The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, Telltale sent me an e-mail saying that the last episode of Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures, the Bogey Man, was out! And as I’m downloading it, I’m like “Wait a second, I never played the third episode.” So I did. It’s called Muzzled!. It was fun. I also got bonus points for spotting Jake Rodkin of Idle Thumbs fame in the credits.

But yeah, I’ve talked in previous Wallace and Gromit blog posts about how Telltale tends to have a very clear act structure. However, I was kind of sad that they dropped actually pointing that out in this episode. I thought it worked very well just giving in and bringing attention to it during The Last Resort. There’s nothing too out of the ordinary from the act structure in this one, besides one or two deviations, or at least things that I noticed.

First off, the other two games had you starting out as Wallace, in order to complete this or that to, you know, set up the wacky situation. This dispenses with that, and you only control Wallace in the third act, which is kind of interesting. It works, of course, but I’m always more of a fan of controlling someone who can tell me helpful and hopefully humorous things about what I click on, so I’m not always a big fan of using Gromit the whole time. So that’s a deviation. There’s also a fairly big deviation story-wise, in that there is a villain in this episode. That’s not a spoiler or anything, it’s, you know, kind of completely painfully clear the first time you see him, not to mention the title of the episode is Muzzled!. This too, is an interesting deviation, because suddenly the puzzles revolve less around dealing with Wallace’s wacky hijinks and more around, you know, normal adventure game stuff. It’s a nice break, but perhaps not as true to the source material.

In any case, the main thing I wanted to point out is that there is a very clear example of the game training me for later. A good example of what I’m talking about would be Portal. It trains you to deal with future, more complicated situations, by starting you with easy situations, and then introducing an extremely similar, but more complicated one, so you can see what else you can do. This is the first time I can recall a Telltale game really doing that, and awhile it’s not going to go unnoticed by anyone, the fact that the solutions to the puzzles in the first act become the building blocks to solutions in the second act lets those puzzles be a little bit more complex, which is certainly appreciated.

Still, the lack of Wallace for most of the game cuts down on the amount of dialog. I mean, I don’t doubt that it takes a lot of hard work to keep the game working as intuitive as it is without a protagonist that can talk, but at the same time, I really do take these Telltale episodes as interactive little TV shows or whatever. I really am mostly there for the dialog, as the puzzles can be fun, but are rarely so awesome as to carry it by itself. So I worry this one might end up being the weaker episode of the set. Still, it’s certainly fun. More fun than, say, the Bone games.
(Aside: Along with my purchase of Tales of Monkey Island, I got any Telltale game free. Well, the only one I didn’t own was The Great Cow Race, the second Bone game. I’ve tried to play it, I really have, but it is so painfully obvious how far Telltale has come. Their games are so much more polished, and so much more fun, and the fact that I’ve never read Bone makes me have basically 0 interest in what’s going on. So when I say this is the weakest of the Wallace and Gromit games, it’s still much more interactive, well-paced, and fun than that. Probably better than many of the first Sam and Max episodes, too.)
So yeah, play it. And I’ll get to The Bogey Man soon. Maybe. You never know.

So my latest Gamefly conquest was Punch-Out!! (the two exclamation points are important, apparently) the sorta-remake sorta new game for the Wii.

Note that I didn’t even try the motion controls. Just the first match with Glass Joe showed me that it would be a tiring and inaccurate exercise that I wanted nothing with. I played it NES style, all the way.

And man. For all the talk about “looks good for a Wii game” that people throw around, Punch-Out!! looks gorgeous. I’d be completely happy with graphics like these on the 360. The characters are so expressive and alive, and they get all injured and everything… it is just fantastic to watch. It just goes to show you that a good visual style trumps millions of polygons any day. At least in my opinion.

As far as the gameplay goes, though, there isn’t much to say. If you’ve played the original Punch-Out! then you’ve played this game. It controls exactly the same, and it handles just as wonderfully. I haven’t played the original in long enough to remember, but from what I’ve heard, the various boxers you know and love act similarly to what you remember, but are different enough to still challenge. In the end, though, it’s one part puzzle, one part memorization, and two parts reflexes. There’s always that time period of figuring the boxer out, and what you have to do, and that is certainly fun. But in the end, it all comes down to training yourself to make those dodges at the right times.

It’s because of those reflexes that I didn’t “beat” the game. I mean, I beat the game. I beat Mr. Sandman, I got myself a Title Belt. But then the game throws out “Title Defense Mode.” This is a great idea: it’s the same boxers, but their weaknesses are gone, or modified. Title Defense Glass Joe murdered me completely. Granted, it was clear that I could beat him, if I kept at it. I knew it was possible. But I also knew that, a few fighters down, would come a boxer that I could not beat without so much frustration and memorization that it wouldn’t be fun.
So I let Glass Joe keep the belt. The guy deserves a break.

In the end, I’m very happy to have gotten to play Punch-Out!!. It really is a lot of fun, and fans of the old school game really should give it a shot. But unless you really, really, really enjoy memorizing these fights, or are just, I don’t know, much much better at your reaction time than I am, this is really a rental. A really, really awesome rental, but a rental none the less. I rented it, I’m done with it, and I am happy.

Gods, just look at this shit. How can I wait for Beatles Rock Band?
HOW CAN I WAIT?

It’s just going to be so intense. So intense. So intense.
I apologize for the excitement, but it is endless.

But man, it just opens up a whole new can of worms. After watching that video way more times than was healthy, I went into a happy dream world of September 9th (Okay, probably more like September 11th, (NEVAR FORGET) since I’m going to be getting it from Amazon.) where I am rocking the shit out with my friends and then, it hit me: Are my instruments up to snuff?

I mean, I own at least 4 plastic guitars. But my GH2 one is broken, Essner keeps claiming that my Rock Band one is broken too, though I don’t believe him. My GH3 wireless guitar has this battery that is never charged and fills me with anger, and my drum kit… well, I’ve had to replace the pedal on it again, and it’s probably going to break again, and if we get back into Rock Band really hardcore, which I hope happens with the Beatles coming out, I just can’t believe that the drum heads won’t break again either.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that it would be nice to have a new Drum Kit and a new Guitar. But is that really worth paying $250 bucks for the big pack? Man, I don’t know. And the individual Beatles guitars, though really fucking cool, are $90 by themselves. I have to keep my mind on my money more than ever before. That is a lot of cash.

Just got to stay positive. Of course everything will work. It’ll all be fine. And if it isn’t? Stores are desperate to unload all of these plastic instruments. Surely I can find a cheap guitar somewhere or something. It won’t be as cool as the Beatles replica guitars, but what are you gonna do.

But seriously, man… I have to keep waiting for this. No fair.

So, did you hear? Magic 2010: the 11th Edition that comes out in 2009 is out! In 2009! Already! Wow! So, you know, that means we’ve gotta draft it. I mean, we just had to, right? So last Tuesday, we got to it.

I walked into the draft claiming I was going to force Black for no reason. Jonathan was claiming he was going to force opening three Planeswalkers. We all claimed that Justin Spaeth was going to take all the Lightning Bolts. (Gods, seriously, I am so pissed at Wizards for reprinting that card. Ugh.) Two of these things came true. Jonathan only opened one Planeswalker.

But seriously, I’m not too sure what I was thinking. Spaeth opened his first pack, and announced his rare was Royal Assassin. Obviously he is going to be running Black, and he did. It was really kind of stupid for me to force Black. And yet, Doom Blades, Tendrils of Corruption, and Assassinates kept getting passed to me, and I couldn’t let them go. Even though I was joking, I ended up forcing Black.
Still, it worked out well for me. I ended up B/u with a huge amount of removal. Sure, I was counting on a bunch of small fliers to get my damage in and whatnot, but eh, such is a tried and true Black/Blue strategy.

And it worked really well, actually. I was kind of a complete dick to everyone, removing thing after thing. Bam Bam Bam! I did some major ass-kicking. Jonathan was having some serious Mana-flood issues that really kind of ruined his surprisingly strong-looking mill deck unluckily, and so I beat him easily. Spaeth’s Black/Red deck gave me some trouble, but in the end I managed to get enough evasion to defeat him in some tense rounds. Essner was the only one I didn’t best. He had too much lifegain for my little creatures sneaking in after I murdered things, and always managed to turn the game around after I had him down to like three, and then he regained some life… it was unfortunate.
So I went 2 and 1. But oh well, I was sort of the winner since I tied with Spaeth, and I beat him. Or so we said. We don’t care too much about wins and losses. (says the person who just spent several sentences talking about wins and losses.) It’s all about building that deck and then seeing it actually work well. In that case, I completely succeeded. The deck really felt like a well-oiled machine. I did a great job this time around.
Almost makes me want to build a deck like it. But that would really get me hated right off the table.

But yeah, Magic 2010: the 11th Edition that comes out in 2009 really does seem like a pretty neat core set. The new stuff keeps it fresh, and it really seems designed for more interesting draft play than previous core sets. Previous core set drafts didn’t seem nearly as dynamic and action-packed as this one did. They tended to be more of a plodding forward kind of game without big swings. In that regard, I pretty well think this set is a success.
Then again, I’ve only played one draft. Who knows. Heh.

I was so excited about Tales of Monkey Island. So much so that I threw down my $35 the very day it was announced. No waiting. No nothing. Then what did I do?

Why, I waited most of a month before actually playing the first episode, The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, of course. C’est la vie.

BUT HOW WAS IT?

Telltale has its own brand of humor, and while I’ve always enjoyed it, it is different than that of Monkey Island. So there was a little worry there. I feel like what ended up was a little mixture of both. It feels like Monkey Island, in no small part due to the vocal talents of Dominic Armato, who is still wonderful as Guybrush. His delivery and most of what Guybrush says is spot on. Completely spot on. Everyone else is a little more Telltale than Monkey Island. Still, I didn’t mind. I very much enjoyed all the humor.

It was also obvious that they kicked the puzzles up a notch from their normal fare, as well. This… I liked less so. Normally I rarely have to look up a solution in a Telltale game. At most, I look up a hint for one puzzle. I looked up three different solutions to stave off frustration in this episode. This didn’t ruin the fun, as I do it for the conversations and whatnot, but man, I wasn’t expecting that. One puzzle, especially, I know I NEVER would have figured out without looking something up. Not going to spoil anything, but it was just so non-intuitive.
I mostly blame all of this on the hint system. Normally, Telltale’s hint system is really good. At the basic setting, if you’re standing around in one place trying to solve something, your character normally throws out humorous little quips that give you hints. I appreciate that. But it just seemed weirdly balanced in this game. It kept CONSTANTLY giving me hints on the treasure maps, which I needed no help with, and giving me no hints at all on the puzzles I was stuck on. Something seemed off. But hopefully they’ll get that fixed in the next episode. They’re good at that.

But seriously, the Treasure Maps. I have to agree with the press’s take: There was absolutely no reason to pad out the game length by making me solve multiple maps like that. That was pretty silly. I mean, I don’t mind it being the little separate minigame outside the game for little downloadable prizes? I think that’s a neat idea. But I didn’t really need to do that twice. Wandering about in a maze once is enough for me, thanks.

But yeah, Monkey Island is back in a wonderful way, thanks to Telltale. Pretty well the only way it could be better is if they spend obscene and non-sensible amounts of money on 2D animation, and somehow got Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert back to write the whole thing. But those weren’t going to happen, and I’m okay with that. I very much look forward to the future episodes. (Even if it’s kinda bullshit you can’t buy these episodes a la carte… doesn’t affect me though.)

My latest Gamefly rental and playthrough was that of Prince of Persia. Not the old one. The new one that they decided to just name Prince of Persia. You know, the baby game where a magical girl saves you every five seconds so you don’t die? That one?

It was a pretty damn fun game.

I mean, sure, it was shitty of them to lock the real ending behind 10 dollars of DLC. (which I didn’t even try for) Their combat system could have used a significant amount of work, seeing as it was extremely repetitive, and repeating 4 extremely similar bosses over and over certainly didn’t help that.

But it was fun. Really.

I’ve talked before about how awesome it is to play a game that is just fun, and doesn’t try to be retardedly challenging or whatever. That is pretty well exactly what Prince of Persia is. You are never in any risk of losing any more than maybe a minute’s progress at any point in time. You can just sit back and enjoy jumping like crazy along walls and swinging from poles and all that stuff. If you miss a jump, no big deal. You start back the last time you were on solid ground, and besides one or two locations, the game is smart enough to give you areas of solid ground at regular intervals, so you never fall too far behind.
The game also does characterization mostly right. Although it would have been better to have the conversations happen while actually playing the game, the conversations between the Prince and Elika are quite entertaining. They have a very nice, fun banter going, and you’ll listen to them because they’re so much fun. What’s more, the animations also do a very good job of conveying their relationship. Having the Prince excuse himself as he moves past Elika on a ledge or pulling her up on his back as he scales a wall is just these little simple things that make them seem a bit closer. I think it’s rather neat. Add into that the cliffhanger ending, which is handled with game mechanics in a very clever way, and you have some fairly solid, if not particularly deep characters. They’re a lot of fun.

Overall, though, I’m glad I never bought Prince of Persia. I think I might have been a lot harder on it had I paid $60 for it or whatever. But it is a damn fun experience, and it is completely worth your time to play.
Unless you’re, I dunno, someone who demands that every game be like I Wanna Be The Guy. Then you’re probably out of luck.

Something was wrong.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya pretty well single-handedly got me back into anime. The first season was so excellently put together with a splash of well-applied avant-garde that really drew you in and made you interested, not to mention welcomed multiple viewings. And dammit, I did watch it multiple times, I picked out all kinds of little things in it, and then I sat back and I said “Woah. Here is something great. Here is something that not only lives up to the incredible hype and fandom it has, but in some ways even surpasses it. Amazing.”

Then there was a season 2, and it started sneakily, in the middle of reruns of season 1. Ha! It was back!

And then came Endless Eight.
It started out innocently enough. A rather boring little episode. But then it aired again, only a little different. And then again and again and wheeeee, Endless Motherfucking Eight!

I’m not going to argue for or against it. I’m sure internet people are doing that all over. But fuck, my blog is so insular. So fucking insular. No, I want to figure out why the fuck I keep watching it, and why I have the reaction to it that I do, and that reaction is…
Well, no reaction.
Honestly, I don’t much feel one way or another on this one. It’s not that I have some endless trust of the people making the show. They had a lot of trust, but by the fourth time I was watching the same episode remixed, that has been completely squandered. I can’t even imagine a way in which this stupid stunt could pay off, much less pay off in the same way that the awesome stunt of Season 1 did. It’s not that I think it’ll be worth it.
And it’s certainly not that it’s entertaining. So little changes from episode to episode that it really doesn’t seem worth my time.

Yet I watch and I watch and I watch.

I love these characters, and I love the world, and the show is really well animated. And I mean, it’s not like they’re reusing shots or anything for these episodes. I keep watching to see what happens to them. I keep going because I want them to break out of this stupid plot bullshit that the animation company has set them in and get back to what made the series great. Honestly, I highly doubt they won’t, after this, come back, in “apologetic” fashion, with something full force that will wow me.

But why stick with the Eight? Why not wait until it’s over? Is it just to be part of the crowd? To be “in” on the time when they pranked their viewing audience or whatever?
Maybe.

Fuck, I dunno.

(If I was really stupid, I’d post this blog post with minor edits for the next few days, Luckily, I am not a complete moron.)

In July, the IoTM of the Month for the game called “Kingdom of Loathing” is the Bag o’ Tricks. I really like this one. Really like it. Yep.

First off, just look at those base stats for equipping it. +item? Yes please. And the MP regen and +spell damage just go great alongside a Chefstaff. It makes the early turns of a Mysticality class go so, so much easier, because you actually have the MP to cast spells and deal some damage with them. It’s completely worth equipping for spellcasters even without the other effects, although it perhaps wouldn’t be worth a Mr. A without them.

Probably the most powerful element of the bag is extending 5 random buffs on your person once a day. That can really save you some money, and is really fairly neat. It’s unfortunate that you have to unequip the bag to use this ability, as that can mean a lot of wasted clicks. Still, the bleeding edge Softcore players probably aren’t going to be actually equipping it anyway, when they could shieldbutt their way to victory with a Pilgrim Shield, so this benefit is probably all their going to get out of it. It’s probably worth it.

But the ability in combat is what impresses me the most. Opening the Bag o’ Tricks is a free action, and not only does it give you some strong buffs (+meat, +items, or +ML (Which I don’t have to remind you essentially equals +stats), depending on how you use it, but it also is a free attack every once and awhile. Dealing a free 40 damage every few turns really does help make annoying fights easier, and I rather love the Bag for that.

Basically, the Bag o’ Tricks is the perfect softcore item for me. It makes the game so much easier and more fun while giving me some new systems to fiddle around with and think about, to keep the game from being boring. I doubt it’s bleeding edge, and I rather doubt it will be talked about much outside of this month (although Val did lay out a complicated way where the bag is optimal, at least until you use up your charges of getting Chihuahua Underfoot) but I’m sure I will be loving the crap out of it on subsequent softcore Mysticality runs. I sure as hell am loving it all over the place on this run.

Over in the land of Twilight, the current garment that is all the rage is the Three-Speed Bicycle Shorts. This stylish pair of shorts comes in three flavors: First gear, Second Gear, and High Gear.

This is a solid item. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll be able to enjoy the real neatness of these pants until we get into some sort of ascension/retcon environment, though, as the neat thing is that they level up with you. Every five levels you get to boost the pants into the next gear. But how are they individually?

Well, the Second Gear is obviously the weakest. HP regen, while useful, just isn’t something I need right now, as an Elementalist. I never turn down HP regen, but I never look for it. Classes without a good healing skill could probably benefit more from it, though. There’s nothing wrong with the time reduction, though, on par with other equipment in that slot, and the +to hit is never going to be a hindrance or anything. It’s useful, but unimpressive. You’ll equip it for the -time spent and nothing else.

At the top end, you have an item that is clearly better than, say, the Xentrium Breeches, and gives some all-important PP regen. This is how I’ve been using them, and they really are quite good. Unless you’re looking for item drops, they are probably better than, say, the Amazing Technicolor Dreampants, though the random nature of the pants makes them more fun, to me anyway. Also, the fact that they’re crazy rainbow pants. But yeah, you’d be doing pretty good at most level 10 and above content in these things, perhaps disregarding the super-high level stuff with the dreamer’s clock.

It’s the First Gear that’s really the unknown quantity here. I just don’t know how speedrunning in this game is going to work. It certainly seems like +XP is going to be very useful to people starting a run, but I just have no way of knowing how useful, since the game doesn’t really have any sort of speedrun community or anything at the moment. Granted, at level 1, -5 seconds is a huge boon, and being able to dodge hits probably is to. It’s just… I don’t know. Anyone in the game who is serious enough to donate for these pants is probably way past the level while the first gear is useful, and without people to test it, who knows if it’s actually as good as it looks. Is this and the Letter Shirt or sports bra better than, say, the Exosuit at early levels? I just have no idea.

Still, this is probably worth your time. It’s got options, options, options involved with it, and that is something I am always down for, and it does have effects that are better than what’s out there. It is likely worth your time.

So hot off my Mah Jong Anime Kick, I decided to watch another Mah Jong anime. I was told that Akagi was not only better, but the best Mah Jong based show out there. (Then again, I can’t suppose that it’s too competitive a field)

My first impression was that it was going to be too manly. Instead of being about cute girls giving it their all at a tournament, it’s about some guy running the Yakuza for all they’re worth? Didn’t seem like my kind of thing.
Then I kept putting on the next episode. Then the next…

The show is actually less about Mah Jong than it might first appear. The show is more using Mah Jong as a medium for mind games, and it works really well. It has the same kind of competitive mind game back and forth that makes Death Note so addictive when it’s “on.” Because these are back alley games, players can cheat, lie, and talk their way out of situations and, as long as they don’t get caught, it’s completely legal to do so. Akagi beats his opponents by both playing skill and sleight of hand. I just sit there, mesmerized. It is so compelling, not only seeing how he wins, but watching those watching the game try to guess his weird strategies.

But man, this has to be the cheapest show to animate EVER. There is a narrator voicing over and explaining things constantly, and as he does, you’re mostly seeing still shots of people’s poker faces being panned over, or shots of Mah Jong tiles that are obviously CG, so they just rendered each tile once and kept shuffling it around. It is so clear that this is so cheap.

Still, as I said, the show is completely compelling. It is certainly working inside budgetary limitations to bring me an amazing show, and for that, I am thankful. I’m about halfway through the series now, and I am almost certainly going to finish it… however, watching it has put me so behind on podcasts, I feel like I should spend awhile catching up on those first… but soon! Soon.