Explosions get the blood flowing!

Jade Empire is so far a really interesting game, and most likely a rather long one. So far I saved a forest from evil cannibal creatures (not really cannibals since they're not human an more), stomped a town full of pirates, and currently clearing out a haunted mine, and all this just to get to the next area.

The game play is sort of a mix between KotOR and a beat 'em up, the characters are so far quite interesting, and the graphics are better than some early 360 games.

Well that's nine down...

I decided to stick through the frustrating game overs and get this game done today.

All told the game took just over 12 hours to finish, but like Mass Effect it's meant to be finished 3 times to see the true ending (which i just watched on line). The game was good but it seemed like all of the difficulty and horror elements went away as soon as I was able to heal my health and sanity with magic, so the whole trick with "Sanity Effects" rarely come up with a full saint bar.

The main down side is that when the character does die it's normally from some really cheap monster out of nowhere. So I would be blowing through a level with full health, then WHAM, I'm dead and have to reload from the start of the level (since I saw no reason to save on an easy area) and have to watch the unskipable all over again. Which after a while makes me want to stop playing for a bit.

Tomorrow it's on to Jade Empire: Limited Edition (which I had barley even started before).

Red > Green > Blue > Red

Progressed a few more chapters in the game and it's starting to get easier as I gain magic.

Basically the magic works with a rock/paper/scissors set up, so if my current weapon is charged with colour that beats the monster I do double damage. Also there are spells to regain health (so I don't die) and sanity (so weird stuff doesn't happen), and the magic to cast these is quickly regained by running. So, as long as I'm in an empty room I don't have to worry much about dying.

As for the weird stuff, some things I've seen include:
- The TV volume adjusting
- The TV going mute
- The screen powering off (which looks odd on an LCD)
- Upside down rooms
- The character shooting the screen
- Rooms full of ammo turning out to be a hallucination
- The character's limbs exploding in a hallucination
- A "Full game coming soon" screen as if it was just a demo

So far there hasn't been the dreaded "Save file corrupted" screen I've heard about.

I always feel like somebody's watching me...

Finished what I think is the 3rd chapter (of I have no idea how many) in EDSR, and the mind messing has just started.

So far it's just random knocking coming from doors leading to empty rooms, or creep voices from out side of the house, or a slight tilting of the screen, but I heard it gets much more extreme (like randomly swapping characters or fake memory card errors).

The actual game play is pretty straight forwards, like Resident Evil but with a less locked down camera and better fight controls (like you can target bod parts).

Last thing I did today was find chapter 4, so that's were I'll start tomorrow (I just need to not play this late at night).

Well that's eight down...

Turns out that Future Shop doesn't take returns on the 26 and 27th so I spent most of the day finishing off Mass Effect (exchanging Dragon Age tomorrow).

At 5 days it was one of the shorter games I played so far, but then that's more likely due to a combination of already being 1/4 through when I started, having more time in the past couple days to play it, and that the game is meant to be played multiple times.

In the end I also managed to complete every side quest in the game that was now reserved for different background or renegades. Also I got nearly half the achievements including the one for taking more shield damage than physical damage(surprising since I barely made it out of most fights). The remaining achievements were mostly for using skills my character didn't have, using other part members on different play troughs, and finishing the game multiple times.

It was a really fun game and if it wasn't for the pile waiting to be won I would go right on for a 2nd play through. For now it's on to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem tomorrow (which I think I'm 20% through already).

X-Boxing Day!

It's boxing day today and that means once a ear deals on games...

The assorted great deals I couldn't pass up were 35$ off Dragon Age (which I have to exchange tomorrow since I accidentally got the french copy), 25$ off Fable II (I once saw it for 25$ but figured it wasn't worth it, but 20$ is), 5$ off Assassins Creed (it was cheap so what the heck, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers for full prince (First day out, need to support GOOD FF games, not like 13).

Counting the 2 games I bought last month, I now nearly have as many games yet to finish as when I started this 3rd edition of my blog... At least Mass Effect is coming along quickly, and several shorter titles coming up later. While adding the new titles to my list I found that some of the rankings of certain games (like Pikmin 2 or MAdWorld) have changed from when I first made the list, so I also re sorted them also and remade the title bar image. So far FF:CC:CB (how's that for and acronym) has mostly average reviews (only Nintendo Power gave it 8/10) so despite buying it the first day it is way down on m list currently.

As for Mass Effect, I completed all the side missions available so far and also finished another of the main story mission.

I also got Shadow Complex on XBLA since it was the deal of the week, but since it takes up no shelf space it doesn't count on my list.

Merry Gethmass!

Finished off today the side missions I collected yesterday and also finished off a bunch of new ones I got today.

Since I'm not going for all the achievements, some are just way too hard, I'm just going to go through the game once (Ding ever side quest I can) and just get any achievements I come across.

All in a days work

spent a lot of the day doing the various side quests that I had previously gathered up in Mass Effect.

I'm getting the feel of the combat a lot more, now I just need to remember to save often... >_<

Cars can jump but people can't?

Gradually getting back into Mass Effect, the last time I played it I only got about to when you get our own ship and took out a outpost of plant controlled people.

To start off slowly I decided to do a mission that I picked up earl on, following up on a report of an odd cult. When I got there I found out that the leader of the cult was the former commander of the protagonist, and that he's gone off his meds and had his followers kill some federation officers. So I head down and on the way there find some items and get some exp, and then get completely stuck between a rock and some debris...

After reloading I decided to stay in the land rover more since it, unlike the protagonist, can jump out of being stuck in places. I collected the items up again and went to check on the cult, surprisingly I was able to talk the leader into surrendering without an bloodshed. Feeling good about the speedy outcome I went around the planet looking for an thing else interesting, and I found it...

A giant sand monster that destroyed the land rover in 1 hit!

So reloading again I killed the sand monster first, then got all the items, then finally talked the guy into surrendering again.

Now I'm in a heavily armed pirate base and greatly outnumbered, we'll see how that goes tomorow.

Well that's seven down...

Beat Metroid Prime Trilogy with a total time of about 55 hours (including finishing Prime 1 earlier), not exactly a speed run but fun!

Finding the missile I was missing turned out to be easier tan I thought it would be. It wound up being in the same room I had to go into to complete the next stage of the story an ways, so I actually saved a bit of time in finding it!

After I got the last missile and the 3 remaining items to get 100% (Omega Ridley was a joke of a boss) I figured "what the heck" and went for the end of the game.

The final fights with Dark Samus and Aurora Unit 313were alot easier than the final bosses of Prime 2. Particularly Dark Samus, who I just needed to shoot for a couple minuets straight (no silly charge cannon trick needed).

So tomorrow my Wii gets a rest and it's back to the 360 for Mass Effect.

Missiles away!

Spent today collecting up all the remaining items before the final charge of the pirate home world, and b m count I'm 1 missile short... and I have no idea where it is!

I already combed over the maps for the first 3 planets, which thankfully have little markers where items were, and I couldn't find it there. So that leaves somewhere in the first section of the pirate home world, which isn't marked!

It looks like Tomorrow I'll be going through my checklist, and crosschecking it with other lists, to find that 1 wayward missile because I want to have at least 1 of these games at 100%!

Full armed.

Mostly just spent today collecting up various power ups from the various planets since I now have most of the power-ups needed to get to them. I'm now at about 80% done the item list so there's most likely not much left to the game.

Samus Vs. Samus

So far I'm at 51% completion on the items, but also now at 50% phazon corruption...

Samus' suit is getting to be more and more monochromatic with light blue highlights, it's not a good look for her.

Today I finished off the phazon seed on the sky world, and started on the Space Pirate home world, where I faced off against the shape changing bounty hunter Gandrayda. At one point she started truing into Samus, but Samus in her old orange/yellow varia suit so it was an odd contrast to Samus' current corrupted phazon suit.

Tomorrow it seems that I'll be going back to the sky world to pick up another Chozo power up.

I.C.U.

Went to see Avatar (not the Air-Bender kind) today so not much time for Metroid, but i did manage to get the grapple add-on for Samus' ship at least.

Good news and bad news...

On the Up side I got several new upgrades today for Saums' suit, like the plasma cutter and speed ball, and at 31% of the items.

Down side is that the stupid phazon suit is at 25% corruption and staring to mess with Samus' head...

Near as I can tell, Dark samus didn't just zap Samus and the 3 other bounty hunters with phazon, she put part of herself in them. So the reason why the are alive despite being walking phazon factories, is because Dark samus is keeping them alive until she can full take over them. A couple times Samus went into phazon overload, and there was a cut scene of her becoming Dark samus before the game over screen. Also when the bounty hunters die a ghostly dark samus collects up all the dark phazon that's left of them.

One odd thing about the game is that it seems doors take much longer to open than in the previous games, which means the areas on the other side of the doors are loading slower. Maybe it's because the areas are more detailed or something but it just gets annoying to wait 15 seconds for a door to open. Also, the game so far seems a lot more like a linear FPS than an open world platformer like the other 2. Maybe it's due to it being broken up into many small areas and not 1 big world.

Did I see that?

At 19% complete and fought the ice bounty hunter, but he kinda just disapeard when defeated.

Maybe it's just the phazon talking...

Phazon? In my power suit?

You save the universe twice from total phazon armageddon and this is how they repay you, by giving you a bloody phazon powered suit while you're unconscious! And what a surprise, this thing is unstable! Thanks a lot Galactic Federation! Ancient super advanced Chozo technology? Lets just slap some experimental radioactive material on to that to make it "better".

-_-;

I'm at around 8%, and being stuck with a buggy phazon suit, which is probably slowly killing Samus and/or driving her mad. At least I know it will be gone by the end of the game, since Metroid II follows this one, I just hope it's sooner than that.

I'm sure that the suit is useful and powerful and all, and that it's feeding off the phazon that Samus' body is some how generating, but it just comes across as a slap in the face! At least when the same kind of thing happened in Metroid Fusion (which came out years before) it was the 1 good metroid in the universe who's DNA was merged with Samus, show me 1 good phazon!

Well that's seven... oh, there's 1/3 left...

Finished Metroid Prime 2 today, and stated on Prime 3 (more on that in a bit).

After collecting up 99% of all the items (the stupid list I was using left off one!) I got down to the final boss battle with the Ing emperor (I think it should have been called the K-Ing). Just before it though the game makers stuck in 1 last wall jump obstacle, making it the 4th time in the whole game that annoying skill was needed.

The final Ing was a pretty good boss fight, with 3 forms, and the only down side was that Samus can't look straight up to see the tentacles of it's first form half the time. After the fight though there is another final fight with Dark Samus while there is a 7 minute countdown until the dark realm ends. This wouldn't be bad except that all Dark Samus does is run around wile invisible to all but sonar for the first 1/4 of the fight then hides in an indestructible ball as the time ticks by. After dying 4 times by running out of time, I looked on line and found that I had to collect some white energy off from the ball and quickly bounce it back at her... How was I supposed to know that?! Nowhere in the game is anything like that even hinted at, normal in Metroid games when a new skill is needed it's telegraphed in a message or a puzzle. Now it's just "You know that side effect of attracting items when charging your blast? Well that's what you use to win the game, surprise!"

Since I didn't get 100% on the items (grumble), I only got the good ending with Samus (with an odd looking face) in her Zero Suit for a couple seconds. I looked on line and found that the extra ending was just of Dark Samus forming in space for a second.

Progressing through Prime 3 is going to go even slower since not only am I going after every item and scan, but also all the "credits". This mean that whenever I miss a credit that is once only and time sensitive I restart from the last save and try again. I did the first battle sequence 8 times because of this until I saved all the marines.

One thing about Prime 3 that bugs me is the unnecessary inclusion of a bunch of Wii motion controls. Want to open a door? Well you have to first press A and hold it, then pull the Wii-mote away from the TV, then turn it counter clock wise, then press it back in! In Prime 1 and 2 you just shot or scanned the door to open it! They just added all these controls to show off the Wii-mote!

Screw ball

Got a lot done today in Prime 2, my scanned times is at 91% and my items picked up is closing the gap at 82% (that's even higher than i finished Prime 1 with).

I got the Light Armor, which makes the air and "water" in the dark realm harmless, and the Screw-Attack, which took quite a while to get use to, and a bunch of expansions for my current weapons and health.

Some of the puzzles to get power up items are getting really tricky, but it's good pratice for using the Spider Ball and Screw Attack (Wall Jumping is still frustrating though).

I figure I'll be finished by tomorrow...

Is there an echo in here?

I'm at 51% today, but my lore is over 80%, so I don't know if I'm nearly finished or only half way there...

Fought Dark Samus again, and since her scan was only at 50%, I figure she has 2 more forms to go.

Also picked up the Echo Visor and Power Bomb today.

An eye for an eyeball, and a spider for a spiderball

10 hours in and I'm now 45% done Prime 2.

Today I picked up the Spiderball, dark visor, grapple beam, and Gravity Boost items, also several energy and missile expansions.

Are we there yet?

Nearly 8 hours in and I'm only 32% done... This is going to be a long game.

I have one more temple to restore so I figure that will take me to about 60%. That means either the final area is huge or there will be at least 1 more mission I have to finish before getting to the final area.

At least I'm slowly getting Samus's arsenal back together, I think I just need to find the mega bomb, a dark and light beam, and maybe there is a screw-attack.

Stay still so I can kill you!

At 24% completion now.

The game I setting a lot harder, and I'm only about 1/4 done. I hope that I get some better weapons than just the light and dark rays, since they run out of shots too fast and the regular bean is not too effective.

The worst part is when in the dark area the air itself kills you even with the dark suit on. Normally when you get a new suit in Metroid it makes you immune to a certain environment, not just make it less deadly!

No manner of luck...

I now have 14% of Prime 2 complete.

What are the odd of Samus responding to a random distress call of a ship that crashed while chasing dark Samus onto an isolated planet that has a secret base of metroid loving Space Pirates mining for phazon? I wonder if she ever has a simple mission where she saves some people from a mildly dangerous situation and then gets paid.

The pace of the game is odd, I'm only 14% done yet I have over 40% of the scanable items. There must be a big gap in the middle of the game where there is nothing new to scan.

Zombie Space Marines!

Started on Metroid Prime 2 of the Metroid Prime Trilogy today since I had already finished Prime 1.

So far the game is a lot like the first one, only with a very unwieldy options menu interface (3D radial branching menus).

According to the save file I'm so far 8% done.

Well that's six down...

Apparently 75 is the magic number of needed Shines...

I was playing and got up to 74 Shines and then the path to Bowser Jr opened up, then there was a short easy lava stage and BOOM I'm fighting a 30 foot Bowers in a slime hot tub then getting the last Shine!

After all the levels that were getting more and more difficult I figured I would have a huge castle to contend with before an epic Bowser fight (like in every Mario game), but no, the game just jumps to the final boss fight after the 74th Shine. I didn't even finish the last chapter of the area I was on.

The Boss fight was silly too (aside form the giant Bowser in the slime hot tub), the tub was shaped like a Shine and Mario just had to rocket slam each of the 5 points. I got it in m 4th try and it only took 5 minuets total! With the high difficulty of the previous levels the last boss fight was a joke.

The ending was another way the game was not really like a Mario title, but at least Bowser Jr has more personality and was more interesting than all the other koopa kids so far.

Tomorrow it's on to Metroid Prime Trilogy.

Purple + Yoshi + Fish = Floating platform?

Got up to 64 Shines today in Super Mario Sunshine, and still no sign of a path to Bowser Jr...

The game is getting harder, but also weirder. In one section I had to pop fruit out of a faucet and bring it to a Yoshi egg (of course it's the 1 fruit that you can't pick up)to get him to hatch. Then I had to ride him over to a platform way out at sea, but Yoshi is apparently water soluble since he melts when wet, so I had to figure out how to cross the gap. The only thing near by were some jumping fish, but Yoshi couldn't eat them or jump on them, then I discovered that if Yoshi spews purple juice at the fish they turn into large floating platforms that you can ride across! Makes perfect sense...

Tomorrow I'll be making my way to 80 Shines.

Ouch time...

I managed to get my total up to 50 Shines today, and that was a stretch!

The later levels (unlocked by Yoshi or the extra water nozzle) are much harder! For example, one level is covered with fire goo and Mario doesn't have his water pack. Now, I first though the water pack was a lame gimmick, but that's just cruel!

Also at 50 Shines there is still no sign of how to get to Bowser Jr., so I hope I can get to 60 Shines tomorrow...

"I'm-a tired!"

For some reason I'm really tired tonight, so I just got a couple more blue coins and traded them in for a shine.

I'll collect more tomorrow...

I think I'll step into the next room and have a nervous breakdown.

My Shine count is now up to 42.

The game is really fun, yet it keeps surprising me about how trick it is, particularly the "secret" levels. There are some levels were Mario has to walk along huge planks of wood, as they are rotating at odd angles, and then jump on to another turning plan at the opposite angle!

The Odd thing is that the game didn't really advance until I got the 40th shine, then suddenly Yoshi, the rocket pack, and the jet pack all become available. I don't know if that's normal or I just did the levels in the totally wrong order.

So at 42 Shines there is still no sign of how to catch up with Bowser Jr. who stole Peach, maybe tomorrow a new path will open up when I get 60 shines...