The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I played a game by the name of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Boy, was that a video game.

Reckoning had so much potential. Dialog Trees! Combat that seemed potentially fun! Um… Dialog Trees! It was trying so hard to be Dragon Age, only better. Surely it wouldn’t be terrible? Certainly some of that would rub off and it would be fun!

Not really!

I mean, alright, it was fine, you know? It was fine. There were plenty of quests? Lots of talking. You had plenty of character customization and could choose what you wanted to do in combat. I went pure mage, and it was really pretty fun! You eventually get this skill where your dodge instead leaves a deadly ice cloud behind, so you can kind of zip through enemies and slow them down while you’re running away. That’s neat. I threw millions of ice shards at enemies until they died. That’s pretty neat!

That’s about it.

I think now I’m just going to make a list of everything that disappointed me in no particular order.

I had a persuasion skill that was maxed, and I failed the last persuasion check in the game. REALLY? REALLY, GAME? Plus, persuasion, and conversation in general, never did anything besides get me gear that wasn’t as good as what I had on. Persuasion was “give me a free thing.” That’s really unsatisfying.

I played on Casual, but at the end, the game got really hard. On Casual. Granted, I might have been underleveled because I only did two side missions because they were all insanely boring. But that fact just kind of strikes me as really weird. I mean, I was playing on Casual.

All the characters in this game are super boring stereotypes. “Hello, I am a warrior who used to be great but now I drink a lot ha ha!” “I am mysterious lady from your past you can’t remember who isn’t telling you anything and has large breasts!” On top of that, none of them have anything vaguely interesting to say. At least, say, Oghren from Dragon Age, while being a stereotype and being voiced by Steven Blum, was pretty interesting once you actually talked to him. These characters are not anything other than your first impression of them, and they can talk and talk at you and not say a goddamn thing. All the dialog in this game is skippable, and in an RPG, that’s insane.

There are at least two mainline “run around in this area and get into a lot of stupid random encounters just to walk to a place and press a button before walking to another place” quests. I get it, there’s an open world for some reason. Can we please move on? Why not make some more interesting quests instead of filling your game with padding?

I enjoyed Amalur well enough, I guess, but only because I basically just charged through the main storyline without stopping, and even then, I was kind of nearly sick of it by the time I was running towards final boss land. It is just devoid of creativity or anything interesting, which just seems crazy to me, as they kept talking up what an interesting world they had. But a bunch of lore doesn’t mean shit without characters, and this game has none. Sure, it has some decent combat, but that’s really it. Rent it if you want, it’s an okay time if you just want to smash your way through like I did. But goodness, just wait for Mass Effect in a week or so, and play a good dialog-full game with fun combat.

Let’s see, what do I still need to write about…
Oh, right. Dead Island.

I did not like Dead Island.

I picked the gun lady because I’m like “how could this possibly work without making you get a lot of guns early on?” And basically, it doesn’t. As the gun lady, you don’t really have any gun skills until like half the way down your skill tree. You’re doing the same melee and throwing shit as the other characters, only you’re probably a bit worse at it. You walk around and zombies run up and you smack them with objects until they break, and then you pick up new objects. You can hold a lot of weapons, but only equip two at a time, so at least in the early game, you have to go into the menu to equip something new constantly. This is genius. (Not really.) I’d be okay with the equipment limit in a game where two weapons would be things you’d use for more than 3 enemies and you’re just having less options, and I guess eventually the game gets to that point? But certainly not at the beginning. It’s frustrating and stupid.

But yeah, the zombies run up at you, and you attack them all the same way, and then your weapon breaks and you grab another weapon and then a zombie runs up and you do it again. This is boring, and really frustrating when you get to a zombie who is “special,” because you’d think “Oh, I need to use different tactics!” but you can’t, really. That’s your options. If you want to do significant damage, you need to run up at him and hit him, but now you’re being punished for it. Genius. I turned on the “analog” combat, since I heard that was more fun, but that doesn’t really help much. It feels different, sure, but I, in a lot of ways, felt like I had LESS control over what I was doing. It felt like I was doing what I’d actually do if I tried to fight someone with an oar or pipe: flail wildly. I’m supposed to be some badass security guard, according to my little bio, but I’m flailing about and screaming while I fight people. I don’t feel badass at all. That seems, in a lot of ways, like a problem in a supposedly loot-driven game like this. I dunno. Certainly not what I expect in a game where you’re supposed to run around with 3 other people.

The missions were fetch quests, and I tired quickly of the combat, and then I realized that people say this first part of the game is the best part! And I am hating it! So I sent it back to Gamefly. Good try, Dead Island! But yeah, I just wasn’t feeling it. At all.

I played the first episode of CSI: Deadly Intent.

I’m still not 100% sure why I did? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a single episode of CSI, no matter what the variation, and really nothing about the game made it seem like it was even vaguely going to be good. Sure, Telltale made it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has appeal outside of those who like the show. But I have Gamefly, so sometimes I put stupid things on my Gamefly list, and then they show up when I’ve forgotten about them, and I go “Oh.”

Let me just say that even as a fan of adventure games, this game is not very good. The controls on the 360 version, especially, are just completely fucking awful. Your left thumbstick is just emulating a mouse. For some things, you can choose options with the d-pad, making it less of a pain, but not everything. It is un-good. Maybe it’s slightly better on PC because you can actually control it.
Second, let me just say that I don’t know how much a CSI fan is going to get out of this game. I mean, maybe I’m wrong about what a CSI fan likes, but I’d think a lot of why you’d like the show is an attachment to the characters, right? All the characters are there, but you interact with them very, very little. They don’t really have any sort of dialog or banter between them that you would assume would be a major portion of the show. They just pop in, or serve as menu options for different things. For example, some guy named Captain Brass is your menu for getting warrants, basically. Again, I haven’t seen CSI. Maybe I’m wrong, and the whole show is all business all the time and everyone works in silence. But I really doubt it, and that would suck for fans of the show, wouldn’t it? Also, the few times the characters do talk, they often crack kind of weak jokes. There was a “ha ha, look, that stripper fingerprint belongs to a transsexual” stupid joke for example. I dunno.

The story of the episode and the mystery seemed fine, however. You had multiple dudes who all could have been the murderer, and you kept finding evidence that would point more to one, then the other, and so on. That seems like what a crime show would do, and that’s kind of neat. Not, you know, hard to do, but not bad.

The actual finding evidence, though, is kind of annoying. Most of it involves playing silly minigames on computers at the lab, which is fine, but also not necessarily entertaining, especially when the game won’t let you complete the minigame yet due to the story, when you know that’s the ultimate solution. For example, the murder weapon in this episode had been broken into many pieces, and you were collecting them over the episode and putting them back together. One fragment had half of a fingerprint on it, so the idea is that you’re going to get the whole fingerprint eventually. But here’s the thing: you match partial fingerprints like 5 times during the course of the investigation. Why the hell wouldn’t you take a partial fingerprint and see if that was enough, at least for now? You’ve got this magic crime computer: use it! I got so frustrated at being unable to match that partial fingerprint, but of course if I could have done that, it would have ruined the suspense on who was the actual killer, so oh no, can’t do that. They even could have explained it better, “That looks like a fingerprint, but it’s too smudged on this piece to get a good match… maybe the rest of the print on another piece will be clearer,” or some shit like that, and I would have been happy. But they didn’t. It’s a shame.

Anyway, I beat Episode 1, and got like a million achievement points, and I could have gotten a lot more if I kept playing, but I don’t care about achievements that much? In any case, I can’t say this game is any good. I guess I hoped that Telltale’s “sellout get that cash money” game would not be quite this slap-dash, but eh, that was probably too much to ask for.

I think we can all agree that Genkibowl was a bad situation. It was not very good, and it left a lot of doubt as to if the money plunked down on a Saints Row: The Third season pass was going to go to waste or not. Were they all going to be as rushed out the door? Were they all going to cut huge corners in regards to dialog? Doubt crept in. Could they sour the super best most awesome game after the fact by selling me this thing and fucking me over on it?

I’m here to say that what I hoped was the case with Genkibowl seems to be true. It was the quick DLC they could get out the door fast so they could work on more substantial things. While Gangstas in Space is not much longer than Genkibowl to play all the way through, oh holy fuck is it better. These are missions that feel completely like they could have been in the game. They are missions up to the quality of the main game’s story missions. They’re funny, and they’re fun. What more do you want?

The moment the DLC started, I was worried. I called up the mission, and once again, the Boss didn’t talk to the mission-giver at all. A bad sign? But the moment the first mission started, and she opened her mouth and talked? I was so relieved and instantly pumped. It was good to be back. The dialog in the episode is pretty good! I mean, there’s probably better in the main game, but it is completely up to par, and I was so glad just to hear the Boss reacting to shit.

Sure, you can see where they made decisions to make this cheaper too. Two of the three missions in the DLC just take place in Steelport proper, as opposed to some alien planet or crazy movie set. That doesn’t make them any less fun, though, and the mission that takes place on the sound stage looks cool, and has tons of Easter eggs.

If there was problems with this DLC, it’s probably the length vs cost and the achievements. If you just flat-out buy this DLC, it’s like 7 bucks? And I beat this in like 90 minutes. That’s… pretty expensive, even if it’s fun. For just a few more bucks, you could probably buy a really fantastic XBLA game like Bastion or something for hours and hours of fun. It’s a hard sell that way. It also has very specific achievements to get, if you want to get them all. Since you can’t replay missions in Saints Row: The Third, if you forget to make saves in between them (and they’re fairly long missions too) you’ll never have another chance to try for them. That doesn’t bother me so much? But if you’re someone that would bother, keep that in mind.

Anyway, I’m glad Saints Row came back in a fun way. Bring on more DLC! Make it good like this one!

“HmmmmMMmmmmMHmmhmmmmmahhhhhmmmmmmoooohmmmhmmhmmmmmHmmmmmmm…” Twilight Sparkle was rereading her latest fanfic. It was a touching, saucy tale of a town, Horseyville, a totally original location, trying to deal with the problems of a new robot uprising, and the many dramatically romantic situations that spawned from that. It was going to be such a success! She couldn’t wait to send it to Celestia. Sure, after she had sent her last masterpiece (Prismers of Love: A Rainbow Romance), Celestia had asked her to never send her another fanfic. Surely, though, that was simply because she thought Twilight could never top her last one! But she knew she could, and this one would do it.
“I know she’ll love this one!” Twilight said. “It’s so close to perfect!”
“Twilight, I think she said last time that she didn’t…” Spike began.
“Spike, I thought I told you to clean the kitchen, not think,” Twilight said. “But no, seriously, this is perfect! But it just needs to be more… real. It needs more reality! That’ll show Celestia what a wonderful writer I am!”
“What does that even mean…” Spike said to himself, heading toward the kitchen.
It was then that Twilight had an idea. “Heeheehee, I know! Spike, I need you to write up a town-wide notice.”
“But I thought you told me to…”
“Seriously, why do you always backtalk me like this, Spike? What have I done to deserve this?”
Spike sighed, and picked up a quill and some parchment.

—

Mafia is Witchcraft

“Hide And Go Beep”

—

“And so, due to increased robotic and robotic sympathizer threat in the town of Ponyville, Princess Celestia has told me, Twilight Sparkle, to form W.A.I.F.U., Warriors Actively Investigating and Finding Undesirables, to find and squash this menace once and for all… Buy some Apples!” Applebloom gasped as she read one of the flyers pasted all over town. This was bad news! For a long time, she had always suspected one of her friends was a robot, but she never told the robot police, sure that she wouldn’t hurt a fly. But now, with this silly inquisition, she was sure to be found out, and then killed!
“I’ve got to talk to Sweetie Belle!” Applebloom raced for Carousel Boutique, where Sweetie Belle was currently staying. She knocked wildly on the door, and Sweetie Belle answered.
“Hello, best friend of mine,” said Sweetie Belle. “Inquiry: what brings you to my house today?”
“We need to talk, Sweetie Belle, and fast!” said Applebloom. “Can we go to your room?”
“Of course.”
They locked themselves in Sweetie Belle’s room, and Applebloom explained the flyer.
“But why is this a problem to our normal, soul-filled lifestyles?” Sweetie Belle asked. “Surely we are not at risk.”
“We aren’t… but I think Scootaloo is!” said Applebloom.
“Scootaloo? A robot?” asked Sweetie Belle, unsure.
“Of course! Have you ever noticed how even though she’s a pegasus, she never flies? It’s because her robotic body is too heavy! And the way that she doesn’t really have any defining characteristics… that just feels like a robot trying to blend in, doesn’t it?”
“Gasp!” said Sweetie Belle, “It all makes sense now! But Scootaloo would not injure a sentient being! She is our friend.”
“Exactly! That’s why we have to protect her! I just don’t know how…”
“Let us think. Calculating…. Calculating… Plan Formed. Didn’t you have a friend you abandoned after you met us?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Who, Twist? Well, yeah…”
“My databanks indicate her family is likely a member of organized crime.”
Applebloom gasped. “Of course! She’d know how to keep Scootaloo safe! Let’s go!”

—

“Are you sure the Princess told us to do this?” Applejack asked. “Because I haven’t heard…”
“Of course she did. Her secret messages are of the top priority and can only be read by me. We’ve been over this,” said Twilight.
“The mission is already falling apart, commander,” said Rainbow Dash, “but honestly, I believe in you and this mission.”
“Thank you, Rainbow Dash. I can always count on you to tell the truth.” Twilight turned to everyone else. “Listen, the Princess once again has put the most capable pony in charge, so as long as you listen to me, and do what I say, we’re going to be successful, clearly.”
“Where’s the gypsy?” asked Rarity. “Surely she’s part of this warrior whatever?”
“I have no idea,” said Twilight Sparkle, definitively.
“But aren’t gypsies traditionally robotic sympathizers?” said Fluttershy. “This is why you should have let me take her out years ago…”
“Oh, right, so that’s the reason she’s not here then,” said Twilight.
“But you told all of us to invite her to this meeting if we saw her…” said Applejack.
“I was setting a trap, Applejack, it’s what leaders do.” Twilight said. “Okay, so, we’ll meet back here to discuss our findings and make plans every night, alright? I’ll have your orders waiting for you then. Dismissed!”
“But what are we supposed to do for today?” said Rarity.
“Find the bad guys,” said Twilight. “You can do it! Go on.”
“Oooookay, well. This has been informative,” said Rarity. “I suppose I’ll head back to the shrine then.”
The Members of W.A.I.F.U. scattered to do their “work.” Twilight Sparkle giggled. “Chapter One, Check!”

—

Seven knocks later, Twist opened the door. “Oh, hello Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo. Were you followed?”
“Why am I here again?” asked Scootaloo.
“That is irrelevant information,” said Sweetie Belle. “Do not worry about it.”
“We need to talk to you, Twist,” said Applebloom. “Can we come in?”
“Sure.”
“Scootaloo, would you mind waiting outside for a moment?” asked Applebloom.
“What? Why did you bring me, then?” said Scootaloo.
“Just for a moment!” said Applebloom.
“It will not take long,” assured Sweetie Belle.
“Fine, whatever.” Scootaloo said.
Safely inside, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle explained Scootaloo’s situation.
“So you want to stop this Team W.A.I.F.U. and save Scootaloo’s robotic life?” asked Twist.
“Yes, exactly.” Applebloom said.
“Can you help us? Awaiting response.” said Sweetie Belle.
“If all the robots in Ponyville are wiped out, my family won’t be able to use the robot police as cover and an easy threat… I think I could get them behind this,” said Twist.
“Well, that’s good news!” said Pinkie Pie. “These sorts of witch hunts never go well for, uh, those who practice witchcraft. It’s good to know you’ll put a stop to them.”
Applebloom and Sweetie Belle turned in surprise.
“Error: unknown participant in conversation!” exclaimed Sweetie Belle.
“What are you doing here, Pinkie?” asked Applebloom.
“Oh, well, Twist and her family helps me get all the illegal ingredients I need for my baking all the time! In exchange for some favors, of course,” said Pinkie. “But seriously, it was this kind of situation that lead to my parents’ tragic demise that only left me sad, alone, and forced to turn to the powers of evil to keep some shred of hope in my life!”
“Does that mean you’ll help us?” asked Applebloom.
“Sure!” said Pinkie Pie.
“Fantastic. Although not as useful as a unicorn or pegasus, Pinkie Pie should be able to aid us in our cause,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Let’s get Scootaloo in here and protected, and then we’ll get to work!” said Twist.

—

Days are normal 72, Nights are normal 48. Don’t talk about the game outside the game, no screenshots of “secret” information (if you have to ask if it counts as secret, just don’t do it), please put all your votes in bold text, and put nothing else in bold (in other words, if you bold anyone’s name, that is a vote, as far as the game’s concerned) and remember: Friendship is Witchcraft, and should be avoided at all costs.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders are the powered citizens. Team W.A.I.F.U. are the mafia, and get a nightchat and nightkill as per usual. The town wins if they kill all of Team W.A.I.F.U. Team W.A.I.F.U. wins if they kill all of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, or get a voting majority in town.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders

Sweetie Belle

A normal, sentient lifeform just like any other pony, Sweetie Belle has a robotic signal jammer built into her back. While Sweetie Belle is alive, it will take Two Nights of Scanning for Team W.A.I.F.U. to determine someone’s affiliation.

Applebloom

With presidential aspirations, Applebloom can be any Apple-related thing she wants to be. Once per night, Applebloom can choose a player. If that player is not one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Applebloom will slap a presidential veto on any actions that player may be taking that night. She’ll also learn if the player she targeted is a Cutie Mark Crusader. How else would she know to stop her veto before it goes through?

Scootaloo

Considered a robot by her friends, Scootaloo fills the important role of being the pegasus so that the Cutie Mark Crusaders are racially diverse. She also has a scooter. That’s cool, right? If Scootaloo is killed in any way, after a day of rest she will return to play, alive and ready to prove how diverse this group is.

Twist

With ties to organized crime, Twist has ways of making a pony talk. They very often involve peppermint sticks to sensitive areas. Once per night, she may pick a player to brutally interrogate that night. When the morning comes, she’ll be told the affiliation of who she interrogated, and that player will have been so badly beaten, they won’t remember the experience.

Pinkie Pie

Using her teleportal powered by Gypsy Magic, Pinkie Pie can avert disaster. During the night, Pinkie Pie may choose a player. If that player would die via night kill that night, or lynch the next day, Pinkie Pie will bake the fourth wall and stop it from happening. However, if she is successful, she’ll have to regather ingredients for the next two nights.

Team W.A.I.F.U.

Twilight Sparkle

Blessed with the magical power to levitate objects, read books, control lightning, and write fanfics, Twilight Sparkle is clearly the most faithful student. However, all of these silly ponies and robots are really threatening to mess up her Mafia is Witchcraft fanfic, which just won’t do at all! Once per night, Twilight may send a message to the GM with a player and a command that can be expressed in 5 words or less. The chosen player will be informed of the command, and must follow it, or they’ll end up like Twilight’s friends back in Canterlot. The player does not have to follow the spirit of the command, just the exact wording. The chosen player cannot say, admit, or suggest that they’ve been compelled by Twilight to do something until the next game day. This power requires co-operation by everyone in the game. Come on! It’ll be fun. Play along, okay?

Rainbow Dash

Rule text? That is so un-Rainbow. Dashing like a Rainbow, Rainbow Dash can dash a message to the GM during the night, in a totally rainbow maneuver. The player mentioned in the message will be totally rainbowed in a dash, and be so overwhelmed with how shallow a character Rainbow Dash is that they will be dumbfounded, unable to speak, other than to vote, for the next game day.

Fluttershy

Cult Leader Fluttershy knows the machinations of the great Lord Smooze, and can thus predict the next Smooze-related eclipse. Once per game, Fluttershy can proclaim the next great eclipse is coming the next game day. That game day will then be shortened by 24 hours, due to the darkness of the eclipse.

Rarity

Part-time Fashion Designer and full-time Cultist, Rarity knows the value of a Giant Hat. She also has a wide collection of magical contact lenses and has taken a copious amount of acting classes. Once per night, Rarity may pick a player, an affiliation, and an identity. Taking on the role of that pony, Rarity will then put on a one-pony show to create fake proof of that player being of that affiliation and that identity for all investigations that night and lynches the next day. However, her overacting is way too over the top to work for herself: other ponies see right through it. She’s always that way.

Applejack

Solider and Apple Farmer, Applejack remembers a few techniques from her time in the war. Equipped with wartime Turing Test and Soul Detection machines, Applejack can determine a player’s affiliation. Once per night, she can pick a player to scan. When the next day starts, she’ll know that player’s affiliation via her invasive, against-Geneva-conventions investigation. The trauma will be so great, the player will block it from their memory, and be unable to tell they’ve been scanned. However, Applejack’s equipment goes haywire in the presence of signal jammers. If Sweetie Belle is still alive, the first night Applejack scans somepony, the results will be inconclusive, and she’ll have to perform a second scan on that player in order to find out the truth.

The Mass Effect 3 demo is kind of a clusterfuck! It really frustrated me. I will record those frustrations here for future generations. Or something.

First off, why the hell won’t this demo let me load my Shepard? It lets you make all these decisions at the beginning to try to approximate your Shepard, but you know what would be easier? Just loading my save file. Maybe this is only a problem for me as I’ve only played the games once, but the demo getting facts wrong from the previous games just made me angry. “That’s not true!” I told the screen! And it would have been completely avoided if they’d just loaded my fucking save.

I play an Engineer in Mass Effect. I am a motherfucking SPELLCASTER, and I love it. I have never really used guns that weren’t pistols in a Mass Effect game, and I have no intention of changing that in Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 3 even has this new “weight” system to help me do that: the more weapons you carry, the more cooldown you have, so if you’re just rocking a pistol, your skills refresh super-fast. That’s great! However, the combat portion of the demo loads you up with a small arsenal of weapons. However, it still let me roll an Engineer. So I have all these cool spells, but I can’t USE them, because I have all these guns I don’t want to use that makes me have to wait like a full minute in between casts. This totally invalidated my strategies for enemies I used in ME2. I died so much because I could not rely on what I had learned in previous games. It was so stupid. Why didn’t it have an Engineer Weapon Loadout for me, since I picked that class? Why was there just this Soldier loadout? Ugh.

Finally, let me talk about the multiplayer. When you try to go to the multiplayer, it says it “can’t connect.” It doesn’t say why. Just that it can’t. I knew people were playing the multiplayer right then, but it just wasn’t working for me! What’s wrong! It turns out you need a special code from Battlefield 3 to play the Multiplayer demo early. The demo makes absolutely no indication of that whatsoever, though. If the demo had just told me “hey, only those with Battlefield codes can access the early multiplayer, come back Friday,” I would have said “Cool, see you Friday.” But the fact that I had to look this shit up online just made me angry. Would it really have been that hard to just put that information in the error message?

So yeah, that demo is fucked up. I’m sure the game will be fine, but goodness. Way to make a shitty demo, Bioware.

Well, my first foray into writing out and GMing a Mafia game has come to a close. It’s kind of a relief! It was a ton of work, though work I was glad to do. But now the game is over, chaos reigns over Equestria, and I’m left to think back on my experience. Here’s some of where my head is about it right now.

First off, I think my ruleset was pretty darn good, as I originally thought. But there were certainly some interesting power things to come out of actually seeing the game in action.
I was surprised at how much people were thrown off by Lies. We’ve played games with forgers before, although I suppose not without a coroner to counteract them, so I didn’t expect people to react so badly to that aspect. In general, I think people are overreacting to how he “ruins the game.” He only ruins the game if you let him. His is a power to help create more paranoia. That’s what being a bad guy is all about in Mafia. As town, you just have to not give in to it! Be logical! Don’t be silly! Don’t pointlessly start extremely clear bandwagons that the Mafia can predict! Still, there really is a lot of hatred for it. I have a feeling I’ll probably have to temper Lies slightly if we do this again, either by having a coroner role, or outlawing the super easy move of hitting yourself with the Lies power so the town never knows your dead, which is what happened this game.
I also feel like I accidentally missed the mark with Applejack, and I felt bad about it. For whatever reason, the fact that Rarity and Rainbow Dash were underpowered didn’t bother me TOO much. Not all powers could be winners, even though I would probably switch them out for better powers if I did this ruleset again. But the fact that I felt Applejack’s roleblocking power, once the game got started and I could see it in action, was actually pretty well a stupid power to ever use made me sad. Torgo put it to use confirming himself, which was good, but yeah. It certainly needs a tweak of some sort. There’s a difference between “tension on how to not fuck up this power use” and “My best move is not to use my power.”
Mutiny, as well, was more neutered than I thought it would be. Brick’s plan was very simple, and made it so Mutiny couldn’t use their power. However, Brick’s plan really fucked with the game overall, I feel. It made it feel like the whole game day was only viable in the last 24 hours, and that had an impact. A huge one, I think. Mutiny wasn’t completely useless in that regard. But still, what’s the fun of having a power you can’t use? I’d want to fix that next time around too.

All that said, I keep going back and forth about how much my ruleset favors the Mafia. Unlike Brick, I’m pretty sure it does, but unlike most of the other players, I am pretty sure it doesn’t in a huge way. It’s really close. Is simply powering up the weak Mane 6 going to be enough to fix this? Do they need something more, to help them not fuck over each other? Or an extra “Mane 6” in the coroner role to weaken that win condition for the Mafia without giving the town too much more power? I don’t know. I’m going to have to think long and hard on that one before I do another pitch based on these rules again. Decisions! Playtesting! Oh my!

One thing I didn’t realize before I GM’d a game is how talkative players in the game are with the GM. I have never thought about PMing the GM of any Mafia game I’ve played for anything other than rules clarifications, but I was pretty constantly getting PMs complaining about things, venting frustrations, saying “Tell the Champagne Room This” and so on. It was really interesting. It was an extension of that feeling I have to want to really over explain decisions I’m not sure of to people who understand. They couldn’t do that all out in the thread, so they tell me, who knows they’re innocent/guilty and thus understands what they’re frustrated about. It was cool. Maybe I’ll do that next game. I dunno.

As far as writing went, it was a fucking blast. I think I’ve converted one and a half people to watching Ponies, too, so that’s nice. Heh. But yeah, I’ve went on and on here about how I love to envision children’s characters taking on actual consequences and problems outside of their normal reach. I don’t know if I did that real well? It did get kind of silly dramatic at times. But it was fun to try, and for the most part, I am VERY happy with how I treated the characters. I panic so much when working with stuff that isn’t my own. I don’t want to change it. I felt like I did a damn good job of keeping Twilight acting like Twilight, Applejack like Applejack, and so on. I especially felt really good about the sequences I wrote with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I often left those feeling I nailed it. Heh. If I had to do it over again, though, maybe I wouldn’t have little flavor interludes at vote counts? Fuck, that took up a lot of my free time. Then again, I got to tell the story I wanted to tell better, which is why I wanted them in the first place. I can’t be too mad about it.

The last thing I want to talk about is the bad blood in the game. Man, I don’t know, I felt like more people got hurt in the silly pony game than in games before. It was so frustrating to watch that from my position and be unable to do anything about it. You have to let people berate people. That’s just how the game works. You can’t do social manipulation unless you’re free to socially manipulate. But fuck, I would have hoped people could keep the game separate from how we all really feel about each other. We’re friends on Talking Time. Basically as close of friends as a bunch of people who haven’t met posting on a message board can be, at least in my opinion. I have screamed at people in games before, called people assholes, told them to sit down and let the adults play, and such things. But while I was frustrated then, as I said them, the moment the game ended, the feeling was gone. It was just a game. It was meaningless outside of gameplay. I don’t mind getting mad or pissy in a game of Mafia because I know, in the end, it doesn’t mean anything. I wish that was clearer to people. I don’t want to be excluding people or scaring people off, because Mafia is fucking awesome.

Anyway, I totally am calling this game a success. It had its hiccups, as any would, but overall there were no big explosions and everyone seemed to have a great time! Would I GM again? Absolutely. But I’m probably not even going to try to pitch a game for at least two more rounds. It’s an exhausting experience, doing all that stuff alone! I need to just chill and enjoy playing for awhile.

Before I say anything else about Sonic Generations, I just have to say that, one again, they have fucking nailed the soundtrack. If there’s one thing I really, truly love about the new Sonic games it is their soundtracks. They are so perfect. They are fun, and fit the game SO WELL.

Let’s just take a sample here, and take a listen. Here is the original terrible but somehow awesome song for City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2. Okay, got that in your head? Cool.
Now here’s the music from the City Escape level for “Classic” Sonic in Sonic Generations. Underneath the song, you have it mixed with Endless Mine from Sonic 3, evoking that “old” Sonic feel in the song.
Now here’s the music from the “modern” Sonic City Escape level. You’ve got the ridiculous stupid guitars from more modern Sonics, but you’ve got the basic song underneath there.

I love this shit. It is doing such a good job of evoking those eras while being good, fresh remixes.

Let’s do one more. Here’s the Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic 2. Got it?
Now here’s the “Classic” Sonic level of the Chemical Plant Zone in Generations. Still basically exactly the same, right? But they’ve added extra similar instrumentation and beat underneath to modernize it a little bit. Still, it sounds like what your memory thinks the Genesis might have been able to make, even if it never could.
And now, here’s the “Modern” Chemical Plant Zone level in Generations. It’s just like “FUCK YEAH GUITARS!” and some heavy remixing of the main theme of the level.

The game itself is just like that. It’s so good at evoking what you remember about the levels, while being slightly different. You go “I remember that part!” over and over again, but you aren’t actually playing the same levels. They’re very different, and designed for new mechanics. But they do a bang-up job of making you see them. I really liked this game.

Well, until lives fucked me over again.

Seriously, Sonic Games, LOSE THE LIVES. I got Perfect Chaos, and I was having trouble with him because you really have to balance your Boost use to not fall and die. I kept losing all my lives and having to restart the whole battle over from the beginning. After doing this a handful of times, I threw my paws up and said “I’m done. I don’t want to be frustrated.”

This same thing ruined my enjoyment of Sonic Colors. I was loving that shit, but then I got to a point where I just died constantly, and I didn’t want to deal with the frustration anymore. I just want to see all of your cool game, Sega! Give me a fucking break, here! I am a content tourist! Let me see your content!

Oh well. I hope they fix that, but I also hope they keep making Sonic games this good. Their last two were not like blockbuster must plays, but they were fun games nobody would be ashamed of enjoying with fucking AWESOME music. I would very much like that trend to continue.

I played and beat a video game! Are you surprised? Well, to be fair, this game took me all of like an hour at most to beat, so that’s probably why.

Awhile back, I found out that The Secret of Grisly Manor was free for a day. It was a little point and click puzzle thing, so that sounded like something worth trying, anyway, so I grabbed it. Then I played through it.

It was okay? I dunno.

The game is basically like a super-polished and not completely stupid version of a lot of those horrible Adventure games Retsupurae has let’s played. You’re in a world of static pictures, and you move around and solve puzzles. The little house you’re in is completely ridiculous in a lot of ways, but for the most part, the puzzles make way more sense than some in this genre, so I didn’t have much of a problem with them. There were some ridiculous, nonsensical parts. For example, at one point, you stick a rod in a whole, and then lightning just happens to strike it for some reason, and that, for some reason, makes what the rod is stuck in disintegrate, revealing a door. This isn’t like… a magic house or something. That makes little sense. Also, your character is extremely concerned with not killing a goldfish? But you’ll put the goldfish in a tub full of dirty, soapy water which would almost surely kill it. I don’t think you’re supposed to put a fish in soapy water! But what do I know, I guess.

The game did have one clever and hard puzzle that was fair, but stumped me for awhile. The clues were all out there, but it did take some thinking to put them together, mostly because there were multiple clues scattered about the world in non-obvious ways, and not like, a single clue that once you pick it up, you solve it. I appreciated that. On the whole, though, it was mostly uninspired “unlock this to get the clue/key to unlock the next puzzle” stuff. Inoffensive, fun while it lasts, but again, if you have half a brain for these sorts of games, you’ll breeze through the whole thing in minutes.

Uh, sorry for ruining the plot of this game, I guess, but it is kind of laughable. Like, you get to the end, where a door in the basement leads outside for some reason (?) and your grandpa, who you were trying to find, is just there. Like, he’s just in the back yard. You could have just walked around the house. You even go around the house to a shed at one point to solve some puzzles. And he’s like “Sorry it seemed like I was dead, but I invented time travel, let’s go!” And that’s it. Just “good job solving my puzzles, I invented time travel” and then it kicks you to the menu. You’d think with a title like “Grisly Manor” you’d have something like… scary or something happen. There’s nothing vaguely scary about the game. They didn’t even try for scary. It’s weird.

Anyway, free was the right price for this. I enjoyed it for that. If you really like this kind of game and are okay with it lasting about an hour, a dollar might be fair. I’m pretty sure they’re charging more for it, though, which is pretty crazy. There are better point and click flash games out there than this. But eh, again, it entertained me for awhile. I can’t complain. And I think this was their first game. Maybe the other ones they made are better? Who knows. I’m probably not going to go out of my way to find out, though.

Sherclop Pones put a teaser image of Friendship is Witchcraft Episode 6 on their youtube page, so I was all like “SHIT, gotta find out when that comes out!” There are links to their tumblogs or whatever the fuck that’s called, so I went and looked at them to see if they had said any sort of timetable. (For the record, take your time, Sherclop Pones! I’m excited, but do that shit right, you know?)

I didn’t find anything, but the guy who does a lot of the editing and stuff had a link to this album. It had appealing art and wanted to give me a seizure, so I figured, you know, I’d try it. It was alright, so I downloaded it, and threw it on my MP3 player. I have then proceeded to listen to it constantly since. Like, constantly. I’ve pretty well fallen in love with it. It’s really silly mashups of songs with video game tunes and all kinds of shit, and… yeah. I like it a lot. I would recommend trying it. Here’s my favorite track, if you need convincing.

But yeah, anyway, I was surprised, so I’m like “Who is this Truxton guy? I bet I’d like more of his stuff.” So I do some searching and stumble onto the website with all this stuff on it. And I’m like “Wait, I remember this ridiculous nurse herm bullshit.”
Anyway, apparently there’s a guy with like a million fursonas that makes concept albums as different people? And Truxton is his most recent creation or whatever? I don’t know. Good for him? Though it makes me kind of feel all the weirder about really liking this album. I don’t know. I remember being like “What the hell is this?” the first time I saw some of those album covers that he’s had done. Plus, since I really enjoyed this album, I’ve been seeing if anything else he has done clicked with me, and I just have stumbled upon stuff that just makes me close my browser in shame.

Let me just make one thing clear. Apparently this is this guy’s job. This is how he makes money. That’s fucking amazing. Awesome! Clearly he loves doing it, and I don’t want to come off seeming like I think he shouldn’t create it and make money off of it. Doing what you love and being paid for it is basically the goal of life, and he made it!

But it just seems in many ways to represent that part of furry culture I just kind of want to be distant from.

I’m a furry, and I certainly don’t think I’m ashamed of it? I certainly make it pretty clear and am not shy about it. Any time I am asked to explain why the hell I am a furry, or what a furry is, I have an explanation, of course, but I know that what it all means to me is pretty different than the fandom at large. I see the furries in my little group, who are a big open accepting family, very inviting, always ready to try something new. The fandom at large is the sort of people who go to conventions, dance, hook up, all this shit. I don’t think if I ever went to a furry con I would feel that sense of family I do with most furries I meet online. Maybe they’re the same people. I know Aesa has gone to these things, and I love him to death. But in a group, it’s just… scary. The overall effect is wrong. That keeps me away. This music reminds me of that in a lot of ways. I can see the bunch of people that want a song entitled “Thorough Pinata Dicking Amateur XXX” and that bunch of people doesn’t seem like people I want to be around.

I suppose this whole “brony” whatever is the same way. I have accepted I’m a super-fan, but I tried watching panels and stuff from BroNYcon, and it just embarrassed me and I had to stop. It was no longer this kind of uninhibited love of something childish and nice which I feel when I talk to people one on one about ponies. It was no longer, say, Molestia’s “let’s make pointless dirty jokes about this because it is silly” fun. It became real. All the fun playing around became super serious and “no, I seriously believe this.” That put me off.
Maybe I’m a hypocrite. I certainly have super-serious but very stupid thoughts about “but no, seriously, if the Mane 6 were lesbians, here’s who I think would fuck based on personality compatibility” and completely ridiculous crap like that. That doesn’t really feel that wrong to me. Similarly, I can have similar dumb conversations about why Fluttershy would actually make a pretty good dom with a small group of friends and it doesn’t feel wrong. It’s just all of us joking and having fun, even if we seriously argue points. But when the scale gets that big, somehow that breaks.

I think I just figured it out. When this stuff scales, I can no longer trust that someone is doing this because it’s fun, and not because they’re insane. One person, one artist, one whatever? I can get that. My brain can handle processing motivations for doing this sort of thing that aren’t creepy or crazy. I can give someone the benefit of the doubt, or see where they’re coming from. Same with a small group. I can process each person individually and make that assessment. But when the group gets too big, suddenly individually working through each person is daunting. I don’t have enough information about each person. I can’t do it. So I can’t be sure their intentions are good. So the idea of being associated with them creeps me out.

I’m not better than anyone. I’m plenty fucking creepy and weird when I want to be. I don’t feel like I’m being unfair here. But fuck, maybe I am. I don’t know. Maybe if I just gave in and didn’t worry about this bullshit, just assumed the best about people like I normally try to, I would be able to go have a good time. Who knows.

Wow, this blog sure went weird places! But seriously, try that album. It’s fun.