backlog

Arkham Asylum: I’m Batman!

KluwesLeave a comment

20170611193852_1

Lately, I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum when I’m in the mood for a single player game. I’ve somehow managed to avoid spoilers and the game in general for a long time. I found it on sale earlier this month and for whatever reason I was in the mood to do bat things. And there are a lot of bat things to do like throwing batarangs, sulking in the shadows, and being reminded for the hundredth time that Bruce Wayne’s parents are still dead.

I’ve had a love hate relationship with Batman. On the one hand, I grew up on the animated series cleverly called Batman: The Animated Series. I didn’t know going in that Batman and The Joker were voiced by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil from the animated series and that already makes this game amazing.

On the other hand, the Christopher Nolan movies defined Batman as a character for a long time. As much as I wanted to be as hyped as the people around me about these movies, they  just didn’t do anything for me.

So I swore off all things Batman for a while. That is until I discovered the excellent comic series written by Scott Snyder in 2013. My faith in Batman was restored. He was a cool, mystery solving, gadget wielding, action hero Batman again and not some grainy, over dramatic, lets yell at everyone in a gravely voice Batman.

I didn’t even see Batman Vs Superman, I just didn’t need that in my life.

20170611171934_1

But Back to Arkham Asylum. I really didn’t know what to expect going into this other than I would be Batman and the Joker probably had some horrible plan up his sleeve. The whole opening scene I was sitting there just waiting for Joker to escape. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. But the gist of it is that Joker has taken over Arkham Asylum for his own nefarious ends and Batman has to stop him. Pretty standard stuff.

I’m about 20% in and I can’t stop playing it. I love the little character Bios you can collect, I love the voice recordings you can find of therapists meeting with super villians like Scarecrow and Killer Croc, and I wasn’t expecting to love the Riddler Challenges so much. Every new area usually has some riddle and you have to use Batman’s withcer senses detective mode to find a certain object and scan it. Then the Riddler says some demeaning comment about your intelligence and you get on with your game. They’re really quite addicting…except the annoying ones but I’m not a completionist so I skip those.

20170618135523_1

Those Scarecrow levels though, those are weirdly fun. They take the game from a 3d stealthyish game to a 2d side-scrolling stealthyish game. It adds a little variety to the somewhat repetitive game play.

Not that repetition is bad, it’s actually a pretty satisfying game play loop of find some clues, hide in the shadows and swoop down on your unsuspecting foes, and then beat them up until they’re unconscious, find out a little more about the Jokers plan, then rinse and lather. The combat is so simple and yet its fun. It’s Assassin’s Creed style beat up your enemy until another one attacks, parry them, and then go back to beating up your enemy. Plus you get the super slow mo finisher scenes when you defeat the last bad guy. I thought they’d get old…they haven’t yet.

It’s been a long time since I played a super hero game but I always find them fun. They just make you feel like your in a comic book or movie. Instead of reading and watching your favorite hero fight bad guys, you get to fight bad guys as  your favorite bad guy.

 

 

 

Sampling the Borderlands

Kluwes1 Comment

20170202070338_1

For the better part of 2 weeks the only games on my gaming menu have been Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre Sequel. For better or for worse I’ve been bouncing between all three games depending on which one of my friends are on to play. I played Borderlands when no one was around, I played Borderlands 2 when Jay was around, and I’ve just started a play through of the Pre Sequel with Jay and CC.

I wasn’t interested in Borderlands when it first came out in 2009 on the account that I was really into the Nintendo Wii at the time and didn’t like the FPS genre all that much. I remember my friends in high school were eagerly awaiting it’s release. I didn’t even really know what it was until a few years later when I started playing it with Jay. By the time I played it with him he had played it 7 times over and new where do go and what to do andd ended up dragging me through the game. We kept restarting to play new characters and I don’t think we ever got farther than the second boss.

20170204185450_1

Fast forward to a few days ago when I decided to fire up the PC version of Borderlands I got from one steam sale or another. The game is brutal I spent more time at the revive station than actually shooting some times. By myself there’s no other focus for the enemies so I’m the one absorbing every bit of damage. It was still fun though if not challenging. It was the first time I actually paid any attention to the story and it turns out I wasn’t missing out on that much. As fun as it was I’ve made it to level 15 where we had stopped in the past and I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to finish it.

I bought the Handsome Jack Collection to play with Jay about a year and a half ago and we still haven’t beaten it. Borderlands 2 is much like Diablo 3 where I get in a mood to play it and then it becomes my main game for a few weeks until I get bored. So every few months or so we’d pick it back up and get a lot of story done and some DLC and then we’d stop.

Borderlands_ The Handsome Collection_20150926000457.jpg

It’s always been a struggle to get myself psyched to play it that first time after a long break because the co op game play is a lot of fun but the story is kinda boring even with a great cast of characters. And after a few hours the dialogue gets overdone. I love spoofs, puns, and pop culture references in games but when its all of that 24/7 it gets a little tiring.

With that being said me and Jay are currently working through BL2’s DLC Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragons Keep and it’s fantastic. I especially enjoyed a quest line spoofing Dark Souls and the whole setting of being in a tabletop game. In fact both the DLC’s that we’ve played through have been much more interesting than the rest of the game.

Borderlands: The Handsome Collection_20170207211803

Now we’ve just started the story in the Pre-sequel and it’s nothing new in terms of story telling or game play. But the Pre-Sequel, despite the story outshines the other 2 in terms of co op for one reason. I can be ClapTrap who is simultaneously the trolliest and most supportive character all in one. I can dish out tons of helpful buffs and abilities to my allies one moment and then turn us all into bouncing rubber ducks the next moment. Much to the chagrin of my friends. Since the game is set on the moon there’s very little air and apparently there’s a mechanic my friends keep talking about where they have to fill up their air canisters every now and then or they die….but I don’t really know because as a robot I don’t need air.

So after this intensive few weeks of the crash course to the Borderlands series I can say that its much more fun to play with friends than alone, the story is nothing to write home about, but the game play and co op is top notch. Your always one drop away from a gun that will change your entire play style or make you super overpowered for your level.

January Recap/February Goals

Kluwes1 Comment

2017-01-14-183823

On the FFXIV front:

January Recap

  • After about 9 months and 300 hours later I’ve finally gotten myself through ARR. It’s not that I didn’t like the content or the story but I couldn’t decide what class I wanted to play, I had to try them all and after I found one I really liked and leveled to 50 I’d find another I  liked and start the process over. I really got to know all the ARR dungeons well after leveling a White Mage, a Bard, a Dragoon, and a Ninja to 50 before I completed the Main Scenario.

February Goals

  • Finishing the 2.XX content and getting into Heavensward: Its only been 3 months since I installed Heavensward, it’s about time I actually get to play it.
  • Level Monk to 42: I keep seeing that Mantra is a good cross class skill for a lot of dps classes.While I’m not particularly loving the pugilist right now it is fun to punch things and I’ll be using my Leveling Roulettes on this.

On the Backlog Front:

January:

  • I finished 3 games this month which is more than I’ve finished in a while. I now have Final Fantasy 1, Azkend 2: The World Beneath, and Risk of Rain under my belt.

February Goals

  • Finish a Steam game: I’ve been playing a lot of games on my PS4 and PS Vita but my steam backlog needs some love. I’m not sure if I’m going to continue with my steam games organized by game length or not but there are some games on the sidebar that I’d like to play so I’ll probably pick one of those.
  • Start Final Fantasy 2

Matching Colors and Slining Arrows

KluwesLeave a comment

I always forget that PS Plus gives me access to games every month and isn’t just payment to play online with my friends. Sure, I get excited and look at what’s coming next month to PS Plus and then I forget all about it. I end up remembering to add games to the library right before the next ones come out.. On the PS4 all you have to do is go to the PS Plus tab and hit “Add to Library” and the games are there for as long as PS Plus is active. They don’t even get downloaded to the console so it’s easy to forget about them As I result I haven’t actually played most of these games.

Since I’ve had the Vita I’ve grabbed a few games but they’ve stayed untouched as well. This weekend I saw that there were 4 Vita games this month and decided to try them out for once.

The Swindle

The Swindle_20170125000342

This is a procedural generated rouge-lite stealth game. Scotland yard is about to developed a machine that will put an end to thievery in 100 days. Your goal as the leader of a band of burglars is to steal as much money as you can before the 100 days are up and hopefully destroy the machine all together. All of this with the steampunk setting and TONS of robots.

Each heist eats up one day even if you fail. If you fail you lose all the money you’ve collected in the level and you have to start over with a new thief. So far I haven’t noticed any differences in the thieves but I’ve only played the first 15 days or so. There are upgrades like the ability to hack computers, set bombs to blast through walls, and increase the difficulty for more money.

I like it so far and would like to try a full go of all 100 days at some point. The only real problem I have with the game is that some times there are rooms that are impossibe to get into or out of if you don’t have the right upgrade. This leads to having to cut ites with your employee and abandon them in a highly guarded warehouse and forfeit a day.

Azkend 2

2017-01-14-143708

This game was my favorite out of the batch which I wasn’t expecting. It’s a match the colors game that utilizes the touch screen of the Vita. It plays a lot like a mobile game and it has a story mode and a few challenge modes.

This game took me by suprise. I fired it up not knowing what it was, saw it was a match the colors type of game and thought well I’ll try a level or two. 3 hours later I completed it and still wanted to play more.

2017-01-14-155212

There are a variety of game modes that have you match as many of the same colored tile together as possible for different effects. One game mode has you match tiles near fog to get rid of it, one game mode has you match tiles near bugs to damage and squash them, and the classic mode has you match colors to turn all the tiles on the board over. The story starts off with a ship being pulled into a whirlpool and the woman on board discovers another world deep below the surface of the ocean. Every chapter has a few puzzles to complete to gather pieces of a tool that the MC needs to move forward. Each of these tools also becomes a power up for you to use later on.

After each chapter there is a scene depicted and you have to find specific details in the scene to get a bonus for the next chapter. Some of these were frustrating because a scene would be mostly grays and browns and it would want you to find a specific gray blob in the image but on some of the more colorful scenes this was a fun mini game.

2017-01-14-160213

I’ve always liked puzzle games and matching games so I shouldn’t be surprised that I like this game so much. I think what threw me off was that this was for the Vita and not for my phone. It’s also on PS4 so I was curious to see what it had to offer. It was a solid game play experience from beginning to end and while some of the levels were challenging, nothing was impossible after experimenting with different power ups and passive skills. The story was even pretty good and the background art was awesome.

Titan Souls

Titan Souls_20170124235133

This is a streamlined rage factory. It’s in the same vein as Dark Souls and Furi where the extreme difficulty is part of the fun. Your tasked with taking down a whole temple full of bosses with your trusty arrow. Yes, just one. You can shoot the arrow and pull it back to you. If you’re touched by the boss it’s lights out and you can go back to the start and try again. Over and over again.

I didn’t care for this game. I got passed the first boss and tried the next 2 but I didn’t see any amount of fun to be had in the future. Especially since the area you start back at is just far enough away from the boss doors to make it annoying. It may also have been the control scheme on the Vita that I didn’t like and I’ll have to try it out on the PS4 to see if it’s any better. For now I can say this was my least favorite this month.

Day of the Tentacle

While I didn’t get around to trying this one out I’ve heard really good things about it and will have to make time this coming weekend to try it out.

 

 

Maptastrophy! Mapocolypse! Mapstravoganza!

Kluwes1 Comment


You don’t realize how important maps are until you don’t have one. You end up wandering around in circles in the wilderness until, exhausted, you and your friends are eaten by bears.

In video games, maps are also important in preventing being eaten by a bear. It’s a feature I’ve always taken for granted. There’s either that helpful mini map in the corner or at least somewhere in a menu. It’s nice to have even if you don’t need it and the absence is really felt when it’s not there.

I’m still making my way through Final Fantasy and up until recently I didn’t have a map and it wasn’t so bad. I found that if I vaguely  remembered the direction of places I’d been to I could stumble my way across the world but this only took me so far, about halfway through the game. Now, I’m not old enough to remember but I’m told there was a time when games came with physical maps and they weren’t packaged away in some insanely expensive collectors edition. After visiting Jay who collects retro games he showed me the map for Final Fantasy and it was then I learned I missed a whole lot of stuff and many hours could have been saved it I was given this at the start.

The map not only shows the land but it also has all the important places listed and numbered. Turns out I had missed the Ice Cave which I thought might get me another crystal. It gave me a Levistone and I think one NPC   had told me next to nothing about this Levistone or what to do with it. So I looked at the handy dandy map and went to the next number on the map and voila, this patch of desert I had been to before that had absolutely nothing there birthed an air ship. So I took the airship to the next point and got a rat tail. At this point not one single NPC told me what to do with said rat tail so thankfully the map led me to the right place.

From then on I’ve been completing one area at a time making my way to the next number on the map and the game has become enjoyable to play again. I’ve been trying really hard not to look up a walk through but I’m getting really close to throwing in the towel on that one. Either I didn’t pay close enough attention to NPC dialog or they just never told me but I’ve completed the Sunken Shrine and have no idea where I’m going next even with a map!

 

 

2017 Resolutions

Kluwes3 Comments

twenty-seventeen-1861383_640.

Well it’s a tad bit overdue but the year is still fresh. Only 10 days in and already 2017 shaping up to be an interesting year. As the New Year struck I was struck by an awful cold that left me out of commission for a few days. On my way to work last week my car’s driver side power window motor died leaving my window stuck down for a few days, not a lot of fun to drive in the cold and snow. Finally, this past weekend I drove back to my parents house, about 4 hours away from me, and in the middle of a white out my windshield wiper fell off making the last few hours a real challenge But it’s not all bad, the year can only get better from here!

Buy Less and Play More

This goes for games as well as books. I have a bad habit of buying more than I can play or only playing a game for a few days before moving on to something else. I rarely finish games and it’s part of h reason I started my personal backlog challenge. So the goal for the year is to play/ finish more games and books than I buy which shouldn’t be that hard because there’s nothing coming out in the nex few months that I’m looking forward too. Though I said the same thing last year where the only game I wanted wasn’t suppose to release until July, I ended up buying at least one game a month anyways.

When It Sucks Stop Reading/Playing It

This one goes more for the books side of things. Every year I set a reading goal oer at Goodreads usually around 20 books. Last year I tried 25 books and I was able to meet my goal, even exceed it by 6 books. The thing is some times it felt like a chore to read and the looming fact that I had to read at least 2 books a month to finish made reading just a little less enjoyable. I’m finding the same as I’ve been working though my backlog. Originally my goal was to finish every game. I thought if I liked it enough to buy it I should be able to finish it. I’ve found that not everything is great and not everything interests me enough to finis it. I think this year I’ll just play games until they no longer interest me. I also have to get better at putting down books when I know they aren’t good instead of forcing myself to finish them.

Change Things Up.

I read a lot of fantasy last year. In fact more than half of the 32 books I read last year were fantasy and quite frankly I’m sick of it. So I’d like to read a little more outside my comfort zone. I’m thinking some murder mysteries, some drama, maybe a romance, and I need to read way more non fiction this year The same goes for games, I feel like I played a lot of the same kind of game last year and while it’s fun to play things I know I’ll like I also have a wonderful library where I can take some chances on other games for free. And PS Plus gives me access to some different games every month and I never try them out. I’ll try to do more of that this year.

November Gaming Goals Galore!

KluwesLeave a comment

Kluwes A'llond 10/23/2016 21:20:38

Wow it’s November already. I don’t have anything clever to say about November, it’s a pretty boring month. Ok so I do love a good parade and the majestic event that is the Westminster Dog Show.  Now that it’s November 1st I’m sure everywhere will be switching gears to Christmas everything. Actually I think they’ve already started playing Christmas music, at least the neighbors have.

October Goals Reveiw

I played a lot of Final Fantasy 14 in October. I got my Dragoon to 50, I got my Bard to 50, I got and apartment, and I finally installed Heavensward. Everything else I planned to do in October kind of fell by the wayside. It was a busier time than I thought it’d be. I think I’m about halfway done with Final Fantasy

November Goals

FFXIV

Beat 2.XX content get into 3.XX content

Backlog 

Beat Final Fantasy 1

Play more God Eater Resurrection

Play More Guild Wars

Complete a full run of One Way Heroics

 

Welcome to Final Fantasy, Three of your Party Members are Probably Already Dead

KluwesLeave a comment

20161019_112519.jpg

As much as I love playing Final Fantasy 14, I’ve never actually played any of the other Final Fantasy’s. Final Fantasy 7 in particular is one of those games I’ve never played but everyone I talk to has much like Zelda games. So Now that I have the means to play every Final Fantasy in one way or another I’ve decided I’d like to see what all the fuss is about. So naturally, instead of just starting with Final Fantasy 7, I started at the original Final Fantasy. I bought the Final Fantasy Origins edition for the PS one which comes with Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy 2 which upgrades both games graphics and audio but not much else.

So here’s the story of Final Fantasy. You have a group of legendary warriors and you have to go find the 4 crystals and save the world. It’s pretty simple, there’s not much too it but the thing that surprised me is that the first 10 or so hours didn’t have me searching fro crystals. Instead I was saving princesses, waking up elf kings, fighting vampires, and exploring castles. It’s rewarding to complete a task and a little bit more of the world or the story is revealed to you. Nothing is all that complex, combat is simple turn based combat without any gimmicky mechanics or timers. Just Monster and Man lining up and politely taking turns wailing on each other. There’s no complex crafting or stats everything is straight forward.

But simple doesn’t mean it’s not fun or stressful. There’s nothing like the stress of trying to get back to town to heal or out of a dungeon before your entire party is wiped out. At one point when I was in the Terra Cave I had just gotten the earth crystal after beating the boss. I had to walk back up the 5 floors of the dungeon to get outside to save in my tent. I had gone in with 100 potions and by the time I was done with the boss I had about 30 left. I began my accent to the surface slowly burning through my potions. I had to escape most of the battles, my team was being picked off one by one. I was on the last floor, only my warrior was left with 40 health to spare, most enemies hit for 1 or 2 points on him so I figured I was safe. It had been a grueling hour and a half from my last save. My heart was pounding, I was just 3 steps away from the exit. That’s when I the battle screen started and I was faced with 3 heavy hitting enemies. I tried to escape only to be hit with a devastating 20 point hit which left me poisoned and with 10 health left. At the beginning of my turn the poison took me out. The game over screen appeared and I was thrown back to the title screen, back to my save from an hour and a half ago.

I’ve died lost in forests circling around and around looking for town as my party is picked off. I’ve walked into castles and had every party member petrified on the first turn also leading to a game over. I’v had pary members one shotted during boss battles and die of poison when I ran out of antidotes. It’s not a friendly game at all and while these deaths don’t happen often when they do it’s when you haven’t saved in a while and think everything is going pretty well.

I’m 18 hours in and about halfway through. I have gotten the Earth Crystal and Fire Crystal and have two more to go. I got my hands on a map from the NES version and realized I skipped entire areas and am currently back tracking to the ice cave where I’m hoping the Ice crystal lives. The map is so incredibly helpful I wish I had it at the beginning.

September Goals in Reveiw

KluwesLeave a comment

20160904223438_1.jpg

Wow, I got nothing done this month game wise. Like at all. I’m not surprised thought I knew this was going to be a busy month of things in the outside world. I did do a few things I set out to do this month and decided to drop some all together.

FInal Fantasy 14 Goals

✓ Get Dragoon Soul Crystal: Hey I’m a dragoon now and it’s been a hell of a lot of fun poking mobs with sticks for the past couple levels

Get Monk Soul Crystal: Maybe I’ll come back to this some day but I just wasn’t feeling the game play of the pugilist and I’m guessing it doesn’t change a whole lot for Monk.

✓ Decide between Playing monk or Dragoon: Ladies, Gentlemen, this is the final rose tonight. I choose to give it too..Dragoon. Dragoon will be advancing in levels and hopefully getting into Heavensward one day,.

Complete the 2.XX content and get into Heavensward: Hahahahaha….I’m not even close.

Backlog Goals

Defeat the fourth boss in Furi: I think I’m done with this game, it was a lot of fun while it lasted but I’m just not into it anymore.

Get to the next system in No Man’s Sky: You know, the last time I picked up No Man’s Sky was 3 days after it’s release ad for some reason I still don’t regret the purchase.

Complete Unepic: What started out as a great game with a lot of RPG references turned into a mediocre game with too many RPG references. I’m shelving this one fr now and going back to my list of games on deck.

Siralim 2-PC/ Mobile Cross Saves

KluwesLeave a comment

20160922100746_1.jpg

A few weeks ago I picked up a game called Sirlaim 2. I had gotten the first Siralim during the steam summer sale and proceeded to play it for hours on end. It’s been described as a mix between Pokemon and Dragon Quest Monsters the latter which I have never played. Basically the premise of the game is you are a king (or queen) of the castle Siralim. Bad things are happening and you and have to save the kingdom. You do this by exploring randomized dungeons with a menagerie of monsters who you can catch out in the wild and train to progress. It’s kind of like one of those hero collector mobile games except you only pay once and can get all the content.

At its core Siralim and Siralim 2 are a dungeon crawler grindfests with no end. Monsters gain levels, weapons equipped to monsters gain levels, your castle can be upgraded, there is a lot of things to craft and a lot of materials to be farmed. The name of the game is progression for progressions sake and to see what how many types of team comps you can come up with. But the best feature of Siralim 2 is the PC/Mobile cross-save.

20160922100620_1.jpg

I bought Siralim 2 on steam for $15 and had no interest at first of getting the mobile version. After I few days I found myself wishing I could take it with me. So I went to the Google Play store and found that the mobile version was an additional $5. Best purchase I’ve made gaming wise in a long time and I’ve put more time into the mobile version than the PC. It’s such an easy game to pick up and play during some down time and when I want to play it longer I can export my save to the cloud and pick it back up on my computer.

I wish there were more of these especially for smaller indie games. Sure a lot of games have mobile ports or more commonly a lot of mobile games have PC ports and end up on Steam but this is the first time I’ve seen a game that has PC/Mobile cross save. It’s a feature I didn’t know I  wanted as I don’t see my phone as a platform for gaming. There have only been a few other games The only other game I’ve really played on mobile was the port of Dragon Quest. But playing Siralim 2 on my phone has turned out out be at least as enjoyable as playing on the PC.