Dead Air: The Terminal
Death Toll: The Boathouse
No Mercy: The Gas Station
Blood Harvest: The Warehouse

Dead Air: The Terminal

This map is pretty easy - you can see the zombies and special infected from far away. I was able to do this with two other friends and a CPU. Three of us had shotguns, and one person grabbed the M-16 (for the specials). First, we all grabbed pipe bombs or molotovs near the bathrooms. Then we stood on top of these newsstands and trash can.
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Dead Air: The Runway
No Mercy: The Generator Room
No Mercy: The Hospital
No Mercy: The Rooftop

Dead Air: The Runway

For this one, grab the M-16 or hunting rifle. This is to take care of the smokers and some of the tanks. This one has little instructions - you want to run behind the rescue plane, up the hill, and jump on a pile of suitcases.
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Here are some sweet spots for some of the maps that helped me get gold. I’ve also included screenshots because sometimes a description doesn’t quite help. Some of the screenshots I’ve also marked some letters on to illustrate the most common places special infected will show up. Green S for smoker, Red H for hunter, Red T for tank, and blue Z for regular zombies.
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As I described previously, you can meet up with your friend across the world and go virtual-clubbing. But wait - what shall you do about your avatar’s clothes? What about your avatar’s hair? Interestingly, most people are emotionally attached to their avatar because it represents them. Take Sheado’s comment “when my pants don’t render fast enough I do feel a tinge of embarassment =D”. I agree with that - I feel my avatar is an extension of me.
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1. Get a JR Pass
Before leaving the country, I had to purchase a JR Pass voucher. The web site explains how much it costs and where to get it. For me, it meant going to my local Mitsuwa and talking to a travel agent. The agent should ask you when and where you plan to go in Japan (for me, it was Kobe and Tokyo, which is about 4 hours of travel in between) to help you determine which pass is better for you (and whether it’s worth it or not). The longer the distance traveled on the train, the more worth it it is to get the pass. I purchased the 14-day pass.

Upon entering the country, I remember I marked “sight-seeing” and “visiting relatives” and got the “temporary visitor” stamp on my passport. The Osaka Kansai airport happens to have a JR station right next to it. I think I went to the information counters in order to exchange the voucher to get the pass. Either way, most people are helpful and will direct you to the correct area. They will ask you when you will be using this pass because it will have an expiration date. After showing my passport, they verified the “temporary visitor” stamp, copied my passport # onto the pass (along with my name), and gave me the pass. Now, whenever you use the pass, you’re supposed to carry your passport with you so they can make sure you are you. They never asked to see my passport however - maybe I looked like a tourist. =)
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I’ve been following this bento blog called AnnaTheRed’s Bento Factory. You should check it out, she’s sooo awesome and detailed - she inspired me to play with food!

Here are my results:

All I can say is, man that takes a lot of work. A lot of the love goes into crafting the details. I’ve never created art from food before, and I’d say from start to finish, this took me about 4 hours. However, I was working non-stop with a clear-cut strategy in place (I drew my plan and wrote it down in steps on the left so I could time things better).
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From left to right, the shapes are balloon, heart (of course!), and birdhouse. And my imagination takes off running! Can you kind of imagine creating a Patapon body from these shapes? Here’s a reminder of what Patapons look like:
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“Kissing RPG” pretty much sums up this game. In the game, your lifelong goal is to kiss the girl of your dreams. After you and your dad move into a new town, you will meet her early on, however, your heart is too fragile due to your lack of kissing experience. So what can you do? You must kiss others to build your reputation and strengthen your heart first, which is basically your lifebar.

In order to pucker up to the townspeople, you must complete a series of tasks specific per person (much like quests),and they will happily reward you with a smooch for your troubles. Talk to these people for hints on how to smooze your way to their lips.

Underground residents are a peculiar group of people that live *gasp!* underground. You can spy on them through cracks in the ground. They emerge during specific times of the day (hence the need for the clock in your display). They are reclusive and most don’t like noise, so if you walk towards them normally your feet will make annoying PAT-PAT sounds, which cause them to slap you (and break your heart!)

Sneak up to them by gently pushing the left joystick - they won’t mind you close by as long as you don’t make a sound. Keep an eye of them, while they are unkissable, they will be steaming like so (pictured above).

As soon as they are ready for a peck (have happy notes around them), you may lay one on their smacker using if you are close enough. If you are too far away, that constitutes as making noise “SMOOCH!”, and they will slap you.

Success! Many of these underground residents will thank you for drawing them out of their anti-social shell and reward you with items or money. One resident will grant you the ‘run’ ability, which helps because the game progresses very slowly otherwise. At the end of the day, your father tallies up the kisses you’ve acquired. If you’ve hit the required minimum number of kisses, you will level up your heart’s strength.

You start off the game as a poor boy, and in order to find food and goods to sell and earn money, you scrounge through trash cans and garbage bins. Unfortunately, you’ll sometimes find poop, which will break your heart, so be careful!

Chulip is available on the PS2, and was released in Japan in 2002 and later in America in 2007, so the graphics are a bit dated. The characters are uniquely designed, the music is fun to listen to at first but gets repetitive over the long run.

How’s the game? Well, reviewing my post on annoying things in video games, it is pretty annoying:

• text cannot be sped up or skipped
• this difficult game requires FAQ (they have one included with the game manual for gosh sakes!!)
• sparse save points - you save at the toilet, and there aren’t a lot of toilets in each town

I was curious and explored the environment and found that many things would randomly kill me….which is bad because I didn’t save at the toilet! *grooooan* A lot of time spent, down the flusher, so to speak!

Me? Well, I’m a masochist for weird games like this. I’ll beat it one day, but for now I will put it on the back burner. One day I’ll complete it and blog about it then. =)

Then I realized, I can start my own pyramid education by paying it forward. I will tell all of my friends about this, maybe you will tell your friends…and so on and so forth. I think the best way to bring it up is “I can’t believe it, but I received a chain letter through snail mail!” Even if you didn’t, if you make the story more personal, people will believe it - just like all those fake testimonials included with the schemes! =) Education may start at BreakTheChain.org.
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Some people drown their sorrows in alcohol, or chocolate, or ice cream, or shopping. Me, I prefer to wallow in the form of extensive video gaming. Some say that this is unhealthy because it’s anti-social; they would say it’s healthier to surround yourself with friends.
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