A Gap in the Collection Filled!

My fascination with video games began with my dad's Apple IIe and the few games we had for it: Zork, Apple Adventure (the Apple port of Colossal Cave), Frogger, Sabotage, Repton (perhaps not originally called 'Repton' -- this was essentially a version of Defender), but the fascination became a straight-up obsession on the Christmas I received a Nintendo Entertainment System. This meant, however, that I missed out on the phenomenon of the Atari 2600. My neighbor Mikey had one, and I remember playing Pole Position and Pitfall II on it, but I never had one of my very own.

Until now!

My future father-in-law is an expert at finding hidden treasures at garage sales and thrift shops, and he unearthed this little beauty: an Atari 2600 with two joysticks (the red one is a third-party stick, the 500XJ Epyx, by Konix), a storage case (check out the faux-wood panelling; very Eighties!), and eight games.

It's been awhile since I've tried to hook anything from this era up to a TV, so it took a little doing and a trip to Radio Shack. Some internet research told me to look for an RCA to Coaxial converter so I could take the A/V output from the Atari and turn it into something my TV's input could understand, but Radio Shack seems to be attempting an image change and their collection of adapters isn't as grand as I remember it being when my dad would bring me there in childhood. I did come back with an RCA to BNC adapter and a BNC to Coaxial adapter, and felt like a smart cookie in the process, so there's at least a happy conclusion to the tale.

The crown jewel of my new collection: Pitfall!

Sarah thought I'd get bored with the Atari after a couple minutes, but actually I'm finding these old games to be quite fun, even if the system itself is older than I am (by one year!). Pitfall is the clear winner, but I've also put quite a lot of time into Moon Patrol and Donkey Kong. It's not the best version of Donkey Kong (it seems to only have two levels, instead of three), but it's a testament to Nintendo game design that even this stripped-down port of the arcade game manages to keep the basics fun and intact. Some of the games are less successful: Video Pinball and Super Challenge Football.

Pictured: Less successful. But I did score a touchdown, somehow!

I remember when I was in sixth or seventh grade, you'd often see Atari games and consoles at garage sales, but with the dawning of the internet age you don't see video games on sale as often; now it's easier to find out how high demand is, and what things are worth, and Amazon and eBay are the prime source for old video games. But every now and then you find a surprise, and now I've filled a gap in my game collection. Huzzah!

PS+ Free Games So Far, PS4

If you have a PS4 and want to play online multiplayer, you'll need to pay for a PS+ subscription. This was one of the announcements that was quietly snuck into the Playstation victory lap last E3, when Microsoft couldn't do much of anything right, and this announcement went mostly unnoticed in the din. Since Killzone: Shadowfall was one of the launch games I intended to pick up (dire single player campaign, but the multiplayer was really well-done) I dropped the money on the PS+ subscription without really thinking about it. Now I can't imagine doing without it -- getting a game or two for free every month is a pretty great way to feel good about the PS+ experience. Here are my impressions of the games that have been offered for PS4 thus far.

Resogun - A video of this game convinced me I had to have a PS4, so you're welcome to guess how I feel about it! A side-scrolling cylindrical shmup inspired by Defender, where you have to Save The Last Humans? Yes, please! It could have used more variety in the levels, which all share the industrial/city sort of look, but this is a very slick game. Voxels, voxels everywhere!

Contrast - There are some neat ideas in this early 1900s shadow-manipulation puzzle adventure, but sometimes the platforming feels a little finicky and I ran into a couple bugs that blocked my progress. It's worth a play for the stylish look and the atmosphere (and a Limbo-inspired section about halfway through), but there's not a lot to come back to once you've played through once.

It's all about manipulating the shadows to reach higher places, like this one.

Don't Starve - An inventory management survival game with the atmosphere of an Edward Gorey illustration. I really like this sort of game, since it's all about managing your resources and paying attention to the clock; you don't want to be stuck away from your fire/home when night falls. My only dissatisfaction with this one is that the opening exploration of the island generally seems to go much the same, without a great deal of variety. I find myself doing mostly the same things and experiencing the same difficulties for a pretty long stretch in the beginning, which means that it can start feeling awfully samey, and keeps me from wanting to start new games as often as I usually would in a game like this.

Outlast - You're an investigative reporter who has received a tip about unpleasant goings-on at the Mount Massive Asylum, and before you know it you're trapped in the place and being hunted by lunatics. It's scary, and tense, and just an awesome experience. This was one of the great PS+ surprises for me -- it wasn't even on my radar beforehand. You have no combat skills, so you need to sneak around in the dark, using the night-vision on your camcorder to see and to avoid the lunatics loose in the asylum. You're also collecting documents and recordings as you go, which builds up the story and gives you a peek inside your character's thoughts. During one amazing sequence outside the walls of the asylum, during a lightning storm, you see a quick flash of *something* in whose existence your character has been doubting, and the document you get has one line: 'God help me. I think I've just seen the Walrider.' Chills! And two thumbs way up. I need to buy the new DLC for this, Whistleblower.

Dead Nation - Didn't really like this one that much. It's a zombie game with a Smash TV feel, but the characters are so tiny and the lighting is so dark that it didn't do much for me. I only played the first couple levels; maybe it gets better later on, or it's preferable to play in co-op.

Mercenary Kings - This game looks like one thing (Metal Slug or Contra) but is actually another thing (Monster Hunter). I've never played Monster Hunter before, but it apparently involves selecting missions to go defeat monsters and grabbing items that you can use to craft weapons that allow you to defeat bigger monsters. That's what Mercenary Kings is too, which seems to be off-putting to people expecting a 2D action game like Metal Slug. The time limit on every mission, the way bosses will run away and appear in another spot in the level after you do a little bit of damage, the way the missions seem to mostly involve grinding for loot drops... these are all design decisions that ramp up the frustration at the expense of the fun. Still, though, I'm having a reasonably good time with it. The key is to only play a mission or two at a time; short play sessions allow you to maximize the fun and keep the repetitive annoyances to a minimum.

It sure looks gorgeous, though!

Stick It To The Man - I didn't think they still made games like this! This is another of the big surprises of PS+, and not a game I expected at all. Reminiscent of classic LucasArts point-and-click adventure games like Day of the Tentacle, in this one you control a guy named Ray who has a pink spaghetti grabber hand coming out of his head -- he can use the hand to peel stickers out of the environment and stick them onto people or things to solve puzzles, and he can also use it to read people's minds. For example, if you need to get by a guard, you might read someone's mind and hear 'Man, I shouldn't have stayed up all night eating burritos! I'm so tired!' That makes a thought bubble with Z...Z...Z... appear over his head, which you can grab, and then you can stick the Z...Z...Z... sticker onto someone else's head to make them fall asleep. It's clever, and funny, and all around I had a blast. A great game!

Memorable characters and funny situations. Also: a cool sticker book art style!

I think the lesson here is that while an individual game may not be to your taste, the net effect of the experience is overall very positive thanks to the variety of the offered games. Just looking at the list up there, you've got two arcade shooters, two quirky adventure/puzzle games, a Rogue-like adventure game, a horror game, and a Monster Hunter-style grinding game. I might have only purchased one or two of these sight-unseen, but most of these proved to be genuinely worthwhile games that I'm very glad I got to experience. Maybe not Dead Nation. I might give it more of a try and see if I can find more of the fun; and if I do and I do you'll probably hear about it. :)

The Year in Review, 2013!

Happy New Year! Before we start looking ahead at what awaits us in the gaming world of 2014, let's look back and see what we've already done! I've compiled a list of the games I finished in 2013, with maybe a few thoughts about each one. So what exactly was I up to in 2013?

Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PSN)

Resident Evil 2 (PSN)

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PSN)

For Christmas I had received the Resident Evil Anthology, which included vouchers for digital copies of REs 1-5 and RE6 on the disk, so I rang in the New Year with PSN versions of the first three. Tank controls aside, these held up pretty well, though the randomized puzzles in RE3 are still a slog to this day.

Spec Ops: The Line (PS3)

This game received a lot of praise for its storytelling and for its unflinching look at the horrors of war, but as a result most of the experience wasn't terribly surprising. It also makes you take actions that you, as the player, know you shouldn't be taking, and then delights in telling you the horrible things you shouldn't have done. Reasonably effective even so.

Resident Evil 4 HD (PSN)

It's the best Resident Evil, and now it's even sharper. For being such a long game, the action flows incredibly and the variety is just great. After this game, Leon can stand toe-to-toe in the pantheon of RE greats like Chris and Jill. He's still no Barry, though.

Dishonored (360)

This one was a surprise, and the game most like Thief: The Dark Project I've played in years. The world was fascinating, and the wide-open levels with multiple sneaking routes through them gave me happy memories of Lord Bafford's Manor and Cragscleft Prison. The 'infiltrating the party' mission in this game was even better than the similar one in Thief 2: The Metal Age.

Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (PC)

Early in the year, I thought I might try playing through all of the Ultimas, as I'd never completed them before. This first one was quite good in a 'history of videogaming' sort of way, limited in the sort of ways you might expect: no set dungeons, for instance -- every dungeon you enter is randomized on entry, even when you leave and come back in. There's a peculiar space combat game halfway through this one, but the version I got on GOG.com ran it well and I was able to proceed; other versions of Ultima I've tried through the years always got stuck at that section.

Quest For Glory: So You Want to Be A Hero (PC)

This was the VGA version, with clay figure style animation for the characters. It's the one I grew up with, and it's still a great experience.

Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress (PC)

Just terrible. I slogged through this one with the aid of a walkthrough and it was still a tremendous pain. Whenever Richard Garriott claims to be the best game designer in the world and that no one else knows how to do it, I wish someone would remind him that he's responsible for Ultima 2. If there were a Director's Jail for games like there is for movies, he'd still be in there, maybe with time off for good behavior (and Ultima 4). I started the third game in the series after this one, but the poor taste of Ultima 2 lingered and you won't see it on this list.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (PS3)

I'm a huge Metal Gear fanboy and even I didn't expect this to be that good, but it's phenomenal. Short and sweet, but very gratifying swordplay and crazy over-the-top action. It has the most ridiculous soundtrack, but the songs for every boss fight are just amazing, and the way it layers the vocals on top when you reach certain stages in each fight is brilliant and really gets the blood pumping. A very strong contender for my Game of the Year, if I really sat down to think about it.

Resident Evil 6 (PS3)

This game had been patched a few times before I got around to playing through it, so many of the complaints I've seen online had been fixed already. Not all of them; it's still a very flawed game in many respects, but there's certainly a ton of game here. If anything there's just too much of it -- everything wears out its welcome long before you're done with it. Four different campaigns of roughly eight to ten hours each, and you need to play them all to really understand the story. Capcom went absolutely bonkers with making content for this thing, and I do feel bad that it was received so poorly: it's not like they didn't try. No, I think the problem with RE6 is that they tried and tried and tried and just didn't manage to execute it that well. I enjoyed my time with it and there's a good list online of the order to play all the chapters in if you want to see the whole story in roughly chronological order, which I think is interesting. "A spectacular failure, but not a failure of spectacle," - Level-Minded Lys.

Bioshock Infinite (360)

This would have been more interesting as an RPG, I think. The shooting really drags it down and the story doesn't go anywhere surprising. I wasn't as infatuated with Elizabeth as some others were; she's no Alyx Vance, though Ken Levine really, really wants her to be.

Mega Man (3DS)

Mega Man 2 (3DS)

Mega Man 3 (3DS)

Did you know you can download Mega Man games on your Nintendo 3DS? I discovered it and played through some of them!

The Bouncer  (PS2)
I didn't play this at release, but I remember all the talk about how short it was. I had no idea it was *this* short, however. Done in about two hours, this one felt awfully ephemeral. It's tough to believe this was a graphical powerhouse at the time, or that it came from the House of Final Fantasy.

Sonic Adventure  (XBLA)
I spent a lot of this year catching up on games I never played the first time, but always wanted to experience. Playing this port of Sonic's early attempts at 3D reaaaaally made me appreciate the hedgehog's more refined, modern games.

Sonic Generations  (3DS)
I only have a couple physical retail games on my 3DS (decided to go mostly digital), but this is the one that I usually keep locked and loaded. It's not as good as its big brother on the consoles, but it does provide a really solid portable Sonic experience. The last boss is awful, though, and it's the sort of fight that means you can get stuck and have no idea how to progress: it feels like you're doing everything right, but it just doesn't work. I eventually had to look up what I was doing wrong. A sad blemish on an otherwise solid game.

Dead or Alive 5  (360)
I've always liked the ridiculous storylines in fighting games, and this one doesn't disappoint. It turns out that taking the approach to campaign from the new Mortal Kombat and transplanting it into other fighting games works just as well, as long as you don't mind playing more than one character throughout the story. Works great here.

Resident Evil: Revelations  (3DS)
This was one of the first 3DS games I played that felt like it could have been a full-blown console release, and what do you know? HD ports of it appeared this year as well, so I wasn't alone in thinking that. It's a surprisingly long and effective Resident Evil, and Raid Mode provides a lot of grindy fun too.

The Last of Us  (PS3)
The Walking Dead, Season One  (XBLA)
Two "zombie" games, and though the zombies are quite different, the emotional beats they tackle are similar and extremely well-done in both. I wrote about The Last of Us earlier. As for Season One of The Walking Dead, just know that of the comic and the TV show, the videogame seems to be the very best Walking Dead related media.

King's Quest I  (PC)
King's Quest II  (PC)
I wrote about these as well! They were fun to revisit.

Sonic and the Black Knight  (Wii)
This game is supposed to be terrible, isn't it? Well, I'm here to report that yes, it is sort of terrible, but for some reason (change of pace? Bargain-basement price? Low expectations? Take your pick!) I really enjoyed the experience and played a ton of it. The controls are pretty awful: you waggle the Wiimote to swing the sword that Sonic wields in this one, which means that you end up swinging your arm for most of the level. There's very little of the usual Sonic trappings (no Robotnik, though there are some short remixed levels that contain old-school enemies and spring-boards you can unlock if you play enough). Boss fights are terrible too. But the music is fantastic, possibly one of the best Sonic soundtracks in years, and while the graphics are Wii-muddy, some of the level themes are visually pretty interesting. It's by no means one of the "good" 3D Sonics (Sonic Generations, Sonic Colors, and... not sure I'm ready to put Sonic Lost World here yet), but I still had fun with it.

Bayonetta  (360)
Finally got around to getting through this! Very enjoyable, with crazy bosses and over-the-top ridiculousness in every level.

Saint's Row IV  (PS3)
Speaking of ridiculous, I also finished Saint's Row IV. It's the best Matrix game ever.

New Super Mario Brothers U  (WiiU)
The big discovery of this game was how much my four-year-old daughter Naomi loved to play too. Her familiarity with touch screens (via her mama's iPhone or my iPad or even her own LeapPad) meant that she could use the WiiU Gamepad to create platforms for Mario very intuitively. For daddy it was a very fun (if familiar) experience, much like the NSMB games on DS and 3DS, but a little bigger in scope and more polished.

Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse HD  (XBLA)
A fun stroll back down memory lane. Not essential, but a good way to spend an afternoon. I believe the company was shut down either immediately after or shortly before this was released, but I would have loved for these guys to take a crack at Quackshot, my favorite Sega Genesis Disney game.

Steamworld Dig  (3DS)
I loved this on 3DS, and it's apparently out now on other systems. It's a good "exploring deep for minerals to get more money to explore even deeper" sort of game, and it has robots. Lots of fun, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually has a story to tell. I wish an endless mode with random challenges unlocked when you finished. Maybe in a sequel!

Grand Theft Auto V  (360)
This one's a behemoth. Ridiculously massive, with stuff to see and do absolutely everywhere. Some of Rockstar's attempts to shock you feel as obvious as they have in past games, but I really enjoyed the story in GTA5 - the setup and execution of the heists, in particular, was really interesting and well-done. A stunning game with memorable characters, but by this point in the series you really have to know what you're in for. If you're not a fan going in, you most likely won't be a fan going out.

Beyond: Two Souls  (PS3)
Sonic Colors  (Wii)
Injustice: Gods Among Us  (360)
Ryse: Son of Rome  (XBONE)

Extra Life Charity Marathon - LIVE!

[ 8:09 AM, 11/3/13 ]
I made it! Not to the end of Spelunker HD, which has a hundred levels and this morning I made it to level 3, but to the end of this 24 (actually 25!) hour marathon! I want to thank everybody who donated -- it was a real blast and such a good cause. Now goodnight everybody! Time to sleep, I think. This was great, and I'll definitely have to do it again sometime! 

[ 7:48 AM, 11/3/13 ]
The finish line is close! I think I'll make it the last few minutes with Spelunker HD, which I just found on my PS3 games list and hadn't thought about in years. I'll just dip into the caves for a couple minutes, and use that to keep from drifting into slumber too soon!

[ 7:14 AM, 11/3/13 ]
Once I do finish Beyond: Two Souls, I'd be very curious to know if the section I just finished is one where you're supposed to mess up, or if I just did because I've been up for so long and aren't thinking as clearly as normal. For anyone who's played it, the chapter is called 'The Dinner' and I did things wrong enough that there never was any dinner. Oopsie.

[ 4:46 AM, 11/3/13 ]
Very, very tired. Time for a new game! Gonna make some progress in Beyond: Two Souls, since that shouldn't require much in the way of agility. Three hours and fifteen minutes to go! 

[ 3:56 AM, 11/3/13 ]
I'm never sure if I should be leveling up the Pokemon I have already so they evolve into new forms, or focusing instead on getting new ones. I have this problem in every Pokemon game.

[ 2:52 AM, 11/3/13 ]
Joilant Fun Park, Jungle Slider, and Volkan City complete! Unfortunately, I'm in another extremely tired wave (it should be nearly 4 by now, if it weren't for clock funny-business) and need to switch games in order to stay awake. I think it's time for some Pokemon Y. I have critters with punny names to catch!

[ 1:48 AM, 11/3/13 ]
You know what? I didn't need to worry about it: Klonoa 2 holds up amazingly well! Playing through the Sea of Tears and La-Lakoosha is still a great experience -- I would buy an HD remake of this game in a heartbeat, but it still looks phenomenal, if a little fuzzy. But the level design is unmatched, and having played through it so many times in years past I can see where the foundations were laid for later stages. For instance, the statues that you'll need to breathe at during Noxious La-Lakoosha are already present in the first version of the stage, and you'll revisit the Sea of Tears a couple times later on and see familiar geographic landmarks. It's so well put together. And the music! The way there's an "outside" track and an "inside" track for La-Lakoosha that seamlessly blends together when you enter or leave the caves is just as amazing today as it was originally. Someone needs to get this on a digital download service in proper HD, ASAP. FTW. BBQ.

[ 1:33 AM, 11/3/13 ]
The tabletop gaming break did me some good! It's second-wind time, and now I've set up the PS2 for the game I've been looking forward to all weekend: Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil. This was my favorite platformer of that console generation, and I really, really hope it holds up. Time to find out!

[ 1:02 AM, 11/3/13 - The Second One ]
Didn't we already have a 1:02 AM? I'm sure we did. Sarah went in search of more games to play to stave off sleepiness and she came back upstairs with this half-forgotten gem from my childhood: PAC-MAN: The Card Game. Oh boy.

PAC minus MAN equals FUN?

Each player gets three cards, and chooses to place one either on their mat or on their opponent's mat. A Pac-Man card is a PLUS, a Ghost card is a MINUS, and there's also a Pac-Man/Ghost card that works as MULTIPLY. So you're trying to make your opponent score fewer points, while maximizing your own. Pro Tip: try and make your equation 10 x 10, since the rules say first to 100 wins. I managed that twice.

Note my awesome game-winning strategy, on the bottom row.

[ 1:27 AM, 11/3/13 ]
Drowsiness is definitely setting in. In order to combat the ZZZZZ's, it's time to make good on Jeff Zia's suggestion of a board game to play. Thanks to him for the donation, but as a result it means we have to play BLARF, the world's most ill-conceived rip-off of checkers. Each player has five tokens, with the letters to spell BLARF on one side and the letter A on the other. Each token can move in a specific direction based on its letter (Backwards, Left, Any, Right, or Forward), and after you move you flip it over. The object is to knock the other player's tokens off the board, but in reality you mostly just trap your own pieces at the edges. It's pretty terrible, but we played it! For the kids.

Proof that we played BLARF!

[ 1:02 AM, 11/3/13 - The First One ]
I just realized that we gain an hour tonight, due to Daylight Savings Time. Yikes!

[ 12:55 AM, 11/3/13 ]
I don't know if Dynamite Headdy has continues, but I never figured out how to obtain any if it does -- every time I lost all my lives it meant starting over from the beginning, so I got pretty good at fighting that cat boss. I also got pretty good at the level "Mad Dog and Headdy," where you attack the tail of a giant toy dog while it retrieves a ball full of monkeys, or a caterpillar, or sometimes a bomb, and songs from the Nutcracker play. I was less good at the level after that one, with the rotating 3D platform. The furthest I got before losing for good saw Headdy grabbed by a flying robotic worm, and I attacked its core as we flew but arrows kept appearing and I couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to be doing. It seems like a pretty good game, but without an easy way to continue the constant weirdness just sapped all my lives without mercy.

[ 11:58 PM, 11/2/13 ]
My next game for tonight is Dynamite Headdy (thanks to Ryan Penk for the donation, and for the suggestion!), and I don't really understand it! Like most games by Treasure, there are a *lot* of things on-screen at once, and everything is moving, and the first boss is a cat in front of a traditional Japanese painting. Well, maybe that last one is just for this game. But there's a lot of weirdness here.

I don't even.

I seem to be a puppet with a detachable head, and I'm trying to save puppets from robots? I like the theater aesthetic a lot -- Headdy's life bar seems to be the spotlight in the corner, and it changes color as he takes damage, and the stages seem to be actual "stages" with props and decorations as if the whole thing is a performance. I'm hoping it gets easier to grok as it goes along.

[ 11:25 PM, 11/2/13 ]
I played Ride to Hell: Retribution until it froze on a loading screen and overheated my fiancé's laptop.  I took that as a sign that I had suffered through that game enough. I don't really know what to say about this game, except for the things on this handy list:

- It starts with a guy riding a motorcycle and suddenly cuts to that guy standing at a turret, shooting enemies. After that it cuts back to him on the motorcycle. Then it cuts to him fighting a thug in a cutscene, and then it cuts to a cutscene of him fighting a *different* thug. And then it cuts to him riding a motorcycle over a helicopter. No context or anything.

- It's the sort of game where something bad happens in a cutscene, and then the *very next cutscene* is a black and white flashback to the bad thing that happened five seconds earlier.

- Remember games like Leather Goddesses of Phobos, which rewarded you for solving puzzles with salacious descriptions and tawdriness? In Ride to Hell: Retribution, there was a thug in a motel parking lot, and after he attacked me his prostitute girlfriend invited me upstairs for an embarrassing cutscene. And it's the sort of game that has a second scene like that one… not five minutes later. Really.

- The dialogue is hilarious. It's not supposed to be. Of special note is the tragic character who won't stop talking about going to see bands. Much is made of a girl that knows about cool bands, and she talks to him about bands, and he just wants to see cool bands that are really far out. Hey, maybe we can go see bands?

- Melee combat plays like a really poor version of the Arkham games, and the motorcycle combat makes you wonder if Road Rash was maybe not as good as you remember it, which is unforgivable.

Ride to Hell: Retribution feels like it earns every point of its 16 score on Metacritic. There's fun to be had here, if you play it with a big group of people looking to laugh, but otherwise… yikes. Maybe you should go see cool bands instead.

[ 10:11 PM, 11/2/13 ]
Ooof, I'm having a very sleepy wave. I got into Block 4 (and Mode 7 rotating craziness!), but I think I need a change of pace in the interest of keeping energized. It is a time long-awaited: time for Ride to Hell: Retribution, a game that's been out for only a couple months but already has a reputation for being one of the worst games of all time. Let's put that to the test, shall we?

[ 9:27 PM, 11/2/13 ]
I ran out of lives in Block 3-3, so it's back to the start of the Block for me. I'm really enjoying some of the tricks in this one, such as the need for a stationary jump on a two-square platform to buy time to safely cross a pit; if you don't, the orbiting ball will always hit you before you can cross. Many of the platforms in the caves of this stage also break if you stand on them too long, or if they're hit by debris. And there are Mermen, and skeletal dragon heads, and those little plants that I only know are called Une because of Aria of Sorrow. I'm having a blast with it. 

[ 9:03 PM, 11/2/13 ]
You know, it's been so long since I've played a traditional side-scrolling Castlevania that I don't think I realized how much I'd missed them. I love Aria of Sorrow and other Metroidvanias possibly more than the next guy, but there's something really refreshing about moving through a straightforward level whipping candles and jumping over gaps. The stages in this are even divided into Blocks, just like the first Castlevania! I love it. The first Block was pretty interesting, too, mixing up the traditional first level with a fenced-in garden and a stables area. The skeletal horseman was a neat first boss, too. Looking forward to any other new wrinkles in the formula!

[ 8:39 PM, 11/2/13 ]
My next game is a recent acquisition, as it appeared on the Wii U virtual console this very week in celebration of Halloween. As a Genesis kid growing up, I missed out on a lot of SNES classics like this one, so once I heard it was available I had to grab it and added it to my marathon list. I've only seen the first couple levels, but tonight seems as good a time as any to see what I've been missing. My next game is… Super Castlevania IV!

[ 8:31 PM, 11/2/13 ]
About four hours of Yoshi's Island sees me through World 3-4: Prince Froggy's Fort, and I think that'll do it for my adventures with Baby Mario tonight. It's a really solid game, but How Long To Beat pegs it at about ten hours to get through all the levels, and I have other games to play. I especially enjoyed some of the bosses -- Prince Froggy himself was a sufficiently cool boss to end on: you enter a castle room and he swallows you, and you fight him from inside his stomach. Gross, and cool!

[ 6:00 PM, 11/2/13 ]
I'm up to World 2-3 now, and it's sort of amazing that the SNES could handle this game back in 1995: lots of 3D effects and humongous sprites. It's both forgiving and not-forgiving at the same time, with a generous time limit to get Baby Mario back on your back when he falls off, but with tricky jumps and lots of obstacles to navigate. The levels are also pretty lengthy, with optional areas for collectibles, all of which add to your grade at the end of every level. I seem to be averaging in the seventies or so. The names of the levels and their associated level design gimmicks are really clever (who doesn't remember 'Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy') and the egg-throwing mechanic doesn't take that long to get used to and is used in lots of interesting ways so far. It's a shame that it's freezing up my system, but as long as it doesn't do it in the middle of a level it's something I can handle. :)

[ 5:08 PM, 11/2/13 ]
It's possible that Yoshi's Island doesn't like the Gameboy Player. I'll try and tough it out, but it means that updates will be slow, since it's frozen twice while trying to write here. So a brief radio blackout while I see what's the dilly yo.

[ 4:56 PM, 11/2/13 ]
This is tougher than I remember! I've lost a few Yoshis already, and I'm only starting World 1-3. It's very easy to drop off a ledge and, despite Yoshi's frantically pinwheeling legs, be unable to recover and get back to solid land. And… I see that it froze up. Let's see how often it saves. :P

[ 4:38 PM, 11/2/13 ]
The Gamecube is hooked up, the Gameboy Player is attached to the correct port, and the GBA cart for Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 is ready to go! Thanks to Reba F. and Naomi for the donation and the suggestion! I've only played a handful of levels of this before, but I've seen enough to know that it was a cute and pretty ambitious platformer. Let's see how it goes!

[ 4:20 PM, 11/2/13 ]
Well, at 56% completion for the tutorial modes, I think I'm done with Dota 2 for now. The stage I reached was a match against bots, and hero I played was a demon called Lion, who just wasn't what I expected. I didn't really like any of his abilities and I found myself dying over and over to the bot playing Viper. The match dragged on until finally my bot allies essentially won the thing for us. Overall kind of a bummer, and a reminder that MOBAs have super-steep learning curves. Hero selection is very important for these games, so find someone you like or you won't have a good time. Gotta keep that in mind for next time, but for now I need a different kind of game to play. 

[ 3:12 PM, 11/2/13 ]
I've been in the 'try out several different heroes' section of the tutorial for awhile now, and am really enjoying how different they feel from each other. I've played as Dragon Knight, Sniper, Windrunner, and Sand King now, and they all seem to have positives and negatives, as you'd expect. Playing as Sand King in particular gave me more trouble than some of the others, but he made me laugh more than once: "I won't saaaand for this!" grumbles the giant desert scorpion. I think I'll move on to the next section of the tutorial now, even though it wants me to try eight new heroes before it marks this section complete. Maybe later.

[ 1:45 PM, 11/2/13 ]
Valve has gotten pretty good at tutorials. After completing the first two maps, I watched a short video that explained some more of the basics, and then a popup informed me that I had unlocked the full Dota 2 experience… or I could play some more tutorials. That's what I'm going to do, since the full experience fills me with trepidation. But I like that they presented it as an option!

[ 1:06 PM, 11/2/13 ]
Okay, maybe I'm starting to see why people like this sort of game. Lots of neat flavor to go alongside the feeling of playing an RPG very quickly. It looks like there might be some meat to this tutorial, too, since after the first map my tutorial progress is listed at 16%.

[ 12:34 PM, 11/2/13 ]
Up next is a little game called Dota 2, suggested by Jared Saramago. According to How Long To Beat, the time to get completely through this one is approximately 568 hours, which is a little silly. As a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game, this is one that will eat up as many hours as you're willing to give it -- one reason I've never tried it before. But today I've agreed to give it a shot, so I'll be playing through the tutorials Jared tells me were recently added. Let's see what this entry in the MOBA genre has to offer, shall we? I promise not to spend 568 hours on it!

[ 12:11 PM, 11/2/13 ]
What a cool game. I think I enjoyed it more this time than I did the first time through, actually. Time to make a sandwich or something and prepare for the next game!

[ 12:07 PM, 11/2/13 ]
Well, that was emotional. Sorry for not updating more frequently, but when Journey gets serious it gets serious! After the cave we climbed a snowy mountain and battled the elements, and I was alone again for awhile before meeting another golden buddy. Together we made the last leg of the journey to the summit, and then… the things happen that happen. It's not a good game to spoil. After the credits they show the PSN names of the companions you met along the way, and here are the folk who accompanied me for a time this morning: Sled68_, Leon-Moco, Si_Da, and Nanashineko.

[ 11:16 AM, 11/2/13 ]
A new buddy arrived! This one isn't golden like my other one, and she seems to be more my own level of experience, but I'm just glad to not be exploring this scary cave by myself. There are monsters in here, searching for us with bright blue lights. Tense!

[ 11:10 AM, 11/2/13 ]
She's gone, and this cave is getting scary! She just sat down and vanished, and now I'm all alone and there are scary sounds. This game, man!

[ 11:02 AM, 11/2/13 ]
The sun went down and now we're in a spooky cave.

[ 10:51 AM, 11/2/13 ]
Nope, all is well! She got up after a bit and led me to a flower blooming in the desert, just like the ones from another of thatgamecompany's games, Flower! And I got a trophy for it and everything! Thanks, anonymous journeying buddy! Oops, gotta go, she's on the move again!

[ 10:44 AM, 11/2/13 ]
My buddy sat down and I don't know why! Is she leaving? :(

[ 10:34 AM, 11/2/13 ]
I made a friend! She's all golden and has the world's longest scarf, and makes me feel inadequate! But she also seems to know where everything is, and has already shown me a couple hidden locations. I have to hurry to catch up now!

[ 10:10 AM, 11/2/13 ]
The HDMI inputs on my TV are switched, the PS3 is booted up, and I'm about to go on a Journey! Thanks to Kalia Pickett for the donation and the suggestion! This is a game I played through once, and thought it was brilliant, so I'm eager to dive back in and experience it one more time. My memory is a little fuzzy on the specifics, but I remember it being a great time, and the anonymous multiplayer was just incredible. Let's see who I meet on the way, if anyone!

[ 9:48 AM, 11/2/13 ]
…but of course, he wasn't really an alien. It was just another trick by that criminal mastermind, which is exactly as it should be. The ending song for Mega Man 2 is surprisingly downbeat, accompanying Mega Man as he walks through the different seasons to an uncertain future, but then the heroic theme song comes back on and leaves everybody wanting more. So that's the credits on my first game of the marathon! How Long To Beat lists Mega Man 2 at a main story average completion time of 2 hours, 59 minutes, so I'm a little ahead of the curve… and I'll have to be, as all the games I plan to play add up to about 41 hours of game!

[ 9:43 AM, 11/2/13 ]
It's probably tough to believe now, but few things were as surprising to the twelve-year-old me as the fact that the game didn't end after you got to the skull marker in Wily's Castle and fought Dr. Wily. The subsequent cave level with the dripping blood-like slime and complete lack of music just about blew my mind with the creepiness. And to get to the end of it and discover that Dr. Wily was an alien all along!!! Oh my goodness!

[ 9:34 AM, 11/2/13 ]
Second-most stressful part of the game, and one I've written about before: the Turret Boss that needs all of your Crash Bombs. Knowing how to handle it is key, especially since the game tempts you into using Crash Bombs in the previous levels by hiding E-Tanks and other goodies behind destructible walls. Luckily, this isn't my first Rodeo Man. Time to fight the bosses again!

[ 9:23 AM, 11/2/13 ]
I've always loved the part in Wily's Castle where you drop into the gross, dirty water in the basement. It always felt like the castle had a real sense of geography to it, unlike some of the castles in the later games. And does the giant robot fish show up anywhere else in the game? I only remember it here. These days that guy would get used everywhere in order to justify the cost of drawing and animating him, but he doesn't even show up in Bubble Man's stage, where you'd expect him to be.

[ 9:14 AM, 11/2/13 ]
The Dragon in Wily 1 is one of the best bosses ever, intimidating and scary, and I love the way he chases you before the battle starts. Just look at this guy:

Put this guy on a list of Best Bosses Ever

He's not even the real threat. I lost a life while he was chasing me because I got so stressed out that I missed one of the jumps. Next time around I showed him who's boss with the Quick Boomerangs.

[ 9:07 AM, 11/2/13 ]
Heat Man and Wood Man are no more, and now I'm listening to the Worst Sound In Videogames: the sound of Dr. Wily's saucer flying off to his castle for the last set of levels. I can't remember if it took this long in the first Mega Man, but here this high-pitched screeching is painful and seems to take forever. Part of its charm, I guess. We're rewarded with the best song in the game when we arrive at Wily 1, so maybe that eases the sting a little.

[ 8:54 AM, 11/2/13 ]
So long to Air Man and Crash Man. The rust is still showing a bit, as I had a few silly mistakes on Air Man's level (why yes, I would love to forget about the egg-dropping birds and get hit by one just as I jump, that would be perfect! Ryu would be proud), but Crash Man has an easy stage as long as you remember which ladder to climb, and everybody likes a free E-Tank.

[ 8:36 AM, 11/2/13 ]
Bubble Man, Flash Man, and Quick Man have been pushed off their mortal coils. Quick Man's stage gave me some problems with the lasers (even after all these years!), but after a couple tries I made it through without using the Time Stopper.

[ 8:21 AM, 11/2/13 ]
While Mega Man gets equipped with the Metal-Blade, let me back up. I chose Normal for this playthrough, which makes my early death even more of a bummer, and I won't be doing any fancy order this time around. We're talking straight-up weakness path through the game, so next stop Bubble Man!

[ 8:17 AM, 11/2/13 ]
Yeowch! First death on Metal Man's stage, just as I was congratulating myself for not attempting the E-Tank trap. My play this morning is already a lot sloppier than usual. Is my coffee ready yet? :P 

[ 8:10 AM, 11/2/13 ]
Breakfast has been had, coffee is brewing, and it's time to begin! I'll be starting with Mega Man 2, one of my very favorite games. I'll be playing the virtual console edition of the game on the Wii U. Time to get started!

[ 7:48 AM, 11/2/13 ]
Good morning, everybody! It's finally the day of the Extra Life Charity Marathon, and I'm ready to game for 24 hours straight! I'll be live-blogging as I go, so buckle up for an account of my exploits today! For starters, I'll be making eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast energy. Back in a few!

Extra Life Charity Marathon

Hey everybody! Pardon the interruption of my usual videogame-related ramblings for something that's actually important... but don't worry, it's game-related too. This November, I'll be participating in the Extra Life marathon to support Boston Children's Hospital, and I could use your help!

The marathon begins at 8 AM on November 2, and it'll run for 24 hours, during which time I'll play a whole bunch of videogames, live-blogging about each one and drinking lots of coffee. You can donate directly at my Extra Life page, located here (Jeff Libby's Extra Life Donation Page) -- it's for a great cause, and every little bit will help kids who need it! Let's show how much good gamers can do!

I'm going to need plenty of games to fill up twenty-four hours, and so I'm asking for suggestions! I know I'll be starting bright and early at 8 AM on November 2 with Mega Man 2 (because of course I am!), but I ask that when you send in your donation (Helpful Reminder Link) you include a recommendation of a game for me to play during the Marathon. I have a Sega Genesis and an NES hooked up, and if I can track down relatively inexpensive copies of games for them I'll do so. Try not to recommend incredibly rare games, because that would be trickier. I have access to a PS3, an Xbox 360, a Wii U, and their various digital services, so that's all fair game.

(Get it?) :-P

I'm hoping to play a lot of games during the Marathon, so games that take an hour or two to get through are probably best. But I'm open to suggestions, and a big donation could have me trying to tackle an entire jRPG in the time-frame, if that's what the people want!

I'll update this post with the box-art of the games I'll be playing. Let's fill up that donation meter -- do it for the kids!

Extra Life Charity Maration (Jeff Libby's Extra Life Donation Page)

Thanks to Ryan Penk for the donation, and for recommending Dynamite Headdy. I've never played it, but I've heard good things! I'll be playing the version in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for the 360.

Thanks to Reba F. for the donation, and for recommending Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. I've never gotten all the way through it, so much of this one will be new to me!

Thanks to Kalia Pickett for the donation, and the recommendation of Journey! If anyone else happens to be walking through that desert on November 2, we might end up journeying together!

Thanks to Jared Saramago for the donation, and "thanks" to him for "recommending" Ride to Hell: Retribution and its 16% Metacritic score. If the badness becomes too much to bear, his secondary recommendation is DOTA 2, which I've not yet experienced.

The Last of Us

I finished The Last of Us recently, after borrowing it from Krumpynut for the PS3. (Thanks, Krumpy!) Here's the short version: I loved it, as you might expect. This is a tremendously impressive game, and even if you think you're sick of "zombie" games, you should still play it.

Wait, let me back up and dispel your worries. I won't be talking about story spoilers for The Last of Us in this post. This is one of those games that goes many interesting and unusual directions over its twenty or so hours, and you should go in unspoiled. Know that it's a very interesting story with believable characters and some impressive set-pieces. This shouldn't surprise you, given that Naughty Dog is responsible for the Uncharted series as well, and they've only gotten better with this new game.

What should surprise you is how much better the gameplay is than in that series. As impressive as the ridiculously-cinematic Uncharted 2: Among Thieves could be at times, everything fell apart towards the end when you needed to engage in extremely protracted gun battles with seemingly endless hordes of enemy soldiers, each one a bullet-sponge of epic proportions. The final few hours were a tremendous slog, and really served to undermine the mostly-good experience up to that point. How does The Last of Us avoid that mistake? A few ways:

1) Stealth is Often an Option 

This isn't a stealth game, like Thief: The Dark Project - you will be getting into gunfights with the various enemies you encounter. But in most situations, you'll be presented with an area in which those enemies are carefully patrolling or guarding specific locations, and you have enough maneuverability to
circle them and take them out silently. If you remain unseen you can then proceed to the next foe, and if you are seen you'll have fewer enemies to deal with during the ensuing gun battle. The tension of creeping up on foes is fun to start with, but the combat is solid enough that even when I was eventually seen I didn't feel the desire to reload a save and try again. Engaging in combat didn't feel like I had "failed" a stealth section. Instead, it felt like a natural extension of the story. An ordinary guy isn't going to be able to act like the world's most deadly ninja all the time, and sometimes you're going to get seen. I like the balance between the two styles much more than the seemingly endless waves of enemy soldiers you have to fight towards the end of Uncharted.

2) Very Powerful Tools, Limited Uses

One of the reasons that stealth is such an enjoyable part of the game involves the weapons and items at your disposal. You can pick up bottles and bricks from the environment and throw them to draw the attention of enemies, and a carefully-thrown brick can also stun certain foes. By drawing an enemy's attention to one location, you can quickly sneak up on them from behind and perform a one-hit kill using a shiv crafted from items in the environment. One enemy down! The problem is that you lose your shiv in the process, and you can only carry two or three of them (until you find the pieces to make more).

Or is that a problem? It really makes you treasure those shivs, because assessing a situation and determining the most dangerous threat, and then easily eliminating it, can turn a very difficult engagement into something much more manageable... but what if you encounter something even more dangerous just around the corner? This is further complicated by a class of enemies that can perform one-hit kills on you, which require you (in some situations) to use up those precious shivs.

3) Crafting for Fun and Profit (But Really for Survival)

In most games with crafting systems, you gradually discover an extensive web of crafting recipes that allow you to make dozens of different items. Not so in The Last of Us. Here there are only five or six different items to make, which makes sense: in a real survival situation you would focus on acquiring the things that work, and once you know those things work you would make them exclusively. Almost everywhere Joel explores has materials scattered around the environment, or in supply rooms or caches, and you really get into the groove of rapidly picking them all up, as quickly as you can. Since the game doesn't pause when Joel crafts, you find yourself hurriedly fashioning health kits, shivs, and melee upgrades (tying a blade to a plank of wood) in every small supply closet you find, while frightening creatures lurch around outside. It's tense, and very very thrilling.

Everyone will tell you to play The Last of Us for the story, and I'm not really any different; it's a phenomenal story, and it's the main reason to play. But I'll also tell you that the gameplay is very solid, and works to build the apocalyptic mood in a way that doesn't feel forced. Bioshock Infinite had you scrounging around in trash cans, eating thousands of burgers and bags of chips, but it never felt like there was any reason that you would be doing that other than 'it's a Bioshock game!' In The Last of Us the gameplay and the story tie together in a believable way, and that helps make it one of the best games of the year. I don't know if we'll ever get The Last of Us 2: More of Us, but I'd play it.

Does the Hedgehog Sing?

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon The Megas and their album 'Get Equipped,' which contains vocal arrangements of songs from Mega Man 2, and fell pretty much instantly in love with it. (Buy it here!) What I didn't expect was how much my four-year-old daughter Naomi would love it, too, considering that the extent of her Mega Man knowledge was that her daddy really liked his games and that he's blue.

Now you know as much about Mega Man as Naomi did... before the Megas!

I left the CD on while bringing Naomi to preschool one morning, and instead of asking for Winnie the Pooh or one of her other favorites, she said 'Daddy, can you turn this up?' I did, and when the song ended Naomi asked me to start it over again.

Welcome to my level, my name is Metal Man

I throw Metal Blades from my metal hands!

I think part of the appeal for Naomi is that each of the Robot Masters has a concept she can easily grasp. Metal Man is made of metal, obviously, and right there he's saying hello to Mega Man and warning him what he can do. Heat Man likes fire and things that are hot. Quick Man is the quickest of all. Bubble Man tells us:

I swim fast

I'll fight strong

You won't last

I'll live on.

This is my redemption song.

Naomi likes it because she understands that Bubble Man shoots bubbles, and swims, and lives underwater, and I like it because the entire song is about how Bubble Man feels hurt because he has the silliest power: he shoots bubbles and swims. Even when I played Mega Man 2 for the first time, at twelve years old or so, my friends and I all internalized that Bubble Man didn't seem to be in the same league as the other Robot Masters.

Out of the eight robots, of all of us

My power is so ridiculous.

And on this album, he knows it. But the very best thing the Megas have done in this song is that while Bubble Man is singing about the redemption he so desperately wants, we the Mega Man playing public know that he gets it, if not in the way he wanted. After all, the final form of Dr. Wily is weak only to the Bubble Lead. Bubble Man is unappreciated, but his weapon, at the end, is the most powerful one of all.

Naomi also likes that Mega Man is a robot (because who doesn't like robots?), but he also has a daddy. His daddy is a scientist named Dr. Light, and he has a song about how he made Mega Man to do good things in the world, and that song is now a personal favorite of mine:

Latex and steel, zeroes and ones make up my son.

This world gave me no child so I built one.

These lyrics are clever, clever, clever. The Megas have an incredible take on Crash Man too, and now for me Crash Man has always wanted to break free of his programming and see Dr. Wily defeated. And he's got a point, too, where he says:

Closer draws the final hour

To break Wily's walls you will need my power.

He's right. Without the Crash Bombs you're not getting past the Wall Boss in Wily-4, but I never considered the possibility that Crash Man could actually want to help Mega Man. It makes the lament at the end of the song, with repeated lines of 'Down falls Crash Man' completely earned. I love that these songs give more depth to the Robot Masters, and in interesting, sometimes unexpected ways. Air Man is an early beneficiary:

Do you know what it's like to be built this way?

With only the power to push others away?

Because he's got a fan in his chest, right? Get it? Get it? At one point he talks about flying high above the city of Monsteropolis, which thoroughly confused Naomi. "Is Air Man going to fight Monster Octopus?" she asked me. When I stopped cracking up, I told her that Launch Octopus wouldn't show up until Mega Man X, and she nodded sagely even though she has no idea what that is. I love that little kid. :D

So it's highly recommended. I'm not sure if the Megas are still recording music, but 'Get Equipped' is phenomenal for any fan of Mega Man 2, and possibly their daughters! After listening to this CD for many, many listens, and deciding it was time for a change of pace, I put in a CD of Sonic the Hedgehog remixes. When I told her what the music was, Naomi piped up from the backseat. 'Does the hedgehog sing?'

Well... sometimes he does. Sometimes he does. But not like Metal Man.