Category: Games

The 200 Club

December 15, 2010

I made a strange Tweet last night, that no doubt confused some of you.

I was jubilant (and for once, I am not being hyperbolic there) when I finally killed this guy in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite:

It’s name is Yamatsukami, it’s bigger than a house and it’s the monster you have to kill to get to the highest level in the game, HR9. He took me four tries, during which I had to learn and get used to his one-hit-kill attack. Once I knew what to look for, he’s not so hard to survive. He’s got massive HP though, so I beat him with less than a minute left. I look forward to going back and killing him some more with better weapons.

So now I am at the highest and most difficult rank of the game (G***) with the hardest-to-beat quests that give the best rewards. How long has it taken me exactly to get this far? I wondered, and I checked. These next three images are the save files of the three PSP Monster Hunter games:

The times are not cumulative, because when the old save file is imported it resets the clock. Turns out I played MH Freedom and MH Freedom 2 much less than I thought I did, and this is partly because they are very, very solo-unfriendly (guild quests are multiplayer only). As you can see, things changed with MH Freedom Unite.

So the total time played in this series is about 404 hours. Impressive!

And I still have much more to accomplish in the game, including (finally) some multiplayer with SFL 🙂

Monster Hunter isn’t the only series I have played like a mad-man this year. Here is a shot of the save-file from Dragon Quest IX on the DS:

And here’s a shot (grin) of the save file from Monster Hunter Tri (the Wii version):

I’m too scared to do the math myself, but I urge you all to get out your calculators and verify that in the past ~36 months I have spent almost a month just playing Monster Hunter games.

What’s scarier: that I did this, or that I am proud of it?

There Is No Future After The Fated Spell Is Cast

December 2, 2010

One of the most popular entries on last years blog – viewed by over 100 unique visitors – was this. So in an attempt to drive up ad revenue, let’s do it again…

AW has been hard at work crafting a fiendish MTG infect deck. He has named it 22 Deadly Venoms and no doubt stuffed it full of cards like this or that. I can see it now and I shudder; it’s going to be a nasty piece of work indeed.

So I have to counter it, and I’m hoping between the nine decks heading south with me (540 cards total) at least one of them will be up to the task. In this post, I shall introduce each in turn with a little hint into their mysteries.

Elves

Guess what? This guy is full of elves. Every creature is an elf, and virtually every spell is elf-related. Lots of elf tokens as well. The idea is to get as many elves out as possible, buff them with the many lords in the deck, and start swinging. Basically a fast green weenie decks with lots of lords and very few spells.

Allies

Allies are cool cards that have effects that are triggered whenever an ally comes into play. Fill a deck with allies and things get crazy quickly. There are some good ones in this blue/white deck, but in test playing it is consistently winning by milling via the excavator. There are four of them in the deck, plus other cards that allow up to 7 more (using clones) PLUS 3 more cards than can turn themselves into allies every turn. It’s a bit combo-y, and a bit irritating to play against, but a real blast to use 🙂

Black

So your opponent plays Maralen, and you laugh inside thinking “That’s going to help me more than it will him!” And then in his next turn he fishes out and plays Painful Quandary and you realise you just lost the game. That’s the idea at least, but given this evil, nasty, disruptive deck has got a whole motley bunch of cards in it who knows if it will ever happen. In tests this has only about a 50% win rate, and I’m not convinced it may not need a tad more tweaking.

Cloudhost (aka. “White Fatties)

White is known for powerful weenie decks (low-costed soldiers, for instance). I thought I’d turn that on its head and therefore assembled a deck full of high-cost (no CMC < 4) stupidly powerful white fatties. The issue is mana of course, but I may have that beaten (the deck name contains a hint how), but even so this deck has a low win rate by virtue of it being a bit slow. When it ‘goes off’ it is unstoppable, and I expect it would fare quite well in multiplay. A very enjoyable deck to use despite it’s weaknesses.

Tokens

And here we have the high-concept green/blue deck. I love the combo afforded by the above two cards, and I had to build a token-based deck around it. The exact for of the deck is still in flux, but my goal is a deck that absolutely needs tokens (including +1/+1) to win. Lets see how it works out when finished…

Eldrazi

There is nothing subtle about an Eldrazi deck. Basically it is all about getting your Eldrazi spawn out as fast as possible, and then sacking them for mana to make the truly big guys. The inclusion of the above two cards are to firstly let the big guys come out twice as fast (since spawn are now worth 2 mana) and to get the most out of Annihilator: “Just put those two lands you sacrificed on my side of the table please…”

Reach For The Skies (aka “Green Fatties”)

The inclusion of Heartbeast was because these decks are primarily designed for fun. It’s a fun card. Yes I know it technically helps the opponent as well (possibly more) but it also means that whoever playing against this green deck with any other deck should be a different experience if Heartbeat comes out. And it needs to be, since in test-plays this deck is one of two with a 100% win rate.

And to think that 100% has come about despite me never even casting Mr 13/13 up there 🙂

Red/Blue Control

Without even realizing it I seem to have assembled a wickedly effective “Oh no you don’t” control deck. If this one gets going the opponent never keeps any creatures in play and either gets timmed to death or poked by one of several unblockable (and shrouded) creatures. The first deck containing blue control elements that I truly enjoy playing. A high win ratio as well.

Steel Army Of The Overseers

The other 100% win deck so far. (Yes, I should play it against green fatties). This deck has 57 artifacts in it – including every land – and so many token generators and break-the-game imprint-based card cloners and deck searchers it is just crazy and complex and completely mad to play or play against. Plus you can make everything indestructable as early as turn two!

But can it – or green fatties – beat 22 Deadly Venoms? Could my token deck be polished into a worthy contender? And which of these ten (including Venoms) will emerge with the highest win ratio after the extensive playing that will occur in that legendary Randwick apartment?

Time will tell…

Yes, I Still Love The iPad

November 23, 2010

It’s been more than seven months since we bought an iPad, and to say it has changed the way we use a computer at home is an understatement. Almost 100% of our web-browsing is now done on the device, and I use it exclusively for email as well. I turn on my desktop rarely, and usually only to watch a video that is unsuported in the iOS (such as the new Ultraman movie trailer) or – ironically I realize – to update this blog.

That’s not to say I couldn’t do either on the iPad, it’s just that the WordPress app is currently woeful. Unlike the Books app, which in the last update turned the device into an incredible PDF reader. As you can see I made good use of this:

Yesterday was the long-heralded and greatly anticipated 4.2.2 update to the iPad OS. This gave the device several new features, including folders, multitasking, a new mail app, new browser functionality, the Game Center, wireless printing and a few other bells and whistles. I eagerly downloaded and installed the update, and here’s my impressions.

The shot above (the ‘desktop’ of our iPad) shows the new folders. To make one, just drag an app over another and hold it for half a second. They are an obvious feature that should have been there from the start, but I would have preferred had Apple gone even further with desktop customization. Such as adjustable icon sizes, ways to rearrange the grid or place items where we wanted (like Android does). Folders are a nice start though – the other features will come in time, I am sure of that.

Incidentally the background image of Sydney (click on the picture, I have included full-resolution screencaps in this post) was captured with the Maps app included with the iPad.

Frankly I don’t care about multitasking, especially since I rarely juggle between different apps. But it works and seems to work well. When I quit Angry Birds and switched to the browser before returning to the game had me exactly where I left off. A nice feature, but hardly necessary in the world of instant-start iApps. A bigger deal for the iPhone I reckon, for me multitasking just means a (new) slight pause every time I close an App.

The new Mail app is cool, and collects all your inboxes into one grand inbox. Thankfully this is entirely optional, especially relevant to micromanagers like myself that doesn’t want to cross the streams of my work and home inboxes 🙂

Game Center! What is this? Well, it’s a bit of an PSN for iPad, and includes achievements, friend lists, leaderboards etc. If you are using iOS, please send me – Richardjesperson – a friend request and we can compare our Angry Birds achievements 🙂

Now the big addition, for me, is the trivial ability to now search for words in-page in the browser. This has been my #1 missed browser feature since switching over to the iPad and I’m happy Apple not only added it but did in in an inobtrusive manner (since one goal of the iOS is to simplify everything). Here’s a shot:

To use it, just enter a word into the Search bar (upper right) and choose the new option to search on the page. Fantastic!

I haven’t used (or even discovered, to be honest) any of the other new features in the iOS, so I’ll end this review/tutorial here. I know quite a few of you use iOS on phones or the iPad, so I’m curious as to your opinions of the update (or the device in general).

For me the iPad has become all but irreplaceable, and 4.2.2 just makes a great thing better in my opinion.

Robot Claw