Tag Archives: catherine

See you when the summer’s through?

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If I had to pick my two favorite games from this year’s Summer of Arcade and PlayStation Play campaigns, I’d pick Bastion on Xbox Live Arcade, and Renegade Ops on PlayStation Network, with Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (XBLA) and Street Fighter III: Online Edition (PSN) coming in closely behind. Shame on me for not actually dedicating enough time to playing all of them all the way through – I’ve only beaten one-and-a-half of them (full point for Bastion, and only half-a-point for SF3OE because I’ve only beaten it with one characters).

I think this year I played way more downloadable games on my consoles than I did with disc-based games, mainly because I rent from GameFly now instead of buying most of my games at Best Buy or GameStop. Catherine is probably the only other “summer game” I can say I really enjoyed. I’d also count Child of Eden, but that was released maybe a week or two before the start of summer.

I kinda wish that there were more WiiWare games to talk about so that I could have something to say about all three downloadable services, but it looks like MotoHeroz may be the best one to come out of that camp this summer (if you’re curious, it’s made by RedLynx, the same developer who made Trials HD on PC and Xbox 360). Unusually for a WiiWare game, it costs 1500 Wii Points (or, to put it in simple dollars-and-cents terms, $15), so I’ve been cautious about buying it until I’ve heard enough about it to justify the price. Maybe I should pick it up before summer officially ends tomorrow.

Irene, Catherine and Sara

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Hurricane Irene barreled its way up the East Coast over the weekend, and as is typical of fierce storms that threaten the Philadelphia metro area, there was a lot of rain and wind, but not to the degree of devastation that some of the coastal states got. It started out as a Category 3 storm, but was downgraded to a Category 1 by the time it reached the mid-Atlantic. I’d imagine a lot of people were disappointed when they didn’t see flying cows miles and miles of smashed windows, but I’ll bet some of them changed their tune when they saw their cars submerged in 4-5 feet of water. My town always seems to avoid the worst of it, except for one part that’s maybe only a few feet above Darby Creek. Of course, it got flooded, but most of the floodwaters washed away on Sunday anyway.

Luckily, I had enough time to finish Catherine before things got really ugly. I had trouble getting through the last few levels of Stage 7 and had to resort to video walkthroughs to figure out just what the hell I was supposed to do. 7-4 is deceptively easy-looking, as you only have to climb up four stories to reach the exit, but the block configuration is extremely tricky. Stages 8 and 9 after that were easy in comparison. I expected 8 to be a pain in the ass, since it’s an escort mission within a boss battle. Luckily, the escortee is smart about climbing, even if she is a bit slow. The black hole blocks that appear in Stage 9 suck up anything and everything above them, so you have to be smart enough not to try to climb onto one if you don’t want to die. I finished the game with the “True Lovers” ending, because I was determined throughout the game to not make Katherine want to kill me.

In much less depressing news, I’m going to pay a visit to Sara’s house for the weekend. I’m excited because I’m finally going to get to meet her face-to-face (we’ve talked to each other on a regular basis since the beginning of the year, and exchanged pictures and phone numbers and all that good stuff), but I’m fairly nervous because it’s a long way from Philadelphia to her home in norther New Jersey. Since the trip requires me to take multiple trains, I need to make sure that all of the arrival and departure times sync up properly so that I don’t miss one and wind up being late – in the words of the White Rabbit, “for a very important date”.

Rain, relationships, repetition and other “r” words

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I’m going to be watching the skies nervously over the next few days. If I’m to believe my local news (and the National Weather Service) reports, it looks like the Mid-Atlantic is about to get a visit from one Hurricane Irene.

Perhaps as a warning shot, the Philly area got an unhealthy helping of rain and thunderstorms dumped on it this morning…just as I was helping my sister move her stuff back into her dorm for college. We had to wait for about 20 minutes after we arrived for the rain to let up enough for us to get her stuff inside, for lightning, water and electronic equipment make for an especially dangerous cocktail. I’m sure she’s all settled in by now, as she’s got a whole day to herself until the other students arrive.

Meanwhile, I’ve made it my week’s mission to finish off Catherine. After having completed the seventh stage (the Spiral Corridor), I can only state that I’ve ascended the tower of some sort of bizarre puzzle-platform hell. Traps appearing every which-way, me jamming the “Reset” and “Undo” buttons repeatedly when I’ve painted myself into a corner… and that’s just on Easy mode. Playing the game on Normal or Hard doesn’t afford one such luxuries. I was surprised that grabbing the pillows on this level granted you three retry chances and not just one. If not, my game would have been “over” over a loooong time ago. Poor Vincent’s gotten himself into a pickle that not even years of psychotherapy could cure. Note to Vince (and to guys in meatspace in general): if you’re involved with someone, and you wake up next to a strange woman who you know definitely isn’t your girlfriend, KICK HER OUT. (Seriously, how did Catherine manage to get inside of his apartment without keys?)

And because I was looking to re-acquire RPG Maker VX for my new computer, I decided to pay a return visit to RPGMaker.net and download some of the better games used for it and the older engines. Of course, in order to actually play the games I wanted, I had to search the net for the different run-time packages (which contain the basic graphics, music and other required goodies). Most of the editors work fine on my machine, but require administrative access in order to save new projects. The only one that doesn’t is RPG Maker 2000, which doesn’t surprise me all that much. If I ever wanted to use it, I could just go on my laptop, which has WinXP and no such compatibility problems.

For the longest time, I’ve never actually released anything worthwhile with the Makers, and I don’t know whether that’ll change today, but I sure to love playing around with them.

Life after Bastion

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Last night, I got everything there is to get in Bastion after two playthroughs and about 11 total hours of game time. On my second run through, I wanted to make sure that I got every damn thing done before entering the Tazal Terminals, which is the final level of the game. That meant clearing every stage, collecting every weapon upgrade in the Forge, winning every Proving Grounds challenge, and maximizing my character’s level (it stops at 10, but I didn’t actually get to do that until I reached the Terminals). With that done, the only thing I could try to do with my maxed-out character is attempt to play through the entire game after activating all of the Idols, with each one imposing a different challenge to make the game harder (enemies getting improved attack/defense, enemies recovering health, enemies reflecting physical attack damage, etc.) Or perhaps even more insane: all idols active and no stat-boosting tonics. A “no-weapon-upgrade run” is right out, since that would require me to start from the beginning and discard my New Game Plus data.

With that done, I still have From Dust and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet to play through out of the games that are featured in this year’s Xbox Live Summer of Arcade (Fruit Ninja Kinect comes out this coming Wednesday, and toy Soldiers: Cold War arrives the following week).

But that’s not all I have on my plate! The arrival of Catherine came just as I’d returned from my vacation. Right now I’m on the fourth stage, and poor, harried Vincent now finds himself trapped between two similarly-named women. I’m trying to keep him on the straight-and-narrow for my first time around, because I’d hate to see what happens when Katherine (with a “K”) gets the idea that ripping a guy’s heart out with a dinner fork is a good stress-relief technique.

Section 8: Prejudice came out on the PlayStation Network last week, as well. Even though it’s been on Xbox Live Arcade and PC for months now, I had some money left over in my PSN wallet, so I bought that version instead. I’ve dipped my hand in a few of the online modes, but I feel like I was cheated out of a certain victory because the game switched me to the losing side just as my team was within 100 points of victory. No worries, though…my kill-death ratio isn’t as pathetic as it has been in most other first-person shooters, so I’m feeling pretty good about myself right now. My stats? Not all that impressive, but I’m working on it.