Zeusthecat

It's been awhile but I got a couple more hours in last weekend and had quite a good time. I'm definitely finding that this game can be pretty fun if I take it in smaller doses and spread out my play time a bit. Since I previously lost a chunk of progress when the game got stuck, I first had to spend some time getting back to where I was. After redoing what I had done before and getting the dunce cap again, I made another attempt to pull the fire alarm and run into the classroom while the teacher was out. Once inside the room, I was able to grab an item out of the chest of random pirate shit, after which, the teacher came back in and booted me out. So I repeated the process a few times until I got all the items I could from the chest (I think I got a parrot whistle, a magazine, a toy boat, and some kind of collectors card) and then moved on. Next, I headed down to the beach where two pirates were talking and as soon as I showed up, the cannon asshole fired a cannon ball at us causing one of the pirates to run off. Apparently, if more than two pirates are ever conversing at the same time, cannon fire will rain down upon them. I chatted to the remaining pirate for a bit and talked to his two parrots (one that always tells the truth and one that always lies) and learned that the bronze hat I needed for the ultimate insult was buried under a rock along the beach. I walked around for a little bit and couldn't seem to find the area he mentioned so instead I decided to head back to Jambalaya and try to finish off the diving competition. Now that I had the dunce cap, I gave the diving competition another go and got perfect scores from all the judges. However, this still wasn't enough and on the tie breaker round, Marco Pollo somehow pulled off an 11 from one of the judges and beat me. But luckily, before the rematch, the game showed a brief segment where Marco Pollo went into the changing room and oiled himself up with the baby seal oil. After seeing that, I figured I would somehow have to sabotage the baby seal oil to get Marco Pollo to fuck up. So I went through my items and eventually found that I was able to distract Marco Pollo and put the chewed up bagel thing into the oil. Then I retried the diving competition and was finally able to defeat him when a bunch of seagulls attacked him as he was doing his dive. With the diving trophy in hand, I went back to Knuttin Atoll to try to get the last piece I needed. When I got back to Knuttin Atoll, I headed straight back to the pirate with the two parrots and continued trying to find the area he was referring to where the bronze hat was buried. Before long, I found that it was just off the right edge of that screen. I saw that there were a ton of rocks along the beach and separate screens for each rock so I immediately used the parrot whistle to call the parrots over. Unfortunately, each time I talked to them they flew up and then landed again in a random spot so there was no way to tell which one was the truth telling parrot when I asked which direction I needed to go. So after some experimenting, I found that I was able to give the coffee I had to one of the parrots, causing him to get all tweaked out and fidgety. Now that I could distinguish between the two, I followed the truth telling parrot's directions until I got to the rock that had the hat under it. I immediately found that the rock was too big to lift and the only obvious solution was to somehow get the cannon bastard to fire a cannon ball at the rock. Knowing that he would only fire if three or more pirates were conversing, and knowing that the only thing left in that area that I hadn't really done anything with was the puppet show booth, I figured I had to somehow get those two puppets and bring them down to the rock so I could somehow trick him into fire at us. So I went back over to the puppets and after talking to them a few times and trying a bunch of items with the dude and each of his puppets, I was eventually able to scare him off by showing him my map to the ultimate insult. Then, I picked up the puppets, headed back to the rock, and put on a little puppet show which tricked the dude into firing at us and got me the hat I needed. After doing all that, we headed back to Melee Island and some cutscenes ensued. Basically, LeChuck got elected governor, I got all my shit taken from me, and I ended up getting stranded on Monkey Island. I started exploring the beach area and gathered a few notes before making it into a clearing where Herman Toothrot had his camp set up. After talking to him for a little bit and picking up a coconut, I moved on to an area where I could drop rocks into a series of tunnels/tubes and saw that it launched the rock onto the beach. And this is about where I stopped playing. For the record, I think the whole Jambalaya Island segment was really well done and was a step above anything else I've seen in the game. The puzzles all made a decent amount of sense and most of the characters were fairly interesting and not too stupid. The fact that I also didn't need or want to use a guide at any point in this section was also a testament to how well it all came together.

Super Mario World.

Oh yeah, well fuck you! Enjoy that last month of sleep while you can because the next year will be a sleep deprived hell!

Watching my daughter play Super Mario Bros has continued to be a treat. She played some this weekend after not having played for a couple weeks and she has gotten remarkably better. For a while, she was having a hard time understanding how to use the run button but as I watched her play the other day, I noticed that she had not only figured out how to use it, but she was even able to use it properly on that small area of real estate on the pillar/stair at the end of the level to consistently get 2000 points on the end level flag. Then, I left the room for a bit and a few minutes later, I heard the victory music from 1-4 indicating that she had just gotten past King Koopa. She had been struggling with that a lot and could never get past the spinning fire rod things so she was absolutely elated and I ran back into the room to celebrate with her on her first big video game accomplishment. After that, she proceeded to beat 2-1 and 2-2 (the first water level) without issue and ended up stopping after failing at 2-3 a few times. She's already gotten close to beating it a few times but at this point I think she's still learning how the flying fish work and how to avoid them.

I'm finally making some decent progress on Jambalaya Island and enjoying it quite a bit more than the last couple sections of the game. When I resumed the other night, I continued going through each of the shops and areas on the island. Starting with the Starbuccaneer's coffee shop, I picked up some kind of nasty bagel snack and ate it, leaving a chewed up bagel thing in my inventory. I then got a hint on the ultimate insult from an old lady inside (and I think I got some kind of souvenir mug here as well but I may have picked that up somewhere else) and tried to order some coffee from the barista which I ended up not having enough money for. From there, I went back to Planet Threepwood, talked to all of the people inside, and got a caricature done by a caricature artist. I also tried to order a meal but didn't have any money so I was forced to move on. Next, I went back over to the micro-groggery and tried riding the mechanical manatee after talking to the bartender again (I think I had also previously gotten a glass of weak grog from this area). I ended up just getting thrown off a couple times and figured that I probably didn't have the means to defeat the manatee just yet and decided to leave the town and head for the next area on the island. After leaving the town, I continued on and found myself in an area with a diving competition and a competition trophy which looked to be one of the pieces of the ultimate insult. I talked to the champion diver for a bit and challenged him to a dive-off, but was rejected because I didn't have the required diving certificate. So I went over to the judges and after they looked me over, they gave their approval and handed me the diving certificate I needed. Then I re-challenged the diver guy and lost horribly. After chatting with the judges some more and making a few more failed attempts, I started to get a good idea of what I needed to do to win. First, I needed to mimic the moves of the other diver to get a perfect score from the hippie judge. Then, I needed to produce the smallest splash possible to get a perfect score from the wise judge. Finally, I had to somehow bribe or otherwise convince the third judge to stop giving me such shitty scores. I was able to at least get a perfect score from the hippie judge at this point by meeting his criteria but couldn't get anywhere with the other two and had to move on. Next, I made my way over to Stan's time share place. After picking up a bottle of glue and a time share pamphlet, I listened to Stan's pitch and fell asleep during his three hour rant. Apparently, if I made it through the whole thing he would give me a coupon for a free meal at Planet Threepwood so I made a mental note that I would probably need to find a way to get some coffee from Starbuccaneer's so I could stay awake for the whole pitch. Before leaving Stan's place, I examined the pamphlet and glue I had picked up and saw that one of the pictures in the pamphlet was of the shitty diving judge with some lady. So I went straight back to the diving place and was able to use the pamphlet as blackmail to get him to give me better scores. At this point, I wasn't quite sure what to do so I meandered around for a little while and eventually made my way back to the town. I ended up going back inside the micro-groggery and quickly realized that I could apply glue to the mechanical manatee. After doing that, I gave it another go and managed to hang on all the way through the highest setting. That netted me a coupon for a free meal from Planet Threepwood which I immediately went to redeem. After ordering my meal and receiving the monkey mug (one of the three pieces of the ultimate insult), I tried to take off with the mug but wasn't able to since it belonged to the establishment. I went through my limited options to try to figure out how to snatch the mug and ended up talking to the caricature artist again to get another picture done. This caricature ended up being a picture of me with the monkey mug so after receiving it, it didn't take long for me to figure out that I could use the glue with the picture to paste the monkey mug portion onto the mug I had received earlier. Then, I switched out my fake monkey mug with the real one and took off with my prize. Next, I headed back over to Starbuccaneer's to see if I could figure out how to get some coffee. This time, as I approached I got lucky and noticed a mug sitting on the other side of the window that I hadn't seen before. So I went inside, grabbed the mug from behind a planter that had been obstructing it from the inside, and handed it to the barista to get my cup of coffee. Once I had that, I went back to Stan's, drank the coffee, and listened to his pitch. Thanks to the coffee, I made it through the whole thing and then realized it was pointless because I had already received the same coupon from the micro-groggery. I had pretty much exhausted all my options on the main island at this point and after eventually making my way back down to the docks, I found that I could take a canoe over to Knuttin Atoll. On the way there, I ran into some asshole who was firing a cannon at me and learned that Knuttin Atoll was where all the pirates were being sent off to. After I finished talking to him, I continued on through and started exploring the island. The first thing I noticed was some guy doing a puppet show so I went right over to him and talked to him and his puppets for a bit. That ended up being pretty pointless so next, I went over to a school house and enrolled in a pirate rehabilitation program. On my first go through, I passed easily and got my certificate. However, I couldn't help but notice a dunce cap in the classroom and based on previous comments about my flat head, I figured that would be the perfect hat to wear during the diving competition to make my splash as small as possible. So I re-enrolled, gave the worst possible answers, and got the dunce cap as a "reward". After doing that, I went back outside and pulled the fire alarm on the building which caused the teacher lady to run out. As soon as I saw that happen, I ran inside and ended up running into a really annoying bug that's happened to me a few times throughout this game. Basically, I was standing in the doorway when the teacher tried to walk back in and the game got stuck with her in a walking animation and me blocking her way with no way for me to move or interact with anything. So I had to revert to an earlier save and lost a small chunk of progress. And that's about where I stopped playing. It shouldn't take me too long to redo that last portion and get back to where I was and once I do, I'll finish exploring Knuttin Atoll and see if I can finish off the diving competition and get that trophy.

Thanks to all of you who have responded and shared your challenges with the whole friend thing. I've been pretty embarrassed to share this with other people and there is some comfort in knowing that I'm not the only one struggling with this issue. It really is unfortunate that we are spread out all over the globe because I think Idle Forums has fostered a great community of like-minded individuals and I have no doubt that many lasting friendships would be forged if there wasn't so much distance between most of us. Also, Nachimir, I think that is some pretty solid advice you provided and I'm really going to try to make an effort to be more social and force myself to meet new people and do more stuff.

Sorry to hear that you guys are going through the same thing. I really miss the days when I could just call up a friend and we would hang out and play video games for hours on end. With those friends gone it seems like everyone else my age has totally different priorities in life and I have a hard time finding people I can really relate to.

I've somehow reached a point in my life where I'm down to about zero friends. It's something that's really been bothering me a lot lately and making me feel increasingly isolated and insecure. I've tried to get together with some coworkers that I get along with and share similar interests but it just never gels for some reason. Everyone else my age seems to have their own thing going on with their established group of friends and since moving to Phoenix 5 years ago, my established group of friends has pretty much faded away. Why is making friends so goddamn hard at this stage in life? Maybe there needs to be a "finding new friends" equivalent of an online dating site (or maybe there already is) to make this shit easier. I'm just getting tired of being a loner.

Yeah, fortunately my home is my own. But unfortunately, it has the whole "open floor plan" setup. So my living room bleeds into the entry way with an open stairwell to the second floor and literally no walls to block the sound from making its way to the second floor. Our bedroom is right at the top of the stairwell and to make matters worse, we have to leave the door open when we sleep or else Zeus will just sit there meowing to get in if he is out and meowing to get out if he is in. Fucking cats and open floor plans. Edit: And yeah Twig, I've definitely resorted to the headphone thing in some cases but I just don't like using headphones if I don't have to.

Then what good is my 7.1 surround sound? Fuck headphones. 7 speakers and a subwoofer blasting sound waves throughout my living room are my "headphones".

I really wish games had separate volume settings for gunfire/explosions and all other sound effects. I tend to do most of my gaming when everyone else is sleeping and am constantly struggling to find a volume level that is loud enough for me to hear all of the music, dialog, and sound effects while also being low enough that my wife doesn't come out of the room asking me to turn it down. Because of the fact that gunfire and explosions are always so much louder than any other sound effect in games, I usually have to lower the volume so much that the only thing left for me to hear is gunfire and explosions. This has been especially annoying in The Last Of Us because decent segments of the game don't involve any loud shit like gunfire and I want to be able to enjoy the background music and chatter between characters. So I turn the volume up enough for all of this lovely shit to reach my ears only to get caught off guard by an unexpected battle sequence and have gunshots ringing through every corner of our house because I reacted hastily and forgot to pause the game and turn the volume back down.

Yay! Glad to hear there is someone else like me.

I just found out my Grandma is on Facebook. I am now literally the only human being I am aware of who is not on Facebook (not including my children). I feel like maybe I should give in and just sign up but I kind of want to do my part to preserve this endangered species I belong to.

Wow. That was the best.

I'm kind of bummed that they didn't add Epona as a vehicle. How awesome would that be to ride Epona off of a big jump and have a fucking hang glider sprout from her back.

For me, I think Goldeneye 007 was the main reason I ended up playing the way I do now. That game was a weird case though because the up and down C buttons looked down and up respectively while the left and right C buttons strafed left and right, and the control stick handled movement on the y axis and looking on the x axis with no inversion. I guess having your x and y look axes split between the control stick and C buttons made the whole inverted y, not inverted x scheme feel a little more natural. Then when Halo came around and put all the strafing on one stick and all the looking on the other, my brain just married them together into a clusterfuck of nonsense. Basically, what I'm trying to say is fuck Goldeneye and fuck Rare. Perfect Dark was awesome.

So I'm one of those freaks that plays video games with inverted look controls. I've always justified it to others by explaining that I envision my control stick being attached to the back of the head of the character I am controlling. I think that is an easy way to give people perspective on why it feels natural for some people to pull the control stick down to look up and up to look down. However, I recently realized that that explanation is total bullshit in my case because my brain only applies that logic to the y axis for some reason. I used to think other people were jackasses for constantly picking on people who use inverted control schemes but now I realize I'm the jackass for having a broken brain.

I agree. As much as I hate a lot of the writing, the voice acting itself is pretty solid. I also got a little further the other night, but not much. After spinning my wheels for a little while longer, I finally discovered that I could pour my can of grog into the furnace thingy to make the brass monkeys stop the conveyor belt. As soon as I did that, the flaming dish that I had stopped in front of the wax painting melted off all of the wax revealing the map underneath. Since the painting/map was of no use to him any more, the chef handed it over to me and I headed back to the dock. After giving the map to the ship figurehead lady, we learned that the ultimate insult was located on Jambalaya Island and immediately set sail for our new destination. Since arriving on Jambalaya Island, most of my time has been spent just going through each of the new locations, talking to the new characters, and picking up a few items here and there. So far I've checked out Planet Threepwood, a micro-groggery, and a Starbuccaneers coffee shop and gone through all the dialog options for each of the characters in those areas. I see that there are still a few more areas to visit on the island aside from the main village area I've explored so far so hopefully those don't drag on for too long so I can get back to solving the next series of puzzles.

Glad I'm not the only one that feels that way. And also, the way Guybrush keeps using that stupid Billy Dee Williams 'sexy' voice when he talks to various female characters is really grating on my nerves. It wasn't funny the first time and it was downright infuriating the third time.

Has anybody made a controller that ditches the dual sticks and instead gives you a stick for your left thumb and a trackball for your right thumb? I have to assume that exists and if it does it seems like that would be the best of both worlds.

Yeah, I feel the same way. After seeing everything that has been happening in Ferguson, I realize this issue is much more serious than I originally gave it credit for and I think the theme they are going with is irresponsible at best.

Today is one of those rare days where we are getting an insane amount of rain. Roads all over the city are flooded and some areas had multiple inches of rain fall in a 30 minute period. I can barely contain my excitement. It is just crazy to think that we only get an average of 7 inches of rain per year and over the span of the last couple days, some areas around the city have received around half that amount.

Never!! I will definitely see this through till the end. It's just been a bad combination of a lack of enthusiasm for this game and a bunch of shit going on in my personal life that has made these last couple months really tough.

After taking a few weeks off from playing this game, I booted it up again recently with renewed motivation to get through the next portion of the game without using a guide. We'll see how far I get with that but I think some time off was good because I actually had an enjoyable time coming back to it and racking my brain on the Melee Island puzzles. Before doing anything, I spent some time re-conversing with the voodoo lady so I could remember what my current objective was. After finishing the conversation and examining what items I had, I went to work trying to figure out how to find the location of the ultimate insult. First, I headed to the Scumm bar and found that it had been turned into the Lua bar. I messed around in there for a little while, talking to the various characters and examining the various items and at one point, I picked up some chopsticks and managed to break them by sticking them in the sushi conveyor belt thing. There didn't seem to be anything else I could do in that area so I continued on and made my way towards Meathook's place. This time, when I approached the door to Meathook's house, he let me inside and I talked to him for a bit about his latest endeavors. Apparently, he had taken up wax art and had a successful business selling his works. Also (and I may be misremembering this since I've been sitting on this post for awhile), he mentioned that he had painted over and sold the map showing the location of the ultimate insult. After I finished talking to him, I went around investigating all the shit in his house and picked up a paintbrush before heading back out. Next, I went back down to the docks. Once there, I was able to grab a quarter out of the grog machine and used it to get a can of grog. Then, I walked down to my ship and after fiddling around for a bit, I found that I could talk to the lady on the front of my ship and put the necklace, earrings, and pen that I had received earlier on her. After doing this, I poked around a little bit more before continuing on. At this point, my options were pretty limited. There was nothing else of interest at the mansion and the only place on Melee Island that I hadn't exhausted all possibilities was the Lua bar. So I headed back to the Lua bar and quickly noticed the painting on the wall behind the sushi conveyor belt thing. I wasn't sure how to get to it yet so after messing around a bit more, I ended up sitting down on one of the stools and found that I could order some kind of flaming dish from the waitress. As soon as I saw the dish coming down the conveyor belt, I figured I was supposed to try to stop it right in front of the wax painting to get the wax to melt and reveal the map underneath the painting. Apparently there were no more chopsticks available to jam in the conveyor belt so I resorted to using the paintbrush. Upon stopping the conveyor belt, the chef came out of the kitchen to see what was going on and I was able to sneak into the kitchen while he was distracted. I haven't been able to figure out what I need to do next but I've repeated this process a few times with no success. I've examined the kitchen pretty thoroughly at this point and tried to stop the flaming dish in various spots around the painting but the results have been the same each time. To make matters worse, there was also a super lame brass monkey reference when I examined the two monkeys in the kitchen. I'm not sure whether to hate the brass monkey reference or the Forrest Gump reference more at this point in the game.

Do what I did. Convince yourself that "selfie" is just a new euphemism for poop. In other news, Kim Kardashian is going to publish a book of her selfies. I guess Kanye West was so impressed by the quality of her selfies that she now wants to share them with the rest of the world. I'll stop now.