Aaand Success!

I did it!
I got gold on every cup in single player! I totally understand that this does not quite mean you "beat" Mario Kart. When does one ever "beat" Mario Kart? This is not that kind of philosophical discussion, dammit! I got gold in every cup in single player!! That's 60 cups! And 200cc is damn difficult!

Now I gotta go online. I wanna play with other people. But probably not on 200cc very much anymore...

Almost there, Mario Kart 8!

Whew!

200cc is hard. I've now finished every cup in 200cc. All of them with gold, except for one silver. 

I'm gonna take a break now. I don't know what I'm gonna play next. Maybe Uncharted. 

NES Remix

With the last points of my club Nintendo account, I got myself NES remix for 3DS. I also got some sweet Luigi greeting cards but that's something else. I've been playing this game on and off for a few months and i'm almost done with it. If you have a 3DS you should check it out. 

Did I Say No More Surprises?

I really gotta learn not to say shit like that.


Mario Kart 8 on 200cc is HHHHHARD.

It's kind of incredible. You actually have to use the brakes or your kart will fly out of control. I'm constantly going off the track cause I'm doing too many miniturbos. Which is bad.

Mario Kart 8

I haven't finished Mario Kart 8 but I'm close. I'm also pretty sure I know what the experience will be like for the rest of the game, not many surprises left, I don't think.

This is the best looking Mario Kart game I've ever seen (as well as it should be, with it being Nintendo's first HD console). My jaw dropped the first time I rounded that last corner and caught a full glimpse of Bowser's castle looming and growing bigger.

Including the downloadable content, this game has 12 cups. You can race the cups in five categories: 50cc, 100cc, 150cc, mirror, and 200cc. That makes for 60 gold trophies to get on single player. That is a lot of content. I'm currently doing Mirror.

Of course, Mario Kart is not about the single player experience, but better with multiplayer. I've had little experience with that, but I've played online a few times. Online feels a lot like it did for Mario Kart Wii, except when it comes time to select a track your choice is more limited.

As for the gameplay itself, this game misses the gold standard that was Mario Kart 64. Drifting is fun, but miniturbos just don't feel right to me. Miniturbos do take some amount of skill to pull off, but they follow the Mario Kart Wii school where the miniturbo just happens if you keep drifting long enough. This was the same way of doing miniturbos in Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS (in fact, Mario Kart 8 feels A LOT like Mario Kart 7). I miss the miniturbos you could do on Mario Kart 64, and even to a degree on Mario Kart Double Dash.

Also, vehicle choices are confusing and there's too many of them. Give me a player based on weight class and keep it simple. Mario Kart shouldn't try to be Gran Turismo.

The did some interesting things with the remakes of classic tracks, and the DLC contains some tracks that are completely new but feel retro like the Excite Bike track. They even brought in some F-Zero tracks which reminded me of Rainbow Road being included in F-Zero X.

All in all, a good game, though feels repetitive. I need to play this with a crowd.

Scratch Another

Tonight I finished Mega Man 9 for the Wii.

I used a few energy tanks and a mega tank in the last stage. I even watched a couple youtube videos. I am not ashamed of this. 

Mega Man 9 is one damned difficult game.

Remember the first time you played the original Mega Man? And there were no energy tanks or passwords? It's way harder than that. 

A lot of people put MM9 up there with the best, up there with Mega Man 2 and 3, in gameplay, graphics and music. Me? I'd rank it above MM6 (Rush Armor/Rush Jet) and above MM5 (evil Proto Man hoax). It's every bit as good as MM4 (Dr. Cosack), but no higher than that. The best for me are still:

1. Mega Man 2

2. Mega Man 3

3. Mega Man

Oh and in case you're wondering, yes I got a number of achievements; no, I'm not going to try to get them all. I don't even think I'm in much of a mood to play it again. It's a very punishing game. Almost every other Mega Man game, I play over and over. MM9 was just kind of mean spirited a lot of the time.

Mega Man 9

I've beaten the 8 robot masters, not it's on to Dr. Wily's castle. And it is hard!

Well, I Started Another One

This time it happened quite by accident. I haven't been playing much. My wife got me a Wii U and I've been racing on Mario Kart 8, so there's that, but somehow I don't count that. Mario Kart is a joy, pretty mich a given that I'm going to beat that. That doesn't worry me. 

So today I picked up another game I got and didn't finish: Mega Man 9 for the Wii.

Man, this game is hard. 

It's Nintendo hard.

I played a couple hours this afternoon and another couple this evening. I've beaten two robot masters and that is saying a lot! This is probably as hard as the original Mega Man was back when I was first playing it and I didn't have the whole game committed to muscle memory.

This game is back to Mega Man basics. Yes, there's Rush, but there's no sliding and no charged shots. Just good ol' Jump N Shoot Man. Except it's freakin hard! Have I said how hard it is yet?!

I Think I'm Broken

It might be because I have a lot of things going on at work, or the fact that I'm about to start up with a double dose of grad school classes, but I've been having trouble starting up a new game. Right after I finished my first list in alphabetical order, I quickly decided that I was going to ditch that particular method of arranging my games and mostly just play whatever I wanted. I then proceeded to pick Metroid Prime and I played it till I beat it. That was fine.

Since then, I've been having trouble deciding which game to play next. There is no order. It could be anything. I tried inputting the list into random.org's list randomizer, but then I kinda didn't like the order it gave me so I ran it a couple more times. Then I thought that was just cheating so I went back to just deciding on a game and playing it. That was less than successful.

The old way, while restrictive in some ways, was actually rather liberating in others. I didn't have to expend any mental energy in deciding anything. The decision was made for me by the alphabet. Now I have to look, pay attention, consider, and decide. All by myself.

Anyway, it's a ridiculous problem to have, I know. I don't know when I'll start a new game. It's possible that I'll be too busy with school and work to play much of anything until March anyway. If you don't see any updates for the time being, chalk it up to either indecision or just plain being overworked.

Metroid Prime Trilogy: Metroid Prime

Today I finished the first Metroid Prime on Wii.
I didn't get any kind of record, 88% and over 15 hours, and I wasn't going for one!
The game is very enjoyable on Wii. Is it better than on Gamecube? Well it is in some ways. It's a bit of a pain in others. Having the Wii remote for aiming is great in MOST situations, but you have to remember that Metroid Prime on Gamecube had a LOT of aim assist. Every time you locked on to an enemy, you were aiming straight at it. On the Wii only the wave beam has homing capabilities, and the rest of the time you have to aim yourself. You're still locked on, which helps circle and strafe around the target, but you need to aim.

Some have criticized Metroid: Other M because it had auto aim, but Metroid Prime did this a lot, as well. And it is fitting. This game was never intended to be a first person shooter. The emphasis should not be on aiming, but on exploring! You never heard anyone complain about auto aim on Prime games.

Anyway, toward the end of the game I realized there's a way to make the Wii version auto aim like the Gamecube, but by then I was almost done, so I left it as it was by default. Maybe on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes I'll switch it back to auto aim. I mean, why else does one lock on to targets!

Next game, I still don't know.