Half-Cherokee, Half-Alien-Ass-Kicker

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I completed a couple more areas in Bionic Commando: Rearmed, but the difficulty is getting to me a bit; I just don’t have the patience anymore to sit there and redo a whole level a few times, I guess.

Oh well, having just completed a fairly lengthy RPG, I think I’ll go for something a bit…lighter for the next major game. I haven’t played a shooter in a while, and looking at my list of installed games, I think it’s finally time to give Prey a whirl. It received rather average reviews, but it was dirt cheap when I bought it, and it shouldn’t take too long to finish, so it can’t be too much of a waste.

It starts out in a fairly atmospheric bar, with all sorts of interactive bits like a TV, video games, and jukebox, and as the characters are introduced it’s obvious that the story’s going to involve the main guy embracing his native heritage and all that cliche stuff. And then the aliens arrive, abduct everyone, and I start out in the bowels of the alien ship with only a trusty wrench.

The alien ship has an interesting organic feel to it, with all sorts of bizarre creatures and living recharge stations and such. It does make it a bit hard to tell what’s actually usable or not at times, but it’s still a bit impressive. Moving around often involves portals. They’re not quite as advanced as the ones in Portal since they’re fixed in place and basically just teleport you between specific spots, but the effect of seeing through them is neat.

The first couple areas were fairly linear and easy, though there were a few unexpected surprises, like discovering that enemies can use the health ‘packs’ lying around as well. Or the gravity-generating surfaces that can have you walking on walls or upside-down, and occasionally fighting enemies on a completely different gravity plane.

And then I got ‘killed’, went to the “Land of the Ancients”, learned to use the spirit walk ability to get through obstacles, and picked up a bow, before being dumped back into the alien ship. That’s where I decided to leave off for the night, not yet having had a chance to actually use those abilities yet. From what I’ve heard they make the game a bit too easy, but that’s okay, I’m not really looking for a serious challenge out of it right now.

And It’s Convenient For Grabbing Beverages, Too

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Bionic Commando: Rearmed was released today. The original was one of my favourite NES games, so of course I had to pick this one up.

It’s a remake, but extremely close to the spirit of the original, with the same basic abilities, same overhead map, same level layouts, same mid-transit truck battles… There are various differences though, such as being able to switch weapons on the fly rather than picking one at the start of the level, the minibosses are completely different (they were rather lame in the original), some different obstacle types, you can grab barrels and enemies with the arm and toss them, and new enemy types (I think).

It was a rough start though, since it feels more difficult than the NES version, even on Medium. It seems to be easier to get hit while swinging around, enemies are alerted more easily and move around more, take more hits to kill, and their firing patterns are less predictable. I failed the first area and had to redo the whole thing three times before finally beating the first miniboss, but I think I’m more familiar with the controls and have gone through a few more areas now.

Never Trust A Guy Named Jacques

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After getting my spiffy new sword in The Witcher, I headed to the Old Manor area, where I found Azar Javed and chased him into the house. I had to work my way through the catacombs beneath it to get to him, including one tough fight against a giant crab he summoned, but eventually cornered him.

The first two attempts to kill him failed though, since he kept knocking me down, and I’d started out low on health since there’s no pause after a previous fight. Berengar showed up to help out and redeem himself, but he didn’t last long. On the third attempt I finally remembered to drink a Willow potion to protect me from stuns and knockdowns, and then he was much easier to kill. That wasn’t the end of it though, as I discovered that Jacques de Alsenberg, the Grand Master of the Order, had been working with him.

Yaevinn met me outside and we went to the boat landing to head back to Vizima, suddenly ending Chapter 5 unexpectedly and beginning the Epilogue. Unfortunately I hadn’t yet finished the armour quest or the huntsman quests for the silver sword, so I lost the ability to get them. Oh well.

In order to get at the Grand Master I had to fight my way through the city and sewers, with Yaevinn assisting me, and in the sewers I encountered a ‘zuegl’ monster that was a bit tougher than expected. It attacked with tentacles that had to be killed before the main body would emerge and could be attacked, but would then resubmerge and attack with tentacles again, and it took about half a dozen cycles before it finally died.

Finally, upon reaching the Order’s cloister and meeting the Grand Master… *endgame spoilers*:
Continue reading →

I’m Going To Have To Start Charging Her By The Curse

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I had to revert to an earlier save in The Witcher tonight, slightly before the end of Chapter 4, so I could get a devourer tooth before leaving the area. I also needed the opportunity to access my stored items and grab some herbs since this will apparently be the last chance I have.

The start of Chapter 5 was pretty much a constant stream of fights through the burning streets of Old Vizima and into the swamp area, with a slight pause to bonk an elf before I could truly start wandering around freely. In the swamp area I completed a couple more quests, became the fistfight champion, and spent some more skill points on pumping up the Igni spell, after hearing that it’s extremely useful at full strength.

I also found the crypt where the princess/striga sleeps during the day, went in to check it out, and got locked in there by Velerand, forcing me to deal with her. I went for the peaceful solution by waiting her out (taking only a few blows in the process), lifting the curse and curing her once again. I also found the second piece needed for the armour quest in the crypt.

And after returning to Old Vizima, I found the dentist and turned in the teeth I’d picked up along the way, completing his collection and getting the best steel sword in the game as my reward. I’m going to need it too, as there’s still Salamandra to deal with…

Fortunately, Witchers Are Patient

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It’s been half a year since I set it down, but I finally got back to The Witcher today. I was originally tempted to wait for the massive rework patch that’s due sometime soon, but that would also almost certainly require restarting the game (even patch 1.3 isn’t save-compatible, so I’m still stuck on 1.2), and I’m already too close to the end. I’ll probably buy the special edition retail package for the extra physical goodies and just hold on to that, to be played again sometime in the future.

I last left off near the start of Chapter 4, and I continued wandering around and exploring the nearby areas, discovering a village wrapped up in an upcoming wedding. Of course, there was some intrigue going on, and before long, a few deaths kinda derailed those plans… I eventually reconciled the dead sisters, and all was, uh worse in the world. Elves came and took the village hostage, Order knights attacked and I was forced to fight them, and Alvin vanished.

Oh well, at least I got a couple spiffy new swords, defeated a water god, and got to know the Lady of the Lake rather intimately along the way. It took a bit of getting used to the rhythm of combat again, and I kept getting killed by giant centipedes for a while, but I think I’m caught up now. It still crashes far too often though, even after increasing the user memory limit.

Now I’m headed back to Old Vizima for Chapter 5, which is currently burning due to a non-human rebellion. My goal is to finish off Salamandra for good but the king has also returned and wants my help in removing the curse from his daughter (who tried to kill me at the end of Chapter 3, remember) again.

Peach Owes Me Bigtime Now

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As expected, I finished off both Braid and Paper Mario: TTYD today. Some of the later puzzles in Braid are fairly devious, but I wasn’t stuck for too long on most of them. There was one though, in world 5-4, that I had to get a hint for from a forum. I would never have solved it myself, since I wouldn’t have even thought of the trick necessary. The final world was fairly clever, with one long ‘chase’ sequence that winds up being the game’s big emotional reveal.

And the ending is…rather difficult to interpret. You can read in all sorts of metaphors about loss and guilt and experience, depending on your own perspective, but I’m not really enough of a smarty-man to fully evaluate it.

Paper Mario: TTYD took a bit longer than expected, and I almost failed to finish it since I wasn’t really well-prepared enough. Grinding levels turned out to be extremely slow, so I just barged ahead with the final chapter. It was full of the requisite puzzles that require you to exercise all of the skills and use all of party members you picked up along the way, of course, but at the end was a sequence of boss fights that depleted a few too many of my healing items. The final fight was fairly long and had two stages to it, and I wasn’t very confident of success at the midway point since I was almost completely out of items, but I just barely finished the boss off, with stats low enough that I probably would have only survived one or two more rounds. I had a similar problem with the GBA Mario & Luigi game, where I have a save right before the final boss but still haven’t beat him in the few attempts I tried.

But it’s over, at least, even if it’s a fairly traditional everything’s-back-to-normal Mario ending.

I Hate My Shadow Self

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Not much gaming tonight as I got caught up in watching the Olympics, so I just popped into Braid long enough to pick up another five or so puzzle pieces. World 5 is tricky in that reversing time causes a shadow copy of you to appear and go through the same actions you just rewound, so you have to help yourself by performing the second part of what you want to do, rewind, and then go perform the first part and try to sync up with your clone.

The goal this weekend will be to finish Braid (shouldn’t take much longer), finish Paper Mario: TTYD (on the last chapter), and…okay I’m not quite close enough to finish The Witcher, but I should at least get back to it.

Edit: This entry seems to be attracting Google searches about defeating the World 5 level Lair, in which case I suggest: make the shadow do all the work.

Enough Of This And I’ll Be A Time Lord

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I finished off worlds 3 and 4 in Braid tonight, after a few more “aha!” moments. Platforms and enemies that seemed to be completely pointless at first glace often turn out to be the key to the puzzle in hindsight. I wish I could say more, but it’s a game that really should be played without any spoilers. Completing a world also lets you piece together a simple jigsaw puzzle for that level, creating scenes that will probably turn out to be meaningful once more of the story is revealed.

I also tried out the demo for Pixeljunk Eden on the PS3. It’s an…interesting game, even if I barely had any idea what I was doing. Too interesting for me, probably, as I never do well with games with weird control schemes like the tethered swinging around in this one.

Can I Rewind To Before Last Tuesday? I Want To Change My Lunch.

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My net connection was out yesterday, so I couldn’t catch up on the Rock Band releases until today, and I picked up the new songs this week (SOAD and some other random guys). Since they’re all ‘metal’, they were a bit more difficult than your average songs, and I failed to 100% any of them. I’d hate to see what they’re like on Expert…

And I also bought Braid on XBLA today. There was a lot of positive hype about it on the forums, and…they’re exactly right. It’s a profoundly different game in that it initially looks and plays like a Super Mario Bros-ish platformer, but at it’s heart it’s really a fiendish puzzle game. You have to collect jigsaw puzzle pieces in each level, but many of them require some trickery to reach, and the trick is that you can manipulate time and have to do so in all sorts of different ways.

You can rewind time, which is useful not just for undoing deaths and mistakes but is sometimes necessary just to revert back to a certain state once you’ve done something else, like picked up one of the keys or opened one of the doors that glow green (a sign that they’re unaffected by time effects). There are also world-specific effects, like one where time is affected by your own movement and only proceeds forward when you move right, and rewinds when you move left. There, you can’t simply wait for enemies to move out of your way because they won’t move until you move.

It’s a hard game too, where many of the pieces look like they’re totally impossible to reach, even after you’ve fiddled with the time effects for a bit. But that just makes it all the more satisfying when that “eureka!” moment hits and it suddenly makes perfect sense. I’ve fully completed World 2 so far, but the rest are going to take a bit more thinking…

The Moon Is Full Of Surprises

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I’m on to the last chapter now of Paper Mario: TTYD, as Chapter 7 turned out to be pretty short and I finished it off in one go tonight. It was a fairly simple revisit-each-previous-area quest to find someone, and then a trip to the moon to infiltrate the X-Naut base. The weirdest part here was encountering another Thwomp in the base, upon which a quiz show broke out…

Before going on, I think I’m going to grind xp a bit (I’m still a few levels below the recommended point), and do a few other things like climbing the wrestling ladder again and doing the Pit of 100 Trials, since I suspect this will pretty much be the point of no return.