(no subject)

[geebs.livejournal.com]

So over the weekend, I finally got Lu Bu's PI in WO. Alas, not in one player mode though. I just can't seem to do the required 1000 kills within 9 minutes on my own. The best I did was 1000 in 10:30, but I never got close to doing it in that amount of time afterwards, much less shave time off. In two player mode though, getting it is a cinch. Just have both players play as Lu Bu, as it'll count the combined kills, and 500 is a more reasonable goal than 1000 within 9 minutes. Luckily, I was able to play it with turdburgler to get that 2nd player.

So while it is pretty easy in 2 player mode. To me it seems near impossible in 1p. What other PIs have people found difficult to get in WO? I want to say the ones I've had the most trouble with are Ina's, Mitsuhide's, and Nobunaga's. (How odd that its all SW guys).

( Ina )

( Mitsuhide Akechi )

( Nobunaga Oda )

So those are my opinions on the hard PIs to get, and what I needed to do to get them, in case any others are having trouble with it. But that had me thinking, throughout the various series, what 4th/5th/10th/11th weapons (since there were no PIs back then) gave you the most trouble?

I never really played SW1 but once, so I can't weigh in on it or SW:XL. But in terms of SW2 and DW3-5, including the XLs, I want to say:

Guan Yu's 10th and 11th from DW4 and DW4:XL. I don't remember what the requirements for his 11th from DW4:XL were, only it was a big hassle. But his 10th gave me problems. I mean, beating the Wu reinforcements was no problem, it was actually beating the level (Fan Castle!) afterwards on hard that took me forever to do.

Cao Ren's 10th from DW4. He's a squat little dwarf, and relatively slow. But his requirements were to destroy all the siege weapons attacking Fan Castle within a certain time, which is pretty hard with such a slow little fella.

Yue Ying's 10th from DW4. The problem was keeping Zhuge Liang alive in that insane Nanman stage on hard. The way I did it was killing 1000 guys to get the super morale boost you used to get in those games for killing 1000. That one also took me forever.

Tadakatsu Honda's 4th from SW2. You had to keep people from entering the 3 forts. But it was random where they'd start, so you'd have to save between each wave and hope it'd be a setup that was actually doable.

I got all the 10ths and 11ths from DW4/XL, all the 4ths from SW2, and most of the final weapons in DW5 (I think I tired of the game eventually and only had Huang Gai, Lu Meng, Zhang Jiao, Dong Zhou, and possibly Pang Tong left to play) and those are the only ones I can remember right now having trouble with. (I know, I have too much time on my hands!) That's close to 150 different requirements though, so I'm sure there are others I had difficulty with that I'm not remembering.

Warriors Orochi: PS2 vs 360

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

Amusingly enough, the big debate over whether or not to get an xbox 360 hinged largely on Warriors Orochi (we already have a PS2, but the Warriors games seem to have lag-issues on the PS2 so I was hoping that the 360 version would play smoother).

My S.O. wanted to play DiRT, which is only available on the 360 and PC, and it turned out that the PC version was horribly ported, and only worked on 4 or 5 different video cards (out of the THOUSANDS available? yeesh...). So, to play DiRT, essentially, you need an xbox 360. But obviously a single game [especially one of dubious quality] is [usually] not worth the drop of so much cash.

All of this meant essentially that we needed to find some other games that were available for the xbox 360 only, or at least that could be played on the 360 at all, that we both wanted (or at least one of us REALLY wanted) to make it worth the purchase. (We've had a Wii since early this year and the only game purchased for and played on it was Zelda: Twilight Princess -- almost a waste of money for just one game, even if it is an awesome game)

Between the Warriors series (DW/SW/WO) being available for the xbox and Beautiful Katamari being xbox-only now, that pretty much sealed the deal.

(Katamari note: The section transitions are so smooth now! And there isn't any lag once you cross the 30sec mark on any of the stages anymore. The only lag is on the two largest stages when you're still "in the world" and not yet "on the world". On the bad side: the game is really short, we bought it Friday and are already 89% complete and barely played it at all this weekend :/)

*cough* Anyway.


So, for Warriors Orochi, was it worth it?

Differences noticed so far:
- two more images ("movie stills") in the image gallery for each officer. taken from DW5, SW2, and WO intros, endings, and cut-scenes.
- even on the non-HD plug (RCA), the graphics on the 360 version are insanely better.
- 360 version seems to lag on a couple stages that have lots of peons (Chi Bi), and possibly only in 2-player mode, but the PS2 version doesn't seem to have this issue any more.

I'm not normally a video-phile, but when geebs came over last weekend with his memory card and the PS2 version of the game, it was really REALLY shocking how crappy the graphics on the PS2 version are. It was immediately noticable on the TITLE SCREEN! It was horribly, horribly *blurry*. And remember, this was using the non-HD connectors, RCA, which is the same thing the PS2 is hooked up with!

Playing as Player 2 on Chi Bi to get Lu Bu's personal item was terrible. I couldn't see anything but the pants of other people near me because all the yapping covers up the top half of player 2's screen (this may be an issue on both versions of the game, though). So you can't tell whether or not you're wagging on your own men or the opposing side's peons (well, obviously if they start crying out you know they're baddies).

But zomg, the BLURRY! Was so blurry! I guess they stepped down the PS2's graphics A LOT so they could smooth out the gameplay some. I didn't notice any lag on that stage on the PS2 version, when it is definitely noticable on the 360 version for the first 3min or so (then it goes away).

The pic 5 and pic 6 in the gallery I find to be much better suited for setting as your background than any of the 1-4. Lu Bu has an especially nice pic 5.

For me, I think it was worth it. The extra gallery pics by themselves just weren't enough to justify the 360 version. But the graphics difference I noticed this weekend was the truly solidifying factor in my mind. Looking back on it, I can't imagine having spent the those 50 hours I've already spent on the game playing the incredibly blurry PS2 version. That 10 min worth of Chi Bi on the PS2 was more than enough for my poor eyes. Augh!

(as for the lag on the 360 -- It's not like I'm not used to that from all the previous PS2 version Warriors games; I guess I should be glad it only happens on only one or two of the stages now *grin*)