Earthbound

 

So I finally finished Earthbound, THE cult game that everyone spoke of and with Ness (a character possessing strong psychic abilities) in Super Smash Bros poked everyone's interest who hadn't played the game, including me. So Nintendo finally released the game for the virtual console all across the world so the first thing I got from the virtual console when I bought the Wii U was this game since I was clearly interested. That was half a year ago and I finished it this Sunday. I gotta say, I will probably be threatened by the Earthbound fans, cause it wasn't really my thing... Please don't kill me! Really, I can see why so many like it. It's charming, charming as hell, the music, the world, the characters and all the wacky things that happens. Sadly it isn't enough for me to say this is the best game of all time. Let us begin with the story. A meteor hits outside your house so you go out investigate and later meet up with your obnoxious bully neighbor Pokey. There you meet Buzz Buzz, an intergalactic police bee that tells you about Giygas, this alien overlord that will conquer earth if Ness doesn't stop him. Buzz Buzz gets killed by Pokey's mother and you set out to finish the job. On the way you meet Paula, another psychic and apparent love interest (well they appear to be around 10 years old so not much more than close friends, but still), Jeff scientific engineer  and Poo, a psychic martial artist and future king of some enlightened society.

One reason I might not get this instant love might be the rpg sin for leaving the game for a month or two before continuing, putting me in the dark at certain times on where I'm supposed to go and what some things do. Still, didn't stop me from enjoying the final battle. This gonna be spoilers so heads up if you care. So to fight Giygas you must travel to the center of the earth in a transporter. There you find out that it isn't enough since you need to travel back in time as well by putting your soul into robots (almost a reversed Terminator time travel). You find Giygas and Pokey who (for some reason) appears to be the brains behind Giygas since Giygas have gone mad for some unknown reason (how Pokey got there I didn't quite get). You fight of Pokey which leaves you alone with Giygas. To defeat Giygas you need Paula to use Pray (the game gives you a hint by making Pokey mock you that no one will save you and you are all alone so you are supposed to get that you "pray for help" even though as far as my understanding went Pray only gave you some small HP recovery, figure that out) that will ask your friends and families you meet on the journey for aid, in the end that isn't enough. So Paula prays out into a void a couple of times. First her prayer disappears, but then it grows stronger and stronger and this unknown character hears this and joins in the praying. Each time a couple of letters gets displayed until the whole name is shown, showing the name that you entered as your name, meaning it's you who prays. That's pretty neat. Must have been rather unique at that time to put you the player in. Today I can mention Baiten Kaitos and Bravely Default that have done it even more (I won't say better, but put more hints of it into the game that you as a player guided the main characters). Your prayer deals huge amount of damage and kills Giygas. The characters souls return to their bodies, the group goes there separate ways and Ness takes Paula home and then goes home himself and tells his mother about his adventure by showing her the album a photographer made during the journey. And then after the credits roll the game seems to start over, but when you open the front door you get a letter from Pokey telling Ness to try and catch him. The End...? A damn cliffhanger. Well, lets see if it takes another 20 years until we get Mother 3 (or even Mother 1) to the rest of the world.

So the story is fine, the ending is good so what's the problem? Small things that just irritates me, but first let's discuss the good gameplay aspects. No random encounters, and best of all, if you are over leveled and you accidentally walked into a low level enemy the screen goes black and the enemy auto-dies. THANK GOD! Best rpg mechanic ever. The HP/PP counter is neat (if you get hit the counter rolls down and if you are fast enough you can reverse a deadly hit with a cure spell or such). The bad then, why isn't there a window or button that lets you see that the different healing spells does? Do I have to memorize it (or use a guide by the side)? It's get obnoxiousness if one character starts to cry and I chose to use healing alpha instead of healing beta wasting a turn and some PP, all because I couldn't memorize what spell does what. Also equipping weapons. Mostly Ness is affected by this, but it's still irritating. Some weapons miss a lot more than others. Do you see a lowered accuracy indicating that is the problem? No. Use a damn guide that anyone that bought it in the US back in the day got. Just irritates me. And now the most irritating thing ever, the damn self-destruct enemies. In Final Fantasy, bombs for example will self-destruct on you if you push them into the danger zone without finishing them giving you a tactic of giving all to avoid damage. Here, if you kill them they will self-destruct on you, making you taking damage whatever you do (if you aren't over leveled so you kill them without a fight). And guess what, the end-game is riddled with them, draining your HP and PP all the way to the final boss. It just frustrated the hell out of me. That's not good gameplay, cause I can't do anything against it, except run. Also the teleport mechanic means you either need a straight line or big area to run around in to activate it. More often then not I run into something, waste my PP and need to redo it. Small things like that is probably why I'm not overjoyed, and the hype around it probably didn't help. Maybe a second playthrough in the future without month long absence make me appreciate it more. Again, don't kill me!

The Loser Election

Elections over... so what happened? Well, we apparently have the trickiest parliamentary selection ever. And all parties (except SD) is losers more or less. Wasn't unexpected though, although some things came as a shock. The greens are pretty shocked as they seemed to be around 10 % and fight for the third party place. They end up losing 0,5 %. A bit of Schadenfreude from my side. Everyone else expected them not to climb over 10 % since they have a history of rate good in polls, but fall behind at election. Yeah, and then we have the supposedly left wind that flows over us and was supposed to demolish the center-right government. The left party rose with 0,1 % (which coincidentally is what the whole red-green parties rose with since last election). To be fair the left wind probably was more akin to 2 % if you take into account the feminist party that got a total of 3,1 %, fell below the parliamentary threshold of 4 %, robbing the red-greens of a bit more stable governmental position. Always something good. And the last party of the left bloc, the Social democrats, up 0,5-0,6 % from the parties worst election result in a hundred years. Still, they are probably happy to become prime minister again.

The center-right parties then. Abysmal for all, except maybe the center party that just fell 0,5 %, but was pretty much seen as kicked out of the parliament 1-2 years ago. Also they are probably the party that will have the same party leader in the next election from the right-wing parties... with except from the Christian democrats (who fell 1 %) since they are a bit harder to guess what they will do, their last party leader sat for 30 years so who knows. The Moderat party then, the biggest losers this election with a drop of 7 % to 23 % overall (which historically is a pretty good result, but compared to last elections all time high is pretty dismal). Unexpectedly Reinfeldt left his party leader position as well at the election night and yesterday the finance minister Borg left as well leaving the Moderats without any leader so that will be interesting when the Center-right coalition is without any authority. How did it go for my preferred party? Minus 1,7 % ending on 5,4 %, which came as a shock as all polls suggested either unchanged result around 7 % or a bit lower and then we drops like that.Why did that happened? Should I make a guess it looked like when our party fell, the center party rose with similar numbers which could be seen as a reaction to the much more passionate Center leader that by all accounts made the best out of this election.

The last party, the Sweden democrats. 12,9 %. By all accounts they rose due to around 5 % of the Moderats changed sides in all elections (National, Regional and Local for those wondering). It doesn't matter in which municipality, Landsting or district, the moderats lost between 3-6 % and the Sweden Democrats rose as much. Best guess would be them abandoning their stance in defense issues coupled with a much more relaxed view on immigration and an unwillingness to challenge the Social Democratic ideas around unions and the welfare state. That's my guess at least (coupled with people feeling unsafe and lacking a vision to believe in).

So next discussion will be who will stay and who will go. On  the Center-Right parties Annie Lööf is the only one feeling safe. On the other side I would guess one of the green leaders will go, Åsa Romson who made an abysmal election and pretty much was pushed away for the final debate. Usually the greens rotate 50/50... except last week when she took Wednesday and Thursday on TV4 so that Gustav Fridolin could take center stage on Friday. Will then the Center and/or Liberal party join a Social Democratic/Green minority government? I hope not cause I would be one of those that would punish those parties on election day for "collaborating with the enemy". Making agreements in parliament on certain issues, yes sure, but accepting and supporting their budget? Never! The Center-Left parties can scream how much they want about taking responsibility for Sweden in this situation, but accepting a Social Democratic/Green budget with support from the Left party is not taking responsibility for Sweden.

Election Time

Since I am a political scientist, maybe I should discuss the election in Sweden this Sunday. I think there must be someone out there that find it interesting? Anyone? Well you will still get my analysis of the situation. For the past couple months it looked like the race was over for the ruling coalition. The polls showed a gap of 10 % or higher in favor of a red-green coalition, often even with there own majority. During these four years it even looked like the two smaller parties, the christian democrats and the center party, took turn being below the dreaded 4 % line to enter parliament. The stage was set to change government to either a social democratic - green coalition with support from the left party and/or feminist initiative (this was the speculations after their alright showing in the European Parliament election in June) or a red-green minority coalition that later during the term would negotiate one of the former smaller Alliance parties to join. That was until Friday.

Friday night the Swedish newspaper SvD published a poll showing that the gap between the blocks had halved to 4,5 %. Yesterday evening the Swedish channel TV4 released another poll also indicating a halved gap, this withbthe numbers of 5 %, but the interesting thing to note was that during the last two days of the polling period (Friday to Sunday or how they measured that) the gap was only indicated to be 2,5 or 2,9 or something like that. What happened during that period? Three different debates. I didn't see any of them since I haven't felt excited about the election until now and that is why I'm writing about it now. What I saw reflected was that the Social democratic leader is failing to be the strong leader the party wanted. What caused it seemed to be his inability to answer yes or no to renew the nuclear power reactors that are in dire need of replacing being to old. It's further complicated when he as a former union leader in the industry sector where he was outspoken in favor of new reactor in order to secure the Swedish industry that is heavily reliant on electricity. The final straw is that he plans to form a government with the green party that have clearly stated that they will close one or two reactors during the coming term. So the people want to know, what does he want? And he fails to answer that question. It doesn't help that the left party has clearly stated they will not back down on closing private schools if they form a government (people even talks about expropriation) even going as far as sending a letter to those companies that they should be prepared to leave signed by the party leader.

The green party then? Well, lets say that they have in their manifest a part about abolishing economic growth since it push forward the destruction of the planet due to its limited resources (not taking into the fact that economic growth often is more about refining resources or create substitutes for the resources due to technological progress). In theory it is an important issue, but if you also claim to make sure the welfare state works as is you are pretty much lying. The welfare state and obligation need growth otherwise it collapse, it also goes for the pensions and if you don't have a plan for that or are upfront with it you will pretty much scare away potential voters. From the social democrats that is, the green party seems to live on them. So all in all, the social democrats falls below 30 % while the potential coalition partners rise toward 10 % coupled with inability to show a direction, I actually believe that the middle voters (or the social democratic right.wing) actually jumps ship to the Alliance since they feel that that is a much more reliable alternative. Had the Social democrats still been around 35-40 % I think they would have stayed since the weight behind the party could pretty much force most crazy ideas out of the way, but not below 30 % and what appear as a weak leader.

The Swedish democrats will still make sure there isn't a majority government, but most people probably don't care at the moment.

Mario Kart 8

 

I usually try to write about games that I finished, but it's rather hard when you have a game like Mario Kart 8 which technically has no end since it's supposed to be a multiplayer experience. Well, good enough they do have a end credit scene when you unlock all stages and win on them. Which I've done on the 50cc. As most current Nintendo games it looks fantastic and fun music. The gimmick for this game is the gravitation mechanic so at certain points you can go up in the ceiling or walls. Since I missed out on the 7th game driving under water and flying with a glider or parachute is new as well. The flying mechanic took me until the very last stage I played to figure out since I tend to push forward all the time on my controller when driver to placebo myself into thinking I'm driving faster. This makes the flying portions diving right into the ground. I didn't think it was something wrong until I missed the jump at the airport every single time... as Toad... one of the lightest characters in the game. I figured something was fishy so the following stage I just pushed it backwards when flying and what do you know... I actually flew a bit. That's neat. Maybe should have read the instructions.

Still, maybe it's the fact that I'm playing on my own, I find it kinda boring at times. Maybe it's me playing on easy since the AI isn't up to the challenge so I should probably play with something more tougher. With other real players it gets more intense, this I know since I played all the retro stages with one of my sisters. And that was fun... mostly since I reigned supreme on most courses, all though we very often switched first plays with each other.

Then we have the DLC. First we have the Mercedes cars. I have it, but don't bother with it and isn't probably bothered with it either. The other ones though that doesn't come out until November and May I preordered for some reason. Why I don't know since I'm not that huge of player when it comes to this game. Maybe if I had a social life worth talking about it might be a reason, but I prefer playing alone. Might have been the Blue Falcon's cooler design and Link as a playable character. And mentioning Blue Falcon. I've only played one F-Zero game, the first one for Game boy advance and I can say, I don't play that well. Maybe the Kart rules will make me able to appreciate it more... and actually finishing courses without being blown up.

Super Mario 3D World

 

So played through the main story of the game... mostly alone, one of my sisters played with me the first 2-3 worlds. What's there else to say. It's a typical modern multiplayer Mario game focused on beating times and high-scores working perfectly for competitive players and also emulating the original game. Me myself is more of a Super Mario 64 fan when you explore the levels without the constant time restraint. Maybe I just need someone to play with since I'm not that good to 100 % myself and maybe playing with someone else makes it more fun... or easier since I noticed you need certain characters for some things you need to pick up or activate. If the player is good that is.

Otherwise it's a beautiful game with good music and a lot of replay value and such, but be warned due to the popularity of the Game Grumps every Miiverse showing has at least one comment to them. Hopefully I beat the game before them so take that. In all seriousness, I think they playing the game was the thing that pushed me to finish it after stopping around world 4-5. It's that feeling that you see these people play and you say to yourself "I can play better than those guys, just watch" and then you do, maybe not the same, but similar mistakes. I think I lost like 7 lifes on the fast running level on the 7th world. But as it looks, I beat it to them... or however that idiom goes.

Super Castlevania IV

 

Finally finished this game, was stuck on Death for a couple of months and then a week before I had the pattern of Dracula himself down. Said to be one of the easiest old school Castlevania games and I don't know, whipping in 8 directions together with all the things you can do with the whip also opens for more things to keep in mind and therefore more mistakes to make. Or I just suck as usual. At least I finished all 4 original games. Well, technically IV is just a remake of the first game, but still.

Nice graphics and music as expected by a Konami Castlevania game. This game I actually remembered at the game stores as playable during it's release. To scary for me at the time, but we didn't get any in this series until Castlevania 64. I must say, even though I'm a cheating bastard that abuse the save state option like crazy, the final boss fight still was fun and felt rewarding. Maybe because I replayed the damn fight and every time I lost I restarted just before the fight began and when I finally got the hang of the fireball mechanic and the fire spirits, the first part of the battle ain't so though... that ends of course when Dracula decides to unexpectedly send lightning all over the screen and I just happens to stand in the way... dead. Replay, have a bit over half life left and save when phase 2 starts... unnecessary since I know what's coming so just avoid the lightning and whip the head. Not hard really, but because the Theme of Simon Belmont sets in, it becomes awesome:

Really, Death was much more of a nuisances until I realized that staying put behind the one block of the room was the correct course of action. Only took me a couple of months until I by a fluke chance realized it. Of course it was more like me trying maybe once every second week without results and closing down the game until I actually sat down and observed his pattern. So lesson to take away from this... be patient.