The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Remember when Pokemon first hit it big, and suddenly, everyone had to have a Pokemon clone? You couldn’t walk into a store without tripping over 14 games that were trying to replicate Pokemon’s success. This has mostly died down now, of course, although every so often someone gives it a try (a recent example would be Spectrobes, I’d think). Monster Racers is one of those tries.

Strangely enough, I can’t find a website for this game. It was published by Koei, but the internet is treating it like it just appeared out of nowhere. I certainly hadn’t heard of it until Val mentioned it, and I threw it on my Gamefly queue at random. When it showed up, I was incredibly surprised. The game is really competent. It’s core idea is, perhaps, stretched a little thin, but what’s there is a really good game. I could see a younger version of myself really getting into it.

The basic story is that, at some point, people found Pokemon. I mean, monsters. The one thing all these monsters had in common was that they love to run. I mean, like, seriously love to run. So, of course, people race them. You’re either a boy or an underage cheerleader girl who wants to be the best Monster Racer in the world, and beat the Star Seven! So you go out on a quest to do that.

Instead of fighting, though, you race. Now, I had this originally described to me as Pokemon meets Mario Kart, but honestly, it’s a bit more Pokemon meets Canabalt. You can slow down and even run backwards, unlike Canabalt, but that’s mostly to your detriment. You’re mostly running full speed forward, jumping over gaps and dodging things and other racers. If you jump on top of another racer, or ram them from behind, you stun them for a moment. As you run, you also build up a Turbo meter, which you can use to pull off a move that’s unique for each monster, but normally involves blasting forward at an even faster pace for awhile.

The game is constantly pulling beats from Pokemon. There’s a definite “got to catch them all” mentality to the monsters, as you get a Handbook, which is basically a Pokedex, that will put a little star next to monster’s names that you’ve caught when you encounter them. To capture them, you have your monster slow down like crazy to fire their MonStar (I wish I was making that name up, ugh) in a random race to make friends with them. It’s really, really easy, and there’s no reason you won’t capture every single monster you meet on the first try.

Still, it gives you a reason to want to do the random races. They are different, but they do get tedious. It seemed like the designers knew this, though, and put in several features to try to make the game more friendly. One feature is that you don’t have to complete a full race against wild Monsters. If you pull ahead of them by a certain length, they give up, and you win. This makes random races take 20-30 seconds, instead of the 2 to 3 minutes a full race would take. This is nice. It’s also obscenely easy to dodge random races as you walk around. Other Monster Racers don’t do the eye thing like in Pokemon. You have to challenge them. You can also see random monsters on the map, and they move very slowly in obvious patterns, so they’re easy to dodge.
All that would be great, but the problem is that you do need to keep doing those random races to level up your monsters so that they can be fast enough for the various cups and whatnot you need to complete to become the best racer. Thanks for trying, game designers, but you didn’t quite nail it.

Overall, though, I was shocked and impressed by Monster Racers. If you were to play it for, say, maybe 15 minutes a day, I doubt it would get old anywhere near as fast as it did for me. (I put in like… 6 hours, most of that in one sitting, so it got stale quick.) Hell, if you modified the racing a little to be even more Canabalt, I bet you could get this game on the iPhone and make a mint. It’s pretty charming and cool. If you ever see it in a bargain bin somewhere, pick it up. It’s certainly worth bargain bin prices. If I could have kept it for that price from Gamefly, I totally would have.

I am annoyed, and I wrote a rant. You can skip it, and that may be for the best, but it’s written, so it’s getting posted. Come back tomorrow for something less stupid. For now, here we go.

I love the internet. I would have it’s babies, even though they would be the most frightening monsters you ever saw. While internet is just wonderful, though, it is also an incredibly caustic place. I’m okay with that. It’s just part of what comes with the freedom the internet provides. You just don’t take it personally, and move on. You take the high ground, and you make yourself better without being a dick about it, and then people take you seriously. That’s how things work.

At the same time, we all have our sanctuaries. We all have places we go where we want to relax, and be ourselves without having to do that. Where we want to let our defenses down and let our freak out. Most of the time, those sorts of places are extremely clearly marked. If you go to fchan, it is your own damn fault if you’re shocked that there is tons of weird furry porn there. I mean, seriously. If you go in there, and post that furries are stupid, then hell, people are going to complain at you. That doesn’t make them bad people. I complain when someone attempts to reorganize my room, because I want it to be my way. It’s natural to defend your spot. Furries are going to complain when you come on their turf and insult them. Anyone would do the same.

However, people on the internet have this concept of “fursecution” in their heads. This is the idea that furries are a bunch of whining bitches that go, “You have to accept me and my weird fetishes!” This means that this natural defense is somehow something that, if a furry does it, just goes to show how immature and retarded they are, instead of being something that anyone would do. Which they would.

I mean, fuck. Furries are weird as shit, and some are weirder than others. But that is perfectly fine. Everyone has their stupid bullshit. Some is crazier, certainly, but everyone has something like that, and it’s really not a problem. It is a problem when you let that get out and force it in people’s faces. That’s a problem. Then, after doing that, when you complain, that’s a problem. Those people piss me off too. But they’ve created this image that makes me have to double-think my own reactions, and that is making me mad right now.

Basically, I started writing this because I was reading stuff over at the Bad Webcomics Wiki. A lot of the articles will get the “yes, this is a furry comic” thing out of the way, just to get it out of the way, and then actually talk about what the problems are with certain comics. (And yes, many furry comics have serious problems, writing and artwise, that aren’t furry-related, and are very fair to bring up.) I ran across one, though, that was all like “Man, this guy has so much talent, why does he have to waste it drawing furry garbage?” I got mad. The comic in question had problems, completely, mostly in characterization and sometimes getting lost in fanservice, but it’s not like the fact that it was furry was harming that in any way.
But then I found myself trying to squash my annoyance. Because I don’t want to be described like that. I’m not one of those fursecution types, right?

And then I realized. FUCK THAT.

Seriously, oftentimes with this stuff, “furry” is part of the initial construction of what such a thing is. It’s claimed as such. It’s “furry” space. If you don’t like that general conceit, then fine. It is often stupid and just there because the artist is furry or whatever, sure. But it’s just part of what’s being done. The art can be bad, the plot can be bad, the characters can be bad, and you are free to point out all those things, but if you don’t like the fact that it’s furry, just don’t read it. If I wrote a fanfic about Code: Lyoko (Why did I pick that for this example?) and you hate Code: Lyoko, it’s not constructive, useful, or a good use of anyone’s time to point out how horrible it is because it’s about the horrible show Code: Lyoko. If I’m not being true to the horrible characters, fine, tell me that. If my word choice is awful, awesome, let me have it. But critique should be focusing on “is this a good Code: Lyoko fanfic” and not “this is awful because it isn’t what I want it to be.”
That’s not to say one can’t say “Man, I wish he would do something not tied to this property” or “Goodness, she could draw much better art if she’d focus on something else.” That is also fine. You can say all kinds of things. You can hate. But it’s stupid to hate on something because “it’s furry and they’re stupid lol,” just like it’s stupid to hate based on anything so vague and unsupported. It’s okay to get angry about such a claim, especially on your turf. It really is.

And yet, for some reason I felt so much like I had to prove myself to internet assholes that I tried to squelch that annoyance. They made me believe that I couldn’t be mad. That I didn’t have the right to be mad. They made me believe that they should control my emotions, and that’s bullshit. Granted, I shouldn’t do something stupid with those emotions, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to feel frustrated. Not at all. I can feel frustrated just fine without being an ass.

So there. I said it. Sometimes I get frustrated for people writing off things because a furry was involved. I get frustrated because some of my best friends are furries, and they are completely functional, completely awesome people whom I love very much. It’s okay for me to be mad because of this. I can be mad, and it’s not wrong. I can be frustrated, and not be a fursecution asshole.

And now I’ve ranted, now I’ve been frustrated, and now I feel better. I said it on my turf, and it’s not in anyone’s face who doesn’t want to check it out. I’m not a dick. I just have perfectly normal emotional responses to things. Nothing wrong with that.

Darksiders succeeds at what it sets out to do.

Basically, it wants to remake Zelda, but it wants to make Zelda with dark, brooding characters one might see on some sort of metal album or really “badass” fantasy setting. Nobody may smile, everything is dead, everyone destroys. Demons rule the world, you messily kill people again and again. This is an “adult” Zelda.

At the same time, though, it’s really kind of childish. It’s a young person’s idea of what adult is, and while some people obvious can get into that (For example, I know Cole really liked the art and setting and whatnot) I found it really grating. Every time there was a cutscene, I was just “I GET IT, YOU’RE WAR AND YOU’RE A BADASS.” It was tiring. It certainly wasn’t why I stuck around for as long as I did.

The reason I stuck around is because this is a really, really good Zelda clone. Make no mistake, it is a Zelda clone completely. You get a new heart, or Life Stone, each time you beat a boss. The first dungeon contains a Boomerang. Sure, the combat has some God of War trappings, but the actual gameplay is a Zelda puzzle dungeon crawl, and it does it really well. If you want more of that, you really need to play Darksiders.

However, I didn’t really want more of that. As I progressed through the game, I realized why I hadn’t really played a Zelda game in a long time. The formula is just kind of stale. Since I didn’t enjoy the new coat of paint, I was looking past it to the same formula I’ve played through again and again since Ocarina of Time. Eventually, I got tired of that, too, and when I realized I wasn’t going to boot it up again, I sent it back to Gamefly.

Still, the reasons I stopped playing it are purely personal preference. Darksiders is a great game, and if you know what you’re getting into, and that sounds good, you really should play it. It’s obvious this game was made with love and with a strong reverence for the source material it’s sort of stealing from. It’s great stuff. Just not stuff really made for me, I guess.

I drink a MTN DEW from time to time, but not really all that often. However, the majority of people at work are hardcore Dew drinkers, and enjoy slamming them back on a regular basis. Therefore, seeing as MTN DEW is currently running a new DEWmocracy promotion, where they put out a bunch of new flavors and have people vote on what they want, I have been hearing about it non-stop since it started.

Driving home from St. Louis, as I am often to do, I stopped into a gas station to get a beverage, and noticed that they had a “buy 2, get 1 free” deal on Dew, with all three of the new flavors there. I felt I had to break down and buy one of each, just to give it a try.

Basically, Democracy sucks.

If you look at the site, the overwhelmingly clear winner is White Out, which is honestly the lamest of the bunch. White Out tastes like a watered-down Mello Yello. Couldn’t all these people who are voting for White Out just buy Mello Yello? Why not vote for a unique flavor? Something different? Typhoon is in a close second, but it’s still losing. It’s a fruit punch kind of drink, so it’s not my cup of tea at all. It’s very drinkable. It’s fine. I’m just never going to have one again. This is what most of the people at work like, and wish would win.

I, however, am firmly in the camp of the big loser, Distortion. Basically, Distortion takes like regular MTN DEW, only it has a much, much stronger citrus kick at the end.
I love citrus.
Distortion is great.

However, the majority disagrees. This is why the majority sucks. I wouldn’t be so mad if Typhoon was winning, but man, it does kind of upset me that a soda which tastes almost exactly like another soda on the market that is easily findable is winning. Give me a break, people who vote about MTN DEW on a website!

In the end, though, I know it really doesn’t matter. I only have a Dew once in a great long while, so it’s not like it actually affects me. I’ll just drink Pepsi and Caffienergy Sauces and whatnot. But it just goes to show you that you probably should never get caught up in voting like this. It only ends in sadness. And boring beverages just like other beverages.

I had promised people from school some DnD action, and so, seeing as we couldn’t get Jonathan’s campaign going on Wednesday, I decided that would be as good a day as any to get my own little campaign with everyone started.

When I had originally proposed this campaign, I had given a general outline: James L. Harner, author of this lovely book, has an evil library, and you’ll fight through it. Of course, bringing that to life is a bit harder than saying it. Especially since I ended up with a party of nothing but Strikers, and players who really enjoy lore, which has never been my strong suit. I needed to make something I’d enjoy running, but also something with enough backstory and sense built in to make the kind of people who wrote 3 pages of character backstory when asked for a “quick character idea” happy.
Oh, and I’d also have to teach everyone how to play DnD.

In the end, though, I feel like things went really well. Everyone was put on the spot when I asked them to roleplay, though they eventually got into it. Spaeth and Cole were doing most of the roleplay, even though Cara and Josh were the ones with all the Charisma. People also had a bit of a problem grasping the basic combat mechanics. I thought the power cards would make that easier, but they didn’t really. Just a little. I was glad Spants was there for that, because as the DM, I didn’t want to railroad them with advice, so having Spaeth be able to say “That really doesn’t seem like a good idea” and stuff as part of their team was better, I think.

In the end, Spaeth had to Lawful Good Stop Cole from stealing money back from a shopkeep, and Josh kept running in circles around a tree to dodge arrows. Spaeth also almost left a dude to die, even though he had magical healing powers. My enemies hit REALLY hard, but went down like chumps too, since there were so many Strikers. I felt like I actually hit a pretty good balance in my monsters this time around, because it was really close, and they were being hit hard, but weren’t in any real danger, either.

Basically, I think I kicked ass in the DM department. Or at least did competently.

I want to wrap this plot up in another session, or maybe two. Not too many, because I don’t feel like I can be counted to do that many. We’ll see how it goes.

Having Cara about creates situations to play games I never really put much time into. She wants to play games, but it’s not like we can play Call of Duty or whatever, nor does she want to. I’ve had to think of other multiplayer things we could play. This has caused me to return to two Kingdoms I barely put much time into: The Mushroom Kingdom, and Dokapon Kingdom.

Frankly, I never put much time into the MarioWii. I mean, it’s good. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great old-school platforming, but for whatever reason, I just couldn’t find time to pound away at it myself. Cara knew how Mario worked, though, so I thought we’d give it a try.

New Super Mario Brothers Wii is hard.

I mean, we were playing it, and we got somewhere. We beat World 3 playing together. But it was tough. There were a lot of deaths, and I was having to carry us, even though I’m not all that good with platformers. It also didn’t help that the world we were on was an Ice world, so we were slip-sliding about the whole time. Still, fun was had. Apparently I got really serious sometimes, but that’s just because I felt like I needed to keep making progress for Cara not to be discouraged, so I was putting on my game face and really trying to succeed at the game, more than maybe I would if I was, say, playing with Jonathan.

It’s a good game, but it was too hardcore, honestly. Playing with another gamer would be fun, but I just wasn’t skilled enough to carry both of us, seeing as I could barely carry myself. Next time I went looking on my self for something to play, I was looking for something a bit more casual.

So we played Dokapon Kingdom.
Which honestly isn’t that casual.

It plays like a board game, so it’s slow-paced, but so much of the game is based on RPG tropes that I don’t feel like Cara really understood. Still, I felt like she had a fun time with it. I mean, she beat me in the short game we played. I was honestly being too confident and getting my ass kicked too much. I also was playing a thief, and I probably should have been a warrior. In any case, if she did like it, maybe we’ll start up a story mode game and keep pounding away at that for awhile. I think that would be fun times. I suppose I should probably ask her if she agrees.

In any case, those are two games I went back to and experienced, partially through casual eyes. It was interesting, and certainly fun. Hopefully Cara is enjoying herself… I always worry. I’m so weird and geeky, but also a girl, and I feel like sometimes she doesn’t know what to do with that intersection. Not that it’s a problem.

Ramble.

Hey, want to know how I’ve been wasting my time recently?

Why, watching this let’s play, of course!

Now, I enjoyed Chip and Ironicus’ Killer7 let’s play when I was all sick in bed, but man, this one was even better. Mostly because there is so much room for fucking around in MGS3, and a lot of it I never did during my playthrough (As I survival-knifed EVERYTHING). They are completely entertaining and ridiculous, and it’s obvious that it’s being played by someone who really knows how to completely break the silly game. It’s cool.

If you want a bunch of interweb videos to eat up all your time, it comes highly recommended.

And that’s my shitty post for today.

On to the American footingsball, or as I’ve heard I was supposed to call it from now on, tackleball.

Something like that.

I was pretty excited about the Blood Bowl game. I had heard great, great things about the tabletop version. It was very well loved, and had a big cult following. I was looking forward to trying it in a completely affordable way on the 360.

Unfortunately, it was just not to be.

It’s clear that the people who made the Blood Bowl 360 game love the original game. Like, seriously and completely love it. Their goal was to set out to create a game where fans of Blood Bowl could play Blood Bowl online with minimal problems, and that’s pretty well exactly what they did. However, they took exactly 0 steps towards accessibility.

After doing the tutorial, and playing several matches, I still have very little idea about how the game’s mechanics work. This is a very complex game with lots of dice rolls, but it only shows those dice rolls when you fail them, and have a chance to reroll, or in a tiny window in the corner where they scroll past without explanation. It makes it extremely hard to pick up exactly why you’re failing to tackle people and so on. I was sure there was a perfectly good reason why I was failing, but the game really wouldn’t clue me in on it. It assumed I already knew.

It’s even worse in the “real time” mode. I figured this would be something to fuck around with, like a really shitty Madden or something, but no, the game just starts rolling dice in real time, and you still have to issue commands, except that it doesn’t make sense how to issue commands. It’s even more confusing than the normal game.

I’m sure, for a fan, this game would be completely amazing. The announcers are funny, but can also be turned off, which I’m sure is nice after you’ve played 50 games. The visuals are actually pretty good, and have strong style. You’ve got all the customizations options you’d want, and you can set up online leagues with your friends, or just practice against the computer. But man, if you don’t know how to play Blood Bowl already, this game is just going to seem completely incomprehensible, and I can’t really recommend it. I sent it back to Gamefly on the quickfast.

I have remembered my dreams again, so now you must sit through me retelling them.
Okay, I guess you could just go to another website, but whatever.

I was on a retreat in the middle of the country. This retreat was being run by Chase, from work, for no apparent reason. It was me, a large number of Bros, and Debra, from work. Every day, we’d drive from what was basically a big farm, or summer camp, into town and do volunteer work. The Bros weren’t getting my transsexualness and I was getting kind of annoyed at them, and brainstorming magical ways to get back at them. I had kind of decided on magically (?) changing them into women for awhile.

But then I went to breakfast, and Debra asked me for my homework, a report about the day. I hadn’t done this, because I had been so busy with other things. Neither had the Bros. We went back to the cabin or whatever to write these up. Then Chase enters, wearing rainbow lipstick for reasons I do not understand. He says I’m doing a damn good job, and would I be willing to come on another retreat as a good example? I don’t remember what I said.

Next thing I know, I’ve got a different volunteer assignment, this one in the city. I get dressed up, wearing a masculine business suit even though I’m a woman in the dream, and drive, in the rain, to the city. It’s night by the time I get there, and I find out the place I’m supposed to be going to is a night club called The Black Hole. It is covered in blacklights and neon and has a gigantic Hello Kitty on the side of the building. For some reason, this is a really happening place. I go in the employee entrance in the back, and end up in a special area of the club, full of magical creatures. Chase is there, and explains to me that this is a special meeting place for spellcasters like myself, where I can kick back, relax, and talk magic. He then asks if I want a Pepsi or a slushie.

And then I woke up.

What does it all mean?
Probably that I really need to talk to Chase about awakening my magical powers before he gets transferred to that other Kohl’s store. Heh.

Jonathan and Shauna were out of town Friday night, and Saturday morning, my parents are always gone doing their stuff. Who was going to take care of Molly and FlipFlip? Molly can take care of herself, of course. I’ve taken care of her all the time. But Flapjack in the mix… I had no idea what to expect. Mr. FJ is hyper and energetic, runs around constantly and fights with Molly, and Molly gets weird, jealous, and possessive when he’s around. I mean, they obviously like each other, but it was a completely different situation.

When I was woken up at 7:50 by the sounds of them running around and scratching at my door, I didn’t think the day was going to go very well.

I knew Molly wanted me to be downstairs, so I got out of bed, wandered sleepily to the recliner, and laid down in it, immediately falling back asleep. For awhile, I kept waking up from a Flapjack nose or lick, or Molly wanting to climb up on me for protection, but a little after, there was nothing. I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I found then both sleeping, relaxed on the couch in the living room, taking a nap with me. And now that I feel more rested, and have gotten my lappy, they’re still in there, curled up and laying down.

I told them both thank you for being so good.

I expected a lot more insanity, because they really do have fun when they get together. I enjoy having dogs, but I’d rather have a dog who just wants to sit down next to me, like Molly usually is. I am pleasantly surprised by how well things went. Maybe Flapstock isn’t so much of a crazy puppy, but really does just get overly worked-up by visiting or visiting people. Who knows?
I’m just glad I got a little more sleep than I thought I was going to.