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.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Notes

Options for brightness etc, I choose normal difficulty as I am unsure of a game like this.

Pan down through Gotham in the dark and rain, Batmobile speeds through the night.
Joker is handcuffed in the passenger seat as Batman takes him to Arkham Asylum, which is a huge sprawling building on it's own island.

We meet warden Sharp as the security guards strap the Joker to a trolley and wheel him into the asylum.
The joker quips away as usual trying to annoy everyone. I get control of batman and we can walk and look around only. The rest of the buttons don't do anything yet just the analogue sticks for the usual movement and camera.
The Joker harasses a doctor and then we watch as another baddie called croc is transferred in front of us, Croc threatens Batman.
In a lift Joker suggests that it was weird that Batman caught him so easily and co incidentally loads of the Jokers gang have also been caught recently.
The lights go out and when they come back on Batman is almost throttling the joker, ensuring he does nothing tricky. The elevator ride comes to an end.
Cut scene shows commissioner Gordon chatting with Batman. The joker is taken out of Batmans custody. and almost instantly beat up his guards and gets loose. The joker has Help and it seems Harley Quinn is in the control room and opens the security gates to let the joker deeper into the Asylum.
Batman gives chase and it's into the game proper.
We have a few inmates to deal with first as the Joker lets them out of their holding cells.
X is strike and Y is counter.
Simple button presses which make Batman do a variety of combat specific moves.
The joker is now in control of the comms system of the Asylum and talks to Batman through television screens handily placed where they need to be.
A makes Batman Run and pressing it again while running makes him go into a diving roll.
B does a heavier attack.
Right trigger crouches
Left trigger makes batman go into aiming mode with a batarang.
Right trigger fires them while you hold the left trigger.
In the next area I find little walking false teeth, you are prompted to shoot them with the batarangs.
We are told to run down a corridor, at the end we fight two enemies. A guard is signalling us at the end of the corridor.
He tells us that a prisoner has one of the guards hostage up ahead.
Batman speaks to a woman called Oracle who seems to be fullfilling a handler type role.

Zsasz has one of the guards strapped in an electric chair.
We can't go directly into the room and are funnelled into flanking him from above.
A guard again asks for our help when we get up to the balcony.
We are prompted to go into detective mode, which makes everything look blue and all the guards look like they are being x-rayed.
Gargoyles up above us glow yellow and seem to be the key.
We get above Zsasz by jumping from gargoyle to gargoyle. Pressing Right bumper uses Batman's grapple.
When we have Zsasz in our sights we press X to do a gliding kick. Then right trigger and Y to knock him out.
Harley quinn appears on the monitors and she has Warden Sharp hostage in his office.
We are stuck in this room and need an exit. Detective mode provides a red glow around a grill which lets into the air vents once we have opened it by pressing A repeatedly.
We come to a viewing area where we can see guards being gassed.
We climb above them using a grill and events and find two guards to save.
There is also a baddie that we save and then knock out.
Batman has to hit the control panel for fans with a batarang to turn on fans which extract the gas and allow us to go down to the floor.
Another corridor and two enemies.
We come to a door with a joker face painted on it in green. When we go in a cut scene shows Batman coming face to face with the joker, however the Joker releases a huge mutant man to attack Batman.
I defeat the monster using batarangs and punches.
Joker vanishes further into the asylum.
As you knock out people or find new things, even break the little teeth bats fly from them. These fill your XP meter and allow upgrades.
I seem to have earned enough to get an upgrade, there are many and most are locked. I choose to learn inverted takedown which allos batman to drop from a gargoyle grab an enemy and then go back up and hang them from the gargoyle.
A guard tries to open the door the joker left through for us but can't. Joker appears on the monitor and gloats about kidnapping Commisioner Gordon.
We have to take an alternative route back to the room where Gordon was kidnapped. We are prompted to use Detective mode and find a whisky bottle, which it seems Gordon's kidnapper was swigging. We can use the detective mode to follow his breath trail analysing the alcohol in the air.
This takes us to an elevator. In cut scene Harley blows the elevator weights and rides up on them as the elevator itself crashes down into the shaft nearly killing Batman.
Seems we can't follow them this way.
We have to find our way up through the shaft in a tomb raider style. Batman can grasp ledges and shimmy along. He also uses his grapple and jumps from ledge to ledge.
At the top of the elevator we get more goons to fight. Then through a vent.
Now we get armed goons, these need to be taken down more stealthily as Batman can't take many direct hits from bullets.
The first time we meet the armed men here we are given gargoyles to climb up on and get behind them.
Crouching moves silently and you can perform a silent takedown with Y.
Three guards are easily despatched and we move on to a single guard up the stairs.
Joker chats again on the tv screen.
We move through a vent and come into the largest room yet. There are guards patrolling and we can use all the skills we have learnt so far to take them out as stealthily or as messily as I want. Best is to use the gargoyles and strike from the shadows or creep up behind and do silent takedowns.
More enemies come in another  wave and then we find the body of the whisky breathed guard we have been looking for. It seems he is a dead end and the joker knew this as is handily painted on his chest.
I get another upgrade and choose armour upgrade v1.
The riddler comes over the comms and asks us to solve a riddle, about a sharply observed portrait and we can see a portrait of warden sharp, scanning it solves the riddle.
Now we have found Bowles we have a new objective which is to escape to the islands surface.
Through some rooms and some vents without incident and then out into the grounds

Mission 2
We find some guards out in the grounds and Joker tells his men to destroy the batmobile.
There is a tunnel in the grounds that the guards think is locked down, it will probably be a source of trouble soon.
We are told by an alarm from the batmobile that it is under attack. We are given a map by oracle that shows the location of the batmobile. We have to go through a tunnel which is guarded by armed thugs. Simple matter for Batman to climb behind them and silent takedown the two guards.
Now out into a yard where the batmobile is parked, about 6 thugs are hitting it with Iron bars. It's fairly simple to take them down.
We are prompted to take explosive gel from the batmobile.
We are prompted that there may be a clue as to where Harely took Gordon in the area.
We find Gordon's pipe and can follow a trail of pipe tobacco using detective mode.
The trail leads to security doors which are locked, we must find another way
It's not hard though as detective mode prompts us to use explosive gel on a thin wall we can see through in detective mode.
Down the tunnel we come to a new area, a guard is hiding in a guard post and tells us that the jokers men are killing anyone who tries to escape the asylum.
There are seven of them at a doorway which isn't a hard fight really.
Inside we find Harley Quinn, she is behind one of the so far impenetrable electric force doors. She has Gordon and after a chat with the Joker on screen we learn that we are making the Joker uncomfortable as we are moving faster than he would like. Harley vanishes with Gordon and we have to find another way past the force door.
The roof seems a fairly obvious way in and yes up on the roof is a weakpoint we can blow open with our gel and get in.
Inside we have a maze of vents to negotiate then a large room with lots of guards to take out, all of them armed, so stealth is important here.
There are floor grates here that you can get in and run around under the floor undetected.
Once we taken out the enemies we free doctors who have been held by the jokers men. They tells us that more are held prisoner elsewhere in the facility. We have to rescue them too.
I get armour upgrade v2.
Eventually I find my way to the x-ray room and three thugs are guarding the door.
We find five men holding one of the doctors, two explosives on walls behind the guards are enough to free her without incident.
Take another route in the building and we come to an area where a guard is trapped by gas. One of the doctors is in the gas room and things look bleak for him.
We have to take a route through the vents above the gas and then find three controls to hit wwith batarangs to turn on the fans.
One is hidden by a breakable wall. The only way to break it is to knock a thug from his precarious perch on top of it and he breaks it for you.
This frees the doctor from his prison in the safe room with the lack of air.
In the last room of the medical area a doctor is held in a chair bed by restraints, it's a trap and as we go in 8 thugs come down from above, fight them all and  you get to free the doctor.
Now we have completed all the doctor missions we are told to go back to the sanatorium which was the big room where we had our stealth kill section. Here one of the doctors wants to go to Arkham mansion to get her papers back. One of the guards goes with her. The other doctors are told to barricade themselves in one of the rooms. An elevator opens which was previously locked andd joker's men come out, again we take them down stealthily in this room.
Down in the lift to the next level.

Mission 3
The scarecrow is down here, he uses gas which makes people hallucinate their worst fears.
We blow a hole in a wall to find an alternate route past the locked force door.
Through some vents and we find Gordon's body, although I think this is Batman seeing his worst fears. Oracle is unobtainable as well.
Things take a turn for the worse inside Batman's head in the morgue as voices whisper about his failings, the door out of the morgue leads back into it. Three body bags are on the slabs and they are wriggling. Opening each one shows Batman's mother and father who blame him for their deaths. The last body bag belongs to the scarecrow who knocks Batman down.
When we get back up the whole room is changing, looking like it's being eroded away by decay and opening up onto another place high in the clouds.
Progressin a few metres into this new world reveals the scarecrow as a giant. We have to sneak past him as being seen by the scarecrow ends the mission.
This is fairly easy and an interesting new diversion and added variety to the game.
We have to clamber around, use bombs and then get to the bat signal which we use to shine on Scarecrow and defeat him. This breaks the spell of the gas and we are back in the morgue.
I get armour upgrade V3.
The way that was blocked before is now opened by a group of three of the jokers men. We aare now getting knife wielding variants of the thugs.
Joker tells us that Harley and Gordon are up ahead, they have been told to kill Gordon is they even suspect Batman is in the room with them. Seems we have to be very stealthy here.
I take down the four patrolling guards and getting above the room where Harley is holding Quinn allows us to take her down in a cut scene by triggering it with a press of Y.
Gordon and Batman investigate a room where Bane is being held and experimented on by one of the Arkham doctors. Joker releases Bane and we are into a bossfight with him.

Bane runs at you and punches, he also pulls chunks of rock from the walls and hurls them at you. He is vulnerable to Batarangs and the odd strike if you are careful. The best approach seems to be to keep distance from him and hit him with batarangs. Eventually he goes into a blind rage and becomes disorientated, when this happens attacking him sends batman into an animation where he jumps on Bane's back and pulls at his venom injector. Do this three times and Bane is downed. In between each round a load of the jokers thugs are thrown into the arena.
After the fight batman climbs from a manhole and talks to Gordon. Batman tells him to get off the island on a nearby boat. Bane comes back and in cut scene Batman uses the batmobile to run him over and dip him in the sea. Gordon goes away in a police boat to calm the panic in Gotham due to the Jokers bomb threat.
Batman talks to Oracle and asks her to look into Doctor Young and the venom that seemed to be making Bane even more powerful. Batman tells Oracle that there is a Bat cave on Arkham Island.
The Batcave is in Arkham North, I head there, there are some new Joker thugs running around.
Here I find the entrance to a cave which we follow to a famous suicide point. Batman jumps from it in cut scene and makes his way in style to the batcave.
Inside the batcave a cut scene shows that Dr Young has made an improved version of the venom formula that powers Bane. It is called Titan and is a much better super solider drug. If Joker gets his hands on it his army of thugs will become as strong as Bane. Batman  gets some new equipment in the Batcave. The batcalw can be used to grab and pull objects from a distance, including enemies.
Simple puzzle here to inroduce the Batclaw, we have to pull boxes which block our jump across a gap.
I can now by another upgrade and choose Armour upgrade V4.
Now we are going through the sewers on the trail of Dr Young.
Oracle finds that Dr Young was being paid by the Joker, However she blocked the payments recently. Looks like she tried to back out of her deal with the Joker.
We have to climb up a sewer manually as the walls are too crumbly to use the batarang.
Out on the surface there are snipers in towers that we have to take out using stealth.
We now have to find a way into Arkham Manor past the pesky electrical main entrance.
There is a grate we can open above the door with the new Batclaw.
Inside we deal with some thugs and use high grates to progress through another locked door.
I upgrade Batarang Power.
Lots of thugs here to have fun with.
In the next room there are a bunch of armed thugs and we need to be very stealthy to take the thugs down.
We find Cash and free him.
Now we go into the library a little more and find a glass floored room. The joker has two men hostage underneath the glass floor and we are tasked by him to get in and save them. The main entrance is a force field door. The bomb gel won't blow the floor, however there is a chandelier type thing high above the glass floor.
Finding my way through vents leads to the top of the chandelier and a quick batarang brings it down through the glass floor.
I free the hostages who confirm that the Joker has captured Dr Young.
I spent a long time wandering around here looking for what to do next. Eventually I found I had missed a door, I was spending too much time looking for clever hidden puzzles that the huge oak door I missed. Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees.
You progress through some cells to another thug encounter.
In this morgue area vents lead into the office.
A cut scene shows that Dr Young got into the office and took the notes.
I upgrade twin batarang.
We are tasked with finding evidence in the room just as we did with the tobacco and whisky. We find Dr Youngs fingerprints on the safe and now have to follow their trail. A convenient shortcut opens in the form of a previously locked door.
When I follow the trail all the way back to the room where I rescued the two men from the jokers trap with the chandelier we find a book with her fingerprints on it.
Batman finds and destroys the formula in cut scene. The joker obviously watching tells him that he will task Zsaz with getting the formula from Young herself.
As we leave the library room there is a puff of vapour from the vent and in the next room the location finder tells us we are in wayne manor. Which is wrong, looks like the Joker or someone is using the scarecrows gas.
We walk down the corridor and it slowly changes subtly into the alley where Batman's parents were killed.
Another scarecrow sequence arrives and I hope there isn't another as it was starting to outstay it's welcome. The only new addition is some skeleton skinned (pardon the pun) thugs to deal with.
After the nightmare you end up in a hig belltower, which is weird as you couldn't get up there earlier. Still cutting the bell rope make an exit and mess of the hall below.
This breaks a security force door which was preventing you going this way earlier and opens up a new area.
A new thug with a stun baton appears, we need to jump over him using our dodge roll and get behind him to prevent being hurt by the baton as we hit them.
In the next room we see Zsaz dragging Dr Young away.
Charge after Zsaz and he kills the Doctor, which ends the mission, strange I thought we wanted her formula out of the Jokers hands. Anyway we have to find another way of stopping Zsaz other than just running up and hitting him.
The game basically tells you what to do, which is good because it would have taken ages to work it out by yourself. You have to go to the corner of the room, crouch and go into corner cover. This allows you to hurl a batarang without Zasz seeing you. You have  to wait until he is visible behind Dr Young and then zap him. This starts a cut scene where Dr Young tells you that the Joker has not got her new formula but has loads of the other venom formula that made Bane. He has a plant with venom in the greenhouse. Dr Young opens the wardens safe and find it booby trapped. She is killed in thhe explosion. Harley leaves with warden Sharp and we are left to fight a bunch of thugs.
Seems the only way to get past the force field security doors is to use a special key which was blown in the safe. The only other way is to get Warden Sharp to open them as they are keyed to his DNA.
We now have to go after Warden Sharp and Harley.
We go back out onto the island from the mansion and cross it again. There are hordes of guards snipers and electric rod wielding thugs to deal with along the way.
I upgrade to triple batarang.
Inside the cell block we find cells and are continuing to follow the wardens trail.
There are cells with insane people inside acting like animals. We follow the trail to the electric chair room and find poison Ivy in her cell.
She pleads to be let out as she can hear plants in trouble. Seems that we have to ignore her and progress. I find Cash in a cell and Warden Sharp tied to a chair. when we go up to Sharp a cut scene shows Ivy being released by Harley and Joker opening the cells with all the loons inside.
Sharp gives us his  keycard and batman uses it to upgrade his lockpick. We now have a device for hacking the force field doors.
Outside again with the warden safely locked up for his own safety the man in the cell is now Sharp and not cash. A shapeshifter?
We go back out of the cells here as there seems to be nothing to do with the shapeshifter yet.
Ivy is gone. In the next room we have a fight with loads of thugs with Harley swining around above us. We fight the thugs and Harley escapes yet again. A trip through some offices leads us back the way we came to the room we fought Harely in.
Progressing we find two guards strung up above pools of water, electricity is flowing here and the men will die if they are taken down the usual way with a batarang. We have to hack power boxes and save the men in a time limit of Harley's setting. This isn't that hard to do and I manage it first time.
Now we are trying to get doors open, the guards we save are working on a computer and we can explore. There is gas in the room where we just escaped from and the familiar fans are there to turn on, the problem is getting to them.
That is twice now I have had to look up a help guide. The puzzle are just a little too obtuse, as evidenced by a simple google search turning up huge amount of people being stuck at the same place.
Turns out the area I thought was the same one I had been in before was actually a new area. Not stuck at all. Anyway. We run through the cell block and Harley is goading us using the Tannoy. A vent in the ceiling takes us to a hack box and we turn off a force field letting us progress.
Through this door we come to a boss fight of sorts. Lots of thugs enter and arena in waves and we have to knock them out. The floor become electrified at times also. When this is done a cut scene starts. Harley is left for dead by the Joker and she comes at Batman who easily subdues her. He scans her fingerprints and locks her in a cell.
Oracle tells batman that heat is building up in the botanical gardens.
We are to use detective mode to pick up Harely's trail in the gardens.
I get remote control batarang.
Some puzzling and box hacking to get a riddler trophy and arkham secret tape here.
We are back out into the grounds and tasked with going to the botanical gardens.
The gardens are nice, lots of plants, looks like a poison ivy boss battle soon.
armed guards, hacking doors.
Now we have a large room with lots of armed guards.
I upgrade to sonic batarang.
we fight a bunch of thugs and save a worker called carl todd.
Here a hack panel is booby trapped with joker bombs and we have a time limit to hack it three times.
Back through to the  big room again and a door is unlocked. Here we come face to face with the Joker, he seemed for the first time to be peeved off that we are pestering him too much.
He blows a bomb and brings down the door arch blocking our way forward. We must  seek an alternate way through a vent and some walls to knock down.
We have to clamber around in dusty chambers where the batarang won't grab and then we come to an ordelry called Jordan fraser who tells us that there are others locked up.
We now have a new objective to save them.
In the aviary which is just through the door we have to save the men locked in birdcages without alerting the guards.
The key here is to take out the man in the chamber with the control button to drop the hostages. Then the remaining guards are easily despatched.
The hostages tell us of a secret door in the room. Harley finngerprints lead right to it and a another booby trapped hack box lets us in.
We meet joker and two henchmen loading up some crates. Joker shoots the henchmen with his titan formula and they mutate into bane clones and attack. Similar to the bane fight except they use dead bodies to hurl at you. You can also get on their back and steer them to hit the other enemy.
The titan production facility is destroyed in the fight. However, the joker has enough of it to cause trouble. Batman thinks that Ivy will be allied to their cause as her plants are being harmed. Our next task is to track her down.
Batman needs something to get accross the ravine ahead. He brings in the batjet in cutscene and we get an upgrade called the line launcher.
This takes us to a room where we find Ivy. In cutscene Batman threatens her and she tells him that only one plant on the island can counter the titan formula. It grows in killer Crocs lair, guess where we are going next.
I upgrade to cryptographic range amplifier.
We have to make our way back through the botanical gardens. This is the first time there has been any backtracking.
As we get to the exit of the botanical gardens Joker gets to Ivy and blasts her with Titan. This causes the plant life to go nuts and mutate. Huge vines grow all over the island. Plants are shooting out deadly spores.
We have to go to cash in the mansion to find out how to get to crocs lair.
Inside the mansion we find that Ivy's plants have really run amok. We have to stay above ground as there is pink killer gas on the floor. We have to use  the new line gun which makes instant zip line to negotiate our way to cash.
Cash tells us that Killer Croc is in a cell under the intensive treatment wing.
The way into intensive treatment is blocked and we have to find our way up to a sniper nest to gain access to the building.
Inside we have a room of gunmen, however the twist here is that our gargoyles are booby trapped making this a much harder fight.
There is another booby trapped hacking door.
Then down a corridor where we find Cash's office and pictures of his family.
Walking along the corridor here it looks like the xbox crashes. I thought it had, I was about to swear when it goes black and a cut scene starts. It looks like the one from the start of the game and I start getting angry then it looks different and I realise that something is happening again, Scarecrow maybe, Batman is in the batmobile seat tied up and Joker is driving him to Arkham. We get control of Joker and Harley is leading a tied up batman into the Asylum.
This is scarecrow again, he appears as the doctor to check the patient over. Joker shoot batman in the face at point blank range and it looks like a game over scene, only it tells you to use the middle stick to avoid the Jokers fire in the tips box.
We restart and see Batman claw his way out of his grave and stand looking rough with us in control again. It's the scarecrow avoiding stealth section again, once too many I feel.
Cells are filled with rocking mad batmen.
I hate these bits now, the load times are far too long after each misstep and being seen by scarecrow and what was startling and fresh the first time has just been overused.
There are some new timing elements and dropping lift shafts, using moving cover here.
Finally I get to the searchlight and now we have a boss battle with Scarecrow, three waves of skeleton thugs and larger bane type skeletons are to be fought before we get back to reality and find scarecrow jabbing us with his syringe fingers.
Batman fights him off and gets back to reality.
I get cryptographic power amplifer.
scarecrow runs and threatens to send his gas into Gotham We see him going down the lift towards Croc's lair in cut scene.
We have to fight some men, hack a box to open a door above the lift to get down the shaft further. More men to fight and then we are into the rooms before Croc's cell area.
We go through a door and into Croc's lair. Scarecrow is there, in a cut scene he threatens to contaminate the water supply of Gotham with his gas. Croc jumps out of the water and grabs Scarecrow and is about to bite his head off. Batman saves him by hitting Croc's stun collar with a batarang and activating it. I would have left the Scarecrow to die. Anyway they both vanish underwater.
We come to a section of tunnels with floating boards, Batman must negotiate them to get to the plant. Making too much noise on them brings croc up to eat you.
We have to get to the plants using the homing beacon from our scanner and when we get to it I find that we have to do it more than once. Croc comes at you from a few different directions and needs to be bataranged and avoided using the zip line gun.
We have to make it back out with a more persistant croc.
When we get near the end we have to run from croc as he destroys the boards behind us.
When we get to the tunnel the gate slams on us and croc is in the tunnel with us.
Shame what you have to do is obtuse and it makes you repeat the naff annoying running to camera bit after a load every time.
the tips box is talking about an explosive gel trap which I haven't laid.
Ah I see it now, there are three sprays of explosive gel on the floor at the gate. Detonating them as croc reaches them sends him through the floor into a shaft. Batman then escapes the lair.
Our new objective is to go to the batcave and make the antidote to titan.
I get sonic shock batarang.
The batcave isn't far away luckily.
In cut scene batman makes the anti titan formula, however it's hard work and he can't make a lot of it. Ivy's roots infiltrate the batcave and wreck it. Looks like that is all the formula he is going to get.
We get a new upgrade the ultra batclaw which allows us to blow up walls from a distance.
We make our way back through the caves. and find a new problem. Joker is polluting the water supply with titan. We now have to get to three pumping stations and disable them.
We have a tomb raider style puzzle to get up to the first pumping room.
The next pumping room is full of around 7 armed men.
Which is quite hard, the hardest so far as you have a small area and less darkness to hide in. You have to be really careful in isolating one guard and taking him out and getting away into vents afterwards.
The next pump room down the hall is much easier, only one armed guard and a knife and electric baton guy.
As we go back the way indicated out to the surface of the island we are trapped by force doors and the joker sends two titan henchmen and a elavator loads of normal thugs to attack in a small confined space.
We have to ascend an elevator shaft using the ultrabatclaw to pull out walls and make alcoves to climb up. Thenn cross the island which is full of ivy's plants which spit globes that home in on you. There a joker snipers in the towers as well.
Back inside the botanical gardens Ivy chat's and the place is full of her spore spitting plants.
I upgrade special combo throw.
We make our way through with little difficulty, fighting some guards that Ivy is mind controlling. There are joker men who have been eaten by Ivy's plants. When we get to Ivy she brings forth a huge plant beast and get inside it's mouth controlling it.
she has two attacks digging roots into the ground which then rise up and grab at you, or shooting the spores.
We have to dodge back and forth and batarang at the head of the creature.
Ivy appears at times and more damage can be done by hitting her.
When you get her energy down to nothing you spray explosive on her protective layer and blow it.
She comes back again with full heath and this time she sends controlled guards at you to run interference. Same again rinse and repeat. Taking her second wind down finishes her off.
I upgrade combo batarang.
We escape in cut scene from the crumbling gardens and find ourself out on the island Again.
The joker is setting off fireworks and asking you to come join his party for a surprise.
When we get there there are around 20 thugs waiting at the door.
When we get inside Joker appears on a tv set on top of a joker figure, you are expected to think that it isn't the Joker but he's actually just sitting there with a tv on his head. He blows the room and when Batman recovers Joker is gone. In the next room we have Joker sitting on a throne made of shop window dummies.
He sends two titan thugs at us and hoards of normal thugs. Three waves of thugs and the two titans later we get another cut scene. Joker brings Gordon in and tries to shoot him with titan to make him a monster and have Batman fight him. Batman jumps in the way of the shot and takes the hit. He starts to change but somehow manages to stop it from happening.
Joker shoots himself with titan. The scene changes to a news broadcast from a helicopter above Arkham. Joker rises from the rubble changed into a titan. He throws Batman into an arena. Batman uses the titan antidote on himself. Now we have to fight the titan powered Joker.
I get special combo takedown.
I get special combo boost.
This is another fight with thugs really. Joker comes down and give you some pounding but you basically have to avoid him.
He then goes up and sends in a wave of thugs Once they are defeated to bring him down with the ultra batarang and he gets stuck on the floor and you can pound him.
You do this three times and the joker is down.
A cut scene shows him attacking Batman who sprays explosive gel on his fist. The resulting punch knocks out Joker.
We see Gordon talking on the radio and telling someone that the asylum is under lockdown again and all super criminals are under lock and key.
The credits roll.
That seemed to take a long time wasn't counting very well for this game. Around 15 hours I would say.
545 achivement points for one playthrough on normal.

HALO 3 ODST Notes

I choose Normal difficulty.

Cut scene shows the squad, There is a new Naval intelligence female on the team, which stirs up the testosterone. Buck the leader seems to know the woman.
We see the gang tooling up to drop into New Mombassa to attack the covenant ship which is hovering over the city.

Our character is the rookie, another faceless armored cipher.

We start the drop, which is graphically nice, flying down through the atmosphere watching the wreckage of orbiting ships wheel past.
I see the covenant cruiser below, the squad seem surprised that they aren't going to land on the cruiser. The cruiser starts glowing at one end and vanishes into a slipstream rupture or something, basically engages ftl drive  in the atmosphere, which isn't really a good idea.
The drop pods are sent flying on a crash course in the wake and we crash down heavily.
I wake to find myself in the pod, we get the usual camera direction test then have to use Right bumper to release four emergency bolts which takes the door off the pod. We now jump to the city street.
Stamina is explained, basically shield strength, stop taking damage and it goes back up.
We are told to find a health station which is a nearby atm type hole in the wall.
usual analogue sticks for movement/camera. A is jump. B is melee. Right trigger is fire, left trigger throws grenades. Y changes weapon.
I am left on my own in the damaged city with no clear objectives.
I find some covenant and engage them.
I am then told to contact the superintendant a.i. of the city. There is a phone booth like kiosk in the area I am in. Connecting to this gives us a map.
I now have a beacon location for another ODST, time to go and investigate.
I go to the beacon, having to pass through a building as there is no direct route on foot.
The beacon is inside another building. I am told to look for a clue.

Inside the building it's spooky, however there is only two covenant to deal with the rest seem dead. I find an ODST's helmet embedded in a tv screen. It belongs to Dare.
Touching the helmet triggers a cut scene. We now are flashing back to the viewpoint of Buck the Captain as he drops into the city. Veronica the Naval intelligence officer it is revealed is an old flame of Buck's. Buck is approached by a covenant dropship. The objective is to find Dare.

Mission 1
We are under heavy attack from the start, progressing down a street. We encounter some normal soldiers who direct us to a route through a building where we can flank the covenant forces.
We come to a covenant sniper post which is heavily guarded.
Then through a large door.
Here is the aforementioned area where we can use the buildings to pop out behind the covenant. There is a horde of them in the plaza and we have to take them all out.
We come to the area where Dare's pod is and find a few covenant harassing it.
When we shoot them and try and open the pod we get a cut scene.
As Buck tries to open the pod a new floating type of covenant appears. It has the helmet of Dare in it's tentacles.
Buck is attacked and nearly overpowered, however he is saved by Romeo using a sniper blast. The new covenant explodes after it is shot.
We see that the helmet flew into the window and got embedded in the screen where the rookie found it during this explosion.

We are back to the rookie in the hub city.
It looks like we have to go back the way we came, however a wall panel flashes up with a detour sign, which seems to be from the superintendant which is helping us.
I fight my way through the streets to the next marker which is a piece of equipment.

Mission 2
Dutch
Uplift Nature reserve
We are now in the shoes of Dutch 30 minutes after the initial drop. We are told to link up with friendly forces and lead a warthog charge to clear covenant from the park.
We get into a warthog with a bunch of other soldiers and have a damn good time charging around shooting all the covenant forces in the large area of beaches and what seems to be a zoo type area.
We then cross a bridge and watch the space elevator collapse.
We have to climb a hill to the top to get to a gap in the wall.
We then have to drive through the wall into a huge gap.
We see a cut scene of Dutch landing, a plane crashes near him and we see the piece of equipment that the rookie find fall out of it's wreckage.
That is that mission over and we are back to the rookie.
Four new waypoints appear on the map, looks like we can do them in any order we see fit.

I take the rookie to the nearest, collecting enough audio logs gives me a supply cache unlock. This is a room filled with armaments. I come to a blown bridge and pick up a piece of equipment triggering the next flashback.

Mission 3
Dutch
Oni Alpha Site
We are with Butch and Dutch and Romeo again, Trying to blow a bridge to stop the covenant advance.
We have to arm three bombs then go to a laptop which triggers the explosion.
Then we go to help some police who are under attack, This is a huge wide open plaza with four raised areas. We fight the covenant in the plaza and once they are downed reinforcements are dropped in by Phantoms in waves. Things go from bad to worse as more and more wave are dropped in, including wraiths. The order to fall back is given after a while and we fall back into the building where we have to defend from more incoming waves of covenant. If it looks like we are going to lose the police are going to blow the building as it's full of secrets they don't want the covenant to get their hands on.
I manage to fend off all the waves of attackers and we are told to get into a lift.
The lift is attacked by the flying insect covenant.
On the roof we have to clear the rooftop before a police pelican comes in and extracts us.
Buck comes over the radio and asks for a pick up on top of the police building.

Mission 4
Mickey and Dutch
Kizingo Boulevard
We come across a scorpion tank which is under heavy fire. We have to assist them, then we get to drive the tank through the streets to a rally point. Here we meet Dutch and have to get out of the tank. We are at a rally point and are told to defend it.
Again waves and waves of covenant to hold off.
The two ODST are asked by police to help blow something up at the end in cut scene.

Quick trip through the city, to find a sniper rifle hanging from a cable above the street.

Mission 5
Romeo
NMPD headquarters
We see Buck and Romeo on the roof of the NMPD building as Mickey and Dutch come in for a rescue. Two Banshees attack and the rescue has to be aborted.
We get control of Romeo.
We are off to rescue the downed pelican crew.
We fight our way back down through our own building, which is full of covenant that were pursuing Buck and Romeo. Sniper rifle is focused upon here with lots of covenant in the distance sniping back at you.
We come to a landing pad where Mickey and Dutch have have bridge the gap to the next building using a crane with a large girder. We have to run along the girder, as we do Banshees fly in to attack.
Another defend the crash site last stand type objective, though I can't say that it's bad as it is such fun to play. Banshees being shot down all around crashing into the ground around you. Phantoms dropping in hordes of enemies. Eventually  you last long enough.
A cut scene shows a huge brute chieftan with Gravity hammer dropping into the middle of the gang from a phantom and smacking Romeo one in the chest. This is where his sniper rifle flies over the edge of the building and lands on the wire where the rookie finds it.
The ODST's take on the Chieftan in almost hand to hand combat and win. I actually laughed out loud when Buck is left underneath it's corpse and needs the rest of them to move it for him. Romeo is alive but mortally wounded.

Mission 6
Kikowani station
Buck
We watch Buck fix up Romeo's pneumothorax with a canister of expanding foam which fills the hole into his lungs from his chest wall and allows him to breathe again. A stopgap measure which shows how critical he is. Buck sees a Phantom land nearby and decides the only way they are going to get out of the city is to steal it.
We basically assault the grounded crew of the banshee and steal it. Buck takes a banshee and we have to escort the phantom
We have to go through heavy covenant fire from ground troops, phantoms and wraiths until we come to a locked door which You have to get out of the banshee to open.
We then encounter a scarab and once  it's down you escape.
On the cut scene just as it looks like it's the end of the ordeal Buck realizes from a comment that Romeo makes just what the naval intelligence girl veronica was after and orders them to land.

back on the streets the rookie hears a distress call from veronica.
This gives a new mission marker

Mission 7
At this we enter an underground portion of the city.
We are now looking for Dare in Sublevel9
The sublevels are a huge labyrinth of similar looking cut and paste corridors, good job the liberal sprinkling of covenant keeps it fun.
There is a flamethrower down here which is fun to use.
When we find Dare she is trying to get to the superintendant to take a copy of it's data core, seems it knows something that both sides want to find out about.
We fight our way through to the data core which has been infected with covenant insect bugs and they hatch from the walls and attack.
When we do get to the data core covenant are banging on the door wanting in.
Inside we find one of the covenant engineers, seems they are a slave race to the covenant and aren't exactly on their side through choice, most of them have bombs implanted to ensure they do the covenant's bidding.
The engineer has taken all the superintendants data. It appears to have an organic supercomputer type structure that can absorb massive amounts of data, this one has learned about humanity from the superintendant and is defecting. This will bring the humans a massive amount of data on the covenant which it has absorbed in it's time with them.
The problem is we now have to escape.
Buck comes to our aid as we are now catching up with his timeline as he comes back for Dare.
The engineer floats around and gives us shield strength when we are close to it.
We make our way through the areas doing a little back tracking then into an elevator and it's the end of the mission.

Mission 8
Highway
We have to attack a heavily guarded sniper point.
Now we are onto the highway where the engineer takes over a large armored vehicle.
Buck and the rookie escort in a warthog the covenant run interference as we drive down the highway.
We come to a warthog with a rocket launcher and change vehicles then to a scorpion tank as the covenant forces get heavier.
We go as far as we can on the highway until a scarab blocks the way.
Always with the driving at the end of Halo games.
Buck tells the other ODST's to bring the phantom to them. We get out of our vehicles and head into the Uplift nature reserve from an earlier mission, though this is a different section of it.
We hold up here in a defendable position in the foyer. Waves and waves of covenant again, but damn it's good fun.
The phantom with the ODST's comes in and takes out the last wraiths that are approaching.
A cut scene shows the gang all reunited at last, Romeo is still alive, the engineer can keep the covenant off their back by providing proper flight authorization and we watch as the phantom makes a run for it while the covenant fly in en masse and attack the  city looking for the forerunner structure found in Halo 3.
The credits roll.

Didn't time this one all that well though would guess at 7 hours
485 Achievement points.

Wolfenstein Notes

A Cut scene shows a Nazi boat about to make an attack on London. Our  hero BJ is on board and starts fighting the Nazi's.
Lots of acrobatics and shooting until he is corned. He produces an object from his pocket which makes a magic shield and blows up the Nazi's for him. BJ makes his escape in a plane and the boat explodes.

At the Office of Secret actions BJ speaks to his bosses,
They tell him of an ancient group who worshipped the Black sun, this group are the focus of the Thule society a German occult group. The medallion that BJ found on the boat contains crystals that can only be found in one city in Germany A Nazi general named Zetta is digging up these crystals and BJ is to stop this General from making paranormal weaponry from these crystals. BJ is sent to the town of to investigate and stop the Nazi's.

Mission 1
We get control and find the usual analogue stick controls. B is a toggle crouch.
I arrive in a train and am met by a resistance member. We are ushered into the sewers as the Nazi's are already looking for us. I find a gold bar in a case in the sewer.
Clicking and holding the left analogue stick is run.
A is jump.
I come up from the sewers into a house and find a resistance fighter. He tells us that there is a train with experimental weapons at platform one, he wants us to help him blow it up.
We get a gun.
I find an intel document.
Left trigger sights down the weapon and Right trigger is fire.
left bumper is grenade.
We fight some Germans in a bar and then out on the platforms. We are told to plant dynamite on a door to open it. Pressing Y and holding Y does this.
We make our way through the station fighting as we go. There seems to be 5 intel documents to find here. I find an emplaced gun and Nazi's obligingly run in front of it allowing me to kill around twenty of them. The resistance plant a bomb on the train for me and it blows.
A strange gravity free effect is unleashed.
We are made to float a bit too, however, the enemies are affected badly.
When we get to the exit of the train station the mission ends.

We are to be taken to meet the leader of the Kreisau circle, the resistance group in the area.
I am now in what appears to be an open world style mission hub. It is named Midtown. I am told to go to a black market vendor to upgrade my weapons.
A door with a skull and dagger on it shows the house where you can shop. I buy a silencer for my MP40.
We then go to the Kreisau circle base and meet the leader, a woman who seems to think BJ isn't all his reputation indicates. She tells us that she will get us to the dig site.
We are to go to a truck and it will take us to the dig site. We have to fight our way through the town to the truck.
The truck takes us to the dig site and we get a cut scene.
BJ finds a man named Sergei Kovlov in a tent who is under guard, he tells us that he belongs to the Golden dawn, a group of scholars, he came for the Thule medallion, however, he was captured trying to steal it from the Nazi's.
BJ tells him he will get it.
Clicking the right stick melees and we can have a degree of stealth if we use it from behind.

Mission 2
I fight my way trough the dig site until I reach a circular chamber, There is a man who shoots green light at you, he takes a bit more killing than the normal Nazi's.
After all the enemies are defeated here we find a pedestal in the center of the room, it has the Thule amulet which we can pick up. Kovlov appears and tells us to give him the amulet. BJ tells him he will have to wait until he knows more about the Golden Dawn before he does that. Kovlov gives BJ a crystal and tells him to touch it to the amulet to energize it.
BJ does this. We can now enter the veil which is a place between the Black sun dimension and ours, a kind of halfway world where everything is green and swirly.
There are veil pools and barrels which recharge the medallion.
There are creatures floating around in the veil, Kovlov tells us that some can be hostile.
Kovlov tells us that we must find another crystal to empower the medallion with new powers. He tells us that the Nazi's have found a portal and it must be destroyed.
Certain walls vanish in the veil so we can use it to access areas normally hidden.
I progress through the map until another Altar like area. This one has a crushing mechanism and you must use the veil to see a safe path to  avoid being crushed.
Another crystal gives me the mire power which slows time.
There are traps in the temple, crushing walls and alternating blasts of green energy, with time slowed these can be negotiated, though they are still dangerous.
There are also ladders painted onto the walls with veil symbols.
A bridge collapses as we cross and we must slow time and run to make it before it become impassable.
I find a stargate type device and we have to plant a bomb on it.
Then we have to make our way back through the dig site through an alternate route to escape.

We have a short trip through Midtown and some Nazi resistance to speak with Caroline Becker again. She has sent her men to attack a church where the Nazi's are up to something. She tells us to join them for the attack.
There are secrets in midtown a painted ladder leads me to a room with gold.
I make my way through midtown to the next mission start point.

Mission 3 Church.
There are two machine gun nests to be flanked here. A checkpoint after each makes me feel like I am playing Call of duty.
We now go through a door blown by the resistance and meet our first heavy trooper, he is a hugely armoued seven foot thing with a lightning/plamsa type gun.
You must use the veil to see his weaknesses, which are red glowing points on his shoulder then back that you must shoot to finish him off.
You get to pick up his particle cannon when he dies.
The particle cannon is a really fun overpowered weapon, I am sure we won't get to use it for long. Yes it runs out of power fairly quickly.
We make our way through streets and through a maze of bombed houses, the guidance pointer is a little poor for this type of close work, and a destructible floor to progress is poorly signposted.
We go through sewers and come up in the church.
We fight our way into the church, where the machine is. We have to shoot the red points on it to destroy it. Once destroyed a blast of energy comes from the machine and hits the Nazi's who were just about to surround and capture BJ. One of them is transformed into a powerful crystal skulled creature which takes a bit of pounding.
Once he is down the mission is over and the exit back to midtown is handily located only a few doors away.

Back in Midtown we are directed to the secret hideout of the Golden dawn.
Their leader Leonid Alexandrov is reluctant to deal with us but does anyway.
He tells us about some of hisoperatives who were sent to investigate a farm nearby that has suspicious Nazi activity. The agents have not been heard from since. Alexandrov wants us to go and see what happened.
There are two sections of Midtown so far East and West.
We are now directed to a tavern. In the tavern a cut scene shows a huge german fighting some locals and beating them up easily.
A golden dawn contact tells us that one of the men came back from the farm but died before telling them what happened. We are told he brought a crystal back.
Our next objective is to make our way through Midtown to the truck to the farm.

Mission 4 Farm
I am out in the countryside, near a river by the farm, first I attack a barn, have to use the slow time to flank a machine gun nest and then finally get to the farm. Truck pull up with soldiers in, it's a shame you can't kill the soldiers in it until their getting out animations are done.
At the farm we find intel and are ambushed by waves of Nazi's. There is a veil door to be found to progress. They are marked with Black sun signs.
In the barn we find the entrance to a secret underground bunker.
Oh by the way you can throw back grenades.
A rocket launcher appears here.
I go down in a lift and find an absolutely huge chamber like factory.
I fight my way through the factory for a bit which is great fun. I come to the Golden Dawn man who has been captured, I untie him. He tells us that there is a crystal in this facility that is important, I must get it out of Nazi hands.
The facility if fairly big, however the open areas soon change into corridors.
We come to some fairly large glowing machinery and a room full of crystals in tanks.
The crystal we want is at the end of the room in a machine. I take it and am given shield power, which is just as well as the room suddenly if flooded with around 10 Nazi's the shield keeps me alive and its an easy kill.
We now escape through a previously closed off section and it's filled with some sort of experimental soldier experiments gone wrong, they are like wild animals, but are obviously once human.
We have to run for it through the now exploding factory.
This is quite a nice cinematic style sequence which reminds me of half life. Lots of scripted scenes of soldiers scientists runnning and beinng blown up by the  explosions and eaten by the mad experiments on the loose at the same time.
We eventually get to a train and have to use an emplaced gun and hundreds of the animals run along the tunnel behind us.

Back to Midtown and the Golden Dawn headquarters. Alexandrov is critical of us destroying the base, he also wants us to investigate the hospital, and chides us not to blow that up as well.

Mission 5 Hospital
In the hospital there are invisible assassins that cut up nurses for fun. The Nazi's are experimenting on the patients.
We have a long trip through the hospital rooms watching the invisible teleporting assassin chop people up.
Eventually the assassin decides its our turn and attacks us. Slow time is the key here and a rocket in the face takes him out with one shot.
We proceed into the secret labs and see all sorts of gruesome experiments being carried out.
Thing start to get hard with a mix of all the enemies so far being introduced, dog soldiers, mystics, assassins etc.
There seems to be a device in one of the rooms that stops us using the thule amulets powers whilst it is working. Shooting it stops its effect.
I find a tesla gun.
Which is another hugely powerful weapon that I won't get much ammo for.
It shoots electricity and can zap and hold a bunch of enemies with arcs of electricity until they fry.
You get a good run through the corridors of the hospital frying enemy soldiers.
I come to a room with the portal in it, a scientist is burbling on to a general.
When they see you the general pushes the scientist through the portal and then gets killed as a huge brute of a creature comes back through the portal, presumably the mutated scientist. The general is tossed aside like a broken rag doll and it looks like it's boss battle time.
This battle takes a little time to work out, but is fairly easy once you know what to do.
The room has a large gallery and four pillars supporting the portal. You are shot at by guards and the monster runs around throwing stuff and trying to smash you to a pulp.
You have to annoy it and get it to charge you. The trick is to put a pillar between you and the monster. Once all four pillars are broken by it the portal goes haywire and everything including you is sucked through.
You appear in cut scene in the black sun dimension. Everything is being sucked into said black sun. Looks like a black hole to me. BJ is unaffacted and after a few seconds of bemused looking around at the ruins of an ancient temple is dumped back in the normal world.
The crystal is there for the grabs and we have a new power called empower.
Empower gives our weapons more power and allows us to shoot through shields.
This is the end of this mission and we are back out to midtown.

Back to the Golden Dawn hq to report.
The back to Caroline at the Kreisau circle. There are new female nazi assassin types out in the streets.
Caroline tells us our next target is a cannery, with little to no embellishment or dialogue the story is stretched thin by these pointless little chats.

I find my way to the start of the cannery mission

Mission 6 cannery
This is a sewer bunker style level, I meet assassins in the corridors and then a flamethrower weilding armoured soldier.
There is a large square like area with lots of rooms off it which makes life difficult as there are loads of soldiers and machine gun nest and one of the big shoot the three red bits troopers to deal with here, hardest part of the game so far.
Once done you get into the cannery proper and find a huge gun that shoots the barrels of blue energy, these screw with gravity and blow apart, so are doubly dangerous. The fun part is that once you storm the control room of the gun you get to use it on loads of Nazi's. You use the gun to blow itself up by shooting four pylons which are part of it.
I make my way through a suspiciously quiet part of the factory to a boss battle. We finally get to meet general Zetta. He uses our powers against us. Bullets pass through him as if he isn't there.
When we go into the veil we see Zetta as a monster.
Here we can see his red weak spots which we have to shoot. He attacks by shooting circular shockwaves, red balls of energy or just swipes at you. When you hurt him enough he goes to a refuelling place and gets more energy. You can shoot these refuelling stations as he uses them and blowing all three of them up means he can't recharge. Hurting him enough this time kills him.

Mission 7 SS headquarters
We have to go into the ss headquarters and find out what has happened to the Golden Dawn boys that have been captured.
This is a fairly straightforward romp through the SS building, some hidden ladders and veil doors to negotiate. You find out that the men have been taken to a garment factory. Looks like we will be going there soon.

Back in midtown I realise I can set objectives to either the Kreisau circle or the Golden dawn. The Golden Dawn want me to get their men from the garment factory. Their leader is as usual pissed that we have killed Zetta and stirred up the Nazi's.

caroline wants us to move to downtown.
I decide to do the other mission at the paranormal base/garment factory

Mission 8 Paranormal base.
Here we find a factory type environment with three golden dawn men tied up in different rooms. There is evidence that the Nazi's have been sacrificing scantily clad women for kicks. A short mission.

Mission 9 warehouse
I follow the marker through midtown to the warehouse doors.
I am here looking for a codebook.
After wandering around in the warehouse and throwing a switch which opens a door I see a cut scene of an officer handing a code book to a guard to be put in a safe.
We have a little puzzle area to find a way into the locked room with the safe. Black sun door in the floor is hidden in a maze of crates.
Once you have to code book you simply have to make your way back out of the warehouse which is reinfested with nazis.

A quick trip through midtown reveals new shield emplacements on the ground that the Nazi's can use for cover.
I got back to the Kreisau circle safe house and find that the code book is useless without a code wheel. We have to go to the officers house to steal this.

mission 10 Officers house
This is a quick romp around the house of the general which is expansive for a house but not a huge level. We have to open a secret bookcase door using a book and then find a painting which glows in the veil, shooting it while in veil mode breaks it and we find a safe with the code wheel. There are cowering half naked women in the bedrooms in their lingerie.
Once the wheel is found we escape the house.

That seems to be all the missions in Midtown done, we are only told now to travel to Downtown.
This is a new area of the hubworld.
We have objectives to meet the Kreisau circle and find the black market in Downtown.

I find the black market and then have a difficult trip through the new hub areas to the Kreisau circle headquarters here.
The leader Carolyn had been captured and we have too rescue her.
Getting back through downtown is much harder than Midtown was.

Mission 11 Castle
We are funnelled up the paths which are the only way up to the castle. There are snipers and flying jetpack troops with what seem like rapid fire rockets.
I a courtyard we find our way blocked by a portcullis gate.
Using a veil hole we get inside and find a new gun.This gun fires deadly gravity projectiles and opens these gates.
Inside the portcullis gate we go up in a lift.
Then through corridors of the castle, we come into a main hall like area with a few staircases and levels to it.
Then we have to deactivate gates by finding a switch. Another hulking monster, luckily the leichenfaust 44 gun kills them with one shot.
I come to a library type area and a few veil user guys and assassins.
More switches to the doors to the roof and some backtracking back to doors that have now been opened here.
Eventually I get to the roof and a cut scene.
A Nazi called Death's head has Carolyn and a machine which is supposed to draw power from the black sun. However the nazi's have got it wrong and the machine blows a fuse. A dimensional rift opens and a huge cockroach type beastie comes through. The Nazi's shoot Carolyn in the melee and run for it leaving BJ to deal with the beastie.
Boss battle time. The beastie has the usual red marks to hit.
After blasting it a bit it vanishes and smaller bugs crawl at you. Then it comes back and breaks your gun.
You basically rinse and repeat here, shoot the red bits on the big bug, it vanishes, a wave of flying or crawling bugs, then run to the next gun after the one your on is smashed, repeat four times and your done. Cut scene shows you nearly getting sucking into the black sun again. You get dumped back out on the approach to the castle and it looks like it's all over and back to the downtown. The game then throws a surprise at you and the bug gets chucked back out of the black sun dimension right in front of you. You get to fight it again. This time the pattern is simple in two long bridge like areas you shoot it's red bits as it marches at you trying to slash you with it's claws. After a while it goes down and you plant some dynamite on it's head and its game over for the bug.
You now get to go back to Downtown.

Back in Downtown we see a cut scene of Nazi's activating one of many towers they have been placing around the area.
We are told to go back to the Kreisau safe house.
Here we are attacked by Nazis bursting in through the wall. We have to defeat their attack. They break off the attack after a while which the resistance think is suspicious.

We are told to go to the golden dawn safe house for a meeting with Engle and Sergei.
Alexandrov has gone missing. They think he has went to the zeppelin which is above the town. Apparentyl deaths head has a weapon up there and we have to go stop him from using it and destroy it. We are to go to the airfield.
Seems that the weapon interacts with the towers and kills everyone in the area, which is the whole of the city.
Getting to the airfield starting point is made difficult by a tank.

Mission 12 Airfield
We start in the garage.
Then have to cross some open hangar areas.
Inside a building we meet a woman hanging suspended inside a sphere of energy.
WWe have to destroy three generators to get her to come out of her protective sphere while nasty nazi demon types run interference. the woman comes out of her sphere and is made short work of with the Leichenstat gun.
Then we are in corridors of a stealth plane research factory.
Some puzzling with force field doors and up in a lift.
Then through some catwalks in a hangar. Then we are at the zeppelin.

Mission 13 Zeppelin
On the zeppelin we run around on catwalks on the outer skin then inside to plant dynamite on the propulsions systems.
Then a run through more zeppelin innards until we come to an outside gantry underneath it. We have to use the zeppelins own emplaced guns to shoot up four engines, all sorts of enemies run interference. Female assassins, flying bombers and he usual soliders.
We then get inside and a cut scene shows that the leader of the Golden dawn has been a nazi spy all along. It was him who betrayed us at the train station and Carolyn to the Nazis.
We have to storm a control room which is filled with enemies, quite a hard section.
Then back outside and into a bomb bay type area.
Then its the portal which is part of the weapon, we have to disengage the weapon and go through the portal after death's head.

Mission 14 Black sun
A quick weapon restock and then a hop into another portal sees us in the black sun dimension.
A cut scene shows death's head and his newly transformed bodyguard admiring their machine.
We now are into a boss battle with Hans the bodyguard who is armoured and toting a mini gun.
There is an arena like circle with circling pylons surrounding a central machine. Hans stands by the machine using his shield. We have to avoid his chain gun and use empower to shoot him through the shiled. The moving pylons fill up our veil energy.
Once we have hit him enough he goes down on one knee and we take out the empower crystal from our amulet and stab him with it. This causes the whole area to blow up and we are now fighting inside the suspended explosion. Hans seems to run around at will and we have to take him out the best we can using the time slowing mire to get some shots in.
We fall down a tall spire of rock and now have to climb back up.
Hans shoots at us and the monsters arrive as well.
We have to climb up the tower shooting at hans at points and killing hordes of monsters.
At the top we get the objective to destroy Hans and the  machine.
Blasting the crap out of Hans is fairly simple and that's it game over.
We run back through the portal and watch a cut scene of BJ escaping the burning exploding zeppelin by parachute. The zeppellin crashes into the castle. The thule medallion is broken and that is it. The credits roll.

It took 7 hours 15 minutes to complete the game according to the in game clock, although it did feel like more than that I have to say.
140 achievement points

Ok I have two side missions that I have not found, so I am going back to do them.

When  you restart the game after you finish it you are at the start of the black sun mission. However you can abort the mission and get back to downtown.
Here you can do the other side missions that are left.
I go to the marker and a man is trying to blow up the towers around the town. We have to hold off waves of all kinds of enemies until he does, which takes him about five minutes.

There are now two more towers to blow.
I follow my marker to the radio station.

Mission 15 Radio station
This is a fun romp along a street with lots of enemeies then into a building where we have force field switches
Then we have a new bit where we have to make our way through air ducts and find hidden ladders to climb up to another air duct.
Then on the roof another new idea a force field has a power line running from it to a red object when seen in the veil, a rocket to it turns off the force field.
We then have an emplaced gun to use on the tower. We now have to escape the burning building.

There are still two towers to destroy on the map. I go to the first and plant dynamite on it.
The second is further away but the same idea.
I have gathered a few more achievements at least.
Shame I almost missed that radio station mission it seemed fairly good for a mission i might never have seen.
I achievement hunt a bit more by sitting on a power area and staying in te veil and mire it gives you achievements for using them.

So after another bit of play I have completed what I can find, apart from all the collectibles.
So 8 hours in total.
200 achievement points.

Most of the achievements are for multiplayer.

Mire power slows time
Shield stops bullets
Empower makes bullets pass through things and hurt more.
Veil allows you to see doors objects and

Godfather II Notes

We get a narration by the hero Dominic, telling us about what is going on with the history of the mafia. It's all too quick to really take, possibly if you have seen the movies it will mean something. Basically there are lots of families all fighting for their share of the pie and things are bloody. Cuba is up for grabs and there is going to be a meeting to sort it out.
You now get a chance to customize your character within quite a wide range of parameters, though non of the outrageous stuff you find in say Saint's Row.

The meeting in Cuba is going well, Rothman is retiring and giving away all his concerns to his partners.
We get control and are told to talk with our brother by walking up to him and pressing Y.
Usual Analogue stick controls. A is run.
We are tld by our brother to go and see  another person, he is two floors down through the hotel, which is crowded by the usual sandbox a.i.
During the conversation we get a choice moment from three options.
Aldo is worried about the rebels. Rightly so as the president makes an announcement that they are staging a revolution and he is running for it over the tannnoy.
We are told to escort the bosses from the hotel.
We can punch with left and right triggers.
We have to punch a few soldiers in the hotel Kitchen then out into the streets where soldiers shoot at us and the civilians run around in a panic.
We have a few x marks the spot waypoints to get to and fight a few soldiers in the streets before getting to the airport.
Aldo is shot in cut scene and the gang get away in a plane.
Michael tasks Dominic with running the New York family now that Aldo is dead.

Another cut scene shows a family member named Frank bad mouthing Roth who Michael seems to trust.
Dominic is told to send a message to a rival family.

Mission 1
Talking to Frank, gets us an interview with some henchmen.
I hire one of them, which is all I am allowed for now.
Talking with Michael we get a little cut scene which illustrates that we will have to build up our own little empire.
We have to go to a Bakery and take over.
Some thugs to shoot and then the boss to intimidate to earn the building.
Intimidating is a little mini game where yoou can hit the guy until a meter fills and then he is ready to give in. Go to far and he dies.
We are now to go to a business and hustle it for protection money.
We have to take over three businesses this way. Most of them with guards who attack when we enter.
We are told to go back to the mansion and speak to Michael.
He tells us that we need to get some more soldiers.
The soldiers have different attributes.
We are told to go to a way point and recruit the man there.
Then to go and take over another area which will complete our first crime ring.
Here we have to blow the back door and run in and kill all the guards, getting to the boss and intimidating until we win the area.
This is our first crime ring, we get a bonus for having it, which is brass Knuckles.
One of the businessess is taken back and we have to go back and do it all over again.
We are taught about placing guards at businesses to keep them. This costs us money which comes out of our pot.

Mission 2
we have to meet Frank at a house where we are given it as a safehouse. Michael talks to us in the safehouse and we are going to put out a hit on one of the enemies made men.
To do this we have to go and speak to Frank.
A quick cut scene tells us about hit, we have to gain intel and take out the target in a specific way.
We are told to go and find someone with information.
There are people with keys above their heads wandering around. Speaking to them reveals a favour they want done, so far someone to beat up and two people who want others killed.
I can now use the Don view, which is what they call the map, to locate 5 made men, well you can once the favours have been done.
The first one I go for has to be run over with a car.
The next thrown in the river.
The next we have to throttle.
I kill the next one with a pistol but don't get the  kill, seems I needed to do the execution move. So this one will come back after a spell in the hospital.

Mission 3
I answer the phone, seems that when someone wants to talk to you all the payphone around you ring as you walk past. I speak to Carmine and he wants to meet. Going to a bar starts a cut scene where Dominic is attacked as Carmine pretends to want a truce. I get control back and have to shoot my way out of the place. I don't know If I have succeeded or failed this mission as I never go a chance to shoot at Carmine.
Frank is killed in the scuffle.

Mission 4
Michael wants a chat at the family base. We are to go and attack the Carmine family compound.
First we have to take over the remaining Carmine businesses on the map.
There are two or three more, simple missions where you enter the building kill the guards and intimidate the owner. Place guards on each building to prevent Carmine from taking it back.

Mission 5
Michael tells us that it's time to go and take on Carmine's compound and kill him for good.
The compound is a large mansion, filled with guards. we have to run through it's maze and kill Carmine. Placing a bomb and evacuating before it goes of ends the missions and finishes the first family off.

Roth calls and asks us to meet him in florida. We have to go to the airport.

In cut scene dominic is met by Fredo at the Florida airport.
Roth is having trouble with a rival family and wants our help.
The granados family own florida they have one of roth's friends hostage. Roth wants us to rescue him.

Mission 6
We have to go and rescue the made man. We have to garotte a few people then assault the room where the man is being held. I screw it up and he is shot, however I have a few seconds to revive him. This I do and mission is done.
I have picked up a few weapon upgrade as we have went, a better magnum and silencer for the pistol.
We call roth and he tells us to meet him he want to give us something.
He gives us a safehouse.
We have to recruit another soldier and promote one, which will give him new powers.

I take over Berry Pawnbrokers.
I take over foreplay pictures.
I take over the Arisocrat.
I take over the elite diner.
I take over jersey sports bar.
I take over Basso fill and go.
I take over Active electronics
I take over Basso oil express
I take over Emilo's Packing company.
I take over Las Palmas club.
I take over Luscious entertainment.
I take over Basso oil depot.
I take over Basso oil refinery.
I take over S&L construction site.
I take over Ausiello's Bar and Grill.
I take over Astoria Construction site.
I take over Sanico-Hauling depot.
I take over Sanico truck depot.
I take over ABF construction.

Now I have no more targets other than the Granados compound. This is a big place and full of soldiers. I kill everyone I can find and then plant a bomb.
I get a big bonus for this and the Granados are no more.
Roth wants to meet me and I can now add another member to my family.
The only other objective on the map is to go back to new york and attack the Rosato compound.
I try and go to New York by taking a flight at the airport. When I get there there is a picket line We speak to Fredo and then Roth.
Roth wants us to speak with a CIA man who can help us.
Seems the CIA want a man who is stirring up the unions to vanish.
We have to rough up the picket line leader to find the location of this Alemida.
Alemeida is in a factory and is guarded by a horde of Cubans. I have to throw him over the balcony to finish the missions.
Our next objective is to go back to New York.
At the airport fredo and the CIA man are waiting to chat.
Back to New York.
We meet Michael at the Correolone compound.
He is in trouble, Frank, who we thought was dead has turned evidence.
We have to speak with a man called Hagen. We have to get a senator on our side to help with the trial. Hagen is now our Consigliere, whatever that means.
Geary has a weakness for prostitutes, we are to blackmail him.
We are told to go to the Maison Rouge, the Mistress want us to do a favour for her first, she wants some books on her clients recovered from the federal building.
We have to go into the building and take documents from the safe. Fight our way back to the Maison rouge. We speak to the Madam, then Tom.
We now have to go to a bar and speak to Geary.
We have a few chat options and I manage to muddle through. He goes to the Brothel. At the brothel he is set up for the murder of the prostitute. He is now in our hands, he tells us of a Cuban family that is moving in, the Manganos.
I am told to go back to florida, I decide to take out the Rosato Compound while I am in New York. Big mansion, full of men and a bomb to plant to finish the deal.
Now to the airport and back to Florida.
Michael is at the airport waiting for us.
He wants us to meet with Mangano, but wants us to make peace, he tells us not to cross him.
The meeting with Mangano goes well he wants to work in florida and is willing to partner with us. He has hired a warehouse and is working from it.
We are told to meet with Fredo at our safe house.
Fredo is chatting, he looks nervous, suddenly gunmen draw up in a car and spray the building missing both of you. Fredo tells us that it is Mangano, seems Mangano is prepping for a takeover.
We are to meet with Charlie Green to get into Mangano's warhouse.
I get a new promotion unlock and can now get another family member.
I hire another man.
Then I meet Charlie Green, he can help us get onto the warehouse which is on a little island with a raisable bridge.
Green wants someone dead in return for lowering the bridge. Killing him is easy as he is just across the street.
At the warehouse a guard lowers the bridge for us. We are told to start a fire.
This is just another takeover mission and I now have Global Storage.
Mangano calls and denies sending the gunmen to our home. He wants a meeting to dicuss the situation.
The meeting is a trap and the Manganos declare war. We see a cut scene of them attack many of our businessess.
We have to meet Roth and Mitchell. He wants us to kill Castro for the CIA.
We are told to go to Cuba.
I decide to take back the Mangano controlled places first. I will probably have to later.
Add backtracking to the sins.

I take over Jersey Sports bar.
I take over Basso oil fill and go.
I take over Basso oil depot
I take over Aussiello's bar and grill.

I decide to try letting the a.i. made men attack a business for me, which actually works well. I have now taken back all the stolen rackets.

Time to go to cuba. The Cuban map is the smallest yet, it has two Mangano controlled rackets on it. I send the gang to one and go and try the other on my own.
My men take over casino Havana. I then bring them back to me and continue on Casino Imperial.
I take over the casino Imperial and that is all of the Mangano rackets taken, their compound is unlocked.
I decide to carry on with the Cuban stuff since I am here. I have to meet Mitchell in Cuba after taking a phone call.
He wants us to take out some dissidents to show our support for Castro. There seems to be around 9 of them on the map.
I take out all the insurgent leaders.
Then I am called and invited to the presidential palace.
A cut scene shows a woman telling Dominic about why the revolution is interested in him. She shows him to a room and tells him to stay put.
We get control again and are tasked to find Castro.
This is actually the first bit of interesting mission design in the game. We have to sneak around using our  garotte to kill the guards. If we are seen then we have around ten seconds to kill the guard before he raises the alarm and ends the missions, sending us back to our room. I find a silenced pistol which makes things easy. I reach a spot and can see Castro, shooting him starts a cut scene.
We watch a wounded Castro bundled out of harms way the Almeida whoose men we already have tangled with in the past in florida appears in person. He taunts Dominic. We now have control back and have to escape the palace.
Once out of the palace we have to escape to the airport.
Back in New York Michael calls and asks us to come to the compound.
It looks like Roth might be in leauge with Almeida. Fredo is dishnoured and Michael gives him some abuse.
Michael is worried about the trial, he has brought Franks brother in to speak with Frank and hopefully stop him testifying.
We are to go and speak with Vinchenzo, when we get there he has been abducted. We have to go and find out where he has been taken. Seven crosses appear on the map of people we have to go and speak to to find out where he is.
I speak to the seven who are in close proximty to the safe house, it only take a minute. Conflicting stories lead you to the conclusion that Vincenzo is either at the docks or at the Maison Rouge. Going to both places leads to a fight with some men, you can interrogate the second group and find out that Vincenzo is at a construction site.
I fight my way into the construction site and rescue Vincenzo.
A cut scene shows Frank going back on his statement in court and Michael getting his charges dropped as a result.
We talk to Tom, then Michael, seems that Mitchell has left the CIA and is now working for a family. Michael takes the recent trial and this news badly and decides that enough is enough, the Corleone's have taken enough in the name of peace, he decides to go to all out war with the Mangano and Almeida families.
I go to Florida and take over and bomb the Mangano compound.
Now to Cuba
I take over Battaglia Quarry.
I take over Battaglia constructcion.
I take over Battaglia cement factory.
I find Agent Mitchell and kill him.
I take over Casino Havana.
I take over Juan Sizzilo's.
I take over Global Crushers.
I take over Global towing.
I take over Global imports.

Now I can enter the Almeida compound, it's big and full of men, long fight, good fun and it's bombed and that is all the rival families taken down.
I am told to go to a phone.
Michael wants us back in Florida.
We are congratulated, however there is one loose end, Roth. He is being brought in to the airport and we are to try and kill him there.
We basically storm the airport like any other mission. Roth is fairly easily shot down when we find him.
We now have to escape back to the  Mangano compound which is basically the furthest away point. The cops are on full alert and it's hard work to get there.
At the compound a cut scene shows Dominic being made Godfather and then we watch Fredo being assasinated. The credits roll.
Once the credits roll you can go around completing side tasks for achievement points.

14 hours and 770 achievement points.

Health recovers by itself if you stop taking punishment.
I can now promote one of my men which gives him two abilities instead of just one.
I decide to try upgrades and spend all my money on one of my men, which helps immensely, however I did not realise I could also upgrade myself.
There are a lot of items to upgrade about your character.
Health
Survival
Marskman
Handgun Accuracy
Heavy weapon accuracy
Ready weapon
Vice grip
Blackhand attack
Blackhand Defense
Extortion expert
Neck Snap
I do a bank job which basically sees you storm into the bank and raid the vault. You only get to keep the money if you get back to your safehouse however. The police attack in force when you leave the bank.
Sometimes rival families attempt a takeover of a place you have taken. You can send your made men to defend it alongside the defenders. Seems that if you do this you will keep a hold of the business. Of course you can go yourself and see off the attackers in person.