The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Every blog has to have one of these, right? Sure.

I played Flight Control for a few minutes, and typed some words.

First off, Flight Control was one of those games that I should have played before, but never had, and honestly, I can’t understand how it could work on a tiny device. It was pretty cool, though. I might have to pick it up for my iPod.

I could see myself learning to two-finger type pretty fast on the iPad, as well, The big keyboard worked well.

The device felt cool. It had a near-perfect weight for what it was. I kind of want one.

That’s it. I mean, I’ve listened to countless hours of podcasts about the iPad at this point, but that’s really all I have to say about it. I guess I was glad the Apple store was smart enough to set up enough demo units? Yeah.

So that’s exciting, I suppose.

50 Cent: Bitch Stole My Skull is a great game.

Okay, let me explain.

50 Cent: Get on that gun, 50! is a blast to play. It’s ridiculous, and it actually plays well, unlike another “bad” game I’ve been playing recently *cough*DEADLY PREMONITION*cough*

Seriously, this game is 50 Cent, writing fanfiction about himself. Every person knows who he is, and loves his music. He has enough money to hire personal armies. He gets shot directly and gets back up and fights another damn helicopter. He is deadly accurate with amazing numbers of guns. Every inch of this game just oozes “50 Cent wrote this game about himself, so him and his friends can play as themselves and shoot dudes.” And it makes it so fun. The voice acting, the plot, all of it is completely and utterly silly, and you can savor every moment of it.

You’ll savor it too, and not suffer for it, because the gameplay is actually pretty good. It’s a really competent 3rd Person shooter, which passable cover mechanics, a good variety of guns, and plenty of combat. In what might be the most “game-y” mechanic in a game I’ve played for a long while, the fact that the game is constantly popping up challenges of enemies to kill in a set time, and encourages you to get kill streaks and kill combos really makes the game much more engaging. It becomes much more fast-paced, and adds that additional element the game needs to keep you entertained.

The biggest strength and weakness this game has is co-op. As I’m sure you’re aware, co-op can take an “eh” game and make it fantastic, and co-op in this game does just that. It is so much fun. However, the lack of split-screen co-op is a huge, huge oversight. Online co-op is fine, and should be there, but this game NEEDS to be able to be played with someone else on the couch. At the same time, I’ll say that, wanting co-op so bad, I bought two copies of this game, and only paid $30 total. I feel like I still got my money’s worth, but I was shocked and displeased that single-machine co-op wasn’t in the game.

That’s seriously it’s biggest flaw, though. I’m sure all the music and fanservice is fun if I even vaguely knew who 50 Cent was. I thought it really accented the stupid crazy fanfiction feel of the game, so I really enjoyed it, but it’s not really my style. The gameplay is great, and the story is so ridiculous, it’s a lot of fun. You will enjoy 50 Cent: Blood Split Upon Many Grains of Sand if you play it. It’s not full price fun, but this is pretty well the pinnacle of excellent budget game. Get it from a bargain bin, shoot some bitches, and get your jewel-encrusted skull back, mother-fucker.

And seriously, if all that hasn’t convinced you, there is a button solely there to make 50 Cent say 50.

Play the game.

Thanks to Evil Trout, one of the main individuals behind the very awesome Forumwarz, which you know I love, I was able to learn about a small indie game called Digital: A Love Story.

It’s completely fantastic.

I mean, sure, it’s a little cheesy, but you would expect that from such a title. But it’s a very great experience. You should roll through and play it right now, before I talk any more about it. It maybe takes an hour or so to play through? Give it a go and see what you think.

Okay? Did you play it? At least a little?

I really like this game, because it works very similar, both in mechanics and just in what it is trying to do, to Uplink. Uplink was fantastic because it made the things you were doing seem difficult and complicated, while still making them easy enough for you to do with no computer knowledge. You had to type in all kinds of things that you probably wouldn’t have to in most games, but that just made you feel more like a badass hacker, even if actual hackers would be doing completely different things, conceptually.
Digital works the same way, in how it makes you interact with the various BBSes much in the way you would have had to back in the day, but still makes it a bit easier than it would have been back then. The Notebook program tracks everything for you, like a modern game, but you still have to dial the numbers each time you want to connect, which just works wonders for setting the setting and making you feel involved in what you are doing.

At the same time, it’s doing some really interesting things with narrative. You can respond to anyone, send them messages, and talk to them. However, you never actually see what you’re saying. You can only infer what your character (which uses your actual name, if you follow the instructions the game gives you) is saying by what the characters in the game are responding to and saying. This is kind of amazing. You have completely control over what your character does, but not what your character says or thinks. You don’t even get to hear what they think, as you might when playing, say, Nathan Drake in Uncharted or something, where he’s going to make what he thinks clear, because he’s a separate person talking on screen. It’s… a really strange disconnect, especially since the game is designed to look like you are looking at a computer monitor from that time. You are supposed to be the character, and yet you aren’t. It certainly shines even more light upon the characters of the various AIs in the game, and what autonomy they have in their feelings and actions, where you only have autonomy in action, and not emotion.

Highly recommended stuff. I enjoy seeing the gaming medium used in a smart way. This is one of those times.

There has to be a million cool games on the App store, surely. I mean, they’re completely impossible to find, but if I could find them, I bet they would be really great. Sometimes, I start looking around, just trying to find things. Part of me doing this made me download, completely at random, a game called “Let’sTans” because, I dunno, it was free. Then I ended up playing it pretty compulsively for a week.

I guess I’m suggesting you download Let’sTans.

Basically, this is a Tangram game. It’s no frills, really, though I appreciate that you don’t rotate pieces using a two finger gesture, as that can get really annoying after awhile. You tap to rotate, and double-tap to flip the piece. Then you drag it into position. Then you solve the Tangram. Really simple, honestly. There are other modes too, which give you crazy screens completely filled with Tangram pieces, and you have to find the various shapes in the screen. Those are a lot harder, but alright as well. Then, they offer you additional puzzles and modes for small DLC fees.

Frankly, I really had a lot of fun with this. Tangrams are basically perfect for on-the-go, five second entertainment. You can completely one quickly, and you can then completely put the game down. Similarly, it’s perfect to fiddle with while you listen to a podcast. It’s not much of a distraction, but it’s enough to get your brain working while you listen to something nice. As I said, I blazed through all the classic puzzles. The rest didn’t do as much for me, but I still appreciated them being there.

This is a great little package for something that’s free, honestly. Unless you think Tangrams are the dumbest form of puzzle imaginable, you will get some entertainment out of it. Download it and enjoy it. It’s fun, in a simple, uncomplicated kind of way.

I’ve been reading scholarly essays on The Dude all day today.
They constantly put him forth in many roles: slacker hero, seeker of the holy grail, noir detective, but in all of them, he is so completely, and unmistakably The Dude. These interpretations don’t change the character: they can’t. The Dude is the The Dude. He cannot be changed.

Meanwhile, I am walking in circles, reading a silly book, and generally being scared as fuck at all the stuff I have to get done in the next month.

I have a term paper to write, some conferences with High School Students, a bunch more research to get done, and a book review to write (of said book of Lebowski essays) and a marketing plan to dream up. Add onto this all of my transition-related pressing issues: I need to be scheduling hair removal treatments, something by busyness has put off for several weeks, as well as finding a lawyer to start the process of changing my name, talking more to my parents, friends, and family to get them prepared, finding a time where my parents can talk to my psychologist, and so much stuff. Then, of course, there’s the multitude of work-related duties I have to work in there too.

Short version: I am fucking busy.

And as I am fucking busy, reading this book, I am told, over and over, about The Dude’s “bravery,” and how he stands there, against the world, shucking everything that doesn’t appeal to him, including his name, and just being The Dude.

It’s inspiring.

I mean, you don’t necessarily get that from watching the movie. It’s just a fucking hilarious, entertaining film. But there really is something about The Dude that makes you like him, and I really do think these essays are hitting on that. Escape is always there in my head. I could escape, not give a shit, hide, and then I can relax. Hell, I used to do that. That’s why it took me so long to get my bachelor’s. I’d get stressed, so I’d hide, play my video games, and relax. Now, I can’t do that. I have things to do and goals to accomplish. I have to keep working. Everyone does. The Dude has things he needs to do, too. He needs to make rent. He needs to live life and be functional. But he says, “fuck that, man.” He does things his own way, and things fall apart, and he doesn’t care. “Strikes and gutters, ups and downs,” he just goes. He just is. He, shockingly enough, abides.

And it’s almost pornographic how appealing that is.

The last class period before Easter, I wrote on the board, on the schedule for Easter break, “Eat a Cadbury Egg. Write a response.”

Of course, I’m the kind of person who would do that, but my class found it a little less funny.

In any case, it’s egg-finding day, or magical rabbit with a basket like for the bread day. It’s a good day, not for religious significance, necessarily, but for all the good stuff it brings. Whether it’s finally having that Dr. Pepper after abstaining for a month, and savoring every drop, or it’s just having an excuse to get the grandparents down and eat a meal, good stuff happens on Easter.

Make some good stuff happen today. You don’t even need to have died a few days before this, promise. Enjoy a candy, enjoy your family being there, or just enjoy a day off.

Just enjoy. And then write a response.

This post has Bioshock and Bioshock 2 spoilers, so keep that in mind if you read on.

Brer asked me, as I started playing Bioshock 2, to keep an idea in mind: Is the game being nicer to Sophia Lamb, and her philosophy, than it was to Andrew Ryan? This is a loaded question, of course. He obviously thought it was. Me, I disagree. I feel like both characters received a comeuppance of having their own philosophies turned against them. The difference simply lies in which has the more “brutal” philosophy.

Andrew Ryan believes in a very “dog eat dog,” social Darwinism kind of philosophy. The weak should not hold down the strong. The best will rise to the top, and should be able to shine without being held back, especially not by the government. In his philosophy, people who are weak fail, fall, and die. He considers himself, of course, to be among the strong, those who succeed. Yet, when you approach him in Bioshock, it is obvious that he is not one of the strong. He has lost, for you are here to kill him. He attempts to salvage his dignity by basically committing suicide through you, by choosing death for himself, instead of having it happen to him. But the fact remains: he has fallen, he has failed, and he will die. He gets the “bad” end of his philosophy.

I feel a similar thing happens to Sophia Lamb. She believes in helping the weak, and that “we are all one big family.” She believes in the greater good. Everyone’s actions should serve the needs of the many, not the needs of the few. If that requires sacrifice, then so be it.
At the end of Bioshock 2, at least with the good ending, Eleanor saves Lamb’s life. She provides kindness and charity which gives her absolutely no benefit, honestly. Lamb tried to control every aspect of her life, and will surely continue to. Giving her kindness doesn’t really give Eleanor any benefit, perse.
However, it puts Lamb in an awkward situation. Brer claims that she would go on to work her philosophical magic on the surface world, but I don’t think that’s the case. Eleanor has dethroned her. She’s in control, and I do not believe she is going to let Lamb do anything like that any more. Lamb is being reduced to a lame duck, being kept alive out of kindness. She won’t be able to enact any good on the world, because Eleanor will keep her in check. In fact, she’s really going to end up being nothing but a burden to Eleanor who, if she is really as brilliant and bright as Lamb would believe, is going to do good things, even if they don’t exactly connect with her philosophy. Eleanor will enact some manner of good on the world, and she is holding her back from that. Her existence, from that point, is potentially harming the greater good. She should remove herself, the very thing she tells Delta to do throughout the whole game. She is on the “bad” end of her philosophy.

Ryan’s philosophy is more brutal, so I feel like his fall from grace is more brutal. I also feel like having two games talking about his philosophy can potential put him in a slightly worse light than Lamb, who only had one. Still, I don’t feel like there is a significant difference between their treatment. I’m sure I’m probably missing something, or ignoring something else, but that’s how I felt when I finished the game, and now I have shared it in a bloeg.

Most reviews of Bioshock 2 that I have read start with the fact that this is a sequel that did not need to exist and, honestly, since that’s the elephant in the room, I’m not going to be any different. This game did not need to exist. Bioshock was a neat, near-perfect package that said what it wanted to say and was done. Playing through the first hour or two in the game, I was filled with the feeling that the game was trying way, way too hard. “Ugh, this is so unnecessary. Man, they’re really forcing this in here.”
After you get past those feelings, though, you start realizing that, hey, there’s still a fun game there. Sure, it didn’t need to exist, but it’s still a good time, and they certainly improved, mechanically, on the combat in the game, making it a much more enjoyable game, though perhaps a slightly diminished experience, since you’ve been to Rapture before.

All the plasmids and guns have been improved upon. The plasmids now have levels: you can upgrade them, and then charge them up for additional effects. This gives you a feeling of power progression you simply did not have in the original game. It’s not gaining levels, but you feel like you’re constantly getting stronger, a feeling you didn’t really get from the first game. This is certainly a benefit and helps draw you through the game experience. Additionally, upgrading the weapons fundamentally changes their use, unlike the first game. The Rivet Gun, for example, starts setting people on fire once you fully upgrade it, making it’s use change. It’s also a big difference, making you feel that same sense of progression that you feel with the plasmids. It works.

Combat itself has been improved by the simple fact that you have a gun and a plasmid equipped at all times. You don’t have to switch between them, which makes it much easier to zap someone with electrobolt and then drill them, or complete whatever kind of complex plasmid to weapon or weapon to plasmid maneuver you want to undertake. Add to this the fact that the game constantly rewards you for varying up your attack tactics, much more than in the other games. The research camera is now a video camera, and you get rewards for recording the killing of enemies in a variety of ways, much more than simply shooting them with the same gun over and over. It makes the combat much more dynamic.

Especially important, to me anyway, was the Little Sister collection sequences. The game gives you a very wide variety of traps, from proximity mines to the Cyclone Trap plasmid. These existed, for the most part, in the first game, but you never really had a reason to use them. You could set up ambushes for Big Daddies, I guess, but they never felt required. It was much easier just to charge in there with a shotgun or grenade launcher and be done with it. Now, with the defense of the Little Sisters, the game is giving you a clear reason to play defensively and set up lots of traps. I loved this: it was a welcome change from how I was approaching normal combat. I took the time to completely vary my approach for these sequences, and I had a lot of fun. I can see how someone who decided they were just going to run and gun during those times would find them a bit tedious, but I took them as a reason to do something different, and was rewarded. I found it very fun.

I feel like I need to mention multiplayer, another thing that people claim the game did not need. I only played a round, but I have to say, I can appreciate what they’re doing. They pretty successfully integrated the “Modern Warfare” style of multiplayer progression with the setting of the game. I loved that I got to walk around my little Rapture house, hear propaganda, set up my loadout and crazy splicer attire, and run into battle. I also enjoyed how well they worked plasmids into the multiplayer. Most of them are reconfigured to be debuffs or DoTs. They aren’t just another gun. They really do compliment whatever strategy you’re trying. So, yeah, I wouldn’t be mad at someone for playing the multiplayer. It’s not really compelling enough to get me to drop everything else and play it, but for a kid who got this for his birthday and has no other multiplayer options, he’s going to have a damn good time, and won’t feel like he’s settling for second best.

Yeah, Bioshock 2 was a fun time. It’s not really a “must play” like the first game, but if you enjoy the first, and want to enjoy some better combat in a familiar setting, you really should give it a go. Just expect many elements to be rehashed going in, and you’ll have no problem enjoying yourself.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HAH HAHA HAH!

AH HA HA HA ! HA!

HA!

Humor.

Well, I beat it. I was unsure if I was going to, but I totally completely completed DEADLY PREMONITION.

I liked it.

I say that with some warnings. This really isn’t a good game mechanically. The open world stuff is tedious. The shooting is awful. It has some strangely-compelling voice acting, but that’s basically it for any sort of decent budget feel to the game. These are all written off by it being a shitty game. “Who cares? It’s crap.”

For some reason, though, I cared. There are elements to the plot that make it seem like everything in the game is working towards something. It gives the impression that there is an overall vision to the game which will make all these weird-ass elements make sense. It made me interpret what was going on as I went along, and then, at the end, it threw a plot twist that, if I hadn’t been looking at the game the way I was, wouldn’t have meant anything, but has, instead, left me reeling and unsure.

Okay, time to talk about the story, so, you know, spoilers ahead.

Agent Francis York Morgan is constantly talking to Zach. It’s obvious very early on that Zach is an alternate personality. York treats him as such. It’s obvious. However, since you’re controlling York, it seems like Zach is a stand in for the player. When you stop the car to pick up a collectible or something, York goes, “Is there something you want to check out here, Zach?” Since I, the player, was the person who made the decision to stop, it seems pretty clear that Zach = Me.
I was going through the whole game thinking of it this way. York is crazy because he has a game-player in his head. That’s why the world is so very “game-y.” That’s why there are enemies in sequences where combat makes no sense at all. That’s why the game looks like an old school PS1 game, because that makes it feel all the more “game-like,” instead of the more structured experiences you find nowadays. That’s why the things anyone does every day, sleeping and eating, are shown as game systems, even though they are, overall, completely inconsequential to playing the game. It’s still something that one would be aware of, and it’s being shown in a video game way, because I am a creature of video games influencing York.

Then the game makes you play as Emily.

At first, I didn’t realize the significance of this. The game still flipped back to York whenever he talked with Zach. It never seemed to miss a beat. I assumed York’s special brand of insanity, namely me, was rubbing off on his love interest. But what this really meant, as was made clear by the ending, was that I, the player, wasn’t Zach at all. Zach was a character in the game. And in the end game, when it becomes clear that Zach is a character, and not the player as character, well, it turns basically my whole interpretation of the game upside down. No longer is the game a commentary about how insane most video game protagonists are, if you look at them from a more normal viewpoint. It’s now a completely different story, and I don’t quite know how to grok it.

Additionally, Kaysen, the last boss, not only refers to the various locations you go to in York and Zach’s mind like they were real locations he can know about, but Harry, as well, refers to those places as real locations. It’s making the supernatural elements of the game real (well, besides the conceit of the purple gas which drives people to rage, which honestly, I can be okay with. The red trees that instantly consume women they are stuck into? Well, I put that into the “insanity” folder) for reasons I don’t quite understand. It also throws in the idea that Kaysen is some sort of Highlander or something, who doesn’t age, right at the end too. I don’t understand the significance of this, either.

Is the game really just a batshit insane experience, with no real purpose?

Again, I may be giving the game too much credit, but it seems like my original explanation could still hold true with the ending. Making Zach a character rips identity away from the player, making the player relive, in a certain sense, the sort of drama of loss of self which young Zach felt all those years ago. It’s also the point where the player loses all control over the story. Sure, there are some boss battles after that point, but from then on, it’s mostly cutscenes. Even most of the final boss battle is scripted heavily. It’s no longer your story, because you are no longer Zach. He’s taken it away from the player, and dammit, it can be as insane as he wants it to be, now that it’s not a video game fever dream, but his story.

But I’m probably just being too English major-y with it.

Still, it’s the fact that I was constantly thinking about interpretations and trying to figure out what it all could mean that kept me playing all the way through the end. On that level, this game was a huge success.

I liked it a lot. I can’t recommend that everyone play it, but I really did enjoy it.