Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Purple Pikmin are Danny Devito, white Pikmin are Michael Jackson. Simple as that.
Comment Commentary
Shin- W-Well you're dumb. >:O

Godel- Heh, it's just a movie about this guy who was born without any immunities, so he had to live in a plastic bubble all his life to avoid dying. He travels the country in a mobile bubble to stop his friend and girl next door from marrying the wrong person.

Mimmi- Haha, don't worry, I'll equally balance my time.

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A lot of movies are filmed out here. We're in a dry, desert area not too far away from Hollywood, you see; so a lot of the deserts you see on television and in movies are out here. Yesterday, I forgot to mention one of the many cool things about Bubble Boy- He grew up in Palmdale (Our sleepy little suburb) and they actually called it that. I thought that was pretty neat.

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Pikmin 2 is as awesome as I had expected it to be. About a week ago, I watched the little intro cutscene on IGN and fell in love with the franchise all over again. It was cool to see the high-quality visuals on a screen wider than 200 pixels..

The backgrounds and textures are where the game's graphics really kick ass. In the second area you can explore, cherry blossom leaves are falling everywhere and they look incredibly realistic. Each of the items you collect looks remarkably identical to their real-life counterparts, and the Empress Bulborb even had a glistening quality to her humongous body. It's breathtaking.

The controls are basically the same as in the first Pikmin, with the addition of the Y button to switch between captains, and the Pikmin's AI has been improved a little bit. If a Pikmin knocks a pellet off of one of the pellet pansies, they'll automatically carry it back to their onion, which is very good (Unless they do that in the middle of battle for some reason). My only complaint with Pikmin behavior so far is that if you get too far away from the onion as your Pikmin are coming out of their ship, they don't automatically follow you. They just stay put.

The purple and white Pikmin add some great new elements to the game, as well. The purple ones are incredibly heavy and can carry ten times the weight of any other Pikmin, and the white ones are small, fast, poisonous when eaten, and can find treasure completely buried underneath the earth. I haven't really seen any creative puzzles involving the white ones yet, but it's not like I have been playing for too long.

Another cool aspect of the game is the treasures that you are scouring the planet for. They're all basically trash to us, but some of the items (like the orange, for example) can be sold for 200 pokos.. That's about one fiftieth of debt, if the remaining mathematical knowledge inside my head is right, heh. Nintendo was pretty creative with what they put in the game- there are batteries, 7up cans, and most notably Nintendo items such as a Game and Watch and an N64 control pad, and a lot of things have brand names on them, which suprised me. The batteries are Duracell, the bottle caps say Dr. Pepper on them, and the tin of shoe polish is Kiwi brand. To add to the coolness, your ship gives the items lots of really lame names. I believe the orange was "Citrus sphere," the lip gloss was "Lifesaving cream," and so on. I think the control pad was called "Wonder pad," or something along those lines. It's really awesome.

There's more I want to talk about, but I'm being dragged to the local.. Fair.. Thing. I'll add that on later.

Teh SillyCircus Day 17- Well you should have gone before we got in the car.
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