The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Gods, just look at this shit. How can I wait for Beatles Rock Band?
HOW CAN I WAIT?

It’s just going to be so intense. So intense. So intense.
I apologize for the excitement, but it is endless.

But man, it just opens up a whole new can of worms. After watching that video way more times than was healthy, I went into a happy dream world of September 9th (Okay, probably more like September 11th, (NEVAR FORGET) since I’m going to be getting it from Amazon.) where I am rocking the shit out with my friends and then, it hit me: Are my instruments up to snuff?

I mean, I own at least 4 plastic guitars. But my GH2 one is broken, Essner keeps claiming that my Rock Band one is broken too, though I don’t believe him. My GH3 wireless guitar has this battery that is never charged and fills me with anger, and my drum kit… well, I’ve had to replace the pedal on it again, and it’s probably going to break again, and if we get back into Rock Band really hardcore, which I hope happens with the Beatles coming out, I just can’t believe that the drum heads won’t break again either.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that it would be nice to have a new Drum Kit and a new Guitar. But is that really worth paying $250 bucks for the big pack? Man, I don’t know. And the individual Beatles guitars, though really fucking cool, are $90 by themselves. I have to keep my mind on my money more than ever before. That is a lot of cash.

Just got to stay positive. Of course everything will work. It’ll all be fine. And if it isn’t? Stores are desperate to unload all of these plastic instruments. Surely I can find a cheap guitar somewhere or something. It won’t be as cool as the Beatles replica guitars, but what are you gonna do.

But seriously, man… I have to keep waiting for this. No fair.

So I was busy doing VERY IMPORTANT work that involved uploading a video of Molly being cute (which you can see here. As you can tell, VERY IMPORTANT) when suddenly my 3G connection seemed to die and I had nothing, nothing, for awhile in there.

Now, I’ve only had internet on my phone for, what… 3 weeks? 2? Not very long. And yet, the loss of the net connection on my phone instilled in me the same pointless rage as when the internet goes down at my house. How dare I be disconnected! How dare they have a momentary loss of service!

The service was back up in, what… 10 minutes? 15? It wasn’t very long. I could once again get my tweets and my IMs and my random internet stuffs wherever I might be. But man, for those moments when I was shopping at Wal-Mart and unable to twitter and tell the world about it? Intense Fury.

If there’s one thing that’s clear, though, it’s that I am likely never going to be able to go back to not having data on my phone. Luckily/hopefully data stuff will be a lot cheaper by the time this contract runs out and I get a phone on my own. I mean, it’s only a matter of time until it becomes standard.
But yeah, never going to be without it. Ever.

Also, we all know this post was just an excuse to post that video. And reviews are already in. This is a bad cell phone video of a puppy you do NOT want to miss! And because it’s so popular, I’ve prepared an additional puppy video! That’s right! Two shitty cell phone puppy videos for the price of one! Don’t delay! Watch today!

So, did you hear? Magic 2010: the 11th Edition that comes out in 2009 is out! In 2009! Already! Wow! So, you know, that means we’ve gotta draft it. I mean, we just had to, right? So last Tuesday, we got to it.

I walked into the draft claiming I was going to force Black for no reason. Jonathan was claiming he was going to force opening three Planeswalkers. We all claimed that Justin Spaeth was going to take all the Lightning Bolts. (Gods, seriously, I am so pissed at Wizards for reprinting that card. Ugh.) Two of these things came true. Jonathan only opened one Planeswalker.

But seriously, I’m not too sure what I was thinking. Spaeth opened his first pack, and announced his rare was Royal Assassin. Obviously he is going to be running Black, and he did. It was really kind of stupid for me to force Black. And yet, Doom Blades, Tendrils of Corruption, and Assassinates kept getting passed to me, and I couldn’t let them go. Even though I was joking, I ended up forcing Black.
Still, it worked out well for me. I ended up B/u with a huge amount of removal. Sure, I was counting on a bunch of small fliers to get my damage in and whatnot, but eh, such is a tried and true Black/Blue strategy.

And it worked really well, actually. I was kind of a complete dick to everyone, removing thing after thing. Bam Bam Bam! I did some major ass-kicking. Jonathan was having some serious Mana-flood issues that really kind of ruined his surprisingly strong-looking mill deck unluckily, and so I beat him easily. Spaeth’s Black/Red deck gave me some trouble, but in the end I managed to get enough evasion to defeat him in some tense rounds. Essner was the only one I didn’t best. He had too much lifegain for my little creatures sneaking in after I murdered things, and always managed to turn the game around after I had him down to like three, and then he regained some life… it was unfortunate.
So I went 2 and 1. But oh well, I was sort of the winner since I tied with Spaeth, and I beat him. Or so we said. We don’t care too much about wins and losses. (says the person who just spent several sentences talking about wins and losses.) It’s all about building that deck and then seeing it actually work well. In that case, I completely succeeded. The deck really felt like a well-oiled machine. I did a great job this time around.
Almost makes me want to build a deck like it. But that would really get me hated right off the table.

But yeah, Magic 2010: the 11th Edition that comes out in 2009 really does seem like a pretty neat core set. The new stuff keeps it fresh, and it really seems designed for more interesting draft play than previous core sets. Previous core set drafts didn’t seem nearly as dynamic and action-packed as this one did. They tended to be more of a plodding forward kind of game without big swings. In that regard, I pretty well think this set is a success.
Then again, I’ve only played one draft. Who knows. Heh.

I was so excited about Tales of Monkey Island. So much so that I threw down my $35 the very day it was announced. No waiting. No nothing. Then what did I do?

Why, I waited most of a month before actually playing the first episode, The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, of course. C’est la vie.

BUT HOW WAS IT?

Telltale has its own brand of humor, and while I’ve always enjoyed it, it is different than that of Monkey Island. So there was a little worry there. I feel like what ended up was a little mixture of both. It feels like Monkey Island, in no small part due to the vocal talents of Dominic Armato, who is still wonderful as Guybrush. His delivery and most of what Guybrush says is spot on. Completely spot on. Everyone else is a little more Telltale than Monkey Island. Still, I didn’t mind. I very much enjoyed all the humor.

It was also obvious that they kicked the puzzles up a notch from their normal fare, as well. This… I liked less so. Normally I rarely have to look up a solution in a Telltale game. At most, I look up a hint for one puzzle. I looked up three different solutions to stave off frustration in this episode. This didn’t ruin the fun, as I do it for the conversations and whatnot, but man, I wasn’t expecting that. One puzzle, especially, I know I NEVER would have figured out without looking something up. Not going to spoil anything, but it was just so non-intuitive.
I mostly blame all of this on the hint system. Normally, Telltale’s hint system is really good. At the basic setting, if you’re standing around in one place trying to solve something, your character normally throws out humorous little quips that give you hints. I appreciate that. But it just seemed weirdly balanced in this game. It kept CONSTANTLY giving me hints on the treasure maps, which I needed no help with, and giving me no hints at all on the puzzles I was stuck on. Something seemed off. But hopefully they’ll get that fixed in the next episode. They’re good at that.

But seriously, the Treasure Maps. I have to agree with the press’s take: There was absolutely no reason to pad out the game length by making me solve multiple maps like that. That was pretty silly. I mean, I don’t mind it being the little separate minigame outside the game for little downloadable prizes? I think that’s a neat idea. But I didn’t really need to do that twice. Wandering about in a maze once is enough for me, thanks.

But yeah, Monkey Island is back in a wonderful way, thanks to Telltale. Pretty well the only way it could be better is if they spend obscene and non-sensible amounts of money on 2D animation, and somehow got Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert back to write the whole thing. But those weren’t going to happen, and I’m okay with that. I very much look forward to the future episodes. (Even if it’s kinda bullshit you can’t buy these episodes a la carte… doesn’t affect me though.)

My latest Gamefly rental and playthrough was that of Prince of Persia. Not the old one. The new one that they decided to just name Prince of Persia. You know, the baby game where a magical girl saves you every five seconds so you don’t die? That one?

It was a pretty damn fun game.

I mean, sure, it was shitty of them to lock the real ending behind 10 dollars of DLC. (which I didn’t even try for) Their combat system could have used a significant amount of work, seeing as it was extremely repetitive, and repeating 4 extremely similar bosses over and over certainly didn’t help that.

But it was fun. Really.

I’ve talked before about how awesome it is to play a game that is just fun, and doesn’t try to be retardedly challenging or whatever. That is pretty well exactly what Prince of Persia is. You are never in any risk of losing any more than maybe a minute’s progress at any point in time. You can just sit back and enjoy jumping like crazy along walls and swinging from poles and all that stuff. If you miss a jump, no big deal. You start back the last time you were on solid ground, and besides one or two locations, the game is smart enough to give you areas of solid ground at regular intervals, so you never fall too far behind.
The game also does characterization mostly right. Although it would have been better to have the conversations happen while actually playing the game, the conversations between the Prince and Elika are quite entertaining. They have a very nice, fun banter going, and you’ll listen to them because they’re so much fun. What’s more, the animations also do a very good job of conveying their relationship. Having the Prince excuse himself as he moves past Elika on a ledge or pulling her up on his back as he scales a wall is just these little simple things that make them seem a bit closer. I think it’s rather neat. Add into that the cliffhanger ending, which is handled with game mechanics in a very clever way, and you have some fairly solid, if not particularly deep characters. They’re a lot of fun.

Overall, though, I’m glad I never bought Prince of Persia. I think I might have been a lot harder on it had I paid $60 for it or whatever. But it is a damn fun experience, and it is completely worth your time to play.
Unless you’re, I dunno, someone who demands that every game be like I Wanna Be The Guy. Then you’re probably out of luck.

Molly is a cute puppy. Just look at her! Awww. Adorable.

But she won’t eat.

Seriously, my parents have tried to feed her everything. Multiple types of dog food, just about any table scraps you can think of, and she just won’t eat. She eats barely enough to even get by, it’s crazy. And yet, she’s still a happy puppy. She jumps about and play and has fun. I have no idea how she finds the energy. And her not eating makes my mom quite worried, really.

Last Sunday, after a whole day of my mom trying desperately to get the little puppy to eat something, Essner comes over for a few rounds of Race for the Galaxy. (He’s addicted, I swear.) So Molly runs up to greet him. He pets her, they play a little on the floor, and then we turn to our game.
Molly immediately runs over to her food, and starts devouring it. Then we get out more for her, and she eats all of that too. Totally stuffs herself.

Was the whole reason she wasn’t eating just because she was too depressed to eat? That seeing a guest cheered her up? That she was missing Essner, Spaeth, and my friends coming over? I really don’t think it was a lack of being able to play, as I fiddle with her and try to play fairly often, though she’s normally not interested. And yet, magically, she was hungry.
I mean, I guess it’s not surprising that her little doggy emotions could affect her so completely and make her not want to eat. I mean, she has gotten doctor-certified so nervous she threw up before. She is a very timid little dog sometimes. She likes things not to change.
So was she just so used to my friends always coming over that it depressed her that they hadn’t shown up for awhile?

Man, I don’t know. I’m glad she ate something. But man, that’s so weird. If she really needs cheering up, I guess we’ll have to come up with a day to do so. But man, that seems like some serious dog-pampering, when you’re worried about their depression.

Still, she’s my cute puppy, so… yeah. I’ll do my best.

It has come to our attention that, a few posts ago, we used the word “addicting” in a circumstance where we should have used the word “addictive.”

We here at getmeoutofthis.net apologize for this grievous and uncalled for error in judgment. No ill will was meant towards our readership. We hope that our loyal readers will find themselves forgivive.

Something was wrong.

The Melancho

…wait, I said I wasn’t that stupid. Okay then.

So here’s some things to be happy about, as opposed to being in an Endless Summer.

There’s a Scott Pilgrim downloadable Beat-em-up coming out around the release of the movie. I hope to god they do it justice, but hell, it’s kind of a perfect fit. It desperately needs to be 2D animated, though. If they do that, with O’Malley’s art style, I bet I’ll end up picking it up.

Thanks to Kale and my own Pepsi drinking habits, I’ve acquired over 100 dollars of free Wii Points. Okay, so this is mostly something for me to be happy about, but, you know. If you wanted to try something on Virtual Console at my house or something, I have tons of points. So, uh, I guess… potentially a group thing. Maybe.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth has a firm American release date. Let the giddiness ensue! At least for me. I love this series with the heat of a thousand suns. I wish they’d do some sort of episodic model somehow, because that would still be COMPLETELY SWEET.

The Weezer 8-bit album came out, and it’s actually fairly completely awesome, and well worth a download. So many sound like some completely badass Mega Man level. I especially love the version of Hash Pipe. There’s vocals with 8-bit music done RIGHT.

Yeah, so… put a smile on. Be happy. Time never comes back once it’s gone! There’s so little summer left! Use it to smile!
(I am saying this to myself just as much as to any of you reading.)

Something was wrong.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya pretty well single-handedly got me back into anime. The first season was so excellently put together with a splash of well-applied avant-garde that really drew you in and made you interested, not to mention welcomed multiple viewings. And dammit, I did watch it multiple times, I picked out all kinds of little things in it, and then I sat back and I said “Woah. Here is something great. Here is something that not only lives up to the incredible hype and fandom it has, but in some ways even surpasses it. Amazing.”

Then there was a season 2, and it started sneakily, in the middle of reruns of season 1. Ha! It was back!

And then came Endless Eight.
It started out innocently enough. A rather boring little episode. But then it aired again, only a little different. And then again and again and wheeeee, Endless Motherfucking Eight!

I’m not going to argue for or against it. I’m sure internet people are doing that all over. But fuck, my blog is so insular. So fucking insular. No, I want to figure out why the fuck I keep watching it, and why I have the reaction to it that I do, and that reaction is…
Well, no reaction.
Honestly, I don’t much feel one way or another on this one. It’s not that I have some endless trust of the people making the show. They had a lot of trust, but by the fourth time I was watching the same episode remixed, that has been completely squandered. I can’t even imagine a way in which this stupid stunt could pay off, much less pay off in the same way that the awesome stunt of Season 1 did. It’s not that I think it’ll be worth it.
And it’s certainly not that it’s entertaining. So little changes from episode to episode that it really doesn’t seem worth my time.

Yet I watch and I watch and I watch.

I love these characters, and I love the world, and the show is really well animated. And I mean, it’s not like they’re reusing shots or anything for these episodes. I keep watching to see what happens to them. I keep going because I want them to break out of this stupid plot bullshit that the animation company has set them in and get back to what made the series great. Honestly, I highly doubt they won’t, after this, come back, in “apologetic” fashion, with something full force that will wow me.

But why stick with the Eight? Why not wait until it’s over? Is it just to be part of the crowd? To be “in” on the time when they pranked their viewing audience or whatever?
Maybe.

Fuck, I dunno.

(If I was really stupid, I’d post this blog post with minor edits for the next few days, Luckily, I am not a complete moron.)

I love my parents, but man, there’s just been a huge gap between us for a lot of my life. They wanted things for me, and I wanted completely different things. They wanted someone who played sports, who was a “normal” kid who was fashionable like the “normal” kids, and, hell, a son. I was interested in computers, video games, writing, and, you know, being myself. We never really saw eye to eye. Until recently, when I somehow finally started to get it through their heads that, not only was I a functional adult, but I was a functional adult that was trendy in my own way, and was doing things that are as important and legit as anything else, the things I did were silly and a waste of time. Nothing I could be doing was more important than what they wanted me to do.

But again, now, in some ways, things are really starting to turn around in our relationship. I think getting my mother a computer so she could use the internet showed her how awesome the internet was, so she leaves me alone about things like that. Games like You’re In The Movies and Scene It! Lights, Camera, Action have showed them some of what I see in video games. And again, I have proven myself a lot more to be a responsible adult.

It’s kind of addicting, too, to have my interests suddenly be worthwhile in their eyes, or at least understandable. For so long, I could really kind of care less if they were involved in what I do. Now I want to show them everything.

The biggest example, and the reason I thought of writing this post, is Beatles: Rock Band. My mom was one of those screaming girls back in the day, and she gets the appeal of regular Rock Band, though she is mostly uninterested as she doesn’t know any of the songs. Now the Beatles? She knows the Beatles. It is awesome to see her excited about the game. I drag her in here to look at the computer every time some new footage or something comes out, and it’s great to see her be as pumped as I am.

I honestly can’t wait to hand her the mic when the game comes in and sing the crap out of the game. It is going to be so much fun.
And hey, maybe we’ll get just that much closer. That would be nice. I don’t want our relationship to get any closer to the one between Rose and her mother.