Matthew Przybysz
Week ending 1/8/15
Ok the last two weeks have been really light on GADD due to the holidays, but I plan on getting back into the swing of things this week, as I have a whole lot of games to play and not a lot of time to play them in, since I will likely be going back on the road for work in a few weeks.
Friday
Aban Hawkins & The 1001 Spikes
Got a $50 Gamespot GC that I turned into a $50 PSN card, and this is one of the games I got from it. 1001 Spikes is another massocore platformer in the vein of Super Meat Boy, but more forgiving than that. I’ve watched some videos on the internet and been wanting this game for a while, but never was able to commit the money. For a while I was thinking this game was going to be far too easy(compared to it’s reputation) as I easily tore through the tutorial world, naturally, and all of world 1 until it finally started presenting a challenge on level 2-5. Still wasn’t ridiculously tough, but it started to get real at that stage.
Peggle 2
This was also purchased with the PSN card and out of all the Peggle games in the world, this is certainly another one of them! I only played through the first set of levels/first master, but so far it just seems like some Peggle-ass Peggle. There’s a few new optional objectives per stage, but nothing to shake up the formula. The formula isn’t bad, but with this now being the third Peggle game (third? There’s only been regular Peggle and Peggle Nights, right?) maybe it’s time to change things up some.
Saturday
Somehow despite football for most of the day, I managed to fit in
1001 Spikes
Yeah now this game is just getting ROUGH, but that’s a good thing as each time I complete a stage it actually feels like an accomplishment. I should mention that I’m making it harder on myself by trying to get all the optional golden skulls in each level too, but on some I’m just saying screw it I just want to finish these stages. Up through the end of world 3 now. I also played around in some of the arcade modes you can unlock by getting the golden skulls, and I just don’t see any reason for them to be here. They’re just heavily watered down versions of the main game and feel like someone else made a bad ripoff of the main game, but that someone else is the same developers! I don’t understand the purpose of these at all.
Peggle 2
Peggles gonna Peg. I seriously have no idea what to write about Peggle 2 here. I guarantee everybody reading this article knows what the hell Peggle is and there’s just nothing to say about it. “Hey guys! I sure did knock all those orange pegs around! I even got my ball into the bucket occasionally!”
WWE Supercard
I don’t normally write too much about Supercard in here, but I just had to make a note as I just completed my *10,000* match. That’s just freakin ridiculous, why do I play this game so much?
1001 Spikes
Had a second play session in the game today, and I only managed to finish two freakin levels before I had to quit. World 4 is fucking HARD, and I died 70 times in 4-1, so that sapped a lot of energy out of me right there. In certain ways this game is more challenging than Super Meat Boy, in that the levels are around 60-90 seconds long, as opposed to the 15-30 seconds of the majority of SMB’s stages. Also you have lives to worry about. Granted, that number is 1001, and every time you get a gold skull you get a free life and you get a large chunk of extra lives when you complete a full world, but just knowing that the number is there ticking down every time you die just adds to the pressure.
Sunday
1001 Spikes
I HATE THIS GAME AND WANT EVERYTHING TO DIE! I mean, this game is awesome but holy shit fuck this game. Finished the rest of world 4, but only after I died 148 times on 4-4 and 69 times on 4-5. I was just sitting there like a crazy person saying “I am dead. I am dead. I am dead. Yup, dead again. Ok that time I’m just dead because I’m a fucking moron” for EVERY freakin death. This game just does something to your mental health, man. I can’t wait to beat it so that I never have to fucking look at it again!
Monday
Octodad: Dadliest Catch
Holy shit everything about this game is so amazing. Octodad is a game that’s all about frustration with the controls, but in the most hilarious ways. You play as an octopus that has somehow managed to marry a human woman and produce human children, and you just do normal everyday fatherly activities (at least in the first few levels) but it’s made much more difficult due to the fact that you’re a damn octopus! Each trigger controls a separate “leg”, while the analog sticks control your “arms” and I can not tell you how many times I’ve gotten stuck humping a damn wall or with a leg caught under the kitchen table or something similarly stupid. The game part of this is that you can’t let people see you act too inhuman or they’ll start to get suspicious and if their suspicion meter fills you’ll be discovered and it’s game over. I only played through the tutorial and the first two levels, and I’m still laughing my ass off over all the dumb shenanigans I can get into.
Tuesday
Super Smash Bros for Wii U
First off, what a stupid stupid ass name. God Nintendo is so awful at naming stuff lately. Secondly, it’s nice to rediscover that I freakin suck at Smash, although the fact that I’m using the damn tablet for my controller certainly isn’t helping. But, unfortunately due to my current setup, that’s the only option I have for a controller right now. Also, the menus in this game are AWFUL. You have to go to “games & more” and then “solo” to find the list of all the game modes? Why couldn’t that just be on the freakin main menu?! Why is that shit buried so deep?! I mainly just did the special challenges where you have to clear already setup scenarios and played the smash tour mode once. I really didn’t like the new board game at all. It just felt entirely lifeless and by the final fight at the end it already seemed decided before we went into it. I need to spend more time with this game to get used to playing with the tablet so I can make a better decision on it though.
Wednesday
1001 Spikes
Played a few more levels, but only a very small few. Still in world 5 and I JUST. KEEP. DYING. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I like games that do this to me? It’s like a sickness I tell ya! But it’s a sickness that I’m determined to beat at some point, no matter how much sanity it costs me!
Super Smash Bros
Getting a bit better using the tablet, although I still managed to get lost in that awful fucking menu after booting the game up. For some reason I found myself using Captain Falcon a lot today, maybe he’s a good noob character? I sure as shit don’t follow Smash enough to know the tiers. Did some Master Orders, where you pay a certain amount of gold and are given a choice of fights, each with their own cost and their own reward. You can earn trophies, songs for the soundtrack, new moves for characters, equipment for a Mii character and other stuff like that. After a few games I found I had all sorts of shit for my Mii, so I decided to make a Mii fighter, although I don’t think I’ll EVER use him. Haven’t gone through the regular Smash Bros one player mode yet, because I’m enjoying playing with all sorts of other tweaks on the game instead. Isn’t that what Smash is all about? Making it as dumb and crazy as possible? Why would I want to go back from that? Also, if I can go off on a mini-rant here, what the hell is wrong with the “serious” tournament Smash Bros players? Why the hell would you want to ONLY play on the most boring level and remove all the items from the game? What the fuck are you doing?! Stop trying to turn Smash Bros into a fighting game, IT’S NOT! It’s a party game where you just so happen to fight each other! Do you hate fun? Is that why you turn off all the items? I just don’t understand the reasoning behind that scene at all.
Papers Please
Had a fairly long session in Papers Please today by my standards, as I played through either 5 or 6 days. It was actually rather free flowing and not anywhere near as stressful as normal, even though the game continues to add more and more stuff to check and find ways to slow you down. However maybe I didn’t find it as stressful because I made the decision to just say screw it and take almost every bribe that was available. I ended up getting a nice little bank due to the bribes and something else story related, enough to upgrade my house to section 7 living. Then…I found out the hard way that when your supervisor makes a request, it’s maybe a good idea to give him what he wants. But looking on the positive side, I managed to see my first of the 20 possible endings! Also, I don’t think I mentioned this in my GADD writeup last week, but after GADD a few weeks ago Lucas Pope himself contacted me (YEAH! I GET A NAME TO DROP!) and let me know that I was mistaken about there being an aspect where you can control the newspaper, and that I was in fact confusing it with Republican Times, one of his other games.
Thursday
Didn’t get to play anything as I went out of town to watch the Sabres/Canes game. I still don’t know if I’m going to root for the Sabres to win or lose.
Alright, now this felt like a good return to form, even with missing the last day of the week. I actually enjoyed everything that I played this week and didn’t feel a sense of dread once! That’s the first time that’s happened in a few weeks now. 2015 is already looking up for gaming! No shut up, just let me believe that for a second, don’t go digging into my easily broken optimism. I feel like I’m getting pretty close to a proper ending for Papers Please so maybe I can get that done next week and MAAAAAYBE 1001 Spikes? That sounds like a tall order but I’m going to at least try. I still have other Steam sale and PSN games to try, but I’m not going to commit to those just yet. Also I’m going to give everyone an advanced heads up, because for once I got an advanced heads up from my job. There are likely only going to be two more GADDs after this before I go back on hiatus. I’ll be going back on the road and will likely say on the road until sometime in June. I swear, GADD has worse pacing than most HBO shows.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK:
Are the people who wait to buy a console until after the next generation has come out the smart ones? They get a much cheaper console and a giant library full of already well established good games for a fraction of the prices. Is this ever something you could do, or do you need to have the latest best stuff too much to wait 5+ years for it?
