The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

OBJECTIVE FAILED.

Hey, remember back at Christmas, when I got Fury of Dracula? And then we gave it a try on New Year’s Eve and it was kind of complicated and took awhile? Well, I finally got around to trying it out again on Friday. This time we had Jonathan, a complete newcomer, and me and Spaeth, who barely remembered what was going on. I was Dracula again.

The game went significantly smoother this time, though. As expected, knowing the rules (well, all the rules but the honestly kind of incredibly confusing combat rules) really made the game move at a solid pace. The game only took us a little under 2 hours this time. That’s a good length for a game like this.

I really wanted to use my knowledge I gained from our previous game to be a more effective Dracula. I was looking forward to actually using “New Vampire” encounters to my benefit instead of throwing them away like I did in the other game. However, I never drew any New Vampire encounters until it was too late to use them. I was doing pretty good for quite some time… until Spaeth pulled and played a Money Trail card while I was on a boat, giving away my current location. Then it was some really tense stuff there, with me moving around and trying to get away while everyone closed in on me. I honestly should have used my Double Back card to get BACK onto the sea and away from the hunters, but I decided to push it and wait until I had multiple options to Double Back to. That was really kind of my downfall. They cornered me and kicked my ass during the day. Bastards.

I did get pretty close to winning? But it was mostly because of Spaeth’s Kamakaze Mina Harker maneuver. He used a card to take away most of her life to teleport to my location, then used a card where we both roll a dice and lose that much life instead of having a normal combat. He rolled high enough to kill himself, which upped my Vampire track by 2. Without that, though, I was doing a bit worse. I needed those New Vampire encounters!

All in all, though, the game was significantly more fun the second time, I felt. Having to slog through rules is always tedious, even when you’re someone who loves rules like myself. The game flowed a lot better. I also agree with our previous assessment that this is the perfect 3-player game. You gain something by having two Hunter-players who can bounce ideas off of each other and plan, and you gain game speed by having a smaller number of players at the table. 3 seems optimal.

Next time, though. Hopefully I will win. Insert Bad Castlevania Reference Here.

So, I’ve been grinding in Kingdom of Loathing! This is so we can actually beat Hodgman now that he’s all… the way he is now that there isn’t a bug involved. So we need a really high Seal Clubber, and I was already a Seal Clubber and I didn’t have any time to play my turns anyway… so grind grind grind!

However, that means I can’t actually, you know, use this month’s IoTM until, you know, after this month. I picked one up, because it seemed neat, but I’m mostly just going off of the wiki for attempting to judge its value. I may have to write another one later, after I do a 100% run with it, or something.

Still! Frumious Bandersnatch! It’s a volleyball!

Well, it’s a little more than a volleyball.
It seems like this would be a fairly useful Volley for speed ascenders, due to it’s “tuning” mechanic. Basically, depending on which color equipment you equip it with, it gives all of its Volleyball boosted experience to a particular stat. So you can have the Bandersnatch give you all Mysticality points, for example. That seems useful! However, the fact that you have to run 10 turns in the arena to get the equipment in hardcore may put a damper on it. I don’t know how much of a setback that is. It’s very possible that, over time, the more focused stats would speed things up for it to be worth it, but then again, since you have to bounce between the Llama, probably, and the Green Pixie… I dunno.

Still, the part that I think is cool is mostly the other part! Which is the fact that the familiar does special effects in response to what standard combat skills you use in combat. That just seems like a lot of fun, and would seem to be a good reason for me to actually use combat skills more often! Because I often don’t, if I can help it. I save MP too much. But seriously, just look at some of these effects. They’re seriously useful… extending the duration when you cast Entangling Noodles… giving you MP when you use Saucegeyer… (as if Saucerors didn’t already get too much MP from Burning Soul and such!) adding a stunning effect to Lunging Thrust-Smack and Shieldbutt? Those are really strong effects! Well, to me, anyway. And since I understand that people use Shieldbutt like… all the damn time, surely that stun effect would be useful to them too, if nothing else. A lot of the rest just gives you extra damage, but extra damage is good, too! That just seems like a lot of fun. I can’t wait to try that for a whole run. I’ll probably be a Sauceror for that one.

The thing has one more effect that I will likely never use, but I’m sure people will like. If you have Ode to Booze on when you go into battle with the Bandernatch, it gets drunk. When drunk, it won’t give you any combat skill bonuses, but if you run away, you can get a “free” run away, not spending a turn for the combat, as you can with, say, a Divine Popper or a tattered scrap of paper. Speed runners find this extremely useful! Less turns spent on pointless combats! I, however, never use these things. So, you know, this doesn’t effect me. Still, it’s a nice bonus on top of everything else cool about the familiar, I suppose. It just seems like, most of the time, if you need that effect you’d use one of those items, or Creepy Grin, or the effect on a navel ring of navel gazing if you’re already, you know, loaded up with Mr. Store gear.

Still, overall? It seems like a pretty fun familiar. I’ll let you know when I actually get to, you know, try it out!

Watchmen has penis.

Standing outside the movie theater, I announced that I would be very, very disappointed if I did not get to see some blue Doc Manhattan dick. I was far from disappointed with the movie based on that criteria.
It’s a damn good thing that movies are growing up to the point where I can go to a theater and see full male nudity, even if it’s CGI male nudity. Not that the movie was particularly sexy or anything, but I dunno. We have such stupid taboos on things sometimes. I’m glad people can push the envelope and show me some dick if it’s appropriate. And I think it was appropriate.

Still, what did I think of the movie overall? It was pretty good in general. I think it looked visually stunning, but you should have been expecting that if you saw the trailers. The acting wasn’t TOO horrible, although it wasn’t perfect. I think that’s just what you get for getting people nobody recognizes in there in order to make them look perfectly like the characters. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

The soundtrack was… odd. It was desperately trying to invoke the time period in which the movie is set as opposed to matching the movie in parts? It was kind of weird in that respect, though I can accept that kind of attempt, you know?
It was especially bad during the long, drawn out sex scene where it was playing Alleluia while two people fucked very graphically. It was horrible. And that whole scene was horrible. It seemed pasted in there JUST to be an apology for showing so much penis “so hey, here’s a naked woman. That makes it better, right?” It was so lame. I mean, there were earlier sex scenes, but they served a purpose. The sex scene with Doc Manhattan sets up his character. The earlier, fumbling sex scene with Nite Owl shows how different he was from the Doc, but that he was still appealing because he was human. The last one was just… ugh.

There was a lot of very graphic violence, too. I had to look away from the screen at several points. This I have less problem with. It mostly looked cool, and it served a point: to show how, you know, dirty and imperfect this superhero world was. I can dig it.

I do have to wonder why the fuck the ending was changed, though. There didn’t seem to be much reason for it. It seemed to be there just to create controversy and make people angry instead of making a good film. Apparently, though, I’ve been told I forgot how the comic actually ends, and that some things I thought were added were not actually added. So maybe I’m just missing something. But the comic ended so perfectly, I really have no idea why you’d touch ANYTHING, and things were touched. Oh yes.

It doesn’t really ruin the movie, though? It’s still worth seeing, just to see all of these characters on screen so pretty and competent. But it does keep it from being, I dunno, perfect? Totally awesome? The movie is long as just kind of there, for the most part. I didn’t leave energized, or excited. It was just a decent movie.
That’s about all I have to say about it.

So those Tyrants who write for 1up are calling Zen Bound THE game for the iPhone. I don’t know if I would go quite that far? I kinda doubt it’s going to define the iPhone and iPod Touch game space. But one thing is for sure: it is a DAMN good game, worth every bit of $5, and if you’re someone with a compatable device, you should probably buy it.

Zen Bound is actually a pretty hard game to describe. It’s a game about wrapping rope around wooden sculpture, like the website there says. But that sounds incredibly boring, doesn’t it? The game is anything but boring. It’s a calm, slow and casual paced puzzle game, basically, which tests your spacial reasoning and is really geniously designed.
The goal is to wrap rope around a figure, having rope touch every bit of it (which makes it change color) and then get the rope to a final nail in order to tie it off and complete the level. There are 3 levels of complete for each level. The first goal is incredibly easy to get to, and the second isn’t too hard to reach if you’re actually trying, but the third always comes at 99% wrapped, and that’s where the challenge comes in.
Basically, the rope is attached on two ends. One is tied to the figure, and the other is attached to an offscreen “spool” or whatever. That means, as you wrap, you can’t go under anything, so you actually have to plan out what you’re doing so the rope you already have wrapped around doesn’t block you from getting into the crevices and such of the figure you’re working on. You have to plan ahead in a way you don’t expect when you first pick up the game.
The game basically starts very Zen, and very casual. The shapes are easy, and you’re just having fun wrapping rope about. There’s no challenge. Before you know it, though, you suddenly hit something you don’t get 99% on the first time. The game is kind of sneaky like that. The challenge ramps up in a very hidden way, and once you hit the actually challenge? You’re hooked. At least I was.
It’s also important to mention the controls. They are instantly understandable to anyone who has used an iPod Touch for 5 minutes, and work so well, you don’t even think about them. You rotate the wooden figure with the normal finger motions, and you can adjust the angle of the rope with the accelerometer. This is a game incredible suited to its medium.
The only real problem with this game, though, is the fact that it destroys the battery. I’ve not played many iPod games that were too intense before with the graphics. (WordJong is not very taxing) This game is very visually compelling and physics-oriented, and because of that, it uses a lot of processing power. Playing this game and listening to a podcast, as I mentioned in the last blog entry, I burned through my battery in a little over an hour. I can’t even imagine how screwed that would make someone who was actually playing on a phone. It’s something to think about if you’re going to play in long sessions.

Still, this game is pretty well the best iPod gaming experience I’ve had so far. It makes me want to pick up the other critically acclaimed iPod game, Rolando, and see if it’s just as good. I’m sure it is.

But yeah, go buy Zen Bound. The developers are nice, too. They responded to my e-mail in like an hour. It was fantastic. And I want Cinnamon Beats. So give them money to finish it. The end.

So, last weekendish, Steam had one of its many sales. This was a “Indie Games” pack. It was a whole bunch of Indie Games for 10 dollars. In this pack was the PC version of Eets, which I paid 10 dollars for by itself on the 360 and thought it worth every penny. It was a pretty darn good deal. So I just gave in and jumped on it.

One of the reasons I jumped on it is because it included a copy of Trials 2: Second Edition. Way, way back in the GFW Radio days, one might recall Shawn Elliot talking about this game at length. Seeing it in the pack was one of the reasons I pulled the trigger on it.

It’s every bit as ridiculous as its name.

Basically, you’re a guy on a motorcycle, and you’re on a 2D plane. You can accelerate, brake, and lean the driver forward and backward. And that’s it. And with those tools, you have to traverse increasingly fucked-up terrain. It’s really hardcore, honestly, because you have such little tools at your disposal. You have to learn how to game the physics system in order to, say, make your rider jump higher or longer or whatever.
What happens is you dying all the damn time. You drive forward a little bit, then crash. Your driver goes flying. You hit backspace to go back to the last checkpoint, and try again. Oftentimes, you’ll die right after getting past something to the next checkpoint, but it feels SO GOOD to have pulled off the crazy shit to get there. Then you keep going.

This is a game for the hardest of the hardcore, who enjoy mastering a system so completely that they can do crazy-ass shit like this without any issue whatsoever. I am not that person, so I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy the game as much as I have. I was expecting to try it, and then move on. But I’ve beat all the easy levels and I’m working on the Medium ones, and I’m kinda hooked. The game is a ton of fun, and it’s actually a pretty darn good podcast game as well, which is always a plus. I mean, I die every five seconds. It takes me at least 30 tries to get to the next checkpoint on almost every level at this point. But for some reason, it is a good time. I honestly can’t help but recommend it.

So, the latest book in my “I suppose I best read these books so I get an A in my novel class” reading series was Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. He’s like… a cyberpunk guy, right? Well, this wasn’t a cyberpunk novel. This was the first of many little letdowns from me reading the novel.

The novel is decently written and constructed. The chapters are short, and often have completely cryptic titles that I didn’t always get. The main character, Cayce, is a pretty interesting girl in a lot of ways. I wanted so desperately to like her, because I could totally dig her way of looking at the world, and how she liked to wander about in cities, her obsession with a certain little slice of internet culture, and so on… I got her. But I could never really get her. Because the book has this air of complete removal from its own story. It feels like I’m watching the story happen on a TV in a store window. There’s just an extra level of removal, even past the whole “third person limited” narrative style. It frustrated me all the way through the book.

The other big problem with her character was the entire 9/11 thing. Now, I’m not going to say the event wasn’t important, and novels shouldn’t be written about it? But this wasn’t a novel about that. I have no idea what kind of 9/11 based message Gibson was trying to make, but it was extremely forced into the novel and I would have greatly preferred it not to be there. I sort of feel like maybe it was supposed to draw me to the character more, but it really just pushed me away. It just felt like a clear intrusion on the reality of the book, and I hated it.

The plot itself does kind of go all over the place. Everything ties up in the end, but at the same time, you don’t feel like anyone has particularly accomplished anything, even though the goal Cayce was chasing for the entire novel is achieved. It just feels too “happy ending” in a lot of ways, the main way being the whole “Oh, now you no longer have your lifelong phobia for no reason yay!” mention at the end. Really? Seriously? Why the hell would you do that?

Overall, I probably can’t recommend this book too much. It wasn’t nearly as painful as Water for Elephants was in parts, but it also wasn’t as engaging as other parts of that novel. It’s a much harder read, and I left the novel getting just as little out of it, as well as being annoyed about how he was trying to manipulate 9/11 for no apparent reason. I dunno. I guess Brer might have been right, and I should have just read Neuromancer. Heh.
But, you know. Class. Had to read this one.

So, I watched the last Futurama movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder, and all I can really say is “meh.”

At least it wasn’t as god-awful as Bender’s Game. That had a BRILLIANT premise that they proceeded to shit all over and completely waste. Fantasy Futurama would be great. Bunch of horrible fantasy parodies? Not great.
Still, this one isn’t really all that wonderful. None of the movies are. Bender’s Big Score kind of gets a pass because it’s got so much fan service, and Beast With a Billion Backs has its fans who aren’t me. But man, I mean… I dunno. I’d be very unhappy if I’d, you know, bought the thing with my own money. And I buy really stupid shit all the time and don’t regret it. Too much.

But yeah, I dunno. I’m unsure, I guess, why these “movies” had to try to be all epic. I don’t know why they couldn’t just be funny. I mean, I liked some of the plot stuff, but dammit, it’s about the humor, right? But all of them tried to be fucking wide-reaching. Was that just an effect of having more time? I dunno.

Ugh, I’m just ranting uselessly. The point is, there were very few moments that made me laugh in the movie, and there were moments of it being painful. At least Bender’s Game had the QVC parody that had me laughing. There was nothing really like that here. There was a bunch of painfully horrible puns that were funny the first 10 times and then went on for the entire movie, and there was a Penn and Teller cameo… and… I dunno. I really don’t know.

Basically, you aren’t missing much if you don’t see Into the Wild Green Yonder. At least Essner would be happy there was no musical number in it.

So the other night, as Nich sells me on yet another game and I go to preorder it, which leads to me preordering another game and then putting a third almost on preorder but then on my “don’t buy for birthday” list… it occurs to me how horrible the “burden” of having too much leisure is.

I’ve long decided that I’m a hardcore gamer, not in the “I beat every game on hard 40 times” kind of sense, but just in the “games are what I do and I do nothing for fun other than play games” kind of sense. But dammit, the games industry is now all huge and stuff. Ever since I’ve gotten a paycheck, I’ve kept up with all the new games I wanted, but it’s getting to the point where that is almost a completely ridiculous proposition.

I mean, let’s just look at what games Atlus has coming out that interest me. Between now and the end of April, I would like to give time to The Dark Spire, Steal Princess, Class of Heroes, and Dokapon Journey. Then, in May, comes the wonderfully long-named Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon, and then in June, comes Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. And they just today announced that, after that, we’ll be getting the PSP Persona remake this year. It’s a good thing Atlus has switched to that new payment system…

I won’t have anywhere near enough time to play all those games as much as I should have, and that’s JUST GAMES FROM ATLUS. There are plenty, plenty more games that need my attention. Hell, I’m having trouble giving both Street Fighter IV and Dragon Quest V the attention they both deserve right now. And I’m constantly distracted by my browser RPGs, too… and getting new games on my iPod…

It’s so lame that I have to schedule my leisure time to play games. I try not to. I should just buy some games and play them, and then buy a new game only when I need a new game. But I want to be a hardcore gamer. I enjoy being one. I want to try everything. I want to play everything. Hell, even with the games I have now, I am wanting to play Dawn of War II so, so badly… the only reason I’m not is because my PC isn’t up to it right now. It’s just all kind of ridiculous.

Still, I suppose being able to recognize that is a benefit, huh? Is it worse to be ridiculous and not know it? Or to know it and not do anything about it?
I have no idea.

WOAH, my arcade stick came in.

I’d heard about issues with the FightStick right when mine shipped out. People were complaining about all kinds of crazy things, but mostly the stick getting stuck in positions. This was… potentially bad! But luckily, it came in, and there was no such issues.

Man, it’s so cool. The art on it is ass-kickingly awesome, and it feels so heavy and… important. The buttons click easy, the stick moves alright. To me, it’s mind-blowingly awesome. I’ve always kind of wanted an arcade stick, but never really had good reason to buy one. I still didn’t, but I got one anyway, and I’m happy to have it.

The one thing I wasn’t expecting, though, was the learning curve. I don’t know why I wasn’t. It’s been literally years since I touched an arcade cabinet of any kind. But everyone was talking about how the standard 360 controller was so horrible, and though I was getting good with it, it was pretty horrible. So I assumed when I got the stick, my game would instantly improve, at least input-wise (I’d probably still suck strategically). When it got in my paws, though, I was back to square one. It was like I didn’t know how to do Hadoukens anymore. A bit training fixed that, mostly, but I still can’t pull off, say, Sakura’s Ultra Combo with ease, and that’s unfortunate. I hear that my problems come from the fact that this stick uses a “square gate.” Apparently octagonal gates are better? I would probably agree on principal, but there’s nothing wrong with this. It’ll just take some getting used to. And I know I’ll work on it hard tomorrow.

I also got a FightPad, but I haven’t had a chance to give that a solid test. So I’ll talk about that some other time, I’m sure. Until then, well, here’s a guide on how to play Ken online.

So, Fighting in the Street for the Fourth Time is here! Street Fighter IV! I’ve been waiting for this for quite some time. There was some worries about the online play not being good, and there are still some future worries about the arcade stick I got not being up to snuff, but overall, this has been what I’ve been waiting for!

Early impressions are COMPLETELY AWESOME. I mean, sure, Seth is a fucking cheating whore, and I shouldn’t have to unlock all these fighters, but the actual gameplay does pretty well exactly what was being reported: bring in the simple, great Street Fighter II experience you know, and then add in some of the more technical stuff from later Street Fighters. The EX moves and the Focus attacks? Well, I have no idea what to do with those yet. They seem cool, though, and the technical people will probably love them. The actual just base fighting, though, is excellent. I was also very, very pleased to see that my Balrog skills carried over quite well from SFIITHDR, and are even better actually, now that there’s a 3 punch and 3 kick button, so I can actually use his Turn Punch. I’ve also been thrilled to discover that my Sakura skills from so, so long ago on Alpha 2 on the PS1 have carried over, and I’m pretty solid with her, too. Those two are probably going to be my mains, as I continue to discover how to make them play better, while already being at a decent skill level with them.

Anyway, we’ll see how things go as I keep playing, especially when my controllers come in later in the week. These are first impressions, don’t cha know?