So a few minutes ago, a bunch of cops arrived at a house across the street (well, across the street to our right) and shortly after six shots were heard. The thought that someone could be dying or dead just a few hundred feet down the road was pretty intense. We found out just a few minutes later that it was actually just a small animal (probably a raccoon) that likely set of an alarm in the house.

But that is completely irrelevant to this blog. I just felt like sharing it. This Gaming Update is brought to you by the fine makers of Bioshock 2. Well, not really. I did spend a lot of time playing the game recently, though. But rather than playing the single player, I spent a few hours with the multiplayer which actually turned out to be a lot of fun. I had spent about 8 hours playing it previously but had some issues with it. You see, the thing about Bioshock 2's multiplayer is that it requires you to experiment with guns and plasmids to figure out what works best, for you at least. You can't just go into the game and start smokin' everyone you come across. The guns are horribly underpowered for a reason. It's pretty clear that the developers made the guns surprisingly weak to force you to use plasmids; I cannot think of any other reason why this would be. And while the weapons do lead to some frustrating moments where an enemy should have died after you unloaded a clip into them, it's strangely satisfying when you combine a plasmid and a weapon and discover that the combination is extremely effective. For a long time now I've been using the Electro Bolt with the Pistol, which I originally thought was a terrible weapon. By hitting an enemy with the Electro Bolt, they are stunned and are unable to move or shoot. All it takes after that is a few quick shots from the pistol and they go down. Stuff like this can also be learned from other players instead of just trial and error; I discovered the effectiveness of the Electro Bolt + Pistol after getting destroyed in a match by someone wielding the godly powers of both.

So if anyone is struggling with the multiplayer (I know I did for a while), here are some useful combos:

• Electro Bolt + Pistol w/ Automatic Fire(mentioned above)
• Insect Swarm + Grenade Launcher (or really, just use the grenade launcher on it's own. It's incredible)
• Electro Bolt/Winter Blast + Shotgun w/ Increased Rate Of Fire

I think I want to talk a bit about Assassin's Creed 2. I first played it back in March but didn't get a chance to beat it, for we had rented it. But mainly, I didn't beat it because I hated it. I hated pretty much everything about it. The climbing, the fighting, the mundane and psychologically arduous errands I was doing for people in the first hour. It seemed like everyone I came across wanted to get rid of me since they sent me out on all these stupid jobs. But a few weeks ago, I "borrowed" the game from my brother and decided to give it another chance. For a few minutes I still had the "Why am I even playing this game?" mentality, but soon grew out of it when the game went from the boring run-jobs-for-dumb-people structure to the let's-actually-stab-some-dudes-and-witness-plot-twists structure. Because it had been many months, I knew nothing about the story. I didn't know who the "conspirators" were, what they were doing or planning to do, and why they needed to be eliminated. But it didn't really matter all that much to me, for I found the game enjoyable to play after all that time of writing it off as boring. The lack of a return date for the game gave me some more freedom to explore the neat little economic system and do some side stuff in addition to main storyline missions. I even managed to complete all of the Assassin Tombs, which proved to be challenging yet entertaining platformer sequences requiring crackerjack timing.

My biggest issue with Assassin's Creed 2, which I also found rather annoying when I first played it back in March, was the climbing. For some reason, Ezio hates me. Whenever I "tell" him to jump a certain direction, he jumps in the other. Whenever I try to leap from one building to a next, he finds it amusing to instead jump into the nearby river or, if he really wants to be funny, take a leap of death into the streets below. There was one occasion where I synchronized a viewpoint and when I went to jump off into the hay bale at the bottom, Ezio pounced off to the right and died on impact when he slammed horribly into the ground. Fortunately, these incidents weren't too common, so they didn't drive me completely insane. Besides that, I was really disappointed with the lack of music in the game. Specifically, I mean the lack of battle music. While the guards in the first game were very unforgiving, the song that plays when being chased it astounding. It really gets the adrenaline going and is goosebump-inducing. So why wasn't there something like that in the second game? Maybe there was, but I didn't hear it. It was even worse when you engage in a fist fight with the antagonist at the end, and the entire scene is completely silent except for the dialog and the muffled punches. It was honestly one of the weakest final boss battles I've ever seen, mostly because there was no music. I'm a sucker for awesome video game music, and Assassin's Creed 2 really let me down there.

And what even happened at the end? It was totally awesome playing as Desmond and stabbing dudes (his kill animation was pretty cool) in the face with a "hidden" blade, but it got me thinking.... is the sun going to be the antagonist in the next game!? That wouldn't make much sense, would it? Final boss battle has Desmond stabbing the sun with a really long space blade or something. Now that would be incredible.

Finally, within the next two days (hopefully tomorrow) Persona 3 FES will be arriving in the mail. I was really interested in doing a text-based Endurance Run type series of blogs, similar to what I did with Dragon Age: Origins, but since there is already a user doing one I'll probably keep them on my profile should I actually commit to it. I have a feeling people would get annoyed if there were a bunch of blogs appearing under Persona 3.

With all that said, we reach the end of this Gaming Update. Hope everyone had a fantastic hump day.

Until next time, children.

Wow, those are some WEIRD control issues with AC2, especially since I never really had them. If anything, my problem with climbing is that it repeats a bit.

" Wow, those are some WEIRD control issues with AC2, especially since I never really had them. If anything, my problem with climbing is that it repeats a bit. "

" My biggest issue with Assassin's Creed 2, which I also found rather annoying when I first played it back in March, was the climbing. For some reason, Ezio hates me. Whenever I "tell" him to jump a certain direction, he jumps in the other. Whenever I try to leap from one building to a next, he finds it amusing to instead jump into the nearby river or, if he really wants to be funny, take a leap of death into the streets below. There was one occasion where I synchronized a viewpoint and when I went to jump off into the hay bale at the bottom, Ezio pounced off to the right and died on impact when he slammed horribly into the ground. Fortunately, these incidents weren't too common, so they didn't drive me completely insane. Besides that, I was really disappointed with the lack of music in the game. Specifically, I mean the lack of battle music. While the guards in the first game were very unforgiving, the song that plays when being chased it astounding. It really gets the adrenaline going and is goosebump-inducing. So why wasn't there something like that in the second game? Maybe there was, but I didn't hear it. It was even worse when you engage in a fist fight with the antagonist at the end, and the entire scene is completely silent except for the dialog and the muffled punches. It was honestly one of the weakest final boss battles I've ever seen, mostly because there was no music. I'm a sucker for awesome video game music, and Assassin's Creed 2 really let me down there. "

I had some problems with AC2 that involved me jumping the opposite direction I intended. 
 
How do you feel about the multiplayer in Bioshock 2?

" @ZanzibarBreeze: I had some trouble with the CTF portion of the carnival games but I didn't fail the event. Basically when I realized that the dude was getting faster each time I captured it, I just ended up climbing up the first building, running across the roofs, and then literally leaping down about a hundred feet to the ground. The fall was nearly enough to kill me but I beat him, using a method I probably wasn't really supposed to. 

Even though the end of Assassin's Creed 2 is forged from pure WTF, I really liked it. It was chock full of snake-eating-its-own-tail-pseudo-meta-fourth-wall-bustin' goodness.

As for the controls, I very rarely had any disconnect between what Ezio and I wanted to do. I'm sure it would have happened at some point, but I certainly don't remember it being an issue at all.

" @Meteora: I was just talking about the ACII soundtrack in general. I was actually listening to it this afternoon. But I should go and get the first Assassin's Creed's soundtrack also. "

I had the same issues with the the climbing too.It was incredibly frustrating trying to navigate through the assassin's tombs when your character never goes where you want him too. Also, damn racoon's, they're good for nothing! The little babies are cute though :O

Getting into the backlog?