Serious Sam: First Encounter

**As I'm currently playing the second game and have uninstalled the first game, I'm gonna post this without pictures**

Last week I bought the Serious Sam series off Steam.  I've heard good things about it and always wanted to play it.  The Steam offer included and HD remake, which updated models and textures, which was a nice touch, though I went and played the Classic version instead.

Story:

Underneath one of Earth's oldest civilizations is a ruin of another ancient, albeit technologically advanced, civilization called the Syrians.  Using the knowledge gained from this ancient technology, humans advanced greatly.  Now in the 22nd century, humanity faces its greatest challenge of all: an alien race known as Mental who had previously battled the Syrians on Earth millenia befor..  Through many a battle, a hero emerges:  Sam "Serious" Stone.  Earth stands on the brink of destruction, but discovers its last hope: the Time Lock.  The Time Lock has the power to send an individual back in time.  By going into the past, humans could defeat Mental in the past and alter the course of history.  Of course, only one man can do this:  Serious Sam!

Basically Serious Sam takes the whole "Aliens helped the Egyptians make the pyramids" theory and runs away with it.  All the stages are based in Egypt, taking you through the Thebes, Memphis, the Alley of the Kings [sic], the Temple of Ra and finally to the Great Pyramids.  The final battle is inside a pyramid, which has its top removed and a giant flying saucer hovering above it.

Gameplay:

Serious Sam is a First Person Shooter game, however, unlike most FPS games where you might encounter small groups of enemies at one time, Serious Sam will pit you against armies.  Some areas will put the player into a rather large arena and spawn dozens (if not hundreds) of monsters. 

Riddled through most of the stages in the game are secret areas.  Some secret areas are helpful, supplying the player with munition caches, others can be harmful such as traps and/or spawning monster, still others may even take you to a secret level.

Weapons:

Despite taking place in ancient times, weapons and ammo are quite abundant.  Serious Sam's weapons are mostly standard issue FPS weapons with a few exceptions.

Military knife: The only melee weapon of the game.  (I never used it, so I don't know how useful it is)

Shofield .45: The pistol.  Its actually pretty decent for being the default gun.  You can also find a second one and dual-wield.  Whats more, using techno-magic (really!) the Shofield has infinite ammo!

Shot guns: 12 Gauge Pump is a pretty useful weapon, although less powerful than its Double Barrel brother.  The upside to the 12 Gauge is it only uses a single shell at once, whereas the Double shoots two, which of course makes the double more powerful.

Machine Guns: Tommy Gun and the Mini Gun. The Tommy shoots slower than the Minigun, but the Minigun take a second to actually start shooting.  Bother are excellent at taking down large distant targets.

Explosives: The Rocket Launcher, and the Grenade Launcher.  Nothing special about the Rocket Launcher.  You can sort of charge the Grenade launcher to determine how far it goes.  Grenades can bounce off walls.

The Lasergun: In my opinion this is one of the best weapons in the game for taking out fast oncoming enemies.  Not very good at long range.

Cannon: Not much to say.  Its the most powerful weapon in the game.  It shoots out a giant cannon ball that mows through anything in its path before finally exploding.

Graphics:

 The game was released in 2001 but had been in the making since 1996 and I feel the graphics show this.  The graphics aren't terrible or anything, but they do feel a bit dated.  I hate to compare graphics, but I feel the graphics weren't too different from Unreal Tournament which was released two years earlier.

The HD version updates models and textures, and leaves the rest of the game identical.  Its a nice touch.  The graphics are immensely better.  I only played through the first 5 or so stages just to see how different it is.

Enemies:

Some of the enemies are pretty weird...  Some of the first enemies you'll see are headless people.  There are 4 flavors of headless enemies.  The "rocketeer" shoots a magic missile that barely even hurts, the "firecracker" which can shoot multiple magic missiles at once, the "grenader" which throws a grenade at you (almost never actually connects) and will explode after you kill them, and finally my favorite, the Headless Kamikaze.  The first three all hold their head in their off hand.  The Headless Kamikaze hold two bombs, one in each hand, and charges at you (quite fast too) all the while screaming.  I have no idea how it screams without a head, and probably should ask!

Most other enemies are different kinds of aliens and would be too hard to describe.

Conclusion:

I had a blast playing Serious Sam!  The shear number of enemies thrown at you keeps you on your toes during the entire game.  Most games you can rocket jump (jumping and shooting a rocket below you to launch you further than a normal jump) but you usually don't need to.  In Serious Sam you almost NEED to rocket jump to survive.

If you play Serious Sam I can guarantee you will die often, but that makes it feel all the more satisfying when you survive!

The graphics may be a bit dated, but if you don't like the dated graphics, thats what the HD version is for!

If you're a FPS fan that wants a fast paced game, this game may be for you.  If you're more of a casual gamer, you might not like this game.

Battle Angel Alita

I'm trying to use my blog more often, so here goes.

A friend of mine on Twitter recently had watched the Battle Angel Alita movie (whatever its called, I think its just Battle Angel, because the translaters changed Alita's name to Gally, so it wouldn't make sense to be called Battle Angel Alita, people would be like "wtf there's no character named Alita"). So, yeah.  He watched the movie and enjoyed it, which is cool.  Anyhow, I had watched it a few months back.  I honestly don't remember much about it, but I do know I liked it, so much that I wanted to get the manga, but I kind of forgot about that.  That is until my friend watched it, and I decided to check if Ebay had the manga, and bam they did.

And I won!  Its the older editions it seems.  Theres a graphic novel version, which is really just a reprint.  What I won is the original issues form.  Its all the issues of the first five parts.  I'm quite excited.  

There were 5 auctions in total.  All for 99 cents.  I'm waiting for the seller to determine the combined shipping cost, which I don't expect to be cheap.  But I think it'll still be worth it.  Can't be more than $50, since that would be the price if I just paid the shipping in full.  Hopefully the seller will contact me quickly.  He was pretty good when I contacted him asking if he did combined shipping.

MetroCon 2010 Days 2 and 3

So yeah, I was too tired yesterday to post the pictures I took, so here's yesterday's and today's pictures.



Sailor Scouts and Tuxedo dude from Sailor Moon, cause I'm sure you needed me to tell you that.



Indiana Jones and a Splicer from Bioshock. And a blurred Cooking Mama in the background.



A Jedi and his working R2D2. R2D2 kept screaming, it was funny. They were pretty popular at one point, everyone kept taking pictures that he couldn't even move from where he was.



A Magikoopa from various Mario games. Or Kamek. Whichever you'd like to call it. Its kind of a unique cosplay, I've never seen it done before.



Random Steampunk guy with someone random's girlfriend. She has similar style clothes so I didn't care that she was in it.



A cactaur from the Final Fantasy series. His arms were actually just tubes, but his legs were real, and he kept losing balance and nearly falling over.



The Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.



No idea who this guy is supposed to be, but I'm guessing something from Warhammer.



Jill Valentine from Resident Evil. This is probably the 3rd of 4th time I've taken a picture of this cosplayer. She's at every convention I go to.



Terra from Final Fantasy 6. Dunno who the other girl is, if anybody.



I think this is the hero from ICO, but I haven't actually played the game yet, so I'm not sure. The girl is Haruhi when she's part of the rock band in that one episode.



Kyon, Haruhi and Mikuru from Melancholy of Haruhi. They were doing the ED dance, thats why their hands are blurred.



BILLY MAYS! After I took the picture he said that would cost $19.95.



His wings were pretty cool. Dunno who he is.



I'm guessing he's a vampire of some sort.



I love taking pictures of people taking pictures. Its Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon. I don't remember who she was taking a picture of, other than it was someone I had already taken a picture of.



Sailor Pluto, also from Sailor Moon. She actually has in my opinion one of the best shades of green hair I've seen.



No idea who these people are, or why I took a picture of them.



These are characters from Trinity Blood. I can't recall names of the first two, but the one on the right is Abel Nightroad.



Mr. Bubbles! This is a Big Daddy from Bioshock, with a Little Sister on the left, and a Splicer on the right.



They were posing for a picture near where I was loitering, so I took a picture as well. No idea who they are.



I think this is the guy from .hack. I've only seen images of the face of the character I think it is, and didn't realize the actual costume was so crazy.



I think its a thief from Spyro. Thats what it looks like to me anyway. And a random kid with it.



Priestess? High Priestess? Bishop? I dunno anymore. One of those classes from Ragnarok Online. And random Mexican staring at the camera as I took the picture.



This is kind of a bad picture. I guess they are pirates or something.



Belldandy from Ah My Goddess. The other girl behind her might also be from Ah My Goddess, but as I haven't actually seen the anime, I'm not sure.



Lord Conti from FLCL. He was also with a badly done Amarao, but honestly, other than from the fake eyebrows you couldn't tell it was supposed to be him.



Another Splicer and Little Sister from Bioshock. The Little Sister's Adam syringe was pretty cool.



No idea who these people are. You can't tell too well from the shot, but the blue girl's boobs were fake. Like they were from a mannequin or something.



Can't recall her name, but shes from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.



Dual Power Puff Girls, and a Mojo Jojo. I never really watched the Power Puff Girls, so I dunno who the person in yellow is.



I think these are characters from Monster Hunter. The one girl in blue's costume was so complicated she could barely move her arms.



Appaently this character is called Genesis, because everyone nearby was screaming that name. I dunno where s/he is from. This shot doesn't show it, but the wing is really nicely done, and there was a detailed inscription along the blade of the sword.



Odin Sphere characters. The crystals are pretty cool.



I took a rear shot to try and show off the feather dress of the girl, but the shot didn't really turn out too well.



Dokuro-chan, from the anime with the same name I think. Its actually a really good cosplay.



And finally, a shot from upstairs overlooking the convention. This was taken today, so its not too busy. I should have taken one yesterday.

MetroCon 2010 - Day 1

Didn't stay too long at MetroCon today. Got there about 1pm and left at about 4. As a result there aren't too many pictures. 8 pictures in fact...



Dunno who these are supposed to be, but they looked pretty cool.



Howl and the girl (whatever her name was) from Howl's Moving Castle. This was the first Howl cosplay I think I've ever seen. Not five minutes later I saw another Howl, but it wasn't nearly as good.



Tidus, Auron, and Lulu(?) from Final Fantasy 10. Probably the best cosplay I've seen of each of them. There was another Tidus that I saw that had better hair, but his costume was not too good.



Gau from Final Fantasy 6 and some girl who was with him/her. I only saw the girl's backside when I asked for the picture and thought that she was cosplaying as someone.



Kid Link! Literally.



Random Pirate? My sister thought the hat was cool and made me take a picture.



Slayers characters. I don't know their names cause I still haven't watched the anime yet. Its on my to-do list.

So yeah, thats it. We're gonna stay longer tomorrow, so hopefully there will be more pictures.

Diablo

If you follow me on Twitter (and personally, you do, because how the hell would you know of my blog if you didn't), you'll know that I had been playing Diablo recently.

Diablo is a dungeon crawling RPG created by Blizzard Entertainment, the company now famous for World of Warcraft.

Deep beneath the small town called Tristram, the Lord of Terror, Diablo, is awakening. With all hell breaking loose, it is your job to search throughout the labyrinth and destroy Diablo.

There are three classes to choose from. The warrior, the mage and the rogue. Apart from maybe the rogue, each class is self-explanatory. The warrior has high strength, and low magic, the mage has high magic and low strength, and the rogue is more or less a jack of all trades, thriving in dexterity. Furthermore, each class has a unique innate ability. The warrior can repair equipment, albeit lowering the max durability value, the mage can recharge staves, also lowering the max amount of chages, and the rogue can detect and disarm trapped doors and chests.

There are 16 floors in the labyrinth. The first four floors consist of the cathedral which is the entrance to the labyrinth. The architecture loosely resembles that of a cathedral or church I guess. There are many shrines which can potentially boost your base stats. Many of the monster found here are of the undead variety, with some minor imps thrown about.

Floors 5-8 are the catacombs beneath the cathedral levels. There are many rooms with ancient tomes in these floors which can provide you with spell books. The monsters are still predominantly undead, but more and more lesser demons can spawn here as you go deeper. Some of these foes can be invisible right until they materialize right in front of you.

9-12 are the subterranean caves. Lava flows freely here, which can be both an advantage or a disadvantage, provided archers a way to shoot down enemies on the other side of the rivers, but also letting ranged demons attack you from afar as well. The foes here are much different from the previous areas. Large lava demons can hurl balls of magma at you. Other smaller demons will spit globs of acid that will remain on the floor for a short period, causing continuing damage if you stray too long.

Finally, the deepest parts of the labyrinth reside in Hell itself! Expect the fiercest demons and hellspawn in these dark recesses. Most notable are the succubi, with their magic that can drain your life and replenish their own.

Much of the story of Diablo II is learned through the various quests, and talking with the villagers of Tristram. Furthermore, there are tomes in the labyrinth that will tell of backstory of the world of Sanctuary. Also, throughout the various quests you can learn more about the villagers themselves. Like how Wirt lost his leg to the demon called the Butcher, or what caused Farnham to sink further and further into a drunken stupor, and finally the true identity of Cain himself.

There are four basic stats. Strength, Magic, Dexterity and Vitality. Strength increases your damage value, and allows you to equip heavier armors or weapons. Magic allows you to learn more powerful magics, and furthering you skill in already known spells. Magic also increases you mana pool, alowing you to cast more spells. Dexterity ups your hit rate, and can increase you damage and defense values, as well as increase your block rate should you use a shield. Dexterity is required to equip more powerful bows. Vitality increases you life, allowing you to take more damage from foes.

Every time your character levels up, you gain Life and Mana, as well as 5 stat points in which to put into whatever stat you desire. However each cap has a max value per stat. In addition to leveling up, you may find shrines inthe labyrinth that can be used to enhance your stats. Be warned however that some shines will add points to one stat, but take away points to another. Further, starting in the Caves, monster may drop Elixirs that will add 1 stat to whatever stat the Elixir is of. These Elixirs can eventually be bought at the merchants in town for high prices.

Unfortunately, there is very little to no music in the game. The only real music is the memorable Tristram village theme. In the dungeons its mostly just ambient music. Regardless what music there is does fit the theme of the game.

All the villages are fully voice acted and have very memorable voices. From Griswold's Scottish-like accent to Adria's sing-song voices. And the classic voice of Cain, which sounds like Sean Connery. The player characters are also voice acted, although to a lesser extant.

All in all, Diablo is a solid game, and worthy of its sequel. And with a third game in the making, its lived it legacy and will continue on for times to come. Diablo itself may not be as popular as it once was, but that doesn't mean it's obsolete. Diablo's sequel, the aptly named Diablo II is still growing strong over the years. If you've ever played Diablo II and never played Diablo, I suggest checking it out to see how the series starts. And if you've never played either, now is as good a time as any.

Bioshock

Just finished playing Bioshock. I know, Bioshock 2 is out, and I finally get to the first one. Whatever. I won't get to Bioshock 2 until Bioshock 3 is out probably...

Anyhow. The game was fun, well worth the 20 dollars I spent on it. The game wasn't too hard, but I did play it on Easy Mode, because I remember the demo being fairly hard. And my friend kept telling me that ammo is hard to find in the game.

Setting/Story
The setting of the game is what interested me the most. The city of Rapture is basically a whole self-governed city underwater in the 1960's. It has the feel of an old Sci-fi movie. I believe that is why I like the game so much. All the technology is similar to what you would expect in the 50s/60s. Every so often you'll here a radio or Jukebox playing music of the era.

Andrew Ryan is the creator of Rapture, and basically what he says is the law. Apparently everything was all peaceful until a new technology was discovered: ADAM. ADAM is a mutagen extracted from a special type of sea slug. Using ADAM, Plasmids were created. Plasmids rewrite a persons genetic code, giving them special powers. For instance, the first Plasmid you encounter in the game is the Lightning Plasmid, allowing you to shoot lightning from your hand. The side of effect of ADAM is that a person must be take regular injections of ADAM or go insane. But ADAM was in short supply. Thus the fall of Rapture. Soon everyone was killing for more ADAM.

Gameplay
One thing I have to nitpick is the walking speed in the game. At times it just seemed so slow. Fortunately there's a Plasmid that increases walking Speed. Once I got that, it was smooth sailing.

The Plasmids are an interesting feature. Basically adding a feel of Magic in a genre thats all about headshots and blowing stuff up. Sometimes you'll need to use Plasmids to solve puzzles, other times, just to kill enemies. The game totes you off with the Lightning Plasmid and a wrench. When you bast an enemy with the lightning, it stuns them, then you can run it and smash their heads in. While they are fun to play with, I found myself mostly relying on the weapons instead.

The game can be slow paced, more time looking for something than actually fighting things, but honestly, thats in my opinion a strong point. I love sneaking around the environments, not knowing when an enemy is gonna come pop out around the corner. But when action comes in, the game really picks up its pace. Especially if theres a big room with Splicers and a Big Daddy and you accidentally shoot the Big Daddy.

Weapons:
The weapons is Bioshock, are pretty much standard issue: Pistol, Machnegun, Shotgun, RPG, Flame Thrower, and a less standard, Crossbow.

Each weapon however has 3 different ammunitions to use with. For instance, instead of using Napalm for the Flame Thrower, you can get Liquid Nitrogen to freeze enemies with, or even use an "electric gel" that will shoot electricity at the enemy, stunning them.

The shotgun, my personal favorite weapon, can use special buckshot rounds charged with electricty, or an explosive round that will detonate on impact, causing an enemy to burst into flames.

The Crossbow can be equipped with electric trip wire arrows, to create traps for your opponent. These mght be useful, but frankly I didn't use them because I figured it'd backfire, and I'd accidentally run into the wire.

While there is a vast arsenal of different types of ammo for almost any occasion, I found myself using the same weapons throughout the game.

Difficulty:
I can't really rate the difficulty, as I already stated above I played on Easy Mode, which is pretty damned easy. Though the game really did ramp up the difficulty around the halfway mark, when the game started shelling out "Elite" Splicers. Even the Big Daddies weren't very hard if you used the right ammunition.

Conclusion
Overall, the game is definitely worth picking up if you haven't already. And with Bioshock 2 already out, and a third game planned, now is as good a time as ever.

Slimes!

I just started playing around with the my tablet earlier, and this came up. DragonQuest Slimes. Its a quick sketch, but I think it turned out rather well.

I signed it as both my aliases. I used to try to keep them seperate, but I don't really care anymore.