The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Man, did you see all that ice? Man! That’s a lot of ice.
Of course, the extended vacation from classes is making me even more iffy on the whole… doing homework thing… but oh well, so it goes. I’ll get back in the groove when I need to tomorrow. And who knows, maybe they’ll cancel my afternoon class too? They already canceled my morning one. I can dream, can’t I?

So for lack of anything better to do, I decided to try to get involved with the Twilight Heroes community more and chat. Results were mixed. I talked for a little, got buffed with Metal Detector, which is nice, and returned some lost objects to people who were nice to me, which was an awesome feeling, knowing I was giving them a buff they might not ever have access to… and then I ran out of things to say and just watched the text scroll by… and… yeah. Back to normal. KoL’s community is thick and I don’t know how to get into it, and so many Twilight Heroes players are just from KoL. Like me, actually, though I joined up before most of them did. But yeah, I don’t know. I guess I just need to be vocal, but I have so little to say. I’m not optimal, so I can’t often offer advice or anything. Eh, who knows.

In other news, Professor Layton is pretty completely awesome, although if I keep burning through it at this rate I’m sure I’ll have it beat in another day. Worth 30 dollars? Honestly, probably not. It’d be much, much easier to suggest at 20. But in the end, it’s another unique sort of experience that I’m having, and I’m willing to go that extra mile to support niche games, so I’m happy with my purchase. It’s fun stuff. Now if only I could get the weekly puzzle downloads to work…

Anyway, time to get food and go to work, I suppose. Wish me luck driving in the ice.

So apparently all this crazy sailing plinth crap ends up leading to a neat little side quest that gets you a crazy familiar called the El VIbrato Megadrone. And I want. So I’m working through the pirate content again so I can start figuring out how to get one. Who knows how long this will take me. Luckily, I don’t give a rat’s ass about being optimal, so I’m willing to waste however many days it takes.
Building my jetpack in Twilight Heroes also goes well. Twilight Heroes is really quite good, you know? I keep debating about donating for the Pouch of Many Lost Things this month, and then deciding against it. I mean it’s good, but I was overly dedicated to KoL for like… close to a year before I started donating a lot, because I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I took that many month break from Twilight Heroes because I thought there was no more content. It turns out I was wrong, but still. I just don’t know if it’s worth it yet. Also, the Pouch is neat because it is a heart vector, and as awesome as I think that is, I don’t get into the in-game chat or anything so as to have someone to go heart up in game. So who knows.
Apparently my mother is playing Picross DS? I showed it to her on a whim, and let her have Jonathan’s DS because he never uses it. It turns out she’s been doing them! Which is completely awesome in my book. Makes me think I should throw even more stuff her way, just to see what happens.
So Valentine’s is almost here. It was Valentine’s in KoL today, but, you know, real Valentine’s is coming up. I got to write some poetry today for it, I think…
Jonathan just paid me for half of Smash Brothers Melee. That was weird.
I’m still kind of moody, though I think I’m better in general? I’m still showing those little things I do when I get that way, but I don’t feel depressed. So I suppose I can deal with that.
People on the Talking Time are starting up Animal Crossing Wild World action. So I suppose I need to start picking all of those weeds, eh? I already got all the roaches out of my house yesterday.

So I think my “moody-ness,” as I call it, comes in a monthly cycle, but I have no proof. So I’ve decided to start marking my moody days with quick posts or tacked on to other posts with the tag “Moody Day.” This is mostly for my own curiosity, I suppose. Just letting you know.

Also, apparently Amphibian Sympathy is amazing? Somebody should have told me! I am so doing a Hardcore Boozetafarian Moxie-Sign Turtle Tamer run after this. (Why Boozetafarian? Because I’d like to try doing the Saint Sneaky Pete’s Day super-drunkenness adventures.)
Also amazing is this thing, which is some sort of KoL Ascension Database. You can look up any character, but that’s me, of course. The way it has a calendar tracking the whole run and what special days were in the run is incredibly awesome. Also, apparently I’m a fairly dedicated Softcore player. Like… 84% of the player base has less Softcore runs than me. Neat.
I hope my question got on the Jick Show. I suppose I’ll know tomorrow.

I should go to bed. I’m going to bed.

Beware, I’m going to ramble on really crazily about Kingdom of Loathing now. You’re probably not interested.

So just looking at the descriptions and such made me want a Naughty Origami Kit, (as well as the fact that I always thought the other items of this type, the Iceberglet and the Great Ball of Frozen Fire, were really neat) and I went, you know what, fuck it. And I picked one up. And now I’m wondering what’s up with it. I mean, like I said, it has some funny content in there. I love just about every message on the origami “gentlemen’s” magazine, for instance. However, that’s rarely going to be better than all the buffs and boosts from my Mayflower Bouquet. The Entangling Noodle effect of the Naughty Paper Shuriken on people with pants is nice, but most bosses don’t have pants, actually, so that’s kind of a problem, as that’s when I’d like to use it. The origami pasties are great, especially early on when the 100 power is way above anything I can equip, but not… flashy and visible. The origami riding crop has a really neat chat effect, but I’m never in chat, and some funny hit messages. I’ll probably use it when I run a Muscle class next for the first few levels, but I tend to enjoy Myst and Moxie classes more, in all honesty. Finally, the Naughty Fortune Teller… we’ll see on that one. Although hardcore players don’t use them, apparently, cookbooks feel way too important to my spellcaster strategy to equip a different off-hand item, and I’m currently a Sauceror. There’s some debate on how effective it is, though, as in it might be close to if not completely optimal, so that might be what I end up using. I do think that the mechanic of it is really neat, though.
Anyway, I find myself in a weird position. I originally didn’t buy Mr. Store items because I worried about having this dilemma, about not being able to always use these neat items I got. If I bought them I was going to use them, was the idea. My snap decision, purchase, and enjoyment of the Crimbo P.R.E.S.S.I.E. I bought in December, though, made me think that I should just go ahead and try it if it looked good, and I’ll probably enjoy it. So I saw this, and wanted it, and I got it. And now I’m confused as to how to use it effectively…
Basically, I don’t regret my decision at all, but in the future, I know I’ll probably be making my Mr. Store purchases later in the month, after I’ve come up with a firm plan of how I’m going to use whatever it is so I can enjoy it to the fullest.
I am such a weird player. I play so sub-optimally, and yet I worry about how best to take advantage of things like this, you know? It’s like I want to be good, but I want to be good to my eyes, and not actually good. I don’t know. I’m weird.

So I can’t play Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.
I thought it was just that I couldn’t play MUCH of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin? I’d play it in little spurts. That’s fine, I thought. It’d last me awhile. But I’m to the first level where I’ve hit a stalemate, and it’s going to take me gods know how many turns to break it. And I just don’t want to. And I don’t. I mean, I want to push through the campaign so I can unlock all the COs for multiplayer, but I just can’t do it. It’s just like in Risk. There comes a point where you know a player is going to win. They’ve won the game. But to actually beat everyone in the game, it’s going to take another hour of pointless dice rolling. Hard Advance Wars levels can easily get like this. I know I will beat the computer. I’m not in danger of losing. But the number of turns it would take is just not worth my time. And so I put the game down.
Now, I’m not saying Advance Wars: Days of Ruin isn’t a good game. Because it totally is. It’s a great game, a vast improvement from a mechanics standpoint from Dual Strike, very friendly to those new to the series, and offering the robust online play that the hardcore want. But I know how to play the game. It hasn’t taken me too long to get most of what there is to know about using the new units. (I think Carriers might be more powerful than I’m giving them credit for, but that’s about it.) And once I figure that out, all that’s left is this great game, but a great game I have played to death, and when it confronts me with these “waste 20 turns to push past this stupid bridge” moments… it’s hard to care.
This all got started because Parish put out a call for “what should we ask the people behind Advance Wars” for this interview they were doing, and I eventually wrote up some things I wanted to hear, a lot about their process in making units and balancing them, as well as justifying the attempt at a serious story in a game with silly gameplay mechanics, but it made me realize that I hadn’t played the game in like 2, 3 days. So I put on a podcast and start and I put it down in like 10 minutes. I dunno. It’s just… it’s kind of depressing, I guess. Advance Wars is one of my favorite series… oh well, I suppose I have Culdcept Saga to enjoy next week.

Also, there seems to be a lot of talk recently about how I seem incapable of getting tired of Kingdom of Loathing. Here’s why, in a numbered list. 1) It doesn’t take much time in the day to do. I rarely play marathon sessions and when I do, it’s after not playing for like 4 days, so it’s not old. Also, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care about being optimal, so I don’t mind if I don’t play for a week and then come back. 2) It’s perfect to play while podcasting. 3) It’s neat to see my set of skills build over time as I perm them and make me more flexible and more powerful. 4) I play as one class for like… 2 months. And then I ascend and switch. The classes do play differently. Not a whole lot, but enough that it keeps the combat from being completely old. I’ve been every class, but for the past few months I’ve only been Pastamancer… so now that I’m a Sauceror, the various splash buffs make the experience different. 5) I listen to the Jick and Skully show and thusly I am constantly hearing about all the new stuff they’re working on, and it’s all really neat. 6) I’ve still got goals to shoot for. I want the Tome of Transcendent Olfaction and the Pompadour’d puppy. That takes a lot of time. And when I get done with all that, I do want to see all the cool content in Bad Moon. Hell, just going Hardcore Oxygenarian to get the Plexiglass Pocketwatch made the game feel a lot different, because as a “normal run” player, I do get dependent on Hagnk’s and the mall for various items. It also made the game slower, which meant I could play less often and not lose any turns, which is good for getting over boredom with the game. If I feel boredom setting in, I’ll be doing another Hardcore Oxy run, you can be sure. Probably as a Seal Clubber. 7) Finally, even being on my tenth ascension, there are still jokes that I missed that I will randomly get and make me laugh my ass off.
Anyway, there’s some reasons. Does that clarify? I don’t know.

This has been a look at two games I love, one that I’m sick of and one that I’m not. Feel free to use this to figure out how I get sick of things. Or something. Hell, I dunno.

It’s late, but I wanted to post some crap. Like this.

CHRISSYMAS SHOPPING LIST UPDATE!
What everyone has been highly anticipating! Or something. This is just why you needed me to get my blog back on track!

Mom: Check.
Dad: Not Check (Still trying to think of something good…)
Jonathan: Check
Grandma: No Check (Got a crafty idea I have to look into doing soon)
Grandpa: Check
Brer: Check (Already mailed, should get there by Friday)
Essner: Half Check (Have something jokey, want to supplement with something good)
White Elephant Game: Check
Festivus Exchange: Check

I am ALMOST DONE. Exciting times. Should finish up sometime soon, I’d think. Hopefully. Yes.

Other business… hmm…. I picked up a Crimbo P.R.E.S.S.I.E. just because I really wanted the Can Has Cyborger effect. It triggers enough for me and I’m not such an optimizer as to stop using my Mayflower Bouquet, too, so I suppose it all works out in the end. I just figured if I wanted it, I should get it and support the game I love, you know? So I did. It’s currently named B.O.X.X.I.E., but I’m open to better suggestions for a name… that’s just what I came up with off the top of my head.
It looks like the Crimbo content is finally in full swing, too… I’ll hope the Wiki has some guidance up before I use my turns tomorrow… I don’t want to miss anything.

What else what else… oh, Talking Time is starting an FFXI static party, and I’m joining, and that makes Jonathan and Spaeth excited, so they’re joining in some capacity… even if it’s just being on the same server as me and going along with Jonathan’s crazy Three Beastmaster party.

Anyway, there’s some updates… I should probably get to bed. Tomorrow: Cleaning up my room, part 1!

You’ve all heard of Gunkata… but have you heard of… Gymkata? It is the ultimate martial art. Seriously.

So the makers of Kingdom of Loathing, my beloved browser game, pointed me towards a game that a KoL fan is making in a similar style and that all of the KoL people were beta-testing… it’s called Twilight Heroes. It’s pretty awesome, actually, although it’s still in beta, so there are things like… missing picture and such. Also, there’s no huge wiki of everything you’d possibly need to know about it out there. Some might consider that a benefit… I admit it’s a different sort of experience, not knowing exactly what to do all the time… at least I’ve been able to figure everything out… the thing is, though, if it ever gets into KoL-levels of puzzlage I’m going to really want a walkthrough or hints or something… some of those KoL puzzles I would have NEVER figured the fuck out without looking at things…
However, I do have to say that the equipment makes me laugh… in KoL land, everything is ridiculous and drawn stick-figure-style, but in Twilight Heroes, most everything is modified photographs of things… which makes me think about my outfits realistically, which makes me giggle. I’m currently wearing a Flak Helmet, Skateboarder style kneepads, Skeptic Sandals, a Leather Jacket, a speedo, and carrying a beanbag gun and a riot shield. Just putting that image into my mind… man, I’m a completely bad-ass looking super hero, aren’t I?
Anyway, if you want something else to play while at work or while you only have a computer or something, you could do a lot worse than Twilight Heroes. I’m poetfox on there, of course, and I’m an Elementalist… if you want my weird Air Shield buff, let me know, I can totally hook you up.

Now I’ll just have to check out Cthulhu Nation sometime… although from everything I’ve heard about that, it’s extra super completely confusing… definitely going to have to find a help resource before I pick that one up.

Essner let me have the two The Go! Team albums… and they’re kinda nice, but I’m liking them less than I thought I would. They’re good music, and nice to just put on in the background, but they have less that really grab a hold of me and thrill me than I thought they would. Hm… oh well. I’m just really stupidly picky on music… as future Listening Time entries will show (there was actually a positive reception to all that liveblog rambling I did for Nich’s CD, so I’ll probably do it for every one I come across. Just a warning.)