League of Legends

I've been meaning to post about this League of Legends for awhile now, but I'm caught in a cycle of not obtaining footage.  I realize I have no footage, so I go to play it and get some, but then I get caught up in playing the game causing me to forget to grab footage.  So, anyhow, here's my random footage-less babble about League of Legends

Even though I'm making my way through my game collection, I'm still playing LoL on the side as my competetive outlet.  I usually squeeze in a few matches every week.  It's updated regularly and new champions keep it fresh, so I'll probably be playing it for awhile.  My completion status for the game is going to be to reach level 30.

The game is a direct derivative of DOTA, created by one of the guys who created DOTA.  It's free-to-play and there is no in-game advantage to spending cash on it (actually, there is a very every so slight meta-game advantage, but nothing to get your knickers in a knot about).  The only thing exclusive to real-money users, is they can purchase aesthetic skins for their characters.  It's kind of surprising that art is their money maker when the game is designed to run on a wide variety of systems (read: a cardboard box passing as a desktop computer).  Still the character artists are amazing and it's easy to see how they can make a few bucks off each of their players each month.

If you're interested in playing, or already do, be sure to add me (PureKnickers) on the in game friends list.  Also, help a man (me) get free shit and sign up here.

Sonic & Knuckles: Started and Completed

So, I completed Sonic & Knuckles, the final of the original Sonic series, in one shot.

S&K also had the best logo.

Chaos emerald stages aside, it was definately the best of the series.  The levels had the perfect balance of high speed cruising and proper platforming.  Some parts were tougher than others, but nothing seemed out of place (like the boss in Sonic 2).  The two bonus stages were also top calibre.  The first being a mix of Sonic 2's casino night zone and Sonic 1's special stage.  Admittingly it got a bit dry the tenth time around. The second was a wicked 'twirl around balls to get higher and collect stuff' thing that was awesome.  They should have done this for Sonic Spinball.  The lessons from failures and successes of the previous games came together for this final game of the series.

Sweet swirly electric staticy balls of funness.

I realized that I hadn't played much S&K as a kid because I got frustrated by one of the bonus stages (which I didn't understand, due to a lack of patience) and the Sandopolis zone.  I recall often getting stuck on the first Sandopolis Zone and the second one simply being too hard for me due to the harassing ghosties.  Basically, I didn't deserve to go farther.  Still, I thought they were the weakest parts of S&K on my current run through.

Stupid ghosties.

Now off to slay a bunch of demons!

Diablo: Calling All Players

With the sonic series nearing an end, it's time to choose a new game. The top 3 voted games in the last poll were Diablo (4), Shinobi 3 (3) and WCW/NWO Revenge (2).  I'm going with you guys on this one and playing Diablo next.

Being a game that plays best with a party, I'm hoping that you guys will come and join my warrior for at least a bit of the adventure.  I plan on starting the plundering of the cathederal on Thursday October 28th at 5 o'clock.  The game will be hosted on battle.net, with a game name of "knixtime" and password "notapk".  Just as a word of warning, I do plan on reading most of the dialogue and would appreciate if you didn't run ahead and slay all the quest related monsters without me.  So, install your copy, make sure you can get on battle.net, set up your settings and be ready to murder some things you can't really see in poorly lit dungeons!

For future games, I'll keep my level posted on the sidebar of this game blog, with the game name and password (which will be the same as the first game).  So if you're around the same level, I'd love to have some fellow adventurers join me!

My completion criteria for Diablo is to kill Diablo on Hell difficulty.

Also note that a new poll is up, due to the nature of polls on blogspot, I'm just going to reset the votes everytime a new game is chosen.  So, you're free to vote again, with the added option of Civilization 4.

Put up your votes and I hope to see you slicing demons in a couple of days!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Death Egg Relaunch Halted

The sonic team must have been a bunch of Star Wars nerds, they just weren't able to let the Death Egg rest in peace.

Hmmm...that Death Egg looks familiar.

Anyhow, I beat the third of the series in one go.  Turns out I had played it a fair bit but never passed the Carnival Night zone because of the floating rotating barrel things. (I'm not the only one)

 Using the barrels is not intuitive.  Sometimes, even if you're 'using' them it doesn't work, and even when you are 'using' them, it can be hard to tell what you're doing is working.  When I originally played this, my young self probably did not have access to any internet guides, so I was just stuck on that zone.  It's too bad, because the ice cap zone turned out to be one of my favourites in the series. As Sonic, you get a classy little snowboard sequence!

Learn more at the Gaming Wiki

 

I forgot to mention it on the completion of Sonic 2, but the special stages are horrible.  Same follows for Sonic 3.  They both tried to be "3D", but just wound up being sloppy controlled 2.5D not-so-fun-I'll-just-skip-that bonus rounds.  Acid-induced Sonic 1 bonus rounds are far superior.  Needless to say I dropped the chaos emerald completion aspects for both Sonic 2 and 3.



Sonic 2 Bonus Stage



On to Sonic & Knuckles!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Science World, of all places, was where I first got to try out Sonic 3.

I know I played the first level a fair bit, but I don't recall ever getting very far through Sonic 3.  Perhaps a couple play throughs will jog my memory.  Like, Sonic 2, the aesthetics look fairly different from it's predecessor.  This time around, the Sega team kept a similar colour palette to Sonic 2, but added a lot more detail to the surroundings. (Sorry about the crappy image comparison, but I still need to get some console recording hardware).

Sonic 2 (left) detail compared to Sonic 3 (right)

While checking to see where Sonic CD fit into the series, I was surprised to find out that it was built in tandem with Sonic 2, by a seperate team.  Apparently it received good reviews, but it never gained much popularity because well...who owned a SEGA CD?  I'm not going to play in series with the rest of the Soinc collection, because the story doesn't follow the same arc. Anyhow, off to break down that big fatty again...

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Death Egg Down!

I finished up Sonic 2 on the second attempt.  Tails failed me at the final boss on the first try.  The difficulty of the final bosses is ridiculous compared to the rest of the game.  You don't get any rings and the locations they are vunerable are rarely open and missing them means you hit their spikes of death.  Basically, you have to be flawless.  My girlfriend probably lost count of all my *sighs* taking on these bosses last night.

Hate you!

...and I hear the last fight is even harder playing as Knuckles.

Collection Challenge: Edit

I added a few games to the list because I found a stack I missed and added a few free-to-play games.  I also calculated roughly how long this might take me.  Assuming each game takes me a week to complete, it will take me 6 years to finish all of the games. That's a loooong time.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

The next game on the list to beat is Sonic 2.

My understanding is that this was the Sonic that actually put him on the map.  The introduction of the spin dash, tighter controls and a less drab colour scheme made a huge difference from its predecessor. I believe Sega eventually included this with the Genesis instead of Sonic 1.

Colour scheme comparison between Sonic 1 (left) and Sonic 2 (right).

I definately played this more than the original Sonic, soley because of the spin dash.  Getting back up to pace without the spin dash just seemed too cumbersome.  Typical youth impatience.

 I've reached the final boss as both a youth and adult many times, but never actually beat him (it?).  I've used countless lives and continues, to the point it's pathetic.  Getting to the boss should be fairly easy, but I have a feeling I'm going to fail at least once trying to beat him.

Conditions for completion:
-kill final boss after collecting all the emeralds

Sonic the Hedgehog

This whole idea of completing all my games came up from deciding to replay the original Sonic games.  They are some of my favourite childhood games, but at the time I didn't have the skill to beat them.  So, I decided to try my hand at the series before it plummeted down hill as fast as Sonic.

Sonic the Hedgehog was the first game I had on my Sega Genesis.  It still remember playing it the first time through and dieing repeatedly on our first encounter with Dr.Robotnik.  For anyone that knows about this swinging ball encounter, you understand how bad this 5-year-old me and his dad were at video games.  While I have beat it in the last few years, I never did as a kid, I didn't have the patience for the Underwater Labyrinth zones.

Anyhow, I sat down yesterday to give it a spin and get a feel for the game again.  Turns out I've still got the feel for it and beat it one try.  Granted, the chase sequence at the end of the Labyrinth zone and the Scrap Yard zone knocked good portions of my lives off.  I also missed one of the chaos emeralds in what I still think is one of the most drug-induced bonus rounds to date.

Sonic 1 is now completed!

All 300 and 1 of 'em

What to do you when you can't decide what game to play, can't afford new games and hardware and have 301 games?  That's right, you beat them all.

 Assuming I didn't miss any, my collection is 301 strong. I'm not sure whether I'm proud or embarassed.  Anyhow, the goal is to complete all of them.  Many I have beat before, but many more I have never seen to completion. While I'll deal with the details of completion criteria as each game comes up, generally it means experiencing the entire story campaign.  No handicaps, no cheats, new saves (twinking will be allowed), aesthetic mods, normal difficulty (with some exceptions), series are played in order and I'll hopefully have a friend where co-op is available.

Using a random number generator I'll select 10 games to go up on a voting poll hosted on this blog. Feel free to vote for as many games as you please. I'll choose from the top 3 scores based on my preference once I've completed a game or its series. Once a game is chosen, I'll take it off the poll and replace it with a new one, other games' scores still intact.  Hopefully, this method will help me spread out the different genres, the good, the bad and year of production, to keep everything fresh.

So, please vote on whatever basis you may.  If you simply intend to see me suffer by playing the most horrific game that is listed, that's totally acceptable.

Ya, this is going to take a couple of years.

Minecraft: Failed 3-Bit Counter

I attempted to build a counter and well...



This was also an excuse to get used to fraps!

Baldur's Gate: Knix Down

Knix lasted until level 6 before he was knocked out for the ninth time.  Eight of those deaths were in one sitting.  Apparently, Baldur's Gate is a bad game to play when I'm not concentrated.

Real Ranger Action!

Anyhow, I'm not too sure how keen I am on doing the BG series at the moment, with League of Legends, Minecraft and Age of Empires 2 already holding my attention.  I'm thinking I might actually complete the Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis saga instead.  It's less time consuming and a little more up to pace for when I'm in an arcade mode.

Surprisingly, this did not kill Knix.

Side note: Isn't that AoE2 website horrid?

Minecraft: Navigation

I plan on building a boat access only building, but my current map didn't have a large body of water that I knew of.  So, I ventured off and sure enough found a coastal region.  I then proceeded to setup a little dock to harbour boats...

...and shelter/mine access.

The cactii are not for style, they kill the bad things.

Whilst setting this up, I realized I didn't leave a trail back to spawn for myself to follow.  So, I played quite cautiously in hope of lasting long enough to craft some gear (including a compass that points to the spawn location) in order to mark a trail to my new site.  Sadly, after escaping a few close calls, I made a fatal error and died a gruesome death.  I'm shamed to admit I mined out the ore block I was standing on and fell through into a pit of zombies.  Now, I was back at spawn and left to guess as to where my dock and lodge were hiding.

The 'O' marks the spawn point and the 'X' marks my dock.  All that explored area around the 'O' that is not in the direction of the 'X' is the area I explored trying to find the 'X'.

Overhead

Before I had the nifty application that produced this map, I just wandered in the direction I thought I had gone before.  I eventually died in a self dug pit from the arrows of a skeleton maurader. That is how I explored the area above the 'O'.  After respawning I downloaded cartographer I realized I needed to head West! That is how I explored the are below and to the right of the 'O'.  See, it turns out Cartographer takes a nod from the Romans and puts East on the top of the map.  Once I figured that out, I found it with little hassle.

The search wasn't in vain though, I did find an awesomely high mountain that seems fitting for a water slide or hermit hut.  It's the red blob on the upper right corner.

Height Map

As a bonus, here's a map from a different cartography program called AlphaVespucci.

Oblique Angle