The Unfinished Reviews: Super Paper Mario (with KoD)

Hey everyone, I've honestly lost my passion for writing reviews and talking about stuff on this blog.  It's no longer something that brings me happiness... it's just a burden to come up with ideas or even finish writing the ideas that I have.  As such I've decided to cut this year short and put all the stuff I have already written (Doctor Who and Recipes) out there every week until they run out which will probably be sometime in October maybe?  However I also have three unfinished reviews sitting out here that I was doing with other people.  However apparently the passion to help me with these things has also died off as for one reason or another my co-writers have just decided not to finish.  Rather than let words go to waste, I'm going to still publish them in their unfinished form so you could see what all I've been wanting to do.

This particular review was started late 2015 as a sort of thank you for KoD getting me a Lucina Amiibo.  Well that didn't exactly happen and since KoD's amiibo hunter failed in that regard I guess the necessity to help me finish this failed with it.  He was just never quite in the mood to talk about one of his absolute favorite games so... here it is with what all we had done up until it just died.  

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This is your standard spoiler warning.  If you do not wish to have Super Paper Mario spoiled then I suggest you hop over into another dimension!  Since this is a review with KoD, I better slap a length warning up there as well.

This is Ghost, thanks for joining.

When I started to create weekly content on my blog, it became important that I would need to diversify my video games, movies, television, and food.  Nobody wants to read the same old stuff.  Therefore, I would like to do something that I wouldn't normally do; perhaps something that I wouldn't normally play for today's review.

If you're looking for something different to play I have a suggestion.

Oh, Hey KoD.  You know, I'm actually glad you're here.  You tend to come up with some unique ideas from time to time.  What's your suggestion?

You could always play one of my favorite games, Super Paper Mario.

A Paper Mario game?  That sounds amazing!  I've played Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and loved it.  I'll gladly play a turn based RPG Mario game any day over the classic platforming nonsense.  My local Gamestop has one used that I saw the other day. Hang on and I'll go get it!  Then we can review it together since it's one of your favorite games!  BRB

Umm... Well Ghost it's not exactly uh... hello? Well that was easy!  I didn't have to bribe him with an amiibo this time.  I just hope he's not too upset that it's not a turn based RPG...

OH YOU MOT...

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Being the Nintendo fan that I am, it pains a certain part of me to admit that I often dislike Mario games as I explained in my post Mario Needs to Let Go of the Past. If you want to know my full feelings on the series as a whole, then read that post.  But then, out of a sea of absolute mediocrity, there is the Paper Mario series.  Suddenly Luigi, Peach, and Bowser had a great deal of character development.  The series picked up a lot of tongue-in-cheek writing and was quite enjoyably humorous.  Also, the Paper Mario series ditched the traditional Mario platforming in favor of a turn-based RPG style with multiple characters to utilize.  Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door were two breaths of fresh air in a sea of staleness which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Then Super Paper Mario came around and made some changes to the series; changes that were fairly baffling in all honesty.  What baffling changes were made?  Well let's jump right in to the review and see.

The Plot

As with most Paper Mario games, we start off the plot with a little bit of backstory.  We are told the story of the Dark Prognosticus, a dark prophetic book which holds the secrets of the future within its pages.  The entirety of the game is basically the story of the book's last user in which we are playing out the events; it's a tale of love.  We start the game properly with Mario and Luigi being given news that Peach's castle has been raided and the princess has been captured

AGAIN?! Are you kidding me with this?

The Mario Bros assume that Bowser has once again made off with Peach and head for his castle.  To everyone's surprise, Peach was not captured by Bowser.  Her kidnapper is none other than Count Bleck, the chosen executioner of the Dark Prognosticus.  Refusing to relinquish the Princess, Bleck knocks out Mario and creates a black hole void which sucks in Luigi, Bowser, and his minions to another dimension.  When Peach awakens, she finds herself at a wedding alter with Bowser.  Bleck's plan involves forcibly marrying the pair in order to create the Chaos Heart and destroy all worlds.  Bowser agrees to marry Peach but she refuses forcing Bleck's assistant, Nastasia, to use her mind control powers to force Peach into agreement.  As the ceremony concluded, the Chaos Heart was born and began it's duty of consuming all of the worlds as Bleck had ordered  it to.

Mario, however, meets up with Tippi, a butterfly-like pixl who takes him to see a man named Merlon.  There, Mario learns of Count Bleck's plans and is told that only the eight pure hearts can save the worlds from destruction.  Merlon hands over the pure heart in his possession.  Mario places the first pure heart into it's pillar and the doorway to a new heart opens.

Chapter 1: Lineland

Mario appears in Lineland and tracks down a man named Bestovius who teaches Mario how to flip into the 3rd Person in this 2 Dimensional world in order to progress through it.  After obtaining this power, Mario climbs Mount Lineland and ends up in Yold Town where they find another pixl named Thoreau.  Thoreau helps Mario to grab items and toss them with ease.  He helps Mario and Tippi cross the Yold Desert where they fight and defeat O'Chunks before entering the Yold Ruins.  The second pure heart is guarded by a robotic dragon named Fracktail because nothing says "Ye Olde Ruins" quite like cybernetic dragon.  Fracktail recognizes Mario as fitting the description of the hero and intends on handing over the heart to him.  Unfortunately, Dimentio appears and corrupts the dragons memory forcing Mario to defeat him in order to obtain the heart.

Back at Castle Bleck, O'Chunks reports of his defeat and Count Bleck sends Mimi after Mario.  Nastasia begins to sweep the castle for any of Bowser's minions still not under their control.  Elsewhere in the castle, Princess Peach awakens and is accompanied by two koopas in search for escape.  However, Nastasia finds them and hypnotizes the koopas.  As they round on Peach she suddenly vanishes.   Back at Flipside, Mario brings the pure heart to Merlon but word hears them of a girl who has fallen from the sky; it's Peach!  Mario revives her and Peach decides to accompany him on his journey to stop the Void.

Chapter 2: Gloam Valley

Mario and Peach travel across Gloam Valley in order to reach Merlee's Mansion where the third pure heart resides.  Along the way they meet an explosive pixl named Boomer who assists on their journey.  Mimi has disguised herself as one of Merlee's maids and once our heroes enter the building she sets up a trap for them to break a vase and forces them to work off the bogus debt in the mansion's power plant in order to delay their meeting with Merlee.  With help from another pixl, Slim, the pair are able to quickly pay off the bogus debt and reach the basement where a vision of Merlee warns them.  Mimi then transforms into her true spider form and chases them around the basement until they discover Merlee who was hiding... *cough* sorry I have to do this.  They discover Merlee who was hiding

IN THE BATHROOM!!!!

Mimi disguises herself as Merlee and after an amusing game show segment, Mimi attacks once more and is defeated.  Merlee hands over the next pure heart to Mario and Peach.

Back at Castle Bleck, Mimi reports that she has been defeated so Count Bleck sends Dimentio after the group.  Nastasia once again resumes her previous activity of sweeping the castle.  Elsewhere in the castle, Luigi wakes up and is accompanied by two goombas.  As the three are searching for an exit, Nastasia appears and hypnotizes one of the goombas; the other joins her on his own.  The two goombas hold down Luigi as Nastasia comes in to hypnotize him as well.  Mario and Peach return to Flipside where they place the pure heart in its pillar.

Chapter 3: The Bitlands

Mario and Peach land in a bizarre area made of nothing more than pixels called the Bitlands.  Within seconds, Tippi is kidnapped by an overly nerdy chameleon named Francis who takes her back to his nerd lair.  A pixl named Barry saw the whole thing and sets our heroes on the right path to Fort Francis.  As they go through this retro world, they run across Bowser and his minions who have built a new castle in this land.  Mario takes down his arch-enemy which leads to the brute joining the party.  The trio come to the Tile Pool and with the help of a pixl named Thudley, defeat a giant Blooper and make their way towards a massive tree.  At the top of the tree, Dimentio is waiting for them.  In order to make the fight more favorable in his odds, Dimentio transports the heroes to Dimension D.

Dimentio is defeated there and as he disappears we are treated to a scene where Dimentio is plotting for the heroes to defeat Bleck.  Finally our trio arrives Fort Francis.  After searching around the nerd lair filled with robotic cats, and all sorts of nerdy collectibles, they find a pixl named Carrie who assists them with finding the door to Francis where Princess Peach marches right in.  After an admittedly hilarious dating simulator portion, the trio defeat Francis and rescue Tippi.  Tippi is so overcome with happiness that her joy produces that world's pure heart!

Back at Castle Bleck, Dimentio explains his defeat at the hands of the heroes.  Bleck decides to have his new minion face off against Mario next.  After O'Chunks, Mimi, and Dimentio leave, Nastasia speaks with Count Bleck; she tells him that it's still not too late to change his mind and stop the prophesy from happening.  Bleck states that he has come too far to quit now and that Nastasia is free to leave with his blessing, but Nastasia states her loyalty to Bleck.  Meanwhile Dimentio is seen eavesdropping on the conversation.  Mario, Peach, and Bowser return to Flipside where they place the pure heart in the next pillar and open the way to a new heart.

Chapter 4: Outer Space

When our heroes jump into the next door they find themselves in space and cannot breathe due to the lack of oxygen.  They hastily return to Flipside in search for a space helmet and eventually find one in the form of *sigh* a fish bowl.  With their new "space helmet" they return to space and meet with an alien named Squirps who agrees to guide them to the pure heart.  The group makes a pit stop on the planet Blobule so that Squirps can use the bathroom.  Unfortunately the bathroom is occupied by someone in desperate need of toilet paper.  Mario then explores the entire planet to find something suitable for that purpose and gives it to the individual in need, which turns out to be the pixl Fleep.  Using Fleep's ability the group is able to reach the Outer Limits of space, a maze-like area with several warp points.  There in the Outer Limits they meet up with Count Bleck's newest minion, the mysterious Mr. L!

SPOILERS, IT'S LUIGI

The trio and L duke it out for awhile, but when Mr. L realizes that things aren't going his way, he summons a giant mech suit called the Brobot.  At this point the game turns into a sort of Gradius shoot-em-up in space between the Brobot and the heroes utilizing Squirps.  Ultimately the Brobot is scrapped and L is sent running.  Squirps then takes the heroes to a statue of his late mother where the pure heart is stored.

Back at Castle Bleck, Nastasia introduces Mr. L to the rest of the teams.  Bleck refers to L as the "man in green" who is destined to bring forth the destruction of all.  Bleck then sends O'Chunks off to face against the heroes once more, sending away his other minions.  Nastasia once again pleads with Bleck.  She believes that the minions will not be able to defeat Mario and that he will be coming for Bleck.  She muses that if she were "that" girl then things would be different.  Bleck refuses to stop his plans and remarks "that girl" could not be replaced.  The heroes land in Flipside but cannot find another pillar there for the latest pure heart.  Instead, they discover the hidden secret about Flipside as they stumble upon the 3D passage to Flopside.  Flopside is a mirror counterpart to Flipside with a mirror counter part to Merlon, Nolrem.  Here they find the proper pillar for the pure heart which opens up another pathway.

Chapter 5: Land of the Cragnons

Mario, Peach, and Bowser are dropped into the Downtown of Crag, a caveman village.  Here they are given the task of helping the local Cragnons by rescuing their people who have been kidnapped by the Floro Sapiens.  After traversing the land and dealing with some extreme annoyance which I shall be covering later, our heroes meet up with a hammer pixl named Cudge who helps them gain access to the Floro Sapiens Caves.  Within the caves they run into a Cragnon journalist, Flint Cragley and his production team.  There they discover that the Floro Sapeins have been using flower sprouts to control the minds of the Cragnons in order to make them slaves.  With the help of another pixl, Dottie, they fight and defeat O'Chunks once more and make their way to the leader of the Floro Sapiens.  They battle and defeat the king only to find out that it was the pollution caused by the Cragnons which turned the king crazy in the first place.  Flint Cragley vowed to inform his people of their destructive pollution as Mario grabbed the pure heart in the King's possession.

Back at Castle Bleck, Nastasia punishes O'Chunks for his repeated failures.  Dimentio appears before Mimi and Mr. L to encourage them to take on Mario's party together.  They agree and sneak out of the castle.  Mario, Peach, and Bowser use their new pixl friends to find the 6th pure heart pillar and open the doorway to another area.

Chapter 6: Sammer's Kingdom

Upon entering the door, Mario and friends find themselves in the Sammer's Kingdom which, by looking at the citizens, is apparently part of Canada.

The Void that Count Bleck created has grown significantly in this area.  As our heroes move into a sort of arena and defeat one Sammer Guy, the King appears and informs them that they must defeat the other 99 Sammer Guys in order to obtain the pure heart.  Unfortunately, around the tenth area, Count Bleck appears before the heroes.  He lets them know that the Void will soon engulf the world they are in and, in the course of his talk reveals that no one besides someone named Timpani ever mattered to him in the slightest.  Our heroes hurry on win the pure heart but in the next section they find King Sammer who just gives them the pure heart.  However this heart is a fake as Mario discovers Mimi has been impersonating King Sammer.  Mimi fights with Mario to delay them further from their goal.  In the end, Sammer Kingdom is consumed by the Void but somehow Mario and the others make it safely to Flipside.  At this time, Tippi starts to regain a part of her lost memory and believes she once knew Count Bleck.  Mario goes back into the door to find a white space of nothingness.  They find the pure heart, but is has become dormant as stone and Mr. L with his mech, the Brobot, are guarding it.  Once more Mario defeats Mr. L and takes the dead pure heart with him.

Meanwhile in Castle Bleck, Mr. L mulls over why he can't beat the heroes when Dimentio shows up.  In an attempt to protect himself from being discovered by Count Bleck, Dimentio puts an end to Mr. L in a powerful explosion.  Mario returns to Merlon to find a way to restore the pure heart when Dimentio shows up and tells them it is impossible then seemingly kills our heroes.  Mario, however, was sent to the Underwhere, the land of "ended games" but Bowser and Peach were not sent there with him.  While in the Underwhere, Mario meets Queen Jaydes who holds on to the pure heart while Mario retrieves Jaydes' daughter, Luvbi.  While searching for Luvbi, Mario reunites with Luigi who was stranded in the Underwhere.  Together, the brothers find Luvbi and return her to Jaydes.  Jaydes uses her power to restore the pure heart to life and sends the brothers back to Flipside.  There, they place the pure heart in it's pillar and another door opens.

Chapter 7: The Underwhere

Much to their surprise, the door leads Mario and Luigi right back to the Underwhere!  While they are there, Queen Jaydes tasks the brothers with taking Luvbi to The Overthere, where her father Grambi lives.  Mario and Luigi travel the Underwhere Road where they find Bowser who joins back up with them.  Trio climb out of the Underwhere and arrive at the stairway to The Overthere.  Along this incredibly lengthy climb they find Princess Peach who is in a deep sleep from having eaten a forbidden apple.  Mario revives her and she joins the team as they continue climbing the clouds and eventually reach The Overthere.  Once they arrive, they find that The Overthere is overrun with skeletons and their leader, Bonechill, has frozen Grambi solid in order to take over the area.  Bonechill reveals that the final pure heart is actually Luvbi; Grambi had given the pure heart a form and life of its own.  The four heroes defeat Bonechill and after a long argument with Grambi and Queen Jaydes, Luvbi returns to her pure heart form and is taken to Flipside by Mario.

Back at Castle Bleck, Dimentio informs the others that all four heroes are alive and coming their way.  Everyone begins to scramble and prepare for the fight they are about to have in the castle when Dimentio asks Count Bleck if the name Blumiere rings any bells.  Nastasia begs Count Bleck to call off the void and calls him Blumiere in the process.  Count Bleck refuses to back down and renounces his old name and identity.  Mario's group place the final pure heart in its place and the final door appears.

Chapter 8: Castle Bleck

At long last, the heroes have made it to Castle Bleck.  With the void growing ever larger, Mario and the rest begin tackling the Castle as quickly as possible.  Along the way, they run into O'Chunks.  Bowser has had enough and takes on O'Chunks solo and defeats him, but the ceiling begins to fall.  O'Chunks holds up the ceiling for the heroes, but Bowser joins him allowing Mario, Luigi, and Peach to progress further.  The trio continue through the castle until they run across Mimi.  Similar to Bowser, Peach has had enough of Mimi and defeats her solo.  Unfortunately, as Peach defeats Mimi, the castle quakes and both of them fall into a chasm; now only Mario and Luigi remain.  The brothers continue until they run across Dimentio.  After an exhausting game of tag, Dimentio reveals that he was responsible for sending Mario to the Underwhere to restore the pure heart.  He was also responsible for saving peach from being brainwashed, and uniting the brothers.  Luigi chooses to fight Dimentio alone allowing Mario to continue.  After Luigi defeats Dimentio, the jester causes both of them to disappear.  As Mario finally reaches Bleck, it is revealed that Tippi and Count Bleck were once lovers.  Tippi is the Timpani that Bleck was mentioning before.  Mario takes on Count Bleck but cannot even touch the villain.  Suddenly, Bowser, Peach, and Luigi reappear and with the power of the pure hearts they obtained, shatter Bleck's shield allowing him to be defeated.

It is then that Dimentio reveals his big plan.  He decided to use the heroes to defeat Bleck so that he could obtain the Chaos Heart for himself; he intends to destroy all worlds and make "perfect" new ones.  Using one of the floro sapien sprouts on Luigi, Dimentio uses Luigi's power and the Chaos Heart to become the invincible Super Dimentio.  After a touching scene between Tippi, Bleck, and Bleck's other minions, the power of the Pure Hearts are activated and destroy Dimentio's invulnerability.  The heroes proceed to lay waste to Super Dimentio.  However, using the very last of his power, Dimentio caused the Void to grow even more.  Out of options, Bleck's team and Mario's team go through a door where they find an alter.  Bleck and Tippi (now again referring to themselves as Blumiere and Timpani) renew their love and finally get married.  Their love caused the Void to disappear however it also caused both of the lovers to disappear from the world... OR DO THEY?

Gameplay

One of the main reasons I enjoyed Paper Mario and Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door was because of the gameplay changes from your standard Mario titles as I am terrible with platforming games.  The turn-based RPG style of those games was a far better fit for me personally.  I can't begin to tell you how shocking and honestly upsetting it was for me to hear that they had jettisoned the turn based RPG style to return to a more classic Mario platforming style game.  If it wasn't for KoD ensuring me of the games good qualities I would never have played it.  Since turn-based RPG is out...what do we actually have in exchange?

Super Paper Mario is effectively a platforming game with RPG elements to it.  If I'm being perfectly honest here it's the best type of platforming game for me personally.  True to its platforming nature, there is a very large emphasis on traversing the landscape through means of accurate running and jumping while avoiding and attacking enemies, with the help of the pixls to solve some of the puzzles within.  However, what has made this game much more enjoyable is the RPG elements that were kept in.  Rather than have a 2-3 hit death situation like all standard Mario titles, we actually have a health bar where falling prey to an enemy attack or touching them only takes off a small amount of damage.  You also have both attacking and recovery items to help you on your journey.  While there is still some of your standard platforming annoyance, the lack of a timer, use of inventory, health bar, and leveling up of the characters made me mostly ignore the fact that I was playing a platformer.

[In this section, KoD was going to talk about how each of the four main characters play completely differently.  Mario can go into 3D space, Peach can be immune to damage at the cost of mobility, Bowser is slow but does double damage, and Luigi can jump incredibly high.  He was also going to mention that the dialogue in the game will change somewhat depending on which character you are controlling.]

One of the more interesting additions to this game is the use of the 12 pixls.  Pixls are small beings that not only have their own personality but also assist Mario with the one function they were born to do.  The world of Super Paper Mario is filled with puzzles and tricks; these pixls help him to solve them. Rather than just have a list of complicated button combinations that allow Mario to pull off these actions, all you have to do is select which pixel you wish to use from the menu and utilize a single button.  Each pixel has its own unique property.  Tippi gives you information about where you point her.  Thoreau lets you throw heavy objects.  Boomer causes explosions.  Slim turns you so thin that you are practically invisible.  Thudley allows you to slam down hard on objects.  Carrie transports you over chasms.  Fleep causes weak areas in the dimension to flip over so that items can be found.  Cudge can be used as a hammer.  Dottie causes you to shrink.  Barry creates a barrier around you.  Dashell gives you super speed.  Lastly, Piccolo causes various musical effects to show and cures you from curses.  While I wish this game had included the ability to have more than one pixl available at a time, the fact that the game pauses entirely as you swap pixls makes it a non-issue.  The only real downfall that these pixls have is that they replace the partners you had in previous games.  At first this may not seem like a big deal but you sort of lose that extra bit of personality and interaction that you would have gotten with the partner characters.  The only personality these guys get are in the brief couple of moments when you recruit them to the party.  Despite that downfall, these are still a really cool addition to the game and I enjoyed using them. 

[In this section, KoD was going to talk about the very large amount of side quests and post-game material that you can honestly spend hours enjoying]

What's Good About It?

[KoD was going to have this whole section as this is one of his favorite games.  I will try to explain the points he was going to make.

The Original Characters in this game are very memorable and unique from the dim-witted O'Chunks, to the insanity of Dimentio, to the various "sage-like" characters you meet.  You will come away from this having enjoyed these characters.

The game has some brief sections of different gameplay.  During one section you basically play a dating simulator, during another the whole level turns into a Gradius style shooter, and whine in the Underwhere you engage in a classic turn-based RPG battle.  These little changes to gameplay keep things fresh even though they are brief.

This game has a much darker tone than most Mario titles are allowed to have.

The Underwhere and Overthere are obviously the Paper Mario equivalent of Hell and Heaven and honestly everything involving these levels (except for the vertical portion of the Overthere) is excellent]

What's Bad About It?

One of the key additions to Super Paper Mario was Mario's ability to flip over into the 3rd person aspect in order to navigate the world, solve puzzles, or avoid obstacles.  This is an excellent idea and is full of potentially fun and interesting ideas.  The problem?  You can only be in the 3D space for ten seconds at a time before you start to take damage.  Why?  Hell if I know.  It seems as though they've just arbitrarily slapped that in there.  It makes little to no sense in the context of the game; the game retained many of its RPG elements and one key part of playing an RPG is taking your time and exploring the area.  It's a bit difficult to explore the entire area in 3D when you can only do it for ten seconds at a time then sit around with your paper thumb up your butt waiting for the meter to fill back up so you can hastily bustle around for another ten seconds... well if you don't want to take arbitrary damage in the process.  This same time limit doesn't apply with pixls that change your dimensions or body like Dottie or Slim so why is it done here?  There's no point to this time limit and it should never have been implemented.

{KoD interrupts with information that you can infinitely 3D if you defeat the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials twice}

....I actually didn't know that.  But honestly who has time for that crap??  If I'm able to defeat a Pit of 100 Trials twice, I'm not about to go around in Chapter 1-1 and see if I missed anything.  Anything missed at that point would be something inferior to the available items at my disposal now.  It just...*sigh*  Why Nintendo??

This point has more to do with platforming in general than it does with Super Paper Mario specifically, but it has annoyed me enough to include it here.  I will never hide the fact that I am not a fan of platforming games.  Despite KoD's insistence upon me playing them and my begrudging enjoyment of a couple here and there, I still dislike them.  One of the main reasons I dislike platforming games is the requirement on absolute precision and perfection when going around the terrain.  There is no type of level more aptly fit to showcase the shortcomings of platforming than vertical levels. Even people who greatly enjoy platforming games hate vertical levels because one simple mistake will have you starting the entire level all over again.  Sadly, we have a few vertical levels in this game and they are just as bad as you can expect them to be.  The worst example is the stairway to the Overthere (chapter 7-3) which has multiple areas that cause you to plummet all the way to the bottom of the level.  Not to mention that you need Luigi's super jump to reach places and have no idea where you're going to land.  You just have to take jumps of faith and hope you land on something and not an enemies spiked head... on top of having to track down various apples.  I spent more time trying to climb those stupid clouds than I did two of the previous whole chapters!  Vertical levels are always a bad thing.

Within this game Flipside (and Flopside) serve as your world hub where you can gather items and prepare yourself for the challenges within the actual chapters ahead.  Under the normal course of play, you are expected to complete all four segments of each chapter at once without returning to the hub world.  However, if you are finding a chapter particularly difficult, you are given a return pipe to return to Flipside at any point.  That's pretty neat huh?  Well... not exactly.  If you haven't defeated the final boss of the chapter and gotten the pure heart, when you use the return pipe you will always have to re-start at the first area of the entire chapter and make your way all the way back.  So, if you were deep in to chapter 4-4 and decided to re-stock on items before the final boss, you would have to start back at chapter 4-1 with all the enemies having re-spawned and make your way back to that same spot in 4-4.  There is some light at the end of this dark tunnel as thankfully any puzzles you have solved will remain solved so at least you don't have to re-do THAT.  It's still a major annoyance when it could have just easily saved where you used the pipe and slap you back down where you originally left.  Sure the argument could be made that doing such would make the game optionally too easy but it's still better than walking through three whole chapters of landscape!

Chapter 5 is annoying garbage in my personal opinion.  You only have to look at the setting, cave people, to realize that this isn't going to be the fun joyride you were hoping for after the insane outer space shenanigans of the previous chapter.  Adding cavemen to your story is generally something that you do only when you aren't sure what you want out of your product or you've completely run out of genuinely good ideas and directions, unless your name is Chrono Trigger.  Cave people are about two steps away from the "screw it, do it yourself" type of game...which considering what the Mario franchise would do in 2015 it seems my original impression wasn't far off.  Chapter 5-1 is probably the most annoying of all because there is a particular block puzzle where you have to hit the blocks in a certain order to progress.  In order to get the pass-code you have to physically type out the word please some 20 times to a caveman using the wiimote for it to be some ridiculous 30 movement code that you'll either have to write down or forget entirely.  And the rock puns... don't even get me started on the rock puns!  Lastly, the reason for the flower king's insanity makes no sense.  Pollution is what caused the problem?  I mean I could understand if it were plants VS factory workers, but cave people don't even have any pollution to start with.  It makes no sense.  The whole chapter is just full of annoyance and nonsense.  It's what I look forward to the absolute least when contemplating a re-play of this game.

Lastly, Level 8-3 can die in a fire.  I generally enjoyed all of Castle Bleck with its complications, weirdness, and mood.  However, at the ends of 8-1 and 8-2 you lose Bowser and Princess Peach.  Now I don't know about your play style but if Bowser or Peach were available to me, I would always choose them.  Mario and Luigi never saw the light of day unless I didn't have the other two or needed them for specific powers only available to them.  Bowser with his double damage and fire breath combined with Peach's floatiness and invincibility made them a perfect tag team for this whole game.  I never had to complain about much difficulty because these two had my back!  Then 8-3 comes along and I'm stripped of both of them.  Not only do I no longer have access to the best characters, I'm hit in the face with a difficulty spike from the depths of hell.  Between the projectile koopas which can flip into both dimensions and Dimentio blasting things out of mirrors and knocking off extremely tiny platforms, I raged so hard at this level.  I've run across difficulty spikes in the past but this one was one of the worst and almost ruined my entire experience because of the extreme difficulty.

Abounding in Strangeness

[In this section we were going to take turns just pointing out some funny moments in the game such as...
A character mentioning his anime girlfriend
Bowser's flailing arms
a "little guy in my pocket"
Peach eating cursed apples and the various effects it has on her when you are trying to heal her
The fact that they use a fish bowl as a space helmet

there are many other individually hilarious moments in the game that can be brought up.  Seriously this game as A-class humor]

The Ignored One

[During this section, KoD was going to explain how, for some reason, this game gets overlooked in the grand scheme of Mario (and Paper Mario) games.  He was going to mention how this was supposed to be a Gamecube Game but delays pushed it onto the Wii.  He was going to mention how Paper Mario and Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door get praised, and how Sticker Star gets trashed but this game gets absolutley nothing.  It shouldn't be just a forgotten game because it may be different than it's previous two games, it's still a pretty fine game in it's own right.]

Conclusion

Super Paper Mario is an interesting and surprising title.  I came into this game with a lot of trepidation.  I heard what they had done to my wonderful RPG elements and was honestly not excited about playing this title whatsoever.  If it wasn't for KoD's persistence on it's quality, this would have been a game that completely passed me by.  Levels 5-1, 7-3, and 8-3 aside, I was actually surprised at the quality and ease this game had to offer.  It was a platforming game that made me often forget that I was playing a platforming game which is honestly kind of a miracle for me.  If you are a platforming veteran, then you should thoroughly enjoy this.  However, if you, like me, are a fan of the Paper Mario series but aren't that good at platforming you might actually be surprised at the quality this game has to offer.  It's definitely of that Paper Mario story and characterization quality while making the platforming bits easier to stomach with the health bar and other borrowed RPG elements.  Give it a try; I doubt you'll regret it.

[KoD would have concluded here stating how much he adores this game and would want everyone to try it out.]

This is Ghost Fading into the Darkness.

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Whovian Chatter: The Tennant Years Series Three

Ghost here, thanks for joining.

I'm going to be examining Doctor Who... every single episode.  I'm going to take you on a journey through the 50+ years worth of this show, showcasing the good and the bad along the way.  For each episode I'm going to give you a very brief rundown of the plot, how good/bad the story is, and anything interesting about the episode.  Basically I'll just talk about whatever comes to mind for each of them.  These will be a more in-depth overview of the series as a whole so you can see which stories or episodes (if any) you want to check out for yourself.  Today I'm going to be talking about

The Tenth Doctor

David Tennant

Series Three

Before I jump into this season, to date there have been two animated stories/episodes for the modern show.  I'm not exactly sure why these were created but I'm glad of it all the same; more Doctor is usually a good thing.  While the second of the animated specials features no companion and as such has a more comfortable spot later on down the road, the first one features the Series Three companion Martha Jones.  While its placement is not definitive, most people agree that it belongs in the timeline somewhere around the place I have put it.  Most streaming sites don't even have the animated specials as part of the series but I find them interesting or bizarre enough to include here.

Series three ran from March 31, 2007 to June 30, 2007 and contained thirteen episodes.  With Billie Piper leaving the show the previous season, a new companion was required in the form of Martha Jones.  Martha took the longest for me to like for two reasons.  First off, she starts the season off being in love with the Doctor (something we've already seen) but him being oblivious to this fact.  Then, at the end of the season she becomes a strong, confident, awesome globetrotter who is easily a welcome addition to the TARDIS...but she instantly leaves right as she gets interesting.  This season's very loose ark is involving a man simply known as Mr. Saxon and figuring out exactly who he is.

2006 Christmas Special
The Runaway Bride

Picking up exactly where Doomsday left off, the Doctor is confused by the sudden appearance of a woman in a wedding dress.  The woman, Donna Noble, accuses the Doctor of kidnapping her and opens to TARDIS door to find they are in space in-flight.  The Doctor takes her back to Earth where the robot santas attack once more and take Donna hostage.  The Doctor uses the TARDIS to fly next to the car holding Donna and rescues her.  He takes her to her wedding where he meets her fiance Lance whom Donna worked with when she fell for him.  The Doctor watches the video of Donna disappearing from the wedding and realizes she must have injected huon particles and was attracted to the huon particles in the TARDIS in her overly emotional state.  He then also realizes the robot santas can track huon particles as a Christmas Tree begins attack the guests.  The Doctor stops the tree and tracks the robot santas to a ship orbiting the Earth which quickly goes missing.  Having learned that Donna's work is owned by the Torchwood Instititue, the Doctor heads there with Lance and Donna to discover a secret underground tunnel beneath the Thames River in which huon particles are being created as well as a large hole into the center of the Earth..  Suddenly a large spider-like alien appears ad introduces herself as the Empress of the Racknoss, a species wiped out by the Time Lords.  Lance also reveals to have been in league with the Empress and had been feeding Donna huon particles to help her revive her race.  The Doctor and Donna escape and use the TARDIS to travel back to the creation of the world where they find the first piece at the center of Earth was a Racknoss ship.  The Empress plans to use the huon particles to revive her race.  With Donna gone, she force feeds Lance the particles and sends them below waking up her "children."  The Doctor reappears and asks the Empress to allow him to take them to a planet where they won't kill anyone.  When she refuses he causes an explosion draining the Thames into the hole and drowning the reawakened Racknoss.  The Empress returns to her ship but it is destroyed by the military on "Mr. Saxon's" orders.  The Doctor offers for Donna to travel with him but she refuses.  He takes her home and heads for the stars.

When it comes to Christmas episodes, about half of them are really great and the others are just ok.  This is a great one.  Catherine Tate as Donna Noble is absolutely hilarious in this episode and it's no wonder that we'll see her return as a regular companion next season.  One negative is the reappearance of the robot santas.  They didn't really make a lot of sense in The Christmas Invasion, and they certainly don't make any more sense now.  The show was wise to jettison them after this appearance.  Still a solid episode though and well worth watching!

Episode 1
Smith and Jones

Medical student Martha Jones is heading to work at the hospital where she encounters the Doctor disguised as a patient under the name John Smith.  Suddenly, the people in the hospital are in shock as the hospital has been transported to the moon and three alien ships arrive.  The ships are piloted by the Judoon, intergalactic police for hire who are looking for an alien criminal that is hiding in the hospital; they begin cataloging everyone who is human and moving on.  The Doctor reveals to Martha that he is an alien and that he fears the Judoon will execute everyone for unknowingly harboring a fugitive.  Meanwhile an elderly woman reveals herself to be the alien and sucks the blood out of the hospital director so that she can pass as a human to the Judoon's scanners.  The Doctor and Martha run across the body of the director and realize the criminal is still out there.  Stalling for time, the Doctor kisses Martha so the scan shows traces of non-human forcing them to do a full scan.  The Doctor discovers the old woman modifying the MRI machine to destroy all life on the Moon and the half of the Earth facing the moon at the time.  Pretending to be a scared human, the Doctor tricks the alien into sucking out his own blood.  When the Judoon arrive, Martha uses their scanner on the woman who registers non-human.  The Judoon execute the woman and leave the hospital.  Martha revives the Doctor and the hospital is returned to Earth.  That night, the Doctor shows up and asks Martha to join him for just one trip in the TARDIS as a thank you.  She accepts.

As far as companion intro episodes go, this one is pretty great!  The Judoon were an interesting inclusion to the world of Doctor Who.  The hunt for the criminal as well as the ticking clock of all the oxygen being depleted (which I didn't mention) made for this a very exciting story.  My problem was something I mentioned in the intro which is Martha's motivations for a good half or more of this season; she was falling for the Doctor.  We just lost Rose and I didn't want to see any sort of repeat.  Still a pretty solid episode.

Episode 2
The Shakespeare Code

The Doctor takes Martha to London 1599 to see Love's Labour's Lost at the Globe Theatre.  At the conclusion, Shakespeare announces that a sequel is in the world called Love's Labour's Won, however a young witch uses a voodoo doll to force Shakespear to declare the sequel will be shown the following evening.  As this sequel is "the lost play" The Doctor and Martha investigate by heading to the inn where Shakespeare is staying.  While there, the Master of Revels barges in insulted that he hasn't seen the script and declares the play will never proceed.  The witch with the assistance of two older witches create a voodoo doll of that man and drown him in the streets.  That same night the young witch uses a bewitched marionette to force Shakespeare to write a particular strange sequence as the final paragraph to the play before falling asleep.  The next morning, the Doctor questions why the Globe has 14 sides and they go to visit the architect who is being held at Bethlem Asylum.  Eventually finding out that the witches had forced him to make the Globe in that shape, one of the witches appears and kills the architect.  The Doctor has now identified them as Carrionites, a species who use the power of words to manipulate psychic energies creating "magic."  The Doctor sends Shakespeare to stop the play but is too late as the words spoken within the globe allow for the entire Carrionite race to return to the world from their exile.  The Doctor tells Shakespeare that he is most likely the only one to come up with words powerful enough to banish them back into exile; Shakespeare comes up with some lines on the fly and they work to send the Carrionites back and trap the three on Earth inside their crystal ball.

This one is pretty fantastic.  I love almost everything about this from the witches to Shakespeare acting like a sort of rock star, to the Doctor being angry with the Asylum guards for mistreating the mentally ill.  There were two tiny parts of this story that I also found really great.  The first is that Shakespeare was such a genius with words that the Doctor's Psychic Paper didn't even work on the man...and he was able to figure out Martha was from the future and the Doctor an alien without being told.  The second is Martha, who is the first black companion, questions if she will be alright in the past as she's "not exactly white."  To this the Doctor just responds that she should act like she owns the place and everything will be fine.  Check this one out.

Episode 3
Gridlock

The Doctor decides to stretch the definition of one trip with Martha and since he took her to the past it's time to take her to the future.  He takes her to New Earth like he did with Rose; a fact that Martha is annoyed by.  However they land in a sort of under city several years after he arrived with Rose.  Almost instantly, Martha is kidnapped by a couple and taken to The Motorway.  The Doctor follows to find bumper to bumper hovering cars in an enclosed roadway filled with exhaust fumes.  He is quickly picked up by a couple who explain they barely move a few feet every week or so and have been on the motorway for years.  Martha wakes up with her captors who explain they needed her to get to the express lane (3 or more people) but upon arriving there, they begin to hear strange voices.  Tired of this nonsense, the Doctor begins dropping down to the bottom layer of cars in order to find Martha while a cat nun starts to follow him.  At the bottom, he discovers a group of crab-like aliens known as Macra have been breeding in the pollution and are killing anything that enters the fast lane.  The cat nun finds the Doctor and teleports him to the surface of the planet; there are bodies lying everywhere.  Several years prior, a plague hit New Earth killing anyone it touched so the leaders trapped people in the under city and motorway in an attempt to save them from death.  The Face of Boe is also there to help the Doctor by using the last of his life energy to re-open the motorway allowing everyone freedom.  Martha finally makes it back to the Doctor who is with the Face of Boe as he utters his last words.  "You are not alone."

This is a weird episode with a lot of random funny characters.  What I really want to talk about here is the Macra.  Now the Macra haven't been seen since the 2nd Doctor's time frame and they were very different back then.  They were fully sentient intelligent beings who were about as tall as a bus.  Here they have not only tripled in size but their intelligence was reduced to that of a mindless beast of instinct.  Now I wouldn't mind seeing how species can change over time but this is literally the only time we've ever seen any sort of significant change in an alien race.  It's like they just needed something to be threatening and pulled the Macra out of a hat to make Classic Fans smile at (or be annoyed by) the reference.  It's also interesting to see future stories where random bits of the past become prominent.  Here the entire population sings The Old Rugged Cross every evening.  It's... odd.  If it sounds interesting then give it a watch.

Episode 4 and 5
Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks

The TARDIS lands in 1930 as the Empire State Building is nearing completion.  They notice a news article about disappearances in Hooverville located at Central Park and investigate.  The leader of Hooverville, Solomon, tells them more about the disappearances but a man shows up offering jobs.  The Doctor, Martha, Solomon, and a young man named Frank take the job.  They are sent to the sewers to clear out rubble but along the way they find organic alien matter that the Doctor takes to analyze later.  Eventually the group run into mutated pig slaves and flee for their lives.  Frank is captured by the pig slaves but the others escape up a ladder and into a theatre where they meet a showgirl named Tallulah whose boyfriend had gone missing as well.  The Doctor begins to analyze the organic material when Martha sees a pig slave watching Tallulah's performance and gives chase where she is captured by pig slaves.  The Doctor and Tallulah follow and find the pig slave watching her was her boyfriend Lazlo.  The Doctor and Lazlo continue through the sewers and encounter a Dalek confirming the Doctor's suspicions.  They eventually encounter the Cult of Skaro from Doomsday and find Martha and Frank with them.  Martha asks the Daleks what their plan is and they reveal to be attempting a Dalek-human hybrid to strengthen the Dalek race.  Dalek Sec then conducts the experiment on himself and becomes the first human dalek.

The Doctor intervenes and frees Martha and Frank as they flee back to Hooverville.  Dalek Caan gives chase but Dalek Sec demands the Doctor be brought back alive.  The other Daleks question their leaders abilities now that he is not pure Dalek.  Dalek Sec then asks the Doctor to help him create more hybrids from the brain dead humans they have captured; he believes the Daleks need that bit of humanity in order to be a better race.  The Doctor agrees and offers to take these new Daleks to a planet of their own and Dalek Sec is happy to agree.  However the other Daleks turn on their leader and capture him, but the Doctor escapes.  The Daleks modify the work the Doctor had done to make these new humans into thinking like a pure Dalek.  The Doctor climbs to the top of the Empire State Building to remove the material required to start the experiment but is too late as lightning strikes the tower (and the Doctor) sending the required power and information below. The human Daleks awaken and are ready to exterminate.  The Daleks and human Daleks track down the Doctor.  The Daleks order his extermination but the human daleks refuse; by the Doctor being attached to the mechanism, a tiny bit of Time Lord was also put into these humans and they turn on the Daleks killing all but Dalek Caan who performed an emergency temporal shift. 

I wish I could really pinpoint what it is about this two parter that I don't care for that much.  The idea of it is fantastic.  A race of hate-filled beings suddenly wanting to be more human to strengthen themselves and becoming kind in the process is great.  There's just something about this that is weird and sometimes kind of stupid.  Maybe it's the pointless theatre scenes, maybe it's the weird makeup, maybe it's the random pigs that make no sense... I don't honestly know.  It's not the worst that the show has to offer by any means but it's also just not really good either.  Maybe you'll like it more than I did.

Episode 6
The Lazarus Experiment

The Doctor returns Martha home but decides to stay when he notices an 80 year old man say he is going to "change what it means to be human" on live TV.  That night they go to see what Lazarus was talking about and find that he has created a machine to rejuvenate the body back to a previous point in time.  Lazarus steps in the machine and emerges as a 30 year old with his memories intact.  The Doctor has his suspicious about the machine's side effects and begins snooping around.  Elsewhere, Lazarus is talking with his partner when he suddenly starts to mutate and kills the woman by sucking out her life force.  The Doctor using DNA samples from when Lazarus kissed Martha's hand find his DNA is unstable and changing.  Lazarus returns to human form and takes Tish, Martha's sister who works for him, to the roof.  The Doctor and Martha head to the roof where all three see Lazarus transform into a strange scorpion-like creature and give chase.  They manage to escape by hiding in Lazarus' machine and reversing the polarity to knock him out.  An ambulance arrives to carry him off but he transforms once more and kills the drivers before running into a nearby cathedral.  He cannot stop his transformations and so Tish and Martha lead him into the bell tower while the Doctor modifies the pipe organ.  With Lazarus in the bell tower, the Doctor plays the organ which interferes with Lazarus DNA and he falls to his death.  The Doctor invites Martha along as a full companion and she accepts.  As they leave, Martha's mother leaves a message on her answering machine warning her about the Doctor and that a representative of Mr. Saxon had told her terrible things about the man she was traveling with..

The most interesting thing about this episode is the form that Lazarus takes and the Doctor's explanation of it  The Doctor explains that the scorpion-like creature was an evolutionary possibility for the human race that was rejected and the machine made his normal form unstable so he reverted to some other possibility.  Honestly not a bad episode.

Episode 7
42

The TARDIS receives a distress call from a spacecraft that is slowly falling into a nearby sun with only 42 minutes left.  Within minutes of arriving, the Doctor and Martha are separated from the TARDIS by heat shields due to the rising temperature on the ship.  The engines have malfunctioned and the cockpit is behind 30 deadlocked doors.  Martha teams up with a crew member, Riley, to tackle the doors while the Doctor helps repair the engines.  While this is going on, the husband of the captain has become infected with a presence that is raising his body temperature.  When sedation doesn't work he puts on a welding helmet and begins killing crew members with intense heat before infecting another member of the crew.  This second infected tracks down Martha and Riley trapping them in an escape pod and sending it off into the sun.  The Doctor learns of this and goes to save them by activating a magnetic recall device.  He looks into the sun while doing this and becomes infected himself.  It is then that he learns the sun is a living being and the ship had used a scoop on the sun to refuel the ship and had stolen the sun's heart.  It is the sun trying to reclaim it's body parts that is causing the ship to malfunction.  The Doctor tries to freeze himself to stop regeneration and the captain orders the fuel be dumped before finding her infected husband and sending the pair of them out of the airlock.  Martha and Riley finally get through the doors and dump the fuel.  This allows the ship's engines to re-start and the Doctor to return to normal.

This was honestly an exciting mystery.  It was interesting to see the possessed people growling "burn with me" throughout the episode and it really made you question exactly what was going on.  It was good to see Martha being a true companion and not just along for the ride.  We also get a taste that something bizarre is up with this Mr. Saxon character though we won't see what's going on fully till the finale.  This is a solid episode and well worth your time.

Episodes 8 and 9
Human Nature / The Family of Blood

The Doctor and Martha are on the run from The Family of Blood who intend to take away the Doctor's Time Lord lifespan in order to prolong their own lives.  They seem to be unable to outrun them, so the Doctor uses a device known as a chameleon arch to transform himself into a human and hide his Time Lord essence in a pocket watch.  He hopes to hide from the Family until their lives have been extinguished... which would only be a few months.  He programs the TARDIS to find a time and place where he can easily fit in and transforms.  The TARDIS takes them to 1913 where the very human John Smith (the Doctor) begins working as a school teacher for boys with Martha working as a maid.  John keeps the strange pocket watch in his room but doesn't question why.  John continues to have strange dreams of his adventures as the Doctor and starts writing them down in an Impossible Journal.  Eventually John falls in love with the school nurse, Joan Redfurn.  The Family of Blood have tracked the TARDIS to Earth as a young student with ESP abilities locates the pocket watch and takes it for himself.  The Family possess four people, including a student at the school and sense the Doctor's presence with Timothy briefly opens the pocket watch and sees visions of the Doctor's past and future memories.  The Family track down John (who has no idea what's going on) and demand that he change back into a Time Lord or watch as Martha and Joan are killed.  Timothy opens the pocket watch a second time which distracts the Family and allows everyone to get out safely.

John fortifies the school with the boys who have had military training as Martha and Joan try to find the pocket watch but cannot find it.  The Family starts to attack the school with an army of animated scarecrows as John, Joan, and Martha escape to an empty house in the village.  There, Timothy meets up with them and gives them back the pocket watch.  When the Family discover that John has escaped, they begin to bomb the town from their ship.  Martha and Joan try to convince John to use the watch to save everyone.  John breaks down.  He doesn't want to become a man who could never be with Joan.  He doesn't want to become a man who never even thought that he might fall in love as a human.  Joan and John then share a vision from the pocket watch of the life and happiness they would have if he remained human.  John then makes his way to the ship and after stumbling around, offers the pocket watch to the Family in exchange for the village's safety.  They agree and open the pocket watch only to find it empty.  John had already transformed back into the Doctor and his "fumbling" actually activated the ship's self destruct.  The Doctor then captures all four members of the family.  He had hidden out of a kindness but his kindness was over and he decided to punish them for all of eternity in various and horrendous ways.  The Doctor returns to Joan and asks if she wants to join him.  She refuses and reprimands him for ever coming there as people may have never died if he hadn't chosen to come there.  The Doctor leaves John's journal with her as he and Martha depart.

This two parter is good... VERY good.  It was great to see David Tennant playing a normal person.  It was also heartbreaking to see him so in love with Joan and having to choose to be something that he didn't want to be in order to save people.  It's a beautiful story.  I also want to point to this episode as far as the Doctor's cruelty.  People and the show itself can forget the Doctor's wrath and occasional cruelty... something that the Twelfth Doctor has done well to remind us of.  While the 10th Doctor next season will call himself "the man who never would" here we see him tossing someone into the creation explosion of a new galaxy, trapping a man in dense chains, trapping a girl inside every mirror in existence, and freezing a boy permanently in time and making him work as a scarecrow.  Granted the torture they had handed out to people throughout their lives most likely made this whole thing justifiable but.... that sort of extreme measure is scary. 

Animated Special
The Infinite Quest

An alien tyrant named Baltazar has decided to crush Earth into diamonds when the Doctor and Martha show upon his ship in the TARDIS.  Eventually the Doctor causes a strange fungus to begin eating the ship causing it to rust.  The Doctor then frees Baltazar's robot bird Caw who saves Baltazar as the Doctor and Martha go back to the TARDIS.  At some point later, Caw takes the TARDIS to his home world and provides Martha with a pin for her help saving his life.  He then provides the Doctor with a data chip which is supposed to have coordinates to The Infinite, an impossibly ancient space ship which legend says can give you your hearts desire. The Doctor isn't interested until he mentions Baltazar has a duplicate and is also off to find the Infinite.  The Doctor and Martha then use the data chip to find coordinates to the next data chip and so on.  Their adventure leads them to a sand world where a woman and a group of skeletons are liberating oil.  Eventually the woman escapes but is murdered with her data chip left behind.  They find the next data chip is in the possession of a gun running lizard alien on a planet where humans and insects are at war.  Eventually the lizard is also murdered and his chip is located.  The next segment leads them to a frozen prison planet where the robotic leader of the prison has been tossed into a cell with an inmate (in possession of the chip) running the jail.  Eventually he too is killed but when they go to retrieve his chip, Baltazar shows up riding Caw. Baltazar reveals that the pin given to Martha was a tracking device and forces the Doctor to pilot the TARDIS to the Infinite.  As he does so, Baltazar tosses the Doctor out with Martha's pin which turns out to be Caw's son.  Martha and Baltazar arrive at the Infinite which turns out to only be causing illusions of what your hearts desire is.  The Doctor arrives having spent 3 years raising Caw's son and reprogramming him to take Baltazar to prison.  The Infinite breaks up as the Doctor and Martha head off on their journey.

This one is really bizarre and could only be done with animation in all honesty.  It's like they had a bunch of interesting ideas but not enough material to make a full episode so they slapped the whole thing in here.  It's pretty entertaining even though ti's kind of absolutely insane.  It kind of reminds me of the William Hartnell story The Chase with all the various locations and bizarre things going on.  While this isn't the definite placement of this story chronologically, this is where I like to put it as Martha is a full companion at this point... or at least she seems to be.  If you can track it down, and are a fan of the 10th Doctor and Martha then give it a try. 

Episode 10
Blink

A young lady named Sally Sparrow is photographing an abandoned house when she sees creepy angel statues and finds a note from the Doctor in the 1960's behind the peeling wallpaper which warns her about the Weeping Angels.  The next day Sally and her friend Kathy go back to the house, but there is a knock on the door.  Sally goes to the door as Kathy suddenly disappears and the angel statue has moved.  The man at the door is older than Sally and Kathy but claims to be Kathy's grandson who was told to show up at that house at that exact time with a letter from his grandmother.  The letter is from Kathy who says she suddenly found herself in 1920 and eventually married and lived a peaceful life.  Sally sees a strange key being held by an angel statue and takes it as she goes to find Kathy's brother Larry at his DVD shop.  Sally tells Larry that Kathy has "gone away for awhile" but notices that he has been documenting a strange Easter Egg on several unrelated DVDs.  It's a man in the 60's calling himself The Doctor having half of a conversation with the viewer.  Kathy then decides to take the key to the police station where she meets Detective Billy Shipton who informs her that there have been several disappearances at that house and one of the latest ones was a locked police box.  Sally leaves but remembers the key so she returns to the police station to find that both Billy and the TARDIS are gone.  She receives a call from a much older Billy who is dying in the hospital.  He had seen the angel statues approaching the TARDIS and suddenly found himself in 1969 where he met the Doctor.  Billy tells her to check the list of DVDs and passes away.  The DVDs are all DVDs that she owns.  She takes Larry and a portable DVD player to the abandoned house where she watches the easter egg and seems to have a conversation with the Doctor who reveals he has a full manuscript of their conversation because Larry was writing it down.  The Doctor explains that the angels are creatures who cannot move when they are being looked at but are lightning fast and will send you back in time to feed off your time energy.  He then asks Sally to take the DVD to the TARDIS so that he and Martha can escape 1969.  As they head for the TARDIS the angels start attacking and causing light failure.  The pair enter the TARDIS which recognizes the DVD and flies off without the pair...however that has caused the angels to look at each other and be permanently locked.  Later, Sally sees the Doctor out in town and provides him with the information and manuscript as it hasn't happened for him yet.

This is one of those fantastic episodes that come around less often than they should.  It's one of the best episodes the show has ever produced.  With the increase of episodes, in Season 2 they had a Doctor Lite episode in Love and Monsters which was atrocious.  Here it's done right....practically perfectly.  The introduction of the Weeping Angels is also amazing as they are one of the creepiest creatures to ever have been created in all of Doctor Who.  This is something everyone should watch.

Episodes 11, 12, and 13
Utopia / The Sound of Drums /
The Last of the Time Lords

The TARDIS is refueling at the rift in Cardiff when the Doctor notices Captain Jack rushing towards them having used the Doctor's severed hand from The Christmas Invasion to track him.  He tries to take off but Jack latches himself to the TARDIS and goes along for the ride.  The TARDIS tries to shake him off and lands way farther in the future than they should have been... the end of the universe.  Jack falls off the TARDIS dead from the flight but immediately comes back to life.  It seems that when Rose brought him back to life in The Parting of the Ways she made him a fixed point in time so that he could never actually die... or at least it would be an extremely long time.  The trio find themselves on a planet where the last remaining human beings in the universe are trying to leave on a rocket ship to find Utopia.  However the rocket isn't functioning and the bumbling Professor Yana can't figure it out.  As Yana can't figure it out and keeps having bizarre headaches, the Doctor notices  that he is holding a strange looking pocket watch.  He then decides to help Yana with the rocket.  Yana hadn't noticed he had a pocket watch and opens it as the rocket takes flight.  Yana begins to remember who he is and kills his assistant proclaiming his real name.. The Master.  The Master is shot by his assistant in her last moments and hops on the Doctor's TARDIS.  He regenerates into a younger man and the Doctor begs him to open the doors as they are the last two remaining time lords in existence.  The Master taunts him and takes off but not before the Doctor used his Sonic Screwdriver to lock the TARDIS coordinates.

Jack uses his time vortex manipulator to return all three of them to 2007 where Martha remembers hearing the Master's voice.  As it turns out, the Master is Mr. Saxon who is now Prime Minister of England.  The Master then kidnaps Martha's family hoping to lure out the Doctor.  At the same time, The Master lets the world know that an alien race known as the Toclafanes have approached him and want to help Planet Earth but wish to hold a meeting with the World Leaders on board a flying ship the next day.  The Doctor, Martha, and Jack sneak on board the ship to find the TARDIS has been modified to become a paradox machine for unknown purposes.  At the world-wide reveal of the Toclafanes, the Master reveals that they are working for him and orders them to kill thousands of people on Earth.  When the Doctor finally arrives on the bridge, he is captured and the Master then utilizes some spare tech from the Lazarus Experiment to age the Doctor several hundred years.  The Doctor hands Martha Jack's time manipulator, whispers something to her and sends her off.  One year passes as the Master is now ruler of the Earth along with his companion/wife who regrets joining with her husband.  Martha has been traveling the world supposedly finding pieces to a weapon against time lords, but has actually been telling everyone about the Doctor and to think about him on a particular day.  While out she discovers the Toclafanes are actually the severed heads of the humans from Utopia trapped in a metal shell, hence the need for a paradox machine.  Eventually Martha is captured and brought before the Master but the Doctor has been slowly integrating himself into a psychic network the Master had laid down.  When the whole world thought about the Doctor, he was able to gain immense psychic power and take down the Master while Jack uses the distraction to dismantle the paradox machine.  This causes time to revert to the moment the paradox machine had opened... the last year had never happened though the people on the ship would remember since they were at "the eye of the storm."  The Master's wife then shoots him and he dies refusing to regenerate and live on as a prisoner of the Doctor.  The Master's body is burned but his ring falls to the ground and is picked up by an unknown person.  Jack leaves the TARDIS to start back up Torchwood as a group for good and worries about what he'll look like at the eventual end of his life; he then tells the Doctor that he used to have a nickname... The Face of Boe!  Martha then decides to leave the TARDIS as she is sure the Doctor will never reciprocate her feelings, but provides him with a cell phone so that she can stay in touch.  The Doctor leaves Earth for more adventures.

This is a pretty exciting three parter.  It was great to see the Master once again and see the dynamic of these two evolving some.  You get more of a sense that they were actually good friends at one point before they went their separate ways.  One strange decision to make with the modern series is that the Master is legitimately insane this time around.  I realize that they give a real explanation for the headaches and drumming sound later but.... the Master was never quite this.  Sure he was evil and his plans sometimes made no sense but... this is more like The Riddler cosplaying as The Master.  Don't get me wrong.  I still love this version of the Master but it's just not the same as the Classic Show.  Also, the last episode gave us the Martha we had been wanting from the very beginning.  She was smart, amazing, and freaking tough.  This was a companion worthy of the TARDIS....then she leaves.  Despite any belly-aching I've said, this three parter is a pretty good watch and a great end to a pretty good season. 

Conclusion

That was Series Three of New Who.  In many aspects is reminds me a tiny bit of the first season mostly because I didn't care for it as much the first time I watched it.  However upon a second viewing, I loved most of it.  While Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks is kind of stupid there is far more good this season than bad.  Human Nature/The Family of Blood and Blink are all absolutely fantastic episodes that everyone should watch.  While many Classic Who fans have a real issue with this portrayal of The Master, I truly enjoyed it.  It was something different that made the Master a very unique foe.  All in all this is pretty great and continues to show why David Tennant will always be considered one of the best Doctors.  Please join me again as we continue to examine all of Doctor Who.

This is Ghost, fading into the darkness

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You can click here if you wish to see my introduction to Doctor Who
If you want to check out all of my Doctor Who content please click here.

Ghost's Arcade: Affordable Space Adventures

"You can be a professional space explorer.  Let Uexplore provide you with a cheap but functional spaceship equipped with everything you could possibly need on an alien planet."

Ghost here, thanks for joining me.

I don't talk about indie games very often.  It's not that I don't like indie games or won't give them a chance.  It's more about the fact that most indie games kind of need to be talked about in a particular time frame. The indie world can be very fickle and since I only make video game related content once every 3 weeks, that fickle nature it not in my favor.  If an indie game is breathtaking everyone will know about it within a week.  Same is true if an indie game is horrible garbage.  In order for me to cover an indie game it has to be something that's pretty fantastic or pretty terrible but hasn't gotten a whole lot of media attention at least in the avenues I pay attention to.  That's where this game lies.

Full disclosure here, I didn't seek out this game on my own.  I had actually only seen this thing mentioned once and that was an official trailer for the thing I saw when diving through YouTube one day.  However, the Humble Bundle did a Nintendo bundle and for only 16 bucks I walked away with 12 games or more? I don't remember exactly, but this was one of those games.  I tried out all of them and this was one I just had to cover.  So let's put on our space suits and hop in our affordable spaceship and see what this is all about.

The Plot

You have just watched an infomercial for UExplore.  UExplore is a company that is providing you with the opportunity to explore a new planet and claim part of it as your own before returning to Earth.  It's affordable and above all, safe with a 0% problem rating.  This, of course, means that when you wake up from your journey you have found that the transport ship has crash landed on the alien planet and you are the only survivor.  There is a distress beacon nearby but it is nonfunctional.  You must now pilot your damaged vehicle across the alien terrain in order to find a functional UExplore distress beacon.  However the pathway is treacherous with extreme heat and cold, strange puzzles, and an alien ship that had crashed landed previously with a multitude of sentry robots guarding the area with extreme prejudice.  Eventually as your systems begin shutting down, you find a distress beacon that is functional and go into a cryogenic freeze until Earth can rescue you.  However, at the UExplore headquarter, thousands of faxes are coming in from others having the same issue but nobody is there to rescue them.

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... and that's it!  The majority of the game is actually based around puzzle solving, navigation, and gameplay.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing so long as what we are given is enjoyable.

Gameplay

Affordable Space Adventures is an exploration game in which you use the WiiU's gamepad to maneuver the space ship seen on the TV screen from one area to another while avoiding traps and sentry units.  There are several aspects of the WiiU's gameplad you must utilize in order to accomplish this.  First would be the buttons and sticks on the gamepad itself.  These do things such as press the gas and break, steer the ship, change different types of landing gear, shoot off flares, and shine the scanner and flashlight in different directions.  Another aspect is the gyroscopic controls within the gamepad itself.  There are some areas which are slanted and would not allow passage through normally so you must turn the gamepad itself so that the ship can travel at an angle through tight places.

However it is the 3rd part of the gamepad that is the most complex, and that would be the touch screen.  The touch screen is basically like your control panel in the cockpit.  From there you can modify how much thrust you are putting out, how much stabilizer to utilize for your flight, whether or not to engage the mass generator to sink or float at ease, utilizing a battery backup, and several other functions like whether to use the fuel engine or the electric engine.  Why are these things important?  Well remember those sentries I talked about earlier?  These things have a radius of scanning for anything coming by.  However, these sentries are looking for certain aspects of your ship.  These sentries can look for heat, electrical signature, sound, or a combination of them all.  If your ship is producing more than what that particular sentry deems acceptable then it's dime for death's sweet embrace.  You can use your scanner on each of the sentries to see what they are looking for and adjust the features of your ship so that you can pass by undetected.  There are also environmental hazards and puzzles that you must get past by utilizing only certain parts of your ship as well.

What's Good About It?

The atmosphere of the game was something that instantly held my attention.  If I was really using my brain at that moment I would have seen the twist coming as soon as they mentioned a 0% incident rate.  However my expectations were different than the reality of the game.  First off, I was under the assumption that there would be a training level or something to get us used to the machine first before setting out on the alien planet.  I didn't realize that we would be there the second the infomercial ended.  Secondly the trailer for this game as well as the opening infomercial were such a stark contrast to what the game actually consisted of that it truly threw me for a loop.   Those two things were like this

Then when the game started properly...BAM!!

Harsh reality right in your face about what is actually going on.  It honestly surprised and jarred me a little bit and that's just wonderful.  Now some of the areas in the game are quite gorgeous, but this stark contrast is very welcome.

The second great thing about this game is it's use of the WiiU Gamepad.  While many developers shy away from a lot of Nintendo's gimmicks and shenanigans, these guys have accepted it full force and have utilized every single aspect of the gamepad so perfectly.  There is literally not a single button or portion of the gamepad that I didn't end up utilizing.  The closest thing to this is possibly... Mario Kart 8 maybe?  It's rare for a 3rd party developer to embrace the gimmicks of a Nintendo Console but it's even more rare for a developer to not only embrace the gimmicks but provide an intuitive control scheme to boot.  Somehow these guys did it and I enjoyed actually using the gamepad the way it was most likely intended to be used.

What's Bad About It?

If you're looking for an easy game then look elsewhere bro.  This game is extremely difficult once you get past level 16 or so.  For a game that has no combat and is mostly just puzzles and pushing buttons I wasn't prepared for the extreme level of difficulty some of these levels provided.  As you can see from the gamepad picture above there are 10+ different buttons that all control different aspects of the ship's output and many of these sentries require certain levels to be so incredibly low that there is one and only one way to get past them... and good luck finding out which combination actually works.  I'd say a good half of the game I ended up having to look up on YouTube to figure out how in the name of all things holy I'm supposed to get past this stuff.  I'm all for trial and error but when I spend 40 minutes trying to get past one set of sentries alone?  That's just too difficult.  If it's not sentries then it's something cryptic.  In the last level I kept freezing to death.  How exactly was I supposed to know that landing in the snow was supposed to raise the internal temperature of my ship? Last time I checked, snow was COLD...whatever.

Speaking of difficulty, here's something else that's honestly more of a nitpick than anything else.  I get annoyed when a game decides to make things difficult by slowly adding more things that you have to worry about...then once everything is given to you, everything that you've come to rely on gets taken away from you again.  That's exactly what this game does.  At first you only have your fuel engine and a couple of small features.  As you progress through the levels more and more of your ship becomes available until you are in the heart of the alien space craft when you have a fully functional machine.  After that level, however, your machine is damaged severely and all of your systems including stabilization start shutting down level by level until you are left with nothing but throttle and temperature control for the final level.  It's not necessarily a terrible choice but it's just one that annoys me.

Conclusion

Affordable Space Adventures was honestly a treat when I wasn't getting overly angry at the difficulty involved with some challenges.  It was a surprise that I'm glad came with my Humble Bundle.  It wasn't a particularly long game at only 38 levels, but it was still a quality experience.  The game is regularly $20 and if you have some disposable income, consider tossing it their way.  I'm personally glad I didn't have to pay $20 bucks for it but that's because I tend to be a Scrooge with my money at times.  I honestly do recommend it even if it's just for the utilization of the gamepad.  Check it out and go on your own space adventure!

This is Ghost, fading into the darkness.

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If you want to see my other Video Game discussions and reviews, click here!