Another Princess, Another Castle

Still Alive (portal reference and reused title; oh wow)

2010-12-06T11:12:00.011-06:00

I'm still alive. I'm still playing games. I haven't cut my hair since freaking August. Yeah, it's been one busy semester. I've been able to play a few games on and off since school started, but nothing too hardcore as say... Demon's Souls. However, I've had a small sampling of games since my radio silence back in... August?

... Seriously?
Brandon picked up Amnesia: The Dark Decent for me a few months back since it was one of the few games I could run on my Mac, and you know, it's a horror game. I dinked around with the settings, got through a few of the first few puzzles with a very "ho-hum" attitude toward it and abandoned it. However, with my weird schedule these past few months, I would roll into school super early, get all my work done and have little to do than play games on Steam or watch Family Guy on Netflix for the third time through (which won me over a few times, believe it or now).

So, I started to play through Amnesia again, and I'm glad to say that it was worth the revisit.

Imagine, if you will, the sight that a number of students at my school have seen. A young woman with her hair tied back haphazardly, hunched forward and inches away from her laptop. She's squinting at browned, blurred images and her brow is twisted into a look of extreme concern or confusion (it's really hard to tell). Her eyes are wide and her body is rigid save for an occasional twitch or jerk of surprise. A scarf is wrapped around her mouth to cover up her mouth hanging open and the frightened, soft curses that slip out.

This was me playing Amnesia. In the dark or light, this game really can spook you if you have a decent set of headphones. Or, if you're like me and get easily pulled into its haunting setting.

Seriously, this was a breath of fresh air for me and my horror genre apathy. The survival horror genre is still in its death knells, but games like Amnesia really give me hope that it ain't dead yet.

And yes, I am scared to play this game in the dark and with surround sound. Something about scaring the bejeezus out of myself is tempting, but at the same time, I don't know if I'm ready for that kind of child-like fear of being petrified to move around in the dark.

Maybe after finals and I hunt down a flashlight or nightlight.

To the delight of those that have been trying to get me into the Pokemons for years...
I picked up Pokemon: Soul Silver back in September. While browsing around in GameStop, I happened to look over at the DS games. I saw the shining box of Soul Silver and Heart Gold, talked myself into it with a "meh, whatever", and purchased a copy of Soul Silver on a whim.

Yikes.

Since then, this game has been my fall-back game. I've picked up while dinking around at work, waiting for class to start, when I'm bored, and you know, just to get a few more levels on my Jolteon. I mean, seriously, I went all out. I took the little PokeWalker everywhere (I still do). I'm pleased to say the closest I've come to cheating with that thing is hanging it from my key when I'm driving.

I ended up talking to a few people that religiously played the series and asked what the hell I was supposed to do and why it was so gripping to them. I got directed to Effort Value training which considerably boosts the stats of your Pokemon. It took me a few hours to get my first Pokemon finished, but it was weird. It really felt like I accomplished something when some digital woman gave me a ribbon for my trained Vaporeon. Even though I've beaten the game (got through the Pokemon League), I still want to train up a few more Pokemon just because.

I don't know; it was nice distraction and it continues to be. I still have yet to catch a lot of the Pokemon in either game, so that gives me more to do. I'm almost scared to say it, but I'm really excited for Black and White to come out next year.

And seriously, that's about all I've played since September.

I can see playing Fragile Dreams again over winter break. Which, after checking my most recent posts, (last updated in August! Are you kidding me!), I didn't talk about at all. Fragile Dreams is a precious and haunting little gem for the Wii. Aside from some wonky controls, it's an action RPG about the Apocalypse. The world has ended for some reason (I only got a few hours in), and you're a young boy looking for hope in a world without any. He finds a mysterious girl in white and goes to find her with the help of a robotic system (which acts as a tutorial).

Seriously, the beginning is any indicator of how sad this game is... I doubt I'll make it through this puppy withou--

Gckt!

(I've been playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer exclusively. Add me on XBL and come get shanked in the back. I swear, the multiplayer alone is totally worth buying this game.)

Hgkt...!

*expires*

Questions

2010-08-24T00:24:00.010-05:00

What have you been up to during your summer break? What have you been up to Bonnie? You may ask.

Keeping up with my blogs?

Hell no!

Being productive member of society?

Not especially!

Trying new things?

Not really!

Tying up loose ends?

Notta chance!

Keeping up with the newest games anyone has to offer?

HA! (What is that Chris is holding? Is that supposed to be the moon from Majora's Mask? What?)

Will I update more that school is starting up soon (with or without silly Scribblenauts hat)?
Probably.
Maybe.
We'll see how it goes.
The hat stays either way.

THE FINAL CUT

2010-08-08T16:30:00.008-05:00

So, we last left off, Jennifer wasn't doing so hot. But, let's see how her luck is changing now...

Alright, so far so good this time. No Scissorman, but I do have this crippling paranoia. Maybe it's caused by these hanging dolls and that clown next to me. There's a key in here to move me forward.
Hrm. And, the doll is floating toward me. I knocked it on it's ass and booked it out of there.

Floating dolls and a maternity magazine? What kind of freaked out mansion is this?!

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. This place is way too intense, even the books are completely humorless.

Speaking of humorless. Excuse me, Ms. Mary...?

Well, erm, I ... Yeah, I think so. Have you checked out this place? Did you know there's a guy with huge scissors walking around? And... And... some dude in a cage outside that says he's Barrows? What's up with that!? Also, I have your perfume, if that's cool.

Uh, okay. Yeah, I guess so. Just as long as you don't put drugs in i--

Damnit.

Double damnit. Hello, Mr. Barrows. No, I don't have any ham. Can you let me out? N-No, I don't want to talk about the current state of affairs in the ham economy.

OH LOTTE! LOTTE, LOTTE, LOTTE! THANK YOU! Let's cheese it, let's!
Well, thank goodness Lotte went out first. I heard a BLAM and a scream, but I'm sure she's okay. R-Right, Ms. Mary?
MY HIND END YOU WILL! YOU WILL MEET MY FRIEND, 2 X 4! HE'S VERY FRIENDLY! AND YOU CANT MIX A DRINK WORTH A DAMN, MA'AM!

After dealing with Ms. Mary, I found my way back to this room. Yes, it looks like the mural in that other room that I couldn't get my stupid girly arms to push over. But, oh well, at least I got the other half the mural. . . which I don't understand anyway.

Oh well, I put the Demon Idol into the slot on the alter and it opened up some secret ladder. I'd be stupid NOT to go.

Below, I watched a Cultist walk by this dog. I'm guessing it was Mary, but maybe it wasn't her. Either way, I spritzed myself down with Mary's perfume right in front of the dog. Dogs don't know it's not Ms. Mary!

Heh-heh-heh, stupid dog.

Now, time to explore this ca--
OH GOD ITS TETSUO OR JABBA THE HUTT DEAR GOD WHY IS THIS TROLL BABY DOWN IN A CAVE! KILL IT WITH FIRE KILL IT WITH FIRE!

...Huh. D-Done and done, I guess.
I feel like my journey is coming toward an end. I'll take this elevator up and take a look at what's on the other side of the house. Oh, hey, there's Ms. Mary. I've got a bone to pick with you, woman!

Wait that was YOUR son? Oh. Oh, honey, I am sorry. Did they give you like, metal hips or something after he was born? Oh. Oh, crap, you've got a knife. I-- YEEE!

LOOK MS. MARY! WE GOT OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT! I'm sure you didn't mean to slip me the roofie, shoot my friend, and have your mutant baby son nearly eat me. And *I* didn't mean to set him on fire! So, let's just talk this out over some non-drugged tea and some ham, yeah?

I ... I guess not.

Whew, how exhausting. I finally got up to the Clock Tower and turned off the switches... I hope nothing else goes wrong. It's been a long day.

I wonder where the Scissor guy got to . . .

Man, I could go for some ham about now.

THE END!

Ending : C
Dead: Bobby (Scissorman), Ms. Mary, Dan (Troll Baby), Lotte, Laura, Ann (was never found, so I guess she's dead too).

Clock Tower Part 3: NEW BEGINNINGS

2010-07-29T19:05:00.002-05:00

We jump back to where Jennifer didn't take the coward's way out to only find out it wasn't the best way out... Let's join her again as she explores more of the Barrow's Manor...
Huh. Well, I'm glad I didn't take that car out of here. This seems quite mysterious. I haven't a clue what this means, but I can't knock down that shelf in the way of the collage. I tried everything. A rope, a rock, perfume, key...

I'll come back later with some muscle.

Hello, Lad--

Um, okay, creepy. I think I'm more concerned that the head fell off.

)(@*$#)(@ I KNEW IT! He's in the way of the door. He's getting up! Oh god oh god oh god oh g--

Huh. Well, I'm glad I decided not to go into that creepy Mannequin Room. Whew. It was a good call not to go there. It's best just to stay away from those. I saw what happened with Jonathan Switcher. No good can come out of that place.

Out in the new hallway, I'm looking at this stupid wall. My friend, the rock, didn't open any more doors for me again. Why rock? Why have you forsaken me?!

Got this from the statue, but... what does this do? I guess I'll take this too. And for the record, no, it didn't open a secret wall either.

Part of me wants to rejoice about dead birds, but dayum. Someone's got a hate on for bird's that is worse than mine.

FLY MY PRETTIES! FLY MY LITTLE CROWS AND SCURRY MY LITTLE RATTIES!

Oh yeah, I still gotta get out of here too. Crap. I need to stop with this Bird Woman of Alcatraz bit and keep my eyes on the prize.

If only I had a car...

Well, I found this room. Thought Scissorman was in here, but it turned out to be some snotty cat in a box. My rock failed me in discovering a secret room, but luckily there was a gray stick near-by, so I bashed the wall in.

... WOW! BREATHTAKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING ROOM! GREAT! I'M SO GLAD I WAS FREAKED OUT BY A CAT AND WASTED MY ENERGY ON THIS!

Sweet. A music room. I can calm my nerves with some tuUUUNNESSS GAGGGH!

INDEED IT IS UNPLUGGED! RUUUUUUUN!

OKAY! Okay. He doesn't see me. He's going out of the room. I'm... I'm safe.

Hrm...maybe if I can get the keys to the car I can get the fu--

Hrm. Not a very strong second start for Ms. Jennifer. WILL SHE EVER GET OUT?!

Maybe, I dunno.

TUNE IN AGAIN TO FIND OUT!

Clock Tower Part 2

2010-07-27T22:38:00.005-05:00

We join Jennifer again after her narrow escape from Scissorman. Let's follow her s'more!

With the Scissorman gone, I'm digging around Ms. Mary's person stuff. I wonder what's creepier: smelling her perfume a few times or taking the bottle with me. I'll just take the bottle with me, you never know when smelling like a skag will come in handy.

I thought the scent of Ms. Mary would lead me to the bottom of this caper. However, it just lead me to ham. I'll just take this raw, dripping ham. I wonder if there's any other meat products around...can't have too many meats around.

BLAGHLGLBHGH! NO GOOD! ITS FULL OF BUGS!

Ms. Mary's perfume comes in handy. The meat is no good, but it looks like I found some key to somewhere. You can't eat a key and put it on rye.

... Is that the phone? Who is calling at a time like this?

It's still ringing. HOW EERIE!

Well, while I'm here... I suppose I can look into a goblet and get a Silver Key. That's pretty cool. Next time I run into Freak Faced Scissor Guy, I hope I razzle-dazzle him with keys and ham.

...And some choice wardrobe changes. Yikes, what kind of party were these guys planning for?

With a little more exploring, I've got a potential weapon. At least it will work much better than a ham. I can smash it into Scissorman's face and...and then he'll leave me alone and I ca--

...I can use it to bust through the wall. Damnit.

Well, If You Give a Homeless a Ham isn't quite like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I found out that Mr. Barrows is actually caged up a shed in the courtyard. Kinda... puts quite a damper on this "getting adopted by rich guy" shtick. Gave him a ham, he gave me his name. Hardly seems like a fair trade off.

GET A JOB!

Anxiety overtakes me when I get back in the house. It's the economy. It's really effecting everyone. Even Peeping Tom's can't afford the right equipment to perform their lurking after-hour activities.

...I need to get out.

I found a car. I found said keys to the car. Laura is already misting with the fishes in the shower and I don't want to even KNOW what happened to the others. I'm not going to miss the other girls. Ann was a nag and Lotte ... well, Lotte was Lotte. Sorry, girlies. I'm so Splitsville.

Let's burn rubber, baby!
[Radical Guitar Solo]

...Lame!

The End....?

And then Bonnie finished some games too...

2010-07-26T13:19:00.010-05:00

So, after FOUR years when I purchased ICO, it's finally finished. It's done! It's beaten! I sat down, was lost again for a good portion of an hour, and beat it. My end time for this guy was only about eight hours. This game is such a sweet little gem that it really makes me question why I didn't beat it earlier (aside from the dozens of games that came out during that four year time-frame). The game itself has its ups and downs, just like any other. The setting is gorgeous. The atmosphere is amazing and haunting. The story is subtle and quite sweet with the friendship of a horned boy and ghost-like princess.

However, some of the areas are too muddy to make out a hidden crucial ladder. And, I was relying on a bad, vague walkthrough guide written by some "brah" after not playing for a year and a half made the game increasingly annoying to navigate.

Really, all the games faults can be blamed on low-res graphics and my short-attention span. With the upcoming release of this and Shadow of Colossus in higher-res, I think it would be worth another look by me and anyone else that ran into the same problem.

And speaking of games I finished recently, Rule of Rose is FINALLY cleared. Another game that took me years to finish, Rule of Rose was a frustrating play at first. With awful controls and a wussy British heroine, it relies on the story to carry it. Rule of Rose offers a dark tale full of wicked twists and cruel turns. While the gameplay itself isn't very good, the story can carry the weight of a unwieldy system and make the extreme aggravation worth it in the end.

As long as you understand a few things about the game, it goes down much smoothly with a couple of hints:

Avoid fights at all costs. Run like the little weakling British gal that you are! This should be obvious tactic with the pathetic arsenal of weaponry that you receive in the game. Sweet, yeah, a DESSERT FORK. Tremble, enemies, at my silverware drawer of death.
Gather a bunch of healing items before the Hell reigns down on you. Maybe the first twenty minutes or so before triggering the story at the beginning of each chapter, send Brown out specifically for healing items and collectibles to build up food supplies for mandatory, unavoidable fights.
Be patient. You'll most likely die in some bogus way. It will be the game's fault (or you can just blame it anyway. No one will know.) and you should just let it slide. Save often and random deaths won't be a problem.

If you have taste for horror games, this is a game you don't want to pass up despite some annoyances. When you get around the aggravations, Rule of Rose is one of those forgotten treasures of the horror genre. If you love the horror genre, chances are you're already used to wonky controls.

So, suck it up and play this game.

Besides... check out the extra costumes you can get for you and your pooch.

Seriously. What other game can you think of where your dog is a CHAIR (see the top left image, even moves like a dog) and you can turn into an octopus?

None.

So, I was able to go through these games, but my list of "I'll finish it later" games is still growing. I'm going to try to finish at least one more game here soon despite starting up on two Clock Tower games (but those two are so short anyway). It'll be a miracle if I get through Final Fantasy 12 by the end of the summer, but a girl can dream, can't she...?

A girl can dream...

Let's Try Let's Play Again! Part 1

2010-07-26T01:12:00.010-05:00

Alright, I'm trying another Let's Play. This time, no video and just imagery. We'll be following Jennifer Simpson in her zany adventures in...

Jeez, Laura. We're walking all the way from the orphanage to some rich stiff's mansion and you can't pick up the pace, huh? Ms. Mary was apparently too good to pay for a cab or something for urchin orphan girls.

Once inside, Ms. Mary goes to get... our new guardian, Mr. Barrows. Laura says what we're all thinking. Yeah, honey, this house and some potentially creepy new "dad" getting four moderately attractive new "daughters".
But it's so ... cozy, Lotte. Where the hell is Ms. Mary? I'd like to get this fluff fake smiling, family bonding moment over so I can lock myself in a room. I mean, for real guys, this place is cool, but doesn't this strike you as kind of cree--
GEE, I'D LOVE TO, ANN. THANKS FOR VOLUNTEERING ME.

I leave for two seconds and the girls are already screaming. I knew they just wanted to exclude me from their fun sexy parties. Was it my constant look of concern...!?

Or maybe not... Though, I'm still wondering where Ms. Mary got off to. That old skag owes me an explanation and a loaded father. I swear I'll murder those girls for leaving me alone. Very uncool, ladies. Time to look around in some rooms around this joint and see what I can find.

In retrospect, letting out the expensive looking parrot that shrieks out "I'll keel you" repeatedly as a faithful sleuthing side-kick probably wasn't the best idea. Oh god, Oh god, oh god, it'll get in my haaaair!

There. Get to the bottom of the bedsheet caper, you little turd, some of us have to rummage through some drawers.

Guh. No *wonder* this dude wanted some foxy daughters. Friggin' troll babies in this photo. Gross. I need to find a shower or something. No, for real, all that walking up here and the parrot incident, I need to freshen up.

Wow, a foggy bathroom. I wonder if this is just a Norway washroom thing, or someone's taking an eerie hot shower with the lights on. I suppose taking a peek won't hurt an--
AGH! Laura, Sorry, I didn't know you ... were in here. Whoa. Awkward.

I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know you had one of my friends tied up and killed in the shower. Terribly sorry. Couldn't be MORE embarrassed. I'm ... I'm mortified, you see. I--Wow, those are big scissors--I just remembered I left the car running and I really have to run, my, uh, grandmother dropped acid and drove through a busload of nuns. I should really run. Y-Yan!

The irony isn't lost on me that I'm hiding under the bed where I killed the parrot. I'm just hoping his nasal passages aren't clear from the dead-shower with Laura to smell urine or parrot blood.

Final Fantasy XII: Round Two!

2010-04-07T12:02:00.010-05:00

Final Fantasy XII had a pretty good shot with me at first. I was ready to jump back into the series after the disappointment that was X. This was about two years ago. Brandon had picked it up for me as a present and I obliged by playing it. It had a savvy sky pirate with a silver tongue, sexy bunny side-kick with some kind of crazy accent (seriously what is that), and a plot about ten hours in that was remarkably like the Star Wars series. All bonuses. The system was pretty fun, but I wasn't completely sold on not controlling my all characters in a gambit system. It was something I was adjusting to, but I wasn't quite feeling it. I hadn't done a lot of the side quests since I was still in "harsh judgement mode" and just wanted to power through the story. Despite all this, I could say that Final Fantasy XII was starting to grow on me.

My friend Kyle had beaten it and was over while I was playing it one day. He commented about some rare weapon I could farm in the Tomb of Raithwall. It was some glitch that the chest that held the item had a good chance to respawn. It sounded easy enough to grab a few more of these swords for my party. It seemed like it would be an easy out for leveling. Thus, I spent hours running back and forth inside the tomb allowing the game stagnant and gaining some pretty wicked swords.

Final Fantasy XII didn't stand a chance once Persona 4 came out. I picked up Persona 4 the day it came out and Final Fantasy XII was shelved and mostly forgotten until recently.

Nearly two years after I got my copy of Final Fantasy XII, I had gone through a few other RPGs and eventually picked up Final Fantasy XIII. I don't know why I did. I saw this awful trailer (the others were a lot better), filled with angst and terrible. The game promised to be nothing like the rest of the series. But there I was at the midnight release with a bunch of diehard Final Fantasy fans, feeling like a fraud as I handed over my sixty dollars. I didn't think it was going to be something I wanted to play at all and I was just buying to buy. Three days past and I still hadn't even opened the game from its wrapping.

Around the same time, I was futzing around with different games, forcing myself to play something. I picked up Deadly Premonitions, but that's not something I could take seriously. I contemplated playing Heavy Rain again, but it would only be to go trophy hunting. I tried playing Stardust HD, but my twin-stick shooter skills were pretty dead after so much neglect. Coupled with my odd hours for work, school, homework, and social life. . . I was fried. It wasn't a wonder that when I *did* pop in Final Fantasy XIII that those first ten hours were like some kind of fantasy high school from Hell. I couldn't do what I wanted to do in the game (which was a lot of backtracking and mindless loot gathering), and it was incredibly frustrating to listen to a squawking teenage boy secretly confess his hate for some failed actor that didn't make it into Airborne. I canned the game shortly after reaching my breaking point. I couldn't keep the mantra of "it gets better after twenty hours". I've said this a lot to people that have talked about the game to me. Like it was a loser boyfriend, I said it just wasn't what I was looking for.

It's not you, it's me.

So, here I am, back in Ivalice. After playing a bit of Dragon Age, I can really appreciate the Gambit system and setting up each character for a specific task and still maintaining control on one character. I've found I really did not give this game its dues when it first came out. There was a good five hours I spent wandering around massive areas, running into enemies I couldn't beat with what I thought was over-leveled characters and secret side quests by talking to some random joe in the middle of no-where. I love finding secrets in games, especially when I have no idea of their existence. It's exhilarating and exciting to find them (which is probably why I liked Demon's Souls as much as I did as well). The hunting quests in the game are interesting, and are fairly difficult... moreso when the enemy is much higher level and can kill my entire party in one hit.

And the mindless loot grinding. Gah, I can level. Wonderful. Needless to say, I'm really enjoying my return to XII with only some minor complaints. Though, at the rate I'm going, the next Persona will come out and I'll be back to square (dohoho) one.

Rain on your Parade

2010-04-05T00:59:00.001-05:00

I’ve seen several games that borderline on being twenty-hour movies. Anyone can tell you that Metal Gear Solid 4 is basically a movie for the fanbase with minor gameplay (seriously, an hour ending cutscene. Who is going to sit through that without complaint other than diehard fans?). Take a look at Uncharted 2, which is one, the opposing side of movie-games. The game plays and looks like an action movie –shot for shot—but, it is all player controlled.

Heavy Rain takes an interesting take on video games: a playable movie.
Forgive me if the synopsis of the story is vague, I really am. But the story revolves around the shocking surprises and sometimes-ridiculous events. I don’t want to spoil any of these and potentially take away from the experience.

After the death of son, Jason, Ethan Mars is struggling to make the best of what he can when his wife separates from him and his living son, Shawn, is growing ever distant from him. When Shawn is abducted, Ethan fears the worst. His son has been kidnapped by the Origami Killer and only has days to find him before Shawn is killed. The Origami Killer murders young boys and their bodies show up in a similar fashion: cause of death points to drowning and an origami animal is placed in the victim’s hand after death. Ethan isn’t the only person invested in the case. Scott Shelby, a good ol’ private detective is investigating other victims of the Origami Killer; Madison Paige, a photojournalist suffering from insomnia; and Norman Jayden, a federal agent working with local authorities to find the killer are all connected to the case. With these four characters, it’s a race against time to find the next potential victim and find the identity of The Origami Killer.

Heavy Rain is saturated with story, so (again) it’s hard to explain the game without giving out key details of the plot. The game follows a choose-your-own-adventure type formula where choices can alter how the story’s outcome changes and events that happen to the characters. However, the game is generally a series of quick-time events spliced between dialog sequences and exploration. They are not all “hit X to win” button presses. Some require delicate slow motions like rocking a baby to sleep; some need a quick jerk to activate the six-axis in order to avoid oncoming traffic in a car. Or, you will need to use your face to press that fifth button since the rest of your fingers are dedicated to other buttons (true story). The point being, Heavy Rain keeps the quick-time events varied between holding and pressing buttons and, moving the sticks and six-axis that it really does feel like the fate of this characters life is in your hands.

Furthermore, you get to know how each character feels about the current situation and what’s running through their head at that exact moment. The player can get incite on how the character is feeling with access to the character’s inner-monologue. This is a great way to connect to the characters and build a rapport with them so it feels like you are really getting in their head. The exploration allows you to walk around an area at your own pace, examining your surroundings, and items. The quick-time events, on the other hand, are much more brutal. These quick-time events don’t mess around. If you aren’t quick enough to the draw or mess up on a button press, you can potentially have a character die. When a character dies, you will miss out on the entire section of story and risk not even finding out who the killer is.

Some of the story gets a little unbelievable or kind of cheesy, but can be easily dismissed as the game progresses. It does an excellent job of roping in players and everyone simply watching the game to really want to know what’s going on in the plot. The characters, for the most part, are likable and there’s a strong desire (at least there was for me) not to see them fail. Heavy Rain is paced well with combination of character development, action, suspense, and the mundane. Even when a character is bumming around their apartment or washing their hands for the sixth time in a row or fighting for his/her life, you get invested into the game and wanting to see a positive outcome.

Obviously, this game looks amazing. The characters look like the people they’re modeled after. And those loading screens where can see the close-ups of the faces? They look incredible. Each face is so detailed and real without having that uncanny valley effect. However, there is still room to nitpick. Children and the young adults don’t look quite right. It seems like, the older the characters get, and the better they look. Scott Shelby is probably one of the better looking characters in the game as fair as details go. He looks like a real dumpy-bodied detective should look like in real life as if he were standing right in front of you.

The game isn’t completely a movie, and by movie standards its full of plot holes. But, for what Heavy Rain is, it is a great experience for anyone playing the game and anyone watching. I really liked the game, and it feels like I could go back and replay it to find the other endings. What I’m really curious about is the upcoming movie with the same plot and characters. While the game is solid, I’ll save my judgments for the movie when and if it ever comes out. Until then, I have many, many other outcomes to play out.

Final What?

2010-03-24T15:22:00.005-05:00

So, I've been really hopping around games lately. Like more than usual. I have been busy rushing through a few games. I 've done my damnest to power through Silent Hill Homecoming again. Which was pushed to the side for...

I'm not sure right.

Anyway, Heavy Rain showed up. I'm still in process of writing minus any crazy spoilers, which is a lot harder than it sounds. It's basically like a movie review. I'm working on it, so, it should be up soon.

Also, I recently picked up Final Fantasy XIII. I didn't like it. At all. The characters were annoying. The funnel I was put through was infuriating. The plot wasn't strong enough to keep me interesting. However, I could chalk this up to being burnt out on video games in general. Doesn't mean Final Fantasy XIII is a BAD game, it just means I really, really don't like it. Maybe later on down the line, I'll touch back on it again.

But, the odd thing about this is I've picked up Final Fantasy XII again. I've gotten back it. A few years back ago, I logged about twenty hours into it before I abandoned it for Persona 4. Whoops. Back into Final Fantasy XII, I've found myself addicted to it again. I really enjoy it. The characters are fun. Giving a second chance on the story, it's fairly interesting (though I'm told it's terrible later on).

On the back burner, I've been playing Final Fantasy VIII on PSP. As wretched as the story is, the gameplay is so addicting. It's perfect for mindless grinding since you have to dredge up so many spells in order to amp up your characters and such. I've already beaten this game once before, but coming back to it brings back some nerdy warm fuzzies. These warm fuzzies bring back the want to play Final Fantasy IX. It's like some kind of sexy angsty floodgate that I've opened.

I also picked up Deadly Premonitions. It's like a terrible ... Twin Peaks. It's so bad it's good. And honestly, that's all I have to say about it right now.

That's what up in my neck of the gaming woods so far. I leave you now, with a sweet t-shirt I won from Penny Arcade from their "beat Bayonetta" on Hard Mode and the temptation of a review coming up here soon.

MORE WITCHES!

2010-01-24T15:15:00.008-06:00

Witches usually get a bad rap in the media. They're seen as wicked creatures in movies, culture, and occasionally video games.

They're the eaters of children...
Thieves of youth...
And, you know, the wives of Satan.
Though, with the release of Bayonetta, witches have a new angle: Sexy-asskicking-gun-toting-deadly-hair-machines.

After 500 years of containment in a lake, Bayonetta awakens and remembers only fragments of her past. While in search of a valuable gemstones called the "Eyes of the World", Bayonetta starts to piece together her mysterious history with the help of her defeated enemies, a woman with similar moves, and a plucky journalist. She journeys through the city of Vigrid slipping between the world of the supernatural and reality in order to deal with the Angel Clan that is constantly trying to twart our leggy heroine from accomplishing her goals.

Chances are, most people that bought the game bought it for the compelling storyline.
... it's a very well rounded, firm story.

Its a story anyone that plays video games has seen one time or another. Lost past, twists, and mysterious strangers that reappear in the protagonist's life all show up in Bayonetta. Its straight forward and nothing out of the ordinary for a action game.

What shines about Bayonetta is the combat system: fast, furious, and absolutely ridiculous. Punch and kick are the basic moves, but pushed in the right order can chain into different combos that are more effective than punching and kicking at random. Its actually quite easy to appear like you know what you're doing when you're only frantically smashing buttons. And the biggest advantage Bayonetta has over other action games (Lookin' at you, Devil May Cry) is the dodge button. When an enemy takes a swipe at Bayonetta, she can dodge out of the way with a hit of a button. Additionally, if the dodge is well timed, it will activate "Witch Time." Witch Time slows down time for everything but Bayonetta which allows her to wrack up some serious points and quickly kill off enemies.

The hair attacks and sets of weaponry is what makes Bayonetta so much fun. While pulling of a successful string of combos, Bayonetta's fist or leg will manifest as a giant column of hair that ejects from a portal of hell can easily crush enemies. That's only the beginning of the bizarre menagerie of weaponry Bayonetta keeps. To start off, Bayonetta has pistols in her hands and also strapped to her high heels. It is not uncommon for Bayonetta to whip in the air with bullets flying from all four guns simultaneously while spinning in a circle at speed. The weapons only upscale from the pistols. Later in the game, Bayonetta gains shotguns, whip, sword, and many more. Choosing a combination of weapons is entertaining in itself since the player can decide what weapons can go on the feet and which will be held in the hand. In addition, accessories can also be purchased. These give Bayonetta an edge by summoning butterflies to take hits for her, demons to dish out damage, or trading out "witch time" to do additional damage.

Bayonetta also has a magic meter which allows her to activate some accessories or execute "Torture Attacks". These Torture Attacks are quicktimed instant kill or high damage attacks that Bayonetta can perform once her magic is high enough. Said Torture Attacks are constructed as so: full of chunks of gore, a layer of sexy, and topped with humor along the lines of Dead Alive and Evil Dead. A couple of the Torture Attacks made even me, the weirdo gorehound that I am, blush and awkwardly laugh. One in particular was Joy, one of Bayonetta's holy sexy counterparts, is introduced by her being spread eagle and loudly moaning. (Alright, the game is obviously directed by men; confirmed.) The Torture Attack for Joy goes as such: A spiked pummel horse raises from a portal and Bayonetta perches on top of it and swings a chain around her head. The chain lashes out and wraps around Joy's body similar to rope bondage and yanks her to sit on the pummel horse. During this sequence, Bayonetta pushes her foot down on Joy, pushing her deeper onto the spikes until Joy eventually climaxes with glee and splits in two.

Awwwwkard.

While the game works amazing for an action game with great flow and speed, Bayonetta has some flaws. Namely, whenever the game tries to try out anything different other than the combat. In the chapters entitled Route 666 and Isla Del Sol, Bayonetta takes control of a vehicle and is set into an on-rails shooter. Not only are both of the levels lengthy, but they are painfully dull. Route 666 is a never-ending sea of cars and enemies that Bayonetta shoots blindly at while going at top speed. Isla Del Sol, Bayonetta takes to the skies on a rocket and shoots down flying enemies as they whiz by in a third person mode. The huge flaw for this will not effect everyone, but I had a lot of problems with motion sickness. The dodge mechanic in Isla Del Sol spins the screen. Bayonetta needs to dodge a lot in that particular level. I am sure you can see what the problem is.

The game is the right length at about eight hours if its the player's first time through, but it can easily be beaten under three hours. Because of the short time it takes to play through the game, the other difficulties of Bayonetta are much more appealing to beat (especially with the promise of more ridiculously sexy outfits, new accessories and weapons). There are dozens of items and secrets in the game to continue to look for through the different playthroughs.

Bayonetta is a great game because it doesn't take itself seriously. It knows it's gory, sexy, and five levels of campy and it fully embraces that fact (unlike it's butch counterpart, Devil May Cry). Once the player can accept the voluptuous protagonist with all of her hairy beasts and outrageous fights, then a beautiful witch friendship witch relationship will start to blossom...

For now.

Looking back at 2009

2010-01-07T20:50:00.012-06:00

It’s a New Year and there are some amazing new games on the horizon...However, I’m following the current trend and taking a look back what I sank my time into in 2009.

Before I go on, I want you to know I went through a whole list of what was released during 2009 and my list of three games exploded into around twenty. So, I’ll spare you and go with my top five.

#5 Left4Dead 2

This really shouldn’t be a surprise. I sank so many hours into the first Left4Dead that this choice really was a no brainer (Dohoho). Left4Dead 2 has access to extra weapons, modes, and new zombie types that really gives a nice shine to already polished game. Plus, I feel that the game significantly jumped up in difficulty (that or my group and I are incredibly rusty). This ensures that Left4Dead 2 will see a lot of play time much like the first.

And openly…

I’M SORRY I DON’T HAVE IT FOR PC! I KNOW IT’S BETTER ON THERE! BUT I DO NOT OWN A PC THAT CAN RUN IT!

#4 Plants Vs Zombies

HI IM BONNIE AND I LIKE ZOMBIE GAMES!

[ahem]

Plants Vs Zombies devoured many hours of my life. I went through the game several times when I first downloaded the game…and then several more time when Steam lost my save data after a reformat on yee olde laptope. Like Left4Dead 2, it has a lot of modes to choose from so the game stays fun and fresh (...for at least the first couple times through. I won't lie, it got pretty stale after the third time to get all the items I had before). I only wished I had screen capped my Endless high score of wave 64 before I lost everything, so I could look somewhat creditable when I state how awesome I was.

(So awesome.)

#3 Uncharted 2

This was really a game I was looking forward to in 2009 and it was well worth the wait. Uncharted 2 was a gorgeous, fun, and addictive game. There were several instances where I debated playing another hour or two or four rather than getting some much needed sleep just to see the next plot point. I still equate the game to watching an Indiana Jones style movie (with exception of Crystal Skulls. We all know that sucked). I'm glad to see this series has some legs, but I'm just hoping that it doesn't start to run stale after the next game. I'm anxious to see what comes next.

#2 Demon’s Souls

Despite being incredibly intimidated by this game at first, I grew to adore it. I became obsessed about finding all the secret items and hidden NPCs in the game. I dug around on the the Demon’s Souls Wikipedia to see what the different events were in the different soul/world tendency (I know, shame on me) and played every side of Demon’s Souls. On top of that, Demon’s Souls was all I could talk about for weeks regardless if anyone had played it or knew what I was talking about (somewhat like other people did to me when Fallout 3 came out). Even now, I feel as if I need to hold back about jabbering on about it once it gets brought up in conversation.

#1 Critter Crunch

Say what you will, but this game was built for me. Critter Crunch was that right amount of challenge and cute that I couldn’t stop play it. This was my “one-more round-game-that-actually-turned-into-5-more-rounds-because-those-last-four-didn’t-count” game. I blew through the adventure mode in a matter of hours and then stuck with the survival mode to get into the top 20. And I’m still rank #17 on the leaderboards. So suck it, nerds. <3 This game is also notoriously bad for making me do the "gamer-mouth-breathing" thing. I always catch myself gawking at the screen after about two hours of play and wondering if anyone caught me doing it.

Sexy.

Honorable Mentions

Resident Evil 5, The Maw, Little Kings Story, Shadow Complex, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

What were your games?

Shattered Hopes

2009-12-30T02:01:00.002-06:00

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a Silent Hill fanatic. I live for its twisted world of macabre creatures and bizarre plots. I currently own all the Silent Hill games despite its recent shortcomings in the recent installments in the series. Each time I pick up a Silent Hill game, I’m always striving to find that same dread I got when I wandered the streets of snowy-foggy Silent Hill and heard the radio spring to life with white noise for the first time. When I played Silent Hill 1-3, I was so freaked out by the imagery, I developed complicated system of turning the lights on and off when I made a mad dash for the safety of my bed and blankets. But, after Silent Hill 3, I haven’t quite found the Silent Hill that has the same terrorizing effect on me. Sadly, even Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has not recaptured the horror I desperately want back in the series.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a retelling of the original Silent Hill plot as first seen on the Playstation. Harry Mason stars in Shattered Memories, awaking from a car accident to find his young daughter, Cheryl, missing from the wreck. Harry begins his search for her in the strange town of Silent Hill. In Shattered Memories, the basic plot structure of the original Silent Hill is still there. The town itself, however, does not hold the same amount of occult horror as it did in the first game. Silent Hill is much like a modern mid-western town during a large snowfall. Everything is caked in snow and the streets are full of vacant cars and void of people. However, during his trek in the snow, Harry is sucked into a nightmarish winter hell where strange creatures relentlessly pursue him. Throughout his exploration of Silent Hill and search of Cheryl, Harry is plagued by doubt and confusions about his life and his daughter.

The game is split up into three parts: Silent Hill, Frozen Nightmare World, and The Worst Psychologist Ever. In Silent Hill, Harry travels through a snowy town interacting with residents and solving puzzles that ultimately brings him closer to Cheryl. The areas have a soft quietness to them, which is both calming and strangely creepy because the locations have a strikingly real quality to them. These qualities are what make the town of Silent Hill such an interesting place to explore.

The Nightmare Mode throws Harry into a frozen landscape filled with humanoid monsters that he cannot kill and all he can do is run in terror. In this world, everything is encased in ice except Harry and his enemies. While the areas are visually chilling, it’s incredibly hard to take in when all Harry can do is flee and hide from enemies. So, the effect is completely lost in the frantic blur of the chase. During these chases, Harry must complete inane tasks in order to move forward. Harry does have the option to hide in certain areas (much like Haunting Ground and Clock Tower), but this option is so ineffective that it feels pointless to ever do it. In this mode, players can look forward to getting lost and dying frequently if they tend to have a bad sense of direction or memory (Yo).

Lastly, we have Dr. Kaufman’s office where he asks the player a number of psychological questions. This is part of the game where it “starts to play you”. By answering these questions and completing tests with the doctor, it changes the world of Silent Hill to build situations based on what the player answered. However, Dr. Kaufman is terrible psychologist. He talks at length about your faults, criticizes everything about your character, and during my playthrough focused WAY too much on sexuality. I understand the concept of putting sex in a game to be edgy or taboo, but after about the fifteenth time talking about the character’s sexuality it becomes mundane and ridiculous.

Where I was excited to see this world of Silent Hill re-visioned, it is loaded with disappointment. Shattered Memories doesn’t hold the chilling fear that the other Silent Hill’s have some grasp on. The monsters are uninspired geometrically shaped meat-puppets that shriek and blindly chase Harry. The Nightmare Mode does offer some interesting effects with the ice, but with the monsters always snapping at Harry’s heels, it’s impossible to take it in unsettling nature of the surroundings (like a car being suspended in a huge block of ice).

Despite the game lacking the certain Silent Hill scary bite, it does bring interesting characters, game mechanics, and plot. Digging into Harry’s past and discovering his true identity is a compelling point to trudge through the tedious Nightmare Mode. Fans may be happy to see some familiar names and faces pop up throughout the game as new characters (I know I was).

The game mechanics are exactly how a survival horror game should be on the Wii. With the wii-mote, the player has control over Harry’s flashlight. It’s a small detail, but it really adds a fun element to the game that really draws in and makes the player feel like they are a part of Silent Hill. Along with the flashlight, the majority of Harry’s actions revolve around his phone. From it, he receives and makes calls and text messages of the bizarre and disturbing kind, take pictures, and access maps. With the wii-mote, the player can choose to have the sound from the phone come through the wii-mote speaker like it were a really clunky cell phone. Another interesting feature is interacting with the monsters in the Nightmare Mode. In order to fling off the monsters that cling to Harry, the player has to throw the wii-mote and the nunchuk to whatever side the monster is on Harry. A bit of a warning to those who are frantic in horror games, you may run the risk of smacking yourself in the face (I’m not admitting to anything).

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a game that is loaded with great ideas and incredible failings. The new take on the horror of Silent Hill is an interesting one, but it still is not the Silent Hill that everyone (including myself) is looking for. Perhaps the next re-visioning or the next game in the series will have what it takes to put the horror back in Silent Hill. Until then, I can walk to my bed with the lights off without the trepidation of some grotesque creature trailing behind me.

2009-11-11T20:18:00.003-06:00

Guess who's rank 49 on the Critter Crunch Leaderboards on Survival Mode?

Yo.

Don't Wanna Die

2009-11-04T11:00:00.054-06:00

Alright, so I may have cheated having Brandon in the room when I went through the first level of Demon's Souls. He had to go through all the cheap deaths before me (there are several of cheap death spots, I might add), so he knows all the ins and outs of area 1-1, Boletarian Palace. I'm playing through as a Magician which gives me a lot of MP and a few spells right out of the gate, but makes it incredibly easy to die fast since I have incredibly low health.

Before I go any further, I think I should go over WHY this dark fantasy action RPG is so insanely hard (and why it's probably a bad idea for me to play). Demon's Souls punishes you for dying. Not only do you start at the beginning of the level each time you die, you also lose your physical body, possibly make the enemies in the area harder, and you also lose all your demon souls (which allows you to purchase items, spells, and level up.). Losing your physical body causes you to be in "soul form" which halves your health and causes you to inflict less damage to enemies If you die so many times in a level, you may start to shift the world's tendency. A darker world tendency can make the enemies much harder, but they do start dropping better items. A light world tendency makes the enemies easier to kill, but item drops are pretty blah. And finally, when you die, you lose all of your souls. However, the game gives you a chance to regain the lost demon souls. You can run to the spot where you died to pick them up; no harm, no foul. That being said, it is very easy to die along the way to retrieve them. If you die a second time on your way to pick up your payload of souls, you will lose them all.

So, knowing all that, I was incredibly paranoid about playing through the first portion of the game. What I ended up doing is looking back at Brandon every few steps, waiting for the okay to move forward. After a while, he'd clam up and made me make my own mistakes. Luckily that didn't get me killed. It wasn't until I was fairly far into the level when he started to crack a knowing smile.

Guess whose paranoia shot through the roof.

"Is this okay? Is there something around that corner? What? What?"
"No, no, no. You're fine. Actually, just look around the corner."
"What? Why? What's... What's around there? Are you trying to get me killed?"
"You'll see."
"You're trying to kill me. What's behind there? Oh god, what's there?"
"No, you won't die, just don't charge through the doorway."

When I peeked around a ledge and ...

Around said corner is not one, but two dragons that do about 3,000 damage with one fireball.

I have 400 health.

Unfortunately, I can't find an image to really illustrate how BIG these things are (Clint Eastwood showed up a few times though), but I ended up standing there for a minute, just gawking. Then, it dawns on me. What are they doing here anyway?

"You'll want to run across this next bridge real fast."
".... Oh god."

And sure enough, as soon as I touched the first brick of the bridge, I heard the dragon screech and blast fire on the enemies that occupied it. I had about 2000 souls and I had already been pushing my luck in this level; too many close calls and lucky shots. I doubt I could regain my souls if I died here. I made a break for it after the dragon does another buzz by. I made it. In fact, I made it through the whole level without dying. A feat that I probably won't be able to replicate EVER again.

That was my first adventure in Demon's Souls. I'll have to see how the next one goes without Brandon's advice and me complaining that I don't want to die every two seconds to him. Hell, it might be worth recording.

We'll see.

And we'll see if any of my luck holds on the next area.

responsibilities

2009-11-02T11:48:00.000-06:00

Yes, there are a number of games that I've been powering through the past couple of weeks. Yes, there are a number of things that should have taken priority over said games. But, c'mon, what would I be if I didn't shirk my responsibilities every once in a while? (A responsible adult, hurhur).

The two big games that have been consuming my time are Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Critter Crunch.

To answer a big question: No, I have yet to play the multiplayer yet. I cannot comment on how good or bad it is. Supposedly though, it's amazing and I'm apt to believe that after playing through the single player campaign.

The ads for this game are incredibly accurate (you know, aside from the dumb broad that can't tell a game from a movie). For all intensive purposes, I played a ten hour Indiana Jones-esque movie-game hybrid. The camera angles give an amazing perspective and depth to the game. In the first ten minutes, my jaw was FLOORED at climbing up a train car that was dangling over a cliff. I had no idea what was going on (and I'm not about to spoil it for you), but there's the beloved Nathan Drake dangling at the end of this train car and has to climb up to the top of the cliff edge to safety. The camera pans upward so you can look down at Drake and see the massive DROP below him.

Uncharted 2 eventually takes you to Tibet through daring escapes, ruthless gunfights, and massive puzzles. Several chapters of the game have that very same tension as it does at the beginning. Dizzying heights and impossible jumps are littered throughout the game without becoming repetitive or boring.

The characters are amazing and as lovable as ever. They really make the story come alive. Not to say the story is terrible, but I wouldn't call it mind blowing or anything either. However, I could listen to the characters banter for hours, which luckily for me, they do. There's a lot of Drake talking to himself or shooting a snarky comment to whoever is near him.

... And plus, Claudia Black voices Chloe. (Lady in Farscape, Pitch Black AND briefly in Hercules). I got too giddy when I first heard that she was in the game. Probably too excited to really comment on. But anyway, this is just a combination of awesome right here: great actors, amazing cinematography, and an interesting story. Even if you haven't played the first Uncharted (shame on you, if you haven't), Uncharted 2 can be played separately and still be an enjoyable experience.

Speaking combinations of awesome, Critter Crunch has had me saturated in it's cuteness and color for weeks.

This game fits all the requirements of my "ultimate gaming equation". (And to quote a friend after seeing the loading screen, "You WOULD like this game.")

The game focuses on Biggs, a furry blob of cuteness(Adorable). Biggs shoots smaller creatures into larger creatures, who gobble them up until they explode into gems(+Puzzle Game), which, Biggs eats. You can chain up combos that allow you to fill up your "Hunger Meter" so Biggs can move on to different areas and bust out some impressive dance moves at the end of each level. (+ Sweet Dance Moves). The puzzles are set up in columns so the creatures Biggs has to pop are always slowly moving down toward him. If they reach the bottom, it is curtains for our adorable little hero as the creatures he usually pops bum rush him.

The adventure mode has a mixture of the basic gameplay, puzzles, and challenges. In this mode, you only need to fill your hunger meter to move on. However! This mode also allows Biggs to feed his son, Smalls. After popping eight creatures or more in one move, Smalls shows up to be fed. Biggs can barf up RAINBOWS to feed his kid and allows YOU to earn a sweet bonus as well as meeting a requirement for the stage. No joke, rainbows.(+This) The creatures are attracted to the colorful vomit and move down faster as Biggs feeds Smalls.

... And they usually jump Biggs (thus me losing) while I'm playing, because I *have* to get the little bastard fed in one move.

"YOU'RE KILLING ME, SMALLS!" and restarting the stage again is usually the end result of most levels. Because, you know, I can't just finish the puzzle without feeding Smalls.

I have since powered through both games, still leaving Fatal Frame 3 and ICO unfinished. Eh-heh! Someday, I'll quit kidding myself and say I won't finish them, but until then, I'll probably have them finished by next time I post. Look for an update on Demon's Souls sometime soon. It's sure to be a colorful commentary because of the game's difficulty and MY lack of patience.

Good to be King

2009-10-28T11:09:00.012-05:00

The Wii has finally been seeing some good games floating its way lately. Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Dead Space: Extraction are being played on and off from the last time I updated. Both are well constructed games, but neither have really sucked me into that dreaded “One more hour mode.”…Until I came across Little King’s Story. There was a span of time that was lost to me. One minute, it was only 10:00 PM and then the next time I glanced at the clock; 3:00 AM. Little King’s Story sucks you into its world with an interesting combination of real time strategy, action, and a cute cow that delivers messages of woe.

Little King's Story follows the tale of a young boy and the building of his kingdom. The young boy is lured from his home by a family of pesky rats and eventually finds a crown and scepter. With these, he can command anyone to listen to him and proceeds to assemble his own little kingdom of Alpoko. At his side, he has a Howser and his trusty cow, Pancho, Liam the Minister of Anything, and Verde the Minister of Records. With these allies, The Little King faces against seven kings in order to unite the world and save the seven princesses that they have captured. His loyal subjects guide him in the right direction and give him helpful hints along the way.

While the story seems cut and dry, it has adult themes despite how adorable everything in the game appears. Science versus religion comes up frequently. Questions about tyranny begin to rise as your little king starts to conquer other kingdoms: Is he really uniting the world or simply dominating it? The topic of Armageddon eventually rises up in the game to bring another surprisingly bleak outlook. It’s not to say the game isn’t filled with the standard Nintendo cuteness, but around the edges you can start looking into the other themes. What Little King’s Story offers should be pulling in a more adult audience, but with the way it’s initially present will have a lot of children lost in its complexity.

That being said, there is a boss in the game that throws poo at you.

The game combines real time strategy, action adventure, and SIM elements into one package. You can gather various townspeople to your side to dig holes, kill enemies, and unlock different areas for you (similar to Pikmin). In turn, you can gain different items which are worth a certain amount of Bol (the game's currency) and expand your kingdom to gain even more citizens. Your Little King starts off with a simple entourage of farmers and grunts that can get the job done, however, different classes of citizens become available. Later on, you can bolster up your numbers with veteran soldiers, ripped miners, manly lumberjacks, and several other classes with special abilities.

You will need these different classes to tackle the various bosses and enemies in the game. Little King’s Story offers a number of different boss fights that keep the game interesting. My concern at first was that all the boss battles would be the same hum-drum of launching as many soldiers as I could, as fast I could until it was beaten to death or all my army was taken out. Luckily, I was proven wrong. The majority of the boss fights have some gimmick to them. One boss fight you play as a pinball game. The other is a race against the clock to reach a top of a mountain. Another is a memory/geography quiz game. It’s not to say that the game doesn’t have beat ‘em up enemies. A number of special monsters in the game make you plan strategically in order to bring them down effectively and without losing any of your men in battle.

This leads into the next section of the game. Early on in LKS, you have the option to build a suggestion box for your people. This allows your citizens to voice their complaints and compliments as well as setting you up with some quests. Most quests are going out to conquer various enemies to either earn Bol or clear out areas to expand your kingdom. The rest are story quests and requests from your royal advisory staff.

As a whole, the game (enemies, heroes, and world) has a very storybook quality to it. During the cut scenes, the imagery turns into a picture book illustrated done in watercolors. The style, with big headed characters, is cute and takes the edge off tough enemies and darker themes of the game making it more of a zen experience. Another interesting design choice of the game is the music; it is all public domain. So, it was not uncommon to hear The Sugar Plum Fairy or Hall of the Mountain King. The public domain music gives a unique soundtrack from older songs that could have been heard at a childhood age for most of the gamers to, again, play off this notion of a storybook-like game.

In general, Little King’s Story is a fun exploration/RTS/SIM game. It has interesting boss fights, a somewhat intriguing story, and a darling world filled with equally darling characters and enemies. It’s a world worth exploring and possibly staying up until the early morning hours just to give your little king that extra push into glory.

Fast Update

2009-10-21T11:46:00.004-05:00

Excuses : School, piles of games, driving TO said school, work, helping with local tournaments.

What's going on : I'm still working on the format of the podcast since the test run didn't go as smoothly as I would have hoped. I have not forgotten about this. I bombed my Shadow Complex review and now writing up something for Little King's Story.

What you should do: Keep watching here. I'll have a review up here soon and HOPEFULLY (if I get my butt into gear) a video podcast.

Easy Mode

2009-09-08T20:23:00.005-05:00

As I suspected, I didn't finish any of the games I thought I would last time and ... started a slew of other games that I probably won't finish. Seriously, I should probably start having a weekly schedule of games I have to play a day.

Recently, I got to play Muramasa: The Demon Blade which I have been looking forward to since I finished Odin Sphere awhile ago. I'm happy to say the game is the eye candy I have been looking forward to. Unfortunately, I'm running into problems with this long awaited game. While I'm excited to see Muramasa in the States finally, I'm a little iffy on the controls and the gameplay so far.

The game is a basic hack-and-slash with minimal platforming. Muramasa revolves around unlocking different swords which have different powers to use (IE: rapid forward jabs, sword beams, and vertical shots). I'm annoyed by the lack of explanation of some of the sword powers, because there's certain abilities that I have no idea what they do and the game doesn't make it immediately obvious.

"I'm glowing ... with red flames around my body. What's that do, Game?"
"lol imma not going to tell u."

You gain spirit points through eating foods (much like Odin Sphere) which unlock better swords. The levels and new swords seem to come faster than I would like. It seems like I would get used to one sword's ability only to have a new one forged that was twice as better a few battles later.

I'm not proud to say that I started the game off on the easier difficulty of two options (There's only an "Easy" and "Hard" mode). However, when I found I was swathing through guys left and right without any problem, I switched to the harder mode. As soon as I switched, I could feel the difficulty sky-rocket. It forces you to start using the dodge abilities and reflecting projectiles like crazy (Holy wow, effort). Normally, this would just be a learning curve, but with the ultra-simplified controls... it's a pain.

To start a combo string...Hit the "A" button.
To block... Hold down the "A" button.
To deflect projectiles... Hit the "A" button.
To perform a down strike... Hold down "A" button and crouch.

I think you get my point. The simple control setup seems to gimp the game into a frenetic "A" button fest. It would be a lot easier if there was another button to use in combat (at the VERY least for blocking purposes) other than "A".

This "A" problem makes me question if I shouldn't just stick with the easier difficulty and just breeze my way through this gorgeous game. I'm already frustrated with the controls within switching to a mode where I have to actually do something other than smash a button to victory. But at the same time, I'm afraid the game will start to stagnant for me. It would be playing the game without any threat of death.

For example: When I had it set to an easy difficulty, I went through a cave of 100 enemies (no foolin'.) without a problem. I can't even imagine me making it through the first wave if I was on the hard setting.

So, that's my dilemma. I'll most likely suck it up and play through on hard mode rather than going through a shamefully simple mode. It's a weird standard in the gaming culture if you pick the easy mode, huh? For the most part, no one is really going to be watching me play this game, but I still feel like I'm cheating somehow by going through on an easier difficulty. It's like I'm taking away the true way of playing the game and that really bothers me for whatever reason.

So, I'll see how well that learning curve treats me next time.

One of a few outcomes

I'm also starting up a gaming ... podcast show upcoming on Friday. So, take a look on here for the link and any news I have about it. I'm also working on a Shadow Complex review, but for whatever reason, I'm having a hellva time writing it.

I'll keep you updated.

Dumpster Diving

2009-08-31T20:55:00.007-05:00

When I was a little girl and I had yet to receive a gaming console, I was pretty stoked to see a five dollar bin on PC games at my local drugstore. Some were complete junk and some were games that I replayed over and over again were like diamonds in the rough. My favorites were point and click puzzle games like Dare to Dream, Alien Incident and a number of games I’m fairly positive no one else has ever heard of (not to sound smug, but seriously it’s a five dollar bin on PC games). So, when a game can recreate magic moments from my childhood gaming, I’m all about them. Emerald City Confidential is one of those games that sent me down a memory lane of digging through the five dollar bin and finding gold.

Emerald City Confidential takes you forty years after Dorothy Gale’s victory of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Land of Oz. But, in those forty years, Oz has changed. Lovable characters have seen the trials of a country at war and it has twisted them into corrupted versions of their former selves. This is where Petra comes in. Petra is a foxy broad detective with a mysterious past. She’s looking to put the Lion, who is now a crooked lawyer, behind bars for good. However, until that day comes she’s just a tough cookie that is trying to make next month’s rent. When a new job for Petra falls on her lap that sounds too good, she takes it against her better judgment. It takes her to the four corners of Oz and forces her to confront her dark past.

Emerald City Confidential does an amazing job of storytelling for a simple point and click adventure game. The characters from a beloved story morph into gritty characters from a noir setting. It’s an intriguing concept and done incredibly well. The artwork is vivid and beautifully done. The voice acting is throughout the whole game as well which—though my many years of PC gaming dumpster diving—is a giant perk.

While the puzzles can be clever, there’s nothing in the game that’s truly mind-boggling. Most of them are fairly simple. The game encourages you to play around to find the answers to each puzzle. Even if something is not clicking for you, the game reminds you that you can never fail or die. However, you can just feel silly for not being able to see a small crucial item (Guilty). I never found myself struggling through any of the puzzles, but they were still an entertaining way to get through a curious story.

When I did finally get my Nintendo 64, point and click adventures were history to me. However, going back to these older styles of games are still incredibly fun for me. Upon remembering those old titles I mentioned, I dug through the depths of internet to find them again. I’m sure for me, digging up Emerald City Confidential some odd years in the future will be a thrilling experience once more.

You can play the game here for an ... hour for free, buy it there, or snag it on Steam. I highly suggest checking it out.

Dust Bunnies

2009-08-17T19:21:00.008-05:00

I’ve been hopping around with games a lot lately. This isn’t completely unusual for me, however, it does mean I have a lot of unfinished games collecting dust on my shelf. So, this week I’ve been dusting off a few of the forgotten games.

Ico has been on my shelf for a long time and I have yet to finish it. I have been playing it on and off for a few months now. I do not recommend anyone trying to play Ico this way. I can’t even imagine how many hours out of a seven that I’ve clocked on this game have been attributed to “… Now, what was I supposed to be doing?” There are several times I’ve backtracked nearly through the whole game only to find I was going completely the wrong way. Forgetfulness aside,
Ico has the ability to make me oblivious to the problem solving tools at my disposal.

Game : You see a rope holding up a bridge. You are holding a sharp sword. WHAT DO YOU DO?
Bonnie: [looking up the answers on gamefaqs.com] I don't know. I don't know. I don't ... WHERE THE CRAP AM I?!

I think a lot of it has to do that most of the other puzzle solving games I play don’t allow you to do the most basic of things like that.

That or I’m an idiot and these obvious concepts can get lost on me.

I really do like the game, however I’m still not sure why so many people are so crazy about it. I love overall design of the game, characters, and enemies. I’m just not seeing the complete draw for a general audience to Ico. I probably will when I finish the game soon (soon as in the next decade at this rate. Hur-hur).

Note! : My sources (Annie) confirmed my hypothesis that the game is made awesome by its ending. So, I can't wait to finish it!

Next up on my forgotten list is Fatal Frame III: The Tormented. I dabbled in the first game and completed the second Fatal Frame. I really liked Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, so seeing the third installment I was eager to start.

By eager to start, I mean, playing it a few weeks after I received it as a gift. (Thanks Brandon!)

Fatal Frame III is pretty much the same as Crimson Butterfly. What makes it so different though, is the characters (You can play three different characters) and the copious amount of fandom thrown in this game. It can be a little much at times, in fact. Tecmo isn’t too subtle about saying “HEY HERES THE OTHER CHARACTERS AND TIDBITS FROM THE OTHER FATAL FRAME GAMES LOLOLOLOLOLOLO”

I’m sure bigger fans from the series are giddy over the fact you can play the girl, Miku, from the first game. But for me, no matter what character I end up playing, they all sound like Japanese Porn Stars that makes erotic sounding noises when they're scared. However, when the subtitles don’t show up and all I can hear is “MMmm….Yah… Ah! Mmmyah,” in a high pitched murmur it sounds odd, to say the least.

I’m still working on both so expect some new reviews in the near future. I also completed Emerald City Confidential as well, so also wait for that review sometime this week! I'm working on a few other things with Let's Play! with some new ideas spliced into it. So, keep an eye out. I'm excited.

You should be too. <3

Chubby Chasing

2009-08-02T12:32:00.009-05:00

Oog. Okay, Google image search yields a lot of mixed results for "Fat Princess". Hughghghgh.

I've been playing Fat Princess since it came out. The dumb community aside, I really enjoy the game. It's cute. It's bloody. It's simple.

It's... still kinda buggy.

I'm sure they're fixing it, but in some sessions, your Princess (who drives the points in the game) will completely disappear from the map.

Forever.

This means, only one team can win. The servers are still a bit crowded too, but eventually the hype will go down and/or the servers will grow.

Either way, I've found some classes in the game that I'm already gravitating to. I really enjoy the fully upgraded Worker. The Worker has bombs and axe which can build up structures like upgrading buildings, ladders or spring-launchers. Just all around useful, right? Plus. Bombs.

Same with the fully upgraded Priest. Not quite as neat as the Worker, but has the ability to heal and sap health. I can find a happy medium by following a pack of dudes healing and dishing out my own damage.

The Warrior is pretty self explanatory. You kill adorable medieval guys. Duh.

I'll updated more on Fat Princess when it's more of a solid game. Right now, it's still pretty buggy and slow going.

...And too many fat jokes and "fat bitches" getting thrown around over voicechat. COME ON, THAT IS WAY TOO OBVIOUS, PEOPLE!

As most of you probably don't know, I've been playing InFamous, which I really like so far. I'm not crazy about the story, but the game is fun to mess around in. When it came out, I did (probably like a lot of others) got Prototype and InFamous confused.

But, more recently, (Thanks to Kyle) I was able to get a chance to play the counterpart to InFamous: Prototype.

Obviously the games are completely different once you start playing them, but with such similar main characters...evil-doer skinheads that are super BA.

Anyway, when I started to play Prototype, the gore levels are incredibly high. I'm talking high levels of flying bloody giblets here. I'm not complaining, but I was a bit taken back by them.

Yeah, that's right. Matrix humor. Totally up to date on funny here.

Anyway, the sheer speed of the game still throws me off a bit. I'm used to having a more control over my actions in InFamous, so when I'm whipping around streets and zipping up building at the speed of thought, I make it look pretty clumsy. I couldn't have played more than twenty minutes of it, but I'm looking forward to trying it out a bit more.

But I really should beat InFamous before I pick up a similar game. I should, but I probably won't knowing my gaming fashion.

squeak

2009-07-27T12:53:00.003-05:00

I enjoy eating chocolate now and then. I’m personally a huge fan of Twix. Now, when I take the first bite of candy and the chocolate rolls on my tongue; there’s that moment of bliss. Shortly afterward when I actually start to chew the Twix bar to get at the caramel and crunchy cookie center, it feels like I’ve been gnawing on tin foil. Now, why do I do this (ignoring the fact that my teeth are probably needing more dental work)? I like a chocolate bar every once in a while and it’s worth going through a little pain for sweet indulgence.

This is how I feel about The Legendary Starfy.

The Legendary Starfy follows the story of (you guessed it) Starfy, the Prince of Pufftop Kingdom in his attempt to help a fallen Space Bunny find his memories and a way back home. Each level gives you the goal of finding crystals to help the lost Space Bunny, Bunston, remember his past. Along the way, you are opposed by an army of cute enemies and helped by adorable allies. With the power of friendship (I wish I was making that up) and Starfy’s various power-ups, you must conquer evil and save the day. Yeah, the story is sickly saccharine and filled with adorable starfish-prince squeaks, darling animal pals with anime expressions, and cheesy lines about friendship conquering all obstacles. There is really no escape from the cuteness in the game. You will just have to embrace it... and possibly play the game in private.

The game was clearly developed for a much younger audience, and therefore is not incredibly difficult. Where the game fails at being a difficult platformer, it does succeed at being a relatively fun with some unique and clever level designs full of nooks and crannies waiting to be explored. The Legendary Starfy is heavily focused on collecting the number of hidden items throughout the world, and purchasing collectibles at the in-game store. These include treasure chests hidden with optional costumes, secret messages, and special pearls used to buy more costumes and collectable figurines. So, while the game isn’t very arduous - finding and buying all the junk in the game can be.

Besides the standard platforming skills, Starfy has some Kirby-esqe morphing abilities that help him get through the levels. You use the dinosaur’s burning ability to blaze through plants, a shrill chicken’s cry wakes up a giant sleepy cloud, and changing into a squeaky seal will help you bust through thick ice. The downside of these abilities is that they are only given to you on certain levels to use. I was never able to Godzilla my way through the game as dinosaur-starfish hybrid of my dreams (Wah-Waan).

Once you have completed the single player experience, if you want even more of a toothache you can play the game multiplayer. Player two takes control of Starfy’s sister, Starly, and she can help you get into areas that Starfy couldn’t normally get to by himself. While this is a benefit for those of you that know someone else that bought a copy of the game; it was annoying for me. The game basically forces you to have a second copy in order to unlock everything available; the download play option takes way too long and starts and stops frequently. It is a frustrating experience to need a second purchase in order to get every item in the game, so completionists may want to avoid picking it up.

I really found it hard to put down my DS despite the game having some annoying caveats. Even the sickeningly adorable story and the forced co-op scenarios were not enough to drag the fun and varied platforming elements; I simply couldn’t help but smile and continue to power my way through it. In the end, this game is an indulgence - one that is almost too sweet at times.

Cheap Damn Hell Ass Games Part III

2009-07-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

Bonus points for title.

Anyway, I make an oath not to make ANY sheep jokes during this post. I just won't sink to that level or that humor. I promise.

Flock
XBOX 360 and Steam
Price: 1200/$14.99

Okay, so it's not the cheapest game in the bunch.

Flock is a puzzle game published by Capcom that puts you in control of a Flocker Ship that herds adorable farm animals into the MotherFlocker Ship.

Yeah, pretty flocking clever, right? Herp-a-derp.

Each level gives a quota of animals you need to spook into the MotherFlocker Ship. To help with this, the basic flocker ship is equipped with different beams. Each ship has a beam to pull up (but not animals) and press down objects. Also, you can use the terrain to your advantage. In some areas, you can breed sheep, shrink sheep in water (They're cotton based animals, you know.) and catapult animals across the map. These examples are just a few I've seen in the short time of playing the game. With all these, you need to race against the clock in order to maximize your points to best the best Flocker ever.

Since my laptop isn't really built for running anything besides Popcap or Flash games, I can't vouch for how Flock plays on the PC. The 360 version takes some getting used to since you're chasing behind a flock of animals, it is really hard to keep them contained and on track. I found that I had a lot of problems making the animals do what I wanted them to without chasing them into a corner of off a cliff.

Whoops.

(Okay, seriously, I'm biting back the urge to make a Silence of the Lambs joke.)
The controls feel clumsy at best and you either need to adapt to the game or be prepared to fail miserably.

The multiplayer version of the game seems to work better than the single player... if you have a competent person to flock around with, that is.

I'm probably not the best choice.

I'm not that bad, but if a plan is not communicated, the game gets annoying incredibly fast. Both players can go after the animals, which sends them into a panic in different directions. It *is* really fun with another person, but communication is vital to the gameplay.

That's all I've really picked up lately for cheaper games. I've been bouncing around a lot with different genres and ways of talking about games (IE: Let's Play). I'm hoping to get some audio with the next game I play, so look around for that. I will keep this blog going, and I really appreciate everyone that's still keeping up with me despite... me not really keeping up with the blog.

Let's Play: Resident Evil!

2009-07-01T15:33:00.002-05:00

So, yeah, I'm doing a Let's Play now. I'm going to upgrade the quality so at some point you'll be able to see my purdy face. Hur.

Until then, you get text commentary.

Enjoy!

Cheap Games Part II: The Search for More Cheap Games

2009-05-17T13:25:00.005-05:00

Rag Doll Kung Fu : Fists of Plastic
PSN
Price: $0.00 until May 21st!

Continuing on with more cheap games...what's better than a cheap game?

A decent free one.

After sniffing out a rumor on a forum I'm on, I found out that it was indeed true. Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic is free until May 21st, thanks to Sprint. I don't really know the details of WHY it's free, all I know is the game went up for FREE.

I was initially drawn to the game because it looked so bizarre. I had no clue there was a predecessor on the PC, so plastic dolls fighting each other intrigued me. However, I wasn't too keen on dropping whatever PSN was charging at the time since I had no idea how good or bad it was. That and I was too apathetic to investigate. Apparently playing the "waiting game"(or forgetting about the game for months) can pay off for the lazy.

The game is pretty simple, but incredibly silly. It's a multiplayer fighter. The game looks so weird when its in motion because characters are drug across the screen by invisible strings. So, each fight looks like they've been done by a kid playing with his action figures spliced in with some Dragon Ball Z.

The game takes advantage of the SIXAXIS which can be both frustrating and fun. When you shake the controller, you character can charge up an energy ball or perform a flying kick or punch. If you take this game seriously, it can be a pain to be gyrating a controller only to see your character do nothing and get wailed in the face. But, if you're like me, this game is just a fun throw-away game to play with friends since no one really truly knows what the hell they're doing.

Plus it's free for a little bit now, so what's the harm, right?

This game is at its best with the various multiplayer modes. Besides Deathmatch, Rag Doll Kung Fu also offers King of the Hill, Capture of the Fish (flag), and Dodgeball modes. So, you're getting a lot of different modes to toy around with (dohoho). Although, like most multiplayer fighting games, it's just not worth playing unless you have someone else to play with.

The challenge modes are for single-play. But once you realize the CPU knows how to control everything better than you, the game ceases to be that much fun. Although, I'm sure if you got used to the controls and actually sat down to get good at Rag Doll Kung Fu, you could probably whomp the CPU.

I just don't care enough to.

That sums up Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic. There's a few other cheap games that I can still think of, so keep an eye out for those next week. It's going to be a pretty slow couple of months for games anyway, so DLC is dominating for awhile until fall.

Also, there's another way to get Plants Vs Zombies even cheaper. Soofoogamers is holding a Twitter contest so you can win said game by telling them YOUR zombie plan. Yeah, I'm a part of the community, but we're trying to get the word out about our site. So, help us out and win a scarily addicting game. (Seriously, I've logged about 40 hours in it since the game came out).

You can get the details for the contest here and I'll see you next week! :)

Cheap Games

2009-05-08T15:40:00.010-05:00

I know a lot of people are usually apprehensive about dropping fifty to sixty dollars on games. Luckily for those people (myself included), XBOX 360 and Steam have some great games for not a lot of scratch.

The Maw
360/Steam
Price: 800 points on 360
$9.99 on Steam ($11.99 for the MAWESOME Pack which includes all of the DLC to date)

I’ve been meaning to talk about The Maw since it’s come out sometime in January. This is an amazing game with a lot of character that deserves a play through. You play Frank the Alien that leads the insatiable eating machine, Maw, around various terrains defeating enemies and consuming anything that moves. During these adventures, Frank and the Maw run into different creatures that give the Maw unique powers. For example, if the Maw eats a fire salamander looking thing, he gains the ability to breathe fire.

Who woulda thunk it, right? Fire breathing from a fire creature.

Although the fire power is pretty generic in video games, The Maw still offers different strange abilities later on. (And you have to admit, it's always fun burning down anything in your way.) While you go through the levels, the Maw continues to grow larger as he devours every living thing in sight. You can expect him to take up most of the screen as you progress through the game.

The Maw falls somewhere between Katamari Damacy and a platform-puzzle game. There’s number of animals/enemies the Maw needs to eat in order to receive 100% completion on a level, plus one hidden bonus boogery slug hidden in all the levels.

Yum

The small cut scenes between the levels are what really convinced me into buying the game. They’re so vibrate and adorable. As soon as I played the demo, I already knew I was hooked. It was one of those games that plastered a giant dumb grin plastered on my face. They really reminded me of the old Looney Tunes cartoons with over exaggeration and slapstick humor. Totally classic stuff.

Plus! It always seems to have some content available for download. So, even if you finish the game, you still have the option to grab a few more levels later on.

Peggle
360/Steam/DS
Price: 800 points on 360
$14.99 on Steam for the Peggle Deluxe (includes Peggle Nights)
$20.00 on the DS

Oh, Peggle, Peggle, Peggle. I love Peggle…obviously since here are four versions of it floating around in the apartment, I think. That’s not counting the versions on Brandon’s computer.

There's a lot of love for Peggle around here.

Yeah, Peggle is amazing fun, simple, and addictive.

Here’s the basic formula for Peggle:

Pure awesome.

Instead of being a straight up Plinko-ish game, Peggle also allows you to play as a Peggle Master. Each Peggle Master has different abilities to clear orange pegs from the board. So, Bjorn Unicorn (the names are so rad) helps you by aiming your shots or Claude the Crab gives you pinball like flippers to bump the ball around in hopes of hitting another orange peg (or in my case, spiking the ball right down into the abyss).

Each version of Peggle is basically the same, but slightly different features. Peggle Deluxe is available on Steam and 360. The benefit to having it on 360 is that you can play with friends over Xbox Live. It’s the same game, but you can compete to have the best shots and scores in real time. The DS version has extra bonus levels to earn more points (more useful for having Peggle on the go, in my opinion). When you're buying Peggle Nights, you're basically paying for more levels and cheesy lines from the characters. Peggle Extreme is the same thing as Nights, but with Valve inspired backgrounds and themes.

So much Peggle.

Speaking of Pop Cap games, here’s one that interrupted the writing of this article several …. several times.

Plants Vs Zombies
Steam
Price: $9.99

Plants Vs Zombies has been taking over my life since finals ended. It’s a tower defense game that pits the forces of nature against the hordes of the undead.

In other words...this is my kind of game. Plants Vs Zombies has everything I really love in a game: Collecting gold, Zombies, and adorable character design (both zombies and plants).

It’s relatively a quick and easy game to pick up, but it does need some skill and planning to really dominate levels efficiently. You have the option to upgrade your plants later on with money you collect during the Mini Games, Survival Mode, and Adventure Mode. There's even a Zen Garden where you can leisurely grow plants to earn even more funds for your game.

Aside from Adventure Mode, Plants Vs Zombies gives you more bang for you buck with more gameplay. You unlock Mini Games, Puzzle Mode and Survival Mode by playing through Adventure mode. A lot of the Mini Games are throw-backs to previous Pop Cap games, so you have a zombie aquarium and BeGHOULED. Survival Mode is self-explanatory... you survive a horde of zombies. Puzzle Mode allows you to control the zombies against a plant army already set in place.

Also, weird/cute music videos :

I realize most of these are fairly causal games, but they’re still fun games to throw in from time to time. Or for hours at a time.

Either way, try them through the demos available and let me know what you think!

2009-04-23T12:10:00.002-05:00

Ah-haa...
Getting charged up come May. I didn't forget about my poor little blog.

To save you a long winded post:

Work Pressures
Bad Scheduling with School
Bevy of games that I haven't been able to put down

But yeah, expect a return in May after my finals.

It's too big!

2009-01-24T22:01:00.004-06:00

This week everyone's favorite awkward anime RPG (seriously check out the downloads section; it's worth a laugh) has a sequel, Ar Tonelico 2. Most of the game revolves around tongue-in-cheek sexual innuendos involving naughty magic girls. I'm really happy to see that the game has evolved since its last romp with busty babes. The combat system is more than menu based. It now sports a brawler aesthetic with combo system based on active button pressing, while making sure your women are happy. So, what this means to me is that I can button mash my way to victory!

As much as I razz Ar Tonelico 2, I've already sank four hours into it in one sitting.

I'm still playing Fallout 3 and enjoying it. I have more of a social-based character, so I get stomped every time I come in contact with a group of Super Mutants. I thwarted Megaton from being blown up by wooing Burke with the Black Widow perk. Since then, I've been running around trying to find him after the fact with no luck. He keeps sending me love letters and I want to find him, settle down in the wastelands together. Marital life in post-apocalypse. Sigh.

I'll probably write more about Fallout 3 later. Although, I don't know if it's as fun hearing what I'm doing in the game since .... anyone can really do what I'm doing. If Fallout 3 is anything like Oblivion was for me, it's all the glitches in the game that are memorable.

reanimated and revisited.

2009-01-19T18:51:00.002-06:00

I know I’ve been talking about Left4Dead for months now, but I’m still very much in love with my zombie filled game.

All I’ve been playing is expert campaign and versus…and expert difficulty is insanely hard. My usual Left4Dead group (Brandon, Ben, and Matt) have tried to make it through all four scenarios on Expert difficulty. Sadly, we’ve only successfully beaten one out of the four campaigns. I mean, Advanced is fairly tough as is, but for those teeth-grinding, white-knuckle moments there is Expert. Our sessions usually last about five hours, which mostly end in tragedy. It’s disheartening, yes, but it’s incredibly satisfying if accomplished. Not only do the zombies do much more damage in this mode, but so does friendly fire. For example, Matt is a great player. He’s a good shot. He’s dedicated to play a game for five hours that he might not even win… but he uses the sniper rifle, which is a one shot kill to anyone on his team.

‘BANG’

Matt has incapacitated Bonnie!

“… Sorry.”

Not to say that the Assault Rifle or the Auto-Shottie are any better, but you don’t have to be point blank with the Sniper Rifle to take down one of your compadres with a misplaced shot.

Also, the AI Director is a jerk. I’m sure everyone has had a defining gameplay moment where the invisible jackass has thwarted their efforts and killed off the whole party. In my experience, it’s always on the last level when this moment occurs. It’s always with the escape vehicle on the horizon. So it goes something like this:

After the unrelenting horde of the undead has beaten down on our heroes, they start staggering toward the rescue vehicle. Zoey is near death. Her health is dwindling by the second as she gimps behind her teammates who are in slightly better shape than she is. However, they’re all bleeding out and recovering from the last Tank attack, when there it is: the escape vehicle is in sight. Glorious survival and victory are just a few steps away. The rest of the team gets inside and starts shouting while providing support fire. Amidst the chaos and the roar of the zombies approaching behind Zoey, Bill meagerly shouts out, “Smoker!”… Which has already grabbed Zoey and is dragging her toward the throng.

Smoker has incapacitated Bonnie!

Zoey is left to die for the good of the team.
/roll credits

“…For the good of the team”

I hate hearing that when I’m down. Although, it does give me a good excuse to warble, “L-leave me!” or “Don’t let them eat me! Shoooot meeee!” like I’m actually in a zombie flick. Yes, I’m an idiot and probably the worst person to play Left4Dead with, but at least I’m having fun.

Speaking of idiots, last week Ryan and I decided to play Versus. After exhausting our options of playing with actual people, mostly by saying “brah” every few minutes (don’t ask), we finally got into a game… with just us two. We connected to a party chat and started Blood Harvest. Surprisingly, the game isn’t quite as taught with only two people (What. No way!). The infected side has one special zombie that spawns-in every ten seconds or so (much faster than the twenty some seconds in the standard four on four). This doesn’t help with the crackshot AI-support that a single survivor gets. The AI is merciless and could explode an infected from the darkest corner or through the thickest tree. The match was pretty even throughout our whole campaign, until Ryan met with an open window followed by a mighty long drop. Either way, the entire experience was worth the stupid smack talk and watching Ryan plummet to his death. Very satisfying.

The game is refreshing to play online as I stated in my previous post. It’s weird. I can’t explain why zombies bring people together, but I can only hope that the zombie apocalypse happens… and heals the world.

Either way, look forward to my Persona 4 review this week. This time I swear I’ll get better about posting.

For real this time.

Left 4 Dead, but surprise surprise!

2009-01-03T03:09:00.004-06:00

Final Thoughts

Zombies are my undead bread and butter, so naturally when a zombie co-op shooter is available I jumped to play it…when it came out....a few months ago.

...Yeah, I’ve been kind of lazy about updating, but there’s a lot of games that came out, Christmas, school, my little brother got his arm stuck in the microwave, my grandma dropped acid, and she freaked out. She hijacked a busload of penguins… In all seriousness, I’ve been certainly getting my money’s worth out of Left 4 Dead.

Left4Dead is a zombie-themed, survival-horror FPS developed by Valve that keeps its players together by surrounding them with hordes of the undead. I have been dreaming about this game for years. Left 4 Dead is a survival zombie game that keeps its players together with threats of mini-zombie bosses and hordes of the undead. Each level is a different scenario (hospital, airport, farm house, boat) that you and your companions need to fight through to finally reach rescue. Seeing as I have the 360 version of the game, there’s not a lot of options for levels yet, but you’re looking at four different areas to choose from.

The game doesn’t have much of a story in the ways of cutscenes or character development. Luckily, Left4Dead doesn't really need a gripping story to keep you playing. Even so, there are some elements of story that allow the player to piece together what's going on. In each safety bunker, you are able to read graffiti on the wall ranging from survivors names to theories of the zombie apocalypse.

The game does thrive off of co-op. In my opinion, if you’re not playing this game with real people, you’re not playing this game right. While your AI companions are not completely stupid, it’s hard to coordinate anything if they only follow you around blindly shooting anything that moves. But as you all are aware of, jerks do exists on XBOX (gasp, say it ain’t so!).

Although, Left 4 Dead does a fairly good job of keeping the “griefers” in check by adding the specials and mass amounts of undead. If someone decides to play a hero (basically playing a one man army guy like Master Chief), they will quickly be snuffed out by some of the Special Zombies who need to be taken out by a team. Also, if you’re playing with random people, you always have the option to vote someone out and have them replaced by a good ol’ silent AI character.

The gameplay is generated by an insidious AI Director. This invisible watcher can make your life in the game a living hell. Essentially, what it’s supposed to do, is gauge how you’re playing and ramp up or tone down the difficulty. Although, after playing it for a while now, it doesn’t really feel like there’s something controlling anything. It feels more random as if there's not deciding factor what gets thrown at you whether your stomping through the area or getting spanked by the undead.

That’s where the “versus mode” really kicks it up. In this game type, you’re able to play as the infected and hound the survivors to death to score points. It gives themakes the game more intense and a way play while racing through the level with actual people controlling the special zombies.

What the 360-version of the game lacks is levels. While the game offers hours and hours of re-playability (what with constant changing spawns thanks to the AI Director) the levels you play can get somewhat stagnant as there’s only two scenarios for versus and four for co-op. It’s not that the levels are bad, but they get kind of old. For versus, it’s easy to know all the good hiding spots for the infected pretty quickly if you’ve played the same scenario a dozen or so times.

Another small flaw is there’s no customization for the characters. It is a small complaint, but I’d love to make myself or even change the look of any of the four characters in the game.

I still really love playing this game. It’s always great to have a shooter that I can get into and even people I don’t know that I end up playing with are actually enjoyable. This game makes people super nice. Left4Dead encourages you to help your fellow gamers, so you hear a lot of “Thanks!” or “Nice shot!”. The game really does force you to work together as a team whether you like it or not. If a Smoker has someone dangling over an edge, someone has to go free them or that character will die. It really is essential to work as a group.

Really, it’s refreshing as is the game itself.

Breathing

2008-12-15T16:02:00.007-06:00

Okay, okay, okay.

I probably ended my hiatus a while ago but I've been busy with a metric buttload of games and other stuff coming up.

And with out further ado, here's shiny new excuses why I haven't posted in a while:

(Don't ask me why I look so smug.)

PSP! PSP GAMES! YAY ! The household has all the next gen gaming systems now!

(Lumines - A puzzle game where you make squares and I constantly forget how. Awesome music and the better of the two I'm told.

Monster Hunter Freedom 2 - I snagged this for Ben and I'm waiting for Ryan to pick this up to so we can all be sexy anime women together and battle Monsters.

Final Fantasy Tactics - 'Nuff said. I'll finish it someday. Like some other Final Fantasy game I swore to.

Loco Roco - It begins anew. And portable.

Patapon - A rhythm RTS type game. Addicting and adorable sounding like Loco Roco.

Jeanne D'Arc - Ah, Joan of Arc like I remember her....as a magic girl surrounded by lizardman. History is awesome! )

and last, not least, and not on the PSP (although I may be able to remote play it) (!!!!)

AN ENGLISH VERSION OF PERSONA 2 OH MUAH GAWWUAAAHHHHD

Early Christmas Presents are so awesome to have. A huge huge thank you to Brandon for the PSP and miscellaneous games. Ryan for finding a copy of the game and somehow being able to part with it.

Thanks!

And I will get more updates soon. School is out on Tuesday so I'll have plenty of time to bring everyone up to speed to what games I'm playing and what I think.

Dead Space

2008-11-20T10:15:00.008-06:00

(Um...yeah, Issac. You have to shoot their limbs... if that's not a big issue. I mean, if you're not doing anything else, can you clear the giant ship of alien lifeforms? Great....)

Final Thoughts

Dead Space is best described as classic horror movies crammed into a single game. Evidence of The Thing, The Alien franchise, Event Horizon are clear. This isn't a bad thing. Being to identify how the team of Dead Space came up with their ideas is fun. I mean, it's what I equate to finding Easter eggs in other games.

The gameplay is reminiscent of Resident Evil 4, but once again, it's not a drawback to the game. The game brings up (for me, anyway) pleasant media memories. The RE4 feel of the game is fun. Except, you're able to move and shoot at the same time while looking over the shoulder of your character in a third person angle. Dead Space's backbone rests in the familiar. The controls are so easy to pick up and start playing after extended periods of not playing (blaming Fable 2).

I thought the story to the game was alright, but nothing to write home about. It's not quite the gripping tale that some people may be craving for after Bioshock's story, but it's satisfying enough for sci-fi horror. It stays away from being cheesy and silly (thank God). It's able to tell the story, but as stated before, it's not quite as immersive was I wanted it to be. The game is a little too generic in the story area.

"Go fix this."
"Okay."
Find some tapes about betrayls and crazy people dying recorded
Repeat

I loved the scares in Dead Space. Most of the spooky moments of the game were predictable, but it was still fun to play through it. However, the best parts of the game were when you expected something to jump from the dark, but nothing happened. During those times, I would be looking around in paranoia waiting for something to leap out and rip me apart. The tension in the game was something I craved. Amazing.

The boss fights were so much fun. One of the boss fights takes place in a Zero-G tunnel where you can run around the walls while shooting at tentacles and pus sacks. The rest of the boss fights don't feel so much as staged since most of the "bosses" end up becoming reoccurring enemies that come across your path later. Which, trust me, is terrifyingly awesome.

About the only area of the game I didn't enjoy was a couple of asteroid shooting events. These parts of the game seemed like they were tacked on and completely took me out of the game in frustration. They were really annoying to control, since it was so easy to get crushed by space garbage or rocks. The controls don't allow you see the whole area you needed to protect, so a giant asteroid always seems to drift by unnoticed.

I loved being able to upgrade the weapons, but the new DLC for the game... eh. I was confused why I need to purchase weapons ... that I already have to only have them look more spiffy and more fire.

I highly recommend this game to anyone that played Resident Evil 4 or anyone that's looking for an action game with a little more "umph". Seriously, it's a great twelve hours and replayable is still good since you cannot upgrade all the weapons in one single play through.

2008-11-19T08:21:00.002-06:00

Blargh. Okay, I'm a little swamped with new games, games I beat and haven't updated about yet, school and the holidays coming up. I will update, I swear it.

Look for some Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, LittleBigPlanet, and ... I think that's it. I'll probably play some Mirrors Edge.

So, yeah. Hiatus for a little bit.

2008-11-13T08:22:00.001-06:00

Mrgghg... Rgaggghghh.... Need game ... now. So fun.

Brraaaaugggggh.

Even if Jerry constantly kills me on "accident"

Prraggll...

Trrry the demo.

Buuuy the game and play with meeee.

Back to the Unfinished

2008-11-09T20:10:00.014-06:00

Holy smokes, there's a lot of goodness out right now. Fable 2 is still up on my most played even if I was sucked back into Dead Space.

I like to just say that even though I've beaten the game (and on my second way through), I really want a longer experience and everything else that was said that was going to be in the game before. I wanted the kids to be more responsive and even maybe a better experience when you're talking to random people on the streets. The expression wheels are neat, but I wish the citizens held grudges or had the Fallout 3 of having consequences of murdering a whole town. For example, if I take the Blacksmith in Bowerstone away to be murdered a new blacksmith will come take his place. I mean, I'll still play it and I still enjoy it, I'm just looking for more depth.

And a better longer story, amirite?

After my long haul of playing Fable 2, I'm back in gear with Dead Space. Since I've been able to play it when no one's around, the game is way spookier alone. The last half of the game is creepier by far. Enemies are faster and harder to kill in the areas I'm in. Stasis (ability to slow down enemies) fails to work at the later levels on some enemies and that's when you want it the most. The mini games that are scattered around the later levels are very reminiscent of Resident Evil 4. Like in Resident Evil 4, you are able to use a shooting range for prizes like ammo or conductors you can sell for money. Unlike Resident Evil 4... Dead Space has Zero-G Basketball.

It sort of looks like that, but less live people. It sort of breaks the mood of the game since it's somewhat lighthearted and nothing tries to, you know, eat your face.

I'm almost done with it. So, you're looking at a tense 12 hour game experience the first run through unless you're dinking around with the physics of the game.

The new Castlevania is crazy amounts of hard and fun. Plus, you play a female for once (aside from Dracula X as far as I remember). The game is based around sucking down glyphs in various levels so you can use different weapons instead of purchasing them. Using a weapon uses up part of your magic meter, but it replenishes fast.

Watch at about 1:17 and on to get an idea. I've had such a great time leveling up in this game. Because like it's other DS predecessors, OOE has quests that you have to complete by picking up various items around the areas. Seriously, ignore the crappy fighter that's coming out that happens to share the same name with Castlevania and pick this game up for a challenge.

LittleBigPlanet is still nothing short of amazing. The levels are so complex and, now adventuring, online levels are fairly clever. My only problem with it is that I feel the need to lay out a blue print on paper just to figure out what I want done. Plus, there's a crazy amount of tutorials to show you how to use EVERYTHING in LBP.

I understand the game really wants to teach me how to use everything, but holy mackerel...

Every time I selected an item a window popped up saying something about a tutorial needed to be played. It's great that you earn stickers and what not, but jeez. Every single time...

I get it. I want to know how it's played I just wish there was a way to play them all the way through one by one instead of teasing me that I can begin to create a level when I actually can't.

Alright, I think that's... OH. Durp

Gears of War 2 came out on Friday and it's an absolute blast and another essential co-op multiplayer game. Now that our household has two TVs and two 360s makes it incredibly easy to let four people play horde mode. I haven't played anything else but horde mode yet. Honestly, I think I could have picked up a game that just has the horde mode. Playing in horde mode means there's waves and waves of enemies coming at you and your friends. You scrounge for enemies while keeping in cover and giving your buddies some "D". It's an amazing amount of fun and the game looks amazing in shades of gray, brown and space marine. I'm looking forward to playing co-op mode later, I think I just need to know some more folks to pick up this game.

Thick-neck hardass space marines are calling, will you answer and play some co-op horde mode fun?

Anyway, that's it for games this week. I don't remember if anything else new comes out next week, but check back soon for another update. I'll be beating Dead Space soon.

2008-11-01T20:29:00.008-05:00

I don't need to say there's a lot of exciting games out right now and coming out soon. My attention right now is on Fable 2 (even after beating it) and LittleBigPlanet. Fallout 3 doesn't... really seem to be clicking in my head.

I'm going to explain this to best of ability. After getting out of Fable 2, I was looking for a game I could pop in and simply running around a game world. Fallout 3 gives a more in depth lengthy story and universe that I just don't have the attention span to commit to it.

I mostly like what I see. The introduction of the game is unique. You grow up, pick your stats, establish what kind of person your character is going to be. That's a neat mechanic and you can set up what kind of person you want to play. All the options that your given at the beginning are surely just a taste of what's to come.

I'm a little wary of how familiar the game motions feels like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. The characters move weird. Watching my character run, the animals/gangers/whatever working together to try to kill me, and the way the NPCs look (and don't blink) remind me of Oblivion. I don't really know what I was expecting, but at the same time I'm not sure what I'm really looking for.

My other problem with the game not grasping my attention is its what everyone is talking about in my group of friends. I mean, I hear all about the game experience through everyone else, but I can't seem to want to play this game for the life of me.

Even if the gore looks super crazy.

Fable 2 is still on my most played list. I am constantly popping in it to see how much money I've built up and to play a little more than quit shortly after. After playing the game through as a good female character, I decided to make a second evil fat male character. It's not like the game changes dramatically, but some of the decisions you make as a child impact. Like, in the beginning you have the choice to hand over some warrants you find to a criminal. If you do this, when you grow up the area of your childhood turns into an area of thugs and whores (opposed to a quaint neighborhood with friendly shopping stalls if you don't fork them over).

I like playing the good character more since she's a bit easier on the eyes. The good female character is a bright blue veined will (magic) user with white dreds, hot pants, corset, and thigh high boots. I couldn't stand making her a good melee user since she got all buffed out. It just didn't look right.

So, with the evil male character, I had that opportunity to expand. First, I made him bald since I thought the hair always look kinda weird when the horns started to appear and added some muttonchops. Next, I fed him a lot of food. Jerky, chickens, pies... it didn't matter. I just crammed his face into anything until he looked like he should be rolling instead of running. Finally, the coup de grace...I found some of the most expensive dapper dandy clothes to wear. So, he's got the fancy buckle shoes, nice looking vest and tight pants onto an incredibly fat demon looking dude. Fun to play as though.

Last on my list of games, I've been playing LittleBigPlanet with Brandon, Ben and Jerry quite a bit. This is one adorable game, people. Grinning sack boys and girls are able to be customizable with items found in the platforming levels. So, at one time, we had a Lion Boy, Cat Girl, and some kind of Sparta caped hero running through the level at one time.

I really like how the game quickly gets more difficult as new elements are added and how searching for items never really seems to get old. There's secret compartments for the items to hide in or a platform that you really have to get launched up in the air to get or you need a second player to help you get some prize bubbles.

What I haven't tried yet is making a level, which seems to be the bigger point of LBP. Build and share your own homemade levels is what you do. I find it kind of intimidating. I mean, I want to try my hand at it, but it seems like it would be too hard or my level would turn out lackluster.

That aside, I haven't really given the online a chance either. This is something I would need a bluetooth headset for and ... um. Friends that own PS3s.

Get on that.

Otherwise, my Eye Toy purchase seems to be validated with LBP since you can take pictures of yourself and friends to make personalized stickers to place in various levels. There's already dozens of sticks of me giving the shooters caked in some levels. Makes me somewhat curious how many pictures of people's junk is on LBP at any given moment.

I swear, I'll finish Dead Space soon or die trying.

You'll see it next week.

Fable

2008-10-25T21:10:00.010-05:00

Like everyone else, I picked up my copy of Fable 2 on release date (October 21) and shortly finished it yesterday early morning (October 25). I got home from work and school to play the game for hours and hours on end. So, the game is short, but understand, I hardcored through the game doing mostly the main quest before finishing the short side quests. If you only did the main quests, you could probably finish it in about six hours.

Final Thoughts
Fable 2 was something I craved from the first iteration of the game. I always looked longingly at Fable 1 wanting to be a good or evil male shaping the world through my actions. So, when Fable 2 finally came out I was ready to dump money on it. I even dumped my cash faster when I heard co-op was available as well.

So, Fable 2 is what Fable 1 should have been. The areas are bigger. The reactions are wider with the reactions of villagers (IE you can slap your bum and people get upset). There's a lot customization with the characters since you can be a woman this time around and there are literally dozens of clothes, dyes, ect. You have a spunky dog companion that will accompany you through the game to dig up items and sniff out quests. You can own several properties that will continue to collect rent even when you're not playing. Of course, you start to look evil or good depending on your actions. This is the core of the game. Forget the story, this is what you really want out of Fable 2. The ability to change your character and to explore what you can do with the world is what you really want to play the game for.

The story is completely worthless. I found myself incredibly bored and skipping through the cutscenes to continue playing rather than what was going on. It's really stereotypical fantasy story of revenge. I wasn't playing the game for the story however. Although, I'm not sure who is playing this game for the story.

However, the sway of the good and evil in the game feels a little quirky. As I played the game through as good, I would accidentally shoot a villager while fumbling with buttons (I always hit "B" as a cancel while "B" is actually the magic button). When I did this, villagers would freak out and run away from me. But, fixing terror is so easy in the game. It's like shooting a bolt of lightning the middle of town can be remedied by doing a jig in the middle of town square. With the exception of the quest choices, it's so easy and quick to change anything. If you get fat, you can eat a lot of celery and slim down fast. If you angry people, you can fart near them and they'll love you again. It goes through that motion for a lot of situations. However, this also makes the game interesting to see what you can do quickly.

The game is still a tad buggy. The beginning part of the game, I got stuck in the first main quest line. There was supposed to be a monk that I needed to trigger in order to progress and I couldn't change it. I had to delete the character and restart my game. I've seen and heard other glitches in the game that somewhat break it to the point it's not playable.

But, even if the game breaks, I didn't find myself really caring. Fable 2 is the one of the best casual games to throw in and mess around in. Though the storyline is incredibly short, it's still fun to play around in the world to see what happens.

The co-op of the game is disappointing and I'm hoping it will change in the future. While you can play in someone else's world, you cannot play as your character from your game. You are made to play a generated character to play in their world. I don't know why you wouldn't be able to play as your own character on someone else's system. However, what Fable 2 does is interesting is the friend's orbs that float around while you're playing. So, for example, while I'm playing the game, I could see Ryan's Gamertag Icon of a Panda floating around the area.

The combat is pretty much the same from the first game except the bow and arrow skill changed to encompass guns as well. The magic feels a bit clunky and some spells are unnecessary. The melee is disappointing if only because you basically have to look like a steroid junkie. So, you either have to bite the bullet and look like a beefcake or ... don't do enough damage.

All and all, I do like the game even if I was really disappointed with the length of the game. The best part of Fable 2 is the replayablity. Although, I didn't get what I wanted to in the first play through, but I'm not too worried about it since I can always play through it again and have a different experience.

That's what I thought about it. Sorry that I don't have a lot stories from the game, but I'll probably have more interesting things happening that anyone else can't see or experience while playing this game. But seriously, next week is going to be FULL of crazy fun games to report on, so keep reading and you'll be hearing some stuff on LittleBigPlanet, Dead Space final thoughts and Fallout 3 goodness.

Guess what's collecting dust now?

2008-10-18T00:52:00.015-05:00

Ha... Alright, well, as I mentioned last time I was having a hard time playing Silent Hill: Homecoming. I've restarted. I discovered a lot of items I passed over when I was skittering through an area where I heard dogs howling in the background. Or something. I don't know why I didn't see the back room where a... bad dialog with the local town "fix-it" man resides. I'm not sure The conversation went something like this:

"Hey man, what's going on?"
"WHAT THE )(@#*$)# DOES IT LOOK LIKE"
"Um. Why you fixing clocks"
"THEY'RE ALL )@(*#$ING BROKEN R U STUPID OR SOMETHING"
"O-oh. Why is that?"
"Oh, well, my dear boy, they all seem to be stuck at 2:06"

Not the exact dialog, but close enough. It's probably another thing I'm missing that gets explained later on. Point being, the character--Curtis-- does such a radical 180 on his personality.

With the restarting process in full swing, I'm still finding it hard to actually finish the game. I'm finding it somewhat lacking in what I wanted which was previous Silent Hill spookiness. This could be for a number of reasons like I'm not grasping the system as well as I'd like to, not being immersed in the game, or playing with a group of people around me. I don't know when I'll be finishing this game or if it'll end up like Silent Hill 0 as a dust collector.

Don't get me wrong, it probably is a good game with some relatively spooky stuff. However, with this Silent Hill I'm not feeling the jitters like I did in Silent Hill 2 that left a certain feeling of dread even AFTER I was finished playing it for the night. The sort of dread that makes you wonder if there isn't some kind of horrid twisted thing hiding out in your darkened room somewhere. Once again, it could be that I'm playing it wrong, but I'm not really sold that this is the Silent Hill experience I'm looking for

On the plus side, I have found a game to play other than a certain vividly colorful cute pinata simulator. Dead Space has been amazingly fun for me. Playing in a third person style akin to Resident Evil 4, I have been cutting off limbs of space creatures. It's been an experience that I can pluck out the inspirations for the game pretty easily. The Thing, Alien, Event Horizon, Bioshock, Resident Evil 4 are the ones I have noticed so far, but I'm sure there's others that I'm missing.

The creature design is obviously from The Thing:

(The Thing creature)

(Dead Space guy)

I've already ran into something similar to the head monster. But, I really like how the creatures move and look. They're downright disgusting and horrific. I'm glad I was able to get the art book for the game (Yay! Pre-orders) just to get a better look at all of them. Since the game relies on the mechanic of "strategic dismemberment", it's absolutely vile how some of these creatures bust apart when you shoot off limbs. One monster that comes to mind, has a giant pus sack on its side that explodes the whole creature into a bloody torso and twitching gooey red limbs.

While the game is about "strategic dismemberment", it really drives the point OVER and OVER that you're supposed to cut off their limbs. The first time you find a gun, you see "cut off their limbs" written in blood. Okay, sure, that makes sense. After killing a few of these creatures in that manner, I find an audio journal stating that "HEY! WE FIGURED OUT HOW TO KILL THEM! CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS ARRGGHH!!!". Um, okay. Got it. A few more monsters and my team gives me call over the intercom, "HEY! Cut off their limbs to kill them! That seems to do the trick!"

...OH WE'RE SUPPOSED TO CUT OFF THE LIIIIIMMMMBBBSSS. Oh. That's makes SO much sense now. Yeah, thanks, I got it the first time. Yeesh.

I mean, so far is has a lot of cheap scares, right? A lot creatures will jump at you. That's a majority of the things that make me yell out. The atmosphere is like the ....

Yeah. Those movies. The scenery changes from steel beams to .... more steel hallways. It's sort of thing you expect from Sci-Fi movies set in space. There's also some new areas like the sort of biosphere area, but for the most part? You're looking forward to Alien/Event Horizon looking areas.

While the game may start to stagnant with the "cut legs, cut arm, done", there's a few curveballs throw. Regeners, wallclingers, and random tentacles that can shoot out and grab you give variety to some of the creatures. That's what I've seen so far anyway. I'm excited to see what else can be introduced later in the game.

I'm a little upset that I've inadvertently cheated in the game by downloading the two suits available off of Xbox Live. I mean, I downloaded them after reading the description that mentioned that it was a suit that you could get as a level 5 upgrade. At the time of download, I was at level 2 suit upgrade. So, yeah, I'm running around with maximum protection and inventory slots. Whoops. Not that it's really taking away from the game, I'm sure, but still. If your going to download these just save it for later. Both the suits look kinda stupid anyway. I can't find any pictures of them, but just take my word for it. You can do without them.

The upgrades in this system are a little frustrating. After hearing several times that I wouldn't be able to upgrade all my guns or suits, it's a little disheartening. It's just a disappointment that all the guns that you can purchase in the game you can't even come close to buying all the upgrades for the stuff. Complete bummer. It makes the re-playability almost a little forced, it seems.

I'm really looking forward to playing the rest of the game. I love how it plays out and it feels like it's something I need to accomplish. I mean, the story isn't amazing, and I'm not really expecting it to be. I'm just happy to have a game that makes me want to play it more. At this rate, I'll have it finished by this week and I'll have my complete thoughts by then.

Lastly, again, I apologize that I'm not really that punctual with my posts. I'm still working with a work schedule, school schedule, personal life and gaming. Plus, I'm a little lazy. I'll be working harder to put out posts at least once or twice a week.

And thank you again so much for reading. :)

Silent Hill Homecoming

2008-10-08T15:28:00.015-05:00

As you can see by the title, it means "srs bsns".
I've been playing Silent Hill for a few hours and I've got a lot of mixed feelings about the game. It is one of my most beloved series and has been since I played through Silent Hill 2. I loved the scares, twisted plots and the depth of the characters. And ever since, I've played all the games, bought the comics (which are horrid, but I love Ben Templesmith) and even dressed up as Heather one Halloween (shut up). I've always wanted more from the series. Whether that be another game, another comic, merch...whatever I needed to either remember the experience of entering Silent Hill's foggy streets for the first time again.

Basically, I want the experience I got from the first Silent Hill 2.

Unfortunately, with the Foundation 9 and Double Helix Games taking over the game series and my over exposure to horror in general, has left me feeling frustrated and underwhelmed with game.

The first moments of the game were what I expected. Alex, the main character, wakes up in an unknown area (presumably a hospital) full of rusty tools, and decrepit rooms. We wander the halls, in shock of horrid latex nurses and easy scare tactics used in horror film (IE: It's all quiet and GOODNESS THERE'S A VERY LOUD NOISE THAT SOMETHING AS HARMLESS AS A WHEELCHAIR MAKES!). There was the familiar soundtrack that I had waited to hear as well. I was even more excited that there was a town that I could explore and places I had to come back for at a later date. I really like the concept of it, I do.

The game has some good looking monsters. They are creepy and maybe the majority of them look like some kind of genitals. For the most part though, the game is still Silent Hill.

With the exception of the battle system. Usually in Silent Hill games, we have trade off combat (I hit the enemy; he hits me...ect, ect.). I saw the trend of what Silent Hill was working up to with Silent Hill 4, but it wasn't quite there yet. It was still sort of slow, hard to dodge, and the camera angles weren't very forgiving either.

Sadly to say, the camera angles still remain in Homecoming, but at the same time the combat has improved a lot. Alex is more fluid, you a have a bit more control over the camera and there is a way to whomp through the game. But, I'm just not seeming to get it. Each enemy has a tell. For example, a monster rears back for a moment, he's going to jump on you; this would be the time to dodge off to the side and whallop him dead. I can't seem to get the timing really down yet. I might be able to fake it on a few monsters, but I end up getting my little red health bar beaten down to nothing.

I can't stress how frustrating that is. I really want to be able to play this game, but I can't seem to wrap my head around it. I mean, I understand *how* it's supposed to work, but I can't manage to make the concepts work.

So, I tried a few different things. I tried faking the dodging game, which didn't really work. I could get a small number of enemies down this way, but for the most part, I'd end up limping away with a few health drinks left.

My other strategy used to be running away from everything. Now the enemies follow me, corner me... then rock me hard. It doesn't help that I horde all the ammo. It's so ingrained in my head that I must save the bullets for the boss fights.

Right now I'm not too incredibly far into the game, but I'm at least still interested on what's going on. I want to finish the game, but I'm having a difficult time grasping that this isn't like the other Silent Hill games.

(Pyramid Head on the left enjoys some leisure time)

Also, I'm kind of weirded out by seeing Pyramid Head again. Don't get me wrong, a wave of girlish glee swept over me when I saw his pointy mug appear on the screen. But, I don't think he should be anywhere else except in Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill doesn't need an icon. I know it's fan service or whatever, I don't want Pyramid Head to become a reoccurring character because he's creepy. He can remain in Silent Hill 2 and have a bunch of weird theories throw around why he's there.

So, I'm restarting the game and seeing what I can salvage the second time around. I can see how it turns out the second time; hopefully, I can get a better experience this time.

Here's hopin'.

Castle of Silent Pinatas

2008-10-01T22:41:00.006-05:00

Finally, I’m not filled to the brim with snot and I’ll just ignore some homework for right now. I’ve got some Pinatas to report on, vampire castle exploration and some biased thoughts on the new Silent Hill game.

First of all, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise continues to be the relaxing game I want…that is, until after my Spanish class on last Thursday. I was already tired and cranky after a day of school and work, so Viva Pinata was my first choice for a game. Popping it in, I went through my usual habits of getting in new piñatas, breeding them, and then selling them off. But, that night, I happened to get stuck on the Horstachios:

And the doenuts:

For those who don’t play Viva Pinata (for shame), in order to breed the piñatas, you play a little maze mini game to collect hearts and get to the other piñata on screen. Easier said than done, apparently. I must have spent about a thirty minutes trying to get both of these animals finished.

I mean, it started off alright. I would lose and grumble something. I would lose maybe, five times, and I’d say an expletive. And after about the tenth and every time losing after, I’d become increasingly louder and more vulgar. I eventually got all of them done, even after a concerned and weirded out Brandon asked me if he could just finish it for me. I assured him in a very serious tone that this was personal now, and I had to take care of it.

Other than TIP giving me a hard time, the other Viva Pinata game (Pocket Paradise for the DS) is exactly what I would want to do if I could have my DS out at work all day. There aren’t any mini games to be seen. It’s a little harder to come by money in the game, so I tend to take my time either breeding piñatas or making produce.

Which, I realized how difficult it was to make money in the DS version of the game when I looked at my total cash in TIP. That’s like 1.6 million versus six thousand. But, since money is hard to earn (piñatas aren’t worth as much, everything costs a lot), there’s a few piñatas that are a lot more useful on the DS. The Taffly’s produce fertilizer which makes plants grow bigger and better. This item must be made by the my blue butted friend since it’s not sold in the stores. And any piñata that can *make* anything is one hundred times more handy than a cute little Preztail.

*huff*

Ok, so, I can’t say I’ve been doing a lot in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night recently. I finally got to the inverted castle and realized I’m in way over my head. I’m so low level and getting my attractive vampire body blown into bloody bits more often than I’ll care to admit. It’s either that, or I’m still hording all my food or potions thinking I’ll run into a harder fight along the way…which I don’t ever see since I’m dead.
What a strange loop.

I love exploration games and I’m so bummed the next Castlevania game appears to be a fighting game. I was hoping for more of the classic hunting rare pointless items down. Actually, what I really would like to see is a co-op Castlevania. If you did it right, you could do something over XBOX live where one person could be exploring one area while you’re exploring another. It’s like Portrait of Ruin, but with another person controlling the other character. Granted, *MY* idea isn’t fleshed out, but a fighting game makes me turn my nose up in disdain.

(hmph! ... Also this is as close as I get to aloof/disdain)

Lastly, I snatched up my copy (and my Fullscreen copy of the movie. Woo.) of Silent Hill: Homecoming.

(eee! We're in a hospital.... AGAIN! Who would have thought.)

As a fangirl of the series, I’m instantly filled with glee and love that I could only compare to some kind of maternal feeling. As a gamer, I’m hesitant. The last few games I’ve played with “Silent Hill” as the title haven’t been all that amazing. I'm hoping against hope that it's more like a Silent Hill 2 game with more depth than "WHOA MAN SCARY MONSTERS AND THE TOWN IS EVIL" philosophical spew.

But the first twenty minutes or so, I’m cautiously optimistic. While the game doesn’t look amazing (it still looks a little dated), it still has the creepy atmosphere and hauntingly beautiful music I know and love about the series. I mean, there isn’t anything wrong with a few touch ups which SH:H has done, I’m just looking for something that looks good without a layer of hazy static; crisp.

I love/hate that nearly everything moves around in the game if you come in contact with it. Chairs clatter loudly to the ground if you run into them, which has been terrifying me since I’ve been A) making sure no one is in the room going to jump behind me and scare the ba-jaysus out of me or B) watching too much X-Files.

I'm not sure about the combat yet. It's feels alright, but I'm not used to the shucking and jiving around the screen. It's quick and from what I've been hearing from other players, there's a lot of fighting. I want to believe that each fight is going to be as smooth as they have been up to this point, but I really, REALLY doubt that.

Other than that, expect more news on Silent Hill: Homecoming in the next update and um, if it’s not as stellar as I want it to be… probably looking at another piñata post until something else comes out.

....Here's hoping the game is good for your sake. :c

THE "D" is for DRACOOLA

2008-09-23T21:56:00.013-05:00

Ugh, I hate it when I'm too ill to do anything, but hork up snot into a kleenex (with lotion, of course) and be exhausted. I mean, in what kind of sick world is someone too sick to even play an easy game like Viva Pinata?

But, luckily, I'm feeling better. And *also* luckily for most of you, I'm probably off the Viva Pinata for a while. Although, I'm still hammering away at getting all the achievements for the game, so PLEASE! Wait for more updates on the Pinatas if you really want to know what's happening in my garden of upper class gents:

(Daniel Plainview Walrus is spotted)

I'm a sucker for adorable. Leave me alone. :c

For now, a lot of my time has been sapped by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the XBOX 360 DLC. I had been playing Castle Crashers by myself for a while. I was leveling up character and trudging through levels in the off chance that I would end up finding a new weapon or animal orb or anything that would bring a spark back into the game for me.

Oh yeah, Castle Crashers is kind of losing it for me. I really want to play it, but other than leveling up characters that have basically the same magic spells, it's just not that fun by myself anymore. So, I found myself wondering, GOLLY DO WE HAVE ANY GAMES THAT ARE PURE EXPLORATION AND FINDING STUFF

Then, I started playing Castlevania.

I love this game series, even if I'm too stuck up to play the one on the orginial Nintendo. I've been spoiled by modern technology, what can I say?

(we played games that looked like this? seriously?)

I love getting lost in the castle, finding items I have no idea what they do, and frantically trying work out the spells like Soul Steal or Sword Brothers even if I don't really need to use either of them.

Sword Brothers:  (MP: 30, must have Sword Familiar)  Down, Down-Right, Right,
               Up-Right, Hold Up for 2 seconds, then Down + Square.

Soul Steal:  (MP: 50)  Left, Right, Down-Right, Down, Down-Left, Left, Right + Square.

Seriously, it's so hard to do a lot of these spells! I know, I know. I only started to really play a lot of the older games a few years ago. I jumped on the bandwagon a bit late to really get the "down to forward" business down on a D-Pad or analog.
Yeah, that's right. I do most of my moves on analog.

....Hrm.

I mean, a lot of them are pretty worthless. For example, I just want to use Soul Steal to grab some health from enemies around (and usually kills everything on screen) , but always end up doing DARK METAMORPHSISSSS which only gives me health when blood splashes on Alucard. And, I might add that most of the enemies explode in fire.

But, that's about all I've been playing recently. Slackjawed and mouthbreathing in frustration while snot dripped down my face, I have been playing Castlevania. So, upcoming posts, really... expect the same, but less snot.

Of Micemallows and Men

2008-09-17T19:48:00.009-05:00

First of all, I apologize for not updating quite as often as I would have liked. With homework, Viva Pinata and more Viva Pinata my hands are tied, people. Granted, that's not all I've been playing, but that's a good majority of it right there.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise is crazy addicting like its predecessor. I've found that I've turned into a brain-dead jerk once I start playing it. I'll ignore most messages that people send me via messages online.

(sorry)

And I'll ignore messages that pop up while I'm playing the game on XBOX 360.

(sorry :c)

Annnd, I'll even ignore someone that tells me to get off the 360 so he can watch The Wire.

(So very sorry :c)

Basically, I'm working through my addiction to the game. I usually drop everything and play Viva Pinata: TIP for several hours a night, but I've gradually got it down to about an hour or so per day.

For now.
Until the weekend.
Unless I get off of work early.

I can quit whenever I want.

But in all seriousness, people that ask me, "Is this game better than the first?"

Um, yes. Leaps and bounds, yes!

My problems with the first game disappeared in the second coming of Pinatas. The gates and fences that pinatas once phased through are now fixed. There's some 30 new pinatas to either trap in different areas or lure into your garden the classic way. A few pointless mini games were added (um, fashion show and races. I can't really find the benefit in winning either other than achievements). You can now also teach your pinatas tricks. Another new feature allows you to use the 360's cam to scan cards to get special items or Pinatas. However, when I scanned the few that I got with the box, nothing really happened other than a new Pinata springing force out of no where only to get popped by the baddie of the game Professor Pester.

(I hate to admit this guy has f'ed my garden up more than once)

All and all, what was added to the game made it more interesting and adorable. About the only thing I don't like that was added is the co-op mode.

A new co-op mode which another person can jump on and help you garden was added to VP: TIP. Which is great for other people, I guess. But when I was playing with Jerry, I just found that I was giving him stuff to do rather than playing a game with him. I'm a mad house when it comes to playing this game.

Get Pinata in.
Breed them like mad.
???
Profit.

That simple.

Also, I just thought I'd share this monstrosity.

(... )

You can customize your pinatas with accessories. I've made monsters. And I'm playing on making a garden that's full of animals in top hats, bowler hats, black bow ties and monocles. I'll post up some pictures whenever I get that finished.

Alright, I'd talk more about Viva Pinata: Pocket Pals, but I haven't really gotten a chance to play it.

And I'm done talking about Viva Pinata for tonight, seriously.

Next on my list, I've played more of Castle Crashers again.

(can I has ur brains plskthx)

I finally was able to get the psychopathic adorable bear to play as. Granted my leveling up as been rather lonely, but I'm sorta having fun playing by myself. I'm aware of how incredibly sad that sounds. But regardless of that, the bear as a whirlwind attack that seems pretty cheap. I can zip around the screen and not get knocked out of it while doing hellish amounts of damage. Plus, getting up to level 35 wasn't too bad with the Bat trick Ryan taught me.

(be thankful I opted for the video without the DND nerd voice)

I know it's cheap, but the game gets boring by my lonesome.

Alright, my only problem with the bear is his magic. While he does turn into a little white whirlwind of justice, right out of the spell if you run in to attack with your sword (or chicken or sausage or whatever crazy weapon) the game glitches and won't allow you to attack. I don't know if it's just *MY* game or something, but it always happens. I have to stop moving for moment and then I can attack like normal. Weird, I know, but I really hope it gets fixed soon.

Okay, and to the jerkops that read my blog, we need to play some Castle Crashers sometime. For serious. Drop me a line and we'll play something sometime.

And to sum up talking about Castle Crashers, here's a little treat:

Castle Crashers Soundtrack

Safe under creative commons license! Just credit and all that jazz to the original artists if you decide to change the songs at all. Enjoy!

THAT'S NOT ALL!!

Fellow zune users (So, um, me and Jerry) can now download the new version 3.0 and get some sweet Hexic action on the zune.

AND A CLOCK.

Way to be ahead of the curve.

Alright, again, I'm going to be hopping around with what the blog looks like for a while, so just be patient with me. Promise I won't be too irratting again (No pink ever again, I promise. :c)

VIVA!

2008-09-10T22:59:00.007-05:00

Well, anyone that knows me personally...and probably people that have just recently gotten to know me, knows that I'm going through a Pinata phase right now for my games.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise was released not too long ago and I have been busting my chops over school and work beating down this game. If I have a spare moment, I'm basically in my virtual garden full of colorful breakable animals collecting them all.

I realize how, um, bad this game sounds at first. Especially with the kids show.

It's not like that. I swear.

More like that. More adorable, less talking.

Incredibly addicting.

And you know, I thought I'd have my habit kicked with me working and school now. But some jerk had to go and buy a copy of Viva Pinata: Pocket Pals for the DS.

(Thaaaaank you)

I'll get more reporting on both in a bit. Promise.

I leave you to wait with bated breath over more talk of Pinatas.

Plus, I just wanted to get in the habit of posting.

PLUS, I have a new title for das blog. I'm planning on moving this sucker to an actual webspace at some point, but I'm going to be tooling around with the design.

I'll find a more suitable blog template. The pink one is kinda burning into my retinas.

Hiatus

2008-09-08T22:43:00.002-05:00

Surprise!

I'm on a new schedule with school. PLEASE! Let me adjust and I'll be back with more wacky gaming fun.

Also, I may be dumping this blog for some new digs, so keep checking for updates. :)

Until then, I'll see you guys soon.

Crash'd

2008-09-02T13:40:00.008-05:00

Okay, so I didn’t think I’d get this done before Soul Calibur 4, but apparently, having a Sunday off means I can hardcore through a Castle Crashers in a single day with my friends.

Final Thoughts

The Behemoth—the folks that brought you Alien Hominid—present Castle Crashers for the XBOX 360 Live Arcade. It has been ages since I’ve hardcored through a game like that. If I had to guess, the last one I played through in one sitting to completion would have to be the Metal Slug Anthologies (so many continues used…). However, this last Sunday a group of my friends and I hammered through Castle Crashers, but with all the extras, we’re far from fully completing the game.

Castle Crashers is a good old fashion beat ‘em up RPG. I’d like to give a good example, but the only game that continuously comes to mind is Gauntlet. And I don’t care what game it is, you never want it to be compared to Gauntlet. Chalk it up to the similar colors of the characters or working in a rundown arcade for a little less than a year, but seriously, that’s the only one that comes to mind (if there’s another game, just comment and tell me).

Anyway, the four of us – Brandon, Ben and Jerry – picked our Knights and went through each colorful cartoony level hacking up equally adorable barbarians, ninjas and evil knights. That’s what I love about this game – and really Behemoth’s style -- the careful balance of cute and kickass. On the one hand, you can see the knights, other characters and the animal orbs (which supply your characters with a variety of advantages) are incredibly cute. Even if the knights are lobbing off heads left and right, they still have a level of cuteness to them.

(D'awww... )

And on the other hand, you see some of the bosses are a different shade of cartoony horror. Most of the bosses are cats. Most of the bosses looked pretty demented and psychotic. Any way you look at the game, it’s very easy on the eyes.

(HEEERREEEE'S KITTY!)

The gameplay, however, I wish I had more to say about. It’s a pretty straight forward: move-kill-loot. You move to get to the guys. You kill the guys. You take the loot or you take the gold to buy the new loot. There are four skills (strength, agility, defense, magic) that you can put points into as you level your character up. So, eventually, no matter what you do, your character is going to end up exactly like everyone else’s. There is a slight difference in the magic with each character (the blue guy has ice, the orange guy has fire, ect.), but when you reach a max level with each character then what does it matter? It doesn’t. What matters is how you want to play it. You can use the magic in the game or you can used the dozens of weapons to swath through enemies.

Don’t get me wrong though. The game is still fun. Despite the fact that I know my characters are all going to end up the same, doesn’t stop me from continuously playing the game after the fact of beating it. While the gameplay can get repetitive by hammering the attack button over and over again(What? There’s a guard button?), you can play for hours on end and still want more. Plus, playing with friends, you can compete with each other every so often for a smooch from a princess you rescue. So, your friend gets all yappy saying that’s HE is the best little knight or he’s the one who is killing everything. In those special levels where you save a princess (or in various optional arenas), you can duke it out between players for giggles to find out who is the best.
There’s so much you can dig up in Castle Crashers. There’s a little under two dozen animal orbs that are hidden throughout the levels that you really need to search for if you want to find them all (and you know you do for that full completion feeling you crave). Next, you have a lot of weapons that enemies can drop or that are hidden in the levels. Lastly, there is a huge number of characters you can unlock to play. That’s a large amount of time to gather all of this stuff. But up to four players pummeling through the game, what’s to complain about?

I’ll tell you. Castle Crashers can be incredibly glitchy. Characters can get stuck in a piece of rock. Enemies can juggle you for up to ten minutes after the fact you’ve been dead for five of those ten minutes. The game will lock up on the Marsh level every time if a player tries to dig something up(or at least it did with my group). The annoyances and usually few and far between, but it’s hard not to acknowledge them since they can disrupt play. Hopefully, Behemoth can fix these problems, if not, well, you can probably expect some frustration when you play.

EDIT: And hey, while I was writing, Behemoth did announce they are working on a patch for multiplayer connection problems. So, if you are having problems after picking up the game, help is on the way and hopefully there’s some fixes on the bugs for local matches as well.

Thankfully, I haven’t found any problems playing online with anyone. I played with Ryan....

Yeah, this guy.

Right here.

That’s him. (We’re even. ;) )

I played a few levels of Castle Crashers with him online and I didn’t see any problems. Surprisingly, we didn’t even have any lag. However, I have heard some complaints floating around on how bad the online play can get. I haven’t seen it, but believe me. You’ll know when I see it. By the sounds of it though, we shouldn’t be seeing anymore problems with it in the future.
Aside from the regular adventure mode, there’s the arena mode which you can also play online and the dreaded mode of “All You Can Quaff.” Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I rapidly push buttons (and I mean, the Mario Party style type tapping buttons ).
My fingers lock up. (I’m double jointed. You learned something new about me.) And that’s all that mode is; you need to press the buttons the fastest to be the winner. It’s boring. It’s not fun. And in some cases, it’s kind of painful.

All and all the game is great. It’s got an incredible amount of re-playability with all the items you can get in the game and all the characters you have available. I’m excited to see some downloadable content come out for this game. I really am. After all I’ve seen in the game, I’m sure there’s more on the way.

If you want to get a taste of what you may be purchasing for a whooping 1,200 Microsoft points (Damn you, Braid for setting the bar higher for prices), you can go here see what you think. Obviously, an online flash version doesn’t compare to everything you can get in the game, at least it gives you some insight to what you’re in for.

So, pick it up and play with me. I’m always looking for some new faces on Live to play some co-op stuff with.

Beautiful day.

2008-08-28T14:43:00.006-05:00

Ah, it’s a gorgeous day today. It’s about seventy degrees out, there’s a cool breeze blowing and yours truly has the day off. And what better way to enjoy the day by nibbling on some Cheddar Bunnies, drinking some orange cream soda, blasting the AC until goosebumps pop on my skin and playing some video games. This is the life.

(nomnomnom)

What am I playing, you ask?
Soul Calibur 4 and some Castle Crashers.
After finding out Xianghau is pretty worthless in a hit against someone who knows how to play, I tried Talim. Playing against Brandon with Xianghau was pretty embarrassing. I took a lot of time learning a lot of these fake-outs that didn’t work. I would get ready to fake out, but instead get completely mauled after a brief pause. She just isn’t worth playing against people that play aggressively and –let’s be honest – everyone pretty much plays …aggressively.
Ah, the spunky little Loli Wind Princess, Talim. She actually worked out a lot better than I anticipated. After the initial trial period of watching her jump and prance everywhere, I eventually learned how to control her and make her into my speedy, hoppy third character of choice. Well, Sort of. I mean, sometimes, I can’t be blamed for sky-rocketing of the stage with her “Wind Chaser” move or the flying donkey-punch move. That’s all Talim ringing herself out. All Talim. Nothing to do with me. At all.

I will give my final thoughts, but I just can’t keep concentrated on writing it right now. I just needed to get a quality post.

Next up, we picked up Castle Crashers yesterday. Aside from the poop jokes, the game is incredibly fun to pick up and play with people. Granted, it was only Brandon and I playing at the time, but we were mowing through guys, levels and each other pretty quickly. The game plays like an old beat ‘em side scroller. Gauntlet comes to mind, but this game is fun. Playing as adorable little knights, you can gain levels and pick up gold for better equipment and healing items.

I’m really excited to play a game like this. I think it would an amazing game to whip out on Friday night and get some wicked-sick four player action.

Alright, so, to those I see frequently, I'll see you Friday for some new game(s) and for my readers look out for a review of Soul Calibur 4 and some new games I'll be talking about like Dead Space and Bionic Commando!

Soul Bonibur

2008-08-17T00:12:00.010-05:00

Be warned, I'm going to be babbling on and on about Soul Calibur 4.

Possibly ego boosting on my part.... Maybe.

....Alright, here we go.

I'm having an amazing amount of fun with Soul Calibur 4. After attending birthday party this weekend and competing against different people really put my playing ability into perspective. I trounced for a few consecutive matches. It was so nuts! I haven't even been able to hold my own like that in a game since Smash Brothers Brawl. Not to completely gab about how awesome I am (or at least, how awesome I *think* I am), I feel completely accomplished from my initial matches. I was able to pick up a few characters and become adequate playing in them. I can pick out what moves I want to do, and actually do them without mashing buttons in hopes of pulling off the same spiffy technique by pure chance. Goodbye, Button Masher Bonce.

(I seriously apologize for this picture. I just needed a new picture of her. I didn't think the doe eyed sweater-puppy princess picture was the only other option, but it's Soul Calibur so there's really no other option for women in this game, but anyway...!)

I can continually rock with Sophitia... at least, against people that don't constantly play against me. My problem that I'm running into currently is that I'm stagnating with Sophitia's move set. Individuals that do play against me frequently (IE Jerry and Brandon) know I'll do a three hit combo that does a mid-attack, then a low-attack and know how to block it. That's not my only move mind you, but that's an easy combo that's null against those two people.
So, I'm starting to branch out like I mentioned in a previous post. Xianghua seems to be a good match so far, but I can't seem to tap the buttons quick enough while I'm fighting against a live person. Against the computer player, I have no problem with a quick three taps of the buttons. I don't seem to have any difficulty waltzing through CPU players through Tower of Souls or Arcade Mode. However, put a pulse behind a controller and I blank out everything I practiced in training mode in a flash.

"Oh shi-- Do that one move--MASH--Back and Vert.--MASH--Fake out--MASH MASH~! THAT ONE COMBO! Oh crap, I've done that combo like five times when I meant to do a different move, they know how to block it! )(#$*)@(#*!"

I love her fake-outs, but I can't seem to get those down yet. Then again, I'm still learning all her moves. I'm not quite as comfortable with Xianghua as I am with Sophitia. And because I have the "Oh shi--" moments with Xianghua, I've started to progress with Cassandra since her moves are fairly close to Sophitia. Cassandra seems to be a little faster, more difficult to play and maybe a little meaner. I'm not really great with her yet, but I'll get there.

However, I cannot stress how happy I am that we play with Japanese voices option on. At the party, the voice was set to English and most of the characters that Brandon, Jerry and I play with have incredibly annoying voices. Tira and Xianghua come to mind. Tira sounds like she is five or ,in a really odd way, whoever did the English voice for Merle from Escaflowne.

Yeah, I'm talking about you. You're *that* bad, Jocelyne Loewen.

But, I just can't imagine playing through the game with English and Xianghua. Her fake-out moves always have her saying "Just kidding!" in a grating high-pitched tone. That and everything scripted in Soul Calibur sounds cheesy in English....

"Those without courage... oppress the weak."
"A pathetic soul, who wishes to find peace in death. How laughable."
"A Tale of Souls and Swords, Eternally Retold!"
"I don't care who you are! I'll take you on! Don't resist and I promise I'll make it quick!"

...but somehow that voids out any sort of cheese if it's said in Japanese.

Probably because they have so much heart.

So much heart.

More games to come.

....But most likely more Soul Calibur until I get burnt out.

Just as I suspected...

2008-08-12T23:07:00.006-05:00

Braid has been finished as I anticipated. So, here’s what you’ve all been waiting for, I’m sure.

Final Thoughts

Braid is a unique fifteen dollar gem. The game pushes forward a curiously creepy storyline about Tim, our charmingly cryptic lead-character. Each world opens another room in Tim's house and tells a little more about Tim and his unending search for The Princess, which he can’t seem to be with for... whatever reason (WINK-WINK).

Of course, this isn't the only Mario reference in the game (Braid is also a platformer). Each world ends with Tim finding a flag with a dinosaur telling him that the Princess is in another castle. While the dinosaur is no Toad, the allusion is still there. Even the enemies in game resemble creatures in Mario. But, Braid has its own flavor and separation from other platformers... its clever puzzles and impressionistic art style level layouts.

See it?

The puzzles are the bread and butter of Braid. With the clever ability to rewind time, the game gives you a casual pace to finish difficult brain teasers to get various pieces of puzzles throughout each world. The rewind time ability also gives way to different levels where you can have a shadow copy to help you solve puzzles or worlds that go forward and backward as Tim does, just to name a few examples. Braid doesn’t hold your hand through the game. Each world gives you a new element to play with and then it’s all up to you. You could spend an hour working on one puzzle only to find the solution by killing Tim as punishment (I did this more times then I'm willing to admit), by having an epiphany where everything suddenly falls into place, or a moment of shameful weakness by looking up the solution on YouTube.

Braid’s look is unique as are its puzzles. The backdrops of the worlds are vivid, living paintings that breathe with life as Tim bounds and leaps through them. Even Tim has a “charming British lad” look.

While there is some initial resistance to the price of the game, it’s well worth the download. Fifteen dollars seems a little high, but the game offers such a wonderful experience with challenging puzzles and a fresh look that should not be overlooked.

Holy New Games!

2008-08-08T00:41:00.000-05:00

Yeah, wow. There has been a crazy amount of multiplayer and new games coming out and new people to play new games with. Whew!

Alright, so, first of all, I got to hang out with Dylan...

Yeah, I can Google image search you, friends.

You've been warned.

Anyway, between the spouts of indecisiveness, we eventually started playing some games. First of all, I didn't really feel up for playing the Wii. That's all I play with the guy for crying out loud. Him and his friend, total Wii guys. Which is fine, but I could rant and rave how it's not completely the system for me yet. Anyway...

Holy naughty bits, Soul Calibur 4 looks awesome and plays pretty nice sans Vader and the weird anime characters. I'm not completely all together into fighting games. I can't be in the ranks of the hardcore with them because I'm either not that good to begin with, or I started to enjoy them way late to catch up with anyone that grew up with them.

Anyway, I can't complain too much with the game itself. The armor breaking down was kind of weird to begin with. Since I tend to use block since I'm not quite sure how to guard impact or anything. So, Dylan's strategy is to keep hitting me and never stop, so I basically turtle my way to glory, and getting a hit where I can. I usually play the busty women as well, so we often saw the Soul Calibur women in next to nothing most of the time.

We were also trying to figure out how to do the Soul Crush moves. But without reading the battle tutorial before, we just kept pressing this button that made our characters reach out--like they were going for a grab-- then hold their head, wincing in pain. So, obviously, we didn't figure it out.

I don't really like Vader in the game because he doesn't fit and I'm not looking forward to having Yoda joining the ranks if he's free later. Really, I just don't like the extra characters. The anime guys are just clones and the Star Wars characters are either incredibly cheap (The Apprentice) or don't feel right.

Now, generally, I wasn't really into Soul Calibur 4 until yesterday. After initially playing with Dylan, I didn't really feel like playing it. It didn't really strike me as something I wanted to do, but since everyone else is playing it and having fun, I don't really want to be a party pooper. So, I got back on the horse and started to pick a character get good at so as not to be trounced by everyone else.

Heellooooo new horse. So, I picked my pony (so to speak) and I've been playing exclusively with Sophitia and I'm actually really surprised with how well I've been catching on. I played her through arcade mode a few times and studied moves in Training Mode. Computer Players are one thing (I mean, throws totally whomp 'em) but real people are completely different. I was surprised when I beat Brandon once, but twice I was a bit blown away. Granted, he's still getting the hang of Hilde and I'm not too sure I can hold up against him again when he learns the character, but still I was tad be proud of myself for at least learning one character. My only problem now is, I don't know who else to learn. I tried Xianghua, but I can't get her quick-tap moves going when I play against the computer because I either panic or hold down a button. So, bottom line is, I can't play her without mashing buttons and doing the same predictable combo over and over again.

But I get really weird when I'm playing against Brandon with people around. I feel the need to be better than I should be. I mean, I know I'm good, but it doesn't really seem like it's enough for me. I have to be fifteen levels of kickass and I'm not happy that I can make Brandon work for a win and sometimes sneak in a win myself.

I don't really get it either.

PixelJunk came out with *their* new game this month; Eden. Already playing a bit through single player the game experience is quite fun. The best thing I can equate it to is Worms Armageddon's ninja rope. But, basically, the game consists of you, playing a creature know as a Grimp to make a garden grow by beating and collecting pollen to make ... plants grow. It's a very bizarre but an unique experience. What really is odd is the multiplayer. After playing with two people with Brandon, and then three when we added Jerry, it was incredibly fun. It's an acrobatic puzzle game the requires everyone to stay in the same area so you don't kill each. The music is amazing, but all I could think about was Mouse on Mars or something when I was listening to the game. Which, you know. Isn't a bad thing.

Way fun. Pick it up. Do it now.

Alright, Brandon picked up Braid today and I picked it up when I got off of work. This game mixes classic Mario platforming with a Price of Persia rewinding ability. Even after playing a few levels, I'm completely hooked. The puzzles in the game are incredibly clever and you really feel accomplished when you solve a difficult puzzle present.

The story is very ... odd so far. After completing each level you get a creature that tells you that your Princess is in another castle, which, obvious Mario reference. However, before each level, there's a series of books that tells a story about how your Princess spurned you and I'm not really sure what's going on right now. The story has an incredibly dark vibe for something that looks so lighthearted. Seriously, the game looks like you're jumping around in a breathing, living painting. It's beautiful on that alone. The rest of the game is a charming platforming puzzler that just BEGS to be played.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 was also picked up and then a constant battle of Brandon and me started much like what happened in Super Stardust HD. So, we're constantly seeing who can get the best, highest score. So, Brandon had the upper hand for a while and still does with most of the games, but I've got Pacifism. And Wax On, Wax Off achievements which were a bitch-and-a-half to get if you don't mind me saying so.

Okay, so Pacifism mode doesn't allow you to shoot, right? You have to dodge and weave between guys and pass through checkpoints to blow them up to get multipliers and build up your score. To get the Wax On, Wax Off achievements, you have to outline the edge of the playing screen. Which is hard when you have seemingly fifty million guys after you on one screen.

Difficult.

But the multiplayer modes in it are entertaining as well. They really work well after the initial four or five deaths because you're watching some other player on the game.

Swinging back to hanging out with Dylan again, he mentioned he really hadn't played a lot of the 360.

This guy.

Sorry, I've been posting a lot of attractive animated women. You need a refresher.

So, anyway, with the two 360's and the two copies of GTA 4 we hopped on there and started causing some havoc in a city. What was weird about it--and it was totally my fault--is that a few stereotypical xbox twelve year olds joined the game while we were playing.

Great, fine. I know they exist on Live. I just wish they didn't.

So, me and Dylan are screwing around obviously because every two minutes or so one of us will go rogue and kill the other after a shaky truce. But these kids take it to seriously. First of all, they get all uppity that I had cops turned on. Personally, I like the threat of "the man" in my games. Secondly, which bothered me more, is that they constantly were whining about it.

"GAWD THIS IS SO GAY"

"Then....go join another game."

And then they'd get all quiet again.

So, Dylan started to say random things as I know him to and we start half-assed griefing them. We follow them, ram into them when we can, kill 'em. Which, I think the kids started to have fun to. Or silently get aggravated. I'm not sure which since they stopped talking. Regardless, it was still fun to run around with someone new in the GTA universe.

Might as well mention Ikaruga while I'm talking about games I haven't played with friends in a while. Before he scattered...

I played a bit of bullet-hell with Ryan. I both love and hate this game. I love how it controls and play, but my god.

It's so freaking hard it makes the veins in my eyes pop. That and it doesn't really help that the last time Ryan and I played the lag was wretchedly bad. It was so hard to keep up what was going on ANYWAY, that a quick stop threw me off pretty badly. Also, Ryan's mic died halfway through the round so I was cursing aloud to myself. We did a lot better than we have the past few times. We can consistently get past the second boss, but then die horribly on the third chapter. We're getting better.

Or rather Ryan is and I'm wasting all of *his* lives, which is most likely the case.

Alright.... finally done.

Exhausting, I tells ya.

Anyway, now that summer school is over I have more time to game for the month. So expect some Final Thoughts on The Answer for FES and if I'm feeling a bit cheeky, *maybe* Digital Devil Saga.

Maybe.

Probably Braid before either of them since it's an Xbox Live arcade game.

Just for giggles

2008-08-06T08:13:00.004-05:00

I promise I'll post something big next time with tons of embarrassing photos of friends that I found on the internet, but for now, I got a laugh out of this.

I happened to be checking up on my XBox 360's blog and seeing what it was saying about me since I haven't touched it in forever. I guess you earn badges by the way you play games, beat games or how much time you spend on the 360. That being said...
That's right. I've earned a sad badge for my 360.

I kind of feel like wearing a wife beater and telling the thing to shut up and get me another beer instead of complaining all day.

...Mmm. Maybe not.

Super Awesome Game HD

2008-07-29T20:24:00.002-05:00

So, I picked up Super Stardust HD when Brandon snagged the two add ons for the game on the PSN. All I can really say is the game really needed it. With the severely improved co-op mode and several point scoring modes, it's all I've been really playing lately. The co-op mode originally had players remain on one screen which resulted in my death several times whenever we tried multiplayer. There's just too much stuff going on the screen to effectively play with another person.

That is.... until the updates.

They offer a split screen with co-op mode which makes it so much easier to play with another person. But I don't really care about that so much, but it's a nice feature.

My main reason for playing this recently is the Endless mode that it offers. An endless wave of enemies until you get gunned down or run into those annoying red triangle guys for the best score. Brandon and I have been butting heads to try to get the best score. At the moment, he's got me beat with 16 million and I'm at 14 million.

My problem being is that I can't get back up to that sweet spot. I want to obviously not die, but to stay alive for the longest time possible with the multiplier up. I can get up to 13 million pretty consistantly, but I can't seem to break my own top score. It's fun, but a frustrating kind of fun. I like to see if I can get up to a higher score, but I just can't do it yet!

Ragh!

That's all I had! I'll be playing Soul Calibur 4 soon! And probably getting pretty schooled!

I finally caved

2008-07-22T21:51:00.004-05:00

So, after months and MONTHS of me going, "Oh well, I'll totally just finish my other games and I can play Digital Devil Saga. :3 THERE'S NO WAY I COULD GET ANNOYED WITH RULE OF ROSE AND SILENT HILL ORIGINS! :3"

I've finally sunk into DDS. I started up and about thirty minutes later I finally got to move around. Atlus, you're beginnings are long and slightly confusing. At first, I wasn't really feeling it. It's like that feeling you're not sure if you want to go through with something because you'll think it'll take to long, but you know it has to be done.

Like cleaning a bathroom.

That "Meh, I'll do it later" sorta feeling? Except the game only collects dust and doesn't smell like urine.

Anyway, that's what I felt when I started it. But it's when my squad of ultra sexy, hip gunners turn into monsters that may or may not have teeth on their breasts.
Yeah. So, I'm still sort of ho-hum about it. I love that it's like Nocturne, but with decent voice acting. It's got the same demons, spells, and items from the other games I've played. It's golden. Yet, I'm not feeling the RPG bit of it. Nothing is really hooking me into the plot just yet. Then, the plot hook of the opposing side of my deadly hipsters starts to freak out about how they EAT PEOPLE after they transform into demons with teeth in their goods.

So, I gotta know what's going on.

But, I'm so fried right now that sleep is taking priority over games.

... I'm getting so old it's not even a joke.

Onward and Encore!

2008-07-20T02:15:00.006-05:00

We finally beat it! PixelJunk Monsters is another game we can cross off the list. I love this adorable tower defense game and it's even better with a friend to play with.

Or Brandon as seen below.

...Hrm. Anyway, we've been playing this on and off for a while, and it's one of those games that you can really lose yourself in. There's a lot of coordination from us both in planning what tower would work best in an area or if we should save up money to buy more towers. Oh, man. I love it. Just the obsession between us to beat the level without letting one of the monsters float by gets fairly addicting. WE STRIVE TO ACHIEVE THAT RAINBOW!

Now, people who have not played this game probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Buy a PS3. Download the game from the PSN.

Know what the hell I'm talking about.

Final Thoughts
I understand this isn't a game for everyone, but I'm in love with its simplistic look and incredibly fun gameplay. For what the game is, it's so wonderful to play with someone else ...

Hrm. Anyway, it's a game that you could keep playing even after perfecting each level because it's just addicting. I'd even go as far as saying that it has the quality that you could go back and replay it several different ways just for giggles. Maybe my memory is just that bad, but I usually can't remember how exactly I beat a level, so I have to come up with something new. Anyway, the word is I'm really loved playing this game and I'm ecstatic to play PixelJunk Monsters Encore for some more tribal fun. And really, anything else PixelJunk decides to come out with.

*cough*
EDEN
*cough cough*

Anyway. BUY THIS GAME AND ALL OTHER FABULOUS PIXELJUNK GAMES. :D

[secretly collects her check from the PixelJunk team]

Quick Update

2008-07-17T14:02:00.005-05:00

It's been a kinda weird past few days of games. I really haven't been feeling anything. I'm a little apathetic toward anything right now, but for some reason, I wouldn't mind playing more Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 sometime this weekend.

I'm sure Jerry will be crushed to read that.
CRUSHED.

But, I ended up picking up Dead Rising up yesterday out of the blue.

I really had a blast with this game after I got over the initial hate of the time line. Also, with infinity mode, I'd love to play it through hardcore with a group of people. I think it'd be really fun and kinda hard to do.

Just so long as we play it on my save. I NEED THOSE GAMER POINTS TO LET EVERYONE KNOW I'M BETTER! [Crazy eyes]

Yeah, but it would still be fun. This is a great game for the 360's achievements because a lot of the extra things you can do in it are pretty hard. It also gives replayablity to the game.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the next one that's supposed to be set in Vegas. I think it still follows Frank, I could be wrong though. He does cover war, you guys.

Also, I don't really know what was up with me yesterday. I just couldn't play anything really well. I did play Dead Rising, but I was in a hurry for something and ended up killing myself after about 15 minutes of playing.

Unfortunately, Smash didn't go any better for me later that night. I don't know what else to say about it, but could be that I'm burnt out on playing it like I was with GTA IV, so maybe I can start getting back into my other games.

I'm eyeing Grim Grimiore again, but I can't seem to take the extra step into playing it again. It's not really my type of game, so I really don't want to play it. I think by the end of this month I'll be able to dive back into my seemingly dozens of RPGs again. But RPGs or not, I've got quite the list growing of stuff I want to finish or play.

THE LIST
(Ah! So scary!)
((Sorry, I watched Aliens today. What were the odds I had a picture of me and the Queen?))

Shin Megami Tensei games -- I should finish up "The Answer" but DDS has been taunting me for months now. I need to finish/start playing them because they're awesomely hard and so, so addicting.
Metal Gear Solid -- This is really so I can geek out when I finish them and then start talking how awesome they are instead of just saying, "Well, I did hear it was pretty awesome and Two is totally gay."
The Rest -- There's a lot of games like Rule of Rose and Silent Hill 0 that I can't seem to finish. There's a lot of these games that I just need to finish up.
Resident Evil -- I think we have most of those games, but I don't know if I really need to play through them. Like, RE4 is what I want to play, and the way RE5 looks, that's the way I want to continue to play them. I think I have my fill of crappy controls with the Silent Hill series.

That's really all I got. Promising more updates and maybe a more ... eventful posting next time.

Later, 'Gators!

Breaking Hiatus

2008-07-13T10:57:00.008-05:00

Ladles and jellyspoons! I had a bit of a break, so I decided to throw in an update.

Lucky you, right?

Despite my apparent busyness, I've found time to sneak in a few games when I'm not cramming my head full of numbers.

In my effort to diversify my game playing experience and pull myself out of my gaming funk, I picked up Grim Grimoire.

Made by the creators of Odin Sphere, Grim Grimoire taps into the vein of "magic school" genre. I initially connected it with Harry Potter what with the Philosopher's Stone, a professor named Gammel Dore and a new gifted magic student, however seeing how Harry Potter is a re-hash of other similar stories...

The point being, I don't care where the story comes from.

Like Odin Sphere, this game is breathtaking. Characters 2D animations during cutscenes are literally breathing. I'd say the characters on screen during the real time strategy bits are probably doing the same, but my eyes are bad.

I can't sees nothin'.

Regardless of my eyesight, a beautiful game. I could say that a billion times over like I did with Odin Sphere, but I think you get the point. While I'm sub-par on RTS grounds, the tutorial is helpful and I'm getting into my groove of getting troops from sparkling portals. What I do really appreciate Vanillaware for throwing in characters and enemies from Odin Sphere. It was neat seeing Alice's cat walking on two legs and flinging spells at the first dragon boss. Way cool.

After a hiatus of Ninja Gaiden II, I'm back on the saddle or whatever the cliche' is. I got snagged on the second chapter bossed and got so pissed off that I couldn't get past him I just said to hell with the game for a while. Picking it up back up, I re-read some of the "training scrolls" and it clicked in my head to BLOCK AND COUNTER. Wow, I know. In my defense, I haven't played Ninja Gaiden ever. After re-reading that, I didn't have any problem walking through that boss. Now, the next level boss on the other hand, I can't tell if I'm actually enjoying the game or I'm just putting myself through excruciating gameplay "just 'cause." The third level boss--and maybe I'm just going about it wrong--does nothing but shoot laser balls and little versions of itself at me, air juggling me to death. Or, my personal favorite, blowing up the screen into a series of flashing blue colors preventing me from seeing how exactly I'm getting killed. I can't seem to get around it and all I can really do it take pot shots at it with my bow, but that only goes so far. I think I'm just not caring anymore, to be completely honest. Devil May Cry 4 gives me more of what I want; a hack and slash that I don't really have to bust my ass over.

Plus it doesn't look the older versions of it with a new layer of gloss over it.

You've been zinged, Ninja Gaiden II.

Speaking of, Devil May Cry 4, I've been playing that as well. The game looks amazing unlike other games previously mentioned with Ninjas. Although the game play isn't quite as difficult, or in the long run, satisfying, I think I'm more happy with playing DMC4. Like I mentioned before, I don't really want a game that's going to make my cry blood over the difficulty between the bad camera angles and steep learning curve. I enjoy the more causal beat 'em up that DMC4 offers. While the "Human" difficulty of the game proved to be way too easy for me, I restarted on the "Devil Hunter" setting and felt more challenge and less like a pile for walking through the game like Nero was fighting orphaned puppies rather than demon spawns from hell.

I've been hoping games like mad. It's true. After digging through my old collections of CD's, I found that Heroes Might and Magic IV was there along with Catz 3, Titanic: Lost in Time, Game of Life, and Call of Cthluhu game (all of which are up for sale. HURRY CATZ 3 WILL GO FAST!!). Finding Heroes first, I opted to install it and play. In early iterations of the game, I never played online. I never got the hang of it. I always lost.

I'm continuing with the pattern mostly.

I'm not really good at this game unless I find a cheat to make thousands of Black Dragons. I play against the computer and dominate most of the map without cheating, but there's always ONE castle that has an insane number of troops that I can't even catch up with at that point, so there's no real way I can win. It's happened to me after about five hours of playing one scenario. Now, that's frustrating. Despite the frustration, I keep playing it anyway because... I don't know, it is kind of fun building up guys and townships to be the best.

Even though, I am clearly not.

Admittedly, I'm not a huge shooter fan. Unless it has something that draws me into it, I get fairly bored/frustrated with it pretty quickly. Although, recently, I picked up playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 with Jerry and Brandon. I caught back up rather quickly. I mean, I'm not getting the same amounts of kills, but I'm not just getting one kill and dying off unceremoniously, which I almost expect to happen sometimes. I do like playing with friends with these types of games since we're working together to kill off terrorists that pop out of thin air (terrorist air). But when their guns turn toward me, I can't seem to keep up at that point. But like I said, I don't play shooters all that often, which I could probably change around pretty quickly.

Bottom Line: I would like to be playing more RBSV:2 plz.

It's always fun to play against new people in fighting games. I'm sure that's the same with most 2D fighters (which someday I'll work on, I swear), but Smash Brothers is the same way. I started to play a few people I knew through an acquaintance through the old college I went to, who I talked me up quite a bit. Which, fine, great. I'm not going to turn my nose up at free publicity about how awesome I am. So, with a party/bonfire I went to the other night, I ended up playing a few hours of Smash Brothers with some new people that I believe are reading.

Anyway, I'm freaking inwardly that I can't live up to the supposed hype about my so-called skills (that pay the bills). So, I pick Peach and go up head to head against the other known bad-ass of Smash, Paul. We duke it out; Peach VS Ike and it's a fairly close match. I probably wanted it more, so I could squeak by with a few more kills than he did. When panic sets in, I play with more a desperate hope and scrappy courage that I've only seen in the Japanese fisherman from Ninja Warrior.

Nagano and me? So much heart.

But no, seriously, it was fun playing with new people. I like the challenge and the different play styles are fun to adjust to and random battles get even more fun.

Even if some jackass just uses Yoshi's egg spin move on the ground.

I say that in mostly good humor. Mostly.

(My "can't see face" also doubles as "glare face")

Speaking of good humor, I have one more thing for you guys to look into:

My Xbox 360's blog.

It's a whiny piece of technology when I don't play it, but I don't think it has the RAM to understand I'm busy.

So, probably see you loverly people in August.

Hiatus Part II

2008-07-05T08:22:00.002-05:00

I'm all tied up with school work and work so, I won't have time to really update properly. I'll be back in August. :)

Follow the Bouncing Bonce

2008-06-26T07:58:00.007-05:00

Cripes, I can't seem to stick to one game more than five minutes. I'm all over the freaking place.

I had Jerry over the other day, so a lot of multiplayer games. NOT TRAUMA CENTER THOUGH.

Anyway, Mario Kart Wii was kinda fun again. We were trying at the battle modes and I was just whomping Jerry. In all actuallity though, he should have won that last coin battle we did. Basically, you just collect coins and try to shoot them out of other players, but, I got bored of it since I can't take corners well, thus I can't get a lot of coins right off the bat. The racing was still kinda fun, but mostly because there's nothing else in the gaming library that's like it so far. However, with the computer players and the cheap items, it's not so much a racing game anymore as it is an item grab. But, that's Mario Kart, and you have to sort of take that with a grain of salt.
We played Streets of Rage II on the Virutal Console. It was fairly entertaining mostly because Jerry is playing Skate, the quick little kid on SKATES (GREAT NAME, RIGHT) and I'm playing the giant muscle man that takes up about a third of the screen. We kept running into the problem that Jerry's guy would grab Big Muscle McGee and Skate would start wailing on him and knock me down to a small chunk of health. So, eventually, the game turned into a beat 'em up against me and Jerry. I think I'm starting to understand why Brandon can only play these kinds of games for like, five minutes before turning it off abruptly.
Alright, I haven't touched Smash Brothers Brawl for quite a while. So, I popped it in while I was waiting for Jerry to drop by. I was making my way through the All Star mode with all the characters, but it gets kinda slow after a while. I mean, I died a few times with characters I'm not used to playing with, so I just burned through a few continues and said the hell with it. When Jerry came up, we ended up playing a bit of co-op endless brawl, cruel brawl (we got two kills :0 ), and the boss fights ate up most of our time. Not that the boss fights were incredibly hard or entertaining, but we got it to start playing it to beat it. However, we kept dying at the Fourth boss, I have no idea why. We did get to the last boss and said that's enough after dying again.

I wish this was the Wii's savior, but unfortunatly, not so much. It wasn't as fun as Melee for some reason. It was slow, a lot of the characters were gimped, the stages (in my opinion) were a little disappointing. But then again, I had Power Stone II stages in my head for SSBB. I wanted the same speed of Melee and more of a draw to play other than Snake.

Alright, one more about Silent Hill Origins for a bit until I beat it. The last boss fight I had was pathetic. The fellow above is "THE BUTCHER." Which I don't know if it is supposed to be the prequel to Pyramid Head or if he's' just riding the coat tails of Pyramid Head's success. Regardless, the boss fight against him was pretty sad. It was like a Benny Hill sketch. The boss fight was in a kitchen with an island in the center. So, the whole fight is running around the island with the Butcher is shuffling behind me. I only really stop to take some pot shots at him.

I just want this sucker done, seriously.

So, maybe I need a break from games or I need more action in my games. Maybe not Ninja Gaiden II action just yet, but Devil May Cry 4 may be able to get me back into games again. I picked up DMC4 again after a LONG hiatus. Which, it's fun again, although, I'm just mashing my way through it since I forgot most of the moves I'd purchased. Plus, I am on the easy difficulty, which I don't really want to be on since I'm walking through everything really fast. I think I'm just sticking with that difficulty because I don't want to get back up to Chapter ... 7 on the harder difficulty.

Really, it's because I'm lazy. I could get back to the same point, but I'm just so, SO lazy about playing games lately.

Hopefully I can finish up some games and rekindle my gaming fire.

The Reason Why Bonce Cry.

2008-06-24T20:35:00.005-05:00

There's several reasons why I don't finish the three games that are plaguing the gaming shelf with their presence. Silent Hill Origins is one of the few that I just can't seem to stomach playing for long. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge, HUGE Silent Hill fangirl. I love the Silent Hill series including it's bastardized fourth game no matter how much I say otherwise, but Origins is one hard game to swallow.

The premise is great. Most of the game is fan service; blatant fan service. The begin of the game, Travis--our scruffy trucker hero--finds the reoccurring character of Alessa in her house while it's burning to the ground. THE ORIGINS OF SILENT HILL. WHAT ARE THE ODDS. Which, at that point, I'm grinning like an idiot and proclaiming loudly to anyone in the room at what's going on.

"That's the girl from the first and third game. OH MY GOD THIS IS SO COOL! I'M A TRUCKER!"

You go through the same song and dance that you do in every Silent Hill; the hospital. At this point, I don't know how annoying the game is going to be, so I'm eating this up. The nurses, the story, the new battle system; it's all golden to me. The game itself looks a little iffy. Although, I hardly let so-so graphics get me down. For one, it's a port of a PSP game. Second, it's Silent Hill. There's still the other characters that I know and love show up. Lisa, the bloody faced nurse from the first Silent Hill making a cameo. The plot is kind of out there. I can understand that the protagonist is supposed to be Joe EveryNiceGuy, but if I saved a girl from a fire and then I got sucked into a world full of demon nurses, I could probably be okay with skipping out to town. But, once again, it's Silent Hill and plot usually isn't really top. This game is pretty much the same in regards to the other Silent Hills: Filled to the gills with cheesy dialog, running into random people that soon leave you alone in the monster filled town, and dead girls. So, I make it out of the hospital level and I'm ready with bated breath for the next area of awesomeness.

Next area I'm starting to notice more of a trend. I can't see a damn thing. I understand darkness is supposed to be scary, but there's a certain point where I have to turn up the brightness on my TV because I can't see anything that's in the small beam of the flashlight. Oh well, right? It starts to just go downhill from there.

The next level I'm starting to see a trend. There's a lot of enemies that are somewhat tricky to run past. The game seems to encourages you to fight seeing there's a plethora of weapons lying around. Silent Hill 0 almost has a Dead Rising vibe to it, seeing as it lets you pick up a lot of miscellaneous items like toasters, meat hooks, katanas. The problem being between the lack of light, the weapons breaking too quickly, and the loudness of the music making it impossible to hear if any monsters are in the area according to your radio make the combat frustrating. So, I'm in a dark hallway, squinting at the screen to see if there is something in front of me, then Travis gets throttled by a weird armless creature with a defined asscrack.

I'm serious, whoever came up with the enemy design may have been molested in a highschool gym shower or something traumatic that involved buttocks. I didn't think I'd ever had to write about something like this, but the enemies in the game are laughable. Yeah, there are nurses and scary dolls, but the others are just ridiculous. Asses aren't scary in most cases. When connected to a zombie like creature that proceeds to go at Travis like a Re-Dead from Zelda: Ocarina of Time, it's hard not to either laugh or be completely insulted. Although, the best has to be the obese skinless dogs with deflated heads. I can't seem to find any pictures on them, but this is the best I can do:

The first thing I say I soon as I see this creature, "Is that a gigantic ass?" All I see is this giant ham of an ass down a dark hallway that Travis' flashlight happens to catch.

The game gets crazily frustrating from that point on. The controls work against me as I'm still in the mind set of "MUST CONSERVE ITEMS." I don't relate Silent Hill to a melee game. I always think of it as a survival horror game. Always. I don't care if the game gives me approximately one hundred pieces of wood to kill enemies with. Not only that, but it's damn near impossible to kill something at some points. I understand the scalpel isn't going to do a lot to a giant ass-dog, but when I have to go through about five weapons before the thing drops, there's a problem.

Basically, the only reason why I haven't given up on this game is because I can't stop playing it to save face and I can't bring myself just to YouTube the rest of the game and sleep well at night about it.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I still love Silent Hill and I'm still really excited about Silent Hill 5 to show up, but this wasn't the game I was expecting. Maybe that's a good thing, but if this is the direction Silent Hill is headed, I may be a bit hesitant to follow.

Filled with fun

2008-06-20T15:03:00.006-05:00

So, maybe Jerry was right. I don't really seem to finish games I set out to, but I do hammer through games that I magically pick up again out of no where and start pounding into oblivion.

Or just get a wild hair to get achievements that no one is going to care about (like most of them) on the 360.
I've gotten some guff over Viva Pinata. Why? I mean, look at the image above. It looks cutesy, fluffy and outright adorable. Granted, the 360 probably wasn't the best crowd of Viva Pinata, but a lot of people have taken a shine to this little gem. Everyone should give our paper mache pals a chance and realize they are filled with fun. I mean, right now, I'm boiling over with fun. ...You can't see it and I refuse to take a picture right now, but, still. Believe in me. I've technically had this game beaten a while back ago, but I guess, how can you really beat a sandbox gardening game?

...Other than maxing out all the plants and getting "romance master" on all the animals and their variants. (I'm so f'ing awesome)

It's still zen and I love just playing it since I get this big grin on my face without really noticing it. It's just that fun. Everyone that I've shown this game has the same reaction (correct me if I'm wrong), get this look of "You're playing what? With what now?"

Then I start playing this colorful, beautiful looking game and it's entrancing! Between the popping Pinatas and weird incestuous breeding patterns of said Pinatas, it's incredibly hard to look away.

Go. Go buy this one and the two other Viva Pinatas are going to be coming out.

So, this really isn't a game yet, but I tried out the Spore's creature creator. You can try it for free on the website. I dare you to make something and post it up here. I really liked making my creatures. The one pictured above is my "nerd". Seriously, he looked like he crawled his way out of a Wonka Factory. I have high hopes for Spore, I do. I'd love to play with my friends making little guys to look adorable but in reality be a furious meat eating machine... that'll show them...I'll show them all....

Erm. Anyway, when it comes out on the 360 I'll be looking for good reviews.

*crosses fingers*

High hopes!

First of all, I love Jason Chan's art. Seriously, beautiful fan art.

But anyway, back to Final Fantasy VI. I'm having a blast with it and I'm back at Zozo a second time to reclaim the chainsaw for Edgar. :D I think I'm on my way to pick up Shadow, but I'm not sure. The game keeps throwing me for a loop. I do have a soft spot for sprite games.

I say that, but it's mostly a half truth.

I love playing Chrono Trigger, a few of the Zelda games, and Final Fantasy VI, but I'll be a little iffy taking up the challenge. I'm a bit spoiled with all the flashy graphics and tainting voice acting of todays video games.

Hurk :B

So, maybe I can get some feedback. I'm not sure what I should finish next. I'm tempted to pick up ICO and Rule of Rose since I'm probably pretty close to done, but we'll see.

Lazy Sunday

2008-06-15T09:33:00.002-05:00

Instead of posting about how the Wii Fit turns out the worst in everyone and how fun it is to
shake ones buttocks at everyone, I've decided to post this little gem instead....

Rose&Camellia.

The game of slapping other women to win. It's a flash game and pretty addicting once you get into it. GO! GO SLAP THAT SNOTTY HEIRESS!

Seriously. That's all you do.

Slap happy.

Sloth'd

2008-06-12T14:39:00.008-05:00

Okay, before decide to put this entry off again because of Final Fantasy VI and watching Deadwood...

Here we go!

Alright, so Condemned 2 is another game I can cross of my list of "GAMES TO BEAT".... which isn't that long, Jerry, thank you.
But enough ragging on Jerry, on we go...

Final Thoughts

I know a few people that were swayed by The Escapist's Zero Punctuation review of it. As I'm sure I mentioned before, but now I'm second guessing so here I am telling you again, I never played the first Condemned other than one level that was sub par at best. Condemned 2 does a great job of immersing you in the game with the heavy hits of melee combat and the chilling atmospheres the game puts through you. So, I didn't know what was going on for most of the game. Whether that was my fault for not listening or not caring, is a different topic all together. Between the bear chases and exploding, walking dolls, the game is still incredibly intense. Yes, there's some stereotypical dark hallway shoots. Yes, you do get some random superpower at the end. Yes, the plot seems a little iffy at best. But really, it's not what I picked the game up for. I didn't know the story. I heard the game was terrifying and it delivered with loads of extras. So, I guess what I'm trying to say it, Gamestop is having a 50% off sale and Condemned 2: Bloodshot is in the bargain bin.

As I said before, I've been playing copious amounts of Final Fantasy VI (Or III or whatever the hell it was supposed to be for the American release. Sorry SNES fans, I grew up with SEGA). Making any Final Fantasy game portable is genius. I have tried to beat this game many times, but I either get distracted with something else or I forget about it. I want to beat it, don't get me wrong, the game is always fun every time I play it. However, I end up losing my want to play it because of one thing or another so I get about half way through the game I never finish it. Alright, well, fourth times the charm, right?

I would hope so. Mostly because I can watch TV and play the game on my DS is a huge help. Plus I can play it at work on Monday's since no one is there. Heh-heh-heh...

I'm really enjoying it again. Just for the fans of the game now, I just got the airship and ... I'm leveling up now, I think? I can't really explain why I'm having fun leveling up in a game again, but I am. I'll have to finish it this time, for reals, so I can change my favorite Final Fantasy on my nonexistent game resume'.
I know I already wrote a review about Rule of Rose, but I didn't really finish it. I know, I know, I know I should have finished the game before the review. However, I already knew what I didn't like about it and unless they magically changed the controls by the end of the game, my thoughts are pretty much the same. I really want to love this game, but Rule of Rose is lacking in several departments and it doesn't make me want to play it all the time. While the story is truly gut wrenching in it's bizarre cruelty, the controls make me want to vomit in terror.

The combat in the game is best to be avoided since it's so awful and awkward. I mean, most of the weapons in the game are a joke, so why would even want to take on a room full of goats with giant scissors with a DESSERT FORK or an ICE PICK that's the size of my middle finger.

But, I'm determined to play through the game and not look up the cutscenes on YouTube.

It's hard not to. It really is.

Last, but certainly not the least, I've started to pick up ICO again. I had played about an hour or two and left the game to collect dust on the shelf for while until I cracked it open again at Ryan's suggestion.

I have no doubt this is one of the best games ever. I played through Shadow of the Colossus and loved (mostly) every second of it. It was beautiful, fun and defiantly different than anything else I've ever played.

ICO just hasn't reached that point for me yet. It's beautiful, the enemies are creepy, and the characters--while they don't say a whole lot--are interesting. But I haven't gotten to the point where it clicks that this is a brilliant game.

I do get an attachment to it though. While dragging the princess, Yorda, along, I do use the walk button so I'm not yanking her around the whole castle. Whether or not that actually does something for the story, I don't know. I heard it from someone and I don't want to look up to confirm or deny the truth of the statement. Point being, I kinda feel bad if I do go running around and pulling this poor girl behind him.

Other than that, I keep missing the obvious in some of the puzzles. Like the last puzzle I got stuck in: There's a room that you eventually get torches lit in that you can finally use to light some bombs that are conveniently left in the room. In the room, there is a door that's been boarded up by planks. Seems pretty obvious what you're supposed to do, right?

Right.

Blow up the stone gravestones on ground level.

Just need to get into the puzzle mind set. Or explore the entire room before I go through this complex plan to blow up something I'm not supposed to.

Finally, after about an hour and a half of this, I can watch Deadwood and play more FFVI...

Andriods, Aliens, and random acts of bear voilence.

2008-06-08T08:27:00.007-05:00

I'm back on board with Persona 3's Answer. I feel the need to consistently power level with characters that I'm probably not going to use. I mean, the characters that I want to use are mostly beefed up already automatically, so I don't know why I even bother. The gameplay continues to be fun, but I honestly think it's because I played the first part of the game for eighty hours. The Answer is a dungeon crawl. Not that I'm complaining or anything... but Persona 3 had a lot more to do rather than power level.

In lieu of it's sequel coming out, I went through the hassle of setting up the wii to play Beyond Good and Evil. Graphically, the game still looks snazzy regardless of its age. Even though it looks good, I can't seem to get into it again. I play for about an hour or so, but I didn't really care at that point. I know the game, I know what I need to do in it... and as soon as I got an out i stopped playing. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it, but I couldn't continuously play it. I'll either buckle down and finish it for the second time or wait for the next one to come out.

Smile!

Anyway, I started playing Condemned 2 again. And by playing Condemned 2 again, I mean, handing off the controller to Jerry's trusting hands because I had to pick up around the apartment.

While I was playing, it was like game was punishing me for not playing for so long. I had stopped playing so close to the end of the ... third chapter of the story I think? Anyway, the game goes into quiz mode afterwards, asking me how the last chapter went down. What happened to the grizzly looking boozehound in his wacky and terrifying journey in the old doll factory. And I don't remember what happened in the game that the story is pretty phoned in from months back.

Regardless of that, I think I like doing the CSI stuff in the game moreso than the fighting. The crime scene investigation parts of the game are really clever and you can solve them many ways. Or at least most of them are. But, the game still offers some scares, but mostly its those ITS LOUD OMG GUYSSSSS GHOOSSSTTTTS

However, upon playing it on Sunday morning, we (being Jerry, Brandon and I) that the game can take some fairly terrifying turns. Not to completely ruin it, although the story is supposedly airtight with supposed hidokens later in the story line, but there's a grizzly bear fight. As ridiculous as it sounds, it's frightening. There's this giant, agitated bear barreling to eat our lovable drunk hero.

Alright, so, while I was in control of the game, I'm really getting into it. I'm hunched over, tensed and eyes wide at the screen. I'm starting to yell at the character to move his ass because the bear is catching up. That's when Brandon grabs me from behind and I spaz with a yelp and drop the controller. At the same time, Jerry gets spooked as he raises his arms and does this slick jazz hands move with a similar cry in surprise.

I'm on to you...

Ninjas

2008-06-05T20:17:00.004-05:00

Sounds way too good to be true.

I'll preface this post by saying, I've never played a Ninja Gaiden game before. I knew it was hard. I've watched people play the first one and watched their faces get rocked by a fossil. I mean, I knew what I was getting into.

Sort of.

Ninja Gaiden 2 throws you right into combat. I wasn't expecting a hand holding or gentle caressing, but cripes. I wanted to learn the game, but right off the bad, I have these terrified, "What do I do? What's block? Oh, my god, those ninjas look Venom," thoughts coupled with frantic mashing of the X button before the comforting tutorial messages come up. Admittedly, I'm learning the ins and out of playing the game or at least trying to.

For the record, I went the Way of the Warrior which, I think is considered "normal." Which, I think would equate to a swift kick to the groin.

Anyway, I really like playing it so far. I mean, I've died several times thanks to the Ninja Dogs. Yeah. Ninja Dogs. My first experience was that I see this dog walking toward Ryu with a hand in its mouth. Okay, dogs, great. I kill it and follow back where it came from. I'm surprised to see a whole pack of these dogs with minimum body armor and carrying swords in their mouths. Needless to say, I was rocked. Several, several times.

But, seeing this is my first time through any Ninja Gaiden game, I'm having a blast. There is something satisfying about this game hacking arms, legs, and heads. Compared with Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden is much easier to sink your teeth into. It's so difficult that you don't want to stop (in most cases anyway). You want to get better.

My only beef with Ninja Gaiden II is how dated it looks. It looks like the last Ninja Gaiden basically if you painted Ninja Gaiden II in a vinyl. The game just looks quite flashy. I'm honestly not that disappointed about because I'm too busy hacking away at enemy ninjas, but it's sort of a let down to see anything on the 360 that's "meh" quality.

Ba da dada da dum dah--damnit.

2008-06-05T01:25:00.002-05:00

Seriously, it's 1:30 AM and I still can't get the theme out of my head. Those round bubbly jerks are going to haunt my dreams like an Eiffel 65 single.

Gromp Gromp Gromp

2008-06-04T16:33:00.004-05:00

Good Lord. Too much Locoroco.

While I appreciate how the game unlocks a few different gates after each time you play, it's a little trying to continue to go through the motions of the game again. Basically, you can't beat the game the first time through. Or the second time. Or the third. Or... I don't think the fourth. After so many times going through the game, you're able to get all 200 locorocos. Once again, I thought that was nice. It was like unlocking levels, but now, I'm a bogged down to say the least. While the game is adorable, it's like someone keeps cramming adorable in my skull. While I do enjoy cute more than most, there's only so much room for constant "lalalalala" singing of these little fatties.

Seriously. Could you take that for two hours? OR MORE?

I will beat it, but I really need to take a long break from the cute overload.

I did end up finishing Riviera: The Promise Land today.

Final Thoughts

I'm not sure what I really was doing most of the game. It was an RPG, sure, but the mood system for the girls was underwhelming. If I did upset them or please them, it didn't really seem to make a huge difference. Even once the ending came, I wasn't sure who favored me. I went the extra step to check out the other endings available, but I couldn't find the one I got.

...Or it could have been that I could have already forgotten what happened to my characters.

Basically, it's a fun little RPG for the Gameboy, but it's nothing to write home about. It isn't a bad thing! I enjoyed it, but I didn't find anything that jumped out at me as completely different. It's worth looking into if only to have a nice 20 hour RPG to have.

With that said, I'm heading out to play some more vidja games, just nothing too musically precious.

Unless...

Oh god.

Another Princess, Another Castle

Still Alive (portal reference and reused title; oh wow)

Questions

THE FINAL CUT

Clock Tower Part 3: NEW BEGINNINGS

Clock Tower Part 2

And then Bonnie finished some games too...

Let's Try Let's Play Again! Part 1

Final Fantasy XII: Round Two!

Rain on your Parade

Final What?

MORE WITCHES!

Looking back at 2009

Shattered Hopes

Don't Wanna Die

responsibilities

Good to be King

Fast Update

Easy Mode

Dumpster Diving

Dust Bunnies

Chubby Chasing

*squeak*

Cheap Damn Hell Ass Games Part III

Let's Play: Resident Evil!

Cheap Games Part II: The Search for More Cheap Games

Cheap Games

It's too big!

reanimated and revisited.

Left 4 Dead, but surprise surprise!

Breathing

Dead Space

Back to the Unfinished

Fable

Guess what's collecting dust now?

Silent Hill Homecoming

Castle of Silent Pinatas

THE "D" is for DRACOOLA

Of Micemallows and Men

VIVA!

Hiatus

Crash'd

Beautiful day.

Soul Bonibur

Just as I suspected...

Holy New Games!

Just for giggles

Super Awesome Game HD

I finally caved

Onward and Encore!

Quick Update

Breaking Hiatus

Hiatus Part II

Follow the Bouncing Bonce

The Reason Why Bonce Cry.

Filled with fun

Lazy Sunday

Sloth'd

Andriods, Aliens, and random acts of bear voilence.

Ninjas

Ba da dada da dum dah--damnit.

Gromp Gromp Gromp

squeak