Just finished Viewtiful Joe 2. Boy... Clover really put on the challenge at the end! I had to endure this one run before the final boss that, according to the game, took 12 minutes completely. I recorded just the major fights of this stage and that took approximately 22 minutes! You can check out highlights below - dying will take you back to one of the three rooms. Losing all lives at any point during this relentless assault will result in the entire part-stage to be done again, which includes a short manageable part that I didn't include in the video.

[video=J3FlwzL-5bIIvzLe]

The final bosses were a bit tough, but just like all the rest take patience to defeat. It feels impossible at the start but ends up not being so bad. Even so, I dread thinking about repeating these challenges in the future. One day I may decide to torture myself with V-rated mode but as for now, I am victorious!

Now, to finish the latter half (maybe?) of God Hand in 8 days!

Got MadWorld this weekend. Played through the first stage early Sunday morning.

MadWorld is a really cool game. I really enjoy the music, as a first comment. The first stage background music was a hip-hop song featuring some really nice rhymes relating to the basic themes of MadWorld. I found myself bobbing my head and just really feeling the beat as I ripped my foes in two with my chainsaw, impaled them on spikes, threw them into trains, jet engines and toilets, snapped their necks and broke their spines... among other things. The variety of finishing moves in the game keeps things fresh so far. I notice that there are a lot of spiked things in this game, and that doesn't bother me one bit. You've got spike racks on walls and vehicles, spiked bats, spikes on the floors and you can even consider ripped signposts spikes. Jack's also a pretty awesome character in design, in my opinion.

The gameplay is pretty interactive. You've got a punch on A and a chainsaw when holding B and swinging the remote either vertically or horizontally. Simply swing the remote vertically and you uppercut, while a horizontal swing performs a backfist. You can grab thugs n' things by holding A and they're thrown by swinging the remote. Jumping is done with Z and backflips for evasion can be done by shaking the Nunchuk. Those basic functions combine to make some killer attacks. Punch a baddie a few times and you can stun him for a finisher. Hold A for a throw type finisher. Hold B for a more brutal, often bone crunching finishers. A flurry of punches, then an uppercut plug a finisher results in some aerial madness. These are just examples of things that can be done with Jack's bare hands. There are so many obstacles that can be interacted with in the environments that it's almost like being in an amusement park... for killing.

With all of the possibilities, it's great that the game gives you a lot of time to enjoy things. The first level gives you a time limit of 30 minutes to rack up 1.6 million points. As you build your point total, new challenges become available. Once you reach the target score, the boss encounter opens up. The boss encounter for the first stage was rather interesting, but simple; I won with relative ease, which was quite a different experience from what I've been going through. :)

I'm really looking forward to playing this game more, but I'm going to have to put the time into finishing Viewtiful Joe 2. I didn't play at all this weekend due to being out mostly. I'm also going to cut the Brawlers theme short due to possibly not being able to play games at all for a while. More news on that later. Check my Now Playing list for updates.

Why are the bosses so damn hard to figure out in this game!? The stages are no problem. The mid bosses (which so far mostly comprise of the same guy in different situations) are not much of a big deal. But the Act IV bosses? Holy jeebies! Other than having 4 or 5 energy bars, they are mostly impervious to damage until they show some type of stall or weak point.

Now I'm not truly complaining, because I eventually defeat the bosses. I suppose I'm just in a rush to win, as the boss levels seem to take just as much time to complete as the standard levels (8-11 mins).

I'm currently on Reel 3, Act III, and it seems that there are six bosses, just looking at the flybys in the opening video.

Ah, bliss. After 17+ hours I brought God of War II (on God mode difficulty) to completion. The storyline is progressing very well and having finished every GoW game in the series so far, in order, I'm now very excited about God of War III. I think I may get a PS3 for this particular game when it launches. Next on the "Brawlers" list: Viewtiful Joe... 2!

It's something about how much more gory Kratos makes everything.

The recession strikes. I need to "restructure" my personal finances, and this is the first step. After 4 (or more?) years of subscription, I made a decision to temporarily cancel my World of Warcraft account. I play very rarely these days, as my overnight job has made it impossible to keep up with the Joneses on my server. My main is still level 73, when everyone else has been raiding level 80 content for months. I was playing a Death Knight with edubuccaneer from time to time, but my console games were higher priority. At this time, I'll be focusing on the consoles and clearing out the backlog for a few months. I will return, eventually, and continue the Death Knight saga with Ed (don't level without me !). I do have the account until March 4, so I'll try to get some game time in over the weekend to say my goodbyes.

In other news, Virtua On Oratorio Tangram MSBS Ver. 5.66 was announced for Xbox Live Arcade! I'm PSYCHED about it, and am praying that it will see a NA release. It was such a coincidence that my godfather's brother and I, who are avid VOOT players - we own twin sticks and are known to link our Dreamcasts for some seriously authentic play, were discussing how cool it would be to have VOOT on XBLA while playing Virtua Fighter 5 only a week before this announcement. I sent him an Xbox message about it and he literally stopped playing Street Fighter 4 just to call me and hoot and holler about it! :)

While on the announcement tip, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is coming to Wii, according to an ESRB rating. AMPED! Final Fantasy IV was (and still is) my favorite of them all. I can't wait to see this sequel.

If you're interested in Metallica and hearing videos of their live show from January 29th that sound like massive farts, please visit my Guitar blog at http://xlm2k.blogspot.com and leave comments! I can't stress how much it would make my day to know that people visit my blog...

30 hours of total power-on time.

25 hours of total play time.

10 hours, 44 minutes of game clear time.

Rank: MASTER NINJA

As far as I recall, it's been years since I've last thrown so many dirty words at a game for such an extended play period. There are some games where I get upset from constantly dying, but I usually conquer the troublesome areas in a timely fashion. The last time I was this livid at a game's challenges might have been in Viewtiful Joe's heyday... 2002 maybe?

There are so many parts of this game that are brutally difficult. I'm a little sad to say, but sometimes it's because of the poor camera that boss fights often end in a Game Over many times over. When the camera isn't screwing me up, the bosses are generally unpredictable and do not clearly show weaknesses. I think of this as both a good and bad design decision. I believe that players should be assisted visually or aurally during boss fights, even if the aid lasts for a few frames of animation. Because there are no aids, the fight seems to be more realistic; that's a positive thing. My main issue with the realism is that there's no reliable weak spot in these bosses. What works one time may not work in the same circumstance a second time, because the boss state changes very, very quickly.

Other than that, my only other gripe is that at the end, you're really tested in your endurance and are not allowed any respite from the middle of Chapter 15 to the end (Chapter 16). You are allowed to restock on items at the start of Chapter 15, but with the amount of boss battles (six, to be exact) it's really tough to complete one-way. You could go back Muramasa after defeating the first three bosses, but as a consequence you'd have to repeat all the fights leading up to save point you're abandoning, possibly dying on the way down or back up the final tower. I chose to just stick it out and wound up facing the final boss with a single life bar. About 2 1/2 hours of attempts resulted in victory, which is just plain shameful; the final bout lasts about 5 minutes at most when played cautiously.

Next up is something a bit less difficult: God of War 2!

On my break, I traveled to a friend's house and played a lil' SF4. Boy, that game has a lot of personality, and it plays pretty well! My friend and I made it up to Seth but got rocked by him many many times. The facial expressions are amazing! I especially like the look of shock on a fighter's face when he's about to get PWNT by an ultra combo. The Xbox 360 D-Pad sucks as usual. I think I will have to invest in that Mad Catz gamepad if I get the game. I would certainly have to try it out before I buy it, as Mad Catz goods are of questionable quality at times.

I hope to snag this game (and a pad) before... April? It sucks to say so, but games are low priority, esp. at this point where I'm trying to focus on a certain genre of gaming.

Speaking of which, I finally unlocked the Unlabored Flawlessness in Ninja Gaiden Black and am very pleased with its performance. Taking out 98% of a boss's health in one ultimate tech is just plain pleasing. Dying right after executing such insane damage, though, not too pleasing! I will need to work on it a bit further! I'm on the Chapter 10 dual-worm boss as of this writing.

Back to work for me! Trilobyte coming later this week!

February is Bad A** Brawlers month, part 1! I just love that title.

Initially slated for a month's celebration, I have extended my appreciation for pugilists, swordsmen and ninja into the month of March. I'm currently playing (or replaying) Ninja Gaiden Black and will move on to Viewtiful Joe 2. Ending the first act will be God of War 2. My progress in Ninja Gaiden Black is Chapter 6 (restarted due to damaged save - was on Chapter 7 previously) and while the game is still tough as nails to me, I've gotten much more accustomed to it. I haven't gotten a rank lower than Greater Ninja (had some Master Ninja and mostly Head (lolpetergriffin) Ninja). I'm also trying to unlock the uber killing machine Unlabored Flawlessness, which has me concentrating on maximizing the essence I gather from my enemies. It's pro work using intermediate skill, but I believe I can achieve this.

My band's EP tracks are almost ready! I'm very pleased with the sound, and hope that I can help tweak the mix job so that it sounds even better than it already does. If you haven't seen the videos and images of us in the studio, please visit my guitar blog. Leave comments! I've also completely moved in and am loving my new apartment.

Be sure to listen to the Trigames.NET Trilobyte, dropping about 3 times this week. Episode 121 was just released. We've been mega busy this weekend, but shared some bits of what we've been playing.