What I Played Today: Hell Week

Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare, Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness

I had a hell of a week, in which I subsequently was dragged through three intense days at work, then took some time off from work after being beaten up by it, then gotten sick because of reduced immunities. So…I didn’t play much, lot of sleeping, and I didn’t play anything really intense. Therefore, I’m only going to highlight a few things which I managed to play near the end there.

I passed Red Dead Redemption, after a lot of screwing around because I thought I needed to complete all tasks before the mandatory ending because I heard things. It’s an interesting ending, although I’m really confused why I needed to be put through five or six very basic and obnoxious missions that really didn’t add anything besides some color. I didn’t get half the color, and I didn’t understand why it required me to rope horses (something I hadn’t needed to do since the very beginning of the game). But it was interesting, if a bit poorly-paced.

I also purchased the expansion to Red Dead, Undead Nightmare, an alternate history sequel to the game in which zombies show up. The acting is even wonkier than usual, but they write in some really good jokes (and a couple of painful ones. Racism isn’t that funny, guys). And the gameplay is improved with the addition of the craziness that they have added, being able to kill zombies and sasquatches. The base infiltration of each town to free it from the zombie horde is fun, if a little tedious, and it’s a lot more fun to gundown zombies than it is to gundown wave upon wave of outlaws. There was also a stupid moment where I had somehow gotten one of the horses of the apocalypse, pretty neat, until it died when I rode it off a ten-foot cliff. It died, and I felt stupid, because I was told by the game, explicitly, that the horse was nearly impossible to kill. Unless you try to ride it off a small cliff while it is pitch black out.

In a fever pitch, I had purchased a new Harvest Moon game, this one about an island. It’s a bit interesting, as the crowd around you slowly grows, but it’s also slow going, as there is not a lot you can do from the get go. But I like that you have to start from the ground up, although the new food system is kinda crazy in the fact that I have to keep eating every day or you’ll start waking up later and later. Of course, on the island early on, where I don’t have a kitchen and the only thing in the story that will actually fill up the food meter is chocolate? It’s a bit goofy.

Super special long blog post tomorrow for my ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Sorry, got excited there. Now I gotta figure out what I’m going to say.

What I Played Today: January 23

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Red Dead Redemption

Lot of single player action today, in which I get through an entire chapter of Assassin’s Creed: Bro-hood, and move on to Red Dead Redemption. First is the festival of crazy that is the four-mission chain that you have to complete in Assassin’s Creed when you break into the Castello with the mission of killing a couple of dudes, only for you to totally give up on that mission to instead save yourself a bit of tail that you were banging a couple of months ago, Caterina Sforza. The missions were kinda all over the place, with poor directions on where you were supposed to go, and having to do things that you haven’t had to do before. One thing I haven’t been liking is the secondary mission goals that will determine whether you fully sync or just kinda sync with Ezio, because if you mess up and get spotted in a mission where you shouldn’t have been, it just means you have to do it again later to get 100%. I don’t want to do the mission again. There are so many sidequests, why can’t you just give me full credit for doing each one?

After I managed to break Caterina out of jail by kidnapping some lady (Ezio can’t kill ladies, it’s against the Assassin’s code or something), you then finally get to recruit assassins to your cause and make your little nest of awesome dudes that you can send on missions. I got six of them recruited in short order, and were sending them all over Europe to ruin some shit. I also got a few unrelated missions about killing some slave trader until Leonardo makes his appearance again, looking old as hell, and he builds me some awesome upgrades and tells me that he’s been tasked with building warmachines, so I should really fuck those up so that the Borgia don’t use them to win their war. So I find some plans and mess up some machine guns, although not before I totally use that stuff to kill 60 dudes, because if you’re not killing 60 dudes in every mission, it is not a modern-day action adventure game.

(Craziest about all the above: Disregarding the parts about Ezio, all of this stuff totally happened. The Borgia took Caterina Sforza captive, Leonardo da Vinci did work for Cesare Borgia, etc. I like how they did all the research on this and weaved in the part about the top secret assassin. I fully expect my final confrontation with Cesare to be on a castle wall in Spain.)

In Red Dead, I churned through the missions because goddang this thing should be over already. The time spent on the farm with Bonnie MacFarlane feel like a long lost memory at this point, and I just want to get on with it. First a bunch of missions with the racist anthropologist, who cannot stop talking in a way that is just painful to modern ears, and I’m glad he’s gone. I also had to stop a bank heist by Dutch, and the game is doing a really weird thing with Dutch. This guy is the Big Bad, the person whose death will mean that Marston is homefree and the game will be over. So you’d expect him to be hard to find, hidden even better than Javier Escuella, but…

You see, the writers wanted to really push the relationship between Dutch and Marston, so they had to have them talk a lot. However, this being pre-cell phone, they can’t just call each other up and have a spot of color between them. So you need Dutch to physically show up and talk to Marston. This would be fine if they gave Marston more of an incentive to not just shoot Dutch. The pseudo father-son relationship between them means little against the pile of evidence telling him why he should just full-auto on the old bum. But instead they have a number of civil conversations in which Marston is holding a gun and does absolutely nothing with it. At least fire at him and miss, John. And why aren’t the G-Men working harder to kill him? It feels like Dutch is riding into Blackwater three times a day, I’m sure you can find a way to waylay him and shoot him. You’re above the law with your pre-formation of the FBI. Just kill him already.

What I Played Today: January 16

Red Dead Redemption

I played more Red Dead Redemption today, mostly doing side quest stuff, trying to unlock some outfits that I won’t use. I was having a problem in which one of the areas that I needed to meet some people was always abandoned the first three times I went there, making me worry that the game was permanently broken and I wouldn’t be able to get the outfit I wanted, but eventually they showed up, and I managed to get the two outfits that were tied to Mexico, so I never have to go there again! Hurray!

What I Played Today: January 15

Back to the Future: The Game, Red Dead Redemption

I finished the first chapter of Back to the Future Game, in which some antics happen. I liked it, it distills a lot of the wackiness of the original movies into a final sequence that's really fun, although some of the in-jokes were just too obvious and didn’t really need to be there. Yes, we know it’s Back to the Future, but you don’t have to keep recreating the exact same scenes. History does not repeat itself in such a contrived fashion. Every single Tannen does not need to drive into manure.

My favorite part was probably when you had to run the experiment while young Doc was offscreen encoding instructions in an argument he was having. It was fast-paced and clever, if a bit long. I’m also glad that most of the puzzles came together in my mind eventually but not immediately, and when I was completely at a loss of what to do, Marty happened to say the one thing that got the ball rolling in my head.

I also ended up reading the walkthrough after I was done, just to remember what I had done up to that point, and wound up looking at the comments and laughing. Some people are just such massive jerks and dummies, like the guy who was so mad about the final scene that he stopped playing before the very last decision because it was just too silly for him. He even used the term “jumped the shark,” which means exactly nothing. This is the first chapter of the game! You can just say you don’t think the game is good if that what’s you’re trying to say. There’s also a guy who didn’t understand the $25 was for the entire game and thought he was being asked to pay for each individual chapter. And the idiot who asked where one can download the game…on the website for the game.

Also been getting into Red Dead Redemption again, I’m finally out of Mexico, and even though it’s strongly implied I still have a lot to do, the game sets you up two or three missions in a row in which you get a lot done in the context of your goal. Considering you’ve been dicking around fighting a war that isn’t yours for 20 missions before that, it’s really weird that so much happens in those last two Mexico missions.

What I Played Today: January 6

Red Dead Redemption

I’ve been playing some review titles that I really don’t want to review (they are crap), but I also played a bit more of Red Dead, and surprise, surprise, somebody pulled the rug out from under John Marston, again, and so we have to shoot like 28,000 more people. Just when I though the Mexican revolution was going to end any minute now, I now have permanently switched sides. Of course, considering what I’ve been up to, I’m amazed either side will take me.

What I Played Today: January 1

Sam & Max, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Red Dead Redemption

A quiet day to start off the new year, in which I finished up the Sam and Max: Season One series, and some more games for an audience.

Sam and Max was alright, with a few major deficiencies. Things were going well once I cheated and found out how exactly I needed to get the absolutely essential “bend things with your mind” talisman (oh man, so many steps), and there was a cutscene in which the bad guy enacted his evil plan and “destroyed” Max. I don’t know why they don’t include more cutscenes, because they do them very well. Then it was a simple matter of getting Max back together, which was easy until the last part, in which I had to apparently read the designer’s mind. It required me making the logical leap of assuming a) Max had access to something worth a hundred trillion dollars, b) that he would feed this object to a character who had been tied up in my closet since Episode 3, c) that I would need to actually interact with an object in the trophy room, something that I never had to do before. This was a bonkers assumption, almost as bad as “cat hair as a moustache,” and I would have never thought of that without cheating. The ending was also pretty darn silly. I haven’t like their ending puzzles, mainly because they usually exist in a vacuum and end pretty anti-climatically. They should really just use their cutscene powers and just make a good ending happen, instead of forcing me to figure out one final puzzle that ends up killing the tension. Still, a good job overall, and I can’t wait to see how they upped the ante in the second series.

Also more Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, I have all the abilities unlocked now, which means I get to poison people now, hurray. Although, moving straight from this game to Red Dead Redemption, which I did, caused a strange moment of paranoia, where I was terrified of having John Marston move at more than a crawl for fear of bounty hunters, which was completely uncalled for, and I finally broke free and started actually playing the game.

I hadn’t played for a while, having been fairly disenchanted by the constant back-and-forth loyalty seesaw that is the Mexico chapter, but I slogged through it here. Most of the time I was helping the damn Army, and I managed to clear out some of the hideouts that were giving me trouble last time I played. Overall I guess it went alright, everything was competent and I didn’t die for a really stupid reason. Well okay, at one point I lost the mission because some NPC I didn’t even know I was supposed to protect was shot, but it only happened once. Hopefully I’m nearing the end of this chain (I’m down to only one questgiver, the rest have fled to America) so that I can go back to the States again. Sorry Mexico, but you’re just large and boring.

What I Played Today: September 12

Dance Dance Revolution, Puzzle Agent, Red Dead Redemption, Persona 3

A day of small wonders, I played a bit of DDR, going to try that every chance I get, if only to get myself moving again. I wish the Kinect would come out already so that I can play Dance Central instead; the songs will be better and the amount of dancing required will actually look like dancing rather than pathetic feet flailing. I can’t believe I used to be fairly good at this, because I topple if the song moves too fast.

Also played about five minutes of both Red Dead Redemption and Persona 3, trying to grab a couple of old sparks, but instead finding myself getting a bit bored. In Red Dead, I was suddenly pulled into a raid on a town that I didn’t actually want to participate in, and just as suddenly my feet touched a small patch of water that I could have waded out of and I died instantly. Guess that foot drop off the pier lead to deadly decompression. And in Persona 3 I ran around that damn tower some more. By the end of the game, you come to hate that damn tower.

But in terms of new and non-exhausting experiences, I picked up Puzzle Agent for the iPhone, and I like it so far, even if the puzzles take a lot of lead-in to get around to and when they do appear, they are a bit simple. I mean, there’s this build-up to some number being written in code, only for it to be an impossible-to-miss white space picture. I did get a bit stupid and screw up the last couple of puzzles I’ve done, including one that should have been obvious, but I went too far in assuming what the puzzle meant. “Maybe all the icons are supposed to be closed symmetric loops with a solid baseline. Oh wait, no, it’s just the numbers 1-4 put next to their mirror images. Well, don’t I feel stupid.” But the game makes up for the crappy puzzles by the building of atmosphere and voice acting, with a very Twin Peaks feeling to the game (which was exactly what they were going for, of course). I look forward to playing it through, as I enjoy most of what Telltale works on.

What I Played Today: August 1

Red Dead Redemption

Being a buckaroo today, rolling around Mexico and shooting Mexicans. I don’t really like this chapter...there’s some nonsense about a revolution, and I’m suddenly play both sides of it without realizing that I was doing it, and now Wade Garrett is mad at me, and I don’t even care. The worst part is that each quest requires me to travel half-way across the country to get to where I’m going before I can even start the quest. One quest literally starts at the western-most city in Mexico, and ends at the train bridge to America just south of Thieves’ Landing. And I had to ride my horse the entire way! Ridiculous. I’m just trying to barrel through this part, just because I want to move on already.

There is this weird mission where you sit down and play card, being charged a hundo to join the game. You play two hands, and then this German asshole tries to kill you. So you kill him, and then his friend shows up and starts shooting at you too! So you kill some dudes, because that is all John Marston knows how to do, and then the mission ends and you get $50. Wait a bit…where’s the $100 from the card game? I even won a hand! I should get my full winnings. Stupid German cheated me out 50 bucks, I’m glad he’s dead.

What I Played Today: July 26

Red Dead Redemption, Persona 3 Portable

It was another day in the old West, as I finished up the Act I missions with a completely unsatisfying ending, and then going into Mexico with that idiot Irish. Man, I hate Irish, but it seems like I won’t see his scraggily beard again, so that’s nice. There was this interesting setpiece when I landed in Mexico and had to ride across half the damn country to get to the next mission hub, as the sun slowly set and a song with actual lyrics came on to accompany my voyage. It was a poignant moment, albeit one that reminded me that the game just played a start-over card on me for no good reason. I also ran into Sam Elliot, so that was cool.

And Persona 3. Today was the beach scene, which is incredibly stupid, watching the characters fail to hit on chicks. They did put one of the creepier characters from Persona 4 in the scene as a cameo though, which was a little funny. But otherwise, there are just so many hours to get through.

What I Played Today: July 10

Harvest Moon: Hero of Leaf Valley, Persona 3 Portable, Red Dead Redemption

I am stuck in a good game loop, in which I keep playing three games that I think are good and have nothing interesting to say about them because I’m just sucked into the vortex of solid gameplay and intriguing events. I wish I had something more to say about it, but I really don’t. Considering one game I’ve played at least twice before and know what’s going to happen next, another is the repetition of the same activities over and over, and the third I haven’t done much but ride my horse around and shoot cowpokes. So, yeah.

I do like that I’m getting a lot of use out of the PSP. Sure, it’s only for two games, but I think I’ve logged more time on the PSP in the past month than I have on the DS for the past year. I’m glad I made this purchase.

What I Played Today: July 9

Harvest Moon: Hero of Leaf Valley, Red Dead Redemption

I played a crapload of Harvest Moon today, giving various herbs and flowers to people, got some strawberries, been feeding a dog. The addictive “just one more day” quality of the game leads well to long sessions of play, if you have the time, although it’s a bit of a problem if you don’t. The only real issue is that the save point is only available if you are done with the day. Considering each day can take up to 15-20 minutes, depending on how much time you screw around indoors, it can suck up a lot of time if you’re not looking.

I also continue to keep working with three douchebags in Red Dead Redemption. I don’t like any of these characters, finding the snake oil salesman only amusing for a few minutes, until he eventually asks me to shoot people. This is the part where originality starts to go downhill...in which every mission turns into a case of “shoot these 20 guys, because indiscriminate murder never gets boring.” It does, it does get boring, and I can't figure out why I have to murder so many people. A sandbox game that had missions that didn’t require acres of assholes just rushing at me with a gun drawn would be refreshing.

Also, the game really didn’t want me to get to Thieve’s Landing. It took until the third ride from McFarlane’s Ranch to take; the first time I was gunned down during what I assumed was the tutorial about dueling (I was wrong), and the second time a man had been robbed of his horse, so, upstanding citizen that I am, I jumped on my horse and drove it straight into the river, killing myself instantly. I’m glad my death was hilarious, otherwise it would have been annoying. Third time in town I ignored all pleas for help and bought a place to save because be damned if I’m doing that again.

What I Played Today: July 4

Red Dead Redemption

Quiet day today, taking it easy on account of all the liberty going on. I instead spent the day shooting cowboys. I’ve gotten to the point where I have to help a bunch of jackasses that I don’t really like and I don’t want to hang out with, but the game says I must, so I do. Luckily, every time I take a mission with them it seems to unlock a new region, so that’ll help out my need for exploration. Still, slow going, especially after I somehow got instadeathed during a mission and it kicked me all the way back to my house instead of to the last checkpoint. I don’t like that.

There was this great moment, great being in quotes here, in which I roll into Armadillo only for Harold Moon, my favorite tertiary character, comes running out of his general store shouting his name and saying he’s been robbed. I immediately jump back on my horse and quickly riding down an alley towards the red dot when I see a man on a horse. I pull in front of him, spin around with rifle drawn and slam him in the chest, killing him instantly. Which would have been impressive if he was the thief. No, the actual thief was on foot about ten yards away. I just shot a random guy whose only crime was getting cockleburs in his horse’s hooves. Luckily, no witnesses to my horrible misunderstanding, and I found the thief and got Harold his money back. All in a day’s work for the West’s Politest Man.

What I Played Today: July 2

Red Dead Redemption, Puzzle Quest 2

More running through the desert and shooting cowpokes today. I like how the big early game boiled down to one big “oh shit” moment in which two different plotlines suddenly and violently converged, and it was obvious that from that point on, honest folk weren’t going to have a thing to do with you. Although I’m a bit upset that the game does what all GTA games do; once you reach the end of a given mission chain, there’s absolutely no way to get resolution. If they can’t find a way for a conversation to eventually involve shooting people, you don’t get to have it. I understand that the playdates in GTA4 were the most reviled part of the game, but something similar to that would have been nice, because there are some nicely written characters in this game.

Also, because I’m enjoying pretty much everything else about the game, I’ll talk about two things that rub me sideways. First, the random events that can happen in the world. They show up quickly, usually while you’re riding full-tilt down a country trail trying to make it to the next mission hub, and require you to quickly perform an action when you’re not fully paying attention. I’ve only been able to do one or two successfully, the others I’ve just felt cheated. Like when I’m asked to help stop a hanging, which I don’t because I forgot I was supposed to dramatically shoot the rope, or when a lady was violently mauled by cougars because I couldn’t wheel my mount around in time. I understand they are computer people, but damn it, people have died because I wasn’t told what I was supposed to do, and as chillingly effective that is to impart of the rough and unforgiving atmosphere, it still sucks to hell.

Second, you can’t sleep with hookers in this game. John Marston is faithful to his wife, even if he’s willing to set barns on fire and shoot lawmen in cold blood. I understand wanting to avoid the usual controversy, and at least they “justified” it, but damn it, if we can’t interact with them, don’t put them there. I know how inaccurate that would be, but you already hid all the children, just go one step further.

I also played a bit of the new Puzzle Quest, in which I leave the town to fight some goblins, and I’m liking their level design a lot. I was tasked to kill this one goblin, but he has all his minions on the way, which I may fight if I’d like, but if I do, there is a box of treasure in it for me. The minigames are all original and nice, from the doorbashing level to the opening the treasure box level to the magic key level. Sure, it doesn’t make any sense that the contents of a box vary based on how well I do in a minigame, but in a world where all conflicts are handled by Bejeweled, it’s understandable.

What I Played Today: June 30

Red Dead Redemption, Puzzle Quest 2

I played a bit of Red Dead Redemption, which I like more than I imagined I would. I didn’t do anything important, just roaming around the wildness helping old crazy ladies who can’t believe their hubby is dead, and giving medicine to crazy ladies who lie around in the desert hoping to find God. There sure are a lot of crazy people in the desert. I just like how the game promotes exploration more than any other game I’ve seen before.

Puzzle Quest 2 also came out today, and I got through the tutorial quest, which mildly gleamed over the main mechanics. But I’ve played the first one, it’s not difficult to pick up. The game changed pretty much all the RPG mechanics, adding attack and defense and weapons and all that. You can use action points to deal straight damage to an opponent, a good change in a game where dealing a fair amount of damage has been hard, and the battles seem shorter overall. Plus, the shift of story to a single endangered town and the art change make it much moodier. I do find the out of battle interface a little...disconcerting, but I guess it’s just a general change that’s annoying me, and it’s still better than the first one.