Discrediting the "Prophet" of Super Smash Bros.

Well I finally found a name for my show. Anyway, so yeah, I'm sick and tired of people saying Pac-Man is gonna be in the game just because this guy said so. That's the gist of things.

Also, I am working on a Metroid II post! Expect that soon, sometime this week. I'm already about three-quarters done with it.

NEW POKEMON REMAKES ZOMG

Now I don't particularly care for the Hoenn region and Gen 3 Pokémon, which probably sounds like scandal to everybody as I'm pretty sure these are the most popular Pokémon games in the series. I'm sorry! Generation IV is still my favorite, even if I haven't played any of these games since Yellow (I mean I do have Pokémon X, don't get me wrong). Even though Gen IV did have Regigigas ("Regigigas just can't get it going!"), it still had some pretty cool legendaries. Kyogre is pretty neat, and so is Jirachi (hello, that's like one of my favorite Pokémon), but Latios/Latias are like wanna-be Lugias (with a silly design imo), all of the Regis--even Registeel--suck (and why the unified Fighting weakness?), and Deoxys also kinda sucks. Maybe it's just that I never used its Attack Forme that I think of it that way, idk. Still, I am pretty interested in seeing a Mega-Evolved Kyogre (come on, those are definitely Mega-Evolutions on those covers)-- Kyogre as it stands is already pretty OP and ridiculous. I can't begin to imagine what a Mega-Evolution will do. Then again, not every Mega-Evolution is all that good. Look at Mewtwo X: not very spectacular. I love destroying Mega-Mewtwo X with a Play Rough from Mawile or a Hyper Beam from Pixilate Sylveon.

I would rather see a Gen IV remake (Dialga's cooler than all these "weather" Pokémon combined and you know it), but I get that it would make no sense to skip these games over. Especially since people really think they are the best games in the series; I personally have no idea why, but I guess I'll see when I get Alpha Sapphire.

Along the lines of Pokémon, I'm putting together a new team. I discovered the incredible hilarity and sheer glass-power that is Mega-Mawile (aptly nicknamed Bites), and I was having so much fun destroying teams that I found myself wanting to build a team around my beloved Bites. So for my alternative Pokémon team on the off-chance I get tired of my beloved Eevee team, this is what I've got so far (plus my own strategizing so you could own me!):

• Mawile@Mawilite: Add Huge Power to Mawile's ~ base 105 Attack (probably more), throw in some coverage moves from its good variety in its movepool, and top that off with its hilariously animated STAB/Fairy-type move, Play Rough, and you have quite the nightmare that lives up to the Japanese ghost myth it is based off of (okay not really since the original Yokai is not really sinister, I don't think).
• Huge Power Azumarill@Sitrus Berry, with Belly Drum and Aqua Jet: This is an uncertainty and may change, but with instant access to 648 Attack, PLUS an instant recovery from the otherwise potentially life-threatening Belly Drum, you've got quite the annoying game breaker. I read this was illegal in tournament play, but I don't really do tournaments. If anything, I've got a physical wall setup on Tangrowth in mind to replace this. My "Mega Bites" essentially does the same thing anyway. Now if I could get Play Rough without breeding for egg moves (which I highly doubt), that'll truly make this Pokémon even more ridiculous.
• Dragonite: Because type coverage and dragons! I think its stats are good, too, so I think he'll make for a good non-gimmicky Pokémon in my team. Haven't really thought of much else to do with him though.
• Blissey@Something, maybe Leftovers: The quintessential special wall. I was going to make it a Wish-passer, but idk. The tremendous problem is that Wish is an egg move, and neither of my 6IV Blisseys have it. One of them has Aromatherapy, which is pretty cool I guess, but the lack of Wish really bothers me. I really don't feel like breeding either, since I'll have to breed for IVs as well, and I've bred hundreds of Pokémon already. Still, if I could get it Wish, I believe Blissey will really be an excellent healer. No wonder she (or I guess Chancey) is always with Nurse Joy at the Pokémon Center!
• Volcarona@Something, maybe Life Orb: If you know Volcarona well enough (read: entered just about any battle where somebody cheaply boosted it and one-shotted you with a Bug Buzz), you'll know that Volcarona is pretty dangerous. People say its resistances are crap, but it's really only weak to three things: Water, Flying, and especially Rock, and you'd have to be a tremendous moron (or just unaware of Pokémon types) to throw a Volcarona at a Rock type. This is what my Azumarill is for!
• Skarmory@Something: And finally, a really annoying trap-setter that is pretty impossible to take down quickly. So far I think I only have Spikes set up on it; I would like Stealth Rock as well but I don't want to deal with egg move/IV breeding when my Skarmory already has 6 IVs. Throw in Roost to give back health and we've got something truly annoying to contend with.

Yeah, it pretty much looks like I've got a gimmicky annoying Pokémon team, and I'm proud! DEAL WITH IT.

Along blog news, I've got another YouTube talk-show/podcast thing in the works on Super Smash Bros. I just need to pretty much finish editing the lengths of the photos, so it shouldn't take too long, but I'm pretty lazy so that may count against that. Luckily right now I feel like taking a break from my video games, so maybe I can get around to finishing it.

Zero Suit Samus! Greninja! All the Smash Bros. Happy Feels!

NOW WITH HIGH HEELS!

 

 

I cannot even find the words to begin to explain my happiness. Oh my god. This is sooooo beautiful! Just watch the Nintendo Direct, damn it!

 

 



This is so wonderful!!!! ☆*･゜ﾟ･*\(^O^)/*･゜ﾟ･*☆ (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ*
(ღ˘⌣˘ღ) ♫･*:.｡. .｡.:*･ ლ(⌒▽⌒ლ)

Everything about this is perfect! Oh Sakurai you master of trolling! Pseudo-Palutena! ZSS not making it into the game! Waluigi! Oh my god this is just too good for me!

Update: Forgot to mention, listen to when they talk about Zero Suit Samus! "Slightly lesser strength than other characters." LMFAO they just took one of the strongest characters and made her stronger! On a more solemn note, it was just as I feared with Little Mac. He will be getting free one-hit K.O.'s. All he has to do is punch and take hits. Oh the doom, oh the misery...

HA HA HA screw that noise! As ZSS, I whooped so many asses who thought they could take me down with Meta-Knight, do you really think I'll be phased by one cheap little move! Lol no!

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Audio Review (Plus Some Space Dandy)

I know, the Metroid thing hasn't gone anywhere further yet, but don't fret, as I will get right to that... eventually. For now, I've played Episode 2 of Burial at Sea, allowing me to give a complete review of the DLC set as a whole. Unfortunately, I haven't played Episode 1 since last October, so I can't really say much about it, but boy do I have stuff to say about Episode 2. Since this was mainly done for my other, private blog, you guys also get me fangirling over Space Dandy as an added bonus! So I hope you enjoy this change of pace.

Metroid: Zero Mission

Inori Says:

Hello! I am Inori Aizawa. Internet Explorer's Mascot who decided to take up the much cooler job of summarizing Axel-sama's really long posts with tl;dr versions of them! For Metroid: Zero Mission, if you're interested, he strongly suggests giving it a try! Pros Include Not just a remake of Metroid; very clear devotion to making the original game an almost entirely new experience. Great, well-polished art design, sprites, area backgrounds, etc. Nice remixes of classic songs, nearly always setting the mood where dialogue and action are nowhere present. Fast-paced action-platforming gameplay that also encourages you to slow down sometimes. (Careful with running for best times, though). VERY VERY BERRY HIGH REPLAY VALUE, multiple ways to play this game (and rewards for doing so) Fun and challenging boss fights. A neat little stealth segment at the end that subverts the typical series formula (in a good way). Samus is hot? (In all seriousness, the character design is nice). Simple-yet-subtle touches in a couple of moments of the game's otherwise thin plot. Cons Include Running the game on 15% Item Completion on Hard mode was a little over-the-top ridiculous. Also, pretty steep learning curve in figuring out how to solve the more challenging puzzles for items without making so many mistakes that you have to reset the game to preserve your time. Too short? (Maybe for others). Sometimes the bosses may just be a little too straightforward.

Let me begin with an explanation of how this series is going to work. I currently have all of the 2D side-scrolling Metroid games available for me to play on my 3DS, so those will be played first. I really wanted to do a chronological thing, but because I don't have my Wii up here in Tallahassee, that is not going to work. I just found out that Metroid Prime and MP2 seem to work emulated on my computer, but it is uncertain whether there may still be a bug later on in the game that'll cause it to be unplayable on my computer. Because there is a lot of uncertainty about how I'm going to get the Prime series to work and thus be consistent with how often I write my posts here, I am going to play those games after I play through the 2D side-scrollers. That also means Metroid: Other M is last, which shouldn't matter because nobody should really care about that game. Hell I'm possibly showing too much care already by including it!

Now I hope you're not a fanatic who is about to ditch me here just because I chose to review M:ZM before the original Metroid. First of all, I don't have the original Metroid on me; my brother has it on his 3DS (which I used to purchase it, long story). I figured why am I going to buy the game again when I can just transfer it from my brother's SD card? Some of you may be wondering, then, why I didn't just download a rom of the GBA port, and to that I say, I would prefer to play it without the emulator. It's a simple formula: Virtual Console is more stable than flashcart.

Second of all, if you honestly think Metroid is a better game than Zero Mission, you have problems. You must, then, think Final Fantasy I and II are better games than VI, XII, or even VII. Or, to put this back in terms of Nintendo, that Super Mario Bros. was a better game than Super Mario 64 or Sunshine. Or that The Legend of Zelda is a better game than Wind Waker. In that case, there is nothing I can do for you. You are trapped forever in a retroactive state of mind, in a retroactive belief that, "Old is always better." For you personally, I am truly very sorry.

Moving on, let's talk about Zero Mission! I'm going to start with some background to give you Readers an idea of my history with Metroid and this game. Very shamefully, I am going to admit right now that the thing that got me into the Metroid series was that I saw a similarity between it and Halo. I'm talking about Metroid Prime, of course, seeing as how Halo was never a 2D side-scroller. I only had a GameCube, not an Xbox, so I could only play Halo 2 when I was over at somebody who had an Xbox. So, when I found out about Metroid Prime, I thought, "Hey, this looks like Halo," and so I went and got it. Of course, I was immediately disappointed with the fact that there was no multiplayer feature, which was pretty much the thing that sparked a contrast between my brother and me in our liking of the game. However, I was already used to games being single-player only. That was how pretty much all games were throughout my childhood, so why should it bother me then? I also don't think I've ever played the single-player mode of any first-person shooter before, so I guess that makes Metroid Prime my first FPS, even though the game stands far off from that. If it's like any game, it's actually surprisingly a lot like Half-Life. It is almost very much an open-world Half-Life where the emphasis is more on platforming than on physics, yet still retains the sci-fi and the puzzle elements and the simple fact alone that it is more than just running around shooting things (coughs and mentions Call of Duty).

What does any of this have to do with Zero Mission, though? Well, Metroid Prime was the only thing I knew of the Metroid series for a while. I had no idea that it was initially a side-scrolling series until I laid my eyes upon an advertisement for Metroid: Zero Mission...

Wait no, that's wrong. I knew pretty much right away that it was initially a side-scrolling series, because after I beat Prime, I unlocked the original Metroid. I never really played through much of it at the time though. After that, I laid eyes on Zero Mission, which I found was supposed to be a remake of the original Metroid game. Remake is a term I refuse to use in referencing Zero Mission, but more on that in a bit. So anyway, since the GameBoy Advance was the biggest thing at the time, I got Zero Mission and fell in love with the game. The graphics, for a GBA game, were beautiful, which sounds shallow but meant a lot to me as a kid, seeing things look better than previous things. I was unsure at first how I'd feel about the gameplay, but the gameplay was incredible to me since it was everything that Prime was but at a much faster and exciting pace (not to deny that Prime was an exciting game). Zero Mission was what truly got me interested in the core games of the Metroid series, and it was what led me to like the original Metroid in spite of how, when I was that age, I never really liked NES games all that much.

So let's talk about Zero Mission, finally. What is Metroid: Zero Mission? Is it a port? Is it a remake? Well, obviously, it isn't really a port. Sure, it's the original game on the GBA, but it's not literally the same thing like the NES series of GBA games. It is defined as "an enhanced remake of the original Metroid game, designed to retell that entry's story with Super Metroid-like gameplay" on Wikipedia. While the gameplay is certainly that of Super Metroid, I would not settle with the term "remake" (even though they threw in "enhanced" to modify that). I would call Metroid: Zero Mission a complete revision of the original Metroid game. Sure, the entire layout of the game is familiar, but this is also a game that was built from the ground up, with its own additions and differences that set it pretty far apart from the original Metroid. I mean, Nintendo could have very easily placed this game somewhere chronologically between Metroid and Super Metroid and called it another game in itself. That is pretty much what Metroid: Zero Mission is in a nutshell.

I guess I can start with the obvious: the graphics and audio. GameBoy Advance games were (or could have been) 32-bit games, allowing for a broader range of color-pallets and detailed sprite images to run together. What was once a blocky-looking Samus Aran robot thing was now a fully-detailed armored sprite, with ridges along the knees, elbows, and other parts of the suit. The "breastplate" of Samus's suit, which in my opinion for the longest time was the only thing remotely indicative of her sex, was sort of distinguishable. You could see markings, the thrusters on the backside of her suit, the ridges and linings in her arm cannon, and the shape of her visor and the small pipes beneath it, I think. The enemies, namely of course the bosses, have also been brought to eye-popping detail. I would go so far as to say that this game looks even better than Metroid Fusion, when in actuality the two may have the same specs in terms of graphics. Here is where it boils down to art design, the backgrounds they use for each section, how the monsters look, and, once again, how the bosses are designed. One example I can pull up is how Ridley in this game looks compared to Ridley in Fusion. First of all things, Ridley in this game is more in line with how he looks in Super Metroid and even the Prime series, whereas in Fusion, Ridley is sort of funny looking. His eyeballs have pupil, they are big, and his snout is more like a cross between a crocodile's and a toucan's beak than his original thin and pointed, dragon-like snout. I mean, he still retains the form of a dragon, more or less, but Ridley in Fusion was a lot more cartoony to me than he was in this game (and cartoony feels like a strange term to use for the Metroid series). It's not that it was bad or anything, it was just... well, it was just sort of funny-looking.

Go ahead, you be the judge. This is a bad screen, too, as his eyes definitely have pupils.

So yeah, art direction! I just thought it was all more polished in this game. Not a huge thing or anything, but yeah. There are also some interesting things to talk about concerning Samus's character artwork as well, but I'll leave that for later (probably the end of the post as it is a fitting place). Then we have the soundtrack. The Metroid series probably has one of the most underrated or unnoticed soundtracks out there. You get a lot of orchestral and piano remakes of songs from The Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy. I think there may have even been a Mario music thing at some point or another. If there are stuff for Metroid's music, you just don't hear about it as often. The beautiful thing about Metroid, which probably goes for a lot of Nintendo games as well, is how well they are able to set the mood or tone throughout the game through cues in the music. This is especially noteworthy due to the lack of dialogue and voice acting in the Metroid games... err, well, in most of them anyway. A great example for this post would be the Chozodia theme, after Samus retrieves her Power Suit (if you are freaking about spoilers, you are freaking out over a game that is eight years old). The Chozodia theme is actually a sort of remix of the Brinstar theme, which is an iconic theme of the Metroid series. The Brinstar theme is cheery, catchy, and evenly-paced if not slightly upbeat in tempo and spirit. It is also the very first song you hear in actual gameplay of all these games. It is very inviting in that way and helps establish the feeling that you are on an exciting adventure, enticing you to explore the interestingly subterranean planet Zebes.

I kind of forgot that I was talking about Chozodia, ha ha. As I said, it is a remix of the Brinstar theme: slightly faster-paced, sounding more of like a fanfare as the music is in a higher dynamic, and each down beat (i.e. beat that a phrase starts on) is almost sort of explosive, as they have some sort of percussion marking those beats. We're not just hearing the welcoming theme that evoked excitement at the beginning of the game, we're now hearing that almost sort of celebrates all that you've been through to now have the "fully-powered suit." In other words, Samus is now one-hundred percent badass, and therefore badass iconic music needs to play to reflect that. It's not just a matter of finally attaining all of the main abilities in the game; the space pirates at the end of the game are virtually powerless against the awe of Samus and her awesomeness.

So before I go on forever about the gameplay, let's talk about story real quick. So... story in Zero Mission... wait a minute? Is there really a story here? Well, one of the selling points of Zero Mission is that it has cutscenes that further enact the story of the original game. Plus, we have a really awesome sort of "bonus" sequence (even though it is essential to beating the game) where we see that Samus never fully does escape Zebes after Mother Brain. But that's jumping ahead a little bit. The story of the game kind of actually begins before the title screen, which I think we pretty much have seen before in the original Metroid. We get a message that reads something along the lines of "Emergency Mission! Destroy the Metroids and Mother Brain" blah blah. In between each thing, we see brief scenes of Samus rushing over to Zebes, although not much really. When the game starts, she lands her ship, and we get this sort of retroactive reflection of the events of the game (not everything, but just that this was Samus's first, or "zero," mission). Then that's pretty much it, afterward we just get some brief intermittent cutscenes for most of the zones, which pretty much explain things like how Ridley arrived and stuff like that. Metroid's never really been all that much about the plot, honestly, and that's really okay, because on the other hand we have things like Other M to contend with.

The point of the game where the story gets really big is, once again, the ending sequence after Mother Brain. I actually really love this whole thing on so many more levels than just the fact that it expands the original game. First off, we have what I think to be a brilliant developing point in Samus's character, which all throughout the games hasn't really been too explored... well, aside from Fusion, but I mean even then, most people thought of Samus as this badass femme fatale whose cunning transcended human comprehension, which is sort of a good way to describe who she is. HOWEVER, this game does something really cool hat I think most people don't notice: we see she didn't always outsmart her own foes. We see in a pretty simple and straightforward cutscene how, after dealing with Mother Brain, she flies off into Zebes orbit and runs into space pirates. She manages to escape these guys, but in a moment of ease, when she least suspects it, she gets shot down and crash lands back on Zebes without her Power Suit. This is where the iconic Zero Suit gets introduced, but I'll have more on that later. This scene, at first glance or from just casual observation, just seems simple enough to further the plot along. However, there is something really cool happening here. As soon as Samus leaves Zebes's atmosphere, she takes off her Power Suit and catches her breath. Then, when things seem quite after that run-in with the space pirates, she seems to relax again, and this costs her her escape from Zebes. Do you where I'm going here? Samus makes a mistake. It isn't even just any kind of mistake, but I believe it to be a mistake that kind of implies that there was more to her than we imagine. It's kind of like she might've been sort of naïve during this time of her first mission. I mean, why not be that way? You are a super-human badass with access to an entire armory of advanced technologies and weaponry. No human being can fully understand what you are. If I were Samus I too would've taken a breath after destroying Mother Brain. Hell I would've kicked back with a cigar and glass of whiskey and probably laughed, congratulating myself for being awesome. Unlike Samus, though, I probably would've been so caught up with that nonsense that I probably would've been dead at the end of Zero Mission.

Well anyway, putting my silliness aside, that's what I make of that scene where Samus gets shot down. Who knows, maybe I'm reading too much into it and it really is just a means of expanding the plot, but nothing the developers can say will change my mind, I believe this is revealing of possibly Samus's age and mindset versus her experience so far in her line of work.

Then of course we get the whole Zero Suit stealth sequence, which is more gameplay talk to be saved for later. Then we get another interesting cutscene, where Samus is at this sort of shrine or whatever, and we see a flashback that reveals a little of her history with the Chozo, and that she was taken here as a child for some reason. So wait a minute, Samus has been to this shrine before, and it looks like there is only one way in. What does this mean? To me, it pretty much means that the whole time she went at least through the Chozo ruins segment of Chozodia, that she knew where she was going this whole time we, the players, thought we were just exploring. Could that mean that Samus knew, this whole entire time we've been venturing through Zebes, where she was going? I think maybe, but it certainly wouldn't be supported by the Chozo statues, which are placed to guide her to the items you find in the game. I know it mainly serves a gameplay purpose, which many find really annoying since it kind of holds your hand a little, but think about it from a story's perspective. If you know that Samus was raised on this planet, by the Chozo and all, you can kind of get the sense that these statues may have been placed in anticipation of her. We get support in later Metroid games that the Chozo were kind of clairvoyant, too.

Well anyway, after Samus gets her Power Suit back, we see how she acquired the iconic look of the big bulky shoulders and such. Then we see how she escaped, and that's about it. Oh wait, we also see Mecha-Ridley, and the fact that we see it so soon after defeating Ridley really shows how well the space pirates anticipated and prepared for Ridley's death (doesn't seem like they have a lot of faith in their top general). But I like that this kind of shows a sort of development or evolution of the Meta-Ridley we recognize from the Prime series, and that Meta-Ridley wasn't always as fast and efficient as he seemed to be in Prime. I mean, he's a giant robot that can't fly, takes up an entire screen, and has a huge weak spot left right out there in the open (although since he's so cramped in the room, it makes it hard to hit). It's almost clearly obvious that he was in no means ready for a situation where Samus comes bursting into their mother ship, if it weren't for the fact that he is one of the most difficult Metroid bosses ever. I mean, sure, he's no so bad with ninety-nine percent item completion, but on the other challenges of the game, he can be one hell of a pain in the ass.

It looks like we're getting into the gameplay now, so why don't we talk about that already? The first thing I want to look at is the fact that there are several ways to play this game. Yes, there is an "Easy," "Normal," and "Hard" mode, but there's more to it than just that. There are eight different "endings" for completing the game under different circumstances. These "endings" are pretty much concept art with different depictions of Samus, nearly all of which are super awesome. You can set out to beat the game on all difficulties, but what is a Metroid game without any reason for speed-running it (well aside from the Prime series, but more on that in a future post)? There are eight circumstances that will reward you for completing them:

1. Beat the game with 15% item completion or less on Hard mode (I like to call this "Curse-and-Nearly-Break-Your-Game Mode"). The picture up top by the way is the reward for doing this.
2. Beat the game with 15% item completion or less on Normal mode. It really isn't all that bad.
3. Beat the game in under 2 hours with 100% completion on Hard mode (I like to call this "Just-Reset-the-Game Mode").
4. Beat the game in under 2 hours with 100% completion on Normal mode (Also called "Just-Reset-the-Game Mode").
5. Beat the game with 100% completion on Normal/Hard mode.
6. Beat the game in under 2 hours with less than 100% completion, Normal/Hard mode.
7. Beat the game in over 2 hours, but under 4, with less than 100% completion, Normal/Hard mode.
8. Take 4 hours to beat the game, or if you're good at the game and smart, beat it on Easy mode. Why would you intentionally spend 4 hours playing one game to unlock the specific ending?

These really aren't the only ways to beat the game either. There are records other players have set, each under different circumstances of their on. There's the 9%-Only Challenge, where you play through the game with only the items essential to beating the game! That means no energy tanks, no missiles beyond the one you need to get to kill bosses and stuff with, no super missiles, no power bombs (mostly unimportant anyway), and no nice things like screw attack and hi-jump boots. Maybe on Normal mode this isn't as bad as it sounds, but I've already vowed to never play another Metroid game on Hard mode for the 15% challenge. That whole thing was so frustrating it nearly made me hate Zero Mission, which is actually my favorite game in the whole series. I managed to do it, though, so I am officially good at these games, and thus that makes me a sound authority.

And then, if that huge block of text describing the different challenges the game has to offer wasn't enough, we have something that's pretty big in the Metroid series: sequence-breaking. Metroid, when it is actually good and not like Other M, is about exploring pretty much every nook and cranny the worlds have to offer. You will find places that will puzzle you and make you scratch your head, but then, when you have found a particular ability, you'll remember that very place and go back again to try and get there. The Metroid worlds are known for being, for the most part, open-ended and enabling for you to explore without any real barriers that go out of the way to prevent you from doing that. Wow that was a loaded sentence. Anyway, so while you can follow the beaten path and go where the annoying Chozo statues tell you to go, you can also rebel against the hand-holding pretty much the moment you get the bombs for morph-ball. Why? Because this game has virtually no limitations on how many bombs you can place at once.

Usually, in other games, you could only place down three bombs and wait for them all to blow up before placing more. In this game, you can pretty much place bombs forever. This enables players the ability to bomb-jump in many ways that were previously impossible to do. For example, one can bomb jump diagonally across spaces to get to areas without the "required" power-ups needed to get there. It's all a matter of timing. Some skilled players can perfectly place bombs in such a timed succession that they can sort of jump twice at a time. It's hard to explain. I never got into doing that, so I just place down one bomb at a time to jump. There's also horizontal bomb jumping, which is somehow done to move in a straight line backward or forward. I have no idea how this is possible, as well as what use it could possibly serve at some point, but it's there if you so choose to use it.

Then of course there's wall-jumping and the shinesparking, which is when you speed boost and suddenly crouch to store up that momentum and unleash it to make some kind of ridiculous jump in any direction you put in. My god I'm having problems with syntax today. Basically, there are a ton of things you can do that go beyond what's clearly set in stone. Sequence-breaking pretty much allows for this game to be experimented with in a ton of ways, allowing for even more depth and complexity in the progression of the game. Combine this with the different challenges you can set out to achieve in Zero Mission, and you essentially have an incredibly high replay value for this game. I beat this game about nine or ten different times in order to A) fully unlock everything, and B) write this analysis of the game, and there was not one play-through where I felt tired with or bored of the game (although certainly annoyed and frustrated when it came to the ridiculous 15% Hard mode challenge, or having to constantly reset the game to preserve a best time).

Here I want to segue into game design, or level design, a little bit. I am no scholar on the art of game design, so excuse me for my lack of critical language, but I can certainly tell intelligent layout of the environments when I see it (disclaimer: sometimes). One example of intelligence and not seemingly arbitrary at first glance: talking about sequence-breaking and item challenges and stuff, at the very end of the game there is a morph ball tunnel which seems like you can only go through by blowing open some blocks with a power bomb. However, hidden above this tunnel is also another tunnel where you don't need to use the power bombs. It seems kind of counterintuitive, since it's really just easier to blow open the blocks once and then leave through them later during the self-destruct sequence, but what if you didn't have power bombs and didn't have that extra tunnel? You would have to sacrifice then another option in your six-percent allotment of items to freely choose from for the 15% completion thing. This also happens right after you beat Mother Brain: there is a tunnel above the exit to the ship that goes over the speed-boost blocks. Why go up this way? Well, what if you didn't have the speed-boost; how else would you get out? There are also, I think, some instances that pretty much anticipate and encourage sequence-breaking too, but I can't really think of them right now. I'd say those instances of game design could fall in line with anticipation of sequence-breaking, though.

Then we have the more straightforward level design that falls more in line with the standard progression of the game. While I don't believe this game is anywhere near Super Metroid in the subtlety of its level design, I think I can still see it there. One really obvious instance of the "hidden tutorial" is when you get the morph ball. When you head over to get it, you have to climb over this platform that seems impossible to go back from (well, not unless you wall jump, but that's beside the point). However, there is a little tunnel underneath the platform that may have struck your attention, and when you find you can roll around with the morph-ball, you see what the morph-ball is for. I don't think this always happens in this game, though, unlike in Super Metroid where even the very beginning of the game, without any abilities lying around to pick up yet, feels meticulously made to acquaint you with playing the game. For example, when you go to get the Speed-Booster in Zero Mission, there is no real indicator of its use before you get it. I mean, sure, Kraid's room is huge, but Kraid is also huge, so maybe Kraid's room is just huge to make him fit. Later you find the Power Grip, which lets you hold on to ledges. Here you do find the game's environment sort of working as a tutorial, but the raising of platforms for you to grab onto and climb out of the pit you fall into is kind of obvious. It doesn't help, once again, that there are Chozo statues standing around waiting to lead the way for you.

But there are still moments where the game does this sort of hidden tutorial. If the original power-ups are considered "invalid" for having already been present in the original Metroid, consider the Gravity Suit, which is not only a new item but also a part of the game's entirely new segment. After you get the Gravity Suit, you could, of course, read the description the game gives of what it does. But even if that description was absent, you'll eventually come across a part of a hallway that is submerged in water for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Like, if the water was removed, it would not have affected the hallway in anyway way, especially since you never go in that water before attaining the Gravity Suit. While in this water, there is even an item you can get with the speed-boost by simply running forward (that is, if you have the speed-boost). While players may not think much of its placement, they will realize that they can now move freely through any body of liquid this game throws at them.

So yeah, intelligent and subtle game design. Even if the game tells you what items do and where to go, it's still not like you are going through supermassive tutorial dialogue boxes like in Final Fantasy XIII. Most of the Chozo statues can be skipped anyway via sequence-breaking, which this game seems to encourage.

Other things: the pace of the action is neat. Before Fusion, Samus seemed really floaty and kind of slow. Maybe in the GameBoy game, Metroid 2, this relatively didn't feel that way, but it was never like Fusion where Samus quickly runs through rooms, jumps and flips around and stuff. I feel like the sound effects they use for Samus flipping in the air bring this out very well, where it started initially as a series of blips that could've meant anything. Even if Samus could run fast in Super Metroid (it is, after all, the game that introduced the speed-boost), she was still really floaty in that game. Fusion introduced the mechanic of keeping Samus from jumping too high (at least until you get the hi-jump boots [that is, if you get them]). I don't know why I'm talking about Fusion so much, other than to say that those mechanics are back in Zero Mission and really help establish its pace as an action-oriented game.

I don't feel like the controls are worth mentioning, because they are so simple it just makes no sense for anything to go wrong with them. I will say, though, that using the L and R buttons on a 2DS is a pain in the ass in this game. That is not really the game's fault though, considering I'm not really supposed to be able to play this game on a 2DS anyway.

Next we have the boss fights. The boss fights in this game, while fun and can be challenging, are nearly all very straightforward. You can very easily sum up a boss fight to somebody by simply advising: "Shoot missiles." Ridley is very criminal to this simple strategy. However, there are several things to consider here. First of all, this game is meant to be played in different ways. If you are going for the 15% Challenge, there is no way you can possibly sit there and unload all of your missiles at Ridley, especially if you do the smart thing (although it does looks stupid at first) and kill Ridley first. Second, there are two ways to fight Ridley: one is under the protection of standing beneath him and being immune to his attacks. This may sound like a terrible thing, but if you're anything like me, the anxiety of not screwing something up will lead to mistakes that might very well mean the end of a 15% game. If you have already killed Kraid by this point, or even if you're just collecting all the items and you sequence-broke, there is no point in doing this. Here is the other seemingly disagreeable option: just unload all of your missiles. While on Normal there is really nothing to it, I feel that on Hard mode (which, aside from the 15% Challenge, is pretty much the way the game is meant to be played), luck plays a pretty big role in the fight against Ridley, while still leaving room for skill to have a say in the outcome. This is always a good thing, and so it made each attempt against Ridley on Hard mode exciting since I A) had to recollect missiles and stuff (remember, I sequence-broke), and B) I could not anticipate for sure whether I'd survive.

Then we have Kraid, who can either be very easy or pretty annoying. He's not annoying to the point where he's a pain in the ass, though, which is good. The alternate way of killing him is simply hit him with three super missiles before he shuts his mouth, which people may have a problem with or consider to be cheap, but I like that it's in there. I like having multiple means of killing things in a game: it's called strategy.

Then there are the new bosses, which I don't care too much for in explaining them in gross detail. However, I will say that they definitely contribute to the atmosphere of the game, further bringing out the curiosities of Zebes. There is also that fight against the Chozo ghost in Chozodia, which was really cool as it is more of a puzzle than a boss. Basically, you have to be decent at dodging things while still being open at the right moment to "strike" the boss.

Mother Brain and Mecha-Ridley are the two bosses in the game where complexity really hits. The challenge of fighting these two is figuring out how to avoid their onslaught of attacks. Neither of them seem to hardly give a moment's rest. I was about to go into detail here, but I realize this post is starting to ramble on a ton about pretty much every aspect of the game, so I'll just leave off the bosses here. Point is, they are (nearly) all challenging and most have various means of defeating them.

This leaves me to wrap up with the ending sequence. So we kill Mother Brain and escape Zebes and think, Woohoo, we won! Then Samus gets shot down by space pirates, and here the game gets pretty interesting. We now have Samus without her incredible arsenal and protection, and now instead we just have this little gun that can only stun enemies, for about a second, and only when it is charged up. So what's this? We can't go running around shooting things anymore? Oh my god it's an intelligent FPS! Run away!

Honestly, as cool and awesome as this segment is, there are things about it that are just total bullshit. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but right at the very start of it, how the hell are you supposed to avoid being seen by that space pirate? He stands right up front of the tunnel you can jump into, but you must be like incredibly godlike at timing when to shoot that stun gun or else you will get caught by him, and thus ends any chance of a "perfect stealth run" if that's what you're after for some reason. There are some clever moments, though, like there is one crawlspace in a hallway that nearly seems destined for you to be caught in. However, it is very simple to time when you run out into the open here, and as for that crawlspace, there is a shadow at the end of it that you can actually hide in it if you stop and think about it. From there, you can stun the space pirate and carry on. Wall-jumping also makes interesting uses here, and it can add some extra dimension to the challenge of avoiding being caught, as now you have to time the jumps in both a manner that keeps you from falling and in a manner that keeps you from being caught.

Still, this also means mostly nothing when you are trying to speed run the game. It is actually better to just run out in the open and dodge every attack as best as you can. This segment is most interesting for the 15% challenges, where literally one or two hits on Hard mode means death for you.

If you really disliked this portion of the game or found it excruciatingly difficult, then that just makes regaining the Power Suit all the more exciting and rewarding. Again, really upbeat and almost celebratory music, plus the space pirates are almost laughable cannon fodder. The cool thing is, you still can't get too cocky on the 15% Challenges.

Last I want to talk about Zero Suit Samus, as this now pretty much deviates from anything that really matters about the game. In the past, whenever you beat the game correctly, Samus was depicted without her armor and wearing some kind of... I want to say underwear, I guess? The only game to really feature another suit was, and this is probably not a coincidence, the original Metroid, with that sort of leotard that Samus wore. She also had really cool green hair, whatever happened to that hair?

Well, anyway, this is the game that introduces Zero Suit Samus, for better or for worse. Some may find the thought of a skin-tight suit possibly even sillier than Samus in her underwear, others may (either creepily or in a calm, observant manner) find it attractive. The way I think of it is, it just simply makes more sense with the art design/logic of the game and its universe. What is the point of wearing underwear under a suit of armor? Wouldn't you prefer to wear something that, as strange as it may sound in terms of designing a female character, feels like you're wearing literally nothing? The Zero Suit is supposed to enable Samus's agility and flexibility, which is something of an iconic superpower of hers in itself. Look at this woman with alien blood in her: no human can jump and run like that! I guess maybe underwear makes some sense, but I'm still not buying it. Besides, when Samus dies, her suit comes off. It would probably be pretty embarrassing if Samus somehow lost her suit in a fight (it's been known to possibly happen) and was left in her underwear for her enemies to see completely.

Last I want to talk about this game's iteration of Samus. In every Metroid game so far (hell, even in Brawl), Samus's appearance has constantly changed. You may go ahead and criticize me for admiring a female video game character's appearance, I don't care because I know there's more to it than just, "Samus is hot." There's appreciation for the character art in itself, like how I described Morgiana in one of my other blog's posts where I talked about Magi. Now anyway, this game is kind of weird with its interpretation of Samus, by which I mean, it can't seem to make up its freaking mind. In some of the cutscenes, her face kind of looks hard, I hate to say it but I guess kind of feisty, like a kind of supermodel or something. I'll use pictures, that'll help.

Okay, so Exhibit A. Huge eyes, huge lips. Super model kind of shit, yeah? Is that a fucking tan?

But here we have Exhibit B. I know, kind of hard to tell, but you can certainly agree her eyes are nowhere near as big. Maybe her lips are slightly smaller. Whatever the case, the art direction here really makes me liken her to Han Solo, which is immensely awesome. However...

We have Exhibit C here. What the hell? Make up your minds, Nintendo! Maybe it's because she let down her ponytail, I don't know, but her face is a loft "softer" here, if that's a term I can use. She actually kind of reminds me of somebody I know in this picture, it's kind of creepy in spite of its sweetness.

I think, if it's anything we are to go by, it is actual concept art showing us the thought process behind designing Samus's face. I can't read any of that Japanese, in spite of the fact I'm taking Japanese in college. I'm just not at that level yet. Oh wait a minute, I can read the subtitle! It says, "Samus Aran Face" and then the rest I can't read because it's kanji I don't freakin' know.

So in spite of the huge deal I put up over Samus's many faces in this game, literally speaking, I think this is one of my favorite iterations of her. It could very well be simply because this is probably the first time they went into detail about showing what she looks like. Wait, no, they did that in Fusion, but I wouldn't count Fusion because it says her genetic makeup changed due to the injection of the Metroid DNA. You also see her in Prime, but I don't care. I like this one, now shut up and leave me alone. I also like the "Justin Bailey" depiction in this game, or the orange crop-top and shorts combo in other words. I don't really know why, maybe it's because orange is a color you never see Samus in anywhere else.

Oh wait a minute, her Power Suit is orange. This just got awkward.

No but seriously, you don't see her wearing anything else orange in anything. It's usually a blue Zero Suit or a blue crop-top and shorts. Well, actually, now that I think about it, her crop-top and shorts/underwear depictions have always been different. Whatever, okay, I just really like this one for some reason. I mean, come on, you can't say it's not stylish! Just look at it! I like it so much I have a modded version of Zero Suit Samus in Brawl where she sports the flashy orange crop-top and shorts combo. Oh, speaking of style, I found this:

She is apparently a fashion diva too. I find this hilarious. Alright alright, enough with the Samus pictures before somebody files a copyright claim on me (can't do anything though since I'm not breaking any rules here).

I think this is a good point to end my discussion on Zero Mission, as we can so clearly see by pretty much my drifting away from the topic of the game. If there's anything wrong with the game that I hadn't listed above... I mean, I guess it's "too short?" Maybe more like "too addicting," if that can even be considered a problem. I find myself wanting to go through it all it one sitting, which is good, but also bad because it's a handheld game, meaning it should be something I feel comfortable with picking up on the go. To be fair, there is a "sleep mode" that works, obviously, when it is played on a GameBoy Advance. If memory serves me correct, this is where the picking up and putting away aspect of handheld games came from for Zero Mission. For those who complained it was too short, what they fail to realize is you don't just play through this game once and be done with it. You just can't do that. Zero Mission is all about the replay, and the new ways you find yourself playing the game each time you start it over, and, just when you ask yourself how long this new method will carry you through the same game over again, you find yourself wanting to finish it as soon as possible to see if your new method will net you a new reward. My goodness, so many ridiculously long sentences!

I Have No Clue

That's a pretty good title for this. I don't really know where any of this blog is going anymore, which I wouldn't say is a bad thing to you if you actually check in on this blog regularly. It's a bad thing for me because I can never decide what to do, and I almost hardly ever feel like writing anything here. I still can't imagine any end to this thing, so I guess there's that.

I thought at first that perhaps what this blog needed was a complete refresher. I thought perhaps if I started it over and went to Wordpress, that would solve everything. I've never thought much of Wordpress lately since somebody who I am very impartial with suddenly decided to drop my recommendation of this site and go on over to that place, which I am a hundred and fifty percent sure was out of spite against me (you see, while I am not completely certain about his awareness, he and I are in love with the same woman. Even though he left me at my wit's end on that situation, I feel pretty sure he views me as some sort of antagonist anyway. Oh, people, they never grow the fuck up). I tried not to think of it this way at first-- maybe Wordpress is actually pretty cool. However, when I went to sign up, there was a lot of pressure to subscribe to them for some sort of premium membership. If it's anything I hate, it's premium memberships, but at least Wordpress wasn't forcing this on me, so I continued. Then, as I was setting up my blog's appearance, I found that there were only a few themes to choose from while the rest cost eighty dollars. Not that this matter all too much to me, I just find it strange: what casual person would pay eighty dollars for a set of differently arranged and colored pixels?

But as I said, I paid little else mind to that and proceeded to try and "customize" the blog, and this was where I saw trouble. For anything, you have to upgrade to the premium membership, which costs about eighty or a hundred bucks a year. Perhaps for a professional thing, that'll work. This blog is the furthest thing from professional, though. Same with this guy's blog: is it professional? Well it is well-written, and a lot of the way he writes feels authoritative (almost so much so that you nearly get sick of reading him after a while were it not for his occasional jokes), but I don't feel that any of that warrants being professional. I don't know if his blog is paid for or not, as for the one part it should have ads if it were a free website (another striking problem with Wordpress), and I see none of those. I just don't see why he would pay nearly a hundred a year to maintain something so casual.

Well anyway, this is starting to delve a little too much into my personal feelings. My contempt for him is not that important.

So what am I here to talk about, if it's not my disliking of the guy who got to the woman I loved first? Why, I'm here to talk about games, of course! Getting on a brighter note, have we all been following the news on Super Smash Bros.? I sure as hell am. Nearly every bit of news tickles the contracting muscles around my lips, although I don't care much for some things like the announcement that Diddy Kong is here to stay. What does bother me a little is how Lucario made the cut. Lucario is a wanna-be Mewtwo. He is a Pokémon that I seriously believe was designed just to be put in Super Smash Bros. Lucario the Mewtwo Ripoff is pretty much a Fighting-type Mewtwo, therefore I believe, after Melee came out, that the developers put their heads... somewhere unpleasant and decided, "Mewtwo is cool, but he's not a fighter, so how does that make sense with Smash Bros.? What should we do? OH I KNOW, LET'S MAKE IT A FIGHTING-TYPE, GIVE IT A STUPID-LOOKING DOG DESIGN, AND NAME IT LUCARIO! To ensure Mewtwo is forgotten, let's promote Lucario in every stupid way we can, starting with putting him in Brawl to have the same exact moveset. If that's not enough, let's have a trainer who uses two Lucarios in Pokémon X and Y, for good measure!"

Well, silliness aside, pretty much everything I've seen with this game has been great. Sakurai's Pics of the Day chip the veil away little by little, showing off more and more of some really cool things. For example, there's going to be a Nintendogs 3DS stage. In it, the fighters are made wee-small, and they brawl in the living room of a cozy house with a puppy lurking around in the environment (I never thought I'd use "lurking" to describe a puppy). Dog toys and some furniture all prove as platforms and obstacles in this stage.

I really hope that puppy becomes a stage hazard. And not in the clumsy manner of the assist trophy, I mean like something you'll fear coming into contact with. That'll really be something.

What's also interesting is Little Mac's reveal trailer and its link to the Metroid series, or rather, what people believe about that trailer. Putting that into context with several other strange things Nintendo's done (there was one time Reggie wore a Samus pin, on which he said, "You never know," when asked if a new Metroid was in the works), the trailer seems to show off Samus quite a bit as well even though it is specifically for Little Mac's reveal. I don't know what to really say about this. Sure, the scene of her rolling by at the end seemed kind of random, but I feel like I've seen Nintendo do this time and time again. They are a company that is proud of its franchises, so I don't know about that one.

But if it's anything Nintendo should make next, it's definitely a Metroid game. The Legend of Zelda got the recovery treatment with A Link Between Worlds following the disappointing Skyward Sword, now it's Metroid's turn! Put Other M in the past! What I say should be released is a kickass sidescroller on the 3DS, although I guess it would be fine on the Wii U as well (I just won't be able to play it). A 3D game like Prime would be fine too. Just have Retro or the SPD team take the helm and nothing can really go wrong. Anything to get rid of the awful cutscenes and atrocious things that were done to Samus's character out of everyone's heads.

So speaking of Metroid, I've started picking up the games and playing through them again as I did last Summer. I think last Summer I meant to do a post-by-post analysis of each of these games, but I never did that for some reason. I know I am doing that with Kingdom Hearts right now, but I still haven't gone around to playing the first game in the series, and since I'm in school it's hard to do that at the moment. The Metroid games on the other hand, well save for probably the Prime series, do not require a lot of time. I've already ran through Metroid 2 and Zero Mission multiple times in the past week. So this is what I'll try to do over the next several posts. It'll be a while before I get around to writing about Prime 3 and Other M (yes, even that horror), though, since I don't have access to those games on my computer.

Well, here's to hopefully being able to keep this place updated often. As well, of course, as to the speedy release of Super Smash Bros.!

A Re:Cap of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

 

The Internet is a really stupid place. This game has been out for three years already and this picture is really the best one I can find? Give me a break.

Anyway, Kingdom Hearts III is upon us, and as a result, all the major Kingdom Hearts titles are being revisited, remastered, and rereleased for the PS3. In anticipation of what will hopefully be an epic, wonderful conclusion to one of the greatest series in videogame history, I've decided to revisit each title myself, albeit on the comfort and power of my personal computer. I feel kind of silly doing this instead of just getting the HD ReMixes of the games, but the thing is, I already own all the games so why am I going to pay for enhanced graphics and official localizations of the Final Mix versions of each game? So what if I have to deal with a few bugs here and there, along with having to go on the Internet to watch the Final Mix cutscenes in English. I have the Final Mix versions of each game, and I really only play them for the added superbosses. With the help of Gamefaqs, I can just download a save file and go straight to each boss that I want to pick a fight with. This is great since I can pay through the English versions of the games and fight the extra bosses without having to play through the game all over again. I know the Final Mix versions, for some reason, have the voice-acted scenes dubbed in English, but I also like to know what people are saying during the dialogue box scenes, which was something that annoyed me each time I tried to revisit the games merely through their Final Mix versions.

There will actually be three games that I won't play on my computer, and those will be 358/2 Days, Re: Coded, and Dream Drop Distance. I'm not actually even revisiting Re: Coded because I chose to never play that game ever, but since I decided to do this whole playthrough of every Kingdom Hearts game in the series chronological order, I figured why not. So what, I deal with a shitty game. Can't be as bad as other terrible games I've played, like the Call of Duty franchise or Metroid: Other M. I still need to get my own 3DS for Dream Drop Distance, but the good news is that I've only just began the original Kingdom Hearts, so I should have plenty of time before I have to get to Dream Drop Distance.

As for this blog, I will try to write about my re-experiences with these games. First of all, I know there is already a "review" for this game...

Wait a minute, that review disappeared. Huh. Well, it doesn't matter, because I remember that it was never finished to begin with. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even a review, it was literally the entire game's story put into words. No wonder why I never finished it! That post must've been a million Word pages long.

Second, I know I haven't been writing here as much. I technically shouldn't even be writing here right now; I should be reading people's short stories and writing critiques. But I don't want to do any more work this semester! Agh. Why does life have to suck so hard? Why can't it just stop for a few months so that I can go through all the Kingdom Hearts games and write about them? Excuse me for a moment, I'm going to go cry in the corner about how enslaved I am to all this work.

Okay, anyway, so I know I haven't been writing here all that much. I'm not going to keep saying that's gonna change, because I've realized long before I tried to convince you Readers of this that it will never change, not for a long time from now. This blog is really more for me in the long run of things anyway, so yeah, deal with it.

Anyway, now that I have a reprieve from homework, onward to Birth by Sleep! Before I continue, you guys must beware, for there will be spoilers. If you had any interest in this game when it came out, I have no idea how you could possibly not know what's going on after all these years, even if you haven't played it. Still, if you haven't played the game yet and don't want to be spoiled, get with the program and play the game already!

This is the game that explains several of how things came to be the way they are in the story's present action lead by Sora and Riku. How does Riku wield a keyblade? How does Kairi wield one (who would've thought)? Who the hell is this Xehanort guy? What the hell was that armored guy that I fought in Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix? Why does Xemnas talk to a suit of armor and a keyblade? What the hell is Castle Oblivion? When will I stop asking so many questions? Birth by Sleep holds the answer (or key, if you will let me run with stupid puns) to these core questions of the franchise, which hilariously you would assume most would already have had answers to by the time Birth by Sleep was released. To give you an idea, Kingdom Hearts 2 was released in 2006, and Birth by Sleep came out in 2010. All of these questions plagued many fans of the series, and many assumed these would eventually be answered in Kingdom Hearts 3. Also, nobody had any idea what in Satan's Insane Asylum they were looking at when they saw the secret ending for Kingdom Hearts 2 (also titled in the Final Mix version: Birth by Sleep. Considering the radical theories, boy did we feel stupid when the game was announced).

I love all the really stupid ideas people came up with at the time, although I guess I cannot say I would've known any better. Somebody I knew said that somebody out of the secret ending was actually Xemnas revived, and now that I think about it, holy shit was he surprisingly close. Others thought this was a post-apocalyptic world where all the Disney characters were dead, where Riku was actually the boy in the mask and under another mind control since he fell to darkness and helped wreak havoc across the worlds, that the Evil Bald Guy was literally named Evil Bald Guy, that the boy who looks like Roxas is actually Roxas, that the dude with brown hair and yellow eyes at the end was either Sora embracing darkness or Sora or Riku's dad (because other people thought Sora was dead, even with Roxas running around somehow), and that the scene with Mickey was him in the past - that's right, before Kingdom Hearts 1 - looking into the future. But wait, who was the blue-haired chick? Kairi? Nobody had any idea because obviously she does not look anything at all like Kairi, at least not in this FMV. Still, it mattered little in the end, because people figured she would be useless since Kairi was "useless so far" in the series.

Man was I shocked to find that none of this nonsense turned out to be true. I mean, what would be the point of showing Mickey, in the past, seeing a vision of the future? Why not just show him doing that in the present at the Cornerstone of Light if that was going to be the case. There were some people, though, who refused to believe this took place in anything but the past, and I sided with them. There were two very obvious giveaways in the FMV: First of all, in the beginning, they quote the Ansem reports on when he hears about "legends of Keyblade Wielders." Gee, I wonder what that must mean. Second of all, they show Mickey wielding the Starseeker, and fans already knew at this point at least that Mickey used that keyblade during his training. So yeah, we have support for this to be in the past. Where people came up with "visions of the future," I have no idea. I know Kingdom Hearts right now has a really convoluted storyline, but what idiot would actually think of the whole complicated process of explaining why Mickey had to travel from the past to the future, rather than from the present when he is a full-fledged Keyblade Master? Only on the Internet.

So anyway, Birth by Sleep is not about Roxas, Sora/Sora or Riku's Dad, and Random Nameless Blue-Haired Chick Who "Doesn't Matter" fighting another Mind-Controlled Riku and Mr. Evil Bald Guy. Birth by Sleep pretty much starts with an event, over ten years before Kingdom Hearts 1, that left Ventus with a heart devoid of darkness. After a few years or so, Aqua and Terra take the Mark of Mastery Exam, where Master Xehanort notices the darkness inside Terra and sees it as a possible method for executing his dark plans. His goal: forge the Chi-Blade to open the door to Kingdom Hearts and start another Keyblade War, which will apparently somehow result in him becoming God and reshaping the worlds as he sees fit. None of this is flat out told... As a matter of fact, I'm not sure where most of that even comes from, but that's the way it is. To forge this Chi-Blade, Ventus and Vanitas, the boy in the mask, need to fight since Ventus is an embodiment of pure light and Vanitas is an embodiment of darkness.

Master Xehanort does not stick to one plan, apparently, and so he tries to lead Terra away from his own master, Master Eraqus, and send him across different worlds and convince him to embrace the power of darkness. Ventus chases after Terra (and later on Vanitas as well), and Aqua, now a Keyblade Master, goes off to ensure her friends' safety. And thus a journey ensues across nearly all brand-new worlds to the series (for some reason they threw in the Hercules world for no reason), including the worlds - worlds which had fallen to darkness during Kingdom Hearts 1 - of three Disney Princesses (Cinderella, Snow White, and Aurora), the city of Disney Town (as opposed to just the castle in KH2), Neverland (as opposed to just the pirate ship and the clock tower in KH [and that shitty excuse of a world in 358/2 Days]), and the prison ship where Dr. Jumba and Experiment 626 were in custody.

While nothing in the series seems like it'll ever get anywhere near as tragic and emotional as the story of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, there is a dark feeling looming over the events of this game. It looms over every scene where either Terra says for the thousandth time how he'll destroy the darkness, where Ventus says for the thousandth time how he'll be a Keyblade Master and fighting alongside Terra and Aqua, or where Aqua says for the thousandth time that she believes Terra and Ventus will be safe, because if you've played the previous games, especially KH2, you'll know that these guys are not around at all. So how else could you feel when knowing that their hopes are not going to work out, at least not for now? That gives quite the dark edge to this game (and my god, this franchise was meant for even kids to enjoy), although again it is nowhere near as insane and awesome as 358/2 Days.

Thinking about the game's storyline, I wonder what it must be like to have never played any of the Kingdom Hearts games and then decide to start with this one. I haven't played these games in years, but even then, nothing will make me forget everything that's happened in these games, so.

Well anyway, while the story is not as good as the other titles, it is still very solid. The characterization is a tad bit rushed, but the payoff of seeing how everything unfolds at the end is marvelous. The boss battles are among the best in the entire series, simply because what we see is so epic. We see how the Xehanort we know from KH2 is formed when Master Xehanort possesses Terra's body. Then right after, we play as Terra's armor, or the "Lingering Sentiment" from KH2 FM, because Terra's will is just that strong! Then we have the fight between Ventus and Vanitas. Honestly, aside from being a part of Sora's heart (and explaining why he looks like Roxas), I don't see how much of an impact this really has on the rest of the series (aside from being grounds for the Chamber of Awakening later), but the final fight with Vanitas is really incredible. You fight in a dive to the heart, and Vanitas shatters the stained glass tower.

Then, amidst a billion floating shards of stained glass, you have to finish Vanitas off with quicktime events, which sounds terrible in words but in application to Kingdom Hearts it actually works incredibly well. You actually have a sense that you are involved with the action, rather than watching a full cutscene of a really cool attack that you'll never actually do in real-time combat. They are also pretty challenging in this fight in particular, as you must time the button pressing appropriately.

Then there's Aqua, who gets her own full paragraph or ten. Some sexist idiots think that because she's a girl she automatically sucks. Some fools who believe magic "sucks" think that she sucks even more because of that. Aqua, however, can go severely ham without the help of Terra's overpowered strength and Ven's... I don't know what exactly. All of the characters can go ham, but anyway that's getting into gameplay and I'm not even quite there yet. So at the "end" of Aqua's story, I was a little disappointed, because you have these epic battles against Xehanort and Vanitas, and then here we have a measly battle against a possessed Ventus. In terms of story, yes that's pretty insane, Aqua has to fight and take down one of the people she swore to protect. However, this card was already played in 358/2 Days (and much more impactful too due to far better character development), and right after the fight, Ventus's body is at least safe. Man, for a second there, I thought this game would have a more complete and epic ending. However...

Once you meet the requirements, you unlock the "Final Episode." Here we see Aqua return to her world of study, the Land of Departure, which is in shambles since Terra unwittingly paved the way for Master Xehanort to come and plunge the land into darkness. Since Aqua is a Keyblade Master now and comes in possession of Master Eraqus's keyblade (who was struck down by Terra in an effort to protect Ven), she learns that she has the power to protect a world from darkness by completely changing its form and sealing its keyhole. So she places Ven on one of the Masters' chairs, seals the keywhole, and alakazam! The Land of Departure is now Castle Oblivion, a world where only Aqua can navigate through. And so Ven is left to recover in the safety of the Chamber of Awakening, which the Organization later tries to find and fails tremendously. But that's beyond this game!

After this, I guess Aqua apparently notices something weird about Radiant Garden as she tries to find Terra, because that's where she decides to go. As luck would have it, she does find Terra here... but something is wrong here. He does not remember who he is, and obviously he looks almost entirely different from who he really is. Xehanort's heart seems to regain control here and announces to Aqua that Terra is lost to darkness, and thus the two engage in a fight. While this fight plays almost exactly the same as Terra's final fight against his own body, it is still pretty awesome. From Aqua's perspective, she has to bring down not one, but both of her dearest friends. And as far as things seem right now, Terra does look like he is completely gone, after all that worrying and hoping that he will never fall to darkness. After this form is defeated, things don't just up and end yet. Terra-nort decides to go ham, and thus he summons the classic Dark Guardian that "Ansem" or Xehanort's Heartless uses at the end of Kingdom Hearts 1. This is top of the line, high quality badass fanservice right here, even if the fight isn't as challenging as the other end boss fights in the game. Many of the classic attacks come back here, and towards the end, you have a chance of dealing damage through a special even where you meet up with Terra's spirit and use a trinity limit against the Dark Guardian (thus making for a pretty epic finishing move).

After all this happens, Aqua and Terra fall into a pool of darkness. Aqua has to sacrifice herself and send Terra back to the World of Light with her keyblade and armor, and so she disappears into the World of Darkness. The game then truly ends with her wandering the World of Darkness, nearly giving up and letting the pure heartless kill her, but then Terra and Ven's keyblades come out of nowhere and save her. If you're playing the normal version of this game, all of this truly ends with Aqua meeting Ansem at the Dark Meridian, years after this whole game and some time after KH2. Here Ansem tells her about a boy with a keyblade out saving the worlds and when he tells her his name is Sora, hope gets renewed in her (so much that she's in tears. D'aw. That must be incredible to hear after running into him as a little kid so many years ago).

HOWEVER, there is also a Final Mix version of this game, meaning you get to actually play as Aqua during some of her time in the World of Darkness. Total badassness ensues, with incredibly awesome field and battle music, along with the fact that you're fighting heartless! And in the series, this is apparently the first time anyone has encountered these things, since Aqua has no idea what they are. You get to go through a couple of rooms, fighting Shadows, Neoshadows, and Darkballs.

 

Then at the end, you fight this crazy heartless boss that jumps around and shit. It even sends clones after you. And it comes with a whole cutscene of Aqua dodging it and trying to figure out what these creatures are, and the way you fight the boss at first is preparing yourself whenever it goes into second-person perspective, as in the fights with Xigbar when he takes aim at you.

 

After this awesome fight, the game truly ends with a scene in a place that looks pretty familiar. Aqua looks up, and gasps. "This is...!" she says, and then the camera pans out to the Castle of Dreams engulfed in darkness!

So badass!

So point in case, so many badass things happen in Birth by Sleep, one right after the other at the end. By this point in the series, nearly every other title has pretty much had a better story, but this was all just so cool. And also, Aqua is my favorite character out of the whole series, but I already have an older, pure fangirling post over her, so I can't really do that again I suppose. But screw the fact that there aren't enough pictures of Aqua in this post.

I must admit, her looks take up a lot of the reason why I like her so much. But there's more than just that! First of all, unlike what most idiots seem to think, Aqua is not useless! I mean, seriously, I wonder if people even played through the game in its entirety. Sure, she fails at saving Terra and Ven from their ultimate fates, but she does manage to still keep Ventus safe. If she let Terra fall into the Realm of Darkness, who knows if we would ever see him again. Also, Ventus and Terra end up pretty much losing their lives by the end of the game. Sure, Aqua disappears from the world as well, but she can still put up a damn good fight through the Realm of Darkness. For anyone to be able to take down the darkness and all the heartless for over ten years is not something to be sneezed at. Aqua is a Keyblade Master for a reason, guys. Also, how about she has pretty much her own world that only she can navigate through? How about the fact that forcing its secrets to be revealed has proven frustrating to some of the most powerful forces in the game? And if story and lore aren't enough to buy you into something, how about her abilities in terms of gameplay?

Here is where I will finally talk about gameplay, although I won't dwell too much on it as I have with the story of the game. The battle system in Birth by Sleep is based around building your own "deck" of abilities, which reloads over time. So there is no cost to doing anything other than waiting a few seconds. Also, the drive gauge sort of returns, but now it's called the Focus Gauge, which fuels the ability to do something called a Shotlock. Shotlocks are basically charged up and aimed at enemies to do a really powerful and pretty looking attack. There are quite a variety of these in the game, and Aqua's ultimate Shotlock has her doing a ballerina twirl and shooting orbs of light out of her body. It sounds pretty strange, and it is, but it's also pretty cool (and it deals pretty crazy damage too).

The other feature of the battle system is the Command Gauge. Basically, every attack you make fills up the gauge, allowing you to go into a sort of limit form when it fills up. First, there are Finish Commands. If you fill up the gauge without going into a limit form, you get to use a powerful finishing attack. I love Aqua's ultimate because she summons large magical orbs of light, and then she floats in the air and teleports and spikes each orb down on her enemies. During most of these finishing moves, you are pretty much invincible. Then there are limit forms, which are divided into Level 1 forms and Level 2 forms. Basically, if you use a certain combination of abilities from your deck of commands, you will enter a form based on the attacks you used. Aqua's ultimate limit form, called Ghost Drive, is so badass, because she basically starts teleporting every time she does anything. When she dodges, she blinks across a small distance. When she attacks, she teleports around the enemy and leaves behind little "shadow clones" (to borrow from Naruto... ugh), and she pretty much kicks a ton of ass. Then there are her commands themselves. Aqua is specialized in magic, which a lot of people say is useless.

Sure, she's useless alright. Having the best blocking ability in the game must be so useless. Ven and Terra can only lift up their keyblades and block what's in front of them, leaving you to rely on luck most of the time whenever somebody sends an attack from behind or even to the sides. Aqua, being specialized in "useless" magic, can cast up a barrier that surrounds her in every direction, making nearly all attacks impossible to hit her. Aqua can also learn really powerful magic spells that no one else can. I haven't explored all of these yet, but there are a couple of commands she can learn which are pretty amazing. First, we have this one ability called Time Splicer. Sure, Ventus can use it too, but you have to go out of your way to get it on Ventus, meaning it is truly an ability for Aqua. Just envision this: you see a bunch of enemies fighting Aqua. She runs up to them, and then all of a sudden, she vanishes. Suddenly, all the enemies she fights are stopped in time (Time Splicer has the added effect of casting Stop on everything), and she is teleporting all around her enemies, striking at them and leaving behind shadow clones. It is essentially the Ghost Drive form without having to fill up the Command Gauge twice.

Next there's Magic Hour, which is essentially the Jump ability in this game. Jump is one of Final Fantasy's signature overpowered abilities, where the character using it literally jumps in the air, becomes untouchable, and strikes down hard on their targets. Aqua once again teleports and strikes down through columns of light, constantly teleporting after each strike. There is another special unique ability she learns called Raging Storm, where she floats around and is guarded by three pillars of fire. Basically you use that to run into enemies and destroy them, and as cool as the spell looks, it really isn't all that great honestly. Enemies can still hit you, in some way, and turning with that spell is such a pain you might as well be driving a golf cart on a winding road covered in ice.

There is another spell only Aqua can learn that I love using, and that is the Seeker Mine ability. While not as extravagant as the other abilities she learns, what she basically does is lay out a set of mines that home in on enemies that step near them (and, since Aqua's magic power is through the roof, these mines hit hard). This spell is a staple for some of the "cheapest" strategies against bosses. Like, for example, in the fight against Vanitas's Lingering Sentiment, all you have to do is spam dodging and never stop. Then, when he uses a cinematic attack that leaves him open, drop down those mines and have him chase you to them. Keep this up without getting hit, and you win. It's a pretty funny strategy that works on most bosses, I've never tried it against the "Unknown Man," (actually Time-Travelling Xehanort from the Past) because that guy is pretty tough.

Last in my deck of commands, aside from the staple healing spell Curaga, would be Wishing Edge, another Aqua-only command. There's nothing incredibly special about this, all it is is an strike that hits an enemy as if you had hit him with three of those strikes. It is really useful for dealing a lot of damage in one quick blow, especially considering that Aqua does not really hit all that well until about the middle or so of the game.

Terra is the physically overpowered guy who can land heavy hits and obliterate his enemies... However, that is if he lands those hits. This guy is slower than a truck going up a hill. At many points throughout the game, this gets really annoying as sometimes enemies will hit me and cancel an attack before it will even land. Late in the game, though, Terra does get some pretty good abilities. Being tempted by the power of darkness, Terra has the ability to use all those really cool dark spells. Like for example he has a version of Sonic Blade where he teleports and uses darkness to temper his strength. He also has Dark Haze, a strike that has a chance of casting Doom on enemies. Doom is basically a countdown until your death, there is no way around it. However, on bosses, the chance for it to hit is either so low it barely works, or it doesn't work at all. Terra's ultimate limit form is Dark Impulse, where he is in full-fledged dark mode with even a screwed up hand of darkness that really destroys his enemies. His ultimate Shotlock involves transforming his keyblade into a cannon and firing a flare that obliterates enemies. Terra's pretty cool, offense-wise, but I like Aqua's style better. Plus, this guy can't even dodge! He does air slides, which enemies can still hit you through. Terra has like no defense whatsoever.

Then there's Ventus. I don't know a whole lot about his Shotlocks, but his ultimate form is pretty cool. A bunch of blades of light pretty much become wings, and all of his attacks utilize these blades in a flurry of strikes. His ultimate commands involve powerful light-based abilities, since his heart is pure light and stuff. These attacks basically send pillars of light all across the field, making it pretty much impossible to dodge. They also heal Ventus, but they have to be charged, so the healing pretty much only makes up for any damage you've taken while charging up these moves.

Beyond general combat, there are times when this game switches things up a little with minigames and stuff. Aside from a particular ice-cream DDR minigame in Disney Town (as much as I love ice cream), there are a couple of minigames in that place that prove to be pretty fun. There is a sort of water-polo-volleyball-without the water minigame in which you must spike balloons over a net and into the enemy's goal net. At some point so many balloons fly around it gets pretty hectic and funny. Then there's Rumble Racing, a shameless and very shitty knockoff of Mario Kart, in which you use the Keyblade Glider to race across different areas of Disney Town. This minigame is pretty fair for the most part, but after a while it does get pretty droll. There's also this thing called the Command Board, a shameless knockoff of Mario Party/Monopoly where you can level up Commands you place down as tiles. This game also gets old after a while, especially when the AI starts being cheap and stealing your money. I just found it easier to level up Commands by using Stitch's D-Link, which has a double exp for commands passive ability.

I forgot to mention D-Links here, but that just goes to show how little they are of actual use with all these other things going on. Basically, D-Links let you use special abilities based off the characters you "summon." That's about it really.

Back on the minigames front, we then delve into the outright terrible: escort missions and really stupid space sequences where you fight and fail on the Keyblade Glider, because attacks never really hit anything you mean to hit. And escort missions are self explanatory, because we should all be filled with hatred against those awful things. There is also an arena world, the Mirage Arena, where you get to take on waves of Unversed and stuff. It's a pretty fun challenge, and I would say it is the best incarnation of the Coliseum yet (making me wonder why Hercules is even a world in this game). There is also multiplayer, which is actually pretty legitimate in comparison to previous incarnations of multiplayer (Chain of Memories had pretty stupid card duels. 358/2 Days merely had scant co-op mission modes). In this game, you can Rumble Race and play the board games with your friends, as well as help each other out in the Arena. They also seemed to have finally gotten a basic Versus mode done right, but the problem is that most of the abilities in this game are negated by general strategies like dodging and stuff. My friend says Dark Haze can hit players with Doom, and if that is true, that makes Versus mode virtually pointless. The one really cool thing about D-Link comes into play here when you can forge one with your friend, allowing you to call upon the abilities he had equipped at the time the D-Link was forged.

There are some sidequests in this game as well, although not quite a whole lot. Disney Town has this whole Million Dreams Award thing, where the last character you play as gets an ice cream flavor made just for them. This holds little effect on the gameplay, but there is an ice cream store where you bring ingredients to make ice cream. Ice cream in this game allows you to instantly go into a command style. These ingredients are dropped by rare Unversed that spawn across all the worlds. Once you get all the ice cream flavors, you get a keyblade called the Sweetstack, which is designed with several scoops of ice cream as the blade.

That would probably be my keyblade in real life.

There's also a limit form called Frozen Fortune, which you randomly get using the ice cream commands. What could be more awesome in Kingdom Hearts than the Power of Ice Cream?

Anyway, because I love ice cream, I loved that sidequest. To wrap things up, since this has been going on for a while now, this game is actually probably my favorite in the series (we'll see when I finish playing through all the games). The story is nowhere near as good as the other, but it's not bad at all really. I cared quite a lot about the friendship between these three, and it was also amazing to see how all of the mysteries came about. Aside from Hercules, each world was a fresh experience, even with Radiant Garden since we get to see what that place was like in the past (sort of ). The combat is probably the best yet in the series, or at least almost as good as KH2 if I find that combat more to my liking. I loved everything about Neverland, from the pirate stuff to the music to the detail they put into designing the land. I loved it so much. And the boss fights throughout the game were always posing some form of a challenge, and they were almost always epic. The game itself is epic in scale, with incredible graphics that fully exploit the power of the PSP and worlds so detailed this whole game could have easily been a full-fledged console game (and it will be in KH 2.5 HD ReMix!). Playing it on my computer also felt pretty great, not having any load times and getting a taste of what the game would feel like on a console. There are still some jarring moments, though, when I'd notice that a background or skybox had a very poor resolution for a 2D render. As with remastered versions of movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, things may look nicer, but you will also notice things you were never meant to see.

While playing through each character's story was an interesting approach to this game, I got tired of it after a while, especially since I felt like I needed to restart Aqua's story in order to see the Million Dreams Award from her point of view (I started with her when I played this on my computer). I found myself skipping cutscenes and rushing through things a bit, which is not the way this game is meant to be played. However, the payoff at the end of each character's story (Aqua's being the Final Episode/Secret Episode) was awesome enough to sort of offset this problem. I loved seeing how things like Castle Oblivion and "Ansem" came to be, and what other Keyblade Wielders were like. And of course, I love Aqua and everything about her, even if her English voice actor can get a little dull sometimes (her character development also doesn't go very far, but I forgive all that). Here's to hoping she will be even more insanely awesome in Kingdom Hearts 3!

Next up is the game that started it all: Kingdom Hearts 1! Where would we be without this game? Tune in next time for a dive into nostalgia, to a time when this series was so much simpler and less flying off the walls as it is today.