The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So here’s my favorite quote from Forumwarz so far. You heal your ego by using various antidepressants, right? So one of my use posts was “I went to therapy for years for nothing, and I just took this pill and I feel better! What is wrong with the medical system in this country?” It was just… not at all like everything else. It made me pay attention.
In Twilight Heroes, I farmed enough to buy a Silver Star! Which was kinda cool. I’m going to keep that star as a badge of all the time I spend farming, I think. Instead of just farming for chips more, I decided I should really see some more content, so I’ve decided to start trying to get all of the talismans I can. I’m starting with the Ultimate Aviator Goggles for two reasons. 1, farming the Skies Above Downtown goes CRAZY quick because there’s no combat there, besides the rare encounter I need, and 2, that extra chips buff will come in handy if I decide to farm chips again. So that’ll be what I’m doing for the next few days… well, I may have to spend another day farming chips to have cash for caffeinated beverages.
So I realized, you know, I heard so much about all these Greasemonkey scripts for KoL, but I figured I couldn’t use them because I mostly play in Flock. That was when I realized I can install just about any Firefox extension in Flock, so I gave it a try. It works like a charm! I installed Mr. Script, and it’s… I haven’t even played with it yet, but it’s amazing. If nothing else, I have quick links to everywhere and I can right click on my character picture to save my outfit to a “backup” slot and then restore it real fast, which… is awesome. Now I need to keep looking for more neat scripts, I suppose!

And now, on the homework front, I’m kicking ass! Or something. I’m turning everything in. I am up to date. I got my first papers out of the way. I’m not PROUD of them, but they got turned in, and personally, that’s all that matters, because that means I’m going to class and I’m going to pass it. Because I am. Even if I’m completely slacking, if I turn everything in, I should pass with a B, you know? And that’s all I want. So huzzah for me!
Seriously, huzzah for me.

So if you look, I have a brand new tag for these sorts of rants! Huzzah! Not that it’ll do much good, but if I’m going to use the tags, I should use them, you know? I even went back and updated my old posts with the tag. Neat!

But the important thing is, I have a new game obsession, and that game is Forumwarz. Basically, take everything you know about, say, 4chan. And then make an RPG out of it. You’ve got a good idea of what Forumwarz is now. In fact, you can watch that video on the front page and get a good idea, too. I think that video does a good job… but yeah, it’s a ton of fun, and the interface is extremely slick and ajax-y. Granted, the humor is insanely crude, but I can dig it because I get what they’re making fun of, and it’s sort of a requirement. Anyway, I definitely suggest you give it a try.
In KoL news, I got all my El Vibrato stuff: A Megadrone and the full equipment set! And then I ascended into a Hardcore Boozetafarian Turtle Tamer run, to Hardcore Perm Amphibian Sympathy, which is amazing. I forgot to untinker my meatcar AGAIN, which is just genius of me. Anyway, I suck at Hardcore runs even more than my Softcore runs, so I’m sure I’ll be playing this one for a few months, but eh, since I’m now playing this and Forumwarz and Twilight Heroes full time, I suppose going a little slower at KoL for awhile isn’t a bad thing by any means…
I also realized today that I probably spend more time now playing this stuff than I did back when I used to play WoW. That’s all kind of crazy to me, because part of why I like these games and keep coming back to them is because they are less of a time investment… and yet I spend so much time at them, that’s pretty well a lie. Oh well, I’m having fun.

So I bought this game on a whim, and it has me entranced. It’s a download-only PC game, and you can buy it on Steam… they’ve got a website here.
Basically, what this game is is a weird combination of both music rhythm games and falling-block puzzle games. You load the game up, and you insert a favorite MP3 or whatever. It reads like every file format ever, and even just CDs. Then you pick a mode. They call them characters, but each one plays different enough that it’s basically a different mode. There are hardcore point modes where it’s all about being the best and having like these crazy fucking reflexes to score these huge combos… or you can just play the fun silly ones like I do. I play “Vegas,” which has a random shuffle instead of any sort of skill-based way to take care of your blocks. I also play a lot of “Mono-pro,” which takes the game away from puzzler aspects and makes it more of a… reflex dodging game where you have to grab colored blocks and dodge grey blocks, trying to build up a multiplier.
Every level is made by the computer based on the music itself. So like… if you play that song a second time, it’s going to be the same thing? And if anyone else plays that song, it will be the same thing. The levels it creates actually do a really great job of syncing to the music. The blocks themselves make sense based on what’s going on, but what normally gets me is how much sense the hills and turns on the little race track that is the level work with the song. Like… if it’s got a fast thumping beat, there’ll be all these little hills, and the little ship will bounce up and down constantly… well, here’s a silly example of someone playing a level on Mono. You’ll get the idea, I think.
Finally, you have scoreboards created for any song you play. If it’s popular, you can compete against the world! If it’s not, you can just compete against a few random fans of that song and yourself or your friends. The fact that it tracks all this leaderboard data in their own servers for any song you might plug in is pretty damn awesome, in my opinion. It doesn’t work perfectly, since it’s based on the Song ID stuff in the tracks. If you changed yours to make it a little different for some reason, you’ll be on a scoreboard by yourself. But for the most part, it works great. And if you don’t want to sit around, wishing that someone would play your favorite song so you can show off your high score, they have a selection of Indie tracks on an “Audiosurf Radio” tab where everyone has access, and thus competition will be, which is a smart idea. Hopefully those tracks will change on a weekly or biweekly basis, but it’s too early to tell now. I won’t use it anyway, but I appreciate it being there. Really, though, there are obviously a decent number of people playing there. I found mostly full leaderboards for things like Albuquerque by Weird Al, which is 11 minutes and 24 seconds worth of dedication to play through. It was fun, though. There were also pretty decently-sized leaderboards for pieces of the Persona 3 soundtrack.
The point is, this game is definitely fun. It would seem like a great way to listen to a new CD, or just waste a few minutes with your favorite songs when you get that “music game” itch, knowing it’ll always HAVE your favorite songs available. Not to mention the price is right at 10 bucks. If you like music games, you should probably give this one a go. It’s a good time!

So I’m still in a pretty good mood! So that’s neat.
I’m also happy to report that Project Get Involved In The Twilight Heroes Community goes well! The project basically worked around buying a Pouch of Many Lost Things and then buffing many random people in chat to give me something to talk about. And it’s working! I’m talking to people! And being weird. But it’s fun! There are a ton of nice people in the Twilight Heroes chat. It’s like all the nice people from KoL came over. It’s neat. I suppose my good mood helps with all that too… anyway, it goes well with that.
I just heard on the radio show that the March Item of the Month for KoL is going to be a familiar? This doesn’t really thrill me? I don’t generally get excited by familiars, I find, even though I got the P.R.E.S.S.I.E., and I love it. But I tend not to want more familiar… at the same time, Jick hinted at the mechanic, which sounds so weird I might have to pick one up. We’ll see. I’m also looking forward to seeing what the Item of the Month for Twilight Heroes is… I don’t know what the response to the Pouch was, and chances are it’ll be something more normal, again, like the Roderick’s equipment or something, but I can hope.
Man, maybe I should have a tag just for KoL and such talk.
Also of note is the fact that apparently EVERYONE wants to have an Endless Setlist party. So I’m going to try to get that going for March 1st, because it does sound fun and also, I am an achievement whore, and having that Endless Setlist on Hard achievement will make me happy. So mark your calendars, people! We’re playing the whole damn thing in a row! That’s… 2 hours and 21 minutes of music, according to my playlist of every song in non-DLCed Rock Band. Fun times!

So, you know, time to brag. The Diesel Sweeties guy twittered this, then I responded, and then he twittered this back. I feel all special. He likes the cut of my jib! I’m so proud of my jib now!

In other news, I have been in a great fucking mood! I blame MYSTERY, the thing I’m doing that I dare not speak of, for I feel it will lose its magic. So I won’t! But it’s silly and fun and it’s improving my mood, and I think that’s the good part, hm? Even Mom was all like “wow, someone is in a good mood today.” So I’m in a good mood. That’s good!

I also beat Hard Solo Guitar in Rock Band, and Sass of Potatoes is Big in Rome! And last night was like… the best Halo night we’ve had in a long fucking while… and… well, things are just pretty awesome, I guess. I’m even keeping up with homework! It’s all awesome. Yes. Awesome.

I’d do it, but I don’t know how to program and I can’t even get Role Playing off the ground in the time frame I want, (It’s temporarily tabled, which, though disappointing, I’m calling perfectly fine as long as I don’t fall behind in school) so this is for some random person out there.

I want Persona 3 KoL.
Well, sort of. I want a game like KoL, which is mostly browser and text based. But I want it to work like this. You have persona, if you will. Call them something else, probably. But these sort of… spirits that live inside you and are based on your personality. Now, in Persona 3,  these represent the character’s personalities decently, though not for your main character, cause you can flop them around all you want, and they’re sort of like Pokemon that you train and crossbreed and shit. So let’s combine those two.
You collect these persona spirits, and you equip one, and this changes your character’s personality. Equip this one, and your character is all emo, equip this one, and your character is a complete dick, equip this one, and your character is a goody two-shoes, equip this one, and your character is a pure Mr. Clean Trousers. So during the day, you go and interact with NPCs or whatever. And depending on your personality, you’re going to have different adventures and different options to deal with things. Perhaps even what personality you start a quest with could affect the way it goes. Say if you start out being nice, then the quest becomes helping someone out, but if you start out as an asshole, the quest turns into trying to steal something that was already stolen for yourself.
As far as combat, I feel you could have actual combat too, in a Persona sort of “dark hour” kind of way, but it would also be neat if it could all be metaphorical sorts of combat to deal with various situation. Not real combat, just an abstraction of conversation shown with hit points and magic attacks and whatnot.
Granted, this would take a TON of writing, even more than something like KoL or whatever. But I would love it. That’s the general idea. Basically, a game with supernatural elements but which is based mostly on social interactions, I suppose. Or hell, just a game based mostly on social interactions in a neat way would make me very happy.

Other ideas I have that I think could tie into this concept would be the idea of having a “Soul Link” which was another player character that you would connect yourself to and help you out in some way. Perhaps who would become an NPC in the story somehow. Perhaps helping you out in battle “KoL familiar” style without actually being there, but giving the actual character some sort of cost and bonus for doing so. Granted, every way I think of to make this work in a neat way would be crazily exploitable with the idea of multis, which is kind of unfortunate, because I think that takes away the coolness, but I like the idea anyway.

I also see a problem with making this game work in that the main way I see games like this paying for themselves that seems to work well and I’m all for is this “item of the month” model, and I don’t know how this sort of model could be adapted to my idea. I think the likelihood of having equipment in any normal fashion would be very low. I don’t know.

Anyway, I got the idea down. Feel free to steal it, and I’ll play your game all day. Steal it and adapt it into some sort of card-based game, and I’d probably marry you. Or something.

Here are my plans for the weekend, so you can make me stick to them, whoever you are.
Tonight: Laziness, board games.
Saturday: Write majority of long, harder paper. THEN laziness.
Sunday: Write all of tiny, no stress, easy paper (seriously, our sources don’t even have to be peer reviewed. Weird), Halo night.
Monday which isn’t technically part of the weekend but whatever: Turn in tiny paper, finish long, harder paper.
If I do that, I will be CAUGHT UP ON HOMEWORK and I will not be stressed. Yay? Yay.

In other news, I was fairly sick, but I’m better now. Also, I’ve got all the software people have found so far in Twilight Heroes now, which is awesome, and tomorrow I should have the crazy hard space station open… also, I got the Delayed Gratification Merit Badge. Whee?
I feel like maybe I should be grinding for Silver Stars and stuff like everyone else in the game seems to be, but I dunno. I don’t mind donating for that sort of stuff, and grinding without even the vaguest of goals is boring. Or something. We’ll see, I guess.

I guess I should keep being good and go to class now, huh?

Man, did you see all that ice? Man! That’s a lot of ice.
Of course, the extended vacation from classes is making me even more iffy on the whole… doing homework thing… but oh well, so it goes. I’ll get back in the groove when I need to tomorrow. And who knows, maybe they’ll cancel my afternoon class too? They already canceled my morning one. I can dream, can’t I?

So for lack of anything better to do, I decided to try to get involved with the Twilight Heroes community more and chat. Results were mixed. I talked for a little, got buffed with Metal Detector, which is nice, and returned some lost objects to people who were nice to me, which was an awesome feeling, knowing I was giving them a buff they might not ever have access to… and then I ran out of things to say and just watched the text scroll by… and… yeah. Back to normal. KoL’s community is thick and I don’t know how to get into it, and so many Twilight Heroes players are just from KoL. Like me, actually, though I joined up before most of them did. But yeah, I don’t know. I guess I just need to be vocal, but I have so little to say. I’m not optimal, so I can’t often offer advice or anything. Eh, who knows.

In other news, Professor Layton is pretty completely awesome, although if I keep burning through it at this rate I’m sure I’ll have it beat in another day. Worth 30 dollars? Honestly, probably not. It’d be much, much easier to suggest at 20. But in the end, it’s another unique sort of experience that I’m having, and I’m willing to go that extra mile to support niche games, so I’m happy with my purchase. It’s fun stuff. Now if only I could get the weekly puzzle downloads to work…

Anyway, time to get food and go to work, I suppose. Wish me luck driving in the ice.

So apparently all this crazy sailing plinth crap ends up leading to a neat little side quest that gets you a crazy familiar called the El VIbrato Megadrone. And I want. So I’m working through the pirate content again so I can start figuring out how to get one. Who knows how long this will take me. Luckily, I don’t give a rat’s ass about being optimal, so I’m willing to waste however many days it takes.
Building my jetpack in Twilight Heroes also goes well. Twilight Heroes is really quite good, you know? I keep debating about donating for the Pouch of Many Lost Things this month, and then deciding against it. I mean it’s good, but I was overly dedicated to KoL for like… close to a year before I started donating a lot, because I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I took that many month break from Twilight Heroes because I thought there was no more content. It turns out I was wrong, but still. I just don’t know if it’s worth it yet. Also, the Pouch is neat because it is a heart vector, and as awesome as I think that is, I don’t get into the in-game chat or anything so as to have someone to go heart up in game. So who knows.
Apparently my mother is playing Picross DS? I showed it to her on a whim, and let her have Jonathan’s DS because he never uses it. It turns out she’s been doing them! Which is completely awesome in my book. Makes me think I should throw even more stuff her way, just to see what happens.
So Valentine’s is almost here. It was Valentine’s in KoL today, but, you know, real Valentine’s is coming up. I got to write some poetry today for it, I think…
Jonathan just paid me for half of Smash Brothers Melee. That was weird.
I’m still kind of moody, though I think I’m better in general? I’m still showing those little things I do when I get that way, but I don’t feel depressed. So I suppose I can deal with that.
People on the Talking Time are starting up Animal Crossing Wild World action. So I suppose I need to start picking all of those weeds, eh? I already got all the roaches out of my house yesterday.

Do you like Poker?
Your answer to that question is irrelevant to this game.

Do you like Puzzle League/Tetris Attack/Panel De Pon?
If the answer is yes, and you have a 360, you must play Poker Smash.

Take the blocks from Puzzle League. Associate each color with a playing card from 10-A. Put an additional suit on each block. That’s Poker Smash. All your normal puzzle league moves work just like normal, but in addition to your normal clears, you can also make various Poker hands, like Full Houses, Flushes, and Straights, in order to clear blocks for even bigger points than usual.
The controls work really well. Normally, controls would be kind of… pointless to talk about in a puzzle game like this, but the two-stick scheme they use is intuitive and lets them do some neat things. Basically, you move the cursor with the left stick, and slide the tiles with the right. This lets them do things you can’t do in puzzle league because of you having to tap to flip things, like dragging tiles past groups of tiles that would normally trigger a clear to use them somewhere else.
Other welcome changes include a Bullet Time meter which you can activate at any time by pulling the right trigger. I find it easy to forget, but if you spot a way to get an extra chain out of what you’re doing, holding down that trigger can help you make it happen. It recharges over time. You can also place bombs with the A button. You start with five, and a meter charges up to replace bombs you’ve used as you clear titles. The bombs will basically destroy the tile you put them on, letting you easily set up 2x’s Chains and get you out of sticky situations. It also freezes the scroll while the bomb’s fuse is going off, so you can use that to set up some additional clears. Both of these make the game a little easier earlier on, but once you get up to the fast, insane speeds, you’ll welcome these additional tools that give you more to think about. They connect with the game flawlessly.
The game comes with all the standard features for this stuff: A full Puzzle Mode, both Timed and Endless score attack modes, and full multiplayer for up to 4 people on Xbox Live, or two people split screen. There is also a little store you can buy skins to use in the game, and set up “custom playlists” of skins for the game to cycle through, so it only uses your favorites. It all works great. And it’s only 800 Microsoft Bucks. That’s $10. Considering the number of times I have bought copies of Puzzle League for $30 dollars over the years, that’s a steal.
One other thing I wanted to mention was the cleverness of one achievement I worked for and got today. There’s an achievement called “Self-restraint” that calls for you to go from speed 1 to speed 7 without making anything but 3 Combos. (They call them 3 of a Kinds, because of the poker theme, of course) This was really quite difficult, and really made me look at the game in a completely different way than I normally do. This is an example of a “Good Achievement” in my book.

I was about to skip this game, because I have little love of Poker. All the talk on 1up Yours made me decide to download the demo and try it. I bought it immediately after playing for like 5 minutes. If you like Puzzle League, this purchase is seriously a no-brainer. If you like puzzlers, why don’t you play Puzzle League? Also, you should try Poker Smash. It gets my crazy awesome seal of crazy awesome blogging approval.