The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’ve been watching Nichijou because I don’t like doing useful things like catching up on Doctor Who or getting work done. It’s got the sort of comedy I enjoy, certainly. It’s very surreal a lot of the time. I mean, you saw when I linked the video of the principal suplexing the deer, right? (I hope so, as I have found that they have gotten that video pulled from Youtube!) That’s pretty normal for the show.

I really don’t understand the general composition of the show, though.

Like, okay, I understand that the series is based off of a series of 4-panel strips: basically funny papers stuff. I mean, Azumanga was as well, so that’s not weird. However, the scope of this show is just all over the place. There are two “main” sets of characters, and then side characters of those two main sets that sometimes get screen time, and then a bunch of completely random little skits only tangentially related to those. For example, every so often the show will show some of “Helvetica Standard,” which is a comic that the girl in the Igo Soccer Club reads, which is a barely related set of skits to the main set of three girls in high school. It’s this incredible drilling-down into these side-side-side characters that really gets me. It’s clear that neither of the two main sets of protagonists are fully mined for humor yet (Hell, I feel like Nano, the Professor, and Sakamoto-san could easily carry an entire show all by themselves) and, frankly, going after my specific example, I feel like the Igo Soccer Club really has more room for funny jokes as well. I just don’t get the narrative need to go one deeper.

All the other random shit, like the jump-rope and rock-paper-scissors, well, they’re perfectly fine.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I tend to expect even my humor shows to hinge on their characters, and Nichijou really does not. It does literally whatever stupid thing the writers thought of at the time, and if they thought of something with their stock group of characters, fantastic, and if not, they slot them into the joke if they can or otherwise leave them behind. I guess on one hand, that’s kind of bold, as not having recognizable elements that make up your show makes it less marketable.

Eh.

Either way, I’ve enjoyed the first, what, 9 episodes enough to watch the entire season at this point. It’s just certainly not how I would have put a show together. Then again, they aren’t asking me to script any anime comedy shows, so maybe there’s a reason for that.

Essner had the idea that he needed to educate me on all the films, TV shows, and other such audio/visual media that I have been missing due to working, or just not seeking it out. An idea of a summer film series was created, and the first movie in this series was Hot Rod, a movie he had always talked up as being pretty hilarious. And why wouldn’t it be, really? It’s got the touch of the Lonely Island guys all over it. Surely it would be a good time!

I must admit, the film itself is pretty hilarious. It’s not perfect, but moment to moment, the laughs keep coming. Frankly, the only time the movie is not funny is when it has gotten silly to the point of making you wonder what the fuck you’re watching. I don’t have a problem with this: it isn’t a painful experience. It’s the kind of going too far I can be comfortable with. Key humor scenes involve Rod falling down the hill (the moment when Essner supposedly fell in love with the movie) and the assault of a poor man who had just had his motor home damaged by a flying Rod. Examples of when the movie got a bit too silly, but not to the point of pain was, say, the Cool Beans scene. Just a bit insane! But I suppose it works out.

The movie also does a great job with some of it’s minor characters. Will Arnet is, well, Will Arnet, so he’s fantastic. (BABY! BABY DON’T GO BABY! BABY! BABY!) Chris Parnell also makes a strong small role appearance. His work on Archer has really made me realize how fantastic he is when used correctly, as a sometimes-ridiculous-but-always-playing-it-completely-straight man, and that’s exactly what he does here to great effect. They filled those slots well.

Something about the film really reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite. I feel like this might upset Mr. Essner, as I don’t think he’s a big fan of the film. I’m not the biggest fan either (I though it was fine, but not spectacular) but there’s a similar vibe going through both. The world of odd people in a strange, not-modern-but-modern urban environment seems shared between the two films. I would not feel it out of place if both movies took place in the same town, or something along those lines. There’s also a similar level of awkward oddness attempting to be passed off as legit, serious conversation that connects the two films as well. It’s the main pool for humor in both movies. Granted, they both have their own way to pull from that pool, but it’s shared, nonetheless.

I’m very glad I finally got to see Hot Rod. It was a very entertaining film, and I would certainly recommend anyone who enjoys the Lonely Island to give it a watch, as you can see their influence in it. I can’t say I’d watch it over and over again, or need to own it on DVD like Essner, but I’m glad he finally forced me to watch it. I laughed and enjoyed myself.
Now onward to the next film in the film series…!

Going to try to write a blog post here in pages while I wait for my appointment. This, in some circles, is called “multitasking” or “making efficient use of your time.” We’ll see, I suppose.

During a family get together type situation, I was exposed to a show called Extreme Couponing. This show seriously follows people who do nothing but clip coupons and stockpile grocery items. Each episode follows two of these people as they go on a normal shopping trip for them. It is just flat-out crazy.

One of the bumpers for this show had a woman claiming that “my stockpile is almost as beautiful as my family” without a hint of irony in her voice. Another woman claimed that her gift for finding and using coupons was sent from God. She believed this was her one god-given talent. Another woman, who shopped at my local grocery store that I go to daily, bought 92 packages of croutons just because she had enough coupons to make them all free. I couldn’t look away from this sort of thing.

It’s also just amazing how the producers and editors of this show manage to insert drama into is ridiculous premise. They are putting dramatic music stings under things like a cashier forgetting to scan one coupon, or the store’s coupon policy only allowing the use of 250 coupons per transition. Oh no! It’s the stupidest shit, but sadly, it totally works, and pulling a 600 dollar grocery bill down to like 8 dollars is pretty insane to watch. You just stare with disbelief that these people would spend upwards of 30 hours a week couponing (which the iPad autocorrected to “coupling” at first, something I could better understand) and in even more disbelief that it works, and stores let this shit happen.

I guess this sort of stuff is how reality shows gain and keep an audience. I’m not about to spontaneously become a tv viewer or avid watcher of this show, but I salute TLC for making a show about a ridiculous premise that was fun for me to watch for a few hours.

There are two kinds of sports games I enjoy: Tennis and Golf. Mario is responsible for both of those obsessions, so blame him. In any case, I watched this Giant Bomb quicklook of Virtua Tennis 4, and the main campaign mode seemed so crazy that I had to give it a rent and a try.

The main gameplay of Virtua Tennis 4 is unchanged from any number of Tennis games I’ve played. You have a few buttons for different types of shots, aiming the ball high or low or whatnot. You do have a power shot, which is strange in a game with real tennis players, but I can’t complain. Your tennis player has a “style” and by following that style, you build your meter which, when full, you can use to deliver one of these special shots. For example, your tennis player may have the style “Strong Forehand,” and when you make forehand hits, you charge the meter. These special shots are not like Mario Tennis ridiculous shots, but are instead a full-power slam, even if your player isn’t in a position to do one. They’re easily returned if someone is expecting them, but you can use them to vary your attacks and get a point in as long as you’re paying attention. All this is fun, if the same tennis game you’ve played over and over. I personally hadn’t played a tennis game since I got Sega Superstar Tennis for like 3 bucks, so I was happy to dive into that same fun gameplay again.

What really sets this game apart, though, is the World Tour mode. Now, I’ve seen a lot of reviewers being down on this mode, but fuck, I loved it. It was created pretty well especially for me, and I really enjoyed it. Basically, the entire mode is a series of board games. There are four boards, one for the road to each major tennis tournament. You move along the boards by playing “tickets,” which are basically cards with numbers on them. You have two hands of tickets: one is drawn at random, and always draws up to three tickets at the beginning of every turn you take. These just have numbers from 1 to 4 and let you move that many spaces. You then have another, supplemental hand of three tickets, which you can buy on “management office” spaces. These can be numbered tickets as well (it’s always good to buy a 1 space ticket, just in case) but also are things like the “Rest Ticket,” which lets you basically create a “rest” space to improve your player’s condition anywhere on the board.
On the board are a variety of spaces. Some are tennis matches and tournaments, of course, but some are training minigames that you use to improve the skills of your tennis player. Most of these minigames are actually pretty fun. For example, there’s a serving trainer where you’re serving tennis balls into a goal guarded by a goalie (which is weird, for a tennis game) and a defensive running trainer where you’re collecting coins left while trying to keep a volley going. In all, there are about 8 minigames, and they switch up enough that I never got bored of any of them. Different types of training helps different skills, so if you really want to specialize, you may have to force playing one over and over again, but I didn’t, and I did fine. There are also spaces where you do things like donate money to charity, or give a tennis lesson to some fans. These spaces, as well as winning tennis matches and tournaments, increase your number of stars. All tournaments have a minimum star rating to enter them, and you have to balance gaining enough stars for the next big tournament with training up your skills and keeping your tennis player well-rested. (If you let your condition get into the red, bad things happen during matches. I only had it happen once, but when I started the match, the game told me my ankle was bad, and occasionally my player would start limping. Not good when I’m trying to return a hard volley! I lost that match, and made sure that never happened again.)
I found balancing playing the board game well, broken up with fun tennis matches, really rewarding. The game constantly unlocks new gear for your tennis player to wear, as well, every time you accomplish something, so you get lots of rewards for doing even silly things, like doing 5 fan meetups and whatnot. Some of this gear is really, really silly, like a big tuna fish for a racket, a jester hat, or Red/Blue 3D glasses, so if you don’t want to take your tennis career seriously, there are plenty of options for making yourself look ridiculous, which I appreciate. There are even special charity matches called “Fancy Dress Party” where you get bonuses for dressing up as ridiculous as you can.

The one thing that just flat-out didn’t work was the game trying to have a story. You constantly get popups telling you what’s happening with your fan club, and conversations with rival tennis players. It was just kind of silly. I would love to play through a tennis story, but that’s not it. When the last person I faced in the last tournament was my original doubles partner I had kicked to the curb long ago (gasp!) I just kind of shook my head. Apparently it was really trying to make something of a story! Who knew?

I wouldn’t pay full price for Virtua Tennis 4 and it’s ridiculous, out of place opening cinematic, but if I had paid $20 bucks for it, I would be EXTREMELY satisfied. This game brings fun arcade actions with an interesting single player mode, and has all the online options one could want. It also has Kinect support, if you had one of those and wanted to fuck around with it. I don’t, and certainly didn’t want to, but that’s a nice bonus if you have one of those things. If you like tennis games at all, Virtua Tennis 4 is a fantastic rental or bargain bin purchase. I loved it.

Wandering about on the iPad, I sometimes come across games that are neat and stuff. Recently I noticed that Enigmo HD was a buck. This, in it’s non-HD form, was one of those early iPhone games that everyone said you had to play, but I had never played it. I thought it would be a good idea to give it a try.

Enigmo HD is really terrible.

In theory, it’s not. The idea is that you have streams of various liquids, and a certain number of tools. You need to get those liquids into their respective bottles as they stream out of the start point by putting things in the way of the stream. There’s stuff like a little tube that makes the liquid shoot out faster, a little trampoline that lets you bounce water off of it, and walls to stop water in it’s tracks. Each of these pieces can be moved and spun about in order to solve the level. That seems like a fine idea for a puzzle game.

However, the controls are complete and utter garbage. I mean, just completely. There is a ring around each object when you tap on it to spin it around and rotate it, but if you tap and drag on the object itself, you move it. However, I would say 90 percent of the time when I went to move one of the objects, it would start spinning it instead. You had to be so extremely precise, you couldn’t actually do it. This just baffles me, as they have this ring on the screen that just tells the player “PUT YOUR FINGER HERE TO ROTATE, OR INSIDE TO MOVE THE PIECE” but it doesn’t actually work like that. Moving the pieces into position is an exercise in frustration.

That could maybe be forgiven if the game wasn’t brutally time-based. There’s a timer ticking down with bonus points when you start the level. I have nothing against bonus points for solving things quickly. However, when that bonus point meter runs out, you lose the level and have to start over. This is a puzzle game, where you want to sit down and look at the level and ponder and think about how to solve it. Having a strict timer like that just goes against what I enjoy in these sorts of casual puzzle games. Add to that how you can’t actually manipulate the puzzle in an efficient way and thus will run out of time and, well, fuck this game!

Enigmo HD is not good! Not good at all. Maybe the original version was less stupid, but this is one of the worst iOS games I’ve played in a long time. I don’t often wish I hadn’t spent a buck on an iOS game, because it’s such a little investment for something I want to try, but this made me feel like I had wasted my money. Don’t touch it.

I rarely remember my dreams, but often, when I wake up slightly, my brain takes some part of a story from a dream and keeps telling it, onward and onward, and I have a hint of what I was dreaming about from that.

Apparently last night I was having a pretty interesting dream, because I woke up remembering a pretty badass premise for an adventure game, which I will share with you now.

I was in a hospital of some sort. It seemed to be a hospital for treating people with various “special” abilities. I didn’t have any of these abilities except one: anything I saw written on an official form became real. The hospital got hit with some sort of supernatural attack, and I was trying to escape because I was trapped in the hospital. However, I kept stealing forms. I’d fill my name in as a doctor on a form, and suddenly everyone would think I was one of the doctors. I’d fill in a form that diagnosed me with other supernatural powers (the one in the dream was seeing the future) and then I had them.

As I woke up, I started to flesh out this concept outside of dream logic. I’d have seen several forms that, basically, I needed to reverse or destroy because someone was using me. I would have seen a form that caused the hospital to be under attack by things like ghosts. I would have seen a death certificate of close friends and family that I would need to reverse. Finally, I’d have to, of course, figure out how to reverse the forms that got me committed to this place in the first place.

I think I vaguely mentioned this yesterday, but low power, high restriction magic is really cool. There’s something awesome about having to take a seemingly narrow-focused ability and use it to solve a variety of problems. I think this whole “form” mechanic really fits that, and my subconscious dream-brain really picked a perfect setting for having a lot of forms lying about to try to play around with. Of course, to be really cool, the game would have to have a lot of forms that did a lot of things that weren’t really important to solving any puzzles or progressing, which would be a potential problem. There could be a ton of different gamestates at any time, and narrowing it too much so there’s not as many gamestate possibilities kind of hurts the fun of the entire thing.

Thankfully, I don’t really have to make this game. But I thought it a neat idea my dream-brain had, so I thought I’d share.

Oh, right, I saw the new Pirates like last weekend. That was a thing.

The first Pirates of the Caribbean is an amazing film. It’s flashy, it’s fun, it’s everything a movie that’s trying to just be flat-out entertaining should be. The rest of the forced “trilogy” were not that great (though a recent re-examining of Dead Man’s Chest by Essner makes him think that maybe we were being a bit hard on the second one in hindsight) and felt like they were just kind of shit out to rake in more cash. They were disappointing, mostly because they added a ton of magic to a setting that worked best as being “low magic,” and just generally shit all over everything that was fun by flooding the entire movie with pointless back story and lore. Also, there were a million nonsensical deals. All that wasn’t what I wanted. I was hoping that this new movie, divorced from the characters and all that bullshit, would go back to the fun of the first.

It kind of did, and it kind of didn’t.

The good parts are when Jack Sparrow is on the screen, and allowed to do his thing. He’s still a very entertaining character, and when he’s released from the chains of bullshit back story, characters, and scene ideas, the film is very fun to watch. Overall I enjoyed the film because of this, but it still left a lot to be desired.

Let’s start by talking about Blackbeard. When he walked onto the screen, I was hopeful. He seemed to have some sort of magical sword that controlled ropes. “Wow, what a cool, restricted magical power that is really powerful on a pirate ship! That should be interesting!” But no, it just controls the ship completely, a ship that shoots fire for no reason. He also has a zombie crewman who can see the future, but for no real reason. He doesn’t need to be any of these things. He also captures ships and magically puts them in bottles. Why? Nobody knows. It’s never explained. It’s a pointless fact. Finally, he also makes really, really stupid decisions for no good reason. He’s a pretty terrible villain. Pretty completely terrible.

Still, at least it makes sense that they’d try to have a villain. A movie needs one of those, right? But there are characters that make no sense, such as the priest on the ship. Not only is his character completely unrelated to anything at all, but his character is also incredibly stupid and annoying. So much time is spent with this guy and the mermaid he is trying to rescue, and for absolutely no payoff. The payoff is that he rescues the mermaid, who brings Jack Sparrow some magical goblets for no reason explained in the movie which she wouldn’t have needed to bring to him if the movie hadn’t manufactured an extremely artificial reason for the mermaid to bring them to him. Essner suspected that he was there to be shirtless for the ladies in the audience. He was fine-looking, I guess, but I don’t know why anyone would care for a character so stupid.

There were plenty of other ridiculous parts of the film too, such as Ponce de Leon being some sort of powerful Spanish Necromancer who fashioned magical Agua de Vida goblets required for a magic ceremony one can only do at the fountain of youth. Those were all the sorts of things I normally don’t care about if the characters and movie are fun. However, the film doesn’t really completely deliver on that. If you are a huge fan of Captain Jack, there is still probably something in this movie for you, though you could probably get away with renting it when it comes out on DVD. I really wish they could get this franchise back to what made the first one a shocking, amazing success though.

It’s bedtime, and… oh shit. There’s no blog post ready for today…? Well, fuck it, linkdump time.

I find this comic pretty hilarious. It’s a new favorite. Yay comics!

Speaking of comics, there’s a reason why Curvy is such a NSFW delight, and it’s pages like this one.

Look at that guy dance. I mean, seriously. Wow.

Hands down game of the year.

Hands down game of 1983.

Ah, sweet romance.

Here’s a fitting monument to that master of the ring and the rap world, Macho Man.

Also, pony gifs. Lots and lots of pony gifs.

Well, hey, my browser has much less tabs open now. See you tomorrow.

As far as iOS games you should play go, you should probably play Spirits.

Basically, think of Lemmings. This game is that. I even just searched for “Lemmings” on the app store, and Spirits was the first search result.

You control a bunch of little forest spirits. They’re cute and well-animated. They’re trying to get to a little magic vortex. Any plants they touch along the way spring to life. You tap on them to make them change permanently into things, like a vine bridge, or a cloud that blows wind to move the spirits around. Your objective is to get a certain number of these spirits to that vortex, while bringing to life as many plants as possible along the way.

Seriously, it’s Lemmings. But it’s not just a rip-off. It does what Lemmings does well, but it adds its own interesting twists to the mix. Your little spirits are really light, so being able to blow them about with the wind is really a completely different sort of puzzle mechanism than most of Lemmings. Many levels revolve around how they all float naturally. You also don’t have a good way to block the spirits from moving around, a la the blocker role in Lemmings, which makes setting things up often a race against time, more so than I remember Lemmings being, where it was often me setting up a path ahead of time, and then blowing the blocker up to let everyone go to the door.

It’s a loving tribute to Lemmings, looks beautiful, and is a lot of fun in its own regard. If you like that kind of puzzle game, buying it really shouldn’t be something you worry about. Granted, I grabbed it for free during a one-day event, so I get the benefit there, and it is a bit pricy for the app store at $5. Still, it’s the app store. Sales and stuff are all the time. This is a really polished gaming experience that’s worth your time. I’m about halfway through all the levels, and I certainly wouldn’t have regretted dropping some cash on it.

4th And Battery put out a new little free app. It’s called Candy Train: The Train of Candy. (Okay, it doesn’t have the subtitle, but it should.) Since I found Unpleasant Horse a rather fun little distraction, and it had the low entry cost of free, well, I decided I’d give it a go.

I’m glad they opened with Unpleasant Horse.

I mean, there’s nothing WRONG with Candy Train. It is a completely functional game. It’s just very boring. Much like Unpleasant Horse, the gameplay is very straightforward. There’s a little train, and a grid filled with train track pieces. You have to keep the little train going as long as possible by rotating the pieces to keep a continuous line going for the train to run on. If you get the train into a loop, the game will break it after one go round, so you have to keep adjusting the tracks. You can speed up the train for more points, if you want.

What Unpleasant Horse had going for it, though, was that you felt badass. The gore, the music, the expressions on the Pritty Ponies, they all made you feel pretty awesome. Every time you’d slam a pony to the sawblades, you’d be like “BAM! I showed that pony what was up!” The game gave you good feedback for doing well.

Candy Train does not. A point meter increases and there’s occasional little choo choo train sounds. The art doesn’t really pop out at you. You’re driving a train through candy land, sure, but it’s not a particularly badass or cute candy land. It just is. The track turns pink to show you how far you have a safe line going for the train, but the train just putters along and the score number goes up. It’s just not giving the kind of feedback I expect from a game so simple, and certainly not from a Popcap game. It’s just no fun.

Try it, if you’d like. I mean, it’s free. But it’s clear why this game is free: it’s not nearly as polished as Unpleasant Horse, which could have easily been worth a buck if they had, maybe, fleshed out some of the leaderboard stuff from more in advance. I guess that’s why you make a skunkworks team like 4th and Battery: some stuff works, and some doesn’t, but you try everything. Still, I’m not really a fan of Candy Train.