Damn, been playing alot of Okami the past few days, well, not enough though, as compared to say God Hand. I'm only at around 24 hrs, I think...? There's a lot I can say about it but I'm really sleepy right now so I think i'll leave this for next time. For now, I'll just say that Okami is by far (in the history of games over the past 10+ years) the one and only truely original game that I've ever seen/heard/known.

And then earlier today, I had to decide if I want to buy the original game for God of War, or to buy a pack of 3 dual layered DVDs to burn a copy from the rental I have. It's like the only game I've rented that's not of the common DVD type. I went to the bookstore to see if they sell dual-layered dvds and it's 3 for $20 (no single ones). That's like.. DAMN! I don't need 3.. I just want one. So I were to spend that much, I might as well get the original. But then again I don't know if I'll like the game or if I really want to have the original, so I ended up testing/playing the game for a bit using that rented one from gamefly, and before I could decide to get it or not the ebay auction already ended. LOL. Oh well...

Anyway, I've played it for about 4 hours now and again, there's a lot I can say about it but cos' I'm tired, I'll just say this for now - an overall great game with great graphics, motion and sound. Another thing worth mentioning would be its many similarities in feel and game mechanics to Prince of Persia the Two Thrones.

All right, that's all for today. Gotta go sleep since I have to wake up earlier tomorrow to help my sister MOVE! Aaaaahh!! *back aches* LOL

Yay!! I beat God Hand last night!! And so (mwahahahha!!) here are my thoughts on why people say it's hard, and that includes me (60%).

Enemy HP
Enemies have relatively high HP. It's only in stage one do they have HP short enough for you to take down in 2 full combos. Enemies' HP increases as you progress into the game. The women go up to around, I think, ~1000 HP while the men can go up to ~2000. and if you're wondering how damaging you are, by that point of the game, your average damage per move should be 16~25. So if you calculate, a 1000 HP enemy would take ~40 hits to kill. Whee~! =_=

Enemy numbers
I just mentioned that enemies have high HP, so taking one enemy down takes time. Problem is when you're not given any chance to land attacks on one without getting disturbed and attacked by four others, or more. The enemies are smart too. They know how to come at you together so that you don't get much chance to separate them and attack. You'll know how traumatized you'll be when you get to fight 8 high HP enemies together AT ONCE. =_=''

Enemy long range attacks
Quite a number of enemies have long ranged attacks. The women get whips a lot and they just whip the hell out of you the entire time. It's not hard against one whipper, but anymore than that and you're quite screwed, unless you have a roulette ready. Other long range attacks include a hat boomerang and a jump at your head (with their crotch!!). For the men, they get a Mohawk and can shoot it at you at fast speeds. ^^" Others have daggers and can throw them even in air. The fatsos can fly at you from a distance at incredible speeds to attack with their heads. For bosses, they can do pretty much anything from shooting fireballs, shockwaves, and laser beams to everything else. So annoying moves, and do you get any? Yes! Barely a few and you'll need roulette orbs to do it! If you don't have one, what happens? Well, it's either you get pretty owned or you'll just have to do without it. Oh wait, there IS one thing you can do – throw objects. They're lifesavers.

Enemy break attacks
This is one of the most annoying aspects of the game. If an enemy blocks your attacks, you can only try attacking them continuously anyway for so many number of hits before they break it, meaning, they smack your fists away and you get caught off guard, stopping your attack and opening you to their attacks. The good thing is, evasion is set as priority in this game, so back flipping after getting broken works almost all the time. The bad thing is, you'll be spending LOTS of time trying to take down one enemy cos' he keeps guarding and breaking you. You'd think spending a little more time isn't all that bad, but unfortunately, the fighting ring (optional money earning area) doesn't like that. MANY of the challenges there have time limits and most are below 2 minutes. Getting blocked and broken all the time will prove uselessness.

Enemy evasion
Some few enemies can dodge your moves the way you can. This gets really annoying because only 20% of your attacks actually land. This is when the game turns to full-on button mashing cos' you just have to keep attacking for 20% of your moves to land at all.

Fighting ring room
When I say room, I mean the space/area in which you can run around and fight enemies. In the main quest/game, the area is big 90% of the time. That also includes objects for you to throw at enemies, but in the fighting ring, you're limited to a very small and right area. The wrestling ring is the worst cos' of the tiny space and 4 corners. The cage is better cos' it's circular and trice bigger. But all the same, they don't have objects for you to throw. When enemies come in big numbers, you get surrounded and cornered very easily, so you'll need a lot of room to get away to. The fighting ring, however, can't give you that, hence the much higher difficulty on top of the already hard enemies and criteria to beat the challenge.

Money earning
This is really the hardest thing to do. You need money for everything; to increase your life bar, buy stronger moves and roulettes. 114 moves in total, most of them $7000-20000, the last 15 are $50000-$600000. Enemies drop an average $200-1000 and that's not for every single enemy you defeat. Only SOME drop money. So really, how do you godamn earn enough $$?! A few ways:

1. Gamble in the casino or Chihuahua race. What are your chances? 0.1%
2. Fighting ring. The challenges are TOUGH and many are seemingly impossible. Rewards average $2000-4000 per challenge, but the impossible ones reward $10000-50000. There're a total of 50 different challenges.
3. Don't die more than twice in a stage (2-3 gameplay). I don't know how much you earn if you don't die at all but two deaths earn you, I heard, $40000. 4 deaths = $10000. 15 deaths = $5000. Above 15 = $none.
4. Die as many times as you can tolerate. Kill all but one enemy in the area before committing suicide. For every enemy you kill you earn money at the end of the stage. Lv 1 enemies = $100, Lv 2 = $150, Lv 3 = $200, Lv Die = $300. This way, you give up your no death reward but kill more enemies to make up for that. This feels more possible to me than the no-death method, really, cos' what are the chances you don't die AT ALL in one stage? Another 0.1%.
5. Defeat devil fairy challenges. These appear in some areas of a stage and are as tough or even harder than the fighting ring. The only problem is that you enter the battle with however much life, god hand gauge and roulettes you have when you get to that point. If you're barely alive by then, chances are there's absolutely NO way you can win the challenge. Once you pass them or give them up, you can never go back to them again later. Also, if you win the challenge but lose your life/god hand gauge/roulette orbs, you'll resume with the main game with that remaining status you have.
6. Sell unused/weaker techniques. Eventually you'll get better moves that are of the same but higher damage, so selling the weaker ones can return you some money but they're barely enough most of the time.

So what can you tell from this? The weaker of a gamer you are, the harder the game is for you. It's fair to reward more if you do good but this game does punish average or below gamers seriously because if you don't earn enough money (which can be earned mostly IF you're good enough), you won't be able to power up so that you can deal with the harder enemies later, and you will be extremely overpowered, especially towards the end. You also can't replay stages to fight common enemies for money. Once you're done with a stage, you're DONE. There's no going back/replaying older stages at all in this game, which is really very disappointing.

I even wrote a review for real in Gamespot, to make others understand why they should never judge the game by anything else BUT its gameplay.

OH MY GOD!! I bought God Hand yesterday and it was AWESOMEE!!! I ended up buying the original cos’ I just can’t wait for the rental to arrive. It’ll take another week for that to happen, so heck!!! Anyway, the game is so damn sweet and fun!! I can’t help but write a review for it already even tho’ I just played 4.5 hours!! (I'll add pics later, cos now I'm at work!! LOL)

Story:
Basically, the story is about a man called Gene who one day finds a girl, Olivia, whose arm is about to get chopped off by some bad guys, and so he saves her but ends up losing his own arm to them. In return for the favor, the girl somehow entrusts the God Hand to him, so now Gene has a brand new arm with the power of god. (LOL) Problem is, the news about him spreads quickly and now every baddie in the world wants this arm of his. And so now Gene travels with Olivia (obligated, LOL) who keeps ordering him to go around using his new-grown god hand to help people in need.

Graphics:
Graphics are good, but not the best, Maybe it’s because I’ve recently grown to be easily distracted by unsmooth polygons and repetitive/rough textures, but the game does lack some good textures, especially on the background/buildings. Thing is, the game is focused and based on almost entirely on the fight, so you won’t be having the time to look around at textures and rough polygons all too much cos’ you’ll be really busy trying to beat up enemies.

Level Design:
I’ve not completed the game yet, cos’ I just bought and started it yesterday, but so far, the levels are linear. The setting looks mostly cowboyish and there’re not all that many buildings and objects. The only real objects you can interact with are breakable chairs, tables, boxes, crates and barrels, and explosive cans. In other words, the level design can be somewhat plain and you might be surprised and or disappointed at how simple and ‘empty’ they are. However, again, this is not exactly a very big issue as the game puts everything into the fighting, which means the more space to fight in (without getting hindered by background objects) the better.

Gameplay:
Now THIS is the highlight of the game. This game is based mostly on a martial arts hand to hand, man to man combat system. Every face button does a different attack which you can select from your move list as to your preference. Holding back on the left analog stick and pressing the X, square or triangle button will allow you to perform other different moves. The O button is only for special reaction moves, which can be performed when, for example, “Stomp (O)!” shows up on the screen. (My favorite reaction move, btw). Also, dodging and evading is performed using the right analog stick.

In general, there is no fixed/set way to play this game, cos’ no one sticks to the default moves setting. You learn and acquire many new moves throughout the game (total of 116) either by defeating demon sub-bosses or rescuing victims (as a rewards), or buying them at the shop with the money you get from defeating enemies. So many moves, and not enough move slots (you can only select as many as ~12 moves to use in battle, even tho’ you can switch and reselect anytime). You will find that you often have to switch and rearrange moves for your combo as enemies get stronger and as you acquire new and more powerful moves. You are free to build and link your combo in any way, but you’ll have to make sure the punches and kicks connect for them to be effective. For example, you won’t want a reverse sweep (makes enemies fall) and then perform a high kick, since the high kick will not hit the enemy when he’s down on the ground.

Like most games, there is a ‘super power’ gauge. In fighting games, it’s called the special move gauge. In Devil May Cry, it’s called Devil Trigger. In Sengoku Basara, it’s called basara. In God Hand, it’s called… I dunno. LOL. But you get the point. Attacking enemies slowly builds up your ‘god hand’ gauge, and when it fills up, you can fully unleash your god hand by pressing R2. It grants you invincibility for a very short time, and your attack power increases.

There is also something known as the Roulette. You can perform a Roulette move when you have at least one Roulette slot. Roulette slots are gained/refilled when enemies drop ‘skull cards’, or when a breakable object drops it. A green skull card refills one slot, a gold skull card refills 2. To perform Roulette, press R1 and a short list will appear. Shuffle through them quickly by pressing the R1 button again to select the move you want. You are given only a few seconds to do this, and the order of the list is random, so you have to be quick to select what you want. Roulette moves are highly damaging, but even so, it is usually not enough to kill most enemies in one hit.

There is absolutely no item buying in this game, meaning, you can’t buy them to use later during emergencies. When your health is low, your health IS LOW. You can only either pray for the next enemy you defeat to drop a healing fruit, or for the breakable objects nearby to give you a free one. The nice thing is, if you get a fruit and you don’t want to take it just yet, you can leave it for as long as you want until you need it, as long as you don’t leave and go into the next area. This way, you are not forced to heal (and use up a valuable dropped item) when you don’t need/want to. This works by having the player press O to pick up the item. Running past it alone will not pick it up, which greatly prevents ‘accidental taking’.

One last thing about this game is, you don’t have to worry ALL TOO MUCH about dying. Trust me, you’ll be dying A LOOOT in this game. But when you do, just select continue to retry from the last door you entered. You can die and continue as many times as you need, but keep in mind that the game records the number of continues you’ve had. At the end of each lengthy stage (roughly 2-3 hours), you’ll be awarded with money, but the more continues you have, the less $$ you get.

Difficulty:
Difficulty in this game is reasonably high to begin with. Most enemies don’t come singularly, but you remain single. And since the combat system is most suited for one on one battles, you will often find trouble dealing with more than 2 enemies at once. Being patient and playing defensive is one way to overcome this, but it may ruin the fun. Also, I find that evading backwards (back flip) is most effective, while dashing forward can be hard. Also, most enemies have pretty high vitality.

Enemy difficulty changes all the time. The more you hit them, the higher the difficulty, the more you get hit, the lower the difficulty. It’s pretty fair, but trouble comes when your life is low and you can’t afford to get hit anymore. In such cases, the typical outcome is that the difficulty gets higher since you keep attacking enemies and not getting hit to keep your life, but the more you try to defeat them, the harder they get and the more risk you face. Pretty tough situation if you ask me.

Music:
The music is ‘easily likable’ for a start. However, this game has surprisingly very few tracks (23 total), which means you’ll be hearing the same track again and again for a long time, which might annoy some people who may get sick of it really fast. But otherwise, I say the music fits the game very well.

OOOHHH!! RIGHT!! I forgot one thing!!! (how can I!?!) I made a Devil May Cry 4 trailer parody. I uploaded it onto youtube as well but no, I prefer for you to download and watch the actual quicktime movie cos' youtube lagged the sound and so it's not in sync as it should. =_=##

Watch the parody! (7.1 mb, requires Flash)

Umm.. I guess I've not updated for a long time, AGAIN. I wanted to update on the 23rd of September but I got lazy. I had a dream then. It was a very awkward dream. It's one of the 2 dreams I remember where I fell in extreme love with someone. For some reason, whenever I dream of such dreams I'm always the kind of girl who'd throw herself entirely at the guy (in the dream). It's so weird. O_o

Anyway, in the dream, I'm in love with this guy I have no idea who he is but he looks asian (I think?). I saw him standing somewhere outside with a guy friend next to him and I excitedly greeted him and immediately leapt at him for a hug. The next time the same thing happened and I tried to hug him I noticed his very uncomfortable look, and finally accepting the fact that I've been rejected I decided to give in and say "Nah... I'm kidding! Don't worry!" And then I left in disappointment, heartbroken, with another guy friend who was with me. And strangely, I guess I was looking for comfort or something and so immediately I ended up sticking to that guy friend of mine. Like, I left together with him holding his arm and stuff. O_o' Damn.

We walked off together and somehow ended up in front of the house of that guy I like. His family saw me and invited me in but I said no because I have my current 'boyfriend' with me. Apparently, the family of the guy I like thought I was with their son, and thought of me as their 'daughter-in-law'. That's so weird! But that's when I realized I probably know the reason why he rejected me. It's because he likes someone else. And that someone else is that guy friend standing next to him. LOL. I got owned. Owned by the yaoi I love so much. HAHAHAHAHA!!! Anyway, that's the dream, and even tho' it was weird it's fun and interesting now that I think of it.

The only other thing I can think of saying right now is something that's been dominating my concentration for the past 4 days or so, and by now almost everyone I know already knows about it cos' I told them >_> Anyway, I plan on going down to San Francisco next year April for a convention known as Tales of Anime. Despite the name, apparently it's more game-based rather than anime, and, it's supposedly made for 'girl gamers'. =D That's so cool! But that alone won't even be a quarter of the reason why I'd ever go. It's the special guests that caught my attention.

Someone informed me through email about this convention, and she told me that Reuben Langdon and Dan Southworth (voice actors of Dante and Vergil) will be there. At first I thought "Nah... I'm not going. Don't got money, don't got motivation to try travel alone and all that stuff." But somehow the next day, the more I think about it the more I want to go. And now I'm really really really very excited about going. I even reserved a ticket already (haven't confirmed tho'). Cos' apparently the return tickets for the 9th of April is already booked out. Heh. Talk about planning early.

If I'm getting the ticket, it'll be $210. But then it'll be from the 4-10th April and that's 6 nights. I can't afford 6 nights in a hotel cos that'll be $600. I want a motel, seriously, but it almost seems like there's no motels in that area, just hotels. =_= So I'm trying to get some friends (even just one!) to go with me so that maybe we can share the room. In that case I can afford 6 nights... Well, we'll see... I'm so overly worried about this >_> I think only the people of the same community would understand how important this is to me... Oh well.

Now I'm starving again. I think i'm gonna get food soon... from Maple again. XD They've got this new duck dish and it's nostalgic. It tastes like the duck in Singapore and I'm so gonna get it again!!!!!

Oh! One last thing, God Hand is coming out in like 5 days. OMG!!! I'm not gonna buy the real thing just cos' I'm still subscribed to Gamefly, so might as well get it there =) I've just spent enough yesterday on a new digital camera (to prepare for the convention.. yes I know it's way early but I need it eventually for my own anyway!) Really hope to play the game soon!! ^_^!!

And the digital camera I got was a Canon Powershot A520. It's not the latest model or anything but it does what I need. And it's compact (smaller than the one I lost =_=), and it's cheap. I got it on ebay, and it was like an awesomely GOOD deal. It was the only one with BUY IT NOW for $99.95. Buyer is trustworthy and reliable and he said that the camera was only lightly used and is in excellent working condition mechanically, electronically and cosmetically. Not only that, he also included a 16 + 256 MB memory card, AND shipping is FREE (priority mail insured!) in the US!! Now tell me if that's a bad deal!!! O_O!! It took me only 1 minute to decide to get it despite all the many other same items that I have on watch. Hallelujah!! ^__^!