The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’m not sure what I think about the title of Cut the Rope. On one hand, it’s simple and catchy. It explains what the main thing you’re going to be doing in the game is. That’s all cool. On the other hand, it suggests a simplicity that is quickly removed from the game as you play. Granted, it never gets overwhelming, but it is a puzzle game, and it does require you to have to wrap your head around some complicated, timed situations later on. It eventually gets a little less casual than it first appears.

Either way, though, the game is fucking fantastic and if you have an iDevice, you should totally pick it up for a buck.

Basically, the objective of the game is to feed a small cute thing candy. This candy is suspended from a rope or series of ropes in a box full of contraptions like bubbles, electric traps, and little grappling hooks that will tie the piece of candy to another rope if it comes near. You interact with these objects to feed the cute thing. The challenge, though, comes from 3 stars also placed in the level. It’s normally trivial to get the candy into the cute thing’s mouth, but much less so to make that happen after making the candy pass through all 3 stars. Solving the puzzle of how to do this is where the bulk of the gameplay lies.

The game starts simple. You slide across ropes with your finger to cut it and make the candy drop into the mouth. Simple. Then maybe you’re manipulating the physics by cutting ropes so the candy swings at the right momentum. Then you’re having to use multitouch to cut two ropes in different places at once. By the time you get to the last levels of the game, you’re using a rope on a slider to move candy in a bubble through a spike maze while a spider tries to walk up the rope and eat the candy. Also, electricity is shooting at the candy. It gets really crazy, but the game does a fantastic job of slowly adding more and more complexity as you go along. It makes sure to do everything it can with a mechanic before adding another, and then uses the combination of those two mechanics in every way it can think of as well. It’s really excellent.

I’m glad I listened to twitter rumblings and picked this game up. It’s one of the best iPhone games I’ve played, and one of the best game experiences I’ve had recently. The menu says, too, that they plan on having free content updates, so I am looking forward to playing another set of levels sometime in the future. Anyway, get it. Seriously. Seriously.

Mercenaries is fun.

I had always heard so much about Mercenaries, but of course, not having given a shit about any Resident Evil, I never played it. In 5, I wanted to try it.

But fuck, it’s hard.

To unlock more levels and characters, you have to get A ranks, a feat I simply couldn’t do. My brother and I tried the first area multiple times, and didn’t even get close. Twitter came in and attempted to give me some advice, but to no avail. I couldn’t do it.

Then I realized there were Resident Evil fans out there, waiting to help me.

It only stood to be the case that anyone playing pickup games of Mercenaries online at this point was really good. I hopped on Xbox Live and joined a random game. My focus was purely on survival. I knew I was dead weight, but I figured as long as I stayed alive, everyone else would carry me along.
I was right.
Soon I had unlocked several characters and maps! Awesome! Of course, then I got to the point where I couldn’t survive without actually being passable, and I stopped progressing. Still, I was having fun. The combat of RE5 is intense, in it’s own broken way, and all the balls to the wall co-op combat was addicting. I kept hopping into games and playing rounds until they booted me out for sucking so much.

It was fun!

I still wish it would have been easier. I could really enjoy the mode with friends if the difficulty was dialed down just a little bit, to the point where I could unlock all the toys and everyone could play with them. Man, though, that really is neat. Something like that with some custom classes built into the mix… I’d pay 10 bucks to play that online, easily. It really is a huge little extra mode.

Of course, it’s only significant to me because this one has co-op, but, you know. That’s why I enjoy Resident Evil 5.

I promised you Resident Evil 5, and you’ll get it!

I really enjoyed this game.
Often I’ve tried Resident Evils, to attempt to figure out what the game was about. It’s such a big deal, right? But I always hated them. Even RE4’s new direction was one I just didn’t get. I was no good. It was no good. Why was this a big deal?

Then Resident Evil 5 came along. Since Jonathan enjoyed 4, and it had co-op, I wanted to try it. We tried it.
It clicked. It was fun. I bought it from Gamefly so Jonathan and I could finish it at our own pace.

Then we stopped playing it. Jonathan did moving and whatnot. It was forgotten.

Then I watched some Let’s Plays of Mercenaries and got all gung-ho about RE5 again. I forced Jonathan and I to get back to it.

And then, over a year after we started the game, Jonathan and I finished it on Saturday.

I’m glad we did. The game was super-fun. Co-op fixes a lot of what made RE4 unpalatable to me. Mainly, the fact that there’s another person around means that your mistakes aren’t nearly as horrible, since the other player can save your ass. This seems simple, but really, it turns RE5 into a fun, more casual experience than RE4. The other main issue that got me to enjoy the game more was that I stopped trying to use the handguns. I had watched Jonathan play through RE4 with all kinds of Handgunning, and assumed that was how you did it. This was not the case at all. Once I switched to a shotgun/machine gun combo, things went much better for me. I was an asset! It was wonderful that way. I played the tank, running in front and controlling crowds with the shotgun while Jonathan sniped from the back with Rifle and Pistol. It was a pretty solid division of labor!

I had originally worried about the “Zombies with guns” parts. I thought they’d be really annoying and stupid. In reality, I didn’t find them that way. Sure, when you tried to use the cover mechanics and saw how awful they were, it was pretty bad. But you rarely needed to use them, and since you were so powerful, especially with two co-ordinated people, the zombies needed something to get at you from a distance. It was a solid challenge. I didn’t feel it unfair.

Know what was unfair? The whole endgame fights with Wesker. Holy shit, that was annoying. Very little indication of what to do for the first part, with the rocket launcher, and such an annoying bullshit sequence of required events the second time, around the lava. Especially the part where Chris was supposed to save Sheva. I could never attack things from a distance well, and having to snipe Wesker was the most annoying thing. I eventually had to put the cheap Rifle I had with like 6 rounds left in it in my inventory just for that part of the sequence. Ridiculous to have to do that. So stupid.

The plot, too, was really ridiculous. It’s so tied into the thrown-together bullshit “canon” of the Resident Evil series that it’s completely incomprehensible, really. I had read a lot of RE let’s plays, so I kind of had an idea what was going on, but it was all… well, I guess I don’t get what kind of person would care about the plot. Still, it was nice enough to let you skip things, even the non-interactive parts of the interactive cutscenes, so that’s pretty nice of it.

Those problems aside, my feelings on the game are still extremely positive. It does a great job of having you manage limited ammo and inventory without giving you TOO little, and it has plenty of great opportunities for great co-op interaction. It’s an excellent game to play with a friend, completely, and I really had fun with it. I don’t know if it was the sort of game a fan wanted to play, but it was exactly what I wanted to play. I’d buy another game based around co-op like that, easily.

I am always in search of awesome weekend games, the sort where you just play through them all quick-style. Then they’re done, and you feel satisfied, but finished. Singularity is one of those games. It’s a pretty neat little shooter that could have done a lot better for itself had it been marketed well. As is, though, you probably missed it. Luckily, I’m here to tell you about it.

The premise of Singularity is that the U.S.S.R., during the cold war, found something called E99. This element enabled MAGICAL POWERS of time travel. You stumble across the island where the research on this element first began, and then accidentally change the past, changing the future to one of EVIL. The rest of the game is a quest to fix that, while shooting many dudes in the head.

Singularity wants to be Bioshock so damn badly. Even the life and magic meters look exactly the same. It manages to pull off the facsimile for awhile, especially in the beginning, as you stumble upon audio diaries and propaganda films and such, kind of learning about the world in the same naturalistic way that Bioshock does. However, eventually more people get involved, and it kind of breaks down. Still, it’s certainly the best attempt I’ve played at attempting to do a similar thing, so that should be applauded.

The main mechanics of the game wrap around something called the TMD, or Time Manipulation Device. This lets you magic things up. You can rewind or fast-forward time on specific objects, make time-slowing bubbles, and do Half-Life 2 gravity gun shit. These mechanics do provide some variety, but since you can only interact with certain things in certain ways, it does seem a little gimmicky. “Oh look, here’s another old, rusted crate! Guess I better rewind it, durr.” Still, there’s enough there that it works.

Having that variety helps, too, since most of the guns in the game kind of suck. There’s little reason not to use the assault rifle 90% of the time. If there hadn’t been achievements for using certain weapons, I probably would have used it that much. They try some neat guns, like a rolling mine launcher and a gun that impales people with explosives, but they’re finicky and way less effective than just using the assault rifle. The coolest weapon is probably the Seeker, which is a sniper rifle that lets you guide the bullets after you fire them. However, it’s a “rare occasion” weapon which they don’t let you keep. You get it several times in the game, but have to throw it away soon after. A shame.

The developers tried to do something with the story, too. It’s commendable, but it doesn’t completely work. There are some time travel logic issues if you think about the plot too much. The one thing I do have to applaud the game for is its endings. None of them are good. There are benefits to each, of course, but there’s no “perfect” ending. They all kind of suck. I think that’s neat, especially since the main message of the game seems to be “doing the right thing doesn’t always work out.” That’s just not a message you get in video games.

I really enjoyed Singularity. It’s an experience I can recommend. If you see it in a bargain bin, or can Gamefly it like I did, go for it. It’ll be an enjoyable weekend.

Cole kept pointing out Trailers for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. This is how I knew I would one day be called upon to view it. This day came.

It was pretty well what I expected.

Basically, what you have here is a children’s movie using very strong “children’s entertainment” themes, like the Power of Friendship. On top of that, it’s an adaptation of a series of novels. It’s a one-two punch of potential badness vectors. It basically succumbs to both. There are lines and moments in the film that are so, so “children’s movie cliche” that I just laughed, and Cole turned to me to ask what was so funny. I just couldn’t believe they’d be so blatant! Meanwhile, the movie introduces a ton of characters and doesn’t give any of them enough time to be anybody, a clear sign of a book adaptation. Eventually there’s this whole band of Owls with Mr. Main Character, and they’re entertaining, but you never really get the sense they get to know each other enough to be this unbreakable party the movie makes them to be.

I also just have to point out the visuals. They are so creepy! The owls are rendered realistic enough to look kind of uncanny valley. Especially when they talk, and it’s clear how hard it is to animate speech when beaks are involved. It’s just so… odd. I don’t understand why they didn’t try to stylize the art a bit. I mean, they’re owls wielding fucking swords and stuff, you’d think they’d go for a little art direction to make it more bad ass. I mean, not cartoony, perse, but just something.

I do have to comment on the moments of “sexual tension” in the film. Mr. Main Character meets up, early on, with a small-species owl girl. There’s a lot of “I’ll protect you, we’ll do this together, stay with me” sort of dialog which tends to indicate “love interest” in these sorts of movies. Then, later, both her and wacky comic relief owl are doing what I can only describe as snuggling with Mr. Main Character. Nobody thinks this is weird. Finally, they get to Ga’Hoole, and Mr. Main Character meets another girl owl of his species who says her name but never does anything else. He is smitten, and the little owl seems annoyed.
And that’s it. That’s your romance subplot.
I dunno, found myself wondering what was up with that.

Still, I can’t say the movie was completely awful. It was competent. I could see me getting much more behind it at a much younger age. There were also several character who were genuinely funny The running gag with the two slavers had me chuckling, for example. I also didn’t leave feeling like I had wasted my time. I mean, I can’t really recommend going and seeing it unless you have kids or something, but I felt like I got what I came for. It was competent. That’s pretty well the exact word for it. Competent. Also, containing owls. And music by Owl City. Which, when I heard it, made me groan. Cause they went there. Yes, they went there.

Sometimes, there is a game where, upon hearing the premise, you much purchase it.

UFO on Tape is one such game.

Seriously, just watch this teaser trailer and tell me this game isn’t amazing. I dare you.

The concept is so genius, I can’t believe it hadn’t been thought of before. We use our phones and such as cameras all the time, so a game where you are treating your iDevice as a camera just works, perfectly, without you thinking about it. You instantly understand what you’re doing when you pick up the game and play, and it’s immersive, as much as that word is overused. You’re actually doing the action you would be doing. The woman giving you advice is perfectly voiced: it seems just like the kind of voice you’d find on one of those tapes. Light poles, buildings, and the edges of the window you’re shooting through all get in the way. It looks fairly real, to the point where, when I show this game to people, at first they don’t understand I’m playing a game. They think I’m just watching a video.

All that is cool, but the bonus is that the game is actually very fun. It’s a simple, high score arcade sort of experience, but it’s very hectic. When the UFO drifts out of the frame and your companion berates you and tells you to refocus, it does create “oh shit” moments as you frantically try to move the viewfinder about and find it again. It also makes great use of Apple’s new Game Center: it connects with your Game Center account to track your high scores and compare them to your friends. Frankly, an arcade high score experience isn’t complete without this sort of thing. If I had more people into these kind of weird games, I could totally get into competing for the most footage. It’s pretty damn fun.

Seriously, the moment I heard people talking about this on Twitter, I bought it for a buck. In one play, I felt completely justified. I’ve been talking this game up and showing it off ever since. If you have an iPhone or whatnot, really do consider picking it up. This is exactly the kind of indie game worth supporting: incredibly creative, with one idea polished to complete perfection. I love it.

I’ve been playing Lost Planet 2 with Kale. We’re going to finish it, so more on that when that occurs. However, he wanted to play it on PS3, so I rented it for that. The result was… less than optimal.

It just kind of amazes me how much better the Xbox is in a lot of ways.

Just trying to set this game up, I have had to update firmware at least twice, and install for a long time once. It’s quite a lot of time just to play this game. It was pretty silly. I know it’s been beaten to death, but, you know.

Also, this has been my first time really using PSN to play online, and man, it’s kind of a trainwreck. It took a long time for us both to figure out how to do simple things like invite each other to games and accept invites. It’s in really weird places in Lost Planet 2’s menus. Of course, since it’s not standardized, if I were to try to play something else online, it would be in different places there, too. Basically, the pointless half an hour, at least, that it took us to figure out how to get a game set up more than justified the price of Xbox Live to me. Making a standardized system is the way to go. Thank you, Microsoft.

Finally, I was just struck by how awful the Dualshock 3 is for shooters. I mean, the Dualshock 2 is one of the best controllers ever made, don’t get me wrong. But damn, the Dualshock 3 just fails at today’s games. Most of today’s games, sadly enough, are shooters, and it is just not laid out for those in the least. The 360 controller is. It’s fantastic. The triggers and bumpers work perfectly for most games. However, the R2 and L2 buttons, as default, such on the Dualshock 3, so they’re not used for shooting. However, I put those trigger adapters on them, so they’d be better for shooting. The game, however, doesn’t support putting “shoot” onto R2, though, because the controller as per normal is so horrible at using R2 and L2 for anything.

After a few hours of fighting with the controls and the PS3, I did, of course, eventually get over all this stuff. However, it was kind of ridiculous, and just shows me that I do the right thing by making the 360 my console of choice. I appreciate having access to PS3 exclusives and whatnot, of course. I’m glad I have the system, and I’m sure for someone without a 360, PSN is not that big a deal and is certainly useful. But I’m not just picking the 360 for achievements. There’s a lot of reasons why it’s a better console, at least for me.

Capcom was having a sale in the iPhone App Store this weekend, and a lot of their games were a dollar. I’ve been sick all weekend, as well as depressed, so I wanted to waste some money in a stupid attempt to cheer myself up. Since it seems better to spend a dollar than, say, significantly more than a dollar, I took advantage of this sale.

For some reason, I’ve been on an RE5 kick recently. I’ve really, really been wanting to play it. Has it been from watching these Mercenaries videos? I don’t know. But man, I was suddenly in love with the game. I look back on playing through most of it in co-op with Jonathan, and I’m like, shit, that was fun. Co-op is what those games needed to make me want to play them.

Basically, as my madness about things I am obsessed with is wont to do, I nearly spent more than I spent on my 360 copy of RE5 to buy a PC copy of RE5 to play with Brer. But then I compromised and bought RE4 Mobile for a dollar instead.

In a lot of ways, RE4 Mobile is really impressive. The graphics look top-notch for the iPhone, and are very similar to the originals. I mean, Leon’s hair looks like one solid helmet mass, but it’s pretty good. The controls, too, are fairly solid. You’re never going to be perfect with virtual buttons and d-pad, but you have pretty solid control over Leon, and it gives you many sensitivity options to choose from so you can make it feel just right. Or at least something similar to right. It does seem like it might control a lot better blown up on an iPad, but maybe that’s just me wanting an iPad. It works fine as is.
The only real problem with the controls is that there’s no way to reload. I understand not having that while actually playing the game: screen real estate for virtual buttons is limited, and you want to have as few as possible. However, I can’t even find a way to reload my guns in the menus. This is really baffling to me, and really makes it hard to fight effectively at times, as you can only reload when you’re all out of bullets in your clip. Still, it’s bothersome, but not a game breaker.

Basically, the game is broken up into a series of combat arenas based on key bits of the actual game. They’re tied together with still-frame cutscenes to explain the plot. I completely skipped this. In between these combat missions, you can go spend your money to do upgrades at the trader, who is just a menu, but they still kept some of his sound clips in, which was nice of them. You also unlock “Mercenary” missions as you go, which I’m sure is only vaguely like Mercenaries in the actual game, but is a nice little remix of the combat scenarios. They also let you earn money that you can take back into the “story” scenarios to upgrade your guns, buy ammo, and so on, which is nice of them.

However, the game is kind of crazy hard. I got to the first area with Las Plagas, the tentacle bitches you have to shoot in the tentacle to do anything to, and I just couldn’t beat it. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, I just couldn’t stop these guys fast enough. The lowest difficulty setting has a “auto-aim” you can turn on, but turning it on did nothing that I could see. The red dot jumps more quickly to valid targets with auto-aim on, but it’s useless against enemies like the Las Plagas, where you have to hit specific points. It’s easy enough to move to center mass and shoot with these controls anyway, and the game gives you plenty of ammo to do so, but when faced with these enemies I couldn’t do that to, much less multiple ones, I could do nothing. Maybe it’s an issue of my lack of skill, or maybe I need to just grind out more money in Mercenaries, buy a bunch of shotgun rounds, and just blast through there. Still, difficulty seems to be an issue.

Is it worth a buck? Oh, completely. It’s fun enough, and if you enjoy the post-4 Resident Evils, the combat is very similar to what you enjoy. There’s plenty of levels and upgrades to work on, too. It’s a pretty smart thing. However, I would have extreme trouble paying the 5 dollars it supposedly is off sale. If the sale has ended by the time you read this, maybe you’d be better off putting it on your appshopper list and waiting for another one. Still, I think it’s kind of neat. I’ll probably keep fiddling with it for awhile.

When Reach was coming out, I was all like, “No. I hate Halo. I dislike the feel of all of Halo’s weapons, and I hate how everyone takes a million shots to kill. I hate how it moves so slowly. I had a lot of fun with Halo 3, but that was dicking around with awesome people. No, I don’t have time for Reach, and I don’t want it. I only bought Halo 3 to play co-op anyway.”

Then everyone started talking about it, and eventually Cole was like “Hey, I got my students loans and I bought Reach, let’s play!” So I gave in to the inevitable. I would be timely, I would play Reach.
I haven’t beat it yet. I’m on Mission 8 of what, 10 missions, I believe? 11 missions? I’m a good chunk there. Enough to write some impressions, anyway.

First off, it’s clear that Bungie is really good at what they do. The game shows a really strong level of polish that I sometimes forget Halo has after playing so many other standard shooters. The experience is refined to perfection.
It’s just not really any different.
Seriously, the gameplay is exactly the same as it has been in previous Halo titles. They try to mix it up by adding the armor abilities, which are cool, though sometimes kind of silly. For example, Sprint is so basic, as you play, that it bothers you when you pick up some other cool thing and lose it. There’s no reason for it not to be just a normal ability you have. Playing with the Jetpack, Hologram, and Drop Shield, though, is a ton of fun, especially in a co-op scenario, where you can run ahead and use Armor Lock or the Drop Shield to draw fire, and have a friend rush up from behind. They did those abilities well. Still, the way you kill the enemies, fundamentally, hasn’t changed. The Plasma Pistol works just like a Plasma Pistol, and you use it to pull down shields the same way. The Assault Rifle is still completely awful and I hate it (although they did power it up a bit from Halo 3, so that is appreciated) and the grenades grenade the exact same way. You have a few new toys, but you’re fighting the same enemies who fall to the same tactics. In the end, it’s just Halo.

The campaign does try to mix it up with a weird space shooting section. This section controls really well, but it is, in the end, kind of shallow. Your missiles are super-homing, and it brings up a little “lead” marker on your screen, so any difficulty in shooting targets with your cannons is nonexistent as well. It’s a fun distraction, but just that. If you could bring those ships into Forge and do something cool with them, well, then we’d talk. As it was, it was a nice break from the normal bang bang of the game, but nothing more. I couldn’t handle a whole game of that, for example.

I do appreciate other little touches. For example, I love the fact that you make your main character, and see them in cutscenes. I couldn’t give a shit about the Halo story, but the fact that I can make a custom female Spartan and see her doing things story-wise is actually something I really like. I mean, my character is going to be generic gun-wielding dude no matter what they do. Might as well make them customizable, so I have a chance of being a little more attached. It also makes campaign co-op more inviting, because you’re rolling with your friends, who all have their unique colors and outfits on. It’s nice.

That’s… about all I have to say about Reach. I don’t regret not buying it. I may regret it once Coffee and the other Talking Timers come up with some ridiculous Forge maps I can’t play, but I probably wouldn’t have time to play them anyway. I do say I am enjoying the campaign, and want to finish it. But that’s purely because co-op makes everything better. I can’t imagine playing Halo: Reach without at least one other person, just like I couldn’t imagine playing Halo 3 that way. I tried playing ODST that way, and hated it completely, just confirming my suspicions.

I dunno, it’s Halo! What more is there to say, really?

I had a soundtrack to the past few days! And it’s this song.

Seriously, I tend to go through through phases when I find an album that I just listen to constantly. It’s this kind of obsession that caused me to listen to so much Presidents of the United States of America that I wrote a whole, whole book of poetry about it. Ok Go’s second album, Oh No, has recently fallen into that rotation for me. I’ve been listening to it constantly, letting it flow through me.

It’s damn good.

Like, seriously! There’s a lot of songs on their first album I don’t particularly care for. Get Over It is good. Otherwise, I dunno. But man, I really like most of Oh No. The first four songs are solid gold, and there is plenty other good songs on the album.

I’ve focused on Invincible and A Good Idea At The Time in the past, but now at the moment the main focus of my love is It’s A Disaster. It’s upbeat, exciting, but it also has pretty solid lyrics. The chorus just rings true. Bad shit is happening, but in the end, that bad shit is all we have, so we might as well enjoy it. We might as well sing a happy song about it and just have fun, you know? As things fall to shit around me, I could stand to remember that.

Anyway: Ok Go is pretty neat. I don’t really like the single with the Rube Goldberg machine, but I should still check it out at some point. Yep.