Buy This Stuff: “Even Though I Didn’t Have to Pay For It” Edition
Stacking (PSN/XBLA)
Sometimes I have a hard time connecting with my friends when we talk about video games.
A trip to Gamestop:
Me:You should check this game out! It’s amazing.
Them:What game?
Me:THE SLY COOPER COLLECTION.
Them:Haha, no.
Sly Cooper, Katamari, Ratchet and Clank…don’t even get me started on what happens when I try to get them to play Portal.
Me:It’s like two hours long!
Them:Yeah I’ll play it.
Them:[NEVER PLAYS IT]
As soon as I booted up Stacking, I knew it was going to be one of those games.
You play Charlie Blackmore, the littlest Russian stacking doll, in a world where every living person and animal is a Russian stacking doll. There’s a plot about an evil Baron kidnapping your family here, but I’ll be completely honest, I missed some of the text at the very beginning, so I don’t remember all of the details. He’s bad, and you’re good.
Charlie has the unique ability to stack with other dolls, inhabiting their bodies. Each doll type has a special ability that is either useful in solving puzzles (unlocking doors), or just funny (farting). Sometimes they’re both (farting on other dolls).
Each level has several challenges for you to solve, and each challenge has more than one solution. After you solve a challenge once, you’re encouraged to replay the same challenge to find another solution. This helps enable your OCD, and also unlocks trophies/achievements. There’s also a set of “hi-jinks” in each level, which are various ways to make trouble that also earn you trophies/achievements/trips to the psychiatrist from all of the OCD.
The game is fun, creative, funny, and you get to jump inside of people’s bodies and make them do stuff. If you’re a PlayStation Network Plus subscriber, it’s free; it’s $15 otherwise (1200 Microsoft points on XBLA). It’s a good idea, so do it.
I’ve started actually playing the multiplayer content of DC Universe Online (that’s what the second “M” in “MMO” means! the first one is a typo). The other day I did one of the group alerts, and actually played my role pretty well. (Crackshot is a Controller. I KNOW WHAT THESE WORDS MEAN.) Yesterday I started joining in the Ring War PVP event in Metropolis, which involves gathering Green Lantern Power Batteries and trying to murder other players. It was all good fun, except for the parts where I myself was being murdered.
Fortunately, as in real life, dying means you revive at your home base (see: Mysterion). Then, you should probably repair your equipment, which costs money. Maybe you should stock up on some more “Soder Cola” next time!
Today I got a pretty awesome new shirt. I thought I’d show you, Diary.
Totally got it from doing some quest for Luthor. You would not believe how much better Lex is at mentoring than the Joker. Why, just the other day, J-date had me fly down to Amusement Mile to pick up a gas mask to protect myself from his Joker Gas (or whatever). That sounds good, right? EXCEPT
HE HID IT IN A GIANT GIFT BOX
AND HE PUT LIKE 100 OTHER GIFT BOXES AROUND IT
AND THE OTHER GIFT BOXES HAD KILLER ROBOTS IN THEM.
It’s stuff like that, Diary, that really makes me wonder about that guy. That, and his Vault.
Ambush Bug and the Joker teamed up to give us villains something cool in theory: a Vault full of “fun, mayhem, and prizes” that we can visit once daily. IN THEORY THIS IS FUN. In reality, when I visit, there’s a bunch of giant balls and some more gift boxes. This time, the boxes can have money (up to three dollars each!) or gear (lame gear!) or other stuff (I haven’t found it!). Mostly it’s $3 boxes. I know it sounds greedy, Diary, but have you ever been warped? I know you haven’t because you are a diary. Well let me tell you, warping gives you nausea. Also, in a world where a can of Soder Cola costs $30, $3 doesn’t really get you a lot. (Except nausea. I covered that.)
Lex is a pretty cool guy, though, and he owns a night club full of hot babes. Joker, though?? KILLER ROBOT BOXES
I’ve had some mean things to say in the past about the PS3 but I’ve come around recently, mostly because I’ve wanted to play Uncharted 2, and to do that I have to play Uncharted 1, and to do that I have to have a PS3. That’s a lot of numbers.
So, now I have a PS3, which means I can compare it to the Xbox 360 and we’ll all read it and laugh. Specifically, I’m going to mention the things that I think either one does better than the other one. That sentence does not make a lot of sense but I think the rest will.
1. Controllers
In 2006 I wrote the following about the PS3 controllers:
Today, Sony revealed their new design, which looks—surprise—exactly like the old controller. Thanks, Sony, for remaking the second- or third-worst controller I’ve ever used.
What a JERK AM I RIGHT? The point was, I wasn’t too fond of the PS2 controller. I’m warming up to the PS3 controller, BUT.
Little paddle buttons instead of triggers on L2 and R2? Uh I guess. Games that use the L1 and R1 buttons as triggers where the Xbox 360 would use the actual triggers as triggers? What kind of backwards world is this.
Xbox, you win controllers.
2. Scaling
By now you have probably guessed that I do not know what order these items should go in. Here is a relevant piece of information: I bought an old HDTV when I got my Xbox 360, by which I mean, it was already old five years ago, so the only resolutions it can display are 480i (in AV circles, “poop” res), 480p (“poop-pee” res), and 1080i (“get a real HDTV”).
Most games are made with a 720p native resolution, and the console of choice will happily scale the graphics to the resolution that your TV is set to.
If you have an Xbox 360, that is. The PS3 likes to play things at their native resolution, but if your resolution isn’t supported, hey guess what? You will get the next lowest thing, which, in my case, is 480p. Did I mention that most games are made with a 720p native resolution? I think I did! Yeah I typed it and everything, it’s there.
But OKAY, whatever. Uncharted 1 (and I’m pretty sure Uncharted 2) both run in 1080i, which is good enough for me. And the 480p games? They don’t look that bad. Which brings me to #3,
3. The PS3 is making me realize that maybe everything doesn’t have to be in high-definition and that everything that pushes “HD” just might be a scam to get us to buy new televisions and re-buy all of our old content in new high-definition formats just like all those people who sold their VHS collections to buy DVDs.
Did you know we are all sheep? Ok.
4. Games
Cool games bro! Uncharted 1 is really good so far, and I’m really looking forward to beating it and then playing Uncharted 2, just so that I can beat it and then play Uncharted 3. And then I can watch the Uncharted movie!
LittleBigPlanet is pretty fun. Apparently the second one is out in like two weeks. Shipoopi.
ModNation Racers is like LittleBigPlanet had a baby with Mario Kart, which is a really disturbing mental image now that I think about it. Basically you can design everything about your character and your kart and your track and then race people. I love it. Someone made Two-Face on there. Your life is incomplete without seeing it.
3D Dot Game Heroes is kind of cool. I played it for about a half-hour before getting into Uncharted and I haven’t gone back yet, but I did manage to make that robot from that robot comic.
5. Misc. Other Features of the PS3 that I Like
This article was sounding pretty anti-PS3 until #4, but I really do like the new thingy a lot. It’s shiny (not literally) and it has new buttons and it makes all kinds of sounds and flashy stuff appear on this box in my house. It also does this fancy stuff:
I can copy save files to a thumbdrive! I can copy files off of a thumbdrive to the internal PS3 hard drive!
It’s a better Blu-ray player than the dedicated Blu-ray player I had! Go figure!
FREE PSN! This is great because my free Live Gold subscription that I had from Microsoft is running out, also I rarely play online games.
I GET TO HAVE A SLY COOPER AVATAR and PRESUMABLY THERE WILL BE ANOTHER SLY COOPER GAME AND I WILL BE ABLE TO PURCHASE IT AND ABSORB ITS EXPERIENCE INTO THE FABRIC OF MY BEING.
That last one might be the greatest thing I’ve ever said or thought or written.
