>God of War 2 In my experiences this has been the most difficult entry excluding Ascension which I have only played through one time. This may change in time though as I plan on doing more difficult runs of all the numbered entries (I've beaten both PSP entries on PAIN+, although I have not cleared phase 2 Persephone). Despite the difficulty this is also my favorite God of War game.

>Tricking I am pretty good at tricking with rolling, but when it comes to bow tricking I am only good against ranged attacks. It's because it feels easier to tell the exact moment when the damage is taken. For PAIN+ I've gotta get this down, but that's just one of many things to watch out for. One of my biggest concerns is DQ from the fleece, particularly against sirens and gorgons. Those siren's ranged attacks are fast and hard to predict for me.

>Bow tricking I hadn't thought of using that during the Eurayle fight. I don't have my plans set in stone but I have some ideas, and for that fight in phase 3 I was intending to probably chip it out, just because it feels safer and you have to restart the entire fight if you mess up. Compare this to Barbarian King where I am looking to perfect my bow tricking for his giant phase to avoid having to chip it out. One of the reasons for this is because there's a checkpoint before that phase, so if I have to try dozens of times, and I'm sure I will, I won't have to do the tedious phases before it again.

>PAIN+ on the PSP entries The primary reason I did challenge runs on these first is because the television that my ps3 is hooked up to is often being used by other members of my household, while I can play those whenever I want. CoO PAIN+ wasn't that bad all things considered, but by no means was it easy. That entry is general doesn't have a lot of noteworthy fights compared to others. My GoS PAIN+ was mostly pure tenacity. That is a rough game and I didn't know that so much help and info was available, so I ended up just having to figure out the best tactics I could find by trial and error. Everything from after you get to the Domain of Death was a nightmare that took dozens, if not hundreds of attempts for the harder fights, ironically with the exception of Deimos and Thanatos, who were both pretty easy. I imagine Deimos would be really hard on an No Grabs PAIN+

>CoO It might be the weakest entry in the original 5 games, but you've gotta remember that before it came out people doubted that it was even feasible to make a full fledged 3D God of War game on PSP. I still really enjoy this game. The Zeus' Gauntlet is my favorite secondary weapon from any God of War game. My only complaint is that it looks quite plain, being nothing but a big metal fist. The Barbarian Hammer is a close second.

>Progress I should be able to play some later this afternoon or evening. I'll update my progress, and hopefully will be able to finish up this part and on to Zeus, which should fun a really fun, if a bit drawn out, fight. I'm gonna try using PS for some collisions through the barriers.

>No Gun Run Any reason you went with the evil John Marston? That whole run seems crazy to me. The best I could equate it to would be a VH run of 3 where you didn't use your main weapons at all, just the bow, head, and boots.

>SWFU I have it on my Steam. I'll try it again soon. I was never really that into star wars, although I do like it. Can you choke a guy or shock them in that game?

>Update I'll update the skeleton from the old post, but I'll be sure to let you know when I've done so. If you'd prefer I just post the rest of the coverage in a new post that's fine too. I practiced the first wave about an hour using the spear to launch into collisions method. It's going well, I'd say better than using the hammer. I restarted if I took more than 2 shoulders from the juggernauts, or more than 1 hit from a legionnaire. I'm seeing now more than before the reason I'm getting hit is because it's difficult to read those juggernauts. They have several different patterns of attack and their sprint feels unpredictable how far it will go. These things are called Fates Juggernauts, but I have no idea what they're supposed to be. They're probably about 10 feet tall, so they're not humans.

>ER I have the feeling if I embraced the lowest common denominator and abused MotK chipping I could get past it, but there's no satisfaction getting through it that way. That's like going into a match against someone new and winning by spamming grabs without bother to learn hit confirms, meaty setups, anti airs, anti fireballs, mixup on knockdown, etc. No class at all.

>SWFU I have a 360 controller I use with my PC. I do not own a 360 though. I seem to remember it working with that game without having to use Xpadder to bind keys to the controller, unlike the PC versions of those Legacy of Kain games. I'd figure if you were playing someone openly evil who could use the force you'd be using it to stop people's hearts, crush their heads, choke them with their own tongues, loosen their bowels. It could be like when Ares kills the barbarians except without the fire.

>DBG Those guys are weirdos. I've seen you around there a few times. They don't know how to handle it when a man tells them something with authority.

>Moving in groups I know, it can really be a problem. I'm gonna check out some more videos of that part soon. Hopefully I'll see the one you were referring to that shows how to control the sirens.

>All in on the satyrs I would only consider using that tactic if the health, magic, and rage chests were all unopened. I'm gonna need all of them at full for W7. Regarding wave 5 specifically the only video I've seen is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b4NwZysyVk&list=PL2BCAC973DC9315F1&index=4, but that is very old and is mostly MotK chipping and wailing away with the hammer and rage. I'm liking the way he does wave 7 there though, even though stoning the cyclopes might be preferable.

>pounding isolated legionnaires It's reliably getting them to do the taunt that I'm getting caught up on. A single one I can keep track of without much trouble as well, but now that you mention it if one is literally alone it would be best to go for launches since you could get collisions as other enemies moved in. I'm not actively trying to get into groups where I'd need to parry, it just comes up sometimes when I'm going for an enemy with a prompt and I get intercepted.

>Motk chipping When it comes to wave 1 I only use Motk when I'm on one side of a barrier alone with enemies on the other side. It's not gonna impress anyone I know, but at that point it's pretty much just free hits as long as they are stuck against the barrier. As for wave 5 that was how I passed it on my previous NUR, and I can see how it can be useful, I am not planning on having it be my primary source of damage in the future though.

>Help If you would help me sift through the coverage and videos to find the ones most suited to my current situation that would be great, but I'll get through it. You see, we've got something those teenagers from the DBG board lack. Guts (the intangible kind).

"Even if my heart stops I'll fight with spirit! Even if my spirit disappears I'll rise from the dead and beat you!" - Takamura Mamoru

"He's a mess...He's half dead but he keeps squirming! Keeps struggling!" - Bryan Hawk

"If I didn't have support, I couldn't have stayed standing." - Takamura Mamoru

"When you run out of strength... use willpower" - Takamura Mamoru

"There is no shortcut to perfection. Hard training is the only way" - Dudley

>Lost run coverage from alt.TUGOWU you've got some pretty ambitious runs there. RDR No guns runs I imagine would get frustrating really fast. What are you to do on the missions where you're riding shotgun and having to protect the wagon you're on? Is SWFU the game where you play as Darth Vader at the beginning and then as his apprentice? I played that game a bit and had fun with it, but I never got very far.

>Testing Business with Ascension I take it. I'll get back to that particular entry in time.

>Wave 3 I'll be sure to check out that video you mentioned. My biggest problems with this wave are being hit by the projectiles from the sirens while trying to concentrate on the gorgons. I also have a problem with the enemies bunching up and moving in a group, making it difficult to safely attempt a false grab.

>Wave 5 I have considered using the spear for launches into collisions for this part, and I'll experiment with it. Ideally I'd like to be able to get through W5 before having to go back for chests since I can go into W6 and 7 with full health, magic, and rage, but if I take too much damage in W3 I will go ahead and grab the health chest to be safe. I was also considering using rage, CR spam, and the hammer to take out the satyrs as quickly as possible, but I don't know how well this would work out in execution. Can't hurt to try it though. I have been using the MotK chip method just because it's relatively safe. I'm ok with something taking a little while if it's safe, but this is a very old fashioned method and I am not particularly attached to it.

>Wave 1 in detail I'll go over my experiences with it so far. I take damage mainly for 2 reasons, which I briefly mentioned before. The first number 1 reason I take damage is because the legionnaires blend so well into the floor that I can only see them clearly if they're separate (I have an eye disorder that makes this aspect of it much worse for me than a normal runner). This ends up getting me hit by a minotaur who I wasn't watching closely enough because I was struggling to see the legionnaires. The second reason is that I miss my parry by a fraction of a second and end up having to block a long string of attacks which push me back into a corner. Usually I am able to hold my ground until a barrier goes down and I can move to safety, but if I get stuck against one of the far barriers my only hope is to keep hitting block over and over, hoping to parry something so I can counter and clear out some room. I try to move around to avoid groups while pounding individual legionnaires until I get a prompt. Ideally I will use X when I grab them, but they're often not close enough so I have to use s, which hardly ever seems to hit anything even slightly higher or lower than you are, which makes it not very good in this fight which is on a ramp. When the barriers go down I do my best to trap the enemies behind it so I can damage them all with MotK, this can cause collisions too. I originally was using a strategy with the spear of launching legionnaires for collisions, but It became very frustrating because I kept hitting them right as they jumped at me, so I didn't get in a launch. As of right this minute I can't think of anything else to note. Any help is greatly appreciated.

>DBG I saw you were gonna visit that board. You might already know but there's almost nothing but a bunch of thin skinned teenagers there.

>Barrier abuse v2 Do tell. Can you hit through them with the blades or any form of collisions?

>Translator wave 3 I just carried him in and dropped him automatically. I figured there was some sort of advantage to be gained from entering some special way, but I didn't utilize any on my runs. I'll look into it more when I start my next run. For PAIN+ I wonder if there's a way to reliably keep the fight behind the podium. I'll watch some videos when the time is right.

>alt.TUGOWU I'm not familiar with that, but if it means coverage was lost it makes me sad.

>God of War 2 Cerberus Breeders I found the Breeders to be more threatening in 1 than 2, especially that fight towards the end with the breeders and the desert king. The seeds felt pretty easy to manage with collisions from ground OS, which also made pretty quick work of the breeders. Nothing fancy like cancels or tricking with the hammer here, I just used rage and hit with tt as it emerged from the ground. It died very shortly after emerging.

>Palace of the Fates:Courtyard B I completely forgot about the amulet for this fight. That's as bad as leaving one's temple unprotected, very poor form.

>The Underground:Lava Chamber A:Hallway C I didn't end up using that switch. I wasn't thinking about it at the time, I just knew getting that chest was a violation of the rules so I didn't go in there at all.

>Phoenix Chamber:Flame Wall Chamber I was planning on using alt.OH for collisions on PAIN+. I did not know there was a limited number of of harpies. In my previous vanilla VH runs I always had level 3 hammer and head by this point so I just shattered the legionnaires and used CR to keep the harpies at bay while I pushed the statue. Why there is a statue of Icarus here I couldn't tell you.

>Phoenix Chamberlatform B How does one go about making a mid fight checkpoint here? That sounds very useful for future runs.

>Lahkesis Pity I didn't know about using the amulet to force the projectile. Would have made things go a lot faster.

>Robotos PAIN+ Isn't the only advantage to this costume the combo thing? I thought for PAIN+ it'd be the same as normal PAIN+, but with weaker blades.

>Mortal Kombat The last one I played was MK3 back in the mid 90s on arcade. Now that I think about it I did briefly play that stupid MK game for Playstation that was a side scroller where you played as Sub Zero, but that game was an embarrassment to all.

>Kratos in MK I imagine he's not allowed in tournaments since he's exclusive to the PS3 version. Are bosses in MK9 separate characters who cannot be played? In SF4 the only bosses are normal playable character who have been buffed up slightly and have the best AI possible for whichever difficulty you're playing on. Kratos is slow you say? Sounds like he's the kind of character who'd have trouble being zoned out. I would have figured he'd be a mid ranged sort of character since he uses the blades are bow.

>Robotos PAIN+ I don't know the exact numbers, but as far as the run in question is concerned it just makes the blades do less damage.

>Dudley He's a boxer obviously who uses an in fighting style. His combos are the highest damaging in the game, and his mixup on wakeup makes any knockdown a golden chance that can quickly lead to a dizzy. He's also a black British man with blue eyes. His weakness is that, being an in fighter, he can be zoned out effectively and his mid ranged game is weak. He's also shut down on the inside by grappling characters like Zangief since their grapple overrules almost anything you can do on the inside. You've gotta bait it out and punish it.

>Kratos in MK I haven't played a MK game since 3. I always assumed they were still like they used to be where the controls were incredibly stiff and all the characters were practically the same. What are Kratos' best and worst matchups?

>Hallway before Clotho I appreciate the advice. i'm thinking that for now using the hammer for wave 1 might be the way to go. I will be sure to use the false grab on the gorgons.