Hello and may your heart be your guiding key towards my latest bad idea. After babysitting a gnome amidst zombies and aliens, I decided to play something completely different. This week I decided to hurt myself by playing one of the most joked about release dates in gaming history, Kingdom Hearts 3. I first got into the Kingdom Hearts series when I played it at a friend’s house when I was around 5 years old. It wasn’t until a few years later after I had gotten a PS2 for Christmas when my family were going to a K-Mart that was having a going out of business sale that I saw a copy of Kingdom Hearts sitting in a clearance bin and I knew I had to get it. At the time I only recognized it as the game from my childhood as Sora is known for having oversized yellow shoes that stood out on the cover. Since that day I’ve been a huge fan of this series despite the… questionable writing decisions by Nomura. Recently, Kingdom Hearts 3 had released a big DLC pack which included a FastPass and Black Codes which are modifiers that make the game easier or harder respectively. If you’ve been reading my blog you already know I’m gonna crank on all that extra pain that the Black Codes offer. I’m going to start on a New Game Plus simply for the fact I need to at least have a chance of winning and getting OathKeeper in my last run will help me smooth out the process. Now I should let you all know ahead of my playthrough that I do not recommend this in any way to someone new to this series or who wants to get into challenge run. I barely made any progress in Kingdom Heart 2 Final Mix’s Critical Mode because I was really bad at pattern memorization. After just barely scraping by the tutorial boss, I realized two important things. One is that the critical mode in this game is very doable and is something I plan to play though when I have more time. The second thing I realized is that I never want to use those Black Codes ever again.

Hello and welcome to this week’s bad gaming idea. After cruising through the early chapters of Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, I decided I needed to step up the difficulty to get back on the pain train. This time I’m going for a very specific achievement in Half-Life 2 Episode Two. The objective is to carry a small garden gnome from one end of the game, to the other end and put it in a rocket. Now as Half-Life 2 Episode is a first person shooter with enemies ranging from aliens to super soldiers, carrying around a garden gnome is not going to be the easiest task in the world. I’ve been playing Half-Life games since high school but I never got into them as much as one of my friends did. Since he has gotten every achievement in all three of the Half-Life Two games, I asked him for some pointers on how to do the run and I got a lot of good advice from him. For example, he told me that during the chapter where Alyx is injured you can just leave the gnome in the room with her and play the chapter normally rather drag it around with you the entire time. While I didn’t play super long into the game due to its length, it was a very interesting way to play since I was constantly making mental notes to myself about where I left the gnome and if it was safe to throw it somewhere. If you’re not an experienced Half-Life 2 player I would personally not recommend going for this achievement.

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of me having bad ideas and acting upon them. Last week I attempted to beat Super Mario Sunshine without jumping which ended rather prematurely to say the least. So this week I decided to try something that was within the realm of possibility. This week I am going to play through Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones on the highest difficulty available, which is Hard Mode. For those unfamiliar with Fire Emblem games, they are a series of turn-based tactics games that could be compared to a giant game of chess by some. I personally found the series in high school when a friend of mine at the time told me about this cool game he had found for Game Boy Advance. It was actually the seventh game in the series, Blazing Blade. However that eventually led to me eventually picking up many more games in the series later in life. However, I never got around to trying Sacred Stones until recently. When I asked one of my roommates what game in the series I should do this week, he said Sacred Stones because it’s his favorite game. The run itself isn’t going to have any special rules like last week. After all, I would like a chance to actually finish the game this time. I’m going to play however I want to on the highest difficulty. Overall I felt my run was lot easier than I was expecting it to be. For the maps I played I honestly had more difficulty with Echoes on a lower difficulty than I had had with this game so far. I’d highly recommend it if you’re looking for a challenge but you don’t want something too insane for a challenge run.

Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the first ridiculous endeavor I’ve decided to try out! Super Mario Sunshine without jumping. I figured what better place to start this series off with than one of my favorite games of all time combined with a ridiculous challenge attached to it. Super Mario Sunshine was one the early titles for the Nintendo Gamecube and sadly hasn’t been remastered since. In the game Mario is falsely accused of covering Isle Delfino with a mysterious goop and has to clean all of it up. To help him clean the island, Mario meets FLUDD, a hi-tech water gun that even has a hover function. As I’m sure you can already guess, FLUDD’s Hover Nozzle is going to be the primary way of rising up in a world where Mario’s most iconic trait is not allowed. Now, those of you familiar with the game are likely aware of the obvious roadblock of the secret levels which restrict FLUDD from being used. My answer to that is to clear the stage normally once when FLUDD is banned, and immediately redo the stage once FLUDD is unbanned. It’s not a perfect solution but it stops the game from being unfinishable. So this run is also considered a minimum jump run. For the sake of not subjecting anyone to pointless cutscenes, I edited out the very long cutscene at the start of the game. Personally I think this was a great way to learn the game even more in depth than I already had from my years of experience. I already knew what my limitations were but the real challenge and satisfaction for me was trying to use everything within my reach as I tend to pick the speediest ways nine times out of ten. It felt great finding that one platform I needed to make everything work together well. I think my favorite missions were Ricco Harbor One and Three because of how much I needed to use the map layout to my advantage to finally reach that Shine Sprite. In the end, I only managed to get 9 Shine Sprites truly with no jumping required. Someday I would not mind giving this run another shot now that’s I’ve figured out some of the optimal routes for the early game.

Hello fellow video game enthusiasts!
I’m Brett. I’ve been playing video games for as long as I’ve been able to hold a controller and despite my years of experience I’m not what I’d consider “great” at video games. If you’re like me and intimidated by those lunatics who can do insane no-damage-default-gear-max-difficulty runs in video games but are unsure how much skill you need to attempt these runs, you’re in the right place! I do the intimidating work so you don’t have to! Super high difficulty runs? Right here! Nuzlockes? You’re more than welcome! Stupid runs that make no logical sense whatsoever? Why not? No one ever said these challenges have to be good ideas! I typically upload new content on Saturdays by 11:59PM CST! See you soon!