Zelda II Review

A few months ago, I beat Zelda II: The Adventure of Link again for the umpteenth time, and I decided to write about it. Well... I never did. Until now.


Zelda II is great. It combines the sidescrolling action of a game like Super Mario Bros. with somewhat of a fighting engine, and combines THAT with the open exploration and item collecting that the series has always been known for. Awesome.


When I say "fighting engine", I'm referring to the battle system. In every other Zelda game (up to 'Ocarina of Time' and the 3D era of Zelda games), you go up to a bad guy, you press a button on your controller and voila, the enemy is dead. Simple. Unless of course you're fighting a boss, in which case you have to repeat the process a number of times until the boss has been bested.


However....


In Zelda II, fighting requires intense concentration. Maybe this is where the game loses people. You see... if you just go blazing into battle with your button-mashing fingers blazing.... you're screwed. You're dead. Fade to black. Return of Ganon.






In Zelda II, you actually need to pay very close attention to what the enemies are doing at all times. For example, if a bat flies low to theground...watch out! There's a very good chance he might transform into a bat-humanoid thing that breathes fire at you. It's okay though, If you expect this, you can just put up your shield and it's no problem. Be vigilant. The best example however, would be the Palace Guard knights. These guys have swords which they can use to stab high or low depending on their whim (I'm pretty sure they were programmed to stab high or low randomly. There doesn't seem to be any order to their stabby-stab-stab chaos). They also have a shield which they can use to block high and low attacks, so in order to kill them, you need to watch for when they pull their daggers and then (very quickly) raise your shield (or lower it) to block their attack and then (quickly quickly quickly) stab them in the area that they are not currently blocking. Sounds tough? It is. And as you progress through the game, they take more and more hits to kill, but they also give you more and more experience points......which leads me to something I haven't mentioned yet....This game incororates RPG elements.


That's right folks.... ZELDA II is the one and ONLY game in the series to utilize experience points.

For some reason experience points are gained in the form of money. Instead of cellecting rupees, you collect money bags. So every time you grab a money bag you either get 50, 100 or 500 rupees (if memory serves me correct). You also get money for killing enemies. In later levels, the knights that you slay will give you over 1000 rupees each. These knights (and all other palace enemies) come back to life every time you leave the palace. So leaving and coming back in is a great way to build experience points. Whenever you gain the sufficient amount of experience to gain a level, you are asked to choose from 'health', 'attack' or 'magic'. If you choose 'health', your healthbar increases (that's right, NO heart containers). If you choose 'attack', you get stronger (you don't collect better swords in this game, you just upgrade using experience), and if you pick 'magic', your magic meter raises (similar to the magic bar in Link to the Past, you even fill it up with magic bottles).


The game is generally quite easy until later on, when you might get to an area and you're thinking "what the hell do I do now". In some ways, it's almost as ridiculous as "Castlevania II". Remember that orb that glows and looks really important, but when you try to touch it nothing happens? Do you remember buying the 'oak stake' and throwing it at the orb to open it up? No?!? Of course you don't. Who the FUCK is gonna figure that shit out?


Luckily, Zelda II doesn't really get retardedly hard until the very end of the game, at which point I would highly recommend talking to EVERYONE! Oh, and try walking through every wall in the later dungeons....cause ya never know....


I give Zelda II 8/10 deku seeds

i google you

The first time I heard this song, I laughed of course. Nothing like mocking today's technologically literate, pop culture. But now, like most of Amanda Palmer's music (yes I know Neil Gaiman wrote the song, not AFP), it speaks to me. I relate the  song to events in my life. Specifically. In detail. I listen to her songs and I think "I know THAT person in that song" or "THAT happened to me, just like that" and on and on.
Seriously, I have the following sentences come up in conversations with friends:
"OMG I love that new hat you wore in that pic on myspace" 
"Oh yea, I read about that happening to you in your blog"
"Wtf, friend me already..."
Has the blogosphere become so ingrained in normal human socializing? I think it has. Twitter is only making this explode faster. I got my first random follower the other day. I have no idea how this person found me, I do not know her from Adam. DENIED.  Do not get me wrong, Twitter is great. I am using it exactly as I intended to. The ability to drunk dial all my friends at the same time.  It will also give me something to do when I am waiting for an airplane.

Marvel: Behind Closed Doors

IMCML members 'peterparker' and 'vanzetti' have been collaborating on a stop-motion series a la "Robot Chicken".

It involves world domination and exploding soup, so gets ta watchin' PLAYA!

episode 1:

"Om3ga-Point" by Se7en Om3gatr0n

It took me three hours, but I've just made a pretty sweet transformers music video (with music by Nairb McDuck aka Unsound Mind aka Se7en 0m3gatr0n, check it:

Building the Millenium Falcon

Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.




thanks to Unkle Remis for finding this.

watchmen 2: electric boogaloo

i left in a state of bliss.
the opening credits montage came straight out of the brain of zack synder. not only does it establish the fact that this world has super heroes, it also shows how gritty and grim things can get for the people who put on a costume and fight crime. it is not a normal thing to do, even here. and there are prices to be paid. yup, there are serious consequences to superherodom.. you do not get that in spider-man the musical.

i say this film is about 92 to 95% faithful to the graphic novel. this only shows how awesome comic book films can be when they do not stray from the source material. just look at the punisher films, they got progressively better as they followed the comics more and more. i understand they had to trim things down, that means all the secondary characters have been dumbed down to the status of cameos. shame really since it takes away from the human tragedy of putting a name and a face to the victims at the climax.

want plot synopsis? in a world where superheros really exist, wear masks, always have effed up personal lives. one night, one of them gets thrown out a high rise building and it is Rorschach to put together the retired superheros together and solve the mystery. and tragedy ensues.

some real mindfuck moments come from dr. manhattan waxing poetically on quantum mechanics, time/space, and the relationship of termites to humans. hence he never wears pants. seriously, who the hell is going to tell him to put some goddamn pants on. unless they want to get exploded all over their friends' faces.  give it a second watch if it all goes over your head. when it kicks in, trust me.

now for fanboy squee momments:
Rorschach. everything scene he is in is an exercise in intensity and subtext. it takes a lot to act well and be expressive when wearing a faceless mask (see how hard ed norton rocked in kingdom of heaven). i think the reason why Rorschach is so popular  with the fans is how singleminded he is. he needs to find answers, he breaks fingers till he gets them. real simple like.  i personally thought it was cute when child rorshach beat the living hell out of the two older bullies.  even when rorschach is getting attacked by mobs of swat, he puts up the good fight.. grats to him.

laurie, aka silk specter II becomes a bigger whore as things go on. maybe Rorschach is on to something.
her mom, sally... i am so in love with her. something like a cross of bettie page and wonderwoman. but more domestic with age. but still a total flirt. awesome.

the comedian is a total asshole. really. no joke.  shooting a rioter in the back with a canister of gas was really sadistic and funny. however, i was the only one in the theather who laughed when he shot someone in vietnam.  wont spoil who it was, but it was not nice. not nice at all.

i giggled everytime i saw dr. manhattan's penis. after a while, it even got on my friends nerves. i heard a few "GAWD, frank" my work here is done. i have never seen so much cock outside of porn. it was great. american films have no problem with exploiting the female form but when it comes to full frontal male nudity, oh nose, think of the children!!! guess what, the world did not explode. i guess it is ok to show blue wang.  maybe next time, it will not be CG. fangirls can only hope.

ozymandias, aka adrian viedt, is a total dick. what do you expect from "the world's smartest man"? as he should be. honestly, every scene he was in was fierce and played a one-man ambiguous gay duo. not that there is anything wrong with that. i would not like to run into him in a dark alley. for a multitude of reason.

so if you wonder what the world would be like if superheros were real, check out watchmen.