Billy Vs Snakeman - A Parody

Lunch time! Oh yeah! It’s nice to work at a place with a good internet connection. This makes it easier to play online games. I figure I’ll try to do a little ‘Lunch  Break’ column and see where that gets me. This will be me playing various flash games and talking about them.

First up is a game that I play nearly every day. Billy vs Snakeman is an online anime parody game made by Al McMasters. The premise is fairly simple. You’re a ninja and you’ve been dropped into a war. You get to join a village, help it grow, go on missions, gain new allies, unlock power ups, and just have fun. It really is a simple game but there’s plenty to do.

At the start of every day you’re given a set amount of Stamina. Stamina is what you use for your normal actions such as doing missions, spying on other villages, or fighting giant monsters. As you complete these tasks you level up and are eventually able to do quests to earn a higher rank. Higher rank means more Stamina and tougher missions. Once you’ve reached a high enough level you can “Loop”.

The game treats you like you’re in a TV series. When you loop you’ve completed that season and move onto the next season. The benefit of this is a higher level cap for each season, plus new content becomes available once you loop. It’s a nice feature and I get a kick out of it. I’ve been playing for two years and I’m currently season 10.

The game is initially based off of the Naruto anime series. Over the years other series have been shoehorned into the lore. Bleach is a big one as you can unlock an entire section for Soul Reapers. Gundam, Lucky Star, .hack have also seen themselves nicely parodied.

The game is pretty simple though and that can be a turn off for many people. With missions just being a screen with a button that basically says “DO” it can seem like there’s nothing to the game. This is the type of game that you need to stick with. The longer you play the better things get. Fighting through a hoard of Zombjas (zombie ninjas), piloting giant robots, battling in the arena, and flipping burgers are just some of the many things that can be unlocked as you progress through the game.

I recommend you check it out. Tell them Convoy sent you.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Yes I'm Doing A Movie Review

I didn’t get to play last night. I went out to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon instead. I’m a huge Transformers fan, I keep up with series and I still buy the toys. The first Michael Bay movie was alright. I was able to enjoy it and I saw a lot of promise for the franchise. Then came the second movie, Revenge of the Fallen. That movie was a mess. The story was all over the place and the new characters were either underused or made into complete morons and shoved in your face. I hated the second movie. I’m not asking for Shakespeare, but I don’t want to leave the theater feeling dumber then when I entered.

Dark of the Moon is more of a combination of the first two movies. It still has major pacing problems. Things are thrown at you very quickly and it can be hard to keep up. New characters come out of the woodworks only to not be properly introduced, setup, given personalities, or be even slightly relatable. The movie’s big twist has absolutely zero impact because you have no connection with the character. He’s barely been around.

The action is fun and easier to follow this time around. This is always the point that Bay excels at. He knows how to do action. Things stay at a fairly frantic pace but there’s still no connection. When we see a bot die near the end it doesn’t seem to matter.

The entire movie just happens so fast though. You jump from scene to scene where information is just thrown at you endlessly. You never have a chance to comprehend what’s going on because the next big thing is already being thrown at you.

The entire movie is one big plot hole if you try to tie in the events of the first two movies. It was nice to see some consistencies such as the Matrix being reused. But if you try to tie the movies together  you’ll probably end up with a big headache in the end.

It really is a dumb popcorn flick in the end.  I liked it better then the second one, but it is still far behind the first one. So this is me dropping my little movie blurb. Don’t get used to them, I won’t do them often.

Oh and this movie basically stole its plot from one of the cartoons. That is just awesome.

Undead Nightmare - Stupid Unicorn

Crappy Unicorn picture

I made the horrible mistake of telling my wife that there is a unicorn in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. I, personally, had no desire to catch the unicorn. I had completed the main story and I was happy with that. I wasn’t out to get trophies or complete challenges. I was ready to move on, so I did. But suddenly she brought it back up that she wanted to see the unicorn. I took her to the Red Dead Wiki and showed her the unicorn, but they have a really crappy picture of the thing.

Since I was on the Wiki I looked up the requirements for getting the Unicorn. I had one more Horse of the Apocalypse to break and I needed to finish some hunting challenges. “Fine,” I said, “I’ll go ahead and do it.” The next three days were spent hunting down this stupid creature. Yeah, those Castlevania posts I’ve been putting up, that’s what I played on the weekend. I haven’t touched that game since Sunday.

Sunday:

I go to the Wiki to double check where the final Horse of the Apocalypse, Pestilence, is located. Turns out he can be practically anywhere in West Elizabeth, not very comforting. There is note that mentions he most commonly located around the Tall Trees area. So I hang around there.

After an hour of searching I finally got the notification that “A mythical creature is in the area.” Yes, I have found the horse and it wasn’t that horrible to look for him! I find the anemic looking creature and I prepare my lasso. Throwing out the rope like a pro I snag him in one shot. I bring my horse to a halt, jump off, and BAM! Pestilence drags Marston to the ground and bolts. Well I’m not about to let it end there.

I continue to chase the dumb horse on foot. I’m able to get close enough to him that I throw the lasso again when BAM! An undead cougar hits me from behind. Pestilence runs off into the woods and I lose sight of him. I viciously beat a cougar to re-death.

I then spent another hour looking for this dumb horse but I was unable to locate him again. I finally called it a night. Basically I made zero progress.

Monday:

I’m still out looking for Pestilence. I’m riding all over West Elizabeth trying to find it. It takes an hour and a half to finally locate him. He’s on the Great Plains this time and there are no predators in sight. With a quick lasso throw I’m able to catch him, mount him, and finally, break him. Since Death is given to Marston at the end of the game, I have now broken all 4 Horses of the Apocalypse. This just left the hunting challenges.

Side note: Pestilence is a boring horse so I hopped back onto Death. Death at least has his auto-kill ability.

First up I had to kill 5 wolves, 2 bears, and 3 cougars with the torch. This shouldn’t be an easy task, but it was. There’s this trick that I could only hope the QA department had reported that involves the Apocalypse Horses. These horses can’t die (or at least killing them takes a lot), so if you stay mounted you can hit the critters with your torch with no fear of being hurt yourself. The animals will keep attacking your horse endlessly giving Marston plenty of time to light them on fire. Another plus is that all three of these creatures are really close to each other in the Tall Trees area. It wasn’t that hard to complete.

Then it was down to Mexico to hunt The Chupacabra. But I decided to go to bed first.

Tuesday:

It was time to end this stupid hunt. I had saved in Chuparosa so I was fairly centered in the map. The Chupacabra could be practically anywhere in Mexico. So I rode around, for over an hour. I found no hide nor hair of the stupid creature. What I did find was Blood Pacts for all of the Apocalypse Horses. I was just riding around on Death when I ran over a random zombie and boom! challenge complete. I had killed every type of zombie with Death’s auto-kill ability. Go me!

Now, Death is a nice horse and all, but he’s not that cool looking. That’s actually a complaint I have for most of the Apocalypse Horses. Except for one. My trusty steed throughout most of this game, War. War is an awesome horse and I now had a way to bring him back. So I did. War and Marston rode around the country side setting the land ablaze. It was a happy reunion.

 But I still got bored. I was thinking about saving and calling it a night. I was traveling from Las Hermanas to Chuparosa to save when suddenly I got the sign. A mythical creature had appeared. I easily found the Chupacabra over a small hill. The thing looked like a deformed hyena, not very imaginative looking. But the Apocalypse Horses told me the devs lack imagination along those lines. He was also an easy kill. He didn’t try to run or fight back, he took the headshot like he wanted to die.

This just left the Unicorn. He’s also in Mexico on the north-eastern part of the map. Apprently he doesn’t give the ‘mythical creature’ warning as I was just riding around the area when I ran across him. He was really easy to break.

The Unicorn isn’t that great of a horse in my opinion and not worth the effort. War can set people on fire, Death can auto-kill, the Unicorn just goes fast. And it leaves a rainbow behind it. Next time I think I should get a robo-horse that can shoot rockets or something. That would probably be worth it.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - The Crow

So I was successful in finally putting up a donate button. I can really use some financial help, so if anyone reading this is willing to donate a couple of bucks I will love you forever!

If the narrative is going to tell us how angry or how dead Gabriel feels inside I would really like to see that translated to the character during gameplay. I know I go back to Kratos a lot, but the two games are fairly similar. During the God of War series I can actually feel Kratos’ anger and hate. It just flows from him at all times. It is part of his personality and it shows. Gabriel, on the other hand, has no personality. I can’t even tell if he’s actually determined. I might call him ‘numb’. He does seem to be just going through the paces, but I never get the impression that he’s actually trying to bring his wife back. No, his wife’s resurrection seems it will be a little side event if the guy should actually live until his quest is over.

Come on! This is the love of his life. Let’s see him mourn, let’s see his loss, let’s see the spark of hope he’s carrying that he just might get her back. And don’t tell me about it in a voiceover. Sure Patrick Stewart still has a great voice, but I’m getting tired of the voice delivering important information that should be occurring during gameplay. Heck, I didn’t even learn Cornell’s name until Patrick Stewart said it during his narrative.

Anyways, I’m here to talk about the next level, The Crow Witch. This is a pretty straight forward area with a lot of platforming in it. It was a nice enough level, well thought out, decently paced. But it was obviously just there to delay another boss fight. I kept wondering when the boss fight would appear. Gabriel really has to climb a good ways to reach this boss. She’s hidden herself pretty well at the top of this tower. I met a new type of enemy called Swordmasters during my climb. I have to admit that they really disappoint. I found them very easy and I never felt like I had to dodge. Not really what I would call “Swordmasters” if you catch my meaning.

At the top of tower is the boss, The Crow Witch Malphas, whose name I only know from the voiceover at the start of the level. Malphas herself is a pushover.  But she isn’t the issue, it’s these annoying little enemies that she spawns. They can be tough and they deal out some decent damage. Grappling them in the air seems to be the best attack against them. The guys just take the beating then, but you have to be careful. If they’re not caught unawares they can counter attack and smack Gabriel for decent damage.

Malphas deserves the name The Crow Witch. She’s turned herself into a giant crow and she even attacks with crows. She spits eggs at Gabriel and that is his cue to jump into action. The eggs have the same concept as the rocks the Rock Titan threw. Gabriel has to grapple the eggs and throw them back at Malphas. It’s easy enough, but there is an odd inconsistency with the whole thing. Sometimes I can throw back only one egg, other times I was able to throw back two eggs and I don’t know why. This is actually kind of critical to know since her annoying minions pop out of these eggs. The more eggs I destroy the fewer enemies I have to deal with. I consider that pretty crucial to the flow of the fight.

This really rounds out the boss fight in the long run. There are a couple of Quick-Time Events that Gabriel has to plow through but nothing substantial. The annoying part to me is that there is a corpse on the roof. If you don’t grab it during the boss fight you’re going to miss it. At the end of the fight Pan shows up in horse form and whisks Gabriel away. Really, if Pan’s not helping then I really wonder what he’s doing.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - My Mountain Fortress Home

Alright, I’m going to make a cry to the internet. I can really use some financial help, so if you would be so kind to click on the ads that are on the blog please.

They say you shouldn’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Looks like Gabriel will get to know Cornell really well then. After Cornell’s death Gabriel acquired his boots. These boots give Gabriel the ability to sprint, do the long jump, and flip over enemies.  They’re nice boots, but I was really hoping for a double jump. Oh well.

And that was it for chapter 3. It only had two sections. Chapter 4 looks to be fairly similar, only two areas to conquer. The Mountain Fortress is where the Tron-eagle will drop you off. Oh, it turns out that the Tron-eagle and horse are both actually Pan. I learned this by looking in the bestiary, not by the story telling me in an intelligent manner. Pan says he’s not helping Gabriel even though he just gave him a lift, so… yeah, I’m confused by that. If he’s not helping why did he help? This also means that Pan helped bring Gabriel to himself at the start of the story, go figure that one out.

The Mountain Fortress is the home of a giant Ogre and that’s really what you need to know about the area. It’s full of your basic platforming sections and nothing really interesting happens until you are directly outside of the Fortress’ wall.  The Ogre finally appears and boy is this guy large and fairly cool looking. The dev team did a good job on him. I really like his yellow, piercing eyes. But then I got confused. The Ogre starts smashing the wall on the inside of the Fortress while Gabriel is battling some trolls outside the Fortress. Once the trolls were dead I kept suddenly dying. It wasn’t until my third time dying that I finally figured out that the Ogre was actually causing the platform below Gabriel to collapse. So I thought, “Cool. We’ll have a section where Gabriel has to sprint around the Fortress and avoid the Ogre’s attacks.”

I apparently gave the Ogre too much credit. This was the only area where I had to worry about falling platforms. Once I swung to a safer spot I had to deal with the Ogre’s hand directly. I guess this was a boss fight since the hand had its own health bar. Avoiding the hand is really easy. You just have to watch out for when it tries to grab you. The rest of the fight is cake if you stay close to the Fortress wall. Once the hand retracts you get to face the Ogre in earnest.

Wait… that’s it? Really? I was looking forward to some intense platforming action. Tell that stupid Ogre to defend the Fortress a little longer, sheesh. But this is the Ogre fight. That makes two boss fights in the last two areas. The Ogre is simple and made even simpler by there being a neutral orb fountain nearby. The Ogre is slow and lumbering, with Cornell’s boots it’s really easy for Gabriel to avoid the Ogre and recharge his magic at the fountain. This means he always has Shadow magic for extra damage and he always has Light magic to heal with.

Avoid the Ogre’s hand and whip it good. The hand, that is. You can directly hit the Ogre too on occasion, but the hand is easier target. Use the sprint ability to stay out of the way. Repeat this for the entire boss fight and the Ogre will go down easily.

While I wish I could end the post there, I have one more thing to talk about in this section. At the very end of the level you run into this annoying little beast called a Chupacabra. As far as I know Cupacabras are creatures that eat goats. Instead of sucking a goat this stupid little beast steals your magic relics and you have to go play a game of hide-and-seek with it. The first time I found him was blatantly obvious.  The second time he was hidden at the top of this scaffolding that I didn’t even know existed. Stupid creature. At least I got my relics back. Onto the next section.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - The Big Camera Boss Battle

During the narrative Zobek declares Gabriel to be “angry” and “filled with hate”. I have yet to see this from Gabriel. The guy seems a little depressed at the most. Kratos always seemed angry and I wouldn’t want to get in his way. Gabriel just comes off as a little pouty. I don’t believe for a moment that the guy is hiding a desire for blood-thirsty vengeance. I know that his wife was murdered, but I thought he was on this quest because he had nothing left to lose. Learning that his wife could be brought back to life had given him hope. At least, that is what the earlier narrative had lead me to believe. Gabriel went after the Lords of Shadow to destroy evil and bring his wife back.

So here we are, Gabriel must now confront Cornell the first of the Lords of Shadow. This fight was… interesting to say the least. There’s a lot wrong with it on a fundamental level and we’ll cover all of that in a moment, but first we’re given expository backstory.

Many years ago the three founders of the Brotherhood of Light went to eliminate evil from the world. They were fairly successful and tip the world in favor of light. They then went on a quest to become closer to God. They were successful in finding three sacred locations and each founder used it to ascend to a higher plane of existence, their power being only second to God. Gabriel knew all of this and was very unimpressed. Here’s where Cornell tries to taunt Gabriel with secret knowledge.

Only the ‘good part’ of the Founders ascended. Their evil parts remained and those became the Lords of Shadow (Dun dun dun!). So the Lords of Shadow are linked to the Founders, to kill one is to kill the other. Gabriel cries about this for a while, but he quickly gets over it and the boss fight ensues.

Fighting Cornell’s human form is lame. I never died, I found him easy to predict, and I only took hits when I got careless. Dodging was the best form of defense against this guy. He’s time consuming, but never hard. When Cornell went down I said to myself “That can’t be all, that was too easy.” I was right.

Cornell is lord of the Lycans. This means he has a werewolf form and I’ve got to beat it down. Again, he’s not hard. He telegraphs most of his attacks allowing Gabriel to have ample room to move. He has the same problem that most bosses have though, they hit really hard. A few well placed hits from Cornell will kill Gabriel. I should know, I was on the receiving end of them.

I did die during this fight and thankfully Cornell’s werewolf form was a checkpoint. That actually makes sense compared to the numerous checkpoints in the Black Knight Golem fight. The issue…  really the issue is the camera. You fight Cornell in a nicely circular arena and Cornell can go anywhere in the arena. The camera will try to follow Cornell. Note I said try.  The camera in this game is designed to stay in one place and spasm occasionally, not follow a fairly fast boss around an arena. This shows the moment Gabriel respawns. The camera is still trying to position itself behind Gabriel when Cornell begins attacking. This means I was taking hits blind. I learned that I needed to be moving before I could even fully see Gabriel and that made knowing where to go difficult. The way the camera continues to flip around was so awful that it I had to walk away from the game on a few occassions. They really needed to give camera control to the player in this game.

Once Cornell’s werewolf form takes enough hits you move onto round three. Balls of energy shoot out of Cornell and hit these stone statues that are surrounding the arena. I have only a slight idea what that means but before I’m able to try it I get smacked around by Cornell again. Ok, I was waiting for one event to finish (the balls of energy) before the fight continued. Silly me. Instead Cornell decides to beat Gabriel down while he’s distracted by the shiny balls of light. At least let me have the camera back before this guy runs in to turn Gabriel’s face to hamburger.

Thankfully it’s a checkpoint. The goal is to smash the statues. Each statue takes one more hit then the last to destroy. So the first statue takes one hit, second statue takes two hits etc. until all are destroyed. Again I ended up fighting the stupid camera more than the actual boss. Cornell is still out to kill Gabriel, but the camera can’t decide if it should focus on the statues or on Cornell. So the camera had to deal with its own internal conflict while Gabriel dealt with Cornell and the statues. There had to be a better way to handle this. If the camera is not going to be given to the player then it needed to be stationary and only slightly adjust when necessary.

With Cornell down Gabriel gets part of the God Mask. Looks kinda similar to the mast Gabriel was wearing when he stabbed his wife. A giant eagle with Tron-lines shows up and offers Gabriel a ride to the land of the vampires. Now wait just a minute! Zobek was supposed to be dealing with the vampires. By the time Gabriel gets there the old man should have everything wrapped up. But he probably won’t and it will be up to Gabriel to clean up the old man’s mess.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - I Don't Have A Witty Title This Time

I could’ve sworn that Gabriel and Zobek split up. Yet Zobek keeps on narrating like he knows what Gabriel is up too. It’s really creepy. And I wish the guy would make up his mind on the Claudia chick. First he calls her young, then he calls her centuries old. Which is it? I don’t think I’m asking that much for an answer.

So Gabriel wanders into this placed called the Three Towers, I assume that it is named so for the three towers in the area. I only remember climbing two… This area reminds why I hate the camera. Sure it’s constantly moving, I have no control over it and the game chooses some really stupid angles for Gabriel to work with. Almost every time I encountered enemies in the level at least one of them ended up off-screen. There is no targeting system, though I do think Gabriel has a slight auto-target so hitting bad guys gets really frustrating. Especially when you don’t know that they’re there.

One of the worst culprits is near the end of the level. There’s a crank Gabriel had to use to open some gates. Well the area is a giant circle and after you collect the item you’re after you have to come back to this crank. This time Gabriel is attacked at the crank by Greater Lycans. There is no warning, there is no setup and you can’t see them coming. I think this was done so the Lycans could destroy the crank, but I took the hit that destroyed the crank and that makes me unhappy. If you need to destroy an interactive part of the environment that Gabriel is in the process of doing, use a cutscene.

In this area Gabriel is introduced to Fairies and fairly suddenly too.  He had to battle a horde of Lycans and suddenly these green streaks kept flying in and surrounding the Lycans. At first, I thought they were granting extra power to the Lycans and I kept waiting for them to transform into Greater Lycans. Thankfully I was proven wrong and all the green streaks are is Fairies. Fairies can be used to distract enemies. The Fairies actually give Gabriel a container so he can capture more Fairies and store them until he needs to use them. That’s kinda creepy, but that also ends up being your mission for this level. Find three Fairies to get past the final door. That’s actually where most of the level comes into play.

Like I said, the level is one giant circle. You run around it finding where the Fairies are kept and you move on until Gabriel makes it back to the start of the circle. The Fairy locations are pretty easy to find so don’t worry about that. The trickiest part is when Gabriel has to put a Crank handle back into a Crank. He actually has to use the same Crank handle in two different spots. I missed this the first time around.

There are a lot of collectibles in the area and I happily found them all. Normally I end up missing them and I have to go back for them later, like with most weapon power ups. I was able to successfully upgrade Gabriel’s Light Magic, Shadow Magic and Health Bar in this level. I don’t know if it’s planned that way, but I thought it was pretty neat to get all three in the same level. What I want to know is what is up with the fanfare that plays when you finally get an upgrade? The whole game has to stop for a moment and announce to the world that you are now a little bit stronger. I prefer the way God of War handles its upgrades. It’s more like giving a high-five. It says, “Good job, here’s your health” then it moves on. Castlevania is more of a “BEHOLD ALL NATIONS, KINDERED, AND PEOPLE! SIR GABRIEL OF THE HOLY ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF LIGHT HAS GAINED ADDITIONAL HEALTH! ALL PRAISE BE TO GABRIEL AND HIS ADDITIONAL HEALTH! HUZZAH!” And then it shuts up. Does that seem like overkill to you? Because it seems like overkill to me.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Oh Shut Up Already!

Well, Chapter II is done. I have to say that I didn’t see these events occurring. Caught me completely off guard. But I can’t say I’m disappointed by the outcome.

First, Claudia needs Gabriel to gather a dark crystal for her. To do this you need four crystal shards. Sounds easy enough. Except that the stupid woman wouldn’t shut up the entire time I was looking for the shards. Yes I know that the shards grow in places that are purple, stop yelling at me! And since she’s a telepath she just talks directly to Gabriel’s mind so he can’t escape her. She is annoying, frustrating, and aggravating. Hey lady! Why don’t get your lazy butt off of your golem and help find a crystal already?! And don’t you dare yell at me when I’m fighting three Greater Lycans at the exact same time!

Once I had the complete crystal it was time to move on to the puzzle. It’s pretty obvious that it’s a ‘reflect lasers off of mirrors’ puzzle. But I don’t have to worry about figuring it out for myself since my wonderful companion just has to mention how “these statues can turn” or whatever. I found the puzzle in Pan’s temple to be more frustrating. Puzzle solved, onto next area.

It’s another Not-Colossus! I mean…Titan, yeah that’s it. Titan. This one throws rocks and apparently it’s a girl since Claudia feels the need to throw a female oriented vulgarity at it. Once again I don’t get to figure out how to fight this girl since Claudia is issuing commands during the fight. First she says “Stay away.” So I stay away and get hit. Nothing happens fight-wise so I run up to it. I get hit some more, Claudia yells “Get away from it”. I know Gabriel needs to climb the dumb thing but how does that part of the battle start? Claudia then yells to watch out for some rock the Titan has thrown, so I dodge it.

But it turns out that I wasn’t supposed to dodge that rock. I was supposed to grab the rock and throw it back. And I might have tried it if someone wasn’t yelling at me to “look out for the rock!” Geez, listening to her ramble on and give bad instructions was really infuriating. Either help me take the stupid Titan down or shut up. I prefer the second option.

Taking down the Titan is standard fair and kind of boring. What made Shadow of the Colossus work was the grip meter. If you didn’t let up of your grip eventually the character, Wander, would fall off. Gabriel has no limitations. He can hang on a Titan as long as he wants and that makes these fights pretty simple. Climbing around the thing until I reach its head Claudia decides Gabriel needs to destroy it by using the dark crystal. Odd, but it works so you both go off to take a nap.

During which Gabriel has a dream where he stabs the girl with a knife similar to the vision where he killed his wife in Pan’s temple.

Speaking of Pan he suddenly shows up. Boy I like the design of that guy. I need to find a picture. Pan tells Gabriel that he needs the black knight golem’s gauntlet. Gabriel refuses; he will not take the gauntlet since the girl needs the golem for protection. Actually she doesn’t, turns out that Gabriel actually stabbed her. It wasn’t just a dream! That should teach her to be a nag! I didn’t see this coming. I figured the girl would turn against Gabriel and try to prevent him from gaining the power of a God. Shows what I know.

Golem’s pissed. He conveniently throws Gabriel onto a circular platform-arena and that’s where the fight occurs. The golem is slow, boringly slow and most of his attacks are very easy to avoid.  The danger is that he hits hard. In the second half of the fight he calls little ooze piles to help him out. The ooze stops Gabriel in his tracks making it easier for the golem to hit him.

I’ll admit to dying in this fight, but it doesn’t really matter. There are three checkpoints during the battle and as long as you reach the next one you’re okay. Every time you take off a quarter of the golem’s health you hit a checkpoint. Taking off a quarter of his health isn’t hard so don’t feel bad if you lose a few times. Taking him down is just a matter of time, not skill. What happened to the days when you had to memorize a boss, have quick reflexes and actually learn how to overcome him? I miss those days.

Once the golem goes down Gabriel gets the gauntlet. Seems to be a new weapon that Gabriel can use, that’s nice. Hopefully it can take down Greater Lycans faster.

Dynasty Warriors 7 - The Forever Conquest

For all those looking for my Dynasty Warriors 7 – Final Thoughts, it does not currently exist. Yes I plan on doing one, but I haven’t completed conquest mode yet. “Why the delay?” you may ask. Truth is I play Conquest mode with my wife and only with my wife. It’s fun to have a second person playing. Even if she does only use the same character so that he is now vastly overpowered vs. all other characters in the game. That’s her choice.

In past Dynasty Warriors games I absolutely despised archers. They were always knocking me off of my horse and always causing a problem. They’re not as bad in number 7. Sure a large group can quickly whittle through your health, but they are no longer prone to knocking you down. It is a very nice change of pace.

The issue is that an annoying troop type still exists and that would be the mounted Calvary. I always seem to miss them, I can’t stop their stupid charge, and I tend to get ran over by 5 (or more) in a row. I lost a mission 3 times last night thanks to those stupid Calvary guys. I finally had to have my wife come down with her massively powered Xiahou Dun to kill them so we could beat the mission.

To make matters worse I was using Zhou Tai. Now Zhou Tai was not a character that got used during the main story line so he has to be unlocked during Conquest mode. This poor guy had no upgrades to speak of and he had to survive a 4 star difficulty.  There’s no other choice though if you want to play this guy. You have to defeat this mission and then he unlocks.

That’s an issue I’m having with how characters are unlocked. Some of their missions are fairly difficult, while others are fairly simple. This means a new character may end up in a mission that is 4 or 5 stars and have no upgrades to speak of. That will make it a very hard mission for that character. Has my wife and I make our way up to China’s most northern point I see two characters are there to unlock. I wonder how difficult their missions will be?

PlayStation Network - My Free Games

With the PlayStation Network back people were given a choice of select games that they can download for free. While this wasn’t the greatest selection of games available I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and grab my two games. The best benefit of this is that my wife also has a PlayStation Network account so she also got two games and since these games don’t have any crappy DRM on them either of us can play any of these games at any time. Hooray for 4 free games.

My first choice was inFAMOUS. The game has had my eye for a long time and while I’m bummed that I don’t have it on disc, it is still nice have it. That game will get a full playthrough blog so I’ll leave it alone for now.

Second choice was Super Stardust HD. This is a fun twin stick arcade shooter. It’s made pretty accessible since the second stick does all of the firing, not just the aiming. The game is bright and colorful and so far, a lot of fun.

My wife’s first choice was Dead Nation. Now this surprised me a little, but she was hoping it would be as fun as Resident Evil 5. We played co-op on that and had an absolutely amazing time, even if the story is incredibly cheesy. Well she’s disappointed that it isn’t. It’s another twin stick shooter, but this time the right stick only aims and the R1 fires. This makes playing a little more complicated. She kept dying on a very regular basis. I didn’t do too badly at surviving.

Her second choice was Wipeout HD. She likes racing games so I wasn’t too surprised by this. The wipeout franchise is fun, but I was shocked by how hard the game was. I couldn’t even win my first race. I knew the later races would be tough but I thought I would have a chance to get used to the game mechanics first.

We passed on Little Big Planet for a very simple reason, Sack Boy. That thing is one of the creepiest creations I have ever seen. He’s got this evil little doll vibe hidden behind a cute face thing going for him. This is too bad since I love the basic concept of Little Big Planet. The chance to build my own levels sounds like fun, but can we get a character that isn’t creepy in the game instead?

So our 4 choices can get blogs at any point in time. I should probably start adding my downloaded games to the poll, but it’s not like anyone is actually voting.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Chasing Blondes

The so called Labyrinth proved to be anything but. Once I learned that the whole thing depended on using Wargs to get around the area became pretty simple. A few leaps and bounds and I found myself at the end of the level where I promptly strangled my Warg. Yeah, that turned out to be a pretty dumb move.

At the very end of the area there’s a wall that only a Warg can climb. I had no idea something like this existed. When I saw the wall I thought I had reached the end of the Warg’s path and so I killed it. I had to work my way back a good distance to find the Warg’s spawn point again so I could catch another one. Then I was able to complete the level. Gabriel runs into the blonde girl again has she dives into this massive opening, prompting Gabriel to follow.

I dove head first into the next section, The Waterfalls of Agharia. This is a pretty small area. I’ll admit that I was surprised how small. It also threw me off a little bit. These blue flames would just spark to life and I kept thinking that Gabriel needed to do something with them. Turns out I was wrong, they’re just for decoration. The flames are burning Gremlin guano which was used as a source of power for the old Kingdome of Agharia.

You can also expect to run into Gremlins. They’re little flying creatures that happen to know that their poop if flammable. These guys will actually fling flaming poop at Gabriel. That makes me laugh, enemies that actually fling poop.

So this area is literally, go left, grab the bridge key, extend the bridge halfway. Then, walk to the halfway point on the bridge, go left, ride the giant spider to rip out a door, grab the second bridge key, and extend the bridge. That’s the basics of it, nice and simple. The gremlins are actually the biggest problem in the area. They like to swarm Gabriel so some area attacks are nice.

Once the bridge is complete Gabriel gets swarmed by even more Gremlins’. This battle continues until a giant black knight interrupts, kills the Gremlins and then prepares to kill Gabriel. Thankfully the blonde girl named Claudia, shows up and stops the knight. Claudia can talk to Gabriel without using her mouth because she is one of “The Gifted” and there is no further explanation then that. She seems perky, almost annoying. I don’t think I like her and I think she’s up to no good.

She can apparently read minds, so she reads Gabriel’s. Her first reaction is one of terror. She recoils in horror from what she sees in his mind, but she quickly hides that under the pretense of liking what he’s going to do. Killing the Lords of Shadow and bringing back his dead wife suddenly seem like a good idea. Yeah….her initial reaction makes me highly suspicious. But she’s tagging along and I’m fine with that as long as she isn’t an escort mission.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Yes I'm Still Complaining About The Camera

Ah! I’m still on top of a giant spider! What the hell?! That’s apparently the last place where I hit a checkpoint. On top of a giant spider. Why the hell couldn’t the game save after I jumped across the ledge? Then I wouldn’t be on a giant spider anymore.

I think I need to become better at combat. I always find myself low on health. If my next fight ends up being against a ‘Greater’ monster I’m probably going to die. At least then I’ll respawn with half of my health back.  For instance, as I continued on through this underground area I ran across a Troll, but I had no health left so he took one swing and killed me. I could see a health font on the next platform but I couldn’t get to it yet. But I had half of my health for the next encounter thanks to the respawn so I survived that round, but I only had a sliver of my health left. *sigh*

I get that this is a fixed-camera game (something I’m learning to despise) but can we at least get some decent camera angles? I want to see where I’m going, not where I’ve been and I certainly don’t want to look at the wall next to me. Just give me control of the camera and I’ll be happy at least then it will stop shaking. Worst culprit is at the end of this area. Gabriel has to climb a series of ledges and use his hookshot to get out of this cavern. The very last ledge has the camera pull way back and then points up at Gabriel. I could not see where to go. So I tried some random jumps hoping I was right and always leading to Gabriel’s death. Low and behold there was a little hookshot point just up to my right. The camera angle kept me from seeing it, but to make matters worse the little blue sparkle that says “I’m a hookshot point” blended in with the skybox. I only found it on one of Gabriel’s random jumps to his death, the camera slightly shifted and I caught the little twinkle.

I did learn Shadow Magic, I like this stuff already. The orbs that enemies drop are neutral orbs. By pressing in on the left or right thumbstick Gabriel gains Light or Shadow Magic respectively. Light magic seems to be for healing, but Shadow Magic is for combat. Just activating it increases Gabriel’s combat strength by a lot. But now there’s a fine balancing act to be played. I have to make sure I have Light and Shadow Magic on a regular basis. But enemies don’t drop orbs if Gabriel is in his Light/Shadow form. So I have to use normal attacks to get orbs, Light Magic to heal and Shadow Magic to kill things quickly. This will take some getting used to.

I wandered into the next area where some Troll was going to eat Gabriel as he hung from a cliff edge. Thankfully a random blonde chick with a purple crystal showed up. She overkilled the troll by summoning some giant demon with tits. The summoning animation made sure to give you a good shot of the demon’s breasts, I don’t know why. Once the Troll was eviscerated, the girl gave Gabriel a smile and then flipped away, indicating that he should follow. Except Gabriel isn’t as agile as the girl, I mean, the poor guy doesn’t even have a double jump!

So Gabriel has to find a different route. And apparently this area is a labyrinth, a literal labyrinth. I know this because a dead knight told me “This is a labyrinth”. I’ll tackle this area later.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - There Be Quail Here

The camera is absolutely driving me nuts. I can’t play for more than an hour at a time. After that I start feeling to nauseous to continue. I can’t even play a different game at that point. I have to just walk away from the system and go read a book. It’s a good thing that I like to read (I highly recommend Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series). Let this be a lesson to all developers, Hold the camera still!

There’s a quail. Why is there a quail? And why did I spend 5 minutes chasing the dumb thing? In an odd little touch for the Land of the Lycans the devs inserted quail. These dumb little birds just run around and can’t be killed. I’m surprised to see quail, I’ll be honest. I wouldn’t think that the lycans or goblins in the area would let anything like that live. So it’s an interesting little touch. One that had me chasing a bird around for 5 minutes.

I finally get to make use of the spike chain for riding a giant animal. Early in this section I have to ride a giant boar and use it to break down a door. Instead I rode the boar in circles and used it to trampled goblins for a few minutes. Once I got bored with that I finally broke the door down and moved on. Then I got to strangle my mount. I was hoping that I got to ride the dumb pig for part of the level, but you only use it to open one door.

The rest of the level is pretty standard fair. Killing lycans and goblins as required. I can’t seem to find lifestones at all. Collect 5 lifestones and you get a health increase. I have only found 3 so far. I guess I need to go back to find more, but that means dealing with the camera in old areas. That does not sound like any fun. I would rather move forward, but I keep dying so I obviously need the stupid gems. Maybe I can convince my wife to go look for them…

Anyways, the end of this section has Gabriel fighting what looks like an Alpha Lycan or some such (Greater Lycanthrope it turns out). I can’t fairly call it an interesting fight; most enemies seem to have the same basic attack pattern at this point. They seem to charge their attack and then they attack. I’m still a little slow blocking, but I do tend to dodge on a regular basis.  In the end this fight wasn’t hard. Before this fight though I found a note that went along the lines of “Use the right weapon for the right kind of enemy.” And I’m thinking “What the hell is he talking about?” Gabriel only has two weapons, his whip and his daggers. I suppose you can count his magic but I haven’t unlocked any of the magic attacks yet.

Once the fight is over Gabriel attempts to open a giant door, but the door breaks, falls and smashes a giant hole in the ground that Gabriel falls into. I have determined that Gabriel died when he hit the bottom and I am now playing a ghost. The pit had to be about 500’+. There is no way Gabriel survived. And he obviously didn’t use his whip to grab hold of anything because he’s lying on the ground like he just fell 500’+. Gabriel really should have shot out his hookshot and grabbed a ledge, then I would believe that he’s alive. Has it is right now, I am convinced that Gabriel failed his mission and died and the rest of the game will actually be his own personal hell.

And that’s why the first thing he does is fight a giant spider. Wait…what?! A stupid giant spider, really?! I was hoping I wouldn’t see these guys for a while. Ohhhhhh, and now I have to tame one. That feels a little late. And I’m taming it so I can pull down that tree? Didn’t I use my hookshot to pull down the last tree? Why can’t I do that again instead of riding a giant spider? Stupid spider.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Taming Giant Spiders

So I’ve tried to set up a twitter feed. I have no idea if it works correctly or not, but I’m trying to get myself all setup with this social media stuff. Maybe I can get a few followers this way. It’s worth a shot.

I have to remember to dodge/block in this game. It’s highly important. I have a hard time remembering to do this though. Part of it is based on how dodging works. Since this is a fixed-camera, third-person action game I keep trying to use the right thumbstick. Currently the right thumbstick has no use. Then I try to use R2 to block/dodge. This comes from the last I played being Prototype and that is how you blocked and dodged in that game. Instead I have to learn to use the L2 button. It will take a little bit of retraining or maybe I can change it in the options menu. I don’t normally change my buttons for a game, but this might just be worth it.

I keep taking hits against these massive spiders Gabriel has to fight and these things hit hard. It doesn’t help that I haven’t found any health upgrades yet and that healing is, well, tricky. Let’s talk about that for a moment. When Gabriel and Professor Xavier parted ways, Professor X gave Gabriel a magical talisman. When enemies die they drop orbs. Gabriel absorbs these orbs into the talisman by pressing in on the left thumbstick. Doing this gives Gabriel light magic. Once he has some light magic built up pressing L1 activates the light magic and now every enemy he hits will restore his health. This means to heal, Gabriel has to remain in combat. It creates a fine balance and forces the player to become even better with the game’s combat system. I call it fairly inspired, unless you’re like me, prone to taking hits.

I’m in this area with giant spiders. Why is it always spiders? I hate spiders. They’re creepy and the way they move just seems unnatural. And that’s why spiders make for great enemies. People don’t like them so you force them to fight what they naturally fear. But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.

I’ll admit that this section had me fairly confused. I had found a note from a dead knight about riding certain beasts. Then later in the area I found a spiked chain upgrade for my weapon. I was hoping that it would increase Gabriel’s damage output. Instead it is used to saw through certain objects (more on that in a moment) and tame certain beasts. So I thought, “I found a letter and a got an upgrade and both of them deal with taming beasts. I guess I have to go ride a spider.” And so I tried to ride a spider. I found one left in the entire area and I could not tame him for the life of Gabriel. Poor guy tried so hard too. Once the spider was dead I went searching for more spiders, but that was apparently the last giant spider in the area. Heck, it was the last enemy in the area period and I had absolutely no idea where to go.

I actually had to go to gamefaqs to get some walkthrough help. Turns out the exit was behind the upgrade room. Who knew? And taming a beast occurs in the next area… Then why was all the info about taming one showing up now? This is fairly frustrating stuff.

And about the ‘sawing’ mechanic, that just looks dumb. Gabriel throws his whip around an object and then you pull back and forth on the left thumbstick. There’s no rhythm to the thing. You just push and pull and then you’re done. This probably could have been executed a little better.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

This game is gorgeous to look at. They’ve really put a lot of hard work into the background and the effort is paying off. Now if only the camera would hold still, then I wouldn’t have anything major to complain about.

Getting to the Guardian requires solving some rune matching minigame. There are 5 runes and once you have them you can open the portal to the inner temple. I only found 4 but the puzzle was really easy. I matched the 4 and started flipping through the 5^th slot when suddenly the puzzle declared itself solved. That was nice and simple.

Once inside we meet Pan, the Guardian of the Lake. At this point I also recommend that you go out and watch Pan’s Labyrinth. The movie is well worth watching.  Gabriel explains that he has come looking for Pan so he can talk to his dead wife. Gabriel believes that God has abandoned the people and that is why evil is taking over. The leaders of his holy order of knights believe that an evil spell has been cast and that this spell has cut off God from the Earth. Either way, Gabriel has made the trip to the Lake to try to communicate with his dead wife. By doing so it is believed that Gabriel will be given the answer to the world’s plight and hopefully a solution as well.

Pan, who is this awesome goat looking thing, tells Gabriel that only the most worthy can talk to the dead.  This begins a little minigame about spinning wheels. There’s a ramp and it has to be moved in front of Gabriel before a guillotine cuts a vision of his wife in half. This is not a hard puzzle, but I failed it numerous times and I can’t quite explain why. It was really easy when I solved it, but I can’t tell you exactly what I did to solve the puzzle. There’s this great cutscene where Gabriel’s wife wakes up, hugs him in a moment of joy, and then Gabriel stabs her, much to her surprise. Gabriel is shown to be wearing a stone mask. Odd scene, but apparently this proves that Gabriel is worthy of talking to the dead.

This takes Gabriel out to a frozen lake where a giant Ice Titan appears. I had to admit that I shocked at this point that the game copies Shadow of the Colossus.  Gabriel has to climb the Titan and smash its weak spots to kill it. The game mechanics are very similar to Shadow of the Colossus. You have to press a button to grip, occasionally the Titan will try to shake Gabriel off and occasionally the Titan would try to grab Gabriel. It’s just such a familiar fight it’s almost eerie. It’s also a simple fight. The Titan’s defenses are few and easy to avoid.

Once the fight is over we meet Patrick Stewart’s character, Zobek. He’s apparently an older member of Gabriel’s Order; I suspect there’s more to his character however. Just call it a hunch. Maybe he’s actually Dracula! Where is Dracula in this game?

Gabriel is able to talk to his wife and learn about the prophecy of the Lords of Shadow. He’s also able to tell her he loves her and that’s a pretty sweet moment. Thankfully Zobek is hanging around to fill in the blanks. Whoever holds the power of the Lords of Shadow becomes Gods vassal on Earth. That person shall have the power to do whatever he wants. Zobek encourages Gabriel to go on this quest so he can bring his wife back to life.

Ha! I knew it! I knew at some point this would be about bringing Gabriel’s wife back and here we have, lain out bare in front of us. Go get the power of God and resurrect your wife you twat. But when she tries to eat you, don’t blame me. This sort of thing never ends well.

So Patrick Stewart goes to deal with the vampires while Gabriel heads for the lands of the Lycans.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Choices Are Good

JUST HOLD THE DAMN CAMERA STEADY!!! It’s really not that hard and it will help me enjoy the game that much more. Instead that camera has to constantly wiggle, or randomly move out. If it would just stay still it would make things so much more enjoyable.

I will now take a moment to praise the level design. It’s actually fun to get lost. Most games like this are pretty straight forward and while Castlevania has its moments, there are also moments when you can choose multiple paths to follow to reach your destination. Sure the paths always converge on the same spot but it’s nice to know you have the option. The Final Fantasy XIII-2 crew could learn from this.

I want to note that Gabriel’s health does not automatically restore. You have to find special health fonts to restore it. These fonts are not that common, so taking hits is a very bad thing. I had to learn this the hard way. I had trudged through the Dead Bog and had found Gabriel’s first equipment upgrade, a hookshot for his whip. After this section you fight a Swamp Troll. This counts as a boss fight and it taught me how to fight more than any other enemy/tutorial in the game. I also realized I only had about 1/3 of my life left. I had to learn to not button mash my way through a combo. The Troll will suffer some knockback, but he’ll recover and quickly get to Gabriel and smack the guy around some. When you only have 1/3 of your health this will cause you to die. Dying is just sad since this isn’t really a hard boss fight, but what killed me the most was failing to execute the kill animation. The troll would be stunned, Gabriel would grab him and then I would mess up the circle Quick Time event.  I messed it up a lot and with only 1/3 of my health (or less) the troll’s counter attack would typically kill me.

But I eventually got it right and won. Then it was on to the Lake Guardian.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - The Opening Act

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a third-person, fixed-camera, action game. It was developed by Mercurysteam and published by Konami for the PS3 on October 2010. The game follows the story of Gabriel Belmont and Knight of Some Brotherhood on his quest to defeat evil and restore balance to the world. This is my first time playing through the game and I will be playing on “normal” mode.

I don’t like to use abbreviations if I can avoid it, but Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a very long title and not one that I want to type every time I reference the game, so I’m going to cheat and just call it Castlevania. If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I reference that title I cannot help you. I’m just a simple man talking about video games on the internet.

I’m going to reserve the right to quit playing this game early due to being nauseous. Yes I suffer from minor motion sickness, because of this I can’t play many FPS, at least not for long. It’s rare that a third-person action game makes me feel this way, but this game tries and it tries hard. The camera shakes, just a little, but it’s enough to start affecting me after an hour or so of gameplay. I imagine that his camera shake is supposed to be for “atmosphere” but I really wish that the camera would stop moving. It would make my life so much easier.

First things first, voice over by Patrick Stewart! Hell yes! I’ve always had this little pipe dream about doing voice-overs. I think most people who watch anime have this thought at some point or another. I’ve never let it go in my older age. But hearing Patrick Stewart’s gorgeous voice read these lines with such depth; it renews my passion and tells me to try again. He seems to be the narrator so I should get to hear a lot of the man. That just might be the best part of the game.

At the start of the game we are introduced to one Gabriel Belmont, an insanely tall man with a neat little cross/whip thing for a weapon. Whips have always been the classic Castlevania weapon and I’m happy to see that tradition continue. To many characters use swords, it’s nice to see some variety. But going back to Gabriel’s height, this guy is either 8’ tall or he’s wandered into a village of pygmies. I don’t think a single villager in the starter town comes up to his chest. The man is ridiculously tall. At least the rest of his proportions are normal. His arms aren’t the size of his head, but I figure making a guy cartoonish-ly buff is the equivalent to making a female unrealistically sexy. It’s the same school of thought.

So the tutorial level has Gabriel battling werewolves, called Lycans. It’s a nice and easy fight, great way to warm up. It’s basic “square for normal attack, triangle for heavy attack” with this game. Some of the controls are setup a little more uniquely. Like circle throws daggers and R2 is the grab button. Gabriel has a large number of combos that can be unlocked. He earns XP as he kills enemies and the XP is used to unlock more moves.

There’s a battle against a giant werewolf, called Wargs. Again, this is all tutorial at this point so the fight is easy and it’s designed to be won. There are some Quick Time actions that occur during gameplay. Like grabbing an enemy causes a large circle to appear. The circle slowly shrinks and when it reaches a certain size you can press a button to have Gabriel perform a unique action. I really suck at doing this. The timing just feels off and I never fully know when one of these events will occur. I also tend to spam my buttons instead of planning out my attacks. It’s easy to screw up if I’m not paying attention. So pay attention me!

Once the warg is killed the battle is over and Gabriel moves into the forest to try to find a being called The Guardian of the Lake. We get a cutscene explaining a little about his past. It appears that his wife is dead, that’s probably related to his quest. He either wants to get revenge, bring her back, or both. Most likely the last one.

That’s when the Tron horse appears. The horse is white with “cyber-lines” drawn through it. It offers to help Gabriel on his quest. I’m apparently really bad at riding a horse. I got knocked off the dumb thing twice, but I also feel that Gabriel is a complete idiot for blindly trusting a horse that appears out of nowhere and talks to you. Whenever I got knocked off I had to fight Lycans and Wargs, but I made it through alive. I like when the horse vanishes in mid-air after knocking some Wargs off a cliff, I wanted the XP for those Wargs. ‘

I’m sure I’ll get that circle, Quick Time event eventually. Maybe then I’ll be able to stay on the beast.