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Summer 2021 Auditions

Over the summer, I did some more auditioning of games and played through a few.

Chromehounds (360)

This mech game from From Software has long since had its servers shut down, so I was not able to play its much-lauded multiplayer. The game has 6 smalll single-player campaigns, presumably for training ahead of online matches, and I played through the Sniper missions and had some fun.

It's as clunky as one would expect from a mech game in terms of menus and customization. The actual battles are fun and fast-paced, graphically manageable for the 360, and quick to play. I hope to return for more of these missions someday, even though I am currently stuck on one of them.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (One)

Like a fine bottle of wine, I've saved this Dishonored 2 DLC for awhile and only opened it up when I wanted to taste the fine blend of stealth gameplay and fantastic story once again. It did not disappoint, and offered a great farewell to the series by wrapping up the story behind all the weird magic of that whale-oil soaked world.

Like Dishonored 2, I played a complete stealth and no kill playthrough, carefully picking off guards, hiding their unconscious bodies, and avoiding any detection. There are only a few chapters in this story and at least one area was used twice, but it was nonetheless a great thrill exploring that world one last time.

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies (3DS)

I was long overdue for a return to the courtroom since I have not played one of these in almost a decade. I left the weird spin off game Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth unfinished on the DS as it just did not captivate me like the Phoenix Wright games did. Looking to keep my gaming balanced across all systems and all genres, Dual Destinies seemed like a good game to use to return to the series.

I'm a few cases in so far and progressing nicely when I have time (my lovely wife decided to pick up the 3DS again too, for a damn solitaire game, so we are sharing one unit). It's the usual interview phase/courtroom phase mechanic, with the usual cute young assistant with a weird power and insane enemy prosecutor characters to increase the courtroom drama and antics.

Graphically, it is absolutely gorgeous and the best use of the 3DS magic to create depth I have seen so far. It's just plain fun, more interactive story than game, and I am enjoying it so much that I already picked up the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for the Switch, in anticipation of later returns to the courtroom.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS3)

I downloaded this PS3 adventure back in 2013 when it was free via Playstation Plus, and dabbled a little then, making a note to come back and play it later. Later turned into the summer of 2021, and knowing full well that this would be a huge commitment of time and have a steep learning curve, I dove in again.

It's an action RPG where the player is the hero and is accompanied by up to 3 "pawns", which are NPC companions. The player has one pawn as their main companion who levels with the player, and two randos that get changed up as needed throughout the game. They were not that stupid, which is a compliment in terms of NPC behavior in the videogame world.

There is not a lot of monster variety overall, but there are big monsters about that take a lot of time to kill, Giant cyclopses, griffins, and manticores are scattered here and there and those fights are fun. Players can climb on these beasts and hold on with one hand while hacking away with another, which was a very cool game mechanic.

Stamina drains so fast that one is forced to be careful to a point that the combat is just not that much fun at times. Of course, there is a whole level of item management and crafting that I barely skimmed that can provide the player with relief potions, but I am just too old to deep dive into that. 

So when I arrived at the end of the game, I took the bad ending option and called it a day. I tried the final boss fight once, and the damn dragon had 10 health bars to hack down. My heart just wasn't in it and the bad ending was satisfying enough.

Thanks, Dad

The recent passing of my father at the not so middle age of 91 has been as heartbreaking as one could imagine. When I think of all the things he was to me as a dad, I still get choked up. He was not really a teacher, other than leading by example, and what an example of his generation he was.

His work ethic was tied to a reward ethic, and while his career as a press room foreman at a printing company was good enough to raise four kids, we were not really rich. At Christmas each year he received a very nice bonus check, and he spent much of it being generous to his kids.

As I type this and still tear up a few months after his funeral, I remember that those gifts continued into adulthood, and even though he may have not known what I was playing,  he usually hit a home run when he guessed.

1975

Dad got us a Pong clone for Christmas and being a nine year old nerd-in-waiting, I promptly kicked everyone's ass at it and we all got bored with it in a few days. I tried to get into it later but it only had a single player handball game for solo play. The real star for me that Christmas was the bigass Space:1999 Eagle Ship with action figures. It was awesome.

Status: Lost

1978

This Christmas centered around 2-XL, a toy robot that was really just a fancy 8-Track player with an unbelievably innovative design that allowed it to seem like interacting with an actual robot. The tapes had quizzes and questions covering all sorts of topics. It was an educational toy that was a lot of fun, and I received several additional tapes that Christmas. 

Now that I reflect on it, it was technically my first programmable electronic device, and since it also played 8-tracks, my first audio equipment that wasn't a hand-me-down from an older sibling. My first album purchase followed shortly after Christmas, and yes it was the soundtrack to Grease, because it was and still is awesome.

Status: Lost

1979

My older brother had the Mattel Football handheld that kicked off (pun intended) the handheld electronic gaming explosion in the late 1970s. It was cool as hell and fun, but I had my sights set on another game that came out before Christmas from a little company called Coleco.

The Coleco Amaze-A-Tron handheld was a randomly generated maze game that took place on a 5x5 grid of small touchscreen squares. The LED numeric display told the players where to put the plastic piece that represented START and the one for FINISH, and two players took turns racing through the maze. It was even fun solo and had eight variations total. 

Finally, a game that never got boring. It's a masterpiece in design that still works to this day, although I did snag a backup on Ebay to replace the box and a missing plastic player piece.

Status: Still have it. Got an extra one off Ebay for replacement box, game piece, and battery cover.

Also that year, Mom and Dad surprised me with a second electronic gift that was not on my radar.  The T.E.A.M.M.A.T.E. Game Computer, an LED toy computer with a 4x4 red LED grid display and a numeric keypad to program it was one of those toys meant to be educational and with me, it succeeded.

By entering simple commands, the player could program small mini games and light displays. There was not a lot to work with here, and there was no way to save things you entered, but the device (technically a dedicated console like those Pong-only machines) and its stellar manual covered the basics of how computers work so well (ROM, RAM, Input, Output, etc) that I used the device in my 8th grade science fair project and got a Superior blue ribbon.

Status: Lost

Finally that year, there were more 2-XL tapes and an actual game for it called Tri-Lex, which was a fun break from the quizzical nature of the other tapes. 

Status: Lost

1980

While this was the year when Atari changed the industry by bringing home Space Invaders for the VCS, I still was not on board for getting a console. I had seen and played a little on my neighbor's Atari but was not impressed with Combat for long. I wanted Space Invaders as a handheld and Entex had that covered, and luckily so did Dad.

It's a very oversimplified and pared down LED version of Space Invaders but was fun to play and truthfully, still is. 

Status: Still have it. Picked up an extra one somewhere for parts.

1981

By the fall of 1981 the Space Invaders clones and the overall explosion of arcade games had me hooked, and I desperately wanted that Atari VCS, but not for Space Invaders. Atari had paved the way for the arcade-to-console pipeline and with Asteroids it was clear that if I wanted to play the now cool as hell arcade games at home, I needed an Atari VCS and made that quite clear to Dad, as I trusted him and Mom with what I knew then would be my most life-changing gift ever.

So they got my an Odyssey 2 with Alien-Invaders Plus and while grateful as always (it was expensive), I was crestfallen at first as their Space Invaders clone was pretty bad. Telling my friends, 3 of which got Ataris that year and one whose Dad already had one, that I was now stuck with the Odyssey 2, was a shameful experience.

Since the gang would stay overnight in my basement, with someone bringing an Atari and all bringing games, it wasn't long before they were amazed at subsequent Odyssey 2 games like KC Munchkin and UFO being better than the Atari games. We also got our shit together once long enough to play the awesome Quest for the Rings.

In the end, Dad's brand loyalty to Magnavox or whatever lead him to get me the Odyssey 2 taught me that any console could have incredible games and to be humble and take what life gives you and enjoy it. 

Status: Still have all.

Also that year they got me (from what I understood at the time) the first videogame watch in the Nelsonic Space Attacker Watch. The thing was an engineering marvel and a design masterpiece, with two layers of LCD working in conjunction, a full calendar, game demo mode, a small light, and other bells and whistles.

I was too young and stupid to take care of it however, and it was lost to the ages.

Status: Lost

1982

This Christmas Odyssey 2 was getting something the Atari VCS wasn't - a voice synthesis add-on called The Voice. By now I was in full support of Odyssey 2 development and there were great games coming out with the unit that took advantage of not only its speech but its other improved sound features.

Dad rounded up The Voice, Type & Tell, and Attack of the Timelord that year, and it was a good haul.

Status: Still have all.

1983

Dad's generosity extended past Christmas at times, and in the summer of 1983 I convinced him to get me a Commodore VIC 20 Computer and Datasette Drive.  I swear, I was soooo close to convincing him to get me the Commodore 64 instead, but that machine was too pricey in 1983 for his tastes. I got a few games before Christmas and on that holiest of mornings my software library for it grew with Gorf, Jupiter Lander, and Omega Race being added to my collection. The real prize, however, was the 16K Memory Expander cartridge they got me, a necessary addition that paved the way for Crush, Crumble, & Chomp a few weeks later.

Status: Ebayed

1985

By this year I was grown up but living at home while working and attending classes at the Mansfield OSU branch. The working part allowed me to finally catch myself up to the state of the art and I acquired a Commodore 64 and disk drive shortly thereafter.

Dad was taken back when he saw that I had gotten the disk drive myself as well, saying he had inended to get me that for Christmas. And that was the handoff, we both knew. From this point on I was able to fund my own game purchases, and most certainly would at my own discretion.

Nonetheless, he and Mom got me Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative, a terrible Star Trek text adventure that I barely ever got into. It was very weird, but I was grateful and it set a precedent of them buying me random games throughout my adult life with no knowlege of what I had and what I was interested in.

Status: Ebayed

1989

By this year I had long since moved back to Columbus with my Commodore 64 in tow and had started my new city life, balanced between work, college, and partying my ass off. I lived with my mess of a college girlfriend who hated my love of games, but had allowed my to add an NES to my collection, purchased with my tax refund.

I'm not sure if I had told Dad about owning one, but that Christmas they surprised me again with a copy of To The Earth, a terrible NES light gun game. Once again I was grateful, but baffled.

Status: Ebayed

1992

The fall of 1992 brought a great wave of Super Nintendo games for me, and the world, so I was in absolute awe when the folks got me Super Castlevania IV. This game was already in my sights of course but they took a chance that I did not have it and hit a home run with this gift.

Status: Ebayed. Reacquired on the SNES Mini console.

2004

Mom passed in 2003 and at that point gifts were no longer expected anyway between all us grown up kids and Dad, but we usually got small things. Thus I was absolutely floored when Dad gifted me with a completely unexpected XBox console. 

I was mostly playing MMORPGS like Ultima Online and City of Heroes in those days, and the only console of that generation I had acquired was the Nintendo Gamecube. I'd been living away from home for almost 2 decades at this point so I have no inkling that Dad had made anything other than an impulse buy with that one. 

Maybe he wanted to gift his then tragically still messed up and single son one last big gift, and he really outdid himself with this generous final offering. The fact that the XBox's market share compared to the Playstation 2 mirrored the Odyssey 2 to the Atari VCS was not lost on me. I think it came with Halo, and I developed a small library for the system over the next few years. 

Status: Traded In.

2017

Dad got me a real nice pen in a case from a local jeweler. I know, it's not a videogame gift, but it means a lot to me in several ways. It's a reminder of the old school world he lived in, and in which I was raised. Also, it sits on my desk at work, which for the past year and a half has been at home, a reminder of his work ethic and how his hard work and attention to detail progressed his career.

2021

Dad passed in early July, but with the easing of restrictions we got to gather the family for Fathers Day at the assisted living facility he was in.  He lit up to see us all there, marveled at his great grandson who towered over us all, having graduated high school and signed up to join the Marines.

Dad's last gift then was to hold on for one last gathering of the family. Over those last few months of visits, he held varying levels of lucidity, but always recognized us when we entered his room.

After settling his affairs (managed by my much smarter sister), I was sent a small inheritance a few weeks later of just over $500. At first I just deposited it and did not think of spending it on anything for myself. But my supportive wife reminded me weeks later that I was entitled to do just that with Dad's inheritance. 

So I recovered one of these on Ebay last week:

Thanks, Dad, one last time. I’ll take better care of this one.

MANGAR DEFEATED, SKARA BRAE SAVED!

Beaten: Tales of the Unknown Volume 1: The Bard's Tale (Commodore 64 /XBox One)

Thirty five years after booting up a floppy disk and embarking on a journey through frozen streets, seedy taverns, and complex mazes of catacombs and castles, my party of six adventurers and one monster have defeated the evil mage Mangar atop his tower, freeing Skara Brae from his wintry curse.

So for the record, my first run on this game in 1986 put my party only one and a half levels away from this victory. I had no idea back then that I was close, and the cantankerous old Commodore 64 floppy disk version probably discouraged me from finishing more than the distraction of new games as mentioned in my previous blog entries, I have concluded.

The old version only allowed for saving at the adventurer's guild back in town. In the remaster, one can save anywhere, which ends the frustration of making a little progress for a few minutes before heading back through the dungeon and back to town to save.

Especially in those last few levels of Mangar's Tower, there are enemies which can insta-kill a party member by turning them to stone, which, while being reversable by a magic spell, still results in a corpse. So why did the designers add a spell to un-stone a character when it only removes that effect and leaves a corpse anyway? Just to save the expense when you drag their corpse back to the healers in town, I guess. Those helpful but expensive monks will charge for both services while chanting the same thing the monks in Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Everything in the remaster is sleeker, faster, and streamlined to remove the hardware-based difficulty and frustration of the original, distilling the difficulty back to its core elements - cautious exploring, meticulous mapping, lore-based puzzles, and enjoyable strategy-intense turn-based combat. The pacing is perfect - if one explores each and every dungeon level rather than rushing through to the stairs to the next level, the party will level up to the challenges of the current area.

The automap saves one a lot of legwork in cracking this classic beast of an RPG. It has shown me that most of my old maps had missing or misunderstood parts to them, but for the most part those maps and accompanying notes were good to go as a helpful tool through most of this campaign. The automap was not present in the original version, and in the remaster serves not only to map the game, but to allow the use of the magic spells right through the map rather than having to close it and then cast the spell one needs. 

If the party is teleported unexpectedly, for example, one can cast the Scry Site spell right in the map to see where they were teleported to. The best part of this is the party teleport spell working within the automap, saving the player the work of plotting out on graph paper maps the x,y,z destination coordinates. Here, one just scrolls through the levels and moves a cursor before pressing Y to use the spell to get there. Of course, there are areas and even whole levels where these spells do not work, by design.

Also useful was the decades of game experience I've had since then. Thirty five years ago I was a less experienced gamer and these dungeons were intimidating and their mechanics sometimes obtuse. Since then, I've played many more RPGs and learned how one's party of adventurers can encounter weird effects when dungeon crawling, and to use all of the game's resources to their fullest. I did not know that the late-game master key, which saves a lot of time toward the end of the game, also prevents the party from getting turned around when they step on a spinner square trap. A trip to Roscoe's to get it analyzed revealed that helpful tip.

The final battle against Mangar was epic and took a few tries, as he summons more Demon Lords. Finally, I figured out a way to take him out with only losing a few party members. After the victory, I returned to that last level to map out everything I had missed, only to discover an additional item that might have been helpful for that final battle. Oh well, a win is a win.

I cannot thank inXile entertainment and their team enough for this remastered version. If their goal was to craft a lovingly faithful yet modernized and accessible version of the classic that would reach one old gamer like me and recreate the joy of playing the original, then mission accomplished. At the end, back at the Adventurer's Guild, the menu now offers a launching point to start The Bard's Tale 2: The Destiny Knight, and I have no doubt that I will return for a rematch on that one later in life. 

And finally, thanks to Barry Ledbetter and Andy Kiss, hopefully out there somewhere,  for their assistance in the first campaign all those years ago. The maps and notes were an unbelievable help in getting through the whole thing this time. When I create my great assembly of game maps, their assistance will be noted as well.

The Bard's Tale Trilogy Remastered is the quintessential Bard's Tale, and I will never be that much of a purist to where I feel my accomplishment in beating the first game is diminished somehow by its streamlined mechanics. It is still fun, challenging, and stands as a shining example of how to bring old games to modern times. 

Field Report from Skara Brae

 My campaign through Tales of the Unknown Volume 1: The Bard's Tale, beautifully remastered on the XBox One, continues onward, with my party stepping foot in Baron Harkyn's castle this afternoon, leaving behind the undead masses back in the Catacombs for some above ground action. This felt like a good time to check in.

Here is how I am playing: I am checking the automap against my ancient hand-drawn maps for accuraccy (more on that later) by mapping out every square on every level. So far, this has seemed to be enough to keep level with what I am fighting. When exploring a level, I take every fight that comes my way (unless I'm on the way out in a rush), and in levels between the current one I'm exploring and the exit, I skip fights.

My party has levelled up enough that my magic users have learned all their available spells, so now it's all about levelling them up to get more hit and magic points. Loot is scarce in this game, and it seems like forever between weapon and armor upgrades at first. The pace picks up though, by Catacombs Two, and now my bard has a good supply of fire horns and my whole party has been upgraded one way or another.

It turns out my old maps were less comprehensive than I thought, but the majority of the misses are traps that I did not detect before, because at this point in the game your mage should be keeping you levitated at all times.  I hovered right over them in my previous visit without setting them off, so they were not marked as traps until this playthrough. 

A big miss was on Catacomb One where a dead end hallway I had mapped was actually two small rooms, the last with a message on the wall pertaining to the game's story. That was embarrassing! And there was something on the town map that I did not have noted, in a small southeast section of buildings guarded by stone giants.

I could not remember why this neighborhood was closed off, so I checked every building, and in one of them was an NPC basically saying that we were in a trilogy (of threats to Skara Brae/games). Was he there on those floppy disks 35 years ago? I have no record of it.

I have also come to realize that I was maintaining a perception for the last 3 plus decades that I was maybe only halfway through the game, but if my suspicions are correct, I was actually only one level away from the end of the game back then. My maps get even sketchier, less refined, and wholly incomplete the closer to the end they get.

Dragons have started showing up, and there is little defense against their breath. It comes down to a roll of the dice as to which spell or bard instrument can shut them up before they can get off more than a few of those attacks. Dopplegangers, too, which "jump" into your party if there is a slot and imitate one of your crew until you kill them both. Fun stuff!

The good news, in summary, is that I'm actually having fun with all this again, and feel no desire to quit or take another three and a half decade break. I'll check in again when I've got something more to report.

Beaten: Gears of War 4 (Xbox One)

 Finally, game designers with the philosophy "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". After beating Gears 1-3 back to back I thought I had had enough of the repetitive cover-based gameplay, but last year I fired up Gears of Ward Judgment and had a blast. It was exactly what I expected - more of the same - with a great story involving a side character from 1-3, great action, and polished graphics and gameplay. 

Gears of War 4, I feared, would suffer from the design philosophy where they think fans of the game want it to evolve, to become more complex, to be more like this game and that game. I was dreading things like crafting, or levelling up player attributes, or multiple choice conversation trees being added to the game.

To my surprise, the game is a perfect and polished continuation of the series and its plotlines, showcasing the next generation of heavily armored warriors fighting through varied areas of cover-based shooting. The locust threat from the previous games has been replaced by killer robots and a new threat in the form of locust 2.0, and that's all good. There are little guys and brutes and bosses as in the previous games, and their movements and tactics are a lot of fun to fight.

The graphics are gorgeous, and in some of the ruined old brick buildings I felt that Dark Souls vibe as my squad worked their way through those areas. I forgot the scale of difficulty on Gears of War games and played on normal instead of hardcore on this run and it was relatively easy but still challenging at times.

Story wise, it all comes together really well, and some familiar faces from Gears 1-3 show up to help out the next generation of Cog (or former Cog) soldiers.  It was a long enough campaign to be entertaining without wearing out its welcome, and with Gears 5 already in my backlog, I'm sure I will return to the series at some point in the future, this time without the fear of bad design ideas muddying up the perfect and polished formula that Epic Games has established with the series.

Some games do need to evolve and grow and it's great to see in subsequent releases. Other times, however, designers add too many unnecessary bells and whistles and it adds nothing to the experience (a good example is that Assassin's Creed game awhile ago that had tower defense segments). Gears of War is a simple and fun formula that ain't broke, so I am grateful that Epic choose the wise path and didn't fix it.

Thirty Five Years Later, A Return to Skara Brae

 In 1986 I was living in my parent's house, attending classes at the Mansfield branch of OSU, and working full time as a salad bar attendant at a Brown Derby restaurant. It was a golden time of hard work, hard partying, and floppy disks for my beloved Commodore 64. 

Finally, I was state of the art. However, I had yet to take on a super complex role playing game because frankly, they were intimidating when I read about them in the magazines of the time.  I took on text adventures like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Nine Princes in Amber, but Wizardry was not on the C64 yet, and the only Ultima out for it at that time was III, and I wanted to start the series with I.

My hometown of Galion, within driving distance of Mansfield, had a few good sources of software among them, but to the south in Columbus was, well, everything. Thus a party/software hunt road trip was initiated on March 28, 1986 with my good friend and fellow gaming enthusiast Andy Kiss, primarily to the Toys-R-Us on Morse Road. There, a long wall of software was on display for a variety of computer systems, and the section for the C64 was the largest.

On the shelf was a shiny new package from Electronic Arts called "Tales of the Unknown Volume 1: The Bard's Tale". It looked as sophisticated as all those other RPGs I had read about, but the animated color monster graphics and the clean screen drew me in. With Andy's encouragement, I dove in and bought it.

After character creation I was free to explore the town, not really knowing what to do or where to go, but I found all the shops and had a few warm up fights in the streets before stumbling onto the first dungeon. It was quite the education from there as I meticulously mapped my way through level after level, and just doing that was enough to grind up my party without the need for too much other grinding. 

Sessions continued that spring and into summer, and Andy, as well as our other friend Barry, spent time with me playing it, assisting in the mapping and note-taking. It was a warm moment of reminiscence last week when I opened the old manila folder with my maps and notes an saw Barry's detailed character sheets listing equipment and spells for each character.

That was March, but by August I had stopped campaigning in one Skara Brae and had started with another, as I took the dive and started Ultima IV, no longer concerned with starting the series at I. I made it pretty far until December, when Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight came out, and caught up in the hype, I dove into that, starting a cycle of unfinished RPGs that remains until this day.

Thankfully, inExile entertainment has revived and remastered the Bard's Tale Trilogy on the XBox One, and that is where I am making my second assault on the game. It plays fast, smooth, and slick, allowing for quick in and out sessions where I explore a little more each time, level up my characters, and let the automap do the hard work. 

Checking the modern automap against my 1986 graph paper map shows for the first two dungeon levels at least, a meticulous re-rendering of the original layout, from the walls to the doors to the notes and traps. I've only found one minor discrepancy so far, and it could easily be an error I made 35 years ago.

Assuming I don't flake out this time, I expect my campaign to last into late summer. At some point I will be exploring farther than I did before and may copy the automap of those uncharted levels onto graph paper so if I finish the game then that manila folder from 1986 will be complete at last.

Auditioning

 As a gamer maintaining a vast backlog, I normally have the next game I want to play in mind as I approach the end of one game. Sometimes, however, I'm not sure what to jump to next. So what I will do is audition my next game by trying a few titles from my backlog and seeing if they grab me. 

I've been doing this in the few months after beating Paper Mario, even completing some of the shorter games I've auditioned. Let's look at what I've been playing and checking out.

Farcry Classic (360)

This 2013 remake for Xbox Live Arcade of the 2004 PC game shows its age well. And yes, I said I was burnt out on Farcrys after 5, but this is not the modern open world Farcry. Instead, this is a refreshingly linear game with some large open environments, cool 80s action movie vibe cutscenes, and standard gunplay.

What really stood out in this game was the enemy AI. One would think that 2004 AI would be worse than most modern games, but something weird is going on with these enemies. Sometimes, as is usual with AI, they are just idiots standing there confused by their programming, which in 2021 is still common. Other times, though, they worked together, took and held positions and waited on my next move, and generally surprised the shit out of me with their behavior. It was refreshing.

Status: Beaten

Feeding Frenzy (360)

This Pop Cap casual game is the kind I normally dismiss, but I tried it and had fun with the scramble-around-the-screen-eating-what-you-can gameplay, which is vaguely reminiscent of the Imagic classic Dragonfire. Start eating small fish, grow, eat bigger fish, repeat. Fast and colorful, but the frenetic action never gets out of hand.

It's a casual game after all, so the difficulty is light but the fun is heavy.

Status: Beaten

Marlow Briggs and the Masque of Death (360)

Another genre I normally avoid is the hack and slash. Every one I've tried has been fun at first but later revealed to be frustrating, with difficult combo moves and so much stuff happening on the screen it becomes hard to even see the character, much less what they are hitting.

However, this hidden gem from late in the XBox 360 life cycle is one polished piece of software. The action gets intense but remains manageable. The character and story may seem standard at first, but not long after starting the game, one encounters a self-aware level of humor that was a delight. The companion mask-god thing that follows the player around cracks jokes about the player dying so much that it takes the sting off of dying so much.

There's lots of platforming here, too, but none of it yet has been unfair. The camera follows the player though each area and is one of the best I've seen in gaming. It always seems to be where it needs to be, with very few instances of it being in the wrong place and causing the player to die due to an unforeseen pitfall.

Status: 3/4 completed, stuck on a boss fight

Heavy Weapon (360)

Another Pop Cap casual game from way back in the day, Heavy Weapon is a bullethell shooter where the player controls a tank scrolling right at the bottom of the screen, shooting at aircraft above. Again, this is not my normal genre, for the exact same reasons listed above regarding hack and slash games.

Nonetheless. Heavy Weapon has brought me in with its colorful graphics, simple yet challenging gameplay, and varied enemies. I did not expect to play this very far before quitting forever in frustation, but playing a little every few days over the last week brought me to the end, and a victory over the final boss.

Status: Beaten

Akumajo Dracula X Chi no Rondo (PC Engine Super CD ROM2 via Turbografx 16 Mini)

This Castlevania classic was a Japan-only exclusive for the PC Engine CD ROM attachment, and tragically was never ported over to the U.S. I remember reading about it in early 1990s gaming magazines and being blown away by screenshots of the graphics, which were a step up from the NES series of Castlevania games, but not as good as the later-released Super Castlevania IV for the SNES.

It's got all the classic Castlevania gameplay and weaponry and is totally playable for a non-Japanese speaking player like me. With the TG16 Mini's save states, I plan to keep chipping away at if for the foreseeable future.

Status: At the start of the 4th Stage, no hope of going much further

Splatterhouse (Turbografx 16 via Turbografx 16 Mini)

I had this creepy cult classic in my Turbografx 16 collection before the great purge, and as much as I enjoyed it, it was a tough one to pick up and play over and over. A side-scrolling brawler with limited weapons and a haunted house full of gory enemies, Splatterhouse has great graphics and sound effects accompanying it's onslaught of enemies.

Again, with the save state feature of the TG16 Mini, I have been chipping away at in anew, making it further than (I think) I ever got back in the day. On some levels, I am literally saving again after making it past each small encounter without taking damage. The only healing comes automatically at the start of a new level, so I must make it to each boss fight with full health.

Status: Stage V so far, farther than I made it 30 years ago

Outer Wilds (Xbox One)

I saw this title on XBox Game Pass Ultimate Platinum Gold Express, or whatever it's called, and had to try it out. It's a first person game of exploration and flying that takes place in a tightly packed solar system. You fly from planet to planet unlocking some sort of mystery.

Everything here is right from the graphics to the characters to the controls, but I did not take much time to learn them and had difficulty getting around, resulting in death by crash and/or asphyxiation. Some of the planets have cave systems, and flying inside one I found a weird wormhole thing that transported me back out to space, where I did not have enough fuel to make it back to any planets, which was repeatedly frustrating.

I'm sure it would be a good game, and I hope to return to it and try to familiarize myself with the controls better. It's got a lot of charm.

Status: I crash a lot

The Outer Worlds (Xbox One)

Fresh off their take on Fallout with Fallout New Vegas, and their awesome South Park: The Stick of Truth, Obsidian Entertainment created their own version of a Bethesda RPG with The Outer Worlds. It plays exactly like an Elder Scrolls or Fallout  game, with combat, levelling, inventory management, companions, and conversation all polished, colorful, and a good balance between fun and tedious.

The player is an unfrozen colonist in a far away solar system, cut off from Earth and struggling to survive. The story unfolds well and there are lots of side missions and even more loot to be had. The companions are great, and at the difficulty I played, unable to be permanently killed. The best one is SAM, a repurposed cleaning robot that shoots acid, whose robotic commentary about cleaning is hilarious.

Since Bethesda seems to be going the Rockstar way of ending solo player experiences in favor of big bucks multiplayer games, it's great that Obsidian took the torch and ran with it so well. The Outer Worlds is a tight adventure without an overabundance of side distractions, rather just enough content that the finale comes long before the burnout.

Status: Beaten (this game won the audition and became my full campaign)

Let’s Be Honest, Sony. Play Has Some Limits

 (UPDATE: Later, Sony reversed its decision to close down the PS3 and PS Vita stores, but the PSP store will be closing as scheduled. A temporary relief for PS3 and PS Vita owners.)

In a heartless but probably sensible business decision, Sony announced today that they are shutting down the online stores for PSP, PS3, and Vita systems this summer. 

I just received the long email detailing what this means for various aspects of the service, but the bottom line is that after the shutdown, many games will become no longer available (legally) anywhere.

At the bottom of the email there was Sony’s new catchphrase “PLAY HAS NO LIMITS”. 

The irony was too much, hence the above defacing. If that logo hadn’t been there, I’d have left it alone.

No Guilt Here

 As a middle aged gamer, the need to work out each day amid the cracking bones and sore muscles becomes clear. If I want to retire well into my 100s with my backlog of video games, the time is now to get into and maintain some semblance of physical health.

So I have relocated the Wii U to the downstairs setup and tested it this weekend. It had been awhile:

As we all know by now, the Wii Fit workouts and stats are, shall I say, for smaller people than most of us. The proof:  it said that my 202 pound /55 year old frame is obese, that I need to lose 50 pounds, and my Wii Fit age is 68.

Still, it's good to know that it's working as intended with the same old snarky comments and totally unrealistic body image standards. Let's see how long I stick with it this time.