Heights To Which I Don't Even Bother Aspiring

In the XBLA release of Ikaruga you can download replays of any score on the leaderboards. The no.1 playthrough is truly something to behold. There is a lot to be learned there, but in my first several attempts at mimicry, the only thing I managed to do any more quickly and efficiently was get myself killed. In my own bumbling way of playing the game, I was able to get much farther, albeit racking up a much smaller score.

I'll never be a super hardcore endgame WoW player, and I have no delusions about this. All I hope for is to hit the cap and still be entertained there by PVP, and to be able to get cool items through that with which to own the opposing faction. Especially the Death Knights. Especially the Death Knights.

I played a bunch more WoW, in what has become my weekend (and weeknight) routine as of late. I finally blew off all of my Azeroth quests and leapt head-first through the Dark Portal, and man, am I glad. After a remarkably short time questing, I already have gear that is on a whole new level compared to what I had up to this point. The greens I'm wearing from Hellfire Peninsula quests are probably comparable to blues and purples from Oldworld. There were also a couple of really cool quests where I went on bombing runs from the back of a wyvern. The only bad thing about Outland so far is the much higher frequency of being ganked. I hate to think about Northrend. I suppose I will have to pick up Wrath soonish, though.

I also spent a couple of hours leveling my Mage alt with Lonesteban's own, a Rogue. For the time being we are both of a level. A mistake in quest reward choice left me with an offhand item and not being able to wield staff, so I trained sword and dagger skills and did my best to find a one-handed main weapon with a stat I could use. In the end I bought a sword with 2 stamina for 1 gold on the auction house.

Otherwise, I played some Wrecking Crew mode in RFG. I'm going for a couple of acheivements in that along with the ones for multiplayer. I don't know if I'll ever get all of the single player ones, though, unless a patch addresses some of the issues with a couple of them. I'm debating picking up the upcoming single player DLC pack, as well, but 10 bucks is kind of a lot in digitally distributed gaming these days.

Time Flies

Has it already almost been a week? The big thing over this past weekend was some XBLA stuff, some Rock Band, and gearing up for MGS2. A lot of that time was spent on Puzzle Quest alone. I'm determined to play that game all the way through to the end. I have no clue how far into it I might be, though. It's just too good of a game; that devious combination of puzzle and rpg tropes is the definition of addicting.

I flew a few missions more in Ikaruga, too. I've made it up to around halfway through the 3rd level (on easy with max lives and continues). That game is beautiful in it's simplicity, and it looks great in high-def. Not a bad deal at $10, either.

I found Monster Hunter Freedom for PSP used, and in mint condition, for $20 at EB the other day, so I decided to give it a whirl. My first impressions are "someone please tell me how to play this game." A couple of times now I've gone off on my first quest for the hunter's guild, which from what I can make of the briefing, is just a test to see if you can either survive a trip out into the wilds or if you can actually find this cryptic artifact that I'm assuming actually exists, not having seen any evidence that would lead me to actually believe in it. I've just wandered around so far, attacking random things and wondering where the hell this "paws pass" or whatever it is I'm looking for is. My PSP battery died halfway through my morning commute today, and that didn't help matters.

My first couple of hours with Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance were spent reading the 3 'books' of back story in the "special" menu of the game. It's interesting how those are set up. There is meant to have been a book published by one of the minor characters in the first MGS, detailing the behind-the-scenes happenings in and around the events at Shadow Moses. The first article of interest is a mock book review of said book, the second a mock-noir recounting by a bumbling journalist of his own investigations into the incident and the book (kind of humorous), and the third is the 'book' itself, which reveals a few previously unknown facts about the Patriots, a guy called Richard Ames, and what really happened in those islands north of Alaska's Fox archipelago. Altogether this stage-setting amounts to about 500 'pages' (a paragraph or so each). I try not to dwell on what my reading all of this says about myself.

As far as the game proper, I've made it through the Tanker chapter, and about an hour or so into the Raiden section of the game. I've only played through MGS2 once in the past, so my memories of the story are nebulous at best. I'm thoroughly enjoying it to this point.

1998 2: 2008

I guess I have a thing for 10-year-old games at the moment. I've been re-playing Metal Gear Solid from the collection I recently picked up. I had only planned to re-play MGS2 as a refresher before 4 comes out in June, but I figured I might as well hop in at MGS1 considering the last two games in the series I played were MGS3 and Portable Ops (and, as anyone reading this no doubt is aware, the series chronology goes: 3>PO>1>2>4).

This is my fourth or fifth time through the game, counting solo and co-op (passing the controller back and forth with a friend) playthroughs. The game holds up amazingly well, especially with the texture smoothing the PS3 can do for it. There's also an option to stretch the image to 16:9, but while that has worked for me in the past with GTA: San Andreas, it makes MGS look really off. Most amazingly, though, is how the actual gameplay holds up. I keep trying to figure out if this is a sign of one amazing game or a whole industry's stagnation.

At first it was a bit jarring not to be able to pull off Metal Gear moves I've become accustomed to, like the somersault, rail-hang, or box-climb (let alone first-person aiming). Before long, though, I was once again used to the relatively simplistic control scheme of the original MGS. Even after all this time, the game feels nearly perfectly executed, including the cut-scenes. The character models are now overly blocky, but none of the impact is lost. Truly an amazing feat if there ever was one. And David Hayter just sounds so good. Also, the hand-drawn character portraits present in the codec calls are hella cool, and they should have stuck with those throughout the series.

I'm just past the torture sequence, at around 6-and-a-half hours in, which is somewhere around half-way if I remember correctly. I know I still have the Hind (D), Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, and the Rex/Liquid fights to go. I'll probably finish the game this week and move on the part 2 shortly.

More contemporaneously, I've picked up Ninja Gaiden DS, and it's awesome! This is hands-down the best gameplay use of the stylus I've seen yet. Admittedly, I've not played Zelda yet, but all indicators point to Ninja Gaiden one-upping it in the control department. Ryu controls smoothly and swiftly outside of battle, and quickly and precisely in battle. Like any good ninja, his sole purpose is to flip out and kill people.

This game was created expressly for the DS, and it really shows. Even in DS-as-book orientation, the game just feels awesome to play (even for a lefty like myself, thanks to the flip option). Stabbing and jabbing with the stylus is like second nature, and jumping maneuvers like the Flying Swallow or Izuna Drop also feel great to pull off by flicking the stylus up to jump, then across or up again to perform the attack. When I think of the feeling of playing this game, there's only one other game that comes to mind with such a smooth sense of fighting and mobility, and that's Symphony of the Night, and that's a hell of a game to draw comparison to.

Briefly, I downloaded the demo of Ikaruga on XBLA, and it's pretty cool (and tough). I also popped in Rock Band for a bit, in perverse observance of Europe's plight with this game. And finally, I hit up Puzzle Quest for a few minutes. They really should have created unique quests in that game for each of the character classes. I'm so far in with my Wizard that it'd be a huge waste of time to start over with another character (but I have anyway, once before), but I'd like to try out other classes, such as the 4 new ones they are adding in the ex-pac just over the horizon.