Gaming with GADD

Week ending 6/17/14

For those of you who have never read a GADD article before, my name is Matt and I have a serious problem. I suffer from Gaming ADD, and I can not sit still and dedicate myself to a single game no matter what. This article is a chronicle of my struggles with GADD and what games I bounce between every wee. For those of you who have read GADD before, all four of you: Holy shit you guys, GADD is back for real! I think I should be around for most of the summer at least, but I’m not sure how much longer after that. So in-between my outages I was back home for about 2 or 3 weeks, but since I knew it was only a few weeks, I didn’t bother to write GADDs. However, in those 2 to 3 weeks, a big change occurred as I joined the current generation and bought myself a PS4! I finally saw enough games either currently out or on the horizon that I found it worthwhile to pick one up. Also, as I touched on in the E3 writeups (go read them now if you haven’t already!) I finished The Last of Us in those few weeks. Sorry for those who wanted me to finish it in the article, but I couldn’t stay away. Even if the end sequences did feel a little too video game-y, I fuckin loved the experience I had with it.

Wednesday

NBA 2K14
Ok, you guys don’t want to hear me talk any more about basketball video games. I know this, so I won’t go too in depth with this, however I will say that the PS4 version of NBA 2k14, while at it’s core is still a really solid basketball game, is also kinda complete fucking bullshit. They decided to add an actual story to the MyCareer mode, which sounds good at first, but once you get into it you start to realize how little what you do actually matters and how much is just completely scripted. Also there are some annoyances in the gameplay itself, with the biggest one being where if a player steps out of bounds while being guarded, 80% of the time it’s called a blocking foul on the defense and it makes no damn sense! Despite all this, I’m still playing way too much of this game, and my Suns (who I got drafted to) are currently struggling to stay in the 8 seed at around the 55 game mark due to their horrendous 1-11 start (again..completely freakin scripted.)

Trials Fusion
Trials is another one that I’m sure joins the pantheon of games you don’t want to hear me talk about any more. This is a Trials ass Trials game, where the only change to the core mechanics was the addition of tricks. There are certain stages where you’re scored solely on your trick score, but you can trick in any stage you want. However the trick system just feels unresponsive at worst and completely unnecessary at best. The actual Trials part of this game is still completely freaking amazing and I still love it, but it just feels like it could be so much more. The leap from Trials HD to Trials Evolution was a HUGE thing, making actual environments instead of just a warehouse and possibly the best level editor in gaming, while the leap from Trials Evolution to Trials Fusion seems almost non-existent. Before I had left for work again I had completed everything through all the hards, leaving just the extremes to beat. Today I went right back into the extremes, instead of warming up on some easier courses, and while that probably wasn’t the smartest plan, I did manage to beat the first extreme with a decent fault rate. I’ll go back to it again at some point and try to do better for sure, but at this point, beating them is enough. Beating one at a time is good enough though, that was stressful enough as it is.

Thursday

NBA 2K14
I know I said I wasn’t going to write too much about NBA anymore, but I just got my first A+ teammate rating in this year’s game so I had to put that shit in. 24 points, 13 assists, 4 steals and 2 blocks, but my Suns are still struggling and trying to get back into the 8th seed for the playoffs.

Stick It To The Man
I picked this up when it was the free PS+ game last month, but only got the chance to actually download and play it now. So far I really like it, it’s definitely just a very basic platformer with puzzle elements, but it’s got such a good sense of style and really effective humor, it reminds me a lot of Psychonauts. Basically you play as a guy who gets some shit dropped on his head from an airplane, and it causes him to grow a giant purple arm out of his head that allows him to read other people’s minds (just go with it.) I feel like if I made a Stretch Panic reference, I’d be the only one that would actually get it, so I won’t, other than the fact that I just did. Plus there’s no girls with giant breasts in this game. Chapter 4 introduces the novel concept of enemies, but that still doesn’t make it actiony, you’re still defeating them via puzzle-work.

Friday

Tales of Xillia
If you remember, I loved Tales of Vesperia, even if took me many many years to actually see it through until the end. Then I went on to play Tales of Graces F and fucking HATED everything about it and wasn’t willing to even give it more than a few hours of playtime. Let’s see what side of the spectrum Xillia falls on! One thing that’s different right out of the gate is the choice between two characters, Lost College Kid or Mega Powered Tits McGee. I went with the college kid cause girls are icky and I don’t like playing with them. Oh man, your medical professor in this game is named Professor Haus? There is absolutely no way that’s a coincidence, I’m not sure if I should congratulate the localization team, or punch them in the face. It’s still weird how this game, which came out 3+ years after Tales of Vesperia, STILL doesn’t look anywhere near as good as that game did. But at least this time I can attribute it mainly to not liking the art style as much, as opposed to it just being technically inferior like Graces F was. I didn’t get a chance to actually play a whole lot of it tonight, due to starting it too late and there being a lot of setup before the actual gameplay begins, but my initial impressions of this are way more kind than the Graces F impressions were, since early on I see potential for the main characters.

Saturday

Tales of Xillia
Decided to return to Xillia again today, and you’re already thrust into battle alongside the female main character early in the game, and hooooly shit she’s overpowered. She has to be quickly stripped of her power, because she just breaks the game. Ok well almost as soon as I got done writing that, sure enough the Abilitease ends and she gets stripped of her powers. I wonder if you choose to play as her if she’s still overpowered from the start. I’d imagine so, but I wonder how much different the story is. I’d like to say I’ll find out when I replay it as her but…yeah we know that shit isn’t happening. I kinda don’t like how this game has a FFX-esque grid to level your characters up with, instead of the game leveling them. I’m always afraid I’m going to horribly fuck something up and eventually be unable to make progress because of my bad choices. However I’m already enjoying the combat, because it’s much more like the Vesperia combat, and not the horrible bastardization that Graces F were. I hate making Vesperia comparisons, but that’s what I’m going to be doing this entire time, and of the 3 characters I’ve met so far, the female lead is very obviously the Judy of this game, and the male secondary character that I just met is obviously the Raven of this game. It’s just a shame that the main male character is nowhere near a Yuri Lowell, because Yuri was a fucking awesome protagonist, one of the best in modern JRPGs. This was another short play session simply because I don’t have the time this weekend to devote to video game playing (after all it’s my first time in town in a while, I have to at least pretend to have a social life!) but from what little I’ve played, I really feel like I’m going to like this game. The story hooks are already getting me, and I still find the characters to at least have potential, but not completely likable yet simply because I haven’t played enough yet, so I think I’ll be continuing to play this one.

Sunday

NBA 2K14
Didn’t have much time at all today due to it being Father’s Day, so all I managed to get in gaming-wise today was just one game of NBA. But what a game it was, I got my second career A+ rating, and my first career triple double as I finished with 19 points, 11 boards, 10 assists, 4 steals and 2 blocks. Yeah I’ll take that, thank you very much.

Monday

Mercenary Kings
Mercenary Kings is another game I started playing back when I was home for the few weeks I was home earlier. It’s essentially a Metal Slug/Mega Man hybrid style game, but with an item crafting system. I’ve been playing through this with my usual co-op partner that I’ve written about in previous GADDs, I feel as though we’re probably about 30-40% of the way through the game, and we are going through every damn level the game will allow us to play, not just doing the rank-up missions when they come available. The game also has par times you can try to beat, but those are fucking INSANE and I have no desire to ever try to get those. The game is really fun, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s drawbacks. The boss enemies have a really annoying habit of running away into other boss zones, and seem to just do it whenever they feel like it with no rhyme or reason, and the game has a habit of reusing the same boss enemies far too often. However we’re both really into this game, and I don’t envision a scenario where we don’t wind up eventually beating it.

Tales of Xillia
I was fucking PUMPED when I loaded up my game and went to spend my points in the level-up orb, because Xillia informed me that it DID in fact have an auto level option. I’ll be sure to use that the majority of the time, so I don’t have to worry about fucking myself and not realizing it until 20 hours down the road. I still didn’t get a whole lot accomplished in this game because I keep freaking playing it at 1 and 2 in the morning, instead of starting it at a reasonable time like a reasonable person would. However the game keeps adding extra layers to the combat, making it deeper than Vesperia’s, but not in a way that you feel like there’s just way too much to keep track of and get overwhelmed. I want to keep playing this game because I like what I’ve seen of it so far, but I need to freaking start it up earlier so I can get more than an hour to ninety minutes in at a time.

Tuesday

Super Mario 3D World
That Captain Toad trailer at Nintendo’s E3 conference had me wanting to play more 3D World, so I finally returned to it after probably 5 months away. It’s a really fun game from what I’ve done, but the Wii U is just so damn easy to forget that it exists that I never even thought about going back to it. Only completed world 2 and then quit, because that freakin tablet is just uncomfortable to hold.

Wii Sports Bowling
I don’t even know how this happened. I was sitting there playing 3D World when someone else walked in and saw me playing the Wii and was all “Hey let’s bowl!” I was reluctant because..really? Wii Bowling? But it turns out that it’s actually still a whole lot of fun! I kinda forgot how good Wii Sports was thanks to the landfill of shit that followed after, but man, bowling was a good time, even if I completely suck ass at it now since it’s been years since the last time I played.

Stick It To The Man
Hey, any game that utters the phrase “I don’t like it when strangers pee in my brain” is JUST FINE with me. Completed 2 more chapters, up through chapter 6 and I’m not really sure how much more there is to go in this game. I get the feeling that it’s not super long, so if I dedicate myself to playing some more of this next week I should be able to easily beat it. I really don’t have anything else to add to my comments from earlier, really easy, really simple, but it’s got charm just leaking out of it’s ass.

So that was my week in gaming. I feel pretty good about this, got myself pretty hooked into two new games, while revising some old favorites, and one I would have never guessed I was gonna go back to. As of right now, I have no clue what’s on tap for next week, I’ll try to beat Stick it to The Man, probably play some more Xillia and NBA (even though I’ll try to not bore you too much with that) but other than those? I have no idea. Will I hook up my 360 and play one of the many MANY games on there I still want to beat? I’m gonna go ahead and say probably not, but let’s find out together, on the next episode of GADD!

QUESTION OF THE WEEK:

There’s so many damn games on PSN that I want to buy and start playing, even though I already have too many games now, so I’m gonna leave it up to you, the GADD audience! Which game should I purchase off of PSN? Transistor, 1001 Spikes, Octodad, Child of Light, or pick up nothing and make my way through games I already own?