The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

League of Legends is a really weird thing for me.

I mean, here is a game that is almost purely versus other people. It requires actual teamwork with your team to be anywhere near effective: you can’t lone wolf. People playing video games on the internet are still people playing video games on the internet, so you’re often fighting assholes.

Yet I do keep coming back to it. Sure, I take long breaks, but man, I come back, and it’s still fun. I wish I knew what about it made me care more than other very training and skill-based multiplayer games, but I do rather enjoy trying to improve and do well at the game.

Recently, I’ve been realizing how I kind of force people I play with to pick certain champions, because I only pick support characters, like Sona or Soraka. I wanted to expand my base, but my problem was that, well, I only want to play characters that I like the look of and man, I just kind of like support in general. I’ve been trying to eye people who are kind of support-like, but fill other roles, and try them.

First I tried Lux. I like Lux. She’s a caster/damage dealer of sorts, only her attacks all have some sort of movement interruption to them. Her little beam will stun enemies for awhile, and her little light field slows champions that walk into it. Thus, she can support people by holding people back for others to kill, as well as potentially using her little shield to save a friend. What I like most about her, though, is her laser gun. Her ultimate has a really short cooldown, and it’s this laser with a huge range that hits everyone in a straight line. It’s so satisfying picking off a nearly-dead champion with it, and you can really clear a lane of minions if needed with it as well. Plus, since it has such a short cooldown, you’re using it often, unlike some ultimates.
My problems with her is that I just don’t feel like I’m building her right. I mean, I focus on some cooldown reduction, so I can use the laser more often, and she needs some ability power if she’s ever going to kill, but I never feel like I’m really doing enough with her. I also find her shield mostly useless, though I’ve heard it’s great. Since it has to be aimed away from Lux to go off, I have trouble activating it in time to save myself, which would be one of the best uses of it. I feel like I’m still missing some things with her.

Next, I tried Alistar. He’s a healer-tank type who can take some damage, but also has a stun and can do this charging punch that both deals a good amount of damage and also knocks a champion back in the direction you hit them, potentially letting you smack people into other attacks. He has a little heal, too, but it’s never going to be too powerful because I doubt you’re going to be pumping up his ability power. His ultimate ups his attack damage, but also breaks him out of stuns and slows so he can escape, which is nice.
I feel like I could like Alistar, but I really am having trouble. His heal has shitty range, making it hard to heal friends with it, which everyone seems to expect me to do when I play as him. His stun, as well, has really finicky range. He smacks down in front of him, but it never seems to show up exactly where I expect, and I whiff with it quite often. His charge punch is fantastic for finishing people off, but I can’t seem to master the “stun and then knock into a tower” combo I’ve seen people do with him. My aim is always off, and unlike Tristana’s big shot, which you can still get use out of as a defensive measure to knock back people chasing you if you can’t use it offensively like that, Alistar’s punch can’t really be used defensively very well. I really do feel like I could like him, but I have a long, long way to go with him.

I also have my eye on Galio, as he seems like a tank I could get behind, but I haven’t picked him up to try yet.

Yeah, I’m working with things, and it is interesting. Compared with Aesa and Jonathan and such, I still have a long, long way to go, but at least I’m having a good time with it. It continues to be fun, shocking even me.

I feel like shit right now, and instead of writing a bunch of depressing bullshit, here’s some links! Everyone loves links, right? It’s the very backbone of our modern computing age!

This is the best chainsawsuit of recent memory. Really made me laugh.

I was also very pleased by this picture, though it has bunnies and foxes, so I’m kind of biased.

I don’t think there has ever been a more accurate comic created than this one right here.

In times of depression, it’s important to remember cuteness. Incredibly savage, bloodthirsty cuteness.

I’m not much of a fan of CollegeHumor in general, but when you make a fairly accurate and wonderful-looking Wes Anderson Spoof about Star Fox, well, I am there.

Mary Worth, however, does not approve.

A long time ago, I put a game called Rock of the Dead on my Gamefly queue. It was supposed to be a light gun game that used the Guitar Hero controllers. This, to me, sounded like a great idea. I mean, a typing game made a fantastic light gun shooter. I pictured something that was sort of a cross between Typing of the Dead and Gitaroo Man. Only with zombies, I guess, because zombies are overused. But still, it would be pretty sweet, right? Even a mediocre game like that could be fairly fun.

Holy shit, Rock of the Dead is terrible.

From the moment you turn the game on, you know you’re in for an extremely budget experience. The menus are awful. They’re like standard XNA fonts on something that is supposed to look like a notebook, but most of the text is too small to read, even on an HD screen. That’s quite a feat. I was immediately filled with dread, but I figured since I had it rented, I might as well try it. What’s the harm, right? Might be some easy achievements, if nothing else.

Once you get into the game proper, it gets even worse. The graphics are PS2 era, at best, with little to no animation on anything. There are voice actors doing a “story” here, but oh man, it is so terrible. And not in a “funny” way. It’s just bad. They’re trying to say jokes that aren’t even jokes, and the game seems to pause and wait for you to laugh, like there was somebody out there who would. Even in the first screen, objects are repeated exactly. There are these meteors, and they are literally cut and pasted everywhere. There is a grandfather character who is not actually animated to stand up, so I guess he kind of teleports around in this lawn chair all the time.

All this could be forgiven in the gameplay was actually fun, but they basically screwed up the one thing I wouldn’t think anyone would screw up: attacking enemies does not involve playing the guitar. If this is a guitar game, everything I do needs to sound like badass guitar riffs or play into an overall song. This game doesn’t do that at all. There is an incredibly generic and unsatisfying shooting noise each time you hit a note. It doesn’t feel like you’re playing a guitar at all. Sometimes there will be a “boss,” where you have to play a song, but this song is completely disconnected from the soundtrack of the level. Like, the soundtrack of the level just stops, this plays for 20 seconds or whatever, and then the level comes back in. There’s nothing musical about the experience whatsoever.

I hope nobody actually purchased this game. It’s pretty completely garbage with what could have been an easy, fun idea and an enjoyable budget game. Man, what an unfortunate waste.

Here’s some random ramblings about my thought processes: I find it interesting how my “poetry brain” works.

As someone who goes by a name that includes “poet” right in there, and who is writing a ton of poetry for her thesis, one would assume I can do poetry. I can read it, and think about it, and enjoy it. I totally can, too. That is something I am capable of. However, I find that, even more than most types of media, I can’t do that stuff with poetry if I am the least bit tired.

I mean, okay, give me a novel when I’m tired, and it’s going to be very slow going reading it, sure. I may nod off. But when I get done reading it, I can still tell you about it, and at least somewhat break down themes and things the author is attempting to do, and maybe even give a close reading or two of what I’ve read. I’m not going to say it’s going to be my best work ever, of course, but I can at least come up with something passable, that shows I’m the kind of crazy person who almost has a Masters degree in this shit.

However, today, I was trying to read and write a review of a book of poetry. I was feeling a little out of it and exhausted, but I was there to work, so I was trying to get it done. I would read the same poem three or four times, and if I didn’t nod off in the middle of it, I would get through and not understand a damn thing about it. I would have no clue what I just read. I’d read it again, and be unable to find the meaning in the words once again. I attempted to write a review, but I couldn’t say anything worthwhile about what I had just read. It was worthless effort.

This isn’t the first time it has happened, either. I just have so much trouble with poetry when I can’t focus, the kind of trouble I simply don’t have when analyzing other mediums.

I really wonder what it is about poems that makes this happen to me. Is it because I have to be able to hold the whole poem in my head to be able to see the connections, whereas something like a short story is a narrative line, and I don’t have to keep specifics, just generalities? That doesn’t sound like an implausible reason. Maybe it’s because poetry is so image-heavy, and when I can’t focus, I can’t create the images clear enough to see the reason why they’re there? That also could be it.

I really don’t know. I just know that poetry is something I really have to be in a state of mind conducive to thinking to be able to consume. You’d think I’d have figured out some other way to do it by now, but I haven’t, really. Oh well.

I get this kind of rage any time something frustrates me, but there is nothing that frustrates me more than my tech not working.

I guess I should explain.

I was having some very nice conversations with my boyfriend, with Cris, with Ecks, and I was trying to write a blog, because hey, I haven’t missed a nightly blog post since I started this bullshit like 2 years ago, so I’m not going to miss one tonight either! However, apparently our home phone line has been down. Nobody noticed, because it’s a waste of money that nobody uses, but she found out it wasn’t working, and tried to fix it, as well as getting my father and me on the case. Since we’ve done that, my internet has randomly disconnected once or twice a day or so, though not for long spans until this time I am about to tell you about, and the phone still doesn’t work as a phone.

Tonight, I was trying to do this stupid Xbox Live test thing, because why not? I like stupid Avatar items. I was running this, and at 45 seconds remaining, I get kicked off. Frustrating, sure, but it comes right back up and I start it again.

Then it kicks me off again.

I’ve been fighting for awhile now, trying to get this to work again. It’s been connecting and disconnecting, and keeping me from finishing my conversations, as well as writing a blog more interesting than this one. I was ready to throw my router across the room. I wanted to scream and wake everyone up. I wanted blood, and, frankly, if this doesn’t go through and post like it should, I will want the heads of everyone who gives DSL to this house. Every single person.

I get so angry. So fucking angry. I hate being angry. But you don’t fucking keep me from the people I love. I don’t care if you’re a modem or a person. You are not going to fucking do that.

Bleh.

I just finished a book called Riding the Trail of Tears. It was a fairly enjoyable experience!

It also has passages like this one. BILLIONS??

But okay, so out of context, that passage seems really, really silly, at the very least. That’s kind of why I took the picture. But if I had to pick one reason why I really enjoyed the book, it’s scenes like that which really sold it to me.

You see, the book is incredibly stream-of-consciousness. Tallulah’s thoughts are just rolling across the page with very little editing. They’re just thrown out there, and you really get inside this character’s head, even more so than usual. Tallulah isn’t telling the story, so she’s not deciding what to leave out for the readers. We’re just right there, all the time, even for the most stupid little thoughts. So when she looks at some of these extremely hormonal college students, it makes sense that, on some level, her mind would go to sex. I find it very endearing that there’s no “editing” of her internal thoughts, and we see her wondering if the two college boys fuck, and how one would feel having to be the bottom. It’s, at times, inappropriate, but thoughts like that fill a person’s workday. It makes it clear she’s a character with flaws, and also a character who enjoys thinking about other people fucking, apparently. Maybe I’m weird, but I find that highly relatable.

There’s plenty of problems with the book. It has a weird premise for a narrator that goes absolutely nowhere, for instance, and a ton of stuff happens that seems to have absolutely no significance. But man, I enjoyed it all the way through, and I enjoyed it because Tallulah was such a strong character. She was very realistic, and easy to love, even as she attempted to picture her clients naked. I liked that about her. I’d recommend it to people who aren’t immediately turned off by the weird premise or that passage up there. It is, indeed, an entertaining read.

I finally started playing Nier again, and as I continued, I basically fell completely in love with it. It’s creative, heartfelt, and weird. I love it. But I’ll talk about that more once I finish it.

What I want to talk about today is Nier’s main character. I believe his offical name is, oddly enough, Nier, though I was tricked into naming him Alexis because the game was kind of unclear why I was typing in a name!
Basically, I just kind of love his design.

I remember all the discussions about the design of Frank West, and how they set out to make an “ugly character.” They wanted to make something that would appeal to western audiences, something that wasn’t a “pretty boy.” Nier is much this kind of character. So much so that, apparently, they released a second version of the game in Japan which is exactly the same, but they replaced him with a Teenage Pretty Boy, which just kind of blows my mind. I don’t know why they would do that to a character who is very deep and very different from your normal protagonist. Even just looking at Nier, you can just tell. This is an older man, middle-aged or maybe even older, with greying hair. He’s strong, sure, but not a buff, “sexy” strong. Instead, he is a hardened over years of hardship strong. He doesn’t look like any other game protagonist, and they don’t achieve that by making him look super-crazy. He’s just a type of guy you don’t see.

I feel like his character (Again, at least as far as I’ve gotten. I haven’t beaten my first playthrough yet) is also a departure from the norm. He’s a “good guy” who is out to help people, but he does it in a very real way. His heart is in the right place, but he doesn’t always feel he can solve any problem he comes across. (At one point he asks, “But what could I do? I’m just a big, dumb guy who hits things. What you need is a doctor.”) At the same time, it’s not in a dramatic despair way. If he can’t help, he can’t, which sucks, but that’s really all there is to it. He has a lower intelligence stat, but a high wisdom, if you’re using DnD sort of terms. When he’s nice, he’s doing it because he feels it’s important, but also because he is definitely getting something out of it. He’s helping his daughter in all he does, but if he can help out some others on the way, all the better. He’s a single father who is a bit awkward around his daughter, trying to be a good dad while also having to run around and fight to cure her of illness.

Is any of this rambling making sense? He’s a powerful character because his looks dodge stereotypes in a mostly realistic way, and his character is built with actual realistic motivations for doing the huge number of bullshit things your normal RPG hero does everyday. On top of that, the dialog and banter in the game is really top notch and by far the best thing about it thus far. This, from a game where you can ride a boar and use it to DRIFT AROUND CORNERS. So yeah, this is pretty solid dialog I’m talking about here, and the voice actor for Nier does a great job of selling it, too.

Nier is certainly one of the strongest, most well-thought-out protagonists I’ve seen since, say, Francis York Morgan. (That’s supposed to be a compliment. If there’s one thing about Deadly Premonition that works, it’s that Francis York Morgan is a completely realized and internally consistent character who is completely interesting to watch and learn things about.) I really look forward to seeing the rest of the game, and the twists it supposedly throws into things. If you enjoy games that are sometimes a little off, but do really amazing, interesting stuff in the game design space, you really should give Nier a shot as well. I waited awhile, but I’m very glad I got to it.

I’ve been wearing glasses for a few days, I suppose. How as that been going?

Pretty well?

I mean, there is no doubt that I needed these. From the moment I started wearing them, I was kind of blown away by how much clearer my vision was. I left to pick up my glasses, taking a look at comics on the door to my office. When I came back, wearing the glasses, I was shocked at how much better defined the lines were on those same comics. It’s amazing.

Still, there’s a lot I need to get used to. I’ll take them off to shower, or sleep, and I’ll forget to put them back on. They’ll get smudged, and I won’t be able to really tell if they are or not, so I’ll hesitate in cleaning them or whatever, and end up feeling kind of silly. Bad habits I had about reading things out of the corner of my eye so that my eyes didn’t have to focus so much really don’t work with the glasses on. There’s a lot to get used to again.

Driving home from St. Louis today, I called my mother. I didn’t hear her pick up, so I figured she must be asleep. However, she had picked up. I assumed I was wearing my bluetooth earpiece, because I felt something behind my ear, but it was just my glasses. Awkward.

The thing that really gets me about my glasses, though, is that nobody really comments on them. I don’t know if I just look like I always should have had glasses, or everyone assumes I don’t have my contacts in, or what. But seriously, almost nobody has said anything about them. I mean, that’s a better reaction than them being incredibly repulsed, to be sure, but I’m not sure what to make of it.

Still, I can read. That’s a benefit. I’m going to keep reading things, I think.

Pokemon is out and everyone is excited about their Pokemons and things of that nature, which is cool.

I can’t do it anymore.

I have so many fond memories of Pokemon. I remember seeing it in Nintendo Power, and being so incredibly excited for its release. I remember playing Red for hours and hours on end, and even more on Gold. I remember being frustrated that I, at random, picked the version without Vulpix time and again. I remember buying tons of Pokemon trading cards, and going to a Trading Card Game Day at Toys R Us and playing with lots of little kids who did not completely understand the rules, but who were super excited to be playing. Hell, I remember going to Pokemon Center New York, and buying a Pokemon Mini because why the fuck not, and buying shirts and plush toys and generally being excited about it. I remember buying Ruby during that trip, because it came out then, and I wanted to play it on the way home. I remember watching the show, and buying DVDs of it because I am so entertained by this children’s entertainment. I remember Pokemon being the gateway to all this ridiculous furry shit I’m wrapped up in, which has lead me to basically every important romantic relationship of my life.

Pokemon is important to me. I love Pokemon.

I have played Pokemon, though. It’s the same game over and over, only with new monsters that I tend not to like as much as the old ones. I mean, okay, occasionally one will come along that I really enjoy, but I mostly want my Vulpix and my Eevee and my Wobuffet. In a perfect world, I want them to do the same things they’ve always done and I want to do them again and again.
Nintendo gives this to me, but it’s taken awhile for me to realize that I don’t really want that anymore. I’ve played that. I want something new. I want something different. Even getting Spaeth to make me eggs of all the Pokemon I wanted to start with, and the appeal of the Pokewalker, wasn’t enough to get me to play Soul Silver much. I just want something new.

I mean, look at Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. I have played so fucking much Mystery Dungeon, because it’s the Pokemon I love with mechanics that were certainly fresh when I started (it was really my first roguelike that I ever seriously got into) and are much deeper and more interesting than the actual game is to me at this point.

Everyone playing White and Black? I hope you enjoy it. I resisted buying it, and every time I think about giving in, I know I made the right choice. Maybe in another generation or two, I’ll be ready to hop back in. I just can’t play the same constant, very long grind to make the few Pokemon I like kind of useful to defeat some gym leaders and then hit a hurdle when I get to Victory Road because everyone is like 10 levels higher for no reason again. I can’t do it right now. I may not be able to do it again. You all best love Pokemon for me, though! Love it hard. Thank you.

There are plenty of questionable design decisions in Army of Two: The 40th Day. The controls, for example, are absolutely perplexing, and do nothing but frustrate. You can’t switch weapons when close to your teammate, for example, because the same button that switches weapons starts a game of Rock Paper Scissors, which is obviously more important in a game where you have to both work together and shoot people.

That is not the thing I want to highlight, though.

Essner and I were playing through, because hey, it was there, and we had started the campaign awhile back. After a dramatic cutscene, we got to a boss, where we then died. Well, no surprise there. The game is kind of hard and we’re fighting with the controls and aren’t great anyway. Might as well try again.

Only the game respawns us back before the last firefight. Then we have to watch the cutscene again: it can’t be skipped. Then we get back into the boss battle, and die immediately.
Then we do it again.
And again.
And again.

This is a third person, cover-based shooter. Have these people just never played other games in the genre to learn where to put checkpoints? This game developer has at least made one other game before, namely the first Army of Two. Surely they received feedback to tell them this is a bad idea? Hell, have these people EVER played a video game before? Nobody is okay with unskippable cutscenes, especially when you have to watch them a second time. This is why you checkpoint after every single cutscene.

This is simple stuff. Simple, simple stuff. The controls and such, I can believe. They tried to do something to give the player more options, and it kind of fucked up. Alright. I understand. But I just can’t understand how a game developer in this day and age can be completely clueless on how to put checkpoints and cutscenes in their game. There is years of history of video games to learn this from. Years. Congratulations, EA Montreal! You sure know how to go out of your way to fuck up what could be a fine to fun experience with mistakes nobody at this point in the history of video games should make.