The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Yesterday was my birthday!
It was kind of a boring day.
I’m not especially complaining or anything, but I didn’t do all that much. I sat around playing the new Wallace and Gromit game and Broken Picture Telephone (both which will be in blog posts soon, I’m sure) and then I went out to eat with Essner. We discussed his script and how awesome sports movies are. Then I went to class. Then there was some cake, and some very nice presents, and some awkward sitting around. Then I installed and updated and now here I am.

There wasn’t any big parties or anything. That happened back on Friday when I went out to eat with the grandparents (and apparently we’re going out Thursday as well? So that’s nice, I suppose.) It was really, mostly, just a day. A day in which I should have gotten more homework done, but didn’t. Good for me.

What are the spoils of the anniversary of my birth? Let me share real quickfast.
-Dawn of War II from the parents, which I’ve played a couple missions of and has already been exactly as I had hoped. More on that later, of course.
-Dungeon Delve from my brother, another great DnD supplement that is just going to make me crave playing all the more.
-Loco Roco 2 from Jonathan’s ladyfriend (which still embarrasses me, that she’s so wanting to get me gifts), a surprise gift which I was worried I wouldn’t be able to play, but after upgrading the homebrew firmware I’m going to give that a nice try before bed.
-The Path from Brer, a artsy Indie game I quite want to try, but is one of those games I have to be in the mood for and then will play all the way through in an afternoon.
-The one libram I was missing in KoL from Cris and Val, which I will use to summon countless items.
-A shite-ton of candy.
-And, of course, additional funds, for buying stupid things. Like Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time.

Yep. Expect writeups of a lot of those in the future. Cause, fuck, that’s basically what this blog is. My impressions of all the entertainment I consume.

MadWorld is a great game.

It can be easy to dismiss it as being gory for goriness sake, or going for shock value and little else, but that’s selling the game extremely short. It may not be worth $50 to everyone, but it is totally worth playing if you don’t mind a little violence and cursing.

The plot… the plot doesn’t matter. You’re in a location. It’s a game show about murdering called Deathwatch. You murder people until you get to a ranking match with a fellow murderer and have a dramatic boss fight. And that’s it.

But oh, what a that that is. The gameplay mechanics are based around point-scoring. The majority of the time, the enemies aren’t that difficult to kill. It’s all about killing them in ways that get you more and more and more points. Stab a sign through a guy before killing them? Point bonus. Toss them into a twirling sawblade? Point bonus. There are point threshholds on each level that change the level up. You may get a new weapon, or unlock a new area, or get to do the ever-popular BLOODBATH CHALLENGE! Eventually, you get to face the boss.
The combat is perhaps less fluid than a God of War or something, but the Wiimote is actually used well. You do motions in very satisfying ways. Flicking the Wiimote to throw people is completely satisfying, as is pulling the Wiimote and nunchuck apart to tear a dude in half. It does get to the point where you can get seriously into it, and if you do, your arms will get tired. Good thing the game is perfect for play in short chunks.

This game looks better than many 360 and PS3 games, and it’s all because of that kickass art style. Have you seen screens? Seen the game in motion? If so, I really don’t think I need to mention it, but dammit, it’s such a pretty game.

If you actually watched that clip, you’ve heard one of the other best parts of the game: The announcers. They are, by far, one of the greatest highlights of the game. Everything they say is funny and appropriate. They do get into the issue of repetition with their quotes, though. I wish they would have put some smarter logic in there so that it would only play each clip once a level or something. Still, they are totally worth listening to, and voiced amazingly well. They’re so awesome that the first thing my brother did was try to find a way to turn them up so he could hear them better, as they do sometimes get drowned out by the sound effects.
That’s not all that’s awesome about the sound, though. Personally, I think the soundtrack is fan-fucking-tastic. I crave, deeply crave a copy of this soundtrack, but it’s only available as a bonus for pre-ordering in the UK and Austrailia. Trust me, when it hits the interwebs at large, I am going to get my paws on a copy.
(I do have to mention here, an oddity. When a game creates good, unique rap for it’s soundtrack? I love the everloving crap out of it. This, The World Ends With You, Persona 3… when it meshes with the game so well, I can’t help but love it. Crave it. When I don’t normally have anything to do with that type of music. It’s interesting, I suppose.)
But yeah, the soundtrack just energizes you. This is a game I cannot play sitting down. Between the motions, the constant action, the music… it’s just a damn thrilling game.

The game’s gore and crude language are going to turn some people off. That’s a shame, though, because most of it honestly seems to be in parody, and hell, it’s awesome anyway. The gameplay itself, too, is pretty well the best action I’ve seen on the Wii this side of Mario Galaxy. Play this game.

You know, that title would make for an interesting striptease, I’d think.

Marty Crouch’s Magic Chest is this month’s Twilight Heroes IoTM!
This is a really great item! Maybe I just like items that give me tons of items. But it’s a really great item!

First off, just as an equippable. There’s nothing else in the game that I’m aware of that gives you a percent boost to your spell damage. The closest thing in that slot is, what, the Enerbun Sphere? Which is only +20. At higher levels, the chest would be MUCH better. So that’s cool.

Of course, the main benefit are these combat items, and these are some pretty solid items. There’s a wide variety of just basic damage-dealers, but there are certainly some standouts. The Deja Voodoo doll is completely intense and game-changing in its ability to face the same monster twice in a row. It seems like anyone who was, for example, Ultra-rare hunting would need to have one of those in their inventory. The Red-Eye Mind Trick is equally game-changing, giving you a “free run away” mechanic, although it’s at the cost of a -items debuff. Still, it’ll be heavily used when the time comes to speedrun this game, I’m sure.

The coolest thing about the items, though, is that many of them are usable on other players. I love this stuff! However, they’re much more “tricks” than “treats.” They actually inflict very minor debuffs. This is… an interesting way for the thing to go. Still, it’s perhaps cooler than, say, the Nerf’d effect in Kingdom of Loathing. It’ll make those who like to grief more happy that way. Me? I’m just happen there’s yet another deck of cards in the game. Can’t have too many cards!

But yeah, I think this is an IoTM that I have little trouble in recommending. It’s effective and funny (a lot of the attack messages on the items? Great stuff.) and totally worth the investment, I think. Well, I mean, as long as you think investing in virtual items in a browser game is a good investment. I obviously do.

That’s what the guy says, and then I’m like “Dude, I would like to get to class” and he’s like “No, I will punch you” so I beat the shit out of him. Then I’m late for class and people are trying to take me down and take me to class and I’m like “Chill out, I’m running to class right now, you don’t have to beat me up!” but they don’t listen.

So I listen to the Rebel’s FM from time to time, and I listen to their Game Club. I’ve been listening since it was 1up FM, even though I never even pretended to play along with them. (Granted, I had played Psychonauts before, but I mean, I have a copy of Shadow of the Collosus here. I could have tried to play along, but didn’t.) I just listened to their commentary because I am a fan of game commentary and podcasts. But they announced that their next game for the playing was Bully.
Now, Bully is a game that I’ve always wanted to play, actually. I’ve constantly been tempted by copies in bargain bins and stuff. It always seemed like a much more focused GTA, the kind of game I could get more into than thefting the autos. And I mean, damn, the only Rockstar game I had ever played was Rockstar Presents: Table Tennis, which barely counts. It seemed criminal for me not to give it a try. So I booted up the Prime account via the website’s affiliate link (Yay, they get a buck or something) and got a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition on the 360. I played up through the first chapter last night (Which I think is where I have to be for the podcasts’ first week) and I wanted to lay down some impressions.

First off, the art in the game is really pretty. I wish the game itself looked a bit more like the concept art in the load screens. It’s awesomely stylized. I also wish there was more art in the load screens, as there is only like 4 different pictures.

Secondly, why the hell are all the achievements written IN ALL CAPS. Did someone leave the caps lock on? How unprofessional, Rockstar.

The gameplay itself is… okay? I’m beating the crap out of people all the time. I do like that I can either injure them or finish them off with a “Bully maneuver” like an Indian burn and send them crying away from me. I can’t control the Skateboard worth shit. It really doesn’t seem like that open an open world, but then again I haven’t left campus yet, so I assume, thanks to this map in the case, that I’ve only seen, what, 1/5th of the world? So I’m sure that’ll open up.

What really gets me is the narrative. I don’t like being Jimmy. I was hoping he would be like, I dunno, a tough guy who’s playing a bully, but really has a sense of justice about him? But he’s really just a mostly bad guy. At least so far. He listened to this Gary character for way too long, mindlessly doing the missions he gave, when I wanted to punch him at about the second cutscene with him. Granted, I think that’s by design. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to hate him, and he’s well-voiced and stuff. But it was extremely frustrating. I felt more like the character I wanted to be in the non-mainline quests I’ve done so far, where people getting picked on would ask for help, and although I’d expect payment, I’d run around and beat the shit out of everyone who was picking on others.
Again, I’m only through chapter one. Maybe after this “betrayal” Jimmy acts more like I want him to all the time. His conversation with the huge guy at the end of their fight would suggest it being as such. We’ll see.

Anyway, I wanted to write some impressions. I’ll be sure to write some more if I keep up with Game Club all the way through the game. I hope to, but seeing as Tuesday is the day of my birth, it could get a bit unlikely, as I’m sure there will be many shiny new games to play.

So, remember that write up of bit.trip beat I did the other day? Have you seen the comments? The creator went and posted something on there. Makes me wish the post was a little better written. (I have several sentences I would edit, in retrospect, but it seems bad form to go back and do it)

Man, what is this? Why do I have people like that coming to this blog? Do I have an actual website or something?

Let’s look at the facts.

I post every day now. When I started doing that back in… what… November 14th of last year? I didn’t expect I would really keep with it as much as I do. But dammit, I haven’t missed a day yet. It’s interesting to be so dedicated to putting some stupid shit up here every day, but I very much like that it’s become a habit. It’s something I have to do. It keeps me writing, even if it is just whatever random shit that oozes from my head. I have something to show for it, at least. I like that. So yeah, like an actual website, I post every day.

I have readers. And you’re all awesome.
But seriously, I have some readers. This is to be expected. I mean, I have friends who could care what I think about things. But the thing that makes it legit? Some of them I don’t even know who they are personally. I even have commenters now who I cannot place and can’t figure out. And they aren’t spambots! That’s something an actual website has, right?

Finally, I have things like I mentioned earlier. I have some recognition from people who make things. Granted, it’s mostly from indie things (completely awesome indie things, though) so it’s not too shocking that someone like Jalapeno Bootyhole from one of these smaller outfits might have the time to leave me a comment. But it’s still totally ultra cool. It certainly seems like something an actual website would have.

Is my hard work paying off or something? Am I legit? I mean, if nothing else, I know I have a lot of Google cred. My website has existed for a long damn time. But man, I can’t really get it around in my head that what I’m writing might actually be read by a human somewhere. It’s still kind of crazy.
I think it’s best if I keep it that way, though. I don’t want to keep myself from writing very personal blog posts, even though I also want to keep writing my little very personal reviews and stuff. Basically, what I want to do is write. Something. So I shouldn’t hold myself back or make myself write this or that… I should just write. And I will.

And if you keep reading it? Well, that’s totally awesome. Thanks.

Ugh. Arg.

So as I’m writing this, it’s Thursday of my Spring Break. I’ve not even attempted to get anything done during this week, school-wise. I’ve just been relaxing. Dammit, I needed some relaxing! Why can’t the whole break be a break! Grumblegrumble.

But still, now I’m working on homework, and it’s going to badly because I just want to fall asleep and be lazy and check out the Player’s Handbook 2 and all kinds of stuff. But I have to be good. I have to go to work, I have to write these stupid papers, and I have to things as well as other things. But I feel burned out so quickly on them. I couldn’t even get a whole draft banged out before this. I stopped in the middle out of frustration. Granted, I was bothered by providing tech support in the middle there to stop my flow, but still, I should be getting more work done than that. I can’t slack off! It’s the last semester! Ever!
ARG.
ALTERNATE REALITY GAME.
Okay, not really alternate reality game. Just Arg.

Welcome to the real world, me. Breaks are hard to get. You don’t get breaks! Ha ha!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go curl up with my vidjeo games and my nice friends and hide from my homework for awhile longer.

I am a sucker for games that manipulate music as you play. Ever since I laughed at how stupid PaRappa looked back in the day, and then actually played it, and was amazed? I’ve been a music game junkie.

As such, the moment I first heard about bit.trip beat, I knew I was going to pick it up. If there was any doubt, hearing this sample of the music convinced me. The final nail in the coffin was that it was only 6 bucks, which is a very fair price for what you get. At 10, I still would have picked it up, but it would have been a harder sell.

The game works like pong! You twist the Wiimote in your hands to move the paddle and hit the dots flying your way. The twist mechanic is kinda weird, but it makes perfect sense. It’s just about the best implementation of one of those dials on such old games without actually having one of those dials. It doesn’t take too long to get the hang of it.
Once you do, you just play. Every time you something bounces off of you or hits the other side of the screen, it makes a note, and you build the music by hitting the notes. Hit many of them, and you “power up” and move upward to a different plane where the music is deeper and richer. Miss a lot, and you move down, eventually getting to the “Nether” plane where everything is Black and White like pong and all the music comes out of the little Wiimote speaker. It’s pretty damn neat.

The game is totally hardcore, though. If you’re playing single-player, you really have to memorize each level, and be really quick in your movements in order to keep the music going and return the hits. I have significant trouble beating the first level by myself.
However, that’s where the game’s up to 4-player co-op comes in. I never would have thought co-op would work in this game, but it makes it a whole lot more fun. Spaeth and I played through the majority of the game co-op, and it was actually a ton of fun. All it does is put another paddle on the screen of another color for Spaeth, but suddenly seemingly impossible patterns weren’t impossible anymore. The game was a whole lot easier, so we accomplished a lot more, and just like any co-op game, it was fun to berate and complain at each other when we were sucking, and congratulate when we actually handled ourselves well. The last level like… quickly broke us, though. Maybe with 4 players, we could take it.

All in all, I think bit.trip beat is a pretty awesome downloadable title. There isn’t enough game here to even think of a retail release, so Wiiware was the right choice. It uses the Wii motion controls very well. It’s a neat little hardcore music game, and it has surprisingly great co-op. Most importantly, they priced it low to make it an easy purchase. You could buy Ninja JaJa Maru-kun on the virtual console for the same price as this game. I leave it to you to decide if this is the better purchase (hint: it probably is.)

So, Steam sales are kind of addictive now that I have a PC that can run games. This could be a problem. For now, though, I ended up buying Unreal Tournament 3 awhile back, because it was only, you know, like 10 bucks. That’s a good price. Much better than 60 dollars, and much more to the tune of the value I will actually get out of the game.

It’s not a bad game, perse? It’s very much Unreal Tournament. If you’ve played one before, you know what to expect: crazy physics, guns that never need to reload, and constant, intense violence.
There are sad things. For one, my favorite modes, Assault and Gunball, (also known as Bombing Run, but Gunball is a more appropriate title) are missing here. As such, especially after this sale ends, you might just be better off getting UT2k4 from GoG instead, because those modes are the shit. Or teh shit. Whatever. Also, you know, it’ll run on less recent PCs.

Still, this new version isn’t a complete throw-away or anything. They focused a lot on the Onslaught mode from earlier games (Which was my least favorite!) and improved that vehicle action significantly while combining it with Assault to form the “Warfare” mode. Warfare is much better than Onslaught was, and it’s obvious they’ve spent a bit more time on the vehicles, at least as far as I can remember. It really doesn’t replace Assault though, in my mind. It’s unfortunate that that isn’t there.
One of the mechanics I actually find very interesting is that of the Hoverboard. This seems like it would be the lamest thing, but it really makes you make some tough decisions during play. I don’t think this was in 2k4… basically, on Vehicle maps, instead of the Translocator, you can press q to pull out a Hoverboard. You move much faster than running this way, AND you can carry flags, unlike in vehicles. However, if you get shot with anything, you drop the flag and go into this long falling down and hurting yourself animation where basically anyone can murder you quickly. Basically, you have to choose when the extra speed is worth the extra risk, and that’s honestly pretty cool to me. The added benefit is that of having something to get you back in the action VERY quickly, which is what Unreal Tournament is all about, so I approve of that, too.

There’s a campaign mode, and that mode has 4-player co-op. I actually got it to work, too, during the free-to-play weekend with Brer, so that’s good! However, the Campaign is not very well designed, mostly because there is a plot. No. That’s a horrible idea. Sitting through cutscenes in a game like this is retarded. What a campaign in a game like this should be is something like in a sports game. I should recruit new fighters, do trades with other teams, and, I dunno, have to balance how tired people are vs taking them into matches, or what kind of game types they’re good at… that’s a compelling campaign for this type of game. That’s what they should be doing.
Still, it’s not like it isn’t fun. But just don’t expect anything but a variety of different bot-matches in different scenarios. Luckily, UT has some pretty good bots. I mean, I have rarely if ever played this series online with actual humans. It’s always been me vs bots, or me and some friends vs bots, and it’s always been a good time. UT3 succeeds in that once again.

These games really must appeal to a certain type of person who likes constant balls against a wall sort of action. I’m not really that person. If I’m itching for a shooter with other people, I’m totally going to go for a Call of Duty 4 or a Team Fortress 2 before even considering hitting UT3. Still, sometimes you just want to shoot bots. A lot. That’s something UT3 has in spades, and it’s a fun enough time.

Hey! It’s dream-recounting time!

I dreamed that I was some sort of blogger (crazy, right? Me? Blogging? Insane.) and that I was writing a blog entry about how much I was getting screwed by my current employer, and how much better I’d have it if I was working at Criterion. I certainly wasn’t working at Kohl’s in this dream (as it was somewhere with a big campus and a movie theatre) and I have no idea why I was wanting to work at Criterion, or even, exactly, what Criterion is. I guess they put out movie collections of Wes Anderson’s work?

In any case, I wrote a detailed blog entry about why I should rather be working there. It was intense. I think it might have had video.

The next day, I went to work, at this place where I don’t work, and Randon, the Loss Prevention guy from Kohl’s, kept threatening me. He said I needed to take down my blog entry, or there would be hell to pay! I was telling him it was weird that he’s complaining now, because in dream time I apparently posted it weeks ago.
Eventually, this lead to a chase, where I was running away from Randon because he was going to beat the crap out of me in order to teach me a lesson. He finally caught up with me, and then I promised to take down the blog post.

I did, though I wrote a description of why it was taken down on the blog. The next day, Randon was giving me the evil eye, like I didn’t do enough.

Then I woke up.

Heyyyyy it’s Spring Break! I’m off of school! I guess!

It’s kind of a fleeting break, though. I work constantly throughout and I have at least two papers and a speech to write. (Granted, the speech will take me all of 10 minutes to write. I’ve got it all planned in my head. It’s more the papers that are the issue. Especially the one for my novel class.) I told myself Friday that I would write one of those papers Saturday so I wouldn’t have to worry about it! Ha ha, I’m so funny! Thinking I’m going to do work. Crazy.

But yeah, I’m trying to take a break. I gave in and bought Mad World to play over the break, and am trying desperately to pace myself on it so it lasts the whole time. I’m sure I’ll write more about it later, but here’s a preview: IT’S FUCKING AWESOME. I also plan to continue to work through World of Goo and the UT3 campaign, since I bought them during a Steam sale. More on those later, too, of course. There was also hope about playing some Dungeons and Dragons, but that doesn’t really seem like it’s going to happen. I can dream, though.

In any case, please try to keep me on the level with my assignments, I suppose. This is really more of a “hey, the semester is over half over” milestone more than a break… but I can dig it. I’m almost done. I’ve almost graduated. That’s a good thing, right?

Yeah…