The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So I finally, FINALLY got in my copy of Persona 4, and I have been playing it COMPLETELY non-stop. It has not disappointed whatsoever. I’ll give you some first impressions, eh? Without being too spoiler-y.

First off, I love, love the characters. In Persona 3, everyone was kind of depressed or stressed, and the tone was, for the most part, almost completely serious. In this game, though there are important events going on and, you know, fate is on the character’s shoulders, they’re still high schoolers. They crack jokes. They hang out and talk about all kinds of stupid shit just like I did back in the day. They are much, much more entertaining to watch.
Not that there was anything wrong with the Persona 3 characters? But it was an extremely rare occasion where they would let loose and have fun. It was an ever-constant focus on “we need to deal with Tartarus.” Just the basic structure of how the dungeons work inside the TV makes there be more opportunity for fun.

Secondly, I enjoy the modifications to the combat quite a bit. I like that all my characters can still run on their own the majority of the time, because that makes the combat go super-quick, which was one of the things I loved about Persona 3. However, being able to take control during bosses is kind of a godsend, and makes them significantly easier, which is a very good thing. I mean, I picked Beginner, because I mostly wanted the story and experience of the game, not the challenge, and I’m still having a little trouble in combats here and there. It’s a hard game, you know? Having that extra control during times when I especially need it really helps. The rest of the modifications seem to more be balancing issues, but I don’t really find any problem with them.

Thirdly, and perhaps, in my opinion, most importantly, I LOVE the new Social Links. The Social Links in Persona 3 seemed like little isolated pockets, completely disconnected from the story that you had to seek out. Here, almost every single Social Link is tied right into the story. They’re your family, and every single one of your party members. It just makes complete sense that you’d have these strong bonds that affect things with people you are truly close to, and not some random shop owner you visit every day, and I love it. I also like the fact that raising Social Links with your party gives them additional moves in battle. It’s a nice and logical touch. Basically, in Persona 3, I was happy just to pick a few favorite Social Links and work on them. In this game, I really want to work on them ALL, because they’re all characters I’ve already gotten to know through other things and I like them. Plus, you know, one of them is a fox. Heh.

Anyway, I’m going to keep playing away at this game until Christmas, I assume, but damn, it is really great, and if you like the MegaTen stuff at all, you should really pick this up for your PS2 at some point. Seriously.

So, the Twilight Heroes IoTM is the Recylonizer Kit. I was hesitant to write anything about this one, because I really don’t know what to make of it. I mean, I totally called the fact that, soon, there would be equipment to set up in your hideout that would be untradable. Totally called it. And as such, I jumped immediately on board and ganked this one. But man, I dunno.
Basically, the Recyclonizer kit gives you access to a special store. You charge it up by putting items in, and it gives the kit a charge based on its autosell value. Then you expend this charge to get various consumables. There are attack items, sugar and caffeine, even a sidekick.
But I rarely use consumables.
Seriously, the fact that I have to give up items to charge this thing combined with the fact that they’re consumable makes me really hesitant to use these items. This is totally a personal problem, and not a problem with the item, but I just can’t see me using them often. When you add it to the fact that things like the Sugar Substitute and the Oil-Can Coffee aren’t better than the STROOPWAFEL and Mr. Tea at my level… I really don’t know. I hear Ryme has boosted them since I tried them, though, but it was more to make them equal, not better, and I’ve got plenty of Misters Tea and STROOPWAFEL are in what is going to be an extremely heavily farmed zone, so both are more than plentiful right now… I don’t know…
I hear many of them scale, or at least the Unstable Isotopes do, and that would probably be crazy useful to power-leveling individuals, but I don’t think I’m really going to do that, so that’s, you know, less useful.

I guess this has good points. As the first IoTM that is expended when used, it’s good for investing in, I’d think. I already invested in one. It also really seems like it would be a boon to high level people who need MP or whatnot. And the idea is really solid. It’s just, the more I think about it, the less it appeals to my play style at all. I guess I could make items to give to people that they can’t make, eventually? That’s something. But yeah, it just isn’t an IoTM for me. Still, if some awesome use comes out of them eventually, at least I’ll have one.

So they came out this with No Doubt track pack? Say what you will about where Stefani went after No Doubt, but damn, they had some good songs. So I bought the pack, even though it was a bit expensive, and I was not disappointed. It’s got every single No Doubt song you’d ever want. Well, I’d ever want, anyway. It’s nice. I’ve been having a lot of fun belting those out.

But the point is, I suppose, that it got me to boot up Rock Band 2 again. Man, that game is still so great. I can just come back to it and sing again and again. And maybe it’s sad that I’ve spent this much money on DLC or just a sign of how awesome the game is, but I seriously have so many Rock Band songs now that I play on random and still get songs I don’t recognize, or just have completely different experiences every time because tracks are never repeated. Unless I want them to be. This is how a music game should be, dammit.
So yeah, I spent hours singing, and then Spaeth came over and I sang for a few more, during which I bought one more new song, Tempted. We discovered it was about as Spaeth was completely randomly going through and previewing tracks for sale. It was only a buck! It is hella fun to sing, though “put you asleep” easy on everything else. But who cares, I just sing. It was a great surprise to find that song, but even more of a surprise to find it was by the same band that brought us Cool for Cats. What. The. Fuck. Could these two songs be more different? Mind=blown.
We also found out that a three-pack of songs by a band named Locksley seem to have a ton of awesome potential and might get bought in the future. Also, two of the three songs by Siouxie and the Banshees seem pretty great, too. I’ll have to consider all these for future pickup.

But seriously, I don’t know. It may be expensive buying all these plastic instruments, but dammit, this game has legs. I’m willing to pay that much for a game I come back to over and over again. I totally am.

I’ve been distracted for awhile, so I haven’t gotten back to it, but I gave in and bought A Kingdom for Kieflings recently, and I’m glad I did. On the surface, it looks really boring. Basically, it’s an RTS without the combat. It’s all tech tree and resource management. That’s the entire game. But it’s shockingly relaxing, fun, and rewarding. I just found myself sitting there, for long periods of time, just gathering resources and building buildings. The way the game unlocks new customization vectors is about right, too. No sooner are you getting bored with building things when you’ll unlock, say, a building to let you paint houses a bunch of new colors, or you’ll build a statue-maker to make gigantic statues in your honor, and then you have to go play with those and put them all about.
I think I’ve mentioned before how important podcast-friendly games are? This is the DEFINITION of such a game. It’s fun, but it’s not taxing. It keeps you busy while you listen to a podcast or music or whatever. It’s wonderful in that regard. It’s also the perfect “waiting for people to log on and invite me into Left 4 Dead” game, as you can play in tiny bursts and still make progress. Not to mention, it’s amazing how many hours of gameplay is in there. For my 10 bucks, I’m almost to 10 hours logged, I believe. Sadly, I don’t always get that much gameplay out of full priced games.
If you enjoy games that relax you, that are casual, like, say, Picross DS or Puzzle Quest or whatnot, you should really give this game a go. Ninjabee hit it out of the park with this one. I came in so very doubtful, downloading and deleting the demo several times, but it won me over, and I’m glad it did.

Well, you can stop imagining, because it already kinda does.

Upon hearing about it from John Davidson on 1up Yours, I just had to try SMT: Imagine for myself. Could it be that great? Could it draw me in with a property I have come to love this past year or so? So I bothered all the people on Talking Time who had codes to the closed beta they weren’t going to use, and got in on it. It’s pretty good, and certainly one of the best free straight-up MMOs I’ve played. (Straight-up meaning, you know, the normal combat, leveling stuff, and not something like Albatross 18, which is a great free arcade-style golf game, you know? Which reminds me, it’s been a long time since I played that. I bet they have a lot of new courses I should try.) When it gets into open beta later this month, I would suggest giving it a try if you like the series and aren’t allergic to MMOs.

First off, the feel is spot on. The game looks pretty damn close to the PS2 Megaten games in feeling, and they’ve certainly matched all the demon animations and models exactly. I keep seeing new people in town with demons I haven’t found yet, and going “Ooh, wonder where you get that one.” The music is not Meguro-quality, but pretty good. Still, I mean, it’s an MMO, you turn that shit off. But yeah, they’ve nailed the “feel” of Megaten that I’ve come to expect.
The combat is sort of an advanced PSO-style combat with pets. It’s all about timing. I’ve been playing a melee attacker with heal spells, like I do in everything, so I don’t know how other people play? But it feels really solid doing melee. You hit combos until you knock an enemy back, and then you can guard, or prepare a counter-attack or cast a spell or whatever. Everything has a charge time involved, so you actually have to plan when you’re going to counter-attack and block, because you don’t throw those up instantly. Meanwhile, you have a summoned demon partner. They work via a customizable AI like most MMO “pets” do, and it works pretty well, but they were damn smart in letting you be able to give specific commands, if you want. If you really want your Pixie to cast Dia RIGHT NOW on this random person, you can use your Pixie’s Dia just like your own. The thing that worries me about the combat, though, is that it’s extremely tough to switch targets. Granted, your demon is normally smart enough to try to draw attention, but if I’m using a caster-style demon, that just means they get dead quickly. I haven’t found a keyboard shortcut to switch targets. You have to click with the mouse. This is just… not good. Tab should switch between close targets, right? Maybe I’m just missing something.

In all, though, the game is really getting me with the Pokemon vibe. You have to be high enough in level to convince demons to join you, and you do it just like in other SMT games, where you talk to them and negotiate or threaten or whatever. Every time I see a new demon about in the world, I start thinking about how I can get it. They have the fusion too, just like the other games, so you might want to recruit even more than just one. The main problem I have, though, is that you can only carry six demons. I’m fine with only being able to take that many into battle, but when I tried to use the “Demon Storage” to store a couple I had that I was going to keep for fusion fodder, I couldn’t. It told me I had to buy some sort of pass and didn’t tell me where to do it. Perhaps that’s their business model, and the demon storage is a premium feature. If so, that kind of sucks, because that means you can’t go all Pokemon without paying. Still, though, even with six slots, I’m sure you could play fine overall. I just like collecting creatures.

The game tries to have a story, too, which I’m barely into. So far I haven’t been impressed, but that’s because the story has mostly been tutorial so far. If the story is halfway interesting and you could play through it with a friend, this free MMO could be a great way to waste some time with an online friend or three. Hell, the whole thing has promise. So much so that I went back to play for several hours again today, because I was wanting to. That’s a good sign. We’ll see how it goes, but either way, it seems a cut above most of these free MMOs, even others by this same company, and I’m glad it’s about.

So Left 4 Dead on Easy is a totally different game.

After a night of Ticket to Ride followed by some connection issues followed by a solid Dead Air advanced run, Morbid Coffee and I were left with one plan, and one plan only: To, uh, get me the Akimbo Assassin achievement. We did this by, of course, going to No Mercy on Easy.
I was shocked and surprised. It was INTENSE. A full game of Left 4 Dead normally takes about an hour and a half, maybe longer if there are a lot of failures. Coffee and I burned through the game in 22 minutes. 22! AND I was doing the Akimbo Assassin achievement, like I said, so I was holding myself back and only using pistols! It was a whoosh and a swoosh and it was nothing like the Left 4 Dead I know and love. And it was totally sweet.
Seriously, on harder difficulties, the game is all about survival. As it should be! But suddenly, on easy, that wasn’t even anything to even pretend to care about anymore. It was all about speed. You had to run fast, and shoot just enough zombies to sneak past. It was a total rush, and man, I can’t wait to try some speed runs with a full group of people, instead of two computer players. Attempting to beat times could make for a really great alternate Left 4 Dead night. I can’t wait to try!

So as I realized and sat down to order the Double Jump Persona 4 guide for when Persona 4 comes out this week, I realized that I’ve spend almost plastic instrument music game money on this game, what with the expensive goodies pack, the game itself, and now this guide.

Man, I must really like Persona.

And I mean, I do. Not only is it, luckily, a completely awesome and good game, but it also OOZES style, and man, if there’s one thing that can really sell me on a game, it’s having a strong style. Art, music, everything coming together to create a perfect, awesome mix. Persona 3 did this, and everything I’ve seen of Persona 4 suggests it will too. And so I buy the stuffed animals and the T-shirts and…
Well, I won’t apologize for wanting things I want. Just the cost of what I’ve been doing, that I’ve pushed into triple digits spent on this game, struck me as I was ordering. And I thought I’d share.

I always talk about IoTMs, don’t I? Well, I’m interested in them. So deal.

KoL’s offering is the Sugar Fruit Fairy, which is a sort of replacement for the supposedly extremely awesome Pygmy Bugbear Shaman. I picked it up, but I am personally unexcited.
I mean, I get that gaining stats and increasing item drops are the two most important things to do in KoL to be effective and quick at it. Thus, this fairyball which effectively does both is the shit. But it’s just so unexciting to me. I mean, I appreciate playing well, but I more appreciate playing easily and entertainingly. The MP drain this creates is an annoying cost to juggle, though I admit less than I originally thought. I thought it would be a HUGE pain, but during my short test so far, putting an origami “gentleman’s” magazine on it and using Spring Raindrop Attack left me with a positive MP gain, so I suppose it’s not so bad. But it’s still something to work around. My Wizard Action Figure isn’t nearly as powerful as this, but I would be much more eager to use it if I needed a fairyball because it does nothing but good and I really appreciate the deleveling and healing it does. I feel constantly like it’s doing awesome things, whereas, after every combat, I get that MP drain reminder message with the Sugar Fairy…
I dunno, I guess it feels like I’m so easily manipulated, to let something like that sway my decisions, but dammit, I play these games to have fun. If something FEELS more fun, then I should do that, right?
Still, I’ll give this one a full 100% run like all the others, and we’ll see how it does overall. I do like it dropping buffing items, maybe those will make me love it more, though they drop really rarely. But I’m not hoping for too, too much.

So, looking for things to play that don’t require new purchases that might step on someone’s gift-buying shoes, I’ve been looking into DLC offerings. One thing that caught my eye was the fact that there were two cheap (I think like… 2 dollars of Microsoft Funmoney, maybe 2.50) DLC campaigns for Band of Bugs. I thought Band of Bugs was a pretty nice little game, back when I first got it. It was an interesting quick and dirty Tactics clone that you could pick up and play easily, so I got one of the two campaigns. I, uh, apparently bought the second one first, though, but since the plots are unrelated, I suppose that’s not too horrible.

The Campaign I got was Ninja Sticks of Fury, which added a stickbug ninja class to the game, as well as snow levels. The pack was less meaty than I was hoping. I apparently retained most of my skills from playing through the original campaign, because I only had to restart twice as I played through it. I got maybe 4 hours of gameplay out of it. Still, that’s not TOO bad of a cost/value ratio. I spend 2 bucks on caffeine drinks everyday, and they probably don’t give me as much enjoyment.
The ninja class itself is kind of overpowered, I suppose. They have the weapon choices and movement of the mosquito thieves but a double-attack similar to the Mantis royal guards. If they get hit twice in a row, they’re screwed, but they can take out just about anyone with one hit after you get them above… what… level 5? Whenever they get the dual-attack. Still, their ranged weapon isn’t nearly as useful as the Mosquito’s crossbow. It does shit for damage against higher level enemies. Still, the flexibility to switch is nice.

Overall, I could probably recommend this? I mean, I am pretty sure I’m going to buy the other campaign before Chrissymas, so obviously it didn’t deter me. But I dunno, be warned that it isn’t some expert-level super-campaign. It’s not that hard. It’s just more levels. If you wanted more Band of Bugs, go for it.

So, on Thanksgiving, my mother had a secret activity. This activity came about when I told her about the game “You’re In The Movies” and she got so excited that she immediately thrust money into my paw and told me to go and buy it and keep it a secret. So we played and made two movies that day. And no, I’m not going to show you, because then you would see me, and I would be embarrassed. You’d have to beg.

In any case, the game is exactly what I thought it would be. It’s not a horrible experience, especially if you, you know, don’t act too cool for it and really get into it and ham it up. Also, it is the kind of game that my parents find amazing. Like, to the point where my mom is wanting to borrow my Xbox 360 so she can play this with her brother, and whatnot. She. Loved. It. And my dad had a great, great time too. And I had fun. And I think Jonathan and his ladyfriend had a decent time as well. I mean, the premise is solid. Green-screening people into movie trailers makes for a funny, awesome time if everyone plays long. It’s a solid evening of entertainment.

It has some problems, though. First off, I think the price is ridiculous. It should be $40 WITH the camera, MAYBE $50. Why? Because those people who would find this game exciting (aka my mom) aren’t going to have a game console at all, or if they do, they’re going to have a Wii, not a 360. So basically, this game is depending on the hardcore buying this to play with their non-gamer friends and family. You need the game to be budget-priced to draw in that kind of crowd. I NEVER would have picked up this game if my mom hadn’t paid for it, you know?
The other issue is the technology. Instead of a green screen, the game basically takes a picture of the room without people, and then uses that to determine where the people are. It works… okay, but it’s easily confused. Parts of people’s body can disappear at random. It can ruin an awesome, funny clip made when Jonathan’s head is missing sometimes, for instance. It should have worked better.

Still, overall, if you have a camera, this would seem like the perfect game to rent while visiting parents for Christmas or something like that. A group of non-gamers with a gamer guide could have hours and hours of fun with this game. Still, as far as a purchase goes…? Well, I’d wait until it drops a lot, which it probably will.