The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, I walk out. It’s a normal day. Time to go to the office, then to the press, La Dee Da. Just like any other.

THEN.
DISASTER STRIKES.

I only had 18 minutes worth of podcasts for hours and hours of work.
Fuck.

I figured I was boned, and would just have to listen to music, of all things. I had the BlazBlue soundtrack and stuff, so I had something to listen to, I guess (Seriously, I don’t know why, but I find it quite nice), and that would be that.

Then, I was checking twitter on my phone and I realized I HAD A PHONE WITH INTERNET. My Blackberry has a normal headphone jack. I figured it was worth a shot. So I navigated to the gdgt podcast, which I listen to sometimes when I have gaps in podcasts like this one, and tried opening an episode.
Honestly, I was completely impressed. In the two straight hours I was streaming podcasts from my phone, it only buffered four, maybe five times. It streamed those MP3s like a pro. I was honestly quite impressed with both the 3G connection and my little phone for playing audio so well.

Granted, it certainly wasn’t perfect. I couldn’t do anything else while it was streaming, not even check my schedule or anything if I needed to. I think I might have still be able to take a phone call, because I accidentally hit the phone button in my pocket and things didn’t stop playing, but that would probably be it. Certainly way less than ideal for normal, everyday podcast use (which I’ve had someone ask me about, believe it or not). At the same time, it’s nice to know that, when I get in a jam I didn’t prepare for, I can stream a decent-quality MP3 without much lag or effort. That’s just pretty damn cool. I’m pretty happy with the little machine.
But let’s hope I keep more prepared in the future, and don’t have to resort to it. Heh.

So I was watching the third season of 30 Rock that Essner lent me on DVD (he was totally right, it totally picks back up and is hilarious once you get past the first few episodes) and I had to stop. So I took the DVD out of the 360, which I was using to watch it. A day and one long Beatles: Rock Band session later, I sit down to watch the rest of it. I pop the disc back in… and it starts exactly where I stopped it.

It was magic.

I was so impressed I tweeted that shit. And then I get a flood of replies that tell me that basically all DVD players ever nowadays do this.
Guess this says how much I watch DVDs.
Still, it was really neat. It doesn’t seem useful for, say, movies, but for a TV show disc you’ve Play-All’d, that shit is perfect. It’s nice to know I can count on such features in the future.

Maybe I’m impressed by too little. Who knows.

I had heard some great things about BlazBlue. Second coming of fighting games! (Okay, less that. That was Street Fighter IV.) A really, really great and unique game! I was really tempted to buy it and try it. But no, I told myself, that would be a waste. Then I got Gamefly, and rented it. Now I’ve tried it.

Gods, it is just so complex.

I mean, I don’t know. I turned the game on and tried to play, and it seemed like nothing I was trying to do actually DID anything. I would hit buttons and my character would fly about the screen in odd angles, but never seeming to attack or anything, and just generally being ineffective. I picked another character, and the same thing happened. I just had no idea what I was doing at all. It was completely obtuse: normal fighting game knowledge only barely prepares you for this game, if at all. None of the button mashing I normally do to figure out how things work was working.

So I turned off the game, frustrated.

Then people on twitter were like “You need to watch the tutorial DVDs!” I worry about a game that requires watching long tutorial DVDs in order to be comprehended, but I pulled them up on Youtube nonetheless. I was immediately further demoralized. These videos show some really, really advanced shit. They talk about deep strategy where I was still needing to figure out how to, you know, attack people. I scoffed at the whole thing. “Ridiculous. Over-complex. But that’s music’s good.”
So I looked up some music on Youtube, and was listening to this track, which I think is pretty great, and I go “okay, I’ll give it another shot.”

So I boot the game back up and pick Carl Clover, because I like his song. And suddenly, I realize the DVDs were actually effective. I suddenly understood what I was trying to do. I mean, I wasn’t great at it, but I was pulling off combos. I was making some rudimentary versions of Carl’s combo loops that he can pull off with his sister. I was beating the computer. Impressively, the videos did what it was supposed to!

Then I sent it back to Gamefly.
Why?
Well, if I had to watch tutorial videos just to understand it, there’s NO WAY IN HELL I am getting my friends to ever touch this game for more than five minutes. Besides Jonathan, sometimes, none of them are going to be willing to invest the amount of time required to comprehend this game. BlazBlue is completely a commitment, not a game. I felt like, at least, Guilty Gear could be played on a mashy level with some amount of effectively, but this game? Not at all. There’s no casual enjoyment of this game. It is all hardcore.

So it’s not really useful to me. But good on it for existing. There has to be a core fanbase that is obscenely happy with this game. And hell, if I could get it for like 20 bucks or something, I might pick it up again and see if I can figure out Carl Clover further. But really, there’s so very little reason to train with it when I’m never going to have competition, so back it goes.

So the other day, instead of getting my work done, I banged out some poems. These were more poems from my Presidents of the United States of America poetry project, which started as poems about one album, then turned into a small Chapbook, and has now become, in my mind, a full-blown book of poetry called “Repeater/Deleter : A Two-Sided Love Affair of Dominance and Submission”. So I wrote some more of them. Then I thought about what I’m actually doing.

Is this a project worth continuing? Is this something I want to bring to fruition? And if it is, is it something that should be my, I dunno, thesis? If I’m going to create an entire book of poetry anyway, it does make sense to double dip. Less stress, etc. At the same time, while I think I’m a fairly decent poet most of the time, I feel like I’m probably stronger writing fiction and things of that nature. Full-blown prose. Or at least Microprose. Uh, I mean, Microfiction. Anyway, if that’s what I’m better at, then that should probably be what my thesis is, right? As that will follow me in later academic endeavors, and I’ll want my best foot forward.

I so don’t have this whole Master’s degree Academic Track thing planned. I’m just going with the flow. Sometimes I come upon questions like this, and I worry. But I should just keep going. Keep flowing. What I should really do is, probably, show most of these poems to someone, like Karen, and see if she thinks they’re worth pursuing.

Or I could just go get more of my classwork done. That would work, too.

I got it in my head that, for Halloween, I was going to run a one-shot Call of Cthulhu game! I don’t really know why. I didn’t have any experience with it. But hey, I bought the book, and I schemed, and I planned, and on Wednesday, Jonathan, Spaeth, Essner, and Ben all played my little campaign.

The story I planned was based in 1920’s Arkham for ease of writing and familiarity for everyone, since we’ve all played so much Arkham Horror. I constructed a story about a Mask I made up and a creature called a Dream Sucker, which was sort of like a mosquito made of light that sucked out creativity until you sort of ended up like a robot. By a coincidence, all the players get infected by these beings, and had to work together to stop them.

The game wasn’t scary at all. We’re like… the least serious roleplayers on earth. And while sometimes I wish we’d get serious and do something serious, I wouldn’t trade the fun we have for that. We were laughing the whole damn time at stupid jokes, stupid decisions, etc. Jonathan’s character broke into a guy’s house, and then left a note with his name an address. Ben constantly attempted disguises and critically failed, causing us to invent crazier and crazier ways where he was MORE like his normal self in his failed disguises. Spants tried to pull guns on everybody, and Essner used his character’s “mentor, Dr. Phillip Rochester,” as the reason for every single thing he did. It was really quite ridiculous, in an awesome way.

From a planning standpoint, though, I feel like I succeeded pretty well. There were several points where I guessed what everyone would decide to do perfectly, and had notes for just such an occasion. I made a physical puzzle involving mocked-up card catalog cards, and while it stumped them for awhile, they all said it was a good puzzle. Which was good! Puzzle-making isn’t easy. I was glad that worked out.

But yeah, overall, a very fun time. I stayed up too late, perhaps, what with me being all old and going to bed early nowadays, but staying up for some fun once and awhile isn’t so bad, is it? I didn’t think so. I made a puzzle, drove someone insane, and laughed so hard I probably kept people up. That sounds like a good night to me.

In honor of that most Hallowed of Weens, here’s a Haunted House story.

On Sunday I was invited by one Matthew Essner to go to the Haunted Hall of Horrors at Arena Park, the Haunted House thingy they set up every year around this time. It was fun enough. A scary time, and a good time standing in line talking to cool people. Of course, I ended up tanking the thing, though… why do I always end up in front? I’m a total wuss. But someone has to tank! I just wasn’t expecting to take that role so literally.

These things always have a section with a flashing strobe light and a dude with a chainsaw without the chain. The strobe light makes it feel like you’re running so slow! And then the guy with the chainsaw chases you. Horror! Suspense! Etc! It’s been there every time I’ve ever gone to this thing, so it was expected.
So we get there, and “OMG guy with a chainsaw!” and we start running and playing along, because it’s fun. Before we get to the end, the group behind us gets to the same section, and THEY start running. Only this woman is way, way too much into it. Either she’s really scared, or just going way too overboard. She sprints forward with all her might. And then she slams, right into my back, throwing me forward and to the ground, and I land hard on my right shoulder. I am unsure if she apologized. I don’t remember one, but my brain could be embellishing for dramatic effect.
I really don’t know why she was so excited, but she obviously didn’t learn her lesson, because this Haunted House had 2, count ’em, TWO chainsaw sections, the other being right at the end to run you out the door. She did the same thing, and nearly plowed into Mason, but he succeeded in his Auto-Parry. The lady fell to the concrete and scraped up her palms? Why? Because she was being stupid, mostly. Probably. I know the people with her were kind of mocking her for it. Nothing like making fun of another’s pain.

And that’s the story! Epilogue: My shoulder still hurts like fuck when I pick up anything heavy. Yay!

You should go and play this right now, and then come back. It’s called Small Worlds. It’ll only take you, what, 10 minutes? 15? It’s really cool. Leave the sound on. Play it. Then we’ll talk.

—

Played it? Ready for spoilarz? Alright then.

This is a really damn good art game. It has a theme that it’s playing on in multiple different ways, and I think it’s effectively open to other interpretations than the one I am going to give you, which is just… neat. I love the art game movement.

Basically, I feel like the theme is that of an expanding world, and what that means. So often, in all of the areas, you start off in a very serene kind of setting, when zoomed in, but as you explore, the camera pulls back, and as the camera pulls back you see more and more of what it actually is. You start in what seems like a Space Station of some kind. A pretty space vista. Then you pull out and see the destruction and isolation and whatnot. In the same way, a winter wonderland slowly turns into a nuclear winter wonderland, and a cave turns into the innards of a horrible monster, etc.

However, the game doesn’t just stick to that mechanic to prove it’s theme. It also uses gameplay itself to push that forward, which I think is beyond excellent. The moment when you realize that you have a goal, and aren’t just exploring to explore, when you find that first little power block? The world of the game expands there. Suddenly, so much more of what you’re seeing has meaning. It’s a search for those blocks. What it means changes, much like how what you are viewing changes when you pull the camera out.

The ending, too, supports a final kind of thesis. After accomplishing your goal, you realize it was for nothing. Everything you thought was significant disappears: The music, the little dude you were controlling… all there is is a sun. Your quest, your existence was insignificant in the bigger picture. When you zoom out far enough, everything changes.

Yeah. I really liked this one. It used gameplay EXTREMELY well to make its point. Some art games, like, say, Today I Die, are neat, but the gameplay is not, you know, necessarily the important part of the experience, even though it is there? You could watch a video of someone playing Today I Die and probably get as much out of it as if you played it. I don’t think you can separate the gameplay from the whole idea and experience of Small Worlds. I like it for that.

Hopefully you at least thought it was neat, hm?

I mean, helmets in RPGs suck. My characters look so lame in helmets. So my superhero in Twilight Heroes would look incredibly lame wearing this month’s IoTM, the Mask of Odysseus. Cause, you know, it’s a mask. Nobody could see my neat face! Maybe!

At first glance, this is just a worse Wolley’s Index or, of course Hero’s Cape. I mean, that’s 5% less Item Drop, and that’s the good stuff!

Of course, you can equip this WITH the other items, but maybe that’s beside the point.

Basically, I see this as a more fun Wolley’s Index. The Index is boring. It’s pure statistical benefit with no fun involved. The Mask does interesting combat things. Interesting combat things make me happy. I do smiling when I’m happy. Unless I am purely grinding for items or really, really want to be optimal, which probably won’t happen, I really can’t think of a reason why I would equip Wolley’s Index over this ever again for that reason.

Maybe I like things for stupid reasons. Maybe I should just work to be the best and have the biggest stats, etc.

But I’d rather do it with STYLE, man. Fucking style!

Even if that style involves a mask that I wouldn’t actually like to see on my character.
Style.

Do I even do these reviews anymore? Fuck if I know.

This month’s KoL IoTM offering is the Squamous Gibberer. It’s a clear Cthulhu reference, so that’s neato as well as torpedo. It potatoes. It whelps. It Wild Hares for extra turns. It breathes underwater.

Basically, it’s completely a win. I love Potatoes and Whelps, and the Wild Hare is one of two familiars whose functionality I liked and I wished I had. (The other being the Doppelshifter.) Now that I have this and the Tiny Costume Wardrobe, I’ve got every really rare thing I would pretend I would actually need. (Not that I’m going to turn down something else, if you offer it to me! I’ll take it!)

This is never really going to be bleeding edge, though, because potato and whelp action is just never going to be optimal. If you’re a good, optimal player, you shouldn’t need the healing or the attack blocking. You should be prepared for them anyway. The additional turns are likely not going to be worth it, either, especially when you’re needing to run turns with, say, your Baby Sandworm to get spleen turn items. Not to mention, apparently, before a buff, it was actually pretty close in power to the Cuddlefish. I still say it’s worth it for me, as the flavor is just fun as hell and I want that Wild Hare functionality, but maybe for the cheaper among us, just using the Cuddlefish would probably suffice.

But fuck, I’m happy with it. It’s a tiny Cthulhu that whispers in your ear, does the two familiar functions I love, plus gives me more turns. That’s a good Mr. Familiar to me. That’s the kind of familiar that’s going to make me want to make one more run in order to test it out, and that’s the exact reason I donate for these things.
So there.

Fact 1: I have a PS3 now. My PSN account is, shockingly, poetfox. I don’t have any games to speak of where that information would be useful yet, though I’ve added a bunch to my Gamefly. So yay for that.

Fact 2: This comic is awesome.

Fact 3: Jade Harley is now my favorite forever and ever. New developments have occurred since I wrote this. So. Awesome.

Fact 4: Workload is low next week, so I can relax somewhat. SCORE!

Fact 5: Fact! Five! Five Facts!

Fact 6: I’m running a Halloween Call of Cthulhu game next week. Excitement, let me tell you. Ex.Cite.Ment.

This is the end of facts you should be made aware of.