Posts tagged with "games"

Soul Calibur 2

I was on gam­ing hia­tus for a few months (my longest yet), but now I’m back into the old swing of things with Soul Calibur 2. I did­n’t play much of it before because I did­n’t know any­one else who played it, but Aaron and Jessie have been addict­ed since the begin­ning of the month. Now I actu­al­ly feel like I can invest some time into train­ing a char­ac­ter and learn­ing their fight­ing dynam­ics. The game is so deep and involved that I can prac­tice for weeks and weeks and still be con­sid­ered a begin­ner. I mean, Virtual Fighter 4 had a pret­ty involved sys­tem, but SC2 extends past the “basic” guard>attack>throw>guard with added sidestep>vertical attack>horizontal attack>sidestep, and mid-guard>high/mid attack and low-guard>low/high attack, not to men­tion the options that open up with soul charg­ing and unblock­ables.

The prob­lem is that SC2 has so many cool char­ac­ters that I want to use. There’s some­thing about using a char­ac­ter that match­es the per­son­al­i­ty. It’s like a pro­jec­tion of the self in a fan­ta­sy world. Whenever I do RPGs, I usu­al­ly cre­ate a char­ac­ter that’s like me (although with height mod­i­fi­er +6 when the option is there). That’s why I nev­er use the “evil” char­ac­ters in fight­ing games.

I start­ed SC2 with Kilik since he had the most rec­og­niz­able tra­di­tion­al Shaolin fight­ing style (my favourite), although Xianghua’s and Yunsung’s moves have fair­ly obvi­ous Chinese roots as well. Kilik end­ed up being too bor­ing for me (no per­son­al­i­ty, pre­dictable moves), so I switched to Yoshimitsu, cause he’s real­ly cool and sneaky, but his moves end­ed up being too awk­ward. I real­ize that this is how Yoshimitsu is sup­posed to be played (with off-tim­ing bal­ance), but the char­ac­ter did­n’t click for me.

Right now I’m using Raphael, who hap­pens to be the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter move-wise, but also the biggest pan­sy out of all of them. He can go in and out of stances eas­i­ly, with sev­er­al attack­ing options in each stance, mak­ing him an offen­sive, but dif­fi­cult-to-mas­ter, char­ac­ter. He has amaz­ing­ly vari­able com­bos, and in between hits, his foil guard-impacts, just like a fencer. He’s unlike any oth­er char­ac­ter in the game, and I have to applaud Namco for com­ing up with the idea and mak­ing him so real­is­tic.

My ner­dy­ness is com­ing back. The same ner­dy­ness that used to say, “Why make out with you when I could be play­ing a game?”.

On a side note, I’m also back into big break­fasts with bacon, sausages, and milk tea on the week­ends. My arter­ies hate them, but I for­give them and love them all the same.

Dinner With Sonas

I had the chance to hang out with Sonas on Wednesday night. He brought over some wine and cig­ars just as a chance to relax. He grad­u­at­ed last month and is look­ing for a job before he looks for a law school. The thing is, he’s not tied down by any­thing at all. His girl­friend is in Seattle, fin­ished her stud­ies and work­ing as a phar­ma­cist, but he has no plans on mov­ing there. He’s per­fect­ly fine with mov­ing back home, out west, or even over­seas to find a job. I have to admire that kind of free­dom, espe­cial­ly since he’s in a rela­tion­ship. There’s a trust there that real­ly goes beyond most of the oth­er rela­tion­ships that I know. We end­ed up order­ing in and hang­ing out on the bal­cony. I can’t relate to him very well because I don’t know much about him, but I can def­i­nite­ly say that he’s an easy per­son for me to talk to, which is a rar­i­ty in itself.

Yesterday I had the chance to hang out with Pat, and just kick back with some Soul Calibur II. We were pret­ty even­ly matched, although I had the upper hand because I actu­al­ly own the game and have a steady char­ac­ter. We’d real­ly learn each oth­ers moves, so it end­ed up being a game of reflex­es and feints, instead of but­ton mash­ing like it is against most peo­ple. He’s the only per­son I know who used to be a hard­core gamer the way I used to be, so it was great to be able to talk about fight­er styles and relate on that lev­el.

The Only Rabbits Foot

I’m gen­er­al­ly not a super­sti­tious per­son but I have this one super­sti­tion when I’m lis­ten­ing to my iPod. I always have my songs on ran­dom, and if two songs ever play in a row that were meant to be played in a row (i.e. in order on an album or if the sec­ond song devel­ops the motifs from the first) then I think I’ll have a good day.

I think it start­ed when I used to play lad­der match­es in WC3 with Jacky. She always lis­tened to music when she was play­ing, so she had her 8000 songs queued up. If Sigur Rós ever came up, she would know that we’d win. I don’t think she was ever wrong.

As Long As I Pass

I can’t study with­out rewards. This may pos­si­bly be the fault of my par­ents, telling me from an ear­ly age that I’d earn some­thing for every spelling test I got per­fect. I told some of my class­mates at the time, who would earn noth­ing but the pal­try praise of their par­ents, and they rather pre­co­cious­ly told me that such a sys­tem was unhealthy. Of course, I was too young to under­stand such things at the time, and now I find myself unable to be moti­vat­ed to study with­out think­ing that I’ll get to do some­thing fun as a break.

I’ve been try­ing to study for my account­ing mid-term all week, and could­n’t actu­al­ly get start­ed until I knew that there was some­thing enter­tain­ing I could do. At first it was play­ing Chrono Cross, but my emu­la­tor was just too bug­gy. Then it was try­ing to make a new back­ground, but it end­ed up being too much think­ing for a break. I moved onto Uru, and I’ve been play­ing it ever since. I have to admit that there are worlds that com­plete­ly take my breath away. It’s one of the few games that real­ly make me appre­ci­ate a high-end GPU. I wish I could be play­ing with Trolley, but I rather like being able to solve the puz­zles by myself. I’m always, always, ALWAYS the slow­est one in fig­ur­ing things out, and nev­er the one who gets the answer if I’m play­ing in a group.

Holidays Season Games

One of the “prob­lems” around the hol­i­days sea­son is the flood of qual­i­ty games that come out. Publishers are always vying for that Christmas mar­ket, and set release dates so that peo­ple have ample time to wrap up a game and put it under the tree. I’m cur­rent­ly addict­ed to Tony Hawk Underground for the GBA. I’ve been play­ing some Prince of Persia, although with­out a con­troller it’s very frus­trat­ing. I can com­plete­ly under­stand why so many peo­ple have such good things to say about it, but I’m think­ing that it’s only playable as a con­sole game. There’s also Uru, which I still have to play and fin­ish with Trolley. Then there’s Double Dash for the GC I haven’t tried yet, and Wind Waker I haven’t fin­ished yet.

Good thing I already fin­ished Call of Duty before Christmas, and the Thief III and Half-Life 2 release dates have been pushed back or there would be no way I’d be moti­vat­ed enough for class.