The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Here’s my mood right now. In, you know, a progressive mixtape of songs linked on youtube. If you listen through it all, let me know. That’s cool of you. If not, well, no worries. Hopefully my mood will not be shit tomorrow, and I’ll write something.

Alternia from Homestuck’s AlterniaBound soundtrack

Hopeless Bleak Despair by They Might Be Giants

Failure by My Robot Friend

Un Dia by Juana Molina

Want It All Back from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack

Grace and Glory from the Jet Set Radio soundtrack

Advice [FLCL Arrange Version] by The Pillows

Skies of Skaia from Homestuck Vol. 1

Three Minutes Clapping from The World Ends With You

Up to the Roof by Blue Man Group

It’s Getting Better (Man!!) by Oasis

When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade by The Boy Least Likely To

Fear (Rez Version) by Adam Freeland

Killed by BR8K Spider!!!!!!!! from Homestuck’s AlterniaBound soundtrack

(I wrote this while I was really raging. Really angry and depressed. I left a bunch of really angry tweets and stuff in my wake. I’m still angry about it, to some extent, but have mostly chilled. Still, here it is, uncensored. I can’t bring myself to write something more entertaining and I’m just… yeah. Seriously, though, thanks to everyone who extended support on twitter and otherwise about this bullshit. It’s more than I deserve, really.)

Today I was supposed to start hormones!

Man, did that get fucked up!

I call to make sure they’ve received the letter to let me do this stuff today, just to be thorough. Turns out, no, they have no idea where it is. Nobody has it. It’s gone. I can’t have the appointment if I don’t have the letter. There’s a slim chance I could get a copy of the letter from Dr. Friedman before the appointment, but it’s very unlikely, as the appointment is before she’s actually up. I don’t have a copy myself. They lost the one I got in the mail. I had to cancel because otherwise they would charge me for the appointment anyway. Soonest I could get in again was next week.

Another week! Another week gone. Another 7 days of my life where I don’t get to be myself. Another 168 hours of not having what I’ve been wanting and working towards my whole lifetime. Just another fucking disappointment. Another fucking delay.

Seriously, at what point do you just give up? When have you been fucked around and jerked around enough? When do you just give up on life when life won’t give you a fucking break? I mean, what’s going to happen next week? Car break down? They lose the letter AGAIN? Won’t accept the copy I bring them? When does it end?

It doesn’t end. It never ends. Being yourself is a failing prospect in the world. Depending on another person for anything as simple as taking a fucking letter out of the mail is impossible, as it will never amount to anything. No amount of effort on creating yourself will ever be worth anything. No amount of hopes and dreams will ever come true. This is a world where you aren’t free to decide any fucking thing about what you do, where you go, or who you are, and if you dare to deviate, dare to hope that, at some point, life might work out and be something positive, well, you are fucking wrong.

Years ago now, I pulled myself out of depression. I pulled myself up, and I decided that I could do this. I could make things better in my life. I could be myself. I tried. I tried to do everything the way I was supposed to. I was patient. I was nice. I didn’t push anyone.

When do you let yourself be pushed around enough for being nice? When do you say that enough is enough, and bullshit is bullshit, and fuck you and how you’re keeping me down? When does that happen? When the fuck does that happen? At what point is “Well, it’s not that big a setback” no longer acceptable? At what point is “In the big scheme of things, this is nothing,” no longer alright?

I am telling you, that point is right now. It’s no longer alright. It’s no longer fucking alright. Everyone holding my life hostage can fuck off, get their shit together, or enjoy my fist slamming into their face.
Fuck.
I give up.

Rage was one of those iOS games that people wouldn’t shut up about how pretty it looked. “Man, it’s like a real game!” they said. The last game they said that about was Infinity Blade, which I scoffed at, until I played it, and then I had a decent amount of fun. So, you know, Rage was a dollar so I decided to try that too. Why not, right?

Rage is certainly a game.

Well, okay, I will say this about Rage. It proved to me that motion controls for a shooter actually work on iOS. I would have never thought it! But I turned it on to try it, and it actually seems like a legit way to play. After you get used to it, it makes whipping around quickly to hit multiple targets way easier than using a virtual thumbstick on the screen. It’s totally something you have to get used to, but I understand now why people would want it as an option.

Now the game that you play that way? Mm.

Rage is essentially a light gun game. You have several stages that your character walks through without you really controlling where he goes. You shoot at mutant to kill them, while picking up bonus money, health, and ammo. You can also shoot targets for more money, and dodge rocks enemies throw at you with a dodge button. You go for high score, and that’s about it, though I suppose there is a bit of a challenge surviving all the way through a level your first go-round on not-easy.

There’s definitely a little bit of finesse, I suppose. You have three weapons: a shitty pistol that has unlimited ammo, an assault rifle that looks like an AK-47 that can fire fast but only has marginally more punch than the pistol, and a shotgun that reloads slow as fuck but can kill most enemies in one shot, especially if it’s to the head. You have to balance finding ammo with shooting, and not go all trigger happy, because the pistol is not great to be stuck with. I actually started starting some runs out using the pistol, just to build up a surplus of ammunition for the other guns before I started really getting swarmed near the end.

Still, in the end, it’s kind of a light gun game without the visceral, fun feel of having a light gun in your hand while you play. Which does make it lose something. There’s also this announcer guy who they obviously think is supposed to be funny or endearing but really kind of falls flat, as far as I’m concerned. He’s like Mad Moxxie, but much less cool. I kind of wished he’d shut up after awhile, and then I remembered I could mute my iPad! So there’s that.

Anyway, it is a nice showpiece for how pretty 3D graphics on iOS can be, but it’s really just a little high score game to build hype for Rage. Which is weird, since who knows when that will be out and Rage has been out on iOS for awhile now. If you’re desperate to shoot things on iOS, I suppose there are probably worst uses for your dollar, but I wasn’t too impressed with it. Once I saw all the areas, I was kind of done.

I made a sticky note on my desktop that says “List of Blog Post Ideas” that I keep adding to, but every time I sit down to write something I never want to write about anything on that list.
So let’s not.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Homestuck lately. I still read it, and I still enjoy it, but it’s really kind of lost me as being extremely dedicated to it. I no longer debate what’s going to happen, what the meaning of this or that is, and so on. It just doesn’t do that for me anymore. I wrote a forum post about why that is here, I suppose. Still, if nothing else, I still really love many of the musical albums. I still listen to The Felt fairly often, and newer tracks like this one, or this one, or this one are really fantastic. (Okay, maybe not the last one.)

While I have still not played a single game, my brain continues to make me drawn to Furoticon, the furry porn card game, just because, seriously, what the fuck? They’re coming out with a new set, Second Vanilla, but I’m really frustrated they aren’t making new preconstructs, because the new art looks super-pretty and they’re doing these in-character blog posts for characters on the new cards and I want to check it out! But I’m not buying individual boosters and being all luck of the draw with it. That’s really kind of silly for a game I’m not actually going to play. Still, I’m still just amazed that not only is the game still going, but they’re managing to get some pretty awesome and famous in the fandom artists on board for card art.
Eh, who am I kidding? I’ll probably go weak at some point and order some boosters.

So the Youtube App on my iPad has gone to shit, and I really don’t know why. It can no longer play a simple Youtube video. It keeps stopping in the middle, and every time it does, it loses what buffer it had. Stops constantly. Like every minute. I really want to just watch stupid let’s plays in bed, but it won’t. I mean, it plays Giant Bomb quicklooks just fine. Why it can’t play a Youtube video in an app specifically designed to play a Youtube video is beyond me, and really frustrating. You didn’t used to be so stupid! Get better so I can watch my stupid Let’s Plays!

Really, though, a lot of my time has been spent being worried as fuck about my trip to visit Brer. I’m getting all wrapped up and nervous about making a decent impression. I worry about what his parents will think about me. I worry about interacting with his sister. I worry about being a horrible-looking motherfucker and if that will fuck our long, loving relationship up. I just worry about it. It’s a lot of worry. It’s my current biggest worry.

What else has happened to me? Well, I took a test to graduate. I bought a ton of clothes. I freaked out and was depressed. I finally got my letter and scheduled my fucking appointment for Hormones, so that’s happening Wednesday. I did some homework. I played a ton of Pocket Frogs, but I’ve already talked about that. It’s just my life, I suppose. It continues.
It keeps going, whether I want it to or not. Whether I feel like shit, or mostly okay.
It keeps on going. Hopefully for the better.

Some people on Talking Time were talking about Tiny Tower, a game coming out, and they were like “I’m so excited and it will be good because it’s by the people who made Pocket Frogs.” That video looked good, and I had seen Pocket Frogs a lot on the iTunes store, and it cost nothing, so I gave it a download.

Holy shit, Pocket Frogs.

Pocket Frogs is basically frog-based Viva Pinata, only a bit more straightforward. You get frogs of different patterns. By breeding them, you create more frogs. You can breed two frogs together that you have tamed and are in your frog habitats, or you can go hunting for frogs in the Pond minigame and sex them up. New frogs are born, and you can mate them, or sell them for coins. You buy new habitats for your frogs, special breeds to play with, and decorations. As you breed more frogs, you level up, and unlock more complex frog types. You can play little minigames with your frogs to make them happy, if you want, and win prizes. Mostly, though, you’re trying to breed expensive frogs to sell for capital, and frogs to match up with daily challenges and so forth in the game.

The deal is that it’s microtransaction based. You can buy stamps to make items you buy or send to friends show up faster, or potions to make your frogs mature and be happy faster. If you don’t do that, everything takes a set amount of time to happen.

Personally, I love that you have to wait. It makes the game a very low time investment. I check on my frogs like once or twice a day to breed some new ones, make some money, and so forth, and then I don’t have to worry about it. Things don’t go bad if you don’t check in. There’s no punishment for playing slow. It actually kind of rewards you for it, because you aren’t pressed to spend money. It’s pretty fantastic in that way. It’s a complete game without spending tons of cash. I love that. That’s smart microtransaction design, and I appreciate it.

It’s free, and it can be a timesink if you really, really want to maximize the value on all your frogs. (I don’t.) But it’s really cute, and a great time without spending any money. I’m poetfox on Plus+. Friend me and send me a frog or something! I’m really enjoying it, and it really makes me look forward to Tiny Tower, to be sure.

Crysis 2 is a game with guns. You fire these guns at both humans and aliens, and then they die.

Crysis 2 is a mediocre game.

There are a lot of things about Crysis 2 that are alright. The controls are solid, and the guns, for the most part, have a fantastic feel to them, something a lot of games get wrong. Even the wussiest pistol feels cool to shoot in the game, and that is to the game’s credit. Sneaking around with the stealth on is fairly easy, and can make you feel fairly powerful, though you do have to try or you will get caught. The first few wide open areas you get into are kind of cool. The game realistically keeps one in the chamber if you reload early, which was a shock when I realized it and a nice touch. It’s very pretty to look at.

I think that’s about all I thought was solid about the game.

There are two main problems with the game. One is the encounters. The combat encounters in this game get stale fast. You are a fairly powerful individual, as you should be, since you’re in a powersuit, and the designers quickly realized they had no good way to challenge you. Thus, enemies start being able to sap your suit energy, either through SMGs that fire ELECTRIC BULLETS or a little EMP shockwave that some of the larger tanks have. The SMGs are just annoying, but they do take away what makes the game feel unique, which just feels kind of stupid of them to do. The EMP shockwave on the alien tanks is just a huge clusterfuck. You have to sneak behind the big tanks to do any damage. (You can deal more damage to all aliens by getting them from behind, but for the big tanks, it’s required, not just a good idea to move forward quickly.) To sneak behind them, you must stealth. But they can knock you out of stealth with that EMP blast whenever they feel like it. It’s really, really frustrating. The “tank” enemies, heavily armored aliens, are also annoying because they just take so much ammunition to kill. It’s ridiculous. After about the halfway point of the game, Crysis 2 is throwing these enemy types at you CONSTANTLY, attempting desperately to make a combat scenario interesting. When it’s not doing that, it’s setting you up for stealth kills on a ledge, but once you snipe everyone and jump down, it spawns a million guys, making your stealth useless. It’s frustrating.

The other main problem is the plot. Now, it’s a shoot-guys game, so plot isn’t important, but goodness, it shoves it down your throat. I could live with that if it wasn’t so stupid. Your character has no connection to anyone in the story being told. He knows no backstory, and it’s never explained why things are happening. He’s just there, going through multiple MGS4 Microwave sequences because people he doesn’t know are telling him to in his ear. These people in your ear betray each other, and keep switching around, but it means nothing, because you never really understood what any of them were trying to do, so you have no investment in who is giving you commands. One minute, the marines are helping you. The next, they’re shooting you. Why? The game certainly doesn’t do a very good job of attempting to explain it. I guess there’s one bad marine? I think I kicked him out a window. I have no idea. Again, either let the story go away, or make it interesting. Don’t shove it down my throat and then make it not make any sense. From what I’ve heard, the story is still completely disconnected if you had played Crysis. It’s insane.

Both of these things are bad, but when you add it to the fact that this game is easily too long, you have a recipe for mediocrity. From about the halfway point on, I kept thinking “this game doesn’t have anything else to show me, I must be in the endgame,” but I wasn’t. It just kept going, and spawning more and more horrible encounters and having more and more cutscenes that were completely disconnected from everything. Bleh.

The base mechanics are fine, and the game looks pretty gorgeous, but it does so many things wrong and, at the end of the day, having a button that makes me as invulnerable as I normally am in a video game doesn’t actually make you feel badass, it turns out. Give it a rent like I did, if you want to try it, but I don’t really understand who would truly enjoy this game. At best, it’s a passable shooter that’s pretty.

Today I take a big important test to graduate. This is semi-important, and as I write this, I am trying very hard to reread a book so I can be prepared or something like it for the test. I’m trying! Seriously.

Anyway, I’m not going to write a serious blog post, but here are some things to look at so you’re not bored.

I found this funny. I did not find it die. I dunno.

This episode of Game Center CX was pretty fucking fantastic, so you could always watch that.

I’ve also been having fun watching Little Kuribo play through the trainwreck that is Duke Nukem Forever here. You could try that too.

Anyway, back to studying I suppose! Yay…

I’ve been trying to figure out clothes. One thinks “Oh, clothes are easy, you just wear fabric to cover up your naughty bits” but it is so much more stupid and complex than that. Especially in my hands, where I’m trying to master clothes of a type I am not familiar with while I deal with lots of conflicting urges. I need to look more feminine, but I also want to just be myself, and I’m a kind of masculine lady-person. I’d rather just wear the shit I have been wearing, but it would be useful to make a clear “shift” to help shift everyone’s perceptions. So I’m trying to find a middle ground, which is really the worst thing I could do. I’m not settling for looking alright. I have to be happy with it, and I have a fucking odd sense of fashion. It probably doesn’t look like it, but I’m really kind of super-picky when it comes to clothing. There’s also a partial problem that a lot of things I want to wear are things from my youth I was jealous about and wanted, and now I can have, but they simply don’t exist anymore. That is also frustrating. Things are frustrating!

Anyway, the point of that last paragraph is that I am stupid, clothing-wise. As I do my research and try to figure this shit out, I have two stupid rants that I would like to address to designers of women’s clothing in general. So if you meet any, make them read this blog post or something.

1. Have Real Pockets, You Assholes.
I look at clothing for women, even things that should have pockets, like pants, and they don’t have pockets. Sure, many of them have “pockets,” but they can only fit, I dunno, a tissue or a single dollar bill in them. They don’t count as pockets. They are stupid and useless. Who thought this was a good idea? I mean, it’s one thing to buy a garment without a pocket. That’s cool, you want to look a certain way, I get it. But to pretend to have a pocket, but not have that functionality is just stupid.
Now, I have heard the argument, “That is why you have a purse!” This is a semi-valid point, but there is one thing that I will never keep in my purse, and that is my cellular telephone. My cell phone is an object I need constant, quick access to, or the cell phone because significantly, significantly less useful. My mom never answers her phone. Know why? Because it’s in her purse, and she can’t get to it. I’m not going to be that person. Another person I am not going to be is someone whose phone actually makes noise. Fuck those people. Phones should always be on vibrate, and I can’t do that unless the phone is in my pocket.
Similarly, I listen to my iPod, oh, basically all the time. Having my iPod in my purse with the headphones coming out of it seems similarly frustrating from a usability standpoint. It also seems like it would look incredibly stupid.
At the very least, a bottom-half garment needs pockets that can at least hold a cell phone or iPod of a decent size. That’s just how the world works nowadays. My current research has discovered that pants with the keyword “comfortable” on the tag have decent pockets, so I am looking into that. Still, it’s just ridiculous that it’s hard to find a garment that serves such a simple function well. I’m not about to say that fashion shouldn’t be about fashion. That’s just fine. People who aren’t me can dress up as awesome as they’d like, and if they enjoy themselves, I am all for it. Me, I just want to be able to answer texts on my phone and listen to my iPod on a day to day basis, for fuck’s sake. The majority of stuff out there doesn’t seem to want me to do that, though.

2. Why Can’t Clothing Go All The Way Down?
Another thing I’ve noticed is that clothing for women cuts off far above the ankle. You can’t get a skirt that goes all the way down, and seriously something like 90% of the clothing in Kohl’s at the moment is a capri of some sort. I just don’t understand this. That just seems like it would bother the shit out of me. I’m not getting the benefits of wearing a full pair of pants or whatever, or shorts, which I don’t want to wear. Of course, the unavailability of shorts that aren’t essentially underwear is a completely different problem, and honestly, likely a reason why capris are so popular. But why not just make shorts that aren’t stupidly short? That’s a way better and less ridiculous solution.
While I will fight to the death about the fact that people, not just men, need actual pockets, this is something that is clearly a personal preference of mine. I mean, I think anyone who wears those socks that only go up below your ankles is insane, because that would drive me mad, but people really like those, so, you know. But still, there’s really a lack of other options.

I’m sure I’ll get super frustrated more in the future as I move on into this scary new world I am scarily moving into. But hey, at least I have a blog today, hm?

When you read a name like DEATH RALLY, well, you assume you will have DEATH and also RALLY. You also assume you’ll have an experience that is EXTREME, or X-TREME if you prefer.

I don’t know how X-TREME it really is, but it’s not too bad of a game.

There’s some comic-book style story when you start the game. It’s got good production values, but for the most part, you’re just racing, so it’s not really important. Still, it sets the tone for the game as being an incredibly polished and flashy-looking game for the platform. This is a top-down racer, like, say, RC-Pro-Am or, say, Rally King. Something along those lines. Of course, this is a DEATH RALLY so you’ve got a car equipped with guns and various other weapons, and can simply explode other racers instead of out-race them.

Frankly, I really appreciate the controls in this game. They realized how frustrating it would be to have a gas button on the touch screen, so instead they have a fairly large virtual analog stick that does gas based on how far you move the stick to the edges of it. It works way better than having a gas button, especially with this sort of top-down game. There’s also a big button to fire your weapons, but that button is only for your special weapons. Your basic machine gun always fires if there’s something vaguely interesting in front of you, so you’re never having to hold down the button. That’s just smart. There’s also two different camera modes. I find camera mode two, which keeps the orientation of your car set and rotates the track, to be WAY more usable than the default, which keeps the camera angle on the track set, but maybe it’s different for different people and I appreciate having the option.

In each race, there is a bunch of other racers, one of which is the “boss” who is likely going to win and who is hard to kill. You get money based on how many people you kill, where you place, and whether or not you took out the boss during the race. You can use this money to repair your car (which is never very expensive, so you’ll never be able to NOT repair your car, even if you get last place) and upgrade things such as your car’s armor, handling, and top speed. You can also upgrade the various weapons on your cars. These special weapons can be moved between cars, but things such as armor enhancements are on a per-car basis, so if you’re planning on doing a lot of car-hopping, it may be better to focus on your weapons first. In general, I find it extremely hard to win races just racing. I’ve done much better trying to explode all the competition so that I’m second place by default, because there’s only two cars left alive. Still, sometimes in spite of myself, I drive really well and win without much carnage. I suppose it’s good the game gives you the option to do things either way.

While you drive, you pick up “parts” of additional courses, cars, and weapons, which eventually unlock as you collect them. The game also has a big meter of your overall completion collecting all this shit on the main menu, so you know how much there is to unlock. There aren’t a ton of courses, but there are a decent amount, and the game uses mirrored versions of them all as well, for more variety. The developers have also put out tons of free updates with more new cars and courses to unlock over the life of the game. Since I bought it, they’ve put out at least one major update, and I know there have been several in the past before I bought it on sale, so that’s awesome that it’s being supported.

If you like those sorts of old-school, top down racers, Death Rally is an easy sell. It’s really polished and a lot of fun. I’m not sure if it’s worth the premium otherwise. It does eventually devolve into doing the same sorts of races over and over to collect more parts and money to upgrade again and again, which is fun in its way, but it doesn’t feel like it’s for any real purpose, just generic completion’s sake, which doesn’t engage me for too long. Still, it was totally worth the dollar I paid for it at the time. I’ve enjoyed myself.

And rolling right on into Back to the Future Episode 3: Citizen Brown.

I dug this one.

While the idea that most of the nation would be normal while Hill Valley is turned into a police state powered by Doc Brown’s ideas is a bit far-fetched, there’s no doubt it’s super-cool. Having Marty deal with completely alien versions of his family, girlfriend, and so on is also just a fantastic premise for puzzles and dialog in the game. I’m there.

I do have to say, though, that the number of “markers of the timeline” Marty is carrying around with him at this point is getting pretty ridiculous. He has 2 newspapers and 2 photographs, and that is the vast majority of his inventory for most of the game. How many of these things is he going to have by the end of the season? I know that’s all part of how Back to the Future shows this stuff off, but seriously, they are the vast majority of his inventory. It makes it hard to do interesting puzzles when you only have one inventory item that isn’t one of these space-fillers.

Anyway, the only real issue I had with this episode was not being able to see the puzzle pieces. Maybe I get what I wish for, where I was like “Man, these puzzles are so puzzles!” last time around, but I just completely failed to find the components to two of the big puzzles in the episode. Once I knew, for example, that you could interact with the statue in the park, it was immediately obvious what I needed to do, but I had no idea I could do anything but look at the thing. At least the goals and hints this time actually stayed focused on things that I hadn’t already done, which helped with these blind spots of mine.

The part I found most hilarious in the episode was Marty attempting to explain why all the time travel was a force for good in the world. He was having a difficult time explaining why going back to assure his family’s success while fucking over the Tannens as being a force for anything but his own personal gain. It was a very nice reference to the sort of “plot hole-ness” of the films while not totally breaking character or turning to the camera and winking at the audience. I liked that very much.

Anyway, the next episode set-up has me a bit worried that it’s going to be almost a reprise of the second episode. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I mean, I trust Telltale, of course, but they do make mistakes. I suppose we’ll see what happens when I actually get to playing it.