The gaming diary

[blcklblskt]

I've been trying to wrap up Batman: Arkham City.  I've beaten New Game and New Game + completely, with the exception of the Political Prisoners side mission.  I have all the Riddler Trophies, so now I just need to be the Riddler Campaign Challenges.

I also put about an hour into Xenoblade Chronicles.  Seems fine so far.  It looks good, but I can definitely notice the Wii's graphical limitations.  It would definitely look fantastic if it was on PS3/360.

[Cryptid Collector]

I played some AC: Brotherhood today.

[Donkey Kong Kid]

Played some Infamous 2 and Marvel Super Hero Squad on PS3.

[nupoile]

^ Welcome to the RF Boards!

[SirPsycho]

Played some Valkyria Chronicles 2 today. It makes some improvements on the system from the first game, like grinding on minor missions is much faster than doing the skirmish maps. Controls took some time to get used to, after playing with 2 sticks it was kind of annoying to switch over to using the shoulder buttons for camera work when R1 was the trigger to aim before.

Story wise I'm kinda torn, I'm still early in the game but they made the move from focusing on the uber-awesome-rock-star squad during a major invasion to zoning in on the antics of a bunch of green trainees in a military academy during a Gallian civil war. And they're not even the good trainees, they're the ones that barely pass the entrance exams and go to class basically learning Meat Shielding 101.

[Izret101]

EA Sports Active 2 - Did my regular work out today. Hit 12 hours work out time
Also have roughly 70/2020 runs done needed to get the 1k kilometers and 35/500 done for the mountain biking 1k kilometers.

EA MMA. After tomorrow this game will never enter the disc tray of a system i own again. I should finally have wrapped up with the final person i need to help.

NFS: The Run -  only got about 45 mins in. Had some fun with the group i played with but accomplished a minimal amount.

Started Guitar Hero 5 on the phone. Will finish it or get a good chunk done tonight before bed.

Pocket God also on the phone - got the coconut achievement and the lightening achievement. Just need shark, ice monster, bird poop and cloud jumper. Bird poop will be easy. Shark is super time consuming/hard since they fucked up and you have to avoid 1000 instead of 100. Ice Monster will be hard because flick to fire sucks in this game, cloud jumper will be super hard because it is basically doodle jump but going across the screen horizontal. So you only have ~2.5 inches of screen instead of ~5

[Tynstar]

Worked on FIFA 11 and Flight Control

[Sirgin]

I've beaten Final Fantasy 7!


I have to say: they really know how to make the ending of these games as frustrating as possible. There's only one save point (which you can place yourself) in the entire final area of the game, and this is no small area by any means. Some sections aren't too clear as to how to traverse them, which means you end up fighting dozens of random battles. One of the enemies in this area is a penguin-like creature, wielding a lantarn with a big, yellow star floating above its health. These bastards must have 30000 HP or something, because it takes forever to kill them. Limit attacks are best, but I hate to sit there during those endless animations. I timed the animation for Neo Bahamut a couple of weeks ago, and it was like 45 seconds, absolutely maddening. At one point I ran into 5 straight penguin enemies, which must've taken me 25 minutes just to beat.

In the end I had a pretty sweet team/materia setup. I used Cloud, Yuffie and Vincent for the final section of the game. Each of them had their best weapon. I had Mega All, Counterattack, W Magic and Magic Counter on Yuffie. Cloud had Slash All and W Item. Vincent had Double Cut. All three had Enemy Skill with White Wind, Big Guard, Aqualung, Magic Hammer. And of course each had Summons and stuff like HP+, MP+, etc...

One last thing: when Sephiroth casts Super Nova, you might as well leave the TV for 5 minutes because that damn animation takes forever. I've never seen anything like it. You could probably play through the first world of SMB during the time of that animation... in my fight, he did it twice...

[Seno]

... At one point I ran into 5 straight penguin enemies, which must've taken me 25 minutes just to beat.

Tonberry's are complete gits I usually just steal an elixir off them and run away.

Still playiny Crimson Skies (Xbox) Navajo missions were a bit crap, but now there out the way its gone back to being great.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Played some Infamous 2 and Marvel Super Hero Squad on PS3.

^ Welcome to the RF Boards!

Donkey Kong Kid's been around for a while. It's just the 1st post since the outage.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

... At one point I ran into 5 straight penguin enemies, which must've taken me 25 minutes just to beat.

Tonberry's are complete gits I usually just steal an elixir off them and run away.

Still playiny Crimson Skies (Xbox) Navajo missions were a bit crap, but now there out the way its gone back to being great.

Demi = Best Friend. Does 9999 on them.

[Cobra]

Played some Huntik: Titan Defence on my iPhone yesterday and today. Seems pretty cool so far. Still recovering from an Easter flu.
 

I've beaten Final Fantasy 7!


I have to say: they really know how to make the ending of these games as frustrating as possible. There's only one save point (which you can place yourself) in the entire final area of the game, and this is no small area by any means. Some sections aren't too clear as to how to traverse them, which means you end up fighting dozens of random battles. One of the enemies in this area is a penguin-like creature, wielding a lantarn with a big, yellow star floating above its health. These bastards must have 30000 HP or something, because it takes forever to kill them. Limit attacks are best, but I hate to sit there during those endless animations. I timed the animation for Neo Bahamut a couple of weeks ago, and it was like 45 seconds, absolutely maddening. At one point I ran into 5 straight penguin enemies, which must've taken me 25 minutes just to beat.

In the end I had a pretty sweet team/materia setup. I used Cloud, Yuffie and Vincent for the final section of the game. Each of them had their best weapon. I had Mega All, Counterattack, W Magic and Magic Counter on Yuffie. Cloud had Slash All and W Item. Vincent had Double Cut. All three had Enemy Skill with White Wind, Big Guard, Aqualung, Magic Hammer. And of course each had Summons and stuff like HP+, MP+, etc...

One last thing: when Sephiroth casts Super Nova, you might as well leave the TV for 5 minutes because that damn animation takes forever. I've never seen anything like it. You could probably play through the first world of SMB during the time of that animation... in my fight, he did it twice...

I know I've completed the game and all but the whole end of the game is such a blur now. I think I remember a part where you take on Sephiroth with two separate teams or something. Sounds like it hasn't aged well with such a focus on it's then flashy visuals.

[Izret101]

If magic attacks especially summons are not going to be long winded and flashy why even have them?



EA Sports Active 2 did todays cardio(apparently this is not a word. it has red squigglies[also not a word] under it ) work out. Then did 500+ side to side lunges to break the 1k mark for the achievement. I don't know exactly how many i needed but it was more than the initial 240 i did. It ended up being over 500 because the counter in the game broke and let me do more than the allotted number per rep.

Ended up being a super geek and didn't finish Guitar Hero 5 on my phone and watched a NOVA special about elements. Made tons of progress on it today though.

Riddick got another 10-20 wins done. Didn't really keep track... Still have over 100 left to go.

NFS: The Run - hit online rank 20 accomplished nothing in the online Italian dlc achievements though :-/

EA Sports MMA - finished helping my last person. @Link/hXd tpb_fan messaged me asking if i would help him get wins. He had 43 wins. At minimum he would have needed 140 wins to get the top belt at 5+ minutes a match.

Went out for dinner and while we waited for food played some Bejeweled LIVE on my phone with my son to keep him occupied. I am slightly over 500k/1mil gems.

[Sirgin]

I know I've completed the game and all but the whole end of the game is such a blur now. I think I remember a part where you take on Sephiroth with two separate teams or something. Sounds like it hasn't aged well with such a focus on it's then flashy visuals.

Yes, fighting Sephiroth with two different groups is the second to last battle, called Bizarro Sephiroth or something to that effect. I didn't bother switching over to my second team, as all my good Materia was stacked on Cloud/Yuffie/Vincent anyway.

I wouldn't say it hasn't aged well. It's still a great game. After a couple of hours I didn't even notice the early 3D graphics anymore. The thing is though, that you can't skip the animations for summons (things like Bahamut, Phoenix, ...) nor enemy attacks. In the final battle, when Sephiroth has wings and looks a bit like an angel, he (Sephiroth) casts an attack called "Super Nova". It has an animation that takes a century to finish (about as long as it takes to finish a modern FPS game), which is very annoying, especially when he casts the spell a second time and all you want to do is carry on with the fight. The music makes it a good fight though. Sephiroth....sephiroth....SEPHIROTH!!!

At the end of the day it's not a bad game by any means, definitely worth playing even today, especially considering the legacy it has. The materia system works quite well, it's only unfortunate that you don't get the more exotic materia (Doublecut, Slash All, W Item,...) until very late in the game, because with those you can really have a nice strategy, as opposed to the boring Lightning-All, Restore-All stuff you are limited to during the first 99% of the game.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

The one, appropriately enough, is called "One Winged Angel". Sephiroth only has one wing, if you notice.

As for Super Nova, it was meant to show off the power of the PSX. There was nothing quite like the Summon FMVs at the time. Even if I had to put down my controller, the fact that an FMV played showing the destruction of the move was awe inspiring at the time.