Mario is fucking hardcore! o_O

This might come as a bit of a shock to you, but I'm not the most social, friendly person around. In the three years that I've been living in the UK, I had exactly one visitor, because I couldn't stop my brother from showing up when he was in the area. Don't get me wrong. He's a nice person. I think. I don't really know. We don't talk. We have absolutely nothing in common. Point being, my not wanting any visitors had nothing to do with him, I just don't like guests in the house full stop. They make me wear pants. Common courtesy suggests I change my desktop rotation to images, which don't solely focus on female anatomy. I can't scratch when and where I want to scratch. I can't be me. You can do that around a best friend, but acquiring one of those would require you to let people into your house and possibly your life and I'm just not that kinda guy. Claire once told me that everybody needs a Wilson. Tim Taylor had a Wilson. Stranded Tom Hanks had one. Even House had a Wilson. Maybe I'm just gonna buy another reptile and name him Wilson or something.

Like all normal people, Claire has friends and family. And one member of her family, her sister, came to visit us yesterday. And like all visitors, her sister would sit on our couch, there'd be that awkward moment of silence, followed by the obvious question: Now what?

I knew this moment would come! It always does! Another reason why I don't usually have guests - they don't just want to eat, they also demand entertainment! So I did the dumbest thing one could possibly do in this situation, something that hasn't been a good idea for decades, something no sane person ever would do: I trusted Sega!
I think that Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed is a pretty decent game and playing the PC version with two Xbox360 controllers works like a charm. Add a third one and the whole experience turns into a nightmare. We've been messing around with it for an eternity, but either one controller would steer at least two characters or one controller would do nothing at all or the buttons wouldn't do what we told them to do in the configuration utility. We simply couldn't get it to work, no matter what.

So we turned to Nintendo. Smash Bros. usually results in things being said and done, which should never be said or done and the only alternative was New Super Mario Bros. This might brand me a heretic, but I don't actually care for Mario. Or anything Nintendo. And platformers, well... they're a bit like those rubbery microwave hamburgers. I'll have one if there's really absolutely nothing else in the house, but they're not my first choice. But seeing as Sonic had let us down and Guild Wars 2 had failed to spark the interest I was hoping for, I reluctantly fired up one of the fat plumber's countless adventures.
Holy fuck.

Things that should never be said and may never be taken out of context? "Help me pop my sister!" "You gotta fucking wiggle it! Wiggle harder!" "For fuck's sake, will you jump on me already?" "Don't make my mushroom go big, I see a midget pipe!"

This game is the biggest trolling contest I have seen in my life. It's still the same old Mario formula, jump and run across side-scrolling 2D landscapes whilst dodging the local fauna and flora, bottomless pits, lava and all sorts of hazardous shit. But with all three of us playing at the same time. Ideally, people help each other, share power ups, jump off of each other's heads to reach tricky spots, that kinda thing. Of course that's not how it plays out. Picture folks pushing each other off platforms and to their deaths, hogging all the power-ups, reviving fallen team mates right above a bottomless pit... we've killed each other so many times, this game really doesn't need Bowser in it. We're taking care of each other just fine. We laughed so hard, we were in tears.

It's also the fucking hardest Mario game I've ever played, granted, I haven't been in touch with these games since the (S)NES, N64 and various portable versions. It feels like I've stepped into some kind of parallel universe. Games like Call of Duty spoil me rotten with checkpoints and auto saves whenever I kill three bad guys, self-proclaimed "core gamers", myself included, complain about how everything gets dumbed down, too easy and too casual-friendly and that damn Mario game killed all of us more often than any other game we've played this decade. Maybe we all just suck.
Holy crap. I wouldn't want a WiiU in the house unless I can get one for free and I'm not gonna turn into some kind of redeemed Nintendo fan. But I can't remember the last time I laughed so much.

Oh, speaking of free stuff: I got a Neverwinter Heroes of the North founder's pack! You know, that ultra hardcore deluxe mega package, which costs 200 bucks? I fucking love my job. I also love how, until this very day, critics say that there's absolutely no bribery going on. Or at least... emotional blackmail? Video game publishers and their PR guys are the nicest people on the planet. They shower critics with gifts, special collectors' editions, invitations to press events and god knows what. When I get tons of awesome free stuff and the game in question turns out to be crap, I feel bad for writing about how crap it is. I'm not saying I'd give 90something percent for an awful game if I'm handed enough free stuff, but honestly now, when a publisher is incredibly friendly and supportive and showering you with cool stuff, ulteriour motive or not, won't that make you hesitate at least a weeeee little bit when you're cranking out a really nasty review? In a perfect world, a critic wouldn't be swayed by these things one bit, but that's because they wouldn't accept any gifts in the first place. And who would seriously forfeit one of the coolest perks that go along with this job?
Mind you, this has nothing to do with Neverwinter, I'm just rambling about stuff in general. I have yet to play Neverwinter, I'm dying to give it a try and I'm a huge D&D fan. I can't wait for it to start! :D

-Cat