Since there is a scientific law somewhere that says progress reports are fun both to write and to read, here's what I've been doing in the wild world of gaming over the past however long it's been since my last progress report.
RED FACTION GUERRILLA: I'm pretty much ready to do the plot quests for The Badlands. I tend to do a lot of the guerrilla missions and high-caliber targets before the plot stuff and I've done everything available except a couple targets and a convoy mission. You can do both Badlands and Oasis stuff now, but I've been mainly focusing on the Badlands with a couple missions in Oasis also taken care of, as a transporting vehicle mission took me to the safehouse there and I figured I might as well do a house arrest and a property destruction mission while there. Lovin' life in this one, as I love being able to destroy stuff at will. Usually with games like this, I'm big into guns, but here, I've noticed that I primarily use melee and explosives like remote charges and the rocket launcher. I've gone from the assault rifle to the arc welder to the grinder to the nanorifle and whatever gun I have always seems to be the "forgotten option".
TALES OF VESPERIA: Right now, I have two things to do: the 100-man melee in the arena and the final dungeon. After that, I'll have the memory (bonus) dungeon and eventually, the 200-man melee. Took a break in order to play Guerrilla, but will have it finished, you know, sometime.
BREATH OF FIRE II: A few nights ago, we had a storm. A five-second power outage stopped my Guerrilla progress and the weather seemed like it might continue to be uncooperative, so I decided to go to ROM-apolis and I fiddled around with this one for an hour or so. Mainly handled the somewhat difficult moment that happens after Bow is taken out of the party leading you to try to clear his name. You have to go to an arena town where you wind up getting two new party members. This part is really tough, as you're flying solo and the monsters in the area are a significant upgrade over the stuff you were fighting WITH Bow in the party. So, I did that and upgraded equipment in the town and beat Baba in the forest in order to get the pass to compete in the arena. YAY!
Suskie Jun 15, 2011
dementedhut Jun 15, 2011
However! I just got Armageddon yesterday after hearing they left out the sandbox element. Maybe it might actually be a fun game because of that.
JoeTheDestroyer Staff Jun 15, 2011
overdrive Blogger Jun 15, 2011
I read your review and it'll be interesting to see how my opinion varies from or matches yours when I'm done with the campaign. Mainly because I'm near the end of the Badlands, which is where things started to go south for you. The lack of ammo annoyance does manifest itself at times. Like in destroying the big target bridge. I'd fire all my rockets at it (and it took some trial and error to find out what parts can be damaged...as the big supports register some temporary visual marks, but don't actually get damaged), run like hell until the alert was canceled, warp to the safehouse...and then drive back to the bridge area. This went on for some time until I finally took it out. Possibly because I did virtually everything from the canyon below because of how it was a bit of a struggle for enemies to get down to me, so I'd only have to sledgehammer one or two of them.
I think I know exactly what mission you were talking about in your first couple paragraphs. In Dust, the second time you get a radio message to save that complex. The first one was easy. The second one was a huge bitch where I finally just stood on the ledge where the enemy approaches and took out as many EDF as possible with rockets as they were driving in and trying to get out of their transports. That was a rough one...but still only #4 as far as Dust Missions that Made Me Scream Horrible Things at My Television.
#3: The house arrest mission with one guy to get...who is in a guarded building loaded with explosive barrels. A whole lot of Mission Failed screens after one of those suckers went boom while I was in the act of trying to do stuff.
#2: The transport mission in that same area where you get put into red alert, have to weave around buildings (many of which might be in some sort of shambles, as most of them were EDF property, so you could get salvage and lower control a point or two by breaking them) and then go all the way to the Parker safehouse in like 2:30. It felt like a three-part mission. First, you had to simply get out of that area to the road without getting rocked too much. Second, you had to get through Dust to Parker while avoiding enemy vehicles. Third, you had to simply get through Parker to the safehouse quickly without mistakes. Like the time where I FINALLY was going to finish it...until I scraped a wall going into the safehouse and the stupid vehicle flipped over. People have committed suicide over less.
#1: The never-completed courier mission in the east part of Dust. That vehicle is durable and quick. With a lot of courier missions, you can take the dude out with a rocket shot or two no problem. This guy keeps going. And then you have to wait for it to reset. And hope that one of the really long convoy missions doesn't start instead. Because then, you'll have a long weight...or you can just travel to a good point and get ready to send rockets into vehicles like crazy!
dementedhut Jun 15, 2011
Thanks for reading, too, hope it didn't sound like I was nitpicking XD. I dunno, the game just rubbed me the wrong way when I played it back in 2009.
PAJ89 Jun 15, 2011
overdrive Blogger Jun 15, 2011
It didn't seem nitpicky to me. It'll be interesting to see how things work out for me. Like, will I get tired of doing the same sorts of missions over and over again? Which is a possibility, as I've shown very little patience with things like the trickier demolition challenges, couriers and convoys in the Badlands. Part of that is because I didn't know the EDF totally pulls out of Dust at the end of it. I was saving a House Arrest mission in case I needed a morale boost. That mission is gone now, so I can't get the achievement for doing all the Guerrilla missions. That makes me sad.
PAJ
I really like it. The best Tales game I've played. I've done a lot more optional stuff than with most RPGs. Which leads to a minor annoyance. You pretty much need a guide to do a lot of this optional stuff, as it basically involves repeatedly going everywhere to talk to random people with you oftentimes only having a limited window of opportunity. However, doing most of this Guide Dang-It stuff is really rewarding in multiple ways (getting skills, items, skits and fleshing out a lot of both major and support characters). But the only part of the game that really has annoyed me was the dog marking side quest. The worst part of it was how I refused to just say "screw it" even though I hated it and I kept going until I'd gotten virtually all the map except for a couple points I apparently couldn't find.