Hello and welcome to my last post before I go on an indefinite hiatus. Since I knew for a while this would be the final post I would be making for a while, I decided to go all out for the finale. For the finale I decided to do the hardest video game challenge that I know of. Super Mario Galaxy 2’s The Perfect Run. First things first though, just to unlock this challenge you need to collect all 120 Power Stars in the main campaign, 120 total Green Stars from every level, and you need to have beaten ‘The Ultimate Test’ which is a level that tests everything you’ve learned from playing the game. The Perfect Run is the same layout as ‘The Ultimate Test’ but you only have one point of health and no checkpoints. You’ll have to be perfectly prepared for this behemoth of a finale. Now if you’re watching someone play through this level you might think it’s easy, but that’s just what the game wants you to think. You have to do the entire gauntlet with one health so of course it looks easy. Actually beating the level is another matter entirely. In both Super Mario Galaxy games one of my biggest problems is I over or underestimating my longer jumps, so this gauntlet is a nightmare. The final part of this challenge involves a gauntlet of Hammer Bros which lead to the final three Boomerang Bros you need to defeat to end the level once and for all. If you don’t deal with the Hammer Bros on the way to the Boomerang Bros the Hammer Bros will still be attacking you while you’re trying to deal with the Boomerang Bros and that is a lot to deal with all at once. I would only recommend this challenge if you have obtained all 242 previous stars and studied your route multiple times using the easier version of the level.

Hello and welcome to a challenge that isn’t Pokemon for a third week in a row. This time I’ve thought up a challenge based on an anime I really enjoyed. The Rising of the Shield Hero stars Naofumi who has been transported to another world as the Shield Hero. While having no attack he has incredible defense and is aided by his companion Raphtalia. Since I really enjoyed the anime I decided to do a run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild with a custom rule set. Following the anime’s example, Only shields are allowed to be used for combat, any other tool like sledgehammers and torches can still be used as long as they aren’t being used for combat. As soon as I leave the Great Plateau the plan is to get a horse, appropriately named Filo, and make my way towards Kakariko Village so I can unlock the amiibo rune for the Sheikah Slate as soon as possible. With the amiibo rune and a Wolf Link amiibo I can summon Wolf Link to act as our version of Raphtalia of the run. If ‘Raphtalia’, she can’t be resummoned for 24 hours, so your best bet is to act like the Shield Hero you were meant to be and defend while ‘Raphtalia’ attacks. I think this is a great way to change up how a casual playthrough of Breath of the Wild is. Normally you could easily focus on attacking and defending yourself at the same time, but now you’re forced to defend your only viable offensive options. I’d also recommend watching the anime for the Rising of the Shield Hero or reading the manga if my minor plot summary interests you.

Hello and welcome back to my latest bad idea. Sticking with last week’s Pokemon trend, I decided to make use of something I picked up a gaming convention last year for this week’s run. If you ever get a chance to go to the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee I would highly recommend going. This week I’m going to be playing Pokemon Green. Now what makes this game a challenge is the fact that it was only ever released in Japan. So with almost no knowledge of Japanese I only have my knowledge of the game and the attack animations to serve as a guiding light. I’ve played fully through the Kanto region through various games so I have a pretty good idea how to get around at this point. Since I’m playing the very first Pokemon game there are tons of exploitable things I can do to make my run easier. The first thing is that I’m going to pick Charmander and primarily use him during the run. I’m doing this because Charizard learns Slash at level 36, and slash is a high damage physical move that almost always lands critical hits in Generation One. The second thing I’m going to do is write down what level my planned team knows certain moves so I don’t accidentally skip learning a move I need. Third is catching Articuno and Zapdoes when I have access to them because it will help me cover my weakness in the Pokemon League. Fifth and finally I’m going to get a Nidorino that knows Horn Drill, a low accuracy one hit KO, and buy a bunch of X-Accuracies to exploit the glitch that allows Nidorino to have 100% accuracy when using Horn Drill to defeat anything Charizard, Articuno, and Zapdoes can’t handle, my final two team members will just be there so I have Pokemon that can learn the HM moves needed to navigate through the game. While these strategies could be applied to a normal playthrough of Pokemon Red or Blue, it’s an interesting challenge to see if basic reading ability is truly needed to enjoy a game like many boxes suggest.

Hello and thanks for taking the time to answer my poll last week, after collecting the feedback I have an idea of how I want to move forward with this blog. Now for this week’s round of suffering, Super Mario Brothers 2. Now at first glance you might be thinking, “Oh the game where you can play as Toad and Princess Peach while throwing turnips? That’s not a challenge at all, what are you trying to pull here?”. Well stop those thoughts right now because it’s time for a Nintendo history lesson. You see, there are actually two versions of Super Mario Brothers 2. One is the turnip throwing version which is globally known as ‘Super Mario Bros 2 USA’. The version that I’ll be playing today is now referred to as ‘Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels’. Originally, the Lost Levels was supposed to be the true sequel to the original Super Mario Bros, designed for players who had mastered the mechanics of the original game. However, Nintendo of America deemed it too hard for American players, so we got the version of Super Mario Bros 2 that most are familiar with today. If you want to play the Lost Levels today, it is available on the 3DS and Wii U Virtual Consoles, along with Nintendo Switch Online’s NES game library. While I do consider myself at least decent at 2D Mario games, I will admit this one intimidates me a bit because of its legacy. I personally stopped somewhere in world two out of the game’s eight worlds. If you really want to try it out I would highly recommend using the Nintendo Switch version so you have access to the rewind feature.

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.

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.