Racketboy Summer Games Challenge 2024

[Ack]

And just like a knife in the dark, Thief II was here in a flash and gone again. It is done now. That is officially half of my 2024 Summer Games Challenge beaten. I didn't go into depth on it, and I'll put more thoughts in the Games Beaten 2024 thread at some point, but suffice to say I enjoyed myself. It isn't perfect, but Thief II improves on Thief with its enemy selection, and there are certain levels that absolutely shine. I'm glad I can finally say I've beaten the first two titles. I'll get around to Deadly Shadows at some point.

So...what next? Well, that's always a tough question. I'm gonna have to think on it.

Ack's List:

1. Marathon - COMPLETE
2. Command & Conquer
3. Rome: Total War - COMPLETE
4. Rage
5. Outlast
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - COMPLETE
7. Thief II - COMPLETE
8. Ultima IV
9. Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force - COMPLETE
10. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - IN PROGRESS

[Ack]

After beating Thief II, I took a short break to play through Jydge, because top-down shooters are lovely palate cleaners. But I didn't walk away entirely from my Summer Challenge. I have selected my next game:

Command & Conquer

I have started the campaign as the GDI, or what would primarily be the Western Bloc of the Cold War, with certain notable exceptions (Russia is on my side). So I'm now attempting to conquer Nod holdings in Eastern Europe and have worked my way down from a beach head in Estonia to Poland. I look forward to continuing my ridiculous exploits.

I also went back to Tactics Ogre: Reborn, where I have now reached the beginning of Chapter 3. That means I'm technically halfway through it, though I don't know if that's actually true from a combat perspective. I intend to continue working at it, though it's definitely moving at a slower pace.

Ack's List:

1. Marathon - COMPLETE
2. Command & Conquer - IN PROGRESS
3. Rome: Total War - COMPLETE
4. Rage
5. Outlast
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - COMPLETE
7. Thief II - COMPLETE
8. Ultima IV
9. Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force - COMPLETE
10. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - IN PROGRESS

[MrPopo]

I very much look forward to your C&C exploits. I highly recommend you play both campaigns before calling it finished, as the sides play fairly differently due to how their army balance is set. The series does something interesting by having some of the mission branch decisions take you to not just different maps, but rather different objectives entirely.

[pierrot]

More incremental progress.

Dragon Quest IX

I believe I now have more time clocked into this game than in basically 100% completing Dragon Quest XI. That's kind of understandable, though, just because IX's post-game is so steeped in grinding and RNG: Grinding levels on classes for skill points; Grinding key ingredient harvest points that reset after 1+ hours of gameplay; Grinding Rank 5 "story" area blue chests for a random chance at Reaper's Necklaces for Royal Charms; Grinding the alchemy pot Gold Mail recipe for gold; Grinding treasure maps for semi-random chance of new, map exclusive monsters; Grinding treasure maps for semi-random chance at decent Rank blue chests, with random chance to give useful items; Grinding treasure maps for semi-random chance at a particular boss, with a low chance of dropping a good piece of equipment; Grinding legacy bosses; So on, and so forth.

Anyway, I've gotten a decent stock pile of tiny medals in order to trade in for Orichalcum, and I'll be using those to make the Loto gear, and hoping for a Silver Orb drop from Baramos for the Sage Stone recipe. I've also gotten a pretty decent pile of Reaper's necklaces, and I got pretty lucky with just happening to have a couple treasure maps that allowed me to clear out a few of the gating Wi-Fi "story" quests quickly, in order to pretty swiftly knock out most of the rest of them. I got three of the four unlockable NPC companions opened up, and actually switched out my lv 86 priest for Ruida. Only have two of the story quests left now; One of which requires fighting the highest rank map boss. That might be my main goal for now, as a stopping point. I'll probably try to get the other legacy boss maps from the wi-fi quests, too.

For collection stats, I'm at 79% of the bestiary, 63% of the fashion catalog, 78% of items collected, 65% of alchemy recipes completed. There are a couple Japanese blogs dedicated to getting all of these to 100%. Some of that is already out the window for me, because it requires having 30 guests visit your world from another game cartridge, though. (The blogs actually recommend buying 32 copies of the game and hoping most/all of them have saves up to Saintschtien, lol--.)

------
Persona

I don't really have much more to say about this game. It's pretty much same old, same old. I have access to some actually good magic stones now, thanks to the Black Market shops. So I'm gearing up for making a FOOL persona with Medialahan. Best case scenario, it's a 1 in 64 chance to get the incident to occur during a meld for a FOOL type persona. After that, I'll actually go after the Harem Queen.

-----
Myst

I actually played some more of Myst, and kind of went back over the constellation puzzle with a fine toothed comb (and the help of modern camera phone technology). Realized I had erroneously associated one of the constellation-picture pairs. Once I hit the right picture switch, I opened up the gate to my first "age." Initially, I didn't realize there would actually be other maps. The books reference a bunch of different "ages," but I figured it was just lore. Basically what I ended up realizing is that there's actually probably a lot more to this game than I really thought, and I'm not so sure I want to keep going. Mainly because it seems that the in-game help feature is incompatible with ScummVM, or something. So it doesn't seem to actually be possible to get hints in game.

I spent a bit of time working on the ship age, but threw my hands up a little bit after getting the battery pack charged up. I found a red/blue page in each of the rooms, but I don't think I can use them without taking them back to the myst age, and I don't see a way to get back there. I guess there's something I still have to do in the ship age before being able to get back, but I don't understand what that is. It's just not clear how to actually play the game most of the time, and the manual is very unhelpful in resolving that, as well.

[Note]

Just wanted to post an update for my Summer Games Challenge.

I'm about 23 hours into Wild Arms. I just finished up the De Le Metalica dungeon, completed the sequence at Vassim's Lab, and am now back in Adlehyde. The plot of the game definitely took a bit of a darker and more serious turn than I was expecting, but I'm not complaining at all. In fact, an aspect of the plot hit me in the feels, which admittedly doesn't happen too often to me when gaming.

I think I'm getting close to the end of the game, but it might take me another week or so before I'm able to complete it.

[pierrot]

Quick update on Persona:
I ended up getting a FOOL incident in only my seventh attempt a little bit ago, which is some pretty wild luck. --Hell yeah. How about that.
I'm still a couple persona levels away from being able to attach it to a character, so it should have Medialahan and the revive hidden special, but it'll be a little bit before I'm able to check that for sure. Had to save already though, so just fingers crossed that I actually got a usable persona out of it, 'cause its growth table doesn't have any increases in magic attack stat--.
Maybe I'll actually raid the Harem Queen tomorrow night.

The plot of the game definitely took a bit of a darker and more serious turn than I was expecting, but I'm not complaining at all. In fact, an aspect of the plot hit me in the feels, which admittedly doesn't happen too often to me when gaming.

Hmm, I am intrigued. I've only ever played a handful of hours of Wild Arms 3 when I was in high school. I couldn't really get into it (but I still remember the theme that played every time you quit the game ('Only the Night Sky Knows')).
I have all of the Wild Arms games now, though (including the PS2 remake of the first one). If it's just ~30 hours, I might play the first Wild Arms sooner rather than later. I mean, compared to that I'm almost 30 hours into Persona, and I'm only about 20 to 30 percent of the way through the main story--.

[Note]

Well, I reached the last dungeon in Wild Arms, the Malduke dungeon. However, the difficulty spike in the enemies here is quite steep. While the previous dungeon felt pretty easy, I'm having a tough time with this one. I'm also beginning to run low on items to restore MP. The frustrating thing is the only way to reach the final dungeon, is by going through the second to last one.

My plan is to warp out of Malduke, do a few grinding sessions, stock up on supplies, and then I'll give it another go.

Hmm, I am intrigued. I've only ever played a handful of hours of Wild Arms 3 when I was in high school. I couldn't really get into it (but I still remember the theme that played every time you quit the game ('Only the Night Sky Knows')).
I have all of the Wild Arms games now, though (including the PS2 remake of the first one). If it's just ~30 hours, I might play the first Wild Arms sooner rather than later. I mean, compared to that I'm almost 30 hours into Persona, and I'm only about 20 to 30 percent of the way through the main story--.

It's a breeze to play for the most part (with the exception of a few random difficult areas) and relatively short, but I think it's worth a playthrough. I reached the final section of the game in about 27 hours, but with the extra grinding and retracing my steps through the final two dungeons, I'm thinking it'll take me around 35 hours to finish. I only have the first two games in the series, but I'm interested in the PS2 remake of the first game now.

[SpaceBooger]

Bioshock (PC) Switch 5/30
Faxanadu (NES) 6/19
Beyond Oasis (GEN)
Metal Gear Solid (PS1) Switch 7/11
Fable (oXBOX) 6/10
Dragon Warrior Monsters (GBC)

Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
I have the original PS1 from when it came out, technically summer '99, and beat it. I loved it. When MGS2 came out I got it on oXBOX (didn't have PS2 then) and couldn't beat the ship level... so I never returned to the series. I have been listening to Codex History of Video Games podcast and they had some episodes about the MGS series and I decided to give the 2nd and 3rd a chance... but I wanted to replay 1 first to play the series through. I was surprised on how much I didn't remember. I remembered most of the story but man I didn't remember how "old school" this was with me having to play many of the bosses multiple times to figure out the patterns and move on. As much as I loved the story, the controls drove me nuts, but the boss battles and having to do them multiple times to figure it out made this game almost perfect in my eyes. I love stories and feeling like I have to earn my wins. MGS fits this bill... now bring on Sons of Liberty.

Next up I'm going to try to finish my summer challenge with Beyond Oasis and I have replaced FFL2 with DQ Monsters to play on the go since I couldn't get a good flow in FFL2. After I beat Beyond Oasis my son and I are going to play through Fallout New Vegas - me on the PS3 and him on the PC just like we did for Fallout 3.

[pierrot]

Persona is now a Phantasy Star 1 and 2 situation: I'm not about to play it any more without referencing maps for the dungeons. The general game design is already insufferable; I'm not about to put up with it on top of dungeons like the Harem Queen's Palace, which has about 28 hidden pits, and only a specific sequence of drops through those pits leading to the end. It's really hard for me to believe this could have truly been directed by Okada Kouji--.

After dealing with the Harem Queen, I went back through the train station to get back to the west side of the map for the forest dungeon. Before that, I took a trip into the nearby ruins dungeon that only exists so the player can encounter monsters that no longer show up anywhere else for various stupid reasons (and kind of tried to see if I could negotiate an Alexandrite out of something so I could trade in for a Megidora Stone, but no dice). After spending about an hour failing to get a particular monster for a Persona I probably don't really need at this point, I just backed out and went through the forest dungeon, which puts me on the path of going back through the train station to the east side of the map.

Basically, I can't stand this game. There are some mildly interesting elements of the story, but not interesting enough that I really care much about it. Really the only thing that I find compelling about the game at all is just the kind of general Mega-Ten feeling, but it's such a massive chore to play that I think I'm just going to put it away for a while.

I think that might mean that I'm kind of out of steam for my list. I'm not really feeling like diving in to any of the stuff left on it, and the free-play period in FFXI coming up, plus the Anniversary event on Ephinea PSOBB are probably going to be the majority of what I spend my free time on the rest of the summer. I also keep chipping away at shit in Dragon Quest IX for reasons I don't fully understand--.

[Ack]

I have beaten Command & Conquer as the GDI! This doesn't mean I'm done with the game, as I still want to play through the Brotherhood of Nod campaign, but for all intents and purposes, I am flagging this as completed on my Summer Challenge. I'll probably still be playing C&C for a while longer though...

But, what to play next? I'm down to four games on the list. Outlast and Ultima IV have been been installed, and I'm at the start of Chapter III in Tactics Ogre, so I'll likely go back and pick at that some more soon. Hmm, maybe it's finally time I give Outlast a spin? Or should I go with Carmack's id Software finale, Rage? Any particular thoughts, folks?

Ack's List:

1. Marathon - COMPLETE
2. Command & Conquer - COMPLETE
3. Rome: Total War - COMPLETE
4. Rage
5. Outlast
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - COMPLETE
7. Thief II - COMPLETE
8. Ultima IV
9. Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force - COMPLETE
10. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - IN PROGRESS