Nevando's HardestLevel

My Favourite Villian/Anti-Hero/Crazy Mass, "Murderer."

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:28:13 GMT

Battle is my forte.

Good News/Bad News

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:22:13 GMT

Sonic Adventure is coming to the XBox Live Arcade! Yes, this is fairly awesome.

Good news and bad news time, children.

The good news is clear: It's Sonic freakin' Adventure. Such a great game.

Bad news: It's the infinitely inferior Gamecube/PC "Director's Cut," port of the game. I could totally sound like I am coming off as the stereotypical, "All old things are vastly superior to new things because they are old," but believe me, I hate this mindset as well. The simple truth is, the DX version of the game is just overall slower. Incredibly slow. And it doesn't even remove speed in favour of less glitches; it's just as buggy as the original game. It just feels like an incredibly sloppy port.

Am I gonna not want to buy it because of this fact? No, I still want it; I just won't be in such a rush to purchase it after all. Way to be a slave to Sonic Team, PJ, jeeze.

Rock Band DLC

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:34:09 GMT

So, I love Rock Band. Like, a lot. I think I've made it clear before, but it is just fact. Although it's kind of irrelevant for me to have a list of all my Rock Band DLC, considering I do not have XBox Live Gold and hence will not be playing online until I do, I just

a) Like making lists
b) Maybe people want to play Rock Band with me? I dunno

So yeah, I'm going to keep this particular post updated with my Rock Band DLC in the future. The more you know!

Most Recent Update: 3/13/10

Along with the entire Rock Band 1 and 2 setlist, I have downloaded;

30 Seconds to Mars
Attack
The Kill

The 88
Sons and Daughters

Against Me!
Stop!

Airbourne
Runnin' Wild*

Alien Ant Farm
Smooth Criminal

All-American Rejects
Dirty Little Secret
Gives You Hell*
Real World

Authority Zero
No Regrets

Avenged Sevenfold
Afterlife

Bang Camaro
Rock Rebellion
Push Push Lady Lightning* [Rock Band Network]

Between the Buried and Me
Prequel to the Sequel

Blink-182
All the Small Things*
Feeling This

Boston
Hitch A Ride*
More Than A Feeling*
Peace of Mind*
Rock and Roll Band*
Smokin'*
Something About You*

Buckcherry
Rescue Me*

The Cab
Bounce

The Chevelles
Get It On

Chiodos
I Didn't Say I Was Powerful, I Said I Was A Wizard

Cocktail Slippers
Give it to Me

Coheed and Cambria
A Favour House Atlantic
Ten Speed (Of God's Blood & Burial)

Count Zero
Shake

Dashboard Confessional
Hands Down

Dealership
Database Corrupted

Disturbed
Indestructible*
Inside the Fire*

Endeverafter
I Wanna Be Your Man

Escape the Fate
The Flood

Fall Out Boy
I Don't Care

Foo Fighters
Best of You
DOA
This is a Call
Times Like These

Foreigner
Juke Box Hero*

Freezepop
Get Ready 2 Rokk
Less Talk More Rokk
Sprode

The Fratellis
Flathead*

Ghost Hounds
Ashes to Fire

GLaDOS
Still Alive

Gorillaz
Feel Good Inc.

Hinder
Use Me*

Hollywood Undead
Young

Honest Bob and the Factory-To-Dealer Incentives
Entangled

Iron Maiden
The Trooper*

Jimmy Eat World
Futures
Lucky Denver Mint
Sweetness

The Knack
My Sharona*

Kutless
The Feeling

The Len Price 3
If I Ain't Got You

Lesley Roy
I'm Gone, I'm Going

Lights Resolve
Dreaming of Love

Miranda Cosgrove
Headphones On

Mötley Crüe
Dr. Feelgood*
Kickstart My Heart*
Saints of Los Angeles*

No Doubt
Hey Baby*
Just a Girl

The Offspring
All I Want
Gone Away*
Hammerhead
Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)*
Self Esteem*

Opiate for the Masses
Burn You Down

Panic at the Disco
She's a Handsome Woman

Papa Roach
Last Resort*
Lifeline*
Time is Running Out*

Paramore
Crushcrushcrush

The Police
Can't Stand Losing You*
Message In A Bottle*
Roxanne*
Synchronicity II*
Truth Hits Everybody*

Queen
Killer Queen
Somebody To Love

The Raconteurs
Steady As She Goes

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Snow ((Hey Oh))
Suck My Kiss*
Tell Me Baby
The Kids Aren't Alright*
Under the Bridge*

Rise Against
Prayer of the Refugee*
Savior

Rob Zombie
Dragula

Rush
Closer to the Heart*
YYZ

Semi Precious Weapon
Magnetic Baby

Shaimus
Like a Fool

Spongebob Squarepants
The Best Day Ever

Stephen and the Colberts
Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)

Styx
Renegade*

System of a Down
B.Y.O.B.

Taking Back Sunday
Liar (It Takes One to Know One)
MakeDamnSure

Tenacious D
Tribute

Thenewno2
Crazy Tuesday

Tickle Me Pink
The Time is Wrong

Tokio Hotel
Ready, Set, Go!

Underoath
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Vesuvius
Promised Land

Weezer
My Name is Jonas

The Who
Who Are You*

Wolfmother
Joker & The Thief
Woman

X-Japan
I.V.

[* means that the song belongs to Jason, which means I cannot play it unless his account is signed into my console. Exceptions include Gives You Hell, Prayer of the Refugee, Push Push Lady Lightning and Under the Bridge. The easy way to explain is that Jason downloaded these songs, although on his account, on my console, so the licences for these songs is associated with my console; I'm fairly sure as long as he's logged into XBox Live he can play them on his console regardless.]

Ask Me Questions!

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:18:11 GMT

Ok so normally I keep my Hardestlevel posts kept strictly about video games. And I kinda am! For serious!

I made one of those popular Formspring things that everyone is doing or something. And you can ask me questions! They can be about video games! Or life. Or fun things. But in this instance, video games!

Filler: It's Not a Big Deal

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:28:44 GMT

Anyone care to hazard a guess at what I, "Achieved," today?

My gamertag says

My Facebook says

XBox.com says

10000 Gamerscore!

I don't really care all that much, but it's kind of a cool milestone. That, and as you may have noticed, I've had very little to write about in this video gaming world of ours. I have nothing new to play. Been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros Brawl [which I may write about in a future time], and actually just went back to play Star Wars: Force Unleashed, partially in anticipation for the sequel, but also because I have an interest in obtaining the DLC missions for the game, upon recieving some form of currency [note; this'll be awhile]. The Force Unleashed is actually where I got my 10000th Gamerscore, about an hour ago!

There are a set of achievements in the game that essentially require you to kill a certain amount of enemies [100/500] with your force powers, and one of the ones I was missing [and the only one worth 5 gamerscore, so I could get exactly 10000] was taking out 100 enemies with Lightning Shield. I had no idea how the Lightning Shield caused damage, so I had to look it up. Apparently, I had to level it up once and fully charge it for it to, "Arc lightning," out from the shield. That's a bit of an innacurate description, since it makes it sound like bolts will shoot from the shield and strike enemies. Which... technically, it does, but instead of a kind of strike action, it more saps the opponents health while you stand around them. It's fantastically cool, although I'm not sure where exactly it would be useful. Keeping up the light saber throws and all that.

So not much happening. Hoping to go to the gym today. How very ungamer of me.

I Got Blisters on Me Fingers!

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:56:18 GMT

I don't know how often I talk about it [I'm fairly sure it's all the time], but I love Rock Band. What I do not love so much? The Beatles. So the fusion of which may be disastrous. I was fairly certain I was going to hate it to the max.

On expert guitar, the setlist is easy. Like, incredibly so. I'd say I've got a good amount of ability in the game. For the most part I try to 5 star songs on expert, rather than simply clear them. But I'm not leaderboards good; Battery is hard to finish. Hell, it's not like I can even do Pinball Wizard all that well [If the option comes up to, "Replace a song on your set for a song that is difficult on the drums," on Rock Band 2, it is a lie, because it's Pinball Wizard]. Playing through the story on The Beatles: Rock Band, sight reading every track, I 5-starred everything in the game on the first try, with the exception of, "I Feel Fine." Which only required a second attempt to rectify.

It has a certain charm in it's simplicity; I mean, they aren't boring charts. Some of the songs get repetitive, since it uses an almost archaic structure of song [Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, a lot of the time, the notes never variate], but for the most part, they were fun to play. Which makes room to pay attention to it's funky visuals. They still use the style for the characters from the Rock Band character creator, except that it's The Beatles, but that's not what I'm talking about. The venues are replaced by... well, technically I guess they'd still be considered, "Venues," but it's more like the places where the Beatles played more historic shows [I don't know, I'm not a doctor... or a Beatles fan]. The BEST though are the ones where they're just in the studio recording, cause that's when the, "Imaginaaaattioooon Traaaiiin," [what am I, 5?] is going full throttle. Or the drugs are starting to hit you. I'm not entirely sure which. For an example, I present Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band / With A Little Help From My Friends. I dunno if they, normally, played these songs together, but I love medleys.

Speaking of the character creator, it does not exist. Am I the only one disappointed? I mean, logically it makes sense; you're playing through the Beatles career, it's almost a strange documentary-music genre game [which does not exist], but... but... I love making characters! And I guess my mindset is, they could have let you have a character creator [with a more... clearly of the decade clothesline/hairstyles], inserted your character into the band, and it would have turned out as a bad fan fiction. Like, a really bad fan fiction.

Although I found the setlist itself as very enjoyable, I can safely say that it is horrificly short; there's already a strew of DLC specifically for the title, however I can't imagine wanting to spend money for the DLC if it isn't currently compatible with Rock Band 2 [which is my understanding that it is not] and if, "Hey Jude," isn't on there yet [which I know for certain is not]. For your comparing pleasure, The Beatles: Rock Band has a grand total of 45 songs [I was pretty sure it only had 42, but the Wikipedia page says otherwise. I could just load up my game and check, but would not want to incur the wrath of the WikiGods of destruction]; compared to Rock Bands 58 or, even better, Rock Band 2s 84 songs. Admittedly, Lego Rock Band also only has 45 songs, but it is fully compatible with Rock Band 2.

The Achievements/Trophies on the game are alright. Rather than things like, "Your first gold starred song!" it has specific sets of songs they want you to gold star. A few story ones, play specific songs a certain way [in most cases, correctly], beat the game in 24 hours [lest I remind you, it is awfully short]. One achievement I found fun to get was the, "How Could I Dance with Another?" which was playing the song I Saw Her Standing There on the expert bass at 100%. My thought process exactly: It's bass. This'll be easy. I urge you to think otherwise. The bass parts in the game are pretty fantastic; the real difficulty in the song comes from the back and forth playing in a chart that has essentially no hammer-ons and/or pull-offs.

...I got it on my second try. So maybe it's not all that bad.

I'm going to give getting the achievements that I can get myself a shot, but otherwise, I'm pretty much done with The Beatles: Rock Band. It was fun, but I'm not sure I can really recommend a purchase... a rental or a borrow [yay me!] will pretty much be all you need to. On the other hand, if you are a Beatles fan, or wanting to delve into the world of Rock Band, due to its, in comparison, simplicity, this could be a good title to start with. Next up in the world of Rock Band: Lego Rock Band, and the Rock Band Network. I am excited!

Sonic Team... is This for Serious?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:59:56 GMT

I... I think I love Sonic Team again. And it may be a mutual relationship.

Sonic. The Hedgehog. 4. As in, a direct sequel to Sonic 3 [& Knuckles]. Jordan just told me today about it, as I told him about my lack of faith in the Pokémon fandom, and he returned the favour with a similiar opinion on the Sonic fandom.

Don't get me wrong. My sudden excitement for this game [and I'm actually kind of surprised I'm so excited; child-like wonderment and all that!] doesn't all of a sudden make me forgot that I actually really liked Sonic Unleashed [atleast the XBox 360/PS3 one. I couldn't... play the Wii one] and the DS Sonic Rush series, so it's not that I don't believe a good Sonic game can be made again. But I guess that it's the concept of, not trying to write in a blockbuster script, introduce 30 new characters whom are all disliked, with 15 of those disliked characters returning in the future while the other 15 go forgotten, and a general slowdown of Sonic himself [as they say, Keep it Simple, Stupid]. My exhaggerations make valid points!

I remember being excited about the concept of Megaman 9, using the old sprites and gameplay style to make games easier to make, and hoping that other companies would use the same idea to make sequels to old series of games as well. Well, they didn't quite do that, because it's still super graphically awesome [Sonic 4, I mean], although his running animation is awkward. But it's still coming out on the virtual downloading system of... well, the respective consoles virtual stores [Wiiware, XBox Live Arcade, Playstation Network], and apparently, by rumour, it may be coming out for the iPhone [Does that also include the iPod Touch?] and I think that is fantastically cool.

It's coming out in episodes, which leaves a somewhat bitter taste after all that goosebump-feeling goodness, but I'm not saying it as an entirely negative. I'm also an impatient person.

Late Night Gaming

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:33:13 GMT

So, I am going to be staying up till 3 AM / whenever the XBox 360 Phantasy Star Universe servers come back from maintenance just so that I can get a head start on playing the new event... Maximum Attack G+!

Sounds like it's worth it, considering I went to the gym / am gonna do my best to go to the gym tomorrow? Probably not! Sound like it's worth it? Didn't I just ask that question? Totally worth it. So at the moment I'm thinking of other games I can do until then [which is about an hour and a half away].

The last time I had done this, it was by me spending the night finishing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days [admittedly, I thought I was a lot closer to completion when I had started that night, and I posted this pulse as soon as I did beat it... at 8:30 AM].

I'm currently in the Fire Temple on Spirit Tracks, pretty confident that I know what to do next and yet... not quite sure what I have to do next. A lot of the puzzles in Spirit Tracks have been really easy to figure out, but strangely hard to execute [drawing the X with the Zelda Phantom in one of the floors towards the Mountain Rail Chart being my key example], but I do have the item of the stage [classic bow and arrow, boi], so I should be well on my way. I could certainly go back and do some Pokémon things, as I can barely remember who I'm in the middle of raising. PJCopter, my level 60 Drifloon who will only have the move explosion. It's to go along with my level 100 Drifblim, HindenPJ. Clips are for obvious reference details.

I could play my 360... but don't really care to until PSU times.

There's a lot of things I could be doing with the Wii potentially. Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games is lying around here, and I have yet to try it, or Sonic and the Black Knight. Alternatively, I could be playing Smash Bros, as I have a tournament-esque thing to participate in next month, and my Lucario skills are ridiculously rusty. My Game and Watch is ALWAYS hilarious.

Filler: Spirit Tracks [So Far]

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:41:50 GMT

I just got into the Snow Temple.

R.I.P. North American Gurhal System

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:29:30 GMT

So after a [comparitively] short run of existance, the North American/European servers for Phantasy Star Universe [on the PC and PS2] are officially being shut down in about 2 months. I'm kinda saddened to know this, considering how much I love PSU [and I do love PSU], but I almost feel as if it's the right thing to do, considering the lack of players on the game. I hope they don't actually believe the whole, "We're dropping the servers so we can pursue future titles in the series," bullshit, considering it's the our servers getting cut, and not the Japanese servers, where the games would be made? But whatever.

As much as I will always see Phantasy Star Universe as one of my favourite games, there were a couple of problems with it; not so much with the gameplay itself, but with how the servers were handled by the company [and how the community had heavilty influenced what happened to them].

1. Pipeline System of Content Delivery
You know what Sonic Team? I don't think having, "Everything," right away is the way to go, atleast in the way fans of PSO wanted it. I mean, admittedly, PSO, the level cap was level 200 right away and all stages available from the get go, but let's be honest people [because it's hard for most people to be honest when it comes to feelings about the Phantasy Star series] there were only 8 stages in PSO, and having it all available from the get-go was very limiting [almost ironically, really]. I think Sonic Team had the right idea with PSU by releasing stages and, in the very early days, planets, and outfits and missions and new stuff in update form. Yeah, maybe it was like dragging out the lifespan of the game, but I think it was great. They'd release a new mission and everyones hotspot would be wherever that new mission was, for a small time atleast, and it always had a feeling of community. In PSO, it didn't work that way. And, the level caps... I mean, even if they never had the level cap reach level 200 at any point in the PC/PS2 servers lifespan, I never had enough time in the game to ever reach the current ingame cap. It seems like the people who complained the most about the level caps went out of their way to reach it, and when they released the next 10 levels, they'd take a whole weekend and do nothing but grind those 10 new levels, reach the new cap, and just bitch and moan about there being nothing to do. Of course there's going to be nothing to do when you do everything in the first 72 hours, not to mention by rushing it. The problem with this system was how slowly everything was delivered, especially on the North American side. At the point of cutting off the servers lifeline, I believe we are atleast a year behind the Japanese servers updates, and that is simply ridiculous. The idea wasn't wrong, but the way it was handled was.

2. Balance

In the beginning, there was only 3 classes; Hunters, Rangers and Forces. Now, everyone knew the advanced classes were coming, since their titles was in the game data and what have you, but originally it was just the 3 classes. At first, forces were seen as overpowered. They had the support, they had the, "Big numbers," while staying in the back, protecting their frail elven bodies, but they never really had the best DPS going. They had big numbers, but their most important role was support. Everybody played force terribly back then. They still do now! Anyways, at that point I don't think it was a matter of buffing the other 2 classes, but simply nerfing the force class horribly. With that, came the time of the rangers being the best in the game. Come the expansion, with a system that allowed you to force critical hits, and slicers, a, "Melee," weapon that was in all honesty a ranged weapon, hunters became the strongest and stayed there. I understand Sonic Team. Balance is a difficult thing. Especially with a fanbase bitching and moaning at every opportunity. Because every person wants balance; just not at the cost of whatever class they are playing losing their abilities. Everyone is selfish and it's hard to work under those conditions. So they essentially continued to just keep making each class stronger and stronger, and the enemies stayed where they were, making the game easier and easier. Which segues nicely into my next point...

3. Game Difficulty [or lack thereof]
At one point, there was a creature in the game most feared throughout the Gurhalian system, and continuesly besting it without suffering a KO was considered an accomplishment. I am talking about PSU v1s Jarba. It was melee resistant, bullet resistant, it had a weakness to the weakest type of technics in the game [ice] and would also throw back at you an ice technic if you were close to it, freezing you and allowing you to get clobbered, or if you were at a distance, a dark technic that could automatically kill you [if the damage caused by it didn't kill you outright]. I'm not quite sure at what point Jarbas lost their edge, either they stripped them of their melee and/or bullet resistances, or they suffered from what every enemy suffered from in problem #2 [in the, every class getting stronger while all enemies just stayed the same] but either way, Jarbas weren't so tough. And they never really made enemies that were all super powerful to counterbalance the powering up of the classes. You could still be ganged up on, and KOed/slaughtered in that way, but with Scape Dolls/Moon Atomizers readily available to revive you at no cost to your EXP or final mission rank, there was really no problem with dying. I don't really understand people saying the game is easy, however, but only on the basis of, what are we judging as difficulty in this type of game? Considering it's a strange mix between standard RPG and MMORPG [but definately not one or the other] what constitutes as hard? If you're overlevelled, everything is going to be easy. If you're underlevelled, you could partner up with someone overlevelled and get a free ride. Difficulty seems purely situation dependant, but I wish whenever anyone would say, "PSU is easy," would remember that they weren't always at the level cap [read problem #1].

4. Reskins [Everything]
This isn't really an issue with the online itself, but more how they modeled the games enemies; you'll be hard pressed to find a real time combat RPG that doesn't have, atleast somewhere, reskinned enemies. PSO was not innocent of this fact, in fact, I'm sure they may have been more guilty of it, as far as standard enemies goes. But not only were standard enemies reskinned. But so were bosses. And stages. It was kind of ridiculous.

I'm not sure I have a singular problem with the gameplay itself, really. I loved the Photon Arts system, I really enjoyed levelling up essentially everything that was attached to your character [character level, job level, photon art level], gameplay was fast paced and... well. It's excellent, really. And although I know I'm playing the game now on the XBox 360 with a new gang of characters [well, I recreated Nevando anyways] I'm certainly going to miss the crazy antics that happened on the PC server. From January 29th, onward, anyone with an account, active or not, will be able to play the game for free, so even though I do have my 360 account, I do plan to log on, maybe take a couple snapshots and potentially get a group snapshot together with Jason, Kyle and Gaz before they cut the plug on the server in its entirety. For those interesting in knowing that other people still kinda acknowledge PSUs existance on Facebook, there is this group, but I created my own group that was more dedicated to the good times and hilarity that happened on the PC server of PSU.

May the Holy Light Guide You!
RIP NA PSU: October 24, 2006 - March 31, 2010