Picross e3 came out at the very beginning of October last year, and despite my so-called “addiction” to picross, I didn’t actually play it until early last month. Maybe it’s because I was already knee-deep in another, cheaper picross game on my iPhone, or maybe it’s because I wasn’t completely blown away by the first two Picross e games. Most likely it has something more to do with me having played way too much picross last year. What kind of piss-poor picromaniac am I, anyway?
Another year is upon us, and with that year comes a long a whole buttload of new games that I’ve purchased on both Nintendo eShops and Steam. Because those year-end sales were absolutely mad. And not “angry” mad, but “British” mad. Of course, I’m not playing all of those games at once, so you won’t see them all here, and that kind of defeats the purpose of mentioning them at all.
2014 is going real swell so far.
As it turned out, January was absolutely swamped with short games that I was able to beat in a matter of hours. So this is a big one. Hold onto your butt.
Super Mario 3D World (Wii U) – The wait to Christmas was absolutely killer in 2013, because I was waiting for this very game. And yet, I did not burn through it in a week like I could have. No, I find that a new Mario game is best when savoured a few levels at a time, and man oh man, have I ever been savouring this one. This is the special kind of game that you buy a system for. Technically I have beaten it, but there’s so much more to do that I’ll leave it in Now Playing for the time being, and move it to Game Over once I’m good and done with it.
Dark Souls (360) – Yeah, I’m still at it. I play more than once a week though, so I’m way ahead of the weekly blogs.
Chibi-Robo: Photo Finder (3DS) – It can’t possibly live up to the standard that I set by the original Chibi-Robo game, but it’s still got a lot of the heart that made the first game a winner. The real problem here is the game’s main gimmick: taking pictures of stuff. It would come off a lot better if the 3DS’ camera wasn’t awful. Heck, it would probably even be a lot of fun with a decent camera. Alas. I have no idea how long this game is going to be, but I’ve filled up two museum displays so far.
Plants Vs. Zombies 2 (iOS) – My wife and I are racing to see who can get to the end first, and neither of us are making progress quickly. Me, because I play like once a month, and her because she’s stuck on a particularly hard level. She’s also quite a bit farther than I, so if she gets over that hump I might be in trouble! Oh, and EA? If you’re going to insist on locking stuff away behind micro-transactions, please make them reasonably priced. There’s no way I’m going to buy any extra plants or power-ups at $3 a pop. If they were $1 each, I’d probably already have them all.
Valdis Story: Abyssal City (PC) – This is like, my dream game (after Super Mario 3D World). It’s a colourful metroidvania with multiple playable characters, a focus on combat, and a Borderlands-style perk tree. Now if only I could play it with a controller from the comfort of my couch on an actual Video Game Machine. Sigh… PC exclusives make me sad. I really have come to loathe playing games on my computer.
Super Monkey Ball (iOS) – Logic would denote that playing a game whose main mechanic is tilting the playfield would work great with tilt controls. That’s not quite the case, as Monkey Ball on my iPhone is very difficult to play, and even harder to enjoy. If you need a Monkey Ball fix, I’d recommend just picking up one of the GameCube games. Maybe the one on Wii. I never played that one though. I’m on World 2 of 5, but I doubt I’ll bother finishing it.
Long Live the Queen (PC) – I’m not into text adventures or anime princesses, but for whatever reason, I felt like I needed to own this game. And it’s sort of blah. All you really do is choose which skills to learn between scripted events, and hope that Elodie doesn’t get murdered along the way. Finding all the ways she can die is probably the most fun you can have with this one though. To date, I’ve only played enough to suffer one death. Here’s a really good review that makes me wish I appreciated it more.
Body Harvest (N64) – Yes, I started my N64 game for February early, but my goal is simply to beat one per month, not to only play one a month. Also I’ve never played Body Harvest and have no idea how long it’ll take me to finish it. Currently I’m on part three of the second mission, and I’m fairly impressed. It’s long since become obsolete, but if I’d played this when it was new, my mind would have been blown wide open.
Picross e3 (3DS) – It’s the weirdest thing, this game had been out for months, and I wasn’t even slightly inclined to buy it. Mostly because I was waiting until I’d finished Paint It Back, but also a little bit because I may have overloaded on picross in 2013. If that can even happen. Burned though it in a week though, because I’ve got to burn through something in a week.
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (3DS) – Wifey gave me this for my birthday last year, and I played it until the game decided to send me back to all the corners of the map that I’d already explored for a big fetch quest, and my enthusiasm petered out. I spent most of January slowly slogging through the second half of the game, and I’ve got to say that the guiding principle behind the whole project must have been making everything twice as long as it needs to be.
Gone Home (PC) – A game about wandering around a house, trying to find out where your family has disappeared to. It’s a cute little game with a lot of heart, but it’s not something I’d necessarily recommend. Not at full price anyway. If you see it on sale and narrative-based wandering games are your bag, go for it. Maybe I’d have liked more it if my PC had been able to run it at full speed.
Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale (3DS) – Gameplay-wise, it’s very similar to Gone Home, but I liked this one so much better. Maybe because it has a more fantastical story, or maybe because it’s much more lively. I don’t know, but I really enjoyed this one. I just don’t like that you have to grind for collectables to truly finish it. :p
Bugs Vs. Tanks! (3DS) – Exactly what it sounds like; you play as an officer in a battalion of tanks that have been shrunken down, and have to combat insects to survive. It’s not a superb game by any means, and can get somewhat frustrating at times, but it’s fun. Also, it’s one of the exceptionally rare 3DS games where the 3D effect actually adds something.
Brain Age Express: Sudoku (DSi) – I finally finished all the sudoku puzzles in there. Guess I wipe it now and start again? Nah, probably not.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (PC) – I actually finished this game in December, but totally forgot about it. That’s because despite the fact that I want to say I like it, it’s a pretty forgettable game. Also it has a stupid mechanic where you have to wait entire days to make certain critical events happen, and that’s just a huge pain in the butt. And making me wait to play a game more often than not makes me forget about the game altogether. It’s still pretty good, though.
Kirby’s Dream Land (GB) – I tend to play through this one every few months or so. It only takes half an hour, and I think it’s pretty fun despite the simplicity. Also I love the music.
GoldenEye 007 (N64) – It felt really good to go back to a game that I spent so much time with, but have never pick up again since. I even wrote a whole thing about it. The word for it may or may not be “retrospective.”
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan began slogging through the sewer level, and as expected, had all sorts of rat-related fun.
Already itching for a reprieve from the stanky sewers, I decided that I was going to adventure somewhere else for a while. Namely, back to the Undead Parish, where I could buy an ACME Home Weapon Smithing Kit from that one blacksmith guy. I could improve my own armor already, but found myself wanting for the ability to upgrade weapons as I saw fit.
Just as I was about to leave the Depths, however, I noticed that there was a doorway hidden behind some crates in the kitchen. I smashed the crates up good, and wandered through the doorway to see what was back therAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
A hole. A long, terrifying hole is what was back there. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I had almost died from the fall, the place I’d fallen into was a small ledge overlooking the giant rat’s room. This turned out to be a blessing, however, as I found a rather nifty Spider Shield on a body. Also I was in the perfect position to murder the giant rat without putting myself in danger. I lobbed a few firebombs to soften him up, and then lept off the ledge and finished it off with a plunging attack.
I scoured the area for treasure, and then ducked into a waterway that seemed to be the only way out of the giant rat’s room. Unfortunately, that turned out to be another, even longer hole. As I was falling, I decided that if I survived, I was going to start watchign where I stepped.
The fall left be with only a sliver of life, but that wasn’t even the half of it. The room I’d fallen into was infested with the most horrifying monstrosities that I’d come face-to-face with yet. These quadruped beasts had huge, cartoonish eyes plastered to the tops of their heads, and barfed out a disgusting black liquid from their oversized mouths. The closest thing I could liken them to was some sort of horrible mutant frog.
I ran as fast as I could from the monsters, but it seemed that around every corner there was another one or two of them waiting for me. Eventually I put enough distance between them and myself to chug some Estus, and then finally faced them down. The frog-beasts, thankfully, were pretty fragile and went down with a single strong blow. Once I’d cleared the area, I picked up a fancy-lloking ring off a corpse and started trying to make my way back out of the sewer.
The deepest part of the sewer was a twisting maze of corridors and waterways. I was startign to panic, as I was low on Estus and having a hard time navigating the halls that all looked the same. It was here that something very odd happened: I was invaded.
This was unusual because I was offline, so there was no way any other players could invade me, right? But here I was, and there was the invader: the Knight… Kirk? What the hell kind of name for a fantasy character is Kirk?
I was too shocked by the sudden invasion to raise myshield, however, and Kirk immediately skewered me on his sword. I turned and ran, hoping to get to a safe distance where I could drink some Estus. It was difficult though, as the sewer halls were cramped and Kirk appeared to be very driven in his goal of murdering me. I managed to confuse him with a short staircase though, and that gave me enough time to recompose myself.
The fight with Kirk was not an easy one. He fought very similarly to the many knights I’d already defeated, but he was much more aggressive and had enough life to shrug off quite a few hits. I eventually did take him down, but at the cost of the last of my Estus. Now, getting back to that bonfire was of dire importance.
A few frog-men later, I emerged into a large hall. On one end, I found a massive gate and a peddler who informed me that it led to a place called Blighttown. I seemed to remember the first fella I met in Firelink saying something about Blighttown after I’d rung the bell in the Undead Parish. This must be where I needed to go, but the gate was quite locked. The key had to be in the sewers somewhere..
A staircase from the large hall led up to what seemed like a castle wall overlooking a massive underground courtyard. Off in the distance, though, there was a crack along the wall with sunlight pouring in. It was a welcome sight after spending so much time navigating by nothing but torchlight. I tried descending to the courtyard, but the final doorway was barred by a Fog Gate, and in my condition, the only thought that passed through my mind was to run as far away from it as I could.
A few more slimes and some rats tried to stop me, but I did make it back to the sewer bonfire. Refreshing my Estus Flask, I steeled my resolve and pledged to myself that this time, there would be no distractions. I would head straight for the Undead Parish, not stopping for anything but to kill any monsters who tried to get in my way. I’d had more than enough excitement in the last hour to last me a lifetime.
Tune in next week for Part 10: Out of the Sewers (For Now)
Let’s not beat around the bush here; everybody’s played Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64. Everyone. It’s that one game that was a must-have if you owned an N64, and if you didn’t own an N64, you probably bought one so that you didn’t look like a fool when your friends came over and asked why you weren’t playing GoldenEye. So you probably don’t really need me to tell you all that much about what it is.
Being the first game in TE’s Year of Nintendo 64 though, I’ve made a paper-thin commitment to write something about it. And now that I think about it, I guess that it’s old enough now that there are kids who are so young that they’ve never played it. That’s a little spooky, and makes me feel very old. But then, a lot of things make me feel old, so let’s not dwell on that.
Today, I want to take a look at GoldenEye from the perspective of someone who hasn’t played the game in over ten years, and see how the real deal holds up against the GoldenEye that is perched upon a pedestal in my memories.
Hey look, another year’s passed, so you know the drill. Let’s look at a selection of the games I played throughout 2013 that I thought stood out from the rest.
This year, the only criterion that I’m going by is that I have to have beaten the game in question for the first time in 2013. Anything that fits into that criterion is fair game. So, for example, there are a few games that weren’t released in 2013, but that I only finally played last year.
There were just over 50 eligible titles, but I found that whittling that number down to 13 was actually very easy. The ones that I picked were just so much better than the ones I left behind. You can check out a full list of the games I beat in 2013 (including replays) here.
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan killed the Capra Demon with an incredibly cheap tactic, and butchered a butcher.
Ugh. The sewer level. The absolute worst part of pretty much any video game that doesn’t star a team of adolescent turtles. Although this isn’t a turn-based RPG, so at least we won’t have to deal with a stupidly high random battle encounter rate.
The kitchen area had a flooded lower area with a few dogs and a single zombie. It seemed like a dead-end at first, until I noticed a section of the wall that had crumbled away, which I climbed up into a hallway. I chose to check out what was to my right first, and I made it all the way around the corner and to a far door before I heard somethign stomping up behind me.
It was another butcher, though where he had come from, I had no idea. The hallway had seemed empty when I got there, but I decided to go back and investigate the room that was on the opposite end of the hall, to make sure there weren’t any more butchers waiting to stalk me.
The far room was filed with nothing but barrels and boxes. Or so it seemed. In the far corner, I saw a head poking out of one of the barrels. I approched, and the head informed me that his name was Laurentius and begged for me to free him before the monsters turned him into lunch. I shattered the barrel with a single kick, as slicing it open with my sword seemed like it would do more harm than good. Laurentius thanked me profusely and ran his hippie ass back to Firelink.
Heading back though the door on the other end of the hall, I descended some stairs into the sewer proper. There I saw a corpse with a shiny item, and as I went to claim it, a huge blob of goo dropped onto my head and started sucking away my life. Eventually I was able to shake it off and stabbed the thing like mad until it dissolved into the grimy water. The bundle of souls I pilfered from the corpse afterward was probably worth the damage I took from the slime, though.
I wandered through the sewers, slaying zombies and slimes as I went, until I came to a small room with iron bars separating it from a larger room. In that larger room was the biggest freaking rat you’ve ever seen. The thing could have easily swallowed me whole, and I was eternally grateful that those iron bars were keeping it from doing just that. The huge rat stared at me as I passed through the room, and I was all to happy to leave there.
Just outside of the giant rat’s observation chamber, I came across a small pack of more reasonably-sized (but still way too big) rats. There were at least five of them, and they all started running from me the moment they noticed me. Assuming this would just be a handful of easy souls for me, I approached the rats and started stabbing them. They didn’t like that, and by the time I had killed them all, I was covered in bites and horribly poisoned.
Having no antidote of any description, and the poison very swiftly depleting my life, I had no choice but to start running the marathon back to Firelink. Through the sewers and taking the shortcut through the Lower Undead Burg, I sipped the last of my Estus, hoping I had enough to make it back to the bonfire before succumbing to the poison. I dashed down the aqueduct and pushed past the undead guarding the staircase to Firelink, and collapsed in front of the bonfire with only a sliver of health left.
Restored, I sought out the dirty hippie Laurentius, to see how he’d repay me for saving his life. He gave me a Pyromancy Flame and told me that he’d sell me some pyromancies. I didn’t really understand any of it, but bought Combustion and Fireball. Equipping the Pyromancy Flame instead of a real weapon allowed me to use the spells I’d just purchsed, and I immediately felt buyer’s remorse. Combustion was absolute garbage, just creating a poof of fire in front of my hand. Fireball was a little better, as I was able to actually throw a little ball of flame a distance. I practiced by torching a few undead, and then traveled all the way back to the Depths.
I took my revenge on the gang of rats by burning them alive with my new fireball spell. I noticed a shiny on one of their corpses, and investigating it I found… a humanity? This was easily the most unlikely thing that had happened for the duration of the adventure up until now.
The rats also managed to get one last laugh, As I strolled away from the scene of the slaughter, a rather unsuspecting box burst apart and a rat flew at me, scaring the absolute bejesus out of me. Needless to say, I quickly turned the rat into little more than chunks of rancid meat floating in the sewer water.
Venturing even deeper, I found another grate looking into the giant rat’s nest, and pressed up against the bars was most of a man’s body. He held on him a key. From here, I had three options: I could head down a narrow waterway to my right, follow a hallway through a Fog Gate to my left, or head back to a locked door I’d passed earlier and see if the key worked on it.
A little exhausted from splashing through the sewers, I decided to try the door. Much to my surprise, the key worked! And even better, there was a nice quiet room with a bonfire inside! I kindled the fire, and sat down to rest for a while. I really wasn’t looking forward to whatever the rest of the sewers had in store for me.
Tune in next week for Part 9: Who Am I, James Sunderland?
I’ve had a bit of a fascination with Nintendo 64 lately, though why this is happening is a complete mystery to me. Nostalgia probably has a lot to do with it, as is usual for a lot of the things I do. It’s been on my mind for a while now, but only a couple days ago did I actually take the initiative to dust the thing off and give it some playtime.
The N64 is the one pre-2000 console that I’ve never packed away, but it hasn’t so much as been plugged in for well over a decade now. So imagine my surprise when it decided that it didn’t want to play nice with my TV. That is, everything was connected properly, but the N64 refused to output anything to the TV. I don’t know why; maybe it’s because it’s an old machine, maybe it’s because the TV is too new. Maybe Ijust wasn’t putting the jacks into the correct plugs, but I’m pretty much an expert at plugging video game machines in, so I doubt it’s that one. I did eventually get it working, but I have no idea what I did that made the two decide to finally cooperate.
The next hurdle was deciding what to play. My Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time cartridges have mysteriously disappeared, so my first choice wasn’t plausible, and I couldn’t play Zelda either. I would be more worried about them, but I have multiple other ways to play legit copies of those games, so it’s not a big deal.
Eventually I settled on Goldeneye 007, which felt like the right choice, but I was a little worried that it would be the hardest game to get back into because of the N64 controller. And let me tell you, getting used to playing a first-person shooter with the N64 controller after about 12 years of dual-stick controls is not a task for the weak-willed. I fumbled my way through the Dam stage as quickly as I could, accepting that this was not going to be an easy or competent playthrough. By the time I hit the first Surface stage, the controls were starting to feel almost natural again. As I reached the end of the game, I felt like I had regained enough of my skill to maybe even play it again on Secret Agent difficulty. Or maybe I’d just go back and try to unlock all the Agent-level cheats. I still haven’t decided.
Playing through Goldeneye again has been a lot of fun, though I must admit that I’m not sure what to hit up next. The truth of the matter is that I’ve got a hankering to try out some games that I don’t own, so I’ve been poking around the internets to see if I can score some N64 games on the cheap. So far I haven’t turned up much, and I’m finding it odd that for a console that gets no respect, N64 games don’t come dirt-cheap. I mean, we’re still only talking about $15-$25 bucks, but I was hoping that I’d be able to find some in the $5 range (that are not sports games). It’s hard to justify spending $20 on an old game that’s probably not as good as I remember it being when I could just as likely put that $20 towards a decent current-gen game. At least none of the ones I want are hitting crazy SNES prices.
I was pretty happy when I found a copy of Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes for $10 on eBay. I know it’s not a very good game, but I spent a lot of time playing it when it was new, so the value is there for me. Hell, that’s what I’d be paying for a Virtual Console version anyway. You know, if Nintendo hadn’t completely dropped the ball on the N64 side of Virtual Console. Yes, we got the Marios and Zeldas, but I’m in it for the curiosities right now. I’m in it for games like Doom 64, Bomberman 64, and Quest 64. Games I may have rented in the day but never beat. Oh, hey there it is. Apparently I’ve gotten myself back into Nintendo 64 for some silly, past due sense of closure.
I also found copies of Body Harvest and Jet Force Gemini for $10 and $15 apiece in the local used games shop. A quick look on eBay shows that I may have been able to get them for a dollar or two less with good timing and a lucky bid, but I’m willing to pay the difference for convenience. Body Harvest is a game that I never played back in the day, but seems to be one of the better N64 titles, and I did rent JFG once, but none of my friends liked it so I had to dump on it too to fit in. It seems like something I’d enjoy though, so here’s to second chances.
Anyhow, I’m declaring now that my big video-games-style goal for the year is to beat one [1] Nintendo 64 game each month. Whether they’re new games or games I already own and have beaten before, it doesn’t matter. Just one a month. I need to get this 64-bit monkey off my back. Also I might publish a review of each one. Maybe. It’s the Year of Nintendo 64 here on TE. Hold onto your butts, it’s gonna be mediocre.
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan explored the ghetto and was cut down by a boss before she could even see what the heck it was.
Morgan woke up at the Firelink Shrine bonfire, wondering what in the heck just happened. It was the quickest, least preventable death that she’d suffered so far, and it only served to make me more wary of what was lurking behind that Fog Gate. On the other hand, there was a tidy bundle of souls trapped back there now, as I’d been saving up to buy Morgan the strength levels that she needed to wield the Drake Sword.
Quite a pickle indeed.
Not one to rush headlong into harm’s way, I sought to explore a little bit more before facing down that boss again. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot left to explore, and the one door that I hadn’t been in was locked up tight. Despite the fact that I started the game with a master key that I was promised would unlock all doors. Oh well.
I did find a set of thief armor, which I considered wearnig for a while. My current set is way heavier than Morgan can deal with, and as a result her movements are slowed down drastically. However, the heavy armor’s defense rating is so much higher than the thief armor’s that I just can’t justify the tradeoff. I get hit way more often than I should, so mitigating that damage is important.
Having failed at finding anything important, I decided that it was time to suck it up and head through the Fog Gate again. That was, of course, after a quick jog back to Firelink Shrine, as that’s the easiest route to take to the Lower Undead Burg boss. The upper Undead Burg’s bonfire might be a little closer, but I’d have to fight through way more bandits and zombie dogs if I went that way.
The second fight again the boss didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. At least I knew how important it was to pass through the Fog Gate with my shield raised; the Capra Demon rushes you as soon as you enter the room, and he’s got two zombie dog friends hanging around to help rip you to shreds. It’s an incredibly difficult fight any way you slice it. You Died.
The Capra Demon’s room is also quite small, barely wide enough to accomodate the boss himself. So in addition to the three-pronged attack that you’ve got to defend yourself against, there’s pretty much no breathing room. I tried climbing a small staircase towards the back of the room, but it didn’t go anywhere, and it wasn’t so tall that the Capra Demon couldn’t hit me while I was at the top. You Died.
I tried fighting him straight up. You Died.
I tried killing the dogs first. You Died.
I tried running in, collecting my lost souls, and then pushing against the door in hopes that the soul bubble would spawn on the other side of the Fog Gate. You Died. No such luck.
Fighting the Capra Demon legitimately is is so difficult, in fact, that I didn’t even feel bad when I found a loophole. See, the Capra Demon has one very obscure weakness: he hangs out in a courtyard. Courtyards, by definition, don’t have rooves, and this one is no exception; you can simply stand outside and chuck firebombs over the wall until the Fog Gate dissipates and you get your rewards. The dogs will rush you at this time, but without their master they really aren’t any more dangerous than any other zombie dogs. It’s a super cheap tactic, but given how hard it is to defeat that sucker in a real fight, I heartily approve of doing it that way.
Even worse, your big reward for beating the monster is the key to the sewer level. So really, eff that guy.
However, with key in hand, it was time to venture into the Depths. Right away I could tell that I wasn’t going to like this area. It was dark, dirty, and filled to the brim with red zombies. Some had torches, some bore blades, all of them failed horribly at trying to damage me. The large mess hall emptied of its unded patrons, I looked over the railing into the lower kitchen area and saw a huge butcher chopping away at a slab of mystery meat. He saw me too.
The butcher ran up into the mess, and started swinging his oversized blades at me. He wasn’t very difficult to deal with, though his attack pattern was suspiciously similar to that of the giant skeleton that I was so terrified of. The butcher’s pet dog came around too, but it was slain before it could cause any problems. I sat at one of the tables for a moment to catch my breath, and then pressed on into the sewers.
Tune in next week for Part 8: The Sewer Level.
Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan rang the bell in the Undead Parish, and not knowing where to go next, went and died over and over in a spooky cave.
Indeed, the Catacombs didn’t seem like a great candidate to be the proper way forward, so I made the executive decision to start retracing my steps through the Undead Burg and look for any alternate paths that I may have missed.
Along the way, I noticed that Morgan had been toting around a bow for som unspecified amount of time. Feeling that it would come in handy very soon, I decided to stop in at the merchant’s balcony to pick up a few arrows to go along with it. After all, a bow by its lonesome isn’t overly useful. Also I picked up a couple dozen firebombs because why not?
Eventually I made my way back up to the bridge area leading to the Undead Parish. There I found a door that was unlocked by a key that I’d pilfered from some corpse back in the Parish. Would it be the way to whatever my next destiniation? I was itching to find out, but figured it’d be a good idea to rest up at the bonfire across the bridge before venturing into the unknown.
Of course, having a mind like a sieve, I totally forgot about the enormous dragon chilling on the overhang above the bonfire’s room. His fire breath toasted Morgan to a fine crisp, and I was just barely able to escape down the nearby stairwell before the second blast turned her completely to ash. You Died.
Seeking revenge for the intense physical and emotional (but mostly physical) damages, I whipped out that bow and slinked down to the lower supporting section of the bridge. From there, I could see the dragon’s tail hanging over the edge. I began pelting it with my flimsy little arrows, which really didn’t do much in the way of damage, but seriously irritated the beast. It was too dumb to figure out where the arrows were coming from though, and eventually just flew off.
The diversion was well worth my time, though, as when I travelled back up to the main level of the bridge, I found that the dragon had dropped a shiny new Drake Sword for me, which was streets ahead of any of the dozens of other wepons currently filling up Morgan’s rucksack. She didn’t quite have the strength the wield the thing properly though, so it would have to wait a while before seeing any action.
I recharged at the bonfire and scurried back across the bridge to my mystery door. It turned out to lead down to the lower level of the Undead Burg, which was a much less inviting place that the upper level. It was all wrecked up, with buildings falling apart and small fires burning all over.
It wasn’t far from the entrance that I was accosted by a pack of wild dogs. Zombie dogs, that is. They were far too purple to be alive. They were also fast and vicious. I also found some of the weak red zombies down an alley, who were all bearing torches and did their best to try to light me on fire. Apparently a zombie memo had gone around sharing the news of how effective the Bell Gargoyles’ fire breath has been at killing me.
After rescuing some jerk named Griggs, who had managed to lock himself in a house the size of most closets, I found a shortcut back up to the bonfire in the middle of the Undead Burg. This was good, because those dogs from before had torn more than a few chunks of flesh out of Morgan’s hide, and she was in pretty dire need of some healing.
Further exploring the Lower Undead Burg, I noticed that it was getting too quiet. There was the pack of dogs right at the entrance, and the zombies down the back alley, but that was it. The path between buildings was becoming more narrow, and I was starting to worry. I attempted to open one of the doors to see if anyone was around, but instead stuck it with my sword, which resulted in the door… taking damage?
Suspicious, I started whacking other doors, and a few of them groaned at the strikes as well. I kept moving forward until I heard the creaking of several doors opning at once. Spinning around to see what happened, I watched a band of undead emerge from the doorways that I’d been attacking. There were three of them, but I wasn’t worried, because pfft, these mooks are no problem.
Only they were sort of a problem. These weren’t the same undead that I’ve already re-killed hundereds of. These were bandits, and they were a bit more dangerous than the previous types of undead. First of all, they’re quick, and dealing with three at once made that a real problem. Secondly, they can parry attacks and counterattack by flipping over Morgan’s head and digging their blades into her. It’s not an instant-kill, but it hurts enough to be a serious threat.
I won the fight with the bandits, but was beaten up enough that I didn’t stand a chance when the next group of three attacked. It sure didn’t help that they had brought a couple zombie dogs along with them, to boot. You Died.
Returning to the scene of my own murder, I was able to best both groups of bandits. Behidnt eh secnod group was a Fog Gate, and I didn’t feel quite ready yet, so I decided to follow the small, barely noticable staircase just to the right of it. A couple bandits and a welcome shortcut back to the Firelink Shrine were down that way. Also a merchant in the aqueduct, but she wasn’t selling anything that interested me.
Resting at Firelink, I steeled myself for another difficult encounter and headed back to the Fog Gate in the Lower Undead Burg. I walked through it and was cut down before I could even figure out what was happening. You Died.
Tune in next week for Part 7: Capping the Capra
Hey, so Christmas happened a while back. Maybe you’d noticed? I sure did, because I got a freakin’ amazing haul of gift this year, and you know how much I treasure material possessions. So obviously I want to brag talk about them on the internet.
I don’t really have any sort of screed to come in on, I just wanted to note that I haven’t done an X-Mas gift round up since… 2007!? Holy cow! That’s even farther back than I’d thought! Man… that was a pretty great Christmas. Looking back on those pics, I can even remember it pretty well. Yeah, I was so excited that morning that after The Unwrappening was over I fell asleep while watching Bender’s Big Score.
So, uh, let’s just get started then, yes?
