Week 6: Hyrule Warriors & Darkest Dungeon - with guest blurb by Richard Dansky

When I've gotten a chance to play anything this week, it's either been Darkest Dungeon, which I Kickstarted last year, or Hyrule Warriors with the wife. Let's talk about Darkest Dungeon for a bit. I'm just going to steal their blurb from their Steam page:

Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes against unimaginable horrors, stress, famine, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark. Can you keep your heroes together when all hope is lost?

Essentially, your father wasn't happy enough living a life of luxury in a swanky cliff-side estate and decided to dig into the earth, finding a gateway to a realm of evil. Good job, dad! Now it's up to you to recruit adventurers and send them off to their eventual death in an attempt to reclaim the place. The game works on building a large group to select from, and continually cycling them in and out of groups of four, shoveling them off into dungeons to try to get heirlooms and increase their levels. While they're on their adventures, which you control, they'll gain stress, which can give them attributes that change their character. There is a lot to juggle in the game, and it can seem like too much at times. It's also intended to be very difficult, and excels at this. If you want to rush through something, it definitely is not the game for you. They want it to be slow paced overall. They could have some better explanations in some of the menus, but it's Early Access still, so we'll see what they do over time besides add content to it. So far, it's an extremely fun game if you're looking for a Rogue-like that doesn't play with kid gloves.

Now, Hyrule Warriors is a game I'm really enjoying, too. Yes, it's a Musou game. For those that don't know, Musou games are the "genre" that games like Dynasty and Samurai Warriors belong to. Most of them are made by Koei, as it's something they kind of specialize in. You play as a single character and fight against hordes of enemies. In Dynasty and Samurai Warriors, they try to tie into some historical reference material, but that isn't why you play, because they just get ridiculous in that regard. I asked Richard Dansky, Lead Clancy Writer for Ubisoft, friend and former co-worker, to write a few thoughts as to what makes Musou games great. He's responsible for me getting into them, as I didn't really play them much until I kept hearing him talk about them.

"The wonderful thing about Musou games is that they have a very simple goal: Make you feel like an incredible badass. And so when done well, they bend all their systems towards reinforcing that feeling of ultimate mastery. Flying bodies, camera pans, SFX, kill counters spinning like crazy - all of that is there to tell you that you are indeed awesome." - Richard Dansky

And they do a great job of this in Hyrule Warriors, which is a Musou set in The Legend of Zelda universe. Numerous characters to choose from, huge over-the-top attacks, and easy to pick up gameplay make it great to play after a day of work. I don't have to think too hard to make awesome stuff happen. I'll probably finish the main story this week, but will likely continue to play after finishing the story as there is a lot of extra stuff to unlock. Of course, hopefully on Friday I'll be playing Monster Hunter 4. It all depends on when Gamestop ships my New 3DS.


Currently Playing: Hyrule Warriors, Darkest Dungeon
Games Completed: 2
Games Purchased: 1
Net Total: +1

Week 5: Another Final Fantasy Finally Finished

Two games completed in 2015! Hooray!

Seriously, though. I have this terrible habit of starting games and not finishing them, so it's actually nice to see them through to the end. It's not really an outstanding achievement or anything, but it makes me feel like I'm not wasting my money.

So, Final Fantasy XIII-2. What a strange game... From a gameplay standpoint, very solid. I'm a fan of the Paradigm system, and that was here and working very well. Having two permanent party members for the entirety of the game felt a bit weird, but the ability to get monsters and use them to build out the paradigms you had was pretty neat. There were "right answers", by which I mean there were ones you wanted to grind to have, and that's always a bit of a bummer since it doesn't really let you have the ones you WANT to have. 

The story was about time travel and paradoxes and fixing timelines, etc. I watch Doctor Who, so wibbley-wobbley timey-whimey stuff doesn't really bother me, but there were more than a few things that weren't explained very well at all. I'm not going to go into spoilers here, but man they used very theory of time travel that exists. I think. It's confusingly straightforward. 

Overall, it's not going to reside in my upper-tier list of Final Fantasy-related titles. I wasn't compelled to do any of the side content as I didn't really care enough about the rewards or characters to want to stick with them too long. My completed save clocked in at 18 hours, which is apparently not too far off from doing a speed run. Honestly, at 18 hours, I felt it was starting to overstay its welcome. I admit I almost gave up on the last boss with the intent to just watch the ending, simply because I'd screwed up my leveling and didn't realize it until the end, which made the final fight pretty difficult. I gave it another few goes, though, and managed to eek it out. That felt pretty good. In all I give it 3 Red Chocobos (yes that's actually the song that plays when you ride a red chocobo in the game)/5.

Up next, I'm really going to dig into Hyrule Warriors. I've not given that game the attention I've heard it deserves.

Currently Playing: Hyrule Warriors
Games Completed: 2
Games Purchased: 1
Net Total: +1

Week 4: Right Under the Wire

Was watching Royal Rumble tonight, so short post for this week. Still playing FFXIII-2. I'm probably about half finished with it. There seems to be a lot of side content, but I'm really not interested in doing any of it. Fought a boss last night that required a paradigm setup I totally did not have, so I had to spend awhile grinding to get it. After that, I totally face rolled him though. Game is fun so far, but I could easily see it out staying its welcome if I were doing all the side things.

Waiting for a few more update before going back to GRAV. Still really fun, but needs a bit more basic functionality with the base building in particular.

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIII-2, FF Theaterhythm: Curtain Call, Monster Hunter 4 Demo
Games Completed: 1
Games Purchased: 1
Net Total: 0

Week 3: The Longest Journey COMPLETED

So I finished my first game of 2015, which was The Longest Journey. Here is my quick review.

The Longest Journey was released in 1999, towards the end of the traditional point & click adventure game era. For this, it suffers from some very obtuse puzzles, but ultimately the narrative is quite good and pulled me through it. For a game released in 1999, it would still be considered very progressive. Female lead character who isn't afraid to call out sexism, dealing with an abusive household, classicism, and more. I look forward to playing Dreamfall at some point in the future. Four out of Five Guybrush the Dancing Monkeys.

In other news, they announced the release date for Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. February 13th, so I'm going to be trying to finish Final Fantasy XIII-2 before it hits. Depending on which friend I ask, XIII-2 is either great or horrendous. I'll find out myself, starting now. But Monster Hunter 4, that's a game that I will play for a long time. It is just such a satisfying experience, but I'll talk more about that in a later post.

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIII-2, Grav, FF Theaterhythm: Curtain Call, Monster Hunter 4 Demo
Games Completed: 1
Games Purchased: 1
Net Total: 0

Week 2 - Eclectic Boogaloo ( Grav , The Longest Journey )

So what have I played this week? Well, I'm about half-way through The Longest Journey. The narrative is really great, but it does suffer from being a very old-school point and click adventure game. Preface, one of the games that made me want to design games was The Secret of Monkey Island. Guybrush Threepwood is one of my favorite characters of all time. This doesn't mean that I like all the design decisions from the games though. Specifically, I've never been a huge fan of the classic "Well, no idea what to do now, let me try combining every single item in my inventory" dilemma. It may have had some strange, endearing quality when I was a kid, but now I'd prefer to get through the narrative with puzzles that are a bit more logical than "use the rubber duck to hold the clamp open and put it on a string so that you can then fish out the key." I'm still going to finish, though, because I am intrigued and do want to get to Dreamfall and Dreamfall Chapters.

However, I did buy another game without having finished one. It's called GRAV, and it just released in Early Access form on Steam. I put a lot more time into this than any other game this week. It's pretty great thus far. We built bases, danced around fires to regain health, found crashed ships and overrun science labs, built really derpy armor, built better armor, and much more. I've found it incredibly compelling thus far, plus I can run my own server. Some pictures are at the bottom.

I've also started a portable game to play both in bed and when I'm not at home. However, this isn't one I purchased, it's one I already had. I'm not really sure how I'll judge when I've completed Final Fantasy Theaterhythm: Curtain Call, but I'm sure I'll when I consider it "done." Probably after playing every song at least once. So far I'm enjoying it.

Currently Playing: The Longest Journey, Grav, Final Fantasy Theaterhythm: Curtain Call
Games Completed: 0
Games Purchased: 1
Net Total: -1

(buy Grav, everyone)

Week 1 - New Year

I've decided I try to do too many things. Last year, I signed up for a 52/52 movies/books challenge, and that failed miserably. Not because I don't like watching movies or reading books, but because I also like playing video & board games on top of spending time with my family & friends. So while I do enjoy all these things, I realize that I need to focus, as when I spread out among all the things I really don't get to do enough of any of them. Spending time with the family isn't going to go away, ever; and neither are video & board games, so I'm going to prioritize those this year. Some might scoff at this, but it doesn't mean that I'm not going to read, or that I'm not going to go to movies, but I have a serious backlog problem with games and this year I plan to deal with it. Well, at least parts of it. I have no delusions of clearing up the entirety of it, but I need to make it better.

I've enacted some rules on myself for this year when it comes to video games.

1) I Can Only Purchase a New Game if I Have a Positive Completed Number
What I mean by this is that, with the exception being getting a game at a great price for pre-ordering via my Best Buy Gamers Club or Steam/GMG sale, with each game I purchase I have a "credit" for which to buy a new game. Any of the ones I get as deals take this "credit" into the negative, with a max of -3, which is a totally arbitrary number I picked but will stick to. As of now, I'm completely even with 0 purchased and 0 completed in 2015.

2) If I Can't Decide What to Play, I'll Ask Something/Someone to Tell Me
Generally, if I get a new game, that should be what I make my current active game. As I mentioned above though, my backlog is pretty epic, with many games that I haven't completed really making me a bad person. I'm using Backloggery to keep track of things, and while this isn't extensive, it's a list of games I have that I WANT to complete. Here is my backloggery page http://www.backloggery.com/piratepwnsninja
Part of the issue with having such a huge backlog is that I get decision paralysis when choosing what to play. To kick things off, I used Backloggery's random game picker to tell me what to play. If people that read my blog/post on my FB have recommendations for what I should be playing, they can send them to me.

3) I Will Update My Blog With Progress
Each week, I'm going to post about what I played and/or completed. Maybe multiple times a week, maybe not; but at least once a week.


So this is my post for Week 1.

Currently Playing - The Longest Journey
Games Completed - 0
Games Purchased - 0

spotify:user:piratepwnsninja:playlist:0nFQgy7vyehVjMa7cfLX1B

Shadow of Mordor - A Record of Events - Part 1

Talion is an angry guy. I mean, you would be too...family killed by the forces of Mordor, banished from death. I'll guide Talion through Mordor to avenge his family and break the curse, and I'll record my adventures here.

This is something I want to do specifically for this title, as it uses a procedural system called the Nemesis system to create and maintain the Orc hierarchy. I want to see just how different my adventures are from others. I won't go a ton into the gameplay itself, unless it is specific to the Nemesis system. This is my Shadow of Mordor experience.

The first captain I reveal is Gimub the Slaver, with a power rating of 3. He seems like a jerk. He apparently hopes that a slave tries to escape soon so that he can make an example of them. The second, Ratbag the Coward with a power rating of 5. I am going to guess everyone starts with these two. Ratbags list of weaknesses shows why he is a coward. Fear of Ghuls, Graugs, and Morgai Flies. Wuss. And he wants more respect. 

Hah. I'm going after the slaver first.

I was just attacked by Ukbuk the Merciful... jumped me on the way to the slaver. He could have killed me...he let me live.

Along the way, I uncover Intel on the following captains:

Flak the Large - Power rating 5 (sick of waiting. Ready for combat)

Gluk the Funny One - Power rating 5 (sounds like he has nasal issues, feeling vexed about recent Ghul sightings nearby)

Ogbur the Shadow - Power rating 3 (plotting revenge against an Uruk who decided to support a rival Captain)

Gorfel Blood-Axe - Power rating 5 (hungry and looking for meat to chew. Or a bone. Anything, really.)

Isgha Blood-Hand - Power rating 8 (feeling like he deserves much more respect)

Tuka Beastmaster - Power rating 5 (wondering if he's hungry enough to eat some caragor bait)

I took out Gimub the Slaver. His archers never saw me, and my diving tackle into him from above gave me a leg up I never lost. Ukbuk showed up again right after the battle. I stabbed him in the back and he retreated. Just because he is merciful does not mean I follow suit.

Flak paid the price for being in my way. He joins Gimub on the list of captains slain.

I've entered an Orc stronghold in search of Ratbag. While there, I interrogated an Uruk and found out that Gluk is vulnerable to stealth finishers, as well as mounted beast ones. He gets pissed at the sight of Graugs, can quick shoot arrows, and blocks attempts to leap over him. Joy.

Ratbag says he wants to help. We'll see. He's told me about a captain named Goroth Caragor Tamer. This is humorous as he is vulnerable to mounted beasts and has a fear of Caragors. I cannot attack him with my arrows, as he is invulnerable to ranged attacks. He also has a posse and a pretty powerful melee attack. I ended up freeing a Caragor, leaping onto it, and riding it directly into Goroth. He didn't even have time to run. I made the Caragor eat his face. Ratbag replaced him as a higher ranked captain. Meanwhile, someone has replaced Gimub. I should find out who...

After the Caragor incident, Ogbur the Shadow happened to be having a feast nearby. If I'd allowed it to resolve, he'd have grown in power rating. I figured it was best to take him out while he was still weak. After a volley of arrows and some fisticuffs with his feasting party, it was down to Ogbur and two other Uruk. I was weak, but refused to run. That's when Ukbuk showed up again. This guy. He really knows when to make an appearance. Instead of running, I was actually mad enough at this guy that I decided to fight it out. Fueled by rage, I fought them both to within an inch of their life. They both attempted to flee, and I knew I could only kill one. Ogbur lives to fight another day as Ukbuk's head roll around near my feet.

Yeah, this is pretty awesome...