The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I think it’s silly that one of my auto-responses to being depressed and stressed is to buy things, especially when a factor of said stress is potentially monetary. I could make more smart decisions, like relying more on Gamefly or finishing games I really wanted to finish but never did, like P3P. Instead, I buy limited edition copies of Marvel Vs Capcom 3. I am simply excellent like that.

I mean, I know why I do things like this. It’s because most of the time, my depression stems from a perceived lack of control. I lack the control necessary to correct people’s views of who I am. I lack the control necessary to make everything not pile on me at once. I lack the control necessary to make people not break from how I perceive things to go. Of course, things like that last one are not powers I’d particularly actually use, but being unable to affect a situation, or convincing myself as such, is a core issue that makes me depressed.

Purchasing things, and bringing more things into my life, well, that I have control of. What I eat I also have control of. It’s proving I can affect the world around me in a silly attempt to feel better. So I buy an extra game I don’t need, or I buy a book I may never read. It’s a stupid coping mechanism, though, thankfully, cheap downloadable games have honestly given me a better outlet for these urges, most of the time.

Then again, my overall goal is to get more stable so this stuff doesn’t crop up, oh, every week.
Sure have amassed a nice collection of toys, though.

Teaching an online class has forced me to have to make quizzes.

I’m not one that thinks that a quiz is the best way to judge how much somebody knows. However, I am a person who understands how incredibly stressful and not viable always doing things the right way is. There are plenty of more useful exercises in the class, but I want to give my students a point buffer and make sure they at least skim the textbook at the same time, because there is some stuff in there. Quizzes are the best way to do that in an online format.

Still, since I’m making quizzes, I have to have fun with it. It’s the only way.

Here’s the meta masterpiece of a question I wrote today: “True or False: Describing a complex situation as only having two possible outcomes is an example of an Either/Or Fallacy.”

That one is kind of subtle, but made me grin so hard when I thought of it. Of course, when I make multiple guess questions, there are five boxes for possible answers. You have to have one or two possible answers so that people actually have to know their shit to get the question right, but I mean, there are five boxes. It’s hard not to make one of them something completely ridiculous. Thus I’ve put lots of crazy phrases, quotes from the Big Lebowski, just about anything I can think of as that useless fifth answer.

Making a good quiz is fairly hard, still. In a lot of situations, it’s hard to think of plausible but incorrect options, as well as just figuring out ways to reduce a section of text into a multiple choice question. But at least I’m finding ways to entertain myself. Hopefully my students will at least get a minor chuckle when they finally get around to taking these online quizzes.

At any point I will break. I am at the point where getting new carpeting put in upstairs feels like it will destroy me. I will admit that I really, really hate this feeling, and I hate that I feel this way. I hate that I feel so lost here. I hate it.

I hate it.

I fucking hate it.

It’s not even funny breaking. It’s not useful. It’s not a motivator. I just feel crushed. The thing that crushed me was fucking new carpeting. I feel like such an idiot.

I’m empty and stupid and my life feels like way too much for me. I want to hide in bed until everyone goes away, for at least a few more weeks. Maybe then things will work out, but hey, I’m not holding my breath. Nothing works out.

I’m a functional, fairly hard-working person. Why am I so crushed? Why do I feel like this? I should function. I should work. Things should work out. God fucking dammit.

I’m super late to the party, but I want to write about Desktop Dungeons. Is that okay? Is that cool? Cool.

So, Desktop Dungeons. I gave it a go because of this nice little Let’s Play going on on the Talking Time. It seemed pretty cool, and I mean, the idea is genius. A whole roguelike you can complete in a few minutes is a fantastic concept that I am totally behind. Then again, pretty well any roguelike is one I can play through in a few minutes because I suck and die, but nevermind that.

It was immediately obvious why I had heard so much about the game. It’s really well designed. I feel like it can be even better, and they’re doing some sort of massive overhaul to make it an actual paid product, I believe, which will probably result in that happening, which is cool. I’d pick it up on Steam sometime for a few bucks.

The thing is, though, I feel like it’s really badly suited for Desktops. The interface uses nothing but left clicks. It seems like it would be trivial to put on an iPad, and that’s totally what I want.

Honestly, it’s amazing to me how much iPhone gaming has changed how I look at games. I see little but awesome things like Desktop Dungeons, and I immediately start thinking about how easily they could be converted into the much more convenient iOS platform for consumption. It just seems like such a great place for such development. The people who made the game could have been charging a buck for it on there from the beginning, and maybe would have earned some money for their hard work.
Granted, maybe without the free version it wouldn’t have gotten as much press as it did. That’s certainly something, I suppose. And, of course, it’s always nice to be able to develop in a fully open environment like the PC. I have no argument there. But dammit, it just seems so right. I have indie developers that I love and follow and support on iOS. That’s never really been something I even thought about doing for PC games.

I guess the extrapolation from that is how little I think about the DS and PSP these days. I’m playing Ghost Trick, and I tried to play Birth by Sleep, and it felt weird. I just play more games on my iPod more often. To be honest, an iPad seems like a much better gaming investment, at the moment, than a 3DS, which is certainly something I never expected. (Yes, Essner, I can hear you saying I could buy two 3DSes for the cost of an iPad, I know.) I could easily do that, and wait until the 3DS XL comes out. Or something similar. I mean, hell, Ghost Trick has an iOS version in Japan, which is probably going to show up here in a few months, and frankly, I would probably rather be playing that. I mean, I’d still have bought this DS version even if I had confirmation, because I am impatient, but I wouldn’t doubt that would be a potentially superior version.
Seriously, sometimes I think about how Apple has taken so much of my gaming time, and it still shocks me. Not that I’m unhappy about it. Quite the opposite.

Okay, I guess this wasn’t REALLY about Desktop Dungeons. But that’s a cool game. You could play it. And then maybe ask them to port it to iOS for me. Pretty please?

I’ve been working on two games. One is Ghost Trick, a completely fantastic game in its own right and I’m sure to ramble on about forever once I finish it, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Both games are awesome, but currently I’m kind of blown away by both of their soundtracks. So I’m going to share some.

Ace Attorney had some great music in it, that really made the game feel more dramatic than, perhaps, the gameplay actually was. Ghost Trick, while being a better game over all, continues that tradition.

I mean, seriously, just listen to this. When this music kicks in, and the person you’re trying to save is about to die, shit gets REAL. It’s always amazing what they can do with the limited sound hardware of stuff like this. I always have such respect when a song really gets me going when I play a game.

On a different sort of note, though, the music in Epic Yarn just perfectly fits the game. It doesn’t really get you going, but it’s just so cute and so right. I mean, just listen to this. This music is played when you’re on the race car levels. It’s flat-out fantastic. A great piano piece that’s fun and upbeat, but still fitting the cutesy look of the game. It’s simple, but solid. The game is willing to mix it up, too, when the time is right, but in general it keeps it simple, and often goes back to the piano on the very next level. It really helps set the tone for the game just as much as the neat Yarn visuals do.

We live in a time when game music fucking rocks. I love it when a game takes the time to take its music into account when creating. It’s just… effective. It certainly keeps me listening as well.

I am angry at a Kirby game.

My Xbox has died, so I’m turning to other consoles and other amusements. I thought I would finish up Epic Yarn because of that, and sat down for a long play session.

Then I got to King Dedede.

He took me 30 minutes or more to beat, and by the end of it, I was so pissed.
Basically, he would do a couple things you’d have to dodge, then he’d hit the ground with his hammer. You grabbed a star that shot up, hit him with it, then you jumped atop him and used him to let you jump up and grab the Marionette controller controlling him. Pretty simple, right? The marionette would only swoop down for small periods of time, but for the first hit, it was doable.

The third and fourth hits, though, were nearly impossible. It would swoop in from the top of the screen and swoop right back out. It was seriously like half a second. I would jump on Dedede’s back and try to time it, but I kept missing, over and over again. I was screaming at the screen by the end of it. Never had I been so angry at a Kirby game before. Kirby is supposed to be light, stress free, and cute. This was just fucking frustrating.

I didn’t even get the patch to unlock the bonus levels after the fight. I was all pissed. I turned off the game.

Then I go and start ranting about how angry I was to pyro, and decide I’m going to show him a video of how bullshit the boss was. So I pull up this video and…
Shit.
Apparently if you do the weight drop on his back, it pulls down and stuns the marionette.

The problem was that I didn’t need to do that for the first two hits. It was fairly easy to hit. Thus, I never considered I might be doing something wrong, or there might be something else to the boss. Thus, I got caught in this endless loop of anger.
It’s so unlike a Kirby game, though. I really don’t know whose fault this was. I don’t feel like I was particularly dense or did something wrong. There hasn’t been an enemy before that which I HAD to use the drop down move on. I dunno.

I’m sure I’ll calm down and love Kirby once again, and with the actual method of beating him known, getting the patch will be trivial. But man. Anger.
Anger.

Tonight, at Droib’s, we finally managed to try some Goldeneye 007. You know, the new Wii thing.

This game seems like it was created to fill a niche. There are no real hardcore shooters on the Wii. This is because, to be, there’s no real need for one. The people who want those games should have an Xbox, right? But they thought otherwise. Surely there must be people out there with a Wii who would like an online shooter.

Those people will love Goldeneye. Everyone else will kind of wonder why they went to the trouble.

I mean, it’s all solid. We had some fun split-screen multiplayer times, reminiscing about old Goldeneye experiences. It’s a bit slower-paced than most modern shooters, but controls fine. You get to pick loadouts, which have perks that, I assume, you can modify playing the actual online mode. That’s cool. Most of the maps seemed okay? There were fewer remakes of classic maps than I expected. Maybe there are more on the online mode.

The real question was of controls themselves. I had a Classic Controller Pro, which seemed to be the way to go. The controls mapped in a pretty quickly learnable way. However, everyone else was using Gamecube controllers, which presented more of a problem. They mapped Z as a “modifier” key for many buttons on the controller. This works okay, but man, it was nearly impossible to figure out, even looking at the in-game controller diagrams. Once everyone figured that out, though, they could work things fine. It’s just not usual. Then again, the Gamecube controller is really, really weird, so it’s not surprising they had to resort to weird stuff.

We didn’t try Wiimote + Nunchuck because we aren’t stupid. Also we couldn’t find a Nunchuck.

Anyway, it was fun for the hour or two we played it, but I don’t know if we’d ever go back to it again. I certainly wouldn’t without the nostalgia factor. I kind of want to see what the single player is like, but at the same time, it’s not a priority. It seems like a solid product, but it’s not really aimed at me. It’s aimed at people with a Wii and nothing else. I’m sure as hell not that person.

We won our first game of Castle Ravenloft tonight, and I was attempting to think about strategy and what we did better. I’m also wondering if the fact that we only had 3 players made the game easier or not. I’m not sure.
In any case, here’s what lead us to victory, as far as I can see. Let me know if these tips are wrong, in your opinion.

1. Always Keep Moving: Encounters are the things that fuck you over. Monsters are mostly manageable. Thus, you need to do everything in your power to explore every turn. Bringing the Ranger to mop up enemies while still being able to explore with her special power makes this easier.

2. Use a Power Early: There are plenty of cards and effects that can let you restore a utility or daily power, so using one right at the beginning and making sure you keep one face down tends to be more beneficial than trying to save big powers for the end of the session. Fighters, especially, should use Unstoppable the moment they take two damage and try to keep flipping it back over to help their survivability.

3. Only Slightly Be A Team Player: Being close to other heroes gives buffs, but also makes encounters fuck you over that much more. One tile away from your fellow heroes is probably the best range to be, as you can still reach each other, but also aren’t on the same tile for horrible encounter card effects.

4. Rogue Kind Of Sucks: If there’s one class in the game one would want to leave out, I think it would be the Rogue. Many of the Rogue’s abilities are very situational, and are only useful when other heroes are close, which, unlike normal DnD, is fairly rare in good play of this game. Rogue has a distance at-will, sure, but Twin Shot on the Ranger and Magic Missle on the Mage are clearly better. Rogue has some decent up close attacks, but the Fighter’s attacks have way more use and the Ranger’s attacks do more damage. Rogue is really just not specialized and spread too thin. Still, if you have one, be sure to force use of Stealth, because that power is one of the best things the class has going for it.

Those are the lessons I learned, anyway. Hopefully, with these in mind, we can start winning some more games. That’d be cool.

Two things happened yesterday. One was that the VERY NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE was changed as whatever governing body that governs things decided we needed a 13th Astrological Symbol due to how the earth rotates. I’m apparently a Pisces now, a sign governed by a picture of two fish doin’ it, apparently. What will become of me? Whatever will happen? And will people ever learn to pronounce Ophiuchus?
I dunno, twitter was going crazy about it.

Anyway, other than that, I drank a lot of water, which is oddly appropriate, seeing as I’m now drinking for two fish instead of one ram, and was really fairly sick, and expect to continue to be, to some extent. The water really helped a lot. I didn’t feel nearly as shitty as I did when I got up that morning thanks to the many glasses of water I downed. My body must have been like, “Oh thank god, proper hydration. I can’t believe I’m receiving a fluid that doesn’t contain caffeine.” Maybe it was so overjoyed it let me ignore my illness for the most part. I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.

And that was my day. The end. Yes, I really have very little to talk about. Besides, I guess, Fable III’s flaws. But I’ll get to that eventually, and overall, I am enjoying it, even though it’s not the masterpiece Fable II was.

Munchkin Quest does a lot of things that I am unsure of. It adds a lot of mechanics to the basic Munchkin play. One would hope this would make the game more strategic or more complete, but I’m really not sure it does. It requires more testing, but… hm…

First off, I’m kind of unsure what they were intending with how you build the board. Having rooms on both sides of the tiles makes it impossible to have a stack to draw from, and makes it really weird to decide which side to pick each time you draw a tile. The “connectors” also seem really odd. Many of them don’t seem to serve a purpose, and once again, they’re printed on both sides, making them more complicated to draw than is really necessary.

The dice rolls, too, really leave me pretty conflicted. Combat in Munchkin the card game goes pretty fast, and it’s normally pretty clear how things can be affected immediately. With these dice rolls, things are much more swingy, and I don’t feel like it’s really for good reason. Instead of other players fucking you over, it’s the dice most of the time. That’s not nearly as fun in something that’s supposed to be a game of backstabbing. It also makes your base level way less important than it is in normal Munchkin, besides as a counter towards victory. You’re more likely to kill your first monster through a lucky roll than actually being equipped for it, and monster boost cards are much less significant due to the dice rolls, even though they persist through multiple turns.

Finally, most of the wheeling and dealing of Munchkin is removed by the room layout. Since you can only support someone one room away, that means you can’t negotiate with everyone at the table for help against tough monsters. There’s normally only one person within range. You look to them, and they shrug, and then you go and die alone. It’s the player interaction that makes Munchkin a game worth playing, and this game removes a lot of that. You have much less incentive to fuck other players over or to work with them. It just doesn’t really click.

All of these are impressions based on our short learning game, of course. Maybe after figuring it out more, it’ll click more. As it is now, though, playing it kind of just made me want to play the card game. It’s more straightforward, and has way more chances for trash-talking. That’s always been the appeal, as far as I’m aware.