Review: "New Super Mario Bros. U"

Welcome to New Super Mario Bros U!  The game where the coins still don't matter but surprisingly little is recycled...

As I'm sure you may have gathered by now, I'm not a huge fan of Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. series.  As I outlined in my review of the previous game, I find that the series tends to do shockingly little to deserve the "New" moniker attached to it's title.  So, needless to say, when I discovered that Nintendo was choosing to launch its shiny new Wii U console with not only another New Super Mario game, but also the second one within only a few months, I was less than excited.  I figured it would be yet another romp through the safe and sterile world seen in the previous three games.

I was wrong.

New Super Mario Bros. U is leaps and bounds ahead of it's predecessors in virtually every way.  Developed by the same team that created the Wii iteration of the series, New Super Mario Bros. U brings far more "new" to the table than any other installment in the series thus far.  Whereas NSMB2 remained so painfully faithful to previous games that it offered virtually nothing in the way of new ideas, NSMBU dishes out fresh content on a regular basis.  It took six years and three attempts on as many consoles, but Nintendo has finally crafted an experience that feels like a legitimate sequel to the original 2006 DS game.

In terms of basic design and structure, New Super Mario Bros. U still closely resembles New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  In terms of gameplay itself, its effectively identical.  Mario controls exactly the same as he did in NSMBWii and a great many of the features introduced in Wii that were absent on the 3DS make their grand return here.  Four player co-op with some new tricks for a fifth player on the Game Pad, Yoshi, quick saves, the Ice Flower, the spin jump, and more are all back in full force after disappearing for NSMB2.

Yoshi, in particular, is great to see again as he tends to make Mario games more fun wherever he shows up, even though his role in this game is seemingly even more limited than it was in NSMBWii.  The new Baby Yoshis that Mario can carry around offer updated versions of the propeller and light blocks ideas first seen in NSMBWii.  Similarly, the new Flying Squirrel suit plays very much like a combination of the Propeller Suit and the Raccoon Suit from previous games.  (It's also a little disturbing, in my opinion, thanks to its half-clothing-half-squirrel-skin appearance...)

But while previous New Super games have been content to simply offer up more of the same, New Super Mario Bros. U takes the foundation set by the previous games and builds on it considerably.  Most of the old Mario 3 gimmicks pop up again, as expected, but they are often used in ways that haven't been done before, or combined with other new gimmicks to create fresh types of experiences.  NSMBU still doesn't stray too far from traditional Mario territory, but instead of doing more of the same types of the gameplay, it does more with those same types of gameplay.

Additionally, NSMBU has quite a few new tricks up its sleeves.  Some of the new ideas are pretty subtle, but some are quite significant.  I lost quite a few lives playing through this game, though not because it is especially difficult.  Rather, it was because it caught me off guard.  New Super Mario Bros. 2 was almost boringly easy because if you were familiar with previous Mario games, you knew exactly what to expect in every level.  The game could never surprise you, so most of the traps and enemies posed no threat.  New Super Mario Bros. U, on the other hand, turns these expectations against you.  Familiar elements suddenly do something new or unexpected.  The vast majority of the levels had at least one moment where I would see what was happening on screen and think to myself, "Whoa.  I've never seen that before!"  NSMBU offers up lots of little surprises that I don't dare spoil here.

The game even plays with the standard Mario design in some basic but noteworthy ways.  For example, pipes often jut out of the ground at all kinds of different angles this time around.  Mario levels have traditionally been very straight forward, to the point that slopes of any kind have actually been pretty uncommon in most levels up to this point.  Pipes especially have always been precisely vertical or horizontal with few exceptions.  But in this game, they're angled all sorts of different ways, which allows pipe-dwelling Piranha Plants to pop out in spots you might not be expecting.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii introduced the idea of shifting and spinning set-pieces.  New Super Mario Bros. U takes that idea and goes crazy with it.  Levels are now much more dynamic in nature, with large sections of the level sliding back and forth, spinning around, bobbing up and down, and more.  The end results are levels that feel much more lively and distinct, as opposed the stale and static levels seen in past New Super games.  Even when playing relatively basic levels, it's touches like these that manage to make the Mario formula feel fresh again.

New Super Mario Bros. U also holds the distinction of being the first high definition Mario game.  I fully admit that if you expect to be blown away by the visuals, you will be disappointed.  There's not much on show here that couldn't have been on the Wii.  Donkey Kong Country Returns was just as visually impressive several years ago.  That said, NSMBU is still a much nicer looking game than New Super Mario Bros. Wii, don't get me wrong, but that's primarily because NSMBWii only looked marginally better than the DS original.

Indeed, it's not the technical side of the visuals that makes NSMBU stand out but rather the artistic side.  At last the boring repetitive level themes of the first three games are gone and in their place are worlds with far more personality.  The colors are much bolder and the scenery is significantly more inventive and unique.  For example, the desert worlds no longer feature generic cacti and pyramids.  In their place are giant melting ice cream cones and Easter island heads!  NSMBU still follows the same progression of world themes as the previous games. (Grassland, desert, beach, poison forest, and so on.)  However, by giving all of these worlds a brand new look, they finally feel somewhat fresh again.  The worlds are also connected together by a single sprawling world map this time, instead of the individual map screens of the previous games.

The game even explains this change of scenery with a slightly more evident story.  This time the adventure is taking place to the left of Peach's castle instead of the right.  Instead of starting out at the castle like the previous three games, you're trying to make you're way back there.  Oh sure, it's still your basic Bowser-kidnaps-Peach story, but thanks to some sporadic cutscenes sprinkled throughout the game, NSMBU is given a bit more of a coherent and humorous narrative.  It's not Paper Mario, but it still goes a long way toward giving NSMBU its own identity.

But for all of its efforts to feel distinct from its precursors, NSMBU does have one huge glaring shortcoming that I find inexcusable.  Just like NSMB2, almost the entire soundtrack is recycled directly out of New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  Nintendo did at least listen to complaints that the main theme was getting old, because a new main theme is present this time around and it's quite nice.  But evidently that was all the effort they wanted to put into the soundtrack because once you play the first level, you've pretty much heard all the new level music you're going to hear in this game.  It was absurd that they recycled the soundtrack once.  It's beyond absurd that they would do it again.  That means that of the four games in the New Super series, three of them have nearly exactly the same soundtrack.  Given the amount of effort that was clearly put in to give NSMBU its own style and feel, I find it ridiculous that Nintendo wouldn't also take the time to have new music written to match, or at least do new arrangements of the old music.  It feels incredibly cheap and lazy.

However, aside from the music, there really isn't that much to complain about with New Super Mario Bros. U.  It's far from revolutionary, but it's not the stale retread that New Super Mario Bros. 2 was either.  Lots of new level features and gimmicks ensure that the main mode feels fresh and distinct from its predecessors and a sprinkling of new modes means there are plenty of reasons to keep playing after the adventure is done.  New Super Mario Bros. U truly does feel like it deserves to have the word "New" in its title and, at last, feels like a real sequel to the original DS game.  It's a great way to break in the Wii U and easily the finest traditional 2D Mario game since Super Mario World.

Now then, Nintendo, how about finally writing some new music for the next one, eh?

Frisch's Top 5 "Other" Mario Games

Yesterday I listed my top 5 favorite Mario games in the main series.  But that hardly scratches the surface when it comes to all of the games the portly plumber has starred in, so today I'm listing my Top 5 "Other" Mario games.  This list covers all of the spin-off games Mario has shown up in.  It's also a bit of a hybrid list, as I'm limiting myself to only one game from any given spin-off series.  So if, for example, you see a Mario Kart game on this list, that means it's also my favorite Mario Kart game overall in addition to being one of my favorite spin-off games.  Confusing enough for you?  Good.  Let's-a go:

5. Mario Party DS

The Mario Party series has a long and storied history.  Since 1998 Nintendo has churned out no less than a dozen Mario Party games.  And, for the most part, they are largely the same basic experience.  Same sort of board game format.  Same sort of minigames.  Same sort of intolerable single player experience.  Mario Party DS has one key distinction from the others that sets it apart:  It's handheld.

Otherwise, Mario Party DS is pretty much par for the course as far as this series goes.  But given how infrequently I play multiplayer games, being able to take the game on the go with me is a huge benefit.  I'm much more likely to play through a quick round with CPU opponents or play a few minigames if I have a little time to kill.  And when you do play with multiple people, Mario Party DS is just as fun as any other game in the series.

Plus, who doesn't love coins?  Especially YOURS!

4. Mario Golf Toadstool Tour

Mario has proven to be quite the athlete over the years.  Tennis, Soccer, Baseball, Basketball, and more.  You name it, Mario's played it.  But by far the sport that's jived the best with the Mario series is golf.  For whatever reason, there is something extremely appealing about taking Mushroom Kingdom locations and seeing them re-imagined them into golf courses.  It sounds boring, but it's actually great fun.

Toadstool Tour for the GameCube is my favorite of the Golf sub-series.  At the time the graphics were unmatched, and they still look quite pretty today even if they aren't quite as technically impressive anymore.  The soundtrack is something else.  It has a ton more energy and drama than you would expect for game about golf, but it somehow fits the atmosphere perfectly.  And on top of everything else, all the little Mario touches throughout the game ensure that this is no regular game of golf.  Mario and golf may not seem like an obvious match but, as it turns out, they compliment each other perfectly.

3. Dr. Mario Online Rx/Express

Good grief?  Mario is a doctor, too?  Is there anything he can't do?  Dr. Mario started off on the NES and GameBoy as one of the many falling piece puzzle games to try and ride the wave of popularity started by Tetris.  What makes Dr. Mario unique is that it has a bit of a steep learning curve at first.  It's not quite as easy to pick up and play as other puzzlers such as Tetris or Bejeweled. That said, once you get used to playing Dr. Mario, it is incredibly fun.  Since you always have an end goal to work toward by trying to clear all the viruses on screen, there's a more obvious forward progression than other puzzle games.

Dr. Mario has pretty much always played the same over the years, so the presentation is the key factor in determining my favorite iteration.  Dr. Mario Online Rx for WiiWare and Dr. Mario Express on DSiWare share the same sounds, music, and visual style.  Which, in turn, are largely based on Dr. Mario 64.  But thanks to the clean colors and sleek design, Online Rx and Express manage to take on a charming and almost soothing quality that makes them even more fun to play than previous versions of Dr. Mario.  With this series, you really can't go wrong with any entry, but on the Wii and DS, Dr. Mario is really at his best.

2. Paper Mario:  The Thousand Year Door

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is pretty much perfect.  It looks great.  It plays great.  It has a great soundtrack.  Oh, and the humor.  Did I mention the humor?  This game is hilarious.  It's exploding with personality.  The gameplay, in all honesty, is very nearly identical to it's N64 predecessor.  But the characters are so much more interesting and lovable.  You'll get wrapped up in the story within minutes and it never disappoints all the way through.

The RPG mechanics are also great fun.  Action commands ensure that frequent battles never get stale.  The environments feature great atmosphere.  Really, I can't say enough good things about Thousand Year Door.  It's perfect.  Oh, and I also can't talk about this game without mentioning the Bowser stages.  They really are the best part of the game.  In fact, there should be a whole trilogy of games based on them, don't you think? ;)

1. Mario Kart 64

This one was obvious.  As soon as I sat down to type this list I knew exactly what the top choice would be.  Mario Kart 64 is still, in my mind, Mario Kart in it's purest form.  Super Mario Kart laid the foundation but Mario Kart 64 perfected it.  I greatly enjoy other Mario Kart games too, don't get me wrong.  Super Circuit is goofy fun.  Double Dash!! has some of the best tracks in the series.  DS sports the best controls.  Wii...was actually pretty awful but it had good music at least.  And Mario Kart 7 even features numerous callbacks to the N64 title, in the form of the music and even the classic pipe frame kart returning.

Mario Kart 64 still can't be topped, though.  Before every Mario Kart game started adding one-shot gimmicks there was Mario Kart 64.  While the thrill of playing Super Mario 64 wore off somewhat after so many years of playing it, the excitement of Mario Kart 64 has never worn off.  In single player or multiplayer, it's just as fun today as it was sixteen years ago!

Frisch's Top 5 Favorite "Main Series" Mario Games

Good afternoon, ladies and germs!  I make no secret about how much I enjoy the Mario series.  It is by far my favorite video game franchise of all time.  Mario has done it all, from platformers to racing to RPGs to everything in between.  Today I'm having a look at my top 5 favorite games from the main Mario series.  That pretty much means all the platformers that have names that start with "Super Mario."  These are the ones that sell consoles!  And here are my favorites:

5. Super Mario 3D Land

Mario's first foray on the 3DS essentially plays like a greatest hits album of Mario history.  It has the style and charm of the Galaxy games, the bright colors and level tropes from Mario 64, the structure of the New Super series, and a heaping helping of Mario 3 references.  Especially the Tanooki suit.  Raccoon tails for everyone!

3D Land is much like the New Super games in that most of its elements are drawn from previous Mario games.  Unlike the New Super series, however, 3D Land excels at taking these familiar ideas and presenting them in a new way.  The levels play more like quick obstacle courses than full blown worlds to explore, but they are still great fun to speed through.  It lack an identity of its own, but 3D Land is probably the best example of pure, straight forward Mario goodness.  Anyone who liked any other Mario game will find plenty to enjoy in this land.

4. Super Mario Bros.

The original that started it all!  Super Mario Bros. is a classic no matter how you look at it.  And while I certainly spend my fair share of time playing the NES version, the SNES All-Stars version is the one that cements this game's place on my list.  The underlying game is essentially unchanged, but the graphics and music have been given a Mario World styled makeover that really enhances the overall experience.

But in any form, Super Mario Bros. is still just as fun today as it ever was.  It wrote the book on Mario games and platformers in general.  Later Mario games have expanded and played with the formula, but the original still holds up as one of the finest examples of why Mario is the big name star he is today.

3. Super Mario World

Most people claim that Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best 2D Mario game out there.  But I'd argue that Super Mario World is the one to hold that distinction.  The levels are huge, the secrets are plentiful, and the music is some of the best in the entire series.  Super Mario World does everything that Mario 3 did, but it does it bigger and better and with much more charm and style.

In addition, World introduces two of my favorite elements in the series:  Yoshi and the Cape Feather.  Yoshi's awesomeness should be self evident.  He's so awesome he even stole Mario's spotlight for the sequel.  As for the Cape Feather, it's one of the best power ups in any Mario game.  It looks way cooler than the raccoon tail and it requires a bit more skill and cleverness to use than just mashing the jump button.  Now that Nintendo has done the tail thing to death in that last few games, I'm hoping that comeback for the Cape Feather is in the works!

2. Super Mario Galaxy

Mario's first full blown Wii adventure is also one of his best.  The original Galaxy is an absolute joy to play.  The levels are large and numerous, with lots of little nooks and crannies to explore.  The orchestral music is phenomenal and provides the game with an epic scope than not even the sequel could match.  Galaxy also boasts some of the finest visuals on the Wii.  Even over five years later, Super Mario Galaxy remains just as impressive and enjoyable as when it was first released.

Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel are often cited as the two best games in the entire Wii library, and that's definitely true.  The second game is often said to be the better of the two, but I'd argue that the original is the superior game.  Galaxy 2 did expand the amount of variety seen in the levels, but it stripped out most of the openness and atmosphere that the original Galaxy had, making it almost feel more like a prototype to 3D Land than a sequel to Galaxy.  It feels sterile compared to the original, which is why Super Mario Galaxy remains the better of the two.

1. Super Mario 64

The landmark N64 launch title has been my favorite Super Mario game for years, and though the original Galaxy gave it a run for its money, Super Mario 64 still comes out on top.  As I did not have an N64 as a kid, playing Super Mario 64 was always a rare treat.  Nothing could beat running around that castle, exploring for secrets, and enjoying the incredible music.  Super Mario 64 is the reason I'm such a big fan of the Mario series today.

These days I've played through Mario 64 numerous times and most of the nostalgic charm has worn off.  But it doesn't change the fact that the game is still just as fun to explore as ever before.  More than any other platformer I've played, Super Mario 64 rewards the player for just goofing off.  It presents big open playgrounds to explore and lets you loose to do whatever you please.  You never know what you might find in Super Mario 64, such as secret stars, warp points, and even a hidden aquarium area.  No other Mario game has presented a world that is so much fun to simply play around in and explore.  And that's why it's still my favorite!

Hey! Where's my Dragons reviews?

Hello, loyal readers.

Okay, fine, loyal reader.

You've probably noticed that I haven't posted reviews for that last two Dragons episodes.  I've decided that I'm no longer going to be writing weekly reviews for Dragons.  The show is still highly entertaining and enjoyable, but it's also extremely consistent from week to week.  The plots are good but not great.  Every episode is extremely predictable.  The animation is decent and Toothless remains lovable.  I enjoy the new characters but Mildew is getting tedious.  That pretty much sums up every episode and I don't really feel like I have much to add on a weekly basis going forward.

So the point is no more weekly reviews.  But be sure to still watch the show!  You don't need me to tell you if it's good or not! :P

Review: "Paper Mario Sticker Star"

The Paper Mario RPG series has long served as one of Nintendo's quirkiest Mario offshoots.  The original Paper Mario for the N64 pioneered the bizarre world of paper cutout characters living in a pop-up Mushroom Kingdom.  Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the GameCube refined the formula in every way and produced one of the finest games in the entire Mario franchise.  Super Paper Mario for the Wii downplayed the RPG elements but kicked up the story a notch, providing an experience that dragged on a bit but was still highly enjoyable.

Now the Paper Mario series has come to a handheld console for the first time in the form of Paper Mario Sticker Star for the 3DS.  In many ways it is a return to form for the series, as many of the conventions discarded in Super Paper Mario make their return in Sticker Star.  The gameplay has returned to the 3D diorama design instead of the side-scrolling levels presented in the previous game.  Turn based battles are back.  And many of the level gimmicks and concepts from the first two games make a return in this installment.  If you enjoyed the first two Paper Mario games, you'll feel right at home exploring Sticker Star's world.

However, in many ways Sticker Star is also just as much a departure from the first two games as Super Paper Mario was.  The ways in which it shakes up the formula just aren't quite as obvious at first.  The most significant change is the introduction of stickers.  Stickers do everything now.  Every attack in battle now requires having a certain sticker in order to perform it, even basic actions like jumping and using the hammer.  Stickers are also used extensively outside of battle for puzzle solving and various other tasks too.  Fortunately, stickers are all over the place.  They're littered about the world, stuck on walls, inside boxes, and you'll even sporadically run into shops that sell various kinds of stickers too.  Even though your album holds a finite amount of stickers, you aren't likely to ever run out.  The trick is ensuring you have the right types of stickers on you for whatever situation you're facing, and that's were the depth and strategy of Sticker Star really lies.

In addition to regular stickers, you will often have to make use of "thing" stickers.  These stickers are acquired by finding various mundane items hidden around the world such as scissors, a cell phone, or a refrigerator.  These boring things can then be transformed into special thing stickers that often have devastating effects in battle.  There's a lot of fun to be found in discovering how such uninteresting stuff can significantly impact a world made out of paper and cardboard.

Things are also used for solving a handful of puzzles throughout the game.  The solutions to these puzzles aren't always made very clear and may often require some serious backtracking if you missed the thing you need.  However, when solved the solutions to these puzzles are almost always inventive and clever, making it worth the head scratching that is sometimes required to deduce the answer to a puzzle.  Sticker Star is usually pretty good about providing multiple paths to explore at any given time, so if you do hit a brick wall in one direction there's usually something else to do while trying to solve the puzzle at hand.

Mario no longer levels up or gets stronger by battling.  Your strength only increases by finding more powerful and rarer stickers as well as the occasional health power up scattered about the world.  As such, battling can sometimes feel a little pointless and tedious since it isn't strictly required for getting stronger and progressing through the game.  Fortunately the game doesn't really punish you for avoiding enemies if you choose to do so.  Your reward for winning battles is typically coins, which are primarily used to buy more stickers.  If you skip battles, you won't get many coins, but you really only need coins to help better equip yourself for more battles.  So you only have to battle as much as you want to with no real negative consequences for avoiding enemies.  It's an odd set-up for an RPG, but it's reasonably well balanced.

Unfortunately it would seem that even the world of Paper Mario could not escape the plague of "New-Super-Mario-itis" that has been infecting all recent Mario games.  The wildly inventive locations and characters of past games are out.  In their place are those same generic worlds we've seen over and over again in the New Super series.  That same grassland, those same mountains, that same desert, that same poisonous forest.  You've seen it all before.  Many many times.

The entire cast, bosses included, is also made up of characters from previous games.  Specifically, the New Super Mario Bros series.  Many enemies frequently seen in the previous Paper Mario games are gone and any recurring characters from the series are out too.  The only new character to be seen is Kersti, Mario's traveling companion.  And other than a very subtle and easily missed nod to one character from Thousand Year Door, this game shares no continuity with the previous games.

Worst of all, for some inexplicable reason, Bowser does not utter a single line of dialogue in the entire game.  He's completely mute.  In the previous games, Bowser has always dependably been the source of the best dialogue and the biggest laughs in the series, but in this game he's just the final boss and nothing else.  His personality has been almost completely stripped away in Sticker Star.  It's a baffling and incredibly disappointing creative decision.

Fortunately, it's not all bad news.  The writers apparently didn't get the memo that this game was supposed to be bland because, even though the story is extremely basic and almost non-existent at times, the game is still packed full of the same brand of humor that the series is known for.  Even though most of the characters you'll run into are generic Toads, they are positively exploding with personality.  Throughout the entire adventure you'll be constantly encountering bizarre and hilarious situations, just like the previous games.

A great deal of comedy is derived from the increased emphasis that this is a world made of paper.  You'll find characters folded up, crumpled, and even stacked together, all to hilarious effect.  The writers even figured out how to make Bowser Jr. and Birdo, both making their Paper Mario series debut, funny and entertaining.  Given how irritating both of those characters tend to be, that's quite the accomplishment.  Sticker Star still delivers its fair share of laughs.  It's just a shame none of them come from Bowser this time.

Similarly, the level designers do their best to provide the most interesting renditions of these stale old level themes possible.  Almost the entire world is made out of cardboard this time around, and Sticker Star makes the most of this premise wherever possible.  Entire set-pieces can be knocked over like dominoes.  Dangerous puddles of poison can be flipped over to reveal that they too are harmless cardboard on the backside.  Using Kersti's powers, it's even possible to peel off entire sections of levels and move them around.

A large potion of the levels rely mostly on basic Mario platforming, but just when it seems like things are getting stale, Sticker Star will throw something completely unexpected at you, like a game show level or a crazy river raft ride.  Sticker Star's world is split up into levels accessed from a Super Mario World-style map screen.  But this mostly just aids in speeding up travel from world to world and does not decrease the scope of the game in the slightest.  Even if you're really booking it, this is a 15+ hour adventure.  The worlds are now split up into smaller levels, but there's just as much to see as what was offered in the previous games.

The Paper Mario games have also always been known for their music and Sticker Star doesn't disappoint in that department.  The signature off-beat sound of the previous games is still present, but this time around the soundtrack tends to favor jazz music, incorporating lots of horns.  It's a great evolution of the sound of the series, and most of the tracks are a joy to listen to.  Sticker Star also cleverly works in a few themes from other Mario games, sometimes subtly and sometimes less so.  Overall, Sticker Star definitely boasts one of the strongest Mario series soundtracks in recent years.

So, in the end, Sticker Star does have a lot of faults.  But it manages to retain enough of the charm and inventiveness of the previous Paper Mario games to overcome its shortcomings.  The game is much more conventional in terms of characters and locations and the story is paper-thin, but the surreal humor and creativity of the previous Paper Mario games still manages to shine through.  It may not live up to the perfection of Thousand Year Door, but it comes far closer than I expected.  Even with its flaws, Paper Mario Sticker Star is still a must-play for 3DS owners.

Dragons Review: "Heather Report Part 2"

When we last left off in "Heather Report Part 1," the deceptive Heather had delivered the Book of Dragons to Alvin the Treacherous.  Now Heather is claiming that she was only working for Alvin to keep him from killing her parents.  However Hiccup and his friends are much too concerned with planning their attack to retrieve the book to consider whether or not Heather is trustworthy.  Astrid suspects she might be able to get the book back more easily if she disguises herself as Heather.  But if Heather really was working for Alvin against her will, that plan may not end very well...

Despite the story having so much to do with Heather, she does not actually appear a whole lot in this episode.  Once again, Astrid is firmly in the spotlight, even more so than in Part 1.  But the episode does mange to culminate in an extremely exciting finale that gets all the dragons and their riders into the act.  There's not much story to analyze with this one!  Since Part 1 did all the set up, this whole episode could be non-stop action.  And boy did it deliver!  Alvin got to prove himself a worthy antagonist for the series one again and Heather even got to redeem herself, even if she did kind of turn out to be a minor player in the overall plot.

Another element of this particular episode that I enjoyed was that we finally got to see some other dragons!  A lot of previous episodes have seemingly operated under the notion that the only dragons around are the ones ridden by Hiccup and his friends.  It was nice to see some other wild dragons get some screen time, to the point that a particular Monstrous Nightmare that Astrid bonds with ends up crucial to the plot.

Part 1 may have had its problems, but it was worth it for the pay off.  "Heather Report Part 2" managed to be one of the most excited episodes thus far!

Dragons Review - "Heather Report Part 1"

Hiccup and the gang discover a mysterious girl washed up on the shores of Berk.  Holy mackerel!  It's a girl!  Given how rare those are on this show, Astrid is immediately suspicious.  According to the girl, whose name is Heather, she was shipwrecked while trying to escape pirates who have captured her parents and are threatening her island.  Heather and Hiccup hit it off right away, but it seems Astrid's suspicions may not be unfounded.  Heather immediately takes a big interest in the dragons and how they are trained.  Is she up to no good?  Wouldn't this be a really uninteresting episode if she wasn't?

This episode wastes no time in revealing that Heather isn't just the helpless shipwreck victim she appears to be at first.  Like many of the episodes, the pacing suffers from the short length of having to fit into about twenty minutes.  Even with this story split into two parts, the plot still zips along a little too fast.  Fortunately, thanks to the plot breaking some new ground (it's not Mildew!) it manages to feel relatively fresh.  It's also nice to see Astrid get a bit more of a starring role at last, given that she really hasn't had much to do on the show thus far besides antagonize Hiccup from time to time.

Ultimately, this episode isn't much more than a set up for Part 2.  Heather is a reasonably interesting character, but she "turns to the dark side" so fast that you never really get a chance to care about her before she simply becomes another bad guy.  But "Heather Report Part 1" does set up a few interesting plot threads to be resolved in Part 2 that should be fairly interesting to see play out.  It's not among one of the better episodes on its own, but I do look forward to seeing the rest of the story play out next week.

Also, chicken makes dragons fly faster.  Who knew?