Best 5

Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction for PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox

X-Men the arcade game

Spider-Man for PS, N64, PC, Game boy Color, and Dreamcast

Spider-Man 2 for PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox

Marvel Vs Capcom 2 for Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2 and arcade

Now for the Worst 5

Spider-man 2 Enter Electro for PS

X-men for NES

Spider-Man for Atari 2600

Catwoman for Xbox, Gamecube, PC, and PS2

And here it is, the most abysmal super-hero game ever…

Super-Man 64

Original Recipe Throwback on the left. Current day recipe on the right.

The label on the throwback bottle is certainly more interesting than the new one.  The main difference between the two drinks is how they’re sweetened.  The current day recipe uses high fructose corn syrup, the ubiquitous, highly processed goo that seems to be everywhere today.  The throwback recipe uses sugar.  Imagine that!

All three boys took part in the test along with me.  Everybody got a couple of ounces of each of the drinks placed in front of them.  I probably shouldn’t have told them which was which, but they knew.  In the picture the throwback is in the red cup.  The modern formula is in whatever the other cup is.

Owen, Declan, and Kieran are ready for the taste test

Everybody drank the throwback first.  The feeling among the boys was that the throwback was sweeter.  It was their unanimous choice.  I really couldn’t tell the difference between the two.  After the first couple of drinks I just sensed no difference.  After another try of each I finally noticed a subtle difference.  For me, as soon as I swallowed the current formula the flavor was pretty much done.  With the throwback formula it seemed that the flavor stayed with me longer.  The sugar must do a better job of coating the tongue.  That’s my theory.

Can you tell which Mountain Dew is which?

So  there you have it.  The four of us all felt that Mountain Dew Throwback is better than the modern formula.  However, I still prefer Diet Mountain Dew to both of them.

Lauren and Kieran are the oldest in the back. Megan, Owen, Declan, Rachael, and Logan are on the bench.

I tried to get a couple of pictures. By this one the squirmies had already begun

It was fun watching them play together.  If you are in the Northville area and you need a park for an outdoor party, you should look into ITC Community Sports Park.  It’s a Novi park with a Northville address.  I’m confused.

You know something's gonna happen when you open this box

First off, Let’s think back to what games were like in 1998, There were pretty big games back then, like Super Mario 64, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Goldeneye 007, but this game blew those away with it’s complete non- linearity, tons of side-quests and just overall amount of content.

I wonder if I can go through that waterfall?

Now lets think about the music. The composer of this game is a legend! This game features the greatest song I’ve ever heard. If you want to hear the music, go here. Some tracks have been in Zelda games ever since. Tracks like Gerudo Valley and Zelda’s theme music are just so good. And let’s not forget, this game’s music is not just a background thing. You do a vast majority of things by playing an OCARINA. It’s such a good idea! Playing the ocarina in this game feels great as well. When you really think about it, using an instrument in a full roaming action-adventure game may sound weird, but Nintendo made it work extremely well, and using it actually feels great.

Adult Link and the Ocarina of Time

Now for the main characters. Link: The hero forest boy who does not talk, Saria: Link’s friend from the forest, Princess Zelda: the princess of Hyrule that sends you on your quest. Ganondorf: Evil Gerudo wizard. Epona: Link’s horse.

Up next, the controls. I really want to, but I have not played this game with the original Nintendo 64 controller,

Just look at this weirdo

I’ve played it with this,

Much more modern!

on the Wii’s virtual console, which, as you can probably tell, makes gameplay much different. In this game,the A button makes you roll, read, get someone to tell you stuff, and a lot of other stuff. the B button swings your sword, the analog stick (left on the Wii Classic Controller Pro) Moves Link, the C buttons (right analog stick for Wii) selects items, the Start button (the + button for Wii) brings up the menu subscreens. I’m not sure how comfortable the original N64 controller is to play with this game, but the Classic Controller Pro works great.

Like all other Zelda games, there are lots of hard puzzles in temples and even towns and Hyrule field! Using your ocarina to reveal a hidden hole in the ground is really cool. The ocarina songs will be drilled into your head by the end of the game because you use them a lot. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though because they’re good songs. This game is also pretty hard. Bosses can get really hard especially PHANTOM GANON!!!

The almighty epicness of the Triforce cannot be matched

To wrap it up, everything in this game is amazing. The music, the action, the story, the overall amount of content.

This game gets a 10 out of 10 and completely deserves the accolade Masterful.

]]> http://www.westphals.net/2010/08/19/the-zelda-zone-ocarina-of-time-review/feed/ 0 http://www.westphals.net/2010/08/19/reviews-are-back/ http://www.westphals.net/2010/08/19/reviews-are-back/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:06:18 +0000 Kieran http://www.westphals.net/?p=423 Hey Koopalings! I’m back and ready to review things on a much larger scale. This time, I’m reviewing video games. I’m a huge Legend of Zelda fan, so naturally I’ll review those games pretty soon. Hope you like the reviews, I’m trying hard to get them out as fast as I can.

That cold part has sat unused in our freezer for quite a long time.  Recently it finally came out.  Declan and Owen were excited to help make the ice cream!  Linda helped them mix up a vanilla ice cream base.  Then while it was churning, they both got to add a little packet of mini M&Ms to it.  It was pretty yummy.

Owen adds his M&Ms to the mix

Declan adds his M&Ms to the mix

My first attempt at a flower closeup

After a couple of tries in the front I went around back to get the garden.  I even got the gardener as a bonus!

Linda tends her garden

Since this picture was taken, the cages have gone around the tomato plants to keep them from falling over.  It’s looking pretty good!

We met at St. John’s at 5:30 Friday and loaded everything up.  Then we headed out to Camp Munhacke.

These new scouts hadn’t done much tent setup before so it took a while to get them up properly.  However, everything did get setup before there was any rain.  After things were setup we needed to focus on dinner.  We made spaghetti.  We had propane stoves on the picnic table under the easy-up canopy.  It came out quite good with plenty for everyone.  There was even some for the raccoon that fished it out of the trash while we were cleaning up.

Kieran, Zack, and Matthew were in a tent together.  They were probably the last ones to fall asleep.  At least they were the last voices I heard before I fell asleep.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early.  We were up at 7am.  Pancakes and sausage were cooked up for breakfast.  Everybody helped and it didn’t go too bad.

Pancakes and sausage for breakfast Saturday morning

After filling up on breakfast and cleaning up it was time for our five mile hike on the Bill Baker Trail.  There is some history to this particular hike.  When last year’s new scouts went out on this hike it became known as the “Death March” because the trail was washed out at one point.  That led to a huge detour through the wilderness and everybody was completely exhausted by the time they got back to camp.  This year the hike went quite well for most of the way.  Then we hit the same place that it was washed out last year, and it was washed out again.  Oh dear.  Casey remembered that it was the exact same place that they encountered trouble last year.  Mr. Blossom and I thought about the situation briefly and decided that our best course of action would be to double back to the road that we crossed most recently and take it back to camp.  It wasn’t quite as adventurous as last year, but given our circumstances it seemed like the best thing to do.

All the hiking scouts as we approach the end of our trek

Once we made it back to camp it was time for lunch.  We fixed Hobo meals on the camp fire.  Hamburger, diced vegetables, butter, and seasonings wrapped in foil and cooked on the grates over the camp fire.  They were easy and delicious!

Matthew used aluminum foil to clean the grates before they went on the fire

The scouts are working on the hobo meal ingredients

Colin, Kieran, and Matthew keep an eye on the hobo meals

Casey and Christian spent some time after lunch working through T-2-1 requirements with the guys.  They made some good progress.  In fact, everybody should be ready to earn Tenderfoot rank very soon.

Mr. Coleman is reviewing Kieran's achievements with him

Manchester Troop 426 stopped over to invite us over for skits and songs in the evening.  So all the guys got together and decided what skits and songs to perform.  Then they practiced them.

Casey taught everyone the bubble gum song for skit time

Christian brought some helicopter-launched-with-rubber-band contraptions that quickly became a hit with all the scouts.  In between other things they would shoot them way up into the air and as they helicoptered back down they’d battle for position to be the one who caught it.

Christian brought these helicopter sort of toys that were a hit with everyone

Casey and Christian showing the new scouts how to do lashings

Dinner was corned beef and vegetables.  It was all boiled on the stoves.  It turned out great and was a pretty easy camp meal.

The boys and leaders taking a break around the campfire while dinner cooks

It started to rain during dinner and continued to rain throughout the evening.  That made dinner cleanup a little more challenging than usual and it took a long time.  Finally it was done and everybody headed over the Troop 426′s campsite to join them for skits and songs.  It was a lot of fun.  They had a pavilion in their campsite so we were able to stay dry during the show even though the rain was pretty heavy.

After the show we headed back to our camp and retired to our tents because the rain prevented much of anything else.  Everybody managed to stay dry throughout the night.  The scouts didn’t know it but we had some pretty severe weather passing over us.  There were tornado warnings issued for some parts of the county, but not where we were.  Dundee was hit by a major tornado during the storm, but that’s quite a bit south of where we were.  Having our tents setup in the tree line as we did provided us with some shelter from the worst of the weather.  The moms and dads back at home were having a worse time worrying about us than we were having being out in the weather.  Mr. Coleman was keeping track of the weather via NOAA weather radio as were the folks in the camp office.  So we knew what was happening.

Sunday morning we woke up to much better weather.  It’s always nice to be able to pack up in dry conditions.  Of course the tents were wet, but the sun was out so we pulled them out into the center of the campsite to dry off for a little while before packing them up.  Breakfast was cereal because we needed to be heading back to the church early.  We weren’t quite as early as we planned, but we were hitting the road for home around 12:15.

This was a great camping experience for the new guys.  Casey and Christian did a great job showing them how its done as well as helping them get a large number of T-2-1 requirements signed off.  They’re well on their way to their next Court of Honor!