The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I don’t know if I’ve made it clear enough, but I really, really hate pointing the Wiimote at the screen. I hate it with a passion.

This is why it’s so shocking that I enjoy Trauma Team so much. Because I really do. Trauma Team is fantastic.

When I say Fantastic, I mean the gameplay is fantastic. The game gives you the option to basically skip all cutscenes and story bits, and after trying to watch a few, I just kind of had to. They’re cheesy and shit and badly animated. You can tell they were done on a budget. Nothing against that, of course, but it’s just kind of hard to watch.

The gameplay of Trauma Team is both similar and different from previous titles. You’re going through and doing various surgeries and medical procedures. However, Trauma Team mixes it up by having different types of doctors. This actually works really well. The first doctor you play as has the same sort of style as what I did back in the first Trauma Center on DS. However, I then switched to a paramedic, who was just trying to stabilize people on the scene so they could get back to the hospital alive, and had to juggle multiple patients in order to keep them all alive. Then I switched to a doctor doing procedures where lives weren’t immediately in danger, letting me take my time and giving me points for precision. I was shocked at how much they switched it up while keeping the basic gameplay the same. It kept me going for a lot longer than I thought I would playing the game alone.

The controls, too, are rather amazing. Yes, you’re pointing the Wiimote at the screen, but the game takes into account how shitty the wiimote pointer is. As long as you’re trying hard to be accurate, it works. Well, on Intern, anyway. I only played on easy. However, when doing this, the game becomes less a game of accuracy for the most part, and more one of time-management. Should you remove the glass shards first, or suture the cuts? Or are the vitals so low you need to use the green medicine before all that? It’s about striking that balance. As soon as I started playing, I didn’t mind pointing the Wiimote. This is quite a feat. Even games I love, like Shattered Memories, frustrated me to no end with pointing the wiimote.

The main reason I wanted to rent this was Co-op, and I have to say, that came through as well. I even played some with my Mom, and she was getting it by the end. Her main problem was selecting things with the analog stick, because she wasn’t used to using an analog stick, but she eventually figured it out. I just gave myself the more complex tools, and she was draining, lasering, and suturing well enough while I did the more complex processes. She was getting into it by the end! It was neat. It also makes the game more tense, somehow, having someone else there. It’s easier, sure, but going “No, wait, I need the drain!” and calling out requests for help just ratchets up the tension. It’s awesome.

Basically, Trauma Team completely impressed me. So much so that I ordered a cheap copy of Trauma Center: New Blood to go back and play. Considered getting Second Opinion, too, but I don’t think that has co-op, and that’s part of the fun. Still, especially if you have someone to play with, Trauma Team is fantastic. I very much enjoyed myself, even in single player, which I wasn’t expecting. Good job, Atlus!

I have heard people, mostly Brickroad, go on and on about how awesome Pepsi Throwback is. It’s made with real sugar, and is apparently something to stockpile! However, even though I am quite the Pepsi-drinker, I’ve never really gone and gotten a Pepsi Throwback. However, during my last trip to St. Louis, I stopped to purchase a beverage on the way home, and was shocked to find a bottle of Pepsi Throwback on offer. It wasn’t any more expensive or anything, so I figured I had to jump at this opportunity.

It was alright?

Having heard so much about it, I admit I was expecting some sort of miraculous difference. However, the only real taste difference was in the aftertaste. It was different, slightly better, but not significantly so. I was kind of shocked.

Granted, I’m sure pure sugar is SLIGHTLY better for me than Corn Syrup, and it was a slight improvement. However, I’m certainly not going to go to the ridiculous lengths required to stockpile this stuff. It’s not just everywhere, you know? It does take some effort. I just can’t see that effort being worth it. Good on the people who do, though, I suppose.

I also have to wonder why Pepsi is doing this. Are they really bringing in more customers this way? Are there people who say “No way am I buying a Pepsi unless it has sugar instead of Corn Syrup!”? I guess there must be, or they wouldn’t have kept making it. Good for them, I guess, but I’ll probably stick with normal Pepsi. Neither of them are really good for me anyway. Heh.

Random thread on Talking Time lead me to downloading some more iPod games. One of them is called QRank. It is free and awesome.

Basically, QRank is a trivia game. Every day, there is a grid of 20 questions. 8 are 200 point “easy” questions, 8 are 400 point “medium” questions, and 4 are 800 point “hard” questions. These questions are in four categories every day. You pick 15 questions from the grid, and answer them in a multiple choice manner. Many of them hinge around current events in various areas: not surprising seeing as they have to have 20 good questions every day. It uses a point countdown, as a lot of trivia games do, where the faster you answer, the more of the “max” number of points you get. There are also daily 2x and 3x bonus questions hidden on the grid you can answer for extra points.

Then the game ranks you on leaderboards. It uses a friends list, if you want. It also ranks you locally, by state, and globally, using the location stuff in your phone to determine where you are. This works really well. I could never compete on a global level like some people, but hey, there’s a chance I could top the board for Cape Girardeau.

I’ve played for a few days now, and the questions are really good. The difficulties are nicely balanced. Easy questions are fairly easy, Medium is fairly medium, and the hard questions I normally miss, because I am not a trivia guru. I do like how I can strategize because of how the game is set up. For example, if, say, Science is a category that day, I may want to try to find the science question in the Hard questions, because I could probably get that one. If the Entertainment category is around, maybe I want to stay on the easier questions, because if that hard question is about celebrity gossip, I’m screwed.

The real benefit to the game, I think, is that it wants so little of your time. You can blaze through 15 questions in 5 or 10 minutes, no problem, and then the game requires no other input until the next day. It’s kind of like Words with Friends in that way. You enjoy it in small chunks of time, so it’s easy to keep going with it. Also, the fact that it’s free doesn’t hurt. I really enjoy the game, and I think anyone who enjoys trivia would get a huge kick out of it. So download it. And add me. I’m poetfox. Let’s trivia it up! You can trivia my ass.

I am super busy, as I can get. Things are happening and happening. So hey, here’s a linkdump post.

Through the Talking Time IRC and various talkings about it. I discovered this youtube channel. Retsupurae is pretty funny stuff. I mostly enjoyed the LPs of various horrible flash games that are up there. However, Val informed me, and watching them proved, that they are also well-known for doing riffs on horrible video LPs. I have been watching and doing much laughing. Plus, several of the videos have General Ironicus of Chip and Ironicus in them, so that’s an extra benefit.

And hey, making that link had me learn that there’s a new LP started up on that site, too, so I’m excited to check that out.

Here, also, is a Persona 3 comic I’ve been holding onto for awhile that I find quite funny. Captured things really well. I’m surprisingly far into P3P at this point, but I haven’t played in awhile. Hopefully I’ll keep plodding away and finishing it. I keep playing in like 2 hour chunks at random times, which is working pretty well for me.

Anyway, I hope those links give you some entertainment today. Come back tomorrow for something vaguely more interesting. Or actually probably less interesting. Who knows.

Animus are always an issue for me. I do like them, when they’re good. The problem is that there is so, so much crap out there. I never feel like I have any idea where to start when looking for the really good stuff, especially when it’s the strange, weird things I enjoy. For example, stumbling into Saki was so, so lucky for me, and I loved that show to death. The method I used, though, was just randomly checking the anime thread on Talking Time, and seeing what showed up. Somehow, I found it.

Through similar means, I decided to watch Ouran High School Host Club.

First off, just look at that picture. Look at the show. This thing looks like it should be a complete and utter disaster. At a glance, you can tell it’s full of Reverse Harem tropes and potentially horrible fanservice, each character crafted to fill a specific niche fangirl demographic. It shares so much with so much anime crap out there.

But then you watch it, and within the first episode, not only does it point out which character plays to what stereotype, but it’s a show about a club attempting to be a Reverse Harem for people, to “bring joy to the ladies” as they put it, and is, at the same time, a Reverse Harem for Haruhi, the female protagonist.
And then it gets silly.

The show’s strength is that it knows it’s completely stereotypical in a lot of ways, and decides to just go all out and over the top with it, recognizing how it works. There’s a character in the show who shows up just to berate them on how shallow their characters are, and how they’re nothing like her visual porn novels. Most characters end up having a secret, but that secret is that they harbor ANOTHER anime stereotype, like the cute boy-lolita being a tournament-grade martial artist who people come from all over to fight.

At the same time, while all this is going on, it treats its characters with respect.

Let me go on a tangent here and talk about South Park. I once watched an interview with someone, I forget who. They were talking about why Jimmy and Timmy are okay characters for South Park to have. It’s not cool to make fun of people who are disabled in some way, right? But they said that the secret to this is that these characters are just people. Sure, those qualities are made fun of, but not any more than any of the other characters. They are treated exactly the same, even though they’re different. That makes it okay.

Ouran does this, too. Everyone is weird, or has some quirk, but it’s all treated as normal, even as it’s played up for laughs. The part that really impressed me in this is that Haruhi’s dad is a cross-dresser, and works at what the show calls a “tranny bar.” (It does bother me a little about what I would call the incorrect use of the word “tranny” in the show. Haruhi’s dad is still going by male pronouns, and still makes it clear that he’s the father. However, he’s clearly transgendered in some way, but is still comfortable, for the most part, with his male body. It’s likely that’s just what cross-dressers are called in Japan, or the translator made an incorrect word choice decision, as happened in an issue of Hourou Musuko. This is all kind of a tangent, though.) However, besides maybe one second of shock when he enters a scene for the first time, it’s treated completely as normal. “Oh, you must be Haruhi’s dad. I’ve never met a real tranny before. How are you?” And that’s kind of the end of the discussion. Nobody is freaked out by how he, and eventually his friends, dress. It’s just a thing, just like how Honey looks and acts pointlessly underage and the twins are constantly romancing each other just to get attention. Al these things do get jokes made about them, of course. For example, in a later episode, they end up waking Haruhi’s dad up early, before he’s shaved, and being a bit shocked about it. However, he’s just a person. That’s certainly the right way to go about it.

Anyway, I’m two episodes from watching the whole thing on Hulu, and I’ve very much enjoyed it. It’s made me laugh a lot. If you don’t have a strong working knowledge of the various shojo and reverse harem tropes that I do from reading tons and tons of manga back in the day, it might not be for you. Additionally, I hear the original manga isn’t nearly as tongue in cheek as the anime is, so that might not be a good choice too. But hey, it’s free on Hulu. Give the first episode a watch if you like this kind of stuff. I certainly enjoyed it.

On Monday, my students came to class having read the wrong chapter. I wrote the wrong one on the board, and they did the wrong assignment. This kind of caused me to have to ad lib for the class that day. I feel like I did alright with having planned to talk about a completely different thing. It certainly wasn’t a huge deal, and we got over it. My schedule for the semester is not thrown off really badly. It’s just a thing that happens. A small oops.

However, it kind of destroyed me. It threw me into a huge depressive state, and I went home and hid, even though I still had things to do that day. I haven’t done that in a long time. It was really upsetting. I tried to explain this to Brer, but unfortunately for him he chose the wrong time to use humor to try to cheer me up, and it didn’t really get across. I couldn’t really explain why this was such a serious event. I guess I’m about to try here.

There were those two years of school where I got nothing done because I was so depressed. I stayed at home, hid, and played video games locked in my room. I didn’t get anything done, because I couldn’t muster any energy to. Then, I turned myself around, and focused. I haven’t fucked up since. I’ve kept a 4.0, kept up with my job and such with no issues. Even as I’ve gotten depressed, more depressed than I can ever remember being, I stuck with it. I didn’t make mistakes.

This was a mistake. It’s a mistake I could have made, even if I wasn’t depressed, and it isn’t a big deal. But it’s a mistake.

Work is kind of the last safe haven for me at this point. While I’m working on things. I don’t have time to be depressed. I don’t have time to worry. I have to complete the tasks at hand, and I do complete them. I do them well. No matter how shitty things got, my work wasn’t going to slip. I was still going to be a hard worker. I was still going to be someone you can depend on to get things done. These things are important to me. They help keep me going.

Writing the wrong number in class makes me feel like I am truly falling apart. It makes me feel like I am, slowly but surely, being defeated by all this bullshit, and that just makes me even more depressed. I can’t lose this fight. But I wrote the wrong number on the board! It’s the first glimpse at how I’m going to slip. Or so the evil part of my brain tells me. It’s frustrating and makes me want to cry.

I know I’m going to do just fine. As I said, I’ve already fixed the problem. Not a big deal. Nothing got thrown out of wack, and I’m still a good teacher. Plus, while I was so obscenely depressed, Jonathan, Spaeth, and Kevin came over to game and cheer me up, and that was a huge help. (It also taught me that, man, I have lost all skill I once had at Smash Bastards.) I’ve got great friends, and I’m a good worker. I’ve got this covered.

But that stupid 14 instead of an 11 was an omen. I wrote a poem about how it all comes down to 14. Fourteen times I fucked up and fourteen times I didn’t, and I’ll do it again fourteen times.
Bleh.

Sun cracks through the window that we hastily covered
with a giggling fit
four hours before,
the perfect method for us
for anything
or so it seemed back then
as the alarm blared
soft irritation
and I hid against you
knowing I had to get out of bed
run away to my own room
put some clothes on, for fuck’s sake,
before our parents woke
and caught us

but your arms wanted me to stay

even as you squirmed,
uncomfortable as always with the nakedness
of a body I’d learn you hated
you still wanted me against you
your heart seemingly desperate to connect us
thin wire of flesh joining us into one
with electric pulses
but we joined in other ways
again
even though it was dangerous and awkward
or maybe because of it

Hours later,
I sat downstairs at the table,
staring at cereal
Mom asking me why we were always so tired
Dad saying it was because we were up all night
and we passed knowing glances
knowing the story they wouldn’t
and knowing,
as we got on the bus for school
and thoughts of love being made
turned to thoughts of the day ahead,
that these mornings would always be
glories of the past we cherished,
conquest of our bodies we shared only with each other
forever
and even now
with my fingers clacking in despair against plastic,
knowing how it’s changed for you,
I feel that way.

I never write poetry here, but my stupid paws and brain wouldn’t do anything else. Hopefully, that’s cool, and you can enjoy. This is, theoretically, from the currently untitled book of poetry to come after the one I’m working on for my thesis. It’s a lovely memoir from one character attempting to deal with her life and how her relationship with her sibling has affected it. And yes, just like Why I Am Here, Even Today has all the titles pointlessly pulled from Presidents of the United States of America songs, this one has titles all pulled from Oasis songs. Point is, it’s part of a longer work of storytelling, and so I apologize if it doesn’t make a lot of sense out of context. Come back tomorrow for something more relevant to this blog, hopefully.

I guess I’ll write an update on how the whole “fighting with my parents over me transitioning” thing is going.

I feel like it’s going better. I certainly feel less like complete garbage. I’m not great, but it’s not bad. This has a lot to do with how awesome my friends are. Cole and Cara, Essner, Jonathan, Spaeth, Ecks, even the wolfie, and of course Brer… everyone has gone above and beyond the call of duty. I am so, so fucking lucky to have such good friends. I can’t express how lucky I am. They’ve helped me to survive all of this so far.

In addition, I think things are turning around with the parents. My mom said the other day that she is “trying” to be mad at me, but she can’t because I’m still her “child.” Maybe I’m reading too much into that… but “child” was a weird word to pick… and I feel like that means it was chosen on purpose. Instead of “son”. Which made me feel a lot better, certainly. She’s also just talking to me again in general, which is a good sign. She’s also at least slightly backing off on the kicking me out thing, which is also nice.

I’ve screamed at my parents, I’ve called their bluffs, I’ve done all sorts of things I really don’t want to do to make it clear this is something serious, and I suppose it is working. It’ll all work out. I wish I didn’t have to force my way through, though. I wish they could just get it. But this stuff is so hard, nobody really could immediately. I understand that. But I understand I can’t let that stop me from making my way forward. Things are going to work out.

It just takes a long time, you know? A long while.
It’s certainly a closer while than it used to be, though. I tell myself that all the time. Affirmations. Etc.
Yeah.

There’s something inherently appealing about having a huge database of free, custom characters to choose from. I mean, it’s going to be a copyright-infringing nightmare for the people running the game, but it just seems like it would be tons of fun to be able to pick any character you want, and just play. This especially made sense to me in a Mario Kart clone, and so I was pretty excited to get to try ModNation Racers. It just seemed like a perfect fit. It also seemed to have some smart ideas about the various power ups that could make the game a much better racer.

However, I really didn’t find this to be the case.

I mean, it was pretty neat. I was an Eevee driving the Mach 5. There’s nothing at all wrong with that. At the same time, everything else just felt kind of generic. Not bad, but generic. It’s a bit unavoidable, but it just didn’t really thrill me. The “career” mode is pointlessly hard, too, especially if you want to unlock everything. The enemy drivers do not go easy on you. Four races in, and I was having to redo races to even pass in 3rd place. That’s just not what I expect from a Mario Kart clone.

What really got me, though, were the items. I thought they had a good idea with the “boost” meter. You get boost from drifting and other tricks, which you can either use to boost, or shield yourself from attacks. This seems like a great tradeoff to me. However, I found the shield almost impossible to actually use. You even get a warning when something is going to hit you, but if you hit the shield when the warning comes up, it will almost always wear off before it actually hits you. It just seems like they made their timing really weird just to be “hardcore” which just kind of ruins the point of a casual kart racer. At least to me.

On top of all this, I had serious issues connecting to their online servers. Apparently they do maintenance on like… 3 in the afternoon on Friday. That’s a really, really weird time to do maintenance. When I finally could connect, I got dropped from the server every few minutes while trying to look for things to download. I couldn’t even imagine what would have happened if I had gotten into an online race. I wanted to, but I was too scared that it would fail, and the obscene, minute or longer long load times would go to waste. Because let me tell you, this game LOADS. A LOT. It’s ridiculous.

These are the main reasons why I ended up unimpressed with ModNation Racers. It was pretty disappointing, I do admit. Maybe the sequel will be super-great. I’m sure that’ll happen at some point. As it is, though, I really felt like I had more fun with Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing, which is weird to say, but totally true. I’d just suggest playing that, if you wanted a Mario Kart Clone.

Alternate Title: Not Nearly As Justified As Advertised.

All the talk on the Gigantic Bombcast really had me excited for Just Cause 2. As you know, I really liked Crackdown, and Crackdown 2 was kind of a disappointment. (Have I written A reviewish thing about that here? Apparently not. I should. Expect that coming up.) However, people were talking about Just Cause 2 in the same sort of wording as the original Crackdown, with lots of mayhem, completely open objectives, and a grapple hook/parachute combo that really opened the world up. It sounded pretty great, and I wanted to try it. Gamefly let me.

I was really disappointed.

One of the things the original Crackdown did right was making travel fun. Getting from one objective to the next was quick and easy, but it was also engaging, because of those damn agility orbs. Just Cause 2 doesn’t have anything like that. You have this big island, and nothing in between population centers and objectives except a lot of boring trees. Sure, there is a fast travel option, but it only takes you to places you’ve been. If you want to undertake a new mission, you have to walk there, slowly. It is a huge, annoying pain in the ass. About 90% of my travel time in the game was spent moving from one area to another.

When I got to the new area, I was also disappointed. Combat in the game is pretty ridiculous. You can’t shoot very well, and there are tons of guys everywhere on normal. Fun stuff you’d like to do, like silly Grapple Hook tricks, often get you killed. Explosives are scarce until you grind up enough money to buy them from the Black Market guy, and so big explosions are hard to set off as well. In a game where the point is to set off lots of big explosions to create chaos, that’s just kind of weird. To top it all off, the mid-mission checkpoints are often way, way too far apart. I found myself having to replace sequences I beat, again and again, just because the next part was really, really annoying. I put up with that kind of thing in, say, Splinter Cell: Conviction because the combat itself was pretty fun. Just Cause 2 didn’t really offer me that to make up for these shortcomings.

It made me sad that the game disappointed me so much. I had played the demo and found it very fun, but it was in short bursts and they put you in a very populated area where you didn’t really have to travel. There was so much potential for a game where you can wreak havok with a grappling hook and many guns, but it just wasn’t working for me at all. It’s gotten mostly good press, so I’m sure some people can enjoy it, but it really isn’t for me.