Schmid Game Log 2008

Schmid Blog Navigation 2009.2 2009.1 2008.2 2008.1 2007.2 2007.1 2006.2 2006.1 2005.2 2005.1 older gamelog literature log - see Talk:Schmid blog for maintenance information (edit blog header)

Personal Information name Jakob Schmid birthdate 1976-02-29 occupation Computer Game Developer homepage schmid.dk contact jakobschmid.dk

Contents 1 Completed

Completed

2008-12-09: I really love this game, but I just want to complain about something while I'm still angry :). The Leviathan boss fight. It is horrible. Not that it's hard, or doesn't make sense, because it does. But it is so buggy! I died about 10 times getting stuck on the floor, and a couple of times running up to a tentacle with revved up chainsaw, sawing into it, without any result. I quickly panicked, tried again two times, to no avail, and I ended up on the bottom of the lake. Guess the fight wasn't really tested - but it could easily have been left out of the game. However, I see why they left it in - the Leviathan is an extremely nice model...

2009-01-08: Completed wave 21-50 on Horde with Jeppe Carlsen, Peter Buchardt, Laurids, and Eske.

2009-01-10: I never got the Achievement for waves 1-20, so I had to do them alone! Note that Horde doesn't scale the difficulty with the number of players, so this was pretty difficult. But now I have the 'Hoard the Horde' achievement.

2009-02-22: Completed GoW2 on Insane difficulty.

2009-03-08: Completed GoW2 in co-op (Hardcore) with Thomas Steensen.

LittleBigPlanet is just the cutest!

This game is all about the graphics. It is interesting because it uses a theatrical approach, combining stage setups with mechanical animation driven by ropes and chains and some incredibly realistically rendered textures, such as patterned velvet and sponges. The attention to detail is remarkable, right down to real-time reflection in every little glass bead-pickup.

As a single player platformer, it has a small selection of levels, with some very innovative graphical ideas, but not much in the way of gameplay. The final couple of levels are really hard, which almost seems too much compared to the low difficulty of the rest of the game.

I played a game with Martin L. K., and to demonstrate 'Decorations', I decorated his face with a car engine! He proceeded to play a level with me, with the engine still strapped to his face. Hilarious!

This is the first time, I've played on a PS3, and I must say that this is definitely the coolest game console of this generation. Every little detail of the interface, the built-in web browser, the sound design (tuning orchestra, relaxing bell sounds, mmm...), is just so much cooler than the other consoles.

-- thanks to Camilla for lending me her PS3 and this cute game.

What a nice game. Bioshock succeeds in being a cool and well-thought out vision of retro sci-fi, and an effective horror game with nasty psychological twists.

If you have tried Bioshock, you'll instantly sense that this is a game of the highest quality; Everything is polished and intelligently designed. The graphics is overwhelmingly detailed and quite unique and the sound design is eerie and menacing. The AIs of the enemies also work perfectly. The Splices wander around aimlessly, talk errantly with themselves, and launch savage attacks, which fits the story background of the game perfectly. An important point in good game design: turn eventual weaknesses of your game into strengths through the story.

The game is quite long, and it sometimes seems like an grueling death march, but only because you are sucked into the dark, evil atmosphere of Rapture. The game isn't really hard, as the Vita-chambers (= respawn points) ensure that you always will be able to continue the game. I didn't really die a lot of times, just by playing a little bit carefully, which seems reasonable in the generally unpleasant surroundings provided by the game.

But a little warning to avoid disappointment - the end sequence for completing the game is ridiculously short and uninteresting.

Devil May Cry is a series of hardcore action adventures, known for its complex fighting system and difficulty. I've played DMC3 a bit, and found it very difficult. I usually play quite defensively in this kind of game, learning to block perfectly, and use counterattacks, but DMC doesn't cater for that style of playing. You have to be all out aggresive all of the time, and blocking really isn't a factor, although there is a great dodging system in DMC. To avoid being totally pummeled, I started DMC4 on the easy 'Human' difficulty. Completing the game was perhaps a bit too easy, but it was nevertheless an extremely entertaining experience.

DMC4 is an epic and operatic story of demons and romance. It can be a bit much at times, but I guess I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, as I enjoyed it very much. The one-liners by Nero and Dante, and the braindead sexiness of the female support characters are annoying, but get balanced out by some very entertaining bad guys.

The fighting system in DMC4 is complex, yet easily learned by way of tutorials. The first tutorial is an insanely action-packed boss fight between Dante and his brother (?), Nero and I don't hesitate to state that this is the most entertaining tutorial in the history of gaming. And as you learn more abilities, the flow and satisifactory feel of the battles is easily the equal of both God of War and Ninja Gaiden. When you have completed the game, you'll want to play it again, to learn to use the abilities to their full potential.

And I will do so - on 'Devil Hunter' difficulty. Thankfully, I get to use the experience gained during the first playthrough, so I won't be bored during the second playthrough.

2008-11-22 16:12 - completed DMC4 on 'Devil Hunter' difficulty (BABABBBDCA BCBCCAADBD)

Condemned is a hardcore horror game, From the moment you lose your gun and you hear the footsteps of the John Carpenter-esque psychos running in the decrepit buildings, your adrenalin surges like crazy and even moving from one room to the next becomes an unsurmountable challenge. And in this game, like its spiritual predecessor, Manhunt, some of the most horrific acts of violence are those you must commit yourself to survive.

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OK, the end of level 8 in Condemned is almost over the edge of what a could be expected from reasonable playing experience. It is even more unpleasant than watching a horror movie with constant shock effects (e.g. 'Shutter') and gore, because you are that much more involved in the game. Condemned has just the amount of mystery and good (although simple) gameplay to keep you in the game through such hardships, and the previous levels had left me brazen and cold, just running through the levels, aggressively attacking anyone who came in my way; but level 8 had a crescendo of unpleasantness, leading up to a big, bony fist of horror and shock to the face, which left my ears ringing and my heart beating like crazy. That really wasn't very nice. I think it subtracted about two days from the length of my life.

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The game reaches an artistic peak a few chapters into the story, when you start seeing shadows of a feathered figure in inaccesible doorwars, birds bursting through a eerily lit window, and the psychopathic hobos start to act less human than seems reasonable. The game hints of something larger, and the good and bad news is that the larger theme is never fully discovered. But - hey ho - perhaps the sequel will tell more of the story. I will play it, that's for damn sure.

Braid is one of the most ingeniously designed puzzle games I've ever played.

The game plays with different approaches to resolving the paradoxes of time travel and causality. The models of time and space differ between levels, including the combination of time and space axes into one and the creation of parallel worlds with different event causalities. The unfamiliarity of such puzzle elements make some simple-looking puzzles exceedingly hard to solve, yet always does the solution seem simple when found.

The graphics consist of beautiful hand-painted backgrounds that slowly change while you watch them, like the shimmering intensity of a Van Gogh painting. In stark contrast, the sprites are primitive in the extreme, reminiscent of Super Mario, but this seems to be a conscious artistic choice. Oddly enough, the combination of the crude sprites and the lush backgrounds doesn't clash while playing the game.

To go with the backgrounds, the music is a tasteful combination of Irish folk music, lullabies, jazz ballads, but everything must suffer the consequences of repeatedly being reversed and fast forwarded, like a kid playing with a tape recorder. This is a radical sound design choice, and is very admirable. Rarely are game developers bold enough to be so radical.

The style and themes of Braid are very adult-oriented, and the plot seems to revolve around some poetic representation of a divorced man who wishes to turn back the time to before everything went bad in his life. This, combined with the maturity of the puzzles and the aesthetic qualities of the visuals and audio, makes Braid an unusually interesting experience for the seasoned gamer.

I've played GH3 with some friends a few times, and I really liked it, so I finally bought it. Not to be a show-off, but I got the game 3 days ago, and even though I attended a 2-day weekend seminar with the rest of Tonic Games this weekend, I still managed to complete Medium Level with a five star ranking on all songs; many songs, including Metallica's 'One', on the first attempt. I didn't know about the Dragonforce-powered horrors of the credits listing, so I was caught totally by surprise! But now on to Hard Mode...

With the release of the new batch of Xbox 360s (now without guaranteed hardware failure within the first month), I caved in and bought one. The first real game I played on my first 7th generation console was Gears of War. In the beginning, I just couldn't stop walking slowly around and looking at the graphics; and Gears is very nice to look at indeed.

The environment is post-apocalyptic, with streets and houses being transformed into ruined battlegrounds. Just the way I like it. The graphics is extremely detailed, and some objects have simulated newtonian physics, which is new to me (never got into the whole Half Life 2-thing, even though everybody told me I should :). The first dangling corpse I found was my plaything for several minutes, pushing it around and shooting at it. That being said, I believe that the physics in a game like this will seem ridiculous in a few years, when the evolution of that particular game feature will have run its course.

Gears is very enjoyable, if you like the whole 'playing soldiers' thing. The game is seen solely from the perspective of relatively mindless grunts, which somehow suits the game perfectly. By the way, the main protagnoist, Marcus Fenix, is played by John Di Maggio (Bender from Futurama). One of the other marines, Augustus Cole, seem to be inspired by his sinister namesake from X-Files episode 28 'Sleepless' - the Jacob's Ladder-inspired Vietnam-episode.

But the action is like nothing I've ever played. The use of cover, the hip/shoulder fire mechanics, reloading, everything is just the way it should be, and you are pulled into the action with wonderfully realistic simulated hand-held camera and punchy and detailed sound effects.

Completing the game on Casual difficulty wasn't much of a problem, indeed the game seems to be tested and designed so as to have a perfectly smooth learning curve, and annoy the player as little as possible. I found a single spot with an annoyingly placed continue point, and a few textures that weren't loaded after continuing, but that was about it.

The game is short, but has plenty of multiplayer options, so I'll have to buy a second controller and try it out with some friends.

-- update 2008-09-14 19:59: Completed GoW on Hardcore. I had a bit of trouble with the end of chapter 4. I guess the solution is contrary to my playing style, but to quote Cuzit from his GameFAQ:

You have thirty seconds to get to the APC. Two Boomers and an Emergence hole stand in your way. The thirty seconds doesn't activate until the Emergence hole activates or one of the two Boomers falls. On Casual or Hardcore, just head outside through either door and make a huge freaking run for it. If you run quick enough, you can get to the APC before the Emergence hole appears, saving you a lot of trouble. That's the only strategy; run like hell.

General RAAM is a bit too difficult on hardcore for my taste. I loaded an earlier chapter to get 12 Torque Bow shots ready for the battle. I equipped the Longshot along with the bow, and I got him. If you are having trouble, make sure you have the 12 Torque Bow shots.

Phew. The final boss, Metroid Prime, was quite hard. My pulse still isn't back to normal, and I'm typing at about 20 WPM faster than I usually would, due to adrenalin pulsing through my body. Unlike certain other games (Onimusha 2, God of War), the difficulty of the final boss in MP isn't unfair, it's sufficiently hard for a game of its length. This reflects the entire design of the game - everything is as it should be, and if you like this genre, you will certainly enjoy MP.

If you don't know MP, you might be tempted to deduce that it is a first person shooter. This isn't quite true - it is certainly first person most of the time, and you do shoot a lot (it's the way you open doors, for instance), but it isn't the focus of the game. The main gameplay revolves around exploration and gathering items and upgrades for your character, the female bounty hunter Samus Aran. Memorable upgrades are the 4 different visors, including the awesome infra-red and x-ray visors. Very cool.

Not to say that there isn't action or suspense in this game; the bounty hunters are very scary, they tend to jump at you from nowhere, uttering intimidating shouts in their deep, alien voices. The fights with pirates work very well, the AI works perfectly, the pirates seem to react to your actions (this may all be in my head, though :), and when they die, they are thrown back, hammering into the ground with perfect ragdoll physics. Just the way it should be.

It's nice to play a game where patience and thoroughness is a virtue. Metroid Prime is such a game. Studying your environment, gathering information, learning the history of the extinct Chozo civilization is important for success in MP.

To obtain synergy, I've also been playing Super Metroid, which has remarkably similar gameplay to MP, even though it's from 1994. I haven't yet completed it, but one of these days I will - that is, if I take some time off from

- Thanks to Jeppe for lending me this game and his GameCube

Just completed Space Invaders Extreme whilst waiting for my clothes to dry at Aladdin Montvask at Christianshavn.

Onimusha 3 is the best Onimusha game by far. The controls and game design are perfected, and the story is interesting, if a bit far fetched. The player alternates between controlling Samanosuke Akechi, in the likeness of Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers), and Jacques Blanc, in the likeness of Jean Reno (Leon). The European and American editions of the game do not have the original voice acting of these actors, but are replaced by english-speaking voice actors. Too bad...

The game is joy to play throughout, and the battle system is very good. The 'Issen' critical moves are no longer a secret, but are actually taught in a new training mode. I must admit that I never got the hang of chain critical moves or the 10-slash combo. It wasn't necessary at all, as the game was even easier than its predecessors. The end bosses never had a chance, as I was fully upgraded with both characters, and had ridiculous amounts of health and magic items; I beat every end boss (there were 5 end bosses) in the first attempt without ever being in trouble. Vega Donna, Ranmaru, and the first Nobunaga form all died from me unleashing all the magic attacks I could afford, without landing an attack on me, and the final end boss wasn't a problem. When commenting on Onimusha 2, I complained about the bosses being to difficult compared to the rest of the game. That has certainly been ironed out; I think the game is a bit too easy overall on normal mode.

The game runs in interlaced mode, and it actually looks like crap on a LCD screen. The game uses a lot of dithering, which doesn't read very well on a modern screen. But on a CRT screen, it looks absolutely beautiful; on such a screen, it is fully comparable to e.g. God of War. By the way, the intro movie is just about the most awesome ninja-action anyone can hope for! I can't wait until the movie directed by Christophe Gans (Silent Hill) comes out.

I also completed "Adventures of Heihachi" - a short mission involving the ambiguous character Heihachiro Honda. Not very interesting. I tried the Oni Target Practice, but I didn't bother completing it.

This game, also known as Rayman 2: The Great Escape, is one of the early great platform games for the PS2.

The graphics, though very well-made and present in abundance, is a bit crude compared to e.g. Ratchet and Clank. Though Rayman himself is perfectly smooth and his nose is big and round, the enemies and the levels have fewer polygons that we have come to expect from PS2 games. It may be due to some reuse of models from a PS version, which is very similar.

The sound is severely lacking, the funny voice-acting is very badly recorded and is almost inaudible at times, but even more important, the response sounds from weapons and the environment are terrible, and even completely lacking at times. As an example, the final upgrade to Raymans weapon has a very big explosion and no sound at all.

The music, however, is a different story. This soundtrack is very beautiful and cute, and at times reminiscent of the fantastic Medievil game soundtracks. It spans a range of genres and is very polished and fits the style of the game perfectly. The composer is Eric Chevalier.

But the most important thing about a platformer is the platforming gameplay itself. I must say that Rayman handles very well overall, with only a few things to deduct from the experience; his shots are fired using auto-face, which works most of the time, but is far from perfect He also has a build-up attack, which is hard to get to build-up. But worst of all, Rayman has the ability to swing from ray-ropes which is activated by shooting, and this does not work well at all. I have died many times, trying to grab one of those suckers, only to shoot into the air and fall to a fiery death. Very annoying.

The game was a pleasant experience with many nice features and ideas, and with plenty of races, riding on living missiles, and flying death-defiantly through lava tunnels with an exploding powder keg as propulsion. Crazy!

-- thanks to Camilla for lending me this game for the weekend

Scenario 52% complete:

• Oyu: 61%
• Kotaro: 9% (we hardly knew ye)
• Magoichi: 31%
• Ekei: 27%

Onimusha 2 is like a watered-down version of Ninja Gaiden. It has all the basic elements, it takes place in feudal Japan, and the Onimusha series even has a historical context (even though there are extreme anachronisms like rockets and robotic submersibles :). Both games have excellent production qualities overall (despite of the truly horrible jap-rock song in the main menu *shudder*), and have grand storylines and dramatic and beautiful FMV sequences involving ninjas and demons.

But when push comes to shove, both games are all about fighting. And that's where Onimusha falls short. Onimusha 2 has 5-6 different melee weapons, depending on your thoroughness, and each has surprisingly few moves. And although you can unlock more moves with secrets, you don't exactly trip over these during your first playthrough. Coupled with the fixed camera angles, that comes with the prerendered backgrounds (as in Resident Evil 1-3), the battle system may be annoying at times. Overall, it is very satisfying, albeit a bit shallow, but when you reach a boss fight, you will be frustrated.

And that's another problem; on the normal difficulty setting (which is the hardest one accessible during the first playthrough), the main part of the game, where you kill hundreds upon hundreds of demons, the fightinh is almost too easy. Unlike Ninja Gaiden, you are not forced to learn advanced techniques (like the counter-moves called "Issen" in Onimusha), and you'll just fall back on your basic hack 'n slash, which works just fine. But the game has 5-6 real boss fights, and here the difficulty ramps up to vertical. So if you're like me, you'll have to fight each boss a number of times while you actually learn the more advanced techniques of the fighting system, and the game doesn't have continue points like God of War, only save points, so you'll have to run the savepoint to the boss every time, which gets tedious.

And a note of caution, if you are going to play this game: when you reach the big flying action sequence near the end, do try to conserve your health and magic items for the final boss battle with Nobunaga, which is insanely difficult, if you didn't.

The replay value of this games is tremendous, as you have multiple storylines with different characters, minigames with frog-stabbing, the lot. I, however, don't care, because I'm not going to play it again. I'll try Onimusha 3 instead :).

... I just looked through the concept art by Keita Amemiya, and it is very nice. He had a lot of great ideas that never made it to the game.

2007-09-14:

Oh man! This is my kind of game. I started playing for real yesterday, and I was scared beyond my wits. I had to stop playing when I got tired, because I just couldn't survive another shock. When tonight I encountered a certain remote location in the Forest World, a single bone-chilling howl sent me running back to the portal to The Room to save. I investigated the entire rest of the world before entering that horrible place.

This game has a quality that is very rare and appreciated more by me than by most people. The world is small, but incredibly detailed and rewards my slow and investigative style of playing. The best example is the view outside the window. I've literally spent minutes at a time gazing out the window, learning every detail of the neighbourhood by heart. When the pink bunny balloon suddenly appeared in the sky, I was in a state of shock! I do not know whether to take this ill omen too seriously, but I do not like that bunny...

2007-10-28:

I've returned to this horror masterpiece, and the game just keeps impressing me... The plot is mysterious, I'm keeping notes in a Memento-like manner, the graphics is wonderfully detailed, even at locations you don't visit more than once. For instance, in the apartment world, It seems as though every single apartment have received special attention and a unique design: strange colours on the walls, unique lighting due to scattered furniture. The colour of the city sky subtly changes with time, and the way that the waking world and the other worlds interact is puzzling and wonderful. But first and foremost - the atmosphere is convincingly dark, paranoid, and, at times, pure horror that makes you want to pause the game and turn on all the lights. In total, I'm loving it!

2008-04-22:

I'm dying here ... This game is the scariest sh*t imaginable. I've had to turn the volume of my stereo down, to be able to play it; the only alternative is switching to watching Star Trek or something. The constant stress of the man in the trenchcoat that can't be killed ... the hauntings in room 302 - the shadow of a little boy standing in the closet next to the bed when I wake up, crying with a hundred voices. I mean, what is that? That's just pure evil on the game designers' part. I hate them. So much.

2008-05-13:

I just realized something: This game really shouldn't be played at night. It's just too much. It's all well and good, when I can look around and the sun is out, people walking around outside the window, my darker instincts kept at bay by rationality. But when its dark, I cannot bear it. So this tip is for you who are like me, and roleplay this game all the way through: play it during the evenings - never play it at night. Better for your health that way. Yesterday night I played the return to the water tower level, and I had to take desperate measures to keep playing; I turned the TV way down, and started some random episodes of The Simpsons on my laptop on the coffee table. Combined with my usual tactics of turning my head away from the TV each time I wake up in the game, expecting the worst.

As Yngve prepared me for, Room 302, which in the beginning is your sanctuary from the horrors of the dreamworlds, gradually becomes the place you fear the most. The dreamworlds have their own reasonable gamelogic, each level has its own Victim, and I've seen every level once before. But in the Room 302, anything goes. I've seen ghostly funghi crawl slowly across my walls, blood running from my faucet, not the mention the worst of them (like the Wailling Wall of Terror).

During the evening, my mind is prepared. Every time I open the bedroom door, I expect something standing in the hallway, screaming at me. I creep into the living room like a ninja, fearing to tread each step. So when I looked out the peephole and saw my own corpse staring back at me from outside, I was ready for it. I almost laughed, content that the game is not going to kill me before I finish it. During the evening, it's not so bad. But the time is 21:04, and the shadows are growing longer. I think it's time to switch to R-Type...

Oh, and by the way, even though I fear Room 302 more than the other levels, something gnaws at my gut right now. Eileen looks stranger every time I look at her, with brown, pulsating blemishes all over her bruised body. And she talks errantly, telling her mother to wake up. Naturally, I fear the worst...

 City    Seaside  Funfair  Nursery
0:00:23  0:12:48  0:16:38  0:18:25
0:03:02  0:23:13  0:22:51  0:21:21
0:01:26  0:06:12  0:32:47  0:28:25
0:03:52  0:20:30  0:24:11  0:44:50
0:06:28  0:23:06  0:39:39  1:00:06
0:28:41  0:27:05  0:20:42  1:03:54
0:20:53  0:13:28  0:27:48  0:22:18
0:24:43  0:31:51  0:39:46  0:42:16
0:21:20  0:09:43  1:04:51  1:03:38
0:11:32  0:25:11  0:11:25  3:15:24
=======  =======  =======  =======
2:02:20   :  :07 

2008-05-02 02:55 Baby difficulty (very easy) - TP-2H "Pow Armor" - stage F.A

2008-06-01 20:11 Kids difficulty (easy) - stage F.B Extremely nice with alternative levels; at the end of level 6.1, my R-13A 'Cerberus' changed into a monstrous B-1D 'Bydo System α', and I fought a dogfight against a R9-A 'Arrowhead'. Now I know who the lone red ship in the very beginning of stage 1.0 is :). Very nice.

Best 39 DKK I ever spent :). Enjoy the unique style of this game, the immersive gameplay that rewards style and skill, and the humour, which is extremely silly (Die-fighters, "Silvia, I am your father", etc.) The game is short and sweet, and the difficulty is just right. There aren't that many flaws, perhaps except for the stupid and boring 'punch missiles into star destroyers' bit near the end of the game.

The most important tip for this game: Slow - Zoom - hold punch deals the most damage per second. Use it on bosses, they won't like it.

When you complete the game, you get an extra bonus in the form of a music video - you'll love it! And now I can play as Dante from Devil May Cry, complete with sword/gun-combos. Awesome.

Tenchu has always been a favourite of mine. Unlike so many other games, this game rewards patience, skill, and thoroughness. Tenchu III: Wrath of Heaven added RPG-elements: the ability to gather scrolls from stealth kills, yielding new abilities to your ninjas. Some of these abilities are quite uninteresting, and some literally changes the way you play the game. Each level is very open-ended and non-linear, and can be completed in infinitely many ways, and the special abilities and items of your ninjas enables some very creative solutions indeed.

That being said, Fatal Shadows is almost the worst of the Tenchu series (the horrible PSP version being the worst). However, and this is the reason I completed it, the actual gameplay of this game is as good as any of the games. It is basically the same game as Wrath of Heaven, except the ability to drag corpses around has been reintroduced, and the items and specials are a bit different.

The problem with Fatal Shadows has to do with story and characters. The story of the series usually involved completing missions for your master, dealing with corruption, and towards the end of each game, you get closer and closer to hell, killing demons and the like. Very satisfying stuff, and stuff that every Ninja Gaiden-fan should appreciate. However, the story in Fatal Shadows is bland and boring, there are no supernatural creatures at all, and revolves around the two girl ninjas, Rin and Ayame, which are poorly defined and have anachronistic dialogue. I really miss someone to identify with, Rikimaru, Tatsumaru, or Tesshu. Apart from being boring, the story actually doesn't seem to make any sense. Every movie seems to be detached from the others (apart from recurring characters), and you never figure anything out about the plot.

The AI is basically the same as in the first Tenchu game, meaning that enemies will wander in predefined routes, react deterministically to certain situations (e.g. always eat poison rice :), and when alerted, behave like as intelligently as locust, e.g. climb over houses instead of walking around them, or stand in corners and jump incessantly.

The level design is OK, but is sometimes plagued by invisible walls, which, as always, ruins the illusion of the game. The sound effects are basically the same as in the first Tenchu, and they seem too shoddy for a 2005 game. The music is quite good.

If you wonder whether to play this game, you have two choices: If you haven't played the other games in the series, play those first. Wrath of Heaven is extremely good, and has all the qualities of this game, and almost none of its flaws. If you have played and liked all the other games, you will still like this one because of the great gameplay, and the new special abilities.

Upon completion, I unlocked two new outfits - one for each ninja, 'Red Blade' mode (point attack), and japanese voice-overs, which makes the stupid dialogue seem a bit more mysterious and interesting.

FlOw is a little work of art, in the form of a game. It is not particularly long or difficult to complete, but it is a very relaxing and pleasant experience. At 7.99 USD, it was worth every cent :).

Yes - I know - I'm an idiot. Its just because I almost completed God of War with Nabaz and Jauert in 2006-ish, and again with Bjørn Bølling sometime later. So I didn't think I had to do it again. But after completing the sequel and with 'God of War: Chains of Olympus' coming up, I just had to finish this awesome game from start to finish. I played it on the Spartan difficulty (hard), which is the way to play this game. It gets tedious too quickly on normal mode. However, on Spartan difficulty, a few sequences are extremely hard.

The first really tough part was the sequence with moving floors, archers, and tonnes of harpies in Pandora's Temple. Equip your fully upgraded Blade of Artemis and move to the far back of the room - here no archers fire on you except those in the door opening. Slaughter the archers in the door, until no more appear, and start killing harpies. It may be appropriate to equip the Chains of Olympus again to take care of the harpies with a move like square, square, hold square. Anyways, when all the harpies are dead, kill the remaining archers.

The first battle with Ares is pretty difficult. Note, that you can block almost all of his attacks. You should use Army of Hades as often as possible, and use your Rage of the Gods to get more free Armies of Hades and powerful attacks. When he starts to fly and throw fireballs, roll out of harms way, stay there a while, roll to a new location, etc. Find the correct rhythm, and you won't get hit. Eventually, he'll have a O over his head, and you enter a minigame (tap O, followed by two random buttons, the second of which has a really small window).

The next sequence is an illusion/dream, where Kratos must protect his wife and daughter from a large number of Kratos-clones. Referred to as the 'Clone Wars', you should have fully upgraded Blades of Olympus, Army of Hades, and Poseidon's Rage. Use your Blades to keep the clones away from the family (the family cannot be hurt by your attacks) - use square, square, hold square to continously sweeping the clones away. When overwhelmed, do a 'full whammy': activate Rage of the Gods, Army of Hades, and 3 x Poseidon's Rage. When your family is low on health, cast Army of Hades and hug family (hold O): the family gains health, your health depletes, but your Rage increases (very important). Repeat this until you have full Rage again, then do another 'full whammy'. Remember to watch your own health, avoid direct contact with enemies, continue to sweep them away. Near the end, clones start to appear with Artemis Blades, you should switch tactics to grabs with O.

The final battle with Ares is handled by carefully avoiding his 'force push' followed by a dash of his tenctacles. He uses this attack when he is close, but not in contact with Kratos. Lure him into attacking with his sword by running just out of range, and then attack him with sequences of square, until a minigame appears (tap O). Follow up by R1 and sequences of square. The 'Stone Columns' attack must be initially blocked, and the rolling away from the columns themselves. If you are lucky, you'll get a few attack sequences on Ares, and he'll die.

Important note: After the movie sequence when killing Ares, you receive a new weapon and are given control of Kratos. do not press start to enter the upgrade menu, as the game will crash, and you won't complete the game. Just resist the temptation and walk into Olympus and save the game! I did it, and had to do all the Ares battles again. Hard work - but so much easier the second time around...

Finished Konquest Mode - and how incredibly lame it was. It follows the less-than-proud tradition of such sub-games as Tekken Force. I only played through the damned thing to obtain new fighters for the main attraction in MK:D, namely the Kombat Mode. MK:D is a very good fighting game, with lots of moves and complex combos. Konquest Mode, however, is horrible. You run around in a boring world, without any means for interaction, except pushing people out of the way, hitting them over the head, or pressing X to hear their one-liner. The maps are quite large, so this running around becomes extremely boring. The events in Konquest Mode are mainly character tutorials, which are lame to get through, and when you finally are put into a real fight, you may get pummeled because you haven't learned anything from the tutorials. The story is sometimes a tiny bit interesting, even though I figured out 'the great plot twist' in the very beginning. Other times, however, the story devolves into pure nonsense. I will give you an example. The main character, Shujinko, is out late at night, looking for Hotaru, the 'Chief of Police' in the Order Realm. When he finds him, Hotaru informs him that he has broken a curfew, and he arrests him on sight. Shujinko is transported to a prison in the Order Realm, where he awaits trial for 20 years or so. Shujinko actually grows older and attains a long beard in prison. Then, suddenly, his guards are attacked and killed by an assassin. The now elderly Shujinko escapes from the prison, finds Hotaru, who tries to convince Shujinko that he would actually testify to the fact that Shujinko did not break the law at all (even though Hotaru arrested him himself). But now, that he's escaped from the prison, he would have to sentence him to death. The old Shujinko rapidly turns into a young woman and kills Hotaru. Afterwards, he finds a Kamidogu (key to another Realm) lying around somewhere. The author may have had a tumor or something, because that is just stupid. But anyways, its done, and I've got Zombie Liu Kang to play with now :).

- update 2008-02-27 23:05 Kompleted Kombat mode (normal) with Scorpion.

- update 2008-02-28 Obtained all characters. Lost the Pollux Gamelabs MK Tournament to Jeppe Carlsen (damn his bones).

God of War II may be the best action game on the PS2, with tough competition from Resident Evil 4 and other great games. The spartan Kratos is betrayed by Zeus, and he pummels and mauls his way through the Greek mythology in his usual fashion. I just completed God Mode (Rank: Mortal - probably not so good, but who cares), and I ended up standing in front of the TV, shouting at Zeus while bashing his head into the rocks of Olympus itself. Yes, a great experience, especially if you enjoy the mix of epic adventure and over-the-top violence. The pacing of the game is absolutely great, you are never bored, never confused, save for a few stupid puzzles involving columns blocking elevators, and the gameplay constantly changes to keep you interested. Grappling and swinging across a collapsing bridge, riding on Pegasus, pulling the wings of Griffins, indulging in gruesome minigames involving dismemberment and pulling eyes out of sockets, all this is only topped when a boss appears. I was especially amazed by Clotho, the third Sister of Fate, fat, mutated and disgusting, sitting motionless in her throne, flailing her many small arms.

The graphics are wonderful, I find myself gazing at the environment, admiring creature designs and animations, everything just comes together. However, there is one sequence which does not cut it at all - the cinematic sequence and gameplay around the destruction of Sparta and the Kraken boss fight. This sequence is confusing, strangely paced, and the cinematic sequences are not at all up to the standard of the rest of the game. It seems unfinished and it probably is.

When playing the game, I was wondering if the music score was performed by live orchestra or ingeniously created using samples. When watching the extras DVD, it was clear: the score is fully orchestrated, with a brass orchestra from London and strings and 40-voice choir from Prague. It is dramatic, beautiful and sometimes delves into the atonal, like the score of a 60s epic fantasy film. Doesn't get any better than this.

The voice cast of GOW II suits the game perfectly. It features actors such as Michael Clarke Duncan (as seen in 'The Green Mile') as Atlas, and Harry Hamlin, who played Perseus in the 1981 movie 'Clash of the Titans', resumed the role 27 years later in God of War II. Linda Hunt is Gaia, and Terrence Carson delivers his usual forceful voice of Kratos.

So, upon completing the game, I received the 'Bonus Play' option, to start the again with all the experience and weapons accumulated during the first play, and possibly with a new outfit for Kratos. One of the outfits was the "Cod of War" - the horror! Reminds me of the Panda costume of Onimusha :).

Thanks to Joakim for this wonderful Christmas present!