After taking a nice long break I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. However, I realized I didn’t want to completely torment myself this time around so I decided to do a more light hearted challenge. This time I’m going to be doing a speedrun of my favorite 2D Mario game, Super Mario World. To be more specific, I’m going to be doing an 11 exit glitchless run, which means I’ll be beating the game by clearing the game by doing the absolute minimum number of levels. Luckily I’ve been playing this game since I was in elementary school, so I have more than a few years under my belt. I know speedrunning is on a whole other level when compared to casually knowing the game like the back of your hand, so I know I shouldn’t set my expectations too high. Personally I have always wanted to give a real speedrun a try, but I’ve always been intimidated by the low times and how many of my favorite games are either mastered to the point of near perfection or they are games that are simply too long for me to want to sit down and run. The only exception that really comes to mind is Cadence of Hyrule, but that’s because every run is always a bit different so it’s fun. Overall I would say that Super Mario World is a game that is both fun from a casual perspective and a speedrunning perspective and I would recommend playing this classic if you haven’t played it.

Hey all, if you liked the content that Ryan posted for his blog, you should take a look at more of his content on his blog
http://blogs.uww.edu/todaystech/

Now that I’m back from my guest blog, I decided I wanted to be a little more social despite the effects of COVID-19 by playing a multiplayer game online. I decided to play Team Fortress 2 with a couple friends of mine. I’ve been playing this game since 2013 and I still play it to this day. As of right now I have over 1300 hours of playtime built up over seven years. Seeing as I had to cause myself some kind of torment, I decided to play the game without jumping as Scout, the class whose biggest appeals are jumping and speed. The only way this is going to be remotely doable is if I use the Force-Of-Nature, a weapon with enough kickback to launch Scout in the air. At first I felt confident in my years of play experience that I would be able to adjust to my jumpless life easily. I clearly did not learn anything from my jumpless run of Super Mario Sunshine. I had to completely rethink how I was going to play through the game. Worst of all, I had to try and learn my new navigation methods but I also had to deal with other players shooting at me. I went on a map that had objectives disabled for the sole purpose of learning how to do this yet there’s always that one person who’s there to ruin someone else’s day. Once me and my friends decided to go into an actual game it was not a great time. Since everyone was playing without any kind of handicap it made it a lot more difficult to contribute to my team. However, the fact that I was slightly buzzed while playing probably didn’t help either.

Hello and welcome to this week’s bad idea. This week I’m going to ignore one of the most iconic lines in gaming history “Gotta catch em all”. That’s right, it’s finally time for some Pokemon  challenges. If you’re a follower of my blog and are a Pokemon fan you probably would have expected me to do a nuzlocke as it’s the most common type of challenge run within the community. Well have no fear, that day will come in early April 2020. For today, we’re doing what’s called a ‘low dex run’ which means I’m going to complete the game while catching as few Pokemon as possible. I got the idea to do this run because a youtuber called Alpharad played through the entirety of Pokemon Emerald with just a Mudkip. This time I’m planning on playing through Pokemon FireRed. I decided to start my playthrough by choosing Squirtle as he is very bulky and can learn Surf, which is both needed for for overworld navigation and is a good move to use in battle. Unfortunately, I will need to catch at least one other pokemon to use the HM moves Cut, Flash, and Strength. Squirtle can also learn a set of moves that is tailor made for taking down the Elite Four and Champion at the end of the game. As I went through this run I realized how easy the early pokemon games really were if you could overlevel our starter to insane levels by the endgame. When I first tried this run out over the summer of 2019 I believe that I had beaten the Champion with a level 79 Squirtle. If you want to mix up your classic Pokemon experience I would highly recommend giving this run a try.

Hey everyone, I’m taking a break this week to guest blog on Newlong’s Blog to mix some Nintendo content into his normal PS4 and PC content. This week, Ryan is filling in for me with some Halo gameplay. Ryan typically writes about the latest happenings in tech so if you’re interest in the latest in technology go check out his blog!

Newlong’s Blog: http://blogs.uww.edu/hmonglorrydergaming/
Ryan’s Blog: http://blogs.uww.edu/todaystech/

If you grew up playing Xbox, you most likely know the fear that trying to complete the Halo campaigns on the most difficult level, legendary. Halo revolutionized the way FPS are made and played, it makes sense that the game is still held to a high esteem. With all of the Halo games that have come and gone, the hardest one, by far, in my opinion, is Halo Reach. The game was the fifth installment of the franchise, and the prequel to Halo Combat Evolved. The game itself is pretty hard to beat, but it is not impossible. If you invite friends to campaign, the game scales to the number of players in the squad, meaning if you have three members in the squad, the game is three times harder. But the real difficulty comes when the player plays the campaign on LASO or Legendary All Skulls On. One of the skulls, the Iron Skull, forces the player to beat the mission with zero deaths or saves. This means if the player dies in the last part of the mission, the player has to repeat the entire level from the beginning. I tried to complete the 10-mission campaign on LASO. With all 13 skulls activated, it took me 6 hours to get to the 9^th mission. The mission that caused me the most trouble, was the last one, where I died over and over again. That mission alone, took me over 2 hours. I could not complete the mission, there were many places I died. I gave up after 2 hours of being stuck on the level. I have completed the campaign the before, but I have never tried to complete it solo with all skulls activated. I can easily say that this was one of the hardest game challenges I have tried.