Monthly Archives: August 2010

Summer of FPS

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I haven’t really played a lot of games recently, besides grinding through a few more series in Forza 3 and knocking off more puzzles in Picross 3D.

I did wind up caving in and buying Victoria 2, though. I was initially hesitant to; I liked the first Victoria but didn’t play it much since the UI is rather weak and POP management gets fiddly, but Paradox games are typically somewhat…troubled on initial release and need at least some patches and an expansion before they really shine. The word-of-mouth about V2 was very positive though, so I wound up getting it anyway, and it is indeed a pretty decent game. There are still some troubles with the economy and things like way too many rebels popping up mid-game though, so I’ve shelved it for now until we see how well the next patch helps.

Otherwise, I’ve been thinking of getting back to some of the FPSes on my backlog, to counterbalance the ultra-long RPGs. I can probably burn through a bunch of them fairly quickly and at least free up some drive space. So far I’ve played through Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, a remake of one of the more old-school shooters. The gimmick here is that there are tons and tons and tons of enemies in each level, keeping things at a frantic pace. Unfortunately it was a bit too frantic for me, and I turned the difficulty down one notch to Easy midway through. I could probably finish it on Normal, but it would take a ton of reloads and I just want to run through these games as fast as possible, not master them.

Roundup

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There’s a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff I’ve played recently that don’t really warrant their own articles:

I’ve played Gran Turismo on the PSP a bit more, but only to grind for cars. I’m not really enjoying the lack of structure to it, so I’m just trying to collect as many of my favourite cars as I can before GT5 comes out, since you’ll be able to import your garage from the PSP game. The best way to grind for cash is to do two-lap S-class races on the test ring, which gets terribly boring, so I don’t do very many at a time.

I’m still working on Forza 3 as well, getting closer to finishing off everything on the event list. I know there’s at least one more car pack on the way though, so I’m trying to leave some events open to use them in and focusing mainly on stock and restricted-model events for now. Along the way I finally saved up enough credits to buy the Shelby Daytona Coupe and Ford GT40 cars, which I’ve been after for quite a while now.

I played through Limbo on XBLA over the course of two days. A rather short game, but very atmospheric and a decent platformer. Well, until the end and the gravity puzzles, the solutions to which get a little hard to figure out… A good game, but maybe not for its full price.

And speaking of platformers, I fired up Super Mario Galaxy 2 for about an hour, getting the first 3 or 4 stars. It feels pretty much like the first one so far, the major new addition being Yoshi and the new abilities you get while riding him. I’m sure I’ll like the rest of it, if I can find time…

And I also played a bit of the Lego Harry Potter game on PC. I don’t know diddly about Harry Potter, but it plays a lot like the Star Wars games, with magic spells in place of the force. There is a lot more variety though, as you wind up with characters with multiple abilities and need to switch between them, and the ‘hub’ world is huge and has tons to explore and collect. It’s not very hard so far, but it’s enough of an advancement over the older games that it doesn’t feel stale.

Somebody Needs To Buy A Vowel

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I used to use Xfire to track my game playing time on the PC, but there have been some…shenanigans going on over there with its change in ownership, so I’ve dumped it for now. Instead I’m using a different program, Raptr, and there’s a card for it over in the sidebar.

The best part of Raptr is that it’ll track my usage of console games as well, and achievements on Xbox Live, Steam, and WoW, all in one place. Some consoles have to be updated manually, but it syncs and monitors what I play on the 360 automatically.

No Saunas, Though

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I just realized that I haven’t written about EQ2 in a while now, and in short: Steamfont. A couple weeks ago one of our party members was going to be a bit late, so the rest of us goofed off doing some quests in Steamfont for a little while. When he arrived, we figured that since we were already there, we may as well just keep on doing them and go check out the Klak’Anon instance as well.

It turned out to be more of a challenge than expected, with some spots where you encounter a ton of roamers, or waves of spawns, of things ^^^-rank and equal-level. I actually died a few times in there, and it took long enough that we had to spend this last week in there as well. We’ve still got one quest that’s sending us back in there, but hopefully it’ll be quick to finish off next week.

I’ve also gotten my illusionist up to level 54, mainly just farming and doing quests in Lavastorm. With his help, I’ve actually completed the Lavastorm collections and gotten a fairly nifty charm item…which I can’t wear until I hit level 55…

Whew

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I finished off Final Fantasy XII yesterday, and it was over a lot quicker than I expected. I popped back into the Necrohol to pick up the Zodiac Spear, get a few last things from the merchant there, and kill the second boss (didn’t bother with the Esper that unlocks), and then it was off to Bahamut, where it was really just a rapid series of boss fights.

Most of those fights were pretty easy, probably thanks in no small part to the Zodiac Spear. There was one spot in the final fight where my entire party got knocked out thanks to some really bad timing and a couple lucky attacks, and I had to bring in the backup characters to revive them. The backups were still only around level 16, but they lasted long enough to do their job, and the boss fell soon after.

So, that’s it for FF12, after around 90 hours total. There are still hunts and sidequests to do and Espers to collect and all that, but I think I’ve spent enough time on it already. The next RPG to finish off will be Persona 4, but I’m going to take a bit of a detour before that…

Damn Statistics

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I’m still trying to finish off Final Fantasy XII, but it’s taking a bit of grinding. It was a bit harder than expected to get the Sagittarius bow; I had to collect some loot items, but that required unlocking a new area, fighting a boss in the new area, and then repeatedly killing one monster there and traveling away and back again to force it to respawn numerous times until it finally dropped enough items. And then I had to open up some new areas somewhere else and grind enemies even higher level than me in order to get the drops for the best arrows for it.

I also figured I’d take a shot at getting the Zodiac shield, since the guide I was following said it had a 30% chance of appearing in a certain chest, though the chest itself didn’t always appear. After nearly a whole afternoon of farming it I started to wonder if something was wrong, and upon checking another guide, it said that it was a 1.8% chance of being in the chest, not 30%. That makes…quite a bit of difference. So, I’ve given up on that. I did manage to get two demon shields in the previous grinding though, and those are still quite good.

I’ve started working on the Necrohol, though it’s smaller than expected and shouldn’t take too long to finish off. The enemies in it are quite annoying though, taking quite a bit of magic to either burn them down quickly or heal the large damage they do. I’ve defeated one of the bosses, with two more to go, and next time I head in I’m going to have to check on that Zodiac Spear location…