*most new stuff explained in the vids that were uploaded recently*

- It may be possible to break out of any cutscene in the game, even those that follow a room transition. However, for you to be able to access menu before the cutscene begins, it demands lag or something else which might be completely random… I have positive experience on 1 cutscene that began after room transition, the one in which Travis lands to the floor below with Alessa in his arms.

- I’ve found a strange glitch (using the tesla rifle, maybe possible with any firearm) with which you can “change” your idle stance to look like the weapon stance. You can’t attack (you just examine things with X instead of attacking), and just moving ends the glitch. This game has so many mysterious things like this… loose ends of sort.

- Once, before the cutscene after which Travis gets the Silent Hill map, the screen flashed and showed Travis standing at the map (like he does at the end of the scene.) During the scene Travis slided a short way while still laying on his back (did I move him?). Wonder what caused this to happen. Many unique things with each cutscene, it seems. Things that can’t be anticipated.

- Game crashes. Aaargh!

EDIT:

- just remembered, I once got this strange menu glitch (at Butcher) in which the fade-out effect leading to menu was absent. The menu graphics became visible sooner than usual, with no data loaded regarding items, etc. in addition to the black fade-in starting abruptly (after that the items always became loaded.) (The same fade-in effect was glitched in some full screen special images too, like reading memos.) The small picture at the lower left part of the screen didn’t show actual gameplay, but the menu itself. This glitch didn’t end until I shut off the game (yes, even loading another game didn’t stop it.) If you’re interested in seeing this one in action, there’s a small clip of it in the cutscene break-outs pt. 3.

I’ve done a total of three healadins on hardcore Diablo II. I enjoy the build because of its unorthodox nature, not to mention it is generally extremely strong against undead. My first two focused on Holy Bolt + healing aura (either Cleansing or Meditation with Prayer maxed, Salvation and misc. auras on switch) and a healing A2 merc. First one got to hell (where I never proceeded onward thanks to the lack of decent parties), second to NM end. Neither died in battle or via PK as of yet, but technically they’re as good as retired already.

My third healer was a more experimental build. It was melee-oriented, using Charge as main attack. Not much Holy Bolt use or investment. All healing, if needed, was done using Cleansing (salvation, vigor, etc. on switch). Main weapon was Insight (lvl req 27), which effectively doubles prayer bonus. +59 healing aura to everyone, plus the benefit of a healing merc (who brought the total figure closer to +65 healing.) Another bonus with this build is that Meditation goes very well with Charge (compensating for that big mana cost.) I just love playing like this. Almost hard to return doing builds that have no regen healing at all (which is the norm, sadly.) Unfortunately even +65 regen healing starts to get somewhat lacking at mid-way of Nightmare, but before that, you and your party are kept very safe. With twinking you could get almost +200 total regen healing aura, which sounds completely ridiculous… (currently at NM end, but might not continue becuse hell is like it is…)

It’s a build that is a different one and also very cool to play. I might do a new one in near-future.

Quite the rough jewel. If it is a jewel at all. Lots of glitches. INdeed. Maybe the useful ones come next.

I find it strangely suiting that this one has almost similar weapon stance glitch Silent Hill 1 does. It is a closely knit prequel after all… the same spirit (or attempt at it, at least).

EDIT: I’m on new game+ now, enjoying the benefits of cutscene break-outs.

1. CoO glitch FAQ has been uploaded at GameFAQs.
2. I’m year older since last september.
3. New Kotinäky was published on Jamendo.
4. Got an electric guitar. Work on doom metal projects can continue.
5. I began a new Silent Hill 4 speedrun, which strives for perfection, and I utilize the newfound continue abuse movement trick in it. It might take a while ’til it’s finished, since I’m not feeling particularly motivated. I saved before picking up the Doll Key (because saving here allows for a new route with continue movement abuse) with time of 00:20 (2 mins faster than respective savepoint of the other test run.)
6. I’m attempting to TAS Game Boy Colour’s Xena. I’ve found loads of interesting glitches for it. However, like with the above, my motivation is currently on music and not games.

…with the final time of 55:36. As I said earlier, I was aiming for less than two minutes of mistakes. I’m not sure if I succedeed in that goal, though. Some parts could’ve been better (though some parts went really well). 52:XX might be possible if you luck manipulated until your socks fell off.

A playlist of the vids (note: the newest ones are uploaded in a few days)

One thing which inspired me to continue was a new capturing program. It is Virtualdub. I’m still struggling with capturing quality settings, but so far it’s been more reliable than Pinnacle Studios (which I previously used).

I’m trying to find more glitches of this game, to help with speedruns and other mess-abouts. The biggest thing I’ve found thus far is the weapon charge trick, with is basically the realization that accumulated charge can be used from any weapon to any weapon. You can speed up high-level charges many seconds with this, by first gathering charge with (f.e.) paper-cutting knife, then switching over to a heavy weapon, keeping the full charge. Most useful on higher difficulties…

I’ve devised some strats for a speedrun, and I’m showcasing them with a test speedrun (easy-mode, new game). I’ve recorded the first half, up to the end of apartment world, and the save time is 00:22. The second half will undoubtetly be more interesting than the first, both because of the more complex item management and the reckless Eileen strategies that are possible on easy-mode. I’ll record that half when I got the energy, maybe in a week or so.

By the way, I earlier mentioned about 3 new kills I am able to reduce from the kill count (for worst possible stars). The method is: you can run through a Toadstool whilst recovering from a hit, meaning that 1 innocent life can be spared at each mandatory Toadstool spot where Eileen is not with you. Unfortunately, if Conquerer’s FAQ is correct, I would have to find 2 kills to prevent in order to ever get a score of 0.8…

So, during my 17 kills run with every other stat at its potential worst (according to Conquerer), I got 1 whole star. This was a lot more than I expected, since according to the calculations, I should’ve gotten only 0.4. In any case, I was not discouraged, and soon found a way to reduce my score even further.

In my earlier post I speculated whether other characters’ kills add to the total Enemies Defeated-count, but I know now they don’t. I was able to kill all the Toadstools at Water Prison II’s sub-levels by pushing Eileen into them, reducing kill count by 7. Now I was the proud owner of a 0.9 star ranking! However, it seems at least one more worst star run is in order, since I found a way to reduce the kill count by 3 more…

On another note, I did a practise speedrun on easy for this game, with the final time of 1:03:05. Not too shabby!

I’ve seen a lot of requesting for 10-stars runs for any of the Silent Hills, but hey, why not for the “worst possible” star runs? According to Conquerer’s Silent Hill 4 FAQ, the star requirement for 0.2 stars would be…

Difficulty: Easy
Play time: Over 11 hours 30 minutes
Saves: 10
Continues: 10
Enemies Defeated: 1 star per 6 enemies
Memos found: 32/52 or less
Ending: doesn’t matter
Freebies: 0.2 stars

*some spoilers follow*

In Silent Hill’s logic, worst possible stars equals the worst possible performance. The fabled Received of Wisdom is just a scared simpleton who hates to read memos and runs away from everything, still fumbling enough to manage to get himself killed 10+ times during the course of the plot. Of course, the only fitting end for such a comedically awful protagonist is the 21 Sacraments, in which the bad guy wins, and Receiver of Wisdom is painfully ground to pieces.

…then again, Silent Hill’s logic isn’t perfect, and the ranking system IS a bit arbitrary in this game. Why would the game reward Henry for reading the memos, if being the Receiver of Wisdom is not a good thing? Maybe the game is actually on Walter’s side, and the players are further persuaded to read the memos like good little sacrificial lambs, and not exorcise the hauntings, and let Eileen get ground up, by making the good endings so non-descript as they are. Hey, this might actually be true…

Regardless, getting that low score would be a genuinely legendary feat. In my calculations, 0.2 is impossible because of mandatory enemies you have to kill – at least about 17 of ‘em. If Conquerer’s data is correct, we would have to reduce kill count by 6 to get an even worse score, and that I can’t see happening unless some new major glitch is found. All other stats are decently easy to mess up, though for the perfectionists Memos is something else to be careful with – I believe there are only 10 memos necessary to pass the game.

For the recond, I messed up my “practice run” because of a strange phenomena I’ve since attributed to One Truth. When I finished my game, all of a sudden the rank showed I got 28 kills, completely out of the blue! I thought what could’ve possible gone wrong, and then remembered that when fighting One Truth, I hit almost every of the wallmen once with an axe. They didn’t die, but they almost certainly counted as kills this way. So this is something to wary. In my new run I found One Truth on first try (here is a good place to utilize those Continues, you know), and in the end the kill count was only 17.

Another thing I’m not sure of is if Walter’s kills add to the Enemies Defeated-count. Maybe it’s my paranoia from God of War II, in which kills made by anyone are listed as Kratos’ kills… In any case, in my new run I always left the area and returned whenever Walter made his trademark laugh. I think one innocent Hummer may’ve died even after this precaution.

After my new run is complete, I’ll post the results here.

Out of the first four undoubtetly the worst. The designing has so many loose ends and rough edges it can’t be anything else but a result of a rushed schedule. They could’ve done more with the concept of a “room”, and from gameplay standpoint, the lack of a 3D-control is very noticeable…

Why am I bringing up something like this right now? I began re-playing the game, assessing challenge run possibilities. I think a no-running, pacifist HARD-mode run would work really fine with this game too, have to keep it in mind for the future. More info on that time.

(I’m reluctant to begin new gaming projects right now thanks to my SH3 run still being in the middle of completion. And there’s no telling when I’ll get back to doing it…)

Diablo II, a game I’ve been playing on and off for SUCH a long time. Recently I picked it up again to finish up some business which still bugged me, such as certain experimental character builds.

My style of playing for this period is quick, fair and detached from material possessions: it is done on Europe HC ladder, magic finding and leveling is kept to a minimum and character deaths (which I actively try to avoid, but you know those wacky PKs) are considered mostly inconsequential, with no useless moping between the characters which are still in assembly line. An efficient approach – and as such I hopefully get this game out of my system again less than a month from now.

In the past I did my share of grinding and trading just to get the right balance of equipment… These days I’ve left it all behind, and now I’m only interested in seeing how a build X functions in an untwinked environment. It’s just a shame that higher difficulties count on the player having a LOT more than what you can get by playing the game naturally… Yeah, I suppose it’s a strange thing, hearing a plead for playing the game naturally from someone who glitches games and does fucked-up challenge runs for a hobby, but it’s all quite reasonably explainable. Repetitively killing super uniques for hours just to get great equipment is not what constitutes as (my idea of) stimulating gaming, nor is skipping large portions of the game if experimenting with different conditions is the single most interesting in that game. That’s as well as I can put it.

Needless to say, normal-mode is the mode I consider the true part of the game. It’s the one you can finish even with less-than-optimal or “avant-garde” builds. Also, on higher difficulties the amount of player killers torpedoes up substantially… eventually making it impossible to make a friggin’ party at Hell. At least, a party that does not consist of backstabbers and charlatans!

Here are some builds I’ve made in my about two weeks of semi-intensive playing. I might write more elaborate descriptions in the future if I feel like there’s something to note.

+ healadin Good_Influence (currently lv. 67 and stuck on Hell because a lack of party)

+ summoner druid Pure_Ture (lv. 37 R.I.P.), concentrating on arctic blast for support (instead of the rest of wind-skills). Soon realized that AB is inadequate for support purposes. Then a PK came and put him out of commission because he was a sad sight.

+ summoner druid PureTure_Reborn (lv. 33), a wind druid with summon support. Works better, but wind skills just plain suck, other than Cyclone Armor. Tornados won’t hit for shit! It’s like sometimes when you try to piss and the piss flies everywhere except where it’s supposed to. Not sure if I’m interested in pursuing him over to NM. The most interesting thing about him is that I’ve found a total of 6 fcr rings/amus on the course of normal playing, one rare… something complete unseen in the past. But hey, those rings came to a good use too.

+ holy freeze/zealadin Naked_Pala (lv. ~23 R.I.P.), true to his namesake and wore no equipment. A challenge build at its finest. Too bad paladin’s fist attack sucks, holy freeze is not 100% reliable for protection and your resists are worse than really fucking bad. Died at act 3 to an Fetish Shaman who used inferno. His naked flesh couldn’t take it. (BTW: kept his merc naked too.)

+ kickassin Naked_Assa (lv. 5, retired). An interesting discovery which prompted me to try this build was the fact that 1, claw specials could be done using the fist and 2, Assa’s fist is a LOT faster than claw! Unfortunately the novelty of naked characters was worn off at mid-way of act 1 and instead I wanted to try a clothed variation of this build.

+ kickassin WorkMyAssOff (lv. 14). Not much to say of her. Before the nuke-kick Dragon Tail there’s not too much I can do. I prefer to use claws at this stage because of the naturally nice damage of claws. Maybe an update is reserved for the future?

+ curse/poison necro Unusual_Man (lv. 21). Learned that it’s not worth it to put 1 point to each curse. Not feeling motivated to continue with this char.

+ bone/dim vision necro nonetheless (lv. 23). Dim Vision in fun, bone shots are a bit weak and not very interesting either. Interestingly, found unique buckler from Den of Evil. Probably going to continue this char eventually.

All for now. Expect an update especially on my fist/kickassin, because she’s the most unique of all the characters at this point. (seriously, how can the fist be so fast?)