In the next rather large room, Twink takes out a couple of Moblins before fetching Medli. And how glad am I that I don’t actually have to protect her or it’s Game Over. I almost feel like there has to be a catch because the game designers aren’t trying to assrape my enjoyable game experience by making it unnecessarily difficult and irritating. Life is full of surprises. Anyway, the whole Power of Teamwork™ thing comes into play a second time as Twink and Medli each have to operate a switch atop two (phallic, duh) stone pillars. A neat feature that Sean Connery forgot to mention is that when I’m in control of Medli, she can actually fly for a while. Sure, she flies like she’s retarded and half in the bag, but I didn’t need swear or throw my controller, so it’s not that annoying.
PENIS!
The next room introduces us to yet another talent of Medli’s, but first I’ll backtrack a little bit. So far, I haven’t really bothered to describe the dungeon décor much because it’s the earth dungeon. It has lots of stone. And it’s not the first dungeon with lots of stone. It’s not even the second dungeon with lots of stone. Sure, there are some odd skulls-with-scythes decorating the walls above the doors, but this is an evil dungeon and skeletons with scythes are evil. Maybe the logic is that when you die, you’re buried in the ground — a.k.a. the earth — until you’re resurrected to become an evil skeleton wielding bladed weapons. I don’t know. I also don’t know if Ganondorf’s crew redecorated the temple, or if it was originally supposed to be rather evil a la the Shadow Temple.
Anyway, my point in mentioning this first and rather bland dungeon theme is so I can introduce our second quite unrelated theme — light. Yes, in this earth dungeon, under the ground and under the water, almost every room has at least one light pillar streaming in from the ceiling. Luckily, Laruto had the foresight to use and pass on a shiny gold harp rather than a boring wooden one, so Medli can stand in the light and use her harp to reflect a blinding beam onto any number of things in order to solve puzzles. I think I just described 90% of the dungeon puzzle solutions.
Twink doesn’t say much to her since he doesn’t really care to get into a slapfight with his dungeon buddy, but he is blindingly, irrationally jealous. Of all the shinies he has collected, not one reflects the light in such a flamboyant way. Even his brightly colored clothes aren’t as eyecatching as Medli’s gorgeous golden harp. This is truly a sad, sad day for Twink.
PENIS!
Once Twink clears the current room of a whole buttload of Chus, he sulks in the corner and lets Medli work her sparkly magic on the various items in the room. One of these is a treasure chest that looks like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak mated with a tub of mercury. Shining a beam of light on it turns it into a normal treasure chest with the Dungeon Map. The other light-sensitive item is a dildo-shaped statue on the wall that dissolves as soon as the light hits it. Well, that’s not a very sturdy decorative item, is it? Twink shudders to imagine what would happen if he unwittingly decorated his cabana with objects made of that material. What would the other orgy participants think when his statues of naked men just disappeared when the sun came through the window? It would ruin him.
PENIS!
The statue doesn’t yield anything interesting for now, but it would be quite an understatement to say that we’ll run into a few more of them later on. Also, as I’m sure you were wondering, controlling the direction of the light beam is not really that simple. After choosing the direction for Medli to face, the beam only gets a limited range of motion. Meaning that it’s not unusual to have to place Medli several times before getting it right. All the while, obnoxious sound effects shriek in my ears. And then there’s the issue of the beam controlling like a rusty shopping cart. Twink hides a bit of a scoff — if he had a shiny object like that, he would be the master of directional lighting.
The exit in this room leads to a central chamber of sorts. In addition to a couple of doors branching off to the sides, there is also a statue on the center of the far wall. The statue has a large round head with a slew of evil pointy teeth. It also has recessed eyeballs with the symbol of a moon on each one. The camera all but places a blinking neon sign on the statue that says “THIS IS IMPORTANT YOU FUCKING MORONS.” Two pillars of light at the back of the room coincidentally line up with the statue’s eyes. Well, that’s just silly — Medli can’t direct two light beams at once.
The floor around the statue is filled with blue fog. This is not just for effect — when Twink touches said fog he becomes unable to use his sword, kind of like being confronted with a naked woman. Heck, it’s kind of like being a woman. Only one thing can drive back the Estrogen Fog — the Light of Flamboyance. Ironically, it is Medli — a yucky female — who shines the light onto a hammer switch, allowing Twink to wail on it with the Hammer of Recapper Revenge. As he releases all of his light-deprived frustration with a couple of hard swings, one of the side doors opens. Fabulous.
Keeping with the theme that dead things go in the earth, Twink encounters a couple of coffins in the next room. He’s kind of hoping that they contain some sexy Anne Rice-style vampires, but he’s dead wrong (GET IT?!?!). Instead, a couple of giggling flamer skulls pop out faster than Tara Reid’s boob. Twink vanquishes them with a minimum of trouble, then moves on to the rest of the drab room.
Twink climbs a ladder and moves a big stone block, releasing another beam of brilliant light into the center of the room. Medli uses this to reveal a treasure chest with a small key. As soon as Twink wraps his hot little hand around the key, a fucking Floor Masturbator appears, trying to handjob Twink back to the beginning of the dungeon. If he had any hope that this shadowy thing would have the least idea how to please him, they might be able to come to an arrangement. But Twink isn’t about to chance it with this greasy-looking asshat when he can stop by Tingle Island for a quickie. Again, he’s got standards, such as they are.
By accident — meaning that I still have the arrows set to ice — Twink discovers that he can freeze the Floor Masturbator and then have at it with the Hammer of Recapper Revenge, shattering it into a million irritating pieces. This is strangely satisfying in a way that shooting it with simple arrows isn’t. Yay, Twink has a new hobby to keep him busy so that he doesn’t get as depressed over his lack of shiny, light-reflecting objects.
Twink destroys another Floor Masturbator, grabs Medli, and returns to the evil statue room. He unlocks the door opposite him with the newly acquired small key. Once again, he is ambushed by approximately a billion ChuChus. In Twink’s past adventures, he has encountered the red, green, blue, and yellow (PeeKaChu) varieties, but now there is yet another of these phallic creatures to add to the list: Black Chus. I will satisfy your curiosity right now — the black ones aren’t any bigger than the regular variety.
But they do have special powers and weaknesses. And this may shock you right out of your comfortable existence — the weakness has to do with light. The Black Chus are pretty much invincible to Twink’s hard blade. Yet, as soon as Twink lures them into a nearby light shaft, they harden up faster than Seymour at a Little League game. Twink can either pick them up and throw them — which causes them to shatter into a million pieces (this has the added benefit of a flashback to shattering a stone Tidus in FFX) — or he can use them like statues to hold down switches. Unfortunately, like certain other things, their hardness is not permanent. So Twink must work fast.
The second Black Chu talent is what Twink must use in this room, after cleverly burning a tapestry with his fire arrows and releasing light into the room. Since we’re well aware that the Earth Temple is definitely located underground — and thus underwater as well — now might be a good time to ask where all this damn light comes from. I think this calls for some serious fanwanking. Get your wank boots on.
Loading ...Speaking of wanking, it’s also highly convenient that these otherwise invincible Black Chus are found only in dungeons — not to mention rooms — with a light source within. It appears that Black Chus are not affected by anything resembling natural selection. The other option is that Ganondorf is a giant moron when it comes to deploying his army of monsters. Still, this is all to my advantage, so I’ll shut up before the game designers try to find new and creative ways to fuck me over. Heh…creative game designers. That’s funny.
So Twink has to use two Black Chus to depress the two switches in the room. It only takes me a few tries to choose the button command for “drop” versus the one for “throw.” And yes, this means several visits to the room in order to regenerate the God damn Chus. I am a genius. At last, Twink manages to lower the staircase leading to the exit. Before he leaves the room, he pushes a stone block off of the ledge to avoid the Chu debacle in the future. Did I do something good in a former life? What’s the catch here?
On the way out of the room, I realize that the sniggering sound the Chus make is identical to the goblins in the movie Labyrinth. Like in the part near the beginning where Sarah wishes her brother away and then the lights stop working and she has to go back into the creepy room with all the little creatures sneaking around and giggling at her when she looks away. Man, did I ever have to fast forward that scene back in the day. Yes, I was scared of some damn muppets. I was — and still am — the hugest chicken ever. So anyway, some new nightmares for me, thanks to that association. I really needed that.
Moving on. In the next room, Twink encounters another horny and aggressive Floor Masturbator. He satisfyingly demolishes it with the old ice-and-hammer trick, feeling very masculine. Then, he pushes a block until a hole opens in the ceiling. The entire ocean floods in through the hole, drowning Twink and Medli. Too bad her ancestors devolved their gills. Actually, I’m just shitting you — the hole brings in more light. And Medli gets to do more drunken light reflecting. I’m glad that these dungeon puzzles aren’t repetitive or anything.
At some point, someone thought it would be a good idea to put a statue right on top of another stone block that clearly has a movable track in the floor. Dumbass. Medli uses her Power of Shiny to dissolve this pesky statue. Immediately, the room’s shitty Feng Shui corrects itself. She also shines her light beam on some random golden spirals in the wall. It turns out that these, like every other thing in this dungeon, dissolve in the light. One secret passage reveals a third stone block. But there was already a track leading out of that part of the wall, so I totally feel like I was spoiled for that surprise. I will whine about it in my LJ now.