Adventures in Appalachia.

On 14th Jun 2019 By theelderblogs9 Comments

A.K.A My first time playing Fallout76

This time last year (give or take a day or two) I was excitedly snuggled on my couch, with my popcorn watching the Bethesda E3 conference. We had all heard rumors a week beforehand about the new Fallout game with Bethesda’s bizarre live Twitch feed, and a little sneak peak in the Microsoft conference but we needed more. When it was announced that Fallout76 was to be an MMORPG my heart sank. I struggle with gun-play on single player games, there was no way I could play this online. Although it was stated it was playable in parties and solo alike, I had my doubts. I mean first off how would you stop a gang of players ganking a lone player? No NPCs? what the heck Bethesda? What are you playing at? No…just NO I refuse to partake in this game! Naturally my excitement at a new Fallout game died.

In the months that followed all I saw were complaints about the game, even YouTubers who make a living from recording Fallout footage were enraged. Bethesda apologized and I don’t know how much they spent/lost by trying to calm the raging storm of vault dwellers. One thing was for sure, I was glad I hadn’t jumped in and bought it, that I waited and saw my worse fears come true. I mean come on Fallout is a well known single player game making it multiplayer would just kill it. I just carried on with life playing Fallout4 quite happily in almost perfect bliss.

Then this year. Be3 2019 everything changed. As I watched the conference, (you can find my views on that here) Todd was saying how proud of the community he was, and how great they are. How the community and Bethesda worked together to improve the game for a more all round smoother experience. Curiously I listened intently as Todd listed the up coming updates and improvements. Then he announced the free trial of 76 and my cogs started to turn. I had always been against 76 from the start but what if? What if it wasn’t as bad as I had envisioned? What if they had corrected all of the mistakes? What if….I tried it? After all free is free and it couldn’t hurt right? So I downloaded it on my PS4. Well this is it, time to take the plunge. How many times would I be killed by a higher ranking player? who knows. I’m only playing it on the free trial so it’s not as if I have anything to loose right?

Challenge 1- Vault 76

So I arrive in vault 76, the character customization was pretty simple. Now I just needed to get out. As the curious person I am I HAD to look at everything. I picked up my pip-boy from the wall and left my room. I couldn’t pick anything up and the only thing I could really interact with was the terminal in my “room” OK I thought to myself as I navigated through the vault, either I can’t interact with things until i’m outside or my game is broke, lets pray it’s not the latter. I wandered downstairs and interacted with the Mr Handy there who told me about the vault boy cut outs. OK cool. Well this idiot obviously didn’t take that info in very well. I was trying to follow my quest marker which took me to a door I could not open. So I thought there was a key or something I needed to open the door. After going around the vault trying to open every door, which I couldn’t I was starting to give up. How hard is it to leave a damn vault? wandering around in circles for a good 10 minutes completely bamboozled. Then it clicked…. The vault boy cut outs were pointing in the direction I needed to go…. “I am such a dumbass” I whispered to myself. So I followed the directions and headed finally to the exit.

Challenge 2- What am I doing?

So I finally emerged from the vault and looked at my quest. OK I need to find the overseers camp. Cool. Uh one problem, I have NOTHING apart from a few bits from the vault. More importantly I have no weapons, I feel I maybe screwed. Oh look a conveniently placed corpse yup I’m looting that, Yes I now have a machete! So armed with a machete and no knowledge I went on my merry way. I came across a few small robot things and some wild animals, which I took down and reached the camp. The camp had all the things I needed to make things and even a gun and some ammo. I used the cooking station to cook my meat and made a couple of pieces of leather armor. After a quick nap to regain my health (I didn’t want to use all my aid right at the start) I went to the next place on my quest objective. Flatlands.

Challenge 3 – People

I arrived at the Flatlands and there were hardly any people. OK cool at least i’m not going to get killed in my first hour I suppose. I carried on going around looting things, went to the vendor in the church and did my quest objectives with no hassle. This is when I realized not only did I have to keep an eye on my health and rads, I needed to keep and eye on my new food and water meters. I killed some more animals such as braham and mole rats made a small C.A.M.P. with a cooking pot and just did some general exploring in the area. My quest objective took me to the agricultural facility and I went around there looting and what not. As I exited through a door an event triggered and the Mr Handy’s that were once docile attacked me on sight. Aw crap! So fighting for my small insignificant life I made my way through the building and bumped into another player. Together we took down the hostiles and completed the event. At this point I was only level 4 and the other player was level 7. At the end he gave me a “thumbs up” emote…. I stood there like the lemon I am, because how the heck do you use emotes? (If you are reading this Mr level 7 Thomas something thank you) I then decided I needed more armor and to do so I needed a armor station for my C.A.M.P. I went around looting for the materials I needed to make it and came across a building with ALL the crafting stations in it. OH. So I went to the armor station and created some more leather armor. As I exited the station I saw a level 60 something character at another station. I cautiously walked around the player to see what else was in the room. Then he spotted me. Ugh I hope i’m not going to die. He tried to get my attention (By this point I had googled how to use emotes) and to my surprise he gave me a full power armor chassis. I was in shock and this kind gesture from another player who was so much higher than myself actually brought a tear to my eye. I gave him a love heart emote and he replied with a thumbs up. I gave him a thumbs up back and went to store my new gift. (Again Mr level 60 odd who’s name I didn’t catch thank you so much ❤ ).

Challenge 4- low level

I had decided at this point I needed to level up as the place my quest marker had taken me, I was struggling to survive at my level. So I did some side quests. One of which was to get to a tower and request a government air drop. I made my way up the hill and reached the tower… I was not alone. 2 level 5 protectrons, a level 8 Mr handy and 4 turrets. (I was level 5). I felt for sure this was it. this was how I was going to die, so I went for it. I managed to take down the Mr handy 1st then ran and hid from the protectrons. when they had given up looking for me I threw a grenade at them them and in sneak mode made a few pot shots. Then I ran out of ammo. I had to resort to hacking at them with my faithful machete but I did it! I looted a bit of ammo form them and used that to take down the turrets. Success (very surprisingly for me) was mine. I activated the drop and went to wait for it. When It eventually landed an other player was trying to access it. I thought to myself “You best not mate I almost died getting that” I went to access the drop but I couldn’t as I had no bobby pins. Luckily for me there was a large tool box behind me that had bobby pins. I accessed my drop took the stuff and stored it in my C.A.M.P. At this point I realized I had been playing for about 3 and a half hours without knowing and decided it was time to log off and have some lunch.

I literally survive off Dogmeat in this game

So I actually had more fun then I thought I would. I am considering buying the full game when my trial runs out. The PS store has it on sale at the moment but I will not have the money for it until after the sale ends. At full price the cheapest one is around £60 and I am certainly NOT spending that much on a game that has been out for a year already and has had problems. I found a disc copy on amazon for around £13 so ner! I’m looking forward to playing it when the human NPC’s are introduced and there are full dialog trees. Well done Bethesda you made good on your promise. Thank you.

Thank you too for reading this. Don’t be afraid to leave a comment, and please share this (share buttons are below somewhere)

Happy gaming ❤

New concept?

On 26th Jun 2019 By theelderblogsLeave a comment

Ok I know I’ve been quiet for a bit, the truth is I have been on a major Fallout 4 binge and as much as I wanna share the random stuff I keep finding I also don’t have the time to write huge monologues like my previous blogs. So I was thinking of a new concept. Now whenever I have been playing and my bf messages me about what I have been up to I just send him screenshots with small captions. I’m just wondering if this would be an ideal format for a blog post? I don’t know. How about you (my darling readers) comment below about your thoughts on it. Here is an example uh for example. Hope to hear from you all soon.

Happy gaming xx

BE3 My thoughts

On 11th Jun 2019 By theelderblogsLeave a comment

So its that magical week for gamers, E3! I was going to write about all the conferences but between working and the fact I pretty much fell asleep during EA’s conference I thought it would be best if I just focused on the one that means the most to me: Bethesda- Be3

This years emphasis for Be3 was community, because (and I quote) “We are all Bethesda.” That’s right all of us, even my pain in the butt cat! 🙂 So what happened, lets look.

So we started of with Pete Hines (HI PETE!) giving a quick run down on what has happened in the previous year and telling us gamers how absolutely awesome we are (Damn right!) before introducing us to, well who else? Todd Howard.

Todd carried on the flattery before running right into Fallout76. Lets face it that game got a lot of flack as did Bethesda. Todd again praised the Bethesda community “We made a post apocalyptic survival game where you can do whatever you want and everybody’s nice to each other? They don’t go on killing greifing sprees, they leave food and water for the newbies and wave to each other. I don’t know about you, this should give us all hope for humanity when the Apocalypse does come.”However before indulging more about the MMORPG, Todd went on to talk about the new updates and content which will be appearing in the mobile game;The elder scrolls Blades. (I previously did a review/ blog about that when it first launched for early access, and you can find it here )

What is coming to Blades? So here is a quick run down, I think I have already bored you enough with my slight fangirling of Todd as it is >.<)

New jobs and solo arena battles.
Custom jewelry system.
Dragon quest line.
PvP, player owned guilds and visiting your friends towns, to be coming in autumn (or fall whatever suits you better).
Being released on the Nintendo switch (like everything else lol) in autumn/fall including cross-play with mobile.

Don’t forget if you already have it, you can log in and claim your E3 rewards this week people! I also need to go back and revisit it to do a new review/blog for it.

Now it’s time for the Fallout76 news and what they have in store for us this year. This years Fallout goodies include:

Human NPCs!
New quest line
New rewards
Full dialog trees

The above Wastelander’s update again is coming in Fall. Also just for E3 week Fallout76 is free for everyone to try. (I am seriously considering this now, since 76 did not appeal to me at all). A new game mode is also being released which is a battle royale mode, for all you BR fans 🙂 The Nuclear Winter (battle royale mode) is also a part of the free F76 trail for E3 week for those wishing to try it.

A new game from Tango is also going to be released, not much was said about it but it did intrigue me. Its an action, adventure, paranormal game called Ghostwire Tokyo. A brief video was shown but it did not give much away.

Next we have The Elder Scrolls Online, server capacity has been increased to deal with the amount of new players. Personally I would love to get back into it and get the new Elsweyr dlc, However I feel I need a party to play with as playing solo all the time isn’t great for me. Oh well, maybe one day 🙂 So what additional goodies do Zenimax have in store for us this year?

Necromancer class (newly released)
Elsweyr is described as the perfect starting point for new players
The next part of the Season of the Dragon story line
New story dlc Dragonhold
Dungeon dlc Scalebreaker

Bethesda then went on to talk about their mobile games, new and upcoming Commander Keen which is based off a 90’s id game, which I have never heard of and elder scrolls legends. They showed a video of the newly released Rage2 and a brief description of the updates which consist of new vehicles and the Rise of the gods expansion,

Next up was Wolfenstein and it’s two new upcoming games. 1st up is a new VR game Cyberpilot. In Cyberpilot you are a hacker working for the French resistance taking control of Nazi war machines and turning them against their creators. It will be available this July.

The next new Wolfenstein game is Youngblood. Promising more weapons, weapon upgrades and ways to customize your play style. It is also going to be co-op. It is set in the 1980s, twin sisters Jess and Sofe are tasked with tracking down their father in Nazi occupied Paris. You can play single player mode or partner up with a friend. Youngblood releases on PS4 XBOX1 PC and Nintendo switch on the 26th of July.

Next up was Arkane Lyon who announced their new FPS Deathloop. Its kind of hard to explain what it is. Two rivals Colt and Julianne must fight in a seamlessly never ending loop of time. One trying to maintain the loop and the other trying to break it. You can check out a video of it here and see what you think for yourselves.

Bethesda touched upon the new streaming service Orion before announcing the game they were counting on the most this year. Doom Eternal.

Doom Eternal promises new areas to explore as the ultimate power fantasy. “Every enemy is different every weapon has a purpose, and every decision you make really counts. The only path to victory in Doom Eternal is to aggressively control the fight.” They showed a few game play videos which were obviously awesome and you should totally check out here. It will be released on November 22nd of this year. There is also going to be a collectors edition which comes with a real life ACTUAL Doomslayer helmet. Of course they did not provide a price. They are also releasing a new multiplayer mode; Battlemode. In Battlemode two player controlled demons take on one fully loaded slayer in a fight to the death. Demon strategy vs Human skill. More will be revealed about Doom Eternal at Quakecom in July.

That was it. No hidden bits or special surprises from Bethesda. Not even a title for ES6. I was disappointed needless to say. So with a big sigh, I turned off YouTube and loaded up a new game of Fallout4.

What did you think of the conference? Which bits did you enjoy the most or least? Let me know in the comments. Don’t forget to check out my other blog posts on here and please share the links on your social media.

Most of all, Happy gaming ❤

TES Blades a quick review

On 17th Apr 2019 By theelderblogs1 Comment

So the other week I was so buzzed to finally be able to log into and try out TES Blades. I spent ALL day on it and had to charge my phone at least 3 times that day. First of all the beautiful Skyrim-esque graphics blew me away!

For a mobile game that is pretty damn pretty! So I played around for a while and did some quests. I reached my “hometown” that’s where I first got stuck. I sat there and spent about 30 minutes deciding on a name before finally deciding on “Cheesecake” (shut up I like cheese) But cheese cake needs a bit of a Revamp. I had to go and find some Carpenters to find some lumber to start repairs. That’s when I got to this beautiful place.

Of course there were spriggans! So I finished the quest and went back to town. I repaired the smithy, sold some things and tried to progress. I did several dungeons which all looked exactly the same. I was hoping for a quest that took me back to that beautiful forest but that never happened. I spent many times in dull boring dungeons over and over again. Just like this!

It was always the same. Go to this dungeon (via fast travel, due to it being on mobile I could understand why they couldn’t do the whole open world thing) kill 5 of these things, go back to town, rinse and repeat. Literally that’s all I did for hours. Because I needed one piece of flipping limestone to complete a repair on a building. The game play was ok considering again it is on mobile. Very skyrim-my in the presentation like health/stamina/magic bars. If you learn magic it will come up as a little symbol so you can just press it, nice and easy. The swiping for using weapons is tedious but I muddled through. Skill point allocation, almost same as usual. You level up put a point into a perk, ability or learn a new spell. This makes getting everything a lot harder.

Then there is the chests. You can collect chests to get items. Common ones take 5 seconds to open. The next stage up takes 3 hours so I was thinking I would get some decent loot…. Uh no, no I didn’t. Anyway I did breifly enjoy it but the fact I was still looking for limestone (I was looting everything everywhere) made me loose interest pretty fast. Also you can find food in the dungeons and yes it still regenerates health but you have to eat it there and then. A bit more variety in environment wouldn’t hurt at all, and that chest thing needs a looking at. Beautiful to look at tedious to play at times. But that is just my opinion. Maybe I will go back to it in a month or two and see if there are any changes, after all it is in early access. But for now I am back in Skyrim working on my RP alchemist. I hope this game improves without 1000s of microtransactions, and I will see you all soon, I hope. Please don’t be like this guy. Much loves xxx

Oh and skeletons take more than one hit. Xxx

Checking in

On 3rd Apr 20193rd Apr 2019 By theelderblogs3 Comments

Hello everyone,

I am not dead just trying to organize things. I have a load of content I am currently drafting and hoping to publish in the next few weeks. Since it is the Easter break here in my little corner of the UK I will have more time and hopefully more content for you all. So these are the things I am planning on doing PLEASE comment and let me know which interests you the most.

*The Elder Scrolls 3- Morrowind- my reactions to it

*The Elder Scrolls Blades- review- when I get my access code (Hurry up Bethesda!)

*Stardew Valley Android Version- review

*Stardew Valley ps4 co-op review/thoughts (When CA FINALLY releases that update we have been waiting about a year for)

House Of Leaves- The horror adventure in a book and how it devoured my soul

And of course in a few months E3 2019!

Please like and share this blog on all of your media so everyone can have a say 🙂

Take care everyone, much love ❤ x

Stardew Valley a noob mum review (2018)

On 23rd Mar 201923rd Mar 2019 By theelderblogs1 Comment

Hello again,

I know it’s been a while. Well in my corner of the UK it was May half term last week so I was a little pre-occupied. Also trying my damnedest to find a job for the summer and still being unsuccessful. (Those of you who have read my 1st post will know, if not you can find it here at the old site Blogger )

So with the help of coffee and some amazing 90’s tunes (my taste in music is diabolical) I shall tell you what wonders I discovered.

What caught my eye first were the graphics. Yeah I know they aren’t the amazing 3D, 4K graphics of an unreal engine but that is part of the charm. For me it was nostalgic, early 90’s adventure style. I mean look how adorable is this?! (OOOOOH Mambo no 5 just came on, excuse me).

I mean look! OK granted it does look like a standard Facebook game, but its not. It is so much more and NOT on Facebook. (Eiffel 65 now, you know the words ). So I had a little look around the internet… OK YouTube. People were saying how it is just like Harvest moon, and Animal Crossing, games which I have never played. (Did anyone else sing “I’m blue, if I was green I would die” or was that just me and my crazy school mates?)

So it starts of your dear old Gramps gives you a letter to open for when you feel like life has just gotten too much and then presumably he passes away. (Steps Tragedy has just come on… timing guys). Fast forward a few years and sure enough there you are all grown up in a boring, depressing job working at a computer which seems to be 4 times the size of your actual body. You pull out the letter Gramps gave you and its the deeds to his farm. You (presumably) tell your boss to “jog on” and hop on a bus to Stardew valley. FREEDOM!!!

Upon arriving you meet Robin who is the village carpenter, who in turn introduces you to Lewis the Mayor and your…. farm. It needs work. “Ugh not another Farmville game, you sigh, exasperated” No, no its not “another Farmville” at all, it is so much more! Sure you buy and plant crops, tend them, sell them, raise animals etc. but there’s a whole village to explore, NPCs to meet and make friends with, and and and…. OK lets try and put this into a bit of sense, I know I’ll do sub-headings. OK firstly;

Farming

So you have a farm, and its a mess! Luckily you are provided with some tools to clean it up a bit. (HINT: Do not cut all of your tall grass you are going to need it later) You get wood and sap from chopping trees, stone from mining rocks and sometimes coal and fiber and sometimes mixed seeds from cutting bushes. Now sap is extremely useful 2 sap makes 1 basic fertilizer which improves crops. (you get standard, silver and gold crops from what I have found so far). You get given 20 parsnip seeds to start off with. You plow the ground with your hoe, put down fertilizer (if you have it) plant your seeds and water them. You need to water your crops daily unless it rains. To see if it is going to rain the next day just watch the weather forecast on your T.V.

Now just growning parsnips is boring but dont worry you can buy more seeds from the general store in town, it looks like this;

Here you can buy seeds and saplings, and sell most things. Keep an eye on the description of the seeds, it will tell you how many days they take to grow and if the plant keeps reproducing after harvest. Also there are seasons in this game. Each season consists of 28 days and unless stated otherwise, crops will die when a new season starts. I.E parsnips will die the 1st day of summer. As for live stock you need Robin to build farm buildings to store the animals in and a silo to make hay. (Remember I said not to cut all your grass this is what I meant, you use it in the silo). Im not too versed in livestock as I have only got my 2 chickens, Chuck and Chook at the moment and they are still babies so they do not produce anything.

Fishing

Ugh, I hate fishing. Its quiet difficult to get the hang of. On day 2 or 3 you get a letter in your mail box from Willy the village fisherman, go and see him and he will give you a fishing rod. Different fish appear in different areas and at different times. What I do to try and level up my fishing is before I go out for the day I turn my T.V. on and watch the fortune teller. If she says luck will be on my side I spend the day fishing hoping for a few catches to level it up that way. Some fish can be quiet “slippery” (aha I made a funny) to catch. But i’m hoping the more I level up the better equipment I can get and make this process a lot easier in the future.

Foraging

Foraging is quiet easy, you walk around and pick things up, such as flowers, berries, seashells and other bits. You can sell these on to make some money to buy more seeds etc but later on be careful as you may need them for the community centre bundles. More on that later. The higher you foraging the more likely you are to find mixed seeds to plant on your farm, well that’s as far as I have gotten anyway.

Mining

After a few days you will get a mail saying that an obstruction has been cleared and you can now enter the mines. These are located north of the Joja supermarket. Here you can mine stone, coal, copper ore, and find minerals. However there are little beasties down there, luckily Marlon from the adventurers guild gives you a rusty sword. I have only made it down to level 15 of the mines so far. Every 5 levels there is an elevator, and on level 10 I found a treasure chest. I’m not sure exactly how many level there are and i’m sure the further down you go, the better the ores and items are. You can also find relics in the mines to give to Gunther at the library. You may also find Geodes, which you can give to Clint the blacksmith to smash open for you to see whats inside. Fun times. Again if you want a good haul check the fortune teller channel 1st.

Cooking

I haven’t even started cooking yet, You need a kitchen expansion for your house which you can get from Robin for 4000g. But you can learn recipes by watching the cooking channel that sometimes comes on the T.V.

NPCs

NPCs are all over the place, you can talk to them and try to make friends with them by figuring out what they like and giving them gifts. You can only give two gifts a week to any one NPC at a time. You can also marry them if you are friendly enough, from what I have seen on YouTube. (oooh nice bit of Jamiroquai right now). They also have birthdays! If you look on the the notice board outside Pierre’s (the general store) There is a calendar which shows everyone’s birthdays and social events. Also once you start to get friendly with NPCs they will sometimes send you gifts in your mail box. Isn’t that nice? You can find most of them in the saloon on a Friday night, and most of them at the social events.

Community Centre

At some point in the game, Lewis will show you the run down community centre and tell you how, if people keep shopping at JoJa mart he may have to sell it to them. Joja being the company you used to work for, boo-hiss too them! You will see these strange little critters whilst in there and find a parchment. If you take this to the wizard he will translate it for you and this opens up the community centre for you. To repair the sections of the community centre you need to compete “bundles” these are seasonal as well as type specific. So there is a lot to do and find. This is an aspect that I love as I am a bit of a trophy hunter when it comes to gaming and I thrive of the sense of achievement when I complete a bundle, which you get little rewards for too!

OK so that’s the best I can describe the game as I have only just gotten to Fall of the 1st year. I have much more to learn and I expect there is much more to do and explore. I have heard that the game will be introducing multiplayer soon too so that should be fun! I haven’t even touched the adventurers guild yet either. So if you are planning on getting it, or a parent wondering if this game would be suitable for you child, it is. Its a charming game with so much to offer and i am really enjoying it. Its a great distraction from the busy depressing world.

So goodbye for now from myself and Phil Collins who is currently playing in the background.

If you are new, here is where to find where I lurk when i’m not madly writing about random stuff on here whilst listening to stuff that was “cool” when i was 13/14 years old.

https://www.instagram.com/theelderblogs

And my coffee cup is empty again.

Take care xxx

The Adventures of sonic, DD and I

On 23rd Mar 201923rd Mar 2019 By theelderblogsLeave a comment

Hello again readers. (I should think of a more original name for you guys).

It was a rainy Saturday morning and I was consuming my usual mug of morning coffee. I was trying to think of something to do with DD. I had a few things in mind and the one she jumped at was “Setting up the mega drive” Awesome.

So we powered up the mega drive, it’s one of the ones that was released the other year with about 80 games already on it and selected Sonic the Hedgehog. You know, that classic from 1991, the one i played endlessly as a child around the same age as DD. We played by the standard 2 player on a single player game rules. 1 person plays until they die or complete an act. Soon enough Green hill started and so did our session.

We did pretty well, by the time we had got to Spring yard zone act 3 we had 8 lives, a continue and 2 chaos emeralds. Pretty good going for an adult and child tag team. DD defeated the Spring yard boss and everything was looking good, until… The screen flashed up, with a gulp and a shared look of worry we knew it was going to be challenging… Labyrinth zone.

“No mum” DD said. “I’m not even touching this, it’s all yours” (Thanks kid) So with a deep breath I took Sonic through the watery and dangerous depths of the Labyrinth zone. I died several times, spikes, running out of air and just not being able to adapt to Sonic’s slow speed underwater. Finally we got to act 3. We were down to 4 lives. I knew I HAD to do this. After loosing 3 lives I finally got to the Boss. Robotnik taunted me as he flew up, leaving me to jump and dodge and fight for breath…I died. But all was not lost, we did have a continue! I got through the labyrinth and to the boss, where I died, and died again and then one last time. GAME OVER!

I was gutted. I played and completed this game so many times when I was DD’s age why could I not do it now as an adult? Stupid Robotnik..

DD booted up the game again and played on her own whilst I took a break and did bits around the house. She got to Green Hill zone 3 and said “Mum I have had enough you can carry on now”, and off she popped. I looked at the screen, was I going to let this game beat me? No, no I was not! I picked up the controller and un-paused it.

I flew through Green Hill and Marble zone collecting rings and extra lives on the way. I got to Spring Yard and stopped. No, I needed to start from the beginning, I knew in Green Hill zones 2 & 3 DD probably missed some 1ups that I was really going to need. So I reset it. I didn’t start the game straight away though. I went through the normal evening routine. Making food, cleaning making sure DD had washed her hair properly in the bath, spoke to a friend on the phone all that jazz.

I psyched myself up and pressed start. It was a pretty good run through, by the time I got to the boss in Spring Yard I had 15 lives, 3 continues and 4 chaos emeralds. And then I died. WHAT? I died on the spring yard boss? dont be silly! Sighing with frustration I tried again… and died. What was going on? So I tried again and died… confused and getting increasingly frustrated I made the executive decision to go to bed. I paused the game, turned off my T.V. and went to bed.

The next morning after general things and stuff I made a coffee and turned my T.V. on. There I was right where I died last night… right Robotnik… not this time mate! I died…

What is going on with me? I died. I finally beat him but I was down to 8 lives… the same amount of lives me and DD had last time we played labyrinth… great. But at least this time I had more continues. Act 1 I surprisingly got through unscathed. Act 2 I died once. Act 3 I died before getting to the boss. So down to 6 lives. I found a 1up just before the boss, great back up to 7 lives! Maybe there is a chance!

I hit the save point and jumped onto the sponges and let the water take me up… I jumped up and up and up. I got the shield bubble and ran. I hit Robotnik and then it was a race. I jumped up and up, leaving the water behind me. I dodged the fireballs and spikes. I got hit by a spike but it was fine i just lost my bubble. The water had caught up. I was almost there I could see the top of the water above me, I just needed to get over to that edge and avoid the spike. The music started indicating i was abut to run out of air. I got to the ledge jumped… I was too late I had ran out of air mere milliseconds before my head broke the surface…

I took a deep breath… OK I was almost there this that time I can do this. I started at the save point so I had no rings I only had the bubble to protect me. Up I went, up and up and up, lost my bubble to a spike and then my life to a fire ball. (How do fireballs work underwater anyway?).

I tried again, I almost reached the top but I ran out of air… How did I do this when I was a kid?

Hands shaking, palms sweating I tired again. I was near the top, I had lost my bubble and the music saying I was almost out of air started. Come on! I thought You can do this and suddenly, DRY LAND! Robotnik ran away in his stupid flying machine and I jumped on the button and released Sonic’s woodland friends. Shocked I just stared at the screen.

After a few minutes I went to DD’s bedroom. I opened the door and just looked at her.

“Hi mum” she snag cheerfully. “Whats up?”

My hands were still shaking and I looked at her.

“I did it poppet, I defeated Robotnik on Labyrinth zone”

She jumped up from where she was sat.

“Really? Awesome! How many lives do you have?” She asked following me into the front room.

“3 Lives, I think I have 3 continues and 3 Chaos emeralds.”

“Awesome mum, good job!”

We played through Star Light zone and picked up a few extra lives. We got a special zone and I got the emerald. I thought I had only gotten three but I had gotten 4, now 5.

“Mum we only need 1 more emerald!”

OK kid. We played through Act 2 and picked up a couple of extra lives and the special zone.

“You can do it mum, I believe in you!”

After a lot of jumping and near misses, I got the final chaos emerald and another continue, but our adventure was not over yet. We defeated the boss and entered Scrap Brain zone. We had at this point gone back up to 7 lives, we were feeling optimistic. We took it in turns to try and get through Robotnik’s death traps. Managed to find a few more extra lives but not without loosing some either. We were Zapped, burnt, fell into oblivion but we we persistent, I mean we hadn’t even touched our continues yet. Act 3 was next and we had 3 lives. I found another extra life but soon lost it. At this point I couldn’t be bothered to look around, especially as it was a lot like labyrinth zone so I just tried to get through it. We got to the area with the springs, I jumped… we were in FINAL ZONE.

Robotnik thought he was so clever in his moving metal tubes, and his zappy balls of electric, but I remembered from my childhood. This Boss wasn’t defeated by speed, you needed patience. I stood at the right hand side of the screen, dodged the balls and waited patiently until Robotnik was in a tube I could hit. DD was keeping count.

“One more to go mum!”

Robotnik came up in his tube and BAM! I got him, his stuff exploded and he was finally defeated! Sonic was running through Green Hill with all his woodland friends who he had rescued and the chaos emeralds floated above his head.

Everyone was happy, Sonic, his friends, DD, me everyone except Robotnik.

Well you shouldn’t have been nasty to everyone then, Robotnik now go away and take your stupid mustache with you!

DD was over the moon.

“Shall we play Sonic 2 now mum?”

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