Blogging While Paused

I’ve asked for no butter and gotten no popcorn. I’ve asked for no pickles and gotten no burger. Or fries. Or onion rings. Not even any soda in my cup! But this might be the worst offender yet (and it’s certainly the last time I tip the delivery guy without inspecting the goods). I asked for no anchovies and got no pizza!

I don’t know how these incidents keep happening to me, but it’s ridiculous! They give me most everything except what I really want. I reach into the take-out bag, I find a bun slathered with ketchup and mustard—and pickles!—but no meat! Add to that an empty holder for fries, an empty box for onion rings, a cup with a straw and no soda or ice, and two stacks of napkins and you’ve got one insulting “meal”. I ask for popcorn with no butter at the movies along with a bunch of candy, and they give me a bucket of butter with no popcorn. As I sat down, before I realized what was in the bucket, I dropped all my candy in it. That was disappointing. I’ve even ordered a game online listed as having “no instruction book”. What did I get? I got an instruction book with no game! That’s the last time I order from “the_purple_prankster94″.

This time I just got a plain old mess. Inside my cardboard box was pepperoni, extra cheese, garlic, onions, green peppers, red peppers, chili peppers, fries, black olives, and anchovies (notice anything?). But no pizza! No tomato sauce, no normal cheese, nothing you could call pizza! And I hate to tell you how I found out what was in there. I carried the box to my kitchen upside down. It opened and my order fell to the floor _right_ where I was stepping. Seriously, my foot was coming down and gravity somehow caused that mess to win the race to the floor. Naturally, I slipped and landed in it on my back. Of course, there was no single solid mass holding everything together or anything, so I had to scrape everything I could salvage off the floor and onto my plate.

You can imagine how unpleasant it is trying to eat a pile of toppings without a solid pizza for a foundation. I tried adding some oregano part way through, and then I just dumped some tomato sauce all over it. I also broke out some of the vintage soda-lemonade mixture I’ve been experimenting with. None of this made up for the lack of actual pizza. They even got mud in it somehow! I couldn’t let it go to waste, of course, but it was still a rather dissatisfying thing to have for dinner. Next time you get a pizza (or anything, for that matter) that’s been put together properly, be sure to be a little extra thankful.

It’s that time once again. Cranky Kong here, bringing you the greatest of the latest with the top five Gamecube games in circulation.

The Gamecube is beginning to bear some semblance of me: it’s getting old, it’s getting tired, and Nintendo thinks it’s time for it to retire. Not being quite as energetic as me, the ol’ system has decided to step down, meaning no new games are being produced for it. However, with the list officially complete, that means I get to make your judgment for you and pick the five most meaningful meaningless games it has!

Where I thought the Nintendo 64 was bad, the Gamecube got even worse. Instead of giving up and going back to the reliable methods of the previous age, the programmers followed through on their endeavors and smoothed out their danged 3D workmanship. Characters could now have five fingers on each hand. In addition to reaching the peak of graphics, they managed to do something halfway right and made more sturdy control sticks on their controllers, although taking away all those yellow buttons limited some of the potential of the games that were putting them all to use before. (Oh, blast it all! Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I hated all those yellow buttons!)

Games on this console introduced new ideas and tried to blend them together with old ones. It’s all too much for me to keep up with, but you kids seem to love it for some reason. An example of something new is those Pikmin games. Is one better than the other? I’ll go through that in a minute. My lumbering son didn’t even sign up for an adventure this time: went off experimenting with those bongos of his. Ah, well. That’s what happens when an entire company disappears. Since they left Nintendo, I haven’t heard so much as a six word sentence about them (and believe me, it’s not hard to spare six words). This is going to look predictable, but I’ve got the means to defend my claims. In an ambiguous order, the top five games are: Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion, the Pikmin games, The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker, and Mario Kart: Double Dash. Quite a light-hearted lot this time around, eh?

Now don’t break out any military satellite control programs yet. I know exactly what you’re thinking. “Cranky left out the Metroid games again!” First off, as much as this cruel, mean old man can, I respect your opinion. Let’s be fair, though. Metroid’s not for everyone. Notice the rating? Point out the most recent T-Rated game you’ve seen here. Besides, this time they looked more like those shooter games than a 2D adventure (or even a 3D adventure!), the music was as scary as the monsters, and a feeling of darkness loomed over everything. As soon as I found out blowing up that planet within the first 15 minutes wasn’t a choice, my interest was gone, and your reward for finishing the game with enough stuff was to see the girl take her helmet off. Maybe with blonde hair. You really want to play hours on end for that? I’m not saying that no one likes them. Metroid games are perfect for some players. (Nobody’s been able to pull Chunky away from it for what’s going on five weeks.) The rest of us though? I don’t think it’s fair to hold us accountable for not being able to screw in a light bulb with a laser cannon. “Cranky left out Super Smash Bros. again!” Its successor is coming soon. Is it out yet? I’m losing track. Go buy that! “Why do Mario and Luigi get so many titles?” Because my son didn’t. Next! “Why are the Pikmin games lumped together?” I told you, I’ll explain that in a minute. Where’s this generation getting their patience from? Certainly not from their grandparents! “Craaaaaaaanky! What about Zelda: Ocarina of Time—Master Quest?” Remember the Disk Drive game that was going to finish the half-hearted Ocarina of Time? Well, this isn’t it. In Japan, it is. The version we got is a toned-down version (only the dungeons have changed). It’s not good enough to mention.

Well, that ought to take care of those arguments. Of course, by the time the Gamecube came out, there were many people who were interested in games; more than when previous systems were new, that’s to be sure. Because of this, there are many more titles that many people know about. That just means that arguments that can be presented are usually good ones (but then, when you argue with Cranky, you need to clear your schedule for the day).

Well, where should we start? Let’s try Super Mario Sunshine, shall we? This is another of those games that you can pop in, start up a complete file, and just play and have fun. There’s a map that shows you where all the areas are, so with a touch of imagination, you can quest from one place to the next. The play style was somewhat familiar from Super Mario 64, but with the punch/kick combo taken out, it was necessary to get used to the new scheme of things. Also, just completing the game was somewhat unintuitive if you didn’t know what to do next. Who would’ve guessed you need to beat the fourth mission of the fourth world to continue? Or the seventh mission of each world just to finish? At least Super Mario 64 gave you freedom of choice! And where’s that lazy good-for-nothing Luigi, anyway?

Oh, here he is. Luigi’s Mansion was the first game for the console, and it wasn’t quite the Super Mario Sunshine people were expecting. I say it was much better. Here we have an old-fashioned style game on our hands! You don’t have to run and jump at just the right moment at a ridiculous angle to have fun here; just watch what happens and react. And there’s a score system, which seems to have died out since the 2D era. Recently I was watching a video from one of my security cameras, and I caught a conversation Dixie was having with Diddy. She said her sister got a high score on Luigi’s Mansion, then played again and tried to beat it, but got the same score again! If you can beat 137,460,000 G, you’ve beaten her. Every coin and jewel counts!

Speaking of treasure, that brings us to those Pikmin games. The first one has good points where you might not expect to find them. First there was the 30 day time limit. Believe it or not, that adds some replay value. When you’re limited by time, content needs to be reasonable. That means you can try it several times in a row and try to best your fastest time. They also put bomb rocks in here, which can be (you guessed it) a blast. The sequel took these things out, which might make play more comfortable, as well as removing all those unnecessary accidental unintended mass suicides. It was all I could do not to laugh harder while pointing at Lanky’s record-breaking loss of 44 Pikmin with bomb rocks, along with three quarters of his health meter. Throw in some new confusing Pikmin colors, and take away the daytime time limit in those underground areas (which doesn’t make any sense at all when you think about it), and you’ve got something like fun. The addition of multiplayer modes might just be enough to give this one an edge over its predecessor. Of course, no one said those little guys ever got any smarter. The final decision is probably up to the player.

That brings us back to Zelda. I think this “toon” version, bright and cheerful as it is, beats the later “twilight” version with its themes of darkness and teen rating. In this edition, dungeons are short and sweet. They’re also few and far between. That leaves most of this depressing oceanic world for you to explore. To make up for the lack of dungeons (I’d swear you could finish the story in three hours), they packed a multitude of side quests. Look for enemy outposts on the ocean. Explore small and large islands all over the place. Decorate the town and your own private island (if you find it). Take pictures of everything. Conquer 50 floors worth of semi-intelligent monsters. And of course, pay with your hard earned savings to play cheap games on corny obstacle courses. If you enjoy the excitement of pirates without all the lethal and unethical factors, you could have a lot of fun with this game. Try exploring the world without any online help; you could go at it for quite a while. The only thing missing with this approach is some kind of finale once you’ve found everything… If it’s too easy for you, there’s always the hard mode.

So, who here has ever heard of Mario Kart? This new one, Double Dash, is a bit easier to look at than its predecessors, despite its advanced 3D graphics. Also, the music doesn’t disappear on you when you incorporate a lot of players. The big attraction here, however, is that each racer has two drivers in it. You can also choose your vehicle independently of the drivers. Aside from the main attraction of racing, there’s a lot of ways to get a laugh here. Arguing drivers, random road trash, oncoming traffic, and any number of hazards can put a bit of a spin on your race. Ever tried racing while cycling drivers at a rate of once per second? And trying everything flip-flopped after you’ve taken so long to get used to it can really throw you. I almost made it in myself, but for some reason the producers turned me away when they realized I was trying to have them build a Rocker-Mobile, not a Rocket-Mobile. What is it with these kids and their jet cars, eh?

There’s a few other quirky titles out there. Animal Crossing? That might be more fun if a certain inevitable cycle didn’t happen. You’re busy for a few days and don’t play. “Oh, that’s no problem; I plan to come back later.” It turns into a week. “Well, my town’s going to be a mess, and everyone will shout at me, and there will be bugs in my house, and I don’t want to deal with that right now!” Before you know it, months have passed. By the time you’re ready to play it again, you can’t remember one blasted thing about that town and find yourself starting a new one. I seen it happen to Funky 54 times now. “Well, there’s Pokemon Channel, right?” Whose idea was it to make a game about watching TV?! Donkey Konga? There’s a few of my critics out there who say the best thing about the game is that I made an appearance. Star Fox Adventures? This looks like someone threw away some old Zelda schematics and Rare recycled ‘em. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance? Would anyone even buy these games if it weren’t for Smash Bros? Besides, the story’s so in depth it’s sickening, and even that’s full of holes! F-Zero GX? Throw in a Rocker-Mobile, and we’ll talk about it. Star Fox Assault? Well, it’s no Star Fox 64… but then, who is? “Oh! What about Sonic Heroes? Surely Sonic can stand up to Mario!” Maybe, but not with this edition. It can get repetitive playing the same game on four difficulties without having to finish any of them once. Oh, and I didn’t say any of these were actually bad; this is just why no single one of them is the top five.

Well, my bones, muscles, organs, tendons, skin, blood vessels, and perspiratory glands are starting to complain to me, so I’m off to bed. I’ve got my work cut out for me trying to figure out which of the old NES games are the best of them. I’ll see you in a week, and don’t steal anything on your way out.

Well, I’d have had my suspicions if you told me this eight years ago, but I’d probably have believed you anyway: I’m actually MORE disgusted with the games they’re putting out now than the ones they came up with back then. Bright colors, smooth graphics, streaming media that plays orchestrated music, in-depth stories—it all just looks so unnecessary to me. I’ll never be swayed from my opinion that the older the game, the better it is (except of course that Donkey Kong is probably the best one of all time). Space Invaders and Jetpac are old favorites, and Sabre Wulf is about as high tech as this old monkey cares to get. However, even I have to admit that some of the old N64 games were better than this new generation that uses controls no scientist could figure out.

I’m going to name what I believe are the best five N64 games out there, and what some of you might think are the best five ever. Now I’m aware there’s a number of those awful and confusing shooting games that are supposed to make you feel like you’re seeing it through your “hero’s” eyes, but luckily for me the opinions on those are so scattered it’s not worth trying to name one. The N64 was also incongruously short-changed when it came to role-playing games, which also were supposed to make you feel like you were whatever character you were playing, and none of them were any good anyway, so there aren’t any nominations there. And of course, there was no Metroid game, so that’s definitely not going to come back to bother me. Now I’m still going with the older the game the better, so that leaves us with this list of five: Super Mario 64, Star Fox 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, and Donkey Kong 64 (not necessarily in that order). Nothing quite like this set has come before or since.

Now before I continue, let me attempt to quell the rioters out there. You say there were sequels to these games? Not the same sequels that were originally planned. Ever heard of the Disk Drive? Went over like a lead balloon in Japan and was never released in the U.S. Worst mistake they ever made. Ah, but more on that in a minute. You say these games aren’t perfect? Well, no one ever accused them of it! A game’s only as good as the folks who program it. So, all you want, you can say to yourself, “You should be able to save!”, “Cranky should have kept his rocking chair!”, and “Luigi should be easier to find!” (Star Fox 64, Donkey Kong 64, and Banjo-Kazooie, respectively). I’m betting you’re still pretty satisfied with these games. “Oh, Cranky! Craaanky! What about Super Smash Brothers?” It has a sequel that most folks like better, and possibly another one coming out in February. …What’s that you say? Oh. Apparently due to some bubble-gum related incident, it’s coming out in March. At any rate, it might be the best N64 game ever, but it’s been trumped and not many folks play it as often as these ones.

But anyway, my list stands with those five mediocre games as the best this old new system has to offer. Now then, let me give you your opinion and tell you exactly what it is you like about these games so much. Super Mario 64 was the first game of its kind, and they must have done something right, because even if you’ve finished it with all those stars, you can just start it up, play, and have fun. I’d bet it’s because the levels are very large, but also easy to navigate quickly. Because of this, you don’t need an objective always in front of you. You can just make it up and play. Any game that captures this aspect means virtually endless hours of play. Banjo-Kazooie had a similar play style, although when you got the collectable things, you couldn’t set them back up. Still, it was just quick-paced enough that you could start over whenever you wanted. Plus, they built cheats right in, so you don’t have to pull out some third party piece of hardware when you get stuck! And the board game at the end was marvelous, revolutionary even! Donkey Kong 64 falls in this category too, although the levels were perhaps a touch more confined when it comes to navigation. Still, we gave you so much to find, so many critters to bash, so many mini-games, and even an appearance from me AND a Donkey Kong arcade game, you can’t help but love it. You could also earn cheats here, not by finding everything, but just by finding all those fairies. Unfortunately I broke my system trying to install that expansion thing they gave you with it. Very annoying.

Star Fox 64 and Zelda are in their own categories, I suppose. Let’s start with the easy one. Star Fox 64 defined replay value. The instruction book told you what you need to do to unlock harder paths, but your first time through you probably weren’t good enough to do it. Even so, you were able to finish the game, weren’t you? As you get better, the challenges become easier, and soon enough you’re setting up your own confusing matrix of stages you’ll be visiting. Plus, you get to bill the fella who hired you at the end. And they don’t expect you to read anything—they read it all for you!

So… Zelda, huh? Well, I’ll tell you this: as far as advertising VS delivery goes, this is the only Zelda game they’ve done right. Sure, they announced working on it two years early, but they didn’t really start advertising it until one year before its release. After this one it’s always three years in advance, so long you’ve lost interest by the time it comes out, and then it doesn’t have all the thrill of the original. What made Ocarina of Time so good? It couldn’t have been the fairy… Sure wasn’t the owl… Let’s see here—dungeons, easy to navigate world maps, side quests, mini-bosses, gear that tends to be used in only one or two places, a story (sort of), the fact that you could go anywhere you wanted again—hmm, this all looks like standard stuff. Wait, could it be? Yes! This game didn’t follow these standards, it set them! Not only that, but it made playing through all of it fun! Of course it had its own quirks, too. Surely you’ve all seen giant versions of those sand worm things, but how about a giant nighttime skeleton kid? Or a giant crow? They’re in there. The one thing I will complain about is I nearly doubled my age trying to get all those gold spiders (which turned out not to be a rip-off after all!).

Now let me ask you this: Wouldn’t you be excited if you heard—now or back then—that Super Mario 64 II was in the works? Or another Zelda like that one? That’s what the Disk Drive was going to accomplish. It would attach to the bottom, and you would put a game in the N64 and another cartridge (different shape) in the Disk Drive. The result would be a new game using the first one as a sort of basis. That means all the old worlds are there, but anything could be changed about them, and all kinds of new ones could be there too. If my studies are correct, they’d be able to release these just 2 years after the original, instead of going crazy, redesigning the entire thing, and releasing their “sequel” five years later. Two years is enough time for you to finish the game, get excited about the advertising, and get “all revved up” to play it when it comes out.

They actually finished the Zelda sequel, but never released it. That is, not until that “Master Quest” bonus disc thing. And not on the U.S. version. You heard me: somewhere right now, a little Japanese kid is pointing at the U.S. on a map and laughing his head off playing the real Master Quest. What kind of changes might there be? They didn’t tell me. But looking at the evidence, I’d say you get that Triforce, melt that frozen kingdom, go on some kind of mask side quest, and… something to do with Arwings.

Banjo-Tooie was going to be a Disk Drive game too. The version they finally settled on doesn’t quite make use of the super secret collectables of Banjo-Kazooie the way the original would have, but overall it’s not terribly disappointing. A Disk Drive version would mean you could go to the old worlds, collect the things, do new stuff, then go to the new part of the game and use the things. The sequel that exists is perhaps not as much fun as the original, but it does deserve an honorable mention here.

Those old games are looking pretty appealing right now, huh?

Join me next week, when I visit the top five Super Nintendo games!

STOP IT!! Hey, STOP!! Hello!? Are you listening to me?? YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG DIRECTION!!!

What is with you people today!?!?! No one is ever going to win this race if one of you doesn’t turn around!! You’ve been at this for 30 minutes now!!! I don’t know if you haven noticed, but this is really pointless! This is never going to end!!! Someone just please turn around!

*sigh*

Why doesn’t anyone listen to me!?!?!?

Fine, you know what? If you want to play this same race for the rest of your life, traveling in a very small blue and red oval for years, that’s your own call. But I’m leaving! Yeah, you heard me. I’m out of here. You can keep track of your own laps, because I certainly have better things to do with my time. So take that!

I am really irritated. Ever since Earthbound for the Super Nintendo, I’ve been campaigning for some sort of sequel. I mean, Earthbound is a really fun game and I think it has a lot of potential. Nintendo promised me a game for the N64. They gave me music and showed me video clips of this new game they were making for me. Turns out, they were really just showing me Donkey Kong 64 footage to keep me off their backs.

I’ve suggested Earthbound Cubed, Earthbound Advance, Earthbound DS and Earthbound Wii. Each time Nintendo nods politely, like a grown up listening to a little child tell a story and tells me that they plan to save a spot for me in Smash Bros. I’ve even approached other companies to try to pitch Earthbound PSP and Earthbound 360. Even Dreamcast turned me down.

I say it’s time to chop off Mario and Zelda and Metroid and let some of the small little buds grow up and have a franchise.

You know what is really, really stupid. That I’m not mayor.

I’ve be giving advice to a lot of horrible mayors for 35 years now, and I could do better than any one of them. I mean, I know all there is to know about the people in the city. I could talk for hours and hours about crime, pollution, fire, earthquakes, floods and what-not. But for some reason, I just can’t get elected. Maybe it’s the 44 hour speech seminars that I hold all the time in my campaigns for mayor. Yep, they must be a key factor in my loosing. I’ll go for 88 hour seminars next time.

Or could it be… I’m not popular. Let’s see here: Bad hair style, goofy colored hair, ugly tie, lame suit, enormous nose, crappy mustache, wide and misplaced ears,  beedy little eyes, bottle neck glasses… and I’m short. Not 5’7’’ short, 4’2’’ short. Well, that plus my annoying voice, endless stuttering, random fainting in front of crowds, random fainting for no reason, selfish look at life, and often giving speeches in ancient Greek, says one thing. I must be super popular.

So that says there’s only one way my competition is wining. They cheat. No wonder Waluigi got 69.9 times as many votes as me last election. Or how Bowser got 100% in four elections in a row, even though the world was telling him he was the worst mayor ever; he still has the “Worst leader of any kind” award in his house. Or that I lost to a Pikmin in the last election. By a long shot. It got 84% of votes, I got 2% and the no-longer-running Bowser got 14%. Maybe it would be better if more people than just me and one other “person” ran for mayor.

I know what I must do… I will… without a shadow of a shadow of a doubt… do the logical thing. I’m running for president of the United States of America in year 2008. Raise taxes, stop paying for cops, no more road repair, no more government jobs. It will be great.

Doctor Wright for President! My slogan… “Way better than the rest of these derelicts, that’s for sure.”

This is an outrage! I looked at the Smash Bros blog a while ago, and you know what I found out? I’m not in the starting line-up. I’m not a secret character. I am an assist trophy.

Now at first this wasn’t all that terrible. At least they took the time to draw me with all that detail. They even got my good side. But you know what really did me in? Guess what I saw when I checked it two days ago? They added Pikmin & Olimar to the starting cast!

I mean, seriously! This is unbelievable! Did you read what he said about the Pikmin? Oh, yeah, and try this one on. You got a quarter? Go get a quarter. Hold it up. That’s how tall the space captain is. And the Pikmin are smaller. Come on! This guy has appeared twice since 2001, and I’ve been going at this so long, I—

You know what it is? Every game I’ve ever appeared in could be labeled a spin-off. No adventures. I mean, you could call my appearance in Mario Tennis for the Gameboy an adventure, but ALL the Mario series characters were pretty much making cameo appearances in that one! And my part was humiliating. I sounded like a snake! “Yeessss… Thaaas-a riiiight…” What’d I tell ya? Humiliating.

But what? Did they think they were lacking for moves or something? Look at all the stuff I’ve done! I spin like a tornado. I cause thorny plants to grow from nowhere. I lie and cheat. I set nasty traps. I steal. I clunk people with disguised eggplants. I swim! Into the air! I was even going to be the antagonist in Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix, but that never even got off the ground! That’s surely enough to draw four special moves from! Wario made the starting line-up, and he FARTS!

You know something else? I don’t get this bit of confusion at all. There are some sources that say just like Luigi (lousy no-good spotlight stealin’ little…) is Mario’s twin brother, I, too, am Wario’s brother. Other sources say I am not. Are you kiddin’ me? This one is totally obvious!

Maybe they’re accusing me of being under-developed as a character. But really, how much do you know about any Mario series character? Age? More than one family member? I think they used to tell us about stuff they liked… maybe. And any game that involves the kind of talking that requires you to read it, then press A (say, Super Mario 64) or shows text on-screen while characters speak it (Super Mario Sunshine), big high and mighty mister Mario doesn’t say a blasted thing! And Luigi’s (spineless cheese-lovin’ puny little…) voice wasn’t what it is now until Mario Kart 64. And there’s been confusion since then (his voice is the previous Smash Bros games was just a speeded-up version of Mario’s). And I’m under-developed?

The release date for the new Smash Bros game was already pushed back once, but don’t be surprised if it happens again. I do have this new bubble gum bomb I’ve been dying to try. Heh heh heh heh…. Watch your back!

Living with Pikmin is a love-hate relationship. The little critters are cute, completely adorable. They are also extremely helpful when trying to accomplish various tasks, such as carrying things. Sadly, they are dumber then a bag of sand.

However, one can only assume that they have the intelligence of a vegetable when you realize you have to pluck the things out of the ground before they can do anything and after you pluck them out they proceed to bash their heads against every solid object in sight. It’s no surprise that they all have applesauce for brains.

When scrounging around for pellets of compressed dehydrated Pikmin, or whatever they are, one might hope that the Pikmin would have a certain affinity or attraction to pellets of their own color. You know, the blue ones pick up the blue pellet and the red ones theirs, etc. This is sadly, never the case. If I find that I have a yellow pellet to take back to an onion, it will inevitably be taken by a blue or red Pikmin despite the fact I only called yellow ones to follow me. On the off chance it is grabbed by a yellow Pikmin, a blue one will undoubtably try to help out and in their wisdom they will carry it to the red onion.

Blue Pikmin are my favorite. I say this because you can take them anywhere you want without much worry. True, you must be careful of fire-ish things, but those are usually fairly easy to avoid. It’s true, red Pikmin are nice because they are a bit stronger, but bashing their heads against walls all day does something to their brains. It gives them a forgetfulness that is usually found in various species of canine. Just as a dog will forget everything it’s ever learned if it picks up the scent of a rabbit, one sight of an enemy and the red Pikmin will gleefully chase it into the water and promptly drown.  Yellow Pikmin, on the other hand are good for two things: blowing up large quantities of Pikmin and I don’t remember what the second thing was. Oh yes, blowing up themselves.

I may seem a bit harsh on the poor little critters, but trust me. If I didn’t have to babysit them all day long I could have escaped from the planet in under 10 days. Less then a week even! If they would only learn, just a little bit… just a tiny bit, I could simply set up chore lists for them to accomplish and have a set of each of them working all day at several landing sites and they could bring the pieces and set them right where I land my ship and I could go around and collect ship parts all day. Sadly, Pikmin do not learn. Not even a little bit. They are as stupid on day 30 as they are on day 1. I tried to teach them. I showed them examples. I did similar tasks with them over and over and over again. Each time they approached the ordeal as if it were an entirely new experience for them.

It’s hard to believe I survived 30 days with those creatures. It’s maddening, trying work with them. I think in 30 days I would be much more likely to die of a nervous breakdown then being exposed to Oxygen. Hopefully I’ll never have the chance to find out, right?

Geeklog Date: 11.26
Mood: Ranty

The sun is bright outside so I’m going to stay in and watch “The Blubbening.” Season One has better writing and voice acting than the later seasons. I mean COME ON. Everything went totally downhill after the big dream sequence. Still, the animation in the scenes where Tubba Blubba battles robots is schweet. Season Three was obviously just a vehicle for selling action figures and vehicles. I never understood why they changed the sound effect when the princess appears. It was “Deet-dinga-deet-ling!” then suddenly it was “Dinga-deet-dinga-ling!” As if no one would notice! Pffft! True fans care about important stuff like that. They should totally run the show without commercials and let fans suggest story lines! That’s what the fans want and we’re the only ones that matter. I guess I’ll still buy “The Blubbening” box set. The preorder bonus is a costume! While I wait for it to come, I’ll go online and tell everyone it’s stupid.

The only thing I hate more than noobs, are noobs who think they can take on Legendary. These people come in, having never played Halo before. Never! In fact, some of them have never even played a first person shooter. This is the generation that grew up on Pokemon.

And it’s killing me.

Literally.

Legendary is called “Legendary” for a reason. And this reason is: IT’S REALLY FREAKING HARD!!! Let’s not forget that. Legendary is a mode made for people who spend their entire life playing Halo and have become so good at the game that they can play through the entire thing blindfolded. And even then, it’s a challenge!

When these newbies come on and start playing Legendary, I die. Not just once, no, I die multiple times. Over and over again.

Dying is painful! I’m not going to lie. Getting shot in the head 18 times in a row, is not only humiliating, but very painful. It hurts! I’m assuming most of you have never been shot in the head. In fact, most of you have never really been shot at all. But this is my life. I am constantly being shot at, and I am constantly shooting back. But if I am at the mercy of someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, I’m going to get clobbered.

So  do me a favor, stick to the easier levels until you know what you are doing. Please!