The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Hook Champ is fucking awesome. If you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone, and you don’t have this game? I will probably punch you. Just saying.
Seriously.
A punch.
Likely to the face.

Okay, I guess I could tell you why, huh.
Here are a list of reasons why Hook Champ is one of the best iPhone games out there.

Reason 1: It’s got fantastic retro styles. I mean, just look at a screenshot or anything. Immediately you will say “Spelunky.” It just looks fantastic, and yet has enough detail that, when you buy a million different hats for Jake, the main character, you can clearly see what he’s wearing. It’s gorgeous.

Reason 2: It contains much humor. Now, Hook Champ is an action game, and you wouldn’t expect a lot of humor, but man, there is a lot of it in there! Before every level, it throws you two quick lines, easily skippable, but they tend to be very funny, and there are so many of them that you’ll still be seeing new ones even after several deaths on a level. The shopkeeper descriptions of upgrade items are equally entertaining. A small example: “Husk Musk Lv. 3: Women will crash into you at high speeds. Also, bats.”

Reason 3: It’s built from the ground up for the iPhone. Seriously, the controls are extremely simple, which is exactly what this game needs. Tap 3/4ths of the screen? Throw your grappling hook. Tap the bottom fourth? Walk forward. There are big buttons for the rarely and situationally-used Shotgun and Rocketboots, too, which are no problem to hit. It controls precisely, which is great, due to reason 5.

Reason 4: It’s got a great upgrade system. It’s always good to see a character improve, and the upgrade system in this game is balanced extremely well, at least to me. Every time you beat a level, there’s probably some upgrade you can unlock afterwards. The cost scales, but so do the number of times you have to try the level, and thus pick up extra loot, each time due to the difficulty. As such, I’ve almost always had something useful to unlock any time I went to the store, and that just feels fantastic. I’ve never had to grind for an item so far. Perhaps I’ll have to for the Max Level items, but at that point, I’m probably going to have to be grinding away at beating the hardest levels anyway, so I have no problem with that.

Reason 5: The game is old school hardcore and challenging, but not in a cheap way. Like the best action games, every time you die, you realize it was your fault, and that had you just thrown your hook a little earlier, or released it a little later, or deployed your Rockeboots right then, you would have made it. At the same time, every death makes you better at the course, and makes you feel like you can get farther next time, and you get to keep the loot you picked up, even when you die, so if nothing else, you’re working towards upgrades to make the level easier. I spent an entire day basically doing nothing but playing Hook Champ, only taking breaks to charge my iPod. It’s addicting in a really good way, and that’s because of the challenge and “one more try” mentality it puts on you.

Watch some videos of the game in action. Be convinced, and then BUY THIS GAME. It is so, so good. You won’t regret it.

Woah, hey, look, an IoTM review that isn’t on like… the last day of the month. Shocking.

But seriously, I have some reservations about this thing. KoL is the home of all kind of ridiculous shit. I can attack people with a butt tuba for crying out loud. This is not a very serious game. At the same time, I dunno. Nothing has quite disturbed me before than this month’s IoTM, the Stinky Cheese Ball. This is frustrating, because at the same time, it’s got a mechanic that I really like, and some really good effects on it. It’s an issue.

Why do I kind of hate this item? Well, it’s mostly because of the Stinky Cheese Diaper. The idea of equipping a diaper just… doesn’t sit right with me. Perhaps I’ve seen too many scary furry images in my day, but it just brings up associations I’d rather not bring up! (As per usual, though, if that’s your thing, have fun! As long as nobody is being hurt, fun is of the most importance. I’m just completely definitely against that particular fetish for myself.) Add that to the fact that it’s a diaper made of cheese? Well, uh, yeah. It just really unsettles me.
The kicker, though, is that this diaper is pretty seriously optimal. Unless you have Time Trousers, it is pretty well the easiest and best way to get +Rollover Adventures in the pants slot, a rare benefit. It’s also trivially easy to get them more effective than the Time Trousers, using the neat mechanic that I’ll get to in a second. Not only do I not like the idea of these things, but I’ll have to equip them every time I log off? Yeah, unfortunate.

Still, the mechanics of the Stinky Cheese Ball are actually really neat. It gets more pungent as you use it, and that increases the benefits of the items you can make out of it. It maxes out at 100 turns, but it’s still a very cool little mechanic. If I want the full benefit of the Diaper, which is +10 adventures, then I need to run a 100 turns of another item. Thankfully, they’re all pretty good, and can squeeze into your equipment somewhere. The “equippable at level 1” shield that is the Stinky Cheese Wheel seems like an overall good choice for many characters (I understand that most optimal players use Shieldbutt all the time, so having a good early game shield seems key, though I guess most would rather have the Pilgrim Shield.) and the sword and chefstaff are similarly useful to, at the very least, early-game characters. Probably the most useful way to charge up that diaper, though, is the Stinky Cheese Eye. Not only does it give you +item, which is, of course, what you want, but it also gives you one free Harold’s Bell a day in the skill it grants, called “Give Your Opponent the Stinkeye” This isn’t something I use very often? But I understand how it would be extremely useful, so it’s nice to have around.

Yeah, I think the Stinky Cheese Ball is a winner. While disgusting, I think every one of the items it can morph into has some very strong use. Obviously, the Diaper was the power item, but I can see me using all of them, unlike with, say, the Spooky Putty, which had several items of questionable use attached to the obscenely useful Sheet. This is probably an item you should pick up. Just don’t think too hard about the diaper, okay? Just… really. Don’t think too hard about the diaper.

We gathered, as we sometimes do, for board games. Only we have some different sorts of people about. Katie Essner, for one. And she brought a game I had never heard of called Luck of the Draw. Instead of whipping out one of my complicated gaming concoctions, we decided to go for this, and man, I’m glad we did. This game was so much fun, I’m going to have to grab me a copy of it sometime.

Basically, this game sort of combines Pictionary with a Balderdash or an Apples to Apples. You get a thing to draw, and everyone doodles a picture of it. Then you mix up the pictures, labeling them with little colored discs. Then you go to the deck of “qualities,” and flip over a few of those, and everyone votes on which drawings have these qualities. If you win votes, you get points. If you get points, you win. Simple.
The genius of the game, though, is that you do not know the qualities ahead of time, nor do the qualities have anything to do with what you are supposed to draw. You have free reign to do whatever the hell you want, and hope that your silly, insane version of whatever you’re supposed to be doodling hits a category like “Most Messy” or “Used Straightest Lines.” Or, if you’re going to draw pictures of cocks, you hope it hits something like “Most Masculine.”

Seriously, though, it’s this disconnection that lets you have a ton of fun with a good group of friends. Much like in Balderdash, it soon becomes a battle to make everyone react. Sure, you could draw a normal-looking bride, or you could draw a bride wearing a KKK outfit. Sure, you could draw a normal-looking daydream, or you could draw one with a man proudly exclaiming “MY COCK IS A BOAT!” Sure, it may be a bit juvenile, and the game works best when you at least try to draw something related to the category, but with a group who can take a joke, it is just so, so much fun.

Due to that being where the real fun is, though, the game does sort of break down like Balderdash. In my experience, after a few rounds of Balderdash, people just start writing hilarious, stupid things, and stop focusing on the goal of the game. This works the same way. You eventually have to shut it down because of that. But man, we had a really great time playing. Oh, here’s a little sample of our art, in “bad cell phone camera” vision. This is Jonathan’s entry for “Tongue-Tied.” Nice, huh? I doodled a Smoker from Left 4 Dead, but there just weren’t enough gamers at the table. Sad. But, again, that’s one of the things that makes this game so great. You don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy it. It’s just a flat-out good time. That’s awesome.

I honestly never expected to be so addicted to DJ Hero. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t played music games before. I’ve played a lot of them. A whole whole lot of them. Still, there is something about DJ Hero that really tapped into something I hadn’t really experienced, and I really, really enjoyed it. So much so that I’ve gotten the vast majority of the achievements, even the ones that required me to compete online. It’s just a really fun little game.

I blame a lot of this on the controller. Say what you will about the cost, and it is probably overcosted, but that controller really makes the game into something special. It feels REALLY good scratching on the controller, and having the physical little dial and crossfader turn potentially boring mechanics into really compelling ones. It takes a lot of work to master these sorts of things, and build up muscle memory on how much to move that slider and where exactly that knob is, but man, for me anyway, it was totally worth it. It feels like you are doing something completely and utterly different from playing guitar in Rock Band or playing a normal music game with your controller, and the game benefits greatly from it.

The music in the game itself is a whole bunch of Mashups, which are both good and bad. On one hand this, once again, makes the game feel extremely different: you haven’t played a game with such songs in it before. On the other hand, this gave them excuse to re-use songs in Mashups over and over again. Sure, every mix is a bit different, but it’s still much less fun playing 4 songs where the base is the same song time and time again.
Still, some of the mixes are really nice and catchy. There are some pretty awful ones, but it’s amazing seeing songs like Hollaback Girl turned into songs I can’t stop listening to. Of course, one of the main reasons I wanted the game was the vast support that Daft Punk threw behind the game, adding a whole bunch of music and mixes. These are by far the best, both their normal mixes, as well as some “Megamixes” where they just remix all their own songs together. And, of course, once I unlocked playable Daft Punk, I never used anyone else. Because Daft Punk fucking rules.

But yeah, I really loved DJ Hero. The main problem with it is that I have pretty well pulled every bit of entertainment out of it that one can. Unlike Rock Band, which works decently as a single-player game, but really comes together, and becomes something you constantly come back to, because you can bring friends into it over and over again, DJ Hero is a purely single player experience. Adding another Turntable wouldn’t really make things any more fun. The game is just complex enough that people can’t just pick it up and fiddle with it like they can a guitar or drum controller. There’s no community element to it. It’s just a game. A fun game, but a game, not a party game. Which is a shame.
That’s why I liked it so much, though. It was tailored for the exact situation I was in: sitting down, by myself, and just enjoying some music and some music gaming. It was a damn enjoyable experience. I hope they manage to fix all the rough edges and bring me a sequel. I’ll probably dust off the turntable and give that a solid playthrough as well, if they do.

The Steam Sale that Steam has been having over the holidays has been horrible. For people’s wallets. I was no different. One of the things I picked up, seeing as I had always meant to try it and it was only 10 bucks, was Champions Online. It was at a good price, and I continue to hope that, perhaps there will be some package deal with Star Trek Online so that when I play that with Spants, I can reactivate the subscription to this, just for fun. That might be wishful thinking.

How’s Champions? Well, let me tell you: it is an MMO.

I mean, I’m not completely knocking it for having that quality, because that is completely what it is. However, it’s not JUST an MMO. It is a complete recreation of City of Heroes. Like, totally. Only with a different backend and character building system. It’s honestly kind of amazing that Cryptic was okay making what seems like the exact same game.

Still, that means it brings over the really good qualities of City of Heroes, and that being the crazy character editor. You have so, so many options, and you can be incredibly creative. After some fiddling, I accidentally made my hero: Jackalope Girl. Just look at her. Isn’t she awesome? Here’s her amazing origin story.

Wandering outdoors during a horrible electrical hail storm, Jacqueline Lapin stumbled across a most disturbing and amazing sight: that of the mythical Jackalope mating ritual. The powerful killer rabbits were unable to let Jacqueline leave: No human was to see this awesome sight. However, they took pity on the poor girl, and made her one of them. Now imbued with the awesome power of Lepus Tempermentalus, Jacqueline has vowed to work to make the world safer for rabbit, antelope, and humankind.

Yeah, I’ve been having a lot of fun kind of creating her character. I’m picking skills that make sense for her too, instead of just whatever: She’s mostly just got kicks. Yep, she runs about and kicks people in the face. She also has Super Jump, of course. The customization is such that I can make her walk around on all fours, too, which is an awesome little touch.

Yeah, that kind of character creation was the very best part of City of Heroes, and it’s the best part of Champions.

Still, there are a few other things that are supposedly “different” from a normal MMO. The game is supposedly an “Action MMO,” but I don’t really see it. Sure, there is a block button, and some attacks you need to charge, but basically it just changes pressing one button and having it automatically fire to jamming constantly on one button instead. Not really a huge change. Maybe it makes a lot of difference in the late game? The one thing it does that I do appreciate is that it makes it pretty easy to escape combat. I can just jump away if I’m getting overwhelmed. That’s nice.
The one difference from other MMOs I’ve played that I do appreciate is that of many little instanced areas. I feel like it works really well. For example, you start in the main city of the game, Millennium City, but it’s under siege by aliens. This Alien Attack crisis is it’s own little instance: until you solve the crisis, you can’t go into the city proper, or do anything else. Similarly, I went to a place in the desert called Project Greenskin, which quickly fell under attack by mutants, who destroyed part of the facility and activated the emergency radiation quarantine barrier, and I needed to fix the problem before I could get outside it. I really like this. It adds a much stronger sense of story to the whole game, and it makes me, at least, feel more like a superhero: of course there are huge crises that demand my immediate attention! It makes it a lot cooler as a soloing experience.

The game is very soloable, too, which is nice. However, it probably is because you’re going to need to grind up many characters, due to the fact that it is very, very easy to completely ruin your character in character building, or so I hear, and that there is no complete respec. That’s kind of bullshit all around.

Still, I dunno, I’m enjoying my 10 dollar purchase. Will I subscribe to it on its own? Has it brought be back into the MMO fold? Nah. It’s a fine little distraction, though. I’ve no complaints. Though if you look at my Steam info to see how long I’ve played, know that Steam has messed up on the count! I haven’t really played that many hours. I’m not THAT crazy. Yet.

Sherlock Holmes is a pretty awesome movie. If you’ve seen the trailer, just know it pretty well delivers on exactly what it is advertising: You get a fun, action-filled ride that is humorous at places, and just plain awesome in places.

One could think that, with something called Sherlock Holmes, you might get a mystery movie, or a movie that’s, perhaps, a little more mental in its excitement. Something slower paced, where you’re always left guessing. This isn’t what this movie is at all. It is, perhaps, a superhero movie: an exciting, action-filled film that doesn’t really slow down, and is incredibly entertaining for it.

Robert Downey Jr. is completely excellent in the role of Holmes. He’s part asshole, part genius, and part high for the entire film, and it’s a pleasure to see it happen. I especially like how they break down his skill in combat, through showing him planning exactly what’s going to happen before it happens. That cements him as mental genius being his main skill, but still helps to explain why he can kick so much ass. It’s a really great choice, and it’s a nice variation on the now-tired bullet time, as the action sequences happen in slow-mo while he’s planning them, then are executed at full speed.

Watson, too, is played quite well by Jude Law. You’ve got this real chemistry between the two characters, which is almost a romance, but not quite. It’s obvious they’re very dedicated to each other, and Watson getting a woman is getting in the way of that, which Holmes doesn’t like. There’s just a lot of realistic tension between them. If I were some sort of horrible fanfic writer, I may interpret it as sexual tension. But it isn’t. It’s just two friends, sticking to what they believe in, and realizing it’s different from what the other thinks, and trying to get their point across without flat-out attacking the other. Watson is also, equally, a badass, which is wonderful to see after, you know, so many portrayals of him.

The supernatural plotline is a good choice, I think. I don’t necessarily connect Holmes with such things, and thus the whole way through, seeing a tale of Black Magic was quite surprising and engaging. Since this was so different from that stereotypical idea of Holmes (although Brer insists over and over again that it’s actually more accurate to the books) I kept wondering if they were actually going to have magic in this world. It didn’t seem out of place. In the end, though, they wrap up all the magical loose ends with scientific explanations fairly well, for the most part. It certainly did a better job of it than, say, Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, which I appreciated.

Overall, though, I thought this to be a quite great movie. I had a really fun time watching it, and it seemed to be, at least, mostly parental-approved as well, as they went and watched with me and Jonathan without issue. I recommend a viewing, if not in theaters, then on DVD. Also, I would expect to see a sequel, soon. It kind of railroaded in a cliffhanger story arc for that purpose. Granted, I didn’t feel it was TOO out of place, just some scenes, and I’m all about them making another. Just, you know, it was awkward at times. Not a dealbreaker, though. The movie was great.

I had the bright idea, during the last week of classes, that we should play a short DnD campaign over the Christmas break. “There will be plenty of time!” I told myself. “So much time!”

Well, it took like… 3 weeks to be able to come up with a date to do this thing, and even then, we barely got it going, and even even then then, we only got through one combat. But hey, it was DnD! Dungeons and Dragons! That’s cool, right?

This campaign was supposed to be a departure in many ways. For one, it was supposed to be the first time that Mr. Justin Spants, Esq. got to be the DM. I knew this meant a complete lack of seriousness to absolutely anything about the campaign, but I hoped it would be fun. I also set out to make a character completely different from what I normally play.

You see, I am stuck, in a way. I always play the healer. Now, I love, love, love playing that role, don’t get me wrong. But if I don’t expand my horizons a little, how can I know all there is to know about the game? How can I know what the other roles need from me, the healer? How can I tell someone else they’re doing it wrong if I don’t know how to do it right? All this, plus the fact that maybe it’s time to try to roleplay someone different brought me to this point.
I had my eyes firmly set on the “Controller.” Nobody in my group has ever really played a Wizard, or the like, and we’ve often been found needing them. So I decide, hey, I’m going to play a Wizard! Only I get this idea for a character: Reckless, Brash, and in love with combat. Someone who shoots first and asks questions later, and is incredibly laid back about her chosen profession. The more I thought about this, the less this seemed like a Wizard. I turned to a class I laughed at before, the Invoker, for the answer. Invoker seemed so… bland, but as my character came together, the idea of this Avatar of Kord who isn’t about evil, or anything, but is just itching to get into war, into more fights, due to anything that could be seemed as a good idea? Well, that fit. That could be fun.

There we were, at a city with a name so stupid I cannot even recall it. Avril Sparklewhisper (sister, apparently of Rachael Sparklewhisper, my Warlord), Willhelm the Staunch (my brother’s completely min/maxed tank of a fighter), and the single-y named Tao (Essner’s warrior monk Cleric Dragonborn guy) were all there. Yes, this was a gathering of one of the land’s greatest adventuring parties: Rumblefuzzz, with three z’s, because… well, I have no idea why, it’s just how it is.

There was a fire cave, or so some guy named Brandon said. In said very religious fire cave were some very bad people, and they had taken the place hostage, which was really killing tourism. We wanted to talk to Brendon, because he seemed like he would no more, but Brandon would have none of that. Dick. We went in to take some names and throw some lightning. That’s what Avril was going to do, anyway.

And I totally did! Having AoE spells really does change combat a lot, and certainly makes it easier. I was knocking down big groups with little trouble, and it was pretty cool. Jonathan, of course, was tanking like a pro, and had some pretty crazy anti-damage skills. Essner continues to not be able to roll a d20 to save his life. Seriously, I just don’t get it. He ALWAYS misses. He never deals any damage at all. Yet he can play Arkham Horror, and murder enemies he shouldn’t be able to hit any day of the week. The guy just cannot use a d20. I don’t know. They just hate him.

Anyway, the combat went on a little longer than it probably should have, which happens, especially when you’re new at the stuff and don’t know what you’re doing: balancing a combat is hard. Really hard. But we had some fun, and then people were done, so we split. Hopefully we can continue and do some more soon, but hell, as long as it took to schedule this one, maybe we can get to it around next December. Who knows.

In Twilight Heroes, the Heroes of Twilight have the option, for like another day or something, to purchase The Grouch’s Sack of Loot at the Wok of Stars, and thus increase the number of items they have that randomly makes more items everyday! Huzzah!

This item is almost kind of sort of a remake of the IoTM that started me buying Twilight IoTMs, the Pouch of Many Lost Things. It creates a collection of seasonal gifts, which you can then send to other players through a special menu, or use yourself. If you send them, you and your target receive a buff, this time called Holiday Cheer. It’s an extremely heart-y item, and I do love such things, so of course I had to pick it up.

However, I would go so far as to say that the gifts from the Grouch might be better, overall, than those from the Pouch. (HA! Rhyming!) The Sack of Loot is a constant supply of sugar, one of the two vectors to give yourself more playtime in the game. The Gumdrop, in particular, is the second-best sugar currently in the game right now, according to this handy chart. That’s power. Even though you can’t assure yourself to get many gumdrops in a day, that’s still a great gift to give someone, and a powerful item to be able to pull daily. The most powerful Pouch items are the Lost Phone, Lost Wallet, and Lost Toy. The Eggnog replicates the Lost Toy’s functionality in a debatably better way. Thus, the Pouch is only really better for the XP-grinding skills it grants. Which is a fine niche for it to be in, but man, I’d prefer the more fun stuff of the Sack, I’d think.

Yeah, this IoTM is a winner in my book. Granted, I have a kind of weird take on this stuff, sometimes, but eh, it’s awesome. You should get one, I think. And then you should gift me things, because that’s fun, too.

The KoL Item which is sold for only one month could be known as the Stocking Mimic. It’s a Ka-Razee familiar that doesn’t level up as per normal. CRAZY.

Basically, this familiar doesn’t have the normal 20 pound cap. It caps at 100, and only levels up when you feed it candy. However, once you use it for a few turns, it drops its familiar equipment, which makes it level up as per normal, which kind of defeats the whole interesting nature of the “feed it candy” thing. I mean, you know, people really concerned with speed would feed it candy? But this familiar is a Cocoabo. It’s not about speed. It’s about doing cool random shit. So… I guess I don’t really get what the point of that mechanic is. It seems like it would be more interesting to put something like that on a Fairy or something relevant to ascension. But what do I know.

Anyway, once you have the thing equipped with its Bag of Confections, it also sometimes drops candy with some cool buffs. You can, of course, feed the Mimic this candy if you really, really want to, but it seems like it would be more fun to enjoy the buffs? Why does the stupid sock need more candy, I ask you? It has a whole BAG of it. I mean, if nothing else, the Polka Pop seems really, really good, giving a very good +item and +meat buff. Belch the Rainbow from the Piddles gives some great Chromatic damage, and Full of Wist from the BitterSweet Tarts gives you more stats. These are all great buffs, and if nothing else, since people probably won’t be running Stocking Mimics all the time, seeing as they really don’t seem THAT optimal, you can probably sell all these candies off at a good price, one would think. Well, okay, a quick check shows that apparently BitterSweet Tarts aren’t selling for much, but the other two are probably worth selling, and hell, use those Tarts yourself. Level up quicker. Why the fuck not? Don’t give it to the stupid sock.

I look forward to having fun with this one. I like the randomness and whatnot, and the fact that it grabs its familiar equipment for me makes it likely that I will use this familiar on my next 100% Hardcore run. Still, it’s probably not a game changer. It’s just a fun little thing. Maybe when they adapt the “feed for weight” thing to something a little more relevant, you’ll have something that really changes the game up.

On Christmas Eve, I was in charge of entertainment. I had a couple ideas: I bought a copy of Up so we could watch it. But then, that was pushed to a Christmas Day movie down at the Grandparents. So what to do? Well, I finally made the parents play a board game I knew they could handle: The Choo Choo Train game, also known as Ticket to Ride.

It was an interesting experience. Explaining the rules didn’t go too bad: Ticket to Ride is a simple game, and that’s why I thought the parents would enjoy it without too much issue. It took them a few turns before they really figured out what they were doing, but they caught on pretty well.

They both played so differently. I must get my options options options lock from my mother, because she often had to really think about what she was doing, and worried about what she was playing, and where she was buying tracks. Dad, on the other hand, found a strategy and stuck with it, as soon as he figured out the game rules. It was just kind of cool. I love when I get to share my passions with my parents, and show them I’m not COMPLETELY crazy.

In the end, though, neither of them won. They didn’t lose by too much, though! Jonathan beat me by exactly 10 points, and got the Longest Train. I almost had him! Damn. But still, it was a great little family game… thing. I’m sure I’ll keep trying to make it happen in the future. That’s just how I roll.