The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I love Telltale. This is not hidden knowledge. Way back in the day, when they announced Nelson Tethers, Puzzle Agent, I was super excited. I love me some Layton, and nobody had really tried to do Layton. It seemed like a great idea. A long time later, after buying a copy on the iPhone and the PC, I finally played through it on my iPad. I love giving Telltale money, but I have to say that I’m glad I only paid like 2 or 3 bucks total on this game.

Tethers is a likable character, to be sure. He’s just as much of a loser as an FBI agent who focuses in puzzle solving should be. The world of Scoggins, while small, is also weird and interesting. There’s some intrigue, and some silliness. The plot is, certainly, something like what I expected, and has the charm I expect from a Telltale game. Sure, it ends randomly on a cliffhanger, but it did it in a way I bought. Tethers is a guy who solves puzzles. He doesn’t get to be the hero. I am fine with that.

The puzzles, however, are another story.

Telltale has never had the strongest puzzles, but in most of their adventure games, I am okay with that. They have the funny dialog and situations to carry the action forward, and there’s only so much puzzling you can do without breaking believability, even in a wacky cartoon kind of scenario like a Sam and Max episode. However, Layton solved this problem by having the puzzles almost completely separate from the story, and therefore able go be whatever brain teasers they could come up with. Puzzle Agent could have done this as well, but completely fails at it. The vast majority of the puzzles are actual jigsaw puzzles or grids of tiles you have to spin into a particular organization. These are extremely trial and error. The jigsaw puzzles will stick permanently together when you make a correct match, rewarding you for sliding pieces about at random until they click together by luck. The rotating piece puzzles use art that only matches up if it’s rotated correctly. Incorrect paths never seem remotely right. You just rotate until the art looks okay.
On top of all this, what good puzzles they have they reuse with small tweaks. This works in Layton, where you have close to 200 puzzles in the game, and thus a series of three puzzles of increasing difficulty doesn’t bother one much, but Puzzle Agent only has maybe, what 25? 30? It’s not enough to handle that repetition.

I was a bit disappointed, yes. Hopefully the announced sequel will be better. It’s still a fantastic idea and Telltale is still a great company. It just wasn’t yet ready for prime time.

And I loved it.

I’m not all the way through it yet, but I am really enjoying My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It is not a show I am going to recommend to you unless you have a child in the appropriate age range for a show like this. Then goodness, get them in front of it. They should enjoy it, and you can rest assured that it’s better than a lot of the garbage out there for kids.
But man, I just love stuff for kids when it’s done with a level of respect for the audience. It makes me happy. It makes me grin.

I know I’ve talked about it before. I tried to find some reference posts about how I love childish things that are taken seriously, and I found this one, but I feel like I’ve written a lot more. I just love the formula. I can see right through it, of course. I’m versed enough in plots to know, within two minutes of an episode of Friendship is Magic, exactly what is going to happen throughout the episode, and I’m always right. It’s following a formula, for sure. But it’s a safe and relaxing formula. Horrible things can happen, but you know that they’ll be wrapped up by the end of the episode, friendships will be strengthened, and everything will move on. I like that formula when it’s done right. The problem is, to do it right, you have to have characters with at least a little depth to them, and that’s often where shows fall flat. The characters are empty placeholders because the people who make these shows assume that children don’t understand how people work, and don’t have even the most rudimentary level of empathy and ability to follow more complex plots and ideas.
I’m not going to attempt to pretend that the character of Twilight Sparkle is some genius invention of art, but she is a very well-rounded character. She demands a level of organization of people around her, but is very sloppy in her own research methods. She’s happy to have friends, but many of her passions involve alone time and solitude, and so she not only has trouble finding a balance between the two, but also figuring out how to actually interact with those around her in an effective way. These are all character traits that are relatable and realistic.
She’s also a fucking wizard, so that’s cool too.
Throughout the season as I have viewed it, every one of the main ponies has had their personalities fleshed out in this way. Even Pinkie Pie, who really seems like one-note comic relief on first glance, is actually fairly fleshed out. None of them is just always right. They bicker, they’re always flawed, and it’s only by working together do they come to a solution to issues that isn’t a huge problem. It’s a mostly ensemble cast, though Twilight Sparkle is obviously the focus, and it makes it so that no one character is the “win” button. So often in shows like this you have a situation where side characters fight, and sigh, it’s time for main character, or “God” or “parent” character who is always right, to come in and fix everything. That isn’t the case here. They come to their own conclusions, and work things out themselves. It’s nice.

People were going insane for this show. I ended up reading this article by the main person behind it due to a twitter post, and I really liked her approach and her frank discussion of how she wanted to make a show worth watching, and not just a toy commercial. Still, it wasn’t until I saw the love put into the animation through the silly music video Val linked me that I decided to check out the first episode and see if what Lauren Faust had said was actually reflected in the show itself. I’m 17 episodes in now, after being unable to stop loading up “one more,” and I feel like she, for the most part, succeeded in her goals and made a really fantastic children’s show.

I’ve been thinking about the character relationships, and the general workings of the entire world of Equestria all weekend. As a person who is trained via lit crit to read too much into everything, I’ve certainly found some interesting things about the general world that I keep trying to figure out in my head. For example, all ponies have something called a “cutie mark” (which is a terrible name and I hope was dictated to the creative team by the toy department) which they develop as they grow older and which reveals their special talent and passion. In some ways, this mirrors the normal process of going up, but in another, it’s something that really speaks to a level of fate being ingrained in Pony society. What marks you is the one thing you can do well, and thus should do. You shouldn’t aspire to do other things, because those aren’t your special talent. Applejack is marked with apples, and thus should work on the apple orchard. That’s it. This sits potentially wrong with me, but says something interesting about the world. Similarly, Pegasus are in charge of changing the weather in this society. Seasons don’t change on their own, but only change via hard work, and those with wings are responsible for quite a lot of making sure nature is functional. They’re expected to bend the natural order to their will, but at the same time, Fluttershy is a pegasus who is totally focused on being in harmony with nature. Is she actively fighting against her place in the world? Or does her mark exempt her from that, because she is obviously supposed to deal with nature? Also, the prestigious ponies up in the capital of Canterlot simply use magic to change the weather and seasons, while those in Ponyville must resort to days and days of hard work to make nature happen. Does Princess Celestia not care about the plight of the working pony in the fields?

Also, Magic is Science, but Magic is also Friendship. Is Science actually Friendship? IS IT?

This is the kind of bullshit I think about, and will continue to think about as I load the next episode to watch while I eat. At least I am in good company, and am not the only one thinking about this kind of ridiculous stuff for fun.

I had heard good things, so I went on my iPad and downloaded Shadow Era. It’s a free-to-play CCG that uses microtransactions for getting new cards. The best part is that they have an “open platform” stance. Your account lets you play on the web, on iOS, on Android, and so on. I love me a card game, and I’m not unwilling to drop a few bucks on additional cards, so I was excited to try it.

The game runs pretty well on the iPad! Although there is a bit of a learning curve with the interface, I never had any problem picking what I wanted to do. The game seems strongly based on the WoW CCG, which is a good base. WoW is a pretty good game, and the preconstruct deck I picked out was pretty good. I was enjoying playing against the built-in AI.

Brer got on, and I’m like, hey, maybe I’ll try playing a game against a real opponent! I mean, it was free, and he could play on the web and face me, right? So I told him to get an account and we’d throw down. I clicked on the “Challenge” tab in the menu so I could challenge him to a game. That’s what you do in card games, right? I was shown a list of ongoing games, but none I could join. The only button on the screen was “quick match.” I figured that meant they didn’t have ranked games yet or something. I clicked on it to make a room for Brer to join.

It threw me into a random match with a random dude.

I searched the FAQ, the forums, all around the menus, and I confirmed it. There was no way to play against a friend.

You know what would get me to pay a few bucks to buy cards? Being able to play a fun card game with my friends. Know what I can’t do in this game? Play with my friends. Competitive play isn’t fun unless I have a complete card pool to build decks from, and I’m not going to get invested enough to buy a full card pool without getting my friends involved and playing. For a game so polished, I was shocked it was missing such a simple, vital feature.

I wouldn’t doubt they will eventually add it, and when they do, I would suggest giving the game a try. But right now? It’s kind of useless. Good job, guys.

It is a well-known fact that Robots desire companionship in order to help them better understand the hu-mon concept of emotion. However, the problem is that all potential feline companions are always stored behind a complex series of doors and platforming challenges. This is why most robots decide to, instead, go on killing rampages instead of actually loving a kitty.

The hero of Robot Wants Kitty has decided that it would rather do a bite-sized Metroidvania instead of getting it’s cold, metallic gripping appendages bloody with the fluids of dead humans.

I am apparently a really easy sell. I received an e-mail from the guy who makes Galcon and it said that I should buy this game by a friend of his on the app store, and I totally did immediately. It was that simple to convince me. If you want me to buy your app, send me a mass e-mail, apparently.

Still, I bought it because I could have sworn I had heard of Robot Wants Kitty before. I do know it’s based on a flash game of the same name. I may have heard the name, though when I got into the game, it was clear I hadn’t actually seen it. Having taken a look at it now, the presentation and such has been really ratchet up for this iPod release, which is nice. Robot Wants Kitty is a fun time, and totally worth the dollar I paid for it.

The game is a Metroidvania in miniature. Each level is like a full Metroidvania game. You collect powerups that give you different abilities that unlock new paths that take you to new powerups until, eventually, you find the Kitty and win the game. Your first task is almost always to get the jump and the laser gun, so you can fight and maneuver, but after that, it varies. There are keycards, double jumps, extra hits, and such you can pick up. Some levels use all of them, and some do not. Some levels have bosses, and some don’t. Still, they all follow the same formula.

The game is a bit limited like that. There are only three enemies (and boss versions of those enemies), and a limited number of powerups and pickups. Still, the game makes that work. You’re never confused by how to solve a situation, but simply must learn the new level. Even someone who sucks like me can complete a level in, oh, 20 minutes or so. The game records times for every level for speedrun kind of situations: I’m sure someone who didn’t suck could go much faster.

The game has 6 levels, one of which is the original Flash game remade. If each one takes you 20ish minutes, like they have for me so far, that’s a pretty decent amount of content for your buck. However, the game also has something called “Kitty Connect.” This isn’t up and running yet, but this is basically going to be user-generated levels. There’s already a level editor in the game where you can build your own stages with the items and enemies in the game. This is a fantastic game, and the editor works really well on my iPad, as you’d expect. Of course, I can’t design worth shit, so I will never make a level worth anything, but the idea of eventually going back into the app and having some top user-created levels in that Kitty Connect menu is pretty sweet.

The only bad thing about this app is the music. I didn’t use to give a shit about music in iOS games because I’d always been playing a podcast on my iPod while I played them. Now that I’m gaming on this shiny iPad, I find I leave the music on really quietly and play the podcast through my computer or iPod. Thus, the music is a thing. It’s okay for a little bit, but there’s basically one song, and it’s repetitive and annoying. Still, you can just turn it off, so no big deal.

Basically, if you like a little Metroid with your Vania, pay your buck for this. It controls fine, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far.

I think I’m still pretty sick of the Zelda formula.

I was playing Okamiden, which I got from Gamefly, and I was having a pretty good time. The game struggles to do all the things in 3D that the developers wanted it to. The combat is not all that fluid, for instance. But it was going pretty good so far and, of course, the brush skills worked so, so much better with a stylus. I beat the first boss, and I’m like, “This is going great! What a nice little game.”

Then I put it down and had no need to continue playing it. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to pick it up again, I sent it back.

Seriously, Okamiden is cute as fuck and seems like it would be a really enjoyable game, but I also felt like I was, in many ways, going through the motions. Here’s the puzzle dungeon. Here’s the puzzles one can do with this power. Here’s a bunch of really, really slow cutscenes with dubious entertainment value. I knew most of what was going to happen before it happened. The boss I fought was really the highlight: he was pretty fresh. Everything else was pretty standard stuff.

I feel this way every time I try to pick up a Zelda-like game. Darksiders did the same thing to me, though admittedly I stuck with it for longer than this. I just can’t keep going with it. I guess I just don’t feel that the time investment I have with those games are worth the enjoyment I get out of them anymore. Fair enough, I suppose. I should really just stop trying them. Maybe I’ve just moved on from them, much like I have the RTS genre. Is that really so bad?

Essner and I have played all the way through Army of Two: The 40th Day at this point. We beat it. We did it, bro.

It is a really terrible game.

It’s frustrating, really, as a game completely based on co-op with really, really stupid bro-action really could be a lot of fun, especially with the really robust and ridiculous weapon customization the game has. That’s why I really wanted to play it. However, they completely ruin it with several big mistakes, which I would love to go over with you right now, and thus will.

1. The Controls Are Ass.
When you look at something like Gears of War, and look at the number of things the A button does, it’s a very big list! However, Epic was smart enough to make sure that there’s only one possible thing the A button can do at any time. Though I’m sure it’s happened once or twice, I can’t really recall a time when I pressed A and something I didn’t want happened in Gears of War. If it happened, it didn’t leave an impression.
The list of things each button does in 40th Day is much longer, and the game is constantly doing the wrong thing. I can’t count the times I jumped out of cover instead of reviving Essner, or started a game of Rock Paper Scissors instead of reloading my gun. They tried to add so many completely useless little tidbits with nowhere to put them on the controller, and it makes the game feel more frustrating because of it. It got us killed fairly often. It was bullshit.
What really gets me, though, is that the D-Pad doesn’t really seem to be used for anything. They could have mapped things like switching to attachments, switching weapons, and things like that to the D-Pad. It would have made more sense, and be much quicker to use in combat. Instead, it does nothing. Excellent.

2. The Shouldering Mechanic Sucks Ass.
This is basically a control issue, but it is such a big issue that it really needs to be it’s own entry. Most 3rd person shooters will automatically and dynamically switch which shoulder you have your gun against when it needs to for you to get a clear shot. This makes it easy to do the shot you want. However, the makers of 40th Day decided they wanted to give you an extra level of control by letting you switch shouldering by clicking in the right stick. Now, more control isn’t bad, perse. I could see situations where you might disagree with how the game thinks you want to hold your gun, and thus would want to switch it yourself. However, this is an edge case, and not really applicable 90% of the time. In practice, this shouldering mechanic just makes you have to fumble with it in order to get a view of the battlefield, and makes it near impossible to quickly make a shot in a dire situation. You end up fighting the controls, not the enemies, and that’s a problem.

3. The Bosses Are Ill-Conceived.
I will put up with a lot of bullshit as far as video game bosses are concerned. But 40th Day takes place in something similar to the real world. The idea that firing 6 grenade launcher rounds and hitting a man in the face will not injure him is stupid. This is especially true when the “solution” to killing him involves blowing up a bag of grenades attached to his ass. I really don’t care how “heavy” the armor is. It’s a really stupid design. Sure, have the shortcut to make the boss easier, but the idea that I can hit a boss point-blank with explosives over and over again to no effect is just ridiculous.

4. They Don’t Understand The Concept Of Checkpoints.
Most chapters in this game have 1 to 2 checkpoints. Chapters are very long. Often, you will end up having to redo a firefight before trying a boss again, and again, and again. Oh, right, I already wrote about this. It’s still true, and didn’t change the entire way through the game.

I’d mention the story as well, which is completely nonsensical and random, but that’s less of an issue to me. It’s a shooter. Who gives a shit about the story? Not me, certainly! Let’s just say that it is not good, and the story ends with a guy holding a dead man’s switch… only he isn’t actually pressing the button, meaning it’s not activated, though he’s pretending it is. Fantastic.

I had fun playing through the game because I played through it with Essner, and we insulted it the entire time. Also, as I mentioned, the batshit insane weapon customization system is a ton of fun to fuck around with, and is the highlight of the game. I wish it had appeared in a game that wasn’t ass. Still, I can’t really recommend 40th Day in any way. It is a bad game. There are better co-op shooters out there. Play those.

As part of my taking command of shit, I got a game of A Penny For My Thoughts together. I bought this game because it sounded cool, and I read it and it did sound cool. But it was just on that stack of games I really didn’t think I’d ever get to play with my friends. However, as part of my take-charge attitude, I realized that they would enjoy it, but would never decide to play on their own. I was being asked to do something with people for my birthday, so I hatched a plan and forced the game to be played. People wanted to do something with me, so I twisted it, searched through a million frustrating boxes, and bam, there we were.

The back of the book has several optional different versions of the game. The basic game is about real-world drama and problems. I knew none of my group would take that seriously, so I decided to use the Cthulhu-based version that was included, thinking there was a slim chance that that might be taken with a bit more seriousness. I mean, it wasn’t, but there was a better chance! Still, that was kind of the setup.

Of course, Penny is a game for a small group, and we ended up having a big group. Thus, we only really got past the first round of the three round therapy session. Still, tons of fun was had. Watching Spants dig himself farther and farther into a hole with the sort of details he was setting up his story with was fantastic. Watching Shauna really work it with the ad-libbing and Jonathan fight desperately to attempt to make his story separate from everyone else’s even as everyone tried to draw him into an overall narrative was also enjoyable.

Early in the game, I read a list of example memory triggers from the book. One of these was “your family’s ski lodge.” Essner blamed me for this, but it was all his doing: from that point forward, everything seemed to involve a ski lodge in some way. This ski lodge was somehow adjacent to a farm as well as a Molasses Factory with a trap door which lead down into a constantly burning funeral pyre to burn werewolves who have converted to Judaism and joined the all-Jewish Mafia and trapeze artist circus act. Also, at some point beeswax was being used as a contraceptive.

That’s the kind of game we were playing.

Still, my gut instinct was right. Having actually tried it, everyone seemed to walk away from the session with a very high opinion of the game, though all agreed that a small group for it would probably be best. I got to have the role-play game I wanted on my birthday, and everyone got to have fun. We even got to eat some of Cara’s cake she made! Seems like a success to me. I have all the gear to finish the game still. I’m unsure if we’ll ever actually finish it, or play another, but I kind of hope so. It is good fun.

I remember a time when I used to review Items of the Month! That was a time when I had less of a problem playing my turns every day, so that I could actually get around to trying out the items at a decent time. This isn’t happening anymore! Thus, especially with KoL, I have no idea what some of the IoTMs I bought do until months and months after, mostly because I am still insistent on doing 100% familiar runs. Thus, these reviews have fallen a bit to the side.

But I kind of wanted to talk about the Mini-Hipster. I’ve been using mine during this current KoL run that I’ve been working on, off and on, and he just really surprises me. At first glance, he’s kind of one of those “jack of all trades” familiars, which do all kinds of random shit all the time and I generally enjoy. He has the free combats tacked on to make him interesting to people who don’t just like cool shit, but he’s mostly just a familiar that does cool shit.

But when the Mini-Hipster single-handedly one-shots the Bonerdagon, well, I have to wonder what is up.

Seriously, the attack damage of the Hipster’s attacks is insane. I’m at a point in my run where I am doing maybe 50 damage with a regular attack, if I’m lucky, and the Hipster is doing 200-300 damage every time it decides to do an attack action. Of course, one of it’s attacks is Hot-Based, which is how it managed to take out the Bonerdagon with ease. I will admit that a dedicated attack familiar would probably do that much damage, if not more, over the course of a battle, but a dedicated attack familiar would not also be healing me and giving me lots of stats like the Hipster does. It just seems crazy.

I’m sure it’s not as crazy as I’m making it out to be, of course. It is a fairly rare action, so you can’t depend on it, and the first action the Hipster takes is always a stat-up action, I believe, so you have to be able to survive at least one hit, if not two, if you’re going to get lucky with it. No serious speed-runner would ever actually care about it. They’d just want the free combats against scaling monsters for free stats. Still, it feels like something is broken each time the hipster lazily shakes greasy hair sweat towards an enemy and it does 5 times the damage of my normal attack in sleaziness. I suppose that’s kind of the benefit of using Mr. Store stuff, though. It’s supposed to make you feel powerful, or like you’re getting away with something cool. I can’t say that isn’t why I pick them up. But normally there’s a sense of balance around them, or a sense of what it’s doing that’s powerful being very tied-in to the general theme or whatnot of the item. I don’t see that with these attacks. They strike me as odd.

I’m still going to enjoy the free kills but, yeah. Odd.

In theory, there is such as a thing as a “popcorn flick.” To my knowledge, this is a movie that you put on because there’s nothing else to do, and you enjoy your popcorn and watch. You aren’t challenged, or even necessarily engaged in any way, but you watch it, and it doesn’t offend, and that’s fine.

That’s basically what Paul is.

I watched Paul, and that was fine. There were some laughs, and some chuckles. I didn’t want to claw my eyes out. It then ended, and it left no impression on me, nor any need to ever see it again.

If there’s one thing the movie was, the term “formulaic” would be completely accurate. Everyone in the story was simply there to fill a slot in the story. Two friends are there because you’re supposed to have buddies on an adventure, but one is designated to fall in love, and here comes female character to fall in love with and serve no other purpose, and so on and so forth.
Seriously, I can sit here and try to think of any actual character traits that the main characters had, and I would totally fail. They were not characters, but simply placeholders which existed to fill in slots in jokes. These jokes are the exact jokes you would expect from a movie about a wise-cracking alien. That doesn’t mean they aren’t funny sometimes, but they certainly aren’t unexpected.

I guess what I’m saying is, basically, look at the elevator pitch for the movie. Imagine the checklist such a movie must have. If you would like to see someone methodically checking off everything on that list without any twists, turns, or derivation, then you may enjoy Paul.

On the way back from the theater, Essner and I had a discussion about formula and how sick we were of it. I think I was less sick of it than him, but regardless, we both agreed that this kind of movie is not really worth our time anymore. He was being much harder on it than me. I feel it’s harmless, though nothing I will ever need to see again, whereas he seemed to find it very offensive, or at the very least bad. When I got back to Tweetdeck after the film I was greeted with this article which seemed to offer a potential interpretation on why we were reacting this way and echoed several of the points Essner was making about how the shows he watched as a child, which were re-purposing plots and pop culture he was not old enough for yet, made it so that when he reached the age where such things could be consumed, he already knew how they were going to turn out and there were no surprises. All this really seemed relevant as I really thought about the film and what it meant about film-making as a whole. There will always be people who enjoy formula and not being surprised. Hell, I really enjoy a formulaic children’s show about the power of friendship now and again.

But anyway, I guess I was talking about Paul. Paul is a movie. It has a joke or two. Seth Rogan is a wise-cracking alien who says the word “fuck.” You know what you’re getting into if you see it.

Today I realized that I was sitting within arm’s reach of an arcade stick, and I had a copy of Super Street Fighter IV sitting on the table over there, and yet I was playing Street Fighter IV on my iPod instead.

I bought Street Fighter IV for my iPod because it was on sale for a buck, and Capcom was donating all proceeds for it towards the relief effort from the earthquake. I had heard surprisingly good things about it, so I thought I’d give it a try. If nothing else, I’d get this blog post out of it. I wasn’t expected it to be as good as it is. It is a really quality game, and completely worth your dollar.

There are several omissions from this version of the game. One is some of the characters. Apparently for awhile they slowly added characters, but they’ve basically stopped now. While I’ll miss personal favorites like Sakura and Dan, I understand why they weren’t priorities, and you still have a pretty decent selection of SFIV fighters in there, including all the required ones like Ryu, Guile, and Chun-Li.

The other omission is no Indestructible. Oh nooooooooo. But at least it still has Guile’s Theme. And the “fight over” theme, which is kind of the best music in the game, as far as I’m concerned. Always makes you feel badass after a round.

Anyway, onto how the game plays.
I don’t know what dark sorcery Capcom employed to make the virtual joystick in this game so good, but all iPhone developers who want to try to have a virtual stick or pad really need to employ it. Every single time I pulled off a dragon punch motion on this thing, I was blown away, but I can do it with a lot of consistency. Fireball motions are never any problem. The stick is fantastic, and that’s the whole reason why the game is playable.
Though not a one-for-one recreation, the game is very, very similar to actual SFIV. All the characters they included have the same moves you remember, and can employ them the same way. I picked Abel, for instance, and was using a lot of the same techniques I use in the actual game. You don’t have quite the same range of moves, though, simply because they have reduced the game down to four buttons: a punch button, a kick button, a “special move” button which you use to pull off your EX moves, Supers, and Hypers, and a Focus Attack button. This means you don’t have as much variety of normals, really, but it still does a fairly good job with what it has.

The game also looks pretty great, while running without lag on my second gen iPod Touch. It seems to be using techniques similar to Killer Instinct, which is smart. The fighters are actually sprites that have been ripped from taking pictures of the fighters in 3D. Still, it looks great. The animation is sometimes jerky when doing things like throws, since the game is trying to figure out how to get the two sprites to connect in a good way, but overall it looks very fluid, too. It’s certainly not enough to throw off someone of my skill level, and let’s face it, you’re never going to be super serious on your iPhone anyway.

The game has multiplayer over Bluetooth, which is nice, seeing as it’s a fighting game at all. It even has “Fight Requests” like the actual game, though the concept of someone noticing you playing SFIV on your phone, booting up their copy, and both of you having Bluetooth on for them to join you in the middle of your arcade session is a bit unbelievable as a scenario. Still, they tried. There’s no online play, because, well, let’s face it, fighters have a hard time dealing with lag on a console, much less over 3G. It’s good they have something.

Seriously, if you like Street Fighter IV, or fighters in general, this is totally fun to fuck around with. The AI is about what you’d expect from fighting games (I can beat everyone on normal but Zangief, who gives me lots of trouble, just like normal SFIV) and they intelligently set the game up as leaderboard-based as a race to get through tournament mode and beat all the fighters in the fastest time. It even saves your progress between matches, if you just want to play one round and then go back to something else. It’s totally fun to fuck around with for a dollar, and completely playable. It’s pretty fantastic like that.