And to think, I almost managed 3 consecutive posts in 3 days.
iTunes for the atypical American Consumer:
So, in a stroke of madness, which isn't completely unlike myself, I decided last week to play around with the settings of my Music Library in iTunes. Before we get any further, let me stress that I do not advise such actions. What had inspired all this was a drive to cut the excess Harddrive usage of my computer. Since I cannot convince Nero and the DVD-Burner to comminucate yet I have to take draconian measures, and upon discovering that iTunes was keeping almost 2 gigs of duplicated copies of music, something had to be done. Either way, there's a wonderful little option in the program that restructures your music library and renames everything accordingly. Well, unfortunately this meant the Folder on my Harddrive Music Library and not the iTunes music Library (redundant naming systems for the lose). Anyways, my Music Folder got twisted into the idealized Apple vision of an American music folder: Artist -> Albums -> Tracknumbered Tracks named with the Album and the Title. This doesn't work well for the type of music I collect since I tend to group by category, Anime/Game, rather than by Artist simply for the sheer number of Artists a single category can contain. So now the race is on to reconstruct my Music Folder, a truly daunting task to say the least, but hopefully it'll allow me to cut down on the excess.
For a game called Snake-Eater, I seem to be kicking alot of Rabbits:
Since David's venerable PS2 seems to disbelieve that I own a working copy of Suikoden IV I've changed gears and started to play Metal Gear Solid 3. Bear in mind the last FPS I've played Console-side was RE4 (And trust me, I've tried cinematic dodging a few times). So, I started off well enough, earning a few ground-holdups against opponents knocked prone by a roll or a melee combo. I had to look up how to actually capture/interrogate an enemy (the concept of a button hold in MGS outside of a gun was kind of alien to me) and immediately started a few bloodbath's in this manner. As anyone who's ever watched me attempt the Dragon Cave in Star Ocean can attest, the Analog sensitivity of the PS2 Dual Shock 2 is sorta a weak point of mine, I tend to be heavy handed (and thus the long + soft note in the Dragon Cave was roughly 40 straight failures) and thus I tend to fail to interrogate and instead more violently bring my captive to his end. I love the take-out maneuver of a attempt at a frontal capture, the trip-slam, and spent much of the pre-sniper portion of the game using it as my main offensive form. After acquiring the Sniper and the Light Machine Gun it's pretty much been cutting a swath through soldiers, leaving a trail of dead foes in my wake. For an MGS game my killcount is probably nearing triple digits and I've only just reached the Fortress. Overall the camera is really a pain, and the fact that most enemies simply outpace me in movement is stupid. Sitting around to regen is annoying, but ideally I shouldn't be seen or hurt anyways so that's okay.
Boss Fights:
Ocelot - The Revlovler fight. I went into this with about 1 shot worth of life and thus ended up eating the two life medicines I'd gotten by the time just to manage the fight. Not particularly hard, but annoying to fight distance with the tranq gun for no real reward.
The Pain - Actually, remarkably painful but not terribly difficult. The Bullet Bees managed to waste away a fair amount of my precious Cure materials. I managed it in one try, but using Stun Grenades instead of Smoke Grenades was a seriously unwise idea. Much easier without deafening/blinding yourself for a shorter effect.
The Fear - Absolutely annoying fight. I ended up hiding in a corner, praying my Stun Grenades knocked enough food out of the trees and waiting for my chance to blast him. Took about 8 tries to get a good run against him and achieve victory mostly a matter of luck than anything else. Burned through 2 of the 3 batteries I had at the time. He has remarkable accuracy, shooting through solid trees and whatnot. I think he does far too much damage to be anything more than a corner camp really, no other viable way to Tranq him down, I guess lethal would probably be far more feasable as he can't eat that back.
The End - What can I say. I think I spent nearly 2 hours in this fight, never got close to being defeated. Hell, early on I got so tired of playing the searching game that I traded out for Female Kabuki Mask with Fly Uniform camo for a massive -40% index standing still in the light. Not really a hard fight, just an annoyance until you can scare him someplace where he'll leave footprints to track and not run to areas that require massive footwork to get to. That he can restore life photosyntethically is annoying and stupid, but hey, he only did it once before I managed to beat him. And only broke two legs overrolling assualts on him and off of high cliffs.
The Fury - Easy fight until I got him down to the last quarter and the areas he frequented were filled with flames and I got toasted. I sorta gave up keeping distance and using the Mosin and ended up just pummeling him down the rest of the way. And yes, I definately tried to RE4 dodge during that end cutscene there.
RE4 is the superior gameplay though weaker on the story. Don't get me wrong, I loved RE4's story, but MGS just has all the history and content to the borders and goes deeper. RE4 on the Gamecube just feels right, unlike MGS 3 on the PS2 where I find myself using L1, L2, R1, R2, and Square all together inorder to fire while Shoulder Aiming on my tip-toes with any Assult Rifle.
I've heard the conversation about the Cardboard Box and the James Bond Conversation, but I don't use the Call function much, so I've probably missed out on some of the other good ones.
Christmas Loot
Got a Nintendo DS with Mario Kart and Advance Wars: Dual Strike. I'm now 12 missions in, and it's certainly an excellent game. Fantastic characters, challenging, inventive. The new COs are an interesting variation on the previous themes and the music is good as well. I think I'll have to go pick up the latest Fire Emblem Game and Meteos before the end of the week. Wonder if there's anything else there on the DS that is a must have.
