The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I had heard that Pilotwings Resort was easy, breezy, and fun, but that it was really short and not worth money. That seemed like a perfect rental, don’t you think? So I grabbed it! And then it was a thing.

I don’t know. I mean, I played the shit out of Pilotwings 64, although maybe that was a “this is the one game I have” sort of situation, and I’m so fucking casual now that surely, I thought, the game would appeal to my lazy, fucking about sensibilities. Doing little tests, flying about, and so on while listening to podcasts sounded like it would be up my alley at this point.

But the game is just so boring. The tasks I was doing were simple: precision gets you a higher score, but I couldn’t give a fuck about that, and I was bringing all the skills I’d need to complete these missions to the table as I played them with no practice. There are just long stretches where you just watch your plane or whatever fly forward, and you aren’t really doing anything to do better or worse. I mean, yeah, that’s flying, but I don’t know. Wuhu Island is not a location I care about. I don’t want to see all of its pretty sights, because I saw them all fucking around in Wii Sports Resort and it was never particularly visually interesting anyway.

Yeah, I just don’t know. I guess someone who picked up one of these because they liked the Wii would probably enjoy it? But it just wasn’t doing anything for me. Like, I couldn’t even turn on the 3D because it made me feel PRETTY ILL the moment I did it. It just seemed… okay. Bland. And certainly not anything I wanted to play anymore.

So I stopped playing it!

Let’s finish up with all these Skylander reviews, hm? Again, most of my experience with these Skylanders has been in the 3DS version of the game.

Slam Bam: This big Yeti man’s name is not… too… terrible? I mean, considering most Skylander names. For a melee character, he is also pretty great. He’s a little slow, but he hits really hard, and when you finish a combo with him, he does a ground pound that can hit a whole group of enemies, which is helpful when he starts to get surrounded. His secondary attack summons a block of ice: this is mostly useless, although when you level it up, you can break it with his punches to stun surrounding enemies, so that’s kind of nice, I suppose. But seriously, he hits hard enough to make him fairly worthwhile as a melee character, and he has TONS of HP in order to take the hits he’s going to take up close. He’s actually pretty good. A great bonus to get with the Empire of Ice Adventure Pack. Also, when he gets in water in the 360 version, he surfs on an ice surfboard. So.

Ignitor: What Ignitor has going for him is that his attacks with his fire sword swing in large arcs, letting you hit two or three enemies at once. The damage is decent, and he can control crowds this way. His secondary attack lets out a little will ‘o wisp or something similar which homes in on nearby enemies and inflicts a DoT, which is nice because you can easily make use of it while focusing on his normal melee hits. He’s a pretty useful melee character, to be sure.
Side note: since the 3DS version comes with him, Stealth Elf, and Dark Spyro, it’s weird to see Dark Spyro suddenly become the most useful in that group because he’s the only one with a dedicated distance attack out of the three. In the 360 set, Gill Grunt just kind of blows Spyro away in effectiveness, and Trigger Happy is still way more useful than him in most situations. It’s interesting. Well, to me, I guess.

Terrafin: Coming with the Pirate Seas Adventure Pack, Terrafin is a land shark, which is still a cool idea, so I will give it that. I gave him a fez to wear, and he looked awesome. So that’s cool, right? Anyway, he’s pretty middle of the road. His melee attacks are okay, but nothing to write home about. Being able to run around under ground and attack people is cool, but has less application than you’d think, and I found his little earthquake attack completely useless, at least in the 3DS game. I mean, you can potentially hit a group with that earthquake, but it takes a second to go off and I found myself missing all the time. Eh, again, he’s not bad, but he’s not going to be one of your front line people.

Whirlwind: I like Whirlwind. She’s awesome. I mean, she shoots FUCKING RAINBOWS. I had to have her when I learned that! The Rainbows arc, so they can hit enemies up high, too, so that’s nice. They’re also pretty damaging and you can rapid fire them, making them a pretty effective attack overall! Her secondary attack is letting out a little storm cloud. On the surface, this seems like it would be useless, but if you release it at an enemy who has gotten in too close, it knocks them back and does a ton of damage. I actually found it pretty useful, especially against beefier enemies who would get hit multiple times by the cloud as it stuck around for awhile. Whirlwind is aces. Highly recommended for your Air Skylander.

Double Trouble: The main problem with Double Trouble is that there’s no way you DON’T have a Magic Skylander, no matter what version of the game you’re playing. You’ll always have a Spyro. That makes him less useful out of the gate. However, as stupid as he looks, I really ended up liking Double Trouble. He’s not so much better than Spyro for you to consider him if you’re Skylanding on a budget, but he was pretty fun. For one, in the 3DS version, he has a Princess Peach-style hover jump, which makes it easy to get around. His main attack, a little lightning shot, lets you circle strafe like Drill Sergeant. Granted, it’s not quite as good at homing as Drill Sergeant, so it’s not quite as easy to do, but it also does a lot more damage, so it works out. His secondary ability is to throw little clones of himself out, which run around and deal damage. Throwing two of those out at the start of a battle is a no brainer, and when you upgrade them, the little clones can do things like light enemies on fire for a DoT. Yeah, I like him.

Well, I’ve now reviewed like a million Skylanders. Which one is my favorite overall? It’s still Dino-Rang. I fucking LOVE Dino-Rang. He’s still obscenely stupid in a lovable way, and his attacks, especially if you branch down the Boomerang path, are just extremely versatile and damaging. Yeah, so, if I were to recommend one extra Skylander, it would be him.

Okay, enough of these reviews for now. Well, at least until Giants comes out.

Back in my birthday times, I had a boyfriend get me a present! It was clearly the best game of all time, because it was a game involving collecting sexy maids and placing them in your private chamber to increase your amount of “service.” It is called Tanto Cuore. It is a game that I own. It’s pretty fun.

Tanto Cuore is basically Dominion. It came out in the waves of deck-building games that hit when Dominion became popular. However, there are several twists on the formula in the game that I rather like, which make it feel fairly different from a normal Dominion game. Let me go over them now.

First off, there is a mechanic where you can move maids from your deck into your “Private chamber” by burning actions. Once they’re in your chamber, they count towards victory, but they aren’t in your deck. It’s sort of like Island from the Seaside expansion. Not all maids can do this, but a lot of them can. The best part is the “Estates” of the game are maids that can do this. Moving those starting “Estates” out of your deck is awesome, even if it does cost 2 actions, which is a big setback. It also lets you stock up on little cards with small benefits early, then tug them out of your deck so you can use your big cards more often as the game progresses. It’s a nice little mechanic that doesn’t require you to always have to have certain “deck thinning” cards out for people to use.

Secondly, there are so many alternate ways to get victory points than just buying flat victory point cards! So many cards have little bonuses attached to them if you collect certain things. There’s a set of three “Crescent Sisters” who give you a point bonus for every full set of them you have. The “Estate” card, Colette Framboise (Did I mention I love how fucking ridiculous all the card names in this are, too? I love it.) gives you a 5 point bonus if you own more of her than any other player, which actually gives you a reason to buy “estates.” Ophelia Grail will either be worth extra positive VP or negative VP depending on if you have an even or odd number of her card in your deck. And so on. There’s way more strategy variety because there are more ways to rack up VP than “Buy Gold, Buy Province” in every permutation of the cards.

Third, they have this deck of “Private Maids.” You only deal two of them out at a time to buy, at random, and they are essentially buffs. Are the constant buffs worth spending your money on, instead of cards? You get to decide, but what Private Maids show up in the game drastically changes it. It’s pretty cool!

Finally, there is way more interaction between players in this game. It is SUPER EASY to attack players. In Dominion, attacking normally involved investing so many resources in attack cards that, in my experience, you ended out screwing yourself out of getting enough victory points. In this game, two Love (the “gold” resource) gets you a Bad Habit (a Curse) to throw on any player. If a player has 4 or more Bad Habits, they are worth -2 instead of -1. It’s trivial to use an extra buy to attack an opponent, or still do something useful on a turn with a shitty draw by playing a Bad Habit. It helps make a bad turn not so bad, and makes attacking a much, much more viable option, especially in card configurations with more buys on the board in general.

Seriously, it’s just a really fun “variant” of Dominion, and the flavor is totally stupid in an awesome way. Well, if you can laugh at the ridiculousness of Japanese Maid Fetishes or whatever. I mean, just by hearing the premise, you know if you’re going to like the flavor. I think it adds to the game, and the art is nice. I will definitely play more, and I’m interested in the expansions, but damn, are they expensive. This game is kind of expensive! Oh well. Give it a try if you can. It’s nice.

Time for some SKYLANDER REVIEWS! Most of these I’ve only played with in the 3DS version, so keep that in mind, as the ability to jump makes melee characters a bit more viable in that version.

Drill Sergeant: Man, was I wrong about this guy. He looks so stupid, but he is really strong and really effective in combat. His standard drill missile attack is just fine, and does some decent damage. However, his little head cannon attack is just phenomenal. It tracks enemies, so you can effectively circle strafe, which is really powerful in this game, it turns out! Really powerful! The individual shots are not strong, but you can easily weaken enemies and then finish them off with the drills. It’s hard to recommend another Tech guy, since Drobot is fucking DROBOT, but he has been one of my go-to Skylanders playing through this new version, since I decided to not use my old guys much for a new experience.

Ghost Roaster: Really stupid name, and he looks pretty dumb to boot. Seriously, a lot of the Skylanders are kind of dumb, but I can understand the appeal? I don’t know who Ghost Roaster would appeal to. The other Undead Skylanders just look so much cooler, and if you’re going to use a melee character for your Undead, it just seems like Chop Chop’s shield would be the better go-to. Maybe that’s why he’s the pack-in with the Darklight Crypt, instead of his own dude to buy. Anyway, his attacks are fine. He has a decent melee attack, but it just doesn’t do as much damage as other dedicated melee characters. I really like his other attack, though. He summons two spirits, and you can send them at enemies to “possess” them and do a DoT. That’s pretty awesome. You can also consume them to do this skull charge thing, but I found that much less useful. Most of the time I did that by accident, and then had to summon more spirits, which was annoying. The possession, though, gives him some viability at a distance, as you can hit two guys with that and then sneak in to finish them with the melee. Again, he’s alright, but I’m pretty sure another Undead Skylander would be better.

Stealth Elf: Pretty useless. Her invisibility just isn’t something this game really has any use for. In the 360 game, she creates a little doppelganger that gets attacked, which is kind of sort of marginally more useful, but in the 3DS game she just goes invisible when she runs. So, uh, yeah. She can throw knives, which does like no damage but if you’re desperate for some distance attack, it’s there. Her knife combos don’t do any damage unless you land the whole thing. The final hit does a lot of damage, but you have to hit like 3 other weak attacks for that to connect. This makes her garbage in groups, and guess what! Most of the time you’re fighting groups. I will give her the up over Stump Smash, my other Life Skylander, though. She’s agile, which lets her get around quick, at least. Stump Smash has a lot of the same combat problems, looks more stupid, and is slow as shit. So… yeah.

Flameslinger: His attacks just aren’t fast enough for a distance character! They’re okay, I guess, but not being able to just fucking jam on the button, like, say, Trigger Happy, or just hold it down, like Drobot or Drill Sergeant’s cannon, just makes him harder to use. His rain of arrows attack is fine, but it’s really slow, and unlike, say, Hex’s skull rain, you can’t level him up to, say, run around while he’s charging it, because it doesn’t home in. It’s really unfortunate. However, his run, which leaves a trail of fire behind him, is shockingly useful. Since enemies, for the most part, just follow you blindly, it’s really easy to deal them some serious damage by kiting them along with that fire trail. This is pretty well what saves him, for me. Middle of the road, and harder to use than a lot of Skylanders, but I can’t say I didn’t derive some pleasure out of burning the stupid idiots who ran after me.

Dark Spyro: He’s just Spyro! To be honest, I haven’t used him. Because he’s just Spyro. Who I have already used. If I am wrong, and Dark Spyro has different abilities or something, please let me know, somebody!

More Skylander Reviews forthcoming. Also a review of the 3DS game, when I finally beat the last two frustrating levels. Whee.

I got my mother playing Draw Something, and she seems to be having fun! So I went onto the app store to see if there was anything else we could play that she’d enjoy. While I was there I stumbled across this thing in the featured apps called Saturday Morning RPG. It was supposedly an RPG based on 80’s cartoons. I could dig that. It was using a fairly standard structure for apps now, where the first episode was free, then you buy more, so I went ahead and played the first episode.

It was okay? It was okay.

The battle system is kind of a combination of a, say, Grandia style system, where the attacks you pick affect how soon you act, and a Mario RPG system, with little minigames for more damaged and timed defense presses. It was a pretty good battle system for a light and breezy RPG you’d play on your phone.
The battle system goes like this. You see an enemy on the field, and get into a battle. You scratch Scratch-n-sniff stickers before battle to give you buffs in a little minigame. You can swap and equip these stickers to give you access to whatever buffs you want, but the order you scratch them in is randomized, so you may not always get to the ones you want to use. Then the fight proper starts.
You have three main actions. Punch is your default attack. It does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and is useless to try to use unless the enemy has, like, 2 HP left. Then you have a charge option, which lets you burn MP for a DBZ-style charge up to deal more damage on your next attack. This is the only use of your MP, and your MP recharges slowly over time in battle. Finally, you can use your items, which are basically little spells. Each spell has a set number of uses each battle, and you can only equip five. They’re 80’s references of a sort, for the most part. You can make guys explode with a Care Bear Stare, or trample them with Fruit Stripe Gum Zebras, for example. Each attack has a speed associated with it, and may or may not require passing a minigame in order to be effective. For example, when giving a Thundercats Ho! with your Sword of Omens, you have to do some rapid tapping to charge up the attack in order to deal the most damage. That’s a fast attack, though. The Care Bear Stare, which does a similar amount of damage as a fully-tapped Sword of Omens attack, doesn’t have a minigame, but is a lot slower.

Anyway, the battle system is simple, but keeps your attention. It’s fun. The rest of the game is kind of bad.

The entire premise is great. Fighting 80’s cartoon villain analogues with silly reference attacks is a good idea! But the problem is, it’s a good idea if it’s funny, and being funny requires writing. I was flat-out shocked at how there is basically NO dialog in this game. It’s ridiculous. There needs to be either 80’s cartoon writing that’s funny on its own ridiculousness, or you need to crank the references up so they’re smart and witty. Having a quest that just quotes this PSA and does absolutely nothing with it is just a huge waste of time. Was this just a group of programmers without a writer? If so, that’s a shame. They should find someone who can write some really entertaining dialog. That needs to be the basis of this, seriously.

Anyway, feel free to try the free episode if you want. Personally, there was nothing in it to make me want to buy the next one for a dollar, but maybe that’s just me. Maybe it’s fun enough. I don’t know. I just know I was a bit let down that the writing didn’t live up to the premise. Oh well.

Okay, so, I’m part of the problem. I’m really enjoying Draw Something.

I had seriously the worst luck, too. I bought the paid version for the game for a buck literally A DAY before Zynga bought OMGPOP. I am the worst. (Yes, I bought the paid version. I really get frustrated with ads, especially in a game like this where you need all the screen real estate you can get for doodling. It’s worth a buck to me to not have that. Plus, you start with a bunch of coins in the paid version which let me start with a color pack which makes the game much less frustrating.)

I’ve heard why this game is so popular talked about before, and it’s true: this game works because it is anti-competitive. There’s no time limits. You aren’t competing with who you’re playing with. It’s just you and your opponent trying to juggle a combo back and forth for as long as you can by not having any missed guesses. You can take forever to draw, and forever to guess. You can make as many wrong guesses as you want, you just have to eventually get it right, or give up and pass. There’s no stress. It’s just fun.

And I mean, fuck, doodling in general is fun. I suck at art, clearly. But it’s still fun to try to be creative when I doodle a little picture, and come up with an interesting way to get my friends to guess what’s going on. It’s nice. It’s also nice that I’m playing on an iPad with a stylus. That’s kind of cheating, as most of the people I am playing with are playing on phones, but it also makes it so I can have more fun playing the game, so I’m not going to complain.

There are certainly some things about the game that suck. Often you will get clues that are multiple words, but the game will not separate them or anything, so you end up with something like lordoftherings or something stupid like that. It just makes it all more complicated for absolutely no reason. It’s also kind of frustrating sometimes when people write words. The people I play with are normally pretty good about that, but I did try playing some random games and people would just write the fucking word on the screen after they drew, or if they had a hard word, just write the word in general. Way to drain all the fun out of the game and miss the point entirely, assholes.

Anyway, it’s basic, stupid fun, and it’s free. You should try it, even with it now being controlled by Zynga. Just don’t microtransact, and you’ll be fine. (Though those color packs are real tempting! But I have like 3 now and have all the basic colors covered, so I’m not too concerned. Still, when you only have the starting four, it makes you want to pony up. But just play the game, earn coins, and buy them that way!)

Let’s talk Skylanders.

Let’s talk Skylanders: Cloud Patrol.

Someone on twitter is like “Oh, it seems like they’ve released a Skylanders game on iOS” and then feel free to put two and two together and figure out what I did. (I threw down my buck and bought the game immediately. If you guessed that, you know how predictable I am.)

Skylanders: Cloud Patrol is pretty alright! A lot of times, shit like this would be thrown together as a quick cash-in, and wouldn’t really have any real value as a game. Cloud Patrol is a legit little casual game. I’m not going to play it for hours, but at least I can appreciate that it’s not a huge waste of my time.

Basically, Cloud Patrol is sort of Fruit Ninja with Jetpack Joyride’s constantly shifting mini-challenge system. You pick your Skylander (who all function the same, just look different. The only reason you’d want to have another Skylander in the game is to look cooler or to match the daily elemental bonus to get more money.) and fly out in a little airship to shoot escaped trolls. You have to tap or draw a line between trolls to target them and shoot them, but if your target line swipes over a mine, you die. The powerups you get in the Adventure Packs fly about, and can give you score bonuses and little buffs, like temporary invincibility, if you tap it. It’s a simple game, but it’s fast. You can play a round in a few minutes while waiting in line or whatever. It looks nice, and it is responsive. What more could you want?

You can unlock all your Skylanders and Powerups in the game by entering in the web codes. Again, besides the powerups, this doesn’t give you TOO many advantages, besides the Powerups. I did it anyway because I am stupid. However, you can also earn Gems in the game by leveling up, collecting presents in game, and, of course, via microtransactions, which you can use to unlock various Skylanders without owning the figure and play with them. Of course, if you own the figure, it gives you a little crown by the Skylander, so…! Little Crown! Come on!

Anyway, it’s a buck, and if you were actually obsessed with Fruit Ninja and want something like that, Skylanders: Cloud Patrol is a quality product that does not require you to own any figures to have fun. It’s been a nice hour or two of distraction for me? That’s all I really need out of a dollar purchase, I suppose.

I have recently been listening to On The Stick’s Spoilercast of Saints Row The Third. I love those guys, and for the most part, they’re nailing it on the cast so far. However, they said something that made me go “Oh hell no. That’s wrong.” And so I have to now write a little essay here telling them why they are wrong. Or something.

They claim that The Boss (the character you play as in Saints Row The Third, to be clear) is not a real character. They all seemed to rally behind the idea that The Boss is simply some sort of avatar pinnacle of every video game protagonist ever. There’s no depth to The Boss. She’s just this huge perfect power fantasy. (I’m going to use she, because The Boss is a fucking she. Much like my Shepard is My Shepard and I don’t want to see anyone else, my Boss is My Boss, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else as that character. So for the record, I had female voice 1. The one without an accent or whatever. So if I say something that makes no sense with YOUR Boss, maybe that’s why?)

Now, there’s no doubt that Saints Row The Third is a game about power fantasy, clearly. However, I just incredibly disagree with the idea that the Boss is not a Full Character, and is just this one-dimensional avatar. One of the reasons Saints Row is such a fucking fantastic game is that it is incredibly smart in a lot of ways, and how your avatar isn’t just an avatar, but is a character with depth is one of them. How do I know she’s a character? Well, she fits my definition of a fully realized character. Maybe your definition differs, but allow me to tell you what mine is, and how the Boss fits that.

First off, the Boss is someone you relate to and care about. If a character is a real character, that means they have depth, and that means they are someone you can get invested in. Good characters are multifaceted, and just kind of exist to advance the plot or do one specific thing. If the Boss was just an avatar of you, then she wouldn’t have facets. She’d just be me. But I really care about the Boss as a character. When I played the Genkibowl DLC, and the Boss was not talking, in other words just being an avatar of me, I really hated it. I missed her, her commentary, and her view of the world. That was the one, sole reason that DLC was a disappointment in my eyes. When I played Gangstas in Space and she started talking again, I was obscenely relieved that I had her back. I don’t think I’d have felt that way if I wasn’t invested in her as a character.

Secondly, I can guess what the Boss would do. If I put together a random scenario in life or in a video game, and asked myself “What would the Boss do in this situation?” I would be write, pretty distinctly, what the Boss would do. This wouldn’t just be something like “Well, she’d clearly kill the motherfuckers” because while the Boss kills plenty of people, all the time, that’s not her style. She almost always has to do it in about the most batshit insane way, which is one of the reasons the game is so entertaining to play, but these “insane” ways have a method to them. Often, they’re personal. They’re designed to not just stop someone, but to stop them in a way that would be most insulting to them. Why just kill all the Deckers when you could log in to their fucking Cyberbase and kill them on their cyberturf just to be a dick? Similarly, it always has to be big. There is nothing subtle about the Boss. She’s always going to add an extra layer to things if things are not crazy enough. These are just some examples, of course. But she has a whole internal logic that you, as a player, learn and can follow along with. She’s consistent. Compare this to, say, Master Chief. I mean, I could probably guess what he’d do in a situation (shoot some dudes) but I really don’t know why he’d do it. I don’t know what makes Master Chief tick. He’s flat and boring. He’s not a person with motivations I can grasp. I couldn’t guess how Master Chief would, say, deal with a dinner party with his parents. I can with the Boss.

Thirdly and finally, the Boss surprises me. A sign of a good character, to me, is that while I can understand how they tick, they’re capable of doing things that I wouldn’t have anticipated, but still fit in with that internal logic. Action-wise, this is not always the case with the Boss. I can pretty well guess what her actions are going to be. But her dialog, especially, is so very often surprising. In the helicopter chase after the Power Jump Sequence, for example, when she’s talking to Shaundi about how she’d look in a maid outfit and how Pierce would appreciate it? It totally fits with her character, but it was surprising to me after she’s all “Honey, sorry about this,” when she’s catching her in the air after the plane sequence in the beginning. The Boss gave off an almost motherly vibe then, and this fits that, but it’s a mother with really strange priorities. It’s a mother with the Boss’s priorities. But when you see a motherly relationship like that, you don’t put that in your head. Then bam. Surprise. Similarly, the Boss becomes really enamored with Kinsie because of her really fucked up quirks that I would have assumed, at first glance, would have repelled her because it made Kinsie harder to deal with. However, once you see that happen, you realize how much of the Boss is in Kinsie, and how they click in that regard. They show their own personal neuroses with dealing with people in different ways, (some of which Eric talked about on the podcast about how mostly asexual and uncomfortable with just relaxing with people the Boss is) but there’s still a kinship there. It’s a surprise, but it happens. That’s how I know the Boss is fully realized.

Anyway, this is why I love the Boss as a character. I agree with On The Stick: I would love to play the Boss in every single video game from now on. But I’d like to do it because I’d like her as a character. She makes me smile, and I love seeing what she’s going to do, which often isn’t what I would do. Because she’s her own person, who makes decisions, it lets me make decisions like her, which leaves me feeling more free to do things like randomly drop-kick pedestrians and really enjoy all the horrible, awesome stuff in the game. The game works so much better, for me anyway, because the Boss is a character. It’s what made me love The Third when I didn’t like Saints Row 2 all that much. When Giant Bomb was talking about the Boss as best character of the year, it was deserved. Don’t discount her just because you can make her look and sound however you want.

The Resistance is shockingly simple, but a lot of fun. It’s basically Mafia, but it’s designed so that nobody ever “dies” and is removed from the game in order to keep everyone involved, which I can certainly see as a benefit. It has a bunch of cards, but they’re mostly just for bookkeeping and voting in secret: it’s an entirely social game. I really want to play it some more.

Basically, instead of voting on who to kill, and hoping to kill a bad guy, you’re instead voting on who the “mission team” will be for a top secret mission. Anyone on the mission can turn in a “Mission Fail” vote to screw the mission over, so if you put the bad guys on the mission, they will ruin it. If the good guys make 3 of the 5 missions happen, they win. If the bad guys manage to make 3 of the 5 missions fail, they win. For every mission, a different random “Mission Team Leader” is selected. This person is the only one who can call for votes. However, everyone is free to vote and complain and things of that nature. A majority has to approve a team for the mission to begin, but if 5 votes are called and fail, the mission is scrapped, which helps out the bad guys.

By looking at the mission results, you try to determine trustworthiness of everyone involved, just like in Mafia. It’s awesome. There aren’t really powered players, perse, although they have a mechanic where players can get one shot powers. When a new leader is picked, that person will draw a number of plot cards based on the number of players. They then, without looking at them, must distribute them to whoever they see fit who is not themselves. These give one-shot powers, like being able to take over as team leader, or looking at another player’s affiliation card, or even forcing someone to vote in public instead of in secret. However, there’s never many of them in play, so it doesn’t take away from the core gameplay. They’re just little twists.

The one game we played so far was kind of fucked, though. Spaeth, who was a good guy, sabotaged the first mission for NO FUCKING REASON, which made the bad guys, Shauna and Essner, win easily. I think he didn’t understand how huge of a setback that was and just thought he’d do something funny, then play for real after. It kind of sucked, though. Next time I’m sure he wouldn’t be like that. I do want to play it again.

Yeah, it’s a nice little Mafia variant party game! And I do like my Mafia.

I’m probably going to write more about Skylanders 3DS once I beat it, as well as do another review of all the new Skylanders I have because I am ridiculous and bought so many. However, I just feel like I should comment on how the 3DS game works mechanically, because I find it really interesting.

In normal Skylanders, you have your Portal of Power next to you at all times. By throwing stuff onto the Portal, you can quickly swap characters, add or remove a second player, or activate powerups. This is a really awesome process that feels very dynamic and natural. It’s also kind of a tense situation a lot of the time. “Oh crap, I need to swap to a Skylander with full health, but looking away from the screen to find my Skylander and slam it onto the Portal might get me killed, here goes nothing!” That’s really damn cool. That’s what made me such a big fan of Skylanders. That base mechanic of swapping out physical objects is just something you don’t get in a video game.

Now obviously they needed a 3DS version of the game. Gotta sell that second copy to crazy people like me, and get those without consoles proper hooked on the toys. However, the basic mechanics of Skylanders I’ve just outlined don’t work in a portable game. You can’t count on a player having the Portal of Power there at all times. You can’t hook the Portal of Power to the 3DS via a USB cable for near-instant transfers and swaps. You can’t expect kids to have their full collection of Skylanders on hand at all times.

Thus, they’ve got this weird storage system. You use the Portal to draw the souls of the Skylanders into these crystals. You can have two at a time, and swap between them, but you can only change crystals in between levels. With the powerups, you can store one of them to the R button, and it costs in-game radiance to activate, instead of having a limited use time in each level. They won’t let you just store every single Skylander and power to the game, because then you don’t need to buy Skylanders, you can just scan your buddy’s, which is kind of evil of them, but I also understand why that’s the case.

This solves the “I want to play but don’t have my tons of toys around” problem, in general, but I find it’s much less satisfying than being able to swap on the fly. The levels have Elemental Challenges, so you have to double check the level you’re going to play and prep Skylanders for those challenges before you go in, which, to me, is just a lot less fun than throwing in random Skylanders as the level calls for them. It also makes having more powerups less appealing. I can only equip one, and I’m me, so I’m always going to have the Healing Elixir. Instead of making you more powerful, able to do random stuff, you just kind of feel like you have all these powerups but none of them ever get any use.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am having a ton of fun with 3DS Skylanders. But it’s clear that this sort of thing doesn’t have the magic of the “main” game. It’s fun because I have the main game, and this is a little side story to fuck around with. However, I just can’t imagine someone with just this 3DS game getting as hooked on these stupid things as I am. The 3DS version just doesn’t stand up on its own, in my opinion, though it works great as a companion game. That’s kind of a shame, because the main game really is a lot of fun and I’m sure there are little kids out there that only have a 3DS or portable system who would love Skylanders. Oh well.