The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Dawn of War 2 is a rare game for me.

My normal game-playing habits basically revolve around something new and shiny coming out, and me playing it constantly until the next new and shiny thing comes out, and then I drop it like a rock.
This game just doesn’t work that way. I don’t want to ramble on about it too much, as I’m going to ramble the shit out of this game when I write an actual review. But basically, the single player is amazing, but I find it’s only amazing for, say, 2-3 missions. Just those few short-ish missions, and then I’m done. I save and quit out, and I can do other things. I sometimes will go “Oh, I forgot to check if Tarkus can equip that Flames of the Righteous in his Terminator armor” while I’m off playing other things, but I’ll just make a mental note to check it next time and not really want to get back into it.
The next day? I can’t fucking wait to put my time in. I think about it all day at school, and then I get home, and I’m right to it. 2-3 missions later, I’m off to some other thing.

This is one of the reasons why I continue to love the shit out of things like KoL and Twilight Heroes and stuff. I can’t wear myself out on them, really, because I can only play for so long a day. Dawn of War 2 is working like this for me, and yet, somehow, there aren’t those actual barriers that are making me do so. I just find myself not wanting to play. I don’t know how they do it, but I honestly applaud Relic for it.

I do think, however, that it working like that means I’m probably going to complete the campaign. Which is awesome. I feel like I’m a little over halfway done? Maybe a bit less. I’ve got a three-pronged objective set I need to complete in order to advance to what I assume is the endgame, and I have completed one prong, and have done one or two missions into both of the other two prongs. So yeah, I’m into it pretty far. Prong!

Anyway, I like Dawn of War 2. I’m playing it a lot, but not TOO much. The end.

So, the first episode of Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures, Fright of the Bumblebees!, came out on my birthday! Of course, I preordered that sucker before then. Telltale has brought me absolutely nothing but quality entertainment, and even though I was less of a fan of this IP than I was of Sam and Max or Strong Bad, I was more than happy to give Telltale the benefit of the doubt and put down my money. The fact that they were putting a nice discount on top of it didn’t hurt either. It was kind of silly that they gave me extra, unneeded copies of games in the purchase though, but whatever. I understand why. They were wanting to hook Wallace and Gromit fans into their other games.

Now, all I’ve seen of Wallace and Gromit before this was Curse of the Wererabbit, and I only saw that because I heard that these games were coming out, so I wanted some context. I liked it! It was kind of punny and certainly entertaining, and I saw clearly how well it would work as an adventure game.

And guess what! It works well as an adventure game. There was one kind of weird, bullshit puzzle in the thing where I had no idea how I was supposed to think of that. But the solution still made sense in the world, so there was no real issue with it. I just grumbled a little and moved on.
The controls are different from previous Telltale games and are, honestly, not quite as nice on the PC. They’re obviously optimized to work with the 360 controller, because these games will be coming out there. You have to walk your character around with the keyboard but you still have to click on things with the mouse. It’s all kind of silly on the PC. I should just be able to point and click. But if that’s what I have to endure to get Telltale more exposure and more money? Eh, that’s fine. It wasn’t a huge deal.

From what I know, the game really feels like Wallace and Gromit as well. It’s a shame they had to get a sound-alike for Wallace, but at the same time, I couldn’t tell the difference until I was told. Then again, I’m not a hardcore fan, so take that as you will. The game totally looks the part, though. I’m not sure what kind of filters or whatever they put on this thing, but it’s clear that the Telltale Tool is extremely and wonderfully flexible. It really does look like clayma… plasticine figures for the most part.
One thing that I found a surprising problem was controlling Gromit. He can’t talk, of course, and most of his humor comes from his expressions, and that’s great. At the same time, not getting a verbal dismissal of something you tried to do and just getting him shaking his head is much less useful in figuring things out than having Wallace, or the main character in any adventure game, comment on it. It also loses a potential vector for humor. They attempted to fix this by having whatever other characters that are in the scene comment towards Gromit when they could, but he’s not always in the same area as another character. It’s just a small consequence, and they worked around it as best they could. It’s just interesting.

Anyway, I got two decently-sized play sessions out of the game. That’s about all I ask from these awesome little episodic deals. It certainly didn’t disappoint. Although the more I play these things, the more I can see the formula behind how Telltale builds a game. They make a game in three acts, sometimes for. There’s an introduction (optional) then a first act, then a second act where there are the same locations but different puzzles in them, and then a finale where you are stuck in a small location. This isn’t really a complaint, it’s just that after playing so much of their stuff, I can see the inner-workings a bit better.

But yeah. Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures Episode 1? Good.

So, all this week, Ubisoft has been having a Steam sale. 50% off a game each day! Nothing was really appealing to me, though. Assassin’s Creed? Not my sort of game. Prince of Persia? I want to play it, but it’s so much a console game, I couldn’t imagine playing it on the PC. Brothers in Arms? I’ll stick with Call of Duty, thanks.

Finally, on Thursday, they put up Far Cry 2.

Now, maybe it was just all of the, I don’t know, rabid love on the Idle Thumbs, but I had always meant to try Far Cry 2. It’s a game well-suited to the PC, so that wasn’t an issue, and Brer was going to buy it, so I could talk about my experiences with him, if I wanted.

Of course, Tuesday was my birthday. I have TONS of games to play right now. TONS. Not to mention my bank account still hasn’t recovered from my PC purchase. I’m so busy I’m not going to get to the games I have anyway. No, I decided, purchasing Far Cry 2, even for the very nice price of $15, was a stupid move. I wasn’t going to do it.

An hour or two later, I purchased Far Cry 2.

I partially blame Sarcasmorator for his tweet explaining why I wanted it. I’m so eager to go with the bandwagon sometimes. It only takes such a little push. I also blame my always keeping Steam open now on the new computer, so I could constantly look at the sale. How foolish I am.

I need to teach myself that dammit, I don’t have to play everything. I really don’t. There will come a time, very soon, where I have significantly less funmoney than I have now. Breaking myself of these horrible habits would be a very, very good thing.

But will I until I have to?

I would be money on “no.”
And hey, when I win the bet, I guess maybe I’d have some more money to buy vidjeo games.

It’s no surprise that, after the Player’s Handbook 2 hit, along with all of the awesome Gabe, Tycho, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton DnD podcasts going about, that I’d hit a fever where I’d desperately want to get some more DnD in. And I do! Very much so! I assumed, however, it was going to be an uphill battle to make happen.

I got home from class yesterday, and there was Spants rolling up a new character, and Jonathan saying he’s planned the beginnings of a Paragon-level campaign.
What a thrilling development!
I resisted running upstairs to the computer to talk strategy out of excitement.

We wanted to run a Paragon campaign because, frankly, we’d run many half-campaigns starting at level 1 through 4 before, and we had all decided we wanted to try mixing it up next time. Jonathan just pulled the trigger and made the call! I’m thrilled.

I just need to figure out what class I want to run. My initial idea was a Paladin of Corellon multiclassing Bard. A kind of hymn-singing tank with a heavy focus on heals with the Hospitalier paragon path. However, Jonathan announced when I sat down that I was probably going to make a Shaman… and dammit, I was looking over the Shaman abilities today and I really do want to play a Shaman. Having the spirit companion is cool flavor, and getting to summon him around and having their basic heal hit multiple targets is something I can get behind to make them different from a Warlord or whatnot. So watch me end up doing that instead, though I really wanted to run a tank because I haven’t gotten to yet and that would leave more options for Shauna and Essner, if he’s playing, to pick from. Spaeth is being an Avenger, which is a divine damage dealer, so we still could really use at least a tank and a healer, you know? Eh, We’ll see when I roll the character later today.

Anyway, more DnD! I honestly couldn’t be more excited.

Chuck Palahnuik is one of those authors where I feel like, as an English Major, I am required by law to enjoy his writing, much in the same way I am required to take smoke breaks during night classes and to go out drinking every night to facilitate talking about “deep” topics. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I assumed I wouldn’t like Diary, a novel of his that I had to read for my novel class. My only real knowledge of his work was watching the movie of Fight Club, which Brer swore up and down I would connect with and I didn’t really at all, and hearing stories about his short story Guts but never looking it up to actually read it. This information told me, when I looked on the syllabus for my novel class, that I would dislike this book, but hey, at least it was short, so I wouldn’t have to suffer long.

When I started reading, it felt like my vague, baseless assumptions were right. Misty, the main character and narrator, is kind of hard to like. She’s extremely confrontational towards her husband, whom the book is “written” for and thus is aimed at with “yous” and whatnot. She seems very much like a complainer, blaming everyone for her problems, then blaming herself, then blaming everyone who tells her that she should be blaming herself. It’s just not all that fun to read.

However, the more and more I got into it, the more and more it’s brilliance got to me. Misty, the character, is a bit unlikable, but as her situation is slowly revealed, it’s clear why she’s so angry and so like she is. The plot is revealed very well, the situations are a bit surreal but not surreal enough for you to not believe they could be happening. I don’t even want to talk about the plot too much, actually. I feel like the way it is slowly shown to you is a lot of the book’s charm. It’s much like a Lost or something like that, only it’s very clear that every little fact is very planned, and every bit of it is going to pay off, (whereas I look at Lost and just see a bunch of cool ideas thrown together with a weak promise they’ll make sense, but then again, I haven’t seen much Lost, so take that as you will.) and that just keeps you turning pages again and again.
It’s also a really good example, to me anyway, of Post-modern fiction done well. Like anything, art can get really bogged down in tropes of movements like that, but this book uses them effectively, and that’s really great. The book breaks the fourth-wall in really fun ways, not just from the use of “you” throughout confusing the characters in the book and the reader, but also in other, spoilarz sort of ways.

Basically, the book hooked me, and before I knew it, it had overcome my prejudices and I was all in. I finished the book in two days of hard reading, and thoroughly enjoyed it. After the last two novels letting me down, pretty much, I was very glad that I hit another novel that really excited me. I can very easily recommend the book, especially since it’s fairly short. It’ll be an easy, fun read. Hopefully. It was for me, anyway.

MadWorld is a great game.

It can be easy to dismiss it as being gory for goriness sake, or going for shock value and little else, but that’s selling the game extremely short. It may not be worth $50 to everyone, but it is totally worth playing if you don’t mind a little violence and cursing.

The plot… the plot doesn’t matter. You’re in a location. It’s a game show about murdering called Deathwatch. You murder people until you get to a ranking match with a fellow murderer and have a dramatic boss fight. And that’s it.

But oh, what a that that is. The gameplay mechanics are based around point-scoring. The majority of the time, the enemies aren’t that difficult to kill. It’s all about killing them in ways that get you more and more and more points. Stab a sign through a guy before killing them? Point bonus. Toss them into a twirling sawblade? Point bonus. There are point threshholds on each level that change the level up. You may get a new weapon, or unlock a new area, or get to do the ever-popular BLOODBATH CHALLENGE! Eventually, you get to face the boss.
The combat is perhaps less fluid than a God of War or something, but the Wiimote is actually used well. You do motions in very satisfying ways. Flicking the Wiimote to throw people is completely satisfying, as is pulling the Wiimote and nunchuck apart to tear a dude in half. It does get to the point where you can get seriously into it, and if you do, your arms will get tired. Good thing the game is perfect for play in short chunks.

This game looks better than many 360 and PS3 games, and it’s all because of that kickass art style. Have you seen screens? Seen the game in motion? If so, I really don’t think I need to mention it, but dammit, it’s such a pretty game.

If you actually watched that clip, you’ve heard one of the other best parts of the game: The announcers. They are, by far, one of the greatest highlights of the game. Everything they say is funny and appropriate. They do get into the issue of repetition with their quotes, though. I wish they would have put some smarter logic in there so that it would only play each clip once a level or something. Still, they are totally worth listening to, and voiced amazingly well. They’re so awesome that the first thing my brother did was try to find a way to turn them up so he could hear them better, as they do sometimes get drowned out by the sound effects.
That’s not all that’s awesome about the sound, though. Personally, I think the soundtrack is fan-fucking-tastic. I crave, deeply crave a copy of this soundtrack, but it’s only available as a bonus for pre-ordering in the UK and Austrailia. Trust me, when it hits the interwebs at large, I am going to get my paws on a copy.
(I do have to mention here, an oddity. When a game creates good, unique rap for it’s soundtrack? I love the everloving crap out of it. This, The World Ends With You, Persona 3… when it meshes with the game so well, I can’t help but love it. Crave it. When I don’t normally have anything to do with that type of music. It’s interesting, I suppose.)
But yeah, the soundtrack just energizes you. This is a game I cannot play sitting down. Between the motions, the constant action, the music… it’s just a damn thrilling game.

The game’s gore and crude language are going to turn some people off. That’s a shame, though, because most of it honestly seems to be in parody, and hell, it’s awesome anyway. The gameplay itself, too, is pretty well the best action I’ve seen on the Wii this side of Mario Galaxy. Play this game.

You know, that title would make for an interesting striptease, I’d think.

Marty Crouch’s Magic Chest is this month’s Twilight Heroes IoTM!
This is a really great item! Maybe I just like items that give me tons of items. But it’s a really great item!

First off, just as an equippable. There’s nothing else in the game that I’m aware of that gives you a percent boost to your spell damage. The closest thing in that slot is, what, the Enerbun Sphere? Which is only +20. At higher levels, the chest would be MUCH better. So that’s cool.

Of course, the main benefit are these combat items, and these are some pretty solid items. There’s a wide variety of just basic damage-dealers, but there are certainly some standouts. The Deja Voodoo doll is completely intense and game-changing in its ability to face the same monster twice in a row. It seems like anyone who was, for example, Ultra-rare hunting would need to have one of those in their inventory. The Red-Eye Mind Trick is equally game-changing, giving you a “free run away” mechanic, although it’s at the cost of a -items debuff. Still, it’ll be heavily used when the time comes to speedrun this game, I’m sure.

The coolest thing about the items, though, is that many of them are usable on other players. I love this stuff! However, they’re much more “tricks” than “treats.” They actually inflict very minor debuffs. This is… an interesting way for the thing to go. Still, it’s perhaps cooler than, say, the Nerf’d effect in Kingdom of Loathing. It’ll make those who like to grief more happy that way. Me? I’m just happen there’s yet another deck of cards in the game. Can’t have too many cards!

But yeah, I think this is an IoTM that I have little trouble in recommending. It’s effective and funny (a lot of the attack messages on the items? Great stuff.) and totally worth the investment, I think. Well, I mean, as long as you think investing in virtual items in a browser game is a good investment. I obviously do.

That’s what the guy says, and then I’m like “Dude, I would like to get to class” and he’s like “No, I will punch you” so I beat the shit out of him. Then I’m late for class and people are trying to take me down and take me to class and I’m like “Chill out, I’m running to class right now, you don’t have to beat me up!” but they don’t listen.

So I listen to the Rebel’s FM from time to time, and I listen to their Game Club. I’ve been listening since it was 1up FM, even though I never even pretended to play along with them. (Granted, I had played Psychonauts before, but I mean, I have a copy of Shadow of the Collosus here. I could have tried to play along, but didn’t.) I just listened to their commentary because I am a fan of game commentary and podcasts. But they announced that their next game for the playing was Bully.
Now, Bully is a game that I’ve always wanted to play, actually. I’ve constantly been tempted by copies in bargain bins and stuff. It always seemed like a much more focused GTA, the kind of game I could get more into than thefting the autos. And I mean, damn, the only Rockstar game I had ever played was Rockstar Presents: Table Tennis, which barely counts. It seemed criminal for me not to give it a try. So I booted up the Prime account via the website’s affiliate link (Yay, they get a buck or something) and got a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition on the 360. I played up through the first chapter last night (Which I think is where I have to be for the podcasts’ first week) and I wanted to lay down some impressions.

First off, the art in the game is really pretty. I wish the game itself looked a bit more like the concept art in the load screens. It’s awesomely stylized. I also wish there was more art in the load screens, as there is only like 4 different pictures.

Secondly, why the hell are all the achievements written IN ALL CAPS. Did someone leave the caps lock on? How unprofessional, Rockstar.

The gameplay itself is… okay? I’m beating the crap out of people all the time. I do like that I can either injure them or finish them off with a “Bully maneuver” like an Indian burn and send them crying away from me. I can’t control the Skateboard worth shit. It really doesn’t seem like that open an open world, but then again I haven’t left campus yet, so I assume, thanks to this map in the case, that I’ve only seen, what, 1/5th of the world? So I’m sure that’ll open up.

What really gets me is the narrative. I don’t like being Jimmy. I was hoping he would be like, I dunno, a tough guy who’s playing a bully, but really has a sense of justice about him? But he’s really just a mostly bad guy. At least so far. He listened to this Gary character for way too long, mindlessly doing the missions he gave, when I wanted to punch him at about the second cutscene with him. Granted, I think that’s by design. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to hate him, and he’s well-voiced and stuff. But it was extremely frustrating. I felt more like the character I wanted to be in the non-mainline quests I’ve done so far, where people getting picked on would ask for help, and although I’d expect payment, I’d run around and beat the shit out of everyone who was picking on others.
Again, I’m only through chapter one. Maybe after this “betrayal” Jimmy acts more like I want him to all the time. His conversation with the huge guy at the end of their fight would suggest it being as such. We’ll see.

Anyway, I wanted to write some impressions. I’ll be sure to write some more if I keep up with Game Club all the way through the game. I hope to, but seeing as Tuesday is the day of my birth, it could get a bit unlikely, as I’m sure there will be many shiny new games to play.

I am a sucker for games that manipulate music as you play. Ever since I laughed at how stupid PaRappa looked back in the day, and then actually played it, and was amazed? I’ve been a music game junkie.

As such, the moment I first heard about bit.trip beat, I knew I was going to pick it up. If there was any doubt, hearing this sample of the music convinced me. The final nail in the coffin was that it was only 6 bucks, which is a very fair price for what you get. At 10, I still would have picked it up, but it would have been a harder sell.

The game works like pong! You twist the Wiimote in your hands to move the paddle and hit the dots flying your way. The twist mechanic is kinda weird, but it makes perfect sense. It’s just about the best implementation of one of those dials on such old games without actually having one of those dials. It doesn’t take too long to get the hang of it.
Once you do, you just play. Every time you something bounces off of you or hits the other side of the screen, it makes a note, and you build the music by hitting the notes. Hit many of them, and you “power up” and move upward to a different plane where the music is deeper and richer. Miss a lot, and you move down, eventually getting to the “Nether” plane where everything is Black and White like pong and all the music comes out of the little Wiimote speaker. It’s pretty damn neat.

The game is totally hardcore, though. If you’re playing single-player, you really have to memorize each level, and be really quick in your movements in order to keep the music going and return the hits. I have significant trouble beating the first level by myself.
However, that’s where the game’s up to 4-player co-op comes in. I never would have thought co-op would work in this game, but it makes it a whole lot more fun. Spaeth and I played through the majority of the game co-op, and it was actually a ton of fun. All it does is put another paddle on the screen of another color for Spaeth, but suddenly seemingly impossible patterns weren’t impossible anymore. The game was a whole lot easier, so we accomplished a lot more, and just like any co-op game, it was fun to berate and complain at each other when we were sucking, and congratulate when we actually handled ourselves well. The last level like… quickly broke us, though. Maybe with 4 players, we could take it.

All in all, I think bit.trip beat is a pretty awesome downloadable title. There isn’t enough game here to even think of a retail release, so Wiiware was the right choice. It uses the Wii motion controls very well. It’s a neat little hardcore music game, and it has surprisingly great co-op. Most importantly, they priced it low to make it an easy purchase. You could buy Ninja JaJa Maru-kun on the virtual console for the same price as this game. I leave it to you to decide if this is the better purchase (hint: it probably is.)

So, Steam sales are kind of addictive now that I have a PC that can run games. This could be a problem. For now, though, I ended up buying Unreal Tournament 3 awhile back, because it was only, you know, like 10 bucks. That’s a good price. Much better than 60 dollars, and much more to the tune of the value I will actually get out of the game.

It’s not a bad game, perse? It’s very much Unreal Tournament. If you’ve played one before, you know what to expect: crazy physics, guns that never need to reload, and constant, intense violence.
There are sad things. For one, my favorite modes, Assault and Gunball, (also known as Bombing Run, but Gunball is a more appropriate title) are missing here. As such, especially after this sale ends, you might just be better off getting UT2k4 from GoG instead, because those modes are the shit. Or teh shit. Whatever. Also, you know, it’ll run on less recent PCs.

Still, this new version isn’t a complete throw-away or anything. They focused a lot on the Onslaught mode from earlier games (Which was my least favorite!) and improved that vehicle action significantly while combining it with Assault to form the “Warfare” mode. Warfare is much better than Onslaught was, and it’s obvious they’ve spent a bit more time on the vehicles, at least as far as I can remember. It really doesn’t replace Assault though, in my mind. It’s unfortunate that that isn’t there.
One of the mechanics I actually find very interesting is that of the Hoverboard. This seems like it would be the lamest thing, but it really makes you make some tough decisions during play. I don’t think this was in 2k4… basically, on Vehicle maps, instead of the Translocator, you can press q to pull out a Hoverboard. You move much faster than running this way, AND you can carry flags, unlike in vehicles. However, if you get shot with anything, you drop the flag and go into this long falling down and hurting yourself animation where basically anyone can murder you quickly. Basically, you have to choose when the extra speed is worth the extra risk, and that’s honestly pretty cool to me. The added benefit is that of having something to get you back in the action VERY quickly, which is what Unreal Tournament is all about, so I approve of that, too.

There’s a campaign mode, and that mode has 4-player co-op. I actually got it to work, too, during the free-to-play weekend with Brer, so that’s good! However, the Campaign is not very well designed, mostly because there is a plot. No. That’s a horrible idea. Sitting through cutscenes in a game like this is retarded. What a campaign in a game like this should be is something like in a sports game. I should recruit new fighters, do trades with other teams, and, I dunno, have to balance how tired people are vs taking them into matches, or what kind of game types they’re good at… that’s a compelling campaign for this type of game. That’s what they should be doing.
Still, it’s not like it isn’t fun. But just don’t expect anything but a variety of different bot-matches in different scenarios. Luckily, UT has some pretty good bots. I mean, I have rarely if ever played this series online with actual humans. It’s always been me vs bots, or me and some friends vs bots, and it’s always been a good time. UT3 succeeds in that once again.

These games really must appeal to a certain type of person who likes constant balls against a wall sort of action. I’m not really that person. If I’m itching for a shooter with other people, I’m totally going to go for a Call of Duty 4 or a Team Fortress 2 before even considering hitting UT3. Still, sometimes you just want to shoot bots. A lot. That’s something UT3 has in spades, and it’s a fun enough time.