It has been too long since I've posted a blog, but I felt like the time was right. After last week's capping off of Bahamut Prime, and clearing the Final Coil of Bahamut on its last week of being a lock out raid in one night literally 24 hours later I can finally go Heavensward with no regrets. To honor what has been this strange, long journey over the past year and about a half now, I wanted to look back on each patch as they were rolled out, and how the game has changed for the better (or worse) since the launch. From the gigantic flop that was 1.0, to the 4 million player accounts in 2.5 this is how we got here, and it all started with 2.0!

The Launch of something magical: 2.0

To be completely honest, when I first grabbed the Phase 4 beta code from this very forum I was merely only going to see what this was about. For a while, I was sucked back into World of Warcraft thanks to my streamer friend Brandon505, with the promise of we were actually going to build a guild and raid actual content, what ended up happening was the few of us that remained after he went back to professionally streaming Dark Souls was just us slumming up the Looking For Raid feature. Somebody from his community ended up mentioning that the release for A Realm Reborn was fast approaching and was abandoning the best MMO on the market for something that literally had no chance for redemption at this point. Yet after slamming him for his "poor choice", I got curious, I wanted to see this game for myself. By chance I saw in the recent posts of that year a thread for people handing away their codes, and I of course was refreshing like crazy and managed to grab one within minutes of it being up. Thanks to whoever posted it, the thread has been long gone for a while now and you have ruined my life.

Regardless of having the PC capable of running it or not, the platform I chose was PS3 to try it out on. To this day I don't regret it since I still play on console, as the craaaaaazy problems some people have albeit only 10% of the time on the PC client just puts my tin foil hat into full paranoia mode (maybe one day I'll just add the windows license to my account). So phase 4 I started up a Miqo'te on Ultros, since the original plan was to play with all of the duders on here. That ended up not working out because same streamer friend was going to try out this game and everyone on Twitch was rolling on Leviathan. So after Phase 4 I proceeded to move on with them as a Lalafell, since everytime I saw one running around I felt like I was missing out on something amazing (And I was). It actually wasn't a month after launch on my Birthday that I was actually able to go forward with playing this game. Yes I wasn't actually around for the first month, so that part of history still eludes me to this day, but I'm pretty sure I have the gist of what everyone did once stuff was figured out, unless there was some game changing stuff that happened, I may never know!

September 27th I finally started my journey into the realm of Eorzea proper with my friends! ... Or atleast I would have if they actually were still playing. I didn't actually see this as a huge bummer though, for when I started my fledgling WoW career back in Vanilla a month after its launch too, it was by myself. What captivated me back in those days was happening again, I was embarking on an adventure into somewhat unknown territory. Unfortunately with all the years of MMOs in my time alot of it was known, but there were interesting twists along the way to make it a little bit more exciting than your average WoW experience nowadays. Leveling up a brand new character in XIV at the beginning of the game actually wasn't as grindy as you would think. At the time Square did a fantastic job of making sure your level was most of the time caught up with the story quests, which are desperately needed to be done in order to do anything in the game (I had a friend who was level 50, but never did the story quests past Ifrit because DPS queues). Which is an insane notion. While leveling up you quickly learn that almost asking everything about when you get what was a trick question. "When do you get your chocobo?", "Yo how do I access my bank?", both of these questions were often answered with an actual level requirement most of the time, when in reality it didn't matter, it was all story related stuff. Meaning there were even more people like my friend who ran around fate grinding... ON FOOT, to 50, and had absolutely nothing to do once end game rolled around.

2.0, Level Cap, and You!

I joined an FC around level 30, ended up getting all the way to my first 50 within the first week, and began to see what everyone pretty much did with their time in this stage of the game. So around October I was spending my time slowly gearing up to hopefully one day get into actual real raiding in this game. So the thing people did included these activities to get there

• Entrance level 50 Story content (Castrum Meridian and Praetorium Speedruns)
• Stealing your relic weapon from Titan when he wasn't looking
• Darklight and Myth gear
• Rage quitting Amdapor Keep on entrance when one of your party members wasn't full Darklight
• Sitting in the Dustbowl that was Mor Dhona writhing in poverty

These were pretty much the five things everyone was trying to do in their day to day activities. Which not including the people already tackling the Binding Coil of Bahamut, which I didn't even see until around November.

So to start off recapping, Castrum Meridian and Praetorium, around the time I got to it, became the fastest and easiest way to get tomestones of Philosophy, the first tier of currency not in the game anymore that you traded in for ilvl 70 gear which we know as the Darklight set. In order to do anything, like get your relic or actually raid, you atleast needed to be full Darklight. So that became my goal, unfortunately because of the fact that CM and Praetorium became the fastest and easiest way to get this currency, the horrible trend and terrible life choice was introduced to the game. At this point you either cared about the story, or decided to skip the rest of the cutscenes in the game now and forever because impatient people rule the group. This is a trend that is still continued to this day in both instances, so to any new players who actually want to do this part, and see this part... the dream died nearly years ago.

Because of this, this also meant the two dungeons that were supposed to be the stepping stone for your gearing up process, Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace were done sparingly. People only did these two dungeons to cap on the second tier of currency for the Artifact i90 gear, Tomes of Mythology. Myth tomes back in the day were set to a limit of 300 per week. Meaning getting anything you wanted could have taken up to three weeks for one piece. Crazy to think we were waiting so long for certain items with the changes they made now. For new people getting into late game you were supposed to do Wanderer's Palace first, which was the easiest of the two starter dungeons. Amdapor Keep... was another story. Amdapor Keep in 2.0 was one of the hardest dungeons to ever see the light of day. There were actual DPS checks in place, hard hitting mobs, intense penalties for ignoring what the mechanics were. This place was the epitome of anger back in the day, only behind the legacy we know today as Titan. People often gear checked if going into the Duty Finder for this place, and if they ever saw someone even without their relic weapon (which is a prerequisite place to complete for it) they would just leave instantly. Amdapor Keep is all but a joke today, but back in the day it had some pride of being difficult, and the Demon Wall had a fun time being King of the Dungeon bosses for a while (He used to summon bees!). All the while these two places also dropped gear from time to time, but none of it really good, with the exception going to some accessories, because you couldn't double up a Darklight Ring of Aiming on a Bard, and as good as the myth ring was it definitely wasn't the first piece of Myth gear you got. It's a pretty bad trend we have today that it continues to kind of be this way, most of the dungeon sets are used for other things rather than to help fledgling players in their quest to do stuff. To be fair though, there are loads more exciting ways to get what you need nowadays. I hope they tweak this a bit when the expansion comes out, to give more people a reason to actually do dungeons rather than to just hit a cap for the week.

After you saved up enough tomes for your Darklight gear, you were ready to go after your trusted buddy, your fated companion for the long trip ahead of you, your Relic weapon. Of course there were TONS OF PEOPLE who SKIPPED THAT PROCESS, and made it a NIGHTMARE for the other people trying to do this legitimately. So the relic quest back in the day was this long sprawling process of talking to an NPC, them sending you off on either 4 man or 8 man content in order to get x thing to turn in to get the next thing. The process started off with you having to beat a Chimera in Coerthas, Doing Amdapor Keep (if people were nice enough to let you), Killing the Hydra in Halatali, for some reason murdering innocent beastmen that don't care what you're doing for a while, and then the original trio of primals. All of this aside from stuff you did yourself, was all actually challenging to do back when we weren't all i130 with Dreadwyrm weapons. Chimera had attacks that needed to be interrupted, Hydra had a Wyvern that spawned that needed to be killed on time, I already explained Amdapor Keep and why that was difficult. Yet when you got past all of them, the OG team awaited you. Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan. Ifrit being the warmup of the three, wasn't actually too difficult. He posed a DPS check today we now don't even limit break to beat, and required interrupts to actually stop him from killing people (which actually doesn't work anymore, but that don't matter too much). Garuda was probably the second hardest, since she actually contained some mechanics that required people to be a bit more coordinated and know where to move, lest they play pinball with the arena by stepping in a tornado. Garuda would not be a bane to players until her EX form, but that's 2.1 and we'll cover that later. For now... We delve into the tale that still sends shivers down the spines of the players that remember these days.

The Legacy of Titan

The third of the OG group, the hardest of the three. Regarded in 2.0 pre AND post fix of Twintania in the Binding Coil as the hardest fight in the game. The primal and god of the Kobolds, Titan. No matter what platform you played, no matter what method you used to speed up your connection speed, no matter what you did, Titan Hard Mode had everyone who wasn't already in Binding Coil of Bahamut's number. Titan was the only fight in the game to that date that introduced a platform with no invisible walls to save you from falling to your death in the center of the Eorzean underbelly. If you got knocked off the platform with one of his moves you were gone from the fight permanently until the group wiped, and if that did happen your group most likely did wipe, again and again. Titan also boasted an intense DPS check where you had to beat up his heart before he did an AoE that instantly killed everyone. With almost every phase change he flew up into the air and slammed the arena, collapsing the edges making the circle smaller with every slam. He trapped people in rock jails that had to be broken to get them out, and after they were broken out had to be cleansed of a debuff that makes all of their attacks hit for the single to low double digits (Which actually STILL gets ignored even to this day). Titan was the King, he decided wether or not you got your relic weapon or not, decided if you got to raid or not. This was around the time were the Party Finder didn't exist and we were stuck looking for people WoW style in the general chat in Mor Dhona, or just going for the one in a million chance of beating it in the Duty Finder. I got lucky, I was in an all Lalafell linkshell that had alot of people doing Binding Coil and clearing it regularly. So I got my relic after a couple of weeks of trying until they made that group for a couple of us. Keep in mind too I was also a PS3 player, I took pride in the fact I could live longer in Titan compared to someone who was boasting they were running SLI GTX 680s and still dying because of the "lag". While I admit the servers even today are still pretty horrendous, I had almost all of the handicaps. I had 10 frames a second, I had the PS3 Phat's terrible wi-fi, in retrospect I should have been stuck for months, like the beginning of 2.1 without my weapon. I got lucky, but with that kill eventually like all content in the game, the pressure of having to do it gets replaced with the relaxation of I got this done and now I can enjoy the fight... if that was even possible for Titan. Because of Titan, the unfortunate trend of selling content became a thing. Linkshells were made specifically to sell clears for people having trouble with the fight. This is how most of the raiding Free Companies made their profits for their future endeavors like Large Housing. It gave alot of people who were not ready to go out on their own and raid in Coils. Nobody learned anything, nobody adapted to situations, the player pool got a little worse. In short, Titan is an asshole, but he was a warranted asshole. He was the trial by fire, something that Warcraft doesn't even do anymore. He was the gatekeeper keeping most of the players who weren't ready out while in turn teaching them how to properly do a boss fight. Wipes should never be considered as a bad thing (most of the time), you use it as a learning experience for the next attempt, to not do what killed you the run before. It helps you in becoming a better player, and is a necessary part of the game. So for us who played in 2.0, we'll always remember this dark period of our lives in Eorzea, but for the ones that got past it could hold their head high for the time being. To know what a threat Titan actually posed in his prime, is a very scary thing to go back to.

Well all that's done, now what?

Well just for the sake of things I'd like to just cover the ever changing face of Mor Dhona. Mor Dhona is the place everyone hung out at before the housing and Gold Saucer were introduced, but is still a prevalent hangout spot to this day. YET Mor Dhona wasn't always the sprawling capital of adventure we know today, in 2.0 Mor Dhona was a HOLE IN THE GROUND. Yes, just for a moment lets remember what was there when we first started hanging out there. Instead of the Tradeposts and Rowena's secret castle house there was a plot of farmland, a literal pile of dirt! Rowena and her group of gear sellers operated out of a goddamn tent! There were no summoning bells here in 2.0 either. The Seventh Heaven wasn't introduced until 2.1 so there was absolutely nothing sitting in that spot either. Mor Dhona has come a long way since 2.0, but its always fun to go back and remember the fact that place used to suck bad, like real bad. The only thing to do there was be a Lalafell and sit in a circle with other Lalafells. (Unfortunately do to the time spent playing a a piece of shit platform I have no pictures of any escapades from that far back). As we move into new cityscapes in 3.0, let it be known that Mor Dhona was the little town that could, it literally started from nothing and became a real hip happenin' spot. We'll be covering what actually got added from patch to patch as well in future posts. Its fun to remember sometimes!

Another aspect I'd like to also cover was the HORRENDOUS POVERTY (Atleast for my server)everyone went through. So for the longest time Leviathan has been known as one of the poorest highest populated servers in the history of the game. 2.0 was a mysterious time for alot of people who didn't craft because... well there was no gil anywhere! Alot of the people who made their gil held onto it, and all the gil being generated was from the new 50s who didn't have to buy anything to get to 50. Gil was a rare commodity, not alot of people had a ton of it at any given time in 2.0. What you got from your journey to 50 was mostly what you got, and the gil you made on the market board came from the same place. The chats of major cities ran rampart with gil sellers before Square fixed that issue and they started operating in tells. 2.0 also was the point where there was no quick /blacklist command, you had to do all of that manually. This was actually a thing that broke the experience of the game for a handful of people. It was fucking CHAOS incarnate, the wild west of the marketboard until it became this highly manipulated controllable thing of the people who made their fortunes in 2.0. The market eventually got better yes, but it never truly recovered from this debacle. If anything WoW shows is that Blizzard knows how to deal with... most of it. Square just continues to let the players manage it, and unfortunately this game out of all the games of this genre I've ever played has some of the most manipulative people I've ever seen.

2.0 in a Nutshell

All Glory to Titan and his Demon Wall. A Long loot grind barred by hard but necessary Guardians of the End Game. People don't really care that they're hanging out in a ditch with no money. Of course honorable mentions that I didn't cover would have to be the FATE farming parties from certain level groups that filled the gap when you didn't meet the level requirements for your next story related thing. The communities of Quarrymill, Costa Del Sol were sorely missed, but 2.1 brought us a great way to not burn out on that bullshit once and for all. I would eventually see my first raid as a co-leader of a raid group into Binding Coil in late November, Early December just before the EX Primals and the way we played the game changed yet again. We'll cover all of that next time though, for this probably is running on longer than it needs to be, especially with no flash to go with any of the paragraphs, which probably won't happen until the 2.2 recap. So thanks to everyone who decided to read this, I'll hopefully be doing 2.1 sometime tomorrow, as it feels good to wrap up what was the best Vanilla experience I've had in an MMO in forever. 2.0 was somewhat of a hot mess of a time but all in all, it was a great mess, it was fun to go through the game's growing pains since the beginning. Again, thanks for reading, and tune in next time!

Correct! It's that time again, as I have not been able to keep a steady flow of blogs going at all. Again my main intent is to actually do that, AND on time instead of it being an extra day late to boot. If I keep having to bring that up though I'll start sounding like a broken record, so lets not dwell on my procrastination and incompetence, cause I fucking played video games and I want to write about them. This week I 117% Dust: An Elysian Tail and recap the return of the Midnight Channel. So without further writing anything else for this part:

Dust: An Elysian Tail

To be completely honest before Dust came out I completely wrote off the rest of the Summer of Arcade. I had no interest in paying $15 for a very disappointing re-imagining of something I can just play on my Dreamcast, and with all the F2P stuff I already play and is coming out Hybrid has no shot of sticking. Deadlight being lackluster didn't help, nor does not owning a Kinect, yet when Dust rolled out on the XBLA I decided to give the trial a shot and see where it would go from there. I downloaded it while watching Netflix and it eventually finished up in the middle of a show so I decided to wait until the show finished up. Upon that thought Dust had a different idea all together and it went a little something like this:

>Dust has finished downloading

>Awesome I'll just-

>Dust has finished downloading

>Okay I got it the first ti-

>Dust has finished downloading

>Okay what's going on I'm checking the active downloads why is it only at seven perce-

>Dust has finished downloading

>FINE I'LL JUST REMOVE IT FRO-

>Cannot remove from your active downloads

>GODDAMNI-

>Dust has finished downloading

Okay so we weren't off to a good start but Dust wasn't to blame for this, as watching Netflix at the same time caused a rip in the Xbox Space Continuum that caused Dust to completely go bananas to the point I couldn't even access my account on Xbox.com, an error message would just pop up saying "You're not supposed to be seeing this page!". Well after all that was said and done I was eventually able to take it off my active downloads and re-download it without any issue, and without watching shit on Netflix. Never watch shit on Netflix if you're downloading stuff apparently, or if you want to get dangerous go ahead and do it.

Anyway I got around to booting up the demo and played through it and while I wasn't fully convinced I was intrigued by what had transpired before me. I do love the concept of a Metroidvania type game, even though the only Metroidvania game I ever played at that point was Harmony of Despair, something my friends while playing HoD will not let me forget as they keep asking:

"Hey man you've played Such and Such right?"

"NO"

So after the demo had passed I waited a day to ponder on the purchase, then eventually made the plunge and put down my $15. Now initially I was a little bit bothered by the art style simply because back in my WoW days I rolled with a few people in which the style does appeal to because well... you know, and if they ever found out after all the ragging I gave them about it then well... you know. Not that I don't find the art not appealing because it chooses to be that, but because well... that community from most of my experience has been sexually deviant, including said people I hung out with playing MMOs, which made the Champions Online phase really fucking weird (Don't ask, I was a giant robot and wasn't one of the many Animals or Demons). Yet I don't find this game unappealing in any way since hey, I got past it with Star Fox and the like, why should I have a problem with this? In the end I don't, and besides some of the character designs looking a little generic, I think Fidget is one of the most adorable fucking things I've ever seen (partly due to the voicework as well). As soon as you can get past that barrier, atleast from the outside looking in perspective, the game itself is actually quite the celebration of the Metroidvania.

As you make your way through the game with Dust and Fidget you start running into a lot of what you expect to see in this type of game. Plenty of areas you'll end up backtracking to, breakable walls, wall chickens, it's all pretty much there. Even the game knows it's pretty much there as it is a bit self aware of what is actually going on. Fidget occasionally making an observation on how ridiculous such a mundane task is causing you trouble, the part where Dust tries to wall grab before he even has the Wall Grab ability, the fact the wall chicken is straight up called Wall Chicken. Though eventually you'll see it disappear from the main quest, a lot of it still resides in the many side quests you'll be off doing. In fact if I recall correctly the main quest starts off as "Oh hey this is a video game and you press these buttons to do stuff" to start you off, but as soon as you're out of The Glade it completely drops that attitude. It meshes both tones into a nice combination that even though you'll find the gags breaking the fourth wall a bit still contains it into a compelling story with you still caring what happens to Dust and Fidget.

Even beyond the pokes at the Metroidvania stuff, there's even more expanding beyond SotN style Castlevania and of course the friends, which by now you should know are mostly comprised of fellow XBLA indie game characters like Meatboy. As you go about finding and freeing them from their cages, you'll be awarded with a permanent health boost, and if you can collect all 12, a nice surprise at The Sanctuary awaits you. All of these things make this game have a whole lot of charm and it most certainly helps you get through it a bit because even though playing on Tough, there really isn't that much of a challenge once you get the Aerial Dust Storm and the rest of Fidget's spells. The crafting system also seems to be a little bit less than desired as I actually ran through 70% of the game without having to switch out the augment on my sword, not because I chose to, but because I never really found a good upgrade outside of what I had. The Difficulty curve eventually does kick up a little bit as there will be enemies that eventually block your attacks, but they're way too late to the party as you should be able to have Fidget electrocute pretty much anything that gets in your way. If you didn't have the Aerial Dust Storm the game would require you to actually do more work, it even makes a few of the other movement abilities useless just because of the distance you can cover with it. Aside from some of the problems this game has, I can proudly say I enjoyed this game from start to full completion, and if you can give the game a look, it's been one of my favorites this year by far. Also the people who provided the voicework for this game should receive more work after Dust, a lot of these dudes have been on Newgrounds for the longest time, and it'd be nice to start expanding the talent pool on voiceovers. Not to bag on the professionals, but everyone is starting to sound the same in video games, and that honestly creeps me out than animal people at this point.

Bearsona 4 Arena

Me and my friends were waiting for this game pretty much the first day we found out about it. Cause goddamn, we liked BlazBlue, but fuck most of the cast, fuck the crazy unbalanced tiers, and pretty much for me fuck everything but Makoto at this point. The return of the Persona 4 crew along with Akihiko, Mitsuru and Aigis pretty much just trumps anything Arc can do with the next BlazBlue at this point, not even adding a trap will save them this time. So enough with the badmouthing of BB and onto the return... The Return of the Midnight Channel.

Almost everyday for me aside from trying to clear Dust has been spent in Persona 4 Arena. Pretty much just training up and learning all that I can with my main man Teddie. Yeah if you couldn't tell from the title I decided to main Teddie, but I did so kind of begrudgingly at first. I was extremely interested in him prior because in fighting games, I LOVE gimmicks. Gimmicks may not win matches reliably but goddamn it its fun to catch someone with one, and Teddie is just chalk full of that stuff. Yet... What the fuck was Dave Wittenberg so busy with that he couldn't come back and breathe life into the character again? My main issue with Teddie is unfortunately the fact that he's voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, the same gent who already does Yosuke. I normally do like Yuri's voice, but his attempt at Teddie, after going back to regular ass Persona 4, honestly feels a little half-assed, and if it wasn't for the fact that I can't just turn Teddie's VO Japanese by itself means I'm just gonna have to deal with it. I mean, he's still that totally awesome bear, but when did Yosuke learn to throw his voice in a matter of two months?

Personal problems with Teddie aside he's an incredibly fun character to play. Fast, throws items, his bat, Kintoki Douji messing up people in the air, makes a lot of my friends very unhappy if I actually win. Unfortunately for me whenever we do get into a fighting game I'm about almost below on the totem pole in terms of actual play. My friend is a bit higher than me in terms of play level (to make matters worse is that he also plays Kanji, so basically just doing the same Tager shit he did in BB but with better tools), and all of his friends are pretty much above him, with one of them having fucking natural talent with whatever character he plays. I guess it could be worse though, I could still be mashing the autocombo. As I play with them more I do end up learning a lot more everytime, so with that I have been able to step up my game a bit with execution in online matches.

The other interesting thing about P4A has been it's story mode, as many who have played it should know is canonical with the events of P4. It's also clear to me that Arc System Works must have had no part in writing this story mode because given their past track record of story modes a lot of it is nonsensical bullshit. If they did though, good job, they didn't resort to time travel to fuck everything up. I haven't actually completed everyone's story, with Yukiko, Yu, Akihiko, and Aigis still untouched. I have no idea if there's some sort of post game after you do complete everyone's story, but if there isn't, everyone's own story just kind of feels weird as they cap themselves off. Mostly because of the fact the character you're playing has to get to the end in a different way, it makes some of the the characters feel off in the end, especially with Yu as he has to play backseat with everyone despite being the leader. In the end though its still a kick to see what the gang is up to before the inevitable clean slate with Persona 5. I'll probably be playing this game for a long time, probably even longer than BB:CS, cause hey, the cast doesn't suck this time.

The End!(?)

As this week comes to a close a whole new plethora of games are heading our way, it is that time again people, video game season. Next week I got some Fall of Cybertron to look forward to along with the regular sparring of P4A, maybe get back to Orcs Must Die 2 in the process. For now though, lets just take a moment and welcome back video games. Also I should probably work out my schedule for PAX, cause that's in two weeks, fucking insane just thinking about it!

SEE YOU GUYS LATER.

Hello and welcome back to something I've been procrastinating for about what the title says. I apologize, mostly because everything I was playing or getting myself into hasn't been too interesting to write about or share, but this week is different! In this edition of writing about Video Games, I take a quick visit into Grimrock, and say my final farewells to The Binding of Isaac, while somewhere in the middle of that talk about how I just got on the "I played Shadow of the Colossus" bandwagon. So without further explaining the gameplan in the intro let's get to it!

Legend of Grimrock, OR The Adventures of Manish Man the Minotaur

So during the Steam Summer Sales I was actually very uninterested in many of the deals. You see I don't tend to go off the handle like some people I know if I just happen to see Crysis 2 for 75% off, or some horse breeding game that happens to be a dollar. I tend to usually only buy up games I actually plan on playing at some point in time. I missed the first 60% off of Grimrock, and made my mind up too late on agreeing I'd buy it at $6. Lucky for me the Community agreed and voted it during the community choice, so without skipping a beat I went ahead and purchased it. So as you know from the Quick Look, Grimrock is one of those first person dungeon crawling RPGs that don't show up very often nowadays. You and three other prisoners that you also customize try to escape the labyrinth that is Grimrock, or I assume that is what you're trying to do. Along the way you're ambushed by monsters and forced to outsmart the deadly traps and puzzles to reach your goals. So in a very Adventure Time-y fashion like I did in Dragon's Dogma, I made my leading character a Minotaur and dubbed him "Manish Man". I have no idea why this children's show has effected my character creations as of late, but I won't question it. Unfortunately in my stupor I forgot to name the other three amigos in my band of merry men and are now stuck with "The Adventures of Manish Man and the Three New Prisoners". I'll just pretend they aren't as important.

So I am actually currently up to the part seen in the Quick Look and are having a complete blast with what has been thrown at me so far. Even though I had early issues like "Oh man why do I have this Lizardman Rogue he can't even hit anything back there" and "How do I cast my goddamn spells with this archaic calculator". Once eventually got around to figuring out both problems everything has been going alot smoother, but I have to say I haven't been stuck on a game for a whole day like this one in a long time. Due to the game never telling me I could actually fit items through gates made me feel like a complete fool, but every time I tried doing it prior I wasn't able to do it. What, was Toorum too busy with escaping he couldn't leave a note behind to help out? Whatevs man, I'll figure out the rest for myself. So yeah, only four hours into it, and looking forward to getting deeper into it. Legends of Grimrock has been worth every dollar, all six of them.

Shadow of the Colossus

Yeah, it's Summer, so I found it necessary to get onto that back catalog of games I needed to play from last year. It just so happened the ICO collection happened to be VERY available, and due to me actually watching some Shadow of the Colossus online via stream or random Youtube Let's Play, it was time. I booted it up, watched the intro, got on my horse, and then began to learn how to ride this horse. This game is one gigantic learning experience, one might even say a COLOSSAL one. Even having gotten 15 Colossi deep I still can't control this motherfucker correctly. Regardless, once I got a "grip" on how to control this beast I made my way to the first Colossus in order to stab him in his weak spot. I have no idea if this is what is intended for most people when they play it the first time, or if it was just me being rarely inept at a video game, I couldn't for the life of me control this game correctly. Holding R1 to stay gripped to things, jumping with Triangle, X not really doing anything with the sword out except for that one Colossi so far, the d-pad I didn't even realized cycled to your bow. Every Colossi up until maybe the fourth one caught me with my pants down. Video Games have not done this to me in forever, and I felt ashamed, but somehow in a good way. For once, a game was mixing stuff up, it wasn't straight forward from the get-go. Like I've said, this game is quite the learning experience, and so far even though the whole point has been "Stab their weak spot" each one has had a different way of going about it. Every time I start up this game I just have a hard time believing this game existed on the PS2, even though it's graphically not there it's somehow not feasible to me that this game was not on a current generation console to begin with.

So far out of the 15 Colossi I have encountered my favorites have been The Underwater and Sand Dune Colossi. I was just amazed at the sheer scale of both of the fights, hanging on to dear life while he whizzes through the water like a Torpedo, or running away on horseback while trying to shoot it's eye out. The Colossi and their respected environments make for great battles and set pieces. I do not regret holding out this long to try out one of the great games of that 05' lineup, because the way this has been set up for me, it was a game I just needed to play as of this week. Hopefully soon The Last Guardian will see the light of day, but until then I still have Shadow of the Colossus, and even after that ICO. (If ICO is anything like SotC though, I'm not looking forward to rewiring my brain to learn how to control that game... ugh)

The End of The Binding of Isaac

To anyone who has been paying attention to my achievements, you might have noticed I have ascended into the Pantheon. I am a Platinum God, and it feels good. Throughout the month of July I was absolutely hooked into 100% this game, from playing everyday to watching dudes stream it it pick up more pro strats, the deed had been finally done, as I made my final descent into Hell with Maggy to end it all. This was one of my favorite games of 2011 and I wanted to prove it by doing every little thing. Collecting all of the items, doing all of the challenges (even the insane Purist one), and clearing the Chest with the whole cast. I can finally move on, and retire Isaac for good. As I made my last run with Maggy into Sheol, the last thing I supposedly needed to do, I stumbled across Epic Fetus in the basement. The game showing one act of humility to me, as if it were a message to me saying "You've paid your dues". It wasn't some reluctant handshake and swift boot out the door, it wasn't some cruel joke to get me killed and force me into run after run with Maggy. It was a graceful finish that Isaac wanted, and I delivered it.

I'll miss this game, and its antics. I'll miss doing all the pro strategies like abusing Eve's invincibility frames, using The Chariot card to get a free item out of the sacrifice rooms. It was a hell of a ride. Thank You Isaac, and thank you Edmund, my friends and I have cursed your name in disgust to the bullshit many times, but without all of that, we wouldn't have had half the fun we had in the basements.

The End!(?)

Well that about sums up what happened for this week, and even then two out of the three games I have started are not done yet. Again I apologize to myself and anyone, I totally wanted to make this a weekly thing, but sometimes interesting things do not happen or inspire me to recap an adventure in a blog on the internet. So hopefully starting this week I can get back into the swing of things and write up more stuff, but for now:

SEE YOU GUYS LATER.

Hello and welcome back to me deciding to write about video games. Now if you were paying attention last week, there was no content. Well, thanks to the US Postal Service being the US Postal Service, I did not get the two games I've been promising for the longest time in time to actually play them enough to know what I wanted to say about them. So with that I got down to it and decided to postpone the blog into the week we are currently in. This week is a doozey of a week though, I promise! So without further writing an intro:

Lollipop Chainsaw

Now me wanting to play this game was more of an impulse since there wasn't anything out that I was currently busy with. I completely missed Shadows of the Damned last time this happened because of that, but thanks to it being the season of no games I was able to set my sights on Lollipop Chainsaw. Now I actually have regularly been in and out of Suda51 joints al a No More Heroes, and I thoroughly enjoyed that series a lot, going into this I decided to set my expectations onto the same level as that, and to be frank the game gave me a pretty good impression. I must be one of the only people on the planet that doesn't find Juliet the least bit annoying. It's probably because I'm a huge Tara Strong fan, cause I guarantee you if she wasn't in that role I'd be on the boat with everyone else. Juliet and Nick have some hilarious dialog throughout each level and because of that the clunky combat is bearable for the time you don't have any damage dealing combos. I pretty much ran through the game with little to no problems, and then the game started to hate me.

Now as some of you may know from the first blog I wrote I've been rather attracted to Score Attack styled modes after Max Payne 3, and Lollipop Chainsaw gives me three ways to play. Score Attack, Time Attack and Medal Attack, I normally pick Medal Attack for personal reasons. Now there is nothing fundamentally wrong about any of these modes, there's even skippable cutscenes! Yet even though they're skippable I would advise against it. I have no idea if this is just on my end, but remember how in Max Payne 3 you couldn't skip the cutscenes since the game was using them as loading screens? Well In Lollipop Chainsaw you are free to skip the cutscene, but the consequence is that later on it will catch up to you. You'll start noticing textures are failing to load up on everything, the game will start stuttering, and there will be more and more segments split up by loading screens. Until eventually you will run into ONE of these loading screens, and never emerge from it again. So when this started happening I decided to try and install the game to see if it would remedy the problem. I loaded up the game, only to be welcomed by even longer load times, even more so at boss fights than anywhere else. Like right before the Mariska fight I was welcomed by a nine minute load screen. On Josey I was greeted by a 10 minute load screen. You're more than welcome to head back to the dashboard some of the time if the game doesn't decide to hang that as well. If you do that during a Score Attack run though, in Score Attack fashion you're forced to give up your progress.

I pretty much threw my hands up in the air at that point and shouted "Japanese Video Games!". Seriously though how does a game get out of development and have such problems? Again this could just be on me and my Harddrive, but I've been playing Dragon's Dogma in the middle of all of it and I have had no issues with that game at all. If it wasn't for the terrible load times and some repeated gags (I just HAD to mention the second Combine sequence, what a fucking WASTE of time), I would have thought this was a pretty good game that was actually worth the purchase, but in the end I'd have to agree with the Quick Look, it's just not Suda51 enough. If you could get this game at a pretty reduced price I would still recommend you try it out, since I still think the Dialog Nick has in the game is priceless. I just wonder how long its going to take to get a decent Score Attack mode in one of these games that doesn't have glaring issues with its forced load times, or its skippable cutscenes breaking the fucking game.

Dragon's Dogma

Yes! The game I've been waiting for a little over a month finally showed it's head, and I was pretty psyched. In the demo I had a lot of fun making my would-be character ranging from Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Duke Nukem, but then I found out I could make him a little boy. So naturally like ALL of my RPG characters dating back to Dark Souls, I was able to make an actual sized Finn from Adventure Time. So before I even started my game I was pretty goddamned impressed. After the prologue with the Chimera and not playing as my character, I finally got to play as my character just in time for HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT DRAGON. THAT IS A DRAGON. THAT REALLY BIG HULKING THING DESTROYING EVERYTHING IS WHAT A DRAGON IS. Unlike another game that had Dragons in it, THIS GAME UNDERSTANDS WHAT A DRAGON WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. It fits in perfectly with how the Monster Manual describes one, the Dragons in that one game everyone loves were the size of Wyverns, and even Dragon's Dogma does Wyverns much better than that. So after that pitiful attempt to try and slay that magnificent creature, he takes my heart and that's where the true Dragon's Dogma(s) begins.

So after you lose your heart you're introduced to a fellow called a pawn, which is one of the big features of the game. You're allowed one pawn to customize and that pawn can go into other peoples games and collect knowledge about the world and future quests you may embark upon. Now if this game were to allow me to make a Dog pawn this would have been an early contender for GotY. Along with your main pawn you're also allowed two pawns you can summon from other peoples games, which actually led to me borrowing a friend's pawn for healing duties. Unfortunately that's not all she was stuck doing. While in The Catacombs we happened to embark on an Ogre, and Ogres in this game have got to be the funniest thing I've seen so far this year. As we tried to encounter it, my friends pawn decided to cast a spell catching the attention of the Ogre. They... have an extreme attraction to female characters, so in typical Ogre fashion he FLIPS THE FUCK OUT and starts pounding the ground and slobbering everywhere. He the proceeded to jump in the air, travel ten feet in a dropkick motion, and dropkick my friend's pawn halfway across the cavern. The Ogre thought that this was such a good idea, he got up, and did the exact same thing, sending the pawn even further and ricochet off of a wall. Even though there is still half of the year to go, I have to vote this son of a gun for Enemy of the Year.

While Dragon's Dogma does combat and enemies pretty well, I actually feel that there's just not a lot to do in the game. There hardly seems to be alot of those Pre-Planned quests in between the more involving main quest, and the notice board stuff seems to be the typical trope of "go find x number of items" or "go kill x amount of enemies". I found myself more or less trying to explore the world in order to find hidden stuff, hoping there would be more, but that never seems to be the case. While there's still the ambush sidequests from time to time, they aren't what I was exactly hoping for. I guess I'm just looking for more stuff like The Duke choking his wife shouting out "LENOOOOOOOOORE!". Geez Bill, get your shit together.

The Super Monday Night Combat Corner!

There wasn't any!

... I hear it's part of the TF2 ARG I guess.

The End! (?)

Okay so it's been a pretty uneventful two weeks, and I pretty much dreaded writing this up because of it. Hopefully next week I can get around to Lone Survivor finally and Rain-slick Precipice 3 and have more to type about. Maybe Diablo 3, but from what I've ran through so far by myself there really isn't much to talk about besides the game being a massive dick and giving me nothing but BLUES on NIGHTMARE DIABLO... Maybe there's more to what I've experienced than I thought. Anyway That'll conclude this week:

SEE YOU GUYS LATER.

Hello and welcome to this edition of me writing about video games. Last week as you all know was E3, so a lot of new things came to be. While the show itself was underwhelming (which shouldn't be surprising with it getting down to the end of the current cycle) there were still games out there that looked like they deserved to be talked about. So this week I bring to you some of the games that interested me, interested you, and above all made the show more interesting. So to begin, I'm going to kick it off with a game I have been waiting for since 2004. A game that was teased throughout this generation but never actually revealed up until now:

Pikmin 3

The return of Pikmin is close at hand with the launch of the Wii U this year, and the announcement that officially made this game a thing has me by the neck. I have been a huge Pikmin fan since the original game back during the GameCube launch. I had been anticipating more since the release of Pikmin 2 during 2004, but Olimar and the Pikmin have been out of action since, only making one appearance in Smash Brothers as a combatant. With only the Overlord games coming close to the original formula, there hasn't been one of these kinds of games in over eight years. With a lot of new features already shown in the press conference, it seems like this game still has many things we don't know about it as of yet. Where is Olimar? How many new types of Pikmin will accompany the new Rock Pikmin? What's the story behind the four leader characters? Hopefully all these questions will be answered within the coming months, but for now, I'm just glad this game is coming out. I'm not looking forward to spending $250-300 just to play one game, but with Pikmin, I just know that it'll be an experience that people shouldn't miss.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

Now I have not played a single Need For Speed game, not even the first one Criterion had a part in. Yet I have played plenty of Burnout games in order to be excited for this one. An open world environment, somewhat destructible cars, smashing through billboards, this has all the stuff to make itself the rightful successor of Burnout Paradise. Even if my only hands on experience with Paradise was only very long stretches with the demo, I could safely say that no game has been able to lock me into a small sample of itself for so long, for multiple days even. After seeing this game I should probably make it a priority to get my hands on it after all these years, cause it clearly deserves it. I wish I had a bit more to say about it, but like I said this will be my first take into the Need For Speed franchise. Even though my expectations are high and I know a bit of what I'm going to get I'm not entirely sure how to put it into words from an outside looking in perspective. All I know is from the first reveal at the conference, and what I saw in that footage, this has to be a day one pick up.

The Last of Us

There's really only one way to sum up the demo during the conference, that dude has no face left. We finally got to see The Last of Us in action this E3, and boy did it look pretty good. While watching the demo, I couldn't really help but notice some of the Uncharted similarities I saw, but all of those were blown out of the water as soon as the conflict with the other dudes happened. My god, compared to all the guys you light up in the Uncharted games it seems like a group containing only three to four guys can be just as deadly in this game. I do expect to see a lot of the missed execution from I Am Alive to be achieved when this game eventually rolls itself out whenever it does. The way that Joel interacts with the environment during fist fights seemed to also get kicked up a notch from Uncharted, as I was not expecting him to bash the enemy's head into that end table, and my eyes literally lit up when that scavenging menu popped up when the player made that Molotov on the fly like that. There is a lot of tools it seems in and out of combat to get you into or out of a lot of situations. While there wasn't any character banter between Joel and Ellie, I am not distressed due to all of the other reports of the extended demo. A while back I said I wanted another trip into Uncharted with Nathan Drake, I no longer want that trip if this is what Naughty Dog's future looks like.

Watch Dogs

Going into the Ubisoft conference, I was not expecting a lot. Rayman Legends becoming a thing, more AC3 coverage. I just about had no interest after the incident with a good looking game gone bad, Shootmania happened (doesn't change my view that Shootmania looks really good). Then... Watch Dogs happened. This thing was accompanied by the most Syndicate trailer I have ever seen. When they were talking new IP, I figured there was no way Ubisoft had anything left, they were totally not going to show what this thing was about. Then... They totally showed what this thing was about. What followed seemed to be a very modern day Assassin's Creed. A guy in a trench coat that had these incredible hacking skills manages to get into this club, and gather information. Some cool things happened, like when he was looking around it was showing things about people that other people really shouldn't know. There was a guy with a QR code for a face that actually led to something in real life. All of this stuff looked great and the game looked really great, but then THIS happened:

So naturally a good way to get information in a game like this would be to hack into devices and listen into conversations. Unfortunately for me I was suddenly flashed back to a scene where Altair sits down on a bench and eavesdrops on a conversation between two dudes in order to get information on his target. That one thing in Assassin's Creed 1 has scarred me for life, and with that I cannot get these doubts out of my head for this game. Now I know nothing about how the mission structure of the game is or how you go about progressing in it, I still can't escape this idea that Watch Dogs could be to it's possible franchise like how Assassin's Creed 1 is to the Assassin's Creed franchise in general. I probably should be putting my skepticism into other things like the game being another shooter or the bullet time, but something about eavesdropping conversations has just left a bad taste in my mouth. While I still am interested in this game for what seems to be offered, I'm not going to let myself get burnt like Assassin's Creed 1. Color me cautious for this new Ubisoft game.

Beyond: Two Souls

Now knowing Quantic Dream, this thing really isn't going to be much of a video game, but due to the amount I actually liked Heavy Rain, I'm looking forward to "playing" this new one. Most of my love of these games comes from me playing them with one of my friends, which unfortunately me not being around the same area as him anymore may hinder the experience a bit. Yet one of my fondest moments from Heavy Rain came from watching my friend go through it in one sitting. Seeing what he picked and how his ending looked compared to mine was a blast, because of one key thing between his and mine was Agent Jayden. While I got Jayden all the way to the end, I was forced to sit and watch him try to get through the Mad Jack encounter, which ended up him failing too many times on sixaxis movements. What came out of it was a very creepily happy Mad Jack dragging Jayden away to what I assume wasn't to patch him up and watch over him. The conversation afterwards was pretty much like this.

"Wait what just happened?!"

"You just totally let Jayden die."

"Wait what?!"

"You let Mad Jack kill him, and now he's gone forever."

"I didn't mean too!"

"You like totally missed out on a big chunk of the end."

"Can I just-"

"It's over, man"

"BUT"

"IT'S OVER, LET IT GO!"

Despite this key element most likely going to be missing for me, I'm still pretty excited to get into Beyond. I thought that the character models were a complete step up from what we saw from Heavy Rain, as it looks like they've developed the tech a bit more on it. I'm a bit curious on how most of the QTEs will be handled with the ghost following the Ellen Page character around, though from what we heard on the Afterhours stream it seems to be just your basic button pushes to get that hot shit started. If we get anything like the Scott Shelby rampage during Heavy Rain, sign me the fuck up.

The Super Monday Night Combat Corner!

I did mention this at the top right? No? Oh well! While E3 was making a ruckus, I was still dropping mad time in SMNC as I normally should be! Unfortunately even if it was E3, Uber really didn't do much during the week besides reintroduce All Star Leveling and Pro Tags back into the game. Even though Pro Tags are back in I'm bummed because it means my stats were not taken care of well. I have a total of 9 hours and ~2300 kills in game, while the kills may be true anyone who's seen my time played on Steam can call shenanigans that I've only played 9 hours. Not only that, my kills seem to come out of nowhere, as I only have around 150 kills with the Vet and only a staggering 11 kills with my main cybro Karl. Despite that discouraging news I still just played like nothing happened, who cares about those totally cool Pro Tags you can attach to your name anyway?

Most of my playtime this week also heavily favored The Veteran, as I'm still practicing pretty hard with him to understand him even better. I'm still getting used to how the Ka-Klaw works, as I still tend to clip small parts of the floor and walls trying to pull people in resulting in a wasted cooldown. It's probably not helping either I'm playing what is primarily a grapple character on the US East region, as my ping isn't favorable on those servers. What's even worse is that the US East region also attracts people even FURTHER away from the East than me, I've seen totals of over 200 ping in some games. All you need to know is that a lot of my stool grapples end up looking like I'm using a mime's furniture to kill people from time to time. I'm also getting many situations where I do not get the last hit on my kills, only snagging assists. Which is fine in practice if my team is competent to use those kills to help the cause, but when that doesn't become the case I tend to fall way behind in levels in some games. Which reminds me of last week about that one Tank, there were games this week where I go 10-2 and I'm totally in the cellar on my team in terms of money gain. I know I wasn't heavy on the bots in some of those games but... there were some guys who weren't even putting up the same numbers and getting more dosh than me. I mean I've been to some alone time with Bullseye and Jungle Bots, but do they really level you up that fast mid game? Or is it people using Money Magnet? Are people maintaining Bot Streaks? All I do know is that I still have to find that balance with the Veteran like I do with the Tank or Karl, I just don't know the spot where he can spiral out of control yet.

Out of all the games I did play this week, there was really one I had to mention that was just one of the oddest I've played. It started off in the pro select screen (Where most of them start), except this time, some dude starts complaining that someone locked is precious Assault. So in response of this he picks Gunner, and as the game starts, he goes off and dies purposely three times to the enemy team. At this point in my head I'm like "GREAT", someone was so mad that he wanted to throw the game for us. After about his third death he just straight up leaves, so while we DID lose a teammate, we ended up dodging a bullet due to his intentional feeding. While that was going on, both me and a Sniper start pushing their right lane pretty hard, their team reacts and starts a great big firefight in the middle of the lane with just me and the Sniper. The other team ALSO ended up picking a Veteran and tried to pull me into their group of guys to be ganked, he missed, and I ended up pulling him into our meager group of two dudes and straight up busted his face up. For some reason, their team did not see it fit to go in and overrun our tiny push, even after I started pulling them in one by one. Long story short their defense was garbage, we got an early turret down in a 5v4. Fast forward a bit, for some reason our CG is able to hold everyone off at the Anni fights and we control it for most of the game. Their Veteran 9 deaths later just calls it quits and we're back to an even game. We wear them down to their back turrets, and everything seems to be going our way, UNTIL...

They managed to sneak a Jackbot past us! We have to run all the way back (For some of us respawn) and get this mofo out of our base. Now with the recent updates the Jackbots have been acting a bit funny as of late. This one in particular passed one of our front turrets on the right lane and just OBLITERATED our Moneyball Rock-it turrets! We get that Jackbot down, but their team is pushing pretty hard, so naturally we counter their push and wipe out the whole team, and continue our push to their Moneyball. With them still respawning our bots reach their back turrets and we proceed to take them out, Our Defenders set up their turrets and we start going to town. I was unfortunately not there at the end of it due to me being taken out to a dumb Megabeth Whirling Derbish, We won the game. Now in the end the game doesn't sound as weird as I made it out to be, but it just strikes me as odd how the Gunner just left the game after purposely dying three times in a row. If he was just going to purposely feed the other team, why didn't he just stick around to make sure we lost? I know I shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but I just can't help but wonder why this guy didn't go out on his troll attempt.

The End! (?)

With E3 at a close, we can finally get back to our normal routine of playing games instead of getting anticipated to play games. This is the second week in a row that Dragon's Dogma is still not in, 3 if you're counting the first blog post. So next week, don't expect it! Instead, Lollipop Chainsaw more than likely, and also Diablo 3, as a kind soul was able to get it for me (hint: it was the guy I watched play Heavy Rain). Maybe Lone Survivor too, as I got to it two days ago and want to get through that atleast once. So look out for all those and maybe more next week!

SEE YOU GUYS LATER

Hello, and welcome to this blog I decided to write up! Yes I've decided to write about video games once again (and yes I changed the name), regardless whether or not anybody actually read the last one. So just in case you were one of the many few that skimmed through the wall of text I posted last week, I mentioned something about Dragon's Dogma. Well that didn't come in this week, so that plan bombed. What I did get my hands on however will pretty much take up all the space that game would have anyway. So here was plan B!

The Binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb

Yes, the disturbing roguelike makes it's inevitable return with the new DLC content Wrath of the Lamb. Since I had absolutely nothing else to do this week, I found myself going through the depths of the basement once again, only this time with new items, secrets, and bosses waiting for me. Luckily I was able to amass a bunch of playthroughs and a good chunk of the new items to share with you, and whether or not the new items were good or not. So to start off I'd like to share what I though was the best (and worst) additions to the basement.

Best New Item: Prayer Card

Prayer Card is one of the Space items you can pick up, and is by far the best out of all of them. Prayer Card when used awards the player with a new "Eternal Heart", a half-white heart, that can be turned into a permanent heart container if another Eternal Heart is picked up. This item really shows off its worth if its found early in the game, for you can actually use it after you clear a boss room, and as you move onto the next level, will instantly award you with a permanent Heart Container. Meaning you can have up to a total of a 9 heart container gain by the last floor (given how far you actually go). While it may be a matter of preference on what Space item anybody uses, Prayer Card can definitely be considered a staple to some. So if you find it, pick it up!

Best (Worst) New Item: IPECAC

Now this may be a bit controversial only because in my opinion an item with an explosion should instantly be good like Fetus in a Jar. Yet somehow IPECAC's explosive shot is by far one of the worst in the game. It travels through the air in an arc and randomly decides what is close enough to explode on impact. Most notably it will to rocks, but not to enemies, and because of that the item with all this potential is suddenly wasted. Why? Because it has a glaring weakness, it's terrible against fast moving enemies. I will not point fingers yet, because this item actually gets brought back up during a run I'm going to share with you. All you need to know is that IPECAC can be a good friend, but most of the time it's a ticking time bomb waiting to blow up in your face. Only pick it up if you have/had no dmg up items, otherwise stay clear.

I would love to talk a bit more about some other great and terrible items like The Holy Grail and Guppy's Paw, but what the game really comes down to is not what pick ups the game throws in your face, but how you actually use them (or misuse) to your advantage (or disadvantage). So I bring to you the three runs I compiled for this blog (Best, Worst, and Most Surprising).

The Best Run:

• Character: Isaac
• Most Notable Pick Up: Fetus in a Jar
• Worst Pick Up: IPECAC

So naturally my best run would include the default character and the best collectible item in the base game. The reason why I think Fetus in a Jar is considerably the best pick up is not only because of the fact it turns Isaac's tears into bombs, but how the bombs still get effected by other collectibles like Spectral Tears and Homing Tears. Thus making Isaac deadly in any fight if teamed up with Ouija Board or The Holy Grail especially. You can literally run through most of the game with Fetus in a Jar without picking up any other item, at that point it would just be overkill. As I was running through though I made the mistake of picking up IPECAC, which actually turned into a bigger hassle than what I wanted. Mostly because IPECAC screws up more item combinations than it creates, namely with items like Fetus in a Jar, in which it will actually SLOW DOWN the rate you can throw out a bomb. You'd think because I'm already throwing out bombs that it wouldn't be an issue, but because of IPECAC's current state, it simply gimps Fetus in a Jar so much that it makes you vulnerable to fast moving enemies and bosses.

Upon figuring this out I quickly started to just skip everything I saw in the game just to finish it before it could finish me. I mostly avoided the rest of the Treasure Rooms in favor of beating the bosses as fast as possible, and luckily for me there were none of the fast moving ones the likes of The Fallen or Gemini. I essentially dodged a bullet through most of the game. I would eventually find myself in the newest addition in the game, The Cathedral, and run into problem after problem. The first one being Twin Mini Gurdy, which I have to ask Mr. McMillen, WHY. Gurdy was already troublesome given if he's allowed to spawn a legion of enemies. Why split him in two and give him the ability to MOVE. Regardless of Gurdy's newly found mobility I was able to scrape by simply because of The Holy Grail and hiding on top of rocks. Then the second problem ended up appearing multiple times throughout the floor, even right before the boss fight, in which I'm talking about Super Double Greed. Now if you know about Greed he normally isn't a problem to most people, but so far he is the only one of the Seven Sins to actually mess me up pretty bad. I have no idea why, but everyone has their simple problems. I of course opted to have the My Little Unicorn pick up at the time, and in an effort to get through without losing any hearts I used it, only to almost break the game in the process. It turns out that when you come into contact with Super Greed he will spit out a large number of coins. I made the mistake of hitting them BOTH, causing the framerate of the game to spiral out of control due to all the coinage on the screen. So instead of trying to ram into them more before it ran out I had to make the decision to pick up ALL of the coins before I could blow them up, which put me in a bad situation. Luckily, again, I got through it and was able to hit up the Cathedral boss for my first successful clear.

The Worst Run:

• Character: Samson
• Most Notable Pick Up: All the Familiars
• Worst Pick Up: All of the Familiars

This was actually one of the first runs I managed to concoct, and by far one of the unluckiest and dumbest. Now I actually ended up unlocking Samson way before I even ever touched Cathedral, and the fact that he had Bloody Lust (a pickup that increases your damage as you kill enemies) sounded really appealing, so I decided to (or atleast TRY to clear) the game with him first. Samson can be a really good boss killer, and destroy floors like there's no tomorrow, as long as they're rooms filled with SLOW enemies. Unfortunately for Samson, alot of the new enemies show up for him to face, and they're mad fast, making him rather ineffective in alot of situations due to how slow his fire rate starts off. Now what made this run suck so bad is what I'm about to show you.

I for one am all for Familiars given the fact I play Cain most of the time, but with Samson it's a different story. Samson fires so slowly and has little to no impact with his tears that most of the time you should be wanting to get things like Jesus Juice. Yet somehow I ran into every boss that wanted to give me a familiar, namely Steven, Chad, and after that bosses that gave me Cubes of Meat. Along with that a kind Treasure Room wanted me to have one of the many Brother and Sister familiars. It was great in a sense I had a pretty good scatter shot, but it was terrible in a sense my OWN ability to damage enemies myself were so low that it didn't even matter, even after getting Spectral Tears it didn't matter because it doesn't effect my familiars shots. I ended up dying on this floor, and learning my lesson with Samson, if you don't get anything worthwhile in the first floor, just give up.

The Most Surprising:

• Character: Cain
• Most Notable Pickup: Prayer Card
• Worst Pickup: IPECAC

Now in this run I was in a bit more comfortable returning to Cain and his Lucky Foot, as goodies abound were guaranteed this run. I was instantly shut up as soon as I saw my first pickup was IPECAC. I thought to myself that this run was already over, but being the hopeful fool I am I went and rolled with it like a boss, and didn't run into any issues for a good two or three floors. Picked up a Cube of Meat and a Pretty Fly to boot, as shield familiars are normally pretty decent. As I made my way through I would eventually run into the make or break moment, and my most real trouble through the whole run, The Fallen. The Fallen actually has this extremely good advantage against IPECAC, namely, if you damage him enough, he will decide to charge at you Gemini style, the only difference? HE WON'T STOP. He moves way to fast for you to hit him with a tear, and it seems like the only way out of the fight is to just simply die. I couldn't accept that as I desperately wanted this nightmare to end the way I wanted it. So I came up with a plan, I decided to run, make sure he closed the gap every time, and slowly but surely shave his health off using Cube of Meat. It was a test of patience and I would eventually come out on top, as you only need to hit him a little bit in order to knock him out of his charge, which was all I needed to win the fight. Now the reason why I mentioned the Cube of Meat and Pretty Fly earlier was because the fight becomes impossible to win with IPECAC being your only offensive outlet. Without those, or possibly even more suicidal methods like The Virus or Razor Blade, The Fallen becomes invincible. After that the rest of the game became a cakewalk as enemies like The Fallen failed to show up for the rest of the game, and by the time I hit the boss room in Cathedral, I had too much health to fail. I snowballed out of control after the breaking point, which is why I'm still stunned I was able to pull this run off. CLEARED.

Of course I had many more runs, but these ones stood out the most, and they were the only ones I managed to snag screenshots of, since I mostly forget to in the middle of the game. Which is why there's no images of The Fallen impossible fight or of the actual Cathedral bosses. I usually get caught up in the rather hectic gameplay to focus on anything else. So the only thing I can do now is leave you with a bit of advice. Always, and I mean always PICK UP THE PRAYER CARD.

The Super Monday Night Combat Corner!

I said I would dedicate a small portion of this blog to SMNC, and I will darngummit! Regardless of how much I actually played this week, it wasn't much, and all of them tallying up to losses, I still feel like I should share a bit of the action. There's really only one game that stood out above all of them, as I dedicated all of these games to playing my new found Vet love, I was on the unfortunate end of a 40 minute loss. Now normally SMNC games do not hit the 40 minute limit, as usually a decisive move happens pretty much at the 15 minute mark. Apparently nobody gave either team the memo. Now what actually disgusted me about this game was that even with my 10-14 performance and nearly 200 bot kills, I STILL had 3000 less dosh than the other team's worst player, who went 15-30, and had under 100 bot kills. I had to stop myself from vomiting how ridiculous this sounds, I even tallied +10 more assists than him. There was no way the game can award playing like.. like THAT over the rest of our team. Regardless of people performing as badly as he was, our team managed to be even worse, as I wasn't able to get most of my kills due to being forced out of combat by their 15-30 Tank, and not scoring the last hit on enemies. Our only outstanding player was a Gunner, who currently I've been seeing in alot of games just snowballing out of control more often than any other Pro. So after that game I ended up playing 4 equally as bad games and tallied up my first lost streak since I started playing mid-December. I'm sure Uber is making it's best efforts (as they were trying to do with this patch) to fix the matchmaking system, but games like this keep happening, and it's becoming real discouraging to go into this game alone anymore. Yet as the motto goes, don't get discouraged, and I will live by those words, and I will continue to live by this game. Maybe this next week will yield better performances worth talking about, and maybe pictures.

The End! (?)

As this edition comes to a close, I would like to remind everyone that Dragon's Dogma is totally still planned at some point, but at the rate Gamefly sends RPGs to people post their release date, expect to see something else next week, and after that Lollipop Chainsaw. As I am not good with intros and goodbyes, I'll leave you with this one sentence,

SEE YOU GUYS LATER

(Seriously if anyone can hook me up with a clip of Ricardio the Heart Guy where he says this it would be much appreciated.)

So I wanted to write something about my current escapades in the games I'm currently playing, more so this week than any other, as you can tell there is actually content on here. Foregoing anything fancy as this might just be a one time thing, I just felt like I needed to share some of my experiences this week whether they be good or bad. So without further intro...

Max Payne 3 (Contains Spoilers, kind of)

I ended up picking this game up through Gamefly, as being jobless has put me into sort of a bind with Mass Effect 3 being the last retail copy I have actually bought. After that game it seems like a lot of games recently haven't actually warranted a legitimate purchase, and this service pretty much solves the age old problem of how to get new games without actually buying them or resorting to piracy. So anyway within the first day or two I completed Hard, Old School, and Hardcore (in that exact order) with none of it being as challenging as the description made them out to be. I had a lot of fun playing on Old School, as it felt like the game was supposed to be played in that mode all along forgoing the Last Man Standing mode and trading it with "Oh man you just straight up die if you get shot for real". This made Bullet Dodge a much bigger ally on this difficulty on the other ones since revealing yourself trying to John Woo people will get you sent to the last checkpoint instantly. This isn't where I have been spending most of my time with the game though.

I've been investing a buttload of time into the New York Minute mode, which is like a time attack mode through all of the chapters of the game. I instantly fell in love with this mode, trying to top leaderboard spots as fast as I could. I ended up grabbing a few top spots within the first week of the game's release, with I believe only retaining one spot (last time I checked before this blog) on the Cemetery level (which also happens to be one of my most hated chapters of the game, whodathunkit). I wanted to complete all the chapters for that phat 100 point achievement and the see what the hubbub was with this Hardcore New York Minute mode. So I ended up doing that, what came out of this became my own personal descent into hell.

You see, I think New York Minute mode made the game 10x better, even having to sit through story elements was tolerable since it was all split up into individual levels you could choose. What New York Minute did on Hardcore was the EXACT opposite of what you want to do for a time attack mode. Hardcore makes you go through the chapters back to back, carrying over your time from the previous levels, and allows absolutely no death. This makes sense since it's a "Hardcore" mode, right? Yeah, I'll admit that, but the fact that the game goes through the chapters back to back and makes you start over from the beginning if you die only get more tedious as you have to sit through ALL OF THE CUTSCENES OVER AGAIN. I mean MY GOD, I must know EVERY line from Chapter 3 at this point (which has actually become my most hated chapter due to how long all these unskippable cutscenes are) only because of how wonky this game can get. This mode has no remorse on what it does in order to kill you. An example would be I once got to Chapter 10, only to get shot by a guy who had NO VISIBLE shot on me, and all I could see of him was a foot and a head behind a rack of bus tires. Now some of you may be wondering "If you could SEE him in Last Man Standing, why COULDN'T you prevent this from happening?" GOOD QUESTION, Even though I could SEE him, it didn't mean my bullets could HIT him. Yes, even though my crosshairs turned red, and I could visibly see him, it turns out BUS TIRES CAN INVOKE INVISIBLE WALLS DURING GUNFIGHTS. So this ended up tumbling me back a bit, so I ended up trying again. NOT A GOOD IDEA AT ALL

It was Chapter 9, I'd have gotten through the whole part of the level where I actually control Max Payne. I got myself to the ONLY significant QTE in the game (which seemed EXTREMELY out of place in this game). I went to disarm the man of his Machete in order to kill him. I pressed the Left Trigger in order to do this, and even though I had hit the correct button at the correct time, the game, the Almighty Game of Games, decided that pressing that button wasn't GOOD enough, and decided to play the failure animation instead of continuing with the event. THUS TUMBLING ME BACK TO SQUARE ONE. In a massive flurry of mad I just decided to quit for the day, and save it for tomorrow. Yet not known to me, I would get even further to my goal. Everything was going right the next day, I was killin' dudes fast, almost racked up an hour of time on the clock. I got every dude who put me into Last Man Standing, got through the QTE, got through the impenetrable bus tires. I had no issues on chapters 11, 12, or 13 making it a cakewalk to the final chapter. Chapter 14 isn't painfully long at all, but can be annoying as the UFE love to FLOP all over the place when shot in their body armor, almost making it EXACTLY like the NBA playoffs. After the train ride to the airplane hangars, I sat getting amped up for the Becker fight. I had loads of ammo and 7 painkillers, I thought to myself that nothing could possibly go wrong at this point in the game, I had it NAILED. I basically had the whole hangar cleared of UFE, almost about to trigger the Bullet Dodge with Becker. When all of a sudden Becker shot out a Grenade from his Launcher, and being the ex-Sharks fan I knew, I was all like "DON'T WORRY ME, I GOT THIS" mid-way through the Grenade's route of travel. I poked out and got ready to shoot it, only when I popped out, there was no grenade to shoot. Nope, it was already at its destination, blew up and took me out with it.

I was devastated, how could I choke so hard at a part I KNEW how to get through, all you had to do was just stay behind the damn cover Meester. Even after that defeat, I made a pact with myself that this game would not beat me. I instantly loaded back up and got all the way to Chapter 6 Part 2, you know, at the part with the three guys trying to push the cabinet down to get out of the room. I killed all of them in Bullet Time and got the kill cam on the last guy. I thought to myself... well no, I KNEW at that point they were all dead. Oh how wrong I was, even after the Kill Cam I was INSTANTLY BLOWN AWAY by the last guy, who did not falter after the barrage of bullets I put in him. Nope, he was still aiming down his sights and pumping me full of lead faster than you could say "CHEATER". My spirit was broken. The game won, I'm not playing this bullshit mode after that. Well as of writing this blog I have the first chapter loaded up and waiting for me to get back to it, so clearly I'm some sort of masochist. Or maybe I'm just out of games to play until Dragon's Dogma gets here.

I might as well cover a bit of the multiplayer in this bit before moving on, but I'm not really a fan of it. As Rockstar usually does nowadays they carry over all the mechanics of the previous game and build or strip on that design for the next one. In this case, Max Payne 3 feels like a Red Dead Redemption lite, as it seems like only one or two weapons work in the multiplayer at any given time. The only thing I like is that they decided to make Soft Aim and Free Aim modes, instead of having the player choose his preference of aim, since ANYONE in RDR going into a game with Free Aim on was dead in the water. Everyone seems a bit more brittle in this game more so than RDR too, as shots to the hand as the target dummy show when you die seem to be as lethal as actual headshots. Mechanics in Rockstar online games just aren't good, and if I had to be fair about it, they just aren't my thing. I lean more on the latter because if you ever play with any of the old RDR clans on Max Payne 3, they're so convinced that this game is a legitimate competitive shooter. I didn't know being delusional was in this month.

Super Monday Night Combat

If I do decide to continue this blog, you might as well expect to see a bit of SMNC talk in it. I am 100% in love with this game, the universe, the characters, the humor, the atmosphere. Everything about this game appeals to the inner sports fan/competitive gamer in me. I've been trying to get my friends to start the path of an SMNC Pro but to almost no avail except save for a few cool guys I happen to have played with last night.

The day started off pretty bad as we were instantly thrown into Gun Mountain, the latest map in the SMNC roster. I hadn't played it since I took the week off of playing the game so I was pretty raw going into the game too. We ended up getting rolled and rather salty towards Gun Mountain due to the bias of playing on it the first time. I just counted it as a bad game and proceeded to Karl up the next game pretty good, which the game boiled down to a last minute clutch Anni fight me and a gunner pulled off to get it. My friend proceeded then to invest in a Jackbot to finish off their turrets and Moneyball, it was a pretty baller performance.

Game 3 was ANOTHER Gun Mountain roll, Gotta say guys, not really a fan of it. We took a small break before returning for one more game on another Bullet Gorge. Only this time I was all like "Hey guys I got an insane idea, what if I went Luchadeer?" They were not opposed to it so I picked up Vet for the first time in months. What followed was perfect Harmony. Our team basically stomped all over the competition. I was able to Ka-Klaw guys into submission, even pull a guy so hard into a pillar he rebounded off of it into a ring out. I'd have to say a 10-2 performance on an Enforcer I barely played but knew what to do was a pretty good thing. So now I'm probably gonna pick Vet more often cause of that, so that Luchadeer outfit will not just sit in my inventory in vain no longer. After that we tried one more, but knowing Spunky Downtown it was bound to go bad, and it did as the whole game just crapped out for everyone. It was pretty much a sign to call it a day, but not before I picked up another Pro to add onto my already expanding list of go-to guys along with Karl, Support, Tank, and Wascot. Due to the Vet being close to a Commando though, I think my Wascot days are over.

Minecraft for Xbox 360

It's a pretty retarded notion that I got the 360 version as I already own the PC version, but thanks to peer pressure I got it anyway due to the fact that getting a group of dudes in a room is a lot easier than it is on the PC. No random IP changing or anything, nope, just a day ruining crash here or there. Ever since we figured that out though I save pretty much every 30 minutes, as we mostly play on my world anyway. There really isn't much to talk about here except for the time we tried to commit Ragnarok on all of our houses. One of my friends was dumb enough to build his house out of wood, so I just managed to take Flint & Steel to burn it down. Letting him know what I did, it wasn't the house being on fire that made it funny, it was the fact he instantly went to "DUDE, MY WOLVES ARE SITLL IN THERE". While as morbid as that sounds (And I do not condone of animal cruelty), we couldn't help but laugh at the fact that you could hear the poor things burn to death. In retaliation my friend tried to leak Lava down into my mountain home through my attic, but to no avail because Ladders don't GIVE A DAMN about physics, meaning if you want to avoid the apocalypse, my house was where it was at.

What to expect soon (If I decide to pick this up again)

Well I've already pretty much dedicated to all weeks having an SMNC update if it gets played, since its the BEST game EVER. Hopefully Dragon's Dogma will come in by next week and I get around to that, and who knows I might just pick up some games I never S-Ranked just to see if I can do it, and I might share the outcomes of that. I guess while I wait for Dragon's Dogma though I'll dredge through more Max Payne 3... There were so many good feelings coming from that game too, oh well.

The End?

Who knows! I might get that feel to share my experiences again only to have nobody read them! Maybe fancy the thing up a bit with pictures and such, since words are so analog.

SEE YOU GUYS LATER.