Just a tiny bit later than when I usually post this, but it's better than pushing it all the way to next week.

GAMES!!!!

Yet another game I bought in mid May that I finally got around to beating, which means I should try focusing on L.A. Noire now. Still, that's not important now. What's more important is sharing my experience with Psychonauts.

Took me way too long to get my hands on this game, but I finally got around to it. All I had played of the game before hand was the demo in Coach Oleander's mind. That was simple enough to get through, then I continued on to see what interesting things were waiting for me. Throughout the game I was treated to good platforming challenges, unique level designs, and some gags I did not see coming.

The platforming in the game is pretty good, though it's a lot better when you get the levitation ability, just because of the increased jump height and added momentum you get from moving. Other than the Meat Circus, there wasn't anything that had me really frustrated. This is the PC version, so while Double Fine said they made changes to the Meat Circus, having not played the whole game before I don't have any point of reference for what they did. I can say that protecting Little Oly was not very fun.

As a matter of fact, once you go to the asylum, starting with the Milkman Conspiracy, I noticed that the levels had a bit of a change in focus. The minds inside of the Psychonaut camp instructors were for the most part regular platforming levels. It was getting from start to finish and avoiding obstacles. Arriving in the Milkman Conspiracy, There was no finish line of any sort, atleast not one that's on a linear path from Boyd's house. I found myself going around collecting cobwebs, solving puzzles by using "disguises" to get past the secret agents. That's when I realized, this was a level that was designed as if it were a Tim Schaefer Lucas Arts adventure game of old. There are obstacles that platforming in the game won't get you around, so you must find the correct items that will get you past a particular area. And even when you complete that amazing level, the next three ones still retain that adventure game style of puzzle solving. Like changing the theater sets in one level to reach the catwalks, or playing a war board game with Napoleon Bonaparte. Odio's mind starts to focus more on platforming in order to solve the puzzle, but the end is reached ultimately from collecting four cards. The goals of the different levels start to branch, and I found that a nice mix up from the first few standard platforming levels of the game.

And I must say, the game is pretty funny and weird. There were quite a few things that caught me off guard with the game. One that wasn't so much funny but weird is the room early on in Milla's mind with the emotional baggage, and the entrance to a cage with fire all around kids whispering creepy things. The Milkman Conspiracy was hilarious, with all the dialogue from the secret agents, all voiced by Steve Blum, and the level ending with the awakening of the Milkman, and throwing goddamn Molotov milk bottles. And then he's holding one in real life in front of the asylum right until near the end of the game. Heck, even the silly actions that take place to set up burning the place down is awesome. And then of course, there is Mr. Pokeylope. I cracked up when I heard him speak. Excellent contrast to Sheegor's high pitched speech.

I didn't do much in the way of overworld activities, aside from looking for deep arrowheads to purchase a cobweb duster. I collected most of the figments, baggage, cobwebs, anything in the levels I tried to get and if I missed, I just moved on. I was more concerned with seeing the main story, and that part of the game was super enjoyable. When I do a second playthrough, I'm gonna do the extra activities and try to get absolutely everything, because I am a completionist to the core. Really fun game. Still can't believe I waited this long to get it, but it was worth it.

And the Rest

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

Got this for free because I'm now a Playstation Plus subscriber and now have access to free games. Played the demo a ton and had fun with that. The game is even more fun. Also, I've got over half of the trophies in that game, because apparently it's an easy S rank.

Vanquish

Played through the first act. I generally don't like dual analog controls for shooters, and a PC port or something is what I wish this game had just so I could play with a mouse. But I've tolerated it so far, and the melee has gotten me on occasion to get up close with enemies and duke it out. Fun game.

Things Other Than Games

Interesting events took place this last couple days. My new hard drive arrived on Thursday, and my dad gave me the 2 extra sticks of RAM he was holding onto for me. Since I didn't have work on Friday, I figured that would be the day I put the new stuff in. Inserting the RAM was easy as I had two extra slots left. Getting the hard drive in was more troublesome as I had to deal with a big video card in the way, along with a bunch of thick power cables. The new drive didn't come with a SATA cable, so I had to call my dad to find me some extra ones. He got some, and I hooked my PC back up in order to boot it up, just to see if it accepted the new RAM. Instead, I got this message

"Bootmgr is missing"

Tried to figure out what the problem was. Eventually I narrowed it down, after talking with my dad on the phone, that the cables connecting the main drive weren't fully plugged in. Because the same cables powering the hard drive also power the disc drive, I tried re plugging them in and swapping them to see if any were faulty or if there was just a loose connection. Same message showed up. I was close to panicking that I might have ruined my hard drive some how, that I went to my PS3 and played some games in order to cope with it.

Then my dad gets home with the cables, show him what I did, and do it one last time, and finally it boots up properly. Turns out I didn't have the power cable in all the way. The data cable was fine, it just wasn't getting power.

So that problem was solved, but there was another. Because of the length of the SATA power cable, powering the new hard drive meant cutting power to my disc drive. Yeah, basically no playing any disc games while my new hard drive is being powered. I decided to make the sacrifice, and now I'm looking if I can find a new power cable. Another problem that came up, though I eventually solved that night was getting the new drive to be recognized so I could transfer stuff to it. I tried setting up a RAID 0, and I ended up going into Disc Management, formatted the new drive, did some stuff, and presto, new 1 TB drive is up and running. I've already transferred my Steam folder over there, and am in the process of moving all my other game files. This now gives me three hard drives to use. One for my OS and other important application (Drive C), one for all my games (Drive D), and one for any miscellanous stuff (Drive E). That last one is a small drive from my last computer, about 75 GB. I could've ditched it, but there were still some important things on it, particularly the Keep of Metal and Gold torrent I downloaded not to long ago. 30 gigs of data I'm not willing to lose or re download.

That's really the one big thing of note. The other kinda has to do with games, but it was still great. I didn't want to wait any longer for Anarchy Reigns to come out here in 2013, so a very generous friend of mine on the internet offered to import the game for me. I normally want to do things on m own, save up for something myself, but it was too painful trying to wait for it. I wasn't making it any better for myself since I have character art for the game on my desktop and I've been listening to the soundtrack constantly. So Thursday night we set up the order on Play Asia, since that was the one place that had it available and cheaper than something like NCSX. So now I'm waiting about a week or so for my very first import game. That's pretty big. Big thanks to her.

In Conclusion

Well, that's it for another blog entry. Also, since I'm probably the only one who noticed, but it's been a year and a few days since I first started doing this blog series. It's been that long since I started doing this. Obviously there were gaps during times that I was particularly busy, but I still had the motivation to keep doing this blog. And I'll probably keep doing it for another year or so. I've still got so many games to play, and so many of them I want to write about, so I can't stop.

Peace.