The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

MUST! STOP!

Instead of sleeping on Christmas Eve, I instead finished playing through Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. This is one of those iPhone games I had heard a lot about, but never picked up. Then it went on sale, and I did that picking up. I then felt stupid for waiting.

Spider is clearly one of the best games on the platform right now. The game does so many things right, I couldn’t imagine anyone not having a good time.

First and foremost, the game controls perfectly. There are so many good games that don’t know how to do the controls on the touchscreen of an iOS device, but Spider completely and utterly knows the score. Never are you making a move you don’t mean. You are constantly in control. You swipe to jump in a direction, hold to walk towards where you’re holding, and tap the Spider to anchor your silk. It simply works. It’s great. Plus, the jump is incredibly satisfying. You feel like a total badass, leaping around the levels.

Basically, you have a limited amount of silk, that’s recharged from eating bugs. Making any polygon out of web strands creates web that traps most bugs. Some just hover in a place, some move around in a pattern, and some can be manipulated by jumping around or interacting with the environment. For example, there are several levels where you can activate light bulbs to attract moths. It’s really simple gameplay, but the game uses it so well. You’re always in places that make you have to rethink your strategies, and they slowly dole out the more complex bugs as you go along, so you’re always learning how to deal with new ones. It works really well.

Other than the gameplay, the game does a fantastic job of making itself atmospheric. You’re just a Spider, sure, but you, as the player, are using this spider to search Bryce Manor. There’s all kinds of photographs and secrets you can find in order to help you kind of sleuth out who lived in this place and what happened to them. While the ultimate fate of such was not surprising to me in the least, the feel of the space I was in still won me over, overall. The art was very distinctive, and felt like a real place, for the most part. (Sometimes, the game will put things in the background to make you have more web-slinging challenge, which is a bit game-y, but that didn’t really detract for me.)

I got it on sale for a dollar, but I totally would have been happy with the $2.99 it normally goes for. If you play games on your iDevice at all, you really should pick it up and play it. The story mode won’t take you all that long, though it is broken up into easily-digestible levels to make it perfect to pick up and play for a minute or two. Still, those levels are fantastic, and there are many challenge modes I haven’t tried, if you want to go in and attempt to get every bit of value out of your purchase. It’s a great game, and probably the most wonderful surprise I’ve gotten in my iPod gaming since Hook Champ. Go get it.

Every so often, there comes a game that makes me go, “Man, this game is too furry for me.” This will kind of creep me out, as, you know, I’m pretty furry myself. I own Furoticon cards, for fuck’s sake. Still, there’s just something about Lugaru HD that makes me wonder about the people who made it. I can’t wrap my head around it.

I mean, there are several things that Lugaru does decently enough. I mean, it’s a completely functional game. I could never fucking do that. It’s also a game that’s trying to simulate fairly interesting hand-to-hand combat. I mean, something like your Gods of War doesn’t really actually attempt to have realistic combat, where you have to parry and so on. Lugaru does to some extent, in that you can sneak up and get the jump on dudes, and you have to sweep the leg and keep them stunned and stuff while you punch at them.

Of course, though, you’re a bunny, so you can do crazy-high jumps, run around on all fours, and pounce on people as well.

I guess that’s the part I don’t completely “get.” There’s nothing particularly rabbit-like about the mechanics, except the jumping high thing. The graphics are kind of late PS1 sort of era stuff, so it’s not really an artistic style decision. It makes me feel like, from the beginning, someone said “I am going to make a game starring anthro bunnies!” and then figured out some mechanics from there. This, plus the heavy dialog at the beginning of the game, is what makes me feel like the game is “too furry.” I mean, more power to this little indie team that made this game. Again, this is way more impressive than any bullshit I’VE ever made. The game works, and has a decent combat system. But it just feels like it was designed, from the ground up, to be a “furry” game, and doesn’t seem to take the time to justify it. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I just feel like I need something more. Maybe if the rabbits actually looked cute or badass or something, that would be all the justification I needed. I’m not sure.

Anyway, it’s not like I played it a long time. This is mostly a reaction. I received it from the Humble Bundle for free, because they were being stupid nice, and I gave it a go. It’s not the kind of combat that I get into, and the whole thing just left me feeling confused.

And now I’ve told you about it, I suppose.

What a strange game.

Sonic Colors has a fucking FANTASTIC soundtrack.

Let’s just listen, okay? Here’s Tropical Resort Zone, Act 1. Great surf rock kind of stuff. Then here’s Tropical Resort Zone, Act 2, which subtly changes the song a bit, while keeping the same themes. Act 3 changes it a bit more significantly, but it’s still the same theme, and still awesome. Then, of course, in the Sonic Simulator, we get an 8-bit version of it.
The music just keeps going like that, and is really fantastic! Even the opening theme, which is horrible in that normal Sonic way, is also really catchy. The soundtrack is spectacular. I love it.

The presentation of the game is also pretty awesome. The storyline of the game is very tongue-in-cheek, and it completely works. It’s still for kids, of course, but it also is constantly recognizing how stupid Sonic plots are to a more adult audience. Sonic will go destroy a boss, and Tails won’t even notice. “Oh? That’s cool I guess. I was doing something else.” Eggman talks about how he “always says” that his plan will let him rule the world, but he really means it this time! I had heard about this before playing it, and was afraid it wouldn’t work, because they’d be “trying to hard,” but they do pull it off.

Even gameplaywise, the way the game has short 3D sections before swapping back to 2D for the more intense platforming works in ways that previous Sonic games in 3D simply haven’t. It provides a fairly good platforming challenge before sweeping you into beautiful-looking 3D sections, before going back to platforming challenge. Plus, it’s actually fun! Some of the Wisp colors are more fun than others, but most let you do some really interesting stuff. Blue Cube is probably used the best that I saw, simply because it lets you swap rings and blocks like a Mario P-Switch, which lets you get to new areas on a time limit.

Yes, this is by far the best Sonic game I’ve played in years. It’s genuinely fun. I didn’t beat it, though, because it does get a bit cheap in later stages. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I could retry forever, but the game still uses lives, like a dinosaur. After 4 tries, I have to restart the whole stage. Some stages are short, and this isn’t a big deal, but at least one or two in every zone are very long, and the idea of replaying them again and again quickly got old to me.

So I returned it. But damn, if you want a Sonic game that doesn’t suck, Sonic Colors on Wii fits the bill. It’s pretty good. I hope they learn from that and make another game that improves on this formula even more. A Sonic Colors 2 could be a genuinely great game, instead of a pretty good one with a fantastic soundtrack.

It’s Steam Sale season again, and once again I am simply overwhelmed with how many Steam Sale games I pick up and then never play. Well, I’m going to try to start turning that around. I’m going to give some of these cheap Steam games a short shot, and see how I feel about them. Then, I will write about them. It’s the perfect plan! Probably. I’m pretty sure it’s something like the perfect plan.

Anyway, Magnetis is 50 cents on Steam right now. That’s cheaper than most stupid iPhone games. I had to pick it up and try it.

The problem a lot of “speed” puzzle games have is that they’re always in the shadow of Tetris. Tetris is just so fucking good! How are you going to make your game better than Tetris?

Magnetis is not better than Tetris, but it certainly isn’t bad. Mediocre, maybe, if you have that Tetris puzzle game itch, and have 50 goddamn cents, you might as well pick it up.

Basically, the field of play is a little circular conveyor belt. If you keep holding one direction, the cubes on the belt come back around the other side. From the top, two-cube sets drop. You can swap the order of these two cubes as they drop. There are three types of blocks: generic, grey “conductor” blocks, left side magnets, and right side magnets. The idea is to connect two magnets of the same color with connector blocks to clear them.

Play starts out really slow. You have to “level up” a few levels before the game starts throwing you magnets of a second color, and it’s kind of nap-inducing until they do. Once a third color appears, though, you get fucked pretty quickly. The difficulty comes with accidentally filling a whole row. Conductors slowly disappear, but if they’re hooked to a magnet, they disappear even slower. If you fill up a row, that row is kind of lost for a long, long time. This is how you can accidentally fill up the whole screen and then lose.

There’s nothing wrong with the game, as I said. It just doesn’t have that constant “searching for the pattern” quality that awesome games like Tetris Attack has, nor a set strategy that you’re desperately trying to keep going, like the gameplay of classic Tetris. You’re just not thrown enough different types of blocks to really make you juggle, and when you are, the small field of play just isn’t enough to handle it, or so it felt to me. Then again, I’ve only played a couple of rounds. Maybe I don’t “get” the game yet.

But no, seriously, the game is fucking 50 cents. For 50 cents, this is a solid little puzzler. There are better out there, of course. I mean, if you have an iPhone, Drop7 is currently a dollar, and you can’t go wrong with that. But if you want something Tetris-y, then hey, give it a shot. I mean, it costs less than a can of soda, for fuck’s sake.

Having been to a bar recently, for some reason, I can promise you that I know what they’re all about. The thing that they are all about is “spot the difference” picture games on little touch screen machines on the bar, right? Now, what would you do if I told you that you could get this experience, on your iDevice, and not have to go to a bar?

You’d be excited, of course. Potentially. Heh.

Every so often, I look at the “newly free” tab in my Appshopper app to see if something pops out at me. Awhile back, something called Battle Spot made me decide to download it. I don’t know if it was the extremely cute panda or what, but hey, I gave it a try.

It’s really not bad! If it’s still free when you see this, go grab it. It’s just a spot the difference game, but it’s a solid implementation.

There’s two different modes, a multiplayer and a single player. The single player just sets you up with a time limit to find the five differences in each picture before throwing you to the next one. You want to finish as many pictures as possible to rack up a high score. Simple stuff, really.

The multiplayer, though, is weird and kind of crazy. You can do local multiplayer with people close to you, or do random or set up matches online. You’re both given the same picture at the same time, and whoever spots the most differences first, wins that picture. It’s pretty frantic, especially with someone not there, because you are in such a rush to find the easy ones before they can key them in. It actually works pretty well!

Granted, I’m not a huge fan of this sort of game, but from what I understand, hidden object games and the like are really, really popular, and this would be a great game for someone who likes such things. It’s nothing fancy, but it works. It has some really weird music, though. You’ll probably want to turn that off. Heh.

I think it’s no surprise that I love Rocketcat games. I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve put out so far, and that trend hasn’t stopped with Hook Worlds. (I realize now I never wrote a review of Super Quick Hook. It’s fantastic. Buy that too.)

Basically, Hook Worlds, for a cheap cost, takes the gameplay of the more robust and adventure-like Hook Champ and Super Quick Hook, and dilutes it down to a really solid arcade experience. It’s an expanded version of the “Avalanche” and “Eruption” modes in Quick Hook. You will always die at the end, but you have to go through randomly-generated landscapes, hooking and swinging and attempting to stay ahead of danger. It’s a fantastic introduction to their games and it’s only a buck. If you never knew if you’d enjoy their grapple-hookin’ stuff, this is a great intro. If you want a more robust, more hand-crafted challenge afterwards, pick up one or both of their other games, and enjoy that.

Even within this simple game, though, they’ve really mixed it up. The “worlds” refers to the various different game types. You have “Curse of the Watcher,” which stars the father of the heroes of Hook Champ and Super Quick Hook. It’s fairly similar to how Hook Champ plays, so if you had always wished that Hook Champ had an endless mode, this would be it. “Bounty Gunner” is the second world, and it stars one of the DLC characters from Hook Champ, Zelle. Instead of having rocket jumps, Zelle instead has a gun. Her stages have many jump pads that throw her into the air, but she also has enemies about that she must shoot. Her points come from the number of ghosts and other enemies she shoots down and collects bounty money from. Finally, there’s Cybergnome 202X, which features a crazy gravity-flip instead of a jump. You can end up hooking on the floor or the ceiling. It’s hard and pretty insane to wrap your head around. There’s also a secret fourth world that was unlocked for early purchasers, and will be unlocked later for everyone else. It’s basically the first world again, only harder and with retro Atari-style stylings. A nice addition, since World 1 is actually fairly easy. (Then again, maybe I have some hookin’ skills after having played the first two so much.)

This game is an amazing value at a dollar. You still have all the hilarious dialog like the other games, and plenty of unlockable hats and hooks (though they are much harder to unlock, being purely based on reaching various scoring levels, rather than building up currency like the other games). If you own a device that can play it, and like action games, you really should purchase it. You’ll have fun. It is fun!

Tron: Legacy was a movie with three dimensional graphics and also had Jeff Bridges being a wizard.

That’s really all I can say about it. I’ll try to elaborate, but seriously, that is the selling points for the Tron.

Basically, CG Young Jeff Bridges disappears, and then his son goes to find him, and ends up in Tron-land, and son and Jeff Bridges and love interest must do battle with CG Young Jeff Bridges. While doing this, some discs are thrown, and Jeff Bridges casts some magic, all to the tunes of Daft Punk.

Seriously, speaking of Daft Punk, the soundtrack to this movie is fucking fantastic. Daft Punk even gets a completely appropriate cameo, and it’s really great. They set the tone perfectly, and do such a great job. Every scene fits perfectly with the music, it works.

The visuals, too, are fantastic. I’m not a 3D movie kind of person, but the 3D effects simply work with the Tron visual aesthetic. It wasn’t offensive and in my face, and it looked great. That’s about all I can hope for from a movie in 3D.

That’s sort of it. The movie is fun, sure. There are plenty of cool-looking fights, and some genuinely funny dialog, of course. The plot, however, is questionable and not all that deep. Sam Flynn, Mr. Main Character, is not really all that interesting, as his only real qualities are “has Jeff Bridges for a dad” and “can drive a motorcycle.” I suppose he’s probably also badass at Ultimate Frisbee. I dunno. In any case, I didn’t really care what happened to him, perse. He won! Yay! I suppose.

Basically, plot was never what this was about, and you knew that going in. If you want fun plots and characters, go see Red. That’s fantastic. This is an audio/visual experience, and at being that, it’s a good time. If you’re going to see it, definitely see it in theaters when you can enjoy it’s full majesty. If you want to see it, you will enjoy it. Still, it’s not something to go out of your way for if you weren’t already in the Tron camp.

I really liked Costume Quest, and I don’t care who knows it! Thus, when I heard that Costume Quest was having some Christmas-themed DLC, well, I kind of wanted in. So I spent my money and bought Grubbins on Ice.

The DLC does a couple of smart things. For one, the DLC has save points. There are these little phones about you can use to save, which is fantastic. I don’t know if they patched them into the main game, but they should have. Makes the game much more enjoyable to play, because you can take smaller chunks.
Secondly, it does what a DLC should do. It gives you more quests, more costumes, and so on. The new costumes are cool enough, but I mostly used my party from the first game, save the Yeti outfit you get near the end, since that one has an in-combat power that’s too powerful to be without.

Mostly, though, it’s just more Costume Quest. It’s not even particularly Christmas-themed, besides the fact that there is some snow around. Basically, since you kicked the ass of the bad guys from the first game, a new bad guy, Araxia, is attempting to take over the monster world, and has kidnapped Lucy. Therefore, you attempt to lead a revolution to overthrow him and save your friend. Still, the basic gameplay doesn’t change. You go from door to door to “drum up support” for the revolution, which is basically trick or treating. The characters even say as such. You also have to solve some troubles for the various monster elders, but besides a maze that requires you to use all your costume powers, it doesn’t really get very different from the base game.

Still, the dialog continues to be fantastic, and the combat and such are as fun and charming as they were in the first game. It’s also interesting that the game ends on a cliffhanger, suggesting additional DLC for later, which I’ll probably be on board for.

Yeah, it’s really more of the same. You really have to judge for yourself whether or not 5 bucks is worth it for 2 more hours of Costume Quest. I thought it was, and I was pretty happy with my purchase, but without the real holiday appeal like the first game, I couldn’t blame you to give this a pass. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It’s just more. I found it fun, though.

Last week, I suggested I take Cara to a movie for her birthday. However, I made a tactical error, and assumed that Tron came out last week. It didn’t. It comes out today. We thus had to pick another film, and ended up going to see Red.

I’m really glad we did, as I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, and it was fantastic.

When I go in for an action movie, I want something that’s fun. Explosions and firefights are all well and good, but I don’t really want that attached to something that’s trying to be too “serious.” It doesn’t have to be Shoot ‘Em Up levels of crazy, but it has to know what it’s doing and it needs to have fun.

Red is designed, from the very beginning, to be fun. There are a few little emotional moments that don’t fall flat, such as a certain standoff in a secret, soundproof room. For the most part, though, the movie is all fun. The characters, besides the audience stand-in and love interest of Bruce Willis, are all badass but also not serious. They do nothing but kill. It’s what they do. Even these horrible odds really aren’t anything they haven’t seen before. As such, they don’t worry about it. They’re back in action. They’re having fun. That fun translates and goes right to the audience.

Seriously, everyone is badass. Even Morgan Freeman, who doesn’t really get into combat, perse, and is mostly just an informant, is completely and utterly badass. I especially liked the silly romance between Helen Mirren and Brian Cox. It’s sappy and saccrine, but the movie sells it. It makes sense to me that these assassins would want romances that are more pure and different, and that’s what they sell. It’s awesome.

The movie was awesome! I may even pick it up on DVD if I see it cheap. I hear it’s nothing like the comic, and that’s fair enough, but it is a blast to watch. I highly recommend it if you need a movie to see soon. It’s not getting much play here, only being in one tiny theater, but don’t let that stop you. Go for it. Enjoy it. I know I did.

I recently played through the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 single player on 360! “But wait,” you may say, “don’t you own Bad Company 2 on the PC? I remember you mentioning something about the multiplayer.”
You are totally correct, I do own it on PC, yet I rented it on 360 to play the single player.
Yes, I’m not completely sure why I did either.

Still, I’m glad I finally played the single player, because it was FANTASTIC. Seriously, it makes Medal of Honor look like a fucking joke. I had fun the entire way through. You should play it.

The cast from the first Bad Company are back, and they’re still pretty funny! Granted, you have to seek out the funny conversations in this game. They don’t happen unless you dilly dally about going to objectives. But seriously, they’re hilarious. Just take a look at these. Amazing. The characters in this game are just fantastic, seriously.

Those characters are backed up by some really great gunplay. Basically all the control issues from the first Bad Company have been completely fixed. The game controls great, has good checkpoints, and gives you a variety of great weapons. Granted, it got rid of a lot of the uniqueness, too. You no longer can drive vehicles on big, open areas. You only do those in set sequences. Similarly, you have the standard “heavy breathing” healing method, instead of the syringe from the first game. This, especially, is a shame, because that was one of the coolest, more unique elements of the first game. Still, it’s all updated and it all works great.
As far as the guns go, I like the “supply drop” system they have in the game. Basically, like the first game, you unlock guns as you go along. Only now, whenever you read a supply drop, you can request any weapon you unlock. This lets you adapt for whatever situation is coming up. Enemy armor? Grab an RPG. Need to be close and personal? Grab and assault rifle and a shotgun. It’s a really friendly system that rewards you for seeking out more guns, so you can unlock them. It’s great.

The plot itself was not… great? But it was a plot. Things were connected together based on this silly fake EMP-type weapon that you end up stopping. You have a sense of progression, certainly. It’s serviceable. It works.

Playing through this game, I’m mostly just amazed at how good it is. The multiplayer is fucking fantastic as well, and this single player component is actually quite fun. Bad Company 2 just did not get as much praise as I feel like it should have. So I’ll give it some more praise here. It’s a fantastic game, and it’s probably kind of cheap now. If you want a shooter, and haven’t played it, pick that shit up. You’ll be thanking me.