Smile!

Well after defeating the 2 remaining fighters Ryo gets the OK to enter the bad guy's base and is given a map with the instructions to show up the day after tomorrow.


So with a free day to kill I went around town and took pictures of all the remaining people needed for unlocking bonus comics.

Tomorrow it's huge raid on the bad guys building, and glancing at the walk-through, it's going to be a whopper!

Fight!

Well today Shenmue II was showing it's Virtua Fighter roots. In order to get into the bad guy's building Ryo has get hired as one of their hired muscle, and in order to do that he first has to go around beating the crap out of 6 opponents in street fight.

So far I beat 4 of the 6, i'll get the other 2 tomorrow.

Not again!

Well folowing the crazy woman with the talking bird lead Ryo and Ren to some guy that works for the guy Ryo is looking for. From there it was a long trek through a dilapidated building filled with QTEs, and I am so glad that I had the walk-through or that art would be insane! So Ryo finally meets the guy he's been searching to the start of the game, and after about two words the bad guys show up and kidnap him.

Darn...

So now Ryo and Ren have to organize a big plan to storm the bad guy's base in order to get to the guy again.

Well that's thirty... Oh, DS dosen't count.

Today I finally officially finished Pokemon SoulSilver, only took about 6 months! Well actually I beat all trainer and the elite 4 months ago, and since then I have been grinding my Feraligatr to over level 90 on my Pokewalker so he wouldn't get killed instantly by Red's level 88 Pikachu (water pokemon don't react well to electricity). Also after beating Red and seeing the end credits I accomplished my personal goal of finally getting a Mudkip!

As for Shenmue II, Ryo and Ren check out some leads to track down the guy Ryo's looking for, but they get set u and wind up handcuffed together and locked in a room for day. After escaping by using the old "This guy are sick!" trick they track down another lead involving a woman and her talking bird.

Sayonara!

Well Ren actually kept his promise (after a bit of chasing) and tells Ryo that the guy he's looking for is in Kowloon. So I sent the day taking Ryo around the city saying his good byes to everyone he met so far.

Then it was off on a bus ride to Kowloon where I'll pick up tomorrow!

Book work

So far it seems that Shenmue II is a lot longer game that I first thought it would be. I spent most of the day playing it, going though the walk-through at a quick pace, and near as I can tell I'm less than half way through. Since it's a relativity old game and has such a cinematic approach to it, I figured that it would not be too long, maybe about 6-8 hours of game play. Then again it was originally on 4 CD's and had a large budget, so it actually being much larger shouldn't be too surprising.

In the story Ryo has to clean out the temple library until he clams down enough to think clearly on his revenge plans. Along the way he comes across a book written by the man he's looking for that could help him understand his father's murder. In the book he finds a note on how to contact friends of this man, and so Ryo tries it out. Eventually Ryo does make contact with an associate of the man, but the guy dosen't know were the man is. The associate does tell Ryo though that the local gang leader may know, ans so Ryo then process find a way to meet this gang leader. Finally he meets with the leader and after paying 500$ is told that he will be lead to the guy he's after.

Also I did a side quest involving the girl helping out the kung-fu master Ryo is staying with, which should some how change the ending a little.

The story progression seems to be on a loop like this:

Ryo: I need to meet "B"
"A": You first need to do 1, 2, 3, 4
(Does 1, 2, 3, 4)
"B": Who you really need to talk to is "C", but you first need to do 1, 2, 3, 4
(Does 1, 2, 3, 4)
"C": Who you really need to talk to is "D", but you first...

and so on...

How you do that Wude that you do so well

Today in the game Ryo ran all around the place learning the 4 Wude disciplines of kung-fu, then proves his dexterity by sticking his foot in his mouth by assuming the master he was looking for was a man. Despite Ryo's stupidity, the master lets him sleep on the couch in her apartment and in the morning tells him that she will help him once he clears out all the books in the library. According to the walk-through I'm going by I should finish this art as fast as possible to line myself up for an extra ending, so after a couple failed attempts I decided to try again tomorrow when I'm more alert.

Also today I picked up my copy of Etrian Odyssey III, along with the pre-order art book. I still have Dragon Quest IX to finish, and I'm currently working on Layton 3, also Strange Journey isn't done. If this keeps up I may have to make a spin off journal for DS games I need to finish...

Let the wandering begin.

So far in the story Ryo arrived in Hong-Kong, got robbed, met Joy, found a place to stay, got a job, and started looking for some one to help him track down his father's killer.

I'm using a walk through as I lay so that I don't miss any important parts and to skip all the aimless wandering around asking people stupid questions 100 times.

Who's alive?

Well to start off Shenmue II I watched the "move" of the first game that came with it. it shortens dozens of hours of slow stilted game play into 90 minuets of slow stilted story.

The premise is that Ryo's father is killed by a Chinese man, so he asks all 4 Chinese people in his small Japanese town if they know the guy, since how many Chinese people could there be in the world? When that surprisingly goes nowhere he gets a letter written in obscure backwards Chinese (for some reason) with the cryptic message to find some master. He finds the master at the dock, who tells him the guy who killed his father is bad news and he should give up on revenge. Also that the mirror that his father was killed over is part of a set and Ryo retrieves the other one, then waves it around all over the place just asking for it to be garbed. After Ryo pisses off the local gang trying to get info on the guy's he's after they kidnap his potential girlfriend (if Ryo wasn't so obsessed with revenge) and tell him that the guy he's after already left japan.

So to sum up, the killer got away and Ryo has been wasting time for months to learn this.

Tomorrow the story picks up as the brain dead Ryo wanders in a daze in china trying to find 1 guy who he knows nothing about among a population of a billion!

Well that's thirty-four down...

Finished off Pikmin today, and being familiar with the controls and level layouts made things much easier. Right off the bat I was gaining 2 or three ship parts a day, and the only day I didn't get at least one part was when I got swarmed by two creatures while a third kept blowing away my Pikmin.

By the 20th day I had already collected all 29 parts, and that unlocked the bonus area for the final ship part (optional). The area starts off with an obstacle course I have to guide remotely at least 10 reds through a tube of fire and then push aside a box, while all my blues build a bridge from the middle of a pond (puddle actually), and I have to toss bomb carrying yellow around the islands to blow u a wall separating the bridge from the box. After all that then there is a huge boss fight against a massive creature that eats Pikmin 30 at a time or just jumps on a crowd, and it's only vulnerable on it's face (which is out of reach most of the time). In the end I had all my remaining blues (so they didn't die if they fell off the bridge) weaken the thing to just under half health (which is when he starts jumping on everything), then I had all my remain yellow grab bombs and suicide run into it's mouth, killing it the rest of the way.

The final piece turns out to be Olimar's piggy bank and with it he takes off back home, which leads the question of where he got the bottle-cap that he has at the start of 2...

Well tomorrow it's on to playing Shenmue II.

So close yet so far...

Well I got through all 30 days in the game, but i was 1 needed space ship part short so it was game over. At least it had the surreal image of a dead Olimar getting turned into a olimar/pikmin hybrid sprout...

I'll try again tomorrow, now that I got a better hold of the controls it should go better.

Beat the clock

So far Pikmin is a lot like I would expect compared to the sequel, it's a rougher more primitive version of 2 but still has the interesting key elements.

The controls are a bit more awkward, such as not being able to sort the Pikmin in the group by color, and the game play is a bit different too, such as yellows can use bomb not electric roof. The biggest change so far is that there is a tight time limit of 29 days to get 29 items, and so fat it's been 14 days and I only have 9, most of the time was to build up my pikmin reserves. unless there is a time extention later in the game or a lot more items become available quickly, This game is going to be really tough and long, having to work on such a tight time constraint, I have I figure 5 hours to beat the game or it's game over.

I;ll see if it turns around tomorrow.

Well that's thirty-three down...

When I saw that I mostly just had story missions left I thought to myself "I bet I could just finish this off in a day" so I did, but It took a lot longer than I thought.

Turns out I had left to do about 3 or for mission quests for each gang, plus about 3 more strongholds, then the Ultor missions, and then after all that a secret mission where you shoot Julius for blowing you u at the end of the first game. What really dragged out the time was quests where you have to do a long stretch of driving/flying/boating to get to the destination and then shoot up a bunch of people, and then out of nowhere a helicopter blows you up with a heat seeking missile and you start right back at the beginning.

In the end I never did find the 4 last jumps, and a lot of side quests I never finished or even start, but then it was impossible to get 1000 achievement points due to the online ones so missing a few others didn't matter much.

Tomorrow it's on to the first Pikmin game, should be interesting to see how it compares to the second.

Taking care of business

Finished off the police side quests, where I basically went around stopping people (as violently as possible) from doing the same side quests that I was doing. One was doing the destruction quest and even had scores coming up as he blew stuff up. Also there was one part where I had to stop a fight between pirates and ninjas, and the dispatcher said "Internet memes have gone too far!" (pronouncing it as me-mes...).

Then I did one of each gang missions and 2 of each gang strongholds.

Have gun, will travel

Didn't play much again tonight, but I finished the other crowd control mission and unlocked unlimited SMG ammo! so i'll alway have at least a back up whenever my shotgun runs out.

people person

Didn't play too much ,just did a couple of random quests and got achievements for tossing people and mugging people.

Gotta run!

Did a few more side missions today, and unlocked some really useful features.

First I got from finishing the escort missions the ability to call one of my cars from about anywhere, so no more running to the nearest garage or stealing a slower car. Then from finishing the insurance fraud quest I got the ability to never get tired when running, so now I'm faster than some of the vehicles on the road.

One odd glitch that came up while doing the fraud missions though was that some how within the first few seconds of the last stage I got ran over so hard that my character got embedded into the road and only their butt was sticking out. so for the next six minuets I had to wait there with only my butt visible, waiting for the time to run out, since if I quit the match I would start back from the beginning (I think, I wasn't going to risk it). Then with 10 seconds remaining I suddenly popped out of the ground and manged to rack up nearly half the required money before the time ran out.

After that I did the second story mission for each of the gangs.

Painting the town brown

Today I sent most of my time finishing all the "trail blazer" quests, where I run around town on a quad-bike on fire blowing stuff up, and the "septic avenger" quests, where I run around town in a septic truck covering places with filth.

mindless fun that got me a lot of money, unlockables, and 2 achievements.

up in the sky...

Compleated the barn storimg quest today, and after a few tries I got the gang of what I was suppose to do.

Having the gamestop "exclusive" UFO helped a lot too...

After that I did the first quest of each of the 3 rival gangs, and cleared out some strong holds.

Tomorrow it's more side quests!

Close one!

Well I was rather productive today, I finished off all the chop shop quests, and also about a dozen side quests. Then when I went to start another quest the game crashed...

Thank goodness that the game now auto saves! if this was the first Saints Row I would have lost everything. Fortunately with the auto save i didn't lose any progress.

But to be on the safe side I'll call it quits for today.

Jump the shark

Well today I finished off all the tags and CD collecting, but unfortunately I missed about 4 jumps somewhere along the way, so at some point I need to go back to all 80 jumps and try them again...

After that I also finished off the hit-man quests since I only had about 4 targets left. It went pretty well, except for one annoying guy. First to get the target to show up my character has to drink 2 beers, and the nearest liquor store is one the other side of the area the target is in. then once I drank the beers the target would show up a long way away and I had to get to it before it disappears. But the target is actually a decoy and the real target shows up in a car driving towards the edge of the area, where he would disappear if he gets too far. So every time the target go away I had to drive back to the liquor store, get drunk again, drive around for the decoy, kill the decoy, drive around (while impaired) trying to catch up with the car, and then try to kill the blurry fool before he shoots me in the face or else do it again.

It took me about 7 tries...

Tomorrow I think I'll do more of the side quests before back tracking the jumps.

Life in the fast lane

Went around collecting more CDs/tags/jumps today, and while going around I kept trying to find a really fast car to do the jumps with and to travel around town quicker. Finally I found one who's normal speed was faster than some cars with nitro on and had great handling, but the first one I found was needed for the chop-shop quest. So not wanting to track down another one of these cars, I took it to a garage and customized it, saving it as one of my personal cars, before bringing it to the chop shop. Unfortunately, it seems that the chop shop override the garage saving and that car, with all the modifications I payed for) disappeared!

Fortunately, while continuing to track down things I came across another one of those cars and saved it in the garage again, this time making sure it was saved. I then took it to a jump that was half the map away from the nearest garage and flew the car into the sea...

Tomorow I have get another car just to retrieve my good car and finish off the collecting.

Harvester

Started collecting the tags, CDs, and jumps, but got side tracked too often with all the neat things to do, so in the end I only got the south west corner of the upper map.

One of the diversions I did was the insurance fraud one. In this game they changed it so any where in the sector you can get points for accidents, not just target intersections, and they an adrenalin meter that sends you flying when it's full. They still have target intersections, but now they give you more adrenalin and are filled with themed vehicles (like construction or bikes). At one time I managed go get a 300,000$ combo as I was bounced from car to car about 15 times.

Also I completed a couple of the chop shop quests as I kept getting wanted cars at random, then when I was at around 7/8 I would hunt out the last car. As a reward I got a custom dirt buggy and a combine harvester, both in 3rd street saints colors.

Tomorrow I'll have to stick to collecting more...

tag and bag

Spent most of the time runnign all over the south end of the map, getting all the tags, CDs, and jumps on that end, along the way I randomly came across several of the chop shop cars and hit-man targets too.

Tomorrow it's more collecting!

Life and death

Sent today mostly exploring Stillwater by car, truck, boat, plane, and helicopter, and doing what ever side quests I could find.

There's somethign about how this game runs different than the previous one that makes all the side quests much more enjoyable. Maybe it's how faster it is to get to locations, or how often you unlock rewards, or just more variety, but whatever it is I spent most of the day just randomly doing quests and never got bored. One quest I really liked and was rather different was the ambulance diversion, where I go all over town and save people's lives, sort of like a mini Trauma Team. For finishing all the stages of the quest I not only got a pimped out ambulance of my own but defibrillators as a melee weapon, which has the extra perk of bringing people back to life! One time in a park some skydiver just fell out of nowhere and splatted into the ground, so I just ran up and shocked him and he walked off like nothing happened.

On a totally different note, I also compleated the Fight Club quests, where the game turns into a simple but fun brawler as I fight increasing waves of bad guys. Also the Hit-man quests are much better in this game since it gives much better direction of how to find the targets (no more driving around downtown for hours only to find the target in the slums) but they also appear on your HUD even when you're not actively hunting them. The Chop-Shop quest is improved too, now you get a message whenever you enter a wanted vehicle (even if you didn't know it was) and you get directions to the nearest of the 5 chop shops (even if it's not the one who requested that car).

Now that I have explored all the areas tomorrow I'll start collecting up the tags, CD's, jumps and barnstorming!

Pirates VS ninjas!

Well Saints Row 2 so far is a lot like the first one, but also has a lot of changes. The first big change is that your character is a lot more customizable, not only can you be male or female but anywhere in between. Also you can set how they sound (they talk all the time now), how they move, their expressions, their age, and their face to ridiculous levels! So my character this time looks noting at a all like the last one, but they're recognized instantly by returning character (often asking if they got their hair cut).

Also another big change is that the shading and textures are a lot better. Before everything was flat and had dithered shading, now there's so much details that it's edging closer to uncanny valley. Not only now there is a wider selection of vehicles, including motorcycles and aircraft, but the sense of speed is much greater too. There are also a lot of new side quests, including vehicle based ones when you steal things like cabs or ambulances.

Story wise, my character just woke up from a 5 year coma and then busted out of Alcatraz like prison to find that a super company has taken over the city and changed everything. After busting another former gang member out of death row and finding a new hideout, they plan to put the gang back together.

Well that's thirty-two down...

Completed Metroid: Other M with 100% of the items, but there was no alt ending, just Samus saying congratulations.

For the most art I thought the game was juts going to be an open world to get any items I missed, but when I unlocked the last new area I was surprised to find myself in a boss fight with a giant version of Phantoon from Super Metroid! I just barely won the fight with my health going between 0 and 1...

In the end it turns out that what Samus went after was the commander's helmet, which he forgot when he ran off to warn her abut the AI mother Brain.

All in all the game was really fun, but it seemd shot, a little less than Prime 3. I hope they make a sequel though and fix the issues that this one had...

On a sucking note, today my DS fell out of my shirt pocket as I was leaning over and some how hit at just the wrong point that it no longer turns on any more... So I'll have to get a 2nd hand one cheap to tide me over till the 3DS comes out.

Tomorow it's back to the chaos and crime of Saint's row 2, and maybe a new DS...

M is for meticulous...

Well that's thirty-two down... but not quite...

I finished the story line of the game, but there is an epilogue portion where Samus goes back to the space station just before it's to be destroyed in order to retrieve something (I'm not sure what yet). During this part all the floors on the map show what percentage of items you have collected, so I'm betting that 100% on all of them gets you the true ending (like all Metroid games have an alt ending).

The story took several odd turns, and all the objectives I thought I would have were not there. On the way to the cloning area I had to have a boss fight with an oddly familiar machine, it was only when the face plate came off that I remembered that it was Nightmare from Metroid Fusion! I guess that explains what it was doing in that garbage dump, the federation must have tried to salvage it.

When Samus gets to the Metroid cloning area she is tazed by her commander to stop her from going inside since the metroids are cold resistant and there is no way for Samus to kill them. He also explains that he is listed as the head of the project only because he had written a report that said how such a project was too dangerous and would not work, but some people followed it any ways. So the commander then goes on into the section of the ship himself as a suicide mission and blows it up. The VA for Samus actually shows a lot of emotion in this scene and she's actually really good!

Next I went to kill Ridley, but somethign beat me to it already. I find another survivor who runs away, and leads me to a large test chamber, and then a huge door opens showing a huge 8 eyed alligator like head...

IT'S A QUEEN METROID!

I couldn't believe that they finally included a queen Metroid in a newer game! Only other appearance they have had was in Metroid II, the next closest thing was the Omega Metroid in Fusion (which could be related to this one). The fight was really hard because it was not clear what I was supposed to do, the queen had no weakness and would keep spawning baby Metroids. Finally I found that I had to freeze and blow up the babies faster than they spawned and then the Queen would change form, growing a row of crystal spikes across it's neck and breathing fire. Then after destroying the crystals with cluster missiles it fell over as the station, which was on a collision course with the federation home planet, stopped suddenly. The fight got frustrating again because the only course of action was to morphball into the queens mouth, but samus would then quickly die. Only after looking through the pause menu that I noticed that super bombs were enabled, with no announcement (thanks for telling me game!) so I then super bombed the queen into dust.

So then I caught up with the survivor, who revealed that she was actually the real head of the project, and that the woman I met earlier was actually the bio-android body of the AI of Mother Brain (and here I was expecting a room size robot brain)! It turns out that the AI was put into a body so that the baby Metroids could imprint on her like the one did to Samus in II, but through the bonding with the Metroids the AI developed emotions and started acting more human. When fuzzy baby Ridley started killing people the scientists saw things were getting out of control and tried to get rid of the AI, who up to now saw the head scientist like her mother. Felling betrayed and confused the AI used her telepathy (the trait of Mother Brain they wanted to reproduce) to control all the experiments on the station to attack and take over. Her plan was to then crash the station into the federation home planet and release all the metroids (from the Queen she bio-engendered), teaching them a lesson for trying to play god, but Samus and the rescue team messed up that plan.

In the final interactive segment the AI summon a swarm of super beetles (who were hiding as wall decorations the whole game) just as the federation shows up to "clean up" the issue. All hell breaks lose and Samus' controls are locked in first person view, but no matter how many missiles I fire the beetles don't die. After several game overs I notice that the AI is still standing there at the back of the room among the chaos, so I target her, but before I could get a shot off her "mother" freezer her with an ice gun and the soldiers shoot her like crazy. Just before the federation goon can sweep everything under the rug, Samus' friend on the rescue squad show up (having escaped death by freezing a lava monster) and explains that his mission takes priority and he's taking Samus and the survivor to safety.

No big fight with Metroid clones, but I get to fight Nightmare.
No big fight with Ridley, but I get to fight a Metroid Queen.
No big fight with Mother Brain, but the twist was awesome.
No mad escape from the self-destructing station... well not yet...

M is for murder...

Well the plot thickens...

Someone has been going around killing off members of the rescue team, and it looks like it's one of the team members. And that fuzzy rabbit creature that keeps evolving turns out to be a cloned Ridley in his baby form (who knew he was a cute kid?).

Samus finally tracks down the person in charge of the station and it's revealed that they have cloned Metroids froum the remains they found on Samus' suit right after Super Metroid (and accidentally cloning some Ridley blood). To control the Metroids they also made an AI version of Mother Brain (like the AI from Prime 3 I bet) that has gone out of control. The scientist in charge also says that the commander is the one running the show, but I suspect that's a lie.

So Samus has to kill all the Metroids, stop the AI Mother Brain, stop whoever is trying to kill her, figure out what's REALLY going on, and probally escape the station before it self-destructs...

M is for mechanics...

Well a little more of the lot is revealed. It turns out that the space station was a military facility that was doing large scale illegal animal research to find what animal in the universe could be turned into a bio-weapon (Metroids must be high on their list). The leader of the team investigating the place (Samus' former commander) also happens to be very strongly against misusing animals as tolls or weapons, so may not be a coincidence that he's there. There is also some mysterious animal running around that at first looked like an evil rabbit, but has since shed that from and is running around in a more deadly unknown from. Plus there may be a cold resistant Metroid around too (maybe connected to the rabbit creature).

I'm getting more use to the odd play mechanics of the game, and the wall jumping is a lot more painless than in the Prime games, but there are still some frustrating bits. The way that Samus gains abilities is not that she finds power ups (like in previous games) but that the leader of the rescue group tells her what equipment she can use. While this avoids the rather silly issue of every strange plant Samus visits just happening to have weapons compatible with her unique suit lying around after she conveniently loses them at the start of the game, it still makes little sense. Not using super bombs and super missiles in a space station that is already falling apart is very reasonable, but what possible reason is there to ban the use of the Varia suit until after Samus nearly dies form over heating in a lava environment? Also Samus isn't given permission to use ice beam until hours after the rest of the team is given permission to. Basically no ability is allowed until it is completely necessary to progress in a particular path, and not even that some times. At one point Samus comes to a room with lava in it and needs the hook beam to get to her destination, but instead of giving permission to use a completely non-destructive tool, the commander tells her to go to a different location.

I could imagine a conversation like this:
Saums: "Commander, I see a energy tank next to a computer terminal but I need to use screw-attack to get it, requesting permission."
Commander: "no."
Samus: "But that tank can help me survive and ensure the suscess of this mission"
Comander: "no."
Samus: "That computer may also hold valuable information about what happened here and what we are up against..."
Commander: "no."
Samus: "This is about me giving up the baby Metroid as a power source isn't it?"
Commander"...yes."