The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I mean, helmets in RPGs suck. My characters look so lame in helmets. So my superhero in Twilight Heroes would look incredibly lame wearing this month’s IoTM, the Mask of Odysseus. Cause, you know, it’s a mask. Nobody could see my neat face! Maybe!

At first glance, this is just a worse Wolley’s Index or, of course Hero’s Cape. I mean, that’s 5% less Item Drop, and that’s the good stuff!

Of course, you can equip this WITH the other items, but maybe that’s beside the point.

Basically, I see this as a more fun Wolley’s Index. The Index is boring. It’s pure statistical benefit with no fun involved. The Mask does interesting combat things. Interesting combat things make me happy. I do smiling when I’m happy. Unless I am purely grinding for items or really, really want to be optimal, which probably won’t happen, I really can’t think of a reason why I would equip Wolley’s Index over this ever again for that reason.

Maybe I like things for stupid reasons. Maybe I should just work to be the best and have the biggest stats, etc.

But I’d rather do it with STYLE, man. Fucking style!

Even if that style involves a mask that I wouldn’t actually like to see on my character.
Style.

Do I even do these reviews anymore? Fuck if I know.

This month’s KoL IoTM offering is the Squamous Gibberer. It’s a clear Cthulhu reference, so that’s neato as well as torpedo. It potatoes. It whelps. It Wild Hares for extra turns. It breathes underwater.

Basically, it’s completely a win. I love Potatoes and Whelps, and the Wild Hare is one of two familiars whose functionality I liked and I wished I had. (The other being the Doppelshifter.) Now that I have this and the Tiny Costume Wardrobe, I’ve got every really rare thing I would pretend I would actually need. (Not that I’m going to turn down something else, if you offer it to me! I’ll take it!)

This is never really going to be bleeding edge, though, because potato and whelp action is just never going to be optimal. If you’re a good, optimal player, you shouldn’t need the healing or the attack blocking. You should be prepared for them anyway. The additional turns are likely not going to be worth it, either, especially when you’re needing to run turns with, say, your Baby Sandworm to get spleen turn items. Not to mention, apparently, before a buff, it was actually pretty close in power to the Cuddlefish. I still say it’s worth it for me, as the flavor is just fun as hell and I want that Wild Hare functionality, but maybe for the cheaper among us, just using the Cuddlefish would probably suffice.

But fuck, I’m happy with it. It’s a tiny Cthulhu that whispers in your ear, does the two familiar functions I love, plus gives me more turns. That’s a good Mr. Familiar to me. That’s the kind of familiar that’s going to make me want to make one more run in order to test it out, and that’s the exact reason I donate for these things.
So there.

Even though I am being good and renting games, I bought Brutal Legend. It was purely out of a love for Tim Schafer and wanting to support Double Fine in its endeavors. I had to give them money and the small boost in first week sales that I could. So, you know, I bought it. I paid my $60. I think I got what I was expecting out of the game, but honestly, I would have a difficult time suggesting you buy the game for full price. A long rental, or maybe when it drops to $30 or something. So much of the game is fantastic, and something you should see, but the actual gameplay just isn’t there.

Seriously, everything you would hope for on the visual and storytelling sides? Fucking fantastic. Jack Black does an excellent job as Eddie Riggs, though it probably helps that the role was pretty much written exactly for him. But he has tons, and tons, and tons of dialog. You do eventually hear repeats, especially if you do all the side missions, (Which I did, for some reason. I can’t really recommend them. They lack variety.) but still, there’s just so much, and there’s so much love put into those lines, that you can’t help but smile. Even the armies in the multiplayer, which you don’t use at all in the single player, all have tons of lines of dialog that they say while they fight. It’s amazing. The visuals, similarly, are fantastic. Tim Schafer had said that his plan was to make it so that, no matter where you are in the game world, it looks like a Metal Album cover, and it totally, totally does. The designs are incredibly strong.

Still, the gameplay doesn’t really hold up. Psychonauts was weak in parts: You could tell they focused more on the look, story, and whatnot than the gameplay. At the same time, it was competent all the way through. Brutal Legend is not nearly as much. You have this huge world with no Fast Travel which, honestly, there is just no excuse for not having in single player games these days. It makes certainly missions really quite annoying.
The combat, when one on one, is very simplistic, and doesn’t offer the strong feel of something like a God of War. When it’s brought out into the Stage Battles, it’s like an RTS, sort of, but not really, but it expects it to be played like one while at the same time telling you not to play it like one? It’s very confusing, and not very intuitive, and it just flat out doesn’t work at times. You either just trounce your opponent with little resistance, or you are totally destroyed because the computer is doing multitasking that is nearly impossible for you to do as an actual human player. It’s just rarely any fun at all.

Overall, though, it’s charm won out for me. I love charm and storytelling in games, and this is, by far, some of the best around. It’s a shame the game underneath it was just a little sub-par. It’s worth experiencing, and playing, but it’s unfortunately not a full-price experience. Sorry, Tim! That’s just what I think. It was a riskily ambitious game that crashed a bit.
Still, it does show that Double Fine has some excellent people working for it. Hopefully they’ll be able to rein in their ambitions a bit more on the next project they undertake and really make a gaming classic. I know they have it in them.

Time Hollow is pretty well exactly what I thought it would be.

It’s an adventure game that’s on the DS. You click on things, and are given descriptions, and you solve puzzles! There’s a story involving a pen that can draw holes in time. It’s pretty well the perfect rental if you’re an adventure game genre fan, and that’s exactly what I did with it. I rented the shit out of it.

I didn’t beat it, though, because it creates several affronts to fun that kept me from wanting to move forward.

One, the entire game is a game of “Find the Cutscene.” You literally have to tap on everything until specific events occur. You can have the solution to a problem way, way before the game wants you to have it, and it will either ignore you, or you will be told you need to come back later, with no real reason given why that’s the case.
Two, the game is full of tiny little miss-able, important items. There are also tiny little things you wouldn’t notice that you have to find to move forward. What’s worse, the game makes a “mechanic” of this, where you have to use the D-pad to pan the screen left and right to see small corners of the scenes for absolutely no reason other than to make the game more difficult.
Three, everyone’s name is an awful clock pun. Every. Single. Name. I could deal with that in a better game, but ugh.

So I sent it back around halfway through. I was having to FAQ my way through it’s generic anime sort of plot, and it just didn’t seem worth my time to keep going. Plus, Gamefly said they were sending me Scribblenauts. Mmm, Scribblenauts.

So yeah, I can’t recommend the purchase unless you are the more die-hard of adventure game fans. But eh, you could rent it if you were really bored. It’s certainly better than, say, Miami Law.

So, David Foster Wallace was a name I had heard of, vaguely, before. I knew I’d heard of him from somewhere. But I got into a conversation with Airek at the office, and he gives me this note, telling me to go watch this Youtube video of him. I put it in my pocket, set it on my desk, and promptly forget about it.
A week or so later, I find the note and, having nothing in particular to watch while I eat, I used the information to pull up this video.

About, oh, 28 minutes and 2 seconds later, I’m on Amazon, ordering every book of essays by him I can find.

I fucking LOVE a good essayist, and especially if you watch that video, you’ll know that David Foster Wallace was one. Those little tidbits are so fun, and so well realized, I can’t help but love them.

A couple days later, I go up to Airek and I thank him for telling me to watch that, because it was awesome. And then he tells me David Foster Wallace killed himself.
That kind of put a damper on things. It’s a shame. He had skills. One would assume he could have paid bills with them. But yeah… sad.

Anyway, we’ll see how me reading those books goes. I’m excited! But I also suck at the whole “Reading books” thing. So we’ll see how well it all goes.

Back on Talk like a Pirate Day, Steam had a sale, as they usually do. What was on sale? Why, only the most pirate-y games! This included The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition, a game which I had been meaning to pick up anyway. So I did. Then, eventually, I finally got around to playing it, even though I have two whole episodes of Tales of Monkey Island sitting there, unplayed! I am so awesome sometimes.

So how was it?

There were some weird decisions made in this game. They decided to re-draw all the graphics, but not re-animate them? They just redrew the frames. So although the art looks great, it also animates like shit. They then decided to totally re-do the interface on the PC version (mostly to make the XBLA version easier to play, I’m sure) which made the game actually harder to play, just so they could fill the entire screen with graphics. I mean, yes, the whole SCUMM interface is pretty archaic, but there were multiple puzzles that were made HARDER by the new interface, just because there was a time element and it was so cumbersome to interact with. I actually had to hit F10, which switches the entire game back to the original graphics (a nice touch) in order to complete these puzzles. That’s kind of bullshit.

Still, it was great to visit a classic, and see where this series I love quite a bit came from. I had tried it a long while ago, back on a Monkey Island Collection disc, but I just couldn’t get into it. I need voices in my Adventure games! I just suck like that. Luckily, Lucasarts did a great job getting everyone they needed to get in on this game, and it sounds great. Although I do have to admit I was surprised to learn that I agree with Chris Remo on the voices. In this early game, Guybrush was not, by default, a lovable cartoon character that is voiced so well by Dominic Armato. Depending on what you chose, he could very well be a very serious guy. There are almost always options for being an actual swashbuckling adventurer as opposed to a comedy guy, something that’s mostly gone in something like Curse of Monkey Island. As such, Armato’s voice does potentially detract from the game a little. Not enough to ruin the fun, but it’s interesting to note. I could definitely see how someone who played the original back in the day might not like it.

Those are pretty well the only drawbacks to the game, though. The game, while old, is still amazingly clever. Even though Insult Swordfighting had been iterated on several times in future games, the original was still quite a lot of fun and funny to read. The text in the game is very strong comedy, and there are only one or two bullshit puzzles in the whole thing, and those I solved with just a couple of presses of the new in-game hint system, which does a pretty good job of keeping you from having to go to a walkthrough if you’re stuck.

So yeah, I totally got my $5 worth. As Guybrush says at the end of the game, Never pay more than $20 for a computer game. So I didn’t. If you’re in the least interested in the history of the series, you owe it to yourself to pick it up for $10 or whatever. It’s a good time. Now here’s hoping they get Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge Special Edition underway at some point. Cause once again, I’d love to play through it and see more history, but damn. Voices, man! I need voice acting!

I think I’m almost more savvy a consumer. Almost.

I remember back in the day, when I was working as a janitor and was getting paid to essentially play GBA and read Manga, and I’d buy so much Manga. So, so much. (Now I’m down to Yotsuba!& and xXxholic. And, I guess, Hourou Musuko, though that isn’t translated officially so I’m not buying it, perse. Oh, how I’ve changed.) I’d walk into Waldenbooks and they would have a sign that said “Buy four books of manga, get one free!” And I’d do it. Every time. Even when I only had, say, 2 titles I wanted. I’d buy five. Every time. I couldn’t pass up the deal, even though it was a shitty deal, and I was getting books I didn’t really want. I was awesome.

Now, Toys R Us and Amazon are both having Buy 2, Get 1 Free game deals, and I keep looking and looking for what to buy, and I can never find three. Instead of just buying something I didn’t need, I have, gasp, not purchased any games.

I’ve worried somewhat, since starting Gamefly, that I haven’t really cut down my game purchases THAT much. But then, when things like this come along, and I realize all the titles I could buy are all titles I was just going to rent, and there’s no good reason to change that plan? That really is like… $100 or so I’ve saved. That is savings. I am saving. I am doing better.
Probably.

Man, I continue to feel like I got really lucky having gotten into the Lucasarts adventure games and such. Every time I really get into looking at these Sierra adventure games, I go “Man, I am so glad I never tried to play one of those.” Well, okay, I tried to play the time travel Space Quest, but that went really shitty, so… makes me glad I didn’t continue to try.

Anyway, I watched a pretty good LP of King’s Quest V awhile back, and it made me feel the same way. This post is mostly to say, hey, feel free to check that out here. It’s pretty good.

But yeah, goodness. Some of the stuff in that game? So completely dumb. And I understand this was the start of games that had voice actors, but goodness.
Goodness.

Maybe if I’d been with King’s Quest the whole time. Maybe. But man, that game…
Just watch it, and be amazed at how random and nonsensical it is.

I do feel kind of bad, though. I saw a link to this LP in the thread for Sky Render’s LP of the game, and it’s probably going to make me not read it. Sky Render has done some awesome LP’s of this series of adventure games, called the Kyrandia series, that I didn’t even know existed. He’s pretty awesome. So you should give his LP a look, too. Or at least go back and read his other ones. They’re also worth your time.

There was this one time when the internet went out for a whole 10 minutes, and I got so mad that I went to Barnes and Noble. Once there, I spent too much money on books. One of the books I bought was Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders, because I seriously, seriously did like that story “Jon”, and wanted to read more.
Then, I read the book.

I’ll admit that this is the first book I’ve read solely for fun in… fuck, I have no idea. Since the last Harry Potter? (No, actually, I bet it was When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris) And that was really more out of an obligation at that point, since the series had gotten so bad. I am such a horrible English Major… no, wait… English Grad Student now, I guess.
One of the reasons I felt like I could read this book for fun is because it’s a really small book. It’s not even 200 pages, and it’s not like the text is tiny of anything. One of the reasons I rarely read, besides not being willing to invest the time into a book I won’t like and then not knowing what I will and won’t like, is because it FEELS like this huge time commitment. Which I know is a lie, especially because I read so fast. But I dunno. Having a small book of short stories just felt right for my own entertainment, so I went for it.

The book itself consists of a few short stories and then a novella. The main theme of the whole thing seems to be “amusement parks.” The only story that doesn’t really fit this theme is “The 400 lb. CEO,” but it can almost count because they go to this crazy theme restaurant. Sort of. When I say “amusement parks,” though, think places much more surreal and fucked up. We’re talking the kind of places that would have “SafeOrgy” rooms and exhibits where an actual plate glass window is installed into a living, breathing cow so kids can see the insides. Those kinds of amusement parks.

I feel that nothing in this collection was anywhere near as good as “Jon,” which is a shame. That one just came together on such excellent conceptual and character arc levels. These stories tend to be of the same quality in concept, but seem to lack the extremely strong character arc that pays off in the end. The ideas and strange worlds are mostly worked through, but the characters showing us these worlds rarely get a satisfying conclusion. The best in this regard was probably “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz,” but it was also the story with, perhaps, the least strange setting, so maybe that had something to do with it.
I did learn, however, that a lot, though not all, of the qualities that make the writing in “Jon” so offbeat are more elements of Mr. Saunders’ style than elements of Jon’s voice. Not that Jon doesn’t have a distinct voice, but it was simultaneously neat and kind of sad to learn he just normally writes like that. I love his voice! It’s neat! But it was also cooler when it was a very specific thing he adopted just for one story, you know?
I also learned Mr. Saunders really likes the work Milquetoast. Seriously, he used it like.. at least 4 times in this book. That’s rather a lot for a word like that.

Still, George Saunders is a really good writer. He’s great at creating internal monologue and has that excellent voice and neat ideas. I find myself coming away from the book a little frustrated, but that’s simply because so much of his work is so high quality that the flaws stand out. His characters in this book, especially in the novella at the end, really never get proper closure. The ride, however, is completely fun for all of them. You have a good time reading them. But it just feels like such a waste when, for example in the novella “Bounty” (Are novellas in quotes or italics? I’ll have to look that up sometime) the huge road trip that showed so much about this nearly apocalyptic world is ended in about a page and a little change. The main character makes it to his goal, but nothing really becomes of it. It was still a fun read, but it’s frustrating, because it would have been a significantly greater read still if it had paid off better.

I guess that’s essentially what I think about this book. Many great ideas that certainly could have paid off better, but was still fun enough to experience. I’m sure if you weren’t the kind of person who cares so deeply about characters above all else, like I am, you’d probably be in heaven with the world building of these stories, especially the novella. If it sounds interesting, certainly give it a read. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. But I’m not going to go crying out all over the place that you should check it out, either.

I bought another one of his collections, too, called Pastoralia. Maybe that one will be stronger? I suppose we’ll see sometime soon. I’m sure I’ll let you know when I read it.

In watching Zombieland, I learned something. I apparently subconsciously think that dark humor is not “genuine” or “real” humor.

I mean, that’s not true. Dark Humor can be totally and completely awesome. I enjoy dabbling in it from time to time. It also seems like a decent fit for a movie called Zombieland, as well. I mean, you’re obviously going to have some gore (And Zombieland doesn’t pull too many punches in that department) and death and whatnot. Dark Humor seems likely. Zombieland didn’t really go that way, though. What you find is a strong, character-based comedy set to the background of a Zombie Apocalypse for no reason other than Zombies are hot right now, I guess. (Also, why did I just capitalize Zombie Apocalypse?)

Seriously, the cast is very small. Just the four survivors. But they all do a really great job in being entertaining, but real people, which is just the perfect sort of combination. Tallahassee, Woody Harrelson’s character, is really the most “cartoonish” of the bunch, and is indeed the source of many of the strongest laughs in the film. At the same time, the movie makes sure to make him a real human being, and does so in a way that doesn’t seem all that forced or tacked on. It’s actually kind of nice, really.

So yeah, instead of humorous, over-the-top zombie kills, you have entertainment based on strong characters interacting. And it works well. And it involves a great cameo by a fucking awesome guy. So I totally, totally dug it.

A final note: They’re pushing a line as quotable in the ads, it seems, that of the mantra of “Nut up or Shut up.” This is not a memorable line. Seriously, one of the best lines of dialog in the entire movie is “Let me start the first part of my three-part apology by saying that you are a wonderful human being,” and I can totally see THAT being a quotable line. Conversations of Balls works alright in the movies, but man, who would actually say that?
Okay, so, people would. But nobody I know. Thankfully. Besides Spaeth. But he would probably say something completely different about balls.

I’m done now.