Can you dig it?

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The new Smash Bros and Captain Toad game are still a ways off, but my knee-jerk reaction here is that Shovel Knight is going to be my 2014 Game of the Year. The fates have conspired to keep me from spending too much time with it over the past two days, but after playing the first three levels, I’m pretty sure that I’m in love. This is exactly what a retro-styled game should be.

If you own a current Nintendo system or a PC, this is required playing. It will figure quite heavily onto your final exam.

Festivus in June

I briefly mentioned once that last year, I participated in Talking Time’s yearly Festivus gift exchange. It’s essentially an internet Secret Santa (here dubbed Ninja Santa), with each forum member who signs up given the mission of sending out a gift to an assigned recipient.

I have very little confidence in my ability to pick out gifts for people, and I was panicking pretty hard to get my gift done and sent before Christmas, but I did it. I spent a little more than I’d hoped to, but my “victim” was happy, and so was I. Then all that was left to do was to wait for my gift to arrive.

I waited, and then I waited some more.

By the time March rolled around, I’d accepted my giftless fate, and figured that I’d just have to be content in knowing that I’d done my part. “More important to give” and all that jazz.

Then last week this showed up.

I was not particularly shocked, as the fella who organized the whole affair had said that he’d be sending out consolation gifts to everyone whose Ninja Santa had flaked. Apparently the flake rate was really high this year, and Nich was paying for these consolation gifts out of his own pocket, so to say that he’s a pretty good dude would be a serious understatement.

Let’s take a look at what’s inside, shall we?

A big book of ghost stories! Mammoth, even, if the cover is to be believed. I’m so very happy to have received this book, as I’ve been crazy about ghost stories since I was a wee lad. In my adult life, I’ve not read a single one, so this fills a long-neglected niche.

It’s worth mentioning that I am also legitimately terrified of ghosts, regardless of whether they’re real or not, so this book will probably contribute to more than a few sleepless nights. I can’t wait!

Also a collection of old horror comics! This is exactly the kind of thing that I would spend my own dollars on if I had some to spare, so I’m also really happy with this.

For whatever reason, I have a deep appreciation for Golden Age comics. I don’t have a clue where it comes from, but I look at this book and I think that it’s exactly the kind of thing that I want to be reading.

I’m not very familiar with EC Comics on the whole, but I’ve had a life-long fascination with Tales From the Crypt, so a publication of a similar theme should be right up my alley, yes? Only time will tell for sure, but I can’t imagine any reality in which I end up disappointed after reading through this volume.

So that’s my Festivus haul. I’d say that it goes above and beyond being a simple “consolation gift.” I know that if I had to shell out to supply gifts to all the folks who didn’t get, I’d probably have just sent out the same generic tchotchkes to everyone, rather than hand-picking personalized gifts. So it’s a good thing that I don’t ever plan to run Festivus.

Ryan’s Spelling Tips For The Internet: Breath/Breathe

Good morning, Internet!

I see you’re back to learn more about spelling with your old pal, Ryan. It makes me very happy to see you here, because it makes me very sad to see easy words misspelled.

This lesson will focus on a set of words that are are similar in appearance, but are very different in application: Breath and Breathe.

Breath is a fairly easy word to spell, but it’s very common for people to forget that they need to add an E on the end when they want to use the word breathe instead. I see the word breath used instead of breathe all the time, so I’m going to teach you the difference between the two words.

The word breath is a noun. Breath is the air that is inhaled and exhaled during the act of respiration. Breathe, on the other had, is the verb for that action.

For example: Morning breath is gross, so brush your teeth before you breathe on anyone.

If for some reason you can’t remember which one is which, just remember that while the second E in breathe is silent, the first E makes a longer sound than the one in breath. If you hear the E as “eh” then you only have the one E. If it makes an “ee” sound, you’ll have to tack a second E on the end.

Hopefully you’ll take this lesson to heart. Already, getting this pet peeve off my chest is helping me breathe much easier.

Thanks for sitting in on today’s lesson, and be sure to tune in later for more spelling tips!

Hooray, hooray, for Mega May

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If you’re not a 3DS owner, you probably have no idea that last month was referred to in some circles as Mega May. Those circles being “Capcom” and “Virtual Console fans.” Obviously I place in the latter. Anyhow, Capcom made it Mega May by releasing the entire catalog of Game Boy Mega Man games through the 3DS’ Virtual Console over the course of the month. (Except for the first one, which has been on there for years already.)

It was glorious, let me tell you. But it wasn’t without its ups and downs. Of the six games released, I’d played only two, so there was a lot of new ground for me to cover here. I mean, obviously I was going to play them all. Even if I didn’t play them, there’s a certain sentimental value in having the entire catalog of classic Mega Man games all packed into a single device.

And by “sentimental” of course I mean “compulsive.”

Continue reading Hooray, hooray, for Mega May

Dark Souls: Throw Me a Frickin’ Bone

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan splurged on a really expensive magical trinket, and got pulverized by a jacked-up mushroom-man.

Dusting my hollowed self off, I got up and left the bonfire to travel through the mushroom-infested forest again. Having the ghostly figures in the first section jump to their dooms again earned a tidy profit of souls on the way, adding nicely to the figure I recovered from my bloodstain.

My second encounter with the mushroom-men went much more smoothly than the first. I took a few wallops, each requiring a couple swigs of estus to recover from, but ultimately the key to winning against them is to take it very slowly. Their punches hurt like nothing else, but they’re also very slow. Mushroom-men aren’t hard to kill, but it might take you all day to get the job done.

After defeating the two large mushrooms guarding the chest (an Enchanted Ember), I thought about slaughtering the harmless little mushrooms that were just minding their own business, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I may have been undead, but that didn’t make me a bad person.

Past the mushroom grove was a massive set of doors, even bigger than the ones that I opened with the Crest of Artorias. I could also see a white mist seeping through the seams, and I decided that I did not feel like a boos encounter at this point.

I turned tail and ran all the way back to Andre, who I figured would be able to put my Enchanted Ember to good use, but he said that he couldn’t do anything with it. I’d have to find another forge to give this bauble to.

I returned to the forest, but explored the far half of the first section a little more thoroughly this time. Past the innumerable weed monsters, I found a path made up of ledges and ladders that led into and across the ravine, up to the other half of the forest. It seemed like a roundabout way of getting over there, since taking the bridge was much easier and a more direct path. I was able to get a good glimpse at the hydra in the basin below. It was by a very wide margin the biggest creature I’d ever seen, and I didn’t have even the slightest motivation to get anywhere near the thing again.

At the other end of this unusual trail was a small clearing. Around it was slightly elevated ground, lined very neatly with trees. It looked almost like a cage created by nature. On the other side of the tree line, I saw a large shadow stalking about. I crept close enough to get a better glimpse, and saw that it was a huge feline. The beast’s fur was thick and spiny, and its wide, toothy jaw looked like something out of a nightmare.

I decided that it would be best to try to engage the big cat from a distance. I stood by the ladder leading into the ravine, ready to bail if the beast charged me, and took aim with my bow and arrow. My first shot hit its mark. The cat turned toward me and charged, but stopped at the tree line and started to slowly back away, never breaking its eye contact with me.

It repeated this pattern indefinitely, as if it was afraid to step down into the lower clearing. So I just shot it to death with arrows. Two more cats showed up, but they just did the same stupid thing and I shot them both to death as well. It took a long time, and well over 100 arrows, but I felled them all without breaking a sweat. It was weird, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

As a bonus, the cat monsters didn’t reappear when I rested at a bonfire, as most other monsters did. So I’ll never know what was going on with them, but that’s alright.

Fresh off of my victory against the cats, I pushed open the misty doors with confidence and waltzed through them with a swagger. Past them was another clearing, this one much bigger, and lined on all sides with slippery rock formations. In the very center was an absolutely massive tombstone, and an equally gigantic sword thrust into the ground in front of it.

I strode forward to check it out, but before I got too close a giant dog leapt out of nowhere, pulled the sword from the earth with its mouth, and then started swinging it at me. A huge dog, swordfighting me. And I thought that I’d seen it all.

The dog was not a great swordfighter though, and I felled him without too much trouble. And by trouble, I mean physical resistance from the dog. I really didn’t want to kill or even fight the oversized canine, as he was the most adorable thing I’d seen since I woke up in the Demon Asylum. In fact, he was the only thing I’d seen in Lordran that wasn’t some sort of hideous beast. So, yeah, I had some emotional resistance to stabbing him. I kinda just wanted to give him a big hug and scratch his tummy.

For my troubles, I was awarded a ring called the Covenant of Artorias. It didn’t seem overly useful at the time, and this was one trinket that I found no pride in having acquired.

Tune in next time for Part 26: Return to Anor Londo

Ryan’s Spelling Tips For The Internet: Definitely

Good morning, Internet

I’ve noticed that quite often, you’re terrible at spelling. Sometimes I’m bad at spelling too, but 99% of the time, that’s because I typed too quickly and/or didn’t proofread my work. I’m thinking that you just don’t have a hot clue when it comes to putting letters in the correct order.

So every once in a while, I’m going to go over a word that you get wrong very consistently, because they bother me so very much.

The first word I want to teach you is Definitely. This is a tough one, and I’ve come to the conclusion that not a single person in the world besides myself knows how to spell it correctly.

I’ve seen it misspelt in many different ways, but never the correct one. Definately, definetly, defiantly, dafinetely. I could list examples until the cows come home, but I feel like it would be more productive to simply give you a tip on how to get it right.

Definitely has a lot of consonants. If you sound the word out, they’re all pretty easy to pick out and get correctly. It’s the vowels that are usually the focal point of misspellings. Here’s the trick: there are four vowels in definitely; in order they are E, I, I, and E (we’ll consider that pesky Y a consonant for now). If you look closely, you’ll notice that the consonants form a palindrome!

So all you have to do to get definitely right is to remember that short sequence of vowels, E-I-I-E, and then sound out the consonants all around them. It’s helpful to note that the word is also built in a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel pattern (and for this purpose, Y is a vowel).

Alright, Internet, you’re now equipped to go out there and spell definitely correctly! Go out onto the message boards and YouTube comments and Twitter to wow your friends with your fancy new spelling ability!

I hope you’ve enjoyed your lesson as much as I did teaching it. Tune in later for more helpful spelling tricks!

Impressions on Nintendo’s E3 2014 Digital Event

I only ever watch Nintendo’s E3 presentations, because aside from maybe one or two specific games, I generally don’t give a flying fig about the other guys’ stuff. I always enjoy Nintendo’s shows, but to be quite frank, this year’s has got me the most excited I’ve been in a good long while. Let’s go over it point-by-point.

Oh, and here’s an embed of the full presentation, if you feel so inclined to watch it for yourself. I’ve embedded a few choice trailers later on, too.

The Presentation

The opening and a few little skits in between game-related segments were all done up Robot Chicken-style. And I don’t mean in a style reminiscent of Robot Chicken. I mean that I wouldn’t be surprised if Seth Green and company actually had a hand in creating the animated scenes. It was a dead-on likeness, and the skits used pretty much the exact same type of humour that the show is known for, albeit a little softer to keep it family-friendly.

While the internet seems to have mixed feelings about it, I personally loved it. It was much more interesting than just having Reggie and whoever else up on stage bleating about business strategy or whatever. Reggie’s part was actually pretty short, too, and his animated double stepped aside less than halfway through the show to let the games and their developers do the talking.

Super Smash Bros

The first game up was Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U. It still doesn’t have a real title, and at this point I don’t think it ever will. Whatever. That’s hardly important.

What matter is that Miis have been revealed to join the fight, and they look awesome. There are three types of Miis to choose from: Brawlers, who are bare-handed; Swordfighters, who obviously carry a sword; and Gunners, who have a really cool gun-arm. Not only can you import your Miis into the game, but you can also dress them up in a variety of hats and different costumes. Oh, and they look like they’ll be a lot of fun to play as, too.

Masahiro Sakurai talked about the game for a bit, and then showed a very quick montage of clips, which I’m sure held plenty of new info, but I haven’t gone over it to pick it apart yet. It really doesn’t matter. It’s Smash Bros. The only thing that disappoints me is that the “summer” release date of the 3DS version is October 3rd. In what crazy fantasy world is that considered summer?

At the end of the show, Palutena from the Kid Icarus franchise was also confirmed as a new fighter, with a very anime intro video. I’m not totally sold on her yet, but hey, the more the merrier, right? Her trailer also suggested that Dark Pit will be in the game in some capacity. Whether he shows up as a playable character or just an assist trophy, we don’t yet know.

It wasn’t a part of the big presentation, but a Pac-Man intro trailer showed up overnight. I’m still in a little disbelief, but really, it makes perfect sense. You’ve got Mario, Mega Man, and Sonic all in the same game already. Pac-Man fits right in there with the big names of classic gaming. Of course, Bandai-Namco is also helping develop the games, so… Pac-Man seems like he’ll be a fun fighter to use. If nothing else, he’ll be fun to watch, with all his wacky moves and goofy sound effects. His trailer also confirmed Mr. Game & Watch’s return, which is just gravy at this point.

Amiibo

Nintendo’s entry into the world of selling plastic figures as add-ons to your video games. At first they seem like an evil scheme to bilk you out of even more money, but unlike Skylanders and Disney Infinity, they don’t seem to be necessary to enjoy the full content of the games they link to. Well, not for Smash Bros, anyway.

While Nintendo has plans to launch Amiibos for a handful of different games, they only showed what the figures will do in Smash. There, they will simply contain AI fighters that you can swipe into your game. These fighters will level-up and adjust their playstyles over time, which seems like a really cool feature. I might pick up one or two because they look neat. I’m just relieved that they’re an entirely optional thing.

 Yoshi’s Woolly World

I’ve been waiting for more news on this one very patiently, and the wait finally paid off! There was a pretty big feature on the game and how it was conceived, which was a pretty interesting segment. I loved Kirby’s Epic Yarn to death, and I could not be more thrilled that Yoshi is getting a similar treatment.

The thing is that Kirby’s Epic Yarn was a pretty huge deviation from the normal Kirby formula. It was an entirely unique game with a beautiful visual style. Yoshi is even prettier, but seems to be hewing pretty close to the Yoshi’s Island style of gameplay that we’re very familiar with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because Yoshi’s New Island turned out pretty darn well on that front. I would like to see Woolly World go in a different direction, but I’ll just have to put my faith in Tezuka.

I also really want a crochet Yoshi now.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker

After playing Super Mario 3D World, I found that I wanted an entire game based on the Captain Toad stages really badly. I even made a Miiverse post or two to that effect.

Not once did I ever think that Nintendo would actually make that game.

But there it is, in all its glory. You know what? Not once have I ever thought that I’d be drooling over a game starring Toad, either. But here we are. I often don’t care about Nintendo’s weird little spin-off games, but the Captain toad levels in 3D World were just so much fun that this is going to be an absolute Day One purchase. I’m still not clear on whether it’s going to be a full retail release or a smaller eShop game, but either way, “Holiday 2014” can’t come fast enough.

The Legend of Zelda Wii U

It’s not even far enough into development to have a real name yet, but God damn did the teaser look gorgeous. And it’s in-engine, too! I love the idea of making the world more open so that you can tackle challenges in whichever way you like.

What’s most immediately interesting though, is that Aonuma suggested that the character in the teaser may not be Link. After seeing it, I immediately turned to the wife and asked “Is Link a girl this time?” The character is considerably more feminine than Link has ever been. It’d be quite a neat twist if Link were a girl this time. Or if Zelda turned out to be the hero!

Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire

Remakes of the third generation Pokémon games. There isn’t really a lot to say about them yet, but I think I’m probably quite a bit more excited about these than most. Sapphire Version was my re-introduction to Pokémon after several years of having let the series pass me by, and I hold it quite dear to my heart because of that. Most people just seem to think that Gen III was trash though. Nuts to those guys. Gen III gave us Blaziken and Walrein and Altaria. I really like Gen III, is what I’m saying.

Also, Mega Swampert is a totally boss, Hulked-out monster. I love it!

Bayonetta 2

I had no interest in Bayonetta 2 at all until yesterday. I’ll admit that I was forcing myself to be indifferent to it because I didn’t play the first game at all. I still didn’t much care for it until they showed that the first game would be packaged in with retail copies, and that you can dress up Bayonetta as Princess Peach, Link, and Samus.

Two games for the price of one? Fun, sexy cosplay times?

This is why I only care about Nintendo’s presentations. They know how to push my buttons.

Hyrule Warriors

I’ve never played a game in the Dynasty Warriors series, and I plan to keep it that way. However, I will buy pretty much anything relating to Zelda, so I’ve been watchign this one with a keen eye. And a much keener eye now that Zelda has been confirmed to be a playable character. I honestly don’t know if I’d rather play as her or Impa, who is a major badass here. Honestly, Link just looks so plain and boring in comparison.

It might not be a big problem when the final product arrives though, as Aonuma said that the game will have tons of characters to choose from. There are four revealed now, and I’m pretty excited about what they’re still hiding up their sleeve.

Not having ever played a Warriors game of any description before, I also get the nice bonus of this being a totally new style of gameplay for me. Running around a battlefield, chopping hundreds of monsters to bits? Taking on huge Zelda bosses in a more fast-paced environment? Playing co-op with the wife? Yes, yes, and yes! Sign me up already!

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse

Kirby: Canvas Curse remains one of my most beloved games on the original DS, and I nearly blew a gasket when I saw that there’s going to be a Wii U sequel.

That same gasket then succeeded in blowing when I realized that the graphics are all done in an adorable claymation style.

Xenoblade Chronicles X

I don’t much care for how gosh-darned anime it looks, but if it’s as engrossing to play as the first Xenoblade Chronicles, I’ll gladly plug another 150 hours into this one. And the Nopon are back, so hooray!

Ugh, but seriously. It’s so freaking anime. Gross.

And I hope the final title is something a little less… dumb.

Mario Maker

It’s exactly what it sounds like. A Nintendo-sanctioned program that lets you build, share, and play your very own Mario levels. It’s really nice to see an official version after the various illegitimate PC editors, but it’s kinda sad that it only includes assets from Super Mario Bros and New Super Mario Bros. So none of the more interesting stuff. Oh well. I’m sure that assets from other games will become paid DLC, and I’m sure that I’ll be more than willing to fork over that cash when the time comes.

Splatoon

A wholly new game for Wii U, and a team-based online (third-person) shooter at that! It’s a goofy paintball game though, so it’s kid-friendly, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be any less fun. No, in fact, this is the first shooter in years that has my full attention.

The gimmick here is that you can cover the arena in you team’s colour of paint, and your avatar can turn into a squid to swim through and hide in that paint. It looks like there’s a certain level of strategy involved, and that just swimming and bouncing around the stages will be a whole lot of fun. Honestly, I think I could actually spend as much time playing this as I did Unreal Tournament. And let me tell you, I played a lot of Unreal Tournament back in the day. I think it probably still holds the record for PC game that I’ve put the most time into.

All of that was enough to take in, but there were plenty of other games that didn’t make the cut and were only seen on the show floor. Everything on 3DS that isn’t Pokémon, for example. Also a new Star Fox game and a couple new projects that Miyamoto is working on.

Immediate buzz is that Nintendo won E3 this year, and if I had seen anything from any of the competition, I’d be able to agree. If nothing else, the Wii U has a friggin’ excellent bunch of software in the pipe. Hopefully that’s what it needs to turn its lagging sales around. Mario Kart 8 was a massive shot in the arm, and a showing like this can only make things better.

Yeah, so. 2015 is going to be a pretty expensive year. If you start to see me hanging out on the streets in the seedier parts of town late at night, it’s probably because I need to bring in some extra income so that I can buy all these darned video games.

Final Fantasy: All The Boringest

I know I said before that I’m not intending to use my new tablet as a gaming device, but the fact of the matter is that it’s a new toy, and I need to put it through its paces. That and I’d kinda like to have one or two little games I can poke at for a for a few minutes before bed, or when I don’t have enough time left in my lunch break to finish another chapter in a book.

So I browsed whatever it is that they call the Android app store, to see what kind of games are popular with tablet users. As expected, it was pretty much all stuff I’ve never heard of and didn’t look interesting to me. Also there was Minecraft Pocket Edition for $7, which I’m still mulling over (I give it a couple weeks before I give in). I did try to install a free Minecraft clone just to get my fix, but apparently it’s either broken or incompatible with my device because it refused to download.

In the end, I found myself buried in a page full of pricey mobile ports of classic Final Fantasy titles. I kinda want one, but I really don’t want to pay $16. Then I noticed that one was listed as free. That game is Final Fantasy: All The Bravest. And I’ll tell you right now, that it’s not even worth your zero dollars. If I had a dime for every free mobile game I’ve said that about…

I guess it came out some time ago, but never caught my attention since, as I’ve mentioned many many times, I don’t really use my phone for games. Also it’s a freemium game and I try to stay away from those as much as possible because I hate that model more than anything. I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t want to pay for video games, but I’d much rather pay upfront than play a “free” game and then get shaken down over and over if I want to enjoy the game to its fullest. Just call it a freaking demo already!

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The idea of the game is that you have a legion of little dudes based on the myriad of Final Fantasy jobs. You know, knights, monks, mages of all colours. Anyhow, you start with four, and as you level up, your squad will get bigger and bigger until you’re rocking a troupe of 32 guys. You can even bump it up to 40 if you send out a few tweets through the game. So you have this weird thing where it’s a classic FF battle screen, but your side is just swarming with party members instead of having the nice clean lineup of four or five.

The entire game is battling monsters and bosses. The way battles are fought is that you tap on your dudes and they do an attack. Then you wait for their ATB gauge to fill and then tap them again. Do this until the enemy dies. That is literally all there is. Different job do different attack animations, but they all simply attack. It’s mindless and repetitive, not even giving you the satisfaction of feeling like you’re the one who led your team to victory.

So all you do is swipe around the screen and watch as your guys just keep attacking over and over. Until they die, at least, which is often, because every guy on your team dies in a single hit from an enemy. If your team wipes, you have two options. You can wait, as one guy will regenerate every three minutes, so you can just flip over to a book and read for a bit while you wait for your team to recover. The best thing about the game is that when your squad is ready to go again, the alert sound is a little 16-bit chocobo wark.

The other way to recover your team is to use a gold hourglass, which is where things take a sharp turn for the worse. Gold hourglasses, you see, cost real dollars. And they’re only the tip of that iceberg.

While you recruit the 25 generic job class characters as you play through the game, you can also have actual legacy characters join up with you. There are a total of 35 premium characters to buy, but they cost $1.06 each and are handed out randomly. So if you want to have a cute little Rinoa sprite in your party, you might have to pay upwards of $35 before she shows up. It’s terrible.

There are also a few world packs that cost like $4 or something each, which give you a little bang for your buck, since they give you a whole new set of levels, enemies and weapons, rather than just plunking in one random character who may or may not show up in your randomly-selected party.

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So if there isn’t anything to the gameplay and the microtransactions are useless and exploitative, what is the appeal of this game? Honestly, I don’t really know. The only thing close to actual FF gameplay is farming enemies for rare weapon drops. I suppose it’s trying to coast on nostalgia, but it does a pretty bad job at that. You can’t see any of the beloved characters without paying out the nose, and even the overworld maps are incredibly generic and lazy. There is a catalog of all the characters, weapons, and enemies you’ve seen that has humorous descriptions to read, but that’s really not enough.

The music is good. There’s that, I guess. It’s all from past FF games, as it should be.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking at the Final Fantasy: All The Bravest page in an app store of some sort, it’s not worth your time. I played through it (and didn’t spend a cent) and I strongly regret the time I spent with it. I could have been doing anything else and been more satisfied. I could have been playing an incomplete, poorly-controlling version of Minecraft instead. You know, that actually sounds pretty good right now…

Dark Souls: Killer Forest

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan explored a cavern filled with skeletons and whatnot, and discovered a very important item.

I climbed out from the twisting caverns of the Catacombs and shielded my eyes from the sunlight. It had been a while since I’d been above ground, and the brightness was a little distracting while I was fighting the skeletons between the cave’s mouth and Firelink Shrine’s bonfire.

At this point, I was rocking a pretty significant surplus of souls, so I sauntered back to Andre’s forge in the Undead Parish. I had the blacksmith upgrade a bit of my gear, and then purchased the outrageously expensive Crest of Artorias from him. I had no idea what horrors that crest kept locked away, but I felt like whatever it was couldn’t be any worse than Anor Londo.

Heading back to the massive set of doors in Darkroot Garden, I slotted the crest into the circular  indentation in the middle. The crest shone brightly and the doors opened on their own, revealing a vast forested area. I stepped in cautiously, and before I made it very far, I was accosted by ghostly wizard. He wasn’t like the malicious invaders that I had fought earlier, but he was no less fierce in his onslaught, tossing magical bolts at me like there was no tomorrow.

I defeated the wizard, at a great cost to my health, but as his figure faded from the world, another apparition jumped out from the trees. I had no choice but to run, and I quickly hobbled up the stairway and through the garden’s doors. I hung a quick right and hid in the shadow of the nearby wall, hoping to elude the spectre. But when I leaned against the wall, to my surprise, it simply vanished! Hiding behind this false wall was a most welcome bonfire. Now that I had a nearby rest stop, the woods ahead seemed that much less daunting.

Refreshing at the bonfire, I headed back to the forest. Straight ahead is where the ghosts lurked, and to the left was a cliff that dropped off into nothingness. I decided to see what was over to the right, hugging the wall to avoid and ghostly encounters. Unfortunately, that side of the forest is literally covered with weed-monsters. These guys are harmless if you’re fighting them one-on-one, but in a group of seven or more? Yeah, you’re boned. You Died.

I decided to take my chances with the ghosts again. I figured that at least I’d be able to take them on one at a time. I was wrong. I guess I walked a little too far into the trees, and two of the spooks flanked me on either side. I ran back to the doorway, and hid behind the staircase, hoping that they would lose track of me and go back to whatever they were doing before I showed up.

To my great surprise, both ghosts ran up the staircase and lept off the top, over my head, and into the abyss below. I stood there, dumbfounded, looking into the fog. After a few seconds, their souls floated up and added to my wallet.

That was a freebie.

There were a few more ghosts in the forest, and I decided that despite it being terribly unlikely, I’d try to have them run off the cliff again. And they did. Each and every one of them. I suppose that all of these guys died of massive head wounds.

Moving on, I came to the remains of a small tower that bridged a gorge between the two halves of the forest. Inside the rubble was a large cat-like monster. It noticed me before I walked in, but didn’t attack me. Instead, the creature talked to me. She warned me that the depths of the forest were a sacred place, and that I should turn around and leave. I stated that I had no intention of doing so, which made her quite cross with me. From that point onward, she refused to speak even a word to me.

At least she wasn’t trying to eat my flesh, I suppose.

The far side of the forest was comparatively peaceful. There were no ghosts, or weed monsters, or murderous statues or anything. There were a bunch of little mushroom-looking creatures running about in circles, but they didn’t appear to have any interest in me. I was cautious around them at first, but one came up behind me and simply brushed past me without so much as turning to look at me. Sure, why not?

But there was a darker side to these mushroom folk. In the center of this area was a small pond. In that pond were two much larger mushroom people. They were at least three times the size of the waist-high munchkins that toddled around endlessly. The big ones didn’t move at all. They simply stood watch over a treasure chest seated right in the middle of the pond. Obviously I went for the treasure, and even more obviously, the big mushroom guys didn’t like that much.

One mushroom-man stayed to protect their cache while the other began lumbering towards me. It slowly raised a fist, and I raised my shield to absorb the blow. When it connected, I was launched back several feet, and I’d taken a massive blow to my health. These mushroom-men were not fooling around. I got up and carefully engaged the mushroom. I swiftly evaded his next punch, but when I went to counterattack, he surprised me with a follow-up swing. You Died.

Tune in next week for Part 25: Throw Me a Frickin’ Bone

Here, have some Mario Kart 8 videos

Despite my apathy toward it, Wifey convinced me to buy her Mario Kart 8. As it turns out, it’s really, really good. Also it has a built-in feature that lets you upload your race replays directly to YouTube. I wanted to put up full replays, but my internet is so damned slow that even the default 30-second highlight reels take 40+ minutes to upload. So I won’t really be using this feature for now.

That said, here are highlights of my first runs through all of the Mushroom Cup courses. They’re… I don’t know, maybe mildly interesting at best.