Falling with style

Today there was a brief but fun mini game where you fly around on a glider from location to another in order to get to your assassination target. I also finished most of the collections today too, including the secret video that shows Adam and EVE escaping from some factory where humans are workers in a futuristic setting!? Now I just need the last codex and the last weapon to have everything.

Killler job!

The game has pretty much run out of new things to throw at me and now it's just repetition of doing missions, finding items, and killing doods. Which is not too bad consider it took a week to get repetitive, while the first game took a day or two and it's still just as fun.

Renaissance man

I think I'm getting near the end of the game, there's only 3 locations left to unlock and most of the hidden puzzles and videos have been found. There's probably a couple days left of things to do, and then another day just running around collecting up all the feathers once all areas are available.

Making a killing

Aside for whacking more Templar doods, I managed to save up enough to upgrade every site in the uncle's town. Now instead of running around trying to find hidden money, i just wait and earn +10k every 20 minuets in real time, the down side is that I have to go to the town every time to claim it. So all that money now is going to buying art-work and weapons/armor to complete those collections too.

In the story Desmond is out of the animus for the first time since the start of the game, which is surprising since in the last game he was out and walking around every other mission. I'll find out what's up with that tomorrow.

Making the rounds.

Didn't progress much in the story today, mostly just went around collecting up a bunch of the hidden items and things, which there sure is a lot of. In the first game there was the insane side quest of finding hundreds of flags, now the game has several more reasonable quests:

100 feathers
30 hidden pages
30 paintings
22 weapons
20 pieces of armor
20 hidden videos
6 assassin seals
2 models

and each kind of item are found a different way, some are scattered about the city, some are hidden in puzzles, some you need to navigate secret tombs to find, others you can just buy.

Assassin nation

Well Ezio's all trained up to be an assassin, or at least not so useless in a fight, and I unlocked a neat new feature of the game. Any extra money Ezio gets can be put towards the development of his uncle's village and mansion, and aside for rebates at local stores Ezio also gets part of the town income.

Also Ezio can now buy and upgrade armor and weapons, extending his life bar and attacks. These changes make the game a lot more like an RPG, but still keeps the heavy action feel to it.

Motherly shove.

After lowering his wanted level, Ezio had to lead his mother and sister out of the city so they could stay with his uncle, this lead to a hilarious bit of AI behavior. While walking the sister and mother follow behind Ezio, but if he suddenly turns around and walks past them their path finding causes them to bum into each other. This triggers the mother's NPC reaction when bumped into to violently shove her daughter away. Now this could be story explained due to the fact that she is in a near catatonic state and dosen't recognize her daughter, but I'm more just betting on hilarious AI.

Once they get to the uncle there is a clever "it's a me, Mario!" line and it looks like Ezio will finally be learning to be a proper assassin (considering there is a giant assassin's creed logo on the water fountain.

Crowd control

While Playing more of the game, one improvement that really stands out is the guard AI. In the last game you could kill 50 people and then just hide fro 30 seconds and no one would be after you, despite still walking around in a big imposing hood. Now if you have a wanted level all guards gradually become aware of you as you walk by (shown by a little marker) and if you don't get out of their sight quickly they will recognize you and raise the alarm, running around or climbing walls helps them recognize you even faster. To counter this you can now blend into crowds, hire prostitutes/thieves/mercenaries to act as cover/defense, or the old standard of hiding on a bench or a pile of hay (but that dosen't work 100% of the time).

You there, in the hood!

Started AC2 today and so far it seems like a much more streamlined version of the first one. The grahics look much better, the story flows more organically, and the game play is more fluid. The extent the new protagonist can scale buildings is a little extreme though, almost to the point of spider-man, where the slightest crack is enough for him to support his weight from. There's also a lot more to do with money being introduced, you can buy and upgrade equipment and take part time jobs.

The game isn't clear of bugs though, NPC's teleport and clip through walls before cut scenes, and at one point one of the guards called to my character about his hood even before he had one.

The story so far is that Desmond from the first game is rescued by the resistance group and is going to be trained as an assassin by re-living the ast life of another assassin. So far I have been in the very long tutorial and haven't even become an assassin yet really, but the character's father and brothers were killed and he's out for revenge.

Well bat's forty-two down...

Finished B:AA today, in then end beating the snot out of a titan Joker. Surprisingly the end fight was not as hard as that one the other day, looks like I didn't need to save that last power up for that fight after all. I didn't bother going for all 1000 achievements since all the remaining ones involved getting ridiculous scores in the challenge modes, and I'm nowhere good enough with the combo system to pull that off.

So tomorrow it's away from beating people up with out killing them in Gotham to killing people with out beating them up in Venice with Assassin's Creed II.

Bat's the last straw!

Ran into massive bottle-neck while playing when I got to a ridiculously hard section. The fight was basically against one titan and 3 increasing waves of thugs, the tricky part was that you need to use the titan to thin out the thugs, but you need to hurt the titan in order to spawn the thugs. So it was a tricky balancing act of keeing the titan alive long enough to get rid of the most thugs, kill him too quickly and you get swarmed by thugs, take too long and the thugs will wear you down, and all the while trying not to get killed by hit that take off 1/8 to 1/4 of your life.

Up until now I have been using the health upgrades as an emergency healing kit, since when you upgrade your health it fills it back up to. I had used up 4 of the 5 upgrades in previous tight situations but I really wanted to save the last for whatever the final fight with Joker was. Unfortunately, due to the inanity of this battle I had to result to using it after hours of dying...

Bat's all folks...

It looks like I i'm about the half way point, Joker managed to get the mutagen working and I had to battel two huge brutes at the same time, and I'm betting from here on out there will be more of them. The battle was extremely hard at first, mostly due to my self imposed restriction of not using any gadgets in order to get an achievement, where I had to not only avoid then but arrange them to each each other. After I finally got the achievement I restarted the fight and used gadgets, making it much easier in comparison.

Bat's gotta hurt!!

While progressing through the game I'm starting to get a better handle on the combo system, which is a much harsher learning curve due to playing on hard mode. When more than 5 hits are made in a row successfully the game goes into a kind of bullet time and Batman pulls off much more dynamic moves, flying from one target to the next like some violent ballet. The other side of the combat is when Batman is up against bad guys with guns, then it plays out like a exaggerated metal gear solid. I had to come up with some clever tricks to take out a room full of guards with out them seeing me, my favorite of which is knocking out a lone guard and then placing a explosive under him, then remotely denonating it when 3 other guards investigate.

Bat's what she said...

Progressed through more of the game, and i think about 1/4 done. The plot so far seems rather basic, Joker is taking over the asylum in order to get at a new super drug that gives people incredible strength like Bane (who I just had a boss fight with), and Batman has to stop him.

The game seems to have a bit of a metroidvania element to it since a lot of the secrect items can only be gotten with tools that you get later on, so I'll have to back track all over the map eventually.

Bat's incredible!

Well I started on AA today and so far it's rather fun. I have t running on hard dificulty so I can get all the completion achievements in one go, and aside for the initial fight (where I get killed before the tutorial tells me what to do) it's not too difficult. Also i'm using a handy interactive on-line map as I go so i'm not going to miss any of the hundreds of secret items...

Well that's forty-one down...

I decided to finish off all the rest of BoGT today, and playing them all in one sitting I noticed a clever little design choice. Basically nearly every mission is just a showcase or tutorial for a new weapon/vehicle/feature in the game, but it's such a minor point next to the story and insanity that you don't notice it. I know GTA IV and tLaD weren't like this since one was way too long for it and the other was too short on new content. It's kinda like how Portal spread it's tutorial seamlessly trough the first half of the game.

Also I find that BoGTis the best of the 3 GTAIV titles, not only for it's similarity to Saints Row insanity, but also it has much more likable characters and ties up all the lose ends of the other two parts.

So tomorow it's away from the depressing criminal activity on the streets of Liberty City and on to fun bashing of bad guys in Arkham Asylum.

The crane and train blew up mainly like the plane...

Altertive title would be "Tanks, but no tanks"....

Did more crazy missions today including blowing up a construction crane, a subway train, and a small air plane, also stealing a light tank.. All this is fun, but i sent way too much time in this place, I'm going to try to finish this game off quick so i can finally get out of Liberty City...

Golf, helicopter battles, and sky diving...

This game is an odd reverse from the other parts of GTA IV. In the main game you only get some over the top missions towards the end (like the bank heist), and LaD was pretty normal except for the prison heist, but i'm just a few missions into BoGT and I'm blowing up yachts with a helicopter, sky diving off the highest building in the city, and having high speed get away on a golf cart. It's almost like the game is trying to be Saints Row, but it still takes it's self seriously. The main characters are much more down to earth and but the do much more crazy things.

Change of pace

Well so far BoGT is rather different from the rest of GTA4, and I'm only just past the first mission. The few characters introduced so far are interesting, and not a bunch of sociopaths, the menus and HUD are easier to read than the brown/red on black of the other games (due to the over use of a rainbow pallet), and at the end of each mission there is a score given so there's more incentive to play missions over again.

The plot so far is that you play the bodyguard/business partner of the titular Tony Prince, and are just trying to get by in the city wild helping to keep the businesses afloat.

Ending with a bang

Well, turns out there was just one mission left, but it was a doozy.

Turns out that one of the gang members currently in jail is going to tell the police all about the groups crimes. so after loading up with all the weapons they can carry, for free too, the gang blow their way into the prison and kill everyone in their way before getting to the informant and killing him too.

when they (all 4 remaining members) get back to the hideout they find it's been trashed, so they burn it to the ground and move on. No mention though about the 2 million dollars they stole from the diamond job though, would have liked some of that in the post game.

The credits have a neat montage of key parts of GTA4 that are seen in a flyby and how the other characters from the DLC were close by.

Tomorrow it's on the the ballad of gay tony, and since it's about a friend of a club owner and not hired killers or bikers it might have a little bit of humanity to it.

This again...

Several of the missions i did today revolve around the same bunch of diamonds that Niko chased after in the 3rd act of GTA4, but now from the perspective of The Lost.

Also the main characters (at least they are on the cover) of Ballad of Gay Tony play a big role in it, so i'm betting i'm going to play a 3rd side of this same story in the next "episode". Getting sick of these diamonds though since i know all this running around will be pointless since in the end some random homeless guy winds up with them.

Also it's revealed that the biker character I play in this part is the one who kidnaps Niko's cousin at the end of the 2nd act.

Things are rapidly falling apart for everyone so i think I have only a couple missions left till the end.

With friends like these...

Did a few more missions today, one of which my character was up against a bunch of cops so I used the new feature to call for backup. When the back up came on their morticycles one of them some how slammed right into where I was taking cover, killing the character instantly... when I tried the mission again the back u never even showed up, which may have been for the best.

Either the gang members don't like me or the AI is just broken...

Any objections?

So about 90% of the gang seems to not agree with my character taking over and they try to kill him. Fortunately they are all nameless NPCs and will be never missed after I kill them all, and instantly replaced with more NPCs.

Also I had to do a stupidly frustrating mission where I had to blow up 3 moving trucks with timed pie bombs from a motorcycle while being shot at. I was basically like trying to kill flies with a fire cracker while drunk, who thought that would make for good game play?

Over 1/3 done with the game though, and then after BoGT I'm done with Liberty City for good!

From the other side.

Went around doing various missions in LaD, one of which was the same one I did in GTA as Niko. It was kinda neat seeing how the mission plays out from a different respective and what lead up to it.

Then in the story missions the president of the gang gets arrested again, under suspicious circumstances, and the character I lay get put in charge of the club. So far i don't see how this affects the missions, it's just more fetch quests to kill people.

Th characters are more interesting than in GTA, but just about as unlikeable.

Got wood?

Started off on The Lost and Damned, and it's interesting so far. the plot seems to follow the second in command of a bike gang who's leader just got back from jail, now it seems the eadter wants to kee doing things the old way while the protagonist wants to keep u with the times. The graphcs are a bit diffrent that GTA IV since there is a grain filter over everything and there seems to be more smoke effects. One cute touch that I don't recall seeing in GTA is if you die by burning your cell phone is all melted and the display is corrupted when you next use it.

After doing a couple of missions I took some time to do the one achievement that isn't connected to the story missions. Basically it involves hitting a guy off a bike with a base ball bat just under 70 times...

"You're gonna need a smaller boat"

Finished off the rest of the stunt jumps, and for the most art they went ok, except for a couple where you had to thread a needle with a dirt bike. The last of the jums I did were the water jumps, and the hardest part was getting a boat to do them in. After treading water for a bit I finally caught a slow moving huge sail boat, and then working my way down the food chain. I used the big boat to block a section under a bridge and before long a medium sized payroll boat crashed into it, then while I was making my way to it a small quick boat crashed into the other two. I then took the quick boat and caught up with a tiny speed boat, which I made the jumps with.

I then flew a helicopter under all the bridges for one more achievement before calling it quits. There are a few others i could get if i played a few days more, like the 200 pigeons or friend relates ones, but I wanted to move on to The Lost and Damned tomorrow.

Shark the jump

Spent my time today going around and collecting simple achievements, like flipping your car 5 times, or doing a sustained wheelies, then I started on the jumps and got a little carried away. For the most part they stunt jumps are easy to find, easy to pull off, and fun, but every now and then were were jumps that took me forever to pull off. Some times I couldn't find the right angle of attack, some times i couldn't get enough speed to make the target, some times i was using a car when i was suppose to use a bike. Also there was all the time wasted running around trying to find a fast enough car or a bike after the previous one is lost.

In then end I got about 30 of 50 done today, I'll catch the rest tomorrow.

A winner is you!

After many many attempts I finally finished the last mission.

To start off I had almost no money left after buying so many weapons the last few missions, and to make things worse, each time i retry the mission I have whatever weapons i had left when I failed, so I kept running out of weapons and ammo and couldn't get more. eventually I had to re load from the last save and re do all the checkpoints again just to get some gear back.

First section is a driving mission where I have to follow the bad guy's car back to their base. only failed this once and after it is the first and only checkpoint

Next I had to clear out a small army of goons with my rapidity diminishing ammo supply, only died here 3 or 4 times due to having only a pistol and shotgun left.

Then it's a short race killing more goons and then trying to catch up with a boat while riding a motorcycle, and then doing a jump to a helicopter. This is the part I failed the most on, having to do the previosu section again and waste more bullets. There is a very limited time to ride the motorcycle before the boat gets away and you fail, so you can't wipe out or take a wrong turn. This gets trickier when there is no indication of where to go, just a brief message on screen to follow the coast, but that diapers shortly after getting on the bike. And then there is the jump you have to make which you need full seed to do.

Then you ride a helicopter while shooting at the boat. this part is scripted mostly and regardless of what you do the boat will catch on fire and the helicopter will take damage from a RPG. I had to do this part over becaseu of a glitch when the copter landed caused everyone to stay inside and just sit there burning, sending me back to the first shootout.

Eventual Niko gets through all that and chases down the minor mob boss, gunning him down at the base of the statue of happiness, then walks off feeling that all the pointless killing is over but not feeling victorious. To drive home the point the last story achievement pops up titled "You win" when you have won another (except 50,000$).

After the long credits Niko gets a call from his cousin that his wife is pregnant and also from the brother of the girlfriend that died. Last thing I did was steal a helicopter and parked it outside of a save house and saved, so it will be there when I lay tomorrow to round up some easy achievements.