When it rains, it downpours

In celebration of my fancy new promotion, Stephanie (who is the best, BTW) bought me Silent Hill: Downpour. I think I was pretty clear about how much I loved Shattered Memories, so it shouldn’t be too shocking that I was a little wary when the first details for Downpour hit.

The game was being developed for 360 and PS3, which sounded to me like a death knoll for Shattered Memories’ style, which focused almost entirely on exploration and atmosphere. Then came the guns, which meant that combat was back; combat has never been more than “acceptable” in Silent Hill games, and is usually much, much worse. I was immediately awash with fears of the game being produced with a “hey PS3 blood and guns derp derp” mentality.

Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m only a quarter of the way through the game, so I’m not sure how things are going to roll out, but so far I’m really enjoying it. Downpour actually does feel a lot like Shattered Memories in most ways. The flashlight mechanic is less prominent here because you have to manage weapons as well as illumination, but it’s still an important part of gameplay. The single (playable) Otherworld section I’ve been in was a mix of puzzle solving and running from an undefeatable enemy. Otherworld transitions are unexpected and visually interesting (I do miss the ice though).

Downpour carries on the Silent Hill tradition of shallow, janky combat. The biggest improvement here is the ability to block, which is way overdue. I don’t know, maybe Origins and/or Homecoming allowed your character to block; I haven’t really played either. But yeah, blocking isn’t going to change the whole game, but it does make monster encounters more managable.

The monsters are also apparently affected by the weather. A loading screen tooltip that came up once said they come out in greater numbers and are more aggressive when the rain is really coming down. I haven’t witnessed a heavy rain yet, but I was surprised at how some of them will elect to run away when the rain stops. Monsters located inside always seem to be equally aggressive, but I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense.

The world is an interesting kind of hybrid of open and linear design. Another Silent Hill staple, now that I think of it. The first couple areas do a fairly good job of herding you forward, but give some nice rewards for exploring off the beaten path. Once you actually make it into the town, you’re given a bit more choice in where you want to go. Between locked doors and blocked/crumbled roads, Silent Hill still tries to push you in the direction of the next plot point, but you can run around town pretty freely. Another tooltip that I saw hinted at a subway system that might allow me to get around town faster, which has me wondering exactly how big Silent Hill is this time around.

One of my favourite things about the game so far is that it has side quests. Yeah, honest-to-God side quests in a “survival horror” game. I use quotation marks because survival horror isn’t really a genre in video games anymore. But anyway, side quests! I’ve only done two at this point: one rewarded me with copious amounts of bullets, I don’t think the other had any reward besides the satisfaction of doing a good deed.

The other thing about Downpour that I’m really digging is that it is terrifying. It might have less to do with the game being scary and more to do with the fact that I’m playing it the correct way. I knew nothing about the game before launch aside from what was shown in the very first trailer; I didn’t even know it was released until I haphazardly noticed it on a store shelf. Also, I’ve been playing it alone in the dark. The right atmosphere mixed with not having a clue what’s going to happen next is exhiliarating in the most horrifying way.

Suffice it to say, I am leaning on the radio static (which signals monster presence) more than I ever have before in a Silent Hill game. Somehow though, monsters are still managing to get the drop on me and catch me off-guard.

It’s not as scary now that I’ve learned how most of the monsters act and what the rules of the game are, but those first few hours were something else. The tension remains high because you really never know what’s going to happen next. I’m currently making my way through a library section of a tower, and there’s this… ghost, I guess that keeps randomly pushing stuff over and giggling. It’s nothing new to the horror genre, but it’s spooky as all heck when you’re not expecting it. There was another related event that actually made me jump out of my chair, but the game is still fairly new so I’ll avoid any more spoilers for now.

So Silent Hill: Downpour is pretty great. I’m not sure if I like it more than either of the Silent Hills that star Harry Mason (Silent Hill Play Novel not included), but it’s definitely my favourite SH game otherwise. You done good, Konami. You done good.

The mighty Pepwich

I had Monday off this week, and didn’t use it to do anything productive at all. I just sat in my room, with the nice spring breeze flowing through the window, playing video games all day. It was pretty much the perfect day.

But trouble arose when I decided that it was time for lunch. The house was suffering from a severe lack of instant lunch foods, and I was ready to resort to PB+J, but there was no J! Crazy, right? A PB and banana sandwich was out of the question because there were no bananas around, and a normal sandwich was impossible because there was no lunch meat in the fridge. Things were looking pretty bleak.

In the end, the best I could cobble together was a pepperoni sandwich. Not really an appetizing prospect, but it was all I had! Pepperoni is fine when you’ve got other meats in there, but it’s not the best meat to anchor a sandwich on. I rounded out the sammich with a couple cheese slices, two kinds of mustard (regular and spicy), tomatoes, and pickles. I took half a box of Wheat Thins “Stix” as a side, because they are the best cracker.

The final product wasn’t something that I’d care to reproduce. It wasn’t a bad sandwich though; I feel like the pickles (which were an 11th-hour addition) really saved it. But at least I was able to make a small meal for myself without resorting to spending money, which is really the ultimate goal at this point.

Mmmm, crow!

So, my complaining worked.

I spent a bunch of time putting off my slot machine duties in Final Fantasy XIII-2 last weekend, and then when I finally went back I hit it big in roughly ten minutes. It took a while to get my first triple-9 (250 coins) and Victory Mode, but I almost immediately hit another triple-9 (500 coins) for Super Victory Mode. Only a couple spins later did the microchus line up (see above) for a massive payout of 50,000 coins; far more than the required 7,777.

Turns out slot machines aren’t that bad after all!

Run, rat, run

So I was playing the second chapter of Dragon Fantasy (which is fairly brutal at the the outset, BTW), and I came across the first boss, the rat king. While fighting the boss, I accidentally hit the “run” command for one of my characters, and to my surprise, we were able to escape the battle!

This is not a new feature to RPGs, but it is an exceedingly rare one. In fact, the only other game that I know for sure lets you run from boss fights is Chrono Cross. I’m fairly sure Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel let you run too, but I’m not certain.

Dragon Fantasy even adds a wrinkle in here: if you run away from this boss, he up and leaves! I was shocked when I saw this, and a little disappointed that all that delicious XP just walked away. The big rat does the same thing if you best him in battle, but I thought it neat that if you don’t want to fight him you don’t have to.

I haven’t tested with other bosses yet, but it’s definitely something I’ll be keeping in mind as I progress. Is this an intended feature or a bug? If you can run from all bosses, do any other ones leave? What an exciting mystery!

Gambling Fantasy XIII-2

If there’s one thing I hate about Final Fantasy XIII-2, it’s the compulsory gambling. Firstly, and easily the worst, is that you have to earn a total of 7,777 casino coins in the slot machines to earn a specific fragment (of which there are 160 in the game). This may not seem like a big deal,  but when your average winnings are generally 5 or 15 coins, it’s a task that’s going to take some time. If you’re really lucky, there are ways that the slots can pay out much larger sums, but it’s all down to stupid luck.

Padding a game with required grinding is one thing, but making you play the slots to earn your %100 is nigh unacceptable (*coughPorygoncough*). Both are tedious, but at least with grinding you can keep your nose down and get it done, and most games provide decent grinding spots for those with the drive to seek them out. With a slot machine, you could be at it for days before you get the stroke of luck you need to win. Of course, you could also hit the jackpot on your first spin, but that’s pretty unlikely. Such a quick lucky break is moot here anyway, because the most coins you can possibly win on your first spin is 500. It’s a nice start down a long road, but likely won’t make the journey that much shorter.

The slots do have a couple features that can tilt the odds in your favour. Most notably, they have “moods” that do quite literally give you better odds at a winning spin. This can be easily manipulated by leaving and entering the casino world until the machines are at their best mood. There are also two bonus modes called “Victory Mode” and “Super Victory Mode” that allow you to bet more coins each spin. You have to hit one of the two jackpot spins (triple 9’s or microchus, respectively) to enter either of these modes, so they’re rare enough to unlock in the first place, and odds are much better that they’ll time out before you can hit another jackpot.

Lastly, there is an auto-play feature that can be accessed by just holding down the left bumper, but using it actually decreases your odds of winning. So I’m kind of torn on whether it would be quicker to just manually play until I hit the 7,777 coin threshold, or to wedge LB against something, go do something else, and hope to earn 7,777 before my capital runs out. Either way, it’s a super annoying “feature” of the game, and one I do not look forward to seeing again on potential future playthroughs.

The second time the game forces you to gamble is a completely self-inflicted scenario. In fact, you have to pay for the luxury. I downloaded the Sazh quest because I thought it would be a fun adventure starring Sazh with an airship-flying minigame perhaps, and the DLC description promised me he’d join my party once I completed it. That last bit was accurate, but Sazh’s “adventure” was… less than fun.

The DLC quest plops you right back into the casino world as Sazh, and tells you in uncertain terms that you have to keep gambling until you earn a certain number of macguffins. It never elaborates on the conditions that will reward you with said macguffins, so you pretty much just have to keep gambling until the casino owner tells you you’re done. On the upside, the game does tell you that the slot machines will not earn you macguffins, so you can safely stay away from them and enjoy the better ways to gamble.

There are two table games that come with the Sazh DLC, and the first is Chronobind. It’s a game for four players, and it’s all about throwing down a card and hoping it’s the highest. It’s not an overly complex game, but the computer players are really awesome at cheating at it, so it’s really no fun at all. I must have played for an hour before I gave up. In that time, I only won two rounds, and left the table with less than half of my buy-in coins.

The other game, much to my chagrin, is poker. I don’t hate poker or anything, but after Dead Rising 2 I was pretty much ready to never play it again. As luck would have it, it’s also played by the same rules as the poker mini-game in DR2 (I have no idea what variation it is in real life), so I knew what I was doing. Another fortuitous twist is that the computer opponents I was playing against were very susceptible to bluffing, so I was able to dominate the table pretty easily. After a game and a half, I had earned enough collectible dealies to complete the quest, but I’ll never see those three hours again.

On the upside, Sazh is now in my party, and it looks like he’s going to be a pretty solid Synergist once I get him levelled up, which is something I was looking for. The real prize though, was that with my winnings from the hours of poker, I had so many casino coins that I was able to buy all the unique items from the casino and still have plenty left over. And even though it took a while to amass that much coin, it was still considerably less time than it would have taken to win it all through chocobo racing, which is the best DLC-less way to earn casino coins.

In the end, it was saving me from days of chocobo racing that made the package worth 400 Micosoft points, because I hate Chronobind and will probably never play the poker game again. I certainly would have preferred Sazh to have been a 150MSP Coliseum battle like Lightning, or better yet, free DLC. But we all know that free DLC is a very rare treat indeed, and Square-Enix is probably the last company who’ll be caught giving anything away.

Now it’s just a matter of finding a way to kick Noel out of the party so I can play the remainder of the game with Serah, Lightning and Sazh…

Pocket homage

Let’s take a break from talking about Final Fantasy and instead talk about a game that is a throwback to Final Fantasy… Sort of.

So Dragon Fantasy, at least at first, is really more a throwback to the original Dragon Warrior on NES. In fact, it’s structured almost exactly like Dragon Warrior, the biggest difference being that you cannot see the enemy’s castle from your starting point. It was kind of a big thing in Dragon Warrior, but video games on the whole generally don’t have those brilliant, subtle touches anymore. But that’s besides the point.

The quest begins with you hunting down a person of interest (DW: Princess Gwaelin, DF: woodsman) and bringing them back to the castle. Then you go on a fetch quest to collect legendary armor so that you will be strong enough to face the final boss. Each one has little differences of course, but the basic story progression is very similar.

The games are mechanically almost identical too. You’re a one-hero party that fights one enemy at a time. You level up and buy new equipment to get stronger, and are granted new spells at set levels. The spells are even all pretty much the same as in DW. The only way to have any idea what to do or where to go next is to grill every person in town and wander the world until you find new areas. The only noticeable difference is that bridges don’t denote where the random encounters get harder in Dragon Fantasy.

What sets Dragon Fantasy apart from its forebears is its sense of humour. While Dragon Warrior played it pretty straight and Final Fantasy was (probably) unintentionally goofy, Dragon Fantasy works every angle, from puns to pop-culture references to parody. A lot of the story dialogue is spent on making fun of the hero, Ogden, for being a washed-up old has-been.

 Of course, a retro-styled RPG with a sense of humour is nothing new. Breath of Death VII immediately springs to mind. Dragon Fantasy, as far as humour goes, is probably the best so far. I enjoyed Breath of Death more for its unique mechanics and genre subversions than its sense of humour.

Being that it hews so close to the Dragon Warrior template, Dragon Fantasy requires quite a bit of grinding. The only time where you probably won’t spend time walking back and forth fighting mooks is right at the end. Mostly because you won’t be able to clear the last castle in one (or even two, probably!) run, but also because the enemies there drop huge gobs of experience. Fortunately, like its major inspiration, Dragon Fantasy is pretty forgiving when it comes to death, and just puts you back at the last church you visited with all your XP and treasure intact, and your gold stash cut in half.

There are multiple quests in Dragon Fantasy, with more being added over time (free, not DLC). I’m not sure if you can choose from any right at the beginning, but once you’ve completed the first quest, you’re free to play the rest in any order you like. I’ve only just completed the initial game myself, and I was going to skip ahead to the Minecraft “homage” quest, but after watching the intro cutscene, it seems that the chapters have separate but interwoven stories that are leading into one big finale, so I decided that I’d play them in order. Then I started having flashbacks of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.

Despite everything I’ve written here, the only thing that really matters when you consider buying Dragon Fantasy is this: do you like the original Dragon Warrior? If you do, this game will make your day. If not, I’d recommend staying far away from it.

Aptlty titled

Last weekend I ventured down to the local shopping center to chat up a pretty girl that works there. While in the HMV, I casually perused their stock of Queen CDs, hoping to find The Miracle, the last studio album I needed to complete my Queen collection. I didn’t think it would be there. It’s never there. Except this time it was there.

Yay! I almost feel like I should start typing out the lyrics to “Happy Happy Joy Joy.” In fact, that’s what I am singing now, as I type this. Just trust me. So now my Queen collection is complete enough. I think I’m still missing a couple silly greatest hits rehashes, but I have like seventy of those already, so that’s not going to count towards my 100% here. I have all the albums pictured on the Queen poster in my room, and that’s good enough for me.

Now it’s just a matter of being not-lazy enough to rip the damn thing and get it on my iPhone so I can listen to it on the way to and from work. And wherever else I drive.