Tuesday, January 02, 2007

A miserable pile of secrets. (And half-eaten pork buns.)

Happy New Year, everybody.



I also managed to whup both Dracula's and Death's asses last night in Catlevania: Portrait of Ruin, so hooray for me. That being said, I'm trying to figure out how in the hell to open up the much ballyhooed Sister's Mode that Jeremy Parish was yapping about, which sounds pretty goddamned nifty (it can't be any worse than Dawn of Sorrow's lame "TRACE THE PENTAGRAM OR DIE!"-styled use of the DS stylus. Argh.)

While we're on the subject, am I crazy, or did Portrait of Ruin's Shop Mode make the last quarter of the game a total cake walk (no pun intended)? I didn't even touch the mode until a few days ago, but once I did, I became so utterly flush with cash and rare dry goods that I was able to power my way through the last batch of bosses almost entirely on the strength of whatever cheesecakes, porterhouse steaks and strawberries I had in my possession.

(Now that I think about it, the fact that your vampire-crushing alter-ego regularly stops to chow down on a ridiculous variety of tasty foodstuffs dropped by rotting corpses...well, that may be the coolest, most ridiculous contribution to the Castlevania franchise that Iga-san has made during his decade-long tenure on the veberable series. I mean, c'mon - pausing your fight with death incarnate to gorge yourself on a bucket full of pudding? That's fucking priceless.)