Post-Move Quick Fixes

So yeah, moving really puts a kink in your gaming schedule. It's also really hard to play enough of one game to come up with a full post for any one in particular. To get back in the habit, here's some quick fixes for what I've been playing:

 

Man, I really want to like this game, mostly because of its status as a classic, but its getting really hard to keep playing this and even finish it with how bad its getting at times. I've never had to check a FAQ for an FPS game before, but I have to do it near constantly with this one. One moment, you're supposed to avoid a mined area, and the next a guy with a shotgun near one means 'clear it out'. There is almost no intuitive 'you should go here next' going on, and choosing wrong could either waste supplies (some of which you -need- to keep going), or get you some more depending on your luck. The movement is still slippery, and yet at the same time I keep getting caught up in corners. To top it all off, the game itself uses a weird memory load procedure, and thus my playtime is entirely limited to when it starts to get jerky, then I have to either quit out and reload, or just stop for the night. The bugs are really getting bad, I'm at a point where you need to cross in front of a sniper, so obviously you're supposed to toss a grenade up into his nest (his netting for some reason is bullet proof). Except A) Gordon tosses like a girl and its near impossible to get any distance on the grenades, and B) A total of 8 grenades went in, didn't explode due to some bug. This is about where I stopped.

This is almost entirely a guilty pleasure now, considering how long I have to get to 'complete' status and how random any progression is. Still very fun and challenging though. Trying to get through the challenge mode so I can have some more options in the main game. As with all rogue-likes though, I feel bad playing them because it is never definite progress. Means the game is truly fun though.

I actually beat this game a long time ago, but 'beaten' for it is only beating the Elite 4 the first time, and there's so much more to do. Over the past two weeks, I basically beat all the Kanto Gym Leaders, beat Red (the hardest match in the game), and re-challenged the Elite 4. That leaves re-challenging the gym leaders, which is a pain due to them only being available to get their numbers at a certain time...then you can only challenge them again at another time. I may just sit for an evening and screw around with the DS clock so I can finish it. Other than that, need to snag all the legendaries and I can call this complete.

To this games credit, its a near perfect mobile game experience. You can pick it up, complete one or two missions, save, put it back down, and when you next pick it back up you really don't have to remember where you were. I'll do a larger one on this one later because there's far more to cover, but essentially they improved on everything from the first game, removed a lot of the annoyances, and made the class system more intriguing (and way less broken). Still some small little quibbles, but I've been enjoying it. Mostly doing sidequests, I -think- I'm almost finished with the story, based on the quest list.

I actually try not to mention this one, and I'm kinda avoiding doing a full review since so much has already been said and its constantly changing still. I do have to say though, I love this game. There are minor quibbles, but I do truly enjoy booting it up, killing some monsters, having shinies drop (even if they end up not being upgrades), then logging out without any requirements to log back in. I put it down for a month or two, picked it back up recently, and had no problems swinging back in. I think its going to be a 'pick up at patch to see whats new' for most people though.

Daily Review: The Binding of Isaac

Daily Review

The Binding of Isaac

System: PC (Steam)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Beat the game for the first time with Isaac, know I still have way more to go.

So my friend recommended this to me a while back, but I didn't pick it up till the summer sale had it and the DLC for cheap. Picked it up today, and it was refreshing to play a rogue-like again. That is basically what this is after all, sort of a Legend of Zelda / Twin Stick Shooter / Rogue-like hybrid. Very fun, and at the same time difficult, but never unfairly so, which is a good balance to strike. The unlockables keep coming at a steady pace, so you're getting new items or characters for the dungeon consistently, and each time you beat it you unlock something new.

The gameplay is solid, though it takes a bit to get used to 'nudging' your bullets off center with movement. There's also little description for the items, so you either have to hit up the wikia or figure out what they do through trial and error (and some you really can't). Still, it is based on rogue-likes, so that is to happen, the trial and error gameplay and finding a style that fits you is part of the genre.

The main thing that might (and will in the case of Nintendo considering it for the DS and turning it down) turn people off is the visuals and the story. Piles of feces, tortured children, gushing blood, bosses that are taken from rather unsanitary body parts, the whole thing feels very juvenile even if most of the story and characters are biblical references. You can see the fact that the designers were doing flash on Newgrounds before this, it shows through easily in the game. The game itself is still coded in flash, so I had some slowdown issues for an otherwise pretty mundane game, and I know others have issues with making it look pretty and not have slowdown, even on high end PCs. I still recommend playing it full screen with as high of a resolution as you can, it makes the game play easier when you can see the bullets.