So I finally played some Final Fantasy XIII over the last couple days around 5 hours or so. I made my way through chapter 5, 6 and a handful of save points in Chapter 7 just before I took control of Lightning and Fang. The game is actually starting to pick up a bit during the last bit but the characters all still have stupid secrets that they are holding which makes characters like Snow and Sazh look foolish when they are saying things to their partners (though unless things change Snow will always be foolish). Did I ever mention that I HATE Snow? That guy is one of the biggest jackasses I have ever encountered in a video game... he's always saying stupid ****. Lastly in characters: I'm not sure what to think of Hope, there is part of me that feels sorry for him, but the other part wants to give him a good slap and shake him a few times to have get a grip so he'll stop whining so much.

During the 5 hours that I played I finally realized what is wrong with Final Fantasy XIII... the developers didn't know what they wanted to do. This game feels unorganized: for example the battle parties are designed for three fighters, but this first 15 and possibly 15 more they only include 2 for story reasons. The game is linear for the first 25 hours then it opens up with side quest and a bunch of other stuff that gives the game more of an old school feel. It feels they got the first 25 hours done and said "oh, ****! We might want to add towns or quests or RPG stuff... huh, what do mean the story is already written and pairs the characters for the first half... our battles are designed for three!" That is how Final Fantasy 13 feels to me; it just was not planned out that well.

I noticed this when I discovered a little trick to make the 2 person battles a bit easier especially with Sazh and Vanille. I would get just a single hit in with Sazh as a COM (commando) (Vanille is RAVager) and then switch to the Dualcasting Paradigm (RAV-RAV) and stagger the crap out of the enemies. You see, when the COM hits a target he slows down the stagger gauge so that the RAVs can stagger the enemy without have the stagger bar deplete so quickly especially on enemies that have a high stagger threshold. I didn't realize the COM effect stayed until the stagger bar depletes so if you just get in that single hit you can switch Vanille and Sazh to their proper RAV roles and kick all kinds of butt. That's why it is such a problem to have only two character parties. I would simply have a third character as a COM and the RAV-RAV-COM party could go to town without so much Paradigm Shifting. I am glad I did discover this little move though because some of the battles were kind of tough during that section of Chapter 6. One last battle engine not: I hate the fact that it is instant failure if the "Leader" (player controlled character) falls in battle... they can't figure out to heal me on their own? I can't take over another character? I don't get it.

I think that about covers what I thought about my last session with Final Fantasy XIII... if the game would just come together I might actually be able to like it but right now I'm still not sold on the game. I am probably going to play some more after I finish this entry. I will probably post again in a couple days unless something happens that I just have to talk about. Step in the rainbow... Loading Complete!

Let me be honest. I haven't played any Final Fantasy XIII since I announced its return to NLID a week ago. Three reasons... first I was way in to a sports game and finished a season for once (not going to say the name because you don't care)... second Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning arrived just the day before I finished Darksiders and third... isn't it obvious? C'mon it's Final Fantasy XIII we are talking about here. I'm just teasing the fans a bit but the first 30 hours is a tough task of heading down corridors to yellow markers and starting boss fights and I have at least 22 hours to go before I reach the part where the game apparently opens up. I digress though because for this post I am going to link to the first three posts of FF13 so you can catch up to where I was when I stopped in mid-October 2011.

Now Loading In-Depth #43: Final Fantasy XIII #1
This post was similar to this one where I hadn't started the game but I had to let my original thoughts on FF13 be known so that I could try to start as fresh as possible. Originally I stopped because after 3 hours of Snow being a jackass, I was sick and tired already.

Now Loading In-Depth #44: Final Fantasy XIII #2
In this really short update I make a progress update and you all laugh at me because I think that after only 6 hours I think I am nearing the Gran Pulse part of the game... that's the "it gets better after 30 hours" part dummy. Lightning did punch that stupid jackass Snow in the face so at least something good happened. Soon after I posted that small update though I had unlocked the ability to improve my weapons. I also mused over the fact that FF13's massive disc size of 17GB could have been avoided if they didn't record FMV of what have to be IN-GAME cut-scenes.

Now Loading In-Depth #45: Final Fantasy XIII #3
In this update I talk about the Final Fantasy XIII battle system like I am an expert. Though these strategies do have merit I just don't think I had quite earned the right to talk details after only 8 hours of play and only a couple of reasonably challenging bosses. Still buff, debuff, stagger, beat up and heal / sentinel when required is the go to strategy.

There you go. You are now all caught up with my first 8 hours with Final Fantasy XIII. If I recall correctly I just started Disc 2. I am going to attempt to get some in tonight as I soon as I finish this little update... I also plan to make it a longer session too as my previous sessions were only about 3 hours long. I've said enough I'm outta here. Loading Complete!

Made it! This is something that should have happened last year but because the last few months of 2011 were not very good for me or for the blog I fell just short. I'm probably only going to celebrate every 100 posts from now on and I will do something special for each one. I'm not going to waste my time reflecting too much for #700 because frankly I indulged quite enough with the 7th Anniversary Editorial (1 - 2 - 3) last year. With that said, this time around I am going to look back at something that I have done on this blog a few times: the RPG Playthrough Log. It's half walkthrough, half progress log... think of it as a TEXT version of a "Let's Play". I got my start doing these as you may have read in the 7th Anniversary Editorial Part 1 with my old ass blog from 2004: A Second Time Through. Today though, I am here to focus on the three that I have done on Now Loading: The Legend of Dragoon Playthrough Log (2005), Final Fantasy VIII Playthrough Log 2K6 (2006) and Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log (2008). Two of which happened before most of you started reading this blog which is why I thought they might be fun to revisit. Please enjoy these playthrough logs responsibly as they contain MAJOR SPOILERS!!!! Also please note all these posts with the exception of The Legend of Dragoon log had header images unfortunately the server they were hosted on is gone now and the addresses are hardwired.

The Legend of Dragoon Playthrough Log (11 Posts, May 29 to June 14, 2005)
This game requires a bit of intro, because I don't think too many people even care about this game. The Legend of Dragoon (PS1, 2000) is one of my favorite RPGs and I love the battle system which features a timing based attack system called "additions" where a blue box spirals in from the sides of the screen and you have to press the attack button again to continue whatever combo you have selected. Some of the more advanced ones even require some decent reflexes and some practice. The only real problem with The Legend of Dragoon is that it suffers from a pitiful translation. The game has a cool story but because of this iffy translation it becomes a bit muddled. Example of the genius localization: The Valley of Corrupted Gravity... sometimes spelled correctly, sometimes spelled as The "Vally" of Corrupted Gravity... in fact, as my experience with writing has grown with the blog and other things the typos and the bland writing have almost become insufferable to me... it also makes me want to re-write the story myself every time I play it. Enjoy the adventure anyway and the playthrough log can explain more than I could hope to in this intro paragraph.

1. LoD Log 2k5: Intro and Game Start
2. LoD Log 2K5: Disc One End
3. LoD Log 2K5: Disc 2 Start
4. LoD Log 2K5: Lenus, Phantom Ship and Reunion
5. LoD Log 2K5: Disc 2 End
6. LoD Log 2K5: Disc 3 Start
7. LoD Log 2K5: Disc 3 Continued
8. LoD Log 2K5: Disc 3 End
9. LoD Log 2K5: Disc 4 Start
10. LoD Log 2K5: Disc4 Continued
11. LoD Log 2k5: The End

Final Fantasy VIII Playthrough Log 2K6 (12 posts, March 13 to March 26, 2006)
After screwing up this playthrough back in my Second Time Through blog... I knew I had to return to it and get it done this time. Final Fantasy VIII is my current favorite in the long running series and I really enjoy the fact it took chances and got rid of long standing RPG tropes such as MP and level grinding. Sure you could grind and draw a billion magic spells but if you have the right abilities you just create your own magic supply from items you don't need. As for level grinding itself, there is only 1000 XP between EVERY SINGLE LEVEL it takes the same 1000XP to get to level 2 as it takes to get from Level 98 to Level 99... Monsters also level with you so it is actually better to keep your level lower and improve your stats by attaching magic spells to your stats instead. In fact you'll probably want to get the GF Diablos right off the bat and start training his Enc-Half and Enc-None abilities as soon as possible. That's right, Enc(ounter)-NONE... as in zero random battles... as you can turn them OFF. Again the walkthrough will explain more than I can in this intro, so enjoy!

1. FFVIII Log 2k6: Intro and Disc 1 Start
2. FFVIII Log 2k6: Dancing, Magic Lamp, Laguna Pt1 and Forest Owls
3. FFVIII Log 2k6: Train Hiest, Sorceress, Laguna Pt2 and Unknown Tomb
4. FFVIII Log 2k6: Disc 1 End
5. FFVIII Log 2k6: Disc 2 Start
6. FFVIII Log 2k6: Master NORG, FH, Concert and Balamb Search
7. FFVIII Log 2k6: Disc 2 End
7. FFVIII Log 2k6: Disc 3 Start
8. FFVIII Log 2k6: Space, Lunatic Pandora, Musical Interlude and Freedom
9. FFVIII Log 2k6: Drawing? Heaven or Hell?
10. FFVIII Log 2k6: Cactuar, Tonberry, DoomTrain, Bahamut and Lion Heart
11. FFVIII Log 2k6: Disc 3 End and The End
12. FFVIII Log 2k6: Post Summary and Final Thoughts

Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log (8 posts, June 17 to July 4, 2008)
I'm not a huge fan of Final Fantasy IX... I find it slow and I am not that tickled by all the homages to the past games. I'm not going to explain this game here too much as its a pretty standard J-RPG the only thing interesting that it does is how you learn skills, magic and abilities which is through equipping weapons, armour and accessories. As you fight you slowly earn AP and these go towards whatever you have equipped if you get enough AP you permanently learn the ability, magic or skill. It takes awhile but the benefit is that you don't have to equip different items for specific skills. You also have a set of passive abilities that you can set with a character level specific amount of crystals and this allows you to set buffs (auto-haste) and protections (immune to poison) depending on what you are facing. In actual playthrough notes I rushed the hell out of this game so that I could participate in the final (ever) Retro Revival Week so for the end game stuff I kind of summarize more than the other two logs. With that said enjoy Final Fantasy IX.

1. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: Introduction and Game Start
2. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: Ice Cave, Dali and Arrival in Lindblum
3. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: Disc 1 End
4. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: Disc 2 Start (Finally)
5. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: Disc 2 End
6. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: Disc 3 Start
7. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: Disc 3 End
8. Final Fantasy IX Playthrough Log: The End

There you have it, three of my RPG Playthrough Logs. Will I ever do one of them again? Probably not, they are just too spoiler filled and as you can tell take quite a bit of writing to accomplish. Besides I do something similar with Now Loading In-Depth which has much, much less walkthrough and more interesting thoughts on the actual game. This post took a lot longer to get completed than I thought but I am glad I am done now and can move on to the next thing which is actually playing Final Fantasy XIII so I can post the next NLID. I will talk to you then and thanks for the support. Loading Complete!

I picked up KoA: Reckoning on release day and have spent about 20 hours playing it. While that sounds pretty positive as that's quite a bit of playtime for only 2 days, but I have mixed feelings so far. You see the combat and the questing is pretty fun, but the world is too big for a character without a horse... which means you'll have to quick travel more than you'd want to. The world while kind of pretty and mystical looking it's kind of bland which mean all this walking / running you'll be doing isn't interesting unless you are in combat. As for the questing I think it's starting to get a little bit old... when are RPGs like this going to try something more interesting than "just go to quest marker and kill or collect stuff"? Skyrim burned itself out with generic quests like that too, I thought I was for quest markers and people who didn't like them where crazy and liked getting lost, but developers are just using them like a crutch now so they don't have to write up an elaborate journal so you can keep track of your quests.

It's a good thing the combat is interesting, while it is a bit on the easy side (apparently even on the hard difficulty as well), the way you can link attacks together is really fun and I love how they designed each "cIass" to be viable. I am playing as a Battlemage and I can do just as much damage with my magic staff as I can with my long sword and the "destinies" card system adds just the proper buffs to any combination of Might (Warrior), Finesse (Rouge) and Sorcery (Mage) you can think of. You wield two weapons (primary and secondary) and a shield. You can use your shield to block attacks to reduce damage but if you block just before an attacks hits you do some counter damage and set-up your opponent for a counter attack. You also have a typical action game dodge roll but here is the catch: in KoA you cannot use the dodge to cancel a combo animation so if you get too aggressive and button mashy you can't use your dodge move; it forces you to wait for an opening before you attempt a full on assault. I haven't tried magic because I kind of wanted to play an Ice Battlemage with ice magic, ice sword and ice staff, but the ice spell doesn't unlock until you put 20 points into the sorcery skill tree so I haven't quite got there yet.

Kingdoms of Amalur is one those questing games that can get addicting until you realize you are doing the same 6 or so quest types over and over. I am going to keep pressing on as I want to try some of the faction quest and haven't made it to far to the east on the map yet. I'll probably have more on this game when or if I get around to doing a finished article. Final Fantasy 13 and NLID #51 probably won't be until Saturday or so as KoA has taken up all of my time which is why I figured I had better write up my impressions. I talk to you soon. Loading Complete!

It was sort of a long time coming and maybe even something that should have been accomplished last year... but that doesn't matter we have reached 50 editions of Now Loading In-Depth in which I have completed 16 games now. I do have 3 games currently on hiatus one of which I promised to get back to, but more on that later. I'm not go to reflect too much I'll save that for #100 but I am really happy with how this series has gone and I love keeping running impressions on a game as I feel it's much more interesting than a review... though I do state my more final thoughts in the FINAL posts such as this one right here. Enough ado let's get to finalizing my thoughts on Darksiders.

As I said in NLID #49 Darksiders is a tough game to judge on its own merits. Don't get me wrong it comes together pretty damn well for the most part and is an enjoyable game. It's just that all the elements separately feel a bit familiar. Aspects of The Legend of Zelda, God of War (and other action games) and even Portal are littered throughout and are maybe done better in their various games. The Portal section of game comes late and only appears in a single dungeon and while portals (called voids) are a little different as they don't require momentum the puzzles in Darksiders are done well and it's a interesting use of Portal's mechanics. As I said the Zelda and God of War stuff is hit and miss. The puzzles can be tricky but the tend to force you to backtrack around large rooms pushing blocks. Comparing the combat to God of War is as close as I can get, but unlike GoW there isn't much skill required to fight in Darksiders. I completed the game just using the main sword weapon and mashing on the X button and occasionally dodging if I saw an attack coming. The bosses are only a threat because they have tons of HP and not because they could actually take you. They are also kind of puzzle based and you usually just exploit the same weakness over and over and at times you have to wait for ever for just one chance to hit that spot. The big worm boss at the end of the 3rd main area is a prime example you just ride around on your horse until he opens his mouth once every five minutes. Combat isn't Darksiders best attribute, but there is a ton of it and the game love to use that STUPID action game gimmick of locking you in a room until you kill all enemies... I hate that.

The story and setting are actually really compelling and that is what really hooked me after a certain point, plus Mark Hamil plays The Watcher a little demon that keeps tabs on War (main character) to make sure he doesn't do anything the Charred Council does want him to. It's similar to his Joker voice but less maniacal and more sinister. I really liked the ending and it has me curious for Darksiders II's story. In the end after over 15 hours of playtime I came away liking the game. I don't really enjoy the kind of combat that's featured good or bad, Bayonetta or Sonic Unleashed, but all that is really needed to improve the game is to tweak the combat to make it a bit more skill based instead of button mashing based and to have a few less block pushing puzzles.. In the end it got me interested in its sequel and I think Vigil Games did a pretty good job tying together so many mechanics in to an occasionally tedious, but fun and enjoyable game.

One last nit-pick, Darksiders doesn't seem to save settings properly and I had to invert the Y axis every single time I booted the game. Anyway, next is the long awaited return to Final Fantasy XIII. I didn't mean to wait this long but I thought I could get Darksiders done a little bit faster than I did. Regardless, I will continuing FF13 where I left off back in October 2011, 8 hours in or so and just starting on Disc 2. I do have some more motivation this time around as I picked up FF XIII-2 last week and I want to get to it as soon as possible. Wish me luck as it still might be a bumpy ride over the next couple of weeks. I'll talk to you in a couple of days with the 4th update for Final Fantasy XIII. Later. Loading Complete!

Darksiders is a tough game to call, It obviously has elements of Zelda, God of War and even Metroid but I'm not sure it does any of the elements particularly well. The God of War like combat is button mashy and has an awkward dash-slide for a dodge move which paralyzes you at the end of it and blocking is only allowed when standing still which causes the combat to lack fluidity. The Zelda like dungeons are hampered by long tedious block pushing and switch puzzles and a large amount of dreaded backtracking around the maps. The Metroid elements are probably the best as if you have a good memory you can find lots of goodies hidden behind obstacles you couldn't deal with previously. That being said Darksiders does have good variety to its gameplay with those three elements and even some 3rd person shooting sections tossed in as well.

The story and setting are pretty neat with the areas taking place in the ruins of human civilization which means a lot of modern buildings all destroyed from the apocalypse. As I was informed by hart704 there was a second set of those BS challenge rooms... I can't believe these things are so important to the main progress of the game... as in: you can't progress in the game unless you can clear these simple but tricky combat challenges. I really don't know what they where thinking with them and I'd suck to be stopped dead in your tracks because you couldn't clear an asinine challenge room.

I think that is about it for today's impressions and I will admit the game grew on me a little bit in the last session. I just cleared the second major boss and just got to the third major area and will probably tackle that later today (Feb 2) after I get some sleep. I will talk to you in a couple of days most likely as we approach a couple of milestones: the 50th edition of NLID (next) and the 700th post in Now Loading history (only 3 to go). Talk to you later. Loading Complete!

Welcome to Now Loading's Month-In-Review for January 2012. It's time to take a look back at the month on the blog and it was a pretty good month with the 2011 Wrap Ups and even a few NLID Editions to round things out. Here we go.

JANUARY 1, 2012
I started off the 2011 Wrap Ups as usual with the My Games of... article which covered games that I picked up from the first half of the year.

JANUARY 3, 2012
I finished off the list of My Games of 2011.

JANUARY 5, 2012
I took a look back at Mass Effect 2 and all its DLC in the second annual Finished Article Revisit.

JANUARY 7, 2012
I gave a preview of Now Loading In-Depth Season 2. Listing some of the possible games for the upcoming 2012 run of NLID.

JANUARY 10, 2012
I cover the whole year of 2011 on the blog with the 2011 Blog Retrospective.

JANUARY 12, 2012
I shared the list of nominees for the various categories in my 2011 Best and Worst Awards.

JANUARY 14, 2012
I announced the winners of my 2011 Best and Worst Awards. Saints Row: The Third was most disappointing and Portal 2 was awarded Game of the Year.

JANUARY 16, 2012
(NLID #46) Now Loading In-Depth (NLID) returned for season 2 and started off with Alan Wake, a neat game with cool atmosphere.

JANUARY 20, 2012
(NLID #47) I had wrote up more detailed final thoughts on Alan Wake but an HTML error caused GameSpot to basically erase all the post on the preview screen.

JANUARY 26, 2012
(NLID #48) It was time to start the next game on NLID, Darksiders. I gave my impressions of a game that is a bit too button mashy for my liking and I really haven't spent that much time with it since I wrote the impressions.

That's January 2012 in a nut-shell. It was a pretty good month, mostly because of the 2011 Wrap Ups... I would have liked to get in a few more NLID entries but I got a cold for a few days, then got fairly busy and to top it off I really am not feeling Darksiders. I'll do better in February and hopefully reach 700 posts pretty quickly, I think I only have about 4 or so to go before I get there. That about covers it; I am going to go have a long session with Darksiders and actually make some progress with it. Talk to you soon. Here's to a great February! Loading Complete!

Sorry it has been awhile, I've been pretty busy this week and did not get in what I felt was a enough playtime with Darksiders to warrant an update. I have since played about an hour and a half and I think that's good enough for some initial impressions. Let's start with this, I have a confession to make... I don't really like button mashy action games, games like God of War, Bayonetta, No More Heroes and others like it love to lock you in rooms and make you fight hoards of fodder enemies to wrack up some kind of arbitrary combo count until they let you out. Sometimes they might even through in one (or *gasp* two) of their mighty intermediate enemies and you might have to even dodge occasionally. The only other enemy type they have is the boss monsters which usually end in some kind of QTE section. Now don't get me wrong I am being a bit facetious here and I am not denying that they are good games... all I am saying is I have never been a fan of button mashy games, even back in the old days with beat 'em ups.

With that said, I am having the same issue with Darksiders right now... it seriously locked me in a rectangular room to fight enemies that couldn't hit me if they tried for over a minute, something like four or five waves of these things... what purpose did that serve? So, what, I could get some more souls or orbs or money or some useless thing so I can "buy" a stupid combo I will never use? Also don't get me started on those forced challenge rooms in the segment just before that, I almost considered quitting outright when I saw that ****. Good thing they where easy or that would have been it. Let's just say it hasn't made a very good impression on me so far. I heard it has Zelda like dungeon structure maybe that can save it, but we will have to see because so far I am not very impressed.

I think covers my thoughts so far. I will try to update again as soon as possible, probably on Saturday if I can so look forward to NLID #49 then. I will talk to you later. Loading Complete!

This was going to way longer and more detailed, but, GameSpot's outdated and glitchy blog editor decided to eat the last attempt at writing this post... it is lost. I am still not feeling that well from getting sick on Wednesday so I am just going to have to summarize my final thoughts on Alan Wake.

- Fun Combat and using the flashlight to burn away the protective shields of enemies is also cool, but on Normal is too easy and lowers the tension of a atmospheric game.

- Large open forest setting is a cool location and with the added benefit of fewer loading times.

- The story is neat, a bit predicable in spots, but it does well to get you in to the world.

- Twitchy controls when trying to make fine adjustments leads to falling and being unable to hit the...

- picky proximity sensitive triggers which are activated by the B button. I had a hard time not pressing the usual A button.

- Too easy combat makes the triggered fights and roundabout level design a bit on the tedious side.

- Vehicles control like crap and sound like crap... therefore: are Crap.

I think that about summarizes what I had written before and with that said I enjoyed Alan Wake quite a bit despite not being really sure I was. I know that makes no sense, but I must have enjoyed it I completed it in just a few days and did really get frustrated with it. Anyway, it sucks I had to breakdown the post like that but every one who has ever used Glitchspot knows it is bound to happen to you at some point unfortunately I wasn't thinking straight with all this snot in my head and forgot to copy and paste my post into a notepad file before posting or hitting preview like I always do.

As for the next game it is going to be Darksiders. Another one of those 2010 games that I missed out on because I just didn't get around to them during that bum year that I had. I look forward to playing it and sharing my thoughts on it with you which will probably happen in NLID #48 on Sunday. That's it from me today. I will talk to you soon. Loading Complete! (again)

Welcome back to Now Loading In-Depth! I am ready to begin Season 2 of the series and because it has been nearly 3 months since the last edition I'm going to go over how this series works for old and new alike. Now Loading In-Depth (NLID) is a gameplay series where I play games of my choosing and do frequent impressions and/or progress updates for you about them. Any game released 2011 or back is available for me to play and as you may have read in the Season 2 preview there are many categories of games to tackle. And that's that, I just play games and update you on them every two or three days until they are complete and then move on to another game that I will announce in the FINAL update for the previous game. It's now to get on with the real deal of NLID gameplay impressions for the latest NLID game 2010's Alan Wake.

This first update for Alan Wake might be a bit of a short one, not because I didn't play very much, I am actually halfway through the game just starting Episode 4.... nope, it's just that I don't know how I feel about the game. It's not scary, it's not really psychological... I am almost always armed with a weapon and once you remove the shield of darkness surrounding the enemies they die in a few shots from the weakest weapon. It is kind of fun blasting "The Taken" *coughzombiescough* and watching the burn up to ashes... I don't know, I rarely get this kind of experience from a game. The story isn't really doing anything for me either and the all the Manuscript pages you pick do is spoil upcoming events or surprises that could have scared you... I know its supposed to be all oooooh what is written on the pages is coming true but it is more like, sigh, now I know a guy with a chainsaw is coming up in the next section.

Another detaching element is terrible lip syncing, not because it's all dubbed Asian movie styIe but because the mouths are simply just animated badly. I do kind of enjoy the forest setting and as I said the shooting isn't too bad... I just don't get Alan Wake yet, I am missing something that will stop me from feeling so neutral about it. Part of me kind of likes it, part of me thinks it's boring, lame and not scary and a third part just doesn't get it at all. I hate it when this happens as it is hard to describe and not usually very interesting... but that is half the fun of NLID seeing if my feelings about the game change and we'll see soon if I can snap out of my funk with Alan Wake.

Since I am so confused I will talk about the gameplay just a bit. Most of the gameplay takes place in the dark, usually in a forest and you walk along the path until the shadowy Taken appear. This starts a battle mode of sorts and you have to take them all out before proceeding onward; I tried running away but you can only sprint for so long and they are faster than you. To defeat them or anything covered in darkness you have to point your trusty flashlight at it until a circle of light closes and flashes, this means their shield is down and you can shoot them with your gun. You have a few different guns, a revolver (default weapon), two types of shotguns (double barrel and pump action) and a hunting rifle. Your arsenal is pretty large as you can carry the revolver, a flare gun (works like a grenade launcher but with light), a set of regular flares for creating a zone of safety, a set of flashbangs which act as your grenades and either the shotgun or the hunting rifle. Its best to take the weapons they give you in each area because you'll find the most ammo for that gun and a lot of time you will lose your weapons during scenes or after the episode is complete so there is no point holding on to your favorite gun. Speaking of episodes each "act" is sort of like a TV episode where each new episode starts with a "previously on Alan Wake..." summary. So far that is all there is to the gameplay: walk down dark forest trails shoot enemies when they appear and get to the end its pretty simple.

It's time to close out this edition of NLID. I can't see Alan Wake taking more than two updates to complete so I will most likely have the final update on it by Wednesday. In NLID news I think I am going to wait until after Final Fantasy XIII-2 is out before I start Final Fantasy 13 again, since I am most likely going to pick XIII-2 up and hopefully that will give me more incentive to complete a game that I am not really a fan of. I think that about covers it for this edition of NLID I will talk to you again in a day or two. Later. Loading Complete!