Quit monkeying around and vanquish him eh!

That was an annoying fight!

Spent an hour and a half fighting just one colossus, a dumb giant ape. First I couldn't figure out how the heck to even get up to him, then I came across the tick that he has to stand on a stone platform to tilt it so I can reach the next level. Then I had to get him to whack the wall with his sword so I could climb up another platform. I manged to get up on his head and stab his weak point, but he still didn't die. Turns out he had another point on his elbow that I had to hit too. So I climbed all back up again and took out that point.

Still wasn't dead!

Took me a while to find that he had a third point on the palm of his hand, and even longer to figure out how to get it. I had to be just far enough that he dosen't try to step on me, but not too far so he chases me, at the right distance he punches the ground and I can grab his harry palm (ew).

Fortunately it looks like I miscounted last time and tomorrow is the final fight!

This bull is hard to steer!

At first I thought the fight with the giant electric bull would be back to the simple "climb and stab", but as I got to the top of it's head there was no stabby marker. Turns out that there are some weird teeth growing out of it's head and when you hit one the bull veers in that direction. So the objective is to maneuver the bull over to some platforms and jump on to them, the bull would then rise up on it's haunches to attack, exposing it's stabby point.

The next monster had a cool design but a rather simple trick. The thing would rise up out of the sand and fly around in the sky, and you would have to shoot out the air bladders keeping it up. Then as it runs around close to the land you have to chase it with your horse and grab one of it's wings. Then it's a matter of finding the stabby point and repeat.

Last was a big dog thing. The objective was to get the dog to knock over various pillars so that you can make your way to an area to trap it. Then the trap would break the armor and allow you to hit the stabby bit (if you can catch it).

Reaching the end, only 3 left!

14 Colossus
74 lizards
128 fruit

The more bones they break...

The fights are certainly getting more tricky, no more just "climb the big thing and stab it".

The first thing I fought today was a giant crab, but before I could hit it's weak spot for massive damage I had to figure out how to get to it. Turns out I had to lure it out over one of the geysers in the area (without being stepped on or shot with it's laser eyes) and then while it's being lifted I had to shoot an arrow at an exposed gap in it's feet. It would then fall on it's back and I had to quickly climb up it's side to get to the weak point.

Next was a sand worm, which was a recycled sea serpent from before. This time I had to figure out that I had to ride my horse as it charged me, then shoot at it's eye from horse back(which i didn't know you could do before). Blinded, it would then run into a wall and I could get some hits in before having to repeat the process.

lastly was a rhino thing, not much bigger than a real rhino, but covered with armor. The trick was getting a wooden stick and lighting it on fire, then using the fire to scare the rhino off a cliff to break the armor. After that it was just a matter of hanging on to it's back for dear life as I tried to stab it.

Total:
11 Colossus
74 lizards
128 fruit

The bigger they are...

Three more colossus down! I finally beat the colossus of the tomb, when I played the original version I got stuck on this one and never got past it, so everything from here on out is new. I also killed a sea serpent colossus, and a lizard colossus. The lizard was the first one to actually pose a threat, it had a powerful projectile attack and a tricky way of killing it.

Total:
8 Colossus
74 lizards
128 fruit

Missed my flight

Well I finished collecting all the fruit and lizards that I can for now. There are some more fruit in the hidden garden, which removes health, and 3 more lizards that can only be gotten at the 16th colossus. So now all that's left to do is kill lots of huge monsters, oh well...

Also I wasted a bit of time running around trying to grab a bird in flight, if you can hang on to one long enough (they gradually fall due to your weight) you get a trophy. Unfortunately I could never grab a bird just as it was going over a cliff to get enough air time.

Total:
5 Colossus
74 lizards
128 fruit

To the max!

Cleared off another row of lizards and fruit today, but didn't go after the next colossus. Each time a colossus is killed the game takes you back to the main temple, and since the rows I'm doing are on the far end of the map I don't wasn't to have to trek all the way back to do the rest of them.

Also I managed to max out my health bar, even though I have about 27 fruit left to get. I guess they put more than enough in the world so that you don't have to find every one for max health.

Totals:
5 Colossus
55 lizards
101 fruit

My Little Colossus

Finished 2 more rows today, only 3 left to go, and finished off 2 more colossus, the horse and the bird.

Totals:
5 Colossus
45 lizards
67 fruit

You're not helping big voice!

Covered a lot of ground today and cleared off two more rows of Lizards and fruit, nearly have half the lizards already.

I also killed of the second and third Colossus. They were not so much difficult than just time consuming.

Totals:
3 Colossus
35 lizards
56 fruit

Chasing tail

Started on Shadow of the Colossus today, and my first goal is to max out the Wanderer as I go.
All over the map are silver tailed lizards that expand your grip meter when you kill them and eat their tail. Although this only expands it by a pixel or less, but it adds up eventually. There are also fruit in trees that extend your health bar when you eat them, and these fortunately have a bigger impact.

The map has a grid pattern on it, which makes following a lizard/fruit walk-through much easier. So I went back and forth across the middle row that you start in and cleared out all the lizards and fruit. Then to cap the day off I killed the first colossus.

The game looks really nice in HD, and would almost look current gen if it wasn't for the horse's very angular plot and mane. There is also a very apparent popping in of textures which would have been much less on a modern game.

Total so far:
Colossus 1
Lizards 15
Fruit 25

Well that's fifty-five and a half down... angain...

Finished Lonesome Road today, and it's worse than The Pitt.

So in the end Ulysses was just a mad man who wanted to use the rest of the nukes to bomb the NCR, since he was inspired by how the Courier was able to destroy a whole town the same way (unintentionally). There was a way to talk him out of it, but I had enough of his pretentious crap just killed him in one punch.

In the end I only came out of the DLC with 1 thing I liked. There's an encounter with a giant deathclaw named Rawr, an after killing it you can make a super deathclaw gauntlet which was more powerful than my Super-heated gauntlet or Pushy (which I used to one shot Ulysses). Also it's cute that on the Wild Wasteland perk it's called "Fist of the north Rawr"!

So on that downer note I am no fully done with Fallout: New Vegas (unless that make more DLC), and it's back to start Shadow of the Colossus.

Did I do that....?

Well after running around and setting off more nukes (which isn't as interesting as it sounds), I got to a point where Ulysses explained in his roundabout and pseudo-philosophical way what is the point of the DLC.

Turns out that at one point the Courier had a trade route through "the divide", and a town sprang up along that route. Ulysses was a Legion spy who posed as a courier, and tracked the Courier to this town and he thought it was a nice place to live and not connected to the NCR or legion. Then the Legion had the Courier deliver a package to the town, and in that package was a device that activated all the underground nukes in the area after the Courier left.

So Ulysses blames the Courier for destroying this place and wants to deal with him, but he's still honor bound to Casar not to kill any other couriers (weird priorities), so he wants to see if the Divide can do it.

Also I found that this DLC has one other new enemy, glow in the dark tunneling lizard people that look like the new Silurians from Doctor Who. They go down in one hit with my power glove, but they also have quite a knock-back and do a fair amount of damaged, so it's get them before they get me.

All the colors of brown!

Started Lonesome Road today, and it very much the opposite of Old World Blues.

The premise so far is that Ulysses, the courier that rejected to carry the platinum chip and all around wet blanket, asks the Courier to navigate a bombed out wasteland in order to have a face to face chat. Along the way are nuclear warheads that must be detonated in order to progress. This may sound insane, but these are the weakest nukes ever! A mini-nuke has more power than these! I was able to stand on one and explode it under my feet and only lose half my health and get a medium dose of radiation.

While OWB had a great motivation (find your brain!) there is no motivation here other than find out what Ulysses wants (other than to ramble on about history and destiny). While OWB had brightly light and diverse locations, LR has bust up brown roads and busted up brown towns. While OWB had robo-scorpions, lobotomites, trauma suits, and cyber-dogs, LR only so far has red ghouls. At least you get an eyebot companion, but my stealth suit is better company.

I really hope this gets more interesting quick, or this will be even more dull than The Pitt!

There's no place like the Mojave

Well I finished Old World Blues today, and it was rather interesting.

After going back over all the locations in the ma a second time to pick up any items or quests I missed, I was finally ready to confront the b rain of Dr. Mobious.

Whom was actually a rather silly and eccentric hero.

Turns out that the whole "robo-scorpion" menace was part of part of a larger plan to keep the other brains occupied, along with some digital OCD, so that they would never figure out a way to escape Big MT and subject the word to their crazy science. When the Courier showed up the auto dock that removed the brain had to compensate for the bullet wound, thus recalibrating and figuring out how to do proper brain transplants. So if the think tank ever got the courier's brain back they would be able to analyze it and reproduce the results backwards, getting new bodies and walking out of the Big MT.

So after finding all this out I had a chat with my brain and decided to talk it over with the think tank. Due to the side quests I did earlier all the brains but the leader agreed that killing me and leaving the Big MT was a bad idea, and the leader agreed that me killing him was not in his best interest. The epilogue starts and I remember that I still don't have my brain, so the story says that my brain stayed happily in it's tank for the rest of it's days.

So I got a nifty gun that teleports me to the Big MT whenever I want and so I go back and get my brain back, contradicting the ending instantly, and retrieving my sine and heart while I was at it. Also I made off with over 2400 pounds of weapons, armor, and junk. I would of had more but I had to keep repairing my expensive talking stealth suit and then selling off junk to get my money back. By the end of it I reached the final level cap of 50 and took the perk that gives me strength and health promotional to my moral standing in trade. Since I was really good, I'm now really strong and tough, and I'll regain my morals in Lonesome Road any ways. :)

Also the whole brain, hear, and sine thing was all a clever allusion to the wizard of Oz. neat! :)

No talking doors?

Well I didn't get to go back and explore the other areas with my force field opening gun, since the last place I had to explore took up all my time.

The area was a small suburban area housed inside a giant hanger, and looked to be the same one in the pleasantville simulation in Fallout 3. This is the place where the brains lived when they still had bodies, and and it was pretty easy to figure out who lived where. While looting the place I not only got over 1200 pounds of stuff, but all the remaining parts to activate the appliances in my room (and fought with a ridiculously strong mini death-claw).

Now I have a smooth talking jukebox that can recalibrate my sonic gun, an old sawbones of an auto-doc that can change my appearance and even personality, a fanatical book processor that removes all "seditious" text and gives blank books in return, and a botanical converter that would make the light switches blush.

Also today I picked up the new Professor Layton game for the DS!

Down boy!

Well a lot more happened in Big MT today.

I was able to activate 2 more of my appliances, another flirtatious light switch and small robot obsessed with coffee cups (which her turns int more usable items). Also I got the ability to turn off force fields, so I'll be revisiting some places tomorrow.

One area I went to today was a training area set up like a school, where I got about 800 pounds of loot. I was getting so much loot that I had to keep stashing it in various spots as I kept going. Then when I had to collect it up I would find a hand or a head of some lobotmite that I killed before and load it up with all the items. Since one part of a body acts as the whole thing, I could then easily carry the body part around in mid air with 800 pounds of stuff in it's inventory at full speed. I then just had to take all the stuff back before leaving to building.

In the school though was another new enemy, evil militarily cyber-dogs (like King, but evil)!

The kitchen sink

Explored more of Big MT today, since the map is circular it's easy to keep track of where I've been, unlike the maze of cliffs in Honest Hearts, so I juts kee moving clockwise.

Aside from the normal huge pile of stuff, I didn't find much of note other than activating a talking sink that hates cleaning dirt. I didn't find any plot related things either, but I'll likely be going back through the same area once I get the ability to turn off force fields.

I did come across though some of those vault 22 plant people and spitting plants (wonder if they originated here), and a giant glowing legendary bloatfly.

Who can I hide you from today?

Mostly exploring around the Big MT today, and inadvertently completing quest lines as I loot everything not nailed down. Since this DLC is very much like Mothership Zeta, I'm taking the hoarding route and planning on leaving with over a ton of junk to sell, and with my Long Haul perk I could do it in one trip!

There are so far 3 new enemies in the game, Lobtomites who have had their brains removed and are basically zombies, Trauma suits that are still walkign even though the bodies inside are dead (even quotes the similar suits in Doctor who), and Robo-Scorpions! The quests I finished so far was to get an antenna array, which I can now swing like a club, and a super stealth suit that even talks and administers meds when needed.

Also I have restored functionality to a flirtatious light switch that I can turn on, and a power mad toaster that can converts other appliances into energy weapon ammo and gave me a spiffy new gauntlet more powerful than Pushy!

And that's just from exploring less than 25% of Big MT!

Cyber puns!

Well I started on Old World Blues, and it is rather silly!

The Courier gets teleported to a old scientific research base in the middle of what's known as "the big empty", and the place is run by 5 brain in floating robot bodies with 3 monitors for faces. Upon arrival the courier's heart, spine, and brain are roved, the last one disappearing some how. Now the courier has to help the 5 brains in order to recover their own and take down the evil 6th brain.

Turns out the place is actually called Big MT, but the first ones who escaped read MT not as "mountain" but phonetically as em-tee, hence "big empty". A Piers Anthony level pun. The brains have very weird personalities, one can't talk, one always shouts, one is filled with cold war paranoia, one is an incompetent robotics expert, and one has a fetish for organic movement.

The hard way

Finished off the second ending of Honest Hearts, after exploring a bit more.

I decided to track down all the old logs of the "father in the cave", a survivor of the war who spent the next 53 years living in the caves of that area. The logs describes all the different hardships that he goes through over the years, from survivor's guilt, to fending off Vault 22 jerks, to losing his new wife and child. It adds a lot more weight to the DLC with just segments of text and shows another side of the wasteland after the war.

Then I did the escape ending, which had a lot more side quests and things to do than the fight one. The ending was mostly positive this time too, except that the trading company still went under and there was no word of what happened with the burned man. After it was over I leveled up and picked a new perk that came with one of the DLCs, The Long Haul, which lets me fast travel even when over burdened (which was handy since I had 100+ pounds of new loot to drag back).

Next it's off to Old World Blues!

The easy way

Well I finished the Honest Hearts DLC, and it falls a little flat. Yesterday I though I was about 30% in, but it turns out more like 75%. Compared to the Fallout 3 DLC, this is Operation Anchorage (well a little bigger), while Dead money was more The Pitt, good thing it only cost 5$.

The last leg of the DLC is having to decide if you're going to help the burned man fight off the invading White Legs, or help Daniel move them all to safety. I picked the fighting route first since it looked to be the shortest and I'll do the escape route tomorrow. I was expecting the ending of the fighting route to be all about how the tribes became barbaric and all was lost, but aside from Daniel being depressed it turned out the best for everyone but the white legs. I'm wondering if the escape route will be just as upbeat, if not I'll have to play the fight route again and have that as my cannon ending.

Take drugs! Kill a bear!

Well slight change of plans today, Fallout New Vegas DLC went on sale so I figured now would be a good time to get all caught up so I can get any references in Fallout: Equestria!

I restored my game from just before finishing the Dead Money DLC so I could go back and get the snow globe from that area, somethign I regretted missing.

Then I went and started the Honest Hearts DLC, which like all the others boots you out of the main game and into an isolated area. The area is rather large open canyon and the main story seems to be about a tribal war between between two factions. On one side is the "white legs" who want to kill everythign to get on Caesar's good side, and on the other is the "dead horses" and the "Sorrows" who are lead by the former second in command of the Legion. Oddly enough the former legion head, now "the burned man", seems like one of the most down to earth and rational people in the wasteland (I guess being set on fire and thrown off the grand canyon would do that).

And the area has Yao-guai, which I can one shot with my Pushy glove!

Also today I managed to track down a copy of Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny for the PS3. It was like Natsume didn't want to sell this game! EB Games never heard of it, Future Shop didn't have it in their database, and Game Buzz (normally has all obscure Japanese game) didn't order any. Once again Micro Play had it when no one else did!

Well that's fifty-five and a half down...

Well I was partly right, the save point was right before the end of the game, but there was a large chunk left in the the final segment.

After solving the puzzle for the other half of the gateway, which was easy once I noticed there was a chain that I had to climb up, Ico and Yorda make their way to the giant doors. The doors open up and a bridge extends, but when they are half way across electricity from the doorway zaps Yorda and the half of the bridge she's on begins to retract. Ico leaps back to the other side of the bridge, barely making it, but the shadow woman claiming to be Yorda's mother shows up and zaps him off the bridge.

Ico wakes up and finds that he somehow managed to land on some large cages hanging fall below the castle. The rest of the game is a series of simple puzzle areas that Ico has to navigate in order to get back into the castle. Along the way he finds the energy sword that the people that put him there used to open doors, so now he has a powerful weapon and can go anywhere without Yorda. Going back to the room he started in, he finds that Yorda has been turned to stone and he has to fight the shadow spirits of all the children with horns that came before him.

He then makes it to the shadow woman's room and is told that Yorda is to be the new body of the shadow woman. After a big boss battle Ico manages to kill the shadow woman with the sword but has both of his horns broken off and is knocked out cold. All the shadow energy from the sacrificed horned children then goes into Yorda and she gets up looking like the shadow form from the start of the game. She picks up the unconscious Ico and carries him to the bottom of the castle where she puts him on a boat as the castle collapses. After the credits Ico wakes up on a beach and discovers that Yorda had washed up too, alive and looking much more human.

It's a neat game and I could see how speed runs can add to the replay value, there is a trophy for 2 hours, my time was just over 6. Next it's SotC!

Water hazard

Well I finished 2 more areas today, and one was a complex and tricky one involving a water-wheel, a waterfall, and a spring platform. After those made it to the second gate control, but it was getting too late to solve the puzzle.

I must be getting near the end of the game though since when I saved I got a trophy for saving at every save point. So either the the game end just after this puzzle or I have to back track like a metrovainia game...

Snicker Snack

Didn't play much more today, just cleared a few more rooms, but the sword works MUCH better than the stick! The sword kills in 3 hits what use to take a dozen, turning fights into quick action instead of long stand offs waiting for the shadow to get close.

Have sword, will travel.

Well it looks like I got to the next big check point in the game.

There was no story advancement but the main character (Ico?) did manage to get a sword and unlock half of the main gate. I'm hoping that the sword deals with the shadow things better than the stick and isn't just for cutting rope.

Hand holding

Well right off the bat it's easy to see why ICO has such a reputation. The game is 10 years old but has much of the style and ascetics of current gen games (or more accurately they have the style if ICO). There is no HUD, no map, barely any narrative, and no tutorial, so in a game where the main mechanic is holding someone's hand, there is no had holding in the game play. The graphics also are really good. Since the look is very stylized it hold up over 10 years much better than a game that tries to be realistic.

So far the story is that some kid with horns growing out of the side of his head was locked in a big weird castles and left to die because he has horns growing out the side of his head. He manages to get out and while exploring he finds a cage dripping with black stuff and a black shape inside. He's then grabbed by a shadow creature and wakes up back where he started. He then find the cage again but it now has some woman that's glowing white. He lets her out and drags her along as they try to escape. Every now and then shadow things come out and try to drag her into a shadow hole (game over if she goes all the way in) and the boy has to beat them up with a stick he found. Eventually they make it to the front door but they close and a woman made of shadows except for her head shows up and claims the other woman is her daughter. After threatening the boy she disappears and the two continue exploring and solving environment puzzles to progress.

Well that's fifty-five down...

All the pieces fell into place during the final case and the real conspiracy was revealed.

The plan basically was to buy up a bunch of houses for cheep, and those who didn't sell would have their house burned down while away on a trip they "won", then build prop houses on them as cheep as possible. The new houses would inflate the value of the property ten times, and all those houses just happened to be where the new highway would go through. So when the government bought out the land at the inflated price all the conspirators would become insanely rich.

The problem is that Cole's old platoon kept getting mixed up in it. Part of the money used to build the cheep houses came from the morphine that half the platoon stole. Then the guy they used to burn the hold out hoses happened to be the flamethrower operator of the platoon (and crazy). Then you have Cole assigned to check out the burnt houses, and the other guy investigating the insurance claims.

And the whole story of the platoon got explained too. Cole survived a major battle in the war by freaking out and hiding, but being the only survivor made him look like a hero and he got a big metal. Feeling that he didn't deserve it Cole then became obsessed with completing every assignment to the letter, much to the frustration of his squad. On one assignment they had to clear out cave systems the enemy were hiding in, but due to Cole's obsessive orders they charged in flamethrower first on a cave that was actually a civilian field hospital. The flamethrower operator lost his mind over the mistake and the medic got so pissed that he shot Cole in the back. Cole gets sent home early due to his injury and becomes a big shot cop, while the others are left to mop up. Pissed that Cole gets all the praise and promotion despite being a cowardly screw-up the medic comes up with the idea to steal the morphine so that the troops can at least get some money for their troubles.

So the last case of the game switches back and forth between Cole and the new guy as they track down the flamethrower guy who kidnapped the German singer, ending in a shootout in the aqueduct tunnels. The new guy escapes with the singer but Cole is killed when the place floods. Half the conspirators turn on the other half (the ones that happen to be dead) and posthumously claim Cole as the hero that brought them to justice.

So now it's on to the The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection!
Also today I finally was able to pick up my copy of Atelier Totori ~ The Adventurer of Arland. While adding it to my title bar I decided to cut off the last 10 games I finished to get it back to a reasonable length, not that it will stay like that for long since I'm getting Rune Factory for the PS3 next week...

Aggressive negotiations

The game continues with this new guy as he hunts down the people who wanted him dead.

After punching out his boss and demanding information he investigates who else in involved in the conspiracy, getting shot at every step of the way. Eventual he tracks down the land developer and storms his mansion with the remain members of his old platoon (the ones not killed by the mob for the heroin deal).

After shooting him in the leg the guy interrogates the land developer, but then find out from Cole that the German singer has been kidnapped by the crazy guy who was starting the fires.

Change of face

The case started off rather odd since the protagonist suddenly changed to someone that Cole knew in the war that now works on overseeing insurance claims. He's a much more likable character and seems to be more interested in doing what is right, while Cole is more concerned with doing what the law says (and German singers).

So the woman that Cole cheated with and is now living with gets a huge insurance settlement from the crooked housing developers on behalf of some one she knew that died working on the house in a plot point I must have missed. Cole tells her that it's actually a payoff to keep them quit and to get the guy he knew in the army to investigate it.

The new guy gets told right away to stay away from the case, but that just gets him more interested. He then find out, after nearly being killed, that the housing company is cutting very corner they can building the houses, including using old prop wood from a closed film set.

After some more instigating the guy gets named by a bunch of goons and beaten up, then he barely escapes them and gets back to Cole and the woman just before passing out.

Catch a trolly

Well, in the case today I manged to catch the person who may be actually responsible for setting the fires, but no close to the ones actually behind it.

After a couple more house fires, one of which had the family inside positioned together after death by the arsonist, Cole stats directly questioning the housing company linking them all together. Since the head of the company is a powerful big-shot, Cole and his partner get told in no uncertain terms by their higher ups to drop it. In the the person most likely for starting the fires lead them on a high speed chase after he hijacked a trolly car, so they close the case and get to keep their jobs for now.

Fire sale

Well it's nice to be back solving real cases that actually helps people.

The case today was two house fires that were both linked to a tampered water heater. The twist though was that both of the owners of the houses were supposed to be out on a trip they won, from a company that just happened to be tying to buy out their land, when the fires happened.

Neither of the two suspects were the actual culprit though, it was clear that a third party is involved, so since I had to convict one I picked the one with the closer ties to the company involved.