Turning on the console after the update released prompts you to update. Accepting sends the usual grey half box across the screen with a progress bar, this progress bar only takes a few moments and is probably the actual firmware update itself. After that is applied the screen goes black, the console reboots and you are presented with the familar xbox360 logo. The next thing that happens is new. Indications of things to come.
A small bllue box appears in the middle of the screen, inside it a progress bar which says it's installing the nxe. I think the nxe is already here, it's just the avatar software which is being downloaded and installed now. When the progress bar reaches the top in about four minutes The blue box states welcome to the new xbox experience. Along the top of the box in white writing is "update complete" and the time. Pressing A to continue we get a video showing game like things dancing around on the xbox planet logo.
We are asked to sign in using out gamertag, which signs us into xbox live.We are asked to accept terms and conditions of service. No point in saying no now is there.
We are sent to the avatar creation program. Various avatars run onto the screen and stand looking at us. We are asked to pick one as a starting point. floaty steel drum music plays in the
background. We are able to Change hair, eyes, eyebrows, ears, nose facial hair, chin, mouth and body shape from a varying number of presets, about 10 to 20 for each item.
Then I move onto clothes we are able to pick from tops, bottoms, headwear, makeup, head and body accessories and shoes. I try and make it as close to me as possible, give it some jeans and trainers. There are a lot of options to choose from. I hope game makers get into giving extras as rewards for completing games.
Now we are on the new dashboard. It's weird, seems like the old system has been turned on it's head, scrolling up and down a list seems to be the same as sliding across the old blades. The new options seem to be called channels. There is a welcome channel which seems to be designed
to welcome people to the xbox or the new dashboard. It has the option to hide it, and I do, don't
think I will need it again.
Lets go through the channels/blades.
Friends
The main part of the screen changes to a scrollable image of the persons avatar and a background, seems like guitars and xbox's are the defaults, although each friend has a variation. Clicking on one of the friends brings up a screen with their gamertag and what they have been
playing along with their last achievements. Moving left and right on this screen changes to an
interact menu with messaging chat and comparing options.
Inside Xbox
Is just as it was, only given it's own channel. moving left and right through it's pages takes you
to a text and image screen like a simple web page or to a streaming video.
Video Marketplace.
This starts with explore video content, which allows you to browse movies available to download.
There are three submenus which appear at the top left once the explore video content box is
selected. They are All videos, Movies and Independent & music viideos. Each sub menu lets you
explore the relevant content and download it. Scrolling left to right on the video marketplace channel lets you look at a range of selected videos, new or popular, or just paying for exposure, clicking on them gives you text based story summary and images, oh and the ability to pay and download too. Scrolling to the end of the menu lets you access the videos stored on the hard drive.
Video library first lets you choose the storage device, i.e. hard drive, media streamer, usb
stick, portable hard drive etc. You can now browse your content, things look slightly better than
the last dash, but it's only a cosmetic improvement.
Spotlight
This channel is essentially a what's new or what's paying for advertising space. Clicking on the various images that scroll left to right allows you many options, from getting downloads that are relevant to seeing images and reading about the game or movie. I notice something called photo party which is free and seems to be about sharing pictures with friends.
Game Marketplace
This seems the same, two main options bookending a series of advert boxes. The first main option is explore game content. This takes you into a sub menu consisting of All games, game videos, game demos, xbox originals, themes and gamer pictures, community games, game add
ons and arcade. So just like the previous dash really.
Most important here is that 20 new community games have popped up from nowhere, they must have been keeping these back for nxe launch day.
My Xbox
This seems to be the main channel. All the options are real options and little in the way of content promotion. I have to state that though things seem to be getting pushed at us in an
advertising fashion they are all xbox 360 games or movies, there is no pure advertising other than movie themes and gamer pictures. First box option is the game that is in the tray, since i have no game in it's blank.
Next is my gamer tag. I can see my avatar which is moving around slightly like a fidget. I can see my five last played games and it tells me I am signed into xbox live. Selecting it sends me to a
menu where i can send messages, change profile, avatar, theme and manage accounts. moving left and right shows me the achievements for all the games I have played. Which seems to be 190 pages. Also seems quicker than the old dash acheivement screens, and neater. You can see the description of the achievement just by highlighting it taking away the need for another scree level that the old dash had.
Games library is just as it was on the old dash only neater and maybe slightly faster at seeking
through the hard drive for content.
Video library is already described in the video marketplace section, this option takes you to the
same place.
Music library is same as before, if slightly neater.
Pictures and media centre as as usual.
System settings is here and looks fairly identical.
There we have it a quick trip through the menu's did all that sound riveting, I bet it didn't. Its
really just cosmetic.
There are a few new games today for the avatars, A kingdom for keflings, which promises to let you use your avatars and Hardwood hearts and Uno updated for avatars.
At first it all seems a bit new and overwhelming, after a good explore you settle down and realise that it is business as usual. I am hoping that the games for the avatars will be expanded upon as after having created my avatar there does not seem to be that much to do with him. I will have to get the trial of Kingdom for keflings to see what that is like.
I suppose it's just the same as the wii, once you have created a mii, there is little to do with him until you get to use him in retail games.
I have not tried the installing a game option. To be honest I am unlikely to either. I was raised on games on the zx81 where you had to type the blasted things in before you could play. Loading times are rarely an annoyance for me unless you have a long load after death in a game, that really gips as you want to get right back in there.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Gears of War 2 Notes
Start the campaign and choose Hardcore, they won't let you play insane first, makes sure that you will play through twice.
Cut scene tells us in voice over that the humans on Sera have been naughty and fighting amongst themselves for years until the locust emerged and gave them someone new to shoot at. The Locust survived the weapon of mass destruction from the first game and are fighting back. Jacinto, which I presume is a city is the last bastion of humanity and a new story element which I presume we will be defending.
The locust queen seems pretty sure that we have brought all this on ourselves and are heading for extinction.
We see Anya Marcus and Dom chatting about how close the locust are getting. Then a rookie turns up and we can choose training or to skip it.
I choose to do the training.
which is a little trip down some alleys with Dom and Marcus instructing the rook as he is called on cover, shooting, grenades and runnning etc.
There is a new thing where you use your chainsaw on barricades to get through.
There are also ladders which i can't remember in the last game, might be wrong.
We head to the hospital and suddenly a load of raven helicopters fly overhead suggesting that something is happening.
Marcus orders the rook back to barracks and he and Dom go to the hospital.
Anya tells Dom there might be a lead on his wife.
We meet Tai and he tells us there is a locust raid.
We are introduced to Rustlung, which is described as imulsion sickness. Rustlung has been on a sharp increase since the lightmass bomb which was detonated at the end of the first game.
We fight some locust in a courtyard. The set up is to show us the exploding barrels. There are a load in the middle of the courtyard and the locust pile into the room and mill about near them. We set of the barrels and no more locust.
We encounter more locust and have the familar gears gameplay. Cover system used to the full in a fairly intuitive fashion.
We fight them inside the hospital and then out into a courtyard. IN the courtyard Dom and Tai pin them down and I flank them which seems the obvious thing to do and they are easily wiped out. A Reaver flies in and lands, which they never did in the last game. It seems fairly easily dealt with and flies away wounded.
Inside the hospital again and more shootouts, variants of the square rooms with cover, ambushed in an circular desk structure with locust pouring in from various doors.
We meet up with Carmine who it seems has been hiding from the fighting, wonder how long he will last now he has met up with us again.
We get out into the streets, Reavers are flying around and landing at intervals taking shots at us, raven helicopters are taking shots at the reavers. We are fighting with many more enemies than in Gears 1 there are more allied soldiers around as well. The battle runs up the street, with us ducking into a shopfront to come out and flank the locust. Much more is made of the ability to revive on the enemies side than in the previous game. Maybe time has dimmed my memory but I can't really remember them reviving each other.
At the end of the street the locust retreat which is unusual for them.
We see Dom being given bad news about Maria, previously Anya might have located her, but she was released from hospital days ago and the trail is cold again. Dom is very angry about this.
Mission 2
We see a long cut scene of the machine of war mobilising, interspresed with a speech from the COG leader rallying us to attack. It seems that Jacinto is built on rock which the locust can't dig up through. This will change soon as they have a new weapon on the horizon. The only course of action open is all out attack. The landown assault is a huge operation to attack the heart of the locust and their breeding grounds.
We meet a character called Dizzy who is the commander of a large moving weapons platform.
The weapons platforms are drills which can deliver the cogs underground. We need to escort them to the landdown site.
The locust have other ideas of course, as we crest a ridge the convoy is attacked by mortars. There is widespread destruction and we must use our guns to intercept the mortar fire before it hits the rig. Then Reavers come flying alongside and start shooting up the rig and ramming it. Three hits and the rig flies of the road exploding.
This bit sucks. I have been trying to kill the fucking reaver for about ten respawns.
had to look at help on the internet for this bit. Found out you can cool the overheating gun down by pressing right bumper. This is not stated in the game anywhere.
Anyway done it. Back on track.
Our rig is damaged and we have to protect Dizzy as he makes repairs. Locust come from emergence holes and reavers fly around. Other rigs use their guns to help us while we fight. With the rig repaired its on again until we come to some shaky ground. Large amounts of locusts and Brumak emerge and we make a run for it. The locust soliders are using grapples to climb the sides of the rigs. One of the other rigs is taken over by locust and they use it to get close you yours and try and grapple across. After shooting up enough locust you can shoot the driver of the rig and cripple it. Then it's brumak and Corpsers running rampage, you can shoot the guns off the brumak and kill them. The corpsers are only there for show and it's scary but fun to see them jumping at the other rigs like something out of the movie eight legged freaks.
We see tai's rig getting attacked by tickers, which are annoying bugs that scuttle around and explode. Tai joins Delta sqaud again.
We have to go through the town of Landdown taking out tickers so that the rigs can progress unimpeeded.
We then encounter Nemacyst which are floating tank like airbags which shoot globs of organic explosives at us.
There are two troika guns pinning us down and Cole comes in on another rig and helps us defeat one that is almost imposible to shoot the gunner on.
WE then take the rig down a long dark tunnel which is filled with tickers. A reaver is waiting at the other end of the tunnel.
As we come out of the tunnel there is mortar fire. We now have our first branching path choice to take. Over the rooftops or through the hotel.
Day 2
Through the hotel to flank the mortar teams and then a Brumak comes out of the tunnel and tries to attack the rig.
We drive on trough the town to a graveyard where the locust attack again. We man the rig gun and shoot them up until the rig gun is blown by mortat fire. Then use the mortar to take out boomers and grubs. Two reavers then show up. After they are downed we get a cut scene showing the geara getting into the drill pods which will take them down into the underground. Dom makes Marcus promise to look for Maria if anything happens to him.
A new grub turns up, fast and agile sporting a staff cutting weapon that can cut through a tank like butter. He jumps onto the rig as Marcus and Dom are about to drop. Dizzy and Tai take him on but it looks like he is too strong for them. Marcus and Dom try to get out of their capsule but the program won't stop for them and they are sent down into the Earth with a bumpy ride to the locust tunnels.
In the tunnels they lose contact with the surface, although Carmine the rook is in contact, his pod went off course and the gears set out to find him.
We run around the caverns on our own admiring the scenery looking for Carmine, we see other pods dropping soliders into adjoining areas. We meet up with carmine, who is under fire. Saving his ass we run into a wall. There is grindlift on it's side which can be rigged to drill through the wall for us. As Jack is doing that more locust turn up. We have to defend Jack and the grindlift while he fixes it. There are two emergence holes with locust and tickers attacking for a period of time. Then it's through the wall.
where we have a squad pinned down that we must assist.
Once the locust and boomers are down Anya talks to us through Jack and tells us that there is something happening under a city and we are to investigate. She also adds in that A lot of civilians have been taking shelter underground and maybe Maria might be one of them.
As we progress through the tunnels we meet what looks like a rock centipede, it potters around by itself and does not harm either side. What it does do is provide moving cover points. The centipedes eat glowing fruits which are dotted around. If one is lying around it will move to it and eat it then stay still. Which means basically you have mobile cover and all the associated strategy that entails.
We take out a small locust machine gun emplacement.
Seismic activity is picking up, I think i see the problem, no one has noticed it yet but the huge side of the cavern we are in looks awfully like one of the rockworms, only huge, Dune huge.
nice scene where we get a rockworm crawling along a ledge with a locust machine gun nest opposite, we scuttle along with the rockworm and take shots at the locust as we travel, at the far end we see locust explosives, which when shot blow up the entire nest.
We reach an encampment of grubs, there is a huge door in the background. We fight the grubs and a reaver appears, killing it opens the door and two boomers and a load of wretches run out. I find a scroll on the floor which suggests that the locust are talking to the worms.
We help out another squad who drop in and are immediately under fire from locust, flanking the mortar position we take a troika to the grubs and assist the squad.
The rock wall of the cavern moves and the theory is proved right, there is a really huge worm down here.
Moving on there is speculation about wether or not the locust have always lived underground or wether they came here as alien invaders and their natural habitat is underground.
Are the worms the true underground dwellers.
We come to a huge castle type structure set into the wall of a cavern. Kantus grubs appear.
Killing them gives us a new pistol and gets us inside the locust castle.
We split up and attack a strongly defended locust position. The Kantus grubs can bring the downed locust back to life from a distance as if by magic.
When we fight our way through we encounter the General guy again with the big stick. He is on a reaver of some description and seems to be directing the worm to the foundations of the city. We watch as the whole city is sunk under the ground and destroyed by the worm.
We find ourselves now walking into the ruins of the sunken city.
A king raven is downed nearby and we go to investigate for survivors, we are also told to look out for civilian survivors.
Blood mounts are introduced. Locust grubs riding on locust beasties.
Civilians are running around also.
WE fight through the wrecked city until we are getting close to the downed chopper. Cole comes over the radio saying that it's an ambush, and we can hear heavy gunfire. We decide to carry on to the chopper and try and save Cole also.
Entering a building we are pinned down by Locust. after shooting at them for a minute or so with little luck a cut scene kicks in. We see Cole coming to our rescue in grand style, cutting the locust apart with stickybombs and chainsaw bayonet.
There is a brief reunion and we are told that Cole's squad are all dead apart from Baird and Sigma squad who he has lost contact with. We tell Anya that we are off to look for them.
Day 3
Up a hill in what looks like a graveyard and a reaver appears. Followed by grubs and a Kantus.
We come across a huge tunnel dug by the giant worm and follow it into locust occupied territory. There are coffin like capsules, some have dead cog soldier bodies lying around them. We find Baird inside one of the coffins and free him. He says the locust took him prisoner and were going to process him, whatever that means.
We come to a staging area and a beast barge arrives, like a scorpion or cockroachtype beast with a cabin on it's back like a ship.
We enter the barge and fight of some grubs and a grinder. Switching some switches on the barge gets it moving and reavers start attacking flying around us. There is a troika on the stern and you shoot at reavers until we come alongside another barge which we are to board.
On this barge after we kill the grubs we find Tai in one of the cells. He has been cut up pretty badly. He take a gun that Marcus gives him and blows out his own brains. Marcus looks really pissed off.
We have to find a location to contact Anya and tell her about what the locust are doing.
Once that is done we are told to move to an extraction point as Anya has a new objective for us.
Of course there are locust in the way of us getting to the extraction point.
Kantus and reavers spoil our fun.
We head to the roof of a broken up building which might be a church and wait for our raven chopper to extract us.
We have to survive on the roof as locust ambush us until the chopper arrives. Once it does we see a cut scene where the rook is last to the chopper and over eager. We just know he is going to die. He manages to make it into the chopper despite being wounded. The worm turns up and tries to eat the chopper whole. Carmine falls out into it's mouth, so no luck after all. Just as we are expecting the gang to get away in the nick of time the worm rears up and swallows them whole.
We see Dom dreaming of Maria and Marcus gives him a rude awakening to tell him that yes they really are inside the belly of the giant worm.
Marcus sees this as a chance to kill the worm and sets out to find it's heart.
There are huge teeth inside the worm that we have to avoid.
They remind me of tomb raider traps, hope there aren't too many of them, nice to see, but i don't really enjoy hours and hours of this kind of gameplay anymore. Reminds me too much of old platform games.
A hole opens and beasties pour out and attack. New creatures that look a little like scorpions.
We go a little further and find carmine being eaten alive by the beasties. We shoot them and see his last words telling us to tell his mother that he loves her. He then dies. Cole gets pissed off and shoots randomly into the creatures innards and pisses it off. suddenly a wave of peristalsis starts that looks like it's going to crush us all. We have to crash through the guts opening sphincters with gunfire and slashing open walls with the lancer. The little scorpions chasing our heels the whole way. Eventually we reach safety. Now there are acid nozzles in the stomach which must be shot to get past. Shooting them stops them only for a few seconds.
Now we are into the intestine which has no oxygen so we must run through it in the half light through many blind tunnels. Someone should tell the designers that almost all biological entities only have one way systems in the gut and no dead ends.
Marcus cuts through the gut wall and into the sternum and we find and sever the arteries of the first heart. Yes the first heart. drowning in the blood that comes from the severed arteries is not fun. Two hearts down and the amount of arteries you need to sever for each one increases. The third has four to cut then a cut scene shows the worm dying and the gang cutting their way out.
Now the general turns up on the viewscreen and tells them that they are to go to an abandoned cog base which is nearby. He is vague on what we are to actually do there, but mutters something about intelligence on the Locust queen, which seems to news to Marcus that such a thing exists. The president seems to know more about what is going on at the facility than the general and it looks like dirty government secrets are about to be discovered. Anya is cut off from us and we can only contact Hoffman. We come to a door which is secured and wants propper identification. We try and get jack to open it but he can't. Baird is asked to get some charges to blow it open. We now have to try and restore power to the warehouse while we wait for Baird.
We find switches that restore power and a quick trip around the innard of the warehouse reveals a flamethhrower and some wretches to fry.
We go back out to our vehicle which is called a centaur and get the explosives. Dom and marcus have to carry the heavy box between them, which makes moving and shooting a slow affair.
We carry the box through wretch attacks to the door and blow it open.
We meet Niles, who seems to be the facility computer or a.i.
Command seem to know nothing of Niles or are keeping quiet on what we are letting ourselves in for. We begin to search the facility, out the window is what looks like a work camp.
There is a room where we turn on computer controlled guns which blow wretches into tiny pieces in seconds.
Further down the corridor we find more active guns.
The guns are bullet proof but their switches are nearby to turn them off. If you avoid their torch beams they won't shoot. There are three sets of traps and then we get outside. Only too go back inside straight away, loads of wretches as we open the doors and more security guns.
There is a section where you have to split up and operate a laser trap which leads to another huge door. This one opens easily enough.
Niles is now officially sounding displeased that we are in his personal space. There are what look like deformed locust in tanks in the first room inside the doors.
We travel through the faciltiy to a control room, Marcus has Jack try and hack the systems for information. There is a big red lever which almost screams do not pull, guess what we have to pull it to proceed. Looks like something is let out of the stasis tubes.
Jack manages to bring up a video. It seems that the facility was abandoned and moved to Mount Kedar. The Niles we are speaking with is an a.i. based on the personality of the director of the facility.
Seems our next stop will be Mount Kedar, once we escape whatever we have let loose.
We have let loose sires, which sound kind of like something used for breeding, only you wouldn't want these anywhere near, they are akin to the flood from Halo. All tentacles and flappy bits, but basically humanoid with extra lumps and tentacles. Shooting them is useless as they get back up about three times before finally dropping dead and staying dead. The best way is to use the chainsaw bayonet and cut them in two.
When you clear about two large rooms full of the Sires you get into a computer room which seems to be the actual hardware that the Niles a.i. is running on and shut it down.
Baird is complaining outside about a razorhail storm coming in. Marcus is less than charitable about his predicament compared to his own.
The locust arrive in force, bolters, boomers, grubs all attack in the corridor mixed up with still active security guns. We enter a large room with a circular glass roof, the roof caves in as the razoe hail storm starts, chopping up the grubs taking cover under the area which it falls. We go outside and the roof structures hold the hail, but stepping out into the rain is almost instant death.
we have to weave our way forward under shelter.
There are wheels to turn to lift garage doors so that we have more shelter and of course grubs, grinders and boomers to shoot at.
There are also two times where you get in train carriages and let the brakes off to roll them to better spots.
You climb up a ladder into a long walkway.
Mauler boomers turn up, they are big things with horns, they have a shield and a mace. hard to kill when they use their shield.
We get back to baird and cole and the vehicle. It has been damaged by the razorhail and Baird is trying to fix it. Reavers show up. We must defend Baird while he fixes the centaur.
Two reavers down and we are off.
we are now driving up to the Kadar mountain.
Whooo we get to drive the centaur, hope it doesn't suck as much as the driving part from the last game.
Wow it's actually ok if pilfering heavily from Halo, Move vehicle with left stick and direct turret fire with right. Pressing A gives you some turbo.
You basically have a little bit of road and then a locust outpost to attack. Lots of boomers, reavers and grubs you come across and blow to bits, good fun.
We come to an icy lake, and as Dom suggests driving a tank over it does not seem a good idea. Here we go then. To make it more fun the locust's mortar us while we are on the lake which blows great holes out of the ice making it more of an obstacle course.
What do you know another lake now reavers and mortar fire to contend with.
We find the old logging bridge that was mentioned by Anya as a pointer that we are on the right road. Only the bridge is down and it's too far to jump across, we will have to find another way.
There is a ledge to the right of the bridge hidden by tree, bashing a path through the small trees we find a makeshift ramp and jump the chasm, then back onto the road that the bridge should have taken us to.
More reavers up the increasingly narrow road.
Then we reach a heavily fortified locust outpost guarded by loads of locust.
You clear the outer defences and then as you approach the tower starrts shooting at you with rockets and troikas. A couple of shots into the bell tower and it collapses and takes down the walls so you can pass through the fortification.
We enter the caves under the mountain and are almost immediately attacked by a corpser.
There is a brumak wandering around in the caves as well but they don't seem bothered that we are here. We drive through the claustrophobic darkness, only our weak little headlight illuminating the vast caverns and sheer cliff. We jump over a drop and the centaur gives up the ghost leaving us in darkness with dodgy ignition sounds as Baird tries to get it started. There is also the small matter of the roaring sounds we can hear.
Like scooby doo, eyes appear in the dark and then roaring mouths, there are three corpsers surrounding us when the lights come back on.
Shooting the three of them in turn when they raise their claws to attack kills them quickly. You drive on a bit and three brumaks turn up and must be killed.
There is a quick cut scene where a tower of rock is knocked over and the centaur is jumped across it. Baird is getting sick of fixing the centaur and orders that there be no more jumps.
We encounter a camp of civilians. They tell us that the locust have something called the nexus down here, which is where the locust come from???
He also tells us that the locust have been capturing people instead of killing them and setting them to work in work camps or taking them to the nexus. Marcus sends Baird and Cole on a mission to evacuate the civilians to safety, while he and Dom go looking for the nexus. Dom asks the civilian leader if he has seen Maria, he thinks he has, but she was in a group that got captured by the locust, looks like it's not going to be a happy ending for Dom and Maria.
We go down into the cavern over a long thin bridge and come to some very old looking ruins.
Theron guards are about, and those damn torque bows are annoying.
The locust have boats?? on the huge underwater lake a gunboat starts shooting at us.
We make out way to a little rowboat, which looks dubious, as we need to cross the lake. The locust make it hard for us and when we do actaully reach the pier and the boat it's almost sinking and looks like it would collapse if Marcus stood in it with all his armour.
The point is moot as a huge locust boat arrives driving right over the rowboat and detaching the whole pier from the wall. We find ourselves on a floating platform, which is as good as a boat. The problem is that the locust gunboats are ramming us and trying to shoot us at the same time. The locust boats are a nice design, instead of engines there are what look like two sea serpent locust tethered to each side. Once you shoot the locust on the boat another comes and you repeat. The jetty is now floating off down river. The locust are conspicuous by their abscence and The guys are uneasy about what they are afraid off. It's a very big sea serpent!
A gunboat pulls alongside us and we jump off our derrick onto it, just in time as it is smashed to bits.
There are more gunboat attacks, fended off with the troika on the prow of the boat. The boat rushes headlong down river, getting faster and faster until we plunge off a huge waterfall. Becalmed in the middle of the lake at the bottom of the waterfall we are attacked by a huge underwater creature.
It grabs the boat with tentacles and tries to sink it. You can run up and chainsaw the tentacles off the boat.
Then after three tentacles are down you have to shoot it in the eye as it bites the end of the boat. When you shoot it's eyes, both of them it opens wide, you then run inside it's mouth and have to shoot at blue tipped tongues that try and lick you to death. When you have shot the tongues enough a mouth opening tries to get you, and this opens up a way down into the belly of the beast, you have to chuck grenades inside.
You have to get three grenades inside the mouth to finally kill it.
Dom and marcus have a lovers tiff about going after Maria rather than setting off their beacon in the heart of the enemy hive. Dom reminds Marcus about what he did for his father??? Marcus decides to help Dom.
inside the rather beautifully textured hive we find that there are indeed work camps where the Locust are getting humans too do work for them. The nature of the work is not apparent but it looks like they are digging for something.
Through some lifts and a little section with floodgates that the locust try to drown us with and then into a larger area with loads of wretches and a mauler.
Then an area with a troika and Theron guards.
We find a working locust terminal which suggest they have computers. Marcus and Dom don't seem impressed by this, i suppose if they have guns and rockets they are sufficiently advanced to have a computer and a network. Jack hacks the network and runs a search through records for maria and amazingly enough finds her. A symbol fills the screen, Dom thinks it signifies where they are keeping her, i think it will probably mean something a lot less good for her health.
We take a wander through around fifty of the human coffins we found Baird inside earlier. Annother terminal comes up with a different symbol, we move on. A locust patrol appears in the distance and stangely enough marcus tells Dom to take cover and let them pass on by.
We follow the locust patrol on their rounds and press the terminals as we come to them, each one shows the wrong symbol.
We finally get the right symbol and ask jack to start searching the caskets for Maria. The locust see us and all hell breaks loose.
This is the hardest fight so far. Being attacked on two sides, means that you are constantly getting flanked. Beast riders attack, along with wretches, boomers, grubs and theron guards, pretty much all at the same time. A huge difficulty spike.
Day 4
When you manage to defeat them a cut scene starts.
jack finds the casket with Maria inside and cuts it open. The door opens to reveal Maria straight from Dom's dream, she is slim and pretty and comes forward and gives him a hug. This all looks too good to be true, and it is. Maria starts to stagger and slump in Dom's arms. His dream clouded vision fades away to reveal that Maria is a skeleton concentration camp victim, eyes clouded and unseeing, scars cover her body. She slumps to the ground with Dom and he can see that although she is alive there is no hope for her, she is too malnourished, to shut down to ever come back from this place. Marcus wisely says nothing, touches Dom on the shoulder and walks away. Dom tells her that he loves her, we can see she doesn't even know he is there. Dom puts his pistol to her head and pulls the trigger. Marcus a little way in the distance stops and his face tells a thousand words about hate and vengence, sadness and loss.
The two come back together, Marcus is planning to wear Theron armour to sneak inside the Locust nexus. Dom tells him not to bother, they are going to kill every last one of them. Marcus drops the armour in agreement and follows Dom.
That was actually emotional. I felt a lump in my throat. Never thought I would have said that while playing Gears of War.
WE go through some more of the city and get our first glimpse of the Nexus. It is a huge tower like citadel. Dom wonders if we should activate the beacon and bring in the cavalry. Marcus thinks that too many of the grindlifts would end up in the huge lake of imulsion around the nexus if he activated it here. They have to get closer.
We have a fight around a spire with a circular staircase. There is a switch in the tower which opens a door to progress.
The queen seems to be adressing us directly and asks us if we have the will to win?
There is the introduction of sliding panels which act as cover, switches lift them and raise them. At times the locust try and lower them on you so that you have no cover. The queen intejects with encouraging slogans to the locust as we fight. Suggesting that the locust are the dominant species and will rule the planet.
We find what seems to be an abbotoir, filled with chopped up worms. Huge grinding machines.
There is a large open area, well open until you bring up the collapsible cover walls. A big shoot out and two reavers later Jack set off the beacon and the cavalry start to grindlift down into the Nexus. The locust start using mortars. which are a pain in the ass.
There is another large area with three sets of locust seperated by walls which drop only when you have killed a set of locust. Boomers and grubs mostly. Though the mortar fire is very dangerous as you have to break cover to survive it and usually into a hail of bullets as you do so.
Baird and Cole have arrived in Grindlifts.
We come to a cable car which will take us up to the palace of the queen. The ride in the cable car is of course packed with reaver action. Our cable car is damaged and hangs motionless. Another car comes down with grubs, we kill them and take over their car and carry on. More reavers attack, but we reach the other side of the cable car ride and are now in the nexus/palace.
Through a grating we see shots being fired and grub soldiers retreating as if they are being defeated. Baird thinks it's our soldiers they are fighting and is overjoyed. Marcus thinks that it is too far from the beacon for it to be gears.
It looks as if the locust are actually attacking each other???
The queen is muttering something about the lambent being inferior and that they must be stopped. Looks like some kind of locust civil war.
Some pretty intense fightingg here, nice design of the locust palace. We come to an area where a split choice is made. There is a lift with a troika on it. I choose to go on it and the others have to pull switches to make the lift go while we cover them with the troika.
We come to a large hall where the locust are fighting each other, as we arrive they fight us instead. Once wwe kill all in the hall we go down and a cut scene starts. The locust who are attacking the others are glowing as if they have been soaked in emulsion. Reminds me of the wretches in the first game that exploded on contact.
some grinders pop out of a door and then another door opens leading down some stairs.
we come to a lift and have to kill all the locust that come up on it. As we get on the lift ourselves a bunch of the glowing locust arrive, one of them jumps at the departing lift and dies making the jump. As he dies what looks like imulsion comes out of his body and runs like mercury along the lift and up the wall of the shaft to the horde of locust at the top. It looks like it dissipates back into the rest of them???
We start getting into rather grander looking place as we get to the bottom of the lift shaft.
The queen is talking about washing the enemies away in the great flood. Sounds like trouble.
the palace is huge and exquisite. However it's a trap as the gang get into the worst spot imaginable the doors slam down and locust appear all around above us at windows.
Having survived the ambush we now have to find an alternative way into the palace.
Round the side of the palace we find a lift.
We now seem to be inside the bloodmount stables. They appear to be feeding them locusts?
Another choice section where we have to protect the others from a higher vantage point.
Queen is going on about water and fire meeting and doom. Sounds like they are going to ignite the imulsion to get rid of the lambent.
We go down a long spiral staircase guarded by loads of the queens elite armoured grubs. Then in a large control room lined with computers. The braodcasting system that the locust queen is using seems to be here and cole goes on a rant about killing all the locusts until baird rips wires out and breaks the system. I am actually warming to Baird as I found him the most annoying out of all of them, in this game he is starting to come across as the brains of the gang. Although Marcus is being given much more depth this time around also. Dom and Cole are just as stupid as the last game.
Jack plugs into the computers looking for intel and we find a file which has the voice of Adam Phoenix, Marcus's dad talking about sinking Jacinto to flood the hollow with sea water and really rain on the Locust parade, however, it's also destroying the last real fortress of humanity.
The other are appalled, marcus seems to be accepting of the plan, he calls it plan B if they can't get to the queen and kill her.
Another choice of left or right.
We progress along balconies above a huge hall. Lots of guards and maulers. At the end we reach a lift and finally the bottom floor. We must be getting near the queen now.
Twice now I have had to look up how to use the weapons, the cooldown on the troika and the range on the mortar, no points for intuitiveness there then.
As we get to the end of the huge hall the floor is a lift trap which sends us down into an ambush, a square with little cover and locust flooding in from four doors at each side of the square.
After we kill the ambush party we have to hoist the trap lift back up and continue on our way.
In the throne room we meet the queen. she is almost human, she looks like a human with an elaborate back decoration, though I suspect that the spines and ridges and the tails that come from it are a part of her. She is half human, half locust and gorgeous. She tells us that we are the first and last humans to ever desecrate her palace. Marcus informs her that they know about the plan to sink Jacinto and kill the lambent. She tells him that she is also aware of our plans to sink it early with both halves of the locust civil war still in residence. She tells us that our plan will fail and she has already sent an army to jacinto to prevent us from doing so before her locust faction have evacuated. She tells Skorge to kill us. He is the super fast locust that we met earlier controlling the worm and on the rigs before coming underground.
The boss battle with Skorge is hard and fast, there are tickers coming at all angles blowing up and leaving the green killer smog behind. Skorge is fast and accurate and he chucks all manner of things at you including columns, light fittings and chandeliers.
I hate exploding things that run at you in games, no more of them please.
The battle is hard, however you soon realise that trying to shoot at skorge is a waste of time. He is too fast for you to get in more than a couple off accurate hits. You basically have to survive his poison gas grenade attacks, tickers, bullets and stalactite and column attacks for a set length of time, then hit B as fast as possible in a chainsaw duel with him about three times to win. He retreats on a hydra and you follow. The queen has escaped on a reaver and we run accross a bridge under bombardment until we get to the reaver stables and nick two.
With Dom and Marcus on one and cole and Baird on another we fly as gunner while Dom drives.
We fly around caverns shooting at emplaced guns and brumaks. Reminicent of games like Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon. We support some cog soliders and then are chased by Skorge on his Hydra. Flying as fast as possible down tight tunnels the hydra tries to eat us and shoot us. Then out into the countryside for some fights with other reavers manned by grubs. The Hydra turns back up again and we have to shoot lumps off it until we bring it down. Yet more variety in an already varied game. Also the novelty game mechanics know not to overstay their welcome.
Getting to Jacinto we find it under attack. The president and General Hoffman decide to go with Marcus's plan to evacuate and sink Jacinto onto both sides of the locust civil war. the problem is that the locust army has turned up to prevent us from doing so until one side can be evacuated thus completing the queens plans of destroying the human settlement and her enemies in one fell swoop.
Anya is trying to implement the sinking of the city while we join the fight to defend it from the locust.
Out in the city things are crazy, with locust everywhere and cogs and raven helicopters flying all over the place. We join in some fights to keep landing platforms clear, and then join battles in the street.
You have to defend a comm array from attack by reavers.
Then you have to defend the main gates from an attack. No air support is available as they are all evacuating citizens or preparing for the bomb drop.
The courtyard is easily defended with a mortar until brumak's turn up.
Though with a few well placed mortar shells they are quickly despatched.
Back at control the brighter science types have worked out that a well placed lightmass bomb will sink the city, the only fly in the ointment is that the perfect spot is in locust territory. looks like we are on for the final mission of the game.
More like the old game now. Big coutyard infested with locust. We move inside the building and Dom takes the other entrance we try to flank the enemy.
Taking out the locust inside we go out the rear door into another courtyard with a troika, maulers and bloodmounts. Now we are through the archives building and into cooper street.
We are given a choice again, go into the parking garage and cover the other person as they advance along the street. I choose the garage and can provide flanking support for Dom as he pins down the locust. At the end of the street two locust grapple up from the street below and then a grinder pops up.
We are given the hammer of dawn to use for the first time and have fun taking out the locust and reach the end of the street.
We are greeted by the sight of A huge crater filled with rubble that used to be city. There are cranes which we can use to get across to the other side.
You get into a crane and take Dom across then he makes one of them fall over and you can run across the gap using it.
Maulers, reavers and grubs attack on the roof off the building we reach.
More grubs grapple up the side of the building to get us, but the hammer of dawn is ready to meet them.
The roof of the building collapses in and we find ourselves about five stories lower, so closer to our goal which is an advantage!
A few grub fights later we come to a building with a comms tower type thing on it. We need to get to the roof of the next building, Marcus suggests cutting cables holding up the comm tower, we use out lancers and it falls over onto the next building. On the way across the whole thing collapser and we fall. Only to land unharmed closer to our goal. That was lucky.
We take out a kantus and his grubs and move into a large wooden building.
A brumak appears out in the street below and begins firing on the building. The whole thing collapses on it's side with us inside. The whole building is now on fire and coming down around out ears. We move through it and into a lift, which is miraculously still working and through a few floors before it grinds to a halt. We shoot the brumak pilot and then get on it.
We now take the brumak down into the locust tunnels and have a party. Reavers, boomers about twenty grubs at a time all fall to our salvo's of missiles and twin chainguns.
We shoot up one of the prison barges from earlier.
We take the brumak into a cavern filled with imulsion, the beast is wading in it. We have to take down three pillars which open the cavern to the sky and allow the ravens to come in with the Lightmass bomb. One of the ravens is hit by the brumak as it tries to take us off it's back and goes down in the imulsion.
Shame it was the one with the bomb on it. Baird and Cole pick us up and we wonder what to do next when the Brumak starts freaking out.
It seems to be ingesting the imulsion. Or the imulsion is invading it.
It begins to mutate before our eyes, growing in size and sprouting tentacles like something out of the movie "The Thing".
Marcus suggests that it is going lambent.
Thoughts turn to the fact that the lambent explode. If we blow up this lambent brumak then the explosion might be enough to sink Jacinto.
We use the hammer of Dawn on the lambent Brumak and it starts to blow. The ravens make a run for it and escape.
We see the huge explosion cause Jacinto to sink, the water from the ocean starts to run over the rim of the crater and floods the ruins and down into the locust tunnels. We see them running only to be caught in the Tsunami.
The human evacuation is seen from the air, boats fill the sea, ravens fill the sky.
Marcus is trying to contact Anya, for a moment it seems like she has been lost in the city collapse, but she is there with Cole on another raven. Seems like Marcus has a soft spot for her.
We hear the locust queen narrating this, suggesting that she is far from dead.
After the credits we hear Adam Phenix. Asking is anyone still out there, and what have we done?
Game over, credits roll. Wow that was excellent. This time the story and the gameplay were the stars, the graphics are excellent, and yes not really that much better then the first game. That doesn't matter though, because what shone in this game was the imagination. A huge amount of diversity, most of it seen elsewhere but all brought together in a neat and well written and paced package. Best game on the Xbox 360, probably best game on any system. Game of the year 2008.
I have still to play Resistance 2, comes out here in two weeks time. We will see. It has a hard hill to climb to beat Gears of war 2.
flaws, some clipping issues, sometime you could see locust going into the walls. Not a lot of the time but enough to be noticable. Probably because it does stand out so much with the high standards.
First Playthrough on Hardcore, 365 achievement points.
Start the campaign and choose Hardcore, they won't let you play insane first, makes sure that you will play through twice.
Cut scene tells us in voice over that the humans on Sera have been naughty and fighting amongst themselves for years until the locust emerged and gave them someone new to shoot at. The Locust survived the weapon of mass destruction from the first game and are fighting back. Jacinto, which I presume is a city is the last bastion of humanity and a new story element which I presume we will be defending.
The locust queen seems pretty sure that we have brought all this on ourselves and are heading for extinction.
We see Anya Marcus and Dom chatting about how close the locust are getting. Then a rookie turns up and we can choose training or to skip it.
I choose to do the training.
which is a little trip down some alleys with Dom and Marcus instructing the rook as he is called on cover, shooting, grenades and runnning etc.
There is a new thing where you use your chainsaw on barricades to get through.
There are also ladders which i can't remember in the last game, might be wrong.
We head to the hospital and suddenly a load of raven helicopters fly overhead suggesting that something is happening.
Marcus orders the rook back to barracks and he and Dom go to the hospital.
Anya tells Dom there might be a lead on his wife.
We meet Tai and he tells us there is a locust raid.
We are introduced to Rustlung, which is described as imulsion sickness. Rustlung has been on a sharp increase since the lightmass bomb which was detonated at the end of the first game.
We fight some locust in a courtyard. The set up is to show us the exploding barrels. There are a load in the middle of the courtyard and the locust pile into the room and mill about near them. We set of the barrels and no more locust.
We encounter more locust and have the familar gears gameplay. Cover system used to the full in a fairly intuitive fashion.
We fight them inside the hospital and then out into a courtyard. IN the courtyard Dom and Tai pin them down and I flank them which seems the obvious thing to do and they are easily wiped out. A Reaver flies in and lands, which they never did in the last game. It seems fairly easily dealt with and flies away wounded.
Inside the hospital again and more shootouts, variants of the square rooms with cover, ambushed in an circular desk structure with locust pouring in from various doors.
We meet up with Carmine who it seems has been hiding from the fighting, wonder how long he will last now he has met up with us again.
We get out into the streets, Reavers are flying around and landing at intervals taking shots at us, raven helicopters are taking shots at the reavers. We are fighting with many more enemies than in Gears 1 there are more allied soldiers around as well. The battle runs up the street, with us ducking into a shopfront to come out and flank the locust. Much more is made of the ability to revive on the enemies side than in the previous game. Maybe time has dimmed my memory but I can't really remember them reviving each other.
At the end of the street the locust retreat which is unusual for them.
We see Dom being given bad news about Maria, previously Anya might have located her, but she was released from hospital days ago and the trail is cold again. Dom is very angry about this.
Mission 2
We see a long cut scene of the machine of war mobilising, interspresed with a speech from the COG leader rallying us to attack. It seems that Jacinto is built on rock which the locust can't dig up through. This will change soon as they have a new weapon on the horizon. The only course of action open is all out attack. The landown assault is a huge operation to attack the heart of the locust and their breeding grounds.
We meet a character called Dizzy who is the commander of a large moving weapons platform.
The weapons platforms are drills which can deliver the cogs underground. We need to escort them to the landdown site.
The locust have other ideas of course, as we crest a ridge the convoy is attacked by mortars. There is widespread destruction and we must use our guns to intercept the mortar fire before it hits the rig. Then Reavers come flying alongside and start shooting up the rig and ramming it. Three hits and the rig flies of the road exploding.
This bit sucks. I have been trying to kill the fucking reaver for about ten respawns.
had to look at help on the internet for this bit. Found out you can cool the overheating gun down by pressing right bumper. This is not stated in the game anywhere.
Anyway done it. Back on track.
Our rig is damaged and we have to protect Dizzy as he makes repairs. Locust come from emergence holes and reavers fly around. Other rigs use their guns to help us while we fight. With the rig repaired its on again until we come to some shaky ground. Large amounts of locusts and Brumak emerge and we make a run for it. The locust soliders are using grapples to climb the sides of the rigs. One of the other rigs is taken over by locust and they use it to get close you yours and try and grapple across. After shooting up enough locust you can shoot the driver of the rig and cripple it. Then it's brumak and Corpsers running rampage, you can shoot the guns off the brumak and kill them. The corpsers are only there for show and it's scary but fun to see them jumping at the other rigs like something out of the movie eight legged freaks.
We see tai's rig getting attacked by tickers, which are annoying bugs that scuttle around and explode. Tai joins Delta sqaud again.
We have to go through the town of Landdown taking out tickers so that the rigs can progress unimpeeded.
We then encounter Nemacyst which are floating tank like airbags which shoot globs of organic explosives at us.
There are two troika guns pinning us down and Cole comes in on another rig and helps us defeat one that is almost imposible to shoot the gunner on.
WE then take the rig down a long dark tunnel which is filled with tickers. A reaver is waiting at the other end of the tunnel.
As we come out of the tunnel there is mortar fire. We now have our first branching path choice to take. Over the rooftops or through the hotel.
Day 2
Through the hotel to flank the mortar teams and then a Brumak comes out of the tunnel and tries to attack the rig.
We drive on trough the town to a graveyard where the locust attack again. We man the rig gun and shoot them up until the rig gun is blown by mortat fire. Then use the mortar to take out boomers and grubs. Two reavers then show up. After they are downed we get a cut scene showing the geara getting into the drill pods which will take them down into the underground. Dom makes Marcus promise to look for Maria if anything happens to him.
A new grub turns up, fast and agile sporting a staff cutting weapon that can cut through a tank like butter. He jumps onto the rig as Marcus and Dom are about to drop. Dizzy and Tai take him on but it looks like he is too strong for them. Marcus and Dom try to get out of their capsule but the program won't stop for them and they are sent down into the Earth with a bumpy ride to the locust tunnels.
In the tunnels they lose contact with the surface, although Carmine the rook is in contact, his pod went off course and the gears set out to find him.
We run around the caverns on our own admiring the scenery looking for Carmine, we see other pods dropping soliders into adjoining areas. We meet up with carmine, who is under fire. Saving his ass we run into a wall. There is grindlift on it's side which can be rigged to drill through the wall for us. As Jack is doing that more locust turn up. We have to defend Jack and the grindlift while he fixes it. There are two emergence holes with locust and tickers attacking for a period of time. Then it's through the wall.
where we have a squad pinned down that we must assist.
Once the locust and boomers are down Anya talks to us through Jack and tells us that there is something happening under a city and we are to investigate. She also adds in that A lot of civilians have been taking shelter underground and maybe Maria might be one of them.
As we progress through the tunnels we meet what looks like a rock centipede, it potters around by itself and does not harm either side. What it does do is provide moving cover points. The centipedes eat glowing fruits which are dotted around. If one is lying around it will move to it and eat it then stay still. Which means basically you have mobile cover and all the associated strategy that entails.
We take out a small locust machine gun emplacement.
Seismic activity is picking up, I think i see the problem, no one has noticed it yet but the huge side of the cavern we are in looks awfully like one of the rockworms, only huge, Dune huge.
nice scene where we get a rockworm crawling along a ledge with a locust machine gun nest opposite, we scuttle along with the rockworm and take shots at the locust as we travel, at the far end we see locust explosives, which when shot blow up the entire nest.
We reach an encampment of grubs, there is a huge door in the background. We fight the grubs and a reaver appears, killing it opens the door and two boomers and a load of wretches run out. I find a scroll on the floor which suggests that the locust are talking to the worms.
We help out another squad who drop in and are immediately under fire from locust, flanking the mortar position we take a troika to the grubs and assist the squad.
The rock wall of the cavern moves and the theory is proved right, there is a really huge worm down here.
Moving on there is speculation about wether or not the locust have always lived underground or wether they came here as alien invaders and their natural habitat is underground.
Are the worms the true underground dwellers.
We come to a huge castle type structure set into the wall of a cavern. Kantus grubs appear.
Killing them gives us a new pistol and gets us inside the locust castle.
We split up and attack a strongly defended locust position. The Kantus grubs can bring the downed locust back to life from a distance as if by magic.
When we fight our way through we encounter the General guy again with the big stick. He is on a reaver of some description and seems to be directing the worm to the foundations of the city. We watch as the whole city is sunk under the ground and destroyed by the worm.
We find ourselves now walking into the ruins of the sunken city.
A king raven is downed nearby and we go to investigate for survivors, we are also told to look out for civilian survivors.
Blood mounts are introduced. Locust grubs riding on locust beasties.
Civilians are running around also.
WE fight through the wrecked city until we are getting close to the downed chopper. Cole comes over the radio saying that it's an ambush, and we can hear heavy gunfire. We decide to carry on to the chopper and try and save Cole also.
Entering a building we are pinned down by Locust. after shooting at them for a minute or so with little luck a cut scene kicks in. We see Cole coming to our rescue in grand style, cutting the locust apart with stickybombs and chainsaw bayonet.
There is a brief reunion and we are told that Cole's squad are all dead apart from Baird and Sigma squad who he has lost contact with. We tell Anya that we are off to look for them.
Day 3
Up a hill in what looks like a graveyard and a reaver appears. Followed by grubs and a Kantus.
We come across a huge tunnel dug by the giant worm and follow it into locust occupied territory. There are coffin like capsules, some have dead cog soldier bodies lying around them. We find Baird inside one of the coffins and free him. He says the locust took him prisoner and were going to process him, whatever that means.
We come to a staging area and a beast barge arrives, like a scorpion or cockroachtype beast with a cabin on it's back like a ship.
We enter the barge and fight of some grubs and a grinder. Switching some switches on the barge gets it moving and reavers start attacking flying around us. There is a troika on the stern and you shoot at reavers until we come alongside another barge which we are to board.
On this barge after we kill the grubs we find Tai in one of the cells. He has been cut up pretty badly. He take a gun that Marcus gives him and blows out his own brains. Marcus looks really pissed off.
We have to find a location to contact Anya and tell her about what the locust are doing.
Once that is done we are told to move to an extraction point as Anya has a new objective for us.
Of course there are locust in the way of us getting to the extraction point.
Kantus and reavers spoil our fun.
We head to the roof of a broken up building which might be a church and wait for our raven chopper to extract us.
We have to survive on the roof as locust ambush us until the chopper arrives. Once it does we see a cut scene where the rook is last to the chopper and over eager. We just know he is going to die. He manages to make it into the chopper despite being wounded. The worm turns up and tries to eat the chopper whole. Carmine falls out into it's mouth, so no luck after all. Just as we are expecting the gang to get away in the nick of time the worm rears up and swallows them whole.
We see Dom dreaming of Maria and Marcus gives him a rude awakening to tell him that yes they really are inside the belly of the giant worm.
Marcus sees this as a chance to kill the worm and sets out to find it's heart.
There are huge teeth inside the worm that we have to avoid.
They remind me of tomb raider traps, hope there aren't too many of them, nice to see, but i don't really enjoy hours and hours of this kind of gameplay anymore. Reminds me too much of old platform games.
A hole opens and beasties pour out and attack. New creatures that look a little like scorpions.
We go a little further and find carmine being eaten alive by the beasties. We shoot them and see his last words telling us to tell his mother that he loves her. He then dies. Cole gets pissed off and shoots randomly into the creatures innards and pisses it off. suddenly a wave of peristalsis starts that looks like it's going to crush us all. We have to crash through the guts opening sphincters with gunfire and slashing open walls with the lancer. The little scorpions chasing our heels the whole way. Eventually we reach safety. Now there are acid nozzles in the stomach which must be shot to get past. Shooting them stops them only for a few seconds.
Now we are into the intestine which has no oxygen so we must run through it in the half light through many blind tunnels. Someone should tell the designers that almost all biological entities only have one way systems in the gut and no dead ends.
Marcus cuts through the gut wall and into the sternum and we find and sever the arteries of the first heart. Yes the first heart. drowning in the blood that comes from the severed arteries is not fun. Two hearts down and the amount of arteries you need to sever for each one increases. The third has four to cut then a cut scene shows the worm dying and the gang cutting their way out.
Now the general turns up on the viewscreen and tells them that they are to go to an abandoned cog base which is nearby. He is vague on what we are to actually do there, but mutters something about intelligence on the Locust queen, which seems to news to Marcus that such a thing exists. The president seems to know more about what is going on at the facility than the general and it looks like dirty government secrets are about to be discovered. Anya is cut off from us and we can only contact Hoffman. We come to a door which is secured and wants propper identification. We try and get jack to open it but he can't. Baird is asked to get some charges to blow it open. We now have to try and restore power to the warehouse while we wait for Baird.
We find switches that restore power and a quick trip around the innard of the warehouse reveals a flamethhrower and some wretches to fry.
We go back out to our vehicle which is called a centaur and get the explosives. Dom and marcus have to carry the heavy box between them, which makes moving and shooting a slow affair.
We carry the box through wretch attacks to the door and blow it open.
We meet Niles, who seems to be the facility computer or a.i.
Command seem to know nothing of Niles or are keeping quiet on what we are letting ourselves in for. We begin to search the facility, out the window is what looks like a work camp.
There is a room where we turn on computer controlled guns which blow wretches into tiny pieces in seconds.
Further down the corridor we find more active guns.
The guns are bullet proof but their switches are nearby to turn them off. If you avoid their torch beams they won't shoot. There are three sets of traps and then we get outside. Only too go back inside straight away, loads of wretches as we open the doors and more security guns.
There is a section where you have to split up and operate a laser trap which leads to another huge door. This one opens easily enough.
Niles is now officially sounding displeased that we are in his personal space. There are what look like deformed locust in tanks in the first room inside the doors.
We travel through the faciltiy to a control room, Marcus has Jack try and hack the systems for information. There is a big red lever which almost screams do not pull, guess what we have to pull it to proceed. Looks like something is let out of the stasis tubes.
Jack manages to bring up a video. It seems that the facility was abandoned and moved to Mount Kedar. The Niles we are speaking with is an a.i. based on the personality of the director of the facility.
Seems our next stop will be Mount Kedar, once we escape whatever we have let loose.
We have let loose sires, which sound kind of like something used for breeding, only you wouldn't want these anywhere near, they are akin to the flood from Halo. All tentacles and flappy bits, but basically humanoid with extra lumps and tentacles. Shooting them is useless as they get back up about three times before finally dropping dead and staying dead. The best way is to use the chainsaw bayonet and cut them in two.
When you clear about two large rooms full of the Sires you get into a computer room which seems to be the actual hardware that the Niles a.i. is running on and shut it down.
Baird is complaining outside about a razorhail storm coming in. Marcus is less than charitable about his predicament compared to his own.
The locust arrive in force, bolters, boomers, grubs all attack in the corridor mixed up with still active security guns. We enter a large room with a circular glass roof, the roof caves in as the razoe hail storm starts, chopping up the grubs taking cover under the area which it falls. We go outside and the roof structures hold the hail, but stepping out into the rain is almost instant death.
we have to weave our way forward under shelter.
There are wheels to turn to lift garage doors so that we have more shelter and of course grubs, grinders and boomers to shoot at.
There are also two times where you get in train carriages and let the brakes off to roll them to better spots.
You climb up a ladder into a long walkway.
Mauler boomers turn up, they are big things with horns, they have a shield and a mace. hard to kill when they use their shield.
We get back to baird and cole and the vehicle. It has been damaged by the razorhail and Baird is trying to fix it. Reavers show up. We must defend Baird while he fixes the centaur.
Two reavers down and we are off.
we are now driving up to the Kadar mountain.
Whooo we get to drive the centaur, hope it doesn't suck as much as the driving part from the last game.
Wow it's actually ok if pilfering heavily from Halo, Move vehicle with left stick and direct turret fire with right. Pressing A gives you some turbo.
You basically have a little bit of road and then a locust outpost to attack. Lots of boomers, reavers and grubs you come across and blow to bits, good fun.
We come to an icy lake, and as Dom suggests driving a tank over it does not seem a good idea. Here we go then. To make it more fun the locust's mortar us while we are on the lake which blows great holes out of the ice making it more of an obstacle course.
What do you know another lake now reavers and mortar fire to contend with.
We find the old logging bridge that was mentioned by Anya as a pointer that we are on the right road. Only the bridge is down and it's too far to jump across, we will have to find another way.
There is a ledge to the right of the bridge hidden by tree, bashing a path through the small trees we find a makeshift ramp and jump the chasm, then back onto the road that the bridge should have taken us to.
More reavers up the increasingly narrow road.
Then we reach a heavily fortified locust outpost guarded by loads of locust.
You clear the outer defences and then as you approach the tower starrts shooting at you with rockets and troikas. A couple of shots into the bell tower and it collapses and takes down the walls so you can pass through the fortification.
We enter the caves under the mountain and are almost immediately attacked by a corpser.
There is a brumak wandering around in the caves as well but they don't seem bothered that we are here. We drive through the claustrophobic darkness, only our weak little headlight illuminating the vast caverns and sheer cliff. We jump over a drop and the centaur gives up the ghost leaving us in darkness with dodgy ignition sounds as Baird tries to get it started. There is also the small matter of the roaring sounds we can hear.
Like scooby doo, eyes appear in the dark and then roaring mouths, there are three corpsers surrounding us when the lights come back on.
Shooting the three of them in turn when they raise their claws to attack kills them quickly. You drive on a bit and three brumaks turn up and must be killed.
There is a quick cut scene where a tower of rock is knocked over and the centaur is jumped across it. Baird is getting sick of fixing the centaur and orders that there be no more jumps.
We encounter a camp of civilians. They tell us that the locust have something called the nexus down here, which is where the locust come from???
He also tells us that the locust have been capturing people instead of killing them and setting them to work in work camps or taking them to the nexus. Marcus sends Baird and Cole on a mission to evacuate the civilians to safety, while he and Dom go looking for the nexus. Dom asks the civilian leader if he has seen Maria, he thinks he has, but she was in a group that got captured by the locust, looks like it's not going to be a happy ending for Dom and Maria.
We go down into the cavern over a long thin bridge and come to some very old looking ruins.
Theron guards are about, and those damn torque bows are annoying.
The locust have boats?? on the huge underwater lake a gunboat starts shooting at us.
We make out way to a little rowboat, which looks dubious, as we need to cross the lake. The locust make it hard for us and when we do actaully reach the pier and the boat it's almost sinking and looks like it would collapse if Marcus stood in it with all his armour.
The point is moot as a huge locust boat arrives driving right over the rowboat and detaching the whole pier from the wall. We find ourselves on a floating platform, which is as good as a boat. The problem is that the locust gunboats are ramming us and trying to shoot us at the same time. The locust boats are a nice design, instead of engines there are what look like two sea serpent locust tethered to each side. Once you shoot the locust on the boat another comes and you repeat. The jetty is now floating off down river. The locust are conspicuous by their abscence and The guys are uneasy about what they are afraid off. It's a very big sea serpent!
A gunboat pulls alongside us and we jump off our derrick onto it, just in time as it is smashed to bits.
There are more gunboat attacks, fended off with the troika on the prow of the boat. The boat rushes headlong down river, getting faster and faster until we plunge off a huge waterfall. Becalmed in the middle of the lake at the bottom of the waterfall we are attacked by a huge underwater creature.
It grabs the boat with tentacles and tries to sink it. You can run up and chainsaw the tentacles off the boat.
Then after three tentacles are down you have to shoot it in the eye as it bites the end of the boat. When you shoot it's eyes, both of them it opens wide, you then run inside it's mouth and have to shoot at blue tipped tongues that try and lick you to death. When you have shot the tongues enough a mouth opening tries to get you, and this opens up a way down into the belly of the beast, you have to chuck grenades inside.
You have to get three grenades inside the mouth to finally kill it.
Dom and marcus have a lovers tiff about going after Maria rather than setting off their beacon in the heart of the enemy hive. Dom reminds Marcus about what he did for his father??? Marcus decides to help Dom.
inside the rather beautifully textured hive we find that there are indeed work camps where the Locust are getting humans too do work for them. The nature of the work is not apparent but it looks like they are digging for something.
Through some lifts and a little section with floodgates that the locust try to drown us with and then into a larger area with loads of wretches and a mauler.
Then an area with a troika and Theron guards.
We find a working locust terminal which suggest they have computers. Marcus and Dom don't seem impressed by this, i suppose if they have guns and rockets they are sufficiently advanced to have a computer and a network. Jack hacks the network and runs a search through records for maria and amazingly enough finds her. A symbol fills the screen, Dom thinks it signifies where they are keeping her, i think it will probably mean something a lot less good for her health.
We take a wander through around fifty of the human coffins we found Baird inside earlier. Annother terminal comes up with a different symbol, we move on. A locust patrol appears in the distance and stangely enough marcus tells Dom to take cover and let them pass on by.
We follow the locust patrol on their rounds and press the terminals as we come to them, each one shows the wrong symbol.
We finally get the right symbol and ask jack to start searching the caskets for Maria. The locust see us and all hell breaks loose.
This is the hardest fight so far. Being attacked on two sides, means that you are constantly getting flanked. Beast riders attack, along with wretches, boomers, grubs and theron guards, pretty much all at the same time. A huge difficulty spike.
Day 4
When you manage to defeat them a cut scene starts.
jack finds the casket with Maria inside and cuts it open. The door opens to reveal Maria straight from Dom's dream, she is slim and pretty and comes forward and gives him a hug. This all looks too good to be true, and it is. Maria starts to stagger and slump in Dom's arms. His dream clouded vision fades away to reveal that Maria is a skeleton concentration camp victim, eyes clouded and unseeing, scars cover her body. She slumps to the ground with Dom and he can see that although she is alive there is no hope for her, she is too malnourished, to shut down to ever come back from this place. Marcus wisely says nothing, touches Dom on the shoulder and walks away. Dom tells her that he loves her, we can see she doesn't even know he is there. Dom puts his pistol to her head and pulls the trigger. Marcus a little way in the distance stops and his face tells a thousand words about hate and vengence, sadness and loss.
The two come back together, Marcus is planning to wear Theron armour to sneak inside the Locust nexus. Dom tells him not to bother, they are going to kill every last one of them. Marcus drops the armour in agreement and follows Dom.
That was actually emotional. I felt a lump in my throat. Never thought I would have said that while playing Gears of War.
WE go through some more of the city and get our first glimpse of the Nexus. It is a huge tower like citadel. Dom wonders if we should activate the beacon and bring in the cavalry. Marcus thinks that too many of the grindlifts would end up in the huge lake of imulsion around the nexus if he activated it here. They have to get closer.
We have a fight around a spire with a circular staircase. There is a switch in the tower which opens a door to progress.
The queen seems to be adressing us directly and asks us if we have the will to win?
There is the introduction of sliding panels which act as cover, switches lift them and raise them. At times the locust try and lower them on you so that you have no cover. The queen intejects with encouraging slogans to the locust as we fight. Suggesting that the locust are the dominant species and will rule the planet.
We find what seems to be an abbotoir, filled with chopped up worms. Huge grinding machines.
There is a large open area, well open until you bring up the collapsible cover walls. A big shoot out and two reavers later Jack set off the beacon and the cavalry start to grindlift down into the Nexus. The locust start using mortars. which are a pain in the ass.
There is another large area with three sets of locust seperated by walls which drop only when you have killed a set of locust. Boomers and grubs mostly. Though the mortar fire is very dangerous as you have to break cover to survive it and usually into a hail of bullets as you do so.
Baird and Cole have arrived in Grindlifts.
We come to a cable car which will take us up to the palace of the queen. The ride in the cable car is of course packed with reaver action. Our cable car is damaged and hangs motionless. Another car comes down with grubs, we kill them and take over their car and carry on. More reavers attack, but we reach the other side of the cable car ride and are now in the nexus/palace.
Through a grating we see shots being fired and grub soldiers retreating as if they are being defeated. Baird thinks it's our soldiers they are fighting and is overjoyed. Marcus thinks that it is too far from the beacon for it to be gears.
It looks as if the locust are actually attacking each other???
The queen is muttering something about the lambent being inferior and that they must be stopped. Looks like some kind of locust civil war.
Some pretty intense fightingg here, nice design of the locust palace. We come to an area where a split choice is made. There is a lift with a troika on it. I choose to go on it and the others have to pull switches to make the lift go while we cover them with the troika.
We come to a large hall where the locust are fighting each other, as we arrive they fight us instead. Once wwe kill all in the hall we go down and a cut scene starts. The locust who are attacking the others are glowing as if they have been soaked in emulsion. Reminds me of the wretches in the first game that exploded on contact.
some grinders pop out of a door and then another door opens leading down some stairs.
we come to a lift and have to kill all the locust that come up on it. As we get on the lift ourselves a bunch of the glowing locust arrive, one of them jumps at the departing lift and dies making the jump. As he dies what looks like imulsion comes out of his body and runs like mercury along the lift and up the wall of the shaft to the horde of locust at the top. It looks like it dissipates back into the rest of them???
We start getting into rather grander looking place as we get to the bottom of the lift shaft.
The queen is talking about washing the enemies away in the great flood. Sounds like trouble.
the palace is huge and exquisite. However it's a trap as the gang get into the worst spot imaginable the doors slam down and locust appear all around above us at windows.
Having survived the ambush we now have to find an alternative way into the palace.
Round the side of the palace we find a lift.
We now seem to be inside the bloodmount stables. They appear to be feeding them locusts?
Another choice section where we have to protect the others from a higher vantage point.
Queen is going on about water and fire meeting and doom. Sounds like they are going to ignite the imulsion to get rid of the lambent.
We go down a long spiral staircase guarded by loads of the queens elite armoured grubs. Then in a large control room lined with computers. The braodcasting system that the locust queen is using seems to be here and cole goes on a rant about killing all the locusts until baird rips wires out and breaks the system. I am actually warming to Baird as I found him the most annoying out of all of them, in this game he is starting to come across as the brains of the gang. Although Marcus is being given much more depth this time around also. Dom and Cole are just as stupid as the last game.
Jack plugs into the computers looking for intel and we find a file which has the voice of Adam Phoenix, Marcus's dad talking about sinking Jacinto to flood the hollow with sea water and really rain on the Locust parade, however, it's also destroying the last real fortress of humanity.
The other are appalled, marcus seems to be accepting of the plan, he calls it plan B if they can't get to the queen and kill her.
Another choice of left or right.
We progress along balconies above a huge hall. Lots of guards and maulers. At the end we reach a lift and finally the bottom floor. We must be getting near the queen now.
Twice now I have had to look up how to use the weapons, the cooldown on the troika and the range on the mortar, no points for intuitiveness there then.
As we get to the end of the huge hall the floor is a lift trap which sends us down into an ambush, a square with little cover and locust flooding in from four doors at each side of the square.
After we kill the ambush party we have to hoist the trap lift back up and continue on our way.
In the throne room we meet the queen. she is almost human, she looks like a human with an elaborate back decoration, though I suspect that the spines and ridges and the tails that come from it are a part of her. She is half human, half locust and gorgeous. She tells us that we are the first and last humans to ever desecrate her palace. Marcus informs her that they know about the plan to sink Jacinto and kill the lambent. She tells him that she is also aware of our plans to sink it early with both halves of the locust civil war still in residence. She tells us that our plan will fail and she has already sent an army to jacinto to prevent us from doing so before her locust faction have evacuated. She tells Skorge to kill us. He is the super fast locust that we met earlier controlling the worm and on the rigs before coming underground.
The boss battle with Skorge is hard and fast, there are tickers coming at all angles blowing up and leaving the green killer smog behind. Skorge is fast and accurate and he chucks all manner of things at you including columns, light fittings and chandeliers.
I hate exploding things that run at you in games, no more of them please.
The battle is hard, however you soon realise that trying to shoot at skorge is a waste of time. He is too fast for you to get in more than a couple off accurate hits. You basically have to survive his poison gas grenade attacks, tickers, bullets and stalactite and column attacks for a set length of time, then hit B as fast as possible in a chainsaw duel with him about three times to win. He retreats on a hydra and you follow. The queen has escaped on a reaver and we run accross a bridge under bombardment until we get to the reaver stables and nick two.
With Dom and Marcus on one and cole and Baird on another we fly as gunner while Dom drives.
We fly around caverns shooting at emplaced guns and brumaks. Reminicent of games like Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon. We support some cog soliders and then are chased by Skorge on his Hydra. Flying as fast as possible down tight tunnels the hydra tries to eat us and shoot us. Then out into the countryside for some fights with other reavers manned by grubs. The Hydra turns back up again and we have to shoot lumps off it until we bring it down. Yet more variety in an already varied game. Also the novelty game mechanics know not to overstay their welcome.
Getting to Jacinto we find it under attack. The president and General Hoffman decide to go with Marcus's plan to evacuate and sink Jacinto onto both sides of the locust civil war. the problem is that the locust army has turned up to prevent us from doing so until one side can be evacuated thus completing the queens plans of destroying the human settlement and her enemies in one fell swoop.
Anya is trying to implement the sinking of the city while we join the fight to defend it from the locust.
Out in the city things are crazy, with locust everywhere and cogs and raven helicopters flying all over the place. We join in some fights to keep landing platforms clear, and then join battles in the street.
You have to defend a comm array from attack by reavers.
Then you have to defend the main gates from an attack. No air support is available as they are all evacuating citizens or preparing for the bomb drop.
The courtyard is easily defended with a mortar until brumak's turn up.
Though with a few well placed mortar shells they are quickly despatched.
Back at control the brighter science types have worked out that a well placed lightmass bomb will sink the city, the only fly in the ointment is that the perfect spot is in locust territory. looks like we are on for the final mission of the game.
More like the old game now. Big coutyard infested with locust. We move inside the building and Dom takes the other entrance we try to flank the enemy.
Taking out the locust inside we go out the rear door into another courtyard with a troika, maulers and bloodmounts. Now we are through the archives building and into cooper street.
We are given a choice again, go into the parking garage and cover the other person as they advance along the street. I choose the garage and can provide flanking support for Dom as he pins down the locust. At the end of the street two locust grapple up from the street below and then a grinder pops up.
We are given the hammer of dawn to use for the first time and have fun taking out the locust and reach the end of the street.
We are greeted by the sight of A huge crater filled with rubble that used to be city. There are cranes which we can use to get across to the other side.
You get into a crane and take Dom across then he makes one of them fall over and you can run across the gap using it.
Maulers, reavers and grubs attack on the roof off the building we reach.
More grubs grapple up the side of the building to get us, but the hammer of dawn is ready to meet them.
The roof of the building collapses in and we find ourselves about five stories lower, so closer to our goal which is an advantage!
A few grub fights later we come to a building with a comms tower type thing on it. We need to get to the roof of the next building, Marcus suggests cutting cables holding up the comm tower, we use out lancers and it falls over onto the next building. On the way across the whole thing collapser and we fall. Only to land unharmed closer to our goal. That was lucky.
We take out a kantus and his grubs and move into a large wooden building.
A brumak appears out in the street below and begins firing on the building. The whole thing collapses on it's side with us inside. The whole building is now on fire and coming down around out ears. We move through it and into a lift, which is miraculously still working and through a few floors before it grinds to a halt. We shoot the brumak pilot and then get on it.
We now take the brumak down into the locust tunnels and have a party. Reavers, boomers about twenty grubs at a time all fall to our salvo's of missiles and twin chainguns.
We shoot up one of the prison barges from earlier.
We take the brumak into a cavern filled with imulsion, the beast is wading in it. We have to take down three pillars which open the cavern to the sky and allow the ravens to come in with the Lightmass bomb. One of the ravens is hit by the brumak as it tries to take us off it's back and goes down in the imulsion.
Shame it was the one with the bomb on it. Baird and Cole pick us up and we wonder what to do next when the Brumak starts freaking out.
It seems to be ingesting the imulsion. Or the imulsion is invading it.
It begins to mutate before our eyes, growing in size and sprouting tentacles like something out of the movie "The Thing".
Marcus suggests that it is going lambent.
Thoughts turn to the fact that the lambent explode. If we blow up this lambent brumak then the explosion might be enough to sink Jacinto.
We use the hammer of Dawn on the lambent Brumak and it starts to blow. The ravens make a run for it and escape.
We see the huge explosion cause Jacinto to sink, the water from the ocean starts to run over the rim of the crater and floods the ruins and down into the locust tunnels. We see them running only to be caught in the Tsunami.
The human evacuation is seen from the air, boats fill the sea, ravens fill the sky.
Marcus is trying to contact Anya, for a moment it seems like she has been lost in the city collapse, but she is there with Cole on another raven. Seems like Marcus has a soft spot for her.
We hear the locust queen narrating this, suggesting that she is far from dead.
After the credits we hear Adam Phenix. Asking is anyone still out there, and what have we done?
Game over, credits roll. Wow that was excellent. This time the story and the gameplay were the stars, the graphics are excellent, and yes not really that much better then the first game. That doesn't matter though, because what shone in this game was the imagination. A huge amount of diversity, most of it seen elsewhere but all brought together in a neat and well written and paced package. Best game on the Xbox 360, probably best game on any system. Game of the year 2008.
I have still to play Resistance 2, comes out here in two weeks time. We will see. It has a hard hill to climb to beat Gears of war 2.
flaws, some clipping issues, sometime you could see locust going into the walls. Not a lot of the time but enough to be noticable. Probably because it does stand out so much with the high standards.
First Playthrough on Hardcore, 365 achievement points.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Saints Row 2 Notes
Saints Row 2
Needs a patch day one hmmm.
Choose normal difficulty after moh Airborne i am wary of difficulty levels being too insane.
We are given an introductory cut scene where two jail guards are walking through a jail talking about a prisoner who has been in a coma for years after a huge explosion. It seems he is public enemy number one. I presume it is our character from the first game.
We come to the ward and a nurse is going to take the bandages off.
We are sent to the character creations screen.
Where we can muck around with many parameters and make our character look as cool or ridiculous as we want to.
Mission 1 Jailbreak
We wake up in hospital, a saint in the next bed informs us that he got himself stabbed so he could be in the hospital at the same time as us. He says that he knows how to get out of the prison. The prison by the way is on an island.
First task is to kill the doctor.
Left and right trigger will punch with the same hand. Also block if we are being attacked. Holding the triggers will charge the attack. We can also do combos.
Given the option of doing the tutorial or not.
Holding B gives a circular option wheel which changes with the left stick.
Y kicks open doors.
We fight two guards in the next area. We are able to pick up small object in the world and hit with them or throw them.
X jumps or climbs up climable areas.
Pressing down on left stick crouches.
We kill a guard with a gun and now have a gun. When it is equiped a targetting circle appears, pressing right trigger fires the gun and left trigger melees using the gun as a blunt instrument.
We can dual weild with the pistols. Pressing in the right stick brings us into fine aim.
Right bumper is sprint.
We make our way throught the jail until we get to the ground outside and find that we can now get into vehicles. A is accelerate and x brake.
We make our way by getting to blue waypoints. We eventually get to the dock and onto a boat. Carlos drives and we have an on rails shoot out with some police helicopters and speedboats.
We reach our destination and carlos tells us that the saints are no more. They fell apart without our leadership and other gangs are in charge of stillwater. Mission over. I get 500 dollars cash.
And now we are into the game proper, the open world of stillwater, first impression is that there are a lot of people just standing around.
I am at a dock. The graphics seems to be in a 720 resolution. Usual sandbox stuff, nothing that is too detailed but nice enough on the eye.
Looking at the map the city seems big but not overly huge, which is the best way really. better to have small and detailed than huge and generic and bland.
I seem to only have one mission marker, which is a saints mission.
Mission 2 Appointed defender.
I go to the saints marker and am told to get some new clothes at sloppy seconds.
A gps marker is set for me.
I go to the shop and get out of the prison clothes.
I now have to go to teenays whatever that is.
Seems it's a strip club.
Inside we get a beer and watch tv where we see that Johnny Gat is about to appeal against his death sentence. We are interuppted and bottle some bar idiot. Looks like we have to go and spring Johnny. After we finish the bar fight that is. Out in the street we are told we have four minutes to get to the court house.
Cruise control A x to change speed up or down left trigger is handbrake.
I drive to the court house and go inside. Once I get to the waypoint at the court Gat is being tried at we get a cut scene. We see Gat being smart with the judge and our character busting in a killing guards. We now have to escape the court house. We have lots of cops to deal with. Health seems to build up again if you stop getting shot for a while. Once out in the street we have to drive to a forgive and forget which stops the cops chasing us when we drive through. We then have to take Gat to a private house and the mission is over.
We now have a crib in the red light area.
We are told about the respect meter which we must fill to be given missions.
I remember this now. I didn't like that in the last game, you are forced to do side missions so that you can progress the main story.
I complete a race mission. Markers seem to be a general guide and it's pretty rough. Manage to get gold third try.
I go to the next waypoint for a side mission. It's called septic avenger. I have to spray shit around on targets to bring down the real estate value of the area so that the realtor can sell some houses. ?????
You basically are driven around in a truck and spray the shit on houses and other stuff in the area. You can pause the truck by pressing Left trigger to give you time to spray the houses completely. I get it done and now have enough respect for the next main story mission. I can carry on doing septic avenger missions one after the other. I complete up to level 3 and am given increased weapons accuracy. I do up to level 6 before giving in as it starts to get harder.
Mission 3 Down Payment
We meet at Ayesha's house. Gat wants to take back the city. Ayesha tells him that he will have to find another base of operations as he can't use her house. We have to drive Gat to an abandoned house.
we drive to the mission house and we have to clear out whoever is inside to take it for our own. There is a hotel under the mission house.
Inside you have to kill some gang members and then destroy 7 shanties, which are homeless shelters inside the area. Once they are done you kill all the bums and voila you now have a base of operations.
I do some mini game called ho-ing or something and you have to move the right stick to a spot and keep it there while moving the left stick in response to direction prompts. Keep to the prescription and you get the guy off. YOU see a window and door and are left to assume from the moaning and groaning and innudeno laden talk what is going on behind it. This i only did thinking that there would be an achievemt for getting through all the levels. I got to level 10 and no achievement. Seems stupid then, i doubt anyone would think of this game as fun unless you are 12 years old. Maybe that is the intention.
I do some escort side missions, getting to level five before giving up. You basically have to pick up a whore, find the client and then ride around until the pleasure meter fills, then you drop of the client. You have occasionally to drive to a certain point or run over a pedestrian or do certain damage to other vehicles. The main aim is to stay away from the increasing amount of tv trucks which take pictures to expose the client. This activity is fairly fun and new things have been added since the first game.
Mission 4 Three kings
looks like it recruiting time, as to have a gang we actually need more than the two members so far.
First we have to drive to the suburbs.
when we get there there are a few people marked on the map as i approach the first one He wants me to repossess a car for him to recruit him into the gang.
The car is a hearse in a cemetry, we are driving over graves with the recovery truck which we must back up and winch the car onto. Once hooked the handling goes to hell. Taking the truck back is plauged by police.
Now onto the next lieutenant.
The next one wants us to kill three groups of ronin gang members. Which is fairly easy.
On a side note i see a female streaker running around shaking her tits at passers by??
The last lieutenant is a girl and she wants us to hit three stunt jumps in a car. which is fairly easy. Also introduced the 80 stunt jumps we have to hit around the city.
That's it, back to the mission house for a pep talk to rabble rouse the gang. We are sending spies to infiltrate the other gangs too. The saints are back in business. As the first achievement tells us. only 5 points, cheapskate game.
i have now unlocked the ability to have a following a.i. helper. Also got car delivery on the escort missions.
Now outside the mission house i have the choice of ronin and samedi missions to pick from.
Mission 5 Ronin : Saints Seven
I choose ronin and we are hitting their casino, there is a scene where one of the gang is planning an elaborate heist, Gat just wants to shoot everyone and his plan is approved.
We have to head to the casino.
Inside the casino we have to kill ronin for a bit then Gat plants some bombs. After the bombs go of we find ourselves outside driving a truck away from the casino with the money we stole inside. Avoiding the police we have to drive to Ayesha's house where the mission ends.
We see a cut scene where the leader of the ronin is arguing with his deputy about the casino. Look like junior does not do things the old country way and has got to americanised.
Mission 6 Ronin : laundry Day
We now have to launder the money we stole from the casino.
We have to go and buy a car from someone in the trailer park, buy a gun from a guy behind a shop. Then take the gun and car to a fence. The fence wants to be taken to her stash. We ride shotgun while the fence drives to her stash. Once there it's mission over. We see the ronin boss being scolded by his dad who is coming over to teach him how to lead.
Shogo now wants the ronin second in command to get the gang together and go take out the saints.
Mission 6 Ronin : Road Rage.
The ronin are on the way to the mission house we have to stop them.
this is fun a bike chase, kind of hard to shoot and steer at the same time though.
You basically have to kill about five bikers who are on the way to the saints hideout. It takes me three attempts but they were all fun.
We see that shogo is in leauge with the Ultor corp and Vogel. Shogo's henchman is watching Gat, looks like he is going to go after Ayesha.
Mission 7 Ronin : Bleeding out
Wow actually an interesting cut scene.
The lieutenant is waiting in Ayesha's house with lots of henchmen. He promises her she will live. As Gat and our hero arrive she calls out and he chops off her head with the sword. It's done tastefully though with no real gore. Gat and us start a firefight with the gang and there is much stylish action. Gat and the lieutenant end up swordfighting. We kill the rest of the gang and tell him to duck so that we can shoot the lieutenant, however this distraction is enough to get Gat run through with the sword. The lieutenant makes a break for it before we can kill him and Gat is left bleeding out on the floor.
Mission starts, we have to protect Gat until the ambulance arrives.
The ambulance is Pierce with a car, we get in and he drives while we take out ronin cars and bikes with a rocket launcher. This is a fun mission. Infinite rockets and lots to shoot at. Mayhem on a grand scale. Some nice touches like when you jump over a building using its architecture as a ramp. When you get to the hospital Gat is taken care of and you vow to go after the ronin leadership.
We have unlocked Bodyguards whatever that means, sure i will find out soon.
Mission 8 Ronin : Orange Threat level
Pierce and the hero drive to the airport, there is a convolouted process to get into the airport, going round the back and stealing a cargo truck and driving in the back way.
Once inside we have a shoot out with ronin.
The vip gets into a terminal cart and makes a break and we chase him in a similar cart. All slightly surreal and chaotic. Outside we catch them up and find that it isn't the father, its a decoy. We see the Ronin second in command with the father, they tell shogo that he is in deep shit.
Mission 9 Shantie stronghold Stillwater caverns.
We have to clear out the homeless who have taken over Stillwater caverns.
Which is fairly easy, I get the impression that this is a mission i missed from the first few. Three shanties to destroy with little in the way of enemies.
I have now unlocked gang customization cars????
Mission 10 Ronin : Kanto connection
We drive to the kanto sushi restaurant and find the ronin second Jyunichi i think, here we have to sword fight with him. There are several other gang members which are easily meleed with the sword, the boss himself needs to be attacked only when he swings for you, at any other time he blocks and counters well. After a few waves of henchmen you take his health down enough to kill him. The cut scene shows Shogo grovelling to his father who wants nothing to do with his apologies.
Doing this unlocks the ronin melee fighting style.
The ronin try a pushback to take one of my neighbourhoods that i have taken from them. You have to go there and kill groups of gang members to stop the pushback.
Mission 11 Ronin : Visiting Hours
We are visting Gat in hospital when ronin assassins burst in to get him. We have to wheel him on a gurney through the hospital to get him out of harms way. Getting to the front doors the ronin blow up our escape ambulance. So we head back to the roof to the helicopter pad. Where we get to drive the helicopter. Taking the helicopter back to the mission house finishes the mission.
We see Father ronin meeting Ultor's Vogel, who isn't happy about the hospital massacre. Father is an asshole as usual and Vogel is not impressed and shown the door, the Ultor Ronin connection severed.
I have now unlocked the helicopter.
mission 12 Ronin Stronghold Suburbs strip club
After completing a few ronin missions a bunch of their strongholds have appeared on the map.
I decide to try one of these missions.
Taking my newly unlocked helicopter I fly to the mission start.
We have to go into the strip club and kill the ronin inside. first in the main club, then upstairs in the private rooms and finally from the roof as the reinforcements arrive.
mission 13 Ronin Stronghold New Hennequet Rec Centre
The ronin are operating an illeagal casion in the basement of this rec centre. WE go in shoot up the gambling machines and gaming tables in each room, killing ronin as we go. We then have to go into the counting rooms and steal money crates. Once that is done reinforcements turn up and you have to kill them all.
Mission 14. ROnin Stronghold Humbolt Park science Museum
The ronin are running porn site servers from the science museum, we have to go in and destroy them.
It's a fight up to the top floor of the museum and into the room where the racks of servers are. Shoot them to bits and the reinforcements this time are a helicopter. SHoot it up and it's mission over.
I now have gained the ability to have two ai helpers by pressing up on the dpad when i am near saints gang members.
I notice a floaty for sale sign and investigate. I can buy a share in the charred hard burger joint which will see the saints protect it and i can get a discount on the merchandise. I will also gain $200 a day, for $5000 dollars it seems like a bargain.
Mission 15 Ronin Stronghold Amberbrook Museum pier complete
We go to the museum and have to kill ronin until we find out what is going on. They are using boats to smuggle from the pier at the back of the museum. We then have to destroy five boats and the mission is over.
Mission 16 Ronin : Room Service
Vogel comes to the saints with a propostion. He wants us to blow up a hotel with lots of ronin inside as he is now pissed of with Father Ronin too. He gives us the means and we execute the plan. We have to fight into the hotel and place seven bombs before making sure several key ronin as assasinated and escaping. We have only a limited time and we have to base jump out of the way of the bombs. Using a cunningly hidden parachute.
A good mission.
Mission 17 Ronin : Rest in Peace
The gang are all there for Ayesha's funeral. Shogo turns up to spoil the party however.
We have to kill him. We take on loads of ronin, with SHogo amongst them. Once we have taken some health off him he runs for a house and the ronin prevent us from getting to him. Once we kill the marked lieutenants we see Shogo get on a motorbike and make a break for it. We chase him through the streets until we damage him enough that his bike explodes.
I finally have run down on the respect that i gained from doing escort and septic avenger misions and have to go and do some more side missions.
I find Mayhem missions, where you basically have to blow things up.
You must go to a location and basicially cause a dollar value of damage before time runs out. I Do up to level 4.
I get a crib customization discount.
Mission 18 Ronin Good D
An old friend called Mr Wong turns up, seems he was in the lst game but i can't remember him. He hates father ronin too.
The ronin bring the fight to the saints by attacking the mission house. They try and bring down the support pillars collapsing the whole structure. The missions is in two phases. You have to stop ronin from using grenades and rocket launchers on the highlighted pillars for a set period of time. Once the two areas have been defended Father ronin turns up and must have his health brought down. You see a cut scene where father ronin turns tail and runs. Not much honor for him there then.
We unlock the ninja gang customization.
I am told that nob hill is under attack, another gang pushback.
A group of ronin to kill in that areas and the pushback is defeated.
My gang are telling me to take a shower, so i go and buy some new clothes and a share in the clothing shop. I gain a style rank up which the game tells me earns me more respect from side missions.
Mission 19 Ronin One man's junk
Gat and Wong are going to a heritage festival with Gat along to babysit. The ronin turn up and Gat takes on their ranks while Father ronin and Wong have a showdown.
We are elsewhere and now have to get there fast.
When we arrive we have a whole bunch of marked ronin to kill to progress the mission. Killing the non marked ronin is a waste of time as they respawn, you have to prioritise the marked ones and eliminate them to progress, the others are irellevant.
We now have to save Wong who is on one of the junk boats.
As we arrive we are in time to see Father ronin kill Wong. We take him on with only swords.
The sword fight with Akuchi is hard but thanks to stupid a.i. we can lead him into fire and burn him up instead. We see Our hero toying with Akuchi and pinning him to the floor, letting wong hear him scream and then jumping from the junk before it explodes killing Akuchi. The ronin are finished.
We unlock akujis prototype bike for our use. Also their vehicles and ronin personality for us to use at the plastic surgeons. We also get the ability to use Johnny Gat as a homie we can call on our cell phone to help us out in missions.
Time for a new gang, Sons of Samedi here I come.
I finally find my crib which is a run down single room, spending lots of cash I pimp it up and play the zombie uprising game which sees you in the hotel basement fighting never ending waves of zombies. I go up another style level for doing up my crib.
Mission 20 Sons of Samedi : Got dust will travel.
The sons of samedi have a drug market going on. We have to steal some of their product in the hope of figuring out how it's made and then undercutting the sons and hurting them that way. We have to go to the university.
Where we have to kill two groups of drug dealers and collect their Loa dust. Once that is done we have to take out a money collecter for the sons which will hurt their take. Finally we return to sandie or Thandie, whatever her name is. Mission over. We see the sons boss who seems to be called the general talking with two henchmen, they are scolded because takings are down and are tasked to find out why.
I go to the next sons marker and find that i need more respect, side mission time.
I find fuzz, which sees us faking footage of police brutality for a bent lawyer and his tv show fuzz.
we basically have to catch purse snatchers, litterers and streakers and beat the shit out of them. Once the cameraman following us has his footage bar full the mission is over. The task get increasingly ridiculous e.g. breaking up a battle between ninjas and pirates. Stopping a prostitute revolution, and runaway tanks. There is a tight time limit.
We unlock the kobra pistol.
After completing all 6 levels of fuzz I unlock unlimited pistol ammo at my crib.
Mission 21 Sons of Samedi : File in the cake.
Shandie wants us to bust a drug chemist she met in prison out. So that we can reverse engineer the loa dust. She gives us a bomb to deliver to the prison.
We have to take the bomb in through a tunnel to a generator which cuts the power to the prison. We then go inside in the chaos and rioting that ensue and find the drug chemist who turns out to be a soccer mom. We take her back to her beefcake younger boyfriend and she promises to sort out our drug problem.
Mission 22 Sons of Samedi : Airborne Assault
We meet up with Laura, the drug chemist who tells us that the loa dust has a lot of pot in it. Shandie remembers that there is a farm at the university. This must be where the pot is grown. We are flown by Laura's boyfriend to the pot farm where we are to destroy the lot.
We have to blow up some tankers and trucks which set fire to the crops. Then we have to take out fleeing samedi members in four cars to finish the mission.
We see the general and his henchman pay our hippie friend veteran child a visit. Seems that it was him that Shandie was fucking for intel. He is told that he must make amends by killing Shandie or he is next to die.
We gain a helicopter and Soccer moms boyfriend tobias as a helper.
Mission 23 Sons of Samedi : Veteran Child.
Veteran child comes to the saints mission house and beats up Shaundie and takes her away under our noses. We follow him to a club called cocks which is a set up and there are samedi gang members there to ambush us. Taking them down we go to Veteran childs club and confront him there. AFter fighting our way to him we find him with Shaundie who he uses as a meat shield. We have to flashbang him so that he staggers around blinded away from Shaundie and we can then kill him. This has to be the most annoying mission so far. I lost count of the amount of times that i shot Shaundie by mistake it seems to take one stray shot to kill her but veteran child is a bullet sponge. Anyway mission done, we see the general watching our escape from a distance.
Another pushback happens. More gang to kill. I get more gang customization cars as an unlock.
Mission 24 Sons of Samedi : Burning down the house
Shaundie gets some intel about a Samedi drug lab. We go to blow it up. Shaundie stays to get high at the frat party.
You have four locations with drug labs to raid and destroy, each drug lab explodes setting the buildings on fire. There is variety as at the last lab there are technicians who must be killed. The last technician escapes is a car and needs to be chased down.
We the general and his henchman watching the flames. They decide it's time to get personal with the saints leadership.
Mission 25 Sons of Samedi : Bad trip
The sons kidnap our hero. In the back of generals car we wake up and have been given some serious drugs, The general is underwhelmed with us. The henchman reveals his name to be Mr. Sunshine. We are to be killed and as they thugs draw guns we fight them grab a gun and shoot up the place. Diving from the car using a dead thug as a cusion for our landing we find ourselves out in the street narrowly avoiding the pile up the ensues. We are still high and controls are sluggish and our view is swimming.
We have to get back to the mission house and save Shaundie. Then pierce turns up with what seems like the whole Samedi gang on his tail. We have a huge shootout in the parking lot of the mission house.
The sons of samedi strongholds have appeared on the maps
Mission 26 Sons of samedi Stronghold : Bavogian Plaza drug labs.
We have to go into the drug lab and kill some crackheads who are watching peep shows. Then some drug labs to blow up and finally a helicopter to bring down.
I unlock three followers.
Mission 27 Sons of Samedi stronghold : Sunnyvale gardens fishing dock.
The samedi are using fishing boats to smuggle drugs. Time to stop their operation here.
We have to go into freezers where drug packages have been hidden inside fish and shoot them up. The we have to blow up the boats they are using, finally a freighter needs a bomb planted and then we have to get clear before the bomb blows.
Mission 28 Sons of Samedi Stronghold : Elysian fields trailer park.
There are drug labs in them thar trailers. Time to make em go boom says Shaundie.
After finding a map which shows which are the drug trailers we are given satchel charges to use on them. Satchel charges are throwable sticky bombs which are detonated with a push of left trigger and thrown with the right trigger.
Mission 29 Sons of samedi Stronghold : Stilwater university student union
The sons are on a recruiting drive at the university open day???
Time to kill the recruiters.
Simple mission go to the area and kill all the marked gang members.
Mission 30 Sons of samedi : bonding experience.
We have to blow up some samedi helicopters which are moving drugs around for them. Pierce is feeling left out of things and wants to come along.
essentially an on rails mission. We shoot at two helicopters from a van driven by pierce then move into a boat and do the same, then back to land for a final two from a van that pierce carjacks. The scene at the end of the mission show The general cutting of Mr Sunshines ear for failure and tasking him with fixing things.
Mission 31 Sons of Samedi : Riot control
Mr Sunshine tells all the druggies that he usually supplies that the saints have all his drugs and it's their fault he has none for them. The junkies come looking for the saints and revenge. At a warehouse full of loa dust we must prevent the druggies from getting the dust and killing us while pierce gets a truck. When he comes back with a truck we must protect Shaundie and Pierce as they load it up. When they do we must escort the truck and keep it out of trouble while Pierce drives it back to the mission house. Quite a fun mission, much mayhem on the roads with junkies and gang cars mixing it up in the traffic. We see Our hero torture a junkie for intel on Mr Sunshines location at the end of the mission.
Mission 32 Sons of Samedi : Eternal sunshine
We are going after Sunshine. We see Our hero and Suandie argue, she wants to come but our heor is having none of it, and insults her by saying that She almost got taken out by Veteran child and our hero does not have time to babysit her. I sense a betrayal coming.
we arrive at the meat packing factory and have to fight our way inside. Once up on the gantries we find Mr Sunshine, he has a voodo doll of us and throws us around with it. We have to shoot it out of his hand from accross the gantry. Then he is vulnerable to our fire for a while until he gets the doll back. Once we take down his health we see a cut scene where our hero shoots him many times but he keeps on gettin back up using voodo power. Eventually she uses his own machette to chop of his head to finally put him down.
Mission 33 Sons of Samedi : Assault on Precinct 31
We are after the general now. He drives around all the time in his limo, which makes him hard to find. However Shaundie has a plan. Using the stilwater police departments traffice cameras she think we can track him. We have to drive to a repairman van and hijack it, dress as repairmen and then enter the police station. Once inside you make your way to the fourth floor where Shaundie hacks the system, you are found out and police swarm you. You have to defend the room and Shaundie while she hacks, and then escape using the handy helicopter found on the roof. Once back at the mission house the mission ends. We see the saints setting up the tracking gear in the hideout so that The General can be found.
Damn poor timing, I run out of respect and need to do some activites. There is some septic avenger nearby. I do three levels before it gets annoying.
Mission 34 Sons of Samedi : The shopping maul
We finally find the generals car it is heading for the shopping mall. We have to dash with Shaundie in tow to the mall and lay an ambush for the general. We hit him with a bus as he parks. Then kill off his guards. He runs off into the mall and we have to give chase.
We give chase through the samedi infested mall and find the General, only he has a four wheel drive monster jeep called a bulldog. We give chase through the mall with a few vehicles for us to use. Eventually wearing his health down we see a cut scene of Shaundie and us. Shaundie wants some compliments but we are being our usual asshole self.
We unlock the bulldog. Some cars, the samedi personality for our gang and Shaundie as a helper whenever we want her.
I decide to go and buy up all the cribs for sale which are around on the map. This seems to increase my earning potential. Instead of there always being 8 grand in my crib safe there seems to be more now that I have bought more cribs. I also buy the aircraft hangar which lets me fly planes, which is fun. I can buy all but the last one on the map.
Mission 35 The brotherhood : First impressions
Carlos takes us to meet with Maero the leader of the brotherhood. Who seems a reasonable if tattooed brick shithouse nutjob. As we are meeting the police turn up and cause trouble.
We have to escort Maero and carlos out of the caverns and to a car, we then have to drive Maero to his hideout. We are given a choice of escaping by car or boat incidently. Once at the Brotherhood hideout Maero shows us around. He plans to cut us in for twenty percent of the action on his new big deal. Our hero is an asshole again and wants the eighty percent. We leave under hostile terms.
I thought this was going to be a slightly different story from the others, slightly disappointed here.
Mission 36 The Brotherhood : Reunion tour
We grab Donny who is another character I can't remember from the first game, seems he was a mechanic in the rollers gang. He is now in the brotherhood. OUr hero also has a grudge about someone called Lynn. Anyway our hero makes Donny bomb some trucks for us. We have to drive him to four trucks where we have to protect Donny while he plants the bombs. We then have to drive to a safe distance and detonate them. The last bomb does not go off with the trigger so we have to wait for it's timer to detonate it. The truck comes after us and we have to keep clear of it until it expolodes. When it does it's mission over. We see Donny explaining his actions to Maero who beats him up.
Mission 37 The Brotherhood: Waste not want not
This is a strange mission, when it starts we see Carlos informing us that he has no leads to what the brotherhood are up to, and they have went quiet. We are on a subway train and our hero looks at an island out the window. She seems to have an idea. We have to go to friendly fire and buy a geiger counter, then to the power plant.
Inside the power plant we go on a wild goose chase to find some toxic waste, which takes me ages, but is eventually found on a table in an office between two guys, not near the cooling towers as suggested. We then have to go to the helipad where Carlos will come and rescue us after we kill all the guards guarding the helipad. We then are flown to the city while being shot at by police helicopters and boats. We crash land in the city and have to drive to the Brotherhood headquarters. We then slip the toxic waste into the ink for the tattoo needle. Maero gets his face done and starts to burn after the tattoo is finished. I think he may well be mad after this one.
Mission 38 The Brotherhood Stronghold : Imperial square pagodas
The brotherhood are doing protection rackets in chinatown. Time to muscle in on the fun.
We shoot up the stores and show that the brotherhood are rubbish at protetction and scare the store owners, being careful not to kill them. We have to do this at four stores. Then we move onto the pagoda hotel where the boss of the protection racket lives. We shoot up the hotel and the brotherhood guards then scare the owner. I assume we now have taken over the protection racket and put the brotherhood out of business in chinatown.
Damn need more respect before i can do more missions, activity time.
I do trailblazing which sees you on a quad bike with a flame suit on??? You basically are a moving instant wrecking ball. You have to race from checkpoint to checkpoint hitting as much as you can, each person or car you hit gives you extra time which you will need. I do three levels.
Mission 39 The Brotherhood Stronghold : Sommerset apartments
The brotherhood have a piece of the campus action. They own three apartment buildings. We have to go to each building and kill the lieutenants there. Finally there is a mobile drug lab which needs to be destroyed.
Misson 40 The brotherhood Red asphalt
The Brotherhood have captured Carlos and are giving him a makeover, in revenge for what we did to Maero. We have to go to Donnies garage. and punch him until he tells us where they have taken Carlos. Now we know the location we drive there fast. We find Carlos chained to the back of a truck being driven around dragging on the ground. Shooting up the truck stops it and we have to go and see to Carlos. What we find isn't pretty, he is alive but only just. We put a bullet in his head as a kindness to stop his suffering. Methinks the brotherhood are in trouble now.
Mission 41 The brotherhood stronghold : Poseidon alley docks.
We have to hijack a brotherhood vehicle and join a convoy. Once at the meeting place we simply kill all the brotherhood lieutenants inside the warehouse. Lots of exploding barrels mean you have to be careful.
Mission 42 The brotherhood : Bank error in your favour
Shaundie is hanging out near a bank and is almost run over by Maero's girlfriend with a huge suitcase of money. Shaundie calls us up.
You have to drive to the bank and go inside and grab jessica. Once done the guards set off the alarm. You have to shoot them and then take jessica upstairs in the bank and turn off the alarm to open the doors. Then fight your way past the swat team and our to Jessica's car, you then have to escape to the university with her in the trunk.
When you arrive the mission is over. The cut scene shows you placing the car with jessica still in the trunk on the destruction derby track. Maero himself rides a monster truck over his own girlfriend. We are truly sick.
I need to do more activites for respect.
I try snatch, i remember this from the first game. You have to bring ho's back to their pimp away from abusive pimps???
Basically drive to where the girls are recruit them by pressing up on dpad and bring them back to the pimp, various pimps and gang members will try and stop you.
Sometimes the girls are in moving cars which have to be disabled to get them out.
I unlock the gal43 sub machine gun.
Sometimes a pimp tries to steal a ho back.
I unlock unlimited smg ammo for doing 6 levels of snatch.
Mission 43 : The Brotherhood : Thank you and goodnight
We are trying to find out about the shipment of Maero's. The gang decide to pump the tattoo guy for info. He plays in a band and they have a gig tonight. We are going to infiltrate.
We have to find a firework truck which is going to deliver to the gig.
The truck is guarded by brotherhood men. Kill them all and you can get in the truck. There is an on rails section where Pierce drive you to the gig. You throw firworks at the brotherhood cars trying to stop you. When you get to the gig the missions ends. You see a cut scene where our hero gets up on stage and beats the shit out of the guitarist only to find that he doesn't really know anything. We learn that the shipment is coming in by boat, well duh? surprising that. We burn the guitarists hand so badly he will never play again just to be a total asshole. Then leave telling Shaundie to get friendly with the dock workers.
We unlock the brotherhood melee style.
Mission 44 : The brotherhood: Restribution
The brotherhood unsurprisingly are striking back and making all out war on the saints in the street. We have to kill four gang lieutenants.
The men are spread out over a large area and all are involved with something when you arrive, The first is torching the docks. The second being arrested, the third robbing an off license. The fourth is having a meeting at the top of a multi-storey car park. Once they are all killed the mission ends. The cut scene shows Maero going into vogels office and essentially battering him until he agrees to get all his gang released from prison to help in the fight against the saints. Vogel complies and gets his corrupt police chief to help him.
Mission 45 : The brotherhood: jail bait
The gang members are being released from prison. First you have to blow up with any means you have three prison buses on land. Then you drive to a boat and take it out to meet the rest of the prison boats with the gang members on. A quick rocket or two and all four are sunk without trace. Mission ends. We see Maero trying to threaten vogel again, however he is ready and a whole private army swat team is waiting for him. Vogel tells Maero that they are taking his shipment from him in payment for getting his now dead gang members free.
A Brotherhood pushback is easily put down.
Mission 46 : The Brotherhood : The enemy of my enemy
We have to find the shipment and Shaundie and Pierce finally manage to track it. There is a ship in the harbour which has just been taken over by ultor. We have to go find a helicopter and fly out to the boat. Once there we have to kill all the ultor security. We see a cut scene of us inspecting the weapons. Suddenly the whole boat is rocked by an explosion.
The brotherhood have the same idea as you and are trying to steal the boat too. There are three waves of boats and heicopters which deposit gang members, once you clear all three waves the mission ends.
With us organising to take all the guns for the saints.
Mission 47 : The Brotherhood : The siege
emboldened our hero tells the saints it's time to go to Maero's hideout and kill him. We have to meet the rest of the gang first.
At Maero's hideout we have to make our way through his entire gang infested warehouse to the roof to confront him. He has a chain gun and is pretty easily taken down with a few rockets which stun him and some machine gun headshots. The cut scene shows us fighting hand to hand with Maero and him getting away in the back of a truck.
We unlock the mini gun.
Mission 48 : The Brotherhood Stronghold : Wardill airport hanagers.
The brotherhood have a deal going down at the airport. We have to go in and stop them transferring money electronically. We have to head into the hangar and kill the tech's that are doing the transfer, we then re-route the money to our own account and have to defend the computers until it's done. Then outside where we have to destroy four planes and four trucks and the mission is over.
mission 49 : The Brotherhood : Showdown
Maero wants us to come to the ultor dome, we go there and he is waiting in his monster truck with about six other brotherhood vehicles. We have to destroy them and the monster truck. Once done we see our hero kill Maero.
We gain the monster truck, brotherhood vehicles, personality and pierce as a homie.
Now it's on to ultor.
We go to a mission marker but it just shows us a cut scene of vogel telling businessmen his plan to make the gangs fight in a certain area to drive people out and lower housing prices so he can swoop in and buy it all up and build his dream project, just like the one at the old saints row site.
Mission 50 Ultor
We go to a bar and vogels men ambush us, we have to fight our way out of the bar then go and rescue Pierce and Shaundie.
Pierce is being attacked by a few squads of riot police. Kill them and he joins your party.
Then you have to go after Shaundie who is being bundled into a van by Ultor men. You must chase the van and disable it. this isn't made very clear as if you shoot it it blows up killing Shaundie, I did this mission about ten times trying to stop the van, eventually the mission ended, I don't know what happened there was a huge pile up involving the van and it just seemed to be disabled, I don't know how I did it, this mission wasn't made clear. A good mission just that one detail let it down.
mission 51 Ultor Pyramid scheme
Vogel has a secret underground lab, which we are going to blow up, as a dstraction we are going to blow up lots of ultor property first before heading to the lab.
We have to head to Saints row where you have to destroy enough ultor property and cops to get a four star rating, then head to a forgive and forget to get rid of the huge amount of attention that gets you. Once done you head into the secret underground base of ultor and plant three bombs and get out. Mission over. We see Vogel getting a roasting from his bosses and trying to spin it his way. He is told to sort out the saints.
We unlock the ultor apc for our garage and a pimp cane weapon.
Mission 52 : Ultor : Salting the earth again
An unknown tip tells us that there is an ultor board party on a yacht, we decide to crash it knowing that the tip is probably a trap. We head to the yacht and have to board it and take out the ultor board members, as usual one gets away in a boat and you have to give chase. The mission ends. We see Vogel who was strangely absent from the party organising to have his office moved to the top floor as he has just got promotion. We have done Vogels dirty work for him, he is a dirty rat.
Nothing seems to be happening, there are no mission objective markers.
I try some heli-assault activity. SOunds fun.
I have to perform objectives with the attack helicopter.
Blow up a plane, shoot some gang members on the ground and in cars.
Next you have to escort a drug car as it makes deliveries and protect it from attacking gang cars. This is repeated, though next time the car breaks at the last drop and you have to go and pick up the saints and take them back to base, they hang on the skids of the helicopter.
I get slightly less bullet damage.
Did up to level 5
Mission 53 : Ultor Stronghold Rounds Square shopping center
We have to kill ultor execs in the shopping mall.
We have four sets of guys to kill, then to go down into a conference room and kill more execs. The ultor swat guys arrive and we have to escape the mall.
mission 54 : Ultor : And a better life
Gat and the hero are making an attempt on Vogel's life. He manages to weasel away and gets into his limo and flees for the phillips building. You have to give chase, eventually he reaches the building and gets inside. You now have to take a helicopter and take out four security stations to break the lockdown on the building. Whatever that means as you just jump in the top floor window from a helicopter when you do so anyway. Was it a force field or something? Anyway You then end up in Vogels office. SHoot his guards, shoot him and a very easy final boss fight.
The final scene sees Vogel pleading for his life in his own inimitable fashion and getting shot in the face and thrown off the top floor. Shaundie and Pierce turn up. Gat is still out killing cops. The conquering heroes take to the sky in a helicopter and the credits roll.
Unlocks the attack helicopter
Looking at an achievement guide i find out how to unlock a secret mission.
Mission 55 : Ultor Revelation
Julius who was the saints leader and vanished at the end of the first game has betrayed us. Inside the police station are three icons which play recorded phone taps of conversations with julius and various people which show that he was the one who bombed you into a coma in the first game and the start of this one. We are given a number to phone to find him. He is inside the saints row church. When we arrive ultor swat team are there to kill both of us. We have to fend of four waves of troops and then drive away in julius' car with him driving. We end up at the amphitheatre and have to fight ultor troops and shoot down two helicopters. The mission ends with a cut scene showing us shooting julius.
And i'm done 26 hours play time on the save game clock 250 achievement points.
Fable Notes
Fable notes
Watch the intro movie with the guy swishing the sword around and lots of stained glass windows.
Start the game make a profile, well put my name in.
Given a chat about how my choice of good of evil is mine to make.
I am a little boy and my dad tells me to give my sister a present. I haven't got one of course.
I have to do some good deeds for the towns people to make enough to buy her one.
Meet the first person in the vilage is another kid who has lost her teddy.
Some nameless woman wants me to find her husband.
Some guy wants me to watch the stock for him while he goes for a pee.
Another boy comes up to me and tells me to steal from his barrels while he is away.
Shall we be bad or good, i think i will try and be good.
I stand still and the little boy calls me a wuss. But i get a halo point or two, which is good i presume. The man tells me that he will tell my father i was good, so that is one task done i presume.
A little boy wants me to get rid of the bully that is pestering him.
I beat him up a little and he runs off. The little boy gives me the bear that the little girl was looking for.
I find the sister, she mutters something about having a dream about something happening in the field she is in.
I find the little girl and give her the teddy.
I find the womans husband, about to kiss another woman, he asks me to keep my mouth shut to his wife. I can take his bribe or not, i decide not to, but should i go and tell the wife about his cheating? Seems that it is a good deed. I get points and the woman goes off to batter her husband.
It seems from the dissapearing number of green dots on the map that i have done most of the tasks. So i go and see my father who give me some gold.
I go to the trader and buy some sweets.
Now I have to give them to the sister.
Seems she dreamed of me giving her chocolates. I give them to her. Dreams come true indeed.
Oh dear, no they don't
Bandits comes streaming into the town and slaughter everyone and burn the place to the ground. Seems they were looking for you. The boy is left alone after hiding and watching all his friends and family murdered.
We are allowed control back to walk back through the burning body strewn village until we come to our fathers body. There was me thinking that so far it was twee and cute. The place is burning and there is gore everywhere.
Sobbing on your fathers body a bandit comes at you, only to be stopped in his tracks and killed by a magic blast. A wizard comes up to you and asks you to take his hand. He teleports with you, causing vomiting side effects. He tells you that he is Maze, leader of the guild of heroes. He takes you to the guild and tells you that you will be trained.
He give you a room and you have a roommate called whisper. After crying yourself to sleep you wake to find Whisper. She is a teenager and seems a little bit put out to have a new younger roommate. She takes you out to the first lesson.
On the way i find a side quest, a woman wants apples to make an apple pie, there are three lying about so far that i have picked up, i just need another one.
In the grounds of the heroes guild there are people training to use staff and bow.
I find the last apple, she give me a blueberry pie in return.
I go to the trainer and he sends me in a ring with a dummy, i have to hit it with my fists, he tells me i am naff. He then gives me a stick and tells me to beat the stuffing out of the dummy. I do this and am told about the xp orb it drops. Seems to get the xp for a kill you have to collect these.
An alarm goes off telling me that there is something loose in the woods. Seems i have to go and sort it out in the name of training.
going out of an arch leads to a load and we are in a new area.
There are some flying beetle things which are no match for my stick.
I get xp gold and renown points.
We are given the choice to save and go on to the next stage or stick around and do side quests.
I beat a guys time running from the demon door and back in 50 seconds. I get gold etc.
I go up the stairs and find maze talking to a rather scary looking warrior, talking about him going to the Northern wastes, seems Maze would rather he stay. He leaves anyway, he is called scythe.
Little Montage showing the boy training hard for years, studying and becoming a warrior.
Grown up hero is still being ticked off by Whisper it seems. She wants to race us to the guildmaster.
The guildmaster gives us a sword.
We are given some training with the sword, blocking and attacking.
Whispers brother turns up and has us fight to show us how good we are, i give whisper a kicking and he seems disappointed in her, i think that might be a mistake.
Now we can do some archery training.
shoot three stationery targets.
Now moving targets.
Now the will???
Ohhh magic, why didn't you say, we have manna which is used up when we use spells.
Holding down right trigger brings the context sensitive a b and x buttons into magic mode and each one is a spell. We can shoot lightning at the test dummies for a bit.
So now we have learned the three hero disciplines.
I can do grading now. I shoot more arrows and fight whisper again and am given an iron katana and a yew crossbow.
Doing the will test gives me a will potion and a resurrection phial.
A man wants me to kill sparrows around the guild.
I kill two then go look for the guildmaster as i can't easily see any more.
Have to interject here that i had to repeat a fair few scenes here as the save game utility seems broken beyond belief.
Another little montage.
Now it's graduation day.
I have to go into the woods for a trial.
Maze meets us and wants us to hit him with sword, arrow and magic. When we do he tells us we must now go and see the guildmaster again.
We are given a graduation ceremony, whisper and you where again the point about choosing good or evil is laboured again.
We are told about the function of the guild to improve the character, using xp points to buy upgrades in strength will and physical abilitys each have three subdivisons as well.
Now I can choose areas on the map to go to to perform quests.
First is wasp menace.
I have to walk through an area and then into another where i find huge wasps attacking people at the picnic area, i kill a few with my sword then a huge one turns up that spawns more. I need to use my bow to kill the big one as i can't get close enough with my sword.
After killing it people turn up and tell me how brilliant i am, i get rewards.
Investigating the area turns up some items, health potion, food and a hairstyle card.
Apparently i can get the hairstyle if i go to the barber with the card.
On the way back to Meet Maze as the guildmaster tells me to do I meet a beggar who is being tormented by a boy. I am told to try my expressions and when i do i fart. This puts the boy off and he goes. The beggar is thankful and goes away, i have a feeling he will turn up again soon.
I have to meet Maze in a town, called bowerstone.
Told about taverns and the mayor lady grey. Oh and i am not allowed weapons in the town.
I meet up with Maze in the middle of the town.
Ooops it just crashed. Back at the lookout point, where i killed the wasp, well at least it's not back to the start of the game.
Ahhh it looks like now i can fully save at any time. Good was beginning to worry.
Maze tells me that my sister might have survived, he has heard rumours that she has.
He also tells me to get better weapons as i will need them.
A little girl asks us to follow. So i do, she leads us to her family and her brother has eaten dodgy mushrooms. The mother asks us to take a sample to the witch to make a cure.
We have to go and collect them.
I find the witch before the mushrooms. She seems to think the boy is high rather than ill.
Anayway she needs four blue mushrooms.
We meet some bloke who seems to be trying to marry off his fussy daughter.
However we must have a certain haircut before he will let us meet her. Weird.
I try the teleport fast travel system as it seems i need to go back to the picnic area for the mushrooms.
On landing back at the guild I meet a prickly heroine called Briar Rose. Wonder what role she will play.
ON wandering the wrong way i find a scottish sounding guy in the woods, he has met a girl while under the influcence of mushrooms at a party and now sober wants to see her again. He wants me to take a letter to her.
On the way to find the mushrooms I find some stoners. Looks like mushrooms are the flavour of the month around here.
They have lost a special mushroom near the demon door at the guild.
And guess what i have to find it for them.
These mushrooms are proving elusive.
Now there is a girl who has taken mushrooms in the hope of laughing her knickers off. She wants me to entertain her.
I find the fist fighters gang. Seems I can bet 50 gold on myself in a fight.
I do a bit of fighting and pass level one, quite easy but i can bet it won't always be.
I get some gold.
Exploring far and wide and still can't find these mushrooms.
Have to find the trader in barrow field it seems to get the mushrooms, only problem if i don't know where barrow field is.
I come to fisher creek and find a man trapped in his house by wasps.
He rewards me for saving him by giving me a fishing rod and we are given a tutorial on fishing and catch a pike.
I find a little chest behind his house which has leather gauntlets inside i take them but is this stealing or??
I can teleport to certain areas once i find the teleport stones.
I decide to finally give up on the damn mushrooms.
I go back to the guild and take a quest.
Orchard Farm
We meet whisper and find that the guild takes two quests for the same job sometimes. Lady grey has asked that the bandits have a hero help them attack the farm while you have been tasked with protection duty on behalf of the farmer.
You get the option to choose either way. Good or bad.
Looks like whisper is being set up to become our nemesis.
We fight a few waves of guards and then fight whisper again. She is hard to beat this time.
We are told we can now use the apologise expression???
I go back to the guild and spend my xp points on levelling up my attributes
Then take the escort traders quest.
After a long trek to get to the start of the quest We meet two traders who want us to escort them through darkwood.
We meet another trader, bruised and battered, the others say he might be infected with something. We are given the choice to help him, which seems to be the good thing to to so here we go. Since I am trying to be good here.
Now we are taught how to give commands to non-player characters like follow and wait.
Which seems a bit annoying as you have to target each one individually and make sure they are all waiting or following and you keep telling the wrong one do to the wrong thing and gahh!!
The bitten guy turns into a werewolf half way through the trek through werewolf and weird beasty infested swamps.
At the end of the trek we meet a huge troll boss.
The quest is over when we reach the new area barrow fields. Yay i was looking for that for ages earlier thinking the first little quest would be just that a little quest. seems a wider issue than i thought. Now to find the mushrooms.
I am also told that Maze wants to see me.
I buy a mushroom from the trader but he has only one and charges me a fortune, says knicker lady has one and the guy near the guild with the letter for his lady.
We go into oakvale and meet the little girl who had lost her teddy, way back at the start of the game. she induces a flashback our hero freaks her out.
We meet maze who has no leads but he tells us of a seeress who may help.
Looks like we have to get her to help us. Only she seems to be in leauge with the very bandits who murdered our family.
I take a side quest to kill hobbes at orchard farm, grinding for xp.
We have to kill the hobbes who are stealing the farmers scrumpy.
WHisper is also there and she wants to compete to see who can kill the most hobbes.
I win na na.
I take the bandit camp and find the seeress quest.
This seems to be a bit of a stealth mission. I have to sneak past bandits because if they see me they will lock a gate.
Sneaking is a pain in the ass.
Once into camp we have to find all the bits of a bandit outfit. There are five. Once we find them the bandit will open the door for us to twinblades camp.
inside the camp we need an inner sanctum pass to get further, we can try our luck winning it or just buy it from a rogue. I buy it.
Again in the next area i buy assassins help in making a diversion.
This must be a shortcut, but i don't know.
We finally get to twinblade and he is a boss fight, seems hard to kill until you see that he sticks his twinblades in the ground every so often, so you simply duck and dodge until he does this and then go in behind and whack him on the back. He dies quickly after this.
As you are about to finish him your sister turns up and she has grown up too.
She was blinded by the real bandits who it seems were actually after you. Twinblade found her and took her in as a slave. He found out about her seer powers and she is his right hand woman. And now a fierce warrior to boot. She gives you a power which she says is in your family. and leaves.
Now we have the option of killing twinblade. I leave him to live.
Maze wants to see me at the guild.
he gives us another two quests. To find the archaeologist and to go to the arena in witchwood.
Seems more side quests are in order.
Have to rescue some traders from twinblades camp.
Hmmm during the rescue I had two saved and had told them to wait after killing all the guards, the guys were waiting near the exit. I went to save the third and in the middle of his little spiel after rescuing him the game said that one of them had died and i had failed the quest. Now after an age of autoloading and autosaving right after each other i am back at the guild and can't seem to find that quest to redo it. No silly me i just have to go back to the area to restart it.
Decide to try and find a better weapon after dying re attempting that trader rescue mission.
In oakvale looking for a weapon dealer I meet myra that the mushroomed guy in the guild woods wanted me to deliver a letter to. I do and she give me one to return to him.
Meet another guy in oakvale who wants me to stop a ghost that is annoying his chicken club.
I go down to the beach and the ghost tells me he was a pirate and if i find his treasure and give it to the wife he will go and give me a reward.
I buy a better sword and crossbow.
Right third fucking time one of those hostage traders has died what the fuck?
Thought i had it sussed I hired two ai guys that help you fight, but still one of the men get killed and it's mission over.
Next day
Mangaged that mission just fine, no problem. Must have been tired yesterday, after night shift.
Fired the two henchmen after freeing the traders.
Take a questcard to go and save a boy that is trapped in mine by hobbes.
Not a boy, well i suppose he is to his mum.
He is in a cage guarded by hobbes, i save him and he tells me he and others were raiding the mine. He asks me to help him saying the hobbes have something really valuable down there.
I do he is soon killed, well at least the mission hasn't failed.
We come to a room called the focus chamber and find that there is a real boy, not the bandit after all.
He is being held prisoner by a fearie type beastie who is planning to sacrifice him to something.
I can't kill her and she wants an alternative human for the sacrifice in order to free the boy. hmmmm the bandit died like a girl bug??
No i can kill her i have to use arrows and lightning though. I kill her, she spawns hobbes. Free the boy and we have to get him out of the area. Which is quite hard as there are many more hobbes than when we came in. Telling him to wait in safe areas seems to be the way to go. If there are going to be many more of these saving people and keeping people alive missions i might quit playing they suck.
Back to the granny and the boy tells me that it was her who made him go down there, he is planning on running away.
Next to witchwood to find this archaeologist character.
Big troll to fight pretty much as soon as we enter the area.
There is a demon door which will open if we know it's name. We have to hit the nearby stones in a certain order to spell it out.
I give a guy a ruby and he tells me the name. Hitting the stones in the correct order to spell hits.
The archaeologist is peeved that we found him. He is hiding from someone called Jack of Blades. IS this the man who killed our parents. The archaeologist is studying focus sites whatever they are. He gives us his journal.
Take a quest in witchwood to go and fight a balverine.
Some guy comes up to us and asks us to come save his wife, but it's a trap and loads of bandits ambush us.
Try out some of the magic spells i just got. Slow time and force push. Quite good.
We get to the town gates and three people are trapped outside and four balverines are coming for them. We save them and are let into the town.
Inside we fight the white balverine, but it vanishes. We are told to go to the widow of the man who killed the last one. We are told by her that her husband is the balverine that is attacking now as he was bitten, she gives us silver augmentation for our weapon and tells us to kill him as he is dead already.
On confronting the beast it calls loads of mates, but eventually dies, taking it's head back completes the quest.
We are given a letter from our sister by the village chief also.
Next task is to go to arena and compete, don't know why?
After about 8 rounds against all the creatures we have fought so far and a new scorpion type thing then we have to fight whisper, we are given the choice to kill her or spare her.
I let her live.
We meet Lady grey and Thunder WHispers dad, who seem to be up to no good. Thunder is hostile and Lady grey invites us to dinner.
Walking through the hall of heroes we see a statue of a female warrior, it is scarlet blade who is our mother. Jack of blades turns up and tells us he wants to reunite her daughter and son with the mother.
Seems that our mother was a great warrior who was tended to when she was injured by our father, whom she married and had you and your sister theresa.
Your mother is under the impression that you and your sister are dead.
Going to the grey house to meet theresa. She tells us that Jack of blades cut out her eyes and actually has our mother prisoner. What is his game? If he wanted us dead he could have done it by now?
Apparently the archaeologist can help us get into the prison.
We meet lady grey in bowerstone's new area that has opened up, she wants us to bring her a gift of a black rose.
The archaeologist has been kidnapped by nasty beasties.
We save him and he tells us a secret route into the prison. His acting is shit.
new baddies here they seems to be called minions
Wasps, hobbes, bandits, undead, trolls, bigger trolls, scorpion, minions.
We have to gain access to the secret tunnel to the prison. It is guarded by a demon door and they only open for very specific circumstances. We have to find a person called Naustro who is long dead. we have to get the skeleton recover it's armour, four parts.
After we get them the door opens and it's a long path with plenty of undead.
When we reach the end we have to kill lots of undead, once they die their soul gets sucked onto spots on the stone dias and when we have lit all the lights with souls the door opens.
Now it's into the prison, undead first then inside with guards. There are some litte rooms here where force fields pop up barring the way until we kill all the enemies in the area.
we meet up with our mother and in the process of escaping we are confronted by Jack
Who mumbles something about our wretched bloodline and a key. Seems our mother knows something about an ancient all powerful weapon. The sword of aeons. Jack is using us as leverage to get the secret out of her. With us captive she has no choice but to tell him what she knows, now jack is off after the superweapon of mass destruction.
We are stripped of all belongings and put in a cell.
After spending some time in the cell chatting to the guy next door we are told that every year the govenor has a birthday wish, the inmates are to race and the winner sent to his room. SOunds scary. Winning the race sees you being read poetry too by the governor. While he is you steal the code to his combination lock and opening it get a key. When you go back to the cells you free yourself, the rest of the men and start a riot. YOu can then get your eqipment back, free your mother and make a break for it.
The way out is blocked by a kraken monster in an underground swimming pool. You have to hit it's tentacles and then it's head.
Free at last you and your mother catch up. The sword must be kept out of Jack's hands. SHe sends us to open a cullis gate in darkwater, which is the way to where the sword is.
We go to darkwater and what seemed like a ruin earlier is now the site of a battle to kill enough undead to power the cullis gate.
Through the gate to hook coast and the abbey where a magical barrier is blocking the way. We have to go back and see Maze for guidance.
On the way to Maze's room we hear our mother over the mind link screaming. When we get to the office two of Jacks minions are teleporting away with her, she screams at us to get the book. There is a book on the table. It contains secrets about the hook coast magical barrier. Only we can't read the language, maybe the guildmaster can help it is suggested.
He can, if we go to hook coast he will read the incantation through our guild seal for us.
The guildmaster reads and in we go, only to find Maze keeping our sister down under a magical force field. He starts telling us that she is controlled by Jack, but our sister tells us he is a traitor. Jack appears and all pretence is gone, Maze reveals his true colours. Jack's puppet. Jack holds us in a field and Maze performs the ritual to obtain the key which needs both of the siblings there. Now Jack has the key and Maze is told to dispose of us.
maze bumped me off. Better go and get some more will potions and health potions.
Back at the guild i take the letter to cyril and get a mushroom, also go fishing near the demon door and get a mushroom.
Only one to get to save the boy.
Finally managed to kill Maze. He tells me that if he knew i was this strong he would not have been a coward and bowed to Jack. He tells me that Jack will now go and try and activate all the focus sites and find the weapon. We must confront him and stop him before he does.
We chase Jack to each focus site, there are four of them, at each one we arrive seconds too late to find he has already activated them. At the last Jack takes our mother into the portal back to the guild.
At the guild everything is on fire. The guildmaster is hurt most people are dead. We chase Jack into a vault with the sword. Jack slits our mothers throat and takes the sword. We now have to kill him. He summons loads of baddies and once we have killed them we fight him. He uses very potent spells and is very very hard to kill.
Jack attacks with spells but if you get close he will fight with the sword. You can get some hits in as long as you keep slow time on and multiply your hit score you will soon wear him down. He then retreats to the centre of the room and shoots spells and summons baddies. You have to use spells or ranged weapons. Since i have never really used ranged weapons much my skills are low and i have a naff bow. So it's pretty hard work to wear jack down. I would have liked to have gone away and found a better bow and level up my accuracy etc. However i am trapped in the guild, i have no prior save game and can't get back out to level up. ????
Damn annoying
Think I will give up here, it's the end of the game anyway.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)