The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I recently played through the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 single player on 360! “But wait,” you may say, “don’t you own Bad Company 2 on the PC? I remember you mentioning something about the multiplayer.”
You are totally correct, I do own it on PC, yet I rented it on 360 to play the single player.
Yes, I’m not completely sure why I did either.

Still, I’m glad I finally played the single player, because it was FANTASTIC. Seriously, it makes Medal of Honor look like a fucking joke. I had fun the entire way through. You should play it.

The cast from the first Bad Company are back, and they’re still pretty funny! Granted, you have to seek out the funny conversations in this game. They don’t happen unless you dilly dally about going to objectives. But seriously, they’re hilarious. Just take a look at these. Amazing. The characters in this game are just fantastic, seriously.

Those characters are backed up by some really great gunplay. Basically all the control issues from the first Bad Company have been completely fixed. The game controls great, has good checkpoints, and gives you a variety of great weapons. Granted, it got rid of a lot of the uniqueness, too. You no longer can drive vehicles on big, open areas. You only do those in set sequences. Similarly, you have the standard “heavy breathing” healing method, instead of the syringe from the first game. This, especially, is a shame, because that was one of the coolest, more unique elements of the first game. Still, it’s all updated and it all works great.
As far as the guns go, I like the “supply drop” system they have in the game. Basically, like the first game, you unlock guns as you go along. Only now, whenever you read a supply drop, you can request any weapon you unlock. This lets you adapt for whatever situation is coming up. Enemy armor? Grab an RPG. Need to be close and personal? Grab and assault rifle and a shotgun. It’s a really friendly system that rewards you for seeking out more guns, so you can unlock them. It’s great.

The plot itself was not… great? But it was a plot. Things were connected together based on this silly fake EMP-type weapon that you end up stopping. You have a sense of progression, certainly. It’s serviceable. It works.

Playing through this game, I’m mostly just amazed at how good it is. The multiplayer is fucking fantastic as well, and this single player component is actually quite fun. Bad Company 2 just did not get as much praise as I feel like it should have. So I’ll give it some more praise here. It’s a fantastic game, and it’s probably kind of cheap now. If you want a shooter, and haven’t played it, pick that shit up. You’ll be thanking me.

Medal of Honor is hell of mediocre.

I mean, I don’t even know what to say about it, really. It was mostly a game of shootdudes or guyshoot, but was very, very vaguely based on reality. You play as these “tier one operatives” who have unlocked beards or something, and you play levels that seem very disconnected, very same-y, and are fairly uninteresting. Then the game kind of ends.

I have one rememberable moment in the game. There is a sequence where the game tells you lay down covering fire on a turmulent, and for the first time in game history, actually means it. You can’t just kill people. You actually have to cause a distraction for your teammates. That was pretty neat. Otherwise, I can’t really remember any moment in the game. Seriously.

Any variety in the game is kind of killed by the way the ammo system works. You can constantly ask your teammates for ammo, as long as you keep the guns you start with. This gives you 0 incentive to ever switch guns, which I found really frustrating, especially when the game gave me an LMG. I’m not an LMG sort. This system was pretty stupid. Sometimes they won’t give you ammo, and sometimes they will. It’s only if they perceive you need ammo. It’s dumb, and it keeps you from enjoying any sort of weapon variety, or from using the weapons you like most.

The game also likes to be really stupid with its objective markers. There was one time where I had an objective of “destroy an anti-air emplacement.” There’s the little symbol telling me where the objective is. Cool. It’s super far away, I can’t see, so I shoot at the objective marker, thinking the game would be sane. No, actually the emplacement is like, down and to the left a significant amount. I eventually squinted it out and found it after dying like 4 times. Way to be game! Way to be.

I mean, I guess I shot some dudes? I didn’t try the multiplayer because of the online pass bullshit, but the single player is really forgettable. If you really want to play through a shooter, play through something like Singularity first. Or CODBLOPS, since I’m sure that’s probably at least a bit more memorable. I don’t know. I can’t recommend Medal of Honor.

Yet I played all the way through it. I am so weird like that.

Have you played One Chance yet? Go ahead and give it a go, then we’ll talk about it. I’ll wait.

You played it?

Good.

On the Jick and Skully show, Jick said that he thought the way that the developer actively doesn’t want you to play the game a second time is “really cool.” Or something to that effect. That’s certainly what sets this game apart, I suppose, from other games of its ilk. You can’t go back and play it again. Feel free to try, but without actually working at it, there’s no way to restart.

I suppose that does say something, I guess, about how your own actions can’t be rewound like a video game. At the same time, there are only a few very binary decisions in the game, so it really kind of lessens the impact to some extent. I chose to work hard every day but the last, where I gave up and spent time with my daughter. It really seemed to be the only way to go for me. I suppose other things might have been fine options for other people to do, and I saw that there were options, but I didn’t really feel like I could make them. Maybe you made different decisions.

Still, I guess I’m just not struck by something like this, because when I play a game with multiple outcomes, my initial reaction is to not WANT to play it a second time, because it belittles the experience by letting me see the systems. For example, watching my brother play through Mass Effect after I had beaten it kind of cheapened the experience for me, as it let me see how tricksy the game had to be to give you the illusion of choice. I certainly don’t want to replay Mass Effect 2 for that reason. I understand that some people would, but I’m not that person. So the fact that this is a game that doesn’t let you restart doesn’t really affect me. Hell, I wouldn’t even had noticed if I hadn’t heard discussion about it after I played it.

So… yeah. I guess it didn’t affect me as much as other people. I felt my interaction to be so limited that many of the things happening didn’t affect me as much as some other sorts of art games. If you’re someone who wants to see every possible outcome, maybe this would affect you more? Who knows. It’s an interesting little tidbit, anyway.

Do you remember Yaris? Man, what an abysmal game. How about Doritos Dash of Destruction? Passable, but not great. These tie-in free XBLA games have not had a good track record.

However, I’m here to tell you that Doritos Crash Course is actually fairly fantastic, and totally worth a download and quick playthrough. It’ll only take you maybe an hour to enjoy all the content, but it’ll be a good hour! It’s a lot of fun.

The premise of the game is a game show along the lines of a Takahashi’s Castle or that new show I’ve heard of called Wipeout. Your avatar is a contestant on an obstacle course, and you have to run and jump your way through to the end and try to get the best time you can.
What this amounts to is a fairly well designed bit of speed platforming. You have to dodge timed traps and use conveyor belts to your advantage to get past obstacles, all the while trying to go as fast as possible. There are tons of checkpoints, so it never really gets frustrating, even though some of the later challenges can get a bit hard. There are three locations with five levels each, and they’re all pretty fun.

This is a great use of Avatars, mostly because they actually took the time to animate them well. They don’t seem plastered in in this game. They seem like they were actually made for this game, which is huge. I hadn’t seen that before. It was cool to see my avatar, rocking her Grant City PD shirt as she died over and over because I suck at platforming. It works!

Other than that, though, this is nothing you haven’t seen before, and there are plenty of better platforming challenges out there. For example, Splosion Man, which I’ve been slowly working through. But for the price of free, the game is totally worth letting yourself get distracted with it. The Doritos branding is only in the title, and not really anywhere else, so that’s not obnoxious. It’s even smart enough to have integrated friend leaderboards to maybe help you eek out a few extra minutes of free fun. The content runs out before it gets boring (unlike Dash of Destruction) and I had a good time all the way through. It has some sort of multiplayer too, though I haven’t tried it, but hey, that also might be fun.

It’s a fantastic little game that actually might be worth a buck. But it’s not. It’s free. So just download it already. At least you’ll have fun mining for free achievements.

Thanks to the super-cool dudes at On The Stick, I played Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now that I’ve talked about the gameplay, I get to talk about the plot. So, I suppose, this is spoiler territory if you care. Consider yourself warned.

—OMG SPOILARZ—

Poor Patrick Stewart.

There is so much bad monologue in this game. Every level opens up with some, and Patrick Stewart reads all of it, and it’s all terrible. I mean, my good buddy Patrick Stewart (yes, I have to write his whole name out every time) does his best, but man. Man. It was painful to listen to, because I know he can do better. I want him to make good money, of course, because he deserves it, but man. Man.

Basically, one Gabriel Belmont has had his wife killed. He’s a member of “The Brotherhood,” an organization that seems to exist mainly to have it’s knights die in places all over the world so that there’s always a corpse with a power up or background info around any adventuring location. He gets told that the world kind of sucks because of the Lords of Shadow by some dude named Zobek, who is Patrick Stewart, and that if he fufills some prophecy, and kills them all, then hey, maybe things will get better. This involves a mask for some reason I was never clear on. Oh, and Gabriel is also told he can revive his wife this way.

It’s not very deep, and there are no real twists and turns. Okay, there’s a twist, but it’s not a REAL one by any means. Basically, Zobek is the third Lord of Shadow in disguise. Or something along those lines. That’s just kind of lame. Also, I guess he used mind control to make you kill your wife, and that makes you unable to go to heaven? Something like that. In any case, no real surprises. Side characters appear, and are gone next level, and you don’t really give a shit about them, even when they die heroically. Even when you kill Pan, the person you probably interacted with the most, it doesn’t really mean much, because half the time he’s just a plot contrivance to get you to a new-looking location. One of which is the land of the dead. I think? I got a bit confused as to why I was where in the end, I admit. It just wasn’t interesting enough to keep my attention.

In the end, Patrick Stewart, now a guy in a dumb mask with horribly stupid-looking animation, talks for awhile, and then suddenly Satan appears for some reason. Satan is the last boss. He is by far easier than many other bosses in the game. Satan is kind of a pushover. You kill him, and he’s kind of gone, and there’s no reason for any of it. Somehow, though, this brings the plot to a close.

There are credits.

Then there’s a scene where, in modern day, Zobek goes to see Gabriel, who is still alive, and tells Zobek to call him Dracula. He then falls out a window.

What the fuck.

This event makes no sense at all. Zobek was killed by Satan, so why is he there? Why is Gabriel suddenly a vampire? Especially considering he doesn’t look anything like all the vampires I killed in the game. Is this supposed to set up a sequel? How could it? Does this relate to actual Castlevania canon in any way? I know enough to be perplexed at the very notion that it might. It was a pretty scene, I guess, but it’s disconnected from literally everything else in the game, and that’s the last thing they leave you with.

Yeah. the story in the game is kind of a clusterfuck. It sucks that games just can’t hack it often in that regard. Luckily, you can mostly ignore it, but especially with the production values on the game, it would have been so much better if there was something to care about. Oh well.

I entered a contest, and then I won a contest, thanks to the fantastic people over at On the Stick. I had entered both because I had a good idea and because I wanted to support them. They’re making a fantastic podcast over there, I think. Not just a “for Talking Time” production, but a podcast any gamer can enjoy. I’m certainly enjoying it.

In any case, I won a copy of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now, I wasn’t really planning on playing this one, but since I won a free copy, I made sure I blazed through the whole thing. On easy, of course. I suck at action games. Now that I’ve beat it, though, I wanted to comment on it a bit. We’ll do mechanics today, and story and other such things tomorrow. I have many things to say about it!

It’s a really weird game. I am just really unsure what they were thinking when they were developing this game.

Just to get the obvious question out of the way, it doesn’t feel like Castlevania or anything. They try to invoke a little of that with powers that unlock things in earlier levels, but I felt no need to ever go back to an earlier level just to be able to hold more subweapons I rarely used, so I didn’t do backtracking. I don’t think this is a problem, but I suppose it could be a problem for some people.
What it is, instead, is like… God of War mixed with all the parts of Uncharted where you’re shimmying along things? I don’t know. There’s so much traversal, and it’s mostly just inoffensive. It’s never any fun, but it’s never really frustrating, as they always make things magically light up to show you were to go. Then you get there, and you might solve a weird puzzle, or fight some monsters.

I personally really enjoyed the combat. I think it’s because I haven’t really played a brawler/spectacle fighter/whatever the fuck this genre is called game in a long time. I played the original God of War, and I played two hybrids of the genre in Brutal Legend and Darksiders, but never really any pure ones since. As such, it was kind of fresh, getting into thinking about combos again. I mean, I’m horrible at it, and there’s nothing particularly whip-like about how you use the whip in the game, but it was pretty forgiving on easy after I got the hang of it, so it was never that much of a problem. I’m sure something like Bayonetta is more palletable for people who really like this genre, but as someone who doesn’t normally go in for it, it was pretty fun.
The best thing about it, I think, were the Light and Dark magic meters and the Focus bar. Basically, you had two magical auras you could throw up at any time. The Light one had a health drain effect, and this is where most of your healing comes from. The Dark one just flat-out ups your damage. There are special combos with each, but I never really used them. However, managing these meters was actually pretty fun. Do I want to end the fight quickly, or be more survivable? I could absorb Magic Orbs into either bar, so I had to constantly be making the decision of which one I needed more. On top of that, the Focus meter meant that if I could get many consecutive hits without being hit myself, I’d get a ton of magic orbs, which was actually enough incentive to make me actually do some blocking and dodging in a game. It made me get more involved in the combat, which was fantastic, as I worried I’d end up just mashing buttons.
I never did find much use for the subweapons, though. Every so often I’d get tired of them telling me I was full up on them, and use them, but they seemed so… separate from the normal flow of combat it didn’t really occur to me. Near the end I started using the Holy Water more to clear out minions, but that was about it.

Granted, there are annoying parts too. I found the Shadow of the Colossus-style bosses to be obscenely annoying. It would always seem to punish me for wailing on the magical seals, since they took about 5 hits more than they should have to break. The sections where a Chupacabra steals your powers and you have to hunt him down while he CONSTANTLY SAYS STUPID SHIT was also annoying. It’s such thinly veiled game padding that it just makes a player sad.

But mechanically, I had a good time. A better time than I thought I’d have, actually. I was kind of prepared for the worst, but the combat was enjoyable, and the rest was fine, and wasn’t going to make me give up. That’s good!

Next time, we’ll weep for Patrick Stewart, but yeah, the game part of the game is pretty fun.

There’s a thing going on with Brer. Not going to get into it out of respect to him. Ask him yourself. The important part is, the end result is that, unlike what was to happen before, he probably won’t be visiting me over Christmas break, and future plans are also now questionable, though not impossible.

It makes me feel pretty awful.

Until this happened I wasn’t aware of the number of silly little things I have acquired over the last few months to share with him when he gets here. But I have. There’s a lot of stuff. It’s all around in here, on my desk and so on. Video games. Movies. So much stuff I bought purely to sit on a couch and share with the guy I love.

I want stability in my life right now, and the feeling like everything is going to turn out alright, but I don’t have that. My thesis as it stands now got a bad, but fair reception. Lots of work to do on that. I still feel like I’m being stonewalled on my transition, something I need to start, preferably yesterday. Now my life with my boyfriend is in question, and I no longer get to show him off to my friends and family and show them all that not only do I have a significant other, but he’s here, he’s awesome, and I have a life, a female life, that I am going to lead and he is part of it. I wanted that so badly. I wanted to be with him. It’s been so fucking long.

I cried on the way back from St. Louis because I couldn’t talk to him like I do every week on the drive. I called up my Mom, and she didn’t know what to say or do. She has to stay distant. That’s okay, I suppose. It’s no help to me, though.

So I wrote this stupid, depressing fucking blog. Bleh.

I promise content the next two days. I have reactions to Lords of Shadow and Medal of Honor that should be showing up. I’m sorry I keep posting stuff like this. I just… don’t know what else to write about when I sit down to make myself. It feels like all I am is sadness. It’s so stupid. Every little 2-player video game I bought for his visit is a reminder of how I continue to fail to get my life in order. It’s just another problem in a string of constant problems, and I don’t know why I keep trying. Some days I really don’t.

End of the Semester has me going and going. Lots of stuff getting done. So that means it’s time to multitask. Two birds, one stone. That means that this Christmas list that I need to write for my parents? You’re getting it here. Here’s the sort of things that I, as a horrible consumer puppet, would enjoy for Christmas.

In the Category of HA! Unlikely:
An iPad. The more I heard about the iPad, the more I feel like it is something I could really fit into my life. The gaming is there, and I’m sure all of you on here know how much I enjoy iPod gaming. The iPad also opens up cool possibilities for things like board games. I actually bought iPad Blokus for a dollar, because when I get one, it’ll be great to pass around and play! It also would be great just to write little things on the go (in landscape mode I’ve found the units in the Apple Store to be very type-able) and have something easily carryable with more oomph than a cell phone for bedtime browsing and so on. However, it’s expensive, and I know if I got one now I would be feeling remorse when they bring out that new version in a few months with much better specs and a Retina display. Still, if I got one? Well, I would not mind in the least.
A New Wardrobe. No, not like… the furniture. This seems unlikely, but it’s something I do need to get on. The way I dress isn’t going to change TOO significantly, but there are plenty of things I enjoy that I’m going to have to search for female equivalents for in the near future. For the first time, I would not mind getting clothes for Christmas. The chances of my parents playing along with that are slim, though. Heh. And no t-shirts! The chances of capturing my style there are slim at best.

In the Category of Vidjeo Gamez:
Fallout: New Vegas. I loved Fallout 3, and this seems to be more Fallout 3 with better characters. It’s a no-brainer. I may actually have time to play it over the break too, like I did with Fallout 3. You never know! And yes, I’ll probably play it on 360.
Fable 3. I know the reviews have been less than kind, but I loved Fable 2 SO MUCH that I have to play this. I bet it won’t be mind-blowing, but I’ve got to give it a try, and I do think that I’ll enjoy it.

In the Category of Board Games:
Castle Ravenloft: I’ve heard lots of good things, and this is just the sort of quasi-RPG board game my friends really get into. It does that random construction thing, too, so that the game varies from play to play. Nice stuff, to be sure. Well, okay, I’m not sure, but again, I really want to sit down and try it.

In the Category of Practical But Cool:
Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition. My favorite style manual updated! And now it’s a really ugly color! But no, seriously, I could use an updated copy, and Chicago is smart enough that I probably won’t need a new one for a long while.

In the Category of Impractical But Cute:
Squishable Fox. Enough said. I want to hug it.

There’s a few ideas anyway, I suppose. I’ve already gotten a lot of my shopping done, but several of my harder-to-shop-for victims are still unaccounted for. I can get it done, though. But first things first: semester finishing, THEN Christmasing.

I kind of do. And since I was dropped such a huge bad news bomb today, I am going to bet you are. Videos! On the internet! Who would have imagined?

If you haven’t watched the Gran Turismo 5 Quick Look on Giant Bomb, it is an epic experience. I recommend it. I feel like this sort of thing is exactly how I would react attempting to figure out what in the world this game is. Granted, I probably will never play the game, but man, it was like I was in the room. Mind-boggling some of the decisions made in the creation of that game.

Here’s a video you shouldn’t watch if you can’t take some cute sadness. Poor ducks.

Here’s the latest in chair technology. This seems completely useless, but kind of awesome.

Finally, seeing as it’s coming out today, here’s a quick rundown of Cataclysm. So you know what to expect. And so you can boggle your mind at why this person made this video the way they did.

I’ll be back soon with more writings. Sorry things keep being crazy for me. Maybe at some point they’ll calm down! I can hope.

I only cried when I was walking in the back after the ceremony and hugging Jonathan and Shauna, so that was nice. I delivered my toast without issue, and the following copy of Bill and Ted with the wedding present went over as wonderfully as expected. We had a dance rave during the reception, complete with glowsticks. My sick Grandmother and my Grandfather were able to stay and see everything, and my other Grandmother got up and danced to AC/DC.

It was a fantastic wedding.

I’ve always been worried that I would hate this wedding. I worried that I’d be frustrated by my role in it. Not the “standing next to my brother and getting to say an awesome speech about how much I love him” part. I would not have given that up for ANYTHING. I wanted to be there. No, I was mostly worried about the constantly being called the “Best Man” part. “Where’s the Best Man?” “I need the Best Man,” etc etc. Bleh. I was worried that constantly hearing that would grate on me until I was having a super-shitty time of it all. I didn’t want to not have fun at this awesome celebration of adding another awesome member to our family. I did not want that.

Luckily, that wasn’t the case. All the “Best Mans” and “You look so handsomes” frustrated, sure, but fuck, the emotional level was so high, even they couldn’t ruin my day. Even they couldn’t get in between me and being so fucking happy for my brother. I was glad about that. I was glad that happened. I am so glad I survived without letting something so stupid potentially ruin everyone’s time. It went over perfectly, and it was excellent.

Now that this is happened, it’s a new beginning. One for Jonathan and Shauna, but also one for me. I no longer have to worry about ruining their special day, even if I never was. Now I can just go for it.
And I totally will.