The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

MadWorld is a great game.

It can be easy to dismiss it as being gory for goriness sake, or going for shock value and little else, but that’s selling the game extremely short. It may not be worth $50 to everyone, but it is totally worth playing if you don’t mind a little violence and cursing.

The plot… the plot doesn’t matter. You’re in a location. It’s a game show about murdering called Deathwatch. You murder people until you get to a ranking match with a fellow murderer and have a dramatic boss fight. And that’s it.

But oh, what a that that is. The gameplay mechanics are based around point-scoring. The majority of the time, the enemies aren’t that difficult to kill. It’s all about killing them in ways that get you more and more and more points. Stab a sign through a guy before killing them? Point bonus. Toss them into a twirling sawblade? Point bonus. There are point threshholds on each level that change the level up. You may get a new weapon, or unlock a new area, or get to do the ever-popular BLOODBATH CHALLENGE! Eventually, you get to face the boss.
The combat is perhaps less fluid than a God of War or something, but the Wiimote is actually used well. You do motions in very satisfying ways. Flicking the Wiimote to throw people is completely satisfying, as is pulling the Wiimote and nunchuck apart to tear a dude in half. It does get to the point where you can get seriously into it, and if you do, your arms will get tired. Good thing the game is perfect for play in short chunks.

This game looks better than many 360 and PS3 games, and it’s all because of that kickass art style. Have you seen screens? Seen the game in motion? If so, I really don’t think I need to mention it, but dammit, it’s such a pretty game.

If you actually watched that clip, you’ve heard one of the other best parts of the game: The announcers. They are, by far, one of the greatest highlights of the game. Everything they say is funny and appropriate. They do get into the issue of repetition with their quotes, though. I wish they would have put some smarter logic in there so that it would only play each clip once a level or something. Still, they are totally worth listening to, and voiced amazingly well. They’re so awesome that the first thing my brother did was try to find a way to turn them up so he could hear them better, as they do sometimes get drowned out by the sound effects.
That’s not all that’s awesome about the sound, though. Personally, I think the soundtrack is fan-fucking-tastic. I crave, deeply crave a copy of this soundtrack, but it’s only available as a bonus for pre-ordering in the UK and Austrailia. Trust me, when it hits the interwebs at large, I am going to get my paws on a copy.
(I do have to mention here, an oddity. When a game creates good, unique rap for it’s soundtrack? I love the everloving crap out of it. This, The World Ends With You, Persona 3… when it meshes with the game so well, I can’t help but love it. Crave it. When I don’t normally have anything to do with that type of music. It’s interesting, I suppose.)
But yeah, the soundtrack just energizes you. This is a game I cannot play sitting down. Between the motions, the constant action, the music… it’s just a damn thrilling game.

The game’s gore and crude language are going to turn some people off. That’s a shame, though, because most of it honestly seems to be in parody, and hell, it’s awesome anyway. The gameplay itself, too, is pretty well the best action I’ve seen on the Wii this side of Mario Galaxy. Play this game.

That’s what the guy says, and then I’m like “Dude, I would like to get to class” and he’s like “No, I will punch you” so I beat the shit out of him. Then I’m late for class and people are trying to take me down and take me to class and I’m like “Chill out, I’m running to class right now, you don’t have to beat me up!” but they don’t listen.

So I listen to the Rebel’s FM from time to time, and I listen to their Game Club. I’ve been listening since it was 1up FM, even though I never even pretended to play along with them. (Granted, I had played Psychonauts before, but I mean, I have a copy of Shadow of the Collosus here. I could have tried to play along, but didn’t.) I just listened to their commentary because I am a fan of game commentary and podcasts. But they announced that their next game for the playing was Bully.
Now, Bully is a game that I’ve always wanted to play, actually. I’ve constantly been tempted by copies in bargain bins and stuff. It always seemed like a much more focused GTA, the kind of game I could get more into than thefting the autos. And I mean, damn, the only Rockstar game I had ever played was Rockstar Presents: Table Tennis, which barely counts. It seemed criminal for me not to give it a try. So I booted up the Prime account via the website’s affiliate link (Yay, they get a buck or something) and got a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition on the 360. I played up through the first chapter last night (Which I think is where I have to be for the podcasts’ first week) and I wanted to lay down some impressions.

First off, the art in the game is really pretty. I wish the game itself looked a bit more like the concept art in the load screens. It’s awesomely stylized. I also wish there was more art in the load screens, as there is only like 4 different pictures.

Secondly, why the hell are all the achievements written IN ALL CAPS. Did someone leave the caps lock on? How unprofessional, Rockstar.

The gameplay itself is… okay? I’m beating the crap out of people all the time. I do like that I can either injure them or finish them off with a “Bully maneuver” like an Indian burn and send them crying away from me. I can’t control the Skateboard worth shit. It really doesn’t seem like that open an open world, but then again I haven’t left campus yet, so I assume, thanks to this map in the case, that I’ve only seen, what, 1/5th of the world? So I’m sure that’ll open up.

What really gets me is the narrative. I don’t like being Jimmy. I was hoping he would be like, I dunno, a tough guy who’s playing a bully, but really has a sense of justice about him? But he’s really just a mostly bad guy. At least so far. He listened to this Gary character for way too long, mindlessly doing the missions he gave, when I wanted to punch him at about the second cutscene with him. Granted, I think that’s by design. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to hate him, and he’s well-voiced and stuff. But it was extremely frustrating. I felt more like the character I wanted to be in the non-mainline quests I’ve done so far, where people getting picked on would ask for help, and although I’d expect payment, I’d run around and beat the shit out of everyone who was picking on others.
Again, I’m only through chapter one. Maybe after this “betrayal” Jimmy acts more like I want him to all the time. His conversation with the huge guy at the end of their fight would suggest it being as such. We’ll see.

Anyway, I wanted to write some impressions. I’ll be sure to write some more if I keep up with Game Club all the way through the game. I hope to, but seeing as Tuesday is the day of my birth, it could get a bit unlikely, as I’m sure there will be many shiny new games to play.

I am a sucker for games that manipulate music as you play. Ever since I laughed at how stupid PaRappa looked back in the day, and then actually played it, and was amazed? I’ve been a music game junkie.

As such, the moment I first heard about bit.trip beat, I knew I was going to pick it up. If there was any doubt, hearing this sample of the music convinced me. The final nail in the coffin was that it was only 6 bucks, which is a very fair price for what you get. At 10, I still would have picked it up, but it would have been a harder sell.

The game works like pong! You twist the Wiimote in your hands to move the paddle and hit the dots flying your way. The twist mechanic is kinda weird, but it makes perfect sense. It’s just about the best implementation of one of those dials on such old games without actually having one of those dials. It doesn’t take too long to get the hang of it.
Once you do, you just play. Every time you something bounces off of you or hits the other side of the screen, it makes a note, and you build the music by hitting the notes. Hit many of them, and you “power up” and move upward to a different plane where the music is deeper and richer. Miss a lot, and you move down, eventually getting to the “Nether” plane where everything is Black and White like pong and all the music comes out of the little Wiimote speaker. It’s pretty damn neat.

The game is totally hardcore, though. If you’re playing single-player, you really have to memorize each level, and be really quick in your movements in order to keep the music going and return the hits. I have significant trouble beating the first level by myself.
However, that’s where the game’s up to 4-player co-op comes in. I never would have thought co-op would work in this game, but it makes it a whole lot more fun. Spaeth and I played through the majority of the game co-op, and it was actually a ton of fun. All it does is put another paddle on the screen of another color for Spaeth, but suddenly seemingly impossible patterns weren’t impossible anymore. The game was a whole lot easier, so we accomplished a lot more, and just like any co-op game, it was fun to berate and complain at each other when we were sucking, and congratulate when we actually handled ourselves well. The last level like… quickly broke us, though. Maybe with 4 players, we could take it.

All in all, I think bit.trip beat is a pretty awesome downloadable title. There isn’t enough game here to even think of a retail release, so Wiiware was the right choice. It uses the Wii motion controls very well. It’s a neat little hardcore music game, and it has surprisingly great co-op. Most importantly, they priced it low to make it an easy purchase. You could buy Ninja JaJa Maru-kun on the virtual console for the same price as this game. I leave it to you to decide if this is the better purchase (hint: it probably is.)

So, Steam sales are kind of addictive now that I have a PC that can run games. This could be a problem. For now, though, I ended up buying Unreal Tournament 3 awhile back, because it was only, you know, like 10 bucks. That’s a good price. Much better than 60 dollars, and much more to the tune of the value I will actually get out of the game.

It’s not a bad game, perse? It’s very much Unreal Tournament. If you’ve played one before, you know what to expect: crazy physics, guns that never need to reload, and constant, intense violence.
There are sad things. For one, my favorite modes, Assault and Gunball, (also known as Bombing Run, but Gunball is a more appropriate title) are missing here. As such, especially after this sale ends, you might just be better off getting UT2k4 from GoG instead, because those modes are the shit. Or teh shit. Whatever. Also, you know, it’ll run on less recent PCs.

Still, this new version isn’t a complete throw-away or anything. They focused a lot on the Onslaught mode from earlier games (Which was my least favorite!) and improved that vehicle action significantly while combining it with Assault to form the “Warfare” mode. Warfare is much better than Onslaught was, and it’s obvious they’ve spent a bit more time on the vehicles, at least as far as I can remember. It really doesn’t replace Assault though, in my mind. It’s unfortunate that that isn’t there.
One of the mechanics I actually find very interesting is that of the Hoverboard. This seems like it would be the lamest thing, but it really makes you make some tough decisions during play. I don’t think this was in 2k4… basically, on Vehicle maps, instead of the Translocator, you can press q to pull out a Hoverboard. You move much faster than running this way, AND you can carry flags, unlike in vehicles. However, if you get shot with anything, you drop the flag and go into this long falling down and hurting yourself animation where basically anyone can murder you quickly. Basically, you have to choose when the extra speed is worth the extra risk, and that’s honestly pretty cool to me. The added benefit is that of having something to get you back in the action VERY quickly, which is what Unreal Tournament is all about, so I approve of that, too.

There’s a campaign mode, and that mode has 4-player co-op. I actually got it to work, too, during the free-to-play weekend with Brer, so that’s good! However, the Campaign is not very well designed, mostly because there is a plot. No. That’s a horrible idea. Sitting through cutscenes in a game like this is retarded. What a campaign in a game like this should be is something like in a sports game. I should recruit new fighters, do trades with other teams, and, I dunno, have to balance how tired people are vs taking them into matches, or what kind of game types they’re good at… that’s a compelling campaign for this type of game. That’s what they should be doing.
Still, it’s not like it isn’t fun. But just don’t expect anything but a variety of different bot-matches in different scenarios. Luckily, UT has some pretty good bots. I mean, I have rarely if ever played this series online with actual humans. It’s always been me vs bots, or me and some friends vs bots, and it’s always been a good time. UT3 succeeds in that once again.

These games really must appeal to a certain type of person who likes constant balls against a wall sort of action. I’m not really that person. If I’m itching for a shooter with other people, I’m totally going to go for a Call of Duty 4 or a Team Fortress 2 before even considering hitting UT3. Still, sometimes you just want to shoot bots. A lot. That’s something UT3 has in spades, and it’s a fun enough time.

OBJECTIVE FAILED.

Hey, remember back at Christmas, when I got Fury of Dracula? And then we gave it a try on New Year’s Eve and it was kind of complicated and took awhile? Well, I finally got around to trying it out again on Friday. This time we had Jonathan, a complete newcomer, and me and Spaeth, who barely remembered what was going on. I was Dracula again.

The game went significantly smoother this time, though. As expected, knowing the rules (well, all the rules but the honestly kind of incredibly confusing combat rules) really made the game move at a solid pace. The game only took us a little under 2 hours this time. That’s a good length for a game like this.

I really wanted to use my knowledge I gained from our previous game to be a more effective Dracula. I was looking forward to actually using “New Vampire” encounters to my benefit instead of throwing them away like I did in the other game. However, I never drew any New Vampire encounters until it was too late to use them. I was doing pretty good for quite some time… until Spaeth pulled and played a Money Trail card while I was on a boat, giving away my current location. Then it was some really tense stuff there, with me moving around and trying to get away while everyone closed in on me. I honestly should have used my Double Back card to get BACK onto the sea and away from the hunters, but I decided to push it and wait until I had multiple options to Double Back to. That was really kind of my downfall. They cornered me and kicked my ass during the day. Bastards.

I did get pretty close to winning? But it was mostly because of Spaeth’s Kamakaze Mina Harker maneuver. He used a card to take away most of her life to teleport to my location, then used a card where we both roll a dice and lose that much life instead of having a normal combat. He rolled high enough to kill himself, which upped my Vampire track by 2. Without that, though, I was doing a bit worse. I needed those New Vampire encounters!

All in all, though, the game was significantly more fun the second time, I felt. Having to slog through rules is always tedious, even when you’re someone who loves rules like myself. The game flowed a lot better. I also agree with our previous assessment that this is the perfect 3-player game. You gain something by having two Hunter-players who can bounce ideas off of each other and plan, and you gain game speed by having a smaller number of players at the table. 3 seems optimal.

Next time, though. Hopefully I will win. Insert Bad Castlevania Reference Here.

So those Tyrants who write for 1up are calling Zen Bound THE game for the iPhone. I don’t know if I would go quite that far? I kinda doubt it’s going to define the iPhone and iPod Touch game space. But one thing is for sure: it is a DAMN good game, worth every bit of $5, and if you’re someone with a compatable device, you should probably buy it.

Zen Bound is actually a pretty hard game to describe. It’s a game about wrapping rope around wooden sculpture, like the website there says. But that sounds incredibly boring, doesn’t it? The game is anything but boring. It’s a calm, slow and casual paced puzzle game, basically, which tests your spacial reasoning and is really geniously designed.
The goal is to wrap rope around a figure, having rope touch every bit of it (which makes it change color) and then get the rope to a final nail in order to tie it off and complete the level. There are 3 levels of complete for each level. The first goal is incredibly easy to get to, and the second isn’t too hard to reach if you’re actually trying, but the third always comes at 99% wrapped, and that’s where the challenge comes in.
Basically, the rope is attached on two ends. One is tied to the figure, and the other is attached to an offscreen “spool” or whatever. That means, as you wrap, you can’t go under anything, so you actually have to plan out what you’re doing so the rope you already have wrapped around doesn’t block you from getting into the crevices and such of the figure you’re working on. You have to plan ahead in a way you don’t expect when you first pick up the game.
The game basically starts very Zen, and very casual. The shapes are easy, and you’re just having fun wrapping rope about. There’s no challenge. Before you know it, though, you suddenly hit something you don’t get 99% on the first time. The game is kind of sneaky like that. The challenge ramps up in a very hidden way, and once you hit the actually challenge? You’re hooked. At least I was.
It’s also important to mention the controls. They are instantly understandable to anyone who has used an iPod Touch for 5 minutes, and work so well, you don’t even think about them. You rotate the wooden figure with the normal finger motions, and you can adjust the angle of the rope with the accelerometer. This is a game incredible suited to its medium.
The only real problem with this game, though, is the fact that it destroys the battery. I’ve not played many iPod games that were too intense before with the graphics. (WordJong is not very taxing) This game is very visually compelling and physics-oriented, and because of that, it uses a lot of processing power. Playing this game and listening to a podcast, as I mentioned in the last blog entry, I burned through my battery in a little over an hour. I can’t even imagine how screwed that would make someone who was actually playing on a phone. It’s something to think about if you’re going to play in long sessions.

Still, this game is pretty well the best iPod gaming experience I’ve had so far. It makes me want to pick up the other critically acclaimed iPod game, Rolando, and see if it’s just as good. I’m sure it is.

But yeah, go buy Zen Bound. The developers are nice, too. They responded to my e-mail in like an hour. It was fantastic. And I want Cinnamon Beats. So give them money to finish it. The end.

So, last weekendish, Steam had one of its many sales. This was a “Indie Games” pack. It was a whole bunch of Indie Games for 10 dollars. In this pack was the PC version of Eets, which I paid 10 dollars for by itself on the 360 and thought it worth every penny. It was a pretty darn good deal. So I just gave in and jumped on it.

One of the reasons I jumped on it is because it included a copy of Trials 2: Second Edition. Way, way back in the GFW Radio days, one might recall Shawn Elliot talking about this game at length. Seeing it in the pack was one of the reasons I pulled the trigger on it.

It’s every bit as ridiculous as its name.

Basically, you’re a guy on a motorcycle, and you’re on a 2D plane. You can accelerate, brake, and lean the driver forward and backward. And that’s it. And with those tools, you have to traverse increasingly fucked-up terrain. It’s really hardcore, honestly, because you have such little tools at your disposal. You have to learn how to game the physics system in order to, say, make your rider jump higher or longer or whatever.
What happens is you dying all the damn time. You drive forward a little bit, then crash. Your driver goes flying. You hit backspace to go back to the last checkpoint, and try again. Oftentimes, you’ll die right after getting past something to the next checkpoint, but it feels SO GOOD to have pulled off the crazy shit to get there. Then you keep going.

This is a game for the hardest of the hardcore, who enjoy mastering a system so completely that they can do crazy-ass shit like this without any issue whatsoever. I am not that person, so I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy the game as much as I have. I was expecting to try it, and then move on. But I’ve beat all the easy levels and I’m working on the Medium ones, and I’m kinda hooked. The game is a ton of fun, and it’s actually a pretty darn good podcast game as well, which is always a plus. I mean, I die every five seconds. It takes me at least 30 tries to get to the next checkpoint on almost every level at this point. But for some reason, it is a good time. I honestly can’t help but recommend it.

So the other night, as Nich sells me on yet another game and I go to preorder it, which leads to me preordering another game and then putting a third almost on preorder but then on my “don’t buy for birthday” list… it occurs to me how horrible the “burden” of having too much leisure is.

I’ve long decided that I’m a hardcore gamer, not in the “I beat every game on hard 40 times” kind of sense, but just in the “games are what I do and I do nothing for fun other than play games” kind of sense. But dammit, the games industry is now all huge and stuff. Ever since I’ve gotten a paycheck, I’ve kept up with all the new games I wanted, but it’s getting to the point where that is almost a completely ridiculous proposition.

I mean, let’s just look at what games Atlus has coming out that interest me. Between now and the end of April, I would like to give time to The Dark Spire, Steal Princess, Class of Heroes, and Dokapon Journey. Then, in May, comes the wonderfully long-named Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon, and then in June, comes Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. And they just today announced that, after that, we’ll be getting the PSP Persona remake this year. It’s a good thing Atlus has switched to that new payment system…

I won’t have anywhere near enough time to play all those games as much as I should have, and that’s JUST GAMES FROM ATLUS. There are plenty, plenty more games that need my attention. Hell, I’m having trouble giving both Street Fighter IV and Dragon Quest V the attention they both deserve right now. And I’m constantly distracted by my browser RPGs, too… and getting new games on my iPod…

It’s so lame that I have to schedule my leisure time to play games. I try not to. I should just buy some games and play them, and then buy a new game only when I need a new game. But I want to be a hardcore gamer. I enjoy being one. I want to try everything. I want to play everything. Hell, even with the games I have now, I am wanting to play Dawn of War II so, so badly… the only reason I’m not is because my PC isn’t up to it right now. It’s just all kind of ridiculous.

Still, I suppose being able to recognize that is a benefit, huh? Is it worse to be ridiculous and not know it? Or to know it and not do anything about it?
I have no idea.

WOAH, my arcade stick came in.

I’d heard about issues with the FightStick right when mine shipped out. People were complaining about all kinds of crazy things, but mostly the stick getting stuck in positions. This was… potentially bad! But luckily, it came in, and there was no such issues.

Man, it’s so cool. The art on it is ass-kickingly awesome, and it feels so heavy and… important. The buttons click easy, the stick moves alright. To me, it’s mind-blowingly awesome. I’ve always kind of wanted an arcade stick, but never really had good reason to buy one. I still didn’t, but I got one anyway, and I’m happy to have it.

The one thing I wasn’t expecting, though, was the learning curve. I don’t know why I wasn’t. It’s been literally years since I touched an arcade cabinet of any kind. But everyone was talking about how the standard 360 controller was so horrible, and though I was getting good with it, it was pretty horrible. So I assumed when I got the stick, my game would instantly improve, at least input-wise (I’d probably still suck strategically). When it got in my paws, though, I was back to square one. It was like I didn’t know how to do Hadoukens anymore. A bit training fixed that, mostly, but I still can’t pull off, say, Sakura’s Ultra Combo with ease, and that’s unfortunate. I hear that my problems come from the fact that this stick uses a “square gate.” Apparently octagonal gates are better? I would probably agree on principal, but there’s nothing wrong with this. It’ll just take some getting used to. And I know I’ll work on it hard tomorrow.

I also got a FightPad, but I haven’t had a chance to give that a solid test. So I’ll talk about that some other time, I’m sure. Until then, well, here’s a guide on how to play Ken online.

So, Fighting in the Street for the Fourth Time is here! Street Fighter IV! I’ve been waiting for this for quite some time. There was some worries about the online play not being good, and there are still some future worries about the arcade stick I got not being up to snuff, but overall, this has been what I’ve been waiting for!

Early impressions are COMPLETELY AWESOME. I mean, sure, Seth is a fucking cheating whore, and I shouldn’t have to unlock all these fighters, but the actual gameplay does pretty well exactly what was being reported: bring in the simple, great Street Fighter II experience you know, and then add in some of the more technical stuff from later Street Fighters. The EX moves and the Focus attacks? Well, I have no idea what to do with those yet. They seem cool, though, and the technical people will probably love them. The actual just base fighting, though, is excellent. I was also very, very pleased to see that my Balrog skills carried over quite well from SFIITHDR, and are even better actually, now that there’s a 3 punch and 3 kick button, so I can actually use his Turn Punch. I’ve also been thrilled to discover that my Sakura skills from so, so long ago on Alpha 2 on the PS1 have carried over, and I’m pretty solid with her, too. Those two are probably going to be my mains, as I continue to discover how to make them play better, while already being at a decent skill level with them.

Anyway, we’ll see how things go as I keep playing, especially when my controllers come in later in the week. These are first impressions, don’t cha know?