7/18/10 - Back From the Windy City

Hello everybody, SlimKirby here!

This blog may be updated kind of late, but I have a very good excuse! In fact, this excuse could actually verify not updating at all, but I felt like I was in enough of a writing mood for you guys, so I decided to give you an entry. :P

Today, I actually returned from a 2-day trip to Chicago. Awhile back, me and 3 of my friends (one of which lives in Chicago) were actually planning on having a little gaming tournament of sorts (we try to have one on an annual basis), and since it was a change of pace, we put the location of this year's tournament in Chicago, that way we could devote one day to gaming, and the other to doing Chicago things. In the end, our plans went through and we ended up having a good time! In fact, your truly (me) actually ended up winning the gaming tournament. For those of you wondering, basically we just play a bunch of different games and for each game, we reward a point score to each participant based on placement (Mario Kart style). I ended up winning quite a few games, including Crazy Taxi, Diddy Kong Racing, a Grand Theft Auto IV Wanted Star challenge, Star Fox 64, Mario Tennis, and of course the two games I went into the tournament wanting to win, Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. There were a few other games worth mentioning, such as Wii Play, Wii Sports, and nearly everyone's favorite multiplayer N64 romp, Goldeneye, but my performance in those games was a bit more disappointing. However, in the end, overall performance dominates, and because of that, I was the victor this year.

For those wondering some of the things that we did in addition to the tournament, really not that much extra, but the things we did too were pretty nice considering. The first thing we did was have lunch at Giordano's home of Chicago's famous stuffed pizza, and boy was it delish. The best part about it was that I actually had leftovers for dinner that same night, so I had a very pizzaish day. Then we took a walk around Millenium Park, which was pretty cool (a lot of nice 'attractions' (if you could call them that) and just a nice little place to walk around). Really though, that's about it. I know it doesn't seem like much, but we could only be there for 2 days and you could only do so much in 2 days, and we also had to do the tournaments and spend some time hanging out for old-time sake. With what we did do though, it was fun. =)

Besides that though, not much going on. I'm really dreading the fact that in about a month's time I'll have to go back to my university again and deal with that giant wave of excitement (sarcasm of course). Again, not that I hate school, it's just a lot of work...

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Youtube:

Majora's Mask - Things are still going pretty well with project. Still not completely sure what to predict for an end-date, but I'd say by the end of August might be a pretty good guess.

CSS: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - So far, Chapter 7 has been moving along pretty nicely. I really like what I did for last Friday's episode and I seemed to have gotten a good response from the viewers and from my fellow CSS members, so it feels nice to be doing something right. Still gotta record most of the videos for this next week, plus I got to start planning for the co-commentary segments which will be coming up either next week or the end of this one (more than likely next week though).

New Project? - Near the end of Mario Party 6, I made an announcement that a new project will be coming near the end of July, and we are over half-way done with the month at this point. At this point, there are still a few kinks I want to work out (mainly, I have an idea, I'm just not 100% sure on if it's what I want to do). I may have some new information on next week's entry.

Video Schedule for 7/19/10 - 7/25/10

Monday, 7/19 - Majora's Mask, Paper Mario TTYD #78 (CSS)
Tuesday 7/20 - Majora's Mask (*)
Wednesday 7/21 - Majora's Mask, Paper Mario TTYD #79 (CSS)
Thursday 7/22 - Majora's Mask (*)
Friday 7/23 - Majora's Mask, Paper Mario TTYD #80 (CSS)
Saturday 7/24 - Majora's Mask (*)
Sunday 7/25 - Majora's Mask (*)

CSS - Project hosted at CrystalStarStudio Youtube channel.
* - Possibility that more than one upload for project could happen on that particular day.

Really, nothing much else to expect for this week; just the ordinary. Next week I may try to organize a stream event or something, although it probably wouldn't happen until the middle of the week.

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Game of the Week

Like last week, this week's game is a sequel of another game I have already LPed for Youtube. It's no really coincidence really, I just played this game more than any other, especially during the long road trip to Chicago. Anyways, here it is....

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising


Yeah, the first game was cool; had a lot of awesome strategic moments, some epic battles, a lot of different features, and even the world's biggest tease target and dunce, Andy, but Advance Wars 2 pretty much took the formula of the original, made a few, but nothing major, tweaks, added some new units and characters, and ended up with a pretty exciting package.

The 2nd game pretty much ends up where the first game left off. After Black Hole's vanishing act after being defeated by the combined forces of Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, and Green Earth, Black Hole has now returned with some new COs of their own as they try to take control of the very same nations they were stopped by. It seems like a very dull story, as I'm sure many of you are willing to bet, but one thing I actually kind of liked about the game was that despite their story emphasis being low, they actually spent quite a bit of time on the character development, and actually did a good job with it. All of the different personalities are pretty distinct and fitting for the type of characters they are.

Unlike the first game where you pretty much had to follow Orange Star for the entire time, this game is broken down into 5 parts, each part taking place on one of the different countries. And while you are in each one, you are restricted to using only the COs that represent that country, which means you can't just pick Max every single time like I did in my AW1 LP. This allows you to get acquainted with different COs and use different strategies and abilities throughout the game. Although with some COs, you'll have a pretty easy run due to the nature of their abilities (COs like Colin, Kanbei, and Sensei), there will be some missions that might give you a little trouble, especially in Hard Campaign.

Like Advance Wars 1, Black Hole Rising has a lot of the same extra content, once again featuring the War Room scenarios and a bunch of different VS. maps to play on. The only difference is that this game just gives you more to work with. Honestly, when looking at both games on a whole, you can't really say Advance Wars 2 failed or lacked on any front in comparison with the 1st game because everything was pretty much either an improvement or an addition. Basically, I don't really have anything negative to say about the game at all (except that some missions (especially on Hard Mode) can be very tedious and annoying, but I think that's kind of the point....to be more challenging).

In the end, if I had to score this game, I would honestly go as low as 4.5/5, although I think the game is pretty close to perfection as it's going to get that a 5/5 wouldn't be too far-fetched here. The only thing you could really say about the game is that after awhile it may get a little boring if you have been playing it non-stop like I normally do. It's really the type a game that you may just want to pick up and play every now and then, which is perfectly fine. I actually even find myself sitting down and playing a War Room scenario every now and then when I got nothing better to do or if I'm watching a TV program or something.

LP Possibility: As soon as I finished Advance Wars, right away, even if I answered the multitude of questions beforehand, I got literally swarmed with requests to do Black Hole Rising. I will say for the time being that I have been considering the possibility of doing the 2nd game somewhere down the road, but I'm holding back for many reasons; in my eyes, good reasons. For one, it's just a really long game to cover and I'm just not up for the task yet. Second, there are many other long games I want to cover beforehand and if I focus too much on doing the sequel, those games will possibly get shut out for even longer, something I don't want to happen. And finally, I just don't want to do it yet. I've already expressed the possibility of doing it somewhere down the line....that should be enough!

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That about does it for this entry, sorry for the lateness.