#cleaning up messes so the other characters could have their cutscene moments

[asterdeer]

one of my favorite parts of the treeboy run was the Cockroach Duo, aka loreleaf and astarion, nearly always coming out of fights squeaky clean while the rest of the companions were on deaths door. shadowheart needs reviving every other battle, wyll takes damage like it’s his day job, karlach hits hard but gets injured hard too, but Ranger & Rogue are like. i hid behind a column up the stairs and did 150000 damage :) i walked out with more hp than i started with — oh but i think i broke a nail so i definitely also need that short rest like you guys :(

[toushindai]

totk spoilers but are we ACTUALLY meant to think it’s poetic or flattering or triumphant that Rauru was like “oh YEAH? Well in thousands of years this guy called Link is gonna kick your ass”

How much has he even heard about Link? He must have had at least one more conversation about him with Zelda because the Master Sword doesn’t come up in the Zelda and Sonia tear, and by the King’s Duty tear Rauru’s just like oh don’t worry, if we don’t finish Ganondorf off I’m sure your bf can handle him. As I’ve said before, his “We rely on your knight” line rubbed me the wrong way starting with its appearance in the trailer, and it really does not feel less entitled after watching said knight (and that legendary sword he carries) very very VERY nearly get one-shotted by Ganondorf at the beginning of the game. And Zelda knows this! What does she feel watching her Better Dad Substitute sacrifice himself and simultaneously sic the evil bad guy on Link—a siccing which explicitly shapes Ganondorf’s attitude towards Link at the beginning of the game? At what point did she have the emotion of “welp. I know why Ganondorf knew Link’s name now.” The musical blending of the LOZ theme/hero’s theme with Rauru’s theme seems to suggest that it’s not an emotion meant to be had at exactly that moment, but I cannot watch Rauru sneer “remember that name” without yelling HE DOESN’T NEED THAT INFORMATION at the screen.

I played through the GSI in Japanese recently and Rauru did seem a touch less entitled to Link than I’ve been reading him—mostly because of the formal, polite, outgroup-equal language he used with him—but I still can’t get over the extent to which Rauru heard about Link a few times and decided, sight unseen, that he was going to clean up Rauru’s mess. My man what made you think that. What gave you the right to decide that. And how frightening to be Zelda and watch Rauru pin all the world’s hope on her beloved knight who Ganondorf absolutely fucking wiped the floor with. We see this worry in her in the Master Sword in Time cutscene! To what extent can Zelda’s transformation and before that her petition to the other tribes of Hyrule for Link’s sake be understood as a forced action due to Rauru’s conviction that Link could do this no sweat? Almost entirely, I feel—but does the game know that?

I just. Isn't it intentional? Doesn't it have to be? The fact that Rauru already needs the correction, once, that he cannot and should not face the Demon King alone. Then his melodramatic claim that Link has got this on lock. Then Zelda being like 😬 not sure about this actually and going through the whole process of talking to the ancient sages + draconifying for the sake of the Master Sword. Because Rauru absolutely set Link up to fail and Zelda is the one making sure Link has the resources, including the support of others, he needs to succeed. And the game is so much about community, about not doing things on your own.

And yet the way the scene is scored and animated and the way all the other characters talk about Rauru's sacrifice seems to treat this as a a moment of culmination, of triumph. I am getting such mixed messages here.

Understand, I’m saying all of this with an aching fondness for this poor self-deluded hypocrite. And also teeth-grinding frustration. I think he deserves to feel suffocatingly humiliated when Link almost didn’t survive Ganondorf’s attack and I also have tremendous sympathy for the shame and terror that it might be far too late to correct his mistake that he must have felt as he waited for Link to wake up. Both of those things. Hopelessly lonely man who found people to love him and built himself into a role he was never adequate for. I wish the game looked at this a little more. I wish I could tell if the game intended this at all.

(This is not the most intelligently written post but I assure you I mean every word of it.)

[canmom]

so, huh. i watched the entire movie. review time i suppose? (for the enjoyment of @centrally-unplanned if noone else, who was the only other person I saw posting about this movie...)

This wasn't a good movie, but also I do feel really bad for the director and team, because this did not really feel like a low-effort cash-grab movie. this felt like much more of a case of a passion project that tried to do something way beyond their technical ability. And people definitely didn't take it seriously, laughing at the jankier moments and generally treating it more along the lines of cheesy zombie b-movie, which wasn't really the vibe it seemed to be going for. A lot of people walked out midway through.

With that in mind, let me give some praise to what did work here. The voice acting was legit solid - the script was a bit rough but it was delivered with genuine emotion. On a cinematography level, the 3D let them do a lot of interesting layouts and camera angles. The story it's adapting is decent enough on the broad level, though moment to moment there are occasionally some fairly dubious turns.

The AI is honestly not the biggest problem with this movie. It only seems to be used for one thing, which is adding a bunch of detail and highlights to the pupils of the eyes. It doesn't look great, with everyones' eyes constantly swimming and warping and surrounded by ringing artefacts, but I could see something like this being used for a conscious visual effect.

No, what lets this movie down is the CG.

Watching this felt like watching a game cutscene, and not in a good way. The animation is largely mocap based - presumably basically using vtuber tech. This leads to a strange mix: a lot of the broad motion, walking around and so on, is quite solid and impressively natural looking. The face acting on the other hand is incredibly crude, and whenever the characters sit still, you see a buch of little jitters from inconsistent tracking. It's not good mocap - a decent vfx mocap studio would have cleaned this up in post - but that's not the biggest problem either.

The biggest problem is fundamentally lighting. The scenes are incredibly poorly lit, with harsh point lights, inconsistent materials, and generally awful colour composition. The character models feel like they belong in an animatic, or a realtime vtuber performance - and honestly vtubers generally look a lot better. Perfectly good shot layouts are brought down over and over again by bright distracting highlights in the wrong place or just generally poor light composition. Surfaces are often blatantly lacking in normal maps, or blurry, or otherwise off.

This, on its own, is not fatal. Much the same can be said of, say, the early works of Schuschinus, who is one of my favourite indie animators. By modern standards, even something like Malice@Doll would fall under this critique (though it was solid in its day). But this film lacks the manic imaginatinative enery of a Schuschinus piece, or the Y2K vibes of Malice@Doll. It wants to tell a sad, dramatic story about human experiments on children and a collapsing world and the disappointment of life, and in this respect, it is constantly undermining itself by janky expressions or inconsistent mixes of assets. The zombies suffer particularly badly.

I do not think the idea of a mocap-based anime-styled CG movie is inherently a bad one. I don't even think it's wrong to use AI if the result is good (though I've yet to see a really good use of AI in animation). But here it's just a mess, and it honestly feels kinda tragic.

The director came out on stage before the film aired, with both him and the translator in kimono and geta. The presenter asked him a few softball questions - how did you make this film etc., giving him a chance to explain the AI thing - as well as quietions like what make a particulary Japanese zombie, to which he answered Sadako. He also described how the title of the film alludes to a poem; indeed, the MC is a poet and his poems are recited at various points in the movie.

So with so much said about technique, what is this film even about? It's a post-zombie world; we have a 'Battalion' disease (makes a change from Legion) which spreads in the usual bitey way and also through the air. Our main characters are two siblings Rei and Yūna in treatment for the zombie disease, and the doctor Rika who is treating them. The sister's case is more advanced than the brother's, and she speaks a lot more suicidally; the film opens with an attempt and later, during a zombie attack, she flees beyond the wall. The protagonist is about willing to give up at this point, but the doctor persuades him to come with her in pursuit.

The doctor, meanwhile, is selling drugs on the side to a shady guy called Takeshiba. The purpose of this is not clear at first, but it emerges that this guy is a people-smuggler, who can take people to America where (supposedly) there is a better treatment for zombie disease, if at a steep price.

The doctor threatens the smuggler to take them to the sister, crossing a wasteland full of giant monsters. At the siblings' old house, they discover that she has eaten what remains of their parents and fused with the wall of her house as a big fleshy monstrosity thing. She begs the brother to kill her; he cannot, but eventually Rika does the deed.

Rika turns out to be infected, far worse than the siblings. She reveals that she was using them all along, planning to sell them in order to get passage to the states. But she's had a change of heart, and now wishes for Rei to live on - despite his feelings of despair and betrayal. As they wait for the ship to come, she becomes a zombie, and Rei is forced to shoot her too.

Rei boards the ship, contemplating her last message, in which she reveals that everyone is going to become zombies and also her experimental treatment only bought him a year to live. He contemplates the horror of existence (title dropping the film) when suddenly a giant monster comes and capsizes the ship. He has a brief imaginary connection with Rika before surfacing, adrift at sea.

Fundamentally I think this story is perfectly suited to being a good film. The basic dramatic arc is solid. The main character is deep in a depression hole throughout and it's kind of a bit one-note; it would have maybe benefitted from working harder to establish Rei and Yūna's dynamic before shit hits the fan. Shit like the giant monster attacks could definitely stand to go, but the overall tone of nihilistic horror and betrayal by the adult generation - which curiously takes the form of expressing a loathing towards growing up in Japan/Asia at points - is solid zombie movie stuff.

And it would have made a perfectly solid 'weird OVA' material. I mentioned Malice@Doll already, which rocks;

I just... can't really make sense of the aesthetic choices made here. This was not a zero-budget one-person film. The credits were decently long. So I'm left wondering, how could they afford so many musicians but not like, a lighting guy? Any decent environment artists? Clean up the jitter in the mocap data? It's all in all deeply strange, and it seems a shame for this project to end up just fodder for the AI debate.

If this was really the best of the AI-using submissions that Annecy received, that doesn't bode well for the tech (but then, artists generally hate it so go figure). But still. Definitely an interesting curiosity, I don't regret seeing it! I definitely don't think AI rotoscoping is going to be replacing anyone's job anytime soon lmao

should i go see the fucking. ai anime. expectations are on the floor but it will probs be novel if nothing else

[verycherrymary]

Let me preface this by saying that I know nothing about Resident Evil and I probably won’t play any of the games but I was curious because it’s hard to ignore a tall, elegant, older woman. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to check it out. I watched playthroughs and cutscenes and sort of got the story but I can definitely (and probably) be missing things. I say this so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt. 

That being said, I think that switching the order of appearances between Heisenberg and Dimitrescu would have made the story better. 

SPOILERS BELOW

Now, I do not say this because I wanted Dimitrescu to live longer or anything. I say it based on what Heisenberg and Dimitrescu bring to the table and how, in my opinion, it could have been better utilized by the story. 

Let’s start with Heisenberg. He’s clever, so clever that he has figured Miranda’s plot which is something that the other three lords do not seem to have done. He’s also the newest member of this twisted family and so, he functions a lot like a bratty, youngest sibling who is the black sheep. But he’s also the favorite. Miranda awards him the honor of deciding what happens to Ethan. In her journals, Miranda seems to favor Heisenberg. And even as someone who watched the walkthroughs, Heisenberg is great. He’s funny and he seems the most “normal” out of the four lords (sans the whole killing thing, ya know.) 

He’s also extremely persuasive.

And it’s this persuasion that, in my opinion, was underutilized. By the time Ethan gets to Heisenberg, he has beaten three of the lords. Ethan discovers that Heisenberg pretty much figures out Miranda’s plot and wants to destroy her. He’s the only lord that expresses disdain towards Miranda and, for a moment, he tries to convince Ethan to help him. But obviously, by this point, Ethan has no reason to side with Heisenberg. 

But what if this happened at the beginning of the game? 

What if Heisenberg could have convinced Ethan to help him out? What if Heisenberg told Ethan that he hates the other lords and that he’s been wanting to get out of this family? What if Heisenberg was the one who told him about the four lords (and not the Duke). When I first saw the trailer and saw all the pictures in the background, I actually thought Heisenberg’s role was going to be one of a guide almost. Your first look into the mess that is the village. (Also, I thought the X out picture of Dimitrescu was because of his disdain for her.) And sure, he told Miranda he wanted to kill you, but maybe it was all for show. Maybe Heisenberg came up with the idea of a game to allow Ethan to escape his crazy family. Or maybe Heisenberg was just supremely impressed with Ethan and thought Ethan was the man for the job, to take down Miranda. 

This would have made Heisenberg live up to being “the most dangerous” as the Duke said. Heisenberg doesn’t care about the conventionalities of his little family and so, he has no restraints. He’s on his own mission and he’s going to use Ethan to get it. Until something happens that makes Ethan realize that Heisenberg is going to double cross him or maybe has double crossed him. 

Granted, I have not watched everything and there could be things that I am missing, but while the game kind of touches this idea of Heisenberg being a double crosser, it does so kind of weakly. And in my opinion, a lot of it has to do with the fact that it came so late in the game that it kind of lost its effect. Had Heisenberg been the first villain you encounter in this strange world, maybe it would have changed because he would have been your first source of information. And if you relied on Heisenberg’s tellings of what is happening, then you have an unreliable source and as a result, your information may be unreliable, perhaps to Ethan’s detriment. Again, adding to this “dangerousness.” 

So what about our lovely Lady Dimitrescu? Well, she has the makings of a closer. Lady Dimitrescu is like the character on the stage you can’t take your eyes off. Her design is a large part of it, but it’s also her attitude and personality. She’s a diva, from the way she talks to the way she walks to the way she conducts herself. In her mind, she’s the best and all of her other “siblings” are beneath her. 

And it’s this ego that is underutilized in my opinion. 

Leaving Lady Dimitrescu for the end would allow her ego to grow and ultimately be her downfall. In her mind, she’s the best. She’s the oldest, the most responsible, and the most dedicated to Mother Miranda. So if she saw Heisenberg fail, Beneviento fail, and Moreau fail, well that’s not a big deal because she’s Lady Dimitrescu and she’s too big to fail. Mother Miranda made a mistake in trusting Heisenberg because look what happened so of course, it’s up to big sister Lady Dimitrescu to clean the mess her siblings made. 

And that would be her downfall. 

Because then when Ethan Winters comes and starts killing her daughters, one by one, her ego gets plucked further and further as she becomes more unhinged. This is her house, her daughters but this man is storming through them. Now she’s failing too, just like the rest of her low life siblings. But she’s better than them so how is this possible? We already know from her journals that Lady Dimitrescu has the issue that every oldest sibling seems to have: this need of validation. And she was determined to get that validation by proving to Mother Miranda that she had made a mistake and by getting Ethan Winters. 

But now, she’s alone. Her daughters are killed. Mother Miranda will be so disappointed in her. And she too is failing, just like her siblings. She’s feeling an incredible amount of pain and loss.  It would be enough to send her in a rage, to devote herself completely to destroying Ethan Winters. 

And if this wasn’t an action game, I think that the best takedown for Lady Dimitrescu would be one of her own creation. One where all the tragedy, shame, and humiliation causes her to make a dumb mistake that allows Ethan to bring her down. At the end, she’s not so different from her siblings and she too falls. 

Karl Heisenberg and Lady Dimitrescu are the two ends of the same rope, each tugging at each other and believing they are superior than the other without realizing that they will both be hanged by that rope. They stand out because they have personality but it feels like their personalities were not used to the full potential. For me, that’s the most disappointing part of it. I don’t mind if they died, in fact, it’s to be expected. The issue is always the treatment of a character before they died and I just don’t feel like either character was used to their full potential. 

Like I said, I have no clue talking about and I’m not part of this fandom. I just hate seeing really interesting characters just kind of pushed aside. The other two lords have their own interesting parts, especially Donna. But Heisenberg and Dimitrescu really had the chance to be something more and it didn’t happen. 

But this is just my opinion and it’s uninformed and I don’t want hate, thanks.

[nautilusopus]

Why do you hate the remake? The ending?

AMONG MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY OTHER THINGS

AHEM:

the ending

the way everyone’s character is botched

this goes triple for poor cloud and tifa because they literally aren’t allowed to have either meaningful character interactions or character development because they CAN’T because this is the first five hours of the game stretched into 40 hours so we can’t get into nibelheim yet because we have to “save” it

the fact that this is the first five hours stretched into 40 hours and thus is largely padding

the handling of sector 7, where we go from watching actual people we care about die to seeing literally zero people die at all and also we evacuated the slums so it’s cool

especially egregious considering the game made us do so many stupid sidequests in the (way too clean and sunny) slums to get attached to these npcs only to kill literally zero of them

they still kill barret though so they don’t have to have him fight jenova with everyone else because he’s not a REAL character, let’s get him out of the serious moments. except they can’t kill barret so he’s back immediately due to time bullshit, great

on a related note, the complete and utter lack of any real stakes

the way aeris has fucking future knowledge

the way the vii universe, due to the addition of Fate, now has the judas problem. if the planet can literally fucking control fate why didn’t it just keep jenova from landing? why didn’t it keep shinra from becoming a thing? the only answer is that jenova and shinra are intended to do the things they do and thus are actually under the planet’s control and are not accountable for their actions

the fact that this is sephiroth’s motivation now or something, instead of the actual personality he used to have where he acted as a foil to cloud with his inability to accept unpleasant truths about himself and instead creating a grand narrative for himself where he has not been victimised by unfair and unglamorous circumstances and responded to this by making bad choices

the fact that fate is now a concept in this game at all and how completely and utterly fucking insulting that is and how much of a disservice it is to everything the original stood for on a fundamental level. a game that was literally about how there is no inherent meaning in some grand scheme, and that on a cosmic scale we are insignificant and the planet doesn’t give two shits if we live or die, so therefore we must create our own meaning, small and irrelevant to vast forces like the inevitability of pain and death as they are, and that the meaning we create with other small and insignificant human beings is nonetheless something with value, and that in fact it is harmful to try and pretend there is some vast cosmic significance to your actions and that there doesn’t have to be because your life having value to you is enough, especially in the face of something as absurd as the inevitability of death and pain, now has fucking fate in it. actually, cloud DOES matter on a vast cosmic scale! everyone’s deaths do! and in fact those deaths are unnatural and you’re going to prevent them! hooray!

this is yet another narrative, following in the footsteps of harry potter and the new star wars trilogy, that pretends to be about a nobody going on to defy odds anyway only to turn around and say actually lol no they were special the whole time.

cloud’s handling in general even outside of that. aforementioned lack of development aside, he’s simultaneously way too chilly and way too casual with everyone, with the most meaningful interactions he gets to have being shallow fucking flirting with tifa and him walking around making put upon faces with aeris

the fandom thirst over literal sex traffickers

the fact that this was marketed as a remake when it is AT BEST a series reboot that relies on you having played the og to understand what the fuck is going on half the time

* the utter lack of reading comprehension among the fans that still somehow think they’re going to get other “iconic og moments” remade. did you fuckers miss the ending somehow? about how we’re doing none of that actually? about how they’re going to Defy Fate? you aren’t getting those moments. period. the entire fucking game and ending is literally about that. about how we’re going to Prevent All The Bad Things

the fact that the above was done because they clearly started out trying to actually remake the gam, realised they bit off more than they could chew, and then went LOL NO PROMISES at the last minute with some kingdom hearts bullshit that would let them wiggle out of any long term plot commitments at any time (and also shoehorn zack in because of fucking course he’s here too)

pacing pacing pacing. aside from the atrocious padding problems, you’ve also got sephiroth showing up and mugging the camera every three minutes, because he has to, because this is the first five hours of the game so they need to cram him in there anyway regardless of what it does to the story or no one will buy their stupid game. also they drop the “cloud was never in soldier lol” WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too fucking early, jesus christ. good to know any kind of subtlety is just out the fucking window entirely now

what they did to poor sephiroth, easily the worst handled character in this whole mess. sephiroth sweetie i’m so sorry holy shit

whatever the fuck they were doing with cait sith

taking a big old fucking dump on any themes and meaning the original had in general which i won’t get into too much because it would take forever but you can read more about that here

how they handled shinra and avalanche, or rather how they didn’t handle it and made everything as black and white as possible

jessie’s thirst is extremely annoying and i’m over it

the fact that the fanbase keeps trying to simultaneously go “no it’s only the first chapter of course there’s no explanations” in response to pacing criticisms while also trying to go “no no they had to make it feel like a full game” in response to massive fucking story changes that only served to bloat the pacing

because they can’t bring up nibelheim yet, in this forty hour game (but still have time to go Zack Is Alive Now Also There Is Fate) tifa has no motivation or personality or connection to cloud and barret to speak of. also where the fuck is her anger, holy shit. she regrets joining avalanche? she isn’t

the fact that the fanbase is not only fine with all these changes, changes which again are being made directly in the name of profit to the detriment of good storytelling, but also are even pushing this as the “intended, fleshed out” version of the story they always wanted to tell but couldn’t

bad soundtrack, fight me

midgar and especially the slums look boring

the turks are good now uwu

no Trail of Blood sequence. again, pacing issues. this was meant to be your introduction to sephiroth to set the tone and establish how dangerous he was and how he was the REAL bad guy, but because we’ve seen him every three seconds at this point the whole sequence got cut and it was one of the best sequences there was

the fact that the interviews repeatedly indicate to me that they don’t seem to understand that not every goddamn irrelevant detail needs an explanation (a problem they seem to have carried over from crisis core so that’s great) but that they don’t seem to care about things that DO need explanations and that zero genuine thought was put into the worldbuilding

the way barret’s treated as a joke by the narrative when he’s literally fucking correct

the obsession with Realism (TM) to the point where it creates more tone problems than it solves at times (cloud can fucking fly in cutscenes but can’t hop over a two foot fence)

LET CLOUD BE A DOOFUS YOU COWARDS

about the only character that made it out with their personality intact was aeris and even she’s gone and had her motivations scuttled so it doesn’t matter, yaaaaaaaaay

i can’t fucking believe the remake has made me AVOID fics with jessie biggs and wedge in them. before it was a marker of quality. look what you’ve done.

cloud has an apartment now instead of living with avalanche in the basement. this is also done in the name of Realism but also kind of sucks away the charm imo and makes it that much harder to buy any of these assholes as found family

the timeline of all of this no longer taking place over like three weeks is once again a result of pacing issues. i’m sure this won’t bite us in the ass at all.

god remember when we thought roche was gonna be the worst addition? simpler times

also roche

and yeah the whole ass ending, complete with homage to the ending of ffvii period with the weird doctor who brain tunnel that makes no fucking sense to be here and is only gonna confuse people who don’t know this is supposed to be a callback, and even if it was why is it here, you can’t just fucking copy/paste Famous Moments with none of the emotional beats or writing to back them up or lead into them, context MATTERS did you fuckers learn nothing from the travesty of hollow writing that was ffxv and especially prompto?

the fact that people are looking at this fucking travesty and just assuming the og is like this too and not bothering to play it either because they loved the remake (for some reason???) or because they hated it and now wouldn’t play the og if their life depended on it, which breaks my heart most of all. “the original is still there!!!” is a meaningless overture if people refuse to engage critically with it on any level at all, which as we’ve outlined is absolutely what is happening. this is what people meant when we said the remake would erase the og, and on multiple levels, whether it’s people assuming the og was always meant to be like this, or seeing no reason to play it, or once again failing to recognise what the remake very loudly screams in your face it’s doing and assuming that of course we’re getting a vii remake with all those moments we care about, this is what has been happening.

i can’t even fucking imagine what the northern crater scene is gonna look like now, IF we get one at all. and that’s a big fucking if

i know i’ve missed a lot of them but i hope this helps

[ultravioletsoul]

Can you rank your fave CoD antagonists?

Hello there nonny, sorry for taking so long to reply and thank you for your ask ♥♥

Rank my favorite CoD antagonists? Sure, I can do that! There are several antagonists in the series, but I’ll only rank my top 3. Hope that is okay with you c:

3. Jonathan Irons

Original gif

Advanced Warfare may not be a series as popular as BO or MW, but I actually enjoyed the game and I also liked Irons. Honestly, I don’t think we’ve gotten that many antagonists that started out as our allies in CoD (at least I don’t remember any others atm), much any less an American antagonist, so that kinda made him stand out to me.

I’m not familiar with Kevin Spacey’s works, and I barely watched any trailers pre-release. So to see Irons go from someone who I believed genuinely wanted to make the world a better place, where every human being could live in peace and thrive, away from the pointless wars that governments waged, to someone who was willing to use any means necessary to achieve his goals, regardless of how many lives he had to sacrifice... well, that was something that hit me hard.

This man who gave my character a second chance, who treated me (Mitchell) as his son, who cleaned up after the colossal mess that others countries made, helped people from devastated war-zones rebuild their lives and gave them hope for the future, turned out to be someone I was forced to betray because of different viewpoints and philosophies. Despite everything, I think Irons had his heart in the right place, but his methods were ultimately terrible and in his messianic delusions he ended up doing more harm than good, so of course he had to be stopped.

And what I liked about him was that he didn’t start out as a bad man, he didn’t do all those things because of greed, and his characterization wasn’t that of a cartoonish villain. In a way I could find logic in his arguments, he made a few good points about the current state of the world and the inability (or indifference) of many politicians to solve the real problems of the people. But the root of it all lies in the loss of his son, his only child, to a government he no longer trusted nor had any faith in doing what was right. Despite having served in the military in his youth, Irons had grown disillusioned at the way the US handled domestic and international policy, and strongly disagreed with them— opposing the status quo in favor of change. 

One could argue that serving in the military was entirely Will’s choice all along, and as a grown adult he knew what he was getting himself into. Still Irons couldn’t help but think that if that war had never happened, Will would still be alive. So that left him with a bitter taste, and it served as the catalyst behind his actions.

If nobody else would bother to do anything to actually solve the world’s problems, then he would be the savior to do it— whether they liked it or not. And he didn’t care what methods he had to use, how many had to die, or if he had to plunge the world into total chaos before he could ultimately end all wars and bring everlasting “peace” (perhaps one of the greatest ironies) as his dream seemed to be. Even at the cost of such a high price.

I don’t think Irons gets the credit he deserves.

2. Raúl Menéndez

Original gifset

BO2 is one of my favorite games and Raúl is undoubtedly one of the most memorable antagonists in the series. Much like Irons, his actions were heavily motivated by the loss of a loved one but his life is also one sad story, so it’s no wonder he turned out the way he did. Not to justify him, but it’s not hard to understand what led him to do all those things.

From a very young age, his life was destroyed by the actions of Americans, from the horrors of the dictatorship in Nicaragua (in which the Contras were supported by the US); the crippling and disfigurement of his young sister Josefina, due to the greed of an American owner who burned down a warehouse in order to obtain 11,000$ through insurance fraud. After losing everything during an earthquake, and becoming homeless, Raúl and his father started over by selling drugs, successfully establishing a cartel that was so powerful in Nicaragua that they were equally feared and admired among the people.

But this status and power they had newly acquired concerned the US government, and it wasn't long before they sanctioned an assassination order on Raúl's father and sent the CIA in to kill him. Raúl observed it all, a teenager back then, and managed to escape thanks to his father's training. Though he could do nothing to stop it, nothing to save his father, this event marked him and further embittered him against the US and the West. And the last straw was the unfortunate death of Josefina, at the hands of Woods. He lost his sister, the only living relative he had, and his world fell apart. But if we think about it, Raúl was indirectly responsible for her death too, after the horrible torture he put Woods through in Angola. So the next time Woods saw Raúl he lost his mind and threw the grenade that tragically bounced into Josefina's bedroom and killed her.

So he spent all his life orchestrating a huge plan, a brilliant plan, that would shake the US from the very ground. And he was damn charismatic while executing it, earning the support and approval of billions of people all around the world— even from those who lived in US soil!— to begin a world revolution and end the dominance of capitalist nations that had subjugated other weaker countries, amassing huge riches through market economy and wars for resources, destroying lives and sinking many in poverty. And he also manipulates and pits two superpowers against each other... sending everyone to the brink of another world war, or a second cold war at best.

He wanted revenge on the US for playing with the lives of other people, for taking everything he loved away from him, by making them live in fear and destroying everything they had built. He wanted them to feel the same pain, to suffer the way he did. And he wouldn't rest until he achieved that because he had nothing to lose anymore.

Depending on the outcome, he can get revenge on Woods for Josefina, as well. And though we all like it when the "good" guys prevail and foil the plans of the villain, I think this particular ending had a much deeper and stronger emotional impact. The conversation they have at the end is something I didn't expect. Raúl has come to kill Woods but they're both in a place where the years have beaten them down with the weight of they’ve done and rather than an over the top scene, what we’re given is quite the opposite of that. 

There’s no screaming, no heated argument between them, no dramatic lines. It’s just two old men who had to live with what they’ve done, and who have come to terms with the inevitability of that moment. Raúl slits Woods’s artery with Josefina’s pendant, and then he does something that surprised me: he closes Frank’s eyes, takes him off the wheelchair and lies his body on the bed. Something that is a huge contrast with what he did to Hudson many years ago... the savagery he used when killing him. For Raúl to behave that way with Woods, the man he considered to be his sister’s killer, it raises the question as to whether he still hated Woods after all these years, or maybe deep down he finally acknowledges that his actions (namely torturing Woods and killing his whole team) was the true motive that led to Josefina’s death.

The thing is, Raúl knows that he's to blame for what happened. It's also the reason why he burns himself alive in front of Josefina's grave. It’s because he has to pay for what he's done to her, too, and he chose to do it in probably the most horrible way possible but it didn’t matter to him. Nothing was more painful than living with the knowledge that his sister died because of what he did.

To him Josefina was the true innocent soul, who didn't deserve any of the suffering she went through.

1. Vladimir Makarov

Original gifset

It’s no secret that Vladimir is my most favorite antagonist (and character) in all of Call of Duty.

Though his background and motives weren’t as well developed and explained as those of other antagonists in the series, his untold story (which you won’t find anywhere in the game, though you can deduce if you have a basic idea of the situation before and after the fall of the Soviet Union) perhaps says a lot more about him than one might expect.

There’s not a lot we know about his past other than the meager information that was provided in some loading cutscenes, but it’s reasonable to think that Vladimir wasn’t always the trashbag that we see in the games. He once was a young man with dreams of patriotism, who wanted the best for his country, who loved Russia with his soul, and who would do anything to protect her, because as a soldier that was what he was taught to do. As a soldier, that was his purpose in life and without that reason to drive him on, he had nothing left.

And however vague his backstory may seem to be, it gives you an idea that Vladimir in a way was a victim of a system that imparted a type of soft indoctrination on him, from a very young age (as many states do all around the world in some form or another, even those who hold democratic values), all the way to his education in the military academy and his brutal training in the special forces, that further cemented this undying love for Russia, maybe in a way that bordered brainwashing.

His true radicalization came after the fall of the Soviet Union with the loss of his homeland and the Soviet culture as he knew it, as well as Russia becoming weak and losing much of her power and influence across the world. Then came his deployment in Chechnya in 1994, where he lived the horrors of a war that most likely left him psychologically scarred after the experiences he had to go through. And when he returned home, he was kicked out of the armed forces under accusations of human rights violations during the First Chechen War. And they may be true, he probably did a lot of bad things there (under the illusion that he was serving his country for a higher cause), and sadly it’s something commonplace in many armed conflicts. I’m going to leave this short post here for some details on that.

When he returned from war, he didn’t receive any professional help or if he did, it didn’t work. He didn’t know how to cope, he ultimately was unable to adapt to a normal life, he became a misfit. He had lost his job, he had a stain in his career, and finding a decent way to get by was very difficult at the time when the country was in the middle of a political, social, and economic crisis.

He was in financial ruin, and it was hunger that pushed him to become a criminal (something that wasn’t uncommon for ex military men in 90s Russia). Not just that but also hatred for those in power as well as society as a whole, and what they represented: total decadence and the reason why Russia was falling apart with these “stupid” western conceptions about freedom that in his eyes did nothing but give leeway for debauchery and corruption, which he ultimately sought to “fix” by returning Russia to what it used to be (a god-fearing empire under the autocratic rule of a tsar that was likened to a father to all his subjects, and where religion was used as a resource to legitimize his power and as a moral regulator that maintained the social order).

He pretty much felt abandoned, betrayed by his government— a leadership that had done nothing but sink Russia deeper and deeper into ruin, destroying the values under which he was raised and turning people like him into cynical masses that had lost faith in everything and were adrift without any real purpose in life, no future to look forward to, completely disillusioned that the dreams they’d bought into, the promises they had been sold by the west, were nothing but lies.

He’s still a piece of garbage, we know that, but I also think that he’s gone through a lot of struggles and bad experiences in his youth that marked him and filled him with resentment. Everyone sees Vladimir as the puppet master of the storyline of MW, and we have to give him credit for that, but deep down he’s just a man who has been a slave to his own obsessions and ambitions, unable to free himself from the hatred that has poisoned his mind for years, which led him to commit so many atrocities and strip himself from any semblance of humanity— all for the sake of a higher cause, as he undoubtedly tried to justify his actions at the end of the day.

In conclusion, all three were marked by losses in one way or another, and saw themselves as men who had to take the hard path and do what had to be done. And it’s also curious that Call of Duty, while not a game with any deep meaning on the surface, almost seems like social commentary on how war ruins lives and how anyone can do horrible things if put through the wringer enough times. It’s like these stories are trying to say that bad circumstances can make bad men out of seemingly good people, who wouldn’t have done any of the evil they did if maybe things had been different.

And I think that’s what makes these characters so interesting.

[latin-dr-robotnik]

Closing thoughts on Sonic Unleashed’s character presentation and development

The year is coming to a close, and so it means my year-long adventure with Sonic World Adventure has come to an end aswell. Since April of this year I started taking notes on some of the underlying themes going on in the game, and it seems I struck a vein of interest in the fandom by doing so, so I kept digging and documenting each optional dialog from Amy till we reached this point, and now I would like to offer some closing words.

Edit: Buckle up, folks, turns out it’s a long post below.

Sonic Unleashed did a lot of things well with its characters, but I can’t shake off the feeling that it also was the first symptom of something that is a real issue nowadays: Tails gets the short end of the stick constantly in this game, not only because of Chip -the “sidekick of the week” if you like-, but also because of Professor Pickle. The way he flew away from Dark Gaia’s monsters at the start of the game gave me war flashbacks of Forces!Tails (not to the same extreme, of course), and after reaching Spagonia he just vanishes from the plot in favor of Pickle taking the helm as Sonic’s guide to each Gaia Temple. By the end of the game, Tails served only as a mean to Sonic and Chip’s end (fly them to each country), and he gets wiped from the climax of the game in an unceremoniously way, as he is shot down while flying over Eggmanland by what I believe was the Egg Dragoon. Only at the very end the game remembers “Oh, hey! Tails was always supposed to be Sonic’s best friend!” and gives him that closing moment when he finds Sonic in Apotos and they both blast away as credits roll.

Then there’s Chip. As a disclaimer, I want to say that I don’t think Chip is a bad character, but he didn’t grow on me like it happened for other fans. 

My biggest gripe with Chip is that, since he doesn’t remember anything about his real self until the Adabat temple is restored, he’s just a clean slate for 4/5 of the game, and the game itself does a weird thing with this: on one hand, it relegates all Sonic and Chip’s bonding moments to optional stuff (you have to feed Chip things he likes to raise the hidden friendship meter and get some of his more heartfelt lines and questions, or even those sweet CG clips), something that I did experience (since that’s how I like to play RPGs in general, get the sidequests first then the main one) but many others won’t bother; and on the other hand, the game puts all focus during the main campaign on what little we know of Chip and how he reacts to each location he visits with Sonic as they look for the Gaia Temples. 

This mess ended up leaving me with two feelings: a good one, since I can sit back and enjoy the world adventure at my own pace and without having to constantly follow a potentially convoluted plot (I can lose myself for 20 minutes in a night stage and have fun); and a bad one, since I was going through the game with this lingering feeling on the back of my head that Chip was just an egotistical prick that only cared about his journey through the world, and not at all about Sonic and that monster form he’s getting used to at least until the second half, or what the rest of his friends are doing (which is, by the way, the main reason why I play a Sonic game in the first place, my order of priorities goes as follows: Sonic -> Eggman -> Amy -> Tails & Knux -> Team Dark -> everyone else). 

By the end those thoughts kinda dissapeared so I can safely say I don’t hate Chip at all, it’s just that the game gave me a wrong message about him. Though the best thing I can extract from his relation with Sonic is the following quote, perfectly summarizing what Sonic is all about.

Finally, there’s Amy. I’ve talked a lot about her in my other two posts, but I still have some things to say. First of all, just like @skull001​ pointed out a while ago, she’s the only one that does not lose hope on Sonic when Perfect Dark Gaia is fully unleashed, as everyone else thought the world was doomed, even Professor Pickle himself. This is because of two reasons: 1) she’s Amy, so she’s always the optimistic one (duh); 2) Amy knows Sonic better than everyone else, and also she was there for him all along, checking on his progress and encouraging him to keep going (even lamenting she couldn’t go adventuring with him). Amy does understand how dire the situation actually is, but she knows Sonic always has a plan, y’all just need to have some goddamn faith (+1 for that RDR2 reference, amirite?). She even looks at the sky as the cutscene jumps back to Sonic’s perspective, like when two characters are telepathically communicating (something this series isn’t a stranger to, I remember reading a post here on Tumblr about Sonic X doing that stuff some time ago)

Sidenote: Also, another funny thing I just realized is that, if you as Sonic refuse to go on a date in the final optional dialog just before Eggmanland, Amy will exclaim: “Give a gal a little hope here, Sonic!” She’s willing to put all her hopes that Sonic will end up saving the world (insert the obvious “If I have to choose between the world and Sonic, I’d choose Sonic!” ‘06 line), how hard could it be for Sonic to give her just a little hope? It’s kinda interesting when making the comparison, Amy just asks for the smallest hint and she’ll keep going strong, pretty much like every shipper out there lol.

(Back on topic.) The beautiful part is that Amy actually gets her “I told you so!” moment with Professor Pickle in the very end of the game, and just as he’s being exposed, the old prick goes on a tangent about how darkness and light are part of the world’s balance, and that the cycle of Dark Gaia vs Light Gaia will keep repeating itself. What does Amy think about this?

Yeah, fuck off, Pickle. This is low-key one of my favorite Amy moments ever. She doesn’t care about the balance of the world or any of that philosophical bullshit Pickle was saying, she knew Sonic was there saving the world’s ass, she knew he was the one that made all the difference down there in the Earth’s core, and that is all it matters in the end. Now let’s go and wait till Sonic’s return so we can have a welcoming party and chill since this plot is over. Perfect ending.

So, that’s Sonic Unleashed for ya. Certainly one of the most interesting cases for me to talk about all year, and top 3 favorite 3D Sonic games for sure. There are lots of flaws and scary things that later would become actual issues with the Sonic franchise present in this game, but it also did so many things right I can’t help but applaud Sonic Team for the effort they put. For all intents and purposes, I’ll be thinking on this game a lot when it comes to character presentation and development in future Sonic games, now fully knowing what’s on display, and what lies beyond, deep in optional stuff. I hope you enjoyed reading or even taking part in the discussions I’ve had along this path, and I hope that, just like me, you might have learned something interesting.

[the-purple-hero]

CNK Story Campaign (Team Spyro)

{{So before I start, I just got a little bored and decided to write out a full thing if Spyro had his own team in Crash Nitro Kart for all the cutscenes. I was inspired after seeing a post with hypothetical teams in CNK, so I thought I’d do my own with a Team Spyro. This will feature Spyro, Hunter and Agent 9.

Note, that this is written in a script type of format because if it were in my regular writing form it’d be a huge writing passage, I hope you guys like it.}}

*Accepting Velo’s Challenge

The cutscene begins giving close up shots of Spyro, Hunter and Agent 9 respectively as they wave and Velo’s crowd cheers.

Velo: Do you accept my challenge?....OUT WITH IT!

Spyro: Y’eesh calm down big guy, don’t need to see ya havin’ a big ol’ fit! Yeah we take your challenge and you’ll see what real speed looks like!

Velo: Then it is decided! You will race across four worlds of my choosing! And if you should win each world’s key. You will earn a chance to race the galactic champion, for your freedom. I even modified vehicles for you to give you a fighting chance.

Spyro: Uh huh that’s all well and good, my pals and I will show you! Lets make somethin’ clear, you’re not gonna have the last laugh here.

Velo: Think you’ll put up quite a challenge do you? Well they all say that dragon, but I do love watching some intense competition!....Now, onto the first world, Terra!

The cutscene finishes with Team Spyro hopping in their vehicles and Sparx joining up next to the little dragon. Spyro gave one last look up at Velo’s holographic head with a look of confidence at the Emperor’s sneer before driving off to Terra.

*Terra’s Champion

Velo: You’ve collected 3 trophies, a promising start! Now you must face Terra’s champion, Krunk!

Krunk appears and bats his chest like a gorilla

Velo: Krunk’s speed is only matched by his cunning on the track

Krunk: They will race me? They look slow, send them back!

Spyro glares at him and holds back Agent 9 who looks ready to aim his blaster

Velo: But Krunk, they’re from... eh...where exactly are you lot from hmm?

Spyro: Psh, as if I’m gonna tell ya that. No way, I’d rather keep it to ourselves can’t have you comin’ and causing trouble if y’don’t mind.

Krunk: Well whatever planet, or world or wherever you came from I’m going to show you a real defeat and send you back with your head hanging low!

Spyro: Riiiight, sure you will, how ‘bout we get goin’ and we’ll see who comes out the victor!

Spyro gives off a smug smirk as both him and Krunk make eye contact, with Agent 9 grumbling behind him and Velo chuckling darkly at the tension.

*Krunk Defeated

The cutscene begins with the crowds surprised at Team Spyro’s victory with one shouting their praises and receiving dirty looks from those near him, and then Krunk approaches the team.

Krunk: Key makes you champion of Terra, also opens all world gates on my planet. Visit when you want.

Spyro noticed that the Terran seemed really sad at his defeat despite his hostility from earlier.

Spyro: Sure thing, not a problem neat skills out there.

Krunk: Really? Thanks! You three aren’t so bad yourselves!

Spyro: Yep, just doin’ our best y’know and trust me we’re gonna win this thing.

Krunk: Hmmm, maybe you will but don’t get too excited.

Velo then appeared back up much to Krunk’s dismay.

Velo: Krunk! Leave my sight!

A beam of light then took Krunk away.

Velo: You’d did well but your nowhere close to winning the circuit yet, onto the second world! Barrin!

*Barrin’s Champion

Velo: You now have six trophies, with these you have earned the right to race Nash! Barrin’s champion! Nash was engineered to always move, he never stops or even sleeps!

Nash: Put ‘em up, put ‘em up!

Nash proceeds to spin around while Spyro shakes his head, Hunter looks confused and Agent 9 looks excited.

Spyro: Y’know this guy, looks like they weren’t kiddin’ he looks like he just had waaay too much candy or something.

Nash: Is that, enough? I need to get moving!

Velo: Soon Nash

Nash: Not soon.... NOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!

Velo is visibly angered by the backtalk and growls at him which shut Nash down and made him back off.

Velo: Excellent

*Nash Defeated

Nash is off to the side looking frustrated and mumbling things to himself and shaking his fins.

Spyro: Guess we made ol’ sharptooth over there mad, you guys doin’ alright after that?

Hunter: You could say that Spyro, but ugh got hit by those fans so many times I don’t know when I’m gonna stop feeling this dizzy, Agent 9 is well...watching Nash because I guess he hit him with something out on the track.

Spyro looks over at Agent 9 who was standing behind one of the pillars and spying on Nash who was starring at the shark who had blasted him during the race.

Agent 9: OOOOH Let me at ‘em!

Just his luck, Nash then runs up to Team Spyro looking very angry and seemed to be still on the aggressive side.

Nash: Gimmie my key back!!! COME ON! HAND IT OVER!

Spyro: Watch it sharptooth, you lost! How ‘bout backin’ off before ya get toasted! Trust me y’don’t wanna mess with this dragon tough guy!

Nash: I don’t CARE! I am not scared of some purple LIZARD!

Before he could say anymore he saw Agent 9 sneaking over but Nash was so focused on his anger he didn’t notice, and realizing what was happening Spyro smirked and stepped out of the monkey’s way.

Agent 9: HehehaHAHAHHA Look who’s here! OOH you’re gonna get a chance to meet MISTER BLASTER!

Agent 9 points his blaster at Nash

Nash: Gah! Nonono get away from me you crazy freak!

Agent 9 chases Nash with his blaster managing to get off a few shots around the coliseum but missed, although making the shark scream and flail his fins around while Agent 9 was cackling like a madman, even Spyro got in on it and managed to blow flames at the shark as he ran past him.

Spyro: How’s that for not bein’ scared of the purple lizard?

This went on for a bit before they are interrupted by Velo’s hologram, ignoring the monkey’s antics and Spyro stopped first.

Velo: Nash! Get out of here I’ll deal with you later!

Agent 9: I’ve got you NOW!

Agent 9 fires one more time hitting Nash in the rear, and he lunges at him but misses him as he is beamed away and led the monkey to have a hard landing with a splat on the ground.

Agent 9: HEY! Stop messing up my fun!

Velo rolls his eyes with a look of disgust, and proceeds to ignore him.

Velo: Well your halfway there here’s where things start to get tricky... On to Phenomena!

*Fenomena’s Champion

Velo: With your nine trophies, you have earned the right to face Phenomena’s champion...Norm!

Norm appears on his pedestal reading a book, not even looking at the team below.

Spyro ends up snickering, along with Hunter and Agent 9 laughed, and even Velo laughed at Norm but then shook his head and came to his senses.

Velo: Don’t let Norm’s size fool you, he’s a demon on the race track.

Norm looked away from his book, crossed his arms and shook his head refusing to race.

Velo: NOOOOOOOO! You ARE racing today, now DO IT!

Norm quickly got down and he turned into some kind of blue goo, and split into two piles of it.

Spyro: What the-?

Hunter: Heh heh, looks like jello

Hunter leaned down and told Spyro with a chuckle

Spyro: Pfft, good one.

But then the bigger pile had a red hat sprout up and they reformed one looking like Norm as they saw him moments ago, the other like a bigger version of him.

Big Norm: Oooh a race! Count me in!

Small Norm waggled a finger at him and looked away, arms crossed again.

Big Norm: I don’t wanna hear it! The deal was that you race in return for me wearing this dumb getup!

Big Norm approached Team Spyro

Big Norm: Besides, they don’t stand a chance!

Agent 9: We’ll SEE!

Hunter and Spyro both glare at him

Spyro: You guys never learn do ya, well c’mon then let’s go!

*Norm Defeated

Big Norm: You know, you did good out there. You got a real shot at winning this thing! Cause you work together!

Spyro: Heh, well thanks! Y’sure turned out to be a pretty good sport ‘bout all this, you two aren’t so bad together yourselves. The last guy threw a fit when he lost...so my pal Agent 9 and I taught him a thing or two.

Agent 9: I got to have a SHOT at him if you know what I’m saying!

Agent 9 waved his blaster around and both he and Big Norm started laughing at the pun.

Big Norm: Ohoho! I know what you mean, good old Nash can get a little upset over even little things but this is a lot bigger of a deal to him, like us.

Big Norm then looks over at Small Norm who was sitting away, and reading again.

Big Norm: Hey! Come over here and make nice!

Small Norm refused and looked away.

Big Norm: Yeah he pretends not to care, but he’s just like me he hates losin’.

Spyro tilted his head and looked over at Small Norm, he understood it didn’t feel good at all to take a loss. But as he did Velo appeared again, looking very angry.

Velo: Norm! Get over here!

Big Norm: Uh oh

Both Norms are persuaded to fuse again by Velo and they do.

Velo: Perhaps I need new ways to motivate you... like... taking your books away!

Norm looks horrified before he is beamed out.

Velo: I thought he had you beat...but you proved me wrong! You won’t be so lucky on Teknee!

*Teknee’s Champion

This cutscene is pretty much the same as the other teams canonically in the game just with the Team Spyro characters.

*Geary Defeated

Geary: My key! How did I lose? I know Teknee like the back of my- my hand! It’s dirty! This whole place is filthy!

Geary proceeds to vacuum the coliseum drawing closer to Team Spyro who are celebrating, he notices Hunter and takes out a brush, cleaning his stomach making him giggle before he moved on to vacuuming his underarm leading Spyro to chuckle at him and look at Sparx who was struggling to hold in his giggles while they were being celebrated, not minding the robot just doing some cleaning.

Spyro: Looks like y’won’t need to go and take a bath he’s doing it for ya

Spyro chuckled, gently ribbing at the cheetah who rolled his eyes at his friend, and was startled as suddenly Velo shouted.

Velo: Geary! You have FAILED ME! As punishment you must clean the trophy podium, and when your done with that... you will clean the entire coliseum!

Velo could now be seen standing where his hologram was, in the flesh and laughing evilly at the job he assigned to Geary.

Velo: You now have all 4 champion keys and with these you can now challenge the most accomplished racer in the entire galaxy... me! And I never lose...

*First Velo Defeat

Velo is visibly angry and grumbles with his two advisers looking concerned, but as he calms down they do as well.

Velo: Congratulations you have won the galaxy circuit, and you put on quite a show am I right everyone?

The crowd cheers victoriously

Velo: You are now free to go.

Spyro: Heh, this was too easy your majesty!

The young dragon spoke with his voice dripping with sarcasm on that last part.

Spyro: Told ya that you wouldn’t have the last laugh here. So now if ya don’t mind we’re gonna head back with Crash and our friends back to their home.

Velo: What? You mean Earth? Oh, but now I have to destroy Earth since you no longer want to race. You can’t go back there, I thought I was pretty clear about that, dragon. You must have made some kind of mistake here yes? Thinking you could just go back now.

Hearing this, Spyro starred into Velo’s eyes looking not too happy while Velo looked smugly down at him.

Hunter: That’s not right!

Agent 9: OOOH you’re playing DIRTY!

Velo: What do you mean? You’re free to go.”

Velo still looked smug since he knew exactly what he was doing, they were free to go but not the way they wanted, he still insisted he would doom Crash’s planet.

Spyro: ...Don’t mess with me greenie, I wouldn’t start playin’ these games with me because I can play them better. If you’re gonna play dirty, we could have a go right here you’re not gonna do a thing to Earth or Crash!

Clearly Spyro was not happy with this, he basically had him where he wanted him because there was no way he was going to let him destroy Crash’s home planet, if he had to fight with him he would if need be.

Spyro: Oh ho I get it, you just can’t stand the idea of actually losin’ to us can ya ugly?

Velo is visibly upset by this remark, but tries not to shout or growl at him.

Velo: Are you certain of that? I would tread carefully dragon, Remember you otherworldly savage, do not dare to challenge me in such a way or else I might have to see Earth destroyed for your defiance!

Spyro: Oh yeah? We’ll keep racing if that’s what it’s gonna take for you to back off from Earth.

Velo: A rematch? How exciting! But there are rules you must follow, you first need to earn all my time relics then we can race for the fate of Earth.

Spyro: If that’s what ya want then bring it on greenie, we’ll teach ya another lesson! You’re so on!

*Final Velo Defeat (Ending)

Velo is visibly fuming and growling angrily even more than last time

Velo Adviser 1: My lord please don’t get angry!

Velo Adviser 2: Your suit is leaking sire!

Velo hits the adviser's hovercraft causing him to go flying. While Spyro stood in front of his friends, thinking Velo might attack in a fit of rage. So stepped in front to defend his two friends...but then Velo unexpectedly in his anger exploded into a pile of rubble.

Team Spyro cough and splutter as smoke fills the area, but soon dispels.

Spyro: There’s somethin’ ya don’t see everyday the bad guy exploding. And here I was thinkin’ we were gonna have to take ‘em down in order to get outta this, I guess that’s one way of doin’ it!

Spyro makes his way to Velo’s scepter standing up on his hind legs and tries to move it from there but trips and it lands on him, the item being surprisingly heavy. Hunter helps him up, just as from the rubble the Real Velo emerges from the destroyed robot.

Velo: It’s mine! you can’t have it!

Spyro: Can’t say I saw this coming, that you were just a little guy underneath all that you sure y’still wanna try me short stuff?

Velo shook angrily, and jumped at Spyro and attempted to knock him down and latched onto him and tried to pull the scepter away while Spyro bit onto it and held it in his mouth.

Velo: GIVE IT! YOU MEDDLING DRAGON!

Hunter came up behind him and tried to pull Velo away but he had a tight grip, and tried to scratch at Hunter’s hands while holding on with the other. Spyro pulled the scepter down with his paws and held it tighter releasing it from his mouth actually working as a distraction.

Spyro: Havin’ some trouble short stuff?

Seemed the distraction worked, as Agent 9 put an end to it with a shot from his blaster at Velo which had him yell.

Velo: OUCH!

Agent 9: HAHA got you!

Velo let go instantly and Hunter was still pulling so he tripped back still holding the Emperor, causing Velo to soar in the air and collide with a pillar of the coliseum and slid down. Landing on his back with a groan and Spyro pushed the staff up and Hunter held onto it for him.

Spyro walked up to Velo who grumbled and scooted away from him, and he snorted with smoke coming out of his nostrils.

Spyro: Not so tough now, are ya?

Velo: Okay fine you win! You can take it, my scepter is too big for me anyway.

Velo laid there and crossed his arms in a grumpy manner.

Spyro: Uh huh let that be a lesson to you, didn’t anyone ever tell ya not to mess with dragons? Well there ya go, guys like us ain’t gonna give up especially not to a baddie like you.

Spyro trotted back to his friends and he held the scepter to the best of his ability and he took his friends, including the Bandicoots back home and after a quick trip back to the Dragon Realms to hand over Velo’s scepter to the Magic Crafters so they could handle it as they saw fit.

Afterward he continued with his visit to Wumpa Island, where he hung around with all of his friends together on the beach and soaking up the sun rays and relaxing after all that racing.

THE END

[zdbztumble]

“Kingdom Hearts II” revisited, Part IV

Having said last time that I don’t understand how any of the first four Disney worlds could be considered filler, I can absolutely understand how the last four could be. I suspect that it’s these worlds, at least on the first pass, that give this game its reputation for Disney filler. The reasons why aren’t hard to spot: it’s a case of formula and stagnation combining to bring the larger story down into a fun but overlong lull.

As I said in Part III, the first of the Disney worlds follow logically from Yen Sid’s briefing, and illustrate the competing villain factions. Disney Castle represents a turning point, with Maleficent getting personally involved and striking at a world that should have been off-limits. I don’t object to the placement of Disney Castle in the line-up; the story needed a step up in stakes at that moment. But there is a total lack of follow-up from there. Agrabah, Port Royal, and Pride Rock all play out in the same way so far as the larger story is concerned; Pete shows up with some Heartless, has almost nothing to do with whatever it is the local villain is up to, and Sora and the local Disney heroes clean up the mess. The one deviation from that formula is Halloween Town, where Maleficent again takes a personal hand and her past history with Oogie Boogie is capitalized on, but it amounts to the same basic formula. 

Where this issue is most apparent is in Pride Rock. Some of the worlds before this see Pete discussing how this or that character would make a good Heartless; in Pride Rock, the local Disney villain actually becomes one. That is, on paper, a major escalation, and a significant achievement for Maleficent’s forces. But the presentation of that moment utterly fails to convey that, because Pete and Scar have virtually no interaction. There’s no seduction or temptation for Scar to embrace the powers of darkness and become a Heartless, no equivalent to Maleficent’s conversations with Jafar, Hades, and Riku in KH I. Everything in Pride Rock plays out as if nothing were unique here, as if no advancement had happened; Pete’s just there, and he’s almost casual in the way he declares Scar to be a Heartless.

Really, Pete’s continued presence speaks to the problem. Maleficent’s threat that Timeless River represented his last chance should have been a real threat; after his failure there, he should have been banished to sentry duty at their hideout or something like that, while Maleficent saw to all the rest of the Disney worlds personally, gradually increasing the threat and the stakes. Meanwhile, Organization XIII could provide at least one major disruption or counter to her plans, keeping them involved. Instead, the Organization puts in no appearances in these worlds, and the only mention of them that I remember is Sora asking Nala if she’s seen anyone in dark cloaks. Whatever the merits and demerits of each individual world (and we’ll get to that in a second), the end result is that the central plot of KH II is absent for four whole worlds, except for the cutscenes tied to Kairi.

And speaking of Kairi - as good as her reintroduction to the story is in the prelude, the game takes too long to bring her back into the proceedings after Sora awakens. The reference to her at the end of Port Royal is adorable, as is the mention of her in the Pride Lands but at least one cutscene, placed somewhere within the first few Disney worlds, was needed. The long absence of DiZ and “Ansem” from the plot is felt too - not as strongly for me, though that’s a personal thing.

When Kairi does finally reappear, we get a good expansion of her character. In one short scene with Pluto and Axel, she’s shown to be brave, intuitive, and determined to set out on her own and be a part of the action. More of that side to her character would have been good to see, in this and other games, but at least this one has it in some capacity. (This scene also serves to disabuse any notions of Axel’s character; a man prepared to kidnap Sora’s lady love to use as bait in an ill-thought plan to get Roxas back is not any sort of hero.)

(For those of you who play through the worlds based on villain level, and who try and play in-character as Sora, Kairi’s cutscene being placed where it is made my path forward after Agrabah an agonizing decision. On the one hand, Twilight Town opening up would be a clear sign that there’s something there worth investigating; on the other hand, Sora couldn’t possibly know at that point that Kairi is there, and the remaining Disney worlds are all populated by old friends of his. In the end, I stuck to following villain level, but it was tough to settle on a plan.)

Now, as for the Disney worlds on their own merits...

Atlantica is bad. I don’t have any inherent objection to a combat-free musical world, and I don’t even hate “Swim This Way;” get rid of the lyrics and it’s a fairly innocuous instrumental track. But the original story for Atlantica written for KH I borrowed liberally from the actual movie plot; to go through an abridged version of that plot here is repetitive, and devoid of any of the elements that tied the world to the larger KH story in the first game. Even more than the 100 Acre Wood, I think this would have been a great candidate for a world not to repeat. KH III’s later decision to keep Ariel involved as a Summon instead is one of the few things I can unequivocally say that game did better than KH II.

I can also say that KH III did a far better job with the Pirates of the Caribbean material. On an aesthetic level, there’s no contest. The size of the world, its design and color scheme, animation of characters (though there’s still some uncanny valley issues), movement and gameplay options, Jack’s VA and original dialogue - even the music, despite the absence of Zimmer’s main theme, all made an incredible leap forward in KH III compared to what the starting point was. I’d go so far as to say that KH II’s Port Royal is, aesthetically, the weakest in the game, and possibly the entire series (though Wonderland could give it a run for its money, at least on looks.)

The bigger problem with Port Royal, at least on the first pass, is the way it handles the movie it’s based on. It’s in Port Royal where I see clearly, for the first time, the approach to adapting Disney movies that would become the detrimental standard. What we have here is an uninspired abridgement of Curse of the Black Pearl, easily the most straightforward adaptation of a Disney movie in this game, with possibly the least amount of effort made to accommodate the greater KH story (we’ll get to the competition for that title next). The abridgement itself is careless in its cuts, leaving certain elements of the world’s story confusing, awkward, or arbitrary. Dialogue is lifted wholesale from the film and delivered with less than compelling conviction by the stand-in VAs.

Pete’s limited role in Barbossa’s schemes has already been mentioned, but this world was the first where I felt that little effort was made to give Sora a role in the proceedings. As happened with infuriating frequency in KH III, Sora and his friends are basically along for the ride here, the plot of the movie playing out around them without their having any real bearing on it. The two things you can give Port Royal over later games’ worlds is that at least Sora is involved with the final battle against Barbossa, and that this world introduces his pirate fantasies (and we’ll touch more on those in a moment). To go back to KH III’s take on Pirates - most of the same problems (and those two saving graces) exist there too, but in the context of that game, The Caribbean in KH III was one of the less frustrating worlds when it came to Sora’s role (or lack thereof), so it was a bit of a bright spot. In the context of KH II, Port Royal having all these problems on the first pass means it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Honestly, if they wanted to adhere to the film so badly, I would’ve preferred that Pete and the Heartless not show up at all. The first pass could have had the skeletal pirates as the only villains, and Sora could leave that world wondering why the Keyblade would have brought him there if there were no Heartless to be had. Cut back to Port Royal, and you’d see a figure in a black cloak and hood wandering around, giving Organization XIII a badly-needed tease in this section of the game.

And, if I can nitpick - Sora and his friends explicitly state that Port Royal looks “so different” from any other world they’ve been to. Why would this game not have them adopt disguises? Give KH III another point for that one, though I think it would have been more appropriate - and funnier - if Donald and Goofy had turned into a real duck and dog.

The other Disney world that really has issues with movie adaptation and providing Sora material is Pride Rock. While it’s somewhat less rigid an a recap of The Lion King than Port Royal was for Black Pearl, the absence of any scene that builds to Scar’s succumbing is emblematic of these worlds’ inability to loosen up and be original in their material when it’s called for. Sora’s first encounter with Nala offers some fresh plot, but by the time Simba appears, we’re locked into an uninspired highlight reel of Lion King’s third act. Some lapses of logic plague this world too (the biggest one: why would Sora and his friends run away from the hyenas when they first come to Pride Rock? They have weapons and magic. Pete being there shouldn’t mean anything unless he summons an insurmountable swarm of Heartless). And this is the world that handles Sora the worst in the first pass - or at least, it’s the most frustrating of them in how it handles Sora. There’s the nonsensical and out-of-character plot of his to become king, but more than that, this world has so many opportunities to let Sora matter that aren’t taken. He’s the one who tells Nala that Simba’s alive, but we get a weak version of Rafiki’s “it is time!” moment instead of letting Sora find his old friend. Sora does at least encounter Simba first, and tries to stop him from finding Nala - but he might as well not say anything, because the “pinned ya” moment from the movie plays out as if he weren’t there. The game prompts Sora to cheer Simba up, but he doesn’t do anything of the sort - Simba just walks away, and we get the discount version of the big Hamlet moment. If it weren’t for Sora staying by Simba’s side for the Scar fight, this would be as bad a use of him in a Disney world as anything in KH III.

As with Port Royal, it’s tempting to imagine alternate scenarios. Picture a Pride Lands level where Sora, upon arriving, encounters Simba in the jungle, wtih Timon and Pumba. More is made of their reunion and Simba’s shock at seeing his friend in lion form (one moment from the world as-is that I truly love, because it’s adorable), and the level starts out with a series of short, light-hearted minigames designed to give the player a crash course in controlling the lion mode and offer a springboard for cutscenes letting these two trios bounce off one another in a fun way. You could also use these scenes to let Sora, for the first time, get a hint of the sadness in Simba. Cut to Pride Rock, where Maleficent is actively tempting Scar and providing him with Heartless. It’s the sight of this unnatural force that moves Nala to go looking for help, and this would lead to a “boss” battle where Sora, Donald, and Goofy end up fighting Nala to protect Timon and Pumba. Simba, recognizing Nala, breaks up the fight, and their reunion brings up Simba’s past, prompting Sora to ask the questions that would bring that past to light. When Simba runs off, Nala ends up asking Sora for help, and he follows her to Pride Rock. Cue two cutscenes - one of the Hamlet moment, and one where Maleficent informs Scar that trouble is coming, and gives him his next shot of darkness. When gameplay starts back up, it’s Sora confronting hyenas and Heartless, leading up to a first try at fighting Scar that it’s impossible to win. That would trigger another cutscene where Simba arrives and has his verbal confrontation with Scar, Maleficent would appear and give Scar his final “help,” and then we’d go right into the final battle with Heartless Scar.

Having been frustrated enough with this world to want a complete rewrite of it, I will say that it’s a much more attractive world than Port Royal, and it’s not without its charms. Besides little character moments that I already mentioned, getting to play as a lion is a lot of fun. I do wish that there was more variation on speed depending on the pressure you put on the analogue stick, as Sora can go a bit too fast for me in lion form, but it’s a great change-up from other worlds. And despite the changes I would have made to her introduction, Nala’s presence and interaction with Sora is nice. It’s a shame she and Simba both couldn’t have been party members.

So, I clearly had problems with those three worlds. But what about the other two? Well, while my issues with the larger KH story in this section stand, Agrabah and Halloween Town both hold up much better taken on their own terms. As someone whose disdain for Disney’s DTV sequel craze is only slightly less than my current disdain for their live-action remake trend, I was loathe to think that any of those videos would find their way into Kingdom Hearts back when I first played this game. Return of Jafar being, to my mind, one of the worst of that bunch only reinforced that feeling. But I liked Agrabah in KH II back in the day, and I’d say it holds up nicely. In some ways, I think it’s an improvement on the (surprisingly slight) material it takes from Return of Jafar, if only because it cuts away all the nonsense. Sora serving as an intermediary between Iago and the world’s heroes isn’t his most dramatic role in a Disney story, but it’s just enough to make his presence seem necessary. Riku and King Mickey getting mentioned again keeps the rest of the plot in mind to some degree. And I’ll give them credit for some variety - saving the Disney villain for the second pass in at least one world was a good call. Though, since Maleficent has a personal history with Jafar, it’s a shame she’s not personally involved in the hunt for his lamp.

That’s not an issue with Halloween Town, of course, and it’s in Halloween Town where what they were trying to do with Maleficent’s storyline is most clearly illustrated. The idea of the Mistress of All Evil, greatest of the Disney villains, having to claw her way back to the top of the totem pole after being knocked down in KH I and finding frustration and setback every step of the way, is a wonderful idea. And the pairing of the elegant Maleficent with a slob like Oogie Boogie (and Pete, for that matter) is a gold mine for material. The fact that she just gives up her plan to turn Santa Claus into a Heartless because Oogie is being somewhat rude and amnesiac makes no sense (does she need Oogie for that process? Why would she give up her side of the plan just because he was annoying?), and it undermines her scheming almost as much as the lack of movement in the larger plot does. But just being able to recognize an attempt at a coherent internal narrative for her, when later games turn her into a pointless tease for UX bullshit, counts for something.

And I love Halloween and Christmas Town in this game. I must confess that I’ve never liked the look of Halloween Town in KH I, with its heavy use of browns and purples, but the world in KH II is as perfect a match to the movie as CGI can get. It is gorgeous, and Christmas Town is even more so. I love the little details they put into that world, like the toy train running through the mountains in the background. Playing the vanilla version as I am, I don’t get to see Sora and friends in their unique Christmas Town looks, but it’s still nice to see them running around in that environment.

As with Agrabah, there’s some interesting variety on display in Halloween Town. Adapting material from the movie to make a sequel to the movie is a fun idea. With the events of Nightmare before Christmas in the past, Jack and Santa’s relationship has a nice flavor to it here, with Jack as the exhausting but lovable neighbor for old St. Nick. It’s almost like Jack is Kramer from Seinfeld, and Santa is Jerry. The story here doesn’t give Sora a whole lot more to do than tag along with Jack, which one could argue is barely a step above worlds like Pride Rock and Port Royal. But the details here matter. Jack specifically enlisting Sora and his friends as “bodyguards,” their actions directly helping Jack, and Sora’s love of Santa Claus, may be little things, but they go such a long way to generating a feeling that Sora really does belong in this story, that his role as wielder of the Keyblade has a direct impact on these Disney characters’ lives. I’m so hard on Pride Rock for lacking in those moments, because every other world in this game has them on the first pass - even Atlantica has them.

Santa Claus, and pirates, are two things in this game that awaken a childlike glee in Sora that momentarily overcomes his focus on the mission. There wasn’t necessarily anything like that in KH I, with a younger Sora. He gets into a petty fight with Donald, yes; there was a look of admiration towards Cloud in the Coliseum; he describes the Gummi ship as an “awesome rocket;” and he’s struck with wonder at being able to fly in Neverland. But there isn’t anything as pronounced as his boyish fantasies of being a pirate here, or his delight at meeting Santa. You could argue that it’s a bit of a retcon to do this; Sora didn’t exhibit any love of pirates while on Captain Hook’s ship. But it’s a slight retcon, and that instance could easily be explained away by his being preoccupied by finding Kairi at last and witnessing Riku’s continuing slide to darkness. It’s one change to Sora’s character in KH II that I don’t mind at all. It gives him a new dimension, it opens up opportunities for levity with Sora without turning him into the butt of jokes, and most importantly, it isn’t overplayed. KH III would see Sora grasping at an unfeasible lure of a pirate ship (not unlike the throne of Pride Rock in this game) and try to claim some great parallels or similarities between Sora and Jack Sparrow that are untenable, but here, it’s just a young boy’s daydream, popping up here and there, which is just enough to flesh Sora out and give scenes some charm. And the moments with Santa give some funny and unexpected insight into Sora’s past; Riku being the asshole who went around telling younger kids there was no such thing as Santa Claus fits in perfectly with what we see of him in KH I.

And to close on a positive note: Halloween Town has some of my all-time favorite gameplay material in this series. There is no reason why Jack’s Command should delight me as much as it does, but watching him sweep Sora into a crazy dance to kill Heartless always makes me laugh. And the boss battle with Oogie Boogie is fantastic. Good lead-up in the cutscenes, colorful, unorthodox layout, challenging without being impossible; would that all the boss battles in the series showed this degree of variety and creativity.

[anxiously-unsatisfied-world]

Horror Game Night

So I don’t play many horror games, therefore, any similarities to actual games are extremely coincidental. But this should be cute ^^ Enjoy :3

Pairings: Moxiety & Logince; Platonic Prinxiety Warnings: Mention of monsters, mention of death scenes (they are playing horror games) Word Count: 953

Virgil sets down a tray of snacks, looking over at Roman who is setting up the game console. "You almost done?"

"Yeah," Roman says. He finishes setting it up and sits on the couch with a controller in hand. "So, you wanna go first or should I?"

Virgil shrugs, pulling a pillow into his lap. "It doesn't matter.  We'll both have to play eventually." Roman nods and pulls up the first horror game, Virgil settling in to watch.

Roman walks around for a little while, not trusting the false sense of security the game is trying to set up. When he goes to open a door, a grotesque monster jumps out, causing both Roman and Virgil to jump.

"That certainly was…unexpected." Roman comments, causing Virgil to roll his eyes. Roman focuses on getting the character away from the monster while dodging different obstacles, but it's a lot harder than he expects so he gets caught.

Virgil snickers and Roman turns to scowl at him. "You think you can do better?"

"Yup. Gimme that controller, princey." Virgil says, taking the controller and pressing continue. When the monster jumps out, they're expecting it, barely flinching at it, and Virgil is off running. His reflexes from constantly being anxious allow him to get quite a bit farther than Roman had but it doesn't help get him out of the dead end that the monster chases him into.

They play this game for a little while before switching to another, which starts them straight off in a life-or-death situation.

"This game isn't messing around…" Virgil mutters as he tries to escape from the monster. Since it's supposed to be the first obstacle you face, he gets past it easily enough, though the next monster is not so easy.

"Here, let me try." Roman offers when Virgil loses to the monster and Virgil passes the controller back over to him. It takes him a bit of effort but they make it to the next part of the game, where the main monster is revealed.

When it resembles the creatures from the game that Thomas played back in May, Virgil pulls the pillow up so he can hide behind it at a moment's notice. Roman cringes and leans against Virgil so he can do something similar.

The cutscene ends with the monster chasing after the main character and when Roman gets caught, the death scene is much more gruesome than any of the others had been.

Virgil flinches and hides his eyes while Roman makes a face as the sight makes his stomach roll. "Hey, Virge?" Roman asks, pausing the game and looking over at him, "You wanna stop for tonight? I don't think I can stomach this game right now."

"Yeah, that's fine," Virgil says, though he knows that he's going to be seeing flashes of that death scene all night. "It was nice playing with you, princey," Virgil says as he rises to his feet, sharing a soft smile with Roman.

"Likewise. I'll see you tomorrow, Virge." Roman waves as Virgil goes up the stairs, turning the game off and cleaning up before following suit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Patton looks up when Virgil does his usual knock before walking in, offering him a bright smile. "Hi there, sweetheart. Have fun?"

Virgil shuffles over and sits beside him, still a bit shaken from that last scene. "Yeah. It got a bit too scary though…"

Patton's smile melts into a soft look of concern, "Aww, honey. Come here." Patton opens his arms and Virgil crawls into them, practically melting into his embrace.

Patton smiles softly and kisses his forehead, humming a soothing song and rocking Virgil slightly. Virgil quickly relaxes in his arms and when Patton thinks he's calm enough, he whispers, "What do you say to baking some cookies?"

"Now? Patton, it's like ten o'clock." Virgil asks, the hints of a smile in his voice.

"Yeah, but you're still a bit shaken. What better way to soothe those nerves than with cookies and a Disney movie?" Patton asks, already knowing that Virgil will say yes.

Virgil smiles and nods, causing Patton to giggle and cheer softly. He lifts Virgil into his arms, just giggling more when Virgil clings to him. Patton then carries him downstairs to start baking some of Virgil's favorite cookies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Logan looks up from his book when Roman enters the room, watching his boyfriend faceplant onto his bed. "Have fun?" Logan asks, raising an eyebrow.

Roman lifts his head and looks at him, Logan able to see the traces of discomfort still on his face. "It was fun, yes. But that last game…" Roman trails off with a shudder, not wanting to revisit that memory so quickly.

"Ah. Well, I happen to be reading something I think you'd enjoy. If you are not opposed, I could read to you?" Logan says, the slight uncertainty in his voice making it sound more like a question.

"Oh? What are you reading?" Roman asks, crawling forward and peering over the book, causing Logan to fondly roll his eyes.

"A collection of fairytales," Logan says and Roman gives a slightly surprised look, already knowing that his boyfriend does like fairytales (as much as he likes to complain about their rationality). But that wasn't the answer Roman was expecting.

"That sounds nice." Roman stands up so he can better lay beside Logan, curling into his side and looking at the book.

Logan snaps his fingers before beginning to read, turning his ceiling into a moderately accurate portrayal of the night sky. Roman looks up at the ceiling as he listens to Logan read, the steady rhythm of his boyfriend's voice calming the last bits of fear left over from the game.

@sanderssidesspook

Taglist: @anuninspiredpoet @echomist13 @theresneverenoughfandoms @fiive-second-cookies @sevencrashing

[softupshur]

I don’t know what to title this but enjoy a break from Imperfect Faith and take this Miles and Waylon nonsense <3

A gift for @sstrnn <3 I know it took me a while, but I hope you like this!

Where there should have been a living room was a sea of sheets and ratty blankets. Most of them were propped up by chairs dragged from the dining room, while safety pins in the wall took care of the rest, but Waylon only saw a huge mess to clean up after everyone else retired for bed.

He buried his face in his hands and groaned at the sight, before reaching for a quilt to start when he heard a voice from inside.

“Hey! I’m not done in here yet!”

Waylon flinched, dropping the blanket. “Miles?”

“No, it’s Auntie Marge. Who do you think it is?!”

Following the source of the voice, Waylon found a soft glow and humming from underneath the largest of the sheets, right where the TV usually sat. Waylon crouched down so he could crawl through the entrance and there sat Miles. He plopped himself on the floor, cross legged, glued to the 10 o’clock news, his eyes flickering like static and a bowl of popcorn on his lap.

“Popcorn?” Miles offered. He held out the bowl for Waylon without looking at him.

“Sure…” Waylon took a handful, then sat beside Miles, catching the tail end of the latest accident report on the highway before asking, “What are you doing in here?”

Miles shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought this fort was cool.”

“It’s going to take forever to clean up.”

“Yeah, those boys of yours sure went all out for this.” Miles tore away from the news for a moment to look up at the fabric roof. “Smart move expanding the territory to the TV.”

“I think you taught them that,” Waylon remarked over another handful of popcorn.

“Then I taught them well!” Miles flashed a bright smile, kernel shells between the teeth, but Waylon only narrowed his eyes.

“You could also teach them to clean up after themselves when they’re done playing,” he said flatly, but Miles maintained his grin.

“And let them have all the fun in here? I don’t think so!”

This time, Waylon managed to smile back. “I think I just fail to see the fun in watching all the bad news in the world.”

“Better than all the other bullshit on at this hour.” Miles offered up the remote to Waylon. “Unless you have a better idea.”

“I do,” but rather than take the remote, Waylon reached for the wiimotes beneath the TV. He untangled the cords and held one out to Miles. “Wanna do a quick race on Mario Kart?” he suggested.

"You’re on!” Miles snatched the wiimote. “One round: all or nothing, loser cleans up!”

“W-what!?” Waylon shook his head, trying to comprehend Miles’ offer. “This doesn’t have to be a competition!”

“No, it doesn’t, but…” His eyes flickered. “Makes it more interesting, doesn’t it?”

“Only if you don’t cheat,” Waylon scolded.

Miles threw his head back and groaned. “The Walrider scrambles the TV one time and you never let me live it down!”

“Remember: I know how to spot the glitches now, so you better play fair.”

“Well, I’m not gonna need glitches when me and Bowser kick you ass!”

“We’ll see about that.” Waylon grinned from ear to ear as he started up the wii and skipped through the menu cutscene. The pair then selected their characters of Bowser and Luigi in record time, but the track selection stopped them for a debate.

“So which track we tackling?” Miles finally asked.

"I don’t care. As long as it’s not Rainbow Road.”

As Waylon spoke, Miles pointed the cursor and selected Rainbow Road.

“Miles…”

“What!? You don’t expect me not to exploit your weakness, do you?”

“It’s not that. It’s…” Waylon trailed off long enough to see the countdown to the end and propel from the starting line.

Miles sped ahead of Waylon and the AI drivers, making great distance between them. Smirking, he glanced at Waylon, but that smirk faded when his kart flew off the track.

“What the!?”

“It’s that you’re as bad at this track as I am,” Waylon chuckled. Nonetheless, he maneuvered well enough to steal Miles’ position in first.

“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that!”

When placed back on the track, Miles snagged a power up, and made his way close enough to throw a shell at Waylon’s cart and reclaim his leading spot.

“Ha!” Miles proceeded to fall at the next turn. “Fuck!”

The two recovered at the same time. They continued the race, switching between 7th and 8th place, as Waylon instructed Miles how to steer through the track. “See, Miles? It’s not all about speed. Focus more on maintaining direction. Even if you need to use the brakes, you can make up the distance after the turn, and-” Waylon cut off when he slipped on one of the AI’s banana peels, and Miles sped past for another shot of glory. He missed the next turn.

“You have got to be kidding me!”

The flying turtles placed the karts on the track simultaneously, but they missed the next turn together. All they could do was laugh. Every failed turn, every banana peel slipped on, and even the blue shells that knocked them off the track had them roaring, even long after their chance to redeem themselves.

In the end, Waylon landed in seventh place and Miles in eighth. Still, they laughed.

“I guess you win!” Miles surrendered the wiimote so he could wipe away the tears from the corners of his eyes.

“I wouldn’t call that ‘winning’!” Waylon gasped for a breath between the final fits of giggles.

“Hey! Ya sure did better than me!” Miles leaned back and sighed contentedly for only a moment before scooting to the exit. “I’ll get to work on clean-up duty.”

“Wait!” Waylon followed Miles out of the fort. “Let me help you.”

“Nah it’s fine,” Miles waved it off. “You won the bet, and this’ll help me earn my keep.”

“It’s fine.” Waylon grabbed the closest of the blankets, tugging on it to to unveil the dining room chairs. He held one corner and handed the other to Miles. “These are too big for one person to fold anyways.”

“Oh, alright.” Miles rolled his eyes, but accepted the help nonetheless.

Together, they made quick work of the clean-up operation. The laughter that resurfaced throughout made it all the faster.

[gamerszone2019-blog]

Erica Review - Grab The Popcorn

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/erica-review-grab-the-popcorn/

Erica Review - Grab The Popcorn

Erica never lets you feel at ease for long. In one scene, a character teaches Erica how to play a song on the piano–you’re encouraged to memorize the cute little melody and try to perform the correct timing. But just when you start playing along, somebody suddenly starts coughing up blood everywhere, it’s messy and gross, everyone starts screaming, and the vibe is killed. In Erica you have to treasure those sweet breaks before they’re swiftly swiped from your hands and replaced with a solid helping of worry, stress, and a side of confusion.

A fully filmed playable thriller in which the titular character is on a mission to help solve a murder case that she has strange family ties to, Erica utilizes some subtle yet effective film-inspired techniques–like match on action and screen wipes triggered by touchpad interactions–to tell its enigmatic tale. To progress each scene, you choose dialogue options and make various adventure game-like actions. The game bounces back and forth in time between Erica’s childhood with her father to the mess that is modern-day life, in which she has to move to a strange hospital her late parents helped create for her own safety.

Erica, played by real-life actor Holly Earl, is a relatable, if malleable, protagonist. Earl regularly looks like she’s bewildered or uncomfortable, exactly how you feel as a viewer in most of the situations. She seems thoughtful and patient, but other than that there isn’t too much of a set personality for her. You decide through your in-game choices if she’s more passive or aggressive or unhelpful during the case, and because of the high stakes murder circumstances, switching her attitude and approach never feels abrupt nor out of character. Even if you spend most of the game being rude, you can be friendly to someone and it doesn’t feel weird. Your reactions, and in turn Erica’s, are likely to change frequently during a playthrough every time new information pops up, objectives change, and new, incredibly peculiar characters enter the picture.

Somehow, every new character you meet is more suspicious than the last. Everyone talks to you like they just poisoned the food you’re eating. There’s a sequence in the courtyard where you can choose a girl to hang out with and get to know better, and right after you pick a possible pal to spend the afternoon with, the head of the hospital says, “Just remember that some of the girls here… Uh… They can be quite manipulative,” and just walks away. The guy is nowhere to be found after that, and you’re left sitting there wondering why would he say that–and before you know it, you’re overthinking every interaction because you don’t know which person he was insinuating was going to manipulate you. All of the secrets, ulterior motives, and Erica’s own faulty memory cause for some very intriguing “Trust nobody, not even yourself” gameplay.

Perpetual disorientation is the central feeling of Erica, and it’s what keeps you searching for the truth no matter how many crooked obstacles stand in your way. The plot is ever-changing and chaotic; you’re attempting to solve a crime by talking to a plethora of weirdos in an unfamiliar, creepy place while having stifling flashbacks of your messed-up childhood. There’s so many forces clashing and intense situations going on that you find yourself yearning to make sense of even the smallest mystery just to feel grounded. There was a time where Erica was being gaslit by a character and I ended up shaking my fist and yelling “She’s not crazy, you’re just lying!” at my TV–but even though that character annoyed me I kept listening to them in case they accidentally dropped a small hint to steer me in the right direction, and they did. Erica is a striking example of a whodunit that’s heightened by its enthralling characters, shady occult science, and recollections of previous trauma.

From the overall murder case to smaller questions like what kind of hospital you’re staying at, there are a number of mysteries weaving together concurrently throughout Erica. It’s easy to miss context that’s vital to understanding the full picture. You might get an answer to a question that’s been burning in your mind for the last half hour, but that answer could be a truth that presents new pathways to choose from or a lie that leads you astray. That mystery management is exciting and makes every experience with the game its own curious, isolated thriller molded by whatever answers and stories you care about at the time.

You can use either a DualShock 4 controller or a companion phone app to play Erica; the latter is smooth and seamless for the most part, while the former is bogged down by a clunky implementation of touchpad controls and is the far less preferable option. As you move through the narrative, you alternate between selecting which areas to explore, choosing dialogue options like “contempt” or “desperation,” and performing no-stakes everyday actions like cleaning the fog from a mirror or turning on the sink. Potential actions are shown as silhouettes on-screen, and there’s also a mock trajectory of where to swipe your hand on your phone if you’re using the app. The inputs are all done by small, comfortable hand swipes, not extending to the full horizontal or vertical reach of the screen.

Most actions are intuitive, and you feel like you know where to swipe and what you can do before the game even tells you. There’s a moment where you and a detective walk up to an empty reception desk that has a bell sitting on it, for example. I lit up when I saw it and I started tapping on the screen a bunch–Erica didn’t hesitate to mimic my actions in her world and ding away, so much so that the detective swatted her hand off of it because he got annoyed. The straightforward motions make navigating trouble-free, and being able to quickly deduce what moves you can make adds a connection to the moment-to-moment gameplay. It keeps your focus on the important things, like figuring out what the heck is going on in the story.

Choices and quick-time events happen every 30 seconds or so, which may sound overwhelming, but it isn’t so in practice. Most of the time, they aren’t high pressure actions; they’re a chain of a few choices, and those chunks are separated by longer cutscenes every so often. They do eventually get mundane and feel unnecessary, especially if you choose to use the DualShock 4, though. The game is controlled entirely with touch, and while the swipes are supposed to be a convenience for your hands, it’s difficult to perform them on the small DualShock touchpad without your fingers slipping off or hitting the joysticks. There were also a few occasions where the companion app was slightly unresponsive, which is something that can have game-changing consequences if it happens at a critical moment. It takes a second to get back into the game’s rhythm after there’s a blip in the controls. They’re small things, but those shortcomings pull you out of what is otherwise a really engrossing experience.

In general, the filmic elements are integrated so carefully that it’s a genuine and mostly calculated mix of two mediums. Erica is in the middle of game and movie, and a lot of small mechanics add up to show that. For example, the character Erica is an artist, and there’s a scene fairly early on where you can flip through the pages of her artbook. Looking through a character’s personal items is a common feature in interactive adventure games, but the detail that went into shooting the natural angles of each flip makes it an even more intimate way of gaining insight into who the character is. Outside of the footage itself, all of the trophy pop-ups are paused until you complete the game, which goes a long way to keep you from getting distracted. It’s a small, fitting touch for a game that values story so much.

Perpetual disorientation is the central feeling of Erica, and it’s what keeps you searching for the truth no matter how many crooked obstacles stand in your way.

There are also some sneaking situations that are made better by the film aspect. There are always conversations happening behind closed doors, and because you have so many questions that you need answered, sometimes you have to be a weirdo and eavesdrop on people. If you peek out for too long or open the door too fast, they’ll see you, stop their conversation, and share an awkward glance with you. Because it’s footage of actual peoples’ facial expressions, it makes you cringe a little more–and that is one of the most high-tension fail states I can imagine.

The whole time, the game marinates you in a constant anxious energy that fuels a curiosity for the dodgy, mysterious world that you’re influencing. Some scenes you’re just holding a book or a photo and staring at it for details, but since it’s paired with an insidious sting it transforms what would be a normal occasion into bitter dread. There are flashbacks, dreams, and abnormal things happening frequently; oftentimes you’re forced to decide on the one secret you want to uncover the most and drop the others. Should you pick up the phone that’s been ringing in the lobby or check out that weird ghost thing in the hallway? There are some decisions that are straight-up difficult–high-stakes ones where, in the bottom of your heart, you don’t know what the right thing to do is, but you know you have to do something. Those times will have you wishing that this game was just a movie, but Erica is more than that.

Erica has a strong, fleshed-out narrative full of twists and turns that each bring their own unique piece to the story. Its cryptic tone is carried through the audio, visuals, and writing; it never lets you relax. Sometimes weird controls jolt you out, but there is an abundance of enticing threads to follow, and it’s a treat to be able to mold your own adventure out of it. Using a combination of crisp cinematography and FMV-specific game mechanics, Erica never fails to hook you into its haunting, mysterious world.

Source : Gamesport

[xehanortsreport]

heya, it’s video game anon again! i wrote down my ideas, althoooo i gotta admit, for the most part i kinda just pulled this outta my ass; im not actually much of a gamer so i don’t know how well these ideas would work in practice, but this was a fun little exercise nonetheless!

SO

option a: duwang gang vs worm man. i don’t have as much developed for this idea as the other one, actually, but i figure you’d play mostly as josuke, and use hamon to fight off the bug people, who function mostly as mini-bosses at first while exploring/investigating during the first chunk of the game. you, your family, and your friends (and rohan) all work together trying to figure out What The Fuck is happening in Morioh, and things seem to be progressing smoothly rrrright up until koichi spontaneously mutates into the legendary cryptid himself, Mothman. there’s been no hints that hamon can be used for anything but combat, too - it’s looking a lot like your friend is doomed, until some weird side-quest fuckery reveals that you can save him/any of your other friends who become bugs with hamon and things get moving again. as the story advances, the bug mini-bosses become more common to the point where they’re just regular enemies, but your skill with hamon has also increased so it’s a fair fight - basically, the game shifts from being more puzzle-based to more combat-based as it goes, i guess? although there’s still a lot of puzzling as you try to find where Kira Worm himself is hiding, and try to figure out how to take him down. you can always switch who you play as at various points, perhaps? everyone has their own unique skill set including Bug Abilities; josuke can use his hamon, koichi can fly, eat through various textiles, and fit in small spaces, yukako is absolutely terrifying in combat, etc etc. i’m sure there’s more we could come up with for this scenario, but to be honest i’m fresh out of ideas, so! onto…

option b: kosakuquest. this one varies from ‘canon’ a bit in places, mostly just to make it a more interesting game rather than “helplessly watch this parasite steal your life: the video game.” so you, as kosaku, have to try fighting off parakira during the very, very brief moments where you have control. you’re either able to wrestle control of your body in moments of 'weakness’ (if the parasite has been attacked, if it’s in rest mode, maybe after it’s just fed, so on and so forth), or if it’s toying with you and granting you a few minutes of temporary freedom for it’s amusement. while in control you can do various things - try to warn your family without putting them in danger, try to destroy the parasite by drinking cleaning chemicals and/or pineapple juice, try to keep it from eating your co-workers… all depends on when, how, and where you gain control. sometimes, when the parasite is in control, you can see what it’s doing (through cutscenes), but there’s often times when you get no such luxury - the game just jumps from you being in control, to jumbled and incoherent snippets of your life being lived by this monster, then suddenly you’re in control again… with very few clues as to how much time has passed, or what has transpired while you were in the backseat of your own body. maybe that’s another thing you can do while in control - try to piece together what’s happened between now and the last time you were driving. sometimes it’s little things, such as all the bugspray in the house disappearing or all the vegetables in the fridge being replaced by slabs of meat, and sometimes it’s bigger, more ominous things, like coworkers disappearing or hayato/shinobu acting very differently around you. most of the gameplay is just exploring, small puzzles, uncovering plot points, and some strategy stuff; trying to hide cans of bug spray in places kira won’t think to look so your family can protect themselves, trying to gather information on parasites before he stops you, navigating conversations with your family/coworkers to try and steer them away from interacting with kira or being targeted by him, things like that. as the game progresses, you get more and more hints that the parasite is slowly taking over the town, learn that most of your acquaintances are under kira’s thrall, realize the few who know about and are fighting the infection are dwindling, and find that your own hold on humanity is getting weaker… there’s definitely various choices and various endings - true ending where both kosaku and the parasite die but the town is saved, good ending where kosaku somehow survives maybe, bad ends where kira wins, kosaku gives up or is destroyed… secret hidden bonus ending where yoriko happens and you unlock a bonus level with her as the player character?

aaaand that’s all i got! hope you enjoyed this mess ahaha

IIIIIIIIIIIIII’M LOVING ALL OF THIS?? Like, I’d totally play both, but KosakuQuest in particular if like...super good. I love the concept, and it’d make a super interesting visual novel/puzzle game kinda like ace attorney or 999. if i had the motivation and/or skill i’d honestly take a crack at making it myself!

[praeuro]

So, this is the long ass post with my thoughts and generally blabing about DMC5. I will cut it so that people don’t have to suffer through my screams but yeah...

So first thing’s first I just wanna get out of the way the styles I used with Dante and give them a sort of ranking and comment about them for this game around. Last time I went full into Swordmaster and just cleaned faces off the screen. This’ll be an ordered list 1-4 in order of my favourite to least favourite, with consideration to all devil arms and guns.

1. Gunsilger

I wanted to have a crack at gunslinger style again since it destroyed my hands in 3 and I never really went back as much but this time around it was really enjoyable and didn’t drive my hands into a craze. Eb & Iv were fun to use with this stance though I could see them getting lack luster by the end, I just wasn’t hitting as hard which is understandable. I only used Cyote-A to get myself out of crowds, or to occasionally push back. Kalina Ann I actually loved this time around because of it’s functionality with you know what...I can’t believe gunslinger could turn Dante into a fucking Ghostbuster. Nah I loved using both Kalina Ann, and it’s second counterpart. God throughout the game after I found that I just wanted Dante to show lady I found her old gun, but no Dante had to be a fucking pest and-FUCK I JUST REALISED THE BITCH STILL HAS IT POOR LADY—FUCK...*sigh* okay Dante you owe Lady big time (does this mean she gets a third iteration????). What were the other ones....? OH RIGHT Dr. Faust. I didn’t want to touch that one, it was a double edged sword and it was fun for a time but I felt like I was just going to use it all up and suffer with it. After I got KA2 I just abused the gunslinger stage 3 mechanics and blew shit up with my LASER lol

2. Swordmaster

It’s really hard not to fall for the one thing Dante is good at. It just boosts his Devil Arm’s power by so much. I loved the swords, I LOVED USING BALROG man that was a good devil arm, nice throwback to the ifrit, and I guess the gilgamesh. CAVILIERE WAS PRETTY DAMN NICE although I’m an average to high speed weapon user so slowing down that much was pretty painful for me (I didn’t use it for long), though I did like it’s swordmaster ability—that came in handy to break so many blocks. Oh and now I welcome the throwbacks and go _**AHH **_because of Cerberus, or now it’s King Cerberus I guess. VERY NICE UPGRADE THOUGH. But yeah sword master was nice in the end...as usual.

3. Trickster

Gonna be honest here and say that I only ever used this as either an evasion mechanic, or when platforming was involved. I just never use trickster offensively.

4. Royalguard

Sorry but I hardly touched this. I still have troubles with the timing, and idk why. It’s just not my style...heh. However it was nice to use occasionally to block certain horrible things. I’m not a tank, but eventually I’ll learn once I do another playthrough.

Okay so with that out of the way I just wanna throw out there that god this was refreshing to have. I do find it weird that this time we have a playthrough that’s intermingled instead of separate start to end. However it’s nice and lengthy still and blends quite nice. Although before I go further I fucking hate that I can’t read the mission descriptions in time before the level loads, even though it’s just a small recap of what happened before I STILL WANNA READ D:

Okay another thing I wanna bring up is Gold Orbs. They THREW them at me like no tomorrow. I used a few yeah but I always had like 8 on hand and I didn’t go looking for them actively. It feels like the kupo coin from KH3, too much power with too much convenience. I liked the blue and purple orb stands though, they were a nice touch instead of just throwing them on the floor or something.

I liked how the story went, though by the middle I picked up and gasped at a few things, and the throwbacks/callbacks holy crap they were nice to mention all the crap and people you know. Even fucking Patty and Kyrie got some nice kicks into this game damn, honestly wasn’t expecting patty. *SLAMS FACE INTO THE TABLE* GIVE. ME. MORE. SIDE. CHARACTER. CONTENT. Sad to not see either of them in person but oh well, maybe next time.

I wanna throw a shoutout to my best friend BlueSpiritFire1 for watching the DMC anime with me because I was a bitch who forgot that shit was a thing. Thank god because it came in handy so much.

Vergil actually fucking stopped being a stabby little bitch for once who’d of thought! I just wish while those two are together they’ll actually start acting mature with one another instead of bringing up the whole POWER and STAHP BEING A DORK thing. I do want Vergil to get an appropriate standing with Dante and Nero because he just needs to slow down and start cooling off. I would love it if they’d just talk for a bit you know, more time to chat.

Controlling V was nice because in other games I like the mage/summoner/support role. He was nice to use and I actually got heaps of Ss ranks on him which is great.

Nero’s new devil breaker arm took some getting used to especially when controlling his magazine and how you can’t gently detach the arm like a fucking normal person would. No instead Nero has to go “Sorry Nico!” *BIG ASS EXPLOSION*—*cocks next gun arm into slot* .Giving up so many arms to make room for new ones was painful but in some way fun. Although loosing a few certain arms when I didn’t have any copies in stock or in mag was sad. However the convenience of finding them out in the open was nice but story-wise...confusing. Especially with Nero saying “Oh, Nico must’ve left this here!” like *confused noises* how the fuck did she find time to throw arms everywhere!?

SPEAKING OF NICO—THOSE ARRIVAL CUTSCENES JESUS. And well that one Lady one where she sticks her head out to openly put out she’s still dangerous guys. Nico was pretty nice and boy was it weird to find out she was related to Mr. AHHHHHHHH. Like fucking hell, least she doesn’t have a stutter because idk that annoyed me on her dad and she really didn’t deserve to have a painful reminder of a deadbeat dad about her. Glad she DIDN’T CARE ABOUT DADDY because fuck that would’ve been awkward to explain, but glad that wasn’t an issue and she knows about it all.

Okay just a few words to open this paragraph up...The Hat Scene. I am so happy that Dante is still quirky as hell. He made Nico happy so I’m happy too. The hat and scarf is cool but gameplay wise still nervous using.

Not having a DT on Nero was fucking weird but I’m glad we got the new arms to compensate. Kinda weird looking back and thinking for a moment that his DT was kinda a pity DT until someone just had to lop his arm off. Ah well least it got resolved and my boy is a lizard. Speaking of DT’s now Dante and Vergil are both that fucking meme about the two hotdogs in terms of DT. Because now we have Devil Sin Trigger. Pretty neat but honestly I found the cheese mechanic in no time. Buy the gun mod for the DST and just hold down RT/R2 to unleash massive fucking damage.

I just need to scream because my tired ass didn’t realise griffon, shadow, and nightmare for what they truly were and in the back of my head I knew something was up but I just didn’t LISTEN. Honestly when the time came to verse nightmare I was crying the back of my head “please don’t return to your OG form I’m begging you, that shit was too painful” but once again the throwbacks were amazing.

Overall I’m happy with the game but I’m super upset that now I don’t have any more DMC to moogle over and I just hope to god they have DLC. I keep hearing that Bloody Palace will make a return so that’s nice, but I want other playable characters ya know, maybe something to fix that itch for more story. I wouldn’t be out of Itsuno’s power to give the fans what they want considering what Capcom did for him to make this game live. He HAS THE POWER!!!! I’m begging for a Vergil story for either a prequel, or a mini sequel. It would be interesting to hear about how he survived all...the mess? Because I think the last time chronologically we saw him was...Neo Angelo blowing up? God it’s been a while.

It’s late where I am and I’ve come back from work so splurging all of this has given me some relief to all the crazy information I wanna just blab about but I think I’m just coming up dry until I playthrough again. So for now idk what to extend this with but I think I’ve gone nuts with a few things that satisfy me enough for now. I’ll probably fan over it more later on in the tags or whatever.

[spinneryesteryear]

Spinner plays FFXIV ARR

SPOILERS AHOY (not that anyone cares about ARR in this day and age)

- For my first dungeon, I was a Roegadyn conjurer surrounded by three Lalafell. I’d figured out by that point that players just clip through each other (even if mobs don’t, lol), but I was still kinda worried about stepping on them. They’re like knee-high to me at best.

- - (Conversely, I once ran a guildhest w/3 Roegadames, so there’s that. We commented on how unlikely of an occurrence it was.)

- I admit it, I enjoy walking around as a Roegadame feeling morally superior to all the Miqo’te. And most of the Viera now, tbh.

- one of my favorite things to do quickly became dispensing free heals/raises after a FATE or when running across stray people having difficulty fighting mobs in the wild. People would clap and cheer for me. It’s a great feeling. Made a few friends this way.

-- (I definitely always look to see if that cyclops FATE is up when I pass through the Coerthas Central Highlands so I can go repeatedly raise all the poor noobs dying left and right thanks to that dang 100-Tonze Swing. I usually don’t even bother level-syncing for it. I just stand on the outskirts and raise. And raise. And raise again, haha.)

- I frequently forgot (and still forget) to do the MSQ bc I get sidetracked gathering and crafting. or just doing side quests, no doubt to Fray’s great chagrin

- ground CNJ to 30 to get my unicorn, then figured out I had to unlock actually using mounts via MSQ, so I went off to go fight Ifrit in shame

- I fully admit I picked my GC (Twin Adders) based solely on which company salute I liked best. Also, Gridania was my starter city. Still not sold on the yellow, though

- as a healer, I usually commend my tanks unless they have evinced such stupidity that I do not wish to reward their behavior. If my co-healer has done a fantastic job (not often, sadly), I’ll commend them. If the red mage or summoner raises me or other party members, they get the commend. (This is vanishingly rare, especially for SMN.) If the dragoon outlives the tank by not eating AOE’s, he gets the commend. If the tank is a jerk and the dragoon is perfectly lovely (and probably does a better job tanking the mobs than the blue moron), the latter DEFINITELY gets the commend.

- shout-out to that one red mage on story mode Titan who died almost as much as the rest of us combined (the dragoon defied his stereotype and was just as durable as the tank, ironically enough). It wasn’t even the backflip killing the red mage; it was the avoidable AOE’s. It must be the black mage in them that makes them allergic to dodging.

- the tank for that story mode Titan just said, “LOL,” in chat when we all died, so that has been my inspiration ever since to take wipes with good grace

- Cid was an instant fave from the moment I first met his character. I admit I wanted to kick Alphinaud off the airplane as soon as we recovered it. He was not endearing himself to me, at all.

- didn’t really care for Haurchefant until he came racing into the middle of our fight with that heretical fake inquistitor with the bad facial hair. If a NPC helps me in combat, I automatically like them more.

- the story made me super worried about story mode Garuda, but she went down so fast I almost missed the second phase

- entered Camp Bluefog for the first time into a scene of absolute chaos with like 15 players grinding the lvl-40 FATE’s so I jumped right in alongside them and started throwing stones at ahrimans and coblyns. it was such an exhilarating feeling

- in retrospect, my first Castrum Meridianum run (that left me dead on the floor several times and questioning my skills as a healer) was not really due to me being undergeared but mostly to the tanks not doing THEIR jobs and picking up all the mobs. It was such a chaotic mess that me sitting there and doing nothing, not even healing, so as not to grab aggro was the only way I could survive

- shout-out to that warrior with the plain white shirt and plain white pants glamour on my first Praetorium run who looked like he just woke up, grabbed his axe, and ran off to tank Ultima Weapon in his pajamas. He was also an elezen, I believe, for extra points.

- also shout-out to that guy killing the 2.0 endboss with a magic moogle stick

- look, if you’re not spending your MSQ roulette judging everyone else’s glams and mocking Gaius’s speeches, what are you even doing??? I admit, though, that I mostly grab a book and a cup of coffee for those 5-min cutscenes. I found their story riveting the first time around, but not on the 30th time.

- I actually really liked Urianger even in his ARR outfit? It suited him

---- me playing DFFOO: I don’t care for Thancred

---- me playing FFXIV: *cheers when Thancred comes onscreen*

- Thancred is my son who shall receive less alcohol and more sleep and encouragement and a gunblade and a very nice coat and possibly a pet squirrel. I know he’s my tank now but I feel the urge to take care of him. (And laugh at him when his various angry girlfriends show up again, of course.)

- I would like to thank that tank in my first run of Lost City of Amdapor who gave me a trial by fire in pulling everything wall-to-wall and indirectly teaching me how to manage big pulls (hint: spam Holy)

- not even making, “Pull the lever, Kronk!” jokes in Sastasha Hard can atone for that tank who pulled 12 things w/o warning and kept leaving me to die via aggro’d adds and THEN telling me to bring adds to him. Like, it was advice I needed to hear, but it does no good when zombie fish pirates eat me before I can reach him.

- I might actually rather heal through Aurum Vale again rather than Sastasha Hard

- oddly enough, I’ve had 0% problems tanking Sastasha Hard

- according to the laws of equivalent exchange, however, this means that I have all the problems while tanking in Aurum Vale, between hideously undergeared healers, DPS stealing my morbol fruit on the 2nd boss, lag murdering me via Bad Breath, and general lack of coordination among DPS

- I actually got pretty good at tanking Dzemael Darkhold, though? I finally figured how and where to pull the mobs to get out of the various AOE’s

- I also got pretty good at tanking Cutter’s Cry, between grabbing the adds, avoiding death via cactuar, not stopping on sand traps or geysers, and memorizing the chimera’s attacks. Somehow, I always get morons for DPS and sometimes healer as well in Cutter’s Cry, so it doesn’t count for much. The last time I was there (on WAR), I had to kill the chimera without a healer because they died to the first eyes-glow-purple and I wasn’t about to wipe and start over when they were barely achieving anything anyway. Thank goodness for a rare competent black mage on that run.

- I ran the Odin trial pretty much as soon as it was available (and via DF, too, whoops; I know better now) and we wiped at least 8 times before clearing. 75% of the time I was one of the last 3 or the actual last person standing so clearly I had improved from all the dying left and right I did in my first Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium runs.

---- on that Odin run, my Lalafell co-healer uttered this immortal line in chat: “I am trying my best, though I am but a popoto... now a baked popoto.”

- speaking of which, I trust AST and SCH as my co-healers far more than I do fellow WHM as it seems I’m always raising them. They don’t do party heals when raidwides are going out, waste their mana pre-pulling Medica II, or spam Holy on single-target, unstunnable bosses, smh. As a DPS or tank, though, I trust only AST and WHM. I’m fairly sure 50% of my SCH healers have been asleep at the wheel and Eos was driving.

- shout-out to that one paladin main-tanking Garuda Hard who started emote-slapping Garuda right before she went down. Thanks, man. You gave me a good laugh.

- before seriously settling down to level my crafters and gatherers, I never checked the market board prices before putting stuff up for sale bc I just wanted to clean out my inventory, so there were probably some very disgruntled omnicrafters out there who wanted to lynch me for underselling them

- #1 cause of death: fall damage with mobs aggro’d

--- (special mention to that time I jumped off the higher floating island at Camp Cloudtop, landed below with 1 HP, and was promptly pecked to death by a gastornis. I now kill those stupid birds whenever I see them to avenge my humiliation)

- I feel like there should be job-specific levequests where you go out and do things appropriate to your job, like killing a dragon as a dragoon (before Heavensward, anyway) or cleansing corrupted sprites as WHM or investigating contraband cargo as ACN, etc.

- on that note, I’m probably the only person alive who enjoys the CNJ/WHm quests. I genuinely felt like I was learning magic, and, later on in the 50 - 60 quests, like I was doing what a white mage should.

- players frequently dance while waiting on someone to finish cutscenes, return from AFK, etc. Usually, it’s the Hildibrand or some variant thereof. I... never dance. Except by accident. I just stand there with my arms folded, towering above the rest of the party and looking mildly disapproving.

[jellyfishrambles]

The Evil Within

When the game first came out, my initial excitement came from the fact that it was a horror game and I’m all about a good horror game. Playing it for not even 10 minutes, you could tell that there’s very heavy influence from both the Silent Hill and Resident Evil franchises. Both of those series’ have redeeming factors, and a large following for good reason. I had really high hopes for this game. Like- reallllly high hopes for this game. But before I get too far into the bad of this game, I do want to touch on what Bethesda did really well with it.

·         Enemy design. Holy shit the enemy design. Some of the coolest zombie/monster designs I’ve seen in a long while, with what I can only describe as a very ‘Purge-esque’ aesthetic. Porcelain masks with cracks and holes and eerie smiles. As well as a twist on the classic zombie design; barbed wire and shards of glass wrapped around and protruding from the skin. Similar could be said about the boss designs, however they’re not nearly as creative in my own opinion. The Keeper is the most memorable, but it’s very clear that The Keeper is a reshaped ‘Pyramid Head’ from Silent Hill.

·         The Concept. All in all, I think the idea of exploring the darkest crevices of ones psyche is amazing. I feel like this game had a lot of good concepts and went in a decent direction, until it would take a random left turn and all structure was lost. 

·         The Setting. I adored the visual appeal of this game. Mental wards, spooky run-down villages, haunted and abandoned mansions. I was in horror game heaven with how lovely the atmosphere was. 

Ok, so, your basic synopsis of the game (Or, my synopsis of the game; i.e. what a stupid person can gather), is a detective, Mr. Sebastian Castellanos, is investigating…something or other…and ends up in the mental ward type psyche of a young man named Ruvik, who flew off the mental rail and went on to perform inhumane and immoral experiments on patients to research the brain. At least that’s, what I gathered from playing this game. Oh also his sister or something like- died in a fire, I’m not really sure. So Sebastian ends up in this weird limbo between the real world and this poor messed up kid’s mind.

So there’s your basic outline. Throughout the game there are admittedly great atmospheres and visual settings. I have a thing for macabre and dark aesthetics. So mental wards, and creepy sewers are right up my twisted alley. However, they get stale rather quickly. I got so bored of exploring and wandering through the same area for what seemed like forever. But honestly, that’s the least of my issues with this game.

The first big ol’ red flag I got was the difficulty curve. It was monstrous! And- if you’re not sure what I mean by difficulty curve in this context; I basically mean that- some parts are insanely difficult, while some are toddler-level easy to figure out. I started my first playthrough of The Evil Within in December of 2014- just a few months after the game’s release. I was havin’ a grand time, playing my game and enjoying myself. And because I’m not a filthy casual- I set the difficulty to ‘survivor’ (Or rather- this game’s version of ‘normal’). It was fine, that’s where I usually play games at. The standard difficulty. And them chapter 3 happened.

Your basic rundown of chapter 3 is- you’re in this zombie village, and you need to get through this hoard of monsters to reach the gate on the other side. There’s houses to explore for ammo, and items, and the all-important crossbow. To finish off the chapter- your boss battle is with the Sadist (I always just referred to him as ‘Chainsaw Guy’). Now- Playing this particular chapter on a STANDARD difficulty, was enough to make me drop the game for years. Literally. Years. I don’t think I picked it back up to start it again until January or February of THIS year (2017 for reference). And- because I didn’t want to deal with that shit again, I swallowed my pride and played on ‘Casual’ (aka, the pussy easy mode). And from there- it was a fucking piece of cake. Finally getting past dreaded chapter 3, it was smooth sailing from there on out pretty much. I did get stuck on chapter 9, because Ruvik’s an asshole and I got frustrated with his random spawning. But that was more /my/ lack of ability to play the game.

My next ‘drop-the-controller-and-give-up’ moment was at the end of chapter 10- with spider lady Laura chasing me through the fire. I’m pretty sure I was stuck on this part for months (And between you and me- I didn’t even beat it. I threw the controller at my friend and he did it for me). So, that was the next stump of difficulty. Chapters 11-15 were beyond easy, and the ending wasn’t rewarding in the slightest- but we’ll get into that later.

This- is when things start to go downhill. Now as I mentioned before- I greatly enjoyed the beginning of this game. The first few chapters set up a great platform to build this into a fantastic game. But it’s like…they gave up. Literally. Gave up like 3 quarters into the game. Textures were slow loading, dubbing was off, and they rushed the last few chapters so much it was like I blinked and it was over. For Christ sake the last ‘boss fight’ was one head shot that was scoped for you. I remember vividly waiting a good two and a half minutes of loading time into an end-chapter cutscene, only to have the textures still loading- while the cutscene was rolling! My friend and I were dumbfounded. And maybe it would run better on PC. As, I played it on the PS4. So while I’m counting it as a game flaw, I can’t 100% blame it on the game, because I’m not sure if it’s the game’s problem in the first place.

My second biggest issue is definitely the plot. Or lack thereof. My synopsis given above was LITERALLY what I took from this game. And maybe I’m just an idiot- feel free to let me know if I am. But I felt like there were SO many loose ends, and gaps that were never closed. It got to the point where I had no idea which realm I was in at any given moment- and perhaps that was the point? But it was executed rather poorly in my opinion. And at the end of the day- that’s all this little ‘review’ is; my opinion.

And- tied into the plot- there were a lot of characters that just- seemed to be there. I know they all served a vague purpose, but all in all I felt like they could have done something a lot better with all these characters. Kidman was about as bland as you could get- I don’t even remember her first name.  (I just googled it- her name is Juli…) Anyway, I know she had the whole betrayal thing going for her, but it was revealed so late in the game, I had lost interest in her and her character because her appearances were so sporadic throughout the game. Similar could be said about Joseph- even though he had a stronger presence than Kidman did. And admittedly I do have a soft spot for Joseph for whatever reason, but that doesn’t stop how….’there’ his character is. Systematically, what was Joseph there for? I understand he’s supposed to symbolize Sebastian’s consciousness, and all that cool metaphorical jazz. But what was his literal purpose? Other than to be a companion AI. And then there’s Ruvik, Leslie, and the doctor guy. These ‘antagonists’ were….ehhh. Motivations were hazy and because I’m an idiot I didn’t quite grasp their reason behind doing whatever it was they were doing. What was their goal? What were they aiming for? Hell if I know.

Perhaps, the game was going for ‘vague and mysterious’ and ‘open ended’. But it was left very poorly open ended. Like someone ripped a hole in a plastic trash bag. It wasn’t clean, or put together. And with the announcement of the second installment of this series, I felt I should spill my thoughts and opinions on the game.

Will I play the second game? I hope not. I may watch a playthrough, but I can’t imagine dedicating more time to The Evil Within. It was a hot mess, to be quite frank. But the visuals and atmosphere alone is what will probably have me coming back to this game. Not to play, but just to look at.