Fastest Challenge Ever!

Liefmealone, Dwarf Shaman, died at level 16 to a group of troggs in the archaeological dig in Khaz Modan. He will be missed fondly.

WoW Ironman Challenge

My WoW account is paid through April, and as it stands right now, I don't plan on renewing. I've discussed this with the guys I raided with normally, and while I will miss hanging out with them online for now, I just don't have the time I used to have -- and any time I do have, I have quite a few other games to play. Add in that I can't really get an uninterrupted 2-3 hour block of time without my 3 month old flipping out, and I just don't see raiding as a real possibility.

Anyway, as a result, I've decided that I should give the lower parts of the game another run through on my way out -- and conveniently I saw a post on MMOChampion mentioning a semi-organized Ironman Challenge. I've thought the leveling part of WoW was crazy easy for a long time (because it is, and arguably needs to be for newer players), and this was a chance to shut my mouth and see how far I could get while making the game significantly harder. Here's the rules I have to follow, copied from the official WoW forums.

RULES:
THE BIG ONE: If you die, EVER, that character is removed from the challenge.

Gear Rules:
1) No heirlooms
2) No items equipped other than White or Gray items (except Bags)
3) No item enhancements --enchants/spellthread/weapon chains/etc.

Consumable Rules:
4) No food buffs. Only white vendor-quality food & drink may be used.
5) No item buffs. No scrolls, elixirs, flasks, etc. (except Quest items)
6) No potions (except Quest items)

Spells & Abilities Rules:
7) You may train and use class abilities learned from trainers (including Rogue poisons)
8) No talent points/pet talent points
9) No specialization. No glyphs.

Gameplay Rules:
10) No guild perks. If you are guilded it must be a level 1 guild.
11) No questing groups. All combat must be soloed --parties to trade/portal/etc. are permitted
12) No battlegrounds/arenas
13) No dungeons/raids that reward experience. All leveling must be done out in the world.
14) No combating-enhancing addons (QuestHelper/Auctioneer/etc. are fine, use your own judgement)
15) No professions, primary or secondary, other than First Aid
16) No sending gold/items from other characters*

*You must earn your own gold/items via questing, looting, or trading/AHing. The Iron Challenger is free to use the Auction House to make money and buy the occasional White or Gray item.

I started my character on Monday, to more or less test the waters and see if I still had enough interest in WoW to even start this. I made a Dwarf Shaman, named Liefmealone. At the moment, my character is Level 11, and things are already notably more difficult than they were when I leveled my Goblin Shadow Priest at the beginning of Cataclysm. I'll put a little icon on the sidebar at some point this weekend, that will make it easier to check on my progress and call me out if I break any of these rules. Any bets on how long I last until I die?

Backlog++ : Half Minute Hero (PSP)

Another cheap PSP game gets thrown on the pile, but this one is a game I've considered grabbing for a while. For $9.99, I had to give it a shot before PSP games are totally unavailable outside of ebay purchases. I didn't know a whole lot about it, except that it looks like a retro-gaming release, and was supposed to represent the RPG, Shooter, and RTS gaming genre in 30 second bytes. While that sounded a little bit like Final Fantasy meets Wario-Ware, it still sounded like something I'd need to see for myself-- even the reviews I read didn't really describe it clearly enough to me. Now that I've played it, I see why. It's hard to really explain what this game is, without just handing someone the game and showing them.

So far, I've only tried the RPG section of it, but I love it. Imagine that you took Dragon Warrior and refined the experience so that it could be finished in a matter of minutes. Leveling, getting new equipment, getting and using items, and killing a boss -- each level has all of these things, and it takes little to no time. Since each level is only a minute or two, it's really easy to pick it up and play the next one.

I'll have to update this as I play the other sections, but I'm glad I grabbed this while I still can. Now to find a copy of Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins so that I can remember how much I suck at those games. But, you know, in a portable fashion.

Final Fantasy IV Complete -- well, sort of.

Last night I finished the main game of Final Fantasy IV, but since I bought the PSP collection disc, this means I still have the Interlude, and The After Years to play through before I knock this game off the Backlog. However, the main game is the whole reason I bought this thing, so I'll summarize my time with it now, since I might actually have to work again someday. That would definitely slow the progress of my gaming time.

This is one of the few games on the Backlog that I had completed before, although when I played it it was called "Final Fantasy II" and was on the SNES. I remember spending summers at my friend Dylan's house just grinding enemies to try and hit max level (which I believe we did) so that the rest of the game was trivial. I know that was one of many playthroughs on what was, at the time, one of the two best RPGs I had ever played (the other was Ultima IV: Avatar). The good news is that, for a change, this game did age fairly well. It still plays well, and aside fromt he addition of some CG cutscenes added into this version, it looks like I remember.

In this playthrough, I got all the available optional summons, and scoured all the dungoens for the missable weapons, like Excalibur and the last palace's "walk through walls" area items. This is probably the second most complete runthrough of the game I've ever had-- aside from the summer run where we got all our guys to 9999 HPs. So, now I'm starting the Interlude, which is fairly pointless. It was apparently made to bridge the gap between the regular game and the After Years, and explain who new characters in the latter game are. Right now, it seems super easy, and heavily story-based. This isn't bad, but if there was no challenge, just make it a CG movie and let me get to the After Years.

Completed - Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (PS2)

After being out of town all weekend, I got home tonight and decided I would finish off the last two levels of Dirge of Cerberus. As I mentioned before, this game is an action game that takes place 3 years after the events of Final Fantasy VII. As a continuation of the events in and around Midgar and the Shinra Corporation, I enjoyed it. The story, while still a little off, made sense-- and the appearances of the main characters from FFVII set off my nerd button just enough. So, as a narrative, I'd say this game accomplished what it set out to do.

Purely as a game, however, I never would have played past the first level. It's not a terrible game, but it's also a fairly mediocre action game without the tie to the Final Fantasy series. I played it on Hard, as was recommended, and aside from dying to my own stupidity, I didn't have any problems with it. Much like Crisis Core that I finished in January, this was an action game made for people who don't play action games. Do you know how I beat the last boss? I ran around him in a constant circle and fired at him. That is it.

After you finish the game, you unlock some extra missions where you run around in circles killing people. I just don't have the interest to even fool with them. I played this game to see the main story, and now that I have, I feel that I can move on. Beating the game also unlocks the movie gallery, and really-- that was probably all I really wanted anyway.

COMPLETION STATS :

Hours to complete : 10 hours, 54 minutes
OCD Completeness Percent Achieved : ???
Outside Help Used : None.
Will I play this again? : Probably not soon-- I'm sure 10 years from now I'll have a hard-on to play the FF series in full again.

Backlog + 3 : A whole lot of cheap things, but things that must be counted.

In my continuing (most likely futile) battle to avoid signing up for Star Wars: The Old Republic (or currently buying Final Fantasy XIII-2), I now have added 3 new games to The Backlog. Timewise, this was obviously a stupid move-- but for the money spent I can't argue too loudly about getting these to quell this latest bout of new-game-itis. For under $25 dollars, I picked up Tactics Ogre for the PSP, Final Fantasy X-2 for the PS2, and Metroid: Other M for my poor neglected Wii.

I've heard that Ogre Tactics is superior to FF Tactics, and it will make an excellent play at work title. I would probably have passed on it for now, having FF Tactics still sitting in The Backlog, but it was new for $9. A lot of PSP games are being marked down heavily since it's a dead system, but in this case it was new for $9, or used for $30. I'm a fool, but a fool that knows a bargain. I'm sure there will be more cheap-ass PSP grabs coming as every store tries to remove any evidence that it existed.

If you are one of the 3 people who read this, you'll know I'm in full-on Final Fantasy mode, playing catch up for about 15 years of ignoring the series, and finding new versions of the old games we never had in this country. This was another game I would have held off on for now, but it was $6. All I know about this is that my friend Matt liked it, it continues the story of FFX (beaten last year), and that it's going to be goofy.

Metroid: Other M was a completely random purchase, but it was also $9. I know this game got trashed when it came out, but I also know that some people liked it. I'm going into it with an open mind-- but that's easier to do when you pay $9 and not $50. Other M is a 2d/3d Metroid, not made by the team that made the Metroid Prime series. It's apparently not the 2d Metroid people wanted, but it's also not a full on FPS style game like Prime was. I'm looking forward to playing this one, since my Wii is still sitting covered in dust with Monster Hunter sitting in it, taunting me.

A whole lot of Fantasies being Finaled... that is horrible.

That awkward title is because almost all my gaming over the last couple weeks has been 99% Final Fantasy related. I've played some other games like Bastion, and I'm currently working on Orcs Must Die! for the PC to break up the RPG-ness of it all, but for the most part 2012 has been the Year of the RPG for me. Orcs Must Die! was a game I picked up during the end of year Steam sale, and so far it's been a lot of fun. It's dungeon defense, but with an action component, since you are actively running around placing new traps and also attacking enemies physically while they run through your dungeon. I don't have a lot more I can say about it so far, since I'm all of 9 levels in. Everything else has been Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy XIII is probably the one I've spent the most time on. I am still in Clapter 11, where it becomes more of an open world, although even when I say that I am referring to "a series of tunnels, but ones where I can backtrack". I think it just feels more open because of that backtracking option, and because not only do things respawn quickly, but I actually need to grind some to continue on. The regular encounters got way harder once I got here, and the bosses at this point are notably harder. Up until this point I think I died a total of 5 times-- and now, I might die 5 times on a trash fight. However, maybe it's exactly that toughness, but now I'm totally behind this game. I didn't exactly hate it before, but I kept thinking "how is this a game?" Now, it's beating my ass regularly, and I'm often running from fights to get to a safer area, bringing back memories of Everquest and running from giants because they could kill me in one hit.

Final Fantasy IV (my "Play at Work" selection) is coming along well. I'm now in the underworld area with the dwarves, and I recall that's roughly the halfway point, at least in the regular game. It's nice to play this and FFXIII at the same time, because they're both annoying in totally different ways that somehow the other game satisfies. FF13 always feels like I'm not in control most of the time, but FF4 feels like I'm exactly in control of every single thing my team does. As a counterpoint, FF4 is slow and plodding sometimes (especially in dungeons) and I'd want a more involved auto-attack option-- just like FF13 provides. FF13 has loads of spells and items, with stats and effects that are poorly documented sometimes (WTF is "Stagger Lock"?). FF4 is a traditional sort of game-- if a spell casts "Sleep", you know it puts a guy to sleep. Both games are turning out to be a lot of fun (not that I am surprised by FF4), even though they're very different games in the same genre.

Dirge of Cerberus : Final Fantasy VII is a completely different game in the series. If I thought FF7: Crisis Core was different, Dirge of Cerberus is "much more differenter". It's a shooter, but not an FPS, more of a clunky Syphon Filter or Metal Gear Solid. I'm 4 levels in, and playing on the Hard setting (as recommended by the game for "people with experience with shooters"), and other than dying to poor control schemes, I'm not having any real issues. You play as Vincent from FF7, and it takes place 3 years after the events of FF7. Vincent has guns and can occasionally transform into a werewolf-demon, which makes him an excellent candidate for an action game. However, you can tell that this game was not made by people who make other exceptional action games, because the controls and camera make part of this game feel more like a chore than fun. There are parts of the game where I've lost solely because I'm fumbling around trying to remember how to switch guns or reload. Despite those problems, the cinematics are damn good, and the story is interesting enough to keep me playing through this.

I need to take a break from the FF series after this I think.