The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I hate March, and I hate every game developer releasing a game in March. Seriously, why are you doing this to me? Let’s run down the games that there is no way I’m not buying that come out in March.

1) Pokemon Heart Gold/ Soul Silver. I may have not beat a Pokemon game in a long while, but I still love them to death, and this is a remake of my favorite of the series, and it comes with the fucking re-imagining of the Pokemon Pikachu. I am so in. It’s coming out March 14th.
2) Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. I’m a MegaTen fangirl now, so I have to get this. Plus, people say it’s one of the best installments of the series in forever. It comes out March 23rd.
3) Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising. I upgraded a computer to play Dawn of War II, and I loved every second of it. You better believe I’m getting the expansion day 1, which would be March 11th.
4) Final Fantasy XIII. Honestly, this is the only one I don’t need day 1, but only because of all this other amazing shit coming out in the same time frame. I will completely play it eventually, though, especially if it goes through with what I hear about “nice and linear, straightforward, with intriguing combat” that people are murmuring. It comes out March 9th.

That is way, way more RPG-esque goodness than I can handle in that kind of time period. Especially considering that I am going to be so, so busy with work, school, teaching, and, hopefully transitioning.

So yeah, fuck you, March. Shame on you for giving me so much awesome shit to look forward to.
Dicks.

Can you tell I’ve been doing nothing but watching and reading Let’s Plays over my break? Because that’s totally what I’ve been doing. And that means I totally have to make sure you’re aware of the more awesome ones, and by far, the most awesome Let’s Play I have encountered in a long while is this Let’s Play of Mercs 2.
It’s basically two people, in co-op, doing some of the most ridiculous shit you can do in the game while playing through all the levels. The conversations are, for the most part, funny, and seeing them break the physics engine again and again is certainly more fun than doing it in game. Seriously, this game made me want to pop Mercs 2 back into my Xbox, and that is saying something, seeing as it’s a passable, but not great game. Still, they make it seems so amazingly fun, you can’t help but want to join in. They even care enough to cut out the boring bits by putting these amazing bits of pixel art depicting what they were doing… it’s just an amazingly well-done let’s play.

I’d love to tell you all about the greatest moments, but this Let’s Play does not deserve the spoilers. It has made me laugh out loud, so loud that I woke people up in the middle of the night. You owe it to yourself to watch it. Now go do that, and enjoy, and I’ll see you later.

Sometimes, there is a game so passable, so strongly mediocre, that you would never play it.
However, sometimes this game is so full of yuri undertones that you just cannot help but grin and scheme while searching for maximum awkward.
At the same time, do you really want to play that game?

Well, that’s what the brilliance of LPs comes in.
This Hammer can Forge a Woman! is really, really excellent. I read through it over the pass few days, and damn, it’s just a really entertaining read. Plus, and I do consider this a benefit, it’s all about a game I have no interest in ever playing, so there’s no chance of me ever spoiling anything for myself. It’s an all-around win!

Additional let’s plays I have been reading (because apparently that’s what I do when I’m bored) that are worth your time include this one, which is just an amazing, amazing playthrough of the amazing game Nancy Drew and the White Wolf of Icicle Creek. It’s written in a specific sort of internet humor style that, perhaps, will not please you. But it certainly pleased me. There were a lot of laughs to be had.

And, hell, if you’re looking for additional excellent Let’s Plays on the homefront, it would be silly not to read Over A Thousand Nights… Every day!, a playthrough of a game I’ve never heard of, The Magic of Scheherazade, in classic excellent Octopus Prime fashion. Still continuing, still awesome!

Yep, so this was another post of links. DEAL WITH IT! Get reading! There will be a test!
Okay, there won’t be, but someday I may be so excited about something like this to make a test! I swear!

A few nights ago, I had an issue. I wanted to play a vidjeo game in bed, but I had no such vidjeo game! Yes, I had nothing new on the DS. I didn’t know what to pop in and fiddle around with. I’ll be honest, I was jonesing to try Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, but I am being good and strong-willed and am waiting for that one on Gamefly. I was without anything.

I looked around on the desk, and saw my copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor staring at me. Now, I didn’t get very far in this. I could play it. Eventually, I did end up playing it. But it took incredible effort to get myself to take it to my room and pop it in. It was an old game! I didn’t want to play that!

But seriously, it just kind of overwhelmed me how much I was against booting an old game up again and playing it. I don’t do that very often, I admit. If I were to do some sort of Backloggery, I would put so many games on there… I never beat games. I never want to go back and beat them either, apparently so much so that I find it difficult to make myself. It got me thinking about why…

I think it goes back to something Jick said, actually, on the podcast. He says he rarely beats games, he just plays them until he feels he understands them. Then he has no want to keep going. I feel like that describes me pretty well. A huge part of why I play games it to be able to talk about games. At a point, I understand a game’s systems enough to be able to talk about them. Yes, there’s plenty of plot stuff I’m missing. But I can hold my own in a discussion of Devil Survivor without getting lost, and that’s really what’s important to me. That’s a lot of why I play a lot of the games I do. I mean, they’re fun to, but I want to understand them and be able to talk about them.

You know, thinking about it, it’s been shocking that, fairly recently, I did dig back into my backlog and finish games, namely Layton 2 and Bowser’s Inside Story. Of course, that happened mostly because I was sick, on my ass, and had little better to do. But yeah, that’s clearly an exception, and not a rule.

Anyway, I guess the point of this is that… yeah, I have a Backlog, and yeah, I don’t care. It should probably concern me about how much money I’ve spent and haven’t gotten enough value out of, but you know what? That’s why I got Gamefly. To cut down on that shit. And I have. And what I haven’t completed? Well, who the fuck cares, you know? I had fun. I’m having fun.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
If you’ve decided to work on your Backlog this year, more power to you. I’ll just keep letting my grow until it crushes me under the weight of all the unplayed vidjeo gamez.

Woah, hey, look, an IoTM review that isn’t on like… the last day of the month. Shocking.

But seriously, I have some reservations about this thing. KoL is the home of all kind of ridiculous shit. I can attack people with a butt tuba for crying out loud. This is not a very serious game. At the same time, I dunno. Nothing has quite disturbed me before than this month’s IoTM, the Stinky Cheese Ball. This is frustrating, because at the same time, it’s got a mechanic that I really like, and some really good effects on it. It’s an issue.

Why do I kind of hate this item? Well, it’s mostly because of the Stinky Cheese Diaper. The idea of equipping a diaper just… doesn’t sit right with me. Perhaps I’ve seen too many scary furry images in my day, but it just brings up associations I’d rather not bring up! (As per usual, though, if that’s your thing, have fun! As long as nobody is being hurt, fun is of the most importance. I’m just completely definitely against that particular fetish for myself.) Add that to the fact that it’s a diaper made of cheese? Well, uh, yeah. It just really unsettles me.
The kicker, though, is that this diaper is pretty seriously optimal. Unless you have Time Trousers, it is pretty well the easiest and best way to get +Rollover Adventures in the pants slot, a rare benefit. It’s also trivially easy to get them more effective than the Time Trousers, using the neat mechanic that I’ll get to in a second. Not only do I not like the idea of these things, but I’ll have to equip them every time I log off? Yeah, unfortunate.

Still, the mechanics of the Stinky Cheese Ball are actually really neat. It gets more pungent as you use it, and that increases the benefits of the items you can make out of it. It maxes out at 100 turns, but it’s still a very cool little mechanic. If I want the full benefit of the Diaper, which is +10 adventures, then I need to run a 100 turns of another item. Thankfully, they’re all pretty good, and can squeeze into your equipment somewhere. The “equippable at level 1” shield that is the Stinky Cheese Wheel seems like an overall good choice for many characters (I understand that most optimal players use Shieldbutt all the time, so having a good early game shield seems key, though I guess most would rather have the Pilgrim Shield.) and the sword and chefstaff are similarly useful to, at the very least, early-game characters. Probably the most useful way to charge up that diaper, though, is the Stinky Cheese Eye. Not only does it give you +item, which is, of course, what you want, but it also gives you one free Harold’s Bell a day in the skill it grants, called “Give Your Opponent the Stinkeye” This isn’t something I use very often? But I understand how it would be extremely useful, so it’s nice to have around.

Yeah, I think the Stinky Cheese Ball is a winner. While disgusting, I think every one of the items it can morph into has some very strong use. Obviously, the Diaper was the power item, but I can see me using all of them, unlike with, say, the Spooky Putty, which had several items of questionable use attached to the obscenely useful Sheet. This is probably an item you should pick up. Just don’t think too hard about the diaper, okay? Just… really. Don’t think too hard about the diaper.

We gathered, as we sometimes do, for board games. Only we have some different sorts of people about. Katie Essner, for one. And she brought a game I had never heard of called Luck of the Draw. Instead of whipping out one of my complicated gaming concoctions, we decided to go for this, and man, I’m glad we did. This game was so much fun, I’m going to have to grab me a copy of it sometime.

Basically, this game sort of combines Pictionary with a Balderdash or an Apples to Apples. You get a thing to draw, and everyone doodles a picture of it. Then you mix up the pictures, labeling them with little colored discs. Then you go to the deck of “qualities,” and flip over a few of those, and everyone votes on which drawings have these qualities. If you win votes, you get points. If you get points, you win. Simple.
The genius of the game, though, is that you do not know the qualities ahead of time, nor do the qualities have anything to do with what you are supposed to draw. You have free reign to do whatever the hell you want, and hope that your silly, insane version of whatever you’re supposed to be doodling hits a category like “Most Messy” or “Used Straightest Lines.” Or, if you’re going to draw pictures of cocks, you hope it hits something like “Most Masculine.”

Seriously, though, it’s this disconnection that lets you have a ton of fun with a good group of friends. Much like in Balderdash, it soon becomes a battle to make everyone react. Sure, you could draw a normal-looking bride, or you could draw a bride wearing a KKK outfit. Sure, you could draw a normal-looking daydream, or you could draw one with a man proudly exclaiming “MY COCK IS A BOAT!” Sure, it may be a bit juvenile, and the game works best when you at least try to draw something related to the category, but with a group who can take a joke, it is just so, so much fun.

Due to that being where the real fun is, though, the game does sort of break down like Balderdash. In my experience, after a few rounds of Balderdash, people just start writing hilarious, stupid things, and stop focusing on the goal of the game. This works the same way. You eventually have to shut it down because of that. But man, we had a really great time playing. Oh, here’s a little sample of our art, in “bad cell phone camera” vision. This is Jonathan’s entry for “Tongue-Tied.” Nice, huh? I doodled a Smoker from Left 4 Dead, but there just weren’t enough gamers at the table. Sad. But, again, that’s one of the things that makes this game so great. You don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy it. It’s just a flat-out good time. That’s awesome.

Often, I will leave a tab open, going “Hey, I’ll put that in a blog or something!” Then I’ll end up with tabs open in Flock for like… weeks. So right now, I’m a bit tired of those tabs, so hey, let me throw a few links at you.

Yes, this is one of those posts that are just links.

At some point, someone showed me WTF Comcast, and much hilarity was has. Completely worth a read. I want that job.

Man, this has been on a mix CD that Essner puts on sometimes, because it’s there? And I really love the song? But I could never remember the name of it, even when I asked Essner like… five times? But now I finally have the name? So enjoy it.

On the LP front, I recently read through this one, and it was completely awesome. Who knew RE0 was so stupid? (Well, I could have guessed, but, you know.) So that’s worth your time. Apparently this guy has LP’d like… every single Resident Evil game. I need to read the rest.

Uh, so, it’s no mystery that I really like all the Persona 3 and 4 music and whatnot, so the fact that the Persona 3 Portable soundtrack is out there now makes me happy. It made my day the other day. I’ve been listening to the Female Other Self’s battle theme and enjoying it, and now you can too! Beware, though, as I am kind of wanting to do an “Evolution of Mass Destruction” post so, uh, you may be listening to it again. Just have to completely collect my thoughts on it.

If you haven’t watched the Blamimations, you probably should. Laughter is likely to follow.

On the Let’s Play front once again, Brickroad finally pulled out a new LP. It won’t take you too long, but it’s, once again, a fun time.

Well, that’s about all I can think of off of the top of my head. Hopefully it has entertained you, perhaps maybe?
Or not. But that’s fine.

BLOEG OVER.

The Steam Sale that Steam has been having over the holidays has been horrible. For people’s wallets. I was no different. One of the things I picked up, seeing as I had always meant to try it and it was only 10 bucks, was Champions Online. It was at a good price, and I continue to hope that, perhaps there will be some package deal with Star Trek Online so that when I play that with Spants, I can reactivate the subscription to this, just for fun. That might be wishful thinking.

How’s Champions? Well, let me tell you: it is an MMO.

I mean, I’m not completely knocking it for having that quality, because that is completely what it is. However, it’s not JUST an MMO. It is a complete recreation of City of Heroes. Like, totally. Only with a different backend and character building system. It’s honestly kind of amazing that Cryptic was okay making what seems like the exact same game.

Still, that means it brings over the really good qualities of City of Heroes, and that being the crazy character editor. You have so, so many options, and you can be incredibly creative. After some fiddling, I accidentally made my hero: Jackalope Girl. Just look at her. Isn’t she awesome? Here’s her amazing origin story.

Wandering outdoors during a horrible electrical hail storm, Jacqueline Lapin stumbled across a most disturbing and amazing sight: that of the mythical Jackalope mating ritual. The powerful killer rabbits were unable to let Jacqueline leave: No human was to see this awesome sight. However, they took pity on the poor girl, and made her one of them. Now imbued with the awesome power of Lepus Tempermentalus, Jacqueline has vowed to work to make the world safer for rabbit, antelope, and humankind.

Yeah, I’ve been having a lot of fun kind of creating her character. I’m picking skills that make sense for her too, instead of just whatever: She’s mostly just got kicks. Yep, she runs about and kicks people in the face. She also has Super Jump, of course. The customization is such that I can make her walk around on all fours, too, which is an awesome little touch.

Yeah, that kind of character creation was the very best part of City of Heroes, and it’s the best part of Champions.

Still, there are a few other things that are supposedly “different” from a normal MMO. The game is supposedly an “Action MMO,” but I don’t really see it. Sure, there is a block button, and some attacks you need to charge, but basically it just changes pressing one button and having it automatically fire to jamming constantly on one button instead. Not really a huge change. Maybe it makes a lot of difference in the late game? The one thing it does that I do appreciate is that it makes it pretty easy to escape combat. I can just jump away if I’m getting overwhelmed. That’s nice.
The one difference from other MMOs I’ve played that I do appreciate is that of many little instanced areas. I feel like it works really well. For example, you start in the main city of the game, Millennium City, but it’s under siege by aliens. This Alien Attack crisis is it’s own little instance: until you solve the crisis, you can’t go into the city proper, or do anything else. Similarly, I went to a place in the desert called Project Greenskin, which quickly fell under attack by mutants, who destroyed part of the facility and activated the emergency radiation quarantine barrier, and I needed to fix the problem before I could get outside it. I really like this. It adds a much stronger sense of story to the whole game, and it makes me, at least, feel more like a superhero: of course there are huge crises that demand my immediate attention! It makes it a lot cooler as a soloing experience.

The game is very soloable, too, which is nice. However, it probably is because you’re going to need to grind up many characters, due to the fact that it is very, very easy to completely ruin your character in character building, or so I hear, and that there is no complete respec. That’s kind of bullshit all around.

Still, I dunno, I’m enjoying my 10 dollar purchase. Will I subscribe to it on its own? Has it brought be back into the MMO fold? Nah. It’s a fine little distraction, though. I’ve no complaints. Though if you look at my Steam info to see how long I’ve played, know that Steam has messed up on the count! I haven’t really played that many hours. I’m not THAT crazy. Yet.

I had the bright idea, during the last week of classes, that we should play a short DnD campaign over the Christmas break. “There will be plenty of time!” I told myself. “So much time!”

Well, it took like… 3 weeks to be able to come up with a date to do this thing, and even then, we barely got it going, and even even then then, we only got through one combat. But hey, it was DnD! Dungeons and Dragons! That’s cool, right?

This campaign was supposed to be a departure in many ways. For one, it was supposed to be the first time that Mr. Justin Spants, Esq. got to be the DM. I knew this meant a complete lack of seriousness to absolutely anything about the campaign, but I hoped it would be fun. I also set out to make a character completely different from what I normally play.

You see, I am stuck, in a way. I always play the healer. Now, I love, love, love playing that role, don’t get me wrong. But if I don’t expand my horizons a little, how can I know all there is to know about the game? How can I know what the other roles need from me, the healer? How can I tell someone else they’re doing it wrong if I don’t know how to do it right? All this, plus the fact that maybe it’s time to try to roleplay someone different brought me to this point.
I had my eyes firmly set on the “Controller.” Nobody in my group has ever really played a Wizard, or the like, and we’ve often been found needing them. So I decide, hey, I’m going to play a Wizard! Only I get this idea for a character: Reckless, Brash, and in love with combat. Someone who shoots first and asks questions later, and is incredibly laid back about her chosen profession. The more I thought about this, the less this seemed like a Wizard. I turned to a class I laughed at before, the Invoker, for the answer. Invoker seemed so… bland, but as my character came together, the idea of this Avatar of Kord who isn’t about evil, or anything, but is just itching to get into war, into more fights, due to anything that could be seemed as a good idea? Well, that fit. That could be fun.

There we were, at a city with a name so stupid I cannot even recall it. Avril Sparklewhisper (sister, apparently of Rachael Sparklewhisper, my Warlord), Willhelm the Staunch (my brother’s completely min/maxed tank of a fighter), and the single-y named Tao (Essner’s warrior monk Cleric Dragonborn guy) were all there. Yes, this was a gathering of one of the land’s greatest adventuring parties: Rumblefuzzz, with three z’s, because… well, I have no idea why, it’s just how it is.

There was a fire cave, or so some guy named Brandon said. In said very religious fire cave were some very bad people, and they had taken the place hostage, which was really killing tourism. We wanted to talk to Brendon, because he seemed like he would no more, but Brandon would have none of that. Dick. We went in to take some names and throw some lightning. That’s what Avril was going to do, anyway.

And I totally did! Having AoE spells really does change combat a lot, and certainly makes it easier. I was knocking down big groups with little trouble, and it was pretty cool. Jonathan, of course, was tanking like a pro, and had some pretty crazy anti-damage skills. Essner continues to not be able to roll a d20 to save his life. Seriously, I just don’t get it. He ALWAYS misses. He never deals any damage at all. Yet he can play Arkham Horror, and murder enemies he shouldn’t be able to hit any day of the week. The guy just cannot use a d20. I don’t know. They just hate him.

Anyway, the combat went on a little longer than it probably should have, which happens, especially when you’re new at the stuff and don’t know what you’re doing: balancing a combat is hard. Really hard. But we had some fun, and then people were done, so we split. Hopefully we can continue and do some more soon, but hell, as long as it took to schedule this one, maybe we can get to it around next December. Who knows.

Welcome to a new decade, I suppose.

How far have I come?
Not far enough.

At the same time, it’s not like it’s been a total waste, I suppose. I mean, it took most of the decade, but I now have a college degree, and hell, I’ll soon have another one. That’s something, right?
I spent a lot of time with some really, really fucking great friends, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything, so that’s definitely something.
I became dependable, and something bordering on vaguely self-sufficient, so that’s also something, right?

Things happened, and, guess what, in this new year, even more things will happen. Maybe things much bigger in my life than anything that came before.

That is scary as fuck.

But I can make it. I can do this. We all can make it. We all can do it, whatever our own personal “it” is.

A new year isn’t a new beginning, it’s just more. But it can be a great more.
I’ll do my best to make it a great more.