(( Hey all,

Has anyone tried Papers, Please ?

Having done that sort of work in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems weirdly true to form...

Anyway, has anyone tried it out?))

Seconding the recs for both Papers, Please and the Fatal Frame series, particularly Fatal Frame 2.  (There is no reason to play them in order.)  Fatal Frame 2 is the only video game I've ever played that has kept me scared after I turned off the console.  I had to impose a rule on myself not to play it after midnight.

Don't feel old, I also had all those PS2 titles. Rule Of Rose is worth a small fortune on eBay nowadays.

Talking of Clock Tower 3, I seem to remember that before the final boss, our teen heroine has to climb an interminable spiral staircase.
Here it is! https://youtu.be/7p0IzyazUBk?t=35
Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku!

Fatal Frame 3 probably gives me the willies more than the other games because half of it is set in a normal apartment, which is your "safe zone" at first, but of course gradually becomes infested with malicious spirits. The infestation starts with barely noticeable things that catch your eye and then disappear. Was that something behind you in the bathroom mirror? Are you sure? Better check under the bed!

Do mobile games count? Yes. Yes, they do.

I'm blaming Aine solely for this one. A cute cuddly Android game called Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector!

There's no real brainpower involved, just setting toys and food out to entice cuddly kitties into your home. Receive their thanks in the form of fish to buy nicer cat food and nicer cat toys. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

Just don't forget to refill the food dish or the finicky felines won't return.

(and because I rarely upload my mobile files, have a free Wikipedia link. :3 )

Okay, so.  Hear me out.

Given the PMS mood-swings (made worse by current circumstances) I find myself diving into angsty bullshit about once a month.  For the last couple months, it had been the history of violence in Guatemala (think genocide) and the potential for current events to trigger another round.  And let me tell you, having REALLY INTENSE FEELINGS about the brutal deaths of 600,000 people is like, the least fun of everything ever.  This month, Kingdom Hearts came up on my radar, and I was like, okay, this is something that I can be like all angsty about that 100% does not matter and I do not care, so when it's over I can walk away and everything will be fine.

Which is why I've been watching all of the Kingdom Hearts, even though I… really don't like it.  At all.

And like, I knew that going in.  I'm not and never will be a huge fan of Disney, and I think Squeenix tends to favor complexity over depth and not really work humor into their work in a way that doesn't feel like a cheese grater on my flesh, and like, I knew that this was gonna lead to sanitizations of already hyper-sanitized stories, and really unappealing character designs with ridiculously huge feet, like.  I was never gonna enjoy Kingdom Hearts.

But I really want to just bitch about it for a little, because I keep finding things to dislike.

Like, the psychological underpinnings of the world are really fucked up and unhealthy.  Just in case anyone's not already totally aware, the whole "Darkness" and "Light" things map roughly to positive and negative emotions, and so far as I can tell, the main theme of the series seems to be REPRESS HARDER.  I mean, splitting emotions into a dichotomy like that is already a huge red flag that's pretty much guaranteed to indicate serious mental illness, but… like, I can almost give it a pass on that.  It's a motif, whatever, the laws that govern your world make it ineligible to stand trial, but sure, fine, be that way.

But where it gets really bad is where it tries to break that down, and then ends up somehow looping back around and doubling down on the original BAD FEELINGS ARE BAD.  Riku's entire character arc is like, "I made some puzzlingly bad decision for no apparent reason, got possessed, and realized that my heart is full of DARKNESS so I faced that DARKNESS and shoved it even further down inside!"

Which is like, oooo-kay…
That'll end well...
…
…


And oh god the gender bullshit.  EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER IS A FUCKING DAMSEL IN DISTRESS.  ALL.  THE.  FUCKING.  TIME.  Like, to the point where we're supposed to think Shiki is a fucking badass because instead of getting kidnapped, she can also RUN THE FUCK AWAY.  No.  Nope.  In The World Ends With You, Shiki fought.  She was just as capable as her male counterparts at taking on monsters.  Squeenix, this was your OWN FUCKING GAME.  You know better.  The only female character who a) is not a villain who is subsequently defeated and b) doesn't spend like 100% of the time getting her ass kicked, is Aqua.  And she gets to deal with pretty much everyone assuming that she's helpless.  Because she's a girl, see.

And fuck Mickey.  He is like, the BIGGEST Mary Sue.  Everything he does is perfect, all the time.  He never fucks up, he never fails, he's capable of literally every plot-relevant skill, any time he's on screen, you can just hear the stakes plummet.  And he still talks like he's addressing a bunch of toddlers, telling them how nice it is to share their toys, except the plot's trying to take itself seriously, and it's really disconcerting, like, "Ho, ho!  Friends always stick up for friends!  Especially when they're in a life-or death struggle with a manifestation of their darkest repressed fears and desires!  Ho, ho!"

Also, bad decisions.  So many bad decisions, that are so obvious, and so poorly motivated.  The villains, aside from being clearly visually indicated as such, are also really obviously lying all the time.  They might as well carry around a neon I'M LYING sign.  What they're saying isn't plausible.  And yet characters keep believing them, and doing things that are obviously not in anyone's best interest.  Because Darkness!  I guess.

And lastly, I'm pretty sure the Disney princesses are eldrich abominations.  If all humans have darkness in their hearts, and the princesses have no darkness in their hearts, then what the fuck are they and why does their beauty keep getting treated like a virtue?

Last edited by Kita-Ysabell (05-13-2016 10:40:55 PM)

Kingdom Hearts plot... I don't know what it is anymore other than... things happening and people being involved... but I thought the darkness wasn't meant to represent bad or negative thoughts (a lot of my opinions are based on games I and II and even more heavily on Chain of Memories), but unhappy or negative relationships.  Light equal positive, strengthening relationships.  The Nobodies (let's not get started on the naming in KH) have no hearts, which aren't intrinsically light or dark, they are simply a means of connecting with others.   On an individual scale, they both connect people, on a larger scale, they connect entire worlds.   So Nobodies have no relationships or identify strongly with no characters even when they are directly manipulating them.  They can feel, but lack empathy, sympathy, or the basic whatever needed to truly exist in any world.  Sora's heart is like, super light filled omg, so he has mostly positive relationships with others and tends to gravitate toward and connect to other people with light.  Riku has a lot of darkness; jealousy, rage, angst, self-doubt, judgement, which can make a lot of relationships less than positive.  He tends to gravitate to/attract towards dark hearted characters.  But Riku isn't taught that his darkness is bad, that it just is.  It can connect him with others, and has its uses (he makes hard decisions, he won't trust so easily, he is self-reflective... not intrinsically bad characteristics), he just can't let him overwhelm him to the point that he's a major dickface or completely inert under the weight of his own bad feels.  It's why darkness and light are so often depicted as doors, corridors, gates, etc.  They are a means of connecting hearts. 


And the princesses are abominations, in not the same words, due to a forced split of those two elements, light and dark, that were always meant to coincide and never be wholly separate.  They are the counterpoint, manmade, to the multiple Xehanorts.  Riku has his light, just as Sora has his dark. 



Yay Kairi being given her keyblade, boo Axel getting one.

Just… this is Axel's theme song for KH2.

If you don't die laughing by the first chorus, you're made of more stoic stuff than I.

Last edited by Kita-Ysabell (05-20-2016 11:49:08 PM)

I've finished Earthbound and have just purchased Final Fantasy III (originally VI) for the virtual wii console.

The steampunk setting it really nice and music is beautiful so far, looking forward to it!

malna wrote:

I've been playing Undertale demo and it is nice enough in its quirkyness. My friend recommended so I'm probably going to purchase. Good idea?

Yes, absolutely, but don't look up anything on it until you have finished the game. Undertale is best experienced blind.

(( Right now I'm replaying Saya no Uta... which is equal parts a romance and Lovecraft-ian mindscrew. ))

If this were facebook I'd like the shit out of that post. Last time I touched CS was 1.6 many years ago, but I love it when shit-talkers are made to to eat their words. Well done!

Just finished Life is Strange. Soo good. Great game though the ending portions did use some techniques. Don't want to spoil anything game is best experienced like that.

malna wrote:

gpink wrote:

Life is Strange

A friend recommended it to me so I might give it a try, though I am by no means a die hard gamer and there have already been so many titles in line for me to check out. Idk.
I've been playing Submachine 10 and really, Submachine series are just my very favorite thing. They are, among games, what Utena is among anime to me.
Has anyone played 999, a point'n'click game? It offers cool puzzles too, and an eerie storyline and atmosphere, although it lacks Submachine's gorgeous aesthetics. It's still a lot of fun to play, though I only ever got to one ending, and there were... 6 possible? I think.

999 is pretty great. There may be 6 endings in total but there is a single true ending which kinda ties all the other endings together.