Barbelith Underground > Games & Gameplay > What (video) games are you playing at the moment

MGS2: it's been a while since I played it, but from what I can remember you *always* want to try and shoot Vamp from the first-person view. Third person just isn't accurate enough and you never get head shots with it. Mind you, you've probably been using first-person for aiming throughout, which is how it should be. I remember Vamp taking me a few goes before I nailed him, but I don't remember enough about it to give you any specific advice there, sorry. I think you need to make really good use of the audio cues to figure out when it's safe to aim at him when he runs around the upper platforms. Shooting him when he's on the deck is a lot easier - peg it away from him, flip around quickly and go into first-person, plant one in his head then repeat.

Not the best advice ever, I know.

I'm at 61 in Amped - as soon as I managed to leave the 80s it started to click into place. First thing: forget grinding. There are far more points to be gained from combining flips, spins and grabs.

Don't use the right thumstick at all. I don't think you are, from what you've said before, but I made the mistake of using it for grabs when I first played the game and I think it's part of the reason I hit a brick wall. I thought it'd be more intuitive than the face buttons, but it's not accurate enough and not as easy to associate grabs with their points worth as X, Y and B.

Grabs are the secret to the big scores. In any one jump, it's best to limit yourself to one continuous grab and one continuous spin - don't pull two grabs in any one jump, don't change the direction of your spin in any one jump. Where the points come in is with the tweaks. Once you're in the spin and grab, swap between the two shoulder triggers like crazy. Often, you don't even need to wait until the animation kicks in - the tweak will be registered as soon as the button's pressed. There's pretty much a guarantee of at least 20K for each trick like this, even if you stuff it up a little. Grabs and spins lose points value the more you repeat them in one run, but tweaks don't.

First jump - grab X, spin left, tweaks.
Second jump - grab , spin right, tweaks.
3rd - X, forwards, tweaks.
4th - X, back, tweaks.

Then repeat the four tricks with B grabs instead of X.

Also remember that the timing of your jump affects its height. It can still seem annoyingly random to me, but I think that's because it's almost entirely an instinct thing - as soon as you try to think about it, you fuck it up.

You're on Stratton now, yeah? Which challenges have you still go to complete on all of the slopes so far? I've got a specific strategy for a 200K+ run on Brighton 1, if you're still having trouble. It's not any more complex than the route that I take down that particular slope and which moguls/ramps I aim to hit.