Surprisingly, while the game got relatively negative reviews, I found Infinite Undiscovery to be pretty enjoyable and have already picked up tri-Ace’s next 360 RPG: Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Unfortunately for me, it looks to be even more crazy and hardcore than Infinite Undiscovery, but one game at a time I guess.

This list of tips and notes is what I put together as I was playing through the game for the third time – the Infinity difficulty mode. For those of you that are playing it on Normal difficulty or Hard difficulty, the tips that I give in this article will still generally be valid. I prefer to write guides for the hardest difficulty of a game since it can address every difficulty mode. Keep in mind though that I will be mentioning spoilers as well since I will assume you have already beaten the game once or twice and need help with a playthrough on a harder difficulty. Can you believe that the prison escape at the beginning of the game is perhaps the most difficult part of Infinity Mode?

1. Two guards in the beginning
The initial encounter outside your jail cell ends up being one of the most difficult encounters in Infinity Mode! Whereas on Normal and Hard difficulties, you could plow through the two guards with ease, on Infinity mode you will not be able to kill them by simply attacking. This is because each guard has about 200 HP while you have 400 HP and their attacks do about 30-40 damage a hit. How much do your attacks do? 3 damage. 4 if you get a lucky critical attack. That’s right – 4 damage. This means you have to hit each guard over 50 times before you can kill him. The most ideal way to fight them is to split the two guards up so one gets stuck somewhere, and you can easily take down the other by blocking when he attacks, then doing two combo strings and repeating this cycle until one is down and you can fully engage the other guard. What you want to do is run to the exit gate with the two guards chasing you, and then run back to where you started but hug the right wall as you run back, then quickly get behind the desk. Hopefully only one guard gets to you, while the other guard gets stuck behind that desk.

The trick to getting one of the guards stuck is illustrated in the below video:

2. Escaping Graad Prison and Graad Woods
Again, it can be very difficult in this first part of the game because your low level just has practically no damage. Things are a little easier with Aya, as her Peacock Plume special attack will knock down enemies, giving you chances to isolate one enemy or to hit both when they’re down for a Down combo. You have two options for escaping the tower: fight or run. I personally fought out of the tower, getting the initial pair of guards down to the bottom floor and circling around the pillar to kill them with Aya’s help but from what I understand, it’s possible to just run all the way up without fighting anyone either. Graad Woods is a definite run. You can fight at the beginning, but it’s super difficult when the four 1000 HP wolves attack you all at once when you’re just level 2 and doing maybe 20 damage a hit. As soon as you hear the wolves howling, just book it all the way to the bridge without stopping for anything.

3. Take Sigmund’s gear
When Sigmund, Edward, Eugene, and Balbagan join your party, make sure to swap out Sigmund’s gear for your own. His sword is much better than yours, and will make things easier for you especially this early on (and in the first dungeon) when you can’t craft yet and enemies on Infinity mode have that much more life.

4. Making infinite money as early as possible
After completing Castle Prevant and you have Sigmund, Eugene, Edward, and Balbagan back in your party, it’s time to make infinite money. Using both Edward’s and Eugene’s blacksmithing skills combined with the free A & B vouchers that are downloadable means you have access to high end equipment very early on in the game. While it’s not the best end game gear, lvl 6 IC crafted gear is still much better than what you’ll be able to buy in stores that early on in the game and often times, the highest level gear simply requires lower level gear and a high level metal/skin – which are now available in all stores due to the A & B vouchers.

First off, when you arrive in Burguss, you should have over 10,000 Fol. Buy a few Lizard Skins (250 Fol each) and Soft Leather Boots (550 Fol each). Have Eugene make Lizard Skin Boots from them, and continue making them until you get to level 5 IC (or whatever else that’s easy to make, like Smilie Charms or Horseshoes). Sell the Lizard skin boots as necessary but try to hold onto as many as possible. Once you hit level 5 IC with Eugene, he will be able to make Salamander boots. Buy as many Salamander Skins as you can from the shop (2500 Fol each) and you can make Salamander Boots from 1 Salamander Skin and 1 Lizard Skin Boots. Each pair of Salamander Boots you sell goes for about 26400 Fol, so when you sell 40 of them, that’s 1,000,000 Fol right there. Keep selling them, and make more as necessary. I dedicated about an hour or so to making about 200 Salamander boots and selling them for over 4,000,000 Fol.

You can either do this money-making either paying attention or not paying attention. Not paying attention means you just keep hitting A for Eugene so he makes boots one after another, but because you’re only hitting A, you can just do other stuff at the same time like browse the Internet or something. If you want to pay attention, you can have Eugene craft the boots, and at the same time have Edward make Bronze Plate Greaves, which sell for 4000 Fol each and only require Bronze Metal (100 Fol in shops) and Bronze Scale Greaves (craftable with Edward from the start for only 1 Bronze Metal). What I did was craft with both Edward and Eugene until they both hit level 6 IC, and then stopped with Edward since Eugene makes more money and I don’t have to watch the screen.

5. Making high level gear as early as possible
Once you have a ton of money early on in the game, it makes things a lot easier. With most craftable gear from materials that you can now buy in shops with the free DLC Voucher A and B, you can create some higher level weapons and armor for your characters. You don’t need to spend a ton of time making gear for everyone, but I’d recommend making the best weapon for Capell since he’s the one you control and therefore generally dictates how quickly you can defeat an enemy.

Have Edward make Capell the Crystallite Blade – a 750 ATK weapon with HIT+40 and +3% critical hit rate bonus using the following materials:

2x Crystallite Metal (15,000 Fol each in Burguss shop)
1x Hearthstone (2,000 Fol in Burguss shop)
2x Lunatite (5,000 Fol each in Burguss shop)
2x Holy Water (200 Fol at all Gemna shops – buy them at his first appearance in Castle Prevant or at the merchant in Fayel)
2x Lunatite (5000 Fol each in Burguss shop)
1x Mercurius Metal (7000 Fol in Burguss shop)
2x Silver Metal (900 Fol each in Burguss shop)
1x Marble (500 Fol in Burguss shop)
1x Longsword (800 Fol in Burguss shop)

6. Buy 99 of any raw materials you find at stores
Since you now have a way of making infinite money early on, it behooves you to buy as much of every item you see at every store you encounter, just to prevent yourself from a headache later. Stores in towns sometimes change their stock depending on how far you are in the game, so if you miss buying raw materials early on, you’ll have no easy way of getting them late game. You’ll often discover that you need early game raw materials late game because many end game items require you to craft the early game equipment into end game equipment, but if you don’t have the early game equipment you’re out of luck.

7. Max out crafting skills
At your first arrival in Port Zala on Disc 2, max out as much of the IC skills for everyone as possible once Faina appears. She conveniently sells materials that are difficult to come across, like yellow and green berries so when she stops selling later in the game, you will be hard pressed to find materials to raise your IC levels for certain characters. Raise all characters’ IC levels to 6 except Rico and Savio – those two can only get as high as level 4 at Port Zala (which should still be done at Port Zala). If you don’t care much for cooking, you can skip out on those characters but you will need the rest at level 6 to craft end game gear.

Enchanting: Capell
Blacksmithing: Edward, Eugene
Writing: Rico
Alchemy: Michelle
Cooking: Aya, Rucha, Dominica

Later on when you get the necessary materials, max out the IC of Rico and Savio, as well as Kiriya, Kristofer and Seraphina when they join. You should be able to find the necessary materials in Kolton.

8. Clearing the game as early as possible
On Infinity difficulty, the realistic level in which you can try to beat the Underwater Palace is 50+ for Capell. There’s no real point in trying to level up like crazy in the regular game when at least one of your party members practically levels up every time you kill an enemy in Seraphic Gate (optional post-game dungeon). My recommendation is to get to the optional end game dungeon as soon as possible because you level quickest there. The reason why you want to hit 50+ is at 50, Cappel learns Grin Velasti, which is the best attack move in the game. Once you learn it, you pretty much can use it to defeat anything.

The first boss, Iskan Du Bal, is one of the more difficult bosses in the game as he can output tons of damage. Keep calling out for healing while spamming Grim Velasti and you should be able to clear your way through the dungeon. The final boss can be tough with his spells and summoning of clones, so make sure you bring plenty of potions and buy tons of Sacrificial Dolls – especially if you’re trying to beat him at a minimal level like I did.

My party included Edward, Komachi, and Eugene. I brought Komachi along because I wasn’t sure if there were locked chests in the Underwater Palace, but there weren’t any so you can substitute her with anyone you’d like. My next choice would have been Aya since she’s ranged. Edward is perhaps the best damage dealer besides Capell and his Grim Velasti, so he should definitely be brought. I turn off all attacking spells with Eugene so he focuses on healing. Well, I leave the first attack spell on just so he stays at range when he’s not healing. If you turn them all off, he’ll run in and try to melee the bosses which is a big no no. I like Eugene because he has Salvus, a “Life 2″ spell that brings a party member back to life with full life.

9. Craft the Azureal Blade for Capell
Once you’ve completed the game and load the completed file, that’s when you can enter the Seraphic Gate. Make sure to talk to Kristofer in Kolton, who will ask you a question. Choose “I’ll try it.” and then pick “It’s B>A>C in that order”. This unlocks endgame blacksmithing options for Kristofer, Edward, and Eugene. Make your way into the Seraphic Gate, and come right back out. Once you do that, Edward will have the ability to make the Azureal Blade, which requires the following:

2x Amarlista (10000 Fol each in all shops)
1x Gram (construct from parts below)
1x Emblazoned Sword (given to you buy Sigmund at the beginning of the game)

Gram is made with the following:
3x Atlantis Metal (20000 Fol each in all shops)
1x Quartz (7000 Fol each in all shops)
1x Aqua Blade (25000 Fol in Port Zala shop)

10. Defeating Sigmund in Seraphic Gate as early as possible
Once you’ve cleared the game and can start playing the optional Seraphic Gate dungeon, you ideally want to get Sigmund asap because everyone levels like crazy but when you get Sigmund, he’s in his low 20s. Realistically, you can defeat Sigmund at 50+ if you have the Azureal Blade. I beat Sigmund on Infinity difficulty at level 57.

Walk into the gate, walk out, have Edward craft the blade, then proceed through the first level of the dungeon easily by spamming Grim Velasti equipped with the Azureal Blade. You should be doing area effect damage of 20,000-30,000 on each enemy. Once you’ve defeated the boss, don’t take the warp but run all the way back up and exit the gate. Save, then enter the dungeon again, and run all the way down to the gate at the bottom without fighting any enemies. All of your party members will probably die, but you’ll make it through alive and can just resurrect them once you enter the desert level. Get to the gate before Sigmund in the desert level, and do the following: enchant Capell with HP Regen 6%, Attack +1000, and equip him with the Ring of Life and Sacrificial Doll accessories.

You face Sigmund alone, and the big problem on Infinity difficulty is he can do about 10k damage to you per attack, so what you need to do is Grim Velasti him once, and if you don’t take any damage, do it again. Once you get hit even once and you are below 10k HP, run. Just run until you regen your life back to max. With the 6% regen enchant and the ring of life, you should be getting 1000 HP back every few seconds. Repeat until Sigmund is defeated. He has somewhere around 150k-200k life I think.

11. Choose your end-game party
Once you decide on the four characters you want to beat the game with, you can pretty much forget about the other characters. Of course, while they’re benched, make sure they’re equipped with Karathos Wristbands so that they still gain 100% experience should you want to use one of them again later.

Honestly, any party with anti-magic gear works fine. I personally went with Capell, Edward, Sigmund, and Eugene. Capell is required, but I picked Edward and Sigmund because creating the Hydra Armor is easier than the Lunar Pendant. For heavy characters, the Hydra Armor is anti-magic and for medium and light armored characters, there’s no anti-magic armor so you need to craft Lunar Pendants for them.

12. Construct anti-magic gear
Before you get to the first save point halfway through the Seraphic Gate, you will need to face off against Gabriel Celeste, who does tons of magic damage and a lot of health. You will need anti-magic gear if you want to defeat him (and definitely need it to beat the final boss, the Seraphic Queen).

Heavy armor characters only need to don a Hydra Armor, which requires the following to craft:
3x Atlantis Metal
2x Feeble Cloth
1x Eclipse Armor

Those components break down to:
3x Atlantis Metal (20000 Fol each in all shops)
2x Feeble Cloth (2000 Fol each in all shops)
3x Amarlista (10000 Fol each in all shops)
3x Lunatite (5000 Fol each in all shops)
3x Blaze Metal (3900 Fol each in all shops)
1x Assault Suit (45000 Fol at Halgita Armor shop after shop quest completed)

Medium & Light armor characters must wear a Lunar Necklace accessory, which requires the following to craft:
1x Lunatite
2x Giant Eye
1x Quartz Necklace

Those components break down to:
1x Lunatite (5000 Fol each in all shops)
2x Giant Eye (dropped off Inferno Glutton dragons on Seraphic Gate – Dragonbone Shrine level)
1x Quartz (7000 Fol each in all shops)
1x Glutton Hide (3000 Fol each in all shops)
1x Pius Wood (dropped off Hill Gigas on Seraphic Gate – Graad Woods level)
2x Monster Claw (dropped by Dune Harpies in the desert)
1x Blaze Metal (3900 Fol each in all shops)
2x Sunstone (50 Fol each in most shops)
1x Silver Metal (900 Fol each in all shops)
2x Snakeskin (dropped off snakes in Dragonbone Shine)
1x Ebony Wood (280 Fol each in halgita after shop quest completed)
2x Cactus Needle (dropped by various catcus enemies in the game)
1x Lauan Wood (150 Fol each in Sapran)
2x Thin Wing (generally dropped by various insect enemies in the game)
1x Cork Wood (15 Fol each in Sapran)
2x Insect Antenna (generally dropped by various insect enemies in the game)

The Lunar Pendant generally requires other necklaces to be forged to it, so if you find any of the following, it should make your life easier: Cork Pendant, Lauan Pendant, Ebony Pendant, Snake Pendant, Blaze Necklace, Pius Pendant, or a Quartz Necklace. I think the only necklace I was able to find was the Snake Pendant, so if you find that it should start things off a bit easier for you when making the Lunar Pendant. Just follow the requirements.

13. Making money in Seraphic Gate
How effectively you can make money in Seraphic Gate depends on how far you can get. Here are three money making spots.

The first is pretty much the first level in Seraphic Gate – Graad Prison. On this level are plenty of Blue Drogo Warriors, lizards that drop Crescent Blades that sell for a good chunk of change in stores. Simply fight your way down the level, take the warp to the next level, but then walk back into the warp and fight your way back up the Graad Prison level. Exit at the warp at the top and re-enter as necessary if you need to make money early on in Seraphic Gate.

If you can get a bit further in Seraphic Gate, the next good money farming spot is the fifth floor of Seraphic Gate – the Bihar Mines. As soon as you enter there are about a dozen or so Lumpers that you can dispatch quickly with Grin Velasti. These guys drop various weapons such as swords, staffs, and bows that can all be sold. Right after them though is a Gold Chest Mimic, that when killed drops about 60k Fol. If you want to make more though, prior to engaging him you can enchant Capelle with the Gold x3 / No EXP  enchant (3x Gold Metal, 3x Steel Metal and lasts 3 minutes)) to get 180k off the chest. After you kill him, take the warp back out at the start of the Bihar Mines and re-enter to farm the Lumpers and the chest as needed.

However, the best farming spot in the game (and recommended if you want to get the Filthy Rich Achievement of attaining 99,999,999 Fol) is the 3rd to last level (I think it’s like floor 15) of the Seraphic Gate – Castle Prevant. Here if you can make your way to the warp-point that takes you out of the level, you’ll notice a 60k Gold Chest Mimic right before the exit. Enchant yourself with the Gold x3 / No EXP enchant and kill it for 180k gold, take the warp out, and take the warp back and engage the Gold Chest Mimic again. You can kill him a total of about 7 or so times within the 3 minutes of the enchant, making you over a million Fol in under 3 minutes. Repeat for as much money as you need.

14. Good leveling spots in Seraphic Gate
If you’re just starting Seraphic Gate and need a good place to level up, the first level, Graad Prison, is ideal. Killing all of the spiders and lizard warriors will up your levels considerably, and equipped with the Azureal Blade and you can easily take them down at a very low level. It’s nice as well that this first level is also a good money making level, so however you may have rushed to get to Seraphic Gate, this first level helps you catch up if you’ve been skimping on leveling or making money.

Another good level spot I enjoy in Seraphic Gate is the Graad Woods level. This is the level after the middle of the Seraphic Gate where you are able to save your game. Graad Woods is very long but if you can make your way to the end warp, you will encounter 3 Hill Gigas walking around together. Kill them, take the warp exit out, but then take it right back and the 3 Hill Gigas will have respawned. Killing them over and over will get you a good amount of experience, and I ended up killing them until I was able to collect 99 Pius Wood (needed for crafting certain items).

The final leveling spot I like in the Seraphic Gate is Dragonbone Shrine – the level right after Graad Woods. If you can make your way to the end (it’s short), there are four Inferno Glutton dragons chilling right in front of the exit gate. Kill all four of them, take the exit gate, then come right back in and continue killing them for good exp. I was farming them for Giant Eyes and Dragon Meat but I leveled significantly because of it.

15. Create lots of Memoirs of a Mercenary books
Memoirs of a Mercenary books are the key to beating the final boss of the game. Why? Because each time it is used, it gives +20% HP boost on any character. So if your characters have 10,000 HP and you use it, that’s 2,000HP more. But think about how quickly it increases when you use several books. It’s not a linear growth at all because it’s compounding based on the HP you’ve gained so after 20 or so, you’ll be over a million HP. The display maxes out at 99,999 HP for every character, but I don’t think there’s an actual HP limit.

In order to create a Memoirs of a Mercenary book, you will need:
3x Halgitan Paper
1x Genius’s Quill

For the Hagitan Paper and Genius’s Quill, you’ll need:
3x Kenaf Cloth (20 Fol at any shop)
2x Lentesco Wood (900 Fol at Halgita shop)
1x Pius Wood (dropped off Hill Gigas on Seraphic Gate – Graad Woods level)
1x Dragon Fang (dropped off Swordtail Viper on Seraphic Gate – Luce Plains level)

The hardest two items to get are the Pius Wood and the Dragon Fang, with the Dragon Fang being by far the most difficult and time-consuming. Pius Wood isn’t too hard – get to the end of the Graad Woods level of the Seraphic Gate, and you will encounter three Hill Gigas at the same time. Kill them, pick up any Pius Wood they drop, and then take the exit gate to go to the next stage. Then take the warp back to Graad Woods, and those three giants will spawn again. Kill, collect wood, and use exit gate. You can easily do this until you get enough Pius Wood – and on top of that, you will level considerably.

For the Dragon Fang, you will have to try to acquire one from the four Swordtail Vipers on the Luce Plains stage of Seraphic Gate. What I recommend is taking Vic along and instead of just trying to kill all four Swordtail Vipers hoping for a drop before exiting and re-entering the level, have Vic successfully steal from each of the four Swordtail Vipers. I had never had Vic stolen from any other creature or enemy in the game prior to this. It may take a while before Vic gets something, but that ups your percentage considerably for acquiring Dragon Fangs since now there’s always an item from the Swordtail Viper and I probably farmed 50 or so Dragon Fangs in a few hours.

Depending on your level, I’d recommend 30-40 Memoirs of a Mercenary books. I would say use most, if not all of the books on Capell. If you get Capell to something like 1.5 million HP (the display caps out at 99,999, but the HP keeps increasing), and have regen, he gains more than 99,999 HP every few seconds, which easily offsets any damage the Ethereal Queen may do. Of course, the rest of your party will probably die, but they’re not a big deal anyway since Capell does most of the damage.

15. Defeating the Ethereal Queen
If you’ve upped Capell’s HP to over a million, the Ethereal Queen should pose no problems. Still, make sure that your entire party is wearing their anti-magic gear, and that you have tons of potions available. If you’re impatient and don’t want to farm dragon fangs for increasing HP, just make sure you have enough Sacrificial Dolls, as you can buy them at Genma in Seraphic Gate and equip them in battle any time one of them breaks.

Once that’s done – congratulations! You’ve completely conquered Infinity Mode in Infinite Undiscovery!

Over 80 hours into this game already. But I’m excited because that means a new game to play is around the corner…

Infinite Undiscovery – A few more Achievements left in the game to get and I will be totally done. I’m hoping to get them this weekend, when I beat the optional end-game boss on the hardest difficulty for that 1 Achievement point. By beating her, I should also hopefully unlock the other most difficult Achievement in the game – one that relies on me having collected every one of the unique 880 items in the game. If I don’t get that Achievement, I’m done anyway – not going through it again and trying to collect every single item.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Finally got the 1000 in the game! cmfl3x and I played a few online matches this week and it wasn’t bad, but without matchmaking, it’s time for me to part ways with the game. It seems like no one really plays 2v2 online though, as it took me maybe 20 minutes before being able to find three other players to start a game.

Street Fighter IV – Still playing this, especially whenever my brother has time to play. We’ll just hop in a room and play for hours. Surprisingly, my Sagat is giving his Abel a little more trouble than we both expected, so either I seem to be catching up to him in fighting game ability or I’m learning how to use the imbalance of my character against him. I prefer to think it’s just the former, but I’m sure it’s a mixture of both. I hit my current goal of breaking 2000 Battle Points this week, and I’m definitely starting to see higher level players. Played against a 4500 player once, and when I lost, I only lost 1 point and he only gained 1. Wha?!

Peggle – Been playing this on my DS. I’m sort of addicted to the game. I never played it much before, but with it coming out for the DS I figured I’d try it out and now I’m playing it on my subway commute home from work every night. I can definitely see why the Japanese are addicted to Pachinko – Peggle seems to take that addictiveness of watching a ball bounce around different pegs but also adds more pinball-like gameplay enhancements that are now making my subway trip home far too short each night.

Resident Evil 5 – Still struggling for a long time trying to decide if I should go pick up the game today since Toys R Us is giving out a $20 gift card with it. The thing is, I don’t know what to put the $20 gift card towards. I think it expires at the end of the April, so it’s kind of forcing me to have to use it sooner rather than later. Maybe I’ll just get at 1600 point card or something.

Street Fighter IV – Finally convinced my brother to pick up the game, and we’ve been spending a good amount of time this past week playing it online. Even though he had barely played it prior to picking it up, he proceeded to destroy me right after we started playing. I was only able to win one of the 8-9 matches we played and I was using Sagat! But still, ever since then he’s started using Abel and that’s all we play. I’ve been learning a lot though from playing with him and while he’s clearly better, playing with him is actually making me better too so I’m happy about that.

Infinite Undiscovery – When will this game end?! Going on 60 hours or so now and have just beat the game on the hardest difficulty. Now all that remains is that final optional (ridiculously tough) end-game dungeon and I’ll be able to move on. Too bad I’ll need about another 10-15 hours in this dungeon before I can walk away victorious.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – cmfl3x and I beat the campaign early this past week so he could move on to Halo Wars. Some of those missions make me wonder if it’s even possible to beat with an AI partner on Hard difficulty. Maybe I’ll try it out sometime since we’ll be putting out a review for it next week.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts – Picked it up since it was on sale at Amazon for $20 this week. I wasn’t too impressed with the demo, but it seems like people that play it say it’s awesome: the equivalent of playing with Legos but in a video game. So I guess I’ll just have to see for myself. Add another game to the backlog…

Crysis & Crysis Warhead – Both were on sale for $10 each at Best Buy this week so I picked those up too. At first I wasn’t planning on Crysis Warhead due to the intrusive Securom DRM, but apparently EA has released patches on Crysis Warhead, Spore, and Red Alert 3 (on the PC) that allows you to deauthorize the game on your PC so you don’t run out of installs. My PC gaming backlog is almost up to double digits now…

Resident Evil 5 – Comes out next Friday but the sad news is: it’s a 7 hour game. What a massive disappointment. Resident Evil 4 was a 20 hour game and this is about the same length as Call of Duty 4 or Gears of War but without any sort of multiplayer. It’s practically Army of Two and even Army of Two had multiplayer! Grr.

Mercenaries 2 (360) – Heard the game was sort of glitchy, but for $9.99 at Best Buy this week it was cheap enough to throw into my backlog.

The Orange Box (PC) – I wanted to pick up Team Fortress 2 for the PC since it continues to keep getting new content and maps, but didn’t want to pay $20 for it. I was hoping Valve would put it on sale on Steam for half price like they did with Left 4 Dead, but when I found it for The Orange Box for $15 at Circuit City during its liquidation this past weekend, I sprang for it. Then what happens? Team Fortress 2 goes on sale for $10 during the week right after I just bought Orange Box. I would have preferred to just buy that instead but what can you do.

Company of Heroes (PC) – Also at the same Circuit City liquidation, I was able to find Company of Heroes Collector’s Edition for a little under $10. I remember playing this game years ago but lost my copy so I sprang for it again. I can’t really remember the mechanics behind it, but I certainly enjoyed it. I figure it’ll be good training for Dawn of War 2.

Infinite Undiscovery (360) – The majority of my gaming time for the last month has been spent playing this title, but now that I’m on the hardest difficulty playthrough, there is light at the end of the tunnel! I’m putting together a guide to Infinity mode as I play through it as well.

I’ve been playing this game for over a month now, but what can I say – it’s a Japanese RPG and I only get a couple hours each night to play video games. So, I’ve been slowly making my way along, and have spent about 40 hours total on the game: 20 hours to beat it on Normal difficulty and then another 20 to beat it on Hard difficulty. I actually beat the game on Hard difficulty a little under 10 hours because I raced through it, skipping all cutscenes and optional quests, but then had to put in another 10 hours to gear up and grind to beat the optional end-game dungeon. I’m currently playing the game on the hardest mode, Infinity, and I’m about 10 hours in but it’s going ultra slow because enemies are a lot stronger and I’m trying to nab the last few Achievements I didn’t get on the previous times through. At my current rate it’ll take me probably another 30 hours or so to beat, which means I’ll have ended up spending over 80 hours to get the 1000 Achievement points for this game. Some may wonder if it’s worth it, and my only response is that depends on how much of a Japanese RPG fan you are. I actually enjoyed the game more on subsequent playthroughs – meaning either the game is just more fun to play once you know what to expect or the cutscenes kind of bored me and I skipped them all the second and third time around.

Good
- combat system is fun and a lot more action packed than a typical Japanese RPG
- crafting is intuitive and you can make some really cool gear with it
- several difficulty levels extend replayability

Bad
- storyline takes a while to pick up
- actual game length is pretty short for a Japanese RPG: about 15-20 hours
- not a game that is easily accessible by those that have never played a Japanese RPG before

Intro
Infinite Undiscovery comes to us courtesy of publisher Square-Enix, the big Japanese RPG publisher behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Underneath that massive publisher lies the development studio tri-Ace, a Japanese RPG company that was exclusively published by Enix until the Squaresoft and Enix merger back in 2003. Since then, Square-Enix has published tri-Ace’s games. The developer’s portfolio consists of several Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile games. Infinite Undiscovery is the first game tri-Ace has developed that is not in the Star Ocean nor the Valkyrie Profile universe.

At last year’s E3, Infinite Undiscovery was announced to be one of Square-Enix’s major three upcoming 360 releases, leading the way for The Last Remnant and Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It seemed like a very exciting bit of news for Japanese RPG fans, along with the fact that Final Fantasy XIII would be released on the 360 domestically. When Infinite Undiscovery was released in the fall of 2008, it got decent Japanese reviews and went on to sell about 120,000 copies in Japan. Unfortunately, Western audiences didn’t feel the same way, slamming the game as mediocre and perhaps that contributed to the game only selling 200,000 copies domestically.

For those of you that recall, the other two big Japanese RPG games that were released on the 360 are Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Blue Dragon is perhaps the top selling 360 game in Japan, clocking in at about 210,000 copies sold in Japan while selling about 340,000 stateside. However, Lost Odyssey was a bit different, selling only 110,000 copies in Japan while selling about 540,000 in the U.S. Wrap your head around that for a minute – while Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey were both ranked at about 78%-79% according to Metacritic, Infinite Undiscovery got an agregate score of 68%. Yet it outsold Lost Odyssey in Japan. Apparently the game is perhaps a little too antiquated a Japanese RPG for Western audiences, but the Japanese still found it enjoyable. For Western gamers that also loves Japanese RPGs like myself, we are caught in the crossfire here since our reviewers don’t like the game, but the Japanese do. Thus, I’d say that Japanese RPGs are difficult to trust Western reviewers on – it’s best to read about the game itself and formulate your decision. Hopefully mine helps.

The evil Dreadknight Leonid is often accompanied by his faithful Saranda.

Storyline and Premise
In Infinite Undiscovery, you play the character Capell, a reluctant protagonist who has very little fighting ability but is good with the flute. He is rescued in prison early on in the game by a woman named Aya, who mistakens Capell for the Liberator hero known as Sigmund. Capell and Sigmund meet, and are surprised by how similar the two look. Capell gets caught up in Sigmund’s crusade to liberate the moon from the evil Dreadknight Leonid. Leonid has chained the planet to the moon, and hopes to take it over (yeah pretty crazy stuff) but Sigmund is able to break these chains that hold the moon. Capell discovers that he is also able to break the chains as well, and several other characters in their party travel the world looking to break each chain that enslaved the moon. The storyline is definitely kind of “out there” and a little boring at times, but fortunately it picks up if you stick with it.

The game spans two discs, and the reason that several Japanese RPGs span more than one disc is simply due to cutscenes. Those videos apparently take a lot of space and Infinite Undiscovery has a ton of them. Throughout the game at important moments the game will often switch to a cutscene, and they’re pretty well done. The only problem is, about a fifth of the cutscenes have no spoken dialogue. There’s no sound whatsoever and it’s definitely jarring considering most of the other cutscenes are spoken. What I suspect is that the developer didn’t want to have the game end up on 3 discs, so they cut out as much audio as they could to keep it on two discs. Sloppy, and that also means there’s no option for a Japanese language track – something that Japanese RPG fans love.

The premise of the game is an open world very similar to any online MMORPG or Final Fantasy XII. You are only allowed to control Capell, while the AI controls the other three characters (4 max) that are chosen to accompany him. Capell’s party travels from town to town to hunt for the base of these chains, where he has to defeat the chain’s protector before destroying the chain. The game is a little shorter than I thought: 5-6 towns, a handful of outdoor areas, and maybe 6-7 dungeons. It ends up ending at not even the 20 hour mark.

Sometimes combat can be pretty crazy with so many things going on at once in real-time.

Gameplay Mechanics
Combat
Combat is one of the best parts of Infinite Undiscovery. Unlike the traditional Japanese RPG, everything in Infinite Undiscovery is real-time based. There’s no turns, pausing, etc. Even when you go to the menu screen to equip characters or use items, the game is still running so you can be attacked by enemies. While that’s not necessarily a positive attribute, it’s done well because when you bring up the menu all the characters sit down like they’re resting so it fits well in the general flow of the game. The combat in Infinite Undiscovery is similar to online MMORPG games and Final Fantasy XII – there’s no random encounters or anything but you can see all nearby enemies and attack any that you want. Attack them first and you have the potential to surprise them, netting bonus experience points and a higher probability of a rare drop.

Most of the characters, including the main character Capell, can be assigned two Special Ability slots and using each of those abilities will cost the user Magic Points. Special Abilities can be leveled through use to do more damage, maxing out at level 3. Each non-magic using character ends up learning perhaps 10 or so abilities, and you are able to set which two abilities you want the character to use in combat. For magic users, each of them ends up learning a dozen or so spells too with half being healing spells and the other half being offensive spells. You are able to turn off any spells that you do not want them to use in the field, so there is a pretty good level of customization for how you want the AI to control your party.

There is also an interesting combo system in the game. You and your party can string along hits in such a way to combo an enemy, sort of like a fighting game. There are three combo types in the game: Aerial, Ground, and Down combos. Aerial combos can be achieved by using a special ability that has the potential to launch an opponent into the air. From there, party members can continue to attack the opponent and juggle him. I think my highest juggle was a 40 hit or so. Ground combos are simply lengthy attacks that chain on the ground, so if your party members are all hitting in sequence, it will combo the enemy – I had over a 100 hit Ground combo on a boss once. Finally, there’s the Down combo, which allows you a brief opportunity to attack foes when they’ve been knocked down onto the ground. Hitting them with a quick string once they hit the floor will net you a Down combo.

Party Management
Infinite Undiscovery is the first Japanese RPG game I’ve played that makes use of a raid system. In older Final Fantasy games, the end-game bosses would sometimes be battles where you could choose several groups from your entire roster and have them take on each part of the boss in a lengthy turn-based final battle. Infinite Undiscovery goes one step further, allowing you to actually create two or three 4-man parties for specific dungeons. These “raids”, which allow 8-12 of your party members to go through the dungeon at once, are an awesome sight to behold since so many of your party members are fighting together. The AI controls the other groups, but keeps them close to you so you still control the direction that you want the raid to progress. Some of the dungeons have the parties splitting up at various times, but then they culminate at the boss so everyone is fighting the boss at once.

One negative aspect of the Party Management system though is that although you can eventually have a roster of 18 characters, 5 of those characters are not selectable during regular gameplay. They can only be used for AI controlled groups in dungeon raids. I don’t understand why this limitation was put in but I was still already pretty happy with a core group of characters I used for non-raid portion of the game.

Characters level up with automatically allocated stats (pretty much how it is in all Japanese RPGs, unlike Western RPGs), but members that are on the bench only gain 50% Experience as the four that are out in the field. Since the player always controls Capell, he can never be switched out so he often ends up being the highest level character in the group. There are accessories that can be found/crafted later that when equipped on characters on the bench, they also gain 100% experience that is generated in the field.

Items & Crafting
Infinite Undiscovery makes use of a traditional Japanese RPG item system, with specific weapon types for each character, a cloth armor for casters, leather armor for ranged/agility characters, and heavy armor for melee characters. Each character is able to equip a weapon, a headpiece, an armorpiece, and leggings, as well as two accessories. Accessories can range in various benefits, from +3% critical attack to nullifying all magic. There are also a plethora of raw materials you can find in the game, which are used for crafting.

The crafting in the game is very well done: mostly every character has the ability to make something. Some characters can cook, others can forge weapons and armor, some can write books, and others can use alchemy to make potions and related items. The main character, Capell, is able to enchant items with temporary buffs. All of these crafting abilities require materials and resources, such as metals, animal parts, linens, herbs, etc. These items are often found in the field, dropped from enemies, or sold in stores.

Crafting levels for each character can go up to level 6, and every time a character crafts an item it gives them a little bit of “crafting experience”. As the character levels up in crafting ability, more crafting options are available and more difficult crafting options yield higher crafting experience. By end game, especially in the harder difficulties, many of the party members will need gear that is only craftable at the highest levels. It’s enjoyable and very intuitive.

In towns, the party members all hang out at their own spots and Capell can go see what each of them is up to.

Achievement System
The Achievements for this game are for the most part typical Japanese RPG style. Most are easy to obtain, as there are some that are unlocked from making progress through the game and many rely on maxing out various abilities. This is all quite manageable and there’s Achievements for beating the optional dungeon on the Hard and Infinity mode difficulties – giving me more of a reason to keep playing long after I beat it originally. However, there is one very pesky Achievement: Compulsive. This Achievement relies on getting every single item in the game. Without some sort of spreadsheet to keep track of everything you picked up, you may be in for a very frustrating time if you want the Achievement. Otherwise, the Achievements are quite doable if you are a Japanese RPG fan and you will accomplish them simply trying to max out in the game. This is pretty much how the Achievements for a Japanese RPG game should be assigned: maxing out, finding all the best items in the game, and defeating the most difficult bosses in the game. What else more is there to achieve?

What other Japanese RPG allows you to raid with a dozen characters at once?

Final Thoughts
Infinite Undiscovery is not a game for everyone. Yet at the same time, it scratches many of the right spots for the classic Japanese RPG fan – a large party of characters to choose from, an abundance of weapons and gear, the ability to max out your characters, and an optional end game dungeon withawesome loot, more bosses, and very challenging optional boss. Yet at the same time, it’s not a game that has undergone revolutionary changes for a Japanese RPG. Part of me feels like the original scope of the game was so much bigger, but the developers ended up with how it is now because they didn’t have the resources to make what they fully wanted.

The thing I have to tell myself here is that I’m not writing a review on a Japanese role-playing game for Japanese role-playing game fans. I’m writing to the general 360 gamer audience, so I have to sort of standardize my score for this game. I give it a B-. It does more things right than wrong, but the game is perhaps a bit on the short side even with the extra difficulty levels. It also is a Japanese RPG straight up through and through – not being apologetic in its somewhat archaic J-RPG design (far away save points, villagers that say the same single line, next set of gear upgrades in the next town you travel to, etc.). For Japanese RPG fans though, this may be enough as this is all they really need to be satisfied with the game. And I’ll say that – I was satisfied with the game. Unfortunately, I was not impressed, which would have had me bumping up the score a bit more.

For non J-RPG fans, I can’t recommend this game. It’s difficult to get into if you’re used to the Western gameplay design mechanics of freedom, non-linearity, and exploration. While other 360 Japanese RPGs also have some similarities to it, Lost Odyssey is perhaps the best Japanese RPG currently out on the 360 that should be experienced if you are curious if Japanese RPGs are for you. Infinite Undiscovery tends to be less “Western-friendly” than Lost Odyssey, so I would check out Infinite Undiscovery if you’ve already completed Lost Odyssey and are looking for your next J-RPG fix. If you go into Infinite Undiscovery knowing what to expect, you may very well enjoy it.

Dead Rising 2 - About time! Hope with the new developer it’s as good as the first one was.

Infinite Undiscovery - Wow. The game is actually a lot more enjoyable on these harder playthroughs. Who would have thought?

Starcraft - had a dream about it this past week. Talk about crazy – I haven’t played it in years, and here I was dreaming I was in a RT 2v2 mirror match with a Terran and Protoss on both sides. After an initial skirmish with my Terran and the enemy Terran, all was pretty quiet as I massed ground units. My Protoss partner was massing Carriers, and apparently so was the enemy Protoss player. I soon discover that the enemy Terran player was massing Battlecruisers, but I’m stuck with all these siege tanks and no air. Great. I plop down 4 Starports (where did I have this kind of money?) and begin massing Wraiths. I then send my squads of Wraiths to take out his Battlecruisers, and scan once in a while to take out the enemy Observer. Not sure how it ended up but then the alarm went off and I woke up. What the heck kind of dream is that? I don’t remember the last time I actually dreamed I was playing a game, especially in this much detail. It wasn’t even like made up stuff that would occur in a dream – all of these Starcraft game mechanics were still quite present and adhered to.

It hasn’t been helping lately that I’ve been playing a string of mediocre games, like Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Prince of Persia, and now Infinite Undiscovery. I guess coming off of better games like Call of Duty: World at War, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2, and Dead Space just makes it all the more difficult.

Infinite Undiscovery – Seemed like there was a lot of potential at first when I started playing the game, but it ultimately isn’t delivering as much as I’d like in the end.

Burnout Revenge – Decided to pop this in to give myself a break from the mundaneness of Infinite Undiscovery. I stopped playing it before because the load times got too annoying, but now that I’m able to install it to the HD, it’s a bit faster. Actually reminds me of the Time Trials of Mirror’s Edge, as I’m collecting stars from doing well on courses but it’s also proving to be just as frustrating with restarts.

Shadowrun - Saw it on sale on the PC for $3 so I went ahead and bought it. It’s the first game that has cross platform 360/PC play, so I was actually able to log into Live when playing it on my new PC. For some reason, it feels more enjoyable to play it with the 360 controller though. Maybe that $3 wasn’t worth it as I’ll probably end up going back to the 360 version.

I’m little over ten hours into this Japanese RPG game and it’s actually not horrible. I remember how it got slammed in the reviews, but I figured that these days, most Japanese RPG games get poorly reviewed because they aren’t innovative enough or have enough marketing behind them. And I was kind of right about the reviews being overly harsh. Some of the things I heard were definitely negatives, but at the end of the day, it still had a certain appeal to me.

Infinite Undiscovery actually plays a little like a single player World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XII. While I feel that Final Fantasy XII is much better game due to its game mechanics, its storyline was terrible and I wasn’t able to finish it because I just didn’t care enough about the characters to see how it concluded. Infinite Undiscovery doesn’t have the gameplay depth or length of Final Fantasy XII, but it makes up for it a bit by having a more interesting storyline and enjoyable characters.

I have to make it clear from the get-go: for the most part, I like Japanese RPGs. I’ve been playing them since the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior on the NES, and while I don’t always enjoy all of them, I do appreciate them. For some reason I could not get into Xenogears. Maybe I was too young when it first came out? Who knows. And then there’s the fan-loved Skies of Arcadia on the Dreamcast or Namco’s Tales series. I can’t help it, but I just cannot get into the Tales games. Something about them just has me falling asleep – maybe the characters are boring, there’s too much dialogue of stuff I don’t care about, etc. I have no idea. Then there’s games like Enchanted Arms and Blue Dragon that I enjoyed, while in general the rest of the gaming community didn’t quite like. What I’ve noticed, is perhaps games like Blue Dragon were enjoyable to me because they kept the tried and true Japanese RPG game mechanics that I enjoyed: leveling up, learning abilities, managing party members, finding treasures, etc. while also giving me an engaging storyline without boring me. I guess since I tend to enjoy watching anime, I’m also more open to the idea of cartoony and angsty protagonists.

Here are a couple things that I liked most so far:

An Engaging Combat System
Infinite Undiscovery is not a turn-based RPG, but rather, a real-time based MMORPG style game similar to Final Fantasy XII. If you haven’t played it, Final Fantasy XII is set up like an MMORPG but instead of playing solo, you are accompanied by two other AI characters. What makes the whole AI party work in FFXII is that Gambit system. Using Gambits, you can actually set specific constraints for each AI partner to do at a pretty detailed level. For example, you could set it so one AI partner would attack with her most damaging spell as long as her MP was greater than 75%. And then you could set another Gambit so that if any party member had less 50% health, she would cast heal on them. You could also set the healing to be higher priority than attacking, etc. This would dictate how she would act in every battle. So you could really customize how you wanted each character to be, and I thought it was pretty revolutionary for controlling AI partners.

Unfortunately, Infinite Undiscovery has no such thing as a Gambit system so you don’t have the AI down to that level of control, but what’s in place works. In Infinite Undiscovery you are able to travel with 3 other AI partners of your choice, and you can set up which special moves each character can use. Instead of specific conditions to set up for each AI partner, you have a choice of about six different party settings that you can switch to on the fly with your d-pad. You can choose from Focus, Spread, Wait, Conserve MP, Free and Combo. Each of those settings allows your three AI partners to act accordingly, whether it’s to focus on your target, don’t use any MP, do what they want, etc. There’s a seperate button you can hit at any time to ask the AI partners to heal the party whether through magic spells or item uce. It works for the most part.

The combat system also has certain similarities to combo systems in fighting games. It’s obviously not as deep or developed, but a combo system is there for air juggles, ground combos, and downed combos. As you level you learn new special moves with different animations/combos. Many of them can lift the enemy into the air, and you and your party can continue to attack the enemy in the air to juggle him until he dies. Ground and downed combos are the same way. It’s not particularly deep, but it’s not the grind-fest of a turn based RPG either.

Large Party Management
Infinite Undiscovery is the first time where I’ve played a Japanese RPG that actually made pretty good use of your entire roster. I think there’s about 15 or so different characters total that can join the team. You can only travel with four at a time usually, and the ones sitting on the bench will still automatically gain half the experience that you get in the field. Pretty standard Japanese RPG stuff except in Infinite Undiscovery, there’s a lot of set pieces that require two or three parties.

Certain levels that require multiple parties means you’ll be controlling the primary party with three other characters of your choosing, while setting up the other parties with four more characters each. Those parties end up being controlled by the AI completely, but it’s definitely pretty cool to see twelve of your party members all out in the field and hacking/slashing their way to the goal. All pickups and experience are shared when multiple parties are in play, so there’s no worry there but to just be sort of awestruck by this “raid group” that you’re a part of. It can get pretty chaotic with so many of your characters running around, but I thought it was pretty neat.

And here are some of the things I didn’t like:

Length Seems Pretty Short
I’m already on the second of the two discs and it’s only been ten hours? Does this mean the game is pretty much beatable in twenty hours? That’s pretty short for a Japanese RPG. The closest game I can compare this to, Final Fantasy XII, I ended up playing for over 70 hours and I was still only about three quarters through.

It seems like there’s only a handful of towns in this game separated by zones. I’m annoyed that you can’t exactly warp from one town to another – instead you have to run through the hostile zone(s) back and forth. It even feels like some quests require you to go through the same zones more than once. Kind of annoying. It actually seemed like it would have a large scope but the developers probably really wimped out because there’s maybe only 5-6 towns and 7-8 enemy zones in the game and you have to keep returning to the same ones.

Missing Vocals?
For maybe 80% of the cutscenes in the game, there is spoken dialogue between the characters. The voice acting is in English only, and it’s not horrible. While I would have loved a Japanese language with English subtitles option, that seems to be a premium these days. Anyway, the weird thing about the other 20% of the cutscenes is that there’s just no spoken dialogue or any sound effects whatsoever. Subtitles will show, but there’s no audio of any sort so you’ll see the characters’ mouths move along with accompanying subtitles, but they won’t speak. And these are main characters too, who were just speaking in the previous cutscene.

What I suspect is that the developers decided to cram the entire game into two DVDs, and maybe they were a bit over. So to get onto the DVDs, they went through and arbitrarily cut out the audio on certain cutscenes instead of just going for a 3-disc release. It’s definitely cost-efficient, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that they would sacrifice the quality of the game to just save a few bucks.

Lack of Quest Management
While the main questline is pretty straightforward, there’s actually a ton of random sidequests that you can accidentally come upon. You may talk to some kid who thinks he saw something somewhere, but that’s all that you get. In any MMORPG if you spoke to an NPC and there was a quest associated with it, your journal would note that optional sidequest and what you should do next. There isn’t any of that in Infinite Undiscovery. You can be juggling 5-10 different small sidequests at a time, and by the time you’re completing one of them you may not even know you completed it. You may not have even known it was a sidequest to begin with! An example of this may be you just entered a new town and spoke to one of the NPCs and she’s like, “Oh you met my brother? He’s alive thank god! Please, take this for your troubles.” Huh? Lady, I don’t even remember your brother! There’s nothing that even lets you know you took a sidequest and I was somewhat annoyed with that. (And most of the rewards suck too.)

Parting Thoughts
At my current rate I’ll probably end up beating it soon, but if I want all of the Achievements I’ll have to play it through three times. I have to admit though, that some of these later cutscenes and enemy zones are really boring. I almost want to skip the cutscenes (which you can), but feel I should just force myself to listen through the story. The game seems to have started interestingly enough but lags a bit due to the “dinky” quality of the acting/cutscenes. Maybe the 20 hour length ain’t such a bad thing then if I already am getting a little bored.

It’s hard to recommend at this point, as it’s not exactly the most non-JRPG friendly game even if it is more action based. Most of the stuff is still very classic JRPG design like checking for treasures in people’s homes, upgrading your weapons at every new town, etc. If you’re a fan of JRPGs, then Infinite Undiscovery might not be too bad for you, but for all others, I’d say skip it. If you’re a 360 owner and not sure whether you like JRPGs or not, start with Lost Odyssey first and slowly expand from there.

Infinite Undiscovery – Only about nine hours in and seems like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. Annoyed a little bit that you can only save at predesignated spots, so it’s tough to stop until you get to the next one. I guess that’s typical of “old-school” Japanese RPG games though so I’m sort of used to it already.

My new PC – Most of this past week was spent messing around with my new PC. After installing my new graphics card, I started going through and installing all sorts of games that I bought years ago that ran a little sluggishly on my old system: Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Oblivion, Age of Empires III, etc.

With my new machine and graphics card, I’m able to run Battlefield 2 on 1280×1024 at max settings for everything and still rock a 70+ framerate. I decided to be a little more adventurous and download the Crysis demo to see how it would go. Outlook: not good. On 1280×1024, even at its lowest settings, I had a framerate in the teens. The smoothest framerate I could get was about 40 when running in 1024×768 at the lowest graphics settings. Graphics looked kinda blocky at that level. Freaking Crysis. I can’t even run it on medium settings on 1024×768 without it stuttering haha

I also went ahead and re-installed World of Warcraft on my new machine, and my patching is fully caught up now (after several hours of torrenting through all the patch downloads). I want to give the 10 day trial for Wrath of the Lich King a shot, if anything at least to see how the game runs on my rig. Also, since I already have a level 60 I can try out the Death Knight class. I just need to figure out when is the best 10 day time for me…

Prince of Persia – Hopefully I can get through this by the end of this weekend and get rid of it next week. Fell asleep a couple times last night when I was playing it.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Seems nearly impossible for cmfl3x and me to be on at the same time long enough to continue our co-op campaign these days. The AI seemed like a pushover until our last mission we just played. We nearly got worked there.

Unreal Tournament III – Decided to open this up a few nights ago and check it out. I then proceeded to drop it about 10 spots in my backlog queue as I completely lost excitement to play it. Maybe I’m just not cut out for that type of old school gaming anymore…

and finally…I got a new PC! Dell has been having awesome deals this past week, so I bit on one.

My new rig arrived with the following for $475 shipped after tax:

- slim tower case
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Wolfdale 2.66GHz 3MB L2 Cache
- 4 Gigs of RAM
- 640 GB hard drive
- DVD+/-RW
- Wireless network card
- Microsoft Vista Home Premium
- 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3450 supporting HDMI

When I received the PC, I discovered that the new graphics card only had DVI and HDMI output. I run a dual monitor setup, and one of them is VGA so I was kind of screwed there. I could have gotten adapters for both (an HDMI to DVI and a DVI to VGA) but figured might as well just get a good graphics card while I’m at it. The only problem is that my PC is in one of those smaller tower cases now so I can’t use normal sized PCI cards. Instead, I had to learn about something that’s called a “Low Profile” PCI express card (I’m totally out of it when it comes to PC stuff these days). So to look for a new graphics card, I had to find ones that could actually fit in my system and still deal with my meager 250W power supply. I ended up spending about $100 (good thing my wife doesn’t read this blog) on a 1 GB GeForce 9500 GT. Apparently that’s the best graphics card for someone in my situation: low profile slot, 250 W power supply, and has a VGA port. I’ll just transfer this current HDMI out graphics card to my HTPC so everything works out. I’m all excited now though to play more PC games again. Bring on Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3!! (And maybe bring on Crysis while I’m at it haha)