News:

I played some more Bulletstorm today. I did some Echo challenges without any progress. Then Mark and I played the online multiplayer survival mode called Anarchy. You have to score a certain number of points to get to the next wave. The best way to do that is co-operative kills. There’s a whole new set of skillshots centered on co-op. It was pretty fun for a while. Each level has a variety of unique environmental hazards too that are a lot of fun. After a while, it got a bit repetitive though, so I went back to achievement hunting.

I was determined to get the last few skillshots for the “all skillshots” achievement. I had three secret ones and two general ones. I looked up the secret ones because I didn’t want to play the entire game again trying to guess at what I’d missed. They were pretty easy ones that by some freak chance I didn’t get in my previous two runs of the game. The last two general skillshots were easy too. That achievement being done (and I was very satisfied with myself), I started to look for the last four Electro Fly swarms I needed. Luckily the game tells you what collectibles you have on each level, so I was able to find them pretty quickly. I played all this campaign stuff on normal difficulty, and once the skillshot achievement was over, I used only the pistol to snap off tons of quick headshots. "Bam, bam, bam, SPLAT!" So satisfying. 

Memory:

I’m thinking about Toy Commander for the Dreamcast. Out in 1999, this was a pretty unique game where you control real toys in rooms of a house. The story was that Andy had gotten some army toys as a gift and he favored them above all his other toys. Well the other toys didn’t like it and tried to get rid of them. Your task as the player was to use the army toys to fight the old toys. I remember flying toy planes around a kids room in this game. Mark and I played the multiplayer a little bit but the controls weren’t perfect, so we stopped. I like the idea of controlling toys in a game. I always wanted those Army Men games to be good, but they rarely were. The toys-to-life genre is similar but the settings aren’t real world places like in Toy Commander. Chibi-Robo is a more similar game in terms of setting.

Photo:

Team water from Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure.

Gill Grunt, Wham-Shell, Zap, Slam Bam

Gill Grunt is a Gillman (half fish, half man). He joined the military in search of adventure. One day he came across a mermaid at a lagoon in the clouds. He told her he’d return after his tour of duty. When he did, he found out pirates had kidnapped her. Now he fights evil and searches for his lost mermaid.

Wham-Shell is a crab. He was king of an underwater kingdom that was attacked by oil drilling trolls. With his trusty mace, a powerful heirloom of the kings of his kingdom, he defeated the trolls and now fights to prevent such events from happening again.

Zap is a water dragon. He was of a royal family of water dragons but was washed away by a riptide to another sea where he was brought up by electric eels. He is a very fast swimmer and uses electricity for his attacks.

Slam Bam is a Yeti. He used to live alone on a glacier. There he ice surfed and made ice sculptors in peace. Then Kaos destroyed the glacier, leaving him stranded on a floating iceberg. He came to Eon’s island and was made a Skylander, turning his ice skills into weapons to defend all Skylands from evil.