The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Normally, I review all the IoTMs every month. I do this because, I dunno, I’m thinking about them, and it takes up a day, and whatever, it’s fun. However, in KoL, I have, recently, always been in a Hardcore Oxy 100% Familiar run when they come out. Therefore, I don’t often get to try them out until after the month is over, and I’m mostly just working from the data I have about the item on whether or not I think it’s cool.

Well, let’s just say that the rogue program is very cool from a flavor standpoint, but I don’t really get the entire gist of what it does. As a familiar, though, I totally get it. It’s a Starfish that also acts as a potato when you equip it’s familiar equipment. This is something I am totally behind. Mostly because it’s hard not to be excited about anything good which has potato functionality.

The rogue program is a June Super-Content Familiar, so it gives you super-content. In this case, it gives you access to the Game Grid arcade by giving you tokens, which you can use to play various video games. These games are little mini-games which, if played well, give you tickets. You can use these tickets to buy a wide variety of items, including a coffee pixie stick, which is the now-required spleen-for-adventures item in these things. The other items seem pretty cool, too. I could see people getting into the Superduperball, since it just flat-out gives you stats. Could sell for a lot so that crazy rich people could level up without actually spending turns… but, of course, it’s untradable, which kind of kills that idea. The spider ring has a deleveler you can use for free once per combat, which is nice. The finger cuffs are a simple stunner which is always useful to have around. There are a bunch of hats that train different stats, which is always cool. The top prizes are a really good ranged weapon and access to a new chat channel, both of which are fine long-term goals.

To buy these things, though, you need to earn tickets. You do these by playing games, and here is where the part about me not being able to play this content yet screws me. I can’t really determine how cool these games are without playing them. Trust me, I’ve tried! I bet they’re awesome, too. Actually, I have little doubt they are. But I can’t really make vague suggestions about which ones to play or whatever that probably aren’t useful without actually playing them. I guess this is where this “review” falls short.

Still, super content! In a familiar! Which gives you MP and potatoes! And is also a Tron reference! Seems like a no brainer, right? Right? Maybe?

Let’s just open this review with… this. Feel free to soak that in for a little while first. Or maybe this one. Or definitely this one.

Yeah. Just think about that.

I really like Marvel Vs Capcom 2. I mean, like, really like. So when people were calling Tatsunoko vs Capcom the new Marvel Vs Capcom, I really wanted to play it! After having renting it and playing it, though, I’m a bit less impressed. It’s a fun afternoon and a fun rental, but I just can’t see anyone really getting into this game in a serious way. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I feel.

But at the same time, it has Yatterman. I’ve just been watching Yatterman clips for like… 20 minutes now. I have no idea what I’m watching, but they make for great characters in the game. Doronjo and Yatterman-1 were pretty well my favorites when I was playing. Especially Yatterman-1. He had a moveset I was clicking with. But they were both so silly, it was wonderful.

Still, the game reduces the entire fighting game thing into four buttons: Light, Medium, Strong, and Assist. At the same time, it still plays like Street Fighter. So it feels really awkward when you pick it up. It feels like, especially when you pick characters one should know like Ryu or Morgan, that you can’t do the combos you’re used to. They’re just off. It’s obvious why they did this, of course. There simply aren’t enough buttons on the normal Wii controller, and they also want it to be accessible. It just makes the game feel very different. Add to that the very large number of supers and how easy it is to hit with a lot of them and it really makes the game more of a fun, button-mashy kind of game that gets a little deeper if you can throw a fireball, and less of a tournament sort of game. At the same time, being able to throw that fireball or do an uppercut gives you such a huge advantage that it isn’t fun just to button mash against that. I destroyed Cole and Cara, just because I had that information. It was kind of depressing, because I just wanted to fuck around and have fun with the game. But since I know how to do it, I can’t really stop myself very easily, and it was kind of unfair.

Basically, Tatsunoko is in this really weird middle ground between accessible and hardcore. Add to that the fact that nobody in America has any chance of knowing what a Tatsunoko is without being hardcore, and you have an extremely strange little game. It’s fun enough. The fun is there! But it just isn’t something I think many people would like, and I certainly don’t need a copy of it.

But, you know. Yatterman. I don’t even know.

I went into Toy Story 3 being told that I would cry, and, honestly, it didn’t disappoint in that regard.

In some ways, it almost feels like “cheap” tears, though. The movie does this by pulling on YOUR nostalgia, not really any respect or love of the characters in the book. It makes you recall your childhood, and uses that against you. Still, I think it was a completely legit ending. All of it was. It was a really fun film that did really fun things. I’m not sure that a Toy Story 3 was needed, but Pixar, once again, took the idea and made something great out of it. They know how to write a good movie for adults and children.

There were a lot of genuine funny moments in the film. I feel like a lot of them revolved around Ken. If I wanted to get all down on the film, I could try to cast some sort of “laugh at the gay” kind of argument, but it really isn’t that. It’s more sort of the… idea that Ken is just like Barbie because they’re the same sorts of toys. He cares about fashion, clothes, and looking good, and is in many ways stuck in the past. It’s humorous because it confirms what we “suspected” about Ken while he continues to deny it for most of the film. In the end, though, he embraces it, and it works out fabulous for him (was fabulous a bad choice of words there?) and that makes it all alright. Everyone is still a bit uncomfortable with it, but that’s fine. They aren’t mean, and he’s happy. Everyone’s happy! Huzzah! Compare that to, I dunno, my rambling about how Mr. Fox and company treats Ash in Fantastic Mr. Fox, and you can see how this comes off feeling a bit better.

There were a few weird choices in the movie. Why does Andy have an incredibly shitty cell phone when he’s clearly using a MacBook? I heard Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub discuss the lack of Andy’s dad for awhile, which isn’t really all that important, but seems to become an actual plot point, at least a little, in this film, and it makes it very clear that the dad is missing. Significant? Probably not. Just dumb things I noticed.

Is Toy Story 3 some super masterpiece? Nah, not at all. But it is completely fantastic and a very enjoyable film. I’m glad I finally go out to see it… In 2D, thank you. After Spaeth didn’t get to see the Pixar short before Up when he saw it in 3D, I have absolutely no need to ever see a Pixar film in 3D. Plus, Night and Day was pretty awesome. One of their best shorts, I think, with a fantastically creative premise.
Got distracted. Anyway, Toy Story 3 is great. The end.

I hear work is being done on Retcon for Twilight Heroes. This is top of exciting! It really is. I can’t wait to play through the game a few times like that. It’ll be fantastic. However, we’re still in a pre-retcon environment at the moment, and that means that IoTMs like the n-barreled shotgun are a bit harder sell. It’s an IoTM designed to level up with you, and to be useful in all sections of the game as you go along. However, since the only section of the game that exists for me at this point is the endgame, it’s hard to get all that excited about it? IoTMs like the insanely super XL bowl have similar issues, since they’re only cool in a world where you actually switch character classes on a semi-regular basis. The bowl had the added benefit of being completely hilarious, though, which made me really like it.

The n-barreled shotgun is less hilarious, but still an interesting concept, and it seems solid. +XP just seems like something that’s always going to get those eventual speed-runners excited, and the fact that it can do two types of damage, depending on setting, is something that will hopefully come into play. The top version is no slouch either, which means it should work through the whole storyline thing, though perhaps not competing with the super-high-level stuff. It’s a functional, solid weapon.

However, I have to wonder if I would ever pick this over the GigaGuy Cannon. That gives me access to it’s moves, some of which are really good, but more importantly, it lets me pick up all the healing items. I like healing items. Right now, when I have a billion of them, it’s not important, but in a retcon environment, I wonder if I wouldn’t just use the GigaGuy Cannon until I get really high in level, so I could stockpile those. Still, that’s a personal preference for someone who values healing and defense above everything else, and also, you know, maybe you don’t have a GigaGuy Cannon. If so, I’m sure the shotgun will work great, if you’re wanting an IoTM ranged weapon.

I can’t wait until retcon so I can make more effective value judgments, though. Also, so I can play through all the retcon content, and all the old content again. Excitement!

I really, really enjoyed what people call PoP 08. It was a great, casual experience, and was a really good time. When I heard, for the next Prince of Persia, they were going back to the old storyline and old ways, I was a bit worried. I never played those games, and I wanted to play more of what I liked. Still, I was willing to give it a chance, and gave Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands a rental.

It was damn good.

Now, I didn’t feel like it was as sort of a… Polish experience as PoP 08. You can tell it was rushed out the door to meet the movie. At the same time, the game is completely playable and completely fun. It’s a bit more hardcore than PoP 08, but not enough to really be a problem. I set it to Easy to keep combats from being tough, and there were only like… 2 or 3 platforming sections that felt nearly insurmountable, and they were right before the last boss. It saves when you’d want it to. It’s a solid, solid game.

There are a few things about it that confuse me, though. For instance, I don’t know what the point of limiting the number of rewinds is. I feel like Elika didn’t ruin the fun with her easy access to redos, and I didn’t understand why I was able to run out of rewinds. It was never a huge deal, but maybe that would have been something they would have dealt with if they had more time.
Additionally, there’s a level up system. I know those are in style and cool, but I just didn’t see what point it served in this game. The only reason I was excited about hitting a level up was because there was achievements associated with hitting certain milestones. You could learn a bunch of spells, but I didn’t find them all that useful. I upgraded all my basic attack power and HP and such first, and did fine. (Granted, I was on easy. Maybe combat requires those spells more on Normal.)

The main thing this game brings, gameplay-wise, is the Water manipulation. This seems weird, but basically, the castle the Prince is in is the leakiest castle ever. There are spouts of water and waterfalls everywhere. Very early on, the Prince gets a power where you pull the left trigger, and it solidifies water around you. This lets you climb up columns of water, run across water walls, and so on. They do some really intelligent stuff with this mechanic as you progress through the game, making you deactivate to jump through waterfalls, then reactivate to climb up the next one, and so on. It’s pretty nice. They manage to use it enough so it isn’t annoying, but is a nice platforming challenge. I appreciated that.

As far as a purchase goes, much like PoP 08, I can’t recommend it full price. It really isn’t all that long, and while they want you to replay it to finish leveling up (since I don’t think you can hit max level on one playthrough without finding every single hidden item for EXP) that doesn’t really seem like a fun time. However, once it gets cheap, or if you can Gamefly or rent it like me, you really must play it. It is a lot of fun. I miss the whole PoP 08 world and so on, but I had a great time with this game. A solid title.

Mom and Dad had all these plans for Father’s day. They had all kinds of stuff they were supposed to do that Dad would like. It was going to be great, and I was probably going to be home, rewarming food for most of the day. I was okay with this.

Then those plans fell through, and Mom was like, “Think of something for us to do.”

My mind, of course, went to the tons of board games I’d like to play with them. Maybe something there? But then it hit me. This is Father’s Day. I’ve got to put an angle on it that he’d enjoy. Then I felt the inspiration, and I went out, spent too much money, and returned with a copy of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 for the Wii, and a Motion Plus. (And Wii Sports Resort which had the Motion Plus with it.) I figured with the Motion Plus, it would feel good, like real Golf, and that Dad would enjoy playing as some of his favorite golfers and looking at all the courses. It even had this thing called “TrueView,” where it didn’t show a character on screen or anything like a game. Everything was shown as if you were standing on the course. Surely he’d like that?

And he totally did. We played that for several hours, and then we put in Wii Sports Resort and played that for several hours more. Jonathan, Mom, and Dad all played, and it was, honestly, a pretty good time. I was having fun. Dad seemed like he was having fun.

But the real confirmation came later, while I was at work. Mom texted me telling me I did a great job, and that Dad was bragging about playing the game to Grandma and Grandpa. That made me feel amazing. It really did.

It’s so damn awesome when my interests and my parents can overlap so well. I love it.

Hey.

Here’s a Let’s Play.

I got pointed to this dude from Spoony, since he loaned Spoony some video footage, but the guy is pretty funny in and of himself. I’m very much in the middle of enjoying his playthrough of Titantic: Adventure out of Time, a game I had heard a lot about, but hadn’t really ever LEARNED anything about. So it’s pretty fascinating.

Yeah, so watch that. I’m too busy doing fatherly-day-y things to write more. Apologies. Better ramblings tomorrow!

Everyone was all like, “Man, I hope Kevin Butler shows up at the Sony Press Conference!”

And then he did. And as his little segment went on, and on, and on, and on, everyone realized he’s really only funny in small doses.

And then there was a few more video montages.

That was basically the Sony press conference.

The moment I saw Nintendo’s press conference, I knew Sony was so completely fucked. I simply couldn’t imagine anything they could drop that would beat what Nintendo brought to the table. Even something like a PSP2 just wasn’t going to generate enough excitement. Move certainly wasn’t. I was correct on all accounts.

Sony’s big bombs were a new Twisted Metal and, finally, a release date for Gran Turismo 5. Frankly, I can’t see who would even give a shit about GT5 at this point, it’s been delayed for so long. Just play some Forza already! (She says as if everyone who wants to play car porn games has a 360.) Twisted Metal… I guess that’s cool? But it has such a stupid aesthetic and I certainly have absolutely no love for the franchise, and the demo they gave didn’t really give me any reason to care about it. I guess it made some people happy, but it didn’t really feel like a bomb to me.

About the only new game they showed off that I was like “Hmm, I’d like to play that,” was Sorcery. This is the most generic game ever, using Move, where you’re a wizard and you use your wand controller to cast spells in an active way. That seemed like a ton of fun, at least in short doses. Of course, being a Move title, I don’t know if I’ll ever play it. They announced Move pricing, but it’s just too expensive. Move is accurate, sure, but it just doesn’t bring anything I haven’t seen before to the table, and I don’t trust Sony to bring the kind of games I have to have to it, just I do Nintendo, for example.

Other than that, the press conference had weird missteps. There was a sizzle montage like… every 5 minutes, and they promoted their advertising several times. “Here’s an ad we’re going to be running.” “And we’ll have ads on Coke bottles! Sony Rules!” It was just kind of weird.

I’m sure they’ll continue to have some games on Playstation 3 and PSP that I have to play, but Sony brought nothing to this conference to change the fact that they’re really bottom-tier in both their races at this point. I could do without them if I had to. Of course, I don’t have to, because I’m a crazy gamer and have everything forever, but they simply aren’t a requirement. It’d be nice if Sony would get that changed. Maybe at some point they’ll figure that out.

And that’s all I’m going to say about E3. Aren’t you glad I’m done? Whew.

They announced a new Kirby game.

I mean, I guess they did other stuff too, but damn, THEY ANNOUNCED A NEW KIRBY GAME.
I love Kirby. I am so excited about Kirby’s Epic Yarn. I want to buy four right now. The art style looks fantastic, and I completely trust them to create a Kirby game that’s easy, but fun as fuck. I cannot wait. But I have to. Damn.

But yeah, Nintendo basically knocked it out of the fucking park. They won E3, press-conference-wise. It was a non-stop showing of very strong announcement for the core gamer, as well as some games designed to “convert” casuals to core gaming which could really make it happen. It was good all around.

It was especially impressive to see a sort of return to 2D up on stage. It was probably due to the huge success of New Super Mario Brothers Wii, but between Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Donkey Kong Country Returns, it’s clear Nintendo is pushing 2D in a huge way. What’s more, these games look pretty damn solid! As mentioned, Kirby looks fun, and DKC Returns looks like a challenging platformer. That’s totally neat.

As a fan of Mario Sports games, I’m kind of displeased with Mario Sports Mix. I mean, I’m sure it’ll be fun, and it certainly is designed to do what they claimed it would, which is convert casuals to more hardcore games. I just need, need a new, fleshed-out Mario Golf. I need it badly.

Also, does anyone actually want a new Goldeneye? That’s right, nobody does. Some people might think they do, but they’re wrong.

Anyway, the most important thing they announced was, of course, the 3DS, which looks AMAZING. That thing has some serious graphical power under the hood, and an analog nub that people are saying is much less shitty than the one on the PSP. What’s more, this is Nintendo, and they’re not going to launch this thing at a high price point. I am all over this, I really am. There is no doubt this is a day one purchase. Even without any real software to back it up yet (They showed a video of a Kid Icarus game, and there’s a bunch of tech demos on the show floor) I want this thing, and they have at least a year to get some games ready to roll for launch, so I’m sure they can make it happen.
Oh, and I guess it does 3D. I don’t care about that? But if it’s as unobtrusive as everyone says, sure, throw it on there. Why not?

Anyway, Nintendo put plenty of things on display to get excited about. But what about Sony? I guess you’ll just have to wait for more ramblings to find out! Dun dun dun!

Because there isn’t enough of them on the internet, here comes my impressions of the big three press conferences at E3.

In Chronological Order, of course. So let’s start with Microsoft.

Microsoft… did okay? Their presentation was very split. They were trying very hard to push Kinect seriously while not making a Nintendo sort of mistake and missing appealing to their core. However, none of it really connected together well. It was almost like two different conferences. Most of their “hardcore” gamer stuff was mostly sequels I knew about and didn’t interest me much. Black Ops? Halo: Reach? Gears 3? I will play these things, but they don’t get me excited. They are known quantities. MGS: Rising was interesting, but I’m also not a rabid MGS fangirl, so I couldn’t get too worked up from that. Was there anything else hardcore? I think that was it? Anything hardcore from Microsoft I’m going to be excited about just wasn’t shown off here.
To their credit, though, I think Kinect could be appealing to the right audience. Game after game that they showed, I went, “Man, my mom would probably really get a kick out of that,” which is what they were trying for. For me, I was especially interested in Dance Central. I trust Harmonix with everything music-related, and I think that game could be obscenely fun. If it’ll be worth the cost of Kinect, though, I have no idea, seeing as they didn’t even announce a price. What the hell? That sort of thing doesn’t bode well for it being affordable enough to have a chance to take off. The problem is that people get the Wii, and people like my parents feel like they “get” the Xbox, and that it isn’t for them. Sometimes I prove them wrong with trivia games, but that’s basically it. The people who bought the Wii probably won’t care about Kinect. It’s going to be a horrible battle to make that work. Not as much of a battle as Sony, but a battle nonetheless.

Then, at the end, there was an Oprah pulled. “Everyone in the room gets a new, redesigned Xbox!” Well, whoop-de-fuck. That was kind of stupid, because everyone at home, including me, just went “What the hell? How is this supposed to get me excited?” Still, at the same time, I realized why they did it hours later when the internet was flooded with unboxings and hands-on impressions of the new system. There was a reason for it. It was just kind of silly. The redesign looks nice, and thank god, they finally built wifi in, but it’s nothing that someone would replace their current system for, unless they simply really, really, really, really, really hate drive noise, and installing games just isn’t enough for them.

In any case, I have no worries about Microsoft. I think they’re still going to continue to win the “hardcore” vote. They simply have the best controller, and the best multiplayer, and even though I don’t give a shit about Black Ops map packs, having those exclusively for awhile is going to net them tons of money and support. They’re doing fine, and I will continue to use their system over the Playstation 3, mostly because of Nerdpoints, but also because that’s where all my friends are. And that will be back.

Stay tuned for more of me boring you with old news about E3 the next two days! Maybe even three, if I think of stuff not press conference related to say! Won’t you be thrilled?