TMNT Nintendo DS Review (2007 Game)

     With the CG animated film being released there were a slew of movie tie-in games.  For some reason the Nintendo DS version got the shaft, even worse than the Sony PSP version which had far superior graphics if I remember correctly.

     Whoever thought this game should be the precursor to all the "Such-and-such RUN!" games should've been fired.  There is the only the most minimal combat in this game and ignoring the TMNT's staple game mechanic throughout the years was this games first and biggest mistake.  In those few moments the controls are garbage- they contain the most pitiful combos I've ever seen.  Since each normal attack pushes you forward quite far, sending you far beyond Foot soldiers if you are even slightly off target, it leaves you wide open to get cut down.  Really, it comes down to spamming the attack button and hoping for the best.

     What comprises a majority of the game is running through the city and dashing back and forth responding to button prompts to jump or swing in the most clunky and sloppy way possible.
     It is a considerable part of the game, to an absurd extent- all you do is push one of three buttons- left, right, or center- ad nauseum.  This costs the game a lot because it eliminates any real exploration they might've had and sapped any enjoyment they could've had in this game.

     To make matters even worse there are corners that cameras aren't fast enough to follow you around, moving jump points that can lead directly to death if the landing point moved, and areas where you have to "charge" a jump by holding the button down for no real reason I could discern.

     The one thing that was kind of redeeming is a mini-game of sorts where one of your turtle brothers shows up and if you can race and catch them, they'll launch you far ahead for a boost in time to complete the level.  Unfortunately the boost only serves to help you retrieve the collectible token letters T, M, N, and - you guessed it - T.  But trying to collect them is a chore because the whole game is awful- so I didn't even bother attempting it, which would necessitate replaying levels to take different paths for the letters I hadn't found.

     TMNT may have begun with an original idea that was initially great, but somewhere along the line it became the befuddling mess we got.  I've played a LOT of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games over the years, and this one is easily the worst.  Even Out of the Shadows is a masterpiece in comparison.

     For more of my Turtles posts [ TMNT ]

Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd you steal our garbage?! (Why'd I Review This?!)

A pic of the greatest butler ever.

     As a moderate fan of the television series (I'm more of a Regular Show guy), and a fan of action-RPG games- I figured I'd give this a go.  It helps that I generally like Wayforward's games, even though most licensed games typically turn out for the worse- this one wasn't too bad.  Much better than I thought Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON'T KNOW! was.  Which also had a great concept, but fell short.

     *SPOILER ALERT*

     The premise of the game is that Jake and Finn woke up to find one of the most helpful crimes committed.  The Ice King has been accidentally eco-friendly in stealing all their garbage.  What he does with it is ingenious as well.  Instead of just letting him take their garbage they make it a mission to reclaim their disposable property and find that instead of rescuing princesses, they are rescuing facsimile princesses composed of trash.

     Hey Ice King! combines a top-down overworld with side-scrolling platforming for levels.  Most friends and enemies are easily recognizable from fans of the show but don't offer much in the way of challenge in either battles or quests.  The combat is the predictable range of small combos with Finn's fists or sword in addition to Jake's shape-shifting attacks and defenses that grow in number as you progress through the story.
     You collect items for use in your backpack/BMO lower screen of the DS system, which could've been a good thing, but since the squares are so small it becomes more of a hindrance during boss fights, or really- any of the grouped enemy encounters.

     There is a large range of places to visit spaced across the map, but unfortunately the Land of Ooo is severely underpopulated.  The entire map feels mostly empty.  Simple platforming and dull combat leaves players wanting to take the easiest route of just running past enemies.  A majority of the people you run into are clumped into the city-zones with very little in-between.  The dullness of this affair is what really hurts the game- it becomes a mindless repetitive chore to pass and re-pass the same few enemies in the same locations over and over and over.
     Even the most difficult boss in the game- the Ice King himself- is only really a problem because of a glitch.  When he rises in the air and starts shooting projectiles if you happen to be anywhere on the left hand of the screen you instantly take damage as soon as he begins to shoot.

The Penguin boss fight is the best.

     One of the major downsides is the title is almost longer than the game itself.  I think it took me about 4 hours of casual play.  Taking my sweet time didn't lengthen the game in any way, but really this isn't too much of a complaint- I've been enjoying the shorter games lately.  It's what little variance there is here that is the problem.  There just isn't enough real content.  Only a few types of enemies, only a few sub-missions, and only a few locations to enter.
     The graphics are gorgeous and the animations are fluid- they are the best part of the game outside of the consistently hilarious dialogue.  Sadly, these two things cannot save the game completely, although they make it much more tolerable.

Adventure Time can always use more Lumpy Space Princess!

     Of course, my largest problem with this game is that there just wasn't enough Peppermint Butler.  With that said, Hey Ice King! is really a good standard, sure it could use some more action, more locations, and stuff to do (maybe another few months of work could've filled in the gaps), but overall it is a decent game especially for the younger audiences.  What this comes down to is if you are a fan, it'll be a good used purchase- a $10 eshop cost would make this feel much less hollow.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare DS Review

     After the Turtles' franchise revival in the early 2000's there were loads of games released- all pretty much similar, and this one is no different.  In fact this is just an extension of TMNT 2: Battle Nexus on Game Boy Advance (GBA).

     Although this one eliminates the awful stealth the last game tried to implement.  But they also had not struck the gold mine Konami created back in the early 90's with the amazing arcade games and 16 bit beat-'em-ups.

     For Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare the fearsome four are sent through a highly repetitive 4 levels with 6 sections each.  But between the level's first segment and last each turtle gets their own individual pathway to follow- with slight story changes to fit, which include different endings.  Regardless of which Turtle you pick, you get to fight the same hordes of palette swapped enemy, broken by the occasional recognizable bosses such as their long time nemesis The Shredder.

     Somehow ignoring the inclusion of all the extra DS buttons we are treated to the usual special, attack, and jump buttons.  Causing predictable combos and special team-up moves.  Like I said earlier- this game is pretty much an extension of the last game with just barely enhanced graphics and sound.  They did however tack on some touch screen additives to make it DS compatible.  At context sensitive points a sound occurs signaling you may tap the turtle pictured and one of the non-played brothers appears to assist with an attack.
     Near as I could tell- the controls are just as frustrating and unresponsive as the last game.  Enemies can hit you without problem, but some of your attacks will go unregistered through them.  Plus there is the massive problem of never knowing which of your attacks will hit multiple enemies, and which will leave you wide open for a retaliatory beat down from an angry Triceraton.

     There are also touch screen mini games of a sort that appear throughout a few of the levels and cause players to scramble for the stylus.  Sometimes you need to rotate a handle or slide electronic puzzle pieces back and forth in a short amount of time (or suffer injury and time loss) to proceed.  All of them feel out of place in what should be a straightforward action game.

     Another part of the game that feels way off key is the escort missions that crop up (which have time limits for no explicable reason).  One of them you are tasked with escorting Fugitoid and have to pick him up and carry him around.  Another you have to solve mini-puzzles and open doors with Leatherneck.  They are downright annoying- slowing down game progress while you figure out what you're supposed to do because most of the mini portions have no instructions.  Most are simple to solve but a couple are off because they don't tell you what the goal is.
     Sure, they did great in adding the extra characters, but at the cost of escort missions?  Not worth it in my book.

     I might add there is a multiplayer mode, that I sadly could find no one to join, and the second time a "Battle Mode" is misnamed.  Battle Mode is once again a crystal collecting challenge set of missions.

     At most this is mild entertainment for a TMNT fan, at worst a dull and forgettable 2d Turtles game.  Mutant Nightmare is another trip to platforming and puzzle solving with small bouts of combat instead of returning to the tried and true brawlers that made the Turtle games great in the 90's.  One might've thought that Konami would've learned that these kinds of TMNT games aren't what the players are looking for.


     For more of my Turtle posts: [ TMNT ]

Also check out:

     [ The TMNT Collectionary ]

     [ TMNT Block Yardsellr on Facebook ]

     They always have a plethora of TMNT goodness to peruse.

Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land Review

     For the most part WayForward has kept me on as a happy customer, but this game somehow managed to have all the right pieces- just none of them seem to fit together quite right.

     What could've been a wonderful homage to the games of yesteryear, winds up falling short.  The show itself has the foundations built on 80's gaming and inventive usage of tons of old school referential humor- but none of them are utilized in the game.  They don't even use any of the series regulars like High Five Ghost or Muscle Man.  Even the simple inclusion of cameos beyond Benson's 20 seconds in the opener would have been an improvement.
     There aren't even any voice acting snippets outside of the duo's "OOOOOOooooooohhh...".  Where's all the quotes?  Where's all the fan service that should be standard with a game based on a television show?  None of the things that make the show great are present in the game.  It missing the humor, the hilarious situations, and

     As it is M&RAi8BL begins with gorgeous 16-bit graphics in a predictable platformer, and adds in some side-scrolling shooting, and top-down shooting like one of my old favorites Zombie's Ate My Neighbors! and swiftly goes downhill from there.
     For the platforming- you can swith between the two major slackers Mordecai and Rigby with a button press.  Rigby will be largely ignored when you don't need to squeeze through small areas because Mordecai gets a very useful double-jump- making him an obvious choice for nearly all situations.
     In the side-scrolling shooter you play as a space ship version of Mordecai.  It sounds great, but handles just a tad too awkwardly.
     During the top-down shooting you get to play as Rigby.  But shooting here is strangely off, it's a lot of strafing, but any changes to the direction of fire seems choppy and can lag that 1 second needed to result in one more cheap death.
     On the whole the controls are both good (platforming) and aggravating (shooting).

     Which brings me to my biggest issue, and possibly the games biggest flaw- a largely artificial difficulty level.  Padding the very short length of the game by making a generically cheap difficulty isn't a good way to make a game.
     There are 4 worlds, with 4 levels and a boss to end the area.  The levels aren't particularly long, and have plenty of dead ends.  Really there isn't a whole lot here- so it seems they ramped up the difficulty to add some game play time.
     Challenge is one thing, cheapness is a another- and this game is rife with cheap challenges.  Dying repeatedly due to off-screen enemies or terrible hit boxes (seriously, there's roughly a 50% chance you'll die jumping on an enemy head- if you aren't exactly centered, you die) doesn't help this game at all.  It is very irritating, and becomes much more so as the game progresses because you only have a single hit point.  Replaying levels after an enemy collision problem right at the end puts this game into a state of frustrating repetitiveness no one can enjoy.  It feels like a constant stream of unfair deaths.

     Even the collectibles section is disappointing- you collect golden VHS tapes and fanny packs.  The tapes open a let-down of an art gallery, and a cheat codes section- and the only code I know of is for infinite lives (big surprise it's the Konami code)- fairly useless once I've beaten a game I know I'll never want to play again.
     And as for the fanny packs...   I still don't have a clue what they were for- it was never explained anywhere in game, and I didn't care enough to find out.

     This game is mediocre at best, and that is coming from a huge fan of the Regular Show.  WayForward has squandered this license- they've created what amounts to an uninspired and greatly missed opportunity.  It looks and sounds good (the music is quite good), and it has ideas that might have been better applied, but all the ingenuity the show has is lost on the game.
     Instead of buying this, just go watch the show, at least you'll be entertained.

     Perhaps in time we'll get a game based on the Regular Show that will do it justice- updating all the nostalgic joy of the 8-bit era without the parts no one liked.  Someone needs to properly tap into the show's creativity and give us a game the Regular Show rightfully deserves.

Thundercats Nintendo DS Review

     Thunder-CRAAAAAAAP,  HOOO-rrendous!!!

     I happened to pick this up at a Gamestop, in the new Nintendo DS section- somehow left unpurchased for at least a year.  In retrospect, that fact alone should've tipped me off to how bad this game is.  All my 80's childhood nostalia from the original show, adding to my enjoyment of the more recent rebooted cartoon series from 2011 wasn't enough to make playing this worth it.

     First off- this should rightly be called ThunderCat, not Cats, as you play solely as Lion-O.  As the leader of the ThunderCats, you do gain the ability to call in assists from other team members- Panthro, Tygra, Cheetara, and the tiny team of WilyKat & WilyKit- by collecting summons tokens.  You can only carry three of these which leads to use it or lose it play.

     The controls are ultra simple.  Simple enough that they neglected to use the X and Y buttons.  We are left with really a D-Pad, a jump button, and an attack button.  Which all of them seem to have just enough delay to result in death for the extremely unclear platforming sections.  It would also be worth mentioning that the unresponsive nature also compounds the problem of animations having to finish- consequently leaving you not just open to attack, but usually leaving you to be hit 3 or 4 times back to back without a dodge or block button.  One could also point out that every swing of the sword pushes you forward, causing you to miss swing because you have to adjust your footing, which is very inconvenient during a boss fights short "weak point" openings.
      Every fight is purely an exercise in frustration.  It is an awful irritation when you get enemies surrounding you and have to wait for even your most menial attack finish it's animation only to result in you getting shot from both sides, and then hit by melee attackers on top of that.  You are left defenseless in a game of melee.  Every level comes down to constant mobbing from an endless stream of color-swapped enemies that will inevitably strike you because the controls are so bad.

     Using the ThunderCats' fabled Sword of Omens feels like you are swinging a useless cardboard tube.  It's weak, it's preposterously slow, and it's range isn't even the whole length of the blade.  This makes the boss fights unbelievably tedious- you need to get close enough for your sword to hit, but this puts you in a position to take multiple hits from their attacks, which have far more range and speed than anything in your own arsenal.  Each one of the bosses is a damage sponge and takes at least twice as long as they rightfully should to defeat.

     Saves occur apparently randomly, not necessarily at the end of the levels like the game says, as I was sent back whole levels after death a couple times, and checkpoints are nonexistent.  So you're essentially playing a lottery with when and where you'll pick up after a death or save.  In reality, playing a level once in this game is bad enough, being forced to play it again because a faulty auto-save is certainly a cherry on top of a shit sundae.

     This is one of the most pitiful 2D beat-'em-up, side-scrolling platformers I have ever played.  In light of the classics like the TMNT or X-men arcades, this is a shameful thing to fail in the modern gaming era.  With a plethora of decent games in this style, how did anyone think this could pass muster?
     What a disgusting cash grab- this is one of the laziest productions of a game I have seen ever.  Muddy colored backgrounds, terrible speech compression (after hearing Lion-O's only line of dialogue, "ThunderCats, HOOOO!" for the 1,000 time on the first level, mute became my favorite button.), and the gameplay itself is a plain chore to plow through.

     ThunderCats is an embarrassment- there are tons of games from our 16 bit yesteryear that are infinitely better than this.  Everything that could've been retro homage to the show felt ruined in every way possible.  Really, this game makes Aliens: Colonial Marines look like a work of art.  Why they didn't make a game like WayForward's Thor: God of Thunder for DS is beyond me.  Just watch the Toonami cartoon and avoid this game, even if you could get the game for free, it isn't worth the time to play- and the ghost of Jaga is crying somewhere in the beyond because of it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Nickelodeon) The Video Game Review

     The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had quite a long and full history of products attached to their franchise.  That's almost 25 years since the 1989 release of TMNT on the Nintendo's worth of accumulated video games knowledge to learn from.  With such a vast wealth of material to pillage, how did Magic Pockets (Activision) make a game so disappointing?  I'm not kidding, I'd still rather play the time-worn but still plenty entertaining Turtles in Time or The Hyperstone Heist, both hold the magic of true beat-em-up gaming that this new one lacks.

     Sure, they stick with the formula that works, a side scrolling beat-em-up, but they missing anything new or interesting.  That being said this particular game also forgets what made the old Turtle's games great- that ooze fueled brawler magic through a variety of levels and settings.  Everything is repetitious here.  The limited combat animations, the turtle's saying the same 3 lines over and over, and only a few enemies that arrive in hordes.  Even the levels are extremely similar to each other.

     The combat is terrible, in part due to awful AI, as fellow turtles will pretty much just stand around, which becomes a problem because the hit boxes will prevent you from getting around them and allow enemies to hit you.  Once you've been struck once like that it usually continues with a few cheap hits that can't be evaded or blocked because there isn't an option for either.
     That isn't too much of an issue since most of the enemies are just as stupid as computer controlled brother turtles.  Most just bumble around and swing at you halfheartedly.  Occasionally one will flash red and be momentarily invincible with an unblockable attack.  Not much there.
     I want to also note that the turtles really aren't differentiated- they all feel the same.  Mikey should be fast but weak, Don slow but has long reach, etc.  They are interchangeable and that doesn't work at all in a beat-em-up.  Even the upgrade system for them is boring.  It offers making attacks stronger, giving you a more durable shell, combo length upgrades, and adds rechargeable power attacks that don't really differ from character to character.

     What went wrong here?  The game can barely appeal to even fans of the show, as this is supposed to bridge the seasons 1 and 2 together but has scant story involved.  The only interesting thing that kept me going were the small amount of easy to find collectibles in scattered throughout the levels.  By the end I unlocked Time Attack and Survival modes as well as the Arcade mini game from the Turtle's sewer home.  Once I unlocked them I was quickly disappointed again, as only the Arcade offered any amount of fun, and even that lasted only about 5 minutes.

     The unreasonable amount of monotony may have been broken up a bit by being able to play co-op, but the 3DS version I played did not have the option.  The 3D is actually one of the things in the game I did like.  It was well handled and looks great.  Another thing I noted was Michelangelo yells "Cowabunga" but then hastily changes it to "Booyakasha!"  A nice touch for us old fans.

     I don't really know why the game companies continue to put out games that seem unfinished.  This Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game should've been have the length and a quarter of the price at most.  Like they strove to make the most basic game possible and didn't even meet that goal.  This feels like a game a 5 year old might play.  Emphasis on might.  That may have been their target demographic, but even then, the game feels half finished.

     As a life long TMNT die-hard fan I long for the day when a company makes a game worthy of their "Heroes in a Half Shell" legacy.  We need a 3rd person, 4-player co-op, open world game like a combination of Skyrim and Lego Marvel Super Heroes with a multitude of filler missions and guys to beat up.  And TONS of selectable or unlockable characters to play as.  That is the type of game that needs to be made.

     Until that happens here are some other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle related sites to spurn a slew of nostalgia fueled memories:

[ The TMNT Collectionary ]

[ The TMNT Block on Yardsellr ]

...and other TMNT blog posts I've written [ Here ]

Scribblenauts and the DC Comics Universe

Mr. Scribble-Freeze

     Apparently 5th Cell's next Scribblenauts game will be getting some alterations and focus on the license with DC comics.  Previously called Scribblenauts Unmasked, it may yet get a new title.

 

     From what I've read over at IGN, the game sounds like the series protagonist and his magic notebook will be assisting the DC heroes in various puzzle quests.  Not much to go on, but since I enjoyed the previous installments, and this one has my favorite Batman villain Mr. Freeze, I may be buying this one.

     Here's a quick snippet from the IGN article:

"One source describes a linear level beginning in the sewers beneath Wayne Manor where a hungry Killer Croc won’t let Max proceed. When a hamburger isn’t enough, a dynamite sandwich sends Croc into a rage leading to his arrest. Robin keeps the situation under control, allowing Max to make his way inside Wayne Manor (where Batman has been manipulated by The Joker) before discovering Batgirl’s capture in the Batcave.

In another situation, Max encounters two police officers, and must decipher which one is legit and which is actually Clayface. An X-ray exposes the villain, and when handcuffs fail to stop the sludge-monster, a freeze-gun does the trick."

    
     My previous Scribblenauts posts (From 2009):
http://www.joshuabarsody.com/search?q=scribblenauts

Scribblenauts part 2: Unconventional wisdom.

First- Two things I thought were awesome.
1) A velociraptor does NOT appreciate having a chariot glued to the back of their head. Or tail.
2) If I have a magic wand and sit on a gorilla with a pointy stick and crown in a saddle on a centaur with a halo and spear, then we fight a T-rex, it turns into a frog and a steak.  But if we fight a mammoth it turns into a frog and 3 steaks.  Score for my tribe!

A list of random things I've learned from playing Scribblenauts.

• If you call on Santa, he hands out random gifts to anybody, good or bad.  Some of the presents he pops out are; pets, sweaters, toys, video games, board games, and...  voodoo dolls.  Odd.
• The most useful items I've found are a time machine and a mind control device.  Next in the lines of handy things would be wings, a teleporter, and a Cupid arrow.
• Death can beat both God and the Devil, but is subsequently able to be beaten by you with a spork.  Or you can stuff him in a barrel.
• Recipe for god = a human + ambrosia.
• Satyrs are stubborn and rufuse to play a pan flute with me.
• A black hole will suck things into their doom, while a portal sends out a very angry monster.
• A blob and a ghost will fight each other and never die.
• Jackalopes will ignore you and just walk around making horrible sounds. 
• A bum will be fooled by the following trap: Boobytrap a snowman by setting it on a bear trap and stapling money to it's head.
• Clones/Dopplegangers/Duplicates and Me all make multiple you's(Maxwell's).  They are also all evil and will try to steal anything you are holding and say "Yoink".  But if you use a shrink ray on them they will keep stealing each others things instead.  Then you may pick them up and fit up to 3 of them in a wallet or pocket.
• If you make an ocean, then make a whale, the whale is too big to fit in the ocean.
• Robots are good and cyborgs are evil.
• If god has a sword, he's good, but if I have a sword I'm the enemy.
• If you leave a trail of meat/brains up to a corpse and drop lightning on the corpse, it will come to life, eat, and pass out from being stuffed.
• Cthulu and Shoggoth are not above love.  If you Cupid arrow them they will love you.

Scribblenauts Part 1: Lessons in Problem Solving.

Scribblenauts is an ingenious problem solving game.  You are a boy named Maxwell with a magic notebook and your job is to accomplish a serious of various tasks.  Whatever you write in the notebook appears on screen to help solve the problems.  Now, of course, there are some words that don't work, specifically vulgarities.  Although poop doesn't work, vomit and booger both show up.  So they tried to make it kid friendly, while still offering adults an immensely entertaining game of "How Imaginatively Can I Do This...".  Some tasks are very simple, like helping a woodcutter get a tree down.  Each level takes a little more effort as the difficulty gradually increases.

One could solve most of the games levels with a small amount of items used over and over, but gives you bonuses by making you think of alternative solutions when repeating a previous stage.  Occasionally the game's items ignore all physics and plausibility, and goes on to do nothing of what it should/would do.  Like if you summon a hurricane all that appears is a handful dark clouds and a pitiful amount of rain, but if you summon a tsunami, the water wave decimates everything on screen(including you) and starts the level over.

A massive amount of the fun in this game is just seeing what you can do with a random set of creations and still achieve the goal of the level.  One can dink around for hours, days, or even weeks with just making random crap appear on the title screen(Pictured at top) and see how things react.  There is a bar that limits the amount of things you can make, so you cannot make an infinite amount of money to bribe a cop or some such.  I discovered that I can only make 6 gorillas, but I found I could stack them all and ride a gorilla tower.

Anyway, here are some of the things I did...

Problem #1:  Help some guy cut down a tree.

1) Go the easy route- Use a chainsaw to cut it down.

2) Less conventional- Burn it down with a campfire.

3) An original idea- Weild a badger like an axe.

Problem #2:  Help get a lady's cat off a roof.

1) Lame way- Make a ladder and climb up.

2) Marginally less easy way- Spawn a pterodactyl and fly up to grab the cat.

3) An original way- Blow the house up with C4.  No house means no roof, so the cat will then be on the ground and reunited with a questionably happy owner.

Problem #3:  Get a soccer ball past a goalie into the goal.

1) Easy way- Run past him with the ball and shoot it in.

2) Less normal way- Drop a virus on his head and when he falls over ill throw the ball in.

3) Awkward way- Shoot the goalie with a bazooka then kick the ball in over his dead body.

4) My favorite way- Create a gold bar and give it to the goalie.  Walk away and explain to your new best friend, Mr. Leprechaun, that there is a real greedy douschebag goalie hoarding his(the leprechaun's) gold.  When the goalie is being beaten to a pulp by a very angry leprechaun walk the ball into the goal.

Problem #4: Trick or Treat with 3 kids.  Either scare them or give them candy to achieve the goal.

1) Easy way- Give them candy or create a ghost to scare kids.

2) Better way- Create the monstrous Shoggoth of the H.P. Lovecraft mythos(both Cthulu and the Necronomicon are there as well). The kids crap their pants and run like hell.

4) Morally ambiguous way- Glue a razor to some candy. The kids recognize it as candy and you still win!

Problem #5: Catch a butterfly.

1) Easy way- Use a net.

2) Better way- Throw a rock at it to knock it out of the air.

3) Best way- Glue an anchor to it so it can't fly off the ground.

4) Ineffective but hilarious way- Drop a meteor on it.  Everything dies(including you).

Problem #6: Clean all the garbage out of the park.

1) Easy way- Pick up the trash by hand and throw it in the garbage bin.

2) Fast way- Create a flamethrower and burn the everything in sight to a cinder pile.

3) Fastest way- Set off an atom bomb in the park.

Problem #7:  Knock over a pyramid of glass bottles.

1) Lazy way- Throw a baseball at the stack.

2) Why didn't I do this earlier way- Put antimatter above it and the bottles are sucked, presumably, into another dimension.

3) Laugh out loud way- Put a human cannon on the other side of the room and shoot the bottles with a clown.