| 6/11/2009 If I get featured on Lamebook, I'll humbly accept it and move on. (The identities get blurred/blocked so it's not like anyone would know who I am.) For those who don't know, Lamebook is a website containing a list of unbelievable conversations, moronic statements and ridiculous status updates as found on Facebook. Wanna know what I put in my Facebook status update? Ruth Amy Louise Huneke COMPLETED TEKKEN 6 CAMPAIGN SCENARIO MODE! WOOO!! I'M AWESOME!!! Or something along those lines. If it does get featured, something I hope will not happen, then I hope it brings someone a good laugh. I don't visit Lamebook myself but June does. She'll no doubt tell me if someone submitted my status update. So yes, Tekken 6. The official release date for the game in the UK was the day before Halloween and, conveniently for me, the day directly after I gave a presentation, which happened 2 days after an essay deadline. What better way to celebrate temporary freedom from work? I don't want to spend time giving my own critique of the game, all I'll say is, even though Scenario Campaign Mode (a new mode in the Tekken franchise) is the one everyone's despising, in my case it's the mode I'm most interested in and what I'm investing most of my time in. I'm just so jaded with the franchise, possibly even the genre, that I can't be bothered to simply play with various characters in Arcade and Ghost Battle Modes, before going online like Tekken players are 'supposed' to do. In Scenario Campaign I get to be (partially) mindless and I always feel a wonderful sense of achievement whenever I complete something and get trophies-partly 'cos the bad control programming makes some levels/tasks nigh impossible. With this in mind, I'm sure you can understand my absolute elation this morning when I finally beat Alisa, Jin, and finally got to the end of the mode. Took long enough. What on Earth was it? 25 levels? I'm not finished with it though. I'm interested in the fact that after initially only having the choice of picking Lars for the mode, I've since unlocked almost every other character. I want to play through with Asuka next. Now it was on the day after Halloween that I got involved with another video game of a different genre. Silent Hill. And why not? After spending Summer watching Let's Plays of the key canonical Resident Evil games, I was bound to do the same thing with Silent Hill sooner or later, what with Silent Hill editions of the Game Den being produced. I'm currently watching Let's Play Silent Hill 2 [Blind], by LordVega. He's done the first 3 and he's hilarious, his comic timing is wonderful. What adds to the comedy are his various reactions. You see, the reason why his Let's Plays are titled [Blind] is because he's never played any of them before. But I'm impressed with his gaming skills. When playing through SH1, he entered the hospital for the first time and ran right by the map. He charged right into the 'other world' without the map and was forced to complete it without any sense of direction. He managed it, and I laughed so hard when he finally picked it up on his way out. As for the games themselves, well much like Resident Evil 1 I found Silent Hill 1 to also not be at all scary, but for different reasons. Resident Evil 1 has dodgy graphics, dodgy controls, bad camera angles and hilariously bad lines. Silent Hill 1, while creepy, intellectually stimulating (the puzzles are not straightforward) and well-developed story-wise, has unfortunately not aged too well. At least unlike RE1 (and Metal Gear Solid 1) the graphics don't look antiquated, just rather vague and half-finished. Much like Resident Evil 2 I found (and am still finding) that Silent Hill 2 was damn way scarier than the first. This entry into the series was on the Playstation 2, which meant that the environments and game sprites could be better detailed. Unfortunately, it also means creepier monsters. I can now see why people are scared of the nurses *shudder* and don't get me started on the mannequins or those armless things that dart across the floor if you try to kill them (later edit: they're called 'Lying Men'). As for the infamous Pyramid Head, it took a bit longer for him to have an effect on me. I mean, first of all, how can anyone be scared by a guy wearing a bloody apron, a weird metallic mask, and lumbering like an obese elephant while dragging that mahusive great knife? When you first 'meet' him, you can't see him. He's just a red bloody figure staring at you through bars in the distance. Even though there was creepy music playing, the fact he did nothing but stare wasn't that intimidating (though Vega thought otherwise). I personally didn't start fearing him until the player (Vega in this case) had to physically face him. While it's easy as pie to avoid his swings of the great knife, did you know he can lift a human into the air with his mind as well as strangle? I certainly didn't. After that point he's so far had a habit of appearing out of nowhere and I mean nowhere. Vega literally sent James running through a single corridor and Pyramid Head materialised where James had been standing not 5 seconds ago. So yeah, while I'm a bit slow in the 'being afraid of Pyramid Head' department, I'm gradually becoming matriculated. |