The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Remember that Disney Channel Alice in Wonderland show where the White Rabbit was a guy in a bunny suit who was force to wear rollerblades so as to be hip? Oh, don’t worry, I found a link for you so you can experience it.

What does that have to do with KoL’s IoTM of the month, the Clan Looking Glass? Eh, not much, I guess, but I’ve been thinking about it since it came out.

Mostly, I think people were excited to see this IoTM because it meant the return of Clan VIP Keys, which were apparently insanely expensive. It wasn’t an issue for me, since I had one from the Pool Table, but, you know, I’m sure that was nice for people. Still, I don’t think one should overlook the Looking Glass, not that I expected them to, perse. But it’s a pretty awesome dump of content with some neat items in it.

I actually didn’t get a chance to get one of these myself, because Val and Cris had already installed one in the Ernest Borg Nine’s VIP Lounge before I even realized it existed. It makes me feel a little eh for mooching. I pitched in for the pool table. I suppose I shouldn’t worry, though, as it’s not like they seem upset. That’s just a problem with this furniture, I guess. There’s always some amount of having to figure out the social issues of picking it up.

Anyway, the Glass basically gives you one “DRINK ME” potion a day, which lets you access the Down the Rabbit Hole area. This has cool shit in it.
The Tweedleporium is a completely heart-based shop. There is a weekly rotation of neat stuffies, an expensive outfit that includes a watch, and puffs of smoke. The puffs of smoke lets you send silly picture messages to your friends. One puff equals one letter. It’s neat and silly, and I really like it. I also like that there’s a good NPC-store-purchasable rollover turn item in the game, even if it is much too expensive to use on any sort of serious run.
There’s a Mad Tea Party, that gives you a random buff based on the number of letters in the name of your currently equipped hat. That’s cool: there’s a lot of nice content in there, and I’m sure some of the buffs are very worth it. It’s hard for me to get excited about this, honestly? But I’m sure there’s at least one buff in there that’s going to become very hardcore-relevant. They’re all solid, and if actually take the time to plan your hat, you can get a nice boost once a day, I would think.
The final part is the Red Queen’s Garden, which is one of my favorite things: a quest that spans multiple ascensions to give you long term goals. I talked about how I liked this back with the Baby Sandworm, and this is no different. Basically, you fight some monsters with some okay drops, but you also work to collect maps to collect parts of a meal. You can get one piece per class, and once you have them all, you can trade them in for a cool reward: a piece of familiar equipment called the ittah bittah hooka. It makes your familiar give you completely random buffs in battle. That is totally cool. I can’t wait to get one and try it out. I like having long term goals.
There’s also a mini-game in the map that you can beat over and over again to get cookies that give you very strong buffs to your base stats. Less interesting to me, but still completely cool.

So, yeah, lots of good content in here. Your clan should pick one up. Three Mr. A’s is still a tough sell if you’re on your own, but I suppose you could always try buying Drink Me potions in the mall or something? It’s cool stuff. I feel like this is a win. Way better than the Pool Table, and a lot of fun.

Since I put the tag “Start Profiling” on the last post, I guess that means I’m writing a series about DEADLY PREMONITION. I guess that’s okay. I can write a little more. I still haven’t beat it or anything, but here are some more of my early thoughts. If I ever do finish it, you can bet that I’ll have a review that’s mostly just plot analysis or something.

I mentioned in the last post that this game bit off more than it can chew in terms of systems. This is completely true. DEADLY PREMONITION is attempting to have a huge, open world with hunger and sleep mechanics.

On one hand, it completely fails. Getting around the world is a pain in the ass. I hear one of the side missions gets you a radio that lets you fast travel, but the game won’t let me pick flowers while it’s raining, so I’m still without that particular item for the time being. The world is really huge, and driving controls incredibly badly. Sure, it gives you a decent feeling that you’re seeing all of this country town, but it also is just a huge annoyance driving around. The annoyance is enhanced by how useless the map is. You can’t zoom the map out. It only shows you your immediate area, so you have to scroll around if you want to see more. This makes it nearly impossible to plot a path to your destination if it’s more than two blocks away. You are constantly opening your map, scrolling around to find the next turn, and closing your map. It’s stupid.
The hunger and sleep mechanics don’t seem to do much either. Basically, you have to sleep and eat, and you can buy many foodstuffs and coffee and such in the world to refill those meters. However, it’s never really something that needs to be rationed. You always have plenty of money, and you find tons of food naturally in the world. It’s never anything even vaguely like a problem to make sure you don’t starve to death or fall asleep outside.
The sleep part, especially, isn’t a problem, because you are constantly trying to sleep to move the clock forward. Lots of events only happen at certain time periods, and often the game will put you in a situation where you have to wait half the day to continue the story. Because the in-game clock moves glacially slow, you have to either sleep or take many smoke breaks (which is another mechanic that moves the clock forward, for whatever reason) in order to get on with it.

Still, though, when you really get into the story, you really sort of understand what they were trying to do. You can see all major suspects and characters on the map at all times. You can see them going about their daily lives. They drive to work. They go home at night, after stopping by the grocery store. You actually have to follow their patterns to finish certain side missions, and it does give the entire game world a much more realistic feel. It’s sort of like Majora’s Mask in that way. The world is moving, whether or not you’re acting on it. You can actually go back to previous days to complete side missions, too, so it’s like Majora’s Mask in that way as well. You can go, “Okay, I guess he’ll be here during this chapter at 14:00” and plan a route accordingly. This kind of open world interaction is honestly rarely done. Games like Oblivion or Fallout 3 do it, but they never move key NPCs because you need to be able to find them. As such, it doesn’t feel like much is actually changing, because the only people you actually interact with are always where you expect them. This game moves everyone, even key characters you may need to talk with. They’re all living their lives. It’s cool. And the fact that your character can be hungry, so you decide to go out to dinner with some NPCs and mooch a free meal? Well, hey, that’s cool realism too.

Of course, this sense of realism is coming from a game where I’m shooting Zombie Ghosts that only York can see like… all the fucking time. But it’s neat, if flawed.

Then again, that’s exactly what DEADLY PREMONITION is. Neat, if flawed.

Between birthday and just awesomeness coming out, I just don’t have time for all the games I want to play. This is frustrating, especially since I only tend to write about games I’ve finished on here, most of the time. I go for the “review” and things. But now I’m worried. As much as I want to, I may have trouble finding the time to finish DEADLY PREMONITION. I feel the need to talk about it. So here are some impressions. I’m almost done with the third chapter, for those who are actually in the know about this game. No spoilers or anything, though.

Basically, I find DEADLY PREMONITION incredibly fascinating. Also, I find it a game title I feel required to put in caps, but that’s beside the point. Here is a game that is, at times, so amazingly subtle and well-acted, but at others, is completely stupid, clunky, and ridiculous. It’s just kind of mind-blowing. During a conversation with Brer, he said he wanted to play it because what I was saying kind of reminded him of the weird-ass, obscure Russian PC games he likes. You know the ones: Ambition far, far outstrips budget, but they don’t let that stop them. They try to do everything anyway, with weird results. Add in an odd translation, and you almost always have a mindtrip. I feel like that fits DEADLY PREMONITION perfectly. That’s exactly how I feel about it. It’s mechanics way, way outstrip its budget, which is only enough to make a game that looks mostly like a PS1 game. The underlying soul of the game, though, is outstanding.

Let me tell you what I meant about subtlety. Agent York Morgan is amazingly well-acted. His in-game avatar is awkward and creepy. When his in-game model smiles, you want to scream in terror. But his voice actor is, honestly, amazing. He’s really genuine. I really feel like I get this completely insane dude. He seems real, because he’s being played as real, even in the completely fucked up scenario the game is putting him in. He does little subtle things, like raises his voice a notch or two around elderly NPCs so they can hear him better. He has genuine emotion. It’s almost mind-blowing to see in a game with shooting controls that are potentially worse than the original Resident Evil.
NPCs are similarly well acted. Some of the smaller characters are less well done, but the rest of the main cast has very genuine voice talent behind them. I honestly can’t decide if these are all very, very passionate amateurs who are really getting into the roles, or if they just hired people who were that good. I honestly can say I rarely see voice acting this good in a video game. It’s even more surreal that it stays good, even when they’re saying ridiculous, almost engrish-y lines.

Basically, it’s the voice acting that makes me sit there and wonder if all the janky, low-budget aspects of this game were on purpose or not. There is a grasp of storytelling at play here that the graphics and gameplay might make you think does not exist. It really makes me think I should be looking very deep into every aspect of the game, and try to find meaning.

Then again, I’m probably just giving it the benefit of the doubt because it is charming me. But still, I’m enjoying it, actually. I really am.

After I have an experience such as a birthday, which I have recently had this Wednesday, I tend to record my haul, partially because I am excited about it, and partially so I can say thank you for awesome in a public setting. I don’t know why this year would be any different, although I’ve been so busy it’s taken me a few days to write it up, as you can tell. So, without further ado, here’s my lovely haul for this year’s birthday!

Jonathan got me a Pokewalker! Uh, I mean, Pokemon Soul Silver. I’m much more excited about the Pokewalker. Can you tell? I’m probably going to write a review of just the Pokewalker soon! But no, this was exactly what I was wanting. It was kind of frustrating hearing everyone talk about it, but knowing I should hold off until my birthday for just this reason. I’ve got eggs from Spants so I have the exact Pokemin I want, and I’m rocking that Pokewalker all day. It’s great.

Shauna got me something… IN THE FUTURE. Apparently there’s a new Dominion expansion, called Alchemy, which is coming out in the next month. She has preordered this for me. This is awesome. I didn’t even know it existed until a bit ago, and now I am going to have it delivered to me. Dominion is still a fucking amazing card game, and I’m not tired of it yet. Bring on more expansions, I say!

Speaking of things in the future, my friends apparently ordered me something that I’ll be getting IN THE FUTURE as well. They did not tell me what it was in a crazy singing Pokemon card like Shauna did, though. Still, they have good taste. I’m sure it’ll be neat.

The parents hooked me up with both current Race for the Galaxy expansions, which I’m sure I will talk about my first time playtesting in a later blog. Short version: they’re pretty awesome. But my mom really had to jump through some hoops and bribe people to order things she knew nothing about it get me these, so I appreciate that. She also got me a copy of FFXIII on the Xbox 360. (Yeah, yeah, it’s supposedly the shittier version, but seriously, I don’t give a crap about visual fidelity. I’d rather have my achievements and useful friends list.) I have no idea when I am going to play the damn thing, but I am excited about doing it. FFXIII has really gotten me excited with its linear nature. I’m unsure I’ll enjoy the hand-holding tutorialness most of the way through, but we’ll see. I want to try.

And, of course, the parents and grandparents were nice enough to supply me with cold-hard cash. Enough that I could pay off my pretty new TV and my new lappy, respectively, which is very much appreciated. Since, you know, I use those all the damn time. Heh.

Oh! I was just going over the party at my house! I can’t forget people who gave me presents outside this setting. For example, Kale got me this completely awesome shirt a few weeks early for the birthday times. It’s awesome. I’ve been complimented about it quite a bit. Brer got me Kate Beaton’s Never Learn Anything From History book, which is sweet, due to the fact that Kate Beaton is fucking awesome.

Thanks to everyone who celebrated my birthday. I swear I got more birthday wishes and recognition for not dying for another year than I ever had before. Even my psychologist sang me happy birthday. It’s… great to be so loved. So fucking great. Thank you.

Classic Munchkin is a much better game than Munchkin Cthulhu.

It’s weird, in a way. You’d almost always expect the first entry in a series to be the most simple, and have only the most basic of mechanics that sequels and spinoffs would build on. This just isn’t the case with Munchkin. Munchkin Cthulhu is a vastly simpler game, and a much better introduction into how the game plays than the original. However, the much wider set of mechanics in the original really make it a much more fun game, in my opinion. There is so much more you can do, and many more Options, Options, Options that you have on each turn. There’s much more interaction. That’s a good thing.

The races and classes do much, much more in this game. Basically, each class has actual abilities, powered by card discards (which gives you an actual reason not to put items out in front of you, as you may need them to power these abilities). These range from getting free run-aways, resurrecting a recently-killed easy fight so you can level up easier, or just winning on ties. The classes in Cthulhu are much more static bonuses: useful, but you certainly feel like you’re playing less of a role and more donning a title to equip certain items. The races fill the static bonuses in classic Munchkin, but even they are much more varied, from the Halfling’s ability to sell items at double the cost to the Elf’s huge, game-changing ability to level up when helping someone fight a monster. These cards really make the game much more dynamic. You have to pay much more attention to what people are equipping and using.

Additionally, I think the fantasy, DnD theme is just a much better fit for the game mechanics. You don’t grind and find loot when you play Call of Cthulhu. It’s not a loot game. As such, it is hard to come up with classes and loot that makes sense. In classic Munchkin, they have so, so much to draw upon that they can have the bigger variety of mechanics and items with no problem. They don’t have depend on making 10 separate Necronomicon jokes to have enough weapons (although most of them are fairly entertaining, I will admit). They even add in things such as damage types and monster keywords to mix things up. Clerics are good against undead, of course. Killing certain monsters with a weapon that deals fire damage makes things easier. There’s simply more variety.

Although I’d like to mix the two decks together sometime, I really feel like classic Munchkin is completely the way to go, unless you are just completely obsessed with the Mythos and hate fantasy. It’s clear this is where all their initial genus went. It’s deeper, but not so deep as to be intimidating. It’s just more fun.

(Side Note: Spell check wants to change Munchkin to Munch-kin, and Necronomicon to Noneconomic. Crazy, silly spell check.)

We had another night of Munchkin on Monday, and it was mostly good times. We played the original, which I picked up (which apparently made Shauna playfully angry, since she had suggested getting the game for me and Jonathan said that it wasn’t my kind of game) and I’m sure you’ll see a review of that tomorrow. Because it’s apparently Munchkin Week here at the bloeg. But for now I’m going to talk about something pointless, stupid, and depressing related to Munchkin. Ready? Okay.

I hate gender-based mechanics in casual games.

Okay, that description really doesn’t describe the phenomenon I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is casual games where game mechanics are based upon the player’s actual gender. This is normally done for funny joke time, to break the ice, or to give female players an advantage because the designers are assuming their boyfriends tricked them into playing or some shit.

Obviously, I’m a bit sensitive to such things. They put me in awkward situations.

Example from Monday. We were playing Cthulhu Munchkin again. I draw an early game Chibithulhu. I can easily beat it at the “male” difficulty, but at the “female” difficulty, I don’t have enough equipment. Everyone knows I have this card in my hand, due to a weird drawing snafu. If I am male, the right thing to do is to look for trouble, play Chibithulhu, take the extra treasure from being an Investigator, and level up. Everyone knows I have the card, and everyone knows I can kill it if this is the case. If I hold onto the card and don’t play it, I am, in their eyes, making an obvious play mistake.
This really, really, really bothers me for some reason. I try to learn rules and master them. I find that fun. I also don’t believe in playing at anything less than the best of your ability, as I find throwing the game only insults the people you’re playing with. (There are exceptions for humor value, of course, but in general, I feel this way.) I tried holding onto the card in reality. I didn’t play it for two turns. It drove me crazy. I didn’t want to seem like I was handicapping myself.
At the same time, I could have insisted I was female, I suppose. All but one person at the table I had had the talk with. That, however, seemed like I would be intentionally disrupting and ruining a fun night. We were all having a good time. Why should I be ruining it with my stupid bullshit?

I ended up playing the card, and asking for help to kill the monster. Everyone at the table complained. “What are you doing? You don’t need help to kill that.” I gave in, took my treasure, swallowed my feelings on the matter, and kept playing.

But it obviously bothered me enough to write a bloeg about it.

And that is why gender-based mechanics suck. The end.
Okay, I guess I didn’t actually prove that. Just that I hate them. I understand why they exist, and I think that’s a fine thing. Nothing wrong with breaking the ice in such games. But dammit, it’s stupidly hard. Annoying. Yes.

And that’s it for that rant. Stay tuned for more stupidity.

Yay for me.

It’s another time passing marker. I get presents for not dying. I’m down with that, I guess. And at least, this time around, I can’t say I’ve sat on my laurels. Look at all the shit I’ve accomplished since last time I had a birthday. I got a college degree. I started grad school. I finally got my ass in gear and started actually useful therapy. I’ve done shit. The list is only going to grow next year, too.

To everyone who might want to celebrate with me: thanks. I really do appreciate it. More than you know. I’ve been out of it recently, so I may not seem super excited. Maybe a little low key. But know that having you around is some of the best stuff in my life. I can’t ask for a better gift than you all, as cheesy and silly as that is.
Just don’t call me “birthday boy.” That shit is kind of old. Heh.

But yes, onward and onward. Maybe I’ll take a break today. I don’t know if I really can, but maybe I will anyway. Maybe I’ll relax and feel good. That’d be awesome. Maybe I’ll grow older, keep doing the shit I love, and do more stuff I need to do every day. That’d be awesome too.

Essner wanted to play Munchkin. So much that he bought Munchkin Cthulhu, and we went at it.

Munchkin is one of those touchstone games that I feel like anyone who gives a shit about board and card games should know about. Yet, I had never played it, and really didn’t feel the need to seek it out. Still, I was looking forward to trying it, just to have the knowledge of how the game works and what its systems are seeing that, as I said, it is just one of those games that everyone knows and refers to.

My initial feelings? A fun game, but certainly one that deserves the criticisms it deserves. Will that stop me from enjoying it in the future? Hell no. But I see where everyone is coming from.

Basically, there are two decks, Treasure and “Door.” Every turn, you flip a door card. If it’s a monster, you fight it. Fighting is a pure numbers game with no real dice rolls. If your “level” is higher than the monster’s, then you win. Equipment and such from the treasure deck gives you additional levels so you can fight more powerful foes. Kill a monster, and you gain a level, and get to draw as much treasure as the card says from the treasure deck. Get to level 10, and you win.
Of course, this is a backstabbing game, so it’s not that easy. From the Door deck, you can also get various curses or monster buffs, which you can throw into the mix to fuck up other players, causing them to use their one-shot cards or to bribe other players with treasure or favors in order to bring them into the combat, where they can party and use their combined levels to beat a monster.
Other mechanics include classes, which are basically buffs you put in play that change your playstyle a little with different benefits, and being able to sell off items to buy levels (but not the winning level.) But that’s basically it for mechanics.

Yeah, so it’s a very, very random game, and not a very deep one. Honestly, there are rarely any really significant decisions that you are making throughout gameplay. It’s all just luck of the draw kinds of things, and “do I fuck him over now, or later?” From a pure gameplay standpoint, it’s not going to dazzle you with Options, Options, Options.
And honestly, that’s okay, because this is a social game. It’s all about trash talk, screwing people over, being screwed over, and plotting revenge. It’s the social interactions that make the game fun. The jokes on the cards help the first time or two around as well, but really, it’s all about the personalities of the people you’re playing with. It’s about being pointlessly vindictive just because it’s fun, or wasting all your cards on something minor because the humor of the situation demanded it. That’s fun as shit.

Honestly, the weirdest thing about playing the game was that it was a game that I didn’t know the rules of, but Droid and Essner did. That never happens. I’m always the person who knows the rules. I mean, it’s not a problem that they had more information than me. It wasn’t a big deal. A fun time was had. It was just interesting having Droid explain game mechanics to me, I guess. It’s a rare occurrence.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun playing Munchkin Cthulhu. I’d play it again. Apparently everyone kind of wished that Essner had gotten the original, because they liked the races as well as the classes. You can mix all the decks together, though, so maybe that’ll be picked up at some point. Either way, I’m down for another round or two. It’s good times.

Go go linkdump!

I completely forget how I stumbled upon this. It’s very furry, but blowing my mind with awesome, I will admit. Maybe I haven’t seen enough suits like that, but that is just amazing for a non-anthro costume.
But on top of that, think of the story which lead to this post on this blog. Now, I don’t know what the website actually is. I haven’t been there, besides this link. But seriously, this is completely furry and outside the realm of any sort of gadget blog. Think of the writer justifying it to the people who run the site. Or maybe he’s there, sweating and worrying, and the people running the site just shrug. “As long as it’s bringing in the clicks.” Then they go back to counting money. I dunno, I feel like the story behind it is almost as entertaining.
In any case, the people in the comments are also stupid. This is obviously a creation of craftsmanship. It should cost that much. Whether the average person would get use out of it to justify that price is another story. I know I probably wouldn’t. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t mind having it. But oh well.

Let’s see, what other links are good? How about this one, which leads to Brickroad’s very long co-op LP of Secret of Evermore? This is a link worth following if you are a connoisseur of fine LPs. It’s slowly being posted, but it’s great. Even if they are just grinding for levels with the Spear forever and so on. Heh.

Finally, LBJ was apparently pretty amazing. I feel bad for Joe Haggar.

Anyway, that’s some stuff. Apparently. Enjoy your stuff and your day, I’ll try to think of something vaguely interesting to write for next time, promise.

Let’s be honest. Everything has a very real possibility of exploding in my face. Everything is made of gunpowder. I’m risking igniting it.

I stared at the ceiling for hours, realizing I don’t have a plan if this fails. My life, for the longest time, has been leading up to trying to make this transition happen. If it fails, if I can’t pass, if nobody accepts me, what happens then? The correct answer is, I guess, that I continue on in some capacity. Somehow, I keep going. I survive.

But that seems so unbearable. Things are already unfair. I shouldn’t feel like this, but I do. I shouldn’t have these problems. The idea that I can put it all on the line, and do literally every single thing in my power to fix this, and then still not succeed is… it would crush me completely. I don’t see anything after that point. I’m sure I’d keep going somehow, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what life is for me after that point. I don’t.

I can’t let the worst-case scenario stop me, though. I know that if I don’t try to fix this, I will hate myself. I will always worry if I could have removed this cloud over my life, that ruins all the fucking awesome people and awesome things in it. I will never feel like I did the right thing. I need to proceed. And I will proceed. As I’ve said before, nothing is going to stop me now. I’m doing this.

Is it a comfort, though. Is it what reality is. I don’t know. Maybe I have less of a read of the flow of things than I had hoped. Maybe I should expect doom and gloom. I don’t know. I just want to be able to claim myself, and maybe that won’t happen.

But life goes on, I guess.

Ugh… sorry… I haven’t been right all week. All depressed and shit. Don’t let me drag you down.