Video Games – Page 87

They’re preaching lies

I’m sitting here trying to finish up Secret of Mana on my phone, but it’s getting to a point where I just don’t think it’s possible to continue. It’s really bad because I’ve beaten this game several times before. I wish I could just say that it’s because I’m getting old and suck at games now (which may be more true than I want to admit), but it’s actually because SOM for iOS is so, so badly balanced.

In the Super NES version, the game was pretty easy. If you get stuck somewhere, it’s because you forgot to buy the better armor at the last town. Maybe you played too fast and didn’t level enough (though level gains aren’t nearly as important as in, say, Dragon Warrior) and need to go back and grind a handful of bees or chobin hoods. Bosses were the only real challenge, and that was until you realized that spamming magic would essentially end the fights before they really began. What I’m getting at is that I never really faced a sticking point before. But now they’re everywhere! The game has been totally rebalanced in the enemies’ favour, and now the bosses are usually where you find respite from the terrible onslaught of death.

Mooks have been way upgraded for the iOS version of the game, their attacks doing a whole hell of a lot more damage than ever. Magic is even worse. And that wouldn’t be too bad on its own, but your character’s hit rates have gone way down. I swear nine out of ten times your attacks will whiff. I first got stuck in the upper land forest, where the combination of overpowered caterpillars and unhittable moles and fish ripped me a new one over and over again. I don’t remember ever using cups of life outside of bosses back in the SNES days, but by God, the merchants are sending their kids to college on my cup of life purchases alone this time around. It seemed like for most of the mid-game that every time I walked onto a new screen the sprite would be dead within ten seconds.

But a combination of grinding money and buying the (awesome) Gold Island armor as soon as possible really made the areas between getting Flammie (SOM’s airship stand-in) and entering the underground city really easy (or at least bearable). Now, in the underground city however, things have gotten retarded hard again. My armor is no longer game-breaking, but merely enough to keep my dudes from dying in a single hit. Making my way through a single hallway is tough, and getting from one end of an entire screen to the other without a casualty is nearly impossible. It gets worse too, because I’m stuck right before a boss with no supplies and no MP and he’s apparently immune to physical attacks? I definitely don’t remember this guy. So basically I have to work my way back out of this area (which is one of the longest dungeons) to get stuff, but getting out alive in my condition is going to be yet another nigh-impossible challenge (see the image above, and that’s right outside the boss room).

I remember a long time ago, when Secret of Mana was fun. But now it’s tedious and unfair and frustrating. I don’t like the iOS port, and until they put out a patch that at the very least puts my hit rates back to a reasonable level, I don’t think that I can finish it.

You’re mad

Still plugging away at Final Fantasy on my iPhone, not really sure what I should do next, because I got the airship right after Lich, and then went on to get my class changes right away. Thought Pants might be better off with magic. He’s not.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played this game too, and that was the first time. Having gone so far off course on my second playthrough makes me feel really cool because I don’t really think about sequence breaking when I play games. But it’s so easy in Final Fantasy! If you wander around enough (and have a vague idea of what you’re looking for), the game basically cracks right open once you kill Lich and get that canoe.

Oh, and check this out! During my first outing, I played FF1 pretty rigidly, always using my fight commands and saving as much of my black mage’s MP for bosses as I could. Large mobs were annoying and took several rounds to defeat. It was not efficient at all. This time I’ve been wantonly blasting whoever I can with magic, and it turns out that you generally will have enough MP to go around anyway. And then I got the Gauntlets and Healing Rod.

I never realized that items like these were in the game; you can equip them for weak stat bonuses, but really what you want is to use them as items. When using these particular pieces of equipment in battle, they cast thundara and heal respectively. With no MP cost. And they never get used up or go away. So now that Gus can cast thundara every round with no MP drainage, cannon fodder enemies are rendered completely moot. Even nine-monster squads are vanquished in a single turn. I don’t know why the game even bothers to keep sending them out.

I honestly cannot wait to see what other items like this I can find. Something that casts healara would be nice, because while ~50 to the team each turn is more than enough for dungeon crawls, it’s not quite enough to keep up with the bonus dungeon bosses and their unusually strong magic. But then again, I suppose that’s what all my unused MP is for.

I ain’t gonna be easy

I know that when you make a game that revolves around issuing commands that has a touch-only interface, you’re probably gonna have to represent some of those commands with icons. But why, exactly, is the item icon in the iOS version of Final Fantasy a teapot?

I mean, okay, I guess a teapot in general might be classified as an item, but never in the game do you gain a teapot as an item. Your characters never interact with an teapot. There are no enemies shaped like teapots. I don’t even think NPC houses have teapots. I suppose that the teapot is a little less generic than using a bag or maybe a backpack as the item command, but it’s still completely irrelevant.

The teapot doesn’t even represent any items you can carry. Why not make the item icon a potion? That’s likely the most common item subset you’ll be using. Why am I thinking way too hard about this? And where do you go after beating Lich?

In the zone

Having finished Brutal Legend (which is a totally badass game, BTW), I started playing Dead Rising 2 last week. Not more than a few hours in, I discovered an adult shop on the main strip of Fortune City. Inside was a shelf full of the item you see above (in several exciting colours!). In the game, it is called a “massager,” but we know that’s not the whole story.

To recap: in Dead Rising 2, you can beat zombies with dildos.

What’s even better though, is that later on I found a survivor in a tanning salon. Her predicament was that she accidentally stayed in the tanning bed for too long and got a little extra crispy. She then needs you to fetch her a drink to rehydrate, and you have to carry her deep-fried body back to the emergency shelter. It was just before I left to find a beverage for the young lady that I noticed one of these massagers on the tanning bed that she had previously occupied. I guess there’s no mystery as to why she was in there too long.

Bass!

I complain about it sometimes, but I don’t hate my job. It’s not very challenging, and it’s often quite boring, but I get by. Lately, it seems that getting by involves reading a lot of random Wikipedia articles. Like on Thursday when I read that last year somebody thought it would be a good idea to port Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 to iOS. And I think it would be a good idea to give this person a nice, long handy jay.

Needless to say, I downloaded it right away. I may not have ever mentioned this before, but like many, I was pretty obsessed with the THPS series in its formative years. These days it’s crap, but THPS2 is the cream of the crop. It was the perfect sequel for a fledgling series; basically the same game as the first but with a few gameplay improvements and loaded down with more content. By the time THPS3 rolled around it was beginning to get excessive, and I just didn’t feel 4 at all.

I lost interest by the time Tony Hawk’s Underground hit the scene, and though I think Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland is an all-around stellar game, it still doesn’t compete with my undying love for the second entry in the series. Which I am now playing on my phone.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother getting the THPS2 app, but it was two dollars and somebody lost my PSX version disc years ago, so really I had no choice in the matter. After all, this is one of the two games (with Megaman Legends) that forced me to break down and get a Playstation all those years ago. I’ve spent about two hours with the game over the course of today, and I have both good and bad news.

Firstly, the bad news. And it’s really bad. I am very upset to report that Activision replaced the entire soundtrack for the iOS port. This is a terrible thing, because the original THPS2 soundtrack was awesome. I wish I could make that awesome more bold, because I mean it more than anything ever before. The THPS2 soundtrack was such an epic thing for me that I feel it necessary to pour some beer on the curb for my lost friend. This was the time after Napster, and I was still only starting to learn about music beyond the radio’s limited and stagnant output. The 15 songs included on the THPS2 disc led me into new and exciting genres, like punk, good hip-hop, and Rage Against the Machine. The iOS port has a bunch of soulless, generic garbage by bands/rappers that I could not identify. In fact, if I hadn’t just watched the in-game music credits, I would have hypothesized that Activision just went to the closest record label and asked for their 10 (9? I forgot to count) cheapest songs. But it gets better! There is apparently a workaround that installs the original music! I haven’t tried it yet, but the fact that it claims that it can be done without jailbreaking my iPhone fills me with delicious hope. (EDIT: It works!)

The other downer is, as with many of the apps I’ve downloaded, the touch controls. You’d think I would have learned after Secret of Mana that they just don’t work well for action games. And SoM is a fairly slow action RPG. THPS2 requires much more complicated and precise inputs. The touch interface is unreliable and inaccurate, making this game in particular very difficult. With a wonderfully tactile controller and buttons, I could have achieved the SICK score in the first stage after maybe one or two warm-up runs. It took me almost all day to get it with the sloppy touch screen controls. There is an accelerometer option, but I think that would end up even worse, seeing as it doesn’t even work great with I Love Katamari, which doesn’t need button presses in addition to tilts.

The good news is that other than the inferior soundtrack, the game is represented in its entirety. Or at least as much as I can remember. It lacks create-a-skater and park editor modes, but I find those superfluous anyway. All the skaters, venues, tricks, and gaps are accounted for, though I can’t speak for any unlockable stuff. Not that far yet. Also, once you get used to the controls being more than a little wonky, the game is still awesome fun. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s the best Tony Hawk game, and now it’s portable. And it’s two dollars. Did I mention that it’s only two dollars?

A generation born in denial

I may have forgotten to mention one particular game the other day. A game which I don’t play too often, but when I do I really get dragged in… Minecraft.

Of course, Minecraft. Everyone’s playing that gosh darned Minecraft. Like I said, I don’t log on often, though if I do I end up trapped in that world of crafting and mining for hours on end, much to the dismay of Morning Ryan. Getting up for work is a real bitch when you were up most of the night digging a really big virtual hole.

And last weekend, my little brother-in-law (to-be, if you want to pick) showed me a gun mod for the game that he’d downloaded and installed. I wasn’t super impressed with the idea of putting guns in Minecraft. And then I was given a demonstration of the high explosives. He put down approximately 100 blocks of the so-called “nuke” in a small shaft near the bottom of the map, and then climbed to the top of said shaft (with a super-awesome grappling hook, by the way). He then proceeded to fire a rocket down the shaft.

That’s when the laptop froze.

For a few seconds there was nothing but silence and a frozen screen. Then things started moving again, and we looked down the hole. Inside was the most gigantic hollowed-out cavern I’ve ever seen. It was bigger than probably all the caves I dug in my first world combined. It was amazing. I’ll admit that I took my time getting home, because there are some things that even exploding the fuck out of Minecraft cannot top. But when I got home, I was on that mod like jam on toast!

This is a small island just east of my sand castle in my second offline world. As you can see, I have strung a series of nukes around the perimeter of the island, and even buried a few in random spots around the sand. This island was infested with zombies at the time, and I was hoping to get an image of them on the island, but I wasn’t able to slip away without them following me. There’s one in the water, and a creeper swam over to the island after I left, but it’s not the same. Now, behold, as I make this entire island disappear! And it’s not going to disappear into time or something silly like that. It’s going to vanish forever.

I will admit, that as cool as the nukes are, unless they’re in an enclosed space, they don’t work all that great. A single box won’t make a much bigger divot than a regular TNT. They also have a fuse, no matter what sets them off, so a nuke set off by a nearby explosion will bounce away and tick for a second or two before it goes off. This makes careful planning important for clearing away large above ground areas.

Voila! As I said, nukes will bounce away from other explosions, so it wasn’t a perfect detonation (it took 4 missiles to set it all off). I would have liked the crater to have been a little deeper too, but the end result is super satisfying. Just look at that wonderful destruction! I also waited until daytime so it was easier to see.

Now, despite the display of awesomeness, you may feel like the gun mod still violates the spirit of Minecraft. And I don’t disagree with you. I don’t see myself using the bulk of the mod items for anything other than explodinating entire islands (or mountains!) at a time. Of course, that grappling hook, which can be thrown to create a rope that goes down until it hits a block, is something that should absolutely be a legitimate Minecraft item. Ladders are neat and all, but the grappling hook is a spelunker’s best friend.

And sometimes it can be so satisfying to pop a cap in a creeper’s ass. Teach those fuckers to explode my library.

Live the rebound

As you might have expected, I’ve been as busy as I can be with video games over the past few months, and honestly, I’ve been playing far more of them than I could have possibly kept up with when I was unemployed and single. So many have become one-week affairs, while others are destined to be played, dropped, and picked up again repeatedly, and others still I haven’t even booted up once. I’d kind of like to get things in order and start finishing a few of them, so I’m going to start a preliminary list of games I’ve been into lately that are fighting for my precious free time. And this list will cover only games that I’ve come in contact with for the first time over the last year. I have so many Gamecube and PS2 games I need to get around to playing, that this list would take forever if I counted all them too. Old stuff I’ll catch up on once the new stuff thins out.

Games I’m playing regularly

Despite all the games I’ve played once or twice and forgotten about, there are many that I continually find time to spend on. Pokémon White is the newest and most obvious example. I’ve been playing the shit out of this one over the month or so it’s been out, and I can’t get enough of it. Those little monsters always find a way to worm their way into my heart. Though admittedly, I would have been even happier with it had it excluded all of the old monsters in favor of the new ones. What are we at, 600 or something now? Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock has been spinning a lot inside of my Xbox, despite the fact that I’ve likely gotten all of the achievements that I can and I’m playing it just for fun instead of progress at this point. Which, actually, is kind of the point, but whatever. I’ve 100%-ed Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, but I still hold out hope that someday they will actually release the DLC we were originally promised to have in February. Being that it’s the only 3DS game I own, Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition is getting plenty of play, but I think this will end up being a once-in-a-while game once I get the “beat arcade with all characters” medal. Dissidia: Final Fantasy is far more fun that it should be, but really, I want to forget about it and go get the sequel. Good thing new games aren’t in my budget.

Games I play sometimes

I’ve begun working my way through Brutal Legend, and while I love it to pieces, it’s getting less play than SSFIV3D, and how does that make sense? Picross 3D, which would have benefited greatly by being held back for 3DS, is not as fun as regular picross. But I’ve been picking away at the puzzles since it came out and am almost finished! I’m sitting at about 350 completed. Final Fantasy IV DS is brutally difficult, and is definitely not the breezy, nostalgic joyride I assumed it would be. But I’m soldiering through it anyway, getting stuck, slowly power-leveling my way though, and then dropping it for weeks at a time. Shadow Complex I could quit anytime, but I only need the Level 50 achievement and sadly, that’s essentially just a time-eating cheevo dressed up in a deceptively fancy hat. Secret of Mana seemed like a great idea for an iPhone game, and it could have been, but I just cannot bear the touch controls. And Donkey Kong Country Returns is such a great game, but it’s soooooo hard. And not great for two-player. I don’t imagine I’ll ever finish Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology even though I pick it up and log a decent number of hours each summer.

Games I played for a week and forgot about

I really wanted to play more of Fallout 3, but it’s so huge! I’ll never finish that monster. Not without power-gaming it for about a month straight, anyway. Final Fantasy XII is the same way, but I do pick that one up for a week or two every few months in a vain effort to make a little progress. I wanted to say my goal was to finish all the mark hunts, but I think I’ll have to settle for all Espers after reading about Yiazmat (he has more than 50 Million HPs).Arc Rise Fantasia is a different story. It’s a fairly fresh JRPG, with a not-entirely-cliche story and a battle system that is both fun and speedy, but the voice acting is so, so awful. It’s not so much that I don’t want to ever finish the game, but it’s enough that I would be okay if I didn’t. Alone in the Dark, the 2008 one, is another mixed bag. It’s got a lot of neat ideas, but gameplay is pretty much balls. It seems like 100%ing the cheevos would be easy if I could struggle my way to the end. Crackdown 2 was fun at first, and I like the in-game help for finding all those orbs, but near the end I gave up because it really just wasn’t as fun as the original, no matter how hard I tried to pretend it was. With Epic Mickey, I knew I was playing more for the atmosphere than the gameplay, but it (the gameplay) was just so mediocre that I’m having trouble pulling myself back in for the good stuff (presentation). Little King’s Story, on the other hand, has fairly good gameplay and presentation, but I can’t play it because I’m at the point where the enemies are actually dangerous, and I can’t bear to send my beloved villagers to their dooms. They all have names! And families! I’m not a monster! And speaking of which, I was completely obsessed with Monster Hunter Tri and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite last summer, but they have dropped completely off my radar, despite the fact that I really want to set aside some time for even one of them.

Games I own but haven’t stared

Why haven’t I played Dead Rising 2 yet? Honestly, it’s because I loved the original so much, I’m afraid the sequel won’t be as good. Loved Case Zero though. Deadly Premonition I got because despite the fact that he said it was awful, Steve’s description of the game (and its easy cheevos) made it sound like a game I wanted to play. So did the Gamespite Quarterly 6 review. The Incredible Hulk (360) will sit on my shelf and collect dust forever. It was better off in the Wal-Mart bargain bin. Technically I’ve beaten New Play Control! Pikmin like a dozen times, but I suppose I should play it at least once to justify the $30 expense. And if you want to pick, I have played the first two levels of Dawn of Mana, but that was so long ago I can’t even remember the experience. Eternal Sonata I hear is not so great, but how can I resist a JRPG that co-stars Frédéric Chopin? By leaving it on the shelf next to The Incredible Hulk, I suppose.

Oh good gravy. And these are just the games that spring to mind. Even if I don’t write an article at all this year, I hope to make use of this webspace to help keep track of how I’m progressing through my backlog of games. I didn’t even consider WiiWare/virtual console games. Or PC games. Or Shantae: Risky’s Revenge! That one really deserves to be finished. Ugh. I’ll have to come up with some sort of system to keep track of what I’m playing and what I need to accomplish in each game. I tried using The Backloggery some time ago, but… I don’t know why I stopped updating it. Maybe because I play too many damn games. Oops.

Now I’m fine

Huh, it turns out that I almost get more hits when I don’t post. Take a look at this graph of site traffic over the last four months.

Crazy stuff, there. Anyway, back to the task at hand. Remember last June, when I posted links to a handful of my favourite articles on the site? No? Refresh your memory then. I had planned on making a second list of favorites, but it never really panned out. Like most of the things I try to do. But here I am, almost a year later, come to finally post the rest of my choices. Of course, I’d long since lost the list I had selected, but I think these ones are particularly memorable, even if I’m the only one who does.

Cap’n Crunch’s Choco Donuts – Present me loves the Cap’n cereals more than anything, but for some reason back in the day I guess I was inferring that he was a pedophile? Regardless, this was the first article that a lot of my friends complimented me on, so it sticks out pretty prominently in my memory.

Top 12 Reasons MegaMan Rules – My goodness, was I really this bad? I realize now that basically every word I typed here makes me look like a retarded fanboy now, but I suppose at that point I was. Oh well. I remember working really hard on this one, especially on the (now obviously) shitty, shitty banners.

The Squirrel Game – Board game fan fiction. For most people that’s enough reason to leave the site entirely, but I refute that that’s exactly why you should read this article. If only to get a good grasp on why I spend most of my writing time blogging and reviewing as opposed to creative fiction.

The Cup – It’s not about bras, or their contents, sadly. It is about a drinking cup, which is adorable. And speaking of adorable, look at 18-year-old me! He’s pretty hot! And young. Oh, how I wish I could be so young and carefree again…

Hachiemon – I really don’t know how to explain this one. There’s a huge language and cultural gap separating me and the understanding of this game. But I like the article! It kind of makes me want to go back and actually play Hachiemon. At least for a couple levels.

I Hate Socks – Sho ’nuff.

The Ramen Fiasco – It’s hardly a fiasco, but I have a soft spot for any articles I’d written about food. This one is short, but I think it chronicles my cooking prowess pretty well. On an interesting side note, said cooking skills have not developed at all in the 5 years since I wrote this!

Feeling a little better

So, I’m not really feeling like getting back into this, but at least while the site is still live, I don’t want that kind of negativity festering on it, so I’ve removed my grim post of grimness. Here’s a replacement paragraph.

It’s sad that I took so long to remove it too, because the dark times didn’t last for long; three days, more or less. I guess sometimes people just gotta get their shit together, and it’s just too bad that sometimes it involves hurting the people closest to you. Anyway, happier news!

There’s this Mario Bros. level creator see, and over at Talking Time, they’re making a whole game with it. Interested in the project, I downloaded the editor just to play around, and quickly found myself deeply entrenched in it because let’s face it, making your own levels for a game you grew up with is a pretty great power trip.

I decided that I’d make my very own Super Mario Bros. game, and while “development” was going smoothly and I was very proud of my work, I quickly came to the realization that all my hard work would never be appreciated by anyone but myself. And while self-satisfaction is great and all, I wanted at least someone to critique a little of my work, so I submitted a stage to the Super TT Bros thread, and not only was it accepted into the game, but was given fairly high praise! So yay me. If you want to see what I made (and it’s really not that great), download the SMBX program and then put this level in the Worlds folder somewhere. It’s most easily accessed by booting it up in the editor and choosing “test level.”

So yeah. I’m very happy about this. Maybe Super TT Bros. will only ever be played by a few dozen forum patrons, but dammit, I made a contribution to a real goddamn game. Fan-game maybe, but a game no less. I can now die happy. How many times have I typed that over the lifespan of this site?

Everything’s gonna be alright

The saddest part is that this is the second time. I knew it was inevitable, and that all 360s succumb to the RROD at some point in their lifetime, but I hadn’t realized that having it repaired would only last so long. Maybe it was just me being naive, but I really, truly believed that once it came back from Microsoft’s Xbox Resuscitation Centre it would live on until it literally fell apart.

But nope. Hardware’s failed again, and this time it’s gonna cost me to get it repaired. So I was thinking about just waiting out my lack of Xbox until I can scrounge up enough pocket change to pick up one of those “more reliable” Slim models. I was needing a hard drive upgrade anyway, so I figure I might as well bite the bullet. If the one I have is just going to keep suiciding forever, why not spare myself the agony and pony up for a new one?

I just really don’t have $300 to fritter away on a game console I already own. Only now do I realize why I shouldn’t have bought each new iteration of the DS (excepting the XL of course, even I’m not that bad with money). It’s not like ol’ Phatty there is going to kick the bucket anytime soon.