2016 Game Review Haiku, #13 – Dakota Winchester’s Adventures Part 3

Near the last ruby
Meh puzzles, naturally
To be continued

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Here we go again. Another year of me attempting to produce quality Japanese poetry about the videogames I complete in three syllable-based phases of 5, 7, and 5. I hope you never tire of this because, as far as I can see into the murky darkness–and leap year–that is 2016, I’ll never tire of it either. Perhaps this’ll be the year I finally cross the one hundred mark. Buckle up–it’s sure to be a bumpy ride. Yoi ryokō o.

Dakota Winchester’s Adventures are everything save adventurous

Over the years, I’ve occasionally dabbled in a few “mouse only” point-and-click adventure games from the people at Carmel Games, namely Habla Kadabla and a few others that I never got around to writing about. They all share a very similar style, both in terms of art, humor, and puzzles, and while none so far have been anything to drop one’s jaw at, they can periodically be enjoyable and an okay way to kill thirty minutes. Not amazingly great, not terribly offensive–just these strange, small adventure titles that ask you only to click and exist in what I imagine as some kind of shared universe, where everyone stands stiffly forward, eyes wide open, voiced by one singular, ultimate power.

So, why’d I pick the subject of today’s blog post to experience? It had to be that Dakota Winchester is clearly trying to ape Indiana Jones, and any time that happens I just have to see how it goes. I mean, Indiana Jones, at least for me, made archeology exhilarating and cool, rife with danger and discovery. And before you weigh in on the current state of Doctor Jones, no, I’ve not seen (and probably won’t ever see) Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, though I did play the LEGO videogame based on the film, which wasn’t terrible. Mostly due to LEGO figs.

Anyways, in the first leg of this episodic journey, intrepid Dakota Winchester travels to some island via Gustavo Cruises in hope of solving the mystery behind Hilda’s box, which is rumored to contain the secret of eternal life. However, in order to open it, he first has to find three unique rubies scattered across the globe. To do this, you speak with people, collect items, and use items on other items/people to make things happen. The main goal here is that Winchester needs to find two rings to open up a temple door, and it’s all straightforward stuff until the final puzzle, where I wasted at least five minutes not realizing there were additional layers on the rotating ring that could be moved. The “To Be Continued…” screen popped up after 21 minutes.

The second episode has a much fuller title of Dakota Winchester’s Adventures Part 2: Cactus City. That means the first episode should probably have been called something like Part 1: Gustavo Cruises or Part 1: Temple of Ring Doom. I don’t know. I’m a stickler for consistency. Anyways, this one only took me 12 minutes to find the second of three plot-vital rubies, and the gameplay structure remains the same. However, there’s one part where you need to find a pickaxe through a bunch of steps to hit a rock in a mine, but if you look in the background art for that very same mine…you’ll see a pickaxe inside a cart. Naturally, you can’t simply click on that one; a strange shortcoming.

According to the credits, James Kaylor handled the voiceover work. All of it. Yes, even the female characters, which you can hear instantly as a man trying to pitch his voice higher to speak like one of those newfangled women in their super screechy tinny talk. I can understand the difficulties in finding additional actors to help record lines, but maybe the better idea is to have it be text-only, which could use a fair shake of copyediting. Sure, you can turn the audio off, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the fact that it sounds extremely amateurish and is there from the start. Some of the music from the first two episodes comes from Kevin MacCleod–remember that awesome soundtrack from 400 Years?–so that’s at least pleasant to absorb. The background art is pretty good, too.

I have to assume there will be a third episode down the line to unearth the third ruby and see what’s ultimately inside Hilda’s box. I don’t suggest anyone play to see what happens, but I’m now at least curious enough to want to know. Maybe sooner than later I should actually play the Indiana Jones point-and-click adventure game in my collection. Y’know, the one called Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Hmm. We’ll see.

The Half-hour Hitbox: December 2013

Some inside baseball: I put this post together piecemeal across the whole month. That means that when I play a game and find myself not interested in writing a large post about it–or suspect that I won’t down the line–I add it here, find a picture, and write a quick sentence or two about it. Alas, sometimes I don’t do that last part though, as I’m just not in the mood at that exact moment, and so I’ll have to come back to it, which can be hard, especially for smaller experiences, such as Isaac’s Odyssey, a game I am finding it hard to remember what happened, save for the atrocious grammar I had to read.

Truthfully, I’d rather put this all together in one go, to keep the writing thematic and consistent, but that seems like an impossible task. I get exhausted just searching for Google for decent screenshots. And then there’s too much to juggle in terms of what each game is and does, and I’d be super worried I’d forget something. I want to be able to give everything its due, y’know.

Maybe I will rethink how The Half-hour Hitbox looks for 2014, but for now, let’s end the last month of the year as we have with all the months that came before it since this feature began. To the games!

Oíche Mhaith

What a horrifying experience. I’m not even sure how it qualifies as a game because all you basically do, as a young girl, is walk around your house, get berated by everyone, watch your father go on a murdering spree, and then play with some strange device that allows you to swap personalities between your father, mother, and dog in hopes of making everything right. We’ve already seen the darker side of Terry Cavanagh’s mind in Hero’s Adventure, but this goes nineteen levels deeper, and I’m very put off. You might get more out of this than I did, but if you do, well…I’m now concerned for your state of being.

Annie Android: Automated Affection

Evidently, one of the first little games Ben Chandler ever made, and it certainly is little. I mean, like a resolution size of 320X200. I had to tinker with my computer to make it larger so I could actually read the text and find items, but it still looked good to me. It’s about an android called Annie and the love she wants, which is a fella called Mailbot. Unfortunately, RoboHQ has assigned her someone else as a partner, and off she goes, to control her destiny. It’s pretty fun with some silly characters, like the robot pretending to walk the dog in the park, and the puzzles aren’t too tough, though one required precise timing, and sometimes my clicks missed the mark. An 80s-esque soundtrack full of bumps and thumps plays in the background, and there’s even vocals for the title screen song. You can download the game right now.

Gears of War

Well, I played the first Gears of War game, and I hunkered down and ran through it on the easiest of difficulty settings. Whatever, don’t judge me. Or you totally can. I don’t care, because I don’t really care about Gears of Wars. It’s macho shoot alien monsters in the face tough guy stuff, and all the dialogue is trite and predictable, and every male character is this unshapely mass of muscle and armor. Same goes for the Locust. In fact, on a few occasions, I mixed up one of my allies with an enemy because they look almost identical, and it’s hard to keep track of everyone when they are so drab looking and moving around an even drabber scene of ruined rubble. I was able to play a single online match–surprisingly, not many people are still playing this game despite it being a freebie for December for Gold members–and that was simply okay. Just like with Battlefield 3 over the summer, I can now confidently say that this is not my thing.

Samsara Room

A strange, otherworldly point-and-click game that sees you traveling from one dimension to another all while still being stuck in the same room. The puzzles are intuitive enough to keep you at it, and I enjoyed how the perspective changed each time. Samsara Room‘s ending is abrupt and completely unsatisfying, but getting there is intriguing enough for me to make up my own conclusion. Plus, music by Kevin MacLeod, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite indie game composers. It’s just so relaxing.

Isaac’s Odyssey

You are a guy trying to escape your dorm room to go to a late-night Comic-Con party. Maybe there’s some Game of Thrones actors boozing it up there or something. Isaac’s Odyssey consists of only two screens and a lot of tiny objects to find and use. It’s not bad in the gameplay department–if a bit old-school–but the writing is simply unbearable. Every sentence either contains a spelling error or strange turn of phrase, and eventually all this overtook my like for clicking on items and using them to solve puzzles. I did eventually escape the dorm room, but that’s the end of the game. Yup, you don’t even get to go to the fancy party. What a dud.

Calm Time

Chances are, if I had known what Calm Time was ultimately going to be about before I clicked “play,” I probably would’ve skipped it. Instead, I watched in horror as a party went to shambles, and I was the driving force behind the chaos. There’s some direct storytelling here, as well as a basement full of indirect–and all of it is creepy. There’s minimal music throughout save for a creepy piano tingle and some jarring TV-like static, but less is more here, and I can honestly say that the whole experience gave me the shivers. The uncomfortable, I’m-a-monster shivers. Whether that makes Calm Time a good game or a bad game, I really don’t know.

Shoot Many Robots

I think the name Shoot Many Robots is awesome and does a fun job of explaining exactly what you do in this wee downloadable freebie for the Xbox 360. Some levels have you going left to right, and other levels are a single room where you have to survive wave after wave of attacking robots. In short, you shoot robots. Sometimes you punch bullets, too. There’s two main weapons and different kind of backpacks to equip for your dude, which grant various bonuses, and it’s all well and good, but there isn’t much else to do otherwise. I do however enjoy the cartoony graphics and honky-tonk slash metal soundtrack.

Hero in the Ocean

A really cute puzzler set underwater. You control a tiny, yellow submarine in search of stars–three per level–and a helpless sea-diver. Each level adds a new puzzle element, such as lasers and unlockable doors, but it’s never overwhelming. By the end, you’ll be a pro at each thing, able to swim swiftly past all the dangers and pick up those shiny trinkets. I found all 45 stars and saved everybody, so go me. Alas, there’s some clunky writing like “you found secret area,” but that can be overlooked for a solid little game that never becomes too much to handle. Plus, the single music track that keeps looping is awesome, starting off slow and somber and building into something bigger than that. In fact, I’ve been listening to it on repeat as I put this paragraph together. I also hope this isn’t taken as an insult to those that made it, but Hero in the Ocean would make a perfect mobile game, too.

Temple Run 2

Speaking of mobile games…this kind of came out of nowhere. The day before Christmas–or was it actually on Christmas day?–Temple Run 2 was released for free on the Windows 8 phone. Mmm. I love free games, especially ones with relatively easy Achievements. And that’s what Temple Run 2 is–a fun, easy-to-pick-up endless runner with a handful of poppable Achievements and enough challenge to keep you going and try for one more run. I played this a lot during my Christmas vacation, mostly because my sister was squeezing the most out of her time with my Nintendo 3DS. It’s pretty good, though I probably couldn’t tell you the differences between this one and the original. I’ll probably end up removing both from my phone soon enough, once I’ve had my fill of running, jumping, sliding, and tilting.

The Walking Dead, Episode 1 – “All That Remains” (season 2)

I just finished this up on Sunday and haven’t even gotten around to writing a haiku for it, but I will soon and will probably write a bigger post about the newest season and how brutal it has already started, but for recording’s sake, it’s here. I also bought the The Walking Dead‘s season 2 pass and am excited for more, if that gives you an early indication of my impressions.

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The Half-hour Hitbox is a new monthly feature for Grinding Down, covering a handful of videogames that I’ve only gotten to play for less than an hour so far. My hopes in doing this is to remind myself that I played a wee bit of these games at one time or another, and I should hop back into them, if I liked that first bite.

400 Years rewards patient players only

400 Years, which is all about waiting, is a game totally designed for me. You have to be patient, and when you get stuck and think that more patience can’t possibly be the answer, it totally is. It moves as slow as a stone effigy with legs, but it moves with purpose, and you can always speed everything else up by advancing time and changing the seasons. Or you can just stand around and bask in the comfortable, autumn weather, listening to Kevin MacLeod’s stunningly gorgeous and hypnotic soundtrack, becoming stone-still yourself. All in all, it’s a fantastic little piece of puzzle-based experimentation, and I encourage everyone reading to give it a try.

The plot is very straightforward: a great calamity is approaching, and you’re the only one who can stop it. Who exactly are you? Well, you’re a sentient stone idol who can do little more than walk left or right, climb trees, and, magically, advance time by a full season, seeing autumn, winter, spring, and summer zip by in an otherworldly blur. In short, you have 400 years to spend until this disaster strikes down, and time’s a-ticking, so you better get a-saving. Just kiddin’. There’s really no rush. I was able to complete 400 Years with about two hundred to spare, and I’m sure you can save the people, the place, and the planet even quicker than that so long as you know what you’re doing.

Of all the games I’ve played this year, 400 Years has been the most relaxing and possibly enjoyable for that very fact. Well, wait. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is pretty stress-free, actually. Anyways, I was not stressed about losing health or missing a collectible or not finding the one specific pixel to click on to advance the plot–there was just time, and a lot of it. Your goal is to, more or less, constantly move to the right until you find the place where the calamity will occur, and then you have to stop it the only way you know how. The puzzles along the way are easy enough to figure out, and waiting is 75% of the solution. Let me tell you, it’s a real joy to ponder the solution for how you get a tree to grow and then see it happen right before your eyes. If anything, I’d have liked more puzzles peppered throughout or places to explore along the way–perhaps you come across a hill of lifeless stone effigies–but the slow pace of the game makes for a solid adventure nonetheless. Personally, I found the ending a bit abrupt and wanted more, but the journey there was really precious, a piece of gaming memory that will–if you’ll allow me just this once–stand the test of time.

You can watch me play some 400 Years in my newest “Paul Plays…” video: