The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

This is the first month in awhile I think I’m skipping both IoTMs. I mean, in general, the Juju Mojo Mask seems like a fairly useful item, but it just doesn’t seem like an item that’s going to get involved with how I play.

Unsurprisingly, this is an accessory with great stats. Anything that says “+2 Stats” is probably going to be relevant. On top of that, you can further tune it to get more stats in Moxie, Muscle, or Mysticality by setting up the various buffs the Mask can get you. It’s pretty all-around stat-tastic. This is why it’s powerful, if anything. The various Mask buffs also do some very nice side-benefits, but setting them up is kind of why I can’t get too excited about the mask.

Basically, for each one, you have to trigger them by doing a particular thing. For Mysticality, you cast a spell. For Muscle, you do a non-spell special move. For Moxie, you use a combat item. These seem fairly simple. These are the sorts of things that people playing seriously do all the time. These are almost trivial in that regard. However, I don’t play like that. I don’t use spells and moves and items anywhere near as much as I could or should. One might say that this would get me to go ahead and use these things. Yeah, that might be. It would certainly work if I was being rewarded with coolness for doing so. However, this is just awarding me with more base power. Again, useful as fuck, but that’s not why I buy these items. Okay, not why I buy them primarily. I want the coolness factor. I’m not feeling it from this.

I mean, this seems like a solid IoTM. Equipment is always of limited use, because it can’t be used in Hardcore. As such, I dunno, I tend to assume that equipment is going to be super-fantastically fun. This is powerful, but seems less fun than I desire. I’m sure most would probably be fine with owning one of these. Me, I’ll sit this month out.

After reading Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, I found myself constantly thinking up scenarios that would have been more fulfilling and a more fitting end to the series than what I had just read. In the end, though, this kind of thought process is really useless. The series ended the way it did, and it ended… with a disappointment. And now I’m going to ramble about it a bit.

A majority of Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour is a fight with Gideon. This is a fight that, for the most part, didn’t need to be in the story. It had basically been written out by the end of book 5. The reason I’ve always loved Scott Pilgrim is that it is, in some ways, a musical. The fights come in places of emotional intensity, and they represent emotion. For the most part, the characters don’t seem to react to the fights as real things. Not only is there very little emotional intensity involved in fighting Gideon, it’s the first fight that really gets treated like an actual fight, which just draws a lot of things into question, like “Has Scott Murdered 7 People?”

In an attempt to make this fight with Gideon relevant, many, many completely stupid things are retconned into the plot, like Gideon somehow having some kind of memory altering ability and having created subspace and all kinds of shit that I don’t really feel make much sense. It just helps to emphasize the fact that, for the most part, the fight served no purpose.

All of the big character moments in this book are Ramona’s. Scott gets nothing out of any of the events in the book, except, I guess, a girlfriend again. He doesn’t really grow as a person. Only Ramona does that. The problem is, she’s such a non-entity in the story for a lot of it, that giving the climax of the story to her just seems… completely stupid. There’s no reason for it, and it just leaves Scott having changed not at all, and us having complete proof of that in the end. I’m not saying Scott has to be fundamentally not Scott in the end. But there’s literally nothing about him that’s changed, besides the fact that he’s employed now, I suppose. It tries to not be a story about him at the very end, where it’s inescapably a story about him.

This book had a lot of awesome to live up to, and while I wasn’t expecting it to be super amazing perfect, I was expecting something better than this. It is a disappointment, to be sure. Thankfully, it hasn’t ruined my enthusiasm for the movie or game, so I’m sure I’ll still get plenty of awesome Pilgrim in the near future. Just wish it would have been good enough. Oh well.

I finally caught up with the Doctor and the latest season of Doctor Who.

It was, on the whole, excellent.

First off, there were lots of people, before the season started, who were really worried about Matt Smith. I wasn’t worried, perse. I didn’t know what to think. But man, he just nails it. His Doctor is wearing the Doctor’s issues on his sleeves. He’s willing to tell people to shut up, because adults are talking, and things of that nature, but he’s also still got some of the fun side of the Doctor. He’s really fantastic. I didn’t worry, and I had no reason to.

However, I was kind of worried about Amy Pond. Every picture of her I saw before I actually watched the series was “Look at me, I’m sexy.” I didn’t want a companion who was just there for her looks, especially after they fucked over Donna Noble so much. (Seriously, don’t get me talking about Doctor Who or I will talk about how much I adore Donna Noble. She is a fantastic character who really, really got the shaft. Fuck you, Russel T. Davies.) I was convinced she wasn’t going to be deep and interesting.
I had nothing to worry about on that front, either.
I mean, I wasn’t completely wrong. She is there to add sex appeal, and that works. (Well, judging from Cole’s descriptions of her relative hotness, I suppose.) But she’s also a complete person. The fact that, say, she nearly rapes the Doctor (Okay, it sounds bad when I write it like that, but…) is not only completely accurate to her character but also completely awesome. I mean, look at Martha. Look at Rose. If only they had had the guts to just flat out say that. The Doctor has all kinds of power, and is a great guy. He is attractive. If you’re on this incredible fantasy trip with him, of course, go ahead and fuck him! Why not! There’s a level of consequences you aren’t going to have from this trip, and once the Doctor is gone, he’ll be gone. Best try while you can. So yeah, that moment, in particular, endeared me to her. But she’s also a very independent person and character, willing to do what she feels is right even when the Doctor tells her to do something else, much like how Donna was willing to tell the Doctor when she thinks he’s wrong. That’s nice. I also think her relationship with Rory is very realistic and well-developed. She loves Rory, but with all this fantastic in front of her, isn’t sure whether stable Rory is the sort that she should stick with, even though she wants to. There’s always a struggle between the possible adventure of being unattached and the benefits of being attached, you know? I thought that was handled in a decent way, too.

The plots themselves are some of the best the Doctor has had in awhile. Thank goodness they got rid of Russel T. Davies (Seriously, Mr. Davies, thank you for bringing Doctor Who back and getting me interesting in the show, but you just are not a good writer.) and stuck Steven Moffat at the helm. He knows how to write a good Doctor Who episode. There are a couple weaker episodes, of course. “The Lodger,” or “We spent our budget on other episodes but we need to make one more” isn’t really all that great, though I’ll take it any day over bullshit like “Daleks in Manhattan.” There also isn’t any episode that really stands out in my mind, like “Blink” did, as being mind-blowingly fantastic. Every episode, though, was fun. None of them made me want to punch someone. They were all really solid.

I hope they can keep this up for the next season. I am looking forward to it, completely. Maybe I won’t wait months to watch that season, too. Who knows.

Also, Bowties are cool.

Way, way back, when I bought Super Street Fighter IV, I did it because a certain Morbid Coffee was planning to host an online Tournament with people from Talking Time. I knew I’d have no chance of winning the tournament, but I figured I could maybe win a few matches and it would be fun either way.

Now the tournament has finally started. And Coffee is doing the coolest thing: He’s uploading all the matches people send him to Youtube. I don’t know why, but I seriously think this is amazingly cool. Certainly makes the tournament feel more… important. So I thought I’d share the videos of what’s happened so far with you. It’s my fall from the winner’s bracket in video form!

My first match was with Matchstick. The original name for the tournament was Matchstick’s Pony, supposedly, so he’s partially responsible for going at it. He was bringing a Chun-Li to the mix. I was using my trusty Abel, the guy who I’ve mained since Super Street Fighter IV for no real reason I can tell, but I’m pretty decent with him, and he’s an odd choice, which gives me the element of surprise against a lot of people who are used to Akumas and Kens and don’t know what Abel is capable of.

I won it in two. The first round, and second round. I didn’t have much trouble. Abel has this really great combo that I can actually pull off. If I can abuse that, I tend to win easily. If I can’t, I have more trouble. Matchstick couldn’t seem to figure out how to get Chun-Li to punish that combo, so I did it a bunch, and pulled off the win. Still, it was a fun fight, and we had fun talking during it. Very good times! I moved on from the first round! Whee!

Second round I was matched up with Shivam. This is a guy who went on and on on the Cast at Demonhead about how Street Fighter is the best game ever. (Granted, he has a lot of best game evers, but still!) I thought for sure I had done some practice fights with him before and he had been much better than me, so I figured I was in for a schooling. I was a bit wrong, though. We had some damn good matches, with a super-dramatic finish! I won the first round. He had said he decided Guile was his best, but he spent a lot of time jumping, and my Abel beat him without too much trouble. After you lose, according to the rules, you can switch characters, and he then switched to T. Hawk. Remember the situation I explained earlier? The one where you don’t know how to approach a character because nobody ever plays him against you? This is how I was with T. Hawk. I was pretty clueless in the second round, and Shivam slaughtered me with Mexican Typhoons. Even after I figured out what I should be doing, it was difficult. Abel isn’t the most capable ranged character, and Shivam could pull off those Typhoons with no problem, which made it hard to approach him. After that, I had a choice. Abel is pretty well my most practiced character, but I needed some range in order to take T. Hawk on. Therefore, I decided I needed some fireballs. For the third round, I switched to Sakura. This worked out better. I actually felt like I had answers to a lot of T. Hawk’s moves, and I felt like I held my own a lot more competently. Still, even with a dramatic Ultra at the end, I couldn’t pull off the win. But they were damn, damn good matches. I never mind losing in fights like that. It was fun times.

That’s about where I stand right now. Soon, I’ll start my loser’s bracket matches. My general hope is that I move on in the loser’s bracket once before I hit people I just have no chance against, but eh, we’ll see. Either way, I’ll give it my all, and continue to have a ton of fun. Because it is a ton of fun! I tend to like fun. Yeah.

I don’t think I really get this month’s Twilight Heroes IoTM.

Seppia’s cephalopod skullcap is a bunch of nice enchantments, but at the same time, extremely situational in it’s “cool” factor.
It’s main “cool” benefits are being a SQUID disc player and letting you breath underwater. There just aren’t that many underwater zones for that to be completely useful, though, and since it doesn’t seem to give any bonuses to SQUID discs (Maybe it does, but I’m not seeing anything about it on the wiki and I haven’t heard anything about it) and you don’t run around with a SQUID player equipped anyway, I don’t see that as much of a bonus.

There’s no doubt that the additional ice damage, a bit of -time, and PP regeneration are all great, though. I mean, those are powerful. But… well… it’s boring powerful. Those might be better than other hats. In fact, I would say that, yes, those benefits are better than most other hats in most situations. It’s certainly the best PP regeneration on a helmet, and while not as good as the -time on the xentrium helm, it’s got the other benefits, so it works out.

It’s just that those things aren’t flashy. I’m not an optimal player. I don’t want bleeding edge. I want cool things. There was an attempt to put interesting flavor on this useful bundle of enchantments, certainly, but that flavor just doesn’t come into play enough. I hope there are people who enjoy the benefits of this, certainly, but I just can’t really get excited by it. Oh well. So it goes.

Dustin finally had another Euchre Tournament.

Euchre is a standard, but pretty darn awesome card game. It’s simple, but requires a ton of meta-game strategy in order to play it well. There’s luck involved, sure. Sometimes you’ll go all night without getting dealt a decent hand. But most of the time it’s about knowing how to use the cards you have to the best of their ability and how to read your partner to know how to play the cards you have without outright cheating.

I’m alright at Euchre. I know the rules, I love games, and I get enough of the basic strategy to not make a fool out of myself, even though I maybe don’t win all that often. However, Dustin’s family are a bunch of Euchre experts. He used to get them all together, and us, to play, and it just amazed me how much of a challenge that was. Not that older people can’t play cards or something, but more that they took the game so seriously, and at the same time so lightly. They play cutthroat, serious, cut you no slack Euchre, but they laugh and joke the whole way through. It’s pretty well the best atmosphere for this kind of tournament. It was a really great night.

How did I do? Well, I went 4W-6L. I was hoping to go 5 and 5, just because that seemed like a good goal, but it was not to be. My wins didn’t get me many points either: I only won very close games, for the most part. Still, in that crowd, I was totally fine with it. I only felt like I made one play mistake all night, when I called on a really risky hand and got completely embarrassed and set. That’s good enough for me.

Dustin won it all, and went on like that was a bad thing, and that it looked bad that he won his own tournament. It was really kind of silly. If that man knows anything, he knows German and playing Euchre. He is a Euchre machine. Everyone there was a good friend. It’s not like we thought he was cheating or something. At least, if we said it, it was in a purely joking manner.

But yeah, it was a damn fun night. Always nice to get on a bit of old-school, standard gaming, and have such a good time. I remember when we used to play Euchre all the time. It’s probably my favorite game with a standard deck of cards. (Pinochle is fun, but requires a special deck and more rules. Euchre is much faster, compact, and you can always play it.) Damn good times.

Of course, then at the end, Dustin said he’d try to get another one together over Christmas break. And my mind went to how different I’d be then, and trying to explain that to his whole extended family… but eh, I would. And I’d have fun anyway.

Dragon Quest 9 is a huge game, with lots of quests and stuff. It is also a game with a class change system, and that means that it is, by default, a game meant to be min/maxed and broke the fuck open by people fiddling with the systems in place to make super-powerful characters. This is a good thing. It has appeal for those people, as well as touching little mini-storylines in each city and gameplay that’s pretty casual friendly. That’s always been the appeal of Dragon Quest. However, I just have to question some of their decisions.

There are 12 classes, from what I understand, but 6 of them are locked behind quests. These quests require you to kill things in a specific way to prove you’re worthy of being a member of that class. Nothing wrong with that, perse. That’s a fine enough idea. The problem comes in with how complicated the quests are. Or, I guess, the one I’m going to talk about.

One of them I had was the quest to unlock the class “Armamentalist” which required you to cast Wizard Ward, and then deliver the final blow to two Metal Slimes. Metal Slimes are hard to hit, and run away very often. They’re also very rare. You can see already how this quest may be a problem. When you already have to waste one turn, and MP, casting Wizard Ward before you can even start hitting the Metal Slimes, often they will run away before you even attack them. There’s a skill that helps you hit Metal Slimes, called Metal Slash, but that’s a sword skill. Mages, who learn Wizard Ward, can’t learn Metal Slash. To complete this quest, you need someone who can do both.

This wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the previously-mentioned Min/Maxing I was talking about. Having your Warrior, who’s using swords, use 8 Skill points to learn Wizard Ward is a waste. Similarly, having your mage put a ton of skill points into Sword Skills to learn Metal Slash is also a waste. Fully-leveling a character in a class nets you 200 skill points (But who would ever get a character up to level 100 in a class?) which means that if you level up every class completely, you get 2400 skill points. There are 26 skills, and it takes 100 skill points to completely level up a skill. Therefore, two skills will never be fully leveled. See where I’m going with this? For the craziest level-grinder, mis-investing those 8 points does matter in creating the very best character, because they can’t fully level every skill. For those who aren’t going to hit level 100 with every class, which is completely insane and would take forever, mis-using those skill points is even more of a big deal, because that’s that much less power your characters have.

Plus, even with a character so specced out, the quest is annoyingly hard. Doing that just makes it possible.

I got kind of angry with the game over this today. I wanted to have all the classes, so I knew I had to do this quest, but it was just so annoying. Even though I’m playing casually, I didn’t want to purposefully mis-handle my character building. I really resisting intentionally gimping myself to completely this quest. I got really angry at the game and put it down.

Then I picked it back up like… 20 minutes later. DQ9 is really good. There’s some questionable decisions, but overall? Really quite good.

But I’ll review it another time. Like when I beat it. (Here’s where you laugh because that probably won’t happen.)

As tends to happen, when trolling for a movie to rent, Essner pulled a movie that I had never heard of, but that friends of his had. It was called An Education, and was described to me as a “female Rushmore.” I don’t really think that description is very accurate at all, but it is a very entertaining and enjoyable movie.

Taking place in the past, a high school girl catches the eye of an older gentleman, who gives her all kinds of fantastic things and helps her to “live” life, instead of just being bored through it. He takes her to all kinds of exciting places, they drink fancy alcohols and smoke fancy cigarettes, they generally have a grand old time. Then a fairly predictable twist happens.

The characterization in this film is actually really good. You really feel like you understand the main character as she’s swept off her feet. She’s not an idiot, not by a longshot, but she sees an escape and decides that her life is annoying enough to take it. She’s out to enjoy every second of it, and it works. Similarly, the older boyfriend is also pretty believable. He’s awkward at times and completely suave at others. He’s generally creepy, as one would expect for an older man dating a 17-year-old, but not creepy enough that you completely write him off. Of most surprising are the characters of the parents, who start out seeming like stereotypes, but it soon becomes clear they’re much fuller characters than that. A speech by the dad near the end of the film is really touching, and really realistic, for example. It’s these characters that carry you through the narrative and make you enjoy it.

I also appreciated the fact that the movie didn’t hand the main character a happy ending on a silver platter. She fucks up in some ways, and the film makes her face up to that. Sure, she does get her happy ending, but we see her having to work hard for it there at the end. A lot of films would gloss over that. It’s really nice that An Education decided not to.

It’s not a perfect film. The same characterization that’s so good sometimes has moments of awkwardness, probably where the movie is sticking really strongly to the memoir on which it was based. The ending, especially, is going along so well, and then ends with a completely out-of-place and never before seen voice-over, which really kind of keeps the movie from ending with a bang. These issues don’t really stop it from being an enjoyable watch, though. It had me entertained the entire way through, and that’s good enough for me.

I tried, but I just don’t understand Dungeon Solitaire.

This game was at the top of the App store lists for card games, and man, do I love card games. It was $2, and I thought, sure, I’ll give it a try. I’m down with card games, and a good single-player one seemed neat.

It just doesn’t work well, though.

Basically, you have two columns, an enemy column and a hero column. There are monster cards, hero cards, green buff cards, equipment cards, and trap cards. You place these down, and try to fill up the whole hero column with heroes to win the game. If you draw a 6th monster three times, the game is over.
Every card basically modifies one of the two stats on a hero or monster card: Strength and Magic. You line up the cards on the grid, and if the numbers on one are higher than the other, that card wins, and the other is destroyed. However, both stats have to be higher. If each card wins one stat, then a Stalemate is created. This can trigger special abilities, but mostly just results in the cards sitting there doing nothing. Equipment and Buffs are in the game to get you out of these Stalemates, but since a card can only be modified by one Equipment ever, and buffs are almost all completely random, they don’t actually help. And since you are forced to play every monster you draw, you get into Stalemates a lot.

That really isn’t fun.

So often you’re randomly drawing cards, hoping for a solution to a monster. But there’s maybe one hero in your deck that can beat said monster. So you keep drawing, but that just makes you draw a monster, and you lose. It’s really stupid, actually. A good card game has an element of randomness, of course. That’s what makes it fun. But there are so few options you actually have in the game, you are almost fully dependent on the draw. It’s very rare when your decisions on where to place monsters and heroes come into play. I’ve played many games now, and it really just seems like a slot machine. It’s pretty unsatisfying. Plus, the game seems based around you failing, and is all about getting a high score. But since it seems like the score you get is equally random, based on how long the random cards let you survive, it really doesn’t seem like a useful way to go.

The iPhone platform is perfect for a good card game. It would be fantastic. It’s a shame this isn’t it. I really want to play a good little card game. I really do! Oh well. I’ll try again, I’m sure.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is, hands down, the best game I have played on the PSP. Certainly the best original game. Peace Walker takes everything that makes Metal Gear Solid great, and mixes it with everything that makes Monster Hunter great, and the child that comes out is fantastic. If you own a PSP, you owe it to yourself to play Peace Walker. You really do.

The main problem with most PSP games is how shitty the controls are, thanks to how badly the system is designed. I won’t lie, Peace Walker doesn’t have perfect controls, but the game is designed around them, and works great. After playing for an hour, you no longer notice the little weirdnesses of aiming with the face buttons. You’re just having a good time. There is also a control set for people familiar with Monster Hunter, if that’s your thing. That’s not my thing, but it’s nice to offer the option.

I think that Kojima and company did a great job balancing this game for single player. The entire story is very doable with one person, though someone else can jump in at any time, and that would probably make a few of the final bosses a little less tedious. Still, the game throws a great mixture of missions at you, from the sneaking missions MGS is known for to kamakaze combat “kill everyone” missions for people who play MGS like me. You’re never stuck with one strategy in these missions either. You can murder everyone in the sneaking missions, and you can sneak around, snipe, and stay hidden in the “kill everyone” missions. It’s a harder time going against the grain of what the mission wants you to do, but you’re only penalized with added difficulty. There’s no “you’re spotted, start over” sorts of situations here.
Immediately after you beat the game, and even during, you unlock all sorts of great 4-player Co-Ops, which are really Monster Hunter style and require multiple people. I’ve played some of these over Adhoc Party, and they are a blast. You really have to work together to take down bosses, and there are enough loadout variations that you can play a particular role in combat, if you desire. These missions are hard, and long, like their Monster Hunter counterparts, but are completely enjoyable. I feel like Peace Walker works better than Monster Hunter, too. I couldn’t play Monster Hunter for every long by myself. I got bored. It’s just not a single player experience. Peace Walker manages to be both a great single player game and a fantastic multiplayer game. It’s good times all around.

All of this would be enough, really, but there are so many little distractions as well. All through the game you are recruiting soldiers to build up Outer Heaven, and using them to make new equipment, research new tech, build Metal Gear ZEKE, and even send out on missions. After every mission, you have all these little side quests and systems to deal with, which keep the action broken up. They aren’t full games on their own, but tied into the other, awesome experience, it adds value. It also gives you goals after beating the main game if you’re playing by yourself. “I need some more APCs for Outer Ops… I should go fight some of those boss battles.” Things like that.

I was expecting to enjoy Peace Walker, but not as much as I did. This is a completely worthy successor to the awesomeness that was MGS3. Play this game. Seriously, just play it. You won’t regret it.