Video Games – Page 60

Dark Souls: Ring That Bell

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan cut her way through the knights and zombies infesting the Undead Parish, and was cut down herself by the Bell Gargoyles.

Since she’d been carrying a small wealth in souls and more than a handful of humanity points, Morgan was a little ticked at that stunt that the Bell Gargoyles had pulled. Dying again would be a terrible loss, so it was time to see what could be done about her fire resistance, since it was that fire breath that really caused a problem.

There weren’t many options though. None of the equipment in her inventory offered much in the way of fire resistance, and the one merchant in the Undead Burg didn’t sell anything better. It looked like all that could be done at the time was to start grinding for souls and use them to level up a bit. The souls requirements for level ups had gotten fairly high for what enemies were dropping, so that wasn’t even really a reasonable solution.

The only real choice on the table was to buck up and attack the gargoyles again. Surely, if I could keep my distance from one, I’d be able to deal with the other. That strategy didn’t work so well, as the gargoyles decided to stay as close together as possible, and Morgan’s body was reduced to a pile of ash even faster than the last time. You Died.

Feeling lucky, I ran upstairs to challenge the Bell Gargoyles a third time. It went pretty much as bad as it could have. I got backed into a corner as soon as the second gargoyle flew in, and Morgan ended up getting well done yet again. You Died. Really, it was either that have her jump off the roof to her death.

Annoyed at how skillfully the gargoyles were roasting me, I decided to meander around for a while, hoping to stumble upon a path that I hadn’t been down yet. It wasn’t an overly successful journey, but I did wrangle up enough souls to buy a couple levels. Not that they would make an appreciable difference.

I also picked up a humanity point in my travels, and I decided on a whim to use it to become a human again. It doesn’t mean a lot in offline mode, but it’s not like I was going to use that humanity for anything else. I returned to the ladders leading up to the parish’s roof, and noticed something different.

On the floor in front of the Fog Gate was a glowing etching. It prompted me to “summon” something, so I went ahead and did so. Just like that, a phantom of Solaire, the man I’d met after defeating the Taurus Demon appeared out of nowhere and pledged to fight by my side for a while. This was an interesting turn of events.

The Bell Gargoyles had no idea what hit them. The fools seemed to forget I was even there and focused all of their attacks on Solaire while I stabbed them in the backs repeatedly. As the second gargoyle uttered its death moan, Solaire’s phantom vanished without so much as a wave and the door to the bell tower opened.

I ascended the tower and rang the bell. I guess that was my objective this whole time? To be honest, it’s been so long since I started the game that I’d totally forgotten what my goal was.

I took the shortcut elevator back to Firelink, and assuming that my work over in the Undead Burg was done, I steeled myself for a return trip to the graveyard. The skeletons were waiting for me, waving around their scimitars menacingly. They weren’t as tough as I remembered, but maybe it was just that I’d gotten more skilled. Nevertheless, they still forced me to use up roughly half of my Estus Flask’s contents.

I explored the graveyard, busting up skeletons and frisking corpses for loot. I didn’t find anything that seemed immediately useful, and had to make a few return trips to the bonfire before I’d cleared the graveyard of is shiny item markers.

The skeletons were starting to seem manageable when I came across the Giant Skeleton. He was a monster, and had an attack that not only sapped most of my stamina, but also broke my guard and did roughly 50% of my HP in damage. I fought tooth and nail against the big bonehead, and eventually won, but was left in a very critical state. If anything had assaulted me at this point, I would have bit it for sure.

After healing up, I sped through the graveyard to a cavern at the other end. I descended into the cave and discovered the Catacombs area. It was nearly pitch-black, and I was immediately accosted by a skeleton. As I was blocking his strikes, I noted something glowing in the distance. Whatever it was let out a shriek and a massive fireball whizzed at me. The skeleton took the fireball in the back and shattered to bits.

I took shelter behind a wall and waited for something to happen. The glowing thing didn’t reappear, but something else did. I noticed the skeleton’s bones, laid out across the cavern’s floor, begin to vibrate and then reassemble. It put it’s head back on, looked my way, and then lept forward to swing its sword. I blocked the attack and shattered the skeleton again. After a few seconds, the skeleton began to reassamble itself again.

Totally freaked out, I tried to run deeper into the catacombs to escape the immortal skeleton, following a round staircase around the edge of a bottomless-looking pit. I reached a small plateau at the end, and in the inky blackness it seemed to drop off into more nothingness. A skeleton that was hiding behind the wall struck me in the back, and as I tried to fight back, the first skeleton showed up and the two of them overwhelmed me. You Died.

I ran back to the Catacombs in an effort to retrieve my souls, and made it back down into the cavern, ignoring the skeletons. I grabbed my souls, and started back up the stairs. But the first skeleton blocked my way and as I tried to push past it, I heard that screeching noise again. Before I knew it, I was caught in a small explosion and rebounded off the wall and into the chasm below. You Died.

Again, I made for the Catacombs to retrieve my souls. They were halfway up the staircase this time, and that was just the edge I needed to make it in and out successfully. I did take another magic blast to the back, but at least this time it didn’t knock me into the great unknown.

I settled down at Firelink Shrine’s bonfire to rest, and began to plan my next move.

Tune in next week for Part 6: Going Downtown

Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: December 2013

Hey, the year is over, and so are some video games that I was playing. Though, since December is kind of a busy time, there was a lot less going on than usual. Let’s have a look-see.

~ Now Playing ~

Dark Souls (360) – Have you been following the weekly Dark Souls feature? You should be. They happen on Thursdays.

Plants Vs. Zombies 2 (iOS) – I thought I was done with PvZ, but somehow the sequel drew me back in. Mostly because it was free. And then I saw that it was free because it was built almost entirely on microtransactions. Yuck. That’s awful, EA.

Pikmin 3 (WiiU) – It’s not often that I get excited for DLC, but the new Mission Mode stages that Nintendo keeps rolling out for Pikmin 3 are pretty darn good. Also, pretty darn hard! My bro and I have been slowly plucking away at them, but those platinum medals aren’t coming as easy as they did in the original stages.

~ Game Over ~

AdventureTime: ETDBIDK (WiiU) – The last 5 floors wrecked us several times over, but we finally pushed through to the end. It was a delightful game, but I don’t think it’s quite delightful enough that I’ll be able to convince Wifey to battle through the Nightosphere with me.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS) – Finally got around to finishing the Master Quest run that I started many, many months ago. You could probably even measure it in years at this point. Anyway, Master Quest is such a nice addition to this game. I’ve played OoT so many times now that I need remixed dungeons to keep it interesting.

Kid Icarus Uprising (3DS) – As much as I like this game, I found it very hard to stay really interested in. Believe it or not, I bought it when it first came out and have only now gotten around to beating it. It makes me sad that there’s still so much game left in there that I know I’m not going to bother playing.

Eathbound (WiiU) – I’m pretty proud to say that I played through Earthbound twice in 2013. Most RPGs I don’t play through twice at all, but this one’s probably getting close to a dozen. And I love it more every time. I’ve never really considered the possibility before, but I think that Earthbound might very well be my Favourite Video Game.

Paint it Back (iOS) – Victory! That’s yet another picross game in the can. Did I mention that I don’t really like the touch controls? I think I’ve probably said that already. Anyway, it’s still a damn good picross game.

Bleed (360) – A cute little indie game about killing all the current video game heroes so that you’re number one. Sounds oddly familiar. Only this one is a side-scroller mashed up with a twin-stick shooter, and I might add that it’s quite stressful, but also a lot of fun. It’s even been recently updated with a co-op mode! The really weird thing about it though, is that while you can unlock a pretty decent variety of guns, the default SMGs are always the most effective weapon.

The Simpsons Arcade (iOS) – I bought this some months ago, and beat one level before forgetting about it. I decided to push through to the end before deleting it, just so that I could say I finished it. This was not the fun revival of the old arcade game that I was hoping it would be. More like a single-player slog with poor touch-controls.

~ Reruns ~

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS) – Had to play through this one again immediately, because I liked it so much. This is the first time I’ve played a Zelda game in Hero Mode and… it wasn’t really that much harder. The first few dungeons were tough due to a lack of hearts and the Blue Mail, but once I hit Lorule it was smooth sailing.

Picross e (3DS) – I’ve been itching to get e3, but couldn’t be bothered to actually spend the money, so I just replayed the first one. It’s pretty great!

Dark Souls: Perishing in the Parish

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan overcame the first real boss and nabbed herself a stylin’ new helmet.

Afraid of the troublesome undead knights that stood in my path, I had yet again let Dark Souls sit unplayed for a good month or so. By this point I was starting to come around to actually liking the game rather than playing it because all the cool kids are playing it. Still, the constant deaths aren’t quite as endearing as some would say.

Normally when you rest at a bonfire or die, all the minor enemies that you’ve killed will respawn. Luckily, this is not the case for a few enemies here and there, and the giant armored boar is one of those who are perma-dead once you off them the first time. So his area was reduced to a short gauntlet of zombies, and was easy enough to navigate.

Getting the hang of duelling the undead knights was not as hard as I’d made it sound last week. It’s pretty much the same as with zombies, only the knights have much higher stats and shorter vulnerability windows. By playing very carefully, I was able to move on past the one that killed me so many times, and finally made my way to the level that opened the big iron gate that stood between the bonfire and the Undead Parish.

I opened the gate, and immediately entered the parish, where three knights were waiting to take me down. You can fight them one at a time, but I was still getting their fighting style down and one ambushed me as I walked through the hallway door into the parish lobby. You Died.

Dusting myself off, I battled back into the parish, and through the cluster of knights up to their leader, the Tower Knight. He loomed at the back of the parish by the altar, and once I entered the main hall, a wizard started lobbing magic at me from the second floor balcony. I got the Tower Knight’s attention and lured him back into the lobby area where the wizard couldn’t see us and engaged the knight.

Honestly, he went down pretty easy. I’d battled the trio of regular knights in front of the parish a few times from practice, and had gotten good enough at fighting them. Tower Knight is just a bigger version of them with a really big shield, so I was able to take him out without a fuss. I proceeded to the altar, where a corpse layed in the fetal position, holding a Fire Keeper’s Soul.

The item description of the Fire Keeper’s Soul says “used to upgrade your Estus Flask” so I used it right away and it… gave me 5 humanity points. Only later did I learn that I actually had to give the (incredibly rare) Fire Keeper’s Soul to an NPC back at the Firelink Shrine to upgrade my Estus Flask. Whoops. Thanks a lot, whoever wrote the item descriptions.

There were two ways to go from the altar, I started left and got ambushed by a knight. You Died. Changing my mind, I travelled to the right, past some zombies, and found myself a new bonfire in a small building outside the parish. I could hear a clinking noise, and as scared as I was to investigate, I raised my shield and headed down into the basement. The clinking turned out to be a blacksmith clanging away at his anvil, and he offered to upgrade my weapons and armor. I happily forked over a few souls and some material for the service, and even bought myself an ACME Home Smithing Kit, which allowed me to upgrade my armor at bonfires.

I went back to the altar in the parish and got my vengeance on that sneaky knight, and followed the stairs up to the second floor. I knew that wizard was up there, so I took it slow, expecting to be blasted with magic. Instead, I was rushed by at least a dozen red zombies, who are somewhat weaker than their browny-gray cousins. But, in such a large group, all flailing their sharpened sticks at me at once, they posed a real threat. Luckily, the narrow stairwell acted as a nice bottleneck and I was able to take them out without taking too much damage.

The wizard was next. He… posed very little threat. I ran around the corner from the stairs to his perch and sank my blade into his gut. He leapt off the balcony and “hid” in a corner back on the main floor. I followed suit and came up behind him. The bugger didn’t try to defend himself -didn’t even turn around– as I sliced him to ribbons.

I went back upstairs and down the hallway the wizard was guarding and fought another knight. At the end, I found a boarded-up doorway. I smashed my way in and discovered a staircase that led up to a tiny cell. What an odd little room. The man trapped in the cell begged me to set him free, and though I worried that it was a trap, I opened the cage. He thanked me and promised that he’d reward me at a later time. He didn’t leave the cell, but there wasn’t anything else of interest here, so I took off.

At the other end of the second floor was a set of ladders leading up to the roof. The door outside was, as you may have suspected, a Fog Gate, and I braced myself as I passed through it. I took a few steps onto the roof and a huge monster flew down from the bell tower and tried to slice me in half. The Bell Gargoyle was a fearsome foe indeed, but I was skilled enough to match its attacks and counter with my own.

The fight was rough, but I was managing to inflict decent damage while blocking the monster’s blows and healing when necessary. Suddenly, when the gargoyle was at about half health, a second gargoyle came out of nowhere and set me ablaze with its fire breath. I was caught totally off-guard and the first gargoyle brought its massive axe down on my head. You Died.

Tune in next week for Part 5: Ring That Bell

Dark Souls: Big Bullies

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan tore through the Undead Burg only to be stopped cold by the Taurus Demon, and I gave up on the game forever.

Forever, as it turns out, is really only a matter of months. I did decide to give Dark Souls another shot after a few months of dwelling on my previous failures and having given up so early into the game.

I spent a little time grinding zombies to add a meager amount of numbers onto Morgan’s stats before giving the Taurus Demon another shot, and a little birdie suggested that I try out a tactic that I’d learned while fighting the tutorial boss, but had very quickly forgotten about.

Climbing back up that dreadful tower, Morgan stared the Taurus Demon square in its haunted eyes yet again. Would it be the last time? Having previously cleared the archers off the nearby battlement, I lured the demon out of hiding and then ran back over to the ladder. When the beast drew near, I lept off the tower with little more than a prayer, and plunged my sword into its skull. The attack drainde a good third of the beast’s hit points, and then the fight began in earnest.

I could have lured the beast to the opposite side of the arena, and then tried to pull off the plunging attack again for an easy win, but I preferred the idea of winning the ret of the fight through skill. And I showed a marked increase in skill this time around, for some reason. I suppose maybe I’d somehow gotten better at Dark Souls by not playing it for a while? Anyway, I killed the Taurus Demon fairly easily considering all the times he’d stomped me flat. It was finally time to move on and see what else the game had in store for me.

What it had in store was nothing but more terror.

I continued along the path, and out to another large balcony. There I met some guy who went on about stuff that I either didn’t care about of didn’t understand. In the end, he gave me an item that I could have used for some multiplayer shenanigans, but alas, I was (and still am not) subscribed to Xbox Live Gold, so I’d be having none of that.

Past the balcony was a bridge between towers, lined with zombies. No sweat, zombies were a piece of cake. So I started crossing the bridge, preparing to engage the enemy, when a hug freaking dragon flew overhead, landed on top of the entrance to the opposite tower, and absolutely covered the length of the bridge on fire. I was able to duck into a small alcove on the side, but every last zombie on that bridge was incinerated.

In my alcove, there was a stairway that opened up a shortcut back to the bonfire in the Undead Burg. Handy!

I returned to the bridge and bolted to the far end in between the dragon’s bursts of flame. There, I found another bonfire (whew!) and the entrance to the Undead Parish. Or, the entrance to the path leading up to the entrance to the Undead Parish. What should have been a short jaunt up a cobblestone sidewalk was laden with trouble though.

The first thing in my way was a huge freakin’ armored boar. While imposing at first, the boar was easily defeated by… a narrow staircase. Indeed, the was a small staircase leading up to a higher level in this area, and it was narrow enough that the boar could not climb it. So it was just matter of luring the boar nearby, then hopping off and doing a plunging attack for big damage. The boar went down without a fuss, and I was awarded with the single most amazing piece of armor that Dark Souls will ever give me: The Fang Boar Helm.

Indeed, with Morgan rocking this magnificent piece of kit, I was happy enough to consider Dak Souls conquered. But, I kept going for a while anyway, just for a larf.

There was a massive iron gate barring me from the Undead Parish proper, so I had to go around a winding, zombie-infested passage to get to the other side and open it. Unfortunately, zombies weren’t the only thing stalking the halls here. It was in this passageway that I met my first undead knight.

The undead knights are big, fully armored, and incredibly deadly. Not only are they adept at blocking and dealing damage, but the ones carrying rapiers can parry your attacks and kill you instantly with a counterattack. You Died.

Or, at least, their counterattack does enough damage that it could kill Morgan instantly every time. You Died.

Even with the nice defense boost afforded by the Fang Boar Helm. ~~F-O-E!~~ You Died.

Despite it being a minor enemy, the sour experience with the knight was enough for me to go back to consdering the Fang Boar Helm the pinnacle of achievement in Dark Souls, and that was ostensibly the end of Morgan’s adventure.

Tune in next week for Part 4: Perishing in the Parish.

Dark Souls: Road to the Undead Parish

Previously on Dark Souls: I made my way out of the tutorial and was subsequently slaughtered by skeletons.

There were two ways out of Firelink Shrine. The first was through an area that looked like a graveyard. It was inhabited by skeletons that were way out of my league, so I had no choice but to see what was down the other path. Or, up the other path, as it were. This trail was a staircase up to a rather precarious ledge of land with a straight wall of stone on the left and an endless-looking drop on the right.

The staircase route was loaded down with zombies. These fellow undead weren’t nearly as tough as the skellingtons, but they were still perfectly capable of killing me if I let my guard down for even a moment. Heck, they were perfectly capable of killing me even when my guard was up, as I quickly learned when one of the zombies atop a flight of steps started pelting me with firebombs. You Died.

Collecting my souls, I learned to lure the zombies on the cliffside to me one at a time so I could take them out more easily. The ones at the top of the steps were still going to be a hassle, as I’d have to dodge the firebombs as I ran up to engage them. Trouble is, Dark Souls’ controls are a little finnicky and take some getting used to. And that’s how I ended up plummeting into the great unknown. You Died.

Checkpoints in Dark Souls are bonfires. Resting at a bonfire will initially refill your health and Estus Flask (healing kajigger), and allow you to spend your souls on level-ups. It will also respawn any enemies you’ve killed. So I ran back and forth between the bonfire and the zombie cliff many times before I made it up the stairs and across the skywalk/aqueduct spanning the chasm, finally reaching the Undead Burg after a good half hour.

The Undead Burg is just what it sounds like: a city filled with zombies. There are little paths here and there, but it’s a fairly straight shot from the entrance to the boss. By this point I’d gotten fairly adept at dispatching regular zombies, so of course the game would throw in archer zombies and spearman zombies to make sure I didn’t get complacent. The lucky part is that the spear zombies are mostly off the critical path, and the archers leave nice long gaps between shots.

Getting to the bonfire in the Burg wasn’t overly challenging. In fact, I made it that far quite swiftly and without any deaths. It was the stretch between the bonfire and the boss door that caused trouble. Firstly, there’s a bridge that you have to run across while zombies up above pelt you with firebombs. Of course, the first time I tried going across I had no idea they were there. You Died.

The second time around, I made it across the bridge, but was greeted with a room where three zombies were chilling. Up until this point, enemies could be handled one at a time. That wasn’t really the case here. You Died.

Passing that room eventually leads you to a staircase with two spearman zombies at the bottom. The spearmen aren’t technically that much harder than a regular zombie, but they have two advantages: they hit hard, and they’re really good at using their shields. And if you hit the shield, you’re very likely to take a spear to the face, and spears hurt. You Died.

Collecting my souls, I decided to venture out to another rooftop near the bonfire. The many features of this rooftop include a pair of spearmen. And this is where I learned to kick. Somehow. I guess I must have done it by accident at first, but by some stroke of luck I discovered the kick command, and how it will break a blocking enemy’s guard. It makes the spear zombies really easy.

There’s also a staircase on that roof that leads down to a balcony where a merchant lives. The only thing I bought from him was chain mail armor, as Morgan’s defense was seriously lacking and I wasn’t comfortable enough with the most basic game mechanics to start buying and playing with items that had fairly vague descriptions.

Eventually, and after a few more instances of seeing the You Died screen, I made my way up a tower at the end of the Undead Burg. There, I found a Fog Gate, which the one nice thing Dark Souls does: it’s an unmistakable warning that you’re about to encounter a boss. This boss was the Taurus Demon, essentially a really big minotaur.

The first fight with the Taurus Demon went about as well as you can imagine. I started walking across the empty rampart, wondering what was going to happen. Then arrows started raining down from the battlement behind me. I started to run away, and then the Taurus Demon fell from the sky and crushed me. Between the arrows and his huge axe, I panicked and got pounded to a pulp. You Died.

The biggest problem now was that my bubble of lost souls was stranded inside the boss arena, so the only way I could reclaim it would be to get there and then defeat the boss. If I died anywhere else, all those souls would be lost forever, so I was pretty set on finding a way to defeat the Taurus Demon.

I worked my way back up the tower, and to the boss’ room. I immediately turned around and climbed the ladder up to the battlement where the archer zombies were waiting for me, and took them out before triggering the boss’ entrance. Not having to worry about those arrows was a great boon in the fight, but in the end I learned an important lesson: he can break your guard and stagger you very quickly if you spend too much time defending. And that, in most cases, will be fatal. You Died.

I tried it again, remembering to lower my shield when I wasn’t actually trying to block an attack, so that my stamina would replenish faster. That helped, but it wasn’t enough. You Died.

And again. You Died.

You Died.

It was around this point that I declared the Taurus Demon too hard for me, and put Dark Souls down for what could have just as easily been forever.

Tune in next week for Part 3: Big Bullies.

Grayish Souls

Dark Souls, maybe you’ve heard of it? People seem to be absolutely nuts about this game, but I opted not to buy into it when it first swept the gaming world. I did buy it once it hit $20 though, because it’s just so beloved that I felt like I needed to know what was up.

And, well, I wasn’t so crazy about it. It was at least a few weeks after purchase before I put the disc in my 360 for the first time, and that first play session was the only Dark Souls play session for me until months later. What can I say? It just wasn’t really what I was expecting to play.

My first brush with Dark Souls was probably much like most people’s first brush with Dark Souls. I watched the opening cutscene, which left me more confused than anything, and then I made my character. Or maybe it was the other way around? Whatever, doesn’t matter. I rolled a lady thief named Morgan, and then I was told that she was actually a zombie of sorts. Huzzah.

I bumbled my way through the tutorial stage, which is some sort of purgatory for zombies. It’s probably the first time in a video game where the tutorial level posed a significant level of difficulty. I don’t remember how many times I died there, but the important thing to take away from this is that I died in the tutorial. And that’s the kind of game Dark Souls is.

After somehow managing to best the Asylum Demon, who looks to me like a gritty version of a monster out of Dragon Quest, I made it up into the actual game world, and marked a new checkpoint at the Firelink Shrine.

I was led to understand that Dark Souls is an open-world sort of game, and there were two immediate ways to go from the Firelink Shrine. I figured that heading in the graveyard-looking direction seemed more like the intended way forward, and after a very short bit of travel, I ran into a couple of skeletons. Two minutes out of the tutorial and I had my first You Died screen of the real game.

Dying in Dark Souls strips you of all your souls (which function as experience points and currency) and Humanity, which has a few different uses that I’ll get into later. Handily, these are all left in the spot you died in a glowy orb that you can grab to regain everything. If you die again before you collect it though, it’s gone forever and all those points are lost.

Knowing this, I headed back toward the skeleton area, figuring that it would be best to recollect the small amount of souls I had on my person at the time. I also thought I’d try my hand at fighting the skeletons again; maybe I wasn’t playing carefully enough before. I had just been running forward without much of a care, after all. I was able to retrieve my lost souls, but the second fight with the skeletons did not go any better than the first. You Died.

Maybe it was time to take a look at what the other path had to offer.

Tune in next week for Part 2: Road to the Undead Parish

Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: November 2013

The good news is that winter is here and I no longer have to feel bad about spending all my time inside playing video games. The bad news is that… well, there isn’t any bad news at the moment. It’s December that’s got all that holiday business to it; November is fairly smooth sailing as far as having free time goes.

That said, real life tried its best to get in the way, but November was still a fairly productive month for gaming. This month, I continued my recent trend of finding games that I could finish in an afternoon, and I think I’ll be keeping that up for a while. It’s fun to dive into epic games that take the better part of a year to finish, but sometimes the thing that really hits the spot is a game that I can start and finish in one sitting.

I don’t have any new categories for this feature this month, so that’s good. I figured that my tendency to obsessively categorize things would have me introducing a new one each month. But that doesn’t seem to be the case… yet.

~ Now Playing ~

Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW! (Wii U) – It was a small pain in the butt to actually secure a copy, but it was worth it. Between the abundance of Adventure Time charm and having another game that The Wife will play with me, I’m pretty happy with this game. It’s also a lot of fun too, being a dungeon crawler that hearkens back to old-school fare like Gauntlet. Games like this aren’t really made any more, which is too bad because I quite enjoy them. We’re currently 50 floors down.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: November 2013

Not your daddy’s Dark World

The new Legend of Zelda game, A Link Between Worlds, came out on Friday. The craziest thing is, I wasn’t really all that excited about it. Normally Zelda games are the things I go the most crazy for, but there was no hype inside me this time around. I simply worked all day as usual, went home and had a nap wile waiting for my wife to get home from work, and then proceeded to the store to pick it up.

I didn’t even start playing in earnest until Sunday.

No, nothing is wrong with me. I’m not gravely ill. It was just a weird coincidence, because now that I have spent some time in the game world, I am finding it incredibly hard to put down. This is because A Link Between Worlds is quite possibly the best Zelda game.

If you weren’t already aware, A Link Between Worlds is a direct sequel to 1991’s A Link To The Past, which is considered by most of my peers to be the very best Zelda game. While it is a sequel, it’s also a first for the series, as it uses the same overworld map that you know and love from LttP. Well, a very similar world map anyway. It’s not a 1:1 reproduction, but that’s quite alright.

Worlds also steals its story pacing from its older brother: you go through a short introduction, then three dungeons to earn your Master Sword, then Hyrule Castle to the alternate world, in which there are seven dungeons and then a final showdown. It’s cut-and-pasted wholesale, but I’d say it’s a good enough structure that it’s worth repeating.

You may have noticed that I said “alternate world” up there instead of Dark World. That’s because in LBW, you don’t visit the Dark World again; you visit Lorule instead. That may be giving it too much credit though, because Lorule is totally the Dark World, just with a different map and a castle instead of a pyramid. The scenery is the same, the enemies are the same, and the dungeons are all even in the same places. Well, the dungeon locations are the same anyway. Somehow Turtle Rock is now in the lake where the Ice Palace used to be.

Speaking of Turtle Rock, all the dungeon interiors are completely different, too. Because you wouldn’t want to climb the old Tower of Hera when you could play around in the completely awesome new Tower of Hera, right? Right. Re-using a world map creates continuity, but re-using dungeons would just be lazy. And, like I said, the new Tower of Hera was a really great dungeon.

All the dungeons are great, in fact! I think it helps that all of the ones I’ve played have been fairly compact, and that it’s more about solving the dungeon as a whole than solving each room for the next key. But there are still locked doors and keys. I’m not really smart enough to explain exactly what it is that makes me enjoy these dungeons so much, but I can tell you that they are very fulfilling the solve, and I really appreciate that they aren’t huge and more complicated than they need to be.

And this kind of ties in with LBW’s main gimmick: having access to most of Link’s inventory after completing the first dungeon. Of course, you aren’t just given all the stuff: you have to pay to rent each item. But they come fairly cheap and I had more than enough cash to rent out everything as soon as Ravio opened his item shop. Later on, you’re able to purchase them permanently for a much higher cost, but owning an item allows you to upgrade it and means you won’t have to pay to rent it again if you die.

What the item rental shop does for the game is allow you to take it at your own pace. Like I said, I rented everything out at once and then immediately went off to explore as much of the overworld as I could, because normally that’s something you have to do incrementally as you get new items. Of course, not everything opens up to you right away; the game still hands out a few power-ups at predetermined points, like the flippers, power gloves and pegasus boots. An important note is that at no point in the game are you given or tasked to find a shield: you have to go out and buy one all by yourself.

What makes the item rental system stand out to most people is that it lets you play through the Lorule dungeons in any order you choose. Dungeons are still built around a single item, but you no longer have to get halfway through to earn that item. Now the big dungeon treasure is a permanent power-up, like a new tunic or an upgraded shield, which is helpful but not necessary to complete the game. Since you don’t have to muck around finding the dungeon item first, you could conceivably head straight for the boss if you know the way, meaning LBW will likely be a big hit with the speedrunning crowd.

The freedom of being able to explore the world right away is a wonderful change for the Zelda series, and stirs things up just enough to make it feel fresh again. The dungeons are great fun, and there isn’t even a hit of the traditional handholding that had soured many gamers on the Zelda series. I’m still only about halfway through, but I am looking forward to that second half like nobody’s business. A Link Between Worlds is the renaissance that the series needed, and I can only hope that the next game is as fresh and fun as this one.

That sinking feeling

I went out and bought a Wii Fit Meter the other day. I know, you’re thinking that’s pretty nuts. Just hear me out: There’s a Wii Fit U demo on the eShop, which is the full game, but it’s only good for 30 days. After that, I’d have to pony up $50 for the full version of the game. BUT! Buying the silly little trinket on its own for $20 and syncing it up with said demo actually unlocks the game for unlimited use. And we all know that I was going to buy Wii Fit U at some point anyway, so I actually saved $30 by buying the Fit Meter. Score!

Also I bought it with a gift card so I didn’t actually spend any money.

Not that I know anyone who owns a Wii U (heathens), but this deal is only good until January 31st, so if you’re at all interested, now would be the time to take the plunge. Of course it’s not a great deal if you don’t also already own a Balance Board, but them’s the breaks.

Anyway, the Fit Meter is basically a repurposed and repainted Pokéwalker. Actually, I think it’s exactly a repurposed and repainted Pokéwalker. The two gadgets are identical, as both are just glorified pedometers. The Fit Meter has some extra features tucked into though, those being an altimeter and a thermometer. It’s also apparently smart enough to know when you’re driving, so as not to count false steps.

You cannot, however, use it to catch Pokémon. Which is a missed opportunity, but I’ll let it slide..

The pedometer and thermometer seem to be pretty on the level, as those have maintained pretty accurate numbers as far as I can tell. The clock is a few minutes ahead and I can’t change it, which bothers me but I guess I’ll just have to live with it. It’s the altimeter that I question.

The altimeter is there to measure your change in elevation as you move around, which will affect how many burned calories it’s calculating. Thing is, the altimeter is set right now at -135m, even though the city’s general elevation is roughly 235m, but that one can be written off as a poor initial calibration.

What really troubles me is that the altitude graph showed a steady decrease on my ride to work this morning, and continued to decrease even while I was at work, despite the fact that I climbed three stories to get to my desk. Looking back even farther, the altitude graph is showing that the Fit Meter thought it was descending overnight, while it was sitting still on my nightstand.

So either the thing is buggy or my entire city is rather quickly sinking into the Earth. I don’t hear any panic in the streets outside, so I’m inclined to believe it’s not the latter.

On the other hand, having even a piece of Wii Fit tagging along in my pocket all day seems like it’s going to be a pretty good incentive to keep using the actual software. At least I’m hoping that’s the case, as I do want to drop a belt size or two, but can’t be bothered to keep myself motivated enough to actually keep exercising. Also that whole “eating right” business, but that’s a totally different beast that I’m going to tackle once I’ve got this regular exercise thing down.

It’s filler, but not

Hey I haven’t posted anything in a while. I guess I have a thing in the works but ehhhh. Between Cookie Clicker and IRL problems (re: being sick), I really haven’t been all over the writing business as of late.

So here’s a thing I did a while back:

Yeah, it’s just an Avatar version of QWOP. It’s not even a very good one. I have this other game that I sort of want to record, which has a similar premise, but a much better execution. Will it happen? I don’t know. It’s a multiplayer thing, and I am terrified of the prospect of trying to record something with another person. Don’t know why. Just am.