Entropia hunt logs #2 - Gallard, 5000, Hunt III

Gallard - 5000 - Hunt III

This log spells the end of the Gallard iron mission chain, and not a second too early. Now I can move on to some other monster, or maybe leave Arkadia altogether and explore what else the universe holds in stock, if that opportunity comes up.

Documenting this log frustratingly got screwed up with me interrupting my sole focus on swunting Gallards to enter the Gold Rush event. The Universal Ammo count definitely is off by some 40-70 peds, the Weapon Cells and BLP numbers seem rather wonky too, though I have no clue what happened there. Those last two are incorrect either in this, or the previous Gallard Hunt II log.

As a consequence, I definitely will create a cover-all log form before starting my next run. This must not happen again, as it's a massive loss of time if one element of data ruins an entire log. This log is basically worthless in terms of calculating my total loss on this hunt.

All the other loot values definitely are correct (plus minus a few PEC with the handgun drops).

Side note: Sweat gatherer level gain has slowed down considerably, but still is increasing motivatingly enough for me. I sold 20k sweat for around 1.75/k at some point.

Globals: 0

Retro Achievements Update #2

What I've been doing over the last few months...

New retroachievements.org score:

11039 points - Rank 437 (of 14110 registered players)

About 70 places closer to the top, quite nice for the fact I haven't really accomplished too much since the last update.

Games I spent time on were:

-) Yugioh World Championship 2005 - 7 Trials to Glory (GBA)

A title overshadowed by the 2006 version I used to play a lot, years and years ago. This 2005 incarnation is severely crippled in its deck building mechanisms (to this day I don't know how to sort my cards!), I literally needed to ask for help to even be able to build my first deck! The actual gameplay is nice and fast though (speedup also helps), even though the very limited AI and old-school-ness of the card pool makes this a very easy game compared to more recent incarnations. The mechanics of game progress are a jumbled mess in this game, to be able to play various tournaments and do challenges you need to "sleep" in order to pass time - with the aforementioned becoming available randomly. Quite annoying and needlessly complicated, needless to say that the formula has been much improved again with the 2006 sequel. Still, it's a Yugioh game and therefore enjoyable enough by default. Not sure whether I will try to GM it as I would need to start a new game in order to be able to do so (and need to possibly do a lot of retries for some of the achievements).

-) Super Tennis (SNES)

I've been working hard on becoming the first person (!) to GM this game's very time-consuming and rather boring set (well it IS a sports game, what would you expect...)

Super Tennis is a more than decent SNES tennis game held back rather sharply by its ridiculously low difficulty and some limitations in ball control and swing selection. I won't elaborate any further on this title as my mini-review should match (PUN) the blandness of playing this monotonous and unrewarding title. Btw, topspin return = RIDICULOUSLY OP! Didn't they test this game before they released it!? *facepalm*

As the achievement set (which has the STUPIDEST achievement names possible!) requires me to win the game again and again with all the different players, I've been doing just that. About 8 players x 3-4 hours per playthrough are left. Super Tennis has an absolutely atrocious password system; thus I am pretty much limited to grinding this game on weekends (I currently am working in an office, which is the best job I've ever held actually!) in order to be able to avoid the pain of entering 40-something letters, numbers and question marks (seriously...) per password *facepalm*.

-) Super Bomberman (SNES)

One of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had was 4-player multiplayer Bomberman (not even an official version, but some Windows freeware clone) with mates and family members. 15 years later, I got very little fun out of this first Bomberman title on the SNES. The campaign mode is rather boring (remote bomb = OP), with the last boss being an extremely negative experience to boot. You need the "fist" powerup (not the "boot" unfortuntely, or I could have made a pun :-() to be able to defeat said... and you lose (some of) your powerups on death. Ergo, if you die to him, you are better off fast-forward suiciding so you can play the previous level again and farm the fist and remote bomb. A very painful and frustrating experience that certainly coloured my opinion on this title quite heavily.

I am reluctantly attempting to grind down the battle mode challences, but as these are very hard and need a lot of luck, I'm pretty much stuck at the third level and don't know whether I'll brute force these after all as the process certainly isn't any fun at all.

-) Donkey Kong Land (GB)

A more than decent title (very good for a Gameboy title, but lacking in comparison to the eternal classics on the SNES). Controls have some wonky moments (e.g. bouncing on enemies is very jumpy, also rolling feels rather off compared to the SNES games - a platformer of course lives and dies with how precise and fluid its controls are, and in the case of this game, they are a valid reason I can't see myself replaying this title too frequently). Levels are, oddly enough, usually much longer than SNES ones and therefore fittingly have multiple save points. I'm currently at the beginning of World 4 (of 4), so I can't give a final verdict on the difficulty compared to the "Country" games. Overall, it's a quite good game. As usual I can't judge music or sound since I play with those off, listening to music or watching videos on the side instead.

-) Chrono Trigger (SNES)

I've been trying to play this RPG several times over the last 10 years, but never got too far, being hampered by the tiresome combats and my general weariness to complete games (I have actually stopped playing games ON THE FINAL BOSS, no joke! only to start them again from the beginning and quitting them at some point again... and so on!)

Now, since I have a reason to play games all the way through (points!)... nothing has changed. Mood is, as is common knowledge, only a thing for cattle and loveplay - but in my case mood is everything when it comes to long-winded non-action titles like this one, and said mood doesn't hit me too often. Right now, I'm in the second section of the game (the past) and have very little motivation to boot this up - but tomorrow this might randomly be completely different! Chaotic neutral!

-) Frogger (SNES)

Doesn't need many words, it's just a very late (1998!) port of the classic arcade game. I got to stage 4, then it gets too hard for me. LOL

-) Zelda: Link's Awakening (GBC)

Now this is a game I actually played back in the day when it came out! Same as Pokemon Blue (I think), I beat this game on the original machine but never on emulation. I might not be able to complete this 100% as you need to do a deathless run (to see the epilogue or something), but I'll try to beat as much as I can otherwise.

I only count the top-down titles as "real" Zelda games, so this one, along with the eternal classic Link to the Past, is - for me - as good as it gets (haven't played the GBA titles though yet). Ocarina of GRIME for all I care!

Of course (people actually called me arrogant partly because of using phrases like "of course" a lot!), next to all this retro shit, I've been playing Entropia Universe 24/7. There is never a reason NOT to sweat, so I've been working on the last batch of 5000 gallards in order to be able to finally check off my first iron mission. Also dabbled a little in the Arkadian Gold Rush (Category I) event, but quickly got bored of shooting the same damn monster for hours. Injecting some uncommons or even a boss into the mix would have worked wonders here... Additionally there was the problem of getting the right weapons for this kind of monster - I've never been hunting big stuff, so I couldn't do much more than randomly get a gun from the auction I deemed able to do the job.

Stuff I'm planning for the "near" future (think 6 months *sigh*):

-) Game of Thrones season 1 review (ugh!)
-) Why I dropped Yu-No (visual novel)
-) Puella Magi Madoka Magica anime review (this will be another big one!)
-) Working on my first serious fanfic "Sennen Empire" (a Yugioh fanfic, basically a project for me to get back into writing fiction after a more than 5-year break!)

StuffIcouldreviewifIhadtakennotesbutIdidntsoIwouldhavetowatchthisstuffagainwhichprobablyisnt worththehassleeeee *pant pant*:

-) Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei anime
-) Another anime
-) Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (visual novel) (...though it would be a lot of fun to tear apart this clusterfuck!)

Entropia hunt logs #1 - Gallard, 5000, Hunt II

Gallard - 5000 - Hunt II (first one with full tracking)

Another 5000 Gallards down, still 5000 more to go to complete my first Iron Mission chain! I swunted a lot more this time around. Very happy with the skill gains. Net loss on the hunt much less than I had thought beforehand. Compared to Hunt I loot was somewhat worse (unfortunately I didn't track expenses in that one so I can't really compare the overall result). I occasionally healed other people with the mindforce chip, so it's not 100% accurate.

On a side note, scanning has gotten very frustrating now, barely any skill drops any more. I hit Level 7 Humanoid Investigator with big pains.

Globals: 0

Interactive fiction review #10 - Last Resort

Last Resort by Jim Aikin

Imbalanced relation of size and difficulty

Last Resort by Jim Aikin is a large, ambitious mystery/fantasy game.

The player controls a teenage girl (unfortunately we don't learn much about her other than she's rather superficial and shallow) who, as we soon learn, is heading towards a rather grim destiny in the course of the day. To escape your predicament you have to perfectly solve a large number of puzzles which I would easily label INSANELY DIFFICULT. Herein lies the main problem of this game.

The player's puzzle-solving ambitions are hampered both by invisible timers and dead ends, which is an absolute no-go in a game of Last Resort's magnitude! The inclusion of puzzles which can only be solved in a short window of time completely contradicts with the game's non-linear approach to gameplay. Twice I progressed through a larger part of the game, only to be stumped with finding me in an unwinnable situation. (I gave up afterwards, as would most people.)

It is really a shame this game is held back by this ball and chain, because the writing and general approach are quite good. The game's events are somewhat unrealistic, but to a degree that can easily be forgiven. (Spoiler - click to show)An example: Would you really let the girl you are going to sacrifice later in the day wander around freely? On the other hand a more interesting main character would likely put the player over the edge of trying to complete the frustrating puzzles. (In such situations, the game Portal always comes to my mind.)

To summarize, brave players might find quite some fun in this monstrous game. It's a trip best aided by the complex hint system. (I have asked the permission of the author to post the password - the usage of one should never be necessary in the first place! - here.) (Spoiler - click to show)Password: Gertrude Stein

No score

Entropia Universe stuff #1 - 5000 Gallard drop list

5000 Gallard drop list

Blogger is being retarded when it comes to spreadsheets (or really anything other than plain text!), so this is the best I can get out of it.

This time unfortunately I didn't keep track of my expenses (600 PED of ammo... maybe?), but next time I'll be more careful. Piron PBP-0 (L) count and tt values are an approximation.

Oh yeah, and also extracted 27876 units of sweat out of these little space turkeys (before I got bored of swunting). Plus a trophy head (unfortunately there's no figurine for them). Fun time... but 10000 more await me!

Globals: 1 (about 15 PED)

Sum of returns: 376.90 PED

Item	PED	Quantity
Gallard hide	40.66	2033
Shrapnel	86.69	866992
Animal muscle oil	31.20	1040
Animal oil residue	27.01	2701
Animal hide	13.99	1399
Soft hide	0.40	4
Socket I component	3.30	33
Tier I component	1.10	11
Body fat	0.48	6
Nova fragment	0.04	4332
Blazar fragment	0.00	746
Corria timber	20.40	102
Hair gel	11.70	90
Wool	0.20	1
Thin wool	0.25	1
BLP pack	15.10	151098
Weapon cells	96.38	963831
Piron PBP-0 (L)	28.00	28						approx

Retro Achievements Update #1

Retroachievements.org

Retro Achievements is a project very dear to my heart. I've grown up with (a schoolmate's) SNES and been playing old games (mostly the SNES games I knew from my childhood) ever since I first downloaded an emulator (around 2004 I would guess). RA provides exactly what the name says. You simply register a RA account, download the modified emulators from there and the roms from any rom site and BAM you can play retrogames with achievements. Nintendo and Sega consoles and handhelds are available.

I found the site (by random googling) when there were 1000 members or so (some 3 years ago) and now it has over 10000, so it's growing nicely. I've entered the top 500 today, so still a way to go - I doubt I have the potential to become #1 since I never was one to quickly learn and master new games (or even play them for more than 2 hours if I didn't immediately figure them out) after I entered my teenage years (and especially during the last 5 or so years where I barely played anything new), but that's not much of a concern to me now. My only hope of ever getting to a competitive level in a multiplayer game died with League of Legends (which I am still sad about, though I don't miss it anymore - in fact I can barely remember ever playing it), so now the only thing I can excel at is to reach world class in certain single-player retrogames.

Back when I joined RA, I introduced the concept of a hardcore mode (i.e. no save-stating) to the administrator of RA, and he actually implemented it! Certainly a rare and blissful moment of being able to convince somebody on the internet of doing the logical thing. ^^

Anyway, my most important accomplishments so far are:

Grandmastery (i.e. getting all achievements for a game in hardcore - by the way, I only play hardcore! achieved in the order listed below):

-) Super Mario World
-) Donkey Kong Country 3
-) Kirby's Pinball Land
-) Donkey Kong Country 2
-) Donkey Kong Country 1

Achievements that were specifically hard to get included beating Lost World K.Rool in DKC3 and King K.Rool in DKC2 while taking no hit in the respective battle - I had massive trouble with both of those and actually consider the first-mentioned the hardest thing I've ever done in a (single-player) video game.

Other noticeable events included me beating a Pokemon game for the first time in my life (on emulator at least, I probably beat Pokemon Red or Blue on a schoolmate's gameboy back when it came out) and scoring the highest legitimate score on Kirby Pinball I could find documented video-wise on the internet - one guy has over 17 million but himself basically admitted that score had been scored with cheating). Sure, that game can be cheesed pretty easily, but it still takes a lot of effort to stay concentrated during the many hours (pinball is like that) it takes to score big. Digital pinball games are the video game genre I'm absolutely best at, and I hold some de facto world records (even though of course competition on these games was never that high - but still!)

So, more thoughts on video games when I full clear some more games. Right now I can't really see what the next one will be though...

Anime review #4 - One Outs

One Outs by Shinobu Kaitani

Based ball... made interesting!

So One Outs is something I would have never thought would show up on my radar... a BASEBALL anime. As a European, I don't know a baseball glove from a Lacrosse... crosse (and seriously these two sports seemed (note the ed) to be equally stupid to me), so naturally I wouldn't have sought out a baseball anime on my own volition. I randomly found OO by looking at Masato Hagiwara's Wikipedia article to see what characters other than Akagi and Kaiji (in the respective namesake series) he voiced. The article mentioned the included gambling element - and I was game!

So, both the good and the bad thing about One Outs is that it's like Akagi. A lot.

Well, no shit, Sherlock!!!

The protagonist, Toa Tokuchi, is basically the baseball-playing version of Akagi, only with an even less fleshed out personality. After the brief introductory baseball-based gambling game "One outs", Tokuchi is convinced to go pro and join the Japanese baseball league as a pitcher. He enters a gamble with the corrupt owner, with both of them solely interested in ripping the other one off as hard as they can (financially).

So, after the second episode, this is all we get to see. One game of baseball after the other, with literally no time spent on Tokuchi's personal life or any other aspect of him. Why does this series still work?

This series still works because it manages to make the sport of baseball look exciting. Tokuchi wins games single-handedly not only with his pitching ability, but also by manipulating and taunting his opponents and devising complex strategies on the spot, facing off with opponents who themselves have special skills (e.g. a black American guy who can run really fast), etc. All of this is used exactly like in Akagi, namely to create interest in how the protagonist is going to overcome the next dire situation and what trick he's gonna pull out of his sleeve (or in this case, glove) next. All this is very interesting to watch and some hilarious moments ensue.

e.g. we get an episode where it starts raining. Which is apparently bad for playing baseball. (I wouldn't know.) Hilarious!

This aspect is handled very well and made me watch the bigger part of the solely existing 25-part (25? why not 26!?) Season 1 in one sitting. Unfortunately the aforementioned covers only roughly half of the volumes of the manga, which is why I don't even know how the gamble is ultimately resolved. I would estimate the guess that the anime was abruptely cancelled, since in the case of knowing the series would remain incomplete beforehand, there often is an alternative ending made (e.g. in Elfen Lied).

I still think the series could've been improved by broadening the focus a little more than... exactly on one element.

So, the rhinoceros fucking the elephant in the room - the Akagi connection. Toa Tokuchi is basically a less evil version of Akagi. He's the same natural genius and lucky guy, he shows no interest in any other matter than his field of gambling, he is a chain-smoker (while being an athlete nevermind!), and, most importantly, he is voiced by Masato Hagiwara, who sure seems typecast on this role. Hell, at one point there is a mentioning of the "crossing the narrow bridge"-thingy, and that was a gamble in Kaiji! Twice! So don't give me the "you're imagining things dude" bullshit this time... it's a ripoff - but in this case that simply is not a problem at all. When you rip off things, always rip off GOOD things (baffling how many authors neglect this simple principle)!

Fallen into the abyss? Or descended into the darkness...

So did this series make me understand the ins and outs (PUN) of baseball? Theoretically, almost. Practically, no. Not at all. I tried watching some footage, but I have massive problems with being able to tell a ball and strike apart (and how would people in the stadium ever be able to see this with the naked eye?!?), and as soon as people start running around after a ball was hit by the batter, I'm at a complete loss. Still, I definitely respect baseball more after watching One outs than the other 2 big American-only (for a reason) sports, Handegg and Hoopball. Cause after all, the Japanese adapted it, and that alone is reason enough. Plus, watching this series actually made me rewatch Akagi for the 4th time or so! (Damn, that is a well made series!)

Final verdict:

Recommended for people who liked Akagi or Kaiji, and people who like baseball. Not recommended to anybody else for the sole reason it's painfully incomplete - and your disappointment when you realise that fact is guaranteed!

PS: A review of something that DOESN'T suck is not very funny for me OR you. Oh well, they can't all be stinkers...

hidden texts for picture inspect command (since blogger is retarded right now):

1 - I don't think Sherlock Holmes himself was evil though. Probably just OCD-afflicted (and lawful good or neutral).

2 - Another thing I don't understand about baseball: why are there like 300 matches per season?! Every match is multiple hours long and doesn't even have a fixed end! You would have to be a professional VIEWER to not miss anything!

3 - Never forget that the abyss gazes back at you... and that I love to mention that since that quote is featured in Baldur's Gate 1.