It Looks To Be Another Update Of Sorts

I'm only kind of at a loss as to what to talk about today.  I wasn't able to post this last Friday (8/9/2013) as Conklederp and I had some friends (Vorlynx and Mills Co.) visiting from Nor*Cal all last week.  There was a robotics conference up here in Portland and there was some river floating and blackberry picking that had to be done as well.  We also started the process of making blackberry wine (adapted recipe to follow) and now our kitchen smells like fermenting fruit, which in turn brings me back to my time working for R.H. Phillips Winery during the 2006 harvest season.  It's the kind of smell that would make you think some fruit somewhere has done something it shouldn't have, if you didn't already know where it was coming from.  Goodtimes.

I've (still) been playing a lot of Infinite Space, (still) and have acquired some more "abilities" such as having a docking bay for individual fighters (a la Battlestar Galactica's Colonial Vipers) which cause minimal damage to the opposing fleets flagship while slowing down the rest of their fleet; realizing that icons above each of the ships in your fleet correspond to weapons and each have their own max and min range; melee battles are a pain-in-the-ass and play like a constant game of  roshambo; ship modules of a certain type (such as bridge/red modules) can fit in other areas of the ship as long as they don't say they have to be in a specific location in the description; "Grus" is a word used in the game that is substituted interchangeably for both "shit" and "fuck" and any other variation thereof; the game is pretty mature, considering it's Teen rating, such as the main character cutting off a bad guys arms to get information and a main character shooting a bad guy at point-blank range in the face out of frustration/fear/anger.  There's a lot going on in the game and a lot of space to do it in, sometimes almost too much space.

I also played a bit of Portal 2 co-op with Vorlynx, but only so much before I had to leave for work (which was also before he had finished the single player campaign).  I've also put roughly six more hours into Torchlight, 2 hours into Half-Life and maybe an hour into Penumbra: Black Plague.  Torchlight is more-or-less just dungeon crawling fun that I continue with after Half-Life becomes too frustrating with having/needing to save after every encounter with enemies and then reloading every time I feel I've wasted too much ammunition or taken too much damage.  I want to play more of Penumbra: Black Plague (partly so that I can write up my First Impressions, but also) because I really liked the first game in the series, I like the company (Frictional Games) and I want to see how the story will end.  And semi-most importantly, I want to play it in the dark for maximum un-nervingnous.

I also went through a couple of the demos that I have on my 3DS, most successfully were the two demos for Style Savvy which will make their way to Demo Time in the coming weeks.  Yes, stop laughing.

I haven't kept up with video games in the news and what's been going on in that world.  I haven't played enough "older" games to warrant another Emulator Hour.  I kind of feel like a bad person, except that I don't.  Boo hoo me, I know.

With all the PAX timbits floating around, I'm very sad that I will not be able to attend PAX Prime this year (as I haven't been able to since PAX2010) due to work scheduling problems.  It doesn't help either that I live 600 miles closer than I did when I was able to attend, but things are in the works (loosely) so that I will be able to attend in the future, although I vaguely recall making a similar statement last year around this same time.

Oh hey look, The Bridge is on sale.  Time to go and take care of that.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Wonders Need Time

First Impressions: Infinite Space (DS)

Infinite Space is a game that came out back in 2009, developed by Nude Maker and Platinum Games and published by SEGA.  I recall finding out about the game from an article in the December 2009 issue of Nintendo Power.  The glowing praise from the article coupled with seeing Vorlynx play hours on Eve Online and explaining game mechanics (despite my general dislike of MMORPG's), I really wanted to play Infinite Space.  

Being the person that I am, I naturally waited too long before picking the game up and it seemed to fall into relative obscurity.  I was able to find it on eBay, but the frequent "RARE" or "Out of Print!" tag that went along with the game's title always seem to drive up the cost of the game.  While living in Northern California, any Gamestop that carried Infinite Space always seemed to be just far enough away that made the idea of travelling 100 miles round trip, just too damn far.  For a while I'd given up ever trying to locate a reasonably priced copy of Infinite Space until one afternoon I was in a Gamestop up here in Oregon and happened to see a used copy for ~$12.  I snatched that up faster than something that snatches up things really fast.

Presently I have put in 4h38m of play time and 6h21m of game time.  Why the discrepancy?  Because there have been times when I've been forced into combat and didn't come out alive, which was usually 20 minutes after having saved.  I also started the game twice.  The first time was shortly after I brought it home and played for about 30 minutes.  A couple of weeks ago I came back to it and rather than try and figure out what I was doing, I just started over.

Right now in the game, I really feel like I'm playing a video game version of Firefly that was done better than a licensed Firefly game could pull off.  In general terms, you are the pilot of a spaceship that you purchase after hawking a family heirloom.  As the game progresses, you come upon new ships to purchase/acquire and are able to establish/build your crew by assigning them to positions that they are best suited for (each character has individual stats such as Engineering, Command, Medical, et cetera).  I am travelling from planet-to-planet looking for work from bartenders.  Thankfully my ships are refuelled/repaired every time I dock with a station while orbiting a planet free of charge, otherwise it would be too much like Firefly.

One thing about the game that stuck in my mind was that it apparently had a very steep learning curve.  Like the harmonica, it's easy to learn to play, but you'd better learn quickly or you'll find yourself in a battle of the bands against John Popper if you're not careful.  Or if you haven't saved in the last 30 minutes.  This has happened to me a couple of times.  Each time you come across a planet, you have the option to save.  While travelling to other planets, celestial objects, you have a chance/risk of running across hostiles.  Most of the time you have the option of battling x number of ships or escaping.  A few times I've been forced into battle against people I am assuming are pirates and I cannot escape.  Each time was following a battle that I was able to win although suffered plenty of damage to my ship, thus my ship was destroyed along with the money and experience I gained from the previous successful battle.

That's the thing with this game, you have to pay attention.  During the battle sequences, you may be battling three other vessels who are all equipped differently and have differing ranges of fire.  The battle screen is set up as such:

The vertically slashed area at the top shows the position of your ship (green bullet shape) to the enemy ship (yellow /green/red bullet shape) that you are currently focused on (which is selected at the top of the bottom screen), regardless if the ship you've selected is the closer of the x number of ships to you.  The green/yellow/red meter shows which type of attacks you can perform on the ship you've selected, but only if they are within range; if you're not in range, you can't attack.

Within this linear space, you can move your ship forward or backward to put yourself within range or move yourself out of range of the ship that you've selected, all the while keeping in mind that the ships that you're not focusing on fighting can still fire at you if you are within their range, which is not displayed.

At the point I am at in the game, I do not have the special "Spcl1" command or the "Melee" option available to me.  In fact, I just learned "Command 2" which allows me to have more than one ship under my command while in combat.

As I look this over, I can see that I would still have a lot to cover, even in a Full Review and I may have to break that up into two parts, like I did with The World Ends With You posts.

The last thing I will bring up is the music.  The music itself is pretty good, about what you would expect from a science-fiction outer space RPG.  The sound quality though seems a bit lacking.  The music and sound effects often sound like there is a layer of static in the forefront.  I only really notice this staticiness when I'm playing the game around people and I feel like I have to apologize for the strange noises emanating from my non-phone-gaming device.

So yes, I am currently very happy with my purchase of Infinite Space, even if it was published without blast processing.  It's a very fun space RPG that is consistently reminding me of Firefly, and even if Kaylee isn't my chief engineer, at least I haven't come across any Reavers.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

She Screams In Scilence

Water, Water Everywhere. . .

It now happens to be that wonderful time of the year again.  Not a time that only comes once a year, but one that happens over and over and over again.  And this, happens to be one of those times.  It's the time between finishing a game and picking up a new one to play.  I just finished The World Ends With You and a "Full Review" is on it's way and now I'm trying to decide, not only which game to play, but which system to play this unchosen game on.  We'll list the top contenders:

PC

Dead Space:  I've played about 30 minutes of this game about a month or so ago and I'd like to keep at it, but not because of the impending Dead Space 3 release on the horizon.

Penumbra: Black Plague:  Having finished the first game in this trilogy, I want to continue the story.

Anna:  A game that I picked up during Steam's Winter Holiday Christmas sale.  The trailer looked interesting and the game looked fun, despite some of the negative reviews.

I Am Alive:  Giving my like towards most things post-apocalyptic and that Steam had this game on sale, I did do the purchasing thing, but have yet to do the playing part.

DS/3DS

Dragon Quest VI:  I finished DQV a while back and I really want to play this and then play Dragon Quest IX.

Scribblenauts Unlimited:  As mentioned in my previous post, I played SU for about 30 minutes just to get a feel for the game, and because I just bought it and it arrived in the mail.  I might be able to get away with playing this on the side and not devoting chunks of time as I normally would with another game.

Infinite Space:  A game released by SEGA that I'd been on the lookout for for a number of years and only recently acquired.  A game, as far as I understand, where you can build, outfit, modify your own spaceship that apparently has a pretty steep learning curve, which is always a fun/frustrating challenge.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box:  I've played the first game and thought it was as much fun as I'd heard.  Puzzles are awesome, except sliding box puzzles and how the game explained why you had to do puzzles at every step was pretty smart.  Part 2 is calling.

PSP

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together:  I bought this game around December 2011, played it for an hour or so and then relinquished my PSP to Conklederp so she could play Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.  I really liked of what little I played and I really want to continue.

Silent Hill: Origins:  I started playing this game for an hour or two and I think I got myself stuck.  This was before I realized that I was supposed to kill every monster on screen and running away is a legitimate strategy.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta:  I really liked the first PSP game in the God of War series (although maybe I should try and defeat the final boss first).

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona:  I started this game about I don't know how many months back and got stuck/lost when I was supposed to go somewhere and I couldn't find out where the building was in which quadrant of the city.  I didn't look online as I thought it was too early to revert to using Gamefaqs, but I'd like to try again before deciding to abandon the game.

So as you can see, I have a problem, very much in the First World category.  I may also have a problem with buying games and not playing them fast enough.  Or, I just happen to like games that take a lot of time to complete in lieu of shorter games like Super Mario Bros. which I can (or at least used to) complete multiple times in about an hour.

Let the voting begin.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

All In All, Chad's A Good Guy

The Eternal Dilemma: To Buy Used or New?

This is a topic that will get people fired up on both sides.  Side A hates the idea of buying used games because it takes money away from the developers and puts it into the hands of Middleman Stores.  Side B loves buying used games because of their reduced price.  I like to consider myself as part of Side D.  We'll skip Side C for the moment, as they're probably on their lunch break.

Side D.  I want to purchase games as new products.  I like having a way of telling a game company that I like the products they're putting out and the stories they're telling.  Sadly, this isn't always feasible as games cost money.  And not just any money, typically $30-$40, at least for DS and PSP games.  PC games can average $40-$50 for a new game.  Being an adult with financial responsibilities (gas, car insurance, rent, food, phone, electricity, car maintenance), there always isn't a lot left from my paycheck to go out and buy a $40 game.  For this reason, I wait.  I'll wait for the game to drop in price or to think, "You know what self, I will go buy that game!"

Here's the second problem, after the whole spending money part.  Waiting.  I like to wait at least six months before buying a game, although, honestly, it usually ends up being at least a year.  For some games, the wait is even longer for any number of reasons.  Such was the case with SEGA's Infinite Space.  I first read about this game in issue #248 of Nintendo Power and thought it looked and sounded pretty awesome.  One of my roommates, Vortlynx, had very much been into EVE Online and a space building/exploration game for the DS sounded pretty awesome.  Even with the comment about the game having a "steep learning curve" wasn't a deterrent.  With Infinite Space, though, I apparently waited too long.  The games sales didn't do very well, but was received well by critics.  It then became hard to find at Gamestops and I never saw it at a Target.   Eventually, I checked Amazon and have had prices set pretty consistently at $74 for new and $23 for a used copy.  Buying from eBay is the same as buying used and at that point I was still somewhat hoping to find a place that had a new copy for under $30.  Gamestop's website has a new game for $34, but it's not available online and their "Pick up @ store" function is unavailable.  Which is why, last month, I settled for a used copy from Gamestop, as I was able to find one that was within 100 miles.

Another example, is that I currently want to purchase Castlevania 64: Legacy of Darkness.  Now, there's not going to be any new copy of that game that Konami's going to see any profits from.  Any new (shrink wrapped) game is going to be priced out the ass by some collector who's more interested in making money than actually caring about games being played.

It basically breaks down to, I'll buy new if I can at the time I want to buy the game.  If a new copy of the game is unavailable, I'll try to hunt it down in a way that the company still sees that I like their products.  If I still cannot locate a new copy, I'll try to find a used copy.  So, until the day that game companies start sending Dr. Potts and/or myself games to review, we'll both have to settle for purchasing games from any one of multiple stores (online/physical).

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Go Ahead And Toss My Name Around

P.S.  Side C got back from their lunch and their response to this topic is, "Meh."