Snakejake90

As always, potential spoilers going forward

---------- Murdered: Soul Suspect ----------

So, I missed this game when it first came out, completely flew under my radar, and that isn't saying to much. I don't remember it being highly marketed, but that could just come down to me not knowing jack about anything at any given time. Oh well, what do I know anyways? Apparently nothing. Moving on.

This is a fairly new game, coming out in 2014 for various platforms (Steam, PS3, PS4, etc.), and is a "detective game", and I'll cover quotations in a bit. Lastly, it was made by Airtight Games and published by Squeenix (Square-Enix). The game can be broken into two parts, that being the detective aspect and the collector's aspect, both being covered in detail. There is very minimal combat (if you can even call it combat), so that isn't considered.

In Murdered: Soul Suspect, you play as Ronan, a detective working in Salem, currently investigating the Bell Killer, a serial killer who has been terrorizing the area for some time. After the first confrontation within minutes of the start of the came, the Bell Killer bumps Ronan off, shooting him and sending him through a third floor window. Ronan plummets to his death, and this is where the game more or less starts, with Ronan experimenting with what he can do as a ghost. There are various powers at the players disposal You can enter others and Eavesdrop on their conversations, read their mind, look through their eyes, or even influence them by using potential memories to gain further information from them. A young ghost girl named Abigail also appears, teaching Ronan the basics of where you can go and where you can't go. The basic idea behind this is that you can pass through everything unless it is a closed off building (that meaning there has to be an open entrance in order to get inside) and spectral remnants of old Salem, which are fairly easy to spot as they are highlighted in blue. She also shows you how to remove and recreate things, such as old doors to take down or stairs that you can create. Other powers that you have but aren't enabled until certain parts in the game are possession, the ability to poltergeist electronics, and teleportation across short distances. Eventually, Ronan finds a girl, Joy (whom the Bell Killer seemed to be after), who can see and hear him, and he goes about helping her on her quest to find her mother as it may very well help my solve his murder, which will guarantee his access into the afterlife, where he can be with his long since past love, Julia. Along the way, you'll have to solve cases to piece together information and you'll have to deal with demons that look for Ronan, and these are really the only things that can kill you. They come in two forms: Spots on the floor you cannot walk over, or else hands will reach up, grab you and drain your life-force (death-force? I'm not sure), and the more physical embodiment of demons, which will patrol an area, causing you to run around, hiding in designated spots or people, in order to sneak up behind them and take them out. Both of these forms utilize a quicktime event, so I am not a big fan and near the end, this led to MUCH frustration.

So, the main draw to the game is the detective aspect (and I guess the story, which did entertain me but I was never really enthralled in it), and it goes a little something like this. You will come to crime scenes where you need to find out some information to push the plot forward, or just a point where Ronan feels stuck and needs to search for clues in order to aid in his journey. You go around the room, finding various clues at the scene in order to compile a portfolio of sorts in order to piece together what he needs to know. This is where my major problem with the game lies, and this is the main draw of the game, so its a fairly large problem. The fact that, say, you are in a crime scene and you find all the clues in the area and are the told to find the three clues that can fit together to give you information of where to go or what to do, only to have the clues sometimes directly tell you in their name that they are the information. Not even that they have or can let you figure out the info, that they ARE the info. Say Ronan searches for clues to find out where the Bell Killer went, and goes into the mind of a woman who was at the scene and attempts to influence her given the clues he has. Chances are, what will make her think of the Bell Killer is the clue that states "The Bell Killer was Here"!! I don't know, maybe its minor and stupid, as somethings are going to be obvious, especially as you're piecing them together, but it seemed pretty big to me, and caused me to groan quite a lot as I was playing the game. And that's pretty much all there is to the gameplay, there isn't anything else outside of the millions of items to collect oh...

I have very little problem with the collection aspect of the game. Very little. I am a HUGE Banjo-Kazooie fan, so I have no room to talk when deciding if there's to much stuff to gather, and this was actually the most fun I had with the game. There are four side missions in the town of Salem that you can help out with, remnants of memories and fliers that will give you info on major characters, papers that unlock Julia's thoughts, facts about the history of Salem, etc, etc. And in each location, including Salem (which can be considered the hubworld of the game), there are certain items to collect that give briefs stories that happened to people throughout the course of the town's history, usually centering around bodies being found. The only downside to this, I'd say, are the drawings. Screw the drawings. They are doodles done by presumably Abigail that adorn various walls within Salem and the buildings you visit there. But they are near impossible to find by any means and by the end I was running through buildings wall-licking just hoping and praying that the R2 button would flash on the screen so that I could collect it and get it out of the way. The reason they are so impossible is that you can barely see them, and sometimes literally cannot see them at all until you reveal them, but you have to be looking directly at where it is in order to get the button prompt to reveal them, and it gets so anger inducing by the end you just wanna scream and/or look up where everything is located!! Maybe just all games make me angry and I should really just calm down.

If you do all the things mentioned above, you should 100% the game and get all the trophies. I don't think there are any trophies that don't pertain to going through the motions of the story and collecting items.

This game isn't bad, I don't think. In my eyes, it has some really major flaws, but it isn't bad, and didn't really break either, though sometimes the visuals led me to believe it was gonna glitch or crash or both or somethin'. I wouldn't play it again, but I at least like the concept. Maybe I would like it more if you could actually possess the people too, by which I mean controlling them to physically do things. The game would have to be retooled hardcore if that was the case, though, because then it would just be a detective game, as you could leave and enter buildings whenever and wouldn't have to worry about demons. One of those rare cases where making a cool addition would just make it lamer.

Although I haven't been doing blog posts for long, this has still been a long time coming.

---------- Super Smash Bros. Brawl ----------

Stickers are the literal worst. They may look interesting, as do the trophies, but the rarity for sticker drops in this game is just messed up. I was originally going to do this post on Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers, but that'll have to wait, because today is finally the day. After countless grinding in CD/Sticker Factories and doing Intense matches in Subspace with Sticker Drop stickers placed to the max on several characters, I finally managed to do it. The cause of this madness? Falco (Star Fox Adventures). Just that one sticker, but I finally have it, thereby breaking the final challenge box I needed and getting the final trophy that lay inside. AAAAHHHH!

Brawl is a good fighter, even with tripping incorporated. It anger me to no end when it happens, and definitely would have been way better if not included, but I still enjoy the game, and its great to bust out at parties or to just smash a couple rounds with your friends in between homework sessions. I've had this game since about a year after it came out, and have slowly been working on it since. It's key to mention that having played it since then, which is about 7 years now, I'm still only a moderate player (If I could just get the dodge rolls down I might last longer). Yet, I still play it, and unless I'm Olimar, I usually die either second-to-last or last. For some reason he is my main, but I don't argue against it. If you can work it, WORK IT!

In completing this game, all challenges must be completed, through which you can get pieces to the Stage Builder, Trophies for your Trophy collection, Stickers for your Sticker Collection, CDs that can be played on stages, and stages themselves. The challenges span a wide array of tasks, such as collecting Final Smash trophies for all characters, clearing certain levels of Target Smash with certain amounts of characters, and clearing the various modes of the game on varying difficulties, including Intense, the hardest of them. I'm proud to say I finally beat Boss Battles on Intense using Princess Peach. Her side B is fantastic for bosses, as long as you can learn and dodge their attacks, and her levitation and Up B are great for dodging the majority of Tabuu's attacks (but if you don't get good at using dodge roll, you're done for). Characters, in addition, can be gained from secret areas in SubSpace after its completion, playing a certain amount of matches in Brawl mode, or doing various other tasks, such as beating Classic with a certain character. If you like playing this game with your friends, though, you'll unlock a lot of the characters in no time, and you'll surely rack up coins for the Coin Launcher to boot.

The Coin Launcher is a variation of the lottery machine seen in Melee, but in Melee, where there was no skill outside of putting coins into the machine and pulling the lever, in the Coin Launcher in Brawl, you do just that: launch them. By hitting a trophy a certain amount of times, you can unlock, blowing up enemy ships can give you stickers, and keep the rockets from hitting you, or they'll take a decent chunk of your coins with them. It goes without saying that most, including me, like the Melee machine more, because by pumping coins into the machine, the chance of getting something new goes up, whereas you can have literally 9999 coins at the launcher, as I did, and spend hours shooting, without getting a SINGLE NEW STICKER WHY!?!?!

The game is fun, and my friends and I will spend hours playing this game if we have the time, taking turns deciding which stage to go to and changing what sets of items show up during the matches. There are quite a lot of people that like the game Final Destination with no items, in order to fully use nothing but skill I suppose. This is a valid way to play the game, and I've don it a few times as well, but I love the chaos the game provides. The stage hazards, the items, the unfamiliarity that arises when the doors begin to open on the WarioWare stage, I love it all. The only major offense I can think of outside of the sticker debacle I've complained about already, is the tripping. It's even one thing if you trip in a Brawl, it still sucks but whatever, but it keeps many from wanting to even play the game, and it led to me dying during Boss Battles 2 or 3 times on Intense, which is infuriating when you're almost near the end. Now that I'm done, however, I'll restrict my gameplay to Brawl's only, and I can't wait for the feeling I'll get when I see a sticker falling off the stage, and I DON'T have the urge to take a dive for it.

Also, I hate New Pork City. Stages that large shouldn't exist.

MASSIVE POTENTIAL SPOILERS AWAIT!!!!!!

Now that that's out of the way, its unfortunately been a while since I've done a blog entry (unfortunate for me anyways, wanting to have done one at least once a week), and that is mainly down to two things: school, and my playing two games pretty solely. The Witness, which I talk about here, and Super Smash Bros Brawl, again. Finally almost done, one sticker left and I'll have completed the game! But that's besides the point. I have a bit of a break right now, so I'm going to make up for my lack of keeping with my own promises and goals by doing one of these each day for the next four days (so four more blog entries). Let's hope I can keep a promise to myself this time.

---------- The Witness ----------

Oh wow, The Witness. I was surprised when this came out, as maybe I'm just not savvy when it comes to news, but it had been a year or so since I had last heard anything on Jonathan Blow's next step into the gaming sphere. The time and dedication put into crafting this gem, however, are obvious from the get-go. Less than a minute into the game, you can tell that a lot of work had to go into making a game look this beautiful and stylistic. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to talk about the game from the beginning.

So, you start out, appropriate enough, in a long seemingly barren hallway with a light at the end of the tunnel. The first few puzzles of the game show up here, being incredibly simplistic, but by design, as they show you how to interact with the panels you'll be seeing and serve as an introduction to the basics more than anything else. After two to three doors, you finally reach the outside. This is where the talent immediately shines through. So much beauty, the clouds, the sky, the trees, yet most everything is out of your grasp. There are a few more puzzles in your way in order to take down the barrier in your way and progress forward into the landscape. But once you reach it, everything is fair game. Though some puzzles don't become activated until others are completed, the island you are exploring can be visited in most any order, though each area gives a tutorial that can help you in other areas. In addition, the landscape itself consists of puzzles (environmental puzzles), that can be traced for the same screen you use to solve regular puzzles. These complete a set of 6 obelisks that inhabit the island, turning white when all the environmental puzzles on it are completed. Audio logs, which mainly consist of people reading quotes from various famous thinkers and religious texts. These won't really help you with any sort of story, though, as its deliberately vague, so that speculation can run rampant on the "inter-webs".

The puzzles were as difficult as advertised at times, with me actual going through sheets of paper where I would write out various solutions in an attempt to solve them logically. I didn't really know that the separate areas were introductions to different puzzle addition at the start, which led me to much confusion once I had reached the town fairly early in the game. It is a combination of most other areas in the game, so I had no idea what I was doing for quite some time. Not really the games fault in my opinion, more just my own. My real problem came with the discarded panels around the island. I "accidentally" solved quite a few of them before I actually knew what I was doing. Yet again, though, they weren't really a part of any of the main story line-based puzzles, so not too much fault there, and there is a panel in the jungle that some see as an introductory one.

Some of the things to do in the game are, however, down right insane. Not many waiting puzzles, thankfully, but they're outweighed by the duration of one of them, a semi-obscure environmental puzzle found in one of the six movies found throughout the island. The puzzle slowly reveals itself over the course of the film, which is about an hour long. A perfect time to go out for a bite to eat or do some homework while waiting for the game to progress. The talks in the movie are interesting to listen too, but unfortunately for me, the audio on my PC port was bugged with strange delays and audible echoes, making the hour long film more like 3 hours. The audio based puzzles in the game, by the way, were nearly unsolvable due to this, and I had to look a few of them up because of it. Hopefully that can be fixed, because none of the solutions I've found online (such as disabling some audio cards and messing with the Steam launcher) have done anything to help it.

The Witness is a masterpiece, and one of few games I'd say I'll happily go back and play at a later date. The world design is gorgeous, the mystery behind the story (or even just lack thereof) is intriguing, and the puzzles are just infuriating enough to where when you finally get around to solving it, you feel like a genius. I might leave some of these papers scrawled on my desk for people to see when they walk by, because looking at them now, they make me look like I was making some sort of code or solving a mystery. And that's what you feel like you're doing when you play this game. You need to get inside the mountain and see what is going on. I'd love to play a VR version of this game inside one of those giant hamster-balls, just to experience its beauty and relive some awe. But maybe I'll wait a year or so before going back, just so that the puzzles can give me a headache all over again.

It's been a while since I actually completed the game itself, but I've been inspired to talk about this game again after playing through it in its entirety with a group of people on my friend's PS4. As well, sometimes I will probably just refer to it as Grim Fandango, as the games are pretty well the same (as is my understanding).

---------- Grim Fandango Remastered ----------

When I was growing up in the late 90's-early 2000's, most of what I played were the few games I owned for my Sega Genesis and Pokemon on my Gameboy Color. However, I was introduced to the point-and-click adventure games of Humongous Entertainment, especially taking a liking to the characters of Putt-Putt and Freddi Fish. Even though I had trouble with the extremely easy puzzles (being a child and all), I enjoyed them all the same. That was pretty much my only foray into the genre, until the summer of last year, when I was first introduced to Tim Shafer's PC masterpiece Grim Fandango in its remastered form. Ever since, I have been developing a steadily increasing addiction to Point-and-Click games, and I'm spiraling out of control.

Now, its first worth noting that, having never played the original game, I cannot really talk to much about its remastered quality, but after looking into it a little bit, it seems that the graphics have essentially been updated and the game can now be played on all modern PC's. This is welcome, as it was already in 3D, and the screenshots I've seen of the original aren't that bad. You can definitely tell the age behind it, but that's to be expected from most any older game. A change as drastic as Ducktales Remastered did not feel needed.

Grim Fandango spans the course of a four year long epic as we follow Manuel "Manny" Calavera throughout the Land of the Dead on his quest to find Mercedes "Meche" Colomar as he gets entangled in a criminal empire spanning from El Marrow all the way to the End of the World. There are a plethora of interesting characters to interact with and do quests for as you solve puzzles on your journey and make friends and enemies alike along the way. BY far my favorite character is Membrillo, whose depressing attitude and living conditions are just too good not to smile at. He even has the best quote of the game, which always manages to give me chills ("We may have years. We may have hours. But sooner or later, we push up flowers"). Also, the setting of the Day of the Dead is worth mentioning, as it feels fresh and the landscapes are vibrant while still having a somewhat somber and dulled feeling to it, as is typical of most film noir, well, films. It makes its presence known not only through the designs of the character and the marking on there skulls, but also through the significance of every year (or chapter) beginning and ending on the Day of the Dead.

The puzzles in the game, as I expected going in, range from simple just by sheer luck, to absurd by any means. Some areas, such as the entirety of Year Four, I flew through with ease, whether I reasoned things rationally or simply happened into the solution. Others, such as pretty much all of Rubucava in Year Two, left my struggling to understand how any one item related to anything else. I usually am against looking up solutions, even if I get stuck for hours at a time, but I had to look up how to solve the forklift in the elevator puzzle, as I knew to drive the forklift into the hole as it appeared, but couldn't for the life of me understand that there was a lever on the side of the lift to raise it. My bad. I am an idiot.

All that said, Grim Fandango has placed itself within my Top Five Favorite Games of All Time pretty securely for matters as the humor, the settings, the wonderful characters and witty dialogue, Bobby Hill angel, and perhaps most importantly, the music. The sting at the very beginning of the game is so powerful and wondrous that not only do you understand the film noir implications, but you can immediately tell how cinematic the following experience will be. There are even those that argue that it could be made into an animated film of its own, to which I say why bother, the game is already a fantastic blend of the mediums of film and video games. Taking one of those elements out, even in order to produce it on its own, would only detract from it.

I completed these game wholly both times I played it, and both times required two playthroughs to do so, giving me four playthroughs of the game all together. Being the remastered version, it has achievements and trophies on its respective platforms, and all of these have been collected in order to achieve 100% completion. It isn't that hard to get the majority of them either, as you get a lot of them just for exhausting dialogue options with all the various characters that litter the Land of the Dead. In all reality, this is a reward in and of itself, especially in a game such as this, so even if you aren't attempting to get 100% completion, as the dialogue and lore for all the characters carry their own importance. There are others that are a lot more difficult, though, especially when playing on the PS4, as often times for a few of the trophies anyways, I hadn't done alternate actions as the required me to push the square button rather than the x button, which is already difficult as the square button is rarely used in the game as it is. Its just as well I suppose, because most of these can be gotten either through the dialogue or just testing various different item and people combinations and interactions, and if you aren't already doing that in a Point-and-Click game, then you'll have a hard time to beat the game normally.

I'm not the type of person that adds a new "favorite game" to their list every time one comes out that they vaguely like, but Grim Fandango has fixated itself in my top five and I don't see it leaving anytime soon. The wonderful characters, fantastical story, and cinematic feel can only build onto a classic that now has an ability to reach an entirely new generation of people who hopefully will feel the same.

This is the first of any sort of attempt at blog entry, and hopefully I'll be able to continue doing this at least once a week. Even if no one reads this but me, it'll be a great opportunity for me to log games I've played all the way through, almost as a journal or diary, which most blogs are anyways. These are not reviews or walkthroughs, just thoughts and impact. Potential spoilers though.

---------- Pokemon Snap ----------

Though I've fallen behind in recent years (which is actually pretty common for original Pokemon players), I still fondly look to the franchise as a constant source of joy and occasional frustration. Having not actually owned an N64 during its era, though. I missed out on several Pokemon console classics. No "Pokemon Stadium", 1 OR 2, and no "Hey You, Pikachu", which I've come to understand is the greatest Pokemon game ever released. This also means no Pokemon Snap, however I have very recently rectified this by finding and purchasing a used copy of the game.

The game was right up my alley and immediately brought me back to my childhood, mainly that of the character designs and 63 of the original 150 to take pictures of and throw fruit at. Oak's art, which is essentially him standing there and slightly moving his mouth, feels JUST like the cartoon, even with the same voice, though most of the dialogue is done through text. You play as Todd, who the internet says was in the anime, but I guess I just don't remember him. I remember Tracey though. You could play as Tracey. I guessed that would be called Pokemon Art Studio, or Pokemon Doodle or something.

Something I love a great deal of in games is secrets, and there are an abundance in here. Even though they are needed if you wish to complete the Pokemon Report, but some of the tasks are fairly ridiculous. Gyarados was definitely the hardest. I know the mythology behind the waterfall and such, but since you need to run Magikarp ashore at the very beginning of the level for him to even appear there later, I found myself stuck for some time.

In order to complete this game to what I assume to be its fullest extent, which I have been striving to do with all games I own for some time now, you need to beat the best score for each individual course, consisting of Beach, Cave, Valley, River, Tunnel, Volcano, and Rainbow Cloud. These scores are much more difficult than the first appear, but after a few tries and learning the strange things that Oak REALLY likes (Electrode blowing up can just look like a white screen sometimes, but he doesn't care), you can persevere. Definitely the hardest is Mew, the final Pokemon on the final stage. The high score to beat is 420,000, and everything depends on how many pictures you can get of Mew and how close. That' because there isn't a "number of Pokemon seen" multiplier for this stage, as Mew is the only one. Took me several tries, but ultimately, it wasn't to bad. You just gotta know when to restart, and the angle you need to toss things to beam Mew in the head.

This is a great game. Very relaxing and something that I have since beating just sat down to play with friends. It's enjoyable to see the different things you can do with the Pokemon and to see if you can improve upon your best score of any given Pokemon in Oak's report. Overall just a fun time and I'm glad I own it.