The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So that whole me starting writing thing? Yeah, that hasn’t happened. I was going to on Monday, but then I got distracted and eh… I should. I know I should. But I also just want to have fun and my mind is working in Small Souls, not Role-Playing. I suck at projects.

But other than that, what else is going on, you say? Why, I checked my grades for the semester, and escaped with a 3.25 GPA, which, at this point, is perfectly perfectly fine with me. I could do better. I know I could. But at least I’m getting things DONE. That’s all I want. As long as I’m passing these classes with decent grades so I can graduate in December, I have succeeded in my book. So huzzah! Something like that!

I also got the “I Love A Parade” trophy in KoL last night, which means I’ve almost completed my 11th Post NS-13 ascension. Neat! Or something like that. I should hopefully be done with this one within the week, unless I decide to get the red balloon of valor. Which I might. Doing such things is really good for profits, and possibly getting another Natty Blue wouldn’t be a bad thing… I do sort of want a full set before I start selling them. You never know when I might decide to do a farm and level to basement thing. I do want to at least get the first level of telescope sometime. Probably will never get any more than that, though. Heh. Basementing holds no appeal for me besides that piece of campground equipment. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind that my next run is a no-path Hardcore Pastamancer run for Pastamastery and the stainless steel solitaire. So wish me luck with that… hopefully being no-path means the run will go much faster than previous pathed hardcore runs… that’ll bring my list of hardcore skills to Pastamastery, Amphibian Sympathy, and Cannelloni Cocoon. Oh, and Summon “Tasteful” Gifts and Summon Candy Hearts, I suppose. That’s a pretty decent loadout for my un-optimal play style.
Man, just looking at that Plexiglass pith helmet… it is godly. I’d like it. But man, I’d have to do another Hardcore Oxy run to get it. Fuck that.

On the gaming front, apparently Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness comes out next week? I guess I finally need to make the decision on where I’m going to pick the game up. Since your character carries over, it’s going to be forever. It’s basically down to getting achievements on the 360 vs what I assume will be more flexible download rights granted to me on the PC. The fact that they made their own download service, however, makes me wary… not because I don’t trust them but because, I dunno, I use Steam pretty much exclusively for such things. I don’t for Sam and Max (and, whenever it comes out, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People) because they offer me that sweet deal where they send me a physical copy after the season ends for no charge but shipping. (However, they’ve completely met and exceeded my expectations. Their copy protection is low to no hassle, and they let me re-download whenever I’d like and install wherever I’d like. That’s how DRM should be.) Rain-Slick won’t be offering me such a deal. Also, achievements, and the fact that the real-time RPG combat seems like it would work better with a gamepad… I don’t know. I’ll think about it some more. Either way I’m buying it next Wednesday, though. I also have a feeling that it might come down to me being too lazy to run out and buy a Microsoft Funmoney card.

I also have added homebrew capabilities to my DS… well, I ordered stuff to add them to my DS. It hasn’t gotten in yet. Why? It was pretty much solely because of this: Lone Wolf DS. That shit just looks like a lot of fun, and on the DS is a form in which I could consume it. Loki is doing an awesome Let’s Play of the book version on Talking Time here, and it’s all awesome. I wanna play too! But yeah, after I play that, I guess I need to look for other sweet, sweet homebrew stuff. Anyone know of any awesome homebrew games or programs for the DS?

Ah, I found a thread discussing the DRM on Greenhouse games. That doesn’t sound too bad, but I think I prefer Telltale’s system. Or Steam. I like Steam.

In fact, I just bought a new game on Steam, Everyday Shooter. It was going to be a PC game, and then Sony paid him fat stacks of cash to make it a PS3 exclusive, and now, out of nowhere, it got released on PC, so I plugged in my 360 controller and have been playing it. The basic description of it is if you like music arty kinda games like, say, Rez, and you don’t mind Robotron-style shooters, this game is for you. The problems I have with it is that it’s too hardcore. I’m quickly becoming more and more a casual gamer, which is fine by me, as long as I’m having fun. Robotron-style shooters are some of the most hardcore games about, and this is kind of hardcore in some levels too. I just want to turn on this “Shuffle” mode, which picks the various songs/levels in a random order so I can see everything, and turn my max lives up to maximum, which I assume to be 9, just so I can enjoy the whole game with no stress. To do that, however, I have to beat the game several times and collect many, many points to unlock all this stuff. That’s… not what I want to be doing. Replaying level 2 over and over is the quickest way to get these points, and I’ve been doing that, but I just want to experience the game, not have to grind to play the game the way I want to. I wish there was some sort of code I could use to just unlock everything, but I’m not aware of any. Still, it was totally worth 9 bucks. You should look into it if you missed it on the PS3 like I did.

I guess that’s about all I have to say for now. Huzzah! Or something!

So if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I will never do a puzzle in a book or something unless I’m CRAZY BORED, but I will do sudoku and crossword puzzles and such all day long if they’re on the DS. Why is that?
Well, 1, I’ve sort of trained myself to get my entertainment that way. I’ve never filled out books of puzzles, I’ve always played video games. When I’m bored, I turn on my DS. Just having it there makes me more likely do turn to it and do it.
I think the main reason is, though, that these games tell me if I’m wrong. I’ve done some sudoku on paper, and had the whole thing ruined because I made a stupid mistake that I didn’t notice. With these games, when I make a stupid mistake, it makes a little noise and puts it in red to let me know I’m completely wrong. Yes, this makes the puzzles easier, but it also significantly reduces my frustration. I hate frustration. I have more fun when there’s no chance of being frustrated. Thus, I have more fun playing these Touch Generations puzzle games on my DS.
Also, yes, this means I bought Crossword DS. It’s really quite awesome. I mean, as far as a crossword puzzle game goes, but actually, from what I’m hearing, it leaves something to be desired for the hardcore crossword fan… people on Talking Time were saying “I do the NYT crossword puzzle all the time, and the lack of theme and lame hints just make this no fun.” Personally, the clues on the harder puzzles are exactly where I need them. Enough to stump me once and awhile, but there are always things I can figure out around the tough ones so that I’m always making progress. Plus, if I seriously get stuck, I have hints or can just guess at letters. See? Having it digitally is useful! Add this to the fact that it has a really great interface and I feel like it was worth 20 bucks. If you’re one of those people who bought your mom a DS for Brain Age or whatever, I think they would really get into a game like this… though get them Picross first. Picross is awesome. It made me sad when I saw those copies of it on clearance at Toys R Us… wanted to hug them and take them home with me…

So I tried sleeping in today, for the first time in a long while… it didn’t really work well, and I had half-dreams about both meeting and being the Doctor at the same time (”Hi, I’m the Doctor.” “No, I’m the Doctor!”) and then I finally got out of bed and I was all cranky and moody. Oh well, I’ll get back into the “sleeping in” swing of thing soon enough, I suppose.

I also hit another hard boss in my Pokemon Kiddy Roguelike 2: Electric-type Boogaloo which really is frustrating me because I think I have about the worst possible party for the boss. It’s this swarm of Shinx, and my party is a Water-type, who dies the moment any of them use Spark, and me,  Pikachu, who can’t use my good attacks but they “aren’t very effective” against other electric types. I got raped, and I haven’t had the heart to get back in and try again yet. Seriously, it’s a good thing I’m playing the easiest of the easy roguelikes, huh? I’m having a ton of fun in general, and after I play a little more, I’d like to try the dungeon that plays like an ACTUAL roguelike (no starting items, you start at level one, see how far you can go), just to see how I do.

So today is apparently Ryme’s birthday in Twilight Heroes, and he sent me an energy drink! Well, okay, he sent ALL players an energy drink, but he was in chat last night and we talked. Sort of. Ryme’s a cool guy. So I wanted to do something for his birthday but, I mean, hell, he doesn’t need in-game items here or probably in KoL, since he’s been playing for longer than I have… so I decided donating would be the best gift, and picked me up a VHF-1 Fighter. I wasn’t PLANNING on getting one? It has a zillion functions, but the only one I’m going to use is that it’s a slightly buffed up Lexura Infinides that can fly. I didn’t really need it. But I was feeling generous, and just like with the Dreampants, I know I can flip it later on for huge profits if I get really annoyed at it. But I bet I won’t. The Dreampants didn’t wow me, but the more I wore them the more awesome the idea of me wearing these crazy pants was, so I’m keeping them. I don’t see any reason why this won’t be the same way, unless he obsoletes it with a vehicle that, I dunno, does something Heart-y and awesome.
As much of a heart as I am, though, I find myself being stingy with my chips, due to Operation Farm Me An Empty Picture Frame Since I Have Nothing Better In-Game To Do, which is probably a bad thing. I mean, it’s just virtual money, and it’s fun to give stuff away and help people out. Plus, said Operation has been going pretty well, actually. I’m up to 9 Silver Stars. That’s 36 percent of the way there, apparently! So I’ve been trying to send more chips Kinks way, to keep Twilight Buffs working… I appreciate your hits of Snout of the Swine, Kinks! I hope my meager contributions at least cover the cost of me using your service.

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about these sorts of Browser RPG mechanics, especially when seeing Soul Raver get more and more… actually made… and it just makes me wish I could make Small Souls. I think I wrote a basic concept of it back a bit ago… say… in this post, yeah. But since then I’ve refined it a whole lot more. I know the basic mechanics of attacking and conversing, all based on a deck of “memes” or “phrases” or “some term I haven’t thought of yet.” So you’d have a card called “Yes.” This would let you, basically, agree with people in conversation sequences, but, like all of these, it would have a use in combat as well, doing something… yes-like… Perhaps a celebratory shout buff. You’d have a card called “No” that would work the same way. Disagree in conversation and perhaps stop an enemy from attacking from a term. And so on and so forth… I also have the idea of a whole mechanic like the time-travel mechanic in Shadow of Destiny sort of, where you could basically repeat quests and stuff by going back in time and trying again. This would give the game longevity because you could retry things from every angle, etc, but I assume it would be hard to program, because every major quest starting would make a time point you could jump back to but not jump back from… and the game would have to be able to basically only undo everything you’ve done since that time point, but not everything you did before it… that would be tough. But it would be worth it, I think. You’d lose levels but not items, basically, so by smart application of level minimums for item equips, I could keep the game balanced…
I don’t know, it’s all such a cool idea to me. But I should really stick with projects I believe in and can actually create with skills I have now, like Role-Playing and the podcast version of that… I can do that if I dedicate myself. And I’m going to this summer, dammit! Yeah.

Also, I continue to hear the siren call of GTA4. I wasn’t interested until EVERYTHING ON 1UP talked about how the good part was the story and not the wanton boring destruction, and people talking like “I never played a GTA before, but I played this and the story really drew me in! It’s great!” I could be that person, who never played a GTA before and had tons and tons of fun! Eh, I’m basically accepted I’m going to pick it up sometime, though I wish I’d wait for a price drop or a coupon or SOMETHING. Give me strength!

Well, I guess I best go to work now. Everyone quit during the dark times of no hours, so we’re severely lacking in people. However, tonight, at least, is a very small ad, so I should be back at a decent hour. Hopefully.

So I picked up Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2: Explorers of Time (Cause 1, exploring time is neater than exploring darkness and 2, this is the version with Lucario in it) and I love it! It has several appeals for me over Shiren. The first is that it’s Pokemon, and I get how Pokemon mechanics work and I like Pokemon. The second is that you only lose half your items and all your money when you die. In Shiren, you lose EVERYTHING, including your level. In this game, if I fail, the next time I try, it’s easier because I get to keep my experience. This lets me just grind until I can beat something, which perhaps is not the true spirit of the roguelike, but what do I care? I’m having fun. And… THREE, SMILES GO FOR MILES! Oh, um, I mean… it’s cute. I like cuteness. I mean, I met an exploration team called Team Flame with a Camerupt, a Ponyta, and, finally, the fearless leader… a Bellsprout. So cute. And the Kangaskahn at the bank still called me Sweetie and Honey. Heehee.
Anyway, I was enjoying my game and talking to CJ Awesome, a Talking Timer who I actually chat with from time to time, and he had played it a bit awhile back, and we were discussing this whole world the game takes place in. I mentioned that it was weird that, in a world where Pokemon run a society and whatnot, these Pokemon know what humans are. If they know of humans, they’re in the normal Pokemon world, and then they wouldn’t be able to build these elaborate bases and towns because humans would tromp by and throw Pokeballs at them or something. Mr. Awesome then said that he always assumed these games took place in the Pokemon Afterlife. “How would a dead human end up there?” I then wondered. “Mistakes are sometimes made,” he said.
This whole scenario, to me, just seems like it could be so interesting. I mean, you’re already a human accidentally a Pokemon in the game, and you don’t remember how you got there or what happened before… it could just be expanded in an interesting way, is all I’m saying. A trainer, dead, accidentally thrown into another afterlife, coming to meet those Pokemon that he or she trained, develop relationships, perhaps romances, before realizing everything that’s going on, that they were the trainer of these Pokemon, that they can get back to the right afterlife, and having to make that choice. Or maybe someone is trying to correct that mistake and they don’t want to go back…
It’s at that brainstorming point when I realize how lame I am. Sure, I would find such a story extremely interesting, but the idea of someone investing time into creating an actually involving narrative in a Pokemon game is just retarded. It’s Pokemon. You buy it for the cuteness and the shockingly intense gameplay mechanics. You don’t need a story, and thus it makes no sense to add one. Yet, I’m so connected to this whole Pokemon world that I want to see more serious things done in it.
Come to think of it, that’s probably why I’m looking forward to that Sonic RPG. The idea of it is ridiculous in the same way, and yet Bioware is making it. It could blow me away, have that childish charm I love so much and still be interesting, you know?
I don’t know, it doesn’t make much economical sense, but I think it would be awesome. The fact that my mind considers, even if just for an instant, the idea of writing fanfics along the lines of what I rambled tells me I would DEVOUR something like that.
Man, I am so lame. And yet, I don’t really care too much, you know? As long as I’m having fun, who the fuck cares, right? I’ll get back to my kiddy roguelike now.

So, summer is almost here, and I’ve cleared my schedule. I’ve got nothing to do. That’s awesome, but I should be productive, right? So I’m announcing… sort of… whatever… that I’m going to get back to Role-Playing this summer. Putting it on hiatus for school was a good idea, but I have no excuse over the summer, and if I work everyday when I wake up for an hour, I could have a few story arcs done by the end of the summer, dammit! So I’m totally going to do that. I’m letting you know, singluar blog reader or, if I’m lucky, readers, so you can help to keep me honest. Rebecca’s story needs to be told. I still think about it and new story arcs all the damn time.
Make sure I get to work week after next or whatnot!

In other news, I beat The World Ends With You. Look below for my review, of course, but it was a damn good game. And now I’ve picked up Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2: Explorers of Time. I’m a Pikachu teaming up with a Tododile for hawt rougelike for babies action! Exciting!

Oh, I guess I should got to my last night class EVAR. Away!

If you own a DS and you enjoy action RPGs, this game is a must buy. Seriously.
I mean, sure, there are plenty of reasons why you would think it’s not worth your time. “Zippers” Nomura obviously had paws all over this game, and I know that turns off a lot of people. There’s a lot of appeal in the music, which I’m sure it far from everyone’s favorite, and might turn it off. I’ll admit I buy into both of those things. But unlike other games, where it might just be thrown in, this creates a very cohesive whole.
The trick is that the whole game takes place in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya district. It’s a place where this musical and visual style and fashion IS the thing, and thus it helps to set the setting, a place where wearing trendy clothes can help you out in battle and where you can sway people’s opinions to get bonuses based on the brand names you wear. It all comes together into a cohesive whole.
On top of that, you have a story that isn’t just fluff. Sure, it might not be greatest thing you’ve ever read, but at the very least all of the characters I’ve encountered thus far (I’m nearly done with the game) are completely believable. I get their motivations. They make sense, and they make me care about them. This is a feat not a lot of games do.
You add all this to a great battle system, and you have yourself a winner. If you haven’t been convinced that you can have a great action game using just the stylus, this game is going to prove to you that it’s possible. The controls are really, really great. You collect these hipster pins, and each one gives you a different “psyche,” or attack. Each one uses a different stylus movement. One might need you to tap on an enemy to throw fireballs. Another might need you to slash upward to do an uppercut. Another might need you to draw a wall of fire on screen, or drag background objects about to smack into enemies. You can equip only a certain number of these, and thus can customize yourself into different decks of pins with different attacks for different situations if you so wish. Meanwhile, your main character’s partner is battling on the other screen, where you play a little minigame using the d-pad to block and attack. This part sounds REALLY complicated, but it actually isn’t. You can just jam in the direction of the enemies to do basic attacks, and that can take out most things. Of course, you can do blocks and combos, too, if you really want to get into it, or ignore it completely and turn on the computer to do it for you, which works really well.
That leads me to the one thing I really appreciate about this game: It’s a completely customizable experience. You choose which of a wide variety of attacks you’re going to use, and they’re all useful in most situations. You choose whether to master fighting with the second character on the top screen or just let the computer take care of it. You choose what difficulty you want each battle to be. You’re rewarded for playing harder. Mastering the top screen combat means more crazy super attacks for you to trigger. Playing at harder difficulties gives you more and different phat lewt, not to mention more EXP. It doesn’t punish you for not playing that way, however. You can play on Easy at max character level the whole way through the game and still have a great time. Most important to me, you can play on fairly difficult most of the time, and easy when you get stuck. I’ve been playing on normal battles with my level about 10-15 below my max the whole game, but when I get stuck on a boss, I appreciate being able to kick my level back up to max and have a much easier time of it. There’s no frustration. Just fun. I like that.
This game is really great. It’s worth the SquareEnix tax. It’s fresh. It’s new. It’s not a rehash of a series you’ve seen 40 times before. If you own a DS, give it a go. Seriously.

I’m easy to frustrate, I admit. I have plenty of bottled up emotions that, when frustrated, all come out. Then I scream and curse and fume and it’s not pretty. Attempting to put together Jonathan’s computer? I did all that this weekend. It was pretty horrid. Especially when it all ended not with Jonathan having a new computer, but with Jonathan having to send a DoA motherboard back just so I can try all this again next week. Ick. Hopefully I can survive easier next time.
Otherwise, I haven’t been doing too much, I guess. This is the last week of class, which is exciting, I suppose, though it just means I still have some homework to finish up. Not a huge deal, but I just need to do it. Should have plenty of time to do so, though, since work doesn’t want me working. Never can tell if that’s a good or a bad thing, you know?
But at least my games are going well. I’m getting close to being done with The World Ends With You, which has been excellent this whole time… I’m probably going to try to write a review when I get back from class, but you know how that works, with me saying it and it not happening. I also got my Snifftome in KoL over the weekend, which is just AMAZING. I’m going to have a lot of fun with that. Of course, I, perhaps foolishly, decided I was going to go for the Uranium Omega of Temperance this run, so I could be killing hippies for most of the week. It’s great when you’re generating two items to help with the Nuns all run, and then decide not to use them.
The one thing that’s really frustrating me, other than computer construction, though, is the fact that the World Ends With You OST is not complete, and some of my favorite songs in the game are not on there. I have no idea how to find out what these songs are or where to get ahold of a copy of them. Bleh. If you know, let me know, yeah?

Okay, I best be good and get to class. (I almost wrote “I best be god and get to class.” I wonder what that says about me.)

So this is a post all about how awesome and expensive my last night in KoL was, so, you know, if you don’t care, now would be the time to stop reading.

So yesterday I got out of Ronin by cocktailcrafting my last three turns of it away while falling-down drunk. Because you can apparently make more booze when you’re too drunk to stumble about and hit stuff with swords. So I set about doing things I had been meaning to do for awhile but never did. Since it was the Feast of Boris, it made it much easier to do, too! So that’s nice.
My first step was completing my set of Crimboffs. Although I’m likely to use my Naughty Fortune Teller most of the time, I can’t argue with the fact that pulling the appropriate one on day one basically gets me to level 2 for free. Also, they were still fairly affordable and wouldn’t be in the future. So I picked up a handmade hobby horse and a ball-in-a-cup to compliment the set of jacks i got for Crimbo. Huzzah for that! It was kind of expensive, though. Cost: 338,000 meat.
My next step was doing the content familiar content. These donation familiars drop items that unlock new content. They’re apparently really awesome or something, especially the Pixie, apparently. It lets you get an item called a not-a-pipe, which is crazy powerful. That doesn’t interest me, though. That seems like a boring reason to use a familiar, just to have access to zones where you do the same thing over and over again until you have 3 !pipes every day. So I just wanted to see this content and get the non-consumable rewards from each. So that’s what I did!
I started by purchasing 4 astral mushrooms, which is what the Astral Badger drops. I needed four to get the full Encephalic Ensemble outfit with two of the crossbows, in case I ever feel the urge to dual wield them. I have to admit the content was pretty neat. There’s something pretty awesome about fighting “The Urge to Stare at Your Hands” and “The Best Carpet Ever“, and I dunno, mapping out mazes always makes me feel all intelligent, even though in the end it’s just sort of trial and error, you know? In the end, though, I probably will only use the crossbows, as the other equipment isn’t TOO exciting, but those crossbows are pretty sweet. Still, it was a fun time. Cost: 8000 meat.
Next, I picked up three tiny bottles of absinthe for the Worm Wood content. These were also pretty fun, and the drops from the entertaining normal combats were also much more useful… I mean, come on… bottle of Realpagne. That’s awesome. Also, however, two of the three equips that I picked up (which was why I was doing this) are significantly more useful than the Cerebral stuff. The Fancy Ball Mask and the Can-Can Skirt are obvious equips for an early portion of a Moxie or Muscle run respectively. The Albatross Necklace is cool, but, of course, Mysticality isn’t as useful as one would hope. Anyway, the content was definitely cooler, but I can’t say I regret not getting a pixie. The actual familiar text of the thing just doesn’t thrill me, and, as I said, I wouldn’t want to run the worm wood over and over for not-a-pipes or whatever. Not how I roll. Still, since the bottles are cheap, I could perhaps run it more for some of those neat consumable drops. You never know. Cost: 1800 meat.
Finally, I still hadn’t gotten a Robogoose from Crimbo. That could not stand. So I started buying up Robotronic eggs. I had already wasted about 50 that I got from combats back in December with no luck. It took awhile now, too, but at least the prices had gone down significantly since then to a more reasonable 700 meat a pop. Still, I had to buy like a hundred or so of them before I finally got the thing… I’m thinking of trying a 100% Robogoose run after this one to recoup the cost by getting eggs to sell. Cost: approximately 70,000 meat.
Total Cost for this endeavor: 417, 800 meat. About half a mill, like I thought. But still, it was worth it. I have this virtual currency so I can do neat shit, you know? Not just to have virtual currency. Spend money to make fun. That’s the whole idea! And I did! So huzzah! Also, I suppose all of the Pepsi Points I sent to Skully for 10,000 meat a pop probably helped to fund this quite a bit.
Anyway, I wanted to ramble about that, and now I did. Back to… whatever the fuck I should be doing right now…

There are several types of games I enjoy. Some are really engrossing and draw me in. They take me over completely. The World Ends With You, which I’m playing now and should review as well, falls into this category. Then there are pure multiplayer games, games that I only play because playing with people is completely awesome. Super Smash Brothers Brawl is in this category. Finally, there are games I love because they are interesting and fun, yet don’t completely consume my brain, letting me do it and something else, such as listen to a podcast or chat with people. Lost Cities is one of those games.
Lost Cities just hit XBLA, and it’s a 2 player competitive card game, though apparently there is a four-player variant you can play on Live if you want. I’ve just played the computer so far, but it’s great. The idea is that you’re exploring five different cities, each marked with a color. You have a deck of cards with a card of each color number 2-10, and then three “Investment” cards of each color. The object is to have the most points at the end of the round, and you do this by, oddly enough, playing cards. Each turn, each player either plays or discards a card. If played, they put it underneath the appropriately colored city on their side of the table (You can play red on red, but you can’t play red on blue). You can only play a card on top of a card of lesser value (so you can play a 3 atop a 2, but you can’t play a 3 atop a 4) or in an empty space. If you put it in an empty space, you’re starting a “new expedition.” This costs you 20 points, and yes, you can go into the negative. Each card you play gives you a number of points equal to the number on the card. This “spend money to make money” mechanic is the core of the game, and the risk/reward system it sets up is one of the reasons why it’s so fun. Alternatively, as I’ve said, the player can discard a card from their hand. Each color has it’s own discard pile, so all the red cards go into the red discard pile, and so on.
The second step of the turn is the player either drawing a card from the deck or taking a card from the top of a discard pile. This is also a neat system, because the game ends the moment the last card is drawn from the deck. You can try to buy time by taking discarded cards you don’t need to keep cards in the deck. Of course, you give up potentially drawing a card you need, but that’s the tradeoff. It’s a simple but neat mechanic.
The last bit of mechanical whatever is the Investment cards. They basically count as 0 in the card hierarchy, so they can only be played on an empty space. However, they can also be played atop each other. When you play an investment card, all cards play on that space get an extra multiplier. One investment card gives you a 2x bonus, two will give you a 3x bonus, and if you manage to get all three in play, you get a 4x bonus. The tradeoff is that the cost to start an expedition is increased in the same way, so it costs 40 for one investment card, 60 for two, and 80 for three. Again, it’s a neat risk/reward system that makes the gameplay so fun.
Oh, also, if you get 8 cards on a city, you get a bonus.
And that’s it! That’s the rules and how you play! It is the perfect podcast game. There are definitely mechanics that you have to think about to play well, but it can be very slow paced against the computer since it’ll wait however long you want to take your turn and it’s so easy to take in the board and see what you need to do that you can get distracted and come back without being lost. It’s just good, simple fun, and I do recommend it if, say, you tire of the non-strategy randomness in XBLA Uno, but would like a similar experience with some more strategic choices infused. Something like that.

Man, I like to ramble about mechanics, don’t I? I guess I should get to bed, but I felt inspired and it had been a long time since I wrote one of my shitty reviews. So there, a shitty review for you!

So I’ve been getting SHIT DONE.
It all started this weekend, where I GOT SHIT DONE. Well, I wrote my two papers, and did my interview, which was just… uncharacteristic of me, getting all that work done. Then, this morning, I work up at 6:30, and pointless panic kept me from falling back asleep. So I said “You know what? If I’m going to fuck myself over with pointless panic, then I’m going to get some shit done!” And I did a lot of catchup work this morning.
I am GETTING SHIT DONE.
It’s weird and kind of nice.

In other news, I bought River City Ransom on the Virtual Console. I haven’t been able to play it much yet, actually, but Kevin and Jonathan are playing it right now, and JUST from that I can tell it’s totally worth it. They are having a ton of fun. I can’t wait to play it with Jonathan or Spaeth or whatnot.
Wait, now I’m playing, and yes, it is completely awesome. I’ll do more of this awesome.