Red Dead Overdose

Last weekend was a double XP weekend for Red Dead Redemption multiplayer. I had already gotten to level 50 and passed into legend, and decided to take advantage of the opportunity so I could get closer to passing into legend for the fifth and final time. Over the weekend I made it from about 42 in my first time past 50 to level 30 something after having passed into legend again. By Sunday, I was getting really bored and decided I'd let it go and hopefully Rockstar will have another weekend like that when they release more DLC.

I also ended up getting the Legends and Killers Pack, which comes with the a new weapon, the tomahawk, that has some little challenges in singleplayer and some multiplayer character models from the first game. I didn't check out the new multiplayer game modes because I don't have a lot of friends that play the game. It feels kind of expensive for what it is, but that might be because I didn't try the game modes and the last DLC was free.

And just to be sure I would get my outlaw cowboy fill over the weekend, I also watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Zooooooooooooop!

I decided to go ahead and load my level 57 Vanguard from Mass Effect, Commander Xxyulmzx Shepard, into Mass Effect 2 without doing another playthrough in the first game to get him to 60. I also decided to leave him as a Vanguard so I could try the biotic charge power that Vanguards specialize in, and I'm glad I did because it's super fun. You pick your enemy target and launch yourself at him, knocking him down and damaging him. I love it when the distance between you zips by as you're flying towards him. I can't wait to try it on an enemy that rushes you, like a Krogan. Very fun but you're totally throwing caution to the wind when you use it because you could end up finding yourself surrounded by the enemies you didn't knock over.

"Embrace eternity!"

I just did a playthrough of the first Mass Effect as Commander Xxyulmzx Shepard (in the future, it will be a trendy first name like Dakota or Madison), with the intention of importing him to Mass Effect 2. I played as a Vanguard, so I could have lots of powers and be trained in the shotgun (and while I used the shotgun, I never put any points toward the skill — it didn't seem like it needed to be any more powerful). I used Wrex and Tali as my away team exclusively, since Wrex is pretty bad ass and I needed Tali to open the locked containers. I played mostly on Veteran and switched it to Hardcore for the final third, but I probably could have played the whole thing on Hardcore since it wasn't very challenging. I also got out of the Mako and fought everything on foot, so I could get the maximum amount of experience points.

When the action got going, things went pretty quickly as a Vanguard, since you're designed to get right up in the enemy's face, so it was pretty fun. I got to level 57, so I might do another playthrough to get to 60 before I import him to Mass Effect 2, so I can get all the bonuses, or I may just make due. I also killed off the Council at the end and let Kaidan die on Virmire (which is different that Commander Stacey Shepard's experience), just to see how it will be different in ME2.

40,000

I saw that my gamerscore was getting close to 40,000, so I hunted through some old games to try and pick up enough achievements to push it over. I unlocked some in Guitar Hero II and III, which I never play, and some in three Call of Duty games (Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Call of Duty: World at War), which I stopped playing because they are so frustrating to play on Veteran.

I had never completed Call of Duty 2 because of the goddamned silo mission on Veteran, so I went back and finished the game on Hardened instead. The difference between the two difficulties is huge and I was able to finish the game finally. I also went back and did the missions in Call of Duty 4 that I had done on Regular on Hardened, and they were relatively easy and it was pretty much run and gun. I think the difference between the games are the modern weapons in Call of Duty 4 and I actually kind of enjoyed it. I might even try and go back and finish it on Veteran.

The worst.

Dear Alan Wake,

Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy. Being terrible and not fun makes Alan a dull boy.

Sincerely,

Not a fan.

Let's get ready to YAWN!

I'm not sure why I'm doing this to myself, but Alan Wake DLC comes out tomorrow, so I'll be downloading it. Oh wait, I do know why I'm doing it: because it's free and short.

"...does whatever a Spider-Pig does"

I am not a Spider-Man fan, so I really had no interest in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions until I saw some of the gameplay footage that shows the four different Spider-Men (Spider-Mans?) you get to play as during the game. Even that wasn't all that compelling to me until I noticed the art direction of the Amazing Spider-Man section, where the animations around his web attacks have a drawn comic book look to them.

I also don't know anything about Spider-Man Noir, but that part has gameplay that focuses on stealth and a black-and-white-when-hidden art direction that seems nice.

Since there's not a lot of games coming out for awhile that I'm interested in, I might be picking this up.

I've got some feedback for you about your date: HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Some girl in my office is in a nearby cubicle discussing the date she had over the weekend (two Coronas! got a little buzzed! walked a mile down the beach!). It's times like these that I turn to Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy for Lilith, which is really just 106 minutes of feedback.

Oh, the Brütality

I had stopped playing Brütal Legend a couple days after I got it back in October, at almost the very end of the game, the Sea of Black Tears battle, because I just couldn't stand that RTS part of the game anymore. I had also been doing my first playthrough on Brütal, the hardest difficulty, which wasn't helping. I decided to give it another shot so I could at least pick up some of the achievements I hadn't already unlocked. I stored my Brütal game and started a new game on Normal, which is actually too easy. I found a strategy for the Sea of Black Tears battle and got through it without any problem. The final RTS battle is really confusing, I had no idea what I was looking at or what my objective was at first, but I got through that as well. The final boss battle was pretty easy, especially since I dropped a flaming Zeppelin on his bitch ass.

Changing the difficulty didn't make any of the RTS portions any more fun, just quicker to get through. It's such a shame because the good parts of this game are so good, but the crappy RTS parts are not fun at all.

Glutton for punishment, you are

I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea, but a friend turned me on to a way to get through Star Wars: The Force Uninteresting Unleashed on Sith Master difficulty with maxed out stats to make it slightly easier, so I decided to try it. The first couple of levels were pretty easy because you can skip most of the level and just do the boss fight. The early boss fights focus on a single Force power to take them down, so they're not too bad if you know what the required power is. Then I got to the dreaded Bull Rancor/Maris "Megabitch" Brood boss fight, and had to stop because it was too tedious and it was making me angry. I know it's probably do-able, but the amount of patience that it requires might be beyond my abilities right now. I also know that I have even more frustrating boss battles after this one if I choose to continue, so I'm not sure if I'm going to finish this playthrough.

Doom generation

I had two lingering achievements in the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance game. One was for getting gold on all of the simulator missions and the other was for unlocking Silver Surfer by getting at least bronze on all of the simulator missions. Way back when I first played this game (only on Normal and Hard), I had gotten bronze on all the missions, but Silver Surfer didn't unlock, so I used a code to unlock him and I didn't get the achievement. Maybe I only thought I got bronze and missed one. Anyway, I had a hard time with the Spider-Man mission because I never used him in the rest of the game so I wasn't that comfortable using his powers. Also, the Dum Dum guy you're supposed to protect during the mission died every time because he's truly an idiot, so I gave up on any hopes of getting gold.

After that Mass Effect 2 playthrough, I was looking for something dumb and easy so I cleared out my old MUA saves and started over on Easy. I played through the game to the point where I had collected all the simulator discs and then started banging through those missions. The boss fights were a joke, I could march up to the dude and just punch away at him without taking any noticeable damage. I got a tip on how to build Spider-Man's powers, so I got gold on that mission on my second try. I worked my way through all the other missions without any difficulty, except for having to redo Blade because he took too long (because his powers totally suck in the game). Anyway, I unlocked both achievements and now I'm 100% on that game.

Like putting lipstick on a pitbull

I did it. I totally thought I was going to have to abandon again, but I finally finished my Insanity playthrough of Mass Effect 2, fuck yeah, U.S.A. It was so difficult and frustrating and took forever, but now all my Mass Effect 2 dreams have come true.

From my last post about this, I just had a few loyalty missions and recruitments left. The recruitment and loyalty mission for Samara was a piece of cake. Legion's recruitment was much easier than I remembered it, maybe because I was sort of seasoned by the time I got to it. I had saved Tali's missions for the end because I remember her recruitment mission being sort of difficult, and it totally is. So annoying and frustrating until I found just the right spot to put myself to take out the boss. I reached level 30 and everyone was recruited and loyal, so I thought it was time to do the final mission.

Before I restarted this playthrough, I did a little research and read that the best way to do the game on Insanity is to play as a Soldier or Sentinel, so I went with Sentinel. I also read that warp ammo is a good choice for your bonus power, which I chose and it worked pretty well. I also read that dominate (which is like AI hacking, but for organic beings) is a good choice too, which you can unlock if you choose to side with Samara's daughter in Samara's loyalty quest. So I unlocked it and then went back and sided with Samara because her daughter is a little bitch and I didn't want her on my ship. Anyway, for the very last mission on the Collector base I switched from warp ammo to dominate and it was kind of awesome (I fully upgraded it and chose area dominate, so I could convert more than one at a time). At one point I was even lucky enough to dominate a Collector that became occupied by the Harbinger, so I had the Harbinger blasting away his own dudes for a bit. Anyway, I would highly recommend dominate for the mission.

I also almost exclusively used Kasumi and Zaeed as my away team during the rest of the game, because you can do their loyalty missions as soon as you recruit them and they seemed to compliment my Sentinel fine. Only Zaeed's mission is a little tricky because it has a stupid YMIR robot at the end — those robots ruin everything, ruiners — but this time I found a much better place to position myself than all the other times I had done it. Anyway, for the last leg of the final mission, those two weren't holding up so well, so I retried it with Grunt and Jack and they worked better (Jack went down a bit, but Grunt was solid). Jack's warp ammo for barriers and Grunt's incendiary ammo for armor and flesh is a decent combo.

So it turns out the real secret to completing the game on Insanity is bringing the right heavy weapon to the goddamned awful final boss battle and having all the upgrades for it. It's recommended that you bring the M-920 Cain, which is pretty much a one-shot nuclear blast that does massive damage, unless you find all the ammo upgrades, then you can get two shots out of it. Well, I missed one of the upgrades and couldn't go back for it. I actually missed two, but restarted from a saved game after getting my ass kicked in the final battle and went back for one of them, which you get from a side mission I had skipped. So with my almost fully upgraded M-920 Cain, I got to the final battle. I shot the boss for a bit, and I had a lot of practice doing this because I had been trying for hours to get through this one part. Then I fired my M-920 Cain and got one shot in. I had enough ammo left that I only needed one more ammo drop from a fallen Harbinger this time (before I had needed like three, which was impossible for me to survive long enough to get), which I got and I felt a rush as I scrambled to get my last shot with Cain in before I was killed.

Anyway, this was probably the hardest video game thing I've ever successfully completed and I'm so glad it's over. I had given up so many times, reached so many parts that I thought I wasn't going to be able to get through, had to retry sections with different options only to fail and have to try again, screamed at my TV a bunch, and cursed the developers, but I finally did it.

Die, All Right!

I was in high spirits when I continued my playthrough of Mass Effect 2, since I was certain I had gotten over a major roadblock in my Insanity playthrough. I continued working on recruiting my crew and doing their loyalty missions. After doing Mordin's loyalty mission, I decided to go back to the ship and research my most recent upgrades. From there I was forced into visiting a derelict Collector ship, even though I hadn't finished recruiting everyone yet and wasn't fully leveled up. I guess it was because I had recruited the DLC people, so the game must go by the number of people you've tricked convinced to sign up and not who they are. Anyway, the mission was maybe the most difficult video game thing I've done.

I failed the first battle on the moving platforms so many times. I went back and changed my away team, heavy weapon, and even the bonus weapon you get to learn before you get there (I wanted the sniper, but I still think it's pretty useless on this difficulty, so I went with assault rifle) many times. My party was dying instantly and I would run out of medi-gel to revive them, the enemy's heavy weapons monster was messing me up and the Harbinger would keep knocking me out of the scrap of cover I had. I was getting super frustrated and thought I might have to give up.

I finally managed to get through the fight by firing my M-920 Cain as soon as their platform lined up with mine, killing or at least injuring everyone. That was just enough time to get rid of the scion on the other platform that was tearing me up before more jerks arrived. Then I just kept firing warp at the Harbinger(s), both from me and my teammmates at the same time, until we cleaned them out.

So then I was working my way through the rest of the ship, the encounters were hard but manageable. Then I got to the part where you drop down and suddenly you're trapped in a giant room with a praetorian, the giant blue cockroach thing I encountered the other day. I started dying again, over and over, and started to get concerned that I wasn't going to be able to get past it. I was out of ammo for the Cain and it was impossible to fight the bug and the other miscellaneous enemies. I finally got through it and I'm still not really sure how I did it.

Anyway, after that I went to do some other missions and everything was super easy. There's one mission to rescue and operative that's just some bad guys in a tiny building on a planet that I remember being really hard in other playthroughs (probably because I had attempted it too soon). This time it was a total cakewalk, I barely even stayed in cover. Even Garrus' loyalty mission with the two giant robots in disguise and recruiting Samara with all the annoying Asari and the giant helicopter were much easier than I ever remember them being.

Now I only have to recruit Legion and Tali and do their loyalty missions and the loyalty missions for Samara and Grunt. I also need to finish the other DLC stuff and all the other side missions I haven't explored yet.

Born of frustration

I just went back and looked at all of my posts about this damn Mass Effect 2 Insanity playthrough that's been giving me so much grief. I've gotten further than any other attempt, and I have a better strategy and the right tools this time, so I should be glad I don't have to be such a crybaby anymore. Who knows though, that all may change tomorrow — I seem to remember the battles with the Asari bitches to be kind of a hassle and I have yet to do them in this playthrough.

Kasumi, I luuuuuuuuuv u!

I had downloaded the last two DLCs for Mass Effect 2 and not played them because I had a semi-abandoned Insanity playthrough of the game that was just too hard. On my first playthrough, I had imported Commander Stacey Shepard from ME1 and made her an Infiltrator so I could use the sniper and the cloaking ability. That worked out fine for the first playthrough on Normal, but when I tried to do it on Insanity, the sniper became pretty useless since I was almost always out of ammo (well, those heat sink things, that aren't really ammo but determine how many shots you have in your gun). Cloaking was good for skipping sections of the game that were too hard (like the awful prison break battles when recruiting Jack), but not really that helpful during a boss battle. I had quit in the middle of trying to recruit the Krogan because I was sick of turning every corner only to have some endless battle where I would end up with nothing to fire at my enemies besides my powers.

I did a little research on the interwebs and read that the best class for Insanity is either Sentinel (with the shield on steroids) or Soldier. I decided to go with Sentinel and imported Stacey again from ME1 to get all the bonuses (for both importing from ME1 and having already completed the game). While this playthrough is still super difficult in places, it's so much easier than what I was trying to do before. I went to recruit Kasumi from the Kasumi's Stolen Memory DLC, and when I saw her shadow strike ability (she cloaks herself, runs behind enemy lines, smacks some bitch down, and sneaks back) I instantly fell in love. Then I did her loyalty mission which unlocked a new bad ass SMG which is so much better than the one I had been stuck with. Every time I tell her to use her shadow strike, I actually watch her do it because it's too awesome. So she is always on my away team. I've also bring bringing Zaeed, from the first DLC along, even though I never really used him before, because I like his fireball ability and was also able to do his loyalty mission right away. So now that I have the right class, better weapons, and the right people, this Insanity playthrough is going much better.

But just because it's going better, doesn't mean it isn't still crazy hard. I got to the boss battle on Horizon, where you first encounter the Collector that inhabits the bodies of his minions. I struggled to get through the first few waves with a lot of frustration. When I finally did it and got to a cutscene, I was like, "Oh yay, I finally made it," only to come out of the cutscene to a giant blue cockroach the size of a Winnebago shooting lasers out of his eyes. It's been so long since I've played that I forgot what to expect next. Anyway, I eventually managed to eek my way through, but only because I happened to position myself so that the bug would stop flying around, which I've noticed is sometimes the only way to beat these boss battles.

Now I'm onto the second game disc, recruiting the next batch of losers teammates, and I feel like I have a chance of actually getting all the way through this time.

Needs more magnetism

I worked on completing the new sim missions from the DLC for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and unlocking all the achievements this weekend. I was also able to finally unlock my last achievement for the game, get gold on all 12 original sim missions, which I was really having a problem with. I figured out the right teams to bring on some of the missions and what I needed to do to get gold on a few others (I didn't know I to stay on the glowing pad on Command to keep earning points). Anyway, 100% on that game now, bitchez.