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Dust – Completed

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After completing the sorrowing meadows and defeating the demon it was time to head to the Mountains & find the moonblood village.

There I met an elder who explained I was created by the moonbloods from the souls of two people. Jin (Ginger's brother) & an assassin called Cassius. General Gaius knew of the village and was planning an attack so it was time for the final showdown.

You have to fight quite a few soldiers in this volcanic region before you come face to face with General Gaius, it is quite a tough boss fight because it has quite a few stages. I had to use up nearly all of my healing items to ensure I would not die.

Unfortunately it is  not only General Gaius who meets his end has Dust perishes in the lava. An enjoyable metroidvania type of game with great voice acting for the main characters.

Next on the list to complete Army of Two Devils Cartel.

Knytt Underground (Wii U)

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LasersHow can a game which looks so lovely, with its giant alien flowers and plants in the background, and mysterious silhouetted machinery and dwellings in the foreground, all fantastically lit and darkened with lanterns, lasers, mist and smoke, also look so terrible with its woeful character portraits? It’s like the game’s amazing scenery artist got his 8 year old daughter to draw them.

Thankfully, that doesn’t matter, as Knytt Underground is a great Jet Set Willy clone for a more modern game player. There’s nimble platforming and wall climbing, a turn-into-a-ball mechanic which you can use to bounce higher and further (losing some control in the process). There’s also several sparkly things you can collect that temporarily turn you into a glowing light that can, depending on the colour, shoot upwards like a star, do a sort of double jump, or shoot enemies. There are timed switches, doors to find keys for, and fetch quests aplenty.

Knytt_time.And a MASSIVE map. Not only is each screen pretty large, with your character being just a few pixels tall, there are supposedly 1800 of them to navigate. The map on the gamepad has tiny, tiny squares for each room. Chapters 1 and 2 start you off with few abilities and a small map, but Chapter 3, where I am now is immense. I can see several locations on the map where I have to pick up some sort of set of artefacts, but the route is blind and with so many dead ends and diversions I’ve hardly come close to any of them yet.

1000 Heroz: completed!

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I can't remember when I first started playing 1000 Heroz; it was some time before September 2011, but I'm not sure how many days I'd been playing by that point.  I went back and completed all the levels at the start that I missed quite early on.  If I wanted to find out, I suppose I could look at every leaderboard and find the first one for which I had a time registered, but doing that involves opening every level and waiting for the leaderboard to open - it's not happening.

Even if I estimate that I've been playing since day 80, that's still over two and a half years of daily challenges.  I've played the vast majority of those; there were times when I had issues connecting, and there were very occasional times when I simply forgot.  I've always caught up on the missed days, though, and made sure that I had gold starred every level.

And then, today ...


Today is the last day.  Day 1000.  It was with a mixture of relief and sadness that I opened the level, not sure what to expect - a really long level, using all obstacles, or a long flat run with a credits sequence?  No, it was a normal level, 20 seconds long, with annoying bouncy blobs.  Not exactly going out with a bang.  The most fun part of the level came right at the start, with a swing just after an up-ramp, where it was tricky to set the swing going without overshooting.  These two scenarios were both seen many times.



And then the level was over.


Unfortunately, Onze has rejoined the RLLMUK leaderboard, meaning that I was unable to finish with a win.  I may have played this game a lot, but that doesn't mean I'm that good at it.  Still, at least I beat everyone else on the last day.  I'm the only UGVM player left, so I did at last win (by default) on that leaderboard.


And with that done, where have I finished?  First, the good news.  Through simple volume, i'm top of the UGVM leaderboard.


As predicted, I wasn't able to catch up with Don Rosco on the RLLMUK leaderboard, though I did make some progress.  My second place has cruelly been snatched by Onze's return.


And where did I place globally?  I am the 330th best 100 Heroz player in the world.


So that's it.  Every level completed with three stars, all relics obtained (including five from the tutorial levels which evidently aren't included in the total below), and all but one achievement gained.  The one I'm missing is for collecting 250,000 gold, which I'm still some way off - and given that you tend to get about 100 gold from fifteen minutes of playtime, that's not something I'm going to chase.


Thank RedLynx for the game.  Thanks to the UGVM and RLLMUK players for the competition.  Thanks to the elite players showing me every day that there were limits to my skill - or my patience and time, at least.  I suspect that tomorrow I'll find myself at a loss of what to do ...

... who am I kidding.

A couple of great posts about 1000 Heroz:

A World of Keflings: to the desert!

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This continues to be excellent, but as stated before I fear it may be rather short.  I've just journeyed to the last region, expecting to find it even more complicated than the second, but in fact it's rather a lot easier with fewer building materials and raw materials to deal with.  I can see that my stay here will be short, probably until I get to trade glass back to the main region.

It took me a while to leave the main region, in fact - I spend a bit of time stockpiling materials and making my trade routes more efficient.  The king asked me to go to the desert, but I had much more important things to do.


Like make sure all the houses were nicely lined up.


And making some fountains.


But I did eventually go to the desert, finding a grumpy old man complaining about the princess.  Hooray.


Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (3DS): COMPLETED!

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tumblr_n1llh6vugn1svmpf2o1_400Well, this is it. Not only is the final game in the trilogy complete, but officially, it’s all over for Professor Layton now. Sure, there’s the Layton vs Wright game out in just a few weeks, but that’s not really a Professor Layton game, so doesn’t count.

I’d be amazed if Level 5 didn’t come up with another game though. Even if it’s just a continuation of the series but without Layton in it.

Anyway. Here be spoilers. Read ahead at your own risk!

tumblr_n1tta9mxsa1svmpf2o1_400Quite near the start of the game, I’d pegged Raymond as a bad guy. As the game progressed, I realised he was almost certainly part of Targent. I’d also begun to suspect Sycamore had a sinister motive too, but I certainly didn’t imagine the reality of them both.

More twist-tastically, I definitely didn’t see the Emmy reveal coming. I was convinced, due to her never appearing or being mentioned in the original three games in the series, that she was going to be killed off – and, near the end of The Azran Legacy, that definitely seemed likely. But no, the character was something else entirely.

Not only that, but the actual Sycamore, Bronev and Layton triple whammy? Off the loon charts. Astounding.

tumblr_n1tt9p3bcv1svmpf2o1_400As for the actual game, it was the usual fare. Shorter than previous chapters in the series (I clocked it at under 15 hours, and several of them were doing the downloadable puzzled), although I’ve not 100%ed it, and almost certainly the easiest; The lack of 75 and 99 Picarat puzzles on the final straight made the ending of the game appear sudden, and there were virtually no slide puzzles (my Achilles heel) to speak of. Having said that, for the first time in any Layton title I reached one of the “you must have solved X many puzzles to progress” points, and came up short. I only needed a quick trip to Keats to solve three missed puzzles to fix that, though.

tumblr_n1ttbgtoel1svmpf2o1_400I’m not sure I like the idea of a Laytonless future now. You could argue the formula has run its course, and 6 consecutive years of puzzling with a man in a top hat is enough, but still… end of an era.