The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’ve been playing a bit of Mega Man 10. Is that surprising? Not really, especially considering how many points I still have from that Pepsi promotion. I’ve beaten a few robot masters, and a full write-up will probably come at some point. One thing is for certain, though.

I suck at video games.

I owned Mega Man 2 and 3 as a child. I couldn’t beat them consistently, perse, but I could get really damn close most of the time.
When Mega Man 9 came out, I played it and tried it. It was really hard to me. I eventually beat a majority of robot masters, but never got close to beating it. It was too hard for me.
When they announced that Mega Man 10 would have an easy mode, I was excited. Finally, I could just enjoy the retro goodness!

I still die all the time.

There are two modes of “easy.” One is the actual Easy mode, which adds platforms over many bottomless pits and spikes so you have less random deaths. The other is picking Protoman over Mega Man, who can use the slide, charged mega buster, and has a shield to block projectiles. I’m doing both of them, and I’m still dying to pits, platforming segments, and bosses.

It’s honestly just kind of sad.

I know that, in general, all that matters is if I am having fun. And I’m having a good time, sure. No worries. But goodness, especially compared to the people on Talking Time, which are probably destroying the game with their eyes closed on one life at this point, I feel kind of inadequate. That hasn’t stopped me from switching most games I play to easy nowadays, and it won’t in the future. It’s just… especially obvious on games like these, which are so much like hard games I used to not have a lot of problems with.

Yeah, I suck. I admit it. There you go.

I once suggested, casually, that Jonathan try League of Legends. “Oh, it’s like DotA,” I said. “You’d probably enjoy messing around with it.” He said he’d try it.

Now, basically all of his free time is spent playing it. He’s dropped a sum of money on new Champions, and plays at least a game every day, if not more. He’s having a great time.

And I’m along for the ride.

He keeps asking me to play, and I’m more than happy to. Especially when we get on voice chat through Steam and play, it is a ton of fun. I’m finding Champions that fit my play style, and really getting good with them. Just the other day, I went 3/3/5 with Twisted Fate, which I just find completely awesome. (That’s three kills, three deaths, and five assists. I had the lowest death count by a big amount.) I also really have gotten the hang of Taric, who I enjoy every much, even if he has some of the stupidest things to say as he moves about. He fits my play style perfectly, being a strong, heal and buff-based tank.

Every other day or so, Jonathan and I will play a match. We’ll stick together on one lane. Jonathan will give me play advice coming from the fact that he plays all the time, and I’ll play a good game, though certainly a more simple game than some who teleport around the map all the time. It’s… pretty great.
One thing I missed about Jonathan moving out was the fact that we had less time to do things like this. It became a serious schedule issue, and it sort of killed our “us” time. He’s my brother. I want to do this kind of bonding with him. Playing this with him all the time is really doing that for me, and it’s pretty fantastic. Hell, I even re-came out to him while playing LoL. It’s just a great medium for that kind of thing. The fact that it’s fun is just a side benefit.

I have a feeling we’re going to keep playing matches for quite some time. Eventually Jonathan will move on, and I’ll not be interested without him to constantly talk about it and draw me in. But you know what? That’s okay. We’re having a great time, and that’s the important part.

Last week, Spaeth, Jonathan and I did our first foray in to MUA2, also known as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. Now, I hadn’t really heard much about the game. I very much enjoyed playing through the first one with my brother, where I was the Invisible Woman for no reason whatsoever, so I wanted to check it out. People at work had talked about how they took a lot of the RPG elements out of the game, and that it made it a worse experience, but these were also people who thought Transformers 2 was an amazing film. Enjoy working with them, love them, but don’t really trust their taste, perse. This was all the information I had going into the game.

After the first session, it’s pretty clear we’re going to keep playing it, but there are some very strange decisions being made here.

First off, the camera is kind of awful. It is zoomed in much, much closer than it was in the first MUA, and in the X-men Legends before it. It seems clear they expected this game to be played with four people online, not offline like we were doing. That’s just stupid, though, as that offline, all on the couch co-op was the whole appeal for the first few games for me. It’s not impossible to get over, much like the weirdness with the menus in Borderlands split-screen, but it does seem like sort of a stupid move.

Secondly, they really did strip out most of the RPG elements. You still gain experience and put points in powers. However, in previous games, you had four buttons to assign powers to, and at least 6, if not more, powers to choose from. Now, some are obviously more effective than others, but you still had the ability to spec out characters in ways that fit your gameplay style. For example, the Invisible Woman had a bunch of powers based upon stealth and crowd control, which I completely ignored to make her into a long distance caster for whatever reason. There’s no options of that sort in this game. The Invisible Woman has four powers she learns, and while you can prioritize some, it puts arbitrary blocks in your way to make you bring the other powers up to speed before putting more points into them. You don’t have very much control over builds.
Similarly, they’ve gotten rid of loot drops and equipment. Instead, the entire team has a set of “Boosts” that give their bonus to everyone. You can only equip three. This is a stupid idea, because a nuker like Gambit or my pointlessly beloved Susan Storm needs bonuses to power strength, MP regen, and things like that, whereas brawlers like Jonathan’s Superhero Black Man Luke Cage need bonuses to melee combos and things like heath siphoning and whatnot. It would make sense to have a varied team, but it punished you for it, by making you gimp characters you aren’t prioritizing with your Boosts. It’s kind of silly.

Thirdly, and this is an Invisible Woman only problem, they made her little grabby ball do stupid things. Her basic power lets you either charge up a force ball, or grab someone in said force ball and then toss them away. It’s really fun to use! However, the force ball is huge on the screen. I have to hold it in place to aim, and, for no apparent reason, it blocks projectiles from other heroes. Spaeth was playing Gambit, and this huge-ass ball would block his cards. Why they would make a character that actively hampered the usefulness of other characters is beyond me. Maybe they never expected anyone to play the Invisible Woman. Well, I showed them!

The last weird decision I want to point out is the conversation system. This has dialog trees like Mass Effect or something. But they are so bad. They zoom in on character faces which were only designed to be seen from above. They look so plastic and fake, it’s kind of hilarious. There’s also a questionably-defined morality system where you can respond “Aggressive,” “Diplomatic,” or “Defensive.” You apparently get different bonuses for favoring one over the other, but it’s not really clear in the game what you’re getting from it, and if it would actually affect the plot in any way. Plus, you just have to laugh as your character stands there, motionless, not emoting at all. It’s so bad.

Still, in the end, brawling through the stages with your friends is a lot of fun. The varied power combo system is much better than the generic bullshit in the first few games, and it really makes you strategically use combo powers, instead of it just being a happy accident once and awhile. I like that. And, hell, getting a bunch of people together on a couch to punch things is just fun, period. Maybe not fun for hours and hours, but great for a short session of fun. So, you know, we’ll probably give it another time or two before I send it back. Why not? SOMEONE has to use the Invisible Woman.

There was a new magic set that came out. Fuck if you can tell by looking at the Magic website, though. It is impossible to find information on that thing. Still, we somehow managed to decipher the cryptic runes on the page and determine that Worldview, the latest of the Zanarkand block, was out, and purchased many a pack for a draft.

Impressions: Multikicker is a fine, if unexciting ability. I mean, I liked my Angel that healed me 2 life every time I kicked her. (Which is just a wonderful way to say that, isn’t it?) She saved my ass a few times. But it’s certainly not something one should build a deck around perse. It’s just nice to have. Landfall continues to be decent, and the Allies continue to be completely stupid. Essner had two, count ’em, two of this ally, and it was just so ridiculous. It would be significantly worse if he was running a deck more equipped to take advantage of them. Yeah, I don’t really like how broken the Allies are.

Still, the draft went well. As per usual, it seems, I went with a White-based deck which focused on evasion and flyers. I was augmented by having some really, really good removal in Ioun’s Judgment, which I had gotten two copies of. I was also given an advantage in that apparently everyone else at the table was trying to force Black, and more specifically, Vampires. So they were fighting over black, and I had my pick of White and somewhat of Blue.

We ended up with a three-way tie, though. Essner was the only one who failed! Those occultists were powerful, and when he got them online, they were pretty unstoppable. But without them, his deck kind of fizzled. Spants’ Black/Blue deck had some really annoying and solid creatures, including a tapper that untapped every time you played a land, which was frustrating. Jonathan had a solid Red/Black deck with lots of burn. The highlight of which was him killing me with a land. That stung a bit.

I think what we all learned from the draft, though, was that… we like drafting. Building constructed decks is very, very time-consuming at this point. There’s joy to be found in it, but it’s a lot of work, and certainly isn’t something you want to attempt very often. With drafts, you get all that joy, as well as removing the “oh, he’s playing THAT deck, I’m screwed” element out of the playing field. It’s just a damn good time.
Almost a shame we can only find an excuse every few months when a new deck comes out. Oh well.

Okay, that sounded bad.

This is my spoilarful discussion of Mass Effect 2 day. If you want a non-spoilar, mechanical review, you’re looking for yesterday’s post.

Okay? All ready for Spoilarz? Neat.

It’s kind of amazing the amount of time Bioware invested in making your decisions from last game carry over to this one. I mean, I’m not going to replay the game four times just to see how things change. I’m not that kind of person. But it’s really neat knowing that things I did years ago in the original Mass Effect actually are impacting the world. A lot of times, it’s only little tricks, like getting an e-mail if you completed one of the side missions, but it’s really effective in making you feel like your game is continuing. I liked it a lot.

The overall plot, though, was only okay. I agree with some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to. I feel like the game lacked something by not having a real face to the threat you were trying to fight off. There was a “collector threat” for the whole game, but in reality, the focus was completely on building your team and making them happy. You looked inward, not outward to the “suicide mission” you were supposed to be undertaking.
This is only emphasized when you face down the last boss, which is really just kind of stupid. I really don’t know why I was fighting a giant terminator. I mean, Brer went on and on trying to explain it and blah blah blah, but no, it was just lame. You can explain it, sure, but they didn’t in the game, and so it leaves you with a weird feeling. The basic concept that Reapers are part machine and part flesh, and need to harvest flesh to reproduce? That’s a great, great concept. That makes them scarier, and puts forth the idea that they may have motives and aren’t just this deadly force. The idea that the reaper has to look like the flesh it’s harvesting? Makes no sense whatsoever. Annoyed me. Didn’t ruin the game in any respect, though. Just seems like they could have done better.

The characters in this game, I think, were very well done. Having very unique missions to help out every single one of them really helps to flesh them out. I connected with all of them in some respect, I think. Even characters that you worry won’t be interest, like, say, a certain Badass Biotic Bitch, are really well written. You may not end up liking them, but you can at least understand why they are they way they are. They aren’t caricatures for the most part, which is really wonderful, especially when they have so many characters to choose from.
The downside, though, is that you really go through what they have to tell you pretty fast. Any time I did anything in Mass Effect 1, I felt like everyone on my ship had a new conversation to have with me. In this one, each character only has so many. Once you’ve gone through them, they no longer want to talk to you, or just say the same things over and over. It makes it so after you have their loyalty, you’re kind of told just to ignore them, and frankly, I don’t like that, especially with Garrus. I wanted to have sex with him (which I will get to in a second) and I wanted to keep talking to him, hear what he had to say, but eventually he kept cycling through this same conversation where I could let him down about the sex if I wanted to have some of the intercourse with someone else, and so I stopped going to see him.

In any case, as far as favorite characters go, Garrus is definitely up there. He was one of my favorites from the first game, all confused about justice in a world where following the rules often gets you less justice. I loved that he was back, and I loved that he was fuckable. He’s been through a lot since the last game. He’s lightened up in some ways, and also found the huge burden that Shepard is carrying around as the leader. He’s made mistakes, and he wants to stop making them and do some good, and this character arc plays into his romance arc. He never thought about having sex with a human, and has no idea how to do it, but he wants to connect with you and make you happy, because he trusts you so much. So he is incredibly nervous, and tries way too hard, because he doesn’t want to ruin yet another thing. And then you tell him that it’s not a big deal, he isn’t going to ruin this. Then the sex. It… actually means something. The sex in the other game didn’t really mean anything. This was a sensible end to Garrus’s character arc, and it was completely awesome because of it.

The other character I really took to, and probably would have romanced if Garrus wasn’t there, was Kelly. I loved Kelly. She was flirty in a fun, not obnoxious way, and she had a personal philosophy that I agreed with. She had a quote that could have word for word come from my mouth, which was something like “Gender, Race, Species, anything like that doesn’t matter. It’s their consciousness that matters.” That was the moment where I knew I was right to like her. Heh. But yeah, not only did I find her an interesting person, and a nice change from the more military-style people on the ship (not that that doesn’t make sense, but you know) but she also served an extremely useful purpose in game and served to make your crew being captured really hit home, because she was no longer there to connect with. She was pretty well the perfect character. I loved it.

Anyway, I’ve written tons about Mass Effect 2 now. It’s safe to say I like it, right? Because I liked it.

Sometimes it’s so hard to come up with good title jokes.

But no, seriously, Mass Effect 2: Amazing, amazing game. Possibly game of the year. I can’t think of anything else that’s likely going to knock it off. Then again, I didn’t expect Red Faction: Guerrilla last year, so who knows. Still, the game is completely worth your time, even if you aren’t the sort who likes RPGs, because it’s gotten away from that significantly. It’s not a competent third person shooter that has choices you make which matter. Also, you get to have sex with people. But I’m so glad Gamefly randomly sent me the game on launch day so I could play it.

Basically, as I said, it’s just a third person shooter. They’ve tightened the cover stuff from the first game, added ammo, and given classes who don’t have a special weapon a submachine gun to help them out, as well as the concept of the “heavy weapon,” which are things like rocket launchers. In the first game, I mostly rushed out of cover to get my AI partners to get out in front of me, firing like crazy, then went and hit before I did another rush. It felt kind of stupid: I was playing Infiltrator, which was supposed to be a sniper, but I couldn’t snipe because my squadmates couldn’t be told to get out there so I could hold back. The AI is much, much, much better in this game. I had the option to order everyone around, but I rarely did it, because they did useful things without me trying to micromanage them. Occasionally I would tell a character to switch to a Sniper Rifle or something, but otherwise I left them alone, and they were a huge help.
The combat was also very different because I changed class. I loved Infiltrator because I had more armor than an Engineer in the first game, but had access to all the tech spells, which I very much enjoyed. I spent most of the game casting Overload and Overheat. In this game, they actually made Infiltrator a class which could infiltrate, giving them a cloak and such. This didn’t seem like the sort of character I wanted to play, so I went ahead and switched to full Engineer. I feel like it was the right choice: due to it being more shooter-y, I didn’t feel gimped at all by my smaller selection of weapons, and my spells were so useful, I’d often go through combats without firing a shot. I’d send out AI Drones and just maneuver to cast Incinerate over and over, and since my squadmates were smart now, they’d finish off everyone I weakened. It really made me feel like I was commanding the battlefield like I wanted to.

People are saying the scanning/mining minigame is the worst part of the game, and it probably is. But it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll take it over driving around aimlessly on the Mako any day. You can mostly refill your various resources with just a few minutes of flying around and mining, and you’re often rewarded for doing so with side missions. If you’re not obsessive about always having those resource meters full, it won’t take all that long to get the resources you need for an upgrade you want. I just put on a podcast during those parts and had no problem. Just do buy the scanning speed upgrade for your ship. It makes it so much less tedious.

Bioware really did it. They kept everything that makes their RPGs so much fun to play, and refined the gameplay of the first game into an actually fun shooter. It’s excellent, and I’m right on board with the third game. Hopefully since they finished this gameplay overhaul, it won’t take them as long to get the story stuff on board for the third game. I can cross my fingers anyway.

Now come back tomorrow for spoilarz and such, hm? I’ve got to talk about characters and plot.

I’ve probably put way too much brain processing power into the sex element of Mass Effect 2.

I mean it. I’ve been thinking more about the logistics of having sex with Garrus, about how that’s going to affect Shepard’s relationship with Liara, and if I can get Kelly involved in some three way action basically more than the actual plot. I mean, I guess some people are getting abducted or something? But that’s just the battlefield where love can bloom, apparently. That’s not what I’m thinking about.

This is just another reason why I should never, ever be in charge of people in tense situations. Because I would worry about these inter-personal relationships more than, perhaps, what’s going on. Okay, I suppose it depends on what the actual goal is. If it’s something stressful, which I’d want to get away from, you better believe I would focus on such things instead.

But seriously, I’m spending way more time thinking about the fact that Garrus said “if we can figure out how to make it work” and what that means for the actual sex. What kind of weird alien cock are we talking about here, where it’s some sort of issue? It’s almost a Yoda’s Penis sort of situation, although Garrus is certainly a more attractive alien than Yoda. Would clearly be better in bed, I would guess, even if you took force powers into consideration. I bet he would be a biter. See, look at me. Thinking about these things.

It really is almost two different games for me. One’s a shooter with some RPG elements which is fun, and then the other is this weird dating/life sim where I’m talking to people and learning their histories and things. It’s so disconnected. I would like each game by themselves. But I’m engrossed in both. I dunno.

Space fucking, you know?
Apparently hot.

With the idea that my body will soon be something that, perhaps, I don’t despise to the very core of my being, I have started thinking that, maybe, I need to take care of myself a little. Granted, I’m not going to go all crazy with it. I can balance, say, the health benefits of not enjoying candy now and again versus the benefits of doing so, and doing so wins out every time. I’m going to drink my caffeine drinks and eat what I want. Going without just doesn’t seem like a good plan.
Still, my body is now something I may want to keep, so I have started looking into maintenance, like exercise. I am too crazy busy to go to a gym or whatever. The thought of making time for that just makes me depressed. I looked for other, lower-impact solutions, and I ended up picking up Personal Trainer: Walking, the most X-treem walking game you’ve ever seen for your Nintendo DS.

Okay, so it’s not really very X-treem. It’s full of that kind of mostly bullshit Japanese philosophy about things you see in stuff like Brain Age. Apparently I’m walking so that I can have a proper “life rhythm.” Yeah. Okay. Sure. You also do things like put stamps on a calendar and get your life rhythm measured every day. (Mine tends to be Evening Horse style, apparently.) None of that is very useful.
Also, it’s not a game in any way. It’s mostly a program for tracking data over time and giving you little goals. These goals are kind of silly, too. I think my daily “mini target” is to “make a comfortable, friendly environment for those around me.” Yay? Really useful in keeping you walking and stuff, huh?

But again, that’s not the point. The point is that the activity meter that you just keep loose in your pocket keeps a fairly active count of your steps as you move around and exercise. It keeps track of active periods and calm periods, and it has a little LED on it. If it’s red, you haven’t met your daily step goal. If it’s green, you have. I actually like this vagueness. It keeps me going longer than when I hit green, because I don’t know how much more I have to walk. I currently have my goal set to 5,000 steps, but you can set it to whatever you want in the game, or have to set it to your average steps over a long period of time.
The game comes with two activity meters, so you can compete with a friend or significant other or something. I gave the other one to my Mom. Talking to her about it seems to have spurred her to be more active, too, so that’s good. Of course, I’m doing a lot more than her.

I really like Personal Trainer: Walking. It’s giving me a reason to walk more, and I’ve been doing so, walking while reading assignments, always taking the stairs, and so on. That’s a good thing. It’s not going to get me super-healthy, but at least I’m doing a bit better than I was. For the cost, I very much recommend it. Combine it with a Pokewalker when Heart Gold and Soul Silver comes out, as I plan to, and you have some serious Watts you’ll be earing, let me tell you!

I have played some Split-Screen 360 Borderlands!
It leaves something to be desired.

For one, you can’t do system link split-screen or online split-screen, so my dreams of buying a second copy and setting two people up in Spants’ room and two up in Jonathan’s were dashed. Still, I’m glad I found that out before I wasted the money on it.

Secondly, the split-screen is really oddly implemented. Basically, it doesn’t resize the menus for you having half the screen. They’re the same size, and you basically have to move the camera around to look at the whole menu with the right stick. It’s kind of the experience of using Mobile Safari while you’re really zoomed in. It’s incredibly sub-par. I mean, it works, but it feels so very, very pasted on. You often can’t see what item your cursor is on or near because you had to move your camera down to where the item information box is. It’s really weird.

Still, it luckily doesn’t hinder one of the very best games of last year enough for anyone to care. It’s still a ton of fun in Co-op. I’ve only really played a Soldier, so I rolled a Hunter this time, since I sniped so damn much as a Soldier anyway, while my brother rolled a Siren. We both ended up really liking what we were doing. Jonathan enjoyed the Shadowwalking or whatever the Siren ability is called… internet search says it’s “Phasewalk.” Okay then. Phasewalk. Jonathan was really digging that, and he was murdering everything with shotguns.

Me? Well, I had heard a lot of questionable things about Bloodwing, the birdie that the hunter throws out as his ability. So, of course, I was dedicated to using the “Rogue” tree, since Pandora apparently exists in an alternate world where “Rogue” means “Bird-trainer.” Luckily, though, I ended up really liking the skill. Swipe is really quite awesome, I’m going to love when he steals health starting next level, and I enjoy the fact that it recharges amazingly fast. At least compared to the Soldier skill, anyway, which took a very, very long time to get up and running. With the Hunter, I can start any combat by critting someone with my sniper rifle, and then throwing out Bloodwing to take out a guy running for me while I snipe the other one. Plus, constantly using abilities is just a nice change of pace, since I’ve obviously shot all the guns in the game a ton when I was beating the game on PC.

But yeah, Borderlands: Still fucking awesome. I’m so fucking busy, I don’t know when I’ll get in another session with Jonathan, but I do hope we make it happen. It’s good times.

Take a moment, and listen to some of the music of Halo 3: ODST right now. Listen to this, and this, and this.

You’ve basically experienced the best part of the game, in my opinion.

Seriously, that soundtrack is amazing. It takes a game series where my brother and I, when playing through it, would yell “GUNS! WE MUST SHOOT OUR GUNS AT THINGS THAT ARE BAD” during cutscenes and dialog because that was all that was going on. It takes a game that is basically that, and makes it intensely atmospheric.
Then, of course, you get into the flashbacks and you have more normal fare. Alright, but not mind-blowing.

Other than the music, though? I dunno.

Playing so much Halo 3 with the Talking Tyrants was a shit-ton of fun, but it made me intimately familiar with the workings of all the weapons in Halo 3. This caused me to hate them so much. Maybe you can only pick Halo or Call of Duty, but if that’s the case, I’ll pick CoD every time, because your weapons feel powerful. Sure, it’s a LITTLE arcade-y. People still take more damage than they actually do. But if you snipe them, it’s one shot. You can kill a person with less than one clip of ammo with all but the weakest pistols against the heaviest-armored opponents, and even then you can negate that bonus by getting headshots. Compare that to the Halo Assault Rifle, where it takes at least 2 clips to kill another player. It’s just so frustrating and stupid to attack people in Halo. It makes me mad that I can get the jump on somebody and lose, because it takes so many shots.

And so, through all the matches, I began to loathe all Halo weapons. Odious Tea did nothing to negate that.

The game really makes me wish that Bungie had gotten to create something else. The game does a shockingly-good job of being atmospheric in the Rookie segments. It feels like a game I want to play. But then I come upon some Covenant and it becomes a game I’ve played to death and is really annoying to me. I really couldn’t get over it as I played. It was so frustrating. A non-Halo game like this I would probably fall in love with.

Still, I was going to hold out up until I learned that Bungie hates people playing their game the way they want to. I have never played a Halo game by myself, and yet I was going to play Odious Tea in that way. I die constantly on Normal in Co-op, so, of course, to play alone I set it to easy, to which I was greeted with a description that “the game basically plays itself.” Thanks, Bungie. Needed that insult. But I continue on anyway, until I realize that I am not getting a lot of achievements. I check them. Apparently you can get the achievements on anything BUT easy. Any other difficulty, but they don’t allow easy for absolutely no damn reason for achievements that are just “Beat Level 1,” “Beat Level 2,” etc. I’m not a complete achievement whore, but I do very much like achievements. I like earning them. They do give me incentive to keep going. I was very pissed Bungie so desperately wanted me not to play their game the way I wanted that they removed that incentive from me.
So after that big fuck you from Bungie, I didn’t feel like pressing through the mechanics I didn’t like any more. I sent it back.

If you can still stomach Halo combat, I bet ODST would be a really, really damn good experience. It’s certainly paying much better attention to story. But it’s pretty obvious it’s not for me.