Last week, there was a big celebration for work. Part of that was having a team of two from each branch compete in “Minute to Win it” challenges. Somehow I managed to convince everyone from my branch that naming our team “Team Ryan” was a good idea. It was that or “Team Jacob.”
I’ve been slowly picking away at 5th Cell’s Run Roo Run whenever I rememeber that I have games that aren’t Tiny Tower on my iPhone. That and Mega Man X, but that’s a story for another day.
In quite a stark contrast to their previous games (re: Scribblenauts), Run Roo Run is a very simple game. The premise is usual video game fare: you are a mother kangaroo who must travel across Australia in order to save your joey, who has been captured and put in a zoo. Just another (minor) twist on the common hero/princess business.
The gameplay isn’t entirely new either. Stages are a single screen long (at least up to chapter 10), and you just have to tap the srceen to make momma kangaroo bounce over obstacles. In each chapter, a new element is introduced, like springs, bouncy tires, and a double-jump kajigger. For the first few chapters, the game is really easy, and only once you reach chapter 8 will you find yourself not getting gold medals on the first try. The game’s main focus is accuracy, so you have to make sure you’re bouncing at just the right time. Once you complete all 15 levels in a chapter, 6 “extreme” stages are unlocked, and in those you need pixel-perfect accuracy to even complete the stage, nevermid score a gold medal.
Run Roo Run isn’t exactly a deep game. Like I said before, for at least half of the game, every stage fits on a single screen. Most of the stages in that first half take less than 3 seconds to complete, too. Only once you get far enough that moving platforms are introduced will your stage times exceed 5 seconds. The rating you get after each stage is handed out based on your time, too. Getting gold stars on normal stages isn’t too diffficult, but nabbing golds on the extreme levels can be even more difficult than 3-starring levels in Angry Birds.
Speaking of those angry avians, Run Roo Run’s menus have a very… familiar look.
The real high point, and I think one of the main reasons I keep coming back, is the music. Scribblenauts had a fantastic soundtrack. Run Roo Run’s music strikes the exact same sweet spot and adds a didgeridoo in a couple spots. The stages proper don’t have much in the way of tunage, but the menu screens provide all the aural pleasure you could want.
As with iOS game developers, 5th Cell is not above trying to wring a couple more bucks out of you once you’ve bought their game. There are a couple purchasable items: a bus that lets you skip a stage, and a “bullet-time” (it may be called something else, I can’t be arsed to check) powerup that slows time for so long. The cool thing is that the bullet-time persists over multiple stages, so you can use one to cheese your way to gold on several extreme stages. I’m not sure if there are more things to buy, as I lost interest in items as soon as I learned it would cost me real money to use them.
Run Roo Run isn’t a particularly robust game, but it’s fun and is over before it wears out its welcome (quite the opposite of Angry Birds). The extreme stages will have you pulling out your hair in frustration from chapter 1, but the regular levels have just the right difficulty curve. Achievements are included, and it’s only a buck. I recommend it and hope that it sells well, because 5th Cell is a great studio, and I’d love to see more work from them.
You may call this Skyrim and grilled cheese sandwiches. I call it a perfect Thursday night.
And yes, I dual-wield Pepsis.
I have one more thing to post about Fallout 3. It should have been done early last week. Alas, Skyrim.
Like millions before me, I have been sucked up entirely into the world of Skyrim and cannot break free of its unusually strong grip. It’s a miracle that my job and relationship aren’t suffering because of it. Just sleep. But that’s okay, I’d much rather play Skyrim than sleep. It’s amazing how the hours just slip away as you’re out slaying dragons and exploring the mountains.
That said, the whole “exploration is its own reward” thing I had going on with Fallout is definitely there in Skyrim, probably even more. There are like twice as many locations to find in Skyrim as there are in the Capital Wasteland, and it seems like a lot more of them are significant. For instance, there was one cabin with a bandit inside. Boring, right? No! In the cellar, I could hear wind coming from somewhere, and as luck would have it, I found a note that mentioned some hidden goods behind a bookcase. After a little searching, I found a button that moved the bookcase, and there was way more down there than a couple bottles of wine. There was a huge, snaking cavern full of bandits. At the end of that was a short ruins area that was full of booby-traps and led to a gigantic treasure trove, full of gold, gems, and rare ores.
Then one other time, I was exploring this cave full of Falmer (cave-people), and then I got to the bottom and a giant robot attacked me! Totally did not expect that!
The one sucky thing I’ve found is that characters who will join you really don’t mind dying permanently. Like this one guy, Faendal, who joined me almost right at the beginning of the game. He was cool, and was a pretty slick shot with a bow. He got the shit kicked out of him a few times, but never gave up. So when I found him laying on the ground after a battle with some particularly tough bandits and discovered that he wasn’t going to get up, I was sad. I also got a stray dog and some random dude killed by giants. Not my fault, really. They just didn’t understand that you don’t fuck with giants.
I suppose I wasn’t too fond of the character creator either. I wanted to play a lady wood elf. Am I so wrong? Well, Bethesda seems to think so, because I had to work very hard to make one that didn’t look manly or scary. I played with the face configurator for at least an hour before I finally managed to work out something I found acceptable. I didn’t need her to be the most beautiful character anyone’s ever seen or anything; I would have settled for cute. (Originally I wanted to make her resemble Stephanie, but there was no way in Hell that that was going to happen.)
In non-Skyrim news (enjoy this, it may be the last for a while), I downloaded the Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo last week. Being one of the three people who liked FFXIII, I’m very excited for it. The fact that it plays more like a regular JRPG (exploring, towns, sidequests, etc) but retains the bulk of XIII’s battle system makes me very happy indeed. I just wish Lightning were the main character again. Serah just seems so… cliche. I cannot relate to her at all. But the new Crystarium seems really cool! It’s kind of sad that I have this pre-ordered, but probably won’t play it for months. Stupid Skyrim, being so awesome and addictive. Skyrim Skyrim Skyrim.
After what seems like an eternity -albeit a very fun eternity- I have completed Fallout 3 to the point where I don’t care anymore. I have all the achievements, so as far as I’m concerned it’s 100%ed. I could have gone back to do all the quests, but I needed to get me into some Skyrim.
But Fallout 3 was huge, and amazing! So I guess I should write up a few final words before I shelve it forever.
It took me just under a month’s time to power through the game, and I think my game clock says something like 80 hours. Which is not too bad! The reason I hesitated from starting the game in the first place is because I kept hearing how you could easily rack up over 100 hours, and that’s before the DLC packs. I suppose you could scribble in an extra couple hours for all the time I lost because of deaths and crashes, but it’s still not 100.
I enjoyed the game in the way I think a lot of people did: wandering aruond the wasteland aimlessly. Yes, I did have drive to complete the quests, but that was just for the little achivement pops. I found it far more satisfying to just prowl about, seeing whatever there was to see. Sometimes I’d end up somewhere I definitely was not supposed to be yet; I fell many times at the hands of super mutants because you shouln’t be tangling with super mutants at level 3. It was still fun though, because either I’d get to enjoy the challenge of sneaking through a dangerous area unseen or I’d just set off in the opposite direction. Exploration really was its own reward.
The low point, I think, was the DLC. I probably would have been satisifed playing the main game to its completion, but they were sitting on my console and the achievements weren’t very demanding. It may have been good that I did them out of order, too. I accidentally got beamed up into Mothership Zeta while wandering around, and while the DLC itself got boring less than halfway through (go down this hall, shoot X number of aliens), the Alien Desintegrator I walked away with made everything after it a breeze. I have no qualm with overpowered weapons.
Point Lookout was easily my favourite, and I’m sad that all the DLC wasn’t structured the same way. As great as it was to have a whole new map to explore with several quest lines to follow, I really just liked when the mansion blew up. That was awesome and totally unexpected. (Sorry if I spoiled it, two and a half years later.) I think this was the only DLC that didn’t provide me with a cool new toy. The double-barreled shotgun is strong, but isn’t as efficient as the combat shotgun.
Operation: Anchorage was kind of bland, but the unbreakable armor I earned from it is swell. Broken Steel was pretty ho-hum too until I got the Tesla Cannon. I don’t know why I’d ever want to use another weapon.
The Pitt was cool, and fudged with my personal morality system. Do I ignore the plea of the slaves or kidnap a baby? Ideally I’d have liked a way to free the slaves without stealing “the cure,” but I was not given such an option. There was no way that I was going to kidnap a baby, even in a video game, and even for the greater good. The way I see it is that the “evil” lord of the Pitt is trying to turn things around, trying to make a city that doesn’t rely on slavery. Things will get better there. I did the right thing.
I think the thing that surprised me about Fallout 3 is how front-loaded the difficulty is. Maybe it’s just because I didn’t start following the story quests until I’d been playing for about 25 hours, but it seems like I spent a lot of time dying and hurting for ammo early on in the game. By the time I made it to Rivet City I was a mostly unstoppable killing machine with thousands and thousands of bullets. Perhaps it was also because I was playing on the easy difficulty. It takes absolutely nothing away from the game, so why not?
So now that I’ve checked the second item off my wishlist, the obvious next step would be to start up Fallout: New Vegas, right? Really, I think I’ve had my fill of wasteland for a while. It’s time for something greener.
Skyrim, though I’ve only spent a few hours with it, has already been just as enjoyable. Again, exploring has been its own reward. Of course, I’m not going to complain when I’m also rewarded with a new bow or a chest full of gold. I can definitely see myself getting deep into this one.
UNOFFICIAL CAMBRIAN WHITEBOARD DUEL #3: RRSP RIVALRY
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Entry #2
So I downloaded Tiny Tower the other day. Now I’m constantly checking my phone to make sure my stores are stocked up. I’ve learned to eat all meals with one hand, whilst managing my tower with the other. I’m even having trouble resisting the urge to play it during work hours. I’m literally afraid that I’m going to start trying to play while I’m driving. This is becoming a problem.
The thing about Tiny Tower though, is that it isn’t really that good of a game. I mean, it’s as addictive as all the other stupid iOS/Facebook micromanagement games, but it’s pretty shallow and needs way more babysitting than all the other one’s I’ve played.
The objective of Tiny Tower is to build a tower. Imagine that! It’s a neat little pixel tower, and the cute little people that move in are referred to as “bitizens.” It hits all the right old-school gaming notes as far as visuals go. The music isn’t quite as prefectly retro; I find the game is best played with volume off.
Building you tower is as simple as clicking the “build a new floor” button. Only it costs coins to do so. Coins are earned in a few ways, but mostly from businesses that you can open in your tower. Each occupies a floor, and each can be staffed by up to 3 bitizens. Bitizens live on apartment floors, and each apartment can occupy up to five bitizens. So you have to build more businesses to make profit, and apartments to keep them staffed.
Businesses are to Tiny Tower as crops are to FarmVille. Each business can sell up to three items (dependent on how many bitizens work there), and each one has an “ordering” time. So like farming games, you have to wait a while before your products will sell and make you money. Then you have to press the “stock” button before the ordered item can be sold. You get so many of each item, so you don’t have to restock every time a thing is bought, but stocks tend to go quickly. The thing that makes this different from farm games is that (at least early on), your products have an ordering time that’s measured in minutes instead of hours. What this means is that with farm games you can plant your crops before work or bed, then forget about them. Tiny Tower is constantly pushing notifications telling you that your stock is in, meaning that if you’re not constantly babysitting it, your profits are going to slow down to nothing.
There really isn’t much else to the game. Random bitizens will sit in the elevator, waiting for you to drive it to whatever floor they desire. This provides a small payment of coins, but the real reason to bother is that you will rarely get a Tower Buck instead. The “bux” are Tiny Tower’s second, rares currency. The one all stupid little Facebook/iPod games have to confuse idiots into spending real money on game money. The bux can be used to speed construction/ordering, improve your elevator/stores, buy coins, and get new costumes for your bitizens. The nice thing here is that Tiny Tower hands out bux much more liberally than most other games like it.
There’s a silly, useless little feature called “Bitbook,” where your bitizens post their thoughts. It’s more like Twitter than Facebook, but I suppose Bitbook sounds better than Bitter. Rollercoaster Tycoon had a similar feature, where you could read what your park guests were thinking, and use that feedback to improve your park. Bitbook comments are just for fun.
The two features I really like about Tiny Tower are that you can dress up your bitizens and rename all the stores and apartments in your tower. Dressing bitizens is mostly cycling through random, adorable outfits. There’s apparently an editor where you can design your own outfits, but I haven’t used it yet. Renaming shops is undispuatably the most fun I’ve had with the game, as I’ve gotten much more satisfaction from coming up with snappy names than I have from driving bitizens up the elevator. Some of my prouder examples include the bike shop called “Cerulean Cycle” (that’s a Pokémon reference, FYI) and the pharmacy named “Mr. Popper’s Pills.”
I think the only real reason I keep playing Tiny Tower is to create a bigger tower than my Game Center peers. And really, that’s less a competition of skill than a race to see who gets bored last. I could probably say more about Tiny Tower, but I think my summary has all the pertinent information. Now if you’ll excuse me, my sushi shop has run out of tuna rolls. Again.
Apparently Bethesda games are known for being more than a ilttle buggy? I can’t really blame them, the games are so huge and allow you to do so much. It would be amazing if they caught everything.
Fallout 3 hasn’t been too bad. Most of the glitches I’ve experienced are just little things like textures not loading properly or corpses randomly flying into the sky. However, I’ve suffered from a couple issues with my Pip-boy, like the above. Every time I go into the Nuka-Cola factory, my Pip-boy moves a little closer to the top of the screen each time I look at it. In the picture, it’s about as far up as it gets, but at that point it’s already rendered useless. This issue sometime resolves itself in time, but I’ve had to reload the game to make it go back to normal.
I’ve had another issue where the Pip-boy display is brightened to the point where you can barely read the screen. That one seems more like something that was programmed in there for some reason, but I have no idea why and I can’t figure out how to replicate it. Fortunately, moving my face really close to the TV makes the screen legible and therefore is not quite as inconvenient as the other problem. Still kind of a pain in the butt.
