The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, summer is almost here, and I’ve cleared my schedule. I’ve got nothing to do. That’s awesome, but I should be productive, right? So I’m announcing… sort of… whatever… that I’m going to get back to Role-Playing this summer. Putting it on hiatus for school was a good idea, but I have no excuse over the summer, and if I work everyday when I wake up for an hour, I could have a few story arcs done by the end of the summer, dammit! So I’m totally going to do that. I’m letting you know, singluar blog reader or, if I’m lucky, readers, so you can help to keep me honest. Rebecca’s story needs to be told. I still think about it and new story arcs all the damn time.
Make sure I get to work week after next or whatnot!

In other news, I beat The World Ends With You. Look below for my review, of course, but it was a damn good game. And now I’ve picked up Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2: Explorers of Time. I’m a Pikachu teaming up with a Tododile for hawt rougelike for babies action! Exciting!

Oh, I guess I should got to my last night class EVAR. Away!

If you own a DS and you enjoy action RPGs, this game is a must buy. Seriously.
I mean, sure, there are plenty of reasons why you would think it’s not worth your time. “Zippers” Nomura obviously had paws all over this game, and I know that turns off a lot of people. There’s a lot of appeal in the music, which I’m sure it far from everyone’s favorite, and might turn it off. I’ll admit I buy into both of those things. But unlike other games, where it might just be thrown in, this creates a very cohesive whole.
The trick is that the whole game takes place in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya district. It’s a place where this musical and visual style and fashion IS the thing, and thus it helps to set the setting, a place where wearing trendy clothes can help you out in battle and where you can sway people’s opinions to get bonuses based on the brand names you wear. It all comes together into a cohesive whole.
On top of that, you have a story that isn’t just fluff. Sure, it might not be greatest thing you’ve ever read, but at the very least all of the characters I’ve encountered thus far (I’m nearly done with the game) are completely believable. I get their motivations. They make sense, and they make me care about them. This is a feat not a lot of games do.
You add all this to a great battle system, and you have yourself a winner. If you haven’t been convinced that you can have a great action game using just the stylus, this game is going to prove to you that it’s possible. The controls are really, really great. You collect these hipster pins, and each one gives you a different “psyche,” or attack. Each one uses a different stylus movement. One might need you to tap on an enemy to throw fireballs. Another might need you to slash upward to do an uppercut. Another might need you to draw a wall of fire on screen, or drag background objects about to smack into enemies. You can equip only a certain number of these, and thus can customize yourself into different decks of pins with different attacks for different situations if you so wish. Meanwhile, your main character’s partner is battling on the other screen, where you play a little minigame using the d-pad to block and attack. This part sounds REALLY complicated, but it actually isn’t. You can just jam in the direction of the enemies to do basic attacks, and that can take out most things. Of course, you can do blocks and combos, too, if you really want to get into it, or ignore it completely and turn on the computer to do it for you, which works really well.
That leads me to the one thing I really appreciate about this game: It’s a completely customizable experience. You choose which of a wide variety of attacks you’re going to use, and they’re all useful in most situations. You choose whether to master fighting with the second character on the top screen or just let the computer take care of it. You choose what difficulty you want each battle to be. You’re rewarded for playing harder. Mastering the top screen combat means more crazy super attacks for you to trigger. Playing at harder difficulties gives you more and different phat lewt, not to mention more EXP. It doesn’t punish you for not playing that way, however. You can play on Easy at max character level the whole way through the game and still have a great time. Most important to me, you can play on fairly difficult most of the time, and easy when you get stuck. I’ve been playing on normal battles with my level about 10-15 below my max the whole game, but when I get stuck on a boss, I appreciate being able to kick my level back up to max and have a much easier time of it. There’s no frustration. Just fun. I like that.
This game is really great. It’s worth the SquareEnix tax. It’s fresh. It’s new. It’s not a rehash of a series you’ve seen 40 times before. If you own a DS, give it a go. Seriously.

I’m easy to frustrate, I admit. I have plenty of bottled up emotions that, when frustrated, all come out. Then I scream and curse and fume and it’s not pretty. Attempting to put together Jonathan’s computer? I did all that this weekend. It was pretty horrid. Especially when it all ended not with Jonathan having a new computer, but with Jonathan having to send a DoA motherboard back just so I can try all this again next week. Ick. Hopefully I can survive easier next time.
Otherwise, I haven’t been doing too much, I guess. This is the last week of class, which is exciting, I suppose, though it just means I still have some homework to finish up. Not a huge deal, but I just need to do it. Should have plenty of time to do so, though, since work doesn’t want me working. Never can tell if that’s a good or a bad thing, you know?
But at least my games are going well. I’m getting close to being done with The World Ends With You, which has been excellent this whole time… I’m probably going to try to write a review when I get back from class, but you know how that works, with me saying it and it not happening. I also got my Snifftome in KoL over the weekend, which is just AMAZING. I’m going to have a lot of fun with that. Of course, I, perhaps foolishly, decided I was going to go for the Uranium Omega of Temperance this run, so I could be killing hippies for most of the week. It’s great when you’re generating two items to help with the Nuns all run, and then decide not to use them.
The one thing that’s really frustrating me, other than computer construction, though, is the fact that the World Ends With You OST is not complete, and some of my favorite songs in the game are not on there. I have no idea how to find out what these songs are or where to get ahold of a copy of them. Bleh. If you know, let me know, yeah?

Okay, I best be good and get to class. (I almost wrote “I best be god and get to class.” I wonder what that says about me.)

So this is a post all about how awesome and expensive my last night in KoL was, so, you know, if you don’t care, now would be the time to stop reading.

So yesterday I got out of Ronin by cocktailcrafting my last three turns of it away while falling-down drunk. Because you can apparently make more booze when you’re too drunk to stumble about and hit stuff with swords. So I set about doing things I had been meaning to do for awhile but never did. Since it was the Feast of Boris, it made it much easier to do, too! So that’s nice.
My first step was completing my set of Crimboffs. Although I’m likely to use my Naughty Fortune Teller most of the time, I can’t argue with the fact that pulling the appropriate one on day one basically gets me to level 2 for free. Also, they were still fairly affordable and wouldn’t be in the future. So I picked up a handmade hobby horse and a ball-in-a-cup to compliment the set of jacks i got for Crimbo. Huzzah for that! It was kind of expensive, though. Cost: 338,000 meat.
My next step was doing the content familiar content. These donation familiars drop items that unlock new content. They’re apparently really awesome or something, especially the Pixie, apparently. It lets you get an item called a not-a-pipe, which is crazy powerful. That doesn’t interest me, though. That seems like a boring reason to use a familiar, just to have access to zones where you do the same thing over and over again until you have 3 !pipes every day. So I just wanted to see this content and get the non-consumable rewards from each. So that’s what I did!
I started by purchasing 4 astral mushrooms, which is what the Astral Badger drops. I needed four to get the full Encephalic Ensemble outfit with two of the crossbows, in case I ever feel the urge to dual wield them. I have to admit the content was pretty neat. There’s something pretty awesome about fighting “The Urge to Stare at Your Hands” and “The Best Carpet Ever“, and I dunno, mapping out mazes always makes me feel all intelligent, even though in the end it’s just sort of trial and error, you know? In the end, though, I probably will only use the crossbows, as the other equipment isn’t TOO exciting, but those crossbows are pretty sweet. Still, it was a fun time. Cost: 8000 meat.
Next, I picked up three tiny bottles of absinthe for the Worm Wood content. These were also pretty fun, and the drops from the entertaining normal combats were also much more useful… I mean, come on… bottle of Realpagne. That’s awesome. Also, however, two of the three equips that I picked up (which was why I was doing this) are significantly more useful than the Cerebral stuff. The Fancy Ball Mask and the Can-Can Skirt are obvious equips for an early portion of a Moxie or Muscle run respectively. The Albatross Necklace is cool, but, of course, Mysticality isn’t as useful as one would hope. Anyway, the content was definitely cooler, but I can’t say I regret not getting a pixie. The actual familiar text of the thing just doesn’t thrill me, and, as I said, I wouldn’t want to run the worm wood over and over for not-a-pipes or whatever. Not how I roll. Still, since the bottles are cheap, I could perhaps run it more for some of those neat consumable drops. You never know. Cost: 1800 meat.
Finally, I still hadn’t gotten a Robogoose from Crimbo. That could not stand. So I started buying up Robotronic eggs. I had already wasted about 50 that I got from combats back in December with no luck. It took awhile now, too, but at least the prices had gone down significantly since then to a more reasonable 700 meat a pop. Still, I had to buy like a hundred or so of them before I finally got the thing… I’m thinking of trying a 100% Robogoose run after this one to recoup the cost by getting eggs to sell. Cost: approximately 70,000 meat.
Total Cost for this endeavor: 417, 800 meat. About half a mill, like I thought. But still, it was worth it. I have this virtual currency so I can do neat shit, you know? Not just to have virtual currency. Spend money to make fun. That’s the whole idea! And I did! So huzzah! Also, I suppose all of the Pepsi Points I sent to Skully for 10,000 meat a pop probably helped to fund this quite a bit.
Anyway, I wanted to ramble about that, and now I did. Back to… whatever the fuck I should be doing right now…

There are several types of games I enjoy. Some are really engrossing and draw me in. They take me over completely. The World Ends With You, which I’m playing now and should review as well, falls into this category. Then there are pure multiplayer games, games that I only play because playing with people is completely awesome. Super Smash Brothers Brawl is in this category. Finally, there are games I love because they are interesting and fun, yet don’t completely consume my brain, letting me do it and something else, such as listen to a podcast or chat with people. Lost Cities is one of those games.
Lost Cities just hit XBLA, and it’s a 2 player competitive card game, though apparently there is a four-player variant you can play on Live if you want. I’ve just played the computer so far, but it’s great. The idea is that you’re exploring five different cities, each marked with a color. You have a deck of cards with a card of each color number 2-10, and then three “Investment” cards of each color. The object is to have the most points at the end of the round, and you do this by, oddly enough, playing cards. Each turn, each player either plays or discards a card. If played, they put it underneath the appropriately colored city on their side of the table (You can play red on red, but you can’t play red on blue). You can only play a card on top of a card of lesser value (so you can play a 3 atop a 2, but you can’t play a 3 atop a 4) or in an empty space. If you put it in an empty space, you’re starting a “new expedition.” This costs you 20 points, and yes, you can go into the negative. Each card you play gives you a number of points equal to the number on the card. This “spend money to make money” mechanic is the core of the game, and the risk/reward system it sets up is one of the reasons why it’s so fun. Alternatively, as I’ve said, the player can discard a card from their hand. Each color has it’s own discard pile, so all the red cards go into the red discard pile, and so on.
The second step of the turn is the player either drawing a card from the deck or taking a card from the top of a discard pile. This is also a neat system, because the game ends the moment the last card is drawn from the deck. You can try to buy time by taking discarded cards you don’t need to keep cards in the deck. Of course, you give up potentially drawing a card you need, but that’s the tradeoff. It’s a simple but neat mechanic.
The last bit of mechanical whatever is the Investment cards. They basically count as 0 in the card hierarchy, so they can only be played on an empty space. However, they can also be played atop each other. When you play an investment card, all cards play on that space get an extra multiplier. One investment card gives you a 2x bonus, two will give you a 3x bonus, and if you manage to get all three in play, you get a 4x bonus. The tradeoff is that the cost to start an expedition is increased in the same way, so it costs 40 for one investment card, 60 for two, and 80 for three. Again, it’s a neat risk/reward system that makes the gameplay so fun.
Oh, also, if you get 8 cards on a city, you get a bonus.
And that’s it! That’s the rules and how you play! It is the perfect podcast game. There are definitely mechanics that you have to think about to play well, but it can be very slow paced against the computer since it’ll wait however long you want to take your turn and it’s so easy to take in the board and see what you need to do that you can get distracted and come back without being lost. It’s just good, simple fun, and I do recommend it if, say, you tire of the non-strategy randomness in XBLA Uno, but would like a similar experience with some more strategic choices infused. Something like that.

Man, I like to ramble about mechanics, don’t I? I guess I should get to bed, but I felt inspired and it had been a long time since I wrote one of my shitty reviews. So there, a shitty review for you!

So I’ve been getting SHIT DONE.
It all started this weekend, where I GOT SHIT DONE. Well, I wrote my two papers, and did my interview, which was just… uncharacteristic of me, getting all that work done. Then, this morning, I work up at 6:30, and pointless panic kept me from falling back asleep. So I said “You know what? If I’m going to fuck myself over with pointless panic, then I’m going to get some shit done!” And I did a lot of catchup work this morning.
I am GETTING SHIT DONE.
It’s weird and kind of nice.

In other news, I bought River City Ransom on the Virtual Console. I haven’t been able to play it much yet, actually, but Kevin and Jonathan are playing it right now, and JUST from that I can tell it’s totally worth it. They are having a ton of fun. I can’t wait to play it with Jonathan or Spaeth or whatnot.
Wait, now I’m playing, and yes, it is completely awesome. I’ll do more of this awesome.

Okay, so I guess this is a Moody Day post. I’m definitely drifty and moody. But hey, Jick read my question on the radio show AND implemented my simple little idea. So huzzah. Or something.

I gotta write two papers over the weekend. Wish me luck with that. I can do it, I know. It’s just hard to focus sometimes… when I’m all whatever.

Bleh, this post is stupid. Oh well, perhaps it will motivate me to write something cooler tomorrow or some shit.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

So news on the internets from Talking Time’s inside source (who says nothing that might lose him his job, of course, but keeps us informed. He’s a great guy who helps make great games) is that there was a small reprint run of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I was planning on buying Persona 3: FES next week, because, I dunno, I love the game so much I’d buy a second copy for end-game content I’ll never get to. That was the plan, anyway, but armed with this new information and the knowledge that, as I just said, I am almost positive I won’t get my money’s worth out of FES since I never beat Persona 3, I went with Nocturne. Ordered it from the internets. Should be here in a few weeks. Hope I enjoy it. It’s apparently harder than Persona 3. Hopefully the music will be awesome, too, though I’d bet it’s of a different style than Persona 3.

Okay, okay, I promise I’ll keep this quick. Browser RPG Update: I’ve got 4 Silver Stars from farming so far, and now I’m thinking about saving my farming stars for an empty picture frame. Thoughts? I also ascended in what was my fastest Normal Nonpath KoL run yet by several days. Here’s the rundown. Amazing what wanting to go fast to splurge on an item will do, eh? Of course, with most people making standard 3-4 day runs in speedrunning, I’m still way behind. That said, early thoughts about this early run: Everyone was right about the Origami Riding Crop being mediocre gameplaywise. It was great that first day, and the attack messages are awesome, but I bet tomorrow or Thursday I’m going to have better things to equip, and it’ll probably get folded back into a fortune teller to use while lucre farming. The Yuletide troll is doing fine, and I can see me defaulting to him quite often, just to have the sheet music to throw at people at random. I love doing that shit.
There, okay? Done with Browser RPG stuff. Man, I need to catch my attention elsewhere, it’s getting to be a bad addiction.

$24.99 is the cruelest Amazon.com price point, and that’s what the Sam and Max animated series box set is priced at. Dammit. The annoying thing is that if I had just realized I was going to buy it like a day earlier, I could have bought it with Jonathan when he ordered more Star Trek. Oh well, maybe he’ll order even MORE Star Trek in the future. Or I’ll think of something else to order from there. Maybe Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 or something.

I haven’t been twittering much these past few days. I’ve been so distracted. I’ve still enjoyed watching the twitter feed on my desktop, though. I suppose that’s alright. But I dunno, it’s weird. I’m so pro-twitter.

Oh, in case you were on the edge of your seats, yes, we completed the Endless Setlist.

The Shadowrun stuff… continues. I don’t know, it’s so weird. I don’t understand me. It’s like… I can sit down for a game I’m interested in and absorb rules from here to tomorrow and love it. When it comes to this game, though, I can’t read them, and I really think a lot of it is kinda pointlessly complex for the sake of complex. I can’t put it together into a big picture. Yet, at the same time, we did this little mock fight to try to teach me, and I was correcting him about the rules and generally getting what I was doing. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens with that.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

So tonight is the night of the Endless Setlist party. It’s been awhile since I played Rock Band, and it’s been awhile since I even thought of this Endless Setlist. Still, it’ll be fun, and at the end I’ll have achievements. Because I am a achievement whore. Wish me fun.

Other notable things, at least to me, are the fact that I got my Libram of Candy Hearts. I find with my normal MP Regen Suite for spellcasters (Chefstaff, Yak Anorak, Ghuol familiar action (this time brought about by origami “gentlemen’s” magazine) and plexiglass pocketwatch to reduce cost) combined with how ridiculous Wave of Sauce is for regaining MP and how using buffbots keeps me from a need to constantly rebuff myself, I have TONS of MP just lying around to summon candy hearts. There are times when it’s been the right choice to summon a candy heart for 150 MP just because it’s going to go to waste otherwise. It’s hardcore, and it means I have all these hearts to send to people at random via candygrams in /c haiku. And I really enjoy doing this hearty shit. It’s a lot of fun. So basically, my investment has paid off in my eyes thus far… not to mention I’ve been actually using White Candy Hearts quite a bit to up my stat gains a little, (I’m getting more concerned about maxing my stat gains, actually… getting to be more of a powerplayer I guess, between that and the naughty fortune teller) so that’s an additional benefit I’m definitely reaping.
Things I still need to do in KoL: Do another *shudder* Hardcore run for Pastamastery and a stainless steel solitaire. (No path this time, for fuck’s sake!) Do a run to test out the awesomeness of the origami riding crop. Do a 100% Yuletide Troll run.
I think the plan is to do a 100% Yuletide Seal Clubber run next, and perm something awesome, like Hide of the Walrus, then try a no path Hardcore run with a Pastamancer. (note I’ve never done a no-path Hardcore run. Maybe they’re not as bad.) But I suppose all this depends on what happens with next month’s IoTM and shit.

Gods, I ramble on and on, huh?

The other thing I’ve been trying to do is… well, Brer wanted to start an online Shadowrun campaign, and so I said I’d join him… but he… and the game… and…
Apparently everything I don’t care about in real life is all things that matter all crazy whatever in this game. This combined with how I play around and whatever in general, which happened while making my character, just frustrated Brer crazily… which makes me feel like an ass… but also, it means as I try to read this… what… 5 to 6 sourcebooks that he claims I need to know? I’ve been trying to read the background of the city we’re in, and my eyes just glaze over, and I skim for names and that’s about it, and Brer is like “Oh, you gotta read the comments! That’s where all the interesting stuff is!” and I haven’t read a single one. I am missing the point, I guess. I don’t know. If I “read” this sourcebook, will I have gotten anything he wanted me to get out of it? Probably not. But I mean, when I’m reading and going “if I’m going to be forcing myself to read something, why aren’t I doing lit homework?” something is going wrong, you know?
Basically, I don’t want to give up because I don’t want to let him down, but at the same time if I don’t I’m not sure either of us are going to get what we want out of it? Basically, it’s just a weird awkward situation all around.

I guess at the end of the month I have several new games to buy. The World Ends With You (22nd), Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 :Explorers of Time… (20th) yeah, some games to get. Oh man, and I guess FES comes out on the 22nd too. Man. Man. I guess I should start actually saving money for that. That’s an expensive week. Maybe I should order two on Amazon and buy one day 1.
Oh woah, I just went to the offical website to link it up there for The World Ends With You… they’ve redone the music. Intense. Still good, though. I’m also glad that the game finally got Parish’s approval.
In the process of writing this paragraph, I realize I should just hold off on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, as I would have no problem buying a copy of Blue Rescue Team right now, so I’m sure I could buy Explorers of Time during the inevitable summer lull.

Console games… portable games… browser games… tabletop games… yeah. I think all of your gaming food groups in this, to some extent.

This is the week of doing work.
Well, it was. Actually, I got everything done this weekend. I’m well-off.
But I still need to catch up on those stupid forum posts for my lit class, and I need to put together this portfolio to graduate.
Eh, I guess things are going alright.

I also keep worrying about the price of the Libram of Candy Heart Summoning. It keeps going up, right after I decide I’m going to splurge on it and right after I can’t actually buy it for at least 6 more days. Also, the current Mr. A exchange rate keeps going down, too. Arg. But I shall stay calm, do my work this week, and not freak out. At worst, it’ll just clean out my liquid meat while not costing me extra donation-wise. I can stay calm, dammit.

Rei was crazy nice and, using some sort of crazy magical work-related hookup powers, got me the new CoD4 Variety map pack at the very affordable cost of free. I love Talking Time, and not because I get free DLC, but because I am in a community that is close-knit enough to want to GIVE each other free DLC.
Anyway, the maps are actually pretty awesome. CoD4 is a great multiplayer experience with a few friends to die with, and these maps are just really cool. I still haven’t played Killhouse, though, but it looks neat. Broadcast is an awesome objective map. Chinatown is a sneaky remake of a CoD2 map I remember that’s horrible for objective games but great in deathmatch. Creek is a sniper paradise, which means I die like… all the time. But at least it looks pretty and has a very interesting layout. Anyway, it gets my seal of approval. I do hope they make them free after awhile like Bungie does, however.

Other than all that, I guess things are going well. Whee.