The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So apparently May is now “Wacky KoL Experiment May.” Or so it’s been said. The last one got generally bad reviews for being much, much too restricted! But this one, this one is going to be good, right? Maybe?

Well, it certainly was new.

There were actually two IoTMs this month. One was the Clan VIP Lounge Invitation, and the other was a piece of furniture for said lounge, a Pool Table.

There are some issues.

One, paying a Mr. Accessory for the Lounge Key seems like a decent investment. You automagically get access to a hot tub which does crazy HP healing 5 times a day, as well as a brand new Mr. Klaw machine which, while dispensing a bunch of silly, fun things, also can dispense a new familiar as well as a piece of gear that, if gotten on day one, would be extremely relevant. But that’s just it. It’s being put forth as an investment. You’re getting this with the promise that there will be more furniture for you to use and get benefits from. But on the radio show, Jick was talking about how it would kind of kill their revenue to actually make another piece of IoTM furniture, looking at the current numbers. Will it happen? I don’t know. Still, the healing in Hardcore is relevant enough for anyone wanting to be serious to pony up for that.

Two is the pool table itself. It costs 3 Mr. A’s, which is a huge expense if you’re on your own. It’s obviously not meant to be gotten that way, of course, as it’s for the clan, and is meant to be used by multiple people constantly. I pitched in a Mr. A for ours. But, of course, then there’s the issue of the Clans. Mr. Store stuff can’t disappear, right? But an empty clan does disappear, and clan-hopping is very important if you’re going to do a lot of Hobopolis runs. I haven’t heard confirmation that your clan would stick around, and hell, nobody is going to test that kind of thing with this expensive of an IoTM. I also feel like there should be a more straightforward way for multiple people to chip in for the table, if that’s the idea. I mean, I have no problem giving a Mr. A to Cris or Val and having them buy it, and I’m not in it for the glory. At the same time, it seems kinda silly that it commemorates who placed the table in the clan when that person probably didn’t pay for all of it, and perhaps not even for most of it. There’s something not optimal to how that works.
As far as the pool table itself goes, I’m pretty happy with it as something I paid 1 Mr. A for. Basically, it gives you some useful buffs 3 times a day, and you can choose which ones you get. Speedsters are going to love Hustin’, and I’m going to probably enjoy Mental A-cue-ity once I get back into normal things. There’s also a metagame where you play pool against people and rack up winning streaks, which goes on a leaderboard. There’s some talk about it being a rock-paper-scissors game, based on the buffs you pick, to beat people, but I don’t think anyone knows for sure yet. Either way, that kind of interaction with other players is something I’m for, though I would have preferred something a bit more interactive. It also would have been nice to have more detailed record-keeping of your own playing. I’d like to see my horrible win/loss record against Val or whatever, instead of just what my longest streak was and how it matches up with my clannies.

Either way, both seem worth getting yourself access to, since they do give tangible benefits and aren’t taking up a slot that could be filled by something else, since it’s an entirely new mechanic. Will it be expanded farther? I don’t know. We’ll see. There’s certainly a lot of potential in clan furniture, but I think there’s a lot of things that could stand to be worked out or stated clearly. Still, I’m not too unhappy with my 2 Mr. A’s of investment this month. Yep.

I keep going on about how bad of a game Legends of Zork is. “There’s art, sure, but there’s no interesting text. It has absolutely nothing to do with Zork. It’s just a grind-fest with very little strategy available to use, where you get bothered in PvP over and over and…”

Still, I play it religiously, even more often than games I flat-out love, like KoL and Twilight Heroes, and certainly a lot more than games that deserve my time and money, like ForumWarz. I’m excited to play my turns every day, and glad that they go so quickly.
It’s actually almost frustrating that I like it so much.

The key is that I can only play for about 10 minutes a day, and can easily play while doing other things. People might say that the almost extreme level of automation makes it un-fun, but in practice, it just seems to keep me from obsessing over it. I’m not worried about what I’m doing wrong when I fail, because I am doing nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong to do. I’m just not high enough in level, so I need to adjust the difficulty of the area I am in or adventure somewhere else or come back later. Numbers go up, and I get more powerful. It’s all the fun of a lewt-fest without all the tedium.

But then I ask myself, why not just play motherfucking PROGRESS QUEST if I like this non-interaction so much. Well, because… there is some interaction. I have to adjust my equipment. I have to choose what to upgrade next. I have more investment in my character than I do in Progress Quest. Apparently it’s enough to keep me going.

So gods, I don’t know. I can’t explain it well, but I am completely hooked. I thought I’d play it for a week, maybe, but I’ve been playing it CONSTANTLY since it opened. And it doesn’t look to be dying down any time soon. Help me, other games! Let me finish up my Hamster runs, let Ryme put in some new content, let a new ForumWarz episode be released! Something unhook me from this obsession!
Or maybe I’ll just revel in it and keep playing. Who knows.

So, Wednesday, we did another Hamster run. This time, everyone was there and everything! Though Ryme didn’t know we were doing it, so he was in, but didn’t have long. So we rushed in, determined to Hodgekill!

I made my first mistake in one of these runs, accidentally hitting the shortcut key on a choice adventure to enter the Marketplace, pointlessly wasting a turn. That really frustrated me. I would have been more frustrated if that would have kept us from getting a Hamster! That was the biggest worry when I learned that we didn’t get it. We didn’t go fast enough for a Hamster. But we were over by at least 4 turns, so I was kind of off the hook.
Apparently, in our efforts to go fast and get poor Ryme to bed, we were wasting a lot of turns opening the Tent that we didn’t need to use. I didn’t really notice, but apparently that was so. If we had gone incredibly slowly, we could have gotten it with time to spare… but, alas…

Still, the Hamster run can be a very tedious thing, so I actually didn’t mind the rushing. It made it better. Though it was a shame we didn’t get the prize we wanted, we still got the consolation prize, Hodgman’s disgusting technicolor overcoat. A solid item in its own right! It would have really helped me out during my basement run.

Then, the unthinkable happened. We rolled for the coat, and I won it.

I hate rolling for anything. I don’t feel like I should be greedy, and it feels greedy, even though I did as much work as anyone else. (Well, okay, Val did much more work because she’s funding everything and farmed all the meat. But everyone else rolling for it? Same amount of work.) At the same time, I do enjoy a bit of phat lewt. And I do deserve nice things. So though I held out, I threw my hat in the ring for the roll at the last second, and somehow came out with the coat. Winning immediately embarrassed me. But I attempted to hold all that back and accept the coat with pride. Yay coat!
I also managed to, kind of at random, get the last piece of the Hyperborean Hobo Habiliments, Frosty’s Old Silk Hat, via a giveaway at the start. So that’s nice too! Yay gear!

Still, once I start ascending again, I won’t be able to equip any of it! But still, it’s nice to have. It’s nice to have in-game goals. Yes indeed.

I can’t do a raid next week due to working, but hopefully they can find someone to fill in for me and whatnot. Still, I’m in this until everyone is done. And then I’m totally going to ascend and try out my huge stockpile of goodies I’ve accumulated.

In the Browser RPG front, I’ve been playing new stuff! (Well, besides Legends of Zork, which I still keep playing constantly. It’s so flawed, but I love how quick and easy it is to play. Shame on me.) And that new stuff is Alpha Bounce, the Breakout RPG. It’s proven to be a fairly completely compelling experience, and it has the benefit of not taking much of your day, either. I see that as a benefit, anyway.

Yeah, so, there’s some plot about how you’re a prisoner and you can gain your freedom by doing a dangerous job: mining in a “Mining Envelope.” This envelope happens to look like a Breakout paddle. So you go around the big map, buying upgrades for your ship so you can move farther, and just generally breaking blocks, getting money, etc.

There’s a fairly large world map. Every area you’ve cleared before it slightly highlighted, and every one you haven’t is darker. So you slowly work your way out, trying to clear the whole map. Meanwhile, you get missions. “Clear all these areas for a cash reward” seems to be the most common, but there are also ones like “check this space for salvage” or “answer a distress call from here” or whatnot. They basically end up being the same thing: Playing a game of Breakout. But at least you always have something to work towards, which is something I insist upon.

The Breakout-play itself is pretty solid. There are many different types of blocks, some of which require different strategies or upgrades to your Mining Envelope to take down. These blocks drop a staggering array of different power-ups. There are the standard ones, like Multi-ball and Extension, of course. Some power-ups, though, are completely game-breaking, like Spawner, which lets you spawn a new ball whenever you click the mouse, or Laser, which lets you fire lasers that destroy blocks for the rest of the level. Still, I don’t think that’s a problem. It feels GREAT when you get one of these uber-powerups and the stage you’re on goes from difficult to done in like 5 seconds. There are also plenty of other power ups with weird abilities that you have to quickly compensate for. I got one that turned my ball into a beam of light, and when it hit my paddle, it just teleported to the top of the screen and came back down again, instead of bouncing off of it. It really changed what I was doing. It was neat.
The controls itself are sometimes iffy, though. You move the paddle with your mouse. (You can move it with the keyboard, but I found it moved too slow to be effective.) This causes problems because, if you get too excited and zip the mouse to one side, it’ll move outside of the play area and fuck up your control. That’s the main unfortunate part of the controls. Otherwise, left click launches the ball and uses any power-up abilities you may have. Escape or P pauses. Space fires a missile from your missile stock, once you get that upgrade. And that’s it. I mean, it’s breakout. It’s not THAT complicated.

The main problem I have with Alpha Bounce (and it’s not really a problem, more a concern for a, I assume, small company that made a game I’m enjoying) is its business model. Like most Browser RPGs, you get a limited amount of plays per day. Each day, you’re supplied with three “Liquid Hydrogen Capsules” which let you make three trips, and play three levels. Liquid Capsules apparently only last for one day, so you can’t stock them up. However, you can buy “Solid Hydrogen Capsules” in game, which persist until you use them. You can also slide the company a little money to get a huge cache of Solid Capsules, so you could play all day. The first transaction scores you a permanent extra life, too, to make the game a little easier.
The main problem with that is I will never pay for extra turns. The reason I love this games is because I love how they don’t demand much of my time. I am COMPLETELY fine with only playing three levels a day. Overjoyed in fact. And since they don’t have any other ways in place to get any money from me, I probably won’t be throwing any cash their way. Which is a shame. I enjoy supporting these games, especially when I get perks for it. But I dunno, if it’s not something that will make the game more fun, it’s a harder sell.

But yeah, overall, I’m having a lot of fun with Alpha Bounce. I recall hearing that at some point, the game takes away all of your free lives, which will… probably kill the game for me. I often need all three lives to clear a stage. But yeah, if you need a breakout fix, Alpha Bounce is a great way to get it. Yep!

So, on Wednesday, it was finally time once again for a Hamster run. Hodgeman awaited! We were ready to murder in a very tedious and calculated way!

But, you know. Best-laid plans. Etc. Etc. Our Sauceror didn’t show up. You can’t get to Hodgeman without a Sauceror! What madness to think you could!
We started without him, hoping he could get into a position where he could show up late and just jump in. We raided, we killed, we pushed forward. Nothing. 2 hours later, he still wasn’t around. There were attempts to find a replacement, but they didn’t really go all that well. Someone offered, but was painfully slow and it was already almost 2 AM at this point. Eventually, we just decided to scrap it. So it goes, you know? Later reports show that he was without any sort of internet due to horrible annoyances from his internet company. So it wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Just a really horrible group of circumstances.

Val took it pretty hard. Seemed kinda down for wasting everyone’s time. But hell, nobody really thought that. We were all there as a team to help each other out. Just because she was the boss, and was ordering us around like a boss, well, that doesn’t mean it’s her fault. Shit happens.
The only reason I particularly care about our failure is because we need to finish these runs up! The school year is almost done and I would like to start ascending again. Still, I don’t particularly care one way or another. It’s all in good fun. I refuse to worry or anything.

We’ll get it. Yes. Yes, we will get it.

Prismatic Sports Bra!

It’s good!

Join me tomorrow when I’ll tell you th…

Okay, fine, a little more.

First off, the idea of it being a “sports bra” is, you have to admit, pretty humorous. Even as a female character, the idea of fighting crime in just a crazy color-changing sports bra is funny. So it gets points there.

If you were thinking that there were similarities between this and the Amazing Technicolor Dreampants, you would be correct! This is not a remake of the crazy rainbow pants, perse, but a slight change on the same idea. Different equipment slot, a few different powers, same constant randomness of useful effects in combat. It also seems to combine with the pants fairly well. I’ve had both of them running, and the similarity of their powers means I am more likely to have one of the ones I really want hit every combat. (I assume for most, that would be the +PP effects, or maybe the +XP effects.)

The one new effect on the Bra that I especially like is the +sidekick effectiveness. I remember when the judo kid gloves hit, and I was really worried about them being useless, and then as I used them, I realized how badass powerful they were, at least for farming. I haven’t unequipped them since. And when, with those equipped and with the bra hitting the right color, I have seen some crazy chip drops. It’s totally sweet.

I also especially like, message-wise, the message after battle when you hit on the +XP color. The idea of a hero actually doing that just makes me grin.

The one drawback to this item is the lack of a -time piece of equipment in the slot. Ever since the Xentrium Breastplate existed, I knew there was going to be this issue: It’s hard to justify putting anything in the shirt slot that doesn’t reduce time per turn. It is an especially hard sell, to those who own most of the IoTMs like me, to replace the Letter Shirt and it’s -15 seconds. I still don’t know if it’s worth it for the bleeding edge types, but I found that the recent inclusion of the Xentrium ingot to make full sets of Xentrium equipment really helps alleviate this. I basically just put on Xentrium gauntlets and boots, two slots that I don’t have IoTMs for because I missed Roderick’s gear, and that basically fixed the problem. It’s not as good as just the Letter Shirt, much less that AND these gloves and shoes, but dammit, I’m casual. I’m having more fun with the Bra on. The Letter Shirt is just a pure stat boost, the Prismatic Sports Bra is fun. I don’t have enough time to play my turns anyway. Heh.

Yeah, I dunno. I like it. Random is fun, I suppose, and this is random. Plus, hell, the idea of being a constantly-shifting rainbow-clad avenger of justice is just awesome. Admit it.

I’ve defeated the basement.
Well, okay, I didn’t “beat” it. It doesn’t end. It just gets progressively harder. But I’ve gotten to the end of the rewards.

I started the basement a long time back. Once I had decided to stop ascending for awhile, and level up to level 30 to get the Scourge of Seals trophy, it just seemed like an easy thing to also swing down to Fernswarthy’s and pick me up a telescope. What could be simpler?

The basement was about the most frustrating thing I have ever encountered in Kingdom of Loathing. Oh man. It was tedious. It rarely felt like I was making much progress. Even at my highish level, it was fairly expensive to get down to level 500. Ugh. I hated it. I hated it so much that I could barely make myself stomach doing more than, say, 20 levels a day. Since I have no free time to play Vidjeo Games anymore (though hell, that does not stop me from continuing to purchase them!) and rarely even played those 20 turns, that made my progress… almost nothing for a long time.

This weekend, I noticed my odd work schedule. “I have two full days off,” I said to myself. “I should just power through and be done with that shit.”
And I did.
And all I got for it was a telescope.
Yeah.

Anyone who thinks I’m going to do this another, what, 6 times to get all the upgrades is a little off in the head.

I used to be down on IoTM equipment. “Why would I equip that? It’s just going to fill a slot that I could use for some other cool thing I found in the game that may be more funny.” Then again, I used to be down on IoTM familiars for the same reason. I came around on familiars because I realized that using a different familiar each run changed things up, and the IoTM ones did different things than the normal ones. Hell, all my IoTM purchases are mostly for this reason: To have an ever-growing list of things I can do, and figuring out how to use them effectively changes the game up constantly, much like the theory behind “Standard” in Magic. So yeah, when I got the Haiku Katana, that all changed, really. Here was a weapon that was fun, did funny things, and really changed up my Muscle class game. I’ve been leaning towards Muscle classes ever since it came out because of this. I’m eager to get other pieces of equipment to really change up my game. This month, KoL has the Elvish Sunglasses, a Moxie-based piece of equipment. I snapped it up.

Now, I’m still in basementing hell and ‘waiting for the Hamster Times” limbo, which is fine, because I barely have any time to play anyway. But that means I haven’t really gotten to try it yet, like so many IoTMs. (I’m going to have a series of very eventful runs once I start ascending again!) I’ve been using it for the Moxie boost for basement checks, but, you know, that barely counts as being put to good use. I mean, the stats on it are great. Who wouldn’t want those bonuses? The +pickpocket is especially nice, what with all the very important new pickpocket-only items that are now available. It’s a bonus-granted machine to the moxie classes.

However, I like a good bonus, but I like entertainment value more. The Haiku Katana gave me both: It’s got really strong boosts for a Muscle class, and it has all these crazy skills I can use and silly Haiku text to read. I like that. The Elvish Sunglasses leave a little to be desired in this department. It grants me skills I can use based on instruments I have equippped. Now, the +5 Substats for “Play a Guitar Solo” is completely awesome and useful. The stun with drums, delevel with Accordians, and extra sleaze damage with flutes are also appreciated. However, this is going to really restrict what I equip. Now, I suppose if I was making my Legendary Epic Weapon, I could use that for most of the run. Especially as a Disco Bandit with a Shagadelic Disco Banjo, I’d be doing pretty nice. At the same time, so many of the ranged weapons I have, in the past, used during a run are not instruments. I normally make heavy use of the Beer Bong, Grease Gun, and Potato Pistol during a run. These are some of the strongest items at their levels (or at least, last time I played a Moxie class they were) and they’re not instruments. The last time I really heavily used instruments as a Moxie class was during my Disco Bandit hardcore run, and that was because I couldn’t pull all my good weapons like I normally can in softcore.

Basically, the sunglasses are asking me to make a hard choice. If I want to use the skills, I have to pick inferior weaponry. I’m sure most of the more hardcore set don’t care: From what I understand, if you’re speed-running, you use your Legendary Epic Weapon for the majority of the run. But it’s unfortunate that I’m not going to have quite the access to it as I would like. Why not have a fifth “vocal solo” skill for when you don’t have an instrument equipped? It could be worst than the rest, but I would appreciate it being there.

Still, I very well might change my mind about it by the time I do a run with it. Just the bonuses could be a huge lifesaver, and perhaps I’ll find there are plenty of instruments to keep me going for the whole run. We’ll see. As it is, I’m slightly disappointed in it at the moment. Not a whole lot. Slightly. I do appreciate it making the basement a little easier, if nothing else.

EDIT! LATE ADDITION!
So, I just remembered they recently added a bunch of ranged weapons to the game. So I checked them out! So many of them are instruments, and so many of them seem totally worth it! Obviously they had thought of that before they released an IoTM so dependent on having good instruments for most of the run, huh? Silly me. This makes me much more excited to try it out, both because it’ll be more useful and because I just realized I have a whole bunch of new weapons to find and try. Neat!

If there was one familiar I wish I would have been able to get in Kingdom of Loathing, it was the Doppleshifter. (If there was two? Probably the Wild Hare as well.) I’m just a fan of fun, basically. I don’t attempt to be very effective at the game when I play. I just enjoy fun, and dammit, cool randomness is kind of fun, you know? I wanted to be able to enjoy that randomness over the course of the casual-style runs I do. However, it’s a very old familar, and it’s prohibitively expensive to purchase. I couldn’t begin to justify it, so I just figured I’d never have one.
So when, on the Jick and Skully show, there was more and more and more talk about making a piece of familiar equipment that made a familiar work like a Doppleshifter? I was so excited. I had my fingers crossed that the idea wouldn’t get thrown away like so many other good ideas, and that they would actual impliment it.

On April 1st, they did! The Tiny Costume Wardrobe was introduced as something that will appear once a year from now on, on that day. And I snapped it right up. No hesitation.

I haven’t really got a chance to play with it yet. I look forward to playing through a whole run with it equipped to, say, The Land-Stander, my Pet Rock. But from what little I did, it seems to work completely as advertised. At the beginning of combat, it becomes something. At the end, it changes back. What more could I want? Nothing, really.
Of course, using it means I can’t use my Mayflower Bouquet or any +weight gear, which is unfortunate, but I’m willing to trade for that functionality. And if nothing else, it seems like it could have a barely minimal pretending to be optimal use, too. If, say, you want to level up your Jumpsuited Hound Dog, but don’t want the +combat? It still gets the experience when it’s got the Wardrobe equipped, and it’ll do something else. Again, though, that probably isn’t actually optimal at all, especially since the Bouquet could give them additional experience, but whatever. The idea of being able to level tower familiars while having fun with them instead of disliking them is kind of exciting.

But yeah, it’s just a straight up fun thing. You know if you’d enjoy such randomness in your game. I sure as hell will. I was very, very glad to pick that one up.

So, on my twitter feed, one Jeremy Parish threw up this little tweet. It was obviously meant to dissuade me from checking out Legends of Zork. But dammit, I like KoL. It honestly inspired me to create an account on the spot. After a day or two of playing, I admit at being intrigued, but dammit, this game has a lot going against it.

The first thing that will happen to you is that you will go to the website and expect text. Glorious text! It’s a Text Adventure Game property, surely there will be tons of text! Text oozing out of all pores!
There’s no text in this game.
Or, instead, the text is extremely minimal. There are no grand descriptions of anything in the game, for instance. Locations are just a picture and a title. Enemies are a picture and a scrolling stat display. There’s nothing particularly text-y about this game. And that’s going to turn off the people who wanted to play it almost immediately, I would bet. Because they’re coming to this game because of the license, right? That’s why you have a license attached to a game. And the game is designed to turn those people off.

This game shouldn’t be a Zork game. It should exist, but it shouldn’t have this name. That’s what I’m saying.

I was immediately turned off too, but I decided to give it more of a try. Over a few days of playing, I got to see what this game is actually trying to do, and it’s something I can get behind. It’s a shame most people are going to be totally turned off to it.

Basically, do you remember Ogre Battle? Were you one of those people who were completely frustrated with not being able to control your characters in battle? A lot of people were, and they stopped playing. But some people, like me, found the real game. It’s all in the setup. In the pre-battle strategy, and in the maneuvering around the map. That’s where the real fun is, not in the battles. You can get really deep into that part and have a lot of fun, if you want.
Legends of Zork seems to work the same way. All battles and adventuring is automated. You just get a result screen. Then you decide whether you keep adventuring (which is a risk: if you die, you drop all the loot you’ve collected since last you banked it back at your base) or waste a turn heading back to camp to heal and put away what you’ve earned. At camp, you adjust your equipment and your “battle stances” to set up how your character is going to automatically act in battle. You buy more shit. Then you set your person to go and the adventuring happens again. Automatically.
It’s actually kind of like Progress Quest with strategy. You just watch your character increase in strength with little input, but then you have decisions to make. You have to balance your encumbrance, and make sure you can carry all your loot back to base. You have to balance your HP, and make sure you go back before you die, but that you don’t waste turns healing pointlessly when you didn’t need to. You have to learn what stances the enemies in an area use, so you can set yourself up with appropriate stances to counter them when you send your person in.

There are benefits to the game being built like this, too. A whole day of KoL or Twilight Heroes can actually take quite awhile to play out. There is no way a day’s worth of Zork turns will ever take me more than 15 minutes to play. Most days it’ll probably be less. That’s a benefit, to me anyway.
Also, it allows them to put in co-op, of a sort. You can take quests and join parties in this game. Once in a party, you set aside a certain number of adventures per day to spend on your party’s adventures. Then you all go out as a team and split the goods, slowly completing the quest. This is the kind of thing I had envisioned for my armchair browser RPG, and so I’m very interested in it. The fact that you can also auto-join quests to always be working on one, even without friends, is a bonus.

I originally didn’t mention their “premium” content, but I can’t really avoid it. KoL, Twilight Heroes, Forumwarz, etc… they want you to donate. Oh yes. But they don’t constantly bother you with it. Every time I am low on turns, it tells me I really have to spend some money to get more turns. Why do I want more turns? I have too many turns to play in these games as is. I want something that makes the turns I do play more fun, and there is nothing like that. I don’t appreciate it pushed in my face. I donate to these other games because I want to support the awesome people making them. This is a clear signal that I should never donate any money at all to Legends of Zork.

Anyway, that obvious problem aside, Legends of Zork isn’t quite the instant throw-away game it seems to be at first glance. It manages to be mechanically interesting, at least to me. I will keep playing for awhile longer. However, it really could use some text. Some Zorkness. With this exact same gameplay, some sort of AI that would generate text and descriptions for these battles, and a more respectful to the player plea for money, the game would be a very easy recommendation. As it is, it’s probably a game for people who enjoy planning more than actually acting. And for the stupidly curious. Like me.