Everyone makes mistakes.

Three more games down, though I didn't do so much. I thought it might be a good idea to start playing games on the hardest difficulty if they had stackable difficulty clear achievements. Bad idea. Back to easy blitzes for completion achievements, and then going back for Hards. So here's what I've been playing.

Bully: Scholarship Edition
Achievements: 38 (all offline, 1000gs)

Welcome to Grand Theft Auto: Lite. Like its big brother series, Bully is your typical Rockstar sandbox game with way too much to do. It's fun, though, since you get to do it as a two-faced snot kid beating up other snot kids, with the lack of a fatal edge to things being a nice touch.

Definitely a grind whore, though. I eked out a whole bunch of achievements just by killing time in the first chapter, which wasn't so bad since progressing in the classes gives you bonuses you can use elsewhere. The one problem is you can't just sleep anytime you want; you have to wait until 7 PM rolls around, even if you've cleared any classes you might have to take for the rest of the day, which basically leaves you little more option than to just screw around, especially if you've cleared all the optional errand missions for that chapter.

Still, it's pretty fun, and I look forward to getting back to it when I have more time for it. Worth a playthrough, and the achievements aren't particularly difficult, just time-consuming.

The Darkness
Achievements: 50 (38 offline for 795gs, 12 online for 205gs)

There's multiplayer for this? Mmmkay. Yeah, I'm a little confused, too. However, the single-player game is pretty excellent. I remember being impressed by the demo, and I'm really glad this popped up from Gamefly, finally.

FPS with special-powers sort of game, with the powers combined pretty well with your shooty gameplay. You basically try to keep things dark so your powers will work, summon buddies to do dirty work or distract enemies for you, and proceed to make a mess of things. I'm down with this.

Achievements are progress based, with a fair amount of exploration and secret-based ones for nitpicky whores like myself, so remember to find all the phone numbers you can. I actually really liked the phone bonus/secret system, as it added a level of depth and gave the setting a bit more life. It was cute.

Still, didn't get so far since this was the first game I pulled that Hard playthrough nonsense on. Ugh. Play this game, but go easy at first so you can get the hang of it. The beginning, before you even have powers, is pretty unrelenting.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Achievements: 38 (24 offline for 600gs, 14 online for 400gs)

Oh man, the first game was sooo good, can this one live up to the legacy? And there's multiplayer here, too? WTF?

Actually, the multiplayer aspect seems pretty fun, since this time around, they really polished and upped the focus on the melee combat system. You must learn decent timing and combo techniques if you want to do well without dying, and I both appreciate and hate this fact.

Fortunately, they also provide a "Bloodshot Fight Club" mode where you can set things up to practice your combat with pretty much any melee weapons in the game against several types of enemies, and it's also a good place to grind out the specific kill type achievements. You also unlock new levels to do so in through completing the game, which is nice for variety's sake.

As for the single player campaign, you're back as Ethan Thomas, about a year after your getting kicked off the SCU and doing quite a number on that little orchard. Drunk and depressed, it looks like your buddy Vanhorn is back, your comrade Rosa's still working and lost some weight, and they're both looking for you because there are... problems.

A lot of the elements from the first game returned, including the forensics aspect and tools, which makes me happy; if you'd just been running around pummeling things this time around while the situation just got weirder, I'd be kind of disappointed. Instead of collecting dead birds and metal, however, you're tuning TVs for story-related info and breaking the sonic emitters that are attracting and killing the birds in the first place.

One other thing is that this game clearly came a long way from the visuals of the first. It's beautiful, for a crumbling city full of posessed bums and monsters. Yeah, monsters. They've got claws. They're dicks. The bums are smarter and tougher now, too, which is why I mentioned you really need to learn how to fight.

If you dug the first Condemned, you need to play this. If you didn't play the first Condemned, you need to play that and then play this. There are no excuses. Go. Now.


As a heads up, I should mention that Sega is finally starting up the Phantasy Star Universe Maximum Attack G extension they promised on 8/1/08. What this means is a) if you have PSU, with the AotI expansion, you should be playing for the boosted experience and goodies out the wazoo, and b) this is the only damn thing I'm going to be playing for the three week's the extension is running, most likely, so it might get a bit quiet here. If you want to run with me, I'm most likely going to be playing as my main FO, Picklebutt, running C-grade runs to finish get the badges I need for the limited edition casting Mag, and then hitting higher grades for better loot and experience, as well as spell grinding. See you there!

Coming soon: Soul Calibur IV review, since I reserved the Limited Edition and have a sexy arcade stick coming next week.