The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Seriously, what the heck is this “kick” thing of which you speak. Balrog knows not of this.

But seriously, I was really hesitant in picking up Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (or SSF2THDR for short) because they priced it at 15 bucks and because I never have anyone to play with in these things. Even though the Talking Tyrants were playing it, I thought for sure it would go to waste. So I hesitated and hesitated, and eventually gave in.
I’ve been totally getting my money’s worth. Not only have I had several nights of hawt Street Fighting Fun with the Tyrants, but I’ve also been learning the game. I’ve been winning against random people online! It’s crazy! And it’s all thanks to that crazy Mike Tyson clone.

It all started when I picked Balrog just for shits and giggles against my fellow Tyrants… and then I won. And then I won again. And then I won again. It was shocking to me. I’ve always been a keepawayfireball kind of player in these games, and Balrog is all about charging in and dealing heavy blows. Granted, I’m normally Kamakaze. I shouldn’t be suprised that I take to his methods. But I took to them.
This led me to actually practice with him, to figure out what was going on. Morbid Coffee jumped in with some tips, as he’s also taken up the Balrog call and really gotten good with him. Better than me! And he showed me two keys to victory with him, and probably in Street Fighter in general.

1) Balrog’s throw is the FUCKING SHIT. He has this like… endless throw loop? It’s a thing of beauty, and just one of his throws does so much damage. Me throwing in general was something that I never did before in the game, and it’s so very effective.
2) There are moves other than special moves. Being effective with Balrog requires you to use several of his normal attacks well. I’ve always been a special move spammer, and now that I’m not doing nothing BUT those moves, I’m being much, much more effective.

Anyway, it’s nice to not suck at Street Fighter! At least with one character. And I hope some of these skills transfer to SFIV… that would be nice… yep!

So, for the first time in a long time, I got to go Slap the Euches at Dustin’s. Playing Euchre used to be something we did quite, quite often, but now it’s kind of a nice rarity. I mean, I have all kinds of games I could be playing instead of this simple card game, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have a damn good time when we do it.

(We also played a little pool before I got in a Euchre game. Man, I did abysmal at that. It’s been even longer since I played pool, of course, but my shittiness was far beyond rusty. At least I was almost competent before the game was over. Geez.)

The thing about playing Euchre with Dustin is that… well… the man plays Euchre. He may be slow to pick up other games, but he knows Euchre backwards and forwards and backwards again and then forwards a little more. We play a hand, and then we spend minutes either talking about previous Euchre stories or much more in depth Euchre strategy that I would have ever envisioned existed before I started these games with Dustin. He discusses this card game like pro Magic players discuss deckbuilding. It’s kind of awesome and a little scary.
The result is that I really, really, really over-think myself when I play with Dustin a little. It makes me completely aware that there is always a correct move when I look at my hand, and when I’m thinking about calling, or whatever. Someone knows what I should be doing in this situation. So I stall for a little bit, and I also start asking questions after every hand where I was unsure, to figure out what I should have done. I take games seriously in general, and Dustin taking Euchre seriously (even though we’re just dicking around. If I make a wrong move, it’s not like anyone would be mad at me at all. Some friendly insulting, probably, but that would be it, and that could happen for… well… anything. Heh.) puts me in the mindset that I should. So I’ll try, for better or worse.

And then I do retarded shit like not going alone on 4 trump and a side ace, just because I didn’t know where the left was. Sigh.

Oh well.

So, since they’ve played Family Guy completely and utterly to death and they lost Futurama, adult swim was on the prowl for new shows to be able to show ad nauseam. First, I saw them pick up Clerks: The Animated Series. A good choice, and a funny show, but there’s only six episodes. However, on New Years, they picked up King of the Hill and immediately started playing hours of that a night. Thus, I’ve started to see hours of the show that I never saw previously. Because I never watched the show before. You know.

All I really knew about it going in was, you know, the premise, and that Essner once told me he thought my Dad sold Propane and Propane Accessories like Hank Hill. Which isn’t true. So… that’s what I had.

What I got was a pretty entertaining show! But not a funny show.
Seriously, there is nothing about King of the Hill that makes me laugh. It has jokes, I suppose. It’s, you know, doing that. But it’s not actually funny. I don’t laugh, and I rarely think what the show is doing is clever.
At the same time, the show is very entertaining. I’m never wanting to turn it off or anything. Watching it is a very pleasant experience. It’s certainly a good show, and certainly a completely great alternative from watching the same episode of Family Guy for the 400th time.

It’s just odd how that works, I guess. I mean, the characters are interesting enough, but this is certainly no drama. It’s not that kind of show. It’s obviously trying to be a comedy. And it’s obviously doing something right, because I want to watch it. But humor… no. I don’t really see the humor in it.
I do wish I could pinpoint why it’s so entertaining, though. Mostly because that would make a great ending to this blog. But I have no idea. I guess I’ll just have to keep watching and figure it out, perhaps… yep.

Well, here begins my last semester.

Gods, how many fucking times have I typed that sentence by now, huh?

I’ve had such trouble with school, but really, this time, I’m pretty sure that statement is fact. I’m pretty sure I’ve done it. I hope to god I’ve done it. Or there will be so much screaming and so many tears.
But no, this is my last semester.

Back on New Year’s Eve, Essner mentioned that this may be our last New Year’s together. He said we’d probably see each other around Christmas, sure… but New Year’s? Unlikely. We’re all going to be graduating and probably moving away, getting started with the rest of our lives.
That is so fucking depressing, you know?
The end of things is always completely fucking scary. I know this. I’ve always known this. I hate things ending. There are plenty of things I don’t like about my life right now, but at least it’s comfortable. I know what to expect. Past this semester is nothing but unknown. I get overly nervous when I don’t know what to expect. I worry. I’m going to worry the moment that diploma is in my paws, because then something completely new begins, and I don’t even know what the hell that is.

I have no idea.
But I just have to be positive it’s going to be good.
It’s going to be so good.

So I was reading about FusionFall being out of closed beta and it made me really really want to try it. Why? Mostly because I”m lame, but also because there is something about “childish taken in an adult manner” that really rocks my socks. The idea of running around with bad-ass anime versions of these cartoon characters I’ve seen so much of just, honestly, sounds great. I mean, I’m the guy wishing for more plot in my stupid Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, you know?
In any case, it’s free to try for the first 5 levels or something, so I jumped in.

First off, this game does a lot of things right. The cheap subscription fee as well as the “parent account pays 10 dollars and four kids can play with their own accounts” is just plenty inspired. I appreciated the fact that you could submit your own character name, which would then be reviewed before it would actually show up in the game, or you could use another one of those kid-friendly “slap three words together” name generators, which, honestly, I have a lot of fun with. Wizard 101 gave me Rachel Sparkewhisper. FusionFall gave me Maple Angeltazer. I dunno, I could just hit “generate” on those things for hours. But having both options to name generation certainly gives you the best of both worlds, as well as the game defaulting to a “OMG PROTECT TEH KIDS” can’t actually type system, but it being easily changeable to a full, standard chat via parental settings or whatever.

However, I only played past the tutorial. Why? Because the game was lagging my computer up something fierce. I can’t even begin to understand how something completely browser-based could make my computer chug so hard. I mean, with this game aimed at kids, I would have assumed just about any working computer could play it, you know? I wonder if there was something set up wrong to make that happen? I have no idea. But I could only stand the lag enough to try it that long. It really seems like a simplified PSO with some platforming, which, honestly hits a great sweet spot for their target audience, I think. In fact, this is pretty well the best MMO I’ve seen for this age group, and I support it a lot.

Playing it, though, made me think a lot about how great it would be “if I had kids,” you know? I get such horrible mothering pangs sometimes… it really kind of depressed me for awhile. I really do have to face facts that I will probably never have a kid, you know? Bleh. I’m sure scoping out what the game scene for that age group is like really isn’t helping though, huh?

Hey, I guess I should talk about the KoL Item of the Month, eh? No? Well, I do it every month anyway! Deal!

This month, in keeping with previous years, we have a form-changing elemental-aligned item in the container of Spooky Putty. I am a big fan of the previous such item, the Naughty Origami Kit. I bought it because I wanted the +Ghuol Whelp and ended up using more often for stat gains, but generally loved it all around, even if it didn’t have a completely welcome reception from the feedback on it I read. So I snatched up some Spooky Putty immediately. This item, however, is certainly going to turn some heads. It is Pow Er Ful.

How is it powerful? The more I see about it, the more it’s pretty clear that the Spooky Putty Sheet kinda breaks the game. Basically, it lets you copy a monster to fight later from your inventory at your leisure. There is all kinds of crazy shit you can get up to with such an ability. You could copy Dia De Los Muertos Borrachos monsters for the scaling stat gains and amazing drinks, and fight five of them every day for forever. You could copy one-time event content, and fight it all you’d like. You could copy Battlefield War Heroes, and fight as many Basingstoke-Pratts as you’d like. I’ve even been using it to break things myself, by copying Underwater monsters, and then fighting their copies to farm items without the restrictions of the gear you have to wear to be down there. It does CRAZY things. Crazy gamebreaking things. I’m sure the majority of these items that they sell are going to be sold exclusively for sheet use.
Still, there are other powerful parts to this item. The Spooky Putty Ball is probably going to open up all of my Moxie runs from now on, because it’s certainly one of the best low-level ranged weapons in the game. The extra stats on a hat from the Spooky Putty Mitre is probably second in power level to the sheet, because there’s only one other stat option for hats, and it’s higher level, gives less stats, and I believe it destroys itself, so the mitre is a welcome leveling boost. The Spooky Putty Snake is also just about the best low-level Chefstaff in the game, and will easily be used on Mysticality runs until I can equip the highest level staffs.
The only form I don’t get is the Spooky Putty Leotard. I mean, I guess they can’t all be winners? And you can equip it at level 1? But it’s not like Stainless Steel Slacks are hard to get at all. I have a pair. And if you’re looking for +meat drops, you are probably in the level 12 quest or are farming for meat, and should have no trouble equipping the Slacks instead. This is a form I can never really see me using.

Still, overall, this item is completely powerful and completely worth getting. You know… if you’re the kind of person who buys virtual in-game items to support games they love like me. If so, and you love KoL, this is a damn, damn good purchase. It’ll keep being useful for you. There’s less humor value than the Origami stuff, but all kinds of utility and game-breaking awesome.

So, we had another exciting adventure in Crystaengland tonight! It was strong session overall, although a horrible fate befell our party: The gift shop was blocked by rubble. Dreams of a Wind Temple snowglobe and commemorative jerkin were dashed. Horrid!

Still, our combat went insanely well this time, even though my lucky numbers were 2 and 11. I kept rolling 2 on my attack rolls, and when I did hit, I kept rolling 11 damage. Seriously, this happened more than enough times to be suspicious. It was kind of crazy. But yeah, even though I blew through too many healing surges again because I love getting critical hit, we were still extremely successful in battle.

Also, I killed four guys! Sort of. See, one of the issues with Warlord is that, so often, I’m not actually dealing my own damage on my turn. Commander’s Strike, the reason I love the class, means that very often, it’s Spants or Essner attacking during my turn instead of me, especially now that Spaeth has the Intelligent Blademaster feat (and seriously, let us all take a moment to savor the humor in the fact that Spaeth’s character has almost superhuman intelligence) and can connect most of the time when I use it. So most of my damage is actually Spaeth’s damage. I claimed all the kills anyway tonight. Essner’s Ranger Showboating had to be put in its place somehow.
But yeah, not actually getting credit for damage done is an issue with the class. A very minor issue. I don’t especially care. But, you know, we’re being dicks, so I’m acting like it. Still, it does make me feel like I’m just standing there sometimes.

Issue two is the fact that I can’t give myself temporary hit points. Myrmidon Formation is so completely useful, and Bastion of Defense is also nice to help with the healing by giving everyone a buffer of temporary HP to burn through. However, as far as I know, I don’t get any health boost when I use them. So while everyone else is well-protected, I get little benefit from these healing moves, and am sitting there ready to be critted to death. Maybe I’m wrong with my rule reading on those? Who knows.
This too, I don’t have much problem with. Warlord is a pretty powerful class in a lot of respects, I don’t really mind it having some drawbacks. It’s not fun to be NOTHING but unstoppable, is it?

Anyway, Jonathan’s campaign continues to go really well, as far as I’m concerned. The impending, scary semester coming up might slow it down considerably, but, you know, hopefully we can keep it going.

So, I got an Amazon Prime account.

I dunno, I was ordering Jonathan’s birthday present and I was looking at that button I always see… I freely admit, the one month free trial made me desperately want the service. So, coming from all the extra money I have coming in now, I decided to take the plunge. Bam.

I then spent the next 20 minutes pre-ordering at least a few hundred dollars worth of stuff with my new 2-day shipping.

Granted, the majority of this stuff are games I would have went to the store and bought anyway. Retro Game Challenge? Dragon Quest V? These were not options for me, so I shouldn’t feel so bad pre-ordering them. At the same time, MAN, I JUST SPENT AT LEAST 300 FUTURE DOLLARS IN 10 MINUTES WHAT HAVE I DOOOOOOOONE!

Still, I’m going to abuse this for all its worth now that I have it. I’m going to try to get all my games for Amazon to keep my money away from the bastard pawn shops that are EBGames (something I was trying to do anything, but still, I often want things so niche that my only options are there or the internet, and the internet shipped too slow… UNTIL NOW!) and hopefully that will help quite a bit in covering the cost. And I mean, I’ve already had Jonathan ask to order something for his ladyfriend using my shipping, so hopefully I can abuse it a bit for my friends as well.
No matter what, though, I do honestly thing that it’s fantastic that they offer it in the first place. It’s a fairly priced and completely cool little service. Amazon almost IS shopping on the internet, and I honestly think that’s for a good reason. I wish they were paying me for this plug, though. Heh.

So, if I know you (and I mean, I probably do, if you actually know about this blog) then I’m sure you have five hours you wish to fill with humor. (okay, that one I can’t be all the positive about. Sorry.)

Then follow this link. You can thank me later. Just, you know, don’t be stupid. Start on the bottom at hour one and work up, okay?

Oh, what that link is? I guess I can share that information.

Basically, Brer found this guy, his name is Noah Antwiler, and he has a website where he does video Let’s Plays and reviews and whatnot called The Spoony Experiment. Every so often he links me to something by him, and if nothing else, you have to give this guy credit. He has a TON of stuff on his website, and all of it is entertaining.
That which is linked above, however, is certainly one of his best that I’ve seen. That is his let’s play of Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh. This is one of those FMV adventure games back when FMV was, you know, something that nobody realized was retarded yet. It’s, honestly, just an amazingly bad game in so, so many ways, and Noah is completely and utterly hilarious MST3King it all the way through the whole damn game. I enjoyed every minute of watching it. And, you know, it was at least funny enough to get Jonathan to come over and watch for a little to figure out what all this hilarious dialog was from.

So yeah, you have five hours to waste and want to laugh? Give that shit a go. Or anything on his site, really. I’ll probably still rely on Brer to link me to the really good stuff, but I’m sure you can’t really go wrong with anything on there.

Ever since Mario Golf and Mario Tennis for the Gameboy Color showed me the light, I have been a fan of very arcade-y golf and tennis games. However, Nintendo has failed to beat Camelot into make a new Mario Golf and Mario Tennis for the DS or the Wii, so I’ve been without for awhile.
Then here comes Essner, who buys a 360 and with it gets a free copy of Sega Superstars Tennis. It’s a tennis game that’s very similar to Mario Tennis, only it has Sega characters, both the lame Sonic people as well as awesome characters like Ulala from Space Channel 5 and Beat from Jet Grind Radio. Noticing that a new copy of this game was a mere 8 dollars after shipping on Amazon, I decided to give it a try myself. This was a good decision. I didn’t get the game as I expected but the bundle that came with someone else’s 360, which meant I got the Arcade Collection with it for free. (I gotta try Pac-Man CE sometime soon) Also, the game is pretty solid. Probably not like… 60 dollars solid? But certainly 20 dollars solid, and a real bargain at 8.

Basically, if you’ve played Mario Tennis, you’ve played this game. You’ve got two buttons, a lob and a slice, and hitting them in different ways produces different results. As you rally, you build up a “Superstar Power” which you activate with the triggers. Then you get to make a couple of super shots, which are powerful, but very disorienting to use and often end up screwing you over as much as your opponent.

The controls are really frustrating at first to someone coming from Mario Tennis, though. The timing is similar enough to make you think you can play the same way, but just slow enough to make you miss stupid shots if you play that way. It takes some real adjustment if you’re coming from that background. I’m sure Virtua Tennis fans and people who have never played Mario Tennis wouldn’t have that problem, though. The other thing that is all different from Mario Tennis that throws me off is that instead of jamming on a button to build up hit strength, you hold down the button. This is a completely logical decision, but again, it still takes awhile to deal with the transition.

Once you get over that, though, it’s awesome arcade Tennis fun. I’m saddened that I don’t like the selection of “power” style characters, since that’s normally what I use, but that’s a minor annoyance.
You unlock most things in this “Superstars” mode, which is basically a series of minigames to unlock characters, courts, and music. Some are just straight up Tennis tournaments, but some are creative tennis-based minigames. For example, in the Jet Set Radio world, you have to hit tennis balls to paint tags on the court, and in Super Monkey Ball world, you have to use tennis balls to ricochet monkey balls into the goals on the court. Besides a few EXTREMELY HARD ones, these games are pretty fun, if sometimes pointless. (Really? You want me to just run around the court collecting rings? That… doesn’t really teach me ball control like some of the other minigames.)
I especially enjoyed the Puyopuyo minigame. This was probably the best Tennis-related minigame I ever played. Puyos fall in a wall just like in Puyopuyo, and whenever you hit a puyo, it destroys it, as well as any connected in a combo with it. It’s a really solid twist on tennis and a really good adaptation of the game. I played that one for quite a long time.
One more thing I quite appreciated was that several of the achievements have nicely fanservice-y names. Run 6 in-game miles total? Get the achievement OutRun. Collect all in-game music? Get the achievement Magical Sound Shower. Have a really, really long rally during a match? Get the achievement SEGA Rally. The game needed more of these, as far as I was concerned. That’s awesome.

Anyway, especially if you can get the game as cheap as I did, I highly recommend this game. If the idea of arcade tennis to the music of Space Channel 5 or Jet Set Radio sounds completely awesome, you’ll be quite happy with the game, as I am.