Topic: Gaming Progress Thread

[Lenophis]

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GC)

I hate Quadraxis. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE YOU! GRR! Err,  yeah. That fight is completely unfair. Health drops need to be much more frequent if they're going to stick you in a room with no safe zones. While we're on that...

Emperor Ing sucks too, but not for the same reason. My first attempt at fighting it produced a very painful death. I didn't get past the first stage because the damn core kept changing directions on me, so I couldn't get it down past 25%. But in any event, mission accomplished. 13:33 is the time of my final save. Got about 80% because I was getting tired of wandering around aimlessly, so some guides wound up giving me more while I was looking for the Sky Temple keys.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Strangely, I don't remember ever having a problem with Quadraxis. Even on my "I missed nearly every energy tank in the game" run, which was on hard mode, I don't remember having trouble there. Now, the Emperor Ing, that fight was a real pain until I started using the Light Beam there. Super Missiles do more damage, but they're just too hard to aim.

No complaints about the Annihilator Beam totally not living up to its name?

[Lenophis]

No complaints about the Annihilator Beam totally not living up to its name?

Well, other than it likes to seek at targets I don't shoot at times, not really. I suppose it probably should be more powerful if it's going to be called "Annihilator."

[Lenophis]

What, really? I'm the only one playing a game in the last month?

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GC)
Started a new game on Hard mode. What the hell was I thinking? Well, I have 3 energy tanks, 15 missiles, both beams, and one ammo expansion. Got the boots, and I'm saved right before Amorbis.

Game over count: at least 10.



Continuing on, I just got the Super Missile launcher, I have 5 energy tanks, 30 missiles, and 100 ammo. I attempted to skip to the Boost Guardian a few times, but I can't seem to line myself up properly to get the unmorph view I need. If I can't pull that off, I'll continue into lower Torvus where I need to get the Gravity Boost. Ugh,  not looking forward to these fights.



37%, 70 missiles, 8 energy tanks, 150 ammo, dark visor, seeker launcher, boost ball, grapple  beam, and gravity boost collected. Chykka sucks. I'm now supposed to enter Sanctuary, yay.



38%, only difference from above is one more energy tank. I'm attempting to get the Screw Attack, and so far I'm halfway there. However, the problem now is either getting to a bomb slot way way up there, or I have to get really good and jump on a robot.



54%, Echo Visor, 200 ammo, 100 missiles, 11 energy tanks, 3 power bombs, and all of the accessories. I killed the power bomb guardian, but didn't collect that power bomb (I'm going to test something; if you know the game then you should have an idea of what I have planned). The only sequence break I successfully pulled off was the power bombs. I got 2 in Sanctuary, and 1 in Dark Torvus.

Now I'm back to this:

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GC)

I hate Quadraxis. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE YOU! GRR!

I've put together a blooper reel of Quadraxis fights, but they are rather large and I cannot upload them quite yet, if ever.



I forgot to mention that I managed to get the game to crash yesterday. I was struggling with attempting to get the Screw Attack, and I figured "I'll get some easy missiles in the meantime." Those missiles are in a large vertical room, with some orb cannons. Instead of going back up, I opened up the next door to "Main Research" where you need the Echo Visor to gain access to a dark portal. I went into it, but not far enough so the door closes, then double backed when I saw I had no way to get out of Main Research. All of a sudden, the orb cannon is blocked off (like it should be), so I started shooting randomly and the screen just went black, then to the health and safety warning.

Anyway, I finally beat the g'fooker Quadraxis, but now it seems it was all for naught. I wanted to test the infamous Ing Cache in Dark Agon, but it turns out Very Bad Things™ happen. The Ing Cache does not show up, as expected (was hoping, but oh well) but now the Power Bomb dropped by the PBG has also disappeared.

Anticipating something may go wrong, I copied my save file before fighting the PBG, but now that means I need to fight the g'fooker again.

[I.S.T.]

Been playing Fable 2 recently. Gave it up. The game is all the dull parts of Fable:TLC magnified with everything else either hit by bad ideas, a dull filter or oversimplification. I cannot recommend it to anyone.

Started Mega Man ZX today. Got up to where I can access the Guardian HQ.

[Odbarc]

I got Fallout 2 and been playing that. Damn, it's hard. It's even harder when you don't know what your doing or where to go.
And even harder when you've learn about 80 ways to have a broken or dysfunctional character that's bound to die quickly.
I managed to steal (which causes exp upon successes, which you can put things into peoples pockets to steal back and gain infinite exp, potentially) to level 8 only to accidentally save when the ghoul-city around me suddenly decided to become completely hostile towards me and my non-combat party for no apparent reason when I tried to fix their power-plant they ask me to fix for them, for free. So my save spot is basically corrupted to the point of non-success-only outcomes as my life-less body dies in one or two shots and I've got about 50 ghouls to shoot though.

On the plus side, the challenge is really fun and I only get farther with every pass with knowing what to do and what I need to find or keep with me. Took me about 10 deaths before I realized I should/could gather allies to help me. This guy Sulik is a HUGE help. It was pretty bad when I had my first Small Guns character running around with no melee/weapons skills and NO GUN fighting things.

I also played Final Fantasy 7 until disc 3 then gave up as I realized how tedious and repetitive the game is. Not to mention that Restore+All is the only REAL combination you need and you can basically fight command your way though the game with a bit of regen and cure spells (as using mana for a 25% damage boost isn't worth the 10 turns of HP that you could have used healing yourself instead with that mana).
Maybe the only real combinations worth including are Demi+Added Blow (75% damage reduce + attack = instant kill?), Time-All (haste) and some of the Enemy Skills have really powerful attacks which make quick AoE battles end.
Final Fantasy 7 used to be good in my eyes but I've grown to be quite bored with it now. I'll likely not replay this game ever again.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Mega Man 10 (Wii)

Got up to the first fortress stage with Mega Man. The bosses there are pretty brutal if you don't know the weaknesses, and I've only managed to figure out about half of them so far, so I haven't managed to get past there yet. I also played through a few of the challenge 1 challenges (which are like minigames, I guess), but got bored with those pretty quickly. Maybe it'll grow on me after a bit, but I have to say so far I don't think this is anywhere near as good as MM9.

 

Okay, I still couldn't work out a few weaknesses, so I just used energy tanks to get past the first fortress stage. The other stages weren't too bad, I had to use another tank to beat the new devil boss in the third stage. The final Wily fight was a bit disappointing, only because it had a huge leadup, but ended up being pretty easy. I unlocked hard mode, but want to play through normal as Proto Man first. He plays the same as he did in MM9, except his shield is bigger (easier to block projectiles with now) and he has access to the shop.

 

Got up to the fortress with Proto Man. Amusingly, he gets a smaller selection in the shop and has to pay more for everything.

Just watched some Bass mode footage from Vixy's live stream over at RPM. Hacked in, it won't be out officially until next month. It actually looks pretty fun, I was never huge fan of his gameplay in MM&B, but it transitioned over fairly well. Even gets the Treble Boost instead of the coil and jet. Takes normal damage, too.

[Dragonsbrethren]

I need to get back to MM10 one of these days, haven't touched it since I got my new hardware. Anyway, I just played through all of Half-Life 2 and its episodes again, plus the full version of Portal for the first time. Every time I play HL2 I appreciate it a bit more, always finding some interesting things I missed the first time. (Still disappointing compared to HL1, though) Episode 2's final strider battle was a lot more manageable without slowdown, but I can't say it was that much more fun. I plan on playing through Ep1 and 2 again with the commentary on, which was my original plan, but I never backed up my saves. Portal... well, it's nice gameplay mechanic, but I just didn't really like it as a game. I'm debating whether I want to play the more advanced stuff, I suppose it might be better.

Finally played GoldenEye: Source and confirmed my suspicions. The only maps I like are the classics, which recreate the originals more closely than the non-classics, and I don't even like some of them. Facility Classic leaves too many props from the solo mission intact. The original game isn't as limited as some people think, those things could've easily been left in place, but they were pulled out for a reason: you get stuck on them too much when running backwards. Basement Classic has horrible lighting, GE could do any color and brightness of lighting, so if you're recreating the original you probably want to leave the lighting alone. The non-classic maps are even worse, I thought Doom mappers went overboard with detail, but this is far worse. There's...stuff everywhere. Non-interactive stuff, which the original game avoided as much as possible. They added new areas, but you never know where they are, since for every one new real door there are two fake ones that look identical. I don't think I'll even get started on how poorly the weapons are implemented...

I also tried out Doom 3 again, but ended up falling back on the Classic Doom 3 mod. A steady 60 FPS on ultra quality does nothing for how boring that game is... I don't even like Classic Doom 3 that much, they didn't rebalance the monsters for the quantities they appear in so the later maps, even on HMP, are just a chore to play through. Some of the maps (E1M7 in particular) are completely unrecognizable at times. I guess the engine is even worse than the original for handling large, open spaces, which is just amusing to me. It's still a lot more fun than the actual Doom 3, somehow...

[Odbarc]

Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce PS3;
Man, not even for a DW series game that I already like, this game is pretty good on it's own.
Aside from the usual (mostly) grind of infinite armies, which has been toned down quite some, you've got your Super Saiyan mode which makes you faster and shine. You also got your DBZ air-dashing and multi jumps in a multi-tiered terrain (vs the old massive flat ground) and 6 weapon types (and a probable 6 armor types) to mix up weapon choices.

Each character can hold their primary weapon and a sub-weapon of your choosing. Upgrades require items found of specific name or color which works nicely in getting or preventing specific abilities you want.
After playing about 5 hours I forgot to manually save (assuming I had an auto-save) and lost a days play time.
After splitting my time between three games, I realied that one game can be played with the other (same force) characters with shared gold and resources (independent exp so new chars start off stronger-ish).

One major component; On-line multi-player! Up to four characters which is that much more fun to play with other DW-enthusiastic gamers. Two major draw-backs that plague the game are these;
1) You require other players to click ready to change screens (town to strategy-menu, strategy-menu to in-game).
2) If someone lags, the game essentially prevents you from going from in-game to town putting your save-file (and progress) at risk. Luckily but painfully, you can disconnect your ethernet and that will cause you to go into single player with your progress to save.

I got Zhang Fei to level 50 and then started on Pang Tong without really working on the quests. I think I was on Chapter 4 of 6. I did a lot of joined-other-player-games which don't add completions to my own quests which is a little bit of a bumber. But being able to have another player open up a mission to get resources you need (or someone just gives them to you free, woot) is always a big plus.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (Wii)

It's been a few years since I last played this and... I'm not very good at it anymore. I still managed to get up to Stage 4 playing as Richter, then I went back and got Maria (missed her the first time), and played up to Stage 4' with her. I keep thinking Richter can hit stuff behind him because of playing The Adventure ReBirth (where it's possible), which is getting me killed a lot. I'm sure I'll get used to it again soon, though, I used to be really good at this one.

This has been a great month for the Wii: Mega Man 10, Final Fantasy II, this, Cave Story next week. I wonder if we'll get anything good on the 29th?

[Lenophis]

Final Fantasy IX (PS)

I'm resuming a very old game, one that had me stuck in the Ice Cave because I couldn't see my HP during the Black Waltz 1/Sealion fight. The old TV was stretching the picture so badly the bar was gone completely, so I was guessing a few times on when to heal. Needless to say, that didn't work so I put it off.

But with the new working TV, I decided to continue. I blew through discs 1 and 2, and I'm just about at the end of disc 3. I actually died in Bran Bal, and hadn't saved since before the Terra Guardian fight, so I wound up doing some prep work. The lack of saving is because of the experience of doing a level 1 Ozma game, so I was a bit too cocky at this section (the level 1 Ozma game stops before stepping foot in Bran Bal, cause it's all about the big round guy).

Level-wise, I'm in decent shape. Zidane is 30, and everyone else is mid-20's. I'm not sure if I'm going to charge right into Memoria or not when I get to disc 4.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Mega Man 10 (Wii)

Bass mode DLC was released yesterday, so I picked that up. I was a bit annoyed that he was seemingly an overpowered character since he takes normal damage, unlike Proto Man who takes double, but I've actually died playing as him far more than I ever did with Proto Man. His ability to aim is actually his biggest downfall, since it glues him to the floor whenever he shoots. The best thing you can do is bunny hop the entire time you're shooting ahead of yourself, unless you actually want to aim, which is rarer than you'd think. He also has his dash - I always figured they gave Proto Man a slide move because the dash would be a pain to use with an NES-style control scheme, and I was absolutely correct. He can dash jump, but it's really tricky to pull off. I'm not sure why they didn't just add a dash button, they added the ability to switch weapons with L and R, which also wasn't there on the NES.

Speaking of the NES, I can see why they did away with "legacy mode" in this one. Bass's sprites alone would consume six sprites per scanline. The game would be a flickering mess. Basically, rather than just a single face sprite like Mega Man and Proto Man have, every single one of his sprites would need to have another one overlap it. It's a really cool sprite and better than anything fan made, but I don't think it really obeys the limitations of the platform. Rather than making his black shades gray, they should have just used the black outline over most of his body, with white and gold as the other two colors in the palette, like Sivak's Bass sprite (and my edit of it).

Oh yeah, almost forgot, Bass also gets the Treble Boost instead of a coil/jet combination. Right out of MM&B, including the useless three-way shot. Still pretty cool to fly around, waiting to see how the speedrunners exploit this thing.

[Shinrin]

Final Fantasy VI Last Hope: All*Stars

Saw this on Romhacking.net today, so i decided to try it out.

Characters so far: Cloud Lv 7, Miang Lv 5
Location: Figaro Castle

Interesting Romhack. Story follows the FF6 storyline of course. Improve Difficulty which kicks my ass.

So I started playing, and already noticed it was harder with the first few battles. Went into the cave and saved. So I knew the boss was going to be hard but started to attack it. Yay for pallete swap! He's now yellow! Guess for the reason why his shell stores lightning now. So I started battling him. Ok.. first attack hit hard.. after my charcters go, two guards show up.. i'm like oh shit.. Killed one and the other, two more show up. 

So i failed.. and failed, and failed again... oh and top it off, if you do accidently hit the shell, it's a instant game over if it's a attack all version of his bolt.



Well I finally manage to beat him. So I continue on and find out Terra wasn't Terra but Miang instead. Got the Elixer in the clock and moved on with the story and she falls though a hole... wow same fate as our poor terra. Something interesting happened in the game, in the battle against Miang and the three guards, not only does she uses her beam to kill one, she actually used a new spell, which also had a new effect that wasn't in the game and killed another. Though this did cause a glitch and kept Miang stay in place where she casted the spell and kept moving her lips.. maybe this was intentional, as she was going for the last kill.

After the flash back was over a certian someone we all know from the world of FF7 appears.



Well, come take locke's place you emo man! you know the story, he is a theif.. must have the materia for it equiped or something, Has a nice sword that has a chance to kill anything in one hit, don't think it works on bosses though..

Well he goes to save Miang and with the help of 11 helpful moogles, Mog stays in this game. So i unequipped Mog and went ahead and take out a monster for his dance and then went and take on the boss.. after 3 or 4 battles.. which we're hard enough.

This one took me some time but....



I win? Mog was on his last leg and stopped and the other 3 dead.. and I won? Gotta love poison!

So Story goes on, and now I'm at Figaro Castle, after barely making it though a battle of scorpions.

So there you have it. My attempt to play a harder version of FF6.

Dragon Quest V DS

Come on and get captured you stupid healslime!

Final Fatnasy XII

All characters level 99 and about to take out Cid in the main big city.. i really need to finish this game, been working on it for 9 months... you can watch it on youtube! if you want. No leveling videos!

[Dragonsbrethren]

Story follows the FF6 storyline of course.

Given the developments that have happened over the past few years, especially the map editor, this is really disappointing to me.

[Lenophis]

Story follows the FF6 storyline of course.

Given the developments that have happened over the past few years, especially the map editor, this is really disappointing to me.

I'd have to agree with this.