It’s a good week for finishing games. In addition to Deus Ex earlier this week, I finally got through Mario & Luigi : Partners in Time. This was a Christmas gift from my wife, and I was a bit dubious about it at first… then I decided to buckle down and see how it was.

Answer: Really fun. I’m not well versed in Mario lore – so I’m guessing I missed a bunch of jokes – but the dialog had me laughing on several occasions.

The only problem I had was that the final boss fight turned out to be a 90-minute mind-numbing pain in the arse grind session. After I finally got through it, and after enjoying a fairly satisfying ending, I went looking on gamefaqs to find out what the heck I’d been doing wrong.

And yeah. I’d kind of stopped trying out new “Bros Items” about halfway through the game, sticking to Red and Green shells with the occasional Ice flower. Turns out, if you actually use some of the later items on that final boss fight, it’s damn near trivial. I’m not exactly going to go back and try it again… but I do feel a little silly.

I have no idea what’s coming off the “to play” stack next. I might get back to Final Fantasy II, I haven’t touched that since December and I was rather far in to it before I bought Ouendan, which displaced all other games.

One week left until we head to Alaska for our vacation. Cat care is arranged for, just need to pack and get ready for some change of scenery.