The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Whenever I beat an RPG, it’s cause for celebration, because I never beat RPGs. It’s also a sign that said RPG is really fantastic. Dragon Quest 9 is really fantastic. It is, without a doubt, one of the best games you could pick up for your DS, even if you don’t like Seth Green.

If you haven’t played a Dragon Quest, you might think, as I once did, that the actual gameplay of a Dragon Quest is incredibly old school and very boring. This is not true. While it is very traditional in many ways, Dragon Quest is smart enough to know how to mix things up and keep things different. Unlike some RPGs, you really put to use almost every spell you learn, for example. Status effect spells like Sleep can be extremely useful in some situations. Overcoming fights with proper use of skills can be just as useful as pure levels.

Additionally, Dragon Quest 9 is a return to the job system of some earlier Dragon Quests, and that adds a lot of depth to the game. Basically, you can switch jobs just about any time you like by going to a place called the Alltrades Abbey. These jobs work kind of like FFXI, although not quite. When you switch to a job, you start as the level you’ve gotten to in that job. So if you haven’t used it before, you’re at level 1. This seems like a horrible idea, but honestly, it’s not hard to boost people back up, which surprised me. You can go crazy with grinding, sure, but it’s less important than it initially seems. You don’t carry over spells or stats when you change classes. What you do keep are your abilities and stat bonuses you have bought with skill points. As you level up in jobs, you get these points, and can invest them in various weapon or class skill lines. Some are stat boosts that affect all classes, like “+30 Natural Strength” which makes you always have 30 more strength than you would have without that boost. Those are probably the ones you go for the most. However, there are also a wide variety of abilities that can be used in combat or out. The one I probably got the most use out of was the wand skill Caudecus, which worked like a slightly more powerful version of Heal, but which my spellcaster had access to as long as she had a wand: She didn’t have to be in a class like Priest who had healing spells to heal that way. Skill points don’t have to be spent immediately, nor in the class in which they are gained. As such, the game rewards you for leveling a few levels in a class you never expect a character to use, and then taking those skill points back to the class you want them to be more powerful in and spending them. At first, the whole system seems really clunky, honestly, but after you play with it for awhile you begin to see how smart and well-thought-out it is.

On top of all this character building, you also can equip crazy amounts of gear. All of it shows on your character, which is totally cool. You can focus on dressing up and looking neat, or you can focus on pure stat-gains, if you want. I did a combination of the two. The result, though, is that your party is very customizable, and very much yours. You’re completely tailoring their skills and classes and wardrobe, and you really become attached to them because of that. It’s awesome. I can’t remember a set of generic characters I’ve gotten more attached to in recent memory.

Of course, it’s taking those characters through the story that really makes the game awesome. But that kind of stuff I’m going to talk about tomorrow. That’s right, I’m doing two days of DQ Review. Deal.

Starcraft 2 is out, I’m so close to the Dragon Quest 9 endgame I can taste it, and I spent an evening trying to play Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s Stardust Accelerator: World Championship 2009. Now there is a title!

But yeah, seriously, I was thinking about CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES and I realized it had been a long, long time since I played a Yu-Gi-Oh game. I do love cards games, you know. I’ve also really enjoyed past Yu-Gi-Oh games that just let you play the card game without buying the cards. I figured it was about time to try it again, so I threw one of the more recent ones onto my Gamefly queue.

I’ve always been kind of at awe with the people behind making Yu-Gi-Oh work as an actual card game. They have so much bullshit to contend with that they feel they have to be accurate to from the show that it has to be impossibly hard to make work. The fact that it kind of does work for the most part is crazy awesome. Doesn’t make it a great game, but it’s neat that it does.
I felt like I understood how they had warped the rules from the show to make the game work. I used to anyway. But as I sat down with this game, I realized I must be missing something. I couldn’t figure out how to sacrifice monsters to play other monsters, which is kind of 70% of the game. I have two theories on why this is the case. The first is that I simply don’t know some new rule. It has been years since I played a Yu-Gi-Oh card game. Maybe the rules have changed fundamentally since then. I kind of doubt something to core to how the game was designed has changed, though, but who knows.

The second theory is that I can’t understand the interface. The interface in this game is crazy. It is trying to display so much information on a little DS screen, all of it tappable, that I never really had any idea how to do the things I needed to do. Everything does something. I understand this is a fairly complex card game, but I never remember previous games behind so hard to comprehend, and many of those I played on the GBA, which doesn’t have the benefit of a touch screen, which should make it easier to understand, not harder. Okay, that sentence was horrible, but you get the point. Especially for a game they iterate on every year, there’s no excuse for the interface being as horrible as it is. Or maybe that’s why it’s like that: People who play every year have already figured it out. It’s pretty horrible for a newcomer, though.

There might be a great game in there, or at least a fun little thing. But man, I had such trouble trying to just use the game that I gave up pretty quickly. Especially in the face of all the other wonderful things I could be playing, I just don’t have time for that.

(Cris gets credit for the title. Heh. Couldn’t pass it up!)

Yesterday was Starcraft Day! As of this writing, I don’t have Starcraft 2 yet. It’s coming later this afternoon.

But I’m not really excited or anything.

I don’t know. I have wonderful, wonderful memories of the original Starcraft. I remember playing the ever-loving crap out of it back in the day. There is absolutely no doubt that it is a completely fantastic game in every respect. There’s a reason why South Korea loves it so much. Blizzard only makes quality, and there’s nothing to make me think that this new game won’t be completely fantastic in every regard as well. I should be excited about getting to play a good game, right? I mean, I even installed Windows 7 on here in order to get prepared for Starcraft!

But yeah, I’m not particularly thrilled. Maybe it’s just because it’s taken so damn long. I mean, how long as Starcraft 2 been in development? Like 10 years at least? A long time. In that time period RTSes went from something I did nearly every day, certainly once a week, with people like Essner to a genre I no longer have any interest in and don’t really play. I really got into Dawn of War II, of course, but not the actual RTS mode. Just the RPG-like story mode. Granted, I think Starcraft is going to have a little of that, but, well… it’s Starcraft. It has to stay Starcraft, for the most part, or South Korea will declare war. Or something. It’s a game with such a rabid fanbase that they can’t really change it fundamentally. It’s not going to be significantly different. Granted, it’ll be good, but where I sit now, it feels like a known quantity. I may feel different after playing it, of course, but that’s how it comes off.

While internet is at a fever pitch, I’m kind of not. That’s okay, of course, and I’ll play it. Oh, will I play it. I just don’t mind that I have to wait until late afternoon to do so, I suppose.

At some point I took a break from Dragon Quest IX (I’ve put over 30 hours into that game so far. Man, it’s got me hooked!) to play through Splinter Cell: Conviction. I had heard a lot about the game at this point, and most of it was positive, though not like… life-changing. Just a fairly good experience. My experience was both good and bad, but overall positive, certainly.

Brer had some big problems with the game because of the plot. He really liked the character of Sam Fischer and disliked what they did to him. I didn’t have this problem because I didn’t pay attention to the plot at all, but if you like Mr. Fischer then maybe that’s an issue. From what I did catch of it, it was pretty ridiculous.

But no, what I enjoyed was shooting dudes in the head, and this game does lots of dude-head-shooting. The game is basically trying to be a combination of the stealth sections in Arkham Asylum and Gears of War, and honestly it works pretty well. For the most part, you feel like a total badass sneaking around and killing dudes without detection. Even when you are seen, there’s often good options to have some fun. One thing I figured out late in the game is how much fun remote mines are. When scene, there’s a little shadow of you where the enemy thinks you are. Throwing a remote mine there is tons of fun. And when you blow up the first guy who comes to check? You can mine his body, and his buddy will probably come to check on him and you can blow him up too. It never got old for me.

There were some issues, though. I put the game on “Rookie,” because I didn’t want to have to replay sections over and over. Even on Rookie, though, I found the game pretty hard. Granted, I’ve never been very good at stealth stuff. I tend to be too Kamikaze. But if more than one guy saw me, I’d basically die immediately, and have to replay sections. What made it so bad was that the checkpoints in this game are all over the map. Sometimes it’ll have checkpoints exactly where it should, and sometimes you’ll go three encounters without it doing a checkpoint save. It’s frustrating having to re-fight the first two of three combats over again and again just because you have trouble getting to the third. It wasn’t enough to get me to stop me from finishing, as the game is pretty short, but it was the source of much annoyance.

The guns, also, were really weird. You had a huge variety of guns to choose from, but they were all useless. All pistols have unlimited ammo, and are just better for being stealthy, which you have to be or you will die. I ended up carrying a shotgun for most of the game, because when I was seen, running straight backwards and firing shotgun blasts tended to deal with the problem pretty well. Still, the majority of the time I used one silenced pistol. It’s just weird, because there’s this weapon upgrade system, but you only need to upgrade that pistol, so it is a system with seemingly no purpose. Kind of strange.

Conviction really is the picture-perfect example of a great weekend rental. It’s fun, it’s short and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, but it’s a little too off to really want to add to your collection. I am sad I never got to play the co-op, because I hear that’s pretty fun too, but maybe I will sometime on PC with Brer when it goes on a super-sale. The single player, though, was fairly good times. I enjoyed myself.

Way, way back, when I bought Super Street Fighter IV, I did it because a certain Morbid Coffee was planning to host an online Tournament with people from Talking Time. I knew I’d have no chance of winning the tournament, but I figured I could maybe win a few matches and it would be fun either way.

Now the tournament has finally started. And Coffee is doing the coolest thing: He’s uploading all the matches people send him to Youtube. I don’t know why, but I seriously think this is amazingly cool. Certainly makes the tournament feel more… important. So I thought I’d share the videos of what’s happened so far with you. It’s my fall from the winner’s bracket in video form!

My first match was with Matchstick. The original name for the tournament was Matchstick’s Pony, supposedly, so he’s partially responsible for going at it. He was bringing a Chun-Li to the mix. I was using my trusty Abel, the guy who I’ve mained since Super Street Fighter IV for no real reason I can tell, but I’m pretty decent with him, and he’s an odd choice, which gives me the element of surprise against a lot of people who are used to Akumas and Kens and don’t know what Abel is capable of.

I won it in two. The first round, and second round. I didn’t have much trouble. Abel has this really great combo that I can actually pull off. If I can abuse that, I tend to win easily. If I can’t, I have more trouble. Matchstick couldn’t seem to figure out how to get Chun-Li to punish that combo, so I did it a bunch, and pulled off the win. Still, it was a fun fight, and we had fun talking during it. Very good times! I moved on from the first round! Whee!

Second round I was matched up with Shivam. This is a guy who went on and on on the Cast at Demonhead about how Street Fighter is the best game ever. (Granted, he has a lot of best game evers, but still!) I thought for sure I had done some practice fights with him before and he had been much better than me, so I figured I was in for a schooling. I was a bit wrong, though. We had some damn good matches, with a super-dramatic finish! I won the first round. He had said he decided Guile was his best, but he spent a lot of time jumping, and my Abel beat him without too much trouble. After you lose, according to the rules, you can switch characters, and he then switched to T. Hawk. Remember the situation I explained earlier? The one where you don’t know how to approach a character because nobody ever plays him against you? This is how I was with T. Hawk. I was pretty clueless in the second round, and Shivam slaughtered me with Mexican Typhoons. Even after I figured out what I should be doing, it was difficult. Abel isn’t the most capable ranged character, and Shivam could pull off those Typhoons with no problem, which made it hard to approach him. After that, I had a choice. Abel is pretty well my most practiced character, but I needed some range in order to take T. Hawk on. Therefore, I decided I needed some fireballs. For the third round, I switched to Sakura. This worked out better. I actually felt like I had answers to a lot of T. Hawk’s moves, and I felt like I held my own a lot more competently. Still, even with a dramatic Ultra at the end, I couldn’t pull off the win. But they were damn, damn good matches. I never mind losing in fights like that. It was fun times.

That’s about where I stand right now. Soon, I’ll start my loser’s bracket matches. My general hope is that I move on in the loser’s bracket once before I hit people I just have no chance against, but eh, we’ll see. Either way, I’ll give it my all, and continue to have a ton of fun. Because it is a ton of fun! I tend to like fun. Yeah.

Dustin finally had another Euchre Tournament.

Euchre is a standard, but pretty darn awesome card game. It’s simple, but requires a ton of meta-game strategy in order to play it well. There’s luck involved, sure. Sometimes you’ll go all night without getting dealt a decent hand. But most of the time it’s about knowing how to use the cards you have to the best of their ability and how to read your partner to know how to play the cards you have without outright cheating.

I’m alright at Euchre. I know the rules, I love games, and I get enough of the basic strategy to not make a fool out of myself, even though I maybe don’t win all that often. However, Dustin’s family are a bunch of Euchre experts. He used to get them all together, and us, to play, and it just amazed me how much of a challenge that was. Not that older people can’t play cards or something, but more that they took the game so seriously, and at the same time so lightly. They play cutthroat, serious, cut you no slack Euchre, but they laugh and joke the whole way through. It’s pretty well the best atmosphere for this kind of tournament. It was a really great night.

How did I do? Well, I went 4W-6L. I was hoping to go 5 and 5, just because that seemed like a good goal, but it was not to be. My wins didn’t get me many points either: I only won very close games, for the most part. Still, in that crowd, I was totally fine with it. I only felt like I made one play mistake all night, when I called on a really risky hand and got completely embarrassed and set. That’s good enough for me.

Dustin won it all, and went on like that was a bad thing, and that it looked bad that he won his own tournament. It was really kind of silly. If that man knows anything, he knows German and playing Euchre. He is a Euchre machine. Everyone there was a good friend. It’s not like we thought he was cheating or something. At least, if we said it, it was in a purely joking manner.

But yeah, it was a damn fun night. Always nice to get on a bit of old-school, standard gaming, and have such a good time. I remember when we used to play Euchre all the time. It’s probably my favorite game with a standard deck of cards. (Pinochle is fun, but requires a special deck and more rules. Euchre is much faster, compact, and you can always play it.) Damn good times.

Of course, then at the end, Dustin said he’d try to get another one together over Christmas break. And my mind went to how different I’d be then, and trying to explain that to his whole extended family… but eh, I would. And I’d have fun anyway.

Dragon Quest 9 is a huge game, with lots of quests and stuff. It is also a game with a class change system, and that means that it is, by default, a game meant to be min/maxed and broke the fuck open by people fiddling with the systems in place to make super-powerful characters. This is a good thing. It has appeal for those people, as well as touching little mini-storylines in each city and gameplay that’s pretty casual friendly. That’s always been the appeal of Dragon Quest. However, I just have to question some of their decisions.

There are 12 classes, from what I understand, but 6 of them are locked behind quests. These quests require you to kill things in a specific way to prove you’re worthy of being a member of that class. Nothing wrong with that, perse. That’s a fine enough idea. The problem comes in with how complicated the quests are. Or, I guess, the one I’m going to talk about.

One of them I had was the quest to unlock the class “Armamentalist” which required you to cast Wizard Ward, and then deliver the final blow to two Metal Slimes. Metal Slimes are hard to hit, and run away very often. They’re also very rare. You can see already how this quest may be a problem. When you already have to waste one turn, and MP, casting Wizard Ward before you can even start hitting the Metal Slimes, often they will run away before you even attack them. There’s a skill that helps you hit Metal Slimes, called Metal Slash, but that’s a sword skill. Mages, who learn Wizard Ward, can’t learn Metal Slash. To complete this quest, you need someone who can do both.

This wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the previously-mentioned Min/Maxing I was talking about. Having your Warrior, who’s using swords, use 8 Skill points to learn Wizard Ward is a waste. Similarly, having your mage put a ton of skill points into Sword Skills to learn Metal Slash is also a waste. Fully-leveling a character in a class nets you 200 skill points (But who would ever get a character up to level 100 in a class?) which means that if you level up every class completely, you get 2400 skill points. There are 26 skills, and it takes 100 skill points to completely level up a skill. Therefore, two skills will never be fully leveled. See where I’m going with this? For the craziest level-grinder, mis-investing those 8 points does matter in creating the very best character, because they can’t fully level every skill. For those who aren’t going to hit level 100 with every class, which is completely insane and would take forever, mis-using those skill points is even more of a big deal, because that’s that much less power your characters have.

Plus, even with a character so specced out, the quest is annoyingly hard. Doing that just makes it possible.

I got kind of angry with the game over this today. I wanted to have all the classes, so I knew I had to do this quest, but it was just so annoying. Even though I’m playing casually, I didn’t want to purposefully mis-handle my character building. I really resisting intentionally gimping myself to completely this quest. I got really angry at the game and put it down.

Then I picked it back up like… 20 minutes later. DQ9 is really good. There’s some questionable decisions, but overall? Really quite good.

But I’ll review it another time. Like when I beat it. (Here’s where you laugh because that probably won’t happen.)

I tried, but I just don’t understand Dungeon Solitaire.

This game was at the top of the App store lists for card games, and man, do I love card games. It was $2, and I thought, sure, I’ll give it a try. I’m down with card games, and a good single-player one seemed neat.

It just doesn’t work well, though.

Basically, you have two columns, an enemy column and a hero column. There are monster cards, hero cards, green buff cards, equipment cards, and trap cards. You place these down, and try to fill up the whole hero column with heroes to win the game. If you draw a 6th monster three times, the game is over.
Every card basically modifies one of the two stats on a hero or monster card: Strength and Magic. You line up the cards on the grid, and if the numbers on one are higher than the other, that card wins, and the other is destroyed. However, both stats have to be higher. If each card wins one stat, then a Stalemate is created. This can trigger special abilities, but mostly just results in the cards sitting there doing nothing. Equipment and Buffs are in the game to get you out of these Stalemates, but since a card can only be modified by one Equipment ever, and buffs are almost all completely random, they don’t actually help. And since you are forced to play every monster you draw, you get into Stalemates a lot.

That really isn’t fun.

So often you’re randomly drawing cards, hoping for a solution to a monster. But there’s maybe one hero in your deck that can beat said monster. So you keep drawing, but that just makes you draw a monster, and you lose. It’s really stupid, actually. A good card game has an element of randomness, of course. That’s what makes it fun. But there are so few options you actually have in the game, you are almost fully dependent on the draw. It’s very rare when your decisions on where to place monsters and heroes come into play. I’ve played many games now, and it really just seems like a slot machine. It’s pretty unsatisfying. Plus, the game seems based around you failing, and is all about getting a high score. But since it seems like the score you get is equally random, based on how long the random cards let you survive, it really doesn’t seem like a useful way to go.

The iPhone platform is perfect for a good card game. It would be fantastic. It’s a shame this isn’t it. I really want to play a good little card game. I really do! Oh well. I’ll try again, I’m sure.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is, hands down, the best game I have played on the PSP. Certainly the best original game. Peace Walker takes everything that makes Metal Gear Solid great, and mixes it with everything that makes Monster Hunter great, and the child that comes out is fantastic. If you own a PSP, you owe it to yourself to play Peace Walker. You really do.

The main problem with most PSP games is how shitty the controls are, thanks to how badly the system is designed. I won’t lie, Peace Walker doesn’t have perfect controls, but the game is designed around them, and works great. After playing for an hour, you no longer notice the little weirdnesses of aiming with the face buttons. You’re just having a good time. There is also a control set for people familiar with Monster Hunter, if that’s your thing. That’s not my thing, but it’s nice to offer the option.

I think that Kojima and company did a great job balancing this game for single player. The entire story is very doable with one person, though someone else can jump in at any time, and that would probably make a few of the final bosses a little less tedious. Still, the game throws a great mixture of missions at you, from the sneaking missions MGS is known for to kamakaze combat “kill everyone” missions for people who play MGS like me. You’re never stuck with one strategy in these missions either. You can murder everyone in the sneaking missions, and you can sneak around, snipe, and stay hidden in the “kill everyone” missions. It’s a harder time going against the grain of what the mission wants you to do, but you’re only penalized with added difficulty. There’s no “you’re spotted, start over” sorts of situations here.
Immediately after you beat the game, and even during, you unlock all sorts of great 4-player Co-Ops, which are really Monster Hunter style and require multiple people. I’ve played some of these over Adhoc Party, and they are a blast. You really have to work together to take down bosses, and there are enough loadout variations that you can play a particular role in combat, if you desire. These missions are hard, and long, like their Monster Hunter counterparts, but are completely enjoyable. I feel like Peace Walker works better than Monster Hunter, too. I couldn’t play Monster Hunter for every long by myself. I got bored. It’s just not a single player experience. Peace Walker manages to be both a great single player game and a fantastic multiplayer game. It’s good times all around.

All of this would be enough, really, but there are so many little distractions as well. All through the game you are recruiting soldiers to build up Outer Heaven, and using them to make new equipment, research new tech, build Metal Gear ZEKE, and even send out on missions. After every mission, you have all these little side quests and systems to deal with, which keep the action broken up. They aren’t full games on their own, but tied into the other, awesome experience, it adds value. It also gives you goals after beating the main game if you’re playing by yourself. “I need some more APCs for Outer Ops… I should go fight some of those boss battles.” Things like that.

I was expecting to enjoy Peace Walker, but not as much as I did. This is a completely worthy successor to the awesomeness that was MGS3. Play this game. Seriously, just play it. You won’t regret it.

Why do I want Persona 3 Portable so much?

Here is a game I have bought twice already, and I really, really, really want to buy a third copy? Why? Is it the portability? Is it because it sparked a long-time love with Shin Megami Tensei? Is it because I can play as a girl?

No, wait, it’s definitely that last one.

Persona 3 and 4 have been about having a character who is a stand-in for you. You build that character up your way, make connections with people your way, and act like yourself. Well, preferably, if you’re playing as you and not min/maxing. That’s part of what makes those games amazing. They took the whole “silent protagonist” idea and pushed it even farther, in an interesting way.

But you always had to be a heterosexual guy.

It’s sort of the same feeling I got the first time I played Harvest Moon. “This game is fantastic, but it’s a shame I can’t be a girl.” It’s a game that involves dating the people you want to date in a significant way, and it’s always a shame when you can’t actually date who you want because the character isn’t actually a stand-in for you.

So yes, I really want to play Persona 3 Portable because I want to play as the Female Main Character.

Maybe I’ll pick it up at some point. I wish I could say I would when it got cheap, but this is an Atlus game. I know I’m making the right financial choice, but it’s really annoying. I wish I didn’t have to make it. I wish I could listen to this track for a million hours while I fight shadows. I wish I had time to play the game to begin with. Yeah.