Za Worldo

I finally finished The World Ends With You, and it was glorious. It’s been the first DS title that I have played extensively at home, and I still have to unlock all the secret chapters. It is amusing to go back and one-shot all the early bosses, and I am amazed at how much text there is (thank goodness you can fast-forward after beating the game). Looking back, I was super noob on my first run-through, and the extra backstory is really intriguing. This game took advantage of everything the DS had to offer, and the art and story were absolutely top-notch.

In the first part of the story, I was soooooo annoyed at Neku as he is just a ball of hot emo. I kept hoping that Cait Sith would punch Neku in the nads or something, but it never happened. I liked partnering with Shiki, as her combo system is very simple. I think Joshua’s probably the best partner because his Fusion is easy to spam, but his voice is annoying and his attacks are not nearly as funny. As for Beat… he is a dumbass but there are times when his combo system is really good. Unfortunately, there are also times when the stupid cards just refuse to match up and you get screwed.

I also didn’t realize how intriguing the optimization process is during battles. I guess if you have mad skills you can control Neku and your partner, set the difficulty to Hard or higher, decrease your level to 0, and start chaining 16 enemies. Unfortunately, I’m not quite at that point, so certain tradeoffs have to be made. For instance, I totally cheese out the Taboo Noise by just setting difficulty to Easy and luring them out before putting the difficulty back at Hard for the other Noise. I also tend to use pins that have easy input methods. The Electricity ones where you scratch a empty space are probably the easiest to use without looking (so you can concentrate on your partner’s combo).

And finally a few somewhat spoilery thoughts:
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Mass Effect So Far

I’ve been putting a lot of free time to Mass Effect lately. The PC version is very entertaining and I’ve really been enjoying the story. The dialog system is especially good, and the grainy film effect makes everything look like you are playing a movie. I’m playing through as a renegade soldier Jane Shepherd, but I can definitely see myself going back through a second time as a paragon something John Shepherd.
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That Evil AI

I’ve been playing our new copy of Mario Kart with Bunky, and it’s fun (although not that innovative). Since I had been beasting through the DS version lately (once I started playing as Yoshi, I began to spank the CPU), I was used to much of the new version, and I dominated all the DS inspired tracks. We tried the wheel that was included, and I did not like it. It’s too sensitive, and accidentally moving will result in veering out of control. I guess if you practice with it a lot it could be good, but the nunchuck-remote combination felt solid, especially since I was coming from the cramped controls of the DS. Manual drifting is also way better, since the auto-drift is kinda odd and doesn’t work well with the wheel at all.

The catchup AI is still out of control. At one point, I got nailed with a shell in mid-jump in such a way that my car got stuck teetering on the other side’s edge, and could not fall down for about 5 seconds. First to last in a single move =(. Another time, I was in fourth place for a stretch, and yet still got hit by a blue shell. Since I didn’t read the manual, I only just found out today (while reading a review) what the heck that lightning cloud thing did. I thought it would shrink everyone else and make me faster automatically! Also the Bullet powerup has some snags where you will suddenly lose its power over a patch of lava. That sucks. All in all, though, it’s been very fun on the big screen.

Brawling

I picked up SSB Brawl this weekend. First off, I only played Melee for a few days on the GC, so it is safe to say that I am terrible at Brawl. The new controls took a while to get used to as well. I’m still trying to decide which character to use, since I know that I should probably get some practice with one person before I start branching off. Bunky and I played some team matches against the CPU and I was able to get her started with simple A attacks and the occasional smash. Currently, she favors Fox.

I noticed there were several balance changes this time around. Samus’ charged B is not nearly as good anymore, and Peach’s down A has also been toned down. I’m considering Pit and everyone’s favorite yellow electric rat right now, although both do have the disadvantage of being very light. Pit seems to have outstanding recovery, with otherwise balanced moves (and spammable arrows). Pikachu has some underrated A moves, and down A is excellent. The lightning abilities aren’t superb, but being short enough to avoid projectiles is amusing. Also, holding the beam sword in the mouth is fantastic. I thought Ike was pretty good as well, but his recovery is horrible and I am already bad at recovery as it is.

I’ve unlocked several characters, and now I can spam FALCON PAAAWWWWWNCH to my heart’s content.