More Shadow Complex

Whew, so I've played quite a bit of Shadow Complex lately! You could almost say I've been addicted to it. I have now beaten the game three times, progressively getting much better and smarter. The first playthrough I beat on Normal difficulty, 100% items and map, with a time of around 10 and a half hours. The second time I beat it on Insane difficulty, 100% items and map, with a time of around 9 and a half hours. Last night I beat it for a third time, finally leveling up to the maximum level of 50 (my main goal of the multiple playthroughs, Insane difficulty rewarding higher amounts of exp) on Insane difficulty, 100% map and 98% items (finding the last two items would have taken me quite a bit of time to find, and I was already at level 50 by that point), with a time of around 3 and a half hours. Like I said, I've become much more efficient with my playthroughs. Also, I should mention that I did not use a guide to find the items (or clear the map, obviously) on my first playthrough. I did use a guide on my second playthrough, because the game made finding the items a little more difficult on Insane difficulty, which was a nice touch. This resulted in the higher game time, as I kept running back and forth across the map to get to these item locations on the guide, to see if I had found the item at that location yet. On my third playthrough however, I did not use a guide, so I was very happy with my 98% item completion with a low game time. There is even a Master Challenge (I incorrectly called them Master Achievements in an earlier post) where one must beat the game on Insane difficulty with 100% items in under 3 hours. After my last playthrough, I believe that I might be able to complete that challenge, though I honestly doubt I'll ever try.

Which leads me to why I'll never try to complete that challenge. Today I started work on a different Master Challenge titled Insurgent. In this challenge, one must beat the game on any difficulty with only 4% of the items: flashlight, backpack, grenades, foam and missiles. Each pick-up counts as one percent, with the exception of the flashlight since you start with it. This means that the player can not pick up any extra items in the game, such as guns, health, gold bars, passkeys, or ANY extra grenades, foam or missiles. It is very difficult, and requires quite a bit of thinking to make sure to avoid such items, especially guns since they trigger cutscenes and unlock doors to progress the game. I refuse to a use a guide, and am stuck with the flashlight, backpack, and grenades (so 2%), but cannot progress any further because to do so I would have to pick up a weapon, which would count as 1%. So now I have to figure out where I need to sequence break, or how to obtain either foam or missiles early, which are just out of reach or blocked. At least I'm playing on Casual, so 200 health should be enough to complete the game...I hope.

The other reason I am doing this is because I only have one achievement left to acquire, which is to beat the game on any difficulty with 13% or less of the items. I figure I might as well complete the Master Challenge, which will unlock this achievement as well, cutting down on playthroughs. After this playthrough I'll probably be done for a while. At most, I'll play through it one more time on Casual and see how quickly I can beat the game with 100% of the map and items. Then I can shift my entire attention to Persona 3.

Also, I was excited to see that when I bought Super Mario Galaxy 2 used, it came with a Club Nintendo code, which I entered (and it worked!) yesterday. So thank you to whoever previously owned the game for not only not using the code, but actually keeping that piece of paper with the case.