It’s been a while, I know. Frankly, I haven’t had anything to say. First, my copy of Assassin’s Creed II came in the mail. After that…well I was busy, and then I wasn’t, and now I don’t even know why I’m posting anything.

I played ACII every day for 15-ish days, and then I was done. Story complete, all feathers found, all Achievements won. Now I’m just waiting for the DLC to come out (one in January, the other in February) and then I’ll go back to it. I’m thinking about writing a guide for it, as it’s such an amazing game, but that’s a lot of work (especially with feathers) and now that I have a life outside of gaming it’s really hard to be able to put enough time into a good guide.

It was different when I was writing the guide for Dragonball Z Budokai 2 on the GameCube. I was a teenager, it was summer, and I had plenty of time. Not only that, but my computer was only a few feet away from the TV, so I could sit in my chair and play, then swivel to the computer to write down whatever I needed to.

That guide is still getting hits, and it’s been several years since I posted it to GameFAQs.

I’ve been drifting along since I finished ACII. I’ve played a lot of games for one or two nights, with the most notable being Grand Theft Auto IV in which I got two more Achievements. I’m still waiting for the DLC disc, as I didn’t want to buy it in case someone got me a gift card for Christmas. TLAD and TBoGT look amazing, and I can’t wait to try them out. Until then, I’ll be hunting pigeons, delivering cars, and praying that the next phone call I get in game is from Dwayne so that I can increase his friendship rating to 90% so that I can get the Liberty City (5) Achievement. Damn, but that’s a ridiculous thing to do. Not only that, but I need it for 100% completion (Key to the City) and if it doesn’t work than I’ll have to start all over again on a THIRD file and find all those damn pigeons/stunt jumps/cars again. And believe me, I do NOT want to have to go through the story a third time. It’s a great game, but it’s still way too soon. Maybe in a year or so.

I went back to handheld gaming a lot, and I’ve been playing Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions on PSP and Final Fantasy IV on DS. I’ve been doing pretty good on each, though I’ve been using a walkthrough for IV. Tactics has been a lot better, as I’m playing how I want to, not how a guide would want me too, which messed up my previous file a lot. I had no idea what I was doing at any given time, so I restarted. That and I wanted to make sure that I remembered all the plot devices and whatnot so that I could play the rest of the game and know what had happened before.

I don’t know that I mentioned this way back when but I lost my copy of the original Rock Band. That meant 1) I couldn’t play it and 2) I couldn’t transfer the track list over the Rock Band 2, which I got for my birthday. Well, my wife found it (just like she found my PSP and fixed my iPod) so I’ll be playing that some more soon. I want to get more of the Achievements, and at least get 50%. I only need 100G more, which I can get pretty easily if only I could find my microphone. That, or have someone play Band World Tour with me enough that I complete another ten cities and get the ten Achievements worth 10G each for doing so. Of course, I could always find some people who want to go through the Endless Setlist on Expert with me, but that’s just ridiculous.

Other than that…I played some MP Gears of War with my wife and got Inconceivable! and Purdy Mouth, so that was a good half hour. My GamerScore amounts for Gears 1 and 2 are now at an even 45%, and I’m kind of excited to see how long I can keep them at similar GS amounts as I get more Achievements in them. Either way, they’re both under 50% and I’m looking at an incredibly annoying grind in order to get either of them up in the GS department at all, so I shouldn’t worry about keeping them “the same”, as that’s just going to put undue pressure on me. But, I’ll probably do it anyways, because I’m a glutton for punishment. Or something, I don’t really think that’s the right phrase, now that I look at it.

I am a gamer. I am proud of that fact. But recently I’ve found it really hard to enjoy gaming. I loved playing Assassin’s Creed II. That game blew my mind. But now that it’s gone I feel…I don’t know, hollow, almost. And I don’t like that my wife automatically assumes that I’ll game every night after supper. The scary thing is that for the past few months, I have been gaming every day after supper, and it’s starting to feel oppressing. I know that, realistically, I should take a break, but I don’t have anything else to do. Couple that with the fact that my job ends with the year and I still don’t have anything lined up for afterwards, in the new year, and the stress keeps on piling up. Gaming helps, because I can spend time in a fake world and not have to worry about anything. Except now gaming hasn’t been giving me the satisfaction that it used to.

Maybe it’s Achievements. Maybe I need to turn the Xbox off for a while and go back to the older systems. Maybe I should play Mario, or Tales of Symphonia, or Zelda. I still have to beat my Virtual Console version of Majora’s Mask, preferably without a walkthrough (although, knowing me, I’ll use one for the masks at some point). I also have yet to beat Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, so that’s something I should be doing.

I’m overwhelmed again. This is what happens every day when I sit down to game. I just don’t know what to play, and I’ve suddenly gone back to playing Hexic HD. You know something is wrong with you when you have literally four dozen games to pick from and you choose Hexic HD. It’s understandable when you first get your Xbox and don’t have any other games, or you’re tired with the two that you have that came with your console, but after two years with the system (holy shit I can’t believe I’ve been playing myXbox for two years now) it’s just not acceptable. It’s those damn Achievements. I want to get a score of 150,000 in Marathon Mode. I want to get the Achievement for making a cluster of three black pearls, and the Achievement for surrounding one piece with six black pearls. The last two I’ll probably never get, but I want to at least try, and I want to at least get close.

I’m hoping that the New Year will be better. Mass Effect 2 comes out in January, and if I plan it all right I’ll be nice and busy until May when Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver come out. I do get the feeling that something is released in March-ish that I’m looking forward to, but I can’t put my finger on it just yet.

FINAL FANTASY XIII!

Damn, how could I have forgotten that? Mass Effect will last me to March (no doubt in my mind about that) and then my life will be consumed with the magnificence that is the newest Final Fantasy game. The PS3 trophies have been released, so theoretically the 360 Achievements should be released soon as well. In reality they’ll be the same as those for the PS3, but I’m hoping for something a little different. On the one hand, I want to buy a PS3 and play FFXIII on it, but that’s probably not going to happen. That also means I’ll probably never get a chance to play God of War III, but I can deal.

I don’t know what else to rant about. I’ve only got 20 or so minutes left until the end of the work day, so I’ll browse the net until then. Maybe play something on the PSP/DS that I bring with me every day now. You might see a new post on Monday, I don’t really know.

I HAD THE SWORD YOU SON OF A BITCH!

Okay, so harsh language, and I’m sorry for that. But I had to remain true to the transcript!

I played more Halo 3 last night with the guys, and I got a miraculous (really, I don’t know how I managed it) four more Achievements for an extra 125G. That’s a lot of fucking points, especially when three days ago I never thought I’d ever get any higher in this game.

We played for, geez, I don’t know, two hours? I did fuckign killer last night, although not really, as I only got maybe two dozen kills, and half of them were in Neutral Assault on Punishment where I was sitting on one of the hills in the back of a Warthog chaingun killing those blue assholes and wracking up kills, only to remember at #9 that we were playing fucking Neutral Assault and it doesn’t matter how many kills I get, I won’t get MVP, because I need to get points. Fuck.

Anyways, there won’t be anything tonight, as it’s my nine month wedding aniversary, or maybe the wife and I will play something together. I don’t know.

Chill out.

What a big day today is

There is much to talk about today. The smallest of these is the releasing of the new Star Trek film on DVD and Bluray, of which I will be buying sometime soon. Such a good movie.

There’s also the official release of Assassin’s Creed II. I haev it on pre-order, as you may know, but unfortunately for me Amazon.ca won’t ship it until the 20th, which means I won’t get it until the 24th at the earliest (according to the website). What that means for me is that I have to wait another week at least before I can play the game that just about everyone else will be playing later tonight if they’re not already.

But then again, I have the Legendary Edition, so it’s not all bad.

The last thing is that notorious FaceBook/last.fm/Twitter update that was ‘turned on’ according to Major Nelson. I still don’t know if I’ll download any of them, as I’m still trying to figure out if it’s worth it, but I might just try it out and then get rid of it if the system doesn’t prove to be useful. Apparently each application is 5GB of space, and while I do have a 120GB HDD with 101GB free, I don’t really want to use up that much space just to have FaceBook on my Xbox.

I lpayed Halo 3 with some guys last night, so I had lots of fun last night, which was a bit of a change from my last few sessions with Halo’s multiplayer. I got three Achievements for 100G, which was a nice surprise seeing as I didn’t expect to get any at all. I might be going on again tonight, so maybe I’ll get a couple more. There is a chance that could happen, which is weird to say seeing as I suck at Halo. But with two friends there to help (maybe) my chances definitely increase.

So this post is significantly shorter than I thought it would be, but there’s not much else I feel like saying. I’m reading The Gathering Storm, book 12 of The Wheel of Time, and I’m already feeling like I’ve spent too much time on this post, so I’ll go back to my book now.

Off the Band Wagon. Again.

So it appears that I can’t stay true to some of my goals.

I jsut couldn’t take playing only <50% complete games anymore, so I spent the majority of the weekend playing Spiderman: Web of Shadows.  By which I mean, I spent several hours looking for those damned Spider-tokens, of which I collected the last 800 or so to get that juicy 75G Achievement for maxing out Spider-Man. It brings my score for that game up to 935/1000, and also tells me that I’m only three Achievements away from having ny ninth 100% game.

As good as all that is, I’m still thinking of other games to play.

Like Assassin’s Creed. I have a perfect file already, so in order to not tarnish it, I started a dummy profile (that’s actually named dummy) and I’m playing from the beginning. The idea is that I remember the plot – both the real world stuff and the past – so that I’m up to date when my pre-ordered copy of the sequel comes I’ll be good and ready. I’m also getting the game mechanics firmly in my mind so that I can properly appreciate all the changes. It’s those I’m looking forward to the most.

My wife’s friend came over the other night and we played some of The Beatles: Rock Band. I know how yet another RB game on my GamerTag, and this time I can’t just play it willy nilly and up my GamerScore. Now I have to wait an undeterminate amount of time before I can either convince the friend to come over to buy the game myself. Either way, I now have an 8% completion game marring my GamerTag, but it’s such a good game and I wanted it anyway, so I’m not going to bitch about it anymore.

I got my PSP back, so FFVII has been in the forefront of my handheld experiences. I did play a smidgeon of Pokemon (Diamond) which was fun. I’m eagerly awaiting the release of HeartGold and SoulSilver.

Not much else to say other than that. Those that are following my GamerTag won’t see me online very much over the next week or two, as I’ll be playing as dummy for a while with Assassin’s Creed. But I assure you, when I get bored or frustrated I’ll switch out to something else, and generally wreak havoc.

You might see me online tonight, actually, as I’ll probably by playing Halo 3 online with some buddies. It helps that I’ve already broken my “50% only” rule, but I’d do it for Halo 3 anyways. There are so many MP Achievements that I have very little chance of getting by myself, so it’ll help to have some friends. Although, now that I think about it, I still have to try my best, which isn’t very good. Ah well, the things I do for Achievements.

Well how do you like that

I didn’t really expect anything to happen, but I got two Achievements in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock last night. The first was for getting a 1000 note streak in Quick Play or Career, which I got by 100%-ing Through the Fire and the Flames on Easy mode. I honestly did not think I would get it, but after only three tries, I hit 1000 notes, and then went on to get the last 102 for a perfect note-scoring song. I’m extremely proud of myself for that. I had originally tried to do it on One by Metallica on Medium, but it inded up being harder than I thought it would be so I reverted back to TFF.

Once that was done I played some Ranked Battle mode online and beat some guy by playing Expert My Name Is Jonas and got the Meet Your Maker Achievement. It’s one of those nice viral Achievements, so I was bound to get it eventually. Also, that’s the first in the series of 15 Ranked matches to win in a row for the next achievement. I’ll also need to try for a 150 note streak in Ranked Battle mode. Those are activities I won’t be doing for some time, though, as there are other games I’m more interested in completing. Not only that, but it’ll be far easier to get the co-op achievements; all I need is my second guitar back and somebody to play co-op with.

Urgh

I really don’t want to think of a snazzy title today.

Yesterday was Remeberance Day, or Veteran’s Day, or whatever you want to call it. I didn’t work, I didn’t really do anything too exciting, and there was no way in hell I was going to blog on a holiday.

So, Tuesday night I finally beat Sonic the Hedgehog. And by finally, I mean that I’ve never actually beaten the game before. Ever. Not since it came out and I had a Sega Genesis and it was all that I would play (okay, so I played NHL ‘93 too, big whoop) have I beaten that game UNTIL NOW! I am excited, you’re probably making fun of me in your head, and really, seeing as I played an emulated version wherein I was able to save in place and generally beat the game without dying to get the Achievement for it, I still managed to beat the game and I’m really fucking pleased with myself.

To top it all off, I now have that beautiful 75% marker thing next to Sonic, so I can concentrate on the other games I have to upgrade. Unfortunately, they’re all retail. Damn, but that’s a lot of points.

I played some Rock Band 2 with a buddy last night. We played on Hard, I got the Victory! Achievement for beating someone in Score Duel or Tug of War, so that was a nice 15G for having fun with a friend. RB2 is up to 44% now, so I should let it simmer for a while. I’ll be playing with friends a lot, so it’ll be good to have my score pop up more randomly. It’s one of those games where I can get to 50% with minimal effort, but with loads of time. So it’ll sit on the shelf until I get some more people over to play, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get some more Achievements.

As for handheld excitement, I’ve been playing Pokemon Diamond, trying to breed and level enough pokemon to have one of each stage in my boxes at the same time. Right now I’m leveling a Dratini – I need Dragonaire and Dragonite to complete the first gen boxes, and then I can start with the second gen non-legendaries that I have. I really should take the time to get the legendary dogs sometime soon…oh well, that’s worry for another day.

I don’t feel like typing anymore. Back to YouTube, and back to Beast Wars. Woo-hoo!

The evil inside everyone

Okay, so for those of you who haven’t played Infinite Undiscovery, let me explain about Vermiforms. Basically, there’s this thing called lunar rain which has started falling now that the moon has been trapped above the planet and it isn’t moving. I personally think that it’s not a natural occurence, and you have the Dreadknight (the main badguy) to thank for it, but that’s yet to be confirmed.

This lunar rain causes anyone with a lunaglyph (which enables the use of magic) to have an overabundance of magic power, resulting in death or transformation to a vermiform. The idea is that vermiforms are pure evil, and invisible to boot. The only people who can see vermiforms are called “unblesseds” because they weren’t given a lunaglyph at birth. So, the magic-less characters are the only ones who can protect the magic-users, and yet the governments refuse to protect the unblesseds from harm (bandits, storms, etc). The main character, Capell, is an unblessed.

Why am I talking about this? There’s an Achievement (which I got last night – yay!) that requires you to let nine members of your party fully vermify, and become vermiforms. There are only nine characters that can do this, and they all transform at different rates. Of course, once they’ve fully transformed, I can’t actually attack them, so there was a lot of running around trying not to get killed by my own party members.

The thing about having your friends transform into monsters is that they start saying things that are really evil and weird. Like, “Mommy, mommy! Give me a hug mommy!” Okay, I know that sounds really sweet, but it’s the tone and inflection, like “give me a hug so I can plunge a dagger into your neck, mommy” or “I’m going to throttle you until your neck breaks, but I can only do that if you give me a hug, mommy” that makes it sound bad. Then there are comments from your most faithful characters about not needing anybody, or deciding that they should be in charge even though they’ve been fully supportive of your orders and following you all around the world for the last god knows how many weeks/months.

It’s a mental thing as well as physical.

It got me thinking about the dark parts of people. How even the most good-hearted individuals have this core of uncertainty and insecurity that they try to hide, and that some don’t even know exist, but can easily overtake them (or you) if ignored or left to ferment on its own without guidance. We see it all the time in situations like Columbine, or Heroes, or just about anyone in Criminal Minds. It’s the realism that scares me, not so much the actions of the created personas of characters in a video game.

On a lighter note, I almost beat Sonic last night! I got the last two Chaos Emeralds (Achievement unlocked!) and got to the Scrap Brain level. I’m in Act 3, just trying to find the way to the end of the level. I’ll be looking it up, because the first puzzle just knocked me over and I can’t for the life of me figure it out. Theoretically this is the last stage before Dr. Eggman, so I should get that glorious Win Achievement pretty soon here, and that’s another game I can cross off the 50% list. It’ll be up closer to 60%, so it’ll be a while before I end up playing it again.

And while we’re talking about that goal, let me say that I’m really getting tired of the same old games. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying IU, and I want to beat it and it’s got a decent story, but with all the talk about Mass Effect 2, all I want to play is the first one! And with my pre-order of Assassin’s Creed II coming in just three weeks, I kind of want to do a quick run-through of the first game to reacquaint myself with the story. There’s also the deepseeded need to play Dead Rising and get the true ending, which I just barely missed and that frankly I don’t even know that I can get. And if I don’t it’ll mean playing through the entire game again (which I’m not necessarily opposed to) and that’s a lot of time I could be spending on other games that aren’t at 50% yet. Like ODST, which, thanks to Waypoint, I really want to play.

Ugh, I’m going to stop thinking about all the Achievements I could easily be getting in other games, and concentrate on beating IU. When I’m done, I can shelve it until I’m ready to start the Hard mode run. That’ll be a long time coming, and a long time completing, but it’ll unlock Infinity Mode, which I need to get the last Achievement and 100% (although I highly doubt that I’ll be doing that anytime soon – probably not for a year at least). Sonic is almost done, and if you check out my recent played games (available on just about any site, really) you can see -

Oh shit, I totally forgot until just now. There’s a triple experience thing going on in Gears of War 2. I’ve been playing a little of that over the weekend, trying to get to level 15 as well as that last win I need in King of the Hill to get the related Achievement. The two of them together aren’t enough to get 50%, but it’s progress nonetheless and I’d be a fool not to take advantage of this opportunity to have free access to KotH without having to play 20 matches of Annex first.

Geez, my life is complicated. I want to get 50% on all of my owned games, but there’s so much to do and so many other games to play! Guaranteed, once I get ACII I’ll be ignoring the goal, but until the end of the month I’ve got a lot on my plate. We’ll see how it all pans out of the coming days/weeks, and I’ll of course keep all my readers posted.

My brain hurts now.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

Gawdammit. I dropped my PSP on the bus this morning. FUCK.

The good news? Somebody found it, gave it to the bus driver, and then responded to the Craig’s List ad my wife put up about the missing PSP. So I should be getting it back within a few days.

That means I can keep playing FFVII, although not on transit anymore, no fucking way.

But what about the weekend, you ask? Well, there was a lot of good things happening all along that. By which I mean, three Achievements in Infinite Undiscovery. I finally surpassed my furthest point by getting Amber Ace, so now I’m going balls to the wind as far as knowing where to go and what to do. From looking at the Achievements I still need to go through three dungeons before I’m done the game, so it’ll be a few more weeks before I’m fully done, I think. It’d go faster but I’m taking the time to get all the best weapons and armor at every new city, so that’s taking a lot of time. I also picked up Social Butterfly and Marathon Man, which brought me up to 400G. 40% mo-fucka!

Sorry, that was rude. I’m just really excited!

Didn’t really play a lot, other than that. And those three Achievements took me all weekend to get. I didn’t spend all my time playing, I only actually spent a couple hours all together, but at least I’m further than ever before. And when I’ve finally beaten the game, I’ll be over 50% and I can concentrate on other games to finish up my goal.

Halo: Waypoint

I’ll admit this from the get-go: I was excited for Waypoint. Achievement tracking, Career statistics, the Halo: Legends anime, etc. It was something intriguing, and since I don’t visit bungie.net as often as I could, I knew it would be nice to have something a little easier to get to.

I’ll start off with some misconceptions about Waypoint and how it works. It was a common fear that Waypoint would be a Dashboard Blade, much like Spotlight or My Xbox. While this would be amazing for fanboys, it would provide an extra item to skip past for those that don’t give a damn about Halo, or who just don’t plan on using the feature. Another misconception was that it would take over bungie.net, as the company will be moving onto other projects after the release of Halo: Reach, coming out next year.

Waypoint is attainable as a free download from the Marketplace, and arrives on your console just like an Xbox Live Arcade game would, with a little icon in the My Xbox Blade. It’s out of the way, but easily accessible with just a few button clicks. This does seem like the best way to accesss the game, as it really just becomes an XBLA item.

As for the “game” itself? It grabs all the Achievement data from the Halo games that you’ve played on your  GamerTag (Halo 3, ODST, and Wars) and combines them into various groupings. These range from Campaign Complete to Vehicle Specialist, which revolve around Achievements given for beating each game on certain difficulties and getting vehicle-based Achievements, respectively. Each group has a number of tiers, and these are upgraded when a certain amount of related Achievements are won. For example, when I get around to completing the ODST Campaign on Normal, I’ll upgrade to Teir 1 of the appropriate group. If I ever get any more Vidmaster Achievements, there’s a group and tier for those, too.

Obviously, this encourages you to play each of the three games being tracked. I don’t have Halo Wars, so I won’t be able to get some of the Wars-specific goals that Waypoint has to offer, nor will I max out the groups with Wars Achievements in them, but if I were to get the game then Waypoint would search my Achievements as soon as I booted up the “game” and upgrade my Career stats.

Waypoint does not, in any way, take over from bungie.net. In fact, the two systems give entirely different sets of data, and where there is overlap, they are presented in two entirely different ways. Waypoint offers a service that is more about merging your individual game scores into one cohesive whole in order to simplify your Halo Career. bungie.net, on the other hand, seems to be more interested in providing detailed data on everything you’ve ever done, from metagame scores to kill counts to MP awards and how often you get them. Waypoint definitely seems to cater more towards the casual Halo gamer, and that’s better for me, as I don’t play Halo online (or any game, for that matter) enough to really put bungie.net to good use.

There’s still much to be seen in regards to Halo: Legends, though. There is a rather interesting sneak preview available through Waypoint, and on Saturday the first show, entitled “The Babysitter”, will be available to watch, presumably for free. It certainly appears that each episode will be different in almost every way – it even seems that Spartan-117 a.k.a. Master Chief only appears in two or three of the anime episodes, not all of them (and to be honest, I think that’s a lot better).

Waypoint also brings in Avatar Awards. You remember those, right? They were implemented two or three updates ago and no game has yet to give them out? Well, when you first sign in to Waypoint, you’ll get yoursef your very first Avatar Award (assuming you haven’t played ‘Splosion Man, Lips, or ODST in the past few days). I won’t spoil it, but it’s already set up with my Avatar, whatever that tells you. Depending on your progress in ODST, you’ll also unlock a couple other pieces of clothing, and for the sexist out there, you get both men’s and women’s clothing at the same time, so you can change your Avatar’s gender and not have to worry about changing clothes away from your neat-o Avatar Award. It’s very well implemented, I must say.

So what’s the overall concensus about Waypoint? From my view, and my experience with the Halo series in general, it seems to fit nicely into what’s already been established. It gives old information in a new format, but it’s done so effortlessly that you can’t help but be impressed. 343 did a very good job with the system, and while I don’t think it has much staying power in terms of the casual gamer, those that play Halo often and don’t have all the Achievements (and really, how many of those people are there?) it provides new direction and goals. You now have a reason to get one Achievement over another; how else will you upgrade to the final tier?

It’s useful, it’s pretty, and overall it was a good move on Microsoft’s part, especially making it a downloadable “game” of sorts. I look forward to examining it more as time goes on, as well as improving my Career score. If you don’t already have it, there’s a nice shortcut in the Spotlight blade on your Xbox, so just click A to download. Remember, you can only watch “The Babysitter” this Saturday, so get in while you can!

Golden wings are the way of the future

I only say this because of the effects of Lunar Rain on characters with a Lunaglyph. The effect causes constantly rejuvenating MP, which leads to endless spells (offensive and healing, yay!) that help me level grind for longer and longer. The only problem is that eventually my friends turn into Vermiforms.

The thing about Infinite Undiscovery is that they don’t tell you enough about what’s going on until you’re halfway through the situation. I had three friends all at stage 3 of vermification before the little screen describing the process showed up. I was so confused the first time I played; I knew what was going on in this second playthrough, but it’s still disconcerting to know that characters are being transformed but not being able to do anything about it, you know?

Before I go on (and really, if you’ve been reading, you should know I don’t do that much about spoilers – it’s not that I don’t care, I abhor spoilers and avoid them like the plague, it’s just that this game doesn’t really deserve the warning, and the other games I play have been out long enough that everyone knows what happens anyways; it’ll change with Assassin’s Creed 2, trust me) I should mention that…oh, wait, I already said everything I need to in the parentheses. Huh.

Anyway, I beat vermified Edward and healed him, so now I’m off to Halgita once again. This time it’ll be under attack, which blows, but at least I’ll get two more characters, and I’ll finally be caught up. Yes! By Monday I plan to be officially further than I’ve ever been, including knocking down the next chain (I think it’s the Amber one). I have to do a little research to see what characters I need for the Bad Influence Achievement (allow nine characters to fully vermify – only nine of them can) so that I can get the lovely set of 30G that comes with it, and then I can concentrate and finishing the game.

I’ve made a lot of progress towards bettering my characters; for example, I’ve been upgrading their weapons and armor at every city. This has made a substantial differenece in the amount of difficulty I’ve had, and the grinding for Fol means that my characters are at a few levels higher than they were the first time, resulting in higher stats and faster battles. If I manage to keep this up (and really, why shouldn’t I?) then I believe it won’t be nearly as hard to beat this game (on Normal) as I’ve been afraid it would. Not only that, but subsequent playthroughs will benefit from my knowledge of where everything is, and how to get to it all.

My time with FFVII has been passing, and I’m still just as happy I bought it now as I was before. It is a magnificent game, and I’d forgotten all the little things that made it funny. Case in point: when viewing a flashback featuring Elmyra (Aerith’s adoptive mother) you see the younger version of the mother waiting at the train stop. A woman exits the train to meet her boyfriend, and the guy picks her up, twirls her around in the air, and then they walk off. You then see a pudgy older gentleman come off the train, get picked up by his itty bitty wife, twirled around, and then they walk off. It added humor to the otherwise sad scene where Elmyra doesn’t get to see her husband.

I’m currently in the Shinra building, having just freed Red XIII (or Nanaki as I’ve named him – see what I did there?)  and following the trail of blood left by (SPOILER!) Sephiroth as he drags Jenova’s body upwards to the top of the building. I know the fight with Rufus is inbound, so that’ll be fun. Rufus and that stupid dog of his.

More of the same tonight, so don’t expect anything great on Monday when I update again. I’m not going to do the Preview thing anymore; too vague. I will, however, make a new post shortly about Halo: Waypoint, so if it’s not up yet, come back in half an hour or so.