Frustrating Ninjas!

***WARNING***THIS POST MAY CONTAIN MILD SPOILERS REGARDING NINJA GAIDEN II ***END WARNING***

     I finished Ninja Gaiden II yesterday. It's not something I was playing diligently, I would pick it up every once in a while. For the most part it lacked some of the ridiculous difficulty that the first game had. For the most part, I said. The last two levels were filled with somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 boss battles. The frustration come in two parts. Number one Ninja bass battles are Hard...usually. That is to be expected with this game though. The second, more frustrating, issue is that I thought I was fighting "The Last Boss" no less than 4 times. I could expound upon how irritating that bosses were, but I feel that would just be belaboring the point.
     I've been playing a little bit of Dragon Age, but I've stalled a little on that game. Dragon Age deserves it's own post, so I won't go into detail right now. I finished Gears of War since my last post and started Gears of War 2, but am taking my time with it. I really want to play both games' campaign as co-op, so I sent feelers out on the Fear the Boot forums for some people to help make that happen. I think playing that co-op will be a game-changer.

   















   
     Finally, every 3 - 4 years I try to play through Final Fantasy III (that's VI if you use the original Japanese numbering system) and I've gotten the itch to try it once again. I've never actually finished FF3/6, not because it is especially difficult, but because I hit a certain (optional) dungeon in the game that I really want to finish, and that dungeon (the Magic Tower, for those who have played it) is especially difficult. Since I always get hung up there, at the very end of the game, I've never actually beat it. But hey, 8th time's the charm.

Cogs of War

Real-life has been interrupting postings the last week. I'm updating because I've got a minute to spare, but I haven't advanced the cause of gaming too much recently. A few days ago I picked up the Gears of War pack that includes Gears 1 and 2 and much if not all downloadable content for Gears 2. I've played the single player campaign before, but I'm sending out some feelers to hopefully find a co-op partner to play with. The only other remarkable moment has been getting to play Last Night on Earth again. Always a treat.

 











I've been playing some multiplayer recently, because it's easy to pick up for a bit then put down. In most cases it's very easy to put down. Anyway, I'm not bragging about my "mad skilz" but I've gotten to the point that in most multiplayer matches I play (not game specific) I usually end up in the top 3-5 players in the match. Gears of War is the exception to this. I've got a couple theories, so get ready! #1- I'm just not good at Gears of War. This is possible, but it feels like an easy answer. I prefer theory #2: Each Gears match provides significantly less opportunity to hone your playing skills. Most multiplayer games allow for and are based around respawns. Some dude explodes your head with a sniper rifle, you wait about 8 seconds, then you're back in the fight to get said head exploded again...in seconds...by the same douche bag. Many of the Gears of War multiplayer games don't allow that. Once you die, you're dead for the match. Clearly, for many of the games that means, as a new player, you run out, get killed and you're done. Quite a 180 from games like Dead Space 2 or Halo where, if you're tenacious, or bad, enough, you can get killed again and again, racking up as many as (possibly) 20 deaths. So you have opportunity after opportunity to try to not die. I can't think of any verbose ending to this post, so I'll just end it abruptly here.