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Day 1 Dear Journal, Tomorrow’s going to be so exciting! I get to spend some quality time with my brand new horse Epona, whom I’ll finally get to meet! No parents, no friends, no trainers, just My Horse and Me! From what I’ve heard, I’ll be in charge of grooming, training, and even going to show jumping competitions with her! Sure, I might be a little too old to be starting up a career in equine competitions, but maybe after I give it a whirl and learn the hang of things I might one day be able to inspire some kids to own a virtual horse and go on virtual show jumping competitions just like the pros! I hope everything turns out great! visuals Day 2 Dear Journal, Today I made sure to take care of our looks. Unfortunately, my sponsors didn’t give me much of a wardrobe to select from, and all these pictures of my face show just how one-dimensional my mug really is. At least I have a little bit of artistic freedom with Epona: I can switch up anything about her, from the color of her mane, her body color, and even the color and type of saddle I want to ride her with. Apparently, we could be a little more lively when we’re out in public. Someone told me that Epona and I look a little robotic when we’re out riding, that we don’t show any emotion when we’re riding around. Maybe if these sponsors for My Horse and Me would let us compete and gallop around in livelier environments, Epona and I would be more animated. As it is, we’re dropped into some pretty boring and generic looking locales. These trees surrounding some of these places look like they’re two dimensional, like they were made out of paper. The field managers at some of these fairgrounds should be fired: the grass looks flat and unhealthy, and dirt courses don’t show any texture or grooming at all. So much for crowds, too. The same ten or eleven people keep following us around wherever we go. It’s kind of creepy, to be honest. They’re always wearing the same exact outfit when I see them, and they never move. They just stand and stare at Epona and me. I should probably go report them or something. audio Day 3 Dear Journal, Horse riding with Epona is pretty quiet. I don’t usually say too much, and aside from the occasional neighing from my horse, she doesn’t make too much noise either. The sound of her galloping is all I need though: it’s authentic and real. When we train, there’s this great disembodied voice that offers some tips and assistance, and she’s lively enough. This mp3 player that my sponsors gave me is pretty weak. It only has five or six songs on it, and they all sound like lullabies. They make me sleepy, wanting to jump off Epona take a nap in the hay. I know horse riding isn’t the most exciting of activities, but more upbeat music would have been nice. Those ten people that follow me around, though, keep me awake during competitions. They’re so loud, it sounds like there are hundreds of people crowding around the arena! But when I look around, sure enough, it’s just that group of ten. How do they make it sound like they’re all around the field cheering as loud as a packed Wrigley Field crowd? If only their numbers matched their cheering level. gameplay Day 4 Dear Journal, There are three big ways My Horse and Me keep busy: I get to groom her, train with her and go to competitions with her. After spending a few days as a horse rider, though, I’m not sure if I like doing any of these things. It’s so boring! Don’t tell Epona that, because she might try to flip me off the saddle the next time we ride. Grooming Epona is such a chore, and I don’t really see it benefit her or me. I don’t even get to personally interact with her. When we’re on camera, some invisible hand gets to brush her while I just stand off to the side and look like a dope, grinning like an idiot. That’s the real big problem with grooming here. It’s impersonal. Grooming should be a time to bond with Epona and develop a relationship that plays out in the form of improving our performance at competitions. We should be closer after all the brushing and grooming I’ve given her. Instead, I never really get to see myself interact with her, and I can’t tell if our relationship has grown for the better. That makes me feel sad. I had such a hard time training with Epona today. The training exercises seem promising at first since there are so many of them, but it’s so hard to figure out what to do. I blame that disembodied voice I talked about a few days ago. She’s nice and lively, don’t get me wrong, Journal. The problem with her, though, is that she’s not a great teacher -- she tells us what we need to do to move on to the next lesson, but never instructs us on how to do it. It’s always been my habit to name each rein I hold in my hand, so I called the left one Nunchuk and the right one Wii Remote, since I love playing my Wii so much! The instructor voice never told me what to do with them, though! I had never ridden a horse before, so I had no idea how to make Epona turn with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. I figured that the voice would tell me what to do, but she just kept telling me, "Too bad!" when I would miss a turn. Luckily, I found an instruction manual in Epona’s saddle that told me to lift the Nunchuk with my left hand to turn left, raise the Wii Remote to turn right, and to make a whipping motion with both to accelerate. Thank god for the manual! Even the manual left some things out, though. I know how to gallop with Epona now, but I haven’t learned how to make her do a slow walk. I couldn’t find help anywhere, not even in the guide. I needed to learn how for one of the training exercises, but no one ever showed me how to do it, and I failed the exercise. Maybe next time I’ll hire a horse trainer. Still, even after I learned the basics of training and controlling a horse, I didn’t feel comfortable maneuvering with Epona. I think my reins weren’t responsive enough. I would lift the Nunchuk but Epona would keep going straight, or I would whip the Nunchuk and Wii Remote and she would veer right. When the reins and Epona did respond correctly, though, she turned like an old Cadillac, slowly and at a wide angle. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the hang of this horse riding thing. More than a few times I ran Epona straight into a wall. I hope it didn’t hurt too bad. The only other thing My Horse and Me do to keep busy is go to show jumping competitions, like the one we went to today. Basically, we went to a pretty random arena where a track was assembled with various hurdles Epona and I had to clear in a certain amount of time for a gold trophy. We were even given a white dotted line to follow on the track that kept us on the right path. Even with my limited experience riding with Epona, we easily cleared the trophy time. One of the prizes was some new clothes to try on! Winning today gave me the chance to race on tougher courses, too! I tried some of those, and they do get a little bit more difficult, but nothing Epona and I couldn’t handle, sloppy controls and all. I wish there were a little more progression in terms of my show jumping career, though: All these events Epona and I compete in seem arbitrary and don’t lead to any big finale or reward. We just keep competing, and winning more tracks to ride on and more clothes for me to wear. multiplayer Day 5 Dear Journal, My best friend came to ride horses with me today, but our excitement was soon dispelled. These stupid field managers won’t let us ride out on the courses at the same time! It was pretty boring taking turns riding a horse and jumping some obstacles, while the other person just watched from the sidelines. Even then, I was only allowed to bring one friend to the arena today. I had to tell my other two friends to just stay at home. We’ll probably never try to do this again. overall Day 6 As much as I like Epona, I think today is the end of the road for My Horse and Me. There’s just not enough redeeming qualities in horse-riding to keep me interested in it long enough. I think a big part of it is the poor training in learning how to control your horse. I had never ridden a horse before Epona, so it was a little frustrating that the training days weren’t put together so well. I know a lot of the information on how to control My Horse and Me was in that instruction manual, but I expected to learn at least the basic mechanics of using my reins, the Nunchuk and Wii Remote, from the training exercises and the trainer’s disembodied voice. Even after I learned how to control Epona, she was still too unresponsive with these new reins for us to be seriously effective or competitive. Maybe a truly diehard equestrian would take Epona in and be willing to put up with some of the faults I’ve laid out the last few days of my journal and have a good time, but that would require a lot of patience and effort. There’s this elfish-looking kid dressed in all green that keeps asking about Epona. Maybe he would be interested in taking her in…
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