The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

On Saturday, I played like 6 hours of Dokapon Kingdom.

Dokapon has always been a game I was excited to really get into. However, it’s not a game for everyone. It takes awhile to really get running, and it’s really a commitment. Many of the friends I’ve attempted to play it with really didn’t enjoy the slow beginning game, and we gave up on it after an hour.

However, on Saturday, Cole and Cara came over, and wanted to play a game. I didn’t really have anything new (I was hoping that Modnation Racers would show up before then, but it didn’t) and I knew that Cara had enjoyed Dokapon in the past, so I suggested we play it.

Cole loved it, and we ended up playing all day.

As we did that, I got a glimpse of how this game really works. It is a game all about the trash-talking. The majority of the fun came from me doing things like sniping people, giving them stupid names, and then constantly reminding them that they have a stupid name. That is what elevated the game from the basic thing on the screen to a competition that was serious and fun.

On top of that, the combat in the game really switched up as it progressed. As you level up, you can really specialize, and do much more in combat than just pick “Attack” or “Strike.” Cole, for example, was doing crazy things by restricting enemy’s actions, while I was just brute-forcing it as a Warrior and Cara was attempting to steal from every monster. I was surprised how it actually managed to keep itself fairly fresh, and also give you more and more control over what you were doing as the game went on.

We stopped for the night after Cara had a rampage of evil. She wasn’t doing very good, so she got a bat over her head, which the game called a “Spirit of Revenge.” I looked up what this was, and apparently this enabled Cara to sell her soul and become a “Darkling” for two game weeks and utterly destroy everything. So I told her this. And she did.

And she destroyed everything.

Seriously, the Darkling is obscenely powerful. It was pretty hard to get going, and she only got the spirit of revenge when she was really behind, so it didn’t feel that broken to me. She was certainly having fun with it. It was pretty neat.

After that rampage, though, we decided we’d have enough. We’ve saved the game, though. Who knows, we may come back to it. I kind of hope we do. There’s still two continents left to explore, and so many more classes to max out with so many abilities!

Basically, I’m glad Dokapon ended up being what I thought it was when I bought it. Good, good times.

Have you heard about Catherine?

Basically, the people behind P3, including such awesome individuals as Shoji Meguro, are making a game for 306 and PS3. It’s supposed to be an action game, and it’s supposed to be “adult” and “erotic.”

And they’ve put out a trailer.

Frankly, I think the game looks fantastic. Little is known, besides that it is an “Action” game, but I have a lot of faith in this team.

While weird and backwards in a lot of ways, Persona 3, 4, and other SMT games have always been very mature in many ways. They tackle interesting issues, and have actually interesting plots. They’re not perfect, of course (Example: Their treatment of Kanji in Persona 4) but they understand they’re writing for a mostly adult audience and they make that work. The problem has always been, in my eyes, that using high schoolers again and again, they’re kept from really tackling more deep subjects. From the moment I played Persona 3, I wanted to play a game like that as an adult, with adult issues and juggling adult schedules. I wanted that very much.

Now, I don’t think this is going to be exactly that. It’s not a Persona game. But it already has the elements. A dream nightmare world where most of the gameplay will probably take place. A real world with obvious elements of at least dating this Catherine character, if nothing else. This could be what I wanted. On top of that, it’s dealing with a very deep subject, one I’ve worked with myself. Sexuality has plenty of interesting ways it could be used in a game like this, and I hope that this game isn’t shy about exploring them.

Again, there are potential worries. Will they be mature enough to make an actual game? Will they treat the subject matter in the right way? Only time will tell. I have optimism, though. Gamers have grown up. Games should grow up in this way, too.

I’m sure I’ll buy it day 1.

Monday Night Combat isn’t just for Monday. It’s for everyday.

Seriously, it’s been a long time since I have played a purely multiplayer experience so polished and perfected. Monday Night Combat is a complete blast, and if you enjoy shooters on the lines and play them on the 360, you have to get this game.

The design of the game is different, but completely awesome. Basically, it’s Defense of the Ancients meets TF2. You spawn minions at both sides, and they move towards your opponents base. You pick one of several classes, such as Support, Sniper, or Gunner, and help push the bots forward to destroy your enemy’s “Moneyball.” You gain money while you kill things, which you use to upgrade your dude, build turmulents, activate traps, and summon additional bots.

What this creates is a setting where, like in DotA to some extent, you can be a huge help without directly affecting the other players. Granted, killing the other team gives you huge advantages, of course, since they are the best defenders. But you can be useful just by keeping turmulents up and going and taking out harder-to-kill bots. It’s objective-based multiplayer at it’s best. In addition, because there are all the bots, when you get into a match where the other team is more skilled than you, it keeps you from dying constantly, because there are other things to shoot at. Avoiding the “Spawn, oh I’m dead” cycle that can happen so often is really appealing.

Apparently the demo lets you play the game online for half an hour. Do that. You’ll know whether or not this is a game for you in that time. But it bet it will be. Because it is simply a blast. I played it pretty well nonstop the few days after it came out, with people and without, and it was fun as hell either way. I want this game on PC, too, so I can buy it again. I love it. The end.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is not near as fun as the BDSM romp it could have been. Instead, it’s a crazy shooter based on an N64 game that never came to America! Isn’t that fantastic?

Star Successor is a Treasure game, so I knew what I was getting into: balls to the walls shooter action that was way, way too difficult for me. This is why I gamefly’d it, of course. I can’t enjoy these sorts of games for a long period of time, but I figured it would be a good afternoon of fun. So I set it to easy, and picked the girl who automagically locks on to people, and went for it.

First off, I have to applaud this game for giving me the option of using my Classic Controller Pro. It’s pretty clearly the sub-optimal control vector, as being able to flip my cursor around the screen faster would have been to my advantage in most situations. However, I hate pointing the wiimote at the screen SO, SO MUCH that I really appreciated being able to control it like the old game.
I also appreciated the Easy mode and the auto-lock girl. It made the game much more accessible. With those settings, with practice, I probably could have beaten the thing. Of course, I don’t want to practice, but it’s the thought that counts. The auto lock was nice, as once you started firing on something, you no longer had to aim until you destroyed it. Granted, this could get you into trouble at times, where you want to kill a few little dudes in the middle of killing a big dude, but overall made the game easier. I’m sure hardcore players, who this game is made for, will never, ever use the girl. But I appreciated it.

Seriously, though, this game is insane. It looks very pretty, though very anime, and the huge bosses in this game are just mind-blowing. Early on, you face this screen-filling giant turtle for no real reason, and it really is a fantastic fight. I later fought some magician dude who had like 6 forms, each more crazy than the last. (Okay, the last was, like, a dolphin. So that wasn’t too crazy. The others were, though!) It seems like it’s delivering on exactly what a Treasure fan would want, and I appreciate it for that.

However, this game is fantastically, amazingly niche. People just don’t do shmups anymore, except the super-hardcore. Thinking back to how Nintendo was marketing this as “No, really, we care about the hardcore!” it’s really kind of sad. It doesn’t do what Nintendo was wanting. However, it’s not hiding what it is. If you think you’d like Star Successor, you probably will. It’s well done. It’s just a kind of arcade, completely hardcore game that I just can’t play for long periods of time anymore.

While browsing internet, I came across a link to this website in the discussion of some comics. I rather liked the guy and his little impressionistic reviews. I spent an entire evening reading up on them. While I was reading through them, I stumbled upon this review of a comic called Miss Don’t Touch Me. I clicked on the link to Amazon, assuming it would be some expensive hardcover thing. But it wasn’t. I snapped it up for 10 dollars and gave it a read.

Basically, the story does some very interesting things, as alluded to in the review, if you read it. It starts out as a story about Blanche ending up going undercover, almost by accident, to attempt to solve the mystery of her sister’s murder. However, as the story progresses, it’s obvious that Blanche is not up to the job. She’s become high-profile in a bad way, and is too impulsive and emotional to deal with this problem. However, Miss Jo, a prostitute of questionable gender (Jo certainly seem much happier in the female role, as she never leaves it, but she could just be a crossdresser. It’s never completely explained, though everyone treats her like a woman, for the most part.) soon figures out what Blanche is up to and has the disconnect from the subject matter and the connections to make the investigation come together. It’s this switch of protagonists that’s so shocking. The story is, almost completely, from Blanche’s perspective, but suddenly, Jo steals the show, and becomes the focus of what’s going on while we wonder what might have happened to Blanche. It is in some ways a break of the general trust of the reader/author relationship, but at the same time, it makes perfect sense. Following Blanche would no longer have given us anything useful. Someone else had to step up before she made a horrible mistake, and so someone does.

The characters in the story are fairly well fleshed-out. Most of Blanche’s nature is completely believable, being so uncomfortable in her new role as well as completely excellent at it. She’s funneling a hatred towards men and her sister’s murder into her dominatrixing, and it makes perfect sense and works out well. Similarly, Annette’s submissive, loving attitude and Jo’s sisterly devotion and willingness to use her importance to get things done is completely believable as well. They all feel like real people, and that is certainly nice.

At the same time, I can’t call the book a must read. It’s… missing something. I don’t know what it is. It leaves you with a feeling of melancholy, like something just didn’t click quite right. It could be the situation of the main characters at the end of the story, but I don’t really think that’s the case. There’s always a little something off in the tale, and I could never pin down exactly what it is. Still, it’s a good enough time, and solid storytelling. I don’t regret my purchase one bit. But I’d say, borrow it from me if you can, instead of buying a copy of your own? It may not be the sort of story worth owning, but it’s worth reading.

Starcraft II is definitely a video game where you game up all the videos, and then some things explode, and you mine a mineral.

I don’t really know what there is to say about it.

They’ve done a great job retooling the single player campaign to make it interesting, and every level has enough different in it to make it super exciting and fun. The multiplayer is just as fun as it ever was, even though they totally fucked everyone over with their horrible Custom Maps system.

Basically, it’s Starcraft II.

I mean, that’s cool. I’m enjoying playing it with people. But frankly, the single player can’t hold my interest, and I’m not all that good in Multiplayer. I keep teaming with Essner against online people, and he does everything and I, maybe, take out one thing with a Thor or something. Thing as in turmulent, not as in base.

I just can’t get into RTSes anymore. I used to play them all the damn time, and I had so much fun. In the end, though, I think it was almost purely the social aspect. RTSes were one of the few games, back in the day, that I could play with a group. I played Warcraft II and the original Starcraft with Essner all the damn time on dial-up back in the day. I stopped playing them, though. Getting better at them isn’t interesting to me, and it only takes so long to try out the units, do some cool things, and be done with it. I just can’t get excited about build orders.

Starcraft II is excellent. I’m not sad I bought it. I will continue to enjoy playing the occasional multiplayer match, and maybe I will polish off the single player at some point. However, it’s just not really my thing anymore. I’m not an RTS player. I kind of knew that going in, though. I knew this would happen. I just didn’t want to admit it out of nostalgia.

Scottingham Pilgrim has not the only movie I saw recently. If I had to pick another film I saw recently, it would probably be The Other Guys, because I saw that one in the theater a week or so ago.

It, too, was really damn good.

In a completely different way from Scott Pilgrim, though. I would describe Scott Pilgrim as “Awesome” while The Other Guys was “Hilarious.” Granted, there were moments of awesome and hilarious in both. That’s just the general feeling of the two.

I knew practically nothing going into this film, but apparently it’s one of the first films that really brought back together all the people who made Anchorman great, and it shows. The writing in this movie is excellent. There is a really smart comedic mind at work here, using things like refbacks and running gags in a completely effective and not annoying way. For example, the joke in the title is funny on it’s own (well, in context anyway, maybe not as a title) and only gets referenced one more time, to great effect. The movie doesn’t need to use the same jokes over and over again, because they’ve got plenty of them. They’re only bringing them out when they’re most effective.

It’s not all perfect, of course. The plot of this film is nearly non-existent. Anchorman had a plot, although a stupid one. In this movie, they’re trying to stop some sort of scheme, but they don’t know what, and you the audience don’t know what, and it’s incredibly vague. Doesn’t stop it from being entertaining, of course, but at the end of the film you may be scratching your head, wondering what exactly happened, now that you think about it. On top of that, the credits sequence is completely weirdly serious in giving you stats about actual white collar crimes, which is just strange and completely out of place. Did the makers of this movie really think they were being political in some way? I have no idea.

If you’re going to see one film in the theater, see Scott Pilgrim. It’s full of visual pizazz and pop that just looks great on the big screen. However, you really should see The Other Guys. It contains humor all the way through that won’t imbalance your humors. I was laughing pretty well constantly through the entire movie. It had been awhile. It felt great. It was a great film.

There was some point where Matthew Essner said that he was glad Scott Pilgrim was almost out, because it had seemed like the entire summer was building to it, and it was about damn time.

Well, now I’ve seen it. It’s been a summer of anticipation, and the film had a lot to live up to.

I think it completely lived up to it.

The movie changes many things about the plot of the comics, but almost all for the better. It streamlines the events to happen in a length of time that make sense with the whole movie covering the entire plot, as well as changing many of the battles in ways that just make more sense and tie all the events together. For example, many more of the fights are tied into the Battle of the Bands that Sex Bomb-omb is a part of.

The result of this is what people I’ve seen initially talking about the film call “removing the emotional core.” I kind of agree and kind of don’t. It’s true most of the relationships in the film are much, much shallower, and people only exist for their completely awesome jokes. For example, fan-favorite Kim Pine really doesn’t have a very big role in the movie besides throwing out some awesome lines. Scott and Ramona don’t so much have a romance as a meeting one night followed by some fights with some exes. The emotional content was one of the key parts of what made the comics something I stood up and took notice of, so it is kind of sad.
At the same time, Edgar Wright made exactly the right choice here. There was no way he could give these people enough backstory to make them deep characters in one film, and still put in all the key points of the story that people would come to see on the big screen, namely the fights. He decided to play up the comedy and action of the series, bring that completely to the front, and let it run wild, and it completely works. We root for Scott on a different level, one where he’s funny, and sometimes badass, and less because he’s the lovable loser of the comics.
Still, I don’t think it’s completely devoid of the emotion people claim it’s missing. Movie Scott is different from Comic Scott. The big lesson he learns at the end is to respect himself, and be motivated by himself. He’s fighting, in the end, because he wants Ramona, not because of “destiny” or “true love.” It’s selfish, sort of, but also completely realistic. It’s also not romanticized. When he leaves with Ramona at the end, it’s not for them to live happily every after, it’s because Scott wants to be with Ramona, so he’s going to try again. There’s no promise it’s going to work out. I’d actually probably bet it wouldn’t. But he wants to try again, and he does, because if he doesn’t he won’t forgive himself. That’s a realistic motivation. That’s a real character, to some extent.

Anyway, the movie is fantastic, end of story. You should see it. I’m probably going to see it again today, after I finish writing this bloeg. It is great, great stuff, and I can’t wait to buy it on Blu-Ray and play the vidjeo game and all that stuff. Scott Pilgrim, man. Scott Pilgrim.

There was a time where Alan Wake was a huge thing. People were super excited about it.
Then like… five years passed.
Then it came out, and I didn’t really hear a lot of excitement or buzz about it. “This is exactly the kind of game I should Gamefly!” I told myself. So I did.
Now I have beaten it.

Alan Wake is a really mediocre game.

Seriously, I go back and forth on being very, very down on it to being kind of eh on it to being all “Yeah, that was pretty good.” It’s such a swing-y game in many ways. When it’s working, it’s very fun, but when it breaks, it’s really quite frustrating. I don’t know.

This is most clear in the gameplay. The combat is decent enough. You shine flashlights on enemies until they pop in light, and then you can shoot a few rounds into them and kill them. You have to dodge enemy attacks as well to survive. When it’s working, it’s a fun variation of normal shooter stuff, and a good time. However, as the game progresses, they start spawning more and more enemies in places where you can’t see them. They sneak up on you and hit you twice, and then you’re almost dead, and one stray smack will finish you off. The result of this is that eventually you get into death loops where you have to go “Okay, this guy will spawn here, have to take him out first, then this guy, then run over here and another guy will spawn, but I have to take out the guy behind me first…” This kind of gameplay is obscenely meta and, frankly, unfun. The game forces it on you, even on the easiest setting, “Normal.” Add to that inconsistent checkpoints that sometimes leave you with having to complete multiple combats before you get another one, and you can see where the combat can sometimes really frustrate.
On top of all this, the game loves to make you repeat the same hour or so of powering up, instead of giving you new toys to play with. Alan is apparently incapable of, say, putting a gun in the pocket of his coat, because he is constantly losing his guns and flashlight. Constantly. Which causes you to basically replay the same sequence where you’re like “Oh, here’s a flashlight, run run, oh, here’s a revolver, fight a little, oh, here’s a shotgun, now I can really fight” every hour. It was a neat trick once, but the game constantly relies on it, and it kind of falls flat. I’ve been told that Remedy’s previous games, the Max Payne games, were the same way. I never played those, though. Maybe someone who had would have been expecting this. I just found it a little annoying and pointless.

The story also has it’s ups and downs. The characters themselves are pretty well fleshed-out and acted. Alan is a fine enough character, and his agent Barry is a perfect example of a comic relief character who is also a genuine character you kind of like. There are also some really cool moments in the game, including an incredibly dramatic “hold this position” battle on a certain farm which I won’t spoil. However, the plot itself just isn’t that engaging. Alan’s trying to get his wife back, and is playing through a story he wrote, sure. But the story is constantly reiterating things you know already, like they were some big revelation, when you figured them out hours ago, and the entire plot is completely predictable. Using the manuscript pages to add background depth and foreshadowing is a decent idea, but it’s also difficult to do well. Some pages work perfectly, while others just tell you things you already know, or ruin intense moments in a way that much, much less effective than just watching them play out. It just doesn’t work perfectly well.

The best part of the game, I think though, were the Night Springs TV shorts. You stumble across Televisions that show this old Twilight Zoneish show called Night Springs. They were live acted, incredibly cheesy, and a lot of fun. I was looking forward to those a whole lot more than the actual plot itself.

So… yeah. I’m pretty negative in this review… it’s a pretty middle of the road game. It’s a rental game. Rent it and enjoy it, but it’s really not worth buying. If I had bought it, I would have gotten “The Signal” DLC story for free, but eh, I didn’t really feel like I missed anything. Besides some Gamerscore, I suppose. Alan Wake. Mediocre. Yeah.

A few days ago, I finally played through all of Alien Swarm, the free co-op game that Valve put out that involved shooting a bunch of aliens.

BUT WAS IT WORTH THE COST?

Oh yes. Completely.
I would have easily paid 10 bucks for this game, although in that case, perhaps a few more missions would have been nice. But seriously, Alien Swarm is very polished and a lot of fun. If you haven’t gotten some people together to play it, you really should.

The game is a top-down shooter in the twin-stick style. Of course, you don’t control it with a gamepad, even though I’d like to. You use the cursor you move around the outside of your dude and walk around with the WASD. That’s completely functional and works perfectly fine, of course. It’s just something I don’t prefer. Doesn’t affect the game in a negative way, though, even for me. You run around and shoot these people. There are a variety of different weapons and a variety of different classes you can be, each of which has slightly different loadouts and skills. The most important of these classes are the tech, which can hack open doors, and the Medic, which, oddly enough, has access to healing equipment. The other two classes, Officer and Special Weapons, don’t really seem all that different, from what I’ve seen. They just shoot some stuff, with Officer being a bit more well-rounded stat-wise and Special Weapons having access to a few bigger guns.

The way this game switches it up from other games of its type, I feel, is that you really have to manage your ammo and fire. Most shooters from a top-down perspective like this are “fire like crazy and kill everything.” In this, you have fairly limited ammo for most guns, so you have to make sure every shot counts. You also have friendly fire on, so much like Left 4 Dead, you have to actually pay attention and make sure not to catch a friend in the sweep of your flamethrower, for instance. This gives it a more different feel, and makes it feel much more like a squad-based FPS. That’s fun times. Of course, the new perspective makes me even worse at the game. At least in a FPS I feel like I know when I’m going to friendly fire. I feel like I have much more control over it. In this game, I either get so ancy about friendly fire that I barely shoot at all, or I force myself to shoot, and have many friendly fire incidents. I’m sure if I practiced a bit more, that would go away. But it is just the sort of game where I’m not used to be cautious and calculating, and it does affect my play. Doesn’t make it any less fun, though.

Seriously, the game is pretty amazing. It has Steam Achievements and persistent leveling to unlock new guns, which is nice enough that you can unlock everything in a few run-throughs of the game: hitting max level isn’t impossible. It uses the same PC lobby system that Left 4 Dead uses, so you get to bypass a lot of PC bullshit to get into co-op games, which I always appreciate. It’s just a really, really polished product, and totally worth your time. They could have easily charged some money for this, but instead they gave it away for free, with the complete source code out there on the web for full mod-ability. It’s great. Glad I’ve played it and enjoyed it.