Gaming Diary — Page 311

Pikmin 2: completed!

Posted on 01/08/2014 Written by Xexyz

After a long break, I decided to go back and try to finish this before it was lost forever. I had completed the first two areas, and had a remaining debt of just 105 doodahs. It shouldn't take too long, thought I.

Straight away I found another bit of treasure outside in the Perplexing Pool. It was on a high ledge, which could only be accessed by yellow pikmin due to their added throwing height. I had to throw them up to a platform, walk around myself, and throw them up to the top. The treasure was worth 100 pipplies. So close.

So I went down into the shower room, a cave system which required me to have water, fire, electric and poison pikmin. I didn't take enough poison pikmin for the first few levels, as half the enemies were spewing purple gas and I had to fight through with my little band of twenty. The levels were quite inventive though, with a good use of previous enemies and some new ones - floating jellyfish in particular - thrown in.

Of course, after the first level I had made over 10,000 jinglies, but I wasn't going to stop there. One of the frog enemies killed about 25 of my pikmin in a single jump; an electric jellyfish killed more. Half way down I found a level which let me regenerate some more pikmin, and it randomly gave me some more red ones.

Which was annoying, as I managed to clear out the entire cave apart from one treasure - a set of false teeth underwater, which required twenty pikmin to move. I had only 14 blue pikmin left.

The boss was hard as well. A larger version of the wibbly slug on the surface, which meant I knew I had to attack the flower on the back. It killed a large number of pikmin, and I'm still unsure of the best strategy to beat it, but I got there with brute force. I went back to the surface, and ...

The end-of-game scores are presented as a leaderboard, hinting that other people should play this copy or I should go back and do it all over again. Maybe not.

There's more game to play though. Louie's been left on the surface; Mr Boss Man says he'll go back to get him. There are a fair few treasures in the Perplexing Pool to collect, and a whole new area has opened in the top-right of the map. I may well be back.

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition: completed!

Posted on 31/07/2014 Written by Xexyz

OK, hardly the longest campaign or story mode, but it has taken me quite a while to beat. I'm not great at SFIV - I was great at SFII on the mega Drive with the 6-button pad, completing it with every character, but this is less straightforward. I got the original SFIV ages ago and played through the arcade mode a few times, but Seth beat me constantly. I was resigned to having to dial down the difficulty a bit if I wanted to win.

But I managed to beat Super SFIV on medium, with no continues, using Ken. Seth is still a git, but I managed to defeat him, finally. I then played through again using Zangief, who is pretty slow but handy with his spinning clothes line move.

And then I was delighted to find that the game automatically saves replays of your matches, so I was able to bask in glory at my defeats of Kieron [planneroftowns] and John [BadHead] (and ignore the matches where they won instead).

They didn't lose all the time, of course. Sometimes they fought each other.

Gaming moments: E

Posted on 31/07/2014 Written by Xexyz

Essential Sudoku DS (DS)

After competing 999 picross puzzles, there was one left. Surely the pinnacle of difficulty, it's surely going to be a trophy or medal or something special. Oh no, it's really easy and it's a pie chart. A bloody pie chart.

Earth Defense Force 2017 (Xbox 360)
Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable (PS Vita)

Both games have many highlights, but the thing I will remember most is the mission in which you are sent into battle against the massive walking fortress. I destroyed more of the city than the fortress did while trying to attack it, and finally the mission ends with you withdrawing because your weapons aren't powerful enough. Sorry I broke the Space Needle for nothing, guys.

Exit (PSP)

One of the characters you have to rescue is very fat. I called him Fatty. I pushed boxes onto him. He died.

Ecolibrium (PS Vita)

Playing on the train, on the tutorial. And then the game requires me to look around 180 degrees with my Vita to see the animals behind me. Not going to happen; never loaded up again.

Endless Ocean (Wii)

I recently went back to this as part of the "Au Revoir Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection" drive, which was pointless as the only online mode it has is to connect to a friend who is simultaneously playing the game; that will never have happened. Anyway, during my brief play I watched the most stilted and awkward cutscene ever made.

EyeToy: Play (PS2)

Accompanying the cleaning suds game with "When I'm Cleaning Windows" was a work of genius.

Batman: Arkham Origins (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 30/07/2014 Written by deKay

What’s this? Two Batman games completed in a single day? What are the chances?

Before today’s session I was actually pretty close to the end anyway, so it only took about half an hour to finish off. Well, over an hour if you count the ludicrously long credit sequence which listed every single person who has ever existed ever, and plenty of other people who never existed at all. Probably.

Anyway. The game! Was brilliant. Although it started off full of bugs, I actually found very few after the first few hours. Aside from this one, from not far from the end:

Hardly game breaking, I know. Thankfully, that was pretty much it – better than Arkham City by the end. In fact, the whole game was better than Arkham City by the end.

Yes! It really was! Despite the map being bigger, and that being one of the things I disliked about City over Asylum, for some reason I preferred it here. The combat was more or less the same as previously, and there weren’t many (or any?) new enemy types over the earlier games. I’m not really sure why I enjoyed it more than City, when I come to analyse it – I just know I did.

One thing that was definitely an improvement was in the boss fights. They were more varied, and some of them, such as the Firefly one, were really something new. The Electrocutioner was hilarious with his one punch kill, and Bane’s final fight was pretty awesome.

I also preferred the plot. I never got on with Arkham City’s “I’m dying and now you’re dying” Joker story, perhaps because although you really had all the time in the world to finish the game, there was this nagging sense of urgency as you needed to find the cure before you died. It was interesting to see the origins (that’s the name of the game, remember) of some of the characters, like Harley and Gordon, but laying the smackdown on a load of cops never really felt right, no matter how bent they appeared to be.

In order then, Arkham > Origins > City. Although I know many will disagree.

Onto Blackgate on the 3DS then.

Lego Batman 2 (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 30/07/2014 Written by deKay

I actually started this over a year ago, but I don’t seem to have made any mention of it. What happened, was that I played the first three levels in co-op with my daughter, but because it didn’t support the Wii Classic Controller I had to use the Wii Remote which is terrible for this sort of game. I wasn’t enjoying it, so I intended to play something else for a while and come back to it to play solo or when I bought a Wii U Controller Pro. Other games happened, and it got put away.
Evil_receptionist Then it came back out a few days ago, and, since I have a Wii U Controller Pro now, I thought two player was back on! Only it doesn’t support the Wii U Controller Pro. Player 2 is Remote and Nunchuk ONLY. Which is rubbish.
Thankfully, in this case, my daughter mainly just wanted to watch, so I flew through the game in single player while she was back-seat driver.

Like most Lego games, it’s a lot of fun. The voice acting is great, and the tasks and levels are suitably silly. The best bit, however, is the huge open world hub, which is even more impressive than Lego City Undercover, despite that game coming out later. Yes, Lego City is more fun and there’s more to do (and there’s traffic too), but Gotham is seemingly bigger and the loading sequences are virtually non-existent – especially in comparison. The music is lovely too, especially the Superman film theme triggering each time you take off as Superman.

As always with these titles, completing the story is just the start. I’ve still almost 200 gold bricks left to find for a start, and haven’t managed a single full minikit yet. I have found most of the red bricks though, which should make collecting enough studs to buy every character and vehicle a bit easier. Not that they cost very much in Lego Batman 2, and I was surprised at how cheap the red bricks themselves were as well – 500k or so for the 8x multiplier? I’m sure that’s been 8 million or more in other games.