Aaand Driveclub Looks Palatable Again

The information contained in the above video is no longer completely true, and that is a very good thing.

In the original Playstation Blog post which shared details of the game, the plan for the Playstation Plus version of the game was finally fleshed out 'fully', which was something that had been...well, not nebulous, but unconfirmed, I should say.  And what we saw was not exactly what we had been lead to believe and, worse, was just not good.

One of the recurring questions we keep seeing is about the scale of the PlayStation Plus Edition. The simple answer is that with an active PlayStation Plus subscription, you can download DRIVECLUB PlayStation Plus Edition, which comes with one location (India), 11 tracks, 10 cars and access to all game modes.

[...]

We think you’ll have a lot of fun playing DRIVECLUB once it launches on October 7th, digitally via the PlayStation store and on Blu-ray at your local retailer. If you’re an active PlayStation Plus subscriber and have been playing the PlayStation Plus Edition, but decide you want the full DRIVECLUB experience, you can purchase a one-time upgrade for $49.99. This will give you access to all five locations, 55 tracks, 50 cars and all 50 tour events, as long as your PlayStation Plus subscription remains active.

Emphasis mine.  What it basically boils down to is that you're offered a slice of the game for free if you have Playstation Plus, which has always been the case.  As with other free things attached to Playstation Plus, it is only free if you keep your Playstation Plus subscription active and that is understandable.  All of that is very basic and there is no problem.  However, the rub lies within the portion that says you can upgrade your Playstation Plus version into the full game for a purchase that is only $10 less than the game retails for, but it retains that pesky "Only available while you have Plus" qualifier which is where we all (understandably) freaked out.

I imagine it was there to prevent a de facto $10 discount for Playstation Plus Members (since if it wasn't there, there's literally no reason to buy the base Digital version of it) but that shit just will not fly.  Short term < Long Term, sers, and that is something that everybody has been making clear in the past year or so.  As with those scenarios, the internet went vocal and, again as with the scenarios of late, the internet (and common sense) have won out.  An Update (within the post I already linked) spells it out clearly:

UPDATE: Our priority for DRIVECLUB is to enable you to play and enjoy everything it has to offer and PlayStation recognises that the prior plan for DRIVECLUB entitlement for the upgrade to the PS Plus edition was not appropriate. As a result, we have adjusted the PlayStation Plus terms for DRIVECLUB.
Now, If you intend on downloading DRIVECLUB PlayStation Plus Edition, and upgrading to the full game experience, you will have access to the full game even if your PlayStation Plus subscription runs out.

Emphasis mine again.  This places the Plus version firmly within "Get" territory once again.  It's not hard to convince me to get a Free Game through Plus (the "Free" part generally does it), but I was more or less considering skipping it completely.  Not because I was totally outraged (though I was very annoyed with the decision) but because I just don't like Racing Games, so it does not take much to dissuade me away from one.  Telling me that I can get a game and then -buy- it, but not have access to it for a set of reasons that is very easily undergone is a very nice way to do that, however.  Thankfully, that is not the case.  That means I'll give it a shot provided it's not like a ridiculous size that will require me to spend like four days downloading it.  Who knows, maybe I'll even like Driveclub!

probably not, it's a racing game after all

Rymdkapsel is Pretty Great

When I heard about the Festive Giveaway that is going on with Playstation Mobile, I just kind of went with it not expecting a whole lot.  I haven't dipped into Playstation Mobile much for reasons I believe I've talked about before (aside from a dip to buy Tokyo Jungle Mobile) and I've more or less just been waiting for the games to be incentivized with more features build right in and such.  Still, free games is free games and the first offerings for the five-week affair were a Soccer game called Passing Time and a strange game titled Rymdkapsel.  I've learned that you won't know how to pronounce it, but you'll have a hell of a time playing it if you're anything like me.

Rymdkapsel is billed as a "meditative strategy game set in space" that "combines spatial puzzling, tower defense and base-building" at the same time, which is far more compelling than it seems at first glance.  It eases you in nicely to the mechanics of it, offering tutorials to start you off that has you build a corridor, then a generator, an extractor and so on and so on so that you're left with the basics of a base.  Then you're more or less left to do that and keep expanding until you reach out to some of the platforms that dot the space about you.  On these platforms are monoliths that you can research to some nebulous result as I've never fully researched even a one, though I assume they're useful!  I would hope so, at least, for the amount of effort that they require.

It's a precarious balance, building things and managing your space station in-between alien assaults, since you have to figure out Defense coverage, make sure you have resources readily available and actually manage your time well since waves of enemies come faster and faster as it goes along, making it become quite difficult to actually get anything done.  I have not quite mastered the balance, but I'm getting some ideas of it, especially after not playing it.  Still, it's definitely worth looking into and refining since it's basically something that...won't end until you die, I believe.  The difficulty ramps up, but if you can find some way to mitigate it with brute force, then it should be pretty well sorted to keep you going for a while.  That's what I've got to try and figure out, I think.

For the nice price of Free, it's obviously a fantastic game, but I'm pretty confident that had I spent money on it, I wouldn't be disappointed.  There's probably a couple days left in the giveaway (I think PSM updates on Wednesday) so if you haven't already, make sure to grab it up.  Space stations aren't going to build themselves, after all!

at least not yet, but you know, future

So I Officially Don't Get Knytt Underground

Knytt Underground went up as yesterday's Playstation Plus freebie in the Playstation Store Update and I have to admit that I've been eying it for a while, but not enough to pick up the demo for the game since there wasn't a file size attached to it in the Vita store and I am considerably lazy at looking that kind of thing up.  I figured it's well worth the shot at the lovely price of 'free' and so I tested out my shiny, fixed internet by downloading all 657 MB of it.  "What's the worst that could happen?" I posited.  I've already played Braid, so I've seen about the lowest depths of 'artsy-fartsy' and pretentious that one could expect from a Puzzle-Platformer, and while I didn't expect anything of that sort from Knytt, it was technically possible as most things in the world are.  But I expected something better than that, something fun and challenging, possibly engaging, with a gorgeous art style to pull it all together.  That....is not quite what I got.

The game -is- quite beautiful to look at for the most part, and is no doubt enhanced by the Vita's absolutely wonderful screen.  Backgrounds are lush and vibrant, where the actual traverse-able areas are generally black, but not distracting from what you're -really- looking at.  The area where the actual look of the game falls is the character design and, unfortunately, it falls hard.  Sprites of humanoid things are generally only shown in portraits for conversations (that barely occur) but when they happen, they're so jarring from the beauty surrounding it, that you find yourself wondering how they managed to end up in the same game.  To tell the truth, they're not....horrible, they're just juvenile and they clash tremendously with the style of the rest of the game itself.

Those characters are unfortunately made less appealing thanks to the writing that is at once barely-there and over-stays its welcome.  Knytt Underground unfortunately suffers from a thought process that it has to be everything at once - beautiful and charming, funny yet serious, simple yet challenging - and, as with most things that attempt this, it fails spectacularly at doing everything by muddling everything together and accomplishing nothing.  When the characters finally do open their mouths, it's usually to spout some groan-worthy 'witty' comment or to attempt to further the equally groan-inducing 'story'.  Here is the story, idly, as it's told over three chapters.  Mi (the main character) can't talk.  She is going to get picked to save the world and can't refuse it because she can't talk.  Then that happens and the last chapter is trying to save the world.  That's it.  Everything else is superfluous and painfully so at that.  The entirety of Chapter 2 is spent looking for a key to doors that just open themselves when you can't actually find the key.  (Spoiler alert:  The key is actually in the fucking pocket of the fairy you're working with and you're -told- this about an hour before you figure it out.)

Nothing about the game screams inspired or enchanting, nor is any of it particularly good even.  It's....mediocre in the literal sense.  Not very good, but not bad either.  It's an effort, that much is for sure, but it's an effort that just didn't go well in the end product.  The designs and the 'humor' that the game tries to have only drag down what's already a fairly uninteresting game to play.  The controls are simple enough and the map design is a bit forced - you'll figure out over the three chapters that you're on the same map for all three, just that you start in different places for each one.  So all those things you see in Chapter 1 that you just can't get to, well, you'll come back to them in what is a poor attempt to making it Metroidvania-esque, I assume.  This is, of course, all sprinkled in with power orbs that are only present in a handful of areas that cause changes in your movement when you use them - orbs that attempt to introduce the actual challenge to the game and...well, succeed, I guess.  Not very well, however, which might as well be the mantra for the game.

Knytt Underground is just....confusing, really.  It doesn't know what it wants to be and thus tries to be a little bit of everything to no real success.  Or, rather, the first two chapters are like this.  Of a three chapter game.  I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that chapter three isn't going to introduce all sorts of game-changers that elevate it to something beyond what I think of it currently.  That's unfortunate, and perhaps I will be proven wrong, but I'm so convinced that I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to continue with Chapter Three - I could be playing other things, after all.  Things I have fun with.  Things that don't make me roll my eyes when the screen goes white and the self-insert narrator faux-cheekily says "...and then there was an explosion.", presumably with an implied hand wave with jazz fingers.  Of course that's not a thing I do often.....but that's not to say I never do it.

seriously, a thing tells Rob (the fairy) that the key is in his fucking pocket three times that is the stupidest fucking thing