Everything’s gonna be alright

The saddest part is that this is the second time. I knew it was inevitable, and that all 360s succumb to the RROD at some point in their lifetime, but I hadn’t realized that having it repaired would only last so long. Maybe it was just me being naive, but I really, truly believed that once it came back from Microsoft’s Xbox Resuscitation Centre it would live on until it literally fell apart.

But nope. Hardware’s failed again, and this time it’s gonna cost me to get it repaired. So I was thinking about just waiting out my lack of Xbox until I can scrounge up enough pocket change to pick up one of those “more reliable” Slim models. I was needing a hard drive upgrade anyway, so I figure I might as well bite the bullet. If the one I have is just going to keep suiciding forever, why not spare myself the agony and pony up for a new one?

I just really don’t have $300 to fritter away on a game console I already own. Only now do I realize why I shouldn’t have bought each new iteration of the DS (excepting the XL of course, even I’m not that bad with money). It’s not like ol’ Phatty there is going to kick the bucket anytime soon.

Parallel Lines : Guitar Hero + MegaMan Battle Network

Quite often in the world of television games, there are set standards that will always ring true. Licensed games (based on movies, TV shows, toy lines, etc) will almost always be unplayably bad. Japanese RPGs will require hours and hours of level grinding. Madden 20XX will sell like hotcakes. Japanese and western developers will have exactly the opposite ideas of how games should be. And that last one is the important one here, because recently I’ve noticed that two completely different game series have evolved in almost the exact same pattern, and not only is one American-born and the other of Japanese heritage, but they’re of nearly opposite genres as well and come almost exclusively on different platforms.

Our first series is the “illustrious” MegaMan Battle Network. A stiflingly brilliant mash up of action and RPG, the Battle Network series was the first standout RPG series on the GameBoy Advance. It reinvented MegaMan and his world, and even cut him down to co-star, forced to share the spotlight with a rather vanilla human hero. Then we have Guitar Hero, which blew up the music game genre, and made the world embrace the art of playing a pretend guitar. Both series have come a long way, and coincidentally have shared many of the same steps along their separate paths.

MegaMan Battle Network took the idea of making MegaMan into a portable-friendly RPG, and then twisted it to make it feel like the action games that the plucky blue robot was known for. The world was re-imagined as a place where anything and everything was connected to the internet and the titular hero was but a program that answered to the back and call of the other main character, Lan Hikari. While Lan would run about around the world talking to ridiculous caricatures and completing tedious fetch quests, MegaMan’s portions were puzzle solving and virus busting. The gameplay made great use of MegaMan’s penchant for acquiring a wide array of secondary weapons, which were represented by battle chips that you could carry 20 of with you at any time. These were weapons that came in a nearly infinite variety, from shotguns to gigantic wooden spikes to flamethrowers to time bombs. They made the Mega Buster look absolutely useless in comparison, and gave the game a great deal of depth. You could battle in as many ways as you could come up with. Maybe you only wanted to use sword weapons. Maybe you’d rely mostly on using Navi chips, which summoned powerful allies to deal huge damage. Maybe you’d build a chip deck that took advantage of a special element. It was absolutely the most original MegaMan game made in years, despite the fact that there were a lot of recycled ideas from the MegaMan “continuity.”

Guitar Hero, on the other hand, was one of the PS2’s last breakout hits, and more than likely it’s best selling specialty controller game. The music genre was more or less just DDR in North America at that point, with very few music games escaping Japan, and even fewer that you’d actually hear about. But Guitar Hero was a game tailor-made for American gamers and music lovers. It took our most beloved instrument, turned it into a plastic toy, and made it so much more accessible than the real deal. The game featured 30 songs that ranged from legendary rockers to upstart Gen-Y groups, and then 17 more by bands that you’d never heard of. They were all covers, and 30 doesn’t really seem like a lot these days (the latest ones are pushing 100 on-disc tracks), but God damn the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll was alive here. You had songs by Queen, Boston, Judas Priest, Megadeth, Jimi Hendrix and the Ramones. It was challenging to learn too, but ultimately extremely satisfying to finally pull off incredible feats like a five-star performance on “Cowboys From Hell.” Guitar Hero was definitely a sleeper hit, as finding a copy of the game and guitar set within the first few months of the game’s release was like trying to find a Sasquatch; maybe you thought you saw one once, but really it was just a display box set there to fake you out.

Both games were exceptional, standout titles that represented their respective genres wonderfully. Battle Network gave people something truly entertaining to play on their GBAs besides the Mario Bros. pack-in that came with Super Mario Advance. Guitar Hero showed people that playing games for the fun of rocking out and getting high scores was just as (if not way more) fun as mindlessly running people over all day in GTA: Whatever City. And both games had their faults too. MMBN was a Japanese RPG, meaning that it would be chock full of tedious running around, and its plot was sufficiently goofy. Worming your way around the it-all-looks-the-same internet was annoying and most of the puzzles were either stupid or totally opaque. Guitar Hero couldn’t be played on a HDTV because it features no lag calibration, and even that tiny bit of lag can totally ruin the flow of a game built around the precision of the player’s input. Said input was a little unrefined too, with hammer-ons and pull-offs (HOPOs) being very difficult to execute reliably, and a rather lackluster multiplayer option. Also, Franz Ferdinand. Blech.

Capcom (who develop the MegaMan games, for those out of the loop) has a well known tradition of always making the second game in each series the absolute pinnacle. This was no different with MegaMan Battle Network 2. It was essentially the same game, but beefed up to be so much more awesome. New character customization options, nearly twice as many battle chips, a slightly less stupid plot, and even cooler boss enemies. Little did I know that Guitar Hero 2 would follow this exact same trend; bigger (and somehow even better) setlist, more unlockables, improved HOPOs, and a practice mode. Both games even got a multiplayer upgrade; GH2 now lets players play the entire song in face-off and includes a co-operative mode, while MMBN2 got a two-player net battle mode added onto the original’s somewhat pitiful trading-only multiplayer option. It should be known that the second installment in both series remains my favourite.

The third Battle Network game was equally as good as the second, much like in the original MegaMan series, but something was off. There were more chips and bosses and post-game content than ever, but the magic was starting to fade. It was starting to get the feeling of the same thing over and over again. It felt like Capcom was just going through the motions. And maybe there was even too much. The Navi customizer easily gave you the ability to tweak your playing style even more, but it also introduced a whole new set of baubles to roam around searching for. It even pushed the multiplayer envelope even farther by releasing two slightly different versions of the game, each with a few exclusive elements that made you get together with a friend to trade for.

Guitar Hero 3 upped the multiplayer ante too, but in a much more legitimate way, by including the option of online play. It was easily the best feature of the game, as the series had shifted developers, and its new handlers, Neversoft (the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater guys) tried way too hard to take Guitar Hero and make it more extreme. They put in cutscenes and changed the HUD and spoiled the selection of unlockable tracks and gave Judy Nails a very unmistakable boob job. Also they cut Pandora, my favourite character. The main set list was still of a fairly solid selection, but the rest of the package was getting to be too much. The obnoxious and loud presentation wasn’t anywhere near as lovable as the notebook-and-doodles aesthetic of the previous entries in the series. Neversoft was taking Guitar Hero way too seriously, and while the core experience -playing great rock tunes with a plastic guitar- was as good as ever, it was starting to smell of the same been-there-done-that odor that had settled upon Battle Network 3. And it was way too hard, to boot. “Raining Blood” makes this game sooooo much less fun.

In both cases, where the fourth game in the series is concerned, the less said, the better. At this point in both series lifespans, the developers had openly admitted to wanting to milk their respective series for as much cash as they could while the games were at the peaks of their popularity. Battle Network 4 was a disaster. Not only was the main plot device a lame battle tournament, but you had to complete the asinine story three times to get everything. Each time you would play on the next difficulty, and unlock a new rank of chips and gear each time. It was awful, and I don’t believe I cared enough to make it through my second run, even though I’d stuck with both BN2 and 3 all the way to 100% completions. You don’t even get to see all the boss enemies until you’ve played through all three time. But that’s not so awful as it could be, because the bosses were starting to seem less like souped-up versions of classic MegaMan enemies, and more like big goofballs. The only nice thing I have to say is that at least here they gave the two versions very distinct differences, with a completely different set of bosses and transformations for MegaMan. It would have made playing both versions worthwhile if the game hadn’t been completely broken. And speaking of broken, I’m not even going to get into that whole Dark Chip mess.

Guitar Hero: World Tour was also a horrible abortion of a game, and hopefully remain the black sheep of the family forever. I dread the idea of a worse Guitar Hero game. Oh, no wait, that was Band Hero. But that’s not the point. World Tour was Neversoft’s attempt at competing with the stellar Rock Band. Adding vocals and drums wouldn’t have been so bad, but that was the point where the directors said that people weren’t crazy enough about Guitar Hero and figured they should branch out with the kinds of music they’d put in the game. What resulted was a overall tepid and unexciting set list that left me wishing I hadn’t wasted $60 bucks on it. Seriously, there are like six good songs in the game. And I know the selection was less than perfect in GH3, but cutting out the unlockable songs altogether? Criminals! Unlocking those tracks (as arbitrary a content block as it might have been) was always special, and that feeling was completely void in this game. The upside is that I kind of like the slider parts, as it makes sequences that I’m nowhere near good enough to play possible. And what’s the deal with making me play a whole set at a time? I never liked that part of Rock Band and I surely don’t like it here. I like to have the option, but I don’t want it forced on me.

Both Battle Network 5 and Guitar Hero 5 seemed to bring redemption to their respective franchises, at least that’s what all the pre-release media led us to believe. To say they restored their families’ good names would be a bit much, but they were certainly a step back in the right direction. Guitar Hero 5 accomplished this mainly by making a much better set list. Not only does it contain “Under Pressure” (goes up a whole letter grade for that alone), but it has two Tom Petty songs and Megadeth is back! Plus Rush! How could I be mad at a game that includes Rush? The ability to play with any combination of instruments is a monumental improvement too. The guy who gets stuck on drums is always disappointed, and eight times out of ten, people will choose not to play over having to sing, so allowing everyone to play guitar together makes the game so much more party-friendly. Speaking of which, there’s all those party modes in there too, but as someone who mostly plays solo, I really haven’t tried any of them, and I doubt they would enhance my multiplayer experience (I prefer to play co-op). And switching up the gameplay by using challenges to unlock extra content is nice, but it also kind of sucks for those of us that don’t own a drum kit and are exempt from certain challenges. It’s still saddled with some truly awful tunes (Coldplay again? Fuck guys, learn! Coldplay sucks!), and it doesn’t quite have that true Guitar Hero feel yet, but I’m much less ashamed to own this than World Tour.

Battle Network 5 on the other hand, changes things up by *SHOCK!* changing the gameplay itself. 80% of the game is still traditional Battle Network fare, alternating between running around as Lan and blasting viruses as MegaMan, but then there’s a new twist. Not only can MegaMan assume the style and powers of his ally NetNavis, but you can actually play as them in certain parts of the game! Also, there’s a cool new strategy-style game mode that shakes things up a bit. It’s a little jarring to have something so different in a game franchise that prides itself on being the same thing over and over again with minimal changes, but it’s actually a pretty sweet sub-game. It actually requires quite a bit of planning and strategy, and the later instances can get incredibly hard, though it never feels like an unfair fight. They also dropped the lame “play it three times!” schtick, which in itself is a major improvement. The overarching plot is actually kind of good too, even if it has the usual MegaMan stupidness and plot holes mixed in. The ally characters aren’t really the coolest ones they could have chosen, but it’s nice to see some fresh faces in Mega’s place. And this one takes the version split even farther, developing two parallel but very different stories.

Battle Network 6 scaled itself back down a bit in terms of ambition and diversity, but it was the closest the series has come to trumping BN2. The version split isn’t quite as huge as in the last two games, but each still contains a unique set of ally characters. And MegaMan’s transformation powers have been tweaked to be so much greater than ever, giving him his allies’ forms without time limits, a super-powerful standard Beast transformation, and nearly unstoppable Beast versions of each of the other forms. While BN6 drops the strategy sub-game, it allows you to play as the ally characters much more freely and all but removes the horrible, game-breaking Dark Chips. The story ends here, officially putting the series to bed, and I honestly was happy that it ended on such a good note. Had Battle Network 4 been the last one, it would have left a bad taste in my mouth that might have fouled my love for the older games in the series. But things got much better from there on in, and while 4 is best avoided and 5 is skippable, Battle Network 6 is definitely a chapter in the series that fans will enjoy. I know I was very pleased that I enjoyed the game to stick with it long enough to almost hit %100 completion again. I let a few of the higher-class chips go, but I essentially saw all that the game had to offer, and that’s way more than I got from 4 and 5.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is still about a month away from release, but eveyrthing that has been said about it to this point shows that Neversoft is finally going back to what made Guitar Hero so great in the first place. The track list is looking to be about 90% metal and rock ‘n’ roll, with the other 10% made up of punk and alternative music. This is great. They finally understand that we play Guitar Hero because we love guitar songs, not just to play popular music. Rush is basically the face band for the game, and if I was ecstatic that GH5 had one Rush song in it, imagine how I felt when Neversoft announced that the entire “2112” suite will be in Warriors of Rock. The fact that Dave Mustaine and Gene Simmons are both involved in the game also boosts its rock credibility quite a bit. Say what you want about how refined Rock Band is getting, but it most certainly lacks the star power that Guitar Hero boasts. I like that the “quest mode” is focused on completing challenges again, but I hope this time they level the playing field for the rest of us and allow all content to be unlocked by one person on guitar. I don’t want to be exempt from parts of my game because I don’t know three other people who play at Expert level. Still, it looks like it’s going to be a fantastic game, and I have a good feeling that it’s going to bring back that love I felt for the Guitar Hero franchise way back in GH2.

While the MegaMan Battle Network series is technically dead (the MegaMan Star Force games were flashy sequels masquerading as a new series), Guitar Hero lives on, but is going to be developed by a new team after Warriors of Rock, so who knows what’s in store for it. But if you look at the parallels between the two, we can see that the next Guitar Hero will parade around under a flimsy mask pretending it’s a new series, when it’s really just a sequel with fancier graphics and less interesting gameplay. After that it will spawn two sequels and then Activision will finally realize than nobody really cares about it anymore and then remake the first game with some extra content culled from the “new series” but nobody will care because they’re content to play GH2 and Warriors of Rock until the end of time. It’s a bold prediction, but look at the signs, man!

Ooh baby, I’m a fool for you

So! Hard drive enclosure get! Also it was fairly cheap. I was expecting $70-$100, got it for $45. Which is still more than I’d like to pay for a glorified cable into my computer, but whatever. The new compy is now set up to feed on the delicious informations held within the old hard drive, so I’ve got access to all my old crap.

That said, I think that in keeping with the spirit of moving old stuff to a new system, I should really get on with moving all the old website stuff over from Angelfire. I beleive I said I was going to start doing that some months ago, and kind of forgot. Or got overwhelmed. There’s a lot more to go than I’d expected, so it’s going to be quite a task, but it needs to get done. And just moving the stuff over isn’t so bad, but updating the layouts and making sure all the links are live is a huge pain. Makes me wish I was coding this site in something more efficient than bare-bones HTML. Oh well!

Yeah, that’s about all. I moved a couple articles over tonight. Not enough that I’m ready to make that second “Ryan’s Favourite Articles” post though. That’ll be next week maybe?

Money’s not an issue

So I got me a new compy, and it’s quite slick. Not a a top-of-the-line model, mind you, but more than good enough to suit my needs. Those needs being running a crap-ass blog and playing Borderlands. Also Portal sometimes, but mostly Borderlands.

The (very temporary) downside to all this is that not everything is quite in place yet and I currently do not have access to my old hard drive. This means it’s gonna be about a week or so until I’m back at peak efficiency. Of course peak efficiency isn’t much more than what I’ve got going now, it basically just means I have my entire music library to listen to whilst I blog, as opposed to the… (let me see here)… three CDs I’ve bothered to rip again.

In any case, here’s a picture of the new beast. Though really, it’s less than half the size of the last machine, so “beast” probably isn’t the right word. Also it’s a jillion times quieter too, so I can leave it on and stuff downloading overnight. Uh, nothing that I’m not supposed to be downloading, of course.

Look at all that space! I actually have a desk now! Also I can move my mouse! Hooray!

But cheering aside, I was going to go to work on moving more old articles over from the Angelfire mess, but then realized I no longer had access to the files! Silly me. Oh well, I’ll be uploading flashy new versions of stuff in less than a week’s time, so stay tuned. Also, that Dove deodorant is totally not mine. I use the manly stuff. For men.

That kind of love

Here’s a shocker: I’ve updated the long-neglected CD archive section of the site. Yeah, thought I’d given up on it, didn’t you? I’ll admit it was (and still is) a monumental task, but I’m feeling like it’s time to git ‘r done!

Ahem.

You can go here to find out more. Gold letters are ones that are recently updated. Yes there is only one currently; it’s been a long, slow process, and I don’t plan to increase speed too much. I do hope to have at least all currently available letter updated and three more done by the end of the year though. Remind me about that in November too please, cause I’m damn sure gonna forget.

So yeah. Mostly I just didn’t want that condom dispenser label to be the first thing people saw anymore. And that kinda failed because this post wasn’t nearly meaty enough. Oh, irony!

Sometimes we might fall

I know that it’s been a while since Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, but it’s a real testament to how poorly the Metroid Prime Trilogy sold that Samus has had to resort to selling condoms to make ends meet. At least Metroid: Other M comes out soon and her regular cash flow will pick up.

Interesting tidbit: While typing the two sentences above, I missed typing nearly half of the o’s. Weird.

I’d stare a lifetime into your eyes

So the other day I went out on my lunch break and bought a bucket of peach rings candy from Wal-Mart. It’s not that I really love peach rings that much or anything, I just needed some candy, and that seemed the most appealing at the time. Also it was like two bucks, so how could I refuse? I ate a few, went back to work, and left them sitting in the car.

Now, this summer’s been pretty crappy, and most of our days have been cold, rainy, windy, or any combination of those three. So of course when I got home and settled into my room and I realized I’d left the peach rings in the car, I wasn’t worried. I’d just take them in tomorrow after work. Of course, I forgot they were there in the morning, and they sat in the backseat all day long. And that was the day the sun came out to shine.

The little bastards melted something fierce, creating a horrible gelatinous peach blob. I was disappointed at first, but quickly discovered that the blob was not only still edible, but it also made a great plaything! The blob was unexpectedly smooth and soft, but it was also sticky as hell, as evidenced by the fact that if I put in my finger, then lifted it out, the whole bucket would lift with it, then slowly stretch back down. See!

Yeah. Sticky. And there’s really not much else to say about that. I showed a close-up picture to people (without telling them what it was) and they were totally grossed out, thinking it was some kind of gore. Then I said it was just candy and they were only slightly less disgusted. I ended up eating most of what was in the bucket, but it hardened back up pretty quickly and it became much harder to tear chunks off. So I’m out a couple peach rings, but I think the entertainment value was still worth the two dollar price. Also an easy blog post!

I suppose I should also mention that I’m going to Canmore again for the next week, so no blogging until Saturday at the earliest. Not that I’ve been keeping up very well over the last couple weeks though… Whatever.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 Loves Bein’ Green

About two and a half years ago, a wonderous little thing called Super Mario Galaxy happened. It was magical, and I hastily labeled it my very favourite Wii game. That title had not fallen, even though I’ve finished the game but once, until now. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is quite possibly the most direct sequel that Nintendo has ever made. It’s the exact same game, just crammed with boatloads of new ideas. All the fat has been trimmed, leaving a very polished, very intense gaming experience behind.

But maybe there’s something you didn’t know about Mario Galaxy 2. It’s got a thing about colours. To this you might say “Oh of course, Ryan. Both Mario Galaxy games have very vibrant and extensive colour palettes. They are indeed quite colourful!” But I’m not talking about the graphics, or the art style. What I’ve noticed, is that many of the outstanding elements in the game are all tied around a single colour, and it’s ain’t Mario Cap Red. Nope, the little bro gets his dues here because this game is all about green.

That’s right. It’s called Super Mario Galaxy, but the recurring theme of green in the game is undeniable and screams Luigi. And there’s no better way to present this theory than with the element of gameplay that Nintendo is pushing more than anything: Yoshi.

Now me and Yoshi have had a very turbulent relationship. In the beginning, things were peachy. He first showed up in Super Mario World, where not only was he just slightly less useful than the cape power-up, but he would also selflessly hurtle himself into the void in hopes of giving Mario a big enough boost to make that jump that was just a little too long. Now that’s friendship! Back then, getting Yoshi was something to be very happy about. There was absolutely no reason not to saddle up the dino. He was great. His starring role in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island brought us even closer, as that is undoubtedly one of the best platform games ever crafted.

Things took a turn for the worse when Yoshi’s Story came out though. It wasn’t a terrible game, but it suffered from a few odd design choices, like the game being six levels long, even though it contained 24 in total. And the baby Yoshi voice. It could have been a one-time annoyance, but no. Nintendo somehow decided to make the grating Baby Yoshi voice the de facto standard for any time noise might slip out of a Yoshi. Maybe it was to annoy people out of buying their games, maybe it was because they wanted people to hate Yoshi. I don’t know why, but it happened.

Add in the fact here that in the Super Smash Bros. series, Yoshi is nigh unplayable, and you’ve got yourself a real stinker of a character. Super Mario Sunshine seemed poised to make Yoshi a desirable companion, but in the end, it just got worse. As you played through that game, you quickly learned that anytime you saw a Yoshi egg, it was pretty much guaranteed that you were about to be forced through an either extremely annoying or difficult (often both!) challenge. Not to mention that it was an unnecessary hassle to find Yoshi a particular kind of fruit for each challenge, and there would usually be only one on the level and it would be quite far from your goal.

Super Mario Galaxy has turned it all around though. Yoshi is back, and while his voice is still a pain in the ears, he has definitely earned back his place as a worthy sidekick. Not only is Mario once again able to jettison Yoshi to his doom to save himself from a deadly fall, but unlike Sunshine, finding a Yoshi egg inspires hope, because levels with Yoshi in them are fun here. For example, there is a flower that Yoshi can grapple with his tongue and use to swing back and forth like some sort of bionic commando, and just flipping around on these flowers is worth hours of fun! Yoshi’s flutter jump will also save your ass countless times as you work your way through Galaxy 2, and every single time he shows up, you will be grateful.

As an aside, Yoshi has fruit-activated abilities again. Besides the mostly uninteresting Bulb Berry, they seem to be based on Sunshine’s FLUDD backpack. The Dash Pepper, for instance, will make Yoshi run at a high velocity, allowing him to run up walls and, more notably, dash across the surface of water. Sound familiar? And the Blimp Fruit is used to propel the duo into the air, allowing them to reach great hights or hover around for a while. Again, I’m feeling a little deja vu. Whether this was on purpose or a very sly nod to Sunshine, I don’t know, but I think it’s neat either way.

To continue with my green theory, we’ll also have a look at one-up mushrooms. They are an iconic Mario item, and they are not at all lacking in Super Mario Galaxy 2. In fact, there may be too many. The first Galaxy easily provided more than enough lives to get by, but Galaxy 2 takes it to the extreme. Not only are the bright green ‘shrooms just laying around everywhere, but there are countless opportunities to earn more.

In nearly every galaxy, there is a teleport pad that will take Mario to a small arena, where if he is able to defeat a handful of enemies quickly, he is rewarded with not one, but three 1-up mushrooms. On Starship Mario there is a die you can hit that will either release a 1-up or a star bit, and later on you can enter a pipe on the ship that allows you to buy five more die that can yield up to five 1-up mushrooms each. That’s a possible twenty-five lives. It’s not likely that you’ll get the yahtzee, but the possibility is there.

Last but not least (probably not even last, I just can’t think of any more examples) just like in the first Galaxy, every time you boot up the game, there is a mailtoad who will give you five free one-ups. Excessive? Yes. In a prolonged play session, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to reach the 50-life mark. In my longest session, I far surpassed the 99-life cap. Of course, there are some hidden terms here, the most notable being that every time you turn the game off, your stock of extra lives goes back to a measly four. And also, once you get to the latter parts of the game, you’ll probably need all of those lives. Why? The green stars are a pretty good reason.

And what exactly do I mean by green stars? Firstly, I’ll ask you to stop reading if you haven’t finished the game and don’t want to be spoiled. Now that I’ve warned you, I’ll tell you this: the green stars are both a blessing and a curse. Once you’ve acquired all 120 gold/yellow stars and trounced Bowser, the game will unleash another 120 stars into the galaxies. They are green, and they will give you headaches.

The bad news is that these headaches will likely come from annoyance and monotony. The green stars are not 120 new challenges, but rather they are simply placed into the galaxies you’ve already cleaned out. Just hanging out there. It turns the back half of the game into something that comes eerily close to a collectathon. However! There is a better side to this.

Obviously, you want to play these levels again. Or at least most of them. The game is so big and full of great ideas that it’s still fun to just run around like an idiot in the many galaxies searching for the green stars. And while a few are a bit uninspired, the worst of them being situated right beside a regular star, the majority of them require some serious skills. Or at least serious accuracy. At least half of the green stars that I’ve collected to this point (currently counting a measly 31) have been floating out in the middle of nowhere, meaning that you’re making a big jump, and if you miss, you die.

Until I embarked on the hunt for green stars, I had no idea why Nintendo had created so gosh darn many opportunities to reap massive amounts of extra lives. The answer being that most of those green stars are literally death traps, and they demand that you be perfect. They are brutal, and if you have any trouble getting through the front half of the game, you’d best be prepared to either step it up a notch or just give up while you’re ahead. Did I mention that most of them are just a little bit farther than Mario can jump comfortably? Yeah, that makes the need for precision even more dire. Well, precision or someone who can jump higher and farther.

And that’s when we come back around to the man in green himself: Luigi. Luigi initially appears fairly early in the game, urging Mario to let him help collect some of the many power stars. And from that point, Luigi will appear at the beginning of certain missions, asking you to let him take over for a while. Using Luigi for that particular star will usually unlock a Luigi ghost, who will in turn lead you to a hidden star on your next run through that stage. It’s not the most logical event, but it happens.

Other than the few scripted appearances, once you’ve defeated Bowser in World 6 for the first time, you can freely switch between bros on Starship Mario, allowing you to take control of the L-Man whenever you desire. He still inexplicably lacks friction, but he does jump higher, making jump-based challenges easier, and many green stars a lot less deadly. Of course, this is kind of a step down for Weegie, who got an entire game mode to himself in the first Galaxy, but I suppose it’s nice for people who don’t want to play with him, as now he isn’t a mandatory step in reaching the very end.

It’s a little sad that Luigi has been demoted from second quest material to a common beggar, especially since someone on staff saw it fit to make so much of the game revolve around his trademark colour of green. But what can we do except take it as it is and simply make that choice to play as Luigi. His place in the galaxy may not be as glamorous as it was in years past, but at least we can still see from this recurring theme that he is loved, even though it’s a total pain in the ass to try to control him on the ground. Like seriously, do his shoes secrete oil or something?

It’s been no bed of roses

Because there were a total of four – count them, four – blog posts between January and March, I updated the news archive with a “1st Quarter 2010” page instead of one for each month. It’s quite sad. I used to love this blog… Oh well. Check this out! Crazy adventure time!

I never used to get sick, but since about November or something I’ve barely been able to go two weeks without contracting a cold or worse, and as a result, I’ve been drinking a lot of tea. Supposed to soothe the aches and throat and whatnot. It works okay at best, but I’ve actually grown quite fond of the stuff, and because my parents have a unexpectedly large collection of different teas, I’ve been able to be pretty adventurous with it too.

Now, brewing tea is pretty easy, and the process of selecting which flavour I’ll be drinking each night is left mostly up to sticking my hand in the baggie they are contained in and picking one at random. I’ve had all sorts of fun stuff, from exotic-sounding things like “Jasmine and Herbs” and “Moroccan Mint” to more mainstream selections like raspberry and english breakfast. When the situation calls for it, I’ll usually even add a glop of honey, as it’s supposed to help with the soothing of sore throats. Today though, I’ll be adding something a little more unusual.

Oh yes, that’s right. I’m gonna put Kool-Aid in my tea.

If you’re not familiar with Kool-Aid singles, they’re little packets that you pour into a glass or water bottle, instantly creating a single serving of Kool-Aid, removing the need for both sugar and a pitcher. This one is strawberry-Kiwi flavoured. They work really well, providing a possibly even stronger taste than traditional Kool-Aid, and given the fact that the orange tea has a pretty strong flavour itself, I’m a little apprehensive about how these are going to taste when they mix. I predict badly.

Once I poured the Kool-Aid packet in, the tea instantly turned a swampy brown, but when it all settled, it turned a much more appealing orange. I took this as a good sign. It smelled exactly like the Kool-Aid would if it had been on its own, another good sign. After letting the tea cool down a bit (because I’m a big pussy and can’t take the heat), I took my first sip, and was very surprisd. Initially it tasted just like strawberry-kiwi Kool-Aid, but after a while the orange taste broke through, creating an awesome evolving taste.

There’s really not much else to say. Both flavours stood out on their own somehow, and didn’t make an awful monstery taste like I’d predicted. I’m very satisfied with these results, and am anxious to try it out with other flavours of tea. Hopefully this is a universal trait of tea, and it’s not just this particular brand of teas that can withstand melding flavous with the Kool-Aid.