Category: video games

O.o

Apologies for not updating in such a long time. Especially Gwen, who informed me at least half a dozen times that my blog was “boring” for the past week.

-.-

In any case, I’ve had a rather null week, basically tonight’s sleep will end it all with a big question mark and begin the school year. I might not sleep, I uually have trouble sleeping on the night before school. Summer hasn’t been what I had hoped for – I mostly get the feeling ebcause of the two weeks a bit after camp (the one right after was wonderful), spent waking up very late and doing very little. Summer hasn’t been bad, I just wanted to end it better. Sam’s absence will be….very noticable….tomorrow. It’s not gonna be the same.

We miss you man.

I’ve basically been playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind all week. Fun game, not the best RPG ever made, but continually entertaining. For those of you who don’t know, Morrowind is essentially the first open ended RPG ever made. It has some 10-12 factions and guilds you can join, which make up probably 250-300 of the quests you can do, while the other 100 or 150 are just out there for you to discover. The only problem I find with the game is that everything is minimalistic. The interactions are basic and very black and white. The characters and buildings are not very unique from eachother, and all the names are very random and not easy to remember. In any case, it’s still a game worth playing.

I’m ready for school to start.

O.o

I know you’re all bored of these Fable posts, but I promise, this is the last one until The 17th or 18th. Gamespot did an interview of Peter Molyneux, the lead dev on the Fable team. This was an absolutely FABULOUS interview. It gives huge insight on all kinds of things – the gaming industry, British culture, the development of Fable, and it’s really very cool.

Linkage

This really prompted me to do a little blurb on gaming and the like. Molyneux is really a great guy – you can tell from the interview. Something that he mentions in the interview is that Fable was brought up with very grossly exaggerated expectations. They were expectations that Molyneux said himself that he planted, and later regretted because he knew his team couldn’t fulfill. He talked a lot about how the project evolved as time went – they set out to make the greatest RPG of all time. That’s what every team making an RPG sets out to do. Because if you shoot for anything less, you’re gonna get less. He doesn’t believe they made the greatest RPG of all time, and I find that a very brave statement for him to make. This interview alone has restored my faith in Fable.

As for the gaming industry in total, I now feel a lot more enlightened on the whole process. The gaming industry is often interpreted as run by single men, who can afford to stay at work for 12 hours each day – because they want to, because they have no responsibilites. Molyneux touched on the fact that over the course of 3 1/2 years, 20 babies were born to families on his team. The gaming industry has changed. Maybe that’s what it used to be, maybe there are still a few companies out there still like that. I don’t know. As the makers of games have changed, so have gamers. Gaming once used to be a very limited field of people. Up until about the time of the Nintendo and Sega consoles, not many people were into video games. PC games were non existant until Windows 95 came out. Computers weren’t nearly as user-friendly 10, even 5 years ago, and thus that has opened up the PC world to those not as much into gaming.

The whole point of this, really, is that I’m amazed at how the whole industry has advanced. Molyneux said he wanted games to become on the same level as books and movies. I think we’re almost there. The only thing left is for the press to embrace what is now equally important to our culture as books and movies.

O.o

Gamespot has posted by far the most helpful review on Fable thus far. Definately worth a read, since it’s only 3 pages. (boy do I hate IGN’s excessively long reviews)

Linkage

It gave Fable an 8.6. At this point I’m still looking forward to it, but I’m hoping it was all an attempt by BBB to figure out how to improve the game.

O.o

Continuing with my gaming phase over the past few days…

A game I’m really looking forward to has finally gone gold. Fable, an RPG long in the making, is going to ship on September 14th. (I already have mine pre-ordered from EB, although I’m too poor to get fast shipping, so I’ll have to wait 5 days. :-()

EDIT: I just learned that they offered free 3-day shipping! Huzzah for not waiting over the weekend!

In any case, IGN has done an excellent review of it, which covers most of the bases. They ended the article by stating it wasn’t as good as KotOR, which has been hailed as one of the greatest RPGs made to date. Having not played the game yet I can’t really make a fair comparison, and I find it almost impossible to believe that Big Blue Box, the developer of Fable, would abandon a few really cool elements such as being able to steal clothing from your enemies, and seeing young children get haircuts like your own (you can do that, you know, get haircuts and stuff) is something I just don’t understand why they would drop.

EDIT: It appears TeamXBox has made a review as well, which has a little bit more informative (IMO) than IGN’s. Here it is. They gave Fable a 9.1, whereas IGN gave it a 9.3. Gamespot has yet to make a full review.

O.o

My week hasn’t been all that great, but, things have been up and down, and I’m a bit bored.

So I decided I should do a little review on Dead or Alive 3. Daniel and I bought it a few months ago for 15-ish bucks (used). It’s a part of a series, although I haven’t played the previous two. There’s another one coming out soon, Dead or Alive: Ultimate, which promises to be good as well. Here’s a quick rundown on it all.

Graphics: Being a release game, it’s very, very well polished. They did a superb job on the models, each of the characters has its own look, (including the females *mutter*) and you even get that whole “each individual strand of hair” look. Very solid.

Gameplay: What it lacks in originality, it makes up for in a very solid, balanced set of characters. There are 13 characters total, each having 3 different costumes (different models or colorings), some with more. Each character has between 60-200 moves and combos available to do, and each of these have different animations, some of which provide for a very cool looking fight scene. (Daniel can tell you the same thing) It’s all fairly well balanced, too. As for the story mode, the plot was weak, easy to complete, and more like something they threw in for the heck of it. Each character had a 1-2 minute cutescene after having completed the story mode, which were quite cool, but still weak in plot. There’s a sparring mode in which you can just fight an invincible opponent, go through all of your moves list, focus on specific combos, really a very nice touch. The shining star of the game is the versus mode, which comes in two version: 1v1, and tag team. Tag team works like it sounds, you slap in your ally at any time, and occasionally do combination attacks along with your ally. When it comes to levels, there aren’t too many, (about 10 for 1v1, 5 for tag team) but each has its own effects (explosions, breaking through walls, jumping off ledges to new areas) and all look very pretty.

Sound: This aspect was also slightly lacking, as the music was not of the greatest variety, and did not support the mood of the game well. Each character also had all their own sounds, usually for each move and combo. Sometime a little reptitive, but not usually.

My score: 8.7

…

Busy day, indeed. Sam spent the night last night (he came over about 6:00) and we had a lot of fun. We watched a lot of Family Guy and Chapelle’s Show, played DoA3, laughed at my brothers antics, listened to music (of many assortments), and talked. It was really, really, really good to have him over for the last time. We woke up about 12:00 today and he left abotu 1:00 PM. Afterwards I walked down to the Commons with Christopher and Jonothan and ate lunch at Benchwarmers, then took a bus to the mall and walked around, they bought CDs, I just listened to stuff, got a moccha, my dad drove over and we watched The Village (good movie, definately not Shyamlyan’s best, though), and we came home. That was about 9:30. I watched a little bit of Starsky and Hutch (very funny) with my dad and Christopher.

I’m tired. Very, very tired.

…

I am very, very bored. I can’t go anywhere, I can’t see anyone, and I have nothing I want to do. Grr. I didn’t go running today, because it was raining, I woke up 2:00, and I didn’t really feel like it. I wanna get better. Now. *whine* I finally got this here site working at all resolutions and browsers, which I am mighty proud of. Even 800×600.

I feel like 1% better though. I’m not sneezing as much and my coughing is down a little. Hopefully I can be…doing stuff…other than sitting here…tomorrow or Saturday. Hopefully. Of course as soon as I’m better I have four lawns to mow. That’s really something to look forward to. Woo. In the meantime I read a a total of 15 pages of previews on Fable. It’s looking good. Speaking of which I finally put the order on for Halo 2 (11/9)and Fable (9/14), AND I ordered those three thinkgeek shirts. Woo. 9 days till Christopher and Jonathan get here.

I keep wondering if I should save up for Doom 3. It might be worth getting.

O.o

A lovely Friday evening is in order for young Tim, sitting in his swivel chair, playing FFVII and posting on his blog. Ahem. I finally beat FFIX last night…a good game indeed, better than VIII but doesn’t hold a candle to VII. Anyways, that was a fun game, I probably won’t touch it again, but that’s ok. At the moment I’m just fiddling around in FFVII…not much, really. I had stuff I was going to talk about but I no longer feel like it.

O.o

So I went to work, for once, and it’s really cool, pulling boiling hot crap out of autoclavers and the like. There’s radioactive and toxic stuff EVERYWHERE, it’s crazy. And that’s about it. I overslept this morning (I just woke up) so I’m home, which really annoys me, as I expected my mom and/or dad to wake me up…i shouldn’t really expect much for going to sleep at 4 so regularly, but even so..heh. I’ve been going through this Final Fantasy stage…I got to the third disc of FFVIII then I decided to go try and finish FFIX. Then I decided to go play Warcraft III. At the same time. It works out well, I guess. I had also been play FFVII a bit too…I realized how brilliant that game is compared to any TBC (turn-based-combat) to date. Oh well, I’m happy right now, probably because I just had a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and a shower…mmm…

O.o

Oy. So camp was an experience, which I will explain in full detail in just a moment. Overall good, some bad stuff, it’s all good in the end. So I got accepted into the Cornell Labs, which has me psyched. I was supposed to start LAST TUESDAY but because of camp, I couldn’t go. The excessive stress involving the LAN party was also caused by camp, as was mowing…camp also pulled me away from home (my computer) for a long time too.

Camp was ok – not great. The tents were really patchy, a LOT of bugs (I counted at least 2 dozen mosquito bites, I usually removed half a dozen daddy-longlegs and 3 or 4 larger-than-normal spiders every night). The food was ok, I only went hungry a few times. I didn’t get a tan, despite being outside the majority of the time. It rained three out of 7 days, all cloudy for at least one other. Constantly having to worry about the infamous bear and pepperoni-stealing raccoon got annoying too. But the merit badges were okay, though I didn’t get to take the ones I wanted. I failed the standard 4-lap swimming test the first day, so I couldn’t get to take small boat sailing or motorboating. In my defense, the lake was < 65 degrees and very wavy. I can do that in a swimming pool easy, but the lake is way harder. Anyways….I got 4 and 1/2 badges, that pleases me.

I started playing FFVIII – it’s better than I had heard. Not awesome or as good as VII, but still worth playing. THat’s about it….tomorrow will be a busy day.

^^

It’s that time of year again, kids. Yes, school has wrapped up and it’s time for Tim to reflect on everything that’s happened. Just because. I’m gonna reflect on all my new friends, my techers, all the courses I took, everything, so this should be long.

My favorite class was either DDP or Biology. Both had awesome teachers and I learned a LOT. Least favorite has to be German. Never met a woman so evil and retarded.

1st Period: Study Hall and Biology Labs. Study Hall held nothing interesting…at all. Just a time to do stuff. Biology, like I said, rocked. Ms. Benenati was the nicest teacher and really knew how to handle the class. Besides that, we had the biggest group of slackers who always had something funny to say. Really a great class to start the day with.

3rd Period: Math. I feel sorry for poor Mr. Kuckes….we had a class full of hicks and druggies, who really just gave him hell. He’s an ok teacher, but he just doesn’t command respect. It had it’s ups and downs. Honors math was great, with Mr. Bock (now retired). He really knows how to teach math.

4th Period: Lunch/PE. Not even gonne bother with lunch – it’s lunch, nothing more to say. PE had it’s moments, with Zach and Ben (Feldman), me absolutely sucking at softball and tennis, drinking mountain dew as the ball flies past me…very amusing, sometimes boring.

5th Period: German. Ugh. You know how I feel. Latin all the way for next year.

6th period: DDP (Design and Drawing for Production). GREAT class. Mr. Briegle did an outstanding job despite the fact that it’s his first year teaching. He know how to command respect, and he gets the students to really want his respect and approval. It helped me look at how to solve problems in a much more systematical way, which is good for me. The only real friend I had in there was Ben (Myers) but everyone gets along in there so it was really nice.

7th/8th Period: First Semester: Global. ABSOLUTELY ROCKED MY SOCKS. It wasn’t Ms. Shenks fault, either. The class itself would really suck if it weren’t for the awesome combination of people we had. Everyone in there was completely different but we had some of the funniest times in there. I feel sorry for Ms. Shenk, she’s a fine teacher, but really just can’t control a group like that – few people could. Second Semester: English. It sucked for the first marking period…absolutely boring. Once Mrs. Metzler lightened up, though, it was great. As she got to know us we really had some good laughs in there (Othello, anyone?). She was an okay teacher, a little bit impersonal and too mature for our class, but not bad. She’ll prolly be my teacher next year too.

Overall, a good year academically. Definately could have done better, but I plan on doing just that next year.

Hoo boy….I made a TON of new friends this year, I never would have believed it was possible beforehand. May God prevent me from forgetting anyone new that I met! Ladies first, of course.

Gwen : We met in Math (our only calss together), and we’ve had some of the funniest times! She rocks. 😉

Shoshana: I met her via Sam, and my first impression of her was at a party, where she spent most of the time in someone’s LAP. A great start, would you not say? She’s very pokeable. *cough*

Mollie: She’s short, she’s got fuzzy hair, and we had some good laughs before she got sick. Get better!

Colette: I met her via Sam too. We didn’t have any classes together, and we never got to see eachother outside of school, but that doesn’t really matter. She’s been a good friend and always has a smile ready.

Katie (Fives): She was in my homeroom, and, I just kinda met her. Sort of through Shoshana, but it doesn’t really matter. She’s very….different! 😀

Caitlyn: She’s in my homeroom and German, and we spent much time complaining to eachother about how much we hate Mary and German and things in general. Hahaha…

Myriah: She was in my Biology class, and I haven’t really gotten to talk to her much outside of that, but she’s still very nice and was the only person who called me by my real name in Biology class.

Amy (Somogy): I met her through Gwen, and we really only get to talk when she’s with Gwen, but that’s okay. She’s very nice to me! (unlike GWEN, *cough*)

Eileen: Another friend through Gwen. She lives in Liverpool, and I’ve never gotten to meet her, but some day….somewhere….we will!

Alycia: Oh dear goodness, bring out the tranquilizers…save us the day this girl leaves high school. O.O

Courtney: I sorta met her through Ryan…complicated story. Stupid skirt. *mutter*

*attempting to rush, about to leave* Now for those of the male-persuasion. This might take a LONG time. Might as well start with those I met first.

Ben (Myers): First met him at a party of his, he’s been a faithful friend the entire year. He’s always around to remind me that I’m stupid. Indispensible.

Zach: I have no clue when I met him, probably at one of the parties, I dunno. But he’s always up late at night to chat with and is just plain cool.

Jared: I met him partly through Sam, probably at a party of Ben’s. We had some great times in Global and English, changing the homework…and stuff.

Paul: I really don’t know how I came about to meet him…I think it was in my homeroom. Who knows. Anyways! He’s usually there to tell me how much my typing sucks…how poor my use of the English language is…you get the idea. Very cool.

Bah, I ran out of time, I’ll continue this later.

EDIT: (Wednesday) Whoops. Blogger, once again, was being retarded, and didn’t tell me it posted twice, or that it actually posted this in the first place. My apologies. Moving on…

Weilin: I had sort of met him before, but I hadn’t really gotten to know him at all till this year.

Ben (Feldman): He was in my gym class, and he joined with Zach in the mockery of my physical abilities.

Dan: He’s a friend of Jared’s that I really didn’t get to talk to till a party at Jared’s house. Nifty guy.

I was really in the mood to do this on Sunday, but now I’m just completely blanking. Darnit. Oh well…lemme know if I forgot you. It really wasn’t intentional! Just remember that these are people I met this year, so…hehe. Anwyays. Staying at Daniel’s house has been fun. Ben’s computer hasn’t been working (supposedly it’s running at 90 degrees Celsius, or 190 degrees farenheit – almost hot enough to biol water) so we haven’t been doing much LAN stuff. We played some Counterstrike…Daniel and I played Sven Co-op, other random games. We’ve watched a few movies, The Bourne Identity, (really cool) The Hire, (a collection of 10-15 minute action films made by 10 different directors, hired by BMW – very cool) and there was something else. I can’t remember. Oh well. Both my exams, I think, went well. None of the stuff I didn’t understand was on the Math final, which greatly relieved me. The German might be a problem, but I seriously doubt I got below a B. I have the Biology on Friday, and another German (mary = retarded) on Monday. Those should be even easier. Especially the German, considering it’s supposed to be for Level 1 students. See, I took the final exam for Level 1 in September, so I could get into German 2. (I now wish I had taken Latin) Apparantly “that doesn’t count” because Frau O’Dell “doesn’t understand how New York’s schools work” despite the fact that Frau O’Dell (who, by the way, is my old German Teacher) has lived here for a few years. ANYWAYS! Having done the tests, we’re hoping to get some Airsoft played this evening with the three of us (ben, daniel, me) and Ben Anible. We aren’t sure where to play, but, we’ll figure it out some how. Supposedly there’s a park by Buttermilk falls we can play at which nobody goes to. We can hope!

A few weeks ago I took some more pictures of my room. Here they are. 🙂 I won’t post all of them, just those that might interest…okay, I doubt any of you are actually interested, but that doesn’t really matter. *sniff* I’ll just give you a link to them, you can scan through if you like.

Pictures!!! YAY!!!

O.o

Yes. I know I haven’t made a real post all week. Yes. I know you don’t care about Halo 2. Yes. I know I’m obsessed. But I don’t care! EAT MORE HALO 2 ARTICLES AND FOOTAGE! The footage is minimal (only ~20 seconds) but it’s actualy gameplay stuff. THere are currently three places to retrieve this footage, but only by streaming, tiny, annoying-ness. Gamespot, IGN, and the E3 main site have it. There’s also some interviews and more articles to look at.

The E3 Main Site video is also stuck together with other game footage, but the Halo 2 stuff is at the beginning.

Footage 1 (E3 Main)

For Gamespot, scroll down to “Gameplay Footage 1”.

Footage 2 (Gamespot)

You actually have the option of downloading the video at IGN, fortunately. I’d actually rate the IGN one as best quality.

Footage 3 (IGN)

Gamespot also presented their view on Halo 2, and IGN posted two more volumes of impressions. I love Gamespot, they’re usually reliable. These two volumes are also much sorter (~one page).Woot!

Impressions 1 (Gamespot)

Impressions 2 (IGN)

Impressions 3 (IGN)

YAY!

O.o

After 6 hours of sleep, I’m back at school again…hoping more E3 stuff will be released by the time I get home. w00t! I sent Daniel (he’s off in NC, for his yearly trip to Hattera’s) the screenshots and IGN review of the demo. I forgot to add the link to that too – the IGN review has a LOT of meat to it. I think the next thing in store for E3 this week is a real multiplayer game. I hope so, at least!

IGN Article

There’s also a Gamespy review. I despise Gamespy, but it’s a read for those seeking, nonetheless.

Gamespy Article

Finally, two new links for the E3 video have been released. These two are the best quality and best resolution – but requires a 30-40 minute download wait. Stupid FilePlanet.

Video 7 (227 MB)

Video 8 (337 MB)

*spazzz*

UPDATE: A really nifty IGN interview of Pete Parsons (Bungie Employee) is up. Reall good stuff, though whoever posted it did a poor job, some questions are mixed randomly or cut off mid sentence. Still really good!

IGN Interview

w00t

UPDATE2: A picture of the Halo 2 regular and Halo 2 LE box has been shown, though not confirmed.

Halo 2 Boxshot?

O.o

Alright. I’m in E3 hype mode, forgive my Halo 2 madness. But I must give you at least a few links to the best stuff coming to the market – November 9th. In the midst of E3, Bungie.net released 10 new screenshots apart from the Real Time Multi-Player Halo 2 Demonstration. I provided multiple links for the video. All the videos are the same, but for safe-ness, I posted all easy access hosts. I doubt many people use Bittorent, but I’ll provide the link for that one too.

Videos

Video 1 (25 MB)

Video 2 (In four parts, 25 MB total)

Video 3 (25 MB)

Video 4 (Bittorent) (Higher quality, 65 MB)

Video 5 (100+ MB)

Video 6 (13.4 => 14.3 MB)

Screenshots

Screenshots

These screenshots (Excluding one can be downloaded in a much prettier form, in a .zip, too!

Screenshots (.zip)

Unfortunately, two of these screenshots were hosted elsewhere, so I have to have seperate links for those two.

Rogue Screenshot 1

Rogue Screenshot 2

In case these are pulled off the web too, I saved them to my hd, and will host them personally if need be. In my frenzy I’va also saved every signiivant Halo2 screenshot to my hd as well! WHOOOO YEEEAH! I love E3.

I’m too busy to post much else right now…until tomorrow morning…

O.o

My last and final post about Ninja Gaiden. Seriously. I won’t bother you any more about it. Definately.

I beat the game, cming in at under 50 hours. Ending boss was easy, thankfully. My impressions of the game from beginning to end have changed, though. The fighting with normal enemies is always awesome, never changes during the game, just gets cooler and harder with the more weapons and combos you get.

-The game starts off weak, the first 2 levels are fun, but really repetitive, because you have next to no combos, and just one weapon. The game doesn’t truly become fun until level 7, so it takes a while to really begin enjoying the game.

-The linearity issues are also solved in once you pass chapter 3 – you eventually come to complex cities and dungeons, and you move past the simplicity.

-However, certain things do not come out in enough quantity. The most prominent of these being puzzles. There was only one true puzzle. And it really didn’t last too long. It is, after all, and adventure game, and needs to make use of the logistic abilities the XBox gives it.

-Another thing – certain enemies have attacks which are overused and unblockable. This eventually becomes an extreme frustration, dealing with infinitely regenerating enemies which you can’t stop. These don’t really show up till late in the game, but they end up making the game annoying, not hard. Once you figure out which weapon to deal them off with, it’s not so bad, but it still has its issues.

-Yet another problem I faced was with the bosses. Some of them were too easy, and yet some were too hard. Few of them really made sense in the chain of bosses, from easy to hard, though few bosses are truly easy. The easy bosses were ones they forgot to make a defense for one of two things – a charge attack dealing massive damage, and shurikans. Shurikans come in infinite supply, and if you get the boomerang shurikan, you can just throw infinitely, even against some bosses. This makes for a really lame way to get past, and usually is the only real way to get past without taking too much damage.

-The final and last grievance I had was with the ranged weapons. That category came to be the least used and pretty much, a bore. Shurikans are cool, and stay that way throughout the entire game. Their only real use comes in delaying enemies, but they are cool. Then you have the windmill shurikan, basically a boomerang. This would be cool if it had any range. But it doesn’t, so you rarely end up using it. Only time I ever truly used it was to lame a few bosses. Then you have the bow. This is my true problem. It comes out to be very little use, and doesn’t really do much for you. To aim first person, you risk killing yourself, but otherwise, you may not hit the target, and considering you can only carry 15 arrows of each type, you gotta save arrows. They have two other types – AFPDS Cores, and Explosve arrows. The Cores are just uber arrows, dealing huge damage, not really that great, because any enemy you might wanna use it on will get you before you can fire. Just kind of annoying.

These were my negative impressions ONLY, and I listed all of them. The game was awesome, it’s in the top 10 in my list. I’m playing it through once more to get more weapons and stuff.

On to stuff other than Ninja Gaiden. I’ve been having a pretty calm week so far. Nothing much has really rocked my world or anything, but the Snow Day on Wednesday was a pleasant surprise. I wish I had gotten it today, being tired and all, oh well. And somehow, I feel as if I’ve written this before….odd…off to go read comics…

O.o

For those of you who didn’t notice, yesterday was a snow day. Not necessarily the best timing, would have been better on Monday or Friday, but, we can’t choose these things can we? I didn’t get as much rest as I wanted, but I did get enough sleep. A full 11:30 to 7:00 block! I WOULD have almost 8 hours but my mom kept waking me up. before 7:15. Grrr.

Level 16/16 in Ninja Gaiden. I’ve beaten all the bosses and I’m now escaping the underworld / hell / illogically placed volcano in which the emperor, which was really an angel/skull demon, who shot lasers and ate you without any muscle. Yes. That’s what happened. In full detail….

After climbing the core tower of Zarkhan (palace of the Emperor of the Vigoor Empire) we find that we must go to the ‘Realm of the Fiends’ to find 5 seperate waves of bosses. 1st wave, 8 easy units. 2nd wave, an easy boss. 3rd wave, 8 easy units with random explosions added by the “Emperor” of the “Fiend Realm”, 4th wave, medium boss, 5th wave, hard boss (“Emperor” of the “Fiend Realm”) with random rexplosions AND easy units thrown in. Took me about 6 tries. After obtaining the statue of the demon, I placed it on a pedastal, which opened the gates of hell. Which appear to go upwards, but the entire level is up-side-down, so it doesn’t really matter. You climb the stairs, which conveniantly fall apart to make your travel faster. After entering the portal to hell, you land in a field of flowers. Look up, and you discover that a giant angel has the Dark Dragon Blade! You fight the angel floating around on a rock, and dodging these GIGANTIC LAZORZ, as well as the occasional strike from his ‘hands’. That boss was probably the easiest one I’ve ever fought. Next, we face the most ANNOYING boss I’ve ever fought. The angel falls into the magma pits, which burned all the flowers. *sniff* Out comes a SKULL DEMON. This is really just a pile of glue with skulls attached, with remote controlled planes inside the skulls. I lamed this guy, and just magicked him to death in a matter of 2 minutes. It wasn’t SUPPOSED to be that easy, but it was. After destroying this dude, you have NOW REACHED THE LAST LEVEL. Now you have to escape the randomly crumbling underworld / hell / former flower bed. But wait, it gets better! Your supposed beyond-scantily-clad-girlfriend has been RANDOMLY tied by her hand with rope from ABOVE THE PORTAL OF HELL. So after grabbing the Dark Dragon Blade you get to somehow rescue your supposed girlfriend, then magically warp into the overworld? I dunno, I haven’t gotten there yet. Should be interesting though.

While the ending may be illogical, it’s still a really fun game. Can’t wait for that plasma sword. I should beat it today, putting me in under two weeks, and about 40 hours of gameplay. I’m going faster than the official walkthrough-maker at IGN. Once I beat it, I may go through it again to get the ‘better’ plasma sword, and the Dark Dragon Blade. You can buy the sword which the entire plot centers around in the 13th level. Pretty cool, really. I’ll do it the next time on hard, which really should be extremely hard. It’s hard enough already, though I’ve mastered killing any and every (xcept one) normal unit. Bosses, I’m still iffy on, but we’ll get there eventually.

Something to note about the IGN review: they played through the game pretty darn fast. They didn’t spend any time looking for the golden scarabs (semi-hidden items which you can collect to get items), getting money for more upgrades, or other important stuff like that. That can put in another 10 hours of gameplay, and the experience you get from the jumping off walls, and killing dudes repeatedly is invaluable. Heck, I didn’t even get all the side stuff! I should be coming in under 40 hours of gameplay though.

O.o

Stupid. Teeth. Braces. Suck.

Got mah braces adjusted on Tuesday. The n00b woman doing it broke the wire after placing my donuts, chains, and lace on. So I sat around waiting for the doctor for 30 minutes, who gave me a 5 second diagnosis. “Just take it all off and do it again.” So she did. And broke two chains during the process. Stupid n00b.

Been making a lot of progress in Ninja Gaiden. Got the new weapon – “Vigoorian Flail”. It’s basically the nunchucka, except infinitely cooler. I’m on Stage 7 right now, just before the boss. I HAD beaten the boss, but I jumped down into a pit and died righ afterwards. So lame!

Off to go read the comi—err, blogs.

O.o

I can’t remember when I posted last….I think it was Thursday?

The weekend was pretty interesting, though hardly restful. Friday night I went to the Ski-o-ree for Scouts, which was at Greek Peak. Not the best conditions…at all. We had three hours friday night with just one chair – chair two. Pollux is fun and all, but it gets old. We couldn’t ski any of the blacks because most of them were closed. Saturday was a little bit worse and yet better, though. Because the Greek Peak staff is comprised of idiots, we managed to have just the bunny hill for an hour and a half. During this time it was also raining. But once it stopped raining, we got a full mountain pass, sort of, and that wasn’t so bad.

Ninja Gaiden still rocks. That’s my ending word for today.

O.o

Well, nothing of any huge importance has happened….except….I BOUGHT NINJA GAIDEN!

*cough*

It’s an awesome game, it really is. It’s really fast paced, and you really only stop when you die, which I only do on bosses. It’s a really hard game to play, because you’re quickly forced to use ALL the controls before you even fight the second boss. Basically, there’s a bunch of different ways to attack. Single pressing-wise, you’ve got one normal attack button, and one ‘essence’ or strong attack button. You also have a button for an auto-aimed ranged attack, and a buton for jumping a button for camera control (two, actually) and one for blocking. It seems really simple, no? But you have to utilize all of them simultaneously, because you’re usually fighting groups of three guys. One thing they mastered really well is having fun just KILLING people. There’s so many ways to do it! If I actually knew how to do it, there’s a way to kill 3 guys at once, and they all die simultaneously, it’s really cool. The ranged attacks are a bit weird to use, though. With the shuriken you don’t have to stop to throw them, but they do like no damage, and the only real purpose is to stop a guy for 1 second, which helps. At the moment, the only other ranged weapon I have is the bow. Problem is, you have to stop and shoot, and it really makes it useless for real combat.

Another thing they did well was the wall effects. In a lot of other games (JK2, JKA, Splinter Cell), tricks off walls were really pretty useless, and you only used them once or twice in the game. But not here. Walls are an invaluable tool for dodging and getting around. It’s just awesome to run into a room, jump off a wall, jump on a guy, land behind him, and own the noob. The game is a lot harder than that though. The bosses are all REALLY hard, and money isn’t a plentiful source for getting potions. At the moment, I’m only on the fourth stage because the first two days I had it, I was stuck on one boss.

As for the bad parts: it’s kinda linear. You basically go into a room, kill people, and go into the next, with maybe some side rooms with more dudes or items or something like that. There’s not a lot of options for where you can go. Another thing is the possibility of not actually being able to prevent your own death. Most games have a thing where for about .2 seconds, you can’t be hit after being attacked. Not this. Ninja Gaiden is completely real-time, and while this makes for an awesome but hard fighting experience, it can be kind of lame. If I just get knocked into the air by an explosion, all my enemies have free reign on me till I roll back up. The blocking mechanism is good, but it only covers, maybe a 100-120 degree range, so if you roll the wrong way, and happen to face the wrong way, there’s not a thing you can do.

Whoops. I accidentally wrote a little game review there. Hehe. 😀

Anyways, that’s been a lot of fun. My dad brought the TV back, so I was playing in my room last night, not upstairs in the den. Tonight comes the ski-o-ree, which should be interesting, considering theres no snow outside. Hopefully it will be good.

…

I’m in Colorado. And it’s not all that great. I have altitude sickness, which apparently won’t wear off till tomorrow morning. And there’s nothing to do.

For those of you who don’t know, altitude sickness happens when you go above 8000 ft. It has somehting to do with the lack of oxygen, and air pressure. I threw up last night, and I’m pretty nauseated right now. Sarah’s parents are nice, but they’re pretty much what I expected. We go skiing tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday, which might be fun, but I just don’t want to get sunburned. Yes, you can get sunburned. You’re actually more likely to get sunburn than in Hawaii furing the summer.

Let me start a little point counter here, for how the trip is going.

I met Tim Hume yesterday, and he’s kinda cool, though I expected him to be like 30-ish. He’s like 40-something. IF I get to see him later in the week and talk to him and stuff, that would be a +1.

I got to see Claire, my dead cousin Pete’s wife. She’s pretty cool, in a spunky kind of way. She reminds me of Allison Hogue, for those of you who know her. If I get to see her more often, that would be a +1.

The Rockys are beautiful. You can see for like up to 250 miles, depending on where the mountain line is. +1.

Altitude sickness sucks. I’ve had it for like 24 hours now, and it’s really making things miserable. -2.

I was never able to get those CDs. I completely forgot when we went to best buy, so I all; I had to bring that I had room for was JoC and RotK. I also wasn’t able to get a charger for the GBA, which my mom is yet again trying to revive. I have batteries, but they’ll run out. -1.

I got forced to spend 3 hours with Sarah going around town. -1.

I had to give up spending the night at Jesse’s house on Sunday night. -1.

The plane ride(s) were pretty bad. We woke up at 6:00 to drive for 1.5 hours to Rochester, to ride a plan for an hour, to wait for 3 hours in Newark, to ride a 4 hour plane to Denver, to drive 3 hours to here. Half the time we were carrying luggage or stuff on our laps. *mutter* -1.

Overall stuff affecting my mood about the trip:

I’m missing my incoming Airsoft shipment. -1.

I’m missing two days of school for this trip. -1.

None of my friends are going anywhere. -1.

Overall score: -6. Not very cool.

O.o

Friday….finally…

Nothing of any great importance has happened since Wednesday. But I’m going to best buy tomorrow, to trade in Medieval + Expansion and Deus Ex, and I’ll save myself 50 bux when I get the Medieval Combo. I’ll get some headphones, and the Revolutions soundtrack, and the first Bond CD. Hopefully that will be enough to give me something to do in Colorado.

Oh well, we shall see….

…

Begin another boring school day. At the moment I’m fairly tired, so forgive me for anything I might do in the next hour.

I had Benjamin, Jesse, Sam, and Nolan over to spend the night on Friday night, after the youth group thing. That was a LOT of fun. We spent most of our time playing games, usually Raven Shield. I finally found the CD Code for it, so I can finally play online. My mind is really blank at the moment, but we played Warcraft 3, and something else, I think. Can’t really remember.

Sunday was as usual, church, but nobody came over, most of us were either too tired or had just seen eachother all Saturday….more likely the latter.

The latest thing I’ve been looking at is airsoft guns. For those of you who don’t know – Airsoft guns are similar to a BB gun, or a paintball gun, in that they shoot low-velocity rounds. They actually shoot .2 cm (or sometimes .12 cm) plastic rounds, at, usually 200 FPS (feet per second). They can cost anywhere for 20 dollars to 2250 dollars, so it really varies what they are. The main thing about Airsoft is that it’s realistic. All the guns you can buy are usually real guns, like a Baretta 9mm, a Desert Eagle .50, or a Kalishnakov. Basically, if you can find it in real life, you can find it in Airsoft. I won’t go into too much detail right now, but I’ve been looking into saving up for one of them. They could be our next laser tag. Daniel isn’t sure if he can get one though, but Jesse is! Benjamin said he’s working on it too, but no definites.

I’m off to go read up on the comics.

^^

Woof woof, wort wort! Tim is SO back.

I keep trying to get back into the rhythm of blogging, I REALLY DO, but it’s hard!. Apologies, to the greatest. Recap…again…Christopher and Jonathan are gone, and I probably won’t see either for another year at least. The house is reall empty, but it does have it’s plus side: this weekend I officially move downstairs. Technically I’ve been down here, but all this time I’ve had my personal belongings upstairs, like books, clothes, and stuff. Hopefully once my dad brings back the TV from his office which is rightfully mine by heirdome, I’ll be all set. I’ve recovered from the hell of last week, which I remember very little of. I managed to scrape a B+ out of Biology, which was somewhat discouraging, but also disapointing. I have the A++ reputation in that class, no good to have that scarring my record. No idea what I have in Global, but I’m bracing myself for the worst. I missed an entire half of the final project; thats gonna kill like no other test could.

In any case, things have been good, but it was really sad seeing Jonathan go. He’s so cool, and he had so much advice on anything, and everything.. Christopher is cool too, but he’s almost tool old to relate to. I’m still his little kid brother. I mean, for goodness sake, even most of my school friends treat me with better respect. But he’s still my brother. Jonathan is sorely missed. But he is moving on to a better stage in life. I’ll adjust in a week.

Finally got my laptop running LAN Starcraft. Took long enough….many thanks to Benjamin and Jesse!

I’ve also returned to Scouting. I had kinda ditched it because it was too kid-ish for the likes of me, but it’s a chance to hang out with friends and just do stuff, so why not?

I recently ripped all my good music (LotR, JoC, Bond) onto my computer. It’s nice to have all my good music sorted and readily available.

More in the Random section: I finally did it! I am unable to fit all my game CDs into one CD book of 60! I AM A TRUE GAMER!!! Technically I was already, but now I’ve like, passed the threshold. Woot. So much wasted money…hehehehe. Considering buying value, and counting gifts and burned CD’s, it comes out to about 1100 dollars in games. I’ve only bought 350 dollars of it myself, the rest came mostly as gifts. Lol…

O.o

Sorry that posting has been erratic, and that I never was able to change the background. Couldn’t find any suitable ones with good sizes. But the search continues.

Warcraft 3 [Battle Chest] arrived. That’s been a lot of fun. Also time-consuming.

Christoper arrived here on Monday, but we never gt to dress him up as a bum. A shame, really. Oh well.

Just a short recap before I fall asleep in school.

O.o

It’s been a while since my last post, but, things have been rather busy. Sort of. Anyways.

I went out and bought Medievel: Total War, Medievel: Total War: Viking Expansion, and Deus Ex: Invisible War [Note the theme]. I haven’t installed the expansion yet, since I haven’t beat the original yet, but, it should be fun. Deus Ex is still cool, haven’t really gone through it yet. I restarted my character in Morrowind to be not so crappy, and I discovered that the game loads and runs slower as you progress. There’s not some awful gap between brand new and really old games, but te loading times are much smoother with the new. [Yes, I’m having a game-ranting moment.] Morrowind is fun, though. Lots of fun!

January 12th comes closer every day. And while it IS Jonathan’s birthday on the 12th, that’s not the occasion. \/\/0127!

Swimming has begun at PE. It’s not so bad, but, we have to get to the gym, change, swim for 25 minutes, then change again. It’s a really long process for something that lasts just a few minutes. Thankfully, I get to do it for a week less than everyone else.

Not much else has happened over the past few days. Oh, 5 week report:

Math C

German B

Biology A-

PE A

DDP A+

Global Studies A+

That’s on the high honor roll, I believe, despite the C. I can easily fix that, because he counted absentee homeworks I haven’t been able to make up. German was a miracle, though. How did I pass that, I do not know. Anyways, catching up on my web comics calls.