The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I am always in search of awesome weekend games, the sort where you just play through them all quick-style. Then they’re done, and you feel satisfied, but finished. Singularity is one of those games. It’s a pretty neat little shooter that could have done a lot better for itself had it been marketed well. As is, though, you probably missed it. Luckily, I’m here to tell you about it.

The premise of Singularity is that the U.S.S.R., during the cold war, found something called E99. This element enabled MAGICAL POWERS of time travel. You stumble across the island where the research on this element first began, and then accidentally change the past, changing the future to one of EVIL. The rest of the game is a quest to fix that, while shooting many dudes in the head.

Singularity wants to be Bioshock so damn badly. Even the life and magic meters look exactly the same. It manages to pull off the facsimile for awhile, especially in the beginning, as you stumble upon audio diaries and propaganda films and such, kind of learning about the world in the same naturalistic way that Bioshock does. However, eventually more people get involved, and it kind of breaks down. Still, it’s certainly the best attempt I’ve played at attempting to do a similar thing, so that should be applauded.

The main mechanics of the game wrap around something called the TMD, or Time Manipulation Device. This lets you magic things up. You can rewind or fast-forward time on specific objects, make time-slowing bubbles, and do Half-Life 2 gravity gun shit. These mechanics do provide some variety, but since you can only interact with certain things in certain ways, it does seem a little gimmicky. “Oh look, here’s another old, rusted crate! Guess I better rewind it, durr.” Still, there’s enough there that it works.

Having that variety helps, too, since most of the guns in the game kind of suck. There’s little reason not to use the assault rifle 90% of the time. If there hadn’t been achievements for using certain weapons, I probably would have used it that much. They try some neat guns, like a rolling mine launcher and a gun that impales people with explosives, but they’re finicky and way less effective than just using the assault rifle. The coolest weapon is probably the Seeker, which is a sniper rifle that lets you guide the bullets after you fire them. However, it’s a “rare occasion” weapon which they don’t let you keep. You get it several times in the game, but have to throw it away soon after. A shame.

The developers tried to do something with the story, too. It’s commendable, but it doesn’t completely work. There are some time travel logic issues if you think about the plot too much. The one thing I do have to applaud the game for is its endings. None of them are good. There are benefits to each, of course, but there’s no “perfect” ending. They all kind of suck. I think that’s neat, especially since the main message of the game seems to be “doing the right thing doesn’t always work out.” That’s just not a message you get in video games.

I really enjoyed Singularity. It’s an experience I can recommend. If you see it in a bargain bin, or can Gamefly it like I did, go for it. It’ll be an enjoyable weekend.

I don’t think I can afford to buy a new copy of Kirby’s Epic Yarn.

For some reason, this is kind of a big deal to me. I feel like I’ve cut down my game purchases a lot. I only really buy maybe one game a month, if that, instead of the three or four I used to buy. Sure, I supplement that with a few cheap iPhone games, but mostly, it’s a net gain. I made hard decisions not to buy stuff all the time. But there was always this idea that, because I was making these hard decisions, I’d be able to have no problem playing the games I really wanted to play. I could still support my favorite franchises on day one, I just wouldn’t waste money on the filler stuff I used to buy all the time. I’d not buy the random chance games that my whims told me to. I’d just Gamefly those. It would work.

I’ll still get to play Epic Yarn. Hell, it’s going to be a short game with limited replay value. I probably SHOULD just Gamefly it. But Kirby is one of my most beloved series. I love the SHIT out of Kirby. I want all the Kirby I can wring out of Nintendo without ruining the charm the series has. Kirby Super Star has to be one of my most replayed games of all time, probably only topped by, say, Space Channel 5. I love this shit, I love the new art style, I want to be a fan and get it day one, even when others wouldn’t. I really do.

In the big scheme, it’s not like it’s a big deal. I’m working on big deal things, you know? That’s why I don’t have any money for such purchases. Maybe it’s just part of growing up, having to start making these choices. Maybe I should just deal, and move on. In fact, I know I should. I don’t have enough money for VIDEOGAMES, for fuck’s sake. I’m not starving or anything. I’m doing fine.

But there’s still something lost there, even if it’s just a tiny little thing that I’m being too emo about. That feeling that, if I work my ass off, things will work out… it’s just a tiny little example of how they won’t. I’ll work hard, and I still won’t have money for all the games I want to support, even if I cut it down to the bare minimum. If I can’t have a stupid disc with a program on it, what else am I going to miss?

Bleh. Should really just get over myself.

Cole kept pointing out Trailers for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. This is how I knew I would one day be called upon to view it. This day came.

It was pretty well what I expected.

Basically, what you have here is a children’s movie using very strong “children’s entertainment” themes, like the Power of Friendship. On top of that, it’s an adaptation of a series of novels. It’s a one-two punch of potential badness vectors. It basically succumbs to both. There are lines and moments in the film that are so, so “children’s movie cliche” that I just laughed, and Cole turned to me to ask what was so funny. I just couldn’t believe they’d be so blatant! Meanwhile, the movie introduces a ton of characters and doesn’t give any of them enough time to be anybody, a clear sign of a book adaptation. Eventually there’s this whole band of Owls with Mr. Main Character, and they’re entertaining, but you never really get the sense they get to know each other enough to be this unbreakable party the movie makes them to be.

I also just have to point out the visuals. They are so creepy! The owls are rendered realistic enough to look kind of uncanny valley. Especially when they talk, and it’s clear how hard it is to animate speech when beaks are involved. It’s just so… odd. I don’t understand why they didn’t try to stylize the art a bit. I mean, they’re owls wielding fucking swords and stuff, you’d think they’d go for a little art direction to make it more bad ass. I mean, not cartoony, perse, but just something.

I do have to comment on the moments of “sexual tension” in the film. Mr. Main Character meets up, early on, with a small-species owl girl. There’s a lot of “I’ll protect you, we’ll do this together, stay with me” sort of dialog which tends to indicate “love interest” in these sorts of movies. Then, later, both her and wacky comic relief owl are doing what I can only describe as snuggling with Mr. Main Character. Nobody thinks this is weird. Finally, they get to Ga’Hoole, and Mr. Main Character meets another girl owl of his species who says her name but never does anything else. He is smitten, and the little owl seems annoyed.
And that’s it. That’s your romance subplot.
I dunno, found myself wondering what was up with that.

Still, I can’t say the movie was completely awful. It was competent. I could see me getting much more behind it at a much younger age. There were also several character who were genuinely funny The running gag with the two slavers had me chuckling, for example. I also didn’t leave feeling like I had wasted my time. I mean, I can’t really recommend going and seeing it unless you have kids or something, but I felt like I got what I came for. It was competent. That’s pretty well the exact word for it. Competent. Also, containing owls. And music by Owl City. Which, when I heard it, made me groan. Cause they went there. Yes, they went there.

I talked to one of my international students for at least an hour and a half on Friday during our ten minute conference.

It was a totally weird situation. He really wanted to talk, and we discussed all sorts of things, both about the essay in question and American education in general. It was… interesting, but surprising. Also a bit tiring. I mean, I was paying the best attention I could, but I couldn’t always understand him, and I was doing my best to respond in ways that could be easily parsed, but I’m not all that good at that, either. We kept going in circles, a bit, as he went back to things he was concerned about but maybe didn’t completely understand the first time. It was… well, as I said, interesting. Language barriers are unfortunate.

I don’t really know what his goals were. He was very worried about his grades. Was he trying to create sympathy so I’ll grade him easier? (Not going to happen.) Was he just wanting advice so he can do it the right way and write the “fantastic” essays he was talking about? We he just wanting someone to talk to about the decisions he’s making for his career? (I’m not really a good person for that, but, you know.) I’m really unsure. Looking back on it, even a day later, I honestly can’t believe we talked that long. It seems kind of… unreal.

Still, I suppose it’s good he’s taking an interest in doing well in the subject, unlike a lot of people in my class this semester. It’s completely an experience, most definitely. All part of that “teaching” thing I do, I suppose.

Sometimes, there is a game where, upon hearing the premise, you much purchase it.

UFO on Tape is one such game.

Seriously, just watch this teaser trailer and tell me this game isn’t amazing. I dare you.

The concept is so genius, I can’t believe it hadn’t been thought of before. We use our phones and such as cameras all the time, so a game where you are treating your iDevice as a camera just works, perfectly, without you thinking about it. You instantly understand what you’re doing when you pick up the game and play, and it’s immersive, as much as that word is overused. You’re actually doing the action you would be doing. The woman giving you advice is perfectly voiced: it seems just like the kind of voice you’d find on one of those tapes. Light poles, buildings, and the edges of the window you’re shooting through all get in the way. It looks fairly real, to the point where, when I show this game to people, at first they don’t understand I’m playing a game. They think I’m just watching a video.

All that is cool, but the bonus is that the game is actually very fun. It’s a simple, high score arcade sort of experience, but it’s very hectic. When the UFO drifts out of the frame and your companion berates you and tells you to refocus, it does create “oh shit” moments as you frantically try to move the viewfinder about and find it again. It also makes great use of Apple’s new Game Center: it connects with your Game Center account to track your high scores and compare them to your friends. Frankly, an arcade high score experience isn’t complete without this sort of thing. If I had more people into these kind of weird games, I could totally get into competing for the most footage. It’s pretty damn fun.

Seriously, the moment I heard people talking about this on Twitter, I bought it for a buck. In one play, I felt completely justified. I’ve been talking this game up and showing it off ever since. If you have an iPhone or whatnot, really do consider picking it up. This is exactly the kind of indie game worth supporting: incredibly creative, with one idea polished to complete perfection. I love it.

I just thought, for lack of anything more structured to say today, I’d collect some of my thoughts on Retcon thus far. (Retcon being the new Twilight Heroes ascension-style mechanic. You did read my plea to get you to play, right?) I’m going to just be open about things, so, you know, spoilarz if you care.

Basically, I thought the last quest was great. It had a nice little mechanic to it, dungeon-crawling through the building. I didn’t find anything particularly hard, but again, it’s designed for level 11 players, and I was level 50. No surprises there. What really struck me is how effective kidnapping my understudy was. I had played the game before understudies, of course, but I mean… I got to name her. She was Sharp-Ears. It really did seem like an affront, and it was effective. I could see a new player, who didn’t have a huge stockpile of sidekick-summoning items, really having a challenge without their understudy. We’ll see when I get there on this run, anyway.

The identity of The Mick, as well, caught me as off-guard. Mostly because I didn’t remember who the hell Michael Ace was. As I’m replaying, though, it’s pretty obvious. The problem was me getting quests out of order and years ago at this point. I didn’t remember all the plot points of the story! I’m seeing it set up as I go back through. That’s working well, too.

The actual Retcon itself didn’t work too well, though. I stumbled upon a bug that deleted all my item-summoning IoTMs and gave me thousands of lab suits instead. Of course, Ryme was very happy to help me get them back, which is awesome of him, and he got the bug fixed immediately after that, as far as I know. It’s a small operation, and it’s understandable for there to be a few bugs. It was kind of stressful for a moment, but not a big deal. Heh.

I’m enjoying playing through the game a bit quite a lot. I picked a fairly easy run for this first one, where I get free pulls and an endpoint where I can pull everything (Which, the more I think about it, I probably won’t pick again. 10 pulls a day is more than enough for the whole run, especially if I get access to all my stuff after I beat Ace again) and “Naturally Hyper,” which gives me a little time bonus, but doesn’t let me use caffeine and sugar, so I don’t feel obligated to run as many turns. I really can’t see myself not taking my sidekick from the beginning or locking myself off from gained skills, but I appreciate them having those options. It’s not really for me, though.

It is pretty amazing how powerful some of these IoTMs are, now that they’re in context. The biggest “wow” I’ve encountered is the Exotic Throwing Stars Gift Set. I’m looking through the blog, and I’m not finding a review of it? Must have forgotten to write one that month. Still, I knew it would be useful in this kind of setting, but not THIS useful. Basically all I’ve done is thrown stars to beat every enemy so far. They are obscenely powerful. Maybe I’ll eventually hit a level where they’re no longer slaughtering everyone before they can really attack me, but until then, man. Enjoying them. I’m also getting a lot more use out of the Mummers’ Gloves, now that the random stat bonuses are more useful, seeing as I’m not 10x powerful than most enemies I’m fighting.

There are a few weird choices. For instance, I can use my lost items and stuff on people who are under restrictions. That seems… odd. Maybe that changed or I’m not understanding it, but so I hear. Also, I didn’t get to perm a skill from my first run. That also seemed a bit off, but won’t be that big a deal in the long run.
Still, those are very minor complaints. Not even complaints, really. Retcon is fun times.
Fun times!
Fun!
Yeah!

Driving home from St. Louis, I stopped for a beverage, as I often do. In town, I know the exact energy drink stock of every gas station, but when I commute, I find it interesting to see if there’s anything I haven’t tried or that looks good. Popping into a QT I hadn’t visited, I noticed cans of Rockstar Recovery. The attractive-looking cans triggered something in my tired mind, and I thought for a moment. Then I recalled: Jeff Gerstmann of the Gigantic Bomb tweeted about drinking one of those a few days ago! He is a crazy man who knows his energy drinks, I thought. He tries everything. Surely if he had picked this for his morning routine, it must be pretty solid.

So I bought two.

I always do this. I can dodge Buy One, Get One sales now, but something about “buy two for less than the cost of two” sales always get me, especially with energy drinks. I’m always going to need another one, right? Might as well get two now, and stash one at the office or something. I suppose I have worse habits.

If the title didn’t tip you off, Rockstar Recovery is completely disgusting. I cannot remember a worse beverage experience since I tried my first Red Bull. It tastes like incredibly watered-down lemonade kool-aid with a strong, plant-like aftertaste that makes me want to puke. Seriously, just recalling it to describe it for this post is making me feel kind of icky. After trying this and being amazed at how bad it was, I noticed one of the ingredients listed proudly on the can was “Milk Thistle.” What the fuck. No wonder it had such a horrifying aftertaste.

Jeff Gerstmann, you have failed me! At least in the purchasing drinks department. Still enjoy your work at Giant Bomb. But yeah, now I have a second, unopened can of this crap. What am I going to do with it? I have no idea.

I had a Dentist Appointment Monday. I hadn’t been to the Dentist in years. Like, seriously, a whole lot of years. But I have a tooth that’s giving me hell, so I knew I needed to go. It would probably need some sort of surgery, and I was worried as fuck. I haven’t had anything even vaguely like that done before. No surgery of any kind. Plus, I knew it was going to cost a lot, but I didn’t know how much. My mother was nice enough to promise to pay for it, but I still feared how much it would set her back, and being a burden. I was sick to my stomach until my appointment, really.

Showing up, things went pretty straightforward. No lectures. No real problems. Of course, what I needed done was obscenely expensive. It would blow through all my savings if it was on my dime, and I felt like shit about her covering it. My mom was trying to tease me playfully and get me to relax a bit, but her teasing about all the things she could spend the money on just made me feel worse. Maybe these things were partially true, and that’s why she was teasing, but I could tell she really did want me to calm down and she didn’t feel like this was a waste. A stressor, maybe, but not a waste.

In any case, I made another appointment for another person to look at my teeth again next week. Then I get to make another appointment for surgery if the first appointment goes well, then after that another appointment for more dental surgery. I had kind of hoped to just put a stop to that whole particular problem that day, but of course nothing is that easy. Now the stress gets to be drawn out over the next month, on top of everything else I have going on. I am super-excited by that.

Gods, I have so much shit to deal with. That’s why I totally fucking slacked off for the rest of Monday. But more on that some other time.

Still, the appointment wasn’t for nothing. I got some antibiotics, because I was told that the tooth was hurting because of an infection, and that the infection was draining when it stopped hurting. This made perfect sense to me, as I’ve been sick and coughing up stuff that could easily be that drain: it would make sense that that ick would be making me feel worse. Hopefully those antibiotics will kill two birds with one stone that way. That’s a benefit, right? Or something similar?

Eh, just like everything, it’ll be fixed in time. But fuck, I’m tired of things taking so long. Really am.

I’ve been playing Lost Planet 2 with Kale. We’re going to finish it, so more on that when that occurs. However, he wanted to play it on PS3, so I rented it for that. The result was… less than optimal.

It just kind of amazes me how much better the Xbox is in a lot of ways.

Just trying to set this game up, I have had to update firmware at least twice, and install for a long time once. It’s quite a lot of time just to play this game. It was pretty silly. I know it’s been beaten to death, but, you know.

Also, this has been my first time really using PSN to play online, and man, it’s kind of a trainwreck. It took a long time for us both to figure out how to do simple things like invite each other to games and accept invites. It’s in really weird places in Lost Planet 2’s menus. Of course, since it’s not standardized, if I were to try to play something else online, it would be in different places there, too. Basically, the pointless half an hour, at least, that it took us to figure out how to get a game set up more than justified the price of Xbox Live to me. Making a standardized system is the way to go. Thank you, Microsoft.

Finally, I was just struck by how awful the Dualshock 3 is for shooters. I mean, the Dualshock 2 is one of the best controllers ever made, don’t get me wrong. But damn, the Dualshock 3 just fails at today’s games. Most of today’s games, sadly enough, are shooters, and it is just not laid out for those in the least. The 360 controller is. It’s fantastic. The triggers and bumpers work perfectly for most games. However, the R2 and L2 buttons, as default, such on the Dualshock 3, so they’re not used for shooting. However, I put those trigger adapters on them, so they’d be better for shooting. The game, however, doesn’t support putting “shoot” onto R2, though, because the controller as per normal is so horrible at using R2 and L2 for anything.

After a few hours of fighting with the controls and the PS3, I did, of course, eventually get over all this stuff. However, it was kind of ridiculous, and just shows me that I do the right thing by making the 360 my console of choice. I appreciate having access to PS3 exclusives and whatnot, of course. I’m glad I have the system, and I’m sure for someone without a 360, PSN is not that big a deal and is certainly useful. But I’m not just picking the 360 for achievements. There’s a lot of reasons why it’s a better console, at least for me.

Capcom was having a sale in the iPhone App Store this weekend, and a lot of their games were a dollar. I’ve been sick all weekend, as well as depressed, so I wanted to waste some money in a stupid attempt to cheer myself up. Since it seems better to spend a dollar than, say, significantly more than a dollar, I took advantage of this sale.

For some reason, I’ve been on an RE5 kick recently. I’ve really, really been wanting to play it. Has it been from watching these Mercenaries videos? I don’t know. But man, I was suddenly in love with the game. I look back on playing through most of it in co-op with Jonathan, and I’m like, shit, that was fun. Co-op is what those games needed to make me want to play them.

Basically, as my madness about things I am obsessed with is wont to do, I nearly spent more than I spent on my 360 copy of RE5 to buy a PC copy of RE5 to play with Brer. But then I compromised and bought RE4 Mobile for a dollar instead.

In a lot of ways, RE4 Mobile is really impressive. The graphics look top-notch for the iPhone, and are very similar to the originals. I mean, Leon’s hair looks like one solid helmet mass, but it’s pretty good. The controls, too, are fairly solid. You’re never going to be perfect with virtual buttons and d-pad, but you have pretty solid control over Leon, and it gives you many sensitivity options to choose from so you can make it feel just right. Or at least something similar to right. It does seem like it might control a lot better blown up on an iPad, but maybe that’s just me wanting an iPad. It works fine as is.
The only real problem with the controls is that there’s no way to reload. I understand not having that while actually playing the game: screen real estate for virtual buttons is limited, and you want to have as few as possible. However, I can’t even find a way to reload my guns in the menus. This is really baffling to me, and really makes it hard to fight effectively at times, as you can only reload when you’re all out of bullets in your clip. Still, it’s bothersome, but not a game breaker.

Basically, the game is broken up into a series of combat arenas based on key bits of the actual game. They’re tied together with still-frame cutscenes to explain the plot. I completely skipped this. In between these combat missions, you can go spend your money to do upgrades at the trader, who is just a menu, but they still kept some of his sound clips in, which was nice of them. You also unlock “Mercenary” missions as you go, which I’m sure is only vaguely like Mercenaries in the actual game, but is a nice little remix of the combat scenarios. They also let you earn money that you can take back into the “story” scenarios to upgrade your guns, buy ammo, and so on, which is nice of them.

However, the game is kind of crazy hard. I got to the first area with Las Plagas, the tentacle bitches you have to shoot in the tentacle to do anything to, and I just couldn’t beat it. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, I just couldn’t stop these guys fast enough. The lowest difficulty setting has a “auto-aim” you can turn on, but turning it on did nothing that I could see. The red dot jumps more quickly to valid targets with auto-aim on, but it’s useless against enemies like the Las Plagas, where you have to hit specific points. It’s easy enough to move to center mass and shoot with these controls anyway, and the game gives you plenty of ammo to do so, but when faced with these enemies I couldn’t do that to, much less multiple ones, I could do nothing. Maybe it’s an issue of my lack of skill, or maybe I need to just grind out more money in Mercenaries, buy a bunch of shotgun rounds, and just blast through there. Still, difficulty seems to be an issue.

Is it worth a buck? Oh, completely. It’s fun enough, and if you enjoy the post-4 Resident Evils, the combat is very similar to what you enjoy. There’s plenty of levels and upgrades to work on, too. It’s a pretty smart thing. However, I would have extreme trouble paying the 5 dollars it supposedly is off sale. If the sale has ended by the time you read this, maybe you’d be better off putting it on your appshopper list and waiting for another one. Still, I think it’s kind of neat. I’ll probably keep fiddling with it for awhile.