Just One Last Thing...

I didn't wake up with a hangover the other morning. Had a pretty crazy night though which included watching a friend yelling at some sus 40 year old lesbian cowgirl and watching some other friends become the victims of some random acts of violence. Those dirty hoodlums. For shame.

Replaying Majora's Mask

Quite a large amount of the gaming community agree that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the greatest games ever made ever. I remember my first moments with the game. Slotting that unique gold cartridge into my Nintendo 64 and becomming entrenched in a world of legend, adventure and an amazing amount of character depth. I spent much of my youth familiarising myself with this world. I played the game the whole way through many, many times. More times than any other game. I have never experienced anything like it since then.

Several years later there was to be a second Zelda game released on the Nintendo 64. I have just refamiliarised myself with it recently infact. So I thought that tonight I'd review The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Majora's Mask is set immediately after the events of Ocarina of Time and see's Link stumble into a parallel world. It is a strange, twisted version of Hyrule (the world from OoT). Characters from OoT are reimagined and it's actually quite alot of fun to see how they've changed and how they've stayed the same to their OoT counterparts. It's quite a strange semi-nostalgic feeling actually. The tone of the game is much darker than any other in the Zelda series. I'm actually inclined to think that the world is dark, twisted, nostalgic and emotive because it reflects the way Link feels about leaving Hyrule; the world in which he was a hero. Majora's Mask is a story of regret, love, loneliness and annihilation.

Blah blah blah. Lets get on to gameplay. Many aspects of OoT's gameplay have returned but there are some interesting new additions. The main new feature is alot like Back to the Future. But instead of going back in time and making out with your mum Majora's Mask has you relive the same 3 days over and over in order to stop the moon from crushing the world. I guess it's a little more like groundhog day but then I wouldn't have been able to make wise cracks about Marty making out with his mum, so I stand by my choice of comparison. Anyway, because of this the game's main quest is substantionally shortened to make room for many more side-quests. Fear not because this is good for 2 reasons. One, the main quest is actually a bit harder than OoT anyway and two the side quests are based around interactions with all the characters in the world and getting to know their habits on a 3 day basis. Having said that though the time travel can be a bit frustrating. There's nothing like completing 45mins worth of a quest only to fuck upsomething major and have to travel back in time to start the whole damn thing over again. The game does accomodate for this in some respects by giving you options to speed up, slow down and skip ahead in time but it doesn't always cover all the damage. On the whole I think Majora's Mask is quite an excellent game but not quite on the same level as Ocarina of Time, but seeing as how Ocarina of Time is damn near perfect anyway I wouldn't let that trouble you too much. I'd give it 9/10.

(Yeah yeah I know it was a boring serious review but I'm struggling to come up with posts these days).

The Celebration

Dear Readers,
I am a little bit pissed right now (as in alcohol) because I just landed myself a job at Sam's Warehouse and my bro's and ho's had their last day at school today. Celebrations all round, I do declare. I must say that Sam's Warehouse (owned by Sam don'tcha know?) was mighty quick to get me on the team. I only handed my resume to them yesterday and 24 hours later I'm celebrating success.It certainly puts Sanity to shame, those guys left it to me to chase it up weeks later and even then it was prognosis negative. So I guess it's mood swings ahoy these days, what with being all bitter and twisted 2 days ago an all and now being super happy like a Japanese bubble gum factory (what the fuck am I on about?). Anyway, because I'm sooo good to my fans and because I love you alll sooo much (sheds a tear) I thought I'd let you know and I'll continue to keep you up to date with every little thing in my life that I feel like reviewing or writing about. Forgive all my inconsistancies, typo's and shitty articles coz I love all you cunts. I rant, I ramble, I blog. And I do it all for you.

PS. If I remember tomorrow's post might be a "Saterday Hangover Special"...stay tuned.

Chill Out Mr. B, Just Watch Some House to Take Your Mind Off

It's nice to occasionally be reminded I have readers. I blog day in and day out and only really get comments when I make refernces to porn or go completely nuts because I'm still miserably unemployed. Anyway after yesterdays outburst which seemed to make you all a little uncomfortable (thanks for the feedback guys) I actually felt alot better. The rest of my day was actually alot better. My aunt has offered me some reasonable summer time work (gardening and lawn mowing) out of sympathy for her pathetic nephew and in the 'eve I sat down with my bro's and ho's to watch the first episode of the brand new season of House. In case you've never heard of house I thought I'd better start by saying "get away from the computer, you'll break it! Go back to your cave!" That's right. Everybody knows who and what House is. Let me just say that House is one of my favourite things. It's right up there with Ghost in the Shell, The Games, Zelda and Cum Eating Asians (just thought I'd chuck that one in for old times sake). Season five is off to a captivating start and after the first episode I just wished I had the damn thing on DVD so I could punish the whole thing in a few days like the TV-to-DVD junkie I am. By the end of it all I had completely gotten over my Sanity insanity (Haw...Haw...Haw...). Anyway so today I was back on the horse riding into a sunset of employment. Armed with about 20 resumes I took to the streets in search of Positions Vacant. Crazy Clarks and the Reject Shop were both after Christmas staff and one of the bottle shops had just had someone leave, so fingers crossed.

PS. I know one of you will probably email me about how I didn't spend enough time talking about House, even though it's in the title. Don't bother. You know who you are.

The Interview Part II

"Unfortunately you have been unsuccessful this time." Fuck you Sanity! I can't belive they left me hanging for almost five days longer than they said they would. I'm sure they would've done so for longer too had I not been chasing them up all damn day. How do you end up with that job anyway? The one were you sit around promising to phone people but never fucking doing it. Jesus I am angry and bitter about this! It's so damn disheartening. Why don't people want me working for them? I would be fucking awesome. The kind of employee who would take all your crap, take pride in his job and do whatever's necessary. I would've made people feel awesome about buying whatever crap they listen to. "Yeah the new Pete Murray album is supposed to be really good." "I've heard great things about the Billie Joe Armstrong solo album."But oh well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be. I guess I'll just have to wait another couple of months or so until something else comes up for me.

Recaps and Changes

Just to recap how hard Alex Kidd in Miracle World really truely is just get a load of this pic. Last time I played this is where I got to. This is the furthest I've ever been in this game and I've pretty much given in at this point. Just remember that in THIS game Alex automatically floats upward and so as well as moving left and right it is also necessary to hold down at certain points. Not TOO much of course because then you'd simply get spiked from below. Fuck! That's all I can say.

Now I'm guessing that if there is anyone out there who is still interested at all in my blog they're probably wondering whether I got that Sanity job. The answer is...no idea. Miss Sanity at HR never called me back, despite her promise. I called up the local branch and quizzed the manager and he assured me that they should be calling back soon. "Give 'em a couple more days" he said. He explained that they're doing a LOT of interviews at the moment. So fair enough...I'll just wait some more and so will you.

Added a few "Gadgets" to my blog. You can now see what other blogs I read, subscribe to my blog and inflate my ego by becomming a fan. I currently have zero fans listed but I predict it will get pretty busy in that little box soon. So if you want some bragging rights for when I'm famous you should definately be the first to sign up. Another new change is that I've started wearing shorts. It went from fucking eskimo weather to flippin'...I dunno, it was just really hot, ok?

They Don't Make Them Like This Anymore

I know that at least a few of you can remember this game. Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I was playing this game with a friend this afternoon and let me tell you it can be pretty hard. Punching Pterodactils (a good spelling attempt there) in the face, jumping lava pits, running from ghosts and challenging bosses to rock, paper, scizzors can actually be pretty tough. It occured to me that games just aren't like this anymore. They've softened up. Become easier. Partly, I feel, due to better design, but more so due to the fact that video games are becoming a very popular form of entertainment. But in an attempt to please everyone games have started to lose their edge in some respects. This is probably why we're seeing such a strong return of the "oldschool" gaming era (particularly with the Super Nintendo). Don't get me wrong, I think that there are alot of fantastic games in the modern era (Portal, Braid, Zelda and Metroid just to name a few) and I think more are soon to come. But I don't remember the last time I felt as on edge as I felt this afternoon as I sat up, ridged as fuck, taping the jump and punch buttons, trying to time everything PER-FECT-LY! It was simple, punishing and addictive. The game wailed on us furiously but we always came back for more, just to see if we could push ourselves that little bit further into the next level. There are no saved games in Alex Kidd; game over sends you all the way back with nothing at all. All you can do is hope you've learned from your previous mistakes. Alex Kidd was never a perfect game and soon the ex-mascot would be tossed aside in favour of Sega's more well-known Sonic the Hedgehog. But Alex Kidd is a reminder of just how far we've come in the past couple of decades in terms of gaming and just how much as changed. For better and for worse.