The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Kohl’s was like “Dammit, have this free movie ticket!” so Cara and I said “Okay!” and we went to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo because that was basically the only movie that seemed worth shit that one of us hadn’t already seen. Plus Cara had seen the other films and such, so she wanted to see. I knew very little to nothing about it, but I was game.

It was an enjoyable movie-going experience. I probably would have never seen it without this free ticket, and I wouldn’t have felt like I would have missed something great, but it was entertaining! I’d recommend it.

Cara told me there was a lot of changes from the books and whatnot? But I was going in cold, like I said, so maybe it’d be more interesting if I gave my opinions without all of that comparison.

First off, the opening credit sequence was some of the most ridiculous bullshit I’ve ever seen. It seemed like it was going to be extremely inappropriate, and it was. They could not have done a worse job at introducing the movie they were about to show me. It was basically a James Bond opening, but just because Daniel Craig is in a movie doesn’t mean it’s a Bond movie. It was just fucking wrong, even if it did look kind of cool.

That was almost certainly the low point, though. The movie picked up after that with no problems, and I did find myself interested in the whole mystery going on and these characters. For the most part, I felt like I got the whole story. However, near the end, it seemed like they must have skipped something. Suddenly they were close enough for a huge bit of money-lending to occur without even a second thought. I did not see that character development happen. I mean, sure, Lizbeth or whatever her name is is a bit weird, so I buy her being that attached, but Daniel Craig’s character just didn’t seem to have the motivation to be that involved at that point. They hadn’t been working together long enough. They hadn’t known each other long enough. I dunno. That was really the only time during the film I questioned the characters, though.

Really, the movie just shocked me with how graphic it was. It showed quite a lot! There were some rapes, a very clear shot of a very brutally murdered cat… just a lot of shots you just don’t see a lot! I didn’t have trouble watching it, because none of it was stabbing. (I don’t really know why I can’t stand to watch someone being stabbed, but, you know. I can’t look at the screen when someone is being stabbed. Made playing the end of Dead Space 2 pretty hard to accomplish!) But it still surprised me a whole hell of a lot. I will admit some of that was because my mom said she liked the movie, and she loved the whole series and all the movies, and that just strikes me as odd, seeing some of the content. But, you know, my mother can have grown-up tastes in films, sure. Just takes a bit to sink in, I suppose. Heh.

Really, though, all the actors did a great job, it was an interesting story… I really have no complaints overall. From what Cara told me, maybe some people who were real fans of the book would have? I dunno. I’m not that person. It was a solid, enjoyable film, one worth seeing if you want to know what this whole Dragon Tattoo thing is all about.

Ascendency was basically my first experience with what I believe is called the 4X genre of games. Reading about it after the fact, it was apparently broken as fuck, and I’m sure there are many better games of this type out there now, and in the past, but it was just one of those formative gaming experiences for me, and I loved it.

So then it came out on iOS and then it went on sale so of course I bought it.

There is simply a ton to the game, and even vaguely remembering it in the past, it was hard to figure out all the controls and stuff. There are a ton of them, and some things, like being able to use your race’s special power if it’s an activated power, is kind of stored in a fucked-up place in the menu that’s not very intuitive to find. I always liked to play as the terraformer people, so being able to activate that ability whenever I needed to was important, and it took me awhile to figure out. Similarly, it’s hard to guide your ships to where you want them to go. I don’t remember ever having any trouble dealing with the pseduo 3D spaces in the original game, but I often had trouble telling a ship to go to the star lane I wanted them to go to. Sometimes they’d just kind of stop beside it for no reason, and I wouldn’t realize it. It was annoying, because you might not find that out until like two turns after you give the order, if you tend to build a fleet of super-slow colony ships like I do.

Other than having to get used to the controls (and I can’t even imagine how bad they’d be on an iPhone. They were bad enough with the screen real estate of my iPad) this is the game I remember. Apparently bugs that I never knew about from the original were fixed in this, making it harder or something? I didn’t notice. I did what I always did, being a super-peaceful researcher and colonizer, and it didn’t seem to really be any different. It is Ascendency. That’s pretty cool.

Of course, what’s not cool is when you get like 2 hours in to a game, and then it crashes for no reason and you lose progress and then stop playing. That’s pretty annoying! That happened. I reloaded though, and it happened again. I don’t know why. But that was enough to make me stop trying, at least for now. They do seem to still be patching it, so hopefully that’ll fix it? Hopefully.

I like Ascendency, but I think this is merely a nostalgia thing. There has to be a better game of this type on iOS, or just out there in general, nowadays. I just don’t know if someone coming in to it new would be interested. However, I mean, if you can grab it for a dollar like I did? That is a lot of solid game for a dollar, as long as it doesn’t crash on you. So maybe it’s worth trying anyway. Who knows?

Remember when I said I’d keep writing these? I guess I am.

Pokemon Gold/Silver is a basically perfect game. It’s the sequel to Pokemon every single Pokemon game since wishes it could be, but has completely failed to be. It was full of plenty of new content, gobs and gobs of fanservice, and refined basically everything there was to love around Pokemon Red/Blue. It is THE Pokemon game.

First off, let’s just talk about the new Pokemon. All of them fit right in with the original 150, easy. You don’t feel like they’re stretching for design ideas. They just work, and it’s awesome. The only Pokemon I truly love are from this and the first game, (Let’s try a list off the top of my head… we’ll call this a list of Pokemon who, if I saw a toy of them, I would buy immediately: Eevee, Vulpix, Ninetales, Wobuffet, Skamoray) and while that’s a personal preference to be sure, I just feel like, in general, these Pokemon are just the ones with the design chops to make me love them.

In addition, Gold/Silver made much-needed changes to the formula of Pokemon to make it a more fun game. Eggs were a really good addition that let you customize your team more. The new types, Steel and Dark, dealt with the balance issues of the first game, as well as little things like giving us a Ghost Pokemon that wasn’t also Poison, so that Ghost could actually be useful against Psychic Pokemon. The timed events, based on a real-world clock, were also fucking fantastic, and I just can’t understand why every Pokemon game after this hasn’t had them. Those events kept me playing the game for a long time, and being able to only catch certain types during certain times of day was just cool.

The amount of content in the game just hasn’t been matched as well. Getting to go back to Kanto and face Red after being the game was totally and completely a HOLY SHIT moment the first time it happened. While it didn’t take as long to get through that content of course, what with your fully-powered team, blasting through the area you had so much trouble with in the past game just made you feel like a REAL Pokemon master, you know?

This was like the pinnacle of handheld gaming when it came out, and frankly, for the most part, I bet it still holds up. I wouldn’t touch it at all. (Well, okay, maybe I’d put the female trainer from Crystal into the original game, but that would basically be it, and I can live without that.) Pokemon Gold/Silver? You’re awesome.

A quick one, because work schedules suck! And I need to be up in like 4 hours to do all my teaching bullshit.

Remember back on Christmas, when I played a bunch of iPad games? Well, I also played Pinball Collection HD! It’s the last one I played that day, promise.

Anyway, it was pinball! You got a table for free, then they wanted money for additional tables. Pretty fair, really. What’s there is really impressive, too, so I could see somebody wanting to buy more, if they actually liked pinball. I’m… not really a pinball person! But it was pretty impressive.

The graphics were really nice. It looks really impressive on that iPad screen! They’re going for a fairly realistic sort of pinball table: no stuff that can’t exist in real life. Maybe these are real-life tables remade? I dunno. Anyway, it all looks like it should, with all the lights and the dings and sounds you’d expect from a real pinball table. The presentation is top notch.

The controls, too, are pretty well perfect. Tap on the left, left flipper, tap on the right, right flipper. Simple as that. It feels really good holding the iPad and just bopping the screen with your thumbs. I certainly felt like I had about as much control as I ever do playing pinball when I was playing the game, so that’s nice.

The free table, Wild West, is really easy, though. Again, I am not very good at pinball, but it did not take me very many plays to figure out how to unlock the bank vault, and then rob it, which made it easy to rack up extra lives. This almost seems like a problem to me? I was getting kind of bored during my last run because it just wouldn’t end, and was not in any danger of ending! Not that I want to be dead in like two seconds or anything, but it seems like there should always be a risk of failure, right? I dunno.

Anyway, it’s got your high score tables and everything you’d want. If you like Pinball, you should clearly own this game. It’s clearly made with a lot of love. I was glad to just waste some time playing the free table, though.

Let’s see… what’s on my list of games I haven’t talked about.

Oh, woah, Solatorobo! The game I played out of my duty as a furry. Or something.

Solatorobo is a game that I am very glad got made and published in the US. That’s crazy! I’m so glad it happened! It’s really not the kind of game I really want to spend a long time with.

First things first: this game is adorable as fuck. The character art is awesome, and the world is weird and unique looking, even with the not-great 3D graphics of the DS. (That said, the 3D is among the best on the DS.) The little sound clips for the characters and stuff just ooze cute, and make you grin. It is just a fun world to be around, where you’ve got this mecha, but all you do is throw things, not shoot everything with guns, you know? It’s just not a sort of world you see anymore.

And that’s really the problem. This is not the kind of game you see any more. On the PS1, this game would have been a fucking revelation, beloved for years to come. But on the DS, it still has a lot of stuff from that era sticking around that it probably shouldn’t have. The game is extremely talky and hand-holdy, and while it is cute, as I said, I wouldn’t call it good. It can take you forever to do a simple side mission because Red just has to do so much talking in between fights. It also makes the plot paced very slowly.

All that hand-holding doesn’t do the game any favors because, at least as far as I’ve gotten, the combat is extremely simple. I am flat-out not good at any kind of real-time combat. I mean, I can get by, but I’m just not good. I had mastered the combat, at least as far as I’ve played, pretty well completely. It’s simple, which it has to be, since all you can really do is pick up and throw stuff. I hear late in the game stuff gets more interesting? But again, how much game with slow dialog would I have to sit through to get there? I just don’t know.

I’ve heard this described as a homage to games of that era, and if that’s what you want, this game totally does that, and does it well! I personally found that, while I wasn’t not having fun, perse, there just wasn’t enough there to keep my interest going when other shinies appeared. Poor Solatorobo! Oh well.

I love Saints’ Row: The Third. Completely and seriously. Love it. I snapped up that Season Pass because I wanted more of it. I was so excited to learn that Genkibowl came out yesterday. So excited!

Genkibowl is such a disappointment of a DLC.

Okay, I’ll say this: the actual activities themselves in the DLC were fun enough. I enjoyed them, and beat them all. However, basically all of them were rehashes. Apocalypse Genki is just the normal Super Ethical Reality Climax, but with a different setting and such. Super Ethical PR Opportunity is just a slight modification on the missions with the tiger and the people fucking in the back of your car. Sexy Kitten Yarngasm is just Mayhem, but with a really, really weird vehicle. (To be fair, that one felt pretty different, but still.)

The one event that was pretty new, Sad Panda Skyblazing, was a TON of fun, though. It was fast paced, and full of the crazy that you expect out of Saints Row. That was good stuff.

But of course, there’s not much of it. There’s only two instances of all these events! And while you get a bunch of fun toys, for instance being able to summon sexy Genki fursuit people, and call in a gigantic ball of yarn at any time, you no longer have any missions to play with these toys in after you get them! There’s just so little content there!

That wouldn’t bother me if there was more dialog. I love Saints’ Row’s dialog. A lot. But the boss doesn’t say ANYTHING in these missions. This really saddens me. The Boss talks right at the end, but she’s wearing the voice thing from the opening of the game for absolutely no reason… except for the fact, of course, that they didn’t want to record all 7 in-game voices. Assholes.

I would hold off on the Season Pass if you haven’t bought it yet. This makes me worried. I certainly would not buy this DLC alone. There simply is not enough there. Hopefully this was their “quick out the door” DLC, and the others will have more story to them. I hope.

I was talking with Aesa, and I ended up rambling about Silent Hill 2, and then Earthbound, because they were games I called “must plays.” Then I got to thinking that no, must play isn’t right. I tried “Flawless,” but as I started to make a list, I realized that wasn’t right either. Many of these games have flaws. I finally settled upon “Untouchables.” This list I was making was a list of games that, if I had the magical power to enact change on them however I wanted, I would not touch. They are something special, close to perfect, warts and all. Anything I’d do to adjust them would just ruin the magic, so I wouldn’t. These are likely games I love, yes, but many games I love have things I would fix. Take, for example, Space Channel 5. I love Space Channel 5 from the bottom of my heart, and if I was listing favorite games? It would be on there. But that game is messed up in so many ways. It’s got huge problems that could probably be fixed while keeping its charm and what I love about it! It isn’t an untouchable game.

Does that make sense? Anyway, I’m going to try this out as a series. We’ll see if I decide this is a stupid blog topic or not. I’ve made a long list, and I’ll just start writing thoughts about them, hm? We’ll see where this goes.

As I started writing down the list, one thing hopped into my head which shocked me. Bayonetta is a perfect game. I very much WOULD say that Bayonetta is a game without flaw. That surprised me. I’m still just not into that kind of combo-driven, perfection-demanding gameplay that Bayonetta has in spades. Why would I feel it so perfect? But dammit, it is. It is perfect.

Again, I am no expert at the combat in this game. I cannot do any sick combo videos or anything of the sort. I’ve seen them, and goddamn, are they a thing of beauty. The game clearly rewards that kind of play, which is fantastic. If you persevere, you will become badass. But normally these kinds of systems sacrifice accessibility for that. If you don’t put in that time, you’re useless. Bayonetta’s easy mode fixes that completely. Much like how Rock Band makes me feel like a skilled musician, the Bayonetta easy mode made me feel like someone making ridiculous combo videos to youtube. And while I’m sure the high you get from actually pulling that stuff off, and the much, much more complex stuff you can do if you’re in full control, feels much better, it let me have a taste that I never, ever would have had otherwise. That’s the mark of a great game.

Similarly, I stand by Bayonetta as being one of the best female characters this generation. She has depth, she’s a sexual being without being stereotypical eye candy for no reason, and you like her. She’s a fully realized person, and that is just so rare in games. On top of that, the game has an entertaining and batshit insane storyline that you feel like you could never follow, BUT YOU DO. Somehow, every fucked up thing in the world of Bayonetta quickly makes sense to you. Being that crazy, but somehow that grounded, is great storytelling.

I wouldn’t change anything about Bayonetta. This is a game that should be affecting how people design games. I don’t know if it truly is, which is a shame. Don’t make a sequel to Bayonetta now! It doesn’t need that, though I will fully admit I will play it. But it should shine as one of the high points of this long console generation. I truly think it should.

It’s Friday the 13th! oooOOOOOoooh! And what better way to scare yourself than by reading about BAD GAME DESIGN DECISIONS! ooooOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!

Anyway, Tropico 3. I was playing along, quite enjoying my time with the game. I mean, it’s got a clever angle, and it’s pretty fun, although I knew it wouldn’t be fun that would last for me. Still, I was having an enjoyable few hours with it before I returned it to Gamefly.

I got to a mission where I was on an island that sucked at farming. So the game, after I get going, pops up a tooltip: why not build some fishing wharfs in order to make sure your people have enough food? A great idea! I didn’t know that was an option! A flat beach area is the only place you can really build one of those, but luckily, my island had a long beach off to the side of the dock the game started me with. I prepared to build some fishing wharfs there, and soon enough, they were completed. All I needed then was to hook up the wharfs with roads so the fish could be transported quickly and get everyone fed. I whip out my road-building tool and start putting a road there.

Only I can’t.

The game will not let you build roads with really sharp turns. The game will also not flatten terrain that it considers too intense, like, say, the little rocky mountain thing by the beach where the dock and wharfs are. It also doesn’t let roads intersect with buildings.

The initial placement of the docks was such that there was no way to build a road around them to the only place where you could build those wharfs. You’d either make the road clip into the area blocked off for the dock, so you couldn’t build it, or you’d hit the mountain, so you couldn’t build it, or the road would turn too sharply, so you couldn’t build it. You simply couldn’t get trucks to these wharfs. It was impossible to actually set up what the game’s tool tip told you to do. It took me like 20 minutes of trying desperately to move shit around to figure this out. I restarted the mission three times, figuring I must have placed SOMETHING in the wrong location. Nope. It’s just impossible.

Needless to say I quit that mission immediately and played another one. But thanks for that, Tropico 3! That was pretty frustrating.

SHPACE MURHEENS?!

I played some Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. I was going to play all the way through it, but it didn’t want me to, so, you know, fuck it.

Anyway, it seemed like a competent game? You ran forward and hit people with a chainsword. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? You can shoot people too, using bolters and whatnot, but there’s only one way to refill your health, and that’s by doing a dramatic takedown on an enemy, so basically you’re only shooting at dudes you can’t easily cut with your chainsword! And that’s fine. That’s certainly pretty much like what I know about Warhammer.

By far the most fun in the game that I had was when it gave me a jump pack. I got to rocket all around this area and smash the shit out of people from above. It was empowering and just totally cool. And then the game took it away from me for flimsy reasons. Come on, game! Just because I’m walking into close quarters doesn’t mean I might not be in non-close quarters LATER. Why did I have to take it off? I guess I’m basically saying that most of the game should have been designed around that Jump Pack, because it was just tons of fun.

Really, though, the game is designed around being stupidly difficult. I mean, I’m a goddamn Space Marine. I’m supposed to be this unstoppable juggernaut. On top of that, I put the game on easy. I should not be almost instantly one-shotted at the same point in a firefight many times in a row on the THIRD CHAPTER OF THE GAME! That’s just ridiculous. If that was the level of difficulty the silly game was demanding of me on easy, I didn’t really want anything to do with it. I’m a content tourist! I just want to see all the stuff! Assholes!

But yeah, the game seems fine and I’m sure the Warhammer fans were very happy about that. I was done with it pretty quick, though. But hey, what else is Gamefly for?

Okay, NOW let me show you my Skylanders. I’m just going to go down the list! Here we go!

Spyro: I was fairly surprised by how not-good Spyro is. I mean, he’s fine, I guess? He doesn’t completely stink. But his damage output is just terrible, and there doesn’t really seem to be a lot you can do about that. His one good quality is that he was by far the most maneuverable of the Skylanders I owned. His Fire Ram thing let him run around maps quickly, especially once upgraded to last for longer. That made him useful for speedrunning through boring parts or dodging the several bullet hell sequences in boss battles, but really, he just wasn’t that good for someone with his name on the box.

Gill Grunt: This guy is the best one you get in the starter set. Maneuverable with his water jetpack, heavy pinpoint damage with his harpoons, decent spray and pray damage with his water hose. He has a good answer to about any situation. I specced him for Harpoons, since Jeff of Giant Bomb fame did the other one, and I was really happy at how much damage his harpoons did once upgraded and made to split into three. You could murder dudes right and left!

Trigger Happy: He’s just amazing to play as, because when you shoot, he’s constantly making these insane laughs, and it makes you feel badass. I don’t really understand why I can’t just hold down A to keep firing. I mean, having to jam on the A button to keep up his rapid fire makes things feel more manic, and I guess I couldn’t have charge shots if that wasn’t the case? But when Drobot does similar damage with his eye lasers and you can just hold the button down for him, it feels like Trigger Happy doesn’t work as well. Still, a solid choice.

Drobot: He’s a robot and a dragon. There is good reason he is Giant Bomb’s Skylander of the year. His eye lasers just do crazy amounts of damage, and once you upgrade his jet flight it makes him decently maneuverable as well. His bouncing gears are not great? But are useful in tight corridors, so, you know. He’s also just one of the coolest looking of all the Skylanders, which means something when you’re getting a toy that sits on your shelf.

Hex: This is the first extra toy I bought. She is very defensive, which is pretty different from the rest of the Skylanders I have. I didn’t get much mileage out of her bone shield because I suck at defending, but once you upgrade it so it does damage, it’s much more useful to deal with a group closing in. Her default attack never gets great, but her skull bombs, which fly up in the air and home in on targets, are incredibly useful, especially once upgraded. They do decent damage, and you can charge them while you run around and dodge. Hex would probably be nearly broken in a two-player scenario, as she could likely use those skulls constantly unhindered.

Dino-Rang: I personally find Dino-Rang to be so lame, he is awesome. He is a dinosaur that throws boomerangs. IT’S RIGHT IN HIS NAME! He is probably my favorite Skylander because of this. It doesn’t hurt either that he is a combat machine. His boomerangs do SICK damage. He can’t fire as fast as other distance Skylanders, but the amount of damage makes up for it, and his little “spin the boomerangs around him” move is really, really good at taking out big groups. I even found use for his little earth traps during some boss battles. This guy is really awesome, one of the best Skylanders I got, power-wise, and if you find his lameness as entertaining as me, you should get him.

Prism Break: This was the Earth Skylander I originally wanted, and I eventually got him. His gimmick is really neat, and he’s a solid guy, but in the end, I stuck mostly with Dino-Rang because he just brought the beats. Still, he is really quite neat, with the way he summons crystals to split his default laser about. Once you get the upgrade where enemies you kill with your laser become crystals, it makes it really easy to fill a room with lasery death, and his crystal eruption attack is also fairly effective if enemies get close, which is nice. But yeah, still prefer Dino-Rang in all his stupid boomerang-throwing glory.

Sonic Boom: I don’t know what to think about Sonic Boom. She throws eggs as an attack, which break open and become little babies which attack on their own. Not a very loving mother! Still, her default attack, with it’s decent range for a melee, bit of knockback, and wide arc, made her a great melee choice for just charging in there and destroying shit.

Stump Smash: This guy looks so stupid! But I needed a Life Skylander, okay? And the one I wanted, Camo, wasn’t out yet. In any case, as far as Stump Smash goes, I don’t really like him. He’s probably my least favorite. I mean, his melee attacks do lots of damage, but getting in there to do them just felt like a death wish. His little acorn thing does a debuff of speed, but that’s just not useful against normal enemies, especially since it’s hard to hit with that thing anyway. I wouldn’t recommend him.

Eruptor: He was some sort of lava man? I really wanted Sunburn but I guess Sunburn isn’t out yet? So I got this guy. His greatest strength is also his biggest weakness. His default attack is thrown at an arc, and it is really useful to be able to hit people above you while they are sniping you, because the vast majority of attacks cannot do that and you just have to run around until your reach the enemies later. Unfortunately, it can make it hard to hit dudes right in front of you. Sometimes the game realizes what you’re aiming for and compensates on his arc? But sometimes it doesn’t. It’s kind of a crapshoot. It’s also a shame his little area effect attack has such a long charge-up. Maybe if you go in that branch of his upgrades, that fixes itself? I don’t know. But it was so slow as to be nearly useless, to me anyway. He’s alright, but I’m sure there are better.

That’s all of them I bought! WILL I BUY MORE?! Probably not. I’m going to be good. At some point, though, I will have a 3DS, and buy the 3DS game, and then all bets are off!