The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Sometimes I forget why I play games, I guess. I do it because it’s what I do. I mean, I enjoy myself, but often it’s not so much a thrill as a way to pass the time. I don’t always realize it, of course. It takes those rare moments to smack me out of it. Whether it be a game that’s so frustrating, I question why I’m using my leisure time on it, or a game so fantastic, it pulls me out enough to make me go “wait a second, this is so much damn fun!”

I don’t know. I got DJ Hero 2 in from Gamefly, and immediately after putting the disc in, I was thrilled. It drew me in. It made me feel excited and energized. After playing for hours and stopping, I stepped back and went, “Holy shit, I was having fun.”

I remember other moments like that in life, where I’ve looked at myself and realized, “Oh, this is happy, I guess. Crazy.” Like, say, the first time I saw They Might Be Giants in concert. I was completely lost in it. Completely happy, and it was extended over a long period of time. At times, the nostalgic feelings that creep up on me when I view a Christmas tree does the same thing. I feel fantastic. I feel loved. It’s great.

There are times I wonder if the fact that I feel this way indicates how horrible I feel most of the time. “Does everyone normally feel like this on a good day?” I wonder. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I’ve got lots of good in my life. It’s pretty solid. No, it’s just a heightened sense. A sense of getting away from everything, and of being completely free. It’s great when a good game experience can give you that rare moment.

Needless to say, I paid to keep DJ Hero 2. I’m really loving it. I’ll write more about it later. But it just reminded me how rare that feeling is. I guess I’m lucky the game gives it to me, at least for a little while.

I bought a game while it was on sale. It was called “Snoopy Flying Ace” and it is a game where Peanuts characters fly around and shoot each other in planes while wearing really, really ridiculous WWII-style costumes. When the planes explode, the characters always parachute out, so you know you’re not ruining Peanuts canon by murdering time-travelling Peppermint Patty during WWII.

Anyway, the game is kind of ridiculous. As ridiculous as you would think a multiplayer-focused XBL game based on Peanuts would be. But Brer likes flying, and I thought we could play through the campaign together, because it has really nice split screen stuff, even online. I bought it cheap to save for his visit. At the same time, I’m like, well, I can at least check out the online, stuff, you know?

Anyway, the point of all this is, the game is fucking fantastic.

Well, the multiplayer is, anyway, and that was clearly the focus of the game. You have your normal variety of modes: Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch (Called Dogfight, both because, you know, planes, and also because, you know, Snoopy), a Capture the Flag variant, a “kill the guy with the ball” variant, and a football-style mode called Pigskin. What’s more, there’s plenty of people playing. This can sometimes be a problem with a game, but I’ve never had trouble getting into a full game, at least in the more common modes. You can bring it up, and be shooting people in a minutes. This is a huge benefit for me.

The game has a fairly large variety of weapons, of which you can take two of into a match, along with a basic forward-facing machine gun you always have. You can set various weapon loadouts per Peanuts character, or just switch them around on one mid-match if needed. You can also fly as your Avatar, just for the hell of it. You can also pick what kind of plane you want to fly, although this is mostly cosmetic: there are stat differences between “light,” “medium,” and “heavy” planes, but nothing in between the classes.
What gets me is that all the weapons actually seem useful. When I first looked at the weapon list, I assumed many would be completely useless. But I’m working on the Weaponeer achievement, and that means I have to use a variety of guns. While I figured that the only good weapons would be the Comet Rockets and the Squitos, I’ve found that there really is a good variety of useful stuff out there. Yes, some are better than others, but if you have different styles, they are useful. Even things like the little spinning melee thing that twirls under your plane is not that hard to get kills with. I don’t see one particular loadout when I play. That’s a damn good thing. The game is well-balanced that way.

The game has kill-streak bonuses like Modern Warfare, too. If you get 4 kills in a row, Woodstock jumps onto your plane tail with two magnum pistols and will shoot people behind you. (No, seriously, that’s what happens.) Getting 9 in a row turns your plane into Snoopy’s doghouse, though I’ve never gotten close to that bonus, so I don’t know what it does. That’s neat, but it honestly doesn’t seem to come into play anywhere near as often as the streak bonuses in things like Modern Warfare. I think that’s a good thing.

There are various maps, many with weird environmental hazards, like robots or evil dragon submarines that you have to dodge while fighting. There are also turrets you can man on the field. The guide I looked at for the game seemed to indicate these are really powerful, and I do sometimes get shot down by them, but every time I’ve gotten into a turmulent, I’ve been unable to hit shit. Who knows. In any case, the maps have plenty of open areas, as well as buildings and things to maneuver around. There’s like… 6 or so of them. This is plenty for a game like this.

Really, I’ve been having a fantastic time. It’s extremely polished, and good fun if you like shooting down other people online. It’s not very Peanuts-y or anything, though there are some nice touches. Die a bunch of times with no kills, and you get labelled a “Blockhead,” along with a silly icon of Charlie Brown with a squared-off head. When you win, it plays a little piano tune and shows a picture of Snoopy dancing. It’s a weird product, but as far as online multiplayer goes, it’s aces. The demo even lets you play online matches for awhile, so I recommend doing that and trying it. It might hook you too.
As for the campaign, I’ve not played it. I’m waiting. We’ll see if it’s fun, but I bet it will be. Probably not the deepest thing, but the mechanics are solid, so I’m sure it’ll be a good time.

In the DungeonDragons, a slogan they used for awhile was “Never Split the Party.” You have to have a party with a unified front, or else you’re just not going to get anything done. People will die, combats will be failures, everything will break down into bickering.

But that’s, you know, Dungeons and Dragons. Cthulhu-stuff… well, in a way, that’s different. Tension between your party is part of the horror. Not knowing who is going to turn, not knowing if you’re all really on the same side, even as you’re facing a supernatural threat…

That’s what I think, at least. I’ve been playing a pre-made Trail of Cthulhu campaign on Talking Time for awhile (It’s here if you want to read) with a bunch of cool cats. It’s been progressing really slowly, but it hasn’t been, you know, stressful because everyone is willing to be patient for people to act. I’ve found it very refreshing in that regard, and we’ve been getting some solid Roleplaying done. I love being silly, but too rarely do I have an opportunity to do roleplaying of the serious variety. As such, I’ve been really enjoying it.

However, the character I’ve pieced together, using a premade character and extrapolating from the information I was given, is really at odds with the party. Everyone else seems to be playing their characters in a very Lawful Good-esque kind of manner. Very goodie-two-shoes and whatnot. There’s nothing wrong with that. I often enjoy playing characters like that. But that just doesn’t fit Jan’s back story. She’s out for herself, and she only believes in herself. She believes she knows what she’s doing, and she wants to be in control. She’s somewhere in the Chaotic Neutral or Lawful Evil sort of range. She’s working with everyone because their goals coincide with hers.

And now, we’re at the point where they no longer do, and Jan is going to make sure she’s protected. That means bringing no monsters back to her world, and that means stopping Roger, who is infected, from coming back. Clearly, nobody else thinks that’s a good idea, since he still has his mind, and they’re good people. But Jan has wanted to be in charge this entire time, and now she has a bargaining chip. She’s going to push this and establish control.

I can’t imagine a way this would work out well for Jan. Everyone’s made it pretty clear they’re not going to bow down, and Jan probably isn’t going to back off on this. But that’s part of what makes this situation awesome. It’s a true character moment. It’s deep roleplaying. It’s amazing. My character might end up getting beaten up or killed because of this, but it’s totally worth it. It’s a realistic, tense moment in an awesome game. It works. I hope everyone else sees it as being as awesome as I do, even as they knock me out and steal my gun. Heh.

Brer says I’m totally wrong, but man, I got really frustrated with Metro 2033 on easy. Luckily, thanks to the power of Gamefly, I just sent it back. Take that game!

There’s no doubt that Metro 2033 is a unique game. It’s got a very interesting setting and a fairly interesting story. The dialog and such isn’t like, the best in the world, but it was enough to keep me hooked and wanting to continue. Various mechanics, such as your quest log being an actual piece of paper you have to look at in the game world, were really immersive and interesting. That’s just not something done in many games, besides, I suppose, something like Far Cry 2. Of course, this isn’t a game like Far Cry 2, it’s a linear shooter, along the lines of Call of Duty in its pacing and construction. Not so much in the combat, but in the story presentation, I mean. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s something really neat here for someone with more patience.

However, I’m not currently that person. I’m stressed and tired, and when I want to game, I just want a fun experience. I don’t want to replay sections constantly, and I don’t want to be lost. Metro 2033 did both of these things to me. The combat, even on the easiest setting, is not forgiving. Enemies take tons of bullets to take down (except, strangely, the monsters and mutants, which go down without issue) and are often in places you wouldn’t think to look. They also don’t just throw a few enemies at you. It’s either a giant arena full of people, or nobody. Bigger combat scenarios would require me to replay them over and over, which is frustrating for me, especially when the game checkpoints just slightly less often than it should, causing me to have to replay hard fights at times. It seemed, to me, that the only thing Easy did was up the drop rate of bullets. I was told that bullets are fairly scarce in this game, but on easy, I was drowning in them. I was not being particularly careful with my shots, but halfway through the game I had stockpiled like 800 AK bullets. This did help and remove a potential worry, but it was not enough to actually make the combat easy so I could just breeze through and enjoy the story.
For a game so linear, too, I shouldn’t be lost as often as I was. The game has a compass, that works as a guiding arrow. It’ll lead you right where you need to walk, over stairs, and so on. Sometimes, though, it’ll just randomly decide that, no, it’s just going to point in the general direction of an objective, and let you figure it out. Giving me help, and then taking it away from me is frustrating, especially when it takes it away in the most confusing environments where I need it the most.

It was these facts, plus the fact that Brer was constantly telling me I missed important things (Sorry love! I’m not mad or something, but that really did hinder my fun), that caused the game to become a chore instead of a destressor. For those more willing to deal with a bit of clunkiness, and who love that European PC game mentality that the game has will probably find tons to love about it. For me, though, it was just the wrong game at the wrong time.

Dragon Age: Origins was on sale for cheap from Gamefly, and I had a coupon I needed to use before I lost it. I had always been meaning to get to it, but I never had. Now, for like $12, it seemed like a good idea. I’ve now finished it, and I must say, I’m glad I played through it. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but it did a ton of things right, and was enjoyable overall.

What really got me about this game was the characters. I expected fairly bland fantasy characters from this game, but I wasn’t given that at all. Every character that joined my party was actually a fairly deep, complete individual, which stopped the generic fantasy setting from feeling as generic and fantasy. I really appreciated that. I’m glad Bioware has their shit together on character writing.
In addition, the conversations your party has with each other as you walk around are really great, and basically made me go, “Why the fuck isn’t that in Mass Effect 2?” It really brought the characters to life, and there were a ton of them: I used the same party for the entire game, and they were STILL having new conversations right up until the very end. It was a great way to show that, hey, the entire world doesn’t revolve JUST around your character, while also building up their character arcs even more.

I was especially impressed with Alistair. I went into the game figuring he would be the most generic dude, in order to sort of… be the guy to compare the rest of the party to, a la Ashley and Kaiden from Mass Effect. Instead, I found a very funny, very charismatic dude who was trying to hide his own insecurity and fear behind wit. He was a really complete character, and instead of immediately tossing him to the side, like I assumed I would, I kept him in the party the whole game, and romanced the shit out of him, marking one of the rare moments when an in-game character in one of these games turned out not to be a lesbian. Crazy! (Okay, I was hitting on Leliana too, so I suppose she was bi.)
His character was totally realistic, too. Part of that was the amazing performance on the part of his voice actor. I savescummed to get the “Recruit everyone” achievement, and I felt horrible about doing it. Alistair was really, genuinely hurt that I’d choose to do such a thing. Similarly, when the decision came to make the final sacrifice, because I didn’t lay down the law and allowed romantic talk, Alistair didn’t let me do the noble sacrifice, instead doing it himself without my permission, which also spurred an emotional reaction in me. The way he went about it was just so realistic. It worked. It was fantastic. Great characters.

The gameplay was… obviously not designed for the 360, but it was way more functional than I had expected. Granted, I also attempted to make it as controller-friendly as possible with my build. Instead of picking a class and skills with many activated abilities I’d have to juggle with limited hotkey space, I instead built a Rogue Bowazon Bard Ranger, which meant that I was firing arrows from afar, able to have a good view of the battlefield without jumping around, and that most of my powers were sustained buffs and animal summons, which meant I only had maybe one or two special attacks that needed to be hotkeyed. This worked really well, and actually fit my style in general pretty well too. However, during the short sequences where I had to control a mage, for example, it seemed pretty clear that the game was designed for a PC, as you just had too many powers to switch between.
I’d also have problems selecting things. Since I couldn’t just click on objects, I had problems destroying barriers, for example, or always talking to party members when I was trying to loot bodies. Granted, it worked most of the time, but it was just clunky enough to show that this wasn’t designed for consoles, and would work better on the PC.

Don’t let that stop you from playing it, though, if you don’t want to do the PC thing. It’s still a great game, and a lot of fun. I’m really glad I finally got around to it. Hopefully I won’t wait so long when Dragon Age 2 comes out. Also, hopefully I can borrow the Awakening Disc from someone and play through it. That would also be fun. But maybe I need a little RPG break first. Heh. That was a lot of RPG!

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra was a super-happy fun fun movie time. It was really hilarious, and had smart writing, and the actors played everything completely straight, which made it an experience to remember. My brother especially loved the movie, so when he heard there was a sequel, The Lost Skeleton Returns Again!, he had to give it a go. Luckily, I was also around to give it a go with him. It was kind of a team go-giving.

It wasn’t as good as the first movie.

Unfortunately, the entire film had a feeling of “done it before” about it. The idea had already been played out in the first film, and to great effect. Obviously, they tried to make it work by putting some returning character plots. Everyone in the first movie who died had a twin brother, of course, and you had cliches in there like Dr. Armstrong being all bitter and drinking, which he wasn’t very good at being. They eventually turned the movie into color, only that sort of low-quality color and old movie might have, and that was a thing, certainly, but I felt it lost some of the charm not being in black and white.

At the same time, the same brilliance in writing was still all over this movie. It was pretty damn funny, and I was laughing fairly regularly. Even the general setup for the film works in the ridiculous was the first one did. This movie is supposed to take place in the jungle, for example, but it’s obvious that the wilds they’re shooting in are the exact same locations as the first movie. Sometimes they remember to set up some ferns and stuff, but sometimes they don’t even do that. It totally works. The plot is also equally convoluted as the first one.

But yes, it’s suffering from sequelitis. The first movie is the sort that you want to own, and watch again and again. The Lost Skeleton Returns Again! was an entertaining view, especially for me, who loved the first, and got some in-jokes, but I certainly can’t see me watching it again. That’s okay, though. If you liked the first one, definitely check it out for a fun evening. Just, unfortunately, don’t expect the sort of awesome that the first film had. It just doesn’t hold up for a second go-around.

Because I know the number of times I will play through The Passing is limited to maybe one or two more, I recently listened through all of the possible dialogs throughout the campaign. They’re fucking hilarious. I suggest you play The Passing like a million times or just watch the videos here.

It just amazes me how brilliant Valve is. Or at least, it did when I started listening to these clips. The Left 4 Dead maps don’t really change much, at least layout-wise, and you’re expected to be playing these maps over and over again. Putting in, seriously, this much dialog is such a great solution and, more importantly, builds a slightly different narrative each time. It creates the feeling of variation, and also makes the characters extremely strong.

Seriously, Valve has done a fantastic job of storytelling in Left 4 Dead. Do they get enough credit? I don’t know. But you’ve got very deep characters and a fairly cohesive narrative, even when all the players can do whatever stupid bullshit they want. The game is designed to create narrative high and low points, and it actually work. When you play it, it’s not just a game. It is a narrative. There’s sometimes narrative in, I dunno, Modern Warfare multiplayer, but it’s always meta-narrative. It’s always the player interacting with another player. In Left 4 Dead, this is often the case, but it is also, simultaneously, a narrative about the characters. Because the game is all about interaction between these four people, the player narrative becomes the in-game narrative. It works. It works damn well.

It’s something more multiplayer needs to do. It makes it way more engaging. Then again, it’s what makes Left 4 Dead so unique. Brer and I have talked about how to take Left 4 Dead into non-zombie genres. It would work. I would be quite enamored with it. Hopefully Valve can do it! Or someone, I suppose. One just assumes Valve because, you know. They’re Valve.

After watching an amazing video LP, I put the strange reboot Dead to Rights: Retribution in my Gamefly list. Then, it showed up at my house and I played it.

I was glad to see what Jack Slate, and his faithful murderdog Shadow, were just as ridiculous as they were in the original game. Jack Slate is ridiculously violent for no good reason, and he and Shadow kill thousands upon thousands of people, while NPCs tell Jack Slate he is a good job, and that he has to “do what he’s good at,” which apparently involves strapping grenades to people’s backs and then throwing them into the air so they explode and shower blood on top of his grimacing, muscly body in order to intimidate other attackers. There are many pre-canned murder animations in the game you can get by punching dudes, and while they do repeat fairly often, they are all so ridiculous and stupid that it doesn’t really get too boring, especially since Jack Slate seems to jump into an alternate murder dimension where time and other enemies don’t exist to pull them off. The camera even gets a filter on it. It’s so stupid, and so badass.

The gameplay itself is kind of weird. It’s trying to be faithful to the original games, while updating them. However, the original games were of an era long past, where games tried to do absolutely everything. It has to be a brawler AND a shooter, and it feels super odd to see those two mechanics in the same game. It doesn’t completely fail, but it seems odd, too, especially when you get to the point where you have a supersoldier army coming after you, and they all want to run up and punch you instead of shoot you with their laser rifles. It just doesn’t make sense to be in so many fistfights at that point. Both the brawling and the shooting are a bit half-assed as well. Brawling uses very simple, repetitive combos, and while they’ve put a cover system in the game, because every third-person shooter is mandated by law to have one now, it doesn’t work well. You can shoot dudes, but it always feels a bit awkward.
They do make the shooting feel unique, though, by making Jack Slate unable to carry much ammo. You maybe have one spare clip of ammo for a gun at any time, max. This creates a fairly unique feel, as you’re constantly having to scrounge for ammo, or attempt to use Shadow and brawling to conserve what you have. It doesn’t completely work, but I appreciated the attempt to create something unique out of this mish-mash.

Honestly, my favorite parts of the game were the Shadow sections. Shadow is apparently the fucking Batman from Arkham Asylum, as he has to stealthy sneak around, dog-style, and take out enemies. He can even “listen to heartbeats,” which basically gives him Batman’s detective mode to see guys through walls. I enjoyed those stealth sections a lot in Arkham Asylum, and here, it’s no different, especially since they’re fairly short so as not to overstay their welcome. Plus, Shadow has his own ridiculous and stupid set of kill animations, though he doesn’t get to teleport to another dimension like Jack Slate does.

The game is so weird, but it does manage to be fun. I wouldn’t recommend anything more than a rental, or very budget purchase, but it’s a fairly good, if ridiculous and stupid crazy time. It even has Avatar awards, which shocked me since I though the game came out before that. But hey, my Avatar is now wearing a Grant City PD shirt. I’m sure nobody will even know what game that’s from, and that’s how I like it. But yeah, I enjoyed myself. It was certainly a good pallet-cleanser in between Dragon Age sessions. Expect a crazy, weird mish-mash, and you’ll have a decent time.

“How did Gamma World go?”
I’m glad you asked, voice in quotes.

I believe it was a success.

Originally, we were supposed to have like 6 or 7 people make an appearance. It was going to be a big crowd, and an intense game because of it. Eventually, people had to bail and it ended up being a more intimate, but no less intense, affair with me rockin’ the Dungeon Mastering, and Kevin, Jonathan, and Spants playing characters.

The cast of characters included Hiro G, a Gravity Controlling Japaneseman from Japanesetown, who was in gay love with his former master of manhole-cover-throwing, who was a plant, and had a love child Bonsai plant named Phyllis. Next was Ox Bellows, a Speedster Thespian who annunciated everything, was wearing a Sharks costume from a production of West Side Story, and could do a badass electric boogaloo. Finally, we come to Containment Zone, or Contain, for short. He may be glowing softly from radioactivity, but that didn’t stop him from being a master of stealth, and also a collector of metal fragments and purifier of water, since he had one of those.

The trio soon began to be huge dicks to all the NPCs, which is pretty par for the course. However, and this is why I think Gamma World fits our group a bit better than straight DnD, this made sense in the more post-apocalyptic setting they were in. They had to fend for themselves, and there was always somewhere else to go, whereas in DnD a lot of the time settings are created that has the players involved in some sort of group or something, and pissing people off at random would create consequences. In here, though, sure. They started by seeing a robit explode, and then pissing everyone off and heading out with their like, four horses, which caused them to rename themselves The Horse Lords. For they are clearly the lords of horses.

Most of the night was roleplaying them pissing off everyone in the town and proceeding towards ADVENTURE! but they did eventually get into a combat. I was impressed with how they attempted to think outside the box, be stealthy, and use the environment to their advantage. Of course, their attempt to flip over a huge boulder on a dude completely backfired, causing them to lose their surprise round, but they made it through the combat okay. They had all drawn Alpha Mutations that drained life, and, calling upon listening to many a Penny Arcade DnD podcast, I decided to try using enemy banter to make combat more enjoyable. I started having all the monsters shouting about how it always seems to be life-stealers, and kill the fucking vampires, and please don’t drink my blood, it’s not tasty anyway!
Those powers really swung the battle in their favor, but still, one could tell it was a high death setting, as I got Ox Bellows down to like 2 HP at one point, and he would have died if Hiro hadn’t used a power that gave him temporary HP earlier in the fight. This caused Contain and Hiro to argue about who got control of Ox’s horse, Contain claiming he should get it, as Hiro had two, and he only had one. Hiro responded, “To be fair, you also have that dead horse,” a horse carcass they had picked up on the way to the place where combat was occurring.

It’s that stuff that’s awesome, and really made the game a lot of fun. This setting is way, way more suited to the way my friends play, much like Paranoia, and it is a ton of fun. Granted, whenever we play, we have the most fun just free-form roleplaying, and it just makes me wish I had an easier time convincing people to play something like, say, Primetime Adventures. Still, it was great, great times. Over too soon, but great times. Hopefully we can find a time to play some more soon.

I find that, when I describe many things I like to Cara and Cole, who have known me for less time and just “get” my sense of taste less, I describe them as being “wonderfully terrible.” This can mean a variety of things, of course. The “wonderfully terrible” of Deadly Premonition, for example, is completely different than, say, the “wonderfully terrible” of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, the anime I am currently following.

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is kind of a Japanese love letter to the more “adult” shows on Cartoon Network. Its art style is reminiscent of things like Samurai Jack and Powerpuff Girls, while the humor is rude, crude, and attempting to push the envelope of taste. Watching it is an experience not unlike watching the original programming on Adult Swim for the first time back in the day. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and it was awesome, but sometimes it just doesn’t know where to stop, and follows through with some terrible ideas.

Some examples, I suppose, would be useful. Episode where Panty and Stocking are fighting a sentient shit blob that’s eating people through toilets? Kind of eh, but fine. Episode where Panty and Stocking are fighting a ghost car while constantly making very blatant jokes about premature ejaculation? Yeah, it fits, it’s fun, and it makes you smile the whole time. Episode where they’re fighting the ghosts of dead sperm, which is between very, very long and intensely drawn “storm the beach” scenes starring sperm, with a lovingly drawn vagina on screen… pretty stupid, not funny, and annoying. It’s this kind of random swings in quality that remind me of Adult Swim, actually. Most of their shows, besides pure gold like Venture Brothers, are like this. Some episodes are hilarious, and push the envelope in novel ways, while others have stepped completely across the line and refuse to realize it, creating something intensely stupid and insulting to view. Panty and Stocking is exactly this way.

However, like most shows on Adult Swim, I keep watching because, when the show is on, it is ON. It’s very funny and entertaining when it’s doing things right. I mean, just take a look at this classy scene. It made me laugh my ass off the first time I saw it. It’s a great parody of many a magical girl transformation sequence and, what’s more, it completely fits the characters. There are tons of moments like this. It works. This is why I’m going to continue to watch the show.

There’s still plenty of season left, of course, but I’m going to see this series out until the end. I mean, it’s no lesbian mah jong, but it’s pretty solid, and completely worth your time. (Hey, there’s another show that’s “wonderfully terrible.” See? I like that stuff.)