The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

This one is a simple one, but I like it a lot.
The GigaGuy Cannon is this month’s offering in Twilight Heroes, and beyond it being a blatant MegaMan reference (which I missed for far, far too long. Take away my Talking Time license or something) it’s also a pretty solid ranged weapon. Well, certainly better than the King’s Boomerang, in any case. (Though that comparison really isn’t fair, I suppose, since the cannon cost about 3x as many stars at the boomerang.)
It does decent attack damage, even after equipping my new Grimm’s Bulwark, but again, that might be just because I’ve been used to seeing the shitty damage from the Longbow of the Law and the Shortbow of the Stick for months. And it comes with several MegaMan 2 style abilities or whatnot, which are always appreciated. I actually found that some of the weaknesses carry over, too, which surprised me. The “GigaGuy Rapid Boomerang” does extra damage to metal enemies. I added that to the wiki. Heh. Do the others deal extra damage to those who are weak against them? I dunno. It’ll take more testing. But I think that’s a pretty cool little thing to add.
The real benefit of this gun, though, is that it makes enemies drop restoratives. After battle, you have a strong chance of either getting a GigaGuy Pellet or a GigaGuy Capsule. These only heal a tiny bit, but they drop after almost every battle and they’re greatly appreciated. They’re probably going to be the real reason someone equips the cannon. Well, that, and I suppose if someone isn’t an Elementalist like me and needs a source of solid elemental damage.
In any case, the point is, I quite like this month’s offering.

However, I believe it’s important to make an addendum to a previous review. After I wrote that, Ryme modified the Recylonizer so that it causes enemies to sometimes drop hunks of scrap metal. This is an item which is only used to recyclonize. It doesn’t do anything else. This really increases the usefulness of the Recyclonizer. Before, it was normally more useful just to autosell stuff and buy restoratives and caffeine and whatnot instead of recylonizing. Which this, you get a few free shots every day, enough to, say, get you two Oil Can Coffees for your caffeine or just get some of the buffs with no downside. It makes the Recylonizer much, much more useful. I understand Ryme was worried about giving people what amounts to free chips every day, and I agree that that is still a concern with this solution, but it really helped to make this one useful, at least for me. So I appreciate the change.

Another board game we tried out on New Years was Fury of Dracula, from the company that brought us Arkham Horror. I thought the all vs one mechanic combined with what looked to be a hopefully shorter game would make this one a winner, so I went about making sure I got it for Chrissymas.
Before I talk about my impressions, though, I have to put a huge disclaimer on here. There are a ton of rules to this game, and learning any game like this makes the first time you play draaaaaaaaaag and go sloooooooow and generally be much less fun than it should be because you don’t know what you’re doing. I especially, as Dracula, had a ton of rules to juggle and figure out. I remember Arkham Horror sucking the first time we played it too. It’s not surprising I didn’t have a great time this first go.

However, I feel like the game may have some problems. For the first… I dunno… hour of us playing the game, nothing really happened. Essner and Spaeth were annoyed because they were just wandering about with no guidance, and I was just playing cards without knowing exactly what I was doing because I wasn’t getting any feedback on them. This wild goose chase gameplay could be fun for Dracula, after I figure out exactly what I should be doing, but it’s certainly not too fun for the Vampire Hunters. It seems like there has to be a way to fix that, but I don’t know what it is quite yet.
The part that was the most fun was when the hunters had my location narrowed down to like… four locations, and had to strategize about where to wait for me. Then you were having those “detective deduction” moments constantly, and I was trying to throw them off the trail using my powers. However, to get to that point, basically my whole trail had to be revealed, which basically removed all traps I could spring on them to give me many options. All the locations of my catacombs were revealed, so I couldn’t spring any big traps on them. It was… less than optimal. It might just have been that I didn’t set things up the way I should because I was kind of clueless. Which I was. I don’t know. In the end, Spaeth had to leave, so I started making some suicidal moves to finish things up, and lost. (Note that I probably would have lost either way at that point, I was just speeding up the process.)

One interesting thing about Fury of Dracula is that it is a game that I don’t think gets better with more people. Three MAY be the optimal number. The hunters have another player to bounce ideas off of, but play moves quicker because you don’t have to wait for too many people to take their turns. Since every hunter is on the board no matter how many players are playing, it certainly doesn’t seem to give an advantage to having more people, even though you can play with five. Who knows, though.

Anyway, this is a game that needs at least a few more playthroughs before I can make a real judgment of value. It’s interesting, and all of the things that I expected to be in the game and that drew me to it are there… I just don’t know if it works well as a package overall. We’ll see, I’m sure.

So, this last night, we got to finally play some of this Dungeons and Dragons campaign my brother has been working on. It went well!
Rachel Sparklewhisper made a slightly re-specced appearance as team Warlord/Healer. I took roleplaying her much less serious this time, though. Cause, you know, it seemed appropriate. So I ate muffins and I went into battle wearing souvenir T-shirts from the temple we were trying to purge evil from… our team leader was Essner’s wolf companion (which, of course, only he could understand) so that was nice. We kept giving the wolf all our gold for safe-keeping. (Though I demanded compensation for muffins purchased, because they were a business expense.) It was fun times.

The combat, as much as I hate to say it, seemed to work a bit well overall than mine did. His “more hitpoints, less damage, very accurate” setup of the monsters kept the tension higher and generally more exciting than my builds, which were based off the numbers in the books and seem more geared for a “high miss rate, high damage” kind of experience. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I dunno, we’ve all grown up with games like FFT where missing is a catastrophic failure, so missing as often as you hit just doesn’t feel like you’re a badass hero, you know? In any case, his combat was pretty good stuff.
It was, however, based around “battlefield gimmicks.” This is not something I have a problem with! But I’m pretty sure it’s also something that isn’t going to seem special, because I’m pretty sure he’s built every fight around a different gimmick. I would more build those as special encounters as opposed to something that’s normal and expected, and let the combat and monster mix stand on their own to make things interesting. Still, maybe that’s an error on my part. I know Essner especially loved the gimmick twists on each of the battles we did tonight, so… yeah.

I feel like I’m comparing myself to Jonathan as a DM. I don’t know why I’m doing that. I guess because I always just kind of assumed that I would be better at such things, you know? It’s not that I don’t want him to do well, because hell, if he keeps doing great, that means I get to play more DnD from the character side, which I am all for. Still, I dunno. I feel something there. I need to get the fuck over myself. Heh.

Anyway, it was, overall, a damn good time, and certainly a nice change of pace from the hard workings I’ve had to do recently. Plus, as my commemorative jerkin states, “I Rocked the Temple – Crystaengland Earth Temple”

As of today, in Twilight Heroes, I am ranked 9th overall in PvP.

What the fuck.

You might recall there was a time where I was really into the PvP in Twilight Heroes. I still think it’s pretty awesome. But I haven’t really been worrying about it for a long while. I’ve just been doing a fight every now and then to keep me as a viable target. Somehow, this rocketed me up the ranks. Perhaps I was one of the few higher-ranked people who kept themselves targetable, and thus those who were trying to grind rank specifically for the board kept attacking me, and losing, and up my rank went? That’s just a theory, though. This came out of nowhere, and I might not have even noticed if Cris hadn’t pointed it out to me. Why did it happen? Must have been Hitsuzen, I suppose…

But seriously, wow. Just wow.

I’m not going to worry about staying on the board. I’m just going to keep doing what I do. If I stick around on there, awesome. But fun is my first priority. Constantly worrying about a leaderboard seems to be the exactly opposite of that. But man, there’s my name. And it’s not even about snowflakes or anything!

Wow.

Last night, I was pulled away from a rousing game of Fallout 3 to play Left 4 Dead with Talking Time people. As per usual, it was a damn, damn good time. That game was great! But after we finished a Versus mode on Blood Harvest, we started talking about what to do, and it was decided that we would open the game publicly, get in an Xbox Live party, and grief.
It was a damn good time.
Not that I have any innate skill at such things. I’m not really adept at being annoying or whatever in various ways. My mind does not instantly figure out how to annoy people within the confines of a a game, especially a game I’m enjoying playing as advertised. But goodness, just being a part of it made me laugh so damn hard. We had so much fun doing shit like getting all the infected into the safe room and locking them in, and using Infected escorts, and accidental party-killing molotovs… It was an hilarious time, and once again proved that, without voice chat, these sorts of games aren’t NEARLY as fun. If we were making jokes and laughing the whole time, it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.

Still, a part of me wonders if I should feel bad being such an ass to these random Xbox Live people. I mean, they could have been nice guys who just wanted to play some Left 4 Dead. Then again, we are talking about people on Xbox Live. The majority of them are dicks. The odds are extremely good that they deserve a little griefing. Still, I suppose that’s kind of a bad thing to say…
Aww, what the hell. I had a damn good time. They could have and probably should have left the game the moment we did something retarded. I refuse to feel bad about the fun times. The party times. Yeah yeah yeah.

So, to ring in the new year, we tried a lot of my new board games on New Years Eve, so I suppose I should write some impressions of them, hm?

Apparently, there are only 7 hotel chains, ever. Did you know this? It’s true. And Business Magnates? Well, they are all up ons these hotel chains.
That’s what Acquire told me.
The game itself is pretty awesome, honestly. It’s really simple. You don’t do a whole lot over the course of the game. You just lay a tile, buy up to three stocks, and draw a new tile every turn. But it’s very much a mind game. You have to think about what all the other players are trying to do so you can maximize your investment. Do you want to invest in Festival because it’s growing to be the biggest chain, and thus your shares will be worth more in the end? Or do you want to buy much stock in a cheaper chain like Worldwide, hoping that the much bigger Imperial acquires them in a merger, letting you trade in your stock for the more valuable Imperial stock? And is any of the other player’s plans going to screw this over? Is player two going to screw you out of the bonus you get for being the Majority stockholder?
But seriously, the game always seems like there should be more to it, and it’s odd that you can only cash out stocks during mergers (though that seems to be a balance thing to help encourage people TO create mergers, which is where most of the action is) but in general, from one playthough, this is a game with a shite-ton of strategy in it’s simplicity. That’s an awesome thing.

I honestly can’t wait to play it again, now that I understand how things work a little better. I’m probably going to try investing mostly in one company next time. This time I really spread out my investments and got second place, but Jonathan won by investing heavily in Festival early, and then working to make sure Festival was the biggest chain out there, whereas I focused on buying little stocks and getting them bought so I could spend my Majority Stockholder bonus on more stocks. I mean, I suppose either could be a viable option? We’ll see, though.

Hey. This is now the blog of an Ad Set Supervisor. Awesome, huh?

Well, mostly awesome, anyway. I’ve got a lot more responsibilities. I’ve got a lot more things I have to do every night. I have a lot more potential headaches. But it’ll look great on a resume to have management experience and, well, the sizable raise certainly helps as well.

As this is posting, I’m having my first night of being the boss. I assume nothing horrible will go wrong, but if it does, I suppose I’ll update to let you know how much of a failure I am. Heh.
But I’m not a failure.
I am a DAMN hard worker, the only one who was qualified for this position, and I fucking DESERVE it. I get embarrassed when people congratulate me. I enjoy cutting myself down. But I can be honest with you, blog. I deserve every bit of this promotion, and dammit, I’m going to enjoy it.

I feel like, to celebrate, I should buy something expensive or something. I wish netbooks were the actual price netbooks should be, cause then I would buy one. As it is, every time I look at one, I’m like “I could probably do a serious computer upgrade for that kind of money…” So I dunno. Is the internet in bed really worth that much money? WHO KNOWS?
I also feel like I want to spend money just because that’s what you do when you celebrate something like this, not because I really want to. Hell, I’m still deep into Fallout 3 and have plenty of awesome things to distract me from Christmas left. I got plenty to do.
Still, we’ll see if I give in.

In any case, in this new year, I am the boss. Well… I’m middle management. Which is kind of like a boss. Sort of.
I’m in control. To an extent.
Kind of.
Yeah.

Welcome to 2009. May it be more awesome than 2008.

At this time of year, it’s normal to want to sit down and think about how you want to change in the coming year, and, you know, make resolutions. I mean, this year is going to be a huge year for me. I’m finally going to graduate college (Yeah, how many years have I been saying that, but seriously, this time, it’s happening, whether I want it to or not) and perhaps get started on my new life, wherever that takes me. It’s big scary shit. But exciting big scary shit. I can’t wait to give it a try.

Still, what is my New Year’s Resolution this year?
Be happy.
No matter what happens, I need to be happy. I need to enjoy myself. I need to be able to genuinely smile. I need to appreciate every moment I have with all the awesome people in my life. I need to know, to know, that I am damn lucky, and that my life is damn awesome, despite all the flaws. I need to be happy.
And dammit, that’s what I’m going to do this year. I’m going to be happy.

How are you approaching the new year, hm?

So one of the things I got for Christmas was this Anotherholic book. It’s actually kind of shockingly lame, since it amounts to xXxholic licensed fiction, and we all know how amazing licensed fiction is. (Not that there’s anything wrong with it, though, if it’s a series you like. Knock yourself out! And I mean, there is good stuff out there that’s licensed. But in general? Plenty of crap.)
Still, it’s fun stuff to me, who is such a rabid fan of the series. It makes some weird decisions, though, like strongly pretending it’s three anime episodes and having, like, an opening credits sequence in each one just printed in the book? It’s also extremely wordy. I mean, I guess xXxholic can get wordy, but I don’t know. It just feels dense, where most of the time the manga doesn’t, besides a few of Yuuko’s speeches and whatnot. Then again, I suppose Yuuko has more speeches in this book, too… heh… anyway, I am totally enjoying it.

However, like actually xXxholic, it’s just making me very introspective and forcing me to think about myself. Last night, in what I was reading, Yuuko said something along the lines of “There is nothing more self-centered than thinking everything is your fault.” That sort of hit me right to the core, I suppose.
I don’t think about myself as a self-centered person. I mean, I guess I think of myself as a “small world” person, where I have this sphere of influence and everything in it is extremely important and everything outside of it can fuck off because I just don’t care. Then again, I suppose in the middle of that world is me, you know? Maybe it is self-centered… maybe I am self-centered, because that certainly is something I have a huge problem with. I always feel like everything is my fault, that I fucked up, and that it’s all on my shoulders. I’ve been trying to break that habit, but it still happens often.
I mean, hell, I write a blog where I talk about me, me, me, constantly, all the time, and I have been for years. Maybe I am self-centered…

I guess the question then becomes whether or not that’s a bad thing… I was always told by nice people that you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else. Goodness knows I still have problems with myself that need to be addressed, so maybe it’s alright. And hell, isn’t everyone self-centered to some extent?

But dammit, I don’t want to make excuses…

I want, most of all, to be a positive force on people around me… I don’t think being self-centered is the way to be that positive force… you know? It’s all something, a bad habit, I should probably break, I guess…
It’s weird, though, because one of the things I’ve been working on so hard in myself recently is just to be honest with shit. I want x, or y, and I should just say it and be done with it. I shouldn’t beat around the bush, or hope quietly and stew on it and generally be unhappy. I should just say it, admit it, and go for it. I’ve been working so hard to make that happen in my life, and now just to look at it and notice how selfish and self-centered that is… I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Hey, here’s a bit of wisdom you probably don’t know: Work sucks.

Now, I’m not one of those people who complain constantly about work. I try not to be, anyway. I rather like working, in general. It lets me buy useless crap and it makes me feel useful, and I appreciate it for such things. Once I’m at work, I just do the job in front of me, and don’t worry about it. Me and work get along fine.
However, these last few days at work have just flat out sucked and been completely horrible. Overnight shifts coupled with shitty ad sets is enough to kill just about anyone’s enthusiasm. I mean, I’m glad I”m not working again until the new year, because fuck, these last few days at work have SUCKED. (Also, ha ha, not working until the new year only means I have two days off of work! Amazing!)

I really kind of dislike people who constantly complain about their work? Get a new job if it’s that bad, you know? Everyone has to work. I mean, everyone needs to get shit off of the chest sometimes, but if it’s so bad that’s all you can say about work, do something else, you know? I try not to complain like that really hard. Still, I’ve been complaining a lot more lately. Is it because work has just gotten that bad at this point? Or perhaps is it because Essner is so open about how shitty Kohl’s is that I feel it’s okay to bitch now that I have a third party to back my complaining up? I really don’t know.

But dammit, work has sucked SO BAD recently. Ugh.