Dragon Quest IX and another game completed!

Yay! I have now got Dragon Quest IX! I'm actually typing this about 2 minutes after getting it. See, i heard a heavy fall on the doormat and my brother looked over and said, don't get your hopes up. Then i checked... a big brown parcel in the lovely familiar shape we all love.

Anyway, i've already started my second ever walkthrough on DQIX and i'm probably never gonna finish it!
The game's so big! I'll start playing it in a minute or two.

In other news....... I finished Metroid Prime 3: Corruption! I'm so happy, i've been working on that game for ages trying to get through it all. I eventually got stuck on finding the last energy cell i needed. But, that wasn't gonna stop me from eliminating the Phazon scourge! Yeah... so i headed over to the planet Phaaze, the final planet, made completely from phazon! Samus Aran goes into a phazon 100% corrupted mode and has to vent her energy tanks! Now she is stuck completely in hypermode. If the yellow bar fills up on the top of the screen Samus is dead. Easy! Not! Phaaze's atomosphere depletes her energy over time! Kill some metroids and you'll get your health back. Man, it was really hard. If you die once, it's back to the beginning!

I won't go into much detail, but you have to kill a leviathan infant! Then, battle Dark Samus and kill her when she merges with the aurora unit stolen from the S.S Valhalla... It was really cool!

Now, time for some Dragon Questing! Embarrassingly, this is my first ever Dragon Quest game...

Hunting Spree

Over my summer holidays, so far, i have had a strange urge to play monster hunter tri non-stop!
I have leveled up over 10 levels to level 42. It's strange i also used to think my armour was so great until i found out you could get + armour sets.

Basically when you hit level 31, you reach the 'Elite Hunter Rank'. This means you can hunt + level monsters. For example, the Great Jaggi is the easiest boss in the game. Right now it takes me no longer than 2 minutes to kill it with a "wyvern sword 'flame'. (online is harder than offline. An offline Great Jaggi only takes 30 seconds to kill)" When i reached level 31, i checked out the new quests and went against a Great Jaggi + on my own... Bad idea. I didn't think it would be that hard! I abandoned quest and gathered some of my online friends to help me.

Since then i have obtained rathalos + armour which has 70 defense per piece. The best offline armour is Helios with 24 per piece! But, i'm rubbish compared to the legendary level 200+'s you rarely see online. They have full Alateron armour, the best in the game. Basically, it takes a long long time to get it!  have played on it for 180 hours and have enjoyed every bit of it... except the hard boss battles!

Anyway, if you haven't got Monster Hunter Tri yet, i can't explain anymore... Just get that game!

GTA: Chinatown Wars Game Guide

I have been working on one of those online game guides you guys may have used in the past when you're really stuck on a game and don't know what to do next.

If you don't know what they are then i'll tell you...

Sometimes people really get stuck on a game and they have no idea what to do to continue and progress through the game. You can either find out what to do on your own, or cheat and lookup an online walkthrough! GameFAQs is full of brilliant user submitted guides to help people get through hard levels on games. You can write anything about the game, but the most helpful guides include a complete and in-depth walkthrough of how to complete the main storyline of the game.

I have been working on an in-depth walkthrough for GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS. I finished the walkthrough and uploaded it a couple of days back. It includes data on all of the cars, bikes and boats as well as a complete walkthrough, a basics section and a section on all of the oddjobs which you don't have to do to complete the storyline, but you do have to do them for a 100% completion rate. That much only took me 9 days!

What i do is i sit with my DS and play the game whilst typing up the walkthrough. I recommend doing it. It's really actually quite fun and it's another way to express my literacy skills. See... i'm very modest!

Here's the link: 

http://www.gamefaqs.com/ds/950922-grand-theft-auto-chinatown-wars/faqs/60697

Birthday!

It was my birthday on the 15th and I turned 13!

Unfortunately, on his birthday, a couple of days before mine, my rabbit Buttons fell ill with a tumour that had re-grown, we decided he had a good 10 years of life and put him to sleep so he wasn't to endure any more pain. We we're all very upset.

It was a pretty good birthday as i when downstairs and saw a lot of presents waiting for me!

One of them, a large-ish sized package which i opened first...

A DSi XL! Yay! It came in the dark brown colour and i switched it on straight away.

The first thing i noticed was that the screens are... Massive! 93% bigger than my old DS Lite.

The dual cameras are still there - one on the front and one next to the mic. inside. The photo editing
software is amazing, and you can play around, morphing your friends faces and giving them mario hats
and so forth. There's an SD Card slot and you can exchange photo's from the SD card to the DS or vise versa.

The day after I went off with my twin brother and the rest of our youth group (TNT) to Spree! Spree is a massive event for young christians, like myself, where youth groups from all over come to Great Walstead. Great Walstead, luckily, is about a 10 minute drive from my house. It is a large private school with a massive field. This is where all of us (around 900 i think) pitch our tents. It lasted from late evening Friday to mid-afternoon Sunday. I slept with my brother and our friend, Lewis in the same tiny tent. When I woke up, i was hurting!

There was loads of activities such as football, basketball, unihock, rifleshooting, paintballing, lasershooting, quizes, movies, tug o' war, scavenger hunts and midnight walks!

When i got back i went downstairs and into the garden. My late rabbit's hutch was out... why? On further inspection, a small furry head popped up and stared at me, i smiled back. Tilly, my new rabbit (so soon!) had been at my house for less than a day as my parents had bought it for the family whilst Josh and I were at Spree. My sister seemed delighted (she was also delighted that we were out of the house for a weekend)!

Anyway... When I got back i had a lovely shower and dived straight into a GTA: Chinatown Wars which I also got for my birthday along with Warioware: DIY.

I won't go to far into it, but, all i can tell you is it's an amazing game! DIY is... well... a little confusing, but, all the same it's an interesting and amusing game aswell.

Today I ordered 'Advanced Wars: Dark Conflict' (Days Of Ruin) on the DS. I have heard so much about it and i have read about it in ONM. I have seen people recommend it countless times so i thought i might check it out!

I'm looking forward to playing it, sorry i haven't done a post for ages.

Final Fantasy Fever

I have always enjoyed Square Enix's games. Kingdom Hearts was my first one and is one of my favourite series. Final Fantasy is their most famous creation though and they have no created 13 main stories. Not to mention the countless spin-offs such as Revenant Wings and A-2 on the DS.

At my school's annual summer fair last Saturday, I trapsed through the small carboot sale on the field with a couple of friends. Obviously we were hunting for games and right next to each other were two games stools.
The first I looked at had mostly Xbox 360 and PS3 games along with a few, unheard, random PS2's. I moved along to the next one and glanced at the wide variety of DS games up for sale.

FFIII took my eye! I picked it up and checked it all. I had seen it reviewed countless times and seen it with a high rank (I think it was 85%) in my monthly Nintendo Magazine - ONM.

But (there's always a but)!

It was £8. I had already spent...
£1 on a lucozade,
£1.50 on a burger,
and 50p on an impossible and crappy sideshow run by my friend's dad.
Damn! I only have £7 (I said this very angrily and loudly by the way)!
The man (old man) at the store said i could have it for £7...

Yay!

Anyway, I got home, turned on my DS Lite, popped in the game and started to play!
The first thing that struck me was the awesome graphics on the opening movie.
For 2006, they're amazing!

I did realize, that playing a port of an old game like this, there would be hardly any movie clips and the objectives would be very vague. There was no chance of it having a tutorial!

You first play as this guy called Luneth (you can change the name to suit you, but i didn't).
He kinda looks like a... well... a girl - but hey...
He falls down a hole created by an earthquake and has to fight a load of goblins, eye fangs and carbucles.
What made me confused was, playing a lot of final fantasy games, some of the enemies have the same names. In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the carbucle is a kind of cat thing and in FFIII it's a weird purple shell with one eye in the middle... I'm confused!

Anyway, in the end - you travel through this goblin cave and the first boss battles you. A Land Turtle!
I killed it easily and then you meet this crystal who says your some kind of warrior of the light.

A couple of hours later and your fighting a Medusa. This gal has, like, 3000HP. And i was level 15. Anyway, I died because 3 of my party were silenced (cannot use magic) and i had no echo herbs to cure them.
I went back and endured many stupid enemies. I only had 1 guy silenced this time... my only magician...
Yeah.. I still managed to kill the snakey hairball and when i did i was really happy. Yay!

Then i went to this Dwarf Island in my boat: The Enterprise and found out that the dwarf's ice fang had been stolen and i had to get it back. So, I turned my party into toads and dived underwater, killed some annoying, hard hitting enemies and found the guy that had stolen the ice fang. After a long and loathsome fight, I managed to secure victory dealing a measly 26 damage with a wooden bow and arrow. I was happy again!

Until i noticed a weird shadow following me after the rogue criminal mysteriously vanished and took no notice of it until i returned to the dwarves, went to the alter and returned the fang. The rogue reaapeared, stole the ice fangs and ran off to the crystal of fire.

And that's about all i've done so far. It is actually a tricky little game and it can take a good while to actually level up...

Though, it's still epic!

A few more games wont hurt 2

Okay, instead of mercenaries - which i had left too long and was gone by the time i got to Gamestation - I bought 2 games!

GTA: Liberty City Stories - PS2 (18)

25 To Life - Ps2 (18)

-- Grand Theft Auto: Libert City Stories --

GTA: Liberty City Stories is an excellent accomplishment by the joint effort of Rockstar North and Rockstar Leeds (Also helped make Chinatown Wars - DS). Basically Toni Cipriani, part of the Lione crime family, had killed a made man and went into hiding, but now he returns to Liberty City, now voted the least place to succeed in America, and begins to takeover. Your main enemies are the Sindaccos - a rival crime family - who have the same plans and will shoot any Lione on sight. A lot of people will help you but too many will try to stop you, including your Mother who will call a hit on you. Around every 10 minutes some bald guy will drive to you in a vehicle and attempt to gun you down, usually they're really dumb and are dispatched easily. You can happily grab their dropped weapon and body armour for further use.

 A lot of the game is similar to Vice City - the same sound effects, coloured orbs around weapon pickups and radio controls. Personally I preferred San Andreas' radio controls and you could switch to the next or previous radio station with up and down on the d-pad instead of cycling through them over and over with the L1 shoulder button. A lot of the time the radio stations dont appear in the usual order and sometimes it even skips some, a minor glitch. The driving controls are much better than the previous Grand Theft Autos on PS2, they seem more real and there is a lot more varience in the speed and the mass effects the speed in a realistic way which is finished well with skid marks and nice smoke from the tires. The only thing I dislike about this game - again, alike Vice City you can't swim!

My Rating: 9/10

-- 25 To Life --

25 To Life is a much more linear game. It is about crime on the streets and follows the story of a man who owes a lot of money and ends up robbing a bank. For the first three levels you play as this guy and kill cops with various weapons from sub-machineguns to sawn-off shotguns. Pressing triangle allows you to switch to your melee weapon or on the police levels a zapper which allows you to apprehend criminals. One thing that i don't understand is that it can take nearly a whole round using  a pistol to kill an enemy whereas if you hit them once with a baseball bat they die instantly.

You have the main objectives which you must complete to finish the level and you have the secondary objectives which can be completed if you wish, but don't have to be. These can be things like, register 8 headshots or achieve 30% accuracy.

I dont think the game has much varience at all and it can get pretty boring because of that. The storyline is really not interesting and it's one of those games where you play a couple of missions and then turn the system off. The one thi ng that really stands out though is its impressive sound track full of catchy rap tunes which actually add a nice movie scene effects to parts of the game.

Nice effects, some cool guns, brilliant sound track, but, bad storyline and too linear.

My Rating 5/10

A few more games wont hurt

Sorry I haven't done a post in a while, but, hey. Anyway - got some new games from a few thrift shops.

GTA: Vice City - PS2 for £2.99
Judge Dredd: Dredd VS. Death - PC for £1

-- GTA: Vice City --

GTA's addictive - i got San Andres a year and a bit back, so, i know the casual "Drive there, kill him, drive back" gameplay style. I love running from the police, it's always fun seeing how many stars you can get before being shot to death then being brought back to life at a random hospital. I hate dying - you lose $100 and all your weapons which you payed thousands for, for all of the ammo too. The main thing i have against this game is that Tommy Vercetti (the player) cannot swim. Therefore, if you accidently drive your car off a bridge or something or fall out of your boat you drown instantly and get put somewhere 10 minutes away from the mission start. Dieing on missions is not fun!

It has a sweet soundtrack and some funny quotes on the radio stations. The weapons are impressive and some of the effects that show when you fire a weapon look impressive and realistic. Parts of the game can be pretty hard as you can have nearly 20 enemies against you with a pistol, at those times it gets frustrating and you need to save up for better weapons and more ammo.

A highly addictive game and the free roam aspects like any other GTA improve the whole experience. Some funny scenes and quotes from the radio, cinematics and pedestrians make it more amusing.

My Rating: 8/10

-- Judge Dredd: Dredd VS Death --

Judge Dredd i already had on PS2 so there's actually no difference in the two games apart from the fact that you can team up with players online in multiplayer - though because it's really old (2003) and not well known, not many people do so. It's pretty fun going around with your lawgiver mark II gun. You can change the ammo type with the mouse wheel to stuff like Hi-Explosive and Incendiary. Setting people alight, whether they're good or bad decreases your law meter - arresting people and completing objectives inctreases it.
If the law meter decreases to zero you lose the mission and the special judicial squad comes along and kills you... nice!

The whole game is linear as it is a FPS. Playing the game i think that the first person shooter style has been executed very well for the game and there seems to be next to no glitches when enemies like the vampires jump at you unlike other older game i've played where the enemies just morph through you. The variance in the ammo is really a unique and fun way to play the game and what i like is that there is a lot of difference between the ammo type. For example using a heat seeking bullet will work against civilians and anything living. But, when you get to the undead/zombie levels you cant use heat seekers against them of course, they don't give off heat - they're dead!

The main storyline is about an outbreak of vampires which occurs in the first mission of the game. This is the work of the dark judges and throughout the game you end up killing their mortal bodies and capturing there seemingly immortal spirit forms. In the end you go to the Dark Judges' home world which is void of life as the dark judges kill the living as every crime is committed by living things. You have a team of special Psi judges and they use there special mind powers to destroy Judge Death' mortal body... confusing!

Unique ammo types make it more fun, FPS style executed well, but, story mode very hard.

My Rating 7/10

Later after the next world cup match between Greece and South Korea, I hope to go up to gamestation and grab Mercenaries - PS2 for £2.99!