Bogart appreciation post

And, bonus baby Finn. (He got his fur all over the cover.)

Top Fifteen Video Games: #12

12. Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? (PSP)

This is a niche game, a spinoff of the Disgaea series. It is not an RPG, it's a hardcore platformer. When it was first released, a lot of people were comparing the difficulty level to I Wanna Be the Guy. Personally, I don't think it was anywhere near that difficult.

You play as a prinny who has to find Etna's dessert. She gives you a red scarf to wear that will prevent you from exploding, since prinnies explode on impact. Depending on which difficulty you play on, you'll either be able to take three hits before dying or you'll die instantly after being hit once.

You are able to choose the order in which you complete the first six levels and they take place at different times during the day. As it gets later, the levels will increase in difficulty, so the levels with higher difficulty ratings should be completed first in order to avoid an extreme amount of frustration. Which bosses you face is also determined by the time of day you complete the levels.

The final boss fight lasts almost three minutes long (it's timed) and if you do not mash the square button fast enough during the fight, you'll never be able to beat it. You cannot take a break, you need to constantly be pressing that button. The positive side to this is that for as long as you live, after beating this game, you will be able to hit any button prompt for any amount of time. It is a skill you should cherish. ...

You're given 1,000 lives to complete the game. No, that isn't a typo. You really get 1,000 lives. My first time through, I finished with 700+ lives left. 1,000 lives is a very generous amount and I don't think anyone would actually need all of them, but it's nice to know you won't get a game over after losing three lives like you would in some older games.

Thirteen Reasons Why

I realized while I was transferring all of my posts to Blogger that I never wrote a review for Thirteen Reasons Why. My feelings were too personal to share, but I think this is an important book to read, especially for younger people.

I copied these quotes down after reading it. I think they say it all.

"I guess that's the point of it all. No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same."

 "You don't know what went on in the rest of my life. At home. Even at school. You don't know what goes on in anyone's life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person's life, you're not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can't be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person's life, you're messing with their entire life."

He's always sticking his tongue out

He's getting too big to do this

Top Fifteen Video Games: #13

13. Resident Evil Remake (Gamecube, Wii - Resident Evil Archives)

This is what every game in the Resident Evil series should aspire to be.

The story isn't a masterpiece like Silent Hill 2 or Eternal Darkness, but by zombie standards it is definitely better than most. You're a member of S.T.A.R.S., investigating an abandoned mansion to find other S.T.A.R.S. members who were sent in before you and have not returned. Once inside, you discover that the mansion is overrun with zombies and that the Umbrella Corporation is responsible for the T-virus that created them.

You don't just face zombies, you have to fight off dogs, plants and sharks, among other abominations. Like Hunters. In my opinion, the Hunters were the most terrifying enemies in any of the Resident Evil games. They're fast, they do a lot of damage and they look hideous.

There are other problems. Like a certain enemy who won't die. And the fact that killing zombies puts you in even more danger. Because in REmake, if you don't burn their bodies, they'll come back. Not as regular zombies, as Crimson Heads, zombies with long claws and the ability to run. Your best bet is to try to run past zombies instead of killing them if your gasoline canister is empty.

I don't give Resident Evil the credit it deserves most of the time because I'm so caught up in other games with better stories. But the Resident Evil series is what got me into survival horror in the first place. Without it, I probably wouldn't have played Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Eternal Darkness or any of the other horror games I've grown to love.

Top Fifteen Video Games: #14

14. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

When I was in elementary school, my mother used to keep me home to play Super Mario Bros. 3 with her. Not often, but sometimes. Because, let's be honest. I was better at it than she was and she needed my help.

Out of all the NES Mario games, this one is my favorite. And I also think it's the easiest, which may have something to do with it. It's the first one I was actually able to complete.

Plus, I have so many memories associated with it. Like, as I said, my mother keeping me home from school to play it. Or the boy I had a crush on in kindergarten coming over to play it one day and showing me how to get the secret whistles that allowed you to skip over Worlds. I didn't even know those whistles existed! He changed my life that day. (No, I don't use the whistles to complete the game now.)

Super Mario Bros. 3 was a huge part of my childhood and that's why it is on this list.

(Side note: I hid in my closet for a while when Dennis first came over to play SMB3. Because I was really shy. I still am, but not hide-in-a-closet-to-escape-the-boy-I-have-a-crush-on shy.)

Top Fifteen Video Games: #15

15. Minecraft (PC)

The few people who still haven't played Minecraft always want to know what's so enjoyable about it. I used to be one of those people. "What's so great about digging in a cave for hours on end? How tedious."

Minecraft is an obsessive compulsive person's dream, or nightmare, depending on how you look at it. I have lost hours upon hours of my life playing this game.

It started innocently enough. I was curious as to why so many people were playing Minecraft, so I went on YouTube to look for videos of it. The person I watched constantly walked by coal without mining it. It drove me insane. I kept thinking, "NO, you have to GET THAT!" And that turned into, "I have to buy this game so I can collect every piece of coal ever. If it's there, I will collect it."

There are many different ways to play Minecraft. You can do what I do, which is wander around aimlessly looking for ore to collect. You can build things. Basically anything you can imagine, I've been amazed at some of the things I've seen people design. You can play with or without enemies depending on the difficulty you choose, which adds another element to the game. Enemies mean you have to collect materials AND build some kind of shelter before it gets dark outside. And if you plan to go out at night, you had better craft a weapon to defend yourself with.

On top of that, people have created tons of different mods for the game. You can change your texture packs, download new enemies and pets, use Too Many Items, which gives you as many of a certain item as you would like. (That may be obsolete now with some of the newer updates, I haven't been able to play Minecraft for a while because I have been having computer issues.) And if you don't want to play alone, you can get on a server and play with other people.

There are people who also make really elaborate adventure maps for others to play through. Some of them are amazing and so well executed.

Minecraft is updated frequently with new features. This isn't a game that was just thrown out there and the developers stopped working on it. They've put a lot of effort into making the game great and giving people the features that they want and new challenges so the game never gets boring.

Top fifteen video games

A while back, I created a list of my top fifteen favorite movies. Why fifteen? Why not five or ten? I love too many of them to narrow the list down to five or ten. It's the same with video games. Even now, I had trouble editing this list down to fifteen games because there are so many others that I feel should be on here.

I've already made a post about my favorites/least favorites in video games. Characters, games by genre, etc. And I did a video series on YouTube about it (which has since been made private because I've abandoned my channel). I don't know if it was more difficult to choose one favorite game by genre, or to include all genres and choose just fifteen favorite games. Either way, I've done it.

Just for the sake of clarity, allow me to explain what I look for in a video game. Gameplay is probably the most important thing, closely followed by story. If the gameplay is tedious and boring, it takes all the fun out of playing. I loved the idea behind Fatal Frame, fighting off ghosts with a camera. Acquiring different upgrades as you progress through the game. It was a nice change from picking up a gun and shooting enemies. Story is important because it's what keeps you interested in a game (usually). There is a reason why so many people consider Silent Hill 2 the best game in the series. The story is incredible.

Aside from gameplay and story, I also appreciate a great soundtrack. To go back to Silent Hill again, those games would not have been nearly as unsettling without Akira Yamaoka's brilliant compositions playing in the background.

The characters have to be likable. Otherwise you end up with a game like Resident Evil 4, where instead of rescuing the president's daughter, you want to be the one to kill her. Unfortunately, that will get you a game over.

Voiceacting is another thing that's important to me. Bad voiceacting completely takes me out of the game. Games like Uncharted have really been stepping it up though, and hopefully all games will have that quality soon.

That being said. The games will be posted over the next fifteen days. I realized after I finished writing the post that it was way too long, even by my standards.

Games that almost made the cut: Dead Space, Donkey Kong Country, Plants vs. Zombies, Persona 3.

Have you ever played Nightmare?

In case you're wondering:

This week, I read The Forbidden Game series. I'm a bit older than its intended audience, but I wanted to read it because L.J. Smith wrote it and I loved The Secret Circle books when I was in high school. The plot sounded interesting enough, so I figured, why not?

It took Finnick five days to go in this cat tunnel

Now he won't come out.

And I can't pet him, because then he does this.

And INSIDE the tunnel, he looks like one of the demons from Supernatural. Look at Finnick's eyes.

And look at Ruby's eyes.

I made Alistair king

And he broke up with my character.

I'm even getting screwed over in Dragon Age Origins.

One of my favorite books

I'm pretty sure this is an original copy from 1947. Since that's what it says under the copyright information.

The book is a bit tattered and beaten up, but it's mine and I love it. And I kind of like that about it...It gives the book character. It's old, it's been around. Other people read it before I did. I need to read it again.

Evidence that Finnick attacked my raptor

Look at my poor dinosaur. >:(

Look. At. These. Claws.

So then he did this. And I was going to forgive him because he was being so cute.

But then this happened...

(That's Bogart's fur in the picture.) I keep all my flat irons in that bag. I took them out because I needed one earlier, and he crawled in there and wouldn't come out. When I tried to get him out, he would swat at me. >:( And he stayed in there for an hour.