This is the dawning of the Tales of Vesperia! Tales of Vesperiaaaaa! VESPERIAAAAAAA!

So last night I finally deleted Tales of Vesperia off my Xbox 360 HD. After 167.5 hours of biting, clawing, crying, bleeding, sweating and OCD-induced seizures, rage and mental fatigue I FINALLY got 1000 achievement points in the game. Why Namco Bandai wanted to make a game which encouraged OCD behavior is beyond me, but I fell squarely in their trap.

That's not to say the game wasn't good. On the contrary, the fact that the game was so fun to play was what made me so OCD about it's achievements. The story was your standard JRPG flair, which I would assume is also common for most Tales games(before this, the last Tales game I played was Tales of Destiny for the PS1. More on that later.) The characters are VERY well written though, and definitely lovable by game's end. The Tales team definitely went out of their way to flesh them out in the way of skits, in-battle and post-battle talk and side-quests. Also, for the first time in a long time, I was finally able to control a JRPG main char that was somewhat morally ambiguous. I was pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the characters and the top notch writing of the scenarios, as well as the excellent job the translation team did on conveying said writing for the American audience.

That milk must have been 200 proof.

That is until the screenshot above popped up. Just when I thought the days of people getting sick off dairy products, of Justin from the first Grandia not drinking "Coffee" because it was for adults were behind us. Today; when we have Gears of War with chainsaw and host-advantage shotgun fun, when we have the option of committing mass genocide as our epitaph in Fallout 3, Namco Bandai America takes a stand. Apparently they believe legal adults cannot enjoy an alcoholic drink or two or three to have a good time, goof off, make an ass of themselves in their best friend's graduation party, bond with others in a party with shots of Patron silver, get so hammered during a New Year's eve party that when they're all alone with a big tittied chick they are unable to perform because of the copious amounts of alcohol in their system(IT, FUCKING, HAPPENS ALRIGHT?!), and overall just to enjoy some kinda festival.

Moving on to the achievement in this game that made my life a living hell.

Item Nerd 30

After my first run of the game, I had made it a point to get 100% on both the information of all the monsters in the world and it's items on the second run. Imagine the shock on my face when I got my perceived last needed item in the game and the stupid xbox chime for achievements didn't come up. My hopes and dreams were dashed in that instant. I flipped through my cluttered pages of achievement tips to find out what went wrong. I was quick to flip out and yell "GLITCH!!" when I couldn't find what I was missing. And then, I found it amidst my crumpled papers. "Magic Lantern" it said. An item that can only be obtained during a specific time in the game. An item that the player has to PURPOSELY fuck up to get. An item that doesn't even fucking give you a prompt on the screen that you actually got it. An item that raped my mother in front of my innocent father as it butchered the rest of my family members in the background. I was horrified... I had to play through the game again and suffer that insipid Ring a Bell theme song by Bonnie Pink. I was at wit's end.

Speaking of the theme song; holy fuck those engrish lyrics don't make a lick of sense. "It's not in the dark scary day to carry on" lolwut?

As I mentioned earlier; the last Tales game I played was Tales of Destiny for the PS1 more than a decade ago. The reason for that was because in the very final dungeon of that game, you literally couldn't take 2 steps without getting into a random fight. It made the game unplayable so I dropped it and swore off Tales games. Until Vesperia came along and I thought I'd give it a spin. Vesperia then went ahead and took advantage of my OCD while she was walking home alone in a dark alley at 2am in the morning by pointing a knife at her throat and having his way with her. So I, again, swear off all Tales games... until next decade.

Achievement Unlocked: Tomb Raider Underworld 1000 achievement points

So I got 1000 achievement points on Tomb Raider Underworld last night. The game was a drastic improvement over the last 2 TR games. Not to say that the last 2 were bad, just that TRU improved upon them significantly. Lara's model is now motion captured, so now her movements don't look so damn artificial. Also, her model has been aesthetically improved upon the already impressive models from the last 2 games(I, admittedly, have a nonsensical crush on Lara Croft for a while now).

The puzzles in the game were a bit in the easy side though. Did people complain after Tomb Raider Anniversary's release that the puzzles were too hard or something? It definitely wasn't as rewarding in TRU to solve the puzzles as it was in both Legend and Anniversary. Although, gone are the annoying time trial achievements from the previous 2 games. Halle-fucking-lujah! Even the collectible-type achievements were easier to get this time around.

Story was well written, albeit short, and added more to the ongoing story that has been lingering in the last 2 installments. I guess you can say this is a trilogy of sorts since the ending of the "Lara's Shadow" DLC shows a definite conclusion to it.


It's really too bad that even with all the improvements Crystal Dynamics made, they still haven't improved upon some of the series' fundamental flaws such as a sometimes erratic camera and poor adjustment of the controls with said erratic camera. Often times, I found myself having Lara plunge to her death towards the opposite side of where I wanted her to jump because the controls had not adjusted quickly enough to the changing camera angles. Still, it's a small complaint that, if you've played previous TR games, you can work around.

Close but no cigar for TRU, but still fun nonetheless.

Left 4 Dead with 11 other survivors makes for a bloody good time.

I still have about 10 achievements left to get on L4D. One of them being the "Beat one campaign on expert" achievement and another being the "Zombie Genocidiest". Lucky for PC users, there's a way to get the former rather easily. Albeit through a whole lotta hoop-jumping with modding. But in the end, engaging in a 12-person zombie massacre is enough reason to jump through them hoops.

I just wish there were some DLC that would allow this on the Xbox360 version, since that's where I primarily play this