The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

OBJECTIVE FAILED.

Hey, remember back at Christmas, when I got Fury of Dracula? And then we gave it a try on New Year’s Eve and it was kind of complicated and took awhile? Well, I finally got around to trying it out again on Friday. This time we had Jonathan, a complete newcomer, and me and Spaeth, who barely remembered what was going on. I was Dracula again.

The game went significantly smoother this time, though. As expected, knowing the rules (well, all the rules but the honestly kind of incredibly confusing combat rules) really made the game move at a solid pace. The game only took us a little under 2 hours this time. That’s a good length for a game like this.

I really wanted to use my knowledge I gained from our previous game to be a more effective Dracula. I was looking forward to actually using “New Vampire” encounters to my benefit instead of throwing them away like I did in the other game. However, I never drew any New Vampire encounters until it was too late to use them. I was doing pretty good for quite some time… until Spaeth pulled and played a Money Trail card while I was on a boat, giving away my current location. Then it was some really tense stuff there, with me moving around and trying to get away while everyone closed in on me. I honestly should have used my Double Back card to get BACK onto the sea and away from the hunters, but I decided to push it and wait until I had multiple options to Double Back to. That was really kind of my downfall. They cornered me and kicked my ass during the day. Bastards.

I did get pretty close to winning? But it was mostly because of Spaeth’s Kamakaze Mina Harker maneuver. He used a card to take away most of her life to teleport to my location, then used a card where we both roll a dice and lose that much life instead of having a normal combat. He rolled high enough to kill himself, which upped my Vampire track by 2. Without that, though, I was doing a bit worse. I needed those New Vampire encounters!

All in all, though, the game was significantly more fun the second time, I felt. Having to slog through rules is always tedious, even when you’re someone who loves rules like myself. The game flowed a lot better. I also agree with our previous assessment that this is the perfect 3-player game. You gain something by having two Hunter-players who can bounce ideas off of each other and plan, and you gain game speed by having a smaller number of players at the table. 3 seems optimal.

Next time, though. Hopefully I will win. Insert Bad Castlevania Reference Here.

So, I’ve been grinding in Kingdom of Loathing! This is so we can actually beat Hodgman now that he’s all… the way he is now that there isn’t a bug involved. So we need a really high Seal Clubber, and I was already a Seal Clubber and I didn’t have any time to play my turns anyway… so grind grind grind!

However, that means I can’t actually, you know, use this month’s IoTM until, you know, after this month. I picked one up, because it seemed neat, but I’m mostly just going off of the wiki for attempting to judge its value. I may have to write another one later, after I do a 100% run with it, or something.

Still! Frumious Bandersnatch! It’s a volleyball!

Well, it’s a little more than a volleyball.
It seems like this would be a fairly useful Volley for speed ascenders, due to it’s “tuning” mechanic. Basically, depending on which color equipment you equip it with, it gives all of its Volleyball boosted experience to a particular stat. So you can have the Bandersnatch give you all Mysticality points, for example. That seems useful! However, the fact that you have to run 10 turns in the arena to get the equipment in hardcore may put a damper on it. I don’t know how much of a setback that is. It’s very possible that, over time, the more focused stats would speed things up for it to be worth it, but then again, since you have to bounce between the Llama, probably, and the Green Pixie… I dunno.

Still, the part that I think is cool is mostly the other part! Which is the fact that the familiar does special effects in response to what standard combat skills you use in combat. That just seems like a lot of fun, and would seem to be a good reason for me to actually use combat skills more often! Because I often don’t, if I can help it. I save MP too much. But seriously, just look at some of these effects. They’re seriously useful… extending the duration when you cast Entangling Noodles… giving you MP when you use Saucegeyer… (as if Saucerors didn’t already get too much MP from Burning Soul and such!) adding a stunning effect to Lunging Thrust-Smack and Shieldbutt? Those are really strong effects! Well, to me, anyway. And since I understand that people use Shieldbutt like… all the damn time, surely that stun effect would be useful to them too, if nothing else. A lot of the rest just gives you extra damage, but extra damage is good, too! That just seems like a lot of fun. I can’t wait to try that for a whole run. I’ll probably be a Sauceror for that one.

The thing has one more effect that I will likely never use, but I’m sure people will like. If you have Ode to Booze on when you go into battle with the Bandernatch, it gets drunk. When drunk, it won’t give you any combat skill bonuses, but if you run away, you can get a “free” run away, not spending a turn for the combat, as you can with, say, a Divine Popper or a tattered scrap of paper. Speed runners find this extremely useful! Less turns spent on pointless combats! I, however, never use these things. So, you know, this doesn’t effect me. Still, it’s a nice bonus on top of everything else cool about the familiar, I suppose. It just seems like, most of the time, if you need that effect you’d use one of those items, or Creepy Grin, or the effect on a navel ring of navel gazing if you’re already, you know, loaded up with Mr. Store gear.

Still, overall? It seems like a pretty fun familiar. I’ll let you know when I actually get to, you know, try it out!

This is a followup to this post here. That all still happened. But yesterday? I got an e-mail from the guy.

Basically, he told me I could have just asked him nicely for the old version, and I didn’t need to be so angry. And attached? An old version of the program. A few minutes later, I could get into my passwords again.

I still feel my anger was completely justified. The way his program worked was still kind of dickish and still created a hostage situation, whether that was his intent or not. But the fact that he did help me, even after I wrote angry things at him, really shows he’s a pretty good guy, I suppose.
I wrote him an e-mail saying as such. That I’m not going to take back what I said, because it would be a useless gesture anyway, but that I really appreciate him helping me out anyway.

Still, I doubt I’ll be using his program any more. I got all my passwords out of the file, and that’s that, you know?

So, in one of my classes, Essner and I were tasked with re-writing a joke to make it better. This is what we were given.

The bartender who fools the snob who ordered a shot of 12-yr-old scotch into drinking something nasty, and when the snob spits it out and says “That tastes like urine,” the bartender says, “That’s the easy part. Now, tell me how old I am”?

We sat there and brainstormed, and, eventually, Essner wrote down the fruits of our brainstorming session. And now, I type it up and share it with you. Warning: This joke could have you laughing uncontrollably.

And now, the joke.

A man walks into a bar. He doesn’t like the taste of urine. He says to the bartender, who is a homosexual, “Barkeep, I would like your finest glass of 12-year-old space scotch.” They are in a space bar.
The bartender pours him a shot of scotch, knowing full well that it is not 12-year-old space scotch, but that it is in fact 12-year-old double space scotch.
The man drinks the proffered beverage, then spits it out in the bartender’s face. “You deceitful old queen! How dare you sully my pallet with this swill! I demand that you give me the 12-year-old space scotch that I have ordered.”
The bartender, who was quite offended by the “deceitful old queen” remark, despite the fact that it was an accurate description of him, (sometimes the most hurtful remarks are the ones that are the most accurate) says to the man, “I apologize, sir. Let me see if we have any of the 12-year-old space scotch in the back.” at which point the bartender takes an empty glass from behind the bar and walks into the men’s room.
After a few minutes, during which the contentious young man plays a game of “space photo hunt,” the bartender returns from the men’s room carrying a glass filled with what was unmistakeably his own urine. “Sorry it took so long. There was a line in the can… I mean the storage room. Here it is, a glass of 12-year-old space scotch.”
“Thank you, sir! At last I can quench my thirst for this delicious beverage,” says the young man who is under the impression that he is not about to drink a stranger’s urine. He drains the glass in one gulp, at which point he spits and coughs ferociously.
“That, sir, is not 12-year-old space scotch. That is, in fact, your urine.”
“Yes, it is. Now tell me how old I am.”
“You’re 47, and you have testicular cancer. I’m sorry.”
“Oh god, how long do I have?” asks the bartender.
“Three months, at most.”
“Oh my god.”
“I’m sorry.”

What operating system do games run in?
Answer: Microsoft Windows.

What mode should ALL games run in?
Answer: WINDOWED MODE. Because it’s running in WINDOWS.

I really can’t get over this. Why in the world don’t developers do this? I’m fine with things not defaulting that way, but not having the option is just retarded.

My computer isn’t a dedicated game machine. It is a computer. I chat, I research, I do so much. I don’t want my gaming to keep me from that. All games should play windowed, and be alt-tab friendly, or they should get the fuck off of my machine.

Yeah, this is an old rant, I guess… but as I’m attempting to try new things to try out the new computer, I’ve run into it twice. First, I redownloaded Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and decided to give that a go. I never got very far in that the first time because I couldn’t run it windowed. My memory told me that that was because my computer couldn’t handle it windowed. I was wrong. It’s just locked away for no fucking reason. They unlocked it for MULTIPLAYER, but not for the single player I wanted to play. Bleh.
Second, I tried the Company of Heroes demo. I should talk more about that later, but let it be known that there is no Windowed option in that game either. Luckily, you can force it into a window via the command line, but it doesn’t work smoothly. It would be much better if it actually supported it. I hear Dawn of War II is like that as well. Not surprising. Same publisher. But it could work a whole lot better.

Am I alone in this stuff? I mean, I know I am not everyone. Full Screen should not go away. Some people do use their computers just for gaming. But come on. I can’t be the only one with two monitors. I can’t be the only one wanting this. And is it really so hard to use Windows in its normal mode? In a window? Bleh.

What a useless, angry rant. But it’s frustrating. To me.
World, revolve around me.
PC Gaming, work exactly how I want!
Come on.
Come on!

Yay! Merry Festivus!

So, I get home from my classes today to find a mysterious box!
Normally, I get boxes all the time. Even more often, now that I have Amazon Prime! This box, however, was different. It was from Fed Ex, for one. My boxes normally come through the normal mail or from the Ups man. It was also heavy. I carried it upstairs.

It was full of stuff!

It turns out that it was my Festivus gift. You remember? Back in November and December? When Talking Time was doing an exchange! I wrote a lot of poems and sent out my gift on time, but never got one! But now I got one! And then, even though it was late, I posted about it on the boards, like I was supposed to.

I do admit I was kind of surprised it got here! Not because I, I dunno, dislike Ample Vigour. He’s a good enough guy. But it was mostly that he told me he was going to send it out like… in January. So I’d kind of written it off at this point. It was a very nice surprise, though, and a very generous gift.
My main issue is going to be figuring out what to use the iPod for. I’m… having trouble figuring out when I could put a Shuffle to use! I’m a podcast person, not a music person. I refuse to let it go to waste! It’s a great and very generous gift! I just gotta think outside the box, that’s all.

But yeah, Festivus in March… who would have thought, huh?

Watchmen has penis.

Standing outside the movie theater, I announced that I would be very, very disappointed if I did not get to see some blue Doc Manhattan dick. I was far from disappointed with the movie based on that criteria.
It’s a damn good thing that movies are growing up to the point where I can go to a theater and see full male nudity, even if it’s CGI male nudity. Not that the movie was particularly sexy or anything, but I dunno. We have such stupid taboos on things sometimes. I’m glad people can push the envelope and show me some dick if it’s appropriate. And I think it was appropriate.

Still, what did I think of the movie overall? It was pretty good in general. I think it looked visually stunning, but you should have been expecting that if you saw the trailers. The acting wasn’t TOO horrible, although it wasn’t perfect. I think that’s just what you get for getting people nobody recognizes in there in order to make them look perfectly like the characters. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

The soundtrack was… odd. It was desperately trying to invoke the time period in which the movie is set as opposed to matching the movie in parts? It was kind of weird in that respect, though I can accept that kind of attempt, you know?
It was especially bad during the long, drawn out sex scene where it was playing Alleluia while two people fucked very graphically. It was horrible. And that whole scene was horrible. It seemed pasted in there JUST to be an apology for showing so much penis “so hey, here’s a naked woman. That makes it better, right?” It was so lame. I mean, there were earlier sex scenes, but they served a purpose. The sex scene with Doc Manhattan sets up his character. The earlier, fumbling sex scene with Nite Owl shows how different he was from the Doc, but that he was still appealing because he was human. The last one was just… ugh.

There was a lot of very graphic violence, too. I had to look away from the screen at several points. This I have less problem with. It mostly looked cool, and it served a point: to show how, you know, dirty and imperfect this superhero world was. I can dig it.

I do have to wonder why the fuck the ending was changed, though. There didn’t seem to be much reason for it. It seemed to be there just to create controversy and make people angry instead of making a good film. Apparently, though, I’ve been told I forgot how the comic actually ends, and that some things I thought were added were not actually added. So maybe I’m just missing something. But the comic ended so perfectly, I really have no idea why you’d touch ANYTHING, and things were touched. Oh yes.

It doesn’t really ruin the movie, though? It’s still worth seeing, just to see all of these characters on screen so pretty and competent. But it does keep it from being, I dunno, perfect? Totally awesome? The movie is long as just kind of there, for the most part. I didn’t leave energized, or excited. It was just a decent movie.
That’s about all I have to say about it.

So! I built a computer! Hurrah!

I told you I was going to, didn’t I? And dammit, I did. And I was much less frustrated putting the thing together. It all worked like clockwork, hardware-wise. I made it all happen without any frustration. I guess I did learn something from my expletive-inducing experience building Jonathan’s computer.

But yeah, hardware? No frustration. I had much easier parts, too, so that helped. No, the frustration came from installing Windows. Brer, in an effort to make things easy for me, lead me to this “Johnny’s Ultimate Windows XP” distro, a custom built distro that was supposed to have all the drivers and such already built in. And it did! But it also decided that it wanted to have “cosmetic enhancements.” Things are renamed for no reason, icons are changed, all kinds of bullshit is tweaked. The benefits of not having to install SATA drivers and have it automagically install AVG is, perhaps, not worth the frustration of fixing everything of those. Still, if those don’t bother you, the distro works fine, installed great, and I’m already up and running, having most everything already fixed and set up. It’s nice.

Of course, though, the weekend when I build my new power machine, Steam goes on the fritz, so I can’t test it in any new games. All of the games have downloading issues and half the time, when I launch them, it says they are “unavailable.” It’ll be fixed after this UT3 free weekend is over and the servers stop getting pounded, I’m sure, but it’s just kinda frustrating. I want to see what the new machine can do!

What it can do, though, is be REALLY fucking quiet. Every time I walk into the room now, I fear that my computer has been shut off. My last computer was pretty loud. I got used to it, of course, being in the same room as it the majority of my days. But compared to this box, it was screaming all the time. I think the big difference is, instead of many little loud fans, the box has one huge fan on the side, which works quieter because it’s bigger? I guess? But seriously, it’s silent. It’s kinda cool.

Anyway, Yuuko-san is up and running. (My last computer was Tomoyo-chan, so I decided to keep the “naming after CLAMP characters” convention.) And I barely had to ask anyone for help to make it happen. Huzzah for me!

So those Tyrants who write for 1up are calling Zen Bound THE game for the iPhone. I don’t know if I would go quite that far? I kinda doubt it’s going to define the iPhone and iPod Touch game space. But one thing is for sure: it is a DAMN good game, worth every bit of $5, and if you’re someone with a compatable device, you should probably buy it.

Zen Bound is actually a pretty hard game to describe. It’s a game about wrapping rope around wooden sculpture, like the website there says. But that sounds incredibly boring, doesn’t it? The game is anything but boring. It’s a calm, slow and casual paced puzzle game, basically, which tests your spacial reasoning and is really geniously designed.
The goal is to wrap rope around a figure, having rope touch every bit of it (which makes it change color) and then get the rope to a final nail in order to tie it off and complete the level. There are 3 levels of complete for each level. The first goal is incredibly easy to get to, and the second isn’t too hard to reach if you’re actually trying, but the third always comes at 99% wrapped, and that’s where the challenge comes in.
Basically, the rope is attached on two ends. One is tied to the figure, and the other is attached to an offscreen “spool” or whatever. That means, as you wrap, you can’t go under anything, so you actually have to plan out what you’re doing so the rope you already have wrapped around doesn’t block you from getting into the crevices and such of the figure you’re working on. You have to plan ahead in a way you don’t expect when you first pick up the game.
The game basically starts very Zen, and very casual. The shapes are easy, and you’re just having fun wrapping rope about. There’s no challenge. Before you know it, though, you suddenly hit something you don’t get 99% on the first time. The game is kind of sneaky like that. The challenge ramps up in a very hidden way, and once you hit the actually challenge? You’re hooked. At least I was.
It’s also important to mention the controls. They are instantly understandable to anyone who has used an iPod Touch for 5 minutes, and work so well, you don’t even think about them. You rotate the wooden figure with the normal finger motions, and you can adjust the angle of the rope with the accelerometer. This is a game incredible suited to its medium.
The only real problem with this game, though, is the fact that it destroys the battery. I’ve not played many iPod games that were too intense before with the graphics. (WordJong is not very taxing) This game is very visually compelling and physics-oriented, and because of that, it uses a lot of processing power. Playing this game and listening to a podcast, as I mentioned in the last blog entry, I burned through my battery in a little over an hour. I can’t even imagine how screwed that would make someone who was actually playing on a phone. It’s something to think about if you’re going to play in long sessions.

Still, this game is pretty well the best iPod gaming experience I’ve had so far. It makes me want to pick up the other critically acclaimed iPod game, Rolando, and see if it’s just as good. I’m sure it is.

But yeah, go buy Zen Bound. The developers are nice, too. They responded to my e-mail in like an hour. It was fantastic. And I want Cinnamon Beats. So give them money to finish it. The end.

So, instead of doing my homework, I was playing around with my iPod. (Shut up, I was tired, and in need of relaxation. I have time to get things done still.) I was enjoying Zen Bound, a game I’ll probably write up in a day or two. So I’m playing that for an hour or so in the library, and then I look at my iPod and notice that I have burned through over half of my battery power with one hour of play. I stopped so I can still listen to podcasts for the rest of the day.

But dammit, can you think of how screwed I would be if I had an iPhone? If I had run out most of my battery power playing games, then I’d be disconnected from my phone. That’s just unacceptable. Losing my “fun” thing is okay, but completely losing my communication center? No.

Granted, I could be having a lot more fun with games with a full connection to the internet and such that the iPhone would give me, but I really don’t think that separation is worth the tradeoff. Part of the reason I wanted one of those two was to play these games, and they’re cool little games, and frankly, they’ve stopped me from carrying my DS everywhere, since I always have fun games to play and most of them are podcast-friendly, so I can listen to them while I’m playing as well. It’s awesome.

It’s a shame these really hardcore games drain battery power so much. I’d think it would make iPhone owners have to make really tough decisions about when they play, which is… unfortunate. But yeah, this is why I made the right choice. When I get a smart phone, it’ll be a communications center. I’ll have chatting and internets and phone power and it’s all separate from my fun, so they don’t kill each other. That’s the ticket. Yeah.