Princess PEACH... Or How Garrett Became A Gamer

Garrett has fiddled with my old Gameboy Advance SP off and on for a little while now but sometime over the last couple weeks he seemed to adopt it as his new best friend.


Sadly, Garrett asked me to take a picture of him and his gameboy. Sigh.

All he liked to do at first was get Mario up on Yoshi and then run them both into a pit and laugh at them. Then, one day about a week ago, my boy done made me proud. I was sitting at the computer, likely working on yet another blog post, when I hear a familiar sound in the background. It was the Level Complete song from Super Mario World!

Garrett had finished a level all by himself! WOO!

Ever since then, it has been a rare day when Garrett hasn't spent a bit of time playing HIS Mario game. This is the kid who used to tell me to turn off the video games.

So yesterday, after digging ourselves out of the giant pile of snow in our driveway, Garrett and I drove down to EB to pick up Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii. We had a blast playing it when we got home but I noticed a trend. When we fired up the game, Garrett was playing as Yoshi, which was fine as he loves that little green dude.



Then something started to happen. Garrett played a match as Princess Peach and then she became his go-to character for the rest of the afternoon. What made this particularly funny was the fact that I had a couple of friends over yesterday afternoon (who shall remain nameless) and Garrett kicked their butts TWICE IN A ROW... WITH PRINCESS PEACH! A 3 3/4 year old beat two 30-somethings WITH PRINCESS PEACH!


(That's why they're remaining nameless.)

What's really sad is that Garrett was trying to say he was feeling sick today so he didn't have to go to the babysitter (he goes every Monday). Why was he sick? He wanted to stay home to play more Smash Brothers with me. He's 3 3/4 years old and he's already trying to fake being sick to stay home to play videogames!

THAT'S MY BOY!

The Gaming Rundown

I haven't really ranted and raved about games lately so I figured that I'd do a quick rundown of what I'm working on and what's worth playing according to me.

Professor Layton & The Curious Village



This just came out today for the DS and I can't wait to spend the rest of the evening losing myself in the puzzles. It's got a great sense of style, the animation is done by Studio Ghibli of Princess Mononoke fame (only with a very European feel) and the puzzles have been cobbled together by some sadistic 300 year old Japanese professor with a penchant for breaking minds. I've only done the first 6 puzzles but there have been a couple tricky ones already. I'm scared about the ones later in the game!

No More Heroes



Just getting a copy of this game is worth a post in itself (I'll probably do this later in the week) but suffice it to say, it was worth the drive to Kitchener. If you have a Wii and want a very stylish, very crude but very fun ode to videogames, you must try this game out. Plus it's the closest you'll get to having a lightsaber game for the time being. Of course, if you hated Killer7, stay far, far away.

Sins Of A Solar Empire



I've only started working on this on over the last day or two but I am afraid of how much of my time it will suck up once I really get into it. It's a mixture of 4x galactic conquest (like Civilization) with Real Time Strategy controls (like Warcraft or Command & Conquer). I spent a bit of time on my first real game last night and found it to be very deep yet very user friendly. Of course, I got into a bit of a stalemate with the computer as I had occupied all of the solar systems except the one that AI controlled. I couldn't get into that system because he had about 400 ships waiting to blow me to pieces if I poked my nose in and he couldn't get out because I had blockaded all of the jump points and would take out the few ships he could send through at a time... sorry... getting nerdy there...

Suffice it to say, it was very satisfying and I've barely scratched the surface, let alone played online against my other SoaSE playing friends.

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And that's it for now. I've been plunking away at Burnout: Paradise and Rock Band as well, but I'm stuck on a couple songs in Rock Band and I can't seem to drive more than 5 feet in Burnout without wrapping my car around a tree. That said, I did have a really cool crash yesterday when I drove my little sports car underneath a bus and was able to drive it away, albeit in a much flatter state...

Lost Odyssey comes out this week and looks to be a great Final Fantasy knock-off in the best possible sense of the word. This will be Mistwalker's chance to wow me as I was really disappointed in Blue Dragon, though I'll probably try to finish that game off sometime soon.

Cod of War

Wow. I just finished God of War 2. What a fantastic game. There are a few annoying bits near the end of the game, but all in all it is one of the best gaming experiences I've had in quite some time.

I'm not usually happy when I am able to finish a game in a week, especially if I paid full price for it, but that said, this was worth it. Plus I can go back and play through it again at a harder difficulty to unlock more goodies, so it's cool.

The only downside to finishing it is that it sets up perfectly for God of War 3, which will inevitably be on the PS3. Sigh. Of course, GoW3 won't be out anytime soon, so I'm in no rush.

Tune In For Spartan Week!

What a week to be a shirtless warrior of ancient Greece.

First we had 300 hit on Friday (and in case my last post wasn't clear on the subject, it's 18 kinds of awesome!) and today I got my hands on my copy of God Of War 2! Woo!

The release of GoW2 is kind of bittersweet though. It's great that it's out and I'm sure it'll be at least as amazing as the first one, if not moreso.

The sad fact of the matter is that God Of War 2 is essentially the last major release to hit the PS2. Now, the system HAS been around for 7 years now and it has a fantastic library of games, so it's not like the PS2 is going the way of the Dreamcast and disappearing years before it should. That said, the PS2 was the first console that I had ever picked up on launch day and it was basically the system that got me back into console gaming in a hardcore fashion.

Hmm... maybe I shouldn't be sad that it's seeing its final game. I'm afraid to think about how much money and time I've poured into it (and the other consoles I've picked up since)... yeeps!

Ah well. I'm counting down the hours to Garrett going to bed. Once he goes to bed, the TV is all mine and I'll be slicing up harpies and destroying the Colossus of Rhodes like nobody's business!