The Phoenix Nest
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Updates (14/05/10)

Alrighty, here's what I've been up to!

Finished Assassin's Creed 2. One word: Awesome. Three words: Give me more! Having finished the 2nd one 100% (Including all achievements!) I can now say that Assassin's Creed is one of my top game series, in the top 10 at least. The story is so compelling and the gameplay is a delight too. The repetition that many, including myself, complained about in the first one is totally gone. Sure, there are repetitive things in the second one too, such as courier missions and races, but the best part is that these are completely optional (bar a few essential ones at the very start of the game). The whole money system works surprisingly well; after reading reviews saying that the villa was pointless I didn't expect to enjoy it so much! Sure it's not very hard to get money, but I loved upgrading the town and collecting all the paintings for the villa. I just wish the town was bigger and that you could upgrade the actual villa itself (beyond the paintings). I hope it makes a return in the inevitable third installment. One of the best parts about the game was the glyphs! They are non-essential, but provide so much backstory, and some great puzzles too. In all it was a brilliant game, and I can't wait for the next one!

Finished Fracture. This was pretty fun. Unlike Assassin's Creed 2 it was neither long or all that interesting story-wise, but the terraforming aspect is a new and welcome change. The gameplay was solid, if a little bland. Story was uninspired. But the music was great! Orchestral quality. It really reminded me that I was playing a Lucasarts game, because you can tell that they had a hand in it. It's Star Wars scale music. Overall I'm glad I didn't pay full price when it came out, but it's a good addition to my game library.

New games. I picked up Lost Planet on the day after my previous blog, and just yesterday I grabbed the XBLA Unplugged Volume 1 collection for just 4 bucks at EB. I used to laugh at those collections, but it's actually pretty good value. I only wanted one game in the collection, Bejeweled 2, which would have set me back 400 MSP. Considering 500 MSP is about $8.25, I consider that a bargain. Best of all, the disk is in near mint condition. I don't think the previous owners knew how to use it...

Manga. I got all 12 volumes of manga I had ordered from Borders. I have only read 1 so far, but I plan to start on the rest tonight. This brings my total manga volumes to 106! If anybody wants to know what they all are, leave a comment and I'll do a blog about it, maybe with pictures too!

The boring stuff. Tafe is going well for me, though I'm not very motivated about most of the classes, the exception being Flash where we have moved on to making simple Flash games. I am making one where you gotta kill demon sheep, while sparing the regular ones. I might put it online once it's done. A word of warning though: It will be really basic, it will be really easy, and my artwork will be crap.

That's all for now, hope you are all well!