Snickerd00dle's Summer Challenge 2012 - how is it going?

[SpaceBooger]

Spoiler-ed for convenience (SpaceBooger, you should read this too).

At the start of Chapter 7, you'll stop getting graffiti challenges, and there will be new graffiti plastered all over the city that you can cover up again. Doing that is totally optional, but for now ignore it entirely.

A red haired character named Clutch will show up at your garage asking you for 40 graffiti souls. (You start out with 20, and there are 140 in the game. When I got to this point, I had 35 just from playing around, and it literally took me 10 minutes to grab 5 more, so no stress on this note.) When you show them to him, he steals them and takes off, and then will alternate appearing in 3 different levels, where you'll have to find and catch him. DJ Prof. K will give you hints on this.

When this happens, drop everything else and go find him. There's not a huge rush or anything, and it won't take long anyway, but you should do it immediately. Once you've caught him and moved past this, you're completely safe to do whatever you want again.
The issue here is that a player might decide to ignore the event and start covering up the new graffiti or messing around in other ways. Apparently the glitch, if it happens (its not guaranteed), will eventually cause Clutch to disappear from the game entirely, making it impossible to finish.

Short version: Save before you give him the souls, and don't save again until after you've caught him and you're in the clear.

Sorry, I know that's a mouthful, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Thanks for the tip.

I went back and put in about an hour and a half on Ninja Gaiden tonight. The whole 90min were used to beat the twin sister demon thing. Damn this game is hard. The harder this game gets the more determined I am to beat it.

I will continue to alternate between NGB and JSRF and hope to have one if not both beat by the end of the month.

[noiseredux]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. What do you think of the music? I love it.

the music is great.

As for the time, well my clock is showing 25 hours, but that's after finishing every last thing in the game. If I recall right, I think I was at around 11 or 12 hours when I beat the story.

So yeah, 10-12 hours.

Hmm really? I'm like an hour and a half in. Not sure if this will hold my focus for 10+ hrs. I figured a game like this would be like 6 hrs. We'll see...

[SpaceBooger]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. What do you think of the music? I love it.

the music is great.

As for the time, well my clock is showing 25 hours, but that's after finishing every last thing in the game. If I recall right, I think I was at around 11 or 12 hours when I beat the story.

So yeah, 10-12 hours.

Hmm really? I'm like an hour and a half in. Not sure if this will hold my focus for 10+ hrs. I figured a game like this would be like 6 hrs. We'll see...

The original should only take 5-6 hours...

I think this is a great change of pace/every once in a while game for the summer challenge even if 12hrs.

[CFFJR]

I'm glad you're enjoying it. What do you think of the music? I love it.

the music is great.

As for the time, well my clock is showing 25 hours, but that's after finishing every last thing in the game. If I recall right, I think I was at around 11 or 12 hours when I beat the story.

So yeah, 10-12 hours.

Hmm really? I'm like an hour and a half in. Not sure if this will hold my focus for 10+ hrs. I figured a game like this would be like 6 hrs. We'll see...

Well that's honestly what it took me that first time, but maybe I'm just slow. There's no reason you couldn't do it faster. Like I said, I didn't screw around, but I didn't have a laser focus either.

Although, now that I know the game well and if I hurried, I could probably go back through and hammer out the story again in 4 or 5 hours.

Hell, I'm willing to try if you want me to.

[alienjesus]

Oracle of Seasons/Oracle of Ages linked quest finished!

1. Monster World IV (VC)
2. Duck Tales (NES)
3. Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts (SNES)
4. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64)
5. Resident Evil 4 (GC) - Playing
6. Metroid Prime 3 (Wii)
7. Final Fantasy IV Advance (GBA)
8. Grim Fandango (PC)
9. Panzer Dragoon Orta (XBox)
10. Oracle of Ages & Oracle of Seasons (linked game) (GBC)

I whizzed through the last few final dungeons tonight, which weren't too hard. Jabu-Jabu's Belly is notorious for being one of the hardest zelda dungeons ever, but I honestly finished it pretty easily, the puzzles weren't that hard at all. I kicked Veran's butt, then went to take down

Twinrova

, which is the furthest I've ever gotten before. The boss caused me untold amounts of pain for an hour, where I was flabbergasted why it wouldnt die, even though I had full health, a revival potion, the best sword and a ring to do extra damage. Eventually I figured that something was wrong here, looked up the fight, and found out whats been wrong the whole time - you're meant to shoot it with your seed launcher every time it's stunned from your sword attacks. There's no real indication to do this, and the sword attacks do the 'damage' animation too, making you think you're hurting it, so it's a really unfair bit of design. Anyway, with my new info to hand, I kicked that bosses butt very quickly, took on

Ganon

, who was really really easy, and finally finished the game. Ages is definitely the superior game of the two, the dungeons, story and game mechanics all feel like a step up from Seasons. Definitely both recommended by me though

[Michi]

I decided to catch up on some tv shows, so I didn't play at all last week. Tonight, though, I booted up Final Fantasy IV Advance and wandered around a bit. Wasn't really that much to see, but I did participate in a couple of fights...

...and got the Asura and Leviathan summons for my efforts

They weren't nearly as hard as I thought they were going to be. Asura can sure hit hard though

Honestly, I didn't really feel like doing much tonight. Partly because I've been so tired for some reason today, and partly because I'm pretty sure I'm done with all the Underworld side-quests and I know the Sealed Cavern's coming up and I don't know how long that's going to take.

[alienjesus]

Been playing some Star Wars: Rogue Squadron the last 2 days. A lot of people I spoke to had a really high opinion of this game. I think they're all suffering from nostalgia goggles.

I went in wanting to like this game. I like both sequels. I love dogfighting games. But this game irritates the crap out of me. The missions are full of annoying goals like shooting imperial gas tanks but not civilian ones (never mind the fact that they're literally right next to each other and that one gas explosion should rightfully set them all off). Only the civilian ones are practically identical, the TIES and turrets all over the level have a habit of shoooting the civ ones when trying to hit me or (more annoyingly) my co-pilots, whose wild flight patterns and strafing fire tewnds to destroy them too. Shot too many civilian gas tanks? Mission failed.

In fact, Mission failed seems to happen a lot more because of secondary objectives in this game rather than me outright dying. So many times I lost because something I'm meant to protect was destroyed by TIE fighters I can't see because they're black and grey against a grey background, the radar is useless and the draw distance means they have to be pretty close to appear on screen anyway. Plus, even if I spot them, I can hold fire with my reticule on them for 10-15 seconds and still not land a single hit due to the awkward laser mechanics, which dont focus on the centre of the reticule, and shoot very slowly.

Failing a mission also sucks due to the games archaic life system, which really doesn't seem to fit the structure of this game at all (and which unfortunately wasn't fixed for the sequels). You get 3 lives to attempt each mission with, but if you fail a mission through any method other than running out of lives, the next time you attempt it you'll have however many you had when you failed it previously. So many good attempts at missions failed due to starting with only one life. Now I tend to crash into the ground deliberately so that I can game over properly and come back with 3 lives. Annoyingly, rather than just letting you choose 'restart mission' after getting a game over, you have to load up your save file again. It's odd to have such a strict life system in the game when it has individual missions - it's cumbersome and awkward.

It might sound like I hate this game, seeing as I'm coming into this rant from a frustration filled afternoon failing at the gas platform level (and a few others too), but it's not terrible. It looks quite nice for the N64 and the missions where you just get to shoot stuff can be pretty fun even if they are pretty rare. I just feel like the sequel improved stuff in many ways (more enemies on screen, greater draw distance, faster lasers that hit in the center of your aiming reticule) and really make this one feel a bit dated.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I've decided to screw the list and just see if there's any game I can complete by the end of summer.

I've gotten bit by the strategy bug and decided to play through Age of Empires 2 (rather than just play skirmish like I usually do).

[pumpkinpie65]

I've decided to screw the list and just see if there's any game I can complete by the end of summer.

Nice. I'm kinda in the same boat. I got distracted by Team Buddies and The Saboteur (both of which I love) and haven't made too much progress on my others. I finally found some stupid really hard to find statue in Fatal Frame though...but I don't know if I'll actually get through that one. I'm still holding out hope for Tomb Raider though! *Fingers crossed*

[Michi]

Still chuggin' along with Final Fantasy IV Advance. If I finish it by the end of summer I'll be most pleased with myself.

Just got through the Sealed Cavern

And once again I've lost Kain.....drats

I'm currently parked outside of Mysidia, but I think I'll fly around and see if there are any other little quests I can do first. I think there are still a couple other places in the Overworld I haven't been to yet, and I suppose I need to revisit a couple places I have been, just to be on the safe side (I may have never played much in the way of Final Fantasy games before, but I do have at least some semblance of an idea of what I need to be doing )