requiescated in pace

Ahhh, what a nice lie down. Or chained up.

So over the past couple of months a few things have happened.

It's much colder here. Singlet, t-shirt. work shirt, vest and jacket are needed for the walk to and from work.

Looks like we've found a place to move into. It's about 400m from where I'm currently living and is the perfect location, location, location. Two lines are within 5 minutes walk. And it is big enough that we'll be able to put a visitor or two somewhere.

Have organized this year's Hokkaido ski trip.

Have become addicted to Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror & Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow. Before those 2 games it was Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. This would be the big black hole of time sucking. A long time ago I complained about GTA. But at the time I was new to gaming and didn't really understand how to play the game. Once you get into it it is really amazing how much game can be put onto one UMD.

The two Syphon Filter games are just great. The controls are perfect. Syphon Filter is a "stealth action" series. "Stealth action" means (at least to me) that sometimes you need stealth to complete your goals, and sometimes action. When you first play the story through you are limited to the weapons that are available in the story. But once the story has been finished the game opens up Mission Mode, where you can return to any episode in the story to replay it. Replaying it allows you to achieve different goals that the game sets such as "Can you kill 10 terrorists using just a knife?" "Can you kill 6 terrorists with stealth?" "Can you complete this level in under 2:25?" By achieving these goals new weapons and abilities are opened up for use at anytime in any episode.

I found the episodes with stealth objectives really challenging. They were like action puzzles, as when there were multiple terrorists in an area there was often some trick in how to set them up so that each one could be killed without any of the others realizing it. Sometimes you had to make a noise to lure one away, or to turn and face them all in the same direction and so leave a blind spot. Other times the guards were patrolling and there was a small window of opportunity to kill a guard otherwise another would return and discover something was wrong.

Spoiler for last bonus level of Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
I really loved this mission, which was an assassination of a terrorist using a sniper rifle. There were three guards outside and the target arguing inside with another terrorist. The 3 guards was one of the time critical problems where there was one guard patrolling between the other two and they had to be killed quickly and in a specific order. But the two terrorists arguing had me stumped. It seemed impossible. Once one was shot, the other was alerted and would run away. Finally I realized that during the argument one terrorist walks behind the other and for a second their heads overlapped. Both had to be shot with the one bullet! The puzzle was so simple yet I thought it was genius.
End of spoiler


Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror is the first game I've completed 100%. That was a pretty satisfying achievement for a game neophyte like myself. And now I've more than 80% completed Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to complete it 100%, too. But the other things that are great about these titles is that they both have Internet play, so I'm really starting to lose time to that. It's kind of fun to put on the headset and run around in a deathmatch with others from all over the world. These games have really been value for money.