The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, it’s offical now: My friends love Dominion.

Dominion is a card game made my Rio Grande Games. I heard about it on the 120 minutes of Jick and Crew, as they were talking about a card game that was about building a deck, much like you build a deck in Magic the Gathering. Of course, the very mention of a card game was enough to inspire some interest in me. So much so that I ordered a copy on the spot, even though this was back right before Christmas and I had gotten a big bunch of board games we had yet to play.
It was totally worth it.

In this game, there are three types of cards. There are action cards, which let you do things, as well as just let you do more things in the turn, like draw more cards or have more money. There are treasure cards, which are money. Finally, there are victory point cards, that do nothing, but whoever has the most victory points wins. Players start with a deck of 7 Copper (worth one monies) and three victory point cards. Every turn, you can play an action, then buy a card, then you dump your hand and draw a new one. Each card you play goes into your discard pile, and each card you buy goes into your discard pile. When your deck is empty, you shuffle your discards to make your new deck. The game ends when three types of cards, or the “Province” victory card, are sold out.

It’s really a very simple game, but it’s shockingly strategic in its simplicity. You not only have to constantly adjust your deck-building based on what everyone else is buying, but you can do things like try to corner the market on a particularly useful card. You also have to balance making a more effective deck with actually buying victory points, as well as figuring out what to do with those victory points when they get into your hand, because they’re mostly dead weight.
On top of all this, you only use 10 different types of cards to buy in every game, and the game comes with 25 different types. So, by switching out what cards are available, you really switch up the strategy of the game. It’s really, really damn cool.

The best part, though, is that all my friends love it. So often I get a game like this that I can obsess over, especially due to the card element, and then my friends are very “eh” towards it and I never get to play. Not so with this. Even Buchhiet loves the crap out of it, and the individual games are not all-night affairs like Arkham Horror or whatnot. It’s so awesome to find a game that we can go to again and again.

Now, here’s to hoping that Rio Grande soon puts out an expansion pack of new card types to buy. Each card in the game seems stamped with an expansion symbol, so it seems like they are planning on it, but I haven’t heard any announcements. We’re all hoping, though.

So a bit ago, Brer told me about this movie called Felidae. It looked like a Disney animated film, but it was all made in Germany, and based on a series of German detective novels. It was never released on DVD, or even outside of Germany, but a rare Laserdisc release of the film had an English dub on it, and, well, you know. With the power of the internet, it was findable. I was game, and we went about watching it.

This movie is mature stuff!

The first indication of this was quite early in the movie, when the main character, Felix, goes out and finds a dead cat. This isn’t too surprising, and you can’t see too much, but, you know, this isn’t what you would expect to see in a kid-oriented film. Soon, he meets some cats in the new neighborhood, who insult him by calling him gay… and then it gets more and more mature from there. There are extremely graphic and gore-filled deaths and evisceration, and plenty, plenty of talk about sex. Dead cats with their guts hanging out are used as marionettes. Felix kills things on camera in full view. Hell, there is even a SEX SCENE. It’s kind of amazing to watch. It makes you realize how censored so much of our stuff nowadays really is.
The movie isn’t perfect by any means. The dubbing is pretty god-awful, though if you were to look back at when it was probably dubbed, it was likely par for the course. The story itself also seems rushed to fit into the running time. Felix plays a detective role, but often we see him just pulling facts out of mid-air to move the plot along quicker, instead of seeing him actually work them out. There’s also a theme song at the beginning and ending of the film that rivals Soul Runnaz for worst adaptation of a plot into a song.
Still, I find it really hard not to like the movie. I’ve expressed before how much I, for whatever reason, crave childish things taken completely seriously and written well. The story underneath it all was a pretty damn good story, and the presentation just… it brings up those childish likes while appealing to that adult side of me. I ate it up. I would love to see more movies like this, definitely, and I certainly think this film is worth seeing, even with its flaws. It’s actually kind of a shame it isn’t on DVD somewhere. It would be a nice little movie to own.

So, Franz Ferdinand’s new album, Tonight:Franz Ferdinand, finally hit. They’re one of bands I actually follow and actively search for, so I was happy to snap that shit up using the amazing powers of Amazon Prime I now possess.
I’m really not that impressed.
I mean, it’s all solid. The vast majority is very listenable, and I’ve been enjoying listening to it on shuffle the past few days. But I have yet to find one song that’s especially memorable in any way. Their initial self-titled album had many, such as Take Me Out, Dark of the Matinee, Michael… the majority kicked major ass. The second album, You Could Have It So Much Better, was less filled with hits, but still had some great, clearly standout hits, such as the title song, and The Fallen…
I have yet to find a song on Tonight that makes me want to put it on constant repeat, and honestly, that’s kind of my criteria for a good song. I listen to songs I love constantly, over and over, endlessly. Nothing has really made me want to do that. I mean, their single for this album, Ulysses, is pretty good, but not like… amazing? I don’t know.

A lot of talk was made about how they were going to mix things up a bit with this album, and use more electronic influences and whatnot. You can certainly hear it, and several songs just have these long, pointless, electronica finishes to them? I like that kind of music, but I’m not especially a fan of it mixed with my Franz. Still, it’s not BAD? It’s just not stand out and doesn’t excite me.
The songs are also, on a whole, much slower than previous albums. The first had like… no slow songs. The second had like two. This one feels like it has a whole lot, but the problem might be that shuffle is hitting them a lot? I don’t know. There’s certainly not any especially fast songs. I like my fast songs.

So I guess I’m underwhelmed. Not as underwhelmed as I was by, say, The Else, which was just… completely forgettable, unfortunately. But underwhelmed. Still, if you’re a Franz fan, this is still an album worth owning. If you haven’t really listening to the band, you should probably just pick up their first album, though. Cause that one is just golden, and awesome, and why I love the band so.

They say the highway’s just one big road, and it goes from here to there…

There being Table Mountain, of course.

So, I kept checking back in and reading Netbrian’s Nethack Let’s Play and it was making me all hungry for some hot Rougelike action, especially since I didn’t have anything else on my gaming plate at the moment. It really made me want to play Nethack. But Nethack is complicated and ugly and… I tried it once. It went badly. It was then I realized I had one of the best Rougelikes ever made on DS, Shiren the Wanderer. I might as well whip that out and play a couple more rounds of that instead of intalling Nethack and hating it.
So I did.
And I immediately got farther than I ever had back when I first bought the game. Such as, you know, to Table Mountain, which is the goal of the game. Heh.

It’s kind of cool how the game slowly starts to change over time, something that I never really survived long enough or smart enough to see. It slowly becomes less and less about combat and more and more about identifying items, using every bit of your inventory effectively, and evading enemies. I’m about as far from a rougelike master as you can get. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is really more my style. (SMILES GO FOR MOTHERFUCKING MILES) But it’s amazing how much I’ve improved. Since I bought Shiren, I’ve played so many rougelikes with varying degrees of success at them, but I’ve obviously learned something, because I’ve started to become vaguely effective.
For one, I was using items. There were so many situations where I know, back in the day, I wouldn’t have wasted, say, an item that could hit multiple enemies when I wanted to affect one enemy. I wouldn’t have used a staff to give me a minor boost and more safety when there was a vague, shady chance that it would be more useful later. I never did those things, but anything that keeps you alive keeps you going in a rougelike, you gotta. And thus, I’ve gotten farther.
I also had to deal with jars, which is something I’ve never really had to do before this. Chiropractic Jars are pretty amazing, and I ended up with many Jars of Change, which I used to decent effect to swap items for hopefully more useful ones. I also got the joy and pleasure to meet my first item-rusting monster, which kinda killed all my equipment, which may have been a reason I died soon after that. Heh. But it was all neat!

The thing that really hit me about this, though, was how new it all felt. Like the title up there, it felt like I’d not put time into this game before. Higher level play gets different like that, I guess. It was the fun times.
I dunno, going back to the game certainly scratched that itch, which is good. Also, it’s a damn shame that Shiren is on so many clearance racks and stuff. It’s pretty well $15 dollars everywhere, if not cheaper. If you have a DS and care about rougelikes in the least, it’s a game that should be in your collection.

So, as I sometimes do, I find myself unfocused, without a game I really feel drawn to playing. I’ve been trying about everything. While iced in, I gave many demos a try. Puzzle Quest Galactrix was better than the flash demo indicated. It’s certainly on my radar now, especially since it has a “space trader” buy high sell low mechanic built into it which sounds like a lot more fun than some of the side quests in Challenge of the Warlords. Defense Grid: The Awakening was a really great tower defense variant, but at 20 dollars, I really can’t justify the purchase. I even tried playing some more Peggle to think about whether or not I wanted to pick up Peggle nights, but dammit, the final boards in that game are kinda hard. I don’t know how you’re supposed to do them without getting lucky.

I feel like the main problem is that everything is coming out in the last two weeks of February. If just one thing would come out this week, I’d be satisfied, but no, it’s all then. Just look at this list: Dragon Quest V, Retro Game Challenge, Street Fighter IV, the aforementioned Puzzle Quest Galactrix… That is a lot of game power. Granted, Retro Game Challenge comes out one week earlier than the rest, but still. And the hits don’t stop in March either. I’m probably picking up The Dark Spire, Steal Princess, and Class of Heroes, and that’s just Atlus titles.
All these great games coming out at once just makes me grumpy. I wish what I wanted was spread out over the year a little better than it tends to be. I mean, Street Fighter and Dragon Quest on the same day is actually fine. I need something to play in between online matches while I’m chatting with people, and something simple like Dragon Quest fits the bill perfectly, but otherwise…
I’m especially disappointed in Atlus. They almost have games of theirs competing with other games of theirs. I mean, isn’t like… that Ys collection and My World My Way coming out on the same day now? And I think Steal Princess and Class of Heroes are on the sameish week as well… Mm, nope, I’m wrong on that one. Steal Princess comes out on my brithday and Class of Heroes is in April… but damn, still.
(I still love you, Atlus. You keep putting out everything you can, and I will buy the vast majority of it.)

But yeah, this is just mostly a post saying “Conform to my schedule, game publishers!” Which is stupid of me. I mean, if I didn’t buy so many games the day they were released, I probably wouldn’t have this problem. Oh well. I know my medium. I know my fun. I’ll chase it however I want, dammit.

So I played The Maw after hearing Tycho’s recommendation and trying the demo. It looked to be a sort of short and sweet puzzle platformer, and I mean, it’s cute as all get out. That’s a recipe for success, isn’t it?

Well, yes and no.

I enjoyed the game pretty much. It was cute, it controlled fairly solid (except for the Bee-tull power, which was shockingly frustrating to use) and, you know, it was pretty fun if you like platformers. Think about to the Nintendo 64, and then think if someone had made one of those platformers, only it was short and had better and cuter graphics. That’s what the game is.
I was really expecting the game to get… puzzle-y at some point, though. The way it started out, I thought what would happen would be that I would find all these different things for Maw to eat to get different powers, and I would have to juggle these powers to get out of levels. It doesn’t really work like that, in the end. Basically, you work to get Maw big enough to get to the power, figure out how to get it, then use it to get out of the level. Still pretty good, but less enjoyable than I was expecting.
Perhaps they were worried about losing audience with the game. It’s extremely casual. You can’t die (something I appreciate. More games should be like that) and it’s pretty nice about giving you hints if you get stuck. Perhaps they felt all the puzzling would confuse some of their audience. However, I mean, it’s an XBLA game, you know? You more than likely already have a level of “hardcoreness” to even access it. I think they could have pushed it a bit more.
Losing the puzzle element also makes the game pretty darn short. If you aren’t trying to get some of the achievements and just blaze through it, you could easily feel you didn’t get your 10 dollars worth. I was alright with the length, though. I would have loved more, but I enjoy supporting good indie developers, you know? These guys obviously know how to make a game. If they made a more puzzle-based sequel, I would be grabbing it in a heartbeat. So I don’t lament the purchase. However, if you’re someone that must make every dollar equal X gameplay hours, you might want to be wary.

So yeah, I guess I give the game a sort of… bittersweet recommendation. I bet younger gamers would eat it up, and people like me, who just kinda like cuteness and solid short experiences, had a good time. I do wish it would have unlocked a gamer picture of just the cute alien. It might have gotten me to change away from my Puyo Puyo Fever girl. Heh.

Late Minute Addition: After writing the bulk of this review, I read this, which said they had three DLC levels coming for $1.25 a pop. This really kinda rubs me the wrong way. The game already feels like it’s pushing it costing 10 bucks, and now to say “oh, we have these three levels we cut that we’re selling to you” just seems… really horrible to me. I guess maybe it was a file size thing? Or maybe it’s just a money grab thing? Either way, I don’t like it very much at all. I certainly won’t be buying them.

So I finished a novel. Holy shit, me? Reading? Holy crap, right?
Well, you know, I’m in this 21st Century Fiction class, so you’re going to be seeing a lot of talk of me finishing novels this semester, and, hopefully, talking about how much I enjoyed them. If they keep being as good as the first book we had to read, I’m going to be very happy with my decision to take the class.

The book I read was Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. It’s a story about a sorta detective sort of mobster with Tourette’s trying to figure out what happened to his mentor and father figure. And damn, it was really good, you know?
The book did many things correctly, and the main thing it did correctly, which is why I enjoyed it so much, was the main character and narrator. Lionel is such a likable person. He’s very intelligent and well-spoken in his internal narration, and the way he tries to view so much of the world through his, you know, condition is endearing and interesting. Seeing him work mentally, and then seeing how people see him while having to, you know, deal with his outbursts and tics just really make you side with the guy more. It also, for whatever reason, gives you an oddly quick but in-depth view of every other character. The way they react to Lionel really says a lot about who they are, so I think you get a really good view of those characters, too.
The plot itself is fairly solid too, a decent detective story with, you know, the things a detective story has. It kind of peters out in the end, but I think for a really good reason. That’s how these sorts of tales actually end, you know? When you’re dealing with organized crime and whatnot, things rarely work out perfectly. In the end, Lionel still hasn’t, you know, completely found his place in the world. He’s done what he’s set out to do, but it’s clear that things in his life aren’t fixed. It wasn’t an ending that left me with a smile, and it wasn’t an ending that was particularly strong, but I really have no ideas about how it could be better, so I can’t really complain about it.

As a quick aside, one thing this book did to me is make me feel very Ticcish. Lionel points out the tics of everyone he comes across because, you know, they kind of run his life, so he looks for them everywhere. Him doing them, and pointing them out… well, I do have little tics. The clearest one is that “ball of energy” finger thing I do when I get really excited, but damn, if I didn’t feel almost obsessive/compulsive observing my own behavior while I was reading the novel. I mean, I’m clearly not, but it was an odd feeling, I suppose, that the book instilled.

This isn’t a book I would have searched out myself. I have little interest in the subject matter and, frankly, I’m just not a reader. The more and more time passes, and I get older, the more and more I find that if it isn’t a podcast or a vidjeo (I don’t know why I’m working that spelling into my vocabulary, but I am) game, I just don’t have time for it. Still, if you are someone that reads a lot of novels, and you like detectiveish tales, this is probably a great book to pick up next time you’re bored. I wouldn’t say you should drop everything to read it? But it certainly gets my recommendation.

So a little while back, I finally got into the remake of Chrono Trigger on the DS that I got for Christmas. Good news, everyone: The game is as wonderful as you remember. Or at least as I remember. If you’ve never played Chrono Trigger, grabbing the remake is a great idea. The new DS touchscreen controls should work great for anyone who’s never played it before and loved, say, the controls for Pokemon. (I loved using those controls in Pokemon, but I just can’t play this game like that. I’ve tried. It feels wrong. Still, I like that the option is there.) They also managed to get all of the PS1 anime cutscenes into the game, so you can now watch those without playing a version of the game that loads every few seconds! Huzzah! I haven’t gotten to the new optional dungeon, I admit, and all reports say it completely sucks, but still, overall, this is probably the definitive version of the game now.

However, the thing that really gets me about the game as I replay it is how little I remember about it. I always felt like I remembered quite a bit about the game, and I mean, I do. But my memories of the game are all slices. Little bits. I sort of remember the plot, I remember some key scenes, I remember what the sidequests are, but in general, I’m having to find out this stuff all over again and being pleasantly surprised by how awesome the plot is playing out.
For example, I seriously could not remember why you go back to 65,000,000 BC for a second time. I know you did, because as I got through the area the first time I didn’t have Ayla and there was still plot there I remembered. But I couildn’t, for the life of me, remember how the party got back there. When it happened, I was pleasantly suprised.
I was also greatly pleased with Crono’s trial. I remembered there WAS a trial, but I didn’t remember how interactive it was, and how much what you did at the fair affected it. Man, this game was just crazy well put together, you know?

For this run, though, I’ve decided to try to do things differently. I’ve been using Ayla. Out of all the characters in the game, she’s the one I’ve never really given a fair chance. So far, she seems as least as awesome as everyone else, which is great news. She just does massive, massive amounts of physical damage, and that’s effective against most enemies and bosses. If I do end up beating the game, I’ll probably keep using her all the way through.
I also plan to kill Magus this run, if I get that far. I’ve never done that either, so I figure that would be a bit of a different thing to try for once, eh? We’ll see how that goes.

But yeah, anyway… Chrono Trigger! Whoo!

Seriously, what the heck is this “kick” thing of which you speak. Balrog knows not of this.

But seriously, I was really hesitant in picking up Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (or SSF2THDR for short) because they priced it at 15 bucks and because I never have anyone to play with in these things. Even though the Talking Tyrants were playing it, I thought for sure it would go to waste. So I hesitated and hesitated, and eventually gave in.
I’ve been totally getting my money’s worth. Not only have I had several nights of hawt Street Fighting Fun with the Tyrants, but I’ve also been learning the game. I’ve been winning against random people online! It’s crazy! And it’s all thanks to that crazy Mike Tyson clone.

It all started when I picked Balrog just for shits and giggles against my fellow Tyrants… and then I won. And then I won again. And then I won again. It was shocking to me. I’ve always been a keepawayfireball kind of player in these games, and Balrog is all about charging in and dealing heavy blows. Granted, I’m normally Kamakaze. I shouldn’t be suprised that I take to his methods. But I took to them.
This led me to actually practice with him, to figure out what was going on. Morbid Coffee jumped in with some tips, as he’s also taken up the Balrog call and really gotten good with him. Better than me! And he showed me two keys to victory with him, and probably in Street Fighter in general.

1) Balrog’s throw is the FUCKING SHIT. He has this like… endless throw loop? It’s a thing of beauty, and just one of his throws does so much damage. Me throwing in general was something that I never did before in the game, and it’s so very effective.
2) There are moves other than special moves. Being effective with Balrog requires you to use several of his normal attacks well. I’ve always been a special move spammer, and now that I’m not doing nothing BUT those moves, I’m being much, much more effective.

Anyway, it’s nice to not suck at Street Fighter! At least with one character. And I hope some of these skills transfer to SFIV… that would be nice… yep!

So, for the first time in a long time, I got to go Slap the Euches at Dustin’s. Playing Euchre used to be something we did quite, quite often, but now it’s kind of a nice rarity. I mean, I have all kinds of games I could be playing instead of this simple card game, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have a damn good time when we do it.

(We also played a little pool before I got in a Euchre game. Man, I did abysmal at that. It’s been even longer since I played pool, of course, but my shittiness was far beyond rusty. At least I was almost competent before the game was over. Geez.)

The thing about playing Euchre with Dustin is that… well… the man plays Euchre. He may be slow to pick up other games, but he knows Euchre backwards and forwards and backwards again and then forwards a little more. We play a hand, and then we spend minutes either talking about previous Euchre stories or much more in depth Euchre strategy that I would have ever envisioned existed before I started these games with Dustin. He discusses this card game like pro Magic players discuss deckbuilding. It’s kind of awesome and a little scary.
The result is that I really, really, really over-think myself when I play with Dustin a little. It makes me completely aware that there is always a correct move when I look at my hand, and when I’m thinking about calling, or whatever. Someone knows what I should be doing in this situation. So I stall for a little bit, and I also start asking questions after every hand where I was unsure, to figure out what I should have done. I take games seriously in general, and Dustin taking Euchre seriously (even though we’re just dicking around. If I make a wrong move, it’s not like anyone would be mad at me at all. Some friendly insulting, probably, but that would be it, and that could happen for… well… anything. Heh.) puts me in the mindset that I should. So I’ll try, for better or worse.

And then I do retarded shit like not going alone on 4 trump and a side ace, just because I didn’t know where the left was. Sigh.

Oh well.