Sunday, November 28, 2010

11/28/10 - SlimKirby: Returns!

Hello everbody, SlimKirby here!

The title is no lie, SlimKirby has definitely returned, but in more ways than one (and not just because I got Donkey Kong Country: Returns =P). For one, it is time for another exciting blog entry, and two, as of tomorrow, I should be returning to the Youtube scene after 3 long weeks of not updating. Will this return set the wheels back in motion, will my laptop be back in action, will SlimKirby still be able to lead the Germans to victory on that Civilization II file I keep talking about? The answers to these questions will be answered….shortly.

First up, the laptop situation should finally be done with after tomorrow (the key-word is “should.”). I talked to the computer people on Wednesday and they’ve told me that there is nothing they can do about getting my laptop back up to the way it was before I started having problems, so they are going to do something else. Basically, what they are going to do instead is install a thing called Virtual Box onto my laptop. With this, I will be able to control a Mac OS and Windows OS simultaneously besides just one or the other. Of course I’ll lose some functionality this way, but it’s the only thing they believe they can do about this for now. Installing Windows via Boot Camp is impossible with the way my laptop currently is, which again is very strange because they actually say my computer is mechanically fine. Anyways, in the long run, just having the Windows OS would solve a majority of my problems, so I’m taking this as a victory for the time being. Of course, I’m not really sure what this means for my videos as far as this laptop is concerned. The thing is, my capture card only works on the Windows OS and is completely unrecognized when I plug it in whenever I’m on the Mac side. I’m not sure if Virtual Box will affect the device, but there is always that possibility. I guess the only thing I can really do is test it once I get my computer back, whether it’s tomorrow or Tuesday, or whenever the hell it will be X_X.

Now you are probably wondering….with this uncertainty still at play, how exactly will I be making my return tomorrow? Well, let’s just say that during this Thanksgiving Break, I did find a little bit of time to get some recording done on my desktop at home. Of course, my desktop set-up isn’t exactly the best set-up to use for the type of prolific work I do. For one, it’s just a really small space and not a very comfortable place to do recording. And second of all, there is no TV, so I have to use the small Windows Movie Maker preview window…something I haven’t done since Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance back in 2009. It’s not a terrible thing to use, but it sometimes hinders precise gameplay, just because you are playing a console video game through a computer program while it’s trying to record it. However, I think I got it to work fine for what I could do with it, and was able to pump out 6 videos from my recording sessions (even though they took a long time). The way I figure it, I will be uploading these videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next two weeks. That way, I can figure out what I can (and need to) do when I get my laptop back, if I can do anything, and even if I can’t, I’m at least covered for two weeks.

So yeah, that is the activity you can expect on my channel for the next two weeks. I know 3/7 (6/14) doesn’t seem like much (it could be more if everything works out ok), but it’s better than the 0/21 record I’ve had for the past 3 weeks. In the meantime, CrystalStarStudio is also back in the swing of things (FINALLY), so you will have something to watch there for the next two weeks as well. Of course we only have TTYD extras for you, but soon we will have a winter line of projects ready for you guys as well. It’s a relief to know that finally CSS is back on the move. I know the wait has been rather long and ridiculous, but it honestly isn’t something we could’ve handled at the time. In fact, I’m actually still a little unsure about a few things, but I’m not going to get into those now.

As for other Youtube stuff, I really just don’t know right now. As I said before, a lot of it just depends on how the whole laptop situation goes. I hope it goes well enough so I can continue Mario Party 7 this coming weekend, but again, it’s just too early to tell. I also have another big project planned on the horizon as well. I would like to start that one on the 13th of December, but it may not happen until the 20th. School and education has quite a lot to do with things as well, and I am reaching that point where final projects and exams are quickly approaching. I guess the only thing I can really say right now is just stay tuned to my twitter updates and recent activity feeds for information pertaining to Youtube stuff.

So now that I got that covered, I guess I could talk about a few things that have been going on in my real life. After all, there was an American holiday we just had! =O My Thanksgiving (and TG Break) actually went pretty well. It didn’t last me as long as I would have liked, but then again, all breaks are like that. =P Anyways, I guess I’ll just cover some of the main highlights;

1). On Tuesday on my way home, I actually got the pleasure of picking up Donkey Kong Country Returns, a game I have been very excited about ever since it was first revealed at E3 2010. It was my “Best in Show” choice for the Wii (even over Epic Yarn), and after playing through most of the game thus far, I have to say that this game could possibly be Game of the Year for Wii as well. So far, the game is just incredible, and I can honestly say there hasn’t been a single part of it that I haven’t enjoyed. There are quite a few bits of frustration though, I will admit, but I’ve always been fond of a little challenge here and there. This game is seriously one of the most difficult games I have ever played, in the entire DKC series, of all Wii games, and may even be a candidate for of all-time. Unlike other games I have played this year, I’m not just breezing through it either. This game actually feels like there is some good length to it. And also like traditional DKC games, there are a lot of collectables and hidden stuff, so even after you finish the game, you’re probably not finished yet. ;) =P Anyways, I didn’t want to get too in depth with this game just yet. I will probably have a Game Discussion/review (whatever you want to call it) of the game soon in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for that. For now though, if you love platformers and if you were in love with the DKC series as much as I was back in the day, definitely give this game your consideration.

2). Thanksgiving itself was a pretty good day. I got to see some of my family (some of which I hadn’t seen in a few months), so that was nice. I spent most of the day feeling pretty tired (a certain girl wearing yellow and purple was doing her job of trying to keep me up as late as she could again =P), but that didn’t really ruin my day any. After the festivities started to wind down, I got to play some Rock Band with my cousins, aunt, and even my mom (my mom is surprisingly a good singer….by Rock Band standards =P), so that was a lot of fun, and perhaps the highlight of my day. Man though, after almost a year of not playing those games, I still remember when I used to be so addicted to them and Guitar Hero. To think if I never started Let’s Playing, I probably would have ended up being a Guitar Hero/Rock Band guy XD. Oh well, I think I chose the right crowd. =P

3). The last and final highlight of my break was that I got to see some of my best friends on Friday night. However, this gathering was not just a friendly, “let’s get caught up” type of visit. Since the end of October, me, and 3 of my best friends, have been trying to start a little Pokemon tournament of sorts (between ourselves). Basically, we replay our old R/B/Y games, and using the team we create in our games, we will use those teams and do battle with each other at a future date and time. All 4 of us have been Pokemon-a-holics for as long as we can remember (in fact, we even call ourselves “The Elite Four” =P), and this competition is kind of a way for us to go back to those times and try to relive those moments and memories. Although, I guess “relive” isn’t exactly the way to go about defining it. It’s moreso “re-nostalgializing” (if that’s even a word) with something near and dear to our childhood. Anyways, on Friday we got started with our new games and we’re all en route to our own individual paths of becoming Pokemon Masters! =P So yeah, this should be a lot of fun! And for those of you wondering (since I don’t think those guys keep up with my Twitter…. not like it really matters either), but I chose Charmander, and I currently have my first badge on my game. As for potential team members, I have a few Pokemon in mind, but I’m going to see how my game plays out first before I choose a finalized version. =P

So yeah, that is what has been going on for me as of late. I’m anxiously awaiting the end of this semester, but to do that I have to get through 3 more weeks of hard work (work I’m honestly not that excited about). However, once that work is finished, HUZZAH! I guess that’s a good word to explain it! =P

Anyways, since I kind of talked a little about DKCR already, I’m not going to bother with any additional game discussion, so I think that means it’s about time for me to wrap things up for this week. I hope you guys enjoy the line of videos I have planned for the next two weeks, and hopefully I can get back into the full swing of things (Youtube wise) very, very soon. I know that most of you are and will continue to be patient with me, but a part of me really misses making videos and updating. =( I’m not trying to overwork myself or anything, but I do get a lot of enjoyment out of it, just like I hope you guys get a lot of enjoyment out of watching my videos. But alas, kind of blabbering on for longer than I need to. =P

I’ll talk to you guys next week for another exciting blog entry! Catch you guys then! Later folks!
-SlimKirby

Sunday, November 21, 2010

11/21/10 - I'm Not Thankful for Long Laptop Examinations

Hello everybody, SlimKirby here, ready for another blog entry!

Last week, things really weren’t going that well for me, and to be perfectly honest, they still really aren’t. Since I’m already talking about it, I guess that will be the first thing I discuss.

If you couldn’t figure it out yet, that’s right, I still do not have my laptop back. At this time I am actually writing this entry using a loaner laptop from my university’s computer care place. Now, I know what you guys are thinking; “But SlimKirby, I thought you said last week that you should have everything solved by the start or middle of this week?” Well, it turns out that I was dead wrong, because at the end of the week, nothing has really been solved yet. For those of you wondering “How?” or “Why?” or “What in the hell is actually going on?” I’m honestly looking for the answers to those questions as well, because nobody seems to really know what the heck is going on with my laptop.

I’m not going to talk about the problem again, or rather, how the problem started, so if you are just joining the blog scene this week, I explain the problem to the full extent in the last entry, so you may want to look at that if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Anyway, on Monday morning I took my laptop in for the university computer experts to examine, and right off the bat I got some pretty bad news. The person at the desk said my hard-drive was most definitely failing on the Windows side, but not only that, the failure had already started going towards the Mac side as well. This of course put me in a very uneasy mood from the very beginning, but they did tell me that they were going to do anything they could to make sure that I had the machine back in the evening. So later that day, 30 minutes before the place was supposed to close, I went back and checked in with the computer peeps just to see how things were progressing. They did tell me that they were still running some diagnostic tests, and that they wouldn’t be done until the next day, so I was like, “Ok, but for the meantime, can I at least get a laptop to borrow until this problem is solved?” and they allowed me to use a loaner until Wednesday. This way, I figured I could at least use the computer until Wednesday, so if they didn’t call me on Tuesday, I wouldn’t have to worry about going back to check in again and give them ample time to finish whatever the heck they were doing.

Fast-forward to Wednesday afternoon! I did end up receiving a phone call that day, but because I had an all-nighter the night before working on a big homework assignment, I was not in a very perceptive mood when I got the call (in fact, at that point I was napping trying to get some energy after that night). The lady could have asked “Will you join me in a hostile takeover of America?” and I would have been like “Yeah…no…whatever, bye,” immediately zonking off back to sleep right after. So I went back later that day and got a pretty good status update, considering. They said they were still running diagnostics, but they at least gave me a little more confidence that the problem would get solved. Not only that, but they also extended my loaner laptop until after Thanksgiving Break, just in case the problem didn’t get solved. They also gave me a number I could call to check in every now and then if I wanted an update on the status. So overall, while they essentially accomplished nothing over the last two days, I was a lot less worried than I was on Monday, and they convinced that they were at least doing something to fix the problem and not just hitting the machine over and over again with a hammer.

Now we are fast-forwarding to Friday! I didn’t check in on Thursday, because like Tuesday, I wanted to make sure that I gave them a little more time to work on things so I wasn’t just breathing down their necks the whole time. So I called them on Friday at around noon, and sure enough, the same lady who gave me such a worry on Monday picked up and was all like, “You’re laptop is not happy! We tried this and this and this, and it’s failed 3 times! You are a horrible person for even installing Windows on a Macbook because Apple bribes us with money to say these things!” Ok, so she didn’t actually say the last thing, but that’s seriously what I feel like whenever she is the one talking to me. She basically gave me a “We don’t know what’s wrong or what’s going on, so we’re running even more tests, but if you would like a better update, you can call back in an hour when our expert isn’t eating lunch,” type of update. So I called back one hour later, and thankfully I got to talk to someone who wasn’t that peach (I use the word “peach” now, instead of the actual b-word, because Princess Peach is a b-word! =D). They essentially told me the same thing, but they promised me that they were not going to give up on me and asked for my patience over the long weekend. I liked the person who I was talking to, so I decided to comply and be nice about it. They had been working on it for an entire week, among many other laptops as well, so even if they do work for a satanic company like Apple, they had been putting a lot of work specifically into my machine, so I had to give them a little credit.

So here I am, one week after I originally had the problem, still not really sure what the problem even is. I still can’t record, I still can’t do any of my homework that involves programming unless I go to a computer lab, and I still can’t continue to dominate the randomly-generated world of my most recent Civilization II file. It sucks, but those are the cards I have been dealt with for this week, and unfortunately I might have to hold on to these cards for a few more weeks as well, if the problem continues. I have definitely decided that when I’m home over break, I am going to start talking to my parents about getting another laptop because I’ve had it with the problems of this one. As I said before, it’s a great laptop, but it just has too many problems that I shouldn’t be dealing with, and doesn’t provide me with the necessities that I need for a laptop. Plus, it has the whole hard-drive space issue I think I mentioned in the last entry. It would be so much easier if I had a desktop computer, but I couldn’t exactly make much use of that either, considering I’m still living in dormitory residence halls. Maybe after this year when I start doing commutes….

So besides that though, things have been going all right I suppose. Last Friday we actually had a LAN Party at my dorm, and at this party they had a Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament and a Mario Kart 64 tournament (amongst other tournaments as well, but none of which worth mentioning as far as my game library is concerned). I did enter both tournaments and was actually satisfied with my Super Smash Bros. Brawl placement. I got seventh place out of 32, and had every possibility of advancing further than that considering my two losses (double elimination) were extremely close matches that came down to one lucky strike. Oh well, I guess I will just have to own them all next time. ;) For those of you wondering, I used my main man Diddy Kong in the tournament as a tribute to my most recently completed Let’s Play. =P As for the Mario Kart 64 tournament, I don’t even want to talk about that because that was the most disorganized piece of garbage of a tournament I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to go into details, but tell me if this makes sense; 1) All of the matches were 4-Player matches, 2) Each round was just one race, 3) If you aren’t first, you’re eliminated, 4) One elimination, and you’re out (single elimination). Who in their right, non-ignorant mind would make a Mario Kart tournament based on that? That’s so freaking stupid, considering quite a bit of the game is luck-based. In fact, that’s so stupid, I’m not even going to explain what would have been the right thing to do and end the paragraph here.

Another positive that came out of this party was that I also entered a raffle (I got 3 free submissions into the raffle because I attended and entered two tournaments), and actually won something. I only entered one of the three drawings because they only had a PS3 game, an Xbox360 game, and a Wii game, and since the Wii is the only system I own of those three, that was logically the only one I could get any use out of, so all 3 of my tickets went to that one drawing. And sure enough, the next morning when I woke up, I had an e-mail that said I won. I went downstairs to claim my game, and the game ended up being “No More Heroes.” Besides hearing the name of the game before, I had no idea what the game was actually about or what it consisted of, so last evening I actually sat down to play it for awhile. My first reaction, after playing 2 hours of the game, was pretty much the following: “Holy crap, that’s a lot of blood! O_O” NMH might just be the bloodiest, goriest game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played the Grand Theft Auto games. Safe to say, I was a bit surprised at what I first saw. Not to say I’m completely against blood, gore, and violence in video games, or anything like that, it’s just not what I’m normally used to. I’m more used to seeing goombas getting flattened, and octoroks vanishing after a quick swipe of a sword. Aside from that though, the game doesn’t really seem like a bad video game, but again, I’ve only played a very small portion of it. If I really feel like it, I might cover it in a future “Game Chat” discussion, but a lot of my viewers are pretty young, so in that regard, it’s probably not a good idea unless I “Viewer Discretion” the hell out of that discussion.

Aside from the LAN Party, not much has really been going on in the world of college. Classes and projects are slowly, but surely winding down. I have a nice 3-day break coming up for Thanksgiving this next week, so I’m looking forward to that, especially since I get to see and spend time with my always wonderful family. And then, before you know it, Christmas time will be upon us once again, so hooray for that! =D


Once again, I’m afraid I’m going to be kind of brief with this entry, so no game discussion this week, or Youtube discussion for that matter (not that it would matter, I haven’t exactly posted anything anyways). Hopefully I get some better news this next week with my laptop, and hopefully I can start posting videos again. If not, once again, I am very apologetic with the wait, but there is nothing I can really do about it. I hate not being able to upload just as much as you guys hate not being able to see any my uploads. I might try to figure a few alternatives out as well, but once again, there are no guarantees. I'll also try to have some game discussion up next week as well, considering there are a few games I want to talk about, plus I should have Donkey Kong Country Returns by that point as well. I'll also try to give an update on what will be happening with my Youtube stuff, whether I get my laptop back this next week or not.

I’ll talk to you guys next week for another exciting (hopefully) entry from the mind of SlimKirby!

Later folks!
-SlimKirby

Sunday, November 14, 2010

11/15/10 - I Hate When Things Don't Work =(

Hello everybody, SlimKirby here, and welcome to another weekly blog entry!

I'm not sure if any of you guys have been to my channel in the last 2 days, but if you haven't, I'll go ahead and explain here. My computer started having some issues, and unfortunately, those issues are preventing me from recording any videos, working on any of my programming (and just ordinary) assignments for my school work, and perhaps the most major, preventing me from playing Civilization II! Ok, that last one is not that much of an issue, but I was in the middle of game that I was doing really well on when this happened. =(

Basically, for those who don't know, I use a Macbook laptop. Now before we start any of the Apple bashing, I want to state for the record that I dislike Apple, Mac, and pretty much anything associated with Steve Jobbs. I'm not saying they should all burn in a fire or anything like that, but as far as their hardware and their software go, I'm just not a fan. So anyways, the reason why I ended up with a Macbook was because my first major was Math Education, and all Education majors were supposed to buy a laptop. I personally never figured out why (I think it's because the portfolio software for that major and the BSU website was specific to Mac, or something like that, but even then I imagine there are ways to get through that), but either way, I was forced into purchasing a Macbook I didn't really want. =\ Like most Americans, I wanted a big computer with a lot of disk space! =3

Anyways, two years ago, after I dropped out of Math Education, I decided to partition my Macbook so it would allow the use of a Windows Operating System (that way, I could also record my videos much easier). Once I did that, everything was happy again (until I realized that I had barely any space to work with, but even then, I dealt with it), and that same laptop has been the laptop I've used for pretty much everything for these past two years. I had a few problems here and there, but they were fixed in pretty much no time. =P

Now, fast forward back to the present, last Thursday, when I turned my laptop on in the afternoon (after uploading my 20,000 subscriber special earlier that morning), for some reason, the machine just wouldn't start up. I got a little concerned and a little scared, because at that time I was planning on recording Mario Party 7 and the new project I was going to start this next week, but then I wondered if maybe I just wasn't getting it enough time to start. Before I tested that though, I decided to see if I could at least boot up the Mac operating system, and strangely enough, that started without a hitch. After that I wondered if maybe I had just gotten a random glitch or something, but sure enough, when I tried to start up Windows, it once again gave the black screen of non-loading. So yeah, at this point I was getting pretty ticked off, but figured that I could just take it to the computer repair place the next day and just deal with the Mac OS for the time being, which I did. During this time, I also tried to do some research on the problem, but couldn't really find anything. I figured though that since I was able to access the Mac OS so easily, it might've been a problem simply with the Windows side, in that case, a simple repartition would suffice (even if that meant losing all of my programs and files that I already had installed).

So the next morning I went to the computer place, but I was unfortunately unable to get my laptop looked at. The guys at the desk said that it would be better if I just came back Monday, because they didn't have any of the experts in the building, and even if I did turn it in, I probably wouldn't get it back until Monday regardless. So I decided to not turn it in yet, just so I could have it for the weekend, and maybe research the problem a little more on my own. I still came up empty-handed on the research, but oh well, at least I had a laptop.

Of course this meant that I couldn't record anything for my channel, which I was very apologetic for, although there wasn't much I could really do about it. I actually did try to get at least a Mario Party recording done though, using a very unique way of recording (which I will talk about when I play Neon Heights next weekend, or whenever I get the chance to record again). However, since there were no episodes this weekend, you can pretty much gather that the plan didn't exactly pull through the way I was expecting it to.

So yeah, at this point, I really don't know what's going to happen. I'm writing this entry late Sunday/early Monday, so I've still yet to turn the laptop in. I really hope it's nothing that major, because I honestly feel like a mess sometimes when I don't have my laptop. As pathetic as that might sound....it's the truth. I really do keep a lot of stuff on my laptop, and without it, I feel a bit lost. Not necessarily because I don't know what to do without it, but moreso because it's hard to transition from having everything in front of you, to having nothing in front of you. Oh well....I guess it's just one of those things that you have to deal with sometimes. Computers are definitely not perfect. So yeah...I guess we'll see what happens. Until then, I'll keep updates posted on my twitter account and main channel page, if you are curious on the progression. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed in a timely fashion...hopefully.

In Youtube news.....well, I don't have anything, mainly because I didn't upload anything but the final DK64 extra video. =P I did post my 20,000 subscriber video though, which went ok for being a small video with me talking a lot about stuff you may or may not care about. =P

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So yeah, I think I might actually end the entry there actually. I know it was kind of a short entry, but it pretty much explains this entire week in a nutshell for me. I'll see if I can find something gaming-related to talk about next week (Donkey Kong Country Returns is on its way after all ;) ), but for now, this has been SlimKirby! Hope you guys enjoyed this entry for what it was, and I'll see you next weekend!

Later folks!
-SlimKirby

Monday, November 8, 2010

11/7/10 - The Yarn Has Been Spun!

Hello everybody, SlimKirby here, and welcome to another week of the blog!

This entry will probably go up a bit late, but give me break. At least I’m getting it done every week. Besides, it’s not like I get paid for the blog, and it’s not like I’m off my goal of one per week or anything like that. But alas….I’m sure you guys don’t want to read sentence after sentence of me giving excuses or explaining my actions, so I’ll just move on.

We’re finally down to the last two months of the year. I can’t believe how fast time has flown. It only seems like a few days ago that I was running around a tree in Majora’s Mask and seeing glitched Donkey Kong Country platforms, but the time just seems to fly by anymore. If only the Inverted Song of Time had real life application! But on the other hand….then things would be going too slow.

Anyways, this past week has been pretty kind to me I ask. School has been hitting me pretty hard, but that’s the way it goes sometime. In my Advanced Programming class, we are working on a final six-week group project which is coming along great! I don’t feel like talking about what exactly we are doing, but perhaps that is something I can talk about in a future entry, or possibly even show it off. But yeah, I’m working with a pretty solid team. I’m not the main programmer (and I have the least experience with coding), but it’s my job to make sure everyone is on task and organized, and I usually take care of the group homework and busy work that we get on the side of the project. That’s really the only good class for me right now (and ironically the one that should be the hardest class X_X), as all my other classes seem to try and throw something stupid in my direction at random intervals of time. I’m doing everything I can though, and I guess that is what is important.

In Youtube news this week, I saw the end of a project today (technically tomorrow since I have one extra video to post), but my replay of Donkey Kong 64 is officially over. I clocked in at 55 videos (most of them lengthed at 15 minutes, the later ones at random numbers in between 15 and 20). Overall, it was a great project. I don’t consider it my best, but this has possibly been my best of the year (followed closely behind Majora and Yoshi’s Island (not that any of my other projects were bad…just not as memorable)). Which is weird….. I’ve started to notice that I do a lot of my big, well-known LPs during the Fall. Anyways, thanks for spending another gameplay session with me Donkey Kong 64! You’ve been a great game to have and play, for a Youtube project or not. =P

Mario Party 7 this week….kind of a different story. Honestly, I thought the board went fine…it was just the nature of the board that made it a mess (in the sense of my personal performance on the board). Pyramid Park was never one of my favorites, mainly because of the star mechanic. I liked the mechanic a bit more in Snowflake Lake (MP6) just because of the chain chomp locations. In Pyramid Park, 75% of them are on one side of the board and aren’t really evenly-spaced at all. My objective was to stay cautious and remain on the left side (the safe side) and only wander over when it was convenient, which was a good plan in retrospect. The only downside was that Boo had a 5 or 6 course meal on stars while I was playing it safe. I think if the computer players played more like they normally did (or should do), I think I would have won that board, no doubts about it. Once again though, it just seemed like they were all naturally working against me in every possible way from every possible angle. You saw the way they dueled everybody except Boo. =P Any way, next week is Neon Heights, a board I like a little bit more, but with a big emphasis on the word “little.”

As for other Youtube stuff, I need to start getting ready for my November 15th project as well as think of something to do for 20,000 subscribers, because that is still something I haven’t done yet. I really should just not worry about it, but I feel a bit obligated now that I mentioned it in my last update video. Meh…if it gets to be too much of a hassle, I just won’t do it, but thankfully my week shouldn’t be too hectic, so maybe I can sit down and come up with something.

Anyways, on to the game discussion!

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Game Chat:

Kirby’s Epic Yarn


Yes! I promised you guys that I would give this game a final….review of sorts once I got done observing and admiring the cuteness that is this game, and that is a promise I plan to keep.

I admit, I didn’t know what to think of this game when I first saw the trailer at E3. In fact, if you have been readers and watchers since E3 2010, you would know that I had a really hard time getting past the name at first. Thankfully though, I looked past the name and at the game itself and I liked what I saw, gameplay wise. I knew that we were going to have a pretty solid game on our hands. Plus, it’s the first CONSOLE Kirby ADVENTURE since Kirby 64 (keep in mind, I said CONSOLE and ADVENTURE…not counting GBA and DS games, not counting Air Ride =P), so that alone was something to get excited about. Any way, over time, the name did start to grow on me, and now I can’t picture the game without it. So now, I officially take back everything I said about saying the game name was too weird! It’s official! Put it in writing, inform the mayor, get out all of your “I Told Ya So!” messages….whatever! I apologize for being weird about it before because I love it now (although I never really said it was bad…I just thought it was odd as a name).

Now for the actual game itself, a lot of the things people were criticizing the game about in its early stages was how drastically the game was changing from past Kirby titles. For one, Kirby no longer has his trademark copy ability or his floating around ability. Another interesting mechanic is that Kirby can’t actually die in this game. Instead of death, whenever you get hit or fall into lava or an endless abyss, you lose beads, in-level collectables used for individual level ranks (gold/silver/bronze) and currency used to purchase things from the main hub store (mostly small little trinkets and souvenirs). You can kind of compare this to some of the Wario Land games where if you got damaged, you would lose coins. Because of this mechanic, the difficulty of the general game is definitely quite easy, but if you are a perfectionist player, and someone who likes to give themselves a challenge, don’t underestimate the difficulty. And although they got rid of the copy abilities, they left in some pretty unique Kirby transformations that are shown throughout specific parts of some levels. These transformations range from a robot, to a U.F.O., to a mole, to a dolphin, and even to a fire truck. Most of these segments can be really fun….just don’t be surprised if they don’t last very long.

So as you can see, Kirby’s new, yarny form has actually changed things around quite a bit. In a bad way or in a good way….I am honestly neutral in the matter. I will admit that it did feel different at first, just because it is Kirby and I am naturally expecting to see him swallow every enemy in sight or float above them for the entire stage, but that’s not what the game developers were going for here. They were going for a unique gameplay experience and I think they succeeded at that. In fact, I think they succeeded so much that the game almost feels like a different game altogether (again, that can be seen as a positive or a negative). I mean, you still have a lot of the familiar Kirby faces and enemies, but the atmosphere itself is just so different and unique (and I’ll get into that more later).

The game itself is still a classic Kirby platformer at heart. You make your way through side-scrolling levels, trying to survive the onslaught of enemies and obstacles in your path, sometimes using level-specific gimmicks or transformations to reach the end. And like Kirby Squeak Squad, you will also find treasures scattered across each level, some of them just stranded along the beaten path, others stashed away in hidden areas, and some that may seem right in front of you, but require you to find or do something a bit earlier on it the level. These treasures aren’t necessary for the completion of the game, and really only offer you some small bonus features (sound test selections, and stuff to decorate your apartment with (something else I’ll talk about later), but finding them does definitely add some extra game time and replayability if you get into the “gotta collect them all” mindset, which I am always in whenever I’m gaming! =P

As for game length, if you just want to play through the game and get it done, the game itself is not very long. However, I don’t necessarily think the game too short either. If anything, I feel like the game has just the right amount of length, for both a normal and 100% playthrough. I have seen quite a few people complain about the length, especially considering how “easy” they think the game is, but honestly, in my mind, those people are not gamers….just complainers. There is no perfect game people…especially in an unbiased sense. The sooner you learn that, the better off you will be. I mean seriously though….what do you want? A game that is 20 worlds long, each world having 10 levels? If that isn’t pushing the envelope, I don’t know what is. But alas, I’m not going to get into a whole rant on that. As for extra stuff you can do in the game, aside from collecting all of the treasures in each level and getting high bead scores on all the stages, there are a few other things you can do and accomplish as well. For one, there are actually quite a few mini-games you can play that actually stack-up with the 100% game completion. These mini-games are just simple “find this,” “collect or destroy this much in the time limit,” and “get to the goal first,” type mini-games that you play over certain segments of each level, but they at least add a bit of variety to the game. My only suggestion to you is that you probably shouldn’t play all of these games at once. They are better left to do in small spurts during the main quest. I actually ended up waiting until the very end of the game and easily spent around two hours just working on that. Some of them can be quite fun and interesting though. Another thing you can do, as I briefly mentioned earlier, is that you can decorate your own apartment, a small living space for Kirby that plays no practical purpose during the course of the game, but something fun you can do (if you find decorating a useless room fun). You can decorate your room with a wide assortment of souvenirs/furniture/figurines and different wallpaper and carpet fabrics you unlock during the course of the game (through treasure chests, mini-games, and the in-game shops). My only gripe about this, aside from the fact that it just seems pointless, is that there is not very much functionality at all. Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying the idea was bad or stupid, or anything like that. I know there are a few people out there who might find this fun, or at the very least, something interesting to try and do just because it’s there, and in that right, the idea is sensible. But the game doesn’t really encourage you to do any of it. They mention it once during the entire game, and I never really found myself going back there at all after that first time. I just wish they would have tried something else to make that feature just a bit more interactive with the game itself, considering how much time you can potentially spend getting beads to purchase all of the different furniture and fabrics, and just collecting them in general. After all, you do have to collect all the items if you want your file to say “100% Completed.”

As for the game controls, I think they work pretty well, considering how much of the Kirby formula was changed for this title. Movement and reaction time is usually pretty solid for the most part. Just make sure you don’t forget that you aren’t playing an older Kirby game where he can fly. Try to remember the yarn you are working with. =P

Now, one thing that really impressed me about this game, which is strange because normally I’m not as affected by this, was the graphics and music. I’ve always been a gameplay > graphics/music type of guy, but if there was one game that got me thinking otherwise (or at least “close to otherwise, because I love the gameplay here too), this game would be first on the list. The environments in this game are just beautiful, and the music fits so well with those environments. You normally wouldn’t think a world made out of yarn and fabric could be so appealing to the eye, but for this game…I just felt the opposite. I got the feeling that I was literally just staring into a work of art the entire time. Everything seemed just so aesthetically pleasing, and I loved just walking around and admiring the all of the environments and really getting into the music. Seriously….whoever created the graphics and the music…..I want to give you either a hand-shake or a hug after the amazing work you put into this game.

Another thing worth noting is that this game does have a 2-Player option for co-op. I will admit though, I haven’t exactly tested this out yet. I was kind of hoping to find someone to play this game with before I had to write about it, but the jerk never showed up. =\ Bah, he is a loser anyways. =P From what I have seen from videos, basically it’s a way where you can team-up with your partner to make some sections of the game a bit easier (for example, I saw a video where you could use your partner as a projectile against bigger enemies, and another part where you could use him/her as a stepping stone to jump to a higher place). It’s a pretty cool concept.I only wish I could have experienced it a bit before writing this. Oh well, I'm sure there is someone out there in this state who would play co-op with me...maybe even a cute girl wearing Wario clothes. ;) =P

Well, the only thing I really have to talk about now is replayability. Honestly, I wouldn’t say there is THAT much, in the sense that it’s probably not a game you want to immediately play again right after you finish , but I’m sure it’s definitely a game I will want to revisit to see some of the levels again and get WOWed once more by the amazing atmosphere the game presents many times in the future.

Overall, Feel Good did an amazing job creating this game and I give them major props for releasing a new, exciting, and eye-appealing chapter to the Kirby series, a very unique chapter at that. The game definitely excelled in its presentation and the execution was pretty damn good as well. It may not feel like a Kirby game, and there may be a few things in the game that kept it from being a perfect title (in my opinion anyway), but as a stand-alone game, it did just that…..it stood out. If I had to give it a score, I would give it a 4 or 4.5 out of 5.

LP Possibility: Hell Yes! Just stop asking me if it will be soon. I will LP the game when I’m ready to LP it. =P

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Well, I think I’ve rambled on enough about stuffz and epic yarnz for the week….at least for this blog entry anyways…considering I’m up to 5 pages in Microsoft Word now. So I guess I will leave it at that and bid you guys and gals adieu! See you next week!

Later folks!