143 Hugs
I quite honestly forgot to write something yesterday. Whoops! Streak broken.
So good news of the day, Dead Space 2: Severed DLC coming March 1st for $7. I think that's a very reasonable price for more single player content and six weeks after release is a good timeframe. The bad news is that I probably won't get around to picking up a copy of Dead Space Extraction before it's released. Oh well. I still want to play it.
I'm still slogging through Just Cause 2. It's starting to get a little boring. I played AaaaaAAAAaaaaaAAAA!! A Reckless Disregard For Gravity. What a strange game. It's just about falling past buildings and near buildings and giving people the finger. It's really kind of impossible to effectively describe. I don't think it's even possible to fully represent with a video. It's also score based, and I am awful at score based leaderboard games. Just awful. But it's fun.
I really need to wrap up Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Maybe tomorrow.
CHAOS!!!!
The weather was nice today, until about 11am. No wet asscrack, but I got plenty dirty, wet, and cold. For what? Two of my five classes felt like a waste of time today.
I stayed up too late last night playing Just Cause 2. This game is bonkers. The world map is INSANELY huge. There are tons of vehicles, cities, villages, and collectables. Good god, collectables everywhere. There are a ton of things that are made to explode and you're encouraged to blow them up but they also attract the attention of the local military. Even when I'm traveling from place to place and trying to get to a new mission, I simply cannot resist blowing up everything that will blow up. This often results in me dying and respawning miles away from where I was trying to go in the first place.
Tomorrow is a light day. I'll be happy if it's a drier day.
Welcome to Shanghai
Today was entirely unproductive, unless playing video games is productive.
I finished off Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. It was a relatively interesting game, if a little repetitive. I beat it in less than five hours, and at least one of those hours was spent between bashing my head against the frustratingly difficult "El Capitolio" and the ridiculously long time it takes between starting the game and getting to the menu. It's painful. The game uses Games for Windows Live, which I don't have a problem with because I loooooove cheevos but you start the game, then it logs you into GFWL, then it shows the developer and publisher, then it finds your save game and notifies you that it has been loaded, THEN it starts the intro movie. You can, thankfully, escape out of it, but the time from game start to menu is easily a solid 30 seconds.
But that's just me bitching. The game moves fast. Really fast. You're escaping from prison, you're robbing a bank, you're fighting in a nightclub in Japan, you're overthrowing the Cuban government, you're assaulting a hacienda in Venezuela, then it's over. The AI, friendly and enemy, is rather dumb and the enemies are fragile so it's much easier to use the friendly AIs as a distraction and then clean up all the enemies yourself. The characters, the titular Kane and Lynch, are a traitor and psychopath respectively. There's not enough time spent with them to really flesh them out. The production quality is pretty good and it feels very cinematic but the graphics aren't exactly awesome. I only spent $5 on it so I feel like I got enough for my money but if I had spent a full $50, I'd be a little upset. I guess there's more of the game tied up in the multiplayer, but I doubt anyone's playing.
After a relatively brief break, I started into Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days and just finished it. I was thrilled to find that Io Interactive did not punish me with another insane game start to menu time. This one is even shorter, clocking in at less than four hours! The game changes a little, and it is an improvement. The graphics look fantastic, and the game's viewpoint is from the perspective of someone who is chasing Lynch with a digital camcorder. There's a lot of shakey-cam and a lot of video distortion from lights and movement and damage and it's all rather beautiful. Most of the shootouts take place in more enclosed areas and the environment takes believable damage with every shot.
If I were to describe the difference between the first game and the second, I'd say that Dog Days is a tighter experience. Whereas the first game gave you a degree of control over friendly AIs, this one doesn't. You play as Lynch and Kane just kind of does his own thing. I can't say he or the enemy AI was as dumb this time around. Both will do their best to outflank each other. The levels themselves are often in pretty cramped quarters.
There are no grenades this time around either, and the weapons aren't as accurate. They mostly consist of submachine guns, shotguns, pistols, and the occasional rifle. There are opportunities to toss a can of gas or fire extinguisher at enemies and blow it up, but those can't be carried around forever. So cramped quarters, bullet-hose guns, and no grenades resulted in a lot of standoffs where you're just hiding behind a box, waiting for the bad guy to pop his head out for a second and then spraying bullets at him and hoping he died.
There are no intentionally funny moments in either game but there's a humorous moment in Dog Days. The two have been tortured by Chinese mafia and are running naked through the streets of Shanghai in the rain. There's a shootout in an amazingly good looking McDonald's-esque fast food joint. So there's a moment where two middle-aged men, naked, wet, and bleeding, are exchanging gunfire with a Chinese SWAT team while taking cover behind the counter at a McDonalds.
Between the two, I enjoyed Kane & Lynch 2 more, despite the short campaign. I only paid $5 for it also, so I feel like I got enough out of it, but once again I'd be upset if I had paid the full $50.
Tomorrow it is going to rain and I have all five of my Monday classes to attend. I am not looking forward to spending the day with a wet asscrack.
Revanant v. Mancubus
What to say about today? I stayed up too late last night playing Doom 2. I have to beat that new episode "No Rest for the Living" in order to unlock the Doom Marine avatar costume. It's beautifully designed and plays great. I'm often overwhelmed by enemies but I never feel like I'm losing because it's cheap. I'm losing because I'm playing dumb or not paying attention. I love it and hate it at the same time when they toss me into a fight against an archvile, four revenants, 8 barons of hell, and a ton of demons.
Monster infighting has become such an overlooked aspect of first person shooters. It doesn't even have to do with the number of enemies on screen, though that does factor in. I'm pretty sure there's no infighting at all in Duke3D, and modern shooters have abandoned it either through superior enemy AI that doesn't shoot each other on accident, or ignore it entirely.
A big reason why you can fight against overwhelming numbers of enemies in Doom is because it's really easy to play them against each other. It's a vital mechanic to the game, even. If you were expected to beat "Tricks and Traps" by fighting through that entire room full of barons of hell and the cyberdemon, it'd be basically impossible! The only way to win is to let them kill each other off then cleanup the survivors. Arguably, the best weapon in Doom is monster infighting.
I suppose I lament it's loss in other games, but I might prefer it that way because it is one of the reasons why Doom is unique.
Equality-eh
After a long day of classes, I had to get out to the airport to take a test and do another flight. This resulted in me not getting back to my apartment until 5pm. I didn't get a ton of sleep last night, so I took a nap. At 6:30. And woke up around 8:15. Whoops.
Doom 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. Easily in my top 5 ever. I've been playing Doom 2 since it was released. I can play and replay it over and over and I still love it. But I hate hate hate hate hate revenants. They are the worst. Even worse than archviles, worse than pain elementals. Worse than fighting a cyberdemon with just a shotgun. Whenever I hear that high-pitched shriek, alarms go off in my head.
One gun
Thursdays are nice relaxing days, which is good because tomorrow and Saturday are going to be relatively busy! I went to the airport today but it was entirely too windy to fly so my instructor and I just went over some stuff. In an effort to wrap this up sooner than later, I'm going in tomorrow and possibly Saturday morning to get some more flights in.
Today I played some Front Mission Evolved. It is nothing like any Front Missions I had played before. This one is not a turn-based strategy, it's a 3rd person shooter. It's more like Armored Core than Front Mission. But that's what I wanted, I'm way better at Armored Core than Front Mission. It has a lot of tiny hidden objects, which is somewhat irritating the completionist in me because I know I'll never find all of them. The action is fun, and the controls are responsive, if a little wonky. They're re-mappable but I'm lazy and won't bother.
I also wrapped up my second playthrough of the first Dead Space. It was a new game+ on normal difficulty that I started to clean up some cheevos I missed out on the first time around. I've managed to get all of them except for the one involving that annoying turret sequence, one gun - which requires playing through the whole game using only the plasma cutter, and the one for beating the game on the highest difficulty. Other people have combined one gun with highest difficulty, I'm not sure I can manage that but I'm going to give it a shot.
I haven't decided if I want to dive into another playthrough of Dead Space 2 yet. I'd be going through on Zealot difficulty (just under Hard Core) to clean up a bunch of weapon-based cheevos that I missed out on. I think I'll give it a little while before I get back in, maybe just before the DLC is released. I definitely want to get Dead Space Extraction before that DLC arrives.
Stunt position
It's the middle of February and I'm going to classes in shorts and a hoodie and before noon the hoodie is too much. I love riding the Sekai around campus. Maybe it's the different body position. I just feel so lithe snaking my way through crowds, going entirely too fast. Like a jaguar on wheels. I got a 78/80 on my first law exam so I treated myself to some cheap sushi. I was going to get the sushi regardless, but the good exam score makes a good excuse.
Steam is a bastard. This is Square Enix week apparently, and they're doing a daily deal on games. Yesterday was Just Cause, so I got Just Cause 2 for $7.50 because Yahtzee loves it so much. I let it download overnight and gave it a quick whirl. It's pretty fun and definitely entirely insane. I keep running out of ammo though, so I think I'm doing something wrong.
Tonight I finished Dead Space 2. I, quite honestly, don't really know what the story was supposed to be but I'm beyond satisfied by the ending. It's set up for a third game, which is fine by me. The final encounter is pretty easy but the fights leading up to it got pretty hairy at times. Pukers, PUKERS, can go straight to hell. I'm still unreasonably attached to my ripper. It is insanely useful in the late game. I don't know when I'll play it on new game+ on Zealot difficulty. I'm about positive I'll never make it through on Hard Core mode. Still, if it's not clear that I had a lot of fun with it yet, I think it's safe to say that I loved it.
Thursdays are pretty good days, and with high winds predicted tomorrow, it doesn't look like I'll be flying. Maybe I'll get in a nice bike ride!
Spearmint: not a worm
My plant biology lab has taken a shocking turn. I did not draw a single plant or plant part today! Of course, I looked at plants and wrote words about plants but zero drawing! Also, I learned that spearmint is not worm and you cannot make two spearmint plants by cutting a stalk off of one and jamming it into some wet dirt. It just dies.
In an effort to wrap up this inexorably long flight course, I flew for an hour today. It was windy as hell. I almost made myself sick from all the up and down and round and round.
I am nearing the end of Dead Space 2. I'm on chapter 13 out of 15. I haven't really branched out to use the new weapons the game has but I'm really loving the hell out of my good old ripper, and the contact beam is even more useful than before. The game keeps handing me contact beam ammo, so much so that I'm selling more than I'm firing. I could probably sell all of my other weapons and finish it with the contact beam alone.
I don't have much to look forward to tomorrow. It'll be windy and warm, so I guess I'll enjoy the nice weather.
Lies previews tell
I rode the Sekai to school today and it was fannnnnntastic! I don't know if I was actually going faster but I sure felt like I was.
Anyone who wrote a preview for Dead Space 2 before it came out ought to be shot. Every preview I read was about how this time Isaac was taking the fight to the necromorphs and the action would be heavier and the game would be less linear and Isaac would have a voice. Only one of those is completely true. Isaac certainly has a voice. But it's still about escape and not taking the fight to the necromorphs. If anything, the game is more linear than the first one, because it all moves a long a critical path with no maps. That's right, maps are out! There's no need for them! As for the action, it doesn't feel heavier but the necromorphs certainly have more variety.
I was almost turned off of this game entirely by the previews. I've written before about how I was going to pass on it because it sounded like Visceral was turning Dead Space into yet another 3rd person shooter, and that simply isn't true.
Snot dripping out of nose
Last night, I didn't stay up till 3am. In fact, I was in bed before 2am! So I was up just after 10am today. It was super nice out, near 60 degrees, so I took the racer out and lubed it up. I'm trying to decide if I should ride the racer or the mountain bike to school tomorrow. As long as tomorrow is a dry day, I will take the racer.
I also did something different today in that I did my homework relatively early rather than let it hang over me all day! I didn't have much except a 3 page paper.
With homework out of the way, I could goof off for the rest of my day guilt-free! So I took my list of ingredients to the grocery store and got enough real food to last for at least a little while. I also got a neti pot.
That is a weird sensation, isn't it? It really works great for clearing out all the snot plugging up my nose! However, the snot ends up dripping out of my nose rather than flushing neatly out with the salt water. Oh well. It's better than spitting and blowing my nose a bazillion times.
I played a round of Dead Space 2 tonight and won both rounds on Marker! At least one of my teammates knew what to do so while the other two distracted the necromorphs and kept them off of us, we blasted the objectives. On my necromorph round, I kept respawning as Pack and slicing up the humans who weren't making much apparent effort to destroy the objective! I got 1 execution and 4 kills and came out in first place. I got as much XP in that one round as I did in the last two games I've played so I leveled up twice.
It really figures that a game that has a multiplayer mode that I thought would be entirely unnecessary would be totally fun. Unfortunately, they didn't tie any cheevos into the multiplayer. I would appreciate that more in a game like Condemned 2, but I like the multiplayer in Dead Space 2!
I am unreasonably tired.