Category: Video Games

My Organ Harvesting Diary: Day Two

Over the weekend, I found a little time between studying and watching the entire second season of Attack on Titan to play a bit more of Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden. And let me tell you, the second chapter was not substantially more exciting than the first.

The gameplay mechanics have grown slightly more complex, without any hope that some of the things that need constant clicking will start to click themselves. First of all, I was given a meat grinder. The idea is that you can pluck organs off a tree before they’re ripe to grind them into mincemeat. It seemed completely arbitrary and pointless up until the point where I learned how to make “excellent” organs. This is accomplished by letting a single organ grow on a tree while chucking any others that sprout into the grinder. So essentially, the grinder is a way of giving you something back for all those perfectly good organs you’re throwing away in hopes of cultivating one really good one.

The catalog hasn’t expanded appreciably yet. In addition to the frogs, I can now purchase moles and woodpeckers. The moles make organs sprout on trees faster (but don’t speed up the ripening process) and the woodpeckers will make the meat grinder run faster. This is all well and good, but the animals get distracted from their jobs very quickly, so once you have a decent sized stable of animals, you’re constantly clicking around to get them back to work. It’s more than a little annoying.

I was also given a third tree to babysit, this new one growing stomachs. It was at this point that I decided that trying to keep all three trees going at once was too much of a pain, and opted to just focus on one or two at a time. It seems like the “grow X number of Y organ” and “get tree Z to level Q” quests just repeat forever with higher numbers, so the best course of action seems to be to just focus on whatever the active story quest is. Sure, you can run the other quests over and over to earn more cash, but there isn’t anything really worth buying yet at this point in the game.

As far as the story goes, it’s mostly just been more creepy customers. One was a little girl who wanted an organ to make her cat talk. Irene told her that one of these magical soul-giving organs can only be put into something that isn’t alive, so the girl left, killed her cat, and then brought it back with the same request. Good lord! I think there was someone else who made a strong impression on me at the time, but I guess it wasn’t that strong in reality, because I’ve completely forgotten. Also there was a mysterious lady in black who came in and the whole screen turned dark, but not much happened with her yet.

So where is this story going? I have no idea. I really just hope that something happens with the gameplay to keep it from getting any more annoying. There is still room for more trees/machines/whatever, and I don’t much care for the idea of having even more clickable things to babysit. In fact, I might just sell all the stupid animals…

My Organ Harvesting Diary: Day One

Most of the time if I’m writing a review for a game, I will start it while I’m in the middle of the game, and then change the review text as I go along. Sometimes the things that I write change quite a lot over that time, sometimes my initial impressions are spot-on and nothing changes at all.

This time, I’d like to keep more of a play diary. Our game in question is Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden. This was a random recommendation from Steam, which I clicked on and decided to put on my wish list, because it was a clicker game that looked a little unhinged. Not long after, it went on sale for a paltry $3.50, so I snapped that puppy up and jumped right in.

Now that the groundwork is laid, let’s dig into the game itself. Hopefully it’s interesting enough to justify using this format.

FMN:MOG opens with a bunch of dialogue, mostly out-of-context stuff that will ostensibly make more sense later. Then you’re given your role: as the assistant in a plant nursery. Only, the plants here grow magical organs instead of fruit or flowers. So far, we’ve learned that putting one of these organs in an inanimate object will give it life, but not a real soul, and that the organs come in differing qualities. Most of the customers have been various degrees of shady, and even your boss seems to have a questionable background.

It’s important to note that this game is from a Japanese developer (CAVYHOUSE), and it’s got an anime feel to it that isn’t overpowering, but is definitely perceptible. From the not-quite-perfect localization to the fact that your character addresses her boss as “master,” it’s clear that this isn’t originally from the Western world. I feel like I was going somewhere with this paragraph, but I’ve completely forgotten where that was. Oh well.

Gameplay starts off simple: water the tree, and it will grow kidneys. Pluck the kidneys and ship them to earn cash. The tree stores so much water, which is used up as kidneys grow, and the watering can will slowly refill over time. You can level up the tree by plucking kidneys, and the watering can levels up as you use it. Eventually you’re given a store, but the only item I can buy so far is a frog. Frogs speed up your watering can’s refill speed, but they lack focus and you’ll have to click on them every few seconds to get them back to work.

In this first session, I’ve completed Chapter One, which ended on a scene of the nursery owner (Irene) and a mysterious friend talking about going on a trip together, leaving me to run the plant nursery alone. I have a nagging feeling that my character may have been brought to life by one of the same magical organs that she is harvesting. Chapter Two also gave me a second tree that blooms hearts, so now there’s twice as much maintenance to take care of and my watering can does not fill nearly fast enough to keep up, even with three frogs buffing it.

So far, it’s been just a matter of juggling fruits, water, and frogs until the door lights up and you’re shown the next story scene. As your things level up and you collect kidneys, you’ll complete missions that give you more cash. It’s a slightly more complicated cycle than most clickers I’ve played, and most other clickers would have given you an option to automate the process by now (which turns them from clicker game into idle game). I suppose I’ll just have to keep playing to see how both the story and gameplay unfold.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – September 2017

The beginning of the month was a time of plenty, with a vacation week dedicated solely to doing whatever the heck I wanted. And also getting a crown on one of my teeth, but that’s besides the point. Then the dark times came, as I went back to school, and my video game time was subsequently supplanted by studying.

~ Game Over ~

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS) – It’s been 13 years since the last 2D Metroid. The wait was so worth it. The only thing that could make it better is if it were a Switch game.

Chicken Wiggle (3DS) – Completed all the packed-in levels, but as long as Atooi and Talk Nintendo keep making new ones, I’ll keep on playin’ ’em!

Illusion of Gaia (SNES) – I’ve been wanting to replay this for what feels like forever, and finally doing so was my birthday present to myself. A good use of my week off.

Piczle Lines DX (Switch) – For the record, I only beat the Story Mode’s 100 puzzles. There are still another 200+ puzzles to solve in the Puzzle Mode. Hooray!

PAN-PAN (Switch) – A cute little adventure game that took well under two hours to finish up. I’ve come to really enjoy short games like this, and PAN-PAN was very fun and rewarding to solve.

No More Heroes (Wii) – A replay inspired by the recent announcement of the third NMH game.

~ Now Playing ~

Hollow Knight (PC) – Not only is it a sterling example of what a Metroidvania should be, but the difficulty level is perfect. Very tough, lots of dying, but no challenge ever feels unfair.

Death Road to Canada (PC) – This weird zombie road trip roguelike came out of nowhere, and holy cow is it ever a blast to play. I’m not convinced that it can actually be won, though.

Final Fantasy XV (PS4) – At this rate, I’ll never finish it. There are too many sidequests. Too many hunts. A too-big Adamantoise. Too many got-danged fish to catch.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch) – It’s basically a light-hearted XCOM, so yeah, it’s really good. What’s much more surprising is that it’s sort of making me like the Rabbids.

Monster Hunter Generations (3DS) – Say what you will about the MonHun grinding cycle, I find it ever so satisfying and it’s still fun after seven billion hours over sixteen hundred games.

Monster Hunter Stories (3DS) – I think it says a lot that I invested upwards of ten hours in the demo, and still didn’t finish it before the full game was released.

Splatoon 2 (Switch) – I basically just played during the Splatfest, and it was nice to see my team win again after the crushing defeat of Ketchup by Mayo. Friggin’ mayo. So gross…

Pokémon Puzzle Challenge (GBC) – How do you make me like Puzzle League even more? Throw a Pokémon skin on there. Bonus points for being Johto-themed!

Picross NP Vol. 1 (SNES) – I wasn’t seriously playing it. Just booted it up to knock out a few puzzles. As much as I love this collection, the controls are just too… slippery?

Magikarp Jump (iOS) – Might be time to stop including this and Greasy Money on the monthend list. I mean, I play Pokémon Shuffle every day, too, and it hasn’t been mentioned in ages.

TPB: Greasy Money (iOS) – Back-to-back event weekends mean I’m even more invested in this app than usual. But I’m still not going to give them any more of my money.

Rock Band (360) – Played a bunch one weekend; my left hand remained cramped for days after.

King of the Monsters (SNES) – I played exactly one round, and then quit because it was dumb. But it sure did look appealing in Nintendo Power lo those many years ago.

Long time listener, first time writer

Anyone who knows me even just a little should be aware that I’m not really a “participation” kind of guy. In most cases, I much prefer to sit on the sidelines and just watch other people do their thing. Observation makes much more sense to me. I’m told that this is a perfectly normal thing for introverts, and I’ve been happy to live my life in this fashion.

However, once in a while, I will feel an irrepressible urge to get up and be part of something. It’s rare, but it happens.

One of those moments came this week, when listening to the previous week’s episode of the Talk Nintendo Podcast. In it, the boys were discussing recent eShop releases, as they do, and mentioned that they were going to start accepting reader-submitted reviews of eShop games to read on air. Because two guys just can’t play every game, you know?

Normally I would just think this was a cool addition and take no action. But they just happened to mention PAN-PAN, a game that they knew nothing about and had strongly piqued my own curiosity. So I went ahead and bought the game, played through it, and after much deliberation, sent in a tiny review.

And now, my friends, you can listen to my paragraph of thoughts on PAN-PAN being read on Talk Nintendo Episode #53. I have now truly been immortalized on the internet. This is even better than the time I got name dropped on No More Whoppers. Best of all, I even got a nice little thank you email back from the boys, encouraging me to send more micro-reviews in the future. So maybe I will!

Full disclosure: one of my tweets has been read on Talk Nintendo before. But man, it was a friggin’ tweet. It means nothing.

Educator’s Creed

Normally, I just ignore all the “today’s highlights” emails that Twitter sends me. Really, I probably should find a way to turn them off. But I’m glad that I bothered to actually look through the headlines this morning, because this is really neat:

I probably still won’t buy the game, because I don’t care about the Assassin’s Creed franchise. But I really love the idea that they’re building a world that you can opt to take in and enjoy in peace. From what I’ve read, there are even going to be guided tours in-game that are narrated by actual historians and Egyptologists, so this is really going to be on the level. Plus, you get to freely run around ancient Egypt and climb around on everything, which is one of those impossible dreams of mine. Specifically, I’d just love to spend like a month exploring and studying the Great Pyramid of Giza, but it’s a protected site and normal folks are definitely not allowed regular access.

You know, maybe I will buy this game. A man can only watch The Pyramid Code so many times before he needs another source of information.

Samus Returns: The Morning After

After about a week of trying to eke out playtime here and there, I finished up my first run of Metroid: Samus Returns last night. For those who may not know, this is a complete remake of the Game Boy’s Metroid II: Return of Samus, which is generally regarded as the worst Metroid game. Metroid II was my first Metroid, and having never revisited it since (I was probably eight years old when I played it), it occupies a special, nostalgic place in my heart.

Anyway, like I said, I finished my first run of Samus Returns. I fully intend to go back for 100% completion, and then to run through at least twice more to play on the Hard and Fusion modes. For now, though, I’ve a few trace thoughts about the game that I’d like to share.

  • Samus Returns is hard as balls. I died lots and lots of times. It’s hard enough where the Hard Mode and even-harder Fusion Mode seem unnecessary. But I suppose they’re just more reason to replay the game.
  • The number one reason, of course, is that Samus Returns is friggin’ amazing. Like, it’s right up there with Super Metroid and Zero Mission.
  • There are a few things that drag it down, though. Like how some of the environmental puzzles are repeated so often that they get stale. It’s like, okay, I get it: use Spider Ball to go over the crumbling floor and grab the missile tank. I’ve only done this thirty times already.
  • The game gets slow between the point where the Spider Ball is introduced and when you finally get the Spring Ball. So much time spent tediously rolling your way around mazes…
  • There are two new major bosses: First, an excavation robot that is probably the most difficult boss in the game, who guards the Power Bombs. Secondly, the new final boss is… Ridley. Of course. Because he must be shoehorned into every Metroid game. Also he was weirdly easy after the very challenging fights against the robot and Queen Metroid.
  • In addition, all the various Metroid evolutions have been given crazy upgrades. There are 40ish of them throughout the game, and each encounter is intense enough to feel like a real boss battle. The few Omega Metroids in particular make for really great battles, and even the lesser Alphas are constantly learning new tricks to keep them interesting even after taking down roughly two dozen of them.
  • I rolled the credits for the first time with just under nine hours on the game clock. That’s a beefy Metroid! Samus didn’t even take off her helmet in my ending, so there’s clearly a lot of room for improvement.
  • And looking it up, there are a whopping nine endings, three for each difficulty mode. Looks like I’ll be playing this a lot…
  • I only got 66% of the power-ups on that first run. It’s going to be a long road to collect ’em all.
  • The stinger after the credits not-so-subtly suggests that MercurySteam would very much like to do a Metroid Fusion remake next. I would very much like that as well.
  • The final “power up” was a complete surprise to me and I love it. So good. So perfect.

Mini-Review – Illusion of Gaia

For me, there are a number of video games that I often find myself reminiscing about because something has triggered a pleasant memory that is attached to them. Most of these games are old, played in my youth, that I have never gone back to replay. One of the most prominent in my memory is Illusion of Gaia, the middle child of an SNES trilogy by Quintet. Though it’s not your typical middle child. Gaia was far better known than its older brother, Soul Blazer. And its younger sibling, Terranigma, was never formally released in North America.

Gaia’s notability is mostly in the fact that it was published by Nintendo, and as such was pushed rather heavily in Nintendo Power. Yet despite this, its siblings seem to be talked about much more often by retro game enthusiasts. Soul Blazer has been christened a hidden gem, and Terranigma’s cachet is being one of those SNES RPGs we never got, which automatically makes it more sought after in the age of the internet. And so, good ol’ Illusion of Gaia often gets forgotten these days, because it was the one of the three that wasn’t forgotten in its own time.

But I haven’t forgotten it. I mean, obviously. In fact, it’s spent a lot of time in my active thoughts in the 20+ years since I first played it. A game that left a lasting impression on my impressionable young mind. Most of this, I attribute to the fact that it was a fantasy RPG that used famous locations from the real world, and had a rather mind-blowing plot twist at the very ending. And so, since these elements were burned into Li’l Ryan’s brain, any time they come up in real life, they trigger memories of Illusion of Gaia.

Continue reading Mini-Review – Illusion of Gaia

Here’s… a thing

I don’t really post enough random, rad stuff that I find all that often any more. Too many long rants about games or movies or whatever. I can’t help it. I feel so empty and incomplete when words aren’t spilling out of me and onto a webpage.

So here’s a classic: RichaadEB’s cover of “Megalovania” from Undertale. It’s one of my favourite video game tunes of all time, and I didn’t think that a cover could ever do it justice. Alas!

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – August 2017

You might think that I would have played fewer video games in August, what with all the hustle and bustle of moving last month. However, life video games finds a way.

~ Game Over ~

Super Mario World (3DS) – I’ve bought a handful of SNES virtual console games on my 3DS, but had only played Mega Man X up until now. Weird, that.

VOI (PC) – A very fun minimalist puzzle game. In a world where you can’t throw a stone without hitting a boring minimalist puzzle game, I think that’s worth celebrating.

Ever Oasis (3DS) – I’ve been letting this one simmer for a while, but it was time to finally hack my way to the finish line. It’s too bad the post-game is so grindy and not all that fun.

Team Kirby Clash Deluxe (3DS) – Done enough. Anything left to do is gated behind the paywall/waiting for daily gem apple harvests. And that’s a load of crap.

Candy Thieves: Tale of Gnomes (PC) – Lame tower defence game that parents might put on their iPads to shut up their four-year-olds. Uninstalled after ten minutes.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – August 2017

The FanFic’d Ones

Very randomly, I received a promotional email from Amazon about an upcoming book: The Freddy Files, which seems to essentially be the Five Nights at Freddy’s bible. I clicked on the link, because I’m interested in all things FNAF, and it was there that I found the biggest surprise…

There is a second FNAF novel.

I had no idea at all! I’ve been so out of every loop since I stopped frequenting Talking Time. But that’s besides the point. I read and enjoyed the first FNAF novel, The Silver Eyes, on the very day that it became available. The sequel, The Twisted Ones, has been out for a couple months now and nobody told me about it. How rude!

So long story short, I bought it and read the whole thing last weekend. It’s not a long book by any metric, and the target audience is tweens, but I think it’s still pretty impressive that I polished off a whole novel in a single weekend. I’m a terribly slow reader, and even though I do love to read, it always gets lowest priority of all my hobbies. It’s a little sad that FNAF is one of the few things that really, truly excites me any more.

If you aren’t at all familiar with the Five Nights at Freddy’s lore, the games are about bipedal, animatronic animals that come to life at night and kill any unfortunate security guards that they might come across. There’s also something about how said animatronics are possessed by the vengeful spirits of murdered children, looking for the pink/purple/phone guy(s) who may or may not have murdered them. The lore goes deep, is what I’m getting at, but that doesn’t really matter because the novels take place in an alternate continuity.

While I did like the original book, and the second is by no means bad, The Twisted Ones almost comes off seeming like FNAF fan fiction. It was written by Scott Cawthon, creator of the games, so it can’t be fan fiction. But it feels like it. There are a lot of really weird story conceits and maybe pushes certain ideas a little too far. This is not unusual for the franchise; it’s built on weirdness and FNAF4 absolutely tried too hard in some of the same ways. But it’s easier to ignore that kind of stuff in a video game. I expect better from books, I guess.

Anyway, if you’re a big ol’ FNAF fanboy like me, you can’t go wrong with The Twisted Ones. It’s got its share of issues, but it’s definitely a step above The Silver Eyes in writing quality and it is significantly more focused from a storytelling perspective. Just don’t expect it to knock your socks off. This is Young Adult literature, after all. Still more interesting than Harry Potter, IMO.