply for the enjoyment of the players. Payday 2 takes place two years after the events of the previous game. A new gang comes to the Washington, D.C. area to perform another heisting spree, and you can control of one of the gang’s twenty-one members and perform heists alone or with up to three teammates.

I…was never any good at either of these two games. Trust me, I tried. However, I always felt like I was dragging down my team and never knew what step to take next. Like, for instance, when the cops show up…do I engage with them or not? I often did, because that’s the mindset in a first-person shooter–you shoot the things shooting at you so they, y’know, stop shooting at you. However, this always ended poorly. I do like the idea of a cooperative heist game, as heists in general are cool and probably the only thing I enjoyed from Grand Theft Auto V‘s main campaign, but I would need to play this with friends and talk through our plans very thoroughly before taking action. Alas, on the PlayStation 3, I have no friends, and so that will never happen. Goodbye to both of y’all.

May your next digital bank robbery go smoothly, all you fans of Payday: The Heist and Payday 2. I’m rooting for ya, truly. Also, watch Heat, one of the greatest heist films out there.

—

Oh look, another reoccurring feature for Grinding Down. At least this one has both a purpose and an end goal–to rid myself of my digital collection of PlayStation Plus “freebies” as I look to discontinue the service soon. I got my PlayStation 3 back in January 2013 and have since been downloading just about every game offered up to me monthly thanks to the service’s subscription, but let’s be honest. Many of these games aren’t great, and the PlayStation 3 is long past its time in the limelight for stronger choices. So I’m gonna play ’em, uninstall ’em. Join me on this grand endeavor.

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: LOST: The Game

Perhaps one of the big reasons why I adore the show LOST so much is because it was something my mother and I both watched, and after each episode, we’d e-mail each other with reactions or theories or to generally complain about how mean Ben is or what nickname Sawyer came up with for some other cast member. Good times. She got really into it during those early seasons; I can’t remember if she ever saw its conclusion before passing away in December 2010. At some point during the show’s popularity, my mother purchased for me LOST: The Game at her local Borders. Here’s the sad rub: I never played it, and by the time I was ready to move out of my studio apartment in Clifton, NJ, I tossed the whole thing away, cool suitcase and all.

Now, around this time, I did make some friends, and we played a lot of board games, such as every iteration of Munchkin out at the time, Talisman, Dungeons & Dragons, Catan, Chez Geek, Pimp: The Backhanding, Kingmaker, and so on. I just never felt comfortable bringing the game over or learning the rules by myself and then having to teach everyone; plus, I was still pretty new to the world of board games, and I had no idea if LOST: The Game was a good one or a bad one or even worth figuring out.

LOST: The Game was released on July 15, 2006 in the United Kingdom and August 7, 2006 in the United States. The game was designed by Keith Tralins, developed through MegaGigaOmniCorp, and published by Cardinal Games. It is a hybrid strategy/social/role-playing game set in the world of LOST that, if you’d believe, is somewhat similar to many solo games I play now, such as Fallout: The Board Game and Discover: Lands Unknown. The game allows you to assume the role as a character from the show in your attempts to survive on the Island and features many of the elements involved in the first few seasons of the TV show, including mysteries, alliances, and the “Smoke Monster.”

There are 75 hexagonal Location tiles that make up the main playing area for LOST: The Game. There are two types of tiles: 30 Shoreline tiles and 45 Inner Island tiles. The location tiles are set face-down randomly to ensure that each experience with the game is unique, just like with Catan. The tiles can be arranged in any fashion the player wishes, as long as the Shoreline tiles are on the outside edge of the board because why would you put water in the middle of the island. Also, how did a polar bear get out there? Anyways…

Here’s how it plays, as far as I can tell. Players are randomly dealt a Starting Character, such as Jack, Locke, Kate, and so on. You cannot play as Desmond, and for that sin alone this game deserves to be stuffed down a hatch and forgotten for good. On each player’s turn, they must move all of the characters they own to an adjacent tile. If the location tile their character is located at is face-down, they flip the tile face-up and follow its instructions. If a Fate card is drawn, they must immediately deal with any Encounters or equip any equipment; however, they may choose to hold an Event card for later use. Characters may also attempt to lead neutral characters at their location. If another player occupies the same location tile, the players may attempt to engage their opponent’s characters to lead them, steal their Fate cards, or steal their equipment.

You win LOST: The Game when:

• One player leads all characters on the Island
• A Starting Character’s win condition is fulfilled
• Another win condition decided upon by the players prior to the game (whatever that means)

Right, so it doesn’t sound like the most intricate or complicated board game ever designed. We’ll give that award to Scythe. Still, I wish I had my copy now because I’m more familiar with this style of gameplay, and it is something I’m curious about, as LOST is never not spinning away in the back of my mind. There wasn’t a lot of attention given to the game’s art or look, other than it coming packaged in a briefcase and using images from the show, and that’s a shame because a more stylized version might have convinced me to keep it for the long run. Oh well. Perhaps I’ll run into it again down the road. Y’know, when we all go back to the Island.

—

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH is a regular feature here at Grinding Down where I reminisce about videogames I either sold or traded in when I was young and dumb. To read up on other games I parted with, follow the tag.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #34 – The Tragic Tale of Bark Scruffalo

Protect your doggy
From monoliths, enemies
Act fast, drop mines, live

–

And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

Celeste: jump up, jump up, and get down

I went into Celeste with hesitation. It’s a splatformer, also know as an extremely difficult type of action platformer, and while I somehow was able to beat Super Meat Boy and VVVVVV, I’ve never been great at these games. They require steady fingers and precise timing and, above all, patience, a quality I pride myself on having…but only to a point. For instance, I really don’t like unnecessarily aggressive drivers; here, let me tell you a recent story of an interaction I had the other week. A light was turning yellow, and I didn’t believe I could make it through so I slowed and stopped just as it turned red. The car behind me was annoyed at this; the driver was a middle-aged man on his cell phone, and he threw his unoccupied hand up in disgust and then flipped me the middle finger. My response? I waved cheerfully at him. There’s just no need for any of that, sir.

Anyways, Celeste is a platformer in which players control a girl named Madeline as she makes her way up a mountain while avoiding various deadly obstacles, such as spike pits and shadow beings. Along with jumping and climbing up walls for a limited amount of time, Madeline has the ability to perform a mid-air dash in the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions. This move can only be performed once and must be replenished by either landing on the ground, hitting certain objects, such as replenishing crystals, or moving to a new screen. Throughout each level, the player will encounter additional mechanics, such as springs that launch the player or feathers that allow for moments of brief flight.

Celeste is at its core a 2D platformer–you run, jump, climb walls, and air-dash. There’s no picking up special items, upgrading stats, or finding costumes that give you the power to shoot lightning from your hands or spit fireballs. You may occasionally grab strawberries, which are mostly collectibles to boast about your excellent masochistic platforming skills. They serve no greater purpose than tempting you to perform non-mandatory challenges liberally sprinkled onto each stage, and I’ve gotten a few here and there, but have no intention of going after all of them, as some definitely look extremely tricky to grab.

Here’s some light praise: Celeste has some of the best 2D pixel art I’ve ever seen. Clearly inspired by the sprites of the SNES era, the characters and environments are both vibrant and memorable, adding a beauty to a genre known for being somewhat ugly or more focused on killing you so quickly you have no time to take anything in. These gorgeous visuals are backed by a soundtrack from Lena Raine, whose synthy chiptune beats will time travel you back to the days off Donkey Kong Country and, more recently, Fez and FTL: Faster Than Light. Lastly, the adventure is constructed together by a low-poly 3D model of Celeste Mountain that helps to convey the scale and trajectory of the climb, as well as serving as a level select.

I’m not that far in Celeste, just a couple chapters, and a part of me worries that it is only going to get more difficult as I climb higher. I mean, that would only make sense; games often ease you into the challenge, unless you are Dark Souls then there are no rules. Still, there’s something called Assist Mode, which I may need to look into further. Evidently, there’s a handful of options available to cycle through at will, like becoming invincible, extending the all-important air dash ability, and slowing the whole game down in 10% intervals. Assist Mode allows for any combination of these to work at any time; for example, if my redheaded-climber keeps landing on spikes, I could just turn her invincible for a hot second to alleviate the pain and bypass the obstacle, and while some might see this as cheating or cheesing the game…I certainly don’t. In fact, this type of stuff allows me to experience more of the game, which is a good thing.

With that, I can hear the mountain calling me back. May I reach its top in due time, all in one piece, perhaps with a strawberry or two to munch on along the way. Perhaps.

Paul’s Preeminent PlayStation Plus Purge – Dragon Fin Soup

Y’all know I love a good, strange-as-heck videogame title, and Dragon Fin Soup is a wonderful example of such a beauty. One, it contains the word dragon, so I’m already intrigued, but it also sounds more like a fancy, medieval recipe than a tactical RPG mixed with roguelike elements and procedurally generated worlds. It tells you nothing about the game, but entices you to check it out nonetheless, which is exactly what I did…many years ago. According to my save file, I played 21 minutes and 51 seconds total. Well, let’s revisit the abnormal critter once more now in 2019 before I get to the uninstalling part.

Dragon Fin Soup stars Red Robin, a charming, yet raging alcoholic bounty hunter who would rather get into a bar fight than deliver baked goods. Players must take up Robin’s blades and set out across Asura, a lushly colorful fantasy world that sits on the back of an enormous space turtle–um, was Terry Pratchett okay with this?–on a journey to discover the secrets of her bloody past. That’s the setup, and it’s pretty interesting; at least our protagonist isn’t an amnesiac for no reason whatsoever. I’m just not sure how much like a twisted version of Red Riding Hood she is supposed to be…

Okay, now I remember what my initial problem with Dragon Fin Soup was. For some reason, the entire game doesn’t fit on my small, desk TV monitor, with important UI being cut off in the four corners or hard to read entirely. Alas, there is no option within the game to correct this, and I don’t have this problem with any other game on my PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 2…so I’m not sure how to correct it. Grrr. It makes figuring out what is going on a bit difficult, especially returning to the game after so many years away from it. Not impossible, but just more work than I want to put into this thing.

Dragon Fin Soup reminds me a bit of Dungeons of Dredmor, which…was a game I didn’t understand at all during my first few attempts at it. Nowadays, I’m much more familiar with the roguelike genre, but that doesn’t mean I love every game that takes permadeath super seriously or identifying items essential for breathing. For every Spelunky or The Binding of Isaac, there are countless other iterations that take inspiration from the punishing genre and run with it, for better or for worse. I think it is all about feel, and something feels off in Dragon Fin Soup; perhaps it is too much information at once or none at all. Speaking of that…

There’s no tutorial, though there is a dream sequence at the start that immediately throws you into combat. After that, you are left to your own devices, which for me, returning to this after years of being away, did nothing good for me. Dragon Fin Soup is a turn-based strategy game. Each move the player makes gives enemy units a chance to respond. Thankfully, it’s not as slow and laborious as it sounds. In fact, once you get a hang of the game’s rhythm and controls, combat can be fast-paced and frenetic. You’ll need to use a mix of magic, bombs, gunplay, and melee combat to take down your adversaries. I unfortunately didn’t get to see enough to keep me engaged and wanting to explore more or learn about Red Robin’s past.

Maybe in another life, Dragon Fin Soup. You still have a wonderfully odd title, and for that alone I give you all the kudos.

—

Oh look, another reoccurring feature for Grinding Down. At least this one has both a purpose and an end goal–to rid myself of my digital collection of PlayStation Plus “freebies” as I look to discontinue the service soon. I got my PlayStation 3 back in January 2013 and have since been downloading just about every game offered up to me monthly thanks to the service’s subscription, but let’s be honest. Many of these games aren’t great, and the PlayStation 3 is long past its time in the limelight for stronger choices. So I’m gonna play ’em, uninstall ’em. Join me on this grand endeavor.

Paul’s Preeminent PlayStation Plus Purge – Toy Home

There was a time when Sony was really pushing the Sixaxis controller as the best way to play some of its big name games, such as Lair and Heavenly Sword. Well, Toy Home also uses it, forcing you to tilt left or right to steer your racing vehicle…or shake it violently to get your vehicle to flip over after a crash landing. I’m sure I looked a bit ridiculous doing all of this, but thankfully no one was around to watch me play. It’s gimmicky and not something I’d every really want to use, but alas…I had to.

The goal of Toy Home, which is a digital download only for the PlayStation 3 that came out in December 2007 and does not contain Trophies because it predates the inclusion of ’em, is to simply collect coins, discover hidden medals, and pass every checkpoint, earning 10 seconds for each checkpoint, before times runs out. You also win points by jumping, smashing, and flipping around. There are a total of eight racetracks in the game, all of them taking place in one of the rooms of the house and are filled with obstacles. It initially does feel like you are a kid’s bedroom like in Toy Story, with larger-than-life toys around you to smash into, and the bouncy music really makes you feel like a kid just goofing around with your toys.

There’s a single player mode, along with a multiplayer mode, where up to eight players can battle against each other online, as well as leaderboards, where you can view high scores. Naturally, I didn’t bother trying to play online because I just know how it’s going to go; I can only imagine how empty and lonely that digital realm is for a…twelve-year-old game.

I don’t have much more to say about Toy Home. It’s not a complicated game. It is what it is, a driving collectathon, and that’s fine. The only part I wasn’t enamored with was the control scheme, but I probably could get over it in time. Still, my goal with this project is to play what I can and see if the games hook me hard or are only interesting enough for an hour or so of my gaming time. I don’t see myself devoting much more of my life to Toy Home, sorry to say to all those at SCE and Game Republic.

—

Oh look, another reoccurring feature for Grinding Down. At least this one has both a purpose and an end goal–to rid myself of my digital collection of PlayStation Plus “freebies” as I look to discontinue the service soon. I got my PlayStation 3 back in January 2013 and have since been downloading just about every game offered up to me monthly thanks to the service’s subscription, but let’s be honest. Many of these games aren’t great, and the PlayStation 3 is long past its time in the limelight for stronger choices. So I’m gonna play ’em, uninstall ’em. Join me on this grand endeavor.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #33 – Kanji Gakusei

Gotta do homework
Search for paper, find kanji
Learn Japanese words

–

And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

All I can say about Auf Abwegen is nein, danke

This might sound super obvious, but jumping is essential when it comes to platforming, and Auf Abwegen does not nail the feeling of good, reliable jumping at all. And without being able to jump well and with precision, there is nothing I could do to get away from the pack of bloodhounds chasing me, which is a shame because, for a free thing on Steam, this seemed to have promise from the start. Well, from a narrative perspective, that is. Oh well, you can’t win them all, and that’s something I’m slowly coming to terms with. Not everything can be completed or seen through to conclusion.

Auf Abwegen, which I believe translates from German to “gone astray” or “on the wrong path,” has you controlling a red fox in its natural habitat. This seems to be some kind of VR simulation, played by people up in outer space, with the implication that Earth is no more, and this is one of the ways they can experience what life used to be like on the forgotten planet. It is a one-man project from user Kindman, but there is nothing kind about the threats and frustration you’ll experience in each scenario you come across, whether it is simply learning how to go under tree roots or running so quick that you can’t see what is up ahead.

Evidently, there are three levels to master, but I think the one where the bloodhounds chase you is only the second one. Or it could be the last challenge, but I don’t really know since I couldn’t get past it after 40-plus attempts. Let me describe what you do in parts one and two. It opens with a tutorial section, where you learn how to move the fox; it can jump, crawl under roots, and run. You are then tasked with finding food for your family, and it is up to you to both figure out how and what you want to hunt. I got a mouse, a bird, and an egg, I think, which worked out, but getting these things was no easy task. For instance, there is a section where you are leaping from lily pads to logs to rocks in a small pond. Again, the jumping is so loose and finicky that landing on these tiny platforms is seemingly random. Chasing the mouse requires you to run it down–not sure how this thing made it across the water–and again, running fast and jumping here isn’t ideal.

However, after delivering the food to your wife and cubs–do foxes have cubs?–you enter the chase sequence, and this is where the madness begins. The fox can run fast, so fast that you can’t see what is coming up next. However, you have to keep moving or else. It might be a hedgehog you have to jump over or a gap in the ground, and you have to use lightning-fast reflexes to overcome these obstacles because the bloodhounds are coming, and if they touch you once, you lose and must start all over, bugle call and all. So it then becomes a game of memorization, but even memorizing what is next doesn’t help when the jumping is unreliable. Sure, some deaths I’ll blame on me, but most of them were me squeezing my controller in pure frustration because I had cleared a bunch of obstacles only to jump into a wooden log with branches instead of jumping over it because I didn’t press the button early enough. Ugh, no thanks.

I do dig the look of Auf Abwegen, from its science-heavy computer interface at the start to the hand-painted backgrounds of the forest, backed by a soft, melodic piano-driven soundtrack, minus that annoying bugle call signaling the bloodhounds that it is time to hunt. The cartoony parts, such as the fox and fish and bloodhounds, pop against the backgrounds nicely. There’s some decent voice-acting, though I think it is all in German, but there are subtitles to read, with only a couple of grammar mistakes throughout.

If y’all are feeling nice or masochistic enough to play Auf Abwegen, by all means, give it a shot for free on Steam. And let me know what happens after you get past the bloodhounds. I’m genuinely curious.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #32 – Grimnoir

New cases, Morris
Supernatural at work
Deduce, kill, repeat

–

And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #31 – The Wind

Creepy atmosphere
Listen to the wind, follow
Effective chills here

–

And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.