Board 8 > Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2020 Contest

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Day 10
90 stars, 33 medals

Shorter session today as I slept in a bit late. I wound up forgetting to look for the medals in the clockwork ruins and throwback galaxies and missed them. Throwback was nice. It's a remake of a level from Mario 64 with the music from Bob-omb Battlefield. Of course it doesn't meet the same level of open-endedness that the original managed, but the redone King Thwomp miniboss was pretty cool. I did the secret level on the Battle Belt Galaxy, which I thought was a nice premise (planetoids used as battle arenas,) but I kind of wish the split was a little earlier in the level. I'll go back and finish up that Galaxy tomorrow.

As of now, I can go on to the final level whenever I like.

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Day 11
100 Stars, 39 medals

I cleared the rest of world 6 except the big boss fight against Bowser, and then took the time to start going back and doing the things I had missed throughout the game up until this point, all the way back to world one. I have a couple hidden stars and comet stars left to go before I've done everything you possibly can without beating the final boss, with two exceptions: the comet medals in Clockwork Ruins and Fleet Glide Galaxies. Clockwork Ruins is just kind of a long level that I don't want to go back through a second time, and I attempted the one at Fleet Glide a couple times and it just seems like kind of a nightmare, so I gave up. I guess this solidifies the fact that I won't be 100% completing Galaxy 2. That would take a long time in any case. I'll probably try to go for 120 stars, which is the same count as the first Galaxy.

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There are 242 stars in Galaxy 2, but 122 are inaccessible until you've collected the first 120. And the final 2 are in the final super-difficult level which you can only access by collecting the other 240.

In any case, I do recommend getting that Clockwork Ruins medal, since the comet star there is a good one.

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I cleared the two rocket stages in Crash 2, but the other three final stages continued to give me trouble. I did get further in "Piston It Away" (honestly really like these punny level names though!) though, and I might have gotten even farther if I didn't lose a life because I didn't know how to defeat a certain enemy.

I'm one of those guys who has a crap ton of nostalgia for 3D platformers and am glad they're undergoing a resurgence.

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Gall posted...

There are 242 stars in Galaxy 2, but 122 are inaccessible until you've collected the first 120. And the final 2 are in the final super-difficult level which you can only access by collecting the other 240.

In any case, I do recommend getting that Clockwork Ruins medal, since the comet star there is a good one.

I see. I assumed the rest of the levels would unlock once I beat Bowser, since that's more or less how it worked in Galaxy 1 as I recall. I'm still not willing to do that damn Fleet Glide medal, so I might have to stop just shy of 120.

Day 12
105 stars, 40 medals

I finished rounding up all the stars I missed before. As far as I can tell, I can't do anything else without either taking down Bowser or returning to Fleet Glide Galaxy. I did wind up doing the Clockwork Ruins medal, which was frustrating. I didn't like the comet level there too much either. I think my issue with that galaxy is that you have to spend a lot of time waiting for the clocks to rotate or the walls to shift, which tries my patience a little bit. In any case, I'll be going straight to the final boss tomorrow.

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Didn't have time to play today. Work has sucked and I've been having sleep problems again.

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Stuck on the last three levels in Crash 2, argh.

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Actually I had beaten the level "Piston It Away" and completely forgot that I did somehow. This is what happens when you watch a movie right afterwards to assuage frustrations with how your gaming session went.

Yesterday evening I easily beat "Night Fight" despite having trouble with early jumps in the previous session. After that I proceeded to finish "Spaced Out" (the level name was something with Space in the name if I'm not remembering right) which was more of an ordeal due to some tricky enemy placement but I managed. I was left with only one life left, so I gave the final boss a try, failed, and decided to stop for the day.

I see myself returning to Crash 2 FAR sooner than I do 1, to put it bluntly.

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Crash 2 is done, already cleared the first 9 stages + boss of Crash 3. Game has impressed me quite a bit so far.

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Day 13/14
122 Stars, 48 Medals

I may be many things, but it seems a man of my word is not among them. I did play last night, quite a bit actually - well into the morning.

The final level made a good summation of all the challenges and mechanics the game has had so far, but unfortunately the final boss was a bit lame. Again, it kind of shares this problem with a lot of Mario games. At first it's just a slightly beefed up version of the same Bowser fight as the last two times, but then there is an admittedly cute little fake ending screen before he interrupts you and comes back for something a little more reminiscent of the final boss from Yoshi's Island - except without any of the challenge, atmosphere, or presence. Bowser tries to spin his way closer to you while you knock meteors at his gormless head. It takes about forty seconds. Peach joins you for the animation as you collect the final Grand Star, Rosalina shows up to take back the baby luma who gives you your spin move, and then there's a nice little playable credits sequence with a hatless Mario.

Beating the game unlocks a few things, most prominently the ability to freely switch to Luigi and the S-world, which is where the real big boy levels are hiding. The very first level is a silver star hunt on a pixel Mario constructed from the green tiles that fall away when you step on them, where you have to collect the stars while leaving enough ground for you to make your way back to the start of the level with. Then there's a comet variant that's the same thing, but for men: it adds purple coins, a time limit, and cosmic clones just for good measure. Actually I think I beat that one on my first try. I sarcastically said "oh good, my favorite" when I got to the next level and found out it was that remote-tilting ball mechanic, but I got through that one without much trouble as well, even the initially-intimidating purple coin comet level.

The level that really gave me a rough time was Stone Cyclone Galaxy. It's a level full of thwomps where everything is moving back and forth extremely quickly. There are a couple of those switches that slow down time but by and large you have to manage without them. You also have to collect silver stars. That level killed me more than some sections of VVVVVV, lol. It got to the point where the longer death animations started to drive me crazy. I actually had an easier time with the comet variant, which swaps the need for silver stars for a timer.

I got all the way to 119 stars before the missing comet medal from Fleet Glide Galaxy became an issue. I decided to give it another go because I was curious to see what the game would do to add another 120 stars before the Grandmaster Galaxy. It didn't turn out to be so bad. I had been having a lot of trouble flying through the second gate, which requires you to turn a long way off-camera. I couldn't get the controls quite down. I would either turn too far or the gate would be behind me by the time I got in place for it. Once I figured that one out, the rest was relatively smooth sailing.

The final comet level in World S was on the Boss Blitz Galaxy, which is just a bunch of minibosses from the first Mario Galaxy on little individual planetoids. My final time for that level was 35 minutes due to all the retries. Frustratingly enough, the first three bosses are an absolute joke and can be beaten in a minute and a half, and all the difficulty comes from Bouldergeist, that boss from the first game that no one likes, and my personal Mario Galaxy nemesis from ever since I was 12. He's a very slow, methodical boss to take down, where you have to wait for him to use a specific attack that spawns bomb boos you can swing into him - and waste a lot of time waiting as he chooses different attacks altogether. Combining him with a time limit becomes a bit stressful. It's definitely possible to fail on the last guy, a fiery upgrade to the original Petey Piranha, after beating him, which happened to me a couple times. You do have to be pretty precise to take that guy down quickly.

With that challenge finally bested, I could go on to the next half of the game... once I had done the final level again, for some reason. Beat it with Luigi the second time around. It did cause me to notice how Yoshi waves goodbye to you as you climb the pole to the final boss, which is cute.

So yeah, it turns out that the rest of the stars are hidden greenies that repopulate the original levels. I tried out a couple, but even after the troublesome things I went through to reach this point, I think I'll leave Galaxy 2 here. Collecting the green stars seems overall less fun and after dragging Red Dead out so much I'm eager to get on to the next game - I've spent my pace-defining two weeks on Galaxy 2 and I definitely got a full game's worth of fun out of it.

Final Thoughts on Galaxy 2 Coming Later

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Ooh Halo Reach is next isn't it? Any chance you want to do Co-op?

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I have Starcraft 2 down as the next game. Wikipedia tells me it released in July while Reach was September. In either case, yeah, I'd be down for that.

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Playing through and beating Grandmaster Galaxy is a peak gaming moment for me, but I understand the decision.

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Huh wonder where I got September from. Ah well, just gives me more time to beat RDR haha

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3 more levels in Crash 3 plus Dingodile down. I SUCK at running from Triceratops though!

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"Later" wasn't originally intended to mean "Tuesday," but life caught up with me a little I suppose.

Final Analysis: Super Mario Galaxy 2
What I thought of Galaxy 2: Every bit as fun as the first
Would I play it again? Yes, it's on my list of games to return to post-project
Did it deserve to make round 3? Yes, probably even further

George Orwell once wrote that "All art is propaganda." He was trying to highlight how almost any work of fiction has a set of morals or ideas it's trying to express, but when taken too literally the statement runs a little risk: eroding the use of the word propaganda as a pejorative. Propaganda is a subcategory of art that places conveyance of its ideas above artistic concerns. What exactly qualifies as an artistic concern is kind of complex, but things like subtlety, pacing, and complexity probably qualify. For simplicity's sake, I might propose that propaganda seeks to convey ideas while art is primarily concerned with conveying emotions.

If we do use that definition, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is undoubtedly an accomplished work of art, and the emotion it conveys is pure unadulterated joy. That feeling radiates from every aspect, from the excellent orchestrated soundtrack to the animations and expressions of the characters to the ultra-varied, shockingly well executed gameplay.

3D Mario games are really quite exemplary when it comes to game design. I think there are a few things in particular that should be noted: how many moves Mario has at his disposal from the very start, how much depth they add to the gameplay, and how elegant and precise his movement controls still are is one. I think this partially arises just because it was a huge point of emphasis for the dev team: there's a story thatsays Super Mario 64 was just an empty room for a full year, while Mario's controls and abilities were tweaked to perfection. How intuitive the games usually are is another big one. I've seen a lot of footage of people playing 3D Sonic games and becoming confused as to what they're supposed to do next, because the games sometimes just don't really illustrate it properly. Such moments are non-existent in Galaxy. The game's visuals are so clear and distinct and the level progression so natural that you can pick it up in a second. The challenge comes from precise execution and timing, which is a lot more fun. That it manages this when there are such a huge variety of different power-ups, mechanics, and control schemes is all the more impressive. None of the different elements feel tacked on or poorly executed: by and large, the game is just as fun on any given level, which is to say really fun.

But I wouldn't call it perfect. I can easily think of a few things to nitpick if I really want to. Most importantly, although I've become mostly comfortable with Wii controls, and Galaxy probably implements them better than any other game, I still don't really like them. I wish I could just press a button to make Mario spin or throw fireballs instead of having to shake the wii remote, and I don't really like the process of collecting star bits - it's more of an obligation for unlocking certain levels. There are times when I get a little tired of watching short unskippable cutscenes, especially during the boss fights (which are generally kind of lame.) Although the game is usually quite easy, when some of the harder levels made me rack up the deaths, the long death animations and jingles can drag down the pacing. I'll admit to becoming frustrated with the game in certain levels, which would make me feel resentful toward Mario for the long animations when he gets knocked down or runs around after burning his butt, though that isn't to say those are bad design.

The fact that I have to resort to such tiny quibbles to say anything negative, though, probably says enough about how good Galaxy is. If you have any fondness for the platforming genre, this game is an undeniable must-play.

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I finished the three levels I couldn't get past last session, although I missed a lot of boxes in all three and Road Crash took a while - good thing you don't lose lives for failing races! Feels dumb that a not-so-great racing minigame is mandatory to completing the game though, all in the name of gameplay variety.

I defeated Dr. N. Brio pretty easily after that, and having gotten so many lives in the process of my many attempts at Road Crash, I decided to try to make use of my new ability to glide by pressing the tornado button multiple times and threw all those lives away in the process of trying to get past a single chasm early in Sphynxinator. I did keep a save from beforehand (and after defeating Dr. N. Brio) just in case though.

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Checking in for the first time in a while to say that I (still) love your write-ups!

Also, count me in among those interested in a B8 Minecraft server, so long as it's the Java version.

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ctesjbuvf posted...

Playing through and beating Grandmaster Galaxy is a peak gaming moment for me, but I understand the decision.

Yeah, it is kind of a shame, because I know that's one of the most iconic parts of Galaxy 2, but I know that gathering the green stars and mastering such a tough level with the rest of the project still ahead of me would drive me crazy. One day!

MetalmindStats posted...

Checking in for the first time in a while to say that I (still) love your write-ups!

Also, count me in among those interested in a B8 Minecraft server, so long as it's the Java version.

Thanks, I'm really glad to hear that! I'm hoping this will be a chance to improve my writing skills as well as learn some discipline. I'll keep you in mind when it comes time for Minecraft.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Release Date: July 27, 2010
Previous Experience with SCII: Played the demo, watched some pro games
My Expectations for SCII: Unsure whether to be excited or worried

I didn't have my own computer until I was fourteen, when I got a dinky little used Windows XP Laptop for Christmas. I had to make due with the machine for most of my teens, because I never really had the motivation to work a part-time job on top of school. I wouldn't really say I regret that choice, but one of its consequences was that I had to learn to amuse myself on the cheap. A computer and an internet connection turned out to be potent tools for that purpose, and I got by just fine through emulating console games, streaming anime, and even running abandonware through dosbox, which let me play PC classics like the original Civilization and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.

I would've liked to play Starcraft II back then, but even if I had bought a disposable credit card and downloaded the game, I don't imagine my laptops 1GB RAM would have been enough to run it. The closest I got to playing the game when it was new was watching Youtube videos of the competitive scene, which made it look pretty appealing. One thing that really stands out about Starcraft is how distinct and cool the three different factions are. I always wanted to play Zerg - the way their workers mutate into pulsating biological structures, or how the Queens lurk in the hive but will rally to defend it from attackers, and how their tech tree comes from organic growth from tiny zerglings up to flying alien monsters - it all does such a good job conveying the idea of this bizarre, invasive alien species in the form of an RTS game. Even the normally-boring Human faction is pretty neat thanks to the Sci-fi trappings of their own tech tree. The way their buildings can take off on jet thrusters or raise and lower to create barriers their own team can pass through, for example, are cool ideas both in setting and gameplay terms.

When I finally upgraded to a slightly-less-shitty laptop in my late teens, I did try out the SCII demo, and I remember wanting to keep playing when I reached the end. Later on, when Blizzard made the original free-to-play, I didn't waste much time in getting it, but I stopped early on in the campaign. As soon as the levels started ramping up a bit, I began to find the game exhausting. It was such a slow build to create an army, and I would always get impatient and try to push enemy strongholds with ill-prepared forces, resulting in major setbacks which would sap my will to keep playing even further. I like the process of building up a base in Starcraft, but I don't like repeating it every single level. Truth be told, no RTS game has really held my interest much. I prefer Grand Strategy games like Civ, where the possibility of diplomacy is open. That tends to make things a little more interesting - potentially even a little more tense when Gandhi is acting friendly but you're convinced he's plotting against you. I'm not sure I quite have the patience that it takes to master a deeply technical genre like RTS either, where I know for certain that one step into the online arena would see me decimated by a guy with three times the actions per minute average I can manage.

If there is an RTS game out there that can change my mind, I'm willing to bet Starcraft II is the one. I think that playing this game entirely offline would be missing out, so I'll probably invoke my two-week rule, play online after finishing WoL's campaign, and see how I feel at the end.

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I'm honestly throughly impressed with how much better SMG2 is compared to the original. It's just an all around better experience despite being very similar.

Really intrigued to see how Starcraft goes. I've personally never experienced the franchise in any form, so I'm looking forward to the write ups!

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Five more levels in Crash 3 + Dr. N. Gin down! The most amusing part was when I broke all the boxes in Sphynxinator but forgot to get the gem because I was in a hurry (there were walls closing in together right behind me, you see).

Can't say I'm a fan of some of the alternate gameplay styles though. The biplane level feels like a half-baked version of Star Fox 64, complete with barrel rolls.

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When I replayed Galaxy 2 followed by 64, I definitely did notice how much faster 64 is to just pick up and play without the cutscenes for every single level start and death. Another thing that I wasn't a fan of was how many Galaxy 2 levels are dedicated to a non-platforming gimmick (like a transformation or the Fluzzard gliding), or fixed-camera 2D platforming, which seems out of place. But, those really are nitpicks. When Galazy 2 is good, and most of the time it is, it's some of the best 3D platforming out there.

I'll be giving Starcraft 2's campaign a shot. I have very little experience with any kind of strategy game, so this and the others in the contest will be a nice way to expand my horizons.

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Another five levels down in Crash 3. I got to Cortex, but I KNOW there are five more levels and anyway it's clear Uka Uka is the main villain, not Cortex.

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Actually made some good progress in RDR today, Fort Mercer is cleared. I'm admittedly starting to enjoy it a bit more since using the fast travel. The story is good and seeing the world interact with itself is a lot of fun. I just wish the story missions had some more variety to them.

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I beat Cortex in Crash 3, but an unfulfilling ending and not even being at 40% completion tips me off that something's up. I decided to comb some of the levels I didn't get the gems in for them, only to get precisely one gem in 10+ levels. At least I managed to clear all those levels again without a Game Over though.

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Got a few more gems, then got so upset about missing the gem in Orange Asphalt (a racing stage) by two boxes I quit in frustration.

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Alright, I finally started Starcraft II today. Played the first couple of missions.

Here's my understanding of the first game's story, from the few missions I've played and what I know outside the game: Starcraft is set in an alt-history universe where the Conderacy won the U.S. Civil War and went on to become a globe-dominating superpower. A guy named Jim Raynor was a rebel against the Confederates but also fought against an invasive insect-like alien species called the Zerg. He had a young woman named Sarah Kerrigan in his squad, who got left behind on a planet swarming with Zerg when a mission went belly-up, but for some reason instead of simply killing her the Zerg transformed Kerrigan and made her their queen. There were also some religious aliens called the Protoss running around. I think they were hostile toward humans for a while but then helped fight off the common Zerg threat.

In the second game, Jim is still a rebel, but the main human powers-that-be aren't calling themselves the confederacy any more. They're called the Dominion. I don't know if that was a different faction in the original game or not. In any case, the Dominion are pretty obviously evil and the game on a whole is quite gritty - there's lots of ugly killings of civilians and the like to demonstrate how tough and cynical the world is. Despite the Terran's advanced technology, people are still working as miners for a single meal. Also, everyone smokes and drinks all the time, even when they're wearing power armor with helmets and visors. It's arguably black comedy. I think the original reveal that the Confederates fly a U.S. Confederacy flag was kind of meant to be funny in the original game.

The first few missions are still basically tutorials. The very first one is meant to introduce you to the basic movement and combat controls. The next few give you really simple mining tasks and let you produce a few types of units. The larger tech tree unlocks quite slowly it seems. I'm still limited to exclusively infantry units. I have the basic marines, the medics, and a short-range heavy unit called the Firebat. Incidentally, the only one of these units that's available in the multiplayer is the marine. There are actually a lot of units that are campaign exclusive.

I've been playing on Normal since I found the first game a little overwhelming, but I think I'll bump it up to hard for the next little while. So far I haven't really had to use tactics. I've just made a big circle of units and sent them en masse at anything zerg-shaped. I guess my biggest complaint is that a couple of the early missions are 25-30 minute defense maps with no way to speed them up, namely one where you bunker down and defend against the Zerg before a ship picks you up and another where you have to escort civilian conveys. I had amassed enough troops that I had effectively won within the first ten minutes of each. That got a little boring. I can understand why they're introducing new units and concepts so slowly for the sake of player training, but maybe speeding that up at least a little would make things more fun for me.

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Well, I tried going up to hard difficulty only to get my ass kicked on the very next mission, so it's back down to normal for now. I cleared two missions, one where you steal a Protoss artifact while a ZvP match goes on in the background and one with a day/night cycle where you have to defend during the night against swarms of zerg-infected colonists but are free to destroy the enemy buildings during the day. That was the same one I struggled with on hard. I got about half an hour into it before realizing I had lost too much and would have to start over. It was definitely demoralizing to lose after such a long time on the map.

That last mission introduced the first mechanical units in the Hellions, a fast-moving vehicle unit with a flamethrower. They're useful for staying out late attacking enemy bases and getting back quickly to defend, since they have much higher movement speed compared to infantry. As a more advanced play, they can kite melee units like the infected colonists and take down large numbers without being hit. It's tough to do that with all the multi-tasking that's necessary in this game though. Being able to do things like that and simultaneously keep your production up to speed is the kind of tech that pro players used to get paid for, before this game died.

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Alright, played a little more SCII. I tried some VS. games against the AI just for a change of pace, and I chose to play as Protoss just because they have a unit called the Stalker, which is, of course, the title of my favorite Russian film. Apparently the game determines what level of AI you should play against over time, starting you out on very easy. After three games, it fingered me as a player who should be facing easy AI, which I guess might be right since I was floating a lot of resources and didn't know enough about the later parts of the tech tree, so that I could only really spam Stalkers until I won. It worked well enough, though.

I also did two missions in the campaign centered around a smuggler named Gabriel, but I'm running late so I'll have to write about those later.

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Finally beat Red Dead Redemption today! I went back to read your final analysis as well and I found myself agreeing with a lot of it. But here's my go at a bit of a write up.

I'm going to start with the positives before jumping into the horses. I really liked the Sandbox they created here. All the different costumes and challenges were really fun to stumble upon. Even finding a new animal tended to have its moments, it was always a pleasant surprise to randomly see a beaver or getting attacked by the cougar. Hell I even found a Jackalope near the end.

I think it plays into the story as well. As repetitive as a lot of the farm tasks got, it actually made me more invested in the characters and their struggles. I found the Mexico arc to be really fascinating too, while I'm sure it lacked any historical accuracy it still managed to spark an interest in the Mexican Revolution.

Now for the negatives... so the horseback riding may be front and center with how obnoxious it can be, but I think the real issue is the lack of a decent fast travel option. Majority of questing just involves getting to the location, then once the quest is over you're just kinda left there and have to travel all the way back just to start the next quest. It's frankly infuriating, sure you can set up a campsite and fast travel, but that requires you to leave cities/roads to use it and even then not all quests are in fast travel locations, so you still have to ride there.

The other thing that really hurt this gameplay loop for me was the sheer number of main quests as well as their lack of variety. There are over 50 quests and a vast majority of them boil down to maybe 5 or so types, so the quests weren't rewarding enough for how long it takes to actually get to them. I think it would've suited the game a lot better to roll multiple quests into one or at least allow us to start them immediately afterwards.

Anyway I'm not really sure what Rockstar was trying with some of these gameplay decisions. I've only played this and Bully, the latter of which I had a much better time with. Really interested to see how the other sandbox games and especially GTAV stack up against this.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

Here's my understanding of the first game's story, from the few missions I've played and what I know outside the game: Starcraft is set in an alt-history universe where the Conderacy won the U.S. Civil War and went on to become a globe-dominating superpower.

As someone who hungrily devoured the lore booklet that came with sc1 as a kid, this hurts me

Well done, and keep it up!

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I got the Gold Relic in the last waterboarding level in Crash 3, but it took me like an hour.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Finally beat Red Dead Redemption today!

I noticed some good gameplay/story mixing with the sandbox too, yes. I think the whole "drive to NPC -> Drive to mission -> Do actual mission -> Drive back structure" is pretty common to Rockstar games unfortunately, and yeah I also consider it a major problem. Even looking at it laid out like that, it's three parts driving to one part actual mission! I try to go easy on fast travel in games. I guess because it's immersion breaking. I'm actually really fond of some games like Wind Waker and SotC that make commuting a big part of the game, but even then I still used the fast travel a lot by the end of RDR. I agree that it's not a very elegant fast travel system.

The lack of mission variety was definitely a problem for me too. I guess one thing that shows is that the normal shooting mechanics aren't all that compelling. While it's not a perfect example, something like Resident Evil 4 probably has an even greater percentage of just shooting sections than RDR, but I never considered it a problem because RE4's normal combat is tense and fun. So I guess either approach would've helped: either working harder on the shooting mechanics to make them more interesting, or adding more variety to the actual missions.

banananor posted...

As someone who hungrily devoured the lore booklet that came with sc1 as a kid, this hurts me

LOL I can imagine. I guess I just saw the flag in the first game and that was what my mind filled in. For the record, I looked on the Wiki while writing that post and realized both that I was wrong about the Confederacy's origins and that Mensk's crew used to be Raynor's pals in the first game, but didn't correct it for authenticity's sake.

Okay, so to conclude my writeup from last night:

The first mission I did was a mining-focused one on a lava planet. The goal is to gather a certain number of minerals. That poses an interesting challenge where you can spend minerals to recruit units, but that means elongating the map. On normal though, there are very few enemy attacks and you can mostly defend just with your SCVs. Lava periodically floods the lower regions of the map, so you have to high tail it out of there when the warning comes. This mainly serves to introduce players to the Terran ability to make buildings take off and fly around. You launch your command centers when the lava is coming and then plonk them back down once it drains. It's also the introduction of the Reaper unit, which can jump. Most units have to go the long way around to reach different areas of elevation, so being able to jump changes things a lot. One trick you can pull is to lure melee enemies over to ledges, jump up, and then safely pick them off from high ground. As a bonus objective, you have to kill a giant monster called a Brutalisk, who has a ton of health and a deadly attack, but it's actually really easy because he's slow and has a huge model, making him really easy to kite. It's not hard to take him down even with a small group of Reapers.

I've clocked in more than my fair share of hours with League of Legends, so kiting in RTS games is one thing I do have some practice in. Still, I've messed up a couple times trying it on really small enemies like Zerglings, because I would accidentally click on the ground close to them rather than their model, which would make my units run up into the enemies' claws instead of moving back and occasionally firing. You'd need to be quite the butterfingers to do that against the Brutalisk, though.

For the second mission, Jimmy and friends raid some special gas from a Protoss religious group. I had to retry this mission because I lost too many troops trying to break the Protoss base, which you do not need to do. I also thought I needed multiple SCVs to extract the gas quickly and was pulling my entire mineral gathering crew off for that purpose. In actuality, you really just need to send one. At first I wanted to use Hellions on this map, but they actually aren't that good because they can only target land units and the enemy uses a lot of aircraft. The map is more built around the Goliath unit, which it introduces. I guess the Goliath is roughly analogous to the Protoss' Stalker, as a ground based ranged unit a couple steps down the tech tree that can target both land and air units. I think it's more specialized as anti-air though. I mostly spammed Marines and Goliaths. It's not too hard to play really aggressively and finish this map quickly, but my successful attempt still took 25 minutes because I elongated it trying to get the optional relics for research, only to still leave without one and fail to get my next bonus from Protoss research as a result.

I think I found the vs. AI mode more fun than the campaign actually, and while I wasn't really feeling the game early on I think that piqued my interest a little more. I've yet to be drawn in by the story however.


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I played a bit on Sunday and a little longer today.

First, I did a few more vs. AI games, all as protoss. I got up to the point where the game would let me play on Hard, but I didn't actually try facing the Hard AI. Mostly I would just build two gateways and spam Stalkers, which tended to result in quick wins. A couple of times, I elongated the games just to try out the more advanced Colossi and Mothership.

In the campaign, Raynor met an old buddy named Zeratul, who kind of looks like Raziel from the Legacy of Kain games. Zeratul gave him a crystal that lets one relive the guy's memories about gathering and deciphering some kind of prophecy about the end of the universe - in practical terms, this means Protoss missions. The first one gives you control of Zeratul as a super-powerful hero unit - he's invisible to most enemies, can one-shot a lot of units, and has two active abilities. The latter part of his kit is what the level is built around and meant to introduce. For his second mission, you get access to probes and can construct units, including Stalkers, Immortals, and Dark/High Templars. You just have to conquer the map while repeatedly taking down a boss character. Guess which unit made up the majority of my army?

As for proper Terran missions, the first one I played re-introduced Siege Tanks, which I remember using a lot in the first game. They're powerful with high range, but they have to anchor themselves down to get the most out of their attack. You have to use them to defend a big lazer as it works through a giant steel door. In theory, you can use the lazer to attack enemy units, but I just built a bunch of siege tanks on both sides, had a marine mobile force, and let the lazer stay on the door all game. That's the fastest way to clear it. It's another of the many missions you can't speed up all that much, so by the end I got bored and launched a suicide attack against the main enemy base. I lost most of my units and had to pull back, but I still won the mission.

Next was a train raiding map where you get a vehicle called a Diamondback that can move and attack at the same time. I don't feel like this is all that spectacular a power outside of the context of this particular mission, where it's handy for keeping up with the trains as you blast them down. Maybe I'm undervaluing it though. Mobility does tend to be good in RTS games. This map had the same 'problem' where the trains come at uniform times and therefore you can't really speed up the game much. I had to save this one and come back to it later. There's a glitch in this game where if you alt-tab during the loading screen your left mouse button might just ping instead of doing what it's supposed to. I fell victim to this after loading and didn't know how to fix it, but my army was already big enough that I could pull through the rest of the map just clicking "all army units" and moving them around, camping at base when waiting for a train and then going out to kill them. I guess I could use a difficulty setting between medium and hard.

Finally, I did a mission on a planet called Haven with a moral choice involved: Raynor can either side with some Protoss who want to wipe out a partially zerg-infested group of refugees or with the refugees who want to not get wiped out. I chose to fight the Protoss. That was a faster knock-down, drag-out style map where you have to take out a few Protoss bases and then a Mothership. You can start fighting right away. I won in 15 minutes or something, making it one of the fastest maps so far, and lost a lot of units in the process, making it kind of tense. The new unit for this one was the Viking, which can switch between being a fighter jet and a land vehicle. It can only target air units in jet form and land units in tank form - so it's slightly annoying to use, since it imposes more need for APM in a micro-intensive game. Honestly, so far I think the best Terran unit is actually the basic Marine. They have a solid ranged attack, a self-buff, can attack both land and air units, and don't cost vespine gas. My strategy in most maps is just to pump out marines along with a few of whatever unit the map is built around. I never go for the firebats or Marauders any more. It hasn't let me down yet.

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I want to mention I despise how the jet ski handles in Crash 3. Feels like early Mario Kart bad. In the non-Time Trial missions I just started and stopped most of the time, but when I had to keep my speed up you bet there was loads of trouble.

The driving missions also feel like a poor man's Mario Kart.

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Haven't check in in a while. Catching up was a good way to start my morning. Glad you're still going.

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Today I tried taking on the Hard difficulty AI and eventually surrendered. I used my usual Stalker spam strategy but by the time I actually launched an attack the AI had a stronger force and could defend itself pretty easily. It didn't strike back right away and I tried building Immortals, Void Rays, and eventually Colossi to get back into things. It led to a pretty stalemated game where each of us kept repelling the other's attacks but lost so many troops in the process that we couldn't really capitalize on it. One mistake I made was not using any troops that don't take Vespine Gas, which caused me to have a lot of extra minerals in comparison.

In the campaign, I did one mission where you're on a planet that's completely overrun with Zerg and have to use Medivacs to fly around the bulk of the enemy forces and take out your objectives. It was a little difficult to control the Medivacs well enough to land troops close to enemy anti-air without putting them in range, and I lost my medivacs at bad times on one or two occasions. I also used Vikings to defend them against enemy fliers.

There's another mission where you race the enemy team to 6,000 minerals. It introduces the Vulture bike unit, which is a classic from the first game. It's a ground-to-ground unit with high movement speed and burst damage. It can also drop mines, but I didn't really use that. I liked the premise of racing another player to a set amount of resources, though, especially since one strategy is just to charge in and destroy the enemy's mining operations.

I finished up with Zeratul's third mission, on the now-abandoned Protoss homeworld. I guess it was the site of a big climactic battle in the first game. The corpse of something called the Zerg Overmind is lying there and Zeratul's goal is to communicate with it psychically. That one was pretty cool. I liked seeing the hidden observers come to life to help Zeratul out, as well as the idea of Colossi that hid underwater and emerged to fight with him. I failed the mission once by losing my hero unit. I just wasn't paying attention to his health because he seemed so overpowered. You have to alternate between pushing into enemy territory and defending against big attacks, but since the enemy incursions are highly telegraphed (there's even an exact timer telling you how close the next one is,) I just marched my whole army out and then pulled back when there was about a minute before the next attack.

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I played some Among Us with friends today, which cut into the time I had for Starcraft a little bit, but I did at least settle my score with the Hard AI. I noticed that it wasn't very aggressive last time I played and used that to my advantage by going for three bases and building a large force over time. I used a lot of Zealots since they're the only Protoss unit that only consumes minerals, and otherwise built Stalkers, Void Rays, and eventually some Colossi. It ended up in a base race situation once I launched my attack, but my force was stronger and wiped out the enemy base a little faster. I think I only had one probe at the end of the game but one was enough to build a new Nexus and the AI had nothing left to work with.

I also completed one mission on the campaign, where you have to choose between helping the established character of Tosh or a newly introduced Ghost called Nova. I sided with Nova mostly because you get the Ghost unit for doing so, which I prefer to the Spectre. They're almost exactly the same except that the Ghost has a sniper rifle and the Spectre uses a stun grenade. Generally I favor simplicity when I pick my upgrades in this game, and it's easier to just use a DPS unit than an active ability requiring specific timing. Likewise, I bought the upgrade for the Ghost that lets them stealth without consuming energy, since it means you don't have to worry about managing when to use stealth and when to hold it, and can just leave it on all the time.

The actual mission has no production and is kind of restrictive as a result. It's one of those cases where a strategy game kind of resembles a puzzle game. You have to find the right order of operations to get by with the limited units you have, which mostly entails taking out priority targets with your permanently stealthed hero unit in Nova or using her mind control ability on particular units. Through that second thing, you get a chance to try out the Zerg Ultralisks and the more advanced Thor, so that part was kind of cool.

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I could only clear one and a half missions today. The first was a quick one, where you take on some Protoss on a planet that is slowly being engulfed in fire. You have to keep relocating your base to keep ahead of the flames. It's fine for the most part, but the annoying part is that if you build attachments to your buildings, they can't take off, so you have to keep rebuilding them. I like to build the reactor on the barracks so I can pump out even more marines. It's also the introduction of the Banshee unit, which seems pretty good. It's a flying unit that specializes in attacking ground forces and has stealth. You can really whittle down the enemy forces on this map with Banshees, by taking out the pylons that power stealth-detecting Photon Cannons and then going to town on the helpless enemies. It's not really necessary on Normal though. I mostly just sent in all my forces and cleared the map with the fire a good ways off. After this one there's a big plot twist where Raynor decides to work with the son of the Dominion leader because he claims he can turn Kerrigan back into a human. Without knowing how that shakes out, it definitely seems like a trick to me.

The second one I started is the last of the Zeratul visions, which shows the dark alternate future in which Kerrigan gets killed. Apparently humanity is already wiped out and it's the Protoss' last stand against the Zerg, who are mind-controlled by some kind of hybrid species. In gameplay terms you have a massive army but can only hold out for so long - it works kind of like the endless modes in Tower Defense games. It's not as desperate as it should be on Normal though. I finished all the side objectives and was just waiting to die, but it was taking so long that I had to make a map save and quit playing so I could get ready for work.

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I made some decent headway on the game over the course of last night and early this morning, and seem to be nearing the end of the campaign.

First of all, I finished dying in Zeratul's last mission. The main story purpose of this set of flashbacks is that it convinces Raynor that Sarah Kerrigan - who is currently leading a genocidal campaign against all of humanity - is the key to saving the universe, and that he absolutely must spare her life if they end up fighting.

I did a pair of missions based around stealing an advanced Dominion weapon called the Odin and then using it to take over one of their broadcasting stations and using it to leak information about how the Emperor commits war crimes. They mostly revolve around a the Odin as a hero unit which is basically an upgraded Thor, an already very large and powerful late game unit. In its second mission, you get a chance to wreck an enemy base with the Odin on it's own. I chose their airforce, but it might have been a mistake because I lost most of my army to some enemy siege tanks in one of the other bases. Through Protoss research, I had the choice between two stealth-detector units: the Raven, which can drop turrets, or the science vessel, which can heal mechanical units. I picked the second option and I'm glad I did, because this pair of maps made it quite useful - it's a great support unit to keep the Odin ticking over.

But it was even better in an upcoming map, where the Battlecruiser (the Terrans' big flying boy) is introduced. The gimmick of this particular stage was that you're fighting Protoss units inside energy fields which slowly drain your health when inside them. You have to fly into the fields themselves to take down their source and nullify them. High health units like the Battlecruiser are best suited to this, and the Science Vessel is extremely handy for nullifying the damage over time as they carry out this mission. It's an annoying map. The starting position is disconnected from the rest of the map by land, so you have to use medivacs to transport any land units between the two areas. It's also nice to just have your factories and barracks lift off and set down on the latter parts of the level, so that the units they produce can just walk up to the others instead of needing a lift.

I've settled into a standard strategy to a certain extent. I always build a reactor on my barracks and spam marines - I never bother with the tech lab on barracks any more. I remember thinking the reapers and marauders seemed kind of good but I prefer to spam marines because those alternatives can't attack air units. I tend to use medivacs just for their healing capacity, rather than the infantry medics. Their healing is a little more powerful and they're less vulnerable since they have more health and flying status. Then I just build whatever unit the map introduces and a bit of an airforce, particularly banshees. I almost never use the vehicle units at all. This has generally worked pretty well. The marines are cheap and versatile, so it's easy to fill in the rest of my build with whatever the situation calls for, and it frees up vespine gas for upgrades since they don't use any. I haven't even built one Ghost yet, but I think I'm gonna try it out in the upcoming missions just because I think nukes will be kind of busted in the campaign.

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Been a little busy lately, but I have been playing Starcraft when I get the chance. So far I've finished Tosh's missions and Matt Horner's missions to expose Mengsk. I've had a few learning experiences, often painful ones like "make sure to leave back a few units to defend the base" and "watch out for siege tanks." I do feel like I'm gradually getting better at unit micromanagement, which is nice. As for the macro, I've been sticking with the build-the-new-unit strategy.

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Alright, yesterday I spent a few hours finishing up Starcraft 2. I was actually knocking right on the door of the endgame, which is in three parts based around an invasion of a major Zerg planet, with Kerrigan on its surface. You can still buy upgrades between the final missions, but once you've started the first of them there's no going back to do any of the optional levels if you skipped them.

The first map is just a big, open area where you have access to all the unit types and have to push through Zerg-controlled territory. There are NPC units who will join you if you rescue them, but the overall goal is to reunite with the Dominion general under Prince Valerian, the big bad's son who Jim is working with. After a point, I stopped bothering to pick these guys up and just focused on the objective. I built a lot of marines, a lot of banshees, some vultures (they don't use vespine,) and finally gave the ghosts a shot. As predicted, nukes were pretty good for taking down enemy strongholds without a lot of trouble. There are actually frequent Zerg attacks on your base in this one, but you start out with both bunkers and siege tanks, so I only had to add a little more before my defenses were completely adequate to hold them off. The map does feel like a good test of everything you've learned so far.

For the penultimate mission, you can choose between taking out the Zerg's nydus worms (tunnels they use to transfer units across maps en masse) or their fliers. I chose the Nydus Worms because I thought it would be pretty annoying having enemies pop up at random places in the middle of my base. That mission is a no-build one where you have hero units of all the major characters on Raynor's team. It kind of feels like an extended break to let you decompress a little between the last big missions.

The final mission is a long defense map where you wait for the Artifact that's supposed to turn Kerrigan human again to charge up. The zerg attack you with everything they've got. I spent a lot of time at the 200 supply limit unable to build more units, but on the whole the map was kind of tough. I had to restart near the end a couple times.

I think I made the wrong choice by getting rid of the Nydus worms, because the enemy air force was pretty annoying. In particular, they have a flying bomber called the Brood Lord that outranges most defensive structures. It generally works to build missile turrets and bunkers in the more remote parts of the base so that your main standing army doesn't have to rush off when enemies show up there (which also reduces the number of areas the player needs to keep track of at a given time,) but when Brood Lords show up you have to respond. The best answer is to build a lot of wraiths. They can get around quickly and are specialized to taking out air units. The high-powered Battlecruiser also deals with Brood Lords pretty easily, and I did build a lot of those, but they also move slowly and I mostly kept them in the center of the map. Even without the Nydus worms, the Zerg can show up deep inside your base without pushing past your frontal defenses because they have these squid-like air drops. On my first attempt I would just scramble my armies to deal with them, but later on I decided to just build some defensive structures almost everywhere instead.

Kerrigan herself also shows up as a repeatedly spawning and fairly deadly boss. She has a move that can one-shot any mechanical unit for example, even the bulky battlecruisers. That's on top of very high HP and a lot of damage reduction. I would usually just push my main army of battlecruisers on her and accept some losses. Aside from the aforementioned units, I used a lot of marines, some siege tanks, and Thors. I tried out the ghost and nukes on one failed attempt, but didn't bother with them on my successful one.

In the end, the artifact really does seem to turn Kerrigan back, but Jim's buddy Tychus tries to murder her - apparently he struck a deal obligating him to do so before the game began, so that's the final payoff for an arc about his loyalty being questionable. Raynor has to kill his friend to save his GF and by extension, presumably, the galaxy.

The story is very much unresolved as of now, though - for one thing, Emperor Mensk is still in control of the Dominion, and the true threat of the Hybrid has yet to even appear outside of Zeratul's future visions. Those plot lines are obviously the stuff of the two expansions. Maybe I'll come to those in time. For now, though, I think it's time to move on to Halo. I know the online is a big part of the Starcraft 2 experience, but I feel like I'd want to practice against bots for a long time before I was even ready to try that, and I'm behind pace as it is.

Final Thoughts on Starcraft II still to come.

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Cool, now onto Halo Reach! The end of 2010 is in sight. I feel once youre through there you really start to see games that are wholly representative of this decade, not either delayed from 2009 or using mostly the last games assets. That might even start at Reach I dont know!

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My bad on the delay for the past couple days. I've been struggling to get my schedule down.

Lightning Strikes posted...

Cool, now onto Halo Reach! The end of 2010 is in sight. I feel once youre through there you really start to see games that are wholly representative of this decade, not either delayed from 2009 or using mostly the last games assets. That might even start at Reach I dont know!

Yeah, that point is coming up pretty soon. I don't know a lot about Reach but I think it is quite similar to Halo 3 and uses the same engine. There's also Fallout New Vegas coming up which was jokingly called an expansion to Fallout 3 back in the day. I guess I'd say it will be a while before the ghost of the 2000s decade is truly exorcised from this project: 2011 has some arguable examples like Portal 2, Dark Souls, and Minecraft which I think was in public beta by 2009, and I'll only be truly clear of it when I finally finish Trails in the Sky, whose Japanese release was in 2006!

Final Analysis: Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
What I thought of SCII: I think I liked it
Would I play it again? I might try the expansions.
Did it deserve to lose Round 1? I'd say no.

The 90s were such a different time for video games. Sometimes I think about how the go-to style for movie tie-in games used to be the 2D Platformer. That was kind of the "default" video game genre back then, thanks to Mario Bros. These day's it's a close race between First Person Shooters and "Action Adventure" games with crafting and contextual button prompts. Mario is just about the only big-name platform franchise left - the 2D platformer is now relegated mainly to nostalgia-focused indie gaming. Well, okay, there's Sonic too, be he's seen better days.

That's console gaming, though. The PC had its own distinct set of popular genres back then. The difference arose because playing with a mouse and keyboard is really quite different to a controller. I would hook up a gamepad to play Hollow Knight on PC even now, and I don't envy the poor souls who bought the N64 version of the original Starcraft.

Anyway, the big PC games used to be point-and-click adventure games like King's Quest or Grim Fandango, top-down RPGs like Fallout or Baldur's Gate, and, of course, real time strategy, of which Blizzard Entertainment were the kings. Warcraft III's hero unit mechanics may make it the worst game ever made, but it was also deeply important to the development of indie and PC gaming through its custom map mode, which among other things gave birth to Defense of the Ancients and the now multi-million dollar MOBA genre. And the original Starcraft, without a doubt, was a major turning point in the rise of competitive gaming.

All three of those genres died in the early 2000s. I have a soft spot for the story emphasis of point-and-click games, but I think the genre deserved it. They don't really work as video games - the puzzles are either obnoxiously obtuse or simple to pointlessness. The initial experience of most older adventure games is either hours of directionless bumbling or constant alt-tabbing to check a guide. People like Telltale and Double Fine have brought about a minor resurgence in point-and-clicks, and the same goes for the old "crpg" style with games like Divinity, but I've yet to see that really happen for RTS games.

A part of me wonders if they didn't deserve their downfall too. Oh, they're much more substantial as games than point-and-clicks ever were, but there are definitely some intrinsic problems with them. The biggest one is that they're so technical. Strategy is meant to be the focus, but it often gets drowned out behind things like actions per minute and simple memorization of tech trees, build orders, or unit matchups. The way that matches grow as each player expands can make things feel very slow, drawn out, and exhausting. It's also kind of a limiting genre. Over the last few decades games have pursued variety in game modes and level types - it's hard for RTS games to keep up on that front.

I guess that if this genre had a renaissance, it came in 2010 when Starcraft II was released, and that one game has done all it can to hold down the fort in the decade since. I personally didn't step into Starcraft II's online arena because of those aforementioned problems. I feel exhausted rather than pumped up when alerts start coming up all over the map. I don't really like the feeling of having to rapidly click back and forth to manage my troops on the front lines and my economy at the same time. For the record, the post-game stats told me that my APM averaged in the high fifties, while a top-tier player's should be above 500. I'm sure that figure would rise over time, but I don't really have the patience to spend hours and hours learning to play this game proficiently.

But you don't need me to affirm the legacy of this game's online. Its release was a huge event for esports and although it's waned over time it's still ticking along to this day.

The singleplayer kind of feels like an extended tutorial. Most maps are built around introducing one new unit and training the player on new mechanics. It's only in the last three maps that the training wheels really come off and you have an open-ended game with all its options available. That being said, it was a lot more fun than most tutorials. I stand by what I said about the three different factions being cool to build up as and generally intriguing. I wanted to keep playing just to see the new units and concepts in action. As intimidating as the learning curve can be, there's still a satisfaction to getting faster at your build order or mastering an active skill. The design is mostly on point. It's well-balanced, the difficulty curve ramps up at a good pace, and it does a good job differentiating the maps from one another.

I didn't talk much about the story as I played, but it's actually not bad. Jim Raynor's band of rebels are pretty likable, the central conflict around Raynor's guilt for losing Kerrigan makes a good emotional core to the plot, and it has an impressive sense of scale. I like chaotic stories with a lot of different factions who can't really trust one another, especially when it isn't clear who the good guys are. SCII can be a little unsubtle with its satirical elements and villain characterization, but it does still achieve a semblance of that feeling. Raynor is struggling to fend off both and alien invasion and a corrupt empire at once, and even his old friends the Protoss butt heads with him a lot of the time.

For me, the most interesting character is one who has almost nothing to do with Jim's crusade for freedom: Kate Lockwell. Kate is a reporter for what is essentially the propaganda arm of the Dominion, but she's quite contrary toward their narrative and shows a scrupulous dedication to the truth. The repeated joke with her is that her superior Donny will try to state the party line, she'll contradict him with the truth, and then her feed will cut off as she's speaking.

Kate wins. Even as the Dominion falls apart around her she keeps getting promoted up the ranks and becomes the station's chief anchor. I like the character, and was glad to see her doing well, but there was always this niggle in the back of my mind: there's no way she'd keep her job for long in a society like the one Starcraft II conveys.

Coming in without much expectations for the story, it did win me over to the point where I feel curious to see what happens in the two expansions - I'm just not sure I'm so curious that I'll spend $40 on them. Still, I barely scratched the surface on Starcraft II, and in another life, where I had the time, I can see myself digging deeper.

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And it's high time I moved on to the next game:

Halo: Reach
Release Date: September 14, 2010
I will be playing: PC Version, through Steam
Previous Experience with Halo: Played a few levels of the first one
My Expectations for Reach: Short, well made, but not quite mind-blowing

I've always been a quiet, introverted type of person, a bit on the weak side and not very adept at making friends. I know that sounds like a long-winded way of saying "I post on GameFAQs," but the point is that although I grew up during the height of Halo's popularity, I wasn't really in a position to enjoy it much myself. I would contend that it was primarily a social, multiplayer focused game, and along with Call of Duty I observed in high school that it was mainly played by the more loud, outgoing kids in class. I've never quite gotten away from the preconception, ironically born of my own immaturity, that the series is best enjoyed by rambunctious boys aged 12 to 21.

To this day, I think I've only played the original Halo. I've never made it past the first few levels and my only foray into the multiplayer was a few one-on-one matches with my younger brother. Being the more sociable of the two of us, he naturally handed me my ass.

Part of the reason I missed out on the later Halo games is that I never had an XBOX 360, and the rest is simply that I wasn't too interested. Apart from my inferiority complex, I'd attribute that to two main causes: first, that I'm not terribly into First Person Shooters, and second, Halo's main aesthetic doesn't really appeal to me. I've always found it hard to engage with emotionally: the characters are mostly stoic military or religious types, there's a kind of cold industrial atmosphere to a lot of it, and most people wear helmets, so you don't get the help of facial queues for the sake of relating with them.

As I've grown up, I have developed a certain respect for the franchise. I'm not the biggest fan of regenerating health or two-weapon limits, but it's undeniable that Halo had a huge influence on gaming, and it's still remembered as an excellent single-player shooter on top of its successful online. I hooked up my aging XBOX not long ago to give the first few levels a spin, and in particular I was impressed with the enemy AI, which helped make shootouts a lot more dynamic than they are in something like Mass Effect 2, which came out nine years later.

When it comes to Reach specifically, I don't know a lot about it except that it's a prequel and how it ends. It's the first game for this project that makes me worry about my laptop's system specs - hopefully it will run alright. I don't expect it to go down as a personal favorite, or even make me want to check out more Halo, but this project has surprised me before.

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Started up the game, but didn't have much time to play. Apart from a little stuttering in the cutscenes in runs just fine so far.

The main character in this game is the newly appointed Noble 6, part of a squad of Spartans (which is what Master Chief is) called the Noble Team. The first scene of the game is just him coming into camp and meeting the other five, some of whom have their helmets off, but then they remember that they're in a Halo game and put them back on so they can investigate some kind of disturbance. One guy's helmet has a skull painted on the visor. The captain pulls the rookie aside and tells him that the lone wolf schenanigans that are apparently on his record will not be tolerated on this squad. They walk around the surface of the titular planet Reach (I mostly just followed my NPC buddies to figure out where to go) and then the covenant show up and get into a few firefights with the Nobles. I stopped after the first few enemy squads were dealt with, inside of a building after we split up and I had the captain and the minigun guy with me.

So far it all feels kind of standard, both to shooters and to military stories in general. The biggest difference between this game and the first Halo is that while Master Chief was on his own right at the beginning, Noble 6 has friends to work with. I guess it's slightly closer to real world military tactics in that it usually makes sense to stick with your squad instead of charging ahead into enemy groups. I think the game is slightly easier so far as a result - I'm inept enough that playing Heroic on the first mission caused a ton of deaths in Halo 1, but I've only had one so far playing Reach on the same difficulty.

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From one military science-fiction game to another!

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Good writeup! The "extended tutorial" description is quite accurate, and it worked well at easing me into the game's strategic complexity. The demands of APM do get stressful sometimes, but I've been enjoying the moments of frantic clicking. However, it's not something that I would want to devote myself to for a long time; I can see why RTSs have remained the domain of the hardcore.

While I'm finishing up Starcraft I'll start watching a Halo playthrough. I have some small Call of Duty experience, but I've never been into Halo, and it should be interesting to compare and contrast the series in what would be the last year of them both being on top.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

From one military science-fiction game to another!

Yeah, 2010 was really a sci-fi Heavy year, and Reach is rounding up a space trilogy. The parallels with Starcraft in particular started to feel pronounced once Zealot-class Elites came up in dialog though.

Gall posted...

While I'm finishing up Starcraft I'll start watching a Halo playthrough. I have some small Call of Duty experience, but I've never been into Halo, and it should be interesting to compare and contrast the series in what would be the last year of them both being on top.

Yeah, that should be interesting. I don't have much CoD experience either, so I'll be looking at them both from the perspective of a newcomer.

I finished up what are essentially the first two levels of Reach - the first is just the intro where you're investigating and run into the covenant and the second is based around protecting a human base from them. I also started up the third, a stealth reconnaissance mission, but decided to take a break a couple firefights into that one.

There isn't too much story progression to speak of so far, except that this isn't the first time humans have encounter the Covenant although it is the early days of that whole conflict, and that one guy has a wife (or mother, I'm not entirely sure,) who is a hardassed researcher type and involved with the Noble Team's mission. There aren't too many different enemy types in Halo, and what variety there is comes from different area layouts and weapon options. To go over the typical enemy types, there are:

Grunts: Cannon fodder

Jackals/Skirmishers: Light shield guys. You have to aim around their shields, which is a bit of a pain. Grenades are one way around it.

Elites: Basically you but an alien. Regenerating shields, moves around while firing, good at dodging grenades, and a bit more strategic than other enemies. You have to be persistent in chasing them down once they're weakened, since their shields will come back if you leave them alone for a while.

I also got introduced to the vehicle mechanics, particularly through the Warthogs, which are basically jeeps with mounted turrets. The tricky thing about the Warthog is that the same character can't operate the turret and drive at the same time, so you have to pick one and let the AI do the other - something they tend to struggle with. So far, I tend to drive, and once I get to the next area with a lot of enemies around I just get out of the car and fight on foot.

The first major obstacle I came across was an energy sword guy in an enclosed area. The energy sword is a melee instant kill in this game. I really didn't know how to deal with this guy, since it didn't seem like I could do enough damage to bring him down before he caught up to me. I ended up resorting to luring him into one of my invincible AI buddies and letting him wail on that guy while I stood behind and let him have it.

In the next mission, there was an area where you can take out a rooftop sniper and then copy his tactics to pick off all the enemies. While I did this, the Covenant kept taking over my abandoned warthog to try and shoot me with the turret, but that worked as a trap because it led to them just standing still until I killed them. I ended up just waiting for each guy to start climbing up onto the car and then shooting them down.

The hardest part so far was when they wheeled out two really big guys who kind of look like Bionicles. These fuckers just would not die, no matter how much ammo I pumped into them. They wouldn't even flinch if I shot them with a sniper rifle - I wasn't sure if it was even dealing damage. One of them eventually died to a grenade, and I think one of the AI characters took out the other while I wasn't looking.

You can swap your ability to sprint for other powers in this game. So far the options I've encountered are a shield that requires you to stand still, which I can't really see much use for, and active camouflage in the stealth mission, which I gave a shot and seems pretty good.


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So I have some advice on dealing with those enemy types if you're interested.

For the shield Jackals, if you fire a charged plasma pistol at their shield it will cause it to temporarily short out.

Similarly for the elites a charged Plasma Pistol will also drain their armor to zero. Other Plasma weapons also work well on shields, then switch to standard bullets when their armor is gone. Also sticking them with a Plasma Grenade is an instakill.

The Hunters are tricky, but in general try to aim for the exposed orange parts around their neck and back. You can even break through their back armor. It's generally a good idea to save grenades and power weapons for them though as they are the hardest enemy type in the game.

Yeah Armor Lock is pretty useless for the most part, it is pretty handy if you know you're about to get hit with an instakill though.

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