The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

With no games to play and plenty of need to distract myself, over the past few days, other than playing in the new Shin-Megami-Tensei-Themed Mafia game and playing fucking Tiny Tower, I watched all of Sasameki Koto. I’m not sure why I did this. I watched the first couple episodes back when it was first airing, and I found it kind of depressing and frustrating. But it stuck with me, I kept thinking of going back to it, and this week I found myself just watching it all.

What a stupid show.

I mean, okay, obviously there are some things I liked about it or I wouldn’t have kept watching. For example, the yuri-lover Asuza, who claimed she wasn’t a lesbian, was an interesting and sadly realistic character, and Sumi trying to deal with her without hurting her was a real decent sort of conflict. The idea of trying to take care of her, while trying to protect the identity of Kazama’s brother, and that causing Sumi and Kazama to drift apart a bit? Fantastic idea for a conflict.

Of course, the problem is that Sumi and Kazama aren’t a couple, because the show is STUPID.

Maybe this is a Japanese thing, and is something about how Japanese lesbians stereotypically act. Maybe that’s why I don’t understand it. But for goodness sake, Sumi and Kazama joined a LESBIAN CLUB together, and Sumi still can’t admit she’s gay, much less that she likes Kazama? Like, for a little while at the beginning, I get it, right? Sumi is worried about rejection because the type of women Kazama lusts over aren’t like her. I get it. But with all the shit going on in this show, when they’re laying together, right next to each other, talking about how Sumi is always going to be there for Kazama, and you still don’t say, “You know, I’m gay, and I really love you.” Fuck. That. It’s extra sad that a lot of the conflicts in the later part of the show would be more sensical if they WERE dating. With them just being friends, it seems really ridiculous that some of this stuff is a problem. If they were a couple, not only do I get it, but I also empathize with a lot of it, such as the whole “I’ll call you when I get there,” and then get no phone call for a day or two. For a friendship, Kazama seems to be way the fuck overreacting. If they were dating, her worry might make more sense.

I also wish I knew what they were trying to do with the crossdresser character, Akemiya. It’s like they couldn’t decide if he was transgendered or not. His original motivation was to date Sumi, which is really a ridiculous premise to go to such lengths to crossdress, because then you’ll convince the lesbian to date you and of course she won’t be disappointed when you’re male, right? (Also, literally EVERYONE deduces that Sumi is gay but Kazama, by the way, because she is really clearly obsessed with fucking Kazama, going into constant daydreams about it all the damn time, which everyone notices. Of course, she won’t just say it! Blerarg!) Sometimes he’s being forced and he “complains,” sometimes he seems completely, completely into it and enjoys it, and then near the end, he wants to prove himself to be “a man,” when before he was worried about his clothes not being cute enough and shit. It would be different if he just didn’t know how to deal with his attraction to doing it, or something of that nature, but his character just comes off as… well… whatever they decided for him to be at that moment. Again, obviously some personal bias makes me want him treated well as a character, but dammit… when you can have something as amazingly well done as Hourou Musuko out there, it’s hard not to demand everyone treat that sort of thing with respect and actual character building.

Anyway, yeah. It’s a silly show. It tugs at heartstrings a few times, but man, there are so many annoying bits! Just fuck already, dammit! Surely all your lesbian friends are! But yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it.

After Brer totally didn’t take me to see it, I was afraid I wouldn’t see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in theaters. This bothered me, as I’d seen all the others in theaters. Finally, it came down to Monday. I had the day off, no game in from Gamefly… I had nothing to do. I envisioned myself alone all day, eaten up by depression. Fuck that, I said! So I asked Cara to go with me to the movie, and she said yes, and then I had something to do to distract me AND I got to see all the Harry Potter movies in theaters! It all works out.

I think I have more to say around the movie than about the movie itself, though. We saw the Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows trailer, which looks fantastic. (I really liked the direction they took Holmes in the last movie, okay?) Glad to finally see that. I used the crazy-ass Candy Dispensing Machine just to see what it would do. Oddly enough, it dispensed candy. This allowed me to have some Shockers, which I hadn’t had in awhile. Shockers are still quite good candy, in case you were wondering.

I also just couldn’t get over what Overthinking It said about Harry Potter. I normally totally agree with those guys, but they said, in one of the podcasts of theirs I was catching up on, that Harry Potter is a “fully realized world.” Harry Potter is a lot of fun in a lot of ways, but let’s be honest: that’s one of the books biggest problems. It’s obvious she made up this world as she went along. It isn’t a cohesive whole in any way whatsoever. They then broke into a discussion about how it just SEEMS like a complete world, but has a lot of vagueness in it, which I might buy more, but it still felt a stretch.

But yeah, there was a movie I watched. It was fun. The fact that all the good parts of the wasteland that is book 7 were in this movie really helped things out. Of course, there were some dumb things. I don’t know if this was pulled from the book or not, it’s been to long, but using “The lightning has struck” as a code phrase for Harry Potter arriving is beyond stupid. That’s way the fuck too obvious. No wonder Death Eaters were breaking down their door immediately. And, of course, the epilogue was as stupid as it ever was. But you can’t say the movie didn’t want to please. It constantly kept things moving, and kept things very action-packed. It didn’t waste time explaining a lot of backstory, assuming that viewers would already know it, or that it’s so nonsensical anyway that they’d be better off just not knowing the details. Frankly, that’s just fine with me. There’s just a throwaway line or two about all the Elder Wand bullshit, and that’s enough.

There’s just really not much to say. It was a fitting end that used the source material well. Seeing all the fighting at Hogwarts was awesome. Of course it was. It’s not like they’re going to come this far and not give us some badass visuals for all that. I didn’t leave all “Wow, that was a really good film” like I did with the sixth film. But I was satisfied. It was sad leaving all that behind again, to some extent. Of course it was. As much as I bitch about Harry Potter, and I do bitch, I am a fan, and I did enjoy the series, for serious. I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad I was there for it. There’s no surprises or unexpected high or low points in the movie. If you want to see it, you’ll see it. Probably already have. And you’ve enjoyed it. But there you go.

I beat Red Faction: Armageddon.

Red Faction: Armageddon is not a very good game.

I mean, it certainly is a game. You shoot dudes in it, for example. They are mostly the same like 3 dudes, over and over, but you can shoot them, and they will die. But it’s kind of dumb. There’s no depth to it at all. It’s just going through the motions.

Really, it’s frustrating to see this be the sequel to Guerrilla. That game was the fucking best. Seriously. This is such a by-the-numbers third person shooter with no life to it. It’s sad. Sure, there is destructible stuff, but it’s mostly just kind of window dressing and has very little to do with the actual gameplay.

The game is certainly TRYING to be interesting. There’s an upgrade system that, interestingly, carries over into multiplayer. But instead of the actually awesome team deathmatch with crazy power packs multiplayer from Guerrilla, which I actually played for a few days, this is just horde mode against the same enemies I’ve already killed a million times. So you’ll excuse me if I’m not excited about that. The game also is constantly throwing weird vehicles at you in order to keep the action switching up a bit. This is appreciated, and none of the vehicles were un-fun to use, but they also weren’t very exciting. I often just kind of wanted to get out and get back to using my regular weaponry. There are a lot of guns in the game, as well, but most of them seem a bit pointless. When I played the demo, for instance, I thought the Magnet Gun seemed really interesting, but it’s just so hard to actually use effectively that you just set it aside. You take the Assault Rifle, because it’s good in all situations. You take the Maul, because it’s good for taking down enemy structures. You take the Nanorifle, because it’s very versatile against bigger enemies, in the same way the Assault Rifle is. Then you pick one of the like 5 Heavy Weapons (I picked the Rocket Launcher for homing) and you call it a day. Ammo packs refill ammo for basically anything you have, and the weapons are so general use that there’s no need to have specific guns for specific situations. There’s no reason not to just pick four and stick with them forever. Some guns I didn’t even fire once. There seemed to be no point.

On top of all this, you have some of the most frustrating video game writing I have seen in a long time. Main Character has a computer AI on his wrist, who is an AI, and they have WACKY CONVERSATIONS which contains, seriously, the most CLICHE AND ANNOYING DIALOG I HAVE HEARD IN A LONG TIME. It got to the point that any time they were talking to each other I wanted to rip my ears off. They talk back and forth all the time. It’s supposed to lend the game some comic relief, but it is so bad. The other characters aren’t great either, though they’re around less, so they’re less annoying in that regard. They certainly aren’t anything bordering on interesting. There’s a dramatic death near one of the games like four endings (meaning that it keeps coming to a climax, but then just keeps going like four times, and that’s not a good thing like in, I dunno, Bayonetta) and the only reason I was sad to see that character go was that she was the only thing distracting the main character from talking to the fucking AI at that moment.

I mostly beat this game because it was there, and I was worried about the future and depressed, and I needed something mindless to do. I really wouldn’t suggest anyone else do that. Even if you are in my position, there has to be something better to play. Armageddon is a serious, serious disappointment.

I saw a movie called Cowboys and Aliens. I was hoping for a film that had both cowboys, doing cowboy things, and aliens, doing alien things, within it. These groups, hopefully, would fight, causing action scenes to occur and be entertaining. That’s pretty well all I hoped for.

Luckily, it delivered just that.

If you’re going to see one dumb, fun action movie, I’d still pick Captain America, but I enjoyed Cowboys and Aliens a lot. They had some good people in there, which helped. Cast sensibly, Harrison Ford still comes off as a badass. Though it’s kind of dumb how they tried to make him seem kind of evil at the beginning, and then UH OH immediately he’s a good guy completely. Making him more of a tactician than frontline hero dude, and letting Daniel Craig do most of that, let the movie use him really well, I thought. Similarly, they let Daniel Craig do what he’s good at, be a complete stone-cold badass, and that was fun. Watching him calmly fuck people up that annoyed him was really one of the highlights of the film.
I’m not going to mention Sam Rockwell just to piss Essner off.

The plot was not completely sensible. The aliens want gold? Okay. But that doesn’t really explain too much about why they’re attacking towns and whatnot. The claim that it’s for research so they can learn human weaknesses really only makes sense for a small handful of humans. Not entire towns. Of course, if they didn’t, then nobody would be riding out to stop them, and you’d have no movie. I guess maybe they’re searching for Daniel Craig’s wristband? But if they are “underestimating” humanity, why would they believe he could use it to good effect? I mean, I guess he does. But isn’t that like… if I dropped a pistol in front of some aliens? Even if they could use the pistol, it’s not enough by itself, right? Of course, this is a movie, so it ends up being as such! But you know what I mean.

Still, what I’m doing is looking at problems in what is mostly just a fun action flick. Turn your brain off, watch cowboys shoot six-shooters at aliens, and enjoy yourself. It’s fun.

Matthew Essner, in his infinite wisdom, told me that I should listen to The Magicians by Lev Grossman as I drove up to meet Brer.
I, in my infinite wisdom, did not. Because I am stupid.
He got on to me when I got back, so I gave in, and started listening to the audiobook I had prepped for the trip.

Then I couldn’t put it down.

If J.K. Rowling could write (by which I mean create realistic characters and fully realized worlds) she might hope to write something as fantastic as The Magicians. On the surface, it’s a story that “steals” from Harry Potter, but that’s not really the case. The world of The Magicians is real. It’s something that could exist, instead of something that only exists when you ignore massive plot holes. It’s filled with real people with real flaws who make real mistakes. Yes, these mistakes sometimes involve fucking, or drinking too much, because that is what people of the age of the students in the book would do. I also agree with Essner that the fact that you get to see what happens when you graduate from crazy magic school is just fantastic. Once again, it’s so realistic that they’d be lost, having trouble finding something worthwhile to do, even though they can do the impossible. It’s how actual people act. I barely read anymore, but it surprised me how nice it felt to see people, acting like people, in a fantasy world.

I’m not going to spoil much of it. I don’t know. I so truly enjoyed the novel that I didn’t do my English major thing to it, that I normally do to entertain myself even when things are going well. It was just lovely. I do have two things I want to talk about, though, so I will!

The book is willing to make references to Harry Potter. I like this. If I were to go to a magic school in this day and age, I WOULD be making Harry Potter jokes. It’s in the public consciousness, and I’m glad it was willing to go there. However, a lot of the book revolves around a series of books called Fillory and Further. This book series is a completely direct analog to the Chronicles of Narnia. It’s Narnia, with some things slightly changed so that it is its own thing. That’s fine, but why does nobody in the book compare it to Narnia, then? It just seems odd to me that that’s the one thing that’s not the same in this world’s general consciousness. Why not recognize that comparison, too? When you’re willing to compare your magical schools to other magical schools, and it works, I don’t know why you’d be so afraid of making that comparison as well.

The other thing is the ending. Essner was kind of eh on it. I can see why. There’s a climax, and then the book continues, and then there’s another smaller climax, and it’s all depressing and downhill from there until the end. The bit of “good news” at the end of the book almost seems tacked on, something too good to be true, since this is a realistic world where stuff just doesn’t always work out well. At the same time, though, I don’t feel like it’s unearned. Quentin had atoned for his sins with his quest, really. Well, I felt he did. He deserved to have his life back, and an event like that was about the only way it was going to happen. Sure, putting Julia in there seemed… odd. But otherwise, I was down with it. It certainly didn’t ruin the book in any way for me.

Anyway, go read the fucking book if you haven’t. It’s awesome. Apparently there’s a sequel coming out? I have no idea how you’d make a sequel from the book, but I loved it so much I will give Mr. Grossman the benefit of the doubt, to be sure. I’ll probably even read it. Me, who never reads.

Yeah, I’m not going to do that narration thing all the way through this. You don’t need to worry about that.

Bastion is a fantastic game, completely worth $15 dollars, and you really should play it.

I play a lot of games, stupid and otherwise, and very few games have the level of polish that Bastion has. Every inch of it seems polished to perfection. The look, the music, the narration, the combat… you can tell every one of them is doing exactly what Supergiant Games wanted them to be doing. They did what they set out to do, and they did it well.

The narration, the first time you hear it, really does amaze. It’s like “Woah, it’s so dynamic!” Having played through the game a second time in New Game Plus (because it was that fucking fun) I can see how it all works now, certainly. You kind of figure out how they piece all the audio together to make it seem extremely relevant even though the game really can’t read your mind and know exactly what you’re doing. That doesn’t make the narration any less entertaining or awesome, though. It’s just this perfect way to feed you backstory about the world without feeling forced or getting in the way of the awesome combat. It’s just great.

Similarly, the combat is AWESOME. The game is set up, with its Idols, to let you adjust the difficulty however you want. Of course, I never really pumped them up much. (I used a few in my New Game Plus playthrough, but not many, and I turned them off if I encountered trouble.) But having the potential there, and giving you big monetary rewards for turning them on is a good idea. It lets you customize the game to your liking.
The combat itself is quick-paced, but lets you use strategy. You can be very defensive, using counters and such, and spec yourself out with the various buff beverages to reward that sort of play. Or you can set yourself up to be Kamakaze like me, and that works too. There are 10 weapons in the game, all of which you can upgrade, and surprisingly, each one is fairly different and fairly effective. The weapons constantly surprised me. One of my favorite weapons, for example, ended up being the Galleon Mortar. When I picked this weapon up, and saw how slow it fired and how hard it was to aim, I scoffed at its utility. But as I started to use it, it became my go-to distance weapon. It’s so good at clearing out armored enemies that I fell in love. On my New Game Plus, I focused on trying all the weapons, and upgrading everything, and I was constantly impressed by how fun they all were. If I had to pick my least favorite, it would either be the Calamity Cannon or the Fire Bellows, but both of them have their use, and I could totally see some players really loving those in a way I did not. Again, this just speaks of extreme polish to me: all the weapons have a place, and they’re all fun. There are no duds.

What’s really impressive, in a game that is, ultimately, about fast-based RPG-ish combat, is how much heart is in the game. The narration, the music, it all kind of tugs at your heartstrings, and I love it for that. The decisions you make at the end of the game, which determines which of the two endings you get, are actually surprisingly hard to make. I had to think about it a bit on my first playthrough. (On the second playthrough, I obviously just picked the other one, to see the other ending.)

Bastion is a labor of love, clearly, and it is one that paid off. It is, hands down, one of the best games I’ve played this year. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and every moment of it is enjoyable and puts a smile on your face. If you have a 360, you should buy it right now. Seriously.

Yo. Catherine. Katherine. Many, many blocks, and pushing them. It was a game I was certainly looking forward to! I preordered it! I bought it new, something I hadn’t really done since Portal 2. The idea of having the main conflict in the game being known vs unknown, exciting vs expected… it seemed like the Persona 4 team was the dudes to do it.

Basically, I really wanted to like Catherine, and it let me down.

I’m just going to talk flat-out, and a lot of the game is ruined if it’s spoiled, so, you know. Don’t read on if you don’t want to be spoiled.

There’s not a lot of super-huge problems with the game. I actually don’t have a problem with the block-pushing puzzle sequences, for the most part. It is interesting enough, as a puzzle game, to keep my interest. Sure, there are issues. Checkpoints are a bit too sparse on some stages. The “boss fights” can be overwhelmingly frustrating sometimes, as the puzzles themselves can be hard enough without having someone constantly attacking you. But seriously, for the most part, it’s designed well enough. You could hang a full game on that gameplay, no problem.

Similarly, there’s no huge problems with the stuff outside the puzzle elements. While Vincent is very much an Anime Protagonist, as opposed to a real person like you’d hope, his story, given that it’s a bit unrealistic (I’m not talking about the magic part of the story, just his character) but not out of place for an Anime Character, is alright. I found it interesting that they painted both Catherine and Katherine as fairly terrible people. I very quickly came to loathe both characters, which shed an interesting light on the decision of who to back, certainly. In the end, I backed Katherine, because while I hated her, Vincent obviously liked her enough to stick with her this long, and it seemed stupid to drop it now. In any case, when you have control, and are texting and making decisions, it’s pretty neat. The texting system, while maybe a little cumbersome to use, sets a good tone, and that’s obviously more important to the game. The strange “Golden Playhouse” framing narrative worked for me, too. I’d watch another “episode” of Golden Playhouse.

However, the game doesn’t learn some lessons from the Personas that came before. One of the reasons I loved Persona 3 and 4 so much is that it was constantly flipping you between the two modes: life sim, and dungeon crawl. If you were tired of life sim, it would be about the time to go back to the dungeon, and when you were tired of dungeon, it would be about the time you were out of supplies and needed to go back to the life sim anyway. It kept me really engaged with the story, because it broke it up with entertaining combat and things of that nature in a way that seemed natural.
Catherine just doesn’t do this. You have very small segments of story, and then very long segments of block puzzles. I enjoyed the block puzzles, but after doing like 2 levels, I was pretty done with them and wanted to get back to the plot. Most of the time, though, you’d have four or five to do in a row before you could get back to story bits. That really felt like a bad plan.

Also, the story just isn’t dynamic enough. This is a fairly short game, one where you are supposed to make decisions. However, the only decisions that really matter are those you make on the climb to the last boss, from what I understand. Other than that, as long as your meter is on one side or the other that you’re gunning for, you can do whatever you want. Vincent’s decisions don’t affect the story until the last few. Things like Vincent trying to break up with Catherine happen even if you’re trying to side with her. It’s kind of stupid. Playing through, trying to be with Katherine, I didn’t notice. The story was very much structured for me to be making those decisions. If I had been going the other way, though, I’d be a bit annoyed. I had assumed that, since the block puzzles are so generic, they could make a story that had crazy branching paths, but they really didn’t. It’s a huge, huge missed opportunity, and it certainly doesn’t make me want to go back to the game again.

I guess I should be selfish and talk about the one story bit I want to talk about: Erica. The reveal that she’s an MtF transsexual at the end threw me for a loop, but it was kind of nice, too. Toby was a whiny bitch about losing his virginity to her, which was stupid, and made me want to punch him. You fucked her, so obviously there wasn’t any REAL reason for you to be complaining, asshole! But before I got too mad at the game, and not just at the character, I thought back to how she was treated throughout the story. Everyone who was not Toby knew of her past, since they all went to school together, but they still treated her like a woman and a friend. Though no longer “one of the guys” she certainly wasn’t pushed away from their social circle. They respected her as she was. Sure, they tried to keep Toby from dating her so the stupid complaining that happened wouldn’t happen, because they knew he’d be disappointed, but they didn’t treat her as a lesser person or a freak. She was a friend, but just one that it would be pretty weird to date, so they didn’t want their other friend to get involved in all that. In the end, I suppose that’s a pretty good portrayal.

All that aside though, in the end, I just didn’t feel any sparkle from this game. It’s not even a rough gem. It just feels rough. It’s a shame that a game which is doing its best to treat topics like sexuality and relationships with respect just doesn’t have the gameplay to back it up. It seems rushed and incomplete. If you’re vaguely interested in it, rent it. I wouldn’t recommend anyone else buy the game, certainly. It’s just not that good.

Captain America might be the first Avenger, but he also starred in a damn good film. Essner described it well. He said they could have gone for a home run, but instead went for a solid double, and succeeded. It had action, it had comic relief, and it treated the subject matter with respect. It was a really fun movie.

One of my favorite things about the film is how much Captain America is not a super-hero. I mean, he is, and maybe they spent a little too long showing him as the scrawny non-super dude in the beginning, but in general, he’s not the one man who can solve everything. From the very beginning, he’s helped by the people he’s rescuing, and he forms a team, which is influential all the way, who really make sure he’s in the right place at the right time, and can succeed in super-heroics. He’s supported. He’s not a one-man army, he’s a super-hero supported by an elite team, and that’s why he succeeds. I can get down with that.

The movie does attempt to stray into the frankly boring “The hero must face himself WHO WILL WIN?” sort of camp, which I am really growing to hate. However, Mr. Red Skull Head is differentiated by his tech enough that that honestly didn’t bother me too much. Sure, he’s super-serumed as well, but it’s really his mastery of crazy technology that is the threat.

Really, though, the only flaw with the film is the ending. Yes, of course they’re going to set up the Avengers movie, but that ending just seemed so… well, it seemed like a teaser I should have seen at the end of the credits, not the actual end of the movie. The last line, meant to be a kind of ironic comedic moment, really came off and sounding less than genuine, something the movie hadn’t been having problems with before that point. I made a little frowny face.

But that was really the only thing I found wrong with the movie. Jonathan felt that Mr. Captain was not a character he felt invested in at all, and that that hurt the movie for him, but I just didn’t get that at all from the film. It was not trying to be the be-all, end-all of movies. It knew what it was: a fun summer action movie. That’s what it did. I really enjoyed it. It’s certainly worth seeing.

When I visited Brer, I had, surprisingly, a lot of time to listen to things in the car. This gave me a chance to do a little of something I rarely do anymore: read. Or, well, be read to. Brer forced a book on me called The Atrocity Archive, so I gave it a go. I listened to that book. Well, okay, I guess the book in question actually had a novella attached at the end but I did not listen to that part. Just the novel part.

It was alright.

There were a lot of really good ideas in the book, at the very least. The idea of magic being a government-controlled thing, and thus being under the influence of things like being ISO 9000 compliant and under oversight by many committees and whatnot is just a damn good idea. Damn good. It’s funny, and sadly, you can really understand how it would get to that point. If there were a real Ministry of Magic, it would be like that in this modern world. It really works as a framework for magical hijinks and adventure, certainly. I enjoyed that.

However, there really seemed to be plot holes. Wikipedia, source of all human knowledge, tells me that the book was originally serialized, and now that I know that, it really makes perfect sense. He was throwing in plot hooks and elements without really knowing where he was going, to meet deadlines for serialization. The first half of the book is really just a collection of random ideas based on a really cool theme, with Bob trying to figure out what he’s going to do and shit happens to him and then that’s over, next issue there’s a new problem he’s dealing with, and so on. Eventually, the author went “Oh shit, I best bring all this together” and ends up with an interesting setpiece and interesting situation, but the reason they’re there is not well-explained. Why is love interest involved at all at this point? The series of events that the book claims is going on as reasons why is just kind of crazy. Would this evil being really bet their life on all this ridiculous bullshit? If his energy is as scarce as is being claimed, it seems like there has to be a more surefire way to get things to happen than what did happen.

It also just really struck me as a book that Brer would love because the main character loves to over-explain things for no reason. He will often just go off and explain a bunch of metaphyiscal whatevers just because he can’t help but blurt out information no matter what is going on. Much like Brer! (Love you!) It’s nice that the magic in the world has been at least somewhat thought out and planned, certainly, but those infodumps just seemed kind of out of place in a lot of situations. I’m not saying it doesn’t fit the character, because it does. It just struck a cord as being so like him, so of course he likes the story. Heh.

I think it’s extremely likely that I have no actual knowledge of genre fiction anymore, and what in it is good. This may really kind of stand out more than I think it does, but I’m not sure. The Atrocity Archive was certainly not a bad book, and if he stopped with the serialization thing from then on in the series, and applied more planning, I think it could really go places. Again, the general world concept is fantastic, and I was enjoying it enough to see it through to the end, even though the narrator of the audiobook was kind of bad. (He delivered jokes in a way that made it painfully clear he had no idea it was a joke, for instance.) But I’m probably not going to break my general not-readingness to continue on with the series or anything. I am the worst holder of a Masters Degree in English, I swear, with all this not-reading I do.

Double Fine is the Double BEST! Or something. I dunno, I love Tim Schafer and his crew, and I love to give them money! I say this, having never actually gotten around to buying and playing Stacking. Oops! But I did get Trenched, because after I watched this badass quicklook, who could say no? Of course, I beat the game weeks ago, when it came out, but one of the benefits of keeping a list of possible blog topics now is that I can remember games like Trenched that slipped through the blogging cracks when I first played them. So I’ll talk about it now! There’s no law against it.

Trenched is basically a hybrid of third person shooter and tower defense, with a little mech game customization thrown in. It’s much more shooter than tower defense, though. (Sanctum, which I also need to write about someday, is basically the opposite, more tower defense than shooter, for example.) It’s exactly as awesome as it sounds. The Double Fine humor is in there, but this is really a game that carries itself much more on the actual gameplay than the writing, a refreshing change for Double Fine, and does it really well.

Your Mobile Trench has “emplacements,” which are basically towers. Different Trenches can equip different combinations of these, but they’re mostly your standard Tower Defense fare. Machine guns, mine layers, things that slow down enemies, and so on. There are things like little healing posts that heal your Trench as well, in case you personally get damaged. Those end up being really important actually. Other than that, your Trench can equip many different guns. Machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, you name it, you can equip it. They take up a certain number of slots on your machine, so all guns can’t go on all Trenches. You have to pick a class, basically. If you want more guns, you take less towers with you. More towers? Weaker guns. It’s not a surprising balance, but it works.

Once in a game, you have to defend a point from waves of dudes. They look badass and are color-coded so you know what they do. Like most Tower Defense games, they come down set lanes, so you can set up your defenses. The difference is, of course, that you can shoot them, and your guns are at least as effective as the towers themselves.
The game really shines with a full party. It’s just more fun with four people running around. The game is also really nice about the difficulty. It’s set such that if you party with randoms who are actually trying, but not coordinating, you will probably just BARELY win, but if you work together, bring in weapons that compliment each other, and so on, you can knock it out of the park. It’s well-built like that. I had fun playing with randoms and friends alike.

The game is a little short, and is in incredible need of an “endless mode” or something of that nature to let you go all out and test your meddle against the game, but if you have friends to play with, Trenched is an amazingly good time. I would bring a friend, though. I only played by myself like twice, and then I’m like, “Eh,” and started pulling in random dudes if nobody was online, and enjoyed it more that way. Still, it is another high-quality Double Fine product. I really had fun.