And now for something completely different…

Instead of just playing my video game and writing about the experience, I spent a couple of hours researching interesting tips and techniques about both general battle tips and specific character tips.

One move that I had no idea that I was able to do is the shield grab. While a character is guarding and blocking opponent attacks, he can grab and throw an enemy immediately after guarding. This would have come in handy so much if I had known this earlier! Another thing I hadn’t thought of was that only one character can grab an edge at a time. The edge grab is the final defense of a character that prevents him from falling to his death. If an enemy is sent flying and can barely make it back to the stage, quickly jump off the stage and grab the edge, ruining your opponent’s final hope of being saved.

Instead of writing about how to use characters, I found some information about the weaknesses of various ones and how to defeat them. The slower powerhouses like Bowser, Donkey Kong, and Ganondorf can be defeated quite easily with speedy characters and well-timed dodges. Unfortunately, the reverse holds true as well. The quick characters tend to have very little weight to them, so not a whole lot of strength is required to send them flying. A few smashes are often all that is needed to finish them off. Characters like Zero Suit Samus, Kirby, Jigglypuff, and Pickachu need to wary of this.

The vast majority of the learning I’ve been doing has been by doing. I have spent some time reading about the characters and techniques, but I figured I would learn the most easily by practicing. This actually reminds me very much of my cooking class I had taken last year. In that class, everyone was to read a recipe, then immediately learn to make it while following along with the instructions. For my character practice last month, I read a short biography before testing each one out. This was so I would have a small idea what to expect from each character. Both experiences with learning were more about physically learning to do something, but with some written information to prepare beforehand.

Considering that playing video games is such a sedentary activity, I have been quite surprised that the learning reminds me of learning more physical activities. This week, I also spent some time playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl with a friend and watching how his playing differs from mine. This made me think about when I was in volleyball in high school. I would watch someone perform a serve or spike, and I would try to imitate their motions. I had to do the same thing for my learning project. It was a strange connection, or at least I thought so.