Monthly Archives: May 2008

It’s Time To Rescue The World. After A Bit Of Shopping.

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I spent a bit of time just exploring around in Beyond Good & Evil, but the area I can roam in is limited by barriers at the moment. I still managed to photograph a few more animals, found some ‘cash’ in crates, won a hovercraft race, and found a ‘looter cavern’ where I had to pursue a thief’s hovercraft through an obstacle course, winning some more cash and a pearl at the end.

After that I went to the bar to meet with the resistance guy, who challenged me to a game of Three Coconut Monty, and gave me a room key for winning. In there, I found the resistance HQ, where they explained about how people are being kidnapped by the Alpha Section agents and sent through a factory, slaughterhouse, and then off to the moon, and they want me to help investigate what’s actually happening to the people.

So, next I’m supposed to be off to the factory, but I also got a city pass that opens up a few new areas. I stopped in a shop and bought a few more health upgrades for myself and the hovercraft, and I’ll have to do a bit more exploring.

The Great Game With The Pretentious Name

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Next up will be Beyond Good & Evil, a game that I started playing on the PS2, but repurchased for the PC when it came out on Steam recently (I hadn’t gotten very far anyway). It took a bit of experimenting to get it to run well on Vista, but it seems to be stable now. (For anyone else having similar troubles, the trick is to turn off “HW Vertex Processing” in the config program.)

It’s an action-adventure in the Zelda vein, where you play a female photojournalist named Jade on an alien planet, getting caught up in some kind of conspiracy about the aggressive DomZ that are constantly attacking the planet, and the Alpha Section troops that are protecting the population from them. Or are they… A resistance group seems to think something fishy’s going on. It’s a colourful world, both literally in the fairly bright colour schemes all over the place and in the various characters around, like Pey’j, the gruff pig-guy assistant of yours, or the Jamaican-sounding rhino-like black market parts dealers.

I’ve played the first ‘dungeon’ so far, and although there was some combat, it’s mostly exploration, puzzle-solving, and photography. Yes, your career as a photojournalist does really matter, and taking pictures of the various animal species, including a lot that are off the beaten path or in the middle of attacking you, can net a lot of cash and bonus equipment. You can also capture maps with it, and I’m sure there will be other uses later on. Pey’j also follows you around and helps out in combat and in some of the puzzles.

There’s also an open world element to it, where you can just roam around the world in your hovercraft. It’s not exactly GTA-ish in its breadth or size, but next up I’ll probably do a bit of exploration and see if I can find any interesting secrets or more animals to photograph before continuing on with the story.

The only annoying things so far are some interface quirks, like how it asks what language you want every single time you start it (what, in case I suddenly go multilingual between sessions?), and how the default controls are split up so that you have to use the keyboard to move the menu cursor and the mouse button to select, not just one or the other.

I Decree The Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Beverageate

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Continuing on in Heretic, I started running across even more new weapons in the second episode, like the firemace and phoenix rod, roughly analogous to a grenade launcher and rocket launcher, respectively.

The rest of episode 2 was fairly uneventful, though I missed the secret level. The final boss turned out to be a pair of minotaur-like creatures, which weren’t too dangerous as long as I maintained my distance, but they had tons of health.

Episode 3 started out rough though, with plenty of the more dangerous monsters right off the bat, including iron liches, before I’d barely found any weapons. I just barely managed to squeak through in spots, mainly by avoiding the first iron lich completely. This episode also introduced a naga-like creature with a rapid-fire low-damage attack, with the twist that the first attack is followed up with a stronger single blast a split second later, so if you strafe to the side to dodge the initial volley, you could still get hit by the second.

The ‘final’ boss had two phases: at first he’s riding some kind of hell-dino-horse-thing, and he’s fairly easy to beat since he only has a close-range attack. Then comes the really annoying part, where he starts summoning in those annoying wizards like crazy. My only hope was to just keep constantly moving so that the wizards wouldn’t hit me, firing at the boss when possible, which wasn’t often because he’d teleport around, quite often just after I’d caught up with him and only hit him once or twice. It took a couple tries, but I lucked out and down he went.

That ends the original Heretic episodes, and although there are two ‘expansion’ episodes, I don’t think I’m going to bother with them. I’ve had my fill of nostalgia for now, and other games await.

Freaking Horse

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Before continuing on with Heretic, I took a slight detour to finish off another game instead: Yoshi’s Island DS. I hadn’t touched it in quite a while, but I only recently realized that there are only five worlds in it instead of the original’s six worlds, so I was closer to the end than I thought.

I only had to complete five more levels, but it took a bit longer than expected. Either the difficulty ramps up a huge amount in these later levels, or my platforming skills have waned a lot. I’d built up 87 extra lives by this point, but by the time I finished the game, it had fallen down to only 44 left. It felt like I’d spent forever redoing some parts, especially one in 5-7 (called “Superhard Acrobatics!”, appropriately enough) that involved annoyingly-placed piranha plants and dodging fire wheels while on moving platforms.

The final level was interesting in that it had five different paths you could take through it, depending on which baby type you selected. I tried all of them but wasn’t having much luck until I gave Wario’s a few tries, and eventually did it that way, since it was mainly based on puzzles rather than speed or precision. And then, ironically enough, the final boss fight was fairly easy, and I got it the first try.

Now, am I going to go back and get better scores in order to unlock the secret levels and bonus games? Hell no.

Some Casual Heresy For The Weekend

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So, what’s next? Definitely not another RPG, since I’m kind of burned out on them after blazing through Suikoden V. Instead, I want to shoot stuff, so I picked up where I left off in Heretic. Yes, the 14-year old fantasy shooter based on the Doom engine. I picked it up as part of the Steam id megapack, since it’s one of those shareware games I played a bit when it first came out but never got the full version, and it still holds up decently well. I’m playing it using the ZDoom engine though, so I can use mouselook and set a higher resolution.

I left off partway through the first episode, so I finished that off, managing to find the secret level by accident. The only really notable thing was the two iron liches at the end of the episode, and killing them unleashed a huge flood of wizards that took me a couple attempts to survive.

The second episode has already added a few new things, like a new enemy that looks like an alien/scorpion/man hybrid and shoots fire, and a new bellstaff weapon. I ended for the night at the start of the third level here, but they’re fairly quick levels (usually a half hour each at most), so it shouldn’t take too long to finish it off. There are five episodes total, though only the first three are Heretic proper and the other two are an expansion pack.

Wrapping It Up

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It took much less time to finish off Suikoden V today, and I first spent an hour or so just getting ready, organizing my equipment and skills and such, and grinding for a bit more cash. Finally, with everyone at or near level 60, I was ready to set off for the final set of ruins.
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Dragons Are Wusses

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I finally got a decent stretch of time in on Suikoden V, and there are signs of getting closer to the end, like having gotten most of the collectible items like old books and window sets.

I headed off to see the Dragon Cavalry, but had to take a boat and then go through the dwarf mines to get there, since Viki wasn’t teleporting for some reason. Unfortunately, Godwin soldiers were there and I could only take two riders back with me, with the commander unable to cooperate.

Upon returning to the headquarters, news came in that the Godwin and Armes armies were attacking towns, and I had to choose which one to defend. I picked Lelcar since it was supposed to be easier, and it was only moderately tough. I lost one squad, but without any permanent deaths, fortunately. The armies continued to advance though, and I had to decide whether to defend the castle, or abandon it. Unfortunately, defending the castle results in the permanent loss of a Star of Destiny (yet another thing you’d only know from a walkthrough…), so I had to choose to abandon it, and I’m holed up in the Dwarf Mines for now.

I then had to head back to investigate what had happened to the Dragon Cavalry at their training grounds, and could only take men in my party due to a rule that no women were allowed at the grounds. There, we discovered that Godwin troops and assassins were holding the dragons and their eggs hostage, and we got rid of them easily enough. Georg also popped up unexpectedly and rejoined me, and finally befriended me as a Star of Destiny, along with some of the Cavalry members.

Now that I’ve rescued the Dragon Cavalry, next up is a war battle to retake the old headquarters…

Ruins Are More Boring Than You Might Think

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It was back to Suikoden V tonight, and I discovered to my dismay that I’d done the Big Hole run for grinding the wrong way, as I hadn’t yet had the trigger that opens up a new area occur yet. Oh well. I figured I’d go ahead and do the western ruins first anyway, so I can ditch Zweig and Lorelai since they’re forced into my party right now and I don’t really want them in my core party.

Twilight Forest was along the way, and it’s really annoying since it’s easy to get lost in it and it’s full of irritating Creeper enemies who’ll poison you fairly often, requiring me to burn through a lot of antitoxins. I eventually caved in and used an online map to get through it, but at least I earned a lot of cash and skill points in the process. The ruins themselves and the Ancient Creeper boss were actually fairly easy, and Leknaat popped up to show off how cryptic she can be again. Thanks for nothing. But I did get a new spell attached to my Dawn Rune, and with that I was able to go back and heal Lyon. I also befriended Killey along the way, though he’s a rather big jerk.

Unfortunately, now the Armes army has allied with the Godwins and is invading, and now I have to go fetch the Dragon Cavalry and hold them to their promise to defend us from foreign invaders. And although I could remove Zweig and Lorelai, now I’m forced to take Lun and Logg, the petty gold thieves from earlier… At least they’re pretty decent party members, have a good co-op attack, and I’ve used them a lot before.

How Many Times Have I Bought Kool Thing Now?

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It’s been a while since I last fired up Rock Band, so I checked out the latest new songs via the store previews. A lot of them didn’t really interest me, but in the end I did wind up picking up Kool Thing (Sonic Youth), Zero (Smashing Pumpkins), and Song With A Mission (cover of The Sounds).

Kool Thing seems to be different than I remember from the Guitar Hero version, and a bit harder. There are a lot of spots where it’s really obvious where notes are missing on the lower difficulty charts, making it feel like it doesn’t quite match up, so it’ll probably be better at the higher difficulties. If I ever get there… Song With A Mission is pretty short and easy, but fun. And Zero is also pretty short, but much trickier with rapid shifts all the way across the frets.

There’s already rumours of a Rock Band 2, but if so, they’d better let us use the songs we’ve already downloaded in it. I’m already up to something like 50 or so downloaded songs…