The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Well… okay… I guess I did go see a psychologist who has very much experience with gender identity issues Monday.
Yeah, I guess I am going to be seeing her weekly now.

I… yeah.

I mean, I really like this woman. She is just… very happy that I’m there. That positive energy does so, so much for me when this shit is so hard, expensive, and inevitably conflict-creating. I don’t need another thing to keep me away.
I even screwed this first meeting up: I got completely lost trying to find her office, and in the end, I wasted over half my session driving around in St. Louis. It was kind of my fault. I didn’t leave super-early, like I should have, because I was worried that I would sit in the parking lot for an hour and go insane with worry, which… was the last thing I wanted. So I didn’t, and I was late. Still, she was very understanding, and wonderful. It’s going to be a good thing.

It’s all going to be a good thing. This is the start. I… well, I sure as hell waited to the last possible minute of the year, of the decade, to start fixing this… but hey, at least I did it, right?
Right.
It’s been a long, long time coming. It’s certainly not any easier. But… yeah.

Deep breath now. Here we go.

The KoL Item which is sold for only one month could be known as the Stocking Mimic. It’s a Ka-Razee familiar that doesn’t level up as per normal. CRAZY.

Basically, this familiar doesn’t have the normal 20 pound cap. It caps at 100, and only levels up when you feed it candy. However, once you use it for a few turns, it drops its familiar equipment, which makes it level up as per normal, which kind of defeats the whole interesting nature of the “feed it candy” thing. I mean, you know, people really concerned with speed would feed it candy? But this familiar is a Cocoabo. It’s not about speed. It’s about doing cool random shit. So… I guess I don’t really get what the point of that mechanic is. It seems like it would be more interesting to put something like that on a Fairy or something relevant to ascension. But what do I know.

Anyway, once you have the thing equipped with its Bag of Confections, it also sometimes drops candy with some cool buffs. You can, of course, feed the Mimic this candy if you really, really want to, but it seems like it would be more fun to enjoy the buffs? Why does the stupid sock need more candy, I ask you? It has a whole BAG of it. I mean, if nothing else, the Polka Pop seems really, really good, giving a very good +item and +meat buff. Belch the Rainbow from the Piddles gives some great Chromatic damage, and Full of Wist from the BitterSweet Tarts gives you more stats. These are all great buffs, and if nothing else, since people probably won’t be running Stocking Mimics all the time, seeing as they really don’t seem THAT optimal, you can probably sell all these candies off at a good price, one would think. Well, okay, a quick check shows that apparently BitterSweet Tarts aren’t selling for much, but the other two are probably worth selling, and hell, use those Tarts yourself. Level up quicker. Why the fuck not? Don’t give it to the stupid sock.

I look forward to having fun with this one. I like the randomness and whatnot, and the fact that it grabs its familiar equipment for me makes it likely that I will use this familiar on my next 100% Hardcore run. Still, it’s probably not a game changer. It’s just a fun little thing. Maybe when they adapt the “feed for weight” thing to something a little more relevant, you’ll have something that really changes the game up.

On Christmas Eve, I was in charge of entertainment. I had a couple ideas: I bought a copy of Up so we could watch it. But then, that was pushed to a Christmas Day movie down at the Grandparents. So what to do? Well, I finally made the parents play a board game I knew they could handle: The Choo Choo Train game, also known as Ticket to Ride.

It was an interesting experience. Explaining the rules didn’t go too bad: Ticket to Ride is a simple game, and that’s why I thought the parents would enjoy it without too much issue. It took them a few turns before they really figured out what they were doing, but they caught on pretty well.

They both played so differently. I must get my options options options lock from my mother, because she often had to really think about what she was doing, and worried about what she was playing, and where she was buying tracks. Dad, on the other hand, found a strategy and stuck with it, as soon as he figured out the game rules. It was just kind of cool. I love when I get to share my passions with my parents, and show them I’m not COMPLETELY crazy.

In the end, though, neither of them won. They didn’t lose by too much, though! Jonathan beat me by exactly 10 points, and got the Longest Train. I almost had him! Damn. But still, it was a great little family game… thing. I’m sure I’ll keep trying to make it happen in the future. That’s just how I roll.

Christmas has come and gone. It was a good one! I’m sure you’ll hear all about a lot of the stuff I got, reviews and whatnot, for weeks. But hey, let’s get it all out there and give some thanks and stuff, hm?

From Shauna, I got the 5 and 6 Player expansion for Catan. I am interested to see how it plays! I’ve always heard that it’s still best with 4 players, but it’ll still be nice to give some extra people in on the awesomeness of Catan.

From my brother, I got Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction, as well as both Dominion promotional decks! Especially excited about those promo decks. Always wanted to try out Black Market.

From Brer, I got all of xXxholic on DVD. Don’t really love the dub, but I’m such a complete fan that it just feels right to own.

Aesa bought me a copy of Cogs off of the Steam Holiday Sale, right before I was going to! A little, but very nice gesture. Awesome.

Kale, of course, bought be a copy of Borderlands months ago, which I am very thankful for. He also bought me the Zombie Island DLC for it the other day. He’s too nice.

I got a bunch of nice stuff from the Festivus exchange, of course. Bunny hats, cookies I need to try, points of the XBLA variety. Nice things!

I also got a board game I hadn’t heard of until I opened it from Bradley Bo for the Friends Exchange, called Last Night on Earth. I’m looking forward to digging into it more. It’s neat.

My parents, of course, were very nice. I scored a copy of Dominion: Seaside, DJ Hero, and a stand for my plastic guitars! I also got a CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE. Fuck yeah.

My grandparents were also similarly nice, as I recieved a copy of Lego Rock Band, New Super Mario Brothers Wii, some Batman Beyond DVDs and a MLA HANDBOOK FOR WRITERS OF RESEARCH PAPERS. YAY FOR STYLE MANUALS!

But yeah, lots of good stuff. I have some very generous friends and very awesome family. I hope my gifts were good on them, too.
Whelp, I’m going to get back to enjoying said gifts now. Later!

A thread on Talking Time made me think about what my games of the year are. Surprisingly, I managed to make a list, and I’m actually pretty happy with it. So here it is, cross-posted, with some more comments.

And now, here are my top 10 games of 2009.

10) The Path: Not really a game as much as an Art thing, but it certainly got me thinking more than any other game this year. So much that I was inspired to write a pseudo-paper on it, just because it stuck in my mind. I really need to get around to playing Fatale.

9) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: This game really disappointed me. After how awesome the first game’s single player was, I admit I was expecting a lot. It left me down. I never would have guessed I would have ranked it so low. Still, I’ve had a lot of fun with multiplayer, both with my friends and alone. It’s still pretty solid stuff. Just not super-great, game-changing stuff.

8) Klonoa: I know it’s a remake, but dammit, I love Klonoa, and I loved playing through it another time on the Wii.

7) Left 4 Dead 2: It’s more Left 4 Dead, and it’s great. I’m honestly surprised that it isn’t higher on this list, but I just haven’t been playing it too much. I mean, it’s not that it’s not quality? But the focus of me and my friends has been elsewhere. I’m sure I’ll get back into it a bit more sometime soon. Doesn’t make it any less fun, though.

6) Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story: Like most Mario and Luigi games, it suffered from a last boss with too much HP, so I didn’t technically beat it. But I enjoyed the ride getting there. More Bowser is awesome. I heart Bowser in these RPGs, and his battles were surprisingly fairly different from that of the Bros. I liked it muchly.

5) Word Ace: I hate poker, but I love word games. Somehow, combining Texas Hold ’em with Scrabble basically created crack for me for awhile. It is just so, so much fun. I wish there were a desktop app, instead of just an iPhone and Pre app, so I could play it on my computer way, way too much.

4) Borderlands: A friend of mine just randomly bought me a copy of this on Steam so I could play with him, and man, it is just so well put together. It brings everything I love about playing RPGs co-op, but it puts it in a shooter scenario where there’s always action and it doesn’t get boring. I am totally going to buy a second copy of this on 360 next year to play with a completely different group of friends, and I’m probably going to buy some of the DLC on PC.

3) Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II: I literally bought a new gaming PC to play this game, and it completely delivered in every way. It mixes RTS with RPG so well that it rekindled my long-ended love of RTS, at least for a little while. But seriously, the single player in this game is completely fantastic, and I cannot wait until the expansion comes out next year. I didn’t much care for the multiplayer, though. I’m sure someone would get a kick out of it. I liked getting to paint my units? But the single player package is more than enough on its own. If you have a PC that can play it, you really should.

2) Beatles: Rock Band: This game has created some of my favorite gaming moments of the year. Standing for an hour, learning harmonies with my friends, and mastering singing while playing Guitar has been just so much fun. Granted, it helps that my friends love the Beatles, so they’re more willing to play this than normal Rock Band. But man, as far as games with friends go, this is, by far, the game of the year.

1) Red Faction: Guerrilla: This is probably the best open world game I’ve ever played. Granted, I only really got into playing such games after Crackdown surprised me and warmed my heart, but man, this game was excellent the entire way through, and came out of nowhere. I love the freedom felt by being able to smash every single thing. Great stuff. Add to that the nights me and my friends spent having a blast with Wrecking Crew, and you have a pretty solid choice for my game of the year, I think.

Notably Missing is Dragon Age, which I haven’t gotten a chance to play yet, but which I bet will deserve a pretty high spot when I finally get around to it. I just didn’t want to dig into a huge RPG while I was still so busy with school and shit.
Additionally noticeably missing is Plants vs Zombies. Maybe that should have been up there! But I’m pretty happy with the list. I could fiddle with it forever, but it’s probably best just to leave it be. Still, Plants vs Zombies is awesome, and you should play it.

Anyway, there’s my picks. Let me know what you think, hm?

Merry Christmas!

I always love Christmas. I don’t know. Few things make me more sentimental, and feel closer to my family, than looking at our Christmas tree. All kinds of memories. All kinds of nice things. All kinds of stuff that is just… perfect. Christmas is just a perfect time of year. I can’t remember ever having a “bad” Christmas. Perhaps slightly disappointing at times. The year I did not get Secret of Mana kind of disappointed me a little. Perhaps unfortunate. I can remember one or two Christmases where I was completely sick and on my ass. But bad? No. I have no real bad memories of Christmas. It’s just such a wonderful time. I feel so connected. It’s awesome.

I’m glad I feel that way. I’m glad I can be close to my family during this time of year. And I hope you can feel that closeness to me, and me to you, as well (because, again, let’s face it, if you’re reading this blog, chances are, you’re someone who I would consider part of my family: those super-close friends of mine who I love).

I love Christmas, and I love you all. I hope you have a great day. Get a good haul, but enjoy yourself, and that closeness, too. That’s what’s really important. That sounds lame, I know, but it’s just… so very true.

It’s almost Christmas. I figured I needed something lightweight to play. Something mindless. Something where I could shoot tons and tons of Nazis without any problem. I ordered Gamefly to send me Wolfenstein, the new one for 360, to me for just this reason.

The game will knock you over with how mediocre it is. There is nothing particularly bad about this game. Nothing is broken. None of the combat scenarios are particularly awful. It’s a completely functional video game. You will pull the right trigger and shoot many people!

The main highlight of the game is the weapon upgrade system. A good weapon upgrade system is a lot of fun, and Wolfenstein is great for that. After every mission, I found myself going back to the Black Market to add more upgrades. They really do affect how the weapons work, too! It works really well.
However, since you have limited funds, and can only upgrade maybe 3 guns of the 8 you get, at most, you end up only upgrading the “normal” guns. Granted, those feel just fine, and I used the MP40, MP43 and Kar98k for the majority of the game. The Kar, especially, is awesome because it gets this incredibly over-powered bayonet upgrade, making it an obscenely deadly melee weapon. Enemies that took whole clips go down with one stab of the bayonet. It’s crazy. There are other guns, too, including some crazy space guns that shoot lightning and shit, but since normal enemies don’t carry them, and thus you only really find ammo for them every once and awhile, you’ll only really be pulling them out for bosses, if that, and they just aren’t worth upgrading.

Mr. Blazkowicz also gets this crazy magic medallion that gives him various Bullet Time effects. None of this is new or revolutionary, but having that extra set of options does make combat more enjoyable. One of the powers surrounds you with a shield for a short period of time, letting you run out and shoot at people. I eventually upgraded it so that the shield actually bounced bullets back at people shooting at me, and walking out in a huge crowd and having them mow themselves down was some of the most entertaining moments of the whole game.

Overall, though, as I said, there’s nothing particularly stand-out about the game. They obviously spent a lot of time on the multiplayer, for no apparent reason, because most of the achievements are for that. I didn’t even try it. Why would a game like this have multiplayer? It seems stupid. Still, it was exactly what I was looking for: a low stress shoot-em-up that wasn’t very long. It’s a perfect rental. Although, honestly, if you haven’t played Bound in Blood yet, that was a much better shooter in this vein. It had some intelligent story, and just felt a lot more polished and a lot more enjoyable. I’d go with that one first. But yeah, you could do worse than play this game for a weekend like I did. It’s pretty alright.

I got my Festivus Exchange Gift! A few days ago, really. It was pretty awesome. I wrote up the haul in the appropriate thread on Talking Time, of course. You can check it out here, if you’d like. Queen Possum was awesome. Perhaps more awesome than I was, in my gift-giving, though I’ve promised myself not to worry about it. However, in this post, I mostly just want to talk about one thing, and that is this hat, what I consider the centerpiece of the whole deal.

It has just kind of made me so happy and so sad at the same time.

Not that I think the gift was a bad thing, oh goodness, far, far, far from it. I look at such things online all the time, and think about buying them. I look with sort of jealous eyes at the occasional person in Kohl’s wearing a cat ear hat. I want to be cute, and wear cute animal hats. Embrace my furry side and grin, and look cute… cutecutecute… and this is pretty well completely cute. Not to mention someone made this thing by hand, for me specifically. It is perfectly fitted to my head. I. Love. It.

But during the process of making that post, I realized I needed to take a picture of me wearing it, to show off how well it fits. But I couldn’t take a picture of myself. I couldn’t wear the hat in public. I’m not that way. Yet.
That kind of spiraled me out of control for an evening.

I am closer than I have ever been to transitioning. I have an appointment with an actual doctor who specializes in gender identity on the 28th. Some number of months after that, after she’s all down with what’s up with me, I can start hormones and stuff. I’m not rich, but every time I evaluate this stuff, I am, for probably the first time in my life, in a good enough financial situation to do this. I can do this. I should be happy.

But being so close just brings what I can’t have yet into sharper focus. I think I’ve been more moody and depressed about these issues than I have been in a long while recently. And that’s likely almost completely because I have finally taken some action, and by doing so, brought all those issues and problems I buried deep, deep inside me to survive these years where I couldn’t due to my stupid parents and money and my own stupid holdups. They’re coming back. It’ll be nice to have someone to talk about them with, I suppose. But it is harder. It’s annoying.

I dunno. I’m on my way, though. Soon I’ll be able to wear that Rainbow bunny hat, perhaps. Soon things will start getting fixed. I know they will.

Yeah… they will. They have to.

After a little getting the band back together (which, honestly, has left me completely hoarse. I was singing way too intensely. Heh.) I was invited, last night, to a showing of James Cameron’s Avatar, a complete reinvention of how movies shall be made forever more. Why not go? I mean, if nothing else, there was going to be a bunch of talk going on about it on all my podcasts and shite. It would be good to actually know what’s up. I paid my crazy 12 dollars for the stupid glasses and ticket, and went.

I had went into the movie planning on completely hating it. Well, not completely hating, but certainly thinking it very silly, and very bad. All the reviews I had heard so far talked about how breathtaking it was to watch, and how empty the story was. Not usually one to be taken by visuals alone (not that they don’t help), I expected to be pretty down on the whole thing.
The farther you get away from Avatar, the more holes you find in it. But while I was in the theater, I admit I was mostly entranced. Pandora is fucking beautiful, and the Na’Vi are animated just… so fluidly, they really don’t look out of place next to the fully-human, filmed characters, which is a real feat. Well, let me rephrase that: they look out of place, but that’s because they’re aliens, awkward, and don’t know how to treat the smaller humans, as opposed to it being “oh, there’s a CGI dude next to that human dude.” There’s no doubt that all of that is really, really impressive. You’re seeing a lot of cool stuff.

The plot, though… there are no surprises. It is what I have heard described as a “noble savage, mighty whitey” storyline, and it is completely. Human becomes a Na’Vi, learns their ways, becomes their leader, better than them all. It’s… predictable. You know exactly what’s going to happen in this movie before you even sit down. You can see all the plot twists coming from two miles away. There are no surprises, and none of the characters are deep enough to give a shit about whatsoever, which I’m sure was something that was intended. People die, and you can tell it’s supposed to be moving, but it really just isn’t. The only thing that pulls at your heartstrings a little is when Love Interest (can you tell how important the characters on when I can’t remember the names of any of them) is upset and crying. Whoever did her acting and voice acting did something so seriously raw that you can’t help but sympathize a bit. Certainly some of the best anguish. But the moment she stops, you realize you don’t really agree with her. It wasn’t a great loss. It was just some stereotype that died. Besides that moment of crying, none of the acting takes these characters out of the realm of stereotype.

Seriously, if you’re going to spend so much money on making such a fucking beautiful movie, you really could spend some time on the acting. For example, this blew my mind: the ore the humans are on Pandora to get is literally called Unobtanium. Yes, the joke term for MacGuffin ores that allow fantastic sci-fi tech to work is the ACTUAL TERM for the ore. They really couldn’t have taken a few minutes to come up with an ore name while they were coming up with an entire Na’Vi language? That’s the kind of thing that’s in the first draft of a script, but then is written out. Ridiculous.
You could also, of course, write a story that doesn’t blatantly steal from most of early American literature. I mean, sure, steal from it. Nothing particularly wrong with that. Keep those themes and put them in a Sci-Fi setting. But dammit, at least try to mix it up. Just a little. To disguise what you’re doing. To leave some tiny inkling of suspense.

There is just so much that could be said on an English Majority thing about how bad the whole story is too, but I think I’ll leave that to the experts. Or at least finally see what they and Spoony have to say and see if that inspires me to write a companion post where I do that.

As I said, though, I can’t claim I didn’t enjoy it while I was in the theater. It is just such a technical showcase that it is just pretty damn cool to see play out. But goodness, if you want to see this film, see it in theaters. If you take away the 3D and the huge screen, I have a feeling it will be even harder to forgive its flaws. All the fun comes from that spectacle. This is a solid spectacle. But not a particularly good movie, and it is a shame that such effort was wasted on a plot so lackluster.

Alternate Title: Trine, Trine Trine.

Trine is a game that has garnered a lot of critical praise, at least among the podcasts I listen to, and it was completely deserved. Granted, the PS3 release is apparently a buggy mess, so maybe you shouldn’t play that one. But the PC version? Amazing, and completely worth your time.

At first, it seems like Trine is trying to be a modern Lost Vikings. You have a puzzle-y platformer with three characters with different abilities. The Wizard levitates things and creates physics objects. The Thief has a bow for distance attacks and a grappling hook to swing about. The Warrior can pick up heavy objects and has a wide variety of ways to fight enemies. Seems very similar to that Blizzard classic. In reality, though, it doesn’t play very much like that at all. It’s still very much a puzzle platformer, but since you don’t have to maneuver and keep track of three different people at once, simply poofing into other forms whenever you need their abilities, it goes much simpler, and that’s a good thing.

The controls on the PC were something I was really worried about. How could I play such a serious platformer with a mouse and keyboard? However, I don’t claim to know how they did it, but it controls perfectly that way. I was doing some very intense and complex swing/jump things with the Thief near the end of the game without any problem. It just controls in a very solid fashion. Never do you feel like it’s the controls making you fail. That’s really important.

The gameplay itself is, well, puzzle platforming. You have to figure out how to hit various buttons or get past various obstacles in order to get to the end of the level. Throughout each stage are scattered bottles of experience, which can provide extra challenge, if you want to get them. However, you also get experience from killing monsters, which you do have to do from time to time. Therefore, it’s not important that you grab all of these. I only maybe got half on my run through the game. In the same way, there are sometimes hidden chests, which contain equippable items for your heroes. These are very useful things, like letting the Wizard have more boxes summoned at the same time, or giving you a life potion that refills a hurt hero’s life whenever they get low. Once again, though, these are useful to pick up, but they aren’t game-breaking if you don’t have them: The only ones you need to pick up, ones that give the heroes brand new powers, are situated so you can’t miss them.
Everything about the game seems really hardcore, but it is actually very forgiving. Checkpoints are spread about liberally, so when you die, you never lose much progress at all, especially since the world-state doesn’t reset when you have to restart at a checkpoint. If you’ve already flipped a switch, it’s still flipped, and so on. When you pass a checkpoint, it also revives dead characters and heals everyone to 50% health. If you’re having trouble with a combat, you can just keep running over a checkpoint multiple times to heal up. Therefore, it’s really just about figuring out how to navigate around the challenges, which I very much enjoyed. If you can’t pull it off, you can try as many times as you need with no penalty. At the same time, it does take skill and sometimes some thinking to get past some challenges, and there isn’t always just one solution. It’s really rewarding to push forward most of the time.
There’s a story, and it’s cute, serviceable, and in no way a hindrance to the game, but it isn’t really important. The gameplay is just so great, it will carry you through till the very end. The end level is stupid difficult, though. I played the whole game through on “Medium” until the last level, where I had to change to “Easy.” It’s amazing to me that they apparently patched that level to make it easier before I played the game. Gods, how could it be any harder? They basically remove the liberal checkpoints you’ve gotten used to using, and make you go through one of the hardest platforming sequences in the game all in one go. It’s pretty mean of them. Still, once I switched it to Easy, it wasn’t too hard, and it certainly didn’t ruin the game as a whole.

Trine is an excellent game. With really well-done gameplay and controls and graphics that will kind of blow you away as being from an indie studio, Trine is certainly one of the best indie games of the year. It’s good, good stuff. Unless you simply can’t stand platforming, you’d do well to pick this game up on Steam sometime. It was worth every penny I paid for it.