So I finished up Tenchu Z last weekend. Here is my kind of “final review” of the game. Out of the gates I didn’t really like the game due to the fact that I didn’t “get” the controls. I think I explained that before. After spending some quality time I “got it” and started to enjoy the game. There are about 45 or 50 missions. The missions are either going to be something along the lines of. “Kill this guy”, “get all these bombs”, “get across this bridge but don’t let anyone see you”, or my personal favorite “Kill everyone”. There are about 10 different maps and they mix it up by having the missions either be at night or durring the day. Day missions suck. But when you’re a mad ninja like I am, it really dosn’t matter. ok so, there are a couple different “ninjas” you can be, these are all based off of how you spend your attributes. Its pretty cut and dry for attributes “Health”, “Strength”, and “Agility”. In the little menu where you mess with attributes there are these slider bars. You have a certian total that each can have, however you can up the attributes from one section by removing points from another. The reason you would want to do this is that there is a skills section. In that section you can only get certian skills if your attributes are up to a certian level. So if there is some stealthy ninja skill you want to get you might have to reduce the attribute points in strength or health so you can get it.

Back to the ninjas you can be. Well there is the one that I picked which is the “stealth ninja”. I dumped all my points into agility. I had lots of fun with this. So think of Sam Fisher, or something along those lines, only you’re a ninja. Ok we on the same page? Good. As a stealth ninja you want to keep quiet (granted). If you run around you make noise, early on in the game you’ll spend a lot of time crouched and rolling around. That makes no sound and it gets you around super quick. Well as time goes on your atributes get bumped up and these awesome abilities like “feet” get opened up. Feet allows you to run and you don’t make any sound. So when you pull your sword out to get your ninja on, normally it effects if people can see you because swords are shiny. Well you can get this sword called the “black sword” that dosn’t effect your stealth at all. In the end what happens is that you just become this super stealthy ninja badass. In the beginning of the game I was real cautious about killing guys. Then once I got all those cool ninja abilities I would just run around from guy to guy and kill them super quick. I didn’t care if anyone saw me or was alerted because I had these items that could make me vanish all cool ninja style, or I could hit them with a poison dart.

After finishing up the game I suppose that my only criticism was that once you really learned their “formula” for killing people the game got pretty easy. All the enemies have a certian way they path, eventually they’ll stop and turn around at which point you can grab them from behind and pull them off into some dark corner to kill them. There is an skill called “ears” which effectively the ninja places their head on the ground and listens. When you do that the map of the level pops up and any movement in a certian range around your ninja shows up as a blip. you can watch how they’re walking and when they stop. Pretty much at that point, I don’t care who you are in the level or where you’re at, I could find you and kill you pretty quick and your stupid “guard” friends wouldn’t know. At the end of the day, I did enjoy it. I liked being able to get my ninja on. I really liked killing other ninjas, stupid loud fucks. I mean dude…you’re a ninja…how about we try to be a little bit stealthy. Just because you’re wearing the ninja suit dosn’t mean that you need to stomp around when you’re walking. See that’s the kind of shit that gets you killed.

In other news: Pokemon is AWESOME! For the record, I’m not currently able to “trade with myself” as I let a friend of mine borrow my other DS so he could start playing pokemanz. However, If I did still have said DS I would be…but I’d need to buy pearl first. For now, I’m going to start going back through and playing the original games so that I can get the sweet sweet pokemanz that are waiting to be captured by me so that they can be moved into my Living Pokedex! I’m not far but I want to say that I’m moving pretty close to “mad man” status with this little venture of mine…

Ok so, yeah, I’m still way into Teh Pokemanz. Now that I can take my Penguin all the way through the Elite 4, money is not an issue, so I’m currently hunting down rare pokemanz while also transfering pokemonz from my GBA games. I’m pretty much on a hunt for any GBA games (Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, Fire Red, Leaf Green) that people have that they don’t ever plan on playing again. See, I want to give your pokemon a new home! A home where there are things there that they’ll like. I have lots of money and I’ll also make sure to give them a virus, which sounds bad but its really a positive thing…like how the Harkonen would use heart plugs and they liked having them…yeah, that’s the same thing with the virus. If you’re in my game….you’re getting the virus! So as I was saying. If you should happen to have any of the carts for the previous GBA games I’d love to figure out a way for you to send them to me so I can purge cleanse transfer them over to my game…The whole reason is that I must actually catch them all. This is your way of helping me catch them all. There are a number of rares that I don’t have that I’d also like to get my hands on…well I suppose that goes without saying considering the previous comment about needing to catch them all. So ok…You and the Capn’ make it happen! And by “happen” I mean you send me pokemon games and I take your stuff.

So when I’m not playing Pokemon (and actually I’ve been known to play both games at the same time) I’ve been playing Tenchu Z. The reviews for the game have been pretty shitty from what I understand of the situation, but lemme tell you, its really fun. In the beginning I didn’t really “get” the controls but then my buddy Steve helped me out with it. He walked me through the tutorial and effectively pointed out all the errors of my ways. Which were that I was trying to play the game not as a ninja but more like a asshole who thought he was a ninja. The whole point about being a ninja is stealth…there are only a couple reasons you’d pull out your sword to attack a guy. If you’re doing the stealth thing you grab them from behind, pull them into some dark corner and then you kill them. If they don’t know you’re there…you’re teh win! Its very much like some of that “Sam Fisher type shit” only, you’re a ninja. If you have the game and would like me to show you the proverbial ropes, just send me message thing on XBL and we can get down.

The Transformers movie is fucking AWESOME! People who pick it apart for whatever reason are idiots (and if you’re a friend of mine or otherwise and you’re one of those people…yes you’re an idiot). If you’ve not seen it, go see it, if you know nothing about Transformers, go see it….listen its widely known that not unlike “the freaks” when its late at night I tend to be like them…and I have ADHD, and I’m in the highest 98% for people who have it, so yeah…two and a half hour film that was balls to the wall awesome difinately kept my attention….twice! I want to go see it again! Lets all go see it together!…like a real family for once.