Friday, December 11, 2009

Assassins Creed 2 Notes

Assassin's Creed 2 Notes

There are no difficulty levels to choose from here.

Story recap is in the form of ghostly images, a voice over and a mish mash of computer type imagery.
Desmond Miles is a prisoner of the templars. They have been using a machine to search his DNA racial memory for clues to the location of an artefact named the apple which is part of a group of artefacts called the pieces of Eden. Seems that templars and Assassin's have been fighting each other throughout history for control of these artefacts.
Desmond is being held is a building, he is kept in a cell and taken from it to the Animus, which is a bed like machine. Throughout the first game he lived through memories of an assassin named Altair. He came to know the technician Lucy as a friend and confidant.
The game starts exactly where the last one finished. Looking at the wall in the cell, though this is now filled with writing which Desmond can see using Eagle vision. An assassin technique. The door of the cell opens and Lucy comes in, she is covered in blood. She tells Desmond to follow her.
Lucy tells Desmond to get in the animus, she has done something and they need to get out of  there in under ten minutes.
Desmond agrees and the animus starts up.
We witness the birth of a baby. We have to do some button presses to make the limp baby wake and start crying.
Back in the lab Lucy turns off the animus and takes it's hard drive out.
Lucy tells Desmond to follow her. Out in the corridors guards appear.
Normal camera and movement controls with analogue sticks.
Right trigger is run.
X is punch.
We get in a lift and come down into a large cubicled area.
Inside some of the cubicles are animus'.
We have to get through to a lift on the other side of the area. Occasionally we meet guards and either knock them down ourselves or leave them to kung fu fighting Lucy.
We get to the lift and the keycard won't work. Desmond uses eagle vision and can see the fingerprints of the guards on the buttons, so at least he knows which keys are right. After three tries he gets the right order.
In the parking garage we have a fight with a load of guards, then Lucy puts us in the boot of her car and drives us somewhere.
We arrive in a warehouse and Lucy tells us that the assassins are losing the war against the templars. She hopes that we can learn to be an assassin and help. She tells Desmond that they can use the animus to train him using the memories of Eizo. Desmond will become a fully trained assassin in a matter of days.
We meet Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane, Rebecca is a tech and Crane an asshole it seems.
shaun maintains the assassin archives.
We can wander around in the new animus area and talk with the main characters.
Rebecca is proud of her updated animus, which she calls baby.
A U action completed sign flashes up here when we get into the animus.
We are now into the first scene with the grown up Eizo. There is a street brawl between two gangs and Eizo seems to be the leader of one of them.
Vieri de Pazzi is leader of the other.
We have to fight a few men and then another wave after being introduced to our brother Federico. Once done we find we have a bust lip. Federico tells us that we need to see a Doctor.
Eizo is reluctant, until Federico tells him to loot the bodies of the fallen for the 200 florins we need to pay the Doctor. Pressing B beside a fallen enemy loots them.
We are then told to follow Federico up a building and across some roofs to the Doctor who heals us.
Federico then challenges us to a race up to the top of a church. Which is fairly easy to win, I don't think you can lose. At the top a little credit sequence runs. Then Eizo wants to go a pay a visit to his girl Cristina Vespucci.
The vantage points and map sycnronisation are still in place from the first game.
Like the first game we can jump down from these high points into soft piles of hay.
These hiding spots can be used to get away from pursuers.
We are free now to head for the waypoint on our map. Here eizo climbs in the window and
gets his wicked way with Cristina. In the morning her father finds Eizo in the room and chases him out the window. He sets the guards on him which me must lose.
Another waypoint appears, it is our father who pretends to be angry at first but can't keep it up and says that Eizo reminds him of his youth.
We have to deliver documents for our father to a man called Lorenzo de Medici.
On the way some random dudes start chasing me.
I escape by climbing a spire, synchronising and jumping down into the hay.
I give the letter to a man who tells me that Lorenzo is out of town. We have to go back to our father who is speaking with a man.
We are free again. Our mother wants us to go on an errand with her. we go and pick up a box and carry it back for Leonardo Da Vinci.
Our sister wants us to beat up a guy for her. Duccio is a love rat, when we find him he is giving chat to another girl. Beating him up completes the mission.
Now we are directed to our little brother Petruccio, who it seems is sick and has snuck out of bed. We have to get some feathers that he wants to get him back where he should be.
This is basically an introduction to rooftop races. Get the feathers in the time limit and then go back to Petruccio.
I accept what is obviously a side mission to deliver two letter to ladies for a man under a certain time limit. It isn't that hard, yet.
You can go to shops in the city.
I climb a viewpoint and Synchronise.
At the bottom of the viewpoint in the square a man challenges us to a race.
This is a simple race through waypoints, I manage it second time around.
I heal at the Doctor.
Another 4 viewpoints.
A side mission to beat up a cheating husband for the wife.
I find a codex page which is heavily guarded, you have to get the guards to give chase then lose them and slip back.
Now it's back to the family home for a story mission.

Main Mission 1
Father needs packages delivered and something from a dead drop. Seems suspicious and father warns us to stay out of trouble.
there are three waypoints. First one I get to is a pigeon loft where I retrieve a message.
The second waypoint sees us delivering a letter to a man up on the roofs. He is nervous and tells us that he is moving tonight and our father should do the same
The next delivery is to a thief and a courtesan.
With that the mission is over and we are left with more questions.

Main Mission 2
When we get back to our house a servant bangs us on the head thinking we are someone else. It seems that our father has been arrested and the family terrorised. The remaining family are taken to the servants house for safety and Ezio decides to go and speak with his father.
we have to climb up a tower to speak with him through the window of the cell.
He tells us that we must go to his study and find a hidden door. There are documents there which must be taken to Uberto Alberti. The man we saw our father talking with earlier.
Our father has not got time to tell us what is going on, only what we must do. It seems that our father is mixed up in something big. The guards come into father's cells and we must go.

Main mission 3
Back at the house we are tasked with finding the documents.
Using eagle vision the door is obvious, inside we find a secret grotto of assassins equipment. This is where we get our clothing and some weapons.
We are attacked by guards when we leave our house, they have swords and we have to kill them.
Now we have to take the documents to Uberto Alberti.
He takes the documents and tells us that these prove a conspiracy against our family and the city. He tell us that he will sort everything out. A man in robes can be seen in the background inside Alberti's house.

Main Mission 4 Last man standing
We are to go to a waypoint to attend the acquittal of Petruccio, Giovani and Federico.
Only it isn't an acquittal it's an execution. Our family are hung in front of us.
Seems that Alberti is a bad guy. Ezio is attacked by guards in suits of armour and runs for it. We see the courtesan and thief in the crowd we spoke to earlier.
We basically only have to escape to finish the mission.

I can see a new viewpoint to climb on the map so I do so.

Main mission 5 Fitting in
We go to the waypoint and find the servant that has our mother and sister safe.
It is a bordello, the Madonna Paula tells us that to get revenge we must be clever. she offers to teach us. Eizo is angry and hot headed but agrees.
We have to learn how to blend into crowds.
When we get near a group of crowd members we turn grey as do they. This means we are blending. We can walk by groups of guards unseen like this.
We have to follow Paula around the block to learn the technique.
Now we learn to pickpocket. Getting close and pressing A lets you pinch money from people.
You have to get away from them quickly before they realise they have been pickpocketed.
Now we are to get a proper weapon, Paula tells us that Leonardo  Da vinci can fix our wrist blade.

Main Mission 6 Ace up my sleeve.
We have to travel to leonardo's house.
leonardo welcomes us and once he sees the wristblade becomes happy to work on it.
He also decrypts an assassins scroll. He jokes about cutting our finger off to make it work, he has modified it so that we don't have to lose a finger.
We now get the wrist blade.
Leonardo asks us to bring any more encrypted scrolls we find to him.
Guards arrive and attack Leonardo, we save him by killing the guard with the wrist blade.
We have to take the body inside, pressing B picks it up, we dump it with the other cadavers that Leonardo gets from thr city for his research!
Mission is now over.

A whole new set of 5 viewpoints have appeared on the map, I go and do them all.

I find a symbol on the side of a building. When we look at it with eagle vision computer code appear. Rebecca and Shaun give it to us to solve as it can only be done inside the animus.
It appears that the data came from subject 16 the person that Abstergo were working with before us. The clues written in blood in the walls of our cell were written by this man.
We have to choose five paintings from a group, after being given a clue. The clue is about cores and picking out all the painting which have an apple in them unlocks a video file from the previous subjects trips through history.
We see two naked people jumping. Only a few seconds of the file. Is this Adam and Eve we are looking at?

I find another glyph this one is a sliding puzzle with portraits of historical figures.

I get two codex pages.
I hired a group of thieves to fight with me for one of the assaults on the little rooms with the pages.

Main mission 7
Back at the bordello we speak with Paula.
Now we are to assassinate Umberto Alberti.
We see Umberto talking with Lorenzo de Medici who it seems is out of favour now with Umberto. We have to follow Umberto.
I hire the courtesans to see what happens, they follow you and get in the way of the guards.
I get into the art exhibition and assassinate Umberto. We have to get away to complete the mission.

Main mission 8
Back at the bordello we are told to lay low.
We must remove wanted posters, bribing heralds and kill corrupt officals.
On the map the location of wanted posters is shown. I go around and collect around five of them to be told the mission is over.

Main Mission 9
Back at the bordello we speak to our mother and sister. It is time to get them out of the city.
We are to go to the villa Auditore in Monteriggioni.
We have to take them through the city avoiding guards. We are given a new ability here, to throw money which distracts everyone including guards.
We are also instructed to use the courtesans to get past the large group of guards at the gate.

Main mission 10
We are outside the city and have to continue on our journey.
We get a little along the road and find the gang leader from our first mission waiting for us, Viere de Pazzi. His men attack and things look bleak. Suddenly most of the men are cut down by unseen throwing weapons. A man called Mario appears with his bandits and gives us a sword. We then fight the remaining men and Pazzi runs for it.
Mario is our uncle, I had to laugh out loud when he says "It's a me, Mario."
We walk through Monteriggioni to the Villa auditore, which is a nice mansion which has seen better days.
Mario is shocked that Eizo knows nothing of his fathers work. Mario expects Eizo to train and take over. Mario tells Eizo to go and find some items in the market to give him time to think.

We are told to go to a shop and by leather greaves and a dagger.
Then to the Doctor to buy medicine.
There is a viewpoint here.

Inside the villa we speak to our mother and sister and comfort them. Then to Mario who wishes to train us.  Eizo is relucant, Mario tells him that even if he goes on the road he will have to learn how to fight or he will not survive the journey.
Eizo agrees.
We learn about dodging, countering and taunting.
we learn to escape a fight.
Then we have to fight Mario.
Once we win he starts on about fighting back against their enemies. Eizo is having none of it. He angers Mario with this. all the men leave for a fight and leave Eizo alone.
We decide to go and join in.
We have to speak to our mother and sister and find a chest where we store the feather pickups we have found so far.
I go out of the villa and find a horse waiting for me.
I ride to Tuscany

Main Mission 11
Mario is waiting with some men.
He tells us that Pazzi is a templar.
We have to sneak into the castle and open the gate for Mario who makes a full frontal approach.
We are given throwing knifes for the assault.
We go inside and open the gate, fight some soldiers then watch a cut scene of the Templar leader and two other henchmen besides Pazzi talking.
We are sent to kill Pazzi, we fight a load of guards then get to him.
He is a hard fight but I manage it, using up all my medicine health vials.
Mario gives us a lecture when we get angry with Pazzi's corpse for not giving us answers.
We go back to the villa.

5 hours so far.

Main mission 12 A change of plans
At the villa we speak with Mario and the men are celebrating the death of Pazzi.
Mario asks us to walk with him.
Eizo and Mario in the office decide that Eizo will take on his fathers work. Which seems to be to bring about the downfall of the templars.
The codex pages are written by Altair the Assassin from the first game.
Decoding them seems to be key to the game.
We are told by Mario to go and findfour hidden codex pages on the estate. This isn't hard as they are shown on your map.
We have to go back to Claudia our sister. She has been given a bookkeeping job by Mario and isn't liking it much.
Seems we can now get money from a chest in this room if we need it.
We now speak with an architect charged with rennovating the villa.
Here we can spend money on the shops and improve them, giving us a discount.
Now we have to go and speak with Mario.
He opens a secret door in a bookcase.
We go down a long corridor and many steps to the sanctuary.
Here is Altair's armour and other assassin artefacts.
However it is all locked up. Seems we need to get the seals of a load of famous assassins from history who have statues in the room. The seals are missing and we must find them.
We are now to go back to Florence.
7 new viewpoints appear.
After getting all the viewpoints I find some more missions have opened up. There are also posters to rip down and heralds to bribe.
I notiice a red blob on the map moving fast, getting to it I find another person running across the rooftops as we do. I give chase but he won't stop. I end up knocking him off a ledge and he falls to his death.
There are two more codex pages to get, using the thieves to lure away the guards makes this easy.

Main Mission 13 Practice what you preach
I go to the main mission marker at Leonardo's house.
we are to practice new assassination techniques while Leonardo gets to grips with the new encrytped pages we bring him.
We can now assassinate using the wrist blade from a hiding spot if an enemy is close enough.
If we are above a target we can air assasinate by locking on with Left trigger and pressing X.
We can also assassinate from a ledge we are hanging on.
We now have to go back to Leonardo and he gives us a second hidden blade.

Mission 14
We are now looking for someone called the fox or La Volpe in Italian.
We have to go to a marketplace and seek out a man outlined in gold in our eagle vision.
He is a thief and he pickpockets us. We are to give chase and a new tackle option is added when we get close to him witht the B button.
When I catch him a cut scene starts. La Volpe arrives a rather well to do looking thief lord and tells us that he can help us with the location of francesco de Pazzi.

mission 15 See you there.
We are to follow La volpe.
This is race against time across the city.
When we get there he tells us that De Pazzi can be found meeting in a church. There are hidden  catacombs which can get us inside.

mission 16 Novella's secret
We are to infiltrate the cataombs and find our way to the templar meeting. In the grounds of the church there is a marked point with an assassin symbol on it. Touching it opens a secret way inside the catacombs.
Now we have to move through a series of rooms and climbing puzzles using levers to open doors.
We then get a group of guards to stealth kill. One of them runs for the others when he sees us and we have to chase him on a scripted chase through the crumbling catacombs. He gets to the other guards and we then have a fight with about five guards to deal with.
We now open a door and overhear the templar meeting.
They are planning something for the De medici family.
we find an assassin's tomb in the crypt and a secret door outside.
Eizo and La volpe chat outside, it seems that the templars are planing something at the church tomorrow involving the De Medici family.

Side mission
An assassin marker has appeared on the map besides the next mission marker.
I investigate and am given a side mission to find the assassins seal in santa Maria del Fiore church.
This is a huge long climb through the insides of the grand church. It is linear and the jumping system makes it fairly easy if you take your time.
inside the spire I find the hidden tomb and get a second assassins seal.

Main Mission 17 Wolves in sheeps clothing.
We are to prevent the attack on the medici family.
When we get to church a cut scene starts, Francesco and his men attack the Medici's as they enter. One of the Medici's is killed, and we step into the melee.
Once all the bad guys are down, we have to flee the scene with the wounded Lorenzo Medici. We have to fight through the streets, although Medici soldiers help. Once we get back to Medici's house he thanks us. However Pazzi is attacking the council and if he kills them all Pazzi's political friends will take over. Lorenzo pleads with us to kill Pazzi as the only way to stop him.

Main Mission 18 Farewell Franscesco
We have to make it to a roof where Francesco sees us and taunts.
I climb up onto this roof and kill all his guards, not so happy now Francesco runs for it.
He is an agile  little minx, almost as good as Eizo. But not quite. I catch him up and introduce him to the wrist blade.
As he dies he tells Eizo that he is too late.
In cut scene Eizo hangs Francesco's corpse from the city hall.
The priest templar sees this, is shocked and rides off.

We speak with Lorenzo who gives us a codex page and the names of a few more targets.
we get some background on the targets.
There are now assasination contracts at four points on the map oh and a race mission has popped up on the map.

The first is to kill a merchant in the market. just walk up to him, stab him and run for it from the police.
The next contract for three corrupt archers.
The third for a conspirator.
The fourth a member of the Salvucci family who smuggled our enemies into Florence.
The fifth assassination contract is to follow a conspirator to a meeting and then kill all at the meeting.

I find a fast travel station and decide to try it out to go back to the villa. It cost 100 florins but gets me there instantly.
At the villa I spend my cash upgrading the town, which seems a good idea as your income from the town will grow and you will get the cash back.

Another assassination mission to kill a conspirator.
A bunch of guards are going to attack Lorenzo, we are to sort them out before they can put their plan into motion. However, they are the larger brute armoured guards and we are only given a minute to kill them all? I give up as I obviously need much better weapons to do this mission.
I do a race mission which takes a few goes to learn the route, I managed it on the fourth go.

Main mission 19 A blade with bite.
We go to Leonardo and he decodes a codex page to give us a poisoned blade.
The poison makes the infected person go berserk then die about ten seconds later.

Main mission 20 Evasive maneuvers
We go back to the villa and speak with Mario. We give him the list of co-conspirators.
He wants to teach us some new fight moves.
We learn dodge and disarm, which we do by locking on to an ememy and pressing Right trigger in combination with A and X.

Now we have to go to Tuscany where a whole bunch of mission markers have appeared.

Main mission 21 The cowl does not make the monk.
One of the bunch of main conspirators is hiding in an abbey, we are to infiltrate it and kill him.
I think I was supposed to infiltrate stealthily, I just marched in and killed everyone who attacked me and killed the marked man.

Main mission 22 Come out and play
Bernardo Baronceli is hiding in tuscany, we have to find him.
I find him with two bodyguards in the market, killing him is easy.

There are 7 viewpoints nearby which i synch with. Now I can see a lot more missions in this area.

I find another glyph and unlock it by finding the piece of eden using infrared in pictures of famous people.

I find a codex pages and grab it from it's guards.

Main Mission 23 Behind closed doors.
I go to a villa and find one of Mario's men waiting. Francesco Salviati is inside and we get to lead some men in to kill him.
This is similar to a previous mission, we must get the gates open so our men can come in and help the fight with the men, I find and kill the target inside the villa.

Main Mission 24
We have to  find and kill Antonio Maffei in Tuscany.
He is at the top of a tall tower, which is made hard to climb by surrounding archers.
Once you get to the top the monk is easy pickings.

I find another glyph, this one seems a bit haphazard, finding images in pictures, with riddles.

Main Mission 25 With friends like these.
We have to tail Jacopo De Pazzi to the templar meeting and kill him.
We have to make our way close to De Pazzi as he goes to the meeting, the area is crawling with Guards. We have to blend in with the crowd a lot.
When we get there a cut scene kicks in. In a large open area the templar boss kills De Pazzi for us and tells us to come out. We are flanked by guards and kill them, then a fight breaks out. De pazzi has been left bleeding to death and we have to finish him.
Then finish the fight with some nasty bigger and better armed guards.

On finishing the fight we flip out of the memory and return to Florence where we See Eizo report to De Medici that the conspirators are all dead.
De Medici gives us a cloak that stops city guards attacking us.

An Blue objective appears. It is over Leonardo's house, seems he has been moved to venice to do some work.
I decide to go back to the villa and get my money, as if you don't do this often you don't earn any more.
I noticed that a sword i was using in the big fight got broken, you can get a free new one at your villa, you don't have to buy another one.

Main mission 26
Our next obejective marker is to go to the mountains.
Where we find Leonardo and his flying machine with a broken down cart.
We now have a little section where we drive Leonardo's cart in a mad chase from Borgia's men/
They jump onto the cart and we have to knock them against the sides or unbalance them by making the cart sway. They attack with flaming arrows. Eventually we get out and let Leo go on alone. We then have to fight off a bunch of guards.

We are now in Forli and have to find for viewpoints to get our mission markers.
There are 8 viewpoints here to do.

Side Mission Assassination contract.
Thin the ranks.
Kill some senior soldiers of an army that is plotting an attack of Florence.
This is basically hunting down three sets of guards and killing them.

Side mission Assassination contract.
Beginnings of a conspiracy
Some men stole a map, we have to kill them.
Basically killing three groups who are wandering the city with guards.
Being seen by any of the guards ends the mission.

I find and retrieve 3 codex pages.

Side mission Messengers burden.
I have to a take a message to a farmer, when I get there I get attacked. Killing all the civilain attackers is easy and the mission is done.

Side mission race Romagna hustle.
Quite and easy race, did it first time  with 30 seconds to spare.

Side mission beat up events x2
Promiscuity knocks
wanton hubby
find the husband and beat him silly.

Assassin tomb mission.
Ravaldino's secret
Roccoa di Ravaldio has puzzle jumping aplenty
New here is jumping backwards while hanging and swimming under obstacles.
We have a few rooms of guards to clear out, and some platforming.
There is a section where once you pull a lever you have a very limited time to get up to the top and through the door that is opened.
As usual with these missions you get a wodge of cash and an assassins seal.

Race mission
Horseplay
A horse race this time.
A woman is arguing with some men about their horseriding skills.
The woman bets that the next man to walk past can beat their time.
Of course it's you and you get promised a shag for beating the time.
I do it first time, and get the shag.

Main Mission
I find Leonardo by a boat. Seems we need a pass to get to Venice.
A woman suddenly shouts for help.
She is Caterina Sforza and needs help to get off a little island. We are told to go to a boat. which once we get on and grasp the oar by pressing B we can steer and row. We go pick up the woman and take her to the dock. It seems this is going to be an important character, as she is able to get us the pass we need. We are on our way to Venice.

Back to Desmond
He is told that too long of an exposure to the animus is dangerous.
It is possible that you will be able to access the genetic memories without the animus. This may sound good but no one who has done it has been able to control it.
I can bet you that Desmond will be the one to do it and control it.
We have to meet Lucy downstairs.
When we do she shows us into a room and asks us to try out any skills we have been gifted by the animus. Seems we can now do all the free running Eizo can. We have to active a security system by pressing six buttons.
Once done we are left to walk back upstairs.
As we do a vision occurs, wieird animus glitching and ghostly figures. It looks like one of them is beckoning us to follow them.
Desmond collapses and suddenly we are in the animus memory of Altair. We follow the woman and have to chase her accross a city. Then up to the top of a very tall tower.
At the top in cut scene Altar gets some loving. The woman looks familar.
She is pregnant, I don't know if this is meant to be a great revelation but I always assumed Altair Ezio and desmond were direct line descendants.
Desmond wakes up and he finds himself in bed in the loft where the animus is.
Time to get back in there and progress.

We are now in Venice

I find a viewpoint.
And get another four or so to do.
I get two codex pages.

These glyph puzzles are getting hard.

There is a viewpoint I can't climb.

Main mission
We are taken on a tour of Venice by Leonardo's friend.
At the market people are being harrassed by guards.
We are told about new commerce laws which are being forced into place.
The man takes us to Leonardo's new workshop.
A female theive pickpockets Eizo and he laughs.

Main Mission
Eizo for no apparent reason bemoans the ability to not make a specific jump. On cue a bunch of theives run past. The female from earlier makes the jump that Eizo couldn't. She is then shot in the leg by a guard with an arrow. Eizo helps her to escape.
We have to escort her to the river.
We run through the streets and have to fight with guards until Rosa collapses, we then have to pick her up and carry her to a gondola. At the gondola other thieves take her and make their escape in the boat. We now have to escort the boat to the thieves headquarters taking out archers on the banks of the canal that are shooting at the boat.
At the thieves guild we see some basic surgery as the arrow is taken out of Rosa and we then meet the thieves guild leader who wants to talk with us. Seems he is taking a keen interest in Eizo.

Main mission
We speak with the leader of the thieves who's name I have still to catch and he wants us to join with him as our goal is the same.

Main Mission
Antonio is his name I think. There are traitors amongst the thieves, Antonio wants us to find and kill them.
There are three thieves to kill, one on rooftops, the other in a market and the third on a boat.

Main mission
Another codex page to Leo for a new upgrade.

Main mission
We have to help the thieves by freeing men who have been captured.
The thieves are in outdoor cages guarded by a few guards. I try stealth but it's almost impossible to evade the eagle eyes guards.
Instead I head to each cage fight the guards and then have to return the men to the place where I first met the thief.
Doing this three times is a little dull.

Main mission
Ugo wants us to steal guard armour so that he can replace the guards on the roofs of the palace with his own men for our attack on Emilio.
We have to go and find three guarded chests, kill the guards, then loot them. Next we have to take a boat and bring it to Ugo.

Main mission
I find Rosa, who wants Eizo in a good way, however he wants to learn to climb like her.
She shows us a new technique where we have to hold right trigger and push up, pressing A jumps and B grabs at ledges. Of course we have to be able to reach the ledge.

Main mission
Rosa wants us to climb a high tower to show us we can really use the new skills.
This is the viewpoint tower that I could not climb earlier.

Main Mission
Antonio is ready to hatch his plan to help us kill Emilio. We are to start off by killing archers overlooking the palace.
This is easy enough, we now need to meet with Antonio.
I don't know what we really need antonio for as it's much more fun just to wade in a kill the guards yourself. We now have to climb the palace to a certain point.
A cut scene shows the target being told by his templar superior that Eizo is here looking for him.
We are on the roof of the palace and kill him quite easily. In cut scene after we do all the other guards are shot by the thieves from the roof.

Main mission
Eizo overheard during the last mission that the templars are meeting. We follow two of them to the meeting.
We have to tail them through the streets as they plot.
The gist is that they are scared by Eizo's activities but not going to back away from their plots. Seems whatever they are planning is being accelerated and must be done in the next week. The main leader urges them to be careful of Eizo and leaves for Rome.

A new section of Venice is now open to us.

Main Mission
The spainyard seems to be the name of the lead templar.
Carlo Grimaldi is one of his henchmen and their plot  to take control of the fleet is about to come to fruition. Eizo wants him dead.
We start the mission at the Palace of the last victim where the thieves are taking over.
Antonio tells us that the Palazzo Ducale is impenetrable.
Antonio and Eizo scout the palace.
It seems that there is no real way to get into the high walled palace.
We have to go to four points around the palace to find this out.
Antonio quips that only birds could get in. This reminds Eizo of Leonardo's designs.

Main Mission
We go to Leonardo and ask him about the glider. He tells us that only a madman would try it.
Eizo is of course that madman.
We get out onto a roof and try the glider, of course it flies and we can control it using the sticks, however Eizo is disappointed with the distance it flies.
Back at the house Leonardo tries to work out how to get it to fly the distance.
He is stumped then eventually has a eureka moment when he thows a drawing in the fire and it floats up in the heat. Antonio is drafted to light fires along the way so that Eizo can get more lift and take the glider into the Palace.

Main mission
We must get rid of the archers first though.
This mission is simply to go to groups of guards and kill them.

Main mission Infrequent flier
Time to take the glider flight
This is quite fun in a fluff filler sort of way.
When we get to the palace we have a few guards on the roof to kill then down for a cut scene.
We see Grimaldi hatching his plan to poison an offical. It might be me but the plot is a little confused when it comes to what the conspirators are up to.
Eizo is too late to warn the offical as he has already drunk the poison.
We basically now have to kill Grimaldi and escape.
It seems that Eizo might now be blamed for the murder of the Duke.

Main Mission
We go to see Leo, sad that we are blamed and now the most wanted man in Venice.
It's carnival time, so at least we can wear a mask.
another codex page for Leo and a new weapon.
This is the pistol attachment for our hidden blade.
Seems the new Duke is a templar. Looks like another victim.

Main mission
We go looking for Antonio and find him in a brothel, as we are being introduced one of the girls is murdered and the killer flees. We are asked by the Madonna to give chase.
As you get close to the killer he stops and threatens another courtesan with a knife. We can lock on and shoot him. This finishes the mission.

Main mission
Back at the brothel Antonio is peeved about the new ruler and Eizo being a trouble magnet.
The Madonna happens to know that the ruler will be at a party tonight. If we can get a golden mask we can enter the party undetected.
We are asked to speak with Teodora about Marco Barbagio, the ruler.
We take a walk and find a carnivale game which gives enter for the winner.

Main mission
We have to take ribbons from the girls of the district in three minutes. reaching 25 gets us victory.

Main Mission
Capture the flag
Is bloody hard but I manage it. Beat you opponent to the flag and take it back to a rooftop.

I do a codex page liberation mission.

Main mission
Hopefully the last of the golden mask mission is a race.
Which i manage first time.

Main Mission Cheaters never prosper.
Now a fist fight in a ring. We take on the champ and win, then have to take on a series of
other hopefulls.
The bad guy turns up with a henchman and sends him into the ring. He is no trouble either.
Then the bad guy sends in four armed guards to the ring. I see them off with my sword.
The final cut scene here shows the bad guy ensuring his henchman wins the mask by foul means.

Assassins tomb mission.
This starts with another scripted chase sequence. Then a guard fight.
Then a bastard of a water filled room straight from tomb raiders worst sequences.
Basically a jumpathon against a tight ticking clock. When Eizo puts his weight on certain levers it opens the door to the tomb.

Main Mission Having a blast
Of course to get into the ball now we will have to steal the mask from dante Moro, the henchman.
He is wandering the streets and we simply have to pickpocket him.
Now we can get into the party. Whilst at the party the Moro arrives and we are on high alert.
We have to blend to avoid being attacked. The victim appears on a boat surrounded by guards. Talk about paranoid. However as Theodora suggests our gun is most useful in blowing his head off. Now we have to escape.
Back at the brothel Eizo gets an orgy as a reward. Though it seems he has eyes for Theodora.

Health regenerates to one small square, if  you want more you have to heal at a doctor or take a health vial.
You can expand your throwing blade and health vial carrying capacity.
There is a weapon wheel brought up with the Right bumper which allows selection of weapons using the left analogue stick.

Main Mission
Eizo meets the new more favourable Duke, however, another victim whoose name I missed has control of a military force and isn't for relinquising it.

Main Mission
Eizo comes across a thief who has been shot with an arrow. Bartolomeo D Alviano has been captured and we must free him.
When we get to the marker we find a cage guarded by a few men. Killing them frees Bart.
We must now fight our way to safety with Bart.
We go to his house and find more guards. Fighting them ends the mission.
Bart runs into the house shouting the name Bianca.

Main Mission Leave no man behind
Turns out Bianca is a sword.
Bart is seems is a mercenary leader, he will help us to fight against the army so that we can get to our next target. However there are other men held captive which would help in the fight. We must free them.
Three groups of men must be freed from guarded cages.

I find that you can buy new moves from the fight training area at the villa.
I buy the ability to shoot two knives at different people.
I buy the ability to use ranged weapons and sweep people of their feet.
I buy the ability to smash with heavy weapons like large axes.

Main Mission
Barts Plan is to have his mercenaries cause trouble throughout the city. That means that Silvio will have to spread his men thin around the city dealing with it. With little men left in reserve at the garrison Eizo will be able to get in.
We are tasked with escorting the mercs to strategic points.
We have to do this three times. Get them to a point which happens to be full of guards, kill the guards and that is the mission done.

Main mission Two birds one blade.
Bart gives us a firework to signal the start of the attack.
Climbing to a viewpoint we set it off.
Now Bart is in trouble in the ensuing Battle, We have to help him.
Dante Moro is fighting bart and we intervene, Moro runs for it.
We give chase back to the garrison entrance where Moro's master urges him to follow him onto a ship.
We have to fight Moro and when we win a cut scene shows him running for it with the Silvio the other templar.
We give chase to the two and tackle and kill them in turn.
As they die in cut scene we find that they intended to set sail for cyprus.

Main Mission
We speak with Leonardo and Rosa. Gist is that There is a prophecy about a piece of Eden coming into the city and being used to unlock a vault. Seems that a peice of Eden has been found in Cyprus and is being brought back to Venice. Eizo realises that Borgia must never be allowed to gain the piece of Eden as the power it will give him will be beyond measure.
He decides to meet the boat from Cyprus at the docks.

Main mission All things come to those who wait.
Wew go to the docks and witness guards bringing the piece of eden ashore. Eizo also spots Mario skulking around watching the same thing he is.
We are tasked with capturing the cargo from the ship.
We tail him to the place and a guard tells him to get a box and package the piece properly. Eizo siezes this chance to sneak in and assassinate the courier and steal his clothes.

Main Mission Play Along
We are now to stay in formation with guards and to go and assassinate the Borgia.
We go and meet the Spainyard is an anonymous yard. Eizo reveals himself and Borgia tells him that he himself is the prohpet. Eizo attacks and once we wear Borgia's health down he calls guards. He taunts us saying that where are our people. We have to fight the guards. Whenn we do Mario, Antonio and Bart turn up and start fighting with us.
Big glitch here as the fight goes outside the area and I can't get at it.
The next time we wear down the Spainyard's health he gets away.
Eizo is told by the gang to wait.
Machiavelli appears along with Paula and Theodora.
He tells us that Eizo is the prophet and they are all assassins that have been guiding his life to this moment.
Eizo is taken and initiated as an assassin.

Back in the real world there is trouble with the animus and a chunk of time after this is inaccessible at present. Looks like the downloadable content will fit in here.

Back to the animus after some chit chat and it seems that Borgia has made himself pope.

We now have to collect the two codex pages that I have missed, seems Eizo had them all at this point. we have to go and find them.
I find one more codex page and can't see where the other is.
The mission marker is showing up at the villa. I go there and find Leo. I give him a codex page.
I eventually find the last one.
Taking them back to the villa finds a gang of assassins at the codex wall.
Giving the last one to Leo translates it.
Putting on eagle vision reveals a jigsaw type puzzle map of the world we have to make up by rotating the codex pieces.
Once done Eizo places the piece of Eden on a pedastal it gives out a light that shows the vault to be in Rome.
The papal staff is also a piece of Eden, seems it and the apple are needed to open the vault.

Speaking to Mario starts a mission to Rome.

Main mission In Bocca Al Lupo
We are to infiltrate the Sistine chapel and kill Borgia.
This starts out as a corridor mission where we have to negotiate ramparts of a large wall. There are many guards, even a bit of horseriding.
Then some sneaking through gates and finally we get above a large church where Borgia is giving mass. We climb above him and jump down in our signature move and seemingly kill him.
He laugh in out face and uses the staff to exude a power wave that kills everyone in the room but Eizo. Seems the apple is protecting him.
Eizo uses the power of the apple to split himself into many, as seen by the bad guy at the end of the last game.
We have a basic fight to weaken Borgia.
Then when we do it's a cut scene.
Borgia somehow ends up with the upper hand. He takes the apple and stabs Eizo.
The staff and apple merge and he vanishes.
We have to follow him down a secret passage.
Where we basically have to beat him to death.
Eizo stops at the last second and lets him live.
He then touches the staff and apple and a beam shoots out and opens a door.
Eizo essentially speaks to a hologram of an alien. She claims to be of a race that created human life on Earth in their image.
Seems that the alined have enemies and while they concerned themselves with human affairs an outside enemy came and blasted Earth. Only a few humans and aliens survived. The human race was rebuilt but the aliens died out slowly. The aliens have left something in temples strewn around the world.
The alien reveals herself to be talking to Desmond, not Eizo.
Desmond is pulled from the animus and the templars have found them. It's time to leave the hideout.
We run out and the lights go out.
In the lower ground area we meet Warren from the original game, we have a fight with some of the Abstergo men. and Warren flees.
The gang run for it. While the credits roll we hear them chattin. Seems the name of the alien was Minerva and the first civilization was wiped out by a solar flare.
Seems the time is coming again for another earth cleansing solar flare.
Looks like the temples hold a secret to preventing the solar flare, perhaps an alien device that can protect us.

That is the main story done, around 20 hours and 785 achievement points.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Modern Warfare 2 Notes

The campaign starts with a credits sequence. Lots of maps with what looks like data communications flying around in green lines.
There is a recap of the story from Modern Warfare 1 as it plays in voice and little bits of cut scenes as the credits roll.
Moscow Russia
A voice over tells us that once one enemy is defeated another quickly takes their place.

Afghanistan
SSDD
Joseph Allen
We start the game in a makeshift base camp in Afghanistan. we are with several soldiers who are described as locals and giving them some training. In the guise of teaching we are show how to pick up guns by holding X. How to move using the analogue sticks. How to crouch with B and shooting with the right trigger and aiming with the left trigger. We have to shoot some targets and throw a grenade with right bumper.
We are then told to make our way through the camp to an objective marker. The ambience is good with soldiers playing basketball and men fixing jeeps.
Now we have a range to run through shooting the paper targets and avoiding the civilians.
We are now given our difficulty choice.
I choose hardened.
An alarm goes off and suddenly everyone is running around. We are going to a fight somewhere.
When we get there all hell is breaking loose. There are rocket teams on the other side of a river shooting at us and we must take them out using a grenade launcher.
Once that is done a bridge layer device comes and makes us a bridge.
We are told to go to a convoy which is forming up and take our seat as gunner of a humvee.
Once there we get an on rails gunning sequence where we use a chaingun to shoot at various buildings
The convoy is ambushed by rocket launchers on the rooftops and we have to flee until the convoy is wrecked. Abandoning the vehicles the troops flee into the houses and then into a school.
I have to fight through the school room to room and ten out into the streets. Where we fight until we make it to a rally point and regroup.
We meet a man named Shepherd and are drafted into his 141 unit.

Mission 2
We are on a  mission in a high altitude mountain range. The one seen in the demo at E3.
We have to use the triggers to dig the ice axes into the ice and climb up then jump across a gap. Once on the other side we are shown the heartbeat sensor which give a radar dot for people in front of us.
Under cover of the blizzard with Soap McTavish we enter the airbase and set about planting an explosives on fuel tanks and then we have to rendevous with Soap at a hanager to deal with a satellite.Inside the Hangar Soap takes out a man with style and then investiagtes a satellite sitting inside the hangar. We are to go upstairs and get an APC module. which I do with no resistance. On coming downstairs Soap has been caught by about ten armed men and is about to be shot. I get to detonate the explosives and then shoot at the men in the confusion Soap also joins in and we get out of the hanager. We have to run around on the airfield and head away. There are men appearing from everywhere and snow mobiles bringing more.
We get to a point where we take over the snowmobiles and have a chase through the snow and a frozen lake. We jump a huge gap and get to a helicopter for extraction.
If you are caught in the stealth sections you get about six troops to shoot then you seem to be free to carry on.

Mission 3
No Russian.
We are Roach and we have been inserted into the terroist cell as a deep cover operative.
We are now taking on the role of one of the terrorists, we are in an airport and are told to follow Makarov who seems to be the main villian here.
We walk out of an elevator around six armed men. There are loads of travellers milling around and security guards. Makarev starts firing into the crowds indiscriminently killing everyone. We walk through the airport with the men killing the innocent without mercy. It is actually quite sickening to see the injustice of it all. The total power they have over the unarmed and I found myself not shooting at the civilians. The guards start to rally as you make your way into the airport. By the time you reach the backroom areas resistance is mounting and swat teams can be seen coming in the distance. Heavily armed and riot shielded swat teams attack and you push out onto the tarmac for a big fight.
Back inside the airport backrooms again an extraction vehicle arrives and just as you are about to get on Makarov shoots you down. Seems he knew you were a plant and his plan was to lay the blame for this attack on the doorsteps of the Americans. After all one of the dead terrorists found at the scene is a genuine American agent.

Mission 4
The Russians are up in arms, they are blaming America for the airport attack. The plan is to go after evidence to clear the name of America for the atrocity.
The supplier for the attack was an arms dealer named Alex the red.
I start in a car watching two men meet another group, whatever happens it's not friendly and the men start shooting each other.
We chase them down the street eventually shooting and catching one of the fleeing men.
He is taken away to be tortured for information. We are to go after the other man.
We are left with another two men chasing down the man. There is heavy resistance as we enter a shanty town. The other two men are killed leaving us to forge on alone.
We forge on through the buildings which are full of enemies and it's hard going as you can be flanked from above and behind easily. I eventually get on the tail of Favela and watch as the rest of the team grab him.

Mission 5
James Ramirez
We see tactical sattellite displays go haywire, sending up bogus contacts for a large amount of unidentified aircraft over the USA. Seems this is an attack and the system is being hacked to display bogus data to divert attention to the real attack which is in Virginia and there really are aircraft there.
We are in a humvee driving through suburban streets, overhead there are planes dropping lots of troops by parachute. There is anti-aircraft fire everywhere. We are told to get out of our jeep.
We have to avoid a heavily armoured BTV as it plows through the street machine gunning and rocketing everything in sight including civilian houses. We follow it and having nothing to take it out with avoid it and progress to a rally point with other troops in the area. Of course there is heavy fighting all the way.
We regroup on the roof of a diner and have to fight off incoming waves of enemy soldiers. We have a protable autofiring machine gun to drag around the roof. After a few waves of soldiers the roof is targeted by a UAV and we have to get off the roof. BTV's turn up and our superiors tell us to get to the UAV controller and take the control box off him. His location is pinpointed for us. We have to run the gauntlet of the BTV's and get to the control box. After killing the soldiers in control of it we take it over and use the UAV's guided missiles to take out the BTV's
We are told by radio to regroup again at the resturaunt.
There is a VIP who we are trying to protect, he is being kept in the meat locker of the first resturaunt, however the burger joint is more secure so they move him there. Our objective to protect the soldier who is carrying the wounded man, once we are at the burger joint and the vip is safe in the meat locker we have to defend the burger joint against a huge assault. Lots and lots of soliders come from all sides and there are quite a few of our own men helping out here. Getting onto the roof of the burger joint is the best strategy and after several large waves, two helicopters and lots of fun the convoy comes in to your rescue and you and your men join the convoy.

Mission 6
we are back with Soap. Makarov has declared war on America and is going to kill a thousand Americans for every russian killed in the airport massacre.
A prisoner in a gulag apparently is someone the Makarov hates immensely. I assume this is the Captain from the last game who we supposedly saw die. we have to go and rescue him.
The scene picks up straight after the last chase through the shanty town.
We are now trying to get to an extraction point, however we have strirred up a real hornets nest and every inch of the way to the LZ is hard fought.
When we eventually get there the helicopter can't land as there are far too many enemies in the area. Soap tells the pilot to abort and try and get them on the rooftops.
We then havve to run up and onto the roofs where the game takes a leaf out of Mirrors Edge and we have to basically run and jump without our gun and make it to the helicopter, however we end up falling off a roof in cut scene and have to get back onto the roofs on your own. The route is simple and impossible to go wrong with but it feels like a breathless chase as you run through buildings and jump gaps to dive over a cliff for the ladder from the bottom of the helicopter. All very breathless action movie staging.

Mission 7
Back with Ramirez in Virginia.
We have to locate and neutralise anti aircraft guns.
We start following a armoured vehicle called Honey Badger.
We can use a laser designator to target areas we would like the armoured car to shoot at.
We progress along streets and through houses clearing out the enemy soldiers.
We come to a road block and have to pass through a house and then we can see the anti aircraft guns. We use the lase designator and they are blown up for us.
We now have to go to 4677 Brookmere road?

mission 8 The only easy day was yesterday
Back to Roach
We are assualting a havily defended oil rig which the russians are using as Sam sites. There is the possibility that the person Makarov hates is on the rig.
We are going in using a submarine.
We exit the sub through what looks like the torpedo hatch with three of us riding a small torpedo like vehicle. Another team comes from another sub in a similar fashion.
We come up under the rig and make our way up fighting as we go. There are sections where you go to a door and place a breaching charge reminiscent of rainbow six Vegas. When you go through the door you have a bullet time like sequence where you have to shoot the soldiers and avoid shooting the hostages in the confusion.
You free three sets of hostages, one on each deck of the rig.
Before the last set you have a section where the enemy use smoke and thermal vision goggle to get you, so you have to do the same.

Mission 9 Gulag
We are assaulting the fortress like gulag, there are helicopters and fighters in on the attack. We start sniping from the helicopter as we fly in and it's a nice sequence with Fighters blowing things up all over the place. We land and get out into the main courtyard of the Gulag and fight our way inside and to the control room where the computers are hacked to find the prisoner. We then fight our way through the cell blocks.
Here we fight our way through the empty cells to an armoury and get a riot shield, which is handy as we are essentially bottnecked in and guard pour in and give us a pounding, since I am behind the shield it's rocky but I survive.
We can hit people with the shield but can't shoot past it.
We fight through more cells, rappell down into a basement type area, breach through a wall into a large shower and locker room area. Here we encounter more riot shield men and find that they are only vulnerable from behind or using grenades.
This is aa farily hard set of rooms to clear. Once through we drop through a hole in the floor to a sewer type area.
Here we are told that the wall next to us is the cell of our prisoner. We breach the wall and the prisoner kills the guard for us.
It is Captain Price. We have to hot foot it to the chopper, the tunnel caves in under the battleship bombardment of the area. We go back to a hole in the roof where the chopper lowers a line, we all clip onto it and zoom up the hole and escape.

Mission 10 Of their own accord
Back to America It looks like things are going badly, we start in a bunker where there are a lot of wounded men.
Sgt Foley wants us to go and slow down the enemy to help with the evacuations.
We run through the battlefield and into a large building, which probably has some kind of signifigance but I don't recognise it. We are near the captiol building and the washington monument.
We climb through the building fighting room to room.
Then get to an enemy position which was being used to bombard the evacuation site. When we clear out the enemies we start using their own weapons against them and snipe some rocket launcher men and blow up some helicopters and vehicles.
We are then to go to the rooftop for extraction. We race to the roof with minimal resistance then get into a helicopter, taking control of the mini-gun we fly around doing as much damage as possible before being shot down ourselves.
In the wreckage we try and fight off the advancing enemy but our ammo is running out.
Everything goes white.

Mission 11 Contingency
Price talks to Shepherd, Price wants to do something fairly weird to end the war today, he likens it to putting out an oil fire by making a bigger bang next to it and sucking all the oxygen away. Shepherd thinks he is nuts and tries to order him to do something else. Price cuts the connection and we are going to it his way whether the Americans like it or not.
We are in a snow bound forest, we have parachuted in and our team is a little spread out. I am with Pri ce and we start making our way to the objective. We take out a few patrols using silenced sniper rifles When  you shoot at one target Price shoots another. After some trudging through the woods you come to a village and things start to hot up as you meet some more of the squad and a fight breaks out.
We fight through the village and then come to a large base. We get a UAV to assist us and storm the base. We are to get to a submarine. It is hard fought but I get there. Price goes aboard and we are to hold off the enemy until he does what he intends to do.
We go to the roof of a guard post and hold them off.
The subs missile doors open and a nuclear bomb launches.
We see the view from the international space station as the nuke goes off. in the lower atmosphere. The space station is blown apart like a dandelion cluster in the wind.
The resultant EMP blast knocks out all the electronics.

Mission 12
Back with Ramirez in Washington, about to run out of bullets with loads of enemies approaching. The EMP knocks a helicopter out of the sky right on top of the approaching enemies. Other friendly soldiers come and free Us from the wreckage.
We have to run for cover as more and more aircraft fall from the sky as if it's raining helicopters.
Inside a building the explosions finally stop.
We walk out after finding some ammo and meet a soldier who tells us to regroup at the Whisky hotel. This seems to be army code for the Whitehouse.
We make our way through an office building with some fighting in the cubicles.
Then back out onto the streets.
We fight some soldiers in the pouring rain and the dark. Then into another building, in the basement of this one we find a door to a presidential bunker.

Mission 13 Whisky Hotel.
We come out of the tunnels onto the gardens of the Whitehouse. We meet up with other soldiers who are trying to take back the Whitehouse from enemy clutches. It seems the whitehouse is the only building with power in the area as well.
we have to storm the building against heavy resistance, into the oval office and through onto the stage where the president would make his televised speeches.
The radio chatter which we can hear now suggests that our own forces are going to level the Whitehouse rather than let it be taken by the Russians.
We decide to get to the roof and show friendly flare colours to the incoming bombers to prevent them from blowing the Whitehouse. We have two minutes to run through the place to the roof fighting all the way. When we get there we are just in time.

Mission 14 Loose Ends
The war is mostly done in the US as a greater part of the russian war machine was rendered junk by the EMP.
141's objective now is to capture or kill Makarov.
He has been traced to two locations. We are sent to one while another team goes for the other.
The house is a nice log cabin type affair in the hills. As we approach jeeps try and make a break, they are quickly rocketed from UAV's
We fight into the house and take it floor by floor breaching into rooms and killing everyone.
Makarov isn't there. On the Radio we find out that he wasn't at the other safe house either.
We are told to hack a computer and while we are doing so a counter attack takes place.
We have to Protect the DSM device as it copies all the files from Makarov's computers.
This is a hard fight with enemies coming from all directions. Placing claymores helps a lot.
After the device copies everything we have to escape to the LZ.
This is a crazy run through loads of enemies. Eventually a cut scene cuts in when you get close to the helicopter. Shepherd shoots the character you place Roach and Ghost at point blank and takes the files. You watch as you are chucked in a ditch, doused in petrol and set alight.

Mission 15 Out of the frying pan
Shepherd seems to be either in league with Makarov or the orchestrator of it all.
Price is in similar circumstances in Afghanistan. His pilot is coming to extract him, however makarov and Shepherds men are fighting it out in the area as well.
We are in a large aircraft graveyard. We have a sniper rifle and it's great fun sniping everything in sight. We progress through the area and every inch is hard fought.
We come to a large open area and our plane flies overhead, the LZ is far too hot though.
Getting across this area is hard but great fun. We progress until we meet a jeep full of our team and have a real rodeo ride of a mounted gun session. We end this by driving the jeep onto the back of the rescue plane as it is taking off.

Mission 16 Just like old times
Soap and Price are on a mission to kill someone, not sure if it's Makarov or Shepherd.
We come across a patrol and it seems to be Shepherds men.
Taking out the patrol we rappel.
down and knife two guards from above whilst on the ropes.
Inside the caverns we find many armed men and lots of equipment. We sneak our way through the caverns only taking out those who get in our way. Eventually we are compromised and the lights go out and the tunnels flood with men.
Fighting our way through we have to use a riot shield to get across some catwalks on the side of the cliffs.
Then back inside the base.
We can hear on the radio that they are preparing to extract Shepherd.
Storming a cavern we have a huge fight before getting to a breach door.
Inside the breach room we have a few men to kill and must avoid shooting the tons of explosives which are being rigged to bring the caverns down around us.
We have to hack doors to escape and then run outside. Shepherd brings missiles down on his own men in an attempt to get us.
We give chase and get to some more caverns.

Mission 17 Endgame
This is a zodiac chase scene, lots of river boats copters and men to shoot at.
You have to give Chase to Shepherd anf avoid incoming fire for long enough.
Then you watch as Shepherd boards a helicopter. You have to hold the boat steady as Price shoots down the copter. Your boat goes over the edge of a waterfall and you land in a heap at the bottom. What follows is a quicktime style series of events where you see Shepherd climb from the crash and you follow him, you are injured yourself. When you get to Shepherd he knifes you in the chest. He is about to put a bullet in your head for good measure when Price jumps him and they fight.
As Price gets beaten to death you try and pull the knife from your chest when you do you throw it at Shepherd and kill him.
Price gets up and helps you up. Nikolai comes in with a helicopter and you are both saved.

Side notes
For the most part the endless respawing of enemies seems to be gone. Yes enemies spawn as you progress through the map, but once you shoot say someone at a window, he might be replaced once, but once the second man is down no more appear. This ends the recklessness which seems so at odds with real warfare. Yes you might need to be bold to progress in a real firefight, surely you wouldn't run headlong into hordes of armed men in real life though.

Credits roll with some weird scenes of office or a museum with scenes being acted out from the game. Is this supposed to be Infinity ward making the game?

15 hours on the in game clock, though I think it was less than that, seems to count time you spend on pause.
405 Achievement points for the first playthrough.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Uncharted 2 Notes

Wants to update as soon as I put it in the drive a 20mb patch takes about 5 minutes.
I choose hard.

We start the game with Nathan sitting is a carriage of a train, though something is wrong.
Nathan is beaten up and bleeding from a hip wound. He looks around and realises that the train carriage is hanging over a cliff, as boxes fly past him and the door of the carriage opens onto a thousand foot frozen drop.
We get control as Nathan hangs from the bottom of the carriage. We have to clamber around the inside and outside of the carriage as bits fall off and it slides further and further over the edge of the cliff. rails bend, rocks fall around us and Nathan is wounded and being tested to his endurance limits. eventually I get to the top carriage and we have to run through it as the whole thing falls over the cliff. Nathan has to jump at the last second to avoid plunging down with it. He lies exhausted at the cliff edge.
A flashback shows a dejected looking Nathan drinking alone is what looks like a carribean bar.
A man that Nathan obviously knows comes up to him and they get a drink and sit down. The man is called Harry Flynn and he has a business proposition. A client wants them to obtain a mongolian oil lamp, i presume which they will steal from a museum. Nathan tells Harry that it's a dangerous job and a three man one at that. Harry introduces Chloe Fraser who will be their driver.
Nathan is suspicous of why the collector wants a worthless oil lamp. Harry shows Nathan a piece of Marco Polo's journal which tells of secrets hidden in the lamp regarding the location of the lost fleet. Apparently Marco Polo sailed 14 ships loaded with Kubla Khan's treasure and all but one was lost. Nathan is definitely interested in the location of the lost fleet, if not the job for the collector. They agree to get the lamp and the location of the lost fleet and screw over the collector.
We are back on the cliffside, with Nathan staggering along amongst the wrecked carriages.
I find a man lying dead andd take his gun, there is also a treasure here.
We have to shoot a padlock to open a door inside a carriage.
Usual analogue sticks for camera and movement.
X is jump.
L1 is aim R1 is shoot
R2 is reload.
We progress through the wreckage and someone shoots at us, they are fairly easily despatched.
We are inside a carriage trying to get out when a tanker explodes and another carriage hurtles down the mountainside and smashed into the one we are in. Nathan is knocked unconscious again.
He flashes back to after the meet with Harry and it seems that Chloe already knows Nathan of old. She tells Nathan that she is purely in business with Harry and once they are done with the job she wants to split the money with Nathan and go off with him into the sunset. Nathan seems to be smitten a little with Chloe, though it looks like she is playing the pair of them.
Nathan climbs out of the carriage and back onto land again, this time he finds a dagger lying in the snow.
Another flashback, this time to the heist, The three are in a boat going in through the sewer pipe. They split up, Nathan and Harry into the museum and Chloe to cut the power as they enter.

Chapter 2 Breaking and entering.
We get control back inside the sewers with Harry on the heist.
This seems to be a basic tutorial on the platforming. X to climb ledges and jump.
We can hang on ledges and pipes and clamber along. Jump from ledge to ledge while hanging.
There are poles to swing on.
We are show how to stealth knock out guards by pressing Square when close behind them.
There are alarmed doors which need to have their junction boxes switched. You follow the wires from the alarms to find the box.
Flynn takes out guards and assists you, the a.i. is quite impressive, scripted, but nice.
The pair of you clamber around through windows and over roofs then into a huge courtyard filled with guards. You have to stealth knockout the lot of them.
Then into an area which is densely packed with guards. Flynn gives Nathan a tranquiliser gun to use on the guards.
We shoot them in two's similar to Army of Two but much more intuitive. Flynn simply shoots his target a few seconds after you do.
More clambering, including pushing a cart over to make a jump possible.
There is a section where you use a rope to climb higher then to swing from side to side to reach a ledge.
Then you have to wait near the tower until the lights go out as per Chloe's end of the job.
Inside the tower a cut scene shows Nathan smashing the lamp to find a cloth map inside. It is blank. Nathan burns the resin inside the lamp and the blue light it glows with reveals the invisible ink on the map. It seems the ships were hit by a tsunami near java and crashed aground near a large mountain drawn on the map.
The map talks of the cursed cargo from Shambala. Nathan is excited and tells Flynn that Marco Polo must have found Shangri la. Flynn then double crosses Nathan and leaves him in the tower with no rope to get out. He shoots a display setting off the alarm and leaves Nathan to his fate.
The area fills with guards on the balcony above us, laser sights fill the air. We are told to dodge using circle to avoid being caught in the sights. We have to run through a few area jumping and getting through manholes into the sewers. Nathan comes up through a manhole and into the guns of about five men.
The next cut scene shows Nathan in Jail three months later. Sully comes and bails him out with Chloe. Nathan is of course distrustful of Chloe. Sully tells Nathan that Flynn is working for someone called Lisarovich. They have found the ships and are working to find the Chintamani stone which Nathan tells us is a huge sapphire as big as a mans head.
Apparently it also has mystical powers.
Nathan needs to get into Lisarovich's files as he has the diary of Marco Polo. With this Nathan is sure he can work out where the stone is quicker that Lisarovich.
Chloe is to provide a distraction and Nathan and Sully are going to sneak into the camp to get a look at the files.

Chapter 3 Borneo
First session 1:15
Sully and Nathan are in a jungle, Chloe tells them to go to a charge and pick up the detonator.
Some armed solider types appear and it's our first shoot out.
We come to a camp and have to fight it out with the guards, then arms the explosives already planted in the camp. Which seems a bit backwards, why plant the explosives in the enemy camp and not arm then when they were planted, so that Nate and Sully wouldn't have to fight all the men and then arm the bombs to blow up the now empty camp.
We boost Sully up to a ladder to get out of the fight box.
Then a little interlude where we are taught some melee skills. When you are grabbed during a fight you press triangle to break out of a grab.
Some men are working on a generator and we follow the pipe from the generator to the camp.
A cut scene shows us that Lisarovich is a bad man, he is a huge military type hard man who guts one of his own soliders for stealing a trinket from the dig site.
flynn and Chloe are in the camp.
Flynn is getting an earbashing for not finding anything yet.
Nathan sets of the charges in the camp we came through a little while ago and Lisarovich goes to investigate as planned. We now have to get into the camp and find some info. There are of course sentries left behind. Sully says he will cover you from above with a sniper rifle.
We get into the camp by stealth killing a few guards and shooting the rest.
Inside the camp Nathan finds Marco polo's diaries along with a lot of other stuff relating to Shambala. Seems that the stone was never on the lost fleet. It looks like Lisarovich is looking for the trail to Shambala itself where the stone may still be.
Nathan asks Chloe via radio if Lisarovich has found any bodies. Seems he has not, which is odd. If 600 people were run aground here there should be some bodies.
Nathan thinks they went to higher ground to avoid the Tsunami. Our next stop then.
Soliders begin to flood the camp however and we have to survive as more and more of them flood in in waves. Grenades are introduced here. Tapping L2 fires a grenade, holding L2 brings up an arc indicator allowing you to aim them.
We have to take out the soliders, then assist Sully as they target him instead. Finally a machine gun nest in a tower must have a grenade thrown inside to blow it up.
We then follow the way up to the mountain.
Up the path we find a temple entrance. Chloe joins us.
Inside the temple there are lots and lots of skeletons all with black teeth. We get to wander around and find a piece of resin, the same blue glowing stuff that revealed the earlier text. We light a torch with the stuff and notice a trail of blood that glows bright blue in the light. Following it to a wall we get to push it down with sully. Inside we find more bodies and it looks like they were fighting each other. Nathan finds a chest, inside is a dagger like object which Nathan tells us is a holy object, not a dagger. A map tells us  that the way to Shambala can be seen using the dagger only in a specific temple in Nepal.
We are given control back in the tomb.
ON getting out Chloe goes on ahead and I am screaming at Nathan that she is going to betray them.
She comes back into the entrance as Sully is being helped up by Nathan and brings Flynn and some goons with her. Flynn gets the map and orders Nathan to be taken to Lisarovich. As they are being led down the mountain Chloe knocks down one guard and the rest of them help her with the other. Seems she wasn't double crossing them, yet.
We are now fleeing down the hill with guards on our tail.
A little fighting hand to hand and some platforming. Then a cut scene where Nathan and Sully jump a huge distance into a river to get away from Flynn.

Nepal.
Chapter 5 Urban Warfare.
Nepal is in the middle of civil war, which is perfect cover for Lisarovich to come in and tear things apart looking for the right temple.
Nathan is driving around in a jeep and is attacked by a large humvee. We get control after he is forced off the road.
We now get the scene that was shown so often before release. I know how to play this in my sleep.
Nathan shoots the jeep blindfiring and running towards the screen. It blows up.
We now make our way through the streets of Nepal, which are beautifully rendered by the way.
Some platforming in the middle of two fight boxes to get between them.
At the end of the second fight box we have our ass saved by Chloe who rockets a truck with an emplaced gunn for us.
Nathan realises that symbols on the dagger will reveal which temple they should be at. They need to be at higher ground to find the symbol, Chloe suggests a hotel which is the tallest building in the city.
We have a blocked door to bypass and must do some platforming to get to the other side of the door.
The street fills with soldiers as we do.
I fight the soldiers and then we are prompted to shoot the lock out to let chloe in.
We then have to boost  her up and follow her through some bombed out buildings.

Chapter 6
On the other side we come upon some more of Lisarovich's forces.
Chloe has a plan involving a grenade and we split up.
This is a fairly big fight box with a temple, and lots of buildings in an l shape. We ambush the first wave and then move waves come in from other directions flanking you. Making it impossible to stay put and forcing you to move and think.
Eventually I kill them all and we now have to climb up inside the hotel.
Once in a new guard is introduced, he has armour and seems to be only vulnerable to melee.
Chloe is trapped in an elevator and we must turn the power back on to get her out.
We have to climb through the bombed buildings making routes through the devastation. There are also some soliders to break up the climbing, something the first uncharted never did.
There is a swimming pool on the roof where Nathan does a Marco Polo joke.
Once up at the highest point you spy the temple in cut scene, however Lisarovich is already there.
A helicopter Spots you and it's time for a fight.
Nathan and Chloe take a zip line from building to building.
Nice scene of Nathan clambering accross a walkway between two buildings and the copter shooting it down around him.
We get to a rooftop being hotly chased by the copter.
Gunfight on the roof with the copter in attendance.
We make our way through the buildings inside and more men arrive to fight.
We make our way through the fight to a large room, the copter blows the wall out and while men try and kill us  the copter shoots rockets at the room, the whole builidng starts to come down around us and the only option is to jump through to the next buliding as the place comes down around you.
In the next builidng we go to the roof and jump to the next building.
there is more shooting and we jump from roof too roof. The helicopter turns up for a boss battle.
We have to shoot it with grenades as it circles the roof trying to shoot us. soldiers turn up to make it more fun.
Nathan and Chloe are split up when a zip line breaks sending Nathan away from her.
Nathan comes around a corner and bumps into Elena from the first game.
She is after Lisarovich and reveals he is a war criminal.
Chloe arrives and there is a girl spat, which is quite humerous.
Nathan wants to save Elena and Chloe is jealous.
A helicopter turns up and its moot as they have to run for it.

Chapter 7
They're coming with us.
We run from the helicopter into a fight box with an emplaced gun at one end.
There is some nice clambering to flank it.
Through the buildings to the other side, we see a tank below us terrorising resistance fighters.
We come into a temple courtyard.
Elena and Jeff are left in the temple while Nathan and Chloe examine a huge statue.
Drakes journal is introduced. Here we see a picture of the statue with it's four arms in different positions from they are now.
We have to clamber around the room until we get the arms arranged as the journal picture.
Once done a keyhole opens up and we put the dagger in and it opens.
The water drains from the floor of the temple and we get a new door.
Inside is a labryinth of tunnels and it soon opens out into a temple.
The floor collapses here and we end up in a spike trap, shooting the cogs off the wheels of the trap stops it killing you.

Chapter 9 Path of light.
Nathan and Chloe come to a huge room with a gold statue in the middle, the statue extends it's arms as the pair enter.
It seems we have to move mirrors so that an intricate pattern of light hits faces which then open their mouths for the blade key and bring the blades of the knife down.
When all three have been done by plaforming your heart out the blade drops onto the statue on the floor and kills it and it's mouth opens a door.
Inside in cut scene Nathan sticks the blade into a key slot and the circular floor moves to form a relief map of mountains and the beam of light gives the location of Shambala which Nathan marks on a map.
The fun ends as noises from above herald the arrival of the soldiers.

Chapter 10 Only one way out.
We make our way back through the way we came exploring the puzzle of the tomb only this time it's filled with enemies, including snipers.
When we get the Elena and Jeff's location they are missing. Outside in the courtyard of the temple we find more soldiers and a rather fine gungfight in the rain.
Once done we find Jeff wounded and Elena tending him.
Chloe wants us to ditch Jeff but Nathan won't.

Chapter 11 Keep moving.
We start with Nathan holding Jeff up, we move slowly and Elena and Chloe are doing the shooting. We bascially as the title suggests have to keep moving following the fairly obvious corridor as gunfights and rockets explode around us. We get inside a building and a cut scene starts. There is nowhere left to go for us carrying Jeff. Chloe is going nuts and Flynn and the gang burst in. Chloe points the gun at Nathan and pretends to be on  Flynn's side. Even Flynn is beginning to doubt her. Lisarovich comes in and shoots Jeff. He finds the map on Nathan's person and they no longer need him. Flynn is left to kill them. Elena slugs Flynn and in the scuffle they both run away.
We now have to run and jump through the area avoiding being shot.
Eventually the duo get away, Nathan tells Elena that he is going after Chloe and she is of course jealous and incredulous of Nathan's stupidity.
Of course she decides to join him on his foolhardy jaunt.

Chapter 12 Train to catch.
We have to fight some soldiers then clamber around some puzzles in the streets.
We end up on a signpost with soldiers coming from all sides. We have to do the entire fight on the post and clamber from side to side to avoid being shot.
Then we get to the trainyard.
Nathan is going to sneak onto the train and save Chloe and Elena is going to drive in and get them out of the yard once done.
Nathan goes into a train workshop and finds a train carriage, he undoes the break and it careers out into the yard. Which is no good as he is in it and it attracts all sorts of bad attention.
We have to survive in the carriage with enemies on all sides.
Until Elena drives in and we get into the jeep with her.
In cut scene the jeep drives after the train and Nathan jumps onto the train.

Chapter 13 Locomotion.
We get to clamber all over the moving train, inside outside on top. Dodging signals and fighting soldiers.
Then the helicopter arrives and tries to kill us.
We shoot it with a rocket and have to turn a wheel to open a door to trigger a rather dramatic cut scene of carnage.

Chapter 14 Tunnel vision.
We go through the tunnel fighting along the train, there are chaingun men to deal with, you shoot the straps on the logs to knock him off the train.
The helicopter needs to be shot down, and while we do so it's rockets need to be shot out of the air, we use an emplaced gun to do this.
We have to fight a boss type character.
Simply shooting and punching him, but he is much more resilient than the average characters.
There is a cut scene where Chloe tells Nathan to go and she does not want saving. flynn comes in and shoots Nathan in the groin, the injury we saw at the start of the game.
Nathan shoots some gas cannisters that are piled together and causes the crash we saw the aftermath of at the start of the game.

Chapter 15
We have to climb the train again, though this sequence is shortened from the first time.
Then we cut back to the scene where Nathan picks up the dagger in the snow. Lisarovich's men come looking for the dagger and there is a fight box here among the train wreck with waves of soldiers and some armoured men for good measure.
I watch a cut scene of Nathan collapsing in the snow in the middle of nowhere and being rescued by a sherpa type figure.

Chapter 16 where am I.
end of second days play 5:30

Chapter 16 Where am I.
Nathan wakes up in a village high in the mountains. A sherpa tries to help and assist him and gives him a drink, it seems he has been unconscious for a few days.
The sherpa takes him out of the house he is in and we have to follow him through the village.
The village is beautiful and children scurry around the stranger and cows moo at Nathan.
The graphics here really are beautiful.
The sherpa takes us to a hut and inside we find Elena. She is glad to see us, there is a bit of catching up and then Elena introduces Charles who has been living in the village since his own expedition to find Shambala failed. He tells Nathan who is fed up of playing the hero since Chloe rejected his offer of rescue that Lisarovich must never be allowed to get the Chintamani stone. He tells us that slivers of the stone have granted enormous power in the past to figures from history like Ghengis khan. If a monster like Lisarovich gains the entire stone then who know what devastation he will wreak on the world.
Nathan is still adamant that he isn't going on. Charles tells the Sherpa Tensi, to take Nathan to see what became of Charles' expedition. Charles thinks this will change Nathan's mind. Nathan reluctantly agrees.

Chapter 17 Mountaineering.
This is a trip though snow and ice filled mountain caves.
Jumping from icy ledge to icy ledge. Swinging on ropes and clambering around the walls.
Wolves can be seen tracking us from on high.
Eventually we come to the wolves slaughtered as if by some animal.
In the shadows as we watch nathan clamber in the distance an ape like figure moves. A yeti?
We come to a large area where we have to puzzle our way.
I find a gun on a body of one of charles's dead men.
The yeti attacks, an ape with goat like horns.
There is some shooting and some punching and close combat shooting as it grabs you.
Eventually when you have it's invisible health down enough Tensi stabs it from behind and it runs off. You then progress up into a temple like area.

Chapter 18 Heart of Ice
Inside the temple the game really does turn into tomb raider instead of tomb raider lite.
Only it's better than tomb raider as it doesn't leave you hanging for hours working out the puzzles and they are slightly easier and much more fun.
Tensi goes to one side of the temple as there are pressure plates which suggest this is a two man job to get to the secret of the temple. The temple is old but it suggests that it is a test for the body and mind. There are levers to pull and huge cylinders with handhold and blockages to negotiate.
Then we are into the workings of the giant statues, cogs and pulleys like the innards of a clock. Tensi goes to his side and follows you opening the way for you as you open the way for him.
Finally you both stand on pressure plates and huge statues lift from the water and make a bridge to the statue.
Inside the inner sanctum you find Charles Schafers men, all dead, shot by Schafer himself.
nathan find out that they were SS. The yeti makes it's presence known and it's time to go.
Only this time there are two yeti.
We  have to pull a lever, which makes an elevator come down from the ceiling.
We have to survive the yeti until it gets there and then get onto it.
As we do the yeti jump on and we have some quicktime and shooting at the yeti as it hangs on Nathan's foot to get away.
The lift takes the duo to the top of the mountain and we can see in the distance that the village is burning.
We cut to the village and Elena is herding children to Safety, Charles is nowhere to be found.

Chapter 19 Siege.
We now have a huge run through the village which is under attack from Lisarovich's men. The villagers are fighting back with crossbows and whatever guns they can take from the dead soldiers. Though the villagers are being massacred.
This feels like a corridor shooter rather than a fight box shooter, or just one huge sandbox fight box. Whatever it is it's great fun.
We get to Tensi's house as it seems he is looking for his wife of children, i'm not sure.
A tank appears and blows the hell out of the house as the duo dive for cover.

Chapter 20
Looks like a boss battle with the tank now.
The boss battle is a long affair, the tank essentially follows a script set by the position of Tensi. You follow Tensi to set points and the tank will follow you both. You have to shoot soliders as you go and jump around the roofs of the houses and run through alley. The tank follows and blows things up and uses it's machine gun. Occasionally you come accross rocket launching soldiers who when you kill them give up their rocket launcher with one rocket left. each time you hit the tank with a shell you get a checkpoint. Around four or five rockets and the tank blows up.
Tensi finds his daughter
Elena sees that Charles is being taken by the soldiers.

Chapter 21
Nathan and Elena give chase in a truck. We have a fun section where we jump from truck to truck fighting soldiers as we go. Occasionally the truck you are on goes on fire if it's hit enough and you have to jump to another.
You come to a truck with a grenade launcher and have a traditional if fun emplaced gun on a vehicle section. This does not go on for long and your truck is run off the road.
The bad guys think you have died, silly them, don't they know you are the heroes.

Chapter 22
Nathan and Elena track the convoy to a monastery and see Lisarovich being given the dagger and charles being led into the monastery.
We are going in on foot.
We climb up the cliffside and can either stealth or go in all guns blazing to the troops here.
Then up to the main monastery courtyard, here we have a large fight box with two stages. A river runs through it and once we have cleared one side we have to use movable cover to get close enough to deal with the emplaced gun on the other side.
Here there is a clambering flank position for the gun and a secret to boot.
Once you get to the gun more men fill the first side of the fight box and you get to give them a pasting with the emplaced gun.
Now we have more clambering puzzles in the crumbling monastery.
A locked door must be opened from the other side so more clambering.
We climb up around the frame of the broken down building and up into the next. It's filled with soldiers and we have a shoot out. as we near the bottom a rocket launcher solider becomes trigger happy and  the building starts coming down around us.
We now get a sniper rifle and fight back against the soliders.
An army of soldiers come at us accross the bridge and it's a hard fight. We then have to go up the inside of a tower as snipers in three towers across the way make it hard.
At the top is a sniper rifle.
A rocket guy is shooting at you and the whole tower is in danger of collapsing.
When you shoot him the tower he is in collapses.
You now have to take out the tower snipers as a hoard of soldiers comes across the bridge at you.
Then you cross the bridge and have a thrilling clambering sequence as it collapses.
Now a fight box with lots of soldiers.
We have to climb a little to get higher up the fight box and are now above where we last fought.
We get into a rectangular room with a balcony and it's a tought fight with soldiers from all sides.
At the top of the stairs we find a room in which Schafer lies injured.
He tells us that Lisarovich must be stopped. Lisarovich is heading for the tower, where apparently the dagger can be used to show the way to shambala.
We have some climbing to get to the rooftops and then somme fighting and climbing combined on the roofs.
We come to some soldiers shooting at something unseen. I bet it's a yeti.
Yes it's the two yeti. They are climbing fast and ignoring the men unless they get in their way.
We have to deal with many men in this area and then move onto the next.
Again a fight box with lots of soldiers and two chaingun toting men.
We climb a bit more around the crumbling monastery and find our way into the tower.
A cut scene shows Chloe Flynn and Lisarovich in the temple. They don't know what to do with the dagger and Lezarovich is getting sick of Flynn's excuses.
Chloe is left alone in the room with the dagger and Nathan drops in. She is relucant to give him the dagger but she does.
In this room we have a puzzle to solve. There are four stones to be placed on four pedastals. They are in our journal. Air fire water and earth are all associated with the stones and the animals on the walls. When you place each stone in the right place then another level of the puzzle opens up.
Now you have to rotate symbol wheels to the right symbol beside each pair.
The colours are as you would expect, apart form water which is clear instead of blue.
This had me for a while but once you see it it's as plain as day.
The dagger into the centre pedastal makes a ladder and a door open. The view outside clearly shows a large symbol on the ground the same as the pedastal in the room. It is obvious that Nathan has to now insert the dagger into it.
We zip line down to it and find some soldiers to kill in the large fight box.
Once done we get the dagger into the symbol turn a wheel that rises from the ground and a waterfall opens up in the mountains and fills up two channels that we have been seeing earlier.
I remember looking at the ornamental tree that was at the top of a flight of stairs into nowhere. Now we find the water rushing into it and opening up a door under the tree.
We have a zip wire and a fight box between us and the tree door. There are lots of dead soldiers littering the place.

Chapter 24 The road to Shambala.
Inside the temple are simple stairs down to some doors.
We come to a room with a blue globe in a shaft of light. There are daggers all around the walls. Turning a few at random triggers the globe to move, which seems to do the trick.
I don't know wether i got it at random or it wasn't meant to be that hard.
In cut scene Lezarovich arrives with chloe and Flynn and takes everyone hostage.
Nathan is forced to use the blue resin to reveal where in the wall to stick the dagger to open the way further.
A huge cavern opens up with a way across, as they watch the way moves to block the path.
Flynn and Nathan are sent to sort things. We have to clamber for a bit then get into a room with more sliding symbol puzzles.
The answers are as always in the journal of Marco Polo.
When the puzzle is solved the Yeti's turn up.
We have to survive for a set time period before Lezarovich arrives and saves the day with his sawn off shotgun.
The yeti are actually blue zombie like giants, Lezarovich calls them Scarecrows or guardians.
We progress into Shambala itself and it is beautiful, a hidden paradise of green pastures and temples.
Lezarovich is about to shoot Nathan when the natives turn up and are far from friendly.
Nathan and the gang escape in the confusion as tons of natives hurl poison darts at everyone.

Chapter 25 Broken paradise.
We are running as fast as we can while the world explodes around us. The soldiers are on our heels and the natives are on theirs.
When we run far enough a soldier shoots a rocket and the builing we are standing on slides down the hill. When we get to the bottom all the soldiers are dead and the gang are happily alright.
Chloe wants to escape and Nathan and Elena want to go and destroy the stone, an argument ensues and eventually Chloe joins them.
The inevitable fight with the natives occurs and they are hard to kill.
Lots of running and gunning needed to avoid their crossbows and anger them into coming for you by hand. Where you can run backwards peppering them.
Once you get one down you can pick up his crossbow which is an effective weapon. Another zombie appears with blue flame grenades just to add interest. Killing him you then have to clamber out of the area.
Blue resin seems to ooze from plants, shooting it clears vines from the way to proceed.
We come into a large temple area. We are allowed to explore for a while then the soldiers arrive. While we are fighting them the natives arrive.
One of the dead chaingunners weapons makes quick work of the natives.
We have to use Nathan as a broken counterweight to open a door.
We are then into the storm drains of the city. Fighting with the soliders.
Into a courtyard fightbox with more soldiers then pushing a cart up to a wall to get higher.
We now come to the temple where the stone is supposed to be.
Inside we have a large fight box with soldiers and natives in waves.
We climb up through the temple unhindered by anything other than stairs.
At the top we find a tree like statue with a huge stone in it's base. Nathan examines it and finds that it is resin and not a sapphire. He looks at the carvings and realises that the sap from the huge tree which is growing outside is the actual source of power here. Not a stone. the sap dries into resin and hence becomes stonelike.
Lezarovich has already been here and realised this. Flynn appears with a bullet hole in his chest, his reward for being such a faithful servant to Lezarovich.
Flynn uses his last grenade to try and take the gang with him and succeeds in wounding elena.
The gang go after lezarovich.
We get a long corridor type fight with soldiers.
Nathan tells Chloe to leave with Elena as he goes after Lezarovich.
She argues but Nathan ignores her and leaves the pair of them.

Chapter 26 Tree of life.
We go down a pathway and see Lezarovich and a few of his men at a large glowing pool at the bottom of the tree. Lezarovich drinks some of the sap and after a few seconds of gurning his scars heal themselves.
Nathan shoots the pool and it explodes killing all the  soliders, however, Lezarovich gets up and his wounds heal.
He comes after Nathan and we are into the final boss battle.
Lezarovich is invulnerable too bullets, however, explosions are another matter. There are loads of sap clusters and we must basically run around avoiding Lezarovich's shotgun shells, grenades and grabs. All the while watching for him to get close to a cluster and then shooting it blowing it up in his face.
Doing this around ten times eventually starts a cut scene.
With Lezarovich downed Nathan is holding him at gunpoint, Lezarovich calls Nathan a monster, and asks him to count how many men he has killed today. He tells Nathan to kill him. Nathan hesitates and Lezarovich laughs. Nathan stands back as the natives arrive en masse and rip him apart.
Nathan now has to run along a massive bridge which we saw in the distance earlier, the whole bridge is falling apart however, this is a fairly spectacular scene as the bridge really does fall  apart as Nathan runs along it. at the end we have a scene where the natives are about to attack Chloe, the bridge falling apart saves them but only just.

Nathan and Chloe take the wounded Elena out of shambala. Back in the monastery she passes out they fear for her life. Back at the village Nathan prays for Elena, Chloe sees and decides to bow out of the running for Nathan's affection. She leaves and Sully chases after her. Elena is getting better and they walk off into the sunset jibbering nice couple like dialogue to each other. The credits roll.

12 hours 41 minutes
42% of trophies on first playthrough on hard.