Gallimaufry.

Purged the lingering embarassment of having not completed Mega Man 9.  I passed the “no continues” challenge, but that was a terrible lie since it was done through save abuse.  A legit 1CC still looms.  And Time Attack.  And Hero Mode.

I had a strange reluctance to mention MM9 because I assumed it was already in everyone’s pocket, but a glance around the friends’ leaderboards says otherwise.  Of course, now there’s a new shame.  The only times I do see are top-ten entries, thanks to Tiki.  When most of the discussion of the game is among people who are glitch-zipping through levels to put up 1’15″ times, there’s something anticlimactic to “oh hey, I only died once to the danger room in Jewel Man’s stage this time.”

Frankly, not only can I still die to the Jewel Man spike room, I also sometimes hose a few of the easier spike jumps on that level.  And there’s a good half-dozen places I can die on Tornado Man’s stage.

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Unlocked Vidmaster Challenge: Annual in Halo 3.  There are a set of seven challenges spread across Halo 3 and ODST which apparently unlock a special suit of armor.  Not my thing, but this one required 4-player co-op and I’ll help a dude out.

Specifically, we had to clear the last level in 3 (helpfully named “Halo”) with 4 players, on Legendary, with all of us riding Ghosts and the Iron skull turned on.  That last clause is the highway to the danger zone.  With Iron on, if one player dies, the whole group is reset to the last checkpoint.   The way Legendary co-op worked in Halo 2.

Normally, 4p co-op is a rompin’ stompin’, even on Legendary.  Halo 3′s stock Legendary isn’t that rough solo, and 4 is more or less an army.  Iron makes it a man’s game.  With a mixed skill group, Iron actually makes it a brutal slog.

We actually cruised up to Guilty Spark, despite my fears.  Grenade jumped to skip the tower climb, and waited for sentinels to mop up all the Flood.  Well, one of us did.  We were too incompetent to all make the pair of grenade jumps, so we just sent one guy to the top to trigger everything, while we hung out in the snow.

That only left the escape sequence on the Ghosts.  Easy enough on the Warthog, and Ghosts are even faster.  It’s the stock game-ending self-destruct escape bit, as we race along to reach the Forward Unto Dawn while the Halo collapses around us.  Oh god, the collapsing.  The horror.

The various dramatic destruction sequences are all triggered by your progress.  So it mostly falls behind you when you’re racing along with all the players in the same vehicle.  But with each of us driving our own Ghost, the player in front triggered everything.  So if I was far enough behind, the stage just fell out from beneath me.  Fiery plummeting.  And Iron’s on, so we all restart.  And repeat.

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Still jamming with Jet.  No progress, really.  I’m incompetent at the secrets in sim5.  Well, incompetent at surviving once they’re triggered, anyway.  That makes 3 triggered’s in one post, which is probably my queue to wrap this up.