I’m The Grand Inquisitor. LOLZ. So I Inquisitored some people, with the ‘help’ of the torture bloke, and found out who was trying to kill Lady Syl. People died, I got a reward, and all was happy again. Probably. After that, I nipped back to Bravil to dump my “spoils”, and returned to Bliss, to start on the quest for the chalice for the Duke of Mania. Seems I’m almost 8 hours into this expansion do far. Cripes.
First thing today was to head to Xedilian, essentially a giant trap, to activate it. On the way though, was Knotty Brambles – where there was supposed to be a cure for the illness the innkeeper in Crucible has. So I nipped in there first, got the cure, and went back to Sickly Bernice. Then, it was back to the quest at hand, and a tour round Xedilian, killing goblin things (which aren’t goblins) and activating the three crystals, and …
You knows it! I got it working! Actually, I didn’t do anything – I just gave it one last shot, and lo, when I booted the game it told me there was an update for it. An update that didn’t exist an hour previously. Bizarre. But none of that matters now, as I’ve made it into the Shivering Isles! First of all, there was a chat with a creepy butler type bloke who asked if I wanted to enter the …
Get really quite annoyed at this now. I’ve spent about £20 on this expansion, but can’t get it to trigger. Waiting, sleeping, talking to people, clearing the cache, re-downloading the file, all sorts. Nothing works. I want to play The Shivering Isles, dammit!
Just for a bit, to try and get a higher score on Refuelled Mode. Which I did – around 300,000, in fact. That netted me an achievement for 250,000, and I also got the Squidport Pacifist achievement too. That score also bumped me up my friend’s leaderboard two places, only to be knocked down two again instantly by people playing at the same time but doing better than I did. Hate!
I bought the new expansion for Oblivion the other day: The Shivering Isles. I decided today to make a start on it. So I loaded it up, and… …nothing. At all. Well, aside from a message on the title screen saying “Loading Addtional Content”. I was expecting a message or something when I started playing to say that the portal was open. But no. So I went to Anvil, where I thought the island might be. It wasn’t, but I …
Is it actually possible to get one complete cycle of Base mode? I think not. I had a bloody good go at it, and beat all my previous high scores, but still didn’t manage to complete a full “loop”. Then I played Advance Mode, and managed to get far enough in to break 100,000 points, and also unlock three new skins. After that, I played Heavenly Star (I think it’s called that, anyway) for a while until I died.
So Mr SomethingWitty thinks he can waltz on in and blow my Retro mode score away, does he? Oh yes, he did. Bah. But! I managed to get 42,000-ish on the same mode – some 2,000 points higher than his, putting me 110th in the world and top of my friends list. For now.
After killing another boss, I realised I had four of the five parts of Vlad already, meaning I was getting close to completing the game. However, it took me ages to figure out where the final piece was – and it turned out it was being held by Death in the Reverse Caverns area of the map. I was expecting him to be hard, but in fact, since I’d just killed another Doppleganger of me which led me to a …
Haven’t played this in a few days, as Rocket Slime had taken over pretty much all of my gaming time this week. But, since I completed that earlier, I went back to SOTN. It suddenly got hard. I’ve found loads of baddies who are difficult to kill and do stacks of damage. I’ve been trying to work my way back to the Entrance, or at least, where the entrance was in the right-way-up castle, and it’s slow going. My brain …
Today’s new XBLA game was this – a remake of the 1983 Spectrum game, which also includes the 1983 Spectrum game! First up was a go on “Refuelled” mode (the new version). It’s very much like the Jetpac of old, just with new graphics, some power-ups and smart-bombs. Thankfully, this just makes it feel like a very late sequel, rather than a new game hiding under the banner of a classic retro game (see: Sabrewulf for the GBA – urgh). …
After a very short journey to the middle of the map where I needed to use the two rings I had and met Maria again, it was off to kill Richter with my new Holy-resistant garb and Holy-killingerating sword. And lo – he was easy. Really easy, in fact, since none of his attacks could now do more than 1 damage, whereas previously 80+ was the norm. Excellent. In fact, I didn’t kill Richter at all, but Shaft, the thing …
A bit of a mammoth gaming session on this today, in several segments rather than in one go, however. In now particular order, I managed the following: Got the Mist transformation, quickly followed by the Bat transformation and then all five Familiars. It seems the familiars all level up too, as you use them, starting out crap (where they don’t attack anything) slowly becoming more intelligent. My pet sword is actually pretty helpful now, especially when I was killing Legion. …
Aha! Double-jump GET! That opened up huge amounts of map for me to get to, although lots of items are still out of reach. I suspect a flying or super-jumping ability to become available at some point. I’m really loving this, although I think I’ve found the entrance to Dracula’s room already. I can’t get there yet (there’s a jump I can’t make), but I’m running out of places to go. I did find out that my save file data …
Being so like Circle of the Moon is actually disturbing me somewhat now, as I feel I’ve played the game before, but not quite. It’s odd. I had a go flicking the “enhanced graphics” off and on, but aside from Som–uh, Alucard, it doesn’t make a lot of difference to my eyes. I killed my clone, who was somewhat easy, found a thing that turns me into a wolf (which I haven’t found a use for yet) and braved the …