I don't have time to do a complete game review this week, and I still am not quite ready to blog about yardwork, walking to work, or the upcoming dodgeball tournament (mostly because that won't happen until this weekend). As is the custom in a situation such as this, it's time to give you an update on the video games I'm currently playing. Also, if you make it to the end of this blog, I have a little treat in store for you. But you're not allowed to skip to the end--you have to read everything!

Super Mario Galaxy - I have collected 70 out of (I'm assuming) 120 stars, and if Super Mario Galaxy continues to be as good as it has been for those first 70 stars, it might end up being my first 10/10 review. Nintendo really knew what they were doing when they made this game. It is exactly what a fun video game is supposed to be--it's the perfect combination of goomba-stomping, challenge, aesthetic appeal, and item collection. The puzzles are plentiful and fall gracefully between "too easy" and "so hard, they make me feel stupid." The platforming is much easier to execute than in any 3D platformer I have ever played--I can jump from block to block or planet to planet with unmatched precision. I never feel cheated by the controls; if I miss a jump and die, I know it's my fault, and not that of a sub-par game engine. I've been stuck on levels and not thrown any hissy fit, temper tantrums, or pity parties, which is usually the sign of a very good game. The only game mechanic I'm still having problems with is accurately stomping bad guys--that questionable depth perception is at it, again. Everything is bright and colorful and just feels right. I hope the end-game is just as superb as what I've seen thus far.

Sigma Star Saga - This is a Game Boy Advance game that is part action-RPG, part shmup (2D scrolling shooter like Gradius or R-Type). You play a human working as a double agent for a war-like alien race, and the story is proving to be quite an intriguing little number. In the action RPG sequences, you explore the surfaces of various planets collecting gun power-ups, killing enemies, and advancing the plot. However, there are also random encounters in which you are beamed to a ship and fly a short shmup sequence. It's a pretty cool idea, but not perfectly executed--the ship to which you are beamed is random, and sometimes you end up flying through tight passages with a ship that is either too big or slow to maneuver through them without getting killed. It's rare, but sometimes death is unavoidable. Oops. Other than that, it's a pretty awesome game, and I'm excited to see where the story goes from here.

King's Quest 3: To Heir is Human (Redux) - This is the fan remake of King's Quest 3 made by AGD Interactive. AGD did a fabulous job on their remakes of the first two King's Quest games, and I'm hoping this one is no exception. Amanda and I are playing it together because two heads are better than one when it comes to solving some of the series' nonsensical puzzles. This game is different from the first two in that your character, Gwydion, is the servant of an evil and grumpy old wizard, and he'll kill you if you're holding certain forbidden items in his presence, or if his magic wand is missing, or if you stray too far from home and don't make it back in time before the wizard wakes up from his nap. It's an interesting mechanic, for sure, and it's taking some getting used to. However, the game is off to a good start.

Legend of Grimrock - This is an independent PC game made by a company called Almost Human. It's an old-school dungeon crawler, reminiscient of Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld, and the like. A band of four heroes have been charged with a crime they may or may not have committed. Their punishment? "Freedom"--that is, being shoved into the depths of Mount Grimrock, a huge mountain containing an equally huge dungeon. Escape Grimrock, and the prisoners are free and absolved of their crimes. Die in Grimrock, and...well, that's it. Like I said, this is old-school at its best. Movement is grid-based. Combat requires lots of strategy and tactical movement. Inventory space and weight limits force you to wisely manage your equipment and supplies. You need torches to see where you're going. You need food to stay healthy. There are traps and puzzles everywhere. You can hear monsters clanking around behind walls, filling you with dread because you know you're going to have to fight them soon. There are giant spiders. It's unforgiving. It's terrifying. I love it.

So that's that. Now, your treat. You get to choose some of my upcoming ramblings! There's a poll up on the Mike and the Ninja Facebook page that you should check out. I have completed a few games recently, and I'm asking readers which game they would like to see reviewed next. To add your input, head over to the Facebook page. Results will be tallied next Thursday, and the game with the most votes will be reviewed two Thursdays from now. If the poll is a big hit, I might do one again. If nobody votes, I'll club this baby seal.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you Tuesday with a new comic!

Confidential Cargo, if you don't recall, is the cover operation Renee and Ohtani are using to track The Six. Allegedly it's a company that delivers supplies and equipment to desert research facilities, but the whole ploy is actually just a means of locating The Six.

I have a bunch of work to do this week, so Thursday's blog may be in question. But I'll see what I can do. Just for you.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!

Game: Doom
Platform: PC at first; later, every console on the planet
Year: 1993

I couldn’t play Doom when I was a kid. Not because of the ultra violence or controversial subject matter. Rather, our computer didn’t have enough RAM.

Our lowly IBM had chugged along without a hitch for two years. Craig brought Doom home, and it wouldn’t run?! What is this all about? Something wasn’t right. Doom was a computer game, and our computer was a computer. It should have worked! The only time this had ever happened before was when Craig bought Dig Dug for Atari 7800, and it didn’t work on the Atari 2600. As far as I was concerned, it was an Atari game—what did the number at the end matter?!

Craig explained the RAM situation to me. I didn’t know what RAM was, but the important thing was that we didn’t have enough of it. No, our IBM and its exorbitant two megabytes of RAM were somehow insufficient to run this extravagant new computer game. (Which inevitably makes me think of my current PC and its six GIGAbytes of RAM—I can’t help but be impressed by our progress.)

A couple of weeks later, Craig acquired the extra two megabytes of memory that were essential for future computer gaming. At last, we could play Doom! And so we did…

…And it was okay. I guess. I dunno; I didn’t get into it that much. Maybe I just wasn’t old enough to appreciate it. You would think a 10-year-old would be mesmerized by Doom’s incredible gore and ability to use a chainsaw as a weapon, but it was a little too scary overall, and just wasn’t my thing.

Some 14 years later, I got an Xbox 360, and Doom was available as an Xbox Live Arcade download.  I bought it, and a couple of years later, Craig and I got around to playing through the campaign 2-player style! Doom proved to be quite a bit more enjoyable as an adult, and with a partner with whom to play through the game, it was undeniably a blast.

There’s some story behind Doom, but it doesn’t really matter. It follows some future marine who didn’t fire on civilians when ordered to do so by his commanding officer, so he is transferred to a base on Mars as punishment. Some corporation is experimenting with teleporters on Mars, and accidentally opens a gateway to Hell. The marine has to kill all the monsters and demons that pour out of the gateway, fighting his way through the Mars moons of Phobos and Deimos, and then through Hell itself, to save Earth.

Like I said—it doesn’t matter. What matters is shooting everything in sight (except your partner!) in a violent bloodbath of truth and justice.

Doom is one of the pioneers of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. It looks and sounds great for its era, but play control is limited compared to later FPS’s. For instance, you can’t jump or look up and down, and you can’t aim. Granted, you get an auto-aim, which does a better job than I could ever do, but it’s still a little finicky at times. Play control is smooth and responsive, but the level designs will occasionally require you to cross narrow walkways, which can be a pain. Several levels are also full of lava and slime that can only be safely crossed with the use of a biohazard suit. Unfortunately, the number of suits in said levels are limited, especially with two guys playing through, so Craig and I occasionally had to restart a level because we found ourselves out of suits, and without any other means of advancement. Much like Commander Keen (produced by the same company, Id Software), Doom used the shareware model on its initial release, giving out the first episode for free or cheap, and asking for money for episodes two and three. (There was also an episode four released much later, which was included in the XBLA version that Craig and I played.)

Playing Doom on a high enough difficulty level definitely presents some challenges, especially in the later episodes. Some of these levels runneth over with demons and zombies, forcing Craig and me to play smart and be conservative with our ammo. On the other hand, if we died, all of our progress was saved, and we just respawned at the beginning of the level. As such, we also spent a lot of time charging into rooms full of bad guys like wild men, firing away at everything that moved (including each other accidentally in many cases, but that was usually my doing). I undoubtedly believe our favorite enemies were the big floating heads—I think each of us took some sick, secret joy in informing the other via the headset that we were just killed by “one of those big heads.”

The bosses in this game are out of control for a co-op playthrough. You see, in the single player mode, you can save and load your game at any moment, which means if you make a mistake, you can load your saved game and keep all of the great weapons you’ve accumulated. In this co-op version, however, saving was not an option. Any time we died, we lost all of our accumulated weapons and had to start over with the pistol. Because of this, we spent a lot of time fighting cyber-demon and giant-mechanical-spider bosses with pistols and shotguns, when in a single-player situation we would have had plasma cannons and rocket launchers to make the job much easier. It was similar to being unable to manage the lack of biohazard suits in the slime and lava levels.

Despite all of that, playing Doom with Craig was still a great experience. Even though we died hundreds of times total (one of us died a record 14 times in one level), I had so much fun taking down the hordes of Satan together that the frustration of dying was barely noticeable. Besides that, there’s not too much left to say—it’s a pioneering first-person shooter, and even if you’re not a big fan of the genre, I’d say Doom is worth a look if you’ve never tried it before.

Brian's Rating: 8/10

[Game images courtesy of GameFAQs.]

Now you know who's really in the back seat of all of those limos that you see on wrestling programming. If Stu had stolen a limo from Ric Flair instead of Paul Richards, there would have been eight bimbos back there. Plus Arn Anderson.

It just occurred to me that a good inside joke for wrestling fans would have involved Stu stealing a white Hummer instead of a limo. Ah well.

You'll probably be seeing a new game review on Thursday. If I don't get around to that, you'll get something mundane like a blog about lawn care or walking to work or something like that. I mean, as mundane as you can get when I'm around, anyway, because nothing goes to plan if I'm involved.

I'll see you then! Take care, and thanks for reading!

I joined the high school newspaper staff my senior year. My friend Carol had been on the staff during our junior year, and was in position to become an editor. Meanwhile, my other friend Izzie would be joining the staff senior year. I had a thing for writing (I even had my own blog before I knew what a blog was), and Carol suggested I join the staff, as well. I considered the possibilities of all three of us being on the newspaper staff at the same time, and with uncharacteristic ego and hubris, determined that with our combined grammar skills and editorial wit, we could “run this town.” I signed up immediately.

However, my overinflated sense of self-esteem sputtered after a couple of weeks as reality set it. Unlike what every high-school-oriented television show or 80s movie might lead the audience to believe, high school newspapers (and their staffs) don’t actually have any power or influence over anyone or anything, ever. They share articles and columns about things going on at school or in town, and that’s about it. As far as I know, none of us went on to work for The Daily Planet. But it was a great learning experience, nevertheless, we put together a good newspaper, and I got to write many fun articles and columns. Just don’t go back and read them today—they are actually awful, and usually had something to do with time machines or water guns. What was I thinking?

It turns out I had to cheat my way onto the staff. For reasons lost to time and poor memory, the application I submitted in order to join went missing or was otherwise never processed, and when I received my class schedule for my senior year, Journalism 1 was conspicuously absent. I stormed the counselors’ office after school and demanded (by which I mean timidly requested) I be added to the staff, that I was supposed to be on it! It never occurred to me that I might have been outright rejected from the staff. If I may say so, that was quite a display of gumption on my part to go in there and tell them to add me to a newspaper staff to which I may not have even belonged. The point is they did it, and senior year was set. (I also dropped Calculus, and man, do I not regret THAT!)

Anyway, working on the newspaper was great, except for one thing: interviews. I was one of the sports reporters, and I didn’t think about having to conduct interviews when I signed up. I was terrified, and definitely not the intrepid, muckraking high school newspaper reporter that you see on TV—I was quiet, shy, and put off my interviews until the last possible moment in a desperate attempt to avoid conducting them entirely. Many times, I wrote an article to completion, and then if my editors felt some quotes were necessary, I would begrudgingly go do the interview, usually dragging a friend along because I was scared out of my wits. In hindsight, it was really pathetic, and I most assuredly annoyed every friend whom accompanied me on an interview—I’d stand around and hem and haw, and try to catch a coach or a player when it was most convenient for them, rather than acting like a real reporter and strong-arming my way to some interview time.

There is only one person that I truly enjoyed interviewing. His name is Matt Gordon, and he played soccer and baseball (maybe basketball, too, but I didn’t cover that). Matt is a friend, a talented writer, and an exceptionally funny guy. My interviews with Matt would quickly steer away from typical sports-interview questions about performance and if he thought they could beat Cape the next week. Instead, we’d talk about superstitions, other personalities on the team, pregame rituals, and exactly how long it had been since the last time he’d washed his uniform. I knew an interview with Matt would never fail to spruce up an article.

Now, the tables have turned, and Matt has interviewed me for his blog. It was an honor and a privilege to be considered for an interview, and it was a lot of fun. You can find the interview here. While you’re at it, please take a look at the rest of Matt’s blog. I don’t usually keep such close tabs on a blog, but Matt’s writing has been so good, he’s made me a regular reader. His entries are both thought-provoking and funny, and they cover a variety of topics. Check it out.

In this week's installment of Mike and the Ninja, the role of Mike will be played by Renee.

Not much to report this week; I'm just taking it easy after Comic Con and all of the post-show business that needed to be addressed. I've done some writing ahead and I plan to tackle some drawing on probably Wednesday or Thursday, and then there will be quite a bit of drawing in the next few weeks while I work to rebuild a giant buffer. I need to think of a topic for this Thursday's blog, as well--I have more video games in the queue to review (whew, bad rhyme), but I'm not sure if I'll have time to write something that long or not. That might be better suited for next Thursday's blog. But we'll see.

I'm outta here. Take care, and thanks for reading!