You're not Leaving 'Till You've Finished That...

In most games when you start a dungeon, you must finish that dungeon before moving to the next, right? I would like to take no responsibility for the fact that I tried for hours to finish the earth realm before finally giving up and consulting a walk through. I normally try to figure things out on my own, but when I’m this clueless I most often just give up on the game completely if it’s not that great in the first place. I’ll very occasionally ask one of my less co-ordinationaly challenged friends to get me past the tough bit or tell me how to do it myself. Once in a while though I’ll consult a walk through. I don’t normally do this my first time through a game though, because they usually contain cheats, spoilers and solutions to problems I’d rather figure out myself. For this one I had to. The game had entertained me thus far and I wanted to keep playing it.

There was nowhere to go in the earth realm but down the water fall, but once you get your fire power there and come back from your little slide trip to the water realm, that’s it. I had already killed myself several times trying to jump ridiculous distances and going in the little cable car that leads you to an exitless room filled with an impossible amount of strong baddies. (Tip: don’t go down there! You’re stuck once you jump on the cable car) So I went online and found a walk through on Gamespot by LoneWolf77. This was extremely helpful in explaining that if you have nowhere else to go, you should consult the oracle in the town and it will tell you (cryptically, to my chagrin) what to do next. And in this case once you get the fire power you may leave the earth realm and must come back again much later after collecting more powers. So that was a fairly helpful tip for the rest of the game. The walk through also, like a walk though usually does, explained in great detail everything step by step that needed to be done. It was very well done, but a bit too much info for me. I linked it here though in case anyone is curious or in need of it.

Photos courtesy of http://www.gamespot.com/

Silent Hill Ridiculous Dialogue Rant

Bone # 2.5 to pick: continued from Video Dr.'s Gaming from a Girls-Eye-View, blog entry: Silent Hill 2 (PS2)

There are storyline conversations in SH2 that boggle my mind:

The fire escape scene, where he says to himself out loud in the very matter-of-fact calm way he says everything: “Oh no, there is no fire escape anymore. They must have removed it when they built this building next door. I bet if I jumped I could make it through this open window in front of me”…the building next door is literally a foot away and the wide-open, man sized window is directly in front of him.

And (the always classic) to the man James finds vomiting in the toilet: “Your not friends with that red pyramid thing are you”, referring to the bad guy with big knife sword thingy he drags around and the giant pointy hat that he violates monsters on kitchen counters with…

Or when he suggests to the lady who’s searching for her mom that she give him the knife before she hurts someone! I’m sure there would have been a more chivalrous way of writing the acquisition of a knife in the script than taking a lady’s only weapon away in the middle of big-dark-scary-murderous monster-ville.

As I play the game I think I will make note of the stupidest dialogues and continue to post them here in future. Feel free to add your own!

Sueing people to make up for your own low IQ. That's smart!

There are a lot of warnings during gameplay on the Wii like "make sure your wrist strap is secure" and "why don't you pause your game and go outside to play". The wrist strap one is pretty funny. I heard people were trying to sue Nintendo for throwing their controllers into their TVs, at people/windows/etc. or bruising their faces with the nun chuck connector cord. That's just hilarious! there's an article here at Kotaku about faulty wrist straps. Kotaku.com: Wii Straps Result In Class Action Lawsuit

Imagine: you're playing Wii Baseball and you're watching your virtual pitch turn in to a very real session of "Huck your controller directly at the TV screen and watch it smash" (It's funny how time seems to slow down when you've done something stupid.) or you're playing the boxing game: you're dodging, you're punching and WHAM the cable connecting the two controllers smacks you in the eye. These things are your fault, shitty luck, but your fault none the less. NOT Nintendo's. Cummon and take some responsibility for your own clumsiness or stupidity people! I bit my tongue while I was dining at a restaurant the other day. should I sue them?

There are also a bunch of stories and links on the blog, Wii Accidents: Linked Here I found these accounts very amusing and entertaining. The investigative tone in the writing definitly contributed to that!

I feel like perhaps I should close this with a disclaimer to stop people from trying to sue me. Here it goes.

The fact that I think you're stupid for suing a company for your own carelessness or lack of agility DOES NOT mean I am necessarily calling you stupid. Saying you're a total and complete moron who can't take responsibility for your own actions would be called defamation and you could sue me for that. I am merely saying that I think you're stupid and that is a personal opinion and you can't sue me for that! : )

Fable: Was done way before I was.

I played this entire game from begining to end, along with a majority of the side missions, in 4 days. Neadless to say it wasn`t long enough and I couldn`t put it down. So, I tried it again.

The first time I did everything right. I helped the old man get rid of the bully; and the farmer stop the bandits from taking his storage boxes. I was called `chicken chaser` by all the villagers, bulked up after every mission and finished the game. First time through, it was awesome. Everything was new. I couldn`t get enough of exploring the land and discovering all of its hidden secrets.

Second time through I did every thing wrong and desided to follow the path of evil. I learned how to chase people away by farting and burping at them (which is perhaps amusing the first time but loses it`s `freshness` quickly. None of the villagers called me names, but none of the ladies would come near me either. The Game promissed that following a different path I would have access to completely different missions and powers. In reality I was playing the same missions only this time I was taunting and farting at the old man and helping the bandits steal the storage boxes instead of stoping them. The core missions where exactly the same as well.

Whether you play good or evil mode the game still has some cool features. You can buy houses and collect rent, (though there`s no such thing as `direct deposit` in the Fable land so you have to visit the house to collect). You can woo a lady and get married. You can complete many side missions and fish for keys or, amasingly, fish. you can solve the misteries of the demon doors and collect their treasure, but sadly all the above mentioned things don`t change if you play goosd or evil.

So, all in all, though the game is entertaining the first time through, great even, it has no replay value.

Photos courtesy of http://www.gamespot.com/

Sudeki - Having Combo Inadequacy Nightmares

It’s difficult to explain... The book tells you what all the combos are, so you'd think if you're atempting the "XXA" combo (like in the picture to the right) you could just quickly press XXA, Bob's your uncle, you've done the perfect spin slash. How pretty and effective, right? NO! Instead, you run up to a guy and press X to swing, but as soon as you press X this activates totally random combo directions (and I mean totally random, running up to a bad guy and pressing X will deliver different results and prompts every time ), if the next of the three circles turns green you have to quickly hit the A and then be ready to hit the next corresponding random button prompt that lights up. If you've already pressed X again for the XXA combo the whole thing cancels then the A will start another combo you're not ready for.

It's not absolutly impossible though, sometimes it works wonderfully, but you have to react really fast and though I’ll probably get better with practice, like the combos in God of War, there’s only about a half second delay before it all cancels out and you have to start again. Unlike in God of War, who only (thank the gods) had finishing move combos that displayed boldly in the centre of the screen, the combo prompters are three tiny circles in the bottom left hand corner. I find during battle that I’m spending a lot of time staring at the circles trying to get the combos and not paying attention to what the guy I’m fighting is doing. That is, until I give up and just start swinging, “making up” my own combos that aren’t actually effective as combos because I’m not copying the random circles…. Have I mentioned these combo prompts are random ; )

To go back to the main post of my first impressions of Sudeki on Video Dr.'s Gaming From a Girls-Eye-View click here: Sudeki (XBox)

Photos courtesy of http://www.gamespot.com/