Bury the Arisen

Dragon’s Dogma isn’t getting any easier. At this point a gentle bat from Veronica’s blade will send a common goblin flying several feet, but their hobgoblin friends are proving to be quite a bit more sturdy and are appearing more commonly. And these are still just basic mooks.

I accidentally let that random guy who was following me die. I don’t know when or where he got knocked off. I was exploring the area just west of the Witchwood, being assaulted by wolves or bandits every few steps. We eventually came to a beach where a group of bandits were catching some rays. I began a long-distance assault on them by firing off a few arrows into their own archers, and then I noticed that they were chillin’ with a cyclops.

The ensuing battle was frantic and much blood as shed on both sides, but I refused to retreat and eventually we emerged victorious. As the cyclops’ corpse melted into a bubbling pile of goo and I wondered why it didn’t drop any loot, I noticed that the destination marker on my map was gone. I also couldn’t see the dude I was escorting. My quest log told me I’d failed though, so I guess the only explanation is that he got smooshed by the cyclops and I was too embroiled in the heat of battle to notice. I figured I’d let him go though, he didn’t seem overly important. Also I didn’t want to have to fight that battle again.

We have since slain a few more cyclopes during our travels. Turns out they’re not particularly difficult to bring down if they don’t have backup. We probably could have taken out that one in the forest and gotten that one guy to his destination. Oops.

Continue reading Bury the Arisen

The Amazing Exploding Circus

I’ve been listening to the new(ish) I Fight Dragons CD like once a day for the duration of this month. You should go buy it. It’s a little considerably more radio-ey than either of their EPs, but the quality is still there. And yeah, maybe the lyrics to “The Geeks Will Inherit the Earth” are edging a little too close to Good Charlotte territory, but it’s such a fun song! Really, the point is that they use a GameBoy as an instrument, and that’s more than enough to keep a firm grasp on my attention and my ten dollars.

And to switch up the topic completely, when I was searching for the Kaboom album cover, I found this:

Upon further investigation, I discovered that this cereal was only discontinued in 2010. For the last five years at least, anytime I go down to the States on vacation I spend more time in Wal-Mart’s cereal aisle than anywhere else. How is it that I never once saw this? I understand that it would have had a different, more modern (though less amazing) box design, but I never saw anything close. Too bad. It looks like it would really make breakfast fun. Guess I’ll have to stick with the stupid Fruity Pebbles flakes.

Terrible Lizard Nosferatu

Do you remember -it’s been almost ten years now- how when I started this website I was really really into X-Entertainment? Like, that’s the reason I started doing this thing in the first place? Well I was. It seems like just the other week I was staying up all night long reading about Pokémon episodes and mantis shrimp. Oh, those were good times. And then Matt stopped writing articles and started blogging. Which is exactly what I did. Only I stopped reading X-E all the time long before I turned blog, so that likeness was unintentional. I think. It’s been a long time.

Anyway, Matt’s abandoned X-E, leaving the site up for savvy scavengers to poke through in an attmpt to find the stuff from the good ol’ days. But he’s not out of the game yet. No, in fact he just launched a new website that is pretty much what X-E was about six years ago. It’s called Dinosaur Dracula and it is fantastic. Mostly fantastic. It’s still pretty blog-heavy, but at least he’s still writing full features. Sometimes there are video blogs too. I’ve only watched one of the vlogs, but… ouch. Matt’s genius seems to be exclusive to written work. Apparently those were A Thing on X-E too, but since I stopped reading X-E at all around late 2007, I never saw a one of them.

I’m looking forward to following DinoDrac in the future, but it really makes me wish that Matt would go back (or pay someone else to go back) and put all the old X-E stuff into a neat little database so that I could read the old articles again and mabye sift through the more substantial stuff I missed. Of course, I no longer have empty weeks that I can use to just browse through one man’s thoughts on Batman cereal and McDonald’s placemats, so it’s really pipe dream any way you look at it. Ah, how I miss being unemployed.

Anyway, don’t go thinking that I’mma be starting up a new site that’s re-focused on features too. At least not yet. I’m still working on this WordPress thing. As much as I miss having custom page layouts for every article and being really excited about each an every terrible thing I published, I like it the way things are now. It may be a slightly different delivery system, but the idea is the same: sharing the things I like with the internet (and sometimes the things I don’t like).

What I’m really trying to get around to saying here is: go check out Dinosaur Dracula. It’s like nostalgia about nostalgia, and I can really dig on that.

Escort of the damned

So Dragon’s Dogma is hard. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t recruited any stronger pawns (allies who you can hire into your party) since the beginning of the game, but we’ve been getting our asses handed to us by bandits more regularly than I’d like to admit. Maybe it’s because I’ve been venturing off into a world I’m not yet strong enough to tackle.

After Skyrim I assumed I could get anywhere in Dragon’s Dogma right away if I was clever enough, but levelling up is definitely a much more important feature here. While Skyrim’s level-up system is more about rounding out your skills, DD’s levels go the typical RPG way of increasing your base stats. Guess it’ll be a while before I can strike out into the wide world of Gransys.

On the upside, I’ve collected a couple good fish-out-of-water stories! The first of which occurred right after I arrived in Gran Soren (the capital city). I poked around the residential area for a bit and then took on all the quests that were immediately available from the inn’s quest board. One in particular was an escort job, and the fella that needed my help (Roderigo or something?) joined up right then and there. I figured I’d best help him out first so that I didn’t have a liability tagging along for too long.

Turns out his destination was halfway across the world. Crud.

But I assumed that my party would be able to hack it. At the very least we could just run away from everything until we reached our destination and come up with a battle plan once we were safe. Spoilers: that didn’t work.

Our first issue was when we came across some saurians chilling in a brook. Being called “saurians” makes them sound like awesome dinosaur monsters, but really they’re just lizardmen. My party had faced off with these guys before, and they’re tough, but nothing we weren’t able to handle. Or so I thought. These saurians happened to be the advanced versions (sulfur saurians) that spend most of their time invisible. They were also considerably more deadly and had better defense. The species loses most of their defensive powers if their tails are severed, but we were barely able to disable and fell one of the beasts before they overwhelmed us.

I ran away as fast as I could, my helpless escortee trailing behind. But as I tried to call my party to escape with me, I noticed that Erika and Ema were downed, so I had to run back to revive them. I had to run back and forth a few times, because usually as I’d revive one ally, another would be struck down. It’s too bad there isn’t actually a “run away” command. Being limited to being able to call your pawns to “come” makes for difficult escapes.

Being more wary of my surroundings now that I knew we were in very hostile territory, I made sure we stayed on the beaten path as we traipsed through a forest towards our goal. Unfortunately, I soon espied the first non-plot “boss” monster that I’d seen, a cyclops. While I’d helped a bunch of soldiers slay a cyclops early in the game, I wasn’t confident that my party would be able to handle the monster at this point; our supplies and strength were equally drained from the encounter with the saurians.

Fortunately, the cyclops had just woren from a nap in the road, so he didn’t notice us. We were still forced to make a detour through the woods if we were to remain unnoticed. Then the bandits saw us. It was close, but we managed to evade them and get back onto the road, but the cyclops had heard the signs of a scuffle, and was loping over to investigate. He didn’t see us, but we were pinned in a corner. The road let us to a rock facing, and the only wa around it was a twisty road that went right through the bandits’ turf. Backtracking and going the other way around the wall would have put us right on the cyclops’ dinner plate. We were in deep.

I made the call to take on the bandits. They were just humans, right? We were in rough shape, but we should have been able to manage. And for a while we did. We slew the first wave of bandits easily, but the fight drew the cyclops’ attention again and he suck up behind us and started stomping my pawns into paste. Between trying the escape the cyclops and revive my fallen allies, I didn’t notice the rest of the bandits closing in on our rear flank. I decided that my pawns would have to fend for themselves, and that as long as I could escape with my charge, I could re-summon them once I made it to town.

I ran as fast as I could, and then I heard Veronica (my right-hand woman) yell out something about a monster that looked like it was composed of several other beasts. Before I was able to process the information, the chimera lunged out from the trees and everything went red.

I’m not sure if I consider it lucky that I’d last saved right outside of Gran Soren. On one hand, I’d lost about half an hour of play time and a good amount of experience. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have to fight my way back through the forest and all my supplies were intact. I think that may have worked out for the best. It was then that I decided to let my tag-along pal around with us for a bit longer. Until I could find a safer path to his destination, anyway. The direct road there was definitely not the one we wanted to take.

Fortunately, he hasn’t been the liability I figured he would. Monsters aren’t particularly attracted to him, and the ones that are are quickly distracted by Veronica’s “shield summon” skill. He’s rather adept at staying away from danger too. I mean, he’ll often waltz right through the middle of a battle, but come out the other end completely unharmed. It’s somewhat impressive, to be perfectly honest. I’m beginning to think he might be able to survive until we’ve grown strong enough to get him where he needs to be.

Or, of course, I could always fire Erika and Ema and hire a couple new pawns who are more on par with myself and Veronica. As it is they’re probably bigger liabilities than what’s-his-face. It’s just hard to split up with companions that you’ve been through so much with. It’s really too bad that subordinate pawns don’t level up.

Zombie-esque

I finished reading Monster Nation a while ago. I’ve got to say that while I didn’t really get into it right away, it did a really good job of picking up steam as it went on. It’s not a huge book, so it’s a little sad that it took me the better part of a month to get through. But you know, video games.

Anyway, it’s a super awesome zombie novel, and a prequel to Monster Island, which I read years and years ago. Being that it belongs in the same series, it explores the initial outbreak of what is referred to as The Epidemic. It also takes a different view on the thing that differentiated Island from most other zombie media: people who manage to retain their minds after zombification.

The series explains the ability to be dead but not a zombie by keeping the characters in question hooked up to machines that keep oxygen pumping to their brains. Gary, the not-zombie from Island, was a med student who hooked himself up to a ventilator and then jumped into a tub filled with ice. Nilla, Nation‘s sort-of-zombie, stumbled into an oxygen bar and put a mask on after she was bitten. The second scenario seems a little less likely to have worked, but whatever. They’re zombie novels, I’m not going to pick at what’s medically plausible and what isn’t.

I’ll summarize before the spoiler line, just so nobody has to venture in to read my full impressions: I enjoyed Monster Nation at least as much as its forebear. Maybe even more. I’ve said it to everyone I’ve ever told about these books: They need to be turned into movies! For the hundreds of crappy zombie movies that get made every year, don’t we deserve at least two (probably) exceptional ones?

SPOILER ZONE! Don’t go any farther if you’re actually interested in reading these books.

Okay, back to my previous train of thought…

They may not been seen as such, but the real main characters of these books are the zombie-esque characters. Gary and Nilla are handled very differently, and as such are two entirely unique, compelling characters that share the same unfortunate condition. Gary gets pissed off when he gets shot by one of Island‘s protagonists and uses dark zombie magic to lead the braindead zombies and become their zombie emperor. Nilla, though she suffers just as much, tries her damnedest to stay on the side of humanity. Of course, she ends up waffling a bit, but who wouldn’t? People hate you, and you have awesome zombie powers. Are you really not going to eat a few of ’em? Anyway, the ending leaves her story open, so I’m hoping she gets picked back up in Monster Planet, the final book in the trilogy. Nilla is a much cooler and more complex character than any of the others in Nation. Plus, she’s the only major character that survives. Well… sort of.

Both novels deal with magical stuff, and I read most of the second half of Island with a cocked eyebrow (Telepathic Scottish bog mummy. ‘Nuff said), it all kinda came together once Nation finally reveals the source of The Epidemic. In the end it was just a dude trying to save his dying wife from cancer by essentially tearing a huge gash in the world’s life force reservoir. Turns out the road to Hell on Earth really is paved with good intentions. I really like when stories use the “to save a loved one” plot device, because it’s absolutely something I can sympathize with. No, I’ve never had to watch someone I love die, but I’m pretty sure that in that such a situation I’d do everything in my power to save them. I’m terrible at coping with loss, and I could definitely see myself ripping space-time (or whatever) a new one if I were placed in the situation presented. I am the crazy dude who would sacrifice the world for one woman.

It’s a tragic ending. You’ve got this one man, who brought about the destruction of the world just to save his wife, and he wasn’t even really able to do that. Yes, he kept her alive, but at the cost of turning her into a horrifying tumour beast. Not much of an existence. And then Nilla… Well, that part I don’t want to spoil. Let’s just say she gets a little angry when she learns that it is physically impossible to save the world.

Dogmatic

On Saturday I made up my mind. We went to Toys ‘R’ Us first because they had a game that The Wife wanted, and I intended to buy it for her. It’s not often that she wants a video game, and I tend to nurture those wants when they surface. But there was nothing for me there. I tried my luck in Future Shop, Best Buy and Superstore that day, but they all failed to meet my needs. Or more, it seemed that my needs came too late.

On Sunday she worked over in St Vital, and I asked if she could check around that area for me on her lunch break. Sadly, neither the Wal-Mart or GameStop were of any help to my cause.

On Monday I asked again if she could scout the local EB Games before work, since it’s a stone’s throw from her workplace. Not only did she check the one in the mall, but the one across the street from the mall as well. All to no avail. I feel lucky to have such a devoted wife, but was sad that I had her chasing wild geese. So I swallowed my pride and made nice with Wal-Mart’s electronics department, because they were apparently the only store in the city that had the object of my desire.

And now I own Dragon’s Dogma. Yay 🙂

Then I booted up the game and it played a remixed English version of “Samayoeru Aoi Dangan” by B’z on the title screen. Freaking B’z. Between that and the fact that the game is more or less a mix of Skyrim and Monster Hunter with a little Shadow of the Colossus thrown in for good measure, this is clearly Capcom’s love letter to me for being such a dedicated fan for all these years.

So maybe the song doesn’t really fit the theme of the game, but man is it awesome! Plus, B’z!! I haven’t had so much trouble getting past a title screen since Metroid Prime.

I’ve only really had time to rush through the intro and poke around starting town a little, but I am thoroughly impressed so far. The boss of the intro stage is a traditional chimera, made of a lion with a goat’s head grafted on its back and a snake for a tail. Your companions suggest severing the snake and diabling the goat to reduce the beast’s abilities. Very reminiscent of severing tails and breaking other bits (frills/beaks/armor/etc) in the Monster Hunter games. Possibly the most entertaining part of the fight was watching my allies grab onto and climb the beast. I tried to get onto it myself but couldn’t manage to stay on. I’m sure the game will teach me how to do it properly before long.

Also, there’s a dragon at the very beginning, and it is massive. Like, at least as big as Lao Shan Lung. So far I am very impressed with the scale of the boss monsters; that’s one of the things I was really hoping Capcom would go all out on, and it looks like they did. Even the chimera was big enough that my character and his three buds could fit on its back. The only, only thing I’m a little disappointed with is that all (or most of, anyway) the monsters are standard high-fantasy stuff: chimeras, griffins, cyclopes, hydras, and so on. I won’t lie, I snuck a peek at the bosses in the strategy guide, and there’s nothing overly original in there. Maybe Capcom will note the excellent cross-promotion opportunity and release some Monster Hunter monsters as DLC. I would be more than happy to pay extra for the opportunity to take on Teostra in a setting where I might have a chance at victory. Or Shen Gaoren. Any of the carapaceon family would be fun, really.

Aaaanyway enough daydreaming. My first impressions of Dragon’s Dogma have been excellent, and I hope that it ends up being as compelling as its influences. I sunk over 100 hours each into both of the Monster Hunter titles I own, and a good 70 or so in Skyrim. I haven’t even seen most of Skyrim yet either.

Oh, the big problem I have with Dragon’s Dogma is that there is a very limited hair colour palette to choose from. Pink is not an option at all, so Claire is stuck with a deep red. Not acceptable.

Not symmetrical

Nintendo’s been going on and on for about a year now about the “asymmetrical gameplay” experiences that the Wii U will foster. It does look neat, and I think the little demos that they’ve provided seem like they’ll be fun for a while, but I wonder if there are any long-term applications for this style? Having an extra player play a support role in games like New Super Mario Bros U and Rayman Legends is a decent way to start, but I hope that somebody can do something really compelling with this bold new idea.

Oh, did I say “new”? I meant “thing that Nintendo has been doing intermittently and nobody cares about.”

Asymmetrical gameplay isn’t a new concept. It’s not even just a Nintendo thing. All it really means is that the two (or more) people are playing the same game and doing a different thing. Mario Party alone has been doing it for over a decade with the 3-vs-1 mini-games. Hell, Gyromite on the NES can be (and works considerably better as) an asymmetrical multiplayer game if you ditch ROB and have a friend use his controller instead. And that’s all the way from the 80’s.

I suppose those ones kind of make a point for the style though. Referencing the “nobody cares about” part of my statement earlier, let’s take a look at Super Mario Galaxy‘s multiplayer mode. Well, multiplayer in the sense that two people have controllers in their hands, anyway. All the second person does is wave around the pointer to collect star bits and stun enemies. Sure, you can point novice players in the right direction, but there’s a hole on my face that could accomplish the same thing more efficiently. New Super Mario Bros U’s “Boost Mode” is pretty much the same thing, and I can’t imagine it’s going to be much more compelling.

Why this is one of the big selling points of the Wii U, I don’t know. I suppose it’s because of the GamePad and the ability to give opposing players different views of what’s going on. That is what makes it truly asymmetrical, after all. But even that”s not new. Do you remember connectivity? That Nintendo buzzword from 2003 that never took off?

I may be misremembering, but the first example of GameCube-GameBoy Advance connectivity was Pac-Man Vs. This was a great idea. One player is Pac-Man, and he sees the entire maze on his GBA. The other players are the ghosts, and can only see a small area around themselves on the TV screen. So what you have is a multiplayer Pac-Man, but in a way that the ghost team doesn’t have such an overwhelming advantage. It’s brilliant, but was unfortunately much too hard to actually find, because it was given away as a limited free sample. It was also included in the GC versions of a handful of Namco games, but they weren’t of much interest to me and Pac-Man Vs, despite its brilliance, was not worth the price of a full retail game.

On the other hand, you have The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It featured a really cool multiplayer mode that most people probably didn’t even know existed. When you encounter Tingle in the game, he gives you a device called the Tingle Tuner, which you can use to summon him through a GBA. Here, a second player (using said GBA) is given a radar and several actions that they can use to help or hinder Link. The problem is that once the Tingle player gets bored of dropping bombs on Link, the whole experience is pretty shallow. Maybe some people like watching a radar and occasionally telling Link where a secret is hidden, but I sure couldn’t get my brother to commit to the role. I usually just had my GBA connected and sitting next to me so I could find the hidden items that are only visible through the GBA.

This mode can also become infuriating for the Link player, because every one of Tingle’s actions costs rupees, and those rupees come straight out of Link’s wallet. It’s especially bad in The Wind Waker, because it’s easily the most commerce-driven Zelda game. Also, the bomb thing.

If you really want to stretch, you could probably consider the first Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles to have asymmetrical gameplay. Not because each player had a different radar on their GBA screen or anything, but because the game sucked for whoever had to be the Bucket Bitch and was fun for everyone else.

I’ve never used them, but a couple of the Wii Guitar Hero games have a mode called “Roadie Battle” where two guitarists compete. Each of those guitarists is paired with another player who has a DS that allows them to send power-ups to their teammate or try to sabotage the opposing guitarist. It’s a spin on the “support player” idea that Wind Waker and Mario Galaxy use, but they do it right by keeping that support player engaged at all times, whereas the other games end up leaving the support player with nothing to do quite often. Maybe the game itself isn’t as compelling as a Mario or Zelda title, but at least you’re not bored.

So yeah. I’ve got just a few examples here (and most of them are a stretch at best), but I think I’ve made a decent case that asymmetrical game experiences probably won’t hold up as a Wii U back-of-the-box bullet point. Developers are really going to have to step up if they want to make asymmetrical experiences that will matter. Nintendo Land has at least two variants on Pac-Man Vs, but you’re going to need something with a little more depth than that if you want people to care.