Category Archives: Types

One Man Army

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I finished off that GTA3 mission I was stuck on, and it was easier with the tank, but it still took a number of tries as I kept getting hit with bad luck. The first time I almost made it all the way back to the drop-off point, except I slowed down for one tight corner and a police officer out of nowhere ran up and busted me. The second time, I hit a bump on the airport tarmac that was difficult to see in the dark and flipped the tank over. I got it on the third try though, after taking it a bit more carefully.

Then it was on to the final mission. I “failed” the first attempt, since my bulletproof Patriot got blown up and I wanted to keep it, so I restarted it and beat it on the second try. It was just a slog through a whole bunch of Colombians guarding the dam area, and the sniper rifle and rocket launcher let me pick them off without too much danger.

So that’s one GTA down, and just three more to go. Technically there’s still more to do in GTA3, but as I said I’m not going for 100% completion, and there are others to play. I might even have to skip one just to fit them all in, though I’m not sure which one I’d cut yet…

Rocket Launchers And Boats Don’t Mix

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It was back to missions in GTA3 today, and I started working on the ones based on the third island (though most of them actually start on the second). I finished off Donald Love’s missions, after which he mysteriously disappeared, and went back to Asuka’s again. Hers should be the last bits of the storyline, though I still have some optional gang jobs to complete, if I want.

I found the import garage on the third island, and managed to round up all of the cars for it fairly quickly since most of them were fairly common ones. I also happened to run across the rare ice cream truck I needed for the first import mission, and hurried it and the plane back to Portland to finish that one off as well. It was a bit odd “driving” the plane through the city streets…

And for now I’m a bit stuck on the second-last storyline mission, where I have to blow up a plane as it’s landing at the airport. I know what to do and can set it up with no problems, but I always seem to hit a bit of bad luck with something, either missing the plane, getting blown up on the boat, inadvertently raising the wanted level a bit too far and getting run over by the army, falling into the water as I’m trying to get out of the boat, failing to find a good car to hijack to return to the end point… It’s just a matter of trying, but I ran out of time tonight. Maybe I’ll try it with the tank instead, if I can get it over there quickly enough.

Aw, I Thought I Was Done With School

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I also finally started Disgaea 3 in earnest today. I’ve been hesitant to start PS3 games since I still don’t have a proper TV for it, but in this case the graphics are only on par with a PS2 anyway…

It’s much like the first two games, except now it’s in an (evil) school setting, though things are still roughly analogous. Instead of the senate, you have homeroom, etc. The plot involves Mao, the main character, trying to do well at school instead of slacking off like demons are supposed to so that he can gain the power of a hero and defeat his father the Overlord, because that’s what he saw in a comic book. Or something. The plot doesn’t really matter here; it’s just an excuse to set up the series of battles.

I did the tutorials in case there was anything new, and there are a few things: you can now lift and throw things like crates on the battlefield, and there are geoblocks instead of geoprisms, though the behaviour is similar so far. There’s also a new ‘magichange’ ability which turns ally monsters into weapons that humans can use, so monsters might actually be useful this time. (Well, they were before, but mainly for exploiting the leveling system…)

Skills are a bit different in that they’re bought and improved with mana points rather than gained through leveling, and you can also buy ‘evility’ abilities that provide various effects. There’s a classroom where you can adjust the seating plan, and where you put your allies affects the chances of team attacks and (apparently) the ability to learn skills from each other. There are also clubs where you can put your allies into different groups, giving them some more bonuses (kind of like the old mentor system, but less hierarchical).

Back in the missions, I captured a hero (though he wasn’t much of one), stole his title, and made him my slave. Mao then revealed that he’s out to defeat his father because…he smashed Mao’s video game that he had a 4 million hour save file on.

The Army Won’t Miss Just One

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I didn’t do many more missions in GTA3 today, but it was a worthwhile session nonetheless. I got the rest of the hidden packages, giving me nearly all of the weapons at my hideout (except the flamethrower). I helped the crooked cop escape to the airport, which got me a bulletproof Hummer-like truck as a reward. And I found a ‘toy van’ mission, where you send out little RC cars to blow up gang cars, though it was more just for fun than any actual reward.

But best of all, I finally got my hands on a tank. I followed the suggestions in a guide and stirred up trouble in a parking garage near a pay-n-spray, so I could ditch the police as soon as the tanks showed up, and could then hijack one at my leisure. It took a good half-dozen tries though, just due to various little spots of bad luck. I then repeated it but stayed at five stars to get an FBI car, turned both of them in at the crane at the docks, and that completed the emergency vehicles mission. I can now go over there and pick up a tank whenever I want.

I’m sure I’ll find uses for them…

I Gotta Get Me One Of Those Flying Cars

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Getting back to GTA3, I finished off most of the quests on Staunton Island. Only most because there’s one that’s fairly tough, so I’ll take another crack at it later. I wasn’t sent fleeing this time, at least.

Most of the missions weren’t all that notable except for the final one that unlocked the next island, where I had to pick up packages dropped by a plane. Picking them up got me a five-star rating, and I was bumped around like a ping pong ball by FBI cars while trying to get to the spray-n-pay. In one amusing moment, I was slowing down to turn in to where the spray-n-pay is, only to have two FBI cars come flying out of the alleyway and right over me.

Now that the next island is unlocked I can go get the rest of the hidden packages next, but that’ll be another day.

Damn Spammers

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I finished off Darwinia this morning, and it didn’t take as long as expected, though I did know that the Escort mission was going to be short. The remaining enemies were no threat, and although I only had to save 100 Darwinians, I wound up with 505 at the end.

The Temple level was then the final one, where I had to destroy boxes representing the spam emails that had the virus that corrupted the system in the first place. They complicated matters by sending out tendrils that would respawn enemies even on other islands, so that no area was completely safe.

But, it actually turned out to be a fairly easy level. The boxes were all fairly close to beam drop-off points, so I just rushed in some squads and dropped airstrike markers by the boxes, which were enough to destroy them. Presto, level completed in no time. I still went ahead and mopped up the remaining enemies scattered all over the place though, just to make it less anticlimactic.

And so ends Darwinia. Despite the rather easy win, it was still an interesting game in that every level introduced something new and unexpected, so it was never really boring. Beating it unlocked a level editor, but I don’t really have time to fiddle with it.

Purge The Red Heretics

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Tonight I finished off two more levels in Darwinia. In Pattern Buffer, I encountered evil red Darwinians for the first time, and I was not prepared for them as they flooded out of portals in waves. I hadn’t used Armor much in the previous levels, but it was essential here for keeping the red ones away from my spawning areas and mission objectives (they’d try to take back stations that I parked my own green Darwinians at).

And in the Biosphere level I had to take over a whole bunch of Darwinian generators, which started off under the control of the red ones. Armor proved useful here too, but the Darwinians themselves were also key to controlling areas. The generators were on a bunch of different islands, so I’d have to clear out a generator or two with some squads to establish a beachhead, park some Armor near them to keep the other red ones on the island from taking them back, take control of the generators with green ones, generate a bunch of other green ones, and then use squads to cover them as I swarmed the rest of the generators on the island.

I also started the Escort mission, but didn’t have time to finish it. It doesn’t look too tough, though; it’s just a bunch of clearing out, and the only annoying part was a bunch of hard-to-reach seed launchers. I snuck around and eliminated those, and the rest will be trivial. (I suspect that I wasn’t really meant to take out the launchers, so that I would have had to escort the Darwinians through the level while still fending off enemies spawned by the seeds.)

After that I think there’s only one level left, Temple.

Hand-Holding Little Green Men

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Getting back to regular gaming, I figured I may as well finish off what I started over the holiday weekend first. I only had time to do the Receiver level in Darwinia tonight, but it was fairly straightforward; I just had to clear enemies off of a bunch of islands and then guide some Darwinians over to them to operate the soul-catchers. The only real catch was that one island had those annoying ants, but I hit the goals before even reaching it, and there was a new big-headed snake enemy. It ate up a bunch of squads before I decided to try an Armour unit against it, and after getting one set up as a turret they went down quickly.

There’s at least three more levels to go (Pattern Buffer, Biosphere, and Escort), so it’ll probably take a few more days to finish it off. These later levels take longer just to do all of the guiding necessary.

Not To Be Confused With Pegging

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Though I shouldn’t be letting myself get distracted any further, I couldn’t resist getting Peggle Nights now that it’s out on Steam for really cheap. It’s more of the same of the original game, with one new character and green peg ability added, but the new maps are a nice change of pace.

I finished off the main adventure mode tonight, but my skills must be rusty as I only full-cleared one board, though I at least managed to ‘ace’ (a new award where you beat a certain score) four of them. The final master level is a bit more difficult than expected too, since nearly all of the pegs can only be reached indirectly.

Weekend Wrapup

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I was away for the last little while, but I still got plenty of gaming in. To quickly summarize:

I finished off the main story in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: EoT, after an number of plot revelations where I discovered that Dusknoir was actually a ‘bad guy’ (well, as bad as they get in Pokemon games), the time gear thief was actually working to stop him by placing the gears at a tower to stabilize time, and I was also from the future and the thief’s partner. A lot of the endgame was a series of linear slogs through dungeons, often without a full party, which worried me a bit since I didn’t have the opportunity to grind quests like I could back at the guild, but I managed to squeak through. The boss fight was tough since he dished out a lot of damage, and I was down to a single reviver seed, but the Smokescreen skill kept us from getting hit too often. There’s still other things to do afterwards, like opening up new areas, recruiting the rest of the Pokemon, and evolutions, but I don’t think I’ll have time for that.

I tried a game of Civ4: Colonization, but it was quickly apparent that it wasn’t really as much like base Civ4 as you might think, and I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t catch on to proper resource management and wasted a lot of effort there on things I wound up not being able to make, and gave up on that attempt. I love the Civ games, but I really need a good stretch of time where I can pay more careful attention to them.

I also restarted Darwinia (technically I had started it before, but didn’t have the save with me), and made it up to just past the mission where you first start to create armour. Most of the missions have been pretty easy so far, with the major difficulties coming from the ‘seed’ launchers that create new enemies (suicide rushes with squads seem to work best to wipe them out early on), and the damn ants. I wound up not even using the armour for the ants, and just used a bunch of squads, slowly inching them closer to the nests while they’re distracted picking up nearby souls, though even then it usually took a few attempts to finally lob enough grenades.

I finally played Depths of Peril, which is a rather interesting game in that it’s kind of like competitive Diablo. It has the same basic kill-loot-level-quest gameplay as Diablo, but you also control a ‘covenant’ where you can recruit other NPCs, and you have a house with a lifestone you have to defend. There are also a handful of other AI-controlled covenants, and they play the game much the same way you do; they have houses in town, you see them running around town and buying stuff from merchants and picking up quests, and you see them out in the combat fields, and they can actually wind up beating you to completing quests. You don’t want to let them do that, because they’ll earn influence from those quests and kills, and there’s a diplomacy aspect to it where covenants can form alliances, trade, or go to war and raid each other based on their influence and relationships to each other. You can win by either wiping out all of the other covenants, or merging them all into an alliance. In my game I wound up getting an alliance victory, mainly by letting them wipe each other out until only two others were left, and then buttering them up by giving them leftover items until they agreed to alliances.

The other new game I tried was World of Goo, a just-released puzzle game where you have a bunch of ‘goo balls’ that you can stretch out to form structures (think Meccano girders), with the goal of building up a structure that reaches a pipe on the map, with enough free-roaming goo balls left to satisfy a certain goal. The difficulty comes in the map layouts, terrain hazards, and the fundamental instability of the structure — the things you build have a very rubbery behaviour that leads to a lot of swaying, making it difficult to do things like build straight up. I’m most of the way through Chapter 1 so far, and each puzzle has been fairly different.

And the guys finally got together and for the first time we got a full band session going in Rock Band 2, unlocking a couple more achievements for me in the process. Oddly enough, playing with a full band actually seems to make things more difficult for me, since it’s harder to hear your own instrument among all the others.