The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I am a fool.
It is amazing to me how much enjoyment I am getting out of my Gamefly subscription, and so ridiculous that it took me this long to try it.

I mean, I’m a gamer. I enjoy playing the various vidjeo gamez that are out there in the world. But most of all, I want to be involved in the video game conversation. I want to have opinions about games, and be able to talk about them with some level of authority. This means I want to play most games that come out, even if only for a few minutes, just so I can have that experience.

Before, a game came out that I wanted to try, I would either buy it day one, which is really a waste of money, especially with a game I just want to try and not, you know, know for a fact I want to play through and beat, or sit there and wait to waste 20-30 on it some other time. Either way, chances are I would get that game, play it for a day or two, and then something else would distract the shit out of me and it would just sit there.
Compare this to Gamefly, where I can hear about any game I’m even vaguely interested in, put it in my Queue, and get it, play it for half a day, hate it, and immediately send it back without feeling badly at all. I get to try so many things at the fraction of the cost. And if a game really does catch me? I can buy it at a reduced price, or I can just keep it and play all the way through it. It works so well, and it should work so well, and it kind of blows my mind that it took me this long to try it.

Of course, there are downsides. I’ve always rather liked the fact that I have what basically amounts to a huge lending library of games that people can come over and borrow. I like being able to provide that service.
But man, the money. The money I am going to save. Just think of the money. I’ve already started holding myself back on some games. I mean, some are inevitable. But I’m pruning down what games are must-buys. It feels so good.

Oddly enough, it feels so good.

I woke up the other morning with a familiar sensation. My ankle was hurting like hell. I couldn’t put any pressure on it.

So I hopped on one foot, basically, to the bathroom and whatnot. By the time I walked downstairs to pay some attention to the dog, who was very excited that she got me up early, it had reduced itself to a limp, and I could go on with my day.

But shit, that happened with me wearing my ankle brace all day.

What the hell? Why did it work so well in the beginning, but now is working so little? Am I suddenly wearing it wrong now? Am I building up an immunity to being braced or something?

Fuck, I don’t want to have to go see a doctor about my stupid ankle. Though I suppose I do have my own insurance to do such things now…

Excitebots is pretty cool.
It just frustrates me.

The game concept is solid. “How about we make a racing game where getting first place is less important than what you do in the race?” They asked this question, and they came up with a game where everything you do, from solid turns, to jumps, to spinning about, to crashing your vehicle, all earns you different numbers of stars. At the end of the race, it’s the one with the most stars that wins, not the one in first place. Granted, winning the race gives you a hefty star bonus, and that shouldn’t be ignored if you want to win. But it’s less important than what you do in the race. Much less.

It does some really crazy things, too. Instead of standard attack items, when you hit a present box, sometimes you’ll get a tambourine, and have to tap out Shave and a Haircut to get a nice star bonus. Or you’ll grab a dart and have to throw it at a target as you drive past. Question Marks on the field make hills appear out of nowhere, or a set of bowling pins ahead of you that gives you stars if you drive through them for a strike. It’s these crazy mini-games in the middle of races that make the races themselves exciting, not to mention how much your little robot bounces and flies around constantly. It’s a lot of fun.

But when I have trouble beating the second to last course of the second set of races, something is wrong. This is a Wii game. It should have a hard difficulty mode, but it shouldn’t be so hard that I have to try a long race a number of times in the double digits to beat it. It should just be fun, let me play, and unlock things. If I don’t win, who cares?
But this game cares. And it makes me unhappy. I wanted to see it all. But I have no want to perfect my skill at this game. I just wanted to play stupid racing game for awhile. The fact that it doesn’t support 4 player split screen means I want to play it even less, because I can’t drag a nice group of friends over to play it.

No, this game has some really great ideas, but it doesn’t really know what people want in difficulty. Okay, not what people want, what I want. So I’m pretty completely done with it.

It’s frustrating when such a nice, core casual experience goes sour like that.

Hello, girl! How’s my puppy, hm? How are you, huh?

Listen, we have to talk.

The fact that you like me? That is so totally cool. I love the fact that you’ll drop what you’re doing to come and see me. I love that you follow me around the house, and that you bring me toys to try to convince me to play with you. I love how you greet me with your happy jumps and you playful nips.

But seriously, little girl, you are trying my patience.

I am a creature of the night. I know you used to be, so I’m sure you can relate a little, right? That means I rarely get to bed early. I’d rather not get to bed at all some nights. And that means that now that my schedule involves being up early, I’m having a harder and harder time getting enough sleep.

The very, very last thing I need is you waking me up at 5 in the morning wanting to say hi, ESPECIALLY when you leave immediately after.

Seriously, little girl, I can’t nap all day with Mom like you can! I got stuff to do. Work to do. I can’t handle this. It’s got to stop.

So, you know, whenever you read this blog (I guess I am assuming that dogs will get blog-reading capabilities within your lifetime) please cut it out? Thanks.

I’ve said that I’m a fan of the animes that involve Mah Jong. For whatever reason, these shows continue to be mind-blowingly entertaining to me. But it’s only so much fun to watch a game being played, even if it’s being played intensely dramatically. Eventually, you want to play it yourself. But damn, Riichi Mahjong (the Japanese variant used in all these shows) is very complex, and whats worse, it’s almost impossible to find a place, in English, to play it, especially against a computer. (Seriously, you Google Mahjong, and it’s all Solitaire. All of it.) I tried the main online Japanese site to play Riichi Mahjong, called Tenhou. But there’s a big language barrier to get into games, not to mention that games on there are played with an incredibly strict time limit. Like, discard in 10 seconds or we discard for you. Completely not conducive to learning the game.

But I didn’t let that deter me. If I wanted to learn the game, I needed to play it, and that required some little tiny portable game. What better place for such a game than the iPod Touch? So I poked around, and looked what Riichi games there were on offer. Most were all in Japanese, and the rest were Solitaire or shitty. But there was one game, simply called “Mahjong Mobile.” The description in the app store is some incredible engrish. “And the slider is done in the tap and the tile is discard.” Intense. But I don’t mean to make fun of this guy. What’s important is the English in the game, and it’s completely correct and understandable. His app is totally worth the 3 bucks if you want some Riichi Mahjong practice.

The previously mentioned slider is actually, from what I hear, a very nice innovation. Since so many tiles have to be on screen at a time, it can be difficult to actually tap the tile you want to discard. The solution Mr. Matano came to was a slider, which you move along the bottom of the screen. As it moves, it points to the various tiles. Tap the slider to discard the tile it is pointing to. Simple.
The game also has many features perfect for the English speaker learning the game. For example, it lets you use the “American” tileset instead of the traditional one. This one is so much easier to parse because, instead of having the symbols on the tiles, which is especially hard to figure out in the Character suit without experience, it just has a little symbol for the suit and the number of the tile. So much easier to figure out and read at a glace. It also does the thing (which I hear hardcore players don’t like, but I appreciate) where it labels all discards that come from a draw as opposed to from their hand. The tiles players threw away immediately, in other words. This is a huge help in learning to read player’s ponds to figure out what to discard. I’m still rubbish at it, but it’s nice.

But yeah, it’s a solid game. It’s all understandable, so I can tell what it’s saying when it’s trying to tell me I don’t have enough fan to actually call Ron or Tsumo. It gives a results screen that can help explain what fan you have and such so you can figure it out. Sure, it isn’t as good as some sort of dedicated tutorial, but it’s a nice trial by fire, and since I don’t really give a shit if the computer embarrasses me and beats me, I’m having a good time learning it, playing a few hands here and there. It’s also a very podcast-friendly game (although it does the annoying thing where it shuts off the sound when you boot into it. But you can pull up the music controls in-game and just start it back up.) which I always appreciate. It doesn’t have many bells and whistles, but it’s a very solid program that sets out to do one simple thing and does it very well. I can highly recommend Mahjong Mobile to anyone wanting to try the Riichi rules out. It’s fun times.

Mirror’s Edge was a game that was kind of exciting to look at from a distance. Here was a game that not only looked unique, but was bringing mechanics you just don’t see anywhere to the table: first person parkour. Oh man, new and experimental, exactly what gaming needs, right? I mean, it’s going to be a bit rough around the edges, but it’ll still be fun, right?

Mirror’s Edge is not a game that likes you.

Maybe it’s because I’ve played Prince of Persia so recently, but this game just doesn’t want you to play it. Sure, Prince had some missteps. Combat wasn’t interesting, for example. But it also wasn’t frustrating, and the actual action of running, swinging, and jumping was completely enjoyable, if a little on rails.
Mirror’s Edge doesn’t let you get any fun out of running fast and making cool jumps until you’ve practiced and run through the level a time or two. Getting into a new area in Mirror’s Edge is mostly fraught with confusion about deciding where to go. This is supposed to be fixed with Runner’s Vision and the B button, which gives you a hint, but the hint just makes Faith look in a random direction and is completely useless, and Runner’s Vision only seems to highlight things when I don’t need it to. So many times I had no fucking idea where to go, and the game did absolutely nothing to help me. Even with a FAQ open, it was hard to figure out. I hate that.

But not running blazing fast all the time, that could be forgiven if the game would actual focus on that. That’s its appeal, and that’s why you want to play it. But the game has all kinds of arbitrary fight scenes where you have to use intense precision timing to disarm foes and then gun them down with horribly-implemented shooter mechanics. Hopefully you do them perfectly, because even on easy, I died constantly. Easy was supposed to make the combat easier, and yet I would fail time and again. I can’t imagine how pointlessly hard it is on other difficulties. To make matters worse, the checkpoint system is so bad that, even if you manage to survive one of these gun-firing combats, if you fail the jump right after it, which you might do, depending on how complicated it is, then guess what? It’s time to re-do the fight.

It was in just this situation, in the 7th level, that I said “Fuck this noise” and sent it back to Gamefly. I don’t need games that frustrate me. My leisure time need not be filled with things that make me angry. So fuck you, Mirror’s Edge. You had so much potential. Come back when you want to entertain me, eh?

I need to learn to be social with people outside my safe, and completely awesome, social group that I’ve had forever, mostly due to things and other things. So when my fellow TA’s invited me to a party they all were holding to kind of get to know each other, and I had nothing going on? Well, I decided to actually go.

Now, I knew a lot of things about this party weren’t going to necessarily be things I was down with. Namely, the fact that everyone would be drinking but me. I am a Teetotaler, and honestly, that’s not going to change. But I mean, it’s a bunch of English majors, getting together to relax. There’s going to be alcohol. So I was worried it wouldn’t be my thing.

Luckily, my worry was unfounded. Yes, there was a ton of drinking, but I still had a wonderful time. It really helps that quite a large number of the TA’s this year are incredibly witty and funny individuals, enough so that, even with a few drinks in them, they’re still able to keep things rolling with the jokes and whatnot and barely miss a beat. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I had a great time, much like the fun goofing off we’ve been doing in class so far.

The big first of the night, though, was that I drank a shot of whiskey. Why? Fuck if I know. Peer pressure or something? I didn’t want to ruin the game everyone was playing. In any case, it was as disgusting as I figured it would be and I will never do it again! Drinking is just not my thing, man. I mean, I don’t know. I guess something is wrong with me. I think about the cost of everything that was drank that night, and it just makes me shake my head. That’s just so much money I can spend on better things, just like smoking and whatnot. Better things like pointlessly large amounts of caffeine!

So, yeah. I went to a party.
Yeah.

So it seems pretty obvious to me that I made a good choice joining up with the Teaching Assistantship program.

I’m about a week into my training, and while it was a fairly exhausting week, both physically (as I had to get used to waking up so fucking early) and emotionally (it’s all new stuff, and I’ve had little time to just sit down and let myself recover) it just really feels like it’s going to be all worth it.

Today, I got the keys to my office. My office. (Okay, I share it with one other guy, but still, my office.) I didn’t expect that to be a point of pride or anything. Of course I’d have an office, you know? And yet… it makes me feel like I’ve got my feet on the ground more than I really ever have before. Well, not quite that… it makes me feel like I am successful. Having a place at work which is my place makes me feel like I am going to have more of an impact in my work. I’ve jumped up a notch from having to borrow the training room as my office at Kohl’s. I’m important enough to have the keys to a building, and to have my own space. That makes me feel good.

But while that’s good, that’s not what makes me so optimistic. It’s the fact that we’re sitting down in class, learning what we’re doing, and we’re joking, we’re laughing, we’re having a good time… and we’re discussing the exact things I care about, and the exact things I would want to teach somebody. We are discussing things I am interested in, and these are the things I am in charge of teaching. That makes me feel like I’m in the right place.

I mean, there are still hurdles to overcome. I still have to figure out how to balance all my work and whatnot. (I am thinking of adopting a strong “my work stays at work” policy, now that I have my own office to work in and keep my work in, and making sure I’m up there often, for example) I still have completely un-work related things to deal with and figure out. But at least, hopefully this stuff, this teaching, will be nothing but positive for me. I hope that’s the case. I want it to be. I feel like it’s going to be.

In a week, I’m going to be a teacher. I think that’s pretty cool.

I saw G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra!

It was shocking.

I mean, seriously, the trailers looked horrible. Like some bad son of Transformers that was going to be painful to sit through the whole time. And yet, my friends decided they were going, so I decided to come along.

Maybe it’s just the power of lowered expectations, but goodness, I really enjoyed this film. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It is dumb. Completely stupid. But man, unlike so many things that are stupid, it KNOWS its stupid. It knows it is based off of a cartoon that was created just to sell action figures. The Joes have no less than 4 million vehicles, some of which have parts that do nothing. (At one point, they get on these snowmobiles that have wings, which, after jumping like three feet out of the transport they were on, detatch. What’s the point of that?) There are crazy lasers and weapons, there are always random armies of guys about whenever someone needs a fight scene… it’s just so dumb, but it knows it. It embraces it. Why not have a weapon make an entire floor explode one minute, and then bounce off of the hero the next for no reason? Why not have a nonsensical “nanomite” weapon that is sometimes dangerous and sometimes not, whenever it’s appropriate?

This movie gave me much of the same rush as Shoot ‘Em Up did when I saw it in the theater. Constantly I was going “That makes no sense!” and “What the fuck!” but at the same time it was so thrilling and just unashamedly fun that I didn’t care. I was thinking I wasn’t going to like the movie going in, and apparently that was a bad plan. When I got there, my expectations were surpassed.
The only letdown was that there wasn’t a PSA after the credits. What a complete waste of a perfect opportunity.

But yeah, no. This won’t win any awards. I will probably never watch it again. But it was just a fun, stupid evening of action and explosions, and I had a shockingly good time. Watch it to MST3K it, or just watch it to watch things explode, and you won’t be disappointed.

Fact: I play too many broswer RPGs.

Fact: This is because there are more and more completely entertaining broswer RPGs coming out every day.

Fact: Improbable Island is a broswer RPG, and I am really enjoying it.

I stumbled upon this game from a banner ad on MS Paint Adventures. It was an ad that was basically a big blob of text, but it was very well-written text, and I had no idea what it was talking about. Kittybikes? Huh? So I clicked on it.
Then I was suddenly in the middle of the game. Or so it seemed.

I always think that kind of thing is risky. You know, when the main page is playing the game, and you actually sign up a little later? But man, it worked so well this time. I read the humorous text, clicked through, and answered the questions. When it asked my name, I didn’t even put in poetfox, because I was roleplaying and I figured it would ask me explicitly if it wanted a screen name, so I just put in Alexis. Shockingly, I now have the account name Alexis. But man, it really drew me into the game.

Once you get into the game, though, what you find is a very humorously written lewtfest. Basically, this game is what Legends of Zork should be. It has a similar quick-paced, mostly hands-off combat system, though you can affect it by throwing grenades or using powers based on your improbable implants. But every combat is filled with all kinds of humorous pre-battle text, and you have plenty of non-combats that are well-written as well. All the while, you’re balancing risk/reward. It costs to heal yourself, but the more you heal, the less it costs. So it costs significantly more to heal 10 HP twice than to heal 20 HP once. So you’re constantly deciding if you should push yourself for one more combat, or cash out and heal up. It’s the main thing that drew me into Zork, that interface, and it’s so much better done here.

Apparently the game is based on an open source engine for a game called “Legend of the Green Dragon.” Apparently this is a really old game that’s been around a long while, and if you’re familiar with it, from what I’ve heard, you’re going to know exactly how to run the strategy in this game. It’s mostly just a cosmetic re-working, but it’s a very entertaining one. Plus, since I’ve never even heard of the first game, every bit of it is new to me, and I’m having a blast.

I’m happy to report that the game even has a fairly robust “ascension” mechanic in place. Every time you get a “drive kill” you start over, improbably losing some of your gear and stuff. But based on how many kills you have, you have a wide variety of new races to choose from. Tired of being a Human? Then try the game as a Kittymorph, Zombie, or Robot. Or hell, I think there’s a few more, too. They all play different, to make the experience different as you come back for more.

So yeah, give this game a try, if you give a shit about these browser games. I promise you’ll laugh at the text. I’m really close to my first Drive Kill, myself, and I’ve enjoyed every bit of the game. It’s worth your time.