Be Excellent To Each Other

Poor Gaywood.

You'd think, but it turns out it's not all that easy to identify which single move will result in checkmate when presented with the mate-1 move board.

I have finished something! Two things, actually, one of which is a game, and the other, erm, is a game too, so says its creators, so I'm putting it here.

1. Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)
2. Pikmin 2 (Gamecube)
3. Heavy Rain (PS3)
4. Dear Esther (PC)
5. Crysis Warhead (PC)

Yup, there's a reason most chess puzzles are mate in 2.

1 is too easy, 3 becomes harder to constrain.

Normally mate in 2-4 or insurmountable advantage in the same.

I should add you only get one go to do it, so you have to work it out using your brain, rather than just moving all the pieces in order to all possible places. It passed the time for me anyway.

Reminds me of the old "there are more possible moves in a game of chess than there are atoms in the universe" factoid.

Is that true? Wow.

Only if you count the atoms first

Off the top of my head, it's about 10^80 possible moves, which is an insane number. There are roughly 10^75 atoms in the known universe.

Updating again.



And now Killzone 4 (PS4). Garbage, just utter garbage. Realistic score 1/10.

I swear, I'm seriously thinking about boycotting all mainstream gaming after that tripe.

Blimey, that be 13 already. I can spend all March on Dark Souls 2 now. Yippie!

Tengami (iOS) - short puzzler where you traverse through a Japanese pop up book to collect cherry blossom.

Was it any good? YerpGonks were quite scathing.

It was frustrating to move around as you character walks slowly and if you're rushing between locations to try stuff out that's bad.

Also, the same style puzzles sometimes had different ways of working them out which made me resort to a walkthrough.

But!

It was beautiful and the popup book navigation was very fun.

Overall I'd say to buy it if you have credit from a voucher going begging, but don't bother otherwise or you'll feel short changed.

1. Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)
2. Pikmin 2 (Gamecube)
3. Heavy Rain (PS3)
4. Dear Esther (PC)
5. Crysis Warhead (PC)
6. Batman Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)

Wahey!

More than finishing games, i'm trying some stuff on my steam backlog.

Dead Island is awful.

Dust is good on paper, but incredibly boring. Valdis Story was a much better metroidvania

Funnily enough I played Dead Island last week and thought the very same.

Also, I'm 20 hours into Project X Zone. Imagine all the other games I could have completed in that time? This is a hard slog.

I just can't stop finishing off games.



And now Rayman Run (iOS). That's 3 stars on EVERY LEVEL and all the teeth including Land of the Dead levels.

It was brilliant. Seriously. Brilliant. I'd have been scepticle how they'd get the console version on the phones but they made a cracking run and jump tap tap athon. The graphics are identical to the consoles and the cut down music is fantastic. I bloody loved it. Each level only takes 60 seconds making it the perfect commute fodder.

Jesus Christ man, isn't that some near inhuman levels of performance? I played through it (by which I mean Rayman Jungle Run, it's not clear whether you're talking about that or the sequel Fiesta Run) and stopped when I'd simply finished all the levels; trying to three star everything and do all the dead levels would've seen my phone getting smacked to death against a hard surface very quickly.

Also: isn't Badland 'Day 2' just the second set of levels in the same game? Why are you counting that rather than just saying you finished the game?

I've done that with Rayman too. It must be you Bamba.

Seventh. The Last of Us.

Wow.

Just wow.

It's the dark souls of 'normal games'. Proof that single player is still king. I had abandoned direct story telling in exchange for mechanics. But this was a paradigm shift in story telling. The first traditional game* story that stands against tele.


* not including innovative games like dark souls that tell stories in ways only games can. And so remains the best game ever.

It was the free one with the iSpaz Christmas thing - must be Jungle Run. It helped that a non-gamer at work was playing it at the same time and I wanted to beat him to the finish. It's bloody good though and a throwback to hardcore platformers, if you ask me.



It's not just a second set of levels. Day 1 had 40 levels. Day 2 has *inhales* FOURTY HARD LEVELS. I's like completing the game ALL OVER AGAIN. ON HARD MODE. If the guys who made it weren't so nice, I swear they could have released it as Badland 3.

Also, the harder levels are by far the worse levels. It just becomes a chore and nowhere near as lovely fun as the earlier levels.

In that case for Dark Souls 2 I'll be able to count each boss!

Yes, it's getting a bit tenuous now.

Get lost, Day 2 is the same size as the "original" game as released; the same game I completed back in 2013.

Just because they've doubled the size with mo' DLC does that mean I've no longer completed the original game if I don't complete the new DLC.

If Dark Souls 2 was "doubled" in size by extra DLC then I'd see your point, but it won't be so, y'know, stop ruining my achievements you buggers.

So it's either a second set of levels or a second difficulty setting depending how you look at it; neither of those constitutes a separate game. Not that you're necessarily inflating your total here because if you finished the day 2 levels this year and that's the last set of levels in the game then you legitimately finished the full Badland game this year. But continually counting it as 'Badland Day 2' as opposed to just 'Badland' is odd and doesn't really work.

For completeness, it's the former.

I was only joshing. You can define the completeness however you like. I would definitely count that as a second game myself.

Hmmm, I might use the tag 'DLC' or 'Expansion' to separate stuff in my list though.

That and I'm going to bold and large fontize dark souls 2 in my list. (Pleasebegoodpleasebegood)

Beex. Overcomplicating lists since 2008.

Feex.

I debate whether it has been done on the majority of days in all those years.

Can we get a poll?

Also 2014? I'm not sure you can judge a year 'n' until 3 months into year 'n+1.'

And surely we should implement a grading system.

Finished The Last of Us New Game Plus, but I'm going to lump it in with Left Behind.

1. Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)
2. Pikmin 2 (Gamecube)
3. Heavy Rain (PS3)
4. Dear Esther (PC)
5. Crysis Warhead (PC)
6. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)
7. RE5: Lost in Nightmares (Xbox 360)

Maybe doing a bit of DLC will let me catch up.

Completed Pokemon Thunder Yellow (GBC) after feeling nostalgic from that Twitch plays Pokemon Red thing. Thunder Yellow is a hacked rom where you can catch all the pokemon, without trading with other real people, I had every intention of collecting them all but the games getting a bit flaky now and keeps jumping back to 10 minutes back in time for some reason. Still I completed all the gym badges, beat the elite four and blue and caught all the 3 legendary pokemon and mew and mewtwo, so I've played a good session.

And that's number 13 done, I'm 25% through my finish list.

Currently playing through Ass Crud 50 Pirate flavour, struggling to play more of this despite putting in a fair bit of time in already and despite I've managed 100% in all the last titles except the first. Hopefully I'll be able to power through the main story and call it a day.
Also playing Rayman oranges and Rayman jungle run thingy Saturnalian finished recently.
Oh and the new Phoenix Wright game. Oh and I started The Swapper.

Hopefully that lot will be done by the end of the month.

I counted Lego Marvel as finished after competing the campaign, but I've just 100%'d it and got the Platinum trophy now, so it feels like it counts properly now.

Just finished Little Inferno, that ending was pretty fucking weird.

Broken Sword 5 Episode 1 (iOS).
Part 2 isn't out yet, but I'll be buying it when it does.

Brothers: A tale of two sons how shit the dualshock 3 triggers are.

Even without th\t, I don't think I'd ever get uswd to the control system.

I'd forgot all about this month's PS+. To the ... etc.

Left behind ticked off. Awesome.

Updating...



And Dead Space 3. Good it was too. Not brilliant but still good.

1. Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)
2. Pikmin 2 (Gamecube)
3. Heavy Rain (PS3)
4. Dear Esther (PC)
5. Crysis Warhead (PC)
6. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)
7. RE5: Lost in Nightmares (Xbox 360)
8. Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War (PC)
9. RE5: Desperate Escape (Xbox 360)

That one was a bit tough, and I only played on normal.

So was No. 10 Dark Souls 2? Nope. Just completed Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations. It occurred to me that now I have a 3DS I can go back to the final of the trilogy - that I had to abandon halfway through when my DS broke.

It's pretty hard picking up a game after a break of 3 or so years, but it was still ace. Playing Threes and Apollo Justice on my commute theses days (but distracted by a book).

1. South Park: Stick of Truth



It's not the only game I've played thus far in 2014, but the only one I've 'finished'. (Mainly because the others are things like OpenTTD which NEVER END).

I finished Marvel Puzzle Quest this morning. I'm fairly sure I'm happy for that to count.

Finished all of Rayman Jungle Run, same as Saturnalian, all levels completed with all gems.

Kind of finished Rayman Legends, well I did the main story levels and I got the final credits. Kind of want to finish 53 games now as I left so much unfinished in it but I want to play the new south park game and I need to send this back to get it.

And me. I may have mentioned it.