I just finished The Ball, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminds me of Portal, Marble Madness and Indiana Jones movies. This one is odd in that reviews weren't that great (68 on Metacritic), but I found it to be quite unique and compelling. It was short (6.5 hours according to Steam), and I never got bored. There were a few letdowns (I'm looking at you, boss battles), and the story was cryptic and didn't make too much sense. You unlock story mostly through finding secrets. If you don't find the secrets, of which I got maybe 1/3, you don't get story, and the story you do get just doesn't flow.
My favorite thing about The Ball was...the ball. It looked, felt, and sounded heavy, metal, massive. I loved rolling it around, using it to solve puzzles, and smashing enemies with it. The enemy-smashing could be slightly awkward because they'd tend to run just at the edge of the ball so you couldn't roll them over sometimes. I'd have to back up and shoot it at them, but that combat worked pretty well. It is strange combat, very straightforward until the end, when you start having to set it on fire, cover it with land mines, or electrify it, to kill enemies and solve puzzles. I like the ball more than Portal's companion cube. The ball is your life in this game. Sometimes you get separated from it by necessity to solve puzzles, and it feels like you're helpless because it's the only way you can solve puzzles and fight enemies! I imagine painting a face on it and giving it hair like Wilson in Castaway. It really becomes a companion.
The puzzles generally weren't too difficult, yet I felt they were clever. The variety was good, and the game regularly, but more in the last few levels, added twists to the puzzles. My favorite puzzle was the first time I got to magnetize the ball, giving it like a low-gravity field that, if you stand in, you can jump and float really high. I used it then to get across a big field of lava with sparse platforms. Using the low-grav field, I could jump long distances from platform to platform. My least favorite puzzle was this ridiculous platforming part where you had to launch the ball up into the air to knock a cube off a tall pedestal. It was just an annoyingly difficult feat to perform.
The bosses, like I said, were letdowns, but they looked so cool! The giant gorilla in particular I was anticipating. But all bosses are of the 'hit them 3 times and they die' variety. I killed the zombie gorilla in about a minute once I figured out how to do it. Exact same thing with the sand worms, and then there was the pterodactyl that you don't even fight. You just avoid its fiery eggs for 100 meters. The best enemies were what I would consider mini bosses, even though they were harder than the bosses proper. Actually, the gorilla and pterodactyl were the only real bosses because the sand worms and the lizardmen (the hard mini bosses) reappeared over and over. Then there was the mysterious shaman guy who led me into traps a couple times, but I never got to fight him.
That's really about all. The game was creepier than I thought it would be. I jumped a few times when zombies screamed and came charging at me from around corners. The environment is awesome, inside this churning volcano. I took a lot of screen shots. And at the end, the ball is not what you think it is...
The Ball was part of Portal 2's pre-release party, so there's an extra Portal level that I played a little bit of. The underground volcano opens up into a secret Aperture Science lab with a fully functional GlaDOS. The first thing you do is use the ball to get a companion cube, but I didn't play much further. I'll fire it up and play that level next time, then start on something else.
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I'm going to put this one down (bam!). Best tower defense I've ever played, though unsurprising since I've only played free online ones, and Plants vs. Zombies, which has a different enough presentation for me to not lump them too close together. I didn't beat the game. I have one level left. I got stuck for hours on the third-to-last level, which was very open-ended with its space. Basically, the linear levels are easier; the spacious levels are harder. Maybe this is where the game gets its name, Defense Grid, because the later levels are just that, giant scary grids. Instead of the aliens taking their little designed route, they are given a huge amount of space/number of paths to run, and you have to figure out where to block them. They are almost totally re-routable in the later levels. There was a lot of trial and error going on, a lot of studying the map and tracing my finger on the monitor, trying to figure out optimal choke points, temporal tower placements, etc.
DG is a lot of fun, but it gets borderline tedious. I finally decided to stop playing after seeing the last level, which is a, yes, giant scary multi-story grid with two entry/exit points. I just don't even want to try, it's so intimidating. I know it will be fun to mess around with, but I also know it will take for damn ever, and I will die a million times, and I'd rather play something else instead. I did, out of curiosity, look at the extra map packs I got, and they are the same: crazy huge grid-like levels with tons of different spots for choke points and strategy. The levels are just too much.
I would enjoy more creative, less open levels, such as my favorite level in the entire game, the bonus Portal 2 promo level. This one also features GlaDOS. You're at the Aperture Science Lab and GlaDOS is running a test to see how well you would fare in preventing human annihilation at the hands of invading aliens. The level had some unique design that was missing in the whole rest of the game, and no, sadly, it didn't use portals, nor did I get a 'portal tower.' I'd attach a screenshot if I could, but basically enemies entered from one of two spots: the top of the map, where they ran past a 3x3 block of towers, and then over a bridge with some random towers next to it, and then through a door, BEHIND the wall (where you couldn't shoot them) and down a ramp, then back out into the open, along a conveyor belt lined with towers to the cores, then out the exit, which was past another 3x3 or 4x4 or something bunch of towers that I never had to build.
The second entry point was new. Masses of enemies ran out from the left side of the screen underneath the conveyor belt to a second core depot, and then ran back across the floor to a second exit where they came from. The first time the mass came, I had no idea it was coming because the entry/exit point there didn't show up on my tactical overlay. There was a chessboard setup of towers on the floor they ran across, so I immediately constructed a central temporal and surrounding concussion towers, then lined the edges with gun and laser turrets. It was a lot of fun killing the giant swarms, and I bet if I played again that level would be super easy. As is, I beat it first try, but with only 1 core left!
So yeah, that's Defense Grid. Fun game. I might come back to it in the future if I ever feel like punishing myself.
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Defense Grid is fantastic. I tend not to play tower defense games though because they get too repetitive, each one being practically the same thing. Defense Grid tosses a few new things in the mix. I began playing just last night because of Steam's little Summer Camp sale, a mean trick to make me spend money on games and time playing them for achievements that reward me tickets that get placed in a drawing to win the top 10 games on my wishlist. There are 6 or 7 achievements per day. One always involves something to do with the Steam community, like uploading a screenshot or leaving a comment on someone's profile. Then the others are in-game achievements for various Steam games. So far I've owned, oddly, 1 game each day of the contest. I had to get 7 headshots in a row in Lead & Gold without dying. I got 37 by spawn camping people with lag. I had to get set on fire and put it out by jumping in water in Team Fortress 2. It was fun trying to get burned just right by a pyro and make it into the water before dying, and I finally got it after 45 minutes. There's one for this game called Magicka that P bought me the other day, but I haven't done it. Then this one for Defense Grid to beat this one challenge mode where you can't use Guns and Cannons on 5 different levels.
So what's unique about DG? For one, the levels are purposefully laid out. Of course all TD games' levels are purposefully laid out, but in DG you don't simply have a path and an infinite number of squares on which to build towers. Since each tower has an attack power, a range, and a firing rate, and the 15 enemy types have strengths and weaknesses to the various towers, you really have to think about which towers are ideal for which locations. For example, there are aliens (the enemies) with shield that can only be taken out with Guns or Cannons. So if you don't have Guns or Cannons to take down the shields, those aliens steal your cores. There are also flying aliens that take a different path than ground aliens, and you have to have towers that can shoot flying aliens.
Cores are objects that keep the Defense Grid active, keep the weapons online. If the aliens take all your cores, it's game over. Each map has an entry point and an exit point, often the same point, such that aliens enter the map, take the shortest route to the cores, collect 1-3 cores depending on the alien, and take the shortest route to the exit. Some levels are linear, and some you can create paths for the aliens to walk. I have gotten stuck on both types, the more linear and the more open. Flying aliens have a set route that you cannot alter. If flying aliens get a core, it's gone forever. But if ground aliens get a core, they still have to walk with it to the exit. When you kill an alien carrying a core, it slowly floats back to the...place where the cores are. Aliens, since they take the shortest route to pick up cores, will alter their path to pick up floating cores instead of walking all the way to the place where cores are stored. That's usually not a good thing! There are also 'boss' aliens that take a ton of damage. I think I've encountered like 2.5 types so far, one that moves slow, one that moves fast and is only susceptible to lasers, and the half-boss that spawns additional aliens, which is bad because they draw your towers' fire instead of the half-boss.
Oh, towers are also upgradeable, which is not that unique, but they do have line of sight! I've never played a TD game with LoS. So you want those Gun and Laser towers on the front lines, and those Cannon and Meteor towers with giant ranges and arcing trajectories on the back. And I unlocked the Orbital Laser a level ago, which is a giant blast with a super long recharge that kills everything in a little radius. I'm still learning all the tower/alien types and honing strategy, as I haven't gotten my Steam Summer Camp achievement yet. I've done 3/5 of the challenge levels. Where the other achievements in other games have taken 45 minutes or less, this one requires you to play most of the way through the game first. A relatively steep time investment, but hey, awesome game that I would have played some other time. Might as well play it now!
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The other day I realized I had to finish Growlanser 2 ASAP because most of my stuff is going into storage for a month and I don't want to leave the game hanging. So, I settled down yesterday evening and this morning and finished it out. Final playtime was a little under 20 hours, but can easily add 5 to that from deaths.
I really liked the challenge of this game. At times, usually when first encountering a difficult battle, the game could appear 'cheap' instead. After playing the difficult battle a few times, I'd make progress bit by bit, quit calling it cheap, and start thinking about how to win instead of trying to steamroll. Some battles are unique and tricky, so it's necessary to get to where I can strategize. Examples of the three most memorable fights:
(1) Poison/Venom battle - This one was INSANE. It's one of the final battles in the game where you're facing off against the mercenary captain Wolfgang and his giant status-inducing robot. There is a long, narrow hallway. Your team begins on one end, and I think 7 golems are on the other end, plus Wolfgang past the hallway when it opens up into a room. Off the hallway are four rooms, 2 on either side, with tempting treasure chests inside. After killing 3 or 4 golems, another 3 appear behind your party, right where you started on that end of the hallway. So you wind up sandwiched no matter what you do. Wolfgang is charging a weapon, and you have to kill him before it fully charges. Wolfgang's only attack, until you get into the open area near his melee range, is this giant status ray that he beams down the hallway, hitting everyone in the hallway every time. It can apply Poison (-5hp per round), Venom (-25hp per round), and/or Shock (character can't do anything at all).
I began by charging down the hallway to kill golems on that side, running back to the beginning to kill the reinforcements, and going back toward Wolfgang again. But I was inevitably losing my casters who were in the back and being killed by the reinforcements. Once the casters are dead, I have trouble healing, because one of them, Riviera, is my dedicated healer. Well, she became my dedicated healer in this battle. I initially used her to cast level 6 Quake, which decimates all enemies for 250hp or so. 2 Quakes will kill everything on the map except the boss. But Quake takes too long to cast, and she'd get killed by reinforcements or Poison/Venom because there wasn't time to charge sufficient levels of Healing after the first Quake. Plus my melee guys were taking beatings in the front from the golems and by the Poison/Venom while she queued Quake.
Quake, I thought, was too badass not to use, so instead of changing her casts, I decided the status effects were more dangerous. I attempted to shuffle everyone in a side room to avoid the status ray and to attack the golems one by one in the doorway. Well, this was alright except that characters' pathfinding sucks, which I haven't mentioned before. It becomes more noticeable as the party fills out and there are more bodies bumping into one another. Characters will box each other in, for example. And some are faster than others, and sometimes the fast ones will get stuck behind the slow ones. In tight levels like this hallway, it can get annoying/requires micromanaging their movements. So trying to get 8 characters in and out a doorway and arranged in a room was not fun. But, I kind of made it work, except that it was taking forever, and I reset because Wolfgang's weapon was going to finish charging. Next plan.
At some point I realized I needed a dedicated healer and a dedicated Poison/Venom remover. The Poison is okay, but the Venom at 25hp per round is deadly and eats through HP real fast, especially with golems beating on you too. I mentioned this in the last entry, having to play conservatively. Quit trying to cast Quake; just queue Healing. Then with Serab, my other pure caster, quit trying to cast Blast or whatever spells; just queue Refine and constantly nullify those nasty status effects. I also rearranged my gems at some point, most notably giving Riviera massive MP savings and shorter casting time since she was going to cast Healing constantly (and Quake if there's time!).
This was basically how I finally beat it. I moved EVERYONE up to at least the middle of the hallway so the reinforcements wouldn't kill my ranged. I used Hans to run around and grab treasure chests. Everyone engaged those first golems until the back reinforcements arrived. Melee kept attacking the front; ranged turned to take out the back. Healing and Refining was going great with the dedicated roles. Once all the golems were dead, I made sure the melee had enough HP, then ran them up to engage Wolfgang proper, for the first time really. Only Wein had ever even made it that far a couple times, and instantly died, before the time I beat it. He died those times because the boss has 3 parts: spear arm, shield arm, and head. He attacks with all of them. So sending one character alone is certain doom. Sending 4 or 5 spread the damage out, and they actually handled Wolfgang pretty fast. Victory. I probably died 15 times before getting it, but proper movement down the hallway and keeping a dedicated healer and refiner were keys.
(2) Disappearing floor - This one was also pretty hectic, and a handful of failures were caused by that horrible pathfinding. This level is in a warehouse, and the floor is being eroded by acid. As time progresses, the floor drops away, beginning at the end of the level where the party starts, and moving one 'square' of space forward each time. If it's a grid with rows 1, 2, 3, etc., then one whole row disappears at a time. Luckily, the small starting platform is made of stone and is a safe spot. However, after a couple times, the floor around it is all gone and whoever is still there is stuck. So it's okay to leave casters, but if anyone else is going to be useful, they need to get off fast.
The goal of the level is to get to this antenna dish in the middle or kill all the enemies. The enemies and the rest of the level is set up in kind of hedge maze fashion, which makes moving quickly all the more important. And, if any party member falls through the floor (is standing on it when it disappears) it's game over. So, the first thing I tried was to move fast characters to the antenna. That didn't work because everyone on the platform got annihilated by magic. Turns out all the enemies are casters. There are these spark things that like to cast Fear and AoE Fireballs and Lightning. Not too deadly on a single target, but when 6 characters are grouped together, and there are like 5 sparks casting, it adds up. Then the other enemies were these skeleton mage types who have serious, serious magic. They'd cast Soul Force level 3 and Blizzard up to level 5 or 6. Level 6 Blizzard is no fun to deal with. All these AoEs quickly made me realize I can't group my characters because they'll die in just a few turns. If the healers on the platform die, then of course my fast characters can't live to get to the antenna.
My next plan then was to move everyone but the casters, split to the left and right of the platform. So I'd have 3 loose groups running around to soak damage. This took a huge amount of practice and repeats because of said pathfinding. The fast character would get stuck behind the slow character, then try to go around him, but walk onto a piece of floor that then disappeared, killing him and losing me the level. Over and over and over! Then I got smart and began using Dash (doubles movement rate) with slower characters, as well as totally micromanaging their movements. Don't think I've mentioned before, but you can basically set a series of waypoints for each character to follow. In effect, 'go here, then there, then there by this trajectory, etc.' It's cool, and useful, but sometimes I wish they'd just be smarter so I wouldn't have to do it. But, good tool. This splitting into 3 groups and moving correctly really helped. There was only one more obstacle to get over. I was still getting pounded by spells.
I'd been taking out the skeleton mages first since they had the most deadly spells. Then, in a total fluke, I wound up taking Wein to the Secret Arena because I was frustrated from dying on this level, and lo and behold, those spark enemies were there, and I remembered they have tiny HP pools. Aha. So I went back to the warehouse level, took out the sparks quickly and easily, so they did like nothing, then focused on the mages after. But killing half the enemies right off the bat made it way easier to manage. I used the melee and continued using the casters to take out the rest of the mages, and actually won by killing everyone and not by getting the antenna. Success.
(3) I hate Hans - Hans is the most annoying character ever, and I actually kind of got my wish when I said I hoped he'd die. At the end of the game (and earlier too apparently) you can actually branch the story. The path I chose, because it sounded too stupid to be true, was to side with the bad guy, at which point he plunges the world into mind control in great dystopian fashion. He's always wanted to bring about peace, and figures he can do it by using this Power Mask artefact to pacify everyone, to eliminate competition, hatred, etc., but of course it turns people into boring shells of themselves. Anyway, Max (or the State) partners people up for 'breeding' at the 'Population Control Office,'
2 kids in 3 years. It's kind of funny. Wein (main character) is somehow unaffected by the brainwashing device, I guess because he's part of the bad guy's control machine. But Wein decides it's terrible that no one has any free will, and as he goes up to the Population Control Office, there's Hans getting coupled with a fat Viking woman who shakes the screen when she walks. Wein tries to reason with him, but he just talks about his duty to the state to produce offspring and goes on his way. So he didn't die, but he got brainwashed, so that's pretty good. EXCEPT...
Except that Hans appears in the final battle against Max (fighting alongside Max), and since in my training and leveling of Hans throughout the game, I molded him into an amazing fighter, he is a massive pain in the ass. Another story character, Logan, keeps Hans healed, and Hans runs around attacking like 3 times for every other person's 1, and doing massive damage + status effects. It was horrible! I couldn't do anything in that fight until I realized I had to prioritize killing Hans over everything else. The fight actually was fairly easy besides Hans. But yes, I killed him in the end. So he did die. I win!
Back to other stuff...
In a Final Fantasy Tactics ripoff twist, there are chocobos in the game, except they just call them 'pack animals.'
The voice acting is bad. I take back anything I said about it being okay. Besides Hans's voice actor being incredibly annoying, the rest are pretty flat. And it's probably some combination of this bizarre formal writing style the game uses and the acting. No one would ever sound like these people. Oh, and everyone sounds like basic American English (but super formal) except this random Scottish soldier one time, who was also terrible. And I couldn't believe this when I heard it, but the shopkeepers who are voiced, they made them sound Indian. Really really badly performed fake Indian accents. They sound like Michael Scott in The Office in the episode about racism in the office, when he goes up to Kelly and says 'buy my cookie! you know you want to buy my cookie, my cookie!' and she slaps him. It was painful to listen to. But, at the end of the game, there are a bunch of outtakes from the voice sessions. I listened to a minute of Wein's so far and it's pretty funny. I'll listen to the rest for laughs.
And that interesting and complex story I talked about earlier? Well, about 2/3 of the way through it goes off the deep end into past Growlanser stuff, and I didn't have any idea where these evil beings and characters and such were coming from. There's mention of this great power, the Power of Language (whoa, deep), and this Power Mask, that you don't find out what Max wants it for or anything until the very end of the game. It just kind of jumps from one bad guy to another real fast near the end.
And the ending, hilarious. You can actually agree with Max to use the Power Mask to brainwash everyone to achieve peace. I did this. You can make the choice to fight with or against Max at the beginning of this battle to confront him. When I sided with him, my whole party was like WTF Wein...except Hans. Hans, blindly following Wein for no discernible reason, and all it gets him later on is brainwashed and killed. So it was fun killing the rest of my party though. The only bad thing is they kept all the gems and rings, and when you realize your mistake later on and come crawling back to beg their forgiveness, there are inexplicably only 4 of them. Serab and Brett and 1 other one I think just aren't ever seen or heard from again. And they've still got the awesome stuff I last equipped them with!
Apparently you can get endings with all the different characters if you chose to fight Max in the first place, based on who you have the highest reputation with. I just watched them all online. And apparently there's a big branch in the storyline earlier where instead of attacking Wolfgang, you can side with him and his mercenaries. That's a long branch! Looks like it's the same battles, just with different perspective or objectives. Cool though! Aaand, you can apparently save Arieta instead of killing her, of which I had no idea. The game seems to make me feel like whatever was unfolding was supposed to happen that way. I bet some people played this through twice. It's short enough and fun enough to where I wouldn't make fun of someone for doing it.
One thing that doesn't feel as 'right' is Wein's character development, stats-wise. I started him off, like I said trying to be an attack mage, but that obviously, based on early party characters, isn't the best choice, and I find he tended toward melee attacks anyway. His magic is never stronger than the other mages, and actually his attacks are never as strong as some of the other melee characters. He's this weird jack-of-all trades that isn't allowed to die or else game over. So I tended toward things that made him stay alive, i.e., strapping on some heavy armor, life leech and going toe to toe with a healer supporting him, instead of standing back and being vulnerable while casting in light armor. It just makes more sense. I wonder if he would have been much better had I straight away molded him for melee combat?
There's also this weird thing with mission success and failure. At the beginning of each mission, it tells you the win/loss conditions. Sometimes when you when, it says Mission Cleared. Other times it says Mission Cleared and there's a sword through it. Other times when you win, it says Mission Failed! But you still win. But it says you failed. It doesn't make any sense, and I don't know the difference between the sword and not having the sword either.
Oh, and one final thing I have to mention, because I made some use of, is the auto-battle feature. There are occasional random battles on the map. If you push 'start' the AI takes over and fights the battle for you. Now, the AI is not that great. They don't kill magic casters first, which you should almost always do in this game, and they aren't able to think ahead, i.e., go on and charge healing spells because since they failed to attack casters, they're going to get blasted really hard. And they do things like cast Cycle Up and other buffs in what should be a <5-minute random battle. Just kill stuff man! The AI will win probably 80-90% of battles though, which works for what I used it for: level grinding. Yes, on some of those really hard story battles, I retreated to go get a level or two with everyone, then try the battle again with more HP and attack/magic power. Auto-battle allowed me to eat dinner, go to the bathroom, read a magazine, sort mail, etc., etc., while progressing in the game! Thanks auto-battle!
And there's my super long entry for Growlanser 2. I guess I keep this open since Growlanser 3 is on the same release. I'll play it first when I move in a month. Fun game, recommend, just turn their voices off and don't ask too many questions about the story. Focus on battles.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jun 30th, 2011 at 05:59:43.
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