The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

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.

So Essner got me this Carcassone variant, New World. It’s… well, I don’t know if it’s better than original Carcassonne? But it certainly does add interesting elements.
For one, having to build off of one edge does add some interesting elements to the strategy. In normal Carcassonne, you can go just about anywhere to, you know, ignore what other players are doing, if you’d like. You can do no such things in this one. Everything is built off of this starting “coast” area, which makes all the play be bunched up a bit, which is interesting, though not completely game-changing.
The main thing the game adds, though, are these “Surveyors.” These little pieces move “westward” each time something is completed. If your little settler piece is in the row of a surveyor when you complete anything, you get an extra 4 points for each Surveyor in that row. That can get a pretty huge boost in points. On top of that, if you have any settlers on pieces that are uncompleted when Surveyors move past that row, you have to pick them up. (This doesn’t count “trappers” which are the farmers in this game. Those stay until the end of the game, like always.) You get no points. This is the mechanic that I think could really mess with the game right here, and although I haven’t played enough to completely gauge it, it seems to strongly punish people who try to make large towns and it makes “farms” (which are the monasteries in this game, named farms for MAXIMUM CONFUSION) much, much less lucrative than in the main game. In normal Carcassonne, there is almost NEVER a reason not to put a guy on a Monastery. In New World, I can totally see putting a settler on a farm often being a bad and kind of pointless choice, as it’s often hard to complete monasteries quickly. This game also makes mini-cities potentially maximum spiteful, too, which is always good. Spite is always good.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll give it a more thorough playthrough soon, but that’s just kind of my first impressions. I think the main thing I’m going to get out of this game, though, is that I’ve added so many tiles through expansions to original Carcassonne that it is no longer the quick and fun game it originally was, and is now much more involved. Since this game is back to that original, smaller number of tiles, it would be great for those times when you have the tile-game itch, but want it to run quicker. If it manages to fill that niche, I’m all for it.

So, the other day, Valera, a friend of mine from Kingdom of Loathing and Twilight Heroes, comes and asks me if I’d be free most Wednesday nights after game rollover. She wants to do some serious Hobopolis runs, apparently. She’d like to get some Hamsters.
I told her sure, I’m game.
This kind of run requires like… seriously co-ordination, because to make one of these drop, you have to make the run in a bare minimum of turns. Every turn has to count for something, and you have to do several things at the exact same time. It’s such an odd thing for KoL, which is normally a game where you just fuck around completely independently of everyone else. I mean, I suppose it’s also pretty awesome that they were able to come up with a dungeon that works this way within the constraints of KoL.
In any case, this is going to take awhile, which actually means it’ll be even longer before I ascend. Which is alright, I suppose. This will pretty well assure me that I am going to get the level 30 Clubber trophy and a telescope, which is always nice, since I have a chance to do so. I could also try the ocean content out and see how that is, while I’m so high in level. There are things for me to do. They’re just extremely different things than I am used to.
I also have to get prepared… I need to get my instrument and perhaps a stogie, which I was trying to get anyway… yeah, I have things I need to get done. Wish me luck with all that, eh?

I BEAT PERSONA 4!

I didn’t get the true ending, though I have a save so I can, if I wanted. But I don’t want. But dammit, I BEAT PERSONA 4!

It’s so rare for me to actually beat a jRPG. I normally start so, so many of these, so many games in general, and never beat them. To overcome having new, shiny Christmas games and still beat it? It feels good. Real good.

The game itself is really great, too. I mean, some of the characters are kind of horrible. I hate Yosuke, and I hate Rise, but they’re both a believable kind of person I hate, as opposed to one who is unrealistic. The game is just so… realistic in its characters. It’s almost boring sometimes because of it, but they really spoke to me.
Picking Beginner was completely the right choice for me, though. I never had to restart or anything, which is probably what helped get me all the way through it. Never did I have to redo a battle or anything. The boss A.I. kind of would act stupid in my favor, and the 10 respawns, which I thought would be a very minor benefit, were actually a huge help in reducing the frustration of hard boss battles. I very much recommend anyone coming to this game because they heard about the cool characters and shit to pick Beginner. Also, to have a guide. It will up your enjoyment of the story, I promise.

The rest is probably all spoilers, so…
SPOILARZ

When Nanako “died” it seriously hit me with an emotional reaction. All of the Nanako stuff did. It played me the whole game, making me expect her always around. It worked PERFECTLY. I really appreciate games that can do that to me. Still, when she turned out to NOT be dead, I threw up my paws in anger. I complained. How dare the game make me feel so bad for nothing? It didn’t make me hate it by any means, but man, it affected me. I’m not all that cool with the game undercutting the emotional reaction like that.
Still, the path for the bad ending that I didn’t go on was… awesome. The whole idea that my party was emotionally charged and about to commit murder? It was so perfect, because I was affected emotionally at this point too. I’m completely unsure how you’d NOT get the bad ending, though. I used the guide to pick what I was supposed to say, and without it, I probably would have never picked some of those things. Then again, I have no idea how anyone would get the True Ending without a guide either, so…
Still, man, my main character was like… the calmest person in the history of ever. The entire time, everyone would be SO ANGRY GRRR GONNA KILL and my responses would always be “Hey, let’s calm down.” Again and again. And finally, in that scene, I got to go “CALM THE HELL DOWN” which felt good. Real good.

But yeah, the game was 70 hours of goodness. It came out EXACTLY when I needed a long awesome game. Everything was right for Persona 4 to succeed. And it totally, totally did.
Totally.

Well, it’s over. I’m tired and happy. I got mostly what I wanted with a pleasant extra game from my brother, and it’s all awesome. Did I mention I’m tired? Yeah, I dunno, that’ll show me not to sleep much last night, eh?

The one thing about this Christmas that really kind of caught me was that I got all choked up… during Fred Claus. Which just seems kind of stupid. But I don’t know, it… I get emotional at Christmas, and I’ve been so damn busy, I haven’t had much chance to, and then bam, heartwarming moment in this fairly eh movie (I mean, you know, Vince Vaughn is funny naturally, but give me a settling like Wedding Crashers for him instead of a heartwarming Christmas movie any day) and it set it all off, and I really had to hold back tears. Heh. I’m so lame like that.

But seriously, everything I said in that last post badly? Gods, I have so much love for you all, seriously. Gods. Christmas reminds me of that. It’s… mmm… I don’t know, it’s a good thing, but a tiring thing, like most strong emotion, eh?

I think if I had to pick one thing I’m most thankful for this Christmas, though, it’s the fact that my Grandma was feeling good enough to cook and spend all that time with us. Today wore her out, it was obvious, but still… I’m so glad we were able to do it, you know? It meant a lot to her to be able to, and it’s just so good to see her feeling good… So glad she recovered well…

Anyway, heh, before I get too emotional I’m going to end this. I hope you all had a good Christmas and whatnot.