The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Okay, let’s see… five more to go! Tomorrow I will address Honorable Mentions as well as Glaring Omissions of what I think could have had a shot at this list, but I never got to play. But that’s tomorrow. LIST GO.

5. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Why didn’t anyone tell me being a total dick in video games was fun? Deus Ex lets you play in whatever manner you’d like, pretty well, so I just kind of did the sort of things I like to do in video games. It quickly became obvious to me that I was playing a total sociopath, manipulating people’s emotions and murdering anyone even vaguely in my way without a second thought. Once I had that into my head, and could wrap it into the fairly decent story of the game, my enjoyment level shot through the roof. The combat has some weird control issues sometimes, but is solid and fun, and the “Social Battles” are fantastic. Really, the only thing that doesn’t quite click in this game is the “Rejects from Metal Gear Solid” boss battles, but they don’t hinder the game in any way. This really is a game you must play, especially if you like a good western RPG.

4. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
New game from the Phoenix Wright guy? You know I was going to be there. However, Ghost Trick is just so, so much better than Phoenix Wright. I will always love Phoenix Wright’s cast of characters, and will keep playing games in the series, but let’s face it: the gameplay is kind of shit sometimes. Ghost Trick’s gameplay, on the other hand, is a joy. It’s clever, different, and fairly easy to understand. At the same time, there’s a whole new cast of characters with just as much lovable charm as Phoenix and his friends, and frankly jaw-dropping rotoscoped visuals and animations that give the game an impressive look. Hopefully they will port this to the iPad in America, where it would also be awesome, but it is totally worth the cost of a DS game. It’s great.

3. You Don’t Know Jack
Do you have friends? Then you should own You Don’t Know Jack. I have thanked my lucky stars that Jellyvision finally made another one of these things every day since it came out. It is fun for everyone, even those who actually don’t know a lot of trivia like my parents, and it is just flat-out hilarious. You don’t get better comedy writing than this in a video game. There is no better time with friends sitting on a couch, for serious. I could gush on and on about this game, and how stuff like the Wrong Answer of the Game is brilliant, or how thankful I am they included Big Button Controller support, but seriously, just fucking buy it. It’s dirt cheap, and worth every penny.

2. Saints Row: The Third
No one game should have all that power.
Seriously, this game is just near-perfect. The shooting is fun, the upgrades are insane and completely satisfying, the customization is above and beyond the call of duty, and the story! Fuck. All of the characters are shockingly real people in a world of utter ridiculousness, completing missions that never really fail to keep topping themselves time and again. The game is crude, but funny as fuck with it, and entertaining for every damn moment of it. I didn’t give a shit about the previous games in the series, but now I am going to buy the fourth game day one. It was incredibly, incredibly hard for me not to give this game the #1 slot. I was grinning the entire time I played the damn thing. So strap it on. You should really play Saints Row.

1. Portal 2
If you’re wondering why I went with Portal over Saints Row, it’s for the writing. Saints Row has some fantastic writing, don’t get me wrong, but Portal 2 tells a story, a good story, and has characters that grow over time while still being completely hilarious and entertaining the whole way. Seriously, it is impossible not to love Wheatley and Cave Johnson for being so funny, but they also have very strong character arcs, which is just impressive. The presentation is top notch. The gameplay is honed so much you can forget it is an engineered video game level, even when it is. You never get stuck, and you always seem to solve the puzzle at just the right time, and feel like a badass for doing it. On top of that, the co-op, which I still fucking need to finish sometime, is in some ways even better than the main storyline! It shows that Valve can really fucking make a single player video game. Make some more, Valve!

Tomorrow I’m going to go over a few Honorable Mentions that were considered, but didn’t make the cut. I’ll also address a few of the obvious missing pieces on this list. So, you know, see you then?

Hello. Let me tell you about the top 10 video games of the year. Well, half of them. Because there are three days left of the year and I guess I can break them up if I want to, and thus I am. So 10-6 Today, 5-1 Tomorrow, and then Honorable Mentions/Glaring Omissions on New Years Eve. Sound good? Hope so, because that’s what I’m doing. Let’s get to it.

10. Tiny Tower
In retrospect, in a lot of ways, it’s kind of embarrassing to have Tiny Tower on here. Also, a lot of people wouldn’t call it a game. But let’s just say it’s the game-like experience I played the most this year, by far. I certainly didn’t keep up with anything else for months and months. It is just a really well crafted version of… whatever you want to call the genre of games like that. If you got addicted to it, I wouldn’t blame you, and I just can’t imagine it not being on this list, given all the time I wasted with it. So here it is.

9. Shadows of the Damned
As I think we’ll find as I climb up this list, I am a sucker for good characters. Johnson and Garcia Fucking Hotspur are two of the best characters of this year. They’re constantly entertaining and ridiculous in completely believable ways. By far the best parts of this game are when the two characters are reading Children’s Storybooks from Hell to one another. The plot, the world, everything is, well, a Suda 51 game, so it’s a bit crazy, to be sure. However, unlike most Suda games, the gameplay is actually decent. It won’t change the world, but it is enjoyable, and that helps you be able to keep playing to get to more awesome character moments.

8. Bastion
Remember what I just said about two seconds ago about good characters? Rucks, the Stranger and Narrator of this game, is a fantastic character. Him talking to you, and all the fantastic music and everything in this game, just make it an outright joy to play, and a game you don’t want to end. Add to that incredibly smart in-game systems to tailor difficulty to exactly what you want and the fact that the fast-paced combat is just AWESOME, even for someone who normally hates doing things like blocking and dodging, and you have one of the best games of the year.

7. Dead Space 2
When Dead Space 2 first came out, I made the decision I was going to try to catch up with this series. The demo for the first game didn’t grab me, but I figured I had a Gamefly subscription, and I should try it. When I did, the first game immediately clicked with me, and I was starving, hungry for this one. What I got when I played it was a game that basically did everything way, way better than the first game, letting me slaughter and murder with fun weapons all over much cooler environments. I suppose there was a stronger story in this one too, but I really don’t think this is a game you play for the story. The action speaks loud enough alone. This is the best 3rd Person Shooter to come out this year. Take that, Gears 3.

6. L.A. Noire
I am so glad I listened to people when they told me that, no, this wasn’t another Rockstar blah GTA clone, but instead an Adventure game, with ridiculous production values. I took a chance on it, and what do you know? It was an Adventure game, with ridiculous production values! Features like making your partner drive you everywhere to skip the tedious moving around town was just genius, and while the Truth, Doubt, Lie system has a lot of flaws that people have pointed out to me, I enjoyed working my way through the cases and interrogating suspects. Most of the characters were fairly entertaining as well, although sometimes leaning a bit hard on stereotypes, and were entertaining to listen to. If you like Adventure games, noire, or just watching a good story play out, L.A. Noire is a game you should play.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more listing, because everyone loves lists! I have it on good authority.

A bunch of bullshit happened today, but I don’t really feel like complaining anymore. So instead I’ll write about Jetpack Joyride.

Jetpack Joyride is a game I had heard quite a lot about, but I never really got the urge to play it. However, I finally moved my Roku into the bedroom and that freed up my iPad to no longer just be a bedtime video playing device, which let me look into some games I missed. I grabbed this Christmas morning while waiting for it to be time to go to the parents, and I played it pretty well nonstop.

It’s really good!

It’s not so much the actual gameplay that’s good. I mean, it’s fine. You press the screen to use the jetpack, and you have to maneuver around obstacles for as long as you can before you die. Simple stuff, really, and there’s plenty of games like that on the platform. Canabalt, Grim Joggers, and Robot Unicorn Attack, just to name a few. It’s nothing novel in that regard, really.

Where the game really shines is in the Mission system. The game gives you three missions, seemingly at random, and you need to complete them to level up and unlock more missions. These missions are sometimes just what you’d do anyway (Collect 5 Spin Tokens or whatnot) but are sometimes silly tasks that totally change how you play (Drag your head along the ceiling for 500 Meters, Reach 600 Meters without collecting a coin) and really keep the game fresh. Most of the time you have one mission that’s more long-term, and one that you can surely complete next run, so let’s go one more! It’s infectious. It keeps you playing and playing.

You also collect Spin Tokens as you play, and these let you get random bonuses at the end of a run. You may get bonuses for the next run (Double all coins collected, a 750 Meter Head start, etc) or something to keep your current run going (a bomb that propels you farther forward for free after death). Once again, these little bonuses are a great way to make you go “One more game” and they totally worked on me.

I dunno if this game normally costs money? I got it for free, and while there are microtransactions, the game really doesn’t force you to pay for them. You can have tons, tons of fun without paying a dime. It’s a great 2 minute game, certainly, and I understood why it got so much adoration from everyone. I would certainly suggest playing it, especially if that free thing wasn’t just some Christmas promotional sale.

I finally got a break from all the insanity of the holidays to play some more Dark Souls.
Dark Souls is a really great game.

I know, I mean, I completely know, I know that I will give up on it and not see it through to the end. But it’s just amazing to me that I can die via a curse that permanently halves my HP until I go to a specific spot to get healed by spending a valuable resource, a place I have absolutely no idea how to get to, and I still don’t want to give up on the game. I still want to keep going and see all it has to offer.

I mean, shit, the strategy in this game is so much fun. I’ve joined the Warriors of the Sun, so I can now throw Lightning, and I have tons of faith to power that shit. I can just slaughter people with it, and it makes running around so much fun, especially when I know I’ll get to a bonfire soon so I can just waste charges smoking random enemies.

I fought the Capra Demon today. Every time I’d fight him, he’d slam me the moment I entered the fight and basically kill me right there. I couldn’t get away from him fast enough. It took many deaths before I went “You know, maybe I should just equip lighter armor.” The moment I did that, I had little problem. I could roll right past him and his attack dogs. I ended up luring him up the stairs, jumping off so he’d following me, then running back up the stairs and sniping him with lightning before he could reach me again. Smoked him in 3 shots. This is a guy I had died to probably about 15 times before this happened, and the defeats were near-instant. It felt so damn good to kill that stupid rat demon! That is why this game is so awesome. I was completely screwed, but when I figured it out, it was a breeze. You feel smart, in the same way that say, Portal makes you feel smart for solving something in that “a ha!” moment. The difference is you also feel skillful, because the solutions take a lot more skill than your average Portal puzzle to pull off. Those mostly just take brains, you know?

Similarly, I ended up exploring the Depths, where I accidentally fell into this horrible sewer maze and wandered around for awhile. I had no idea how to get out, and I was seeing monsters like Basilisks (which is what eventually killed and cursed me) and a gigantic fucking rat about 2 stories tall. The level of intensity I felt during that sequence was just amazing. Sure, I could have cast my Homeward spell, and now that I think of it, I really, really should have! But no, I had to see what the game had in store for me down there. It turns out it was turning to stone and halving my HP permanently. Thanks, game! But at least I found a cool Poison Resist shield before that happened.

I’m sure if you’ve played this game, or been around other people who’ve played this game, these are all stories you’ve heard before. I’ve certainly heard them. But when they happen to me, and I’m not screaming in anger but instead just like “HOLY SHIT!” That says something to me, you know? It really does.

Today I played a Doctor Who MMO thing.
I was just looking at it and then I learned you could be a cat person so of course I played. I am a very predictable furry.

Basically, if you want to play a lot of shitty in-browser versions of Puzzle Fighter, Bust-A-Move, Pipe Dreams, and Sega Swirl, this is really the game for you.

You make your dude, and then the Doctor picks you up in the TARDIS! Whoo! I will give the game this: it looks really nice. It’s clearly flash-animated so that every animation isn’t individually drawn, but it has a great art style that looks really nice, and the little animated version of The Doctor is spiffy. Anyway, you go into the TARDIS and the Doctor says things like “Blah blah blah time crisis blah blah blah probably going to fight all the villains from the show since it’s relaunch in sequence blah blah.” And then he gives you a gadget, which is TOTALLY NOT A SONIC SCREWDRIVER because it sucks and you have to play little minigames to do things. Either that, or the Doctor is just really, really fucking good at Bust-A-Move, because he can unlock a door in like a second and it takes me clearing like 3 boards of Bust-A-Move to do that. Then you go out and you fight some of the plastic people from the first episode using your PUZZLE MINIGAME POWERS. I assume you eventually move to other times and places and fight other enemies from the show, but I certainly didn’t get that far. It’s also weird that, if I have gone back in time to the point where the plastic people were invading, then Earthlings don’t know about aliens. I’m a cat person. Shouldn’t they all be fucking terrified of me? World going to shit and whatnot? Or do they just assume the furry convention is in town or something? I assume they have furry cons in London.

Anyway, back to the game. Another thing I will give the game credit for is this: you really aren’t doing like… typical video game stuff in theory (although in execution, it’s just puzzle minigames, as I’ve said). The game has you unlocking doors, interrogating people, rewiring gadgets, and distracting enemies. You’re not running around with a gun and shooting people. You’re doing what the Doctor does in the show, which is to the game’s credit. You team up with a bunch of other players (in theory. This beta didn’t seem to have that working.) or if you solo, you get some AI characters to help you. You assign them to tasks and you do some yourself, or help them do them faster. “You barricade the door, you keep the woman calm, and I’ll hack this computer!” Again, in theory, really like the show, but in practice, it’s just playing board after board of these puzzle games, so it gets old fast.

The conversation, or “wits” minigame as they call it, is especially kind of bad. It’s like Sega Swirl, except there are ways to make special gems that do things like clear a whole line. In practice, this means that once you start a combo, it can kind of go on FOREVER. I had a combo last for a solid minute without me pressing anything in the game. And that combo didn’t give me enough points to finish off the task I was doing. Thanks, game!

The game’s microtransaction system really confuses me too. Going on missions and upgrading your gadget and whatnot requires “Energy.” The game always said I had 0 Energy, and was asking me to buy more, but it let me do everything anyway. Sometimes there was a number to the left of my Energy, which decreased when I did stuff. Maybe that was my actual value and it was a bug? In any case, it was not explained how Energy works. Is it a currency that regenerates over time, like in Spiral Knights? I kind of doubt it, though, as it’s required to buy clothing and TARDIS decorations and shit, so I assume it’s just a straight up microtransaction currency. If so, then that just seems really, really stupid. You have to have some way to keep free players coming back to play the game, so they’re tempted to spend money, whether that be “You can only play so many turns a day, unless you spend money” or “You can go in this special dungeon if you spend some money” or “You can play with this sick gear if you spend some money.” But just requiring a purchase to straight up play after a trial period, especially when your game is like this? That seems dumb. Then again, the BBC is stupid enough to price Doctor Who seasons at like 90 dollars in America for no fucking reason, so maybe that’s just that tendency shining through. Either way, the game doesn’t explain how this stuff works clearly, so who knows.

I… can’t suggest you try it? I mean, go for it, if you want. You don’t have to be a cat person. You could be, you know, a human. Or some green dude with a weird forehead. And maybe it’s just being aimed at kids, and that’s the problem. I mean, I could see having fun teaming up with my kid or whatever and playing this stuff. But I dunno if it would keep a child’s interest much longer than mine, unless they really, really wanted to see the outcome of the little stories in each level. Eh, I dunno.

Demons’ Souls didn’t do a lot for me, but fuck, I am really kind of getting into Dark Souls.

I really don’t know why, either. I mean, I think, for one, I picked a starting class that makes more sense to me than what I did in Demons’ Souls. I started as a Cleric, so I started with the Heal Miracle, and that really helped me out early game. I also feel like I have seen several people play through the first few hours of Dark Souls at this point, which made me very prepared to get past the early roadblocks and really get into how the game feels when you aren’t dying every five seconds. (Spoilers: It feels pretty awesome when things actually start to click.) Finally, I think it’s just that this game is much more streamlined and refined in very subtle ways. It’s more approachable. It’s ever so slightly more obvious what you should be doing. That’s very nice.

In any case, I’ve had some adventures! I ran around a lot uselessly because I didn’t realize there were shortcuts, which is always awesome! I died a lot, but I didn’t get angry about it, really, because I’ve just sort of accepted the idea that I am going to lose a bunch of souls every so often! (Though it does suck when you lose a humanity you randomly gained for some reason. Why do you randomly gain humanity, anyway? (One trip to a wiki later, it seems like you sometimes gain humanity for having your messages upvoted, so maybe that’s how I was getting them.)) I summoned some phantoms, who proceeded to utterly slaughter the Belltower Gargoyles while I watched in horror having no idea what to do. I bought a lot of equipment for my bonfire! I got hugged to death by a tree! I upgraded a shield! I shot a million arrows into a dragon tail! I used an exclamation point!

But really, when I went back and killed some of the big knights that I was running away from early in the game, overcoming them after a try or two now that I had leveled up and got new equipment, it felt good. Really good. That’s the kind of satisfaction this game can offer, I suppose.

Anyway, I find myself still wanting to play it, so, like a fool, I kept it from Gamefly. I guess I am playing a very Miracle-based character at this point, so I’m thinking I will join the Co-op Covenant thing so I can get Lightning Spear, the Miracle attack spell. That’s my next goal, anyway. We’ll see what happens with that, and if it can keep making me want to play it like I feel right now. We’ll see!

Okay, so I guess I’ll write a little about the Magic draft, then get some sleep.

Last night, we drafted! Yay! About damn time! We gave Innistrad a try, with it’s stupid flip cards. From a victory perspective, the draft went very badly for me, as I lost a lot. Jonathan made a ridiculous 60 card rainbow mill himself deck that somehow worked fantastically. Essner drafted werewolves. Duh. But Spaeth’s fairly straightforward black deck ended up taking the whole draft.

Drafting this set, there just seemed to be an overwhelming number of completely garbage instants in this set. Just really terrible ones! It also felt like there was a lack of solid low-casting-cost creatures, but maybe we just got unlucky with the packs we opened.

I got a card I really liked. It was called Mikaeus, The Lunarch. That is a fun and powerful card, and I often paired him with this equipment that gave Hexproof, but he really didn’t go off as much as I would have liked. He was a bit too slow to get going for the draft, I suppose, and it’s always hard to keep a large number of creatures on the board in a draft because, in general, you’re more likely to trade to get rid of threats because you don’t have any other options to deal with those threats. Thus, he wasn’t as useful as he could have been.

Really, though, those stupid flip cards are the main thing here, and they just weren’t anywhere interesting enough to justify how fucking annoying they are to have in a deck. I mean, they were fine. I used some for easy beats and threats. I also got this planeswalker, and he was kind of a win button. But seriously, just… every time I shuffled the deck and saw those cards in there, it just frustrated me. I wanted to see all the card backs so I knew everything was okay. Bleh. It really was as stupid as I expected it to be. There were no surprises there.

Anyway, that was definitely a Magic set! It certainly isn’t going to get me back into playing Magic as much as I used to, but it was a fun diversion for an evening, to be sure.

Scribblenauts Remix is a dollar right now, and you should buy it.

Now, I wasn’t a huge fan of Scribblenauts on DS. It controlled completely and utterly like ass. It was a pain to play, so much so that I didn’t even try Super Scribblenauts.

They fixed all that on iOS. The controls are basically the same as on the DS, but because my iPad is a much bigger screen, it is much, much easier to tap on what I want to tap on, and so on, and even easier to type in words. You may still have similar issues on an iPhone, but even then, they’ve included a virtual joypad option for moving Maxwell which will at least deal with a majority of stupid movement issues.

This lets you enjoy the game, which is easy, but the ability to create basically anything you type in is still magical. I played for like, what, an hour today, and I already have beaten over 50% of the levels, but it’s still a lot of fun. They seem to be using a mix of Scribblenauts, Super Scribblenauts, and original levels in the iOS version, which means a lot of these levels I haven’t seen before, which helps too. Makes it more fun.

I don’t know how long-lasting the game will be. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish blazing through the rest of the levels in another session and then be done. But I’ve certainly had a lot less fun for a dollar before, and it is pretty awesome to make all the shit appear, especially if you force yourself to constantly come up with new words. I highly recommend grabbing this while it’s on sale (or, of course, when it’s on a future sale, because it’s iOS, that’s obviously going to happen.)

I have played through the Batmens. Well, okay, I’ve played through Batman: Arkham City. Well, okay, I played through Batman: Arkham City without the Catwoman code, because everyone said that was the worst and most frustrating part of the game, and I didn’t need that. I got frustrated enough without it. But yeah, okay, I played through Batman. This is established.

It was pretty eh.

I mean, it was still a good game. I enjoyed my time with it. I punched some dudes, and silent-takedowned some others. There was a really, really fantastic boss battle with Mr. Freeze that was only unfortunate in that the reasons leading up to meeting and fighting Mr. Freeze were pretty stupid. I don’t know. There were a lot of stupid plot points in that game! But yeah, the gameplay was satisfying.

Of course, the problem is, like everyone else in the world has said, that the gameplay was so… same-y. It didn’t feel like a revelation at all. It felt like the exact same game I played when I played Arkham Asylum, only now the plot was even stupider, and I had to deal with this stupid overworld all the time. Batman was constantly being more of a dick than usual, generally having way, way too high an opinion of himself for no real reason, while making like… the worst strategic decisions, which is very un-Batman. It was everything that made Arkham Asylum good, but less so. It was a lesser game, and was hurt by being a sequel to such a fantastic game.

I’m not saying not play it. Like, I’m saying as I’m being negative, it’s still fun, and there’s plenty of good content. I mean, there are tons of sidequests that actually sound pretty interesting if you care about Batman. (Stupid Riddler Trophies don’t count, just… forget those exist). I mean, I didn’t do any of them, but I’ve heard stories of all kinds of cool encounters with Batman villians in this game, so if you give a shit about Batman, maybe that’s something you’ll enjoy? I dunno. Batman is a cool dude, but I’m not that thrilled about him in general, so, you know, I didn’t worry about it. But I could have been! I guess!

I’m glad I played it, but yeah, I just wasn’t wowed.

Jonathan was all like “Woah, I got Four Swords for free on this 3DS that I got for Christmas early! So cool!” and I’m all like “I have that on my DSi! We should play!” and then he went “We totally should!” so we did. Although it was just us two, so it was more like two swords.

I really liked it! Jonathan seemed disappointed. I think he was expecting, you know, a co-op Zelda game, with Zelda dungeons and Zelda puzzles. I suppose that’s a reasonable expectation, but I had heard enough about Four Swords to know what I was getting into, and that was a crazy, fuck your neighbor and grab his rupees adventure. While I didn’t totally play that way, some shenanigans were had, and we both had a fun time. Just not the time he was looking for.

It was also just kind of interesting to play and go “Oh, hey, there’s that item from Minish Cap!” Because they totally just stole a bunch of the more clever items from this and put them into Minish Cap. Not that I can blame them, since nobody really saw this stuff when it first came out in that Link to the Past remake. The items themselves were nothing really spectacular, as they just wanted to invoke the “feel” of Zelda, so of course your get a boomerang, bombs, Pegasus Boots, and so on. Certainly, though, the Magnet was a pretty weird item, and fun to use. It was certainly a cool and more interesting hookshot variant. The puzzles where you had to stick the other player to the wall to progress were fun, too.

All in all, I don’t know if we’ll play again. It wasn’t what my brother wanted and while I had fun, it really does seem like you need four players so it can get super chaotic and backstabby for maximum fun. Still, for the low price of “free” we certainly got an afternoon’s worth of entertainment, so no complaints there.