Lost

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As promised, I dusted off my Final Fantasy XII save game (idle for over three years!) and played it for a bit tonight. And had no idea what to do.

I found myself in the town of Bhujerba and near a mine and popped in there, and saw that there were still areas of the map darkened, so I figured that I still had some exploring to do. But, after wandering around for a while, those areas turned out to be unreachable because of barriers. Clearly, I need to do something else first, but I couldn’t find it in the mines. At least I got my main characters from level 14 to 16.

Back in town I wandered around a bit and upgraded a couple of pieces of armour, but otherwise I’m pretty much maxed out on available weapons and armour. I finally discovered that apparently the Marquis was expecting me and I had the option of visiting him when I talked to some guards. Doing so triggers a cutscene so clearly that’s a path forward, but it was getting late and I’ll leave that until next time.

RPGMania

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Hmm, I feel like playing an RPG now, which ones do I need to finish off…

  • Oblivion
  • Persona 4
  • Final Fantasy XII
  • Gothic 1/2
  • Drakensang
  • Dragon Age
  • Atelier Iris
  • Final Fantasy Tactics
  • Eternal Sonata
  • Divine Divinity
  • Neverwinter Nights
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2

Yikes. And that’s not counting the ones that I haven’t even started yet, but I don’t want to make my problem even worse…

Time to do a bit of trimming. Eternal Sonata can go since I wasn’t really getting that into it. A unique setting and story, but the combat mechanics didn’t really ‘click’ for me. I may as well abandon Atelier Iris since I own a couple of the later games in the series so I may as well play them instead. I didn’t make it that far into Oblivion and I need to redo the research about mods for it, so I’d want to start over anyway. In NWN I was still in the main campaign and it’s widely criticized as a waste and that I should play the expansions instead, but then I’d basically be starting over. And FFT is on the PSP so I’ll probably keep it for when I’m on the road.

So, of the remaining ones, I think this will be my preferred ordering for finishing them:

  • Final Fantasy XII (want to get it out of the way before FF13)
  • Persona 4 (really good, want to see it through)
  • Dragon Age (also really good)
  • Drakensang (still near the start, curious about what’s next)
  • Gothic 1/2 (good, but getting old)
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2 (decent so far, but supposed to have a weak end)
  • Divine Divinity (supposed to be worthwhile, but it is fairly old)

Getting through seven RPGs will still take a while, though, and I still really want to play some others like Mass Effect 2 so they might wind up sneaking into the list.

Shocked!

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I put in a lot of time over the last three days into BioShock 2, and just finished it off tonight. My original scheme of playing it on hard with the Vita-Chambers turned off was turning into a grueling slog though, so I wound up turning it down to medium.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. The plot was familiar-feeling, with an extremist ideologue villain and someone with a dark past and of questionable trust helping you along, but it added enough twists to keep it interesting. The ending felt like a satisfying payoff, even without a traditional Big Bad Boss Fight. There were some pretty good set-piece fights and escape sequences, though.

Combat was a lot more chaotic than it was in the first one. I preferred the drill and electric shock combo a lot in the middle sections, but fights became just a frenzied blur. Towards the end I started relying on the machine gun and rivet gun along with the bee swarm most of the time, for a more traditional ranged fight. It worked well enough that I never really bothered to try out the other weapons like the spear gun and launcher very much.

Of course, now I should play through again on hard to get the achievement for that (now being free to use the Vita-Chambers) and see what happens when you go the evil route. But…time is limited, so I think that’s enough BioShock 2 for now.

But In The Meantime…

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We had our usual Thursday EQ2 group, and wound up finishing off a handful of the longer quest series in the Everfrost zone. We’ve still got the final step to go in one of them though, since it requires clearing an area until a named goblin spawns, and it was getting late and we knew it could take a while and be rather boring. Maybe next time.

And I also picked up a little indie game called Eversion on Steam, based on the word-of-mouth on some forums. It’s a Mario-esque platformer, but the twist is that you can trigger certain ‘eversion’ points on the map to alter the atmosphere of the level, which affects how the enemies behave, which barriers become passable or impassible, and how you need to go about collecting gems on the level. It’s really short and I already got the basic and third endings for it, but it was a decent amount of fun for the cost. There’s a second ‘good’ ending if you collect all the gems, and I’m at something like 201/240, but some of them are tricky enough that I don’t really feel like spending a lot of time trying for them.

Okay, That’s Enough Cars

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I played a handful of more races in Forza 3, and wound up spending most of the money I’d accumulated in order to get that achievement for owning at least one car of every manufacturer (unfortunately the expensive DLC ones count), so I won’t be getting that Shelby Daytona Coupe anytime soon. Ah well.

I also went back and started playing Project Gotham Racing 4 again. I got frustrated with it a long time ago when I couldn’t beat the invitational event for the Impreza 22B, but I put some more time into the career mode and enjoyed it a lot. I eventually got back around to that same invitational, and after what felt like 20+ tries, finally won that damn Subaru. It was well worth it though, as it’s probably one of the best cars in its class for the game.

The drifting-related events were still frustrating me a lot though, especially the Time-Vs-Kudos ones, so I wound up dropping the difficulty down to easy soon after. That made a lot of the more straightforward races a bit *too* easy, but I just wanted to have some fun, and as I made my way up the rankings some of the Master-level events were still a bit close. Those A-class cars are a handful to control. I eventually hit rank 1, and although there are still a bunch of other ‘arcade’ events to do, I think that’s all I’ll do in PGR4 for now.

I’m kind of a bit tired of racing games now, so I think it’s time to get back to other genres for a bit. Next up, finishing Bioshock 2…

Newer

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But that’s not all that’s new…

There’s a flood of new racing games, and I also picked up ModNation Racers for the PS3. It’s much more Mario Kart-like with the arcadey handling, twisty tracks, shortcuts, random powerups, etc. The big hook for it is that you can customize things though, and there are already plenty of them (mostly well-known characters of course) being shared online. For your racer and vehicle, it’s purely cosmetic, but you can create tracks as well and I’ll have to check a bunch of them out.

Single-player also seems to suffer from the unfairness of becoming a target for attacks 10 feet from the finish line, dropping you back three places. Fortunately you can spend boost power on shielding yourself, but the timing is tricky. The AI is tough, and the passing requirements for unlocking items for modding are even tougher, so completing the single-player campaign isn’t going to be easy. Unfortunately, online has its problems too. Lobbies have to fill up from scratch with every new race, meaning you often only get half the full complement of 12 racers. And you have to go through annoyingly-long loading screens as you toggle back and forth between the online race, the ModSpot, the race, the ModSpot…

I also picked up 3D Dot Game Heroes out of curiosity, and it’s pretty much a clone of Zelda: Link To The Past, except in a 3D voxel-like presentation. There’s kind of a cheeky self-awareness to it all, but otherwise it hasn’t really had much of an effect so far, so it pretty much remains a Zelda-alike. I’ve only done the first temple (of six) so far, which is pretty much just part of the tutorial.

And as if I didn’t have enough racing games already, I wound up picking up Gran Turismo for the PSP when it was set at a new ‘classic’ pricing on PSN. It definitely feels like Gran Turismo, but I’m still struggling with the controls a bit. Using the dpad leads to fishtailing like crazy (though it’s better for minor adjustments to straighten yourself out), and with the analog nub I find myself lurching around corners trying to find the right amount of steering. Maybe it’ll just take time to adjust after playing Forza 3 so much lately.

The challenges are pretty much like the license tests of previous games, but the passing requirements are pretty fair and I’ve managed to get at least silver on all of them so far, and a few golds. No reward cars though, just cash. Other than that, you just pick a car and track and race a random selection of AI cars. (There’s a ‘drift mode’ too but I haven’t tried it yet.)

It’s not entirely what I’d hoped for, but it might be fun in small bursts, and it’ll get me a head start in GT5.

New

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Wow, there’s a whole bunch of new stuff to catch up on.

I picked up Blur for the 360, since it looked interesting and I’m winding down on Forza 3. It’s basically like a Mario Kart-style racer, with powerups you pick up and fire at other racers, but on realistic cars and tracks. You can also use powerups to block incoming attacks instead. So far I’ve found the single-player game a bit frustrating since it seems like so much depends on random luck; I can come in second place one race, and then 18th the next, and I can imagine it getting frustrating trying to hit the specific advancement requirements.

In online multiplayer though, Blur is a blast. It doesn’t even really matter where you eventually wind up placing, with 20 players in total there’s plenty of action going on no matter where you are. There’s a level-based progression system that unlocks new cars and ‘mods’ that affect the rules slightly, and I’m up to level 13 (of 50) so far.

While picking up Blur, I noticed that Picross 3D was out. I played the hell out of the original DS Picross, so I had to pick this one up. It’s the same basic idea, expose the image within a grid by carving out unwanted blocks, but this time it’s a sculpture in a 3D block. The information you use is fairly different though, as you’re only told the total number of blocks to keep in a given row, how many groups the blocks are broken into, and not all rows are numbered. There’s a fairly lengthy tutorial that explains it all though, and I’ve perfected the Easy puzzles and just started in on the Normal difficulty.

And it’s not so new, but a fair bit of stuff has happened in EQ2 as well. I played my illusionist around the Everfrost area for a while last weekend, getting him 5 levels and burning up all the saved-up vitality xp. My mystic cleared out a bunch of the monster-farming quests in his log and then in the weekly group we went and finished off the Golden Efreeti Boots quest. Or the rest of the group did, anyway — I screwed up and missed a turn-in when we were in the Temple of Sol Ro, and then got wiped out by a level 70 dragon while trying to get back to it. I didn’t want to waste their time, so I told them to forget it and I’ll finish it myself at some later point, when everything’s lower-level.

Junkie No More

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I just got around to changing my Xbox Live gamertag and shall now be known as HalibutBarn instead. MS has been rather oversensitive lately about ‘inappropriate’ names, so I figured I’d better change it before I suddenly wind up suspended for being a drug reference or something.

I finally started Bioshock 2 a little while ago, and this time I’m playing on Hard and going for the achievement for not using any Vita-chambers. So far the main struggle has just been to avoid running out of ammo and money, which are in scarce supply. Otherwise, it’s still a pretty familiar-feeling game and that’s perfectly fine considering how good the first one was. I’ve only made it to Pauper’s Drop so far, but I’ve fought one each of a Big Daddy and Big Sister, and the fights were fairly tense. The Big Sisters in particular are going to be tough, being as quick as they are.

In EQ2, we’ve mainly just romped around Everfrost some more for the last couple weeks, finally reaching the NE and NW corners and finishing a handful of quests, including the HQ for Tobrin’s Mystical Eyepatch. I also did a bit of soloing on my own to clean out some of the simpler quests and pick up collection items.

The city of New Halas was also finally released, and I immediately moved my shaman there to be with his barbarian brethren. It’s a really nice city too, with almost everything within fairly easy reach (the dock is a bit farther away though) and the tradeskills all clustered near the bank. The housing is really nice, and I finally upgraded from the starting apartment to a five-room house, which feels a bit sparse even with 160+ items in it now. I also started up a new dwarven warlock character, but haven’t gotten very far into the Halas newbie zone with him yet.

And I’ve played a bit more of Forza 3, but I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I was before, as now I’m pretty much just trying to grind credits and fill out the event chart. Maybe I’ll look at something like Blur next…

Getting My Mac Wet

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It’s been a while since the last update, so there’s a bit to cover…

In WoW, I finally saved up enough Champion’s Seals to buy the Argent Hippogryph. I was initially thinking of going for the Sunreaver Dragonhawk, but then someone pointed out that it doesn’t actually land on the ground and that suddenly seemed disconcerting. I then started saving them up for the other minipets and mounts, but in the meantime I managed to find all of the Horde tournament minipets on the AH for fairly cheap (it’s easier to grind for 300 gold than it is for 40 seals), so I’m not sure what I’m going to save for next. The warhorse, perhaps…

I got my mage to level 40, enabling him to work on tradeskills again, and soon had JC maxed out at 300 and enchanting near-maxed at 296. It did cost about 700 gold in materials that I didn’t already have on hand, though.

And I found a few more soloable quests in Icecrown that must have been opened up by raised faction levels. I now only need 14 more to hit Loremaster.

Steam finally came out for the Mac, and I already have access to a handful of Mac versions of games I previously bought. For now I’ve only downloaded Toki Tori, Civ 4, and a few Popcap games like Peggle, though.

In EQ2, we did the Temple of Cazic-Thule last week. It’s kind of an annoying place since there’s plenty of roamers that lead to long strings of fights, and a lot of grindy quests, but we did manage to complete the heritage quest for the Screaming Mace in there and I picked up a couple of item upgrades. There’s also an inner instance, and we worked our way to the top of it only to get squashed by the boss in no time flat. It’s frustrating that you immediately get locked out of it for 18 hours after only a single attempt.

Last weekend we then tried the Tower of the Drafling in Rivervale and cleared it out pretty easily, and also completed the Hierophant’s Crook and Bone Bladed Claymore HQs. And then this last Thursday we went and explored Permafrost for a while, discovering a bunch of quests and uncovering a fair chunk of the map, but there’s still a lot of stuff left partially-done and we haven’t seen any of the dungeons there yet.

And finally, I’m essentially “finished” Forza 3 for now after completing the R2 and R1 championships and getting the Season 6 achievement. There’s still plenty of races to do as I’m only around 28% completion according to the stats screen, but I’ll work on them occasionally on a more casual basis.

I also picked up the most recent exotic car pack, and the Mosler MT900S is extremely nice, and easily my favourite R2 car now. And I also discovered that the AI isn’t very good at oval races, with the R2 speedway series involving some rather impressive pileups…

One More

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On Friday we had an impromptu last-minute gathering to do the Amphitheatre of Pain ring event in Zul’Drak, and that got me the last few quests I needed for the Zul’Drak quest achievement. That just leaves Icecrown to go now, though it’s going to be the hardest since it’s mainly group quests left, and as the highest-level outdoor zone in the game, they won’t be duoable like all the other zones.

I also played my mage a fair bit and got him up to level 39. I’m currently doing quests in Dustwallow Marsh, but it’s an annoying place for a mage since you get attacked by roaming crocs and spiders constantly, when as a mage I prefer to launch fights from afar.

I finally got FUEL installed and working now that they’ve added more serial keys on Steam, and spent a little while doing a few races, roaming around the open world, and playing online a bit with a friend. It was fun for a little while, but I can see how it could get a bit boring and repetitive. Fortunately it was only $4.

And speaking of racing games, I completed a handful of series in Forza 3 as well, putting me partway into the R2 championship and at driver level 40. I’ve also rediscovered the Impreza WRX STi as one of my favourite class C cars, as it made the Fujumi Kaido point-to-point races much easier.