World 2-32: Burrito Bison

Burrito Bison

http://www.kongregate.com/games/JuicyBeast/burrito-bison

This was a pretty sweet game. It's a launch game, the kind where you have to continuously launch your character as far as you can, gather up money, and spend it on upgrades until you are finally able to blast through the air and soar all the way to the finish line. I don't remember how long it took me to complete the game, but my best launch time was 1:09. I also purchased every upgrade.

Burrito Bison had a wacky Mexican theme, featuring gummy bears as the main enemy. It was fairly well done for a launch game, and I had a lot of fun playing this one, even after reaching the final goal. The colours matched the theme perfectly, as did the music and sound effects.

World 2-31: Collapse It

Collapse It
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Smrdis/collapse-it?acomplete=collapse+it

"Collapse It" is a puzzle/physics/gravity game with 34 levels. Your objective is quite simple - place bombs inside the bricks on each level to blow up the structures in such a way that all the people on the screen will be killed by all the rubble. As with most games of this genre, I find myself "gravitated" towards them for their simplicity and addictive nature. There are a couple different types of bombs, such as the standard bombs that you stick directly into the bricks, and drop bombs that come tearing through the sky to attack people from above. There are also a couple different brick types that will alter your strategy as well.

Overall, "Collapse It" is a pretty quick and fun game that would be ideal to fill up maybe half an hour of your time.

World 2-30: Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
~PC

Once again, I have mastered Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (at least on normal mode). This time around I decided to try a Paladin for the first time, finishing off Baal at level 34. To be more specific with my build, I tested out what is called the "Hammerdin" character by putting the skill "Blessed Hammer" up to level 20. To properly pull off this build, you need to get your offensive aurora "Concentration" to level 20, as well as the defensive aurora "Vigor", but I believe I only got both to around level 6 each before I unlocked Blessed Hammer. At that point, I switched off to offensive play, since I am naturally an attacker - not a defender. By the time I completed the game, I hadn't gained enough levels to max all three skills out, but if I continue in hell mode those will be my next steps. Although I must say, auroras feel a bit awkward to me during solo play, because the only person other than myself gaining anything from my boosts is the mercenaries I hire. Then I am left standing around waiting for him to polish all the monsters off. As I said, I like to charge enemies too much, so I was always busy mashing all the enemies around me with my awesome hammer spell rather than worrying about building up my auroras.

As a first time Paladin, I found this build pretty fun while I was building up my Blessed Hammer skill. After some time, it started to get pretty boring. I'm a Sorceress at heart, so I'm used to having a whole bunch of different spells to cast at any given moment to most effectively take down the enemies I am facing. Blessed Hammer has a huge advantage in this regard, because it seems to work just as well on one monster as it does the next, and it's also a really strong attack. Much stronger than I remember my sorceress's best spells being.

Once again, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend this game to anybody and everybody. Not only is it amazing from music to character appearance to expansions of characters and more, it also completely involves you in the game and gives you hours and hours of lasting fun. Diablo II is definitely one of my all time favourite games.

World 2-29: Altered Beast (Arcade)

Altered Beast (Arcade version) via Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection
~PS3

Altered Beast has always been a classic in my books. There's nothing incredibly special about it, but the music always gives me a great sense of nostalgia, and the game play is simple and straight forward which makes it easy for anybody to pick up and love. The story is basic, where some sort of royalty (probably a king) asks you to rescue his daughter, so you set off on a mission to save her. There doesn't seem to be any names for any of the characters, but it works well for this game.

Altered Beast features flashing beasts which drops orbs that you must collect in order to power up and transform into a new beast in each level, true to the title of the game. It's fairly short, as there are only 4 levels (and only 3 monsters to transform into - the last level featuring Gold and Silver versions of the first beast transformation).

As a side note, the arcade version is a lot more fun than the home console version. The graphics are much smoother, the colours are better, and while my favourite music sequence that plays between levels is faster than the home version, the whole game just turned out better for the arcade. I would recommend this game to anybody who likes a simple arcade classic that doesn't have much of a learning curve.

World 2-28: Pokémon (Pokemon) Silver

Pokémon Silver
~Gameboy Color

Final Stats:

Kadabra - Lv. 70
Tyranitar - Lv. 70
Seaking - Lv. 70
Noctowl - Lv. 70
Dragonite - Lv. 72
Typhlosion - Lv. 74

Money - 211,544 (not including saved money)
Play time - 232:34

All 8 Johto and Kanto badges
Elite Four beat twice
Final Champion beat once

Somehow I never got around to playing this installment in the Pokémon series until just now. As it turns out, Pokémon Silver is a really good game! I had a tough time getting into the "new" pokémon, and often used many of the original ones instead. However, there were some pretty cool new additions to the game above a whole new set of monsters. For instance, a couple new pokémon types were added (such as steel) and even new evolutions of the original pokémon have been discovered as well. Another really cool feature in Pokémon Silver is that after you collect the first 8 badges in Johto and finish the game, you can actually continue your save file and travel to Kanto. There, you can revisit all the old cities from the first Pokémon games, collecting those 8 badges as well. Finally, you can challenge "Red", the champion of the Pokémon universe, who looks suspiciously like Ash Ketchum.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing Pokémon Silver. It featured the classic catchy tunes that made everybody fall in love with the Pokémon series on Gameboy, created a lot of great memories, and played very smoothly from start to finish. There were tough times and easy times, but all in all it will be remembered as a great classic for the handheld series of video games.

World 2-27: Super Adventure Island

Super Adventure Island
~SNES

Super Adventure Island is the first Super Nintendo installment of the Adventure Island series, which includes five previous games. The story starts when you (Master Higgins) and your girlfriend (Tina) are spending some time together, when suddenly a dark sorcerer comes along and turns her into stone! It's the classic damsel in distress, gotta go save my girlfriend video game plot, but hey back in the 90s, any story passed as long as the game played well enough.

The controls in Super Adventure Island were actually fairly tricky to master, as there is a lot of sliding momentum while running. It also takes awhile to hit your top speed, and turning around is a nightmare - although thankfully, turning around isn't usually necessary. The entire game is pretty fast paced, and has a cool sound track to boot. You can even grab a skateboard sometimes to really fly through the levels!

There are a variety of cool level themes in this game as well, such as caves, tree tops, and mountains. There's also a really smooth water level (or two) which were surprisingly really fun!

All in all, Super Adventure Island isn't the smoothest or most original game around, but I will always have fond memories of playing this game as a kid.

World 2-26: Mega Man 3

Mega Man 3
~NES

Mega Man 3 was a huge improvement on the first two Mega Man games. The graphics were a lot smoother, the bosses were cooler, and the music was also awesome. By the time this third game in the series was introduced, there was still a lot of creativity implemented by means of cool boss and level themes, as well as a wicked sound track to compliment each stage. For these reasons, Mega Man 3 is another common game seen in top 10 lists around the globe.

I found that the game play in Mega Man 3 was very smooth, and while there were some incredibly frustrating parts - the biggest one being that you are required to fight all 8 of the robot bosses from Mega Man 2, on top of the 8 bosses from Mega Man 3, all before fighting the final boss (with various forms) - it still managed to be a really enjoyable game, and one I am proud to have in my trophy room.