The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, I was fucking tired of every single podcast ever and every single news blogpost and everything talking about Burnout Paradise without me having played it. TIRED OF IT. So I got it, since it was only 20 bucks.

Now, common sense would dictate that this was 20 bucks badly spent. I’m not a racing game person. At all. I play Mario Kart, I suppose, but that’s about it. I dislike most vehicle sections in games and such. In fact, back when the game first came out, I tried the very nice demo, and was completely unimpressed and uninterested.

Criterion sure showed me.

Burnout Paradise is the racing game for people who hate racing games. The entire design seems built up to get rid of the elements that would frustrate someone who isn’t a huge fan of cars and the technical side of racing.
What exactly does this, you ask? Well, first off, the fact that crashing your car is only the most minimal of setbacks helps a ton, first off. When I can completely wreck my car 4 times in a race and still end up winning? Well, that’s a stress-free experience. It only helps the fact the crashes are totally badass to behold. They look really impressive, and they put cool camera angles on them… it’s almost positive reinforcement than negative. I love that. Now, of course, if you don’t crash, you’re going to do a ton better. But the fact that you can and not be completely screwed makes this game less technical and more fun.
Secondly comes the fact that there isn’t a list of challenges you have to do to move up. You literally can do anything you want at any time. If all you want to do is play Road Rage today, then you can just play Road Rage and smash a bunch of cars. That’s expected, I guess, but the fact that this helps you progress in the game as much as anything else? That’s just awesome. And if you decide that you hate this particular challenge and want to quit? You just come to a complete stop for 2 seconds, and the challenge is gone. No “You lose” message or a “Try again?” prompt to make you feel in any way responsible to complete the challenge. You can just drive away. It really is the game your way.
Finally is the fact that it’s fun just to drive around the world. Any time, you can start “Showtime” mode to just deal damage as you drive around. The mechanics of driving are arcade-y and fun, and it’s just enjoyable to go fast. As you drive around, you constantly see jumps, billboards, and gates that you have to figure out how to get to and break, and it rewards you for seeking them out. As you complete challenges, cars appear in the world for you to collect. You can just be driving around, and one of these cars will roar past you, and then IT’S ON, and you have to rush to wreck them to get a new car. You can have a great time without even starting a race.

So yeah, Burnout Paradise is a fucking great game. It’s really hard not to recommend at 20 bucks. My favorite events are Road Rage (where you have to wreck a certain number of opponent cars under a time limit) and Marked Man (where you have to get to a certain location while every single car on the road is trying to wreck you) but I’ve had fun with basically every single event type in the game. I haven’t even gotten online with it yet. Sure, that time might be past with Talking Time, but I’m sure that’s even more fun if I can make it happen sometime. And hell, if nothing else, this is a REALLY great podcast game. You don’t need to listen to it. You just need to race.

So yeah, I love a racing game. There, I said it.

So, for the lovely day of Valentine’s, Brer got me a copy of Aquaria on Steam. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s an indie game in the Metroidvania style that takes place under the water! Crazy water! I’m a fan of the Metroidvania style of gaming, so I had always meant to try it, and suddenly I had a good reason to. So I did.

Man, where to start?

Well, first off, this game is painfully pretentious. Your main character gives little snippets of story every once and awhile through these voice-overs, and they just make you wince, not because they’re so bad, but because they think they’re so completely important. It’s almost like the text in Braid, except Braid’s text gives off the impression its actually about something, and you can ignore it. Still, the voice-overs are very rare, so it’s not a big deal, But it’s worth mentioning.

Secondly, the controls. The developer went above and beyond the call of duty to make a just-mouse control scheme work. It works pretty well, too, for the most part! The moment I plugged my 360 controller in, though, the game controlled just exactly how I wanted, so I used that the whole time. It made aiming difficult, though.

There is a lot of aiming, too. It’s weird, the game starts off being about a mermaid who can sing. The voice-overs and the pretty visuals really kind of suggest that this is going to be a very relaxing little indie game of exploration or something, you know? Then you get the ability to throw fireballs and suddenly there are constantly enemies swarming you and it starts to feel more like a two-stick shooter. It’s kinda strange how quickly it gets hectic!

Still, the game is pretty darn solid. Moving works right, it has a nice little magic system and a big world to explore. My main problem is how little guidance you get. Most Metroidvanias either let you know where you’re supposed to be getting to, or have you smartly funneled down certain paths by using barriers that can only be surpassed using things you get by going the right way. Aquaria does a little of that, but not very much. You just kind of have this whole big ocean cave world to wander through, and no direction.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s not having direction in a game when I want it. Ugh. Add that to the fact that the game is pretty difficult, and you can head the wrong way and immediately get slaughtered, or do a bunch of exploring, die, and lose all of your map progress. Normally, I would be thankful to fix this kind of thing by heading to GameFAQs and pulling up all the maps and FAQs I need, but there aren’t any! It shocked me. How could there not be a guide for a vidjeo game? But there isn’t. At least last I checked.

And that’s kind of where I ended with the game, at least for now. I was frustrated not knowing where to go, and so I turned to other things. Still, if you are someone who likes wandering around and things in games, this is pretty damn well made. I’m just not that kind of gamer, I guess. Maybe someday someone will make a very elaborate map and I’ll get to finish it.

So, Retro Game Challenge! The game that Parish and all of Talking Time is all crazy over! Guess what? There’s damn good reason.

If you grew up playing console games, there is no way this game will not put a smile on your face. The presentation starts off silly, and most of it is kind of silly. But it’s so true to how it was back then. They nail so many things. Having someone sitting there, watching you play on the bottom screen just… feels so right. The magazines and manuals are so spot on, and they just make me grin as I’m reading the horrible reader mail section and everything… this game attempts to be living through that era of video games in a sort of compressed, mini form, and damn, if it doesn’t nail it.

All that wouldn’t matter if the games suck, but they don’t. Much like the presentation, you’ve got a very compressed version of genres and games, and dammit, they all play so well. The trick is that they look retro, they feel retro, but there is obviously modern influence on them. You won’t notice at first that, say, the weapon system in Guadia Quest is way too advanced for RPGs of the time period. It’s not intrusive into the gameplay, but it makes a much, much better play experience than if it would have actually been modeled on RPGs from that era. The same goes for all the action games. The little tweaks, like having the ninja stars in Haggleman to the changing ship forms in Star Prince, don’t feel out of place, but when you really think about them, they wouldn’t have been included in a game from that era. Still, they make the games that much better to play.

To top it all off, the game flows extremely well. All the challenges Game Master Arino gives you aren’t very difficult. They’re basically a tutorial on how to play each game well. They have you learn the game, and then you can decide yourself if you want to keep playing at it. The best part is, they don’t take long. I’m never going to put a lot of time into Rally King, like most Talking Timers, but the game is well-made, and I finished the challenges long before I got bored with it, even though I don’t really like those kinds of racers. The only exception to this, I suppose, is if you don’t like RPGs. The last challenge in Guadia Quest does take a little, but if you’ve enjoyed any jRPG in the past, it will fly by, I assure you.

If you do get stuck, though, one final, perfect tweak makes this game hit it out of the park: the cheat codes. You can use these codes to beat challenges, and there are a lot of them, from making yourself invincible to just being able to continue in games without a save function. It’s basically a difficulty selector. Use all the codes if you really hate Rally King and just want to be done with it, or use none of them if you’re really digging it and want to challenge yourself. The fact that you have to look them up in the in-game magazines also helps to get away from the whole “oh, it’s there so I have to use it” kind of easy mode in these games. People complain, for instance, about being able to give yourself infinite lives in arcade games, because they say they always have to do it. Looking up these cheat codes takes time, and they take effort to input. It’s not just an option you toggle. As such, I found myself only using them when I was actually frustrated. The fact that they’re annoying to put in actually works in their favor, I think, to make it easy to challenge yourself exactly where you want the challenge to be without being tempted to make it all super-easy. On top of it all, entering such codes are extremely nostalgic, of course.

This game is seriously a must buy if you, in any way, enjoy retro gaming. I’ve had a lot of fun. I’m going to try to finish up the final challenges (Which is simply beating every game, unlocked after you complete each challenge on all the games) this week before Dragon Quest V and Street Fighter IV come in. I might not: Guadia Quest is actually decently sized. But I’m certainly going to have a whole lot of fun at it, either way.

So, along with Retro Game Challenge (which I would expect a review ramble of… oh… tomorrowish.) I finally got my paws on Scott Pilgrim Vs The Universe last Friday. Ah, it is a wonderful thing, even without flipping it open. The cover is super-foil-y and neat, and the back cover has these “screenshots” of the Scott Pilgrim “game.” It’s nice.

The story inside is nice, too. There be spoilarz going forward, though. Not huge ones, but, you know, just in case, wait until you get to read it.

–This is the SPOILAR line.–

The book is going in a different direction. Pre-me-getting-my-copy reviews I read suggested that this book takes a much more emotional turn than previous, and that the fights are much less a focus because it’s already been established that there is no way Scott can lose. This is pretty much accurate. All but the final fight scene are mostly just in the background while other characters talk. I am totally and completely okay with this. I love the game references, I love the action, but all that wouldn’t make Scott Pilgrim as awesome as it is. It’s a great series because it has emotion and romance things underneath its silly exterior. It really comes out and shines in this book.

Talking Time favorite Kim Pine plays a very big role in this one, too. There are some revelations about her motivations that sort of caught me off guard. Maybe because it’s been too long since I read the first four. But it was just shocking at first: it all makes perfect sense. The plot is making really good sense! And I can’t wait to see the ending.
It is sad that there’s so little Wallace, though. He is just hilarious. His comment of “Hey, it’s that guy” at the end of the first volume is what made it completely clear that I was going to be a huge fan of this series. His role gets more toned down now, though. It makes sense. Things are more emotional than funny. But it’s still unfortunate.

It was also decently tugging at the heartstrings. Seeing Scott lash out at people is silly and fun, but is just so… representative of what he’s going through. He’s not the brightest guy. He very much wants to fix things. He was trying the method in the last book, of getting a job and becoming, you know, and adult. But even that suddenly becomes not enough in this one. All he knows how to do is fight, so he’s desperate to and sure that will fix things. You gotta feel for him.

People have been saying that this is good, but not the series at its best. I don’t really think that’s the case. In volume four, the series took a very clear emotional and focal shift, and this is just the result of it. I suppose if you got into the series for wacky action, you’d be disappointed a bit? But if you got into it for that, and stayed for the relationships like me? You’re going to be very interested in this volume. Very.

Reading it does make one thing clear, though: I need to reread the whole series. I’ll put it off until after Essner gets to read this one, though, so I have more people to discuss it with. I also need to force Spaeth to steal my copies and read them… yep.

That stupid song is stuck in my head from work. Ugh.

So, this month’s KoL IoTM is the libram of love songs. It’s yet another skill book! Cris was very sad. But I was, you know, still alright with it. I like IoTMs. They’re what keep me playing these games, trying the new items and seeing how to use them. So I was all about being able to Summon Love Songs. I snapped it up immediately.

Since this is a Libram, each cast of it increments the same counter that lets me Summon Candy Hearts. This hasn’t really been a bit deal for me. I have like… 4 gabillion candy hearts at the moment, so I can just summon love songs all day long. Eventually, it might become a tough choice. I kind of hope it does! It’ll probably be candy hearts for the beginning of a run for a few days, until I have a few Lavenders, Oranges, and Pinks to get me through, and then all love songs.

Now, each love song can do two things. They’re powerful combat items that deal elemental damage equal to various stats. (Well, okay, one does physical damage.) They can also be used up as a 5-turn buff with the interesting mechanic that the buff does more depending on how much duration you have. So if you have 5 turns left, it’s less effective than if you have 10 turns left, and so on, up to a cap. I think that’s a pretty neat mechanic.

There’s no denying that these items are useful. They are damn, damn good combat items. I’ve been extremely thankful that this book came out right at the beginning of my Basement dive because these combat items have made the combats trivial, which is one less completely frustrating thing to worry about. (The basement SUCKS.) I haven’t actually used them as buffs, though, the main reason being they’re so much more expensive to use. I’m using up the combat item to get a shorter effect than my candy hearts, though potentially a bit more effective if I use a lot of them. (For example, Withered Heart caps at +20% Items, +20 Myst, as compared to the Lavender Candy Heart‘s +3 to all attributes, +10% items, but I have to use 4 Love Songs of Disturbing Obsession to get up to that boost, and then continue to use them to keep that amount up.) But the candy hearts are so much easier to use in that regard. They’re going to be what I go to for buffs, even if the mechanic is neat.

And I guess that’s really the issue with this IoTM. I only really want this libram to summon powerful attack items. I don’t need the buffs. But if I had a Libram of Divine Favors, then I’d already have a much better source of attack items that would let me have a chance to get the all powerful divine popper. If I was someone who had the favors but not the hearts, then this is a great source of buffs. But to those players who have both, this really does have to seem mediocre. I mean, it has some really funny text when you use the attack items, but this really does seem designed for people who are missing a libram, or maybe even missing both. There’s nothing especially wrong with that, and I’m happy with it, because I was missing a libram. But it does seem like, if you have the other two, you could probably safely skip it. Maybe I’m missing something awesome you can use it for? But that’s how I feel about it.

Still, I’m going to continue to enjoy it greatly.

So, last I checked, it was February. So it’s IoTM time! Or it has been IoTM time. Yep.

Twilight Heroes offers a set this month, the foxy sombrero mask and the foxy caped suit. Since they have the word “foxy” in them and everyone in game calls me Foxy (Thanks to Val) I couldn’t NOT get them, even if they did nothing! Luckily, they don’t do nothing.

The standout piece, for me anyway, is clearly the sombrero mask. It offers an increase in farming profits, doubling my +chip bonus from the next nearest hat, the royal crown. I’d wear it, even if it didn’t have “foxy” in the title. Clearly, though, this is a reference to Zorro more than anything, and I think that’s done well. The other abilities of the hat, that of increased enemy fumble chance, is… interesting. Very interesting indeed, especially considering the ability when worn with the suit, which lets you, Zorro-style, emblazon some initials onto your enemies when they fumble for a little extra damage. Apparently Cris pushed for the customizable initials for me. Heh. I’m flattered, and I do think that part is awesome, even if the only obvious choice of initials for me is “fox”. Heh. Customization rules! Also, the idea of me carving out my initials with, say, a cannon makes me smile. In any case, I think the hat is a complete win, either as a farming aid alone or just being fun with the full suit.

The main problem I have with the caped suit, though, is that it’s a suit. Suits take up both the shirt and pants slots. I mean, for a character who’s going for ranged weapons and reflex, the foxy caped suit offers some nice bonuses. The combo with the hat isn’t too impressive, but is appreciated. (The real combo benefit is the one on the hat, as far as I’m concerned.) The -10 seconds makes it on par with the Xentrium Breastplate, which is almost a requirement. But the fact remains that, if I equip this, I can’t equip both the Letter Shirt or the crazy rainbow pants. Losing one of those I could handle, especially for the fun of the initials. (I keep my double tower shield always equipped for the battlecry, even though there are much, much better farming options for that slot) Losing both… I just can’t justify that most of the time.

Overall, though, I think this month is a pretty solid one. If nothing else, the hat is a good buy alone for anyone who wants to increase their in-game wealth with the added bonus of the fumble chance, and if you’re a player who doesn’t have, you know, most of the IoTMs like I do, the caped suit is probably a really good option if you’re playing, like, a ranged-attacking Gadgeteer or something.

So, I was continuing to have a roguelike urge, and Talking Time had, conveniently started up a thread about stupid roguelike deaths. I was all playing Shiren, but they kept talking about a PC roguelike called Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It’s apparently a modification of Dungeon Crawl, if you couldn’t guess. Since it was popular and free, I decided to give it a go.

It went badly. It was all ASCII characters and I couldn’t grok the controls or understand anything. Ugh. I went on my twitter and complained.
Red Hedgehog responded in surprise. “But it’s so newbie-friendly with its mouse controls!” Mouse controls? I knew of no mouse controls…

It was then I learned that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup with tiles is almost a completely different and much much better game, from an interface standpoint. Everything is very visual, and you can mouse over anything to get a list of commands that object can do, and the most common ones are mapped to the left and right click. So the mouse basically works as a cheat-sheet and an interface all at once. You can even see what the enemies are holding by their pictures. It’s pretty rad.
Once I got controls that worked, I was hooked for quite awhile!

Granted, I suck ass at these games. There’s like… a whole bunch of layers or something in the game, many different dungeons in the dungeon, and I still haven’t found any of them. Not one. But I’ve been pretty impressed by the different classes, as they really do seem to play fairly differently, at least at low levels. I’ve had the most success with Healer, though, as they come already with the knowledge of what potions are potions of healing, which, well, really helps me remember to actually attempt to use potions of healing. Which is probably why I’m so successful with that class.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a roguelike, it comes highly recommended by me. It’s so, so much easier to comprehend than, say, Nethack, and it’s a good time. Oh, and if you want even more information, I’m sure @play would be happy to oblige.

So onward marches the semester, for better or worse, and so I’ve read another novel for my novel class. This one is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Now, after how much I enjoyed Motherless Brooklyn, I was looking forward to more. I really don’t read enough, and if the class keeps feeding me stuff like that, I was going to love it.
Water for Elephants did little but disappoint.

There are books in the world that are so much worse than this book. It has a really strong sense of setting, and the writing is not altogether horrible. But being alright doesn’t really a great book make, and this book is just kind of alright.
First off, the book has a wrapper. Meaning it’s a story within a story. This can be really awesome. See something like, I dunno, Big Fish. However, there is absolutely no real meaning to having the wrapper in this book. There’s absolutely no payoff to it (and I’ll get to the ending in more detail in a minute, I have complaints about that too) and it takes up a very large portion of the book. Every time the story would get back to the old man who was remembering all this, I would sigh, and have to slog through to get back to the stuff that was more interesting.
Even the main story, though, was not perfect. Above all, the story itself seemed determined to shock. There’s nothing wrong with this either, but it honestly just felt very out of place, because when you were in a moment that was supposed to “shock” the descriptions would get all super-intense, and the language of the book would change. It felt out of place, and it just didn’t work at all.

Finally, though, the last nail in the coffin for this book was the ending. First of all, it really tried to write up, with the wrapper, that the fact that Jacob married Marlena was some kind of twist, when you knew, you knew, the moment Marlena entered the story, he was going to get the girl. But that’s just annoying. What’s wrong is that the ending is such a complete happily ever after. They miraculously go from being completely broke and jobless to having enough money to support themselves and an elephant and a chimp and a whole bunch of horses. Hell, even the old Jacob gets to improbably relive his glory days recklessly. This just does not jive with the grittiness, the dirtiness, the reality the rest of the book is trying to sell you. The book attempts to make the ending seem less perfect than it is by killing off several characters you might like right at the end, and it might work… if the fact that those characters were around wouldn’t have made trouble for the couple. If they would have still been alive, then Jacob and Marlena would have to figure out how to help them, and they couldn’t ride away on the Rainbow Happy Ending Express unhindered. It just doesn’t work.

So yeah, I was very disappointed with Water for Elephants. It was not anything that I would call a great book. It might have come off a little better if it hadn’t been in such close proximity to Motherless Brooklyn, which was just… awesom. But only a little better. Only a little.

So, I don’t know if you listened to the last 1up Yours, (even though it seems like Listen UP is the exactly same show only it doesn’t have Shane) but if you did you probably heard Luke Smith and John Davidson talk about, what else, an iPhone game. Mr. Davidson likes talking about those, and dammit, I appreciate it, because there just aren’t any good ways to get information about iPhone games. Parish’s iPhone blog is a good help, but at the same time, he’s talking about all things Mac related, whereas I want mostly just an app review portal, you know?
Anyway, so they bring up what they’ve been playing on their iPhones, which is WordJong: Daily Challenge. I’ve heard of the WordJong before, back in the EGM Live days, when they made fun of the DS release, and then found out it was actually kind of respectable. I’m still wanting more killer apps on my iPod, because I find myself playing games on it in between classes all the time, so I snapped it up for $5. It was a good choice, because it is a damn good word game. It’s probably not worth the full price DS release, but it’s hard to pass it up as a $5 download.

The game basically is what the horrible title suggests. You play MahJong solitaire, but instead of the normal tiles, the tiles have letters on them. You have to spell out words, trying to spell long ones to score more points, all the while having to adhere to the rules of what tiles you can use in MahJong, as well as having to clear every last piece from the board. This is made easier by bombs, which can destroy a single tile. You can only hold one bomb at a time, but if you don’t have one, you get another one every time you spell a 5 letter or longer word. Of course, blowing up tiles gets you no points, so it’s perhaps better not to rely on it.
Obviously, if you have no love of word games, this is completely not the game for you, but it’s the perfect game to pull out for 5 minutes if you enjoy word-based action. There is a new puzzle every day, and that puzzle is the same on every copy of WordJong, so you can compare scores with friends. Each puzzle ramps up in difficulty like the daily crossword puzzle in the newspaper. Monday’s score to beat is easy, and then each day gets harder until you reach Sunday’s impossible number.

I agree with the Luke and John that the game desperately needs an online friend leaderboard so you can race for high scores against your friends more easily, but other than that, it’s really hard not to recommend. This is exactly the kind of experience I want on my iPod: a relatively fast, easy to grasp but decently deep little game. If you have an iPhone or a Touch like me, you should really give it a purchase.

…oh my, I just learned there’s a free online version on their website? That’s awesome, although the rules seem a little different. Instead of bombs, you earn wild tiles, which aren’t in the puzzle itself this version. But yeah, that’s great. Just go check it out and try it for yourself.

So, I didn’t think I was going to get to go out and see it opening weekend, but I managed to swing it! I saw Coraline. This is the first movie that I’ve actively wanted to see for a long while, so it was a good excuse to get out of the house. Being out of the house is good, right?

The first thing that kinda surprised me when I got there was that it was in 3D. This was a mostly pleasant surprise. I don’t think it added a whole whole lot to the film, but it was fun, and a good reason to see it in the theater. On the other hand, I didn’t much appreciate paying like 3 dollars extra to buy the 3D glasses. On the other other hand, these are some serious 3D glasses. I rather like them. I’m keeping them. (There was a box to recycle them outside the theater. Why the hell would you do that? You paid extra for them, and they’re nice! Crazy.)

The movie itself… well, I think Essner said it best. If you watch the trailer, you know whether you are going to like the film or not. The movie is not surprising. It doesn’t switch things up, or have any twists. It’s just fairly straightforward.
Now, I don’t find that a bad thing. I love childish stories. This is completely a childish story, and it was a lot of fun for me to just let my inner kid out and enjoy every moment of it. It was well-enough put together, though I think you could safely say it follows a formula that many stories have used before. Still, those kind of things are why I like childish stories. I like getting lost in that. That’s mostly a personal preference, though.
It also helps that the visual style is pretty nice and stylized. I mean, I’m in the camp that says that the expense of doing stop-motion animation just isn’t worth it, but at the same time, once you’ve spent that money, it looks damn cool. The movie knows it, too, because the beginning perhaps drags a little bit trying to show you “Look how awesome our effects are!” And they’re awesome! But it apparently put Essner to sleep. It certainly takes a little while to get dramatic, I suppose.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty nice. I had a good time. I smiled all the while. Still, it’s not an instant classic, and I’m certainly only going to consider getting it on DVD on the cheap. It was fun, though.

And gods, it was a million, billion, billion times better than Corpse Bride. I think everyone can agree on that.