Schmid Game Log 2009.1

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

Contents 1 Completed

Completed

2009-06-30 01:29: Completed Samurai Shodown V Special on level 2/8 with Genjuro (he's so cool :).

2009-06-30 02:05: Completed on level 4/8 with Genjuro.

2009-06-29 23:09: Completed with Ryu on Easy, lost to M. Bison and got the bad ending. Found that X-ism is my style and Turbo 1 is my speed - these most closely represent what I'm used to from SF4.

2009-06-29 00:04: Completed with Ryu on Normal, lost to M. Bison.

Immersion!

Now that I am a million years old and my imagination is dull as a blob of butter, true immersion is a rare occurence. When I was a kid, all I needed was 29 green and yellow pixels to portray descending space horrors horrible enough to make killing hundreds upon hundreds of them it an utter necessity (Planetoid - Defender clone for Acorn Electron - my return key was never the same). I still like games with a 5-digit pixel count (81920 pixels should be enough for any game), but the concentration and focus of those days may sometimes be missing.

But Fallout 3 provides a world so convincing and interesting that I get completely immersed.

• 2009-06-28 11:28: I just killed Paradise Falls. Damn slavers. Didn't seem like the dialogue was prepared for that option. The Lamplighter kid talked about 'they're not going to forget this, you know'. Who's he talking about? I killed them all! Damn slavers.

• 2009-06-28 15:18: Talked to the president. Convinced him of the error of his ways. Now 'Take it Back!' is looking me in the face, and I don't know whether I should buy 'Broken Steel' or not...

• 2009-06-28 15:31: ... And I've bought it.

• 2009-06-28 16:19: Completed Fallout 3 main quest. Awesome, awesome game!

• 2009-06-28 16:57: Dammit, this ending stuff is completely broken. I had to retry the ending 4 times to get it right. It seems you have a time limit to do the final thing in the game, and if you don't, you still get an ending, and you'll never know that you didn't get it right. Also, the Broken Steel ending seems tacked on.

Thanks to Joakim for this wonderful Christmas present!

This game is freaking awesome - this is the perfect Pac-man game, and I do love Pac-man so...

• 2008-09-30: completed Championship Mode
• 2008-10-08: completed Extra Mode 2
• 2009-05-25: completed Challenge Mode 1
• 2009-06-11: completed Extra Mode 1 - my hands shake with adrenaline! :)
• 2009-06-11 11:46: completed Extra Mode 3
• 2009-06-25 01:32: Finally completed Challenge Mode 2 - the Dark Maze. Had a bit of trouble with this mode, where you can't see the maze, except for the area just around Pac-man and the Ghosts; finally I employed a hack: instead of going for maximum points (= extra lives), I instead focused on staying alive for the first 7 minutes or so by just dodging the ghosts and moving back and forth the tunnels. It worked, and then I started playing "for real" during the last few minutes. I certainly didn't get a lot of points, but now all the modes are completed. Now I just need the 400,000 points achievement - I earn half of that during a good playthrough...

• 2009-06-06 22:00: Walked into the village. This game sure looks great.
• 2009-06-07 09:54: Completed chapter 1-1. Sheva is so hot.
• 2009-06-07 12:53: The graphics still impresses me a lot. The harbor level is stunning.
• 2009-06-17 10:48: Argh, a huge pile of corpses! That can't be a good sign...
• 2009-06-17 11:01: ARGH!
• 2009-06-17 13:27: Eat lava, you mutated freak!!!

Why is that the last couple of levels in Resident Evil always needs to be boring science labs and ships? The last levels in RE5 are nowhere near as cool as the first ones.

• 2009-05-30: Put the game in the 'Box for the first time. Seems good.
• 2009-06-06: My summer vacation officially started today! Time to play some games!
• 2009-06-06: The invisible radiation walls are awful, and so is the water. You can actually defeat a couple of mini-bosses (which are awesome, by the way), and then die from falling into the water and sinking like a stone. Frustrating!
• 2009-06-06: The SJMG (machine gun) is surprisingly effective against the Mohole (worm biomech).
• 2009-06-06: Damn, those Hadoken-Biomecha are some mean mothers if you don't have the Bulldog (grenade launcher) or the Tarantula (missile launcher)...
• 2009-06-06 15:57: ARGH! Just killed two Biomecha and about 20 soldiers, only to swing into radiation and die! Annoying!
• 2009-06-06 16:30: Just reached the sequence with the helicopters. Awesome!
• 2009-06-06 20:10: Haha ... skipping cutscenes in BC amounts to shouting "Shut the F... up!" to the villians during their speeches.
• 2009-06-06 21:10: The ending is impossibly far out - it goes completely crazy Devil May Cry-style. I love it.

• 2009-05-03: Reached Persephone.
• 2009-06-06 17:08: After a long break from GoW:CoO, I resumed playing. Man, is the Persephone battle annoying; it's not the battle itself, but that you have to wait a few seconds for loading, run a few seconds, and then sit through a cutscene, and then you can try again. I lose focus every time it happens, and it ruins the experience. Why designers keep accepting these things in a modern game is beyond me.
• 2009-06-06 18:16: A nice surprise: a checkpoint in the boss fight. Now I'll never have to endure that annoying cutscene again!
• 2009-06-06 18:24: ... And she's defeated! Awesome game.
• 2009-06-06 18:39: Spud of War?

OK, so after playing Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur IV is ridiculously easy! I completed Story Mode 15 minutes after i started it, Arcade Mode a few minutes later, and Story Mode on Hard Difficulty wasn't much of a challenge.

However, the core fighting in Soul Calibur is still as great as ever. It is without comparison the best weapon-based fighter, the controls are tight, and the range of moves, characters, and equipment is huge.

... And if you want an actual challenge, you should try the Tower of Lost Souls. It gets pretty hard and there are a lot of levels.

This game is just outright silly at times. I created a fighter, a lovely red-haired Raphael-style girl with a green dress, aptly named 'Hottie'. It seems that the armour-destruction also applies to regular clothes, so amidst a fight, her dress will disintegrate and she will be fighting in her undies. She looks cute and all, but it is a bit ridiculous. :)

• 2009-05-26: Completed Story Mode (Normal difficulty) with Raphael. OK, this has got to be the easiest story mode ever. I completed it within 15 minutes after I started the game. I never lost a match, and the opponents hardly ever landed a hit. I've never appreciated the existence of a Hard mode more... By the way, I really like that Raphael apparently has become a all-out villain. Good man.
• 2009-05-26: Completed Arcade Mode. Defeated a guy called Algol. Didn't know his last name; probably either '58', '60', or '68' (programmer joke).
• 2009-05-26: Completes Story Mode (Hard difficulty) with Yoda. Dammit, this game is too easy! The 'Hard' difficulty is easier than the easiest difficulty in Street Fighter IV. That's just wrong.
• 2009-05-28: 300 Microsoft Points for unlocking Darth Vader? No freaking way.
• 2009-06-02: Completed Story Mode (Hard difficulty) with all characters.

• 2009-05-23: Completed Adventure Mode on Green Belt.

How can one create a game that is so simple, so easy, and yet so satisfying? Popcap really nails casual games, to such a degree that even hardcore gamers enjoy them. Typer Shark was my first, and later Zuma, and then Peggle.

The newest is Plants vs. Zombies. It is silly, cute, ridiculous and funny. I love it.

• 2009-05-17: Completed game.
• 2009-05-17: Completed all puzzles.

• 2009-04-17: Completed MKvDCU DC Universe campaign. Very easy compared to e.g. SF4.
• 2009-04-17: Completed Arcade Mode on Medium Difficulty with Scorpion. GET OVER HERE!
• 2009-04-20: Completed Mortal Kombat campaign.
• 2009-04-21: Completed Arcade Mode on Medium Difficulty with Batman.

Popcap games. This game has almost no gameplay, and yet it is still fun. How do the Popcap guys do that?

Jeppe Carlsen suggested that I tried this artsy game, and with only 5 minutes of gameplay, I was completely up for the challenge. It is indeed very artsy, and a bit depressing to boot. It made me reflect about life. I hate games that do that. And when the idea of the game is a representation of you wasting your life until your inevitable death...

But it is interesting nonetheless.

While looking for a simple platform-ish game to analyze for gameplay, I stumbled upon 'Don't Look Back', a free Flash game with extremely simple graphics and very simple Pitfall-like gameplay. There was something about the uncompromising style and the mystery of the setting combined with the title that interested me.

I'm not going to spoil the game by divulging the story, just go play it and figure it out yourself. It is very short and pretty hard, but well worth the time.

• 2009-03-02: Got every character but Seth.
• 2009-03-11: Unlocked all characters (The World Warrior achievement)

SF4 is kick-ass hard, and just completing Arcade Mode on medium difficulty requires all my concentration. The simple but utterly technical fighting mechanics offer a wealth of possibilities that keeps me interested.

• 2009-03-12: Trying to beat Goukens combo challenge, I just had an epiphany. Read more in my Street Fighter page.
• 2009-03-21: When visiting Morten, I inadvertently tried playing SF4 online. Obviously, I got totally pummelled, but the sheer excitement of it drew me into a black hole of desire. A desire, that could only be satisfied by joining the ranks of Xbox Live zombie slaves of Microsoft: Gold Members ('Gold Member' not 'Goldmember'). So, now I play SF4 online. Must ... give ... all ... my ... money ... to ... Microsoft .
• 2009-03-24: I was getting the shit kicked out of my semi-crappy Gouken on Medium difficulty. When finally completing it, I read somewhere that Seth didn't change difficulty on Hardest difficulty. This meant that I could beat him. And sure enough, during my first fight with him using Sagat, I did it ('World Champion' achievement).
• 2009-06-24: Completed with all characters on medium. C. Viper was a bitch to complete with. But I got it done... Now I never have to play with her again - I'll just kick her ass, the next time I see Yngve. :)

Cute little game.

I love SMG.

I do hate the swimming levels, though. The 3rd person 3D controls are hard, and it isn't very satisfying. Also, the camera seems to get lost from time to time.

• 2008-12-30: After demonstrating NG2 to Anders V.M. on Acolyte difficulty, I decided to restart the game on this difficulty. I reached level 6 on Warrior difficulty, but it just wasn't fun anymore. Maybe I'll resume the game on Warrior difficulty later on. Acolyte roughly corresponds to playing God of War on hard difficulty, except for the NG2 bosses, the difficulty of which vary wildly.
• 2009-01-04: NG2 may not be a good-looking game overall, and indeed, the game contains some real eyesores, and all surfaces seem to be made of the same plastic material as Ryu's suit, but there are a few highlights towards the end of the game. Chapter 10, which many has seen in the trailer released before the game, is a Lovecraftian subterranean world of grey stone in improbable geometrical shapes, with winged monsters hovering in the air above. Very nice.

Chapter 12 takes place inside Mount Fuji, which has erupted as a volcano. The insides of Fuji is a horrible nightmarish hell of lava and impossible shapes of rock and huge, snake-like tentacles winding themselves high into the air, joining at a huge pulsating dark heart. Crushed buildings stand teetering over the edges of the burning lava lakes, a bit reminiscent of Gears of War 2. This level has that finished, polished look, that the rest of the game is missing.

One of the things that impressed me the most about the original Ninja Gaiden was the end bosses. Surrealism was applied to enable an even greater climax towards the end. The same effect is achieved in Chapter 12, when I now delve even deeper into the heart of the mountain; I am met by a hazy wind-swept forest, bathed in a blinding blue light - unlike anything I've ever seen in a game. Wonderful. But I must go now - I am attacked by robotic tripod ninjas :).

Of course, the graphics is not what NG2 is about. It is about dismembering hundreds upon hundreds of evil ninjas.

2009-01-25: completed on Warrior difficulty - Play Time: 21:26, Karma Score: 19,728,474 (Lesser Ninja). With the training from playing on Acolyte difficulty, Warrior wasn't too hard. The bosses are still unfair, but some resource management takes the edge off them (saving Lives Of The Thousand Gods for boss fights is imperative). The fighting system is well worth playing the game again. There are still several weapons that I never really used.