The 8 Stages of VR 18 (Metal Gear Rising)

First Attempt
You may not even realize that this is a “one-hit KO” challenge at first. You take out the first wave easily by baiting the Gekko’s bum-rush and countering, the same technique you’ve been using the majority of the game. It’s not until you get killed by the Mastiff’s drop kick that you realize what you are in for.
“One-hit KO? This is going to be tough.”

Stage 1: Denial
After a couple hours of failed attempts, you start to blame the mission for being too difficult and unfair.
“The stupid camera keeps getting me killed!”

Stage 2: More Denial
By this point you’ve mastered perfect parrying the Mastiffs only to subject yourself to the horror of wave 3.
“That laser attack is so unfair!”

Stage 3: Anger
You’re seeing red. Your gameplay is starting to suffer due to your lack of focus. You start to spout expletives in a vain attempt to vent your frustration. Sadly for many, the game disc itself does not survive this stage.
“[EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED]!!!”

Stage 4: Bargaining
You start to realize that success in this mission is highly dependant on the actions of the enemy AI. You beg the game for mercy.
“If only the enemy AI would just do what I want it to do!”

Stage 5: Acceptance
After hours and hours of failed attempts, you finally accept your defeat. Your eyes are getting heavy, your reflexes are slowed and your drive has been all but squashed.
“Forget this, it’s not worth it.”

Stage 6: Research
You start to watch YouTube videos and read forum threads about the mission, hoping to discover some kind of tactic or exploit to make the mission more manageable.
“This guy on YouTube makes it look so easy…”

Stage 7: Revengeance!
You’ve gotten a good night’s sleep and return to the game with a clear head and renewed motivation. You’re parrying and dodging like a pro, Raiden on the screen looks like poetry in motion. You embarrass the Mastiffs and trick the Fenrir into killing his own entourage. You obliterate the Grad using the tactial Sai stun lock trick you saw on YouTube.
“Holy crap, I actually did it!!”

Stage 8: All That Heavenly Glory
You are elated now. You triumphantly proclaim “I beat VR mission 18!!!” on your Facebook status. No one knows what you’re talking about.
“I wonder what VR 19 is like?”

Oblivion and the ‘leveling problem’

In preparation for Skyrim, I’m doing a new playthrough of Oblivion. I really like this game but hate its broken-ass leveling system. If you’ve played Oblivion before you know what I’m talking about. The game’s enemies and treasures level up as your character does, which sounds like a great idea in theory but it’s entirely possible to screw up your character to the point where you are ‘behind the curve’ of the game and the enemies all own you. To figure out why this happens we have to analyze how the leveling system works.

When you create your character, you’re asked to choose 7 major skills that basically define your character’s abilities and also determine when you level-up. These skills have their own independent skill levels that are raised as you use those skills in the game. When you have a total of 10 skill levels across your major skills you level up. If you are playing as a warrior, for example, you might want to choose ‘Blade’ and ‘Heavy Armor’ for major skills in the interest of improving your character’s fighting ability. This would most likely be fine because with these skills you should be able to handle the stronger enemies as the game progresses.

The problem arises when you decide to try a more interesting character build, like say a thief. As a good thief, you will most likely want to choose a major skill like ‘Sneak’. What good is a thief that can’t sneak? Just imagine yourself in a dungeon, shrouded in darkness, bow and arrow in hand, just ready for that sneak attack on an enemy guarding a treasure you so desire. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Here’s the problem: choosing a major skill like ‘Sneak’ for a thief could actually hurt your character. You will sneak pretty much constantly and your character could level up too fast, causing enemies to become too powerful for you to defeat. What you will end up having to do is stop using ‘Sneak’ and the other major skills you chose in the interest of not leveling up. That’s right, in this game you want to avoid leveling up. This is inherently flawed because as an RPG gamer your sensibilities are to choose the skills that your character is going to use most, but some skills level up so quickly through normal play and don’t really contribute to your characters ability to stay alive that they end up hindering you more than helping you.

So what’s the solution to this problem? What I am going to try for my new playthrough is the following: I’m going to pick major skills that I can generally avoid using in the game, things like ‘Hand to Hand’, ‘Heavy Armor’ and ‘Conjuration’. Basically my strategy will be to have all my good skills as minor skills, level them up until I’m satisfied (gaining minor skill levels does not cause your character/game to level up) and then level up a throw-away major skill 10 times to trigger the character level up. How ass backwards is that? This will be my first time trying this strategy but I think it will result in the best character for me. The beginning of the game might be harder due to the fact that I will not be getting the initial stat bonuses from choosing such skills as ‘Sneak’ and ‘Marksman’ as major skills for my thief character, but I think in the long run it will make my character better and the game more fun.

I’ve purposely been avoiding looking up Skyrim info to avoid things getting spoiled, but I’m very happy to say that Skyrim will be adopting the (much better) leveling system from the Fallout series.

TLDR version: To make the best character in this game, choose major skills that you don’t actually want to use.