It's a growing trend in the indie video game side of the business that games are being developed lacking key, distinct plot points and/or unclear or open-ended endings, thus forcing players to develop their own meanings and reasons for the game they just experienced, opening up the dialogue for conversation. While the bigger, "AAA" titles tend to be more straight forward, spelling it out for the player, indie games have a lot more freedom to be creative, quirky and left open to interpretation. While there were a few games before Limbo to go this route of story telling and forced critical thinking, Limbo was the game that thrust this new way of looking at how games should be experienced into mainstream recognition. And ever since it was released on the XBLA, so many indie games have tried to replicate not only the success, but the emotional experience this game brought to the consciousness of gamers everywhere. Few have accomplished this feat, but even when they do, they are still compared to the likes of Limbo. Basically, Limbo is the hipster game of the genre. I first bought this game after it had came out on XBLA, when Microsoft was having its end of the year sale, where they teased the upcoming titles they would put on sale. My friend and I both knew Limbo was coming, based on the hints, and that night, we both waited up until midnight to see it go on sale so we could pick it up. Consider it a midnight launch party, except we were just texting back and forth. Oddly enough, this was one of the first games that we both owned and purchased at the same time, meaning we were able to experience and share notes about the game at the same time. I think that first night I stayed up for a few hours, glued to the game, which is crazy considering it was just an XBLA game. But man, crazy or not, it was so worth it. This game is amazing. I simply don't know how else to put it. Today it was released for the PS Vita, which of course I bought, and it is still the amazing game now that it was back then. In fact, I almost think this game was originally built to run on a handheld like the Vita, because this system is ideal for games like Limbo - especially with the ability to just suspend the game on a whim, and return back to that point whenever you so choose. While Limbo is great in long playthroughs, I really believe it is better in slightly shorter sessions, to allow you to sit back and reflect on what you just experienced. I really do enjoy this game, and even though I beat the original XBLA version of this game a couple of times, I am still struggling to remember all the easy solutions to the platforming puzzles. I shouldn't have a problem, but the beautiful yet creep atmosphere and overall sad, melancholy tone of the game completely distracts me from the task at hand, usually. At least I am distracted by in-game things rather than being bored with the game itself so much that my mind starts to wander off. If you have a Vita and still haven't pulled the trigger on this game up until now, NOW is the chance. Apparently, the totally awesome cross-buy promotion is in full force for this title, so you can have your cake and eat it to. Or something like that...
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Platforming games might be the crux of my gaming habits, and the bane of my existence in this digital world, yet the genre remains to be my absolute favorite, hands down. I've always had an affinity for platformers, as far back as I can remember. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that a good majority of games out when I was a kid were some sort of platform game. Unlike many other gamers who grew up playing platformers who eventually grew out of the genre and moved on to more complicated of different genres, I didn't. I guess I just never grew up as a gamer. And that's OK with me. So tonight, I played Jak and Daxter, the first of a major series and exclusive franchise to the Sony platforms, originally released on the PS2. Tonight, however, I played it on my PS3, which I have had downloaded forever now and just haven't bother to play it. Until tonight, that is. Mainly, I think I have been cautious about starting an awesome platformer like this game because of all the other games I need to get through. My whole life, I gave passed on several games for the sake of a platformer. They are more than just a gaming love of mine, but also a huge distraction as well. Jak and Daxter holds up well, even if it is over 12 years old. Of course, the HD remake of it that I played makes it look a whole lot better than I'm sure the original one does after all these years, but that's neither here nor there. The point is it is still a really, really fun game. Am I biased towards it? Of course I am, and that's the joy of it all. Also, it has trophies. So what else could I possibly have to complain about? I won't be dumping significant time into this game going forward, with all the other newer, more awesome games I need to play, but it's nice to know I have a good old fashion platformer to fall back on if that itch becomes impossible to scratch else wise. If you have been reading this little old blog of mine for a while now, or even browse it occasionally, you will notice quite a few patterns I have in my gaming habits. I don't like multiplayer games, my system of choice is PS3, my fondest memories of gaming as a kid revolve around Nintendo games, and I am new to PC gaming. One more trend that proved to be true tonight was that I am a sucker for small, independent different-than-the-norm games, especially if they are cheap or on sale. Tonight, on a complete whim, I picked up Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery on the PS Vita, which was released today on the PSN for a low, low price is $2.99. That's right, I said the low, low price of $2.99. But wait, there's more! It also comes packed in with tons of trophies, an awesome new protagonist from an original IP, great and challenging puzzles and a fantastic art style. Oh, and the story is wonderful, and makes me think I am watching some sort of cartoon - Gravity Falls comes to mind right off the bat. And if you don't know about the show, stop reading this immediately and look it up. Seriously. Ok, I'm not that serious. Don't stop reading until the end. THEN you can look up Gravity Falls. I don't know what it is about these quirky little games, but with such a low price tag, I feel wrong in not buying the games, especially when the look and play this good. Right off the bat you are forced to solve some puzzles, and unlike most puzzle games where you have very, very basic puzzles at the start, this game doesn't hold your hand and makes you think immediately. Another cool thing is after finishing each puzzle, it tells you how many moves it could be done in, and if you happened to meet that mark, you seem to get a trophy for it. All in all, it's just another fun little game for my Vita, to enjoy in short spurts and collect some trophies for it as well. I would rather buy and play 10 of these kind of games then buy one big, AAA retail game. Don't blame me for it, though. Habits are harder to break than they are to fall victim to. Trust me, I've tried. First of all, let's be perfectly clear about this: I know my blog posts have been lackluster the last couple of nights. I can't sit here and pretend like they haven't been. But in my defense, writing blog posts on my phone is harder than it seems. Along with everything else I've had to deal with this weekend, not having Internet has been quite an inconvenience. This should be the last night, however, so bare with me as I struggle through one more post. Tonight, I went out to dinner and a movie with my cousin, our buddy from work and his date. Turns out, she is a huge gamer, which of course led to me doing a little shameless self-promotion and pimped out my blog. She brought it up immediately on her phone, and while she didn't want to read it while sitting at the table, she browsed it quickly and asked a few questions about it. One of the questions she asked was, "What game are you writing about tonight?" At first I told her I wasn't sure yet, to which she reminded me that time was running out. She was right. I mentioned how I had played a bunch of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon today, but wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to write about. Well, here we are. When I got home I played some more Blood Dragon. Clearly, this was the game I was going to write about. So let me clarify one thing. I usually wouldn't consider a DLC episode of a game as a different game for the sake of my project, but this is different. While it seems like DLC, it's actually a stand-alone game that just happens to use the Far Cry namesake. It was developed by the same team, and uses the same engine, but other than that, it's just it's own thing. Blood Dragon is basically an 80's action movie that takes place in the future. It's jam-packed full of neon, cheesy one-liners and over-the-top EVERYTHING. It has lasers, cyborgs, giant mutant radioactive blood dragons, sarcastic AI, and cyborg panthers. Really. I can't make this stuff up anymore. It's plays, feels and has a lot of the same type of game play that Far Cry 3 does, which is a good thing, because Far Cry 3 was AWESOME. Now just take that awesome, skin it in neon, add a stereotypical 80's action hero and you have Blood Dragon. So far, it's great. Honestly, it just felt to do some actual gaming, finally. I'm pretty much all settled in now, and once Internet is hooked up tomorrow ... Watch out. Oh, and hello to my new gaming friend, if she reads this as promised. Good luck with getting your own blog started. Sometimes you just have to take the leap. Finally, Iron Man 3 was amazing, and worth every bit of hype it has received. Let's get down to it. I've spent all day at multiple baseball fields, moving, and putting together more furniture. It has been an exhausting weekend this far, mentally, physically and emotionally. I'm still grumpy that I don't have Internet, but I did get my gaming situation all set up. So, because of that, I'm just going to give you a bunch of photos for tonight's entry, and call it good. I played Zombie Tycoon 2: Brainhov's Revenge. It's a tower defense kind of game. I think that's what you would classify it as. So without further adieu... Today I played the fun game called "Moving." I moved out all of my belongings from my old house and moved into my new apartment with my cousin. Aside from just moving, however, I also had to go to Ikea and pick out, buy, haul around and assemble a bunch of new furniture. Despite having the day off and a three day weekend, everything I did wasn't exactly my idea of fun. I didn't even get my game systems all set up for crying out loud. No Internet until Monday and no TV until next Friday. So what's a guy to do? Play his portable gaming system, of course. So tonight, in between building a nightstand and putting clothes and stuff away, I played a little Patapon on my Vita, which was actually an old PSP game that I got for free on my Vita thanks to the amazing PS+ membership. It's a fun little game. It's a rhythm game, and one that requires sound to actually participate. This was hard because my cousin was watching Halloween 2 super loud. I made it work, however, because that's how I roll. You have to push the buttons in rhythm to get your characters to march on into battle, escaping enemies and recruiting new soldiers along the way. It's a fun little game, but not one that would hold my attention longer than a level or two. Maybe I'm just too tired, though. I mean, really, that furniture wasn't going to build itself. I'm tired. Mentally, emotionally and just physically tired. But alas, my pursuit to play a game every day must push on. So today, I played a little game called Stacking. I played this game when it first came out a few years ago, but never went past the demo, and that was on the Xbox. Thanks to my love for trophies and an awesome sale the PSN had a few weeks back, here I am, revisiting a game I only sort of liked in the first place. Oddly enough, I think I may like it more now, and I'm not sure why. It's not like I didn't like the game for any particular reason, it just didn't grab me as much as I thought it would when I first tried it. I loved the concept of it, and the quirky game play and the unique ideas within it, but I just got bored with it. Maybe the demo didn't allow me to dig further into the game than I needed to. I love the idea of jumping around within the game and taking over the body of each nesting doll that you come across, along with all the powers and unique abilities of each doll. It's mainly a puzzle game disguised as a 3D platformer/adventure game, where you need to find the correct dolls and have the correct interactions to advance the story. Yes, there is a story, and it's pretty clever and engaging, but it's no BioShock Infinite or anything like that. The characters are neat and I enjoy discovering each new doll. Because it's all mostly open world, you are encouraged to come back after and do clean up to find more dolls and of course, collect trophies. Trophies. That's what it's all about. I have pretty much became a full-fledged trophy hunter. At least I haven't started playing really bad games yet for the sake of trophies. I've never been into the musical games that were all the rage the last few years. Despite my unhealthy love for peripherals, I never fell victim to the Rock Band/Guitar Hero craze that swept the country. I thought DJ Hero might have been that game to finally drag me in to the depths of pretend instrument gaming, I never spent enough time playing it to give it a fair shake. You see, I'm not what you would consider to be musically gifted, which is problematic when trying to keep rhythm while pretending to play plastic musical instruments. I guess my fear of sheer failure and humiliation kept me from ever putting much stock into the genre. So when this little PSN exclusive came out, based around beats, rhythm and your ability to make all those things come together in video game form, it had me worried. Would I like this, despite my musical ineptitude? Well, I gave it shot back then, and I loved it. Half the game is comprised of platforming, where you collect notes throughout the level to complete the beat for that stage. No musical talent necessary, just uncanny and unflinching platforming skills, especially when it comes to the challenge levels. The other half of the game is the level editor, where you build your own levels with the beats you want. Within that mode, there is Beat School, where you have to recreate small samples of beats perfectly, figuring out where each note goes on the music sheet. It takes a keen musical ear to figure these out easily, but with enough struggling and guessing, even someone like me can figure them out. What a sense of accomplishment it is to. And that's why I played tonight, to go back and mop up a handful of silver trophies associated with Beat School DLC that I downloaded a while ago. Honestly, if it wasn't for all those awesome trophies, I probably would have quit on the Beat School levels a long, long time ago. But hey, for the musically gifted, they are probably the best part of the game. For the musically challenged though, like me, don't worry. There are PLENTY of guides available online to help you through the Beat School levels. You know, if you're in to that sort of thing. So it's crazy to think that this is the last double-digit of the blog, as we have officially reached 99 on this crazy whirlwind of a year-long project. I wish I could say I played a bunch of games today and I have an amazing blog to write, but alas, the real world has kind of slowed down my gaming. Today is Tuesday, however, which means new games and the PSN store update! Since no new games came out today that I know of, I turned to the PSN store to pick up a new game. Actually, because of the awesome PS+ service, I received a free game as well, but we'll save that one for a later date. Tonight, let's get to the good stuff - Guacamelee! In buying Guacamelee!, I received both versions of it for both my PS3 and my Vita, thanks to the continuously awesome cross-buy promotions. At this point, despite the issues the Vita has had, the cross-buy feature of several games have made it an amazing handheld system. Sure, they aren't making as much by giving away games for free, but seriously, is there any better way to reward and thank the Sony fans who have invested in both systems? So anyway, tonight I played Guacamelee! on the Vita, only because of being portable and me not being able to console game again tonight. It is a super fun, stylish game from what I have played so far. It's a beat'em up platformer, with beautiful and engaging graphics and art style, fun and delightful music and a certain charm that isn't easily captured in games these days. You must remember though, this game comes from the same studio that brought the Vita one of its standout downloadable titles at launch, Tales From Space: When Mutant Blobs Attack. DrinkBox Studios knows what they are doing when developing these oddly charming Vita titles, and it's refreshing that Sony is not cornering them into just the Vita market, by putting this game on the PS3 as well. They deserve all the recognition they can get at this point. I love collecting things in game, which this game has plenty of. I love the Metroidvania style of game where you are free to go anywhere on the map as long as your abilities/weapons/tools allow you to, and if you don't have the proper upgrade yet, you can always come back and explore the previously blocked-off section, I also enjoy quirkiness and unique humor, and this game oozes it. If you have a PS3 or a Vita, or both, go buy this game now. PS+ members even get a discount on it this week, making it even harder to resist. Go support the great indie studios, folks! Sorry in advance for making this a somewhat brief post, but I don't know how much time or mental energy I will have later on, so it's this or nothing. And since "nothing" isn't really an option, you'll just have to deal with it. Because y'all love me, of course. Anyway, i played a little bit of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken today on my PS Vita, mainly just to clear my head and try to focus on something else other than real life problems. I played this game a little bit on my vacation to Disneyland, and I kinda of liked it then, and I kind of liked it today. It's a 2.5D platformer, as the kids are calling this kind of genre these days, where it's not quite 3D but it's more than the standard, flat 2D experience. You play as a chicken, whom from what I gather, has a serious bone to pick with an army of other chickens and birds, who are stylized a bit to look kind of like Nazis. Bold move, but effective in making them clearly the enemy of the game. In actuality, the game feels and reminds me a lot of Shank or Shank 2, if you are familiar with those games. It's actually quite violent too, considering it's a lot of bird-on-bird violence. More so than I expected, I guess. It's not a bad thing, it's just a thing. So yeah, it's available on the PSN for both the PS3 and the Vita, although I think they are bot exactly the same game, but quite similar. They aren't cross-buy either, so watch out for that, since the PS3 version came out long before the Vita version did. If you're looking for a shoot'em up 2.5D platformer, especially if you have a thing for poultry, this game is right up your alley. |
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February 2014
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