Tag: animal crossing

as we merrily roll along

The Steam Sale continues to roll along, and I continue to buy things here and there that I didn’t necessarily mean to.

Here are my spoils, updated as of Friday morning with newest additions in italics:

  • Rogue Legacy
  • Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
  • Thomas Was Alone
  • Sword & Sworcery EP
  • Dirt 3
  • The Last Remnant
  • Home
  • Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe
  • Bully
  • Toki Tori 2
  • Skyrim DLC
  • Gunpoint
  • Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

As of right now (again, Friday morning), there’s only one thing on my wishlist that I’d like to pick up if it goes on sale: Magrunner: Dark Pulse, which apparently has a Portal-meets-Lovecraft vibe going on, and I’m a sucker for that kind of shit.  I’d also love it if that Civ V: Brave New World DLC came down in price, although considering that it just came out like a week ago, I highly doubt it’ll get anything beyond a token 10% discount.  (And if I’m being honest, here, the truth is that I’d probably only play it once, on Very Easy, and still fuck everything up and maybe give up halfway through the campaign.  Which is, again, why I wouldn’t mind picking it up if it came down in price.)

In the meantime, I continue to plug away at things I’ve already played before – specifically Tomb Raider, which I’m enjoying just as much the 2nd time around (even if the things that were problematic before remain so now).

Also received Shin Megami Tensei IV in the mail yesterday, which has received a rather positive reception even if nobody’s really articulated exactly what it is.  But it’s just as well; ever since I gave up on Animal Crossing I’ve been kinda just dicking around in Paper Mario Sticker Star, which is good but not nearly as fun as the Mario & Luigi games, and so any excuse I can find to play with the 3DS is one I’ll gladly take.

No gaming plans this weekend; I will be in a recording studio, making music, for pretty much the whole 48 hours.  Fun!  I only hope there’s air conditioning over there.

of zombies, peaches, and time

I’ve had very little game-playing time in the last week or so.

This is actually a good thing, as far as The Last of Us is concerned; its relentlessly grim atmosphere can start to feel suffocating after a while.  I’m not sure how far I am into it, actually, because my time with it has been so stuttered; if you’ve already played the game, then you’ll know where I am when I tell you that I just recently picked up the bow and arrow for the first time, and am in that booby-trapped town, trying to help this guy find auto parts so that he can build us a car.

It’s weird how I can binge-watch a show like Hannibal and have a really great time (even if I end up having trouble sleeping), but that I can’t play TLoU for more than 30 minutes at a time without feeling restless and agitated.  Of course, I’m also having trouble enjoying TLoU.  It’s an incredibly well-crafted experience; it’s probably the best-looking game on the PS3 (which is no mean feat; how Naughty Dog managed to top its own Uncharted 2/3 is beyond me).  But aside from the oppressive atmosphere and the overwhelming sadness that pervades every inch of this apocalyptic wasteland, it also suffers from the same kinda-shitty combat that plagued the Uncharted games.  To be fair, the body count thus far is much, much lower than in Uncharted, and the stakes feel much higher – the violence actually means something this time around.  But it still feels awkward, and I die an awful lot (even on Normal), and one-hit kills stop being devastating after you’ve been one-hit killed 20 times in a row.   I feel compelled to push on, as it’s one of the last truly significant games of this generation, but I can’t honestly say I ever look forward to playing it.

I suppose I’ve also reached my saturation point with zombies.  In the mid-’00s, I was getting tired of killing Nazis; now it’s zombies.  They’re a very convenient enemy – you don’t feel bad killing them, you won’t offend anybody by making them the bad guys, and it’s easy enough (if you want) to drape your own morality tale over whatever metaphor you want the zombies to represent.  I get it.  And zombies are still a hot commodity right now, and if there’s anything you can do to get a new IP off the ground, zombies have a proven, successful track record.  But how many more goddamned zombies are we going to have to kill before the industry feels comfortable inventing something new?

*     *     *

The having-no-time thing is a bit of a drag, though, with respect to Animal Crossing: New Leaf.  Ordinarily I’d appreciate the slow pace and the do-what-you-want gameplay, but because my time is so limited, I feel this weird sort of pressure to try and finish all the town maintenance stuff I need to do as quickly as possible.  Now, to be fair, it’s not the game’s fault; it doesn’t necessarily punish you for not staying on top of things all the time (though it does mean there’s more weeds that need to be picked up, and sometimes you’ll end up missing on certain special events).  I fully acknowledge that my previous addictions to stupid timer-based town-maintenance shit like Farmville have informed my approach to AC:NL.  Still, though, it is what it is, and my weirdness about not having any time is making the game less fun to experience.  Which is a drag, because it’s clearly something that everyone else on my twitter feed is madly in love with.

meanwhile

The story of this year’s E3 is still Sony’s press conference.  This is a little disheartening, now that we’re a few days into this thing, because it also means that there aren’t any new games that are blowing people’s minds.

So I figured this is as good a time as any to get a few “First Few Hours” profiles out of the way.

Remember Me:  There’s a lot to like about this game; it’s got a fantastic visual aesthetic, an interesting narrative idea, a female protagonist who isn’t overtly sexualized, a very cool memory-remixing mini-game, and a “design-your-own-combo” system that ought to make the combat sections feel like personal statements.  Alas, the combo system isn’t nearly as creative as I wanted it to be, and in any event the combat is nowhere near as satisfying as the Batman: Arkham games it so clearly is inspired by.  And the environments, while jaw-droppingly beautiful, are claustrophobically linear.  And the load times are absurdly long, even if you install it to the hard drive.  And I got hung up on a boss fight that checked off way too many boxes on my pet peeve checklist (i.e., teleporting enemies, enemies who change the rules of the fight without explaining what it is they’ve changed, etc.).  I still might recommend this to someone who’s better at button mashing and who also has a bit more free time and patience, though; I’d be curious to see where the story ended up.

Animal Crossing: A New Leaf:  I just started playing this morning – long enough to buy a shovel and a fishing line, dig up a few fossils, shake up a few trees and sell some fruit, and put up a $10,000 down payment on a house.  Unfortunately, that’s pretty much all I can do for the time being; my house won’t be ready until tomorrow morning, and there’s no more fruit on the trees or fossils to dig up.  I suspect (well, hope) that there will eventually be more to do, but for now I’m just… waiting.

Scurvy Scallywags:  Ron Gilbert’s had an uneven ride the last few years – I was a big fan of the first DeathSpank but the second one fell flat, and The Cave, while interesting, didn’t really do all that much for me (or at least enough to do more than one playthrough).  Still, when he says he’s doing a pirate-themed Match-3 RPG for the iPhone, I download that shit immediately.  The big twist in this game is that, unlike most Match-3 games where objects only fall down, here the objects come in depending on which direction you swipe – and your enemies appear on the board as objects, too, and you need to be sufficiently powerful enough in order to handle them in combat.  This makes the game a great deal more strategic than you’d expect a Match-3 game to be, as you’ll need to pay attention to enemy placement as well as combo potential.  There are also mini-quests and stat buffs and spells and costume changes and sea shanties and the whole thing is delightful.  Suffice it to say, I’ve been heavily addicted ever since I downloaded it last week.  The only things I’d want changed – and which are probably easily patchable, although what do I know – are the ability to listen to my own audio, and an easier way to compare new costume loot with what I’ve already got equipped.  Highly, highly recommended.