Demonstrating Absurdity

After years of giving up, I've finally beaten Gustave's scenario. The damned Battle of South Moundtop drove me NUTS.

Looks like about 14 or 15 scenarios left before the end of the game. Then maybe I can beat some more SaGa games.

I have finally beaten this god-forsaken game. On the PSP, of all things, as well. Didn't even use the Blood Sword. After trying (and getting to at minimum the Jade Passage) on both NES and GBA, I finally bit the bullet and plowed through the PSP version.

It was the strangest thing, though. Frioniel, Maria, and Guy are doing maybe 200-400 damage per round each to the Emperor, and Leon is doing about 100. All of a sudden Leon starts breaking out with 1200-2000 damage a swing. I don't really remember buffing him with anything, but holy HELL (though I have an idea, but I never tested it in-game...if you Berserk one party member, does it increase their attack power more than if you Berserk'd the entire party?).

EDIT: Tested it out. Yep. That explains a lot.

Huzzah, all main-line single-player FF games complete!

Ok, so since I don't have an Xbox360, I never got the chance to play Braid, and there was a hell of a lot of hullabaloo about it way back when. Thus, when Steam finally offered it, I jumped on it. As for what I think...most people weren't too far off.

- First off, the game was average in difficulty. I love these kinds of puzzles (spatial/temporal), so I think I had a slight upper hand when dealing with the puzzles (The puzzle in the last level of level 6 was ingenious - the one with the upward firing cannon and you have to use the ring and reverse time to slow down the platform in order to simultaneously move the platform and catch the ring), so it might have given other people trouble, but it was mostly a matter of a minute or two to gauge what I really needed to do in order to get all of the puzzle pieces.
- The music was pretty awesome. I enjoyed every track that was played throughout, and the only reason I'd mark it down was that during rewinds and the like, the music adapted to the time change. I understand the need as far as gameplay, but the music was too good to just let it stop/rewind like that.
- The story was...meh. I can see the parallels to the atom bomb and all that that people are speculating about, and it's a decent guess, but for the most part the story seemed too pretentious and lackluster. I like the way the story was presented (books with actually pretty well-written exposition), but overall it was mediocre.
- Graphics were top-notch. I love watercolors in games (which is a good reason why I like SaGa Frontier II), and they fit perfectly.
- I finished the game in a few hours total, so it wasn't especially long, though YMMV.

Overall, it was worth $15. The people bitching about the price are crazy, and despite Blow's attitude towards the gaming populace (pompous), I feel that $15 is justifiable. If you haven't played it, it's worth a run-through!

Ok, invented a burger tonight. Turned out pretty well.


1 lb ground chuck
1 lb ground lamb
1 large tomato
1 large onion
red leaf or romaine lettuce
feta cheese
sour cream
1/2 c fresh chives
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Some sort of bread with a crust.
Beef broth

1. Mix the chuck, lamb, chives, Worcestershire sauce, and 1/2 c of sour cream. Form into patties.
2. Chop onions, saute until brown. Chop tomato into slices.
3. Heat beef broth. Dip the bread into the sauce (the side that will go on the inside of the burger). Do not soak the whole thing. Toast the bread in the oven.
4. Cook the patties, adding feta cheese and onions on top. Wait for cheese to melt.
5. Assemble. Spread sour cream on the top bun, then add some chopped chives. Then, from top down, lettuce, onion, feta, patty, tomato, and bun.
6. Nom nom nom


I might add some chopped olives to the burger mixture next time. Also, make sure you get good bread. I only had Kaiser rolls, so I had to do some damage control after dipping it in the broth ^^;

OK! So I'm about 20 hours into Fallout 3.

Let me get this out of the way first: this game IS Oblivion with guns. However, that's a great thing.

F3 takes everything TES4 did and improves on it. No more moronic level scaling of enemies (it's still there, sorta, but a lot more fair to the player), exploration actually reveals locations that are of some importance and are actually INTERESTING to explore, and NPCs don't en masse try to destroy you the moment you accidentally trip a lock.

This game is phenomenal. While it has a large difference from the previous series entries, this game most definitely deserves to be put in the box with the rest of the canon. The sheer amount of freedom you have in-game is staggering, and I'm very confident that I'll play this game more than once through, possibly three or four times, depending on how I want to build my character.

9.5/10. It's not perfect, but it's as damn near close as you're going to get. I'd squee some more about it, but I'm going to go play. :)

Alright, beat the six bosses that are necessary to open the path up to The Guy. I've beaten the Mine Cart level (there's always one) and am currently stuck at the boss. It's the dragon from Mega Man 2, except he also uses the Yellow Devil tactic of splitting into 6 parts and flying across the screen. Quite the pain in the ass, I must say.

Beat Kraid-gief and Mother Brain.

Kraid-gief was just a pain due to randomness. Every time he'd do a headbutt, a spike would fall behind me, and I'd just jump right into it.

Mother Brain...wow. If you've played Metroid, you know that the final boss is basically a giant head in a glass case, surrounded by tons of cannons and flying rings. You'll also remember that you have a health bar. Not so much in this case. It's pretty much the same setup, you just have to do it without getting hit once. That definitely took me awhile.

Next up, defeating these stupid couches that bounce me into the spikes so I can get on with the next two bosses - Dracula and Wart/Wily/Bowser.

So, I started playing I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game. And yes, it's freaking difficult. I mean ridiculously difficult. I'm talking I've-probably-died-about-a-thousand-times-literally difficult.

But it's frustratingly FUN. It's weird. You'll die hundreds of times because of the obvious spikes and fruit littering the levels, but then you'll get destroyed by something that comes out of the background that you didn't see before. You HAVE to memorize where the problems are. This is a huge throwback to the concept of Nintendo-Hard.

Anyway, managed to beat two bosses (Mike Tyson and Mecha-Birdo), and am working on the third (Kraid-gief). He's not really hard...just very random and I keep making really, really dumb mistakes.

Anyway, if any of you have patience, I'd recommend playing it. You can download it here.

June 28

1914 - Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip , the casus belli of World War I.
1919 - The Treaty of Versailles is signed in Paris, formally ending World War I between Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, the United States and allies on the one side and Germany and Austria Hungary on the other side.
1997 - Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield II - Tyson is disqualified in the 3rd round for biting a piece from Holyfield's ear.

1926 - Mel Brooks, American filmmaker
1966 - John Cusack, American actor

* Vidovdan, Orthodox religious holiday commemorating St. Vitus - I guess this is the only holiday.

So, I decided to play through Bioshock again, this time murdering all of the Little Sisters...yay!
I just got past Hephaestus, and am now in Olympia Square (or whatever the hell it's called).

Is it weird that I actually agree with Ryan on a lot of his points? I mean, maybe not his actions, but his general philosophy? I'm a misanthrope in general, but his outlook on how people should live is actually pretty appealing, as long as we were to skip the whole plasmid/little sister business. I wouldn't mind creating Rapture myself, or being part of such a society.

That, incidentally, is the reason I decided to play it again. The world of the game absolutely entrances me. If it were still a normal, functioning society, it would be fantastic. The environments and the philosophy behind it are amazing, and will keep me coming back. Fort Frolic, on its own, is superb.

So, I went to my second cousin's wedding this past weekend. Pretty neat, they met on eHarmony and all that. Good food, yadda yadda.

So anyway, I'm sitting in the pew next to my little brother, and they start playing the Prelude music for the wedding. Couple of songs go by, and then a peculiar sound floats across the room. I hear three notes, and turn to my little brother with a look of, "no...they wouldn't. They didn't...wow."

The pianist starts playing "To Zanarkand." The guys behind me actually realize it a few seconds after I do. I was really just in disbelief. One, cause I didn't know Dave was a gamer, and two, I wondered if his soon-to-be wife knew. Don't get me wrong, I love the song, and 99% of the people in that room had no idea what it was and just said, "it was so pretty!"

And, during the procession out, they played "Final Fantasy." That one took me a second, because it actually starts out sounding like something that could be played in a procession.

I almost expect to hear the Battle Fanfare when the bride and groom kissed.

And then later, at the reception, Aeris's Theme played.

Apparently they both wanted to add some of their own music, so he added FF stuff, and she added Harry Potter music. Heh.

Well, we got beat to it. Someone registered megamanathon.com sometime in the past week and got their site up and running, with the marathon scheduled for this weekend. Ah well. Maybe something else....


Final Fantasy? ;_;

Mega Man 1-7 complete!
Total Time: 12:04:34
Total Deaths: About 114 (I assumed 30 for Mega Man 1)

( Stats! )

Huzzah! Might get 7 taken care of later tonight if I feel so inclined.

December 9, 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O10pqWZPhiU

Alright, I should probably do a test run of these games as well, just to get a gauge on how long it'll take me to do them all in succession.
( Stats! )

I hope this ends up raising money. If it does, I'd love to do something like this each year.

DIABLO 3 IS ANNOUNCED.


I was totally right. FUCK YEAH!

Ok, beat Big Boss Hard...stats:

Time: 5:20:41
Kills: 0
Alerts: 0
Continues: 0
Life Items Used: 0

Titles Earned:
FOX-HOUND
FOX
HOUND
OCTOPUS
PIGEON
WOLF

Items Earned:
Type 17 Pistol
Desert Eagle (Long Barrel)
Thor .45-70
Solar Gun
Bandanna
Stealth Camouflage

Man, I hope the credits time doesn't count towards your total time. Damn you, unskippable thingies.

Dare I go after The Boss Extreme (Big Boss title, meaning under 5 hours, and 0/0/0/0)? I think I'll do a rampage run-through first. :D

Finishing the motorcycle sequence in Act 3 with one health bar, while not killing anything, is freaking insane. This...this is going to take awhile.

So far, so good.

As of the end of Act 1..

Time: 1:22
Kills: 0
Alerts: 0
Continues: 0
Recovery Items Used: 0

I made it past the B&B boss in Act 2, I'm saved during the part where you're following the footsteps. As far as I can tell, no alerts or kills so far...

Finally beat the game. Wow. That was certainly a masterpiece if I've ever seen one. The whole end sequence throughout Act V was awesome. And HOLY SHIT ending.