Rolling, Rolling, Rolling…

I finally got back to We Love Katamari tonight and completed a handful more stages. Fortunately most of them at least had a slight thematic twist to them, even if it boiled down to the same old get-big-enough-within-the-time-limit.

The sumo and zoo levels only count certain types of items towards your total, but there’s plenty of them around. The gingerbread house level was more of a diversion than a real challenge, since everything’s right in one spot. The firefly level was really just a test of how efficiently you can cover areas, since there’s no size differences. And finally, I’m not even sure what the goal of the snow level was, since there’s no timer or size goal at all, so maybe it was just another diversion.

It shouldn’t take too much longer to finish it off, since it’s a fairly short game.

I’m Not Dead Yet

There hasn’t been much to report, as I haven’t had much time for games lately aside from a Picross DS puzzle or two here and there (on level 9 Free Mode now). I at least got the shipping box for the 360, so it’s on its way and hopefully the replacement won’t take too long.

Otherwise, I’ve just been keeping up with the regular old news and chit-chat. Beautiful Katamari is out now, but the reaction seems to be a bit mixed. A common complaint that comes up is that this version seems to be a lot harder than the previous two, doesn’t really add much new, and is fairly short for its new higher price point. There are some more levels on the way as DLC, but they’re not available in North America yet. I might pass on this one after all.

I fired up We Love Katamari and finished a few more stages in it, ending the night at the racetrack. A couple of the ones I did tonight were fairly traditional get-to-a-certain-size-in-X-minutes stages, which weren’t too difficult or interesting, but there were a few others that threw in a twist or two.

In one stage my katamari was on fire, and I had to get it big enough to roll up a stack of wood at the top of a hill. I failed this one a couple times because you have to a) avoid falling into water (which I didn’t), and b) keep rolling things up at a fast enough pace that your flame doesn’t run out of fuel, which I didn’t realize at first and failed once because of it. It’s tricky trying to judge the right time at which you think your katamari is big enough and well-fueled enough that you can make a run for the wood stack and risk not being able to light it and find more fuel fast enough.

Another stage had me rolling up planets I’d already created in an attempt to roll up the sun. It’s too early for that though, as I need a lot more planets and they’ll probably have to be a lot bigger before I can really attempt it. Fortunately it’s an optional stage anyway.

And finally there was the racetrack. The twist on this one is that your katamari is constantly moving very quickly, whether you like it or not, and you start right on the track itself, dodging through other race cars, horses, and other vehicles. It’s frantic, but not frustratingly so, and it doesn’t take long before you’re big enough to start picking up all those cars you were previously avoiding, stuff beside the track, in the pits, at the nearby docks, all while quickly zipping along. This is probably the best level so far, and a high point of the game for a lot of people on the forums.

Damn Hunters, Get Off The Road

As I expected, I finished HL2:Ep2 fairly quickly tonight. The final battle was simultaneously one of the best and most frustrating battles ever in the HL series. Best because it’s something actually different from the typical ‘boss fight’, but also frustrating in (without spoiling too much) dealing with the car and the Hunters. I swear I had to quickload eight or nine times at one point because of the damn car’s handling.

Although the episode did improve a lot in its second half, the beginning was still fairly uninteresting, so it’s a fairly average episode overall. It took me about ten hours, so it was still reasonable value for its price, and I’ll still be interested in Ep3.

I still haven’t really checked out Team Fortress 2, but team-based multiplayer games like that require a bit more of a long-term time commitment than I want to give it right now. I don’t really have time to start anything new tonight, but the news that Beautiful Katamari came out yesterday reminded me that I still haven’t finished the second one, so perhaps I’ll start on that again tomorrow.

Death Race 2007

I was starting to get concerned, but HL2:Ep2 definitely improved tonight, perhaps due to one major factor: running over things is fun. ;) Especially Hunters, which die in a single hit if you’re going fast enough, and it’s often easier than trying to take them down in a straight firefight.

There was one point at which Alyx and I got pinned down in a house and had to fend off multiple Hunters and Combine troops without the help of the car, and that was probably the best, most tense battle of the episode so far. The Hunters break into the house itself and will shred you to pieces unless you effectively use the hallways and stairs for cover.

The night ended by arriving at the place we’ve been seeking all along, and I’m probably pretty close to the end based on the achievement list. Speaking of which, I got a whole bunch more of them tonight since a lot of them depended on getting to certain parts of the story or having the car. Again, I wound up doing things I might not have bothered with before (stealing grenades, racing D0G, etc.) if not for the achievements.

A Familiar Scene

My supposedly-fixed 360 has been red-ringed for three days now, so it’s time to finally put it to rest. The service web site wouldn’t let me start a new repair request, since it still seems to be stuck on the ‘returning to customer’ phase of the last repair, so I had to call this one in. Fortunately I didn’t get one of the Indian call centres, so it went fairly smoothly.

They offered one of four different games as compensation for having to do a second repair, but…I actually already have all of them (PGR3, Kameo, Viva Pinata, and an XBLA compilation). Oh well, maybe I can give away a second copy of VP.

And unfortunately this is horrible timing as the holidays approach, as it means I’ll miss the launches of a huge number of games I’m interested in: Guitar Hero 3, Ace Combat 6, Beautiful Katamari, Call of Duty 4, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, The Simpsons Game, and potentially Assassin’s Creed. But if I’m lucky, it’ll be just in time for Mass Effect…

But Does Freeman Have A Valid License?

A bit more progress in HL2:Ep2 tonight, though I seem to be taking it a lot more slowly than most people, as I’ve only just gotten to the car after 5 hours in.

Not too much of note happened tonight; it was mostly just crawling through some mines and an industrial yard, fighting zombies/zombines, with a couple set piece battles that weren’t all that tough or interesting. In one I had to hold off waves of zombies while Alyx sniped them, and that took a few tries, but it was fairly easy once I figured out the trick. I’m hoping it picks up a bit now that I have the car.

I picked up a couple more achievements, one for one of the set pieces and the one I’d been working on for kills with thrown items, so now I can go back to using more conventional weapons for the rest of the episode and not having to try for tricky gravity gun kills. I definitely can’t get the grub achievement now though, and I’ve also missed the garden gnome needed for one of the more difficult achievements. If I want to get those, it’ll take another run through the episode. Which I was going to do anyway for the developer commentary nodes, but you can’t get achievements while in that mode, so I’d need a total of three runs through. I think those achievements can wait for a while…

Is There A Can Of Raid For Antlions?

I got a bit further in HL2:Ep2 today, and it’s been nothing but antlions, antlions, and more antlions. Including a new variant, the acid antlion, and they’ve actually got a decent AI. They’ll try to stick to their strong long-range attack, hide behind obstacles when not firing, and try to sneak up on you if you retreat.

In the middle there was a defend-this-spot battle involving turrets, and it was simultaneously less and more frantic than a similar battle in the original HL2 (at Nova Prospekt). You only have two turrets to take care of this time, they don’t fall down so easily, and you’ve got backup from a couple other NPCs, but things get tense at the end when it’s difficult to avoid being overrun.

I also had a vortigaunt for a companion instead of Alyx for a while, and their shock attack is pretty powerful. After a while all the third-person pseudo-praise you get from him gets a bit discomfiting. “Ah, this seems like a situation for which the Freeman is uniquely suited!” “Um, yeah, thanks…again…”

I hope I’m done with antlions for the rest of the episode, as I’m kind of sick of them now and I’ve completed the web cache achievement and almost got the squish-all-grubs achievement (328 of 333). I’m getting close to that kills-with-thrown-objects achievement, too (26 of 30), which was tough to try for up to this point since there isn’t much to throw around with the grav gun inside the antlion nest.

I Wish My 360 Had Half A Life

Well, I was going to play with Halo 3’s theater mode mode to get a screenshot of the Ghost collision I mentioned before, but my 360 has decided that tonight is a red ring night. Maybe it’ll be more cooperative tomorrow…

I fired up HL2:Ep2 (finally) instead, but didn’t get very far into it. About the only notable thing so far is encountering the new Hunter enemy, though I didn’t get to fight it. The Vortigaunt model has been completely redone, so they don’t look quite so bad next to the rest of the NPCs anymore.

The other big thing that’s new with Ep2 and the rest of the Orange Box is the introduction of ‘achievements’ to Steam, similar to the 360’s but without the point values. Trying to get achievements gives you a bit of extra challenge, extends the game a bit, and of course, lets you prove your bragging about your ‘leet skillz.’ It’s already changing how I approach Ep2 as I now first try to kill enemies with the gravity gun instead of conventional weapons, in order to try for the “kill 30 enemies with thrown objects” achievement.

I Didn’t Shoot You In The Back, It Was…Um…Him.

HL2:Ep2 got stood up again in favor of an impromptu Halo 3 co-op session. Alyx is going to be so mad at me…

The co-op mode in Halo 3 is a ton of fun though, since you’re a stronger force, you don’t have to worry about checkpoint respawns as much, you can cover multiple vehicle roles (when you’re not running each other over), provide covering fire for each other, etc. Or accidentally crash into each other trying to jump Ghosts over the same ramp at the same time. ;) (I’m going to have to find that in the replay theatre…)

The only downside is that since you’re much stronger, the campaign speeds by that much quicker, making it feel even shorter. Rooms that I might have spent 10 minutes carefully clearing by myself can be blazed through in a couple minutes when you’ve got three people. Oh well, there’s still some more skulls to hunt down…

I finally got to play with the vehicles, but I’m not too impressed by the new ones so far, though I’m sure there are more that I haven’t seen or tried yet. The Ghost, my old standby from H2, is still great but less frequently available, and I still don’t like driving the Warthogs.

Otherwise, things went by in too much of a blur for anything else memorable to stand out. The other downside of co-op is that you’re not always the hero, so occasionally someone else gets all the glory while you were standing there admiring the texture on a rock. :) At some point down the road I’m going to have to replay it again by myself just so that it deliberately takes longer and I can focus on it battle by battle.