Seeing green

I’ve recently knocked off two more to-dos from my 2011 video game backlog/wishlist. At the expense of playing new games, I’ve managed to complete the solo guitar career in Guitar Hero: Van Halen. I was going to go back in to dig out a few more achievements and up my cheevo/gamerscore ratios, but someone at Activision decided that you don’t deserve achievements unless you’re playing in a full band of people who are experts at the game. So maybe I’ll just let this one go.

I also hunkered down and played through the entirety of MegaMan Legends again. Well, the entire story anyway. I wrote off the objective of collecting and upgrading all the special weapons before I started because who has the time to grind that much money? I was shooting for the Shining Laser, at least, but the stupid race game that you need to win to get a part for it is too dumb and hard so I gave up and just beat the game with the buster. Whatever. The charm of MegaMan Legends is in its characters and world design, not collecting everything.

I’ve decided that now I’m going to clean up the rest of the green stars in Super Mario Galaxy 2 – a task I thought would be much less annoying than it is. The green stars are just tedious filler to begin with, but some of them are placed in incredibly frustrating locations. I wrestled with the Whomp King for almost ten minutes, trying to get on top of him so that I could collect the star floating above the fortress in Throwback Galaxy. Once I decided it was impossible, it took me another few minutes to get a good enough wall jump off of his face to grab the star. I know they won’t get any easier from this point on, but if they get any harder, I may just give up on this fool’s errand.

TE on E3

I haven’t really been into E3 the last few years. Less free time is probably a factor, but also I no longer spend every day with a group of people who are also interested (re: the high school clique). I find myself considerably less excited about video game things when I don’t have people to be excited about video game things with.

That said, I’ve generally just followed Nintendo’s E3 stuff this year, which should surprise nobody. I read about the Xbox SmartGlass thingy and couldn’t care less, and I have no idea what Sony’s up to besides that half-hearted Super Smash Bros rip-off. I really couldn’t care either. I play video games because I like Mario and Zelda. I used to like MegaMan too, but they don’t make those anymore.

I managed to get myself pretty pumped up for the big Nintendo press conference, so much so that I actually took a really early lunch break so I could watch it live on my phone. It wasn’t a terribly exciting show overall, but it served it’s purpose: I want to buy a Wii U more now than I did last week. I love the things they’re doing with the GamePad. Asymmetrical gameplay is neat, but not really new for dedicated Nintendo fans (that’s yet another story). I’m much more interested in the way it’s going to be used as a physical inventory manager or sniper scope or TV remote.

Regarding the most controversial part of the presentation, I’m not really that excited about Nintendo Land. Sure, it looks neat, but I’m more of a solo gamer. If it’s packed in with the Wii U I’ll spend time with it, but if it’s sold separately I’ll likely pass. Wii Sports was revolutionary enough that I would have purchased a copy, this seems less so. And Nintendo already has a great game that unites their franchises: it’s called Super Smash Bros.

Obviously I’m going to buy Zombi U. I bought Dead Island, didn’t I?

For some reason, I just don’t feel the passion for new 2D Marios anymore, but I’ll definitely get New Super Mario Bros U. At the very least, I’ll be able to get Stephanie to play with me, and we had an absolute blast with NSMB Wii. I’m less sold on NSMB2, but it’s Mario, so it’s going to be good and I’m going to buy it. Might be a little disappointing after the stellar Super Talking Time Bros 2 though.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star looks great, and I’m sure I’ll adore it when it launches, but I’m just not really interested yet. Maybe I’ll have to go back and play The Thousand Year Door again to remind me how good these are.

Project P-100 and Tank! Tank! Tank! both look like a ton of fun, but seem as if they might wear thin pretty quickly (much like Custom Robo). Online multiplayer would probably be necessary to justify a purchase. We’ll have to see how robust they are before making any real judgement.

Bit.Trip Runner 2? EXCITED!

I really wanted to, but couldn’t really get into Epic Mickey, so I’ll likely pass on the sequels. Sorry, Warren Spector. I know you did your best, and I respect that. It just didn’t click for me. Goes for Scribblenauts Unlimited. I am behind these games 100% in theory, but I just didn’t have enough fun with them to back that up with dollars.

I’ve been sold on Darksiders II since before it was announced. I enjoyed the first one enough to play it twice in a row – a very rare occurrence. Luigi’s Mansion is another game to bear that distinction. It may be because it was the only GameCube game I owned for about a month, but I also really liked it! I hope the sequel launches before Christmas.

I like the idea that the new Tomb Raider might release on Wii U, because I like what I’ve read about it so far. As for any other 3rd party offerings I haven’t mentioned yet? I probably don’t care about them. Although Assassin’s Creed III may be the first game in the series that I play because I dig the American Revolution setting.

The two big games for me are the ones that led the two big Nintendo shows. On Wii U, it’s Pikmin 3. I could play Pikmin over and over again forever if there weren’t so many other games that deserve my attention. It’s a short game, but who cares? It’s super fun! My secret shame is that I still haven’t finished Pikmin 2… the perfectionist in me won’t accept Pikmin losses to anything but boss monsters, and so I inevitably lose focus while trying to savescum my way through its deadly, deadly caverns. I’ll get there some day. There isn’t enough information on Pikmin 3 yet to be excited about it for any reason other than it’s Pikmin 3 and its beautiful HD graphics. I really would love to type more words about it, but there’s not much else to say. Maybe a speculative post in the near future.

In my 3DS’ future is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate. The title could use a little pruning, but the game looks amazing! Lords of Shadow combat and story with Symphony of the Night exploration? Assuming it plays as nicely as it sounds, this could very well be the perfect video game for me. If you’ve played those two games and aren’t excited about what looks like a mash-up of the two, there’s something seriously wrong with you. You really should get that checked out ASAP. It’s probably cancer eating the “good taste” part of your brain. Seriously, talk to your doctor.

If there’s one thing I’m sad I didn’t see, it’s either of the Monster Hunter games for 3DS. I will be broken-hearted if they are destined to remain exclusive to Japan. If the 3DS weren’t so damn region-locked, I would import them and learn Japanese so I could play them. That’s how much I love Monster Hunter. Then again, MH4 isn’t even out in Japan yet, so we’re going to be playing the waiting game for a while anyway.

That’s about it. I’m sure there’s something I forgot to mention, but if I forgot it, it probably wasn’t that impressive in the first place. Now the real question is how I’m going to be able to afford (in both time and dollars) to play all of these games.

Gamers suck

Kay, so I don’t know if you’ve been following E3 at all this year, but it’s really making me sick of the internet. I’ve only really been keeping up with Nintendo World Report ‘s coverage of the Nintendo side of things, and if this wasn’t something I’m so deeply invested into, I probably would have buggered off right after their press conference on Tuesday.

Here’s the issue: I was happy looking at new media for games and a new console that I will be enjoying later this year. Nearly everyone who posted comments on the site was there to whine about how the presentations weren’t good enough or about how much the games shown are going to suck. What? I thought this was a Nintendo fansite? Also, you haven’t played these games yet!

Most comments are pretty similar to this: “Nintendo did a crappy show because they didn’t tell me about every single game that’s in development. Give me more. I am entitled to more. Everything you showed sucks because I already knew about it. Nintendo Land sucks and New Super Mario Bros sucks and I don’t care about Pikmin 3. Show me what Retro is doing!”

It’s a little exhausting. I guess this is more or less the status quo for the internet though, and I just never paid that much attention before now. I suppose that maybe I was on this ridiculous bandwagon back in the day in some capacity, but mostly I just remeber being happy to digest all the new previews and videos provided to me, and not just bitch about how there should be more.

It’s kind of the same thing that happened with Xenoblade Chronicles. You had this game that wasn’t going to be released in North America, and gamers desperately worked to get it brought over. Operation Rainfall was ultimatley two-thirds successful (Xenoblade and The Last Story are go, Pandora’s Tower is still absent). This was a movement of gamers who unrelentingly demanded these games for themselves. Then when Xenoblade was released, half of them turned around and bitched about how the graphics aren’t good enough instead of savouring the hard-fought victory and enjoying the best game available on the Wii.

MegaMan Legends 3 had kind of the opposite story, but the same outcome. The game was announced, and the developers were kind enough to actually set up a website where fans could submit their thoughts on character designs and other aspects of the game. Then Capcom decided to can it because they didn’t think it’d be profitable enough. I was heartbroken of course, but the other nerds flew into an absolute rage, demanding that Capcom continue development because they deserved the game. Why? What did you do to deserve it? What makes you think you’re so special?

I’ll talk more about my personal opinion on Nintendo’s E3 showing in another post, but for now I just want to distance myself from these other gamers who feel they deserve so much more than the game makers are giving them. Yes, E3 could have been more exciting, but stop whining about it. You’re lucky these people are putting so much money and effort into trying to entertain you in the first place. If you don’t like it, go do a better job yourself. It seems like all anyone can do anymore is complain.

Forever is a long, long time

So you may have noticed that I’ve been ignoring the blog for a while. I guess that’s just the kind of thing that’s bound to happen when you get married. That’s okay though. I have stuff to type thoughts about now. None of them particularly interesting to anyone but me, but that’s kinda the point.

I’m going to try may hand at publishing another article in the near future too. That’s kind of exciting. It’s another TE staple too, so froth with demand!

Random musings

I just realized how ironic it is that I said “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was too much of a mouthful for a title. (You know, because my website’s name is an octosyllabic monster)

My Super Talking Time Bros 2 LP is coming along swimmingly, though I feel the onset of burnout. I guess devoting every spare second I’ve had to it for the past week was maybe a bad idea. Gotta learn to pace myself better.

In any time I have that I’m not putting toward STTB2, I’ve been soaking up more completely useless trivia than you can shake a gunblade at from the Final Fantasy Wiki. Do you understand the plot, character motivations, and mythology of Final Fantasy XIII? Because I do. I probably know more about FFXIII’s story than FFXIII does.

I’ve finally started reading Monster Nation, the sequel to the superb Monster Island. It’s good, but not quite as hard to put down as Island was.

Trying to eat less sucks. Now I’m hungry all the time. Even right after a meal.

I cannot believe how many more people are on the 4:42 bus home as opposed to the 5:14. I had to stand for half the ride home yesterday! I have never been so put upon as this.

I was looking at DLC costumes for Final Fantasy XIII-2, and can’t help but think that Square-Enix got something backwards. Noel is a more competent Medic than Serah, and she’s a better Ravager than he is, but Noel got the black mage costume and Serah the white mage. Geez, gender roles. Also Noel’s black mage outfit lacks a pointy hat. Epic fail.

Why does iTunes delete all the ringtones off my iPhone whenever I install the new firmware? Nothing else ever vanishes. Just the ringtones.

Is Minecraft still big enough that Mojang is really getting away with charging $25(ish) for it? I was super excited about gettiing the Xbox version until I saw the price.

Chisel Master 3D

Finally, I am able to cross my full clear of Picross 3D off my 2011 video game checklist. I completed the last puzzle yesterday on my lunch break, and did a long-delayed fist pump to celebrate.

Considering that Picross 3D came out near the end of the DS’s lifespan, I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t hold it back for the 3DS. Maybe that would have resulted in a few lost sales at the time, but it would have been a really great launch title: something the 3DS sorely lacked. More than four people might have bought it then, too.

Anyway, that’s just another small victory for me. Now to get back to ignoring that list…

Teenage Martian Ninja Turtles

I don’t know if anyone but me keeps up with this kind of stuff, but there’s a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in production. It’s actually just called “Ninja Turtles,” which is kind of a strange departure from the norm, but I suppose it helps to streamline a title that’s a bit of a mouthful, as well as define it from other works that use the whole title.

The big news about this one though, is that it’s being produced by Michael Bay, and he’s changing the lore so that the turtles are aliens instead of mutants. The fan community is in an uproar, with hateful letters to Bay flying left and right. You might think that being the TMNT fanboy that I am, I would be pushing my way to the front of this spiteful bandwagon. In fact, I am not. At first I wasn’t ready to believe it, but after spending a good hour or so reading what we know about this film so far, I’m not too worried about the change.

I will admit that I do worry about how Bay is going to handle the Turtles otherwise. He’s not exactly a man who understands the concept of “subtlety” and that’s kind of the whole point of ninjas. Overall though, I trust him to keep mostly in line with where the franchise should be. I really loved the reboots of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, even if they did take themselves a little too seriously. TMNT is a fairly light-hearted franchise, so I’m really just hoping that it’s not all grimacing and dull colour palettes. Even the grim black-and-white comic book Turtles lighten up and start cracking wise after the first couple issues.

Anyway, the alien turtles thing. It’s a little ridiculous, but I can’t imagine that it would change the story that much. It’s been confirmed that the Turtles will be the same characters we all know and love, so does their origin really matter? I’ll admit that I had reservations about it at first, but sitting down and really assessing the situation cooled off my terror gauge pretty quickly. Especially given the fact that Eastman and Laird have both been privy to a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that the general public doesn’t have access to yet, and they’re both pretty optimistic about the project. Their direct involvement seems to be limited, but as long as they’re showing upturned thumbs, I believe that everything will turn out alright.

The other thing you really have to consider is that there are plenty of other franchises that have been rebooted or otherwise completely rebuilt that have worked out for the best. In my case, I am thinking explicitly about the Silent Hill series. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, if you want to get really specific. Aside from names, Harry’s line of progression through the town, and the general atmosphere of unease, there really isn’t all that much in common between it and the original Silent Hill. And that was okay! Though Shattered Memories changes nearly everything about the game it is inspired by, I have room enough in my heart for both, because they are both quality products. Yes, someone went in and changed a story that I am very familiar with and treasure as a part of my personal development, but they did a really good job of it! Who’s to say that Michael Bay can’t do the same by altering a mostly irrelevant part of the Turtles lore?

“But… they’re from space!” you may scream like a moron on fire. Yes, they are. Did you know that in the original TMNT lore, the mutagen that made the Turtles into what they are was from space? Kinda makes the transition seem a little less like a major shift than just cutting out the middle man. Yeah, yeah, I know there was none of that in your 80’s cartoon or 90’s movies, but that’s the straight dope. And consider those too; this isn’t the first time a production studio has taken creative liberties with the Turtles’ lore. Hell, the 80’s cartoon took all sorts of wacky departures from Turtles canon, so I think it’ll be okay here. Even worse is that most people (fools) believe that cartoon to be the Turtles canon because it was the most mainstream iteration of the TMNT.

So I guess what I’m saying here is not to make any snap judgements. Yes, the Turtles are going to be from space. It’s not a huge departure from the original lore, so stop saying that the upcoming movie is “sodomizing your childhood.” You’re being nitpicky dumbasses. We don’t really know anything about this movie yet, and odds are that it will be pretty good. As long as it doesn’t take and inspiration from The Next Mutation, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. If it does turn out to be awful, I really doubt it will be because the Turtles came from space. There are much more important places for you to direct your hate: maybe send some towards that retarded-looking Battleship movie for existing. And for casting Rihanna. God, I hate Rihanna.