Happiness abounds once Eeyore’s tail is “found,” at least until my eyes start bleeding from the mental image of Junior “reattaching” Eeyore’s tail. I’ve captured it for posterity so I don’t have to be the only one suffering. Things aren’t helped when Eeyore suddenly starts doing some kind of tail-reattachment shimmy in front of Junior while looking over his shoulder in what could possibly be interpreted as a seductive manner. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go gargle some broken glass and chase it with drain cleaner.
*head explodes*
For this adventure, Junior gains the power of time, according to the Obvious Text God. Stop has turned into Stopra. Day late and a dollar short, Obvious Text God.
Since we can’t stop we must go on, which is the logical progression of things. Junior pays a brief visit to Pooh’s house, where Pooh-bear sits outside in front of an unlit fire complaining that he’s cold. He’s also apparently too goddamned lazy to get up off his duff and get some matches, so Junior has to light the fire using Firaga. Pooh hands over some Mythril in thanks of the lovely fire, which Junior stores away with a long-suffering sigh because he knows I’m too fucking lazy to go make him anything at the Gizmo Shop. All work and no play makes Junior a dull wanker, but I am unmoved.
The next added page in our book takes Junior to a clearing full of tree stumps, and to the point in the game where if I were actually trying to play through this section myself, would need a family intervention for all the substance abuse your Auntie AG would put herself through. This will be two, two mini-game hells in one, I promise you. Inside the clearing are the aforementioned stumps, but also a crude log see-saw and a gigantic pot. Junior stares in wonderment at the pot for a second, completely unaware that it will be a means for his continued humiliation here in the Hundred Acre Wood.
Junior finds Tigger and Roo on the log see-saw, singing the praises of non-stop bouncing. I know hundreds of male anime fans with boobie message board avatars that would agree with you, Tigger and Roo, but it is neither the time nor the place to discuss that. This is supposed to be a family game, despite all evidence to the contrary. Gods, I still can’t get Eeyore’s “Happy Tail Shimmy” out of my mind. Unclean!
Tigger asks Junior if he’d like to join them for a spot of bouncing, and despite my warnings to the contrary, Junior agrees that bouncing would be tons of fun. Tigger tells Junior that to bounce with the finest, you’ll need tips on how to do it from the finest, and Junior vows to run right out and buy Jenna Jameson’s new book until he realizes that Tigger means himself. Thus begins one of the most pernicious mini-games in this godforsaken forest to date, the “bounce this way” copycat follow game. At first it’s not so bad. Tigger jumps from the see-saw to the nearest tree stump and Junior follows easily. Then Tigger jumps from stump to stump until he reaches an overhang on the other side of the forest. Emboldened by his success at that first jump, Junior gamely goes along with the program and lands successfully on the overhang. Now comes the true horror of this game, as Tigger and Roo execute more and more complicated jumping routines that not even the Harlem Globetrotters could follow without a map. Junior tries to match their bouncing with his woefully inadequate jumping, but heartbreak awaits him as he falls again and again. Jump, fall. Jump, jump, fall. Jump, fall, jump, fall, jump, jump, jump, if-you-don’t-make-it-this-time-you-uncoordinated-little-shit-I-swear-to-Yevon-I-will-brain-you-with-this-fucking-strategy-guide, fall. You can’t hear me right now, but I’m slinging more Chinese curses than a Firefly crew member trying to get “cocksucking son of a harlot and an ass-raping monkey” past the network censors.
Once Junior has made it through the ass-paddling gauntlet of bouncing, Tigger and Roo have something else in store for him, something they’re calling “the big one.” And a big one it is. The name of the game is “Tigger’s Giant Pot,” and the purpose of the game is to bat Tigger’s nuts back into the pot with the Keyblade. And for all the pain these mini-games have caused, smacking Tigger’s testicles into a hard ceramic pot with the Keyblade doesn’t sound all that bad at the moment, so let’s begin.
HURR!
Once again, I’m very fortunate to have a husband with much better hand-eye coordination than I could ever hope to have, and the twenty smacked nuts required to win this mini-game and burst Tigger’s giant pot go rocketing back to Tigger’s ceramic stronghold in rapid order, breaking it. Inside the hollow log where the pot used to sit is an AP Up. Well, cheer up, Junior! At least you get to use this right away instead of waiting for me to take you to the Gizmo Shop. So stop your sniveling and buck up, because the pain fun isn’t over yet!
As Junior contemplates the wonders of his new found prize, off in the distance, Pooh waits like a harbinger of doom, vaguely warning us of more jumping games to come. On his way out of the Stump-Strewn Meadow of Despair, Junior meets Owl, who tells him that rare nuts grow on the trees in this area. Owl will gladly trade Junior goodies if he’ll only gather nuts. I must stress here that “nuts” in the Hundred Acre Wood are large, elliptical pink things that vaguely resemble cocoa pods, but the fact that they’re large and pink isn’t helping my twelve-year-old homo mind latch onto their resemblance to the mother of all comfort foods, the mighty chocolate. I also never knew that owls had much of a liking for chocolate. I mean, if that were true, wouldn’t there be chocolate-covered Owl Treats and things? But then again, the owl in the Tootsie Roll Pop commercial always bit his way to the Tootsie Roll center in three licks, so… I just lost about half of you reading, didn’t I? You have no goddamned clue who the Tootsie Roll Pop Owl is, do you?
The obvious reminder of my great age aside, Junior gamely collects all the rare nuts in the trees and trades them to Owl for his goodies. Now, there were a lot of various maneuvers Junior had to go through to get all the nuts, like switches and water pressure and see-saws and all kinds of groovy things, but Junior, like me, just wants to get the stupid pink nuts into Owl’s feathery clutches so we can move on with the storyline, such as it is. Once all the nuts have been collected and traded to Owl, Junior is (finally!) allowed to leave the Stump-Strewn Meadow of Despair forever, and it’s not a moment too soon for my money. Speaking of money, Junior gets more Mythril that I’m not going to use any time soon! Isn’t that great?
As of now, we have one more book page to go, so Junior wastes no time getting the final page back where it belongs. Doing so takes Junior to a “winding, muddy path,” and a time-consuming game of hide-and-seek, like we hadn’t just spent the last hour and a half “finding” all the happy denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood in other mind-shattering mini-games. Remember, kids, no plot point is valid in a video game until it’s slammed home by a hammer the size of a Buick.
To start the game, Junior comes across Pooh, who is “following” a set of suspicious footprints. Pooh-bear must’ve been smoking one too many Pooh Sticks because he’s now convinced that bad people have come and taken everyone away again. I get the feeling that if Pooh-bear had internet, he’d be that friend that sends you every chain letter under the sun, convinced that they’re all true, no matter how many times you point him to snopes.com. And I’d like to state for the record that despite some forum-goer’s beliefs to the contrary, snopes.com is not, repeat, is not a parody site. If you’re going to go around believing that un-sourced political articles posted on the internet are true, you’ve got no call to be dissing Snopes, that’s all I’m saying.
Even Junior figures out that Pooh has finally gone around the twist, but instead of telling him so, Junior agrees to search for all the other Hundred Acre Wood residents while Pooh stands dreamily to one side. Now, considering that Roo and Tigger are on yet another cheerfully hollow log within sight range of where Pooh and Junior are standing, this game should be a doddle to get finished. That is, unless you have to drag Pooh with you so he can see his friends for himself, which, as it turns out, you do.
So Junior sets off and finds Eeyore in a nest of reeds. Eeyore’s looking for more sticks to use in building his home, he says mournfully. Junior declares that the nest of reeds is the perfect place to drop everyone once Pooh has seen them all again while mentally damning the poor stoned bear into the deepest pits of Hades for this fool’s errand. Next Pooh spots Roo, who’s bouncing around at the trunk of a tall tree up the bank from the nest of reeds. Pooh calls him down to join Eeyore, thus adding to Eeyore’s social anxiety by an exponential rate of ten. So that’s two down, way too damned many still to go. Under the cheerfully hollow log that Tigger blissfully bounces on is a cave with three door-like entrances. Rather than to draw Tigger’s attention away from Tigger for the time it would take for Pooh to notice him, Junior opts for the easier task, that of getting Rabbit to finally come out of the closet, or in this case, the cave. It turns out that Rabbit is quite entrenched in his ways and though he hovers at the exit from time to time, nothing, not even Carson’s horrible outfit with the pink pants and the cowboy belt can make him budge. Then, suddenly, as if he were spotting a sale on product at the nearest hip-yet-fashionably-retro salon, Rabbit’s out, blinking in the light of the newly outed. Junior wastes no time in corning Rabbit (no, not like that, Jesus) so that Pooh can be reassured that Rabbit is indeed alive, well, and fabulous. Rabbit takes his place with Eeyore and the others, and then proceeds to decorate the reed nest with a few earthy elements that Thom just happened to have with him.
In order to catch Tigger’s preoccupied eye, Junior has to use a handy upward air draft from a nearby well to float up to a point near the cheerfully hollow log, and then pretty much stand in Tigger’s bouncing path way until Tigger notices him. Tigger says he was bouncing around looking for Pooh, and the handy mirror he had in his hand was really a high-tech surveillance tool. Nice try, Tigger. Just get your vain ass down there with the others, will you?
Junior finds Piglet in a hollow tree further up from the log where Tigger had been bouncing, but Piglet won’t come out unless he can see his friend Pooh-bear, who’s still dreamily wandering around back near the cave where Rabbit outed himself. So, Junior has to go back down, collect Pooh, herd him up to the hollow tree, walk him through and then lead him over to Piglet so they can see one another, then lead Piglet back down to the reed nest, using nothing but that Wanker Mind Control Trick he’s got. Whew. It makes me tired just to think about it. I think for the first time in any of our recaps, I actually feel a bit of pity for Junior here.
Last but not least, Junior corners Owl by the hollow tree and makes him go down and join the others. It’s time for their daily nap, and no one can put you to sleep quite like Owl when he gets to expounding on the subject of his own wisdom. I had a few professors in college like him.
Once everyone is back in the reed nest, Junior can heave a sign of relief. He’s done with yet another fucking mini-game. His reward this time is another piece of Gizmo Shop gimcrackery, a piece of Orichalcum. For those of you who have ever wondered what in the hell Orichalcum is, it’s supposed to be the legendary copper alloy that was used in the building of Atlantis. And now I’ve just given myself more nightmares of the Atlantica recap, which I certainly didn’t need. That’s what I get for trying to do my bit to help the obscure reference recognition level in video games. Not that you can expect me to give a half-hour lecture on the wonders of Xenosaga anytime soon for a class project or anything lame like that. Now, please excuse me while I go hide that PowerPoint business model presentation I did with the picture of Auron in it. Don’t look at me like that, I got the highest grade in the class with that thing and a viable business model to boot.
Instead of taking Junior back to the surface of the book again, we get a dusky twilight cut scene with all the happy Hundred Acre Wood folk gathered together in fellowship. Any second now, they’re going to break out the guitar and sing one of those “togetherness” songs that they always made me sing in church camp. Well, they’d always make me sing them for the first day. I’d usually get kicked out for changing the lyrics around Day 3 or Day 4.
You? NOOOOOO!
Pooh sits in thought about what to think about, while Piglet whines about how lonely he was and Tigger, well, Tigger is finally able to admit that there are other people in the Hundred Acre Wood besides himself. Junior takes this opportunity to announce his imminent desire to get the hell out of the Hundred Acre Wood for good, though he’ll probably end up back here again someday. There’s no way that Squenix would let such a wonderful torture instrument go underutilized. As Junior is walking away, Pooh says his goodbye. With that, Junior is teleported out of the book one last time as the Winnie-the-Pooh theme song swells on the soundtrack. The camera zooms back to show us the book’s pages showing the dusky twilight scene, then a slo-mo closing. The clasp on the book’s covers changes from a keyhole to a regular clasp design, and that’s not all that changes, though I can’t bring myself to mention the rest. Just…look at the screencap. And cry.
Heresy!
So, what have learned today in the Hundred Acre Woods, children? That our childhood friends of old are actually greedy, emotionally immature creatures with overblown personality faults? That Auntie AG is old enough to remember the original Disney Winnie the Pooh productions and the second coming of the Monkees? That Disney is an Evil Empire that will whore out any of their properties in the siren song of making a fast couple million, even going so far as to market Old Yeller Dog Food?
Well, the message we’re supposed to take away from this is that without your friends, you’re very lonely indeed, and that Junior is doing all this just to find his friends. I, however, as my intro blurb to this recap have already states, am doing it for the love of Billy Zane. Because you should listen to your friend Billy Zane. He’s a cool dude.