Kelly Hannon reads Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad and considers Penelope, a woman whose absentee husband has a penchant for storytelling (and anger management issues). Read “Penelope, still waiting”

Back in January, The Friendly Foodie made a last-minute pilgrimage to visit Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian, and discovered one of the possible secrets behind her irrepressible joie de vivre in the kitchen and in front of the camera. Read “Julia’s kitchen”

“Funny thing, though. A couple of months after my first issue, Batman quit the League to form his own team, who would fight battles his more straight-laced friends refused. Then the Atom disappeared into the jungle. Green Lantern went into space and couldn’t commute back and forth on the weekends that easily, I guess. The Flash went on trial for murder, of all things. The team was slowly breaking apart. I’m not sure I really noticed until I went to grab the latest issue from the bottom rack at the grocery store one day, and there were all these new characters on the cover. Wait a minute. What’s going on here? I flipped to the inside spread and read: The End of the Justice League!” Read “My youth in a comic book Detroit” by Matt Santori-Griffith

The Gamers’ Club is playing Cave Story. Read “Power up” by Daniel J. Hogan, “The zig-zag world” by Gavin Craig, and “Nostalgia, celebration, and exploitation” by Kevin Nguyen.

“With Maria you get a cacophony of voices each one populating the world around and inside her.  We hear her family, her friends, L.A. rich lady, Mexican neighbor, children at a youth center, the devil, baby Jesus (leaving messages on Mama Bamford’s answering machine), her childish self, her dark self, her anxious self, her feminist self. . . I could go on.  Though one could lazily label her silly, just a weird voice lady, or as one radio deejay so inanely misread her,  a “schizophrenic,” if you listen closely you might hear how her woman of a million voices act quite brilliantly sketches what it feels like to be Maria — to inhabit her skin, her space, her mind.  And if we’re honest, we might find that all her “weird” characters, offbeat thoughts, songs and reactions are pretty familiar to our own experience.” Read “Keeping it weird: A night with Maria Bamford” by Ana Holguin.

“I rarely judge a book by its cover, but really, that is what the covers are for. The art can pull you in as much as the description of the story, and it’s the first thing you see when picking up a new book. At AWP I attended a talk about small presses and one of the authors said her favorite part of publishing with a small press was the control she had over the cover art. Her book was about a college-age woman who moved back to her hometown. It’s a coming-of-age novel and with a female protagonist it will appeal mostly to women. But the author wanted to at least try to get a few men to pick up the book. She had experience with large presses and knew they would put a close-up of a woman on the cover, probably with an out-of-focus field in the background and just as likely with her face out of the frame. That way all the women looking to buy the book will put themselves in the heroine’s place.” Read “Cover story” by Kelly Hannon.

“I normally sauté some zucchini in olive oil when I make honey-soy broiled salmon, but otherwise I have no idea what to do with it. I found a recipe for gnocchi with zucchini ribbons (?) and parley brown butter from eatingwell.com. I had no idea what zucchini ribbons were or how butter got brown, but it sounded pretty so I went with it.” Read “Butter, browned” by Jill Kolongowski.

Steal The Plot
Plots are hard! I know, it’s okay. The home planet of humans has been destroyed but a few scattered ships make it out alive and try to settle on a world they don’t know much about all the while a nefarious force is tracking them down. So, is this the plot of seasons 2/3 of Battlestar Galactica or the plot of Outcasts. It’s both, silly!

Steal The Best Character
BSG’s Gaius Baltar is the unique combination of scientist, traitorous political officer, and religious leader. Outcasts’ Julius Berger is the unique combination of scientist, traitorous political officer, and religious leader.

Steal The Best Actor
Star power! BSG fan favorite Jamie Bamber appears briefly in Outcasts. He’s on the show long enough to get people who like BSG to start watching Outcasts, but not so long that casual viewers would start to pick up on how similar Outcasts is to BSG.

Steal The Best Plot Element
Cylons: We created them and they turned on us so we tried to kill them and now they’re pseudo-humans who would like to see us destroyed, but we may have to try to live together. Advanced Cultivars: We created these pseudo-humans who turned on us after we tried to kill them and who would like to see us destroyed, but we may have to try to live together.

Steal The Best Twists
One of the pseudo humans is amongst us unbeknownst to even her! Gaius/Julius is a traitor! There may be something more mystical going on that we can or want to understand!

Outcasts is a decent show especially if you’re jonesing for something more with Battlestar Galactica off the air. Just set your expectations appropriately.

–

Sarah Pavis is an engineer, writer, and Netflix obsessive. She writes “In the Queue” for The Idler.

In life, though, we don’t always get to decide where a particular story starts. Sure, you can edit a bit in the retelling — as I am wont to do — but it all still happened the way it happened. This may be the supreme reason why I love comic books so much, particularly those of the superhero variety. This form has evolved into a grand tradition of revision and rebirth, from their humble origins as reprinted Sunday newspaper funnies, transitory stories granted new life with just two little staples. Nearly 80 years later, we’ve seen characters live, die, and live again (and die again, sometimes even again). Stories have been told, retold, replaced, added onto and subtracted from — all the while being read for the first time by a new audience every year. If every comic can be somebody’s first, then every story has the potential to mean something monumental to someone.

Honesty? I think that’s pretty darn cool. My first comic book was a DC Comics Justice League of America, the third part of a four-part story, given to me for my 8th birthday. It didn’t matter to me that I was dropped into the middle of the action, or what had come before. These were, as covers often boasted, “The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes” and I was ready to go wherever they led. Batman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, Red Tornado, the Atom: These were literally my new heroes and I was determined to read about them and their super-colleagues forever.

Over the next few issues, the League rescued a microcosmic city from disaster, stopped civilians from being transformed into elementals, fought the skull-faced Doctor Destiny in their dreams, encountered magic lightning bolts — all as a team. I figured, if I could only get a single book, why not get the one with all the greatest heroes? That was my guarantee to see all of them in one place, every month, forever.

Funny thing, though. A couple of months after my first issue, Batman quit the League to form his own team, who would fight battles his more straight-laced friends refused. Then the Atom disappeared into the jungle. Green Lantern went into space and couldn’t commute back and forth on the weekends that easily, I guess. The Flash went on trial for murder, of all things. The team was slowly breaking apart. I’m not sure I really noticed until I went to grab the latest issue from the bottom rack at the grocery store one day, and there were all these new characters on the cover. Wait a minute. What’s going on here? I flipped to the inside spread and read:

– The End of the Justice League!

This may seem trite today, but back in 1984, this was BIG. There had never been a panel, to my knowledge then or now, that announced the disbanding of something I imagined would never end. Disbanded? The Justice League? Are you sure?

I like to imagine myself in that moment: little 9 year-old me, face agape just like old flame-head here, looking around the grocery store for someone to tell me it isn’t true. Suffice to say, I read that book that day like some Jewish kids study Torah. Line by line, panel by panel, I dissected this story for every inch of hidden meaning and inflection I could find. To this day, after two decades of art school and internet research, I can still remember every brushstroke of Justice League of America Annual #2, as if it was the subject of my master’s thesis. Burned into my brain as no other art that came before or after, I ultimately needed to replace it with another copy that had not been read to tatters.

This extra-length tale, told by continuing creative team Gerry Conway and Chuck Patton, of course ends in a new League being formed from the ashes of the old. But new was definitely the operative word. Aquaman, never much the leader in almost 25 years of storytelling, took control, asking for full-time commitments from his colleagues. Few accepted his — frankly — pretty demanding offer, and none of them were what we consider the “big names.” He got a Martian, a magician and a stretchable sleuth. A lesser hero might have given up there. Soon enough, as is common enough in comic books, other candidates started to appear and they were a revelation to my young eyes!

Vixen was one of DC’s first Black super-heroines, having been created by Conway for a Superman tale just three years prior. Granted the power to mimic the abilities of animals by her mysterious Tantu Totem, Vixen was a desperately-needed breath of fresh air for a team that was both overwhelming Caucasian (Martian Manhunter aside) and traditionally just a wee bit sexist when it came to the lady heroes. She was a bit sassy, often ferocious, and lent a great deal of power to a team that suddenly felt a little lopsided.

Steel too was an earlier Conway creation, but now the grandson of a star-spangled character he wrote in the self-titled 1978 series. This 19 year-old, retrofitted with internal mechanics that imbued superhuman strength and invulnerability, was brash and inexperienced, but excellent contrast to the more traditionally-minded Aquaman. However, when it came to game-changers, Steel paled in comparison to the last hero who would formally join in this issue: the also 19 year-old, but much more controversial, Puerto Rican character Vibe.

Relocated to Steel’s secret headquarters in Detroit (a city whose name famously appends this version of the League), the team is quickly joined by the questionably stereotypical Paco Ramone: retired gang member, graffiti artist and break-dancer. Named, I’m sure, for the dual purpose of expositing his vibratory power and giving him an “urban edge,” Vibe was unfortunately the flip side of Vixen — an attempt at ethnic inclusion gone wrong. That said, my pre-pubescent head didn’t realize how crass some of the subsequent portrayals were, as much it was just new and different. And it excited me.

Years later, I’ve read thousands of stories, but I like to think the tolerance for change in my heroes — for the new and different — comes from this formative tale. Vibe was no substitute for Batman, but he contributed to a book where literally anything could happen month after month. I still want that in comics, probably more than in my real life honestly. Here I’ll take new beginnings over endless certainty any day.

–

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He works a day job as an art director for several non-profit organizations, but spends his dark nights and weekends fighting the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

Like Cave Story, Diablo III is a game that panders to one’s nostalgia, in this case nostalgia for Diablo II, released way back in 2000. I remember coming home from summer camp and pouring all of my time into accumulating new weapons and armor for my Amazon. The point of the Diablo games isn’t to defeat monsters; it’s to collect more stuff, which is good for helping you collect more stuff. Diablo III is certainly a vast improvement upon its predecessor, but overall, it’s really the same game built for 2013. I won’t say too much more about Diablo, since I’m supposed to be talking about Cave Story, but basically Diablo III has all the talent and polish of a triple-A title. And for those reasons, it basically has no heart.

Few games have more heart than Cave Story. It was painstakingly hand-crafted (so to speak) by Daisuke Amaya, who designed and developed the game by himself over the course of five years. There’s a decent interview with Amaya, where he explains that his work on the game paralleled his life: “At the time I started work on Cave Story, I was a student, but now I’m an office worker. My entire life had changed by the time this game was finished.”

That’s right: Amaya is not a game developer by trade, so he created the art, music, and story, as well as all the code, in his free time. It may be a nostalgic platformer, but Cave Story feels like the personal expression of one man. We all love the game’s weirdness (or in Daniel’s words, the “WTF factor”), which is something that can only come from the vision and imagination of singular vision.

So why am I not compelled to play more Cave Story?

For me, the appeal of Cave Story is its charm. Sure, it’s fun to jump around and fire rockets, but I love uncovering the uniqueness buried beneath the Metroid and Castlevania-inspired platforming. Diablo, on the other hand, is designed to be addictive. And it is very good at that, almost to the point of blandness. The game says and means nothing.

While both are designed to make you think about the good old days, I think there’s a single key difference between the two games: Cave Story celebrates nostalgia, while Diablo III exploits it.

–

Read Daniel J. Hogan’s week 2 post
Read Gavin Craig’s week 2 post

–

Kevin Nguyen is an editor at The Bygone Bureau. His only marketable skill is an above-average knowledge of European geography. He has been useless since the introduction of the atlas in 1477. Find him at Twitter at @knguyen.

With Maria you get a cacophony of voices each one populating the world around and inside her.  We hear her family, her friends, L.A. rich lady, Mexican neighbor, children at a youth center, the devil, baby Jesus (leaving messages on Mama Bamford’s answering machine), her childish self, her dark self, her anxious self, her feminist self. . . I could go on.  Though one could lazily label her silly, just a weird voice lady, or as one radio deejay so inanely misread her,  a “schizophrenic,” if you listen closely you might hear how her woman of a million voices act quite brilliantly sketches what it feels like to be Maria — to inhabit her skin, her space, her mind.  And if we’re honest, we might find that all her “weird” characters, offbeat thoughts, songs and reactions are pretty familiar to our own experience.  You know that you at your core?  The one that likes popping zits, eating ice cream for breakfast, narrating the thoughts of your maniacally evil cat in Broadway style with jazz hands and aplomb?  Yeah, that’s the self we usually tidy up and edit out and that’s the one that Maria shares with us in public, on stage.

A few weeks ago, I actually had the (strange) fangirl pleasure of seeing Maria live in Ann Arbor, MI and it wasn’t exactly what I expected.  First off, I’ve always seen comedians perform in theaters, casino auditoriums, or arenas. The venues seemed to support the idea that the player we came to see was an artist, someone valuable, someone famous, or “big.”  However, the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase is a lot more like (or at least trying be like) the comedy clubs you’ve seen intermittently on Seinfeld or Louie.  Small cramped quarters. Brick walls. Teeny tiny tables. The audience is ushered in two people to a table and every table is crammed into a semicircular formation around a small spare stage decorated only with a saddish mural of a big city.  The cityscape looks like stage dressing for a high school play.  I could easily walk up to the stage, take the mic, do a jig if I so desired.  There’s none of that spatial separation — none of those markers that suggest that the performer is not like me, is better.  This makes me sad for Maria.  “She deserves better than this!” my mind screams, and a nervous knot ties in my belly.

I switch seats with my friend Erin — she joining my husband at a table for two, I filling a half seat next to strangers. And then the fun begins.  A drunk crew of somebody’s moms and dads out for a wild Ann Arbor night squeeze into the spots next to me. The tipsy star of their band immediately starts chatting me up. A woman “alone” at the comedy club — of course I desire his doting attentions! He entertains, he reads my Facebook phone updates over my shoulder. His wife and friends cheer him on for he’s so funny he should clearly be on stage!  Oh, a laugh riot this guy.  He wants to know is Maria anything like Paula Poundstone?  He likes Paula Poundstone.

Way to know a contemporary female comedian, buddy.  I quietly seethe.

“Nooo, she’s not really your typical stand-up.  She plays a lot with voice work. . .”

“OH, so she does voices.  Can she do Cher?  Sylvester Stallone?”

“No.  Um, she’s not really an impressionist.  She uses the voices to. . .”

“Does she do Arnold Schwarzenegger?  Oh, all right, voices! “

“. . . . . . .”

He went on to showcase his devastating display of comedy knowledge referencing everyone from Sam Kinison to. . . well, Paula Poundstone again.  I went on to call him stupid on Twitter and then concocted elaborate anxiety fantasies of him heckling Bamford, me sitting next to him mouthing to her, “I’m so sorry!”  My stomach at this point was well on its way to cat-o-nine-tails.

The first act was a boring newcomer full of expected and borderline offensive jokes that the old kids sure enjoyed.  Second up was Jackie Kashian — a friend of Maria’s and strong comedian.  Her work was more story-oriented and built around the ridiculousness of her family, and tales of her nerdish childhood.  Kashian’s style is confident, unshakeably so without being arrogant.  A fine line to walk but she walked it well and all while sporting her Powell’s Books t-shirt.  I liked her.  Dr. Comedy next to me was less pleased but still riding his buzz.

Finally, Maria came on and she was all that I hoped she’d be and more.  The packed closeness that had inspired claustrophobia was now cushioned by loud shared laughter.  The sticky crampedness that built stomach knots gave way into release.  Maybe this layout is part of the build up — it provides some of the necessary tension that jokes erupt out of, I pondered.  But Maria brought some of this discomfort too.  Her voice could be too quiet, I strained to hear, she babbled her weird thoughts, she’d close her eyes rehearsing what she had told us and what she had yet to say.  One could possibly think she looked unstable or at least fearful, uncomfortable on stage.  There was something true about this but also something that was just part of her performance. I knew she possessed the wherewithal to clean this up, look more “normal” if she wanted to, but she was choosing to show this process as it was.  She does not glibly glide from joke to joke, she gets there messily, truthfully.

But beyond this, I can’t really do her justice as her show relies so heavily on voice and intonation.  For a taste of her sense of humor here’s a story/joke she relayed about a conversation she and her new neighbor shared:

Maria’s new neighbor: I hope you don’t mind living next to a Mexican — you know we leave stuff on our lawn.

Maria: I hope you don’t mind living next to a white lady, because I’m gonna steal that stuff.

MANIFEST DESTINY!  It feels like it’s mine!

Old Kinison to my left did not approve.  He was sorry he didn’t get a chance to tell her to her face how badly she sucked.

Erin’s high-pitched laugh squealed behind me. I laughed tearfully.  Maybe she didn’t please everyone that night, but she sure punched some of us right in the comedy gut.

Now, for a comedian to be successful, assuming successful means garnering a wide audience, playing huge theaters, arenas, even, their material needs to hit a sweet spot of broad experience.  It has to fit into, explain and reflect the thoughts, dreams and fears of a good many people.  We tend to mark “the best” by measuring success in this fashion. However, there’s something special about artists like Bamford, performers who refuse to play to the standard and reach every person.  There’s something brave, kinda punk, kinda D.Y.I., feminist awesome about how incredibly close she keeps her comedy.  Her stories all spin out from her unique self and even when she ventriloquizes and lampoons those around her, she maintains the oddity and complexity of her own voice and perspective.  Her show was small, intimate, a little too close and that’s exactly where she’s at home and I felt at home there, too.  She might be too unsettling for even my weird friends, she might not be the next comedy sweetheart to sweep the nation, but she’s honest and amazing in her own right.  She might not steal your heart, but she may steal your stuff. . . and then tell a small crowd a very good story about it.

–

Ana Holguin writes PopHeart for The Idler.

So instead I’d like to continue to talk about the ways in which the game mixes RPG and 2D platformer mechanics — primarily how a strikingly simple design choice serves to open up what would otherwise be a fairly linear world. In the 8-bit platforming world which is my (admittedly outdated) primary point of reference, games largely ask the player to navigate in one direction, often from left to right. The basic model would be, of course, Super Mario Bros., which doesn’t even let you backtrack once the screen has scrolled to the right, but even when games like Castlevania include vertical and right-to-left elements in their level design, there’s usually a specific forward direction at any given time, and it’s rare for a game to ask you to retrace your steps.

This might be one of the most brilliant components of the 2D platform game — particularly in systems with severe technical limitations (like an 8-bit console), the 2D platform game architecture creates a perpetual feeling of active progress. The game, when played, is in constant motion, and that motion is always directed toward a specific end. Thus, as long as the player is in motion, they can be confident that they’ll eventually reach the goal. The game may include rewards for exploration — hidden power-ups, warp zones, or bonus areas — but even a new player can just keep moving forward and progress through the game.

Cave Story, on the other hand, pushes the player back and forth within a level like no other 2D platformer I’ve ever played. I’ve created a map below of the path I followed to complete the Bushlands level (known in some versions of the game as the Grasslands). [Click on the map for a larger version.]

You’ll note that in addition to all of the smaller back-and-forths, the game requires the player to return to the very beginning of the level at least three times. While the level largely follows a progressive back-and-forth — that is, you could basically divide the level in half, and the player is required to thoroughly explore the first half, and then can largely move on to thoroughly explore the second half — but then the game violates this neat division when it makes the player return to the beginning to fetch charcoal as a bomb component.

The effect of all this, at least in my play, was to make the area much more of a map (in RPG terms) than a level (in 2D platformer terms). Rather than simply being able to progress (and then return to the teleporter after completing the level), I had to continue to re-explore, and continue to converse with Non-player characters (NPCs), just like returning to a town after defeating a major monster, accomplishing a specific goal, or acquiring new items in an RPG. In fact, the player’s relationships with NPCs in Cave Story are more dynamic than in many 40-hour RPGs I’ve played.

And, in all honesty, Final Fantasy XIII could learn a thing or two from Cave Story‘s level design. (Too often, running around in Final Fantasy XIII is like Super Mario Bros. without the jumping. Ugh.)

So, story next week, I promise, and I’m hoping to look back on how the robot works as a blank slate/player identification character compared to Ness from EarthBound. (My initial take is that the robot works a lot better, but I need to do some noodling as to why and how.)

Thus far, we know that Daniel is enthusiastic about Cave Story‘s power-ups, and Kevin is a bit skeptical about the jumping mechanics (which is a pretty big problem for a platformer). I’m curious to know, though, on the whole how is the game working for the two of you? What genre would you cram it into? What, as you head towards the end, would it take to make or break the game for you?

I can’t believe that we wrap up next week! Well, onward! (And maybe back again.)

–

Read Daniel J. Hogan’s week 2 post
Read Kevin Nguyen’s week 2 post

–

Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.

The Distant Hours was different. The cover grabbed my attention and pulled me into its world. The castle overlooking the moors with a blue-gray sky above told the story of the book as well as the liner notes. A letter sent fifty years ago finds its way into the hands of our main character Edie. Edie follows the letter’s path to the decaying Milderhurst Castle. There she meets three aging sister who helped Edie’s mother during World War II. The castle and the sister have secrets that Edie slowly discovers during her visits, unraveling her mother’s story among others in this gothic fiction.

I fell in love. I rarely judge a book by its cover, but really, that is what the covers are for. The art can pull you in as much as the description of the story, and it’s the first thing you see when picking up a new book. At the AWP conference I attended a talk about small presses and one of the authors said her favorite part of publishing with a small press was the control she had over the cover art. Her book was about a college-age woman who moved back to her hometown. It’s a coming-of-age novel and with a female protagonist it will appeal mostly to women. But the author wanted to at least try to get a few men to pick up the book. She had experience with large presses and knew they would put a close-up of a woman on the cover, probably with an out-of-focus field in the background and just as likely with her face out of the frame. That way all the women looking to buy the book will put themselves in the heroine’s place. The same effect is achieved when publishers put figures, usually women, walking away from the camera toward the sunset, or a beach, or that same out-of-focus field.

The author wanted something that would appeal to both genders instead of being pigeonholed into “chick lit.” I understand completely. Female torsos or backs are as prevalent in “books for girls” as guns and submarines are on “books for boys.” While the cover for The Distant Hours is beautiful, it’s a dark beauty and not necessarily feminine. The castle is on a hill that borders on being a cliff. The water below is filled with rocks; the clouds are coming in to cover the pale blue sky. This place holds secrets and might not be ready to let them go. Of course I had to buy it.

I hadn’t thought to pick it up again until this week because this is the week I finally bought myself a copy of Wuthering Heights. I went to a library sale and picked up a bunch of classics and history books to sell to the store so I could get myself some store credit and buy the cutest set of Gramercy Classics that came in a few days earlier. Among the books I sold for credit were two copies of Wuthering Heights. I sold a different copy of the same story I would be buying, and paying more money for, all because of the cover. The rest of the set includes Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and Pride and Prejudice. The books I was selling from the library also included Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, books I already own in different editions but wanted to buy again because they were little with matching covers and ribbon bookmarks. I’m a sucker for ribbon bookmarks. They feel so damn classy.

Covers are important, if only because they make people like me buy multiple copies of a good book because the new cover grabs my attention. I know Kate Morton really wants me to read her book, not just to buy it and then admire the pretty artwork. But the artwork is what got me to open the book in the first place, so no matter the quality of the book, the art deserves an honorable mention. Because it was so appealing I bought it and now I’ve finally started it. I’ll finish it this week while my Gramercy Classics set looks down on my from its prime spot at the top of my bookshelf.

–

Kelly Hannon works in an indie bookstore, is editing her first novel, and blogs about annoying people at www.letterstopeopleihate.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyMHannon

But first, a quick aside. Gavin pointed out you do not have to fight Balrog, the “Oh Yeah!” shouting baddie, in your first meeting. He asks if you want to fight, and well, I selected “No,” just to see what would happen. Balrog said, more or less, “OK, see you later,” and left. Interesting.

Back to the power-ups — Cave Story has you collect items which increase the power, or Level, of your weapons. With each Level, the weapon takes on new abilities. It is a double-edged sword, however. Each time you take damage, so does your weapon, and after several hits, your weapon Level drops, making you weaker. This was an unique mechanic, which added a bit of extra drama to boss battles.

I had a lot of fun powering up the weapons to their maximum Levels, just to see the difference it made. Missiles became larger, rates of fire were increased, and so forth. My favorite discovery of the game was when I realized I could propel myself skyward using the powered-up Machine Gun. Just press Down and Fire — no more pit deaths or trying to make difficult jumps. Granted, one must exercise caution — the Machine Gun’s ammo needs to recharge after a lengthy burst.

The variety of weapons keeps the game fresh too, as each weapon has its own advantage or disadvantage. For example, the Fireball just bounces along the ground (not unlike in Super Mario Bros., just larger). This makes the weapon pretty much useless for ground-to-air attacks, but the Fireball can plow through herds of enemies on hills or slopes. The Bubble weapon was also fascinating, as it doubled as a shield (handy for running through a cloud of baddies).

It seems I get a new weapon every few levels or so, and I look forward to seeing what the rest of the game offers. I just hope I don’t end up having to use jelly beans against baddies.

–

Read Gavin Craig’s week 2 post
Read Kevin Nguyen’s week 2 post

–

Daniel J. Hogan’s webcomic and humor blog, Clattertron, is nearly jelly bean free. Follow him on Twitter, @danieljhogan.