Rich George's WWYD Journal

This is Rich_George's WWYD Journal for Ed Bellis's What Would You Do contest. It chronicles a week in the life of Rich_George.

March 13, 2008
I didn’t do much today, which is not a surprise to me. Since the weekend, I’ve been alone in the apartment with no classes (spring break) and no responsibilities. I’ve rediscovered how much I love that. I occasionally used to have that when I still lived at home when my parents would go away for a couple days or what not. It feels so wonderful to be completely alone, in my own quiet, timeless universe. But I’m supposed to be talking about what I specifically did today, I guess. Well, I can’t exactly fill 4 096 characters with what I did, since that would be practically nothing. I hope my thoughts of the day count as being “about my day.”

My Wii came in the mail yesterday. I really only needed two things to convince me to buy one: backwards compatibility and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Like yesterday, today I played a lot of Brawl. I’m absolutely loving it, although right now I’m wondering if there are only 20 events, because I can’t seem to figure out how to unlock more. What the heck? Melee had 52! Not that I’m complaining or anything. Today the replay sent out by Nintendo was Sonic on a target test level. When I started watching it, I thought, “Oh yeah! Sonic’s in this!” On top of all the amazingness the game already offers you, there’s a bounty of wonder to unlock. The gameplay is amazing. I like the new air-dodge system, but I cannot conceive of why the hell they took out L-canceling; I just hope that there are other methods to maintain the speed of gameplay and usability of aerial moves. p.s. Wario’s fully charged fart does 40 damage?! WTF?! I’m pretty sure that’s more powerful than any single move in Melee. Hmmm, Ganon’s up-tilt, maybe? I forget. Lots of cool new items. Love the assist trophies. (Tingle, did you seriously just rain a dozen hammers down on the playing field? Really? Oh, Tingle.) Love the Smash Ball, especially the tension in considering whether or not to try attacking it right away since you might just be softening it up for the next guy; and most (but not all…) final smashes are actually nowhere near insta-kills, so it doesn’t feel unfair. Don’t like the Dragoon pieces. (Who intially picks them up is mostly decided by who is randomly nearest, and stealing them from the other player only invloves attacking them, which you would be doing anyway. Thus all it does is push the winning player further ahead.) Love the pitfall. (Trying to recover, are we? Eat pit!) Really don’t think the golden hammer was necessary; the game has enough absurd randomness already. Speaking of which, who’s pathetic idea was it to put in the mechanic that occasionally makes you slip and fall when you try to run?! This is the one thing in the game that upsets me, because you can’t turn it off. To me it’s a big F-you to all the serious Smash players. “Oh, so you want to make everything so academic,” Nintendo says, “turning off all items and banning half the stages we make? Well how would you like a nice random stun! You like that? Yeah, I thought so.” Dedede is hilarious and awesome and bubbly, but what’s up with Diddy Kong? Diddy seems really bad… maybe I just need to figure him out.

Hmm, what else did I do? I made myself some pasta and ate it. The sauce was “tomato and basil” which when I looked at that reminded me that I have spices that my mom gave me as a gift and I could be using them on stuff I make. So I put some extra basil on my pasta… yeah, exciting day today… Then I got a shower and came into my room to check WWYD, which I read and became annoyed that it was yet another challenge that assumed you were going to read it within 24 hours… ugh. Seriously, if “Ed Bellis” made a challenge that was “reply to this topic within an hour of my posting it,” I would lose and everyone else would easily win. At least that’s how it feels. With this week’s challenge being so time-consuming, I’m hoping the whole WWYD thing doesn’t become like so many other things I do for fun in life, taking up much too much of my time until I realize I’m wasting my life away on meaninglessness. That happened to me with the Neopets website once. Then again, writing a mini-diary isn’t meaningless; it’s helping me think about some things (that I won’t write here). Anyway, I met the word requirement; I think I’ll go listen to Mme Sarkozy me dire que ma vie ne vaut pas grand-chose (elle à la place de moi maintenant).

March 14, 2008
Today was another day of lazing around, playing Smash, etc. I didn’t unlock any new characters today; I’m getting anxious! And I’m consciously not looking up online how to unlock them, because I like the surprise of getting the “Challenger approaches” screen. When that screen for Marth came up; I got so excited. And that’s for a character that I’ve already payed in Melee! Anyway, I’ll probably leap up and down giddily when I finally face Snake or Sonic, at which point I’ll probably get so flustered making sure I beat them that I’ll make some dumb mistake like attacking a bomb.

Today I unlocked the French version of that Japanese Pikmin song; that was cool, since I didn’t know there were any French songs in this game. I learned a new word from it—veiller—which I now know means to be vigilant in the sense of staying awake or of watching over someone. (The last line of the song is “Nous veillons sur vous comme des anges.”) I promptly memorized the lyrics so as to sing along whenever it comes up in the game (probably soon to the great annoyance of my apartment-mate). Of course, now it’s stuck in my head.

Anyway, today I tried getting more familiar with Meta Knight and the Pokémon trainer. Meta Knight is a tough nut to crack since his moves do very little damage and have weak knockback. One neat advantage he has is that his up-B is actually usable in normal combat since it doesn’t incapacitate him but rather sends him into flight. His other special moves seem kind of weak and useless though, especially the side-B, but I have an inkling that his teleport could prove deadly if mastered.

The Pokémon trainer is very fun to play, with all three pokémon being decent fighters, with the possible exception of Squirtle, who has a couple water moves that only push the opponent back rather than doing damage. Ivysaur is quite hilarious, especially his neutral-B move which fairly reliably does an easy 20 or 30 damage to a level-9 AI, simply by holding down the B button while near the enemy.

Speaking of incompetent AI, I’m sorry to conclude that Brawl still has it. Some of the inexplicable idiocy of the AI in Melee has been fixed. Enemies actually pick up and use items (although unfortunately I’ve still seen a couple instances of the AI inexplicably not picking up a dragoon piece right next to them), and they no longer walk into your charged attacks. However, I still find it incredibly easy to defeat any single level-9 AI opponent, even with a character I’m unfamiliar with. I saved a reply today of me playing as Mario against Peach on Onett, doing nothing but firing about 30 fireballs in a row at her as she helplessly struggled to recover from my, er, impenetrable assault. It’s too bad, because without a legitimate 1-on-1 challenge, it doesn’t really feel like a fighting game to me. It doesn’t bother me all that much, since it’s still one heck of a fighter against a real life person. Now, however, having said all that, there is a twist—occasionally the AI will suddenly become godlike and pummel me mercilessly! I played one match on the Melee Starfox stage today against Wario, and he was ridiculous! He hyper-aggressively attacked me at every chance, skillfully countering my advances and never letting up for a second. He KO’d me 6 times in 4 minutes! Man, that felt good to finally face a challenge. I’m just wondering what magic I can whip up to make the AI always that good.

Other than play Brawl, today I browsed the internet a bit as usual, and I talked online a little to a couple of my French pen pals. I continue to hope and pray with tentative optimism that my application to go teach English in France next year will be accepted. It’ll be a big blow to my psyche if I’m not accepted, although saying that makes me think that perhaps I should prepare myself so that it isn’t. Eh, I’ve got other things to worry about for now. Things that I can actually control.

…like school this semester. Ugh. I wasted spring break by not getting caught up with any of the work I’ve fallen behind in. Come on, self, this is the last semester of this bullcrap college you’ll ever have to go through; just get it over with already!

March 15, 2008
Nothing interesting happened today. I don’t mean that in a bad way, though. I watched a Swedish short film called Lucky Blue about about the beginning of a relationship between two boys who live in a trailer park and who are considerably more attractive than you would generally expect trailer park boys to be. Then again, it’s in Sweden, where trailer park lives in you. Wait, no, that’s Soviet Russia. The film was actually pretty good. I expected it to neatly solve all the conflicts and end with an embrace; instead it ended with a quiet conversation and a moment of contemplation that subtly suggested (to me, who sees symbolism in everything) what might follow in their lives.

Played more Brawl, duh. Didn’t unlock any new stages or characters, but I’ve been enjoying making ridiculous new stages with the level editor, including one which consists of nothing but the large version of the mushroom tile, with floor underneath—it actually plays surprisingly well!

I was going to really try getting back into my responsibilities today. I did the dishes until the dry rack was full, but so far I haven’t gotten around to putting them away and washing the rest. I should really keep a clock next to me while I play Brawl so I can be aware (be AWEH-ERRRR, Ritziiiiieeeee) of the time. Hmm… more comments on Brawl… the downloadable submitted custom stage today was utter crap (just a giant column with ladders running up both sides). You’d think they’d be getting so many submissions now that they could easily be releasing out a fun, clever stage each day. The photo today wasn’t really anything either; just Yoshi standing in front of some character, possibly from adventure mode. Seriously, Nintendo, aren’t you putting in at least, say, half a man-hour per day on choosing this stuff? The shots in that dojo post were pure gold. Robot Wario? Pure genius. OH. I just remembered. The “Devil” assist character. What. The. F. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. I was always annoyed in Melee by being unable to see your character on the edges of the stage, especially since the AI seemed to be able to magically see on the edges anyway. And now we have a trophy that actually encourages, nay, mandates this poppyc***? (avoiding auto-flagging there) Seriously, between this, the Nintendog, the Animal Crossing trophy, the stopwatch item and the random slips, I think Nintendo is actually convinced that it’s fun to be unable to control the game. Hey, I have an idea for an assist trophy. When you pick it up, everyone is controlled by level one AI for the rest of the match. You didn’t really like using your controller anyway, did you? It was too difficult. You appreciate the break. You. Appreciate. It. P.S. Careful, sometimes the trophy only affects you!

Ike is an interesting character, because at first glance he seems unfairly overpowered. His regular attacks have about as much knockback as most characters’ smash attacks, and his smash attacks seem to hit like the baseball bat. Many characters need to be learned to play effectively with. Ike needs to be learned to play effectively against. His obvious flaw is that most of his attacks, especially his smash attacks, have long startup time, so you should usually be able to evade or counterattack easily. Thing is, some of his attacks are quick, like his neutral A and up-tilt, both of which have huge knockback (or, er, knockup, as the case is for the latter). Time will tell if he truly is one of the most powerful characters in the game or if there are more easily exploitable weaknesses that I have yet to disocover.

Well, tomorrow’s Sunday, the last day off before classes start again. I’m finally going to have to face the consequences of having put off all my work of the semester up until now. It’s kind overwhelming how much is on my plate now, but I think the best thing to think about the motivate me is that this is my last semester. If I can just plow through this crap, I’ll never have to do it ever again. My undergrad career will be over. I’ll never have to go back to school again if I don’t want. Just. Get. It. Over. With. Yes, I think that will help. I always find that I am more motivated to work if I see an eventual purpose in it, or a goal that I am actually accomplishing aside from the general assumption that it is bad to fail stuff. All right. I’m determined to make this happen. I can and I will.