1 vs 100 = DONE

And that's arcade #28, 21 more to go before January 1. I was able to get both Watchmen games for $15 combined yesterday, so there's 2 more that I'll be getting in that time. I should also be finishing up 'Splosion Man soon, as well as Tetris Splash and starting up Castlevania. I also opened up MW2, and already finished the Alpha and half of the Bravo Spec Ops.

The Orange Box = DONE

I intended to do Portal without cheats, I really did. Then I spent about 2 hours on the first time challenge and decided that I really didn't want to. It's not that I was unwilling to put in the time and effort, but that I didn't want to associate Portal with anything negative. When I hear "The cake is a lie", I associate that with GLaDoS and Valve and everything I love about video games. I wasn't willing to add "flashbacks of two weeks of pain and frustration" to that.

So, I broke down and used the whole cheats exploit thing, and it only took 2 days to sweep up all the golds. Orange Box is done now, 99 achievements and all. I put MW2 on my card as well, and I should have that done relatively soon.

1 vs 100

I love general trivia games, but I was unable to play 1 vs 100 for quite some time, as the Live games may as well as been scheduled by someone with a copy of my class schedule and a deep hatred for me. Thankfully, Thanksgiving (hurrpunnotintended) gave me a few days off of school, and I was able to max out my avatar action 10 times in a Live game last night.

I didn't really find the achievements too hard, seeing as how I'm just insanely awesome and got my first 16 questions right. The 6 instant answers took me a while though, seeing as how it's a fucking stupid achievement when a quarter of the questions are along the lines of "Which of these are longer/bigger/smaller/harder/better/faster/stronger?" and you therefore need to see all 3 answers before you can respond. I got something like 10 4-5 question streaks, which took me like 2 hours. I finally got a 5-question streak and then I got the question "In what movie does Paris Hilton play a drug-addled spoiled heiress?" The answer to that is Repo! The Genetic Opera, a cult movie that almost no one's heard of but I would have the bastard children of.* So yeah, that was pretty awesome.

All I have left now is to answer 500 questions, which amounts to around 2.5 hours of aimless button mashing as I do something on the computer, and that'll be arcade #28. Unfortunately, my ever-present foe Birky also got the game, so it's a complete wash for my arcade completions challenge that I'm probably not going to win anyway.

*This is the second time in three articles that I've mentioned having babies, I promise I'm completely male and have absolutely no gender confusion issues.

Assassin's Creed 2 = DONE

The collectibles this time are far easier, and actually tie into ingame rewards. So yeah, I can conclusively say that AC2 has improved upon the original in every conceivable way. Anyway, I'm done with it for completion number 91.

#92, in the form of Borderlands, may be coming later this week, depending on how efficient powerleveling is. At any rate, I'll be done with the DLC tonight and be putting MW2 on my card for my last new retail of the year.

No spoilers here

Without delving into any specifics at all, I will simply say that the ending to Assassin's Creed 2 is the single best 5 minutes of media I have ever seen. In one cutscene, every single question the first two games introduced was answered, even the ones you never asked, and the plot took a massive increase in scale. It was exposition, rising action, climax, and conclusion all in one and was it ever fucking awesome. In less time than it takes to cook an egg, I went from hating AC1 to respecting it, from loving AC2 to wanting its babies.

I might be done with the game tonight, and definitely tomorrow, and I'm eagerly awaiting the probable DLC. After that's done, it's Expert L4D and Borderlands DLC. Also, I got my first straight flush in 20,000 hands in Texas Hold 'Em. 26,617 hands and no royal.

Assassin's Creed 2 - first impressions

It started off pretty damn slowly, but now that I'm a few hours in, it's definitely a far better game than the first. A story worth paying attention to, varied missions, and vastly improved weapons blow AC1 out of the water. Then there's the fact that Leonardo Da-Fucking-Vinci is in the game and AC2 is a solid five-star release.

I'm working on AC2 and L4D2, as well as Tetris Splash, as well as doing shitloads of school work, so I really couldn't say when I'll have anything done. I just know that it will be.

Left 4 Dead 2 - First Impressions

All of the complaints about this just being a shitty rehash of the first one have been proven wrong, as #2 adds so much more in the way of weapons, gameplay, and infected. It actually goes so far past L4D1 in a year that it makes the first game look like the phone-in version that was released way before it was ready.

Just playing through one campaign, it's obvious that these are two completely different games. It's no longer just an A-to-B thing over and over, the cresendo points and finales require you to actually complete a simple task, like finding and shutting off an alarm, retrieving an item, or collecting gas cans to fuel your escape vehicle. The melee cooldown in 1's multiplayer is everywhere in 2, but there are also new melee weapons that can be used nonstop.

The introduction of melee weapons is just part of the incredibly immersive co-op play. In 1, the extent of co-op was special attacks that required help, and possibly having different players carry different kinds of the three weapons or two thrown ones. In 2, there are more special attacks, with at least 6 different weapons, 3 thrown ones, and even the health packs and pain pills have options.

Once you add in the fact that there's actually a continuous story, it's obvious that Left 4 Dead 2 is not a shitty rehash, but rather a completely new experience that Valve somehow managed to pull off in a year.

Fracture = DONE

Fracture honestly disappoints me. It brings a lot to the table in terrain deformation and plenty of strange weapons, which are both completely awesome and original. Unfortunately, the game is so poorly designed that it doesn't tie together well and ends up just a complete mess. The aiming is horrible, movement is finicky, level design is incredibly generic, and it's just all boring after a while. The story is worth playing through, even on the usually-unfair hardest difficulty, but it definitely doesn't make up for the online achievements. About 75 hours for the 1500 games played.

The ending sets up a sequel, and I would honestly get Fracture 2 because if LucasArts can learn from their mistakes, it would be an incredibly good game.

In other news, I'm shelving Borderlands for the time being. I could play through the story again to get to level 50, but I'd rather wait for the announced DLC and see how much EXP I can get from that. Started Left 4 Dead 2, which looks like it'll be a fun but extremely hard 1000. I've got a solid team ready though, so I'm confident I can get it done. I'll get whatever I can get done by myself, then crack open Modern Warfare 2 and play that when my team's unavailable. Looks like Assassin's Creed 2 is going to stay on the shelves for a little while.

I can be petty.

Did you know that BASE jumping stands for "Building Antenna Span Earth", and is by definition parachuting from a stationary object? I knew that, and I thought everyone did, until I played Gay Tony. Apparently, "base jumping" (which is in real life inherently awesome because you're jumping from relatively short heights) is synonymous with "parachuting" to Rockstar, because half of the jumps are done from helicopters or motorcycles (wtf?) and they're mainly about the parachuting section.

The drug wars are also stupid as hell, because you're doing 25 of them that cycle through 4 different dialouges, none of which are well-written or well-acted.

The dancing part is just plain dumb.

The golfing mechanic is finicky as hell and zooming in doesnt help because your sensitivity remains the same.

The fight club bit is unfair because your enemies can use weapons and you can't unless you disarm them, but then it just goes away at round's end.

And don't even get me started on the 100% nonsense.

The two extremes.

Played Borderlands and GTA today, and the differences between the two are almost saddening.

You have Borderlands, which sacrifices richly detailed landscapes and any hint of realism to just be balls-out fun. You have unlimited respawns, fully dynamic saving, a magical hawk that divebombs enemies, a gun with unlimited ammo that fires plasma, enemies with "Badass" right in the title, midgets that get knocked over by their own shotgun kickback, and missions that make absolutely no sense. All in all, it's a phenomenally fun experience with tons of replayability. The only thing wrong with it is the lack of compatibility with completing the story missions in co-op. Everyone in the game has to be at the exact same point in the same playthrough, otherwise stupid things happen and the host will get random missions from far later in the game assigned to him or no one gets to save progress or something. I defy anyone to seriously fault the single-player experience for anything.

Then there's GTA, which, I'll say time and time again, is the most realistic and detailed experience to date, and honestly would be right up there with the ENIAC and MS-DOS on a timeline of humanity's accomplishments with computing devices. Just walk around the city, and note the level of detail in the NPCs walking everywhere. They actually do things, not just walk around aimlessly. The city-wide traffic grid functions perfectly, the in-game internet is more advanced than China's real one. Unfortunately, that's about all you ever do, just drive around the city, and at 30mph to boot because any faster and you'll flip on every goddamned turn you make. Every mission is punctuated with random phone calls from your friends, asking you to go on dates that you have to accept, or you get no awesome things like free quicktravel or guns. Half the missions are just stupid A-to-B things. GTA IV's just not a video game, it's a simulator. It depresses me to think about exactly how fun it would be had that much attention and money gone into something like Saint's Row 2. As far as I'm concerned, GTA IV is one of the worst video games ever, just on the sole fact that it's not fun to play. Microsoft Word would make a horrible video game too, but Microsoft was smart enough to promote that as a word processor.

Unfortunately, Borderlands is almost over, while I still have quite a bit to do with GTA. All that's left for Borderlands is for me to play half of the story again to rank up to level 50, and then await DLC, which AC2, MW2, and L4D2 will keep me from playing for a while. As far as GTA goes, I'm slowly but surely getting to the $5 million for Wanted, and now going into mop-up mode for Gay Tony. Unfortunately, mop-up's going to take me about 3-4 times as long as the story, which is even more reason for me to hate Rockstar.

Borderlands - first impressions.

Holy. Fuck.

GOTY so far. I normally don't care about graphics, but it looks absolutely incredible. I could keep going on about what's so awesome about it, so I will. It's definitely got a hint of RPG in it, kind of like a My First RPG presented through a shooter. You also gotta love a game that refuses to take itself seriously, like this. The guns are crazy, the people are insane, and nothing makes much sense if you sit back and look at it. At the end of the day, it's all just fun.

I'm currently mopping up (I think) my first playthrough, and two are required. Should be done by L4D2/AC2 release, at least if I don't get swept up in finishing GTA. I'm just shy of 2 million and Gay Tony still sucks. 100% all missions isn't going to be fun. I'm probably not even going to try it until someone writes a guide.

All Hail!

So, I'm finally done with Hardcore 'Splosion Man, and I can honestly say it's one of the harder things I've ever done. Some of the levels towards the end were just ridiculous. 3-4 minutes of precisely timed 'splodes. Not fun. All I have left is to do the multiplayer campaign and I'm looking at a solid 200. I'm probably also going to put on Castlevania and definitely CoD Classic over the next week, so that's 3 easyish arcade completions right there. Birky, I'm coming.

Fallout 3 = DONE

For the first time in a long time, I've been really motivated to clean up my card. I've had Borderlands and Brutal Legend sitting unopened for weeks now because I can't put Fallout, GTA, or Splosion Man away long enough to work on them. I finished Fallout though, had to go on a murder spree to finish up the rank 30, SO hopefully there'll be no more DLC because I don't feel like starting it with everyone in every town dead and my Karma tanked.

Also got past a bit in Splosion Man that had been kicking my ass for weeks, and I'm now only a few chapters away from completion, so yay for that.