You Don’t Know Jack, Costume Quest
I got the latest You Don’t Know Jack today, because I remember loving this game when it was originally released…15 years ago. It’s still funny and topical, weaving in pop culture jokes while at the same time asking difficult questions. I’m really good at it, it turns out, as I can get $30,000 easy without trying, and completely crushed in an online game I was played.
A small concern is each show is set; so it presents the same questions every time. This gives the game a pretty limited shelf-life, but at 73 episodes on the main disc and at least three sets of DLC already planned, I think it’ll still last a while. They also include a new feature, the Wrong Answer of the Game, in which one of the wrong answers ties into the sponsor, and if you correctly identify it, you get a prize, usually something wacky like Supreme Court vitamins. So I guess hunting these down might increase the replayability, and also just getting answers purposefully wrong to see how Cookie will mock you.
I also finished up Costume Quest, so it was off the plate when the newest from Doublefine comes out tomorrow. The game sways towards easy, and I was ripping through crowmen until the final confrontation with the witch and her back-up plan. I died once because I forgot that I was in the fight for the long haul and forgot to bring healing, but the second time around I over did it and the Big Bad fell pretty easily. Then an epilogue in which sleepovers are had. It was definitely cute, but I’m glad that it’s done. The combat just got too repetitive, and the challenges never really changed. I’m looking forward to Stacked though, because it seems fast and clever.
Showing posts with label Costume Quest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Costume Quest. Show all posts
What I Played Today: February 6
Costume Quest, Crackdown 2, Dominion
I have finally gotten over my anger at the game-breaking bug in Costume Quest and am back at the place I was before. The French Fry suit now works exactly like it’s supposed to, and I got my costume back from the creepy crows. I also found out that the mysterious elements that have happened so far were caused by this one guy, who takes all the credit and demands that we take care of the big bad, despite the fact that he is obviously more powerful than three kids. There are some antics involving a cannon, and then I stopped playing because I was done. I do like the monster designs of the new enemies though, the crows. They look really interesting.
I’m at the last beacon drop in Crackdown 2, having done all the main quests and just cleaning up. The last level is really hard because there are a lot of enemies running around and they are sending giant freaks to slam the beacon every minute and a half. It’s terrible. I almost passed it once, but fell down and got hit but some jerk, killing me while the beacon was at 90% power. I’ll get you yet, you freaks.
The game is also doing that thing where it’s playing that the people you’ve been fighting the entire time are good guys, which would be alright if it didn’t steal all the page notes from Bioshock (audio logs, communication interference, etc.) and if we didn’t remember the end of the last game. We know that the Agency is unambiguously totalitarian (at least, I assume we know that. Sequels are meant to build on the first game, correct? I’ve always assumed that a sequel supposes you have all the relevant plot info from the previous. I think that might be a topic for discussion). So the fact that we’re doing their dirty work again has been perfectly reasonable to me because there is absolutely nothing good about zombies. Of course I want to destroy these zombies, and while the method may (definitely) have ulterior motives, Cell sure hasn’t produced a better method, and things have gone completely tits up. It would be irresponsible to not detonate the beacons, and the half-hearted “Don’t do this despite the fact I’m not explaining why you shouldn’t” from the rebel leader just didn’t play. Plus, if I fail to detonate the last beacon, I’m never going to know what happens. My fate is kinda sealed here.
Oh, and I figured out how to get up the big tower downtown (it wasn’t easy), and spent maybe two hours trying to unlock a specific gun and failing miserably. I kept trying to find it among the ruins of each strategic location and always just missed the chance to pick it up. But I got it, which felt like a real achievement.
I also played a couple games of Dominion, which I kicked butt at. The first game was pretty standard, where I pulled ahead by the virtue of choosing to use the contraband to buy 3 duchies when the province was locked to me. The second game I used the trading post and loan to kick all the cooper out of my deck and quickly ramp to buying platinum every turn, every so often expanding to upgrade to the next coin level. The streamlined deck soon saw me buying a colony every turn, and I won easily, even as my opponent used expand to tear his deck apart to grab whatever victory cards he could.
I have finally gotten over my anger at the game-breaking bug in Costume Quest and am back at the place I was before. The French Fry suit now works exactly like it’s supposed to, and I got my costume back from the creepy crows. I also found out that the mysterious elements that have happened so far were caused by this one guy, who takes all the credit and demands that we take care of the big bad, despite the fact that he is obviously more powerful than three kids. There are some antics involving a cannon, and then I stopped playing because I was done. I do like the monster designs of the new enemies though, the crows. They look really interesting.
I’m at the last beacon drop in Crackdown 2, having done all the main quests and just cleaning up. The last level is really hard because there are a lot of enemies running around and they are sending giant freaks to slam the beacon every minute and a half. It’s terrible. I almost passed it once, but fell down and got hit but some jerk, killing me while the beacon was at 90% power. I’ll get you yet, you freaks.
The game is also doing that thing where it’s playing that the people you’ve been fighting the entire time are good guys, which would be alright if it didn’t steal all the page notes from Bioshock (audio logs, communication interference, etc.) and if we didn’t remember the end of the last game. We know that the Agency is unambiguously totalitarian (at least, I assume we know that. Sequels are meant to build on the first game, correct? I’ve always assumed that a sequel supposes you have all the relevant plot info from the previous. I think that might be a topic for discussion). So the fact that we’re doing their dirty work again has been perfectly reasonable to me because there is absolutely nothing good about zombies. Of course I want to destroy these zombies, and while the method may (definitely) have ulterior motives, Cell sure hasn’t produced a better method, and things have gone completely tits up. It would be irresponsible to not detonate the beacons, and the half-hearted “Don’t do this despite the fact I’m not explaining why you shouldn’t” from the rebel leader just didn’t play. Plus, if I fail to detonate the last beacon, I’m never going to know what happens. My fate is kinda sealed here.
Oh, and I figured out how to get up the big tower downtown (it wasn’t easy), and spent maybe two hours trying to unlock a specific gun and failing miserably. I kept trying to find it among the ruins of each strategic location and always just missed the chance to pick it up. But I got it, which felt like a real achievement.
I also played a couple games of Dominion, which I kicked butt at. The first game was pretty standard, where I pulled ahead by the virtue of choosing to use the contraband to buy 3 duchies when the province was locked to me. The second game I used the trading post and loan to kick all the cooper out of my deck and quickly ramp to buying platinum every turn, every so often expanding to upgrade to the next coin level. The streamlined deck soon saw me buying a colony every turn, and I won easily, even as my opponent used expand to tear his deck apart to grab whatever victory cards he could.
What I Played Today: December 13
Costume Quest, One Chance
I mainly screwed around today, not playing anything “important.” I played through to the next level of Costume Quest, only to discover that I stumbled upon a game-breaking bug, which seriously chives my loaf. I understand that these things happen, but it happened over a week ago, and it only happened when the game updated. I understand it’s a short game, and I could probably start over from the beginning and be at the same place in two hours or so, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. (Although, after having read some jerk on the Internet LOSE HIS SHIT because of this bug, I’m now exceedingly less concerned. Check out spencerdsmith’s motherfucking tirade here)
Also played a flash game called One Chance, a bit of apocalyptic play that involved you, a scientist, accidently creating a world-destroying virus and what you’ll “do”. And of course the big gimmick of the game is that it saves your file to your Internet cache, meaning unless you clear that, or play the game locally, or play it on a different site, or any other potential workaround, you can only play the game once. It’s…not very good. The options are vastly limited, you can only do about one of two different things per day. It’s riddled with misspellings and bugs, and it fails to give you a clear indication that it’s over. Which, considering you’ll only be playing once, should be a pretty big deal. I don’t know, it just rubbed me the wrong way because I decided that the obvious response was to, well, fix the problem, and the narrative penalized me so much by having everyone else die while I did what was right. And they could not have tried any harder to make the main character fail to react to pretty much everything. Only a single moment did he react like a human being.
I mainly screwed around today, not playing anything “important.” I played through to the next level of Costume Quest, only to discover that I stumbled upon a game-breaking bug, which seriously chives my loaf. I understand that these things happen, but it happened over a week ago, and it only happened when the game updated. I understand it’s a short game, and I could probably start over from the beginning and be at the same place in two hours or so, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. (Although, after having read some jerk on the Internet LOSE HIS SHIT because of this bug, I’m now exceedingly less concerned. Check out spencerdsmith’s motherfucking tirade here)
Also played a flash game called One Chance, a bit of apocalyptic play that involved you, a scientist, accidently creating a world-destroying virus and what you’ll “do”. And of course the big gimmick of the game is that it saves your file to your Internet cache, meaning unless you clear that, or play the game locally, or play it on a different site, or any other potential workaround, you can only play the game once. It’s…not very good. The options are vastly limited, you can only do about one of two different things per day. It’s riddled with misspellings and bugs, and it fails to give you a clear indication that it’s over. Which, considering you’ll only be playing once, should be a pretty big deal. I don’t know, it just rubbed me the wrong way because I decided that the obvious response was to, well, fix the problem, and the narrative penalized me so much by having everyone else die while I did what was right. And they could not have tried any harder to make the main character fail to react to pretty much everything. Only a single moment did he react like a human being.
What I Played Today: December 8
Costume Quest, Sam and Max
Played a few dang games today, first some Costume Quest in the mall. Finally got the third party member, who you meet with little fanfare in a dark cave, and who joins the team just because. Gotta say, not a lot of motivation. But I did some trick or treating, and am back in the groove of killing monsters. With the third member it definitely becomes easier, as I can complete fights without taking any real damage now, but the fights are now more frequent, which make them a bit annoying. I don’t know.
Also played some Sam and Max, deciding to finally finish up that last chapter of Season One. This one has a lot of callbacks to previous episodes, including to NPCs that I barely remember, and right now I’m currently at the point of the game where what I’m up to doesn’t make any sense. I know I need to use Cybil somehow, but she is currently the queen of Canada, so I don’t even know what, and Bosco wants a hundred trillion dollars for the thing he’s selling, so I don’t even know how to get ahold of that. I do love his rationale for asking though, “Man, all I know is that I keep asking for some extreme amount, and you keep getting it to me.” I also have an eyeball that will let me see through lead, and an amulet that will make someone throw up. So, yeah! Pretty lost!
Played a few dang games today, first some Costume Quest in the mall. Finally got the third party member, who you meet with little fanfare in a dark cave, and who joins the team just because. Gotta say, not a lot of motivation. But I did some trick or treating, and am back in the groove of killing monsters. With the third member it definitely becomes easier, as I can complete fights without taking any real damage now, but the fights are now more frequent, which make them a bit annoying. I don’t know.
Also played some Sam and Max, deciding to finally finish up that last chapter of Season One. This one has a lot of callbacks to previous episodes, including to NPCs that I barely remember, and right now I’m currently at the point of the game where what I’m up to doesn’t make any sense. I know I need to use Cybil somehow, but she is currently the queen of Canada, so I don’t even know what, and Bosco wants a hundred trillion dollars for the thing he’s selling, so I don’t even know how to get ahold of that. I do love his rationale for asking though, “Man, all I know is that I keep asking for some extreme amount, and you keep getting it to me.” I also have an eyeball that will let me see through lead, and an amulet that will make someone throw up. So, yeah! Pretty lost!
What I Played Today: December 6
Costume Quest
I played a bit of Costume Quest today, getting through the dark part of the mall, which is good, because I really didn’t like it in the dark. I got a new costume, the space warrior, who has a jetpack and a lightsaber, which is just stupid awesome. I also ran into a fight that I was having a really tough time passing, until I went full aggro. It’s good that there’s no penalty for losing, so that you can adjust your costumes and battlestamps to what you think might work. I wish the stamp that was supposed to make monsters run away didn’t always fail. But yeah, now I’m in the mall proper, and there was a small implication that I’ll get a third party member soon, so that’s awesome.
I played a bit of Costume Quest today, getting through the dark part of the mall, which is good, because I really didn’t like it in the dark. I got a new costume, the space warrior, who has a jetpack and a lightsaber, which is just stupid awesome. I also ran into a fight that I was having a really tough time passing, until I went full aggro. It’s good that there’s no penalty for losing, so that you can adjust your costumes and battlestamps to what you think might work. I wish the stamp that was supposed to make monsters run away didn’t always fail. But yeah, now I’m in the mall proper, and there was a small implication that I’ll get a third party member soon, so that’s awesome.
What I Played Today: November 29
Alan Wake, Costume Quest, Dance Central
And…we’re back. I’ve been playing a few games today and yesterday, but they were the same games, so I’ll go ahead and count them both.
I received Alan Wake in the mail from Gamefly, and I’m liking it a lot. The story has a lot of mystery to it, and the atmosphere is great. I do find some of the shooter aspects annoying, mainly because shooters are somewhat obnoxious when they get long in the teeth, but I like the philosophy of breaking up each of the action shooter scenes by causing you to drop pretty much everything you’re carrying between areas. Of course it makes sense to hang on to the shotgun that you found in the woods, but whoops, some maniac started shooting at you and you had to leave it behind! So it’s pretty fun.
I purchased Costume Quest, and while it feels like a low-end RPG, the flavor of the game is definitely there. It has a nice low-key humor, the over world a typical suburban neighborhood, overflowing with Halloween trimmings, while whenever you get into battle, it’s high concept combat with giant robots and Lady Liberty versus giant goblins. It’s cute, and even though the battles are a little difficult after a bit, there’s just enough strategy there to make it interesting. Probably the most jarring part to me is how quickly the game starts rolling after you get past the suburbs, but I haven’t gotten much further beyond that, so there we go.
I completed Dance Central today, and yes, Eliot is a robot. A robot wearing a tie and a jaunty hat! So, I danced through about 15 songs worth of routines (it only took about 7-8 minutes, shorter than I expected, because it seemed like it would require doing bits from EVERY SONG, but not so), and then after that there’s a short cutscene that makes double-plus no sense, and then the traditional Harmonix ending, with the entire staff showing off how awesome they are, and then about six minutes of scrolling credits. I always like the pages of the staff showing off, mainly because it’s cool to see the people behind the game, and also because everyone who works there looks like they are having an awesome time. It also doesn’t hurt that a lot of them are fairly photogenic. So hurray for passing a game, now to try to get through all the medium level routines…and then the hard level…and then try a couple of no-flashcards…oh geez.
And…we’re back. I’ve been playing a few games today and yesterday, but they were the same games, so I’ll go ahead and count them both.
I received Alan Wake in the mail from Gamefly, and I’m liking it a lot. The story has a lot of mystery to it, and the atmosphere is great. I do find some of the shooter aspects annoying, mainly because shooters are somewhat obnoxious when they get long in the teeth, but I like the philosophy of breaking up each of the action shooter scenes by causing you to drop pretty much everything you’re carrying between areas. Of course it makes sense to hang on to the shotgun that you found in the woods, but whoops, some maniac started shooting at you and you had to leave it behind! So it’s pretty fun.
I purchased Costume Quest, and while it feels like a low-end RPG, the flavor of the game is definitely there. It has a nice low-key humor, the over world a typical suburban neighborhood, overflowing with Halloween trimmings, while whenever you get into battle, it’s high concept combat with giant robots and Lady Liberty versus giant goblins. It’s cute, and even though the battles are a little difficult after a bit, there’s just enough strategy there to make it interesting. Probably the most jarring part to me is how quickly the game starts rolling after you get past the suburbs, but I haven’t gotten much further beyond that, so there we go.
I completed Dance Central today, and yes, Eliot is a robot. A robot wearing a tie and a jaunty hat! So, I danced through about 15 songs worth of routines (it only took about 7-8 minutes, shorter than I expected, because it seemed like it would require doing bits from EVERY SONG, but not so), and then after that there’s a short cutscene that makes double-plus no sense, and then the traditional Harmonix ending, with the entire staff showing off how awesome they are, and then about six minutes of scrolling credits. I always like the pages of the staff showing off, mainly because it’s cool to see the people behind the game, and also because everyone who works there looks like they are having an awesome time. It also doesn’t hurt that a lot of them are fairly photogenic. So hurray for passing a game, now to try to get through all the medium level routines…and then the hard level…and then try a couple of no-flashcards…oh geez.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)