ALL CONTRA GAMES (Various platforms)—You have almost every gun ever made at your disposal, but you die with one hit. Let the pain begin.
Metal Gear Solid games (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube)—The first one was difficult because you were ridiculously unarmed. The second one was kind of easy…until you played it on ‘Very Hard’ difficulty. That turns the two ‘shooting with Snake’ sequence near the end into moments in gaming history. And the third one? Your radar is gone, medkits are completely unavailable, and there is a boss battle that will take you more than an hour to complete—and that’s without dying. Satisfyingly difficult games.
X-Men: Mutant Apolcalypse (SNES)—The X-Men have all their different abilities, which would make the game easy if it wasn’t for the fact that a single enemy could take away 1/3 of your health all by itself. A bit on the short side, but well worth playing to the end.
Alien Hominid (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Internet demo)—The first example of a Newgrounds game being turned into a commercial product, and it’s a good one. It’s like Contra, but with a sense of humor. Too short, but worth a rental (and a purchase if you can find it cheap).
Bebe’s Kids (SNES)—There’s hard good, and then there’s hard bad. This is hard bad. Avoid.
Starfox Games (referring to the N64 and SNES versions)—Hard to believe that I found these to be too easy when I was young. Now it’s an event when I can complete the first level of the first Starfox.
All Prince of Persia games (Various platforms)—Get a POP game, spend two weeks playing it. It’s a tradition that started a long time ago, and it continues today.
Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross (SNES/PS)—RPGs done right; memorable characters, engaging dialogue, amazing twists, and difficult. Worth getting by any means.
Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube, PS2)—Brian Kelley can write entire essays based on how great this game is. In fact, I actually wrote a complete review of the game as one of my final assignments in English class last year. Suffice it to say that this is the first game in the RE series that no one can find a huge flaw in, and those that do are not worth hanging out with. (Brian once asked me how many times I had to go through the ‘village’ area near the beginning. I answered ‘once’. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t tell him, though, that I didn’t activate the part where the chainsaw guy comes in. He did, which was what took him multiple tries. I mention this to prove that I was better than Brian Kelley at one portion of RE4.)
Shining Force 2 (Genesis)—The first one held your hands while you took it to town. The second one assumed that you played the first one, and ramped up the difficulty. Guess which one has aged better?
Mischief Makers (N64)—Treasure, famous for its insane shooters, makes a platform game for a change of pace. Its still hard, but with a sense of humor.
The Timesplitters series (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube)—Honestly, I can probably own you in Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark, which were the precursors to Timesplitters. But then you give me DUAL ANALOG STICKS and set the frame rate at 60 FRICKIN’ FRAMES PER SECOND?! (The best FPSs at the start of the 00’s ran at 30 frames per second.) Now that’s a way to die, fast, over and over again. Play with 3 friends, set deathmatch at a 30 minute time limit, and with 60 kills to a win. Then chug your coffee, cuz you don’t want to blink.
Smackdown vs Raw 2006 (PS2, PSP)—I am the king of wrestling games, but this game has tried me in all the good ways that a video game can. I once wrestled a Triple Threat Match that took half an hour to complete, and I’ve wrestled in 60-minute Iron Man Matches that never got stale. Play against someone else who is good at the game in order to pass a good 20 minutes.
The Mega Man series (Various platforms)—A good example of a series that doesn’t hold your hand and has succeeded. Beat a boss, take his weapon, use it to beat another boss. How can that be so hard to imitate? And why has no one tried?
The Pokemon series (Various platforms)—Every gamer claims to hate it, and the fad is long past its prime, but every time a new one comes out, it sells like hotcakes. Just TRY playing without some sort of a strategy guide. Yeah, I can’t, either.
The Jak series (PS2, PSP)—Here’s the thing: it’s aimed at kids, but there are many levels in each of the games that I, John Edward Downey, gamer for the past 16 years (or so), have a lot of difficulty with. The fact that I want to get to the end of the game tells you about each games’s quality, though.
Super Smash Brothers Melee (Gamecube)—You cannot own a Gamecube and not have this game; it’s that simple. It’s also damn near impossible to unlock everything. It’s also impossible to guarantee victory against even the greenest rookie. The best Gamecube game on the market, period.
The Legend of Zelda series (Various platforms)—Proof that nobody cares about an original story, just as long as that story is told well. The early games needed walkthroughs, A Link To The Past remains one of the best games on the SNES, Link’s Awakening almost made me shed a tear, but Ocarina Of Time is the best of the series, and a good candidate for ‘Best Video Game Of All Time’. Majora’s Mask needed a walkthrough, the Oracle games were a nice change of pace (Capcom made those ones), and while I personally did not enjoy Wind Waker, I know a lot of people who did. With the exception of the long-forgotten CDI games (look them up for a good laugh), if it’s a Legend of Zelda game, it’s a compulsory purchase.
(I don't like to start online conversations with a simple "hello". That's my only explanation for the following gem.)
downeyfelix: why, oh, why, oh, mofogin, WHY, do the Jamster try to see me on shizzat that I don'ts want to be hereing? Like, who the hell thinks that I listen to Rick Ross? Why would I like Rick Ross? Who the hell is Rick Ross? I don't know, and I don't care to know. All I know is that he sounds like he swallowed too much syrup and he has a huge beard. That's it. Oh yeah, and who would name themself Lil' Scrappy? Why would you make people pay attention to the fact that you are little? Why not call yourself Bigass Scrappy? Makes more sense from an advertising standpoint. And why make people listen to the song before they buy it if the song sucks? Just say, "Hey, the new Rick Ross banga is available. It's only a click away!" Rick Ross fans will go, "OH YEAH! I'M HUSTLIN' MAH WAY TO THAT WEBSITE!!!" while everyone else would go, "Thanks, but no thanks." That makes more sense to me. Then again, I'm retarded.
(From a Creative Writing class at NECC in 2006, titled, "Eh, Steve!".)Pure reminiscence is impossible. It would require me to write in the mindset of whatever age I was, without editorial or nostalgia. The editorial part is the most difficult aspect to deal with, since it is only years later, when everyone’s ulterior motives are exposed, that the whole picture is revealed. Nostalgia isn’t a problem for me because I tend to ask “When was I young?” before I ask “Remember when we were young?” I mean, hell, I’m still young. In 10 years, I’ll be only 30 years old. It would still be too early to write my autobiography if I was 45 years old. Looking at that short span of time that I know I was a child (and I did not care), one moment sticks out, not because it was a good memory, but because very little could take away from the image. I was learning how to hit a baseball. A few kids from the neighborhood were trying to teach me the best hitting technique to use, and told me to only go after ‘good’ pitches. Of course, even at the age of 6 (7?), I was showing a fondness for alchemy, or at least attempting to turn copper into gold, as I tried to turn balls thrown above my shoulders into 500-foot bombs. I looked like an idiot, but hey, I was TRYING (and that’s all that matters in life, right?). And, well, that’s it; I hit a few, missed a lot, went home when dinner was ready. Where are those neighborhood kids now? Well, the catcher got married last May. The pitcher died 3 years ago (drunk driving, whatever). I’m not sure what happened to the rest. Two years after the batting practice, I was put on Ritalin because A) it was 1994 and B) my mom thought there was something wrong with me (ADD, no, Asperger’s!). Dad disagreed, but pretty soon, he was too dead to be able to object to the Ritalin, or Mom moving the family to a town outside of state. One thing hasn’t changed, though. I still think baseball sucks.
(From the same Creative Writing class, titled "GETUM".)So there was this time when I was little, well, I wasn’t that little, I was always a big ’un, but back when I should’ve been little, there was this girl on the playground who was really ugly and was named Samantha, and well, I don’t do well with girls named Samantha cause they’re always this close to being guys, cuz it’s the difference between Sam and Sam, essentially, and she always called me ugly, but I always told her that she was uglier so that I had the upper hand, and one time I called her really REALLY ugly, so she kicked me between the legs, in the place where the thing and the other thing and the other thing spend their time, and I was hurt a lot, and she started laughing, so I kicked her in the same place, but it didn’t hurt her as much because I was hitting practically nothing at all, but she fell over crying anyways and a couple of girls told me that I was a big meanie because I spent all my time hitting girls, but my friends who happened to be boys had my back because they knew that girls don’t have what guys have, so we agreed to have ourselves a MUD WAR, which is like a snowball fight, but with mud instead of snow, but the boys weren’t really athletic, so we asked for a day to prepare, and the girls agreed to do it the next day because they were stupid and ugly, so the boys and me ran around the school 20 times after school, well, actually, we planned on running around the school 20 times, but Fat Ricky gave up after two steps because he didn’t have the right kind of shoes, and Joe gave up after two laps because he hurt his ankle, and Lenny gave up after 6 laps because his mom was waiting to drive him home, and the rest of us did 14 laps because we didn’t want to miss “Power Rangers”, but at least we worked out, the girls probably sat in a corner, practicing their best “DON’T SHOVE MUD DOWN MY THROAT” looks, and the next day came, and the girls had forgotten all about it because they were stupid like that, so I got a big pile of mud together and put it in my right hand, so I had, basically, a mud fist, and I punched Sam in the ear with it, and she started crying, and the boys all threw mud at all the girls, and I tried to shove mud down Samantha’s throat but SHE BIT MY FINGERS BECAUSE SHE’S A CANNIBAL, so I spit in her face and kicked her between the legs again and then I ran home so that I could put a band-aid on my fingers and the next day, my mommy told me that I had to go to a new school because I was too good for my old one.
(Same class; this time, the assignment was to use only dialogue. Titled "Not Sure That's Legal, But Whatever".)Timothy: But you said before that it would cost only $15.
Anthony: It’s called ‘inflation’.
Timothy: No, you’re just being a dick.
Anthony: Prices go up. I have to make a living.
Timothy: By changing the price to $150?
Anthony: My little boy needs money for a class field trip.
Timothy: Really? What school is he going to?
Anthony: It’s a private school.
Timothy: Well, all of my nieces and nephews are in private schools, so which one?
Anthony: It’s a private school that I run in my house.
Timothy: Huh?
Anthony: What?
Timothy: Isn’t there a word for—
Anthony: My kid’s taking a field trip to the hospital.
Timothy: Right. Sure.
Anthony: Hey, he’s visiting my sick mother. She’s got cancer. She needs the money, too.
Timothy: What kind of cancer?
Anthony: The one that makes them get chemo.
Timothy: Yeah, that narrows it down.
Anthony: She’s got more than one kind of cancer, you know. Hard to keep ’em straight.
Timothy: Name one.
Anthony: Brain cancer. Her brain got too smart. Didn’t know you could get that, did you?
Timothy: Okay…
Anthony: Bone cancer, too. She was lactose-intolerant. Go figure.
Timothy: That doesn’t make any—
Anthony: Now she’s got titty cancer, too. With a growth. Looks like she’s got a third funpiece.
Timothy: Forget it. No bag of candy is worth $150.
Anthony: Inflation, motherfucker. Inflation.
(The following is my entire portfolio I put together for an online poetry class at NECC, complete with explanations of each poem.)I don’t like Dane Cook. I’ve never liked Dane Cook. Most of his jokes are based around him saying the unexpected, which only works once (twice, at most), and frankly, I don’t see the humor in bee punching. I’m more of a David Cross fan, since his humor never loses its edge to me. (On “It’s Not Funny”, Cross says that he would rather hear the death rattle of his only child than listen to Creed, which always gets a laugh out of me despite having the album for two years.) That said, the dude came up (or stole from somebody who I haven’t heard of—I’m not sure) with one joke that I had to admit was pretty funny. The entire joke goes like this (more or less): “You know, someday, I just want to walk up to one of those people who are wearing the Superman S on their shirt, shoot them in the chest, and say ‘I TOLD YOU SO’!” So that’s why I reference Dane Cook in the title of the poem and then talk about Superman in the poem itself. As it may have come across in the discussions of this poem, I’m not a big comic books fan, but I stay up to date on what’s going on in the world of the big two, while most people don’t stay up to date on either one. (By the way, best DC comic ever was Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman”. Best comic ever:
COUPLET: THE SOURCE OF THE ONLY DANE COOK JOKE THAT I’VE EVER LAUGHED AT
It’s boring to be perfect, isn’t it?
He’s got super super hearing, but he ain’t listenin’.
“Hey, look at me, I came from another planet!
My backstory couldn’t be better if I planned it!”
Yeah, whatever,
You laughed when you saw my arm in plaster.
I mean, yeah, I looked pretty funny with my arm at an angle,
But you wouldn’t be laughing if you saw my limb dangle
Off of my shoulder right after the accident.
But I’ll ask for the millionth time—where were you,
Were you protecting the fosters by throwing the bad corn around back,
Or more important things, like getting Lana in the sack?
I’ve got connections, farmboy; I can send Lois the tape.
“What tape?” THE tape. Your mouth gapes.
Bet you’d be willing to make it disappear?
Ah, yes, but first let’s watch it together—hey, have a beer.
There’s you as a baby—oh, you have your father’s hair!
Here’s your homeworld exploding, AND EVERYBODY CHEERED.
“This isn’t—” And here’s you excelling at pretty much everything
With no asterisks or anything; an alien as prom king!
Luthor? Check. Mxy? Check. Apok? Check.
The tragically misunderstood in need of help Bizarro? Check.
A guy with crystals for bones and immeasurable strength
Who could hop distances of football fields in length
“That doesn’t even—” and doesn’t shy away from beating up women
And has a name that basically means ‘the end’?
“Doomsday?” Check, but it took you long enough
And resulted in a movie starring Shaq. It sucked.
Oh, and death? Yeah, there’s a check, too.
“I didn’t beat—” Yeah, but he didn’t beat you.
Here’s the time you stuck your tongue in a light socket—
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? No further comment.
Yeah, just try to kill me. No, seriously. Try to bite.
Thought you should know, though, that your can’s made of kryptonite.
HOW DOES MY LEATHER BOOT TASTE, FOOL?
Hmm…drag your carcass over to the pool
OR STICK HOT POKERS IN YOUR EYES?!
I can’t stand to flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…
Wow. This one’s dark. So dark, in fact, that I spent the rest of the semester focused on killing alarm clocks and elephants. So yeah, this one’s about my dad. So…yeah. Awkward. I should point out, though, that I included a slight fabrication in the poem, that of him being lowered into the ground. Dad was cremated, therefore, no need for a coffin. Or burial space, for that matter. As for the other references, well, 4th paragraph refers to “Redneck Rampage”, which was a ripoff of “Doom” that my father liked a lot, and the Calvin referenced in the last paragraph refers to the Calvin of “Calvin and Hobbes” fame (specifically, a strip in which Calvin and Hobbes find a dead bird and then wonder how one goes through life with the specter of death hanging over your head, which is one of my favorite “Calvin and Hobbes” strips).
GHAZAL: THE SOURCE OF ALL HAPPINESS
Here comes the ground, all packed and brown
And we see superdad being lowered down all the way.
Scraped knee, but I fly through the garage thanks to the guardian angel
Devilish smile, bandages, anticeptic, he’s here to stay
I asked him what hell was like once, when he visited my dreams
And he said that compared to his time living, he loves living every day.
“Man, look at what video games have become. Rednecks on a rampage?!”
Pops open his drink and sits outside, looking over at the sunset on the bay.
As Calvin sort of once said, “In order to go on with your lives, you can’t think about it.”
Still, though, Downer gets down-er with each passing day.
What a great title for this next piece. “Hmm, this poem is about wanting to kill your alarm clock, and shotguns can kill things, so hey, why not mix the two?” The best poems are the ones that you can relate to, and I’m pretty sure that a lot of people related to this one. The “get the money” line may have had too much going on with it to work (trying to bring up the reasons why one should get out of bed doesn’t work all that well when you are trying to celebrate laziness), but I’m keeping it in because I still kind of like it. Oh yeah, and this one was really hard to write.
ACCENTUAL-ALLITERATIVE POEM: SHOTGUN ALARM
Comes the choice
Can I come out?
Distance to the door
Don’t; too far.
Kill the rooster
Kick the snooze.
Get the money
Get the blanket.
Snooze the day
Snails have fun.
Once I figured out what a rhyming metrical poem consisted of, this was a piece of cake. Encourage me to be silly, and I’ll give you an elephant looking for ice cream. I tried to amuse myself with as many of the lines as I could, which worked out pretty well. I should also point out that I watched the Flash animation “Charlie The Unicorn” shortly before writing this, which may be why I put a mountain in the poem, since “Charlie The Unicorn” sees the title character try to get to
RHYMING METRICAL: ICE CREAM GUPP
The ice cream at the top of the mountain wasn’t going to get itself,
So they left it up to me, Ralphie, to go get it for them.
I gathered my things with my tusk, said goodbye to my pet hen Lem,
And started my trek up
Mountains aren’t good for elephant feet,
But I guess I needed to get some exercise.
Halfway up the mountain, I met a monkey who liked to tell a lot of lies.
After a 15-minute water balloon fight, he admitted defeat.
My food supply started running low about three quarters of the way up,
And I’m not the kind of person who likes to eat ice cream.
While pondering what to do, I dozed off and had a weird dream;
It was about juju beans, sheep wearing wool, and a dog named Gupp.
I made it to the top, but couldn’t find the ice cream that was supposed to be there.
I panicked, and started throwing around everyone who got in my way.
One little boy, bruised and battered, cried out, “Ice cream man leave yesterday!”
In my fury, I think I might have swallowed a bear.
Using a sled that nobody seemed to be using anymore,
I managed to get down the mountain in 5 minutes.
The town, it seemed, had been destroyed; smashed to bits.
Looks like I didn’t have to worry about ice cream no more.
One of my Facebook notes, brought in to pad my grade! No fabrications, either. I really did punch that refridgerator magnet, and I did meet a homeless girl who was way too smart to be without a place to go home to. It’s the least I could do.
FREE CHOICE: COUPLETS (SORT OF)
Why am I friends with myself? Shit, it's not like I have a choice,
But c'mon, gather round, little girls and boys
And see the retard with the silver fingers talk to you about self-doubt
And make sure you've got your earplugs ready, because this could get loud.
When I was 4 years old, I attacked a magnet on the refrigerator.
It was a picture of my brother--oh, how I used to hate her.
Yeah, I know that he's not a she,
But really,
He's not the kind of guy that should be using a lot of pronouns
Because he can get dozens of people to say "Go Downs"
While I've got only a select few biggest fans, they're always in the fronts seats
Braving the smell of yours truly's dank feets
To hear whatever the fuck it is that JED's got on his mind.
All I do is repeat a comedian's act and then add, "Signed,
John Edward" and I'm called a fucking genius
And people make encouraging comments on the size of my...hairline.
And that's what really separates friends from family,
Because my family knows not to be friendly around me
Since it's not as though I could feel it anyway
I mean, sure, I can feel a hug, but at the end of the day
That's still a gesture meant for people who have feelings
And all I've got is some sort of onion peelings
From the layers that I've stripped off, starting at the fingers,
I finish picking at them, but the smell of blood lingers
And my dog can taste it, that's why she's afraid of me,
That's why I like to call her Coffee Downey
Because that bitch gets it, I'm not to be trusted,
My sense of empathy has already rusted
Over the course of the past 20 years
So if you cry, I'll probably just laugh at your tears.
Read my autobiography, it hasn't been written,
But I told it to a stray kitten
That I found while walking around a cold mountain town before being shipped down south
You wouldn't believe the poetry coming out of her mouth;
She described a train as a "lumbering beast",
At which point, my negative thoughts towards the homeless ceased
And I wondered how a girl with a mind like that could fall so far
And I wondered...
I wondered how I could forget her name.
That's enough for now, kids, story time is over,
Now go outside and play some red rover.
I'll just be picking my mind, see if I've got friends in
And ask Sufjan for more words that rhyme with alligator.
NUMBER 2: Most useful learning experience? Heck, that’s every time I get backed into a corner with a poem. Twelve more accentual-alliterative poems and I’ll figure out the meaning of life. I’ve learned that I’ve got a really silly side that hasn’t worn off with age. My favorite part about my work this semester is how silly my work has been, compared to my material last semester. Spill your guts too many times and you won’t have anything to breathe with anymore, I guess. My writing hasn’t changed all that much, unfortunately. I have a better understand of meter now, along with a few new ways to rhyme stuff. The best piece of advice I’ve gotten is when somebody said that they didn’t get one of my poems. I tend to make all sorts of obscure references (or self-references, which are fun to write…right before you delete them), and being told to make things more accessible is a good way to keep your audience. I’m still struggling with the poems that have the most rules attached to them. The most frustrating part of the writing experience is when I have to choose between the great line and the decent line that follows the poem’s guidelines. My goals after this semester are to continue writing poems. I’ve been writing a few of them on my Facebook notes, as a matter of fact. It’s good exercise.
NUMBER 3: Deadlines are more lenient in an online setting, which is good for lazy people like me. The problem with doing creative writing online is that it makes giving feedback harder. Once, I told someone that their poem was too “poety”—which is my way of saying that the work sounded like it was written with the intent of sounding really pretty without care for the content. This person thought that I had misspelled “poetry” and proceeded to give me an undeserved online bitch-slap. In a face-to-face setting, that wouldn’t have happened. The lecture notes and assignments were easy to follow. I didn’t have to read anything more than twice to get it. I barely read the text, to be honest. The discussion questions were fine, and really helped me mold my poems. The instructor should only put in their word in the discussions if we’re all REALLY missing the point. I would like to read everyone’s poems when they post them, so I’m in favor of a whole class workshop. The only people that I really got to know were the ones that I got to know outside of class, which is how it worked with my other online class. In a face-to-face setting, I would know something about everyone. As it is, I know 1 or 2 people in this class. My favorite assignment was the first one; my least favorite was the accentual-alliterative poem. I would like to see an assignment that has one person coming up with a few names, objects, and/or words, and another person has to write a poem using all of the listed words. The only thing that I would suggest that could improve this class is to have more live readings.
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