swimming, and why videogames don't need to include this feature

The game I've planned to discuss in this entry is Mario Galaxy. I love this game a lot, it's easily the most fun I've had playing a traditional Mario game -- and I know that's a bold statement to make, but hear me out. The reason this has been the best Mario experience for me is because it's the only one I've ever had that was relevant. I grew up playing Master System (or Genesis, but honestly which name is better guys?) so I missed out on Mario 1, 2 and 3, as well as Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island. The Dreamcast had already failed by the time I got my N64 so when I finally got around to picking up a used copy of Mario 64 I was about ready to get my PS2. And by the time I found a cheap Gamecube the backlash to Mario Sunshine was so huge that I couldn't possibly have cared less.
However, none of this stopped me from rushing out to grab Mario Galaxy the day it came out. Let's face it: think of a game you like, and it's probably a Mario title. Simple as. However, there's one feature that's always been in these games that they need to remove.
Swimming.
Think back to good old Mario World. You're running through World 1-1 bouncin' on Gombas and evading Piranha Plants and then you slip down your pipe into creepy cave World 1-2 and you're running around and you hop on some eerily suspended girders and you're running along ontop of the level and you find the hidden warp zone and what level does it allow you to skip? The swimming one!
Even since the first (real) Mario game they knew that swimming was no fun. You could skip the water levels super easily in Mario World 3 as well (warp whistles were all too easy to come by in that first world). Every one of those pesky levels where the giant fish would jump up and eat you were unbearable, and they popped up relentlessly in every 2D permeation until Mario64 came along and made swimming suck in revolutionary new ways.
Now you can drown, whoopdy-fuck. If swimming is annoying in a 2D world with a fixed perspective, what good could possibly come from tossing it into a 3D world where your camera is driven around by a blind razor backed turtle base head? It's fucked up. I remember practically bashing my brains out with that stupid banana shaped controller when I had to swim around behind that douchey little eel in Dire Dire Docks.
So it kills me, it really kills me, to have to bitch about this same bloody game play component TWENTY-THREE years after Nintendo initially acknowledged that it sucks. Come on guys, shape up.

Rock Band

       So the game I happened to play to review this week is Rock Band for the XBox360, and I must say that it's everything I've ever wanted in a game. Granted I was under the infulence of many a chemical (can I say that in a school blog?) when I first tried this game out, but even if I were not I feel that it would have been mindblowingly awesome. 
       By nature I'm not much of a rythm man, so drums were right out for my first attempt at the game, and setteling for the all-too-familiar guitar controler I opted for guitar, and then bass, and then singing and once I'd had my fill of strings and things, I tried drums. 
       Not much has changed in the transition from Guitar Hero to Rock Band so far as guitar and bass is concerned, so it was quick to pick up for me. I easily blazed through tracks by Oasis and Radiohead, and once I'd had my fill of British 90s Alternative I was dragged into playing various metal and derivitive genres by my cohorts. Not surprisingly they were all enjoyable. 
       Putting down the guitar I picked up the microphone (now if Only I had two turntables...) and belted out Say It Ain't So in my best black-metal singing voice with surprising results (reassuring me that singing games will always be lame). And then I tried my hands and a foot at drumming and experienced exactly the results I had anticipated earlier in this entry.
       All in all I am definitly jealous of everyone I know that owns this game, and I wish I had it so that I could spend hours of my life sitting infront of my tele pounding little plastic disks. 

Halo 3

       There comes a time in everyone's life, and I mean that in the most cliché way possible, when you just have to break down and do "the popular thing." To preface this statement I should probably have intimated to you all that I'm a fan of going against the mold, so to speak. I've never really followed the mainstream trends in anything, and it's led to what I would consider a pretty swell life so far. But there are some hurdles that it's just impossible to jump over when you're trying to live the Ugly American Dream, and for me that hurdle was Halo 3.
       Halo 3 is by far the ultimate consumer, mainstream first person shooter. Nothing video game in recent years comes to mind as being more of a draw for the general population than this one, and I must admit that I too have felt the sting. So I caved. I actually went out and bought an XBox 360 so that I could play this game (and Viva Piñata). And how do I feel about this?
       Awesome.
       Halo 3 really is about the best console first person shooter I've ever played. Nothing will ever take the 'best ever' title away from Unreal Tournament (though I've yet to play UT3) and I'm fine with that, but I was pretty sure I would never let anything take the console glory away from Perfect Dark, but who am I kidding? The only enjoyable aspect of First Person Shooters is the multiplayer, and if you can show me a console game (don't give me this Call of Duty 4 bullshit, modern shooters are super lame) that has done multiplayer better than Halo 3, please enlighten me.
       I think the reason that Halo 3 resonates with me so well is that it really does foster a team dynamic, without being overly forceful about it, like for instance Counter Strike, while still allowing for a variety of play experiences. Don't get me wrong, the team dynamic of Team Fortress 2 is definitely stronger, but if you're playing a ranked double team match and your teammate is just running around underneath snowbound with an assault rifle, you and his diatribe is going to be rather colourful. 
       And while I applaud this universal, un-ending desire to win, and not just win but to dominate the other team, I can't help but feel like this is perhaps the one flaw with Halo 3. The reason I don't like Halo 3 is because of how many little kids I end up playing with, and how they generally respond to me as a player. It seems every game I am greeted by a very effeminate sounding boy saying something like "I'm gonna smoke your ass," and it really scares me. If little children are starting to think like that when playing Halo 3, then it's only a matter of time until they move onto Call of Duty 4, and once placed in that modern combat world they'll start to get that kind of attitude to the enemies portrayed in it: i.e. the middle east.
       And I really don't mean to get on a soapbox about this, 'cause fuck your politics and fuck my politics, no one has it all figured out. But if Halo 3 is breeding a generation of soldiers who want to invade Iran, then I'm going to have to reverse my position and call it the worst console game of all time, and I really don't want to do that.

enter the dragon

      Playing videogames has been something that I feel I've been doing all of my life. My mom was really into them, and I grew up playing Stampeed to death on her Atari 2600. This probably had a profound effect on me, as I eventually decided at the young ages of 5 that I wanted to be a cattle roper.
      What happened to that kid?
      Seriously though, the 'profound effect' that I was talking about probably came from the game Manhole that we had for our second computer. The game was essentially a point and click adventure game where you just ran around trying to not get burned by a dragon or drinken by a giant rabbit.
      So it was that moment, when I first hopped in that miniature boat and road down into a coffee cup and heard the hare cry out "Oh my, there's a tiny boat in my tea cup" that I knew I'd be with them to the end.
       And I pretty much have been. I was an avid Master System player in my elementary school days, and then evolved to a N64 for middle. PS2 for highschool, and in college I've switched to XBox. I've been with all the companies and I've experienced the greats that all have to offer; but the experiences that will stay with me the most were my first ones with Lucas Arts.
      After playing The Secret of Monkey Island I was sucked into the world of adventure games, and I've been there ever since. Some of the greatest games ever made came out in that golden era. Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max; no videogame developer has ever come close to the story writing capabilities of that team.
      And through the years on every system I tend to be drawn to these adventure games. I remember getting sucked into Ico when I first got my PS2. I remember an unhealthy addiction to trying to beat Cosmic Space Head on the Master System. There were the countless times I played through Ocarina of Time on the N64.

      And I've completly run out of steam, this is probably the worst blog entry ever.