152 insights into my soul

ME blather- Got the gunslinger banner today, so the last actual weapon challenge left is the sniper one. Hey, I saved the best for last. I'm kinda cheating though, I'm using the Juggernaut in London vs Cerberus to get this one to pop. I love the Infiltrators, but they are just way too flimsy to complete the sniper rifle challenge solo. It would take way too long if I tried to complete the challenge with one of them. With the juggernaut, they can't really do anything to me.

Like I said last post, did the Widow, and completed the Collector Sniper Rifle. Now I'm doing it in descending order of which ones already had points towards the challenge in them- so, currently working on the Black Widow, followed by the Valiant, then the Mantis. At that point, I guess its descending power order- Viper, Raptor, and finally Indra.

Oh, another reason I'll never get best of the best- one of the challenge is N7 mastery, which is promoting classes 60 times. Which, eff that. I've promoted the Adept once and the Engineer twice now. I was able to max the Adept back up, and I foolishly promoted the engineer again after I got it back up. Never again! Its like, "ooh, my N7 ranking goes up, and I get extra assets in single player". I could give a rat's ass about the N7 ranking, and I'm already at the point where I have enough assets to easily fulfill all of the ending requirements in single player.

Its like, I've reached level 20, why the hell would I want to knock myself back down to level one and be all weak again?! Some people are all, "Oh, what about challenge?!" Eff challenge, I just like killing things. I like being powerful. Its why I love the DW/SW/WO games- its just cutting through swaths of bad guys and feeling like a war god. And why AC3 is my favorite, because you basically have to be a gimp to die from a fight in that game. You're well nigh unstoppable in that one. Why would I want to play a game where I'm weak?! That's totally retarded, video games are escapist fantasy, anyone who's all, "Oh, I like things to be so hard!" is a cocky little shit.

So the DW/SW popularity poll I posted about yesterday inspired me to make some lists of my own. I don't think I could end up doing a top 10 DW characters list, because it would end up being mostly Wei, so to be fair, I'll do a top 5 in each faction:

Wei
1) Xu Huang- I've always loved his character design, I guess its the hood, and he's a bad-ass to boot.
2)Xiahou Dun- he just oozes bad-assedness. I've always been a fan of his character design, but I especially love the move to the long coat in DW6/7.
3) Wang Yi- by far the baddest ass chick in the DW series.
4) Zhang Liao- Another bad-ass. Am I sensing a theme here? Anyhoo, his halberd moveset in the previous games was great, but he really shines with the twin axes now.
5) Cao Pi- by far the most awesome of the "leaders". I love his arrogant attitude, and I've always loved his twin sword move set.

(Actually I just like the Wei too much, so I'll do top 10)

6) Jia Xu- He's just such a great character design, I like the Arabian/Ninja look and the assassin feel to him. (I especially love his Assassin's Creed DLC costume in DW7 as well)
7) Zhang He- He's got speed and style, and I love his desire to add a tinge of grace and beauty to the slaughter of opponents.
8) Dian Wei- This guy is just a beast!
9) Zhen Ji- Cao Pi's better half, making them the best couple in both series. She's hot and I love her attitude, she and Cao Pi suit each other.
10) Cao Ren- I just love his dwarven warrior feel.

Wu:
1) Zhou Tai- Its a dude in black and red armor who uses a katana in the iai-jutsu style, you would expect someone else as number one?
2) Gan Ning- If there was no Zhou Tai, he'd obviously be the baddest ass of the Wu. He just has an awesome look and personality.
3) Lu Xun- He's young, but I've always like his character design and his moveset. Especially what they did with it in WO3.
4) Ling Tong- Gan Ning's frenemy/partner in crime. Both are great warriors in their own right, but together they're even more awesome.
5) Ding Feng- I love his look, his mix of wrestling and throwing bombs moveset is fun as hell, and he warrior poet personality is great.

Shu:
1) (tie) Ma Chao and Zhao Yun- I struggled over which one to put over the other, but I like them both too much. They both have great designs and movesets, and by far my favorite Shu to play.
2) Guan Ping- The epitome of the young warrior seeking to prove himself and live up to the lofty standards set up by his dad. Alas, his DW7 moveset isn't as great as his original one.
3) Wei Yan- I love the whole beastman thing and his almost berserker fighting style is great!
4) Yue Ying- I'm not a fan of the changes they've made with her since DW6. But thankfully, her old armored costume is available, and she's back to using her scythe in WO3.
5) Xing Cai- Great character design, and I always like her and Guan Ping as the children of two of Shu's previous bad-assses, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.

Jin/Other:- (There just weren't enough in either faction to make a decent top 5, so I combined them)
1) Lu Bu- The baddest of the bad.
2) Zhong Hui- I just love his design and totally arrogant personality.
3) Wang Yuanji- The hottest of the DW girls, and a bad-ass with the throwing knives.
4) Xiahou Ba- The armored knight thing he has going is great. And his special in WO3, the super speed boost is just too awesome.
5) Diao Chan- The hottest DW girl until Wang Yuanji showed up.

Samurai Warriors:

1) Kojiro Sasaki- I love everything about this guy, his character design, his moves, his personality. He's the best swordsman after Musashi, but revels in the killing.
2) Mitsuhide Akechi- He's just the epitome of the traditional bad-ass samurai. Again, great looking design, and his moveset is phenomenal.
3) Muneshige Tachibana- the best addition from SW3. I love the heroic knight thing he has going, and his moveset is great!
4) Ginchiyo Tachibana- Muneshige's wife, and the baddest ass chick in SW, and the baddest in either series until Wang Yi came along. Like her husband, she has a great all-around moveset.
5) Keiji Maeda- The wild warrior of SW, he just oozes bad-assedness.
6) Kotaro Fuma- I just love his look, its so demonic and sinister.
7) Tadakatsu Honda- The baddest of the bad in Japan.
8) Toshiie Maeda- He uses two short spears and a serrated katana, his moveset looks awesome. Like Guan Ping, he's the epitome of the young warrior seeking to make a name for himself.
9) Kiyomasa Kato- He just looks cool, and he uses a giant scythe!
10) Masamune Date- Great design, and his personality is hilariously awesome. Plus, he uses dual pistols!

As long as I'm making lists, here's my top 5 hottest chyx from the series, in my favorite outfits of theirs: ( under the cut )

( DW7/WO blather, under the cut )

TV commentary:

Game of Thrones- Interesting season finale. ( spoiler cut )

So, cookout at work today. Well, it wasn't really a cookout since we couldn't have it outdoors at the place we usually have it. Instead, it was in the Student Success Center. Not sure how they cooked all the hot dogs and hamburgers, but they did. Which was good, because I was terribly vexed when they were talking about the cookout not being a cookout, because I wanted my burgers and hot dogs. I usually get two cheeseburgers and two hot dogs at these things, but I'm getting old, I couldn't finish my second hamburger.

Given I stuffed myself at lunch, I only had a beef taco and an order of dumplings when I hit Hankook for dinner with the usual suspects. Since clevemire hates aioli, well, anything mayo like, he wasn't using the cup that came with his sweet potato fries, so I got to use it to dip my dumplings in. Hey, it works!

Anyways, with the lack of anything on the telly right now, decided to finally check out Luther on Netflix. Pretty good show. And his frenemy, Alice Morgan is strangely hott. She's a little like Emma Stone's cute, older, totally psychotic English sister. You know, I shouldn't find crazy girls so attractive, but I do.

Also decided to try and kill time by finally maxing out everyone in DW7:XL. All I have left to max out is Yuan Shao, Meng Huo, Zhou Yu, and Huang Gai. (weird that Zhou Yu hasn't been maxed yet, I would actually rank him higher than some of the other Wu I have maxed out, I'm surprised I hadn't played him more) Well, that and get all the devotion lines for all of Wu. Of course, even if I do that, I'll still be missing some trophies- a couple of the arena ones, and the get all nightmare weapons/get all weapons trophies. I'm still not sure if I'll get the latter two, because I still haven't tried tackling getting the nightmare level brush again. It just seems like too much effort compared to the reward.

What the frick, how did I not know that Tom Friendly was Roscoe in the Dukes of Hazzard movie? Do I even watch TV and movies?! In my defense, I haven't seen the movie in a long time. I'm still skeptical James Roday was the one race car driver dude. (I mean, obviously, he was, but I'll believe it when I see it!) The actress who plays the Katie chick is like my dream girl in real life- she's cute, she was on one of my favorite teen dramas (the OC), she's an avid gamer/geek, and she watches Glee as well as several other of the same shows. Those are all good qualities! I mean, if she was a gun enthusiast, liked karaoke/rock banding, and not a vegetarian/vegan to boot (not that I have a problem with such people, but it would make it a pain in the ass to find a place where we could eat, and I likes to eat), she'd be perfect.

So, apparently my dream girl is a cute geek girl who likes to eat meat, shoot guns, play video games (especially Rock Band), and watches the same shows I do (bonus points if she ships the same ships) and likes to sing along to musicals and Glee. I wonder if I put that on the "looking for" section of a dating profile, if I'd find anyone who fit that. Well that, and not go running for the hills when they discover my... proclivities.

Speaking of Glee, AfterEllen posted their Rachel and Quinn's seven best more than friend moments. Those are all good choices, but they forgot the hallway scene in On My Way, which is like their gayest scene ever- Quinn asking Rachel how she looked in the cheerleader outfit when Kurt and Blaine just told her not a few seconds before she looked hott, the whole "you were singing to Finn and only Finn, right?" (how else are people supposed to interpret that question?!), and the look on Quinn's face when she hugs Rachel? If there was any scene on the show that ever made it look like Quinn was secretly pining for Rachel, its that one.

Oh, why the hell did the cable guide say MIOBI was new last night when it wasn't? Since its been almost a year since the last ep, I watched last night's episode for like 15 minutes before I realized it was a repeat!

Hmm, Warriors Orochi 3 is coming out on the 27th. Its only available via download for the PS3, whereas its an actual disk on the 360. Apparently because there's no english dub track, and SCEA won't release games on discs that are not in English.

Its has everyone ever, and for those who were in the latest titles, its their look from DW7:XL and SW3:XL. Which means Zhao Yun, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Xiahou Dun have their DW7:XL movesets. But additionally, it sounds like a couple of other characters are using their weapons from Dynasty Warriors Next (the DW game for the Vita), so Xu Huang has his great axe and Yue Ying has her scythe, which is awesome. And I guess Pang De has a mace instead of the twin axes, and the corpulent Dong Zhou has his bombs. Owel, I actually liked DZ's EX move with the flail though, the nut kick to sitting on them camel clutch style, and doing the camel clutch until he snapped their neck. It was so brutal!

But I guess I have to get it now! 120 characters though, I haven't even maxed out everyone in DW7:XL yet. But I'm close, I can easily do that part before WO3 comes out.

Cool, free cookies from Asian co-op girl! I'm such a dick, I shoulda helped her with the door since her hands were full. But DW beat me to it.

Cool, isabel79 got tickets to see Godspell this Thursday, so I guess I will get to see it over the break, with her and sparkyboy.

Anyways, got tired of pops' new blu ray still sitting in the box, so I figured if I didn't set it up, it wouldn't get done. Moved the old blu ray to my parents' room. Unplugged and moved the old DVD/VCR player out of the way and tucked it away next to the CD/Tape Player/Radio at the bottom of the cabinet since those are both defunct. Then hooked up the new blu ray, plugged it into the ethernet connection for the old blu ray in the cabinet and updated it, since it apparently required one once I plugged it in. In any case, the interface is like that of the PS3, but I guess that makes sense, since they're both Sony.

DW Blather- Finally got around to trying the last two DLC stages, Siege of Mt Jing Dun and Siege of Nianpi. I like them, like Jianye, its just you alone vs the enemy army, so no one to kill steal you. Nianpi is you vs all of Wei, whereas, Mt Jing Dun is you vs all of Wu, which is amusing since the actual battle of Mt Jing Dun didn't involve the Wu at all, it was Shu vs Wei.

AC: B- So, I finally finished up the Davinci war machine missions, so now I have access to parachutes. And as such, was able to complete the last thieves' guild challenge to get La Volpe's bite. I also finished the last of the Romulus lairs, so now I have the Armor and Dagger of Brutus. So I should have the best armor and all the weapons now.

The parachutes are definitely useful, particularly when I'm traversing Rome and I end up at the top of a large cliff drop, no longer do I need to take the long way around or carefully climb down, I can just jump and glide down.

I also finished the Assassins Contracts as well, with 100% sync! Heh, even I've finally learned to leave it to my assassins. One of the last missions is to kill 8 brutes in 30 seconds. Not sure how you're supposed to do that without an arrow storm. My only guess is to toss a smoke bomb and quickly assassinate them all with the hidden blades? Also used it to beat the last mission, where you had to kill 4 recent Papal Guard graduates. 100% sync is to not take any damage at all. Taking on four Papal guards without taking damage? Yeah, right! So after sneaking into the Basilica, all four were in that big courtyard. So just stood on the ledge and arrow stormed 'em. I guess, again, the smoke bomb is my friend, they were in 2 groups of 2, far enough away that I could've smoked bombed the first group, assassinated them while they were stunned, then quickly smoke bombed the other and quickly run up and kill them.

I did get all the feathers, and I believe did all the Cristina memories, given she died in this last one (aw, so sad!) I'm pretty sure I'll need to re-scour the Romulus lairs for some Borgia flags, I know I definitely missed some in the tomb one. But man, some of the ones hidden in the Romulus lairs are just evil! So my godson was watching me play it. Heh, he had mentioned this was a "really hard" mission, and was impressed that I weaved through the crowd without getting detected. Anyways, when it comes to chase the cardinal, he noticed a flag off to the side during the chase. WTF?! How are you supposed to see that. Luckily, at that part, the cardinal was "waiting", and I had already screwed my chance of beating the level in under 8 minutes to get 100% sync, so I went back and got that.

Even more evil, after you kill him, you take a leap of faith out of that room to get to the treasure room. Only, there's a Borgia Flag hidden on a post way below the leap. Again, if you're not paying attention, you could easily miss it! I mean, you can hear the twinkle of something as you exit to the ledge, but still! Since I have all the maps, I'll grab what's shown on there, hopefully I won't have to do much scouring of the lairs and Davinci missions to do.

Back in NYC for the holidays, as usual! Had a slight delay with the flight, but still got to the 'rents by 8pm.

On the flight, finally watched the season finale of Dexter. ( spoiler cut )

Anyways, looks like I was able to transfer my saves onto sparkyboy's PS3, I would have been quite sullen if I was not able to play AC:B or DW7.

DW7 blather- Tried another one of the XL DLC missions. Wow, these are intense! This time, it was Wei vs Shu, commanded by Pang Tong. So you had to rescue a couple of allies, also stopping an ambush or three on Cao Cao and fighting your way to Pang Tong. Its a long and hard (well, not that hard) battle, but the end is in sight, right? Wrong! Then it turns out its a trap and Lu Xun shows up with a crapload of Wu! And now you have to beat both Pang Tong and Lu Xun to beat the board. Its like two battles crammed into one!

AC blather- So I'm a little past the halfway mark in terms of main story. But, I think I have most of Rome renovated- I think I have all but one or two shops, possibly 1 more broken Aquaduct, maybe a random landmark or two. Definitely burned down all the Borgia towers, so I have a full complement of assassins, and all but two are full fledged Assassinos. But those two should be maxed out soon since I can give them a crapload of xp just by having them tag along with the experts.

I will say I'm starting to see the value of these recruits. I like to take everyone on myself, but I finally ran into trouble with the second to last Borgia tower I did. The captain was on horseback and I was worried he was gonna gallop away, but he didn't. We had a running battle a little ways beyond the tower. After taking care of him and the 5 or so guards with him, I thought to myself, I have this! Even though all my assassins were off on assignment, I went in anyways without backup.

So, I walk back to the tower, and there are still guards around, so I figured I should clear them out so they don't interfere with me scaling the tower. I don't know what the hell I did, but I was assailed by a dozen or so guards. Normally, no big deal- that mission where the Frenchies attack Bartolemo's HQ, since I was having trouble disengaging from fighting so I could run and close the damn gates, there were a whole lot of dead bodies at the end of that, with me no worse for wear.

Only this tower was the first time I encountered guys on horseback attacking with crossbows. That was really bad, because their bolts would interrupt my attempts at a kill chain on the non mounted troops, and the fact they were on horseback made it really hard for me to get up to them without taking a bolt (or four!). And even then I couldn't knock them off the horse fast enough before the guards on the ground caught back up to me. Like this would have been the perfect time for an arrow storm, and there were enough enemies there I would've totally gotten the airstrike trophy if I did. Owel. In any case, used the smoke bombs for the first time, which allowed me to quickly take out a few of the brutes, and I ended up fighting for so long, I got one assassin back, so I called him for help, and that got me some relief. Eventually, we managed to kill everyone, though I had some armor damage and went through a bunch of my medicine.

Other idiot moves so far- one, I didn't realize you could explore the rest of Montessori (or whatever the hell the name of the town Desmond and crew are at). I thought all that you did out of the Animus was talk to Shaun, Rebecca, and Lucy and check e-mails. Two, for some reason I idiotically didn't realize that you got the treasure maps for an area from the art shops IN THAT AREA. I was like checking the art shop near me and wondering, "Hmm, why does it only sell the treasure maps for this section of rome?" It took me embarassingly longer than it should have to realize I should check the art shops in other sections to find the treasure maps for that section.

If there is one weird thing I find about this game is the discrepency between the stats of a weapon and the ease of getting it. I mean, the dagger of Brutus is the best dagger, and accordingly, you have to beat all the Romulan lairs to get it. But, the sword of altair is the best sword, with 5 stars in power, speed, and deflect, and all you need to do is complete all the assassin guild challenges, which are far easier to complete than the other guild challenges. And for a while, I was using the spadone, which is a 5/4/4 heavy weapon, which is far better than things you unlock from shop quests or start showing up as you progress the game, and all you need to do is renovate 10 blacksmiths! I mean, since I love weapons anyways, I'm still buying everything, but there's no real benefit to using them other than you want to use a certain weapon type.

Of course, maybe its because I'm not one who tries to go through the story as quickly as possible and leaving the side quest for later. I got caught up in side quests, one because I'm paranoid it might be something that won't be available if I go to far in the story. And two, it may be something that makes me more powerful, and I'm always up for statting up so the main parts are easier. So, maybe they didn't expect me to fulfill all those requirements as early as I did?

But even with all the Borgia towers gone, there are tons of side assignments left- assassination missions, courtesan missions, templar agent missions, Romulan lairs, Da Vinci War Machine missions, I'll be busy with this game for a while.

I will say I have a whole lot more missions I need to redo for 100% sync. Heh, while I don't feel the need to immediately redo things where I accidentally touched the ground, or was seen, or whatever, I do have to immediately redo the missions where it wants you to kill someone a specific way. Like there was a templar agent mission where you had to kill a guy with the hidden blade, only when I was sneaking up on him, I accidentally shoved him off the roof instead (ironic, since I was after him because he was pushing people off rooftops). Or the Leonardo mission where you have to kick that one guy first before killing him, he had a whole lot of guards in front of him. I didn't realize the arrow storm kills everyone on screen, not just a really big clump. So I had to go back into the DNA and immediately redo the missions to "get it right".

And while I could've easily killed The Banker at any point in that mission, since the 100% sync requirement was to kill him while sitting a bench, I made sure I killed him that way. I don't like "ugly" kills, and if I don't do it the way they want, then I'm doing it wrong.

Video game commentary:

DW7:XL- Got the new stage pack- its four 10 star stages, but I only got to try out one in between sessions of AC:B. It was a fun one though. Sun family and the Lus (well, the Wu Lus, Lu Meng and Lu Xun, not Lu Bu) vs scrubs, then Wei, with an interruption by Shu. Man, had I known about these stages beforehand, I wouldn't have wasted all that time struggling to get the "kill 3000 enemies" trophy since it took forever to get those 3000 to actually spawn. But like the vanilla DW7 DLC, 3000 kills is the norm. But I digress, all the Wei officers are there except for Cao Cao and maybe Zhang He (he might be there, but for some reason I can't remember him being there), while Liu Shan interrupts (its not like SW though with a red and yellow group, and everyone can fight anything not their color, Shu was helping Wei) with a few NPCs, and Xing Cai (of course), Jiang Wei, Yue Ying, maybe Ma Dai and Wei Yan. Basically the "later" Shu officers. Its definitely a made up battle though, given the entire Wu family is alive, but with Cao Pi and Liu Shan as the leaders of their factions, it implies its later, but Dian Wei and Xiahou Yuan are still alive as well.

In any case, I surprisingly had a little trouble at the end vs Cao Pi, Zhen Ji, and Zhang Liao, because they actually teamed up properly (and I wasn't using my musou)- Zhen kept doing the first flute charge attack to auto stun me so Cao Pi and Zhang Liao could gang up on me while I was out of it. I applaud the computer for its tactics, and as such, fought the three in fair combat without using my musou. It was a little harder than usual, but I still came out on top.

AC:B- So, I know zarathrustra94 likes the warhammer, but I just have a penchant for blades. Heh, I've been using the two handed sword as my main, since its surprisingly faster than you'd expect. The thing to remember is kill animations don't prevent you from countering, so even though you may in the middle of cleaving into an opponents skull, you can still counter his ally trying to attack you. But anyways, I do still have a knife if I need something quicker anyways.

Also, the crossbow has definitely payed for itself. One of the Copernicus missions, you have to find 6 "executioners" (that kinda pissed me off that they referred to them as that, because my first time through I was looking for guys in like executioner hoods and big axes or something, but they basically look like guards), 3 are on rooftops, and 3 wander the streets. They're basically spread throughout the district, and its kill one target, then the next becomes available and so forth. Anyways, this mission pissed me off so much, because the last guy was a rooftop guy, and I basically chased him across the rooftops for a long while and never caught him. So when I desynched and did it over, all the rooftop guys I had to kill were giving me problems. I wouldn't be fast enough to get to them, and they'd run and I'd never catch up. Finally, decided to whip out the crossbow when they started running. I may not have been fast enough to catch up to them as soon as they started running, but I am fast enough to shoot them down before they get away. And to get 100% sync, you have to do it in 5 minutes?! I mean, even after I figured to use the crossbow to take out the rooftops guys, the guys on the ground are a pain in the ass in a different way. At least the rooftop guys are in the same perch every time. The ground guys are wandering around randomly (it seems) and I burn a lot of time just trying to find them!

I also don't see how I can do the "tomb" Romulus lair within 8 minutes. That place is a friggin maze! Anyways, I do have all the stuff from Leonardo now, so I have the double blades back. I'm also at the part where you can recruit assassins. On the one hand, I don't feel the need for them, I'd like to kill everyone myself, thank you very much (but I will allow them kills when its required to get 100% sync on a mission or to complete Assassin's Guild challenges). On the other, I like the whole dispatching them around Europe on assignments, crunching the numbers to efficiently level them up and wot-not. And hey, some of them are chyx!

In any case, there's no shortage of things to do in this game!

Saw the new Sherlock movie with clevemire today. I thought it was pretty good. I can't seem to remember the first one all that well, so I can't tell you if this was better or worse, but I think its enjoyable enough.

You know, I had no idea there was a new Batman trailer out. So people are complaining all, "They made Catwoman is a 99%-er!" People have been saying what she had in her little speech in the trailer long before 99%-ers were a thing though! Or is the complaint that she does what she does for 99%-er reasons, as opposed to just being a thief? In any case, I thought it was kinda hott. Should be an interesting movie, to say the least.

Cool, from the previews before the previews, apparently "Joyful Noise" comes out next month? Ah can't wait, I was thinking it was supposed to be March or something. But the soundtrack comes out on 1/10, which I shall use the itunes cards I hopefully get for Xmas on. But hopefully I get enough itunes funds to basically pay for my Glee purchases for the rest of the season.

Didn't get to play my games as much as I would have liked to this weekend. I am close to maxing out all of Wei, still have Xiahou Yuan, Zhang He, Cao Ren, Cai Wenji, and Pang De to finish up. I at least got all their "any difficulty" titles, I believe I just have the nightmare level title left for the first two, but it should be easy enough to finish up. And just in time for the new DLC levels on Tuesday. But it doesn't look like the fantasy costume DLC is out yet. I want my Ezio costume for Jia Xu!

Speaking of Ezio, still pretty early in the game, just explored the ancient underground ruins belonging to that cult of Romulus. Kinda annoyed, because I knew I wasn't going to get full synch for that portion (the exploring, not the slaughtering the Romulan cultists who ambush you without getting hit part, that was easy) since I had to figure out how to navigate the ruins on my own. (I was good and decided not to cheat and look it up). But now that I know, I can just go into DNA and replay it, I'm pretty sure I can traverse it in the required 8 minutes. What I'm annoyed about is that there was a chest I missed (luckily I got all the Borgia flags. I think), so am I going to have to replay it thrice? I don't think I can do it within time limit if I have to figure out that last chest. Unless I can revisit the ruins again anytime, I haven't tried.

Got AC: Brotherhood in the mail yesterday, so finally got to try that out. Its pretty awesome. Ezio is a smooth bad-ass. Also, while I was aware of the "real world" stuff, hadn't yet experienced it. Like all I knew about it was Kristen Bell voiced a character. Anyways, I guess between this series and Gossip Girl, it seems she does more voice over work nowadays than actual acting! But yeah, she sounds totes cute here, and I like the little flirty thing she and Desmond have going on.

Progressed far enough to unlock virtual training, so I could get some practice in. That's one good thing about the Desmond sequences, its good practice for the parkour stuff with less pressure. I've definitely gotten less gimpy moving around. But yeah, got some short kill streak training in to get used to the combat, particularly practicing the chain killing. So, once you kill a guy, quickly move the directional stick towards the closest guy and hit square to do an immediate kill move, and so forth. If someone swings at you to interrupt your streak, quickly do R1+attack to counter, which you can do even if you're in the middle of a kill animation on some other guy. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now that I know, did way better than my first run on Saturday. I was aiming for at least a 10 kill chain, so I could get the "serial killer" trophy, but managed to get all the way to 16. So, I'm halfway to my decree that I shall get a 1000 points in short kill streak! Well, halfway in terms of kill streak. Since its your highest kill streak times the number of actual kills, that's only in the mid 200s, point wise.

One thing I know I need to do is practice the double kills to jack the chain up. During your kill chain, when selecting your next victim, HOLD attack instead of just pressing it, then you'll do the kill one guy and toss a knife to kill another, or the cool hidden blade to the neck move, then firing the hidden pistol THROUGH the guy's neck to kill another.

Also, I didn't know you could toss the heavy weapons by holding down the attack button. During the villa invasion sequence, killed the one brute, then picked up his axe and tossed it into the next brute. I think there's some achievement from tossing a certain number of heavy weapons at enemies? Fun!

In DW, got all the nightmare weapons except that damn Auric brush. Not looking forward to that pain in the ass. But it will be sweet to say I was able to do it all by myself. Got all the devotion lines of the Wei, and maybe half of them maxed out with their final titles. In terms of the other factions, did that for Zhong Hui, Xiahou Ba, and Wang Yuanji in Jin, Lu Bu of course from other, Zhou Tai, Gan Ning, Ling Tong and Taishi Ci of Wu, and Ma Chao, Zhuge Liang, Zhao Yun, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Wei Yan. My goal is to at least finish the Wei, Lu Xun from Wu, Huang Zhong (to get all 5 tiger generals maxed), Jiang Wei, Guan Ping, and Xing Cai of Shu, and Diao Chan, and go from there.