Saturday, December 27, 2008

New Day, More Points

Today was hardly the most exciting day of gaming, but some progress was made. First, I got to work on more Dynasty Warriors 6, finishing Guan Yu's campaign and starting Xhaou Dun's. I'm loving DW6 so far, but I hate what they did to Xhaou Dun this time around. They've replaced his sword with some sort of a pole with a long-spiked club-thing at the end of it. It's hard to describe. In effect, this weapon change has transformed him from a speedy fighter to a slower power-type character, and I don't like the change at all. Shame on Koei for messing up one of my top five favorite characters...

Besides working those campaigns, I gave the challenge modes a try, and earned the achievements for personal best in Rampage, Havoc, and Gauntlet. Rampage, which tasks you with getting as many KOs as possible in 10 minutes, and Gauntlet, which forces you two evade stampeding horses and collect experience pouches, were both surprisingly fun mini-games, which I'll likely play again even though I have the achievements for them. Breaking as many things as possible in a strict time limit (Havoc) wasn't as much fun, and I think I can pass on that one.

Needing to step away from hack 'n slash, I loaded up Lego Star Wars II, hoping to finish the Super Story for Episode V and get that gold brick out of the way. All of five minutes into it, my Xbox locked up... at least it didn't do it near the end of the story, where the loss of progress would have been much more significant. I gave the game another try, and shifted my focus to running through several levels of Episodes IV and V, collecting minikits and power bricks that I'd missed before. I really wanted to get to 60% completion and earn that 60 point achievement. Reaching the point where I could play no more, I was stuck at 59.1%. Since I've been saving studs to buy the "x2 stud multiplier" power, I didn't want to buy anything, but I saw I still had several unpurchased tips available in the store, for only 100 studs each. I bought those, which put me over 60% completion, without putting a dent in my stud savings, so I was quite pleased to get my 60 points without having to play another level.

That's likely all the gaming I'll be doing today. Tonight I have a party with a bunch of high school friends I haven't seen in almost four years. It'll either be totally awesome or really awkward... I'm going to bet on awkward at first (for me, at least) and will transition to awesome as time goes on.

OPERATION JEDI UPDATE: The most recent numbers have me at 57.46%. That data is off by 100 points (I've gained 100 since it updated), but I can say for sure I'm still 20,668 points short of the big goal. Still a lot of work to do, but I can't complain about picking up 530 points in the last five or so days.

That'll do it for today. The extended forecast remains:

Sunday: Open. Could be anything. May be an off-topic gripe about Minnesota Vikings football.
Monday: The Famous Warriors Orochi 2 rant (four months in the making)
Tuesday: Best, Worst, and most Under-appreciated games of 2008.
Wednesday: The 2009 forecast (full of hilarious wishful thinking. Stay tuned!)

No comments:

Post a Comment