The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Okay, I have some things to talk about… one of them I’m debating writing for an essay for Deadpan… but I dunno how far it would go… then again he wants short essays… hm… I guess I’ll hold onto it awhile longer and see if I can write it up over the weekend or whatnot. I dunno what kind of thoughts about life I’d come up with about it, but it seems like there’s room for interestingness.

In any case, though, I wanted to talk about what I’ve been doing, which has mostly been a big bunch of nothing, but I did spend the 800 Microsoft Funbucks left on my gamertag to buy Eets: Chowdown. When it came out, I was interested, but I didn’t have any points and it wasn’t worth a trip out to buy a point card, so I never picked it up. (I wonder what will happen when I get around to the downloadable campaigns for Band of Bugs… they’re at a decent price, but downloading them will kill my 0 balance game on Microsoft points… I wonder what stupid crap I’ll buy then…) But during random bootings of Steam for the playing of Team Fortress 2, the little ad for the PC version kept tempting me, and I decided if I was going to buy it, I might as well get some achievement points out of it (since the price was the same) and so I downloaded the demo, tried it again to make sure my memory wasn’t wrong (it wasn’t) and bought it. (Although I look at the website now and apparently the PC version lets you make your own puzzles? But oh well, I honestly wouldn’t have used that much anyway. I doubt anyone else has the game for me to share stupid puzzles with.)
Anyway, the website is pretty clear on what it is. It’s sort of like Lemmings, in that you have this cute guy that you can’t directly control that you need to get to a goal. (in this game, it’s a puzzle piece.) You do this by using these little items you set up ahead of time (some are pre-set) to take out obstacles as well as affect the cute Eets guy’s mood to either Happy, Angry, or Scared. If Eets is scared, he won’t jump off of ledges, and will turn around when he encounters them. Happy Eets will jump when he gets to a ledge a short distance, but will turn around at any barriers. Angry Eets will jump much farther, and will bite and destroy certain barriers that get in his way. So you use that as well as an increasing number of little doodads that you can place on the maps… you have to activate most of them, though… it maps them to a button on the 360, so there’s an element of having to time everything instead of just setting it all up beforehand and letting it go. You get awards for using less tools than it gives you as well as running the levels below a par time. (depending on how you solve the levels, Eets could end up walking for a long while, leaving the running time from start to finish longer than the par… you have as much time as you’d like to set it up)
In any case, it’s a nice, relaxing little game. I enjoy it… I think I’m about a fourth to a third of the way through the puzzles, which is nice. It has a good number in there… and the achievements require you to play without requiring you to do stupid impossibly hard tasks, for the most part, which I appreciate. I like those sorts better. In any case, it’s probably worth your 10 dollars, if you’re into that kind of game play experience. It’s great to play while listening to podcasts…

In fact, I think I’ll get to that. My feet are still hurting like crazy from last night at work, I need to do some serious relaxing.

I think I must be missing something in Half Life 2. Seriously. Because every time I complain about things that bother me in the game, someone tells me I’m completely fucking insane. And I just really don’t get it. I really don’t get how my complaints aren’t valid. What I’m talking about certainly ruined sections of the game for me as I yelled in frustration. Bleh.
(Note, I talk about the end of Ep 2 here, so there’s probably spoilers)
Anyway, I finished Half Life 2 Ep. 2 a moment ago. It was better, overall, than Ep. 1, very much so. I only got seriously frustrated at the end sequence, which, sort of ironically, was when the game tried to do something different… I appreciated the change in pace. I did not appreciate having to kill 2 Hunters around every Strider while giving me no ammo to do so. If I tried to not kill them, then I couldn’t throw the stupid bomb because they’d shoot it out of my hands. It was maddening. I ran out of everything but pistol ammo over and over, and it got to the point where if I missed with the first bomb, I’d just die and try again, as opposed to attempting another go. And then I turned it down to easy, and it affected almost nothing of what I was being frustrated by (which is why I never did it in episode 1 when Brer suggested it… Easy doesn’t change the environment, it just gives your guns more punch and you more life, and it was the environment that was making me angry) I ended up with barely enough ammo until the very end, so I guess it helped, but it still drove me mad every time I’d hit the striders and then the fucking sticky bomb would SLIDE OFF while I’m trying to pull out my pistol. Fuck.
The ending was completely idiotic as well. “Well, we best kill off a character.” Well, then do it while they’re doing something interesting instead of having a guy pop in a window and kill him. That’s just stupid. The battle had been over for a long while, and then, magically, these two things appear, break a window but nothing actually important in the room, and kill the guy. That is just a waste of killing a character. Completely. Yes, to make you really FEEL a character’s death, it shouldn’t be drawn out, it should just come out of nowhere… but making it come out of nowhere in a situation where there IS NO DANGER is retarded. The fact that these enemies just fly away afterward makes it even more random. Sure, you can start a battle with this random death, why not? But there is no battle. They just go “Oh, we killed one guy, see you later!” Bleh.

Anyway, that’s what I think of HL2 Ep.2, but apparently I’m insane and don’t know how to play video games, so you’ll probably adore it. I think Half Life does SO MANY things right that it makes me mad when it does things I perceive as wrong, more so than if some shitty game did it.

While I’m reviewing, I also beat Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
It’s Zelda. It’s very by the formula. It does a couple really neat things with the grappling hook, but otherwise it’s pretty well just as you expected. I’m satisfied, but more creativity like with the hook, and maybe two more dungeons with the new sword you get at the end of the game while giving this sword a power… that would have been appreciated as well. But if you like Zelda and you have a DS, there’s absolutely no reason not to pick this up… well, unless you’re under Zelda fatigue… like you just beat Twilight Princess or something. Then don’t.

Finally, Megaman ZX, you would be so amazingly perfect if you JUST HAD A FUCKING MAP! Every DS game has a map on the second screen! HAVE A MAP! HAVE! A! MAP! It’s still pretty good Metroidvania action, though… After dying on the first easy tutorial boss, though, I switched the game to easy mode. I still die, so that was probably the right choice.

So, a lot of games i could talk about, but I think I’m going to talk about Team Fortress 2. Brer’s constant hinting and suggesting I not get it on the 360, combined with the 15 dollar price difference, made me get it on the PC… I prepurchased, and I could play Team Fortress 2 right now, so I have been. Short version: It’s pretty neat team mulitplayer action.
It runs well in a window, which is always a plus, though I should have expected it from Valve, who makes some of the more window-friendly games I’ve ever played. It’s really quite intense, and all the various classes do play differently, so I think they succeeded there. I’ve tried to give every class a fair shake (well, except Spy. I’m never sneaky. I’m never going to be effective as a Spy) and tried very hard to find someone to play that was not pure support. I don’t know why, I just felt like I’d rather be bad ass for once… however, it was not meant to be. I’m most effective as the Medic, which is what I would have guessed, and I make a decent Engineer and Heavy when the team I’m playing with needs someone to fill those spots… pretty well exactly what my niche was in Dystopia, only obviously a bit different… I keep wanting to be a Sniper, not because I’m any good at sniping, but because their secondary weapon is an SMG of sorts… I always tend to use guns like that, but there’s no class that uses that sort of weapon exclusively. (The Medic also has an SMG-like weapon in their Syringe Gun, but if you’re using that instead of your Medi-gun most of the time, you’re doing it wrong.) Granted, I think part of the reason is that those sorts of weapons take many shots to kill, of course, and if you attack someone like that you are almost definitely going to get a rocket to the head in this game. You need something to protect you if you’re using a weapon that needs multiple shots to kill, whether that be the Scout’s speed or the Heavy’s intense Hit-pointage…
Anyway, it’s a damn good game in that multiplayer shooter vein. It’s not going to dethrone Halo on the 360, but that’s a shame because it’s every bit as fun and a bit more varied, with all the classes and shite. Hopefully Brer and I will play it together more than a few times… though these last games I’ve played have been filled with lag, I don’t know if it’s my machine not being able to process the huge crazy-ass choke points I was involved in, or what… I don’t think that’s it, because I lowered the resolution of the game, and the lag didn’t go away… (note to self, kick that back up next time you play) Also, I don’t remember that lag playing on Brer’s friend’s server the night before… it might have just been the random server I was on. Oh well.

Before I move to Zelda, I do want to comment on the Valve Communities. It’s a neat little almost XBL overlay that goes over their games where you can chat and voice chat with people while you play. It’s a fairly great implementation… except for the fact that, if you start a voice chat with someone, you can only talk to them while the overlay is up. This is completely retarded. The moment I saw this, I was looking forward to just pulling in Brer, or all the Talking Tyrants, and just Voice-chatting with them while we play Team Fortress. Instead, now I still have to open up Skype for that functionality. Live lets you do that (and doesn’t make you take an hour to set up a simple game with two people… which is why I’d rather play online on Live in general and why I don’t mind playing a little for online. (it should be less than it is, but a little fee is okay) It’s click, send invite, they’re in, off you go. It’s so low-hassle… but I’ll never convince Brer or PC people of that, probably, so I’ll just move on) and it’s a godsend. I want to talk like idiots to my friends, but I don’t even want to hear random assholes. I might not be co-ordinating with my whole team, but co-ordination between friends still helps the whole team win (Playing 3 or 4 player online Halo proves this. Just Spaeth and Jonathan and I co-ordinating on the couch helps the team along quite a bit.) Anyway, I’m saddened I still have to have another program running to get this on the PC. You’re so close, Valve! Just let me like… click a check box to bring the chat out into the game or something!

I’ve also been meaning to give some impressions of Phantom Hourglass. It’s obviously scaled back a bit to be accessable to Nintendo’s new market… I could really see someone who plays Planet Puzzle League or Elite Beat Agents being able to grasp it, though it’s probably still a bit beyond the reach of the All Brain Training section of the demographic… however, it’s still a pretty good Zelda. By the numbers, but it has Wind Waker charm and cuteness to help it along.
The controls are pretty good, actually. An hour or so and you’ll not have to worry about them anymore… it actually gives the game a kinda lazy feeling… I’ve sat down with the game, playing with just one hand (you can use your other hand for some menu shortcuts, if you want, but it’s not required) and just chillin’ and playing Zelda. It’s nice, actually, and a bit different feel that I remember from Zelda (Note: The last Zelda I played was The Minnish Cap several years ago on GBA) The only control issue I have is that sometimes it’s hard to select your items quickly… clicking in the corner works, but not in high combat situations where you’d want to throw your boomerang a lot, and I feel like the R button quick selection works incorrectly, because when you release the button it cancels what you’re doing, instead of making it happen. I have to lift the stylus to throw the boomerang after drawing a path, for example, and it feels more natural to me to just let go of the R button… but these are minor complaints. It doesn’t ruin the game.
The bosses I’ve been pretty happy with so far too. Though I agree with Parish in saying that Nintendo can only make like 2 bosses, at least they’ve done some creative things with the two screens that made me smile. Not going to spoil anything, but they worked well and made the boss feel a little different, even if, perhaps, they actually weren’t.
As per usual, though, with games like this, I’m annoyed that I can play dress up but I have to unlock all the pieces in difficult fashion. I wanna make my boat look neat WITHOUT pointless sidequesting! But oh well.
Anyway, if you’re a gamer with a DS, you shouldn’t let the stylus controls disuade you. You’re still getting a solid Zelda. So, you know, go play and enjoy. And name your hero Fritzen. Because that’s what he should be named.

Okay, okay, fine. Halo 3.

It’s a shooter and it’s pretty good. It’s obviously well-made. I’ve been skipping all of the plot, though, because I don’t really care… whenever someone talks to us, Jonathan and I yell “WE’VE GOT GUNS! WE WILL SHOOT YOU! VIOLENCE SOLVES EVERYTHING!” I think there’s a plot, though. People on Talking Time seem to be trying to dissect it. There are even Marathon-style terminals, apparently, with more plot. I haven’t found any, though.
In any case, I can’t imagine playing through it and being entertained without Co-op. It’s just that much more fun. I can’t wait to get into some sort of 4 player co-op game on Legendary and bring everyone down! Because I will.

The real reason I got the game, though, was for multiplayer. I’ve been having so much fun with the Talking Tyrants in Halo 2, I wanted not to miss out on a moment of it. Just last night, I jumped into a huge game of Forge that people were doing… the dicking around was beyond entertaining. I picked up Mr. Beatall in a tank and flew him around the level while he shot at people on the ground… it was fun, fun times. Just that alone seemed worth the price of admission. Add that to all the normal online matches I’m going to play, with great new variants I really enjoy like VIP, and it’s going to be worth the cash in the long run.
Oh, also, you can have up to four guests playing online with you, this time! So I can bring a full splitscreen worth of people into online matches. I expect to do this a lot. Spaeth and Jonathan and I have already played a fair share of Big Team Battle matches, and it was good times. Granted, it’s always better to have the full screen for these things, but the enjoyment of co-ordinating with people in the room with you can’t be beat.

Anyway, with the cool features that make it easy to pull screenshots out of Halo 3, I thought it prudent to reset up the image dump gallery I used to have… I think I’m using a different backend now, but that was just because it was so easy to set this up. (Fantastico is a great resource for people who are only partially knowledgeable about these things like me) I guess all my WoW screenies are lost to time, now, but oh well. No big deal. If I lose these, it won’t be a big deal either. But you can either click here or use the link on the top bar to go look at the gallery if you’d like, though. Yes, it’s ugly and default. I might change it sometime if I get the urge. But it’s mostly just a way to upload pictures and store them easily so I can link them other places with little hassle.

Well, guess I best be getting back to class… fun times… fun times…

Hey hey. New Deadpan. New crap of mine in the Deadpan. Specifically, the opening, a poem, and hey, I got a Greasy Spoon point! Score!

So let’s talk about Worms: Open Warfare 2 for the Nintendo DS.
It’s the best version of Worms I’ve played in a long time.
The Xbox Live version of Worms was pretty disappointing, overall. It’s still fun, but the lack of the wide variety of wacky weapons that the series is known for really hurt it. It was very bare-bones. Coming from that, Open Warfare is a joy. It doesn’t have quite the huge weapon set of Armageddon, but it is very sizable, and contains classic favorites that were completely left out of the XBLA version, such as the Holy Hand Grenade. It has “Hotseat” multiplayer, where you pass the DS between all your friends as you play, as well as Single-Cart multiplayer and, of course, Multi-cart multiplayer. It also has ranked online play over the Wi-Fi connection. I know this is just a list of features, but seriously, the Worms gameplay is classic and hasn’t changed much since the original. What you want are the robust set of features to make playing a great game customizable how you want and easy to get into. This does that, most definitely.
The only real complaints are that you sometimes feel you don’t know what exactly is going on, since Worms is really built more for a widescreen view, instead of the tall vertical view you get over the two screens of the DS. Add in playing Hotseat, where you don’t get to see your Worms exploding because the DS isn’t in your hand when it’s happening, and you can get a little confusing. Also, the lack of Napalm strikes, Molotov Cocktails, and Napalm Throwers is saddening. But there’s not much that can be done about that on the system. I assume all of those are technical limitations, which I can accept. I mean, this is a DS game that has a loading screen. It’s obviously pushing the hardware pretty hard.
In any case, if you like the “pass around between your friends because we’re bored” multiplayer of Advanced Wars and have played and enjoyed Worms (or, if you’re really old school, something like Scorched Earth) before, this is a really easy recommendation. If you don’t like playing Worms, this isn’t going to convert you, though.

Also, damn, I hadn’t seen the Concrete Donkey weapon before, but holy shit that’s overpowered. I was playing online (which you should do with me, if you pick up the game. Check out the new version of my Gaming Info page. It’s linked at the top, too, in that little bar) in a mode where I had infinite everything, and there was absolutely no reason not to use that every turn. It practically guaranteed a kill every time.

In other news, I keep thinking about writing more Role-Playing… finishing up the first story arc and getting it out there and seeing if people are interested in the adventures of Rebecca  “Tailrazor” Ai… but I dunno. I have such problems with focus in all things… we’ll see.

Here is a short review of Shoot ‘Em Up.

The entire time, I was laughing because what I was seeing was so completely ridiculous, and that was the point. It’s not some sort of high art thing, it’s just incredibly exciting and stupid fun. You should see it, if you would like exciting and stupid fun. At the very least, give it a rent when it hits DVD.
I’d sort of like to say more about the movie, but that’s really it before getting into details that I really think you shouldn’t know beforehand. They’ll add to the enjoyment. So… that’s it, I guess. Do give it a try sometime, though.

In other news, my wrists are really hurting. Which sucks. I also finally completed my quest to acquire Casino Royale in a buy 2 get 1 free used DVD deal, so that’s happy. Also, I need to write a poem using the word “Littoris.” Probably something talking about some book needing to “lick my Littoris.”

Yeah.

It’s time to test blogging from Flock on the new system. If you’re seeing this, it’s working! SCORE!

So now, I’m going to review Kino’s Journey, the anime, also known as Kino No Tabi. I’ve got two episodes left. Short version, it’s really good. I’m happy to have paid money for it.

The story is a tale of a youngish girl named Kino, who rides around to all these various countries that are stora like City-States, on her talking motorcycle, Hermes. She’s got two guns and she sometimes kill people, but that’s not the point of the show. Basically she just goes and looks around, talking to people, and finding out how they live.
Most of the characters Kino meets have a decent amount of depth to them. They’re interesting, which is good, because a lot of the episodes involve these people just telling their tales. These tales are happy, these tales are sad, these tales are infuriating. Most stories don’t seem to have a point or a moral, they just how things are. It’s just sort of reporting on how things are in the world the show takes place in, and thus talking about how our lives work.
Most of the emotion, though, is very detached. Kino herself is a very deadpan, detached person, probably because of her past, and all the death she’s experienced. She’s a good person, but she does kill when she feels it appropriate. The book opens with her asking Hermes if she’s a bad person for all the people she’s shot. She’s not, really, but at the same time she shows very little remorse for the death she causes. The most remorse and sadness she’s shown in the show, really, has been over the deaths of three rabbits she killed to make food for some travellers that are stranded. The fact that most of the deaths are fairly graphic and not obscured combined with this sort of “That’s how life is” additude the show has towards death is kinda… refreshing and interesting. There are no dramatic deathbed speeches or crying over dead bodies. They’re just dead.
The whole show feels detached, and it leads to a more… distant feel than most shows. You really do feel like you’re, I dunno, looking through a camera at all this, and aren’t really a part of it. Even when Kino is involved, doing things to help, she’s very clearly just passing through. It’s just a small stop, an interesting story to tell others, and after three days she’ll be gone and likely never have any effect on these people. You watch, and very emotional things happen, and the show has real emotion behind it, but you can barely feel it, because you’re so far away. It’s like a little quiet echo of feeling. It’s kinda unsettling, but it fits the series perfectly. I might be over dramaticizing what I feel here, of course, but it’s a hard thing to explain.
In any case, I suggest you watch it if that sounds like something you could enjoy. The Light Novel this is based on is amazing too, which I think I’ve written about before. It was the reason I bought this, and I’m going to buy the rest of the Light Novels as they come out. Brer claims that the show is similar in feel to The Little Prince, which is something I’ve always wanted to read but never got around to it. I trust that he’s right, as he’s watched a couple episodes with me (though it didn’t keep his interest) so that might be a good thing to keep in mind if you’re thinking about watching it.

There you go. Another rambling review done. Man, I feel exhausted for no real reason… I should go take a nap.

Okay, I have minutes before class, and I’m going to do a quick review of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, because I’ve been watching it.

Short Version: It’s really weird, but the kind of weird I laugh at. For example, see Youtube video of the opening.

Long Version: It is a story of a man who is over-dramatically depressed. When you write his name sideways, it says “Despair.” Apparently one of his brother’s names, written that way, is “Death” as well. He’s a doctor.
Anyway, he’s a school teacher, and he has a class full of female stereotypes: Panty-shot prone forgeiner. Shy Text-messager. Anal-retentive leader-type. Stalker. Hikkomorri. Etc, etc. All of them have very punny sorts of names that reflect who they are. Although all of these characters are fairly one-dimentional, it’s just silly to watch them all interact together in one place. You add this sort of feeling to the incredible randomness of the people making the anime (every time the camera cuts away from a blackboard, it says something different, and what it says is almost always pointless and unrelated. They also use this head of someone I assume is on the anime team all over everywhere. It’s even in that opening I linked.) and you get this sort of crazy humor which often appeals to me. It’s not going to break any sort of new anime ground or be art in any way, but it’s an enjoyable show. About how I feel about Lucky Star, actually, now that I think about it. Not going to become fanatical about it, but it’s entertaining enough to make me want to keep getting new episodes to fill my time. I suppose that’s all most shows can ask for.

In non-review related news, apparently Ecks was not insane, and the title of my blog is cut off when you’re viewing it with Vista’s version of Internet Explorer (I’m on a Vista PC at the computer lab at school right now). I’m not going to worry about it, it looks pretty fine anyway, but that’s really weird. I guess that’s just more proof that Vista is not something you really want to be near right now. Give it at least another year for Microsoft to hammer out a lot of the suckiness, yeah?

Okay, class time. Trying to catch up on reviewing all the stupid things I’ve been consuming. Up soon: Invincible, Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Fusion, Kino’s Journey. I’m sure you don’t care, but stay tuned for thoughts on those anyway.