The Downward Spiral

In a word: Punishing.

You die?  You start over.  You do a level, no, a part of a level, 100 times and you like it.  There is no starting over where you die.  You start at the beginning, every time.

Everything is based on souls.  They are your currency and your leveling up.  You buy equipment with souls, but you don’t sell the equipment, you kill more.  If you die, you lose all your souls.  Had 3000 souls?  Well you just got one shotted and now you are dead and have none.

Also, you spend most of the game in soul form.  That means you have half your life, most of the time.  You only get your body back when you kill a level boss, which always look impossible.

But, it’s not all this bad.  First, after you kill the first boss anyway, you can sink your souls in to levels.  So you can do part of a level that you know how to do, over and over, and accumulate souls.  Then you can run back to the beginning of the level and power up.  Now you can get the same souls, but easier, and press further in.  All the guys come back and attack in exactly the same way.  So you end up memorizing levels as you do them, over and over.

Did I say after you kill the first boss you get to level up?  Ya… so… you just kinda have to accept that your starting character is how you are going to play the first 2-3 hours of the game.  If you are having a hell of a time, you suck at that kind of character… or… maybe there is a better choice of starting character.  For instance, if you want to be a mage type character, the magician sounds like a reasonable choice right?  Well, no, actually you want the Royal.  The magician can’t regen mana yet.  That means to beat the first stage, you have to carry probably 20 mana restoring things.  Well, those cost 350 souls, which take about 20 minutes to collect… so.. ugh.. that blows.  I restarted as a Royal and it was way way easier… easier meaning perhaps possible.

So then about the character class.  It really only affects before you defeat the first demon.  It’s your starting equipment and stats.  After that, you can spend souls however you want and get any of the starting equipment pretty easily in the first stages of the next worlds.

And back to dying.  Yes, you die and lose all your souls.  But if you can fight back to where you died you can get them all back.  If you die before you get there, then those souls are lost and your new current soul count is what you have. So getting “scared out of pushing forward” is a common thing.

The game is multiplayer, but in the sense that you see wispy apparitions running around doing about the same thing you are doing (only 1 at a time, it’s definitely not annoying) so you can kinda watch them and see where they go and how they move around the level.  You can also leave stock notes to each other.  Like “watch out ahead!” and stuff like that.  You can also team up and PVP in to other worlds and kill, but I haven’t done those yet.

Even though it’s really tough, I really dig it.  It’s a real challenge.  I feel bad that I restarted as a Royal… seems a little like giving up, but it’s really fun now.  I had been reading online a little, but I gotta stop that… the exploration and the dying over and over is all part of the fun

so I got Tattooine and Jedi Academy dlc’s for Force Unleashed together for about $20.. I played through both of them in about as much time as it took to install them.  They were fun and interesting, but there really just needs to be a part 2.  Which there is… coming out this year!

What’s a jip is that the force unleashed ultimate sith edition has both the Tattooine and Jedi Academy campains AND another campain that takes place on Hoth in the parallel universe where Starkiller kills Darth Vader and basically does all his stuff… so I’m kinda out the $20 and not gonna spend another $30 or $40 just for a 1 hr expansion level to kill Luke… I probably just need to find a youtube video

also, before all this, I got up to the Emperor and was getting in to the swing of how to kill him.. so then he knocks me off the platform outside the blue force field, then I die finally and I start fighting Vader.. gah… so I killed Vader just because, again, and then it start me back in the tie fighter factory… so I didn’t get to beat him again

oh well… anway.. I think I’m totally done with the game now and will move on to something else… it’s still a blast.. one of the best I’ve played.. it’s a big deal to replay a game and still have fun… I think that’s the only game I have that I really want to replay.

I went through on the game Sith Lord difficulty since it had trophies now.. this time dark side… the gear you get is pretty cool looking.. even though the dark side ending leaves you feeling “man, I really should have gone the other way” … and official cannon says Starkiller did go light side … so I’ll probably beat it, again, the light side way and get the trophies with my dark side costume… anyway.. that felt fast.. it was like 10 days playing some nights and mornings.

there are some expansions for it… I might have to get those…

Matt and Kat had their baby girl today… Gillian Ann Mossie.. 8 pounds somethin and black hair.