it;'s like a hardcore version of megaman

Someone commenting on Power Blade for the NES.

Here's a weird thing I noticed online. Epic Dungeon is no more. It's now called Cursed Jewels or something like that with an extra class to play as.

I tried to read why, but can't remember. It just seems kind of lame because you and Joe have outdated reviews of a game that no longer exists in that form, I have a game I have no reason to review for that reason AND, most importantly, even if you have "Epic Dungeon", you still have to pay $1 to get this updated version. I mean, the money's no issue, but the principle of the matter is. To me, it'd be like if Bethesda came out with a patch for Skyrim where they fixed things, added a couple minor details, changed the name to NordWorld and charged you $50 more for it.

Since I'll be reviewing it in the next couple weeks most likely. Love the game, but am starting to get a bit tired of it. 150ish hours of something does do that.

1. Avoid Fast Travel when possible. I only use it to get back to base and/or collect quest rewards, but try to walk everywhere. The game's really attractive and immersive, but when you rely on fast travel, it really devolves. Which is why I'm still going strong after 150 hours. That walking takes time.

2. Most alive world I've experienced. Just the sheer number of quests you can get from just about everyone, as well as all the little randomized events that can happen as you're walking around the countryside.

3. If you play aimlessly with the purpose being to wander around and see what trouble you can get in to, it's near-perfect. If you play in a more regimented style, things kind of fall apart, as most of the game is based on a repetitive style. Get quest, go to dungeon, kill stuff, get item and/or kill boss, go back and get reward. If you're freestyling, you don't notice (or you notice, but don't care), but if you're planning to sit down and, say, knock off 4-5 missions for a guild or something, it kind of grates on you.

4. Even that's better than in Oblivion. Just because the dungeons look so much more varied. You might be getting sent to 30 different caves for fetch quests, but at least they don't all have the same general look.

5. Difficulty balancing is still an issue. Around when I hit the late 30s level-wise, virtually everything got very easy. It might have been because, thanks to smithing/enchanting perks, I massively boosted my armor rating AND added superior enchantments to everything. But, whatever, when you get to a certain point, it does get a bit depressing, as I went from needing to use stealth and guile in many situations to just being able to destroy everything with my fire-enchanted warhammer.

6. And by "stealth and guile", I mean "exploiting enemy AI issues". Hello, Mr. Bandit Marauder! You're a tough mofo, so how about I use sneak to peck away at you with arrows while you only make lackluster attempts to find me even though I'm only about 30 feet away! Man, I got pissed when I fought Movarth the Vampire, as he apparently regens health, so that strategy didn't work and I had to actually man up and fight melee style.

7. Gotten lucky with glitches compared to things I've read. Only quest that really glitched in any way was the Brotherhood quest where you have to assassinate a woman during her wedding in Solitude. Apparently, the town gets hostile and one of your DB buddies creates a distraction. Neither of those things happened and I also didn't get the reward for the perfect kill even though I did push the statue on her while she was addressing the crowd. The most annoying thing is that I did all three Bard's College fetch quests, but the special instruments never left my inventory, so I have 10-12 pounds of non-droppable quest items cluttering things up.

8. The inventory, for MISC items, is a bit glitched. Things don't always stack, which makes the list obscenely long. Also would have been nice if they created sub-menus for ores/ingots and soul gems and quest items. MISC just gets so long and cluttered.

...I wonder if it's worth it to buy a used XBOX just for this game (Onechanbara) and DOAX.

Merry Christmas!

It's from the early 1980s... people were more easily amused and impressed back then.

Uhhhh.....

Congrats on the current 600th review on the site, Venter. That's a lot. x_X

Guess what I got today! :|

I've wanted to play both games for a long damn time, but I just couldn't stomach the original price range for both the game and turntable controller. However, I finally decided to get one when I saw the DJ Hero 2 bundle going for under $30 new, plus DJ Hero 1 standalone disc for $15 new. So I got everything for about the price of a new game, which I thought was an awesome deal.

Then I tried playing with the turntable, and every single button was working fine.... except for the crossfader. The thing, by default, would shift to the right. At first, I thought I goofed up by fiddling with the controller as I was turning on the system, but after several attempts and methods, it was actually just the controller being crapped out before use.

This meant I could only play the game on the easy difficulty, since it excluded the crossfader segments. It's not bad, really, but I KNOW I'm missing out on the game's full potential by not playing on higher difficulties. I'd return it, but in a fit of semi-rage, I kinda broke off a piece from the controller. So much for that. >_<

I dream about that sweet Sailing Simulator deal. Hell yeah!

Yeah, over the years I've experimented with different methods on writing a draft, just to see if a certain rhythm gels with me. Sometimes I can finish a draft within an hour, sometimes it takes up to a day or more. Since this is more of a hobby to me instead of an actual job, I just go with whatever feels right with me at the time of writing.

This time, however, it's just one of those things that could've been done easily, but is getting dragged out. x_X

I know what I wanna write, but I'm just so on and off when actually typing it. I think I'm officially burnt out on making shoot-em-up reviews for the year. XD

Must finish review.... must... not be tempted to... play.... Metal Gear Solid HD Collection! Gwah!

Update 1: First paragraph done. Time to eat some delivered pizza.

Update 2 (Nov. 13 - 8:33pm est): Still only one paragraph.

Update 3 (Nov. 14 - 12:44am est): Three paragraphs. >_>

Update 4 (Nov. 15 - 7:11pm est): Woke up from a nap since I only slept 2 hours this morning before going to work. Still only three paragraphs.

Update 5 (Nov. 17 - 2:59pm est): Five paragraphs done. After getting off work, I'm gonna finish this sucker and hopefully get it up this week.

Update 6 (Nov. 18 - 5:08am est): Think I'm done, but I'll probably read through the thing a few times before submission to be sure.

That seems to have been taken out with the last site revamps. Might have to talk to Justin about that, as I have a bad habit of screwing up HTML deals and it's nice to catch a minor error that would turn the entire site into italics before going live.

I didn't want to judge the game based on that one completed experience, so I forced myself to play it a few more times. It's actually not a bad shoot-em-up. And after playing the game for 2 days, I just realized the Y button also works as a charged attack... Helped quite a bit in some situations. >_>

I still think the characters' hit boxes stink.

I've only played through the whole thing once, so maybe a few plays is needed, it's just I never had this issue with past Gradius titles. It's so hard to tell where the hit box starts and ends around the player.

Konami, how do you fuck up something that hasn't been a huge issue in various Gradius games and spin-offs for the past 26 years?

HOW?!

I'd seen Parallel Trippers got translated. I was wondering if that'd be worth downloading sometime (even though I have a million other games to play) and now I know to put it on the "maybe do in the next 20 years" list!

You shit bricks hearing a Super Sonic Racing remix playing as you race against Knuckles in Green Hill.

Mah gawd, Sonic Generations.

I like the big band rendition of The Thing. Great way to get the afternoon going!

Chris Jericho's coming?

That's the best possible outcome! Especially if it's slimy, big-word-using Jericho.

I've reread that review many times, and yet I've never noticed that mistake until after I submitted it. x_X

That's fine. Dropping a brand new review everyday is hard work, much more than I could pull off. When I did my unintentional Gradius "marathon" for two and a half months, churning out a new review every week wore me out, especially with it being more or less the same type of game. XD