During the last week, I’ve used all of my time waiting in lines, or for someone, or for a train, to play Game Dev Story. I actually managed to get to the end of it, and what an end it was!Continue reading
Today, I’ve completed Grandia. It required computer skills, the usage of a guide I wrote and quite a lot of time, but I did it. From now on, though, instead of converting my PlayStation games to EBOOT, I’m getting them from other sources.Continue reading
I invested two more hours into this and today, I managed to complete Babel Rising. First, let’s get one thing out of the way…
Fifteen. There are fifteen levels in this game. Considering the amount of actual content it has, that’s about ten to many. All you ever really need are one level for each of the four elements and one level where you can freely pick two out of those four and use them. Maybe one or two levels added to that, and that’s about it. Everything else in Babel Rising is just padding and completely unnecessary.
Finally! Now just leave me alone!
Other than the fifteen campaign levels, there are three more survival levels with two degrees of difficulty per level.
It doesn’t. All the way to the final level, you are limited in which two powers you can pick and nothing new is ever really added to the game. At one point, siege towers are introduced which approach the central tower and spawn workers and priests, which start at already higher levels. At one other point, special sequences are introduced where the camera switches to the nearby sea and you use fireballs to destroy approaching ships. None of these two things add anything to the game.
The final level. At this point, the objective really pissed me off.
The only thing that really changes is that the level objectives take longer and become more annoying to achieve. That’s it.
Steam says “3 Hours Played”. As soon as the game was over, I took a quick look at the menus to make sure I’m not missing anything and then I left it. I’ll tag it as completed in steam, uninstall it and try to forget about it.
I’m sorry, but Babel Rising is not at all a good game and even the developer approaching me in the comments won’t change my opinion. Babel Rising is uninteresting and unfun. There’s nothing saving it. There’s a DLC for it, called “Sky’s the Limit”, but from the description, it just seems it adds more padding and nothing substantial.
Oh look, another completely irrelevant and empty addition.
So why did I complete it? Because it didn’t take long, it was pretty to look at and I just had an itch to get it over with. I’m weird like that. I’m sure some of you can name a game that did the same to you. I’d be interested to hear about it, so feel free to mention it in the comments. The silence is sort of starting to bug me 😀
So yeah. I’ve completed the game, but It didn’t give me enough to write about, so you get this. I’m sorry.
Pokemon Platinum is hard! This is something that absolutely needs to be said. Cynthia, the League Champion of this game, actually has all of her Pokemon around level 60. Level 60!
Suffice to say, I had to do a lot of training. This time, I actually used the Exp. Share for training as well, hoping to get Gible to a high enough level so he’d be useful, for once, but even at level 50, I did not get a chance to use it properly. In fact, even Pikachu was for the most part useless, not to mention Buizel. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but the stat gap between unevolved and fully evolved Pokemon in Pokemon Platinum seems to be far bigger than in the previous games. My level 55 Pikachu had about 130 HP, while my Torterra reached 200 with a lower level.
Thanks to Surf, Buizel was easy to train at the Victory Road.
It didn’t take long before I was consistently able to beat Aaron, the first of the Elite Four and a bug user. Once Infernape got to the mid-50s, it could sweep through Aaron’s entire team. Soon after that, I could also sweep through Bertha, a Rock user. My Torterra was able to handle it, but I was also able to use Buizel here, once its speed got high enough to make it act first in battle. Before that, though, a single hit, even with a type resistance, would often nearly kill it.
Flint, a Fire user was the first hurdle I needed to get through. He was also the one I couldn’t get through until I got Buizel to the high 50s. Once I managed to do that, I was able to sweep through his three weaker Pokemon. His Magmortar and Houndoom gave me trouble, though, Magmortar far more so. I really couldn’t find a way to beat it without abusing items.
I finally beat you, you bastard!
Once I got through Flint, Lucian was relatively easy. I didn’t really have a proper type advantage against any of his Pokemon, but by using Flame Blitz, I could still sweep through most of them, thanks to Psychic Pokemon having low physical defense.
Finally, I got to Cynthia and by this point, I decided to win it, no matter what. Most of my Pokemon got close to or even beyond level 60 thanks to my many failed attempts, so I was able to survive a hit or two on occasion. I used these opportunities to generously throw items at my team, mostly Revives and Hyper Potions.
I think Cynthia is my favorite Champion.
Cynthia’s Milotic and Garchomp and Togekiss gave me the most trouble, in that order. The other three, I basically one-shoted, but these guys burned through almost my entire Potion and Revive supply. I pretty much had to wait until their strongest moves ran out of PP before I could even act. Once they did, though, that was it. I won!
Yes, it was cheap. I threw money and items at the League instead of winning it by grinding. I can live with that. Grinding is simultaneously my most- and least favorite part of Pokemon, depending on my mood and the general situation. In this instance, I just fought random battles for so long already, I didn’t feel like doing it any more. It’s not like playing for a couple of more hours would somehow made me more skillful or smarter, I just wouldn’t need as many potions.
It looks like I lied. I didn’t get even close to the 60s with most of my team. My memory is bad.
In any case, there’s only one generation left, and this one will be tough to incorporate into the challenge. As far as I understand it, the anime didn’t get to the League yet and we already have two games for the generation, with a next generation game (Pokemon X & Y) already announced. I’ll see what I can do. I might just go with Black 2 or White 2, since it technically is an upgrade of the first two, kind of like Platinum was an upgrade for Diamond and Pearl, etc. Sure, the story is a bit different, but it’s no more or less true to the anime. Right?
I know the title of this posting is a major spoiler so I’ll get right to it. I’ve completed Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Bear with me, though. I’d still like to write about it.
I had to use my new ability to turn the sun dial and open the passage.
I didn’t really feel like exploring anymore, so I went right for the next area after killing Dumah. I remembered there was a fork in the path next to the last portal I activated, so I went back there and took it.
I ended up in an extremely long and pretty linear area. Based on what the Elder God told me, it was supposed to be cold, so I guess the initial cavernous part of the region was supposed to be covered with snow or ice, but it’s really hard to figure it out on graphics alone. In any case, it was colorful, so I liked the region.
The walls might be ice or snow, but I’m not sure.
I basically had from room through room, connected with extremely long hallways and with a relatively straightforward puzzle in each one. One of them involved pushing blocks to open a door, another involved leavers or using force projectile to push blocks, etc.
The slightly annoying part was fighting a lot of those Morlock enemies. The developers apparently have a sick sense of humor, because they absolutely love placing them in blind spots, so they’d hit me, causing me to lose the Soul Reaver and face them without a weapon. What I ended up doing was just to ignore most of them and run past them.
Eventually, I got to a part that was even more linear. I just walked through a large hallway, interrupted by flashbacks of the past story events. Eventually, those flashbacks turned into premonitions, or hallucinations, Raizel was unsure about that. Finally, I got to the last room of the game, where I had to face Kain again.
The second battle with Kain worked basically in the same way as the first one, except it was much harder, or easier, depending on how you look at it. Again, I had to hit him three times before he would hit me and teleport away.
The method to beat Kain is the same as the first battle, but it’s harder this time.
The part that was easier was that a single hit didn’t send me to the spectral realm this time. Instead, I could get through two or even three hits. The harder part was that he started out much further away from me, and with each hit, the distance increased. By the third hit, I wasn’t able to do it in time.
It took me about fifteen minutes of trying before I finally got to him in time and hit him for the last time. To be fair, I did spend a big part of those fifteen minutes trying to figure out the underlying mechanic and somehow trick the game my predicting where he would appear next. Eventually, I gave up on that and just got lucky enough to be facing the side of the room where he appeared.
This might be a major spoiler, though I personally don’t think so. The game ends with a cliffhanger. I’m not saying the story isn’t complete, I’m saying the game literally shows you a black screen with “To Be Continued” written on it.
This is where the game ends. I’m not gonna tell you who the other guy is.
Now that I think of it, Defiance has Raziel chasing Kain to, so it’s quite possible the story stretches all the way to that game, which means it doesn’t end during the two games in-between.
In any case, Soul Reaver is completed. I think Soul Reaver 2 is next, or possibly Blood Omen 2. I need to check. Alternatively, I could also try the first game in the series – Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. I never did play through that one.
Yes, yes it is. In fact, it’s an excellent game. It has graphics which haven’t aged to badly, fun and engaging mechanics, amazing music, sounds, atmosphere and voice acting and an extremely intriguing story.
The downside? Well, I guess the camera could use some work. Heck, it could use a lot of work. The thing is, this was a 90s game. Back then, the camera in most third person games needed a lot of work. It was a new concept. I can forgive a slightly annoying camera if everything else is great.
You should play Soul Reaver. You really should.
Last time in Pokemon Crystal, I attempted the league with a level 45 party and failed horribly. It was obvious I had to train, so train I did.
As I already said, most of my Pokemon had it easy with training at the Victory Road. The cave mostly contained ground and rock Pokemon, with a couple of Golbats thrown in for good measure. My Pikachu simply destroyed everything with his Iron Tail, saving his Thunder and Thundershock for Golbat. Kingler handled it all with Surf and Crabhammer, once he finally got that awesome move. Heracross didn’t really have a super effective move to use, but thanks to his amazing power, he handled everything with regularly effective moves and the STAB bonus on his Horn Attack. Noctowl kicked ass with Confusion, but didn’t get to learn Extrasensory in time. Bayleef had it easy with Razor Leaf against the rock and ground types and a Headbutt or a Body Slam against Golbat.
The state of my final team.
The only Pokemon I had issues with was my Phanpy. It was getting more and more obvious I won’t get any use out of him in this game. He can’t evolve yet, since that only happens later in the anime. I got it late in the game, so his stats are low and none of his moves are really useful. In addition to that, his speed is low, so he usually acts after the enemy Pokemon, which means he usually doesn’t act at all. I tried giving him the Exp. Share, but that didn’t really help, since he would have to outlevel the rest of my group to be effective enough.
Kingler steals the last hit!
After about 30 minutes of grinding, I finally got most of my team (Phanpy not included) to about level 50 and then I gave it a few more attempts against the Elite Four. The first few attempts failed miserably, but this helped me learn which Pokemon the Elite Four actually have, so on my third attempt, I finally managed to get to Lance. After Karen, who used dark and ghost types mostly, Lance and his “dragon” types were easy. I say “dragon” because he used a Gyarados, a Charizard and an Aeordactyl, which Pikachu disposed of with a single hit of Thundershock. His other three Pokemon were all Dragonite, so I had some difficulty with them, but Heracross got rid of the first two and Kingler somehow managed to defeat the last one.
Champion for all eternity!
With that, Pokemon Crystal was won. As with Pokemon Yellow, I failed on my first try, just like Ash did, but then I went and won it anyway, just so I can get some closure. I know it would have probably been truer to the anime to just give up and go with the next region, but it just doesn’t feel right to leave the game at that.
The traditional Victory Screen. I think I’ll save these for later.
Technically, I could now also go through the Kanto region to beat the local gyms and then finally face Red, the trainer of the first generation, but I really don’t feel like doing that, since it has nothing to do with the anime.
Time for Generation III!
In my final two sessions of Pokemon Yellow, I beat the Elite Four and my rival and then spent a couple of hours wrapping things up.
Training was very creative. I figured it was faster to get less experience directly than constantly switching in battle.
I made some “creative” choices with training. I got bored constantly switching Pokemon in and out at the Victory road, so instead, I did a couple of suicide runs against the Elite Four. Lorelai was easy to beat with Pikachu and Charizard easily destroyed Bruno’s team. I even managed to beat Agatha relatively consistently. It was only Lance that gave me trouble, really. At one point, Squirtle got strong enough to beat Bruno’s rock types, so I started training him a lot faster to.
Surprisingly, Squirtle took the victory.
Kingler and the rest of my team gave me trouble, though. I actually started wandering around the world, looking for trainer rematches to get some money and train the weaker Pokemon in my team. I had to grind for a long time to finally beat Lance with most of my team intact, but once I did, Gary was easy in comparison. He did almost kill me, but that was only because I ran out of PP on Pikachu and almost ran out of PP on Charizard. In the end, Squirtle took the victory with critical health and none of my other Pokemon remaining conscious.
The state of my team before the victory.
The game was technically beat, and the session was over, but I wasn’t done yet. Today, I loaded up the game again and went straight for the Unknown dungeon, to catch Mewtwo. The place was a maze with tough enemies, but Pikachu and Charizard made it easy for me to get to the bottom of it and reach Mewtwo. I decided not to beat my head against a wall and just used the Master Ball on it, so the fight was won instantly and Mewtwo was mine.
Remember when Mewtwo used to be “the strongest Pokemon ever”?
Next up, thanks to some reminders on reddit, I went to route 4 and caught a Mankey. Technically, Ash encountered a Mankey in the early episodes, but only caught it after it evolved into Primeape, but I don’t think that’s an option in Yellow, at least not that early, so instead, I did what I did with Pidgey and just rush-trained it to level 28 instead.
I kind off forgot about Primeape. Thanks, reddit!
After that, all I had to do was to catch 29 more Tauros. This took me a good hour of playing, even with generous use of the fast-forward feature, but eventually, even that was over. I wish I could prove it , but sadly, the Box interface of the first generation games is horrible and there’s no way for me to show how many I had. I’ll transfer them from game to game until I’m able to display them in the GBA games.
No, I don’t want to give a nickname, for the 19th time!
Also, it was pointed out to me that I didn’t catch a Muk. I actually did, I just didn’t write about it. I caught one at the Electrical Plant but haven’t used it at all. If i remember correctly, Ash’s Muk evolves at one point, but I don’t think it’s in the first season, so there’s plenty of time for that.
In any case, I believe I did everything I could and needed to do in the first game. I also did something extra – I got a Lapras. Ash saves one at the beginning of the Orange league season, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to catch one then, so instead, I got it now, for free, as a reward at some point in the story.
That’s right. After all these years, I’ve finally managed to complete this amazing classic god game. Populous: The Beginning has always been one of my favorites, but it has also been a thorn in my side, since I never even finished half of it as a kid. Thanks to the magic of Good Old Games, I could finally do it and it was worth every single one of the many hours I’ve spent doing it.
Journey’s End was technically the last level I needed to complete before my shaman could finally realize her plan and become a god. It was definitely not an easy one.
I started out on a small piece of land on a peninsula surrounded by the three enemy tribes. While I only had a few huts, all of them already had pretty much fully built settlements. Even worse, those that didn’t have a nice route towards me were just a Land Bridge away, which the Matak nicely demonstrated just a minute or two into the level.
I started immediately charging my own Land Bridge so I could create some extra room for my buildings. At first, I used my shaman and her spells to repel the early attacks, but I rushed to get a fire warriors training hut as well as a balloon hut as soon as I could. This was a huge gamble since I was low on room already, but it paid of. Once I had a few airborne fire warriors, I could repel the enemy attacks more easily and now actually had time to charge up the crucial spells I needed, such as Swamp.
The starting location was NOT a good place to be in.
Pretty soon, the Chumara started attacking with balloons of their own, but lucky for me, I already had a small force of fire warriors and, since they used a mixed force of attackers, I could easily take care of their shaman and then pick off the ground forces without any difficulty.
This got me a huge fleet of stolen balloons, so I trained up even more fire warriors and decided to go after the Matak, since they seemed the weakest and their lands seemed to have plenty of trees which I lacked. This turned out to be the correct strategy, so the Matak were destroyed pretty soon.
Now I could finally build up my village properly on the Matak terrain, so that was exactly what I did, using my shaman in the meantime to do some harassment. Once I had an even bigger flying army I could use, I started focusing on the Dakini and the Chumara in order. They managed to repel a couple of attacks and even started a few counter attacks, but eventually, I worn both of the tribes down and managed to defeat them. The Chumara were definitely the hardest, since they had access to balloons of their own and also loved creating fire warriors.
Time to get my godhood…
In any case, the level and technically the game, were both won. I wasn’t done yet, though.
I got myself a bonus level to play with. The beginning is a level where every tribe, including my own, has a fully built up village. The catch was, I was in the middle of all of them. The fun part of it was that my shaman was now a god. What this meant was that I could cast any of my spells on any point of the map, as long as I had the mana for it. Fun times!
To be completely honest, I wasn’t ready for this kind of power. My first two tries failed miserably, because I though I could just focus on my spells and ignore my village. I guess I wouldn’t be a very good god, because I missed the part where I needed villagers to get mana for my spells.
Eventually, I figured this out, so I started focusing on building up my population and defending until I could increase my mana income enough to go on the offensive. I focused on sinking the routes towards my village, being careful to keep the trees growing on those routes on my side of the sea. Once I got rid of one tribe’s route of attack, I could more easily defend against the other two. Once all of them were gone, I was finally able to go on the offensive.
No sinking this time. I cast a charge of swamp on the three places where the enemy shamans loved to hang out and then used the huge amount of mana I was getting to obliterate everything. Volcano, Angel of Death, Firestorm, Tornado, Earthquake… Everything was used and no one was spared.
The Dakini went down first, followed by the Matak, keeping the Chumara for last. They were a bit stubborn, hiding the last few of their villagers on various parts of the map, but eventually, I exterminated every single last one of them. The universe was mine.
As expected, Chapter V of the Witcher felt far more linear and shorter than the earlier chapters. It was followed by a relatively quick epilogue and that was it.
I started out at the Dike, having to fight my way to the Old Town, where I met king Foltest and was taken to his palace. Once there, I was told I needed to free his daughter from the curse again and find some way of ending the conflict between the Scoia’tael and the Order of the Flaming Rose, which turned Vizima into a war zone.
While I was there, I managed to miss the last gambling quest. The gambler was the king, but when he offered me a match, I declined, hoping I could save my game first. Sadly, after the conversation, he wouldn’t talk to me any more. I guess I deserved it for trying to “cheat”.
I went back to the Old Town, where I cleared the area and met Shani and Kalkstein again. After that, I had to go out to the swamp graveyard. This was the large area of the chapter, with several smaller locations to explore and outlying areas to visit. I spent about an hour there, solving various quests, including the one which involved saving the princess again.
That one was a bit confusing. I got locked in the crypt with her, so I had to either kill her or somehow free her from her curse. I didn’t want to kill her, so I opted for the other choice, but I couldn’t figure out what I needed to do. I though I need to somehow hide from her so I could leave combat and then meditate at one of the two campfires there, but this didn’t work. Eventually, I let her chase me around her sarcophagus for a bit and then the game finally revealed what I needed to do.
Why couldn’t I have just blown the candles out with Aard?
After leading her around long enough, one of the candles on her sarcophagus went out. After four more candles, it was finally over. I have to say, I did not like this mechanic. It wasn’t very obvious and it felt very clunky. Still, I did what I needed to do, so the mayor let me and the princess out of the crypt.
The second major quest I did in the swamp revolved around me gathering all the pieces I needed to craft the legendary witcher’s armor I found out about in the previous chapter. I had to bring all the pieces to the blacksmith at the Old Town, which got me what I’m guessing is the best armor in the game. It reduced all damage I received by a fifth and had three potion slots.
Raven’s Armor doesn’t just look awesome, it IS awesome!
Eventually, I cleared everything I could and went to the old manor, where the king sent me. This is where I found out the Salamandra laboratory was, with Azar Javed hiding inside. I met Yaevinn there, so he followed me in. After along trek through the catacombs bellow, I finally reached Javed and was able to fight him. He fell really fast, so it was a bit of a letdown. The monsters he threw at me before I could reach him didn’t fall nearly as fast, though, so there was definitely plenty of challenge.
Once all of that was over, I found out the leader of the Order of the Flaming Rose was behind everything. I got back to the city, which ended Chapter V and started the Epilogue. I fought through the streets, met some old friends along the way and finally got to the Order’s castle, where Jacques de Aldesberg was waiting. Before I could fight him, the teleported both of us to some icy area in the future.
Apparently, some sort of major cataclysm, called the White Frost was coming, so Jacques’ intentions were to create a new breed of human which could survive it. Of course, his intended results weren’t exactly what most people would agree with, so he definitely didn’t turn out to be a good guy, just a misguided crazy guy.
The icy area actually looks cool. I wish there was an actual chapter there.
What followed was the game and Jacques prolonging the inevitable. Instead of me just having the final showdown, I had to fight random battles on the long way to Jacques for about half an hour. It wasn’t hard or challenging, it was just tedious, so it kind off took away from the ending and the game. Eventually I got to him, beat him, and the game was won.
Oh, and it’s possible Jacques might be Alvin all grown up. The same amulet I gave Alvin was on Jacques body, except it looked aged, and Triss already said it’s possible Alvin could actually teleport through time. The game didn’t confirm it, but it’s a definite possibility.
In any case, the game is won.
Also, the final movie looks awesome. I wish there was more of that. In fact, I wish there was a full-length movie.
Well, it’s the last day of the year and I managed to squeeze in one more game before it’s over. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is completed.
I’m not done with the game, though. Even though I beat the last boss and gathered all the crystals, I still have loads of gems to collect. Luckily, the game gives a convenient “percentage completed” statistic, which now tells me I’m at 73% overall. I was in the higher sixties when I beat the last boss, so I did make some progress towards 100% completion, but it will still take a while. As a kid, I never managed to reach 100%, partially because I was a kid and partially because I didn’t have Internet access so I couldn’t “cheat” my way through by reading guides. I’ll try not to cheat my way through this time as well, but I make no promises. If it gets too dull, or I get stuck, I’ll find a guide.
As I said, I’m at 73%
I love the look and feel of the game. It aged really, really well and the graphics don’t look outdated at all, thanks to a great, timeless style. Most of the levels, I’ve enjoyed, but some of the last few got a bit annoying. The levels which contained bees got a bit tedious towards the end, but by the two most annoying levels were definitely the two where you used a jetpack to fly through a space station – “Rock It” and “Pack Attack“. These two were simply too different compared to the rest of the game. It was disorienting and annoying to play through them. I do get why they exist, though. The last boss uses the same control scheme, so the game had to get me used to it. I’d prefer if Cortex just didn’t use this mechanic, though.
In any case, Neo Cortex was defeated and everything was well and dandy, but as I said, I still have a whole bunch of gems to collect, which I’m guessing will allow me to destroy the Cortex Vortex and beat the third mad scientist, whose name I forgot. As of now, I got close to half of the grey gems, I think; as well as one of the several colored gems. I also managed to find two of the five secret levels.
And what about the Cortex Vortex? It’s still up there.
I’ll make use of the plethora of spare moments on train rides I have to complete the collection. The PSP is a great gadget for stuff like that, and Crash Bandicoot is an excellent series for short sessions. Well, the first three games of the series are.