The Energon Pub

[The Happy Locust]

Okay, trying to keep putting time into my active games even though Minecraft has become a timesink.

Donkey Kong Country Returns
Went through the rest of world 4 (caves) and collected all the missing puzzle pieces and the pearl before going after the boss. The Mole train should have been easy but somehow kept kicking my monkey but at every turn. Managed to defeat it and move onto world 5. According to savegame, at 45%.

Dead Rising 2
Mostly focusing on case files. The reporter asked me to meet her at a nightclub so I could meet with her source. Turns out the source was the bad guys's 2 showgirls who had tricked the reporter. Luckily, Once one went down, the other just couldn't live anymore and offed herself.
With time to kill, found a deranged Mailman who kept trying to letterbomb me when he wasn't shooting me with his shotgun. Took him out and collected some Zombrex for my troubles.
Got an open mission I want to tackle, but it's almost Zombrex time and there's no way I'll make it there and back in time.

[Shadowman]

Monday Night Combat:
I'm not gonna say "Now I'm getting the hang of this" because that's how I started MNC updates the last three times.

I am, though.

Turns out, no matter how much you think you've gotten the hang of this game, no, no you don't. I'm getting better as Assassin, though, once I finally accepted that Bot Kills = Money = Victory, and that I shouldn't go looking for a fight with human players, but to let it occur naturally.

Advent Rising:
Got a nifty power called Time Shift. Let's me teleport forward and then explode at people. Leveling it up gives me good ol' bullet time, except I'm moving at normal speed. Goes GREAT with melee.

[Shadowman]

Two days with no activity. That means I can officially double post!

Advent Rising:
BEATEN! Now, when's that sequel coming out?

Oh...oh right...

Monday Night Combat:
Not progress, but more of an example. I'm trying out the beta for Steam Screenshots, where you just push F12 (Or the shortcut of your choice) and you can take a screenshot, uploaded to your Steam profile. For example, here's the Assassin doing a high kick. Now, if you'll excuse me...I'll be in my bunk...

[1337W422102]

I just use Xfire for all my screenshot and video needs. Both related; also, unf.

Cosmic Break [PC]:
Wow, this is awful. It's like they took Exteel, extracted all of the fun and badassness, and crammed genericness into it instead. Then, they omitted to properly translate it, and marketed it to weeaboos. Needless to say, that crap was promptly uninstalled.

[Shadowman]

Cosmic Break [PC]:
Wow, this is awful. It's like they took Exteel, extracted all of the fun and badassness, and crammed genericness into it instead. Then, they omitted to properly translate it, and marketed it to weeaboos. Needless to say, that crap was promptly uninstalled.

Checking out the website shows me many anime women with awesome chests. It's like they cut out the middleman and just put the Rule 34 on their official site. On the one hand, I really hate fanservice-based marketing. On the other hand, boobies.

Final Fantasy Tactics:
Goddamn it, Rafa. You have a tragic backstory and damn it I really want to love you, but it's like you do everything in your power to ruin that. For instance, why, why, oh why, would you go and attempt to attack those assassin ladies? You know the mission fails if you die, right? And that I don't get a chance to use a Phoenix Down or Raise? So when you go down, and you WILL, it's game over for me. How hard could it possibly be to get behind Ramza so my White Mage can heal you? She's really good, you know, she's mastered the class. But no, you have to go in, guns-a-blazing before I can even move, thus assuring your death and my failure.

[1337W422102]

Cosmic Break [PC]:
Wow, this is awful. It's like they took Exteel, extracted all of the fun and badassness, and crammed genericness into it instead. Then, they omitted to properly translate it, and marketed it to weeaboos. Needless to say, that crap was promptly uninstalled.

Checking out the website shows me many anime women with awesome chests. It's like they cut out the middleman and just put the Rule 34 on their official site. On the one hand, I really hate fanservice-based marketing. On the other hand, boobies.

Yeah, it seems like just a case of LOLTITS, but, alas, that's only in the artwork on the website and loading screens. The game itself is overly chibified and really derivative.

[8 bit]

Dragon Quest 8 [PS2]
Decided to pick this one up again after a discouraging battle with Dhoulmagus. I caught up with him in some ancient ruins; where he basically kicked my team all over the place! Since then, I've gone from level 32 to level 37, acquired some more powerful weapons, and added a second Monster team by becoming the Rank B Monster Arena champion. All that's left now is to return to the ruins and face Dhoulmagus!

[SlyTF1]

Mass Effect 2:

I beat Mass Effect 2 in 19 hours!!! WHAT! I started at 1 in the morning, went to bed at 4 in the morning, woke up at 10 in the morning, and played the rest of the day and beat the game in 1 day! But that's not counting Layer of The Shadow Broker. I only play that once I'm done with the entire game.

[Shadowman]

Final Fantasy XIII:
BEATEN! And another Final Fantasy bites the dust. I think the only ones I haven't beaten are now are III, IV, IX, and XII...well, also XI and XIV, but those are MMOs and by definition unbeatable.

The game is...well, nowhere near as good as other Final Fantasy games. By a long shot. I really liked the characters, and the overall design, but while the story could be good at places, it was really weak at others. (How am I supposed to feel sad Nora died when she had all of sixty seconds of screen time, and they didn't give any details about her in that sixty seconds, not even her name?) The combat was fast a fluid...and bad. it's like they took the Gambit system from XII, and removed anything resembling control. I can swap out classes on the fly, but I can't even get Vanille to focus White Magic onto Lightning, and many battles were lost because once the party leader dies, it's game over. And that's not even getting into the painfully linear world...well, it's painfully linear, except for near the end.

And the music. It can be good at some points, but I'm still sore they left out every piece of recurring music from the Franchise except the Chocobo theme, and even that whole scene just felt like it was shoehorned in.

All in all, it wasn't a bad game, but it was a bad Final Fantasy.

[1337W422102]

Gears of War [PC]:
Feels good to be able to play this again comfortably. Getting your heart broken by a girl whose nickname is Dom will kinda put ya off Gears for a while.

Just took out the Seeders. Now to find Alpha. Or what's left of them.

[The Happy Locust]

Geez, have to force myself away from Minecraft these days.

Dead Rising 2
Gave Katie her day 3 zombrex. rescued 3 ladies from a plaza pool area, had to survive a sniper's gauntlet of hillbillies with high-powered rifles. Met with the reporter on the rooftop and after a protracted session of searching, found what appears to be the bad guy's helicopter. To the hotel!

Donkey Kong Country Returns
Working through world 5. Still enjoying this game, even if not playing it as much as I'd like.

[Shadowman]

Geez, have to force myself away from Minecraft these days.

The only reason I can stay away is because...well, I don't own it yet.

Final Fantasy Tactics:
Here's how things go:

GameFAQs: Here, try this strategy.
Me: *Does that strategy*
Final Fantasy Tactics: Here, try this sodomy.
Me: *Strategy fails spectacularly*

Still doing what I'm certain is the final couple missions in Chapter 2. Wiegraf is a pain in the ass. Velius is a bigger pain. Keeping Rafa "Rushing when you need to fall back" Galthena alive is the biggest pain.

[1337W422102]

Lunia [PC]:
Reached Level 79. Did a sweet Event with my guildmates which scored me about 23% of a level. Which is great, considering the most I get from doing stuff at this point was about 2%. I'll have my character, the jiggly-chested half-naked half-elf tomboy ninja thief chick, be reborn when I reach Level 80. (Hope you don't mind the old video; her current equipment loadout, shall we say, better compliments her assets.)

[The Happy Locust]

Geez, have to force myself away from Minecraft these days.

The only reason I can stay away is because...well, I don't own it yet.

Keep your distance, for it shall devour your soul... and by soul I mean time.
Honestly, don't ask me how digging through dirt for resources is addictive. It just is.

Dead Rising 2
Tracked down the escaping bad guy and brought down his helicopter. He's out cold and under lock and key for the time being. Ran a few more rescues including a Girl in a mermaid suit who had chosen the wrong day to 'go commando' and couldn't take off her tail costume. The military came and everything is all better... Wait, scratch that. The military's toast and some odd fog has enhanced the zombies. At least we're all safe in the... oh wait, the reporter's out in the open. Guess who has to go rescue her.


Donkey Kong Country Returns
Still on world 5. Unlocked all the levels but didn't have time to do the K-run or the boss battle yet.

[1337W422102]

Champions Online [PC:]
Er, NO progress yet because the download is slow as hell. Downloading 3 gigs at 25 KB/s? Man, this sucks.

[Shadowman]

Geez, have to force myself away from Minecraft these days.

The only reason I can stay away is because...well, I don't own it yet.

Keep your distance, for it shall devour your soul... and by soul I mean time.
Honestly, don't ask me how digging through dirt for resources is addictive. It just is.

I played the Alpha version on the website. it's barely 10% of the full game and yet it's hard to keep away...and now I really want to play it. You win again, Locust.

[The Happy Locust]

Geez, have to force myself away from Minecraft these days.

The only reason I can stay away is because...well, I don't own it yet.

Keep your distance, for it shall devour your soul... and by soul I mean time.
Honestly, don't ask me how digging through dirt for resources is addictive. It just is.

I played the Alpha version on the website. it's barely 10% of the full game and yet it's hard to keep away...and now I really want to play it. You win again, Locust.

All you need to do is find yourself a project. And on the note of both minecraft and progress...
my current work in progress.

[Shadowman]

Final Fantasy Tactics:
Just a smidge more grinding and I gave it another shot. The last few times, Velius was the bigger problem than the rooftop battle. Once I got past him, Draclau and his Ninja Bitches were a cinch. In fact, so has every story battle since then. When I only have to kill one person, everything's easier.

Got to Zeltannia, where another story battle required I only kill one guy. A pair of hits from Ramza (Who, due to being a Ninja now, both hits were on the same turn) and a shot of Holy from my White Mage and the battle was over. It was basically over when she targeted the enemy, but they don't count it until the spell is actually cast.

Now I'm going to hunt down not Thunder God Cid, but Beowulf, and the Bonus Character sidequests.

[1337W422102]

Champions Online [PC]:
PROTIP: If you feel like trying out the game, do not use the downloader from http://champions-online.com/download. Instead, use one of the mirrors on the left side of that page. You'll get better speeds that way.

Anyway, I tried it out (it's free; why not?) and so far I'm having fun. I really like the character customization and made a few cool characters. An intergalatic bounty hunter and a man who saves our chicks. Apparently, they've gotten much more lax with the "durr copyritez" rules as there are Level 40 Deadpools and crap running around.

I'm seriously contemplating buying two more character slots just to mess around and see what other characters I can make (and try out the other classes). Then again, because you can save costumes, I might as well just play as one of the two I posted, delete the other one to have a free charslot, make costumes and save them. I'm not so keen on dropping money on this game just yet, though I have liked what I've seen so far, which wasn't much, to be fair.

[Shadowman]

The last free-to-play-but-you-can-still-pay-if-you-want game broke my heart...

Final Fantasy Tactics:
Got Beowulf (Without the crappy dead-eyed CGI Zemeckis fell in love with) Reis (Not yet a smoking hot human), Worker 8 (Awesome robot buddy with chest cannon) and "Thunder God" Cid Orlandu, who is a God. I should be able to humanize Reis soon, so that's cool.

[1337W422102]

The last free-to-play-but-you-can-still-pay-if-you-want game broke my heart...

Same here, BlueComet. Same here.
A brief moment of silence and a 21 Rocket salute.

[Shadowman]

Final Fantasy Tactics:
Turned Reis back to her sexy human form, as planned...then I unleashed Cloud's spiky head upon Ivalice, more not interested than ever. Killed Elmdore and Dycedarg, who weren't really them but, in fact, more Lucavi. Then I went and saved Cloud from a bunch of thugs that he saved Aerith from. to be fair, he was unarmed and suffering from what I assume was Sephiroth doing some of his signature mental torture. Went out and got Cloud's Materia Blade, so he can do Limit Breaks now. So that's cool.

[Shadowman]

Monday Night Combat:
Main menu. Move your mouse over the Monday Night Combat logo and it'll turn into the Monday Night Hugs logo. The rest needs to be seen to be believed.

Final Fantasy Tactics:
Working on the Deep Dungeon. I have a set of maps so it's not TOO hard to find my way around. The hard part is fending off enemies while at the same time keeping them alive, thus keeping the battle going, long enough for me to find the right exit panel.

[1337W422102]

Monday Night Combat:
Main menu. Move your mouse over the Monday Night Combat logo and it'll turn into the Monday Night Hugs logo. The rest needs to be seen to be believed.

Oh hell yeah. I'm so Xfire video'ing that.

[Shadowman]

Final Fantasy Tactics:
Finished Deep Dungeon. Went back to an earlier part and picked up Excalibur, then took Meliadoul's Save the Queen (I wasn't using her anyway), switch Ramza back to Knight and gave him the "Two Swords" ability, and now he's dual-wielding two of the most powerful weapons in the game, which also give him Haste and Protect. I'm still getting used to his decreased mobility, but he is a goddamn destroyer now.