Morbid Party 5

Last night my childhood friend Rebecca came over and we decided to take out the gamecube for oldtimes sake. Now when we were little, we used to play Mario Party 5 for HOURS. I mean literally, hours. We would stay up much too late for children - button mashing, star stealing, and mini-game winning. We were obsessed.

Fast forward about 10 years and you've got two adults swearing at each other, at the characters, and at the game in general. Mario Party is arguably the easiest game to rage on (Apart from Sonic the Hedgehog - but we'll get to that in another post...)

I had a much different feeling while playing through it as an adult. I quickly realized that the characters are essentially playing for their life! It's a modern Lord of the Flies! These cute little characters are cheating, stealing, and racing the way to the top in order to save themselves. Just take a look at the end of the game...

One character wins (and is saved), the rest just fall into a pit of nothingness. I might be taking this too far, but I began to though about the mechanics of the game and the morbid nature of the gameplay. First of all, let's look at the mini-games. Basically all 4 of the characters compete; either all against each other, two vs. two, or one vs. three. Winner gets some coins, loser gets nothing. But look carefully at the end screen of the mini-games. Fifty percent of the time the loser can be seen almost being killed! Whether by rocks, falling to their doom, or just disappearing. Their lives are on the line!
The game also encourages players to cheat, steal, and basically do just about anything to get another star. All those capsules, hidden blocks, duels just aide in the massacre. Don't even get me started about Bowser or Donkey Kong.

This is right before Boo falls to his uh, death. I'm not really sure how that works when you're a ghost...

I'm convinced the stars are the ones behind it. They've trapped the characters in some dream world for them to duke it out. I might just be paranoid, but this game is all about survival of the fittest.

"The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering."
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Well, I hope you all have a Happy Easter and a lovely long weekend. I'll be doing a Portal 2 review for the next post, so be sure to check back in (or just subscribe and make life easier).

As Always,

LadySnip3r 

PS. Have you ever played a game as a kid that you ended up having a totally different feeling playing through it as an adult? Comment and tell me about it.

Stepping into the World of Gaming...

In the grand scheme of video gaming experience, you know--beginner, novice, expert, n00b, pwner--you can probably consider me an infant. I am by no means a gamer (as of yet), but maybe I can get there with a little help from you.

Allow me to introduce myself...I am w0lfspirit, and I will soon be investing in my very first Xbox360. Up until now, I have only had experience with the old school stuff: NES/SNES, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, N64, PS1/2, Wii, Gameboy Colour and I have very recently stepped into the wonderful world of NintendoDS and Pokemon TCG. I assure you that I can pwn you at Super Mario 3 for NES; however, give me an Xbox360 shooter game and I’d probably shoot myself first before understanding what happened. But I’ll get there eventually, have no fear.

When my good friend LadySnip3r approached me to co-blog, I had no idea how I could possibly contribute. I thought maybe some reviews; but since I’m so out of the loop, reading my review on Black-Ops would be old news, and I could not possibly do a better review on Pokèmon Black and White than LadySnip3r herself. She asked me to think about gaming and what it’s like getting into it. So what, maybe I’m not a crazy gamer right now but that’s ok with me. I still have the passion to take this wherever I want to go and learn as much as I can along the way. In the mean time, it turns out that I could write an entire blog on what it’s like starting to game and thus far this is what I’ve learned....

Lesson #1: Time Management

I am a typical university student; I have a lot of stuff on my plate and I usually feel like essays and readings take up the majority of my life. That is exactly where time management has come into play. I have recently invested into a Nintendo DS and have started to play Pokèmon Black. Thus far, I love it. It makes me nostalgic for my childhood, when Pokèmon Red/Blue/Yellow owned my life. However, playing Pokèmon Black at my age is a completely different game considering I now want to train all my Pokèmon to equal ability and win every battle so I can earn lots of Pokèdollars. I’m already 20 hours and 55 minutes in and I’m not even close to being the very best like no one ever was. Where did all that time go?!

Currently, I’m in the middle of exams and it has been tricky to get game time in while balancing the very important studying that I have to do. What has worked best for me is a very silly reward system. For example, in preparation for my English exam a few days ago I needed to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. At first I really couldn’t concentrate. I was in the middle of trying to beat the Nimbasa City Gym and those Emolga were getting the best of me every time. The only way I could get myself through was with a silly little calculation...

5 minutes of reading my way through the Darkness and then 5 minutes of kicking some lightning gym butt. The reward system works well in any situation. If anything, it will help you get through that other, non-gaming stuff so much faster. As long as you have the discipline, this works great.

Really, how lame is that? Why am I writing a blog about how I manage my time? I guess all that I really want to prove to you and to myself is that game life + real life is doable. I’m learning things like that right now. They may be simple and maybe even common sense, but an infant needs to grow into a toddler at some point. Keep following me through my journey into the world of gaming. It’ll be quite the adventure.

Until next time,

w0lfspirit