Soul Calibur IV

"Righteousness is on my side, victory will soon follow."

I started playing a bit of Soul Calibur IV on the 360 and it's been pretty fun. There is a heck of a lot of detail in these fighting games these days, eh? I like the multiple fighting stances with multiple sets of specials, activated with different stick/button combinations. Its a pretty steep learning curve but fun.

At the moment all I really do is a few special moves and when it gets tricky I end up button mashing, which still works.

One of the nice options is the role playing game style ability to create your own character, that uses any of the fighting styles found in the game. Its complete with gear purchases that grant various bonuses, and you can select what sort of special effects you want the character to have, such as chance for unblockable attacks, health leeching, higher tick damage against blocking foes etc.

You can find this one used for a pretty good price these days - I picked it up for $25 Canadian, compared to the original $59.99 msrp.

Here is a place where I found some nice SC4 wallpapers.

As an aside, my favorite swordfighting video game was Bushido Blade, which interestingly enough, had multiple stances, with different moves and weapons too. Ditto for the multiple play modes too, such as a story mode, endurance mode etc.

Most interestingly, Bushido Blade had the "one hit kill", if you get in a good, solid sword strike to, say, the head or chest. I think it should be more common in swordfighting games with all that sharp steel swinging around. :D It made the endurance modes really challenging and lent a completely different sense of urgency to the gameplay, since fighters are always one (good) hit away from death. Generally this means I never reached a low-health desperation attitude, and could look at the game with a more calculating eye. After all, your foe is in the same situation, where they could die from one good hit from you.

Upsen.

Fallout 3 Pitt Glitch

I finally finished the Pitt DLC, and all the achievements for Fallout 3. Well, at least until the next DLC comes out: Mothership Zeta, coming out Aug 3, I hear.


Problem with the Pitt - in the Steelyard, I had a heck of a time with a glitch. Starting from the 2nd trip there, I would always fall through the corrugated rooftop that leads to the upper catwalks. I rebooted the console and the same thing happened. I went back and reloaded old saves on the rooftop, and I would actually just start falling after the game was loaded.

It turns out that this is because I also have the Point Lookout DLC installed - something goes wrong when you have both the Pitt and Point Lookout installed, and sections of that rooftop becomes a hit-or-miss affair. (usually a miss)

So I went into the console memory options and deleted Point Lookout. After loading the game again, the rooftop was solid. The game warned me that I would lose my Point Lookout gear and perks etc though.

I got the steel ingots I was missing, and the achievement after I turned them in.

You can redownload Point Lookout at no cost, if you purchased it online. (Assuming redownloading 400+megs doesn't impact your internet plan) If you installed it from a disc, you'll need the disc again, of course.

I didn't check the status of my perks and gear after reinstalling Point Lookout though, I haven't played the game since.

edit Aug 1 - I loaded up the game and found that the Perks and gear I'd gotten from Point Lookout had all disappeared. After the reinstall of Point Lookout, I got the message that there is a new ferryboat available, as if I had never done Point Lookout before. The location on the Capital Wasteland map is considered unexplored again too. Looks like I get a second romp through the Bogs if I feel like it.

Upsen.

Bought and returned an arcade stick

This would be a great stick if I was 15 years younger and on a sugar high.

A while back, I bought the Samurai Shodown 2 download on the Xbox 360 and I was doing pretty miserably with the gamepad. I thought maybe a better controller, an arcade joystick, would help me with the control problems, and at the same time, help with all the other various fighting games that I have, like the Super Street Fighter HD Remix, Soul Caliber etc. So I headed off to the game shop at the local mall, and I picked up a Mad Cats arcade stick. The buttons had a nice feel to them, and the stick was metal with microswitches, which was pretty nice stuff.

Unfortunately, after trying it out for a couple days, I wasn't really doing that much better - the stick's base was too small and moved too much. I didn't like the 8 button layout either, I think I prefer 6. Or maybe I'm just getting too old for these darn reflex fighting games.

I took it back to the shop, where some skinny kid told me I couldn't return it since it was an open box. Of course, this stick is sold "open", there is no plastic wrap inside or outside of the box, and the stick is held in place by a couple of chunks of foam. It seems like he thought he held some power over my situation, and was enjoying my irritation, with a smirking "what are you going to do about it?" attitude. He even had the gall to tell me it wasn't his problem.

Luckily, the manager was around, and I spoke with him. He put the kid in his place, and made the kid process the return. After all, the stick was in pristine condition, that is, exactly as it was when purchased.

The best part of it is that after I got home, I found that the kid refunded me wrong and I have about $15 more than I started with. Not my problem I guess. :D

Upsen.

How the stick is packaged.

Fallout 3 Alignment Achievements

I've finished all of the achievements in Fallout, except for The Pitt, which I'm working on right now. I haven't spent this long on a single-player-only game in quite some time.

One of the achievement types is for reaching certain xp levels while at different alignments. If you reach level 8 as a good character, you get a certain achievement. If you reach it as an evil character, you get a different achievement. Neutral, and you have a third achievement. This seems to imply that you have to play through the game 3 times, once as each alignment.

What I did was I played through as a good character, saving fairly frequently. Whenever I levelled up at an achievement level, I would reload the save before I levelled, go to the Underworld where there is a computer terminal in the back room. Opening the terminal and closing it again right away takes away karma even if you don't actually use or hack the terminal, and can be repeated over and over again. After I knock myself down to neutral, I save and then destroy all the ghouls living in the Underworld, which finishes the levelup and gets the achievement. I reload the neutral save, and continue opening/closing the terminal till I get evil status, then do the Ghoul wipeout till the levelup hits.

Voila, you will have all 3 of the alignment based achievements for the level.

If Underworld is too difficult to get to, you can probably do the same trick with Colin Moriarity's terminal in his Megaton saloon. Just opening and closing red terminals will raise eyebrows but no armed response if npcs are around. I used Underworld cause there is a lot of xp available from the zombies and all on the one map.

Upsen.

Fallout 3 DLC Pack: Point Lookout

I picked up the Downloaded Content Pack for Point Lookout.

The first thing I did when I got to the ferry was find what options there are for getting passage to Point Lookout.

Bsaically, the only choice is to buy a ticket from the boatman, Tobar.

The most you can really do is sell him enough junk to cover the 300ish cost of the ticket.

Tobar is marked as an essential NPC, so he gets the "unconscious" flag instead of death, so you can't kill him for his boat after he tells you how to get there.

You can't threaten or charm your way into getting there. You can't pickpocket him for a ticket, though I guess that doesn't really make much sense, stealing a ticket to give back to the boatman. If you attack him, he fights back, when you take him down, he just gets back up after a while and wishes you a good day. Same for after you arrive in Point Lookout, he is still an essential "friendly" npc.

So annoying.

As an aside, what is with the super tough foes inside Point Lookout? In the main game, you headshot stuff with a single bullet from a sniper rifle, two if it's a tough one. Here you can throw away the sniper rifle cause it hits like a almost-broken handgun. I'm relying on the TESLA CANNON to kill the hostile axe-wielding, shotgun-toting rednecks. And it takes 3 shots! Enclave soldiers in power armor only took one shot, geez. It's like they are all tough as giant albino scorpions or super mutant overlords.

The speed at which the Tribals hack through power armor with axes puts deathclaws to shame.

The difficulty is not impossible to handle, but it feels incredibly out of place compared to the rest of the Fallout world.