The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Twitter was all like “Oh man, Quarrel is like Boggle and Risk put together, oh man, Quarrel is so awesome you should play Quarrel!”
So, you know, I downloaded it.

First off, let me just say that the versions of the game are stupidly misleading for no reason. The game called “Quarrel” is just a demo. “Quarrel Deluxe” is the actual game. I just played the demo, though. It was fun, but I couldn’t see myself playing it enough to be worth five bucks because of issues.

Quarrel is a very good looking game. All the characters have lots of, well, character. They hop around and throw letters at each other. You also fight opponents with little animated expressions and reactions, which is nice. The gameplay really is exactly what it sounds like: Boggle + Risk. Each troop you have is one more letter you can put into the word. You spell words instead of rolling. The person who has the highest point total word wins the fight and takes out the other side. Point ties go to whoever entered the word the fastest. Winning gets you “treasure” which you can use at the beginning of a fight to call in an extra dude. You do troop movements like Risk, and you get one guy on each controlled territory at the end of every turn.

All that is fine, but it just didn’t catch me. When you can lose because you aren’t faster than an AI opponent, that takes a lot of fun out of playing against the AI, at least personally. The game doesn’t show me a countdown clock or anything, so I really don’t know how fast the computer is. The game even has a little mini game to play while the computer players are fighting each other. Why not just skip those fights? I don’t know. It’s a weird decision.

But the real problem is lack of multiplayer. I’m not talking about in the demo, that’s fine if it doesn’t have it there. But the full version doesn’t have any multiplayer either. This game would be fun as shit against actual opponents, but not being able to have any just makes the game a moot point. You can beat an AI that’s intentionally being stupid, and you will fail against an AI that always knows the highest value word because it’s an AI. It’s not a challenge. It’s just kind of a timewaster. Against real people, speed becomes a fun element. Against real people, strategy becomes more important. Against real people, this becomes and awesome game.

But it’s not there yet. Play the demo if you want. It’s free, and you’ll get some fun out of it. But goodness, I can just not see the full version being a purchase you can make without very, very robust multiplayer options.

Well, I know Molly can’t read my blog, but whatever.

I made some mistakes with Frisky. To be fair, I was growing up. But when it became apparent that he was my mother’s dog, and that my mom had basically turned a 360 on her opinions on having a pet and loved Frisky completely, I kind of slid away from him. We were like friendly coworkers. Sometimes we interacted, but for the most part, he did his thing, and I did mine. It was only when I saw how much Natalie interacted with her dog, and that Frisky was getting older and a bit ill, that I realized my problem. The reason Frisky didn’t hang out with me is because I never set out to hang out with him. I couldn’t just assume he’d want to be around me. I had to make a connection.
Granted, it’s not like I didn’t have good times with Frisky before that point. I did. He was a great dog. But I just wasn’t trying to connect with him. I wasn’t trying to be his friend. I spent the last bit of Frisky’s life doing that, and I found it rewarding. I was glad I reached out when I could.

When Molly came into our lives, I knew I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes I made before. Sure, I’m still a computer person who plays video games, and a dog isn’t really going to want to hang around with me while I do that, probably, especially when Mom is spoiling her to death. But I make sure to make time to visit with her. I take time to pet her and play with her every day, and check on her if I’m around. I got to know her. I get to be her friend. And it pays off. She likes me. She listens to me. She’s awesome.

Granted, she’s spoiled rotten. She’s picky as all get out about her food. She’s scared to death of everything. She gets to chew anything she can pick up because my Mom thinks “it’s cute.” But all in all, she’s a pretty good dog. I love her very much, and I am very glad she wants me around.

Happy Birthday, Molly.

Are you going to say to me “This can never be,” are you going to say to me, Withered Hope?
Sad sack!
Sad sack!

A post of complaining. I recommend skipping. Here, watch this instead. You’ll have more fun.

Here’s what’s going on, I guess.
So Sunday, Jonathan and Shauna decided it would be a good idea to get Molly groomed, as it was obvious my mom never was going to and they were going to the dog groomers anyway. So they took Molly and did it. This really upset my mother, as she thought Molly looked cute all shaggy and stuff. Of course, she was ignoring all the matted, dirty fur and things like that, which is why Molly needed to be groomed in the first place. She was also freaking out about the idea of Molly being in a cage for any length of time at all, and was sure Molly would be angry at her. It… yeah. Anyway.
Molly gets back, and Mom is all moody that Molly looks different now. She’s clearly upset. We all try to cheer her up, but to no avail. She’s unhappy about this turn of events. This is when Cole arrives, and we go upstairs to play games and wait for Cara because we were going to get snowcones.
A bit later, Jonathan and Shauna come up, and they tell me the situation. Apparently there was a fight. Anger flared up over the fact that my mom worries so much about this dog, but won’t attempt to support me by even doing something like trying to call me by my name. She got told off, and started crying. Shauna and Jonathan just wanted to let me know. I hugged them and told them how much I appreciate their support. I mean, I don’t want us all fighting. I want us all to be the awesome family we are, you know? But still, the fact that there’s so much love for me there, and that they want everything to work out for me so much that they’d do that… it means a lot to me.

Anyway, this made my mother’s mood worse, of course. I tried to talk to her, and she asks me if I’ve been telling Shauna we’ve been fighting. I said no, because we haven’t been. But that’s just because I go way, way out of my way to not do anything in front of her that would cause a fight. I can sense fights brewing. I can sense how everything will explode if I do things the way I want or should. I feel like our relationship is so strained, so fragile, and I’m trying so hard to make it work. If I’m myself, it’ll break. Even the little things I do, like using my true gender when talking about myself, bother her. We haven’t been fighting, but I’ve been holding myself and my life back a lot to keep it from happening.
She said she’s been doing good in supporting me. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes. She and Dad are being fantastic in helping me out in many areas, such as house-buying, but in this one? This whole being myself thing? They’re not with me. As far as I’m aware their position is still “I can’t look at you doing this to yourself.” Which is basically getting me out of their life. Which they don’t seem to understand still. Even though I’m teaching and working and doing literally everything but being around them as myself, and that someday that shit has to end.

I’m complaining instead of explaining. Anyway.

Now it’s today. Today was going pretty decent for me. I mean, I had to get up early and work the truck, but that’s not so bad. Hours and all. I also taught, and that went pretty alright, too. Things were going fine.
Then we were having a conversation with my dad, and for the first time today, Mom refers to me by my old name.
My stomach dropped out from under me. I felt terrible. It took me awhile to figure out why, but I think it’s because she had been yelled and screamed at, but took nothing away from that experience.
Either way, bringing it back to the song, it just feels like my hopes of ever getting my parents to understand are stupid at this point. It feels like it will never happen. It feels like I am going to lose my parents. They don’t want a daughter, and they don’t want me. I feel like I’ve tried so hard to keep that hope alive, that they would, and this is just another thing trying to blow out that candle. Maybe it would be for the best if I went. I don’t know.

I love my parents. They love me. I want them in my life.
I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of them being the only two people in my life who don’t understand. I’m tired of them being the only two people who make me feel like a freak, or that I have something to hide, or that I’m less than a person. I’m tired of his hope that they’ll understand someday that keeps me from doing something about it. I’m tired of worrying, every moment I’m around them, that we’re going to start fighting.

I talked with Ecks after I ran to my room, turned down Jonathan’s invitation to go play board games with people (I just wasn’t in an emotional state to meet new people. I’m sorry, Jonathan. I hope it didn’t ruin anything.) and just curled up in depression and lost hope. We talked, and he’s awesome, and he’s right. I mean, I’m not going to let this stop me. Nothing is going to stop me anymore. Not when I’m finally myself for the first time in my life. I will wake up tomorrow, and I will continue on. No thoughts of suicide, no inability to get out of bed, no overwhelming feeling of failure. My parents have done a lot, but I got rid of those things without them. I was responsible for becoming myself and succeeding, and still am. I don’t need their approval. If they want to be a roadblock, they can be, but they should get out of the way. I’m going anyway.

And that’s what’s happening in my emotional life. Did you see that funny video? You should have just watched that up there. Goodnight.

I don’t have a separate tag for manga, so I guess anime will do. Does anyone care about my tags anyway? Who knows.

Anyway, Mightyblue on Talking Time mentioned this manga called Prunus Girl. His short description was “sort of a romance/slice of life between a guy and a trans/crossdressing guy without being overbearing or stereotypey about it.” Because I am incredibly predictable (but I mean seriously, let’s face it. We all like reading stories about ourselves, right? Is it really weird that I want to read a romance that involves a transgendered person?) that was more than enough to make me check it out. I hadn’t read any manga in a long while, so why not?

I really don’t know what to think about it. I don’t think it’s really all that great, but at the same time I read the majority of the comic in one non-stop sitting, so it kept me engaged on some level. Though not in the way it seems to engage random people talking about it on the internet, if Google searches are any indication. It seems to be a lot of debating if Aikawa, the transgendered character, is really male or female. He certainly teases about that fact a lot during the comic, but the fact remains: he tells everyone he’s male. Thus, he’s male. The fact that he’s very feminine and always wears female clothes doesn’t really change that. In any case, I could really give a shit about that sort of thing, though I would feel a bit disappointed if they finally got together and Aikawa WAS physically female, AND just shed being a man completely. It would sort of make Maki’s character arc of coming to terms with his feelings for a guy a really fucking moot point, and that’s all the story really has going for it. I guess Aikawa could be physically female, but a transsexual man, without me feeling cheated in that way, but goodness, I don’t know if this author could even attempt to handle something like that in an intelligent manner. But we’ll get to that later. Point is, Aikawa is a man and it’s dumb to debate it.

Even saying all that, though, I must admit I don’t get Aikawa much at all. I don’t understand why you’d go through all the trouble to look female (and it is a fucking lot of trouble) and then tell everyone you’re male. Granted, this is because I’m me, trying desperately to look female but still keep my look. He passes with ease, and I’m jealous and shocked he kind of throws it away constantly. I find it difficult to push through that and understand the whys behind what he does. Then again, maybe there’s nothing to break through and see. Maybe the whole thing is being played for laughs and that’s all I’m supposed to take away. But there’s hints of depth in the characters and the scenario, so I don’t want to believe that.

In general, the comic feels like it’s being created without a plan, though, which is a shame. There’s a lot of genuine drama you could bring out of this scenario (not necessarily doom and gloom persecution stuff, but more the fact that this DOES complicate a relationship. You could explore that. That’s one of the things Wandering Son does so well.) and a lot of it is left on the table so that the story can include more super generic romantic comedy antics. There are too many scenes where something is set up that would work with any romantic comedy couple, but not with this one because of the whole transgendered thing. But the problems with it are literally written off in a throwaway panel of “I don’t care, let’s do it anyway,” which really hurts the whole thing. The biggest example of this was a water gun fight, where one team was trying to get Aikawa’s white shirt wet so they could see his breasts. But he’s a guy, and the horny guys trying to do this know it. But they just say, “Eh, I still want to,” and they’re off. It’s like the author had a silly idea, realized it wouldn’t work, but just did it anyway. I’m not necessarily against wacky romantic comedy happenstances, but at least understand your own gimmick, author.

It also just falls into that trap that bothers me more and more when I read this sort of “romantic comedy genre” stuff. The “tension” supposedly leaves if the main characters actually get together. But it’s stupid they don’t. I kind of felt this in Sasameki Koto, but that was more feeling like characters were stupid for not just being honest, as opposed to stupid for them not being together. A bit different. In Prunus Girl, it was them basically going on dates, spending all their time together, and so on, but Maki won’t call it dating because that would “ruin” things. It’s so stupid. They like even go on a fake date for shenanigans at one point, and Maki notes that THIS IS WHAT THEY NORMALLY DO WHEN THEY’RE TOGETHER. THEY NORMALLY GO ON DATES. But he won’t call it that, noooo. It’s such an artificial thing. It keeps the characters from growing because they are stunted by this stupid decision to keep this “tension” going between them. There’s plenty of tension to be found if they START dating! Use writing! Bleh.

Anyway, yeah. Can’t recommend this one. There’s no planning to it, no real overall arc to be found here. I suppose I have read worse manga (yeah, yeah, I have) but still. There’s probably a better way to spend your time.

I was always a Street Fighter person, and never a Mortal Kombat person. Never really gave a shit about that series. However, that new remake came out, and with Giant Bomb going on and on about how it has an actually good single player story for some reason, as well as friends at work just being huge Mortal Kombat fans, I really felt like I had to try it. So, you know, Gamefly to the rescue!

I didn’t make it through the story mode.

I’m not saying the game is bad, I just lost interest! I think the game seems really good. There’s no doubt there’s like a million fucking modes in there, as well as strong online play and plenty of characters to work with. They’ve got, you know, all your favorites. If you have favorites. I don’t have favorites. Their use of a modified EX/Super meter seems to work well for the game.

But yeah, I just… I don’t really get Mortal Kombat. None of the characters seem fun to me. They are born of a time when I didn’t really care about blood and gore and shit, you know? I’m sure people with that nostalgia would love the shit out of these guys, but I just don’t have that. I especially don’t get why the moves are like they are. The Giant Bomb guys said the moves were easy to pull off, but man. Maybe it’s my years of Street Fighter, but I just can’t tap on directions like buttons like the game wants me to do. I had trouble with a lot of the moves, and I’d always end up only being able to use one or two. Personal problem, I’m sure, but it just seemed to go against what I think a fighting game is.

Really, though, the reason I didn’t finish the story mode was that it was too hard. I just wanted to see the stupid-ass story, you know? But I had it set to the easiest setting, and sometimes matches just would not let me mash. When they throw in those 2 on 1 matches, even the braindead level of AI becomes a huge problem, because you just can’t fuck up. If they land an X-Ray on you, it’s kind of over, and since I didn’t know the characters and shit, I wasn’t really equipped to dodge X-Rays. I didn’t want to have to redo fights. I just wanted to see the stupid plot. Eventually, though, I had to try, and I just wasn’t interested.

It’s not really the game’s fault, though! It’s trying to be a challenging, cool fighting game with a challenging, cool story mode. They are appealing to fans something HARDCORE and I could not be any less of a fan of Mortal Kombat. But good on them for making an amazing game for a series I, and I’m sure many others, had totally wrote off. It’s just not my thing. It’s on the way back to Gamefly now.

I’m up to the Five Mole bosses, all of which are Number Three, which is still a fantastic gag. Earthbound is still a great game.

While I’ve been playing through, though, I’ve really been wondering about the level ups in this game. They seem randomized, something I never really paid much attention to, but it’s coming out now because goodness, Jeff has been getting terrible fucking level ups this time around. I think I had two separate levels where all he got was +1 Max HP. No stat increases, nothing but an extra hit point. He was constantly getting one-hit-killed for quite awhile with updated gear and everything. Paula was a little better, but not by much. I know Ness has always been way more survivable than the other party members, but I just didn’t remember them being such glass cannons. Maybe I did even more grinding in my youth? Who knows!

One thing I know I didn’t use in my youth were Jeff’s gadgets. Last time I played through the game, I discovered the Slime Generator, and how it breaks the combat wide open with how obscenely useful it is. This time around, I decided that I might be missing other things just as awesome, so while I’ve been using the Slime Generator a ton since I got it again (because seriously, it is that good) I’ve been trying to remember to try all of Jeff’s other unique items that kind of stand in for him not having spells. So today I used the HP-Sucker. Uh, it’s no Slime Generator, to be sure. It’s pretty well completely garbage. Very low chance of hitting, and when it does you get like 10 HP. What a waste of a turn. Maybe it’s not surprising that I didn’t discover the Slime Generator so long ago. I seem to recall there’s an gadget that removes enemy shields, though. That one might prove as useful. I’ll try to find it. (I’m not using any walkthroughs or anything for this playthrough. Just pure memory.)

Really, though, Earthbound does have its flaws. The inventory system, while neat, is just so broken. Ness’s inventory ends up filled with so many stupid key items, like the ATM card and Receiver Phone, that you’re essentially unable to actually store anything on him. Still, it creates so many dumb little touches and cute things around it. For example, the For Sale sign. I love this item for no reason. In a game with such a small, shitty inventory, it just feels so powerful to be able to clear room by selling things, instead of dropping them. Find better gear? Sell the old gear immediately! It feels like I’m breaking something, though in reality, I’m actually letting my inventory be cluttered up with another item in the For Sale sign. Still, I always carry it with me. I can’t help myself. Using it to make a little room feels better to me than randomly eating a food item or something.

Anyway, my emulator keeps crashing on me for some reason, which slowed my progress today. Still, I’m going to keep playing. I still really enjoy the game, and if I can push past Fourside, I can finish. I always find that to be the sticking point. Once I get to Summers, it seems like the end of the game rushes to me.

Cut the Rope: Experiments is just more Cut the Rope, and that isn’t a bad thing.

Basically, the Cut the Rope people got tired of giving out awesome level packs for free and decided to make a sequel, to get more money. I’m okay with this: they really, really expanded Cut the Rope, and there is a lot of game there. It’s well worth a dollar. They’re surely going to do the same thing with the sequel here, and I can’t wait. I even splurged and gave them an extra buck for the HD version (which you don’t need to do, as it plays fine without even on an iPad) because I really liked Cut the Rope. Then I dug into this.

The “plot” of this game confuses me. The first game was that you got a mysterious box with a little dude who you needed to feed candy to by solving how the box worked. So you’re the owner of the house, and the Om Nom is just a little dude. Cool.
Now in Experiments, it’s like an alternate reality, where the Om Nom is delivered to a scientist’s house. He seems to be wanting to test the Om Nom’s intelligence. However, who are you in this scenario? You’re not the scientist, because he talks to you and encourages you. Are you the psychic force of the Om Nom, manipulating the contraptions? Are you still the homeowner from the first game? But if that’s the case, why is the scientist testing YOUR intelligence?
Of course, you’re not supposed to care about that. A cute guy wants candy, end of story. You’re supposed to play Cut the Rope.

The action in Experiments is much more fiddly, and I think that’s a good thing. The game has some tutorial levels, but it’s really clear that you should just play Cut the Rope first for the easier levels, and that these are for advanced players. It’s nice that they’re catering to people who bought the first game. The contraptions that each set of levels is based around are also quite fun. Introduced so far are tether guns and suction cups, and they all make for some interesting situations. I don’t remember, for example, anything having weight in the first game. Maybe some stuff did, and I forgot? But weight really plays a big role in these new puzzles. If you shoot the candy with a ton of tethers, it gets heavy. The force of the tether when it hits pulls the candy in its direction. Suction Cups have weight, and if you have enough of them on a bubble, the bubble won’t float up. You’re doing things like attaching and detatching suction cups to swing the candy across the level before shooting it with a tether to make it fall in the Om Nom’s mouth. You’ve also got all the toys from the previous games in play: you’re still cutting ropes, of course. It’s just Cut the Rope: Advanced, and that’s awesome.

Seriously, if you’re new to the game, get the original, or download Holiday Gift to try it. If you enjoyed the original, I think you know if you want to invest another dollar in fun action-puzzles. I did, and had a fun afternoon solving what they have in the game so far, with more to come. Good times.

I really wanted to try WWE All Stars.

This seems weird to me, but I don’t know. The quick look on Giant Bomb just made it look crazy insane and flat-out fun, and I have been subjected to so much wrestling stuff through a certain person (*cough*Joe Drilling*cough*) that I was just really interesting. Luckily, this is exactly what Gamefly is for, so I put it on the list to try it.

Personally, I think WWE All Stars is a fantastic game. There are things to say about it that are negative, I guess. The art style on the characters is kind of weird, to be sure, but I don’t think it isn’t fitting for caricatures of wrestlers. I suppose most wrestling games have a complex character maker mode? This one has a shitty one bolted on. Again, I feel that’s okay, because this is much more a “fighting game” than what wrestling games normally are, from what I understand.

If you come into it with that “fighting game” mentality, which I did, the game works fantastically like that. You have dudes with special moves and combos that you can pick from. The action is very fast-paced and completely ridiculous, with you being able to do things like short air juggles and basically slamming people to the ground so hard they rocket into the air. They’re trying to make the game fun, and less what wrestling actually is and more what the wrestling in your mind would be. It totally works. I dig it.

I did have problems with it, though, which is why I didn’t play very long on it. For people who are actual wrestling fans, or just fans of other genres, I don’t think these would be much of an issue.

The first issue was targeting. You get to do these matches that have more than one other opponent in there. You switch between targets with the right stick. I never got the hang of this. I just found it kind of frustrating. Why couldn’t I just grab the dude in front of me? Plus it seemed to cycle, and it just took forever to change the focus to where I wanted it. I feel like wrestling people probably deal with this all the time, and are used to it. “Full” wrestling games probably have this. It’d be fine for them. It just didn’t work for me.

Still, I could get used to that. The part I couldn’t get used to was how counter-based this game is. Now, don’t get me wrong: an active counter system makes PERFECT sense for wrestling, and adds a lot of skill to the game. But fuck, I am always terrible at games that required timed counters. I tried, I really tried, to counter stuff. But once the opponents got hard enough that I had to counter them to have a chance at beating them? I no longer beat them. I just couldn’t do it. I am not that kind of gamer. That was it.

It’s not a game for me. But it really seems like a fun game. I dunno if I’d pay full price for it, knowing the stupid amount of features that are in the normal, “full” wrestling games? But for a fan who picked this up for like… 30 bucks? That’d be a damn, damn good purchase. It’s exciting and arcadey and I am glad I tried it.

On The Stick did an SNES draft. It was totally fun, just like their NES draft! But it had one huge flaw.
No Earthbound.
Blew my mind. I mean, Final Fantasy 2 is a fine game, but when you’re picking that over Earthbound? You’ve got your RPG priorities wrong. I wasn’t really mad? But the idea of doing a “protest” and replaying Earthbound stuck in my mind. Then I started thinking about the last time I replayed Earthbound, and what a delight it was to revisit it, not being completely useless at RPGs. So I decided to do it. I started playing Earthbound again. Named my party Alex, Cris, Brer, and Ecks, and set out. Then I was thinking about commenting on twitter, but that seemed more a thing to do here. So here I am.

Today I played up to getting the Pencil Eraser. Here’s what I noticed.

The game, as it always has, has a lot of heart, but I personally enjoy the way that the game does the “chosen hero” thing. Buzz Buzz mentions you’re a chosen hero, but you don’t really tell that to anyone, and nobody but Pokey really even knows about the prophecy, though of course that is relevant. At the same time, it’s like your parents always knew. When you head out the door after the meteorite crash, your mother tells you to have a nice adventure. She knows you’re now an adventurer. It’s just kind of accepted. Same with your father. He just accepts you’ll be traveling about to save the world, and makes sure you have the cash for it. It’s like… it’s like Ness had always wanted to be an adventurer, in the same way someone has always wanted to be an artist or something like that, and his parents are ready to encourage him and support him because they know he can do it if he sets his mind to it. It’s just really endearing. You really like your parents in the game. It’s cool.

When you get to Twoson, the game really takes the kid gloves off, though. Even grinding up to the point where I didn’t even have to heal during the Frankystein Mark II fight, the Ramblin’ Mushrooms and Walking Sprouts are just brutal. Hitting your single character with the “Feeling Funky” mushroom debuff and PSI Magnet is really kind of cruel, especially since there’s nowhere to buy better weapons and armor in the Twoson. On top of all this, Twoson is where you get things like the Bicycle, Pencil Eraser, and the Receiver Phone, which basically make Ness’s inventory all but useless and full of key items. You need Paula desperately, if just for the extra inventory space, but they just take awhile giving her to you. Which is weird, because you get Jeff like… immediately afterwards. Well, after his little side thing in Winters, anyway.
In any case, I think Twoson, almost single-handedly, is why I thought this game was so hard in my youth. It just doesn’t let up! Of course, being smarter now, more willing to use PP to kill regular enemies and whatnot, it’s a bit less of an issue, and once you manage to get to Happy Happy Village, the difficulty calms down a bit.

But I’ll have to experience that another day. Time to bed. We make a great team, don’t we? Be sure to turn the power OFF instead of just pressing RESET, alright?

Borders is dying. You might have heard. There was a Borders I always bummed internet from when I was in St. Louis, and now it is leaving! Boo! But I went to pick clean it’s carcass, of course. I was hoping for RPG sourcebooks, but had no luck there. However, at some point I went, “Wait, TMBG have a new album out,” and wandered to the music section. Then I bought it. On physical media. Crazy. But I told you that already.

I had heard Join Us was a better album than The Else, and I didn’t know what to think about that. I really hated The Else in the beginning. It just didn’t click with me at ALL. However, after a long downtime, I came back around to it and really ended up liking a couple tracks. I’m Impressed and Take Out The Trash, for instance, are pretty solid, and I enjoy them. It’s not their best album, but it was alright. However, people were talking about Join Us as a return to form, and that worried me. I enjoy a TMBG that rocks, not just one that makes silly songs.

I need not have worried. Join Us is a callback to some of their older stuff, but they still bring excitement.

By far, my favorite song is When Will You Die. (That is a pony video, but it’s the only one on youtube with the song! So, yeah.) It is just SO FUCKING UPBEAT and it’s language is so hateful. It is just so classic TMBG, and it’s so catchy on top of it. Lots of nice horns. SO GOOD.
I also really like The Lady and the Tiger and Cloisonné as well. Both interesting musically and catchy. I also like that they’re trying the weird round thing they do in Spoiler Alert, although that’s not one of my favorites. (Sorry, no good Youtube of that one.)

Really, though, what puts this album higher than The Else is that I find the whole thing listenable. I can pretty well go through the whole thing without issues. I especially like how the last track fades very interestingly into the first, if you have the whole album on repeat.

I don’t think Join Us is going to make new fans out of anyone who wasn’t into the Giants before. But seriously, even if you’ve kind of fallen out of love with them, this is worth a listen. It’s a fun little album that I’m glad I bought. I have bad taste in music, but this is good stuff.