Friday, April 4, 2008

Stack Pop

Psychonauts is complete. The "last boss" was just a precursor. I had some kind of odd bug which prevented me from being able to beat him in my first try. I actually had to die 5 times to get the continue, so I could load the game without this one board protecting the glass brain case on the giant tank. I thought this boss was too easy, and the game more than made up for it. The final level of the game is just sick sick sick. Time limits, impossible jumps, another pseudo-boss-fight, and a new type of play for the final boss with some new magical powerup in order to beat him. At least the ending cinematic was pretty good, even though the weak sales of this great game preclude it getting the sequel so hinted at. All in all, a really solid experience, and until the last level, I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested.

My 360 should be back by next Monday, but by then Lars will probably have bought Burnout Paradise, and I intend to get some progress on Overlord this weekend. I have a hard choice to make when I get the 360 back: Bioshock or Overlord. I really want to get Bioshock done so I don't have to worry about spoilers, but Overlord is ready to be played right now. I think I'll do what I can in Overlord this weekend, and evaluate the Bioshock dilemma when I get the 360 back. I miss Rock Band!

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

March failure

I almost made my goal of beating Psychonauts in March. I probably would have done it, but with the 360 out of commission, I was missing the social aspect of gaming, so I jumped on one month of WoW. Just in time for the 2.4 patch, which raised the experience given from quests, so I was able to go from 51 to 53 in two days. Granted, 51-52 was based mostly on Kevin helping me out with his level 56 Hunter. We were able to blast through 5 quests in no time. I was able to do level 53 all by myself, just by cleaning up a few straggler quests and getting some Alterac Valley quests. That obviously means I got to try AV. I sort of hated Warsong Gulch, as a Priest, but I loved Araethi Basin. Even AB pales in comparison to AV. The massive, massive battles, tons of players clashing over snowy fields. Even though I am the bottom of the rung at this bracket, and unable to wear any armor heavier than cloth, I get to participate, sometimes just by following some level 60 Warrior and keeping them healthy (until the Alliance punks realize that you always kill the healers). I hold out some small hope that I will hit 60 with some help from Kevin and his group of players before the month is up, but in the meantime, AV is a lot of fun, and well worth 15 bucks if I get some more play time on it.

This past weekend I focused on getting Psychonauts finished up. I didn't quite make it, but I did make good progress. I was in the insane asylum, and had figured out the three people I had to help to get to the top of it. The thing is, I wasn't expecting each of these three characters to be a full-blown level on their own. With that in my way, I only managed to finish one of them on Sunday, then the other two Monday night. Late Monday night. Then I stayed up later trying to get to the real end, and that was another 25 minutes, just to get to the final boss. So Psychonauts remains uncompleted for March, but I figure as long as I have it done before this weekend, I can call this a triumph. Huge success.