Pirates and Plonking Along

 So my husband surprised me this Christmas with a new graphics card for my zombie of a PC. As a fun surprise, a copy of Assassin's Creed IV came with the card. I loaded it up, just to see what all the fuss was about. I finished the first AC a long time ago, and made it about halfway (?) through the second one. Then we moved, and my husband unplugged most of the consoles, and .... we never really plugged them back up. So I never finished the second one. I never touched brotherhood or the third one. Okay, I didn't touch the third one mostly out of principle. Anything involving the American Revolution is usually painful. Well, a lot of history I find painful. Err, not history, the visual representations of it. Not that the AC games ever claimed to be accurate representations of history.

Ohmygosh. Getting back on track. The first thing that jumped out at me was that this game loves to randomly capitalize words. In every. Single. Line. Of. Dialogue. I will refrain from making any too many doge jokes, but yeah, many capitals. Such grammar. Wow. Seriously though, every single line of dialogue has these capitals. Even when you are outside of the Animus.

Then there's the matter of the controls. They are clunky, loose, and in some places a bit counter-intuitive. Granted, I have not played an AC game recently, and I suppose if I had that things would be different. Easier, perhaps. But that shouldn't be how a game is designed. A game should pull you in and be so smooth and fluid that you forget you are even playing, instead of frustratingly bashing your hips and knees against the crates and ladders and other climbable paraphenalia because ... not everything is climbable. Or you're doing something wrong. You are probably doing something wrong.

Other than that though, well, let's just say the game is gorgeous. I find it odd that so much of the intent behind this game is to run quickly and jump up walls and dodge and roll and hide here and there - but all I want to do is amble slowly along, taking in the sights. It doesn't make any sense for the game to be about speed and running blindly ahead when so much of the beauty of the game lies around you.

Then there's the characters. Yes, I am only just past the intro, but I am really loving the characters - the interaction between Edward and this guy ... whatever his name is. Yes, I realize I can't make a very strange argument for characters when I can't remember his name. But it was the interaction between them that caught my eye (ear?). Maybe we can attribute that to writing and voice acting more than characterization itself. But look! More Random Capitals!

In the end though, I'm determined to enjoy it, despite the clunky and sometimes vague controls, and consider it the only tropical cruise I'll probably ever have.

Spritely Happy Fun TIme: Making Something of Myself

So today in Terraria I decided I was going to kill a boss. I had already killed the eye of Cthulhu about six times, and he was getting boring quickly. So I went off in search of my dungeon.

I found it, and the dungeon guardian got me. Funny, no one mentioned him. After some research I learned I needed to defeat Skeletron before I could safely get into the dungeon. Only one problem - I couldn't defeat Skeletron. I tried several times before I decided I was undergeared.

I went after the Eater of Worlds instead, at my husband's advice. I killed the Eater of Worlds after a couple botched attempts, and then, just to see if I could, I killed him again. By then  I was feeling pretty spunky, so I went off to attempt Skeletron again.

It was rough at first, but once I got rid of his hands, he was almost as boring as the Eye of Cthulhu. So he is dead, and my new favorite thing to do is die in the dungeons, mobbed by lots of angry skeletons. I am on a hunt for enough golden keys to open all the locked golden chests in the dungeon in the hopes that I will find a shadow key for the few shadow chests I've seen scattered about in the hell regions of my Terraria world. No luck yet - three golden keys and no shadow one :(

Even though I haven't found my shadow key yet, I exited Terraria feeling pretty good about myself and my accomplishments - that is, if it's okay to feel good about achievements in a pixelated world. Oh, and I have Spectre Boots now. Very happy face.

It's good to have goals, right?

Sly Cooper Returns!

One of my favorite game series has always been the Sly Cooper games. Well, let me back up a bit. If you've gathered anything, it's that I have a fondness for platformers in general, but Sly has always had a place in my heart. There's just something about that slinking raccoon that makes me smile. The trilogy of games were all released several years ago for the PS2, but were just recently re released on one disc for the PS3. My wonderful husband got it for me as a surprise gift, and for the past few days I've been reliving the stories I enjoyed so much back when I first played the games.

You play as Sly Cooper himself, a dashing raccoon thief, and sometimes (more often in the later games) his cohorts. The games are cel-shaded, but the series is one of the few games I have found that manage to tie the uniqueness of the graphics together with a reasonably sound story. 

Granted, the game series is geared towards younger audiences (throughout most of the dialogue this is readily apparent, but there are odd snippets here and there that lean towards an older listener), but that doesn't mean the average adult gamer can't get a kick out of playing the series.Some sections of the game can be fiendishly difficult, and with the 'one death and you have to start over' rule, this only intensifies the feeling of having to get it right the first time. There are some power-ups you can collect to temporarily override the one-death rule, but at the most you have two or three chances to get it right before you have to start over again. The other games have different versions of this, but as I haven't gotten to those games yet my memories are still a bit hazy. Stay tuned though, because when I get to the second and third games I will be sure and post more!