The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I really, really enjoyed what people call PoP 08. It was a great, casual experience, and was a really good time. When I heard, for the next Prince of Persia, they were going back to the old storyline and old ways, I was a bit worried. I never played those games, and I wanted to play more of what I liked. Still, I was willing to give it a chance, and gave Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands a rental.

It was damn good.

Now, I didn’t feel like it was as sort of a… Polish experience as PoP 08. You can tell it was rushed out the door to meet the movie. At the same time, the game is completely playable and completely fun. It’s a bit more hardcore than PoP 08, but not enough to really be a problem. I set it to Easy to keep combats from being tough, and there were only like… 2 or 3 platforming sections that felt nearly insurmountable, and they were right before the last boss. It saves when you’d want it to. It’s a solid, solid game.

There are a few things about it that confuse me, though. For instance, I don’t know what the point of limiting the number of rewinds is. I feel like Elika didn’t ruin the fun with her easy access to redos, and I didn’t understand why I was able to run out of rewinds. It was never a huge deal, but maybe that would have been something they would have dealt with if they had more time.
Additionally, there’s a level up system. I know those are in style and cool, but I just didn’t see what point it served in this game. The only reason I was excited about hitting a level up was because there was achievements associated with hitting certain milestones. You could learn a bunch of spells, but I didn’t find them all that useful. I upgraded all my basic attack power and HP and such first, and did fine. (Granted, I was on easy. Maybe combat requires those spells more on Normal.)

The main thing this game brings, gameplay-wise, is the Water manipulation. This seems weird, but basically, the castle the Prince is in is the leakiest castle ever. There are spouts of water and waterfalls everywhere. Very early on, the Prince gets a power where you pull the left trigger, and it solidifies water around you. This lets you climb up columns of water, run across water walls, and so on. They do some really intelligent stuff with this mechanic as you progress through the game, making you deactivate to jump through waterfalls, then reactivate to climb up the next one, and so on. It’s pretty nice. They manage to use it enough so it isn’t annoying, but is a nice platforming challenge. I appreciated that.

As far as a purchase goes, much like PoP 08, I can’t recommend it full price. It really isn’t all that long, and while they want you to replay it to finish leveling up (since I don’t think you can hit max level on one playthrough without finding every single hidden item for EXP) that doesn’t really seem like a fun time. However, once it gets cheap, or if you can Gamefly or rent it like me, you really must play it. It is a lot of fun. I miss the whole PoP 08 world and so on, but I had a great time with this game. A solid title.

Mom and Dad had all these plans for Father’s day. They had all kinds of stuff they were supposed to do that Dad would like. It was going to be great, and I was probably going to be home, rewarming food for most of the day. I was okay with this.

Then those plans fell through, and Mom was like, “Think of something for us to do.”

My mind, of course, went to the tons of board games I’d like to play with them. Maybe something there? But then it hit me. This is Father’s Day. I’ve got to put an angle on it that he’d enjoy. Then I felt the inspiration, and I went out, spent too much money, and returned with a copy of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 for the Wii, and a Motion Plus. (And Wii Sports Resort which had the Motion Plus with it.) I figured with the Motion Plus, it would feel good, like real Golf, and that Dad would enjoy playing as some of his favorite golfers and looking at all the courses. It even had this thing called “TrueView,” where it didn’t show a character on screen or anything like a game. Everything was shown as if you were standing on the course. Surely he’d like that?

And he totally did. We played that for several hours, and then we put in Wii Sports Resort and played that for several hours more. Jonathan, Mom, and Dad all played, and it was, honestly, a pretty good time. I was having fun. Dad seemed like he was having fun.

But the real confirmation came later, while I was at work. Mom texted me telling me I did a great job, and that Dad was bragging about playing the game to Grandma and Grandpa. That made me feel amazing. It really did.

It’s so damn awesome when my interests and my parents can overlap so well. I love it.

Hey.

Here’s a Let’s Play.

I got pointed to this dude from Spoony, since he loaned Spoony some video footage, but the guy is pretty funny in and of himself. I’m very much in the middle of enjoying his playthrough of Titantic: Adventure out of Time, a game I had heard a lot about, but hadn’t really ever LEARNED anything about. So it’s pretty fascinating.

Yeah, so watch that. I’m too busy doing fatherly-day-y things to write more. Apologies. Better ramblings tomorrow!

Everyone was all like, “Man, I hope Kevin Butler shows up at the Sony Press Conference!”

And then he did. And as his little segment went on, and on, and on, and on, everyone realized he’s really only funny in small doses.

And then there was a few more video montages.

That was basically the Sony press conference.

The moment I saw Nintendo’s press conference, I knew Sony was so completely fucked. I simply couldn’t imagine anything they could drop that would beat what Nintendo brought to the table. Even something like a PSP2 just wasn’t going to generate enough excitement. Move certainly wasn’t. I was correct on all accounts.

Sony’s big bombs were a new Twisted Metal and, finally, a release date for Gran Turismo 5. Frankly, I can’t see who would even give a shit about GT5 at this point, it’s been delayed for so long. Just play some Forza already! (She says as if everyone who wants to play car porn games has a 360.) Twisted Metal… I guess that’s cool? But it has such a stupid aesthetic and I certainly have absolutely no love for the franchise, and the demo they gave didn’t really give me any reason to care about it. I guess it made some people happy, but it didn’t really feel like a bomb to me.

About the only new game they showed off that I was like “Hmm, I’d like to play that,” was Sorcery. This is the most generic game ever, using Move, where you’re a wizard and you use your wand controller to cast spells in an active way. That seemed like a ton of fun, at least in short doses. Of course, being a Move title, I don’t know if I’ll ever play it. They announced Move pricing, but it’s just too expensive. Move is accurate, sure, but it just doesn’t bring anything I haven’t seen before to the table, and I don’t trust Sony to bring the kind of games I have to have to it, just I do Nintendo, for example.

Other than that, the press conference had weird missteps. There was a sizzle montage like… every 5 minutes, and they promoted their advertising several times. “Here’s an ad we’re going to be running.” “And we’ll have ads on Coke bottles! Sony Rules!” It was just kind of weird.

I’m sure they’ll continue to have some games on Playstation 3 and PSP that I have to play, but Sony brought nothing to this conference to change the fact that they’re really bottom-tier in both their races at this point. I could do without them if I had to. Of course, I don’t have to, because I’m a crazy gamer and have everything forever, but they simply aren’t a requirement. It’d be nice if Sony would get that changed. Maybe at some point they’ll figure that out.

And that’s all I’m going to say about E3. Aren’t you glad I’m done? Whew.

They announced a new Kirby game.

I mean, I guess they did other stuff too, but damn, THEY ANNOUNCED A NEW KIRBY GAME.
I love Kirby. I am so excited about Kirby’s Epic Yarn. I want to buy four right now. The art style looks fantastic, and I completely trust them to create a Kirby game that’s easy, but fun as fuck. I cannot wait. But I have to. Damn.

But yeah, Nintendo basically knocked it out of the fucking park. They won E3, press-conference-wise. It was a non-stop showing of very strong announcement for the core gamer, as well as some games designed to “convert” casuals to core gaming which could really make it happen. It was good all around.

It was especially impressive to see a sort of return to 2D up on stage. It was probably due to the huge success of New Super Mario Brothers Wii, but between Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Donkey Kong Country Returns, it’s clear Nintendo is pushing 2D in a huge way. What’s more, these games look pretty damn solid! As mentioned, Kirby looks fun, and DKC Returns looks like a challenging platformer. That’s totally neat.

As a fan of Mario Sports games, I’m kind of displeased with Mario Sports Mix. I mean, I’m sure it’ll be fun, and it certainly is designed to do what they claimed it would, which is convert casuals to more hardcore games. I just need, need a new, fleshed-out Mario Golf. I need it badly.

Also, does anyone actually want a new Goldeneye? That’s right, nobody does. Some people might think they do, but they’re wrong.

Anyway, the most important thing they announced was, of course, the 3DS, which looks AMAZING. That thing has some serious graphical power under the hood, and an analog nub that people are saying is much less shitty than the one on the PSP. What’s more, this is Nintendo, and they’re not going to launch this thing at a high price point. I am all over this, I really am. There is no doubt this is a day one purchase. Even without any real software to back it up yet (They showed a video of a Kid Icarus game, and there’s a bunch of tech demos on the show floor) I want this thing, and they have at least a year to get some games ready to roll for launch, so I’m sure they can make it happen.
Oh, and I guess it does 3D. I don’t care about that? But if it’s as unobtrusive as everyone says, sure, throw it on there. Why not?

Anyway, Nintendo put plenty of things on display to get excited about. But what about Sony? I guess you’ll just have to wait for more ramblings to find out! Dun dun dun!

Because there isn’t enough of them on the internet, here comes my impressions of the big three press conferences at E3.

In Chronological Order, of course. So let’s start with Microsoft.

Microsoft… did okay? Their presentation was very split. They were trying very hard to push Kinect seriously while not making a Nintendo sort of mistake and missing appealing to their core. However, none of it really connected together well. It was almost like two different conferences. Most of their “hardcore” gamer stuff was mostly sequels I knew about and didn’t interest me much. Black Ops? Halo: Reach? Gears 3? I will play these things, but they don’t get me excited. They are known quantities. MGS: Rising was interesting, but I’m also not a rabid MGS fangirl, so I couldn’t get too worked up from that. Was there anything else hardcore? I think that was it? Anything hardcore from Microsoft I’m going to be excited about just wasn’t shown off here.
To their credit, though, I think Kinect could be appealing to the right audience. Game after game that they showed, I went, “Man, my mom would probably really get a kick out of that,” which is what they were trying for. For me, I was especially interested in Dance Central. I trust Harmonix with everything music-related, and I think that game could be obscenely fun. If it’ll be worth the cost of Kinect, though, I have no idea, seeing as they didn’t even announce a price. What the hell? That sort of thing doesn’t bode well for it being affordable enough to have a chance to take off. The problem is that people get the Wii, and people like my parents feel like they “get” the Xbox, and that it isn’t for them. Sometimes I prove them wrong with trivia games, but that’s basically it. The people who bought the Wii probably won’t care about Kinect. It’s going to be a horrible battle to make that work. Not as much of a battle as Sony, but a battle nonetheless.

Then, at the end, there was an Oprah pulled. “Everyone in the room gets a new, redesigned Xbox!” Well, whoop-de-fuck. That was kind of stupid, because everyone at home, including me, just went “What the hell? How is this supposed to get me excited?” Still, at the same time, I realized why they did it hours later when the internet was flooded with unboxings and hands-on impressions of the new system. There was a reason for it. It was just kind of silly. The redesign looks nice, and thank god, they finally built wifi in, but it’s nothing that someone would replace their current system for, unless they simply really, really, really, really, really hate drive noise, and installing games just isn’t enough for them.

In any case, I have no worries about Microsoft. I think they’re still going to continue to win the “hardcore” vote. They simply have the best controller, and the best multiplayer, and even though I don’t give a shit about Black Ops map packs, having those exclusively for awhile is going to net them tons of money and support. They’re doing fine, and I will continue to use their system over the Playstation 3, mostly because of Nerdpoints, but also because that’s where all my friends are. And that will be back.

Stay tuned for more of me boring you with old news about E3 the next two days! Maybe even three, if I think of stuff not press conference related to say! Won’t you be thrilled?

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is out, and people were saying it was really great! I was like, “Man, I’d like to play a good Metal Gear game again…” and then I realized I had MGS4 just sitting on my shelf, and I had only played the first chapter. Then I played through it and beat it. I’d just like to thank Peace Walker for getting me to beat Guns of the Patriots. Thanks!

Then I’d like to punch Kojima for being so stupid.

Seriously, the ridiculous horribleness of this plot cannot be overstated. Kojima decided that literally every single little stupid thing should be relevant in a really stupid way. Every single character from MGS3 is somehow relevant to this world-wide conspiracy bullshit… it’s just lame.
Here are two minor spoiler examples. The DARPA chief from the original game is SIGINT… just because he had to be involved somehow. Not for any reason reason. Also, Johnny, the guy who exists JUST FOR POOP JOKES gets a ton of time devoted to giving him a happy ending. FOR NO REASON.

What the fuck, Kojima?
Every time a cutscene started, I was overwhelemed by how stupid it was. I mean, MGS has always been a bit over-dramatic, but rarely has it been this in-your-face with stupidity. It beats a player savagely over the head with it for hours on end. Ugh.

When the game actually lets you play, though, it’s really damn fun.

I think my playthrough benefited from having watched that MGS3 LP. It basically showed me how much fun fucking around and not trying to play the game the “right way” with all the sneaking and stuff could be. As such, I actually used guns and killed dudes, and it was a ton of fun running around with the huge arsenal I had, playing with enemies, and being a very old murder machine. With the polygonal head of MGS1 Snake on.

Similarly, the boss fights were a ton of fun, and really well designed. They all took a certain amount of strategy to beat, which was nice. (Granted, since I was playing on easy, I could Kamakaze and dodge some of that strategy if I got annoyed, which was nice as well.) MGS has always done boss fights well, and MGS4 was no exception.

It’s just a shame the game didn’t focus more on the gameplay. I hear that’s what Peace Walker does, and if it can deliver this kind of gameplay without quite as much bullshit, I will be so there. MGS4 doesn’t dethrone MGS3 in any way, but it is pretty solid, if you are willing to skip cutscenes, or go get a snack, or even better, play through with someone else’s save that already has all the guns. Savor each moment of awesome gameplay. It’ll be good, I promise.
Just prepare for Kojima bullshit. Maybe this was his goodbye to such convoluted, unrealistic madness. That’d be cool.

The free version of Eversion has been sitting on my desktop for months. Everyone was telling me I needed to play it, but I continued not to. Probably not out of spite. Probably.
Then it showed up on Steam, and I was making a Steam purchase, and I’m like, eh, okay. So basically, I spent $5 on a game that used to be free that I hadn’t played. I assumed this would get me to play it, and it did. I plugged in my Fight Pad and played through it right then.

So how was it?

First off, I do have to say that I feel like I didn’t get my money’s worth, if I’m just trying to go for value. Yes, I like supporting indie devs, so I’m not mad or anything, but if you were thinking of actually buying the game, I’d wait until the inevitable 1 or 2 dollar Steam sale. At that price, it’s great value, and totally worth it.

Now that I got that negative out of the way, I just want to say that you should play it. The paid version adds some better graphics, achievements, and a few more secrets, if you’re into such things, but the free version would be just fine too. Just give it a try. It’s fun.

The game is based off of a “twist,” and if you’re heard anything about the twist, you know it’s coming. It doesn’t make it any less cool, though. It’s done in a very intelligent way and it does work as advertised, even if you have a good idea that it’s coming. It’s got solid platforming, and a nice style to it. It’s a fun little romp, and if you take the time to collect all the gems and beat the secret last level, it’ll take you a little bit. I think it took me like 3 hours to completely beat the game, but keep in mind that I TOTALLY SUCK at platformers in every way, so your mileage may vary.

It does seem a little split in focus, though. It’s like it can’t decide whether it’s a puzzle platformer, or just a platformer. I suppose it’s a little of both, but it’s actually kind of off-putting to me to have such hard platforming in a puzzle platformer, because the puzzle part means once I figure out what to do, I want to be able to execute it without difficulty, which isn’t always the case in Eversion. Still, I’m probably just a wuss, and I’m sure there are much, much, much harder indie games out there. Just my personal opinion. My personal “sucks at platformers” opinion.

I don’t know what else there is to say about Eversion, so I’m going to stop saying things about Eversion. It’s not perfect, but it’s a fun little indie game, and I like fun little indie games. So there.

I am so good at fucking up rules.

When I played my first game of Thunderstone, I read it as “Go to the Village, Go to the Dungeon, AND Rest every turn.” It’s really “Or.” That’s kind of a big deal.

Still, though, Thunderstone is as advertised, and I was pretty pleased with it.
How was it advertised?
Basically, as Dominion, but with a more clear theme and monster fighting. That’s basically how it works out, too. You’re building up a deck which you shuffle a lot, and you’re killing monsters to earn victory points, which go in your deck and clog it a bit, but you need it to win.

Still, I can see why people really dig Thunderstone over Dominion. It has a much cooler theme, and does seem more well-thought out. However, there are some issues, at least from a first playthrough. As expected, the cards aren’t very easy to read. There are a lot of symbols that aren’t very clear that you have to figure out, which is unfortunate. It’s not Race for the Galaxy bad, but it isn’t great, either. Dominion is much easier to pick up.
The “light” mechanic seems a bit weird, too. Basically, you have three depths of monster you can fight at any time, and there is a light penalty to attack them, which you have to get rid of with light sources. There’s no markers for this light penalty, which seemed to make it hard for people to grasp that it was there. Some sort of play mat to put the monsters on would probably make that clearer. It also just seems weird that it’s there at all. It’s like they were really desperate to make another type of card to buy.
Finally, people claim that the low number of heroes, which everyone needs, that is in every game is a problem. I haven’t played enough to say, but I can definitely say that there was a big shortage of them. I can see people getting annoyed at that. Such shortages aren’t much of a problem in Dominion, because once three piles run out, the game is over. However, in Thunderstone, if nobody is attacking monsters, many piles can run out and the game can still continue for awhile. It makes the shortages a little harder. I feel like this is a feature, and not a bug, but it’s weird.

The biggest problem with Thunderstone, though, is the box. What the fuck were these people thinking? They’ve obviously played Dominion. Why isn’t the box built like that? There’s no good way to sort the huge number of decks in the game in that box, and that is just annoying as fuck. It’s going to make setting up games last much longer than it should, and they should be ashamed for fucking up such an easy, obvious thing.

Still, I had a good time, and I want to play more. Additionally, unlike some claims I’ve read, I don’t think that Dominion is obsolete because of this game. Dominion is “pure,” it is the essence of an idea, and that’s always fun to get back to. It’s easier to pick up and play, and there’s plenty of strategy. Thunderstone, though, has a theme, and more deep mechanics. It’s pulling from the well of Dominion to a different purpose. That’s cool. But it’s a very different beast from Dominion. I think they’ll catch different groups, but I can enjoy both, certainly. Both are fun, but Dominion is lighter, with more variety in what happens, and Thunderstone is more involved and detailed. That’s totally cool.

Anyway, those are my thoughts after a game. We’ll see what I think after I’ve run through all the different cards and stuff after a few more playthroughs.

It’s not easy being a Bard/Rogue with a bow.

For one, sometimes a bunch of lizardpeople attack the town when you’re just trying to get a fucking drink, and you have to shoot them up with arrows. That’s something.

For another, you could be teamed up with a band of misfits who decided to name their adventuring company Balls, LLC.

Yeah, I played DnD again.

I was under the impression we were going to be a big more serious, so I tried to create a character and play it as such. However, Essner made a character who was just named his name, which was really kind of silly, and Spaeth was playing a Shardmind who couldn’t decide if he was British or not. Kenny was silly, but was actually roleplaying, I thought, so awesome. He even had a little voice for his Gnome.

Jonathan did a wonderful job as always. He’s a solid DM. The game itself moved a little slow, though. We were in a single combat for something like 2 hours. Granted, it was supposed to be a huge setpiece, with people of the town being attacked around us, but that long in one fight can grate sometimes, especially with Essner. I didn’t really mind too much. I really enjoyed my Bard Arrow powers. None of them hit hard, (Almost all of them did 1W+CHA) but most of them had really great buffs on them. I especially enjoyed Rewrite the Future, where I’d roll an extra D20 and could assign it to someone’s roll before my next turn.

Everyone was very “Let’s just go kick some ass,” which my character had to keep complaining against. I didn’t see her as a reckless person who took risks for no reason. I spent a lot of my RP time arguing with people at the table. I’m sure that’s probably a good thing, but man, I kept “Inspiring Competence” so that they’d see how stupid their strategy was. I’m unsure it worked.

Still, it was a fun time. Hopefully we can get more done next session, though who knows when that will be. Hopefully soon! I can hope for things!