The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

MU HOO HA HA HA HALLOWED WEEN! SPOOKY, SCARY!

But yeah, happy candy day, everybody. Get lots of Smarties. Those are totally the best. But not the Canadian kind that are just M&Ms? The real, American style kind. Yeah.
I guess you can get other kinds of candy if you prefer, but you’re probably doing it wrong.

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.

Even though I am being good and renting games, I bought Brutal Legend. It was purely out of a love for Tim Schafer and wanting to support Double Fine in its endeavors. I had to give them money and the small boost in first week sales that I could. So, you know, I bought it. I paid my $60. I think I got what I was expecting out of the game, but honestly, I would have a difficult time suggesting you buy the game for full price. A long rental, or maybe when it drops to $30 or something. So much of the game is fantastic, and something you should see, but the actual gameplay just isn’t there.

Seriously, everything you would hope for on the visual and storytelling sides? Fucking fantastic. Jack Black does an excellent job as Eddie Riggs, though it probably helps that the role was pretty much written exactly for him. But he has tons, and tons, and tons of dialog. You do eventually hear repeats, especially if you do all the side missions, (Which I did, for some reason. I can’t really recommend them. They lack variety.) but still, there’s just so much, and there’s so much love put into those lines, that you can’t help but smile. Even the armies in the multiplayer, which you don’t use at all in the single player, all have tons of lines of dialog that they say while they fight. It’s amazing. The visuals, similarly, are fantastic. Tim Schafer had said that his plan was to make it so that, no matter where you are in the game world, it looks like a Metal Album cover, and it totally, totally does. The designs are incredibly strong.

Still, the gameplay doesn’t really hold up. Psychonauts was weak in parts: You could tell they focused more on the look, story, and whatnot than the gameplay. At the same time, it was competent all the way through. Brutal Legend is not nearly as much. You have this huge world with no Fast Travel which, honestly, there is just no excuse for not having in single player games these days. It makes certainly missions really quite annoying.
The combat, when one on one, is very simplistic, and doesn’t offer the strong feel of something like a God of War. When it’s brought out into the Stage Battles, it’s like an RTS, sort of, but not really, but it expects it to be played like one while at the same time telling you not to play it like one? It’s very confusing, and not very intuitive, and it just flat out doesn’t work at times. You either just trounce your opponent with little resistance, or you are totally destroyed because the computer is doing multitasking that is nearly impossible for you to do as an actual human player. It’s just rarely any fun at all.

Overall, though, it’s charm won out for me. I love charm and storytelling in games, and this is, by far, some of the best around. It’s a shame the game underneath it was just a little sub-par. It’s worth experiencing, and playing, but it’s unfortunately not a full-price experience. Sorry, Tim! That’s just what I think. It was a riskily ambitious game that crashed a bit.
Still, it does show that Double Fine has some excellent people working for it. Hopefully they’ll be able to rein in their ambitions a bit more on the next project they undertake and really make a gaming classic. I know they have it in them.

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.

By the way, I typed the title as “I’m alone at home with the god” three times before I managed to type it correctly.

So the parents are back, and I survived the dog. Good for me!

Overall, it was a fairly positive experience. I got her to actually eat her dog food, which was good. She slept with me in my bed pretty well without issue and without waking me up at odd hours, which is awesome.

Still, she was really kind of annoying at times. She does NOT like being near my computer, and still constantly tried to get me away from it. Eventually, she gave up, and decided to climb into my lap while I was on the computer. This created its own issues, because she would keep moving around, making it near impossible to type, and leap up any time I readjusted myself in the chair to try to make me run to a more suitable location.

Still, all in all, I have no complaints. She was mostly behaved. I got along with my life normally with no issues.

She sure made quite a mess downstairs, though, which I didn’t have a chance to clean up. Oh well.
Back to business as usual, I suppose.

Time Hollow is pretty well exactly what I thought it would be.

It’s an adventure game that’s on the DS. You click on things, and are given descriptions, and you solve puzzles! There’s a story involving a pen that can draw holes in time. It’s pretty well the perfect rental if you’re an adventure game genre fan, and that’s exactly what I did with it. I rented the shit out of it.

I didn’t beat it, though, because it creates several affronts to fun that kept me from wanting to move forward.

One, the entire game is a game of “Find the Cutscene.” You literally have to tap on everything until specific events occur. You can have the solution to a problem way, way before the game wants you to have it, and it will either ignore you, or you will be told you need to come back later, with no real reason given why that’s the case.
Two, the game is full of tiny little miss-able, important items. There are also tiny little things you wouldn’t notice that you have to find to move forward. What’s worse, the game makes a “mechanic” of this, where you have to use the D-pad to pan the screen left and right to see small corners of the scenes for absolutely no reason other than to make the game more difficult.
Three, everyone’s name is an awful clock pun. Every. Single. Name. I could deal with that in a better game, but ugh.

So I sent it back around halfway through. I was having to FAQ my way through it’s generic anime sort of plot, and it just didn’t seem worth my time to keep going. Plus, Gamefly said they were sending me Scribblenauts. Mmm, Scribblenauts.

So yeah, I can’t recommend the purchase unless you are the more die-hard of adventure game fans. But eh, you could rent it if you were really bored. It’s certainly better than, say, Miami Law.

So, David Foster Wallace was a name I had heard of, vaguely, before. I knew I’d heard of him from somewhere. But I got into a conversation with Airek at the office, and he gives me this note, telling me to go watch this Youtube video of him. I put it in my pocket, set it on my desk, and promptly forget about it.
A week or so later, I find the note and, having nothing in particular to watch while I eat, I used the information to pull up this video.

About, oh, 28 minutes and 2 seconds later, I’m on Amazon, ordering every book of essays by him I can find.

I fucking LOVE a good essayist, and especially if you watch that video, you’ll know that David Foster Wallace was one. Those little tidbits are so fun, and so well realized, I can’t help but love them.

A couple days later, I go up to Airek and I thank him for telling me to watch that, because it was awesome. And then he tells me David Foster Wallace killed himself.
That kind of put a damper on things. It’s a shame. He had skills. One would assume he could have paid bills with them. But yeah… sad.

Anyway, we’ll see how me reading those books goes. I’m excited! But I also suck at the whole “Reading books” thing. So we’ll see how well it all goes.