The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Years ago at this point, I went to a Journey reading. I read poetry that nowadays would make me cringe. Yesterday, I attempted to fix that by standing up and reading at a new Journey Reading experience.

How did it go? Alright, I thought. I didn’t make any reading errors, perse. Got some chuckles from a few chuckle-worthy lines. It was about all I could hope for, really. I realized once I got there I had a lot of poems about sex, though. But it was cool! Really!
I was asked how to be introduced, and I had no idea, so Essner ended up telling Marsha to tell everyone the inside joke about how brownies and mac’n’cheese molested me as a child. Which was… an interesting way to start a series of all-serious poems, I suppose.

Essner, though. Dammit, he commanded things and captivated everyone. His completely fictional story, “Non Fiction” was hilarious and he performed it well. It was great. He did great. If there’s one thing he can do, it’s right a good, comedic story powered by dialog. Which is why he needs to succeed in his script-writing dreams. I do hope he can. He’s a fully funny guy.

Dustin also showed up, which was much appreciated! Much! And then shared that he was in some sort of relationship with the other reader who just seemed… like someone who wouldn’t have any interest in Dustin. And that was interesting, I suppose.

But yeah, it was a good reading overall. It went well. Not a huge turnout, but who expected one? It was good for me to get up there and read. And now I have.

I was testing out the NXE’s new “start downloads from your PC” feature when I noticed the existence of Domnio Master, the ultimate online domino experience. When did this come out? I had to try the demo.
Why? Well, two reasons. One, Uno on XBLA is hella fun, really. Not having played any with Talking Time people is actually kind of a problem I’d like to fix. I’d have nothing against more good, fun, simple games like that on XBLA. Two, I do have kind of an odd relationship with Dominoes. I never get to play them, but I have a kind of odd obsession or affinity with them after reading Nymphomation and loving it, much like I like all of Noon’s Vurt mythology stuff. So if it was a really compelling Domino game, I mean, who knows? I might buy it.

The first reason I didn’t buy it, of course, was the fact that it costs 10 bucks. Seriously? I have fully-featured Dominoes in Clubhouse Games, which only cost me, what? 20 bucks? It even has online play of a sort. So, yeah, no value.
The second is that it just has a really weird vibe. I got into a game, and the computer AI I was up against in the demo was a picture of a Fox wearing green shades with the handle “FoxyLady1991”. What am I supposed to make of that? I mean, is this AI supposed to be 14 years old? And if so, why is she foxy? Is it just a furry thing? I mean, that would be okay, but that would be weird to put in the game, I guess.
The last reason, though honestly I didn’t need any more but the price, was the fact that the game refuses to streamline anything. I would pick to place a bone, and there was only one option of where to put it, and it would still require another press to pick which play I want to make. That’s just kind of silly. There shouldn’t be that extra button press there.

In any case, seriously, Domino Master? When the hell did that come out? I mean, I pay attention to these releases. Why didn’t I know this? Huh? Did it slip under everyone’s radar? Where’s the 1up Review of this?

Well, at least the cuing the downloads on the PC worked perfect and awesome.

So, Left 4 Dead is a lot less fun when you can’t communicate.

I mean, I knew this already. Talking with friends while doing something? Almost always improves a gaming experience. Hell, friends improve almost any activity, do they not? Even like, you know, sex with friends is better than sex with strangers. Maybe. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.

In any case, the last time I played Versus mode, in the first round I encountered a pretty shitty bug. We started the game in split screen, letting Jonathan and Essner try the Infected. Split-screen works alright for the campaign, but it is nigh unplayable online. There just isn’t time for the one person with a headset to go between and co-ordinate both the other split-screen player and the people on the headset. Add to that the fact that you can mostly forget about your computer partners in offline co-op, because the AI is so good. You need to know where everyone is in online games, and you simply can’t see enough. Finally, when you’re playing as the infected, this helpful info box is on the screen. However, it basically covers the ENTIRE split-screen area, making it completely impossible to set up ambushes well, since you can’t see until you spawn. Don’t play split-screen online, kids.
In any case, eventually they left and so I left the game, killed the split-screen, and jumped back into the game, only to find I could no longer talk to people on my team. This. Sucked. All the energy and excitement I had in Left 4 Dead the first time I played with it online was all gone. It was a depressing experience of frustration.
Eventually, I figured out that what was causing all my chatter to disappear was having a Guest signed in who wasn’t playing. After I logged the guest back out, I could talk and communicate again, and then the game got completely awesome again. Still, it was pretty striking how such a great game can get so much less than great without friendly banter and strategizing. At the very least, it convinced me to never, ever attempt an online game of this. At least, not without having friends fill up my entire team and murdering the random XBL kids.

So it looked like I was going to have to jump into Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People Episode 4… you know, I’m done with references. Sorry.

But seriously, Dangeresque 3 did not fail to deliver. It was pretty completely great. They went the extra mile to make the episode actually look like a Dangeresque movie, from the quick cuts to Strong Sad for stunts to the camera occasionally getting distracted like a bad cameraman should to horrible editing in the game that leaves in things you shouldn’t see. It’s just… perfect. And hey, it was actually in 3D, just like it was promised. Still, I bet people who are big Strong Bad fans could be kind of upset by having such a heavily demanded and loved thing actually be done in the game. But if they were such a fan, why weren’t they buying the games anyway? Bastards.
The puzzles themselves were actually fairly puzzle-y too, in parts. This is the first episode of SBCG4AP where I’ve had to look up an answer because I was frustrated. Granted, the solution was actually very meta, so I don’t blame myself for not getting it, but it was the first time these games have stumped me.
I feel like if I talk about it too much, I’ll spoil some of its awesome. So I won’t. But this game’s humor got me out of not one but two fairly shitty moods. It’s great, great stuff. I would probably put it as better than Strong Badia the Free, which was my favorite episode before this one. Granted, it was pulling from and counting on a LOT more in-jokes than Strong Badia the Free which was mostly all original content, which I can appreciate. But seriously, it was the best yet. If you like Strong Bad, you deserve to play this game. You’ll laugh.

So my previously mentioned poem sequence keeps on evolving, though I think it’s to its final form. It turns out what I really wanted to write was a poem sequence following a couple, first with the man of this couple coming to terms with their relationship, and then briefly showing the woman’s side of things with one last poem. All of this following the track list of These Are The Good Times, People by The Presidents of the United States of America. Yeah, it’s kind of weird.
Still, I feel like it’s working well. There’s still a lot of tweaking to do, and there’s still about half of it to write (I had to scrap some of my earlier poems, though alright, once the theme got reined in.) but the individual poems are up to my standards for myself, which is always nice, and if nothing else, I feel like I’m painting a really nice picture. I hope it comes across.

Am I getting to close to this project, though? I wonder. I got really mad at Brer earlier due to how he was criticizing what I was showing him. I love constructive criticism. I mean, there are some things I won’t budge on (like, uh, my use of parenthesis. Sometimes I can use them better, which I’m happy to hear if that’s the case. But their inclusion kind of makes my poems work in my eyes. I’m not going to cut them.) but for the most part I love hearing different viewpoints so I can look at my work and think about how to make it so the reader sees my viewpoints. I don’t get enough of it.
I mean, I think a lot of it was my bad mood at the time combined with how easily I get mad at Brer when he argues with me. He just loves to put things in the exact wrong way to push my buttons, and it’s got to the point that even when he says things that just suggest that manner of speaking, I jump on him because I feel it’s going there. Not fair, I know, but I follow my emotions for better or worse. Life doesn’t work well if I don’t.
But seriously, is it that I can’t take criticism? It concerns me. I really don’t want to be that guy, and though I’m proud of what I make, I’m not pretending that my art is… I dunno… Art. It’s just neat things I do. That I hopefully might get published some day. But I don’t have any delusions that I’m some master artist, do I?
Damn, I dunno.

So I got Left 4 Dead and I’ve had one solid night of trying it.

Holy crap. Seriously.

We only had 6 players, but with 8 players? It would be bliss. This is by far one of the best multiplayer games around. Hands. Down.
We started by playing the Campaign, of course. Four of us trying to beat No Mercy. Advanced is much harder than in the demo, it seems. We couldn’t beat it! Wave after wave… it was so very intense. And even though we kept dying, it was a ton of fun. Still, eventually we decided to try to see something else, and joined up with another couple of people, and played Versus mode.
Now, I wasn’t buying this game for the versus mode. I figured I wouldn’t like it much. Picking on people as the infected didn’t seem like fun, and I just wanted the co-operative teamwork of the campaign.
I was so very wrong.
Campaign mode is great, don’t get me wrong, but Versus mode is probably THE BEST competitive multiplayer experience I have been a part of. The sides are small enough to be intimate, and you are constantly working with each other and talking strategy on both sides of the equation. It plays different as the survivors because, with the increased special zombie count and knowing there are human players behind them, you really have to be careful about things like stopping to heal… anything. You have to clear rooms, check every one for an ambush. I mean, you do in the single player, to the extent, but knowing your opponents are scheming makes it even more intense.
And the Infected! Dammit, that was fun shit. I expected it to be boring, since you spend the majority of your time respawning. But now, you’re spending that time scheming with your fellow zombies and cheering them on when they manage to pounce someone or get a swarm after them. I thought it was going to be a more solo rogue experience, but you are just as co-ordinated and a team as the survivors, and when you catch them in a good trap, it’s fucking sweet. But that just makes you all the more nervous next round, knowing they’re trying to top it.

I am so high from… gods, what, three hours of gameplay? A versus match is an all night affair, but it is a FUCKING SWEET all night affair. I hope we can play so, so many more of these. And that’s just the first impression from ONE CAMPAIGN. I haven’t even tried the levels that weren’t in the demo yet.

Man, I can’t fucking wait.

So I saw Quantum of Solace on Sunday. The basic idea is that if you even mostly liked Casino Royale, you’ve got to see this film. I feel like I don’t have to tell you that, though, if you were a fan of the Craig Bond. This won’t have spoilers or anything.
The action was mostly non-stop. The movie rarely takes a breather, and when it does it’s mostly just to explain some plot and normally has some interesting things going on in the background anyway to keep your attention. The movie is shot in such a way that you get confused, but not TOO confused. I assume this is to sort of simulate how crazy actually fighting someone can be. Not that I’ve actually fought someone to be able to tell you or anything.
But yeah, Craig’s Bond is an unending badass who gets some laugh out loud badass lines and fucking murders everyone. And yet, somehow, they’ve managed to give him some characterization without it feeling forced, cheesy, or unnecessary. He feels like a real person and not a superhero. Granted, that just makes moments where he impossibly survives without major injury kind of stupid, but you rarely care, because oh shit, here comes yet another fight scene.
That’s something different about Quantum from Casino Royale. There is no downtime. Casino Royale took a little bit of slower time to have Bond do some actually spying. In Quantum, if Bond starts trying to gather information, you know there’s going to be a guy for him to beat to death jumping out from somewhere in moments. It doesn’t get quite to the point where you don’t buy it, either. The movie walks that line really well on a lot of fronts.
The most disappointing thing, by far, was the title sequence. As much as I would have liked to have seen Bond get into a boss battle with four giant naked women, it just doesn’t work nearly as well as Casino Royale’s. I mean, take a look at it. Cool card imagry connected with how much of a murderer this Bond is. Nice. I think part of the problem probably was… what the hell was Quantum of Solace about? If you don’t know that, it’s hard to make a neat sequence that captures the film easily.
I do think it’s odd that I can be half-confused about what the movie was about and still think it was completely awesome, though. I mean, I think I get the plot, mostly, but it’s going to require another viewing (When I get it on DVD. I mean, I probably won’t see it in a theater again. Gods, I have no time for this stuff.) to get it completely. We stood in the parking lot after the film discussing what we didn’t understand, even as we were all going “Damn, that was a great movie.”

And seriously. Damn. That was a great movie.

Call of Duty: World at War is the best WWII mod for Call of Duty 4 available. I don’t regret my purchase? But I would suggest that most people just give it a rent and enjoy a quick play through of the single player unless they’re gung-ho about the multiplayer aspects.

That’s the short version. Here’s the long version: Call of Duty 4 has a fucking great engine, and as such, it’s no surprise at all that a game made with that engine to emulate that game plays awesome. It also has all those WWII weapons I fell in love with back in CoD2, so that’s nice. The Gewher is still my weapon of choice. Heh. The game also has co-op, which was the only thing CoD4 was missing. It’s kind of the saving grace of the game, though. The Single Player suffers from Me-too-ness. Most of the memorable sequences in CoD4 are recreated in this setting with a little twist. “Being Taught How To Snipe Level”? Check. “Manning a Gun Plane”? Check. Even the flipping back and forth between two stories is done, although here, it is for absolutely no reason whatsoever, instead of creating the narrative of CoD4. That’s really a problem: WWII is done to death. You would have to almost completely deviate from history to make a compelling narrative out of WWII at this point. CoD4 actually had a story, because it got to write a story, and it was much better for it. Still, Co-op makes everything better, and this is no exception at all. If you have a friend, you’ll have a good time.
But most of the single player is fun but forgettable, honestly. It doesn’t help that they went out of their way to do flame physics, and thus “flamethrower it” is the solution to almost everything in the game. It gets really annoying, because the flamethrower is not all that fun to use, after awhile. The first few times, it’s a lot of fun burning up grass to stop would-be ambushers. But then it makes you do it for like 4 more levels, and you realize how vulnerable you can be running forward with the flamethrower trying to hit people. It gets frustrating. What’s also frustrating is how, since there were no flamethrowers used all that much in the Russian campaign, they give you Molotov cocktails as your special grenades. It is extremely hard to kill someone with one of those, the animation to throw them takes about an hour, leaving you out in the open getting shot, and it takes up the place of smoke grenades, which are insanely useful against AI opponents. Many frustrating sections would have been a lot easier if I could have had just one smoke grenade instead of those stupid firebombs. Ugh.
Multiplayer, like the single player, is pretty well just re-purposed CoD4. However, that’s a great, great thing in my mind, as CoD4’s multiplayer was one of the first I really seriously got into in a shooter. It’s still just as fun, too. Many people are saying the dog summon, which replaces the helicopter summon, is more annoying. I completely disagree. If you’re paying attention, you can deal with the dogs. It’s hard to do more than hide in a building until the helicopter runs away, unless you’re carrying an RPG, and even then, you only have two tries and will probably miss both times. Then again, I suppose the helicopter can only be bothering one person at a time, so maybe it’s a tradeoff. In any case, though, the maps are completely great as well. They’re well-thought-out and I can’t think of any that annoy me. It’s a fun time. If you’re bored of CoD4’s multiplayer, this will easily scratch that itch. It’s enough new to get me back into multiplayer games, anyway.
The final piece of this puzzle is Nazi Zombies. I have no fucking idea why this is in the game. It starts up right after the credits, which kind of kills the sense of “war is a real thing” that they were trying very hard to foster by using real film clips and shit throughout the campaign. Still, it honestly looks like a lot of fun. You have to build up points to buy weapons, and you have to keep rebuilding these barricades as they get knocked down, and you can play with four players… it seems like a good time. At the same time, uh, I’m about to pick up Left 4 Dead, which is a much fuller experience, so it might be kind of moot.

Anyway, there’s some extended impressions. If you have it and are playing online on the 360, let me know, but again, probably don’t buy it unless you’re going to get your Team Deathmatch on. There are too many other great things coming out right now.

UPDATE FROM SEVERAL DAYS AFTER I WROTE THIS ORIGINALLY! The game randomly deleted my save, meaning I can’t pick any level but the first for co-op and can no longer play Nazi Zombies! Why is all of this locked? Why does the game hate me? Well, it worked, because I now hate this game. All developers making games with locked content, ESPECIALLY multiplayer content, should be shot and killed. I want to play what I paid for. Bastards.

On a complete whim, I joined Twilight Heroes’s PvP system a couple nights ago by paying a few chips at the Unbranded Arena. I’m still not completely clear why I did this. I mean, I’m a Hearty-Diamond. Beating other people is about the farthest thing from my goal in these games. I’d rather buff them to high heaven. But there were a bunch of PvP items in there and I wanted to see what those items were, so before I knew it, I’d joined. After realizing it drains my in-game time and thus my Sidekick time, I went about using up the rest of my Mafia informant action and then I gave it a go.
It’s actually pretty fun.
The main reason I don’t like PvP is because it’s almost inherently picking on people in games like this. I have to go and find a target and then keep on attacking just them because, well, it would be a pain in the butt to find another target, wouldn’t it? Ryme fixed that well by having a little box of “hey, while you’re in the arena, here’s a list of 10 heroes of a similar PvP rank to you who are PvP active.” So you just click “Duel” on one of those and away you go. The game takes you out of that PvP active list if you haven’t attacked someone in a week, I think? So I know everyone on that list wants me to attempt to punch them in the face. Plus, I can only beat them up twice a day, so I couldn’t even pick on them if I wanted to. Basically, I feel like that list makes random aggression acceptable in my eyes. Perhaps that’s weird.
The other main reason I don’t PvP is because I’m not competitive. I never try to have the best and most powerful in a game or optimize the shit out of myself. I’m just in it to have fun. TH’s PvP is like an entirely different game, with a very small selection of equipment you can pick which you set aside in a locker and don’t actually have to equip. It’s just changed magically the moment a duel starts. The mechanics, too, of trying to outsmart how your opponent has set the Rock-Paper-Scissors generator is also a fun little mind-game. But basically, it’s so removed from the main game, it doesn’t have to disrupt what I’m doing over there. I don’t have to adjust my equipment every time I decide to have some PvP matches. If I lose, it’s just ruining my PvP ranking and keeping me from getting more Lambda Tokens to buy more PvP gear or just to put in my Memuseum to brag. It’s set up to be a game lifestyle choice, hopefully, eventually, but it’s also in a nice little side box so that I can go in when I’d like, and get out and get back to normal when I prefer. Compare that to something like WoW or whatnot, where you’re either completely removed from PvP or you could be attacked at any time. I like this better.
Did any of that make sense? I mean, I’ve been needing something new to do in game besides farm chips, so this is filling that role nicely as well. I think I’ll keep up the PvP at least long enough to get the PvP equipment I want, and then do an attack or two every couple of days so I can keep defending against attacks after that.
Yep. That’s my PvP ramble.

What? November IoTM Impressions? Don’t mind if I do.

Twilight Heroes has the Judo Kid Gloves on tap this month. They are… well, they look fairly unappealing at first glance. I was underwhelmed but assumed they would be fun. I was mostly right about the fun, but still, it’s very situational. Obviously, these only work if you have a steady supply of sidekickness, which is actually kind of rare for some classes who can’t summon their own in the game. You almost need the Plaid Couch to make it worthwhile. Luckily, I have 2, so I’m making good use of it. The +50% effectiveness comboed with the Mafia Informant it putting my chip drops through the roof. I’m wearing less +chip gear and getting more chips than before. It’s wonderful. The extra PP and Damage are also always appreciated. The extra PP effect can actually trigger during non-combats, too, which is just weird but neat.
Basically, though, it doesn’t do a lot. It just improves what was already good. It’ll get used if you get one, but, well, this might be an IoTM you can safely skip.

Now the Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Sticker Tome was an IoTM I was SERIOUSLY looking forward to. I’ve enjoyed all my other magic books, and I figured filling up that last slot on my Mystical Bookshelf would be really great. Not to mention the idea of a customizable weapon was just an awesome one.
I was quite disappointed.
I mean, the item is powerful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s completely just a series of buffs held back by the need to equip a weapon. That’s fine, I suppose, but it… well, I can’t seem to find many times when it would be worthwhile to load up a Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Sword with stickers and use the benefits. I mean, okay, it often would be worth it. But it’s never worth it enough for my stingy ass to use up the items. It doesn’t help it that some of the best uses for it, getting stats, are rather eclipsed by my Naughty Fortune Teller.
I mean, I suppose the real benefit of this is not in softcore, but in hardcore. There the extra stats from the Apple Stickers would be very useful, and getting a good sword with neat effects early would be more significant, since I can’t just pull my Haiku Katana or whatever. If you’re in hardcore, I’m sure it’s a great help. But for someone all softcore like me… it just feels like it doesn’t do quite enough. It disappoints me.
Maybe if I’d just get over myself and use my items, though, I wouldn’t have that problem. Hm. Either way, though, “Accepts Bedazzlement” is a great-sounding enchantment, isn’t it?