My favorite Once Upon A Time season 1 episodes

     All of you who read my blog know I love video games but those of you who haven't met me in real life don't know that I love fairy tales as well. This love (and recommendations by many friends and family) lead me to start watching Once Upon a Time on Netflix and I have now finished season one. In honor of this I'd
like to list my Top Five Favorite Season One Episodes. Also:
With that out of the way here we go.

5.The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
 Sheriff Graham was one of the only guys to be seen as helpful and able to resist Regina's fear factor and this episode both fleshed him out and added a good bit of back-story to him in the Story world.

4.The Price of Gold
I could recommend this episode just by Jessy Schram's performance of Cinderella/Ashley Boyd, her acting was some of the most convincing I've seen and both Cinderella's and Ashley's dedication to her child was honorably even going toe to toe with Rumpelstiltskin/ Mr. Gold, even being the reason Rumple was in a cell until the curse was brought around.

3.  Dreamy
Grumpy was easily the most complex of the Dwarves and this episode helped solidify this. Born Dreamy he fell in love with a fairy named Nova, but since both are forbidden to love at all it ends very sadly for both Dreamy and Nova, leading Dreamy to break his pickax and be renamed Grumpy. In Storybrooke Leory, Grumpy's Storybrooke form, and Mary Margrette try to sell candles for local nuns, one of which is Nova's Storybrooke form. The lengths Leory goes to to impress Nova are both funny and admirable at the same time.

2. That Still Small Voice 
Dr. Hopper is still very much my favorite character in OUAT and this episode added a great back-story to his Story world counterpart: Jiminy Cricket. This episode also gives Hopper some much deserved screen time and tells a good story in both Storybrooke and Story World. In Story World Jiminy is the son of two thieves and wants out so bad that he makes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin that ends up killing young Geppetto's parents by mistake. To make amends he has a fairy turn him into a cricket and become Geppetto's consonance. In Storybrooke Dr. Hopper is threatened by Regina to stop Henry's ideas about the curse or else and the following story is both interesting and marks one of the first acts of defiance towards Regina by a town member.

1. Skin Deep
Rumpelstiltskin is probably one of my favorite villains of all time and this episode is part of that reason. One of three episodes fleshing out him by placing him as the Beast from the story of Beauty and the Beast. When I was watching the first few minutes of this episode I thought this would be a bad episode where Rumpelstiltskin would just become a wuss forever but I was incredibly wrong. The relationship between both him and Belle was both growing and going so well that I was sure Rumple was playing a trick on Belle but as it turned out he was the one being tricked by the Queen and both his freak out afterwards and his beating of Moe (Belle's Storybrooke father) is both the scariest and best moments in my viewing of anything ever. To see what I mean just watch in the two links provided. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM_OPjIUorg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZOId396y9c

5 of the creepiest Ghost Type Pokedex entries

     Happy Halloween everyone, in honor of this time I'd like to talk about the most mysterious Pokemon type of them all, no not the Fairy type, the Ghost type.
     Ghost is the most common name for the disembodied undead and each have many different agendas, depending on the myth. The Ghost type projects this really well, from there immunity to Fighting and Normal type moves, to the subject of this article: their Pokedex entries.
     The Pokedex is the first piece of equipment that you get in most Pokemon games and tells a little about each Pokemon you come across. These tid-bits of info are usually known to be strange and downright creepy so today I'm going through some of the creepiest Pokedex entries (Ghost type only.)

Litwick, Lampent, Chandelure

"Litwick shines a light that absorbs the life energy of people and Pokémon, which becomes the fuel that it burns." 
(Litwick; Pokemon: Black)

"The spirits it absorbs fuel its baleful fire. It hangs around hospitals waiting for people to pass on."
(Lampent; Pokemon Black 2 and White 2)

"Being consumed in Chandelure's flame burns up the spirit, leaving the body behind."
(Chandelure; Pokemon X) 

So not only do these Pokemon steal souls from people, they actually live off them? This this is just a lose-lose situation: If the trainers keep these guys away from cities the entire species would die from lack of food, but if trainers did nothing then HUMAN SOULS WOULD GO MISSING. 

Gourgeist 
"It enwraps its prey in its hairlike arms. It sings joyfully as it observes the suffering of its prey."
(Pokemon Y)

Speaking about eating, this Pokemon enjoys eating prey so much that it SINGS SONGS WHILE YOU DIE. I don't think that I need to explain any more about this just-just leave Gourgeist, leave.






Drifloon  
"These Pokémon are called the "Signpost for Wandering Spirits." Children holding them sometimes vanish."
(Pokemon Y)

This one is really scary when you realize that nobody knows what happens to the kids afterwards. One rumor says that they take them to the Underworld, another says that the child is used to make another Drifloon,  but nothing official, not even another Pokedex entry, tells what happens. The scariest thing for me though is its location in Sinnoh: the only place to get one is on Fridays at night outside the Valley Windworks; where the daughter of Windworks hangs out. Add to that the fact that Drifloon is actually cute, meaning that kids will actually want to hold these Pokemon, and you have the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing of the Pokemon world. 

There are many more ghost types with creepy Pokedex entries, but if I listed them I wouldn't have anything for next year. :) So good night and Happy Halloween. 

Litwick, Lampent, and Chandelure picture from Smosh.com
Gourgeist picture by Hyshirey from Deviantart.com
Drifloon picture from photobucket.com  

Lego Minifigures Online review

     

     Lego Minifigures Online is a MMO for Pc, Ipad, and IoS phones where you can use the minifigures from Lego's originally named random pack line: "Lego Minifigures." It is a fairly resent game, so much so in fact that most of the internet is still using beta test information on wikis and other blogs. With the general stuff out of the way lets get started.
   
     After creating an account we wait at the loading screen. And wait, and wait. My first complaint about LMO is the initial loading time is super long. I had to get a book to read to just to remain patient. So be sure to have something else to do. Luckily, after that the load time is shortish and really just comes down to computer power. This is also true of spike lags which will probably happen to everyone a few times turning play so be ready for those.
   
     The gameplay is simple and similar to the earlier Diablo games in terms of controls. Enemies are like most enemies in MMOs; two or three hits with a striker character is all that's necessary but will attack en mass, making some areas hard to get through if you don't know the way. (Luckily though, you get a map early on so a quick look over of that will help you on your way.) The bosses are challenging without being hard, there isn't really any problem solving involved, just smash everything really, but boss fights are my favorite part of the game.
   
     Your characters, obviously, come from the Lego Minifigures line alone, sadly they only come from the main numbered series, meaning that the Simpsons and Lego Movie series's aren't ingame. This seems like a bit of missed opportunity to me, humor wise, but there is plenty of other humor ingame so I can't complain. Each character has two characteristics, and two attacks. The first attack is just the auto attack with the mouse button but the other is the "super attack," which is unique to each character, ranging from a shield that both protects you and damages enemies, to a single hit, high damage attack, and so on. Each character feels unique from the others, so it doesn't feel like you're playing as the same figure with a different skin.
   
     The last aspect I want to talk about is the community, in any MMO the people can often make or break your enjoyment of the game, regardless of how good the game actually is and so far, its kind of in the middle. In my play so far I've only seen four other players. Other people clearly play the game from what I've seen from online forums people just compare LMO to the previous Lego MMO: Lego Universe. This is a little sad to me, Lego Universe was a bit more serious in tone while LMO is definitely more humorous. This alone makes the two fairly incomparable.
   
     So over all: Lego Minifigures Online is a fun game, its mutliplayer capabilities are limited so far do to its small fan base, but this will probably change in the next few years, and I recommend this game to both Lego fans, and people wanting to get into MMOs.  

These 6 Mon (Poem)

                                                 These Six Mon, A poem about Pokemon Diamond

These six mon

From my first day with just one

He taught me that when all else is gone

That is when friends are found.

From my second day with just three

they taught me that victory or defeat was all on me.

These three mon taught me in no small part 

 friends will leave

but really stay no matter how far apart.

   on the day thrice these five mon

taught me to protect my friends until all was done.

my fourth day with these six mon

taught me to never give up

until the end of time. 

For these were not the ones and zeroes said

these where my friends, no matter where we tread

Pokemon Diamond is my favorite game because on one hand it's a lot of fun, and on the other: it started my time as a gamer. So without this game I might not be who I am today. I'm curious if any of you guys had a game that in one way or another changed your life, if so let me know in the comments. Thanks and see you on the next post.

Picture by zeldafan48 from Fanpop.com

My favorite Smash Bros characters

        With Smash Bros for the 3ds coming to America in a few weeks I'd like to do a list of my favorite characters from Brawl that will be returning in Smash Bros for 3ds and Wii U.

Lucario

As I've said in a previous post Lucario: is my favorite Pokemon, so him being in a Smash Bros game was awesome to me. Smash Bros wise he has a cool and unique ability that makes his aura powered moves (nearly all of them) more powerful the more damage he takes. However, I'm not that good with him. So I'm looking forward to practicing with him in the new Smash Bros.








Charizard

OK, I know in Brawl he was one of the Pokemon Trainer's switchable Pokemon but the Flame Pokemon was both the only one I was good with and the only one returning to the new Smash Bros. So yeah, Charizard is the fastest "heavy" character in Brawl and one of three characters that can fly. His Flamethrower attack can also beat Bowser's Flame Breath. So over all, Charizard was a cool addition to Brawl and I'm looking forward to spamming his Flamethrower soon.





Samus Aran

Samus actually has two forms (which are switchable in Brawl and two separate entities in the new Smash Bros.) Her armored form is a bit slower and focuses on projectiles and can take plenty of hits. Her unarmored from (named Zero Suit Samus) focuses more on quickness and dodging and is my favorite of the two. So I'm glad that shes in two different forms for the new Smash Bros.  






Link

These were in no order for this list but I've saved the best for last in my opinion. Link is a jack-of-all-trades, with three different projectiles (his bow, boomerang, and hook-shot,) bombs, and a good balance of speed and damage taking. Hes also the only character I've been able to beat Rj with so that is also a testament to both the Hero of Twilight's strength, and my own growing skills. And I'm looking forward to spamming his bow on my 3ds soon.

Destiny's classes and why I think they're cool

             I'm really excited for Bungie's newest game, Destiny. With the Halo series under their belts Bungie is blending Halo's fast gameplay and love of in-game lore with very MMORPGish traits such as the subject of this article.

          Classes are sort of the divisions of in game characters by what they can do. In Destiny there are 3: Warlock, Titan, and Hunter with 2 subclasses each.

 Warlock

Warlocks spent years studying "the Traveler" and its secrets. As such Warlocks posses "magical" powers such as unaided flying, using the Sun's power as a weapon and so on. The Warlock focus on offence even having it's subclass the Voidwalker be described as a glass cannon. Bungie stated that they designed Warlocks around the Jedi Knights, the Matrix's Morpheus and even Gandalf (but with guns.)

Titan

The Titans are the defenders of the last city on earth, known as
"the City". Which makes sense since their two subclasses focus on close-range-kill-everything or being a team player each. Their top three things are strength, sacrifice, and mercilessness. They are the most heavily armored of the classes and draw inspiration from such soldiers as Bungie's Master Chief and even the Terminator. I'll be back... to play as one of these guys. 

Hunter

The Hunters are the cowboys of the future. Using just as much luck as skill these men and women actually survived outside "the City." At there disposal is a good mix of both speed and strength and serve as the recon of the teams although no slouch in combat. The Hunters are also the only class who's special ability charges their melee weapon: their hunting knife. Fashioned after both bounty hunters and spaghetti western heroes, Hunters are probably the coolest of the classes in my opinion. 

My LoZ Wii U trailer impressions

Wii U Legend of Zelda impressions

         Nintendo showed us a lot of new games in their E3 Direct a few months back but my favorite one shown was the new Legend of Zelda game at the moment only known as "Legend of Zelda for Wii U." Sadly Nintendo only talked a little about it but today I'm going to give my two cents about this new LoZ.
        First up is the teaser trailer and right off I'm excited, the landscape looks beautiful and the developers assured us that we could even reach the mountains in the background. Also the design of everything looks amazing, almost as if Disney and Pixar had designed Hyrule, and the close ups we get show great attention to detail.

Next up is what everyone is either super excited for or is dreading: the size of the map. As mentioned earlier we can get to the mountains in the background and Nintendo has said that this new game will have the open world of the original Legend of Zelda and some of the dungeons have the potential to take several hours to compete. For example a test dungeon was made for the game that supposedly is bigger then Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time. Having played Ocarina of Time, that fact is mind blowing and if it's just the dungeon I have high hopes for the over-world.      

The thing I'm personally most excited for is getting the horse back, Empona the mare has only been in game in 3 games and is probably one of the most famous NPCs in LoZ games, and it will be nice to not have to walk everywhere. Especially with...  

The enemies. Granted only one was shown in the trailer but it brings a few cool possibilities to the table:

1. Some of the enemies could be able to destroy the land. I know it was a cut scene of sorts but the monster that Link fights is shown setting things on fire and destroying a bridge so it is possible that some enemies have land altering capabilities. 

2. Enemies could be challenging. Outside of boss fights, swarming, and surprise attacks the enemies in LoZ games don't pose much of a threat, being able to be taken out in one or two hits. The enemy shown in the teaser however, took several arrow shots and was only felled with what could possibly be a Light Arrow. 

3. We're fighting robots. This enemy looks and acts very robot like and since the scraped first story of LoZ for the NES was that Link would be able to travel between the past and the distant future where Zelda was from, this is a possibility. 

Lastly is what I hope is what I'm seeing: customization. Both Link and Link's horse have equipment that as far as I know hasn't been seen in Hyrule anywhere such as the buckler shield and not the parise Hylean  shield. Also seen is Link wears both a cloak and a light blue tunic, the latter could, however, just be the 

Water tunic but that seems unlikely. Other Zelda games give you very little variety weapon wise.

Again these are just guesses but it will be fun to see how many become true and I'll be looking forward to the full game. 

Until then, its a secret to everyone.