A boy and his blob for Wii: Final Review

I vaguely remember what it was like to learn to read. Reading came pretty easily for me, but I remember the way it felt to pick up a new book and try to read it for the first time. It was exciting, but challenging, since each new book presented a new set of vocabulary words, words I had never read before, words I had never even heard before. Playing video games evokes the same exact feeling for me and that got me thinking. Imagine if every time you pick up a new book, you had to learn how to read it first. That's how video games are to me. Is that how video games are to everyone or am I just not familiar enough with the vocabulary of video games to be able to pick one up and play it comfortably, the way I would pick up and read a book?

I find myself bringing up books a lot on this blog, which could be because I like to read and write so much and books are special to me. It could be because I have a bit of snobbishness about books in comparison to video games which is one of the main reasons why I started this project in the first place. I wanted to explore where that snobbery originates and whether or not it is fair. A Boy and His Blob, more than any other game I've played, kept making me think about books and I wondered why.. After a a lot of thought I find myself with much to discuss on the subject.

If Dead or Alive:Xtreme 2 were a book, it would be a trashy romance novel you read through while locked in your bedroom under covers where no one can see you reading it. If God of War were a book it would be a really bad novel adaptation of a cheesy 300-style Greek god action movie. Flowers would be read in a college fiction class as an example of what makes a great short story. A Boy and His Blob would be a Caldecott Award winning children's picture book. I couldn't get that out of my head while playing this game. Playing through this game was like playing in a beautiful children's picture book.

A disclaimer. I love reading books. I do not love playing video games. I am clearly biased, but I am trying to have a positive attitude while playing through these games and to be fair-minded while writing about them.

With that stated, books have elements that make them easily comparable to many, if not most, video games. Both books and video games introduce character, setting, and plot. They both often use dialogue, description, and narration to tell a story. They have protagonists and antagonists. They have drama, adventure, and humor. They have a beginning, middle, and end. Video games take an extra step, though, to include the reader in physical involvement in the story beyond reading, thought and imagination. Video games require the “reader” to become physically involved in the storytelling, which is what I love most about video games and what I hate most about them.

I love that I can make that little boy character hug his blob. I love that I can make him roam through the beautiful caves with their rays of light and trickling waterfalls. I love that I can choose to transform the blob into a trampoline to help the little boy soar into the sky or into a bouncy ball he can use to hop across water or into a parachute he can use to float in a colorful sunset. I love that the player of the game becomes the main character in a game. There is so much potential in that! I love the creative potential inherent in open-ended action and involvement.

One of my favorite books I owned as a kid was a choose-your-own adventure story. At the bottom of each page I could choose what the characters should do and the book had page numbers to flip to depending on my choice. I found it empowering to direct the story's plot and the character's actions and I thought it was amazing that the author could organize a book in a way that made choice possible. Video games have the potential to always give you, the “reader,” that feeling and that power, an ability that books can't generally provide. While books rely on a reader's imagination to make the story come to life, games have the gift of actual player participation. The game can show you the setting, the characters ,and the plot and the player actually enters into it. That ability is the ultimate in storytelling potential.

I love that this game takes advantage of that by using subtle details that help the story unravel and help you get to know the characters...at least a little bit. For example, the few words heard in the game are the boy's commands to his blob which is interesting because it calls attention to the importance of the boy's command over the blob and the blob's willingness to rush to the boy's commands. The lighting in the game helps tell you, the player, where to go. In one level, the blob is your light and you have to have him close to you so you can see. That detail subtly speaks to the fact that the boy may control the blob, but he also depends on it. When given charming and adorable characters, beautiful and interesting places to explore and a story about a blob who has landed on Earth and needs your help, who wouldn't want to actively, actually experience the world of A Boy and His Blob?

Video games have the power to engage so many more senses in a more physical way that books, but books have the power of a reader's imagination. For example, the reader can imagine how a character's voice sounds so there's not a danger of bad voice acting ruining the experience. In some ways, a reader's imagination is as freeing and empowering as a video game's ability to include the player in the story's action. Video games' greatest strength is also it's greatest weakness. I haven't played a lot of games, but from what I've seen, games and story don't coexist well; one always seems to get in the way of the other. They trip over each other, creating a lurchy, strangely paced experience for the gamer. A boy and his blob has all the elements of a great book and if I saw this children's book on the bookshelf, I would immediately pick it up to read it. I want to know the story! I want to get into this little boy's head and I want to befriend his blob right along with him. I am dying to travel wherever those maps lead. I want to investigate the boy's tree house and see what his house looks like. I want to ramble in the forests and jump up into the sky and fall down under the ground. I yearn to know why this blob is on Earth and whether it will find it's way back to Blobolonia. Even the black blob frog and bull villains are intriguing. All the elements for an unforgettable story are in place, but they don't seem to come together because the game's puzzles get in the way! I want to be compelled to keep playing just like any reader wants to be compelled to turn the page, but I'm not and that mystifies and frustrates me.

Part of me feels like A Boy and His Blob is successful as a puzzle game since the puzzles allow you to explore the world. For example, I have to figure out how to go down a hole but there are sticks blocking the path so I have to turn the blob into an anvil (which I called a power drill and Ben will forever tease me about that). Then I have to push the anvil down the hole, breaking the sticks. Then I discover that I must turn the blob into a parachute so I can float down the hole slowly and safely, careful to avoid the flying black blobs on the way. It's fun to figure out ways to utilize the blob to get where I want to go while getting to see this world. It reminds me of being a kid and having to be resourceful to get what I want. As a kid, a tree trunk becomes a table and a pile of leaves becomes a bed.. Then the other part of me is frustrated by the puzzles. Here's an analogy. It feels like I'm trying to read a book that requires me to complete a crossword puzzles before I'm allowed to turn the page. Sure, maybe the crossword puzzles have something to do with the story, but they aren't necessary to understanding the story and they slow down my reading of the story. They get in the way. Not to mention the fact that they're hard, sometimes so hard that I just want to quit reading, Why do I have to work so hard for my story? If I'm going to have to work hard for awhile, at least give me rewards for my effort along the way, because if I'm not going to be rewarded, then I'd rather just read a children's picture book version A Boy and His Blob. I'm sure I'd love it.

I only played through one and a quarter maps for about three hours and in that time I learned next to nothing new about the characters except that my blob could change into a wide variety of useful objects. The setting changed a bit, but not significantly. I learned nothing more about the plot. I was solving the puzzles just to get to another area that looks a bit like the area before it. That isn't good enough. That doesn't make a reader turn the page and it doesn't make me keep playing. If I'm going to work for it, I want something in return. I appreciate the details that I mentioned before. I am intrigued by the subtlety of the storytelling, but it might be too subtle.

Or maybe this is all my fault. Maybe I just play too slowly. If I played faster and solved the puzzles faster, then I could have probably gotten twice as far into the game and maybe I'd reach the rewards I'm looking for. I know that just when I was ready to quit playing Ben told me I had to play the next level because my blob is about to eat me to become a ball I then ride and that ball can go really fast. I was surprised to hear that news, because there was no hint that something new was about to happen and there hadn't been anything like that in my previous three hours of playing, but I turned the game back on and he was right. It was really fun! It was a bit of the reward I'd been looking for! So maybe my attention span is just too short. Maybe I got bored with the puzzles too fast. I don't know. I just think, if I read a book and I know nothing about the characters, or their setting or their story or why I'm reading about them within the first three hours of reading, I'm not going to keep reading. I don't think that's uncommon for a reader. Why is that uncommon for a video gamer?

Do I expect too much? Maybe I shouldn't expect to feel emotionally attached to my characters. Maybe I shouldn't expect well-written, compelling story lines. These are supposed to be games, right? I don't go into a board game expecting to be moved by the experience. I should just want to keep playing for competition's sake or for the sake of reaching the goal and enjoying the little challenges and tasks set before me. Maybe game designers are just trying to find new ways to make old tricks continually interesting by introducing beautiful settings and interesting stories. The game could just be a bunch of puzzles in a sterile environment, but these game designers bothered to create a great world for the puzzles to inhabit and charming characters to use to solve the puzzles. Maybe I shouldn't be complaining. Maybe I should be grateful!

I just feel gypped when I know that great storytelling in video games is possible and it isn't delivered. If you're going to provide me with a story, make it a good one. If you're going to add in characters, make them round characters that are interesting. If you're going to plop me into a world, give me a reason why I'm there and make the world believable. Why is that rare? Do video gamers really like killing things or solving puzzles or jumping so much that they can overlook bad voice acting, contrived plot lines and game play that has nothing to do with forwarding the presented story? Again, ir seems that when story and game play coexist, one always gets in the way of the other. Uncharted is the only game I've ever seen that has successfully reconciled the two. The game made the player part of the story while the story supported and gave the game play relevance and purpose. That's what I'm looking for.

Are these the rants of an ignorant gamer newbie? If so, let me know. I want to be wrong (just tell me I'm wrong nicely, please). I want to see games that are compelling because of great writing, believable characters, and great game design. In my college writing classes, my favorite writing professor taught his students there was not good or bad writing, only writing that is successful at what it set out to do or not successful. If I were to look back at the games I've played so far during this project, I would honestly have to say that Dead or Alive: Extreme 2 might actually be the most successful game of the bunch! The game's goal was to give me a bunch of bitchy girls with big boobs who play beach games. The setting, the characters, and the game play all worked to that aim and, honestly, all three elements were done well! And because it was a ridiculous, silly game, anything silly or ridiculous about the characters, setting, and game play worked!

I'm speaking like a judge on a dance competition TV show. The judges are always most critical of the most talented dancers who show the most potential. The judges are easy on the so-so break dancer with no formal training attempting to do a Cha-Cha, especially if the dancer manages to exceed the judges' already low expectations. It's the good dancers who suffer the harshest criticism. This game is a victim of it's own greatness. Of all the games I've played, A Boy and His Blob probably has the most potential to be a truly beloved, memorable, touching game and that makes me extra critical of it. Like I said, the game is charming and beautiful and nostalgic and subtle and something really special. I just can't say that it is everything it has the potential to be.

Let me exist in the story of the boy and his blob and make me compelled to keep playing it. Make me emotionally involved. Make me cry. That shouldn't be difficult. Even car commercials can make me cry. I know this boy and his adorable blob could, too. I really wish they would.

My next game might make me cry. With a name like Deathsmiles, I want to cry just thinking about having to play it. To be fair, I know absolutely nothing about this game except that Japanese anime French maid type girls grace the cover. Ben has told me that it is a side scrolling shooter for the XBox 360. Who knows? I mean, I just admitted that Dead or Alive:Xtreme 2 was the most successful game I've played so far. This project continues to shock me. Perhaps this Deathsmiles game will, too.

A boy and his blob for Wii: Initial Impressions

A video that pretty well represents my experience playing this game. I elaborate below.



The video sums up my initial impressions of this game pretty well, so I won't blab about “blob” too much this go-round. I want to have plenty of material for my final review. I've played for a little over an hour so far. As the video shows, the game is really charming – one of the most charming I've ever seen. When I realized that I could make the little boy hug his blob, the game reached a whole new level of adorable. Then when my own little almost-two-year-old boy started calling our “Blob! Blob!” around the house and bouncing on the bed whenever the little boy in the game bounced on his blob-trampoline, the game's charm soared to even higher heights.

From my Pokemon Heargold and Flower reviews, you already know that cute stuff works on me. I can get interested in a game if the game is at least pleasant to look at. I sheepishly admit that I pick most products based mostly on their aesthetics whether it is a car or a dish towel, furniture or a computer. Whatever is most aesthetically pleasing is usually what I want, especially if it matches something I already have. Ben figured out that personality quirk of mine quickly. He is, for the most part, accepting and patient about it. The only times he gets really frustrated is when I rearrange all the furniture, neglecting to care whether or not he will be able to plug in and connect all of his various electronic belongings. Ben is much more practical and logical in his product preferences. Compromise is key with our household purchases, that's for sure.

Back to the game. Wikipedia describes it as a 2D puzzle platformer (one of these days I'll get that lingo down). The game is about a little boy who befriends a blob that has come to earth from its home lima-bean-shaped planet, Blobolonia. The blob transforms into useful objects like ladders, trampolines, balloons and parachutes to help the little boy explore the lush forested land outside his tree house. The blob comes to the boy whenever the boy calls him and it will stay put if the boy scolds him. Jelly beans are fed to the blob to make it transform (for example, a blue jelly bean turns the blob into a balloon). The transforming blob part is fun and there are signs that tell you which transformation to use, so the puzzles aren't as difficult as I had originally feared. Better gamers may not appreciate the constant help, but I did! There are also frequent checkpoints that save my game for me which is amazing. No terrible save catastrophes await me in this game.

Black blobs patrol the forests and kill you if you touch them. The kill is like a slow-motion faint which I find a bit disturbing, especially because, when I play, it happens often. There are spikes on the ground that can kill the little boy, too, and I frequently can't even tell they are there until he's in the midst of fainting. It doesn't feel good to accidentally “kill” this adorable child. It didn't help that the first time I played I'd just downed two adult beverages. It took me about nine tries to jump over one of the black blobs. I thought a couple drinks would loosen me up and help me jump better, but that was not the case. I'd like to blame the Wii controller, but I don't think I can. I admit it. I have a jumping problem. I'm just not good at jumping in video games; I jump too far or not far enough. It doesn't seem to matter what game I play. Sadly, a high percentage of video games require jumping ability which is, seriously, one of the main reasons I don't play more games.

The Wii remote and nun chuck is a bit of a change, though. They feel so different than all the other two-handed controllers I've ever used. I keep having to try every button, trigger and joystick to make the little boy successfully call his blob or drop a jelly bean or switch between transformation items. Then, since I've tried so many different buttons, I'm not sure which button actually worked so I face the same problem the next time. I'm glad that I at least don't have to aim the Wii remote at the screen much. Either my hands are too shaky or that Wii remote is too sensitive or something, but the select arrow doesn't go where my brain wants it to go. I have most of the controls down at this point and find that I am making my way through this game without too much trouble. I look forward to seeing what else this game has to offer in my assigned remaining two hours. So far not much has changed in the game. What you've seen in that video is about all I've seen in the past hour of play. Who knows. I might be staring at those trees and that white blob for two more hours, in which case, it's a good thing they're cute!

This game made me think a lot about video games - what I like and don't like about them - in a whole new way. I plan on discussing these video game thoughts, questions, and opinions in depth in my final review of this game. Until then, I have black-blob jumping and forest exploring to do. There are jelly beans and treasure chests to eat. “Come on, blob!”

This week I have three similes to describe my experience playing Pokemon HeartGold:

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like trying to save for a new car. Your old one isn't good enough, but in order to save enough money for a new one you have to get to your job which you can't do if your car doesn't work so you just have to keep fixing your old car, using up any money you could be saving for a new one. So you just put a few bucks at a time away hoping that one of these days you'll have saved enough for a better car. The game is all about ncremental advantages. It's about inching your way to a better position.

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like going to the gym to lose weight. When you first start going it's painful and embarrassing, tedious and frustrating. But then you start to lose weight. Going to the gym becomes a numbers game. What will the scale say tomorrow? How many more minutes on the treadmill will result in how great a difference on the scale? Watching the numbers change and your body change, too, becomes exhilarating and entices you to keep going to the gym and keep losing more and more weight.

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like knitting a scarf in Florida. The time spent might not actually be productive when you consider the end result, but it feels productive while you're doing it. Knitting a scarf and playing Pokemon require about the same amount of concentration and care - enough to get by, but best done while in the car or in front of the television so you feel like you're multitasking your time-wasting activities. It's something to keep your hands and brain busy and distracted. It's something to do. Plus, there are times when the scarf turns out to be surprisingly beautiful.

Pokemon. The Grind. The Numbers Game. The Mindless Addiction.

I played Pokemon for seven hours and 22 minutes. The first six and a half hours of gameplay was spent just trying to accomplish the goals Ben set out for me. Two revelatory moments made me play another voluntary hour after my mission had been accomplished. The first revelatory moment was when I received that gym badge which I will talk about in a bit. The second revelatory moment entails telling a little story.

I had reached my first gym after a countless number of battles while wandering the streets and grassy paths of Cherrygrove City and adjoining areas. I had learned to trap, trade, and battle Pokemon. I had learned my way around and had spoken to numbers of people who taught me many things about Pokemon. I had played for about three hours and was ready to be finished with this game, though I wasn't exactly sure what more I could say about it that I hadn't already said in my initial impressions review. I survived the many trainer battles in the gym and felt pretty prepared to beat this last trainer and find out my next game assignment. Then a level 14 Pidgeotto crossed my path and I realized that, not only was I NOT leaving this gym with a badge, I wasn't going to be able to get this badge without a lot more work. My Pokemon were ill-matched against these bird Pokemon to begin with and none of them were anywhere near strong enough to go against a level 14 Pokemon of any type. The only useful Pokemon I had was Doggy, the fire Pokemon Ben had traded me, and he had leveled so quickly that he had turned against me and was rudely ignoring my commands!

After I realized that I would not be earning my gym badge anytime soon, I pouted for a while and Ben suggested I buckle down and begin The Grind. By that he meant slowly, patiently, and strategically leveling the Pokemon I had while trapping more Pokemon and then leveling them. All the while I must find the best patches of grass with the strongest enemies to level as efficiently as possible and make sure that I gave my Pokemon the rest they needed even if that meant going back and forth between the tall grasses and the Poke Center. This was going to take some time. With an exaggerated sigh I set back out to wade in the grass and wait for enemies. I collected a bug type I named J.J. and a Pidgey I named Dwight (even though I realized later I should have named him Larry...get it? Larry BIRD? Oh well...maybe the next HootHoot I find). Ben hatched and traded Boozer and D-Wade for my Jameer and Gortat (a good trade, wouldn't you say?!?)

That evening I battled my brains out. Literally. I felt like I had no brains left after all those battles. I called it quits for the night and closed the DS. On my way to turn off the bedroom light while holding the closed DS in my left hand, my right hand collided with the top of the DS and the game popped out! Like any mature adult woman would do, I screamed loudly, “NOOOOO! I HATE video games!” Ben's response was, “You should have saved. That was your fault.” This exchange is very similar to other moments in our household. Like the time I reached into the 400 degree oven with my bare hands to pull out a cookie sheet simply because I hadn't thought about putting on oven mitts first. Typical Jess screech: “Ow! Ow! Ow! I hate ovens and myself!!” Typical Ben response: “Why didn't you put oven mitts on first?”

So Ben went to sleep next to me while I seethed in bed for a little while trying to decide if I should sleep, too, or if I should get up and re-level my Pokemon. I was determined to finish up this game as quickly as possible, so I returned to The Grind going to bed more satisfied after Carmelo reached level 16, high enough to probably beat a level 14 Pidgeotto in the morning. I snuggled up with my dog and my blanket and happened to glance over at the baby monitor only to see that it was not on. I knew that Jhonen was teething and, therefore, prone to wake up in the middle of the night crying. I got up and turned the monitor on, then returned to bed. About ten seconds later, as if I were a master of telepathy, I heard Jhonen's wails over the baby monitor. I groaned and heaved myself back out of bed, then turned off the monitor so Jhonen's cries wouldn't wake up Ben. I found my way down the dark hallway to Jhonen's room where he sat up crying in his bed. I pat his back for awhile until he fell back to sleep, then went back to my bed to try and get tired and comfortable. I'm about to fall asleep when I look over and see....you guessed it....the baby monitor was off.

Suddenly I knew what Pokemon was trying to tell me. That Pokemon World is just like our own darn world. These Pokemon are just like us. And the way we play Pokemon games mirrors how we live our own lives. It sounds ridiculous, but it's true.

With that breakthrough in mind, I will now return to my three similes.

Playing Pokemon Heartgold is like going to the gym to lose weight. It's that good old Number Game. Life's all about number games. Credit scores. Diminishing car payments. Salary raises. School years. Wedding anniversaries. We mark our lives and measure our successes with numbers, amazingly arbitrary numbers at times, but we don't mind because it's a way to make sense of things. Numbers give us something to look forward to and a way to organize the years and days and seconds. Watching numbers inch towards their goal is exciting and reaching the desired number is even better. In Pokemon, it is ludicrous how exciting it is to watch your Pokemon reach higher and higher levels and you are richly rewarded once you have reached certain ones. Sometimes you have to work hard for those numbers. You have to metaphorically sweat and ache to try to get those numbers on the scale where you want them. Sometimes those numbers creep along at a maddeningly slow pace and then you learn you just spent the last 45 minutes in the wrong patch of grass.

Which brings me to the fact that playing Pokemon Heartgold is also like trying to save for a new car. You can work and work for hours and days and years for small, incremental advantages hoping that, eventually, the hard work pays off and you reach that desired number (or gym badge). Then, in between all this hard work, you're faced with other distractions that slow you down. Pokemon has many of these distractions (in the game, they are called “features”). Throughout the game you're trying to catch Pokemon and level and evolve and breed in order to get to the gyms and earn all the gym badges while also talking with friends and professors and family (your Mom is there to encourage you in the game and save money for you since she doesn't trust you to save for yourself...tell me this isn't like real life). In the midst of all that, though, you have to go shopping at the Poke-Mart. You are forced to make small talk with boring strangers. You get telemarketing style phone calls. Then there are the little obnoxious moments that happen to me all the time in both the game and in my life. These are moments like walking up the stairs, realizing I have left something downstairs, going downstairs, and then having to go back up again. In the game I was constantly walking up a ladder and accidentally pushing down and going back down the ladder. This happens with doors, too. I walk in the door and somehow accidentally end up back out the door. In the game I tried to battle with my friend, Jack, through a wireless connection and we ended up inexplicably disconnecting several times. It was just like playing phone tag or having a bad cell phone signal or losing an important email.

(An Example of Small Talk)


As I mentioned in my final review of Retro Game Challenge, the more obstacles you encounter and the more you have to struggle to attain a goal or to get a win, the greater the reward and the better the feeling of satisfaction. Something happened when I earned that gym badge. I got that gym badge in my hot little hands and realized that I wanted to keep playing! I received rewards I felt that I'd earned. Not only that, I had grown attached to my Pokemon roster. I felt like the coach of an actual basketball team, trying to make all my little Pokemon reach their full potential to make my team the best they could be. I was making plays and training my players. I was pulling players who weren't doing well and substituting better players. I felt actual pride in my Carmelo when he leveled up and evolved.



It sounds stupid, but I was talking to a friend who casually plays this game, too. I told her that it took me a while to get into this game and she said, “me too, but then I earned that first gym badge and I was hooked.” For some reason, I had the same exact experience. With the gym badge comes lots of money, lots of experience points, and your traded Pokemon stop disobeying you. Rewards like this work on people in real life, too. I don't see Ben for a good portion of the year because he has to help get Madden NFL football games on store shelves by a certain date. Every year is hard and annoying and then the game gets out and he gets time off and bonuses and sometimes raises and promotions and the rewards help to make up for the hardships...mostly....

Not only does the game reflect life, but I noticed that the way I play this game as opposed to how Ben plays this game says a lot about who we are as people, too! I mentioned before how Ben told me I couldn't be mad at the game because I forgot to save. He later told me that he saves after every battle. What?? That seems crazy to me, but it doesn't surprise me that it doesn't seem crazy to him. While I'm reaching into the oven barehanded, Ben avoids reaching into the oven, period. He will drive a mile out of his way so as not to have to make a left-hand turn. If he feels like he's getting the sniffles he will gulp down two gallons of orange juice. He is careful, almost to a fault. He is methodical. He doesn't get lost. He doesn't stress out about what to name each Pokemon. He just names them all Doggy which he finds both efficient and amusing. He'll play in whatever way is most sensible or whatever is most funny. This is how he plays Pokemon and it is how he is in his day to day life.

I, on the other hand, plunge along trying my hardest to do everything right, getting impatient when I do something wrong, but not wanting to quit because I set a goal for myself and I want to see it through. Keeping my Pokemon happy is of utmost importance to me and watching them do well keeps me going in the slow times. I loved learning about the different types of Pokemon and traveling around the cities just like I love to meet different types of people and travel all over the world. I enjoyed the art style and the aesthetics of Pokemon. I couldn't wait to see what new type of Pokemon I'd have to battle next. It was fun to explore that world.

I mean, it may seem sort of obvious that whatever we do will somehow reflect who we are. This game struck me as particularly reminiscent of life in a way that completely surprised me because, on the surface, it seems like a silly “kid” game. Just like we are who we are and we play Pokemon like we play Pokeon, we also like what we like. Playing Pokemon is like knitting. It is something that fills the time. In my last review of this game, I spoke about all my gaming prejudices and why I feel like some games are a waste of time and some aren't. After playing this game, I think it all comes down to liking what you like. Some people think running marathons is amazing. I think it sounds like torture. Some people want to be comedians. I think standing up in front of people and trying to make them laugh sounds like the most terrifying thing you could ever try to do. Some people like Halo and some people like Guitar Hero and some people like Barbie's Horse Adventures and some very odd people like all three. I like puzzle games and music games. We like what we like and we fill the time we're given however we think best to fill it.

We have a certain amount of time here in Our World and we spend it in purposeful, beautiful, heart-shattering, earth-improving moments and we spent it on Facebook and on the toilet and in bed and going up and down stairs and we spend it knitting and learning guitar and playing Pokemon. We train, we travel, we meet new people, we set goals, we watch the hours pass, we evolve, we level up. Sometimes we fail and sometimes we're rewarded for our success. This sounds lofty for a Pokemon game, but I think the game desires to be lofty. To quote the game intro, “On your travels, we hope that you will meet countless people and, through them, achieve personal growth. This is the most important objective of this adventure.”

I hope that for myself, too, and for all of you.


(Go, Old Kurt! Go! You gotta love Old Kurt.)

Will I play this game again? I think so! I'm not addicted to it. I have lots of other “knitting” to do: writing these reviews, taking care of my own little-boy-Pokemon, cooking dinners for my family, and teaching kids about art at the museum. But I wouldn't mind traveling to Pokemon World now and then. Like the game says, there's a world of people to meet.

I might even bump into myself while I'm there.

Or maybe I'll bump into a boy and his blob! My next game assignment is to play three hours of a game called a boy and his blob, my first Wii game. The box art promises a cute white blob friend who will help me "battle baddies and bosses through 40 puzzle-packed levels" in "a tale of friends, heroes and...jelly beans?" Stay tuned! It could be delicious.

Pokemon Mission: Accomplished

Due to a headache (surprisingly, not Pokemon-induced) I'm not going to post my final review tonight as planned. There's so much to write about! It's crazy! So I'm just going to announce that I have successfully traded three Pokemon, four of my Pokemon are level ten or higher, and today I earned my first gym badge. I have much to tell about my time in Pokemon World, but for now I will just brag like a proud kiddie pageant Mom about her very first Pokemon, Carmelo. He was once but a tiny Chikarita, newly trapped. Just look at him now. A level 17 Bayleef with a Razor Leaf attack that can make a wild Rattata faint in just one hit. (Sigh) They grow up so fast.



Look for my final review (wordy, but a goody) in the next day or two! For now, my Pidgey, Dwight, needs leveling. Off to Azalea City!

Pokemon Heartgold: Initial Impressions

My brother and I are eight years apart in age. When he was obsessed with yo-yos and Power Rangers, I was obsessed with jazz band and boys. When he was collecting Pokemon and pogs, I was collecting yearbook signatures and college application forms. In some ways I thought of him more as a son than as a brother. I have trouble remembering what interests he had at what age, but I know that he was a Pokemon fanatic. I remember, in particular, a poster he had hung in his bedroom. The poster pictured row after row of labeled Pokemon creatures. I remember being really impressed with my brother because he had learned the names of every single one of the Pokemon on the poster. I also remember being annoyed with the marketing of Pokemon products to my brother. The Pokemon tag line, Gotta Catch 'Em All should have really been, Gotta Buy 'Em All because that's what my brother really wanted to do. Posters and cards, plush toys and video games, he had to collect all the Pokemon paraphernalia. Pokemon was like the McDonalds of toys. They wanted to make kids stuff their fat faces with Pokemon products and then beg for more. Because of that, I've always been a little anti-Pokemon, other than thinking some of the creatures on my brother's posters were cute.

While we were dating in college, Ben bought a Pokemon game because it was really cheap and because he thought buying it would be funny. He has a really sick love of purchasing things he thinks are gross or stupid or at least so gross or stupid they're funny. The half empty box of stale, green-colored-cream filled Shrek Twinkies are one example of a joke purchase. The picture on the side of the box is what really secured the sale:



Like those Shrek Twinkies, most of Ben's joke purchases end up photographed, tweeted about and then relegated to a shelf where they'll sit until we move again and I make Ben purge. Occasionally the joke purchases actually see some use. He bought a pair of really gaudy red and yellow flowered swim shorts as a joke once and they have, since, become his main pair. He allocates very little time for clothes shopping and I think he feels he put in his quota of swim trunk shopping time already so he just wears the gaudy ones. A few times the joke purchases have surprised him by not actually being as terrible as he had expected. He bought the game 50 Cent Blood on the Sand as a joke and I think he actually ended up playing it a lot and liking it! Pokemon is a rare example of a joke purchase that turned into one of his favorite purchases of all time. That $13 Pokemon Ruby game purchase created a lifelong Pokemon fan. (or should I say, addict?)

My brother and my husband both love this darn Pokemon World. How is it possible? What is it about these bizarre little creatures with their equally bizarre names and their evolutions and inexplicable need to battle each other that is so appealing? In order to discover the answer to this question, I will have to delve into this Pokemon World for myself like an undercover secret agent. It's like an episode of Alias over here. In order to infiltrate this Pokemon World I am going to have to compromise my moral code. I'm going to have to play a stop-and-talk-to-everything game...the kind of game I've carefully avoided these past 29 years. I don't have the patience ot the interest in playing games where you have to stop and talk to every Tom, Dick, and garbage can you come across. It's especially infuriating when half the things you stop to talk to just want to give you a bunch of small talk. “Hi Jess! Don't you just love Pokemon? Your Chikarita is so cute. I wish I had one.” Thanks, lady, for taking up 10 seconds of my life. I still have a tree and a mailbox to talk to before I hand this mystery egg over to Professor Oak and you have not provided me with any useful Pokemon hints or given me any free potions or antidotes. Thanks a lot.

Also: can I become so engaged in collecting and naming Pokemon that I don't mind playing the run-around-a-town-to-complete-a-pointless-mission sort of game? Can the Pokemon's cuteness be enough to get me to overlook those dreadful battles? I can't find anything interesting about slowly taking turns hitting and being hit by attacking enemies. It's like watching chess on TV. It has to be the most boring thing about any video game and yet so many video games are like that. Why? I also want to find out what the goal of this game is. Is there ever an end? Can I like a game that is never-ending? I tend not to. Also, why do I have all these game prejudices? Why is it that I can play Picross, Lumines, and Guitaroo Man for hours and not consider it a total waste of my time like I do so many other games? How will Ben and I play this game together? I hear something about trading Pokemon, but I'm an hour in and I only have one and I barely know how to play. This game is one big time suck! And why are Pokemon games named after the contents of a jewelry box (emerald, ruby, diamond, silver, gold, etc.) These are just a few of the questions I will try to answer on this undercover operation. Fifty-seven minutes in Pokemon World has not yet provided these insights.

That aside, this game has some temptations that might turn me into a double agent. Pokemon is easy to play (relief!) I have already completed my first mission with great success and, as a result, I have been awarded a Pokedex with which to keep track of all my Pokemon encounters. The Pokemon and the little villages are cute and fun to discover. Pokemon World is an imaginative and relatively charming world, despite being completely silly. I find myself laughing a lot at the dialogue in this Poke-centric world. Humans and Pokemon apparently co-exist, but it seems that humans in this World are completely obsessed with Pokemon. Pokemon are all these people talk about. You can just walk in and out of stranger's houses and all they'll do when you walk in is tell you about how to keep your Pokemon happy or how to help your Pokemon evolve by being extra nice to it. It's like if we all suddenly had lots of dogs and all we talked about were our dogs and all we do all day long is keep our dogs happy or train our dogs to be the fiercest fighters and then fight our dogs against other dogs. Our dogs go with us wherever we go and we only carry things around with us that will help our dogs in case they are sick or tired or need something to help them fight better. Speaking of which, my dog could be a Pokemon. I mean, look at her!



The best thing about this game is the ability to name everything. I love naming things. I could name things all day long. I've decided to name all the people and Pokemon in this game after famous basketball players. So far, I have one Pokemon, a Chikarita, named Carmelo and then there's Kobe, the villain boy desperate to become the best Pokemon trainer in the world. For some reason, this really cracks me up. The cuteness of the Pokemon and my interest in naming them will hopefully keep me going through those long nights of unthinkably boring battles and missions.

Is Ben hoping Pokemon will be my gateway drug to other, more grown up RPGs like Final Fantasy? I imagine him in the dark hallway outside our bedroom door. He sneaks a Pokemon Heartgold DS case out from under his dolphin embroidered I Heart Florida joke T-shirt and whispers, “Here, little lady, give it a try. Don't worry. This one's on me. I think you'll like it.”

So far I've avoided dabbling in games like this like I've avoided dabbling with cocaine. I've seen what Pokemon does to people and have found it best to steer clear. But I have a duty to perform here, people. I have questions to answer. I have a Chikarita to battle against a Rattata! Go, Carmelo! Go!

If you don't hear from me in a week's time, start to worry. In the meantime, I have Pokemon gyms to infiltrate and Pokeballs to fill.

Retro Game Challenge for Nintendo DS: Final Review

I promised that I would write a new post as soon as Retro Game Challenge for the Nintendo DS had any substantial impact on me. When I chose the word impact, I intended it to mean “a forceful consequence" or "a strong effect” as used in the sentence, “the game had an important impact on my thinking.” Then I arrived at game two, stage three, the Ninja Robot Haggle Man challenge where I have to clear level four without dying. I now know that "impact" was the correct word to use, but the more appropriate meaning of the word, in this case, is found in the dictionary as follows: “the striking of one body against another.”

In the thesaurus I found three similar words that may be even more appropriate to describe my experience:

Contact – the physical coming together of two or more things - as in level 4 little blue enemy guys continuously coming together with my little blue Haggle Man and killing him after playing through the first three levels completely unscathed. Why, level four? WHY?

Bump – an impact as from a collision – as in the collision of my Haggle Man and challenge three. I played challenge three for about 75% of the car ride from Deltona, Florida to Atlanta, Georgia and never cleared it.

Slam – a forceful impact that makes a loud noise – as in the sound a DS Lite makes when being thrown across a car.

Yes, this game made impact. The third stage and I had a head-on collision and my Haggle Man did not make it out alive. (The DS, luckily, proved impervious to my assaults.)

To use the previous definition of the word impact, this game did have an impact on me. It taught me that old games are hard!

I expected Afterburner Climax to be difficult for me as it did not involve a plastic guitar or colored blocks. Then I played it and, although I was terrible and didn't know what I was doing, I somehow beat that game. I still can't quite believe it. The game was just really forgiving. Then I heard I had to play God of War III and I thought there was no way I'd be able to play that game, especially after I saw the hordes of skeleton beasts. But then I cracked my fire-whip a few times and BAM, before long my God hands were slapping high fives and giving out nanny-nanny-boo-boo waggles at those panty-wetting she-skeletons! The God of War puzzles got me a bit stuck, but that was mostly because I just didn't care enough about the game to solve them, not because I couldn't eventually solve them if I tried hard enough.

Then I arrive at Retro Game Challenge, a game that featured cute children playing old arcade-y games. I thought to myself, "This is great! I can do this! It's going to teach me to play video games just like Arino is going to teach little Clover!" The game was all so silly with its crazy demon head and its game geek magazines and its pro-tips and cheat codes and its cheesy diologue and then...oh Sh$t I can't play this F#$%ing game!! What the f#$%?!?

I already admitted to you that Ben played one of the challenges for me, but I didn't want that sort of cheating to become too regular an occurrence. I figured I'd let him get me to the next game and then I'd hopefully sail through a few challenges before things got really super hard. That did not prove to be the case. Determined to beat RTG on the long ride to Atlanta, the first hour went by quickly. I was glad to have something to entertain me. Then the second hour came and went and I noticed Ben beginning to laugh at me. I was starting to nervous-jump a little higher than normal. Towards the end of the second hour I had slammed the DS shut a few times, putting it in my lap for a moment to do some deep breathing exercises. By the third hour my eyes were stinging and the DS was almost in as much mortal peril as my poor little Haggle Man was in level four.

After that third hour Ben was telling me to put the DS away and try later when I could calm down a bit. I refused to stop. These level four enemies were not the boss of me! I could DO this! Knees up around my chin, my blazing red eyes wide and crazy, I clutched the DS like Kratos clutched his bloody swords. The more agitated and intense I became, the worse Haggle Man performed! I tried again and again, Ben chuckling anxiously, my Mom hiding in the backseat, Jhonen pretending to sleep. Finally, I chucked the DS across the car; My Retro Game Challenge road trip experience giving new meaning to the term road rage.

I had to stop playing. Haggle Man had defeated me and I had defeated my Haggle Man. I had failed. These old games are hard.

The failure had more bite than normal because I actually do like this game, especially Ninja Robot Haggle Man. In that game, you are dropped into a stage with several raised platforms with lots of lettered and differently-colored doors. You can go in and out of the doors to either hide from enemies or kill enemies. If you go through the doors in alphabetical order, the doors will change color to match the previous letter. Same-colored doors open simultaneously, allowing you to kill multiple enemies at once. After a certain number of enemies are killed, you face a boss. The boss from that stage becomes the enemies of the next stage. It's fun, but it's hard!

I think I failed because, unlike Clover, Arino, and my own Grand Master, Ben, I wasn't playing these difficult games in the eighties. When games were at their hardest, Ben and other little Charles in Charge watching, scrunch-sock or Jams short-wearing boys and girls were mastering them. They say the younger you introduce kids to a foreign language the better their chances of fluency. Well, as I've mentioned in previous posts, video games have a language all their own and I'm getting a really late start at learning it.

However, like little Clover, I have my own Arino to help me learn. While playing this game, it was fun to imagine that the boy and girl were little Ben and little Jess hanging out in my childhood living room playing these games. I've always liked to look at old pictures of Ben as a kid and imagine him playing with Transformers and reading comic books and talking about video games. I don't know if he would have given a girl (gross!) the time of day back then, but if he did, and we had been friends, I bet he would have been the patient, kind video game coach that he is today. I saw it firsthand this evening.

Ben bought Jhonen the new Toy Story 3 game for the PS3. Jhonen brought him the game case and said “Buzz Show!” Ben played it for him for awhile and Jhonen seemed to like to watch Woody jumping onto a train and riding his trusty horse, Bullseye. Then Ben let Jhonen play as Buzz Lightyear. I was trying to write this review at the time, but I couldn't stop watching Jhonen trying to play this game. First, he tried every button and seemed to really like rotating the joystick best. I watched his face as he began to realize that he was controlling Buzz Lightyear's movements. He started to explore. He ran Buzz in circles. He ran Buzz into a rock. He got stuck...and then unstuck! He was learning to play and he's not even two years old.

He will surely be fluent before we know it. Yet I wonder how his skills will differ from the gaming skills of those 1980's kids who grew up with Ninja Gaiden, Contra, and Mega Man (games Ben tells me are really hard.) I don't know enough to speak with any real conviction, but it seems that perhaps slick marketing and sales figures and must-have-new-features and amazing 3D graphics have watered video games down a bit in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. Still, I watched Jhonen learn a lot tonight. He learned about cause and effect. He learned about problem solving. He learned about hand-eye coordination. Plus, he connected in a new way with Buzz Lightyear, his very favorite character.

Tonight I learned that beating hard games is satisfying. The harder the challenge, the more satisfying the win. I didn't have many wins, but the ones I had felt good. I can only imagine how good a cleared stage three of Ninja Robot Haggle Man would feel!

Speaking of challenges, my Game Master Ben has given me my next game assignment. The fun and coincidental part of this assignment is that, like Clover and Arino, Ben and I will be playing together! I will be playing Pokemon Heart Gold while Ben plays Pokemon Soul Silver, both on the Nintendo DS. I have been challenged to get four Pokemon to level ten, perform at least three trades, and collect the first gym badge. Sounds so romantic.

I wonder what sort of impact Pokemon will have on me. I already know how dorky I felt just now, writing that I have to collect a gym badge in a Pokemon game. The Pokemon games are possibly nearer and dearer to Ben's heart than I am, though, so I'd better just hope that this next game assignment has a positive, rather than negative, impact on my marriage.

Retro Game Challenge for Nintendo DS: Initial Impressions

Retro Game Challenge synopsis: My child character is challenged to complete stages in various game parodies of old Nintendo games from the 1980's. The game is based on a popular Japanese television show. The premise of the show is that a guy named Arino must play video games, despite his being a poor video game player (appropriate!). According to the game manual, Arino, “having been utterly defeated by his friends in every 'current-gen' multiplayer game, longed to become a gaming master. His obsessive desire for complete dominance in the gaming world spawned a digitalized version of himself in his Nintendo DS (huh?)...and he began to haunt gamers around the world with retro game challenges.” The premise is goofy, but eerily relevant to this blog and my Grand Master Ben's own game challenges for me! In the game, Arino becomes a 1980's era kid again to help my kid character play through the challenges. Each game comes complete with its own game manual and even Game Fan Magazines that you can read to get gameplay tips.

I remember my very first video game I ever played pretty well, though I can't remember the actual title of the game. It, too, was a handheld game, played on its own special device - the little console being what I remember most vividly. The console was yellow and black, sleek and shiny and aerodynamic, shaped like the little jet sprites that once jerked across its squarish screen. A silver toggle lever moved you, the little green triangle at the bottom of the screen, right and left. I think there was a button or two for shooting. Red and green jet-like figures fly at you and shoot little colored dash missiles at them while racking up as many points as possible. It was my Dad's toy, but I played it as much as he did. The reason I remember the game so vividly, though, is because of the accident.

My Mom was driving me somewhere – probably to dance class or the mall or something. I was playing this game as we drove and I was doing really well, probably the best I'd ever played, though I was having a hard time seeing the picture because it was sunny and I had to keep the screen shielded by a shadow. Then the shadow disappeared and I couldn't see any longer and I got shot down. Game Over. I was really mad at the sun and really wanted to know my score because I was pretty sure that, even though I'd died, I may have still beat my previous high score. Problem is, I couldn't see the number. I begged my mother to read me the score. She said, “I can't read the score right now. I'm driving.” But I wouldn't let it go. So I started whining and pleading until she gave in. She took the game from me and tried to shadow the screen with her hand to see my score and that's when we rear-ended the car in front of us. Everyone was fine. There's no real tragic ending to the story. I think it was just a little fender-bender. I just know that I felt really guilty for whining at my Mom to see my score and I remember that video game being the source of our car accident.

I have written and rewritten this first game review for Retro Game Challenge (RGC)and I can't seem to focus on any one theme for this post. Maybe the problem is just how completely different this game is from my last assignment. RGC is decades and oceans separated from the beach babes and beach boobs of Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2. That game was a very focused experience whereas RGC is about a lot of different things. This one game is really eight different games all based on eight other games, all of them being completely different types of games with several challenges I must complete within each game. Add to all that the time travel, the crazed Game Master Arino, the kids and the breaking of the fourth wall and I'm feeling as scattered writing about this game as this game is scattered. So far I have started writing about portable gaming, arcades, meta-fiction, early gaming, gaming magazines, top-down shooters, platformers, parodies, and Japanese television programming. No one topic feels right. So far nothing has really struck me as being more or less important than anything else in this game. Maybe the problem is simply that this game is really difficult. Unlike Dead or Alive, I can't fake my way through mini-games and then go shopping and buy sunglasses for my girlfriends. I actually have to beat each challenge or I can't continue. I can see why Ben is having me play 5 hours of RGC. I have spent 2 hours on it already and have just recently reached the second game. Ouch. How can you review something you can't play?

Or maybe the writer's block is the result of a guilt-ridden 1980's little-girl-gamer still hearing the car crunch sound in her ears after these two long decades since The Accident.

My initial experience with RGC was sort of a series of accidents. I was shocked at how well I did on the first few stages of the first game, Cosmic Gate, a Galaga clone. My first challenge was to clear five levels without getting a Game Over and I only had to try twice to clear the stage. This was what young Arino said to my character, Clover:



Who me? No way! I shut off the power switch proudly. I would end the evening's gaming session feeling good about myself. Then I remembered that I hadn't actually quit the game properly. Oh well. Shouldn't be a problem. I mean, surely the game saved my cleared stage. I had already moved past stage one and received my stage two challenge, so I'm sure I'll turn on the game tomorrow and it will let me begin my second challenge(successfully warp twice). Doubt about my save gnawed at me as I tried to sleep. My curiosity burned and I turned the DS back on. Sure enough, the game had not saved my cleared stage. My victory was so short-lived! Not only that, but to get back to that first stage I had to sit through a ton of blah-blah dialogue and push the A button fifty times before I could try to clear the stage again. I never know how to turn off a game. When I put the DS to sleep Ben yells at me. He always thinks I'll let the DS's battery die and lose my saves. Now, the one time I decide to turn off the DS as he repeatedly asks that I do, I lose my save.

I had no choice. I replayed the first stage and beat it handily and went into the next stage nervously. I didn't think I was understanding the whole warp concept. I read the game manual. I read the fan magazine content. Somehow I still wasn't sure I knew what I was doing. Turns out I didn't. I played stage two for an hour and fifteen minutes and got so frustrated I decided to go back and reread the warp tips. Turns out I was warping incorrectly!. I return to stage two, angry with myself for being such a careless reader. I went back and cleared it on my first try. Stage three was easy. I just had to shoot down a giant asteroid to get 15,000 bonus points which I managed to do on my second attempt. But then...already two hours into the RGC and only one game in, I am informed that my final challenge in Cosmic Gate would be to earn 200,000 points. I hadn't been paying close attention to my point totals so I had no idea if I had been getting anywhere close to 200,000 in my previous attempts. I played through as far as I possibly could. I took care to kill the boss guards before I killed the boss Insektor (the game's enemies) which I had learned from my Game Fan Magazine would earn me extra points. I tried to shoot down as many darn asteroids as I could. I played with as much focus and determination and care as possible. I got 44,000 points. I gave up, (although I was careful to quit and save properly this time). Again I wondered, how am I supposed to review a game I can't play? Even more to the point, by not having played difficult video games since my own 1980's childhood, is the learning curve too high? Can I muster the dexterity, master the timing, remember the controls and instructions long enough to get better at playing video games?

Not sure how to answer these questions, I went whining again. This time I whined to my own Grand Master and said, “Help! I don't think I can pass this stage yet.” And just like Young Arino, Ben was encouraging and patient and showed me how. In other words, we cheated. He played the fourth stage for me.

I have since moved on to the second game in the challenge: Robot Ninja Haggle Man, a parody of Mega Man. I have passed the first stage and am, again, a bit stuck on stage two, though thus far I have avoided any major accidents. Tomorrow I head off on a road trip to Atlanta – our first road trip since Jhonen was born. Again I will find myself playing a handheld video game in the car and will have to learn from my childhood mistake and try not to beg the driver (Ben) to look at my DS screen to help me figure out how to pass my next challenge (clear three stages without letting the Haggle Man fellow utilize his Chinese stars). For the sake of my husband, son, and mother's sanity, I will also try not to whine when I can't figure it out. Not whining for help may just turn out to be the biggest challenge of all.

Look for a focused and thoughtful review of this game in a few days. For now, I'm too dazed by the difficulty and confused by the instructions. I'm moving through this game in slow motion while bracing for an impact.

And when it makes an impact, I will be sure to write about it.