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Game Progress Topic Lambda
CLOUDBOND007 The last few episodes I've seen of From the Earth to the Moon have been a little anticlimactic. I had initially assumed that the series was going to end with the first moon landing, but that happens about halfway through the series. There was one episode that I thought was terrible, which dealt with a rivalry between two reporters covering Apollo 13. To make it worse, they were fictional. Waste of time that was. Part of the deal with that episode was that they wanted to make a point of how there were no images from Apollo 13 after the accident and that everyone on Earth only knew what was happening from the radio transmissions. So unlike everything else dramatized during this series, there were no recreations of anything that happened during 13. This was also to avoid having another fictional version of these events when the movie was already there... they generally try to avoid repeating what's already been done to death by other shows and films. It didn't make for good viewing in this case, though. For Sam & Max Hit the Road, the game is really nonlinear, so it's hard to explain my progress in the greatest detail. I've been to the largest ball of twine, the alligator infested golf course, the finishing pond, and the mystery vortex. I've gotten help online a couple of times. This isn't a game that offers you much in the way of hints. Occasionally you'll need to do something so random that you might never figure it out. I guess that's always been a problem with this genre. I don't really like this game too much, I'm sorry to say, though I can see why others would. What surprises me a little more is that there are so many people who like both the new and old styles. It's not really the gameplay and controls that bother me so much is that the dialogue isn't really that funny and seems geared a bit more for somewhat younger audiences, with a couple exceptions. Maybe the humor got a little more clever because the original Sam & Max fans are so much older now. As far as tips, the new episodic games have a scalable hint system where Max will randomly chime in about what you should maybe be doing. You can adjust the frequency of his tips or turn them off altogether. However, this really only works because those games are so much shorter and more structured. I watched Howl's Moving Castle again with somebody. I liked it a lot the first time I saw it, but I can see now that Spirited Away is a much better film.
Sweetbee
da dick the elephant said that his brother rescued an infant 16 years ago from the ruins, and went into a coma(probably some curse laid by the devil king's ex-minions?) right after that. that was the year of the death eclipse. shonen is 16 years old like sara, and he dresses like a eastern-er. so that infant was shonen. guess shonen was meant to cure the elephant man who saved him, but sara could cure him as well. don't remember if i said this before, but i figured out 5 of the (possibly) most well-rounded party members i could recruit. they are black the pirate, leonid the vampire, robin(slim version) the masked avenger, elephant zo,and magic knight sharl (w/silver hand). if i want to fully utilise the silver hand, i would replace sharl with bai mei niang the bitchy ol' witch. the witch can't learn the most powerful weapon techs easily(she's more of a wizard), but she has the best stats among the wizard-y types. problem is, i can only get robin and sharl fairly early in the game, so i'll have to waste time training up a few temporary characters before i'm strong enough to collect 'em all, then spend more time training up again. leonid should be the hardest to recruit, and monica can't get him 'cause she can't enter the zweig tournament, which triggers leonid's grail quest. most of the shinon heroes are decent characters to use and easy to recruit, but their starting stats/skills/techs/spells are weak compared to the best of the non-main characters. but... i don't feel like ditching julian for my monica quest, since i still want to see the "good" ending. i already missed out on getting the (maybe) better ending for kat's quest, by not keeping mikcheal in my team. don't feel like training up another character and can't recruit mikheal after closing the wind gate. i really should complete the game before i think of making an optimal(sp?) team for my next game. closed the last gate(fire), after spending 2 hours or 3 searching for it in the jungle. accidentally saved(in-game) while doing the final dungeon in huang city, and i don't have any save states to go back to.regretting it. i think i should have taken up the grail quest and the holy king trial before going to huang city. huang city isn't any more tougher than the abyss gates, but the last abyss gate in it made me wish i levelled up till 850+ HP for my whole party. i was forced to kick out boston so shonen could join. shonen joined with only 450 HP and basic equipment. not very useful at all. i should have packed brought more equipment/items... like fish scales for countering water attacks from the real forneus, flame shields and armour for the real whatshisname fire devil, and wing charms for real byunei(sp?) and the real earth devil. it's optional to fight the real devil lords before facing the "destroyer", but killing the lords seem to reduce the power of that final boss. i wasn't able to kill it after barely defeating forneous only. got the really bad ending... destroyer made the world explode... then i made a little animated GIF out of it. damn. already spent 98 hrs on this kat's quest alone. overkill. wouldn't take so long if i did the royal ring money trick earlier, and ignore the business mini-game. or i could have used amitriussiwhat?'s money hack file. === my mouse:
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH On the plus side, it looks like in the 13th issue Kevin finally does something about his stupid haircut.
TaroSH Also, the Rogue Prime looks like shit. In real life, you wouldn't want him to come to your rescue, you'd want to punch him in the face. They go back to the original Prime on the 17th issue (or probably at the end of the 16th issue), I guess because everyone agreed with me.
CLOUDBOND007
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH I slugged through the Rogue Prime arc and read issue 17, the one where the original Prime comes back. It was like my friend came back, bearing gifts and trying to apologize and explain himself, but I'll never forget this betrayal. Fuck you, Rouge Prime. Fuck you to hell.
TaroSH Incidentally, the soundtrack to the video game was done by Tim and Geoff Follin, and I know FO's a fan of their work, so maybe if she knows where to get Sega CD music she might like to check it out. I haven't actually tried playing the game yet, but in any case I'm not as big a fan of them as FO is. I liked some of Plok's stuff but thought some songs, like the boss theme, were really noodly, and when I tried to listen to the Silver Surfer music it kind of irritated me. The Equinox boss theme ain't bad, though.
Forum Jackass I also like the beginning of the Tori music from Equinox but I'm not sure who actually composed that game's music. Tim does not mention the game on his official site, so I'm thinking Geoff must've done that game and Tim only got credited for the songs he originally composed in Solstice which got reused. Solstice is Tim's most impressive work, IMO, with the title theme being the best. The main game song is good, but it has the same problem as the Legend of Mana which isn't the fault of the song - it's the fault of the game for dragging it on too long with no breaks.
CLOUDBOND007
sethrashnoo
TaroSH Gaiares - Still got my ass kicked by the sixth boss. Prime - I may not forget the Rogue Prime bitchslap, but I can and will forgive it. I read books 18 through 24, and while the two Primevil books were retarded (and the first one had a horrible art style) they were awesome! They mostly looked great, they fixed Kevin's design so that he didn't look like Archie Andrews (although because of the various art styles the books kept changing to, he looked better in some than in others), several moments were great and two of the books left me with a huge grin on my face, and one had a hilarious moment with Kevin at an opera daydreaming about Prime on stage. Issue 24 was like the ending to Phoenix Wright 3 in that it was so mother fucking awesome and happy I might even forget the Rogue Prime incident. And as a cherry on top, even Kevin said he never wanted to be Rogue Prime again. I'd like to pick up some Ultraforce books (Malibu's answer to the Avengers) which also have Prime in them, partly because I want more of this kind of Prime writing but also because I want to know what Hardcase said to Kevin/Prime that turned that Rogue Prime shitfest into this.
CLOUDBOND007 I got farther into Daxter last night, beating a Brewery level. This one teaches you to use Daxter's bug sprayer device to hover, not unlike Mario Sunshine. If he hovers over flame, he boosts higher, and if he sprays flame, the spray ignites and can be used to burn down nearby barriers. There was some tricky enough platforming but falling or dying doesn't have very severe consequences at this point.
Captain Ladd Spencer One thing I missed is in the first issue when Prime is beating up the coach, I thought he crushed the coach's wrist on accident. What he actually did was twist his arm and tear his elbow. All in all, if anybody's looking for a comic book series they don't have to read 200 issues to know what's going on in, I really recommend it. Just skip issues 11 through 16. All you need to get from them is "Kevin/Prime acts like a tit for six issues"
DEATHAMSTER
Psycho Penguin I also started FF5 Advance last weekend and am also about 5 hours in, up to the part where you have to infilitrate the ruins. I already beat the four protector boss thingies. Started reading a wrestler's biography a little while ago, Batista's, and am already on page 100. I have Chris Jericho and Stone Cold books to read as well.
TaroSH I read Primes 25 and 26, and it's taken a turn for the weird. It seems now that Prime isn't just trying to slug He-Man, but ape him. The track we're on now is that his power comes from some magic alternate dimension. And they've even introduced some female equivilent called Elven who looks like Evil-Lyn. 26 was the last issue in the main series of the Malibu run, but it's wrapped up in some four-issue miniseries called Power of Prime. Then there's the fifteen issue Marvel run, which I'll try to scoop up (I already have three issues of it in any case). I have a feeling I'm going to regret this after how great issue 24 and most of the ones between it and 17 were. Every time he goes on about Chelsea Clinton, I feel like rolling up the comic and smacking him with it.
CLOUDBOND007
TWEETER911
TaroSH Some things I've learned are (A) if you throw the TOZ at a shield option, you actually get 5 or 6 hits as opposed to 3 if you just touch it, and (B) how to guide her shell attack where I want it to. I'd always try to get out of the way too soon, and she hadn't even fired it. In one of my attempts I actually lasted quite a while against her, but I didn't even turn her red because the Pulse Cannon is piss weak.
TaroSH FUCK YOU GIANT AMAZON BITCH!
Forum Jackass TWEETER911 wrote: I did stuff. Coincidentally, so did I.
TaroSH When I beat that wall boss, I thought "Is the game being nice to me because of how much pain I went through with the level 6 boss?" Then the real final boss showed up, and slapped me around for a while. I found out you steal random weapons from it, and I when I got the laser I made quick work of it.
TWEETER911 Forum Jackass wrote: Coincidentally, so did I. Congratulations!
CLOUDBOND007 FUCK YOU GIANT AMAZON BITCH! Prince Watercress has been gone a long time, no need for this kind of hostility towards him. ... Yeah, I know that makes no sense.
CLOUDBOND007 Anyway, I started getting more and more annoyed with Daxter so I gave up on that, too. Too much of the game is ugly and when I got to this nonlinear item collection level I just didn't feel like dealing with it anymore. Plus the entire plot of the game is that Jak is captures and Daxter becomes an exterminator. He kills some bugs somewhere, then gets a job to kill bugs somewhere else, plays a minigame to learn a new move, then has to go somewhere to kill more bugs. It doesn't feel like you're building up to anything at all except killing more powerful bugs. Maybe something about, oh, I don't know, rescuing Jak might have made the game more interesting? I'm sure they start dealing with it at some point but I'd already done about six different bug killing levels. Well, it was more or less a free game, so no big loss. I'll have to start another "PSP Clearance" auction where I get rid of various no-case UMD discs I've acquired and don't want. Speaking of ebay, I sold my bricked PSP with the scratched screen and damaged drive door for enough money. The guy felt the need to inform me that he unbricked and it works fine. "Dirty but fine". Hey, I didn't feel like polishing a dead PSP and he got it for a great price. I'm also auctioning off my old style blue DS that I've had sitting around for an eternity and a half. It's got a lot of bidders. Interestingly, the screens are both perfect while on my DS Lite, the bottom screen is scratched to hell. I blame Elite Beat Agents. I already mentioned that Gamefly shipped Crisis Core. It's supposed to be the best (and the only good) FF7 spinoff, so hopefully that's worthwhile.
TWEETER911
da dick the destroyer in its eclipse(sp?) mode was impossible to hurt as he keeps casting that attack/spell reflecting thing, and giving my whole party various status problems. i'm forced to continuously(sp?) defend and heal while it's in that mode. too bad i only have 1 good healer, thomas. the other members's intel is too low for their healing and lifedrain spells to heal more than 200+ HP. should have stocked up on more salve3 potions.
CLOUDBOND007 I already sold the Family Guy UMD that came with the system, the Black Hawk Down movie, and some extremely bad game I forget the name of.
TaroSH
Lord Vyce
da dick for a man who keeps claiming that he's very rational, his prose is anything but dry and de-personalised.smooth, brilliant, and impressively convincing, with a hint of charming stoicism. i wonder if he ever read stanislaw lem. especially "chain of chance".
Lord Vyce
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 There's this stupid slot machine gimmick that's totally random and noninteractive. It pops up sometimes and interrupts the action to level you up or give you a temporary boost or whatever. I could do without this. It seems that aside from the main story, you can take on mini-missions to earn items and stuff. For those who aren't familiar with the game, it's a FF7 prequel where you play as Zack.
CLOUDBOND007 There's a brief Yuffie cameo. And then another boss battle with an Ifrit that somebody summoned. I spammed Blizzard on it and doged. Then a Sephiroth scene. He's one of the main characters in the prequel from what I've read (though Zack is always the only playable one). Now I'm back at Shinra and I can go on a main mission and I have something optional available, too. This seems like it'll be one of the better games I've played this year.
TaroSH I've made it to the inside of the base in mission 6 on a dollar.
TaroSH
TaroSH My Xbox came yesterday, and today I finally got around to testing it with Stranger's Wrath. Controls and camera are a little clunky, but not broken. There's an ability to tap Y to heal yourself, and doing so depletes a second meter which recharges over time. I thought this was going to castrate the difficulty. However, you have to be standing still to use it, and enemies can wipe you out pretty fast. This is also another one of those "people who don't shut up" games. When I fought the second boss, he kept yelling taunts at me about how he was going to pump me full of lead and wear my head as a hat.
CLOUDBOND007 Finished a bunch of the side missions in Crisis Core. Whenever you're at a save point, you just open the main menu and select missions. It has everything available sorted by type and difficulty. Some are based around getting new materia, some are just random missions from Shinra. You always get some reward at the end. Sometimes when you finish one mission you'll unlock new ones. So far, they mostly consist of extremely small areas with a few battles or a single boss battle.
CLOUDBOND007 I'm really pleased with the battle system. It's super fast and still easy to follow what's going on. The slot machine is really one of the only annoyances. Even that isn't too bad because when it appears, something good happens more often than not. That or nothing. It's never a bad result. Sometimes when it lands on certain things, Zack will have a flashback to a particular conversation or part of a conversation that the player didn't get to see at the time. The side mission implementation is really good, too. I think of this as what taking a break to level up is for a normal RPG, only not as tedious. They're also good for those crazy people rumored to exist.. the ones that take their PlayStation Portable with them and play their games portably. Poor fools.
Psycho Penguin I still have FF5 Advance to go through, and I started Harmony of Dissonance for like the 4th time now. I already made it to the 2nd castle, which is when I tend to get lost and give up. We'll see if I hang on this time. 21 stages left in 1942! Finally, I finished Batista's book and am almost done Chris Jericho's now. Incredible stuff.
CLOUDBOND007 The difficulty has been on the low side but combat and storyline continue to be entertaining. It's interesting to see familiar areas (Midgar, a mako reactor, the Shinra building, Wutai, etc.) rendered in real 3D. The effect isn't always as impressive as when they were prerendered but it's neat because it's familiar and nostalgic but doesn't feel like a total retread of the original game. The story has an overall sense of sadness about it because anyone who's played FF7 knows how Zack's story ends. It also makes Sephiroth's fate seem sadder because you see him as a much more human person here. Talking about this game makes me feel like a total FF7 fanboy. It's also making me wish the FF4 3D remake could be on the PSP because Crisis Core looks absolutely stellar for a portable game.
CLOUDBOND007
TWEETER911 CLOUDBOND007 wrote: In this game, Aeris seems kind of ditzy and... a little bonkers from living in the slums. She's afraid of the sky for one thing. If only she had a greater fear of more realistic dangers, like being stabbed through the back by effeminate men. Then tragedy may have been avoided. Ffff...hahahahaha, seriously? Hahahahaaa. Aeris sucks even more now. YAAAAAAAAY.
TaroSH I like He-Man, but there are some things I find so pants-on-head retarded about it. Namely, why can't Adam tell his family and friends he's He-Man? You might think it's because Skeletor's always spying on Eternia, but how come he never happen to be spying when Adam and Man-At-Arms are talking about it privately? In one of those episodes I watched tonight, Teela temporarily gains psychic powers thanks to a blood transfusion from the Sorceress, and Man-At-Arms tells Adam not to go near her or else she'll read his mind and find out he's He-Man. And? Now, mosey on over to Prime. It too is about a kid who can turn into a man with near limitless strength (and can also fly). When he does this, he does not become Mr. Perfect Know Everything About Eternia Including Things the Audience Has Never Heard of Before, Like Super Foods That Only Last Five Minutes, and in fact has screwed up like when he slipped to Turbocharge (a sixteen-year-old with superspeed who Prime takes on as his sidekick/partner) about his mother. Kevin doesn't have as many "friends" as Adam does. Really only his mother, his father who already knew about Prime, and Kelly who eventually figured out Kevin and Prime were the same person. Turbocharge doesn't count because he doesn't even know about Kevin Green. Prime also has more interesting conflict. It just occured to me Prime does not have any arch nemesis. First he had Dr. Gross his creator calling him his Frankenstein monster and trying to retake him, then he had General Samuels trying to control him with deceit and putting an electrified dog collar on him, then there was more business with Dr. Gross, then his mother takes him to New York and both their lives are turned upside down and Kevin is having to balance Prime time and being with his mother, and then there's his father's conflicts. The conflicts in He-Man amount to Skeletor devises a plan to attack Grayskull, often in the form of finding some magical relic, Adam turns into He-Man and lays him out. So, while Prime has its stupid moments (Maxi-Man, that Rogue Prime malarky), it's mostly a more realistic and intelligent He-Man.
CLOUDBOND007 Ffff...hahahahaha, seriously? Hahahahaaa. Aeris sucks even more now. YAAAAAAAAY. Yeah. She says it's scary. It feels like the sky is "sucking her in" when she looks at it. Zack says someday he'll show her the real sky. "It's not scary at all!". The way Zack says it makes it sound like she's afraid of looking up and seeing the Midgar plates but I think she's afraid of the "real sky". It's funny now for me to imagine Aeris spending all of FF7 looking down at the ground. They changed her name to Aerith. Makes me think of Sylvester the cat when I pronounce it that way. BTW, I think it's the voice acting that makes her seem extra stupid in this game. She meets Zack pretty much the same way she first meets Cloud. I think it's stretching things a little too much to believe they both could have fallen into her church and ended up talking about going on a date. Got to see some more classic areas rendered in 3D. Obviously, the church. The little town in the slums where "this guy are sick", and the park outside Sector 7 where Aeris and Cloud talk. Also the chocobo farm past Kalm. Unlike recent RPG's that can render impressive scenes with the game engine, Crisis Core goes back to using a fair amount of FMV. It looks REALLY good. There was a nice battle between Sephiroth and this other asshole 1st Class with One Winged Angel playing. They have the excuse of fighting in a simulator, but it started to get comical when they both started flying around and shooting fireballs and crap DBZ style. And seriously, everybody starts sprouting wings in this game, one or otherwise. Edit: After an eternity, I finally got to see a new Battlestar Galactica tonight. It was as good as always. The show rarely ever disappoints me. I'm not used to have to wait a week between episodes, though. When I first started, it was on DVD already.
da dick
Captain Ladd Spencer
TaroSH I beat him by finding a safe spot where I was hidden by some fences, then using the Chippunks and spiders (forget the specific name) to take out most of his men (I think there were still two after I took him out) then blasted him with alternating Fuzzles and Zappflies, then when I ran out of Fuzzles switched to those beetles that do good damage. Yeah, I killed him. Then I found a farm. I'm probably going to have to fight a boss here later, because there's this machine that you can activate to cause a giant piston to slam into a plate, which I can imagine being used to kill a boss like those fans. It's actually a decent looking game. It uses bloom through the windows when you're indoors, but when you're outside there's none. There's is a lot of brown though. But there's also reds, realistic looking rocks, blue or purple skies, and lots of plants. And the browns aren't dog shit browns.
TaroSH I did a rescue mission in Stranger's Wrath. There was no boss, just a bunch of normal baddies I had to take out. After I rescued him I found these frog-like people screaming and whining that I was going to find their idol, and I did. Going back to the censorship of the Great Mighty Poo song on the Xbox, Stranger's Wrath is rated T and people are cursing every sentence. Mostly it's "bastard" and "ass" and all, but the guy I rescued was going on about some statue everyone thought was cursed, then called those people a "bunch of superstitious little shits." Plot's got me a little intrigued. The Stranger is bounty hunting to get money for some kind of operation he needs to save his life, and after you save that guy and he talks about the cursed statue we pan up it and see it has the Stranger's face.
Flying Omelette It's also still amazing that Albert Odyssey got a K-A rating instead of a T considering all the swearing, innuendos, and alcohol references. And whoever rated R-Type Delta an E didn't see the stage with all the blood-spurting enemies, and whoever rated R-Type Final an E didn't see half the game.
TaroSH The area leading to her was a trip through a sewer that was actually quite pretty. It was colored with blues and purples and oranges instead of the usual greens and browns. I forget, did Seabu rent this game before? I remember him commenting on how the ammo insults you, but then again, I swore he rented X-Men Legends but he said he hadn't.
CLOUDBOND007 ... Not exactly related, but I think I've gotten the slightest bit drunk just now.
TWEETER911
CLOUDBOND007 Oh shit, I just ran over Melee Master. Why did I have to drink and post? Why God why?!
TWEETER911
TaroSH We've got our protagonist who doesn't have a name, just goes by some noun. However, I find it easier to sympathize with the Stranger because (A) his reason for being here isn't so sickeningly contrived with a "big reveal" you'd have to be retarded to not see coming from the beginning of the game, and (B) he has more personality than a box of packing peanuts. I guess they also dress kind of similarly, with their brown ponchos with the loopy designs on it, but I haven't seen the Stranger's poncho billowing in an underground tunnel yet. Both games take place in deserts. While I understand the Xbox is a lot more powerful than the PS2, the main reason Stranger's Wrath looks about a hundred times better than Shadow of the Colossus is because the graphic designers put their effort into the world and getting the grids off everything and applying color theory, whereas the Colossus folks were more interested in seeing how high they could crank the bloom and fog while leaving the world to look like it was generated by a computer that thought it was possible for entire canyons to be made of anhydrite. (Fun Fact: I keep typing "Stranger's Wratch" and have to keep fixing it)
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 One complaint is that cutscenes are unskippable, so one of those boss battles involved waiting through about 5+ minutes of story for each attempt I made.
TWEETER911
ACC KAIN
TaroSH
ACC KAIN
Cesium
TaroSH Ultraverse Readings: Hardcase: Well, it's not bad, but it's kind of generic. Hardcase is the only survivor of a superhero team that got attacked by an Alien, and he retired to playing himself in movies, and doing his own stunts since he was invincible anyway. But then he goes back to being a superhero when a cop he was talking to just minutes before got killed by an ultravillian. It's not hard for me to see why Prime became more popular, practically the Malibu mascot they wanted Hardcase to be. Prime: Got and read the Power of Grayskull Prime miniseries, which overall was okay. Some parts were good, like the conclusion, but the real knock I have against it is when Prime is offered the chance to be Prime forever and thinks it's totally awesome because he'd never have to Kevin Green again, which was a slap against what everything past Rogue Prime built up to. But at the end, thanks to some insightful words from Turbocharge, he realizes that would have been a dumbass move.
CLOUDBOND007
CLOUDBOND007
TWEETER911
CLOUDBOND007
CLOUDBOND007 In Crisis Core, I finished Junon and now I'm helping Aeris build a flower wagon. Yeah.
TWEETER911
ACC KAIN It's kind of weird thinking of a hero as inarticulate as Kevin wielding the mana sword...
TaroSH I figure five issues will be good enough for today.
CLOUDBOND007 she should build it herself. Without someone around to keep her talking, she might accidentally look at the sky and have a fear induced heart attack.
CLOUDBOND007 I think Zack and Sephiroth might be going to Nibelheim next. I look forward to seeing a retelling of those events.
TaroSH There's entire hallways of doors locked with the same key color, and those key colors are found scattered throughout the dungeon entrances except for the one containing the hall of doors locked with that color. Oddly enough, the water effect isn't bothering me.
CLOUDBOND007 Edit: And now I'm in the Cargo Ship after the welcoming parade stuff. There's that one boss in the Junon slums that uses an attack on you that surrounds you in a bubble and drains your HP. I couldn't figure out what the heck to do about that. Attacking and using magic on the character didn't get rid of it. I won anyway.
CLOUDBOND007 I'm now at the part where Zack and Cloud have been experimented on for some time and are now trying to escape the Shinra forces (well, Zack's escaping while dragging an incapacitated Cloud around with him). It was fun mowing down wave after wave of Shinra grunts with Thundaga. It looks like force lightning in this game.
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 Edit: Turns out I'm at 14.5 hours. I just got slaughtered by something.
TWEETER911 Killed Fenrir in EO again....at LV13. "Such wonderous warcraft!" Shimazu Toyohisa exclaimed after I killed the boss. Uh-huh. And on another note, I'm on some sort of Metal Gear kick this week. I'm not playing any of the games this week, just watching videos and listening to music. I have no idea what brought this on. But hey...
CLOUDBOND007 I killed one of the most obnoxious villains ever and beat the game. It was SO easy and I'm not even overleveled. Now to watch Zack die in some probably stupid way. He's got godlike powers but he'll probably get shot by some Shinra grunt, I guess. I think that's how it happened in FF7.
TWEETER911
CLOUDBOND007 Edit: Dude, these credits are never going to stop. Long after the heat death of the universe, the credits to Crisis Core will still be rolling. Edit 2: Cool, it ends with a totally redone FMV version of part of the original FF7 FMV opening. Then it has crazy-Cloud on the train. "My name is Cloud. SOLDIER 1st Class." Edit 3: Hey, I'm pretty sure that at the end of Advent Children you see Zack and Aeris in the afterlife or something. Maybe that'll seem more meaningful now. I've got to watch that movie 90 minute FMV again some day.
Nixxy Blayde
TWEETER911 CLOUDBOND007 wrote: More like killed by 1,000 Shinra grunts firing simultaneously. The game makes a show of giving you a chance to beat them at first but eventually it forces you to be killed, no matter how many elixers and such that you try to use. That actually sounds fairly cool. Never ending extermination squad....
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH Issue 4 ends with Kevin flying off, telling himself he'll have to explain the insane Prime to his parents. But issue 5 is about a team-up with some female samurai to stop the resurrection of Cthulhu Hiruko which has nothing to do with anything. Issues 6 through 8 are about Prime and Solitaire taking on a drug ring, and when somebody randomly mentioned Prime breaking down a few drug houses I was all WTF? It was like that post Crawl made in another topic about omitting details that were important to understanding what was going on.
TaroSH I wonder if they brought back the original staff to clean up the mess Marvel made. I noticed Prime and his family were drawn like they were in the first issues, albeit colored differently, and when I looked at the credits it was Breyfogle who drew it. The funny thing was, I actually liked seeing Kevin and Prime drawn like that. 5 has absolutely no reason to exist, and I guess 6, 7, and 8 are supposed to take place between 9 and 10 because if read in numerical order it makes no sense as to why Kevin would be flying home and explaining to his parents about smashing up a train and how he had to rejoin with Prime when in an earlier issue his mother was tucking him into bed, and it would explain where Turbocharge and Phade were for those issues. I think this is a good place to stop for today. EDIT: Oh wait, after Prime explains what happened to his parents, it says two weeks passed. I guess 6-8 happened then.
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH
TaroSH http://www.codiekitty.com/File/Prime/
TaroSH
Flying Omelette My intro for the walkthrough on Atlena explains the trouble I had with that level when I first got to it many years ago.
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 The only downside is that I have to start from the beginning again but the experience is so much better that I don't mind at all.
eda dick the not bad ending was weird. it starts out looking almost exactly like the bad ending. but after the "bad ending", the game world pretty much just reappears again out of the darkness of space. then it shows what happens to everyone i've met in the game: -kat leaves mikhail after returning the masquerade 'cause she's "too afraid". she has to defeat the destroyer with mikhail at her side to be not afraid?!? after that she's seen sailing with the vanguard isle/town. -the poet talks/sings to a crowd in a tent about the final battle with the destroyer. -rather funny scenes of bai mei niang going around causing earthquakes for no apparent reason. -boring bla bla bla stuff. after that, the credits roll with scenes of various boss fights. ends with a pretty animation of day continuously turning into night and vice versa, with a translucent white logo of "romancing sa·ga 3".
CLOUDBOND007 No matter how many times I hear this text error, it never, ever gets old. Edit: I just finished the crossdressing part and the sewers.
da dick
CLOUDBOND007 Anyway, the dialogue was: Tifa: Unexpected...
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 I'm through Cloud's flashback in Kalm and ready to catch a Chocobo. I'm almost caught up already to where I was when playing on the PS3. I'm glad I started over, there were a lot of scenes in the first several hours of the game that I enjoyed more or paid more attention to after having played Crisis Core. Gamefly sent me Assassin's Creed today. As I recall, hype was very high for this one, but reviews were mixed. Seemed like a decent choice for a rental. Not sure if I'll play it alongside FF7 or just save it for when I get around to it.
TaroSH http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2694-Zero-Punctuation-Assassin-s-Creed
CLOUDBOND007 I got Yuffie to join before Junon. That's never happened before. I also leveled up and earned a fair amount of gold figuring out what the correct responses were to make her join. Party is now Cloud, Berret, Yuffie. Something about Red 13 is obnoxious.
TaroSH I tried to find some help with this problem, but nothing. I finally wisened up and went into the last GPT to figure out how Seabu ran Sam and Max, and turns out he was using some SCUMM emulator. I found it, and man that worked so much better. I also have Sam and Max: Hit the Road and Full Throttle, which came in the lot with Monkey Island and are supported by the emulator.
CLOUDBOND007 I found it, and man that worked so much better. Yeah, that's a nifty emulator. I found that I was able to use the game's normal save system or the emulator's save state and both worked just fine. I could also run from the disc or from the drive equally well. If you play Sam & Max, I'd recommend playing it casually over a long period of time rather than focusing on beating it, so that it doesn't drive you mad. Unless you've got more patience with those kinds of games than I do. Now departing Costa Del Sol. This is the farthest I've played into FF7 in a long time. There's very little in the way of traditional gameplay once you reach Junon. You get there and you fight a boss, okay, that's gameplay. But then you give the girl CPR, do the thing with the Dolphin to get to the upper city. March in the parade. Then try to impress Rufus. Then walk around on the ship and talk to everybody. Then finally fight another boss, then watch some scenes and explore Costa Del Sol. So for Junon, the welcoming parade, the ship, and Costa Del Sol, you've got two bosses and nothing else. I don't mind when the game does storytelling for extended lengths of time. I think the flashback in Kalm is one of my favorite parts of the game, actually. But this last hour or two, I feel like not only have I not gotten to play very much, but the story wasn't very interesting, either. I'm still enjoying the experience and I know it gets better, but that's something I wanted to mention. The fight with Jenova on the ship may have been the most challenging in the game to this point. I remember Game Overing there in the past, but I don't think I was in any real danger of losing this time. After using two limit breaks, and both my Summons, I think it's HP were down close to half. I was in the most danger when the thing attacked Barret a million times in a row and killed him. I was afraid I might have trouble using a Phoenix Down and then healing but the boss kept trying to use stop and missed every time, so that gave me plenty of time. I've never paid too much attention to materia growth before. I think it pretty much takes care of itself for the casual player. I only started thinking about it when buying some new armor. The one that cost 1800 gold had a much worse defense rating than the one that cost 800. But it offered double materia growth rate. It's got me wondering if I should be paying more attention to such things, but I ended up going with the cheaper, higher defense items instead. One thing I'm sure I've mentioned in the past but I'll say again... I love FF7's overworld. It just makes me feel like exploring.
CLOUDBOND007 Some of that was enjoyable. The path to Corel was just a simple dungeon with a bunch of random battles but it was inoffensive. Not much happens at the Gold Saucer at this point in the game. Cait Sith joins, and I plan to never use him except when I'm forced to. I don't see the appeal and doesn't he have a limit break that can randomly kill the entire party? The prison place was kind of a pain because of the random battles with creatures stealing your items. I lost a Turbo Ether to one of them. The fight with Dyne wasn't too hard but it had me nervous at one point where he starts using two attacks every round. Barret didn't have Cure, so I used Hi-Potions to heal while attacking with Fire 2, Bolt 2, and Limit Breaks. Chocobo race is kind of a pain since it's unclear how often it's best to go to manual mode. For the first race, the Chocobo I had was so crappy, that I don't see how you could get to the end. It's loses stamina at a ridiculous rate unless you have it run slower than every other racer. It was kind of weird how hardly anything happens at Gongaga. The Turks attack you, but that's outside the town. That battle was easy. I used Shiva, Ifrit, Choco/Mog, Limit Breaks, and by the time I was down to using regular spells and attacks, the battle was almost over. You get a little scene at the ruined reactor, too, but nothing at the town. Only thing of interest is an optional quick dialogue with Zack's parents. I think it's a little more involved if Aeris is in the party, but not much. In the end, you have to leave and stumble across Cosmo Canyon without being hinted to go there. Although I guess there isn't really any other direction you could go unless you decided to revisit old areas.
CLOUDBOND007
Nixxy Blayde
CLOUDBOND007 FF7... Completed the events of Cosmo Canyon. The explanation of how the lifestream and planet function all seems a lot sillier than it did when I last played the game. I laughed how in the simulator, they showed the planet just kind of crumbling and turning to dust if all the spirit energy were removed. Does that mean even the planets in the solar system without any life have spirit energy holding them together? The dungeon was okay. The encounters were a little tougher than usual and extremely frequent, but they gave tons of experience points. Except for those stupid spiders. I fought almost every battle I encountered and gained several levels and made enough gold to buy all the best new equipment. I guess the easy way to kill the boss was to use an x-potion on it, but I didn't realize that until after the fight was over and I read about it online. I probably still wouldn't have wasted it unless I was desperate. I was a little confused by how to actually beat the guy because he has two flames fighting with him, and they can semi-possess one of your characters. They don't take control, just cause you more damage. But I didn't know if I should focus on them or the main boss, so it dragged on for a while. I eventually killed all three parts. The part with Red's father was sad. Still no guidance on where to go next, either. I guess what was supposed to happen is that I would have gone past Cosmo Canyon and the buggy would have broken down or something, and I'd get the clue to go there. Then when I did all those events, it would be fixed.
TaroSH I hit a dead-end, then found out you could leave town. But I've hit another dead-end. I'm going to take my time with this game. Whenever I go to GameFAQs telling myself I just want a hint for this one puzzle and I'll solve the rest myself, I end up going back when I hit something I don't solve in five minutes because I figure "well, I've already looked one thing up..." I've laughed quite a bit. Is it just my perverted mind, or does "Guybrush Threepwood" sound almost as much like a porn name as "Solid Snake"?
da dick rs3: i doubt i will have much time for games once i take up my new security gig. unless i stop sleeping or camp out at my assignment with my computer.
CLOUDBOND007 Something I never noticed before is that when you go to the basement, there are a lot of clues about Zack and Cloud's detention and escape. Notes scratched onto something about the best time to make an escape, a report that subject A (Zack) was killed and subject B (Cloud) escaped during subject A's resistance. Note that the Mako and Jenova cells had no effect on Zack but did have an effect on Cloud. Question about whether to bother to pursue Cloud due to the fact that he had "diminishing consciousness", I think was the term. After the mansion, it's on through Mt. Nibel chasing after Sephiroth. Pretty straightforward area, with random encounters not being anything special. One exception being a giant dragon encounter in the final area that was tougher than the actual boss (that boss being Materia Keeper). You can also take a detour and visit the often mentioned reactor but there doesn't seem to be anything in there. Next comes Rocket Town and Cid joins up. Something interesting is that during his flashback to what went wrong on launch day, you can see that the rocket has all the rust and general wear that it has in the present day. They didn't want to make a cleaned up version just for a flashback, I guess. Either that, or Shinra did a really, really bad job putting that thing together and it was like that from the start. So now I've got the Tiny Bronco to navigate the shallow waters with. Yuffie had a funny line about how we might want to go west. For "No reason. No reason at all."
TWEETER911
CLOUDBOND007 Playing on the PC is definitely helping with that. The prerendered stuff doesn't look quite as good as on a TV but anything with polygons is a whole lot better. And you just have a much more close-up view of events. I don't know if you played it on your PS3 but it was definitely having some graphical issues on mine.
TaroSH There was a nutjob scene in there where Guybrush is fighting with the sheriff, but it's all happening behing a wall, and sentences like "Use Staple Remover on Giant Yak" were appearing. Later when I came back to get an item that was back there, more crazy crap was happening like "Use Book of Style in Shredder" then "Give Stylish Confetti to Crazy Clown". Also, I think I wasted 100 pieces of eight buying a sword, because the sheriff takes it and you find one at the bottom of the lake he throws you in.
CLOUDBOND007 Temple of the Ancients was easier than I remembered. I think my levels may be higher than last time. Around 30 on average, though of course Aeris was lower since I never used her until now. I'm going back to Cloud, Barret, and Yuffie for now. There are two bosses, a big dragon and a wall boss. I was astonished at how quickly the dragon went down. I had used my starter attacks and limit breaks and was planning what I was going to do next when it suddenly died. The wall was another story. I got two Game Overs trying to beat it and the winning strategy was to put everyone in the back row and play very defensively. Bahamut did great damage but I could only use it once. After that, I relied on limit breaks as they're the only things that have much effect. The regular summons and level 1 or 2 spells do almost no damage.
TWEETER911
CLOUDBOND007
Minerva K Red I have a Quest for Glory collection for PC. I think I'll go ahead and give them a go since I always heard good things about them.
TWEETER911
TaroSH
CLOUDBOND007 I played through that confusing but enemy free city and saw the Aeris death scene. I cried so hard. From laughing. I liked how after she's already dead, Cloud is in a panic over how he almost killed her. It's a good thing he snapped out of it, there might have been a tragedy (Sephiroth's entrance would be ruined!). Hey guys, what should we do with the body? Eh, let's just throw it in the water and go after Sephiroth. The Jenova fight was easy because of the water ring. You can't lose with that equipped. End of Disc 1.
TaroSH
TaroSH I redid that bounty, and holy crap the boss took forever. Then I got a cutscene involving a bounty for the head of an animal called a Steef, which looked like the Stranger with massive horns. Hmm!
CLOUDBOND007 Is Codie posting from 1943 or 2043? In either case, be careful of Nazis or Evil Robots. Or evil Nazi robots (as opposed to pure hearted nazi robots.) I played FF7 all night. I'm past the part where Sephiroth summons Meteor and Shinra is trying to collect the huge materia. I've got a party of Cid, Yuffie, and Barret saved outside of Corel. Either 16 or 17 hours on the clock, I forget which. I have to say, I'm having a pretty spectacular time with this game. It's actually revived my interest in PSX-era gaming in general.
CLOUDBOND007
TaroSH
MaskedSheik
CLOUDBOND007 I finished the first assassination in Assassin's Creed. You basically do various mini-missions like pickpocketing or eavesdropping until you have enough info about your main target. Then you kill the target. It's kind of boring so far.
TaroSH I also got back to Hardcase, which hasn't hooked me like Prime did. The problem might be that it's too focused on the Choice character and her forgotten past, to the point the books might as well be called "Ultraverse Choice, Guest Starring Hardcase." It's slow, dull, and can anybody read the "big reveal" with a straight face? http://www.codiekitty.com/Pictures/hardcaseno.jpg (Side note: Linda Warren is Hardcase's girlfriend/teammate, who was put into a coma during a battle with a robot Alien) But Choice is (hopefully) gone now, so maybe with her out of the way Hardcase can start doing something I actually care about.
TaroSH Sometimes the Ultraverse is, to quote Yahtzee Croshaw because I'm not in the mood to come up with my own similie, as twisted and impenetrable as a granite octopus. I'm a little sick of being told to go read a Mantra to get all of Prime's story, or a Strangers to get all of Hardcase's, or the two Break-Thru books which I still need to get ahold of because every Ultraverse character is involved in it.
CLOUDBOND007 Played the submarine minigame. It was more impressive in my memory. I'd talk more about the game but it's been a long day and I'm not feeling too good.
da dick bondage skills what kind of pron are you?
CLOUDBOND007 I got Uncharted: Drake's Fortune from Gamefly so I'll try that next. This is one of the only PS3 games I'll have tried since I bought the thing. In FF7, Hojo's final form beat me up. I'll equip a ribbon on somebody and try again later. The Turks fight was hard, too. I think my materia isn't that good.
Minerva K Red My topic about Zelda 2 made me want to finally beat that fucker after all these years of just dreaming about the last parts of it that I never got to. I've cleared the first two palaces, got the candle from the cave and did some other shit that I don't quite remember exactly. I think one was a heart container. Right now I'm power-leveling the shit outta Link's pantless little hinie because I think Palace 3 is the one that has that Ironknuckle boss, right?
CLOUDBOND007 I was expecting to have to do some serious leveling up to stand a chance but I obliterated everything. I was level 55. Cloud, Barret, Yuffie. Ultimate weapons for all three (except Barret's sucks because it needs Master materia equipped to it to do any good). No KOTR or really cheap tactics. I mainly attacked with Ultima, the obvious Bahamut summons, and limit breaks. Yuffie (I guess because of the way the Conformer works) was doing 6,000+ damage on Sephiroth's various forms. The omnislash scene at the end is cool, I'm sorry. Embarassingly, I think this might be the first time I've played the game and had everything in the story make sense to me.
CLOUDBOND007
Minerva K Red
TaroSH CLOUDBOND007 wrote: So up to this point, I've played Crisis Core and FF7. I'm now reading the mini-novel featuring mostly Barret right after the world started returning more or less to normal. It's readable. Then I'll watch Advent Children one more time and that'll be the last FF7 related thing I'm likely to look into. The other prequel games just sound so terrible that I don't see the point. Just because I'm feeling nitpicky and probably grumpy at the fact I haven't played anything recently, Dirge of Cerberus is a sequel.
CLOUDBOND007
DEATHAMSTER
Captain Ladd Spencer To get to the new town you go through a forest area by a river. It was a little annoying, because you're surrounded by tall plants, and the enemies can see you but you can't see them. I got through this area by letting them spot me, then watching where their bullets were fired from, and firing a Zappfly at them. X'Plosives was a pain in the butt. In his first phase he's riding around thge arena in circles on a cart while some cronies snipe you. I found it a little insulting that it starts with a cutscene of the Stranger telling you what to do in this phase, but what you do is fire at these electric targets as his cart comes to them to make him switch paths and come down some (a railroad crossing chime starts dinging when the cart is by a crossing). But first I took out the snipers by shooting nearby oil barrels with Zappflies to blow 'em to Mordor, but every time you bring X'Plosives down a notch he brings in reinforcements. After three rounds of this you fight him hand to hand. Fortunately if you die on the second phase (which I did a lot) you don't have to redo the first one. I caught him alive by pounding him with Zappflies, Bolamites, and Stunkz. I'm also a little surprised by what this game got away with for having a T rating. Some townfolk say X'Plosives is as mean as his is because he wasn't breast fed. I didn't mention how in the fight with that boss that took me 35 years to beat, he's firing rockets at you, rockets which are stopped by a chain-link fence, a chain-link fence which his chronies can't see through, did I?
da dick mechwarrior4: a templar with max-ed out firepower would actually be slower and have less armour than a timberwolf. i think the templar has only the advantage of higher max. armour and jumpjets. it has less omni slots than a madcat. it's overpriced. tried the last davion mission with max-firepowered timberwolves. worked fairly well, but it's a lot more easier to get killed than when i was using a lance of atlases.really needed the allied victor mecs to distract the enemies, and take the aircraft and towers before moving in. also almost got killed trying to snipe at the mecs at the back entrance, before destroying the hangar. peter davion(in fafnir) and his victor guards will not help out with the enemies guarding the back until i've taken down the hangar. later, i played around with the daishi/direwolf, and tried to max out its firepower gauge and beyond.can't tell if a dashit with max firepower is more durable than a one with the most highest damage weapons. the maxs firepower-ed one could take down a high-damage before it reaches it, but only if the missiles(i usually put a few long-range missiles 'cause they're very light for their 'firepower' rating) all hit the target. if the high damage gets within mid-range, it could take out the maxfired with 2 or 3 hit alpha strikes, or roughly 12-18 seconds. then i made high-damage and max-firepowered altases. and a high-damage fafnir. i took turns controlling a lance of those atlases to fight another lance of the fafnir and the dashits(2 hi-damage,1 maxfire), and vice versa. i won in both fights, probably because the AI almost never gangs up on a single target, but just hits the closest one. i guess they're evenly matched. i did defeat the opposition slightly faster with my atlases. that must be due to their higher speed. they can engage the enemy sooner.
Captain Ladd Spencer
CLOUDBOND007 It's nothing amazing so far but at least it's got some color, controls pretty well, and the dialogue can be amusing.
Captain Ladd Spencer You see the Yahtzee review for that one? I took down another bounty in Stranger's Wrath. He was poaching some pig-like animal in a graveyard. First I had to learn that animal's call, then use it to lure him out of hiding, and to learn that animal's call I had to go fight one of those animals to have the guy teach me the call. Then I went to the boss's hideout. At the start of the fight he retreated back into his hideout and called out some goons I had to take care of. Then he came out and shot me with some really nasty bullets. They'd smash the tombstones in two hits, so I had to keep moving to them. After a certain amount of health is knocked off he retreats again, and calls out more reinforcement. Again, take them all out, and he comes back out of hiding. After this round, though he came down and I pummeled him with Zappflies and Thudslugs.
DEATHAMSTER
Captain Ladd Spencer I've taken a look at the Ultraforce figures, and they crack me up. There's something off about Hardcase's face, like he's crosseyed or something. And Prime's cape pisses me off. I can't even figure out how to get the damn thing on - I think you're supposed to put it on over his head, but I can't even get his head through the opening. This could have been fixed if somebody had simply taken a look at how Prime's cape actually works. It comes out of the top of his shoulder plates, and has a V-shaped cut-out behind the neck. Somebody at Galoob decided it's chained around his chest, and is shaped like a rectangle/normal cape. So either having it snap into his shoulders, or putting that V-shape in the cape to give his head enough room to go through would have remedied this problem.
CLOUDBOND007 It's fine either way because the combat is really well implemented. It's a pleasure to have a game so easy to control. Moving around, taking cover and aiming is a breeze and the game isn't overly stingy with ammo. The game uses that "stay still for a few seconds without getting hit and you'll recover" health system which I love. In games that have a real health meter, I find it annoying because I never know if I should reload the last checkpoint or keep going if I take some damage. Or having to manage an inventory of health paks. The story is really ridiculous but I like the mostly lighthearted nature of it. In the beginning of the game they find Francis Drake's coffin and it's empty except for a journal. This leads to some ruins and then (deep breath) to a Nazi U-boat in the middle of the jungle that has a map to an uncharted island where there might be a gold statue stolen by the Spanish from those ruins, also there are some bad people trying to get there before you do, and the uncharted island has anti-aircraft defenses.
Captain Ladd Spencer Captain Ladd Spencer wrote: You see the Yahtzee review for that one?
DEATHAMSTER Overall, I'd say StarTropics = 4 stars, StarTropics 2 = 3 stars. Now I'll have to find another challenging Zelda-like game since these are the only two and Nintendo's too lame these days to make another. Alundra, here I come.
CLOUDBOND007 You see the Yahtzee review for that one? Sorry yeah, I watched it when you first linked it and forgot to reply. It has a spoiler. I cried for hours when I learned that one of the bad guys dies. That's just not something you could ever predict. It was funny how he leads off with the race thing and it's true that there haven't been any white enemies so far except for the main villain. Then again, for the locations you're visiting, it would be weird if there were. I never played the Tomb Raider games. It rips off Prince of Persia but the gunplay balances it out because there was nothing like that in PoP. I had that happen where I thought I could grab onto something but it was just background and I plummeted to my death. No quick time events yet. It's a better experience than the summer movies it rips off (except probably Indiana Jones which I haven't seen yet somehow).
CLOUDBOND007 There was this one gunfight I had to replay about 10 times because I was getting annihilated. The enemies were much bolder than they had been before. Usually, I could stay behind cover and pick them off one at time, but this group pretty much charged all at once. I'm hoping to get GTA 4 from Gamefly if they have any left. It looks kind of amazing in the Youtube videos but I know I'll get tired of it before I get $60.00 worth of enjoyment from it.
DEATHAMSTER Good god, this game is A Link to the Past with StarTropics 1's play control. |
