Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: March 2014

I’d just like to point out that in no part of this post am I trying to fool you. Yeah, there are some really weird entries in here this month, but none of them are jokes. I legitimately spent some time trying to figure out the appeal of Freakyforms.

Note that the Now Playing list is shorter than usual. I’m proud of this, because it means that I’m focusing on completing games, rather than having a dozen on the go at once like a spaz.

~ Now Playing ~

Zelda: Oracle of Ages (GBC) – It’s weird, because I claim Link’s Awakening to be my favourite Zelda, but I just can’t get into this one. I think it probably has less to do with the obtuse puzzles than the fact that it takes damn near forever to navigate the two world maps. Five dungeons down, three to go.

Yoshi’s New Island (3DS) – I’m only just starting World 3, but here’s what I can tell you so far: It’s almost as good as the original game, just with different graphics and worse music. So basically, yes, you want to play this, but do it with the volume off.

Freakyforms: Your Creations, Alive! (3DS) – I bought this thing years ago and have barely touched it, picking it up recently only as something to do while on the can. It’s a lot like Drawn To Life in that it’s fun to turn everything into penises, but not actually very fun to play. Once you get your penis fix, it’s basically just collecting a zillion doodads that give you more customization options. I don’t know if I’ll bother seeing it through to the end, or if there even is an end.

Blowfish Meets Meteor (iOS) – I’ve trained myself to ignore my phone as a gaming device, but every few days I remember that this game is actually really good and pick it up for a few levels. Those cute little mermaids aren’t going to save themselves, you know! I’ve progressed to World 5 at this point, and I have no idea how much longer it goes on.

Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES) – I’ve beaten the other two DKC games multiple times each, but for some reason I never really got into this one. I want to finally scratch it off my list, but I don’t know if I can be bothered to complete it to the full 102%.

Snapdots (DSi) – This is where I’m getting my “a little like picross but not really” fix for now. All I have to say at the moment is that the difficulty is really uneven. The stupid-easy and retarded-hard puzzles are all intermixed seemingly at random. Fun, and most of the time makes you actually think.

~ Game Over ~

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (360) – I am terribly fond of this one, and like the two other FFXIIIs that came before it, it’s pretty much dominated my gaming time. I even wrote a whole thing about it, I like it so much. So read that for thoughts more in-depth than “I think it’s neat.” I finished the game, and I’m playing through again on new game+, just destroying everything in my way.

Pokémon Battle Trozei (3DS) – It’s a Pokémon block-matching game. If you want to know more, check back in on Sunday when my full review goes live. I’ve “cleared the game” but still have roughly half the Pokémon list to fill in.

Jet Force Gemini (N64) – Hey, come on. You should know by now that I’ve been writing big spiels about any N64 games I play this year. Get with the program. TLDR: It’s was pretty alright until the end, when it turned into poop from a butt.

Soul of Darkness (DSi) – A crappy-looking Castlevania wannabe. It’s actually a decent effort, but there’s still no reason that you should play it over an actual Castlevania game. The one fun thing about it is that like all of Gameloft’s DSi games, it uses the camera to replace art assets with photos you take. This game in particular lets you replace the three main characters’ faces with whatever you choose.

Tappingo (3DS) – A puzzle game that people keep comparing to picross, but really it isn’t all that much like picross. You assemble a picture with a group of square tiles, and that’s about all they have in common. Tappingo is significantly easier than picross, and is definitely more of a thing you zone out with while you’re listening to the TV in the background. Not something you play for a deep intellectual challenge. It was brief, but fun.

Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai (3DS) – The sequel to a goofy 2010 WiiWare platformer that I inexplicably loved. More than half of the levels are side-scrolling now, and the overall game isn’t quite as enjoyable as the first one, but it’s still good enough that I’m looking forward to the third game that the ending teases. Also the collectable solar cells are just money now, so that’s nice.

Pokémon Y (3DS) – I think I counted this in Game Over before, but this time it’s really game over. The Pokédex is complete. 718/718. This is where I would drop the mic if I were inclined to do a thing like that.

Altered Beast (PC) – I got the recent SEGA Humble Bundle, and it came with a collection of ten Genesis/Mega Drive games. This is the first of those. It’s kinda butt, and I’m not even ashamed to say that I had to give myself infinite lives to beat it. Whatever, it’s an old-school brawler; it’s not supposed to be beaten.

~ Reruns ~

Donkey Kong Country (SNES) – Picked it up on a whim and nearly finished it in one sitting. Or so I thought. Turns out that I had forgotten that the last world is a thing that exists, so I wasn’t actually that close after all. One thing I noted is that it’s an awful lot harder than I remember.

3D Classics: Kid Icarus (3DS) – It doesn’t get a lot of respect, but I love Kid Icarus to pieces. It’s challenging, but not actually as hard as you may have heard. Or maybe it’s just because I’ve played it enough times over the past couple years to get really good at it. It just makes me sad that the 3D Classics version doesn’t have a new game+ mode like the NES original, because…

3D Classics: Kid Icarus (3DS) – I had so much fun the first time that I played it over again. This is the first time this kind of thing has happened, so I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. And thus, I listed it twice.

Super Mario Bros 2 (NES) – I bought the Virtual Console version of this on 3DS on a whim, and plowed through it in one go. Using all the shortcuts, of course. I’m a little shocked at how much harder it is than I was expecting. I had a lot of trouble making through the final stage. I suppose there’s a reason that I was never able to finish it as a wee one.

Year of N64 – March: Jet Force Gemini

Jet Force Gemini and I have a unique relationship. I sort of glossed over the coverage in Nintendo Power back in the day, and I did rent it once. However, while I didn’t have any immediate problems with the game, my friends held a negative opinion of it (though why that was never came up), and I didn’t spend very much time with it because of peer pressure. As it stands, I think it’s still the only video game I haven’t played for that reason.

But now I have played it, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t miss all that much.

That’s a pretty blunt way to put it though. The fact of the matter is that JFG is an alright game, but it certainly doesn’t dazzle the way that it should. Mostly because it’s got a handful of minor-to-infuriating issues that bog it down, but also because pretty much everything else that Rare did on the Nintendo 64 is a much better way to spend your time. If Mickey’s Speedway USA weren’t so mediocre and Donkey Kong 64 wasn’t a minigame-focused mess, JFG would be the worst N64 game developed by Rare.

Though, again, that’s harsher than it actually sounds. I appreciate Rare’s efforts with JFG, but it’s one of those games that could greatly benefit from a complete overhaul. A remake isn’t something I’d buy an Xbox One for, but I’d certainly plunk down $15 if it were remade as an XBLA game. But that’s for an actual remake. I wouldn’t pay a dime for a simple HD edition, and you’ll find out why soon enough.

The absolute worst problem with Jet Force Gemini is controlling the game. It has a control scheme reminiscent of a platformer mixed with a first-person shooter – that is to say that the control stick moves your guy in the direction you press it, and the left and right C buttons are used to strafe. The controls themselves are solid in theory, and they work for similar games, so what’s the problem here?

First of all, the characters feel very slippery. It’s hard to explain, but they don’t have that nice tight feeling that you expect to get from a high-profile 3rd-person action game. Precision movements are very difficult to make. It’s very common that your character won’t quite move the way that you want them to, and I’ve lost many, many lives by accidentally overshooting a ledge and plummeting into the void. Trying to move backward is also way more trouble that it ought to be.

The strafing is also super-weird. Maybe it’s a third-person thing, but the characters don’t simply move to either side the way you think they would. They seem to sort of randomly drift forwards or backwards a bit as well, and that can really throw you off in the middle of an intense firefight. Holding the R button to enter aim mode fixes this, but trying to aim while dodging the enemies’ unbelieveably accurate shots is its own little chanllenge.

When mixed with the slippery character movements, jumping is just not something you ever want to have to do. Just trying to line up your character for a jump is difficult, and landing where you want to is even harder. Fortunately, precision platforming isn’t something that the game asks you to do very often, but it’s a huge pain it the butt when it does come up.

The other issue I have with the game is how it handles collectibles. Rare games are well-known for requiring you to pick up a metric ton of silly baubles, and JFG alleviates that by making half of the pickups character upgrades (health/ammo expansions and new weapons) and keys, but it’s the other half of the collectibles that bug me.

The Tribals are a teddy bear-like race of friendly creatures who have been captured and enslaved by the space-bug bad guys. Throughout each stage, a handful of Tribals are scattered around, and it’s your job to find and save each one of them. They’re literally just standing around waiting to be saved, and all you have to do to save one is to run up to it, which will teleport it to safety.

What makes them annoying is that you have to rescue all of them to get to the end of the game. Already that’s kind of dumb because they aren’t handed out as challenge rewards like jiggies and power stars in Banjo-Kazooie or Super Mario 64, they’re just standing around. It doesn’t feel like you’re actually doing anything to earn your ending. It stings even more that you need certain upgrades before you can rescue some Tribals, so you have to backtrack if you’re going to get them all. The thing that makes me really irate about this is that when you return to a level, you have to rescue all the Tribals in it. Ones you’ve found already aren’t recorded, meaning that you’ve got to get them all in one go.

This basically means that you should ignore the Tribals until you’ve got all the upgrades and weapons, and then go through all the stages again. It would have been really nice of the game to tell you this in advance, but it doesn’t. So the first-time player will waste a ton of time getting all but that one inaccessible Tribal in each stage, and then return only to learn that he/she has to get them all again.

The one saving grace of this system is that since you and the enemies can straight-up murder the Tribals, so if you mess up and get one killed, you don’t have to reset the game. But really, that’s just alleviating one annoyance by susbstituting it with another, slightly less annoying one.

Jet Force Gemini’s redeeming qualities are pretty much all in the combat. It’s a third-person blast’-em-up, and firefights are good fun. Once you get a grip on the wonky controls, that is. The really fun thing is that it’s a cover-based shooter before cover-based shooters existed. The space-bugs have really great aim, and while you can’t snap to cover like you can in modern games, you’ll have to learn to strafe in and out from behind trees, crates, and the like if you want to make it very far. Simply trying to barrel through stages like a crazy person will not work at all.

The game also gives you a rather huge arsenal of guns and other weapons to play around with. After only a few stages, you’ll be equipped with a pistol, machine gun, plasma shotgun, sniper rifle, tri-rocket launcher, two types of grenades, and remote mines. There are even more guns and gadgets to collect, and enough different enemy types that pretty much all of them get a chance to shine. I’m the kind of guy who tends to favour one weapon, but JFG had the rare quality of making me comfortable with regularly rotating through my entire arsenal.

I’m also a fan of the cartoony space setting. It’s not a thing you see all that often in video games. Generally things of the sci-fi variety are super-serious, but JFG likes to goof it up whenever it gets a chance. From the adorable little Tribal coos and the gooey splatters that bugs make when you shoot them, to groan-worthy puns and jokes in the dialogue and the doofy-looking nervous system displays on the character select screen. And of course, since it’s a Rare game, at one point you have to find an NPC’s missing underwear.

I would be remiss to omit that you can also unlock special game modifiers by collecting the severed heads of your enemies. The special unlockables include: making blood rainbow-coloured, turning yuor main characters into kid versions of themselves, and changing all the basic enemies into Mr. Pants. That, my friends, is some sweet, sweet irony.

However, Jet Force Gemini does its absolute best to destroy any goodwill it’s earned once you get to the second act. Here, you’re given the task of collecting 12 spaceship parts (one of which is awarded for finding all the Tribals) before you can face the final boss. Most parts are found in new areas, so it’s not the worst fetch quest of all time. However, two of the ship parts are nearly impossible to win.

To get one of the pieces, you need to win a racing minigame. This is the absolute worst racing sequence that I’ve ever played, and it’s so viciously difficult that I almost turned off the system and called the game done after spending more than an hour over two evenings trying to win. I thought the Goron race minigame in Majora’s Mask was bad, but it’s got nothing on the JFG race.

What makes the race bad is mostly in the controls. Despite the N64 controller having an analog stick, moving your racer left or right is not a precise affair. Rather, you move the stick and it basically just flings itself in that direction. It’s basically impossible to control, and if you so much as gaze the wall, your speed is immediately cut in half (at least!). The AI is also brutal. The racer that starts next to you has a one-way rubber band effect; if you’re behind, it’s extremely difficult to catch up, but if you’re ahead, he will find a way to pass you. I don’t know how I passed this race, but I did it, and I felt the biggest relief, as I assumed that the worst was now behind me.

Enter Floyd. Over the course of the game, you recruit a little flying robot buddy who you can control to play little obstacle course mini-games for multiplayer unlockables. Except that one of these courses actually has a mission-critical item as its top prize, and it’s retarded hard to win.

The idea is simple: fly through a course of pipes, collect 8 doodads, and shoot 4 targets. Super easy. I completed it like nothing, but I wasn’t awarded the prize. What the game doesn’t tell you is that you have to do all this in under a minute. Also, the controls while playing as Floyd are even worse than the racer controls. Aiming is a bit sloppy in JFG on the whole, but trying to shoot something acurately while under a strict time limit? Nearly impossible. That and the collectibles have a hitbox that is much smaller than they are, so you basically have to fly right through the middle of them or you’ll miss and have to start over.

I came close twice, both times hitting the finish line less than a half-second too late. The fact remains that the other hundred or so attempts (I’m not exaggerating, either…) ended somewhere between 1:07 and 1:22. I’ve come close enough that obviously I think it’s something that I could accomplish, but not without channeling a lifetime’s worth of luck.

So I gave up. I invoked the Fuck It Adjustment, watched the final boss battle and ending on YouTube, and moved on with my life. This stupid mini-game was so infuriating that I nearly destroyed my N64 controller; clearly I wasn’t having fun anymore, and at that point it’s just not worth it. I think that by choosing to give up on Jet Force Gemini, I’ve grown a little bit as a person.

And so, my journey with the Jet Force came to an abrupt end. I got everything else required to beat the game, so I came close enough, but this one’s gonna remain incomplete. I suffered through a lot of crap just to get to the end, and that stupid Floyd course was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I want to be more positive about the game overall, but the fact of the matter is that the entire second half seems designed to make you hate it. It’s too bad, because there’s something decent buried under all that crud.

Dark Souls: Dragon Breath

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan wandered in a little too deep and got toasted by a giant lava man.

Bereft of my souls, and not too interested in wandering back into the lava giant’s domain to reclaim them, I decided that it was time to leave the Demon Ruins for now. In all likelihood, it would still be there if I came back later. A little birdie had informed me that ringing both bells had opened a fortress gate not far from the Undead Parish, so I began to make my way back to the surface.

On my way to the Blighttown bonfire, I noticed a large vertical pulley system that looked like it was built to ferry people up and down. I climbed up to it and hopped on. At the top of the lift, I found a ladder that headed farther upwards, and a small cavernous area in the stone. Entering the cave first, I was almost immediately beset by a team of blowdart jerks. I was able to take them out just before succumbing to the toxins that their blowdarts had inflicted upon me. You Died.

Frustrated that I hadn’t stopped by the closer bonfire before exploring, I hoofed it out of the Demon Ruins again, and made my way back through Queelag’s Domain. This time, I took a minute to warm up at Blighttown”s fire before heading back up the lift. I went back into the cavern, now void of blowdart jerks, and found myself a Fire Keeper Soul. This was a ridiculously valuable treasure, as it allowed me to upgrade my Estus Flask to restore more of my life with each swig. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the ability to use it on my own, so I’d have to find someone else to make the upgrade for me.

Leaving the cave, I began ascending the myriad ladders that led ever upward. It was a long climb, and I was consistently hindered by giant mosquitoes on my way up. Taking the time to slay each and every one of them was a waste though, as they were chipping away at my health at a good pace, and they weren’t quite fast enough to keep up with me as long as I kept moving.

At the top of the structure was a short tunnel infested with barbarians, who I dispatched ratehr quickly. On the other end of that tunnel, I came out in the middle of an enormous gorge. I want to say that the ledge I found myself on was about halfway down, but truth be told, I couldn’t see any bottom to speak of.

I slowly crept my way along the narrow ledge, crossing over a perilous rope bridge. I could hear a strange, repeating noise. A rumbling that came and went rhythmically. Poking my head around a cliff wall, I discovered the source of the noise: a sleeping dragon, clinging to the edge of the path I was on. Quietly, I crept closer, and noticed two things. Firstly, the dragon seemed to be half-rotting: a messy corpse of the great beast it once was. Though like too many of the corpses I’d seen during my travels, it was most certainly still alive. Secondly, the dragon was huddled over several human bodies, and what appeared to be a nice stash of treasure.

Obviously I couldn’t just ignore treasure. I sidled along the wall very slowly, careful not to make any noise, until I was basically staring the dragon right in the snout. I started collecting my bounty, a bunch of souls, a shield… as I set my hand on the sword that was laying right in front of the dragon, the undead beast roared to life and Immediately unleased a torrent of purply vomit at me. I was just barely able to dive out of the way, and another wave of icky barf was already rushign at me.

I up and ran away from the undead dragon, hastily clambering over the rope bridge and nearly tripping over my own feet as I sprinted down the narrow path. The dragon did not follow, opting to simply wait at his perch for any other prey foolish enough to get too close.

Following the valley in the other direction, I came to what seemed like a dead end at the base of a tower. Inside the tower was a mechanical lift that took me upwards. I came out in a dark cavernous area, and off in the distance I could barely make out what looked like a flooded ruin. Passive undead were all over the place here, and further exploration yielded another lift that took me up to… Firelink Shrine! Safety at last!

A mute girl here helped me to upgrade my Estus Flask, and then I started my juorney back to the Undead Parish. Again.

Tune in next week for Part 18: Dr Fangs and the Electric Mayhem

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

You all know that I’m one of those weirdos who really liked Final Fantasy XIII, right? I just wanted to make sure we got that out of the way first. It’s definitely not a game that everyone can appreciate, but I found a lot to like about it. Most of the characters were well developed, the setting was really unique, and the music was absolutely wonderful.

One of the few things that FFXIII fans and not-fans agree on is that the story is bad. I don’t agree with this. I think that FFXIII had a fine story (not great, but I found it interesting enough), the big problem is that it was told very poorly. The storytelling was disjointed, looped in on itself several times, and even omitted a bunch of details. Most of the key points could be found in the optional in-game datalogs, but if players have to read a bunch of supplemental material to understand your story, you’re doing it wrong.

Continue reading Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

Dark Souls: The Magma Giant

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan travelled through a horrible swampland filled with giant mosquitoes and killed a humongous lava-puking spider with a naked lady glued to its head.

I wasn’t terribly keen on exploring the Demon Ruins right away, but decided that I’d at least poke around a bit before venturing off to somewhere a little less flooded with lava. It wasn’t a very long poke around either, as all there was to the area was the hill below my bonfire that was covered in egg carriers, and a ruin wall that I could run across the top of that led me to a Fog Wall.

Thinking that it was one of those fake-out Fog Walls that I’d seen in early parts of other locations, I walked through it with confidence. Said confidence immediately dissipated when the Fog Wall did not. Terrified of what I’d find here, I made my way forward along a pathway leading along the side of the rock wall. Peering off the edge, I could see nothing but lava below me, and the heat coming off of it was overbearing.

I rounded a corner and stopped dead in my tracks. Quickly scampering behind the wall, I looked out again at what had spooked me. A behemoth of a creature was standing out in the lava, just sort of staring mindlessly at the pathway that stretched in front of it. The creature glowed a bright red and looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was a vaguely human-shaped lump with a mess of tenacles or spider legs or… something jutting out of one side. I really wasn’t able to made heads of tails of it. All I knew is that I didn’t relish the idea of it attacking me.

Then, a lump on the front of it’s body turned toward me and I felt the gaze of six or seven or God knows how many eyes on me. But the creature didn’t move. There was nowhere for me to go but forward, so I crept out from behind the wall. The creature didn’t move. I slowly started walking toward it, ready to turn tail and run for my life. The creature didn’t move.

Indeed, the giant didn’t do anything as I strolled by right in front of it. It didn’t move; didn’t make a sound. Just stared at me as I walked by. Unfortunately, the path came to a dead end. I looked up at the rock wall and wondered what I was supposed to do. I saw a small altar tucked away in an alcove at the end of the path. There was a corpse on the altar, and I did what I’ve been doing this whole time: I looted it for valuables.

I heard a terrible roar behind me.

The ground shook as the giant came to life and unwound a giant arm that had previously been coiled around its body in a way that I didn’t even know it was there. It roared again and I ran. There was a narrow passage leading through the wall, and I rolled into it, hoping for some cover. The beast’s arm slammed down on the path where I had been standing, sening rubble flying everywhere and knocking me off my feet. I quickly stood up and continued down the path, eager to escape my attacker.

But the corridor on ly led back to the main path, and the giant had already rounded the corner when I got there. It looked at me menacingly, breathed in, and the last thing I saw was fire. So much fire. You Died.

Tune in next week for Part 17: Dragon Breath

Mumbleheart

I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. On one hand, it has a strong tendency to bring out the worst in people, and makes it so that they can very easily use that hatred to make other people’s lives worse. Also social media is the Stupidest Goddamn Thing and I don’t understand how it’s taken over the world.

On the other hand, the internet affords me the ability to buy pretty much anything on a whim. While I’m very happy to have this convenience, it’s kinda dangerous for someone like me who has a terrible habit of impulse buying. I’ve sunk far more money that I should have into eBay, Humbe Bundle, and iTunes purchases over the last year, and the Mastercard people are laughing about it all the way to the bank.

And all that just to say that I purchsed some random album on iTunes yesterday. Goldenheart by The Organ Beats, to be specific. And how did I get around to picking out this album that nobody’s ever heard of? It’s pretty simple. The lead singer is Noelle LeBlanc, formerly of Damone, a band that I was pretty into back in aught-seven. I liked her previous work, so I bet $10 on her new(er) band. It was mostly worth it.

I haven’t been listening to very much in the way of new music lately, but it seems like a lot of the bands I’m currently into like to pump up their drums while sort of tucking the guitars away in the noise, only turning up their levels for solos. The Organ Beats went pretty much the opposite way in their mixing, and put the guitars front and center with the drums in the background, keeping the beat the way drums are wont to do.

The one thing about Goldenheart that I really take issue with is that they either recorded the vocals really poorly, or turned down their volume for some reason. Noelle is basically inaudible for half the album, which is a huge bummer because I think she’s a pretty good singer. Well, usually. It seems like she kinda phoned this one in. Maybe it’s just the mixing, but her singing just isn’t as strong as I’m used to.

Of course, she could have also been singing half-heartedly on purpose, because apparently (and I’m going entirely by the video embedded below) she wants to be the indiest motherbuzzer out there.

Stupid hat? Check. Scraggly hair? Check. Walking down a street trying to look deep? Double-check. Yep, that’s about as indie as you get. They just need to pop an air of self-righteousness in there and it would be totally unbearable. Oh, and also much, much worse music.

As an ironic twist, the vocals do finally stand out on the last song, “Don’t You Ever Feel Like Dying?” which pretty much just as dreary and depressing as it sounds.

Of course that all betrays the fact that The Organ Beats are a pretty hard rockin’ band, and I’m really digging them. They just need to turn Noelle’s levels up a bit next time, and they could be the next big thing for me. For now though, I’ll take it. Ten bucks well spent.

Dark Souls: Webs N’ Boulders

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan began traipsing through the rotten hellscape known as Blighttown, and beat up a fat hobo lady.

The lower level of Blighttown was a huge expanse of poisonous swamp, dotted with raised safe spots that came up around gigantic pillars that supported the walls high above. Trudging between dry land was slow going, and the constant barrage of giant mosquitoes didn’t make anythign easier. Fortunately the safe spots were spaced just close enough together that I could get from one to another before being afflicted with poison, but my journey through the Darkroot Garden had supplied me with so many Purple Moss Clumps that poison wasn’t much of a bother anyway.

I slowly made my way around the perimeter of the area, picking up loot from corpses as I went. At one end of the swamp was an absolutely enormous tree. It was surrounded by a throng of gigantic leeches, but they barely registered as a threat. I climbed up a large wayward root to a hollow portion of the tree, and found nothing but a shabby old shield tucked away inside a chest. It was such a unique landmark that I had anticipated finding something a little more significant. Alas.

Continuing my march around the swamp, I trudged along the costal area, taking out leeches and mosquitoes as I went. Following the natural wall of dirt and rock that surrounded the swamp, I came to a pillar that served as the end of that wall. I peeked around the corner of pillar slowly, squinting into the inck blackness that stretched out before me. I couldn’t see or hear a damn thing, so I cautiously stepped out and started feeling my way along the next wall. And then a giant boulder flew out of the darkness and hit me square in the face.

Dazed, I picked myself up out of the sand and one of those tubby barbarian dudes emerged from the shadows. Only this one wasn’t carrying the usual spiked club; he was lugging a boulder reminiscent of the one that had just recently gotten all up in my bidness. Mystery solved.

As I prepared to engage the barbarian, another boulder came flying out of nowhere and finished the work that its predecessor had begun. So there were two guys back there. Brilliant. You Died.

After reviving and exterminating the entire colony of mosquitoes again, I re-engaged the boulder bros, making sure not to step out so far as to alert both of them to my presence at once. Separated, and with a wall to shelter myself from flying boulders, they weren’t terribly difficult to deal with. Without the element of surprise to fall back on, they were slow to attack and didn’t have a chance of hitting me. As luck would have it though, they were just a warm-up.

On the end of the swamp opposite of the giant tree was a huge mound covered in what looked like spiderwebs. There were twisted trees poking out of it at all angles, and the mouth of a cave just barely visible at its pinnacle. This was pretty obviously the place I was supposed ot be headed, but three boulder-tossing barbarians stood on guard at the base of the incline.

Luckily, the barabarians weer pretty dumb, and I silently snuck up the side of the mound to the cave. Inside, things only got more horrifying. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all completely covered in webbing, and there were huge egg sacs all over the place. Farther in were two corpses lying on the floor, each with huge bubbling growths emerging from their backs. It wasn’t until I got close to them that I realized that the bodies were still alive. It was then that my stomach decided that it needed to be empty immediately.

I decided to put the poor souls out of their misery, but after I struck them, the growths on their backs erupted and produced two clusters of huge maggots that immediately started crawling at me. I hacked them all to bits in a horrified frenzy.

It was only after stopping to regain my composure that I noticed that just past the egg-carrying bodies was a Fog Wall. Deciding that it was in my best interest to enlist some help before entering what could only be the lair of a truly fearsome beast, I trucked back to the bonfire and ate up a humanity to restore myself to human state. When I returned to the webbed cavern, there was a summoning sign on the floor as I had predicted. Imagine my surprise when I activated it and Maneater Mildred reappeared from the ether.

Mildred’s phantom either didn’t remember or didn’t care that I’d killed her very recently, and she followed close behind me as I passed through the Fog Wall. I couldn’t have possibly expected what happened yet.

The figure that approached us was that of a beautiful, naked woman. She stared at me with a hungry look as she brushed the hair away from here eyes. Oh, and also where her legs should have been was an enormous, horrifying spider. And she had a huge sword that was on fire, which she wasted no time in swinging at me. The sight was so paralyzing that I only barely brought up my shield fast enough to reflect the blow. My senses then came back to me, and I backed away from the woman-spider while Mildred rushed forward and started hacking away at her.

The woman-spider, Quelaag, didn’t appreciate that, and her spider head responded by vomiting out lava all over the place. Mildred avoided it, but was then put in a perfect place for Quelaag’s human half to engage her with her fire sword. I saw my opening and began my assault on the giant spider-ass. Mildred kept Quelaag busy while I did my part, but even the craziest chubby hobo can only hold out against a fire sword and lava barf for so long, and it wasn’t too long before I saw my phantom parter disappear in a flash of light.

We had already done quite a number on Quelaag by that point, and while Quelaag fought back fiercely, I didn’t have to weather her attacks for long before I finally drove in the finishing blow. Quelaag’s form dissipated quickly and left behind a small, pulsating, black blob. It was her soul, and I scooped it up like so many before it and went on my way.

On the other side of Quelaag’s chamber was the second bell, and the next step in the quest that I didn’t entirely understand. After ringing the bell, I descended a spiral stairway that led out the opposite end of the cave. Outside, I found a sprawling cavern that was lit up brightly by a lake of lava. Off in the distance I could see a very explorable ruin, and right in front of me was a bonfire.

Seemed like I was about due for a rest.

Tune in next week for Part 16: The Magma Giant

Pepsi That Came After The One Before It

Wifey and I were out at the groceteria pickig up some fruit and veg the other day (also a pie), and an endcap happened to capture my attention. It was an endcap filled with a new Pepsi product, Pepsi Next. Being a member of the Pepsi family that I’d never seen before, I was intrigued. Learning that I could save four bucks by buying two cases was the factor that convinced me to buy in.

Pepsi Next is not a new product, but like I said, I’d never heard of it before. I chalk it up mostly to the fact that I don’t watch TV at all. Oh, and I guess some of it has to do with the fact that only in the last couple weeks has it become available in Canada. Yeah, that’s probably the one. It’s been sold in the States since 2012.

Pepsi Next is a Pepsi for a world where the acceptable daily amount of sugar for an average human is six teaspoons. Or something like that. It claims to have less 30% sugar than the “regular leading cola” has. Whether that’s normal Pepsi or not, I haven’t a clue, but Pepsi Next still has 26g of sugar per can, so that’s still almost double the daily recommended amount.

It’s still an alright compromise though. I love the taste of Pepsi, but am a little wary of it’s horrible effects on my body. Pepsi Next is less horrible for you, and it still has a pretty decent taste. Somewhere squarely between Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. I am not at all a fan of Diet Pepsi or any of the other low/no-calorie sodas, but Pepsi Next is far enough away from it that I can still enjoy drinking it. I’ve been trying to cut down on my sugars, but I’m not ready to let go of soda, so I think Pepsi Next is going to be my go-to soda from now on.

And let’s not forget the best part: that can! Oh my God, it’s such a perfect shade of blue. My horrible photography skills don’t even begin to get across how achingly beautiful it is. It’s the same shade of blue as the water that you see in travel agency pictures of beaches. That particular blue is my absolute favourite blue, if you couldn’t tell by me draping my website in similar shades.

In closing, Pepsi Next is quite alright. It’s not a straight-up substitute for real Pepsi, but it’s a good ever-so-slightly healthier alternative. Though it might be more accurate to say that it’s ever-so-slightly less unhealthy, because no Pepsi has ever even had aspirations to have a health benefit.

Year of N64 Bonus Round Q1 – Super Mario 64

Super Mario 64 is a game so near and dear to my heart that I’ve been calling it my Favourite Video Game for well over a decade now. For a while I was thinking maybe that Super Mario Galaxy might supplant it, but Spring Mario is stupid. Other than that it’s a pretty perfect game.

That gets me to thinking though, that I could go on and on all day about why I like Mario 64 so much. But I’ve done that before. Maybe not in blog form, but I have. So instead, let’s have a chat about the things I don’t like about Super Mario 64.

The short answer is nothing.

Yeah, that’s a huge cop-out. Obviously, if someone digs deep enough, they can find something to complain about even in their absolute favoutire thing. But it’s hard. One of the reasons that Super Mario 64 sits unchallenged on the throne of games I like the most is that there’s nothing about it that makes me grumpy, nothing that makes me call bull on it.

If you’re going to make me give you an actual answer though, I suppose one thing I might complain about is the way the Wing Cap controls. It works exactly as it’s supposed to, but it’s impossible to gain altitude with it, as Mario enters more of a glide than a full-on flying mode when he’s in the air. You get the boost from the initial takeoff, but from there on out it’s all descent. Maintaining speed is also a struggle. As Mario glides, he slows down to a rather lazy pace. The only way to regain any speed is to dip and then quickly pull back up, and after doing this, the tendency to lose control is fairly high.

I can see why Nintendo might have limited the Wing Cap’s flight ability, as there are a number of power stars that would be much easier to get if you could just fly up to them. But really, I’d rather have the option to cheese or not to cheese, rather than just have it strippped out in hopes of keeping the game “fair.” The cape power-up in Super Mario World is exactly that kind of broken, allowing you to skip entire levels once you’ve mastered it, but you won’t hear anyone complain about it. Mario 64 gives you so much freedom to play around any way you want, it’s just weird that free flight isn’t also included.

Also, Tiny-Huge Island is probably the least fun level. It’s not that the challenges are bad or anything, but the gimmick makes the level less fun than it could be. If you’re huge, it’s a miniscule stage with virtually nothing to do. If you’re tiny, it’s designed so that it takes forever to get anywhere. This is easily overcome by using the size-changing pipes, but it’s still a minor pain in the butt if you just want to bounce around the stage like a loon.

I’m really stretching it here, but I guess I also don’t like how your extra life counter resets every time you save and quit the game. That one’s mostly negligible though.