Gaming â Arran

What with the inimitable ShadowWraith hanging around my house for a bit, there's been ample time for gaming. I must have watched him play through Devil May Cry 3 about seventy times by now. Like the fighting games I occasionally love, it has enormous potential for humour and it is quite visually satisfying too. We played through together with me as the doppelganger and despite not having all that much control over how the game went it was pretty awesome.

Aside from that, I also got to try out two of the random mystery PS2 games I've been acquiring. Daemon Summoner was a complete mystery to me, being devoid of even a wikipedia page and GameFAQ, so I didn't know what to expect, but it was terrible. Reminds me a lot of Turok with the fog and awful frame rate. The crossbow takes an unreasonable amount of time to reload (though somewhat realistic I guess) and the melee weapon seems to do about zero damage. I got to the second level which is a forced stealth section with absolutely no display of enemies around you or even if you're hidden a là Thief, with numerous patrolling guards. Rather than taking the time to learn the routes and timing I switched the game off. One day I'll come back to it, but it may well end up being the last game I ever finish.

The other one is Haven: Call of the King which is not as unknown, but almost as annoying. An action adventure in the vein of Jak and Daxter, it has the same kind of art style and controls, except Haven is sort of sticky and has a large turning circle. It's a shame because it obviously had good production values but screwed everything up in small ways. The game is linear rather than hub-based and the levels take a long time to explore. I don't dread going back to this one but it will take a lot of patience.

Emily picked up Naruto: Rise of a Ninja for me on a whim and despite the potential for terribleness it's actually pretty good. Exploring Konoha is a good deal of fun and the combat is hectic and visceral. It's a shame the DLC is unavailable as I'd like to replace the awful English voice acting and download the free extra characters. I think I'm close to the end of the campaign as I just beat Kiba in exam stage 2. Not bad at all. The camera is stupid though.

I thought it was also high time I finished my easy play through of Earth Defence Force 2017 also. Easy difficulty is very very easy, so it's not much of an accomplishment, but it was pretty cathartic. The last level has a truly insane roster of enemies and I dread to think how many tries it will take on Hard or Inferno. I also played through the first 5 or so levels with Arran on Hard. I'd recommend this game if you really hate ants. Watching them fly about the landscape as you set off explosions everywhere is neato. Also it cracks me up when the soldiers start chanting EDF, EDF!

Also I got 1000g on Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires. I like this series despite the repetitiveness and playing as every musou character as the achievements demand is a good way to experience it. Meng Huo OP!

Family Matters

Been re-interested in genealogy stuff again lately. I still find it amazing that Emily's 4th great-grandfather fought in the American Revolution. It's difficult to trace my family tree back that far because of my parents' extremely common last names. Davies and Jones, both with roots in Wales...

Connor Kenway

I love the Assassin's Creed series and I've never really made a secret of it. Ever since playing the first game, my imagination was captured by the possibilities of the storyline and the simple pleasure of exploring an ancient world with hand and foot. The mystique of the game universe Ubisoft have created still makes me marvel.

So naturally I'm playing Assassin's Creed III and enjoying it immensely. America (before it was America) is laid out beautifully and I'm agape at the sheer amount of additional stuff there is to do. Hunting deer or slitting throats, it's all brilliant and I don't know if I'll ever get enough of it.

Wakefield CeX

CeX is the greatest shop!

First, some DVDs to watch:

• The Ultimate Fast Show Collection - this is what we actually came for, so naturally we bought a billion other things too.
• Lord of the Rings Complete - Special Extended DVD Edition - Emily wanted to see these again; I wonder what the extended edition adds?
• Iron Man - Emily also wants to see the backstories of the Avengers, as we both really enjoyed that film.
• Captain America - The First Avenger - ditto
• I Am Legend - it's not quite the book, but I think it's a really good take, also Will Smith

So now down to the real meat... JAMES:

• TimeSplitters [PS2] - I have TimeSplitters 2 and like it, so why not?
• Haven: Call of the King [PS2] - I have no idea what this game is!
• Eternal Quest [PS2] - I have no idea what this game is either!
• Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 [360] - ahahaha
• White Knight Chronicles: Origins [PSP] - kind of a strange entry to the series, but I don't have a PS3

Also went to Games Workshop and bought Warhammer: The Island of Blood, a starter set for Warhammer Fantasy with High Elves vs. Skaven. Emily really wants to paint this stuff! To help with that we also got Hobby Starter Set (set of 9 paints, flocking, brush, glue etc.) and a Chaos Black spray.

No money left now. Noodles for the rest of the month.

Buffalo Bill's Limited Edition Extra Smokey Beef Sticks

Why is there an E in that title? I'm not sure, but I have some in front of me.

"Flavor from the Old Country"

They sure are beefy. But mainly salty.

Also apparently they come from Lebanon. I didn't know Lebanon was in Pennsylvania.

Strangely, 'smoke' isn't one of the ingredients. But Paprika is.

what it is my doge

So I've been doing a fair amount of gaming and programming lately, here's some highlights:

• Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires is still a lot of fun albeit a little derivative. Sure, the series basically doesn't change, but it still does what it does, well. I've got most of the achievements already. Just need to finish Guan Du and Chi Bi and play as a bunch of other people. I wish they'd make more interesting achievements for the DW games. Maybe I'll get DW Gundam, those look better.
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is also on my Now Playing list. Looks good so far, very WRPG-lets-you-do-anything-you-damn-well-want although the enemies I'm getting to now hit me for about a billion damage so you probably can't do things THAT out of order. I know Aphox speedran the game in about 4 hours so it must be fairly breakable. I'm playing as a Mage which probably blows but whatever. I feel like I'll end up playing this game multiple times.
• Pokémon SoulSilver is back in my DS and I'm actually playing it. It's probably my favourite one yet; the pokémon don't look dumb yet, and the mechanics of Gen4, though there's about eight thousand moves I don't know the effect of now. I just caught Lugia, and now I have to do the dreaded Victory Road. My party isn't very powerful.
• League of Legends still occupies a lot of my time; I've found a few people to play ARAMs with and they're a bunch of laughs.

Back to life, back to reality

Sorry! I've been pretty quiet lately. That's not an indication that I'm either dead or plotting something, I'm just not that interesting. Things have also slowed down on the game-buying side, as I'm trying to focus more on game-finishing right now.

If I ever decide to actually knuckle down and do some work on a speedrun I guess I'll mention it here.

Emily's still not awfully well but hopefully might get some tests and shit done to see if she's suitable for surgery on her stomach.

Soulcalibur V is fun. Ezio is interesting to play, though I'm not sure how good he actually is. Crossbows are awesome.

Picked up Lost Planet: Colonies for criminally low. I've heard it's pretty okay.