rock is sponge

you know, there aint no rest for the wicked

damn zombies

again, been a while. played several games since last time.

went through the 3 dead rising games in order (#1. case zero, #2).

the first one was rather hard to get into at first because of its unusual design aimed at playing it through more than once....and its save system which caused me to die a lot and have to repeat my steps many times. but i eventually devised a scheme to get the uber mega buster gun, and restart the game which made things much more enjoyable and easier.

case zero was very short and is simply a paid demo of the 2nd game, but it does give achievements and allow you to carry through levels and stuff onto the main game.

so when i did start the main game, i was a bit better prepared. it was much more easy to get into compared to the first. although there were no super weapons like the first, the levels seemed to come easier and the combo weapons provided some extra killing ability. and the pre order dlc ninja costume which made zombies pretty much ignore you also help. i had finished it and was in the process of trying to get a few more achievements when i fucked up my xbox and had to send it back to get repaired.

since then, i have been playing a few other games with eugene.

namly left 4 dead 2 which i got last christmas and am finally getting round to. not terribly different to the first, but not a bad thing. same old zombie killing action.

we also played lost planet 2 which was surprisingly amazing. i was expecting a simple 3rd person shooter, but the sheer scale of operations and epic-ness of some of the encounters blew us both away....some highlights included going inside an alien the size of a warehouse and shooting its heart apart, taking out an alien worm the size of a village with a railgun the size of a large house mounted on twin trains, and going inside of an alien the size of a small island to kill it from the inside and then dropping an orbital laser built into a large asteroid into its mouth and then firing it again causing an explosion covering roughly 1/3 of the planet. unbelievable stuff....

also finall played alien hominind with phil. pretty hard, but good old skool shooter action.

also played lego batman and lego harry potter with eugene. didnt finish harry potter, because it was too....weird and different and we had no idea what was going on. lego batman was much more like the rest and more fun as we got to beat everyone up

wow....force unleashed was very short. feel like i only started it and it was over. 9 levels in total. none of which were terribly long....

and some of them were multiple sub levels of the same location. so only 5 locations in total. and one of those was just basically a cinematic...so 4 really. haha. still a jolly jedi jaunt though. endings a little implausable....darth vader cannot be restrained. haha

been a while. played a few things since the last post...

Dante's inferno: total god of war clone. and i mean total. even down to the button assignments, movements, enemy types, etc. it just replaces greek mythology with christian mythology. nevertheless, i still enjoyed it. very....visceral depiction of the circles of hell. and god of war gameplay is always fun.

Advance wars:
finished this while over visiting Britt. Still just as hard as i remember it. needed quite a lot of help in many places....guess i just don thave a strategic brain. but it was still good to finish an old one i had left many years ago back in the gba days.

Heavy Rain:
been wanting to play this for quite a while. very interesting story with a most unexpected conclusion...quite a nice change to have the focus on the story for a change. I managed to keep everyone alive and get the best ending. much more...down to earth than farenheit was. haha. very involving game.

Alan Wake:
also been wanting to play this for a while. saw nath play through it and didnt expect to like it much when i got round to it, but i really enjoyed it a lot. i played it with the extra developer's commentary which gives a lot more cool insights into the story and development. and i loved seeing all the references to max payne and nordic mythology. the attention to detail in this game is frankly astonishing. not even just the environments (which are very detailed), but the depth of the character development, back stories, little details and secrets and snippets of information everywhere. so much to see. played both dlc episodes too and feel that 'season 1' concluded nicely. heres hoping they get to make a season 2.

Star wars the force unleashed 2:
just started into this. very similar to the first one. but still enjoyable jedi action.

going to take so long to get to lt. colonel in reach....damn.

had an awesome 3 day halo marathon with eugene last week.

day 1: halo reach
day 2: halo: combat evolved, halo 2
day 3: halo 3: odst, halo 3
day 4: wind-down

awesome to see them all back to back. great feeling of continuation

as expected, reach is awesome. through and through.

legendary campaign is hard. probably the 2nd hardest game in the series next to halo 2.

its also a very powerful story. we all knew how it would all end. reach was going to fall. but what noble team had to go through to pass on the flame and allow the pillar of autumn to escape was hard to watch at times.

bungie had said it was difficult to get the balance of the story right so that even though you knew what was coming, you would believe you were doing the right thing all the way to the end.

i think they got it.

remember reach

finished dawn of war winter assault today. ended up being a lot harder than the original. i think that is a combination of the imperial guard sucking so much compared to space marines and their ranks need continuously replenished and different mission structures that usually had time limits or other restrictions built into them in some way so you didnt have time to just mass up as big a force as you could.

was going to have a go at dark crusade, but the installer seems corrupt so i had to get it again. while i did that, i had a quick go at dawn of war 2. which looks a lot nicer. and seems to be much more individual person and squad focused. no resource management at all and a non linear plot progression. its almost like...ghost recon in isometric view. and with space marines.

nathan had a go at deep fear on a saturn emulator. not bad for a game of its time (1999), but as with most games of its time, the voice acting sucked. and its also a blatant resident evil rip off. but underwater.

just finished dawn of war. very nice. steamroller tactic worked for pretty much every level bar 2. ending was a little promiscious. maybe it will be explored more in the sequel. although the zoom level was pretty annoying. i found a zoom out mod which will be good for the next game.

next up: winter assault....

been going through dawn of war's original campaign. its strangely compelling. even though a simple steamroller tactic is winning every engagement so far. its just cool to be in the 40k universe.

nath is also having another go at his silent hill 2 longplay. he went through it a few times quick today on easy to unlock endings and so on. more tomorrow.

today eugene and i finally got round to playing doom 3: resurrection of evil. over a year and a half since completing the original doom 3...we used tunngle vpn to play it as a lan game over the internet. although there was a lot of lag even for an internet game which could have been caused by tunngle. further testing will need to be done.

it was quite short and pretty easy with the last man standing co-op mod but good old fashioned fun none the less. jimbob managed to mince through it on ultra-high quality without even breaking a sweat with his shin new radeon hd 5670

finished zelda 2. finally. so damn hard. even with save states. undoubtedly the most merciless, weird and bone-crunchingly hard zelda ever. another childhood nes game put to bed. and i think thats the lot. maybe i should move onto unfinished snes games now...

nath finished silent hill 4 today too. pretty good ending generally considered one of the worse silent hill games, but i liked the story in it. more narrative and events rather than just wandering around going "what the fuck" most of the time like most silent hills

closing in on the end of zelda 2. 5 dungeons in, 2 to go. already further than i got on the original nes cart.

nath got most of the way through silent hill 4 today but went to bed before he finished.

trying to finish off the last few nes games i have on the list. only 2 are zelda 2 and mario and yoshi. and i dont think mario & yoshi really has an ending....so i went with zelda 2.

its still rock hard as ever. emulating it on ds and having to make ample use of save states. seems to be slow, nibbling progress. you have so little life and magic. and limited lives. what the fuck. so everytime you die you have to go all the way back to the start castle. but making slow progress....did 1 temple and am close to the second i think.

nath was gonna do more silent hill 4 but didnt feel up to it. perhaps tomorrow.

just beat totally rad there today. another blast from the past finally conquered. originally called 'magic john' in japan. the surfer lingo and characters were added completely out of nowhere by the american translators. curious.

nath beat silent hill origins last night. it locked up near the end then he went to bed in defeat. then came back 5 minutes later saying it would bug him if he didnt finish it, so he did. pretty good ending. hes starting back at silent hill 4 today.

also, my army of two 2 came today. it didnt get lost in the post after naths da re-sent it using the same postage mark. good stuff

i am starting this as way to keep track of gaming progress/history so i will have something to look back on fondly in future days and remember good times had with gaming.

yesterday i finally finished the pc version of braid. it got very hard very quick and was especially difficult towards the end. the epilogue didnt make a lot of sense to me and apparently it has no concrete meaning. the 'girl' he is chasing is possibly a metaphor for the atomic bomb....quite odd. but still good nonetheless.

today i finished a game i had left unfinished since i was about 12. rad gravity on the nes. through ample use of save states on an emulator i eventually finished it. interesting twist at the end in that your computer was actually evil and you were doing his evil bidding all the time. but in the end when he was revealed as the villan you did the right thing.

nath has started going through silent hill origins again due to being stuck in the last attempt with too little health to progress.

not sure what to play next. so many options....so little time