The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

RedLynx makes games that I never would have expected to enjoy. However, one might recall how much I loved Trials 2. And I did love it! Would I have paid full price for it? No. But it is a damn fun little game. So when I heard that RedLynx had put out another game, called Monster Trucks Nitro, I was intrigued. It looked like a game that worked on the same basic control ideas as Trials 2, but put them in more of a racing setting, in order to, perhaps, lessen frustration and maximize feeling like a badass. I wanted to try.

But for $20 bucks? No way.

Then, last weekend, Steam had a “Bone-breaking Racing Package” that had both Trials 2 and Monster Trucks Nitro for only $4.50. That was a much more palatable price to try out Monster Trucks Nitro, and hey, I’d get a free copy of Trials 2 to give to Brer or something! So I bought it. Unfortunately, it is apparently only Valve games that do the “gift your extra copy” thing, and my extra copy of Trials 2 has gone completely to waste. A shame. But Monster Trucks Nitro is still pretty well worth that price of admission.

The game was pretty well exactly what I was expecting: It is a more casual, faster version of Trials 2. You accelerate with up, reverse with down, and lean yourself back and forward with the left and right arrows. You race down crazy tracks, which start out mostly as time-trials, but soon become as tricky as some of the stages in Trials 2. Along the course are Nitro canisters, which you can pick up and then deploy with Control for a boost of speed to help you up ramps, over gaps, etc. Much like Trials 2, it’s a fantastic podcast game, and it looks really nice, with weird crazy physics as you crush cars and slam into piles of tires to push them out of your way, while being on a 2D plane.

Still, you can tell that Trials 2 has been around longer and has much more support. The amount of levels in Trials 2 is pretty staggering. There are quite a few, and they continue to release downloadable level packs. Monster Trucks Nitro is still fairly new. While I have no doubt that they’ll put out more levels, I’ve almost beat all of them already. Granted, I think there is also something to be said about how long it takes to defeat a Trials 2 level as opposed to the easier, more casual Monster Trucks Nitro levels, but it is slightly disappointing. I don’t feel like I got cheated or anything, however.

As it is, for 5 bucks, I think that Monster Trucks Nitro is a great purchase. However, by the time you read this, it’ll probably be back up to $20, which is kind of a ridiculous price. $10 would be justified, but $20 is just kind of crazy. I’d wait for another sale, and then pick it up. But I’m having fun with it, and that’s what matters.

When I last talked about GRAW, I was a little pissed, as you can tell. The game still is a pretty glitchy, horrible mess. On a lot of missions, Brer and I will get into a co-op game, and then fall through the world geometry and have to restart half the time. It has crashed many times. It’s just pretty badly put together. I keep being told that GRAW 2 is better in every way, but dammit, it’s still $20, and I had GRAW. So that’s what we’re playing.

There are plenty of problems outside of the glitchy-ness, too. There is a really small selection of weapons. There’s only like 6, and several of those are extremely situational. There’s no respawning, so when you die, you’re dead. This actually makes two players the optimal number, I think, because if there are AI partners and you die, you take over for an AI. So playing 2 player basically makes you have two extra lives for your team. Still, it’s not really optimal, especially since when you’re playing co-op games, there are no mid-mission checkpoints. So unlike playing them in single player, you can’t save in the middle. You have to complete the entire mission in one perfect run. This means you never complete missions unless you’re some sort of god or something. I mean, we’re playing on easy, and we only got close to beating our first mission the other day, and we still didn’t pull it off.

Still, I can’t deny I’m having a good time with it. I wasn’t sure I would. Brer is a very controlling perfectionist, and past games that are his games that we’ve tried to play co-op, I kind of hated because he was basically treating me like a little smarter AI partner, you know? We work alright in Left 4 Dead and Killing Floor, because they’re very arcade-y in a way. You have to use strategy, but you’re mostly running and gunning, and everyone is yelling out strategies and having to change them on the fly. I mean, I enjoy my games a bit more on the arcade-y side in general, where people go down with only a few shots, like in GRAW, but where you can take many, many more, which GRAW is not like. You can easily get ambushed and die before you even see there’s someone there. That’s the kind of gameplay Brer likes. I thought that, because this was his game, it would probably end up with him working in that controlling, no fun for me way.

But I think Brer either decided he wasn’t going to do that so I would enjoy myself, or the way I play made him change his gameplan, but he just decided to play extremely aggressively instead of slow and steady, and we clicked very well. His aggressive is my normal pace in such games. So as we started pushing forward, we really started clicking together as a two-person team. We’d call out enemy locations. We’d split up the jobs, with me doing most of the sniping work and Brer handling figuring out where to maneuver and ordering the AI around and whatnot. Even though we haven’t beat a mission, I still keep finding accomplishment in those moments when we are working in perfect harmony. It’s pretty damn awesome when it happens, and the more we play, the more it happens. It’s fun.

There is also one thing that GRAW did so well that, when I realized it, it blew my fucking mind, and that is the aiming. If you hold down the “look through scope/iron sights/aim” button, then when you release it, you go out of aim. If you tap it, then it toggles you in and out of it. I personally hate toggle aiming, having been trained the other way through so many console games, but I know Brer hates the “hold down” aiming. There are times when both are useful, but normally you have to chose. The method in GRAW is so fucking seamless that I was toggling sometimes and holding others, and it took me many, many sessions to realize what it was doing, and only because I had recently had conversations about having to set that up in Killing Floor. Bravo to GRIN for that bit of control decision. Every shooter with that kind of aim button should work like that.

Still, I don’t know how much I can recommend the game outside of a neat control thing and that I was having fun with it. Co-op can make anything significantly more fun, and I don’t think the game would be very much fun, at least to me, without it. I mean, I don’t have any interest at all in the game’s “die constantly, memorize enemy locations and move super-slow” gameplay outside of co-op, and the co-op really doesn’t work that well. You’d probably be better off getting GRAW2 for co-op, or anything, really, if it’s as fixed as I’ve been told. Still, it’s got me interested enough to wish for Steam to discount GRAW 2 and Rainbow Six: Vegas and Vegas 2 down to $10 so we can try those co-op as well. Hell, if Steam wanted to have some sort of GRAW 2, Vegas 2, HAWX discount bundle, that would make Brer’s co-op day for me to pick up, and I’d love to.

TL;DR: Co-op is Fun.

Hey, I finally completed the latest Wallace and Gromit episode, The Last Resort! Just in time to get the next one and not complete that one in a timely manner, I imagine.
How was it?
Well, it was definitely an episode of a Telltale adventure game, I’ll tell you that much! Which basically means “entertaining, but not really hard or anything.” Which is just fine with me. Here are some impressions which I am now realizing are kind of disjointed, but oh well.

I still know why I have to move Wallace and Gromit around with the WASD keys, which is so they can make the game more controller-friendly so they can sell it on XBLA, but it still kinda frustrates me. There seems such little reason for it, especially since I’m mostly just moving to get stuff into the screen so I can then click it, and they walk to it… it’s kind of awkward. But nothing that ruins the game or anything.

In past Telltale series, the first episode has always tended to be a little weak, and you could tell it was in the second or third that the series hit its stride. I honestly don’t think that’s the case for this. There’s nothing wrong with The Last Resort. It was a fun time. But I can’t say it was the leaps and bounds better that the second Sam and Max was over the first, or Strongbadia the Free was over Homestar Ruiner. It did benefit from having the supporting cast introduced, as you had to use what you knew about them to make them happy at the little resort, and then fiddle with them during the whole “murder but not really” mystery section. So I guess it’s a benefit there.

I think I’ve talked previously about how Telltale tends to put its games into three acts: An introduction, a center bit where the locations are slightly changed from the introduction, and a “boss” or grand finale. This episode actually had four acts, and just flat-out stated them as such. I think the game was all the better for just admitting it was in this format, and it worked very well.

Wallace and Gromit’s puzzles seems to depend a whole lot on “pointing towards objects for inspiration.” This is not a bad thing, and honestly, it feels a bit unique. There was a section in Baddest of the Bands which worked like that, (though with an extremely Homestar bent) but they are really all over this episode, in particular, and it stood out. It really seems that Wallace is the kind of person who looks around desperately for inspiration on what to say. These kinds of puzzles can be entertaining, and Telltale does them well. But they’re also extremely easy to solve, because it’s completely a multiple-choice test. At least in most Adventure game puzzles, you don’t know all the possible solutions. If you get stuck, you can attempt to take every item and use every item on everything, yes, but there’s always the possibility that there’s another item out there you didn’t think of using to let you think outside the box a little. There is no such thing in these puzzles. I basically fail them once, figuring out what exactly I’m doing, and then solve them the next time. I suppose I could try every fail case for funny dialog, which would be funny, I know, but once I solve a puzzle I just want to make sure I’m right, so I never do. Oh well.

…I can’t think of anything else to say about the episode, so I bring the disjointed rambling about said episode to a close. Seriously, any of Telltale’s stuff is completely worth your time, and Wallace and Gromit is no exception. The Last Resort is good. I just, perhaps, think a lot or too much about my vidjeo games. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

This weekend is Free TF2 Weekend! Not that I care, because I own the game. But it also marks the release of the Sniper vs Spy content pack! This includes new equipment and achievements for these classes but, more importantly, it marks a huge-ass change in how these weapons are unlocked, via a tiny little comment in the update:

You now find new and old items as you play, instead of through achievements.

This is HUGE! This is exactly what I’ve been wanting! The last thing I wanted to do was to grind out achievements just to play with the new toys. I’ve been waiting for this for a long while.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite as I had hoped. I don’t know if it’s a bug, like this suggests, or what, but it is insanely random and unsatisfying to get these weapons. I would have preferred some sort of experience system, or something where I knew every moment of play I put in was earning me stuff. But it certainly didn’t feel that way. Valve has finally put forth an official statement about it, which suggests that, yes, it is tied into how much you play, and that they are going to tweak it. We’ll see.

Still, I played TF2 ALL DAY. For the first, oh, 4 hours, I got nothing. (which is why I also think it’s a bit bugged) Then, shockingly, I got the Dead Ringer. I knew the moment I got it that this was lost on me. I’m bad enough at the Spy normally. But goodness, the Dead Ringer COMPLETELY changes how you play. Only being able to cloak when damaged completely negates a lot of what I had figured out that worked with the Spy, like cloaking to mislead people that you went down one path, and then going the other. I have no idea if the Dead Ringer is going to be optimal or not. I’d say not. But it is fun to try out.
Soon after that, I was granted The Axtinguisher. This weapon, too, is completely wasted on me! It’s effective, no doubt, and I could see someone who was skilled with the Pyro putting it to great use. But damn, I can’t even think of a time when I would switch to the Axe with the Pyro. If I was out of flamethrower fuel, I guess? But the Flamethrower is such a Melee weapon, and I’m so uncoordinated that switching to the axe as soon as I ignite someone just isn’t going to happen. Still, it looks completely bad-ass when you wield it. So it’s got that going for it.
Then, I got another Dead Ringer. Thanks, Valve! That’s… useful. Still, if that blog post up there is to be believed, eventually I can give it to someone. I appreciate such Heart-y abilities. And I will totally give it to someone.
The last thing I unlocked was probably the item that will get the most use from me: The Sandvich! I Om Nomed on that thing quite a bit. Granted, never in a situation where it actually helped. But, you know… there’s an achievement for eating a lot of Sandviches! So I had to chow down, you understand! I had no choice!

Overall, though I got annoyed at the drop system (though not anywhere near as much as the hardcore players. They were used to achievement grinding for a few hours and then enjoying their toys, and were pissed that they weren’t getting the new stuff) I had a lot of fun playing it solid for so long. The main reason was Arena mode. Apparently this got added with the Heavy update or something? But it’s basically TF2’s take on Team Deathmatch, and man, it is PERFECT. The sides are always balanced. Rounds rarely last more than 2 minutes. Whoever draws first blood gets a crit bonus. It is a ton of fun, and I can’t really see me going back to more traditional TF2, in all honesty. It’s all I’ve played since I found it. It even gave me an added appreciation for the Pyro. Once I was unhooked from looking just at capture points, suddenly I “got” how the Pyro worked. I even had a completely badass moment where I ran into a huge group of five guys and Critted them all. It was so sweet.

But yeah, hopefully they get the drop system tweaked. I’m glad they went away from the achievement method, but this isn’t what they should have either. Still, Valve are experts. They can handle this shit.

On the other side of the Tower Defense genre comes Pop Cap’s Plants Vs Zombies. First off, don’t buy the game from that page. It’s only 10 dollars on Steam, and it’s not like Steam is having a sale. This originally seems a bit weird, but I actually think that it’s kind of genius on Pop Cap’s part. The people who buy Pop Cap games from Pop Cap are casual gamers. Moms and such. They’re used to paying 20 dollars for a casual game, and they don’t even know that Steam exists. Meanwhile, over on Steam are all hardcore gamers who are very, very willing to come out and tell you that your game is overpriced. This way, Pop Cap has its cake and eats it too: they get the added revenue from the casuals who would spend more for a new Pop Cap game, and they also get more revenue from the hardcore, whom this game is clearly aimed a little more towards, even if it’s accessible to anyone.

That out of the way, Plants Vs Zombies is totally worth your time.

I had just bought Defense Grid, and was playing it, and having a good time. But Twitter, that damnable twitter, was going on and on about Plants vs Zombies, so I decided I should try it out. I downloaded the demo, which is timed for an hour. The hour went by like THAT. I found myself very unhappy that the demo had ended. I dropped my 10 bucks right there. It was even nice enough to still have my save file when I got the full thing.

Whereas Defense Grid is as classic a Tower Defense game as you could make and still have a full-featured game, Plants Vs Zombies is almost tower defense in name only. All of the tropes of such games are basically gone. There are five rows on your front yard. Zombies pick one of these rows and walk straight down them. If they get to the end, then they walk inside and eat your brains! Which is bad, of course. So you have to plant plants to stop them. The vast majority of plants only affect things on their row, so you have to basically keep up the fight on five fronts. You can only take a limited number of seed types into any one level (It starts at 6, and goes up as you play until you get to 9, the max) and depending on what you pick, you can really vary your strategy. Will you set up lots of walls to slow them down, and have a minimal number of attackers? Will you hide mines and other such traps all over the place? Will you attempt to slow or debuff the zombies to lead you to victory? There are 49 different plants in the game, I believe. There is a lot of variety, although you’ll likely be using Peashooter variants for a lot of levels. Also, a lot of plants are only useful during night levels, or during the levels when you’re defending the pool in your back yard, etc, so you don’t always have a full arsenal.
One plant you always have to bring, though, is the Sunflower, (Or Sun-Shroom, during the night) which gives you sunlight to power your army. Most Tower Defense games give you resources for defeating enemies, but in this one, you must farm them with Sunflowers. This means you’re devoting valuable space on your lawn to these sunflowers where you could be planting attack plants, so you have to strike a good balance. You also have to actually click on resources to pick them up, which can help make the game additionally hectic.

The real stars of the show, though, are the Zombies. There are a ton of different Zombie types. You get to see the basic spread of zombies before you start a level so you can pick your seeds correctly, and you really do need to choose wisely. Are there a lot of Zomboni drivers? You’re probably going to want to bring the Spikeweed plant that stops them in their tracks. Zombie Dancers? It would be a good idea to bring a Cherry Bomb to take out the hordes of backup dancers they summon. They’re all playing off of simplistic jokes that anyone can enjoy, but they still have plenty of personality, and the game is good at throwing completely off-putting mixes of zombies just when you develop strategies to take out certain types. I often found myself going “I have to take care of BOTH of those?” and having to rethink my strategy. I liked that.

This game is no Peggle, though. As I mentioned earlier, this game gets really hectic really fast, and can get really difficult. Peggle is accessible to everyone, no matter what the difficulty. It is always fun, even when you’re failing, and you can take it at whatever pace you wish. While Plants vs Zombies does a really great job training you to understand what you need to do and how you need to do it, starting you off nice and slow, there’s no question that the fast pace and real-time nature of the game are going to make the more casual gamer fail more often than perhaps they think they should.
Still, if you’re reading my silly blog, you’ve probably played a game or two in your lifetime, and if so, you can probably handle and love Plants vs Zombies. It’s just an amazingly solid game all around. I used to look down on Pop Cap, like many did, for just repackaging expensive versions of common casual games. But I think that after Bookworm Adventures, Peggle, and now this, they are proving that not only can they appeal to a casual audience, but they can also make some awesome games. They’re pretty well sold me on checking out whatever they come up with next. I’m extremely happy with my 10 dollar purchase of Plants vs Zombies. If you’re at all interested, please download and try the demo. But, fair warning: You will probably get hooked.

A long time ago, I tried the demo for Defense Grid: The Awakening. The game was right, but the price was not. I would drop 10 dollars on that easy, but 20? Nah, I said. I could wait.
The wait paid off. Soon it was on sale for 5 bucks on Steam, and I snatched it up.

There is nothing particularly unique about Defense Grid. It’s a tower defense game to its very core. There’s nothing particularly new or exciting about it. It looks nice enough. The controls, the first time you boot up the game, seem a little weird with how the camera follows your cursor around and you select things with the mouse wheel, but after you get used to it, it works really well. But it’s nothing you haven’t seen before if you’ve played a Tower Defense game. They try to make it more interesting by having this computer AI who talks to you, and who delivers a “story” of sorts, and while that’s a great idea, he’s lacking just enough personality and variety of things to say to really make him shine. Still, he’s not annoying either, so I can’t complain too much. But this attempt at making the game something other than “generic tower defense” game falls flat.

Still, this is almost the definitive version of Tower Defense. The levels in the game run the gamut of Tower Defense variants, from the one set path, to large mazing endeavors, to two streams of enemies and everything in between. The levels have a good amount of difficulty. They’re very hard to perfect, but if you just want to play through them and beat them, you shouldn’t have too much trouble, even if you’re only a casual tower defense fan like myself. I’m nearly through the “story” mode, and I’ve only gotten stuck on two levels, and I beat those on the second or third try. If you’re a fan of challenge, though, many challenge levels unlock as you beat things. There are challenges that limit the amount of towers you can build, that keep you from upgrading your towers, and many others. If you want difficulty, you can find it.
The towers themselves mostly fill standard roles. You have the tower that slows but doesn’t deal damage, the generic, cheap tower that doesn’t deal much damage but hits ground and air, a slow-firing cannon that hits both ground and air, missiles that only take down air, a flamethrower tower that hits groups up close, etc. The most unique towers, and ones I haven’t seen before, are the laser tower, the concussion tower, and the command tower. The laser tower deals constant damage to enemies that pass it on the ground, but also inflicts a DoT on them, keeping them taking damage for awhile even when they’re out of rage. The concussion tower basically sets up an area of pain. It’s constantly attacking for minimal damage and hitting every enemy in its range. The command tower is really odd, and I have no idea how you’re supposed to use it well, but basically, it increases the money you get from creatures that die in its range and reveals cloaked enemies.
Speaking of enemies, they also have a bit of variety. You actually have two damage types from your towers, ballistics and heat. Slug-throwers like guns and cannons deal ballistics damage, and are best against creatures with shields, as they take less damage from heat. Flamethrowers and lasers and the like deal heat damage, and are best against quicker enemies and so on. Resistances to different damage types is something I can’t remember seeing before. I remember seeing enemies resistant to ALL damage, but not this. It works pretty well. I soon learned my early reliance on laser towers wasn’t going to work, and I needed to mix it up.
The final piece of the puzzle is the orbital laser. You get this during the story mode, and it’s mostly what keeps the game from being balls hard at points. Basically, by holding down the L key, you fire a laser that blows up all enemies under your cursor. The laser then slowly recharges. This is basically your panic button, which you can use to take out enemies about to leave with your cores (read: lives) so you can survive long enough to figure out why they’re getting past. Enemies you destroy with the laser don’t give you money, though, and the laser recharges slow so you can’t just fire it constantly. Still, it does keep the game from being frustrating, and I appreciate it.

So yeah, this is a pretty solid piece of tower defense fun. The game has like a million Steam achievements, and has obscene stat tracking. You can look at anyone’s Steam profile who has the game and see complete stats on how many towers they built, of what types, and how many enemies they’ve killed, etc. It is completely worth the 5 bucks I paid, and probably worth 10. It’s a well-made vidjeo game. I still think it’s a hard sell at 20, though, unless you are really jonesing for some Tower Defense goodness. But when you can get Plants vs Zombies (which I’ll talk about tomorrow) for 10 dollars, it is a hard sell.

“Hey poetfox! I bet you just got a lot of really cool games!”
Yeah, I did! Look, here’s the new Shin Megami Tensei game! I always love those! Ooh, and look, here’s some awesome Tower Defense games… and I got some Co-op action in Killing Floor and GRAW to play…
“Then what the fuck are you doing? You aren’t playing those.”

You’re right. I’m playing MOTHERFUCKING FREEREALMS.

I decided to boot up FreeRealms, You know, just to try it. It was free! I already had an SOE account. I could just give it a try. Maybe see what the card game was all about… And I tried it, and I went “Woah, okay, this is pretty good. It’s target audience is going to love this. That Demolition Derby is pretty cool, and the combat is MMOesque but accessible… the card game isn’t half bad. Yeah, that’s cool.” I closed it.

But then I went back to it.
And again.
And again.

Soon, I had maxed out the Card Duelist job by literally doing every single card quest that existed in the game. The starter deck they give you is quite effective. In the paws of someone who knows card games, like myself, I had little trouble beating the in-game challenges with it. “Oh well, that was fun.” I said. “Well, I’m sure that now that I have no more card games to play, I’ll put this down…” Then I started leveling Chef… and Brawler…

The game is just really well designed. You can play just one part, like I did with the cards, or you can do a little of everything. In every town, there is always something additional to do, and even if there isn’t, you can teleport to any other town instantly. There are tons of mini-games, including puzzlers and a decent tower defense clone. The combat is just another mini-game. You find an enemy, click on him and say you want to engage, and then you go to an instanced mini-game map where you have a little combat mini-game. If you just want to play Cooking Mama and be a chef, then you never have to fight anyone. You just run right past it. Everything gets you experience in your job, and likely some equipment for that job. For Card Duelist, it’s mostly cosmetic, giving you gear like a cap with your favorite element on it or whatever, but they have stat bonuses for relevant classes, like Brawler.

I both hate and love its business model as well. You can buy “Station Cash” which is 100 points per dollar, and buy things in game. Some, like healing potions, just seem stupid to buy. Some are pets, which you can use for the Pet Trainer job and can show off to your friends. They range from 2 to 4 dollars. You can buy virtual card packs for the card game, which gives you like 12 cards for 4 dollars. You can also “upgrade” and subscribe for a reasonable 5 dollars per month, which gives you access to more interesting combat jobs and more quests and, and this is key for me, gives you one free card booster a month. So if you’re going to buy one pack? You might as well subscribe for a month for the extra dollar.

Anyway, I’m kind of shockingly charmed by FreeRealms. I honestly don’t know why anyone would, say, party up, as it doesn’t seem at all necessary, though I suppose the combat would be as fun in a group as alone, and playing the kart racer and demolition derby games with friends would be fun. But yeah, this is the real deal. It’s obviously interesting enough to entertain me, but it’s still simple enough that a kid would enjoy it which, combined with the cheap subscription price and free nature generally, would make this a perfect game for a parent to play with their kid. I think I’ve told someone that FreeRealms is the real deal. It is. There is plenty to do without paying, and the price for paying is mostly right. I hope it’s successful. This is how free-to-play games should be.

So, on Tuesday, we got to finally play more Dungeons and the Dragons! Huzzah! It had been awhile, but I’m glad it didn’t peter out. I’ve been having too much fun at it. So we all sat down, tried desperately to remember where we were, and set off into the desert.

Our first order of business was to cut down a palm tree for no reason. Ledeinshaft (also known as Guy de Purplopolis in some circles) fucking criticaled that tree! Then all the boys went on ahead while Canadia and I had some girl talk. Then people started to get eaten by burrowing sand alligators. I told them to stop dicking around, we didn’t have room for pets on the Astral Skiff, but noooo, they just kept getting eaten anyway!
The battle itself was fairly straightforward. I didn’t do much, as usual! Cause I can’t hit the broad side of a barn, it seems. We also didn’t pay attention and realize there was a gimmick about the place, but we crushed those lizards anyway. They were bastards.
The battle ended with the last lizard eating me, and Lord Captain Allouishous slicing off his head with me still inside. I had to climb out through disgusting alligator guts! I complained. “But we got eaten too!” they said! “Well, you just got thrown up nice and easy, I had to climb out! Stop playing with lizards!”

We soon ended up in an impressive set piece of a temple. There were tons of guarding spirits about that I could see with my Shamanvision (TM) but they were all untalkative dicks. I told them as such. We headed into the temple of Ioun, where, after wandering about a bit and a equally untalkative spirit helping me to find a secret passage, we managed, in our infinite wisdom, to turn on some robots.
It was then that something odd happened. We attempted to employ strategy. Talk around the table became about how to lead these robots through the passage to pick them off one at a time. I didn’t much like the plan, mostly because Sehanine doesn’t seem like the planning sort of goddess, and she’s MY goddess. But whatever, they enacted the plan. It didn’t work perfectly. The line was broken. But it was shockingly effective. The main enemy got bonuses for being around its minions, so our strategy managed to neutralize that pretty well, after he pushed through our ranks and we worked to hold the rest behind our line. I also managed to, GASP, deal damage! I got a crit with pretty well my heaviest hitter, Spirit Tide. That dealt 25 damage to the target, and 10 damage to all enemies within 5 squares… which was everyone. It was a shocking feeling, actually doing damage. Man, is this the rush Spaeth gets every time he attacks, I thought? But eh, such is the life of the healer.

In any case, we schooled that encounter too, much to Jonathan’s surprise, and we leveled up to level 12. I gained… a not very impressive utility power! I can teleport anyone to switch places with my spirit companion once an encounter now. Useful, but not really exciting. I also get a feat, but I have no idea which one that is. I might just take Paragon Defenses, I dunno.

Still, I hope it’s not another three week or whatever gap before we can play again. Dungeons and Dragons be fun times. I know this may come as a shocker, but it’s true.

I could talk all over the place about what I love about Klonoa, but I’m only going to do one more. The point of this post is this: Klonoa has some of the best video game music I have ever heard.

First off, I mean… just listen to it. Here, try one of my more favorite tracks, Count Three. The mixture of orchestrated sounds with more classical, video game-y sounds throughout the soundtrack just works so well to make music that is definitely for a video game, but is beautiful in its own right. Both major Klonoa games use this same kind of music, and oh, it is so wonderful. I am so glad it’s untouched in the remake.

But mostly, the reason that Klonoa’s music is so wonderful is its use of Leitmotifs. Every physical area in the games has its own musical theme, and that theme is twisted and played with to set various moods depending on what is happening and the plot. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take a listen.
One of the clearest ones in the original game is that of the original piece of music you hear, The Windmill Song. This incredibly happy piece of music is the first you’re hit with when you start playing, in the first level, and it sets the tone of the game as being a happy one, a fun one, a cute one, devoid of any sort of worry or anything of the sort. Then, later in the game, you are rushing back to your home in a race against time to prevent bad things from happening. The song playing then is The Ruin’s Air. Now, when you first listen to this piece, you may not immediately notice the connection, the Leitmotif between them. But eventually, it gets to a very clear melancholy rendition of The Windmill Song, and then you can’t help but hear it within the entire piece. The corrupting of the original song sets the mood strongly. It’s completely awesome.

It’s not always so dramatic, but it’s still constantly used to great effect. In the second game, you find yourself in the amusement park town, Joilant. The theme is happy, and reminiscent of an amusement park, easily. Later, when facing the boss of the place, you hear a mix of the Leitmotif set by the original piece in Leptio, The Flower Clown. The original song fades in and out of much more intense horns and drums, setting the tone for the battle.

I could give examples all day, but hopefully I’m making my point here. Klonoa’s music is good. So very, very good. There are few video game soundtracks I listen to, outside of stealing some boss battle themes, perhaps. I listen to the entire soundtrack to both Klonoa and Klonoa 2 on a regular basis.

I love Klonoa so much! I promise to shut up about it, though. Tomorrow: Something not about Klonoa! Maybe!

I’ve not been shy in talking about how much I love “childish done seriously.” (References: This one, and that one, and that one…) It is the sort of idea that I cannot get enough of, and it’s just one of the many reasons I love the ever-loving crap out of Klonoa.

The visuals in Klonoa are amazingly cute. Klonoa himself is visually appealing, and the main enemy type, the Mu, are completely huggable in their appearance. The cute is only additionally sealed in with the Phanomilian gibberish that everyone in the game speaks. (Though the remake has a dubbed option. I think it’s probably a good move to have one, because it’s more family-friendly that way, but I thank gods that they left in the original voice option, because I don’t think I could stand it otherwise.) The dialog itself is simple and childishly written. The game, from top to bottom, screams children’s game at a glance.

However, anyone who’s played it knows that it is not. It’s easy enough to be played by kids, sure, but the game is very serious and certainly not childish. The plot, while not the most amazing thing in the world, does get quite dark. There are deaths. There are bittersweet endings. Things don’t work out perfectly. These are not things you expect to see in a children’s game. Add to that the incredibly polished mechanics. They’re simple enough that anyone can grasp them, but they are shined to a very adult perfection. Until you play the game a few times, it may not occur to you just how perfect the control you have over Klonoa’s little struggle-in-the-air hover is, for example. You can drop it at any time, though if you hold it the whole time you get extra height. It can save you from a badly-calculated jump, or it can be used to hop off a platform and then back on to get a difficult item pickup, and other advanced maneuvers. It responds perfectly in all situations. It’s not an animation you get stuck in, like it might be in other games. It’s a very solid mechanic.

So yes, Klonoa is that excellent blend of childish feel with serious, adult considerations. It’s rare that a game hits that so perfectly. It’s rare for anything to hit it so perfectly. Klonoa does. Oh yes, it does. And I love it to death for it.