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I guess since everyone doesn't listen to the Zelda Shopkeeper like they do the grumbling Moblin, or the Old Man, I'll have to try this again. Although clicking a link to a link is a bit more work, you people are lazy, ect, ect. But what the hell, I needed to update my list anyway.
Also note that these prices are all negotiable, and do not include the S&H (which you hafta pay).
GBA- Mega Man Battle Network 4: Blue Moon - $4 game only
PC
- Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - $3 game/case
SNES- Art of Fighting - $4 game only
- Battletoads in Battlemaniacs - $4 game only
- Fatal Fury - $4 game only
- Inindo: Way of the Ninja - $4 game only
- Super Mario World - $4 game only
- Super Mario All-Stars - ON HOLD FOR SPICEBEAN
- Super R-Type - $4 game only
Genesis- Battletoads & Double Dragon - $4 game/case/manual
- Columns - $1 game only
- Kid Chameleon - $4 game/case/manual
- Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi - $3 game only
- Shaq Fu - $1 game only
- Street Fighter II' Champion Edition - $3 game/case
- Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio w/ Mouse - $2 game/mouse
- X-Men - $1 game only
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - $2 game only
- The Revenge of Shinobi - OH HOLD FOR ENDASO
- Sub-Terrania - ON HOLD FOR ENDASO
- Strider - ON HOLD FOR ENDASO
N64- Killer Instinct Gold - ON HOLD FOR SEIJIKA
- Quake II - $3 game only
PS1- Street Fighter Alpha 3 - $10, complete
Also related to this is a small list of game stuff I'm looking to buy. Granted I won't have the scratch to buy this stuff until the sales start moving, but having it up here for viewing works.- Resident Evil 4 (GCN) Instruction Manual
- Mega Man Anniversary Collection (GCN) Instruction Manual
- Mega Man X8 (PS2) Instruction Manual
- Suikoden III (PS2) Instruction Manual
- Mortal Kombat 4 (PS1) Instruction Manual
- Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense (PS1) Instruction Manual and Case Insert(s)
- Mario Kart DS (NDS) Game Case with Case Inserts
- Streets of Rage 3 (GEN) Case Insert
A Master Run: The playthrough of a completed game in which the player challenges himself by putting self-imposed restrictions on the playthrough to make the game more difficult. Classic master run staples include the Speedrun (beating the game as fast as possible), the Single Character Challenge (using only one character period, found mostly in RPGs), and the No Death challenge for games which tend to be easy to die in (such as Contra and Battletoads).
Three days ago I got the sudden inspiration to Master Run another of my favorite games, Suikoden 1 for the PS1, not more than two weeks after I went through Pokémon FireRed using only a Raticate in battle. Close to a year ago I did a Master Run for Suikoden in which I did a speedrun while collecting all of the 108 recruitable Stars of Destiny in just about 9 hours.
However, that run was both unplanned and a tad lazy, and looking back on it Monday, I decided that I could do better. So, I changed up the criteria: I would not recruit ANY optional Stars of Destiny, and I would only use people in my party who I could not remove. So if the hero was left alone for something, I had to do it with just him. It doesn't seem like much, but realize that the game has at least 60 combat-usable characters, and you can have up to six people in your party at any given time.
I'll break it down into chunks of the game. Note that if you have not played Suikoden 1 and you do not want the game spoiled even a tiny bit, then reading the following will not be good for you.
I repeat: Spoilers ahoy.
Start of the game to acquiring my castle: You can't use anyone optional until your castle is up and running, so this went exactly like a normal playthrough. I didn't bother getting the best equipment for Camille or Tai Ho, but I did get everyone to about 19 by fighting the Kobolds in the Great Forest Village southeast of Kouan. I also got lucky on a Lightning Crystal drop from the Zombie Dragon.
Visiting Lepant: The challenge pretty much started here. Normally I'd go grab Kai, but he's optional. Using just McDohl, Cleo, Viktor, and Gremio wasn't so bad though. Cleo had the Fire Rune from Leknaat on, and outside of the giant roulette wheel and it's battles I think I got into like 3 random encounters total. Didn't struggle at all.
Taking down Kwanda: Going from the castle to the Elf Village with just McDohl, Gremio, and Kirkis was a bit tough since the latter two weren't able to crank out good enough damage. I did have Kirkis with the Lightning Rune I got the entire time though. When Valeria showed up, things improved drastically thanks to her Falcon Rune. Not many encounters in the Dwarves' Vault, and the boss didn't like Kirkis' lightning spells. Pannu Yakuta was easy like usual since Viktor and Kuromimi decided to tag along, and I had a six-person team for that.
The fruity Flower General: This whole segment was more about walking from town to town than actual fighting. Even though I only had Flik, Viktor, and Gremio alongside McDohl, the enemies weren't hard. The main difficulty came from dealing with the lack of Viki's teleportation and the Blinking Mirror for easy travel.
The greatest of the 5 Generals (imo): If I didn't have Black Shadow on the Soul Eater, going to the Secret Factory with just McDohl and Tai Ho would have been a LOT harder. Luckily though, I did. That, plus how much exp Tai Ho got from a two-man party meant that within several battles I had a high enough party level average to just "Let Go" all random battles I didn't care for. Love them Fire Spears, but the enemy didn't.
The Runic Vamipre: Nothing hard, or unusual about this at all. Cleo with a Flowing, and McDohl's "Hell" spell made this a cake-walk. Hix kinda felt unneeded and Viktor with the Clone Rune hit hard.
The Knight's of the Dragon's Den: Until I entered Sonya's Floating Fortress, I thought that the highest weapon level I could get to was 12. As such, I did everything before it with that as the max, and it wasn't that difficult. I just left Liukan for dead until he was removed from my party, and the trio of Humphrey, Milia and Flik hit the Crystal Core hard. I also gave Flik Cleo's Flowing Rune here, which he kept until the end of the game.
Moravia: The comments about the Hell spell and using "Let Go" on enemies pretty much sums up the difficulty here.
Sonya's Fortress: Ok, I had to stop and think at this point. Just McDohl and Viktor, a smallish dungeon, and two bosses in a row all without MP restoration. Prior to entering here, I went back through Moravia and grabbed the Mother Earth rune at the top and slapped that on Viktor (even though his magic is bad). Then, I got both of their weapons up to level 15 for the extra damage, pimped out their equipment and went at it. Funny thing: A level 60 Viktor with a Mother Earth Rune and around 98 magic can do 1,400+ damage to the Shell Venus with a single Earthquake. And Sonya? She didn't like Judgement.
The Final Stretch: I had to re-do Yuber's war battle three times becuase only 45 SoD = horrible war battle situation. I did get lucky in the end though and ended up winning with 500 troops left out of 9750, compared to Yuber's 20,000. Pimped out McDohl, Flik, and Viktor with the best equipment, level 15'd their weapons, and made sure that Viktor had Mother Eart and Flik had Flowing. I was a tad torn though, since I didn't know how much use Copper Flesh would be compared to Viktor throwing Rage or Thunder Rune spells. Went through the place twice, since I used magic to wipe out the forced battles on the first run, then I went after Barbarosa.
Final Boss: I had at least 3 Sacrificial Buddhas in each character's inventory, but I didn't end up using any of them. Viktor's Copper Flesh spell came in handy, and he did decent damage to all three targets with Earthquake and Voice of the Earth. Flik spammed healing spells, and McDohl spammed Judgement and Black Shadow, then all three fought until the final boss died.
Reflecting on it now, I'm a tad disappointed that it wasn't harder, or longer. It only took me about 14 hours to do the entire run, and I never needed to grind for levels or cash really. I'm tempted to do another run, like a No Rune run suggested by Hojo, but that'd just end up with a party of big strong hitters and lots of Mega Medicine/Sacrificial Buddhas. Not sure how challenging it'd be.
Still, it was a fun run for an amazing game, and I'm glad that the emotionally moving scenes in the plot still get to me, even after having beaten the game over 15 times in the last 10 years. I'd recommend doing a Master Run of Suikoden to everyone out there, provided they can stand jRPGs.
Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
When someone says "JRPG" to you, what do you think of? Long games of monotonous turn-based battles mixed with predictable plots featuring characters that are pulled along the path of the story with no apparent choice, as if they're forced to do the stupid shit you see.Despite this, we seem to like them. I can't explain why I like gameplay where it's walk to area, press X until fight is over and repeat until next plot point, but a bit of me hates it because I tend to be grabby about any RPG I can get my hands on. Lately I've stopped going after the bad JRPGs and gone with a few good ones; this is one of them.
For those of you who don't know this series, the premise is pretty simple. You're a silent hero named Ryu who's race has the ability to turn into dragons. You spend the entire game going around teaming up with other anthro characters such as winged girls and wolf men to defeat the looming evil that for some reason persecutes said dragon race.
The concept is simple, but I felt that Breath of Fire III lacked something that other JRPGs tend to have: a clear villian. Most of the plot is dedicated to Ryu, the last of the Brood race, journeying to ask God about a whole bunch of stuff. You find things out along the way but nothing is ever really resolved until the final area of the game, which made me wonder "Where's my motivation?" a lot.
It felt really drawn-out and tedious in going after this goal but luckily the gameplay more than made up for it in my eyes. Even though it played like a typical JRPG combat-wise, the systems attatched to it made it fun and more in-depth than the average Final Fantasy.One such system is the "Master" system. Scattered around the BoF3 world are a bunch of Masters who you can apprentice your characters to once you receive their approval (such as paying one all of your money once). Each Master adjusts the stat growth at level up, like a wizard giving more Intelligence but taking away Strength, and have a set list of Skills a character can learn after gaining a determined amount of levels. This allows the player to develop their characters how they want, which I more than took advantage of.
The aformentioned Skills are also an excellent bit. Very similar to Final Fantasy's "Blue Magic", where certain enemy spells are learnable and usable by certain characters, Skills are a little bit more open. Any of the characters you get can learn a skill by using the combat menu choice "Examine".You can only learn each Skill once, though, and only one character at any given time can have a Skill. I tend to love Blue Magic systems, so this was very attractive. I just wish that 8/10 of the skills weren't so useless.
Breath of Fire III also has my favorite mini-game I've played in an RPG yet: Fishing. With an easy-to-learn yet challenging system and the bonus that each fish has a purpose as currency and a combat item, it made it addictive. Spend some time fishing, buy a good weapon you can use until later when you can buy said weapon normally.
So not only could you get excellent equipment (including some of the best stuff for Ryu near the end), but some of the harder fish to catch were really useful in combat. In other JRPGs the player would tend to hoard items like a Mega Elixir because of how rare they were and hard as hell to acquire. With enough patience and skill in fishing, the player could have an entire bagful of excellent healing items, and didn't have to feel remorse if they wasted one because there were always more to catch.
For a game released in 1997, it looked rather good to boot. The game may have been 2D-sprite heavy, but the enviroments were built on a 3D-plane that the player could navigate which led to some interesting locations. Add the fact that you could hold R1 and adjust the camera to look around obstacles you normally couldn't see through and it led to some challenging puzzle-filled dungeons and a lot of hidden items.
Those same puzzles would have been tedious and boring too, but luckily the music of the game was excellent and totally helped with the atmosphere of each dungeon. I absolutely love the overworld theme as Adult Ryu, and the end credits song was awesome.
Overall, I love this game. It may have taken me 95 hours to get everything and, before level-grinding to get the last things, being in the high-thirties by the time I got to the final location but the way it was constructed didn't make it boring like a lot of RPGs I've played. If you're looking for a good JRPG to sink time into, get this. It'll be worth it, even if all you do is fish like I did.
I may have been a tad harsh when it came to my previous review on Bram Stoker's Dracula for the Genesis, but compared to some of the crap shovelware coming out nowadays I'll take that game in a heartbeat. At least that was a video game! Compared to some of the titles that Nintendo is letting companies like Ubisoft defecate onto their consoles, Dracula was awesome.
Some of the worst turds that I'm seeing now are nothing more than 3rd party duplicates of things like Wii Sports and Nintendogs. Granted I never gave a shit for the latter but apparently it did it's job well enough to have four thousand even lamer clones fired out of a rectum cannon to loiter noisily amongst the good titles the DS has sitting around.
Nintendo makes a virtual dog raising emulator and next thing you know series like the "Petz [Animal]z" are camping out next to the Imagine [Profession] series of "games". I'm trying to find a good deal on a used DS game shelf, and I have to toss aside failures like "Bratz Kidz: Slumber Party" to try and find a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for under $25.
And as if it wasn't bad enough, the same thing's happening to the Wii! Everytime I go to look at the Wii games, the stock is 80% mini-game collections that rip off Wii Sports like Babysitting Party and shovelware games that are making stuff like Kung Fu Panda actually look good.
I don't suppor the PS3, but even it's meager collection is looking better than the giant collection of crap that Nintendo is letting companies like Ubisoft spray all over it's waggle-heavy console like a pent-up torrent of diarrhea. As it stands, I'd much rather pay more for a console if it will further solidify itself in saying "We don't have as many games, but you won't have to wade through shit like the stuff flying out on the Wii."
This is why I fully agree with Noi-sama here when I say that Nintendo needs to get their shit together, and fuck Ubisoft. We have to deal with hundreds of horrid titles like that when companies can't get their shit together, deal with some minor profit gains, and give the gamers good shit that we want. Things like english translated official ports of Namco x Capcom or anything from the Super Robot Wars series we haven't received yet.
Yeah, I realize that it'll cost a lot of money to do that. Any more money that shitting out 30 different clones of a single game that all suck? At least gamers WANT those games, not Nintendogs clone #390 with extra waggle action.
I'm going to be blunt when I say that some companies shouldn't make games. Either that, or all companies should be required to create and develop games to a standard of quality. The following game, by just about all accounts, wasn't.
For those of you who don't know (and I seriously doubt there are many of you that read this that do), Bram Stoker's Dracula was released in 1993 by Sony Imagesoft for the consoles of the time, and was developed by Traveler's Tales. Traveler's Tales is responsible for a handful of movie & tv show game adaptations in the past fifteen years and more recently the LEGO Star Wars/Batman/Indie series.
Unlike the LEGO games, which are actually fun from what I've experienced, Bram Stoker's Dracula was boring and badly-coded. This is something to be expected from books turned movies turned games, but I was willing to give it a shot considering how awesome the source material was.
1. Plot
What can be explained here? It's based off of the Columbia pictures movie adaptation of the classic novel, except formatted to fit into a 16-stage action platforming game. Not much to explain beyond that. Something I didn't learn until after looking up the movie, however, is that Keanu Reeves played Johnathan Harker in the movie, and you play as Harker throughout the entire game.
2. GameplayHere's where the game goes bad. The developer must have been in a rush to get the game out, or just didn't care to release a good game because this platformer just generally isn't above mediocre. It has the classic staples: Form of close/long range combat (Harker's sword and projectiles), lives, a hit point system (show as red-filled vials instead of a bar), and a useless score bit.
It may have sixteen stages, but they're all rather short for a platformer. On top of that, combat is dull. Harker's sword hit box is a tad small, and is absolutely useless for hitting enemies beneath him while moving at a downward angle.
Basic concept of each stage depends on what kind of stage there is. The quicker ones have you look for Van Helsing, which causes projectile items to appear on the stage, then find the exit. Even quicker stages than that are ones that remove the Van Helsing bit and just have the end. The third type replaces finding Helsing with fighting a boss.
That brings me to my next irritation: how absolutely easy the bosses are, not to mention how vague it is as to who they are. I had to look at a walkthrough to find out that the first boss was Dracula's carriage driver, for example. Before that I had assumed it was just a really bad shot at one of the Belmonts from Castlevania. But yeah, the difficulty. When the final boss of a game can be defeated by sitting at one side of a plain rectangle room and spamming your sword until Dracula runs into it enough times to die is just pathetic, even with the bad hit detection and small amount of life you get. The platforming of the game is harder than any fighting involved.
3. Graphics
They were alright for the time, but could have used some more time in making them.
4. Music
Eh, what can you expect from something that could be considered yesteryear's shovelware? I just didn't care for it.
Overall, it could have been a much better game. However, it's a general unwritten rule that movie to game adaptations generally just suck. For what it's worth, it was a change of pace from a Castlevania game, and had some different bosses in it. Like a fifteen-foot tall man wrapped in bandages that vomited spiders at you.
Final Score: 4.0
A month ago I came into a bit of money. What I did with it is the same thing that I usually do when I come into such an amount: I go game shopping. So I went down to the local music & game shop and browsed around for pre-owned games, then I walked out with Viewtiful Joe (GCN) and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2) in my possesion for only $25.
It wasn't until the last week that I actually started playing CoD though, and now that it's beaten I have a few thoughts on it. Thoughts on topics such as...
1. Plot
Compared to other Castlevania games - you are Belmont, Dracula is alive, go kill him - Curse of Darkness breaks the trend a little by instead starring another supporting hero, this time in the form of one of Dracula's two "Devil Forgemasters" (with this being the only time ever hearing of them). Hector, as he is known, had betrayed Dracula sometime during Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and gone off to do his own peaceful little thing. Some time later the other Devil Forgemaster Isaac orchestrated the death of Hector's fiancee Rosaly via burning at the stake.
Isaac then plays cat and mouse with Hector as Hector struggles across the cursed countryside - another departure from Castlevania's tradition of just a giant castle - to kill Isaac and avenge his lost fiancee. Along the way he meets various characters such as the monk-like Zead, the enigmatic Saint Germain and Julia the witch. He also ends up encountering Trevor Belmont - the hero of Castlevania III - several times throughout his travels. I won't go into details or spoilers here but even though the cutscenes are spaced out farther than I would have liked, the plot does have it's share of twists and is quite good. And to top it off, I find Saint Germain to be an excellent character.
2. Gameplay
The meat and bones of the game, and what you're purchasing the media for. Unlike a bulk of the Castlevania games - 2D action platformers or "Metroidvania/Castleroids", Curse of Darkness follows in it's precursor's footsteps in being an action game set in a 3D enviroment. Unlike Lament of Innocence though, Curse of Darkness deviates even farther away from the typical whip + sub-item attack scheme that so many other Castlevania games have.
For example Hector fights in a system more akin to a Dynasty Warriors game, with one button being standard attacks and another being more powerful combo-finishing techniques that are used after the standard attack button has been pressed X number of times. The differences don't end there though, as Hector gains several different weapon types - ranging from swords to spears to even a guitar - and each type has it's own moves, pattern and speed.
However, unlike a normal game where you gain different weapons by finding them, Hector forges his own weapons using the items he gains via enemy drops or by stealing. Some of the best weapons in the game can only be forged by stealing from the proper enemy or boss, and a few of them are quite difficult to obtain. Death's item is especially a pain in the ass but is worth it in the end. This is because each enemy has a certain time when the item can be stolen from them (shown by a purple cursor instead of green when you've locked onto them with R2). Each enemy has a different window of steal availability with some being rather easy (Skeletons) to others being incredibly tedious (Death).
Another addition, and a bulk of the gameplay, is the Innocent Devil system. Representing his Devil Forgemaster status, you collect and raise various species of Innocent Devils to aid you in both exploring the areas around Dracula's lands and in combat. They range from the fairy species (seen previously in Symphony of the Night), which can heal you as well as provide other player-aiding abilities, to the Battle and Bird species which help with heavy doors and large gaps respectively.
With these expansions onto the usually run and hit of the 3D Castlevanias, the gameplay does get repetive and a tad boring after awhile. Much more detail could have gone into the areas that Hector explores and they could have dealt with being a tad less linear, especially Dracula's Castle. So many bland and empty hallways that existed for the sole purpose of running down could have been dealt without. And like I said earlier, combat does resemble a Dynasty Warriors game quite a bit. Could have been better, but still good overall.
3. Graphics
I'm not really much as far as opinions go on graphics. I'm a guy who still enjoys SNES and Genesis titles afterall, so the overall look of a 2005 PS2 game is that it looks good. The cutscenes look detailed and nice, and the character models during gameplay are decent. Backgrounds and level design is repetive though and flat, so it doesn't do great in that respect. Overall, it's good, but not much better than that.
4. Music
Finally, the music. Every Castlevania game has an incredible score worth listening to, and Curse of Darkness is no exception. Where some other aspects of the game may fail, the music is there to help you deal with it and still have a good time. The music has all of the old Castlevania appeal, but with the addition of the electric guitar in many songs - something that was missing from a few previous games. Personally, the battle theme that plays when you fight Isaac is my favorite.
All in all, I enjoyed the game for what it was worth but I think there could have been several improvements. It's still worth picking up and trying out though, so it shouldn't be just tossed aside in favor of one of the Castleroid games.
Final score: 8.0
Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
After a little over three weeks I update my blog. However, there's a twist on this post's topic. It's not going to be about video games, but the accident I went through months ago. I've been throwing around tidbits of information on said accident ever since I came back to the Internet, but I haven't fully written down a full-on synopsis of what happened nor have I posted pictures.
So, the time for that has come. We go back to the beginning of it, May 14th. I warn that some of the linked pictures are graphic, and I'll warn the reader when it comes to their links.
On May 14th, I was looking on JobsinME for employment. I came across one that fit to my limited standards: a sit-down warehouse job where my task would have been processing and sorting DVDs returned from Netflix members. The pay was good ($9.50 an hour to start), I'd be sitting down for the shift, and it was sorta local.
This was a damn good job for me since, as my friends know, I have bilateral club foot. Standing up for longer than a half hour or so causes my feet to hurt pretty bad. I also quickly wear out the soles of any footwear I have on because I walk on the outer sides of my feet. So, a job where I sat down and did work with my hands - for good pay - was a heaven sent.
May 15th I went in for my interview and was hired then and there. From there I tackled the only remaining task for this job: finding a bicycle to use. The job location was about seven miles away from my home and I had no vehicle transportation there. Bus route didn't start for close to two hours after I'd start work (shift started at 5am), and I knew no one who could give me a ride each morning.
I ended up acquiring my friend Nick's old bike to use. Though, I can't remember ever picking it up since I got the bike on the day of the accident: May 17th. The woman who hired me had said that I ought to get my way out to the job site before I started work so I'd know where to go and the proper route, yada yada. That Saturday, May 17th, I started doing just that. I didn't even get a tenth of a mile from my house before my travel came to an end.
Not more than twenty seconds of walking from where I live is an intersection. One of the streets to this intersection is Walnut Street. The half of it going in the direction of downtown is very steep and hard to walk. For reasons I can't remember and fathom, I decided to go down Walnut and attempt to merge onto Sheridan - a rather level street - instead of going down the street I live on. And to top it off I decided to do this on Nick's bike. A bicycle I had never ridden before.
Spectators said that I went down the hill pretty fast and missed the turn almost entirely. I ended up cutting onto the sidewalk, hit this cement divider, and flew the twelve to fourteen feet directly into this brick house. The dried spot of blood has been paved over since then.
I hit the house tilted to the left, so my right side and arm took the intial brunt of the hit. I was told I went unconcious almost immediately. From the hit and the resulting force of impact, I fractured eight bones in my body. The last of the Thoracic and the first three Lumbar spinal vertebrae, both the radius and the ulna of my right forearm, my left clavicle and the top-right portion of my skull. I also suffered a subdural hematoma, but luckily there were no lasting effects from it.
I remember nothing from May 17th to May 25th, very little of Memorial Day, and nothing else until May 28th. On May 30th I was relocated from the hospital I had been in to another and June 5th I was finally able to go home.
These three pictures are all of me the day after the accident. [Warning, those were graphic.] This is me at the second hospital, with my mother, my stepdad, and a close-up of me. This is me after being at home for a few weeks. The scars are where they had to preform surgery and put two titanium plates into my right arm. The circular middle of this scar is where the bone broke through my skin. This is the other scar.
I had to wear that torso brace everyday at all times unless I was laying down or sitting at less than a 45 degree angle. At night I could take it off, but I was forced to sleep on my back or sides. When August came around I went through the process of weaning myself off of wearing it everyday until September came. A few days ago I met with my doctor again and I'm supposed to wean myself off of using the brace period. Since that appointment I have not put the brace on and I don't ever intend to again.
As far as activities went, I wasn't able to sit at the computer for more than fifteen minutes every couple of hours because of the pressure put on your spine and back while sitting. Most of June had me laying in a reclined position on my bed watching tv or movies until I finally felt well-enough to start playing video games again.
I started out with Final Fantasy IX and got to the third disc before I put it back. Shortly after that my friend Will lent me his copy of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a game I put over 140 hours into before I finished playing it. And after those I went back to my Backlog and started going at it all over again.
Overall, my healing has gone incredibly well. The doctor has informed me that I can start work again, provided that it's not something that would injure my body. So working hard hours in a retail store or doing physical labor in a warehouse are just some examples of what I can't do in addition to my restrictions because of clubfoot.
The job search has been hard and I'm hoping that I can carpool with someone to work the job I got hired for back on May 15th but I haven't heard anything from them in days. Not sure what I can and cannot handle but I'm going to continue looking since now my need for an income is greater than my pain.
Next time I update, it'll be about video games again. Don't you guys worry. Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
For years I only ever considered using a computer for non-gaming activities. Chatting using IM systems, browsing the internets, collecting and listening to music, ect. I did play video games, but they were few and far between. For the longest time it was only Blizzard games, like Diablo and Starcraft, but as the months go by I've started to use my computer for gaming more.
I download games and I play them from the disc, but I only own a few of the latter. So with few options available to me, the internet has provided sites like the excellent Home of the Underdogs.
This site's goal is to host and provide both freeware and abandonware games for the PC, with some of the oldest games being from 1982 to games up to 2005. Unfortunately, they apparently haven't updated in a couple of years but the site is still running and all of the games are still available.
After I got into a small funk over deciding which game I should play (since I was tired of both FFIVDS and FFVA at that moment), I decided to hop onto the computer and see what games I had downloaded. I have several roms available to me but none of them peaked my interest aside from Captain Commando, a game I recommend for SNES owners, and after I beat that I went to the internet on a whim.
The result? Delicious stockpiles of free games of every genre I can think of. Thanks to HOTU and other sites I now have several more PC games added to the repetoir, including a couple I think deserve a mention.
The first is Duel Toys. It is a freeware game released in '05 that takes a fun twist on fighting games. Instead of playing as the actual characters, you're a kid who owns "Duel Toys". These Duel Toys are the characters you use to fight with, so it's a tad like Pokemon in the "collect your fighters" theme. The nifty thing is it takes games from several major fighting game series. Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Darkstalkers, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat and even Star Gladiator; it's got fighters from them all.
To top it off the sprites are done in a cutesy "chibi" fashion to give it a fun and happy-go-lucky feel. My only gripe with it was near the end of the Story-themed mode they provide. After you collect six badges and accumulate 50 wins you're allowed to enter the DT Tournament. This Tourney is a bunch of endurance battles one after another. Lose, and you're automatically sent back to your house. This forces you to start the whole thing over again.
Problem with that is, you have to reset the program or Quit the Story mode without saving, because the DT Tournament glitches up. If you lose once and try to go back all you can do is wander around the area while all of the assembled fighters - including a sprite of your character - stand there and look at nothing. Save your file at that point and you're permanently (as far as I know). Overall still a good little fighting game.
The next game comes from Bombergames. These guys have spent the last five years or so making the best Streets of Rage games I've ever played. The entire game engine was coded from scratch, all of the sprites from the games have been graphically edited and made better, and the game's series of stages is an original run with multiple paths to give the player a buttload of stages to get through. If you ever liked the Streets of Rage series or enjoyed a good beat-em-up, this game will do both of those justice. It's definitely a download (and for free too).
Now for the third and last game of my mentions. Released two years ago by Pixeljams, Gamma Bros is an awesome neo-retro game that goes back to the heyday of oldschool shmups. The concept is kinda like Space Invaders but with movement on both x-axis and y-axis, with enemies coming from all four sides of the screen. There are only a few stages to the game but these are long and make the playthrough last, especially if you die.
Unlike other shmups where you get extra lives or have multiple continues, Gamma Bros only gives you two chances before you get a Game Over. This comes from the story of the game - a tale of two friends trying to get home from work through an alien-infested area of space. Each of the two guys has a ship with a lifebar that you can collect heal restores for. When the ship is gone, however, the guy is left to hover around in space with a jetpack. If he dies it switches you to the other man and if he dies, game over.
Fortunately you can buy new ships and even resurrect your fallen comrade with the proper currency you pick up through the game. But luck and skill go a lot father then purchasing new chances in my opinion.
That's all for now, so until the next save point Sobou's going back to healing his fractured back.
Well, the past several days have been quick and interesting. Well... kinda interesting. Life shuffles on like normal for most of us, but for several it either speeds by or just up and quits.
Before I start up the whole rant about my life and video games, I want to say that I send my condolences to the families of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. This past weekend both of them died. Bernie was only 50, while Isaac Hayes was 65. It's a really bad thing to see great people passing on, but life does happen so we just have to grieve and move along. I liked both of them since I thought Bernie Mac was great in the movies he played roles in and was a funny comedian, and who didn't like the soul-singing star who played Chef in South Park? It's just a sad loss of two men who had years ahead of them.
With that done, let us move on to someone more personal: me. For me the week went by fast and my main obsession was Final Fantasy V Advance. Yesterday I finally beat the game, after six hours of ABP-grinding near the only Save Point in the Cleft of Dimension's Void. Gaining anywhere from 26 to 30 and sometimes 199 ABP - when you're normally lucky to get 6 ~ 8 - was awesome so I took it upon myself to master every class except Necromancer (which I don't have yet) and Mime (which functions almost exactly like Freelancer).
With my team completely beefed up I went on in and beat the crap out of Exdeath and Neo Exdeath. I had forgotten not only how easy he was (when you have all your classes mastered), but how moving the final cutscenes were. From what happens with Gilgamesh, to the appearance of the Dawn Warriors and the determined final attack of your party, it just hit home and felt good to see something come out of it.
After he died and the credits rolled, I unlocked the Bonus Dungeon. Whoo. It's a pain in the ass. The bosses challenge you unlike anything the regular game provided, including Omega and Shinryuu. Bosses like the Archeodemon - who casts Death on himself if you attack with commands like !Rapid Fire and fully heals himself - and the Grand Aevis are tough and challenge you harshly even with 99% of your classes mastered. I'm on the Archeodemon now, but after yesterday's attempt at him I shut it off and installed Age of Empires 2.
Now, I love the game. The tons of different units and upgrades, the multiple resources and ways to acquire them, and the historial tales you play through are all fun. But not when you're about to beat a campaign mission you've spent close to an hour on and the game crashes on you. That turns that love to hate. Which is why I went straight to my next game: Super Robot Wars 3.
Known in Japan as Da 3 Ji Super Robot Taisen, this game is incredible. Japanland has gotten at least 20 different Super Robot Taisen (Wars) games, but America has only ever acquired two: SRT Original Generations 1 & 2. Problem is all the different series contained within each game, which makes licensing a bitch for the Japan companies because everyone of them wants a cut of the profit if the game is going over to America. This sucks because the games are fun as hell.
I obtained a ROM of the game and there is a full translation patch available on the Internet, so I started it back up. I had played it for several missions ages ago, but I wanted a new start. Oddly enough as I'm playing this I'm also ripping sprites of the mobile suits, the character portraits and the map icons for a reason even I don't know of yet. It makes for a fuller experience I suppose, and I can always use the sprites for a new Backlog banner.
So, for those of you who said "lol tl;dr", let me shorten it out:
- Sucks that Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes died.
- I beat FFVA and I'm working on the Bonus Dungeon
- Age of Empires 2 is fun, but not when it crashes on you.
- Super Robot Wars is awesome and they should get it over here.
Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
To be frank, it pisses me off. I love the series, but it pisses me off. And this opinion comes from my previous play experience with the Midway series that accumulates to today.
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down and started playing Mortal Kombat: Armageddon for the PS2 again. It's been sitting on my shelf for at the least several months, and I never did finish it. On a whim I decided to go back to it and what resulted was me in my "angry gamer" mode: pissed off, slamming my fist on the desk and just about roaring about the bullshit the game was giving me at the time.
The whole gameplay aspect of MK:A is good, but the AI is a bastard. For some of the mandatory one-on-one fights I had to do in the game's Konquest (story) Mode, the computer was relentless, not even allowing me to input a command to do something. It would sit there and either counter-attack or juggle me to my death despite my attempts of hitting - and even smashing - at buttons, trying to do anything.
Plus, the "Parry" and "Breaker" systems didn't help either. Breaker is where you press Block (R2) and Toward the opponent at the exact time they hit you with an attack, and you counter-attack, knocking them down. Problem is, it was stubborn as hell to actually work for me, and it only allows you to preform a Breaker three times between all of the rounds of combat you have (So 3 times in a best-of-3).
Parrying almost never worked either. It's the reverse of Breaker: Away from the opponent and Block. It's suppose to deflect the attack and turn the opponent around, and you have infinite uses of it, but seeming as how Hell would freeze over before it worked, I could barely defend myself against the cheapass juggling sprees and counter-hit frenzies the AI worked itself into.
And let's not forget the "air combos": the moves that take up half of each fighting style's roster. Apparently you can only do them after using a pop-up move to knock the enemy in the air. I tried practically everything, but I could never find the proper pop-up move for Taven, because anytime I would hit them into the air, they'd sail out of range of any move save a fireball or something. So if I hit, it was either [Direction] + [one of the four buttons], or Square-Square-Triangle. That or gratuitous spammage of the special abilities.
The storyline was good though, as ambiguous as it was. And like usual, the ending was a cliffhanger that resolved practically nothing. Figures. I spend all that time running around as Taven, trying to stop Armageddon, only for it to leave off with him winning his godhood (what did you expect?) and attempting to hold off Armageddon until he could find a way to stop it period.
Maybe I just suck at Mortal Kombat games, but the AI went to even "cheap" lengths at times, and was merciless. I did manage to beat it though, and collected all sixty of the "Konquest Relics", unlocking EVERYTHING in the Vault. Kinda funny how they give you all of those music clips, alternate outfits, movies and concept sketches for free when you manage to somehow acquire an item from every person's repetoir. Seriously, how could Kano run around without his mask, and why would a dead Lin Kuei ninja have Liu Kang's wristbands? It makes no sense.
I don't believe I'll go back to it now that I've finished and completed it, but I'll keep it around. Having just about every character in the series playable is something worth holding onto.
I've also made progress in Final Fantasy V Advance. Stupidly, I didn't realize that when the spikes turned into holes in one of the lower floors of the Waterafall, all I'd have to do is jump down and grab the Tablet. I then spanked Leviathan with Rapid Fire + Thundaga Spellblade (moronically easy win), and sprinted right through the Underwater Magma Chasm. Last Tablet in hand, I finally managed to get three of the four new classes: Oracle, Gladiator and Cannoneer.
I've got mixed feelings about them. Oracle seems to have potential, but the Predict and Condemn skills either don't have enough of an effect, or are too slow to even work well. But the ABP Up skill (150% ABP gained per battle), and gaining the highest base Magic stat for Freelancer/Mime by mastering it does seem worth it. It just has to be slugged through.
It's crap that the whole appeal of Cannoneer - Combine - isn't acquired until you master the damn class. When it's proclaimed that the core of the class is mixing "Shot" materials together with other items to hit all enemies with damaging effects, why make it the final skill you get from the damn thing? As such, I have had no chance to even experiment with Combine. I just had to deal with "Open Fire", the class's core skill.
And Gladiator? Finisher is ok, and having that many different weapons available to equip is nice, but it just seems like a mash-together of different traits of Knight, Berserker, Ranger and Dragoon, with a new core skill (Finisher) that doesn't work half the time. Hopefully Necromancer is actually worth the effort.
Oh well. With just Odin left as an extra before I tackle the Cleft of Dimension, the game's going smoothly. I just wish my stomach was as filled as this playing experience is turning out to be.
Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
... and the driver is tired as hell. I've been up for seventeen and a half hours and I'm ready to just crash. First things first though, gotta jot out all the crazy shit that went down today. Well, maybe not crazy, but all the same.
I woke up at around 7:26am this morning rather abruptly to a fire alarm blaring throughout my household. I figured it was temporary, and if at least forty minutes is "temporary", then sure enough it was. Turns out the fire alarms in the household have reached their five-year life expectancy and decided to shit out on us. Go figure.
Took a long walk before heading to my weekly Dungeons & Dragons game, and that went well. Had some jumbo shrimp and the session ended well for us, with the third out of ten "Queen's Eyes" dying to our ten-character (1 PC + 1 NPC for each person) party. We play a mix of 1.0 and 2.0 rules, with a lot of house rule mods as well. Normally, I'd question this, but our DM has been playing for 30 years, so we just go with it. Plus, it lets me cast mage spells even though I'm a cleric, so rockin'.
Went to the movies at 9:45 to see the third Mummy movie. Overall, it was pretty good. It's been awhile since I've seen Brendan Fraiser in a movie, and Jet Li did a decent preformance for what he was. Plus, the yeti kicking the chinese soldier in the balls and scoring a home run was funny as hell.
And now for the main portion of this whole thing: The news from my own video game world. Couldn't decide what to play earlier today, then I just up and picked back up Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion for the 360. I still had the Dark Brotherhood, Mages Guild and Fighters Guild questlines left to finish, so I figured I'd hop into it. Before I left for the Mummy movie I finished up the Dark Brotherhood (and became the Listener of all things...), adding another leadership title to the repetoir of jobs my character does in the Oblivion world.
Seems almost impossible for someone to multi-task like that... Being the leader of an assassin's cult, the leader of a thieves' guild, the Champion of the country, the central Arena's Grand Champion, and soon the Arch-Mage of the Mage's Guild. It defies even video game physics.
I'm also plodding along bit by bit in Final Fantasy V Advance. Trying to do the Waterfall dungeon where one of the two remaining tablets is, and all I seem to be accomplishing is mastering classes, since I can't seem to find my way through any deeper. Oh well, it's ABP and it's all good.
That's it for now, so until the next save point, Sobou's out.
There. Everything is up and running, and I've got the page how I want it to look (for now at least). So, then, opening blog post it is!
My main use for this will be to just clack out my thoughts/impressions/opinions on any game I'm playing at the moment, or life and how it's going for me in general. I would have just stuck with the comments section on the Backloggery, but those are small and tend to get overwritten and possibly deleted, and I'd like to look at what I wrote several months back when it comes down to it, honestly.
As far as life goes right now, I'm doing good. I've got about a month left of wearing the brace I need (due to bike accident) to wear, then it'll just be onto the outpatient physical therapy to work back up the torso muscles that have been weakened and lazy these past two and a half months.
In my video game world, I beat U.N. Squadron - a SNES shmup - today. I've owned the game since at least 1995, but as far as I can remember I never actually did beat it until today. The second-to-last level was an utter bastard. Rather, not the level itself, but it's boss. In a game where you're scrolling from left to right and shooting in that direction, putting a boss's weak point above you with shields on either sides makes for a tough boss.
Then you've got the fact that missile launchers and screen-ranged flamethrowers keep coming onto the screen via the train-like tracks on the floor of the gigantic cavern you have and it becomes a battle to just stay alive while you spam whatever special weapons will even hit the damn boss above you.
Still, I love the damn game and I'm glad I finally finished it. I can only imagine the amount of hair I'd tear out of my head when I'd go back to it and upgrade the difficulty above Hard to the "Gamer" difficulty.
Until the next save point, Sobou's out.
