The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So I just spent all kinds of money on a brand new phone and a data plan. Exciting times! I am now the proud owner of a Blackberry Bold, one of the newest Blackberries, with all the bells, whistles, and 3Gs.

The first question one has to ask when they realize I made this purchase is “Why didn’t you get an iPhone?” This is especially true since we switched to AT&T and the iPhone 3G is ridiculously cheap. Well, it comes down to keyboard. I already have access to all the cool iPhone apps and, more importantly, games, through my iPod Touch, so apps are mostly a non-issue. What I really want a phone with data for is for twittering and for getting on my AIM and whatnot in weird places and chatting with people. For this, you need a keyboard, and gods, I hate the keyboard on the iPhone. Granted, I think Shawn on Talking Time made a good point once: The iPhone keyboard is a ton better than typing with a standard phone keypad. But when there’s Blackberries out there, why settle just for that?
And oh my god, this keyboard is so sweet. You can tell that RIM has been making the best cell phone keyboards for years. It feels PERFECT, having the exact right amount of give and click to the buttons. I can’t type at the same speed at which I’m typing on this compy keyboard right now, of course, but I have been impressed at how fast I can already type, and I know it’s going to improve a little more once I’ve had it for a month or two. I can AIM on this thing at good speeds! I might even be able to hold down TWO conversations! It’s pretty damn neat to me.
The other reason I wanted data on a phone was for anytime access to internet browsing. This, I will admit, is an area where an iPhone is superior. Mobile Safari is just the best mobile broswer out there. It works so damn good. The Bold doesn’t have a touch screen, and that’s going to make broswing not as good. It makes up for it with this little trackball thing. I thought I might hate this, but after you get used to it, it really works quite well for selecting things and whatnot. It doesn’t, however, scroll webpages well, which is the main issue with the built-in broswer. However, I was told to immediately get Opera Mini, and I did, and it is much better, having easy zoom in/out controls and shortcut keys to scroll for 1 page of text, making it easy to read blog posts, such as this one. The broswer is plenty good for checking something on Wikipedia or wasting time, and that’s all I ask.

But yeah, it’s quite the nice phone. And I am so glad to have mobile data now. I am going to abuse the shit out of it. Still, besides Twitterberry and BeejiveIM, I don’t really know what other apps there are that I might actually use. (I also put Qik and Google Maps on there, but those are going to be rare uses, I’m sure, though if I ever start road-tripping again, Google Maps could be a lifesaver.) If anyone out there has any good suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Apparently this exists.

That’s basically all I have to say about the subject, except to be astounded.

The world is just an amazing place. you know? You think “hey, I have access to a vast network of computers which can basically give me any information I want at any time. There’s nothing I can be surprised by anymore!” and then you get surprised by the combination of two games and the fact that people actually play in some sort of league in this sport, and so on.

It’s just… amazing.

It really is.

I mean, I honestly don’t know how many other perfect pairings like this could exist, though. The concept is just, honestly, brilliant. “Let’s combine a sport where the goal is to pummel someone until their a drooling body on the ground with a game where you have to be constantly aware of your surroundings and make quick, smart decisions.” It works, you know? The game distracts from the boxing in the minds of the fighters, and the punches to the head and pain distract from the chess. It works.

Man, seriously, though. Chess Boxing.

There hasn’t been a game I’ve bought that’s been more of a hit than Dominion. And why shouldn’t it be a hit. The game has a completely genius design based around building your deck while you play, and is incredibly easy to pick up while being strategically interesting and fun all around. It really is a winner.

So, of course, when I heard about Dominion: Intrigue, the stand-alone expansion for Dominion which can be played alone, or mixed with the cards from the original set? Man, I was right there. Pre-ordering it was basically the reason I ordered the Big Box of Board Games.

It didn’t disappoint.

Even though Dominion: Intrigue is Stand-Alone, I really don’t think it works very well as an introduction to the game. There are no simple cards, because the simple cards are all in the normal Dominion. However, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a good expansion and game. Far from it. I think it’s completely worth the title of Dominion’s first expansion.

Options Options Options seem to be the name of the game with the cards in Intrigue. So many of them, like Ironworks, Steward, and Pawn, present a choice of many smaller effects instead of one big effect, like most of the cards in the base set. This allows them to fill the roles of some of the more necessary cards from the base set, while still playing fairly differently. Pawn, for example, is just a really great card all around, letting you choose 2 different options from the list of +1 card, +1 buy, +1 action, and +1 gold. The correct choice is not obvious as many times as it is clear, and I think that’s really great.
There are also a lot of twists on other cards. Wishing Well was quickly my favorite card from the new set. This card basically works like Village, but has a luck/guessing aspect to it, in that if you can correctly guess the top card of your deck, you get to draw an additional card. That kind of guessing is just fun. Shanty Town also fills that Village role, but with an interesting twist: You always get +2 actions, but you only get +2 cards if your hand doesn’t have any actions in it besides the Shanty Town you just played. Trying to set up chains with that card is additionally fun.
There are also some really painful new attack cards that run the game out incredibly quickly. Saboteur is just completely and utterly mean. It makes opposing players flip cards off the top of their deck and trash them, adding in a lower-costed card. This is devastating if someone flips over a Province or something. (This happened to Spaeth. Totally dicked over!) The Swindler card also has opponents flipping over the top card of their deck and trashing it, but instead, the player who played Swindler has to replace the card with one of the same value. Lots of dicking potential here, but at least your Provinces are safe, being the only card worth 8. Still, that kind of constant trashing makes the game end much, much faster!
The real power cards, though, are the hybrid Victory point cards. These cards have an additional affect, as well as being worth points. For example, there is absolutely no reason why everyone won’t buy out the Great Hall deck if it’s in the game immediately. It is just so good. Harem is also extremely powerful, and I found myself picking that over a similarly-priced Gold every single time. At first, these cards seemed TOO powerful, but the more I think about it, the more okay these sorts of cards are. The game is designed so you just don’t play with card types you don’t like, and since buying them out ends the game quicker, putting a single card out there that’s higher valued than other options makes the game end significantly faster, affecting gameplay and potentially making the powerful nature of these dual-natured cards less impactful.

Still, though, if you like Dominion, buying this expansion is a no-brainer. Mixing these new decks in with the old will provide tons more entertainment, not to mention that if you mix them, there are now rules to play with 6 players, which is always welcome. I mostly just worry about Dominion: Seaside, the non-stand alone expansion coming out later this year. Is the well deep enough to support another 26 Kingdom decks? We’ll see. I’ll certainly be there day 1.

So, there’s a thread on Talking Time. It’s called Fall Anime ’08. The title is kind of incorrect, though, as it’s much more about talking about what Animes are currently running and how they are. (I guess the title was correct, back in Fall of ’08, but it keeps being used.

In any case, I check in there from time to time. I used to be all about the animes, and I like vaguely knowing what’s going on in the Anime world. So while I’m there, I hear about an anime called Saki. It’s painfully fanservice-y, with lesbian sexual tension poured on by the bucketful, and it’s not very good.

But it’s about Mah Jong. And how winning this Mah Jong tournament is the only thing that matters. And dammit, I am completely weak by this kind of concept. The idea of these dramatic shows about board games, card games, and so on is what made me watch seasons of Yu-gi-oh. I can’t get away from such things. They are so compelling to me, even when I want to murder the animators every time they’re like “MUST HAVE THE CAMERA ANGLE SHOW SHE HAS BIG BREASTS LOL!” When you play Mah Jong like this, then I watch. I am so weak.

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last day or two. Watching Lesbian High Schoolers Play Mah Jong show. What have you been up to?

Awhile back, I ordered a big box of board games. They have arrived, and we are now playing through them and enjoying them. Etc. So here is some of my first impressions of the games within said big box.

One of the games I bought almost completely on a whim was Race for the Galaxy. I didn’t know anything at all about it, besides it was a card game (which is a huge plus in my book) and that several people on Talking Time seemed to like it. So some days ago, when the box came in, we busted that sucker out and gave it a try.

Damn, this game is complicated.

This is not a game you get right on the first, or even perhaps the second gameplay session. Each game card is partially COVERED in obtuse symbols. Each player is given a full page cheat-sheet for these symbols. Depending on differences in coloration, cards might play completely different. Some elements of cards actually don’t matter unless you add in an expansion set, but are just there in the base set. It’s really weird, and not for the weak of heart. This isn’t a game you’re going to be teaching your non-gamer parents or anything.

Still, once you start to get into it, the game starts to show off its fairly clever mechanics. The main idea of the game is that there are 5 phases to a turn, and each player picks a phase to get a special bonus in, in secret, at the start of the turn. The catch is that unless a player picks a bonus for that phase, it doesn’t happen. So if nobody picks the Explore phase bonus, no player gets an Explore phase that turn. This means it’s actually impossible to play all 5 phases in a turn, since there are only 4 players, max. It’s pretty interesting.

The other thing that I find interesting is the fact that the cards in your hand are both your money and your options. (options, options…) You have to discard cards to put things in play, but then you’re also throwing away things you can do… it’s a pretty solid way of making a currency without having another currency. (Though they then kind of throw that out the window with the “Goods” thing on Planets.)

Anyway, this game has a huge learning curve, but already, by the end of our second game, we were starting to get the hang of it. I think in another game or two, this will be really fun. We’ll have to see how it goes, though. Such learning curves can really kill the game, but it’s clear that underneath it, there is a really clever strategy game here. Hopefully we can find it.

I slept like shit Friday Night! And I had this dream!

I was back in high school at Notre Dame, only we seemed to be in the gym of my grade school. We were trying to put together the yearly musical, only for whatever reason, nobody had gotten a head start on it. It was like… one week until showtime and absolutely nothing was done. No sets. No rehearsals. No music. No lights. Nothing.

Essner was the director. Why? Hell if I know. He was very stressed out. The musical we were putting on was apparently a musical version of Terminator: Salvation, starring none other than Justin Spaeth. I kept trying to calm him down. “We don’t need complicated sets, right? Just a couple of flats up with a wasteland locale, we can use that for most scenes…”

Eventually, after a dispute where we were trying to get Spaeth to be the sound guy, too, but he refused to be the sound guy from backstage and wanted to be in the booth? But he obviously couldn’t star and be up in the booth… so Essner said fuck it, and we retired to a restaurant, I think it was Logans.
Essner, Bradley Bo, Ben, and I were eating together. Ben and Brad had bought necklaces at some sort of quarter dispenser, only they looked like necklaces we sell at Kohl’s. And we talked about the necklaces for awhile, and I think I eventually stole one.

Then I think the musical was canceled.

Yep. That’s the kind of shit I dream about.

Sometimes I have my moments where I realize “Holy shit, I really am the sort of person who has a degree in English.” Mostly, these come in the form of inspiration for English Major-y papers, where I look at something and realize I could analyze it in a way where I could add in research, over-explain it, and then get myself some A’s or whatever. I realize that I could write a paper about a text that would fit right in with all of the scholarly articles I have had to look at in my college career. It’s kind of weird when I do it, as I’ve always thought I wasn’t the sort to WANT to do that, but at the same time, I suppose I have developed some skill in it.

Most recently, I was watching Endurance Run: Persona 4 and I realized there was an extremely good paper in there.
Of course, I’m not going to write the paper. So I’ll just sort of summarize my thesis here, I suppose.

Basically, there is something to be said, culturally, about the main character in Persona 4. The protagonist is your classic jRPG silent protagonist, but he also has a special power that other characters in your party don’t. His guiding Tarot card is the Fool, 0, and as such he can make multiple Persona and switch between them at will.
Personas are “facades that help you overcome life’s hardships.” They are your personality, and how you deal with things. All the characters in your party have them, and they reflect the person that the character is. However, with each Persona comes certain strengths and weaknesses, represented by the normal elemental Rock/Paper/Scissors that you see in such games. Because each other main party member is stuck with their one persona, which is their personality, they will always have weaknesses. The Protagonist does not have these weaknesses, as he can switch away to Persona who are strong against certain attacks to protect himself, not to mention have access to a much wider variety of attacks. He is a much more powerful character because of his lack of one distinct personality.
However, this ability comes at a cost. Like I said, the protagonist is your standard jRPG silent protagonist. You are given choices to make, but for the most part, they are empty choices. There is nothing the Protagonist can do to affect the world, or to make choices or changes in his life. Because he is not a distinct character of his own, his life is not guided by his choices, but rather guided by those around him, as well as a mysterious voice that tells him he’s tired and so on.

Hopefully you see where I’m going with this. There is something to say, culturally, about Japan, or at least the creators of Persona 4, considering the ability to be a non-entity, and move between personalities at will, to be a good thing, and to mean you have greater power. The game seems to promote losing your self-identity. That is… not something I really agree with. But damn, it could make a good paper. Surely there are Japanese cultural studies that I could pull in as well, to give additional real-life analysis. It would be one hell of an English Major paper.

Man, I’m kind of lost, though, aren’t I? When I’m thinking about these things in my free time? I am pretty clearly going to be an English major forever. Heh. Oh well.

I find now, all of the sudden, that I have no idea why I am not following Giant Bomb more often. I was liked to a little review of Rocket Riot, a game I hadn’t really heard about, on Talking Time. I watched it, and I was like “Okay, this is pretty entertaining, let’s see what else they got… oh, here’s something about BlazBlue…” So I went to watch that.

And man, I laughed so hard.

Which caused me to notice the fact that there was over 100 episodes of something called “Endurance Run: Persona 4.” So I went to that. I’ve been watching it for quite awhile now, and I just keep laughing. Basically, they’re playing Persona 4 in 15 minutes chunks and recording it, while commenting on it. It’s a Let’s Play! But man, it’s so good. So good.

It really makes me wonder what else I’m missing. Should I be listening to their podcast? What else of theirs should I be following? I mean, I have no idea.
But hell, at least for today, I was extremely entertained.

Work is just amazing.
I just found out that I have HOURS next week! Actual, verifiable hours! Lots of them! I will have a big paycheck! I was all happy!

And then I went “Oh, I have hours.”

I mean, I’m not someone who bitches about work a lot? When something genuinely pisses me off, sure, I will tell you about it, blog of mine, but the majority of the time, I’m just fine. I work. It sucks. A lot of the time it makes my right ankle and knee ache. But I get the job done, and I get paid, and it’s no big thing.

At the same time, my schedule changes from week to week and week again. And honestly, I’m pretty well getting sick of it.
I don’t know… I’m a creature of habit for the most part. I like things not to change. This is the sort of thing that gets me into a lot of trouble, feeling that way. I think that, more than ever before, life is just constantly changing nowadays. I wish I could get 1 job and work it for 40 years, but that just isn’t done. You spend a year or two somewhere, or even less, and then you find a better offer and go for it. Change change change…

I don’t know, I think work wouldn’t be so tiring if I didn’t work completely different hours every week. The idea of, you know, working twice the number of hours as I worked last week is kind of a soul-crushing idea, even if I know I can do it. It’s the change that makes it feel worse. If I had actually been getting this number of hours the whole time, then it wouldn’t have been a big deal, would it?

Probably not.
I don’t know.

Anyway, it’ll be nice to get a large cash infusion to my bank account, in any case.

Speaking of board games, we managed to get in another exciting game of Arkham Horror on the 3rd! Yay for Arkham Horror! This impromptu match against Eldritch forces pitted us against Glaaki. Luckily, we weren’t too afraid of some crazy lake slug, so we dug on in.

Essner, of course, started out the night on the right foot by drawing out, with his uncanny ability, the researcher with the amazing rack, Mandy Thompson. How he can constantly draw his favorite character is beyond me. Spaeth also got lucky and got the gangster, which is the character he always wants to play. Shauna, the newbie to the game, got the author, Jonathan got stuck with Ashcan Pete, and I ended up deciding to go with Dexter Drake, magician extraordinaire.
Our starting gear was… so so. Besides the gun Spaeth started with, nobody really got any weapons besides Shauna, who got a rifle. I had Shriveling, of course, because Dexter starts with it, but I also had a spell I had never had before and was interested in trying out: Alchemical Process. This spell basically let me spend a sanity to gain $3 bucks. I abused the hell out of that spell, buying me a magical sword and such… and driving myself insane because of it at least twice.

So I didn’t do much, besides using Call Friend to draw Spaeth, who somehow had like 16 bucks (thanks to him getting “untold riches” from a mysterious power… those untold riches being $8) and was up in Dunwich, to the Merchant District Streets to deal with that horrible Mad Bomber rumor where you have to pay like $4 an investigator to dispel it. Money is not easy to come by in this game, and you couldn’t let it lapse, because then every investigator would get an injury and a madness. It is a really shitty rumor. Anyway, I helped out with that, but spent most of the game in Arkham Asylum. I didn’t even go to a dimension once.

Still, Jonathan, Shauna, and Essner -REALLY- stepped it up and basically won the game for us. Somehow, they sealed like… every damn thing, even with Essner constantly getting really shitty items. (I gave him my magical sword to make him feel better, but I don’t think he put it to good use.) Glaaki was also having bad luck. He only had about like… 6 doom counters on him when Shauna sealed off the final gate and won the game. The only real threat to us was the fact that we were in Act II of the King in Yellow, and had no real weapons to fight Glaaki had he been summoned. If we had drawn The Next Act Begins! we would have been fucked. But we didn’t! We won! And the world was safe from crazy mutant slugs yet again.

People on Talking Time think it’s crazy that I am missing several of the Arkham Expansions. Granted, I would enjoy having them, but damn… they are kind of expensive. Instead of those expansions, I can buy several new games with new, neat experiences, which is what I did during the purchases described yesterday. Don’t think I didn’t debate picking up Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Black Goat of the Woods while I was picking out my board games! But in the end, Arkham is plenty in it’s current state. I may pick up another expansion at some point in the future, but we’ve only played like… 2 games since I got The King in Yellow. Things are still fresh. When it needs some jazz, then I shall expand.
Plus, some of those new investigators are crazy powerful. Power creep, anyone?