F-Zero: Brakes are for Suckers

Alright, so my first go at this F-Zero game was a... Partial success. To be honest, I was actually feeling pretty confident about my abilities after the first lap of Mute City. I thought the controls were simple, and that I knew exactly how to power through this whole game. Oh ho ho, boy, was I wrong. This game is vicious. It is fast, and relentless, and it is near impossible to stop to think about anything else when you're blasting along in your hover-car. By the end of my sit-down I was cursing left, right and center. I slammed my fists down on the table and walked away to get some chocolate ice cream. Let's see how I started off so well.

The game starts off simple enough. Two options: Grand Prix or Practice. I'm like "Practice? Hah, who needs it." So I jump in. There's only four different cars, which seems ludicrously small considering the roster of cars in modern racing games (over 1,000 in some cases.) I don't really take time to look at stats or acceleration because the Blue Falcon looks perfect and I love me Smash Bros.

Logic = flawless.

So here go, Mute City. Pretty basic starting racing level. More or less an oval-ish shape.

^See that oval? It's a bit distorted

So the cars blast off and I gun it. I pass two of them easily enough but the yellow car is just ahead of me. We tango for a bit, weaving side to side, he's trying to keep me from passing him, I'm trying to pass him... Classic. Then we turn.

Let me tell you something about F-Zero corners. They are tight. These are not very forgiving corners of the stage. And when you bump the wall you will know. It electrifies you. I'd say it's like the bottom of your car is fingernails, and the edges of the stage are like a chalkboard. You grind down on it and it hurts you and makes a horrible sound that you never want to experience again. But if you're going too fast, it'll shuck you all the way into the opposite wall, which will shoot you back and electrify you too. So brings in the power meter at the top right of the screen. This is your health bar. It goes down when you hit something - be it a wall or another car. There is one strip of healing track per level (so far anyway) and when you go onto it a little robot appears above you and lasers down some glowing energy that heals you.

So anyway, back to the race at hand. This yellow guy was not letting up, and even when I passed him, he was ALWAYS right on my tail. It was like no matter how fast, or how well I thought I was doing, he was literally always right behind me. I did manage to keep calm though, it was all about focus, that's one of the main things I took away; this game demands your attention or you will be passed. You can't idle. Idle and Die.

So I'm in first place right now, great place to be. There are only 3 other cars and they're behind me (right behind me infact), when I see a car coming up infront of me. And I'm thinking, "Sweet, I'm lapping one of them!" But, no, it was a car I didn't recognize. So I pass it, and there are a couple more. Then it just becomes normal that there are all these other cars in the race. Some of them are flashing, and if you bump them, they explode. I guess their extra enemies to deal with, because just racing would be boring, right?

So that's the gist of Mute City. I won though.

Wooo! First place!

Next we came to Big Blue, which is a really fun stage; and has an AMAZING soundtrack to it. It's very recognizable, but that may be because I played a lot of Smash Bros. (When will I stop referencing that game? Who knows.)

Anyhoo, pretty well the same deal here. Kept ahead, couldn't look back, smashed into some walls, tight corners, flashing enemy-bombs. Came out on top.

So I really felt good about those two first levels, and I imagined I would continue this winning streak and demolish anything in my way. You'll see how wrong I was in my next post, catch ya later gamers!

Mega Man X: Flame

Alrighty, back into the groove. Demolished the Flame Mammoth. For some reason this level felt very quick, but maybe it was just in my head. I started off in this factory area, with conveyor belts which were dropping baddies down along. Some were robot dragon heads, and the if not them than they were the top halves of humanoid robot things which shot at me. I got hit by a stray blast, but I was alright. Pretty well right after the belts there was a drop, but across it was a little orb of full health. So that was awesome.

Then I came to an area that was very similar to the conveyors; except they were just bridges.

I'm going to take this moment to wonder why there are no humans in this game. As far as I can tell, this 'war' I am fighting is against robots, and I am guessing it is for the good of mankind. Why haven't I met any? Where are they? What are they doing if everywhere I go there is an onslaught of robot baddies. Just something I found myself thinking about... Back to the level.

I followed along the bridge, and then there were these robot mole-men miners or what not. They hurled pick axes at me. They threw them exactly where you were though. They were impeccably accurate.

Luckily they died just like everything else with some buster shots. I went in a straight line and killed them all, and then there was thing glowing pink heart under the bridge, so I went back and dropped to the ground level and got a wonderful health increase! This pleased me.

I did some wall jumping then up and up, and then dropped into this piped area which was dropping what looked like lava out of them. I could avoid them, but there were these little weird spikey spinning bastards which circling along the pipe and went back and forth, and I couldn't kill them! My shots would just bounce off of them. This sucked. Then there were these shield buggers. Couldn't shoot them either. They had a morningstar-esk arm, and when they shot it out at me I jumped over it, and then had to rapidfire them to kill 'em. So I had about half-health when I made it through that, and then I was at the boss door. Really short level.

So the Flame Mammoth as he's called is an odd guy. His boss room has a conveyor belt which is annoying. His attacks consist of shooting some fireballs, launching a blob of some dark red soot (I didn't get hit by it, nor did I step into the puddle it left; I'm guessing DON'T.) He also can leap into the air at you. This does ALOT of damage. I did not, unfortunately, have the power which was hit weakness, so I had to beat him down the old fashioned way; using all my different powers in various ways until he died. I would dash away from him when he leapt into the air, keep myself on the wall to avoid his shots. I used the rolling shield I acquired because it curved downward and it worked well. I also used the ice shot because I could should the opposite direction of him and still hit him because it would bounce to him. I finished him off with the rolling shield because it's just a fun power. I also didn't die, so... Ya, awesome.

Now which boss shall I destroy next? Catch ya later gamers.

Mega Man X: The First Steps

Alright, so apparently this 'X' is a really big deal. He's an awesome robot with finally realized AI or something. He's also ridiculously dangerous; cuz he's better than humans, and he should avoid hurting them because of rule number one of robots: "A robot shall never harm a human being", which is in a multitude of Robo-literature/cinema (see; Bicentennial Man, iRobot, etc.) Apparently this 'X' is supposed to be kept in some sort of capsule thing while his internal workings are tested. This mysterious "T.Light" fellow warns the reader of this message not to disturb X; and thus the game begins.

Well, X, as it looks, is NOT in a capsule, of any sorts. He starts off by beaming in on a highway with robotic creatures that are attacking him. I made pretty quick work of the robots, thanks to my handy X-buster and it's charge shot. Then I fought a large robot fly, which shot its machine gun at me. I'm so happy I didn't die; thankfully many enemies dropped large amounts of health so I was at full health the majority of the running, jumping, wall leaping and whatnot.

Then came the boss who dropped down from a giant flying ship. It didn't explain who he was, or what he wanted. just that he wanted me dead. And goddamn, he was tough. There was no where to wall jump off of, couldn't jump over him to dodge, and he did a good amount of damage each time he hit me. So I was very frustrated with this fight, and then realized I was supposed to lose when he entrapped me in an electric bubble thing. Then some red guy with long blonde hair named Zero shot off the bad guy's arm, and was very cocky and better than me. So much better than me. Sure he supported me with his words of "You can do it!" But when he said "You might even become as powerful as I am" all I could think was, 'Oh, you ass.'

Anyway... That was just the intro level, and now I'm looking at a menu of different bosses to go and fight... I think I'll roll on the penguin.

Super Metroid: Die alien vermin and space golems!

So I logged about an hour and a half on Metroid today. Most of it was spent going from my save point to the golem that's guarding the morph-ball bombs, dying, then doing it again. Finally, after I decided to stop sucking at fighting this mini-boss and use some real strategy I beat him. Then I got killed by wall-crawlies only a few rooms away, having to start from the save point all over again.

Now, about save points. I have played many games with this feature and most of them strategically place them so when you finish something really hard, you save, and you never have to face that horror ever again. Unfortunately, in Metroid, this was not the idea. The save points are more like off-the-beaten-path rooms that you have to go well out of your way to get to, so obviously you're thinking to yourself...well I have two full energy tanks, why bother saving. Oh wait, the giant plant eyeball boss is in your way!

PS: Here's my WTF of the day.

I don't know what this is about yet, but I have a feeling I'll figure it out later. As of now, it seems a bit early in the game for such huge mysteries. I might just be dumb, but I personally was weirded out by this monstrosity's appearance. 

Moving along. I did defeat the giant plant eyeball thing and I felt pretty good about myself up until I discovered the super missile and promptly got killed by those little egg sacks that spit baby egg sacks. Sending back to the save point quite a ways before the eyeball thing, but (thankfully) after the killer golem. So I saved and shut the game off, and shaking off my rust before getting back into it.

Oh, and another thing. I've discovered (due to all my deaths) that Super Metroid has got to be the only game in history to have a slightly positive twist on player death...

Yes...Samus's armor explodes and you get a brief glimpse of her in her bit-sized skivvies. I personally found this weird. I pulled the image off of this guy's blog, btw. If you want more extensive information on Metroid and it's history I suggest checking it out:

http://metroidgameculture.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Anyways. Until next time, I'll be hoping for space pirates and killing stupid ceiling jumpers.