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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

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Survey #469

“i am hungry for some unrest / i wanna push it beyond a peaceful protest”

Do you have any goats? Can't say I do. Are you going to be getting any new pets soon? No. Would you rather be a panda or grizzly bear? As a protected species, I'd say a panda. Do you like BBQ sauce? I hate it. Can you do a twirl like a ballerina? No. Does your house have a pool? No. Do you own an iPad? No. What’s a topic you’ve drastically changed your opinion on? A LOT. Many years ago, I was very conservative, now I'm definitely more liberal. What’s an achievement you hope to see humanity accomplish in your lifetime? I'd really love to see great improvements in nature and wildlife conservation. Are you and your SO Facebook official? We're like... half official? He never checks his notifications, EVER, so he hasn't verified our relationship status. Instead, it just says on my profile "in a relationship with ____ (pending)." I don't mind, though. "Facebook official" doesn't mean much to me at all. What matters is that we know. Have you ever bathed in a river or a lake? I've swum in them, but I most certainly haven't bathed in one. Have you bought a bag of potato chips in the past week? No. I avoid chips because I'll eat too many. What was your first job? And how long did you work there? I was a sales associate at GameStop for like two months, but keep in mind I was VERY rarely on the schedule, so I probably didn't even work for a week's time in total. Can you drive? I can, but I don't do it well and don't have my license. My permit's even long expired. I plan on forcing myself to practice and get licensed once I get new glasses, though (whenever I can afford that...). Right now I couldn't even pass the vision test. I just have to do it; public transport isn't big here AT ALL, and I can't keep relying on others to get me everywhere. Do you spend too much time online? Way, way too much. Extremely high odds are, if I'm conscious, I'm on the computer. I want to change that so badly and experience other things in life way more regularly, it's just an addiction that has been an issue since I was first exposed to the Internet. Do you like to travel? I barely ever get to do it, but yes, I love it. How did you first notice the last person you kissed? Well, it's kinda hard NOT to subconsciously notice the guy who played the fuckin' huge-ass tuba in band, ha ha. Why will/won’t you and your ex get back together? THE ex, because 1.) I'm sure he wants nothing to do with me, and 2.) because I'd be much too worried he'd leave again if I relapse with my depression badly enough. Do you use the words "I love you" too lightly? Definitely not. Do you like pizza? Legit, are there people who don't like pizza???? Do you use an alarm clock? I use my phone for that. Name something that is currently making you happy. Girt is making me really, really happy. I'm still not happy at my core, but, y'know. A person can't do that, anyway. What do you want for Christmas this year? Stiiiill a 40 gallon for Venus with proper equipment... I need a fucking job. That's going to be my answer possibly past Christmas because I just completely rely on my parents financially. Are you excited for the holidays? Very, except for Thanksgiving. I'm way more hyped for Halloween and Christmas and all it entails than usual. Name one tattoo you would like to get someday. I'll give ya one I don't think I've mentioned. On top of one of my hands, over some sort of fiery graphic, I want "Gefährlich ist wer Schmerzen kennt" (translated to "whoever knows pain is dangerous") written in fine text. It's a lyric from the song "Feuer frei!" by Rammstein that I just find very powerful, and not necessarily in an dark way. Are you afraid of stink bugs? Yes, because they're a form of beetle, which tend to scare me. Do you wear contact lenses? No, but I wish. :/ There are piercings I want that would look stupid with glasses. One of my eyes has such bad vision that I need a weighted contact in it (don't ask me exactly what the difference is), and I could feel it way too clearly in my eye, and it made it heavy. Wearing those contacts did NOT last long; I went back to my glasses. Have you ever danced in the rain? No. What was your last dream about? Astonishingly, I don't remember. Where was the last place you went besides your house? The doctor's office. Do you feel like you're judged for your looks? Being someone who is by definition obese, I'm certain some people do. Do you fight with your parents a lot? No. Last time you got stopped by a cop or pulled over. Why? I never have been. Do you like hot sauce? Yes. How bored are you right now? Very, very bored. As a side effect of depression, I experience severe anhedonia like... constantly, at least to some degree. No exaggeration. It makes my life a fucking drag. It's why I take surveys so much; the randomness of the questions is at least a momentary distraction. Do you think you would make a good model? Hell no. Even if I was in a physical shape for anyone to be interested in photographing me, I would feel WAY too awkward. Are you a good singer? No. Do the Emergency Alert System noises on TV freak you out? Yes, because I immediately assume it's a tornado warning. Describe your perfect date. Actually I'm planning something for Girt and me hopefully on Halloween (or if he has to work, at least close to) that is like absolutely effin' perfect for me. Carve some pumpkins together, make those Pillsbury Halloween cookies, and binge some spooky movies. :') Do your parents trust you? Yeah. Do you like pot roast? No. Have you ever thought about being a stripper? No. Are you flexible? No. Can you wiggle your nose? Nope. Have you ever played Mario Kart? Yes. My younger sister especially was sooo good at it; she doesn't even play video games and yet she was hooked on it for a while. How often do you go shopping for clothes? Almost never. I really, really need to for undergarments and pants now. Do you have a high IQ? I don't know my IQ, but I very much doubt it. Would you ride a motorcycle if you had the chance? No. They scare me. Have you ever been bitten by a dog? No. Do you like the smell of cinnamon? yessssss Do you like frogs? I love those lil bug-eyed cuties!!! :') Are you afraid of dying? Not massively. I mean yeah, I don't want to die and the fear of the unknown is there, but I really don't think I'm as scared of it as most people. Do you like bananas? Yeah. Where's the last place you've been to out of state? Lake Gaston in Virginia. What are you listening to right now? I'm watching another playthrough of Fatal Frame 3. Gotta say it's probably my favorite that I've seen/played of the franchise now. Would you rather use a trackpad or a mouse? Mouse, for sure. Do you like steak? Yes. What was the best gift you've ever received? My late dog. Tell me one of your pet peeves. Consistently trying to make conversation with me when I have headphones on. It's a bitchy pet peeve, but a pet peeve nonetheless. Do you like to keep your nails painted? I don't paint my nails or care to. Are you a Duck Dynasty fan? I was a long time ago when I actually watched it. I wouldn't watch it now because I don't support the overly-conservative cast, having followed a couple on Facebook for a time. Have you ever played with Silly Putty? As a kid, for sure. I loved that stuff. Do you take in a lot of caffeine daily? Yes. :x Do you know a lot about history? Definitely not. Are you allergic to pollen? Yes. Would you rather play Xbox or PlayStation? I'm a PlayStation gal. Have you ever worked at a fast food place? No, and I neeeeever would. Hungry people are the worst. Do you like hot tubs? Meh, I have to be in the right mood. Do you know anyone who is battling cancer? Not at this current moment. Are you good at doing fractions? NOOOOOOO, or doing ANY kind of math. Have you ever auditioned for a talent competition? No. Would you rather get high or get drunk? I've never experienced either, but probably high. Being drunk is usually synonymous with being sloppy. Do you like the Silent Hill movies? AYEEEEEEEEE I'm the chick to ask! I love the first one, it's brilliant and loyal to the idea of the series but still unique from the original story of the pilot game. The second one is objectively fucking awful story-wise and is SO all over the place, but I can still enjoy it as an obsessed fan of that franchise. Did you ever want to be a doctor? I wanted to be a vet for a long time, if that counts. [TW: SUICIDE] The last person you kissed, how many times have you cried in front of them? I probably cried some/was teared up to some degree when he visited me in the ER after my overdose. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 1 month? Is this written for a middle schooler? No shit I could, and have in the past on more than one occasion. Have you kissed someone with braces? No. Is this the best year of your life? Nooo sir. Can you have more than one best friend? Yeah. What do you like better: hot chocolate or hot apple cider? Hot chocolate. ooo: What are your full initials? BMD. Would you ever let your grandma set you up on a blind date? She's dead, but if she wasn't? HEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL NO. Do you ever wonder if you will get in a car accident and die? As someone who is terrified of driving, absolutely. I'm primarily more concerned about becoming paralyzed from the neck down, though. I'd rather die than that. So your ex comes to you and says “I want you back”, what do you say? I'd probably say, "I'm happy to finally be able to say 'no'" or something along those lines. Maybe even just a simple "no." Which was worse for you: freshman year of high school or of college? College. I was so fucking depressed and lost. What is the last language you spoke, other than your first? German. Would you ever consider moving to a different country? Canada, yes, if it didn't mean leaving my family and now boyfriend. What is your favourite food from your culture? Burgers. @_@ Other than your name, what was the last name someone called you? Britt. If you could find one long lost friend of the past, who would it be? Megan. I found her on Facebook before and sent her two messages over the past something years, but she never responded. It's frustrating, like I was so close to reuniting with her, but not close enough. Do you wash your hair or your body first when taking a shower? Hair. Have you ever been to a nursing home? Yes, with my mother to visit someone.

#survey #surveys #random questions #lyrics: ''unnatural selection'' by muse

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pocketantscheats · 4 years

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Pocket Ants Cheats

Pocket Ants Guide

Pocket Ants manual is a manual for a famous new recreation. The sport will provide you with full manipulate over the lives of tiny ants. Their range, aggressiveness, nest place, the direction of motion of ants and all that kind of component. Kill them surprise and drown within the muddy water, blow off an ant trapped via a fan, laser cut them, burn the flame thrower, blow up fireworks, sizzling magnifying glass undermines their mini mines, throw rocks at them fatal. But further to consequences, you could throw them melons and strawberries, to suggest the direction to move the anthill with ant magnet. Humans are complaining that there are not any updates, however they do not know that episode 47 was speculated to be the ultimate one. They did episode 48 simply because of popular demand. Even as i do wish there has been a manner to have alien pygmy's, werewolves, and female pygmy's, the game is full of fun activities. Perhaps if the developers come returned they can make 2 more episodes to complete it off? Simply due to the fact 50 episodes is lots cooler than forty eight haha. ->your army length is restrained to a certain variety; x10 early. So, we would propose you to keep away from preventing a big quantity of ants. You will lose greater soldiers in case you fight extra ants than the scale of your army. So, the nice manner to keep soldiers and combat accurately is through preventing with a small wide variety of ants at a time. The way to try this? Well, it's quite smooth. All you want to do is "entice" the small wide variety of ants. Description: Pocket Ants: colony simulator (mod, limitless money) 0.0515 is the handiest recreation which has unlimited sources like Gems, Gems coin, elixir and dark elixir. With the help of these kinds of sources, you can make protection robust and attack other clans without problems. Each function of this recreation is unlocked simply down load and revel in the sport with your friends. Pocket Ants: colony simulator (com.ariel.zanyants) is a method android game. This utility has age regulations, the encouraged age for the use of 6+ years. The today's reputable model has been mounted on five,000+ devices. • blow up the ants with ant mines. • drop rocks on ants. • have the ants move their home. • race the ants. • upload greater or less ants. • set pink and black ant aggressiveness. • set percentage of black/crimson ants. • tilt the screen to transport objects. • ants like a smooth home and pass rocks. ♦♦♦ observe us ♦♦♦ twitter: http://twitter.com/concretesoftwar fb: http://tinyurl.com/n3sdee web: www.concretesoftware.com youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpcja30eq1o you are king of the ants - feeding, squishing, burning, marching, pulling, exploding, preventing, transferring, and racing your ants! Extremely good ants' puzzles begin simple but become increasingly fiendish as the game progresses. The game's monetization stems in general from the sale of "hint" gadgets which help gamers to resolve particularly troublesome degrees, but the participant have to additionally pay up in tender currency to release additional sets of degrees. The "unlock relaxation of recreation" object is rather costly in phrases of cash and will nearly genuinely require an in-app buy to acquire — pretty why it isn't sincerely an in-app purchase in place of a 500,000 coin object (the equal of about $eight) is a thriller. You may best be tortured through the knowledge that you will by no means have a sincerely enjoyable ending. Oh, what a stunning recreation this was... this sport used to be the best. I remember lower back in school we'd wait each week for the brand new updates. Every time a brand new replace got here out, my buddies and i amassed collectively and performed with all the new capabilities. This recreation become remarkable, so sad it's over. Re-downloaded it after years of now not playing it, and it's cool to peer some new things. There are masses to find out, and it is a perfect manner to keep away from anti-social cell use whilst out with buddies. Just ahead of releasing its walking useless sequel (see beneath) developer telltale games surprised us with this: based totally on the fables graphic novels, you play bigby, the big terrible wolf of fairytale legend reinvented as a sheriff. Even a little way in, a properly-crafted take on an already-characterful collection. The drowning attempted to reconsider the manner first-character shooter controls paintings on a touchscreen. Another polished football sport, with more of a focus on multiplayer matches in addition to a single-participant mode. As in its predecessor, it sees you looking to rating desires by way of drawing traces on your gamers' runs, then (with a bit of luck) flicking the ball into the internet. A actual tactical project. The state-of-the-art mobile version of the world's exceptional soccer control franchise provides extra depth, a redesigned consumer interface, the capacity to create your own club (sure, with you as the superstar striker in case you're in that frame of thoughts), and the ability to manage in multiple us of a. us too—and that's why we use pocket. Whether you're in safari or internal your favorite news app, simply faucet the percentage button and save anything you want to read for later, even if offline. I don't know what i would do with out this wonderful app. In a international of essential gear to organize, entertain and complete your life, i extraordinarily propose the pocket app within the top five of your infinite list of in no way-ending beneficial programs. I take advantage of it normal. It is quite addictive! Victor, iphone footprint "the animations are remarkable, bringing a slight tinge of revulsion whilst the ants swarm out of their mound." B. miller, 148apps thank you for all the aid and exquisite evaluations! We recognize all the update thoughts from our Pocket Ants community! ♦♦♦ functions ♦♦♦ • flow the ants from their herbal habitat to a town sidewalk! • smoosh the ants along with your finger! • use the nuclear bomb to break their domestic! • exterminate the ants with the poison spray! Were given mail? Subscribe to appsafari by way of e-mail. Watch humorous and interesting iphone videos accrued from across the internet. Tiny tower helps you to construct a tiny tower and manipulate the businesses and bitizens that inhabit it! **?make money to build... koi pond meets doodle bounce in this stunning excessive score sport from nimblebit!get away into your own tranquil pond to see... experience a brand new adventure of the oregon trail!youve conquered the trail, now its time to tame the frontier! In... It's time for high flying mischief and crazy tricks with your favorite feathered friend!

#pocketants #pocketantscheats #pocketantsgems #pocketantscheatsgems

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jmsebastian · 7 years

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How Not To Refine a Horror Game: Clock Tower 3

Clock Tower 3 is many things: a product of a developer acquiring the rights to a series they had no hand in creating, a mashup of several interesting and competing ideas that offer a lot of promise, a disjointed final package that suffered from a lack of singular vision. In the simplest terms, it’s a survival horror game made by Sunsoft and published by Capcom for the Playstation 2 in 2002. Following the collapse of Human Entertainment, the developers responsible for creating the Clock Tower series, Sunsoft acquired the rights and set out to push the franchise toward a larger audience. Their attempt to do that meant making sweeping changes, and seemingly making as many of them as possible.

Part of what made the Clock Tower games so interesting was their limited mechanical complexity. They acted more or less as point and click adventure games. Players move a cursor using the D-Pad on the controller to highlight objects in the environment and move the player character around the screen. They use a menu system to interact with the things they find in the environment. The straight forward nature of this control scheme was deliberate. It created a separation between what was happening on screen and what the player intended to do. That lack of instant response helps build tension, which is something you want as much as possible in a horror game. With the changing tides of the industry and the increasing understanding of how to move characters around in 3D space, control over the player was the biggest overhaul made.

In Clock Tower 3, you control your character, Alyssa, with the left analog stick. Her movement is very similar to the movement found in the Resident Evil remake for Gamecube or the Fatal Frame series. Moving the analog stick in a direction will move Alyssa in that direction. Holding a direction will continue Alyssa’s momentum in that same direction despite changes to camera angle, until the analog stick is released. Releasing the analog stick resets the direction back to zero, essentially. Alyssa’s default speed is running, though she can walk as well, accomplished by holding the Square button while moving. She can also crawl, which is performed by holding the Circle button and moving with the analog stick. While this is technically more complicated than the other games in the series, the reality is that having direct control of the protagonist is significantly more intuitive for most players, especially at the time of its release. Tank controls and point and click interfaces were rapidly being exchanged for more direct options. While remembering which button crawls and which one walks can cause a few hiccups, those movement types are not used with enough frequency to cause any serious trouble for players, and it’s a small trade off for the possibilities that direct control opens up.

Being used to Playstation 2 era horror games, I enjoy how Alyssa controls. The complexity of movement does, however, highlight some issues with development. For instance, setting the default movement to running is fine. The levels are large enough to accommodate running and Alyssa’s run speed feels appropriate. The problems begin with walking. Since it was included in the game, one would think that the player might need to utilize walking at various points in the game. The obvious use would be to move around more quietly so as not to arouse the game’s antagonists. Early in the first level there are even reinforcements of this principle. As you make your way through a tunnel, there are some tin cans that Alyssa will kick over if she runs through them, but that will stay undisturbed if she walks. It’s a brilliant use of the environment to pull the player into the world and make them aware of their effect on the things around them. In truth, these little additions have no real impact at all. You can kick over all the cans you want, or stomp on as much broken class as your heart desires. It doesn’t change anything that happens in the game. They are simply elements of game polish.

It definitely feels as though the walking was designed to work in the way I described. It’s inclusion really makes no sense otherwise. If this is true, it points to the likelihood that Sunsoft didn’t have the time to fully implement it. They either didn’t build it into the villain AI or they didn’t create enemies to tie in specifically to this mechanic. What this leaves the player with is a useless movement option. There are no benefits whatsoever to walking. In order to escape those in pursuit of Alyssa, she will need to run. In order to stay out of the clutches of the various restless ghosts, she will need to run. At no point ever does the player ever need to force her to walk. It’s a shame that this was not more fleshed out. Since you come across the cans so early on in the game, they seem specifically built toward subtly teaching you about a core component of eluding capture. There’s a definite stealth aspect being teased, and to have that tease go unrewarded feels deeply unsatisfying.

While walking turned out to be a disappointing inclusion, it was not the only mechanic to get short shrift. Peppered throughout the levels are green spiral indicators that let the player know they can evade a pursuer there, or hide from them. Hiding from enemies is one of those no-brainer ideas for horror games that it’s a bit of a mystery why so few games actually implement it. Their implementation in Clock Tower 3 gives the player the impression that they will be an integral part of the game. For a while, they are. In the first level, there is one particularly useful hiding place behind a curtain in the house where you first come across Hammer, the Subordinate who chases after Alyssa throughout the stage. Hiding behind a curtain is a pretty unconvincing place to hide, but it works as intended and when used properly, can really give you some breathing room when exploring the house for key items.

He’ll never think to look behind a thin hanging sheet that exists for no practical reason.

The dubiousness of the hiding places only increases, and the effectiveness of them also goes down. In that same first level, there is a locker that Alyssa can run into. The main problem with it is that the first time the player discovers it, it’s likely with Hammer right on their heels. The AI of enemies is not particularly robust, but it’s good enough that an enemy will attack you in a hiding place it watched you enter. A hiding spot found in a later level is tucked behind a fish tank that can clearly be seen through. When you look directly at the axe wielding fiend who wants to kill you through some glass, yet no reaction is elicited from the assailant, the consistency of the world really breaks down and the tension is lost.

The impenetrable defense of transparent water.

The silliness of these designated hiding places is important to highlight because there are other areas of levels that can be hidden in that are not marked as such, they just logically work out to shield you from the view of those who would see you dead. In the concert hall in the first level, there are two places you can usually find respite, even though the game does not indicate explicitly that you can hide there. In the entryway, you can duck behind a counter to stay out of view of Hammer. You can also go behind the large curtain hanging on the stage and wait there until the coast is clear. This is the kind of design that the entire game should have been built around. The placement of the designated spots is conspicuous enough that they would have been hard to miss by curious players to begin with. The other side of them working as intended, of course, would have been to make sure there was appropriate quiet time and space between bouts of running for your life. The relentlessness of the Subordinates and the compactness of the level designs means there just wasn’t enough room for this idea to breathe properly, and it’s a shame, because it was probably the most promising aspect of the game.

Things get a lot better when it comes to Alyssa’s defensive capabilities. During the majority of gameplay, Alyssa can use Holy Water to stun enemies, open doors, or activate portals. She begins with just two uses of the Holy Water per fill of the vial, but this increases as each stage boss is defeated. The stun effect, which is the main method of outmaneuvering enemies, temporarily stops them from moving. The stun does not last long, but it’s enough to put a decent distance between Alyssa and the Subordinates, enough to either make it to a hiding place without being followed in or to reach the next objective that will alter the Subordinate’s behavior. Refilling the vial is also a fairly straight forward affair. Refill stations are rarely too far away due to the small level layouts. Over time, the need to refill also drops as more uses can be held per refill. The multi-purpose aspect of the Holy Water is probably its greatest asset. It certainly isn’t the sole focus of the interactive aspects of the game, as there are single use items of various types as well, but it is the most frequently used, and there is tension created when you’re not sure whether to use some Holy Water to open a door and press on, our double back and refill before going into the unknown.

Like with all of the game’s mechanics, the Holy Water is a good idea that doesn’t get enough room to breathe. The small number of levels and their incredibly compact designs means that nothing lasts very long. You have to toss a lot of water around to get past Subordinates, you have to use two sprinkles of the stuff to open portals. The result is really just a lot of backtracking. This isn’t so bad, really, as the levels are small, as mentioned before, but it does mean you are basically guaranteed to run into an enemy again, which might prevent you from getting back to the portal or doorway with a full vial.

The most enjoyable part of the game comes at the end of each stage, when the Subordinate who was hunting you becomes the stage boss. These segments are where you go from being a helpless schoolgirl running away from monsters to a magical girl capable of banishing evil to some fate worse than death. This all happens because Alyssa is the most recent in a long line of Rooders (spelled ruders on the book in the cutscene, but Rooders in the game text), and as such, it is her duty to put the Subordinates to rest. During boss fights, Alyssa dons a magical bow capable of shooting arrows which bind Subordinates to the ground. Bind them enough times in sequence and she can fire off a powerful arrow capable of taking off huge amounts of the Subordinate’s HP.

Moon Prism Power! Make Up!

There’s still a bit of helplessness tied to Alyssa’s control here. She still runs at the same speed as usual, and when her bow is drawn she cannot move around or adjust her aim. In order to bind Subordinates, arrows also have to be charged to their maximum capacity. The longer you hold down Triangle, the more charged your arrow becomes until it signals that it is binding. It’s very basic combat, but remarkably enjoyable. Baiting enemies into lengthy attacks takes some figuring out. Getting into the correct position to provide enough space for a full charge is not difficult, but it is interesting. It’s also very satisfying to bind enemies enough to activate those powerful shots, as they are ushered in through a cutscene reminiscent of a summon in Final Fantasy VII. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it feels good to be able to put the hurt on the monsters that have been chasing you around every level, spouting off about how they’re going to get you.

From a narrative standpoint, the transformation into a magical girl makes perfect sense. It’s the cornerstone of the story. Alyssa’s entire involvement comes down to the fact that she’s a Rooder, and her grandfather has gone insane with the idea of binding his soul to hers in an effort to become a supernatural being. It’s not a particularly deep or surprising story, but it works well, and is probably the standout aspect of the game as a whole. From a mechanical standpoint, the juxtaposition of these two facets of gameplay are incompatible. There is just no justifiable reason why Alyssa can’t always be prepared to shoot arrows at bad guys once she discovers her power. Yes, it would completely destroy the survival horror aspect of the game, but at that point, you have to ask yourself, why exactly is this a survival horror game in the first place?

The final aspect of the game worth focusing on is the various spirits that harass Alyssa if she gets too close to them. These apparitions appear as various colored phantoms. They represent the dead who still have unfinished business in the living world before they can be put to rest. To allow them to pass on, an object of theirs must be returned to them (basically the entire premise of From Software’s Echo Night boiled down into its most basic implementation). Returning objects can reward the player with rare defensive items, or help to progress the story by opening up previously inaccessible areas. These are great additions to the game, but they, more than any other aspect, feel unfinished. The extra items that you get for returning items are not necessary to finish the game. They might help a little, but the game is easy enough without them. For those ghosts that help progress the story, it’s obviously much more satisfying to resolve their issues and get them out of limbo, but there just aren’t enough of these situations.

A lot of good it’s going to do your bloodied corpse.

The ghosts suffer the same shortcoming that nearly everything else does in the game, not enough space to breath in. The levels, well designed though they may be, are simply too small to flesh out all of the things the game tries to include and there just aren’t enough of them to vary out the experiences. This is why it feels like the Subordinates can never be given the slip for more than a minute or two at a time. It’s why hiding places are more of a tease than a useful escape, and why the backtracking is focused more on making sure you are fully stocked up on Holy Water than making progress through previously inaccessible areas. The game has very little quiet time, and for a survival horror game to truly manage tension well, quiet time must be existent and savored. Clock Tower 3 just does not have enough of it, and the result is that nearly everything in the game feels rushed and imbalanced.

The likely solution to all of the game’s problems would have been more development time. The ideas behind all of the mechanics are sound (if a bit incongruous at times), and they are implemented about as well as they could be given the circumstances. Sure, some of the hit boxes are a bit difficult to predict, especially with regard to Alyssa’s arrows, but they are consistent once you learn them. There is just so much going on in the game, it feels as if it was intended to be much bigger. Maybe due to the time of its development, Sunsoft seems to have just scaled everything down rather than reduce the complexity of the game to its most crucial elements. It’s hard to fault them for that decision, though the decision really didn’t pay off for Sunsoft. The game Capcom ended up publishing was nothing like the previous games in the series, and one that felt loaded with filler despite its short length. It’s a better game than one might have expected, but sadly, it just wasn’t enough to make it a classic entry in an increasingly crowded genre.

#clock tower #capcom #ps2 games #survival horror #sunsoft

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terryblount · 5 years

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Mortal Kombat 11 – Review

Mortal Kombat is more than a game: it is the closest thing we as gamers have to a counter-culture. It is an I.P. that has consistently laughed in the face of censorship boards by never compromising on giving fans the unfiltered carnage of close combat. This was literally (part of) the reason why there exists an ESRB rating system today.

What’s more, this violence is not just for looks – it is also about skill. The genius of Mortal Kombat’s formula has always lain in demonstrating the player’s fighting ability through how sadistically they can crush their opponent. You don’t just K.O. an opponent in this game; you FINISH THEM!!!

Is it weird to admire the way blood is animated in a game?

I am quite pleased to say that this 27-year-old spirit of Mortal Kombat is alive and well within the eleventh arrival. Let’s not beat around the bush here. This is essentially the perfect fighting game, and players and pros alike will surely regard it as one of the best this series has ever produced. This is because Mortal Kombat 11 manages to include every modern convention that works, while being mindful of the old-school novelties that cemented the I.P. in gaming culture.

Time and time again

In the single-player ‘kampaign’, Earthrealm yet again comes face to face with an apocalyptic threat. The story opens with a now corrupted Raiden (see MK XL) decapitating the elder god Shinnok as a message to anyone who dares to threaten his domain. This was was a most serious error in judgement as Shinnok turns out to be the son of a new character, Kronika – the guardian of time itself.

“But know this–the arc of the universe bends to my will.” – Kronika

Needless to say, Kronika is rather unhappy not just about her son being reduced to the usefulness of a bowling ball, but also due to the balance of good and evil now being uneven. She vows to restore equilibrium in the timeline up to the events of her son’s beheading, but is also aware that Raiden and the Earthrealm gang could present a troublesome thorn in her side in any dimension.

Kronika therefore merges the past and present together, and teleports an army of Netherrealm’s most formidable villains, like Baraka and Shao Kahn, from the past into the present as her insurance policy. As per usual, the player will represent the fight for Earthrealm’s fate from the perspective of Johnny Cage, Kotal Kahn, Kung Lao, and other classic and contemporary characters.

I get that the whole time travel motif has been done to death, but the team at NetherRealm have once again shown their practiced hand for storytelling. They have wisely used the motif of temporal distortion as a McGuffin to re-imagine and bring back some of the franchise’s most beloved figures for the modern gaming climate.

Johnny squared!

This makes for a deeply interesting plot with some exciting and unexpected alliances forming or breaking between characters from different time periods (because their major clashes haven’t happened yet). More than that, Netherrealm sets up the opportunity to introduce characters like Cetrion and Geras who have fighting abilities centred on the manipulation of time.

Overall the story really oozes the kind of cinematic quality that would make Marvel Studios sweat bullets. The combination of excellent graphics, captivating voice acting, and the return of favourite characters will most definitely have new fans engrossed, and old fans spiralling into nostalgia.

In with the old, out with the new

Objectively speaking, Mortal Kombat 11 plays it extremely safe. This game demonstrates the old adage that players are bound to enjoy what lies in their comfort zone, and it is not necessary for sequels to reinvent the wheel. Instead, MK 11 goes for the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but make it a whole lot prettier’ approach.

Indeed, MK 11 plays just as slick and precise as every game Netherrealm has developed thus far. What can be perfected has been tweaked, but a whole slew of small changes collectively add up to an experience that will still feel fresh and engaging to long-time players. Not much is new here, and I am very happy about that.

You get to see quite a lot of Sub Zero’s face in this game.

So aside from the single player campaign, the ‘Klassic Towers’ mode also makes a return in which the player must defeat a sequence of opponents to ascend up the tower. Except for infinite modes, these always end with Kronika as the final boss. Defeating her also gets you a brief cut scene that fills in some story details specific to the character you happen to be playing much like Tekken or Street Fighter.

You will not find the ‘Living Towers’ of the previous installment as Netherrealm has ditched this mode in favour of the ‘Towers of Time’. These differ from Klassic Towers in that opponents get more challenging as you approach the top, and players are also permitted to activate certain modifiers (they unlocked as loot) either for one match, or for the duration of the entire tower.

As an example, you can assign Jade one or two of Cyrax’s cyber webs to fire at her opponent stunning them momentarily. Alternatively, the match might have a vampire modifier in which the player’s health bar drains constantly to the opponent’s, so it is best to finish the match sooner rather than later. These towers can certainly get infamously punishing, but the game drowns you in rewards for completing them.

Lemme smash! This is who you will be playing in the Krypt. Note the three currencies in the bottom of the screen.

The Krypt is back again, of course. This time the event plays out on Shang Tsung’s island (see MK 2011) during which you open chests, smash vases and crush meteorites for some sweet loot and unlockable goodies. The Krypt also adopts a third person perspective now which only makes the act of swinging around Shao Kahn’s colossal hammer at vases and statues all the more gratifying.

Light puzzle solving is also a way of collecting some treasures, and it is clear that the developers really want the player to enjoy exploring for goodies to make your game more interesting. I have always been intrigued and, a little creeped out by this subsection of Mortal Kombat games, so it’s nice to see it return here. It’s really beginning to feel like a crucial component of the experience.

Kompletely Unreal

I have never been shy to express my admiration for the Unreal Engine, but what Netherrealm has achieved on a visual level in this game is outright astounding. Here we have a super modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 no less, throwing around particles and rendering high definition textures like it is trying to put Frostbite and Unity out of business.

Even though certain sections of the game have been mysteriously capped at 30fps (most of which can now be fixed by a mod), this game flows on the PC like butter down a centrefold’s butt cheek. In contrast to Mortal Kombat XL, the vibrant graphical tone of MK11 really throws the bountiful details of the visuals into sharp relief. I feel like the unique cast of characters that has always defined this series finally get the representation they deserve.

Damn this game is beautiful. This allows for particularly dramatic cut scenes.

The environments and fighting arenas have also been given the deluxe visual treatment through dramatic lighting and environmental effects. I found the arenas to have an enigmatic and refreshing feeling to them, and a particular favourite of mine became the decaying Shaolin temple where the corpses of dead monks observe your match. I clearly have issues.

They are noticeably the tightest fighting planes that Netherrealm has implemented within one of their games, but this has the pleasing outcome of somehow making the action feel closer… more immediate. The close-quarter combat also places more importance on finding openings in the opponent’s technique rather than just flying from one combo to the next.

Combos are still just as important, but it is clear that MK 11 wants shorter, more potent moves to play a bigger role too. This means that the one guy with supersonic thumbs you always get paired with online is less safe than he thinks this time round. You know who you are!

The fatalities and other post-match tomfoolery have, naturally, also been given an obvious graphical upgrade. Seriously, seeing brains being splattered and bones being shattered in this level of realism is not at all for the faint of heart. Be that as it may, I nevertheless have a hard time imagining a more beautiful, albeit visceral fighting game.

The very definition of fighting chance

As I mentioned, the roster of fighters is a mixed bag of old and new characters including the original 7, but like all the other yobs on the internet, I feel like some characters leave a conspicuous absence. Where the hell is Goro!? I also miss, Takashi who had a snappy and responsive feel in his fighting that appealed to my playing style in the previous game.

Perhaps old Goro will get his chance with DLCs, but the roster is still a bit smaller than I would have liked. It is once again too obvious that most of us will be expected to fork out more of our hard earned cash as extra content later down the line. Netherrealm has chosen quality of quantity, but this rather anemic roster just smacks too much of leaving room for microtransactions.

At least Geras more than makes up for my four-armed favourite being conspicuously M.I.A. His time-travelling abilities allow him to execute a punch, blink back in time, and execute another attack before my opponent could even find a moment to move. I also liked the beefy, warlock look he had going on which looks particularly slick during fights. Definitely my favourite new character in this game.

Geras warping back in time behind his opponent. Cannot remember who the other is… uhm was…

It also helps that the developers have really gone the extra mile to give MK 11 a truly comprehensive and helpful tutorial segment. They even included a lesson on frame times and hit advantages – something I usually ignored and left to subconscious strategy until I actually paid attention to it in this game.

Best of all, for the really nasty combos and chained assaults the game will actually demo the move on screen with button prompts. I am embarrassed to admit that some combos in previous games took me upwards of an hour to get right. With this new system, it was ten tries tops. As such, newcomers to Mortal Kombat, and fighting games in general, will undoubtedly feel more welcome than ever before.

On the subject of techniques, MK 11 has swapped out X-ray moves for a new system called ‘Fatal Blows’. Like X-ray attacks, they are once-off, deadly attacks taking you microscopically close to your, or your opponent’s, cracking jaw and rupturing internal organs. Except there is one crucial difference: Fatal Blows can only be activated in the last third of your health.

In other words, if the player has only been maintaining a slight lead with their opponent throughout the fight, the last section becomes indescribably tense. You can no longer rely on short-distance techniques or longer combos to win because if you allow even one opportunity to have a Fatal Blow performed on you, you’re toast.

Let us have the talk

So what exactly is the deal with this grind getting everyone all upset? Well, the manner in which MK 11 deals with in-game currency makes us all want to gather our raincoats for the inevitable microtransaction storm that is surely going to hit soon. At the time of writing, MK 11 has very little to offer in the way of DLC on Steam.

Still, something tells me that this will change soon not just because this is the nature of our industry, but because fighting games are also particularly lucrative opportunities for monetisation. They always have been because it is so satisfying seeing no grey blocks on your roster, or adding some cosmetic personality to your favourite fighter.

This is my only major issue with MK 11 because it feels like there is simply too much being gated off from the player when you start the game. Every time I completed a fight, the game goes through a huge pomp and circumstance to inform me of all the different currencies I just earned. Not that the handouts are even that generous mind you.

You read that correctly. This time there is not just the Koins used to unlock outfits, fatalities and modifiers for tower modes. Even in the Krypt, you now have to juggle multiple kinds of currency units like hearts and soul fragments if you want all off the riches the hidden content has to offer. Oh, and the Krypt chests are randomised so your friend may find a liquid metal suit for Sonya Blade in the same place you get concept art…

Playing around with some of the unlockable skins and finishing moves.

Even though I have never really cared much about cosmetic items in the games I play, I don’t like the sense of gaminess MK 11 creates with the endless pop-ups eagerly informing me how much I have earned. I am playing because I am having fun, and this just feels like Netherrealm is trying to force me into some scheme inevitably leading to microtransactions.

FINISH IT!!

In case that last section threw you off a bit, I want to state again that Mortal Kombat 11 is essentially fighting game perfection. This game is completely saturated with the kind of creative vision that has been the worked into the design of my favourite fighting games. This game looks great, sounds great and feels great.

If Netherrealm vow never to turn the superfluous currencies online into an evil plot of monetisation, I will not need another fighting game for the next ten years at least. Combined with an excellent story, this will become an essential classic in your Mortal Kombat collection.

Remember to check out our Mortal Kombat 11 performance analysis!

Tight and refined combat

Tutorial section

Story

Excellent visuals and sound

Design of new fighters

Temporal fighting abilities

Somewhat limited roster

Too focused on currencies

Playtime: About 28 hours total. 10 hours on the single player campaign with much of the remaining time spent online.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an Xbox Controller (Thanks to my friend Niel for lending me his!!)

Mortal Kombat 11 – Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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jmsebastian · 7 years

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Controlling Your Fear: Fatal Frame IV

Fatal Frame is a video game series made by Tecmo (now Koei Tecmo) that has meant a lot to me as a player. While horror games aren’t always my favorite experiences, I owe a great deal to Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly for my personal gaming renaissance. After having purchased a used PS2 in order to start digging through the decade of games I had completely missed out on, I had an itch to play something survival horror. I had something more along the lines of Resident Evil in mind when I began my search, but Fatal Frame II repeatedly popped up on lists of the scariest games ever made. After doing a bit of research and learning about the game’s main gimmick of using a camera to defeat the undead, I was sold. I immediately purchased a copy and when it arrived in the mail, I wasted no time in sinking my teeth into it.

Much to my delight, games like Resident Evil (in their original incarnations, anyway) have not aged particularly well when it comes to eliciting terror in players. The chunky visuals, goofy voice acting, and use of horror movie style zombies as the main threat come across an pretty hokey these days. RE is a great time, but its classification as survival horror refers almost exclusively to its mechanics now more than it does the content of the game. Despite being a fourteen year old game as of the time of this writing, Fatal Frame II is still terrifying. In fact, all of the games in the series generate genuine chills at a high enough rate that it’s quite surprising that they are not more well-known and popular than they are. Given just how popular the horror genre is and the sheer number of horror games that have been made, having the Fatal Frame series be something of a crown jewel seems obvious to me.

So if Crimson Butterfly was my first exposure to Fatal Frame, why then am I skipping ahead to talk about the fourth installment instead? For one, it’s the only game in the series to have never been officially released outside its country of origin. Despite never being a major selling franchise, five of the six games were translated for foreign markets, four to North America. The fourth game did not get so lucky, and thus its English speaking player base is probably a fair amount smaller than it is for those games that did make it over. Second, the fourth game marked a transition for Tecmo away from their partnership with Sony to a new one with Nintendo. The first three titles in the series were all released for the Playstation 2 within about four years of each other, with the original published in 2001. The series went dormant for a few years before it resurfaced on Nintendo’s Wii console. Following a merger between Tecmo and Koei, the new company’s relationship with Nintendo grew significantly, with several projects beginning, some including Nintendo’s own properties.

The third and primary reason I wanted to talk about the fourth entry to this series is because it uses motion controls. Being released on the Wii meant that everything players knew about playing Fatal Frame games was going to change. As such, it is a great game to play if you’ve never played a Fatal Frame game before. The barrier for entry is somewhat high considering its lack of official Western release, but the play experience itself is about as accessible as an oppressively dreadful video game can be.

Who doesn’t love those immersion breaking but totally necessary Wii Remote prompts?

Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen, or Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse as it has become known in the West, is made up of the same basic formula as the rest of the series. There are mysterious circumstances that compel the player character or characters to visit a haunted location to discover the truth about something. Usually that something involves some cult ritual designed to ward off evil or prevent a calamity that instead does just the opposite. Naturally, visiting haunted manors and hospitals means that the player is likewise visited by numerous spirits, most of whom suffered terribly in life, met an untimely/violent end, and are now out to exact their revenge on anyone they can. Thankfully, you have a way to defend yourself in the form of the Camera Obscura, a Polaroid style camera that exorcises ghosts by using special film to take pictures of them.

From a mechanical standpoint, the entire series is built around the Camera Obscura. For this reason, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is one of the most interesting games in the series from a mechanics point of view. Lacking the more traditional controllers of the PS2, players must take up the Wii Remote with nunchuk accessory. The analog stick on the nunchuk is responsible for general player movement while in third person. The C button allows the player to strafe. Holding the Z button allows the player to run. Over in the other hand on the Wii Remote, the B button is used to raise or lower the Camera Obscura, while A is the general interaction button. It is also used to take pictures. To top all this off is aiming. The Wii Remote’s motion detection is used to track the aim of the flashlight the player carries up or down and does the same for the Camera Obscura when looking through its viewfinder.

You might not like what you see through the viewfinder.

The inherent limitations placed on the Wii Remote are what make this game such a curiosity. Intuitively, a player might think the game would take advantage of both the horizontal and vertical tracking that the motion bar allows. Doing so would have made aiming the flashlight around when in third person especially useful. Throughout the exploration of the game’s locales, items can and must be discovered by pointing the flashlight over them. It’s a kind of hidden in plain site approach where your Camera Obscura alerts you to objects using an indicator that glows more prominently the closer you are to the object, but those objects usually won’t appear until you pass the glow of your electric torch over them, causing them to reflect back at you. It’s a neat idea, but it is a slow process given that aiming the flashlight left or right is contingent on turning the player in one direction or the other using the analog stick rather than being able to simply point the flashlight in whatever direction you choose. If you need to highlight something above or below the character, then you can use the motion controls, but it has a delayed feeling to it, almost as if you are titling a scale rather adjusting the aim.

It’s a quirky design, and a bit counterintuitive. It lacks a lot of elegance, certainly, but it is so particular that it definitely seems intentional. In the earlier games for the PS2, using the right analog stick would move the direction the flightlight was aimed independently from the player’s movement. This allowed for more efficient scanning of unexplored rooms and areas. Since motion controls are much more fluid for this kind of interaction, it seems as though the developers purposefully stifled the ease of use in order to heighten tension. Turning is a very slow process, and forcing players to do so in order to point the flashlight or Camera Obscura is geared toward making sure the atmosphere of the game is appropriately dreadful. After all, having to wait for a slow turn when you think a ghost is right behind you is a scenario that should induce panic. Were you able to just aim the camera any old place with a quick flip of the wrist, tracking down enemies would be trivial, and all tension in the game would be lost.

Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is not really about doing things quickly, and this is also true of its combat. The aiming in the game is methodical, designed toward fine tuning so you can get a great shot of a creepy little doll tucked away under a staircase rather than quick approximation so you can rapid fire photos at ghosts to punish them. To emphasize how little aiming matters with regard to combat, the game includes a lock on mechanism. With the Camera Obscura to your face, all you have to do to guarantee at least some damage is to aim in the general direction of the offending ghost and press Z. This will lock your viewfinder to the ghost and track them as they move about and get closer to you.

Taking snapshots of ghosts is really nothing like shooting them with bullets. It’s more of a staring contest. The longer you can hold your gaze, the closer the ghost approaches, and the better chance you have of landing some big damage. The default Type-07 film you use comes in an infinite supply since having film is required to solve puzzles. It would have been a bit unfair to leave players with no film and not enough points to get more. To compensate for the film’s abundance is its lack of power. If all you have to use is the basic film, fights can end up taking a long time, and the longer the fights go, the more varied and dangerous the spirits’ attacks become. Littered throughout the game are more powerful types of film which are limited use. The game isn’t especially generous with handing out this more powerful film, and it’s possible to miss the pickups much of the time if you aren’t feeling brave enough to thoroughly bathe each and every room in your flashlight’s glow. There’s usually enough to help take down the most powerful enemies, but it’s not a resource you want to waste.

So how do you defeat ghosts with crappy ammunition, then? By putting yourself at risk. The lock on ensures that you can reliably let the ghosts get close to you without letting the panic that is setting in throw off your aim. You can watch their faces get bigger, their expressions become more pained and threatening. Eventually, they’ll get close enough to strike, and just as they do, you press the shutter. This use of proximity as the primary method of determining damage is not new to Fatal Frame IV. The same basic scheme was used since the second game, however Mask elevates it by changing where the difficulty lies. In previous games, the difficulty was in keeping the camera aimed at ghosts while looking through the Camera Obscura. You have to use the analog stick to constantly adjust your aim. The closer enemies get, the more difficult a task this is. Sudden jerking movements leave you looking at an empty bookcase while the ghost goes in for the kill. In IV, the challenge is simply to get your character aimed at the ghosts in the first place. The over the shoulder position of the third person camera severely limits the view of the surrounding environment. Compare how the pre-determined camera angles of the first game allow for a broader view of the environment to how little you can see in Mask’s new dynamic camera setup:

Fatal Frame (2001)

Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen (2008)

If you go looking for spirits in the wrong direction, those slow turns are going to really cost you, so you better be sure of where you’re looking before you bring up the viewfinder. Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of locking on and not pushing the shutter too quickly.

The behind the shoulder view and dynamic camera probably have the most profound effects on how this game plays compared to the earlier entries in the series. One of the things that made those early games frustrating at times was how abstract the environments felt. The fixed camera angles, often chosen to make the player feel small and isolated, made creating a mental map of the areas extremely difficult. The games offered in game maps to aid players, but instead of being simple, friendly aides, they had to be used as crutches. Without an almost superhuman ability to piece 3D geography together from an odd mixture of directions and angles, you’re going to need the map, sometimes just to go from one end of a room to the other.

Mask of the Lunar Eclipse isn’t completely free of map checking, but it is drastically improved from the PS2 games thanks to the camera following the player around. Since players can view each room from any position from within it by scanning around, figuring out where rooms are in relation to each other is a much easier task. The level design helps a great deal as well. Taking place in a hospital, the layout of each floor has practical purpose. The first floor is made up mostly of a reception area, while the third floor is where many of the boarding rooms are located. The space is surprisingly believable as a functioning hospital. If not for the dilapidated state and the fact that it is crawling with spirits consumed by their lust for vengeance, it feels as if it could be used as an actual building in real life.

First floor of Haibara Hospital.

I mentioned before that turning your character in the game is extremely slow as a way to force players to keep a cool head and read the warning signs instead of flailing around. This is true, but it’s also true that the game has some built in Wii Remote gimmicks that alleviate a lot of the headache the slow controls can cause. The first is that you can actually tilt the remote outward or inward to aim your flashlight or Camera Obscura right or left independently of your character’s position. It’s not especially useful, and feels almost like an afterthought. The second gimmick is performed by flicking the remote quickly to the side. This has equal use in exploration and combat, and mastery of it can make both much easier. In third person view, the flick will cause your character to perform a quick turn of 180 degrees. This is great for when you run into locked doors or other dead ends. In combat, you can use the gesture to dodge ghost attacks when the Camera Obscura is raised. Let’s say you didn’t manage to get a lock on after a ghost bum rushes you unexpectedly. No problem. A quick flick will have you side stepping your way out of harm, freeing you to move into a more advantageous position. This maneuver is limited to combat specific situations, but since it is the same motion as the quick turn, there is ample opportunity to do one when you meant the other, punishing those players that let fear get the best of them.

On its own, the Camera Obscura is a fantastic device to build a game around and the series has done a wonderful job of expanding its role over time. What started out as a simple point and shoot style camera has evolved into a weapon of hard hitting exorcising power when wielded efficiently. There are simple upgrades to the camera’s inherent abilities, such as increasing its spirit power, increasing the rate at which that power is absorbed, and decreasing the cooldown time between photographs. There are also various lenses that can be added to the camera to give players new abilities, such as knocking ghosts back after taking their picture, or an auto lock on for nearby spirits. The more decked out your camera, the easier it is to get combos, and the more damage you can deal to end fights quickly. There’s a lot to learn about the camera, enough that were this game in the hands of lesser developers, it could have quickly evolved into a complete mess. Thankfully, the various components to it work together effectively, none really getting in the way or the others or making the basic use of it too difficult to figure out. Even if you don’t pay too close attention to all that the camera can do, you can make it through the game if you play it safe.

You can rack up some series points, though, once you get the hang of things.

Not only did Tecmo alter the way the camera worked from the perspective of player input, but they provided an entirely new weapon with which to fight off the endless spirits. When playing as Choushiro Kirishima, the player wields the Spirit Stone Flashlight. The basic principle of fending off ghosts is the same as it is with the Camera Obscura, but it behaves a bit differently. When raised, the first person view is not confined to the viewfinder. Instead, you get a much more standard perspective, with the light that the flashlight emits being at the center of your field of view. Given the wider perspective, this is not so much a problem as an opportunity for different types of enemy engagements.

Unlike the camera, the Spirit Stone Flashlight can’t lock onto enemies. Players must hold steady and aim with some amount of care if they plan on getting through encounters. The nice part about the flashlight is that it has a wider blast radius. So long as a ghost is somewhere within the light, damage will be dealt. The determining factor for dealing damage is shifted a bit, as well. Proximity to the ghosts still adds a multiplier, but the majority of the damage comes from charging the flashlight up to full power before firing a shot off. The longer you hold down the A button to charge, the more damage you’ll do, up to a point. What’s nice about this is you can do successive damage to enemies much more often as the time it takes to charge the flashlight up enough to shoot is fairly short. The trade off there is that you lose out on the combo system that makes the Camera Obscura such a rewarding device to use.

Fights with multiple enemies are much more manageable with the Spirit Stone Flashlight. Whereas locking onto a spirit with the camera results in losing sight of the other ghosts that may be around you, there is no such compromise here. The trick to these fights is simply to lure the ghosts into clusters and let them have it with your charged shots, resulting in Chain Damage. There are quite a few fights where you must take on two or more enemies at a time. This is a nice change of pace and having a completely different weapon seemingly built for multi enemy encounters makes a lot of sense. One of the most frustrating things about all of the Fatal Frame games is how limited you are in your field of view. That’s sort of the whole point, but when the game insists on putting you in small rooms or narrow hallways before throwing two ghosts that like to attack from different angles, it starts to jump from scary surprise to frustrating. The Spirit Stone Flashlight eliminates the majority of this frustration without having to alter the confining nature of some of the game’s areas.

One of many multi-enemy encounters as Choushiro.

By and large,the flashlight is a much simpler weapon to use, and it makes the sections with Kirishima feel almost like a respite from the dread of playing as the camera wielding characters, Misaki and Ruka. Like everything in this game, the Spirit Stone Flashlight does have one fatal flaw. It too, can take pictures. In order to do so, the player must swap between lens types. This becomes the source of a lot of a lot of tension when fights begin as you frantically press up or down on the D pad to switch back to your attacking lens. It becomes a source of annoyance in every other situation. Trying to take pictures of the ghosts that pop up to lead you around gets wearisome after you’ve accidentally tried to blast them into resting in peace for the tenth or twelfth time. It becomes ingrained in players to take pictures of every ghost they come across, but the reliance on this particular game mechanic seems unnecessary for Kirishima’s portions.

Getting pictures of these ghosts is not really necessary to progress through the game, but they do provide valuable points, which can be redeemed for film stock or health items. Points are easy to come by in fights since it requires less skill to fight well with the flashlight, and there are more multi-enemy encounters, drastically increasing the number of targets from which to draw. There is even an area filled with re-spawning enemies that can be used to score tons of points in a very short amount of time if players find themselves spending more than they anticipated. Mechanical reasoning aside, the very existence of the Spirit Stone Flashlight reduces some of the allure behind Fatal Frame’s lore. The Camera Obscura is supposed to be a unique item, capable of doing what nothing else can: see into the world of the dead. Its artifice becomes all the more glaring given that there are other objects taking the form of much more modern technology that can achieve the same ends.

There was a lot of opportunity to expand how Fatal Frame games were played through the introduction of the flashlight. Rather than timing blasts of energy that act so similar to how the film works, it might have been interesting to use the light emitted from the flashlight to deal a constant stream of low level damage to enemies. From far away you would only see the HP of ghosts trickle down a bit. Getting closer could increase that damage, while maintaining the light on ghosts could produce damage multipliers over time. Maybe instead of various flashlight lenses, you could have adjusted the focus of the flashlight so that you could target in on a single difficult enemy to deal out hits, or widen it to capture as many of the ghosts as possible. Ultimately, the Spirit Stone Flashlight is not a bad inclusion, it just feels unfinished and not as well thought out as it could have been. Given that its abilities were changed drastically for Fatal Frame V, it seems as though the developers picked up on the redundancy. Sadly, its later iteration still failed to provide alternative methods of dealing with enemies to elevate the game in a meaningful way.

Being a Wii game, Tecmo made sure to include some less often used, one could argue superfluous, types of motion controls. Some offer nothing of real value to the game, such as having to point at piano keys in the right order and press A to repeat a melody. It’s not a bad use of motion controls, there’s just no real reason for it. A more interesting use is how numbered dials or combination locks have to be turned by tilting the remote right or left. It’s a fun gimmick that doesn’t enhance the game to great heights, but is strangely satisfying. It’s so satisfying, in fact, that the gesture’s exclusion from interactions with door knobs feels like a real miss on Tecmo’s part. There are a lot of doors to go through in this game, so it’s likely that simulating turning a doorknob, or pulling on a door handle would have overstayed its welcome, but it’s difficult not to imagine the possibilities left on the table.

The most positive addition that the Wii Remote offered outside of combat is in its little speaker. Various effects are conveyed via this speaker that add a great deal to the atmosphere of this game. Crackling noises emitted when the Camera Obscura is raised or lowered provide a nice bit of polish with regard to representing the spirit realm. The cries of defeated ghosts can be heard emanating from your hand as they fade away. Last but not least is how phone calls are exclusively heard through it. The Wii Remote shape is quite similar to that of a home phone receiver. Putting it up to your ear to try to decipher the words coming through really is second nature and an ingenious use of the technology that the game had available to it. The eeriness of the game’s audio design is already one of IV’s high notes. Having some of that audio crackle in on a low quality speaker to add an ethereal quality is the icing on the cake. While I am not a fan of motion controls more generally, as they have never been an especially comfortable way for me to play, (left handedness makes some of this stuff more difficult than you’d think) the Fatal Frame series is in a unique positioned to take advantage of them in ways few other games are.

Playing piano with all the accuracy of typing with one finger.

It’s an incredible shame that this game was not released outside of Japan. It is easy to blame Nintendo for not putting enough effort into the series, though it’s just as likely that the series would have died out altogether had Nintendo not agreed to work with Tecmo on it. It’s not as if Sony or Microsoft were offering Tecmo big incentives to make sure the games remained on their platforms. Had it been localized, you can bet there would have been character dubbing, and frankly, the series doesn’t have the best record when it comes to its voice direction for the non Japanese cast. What makes this game’s lack of localization so odd is that four years later, Tecmo would release a remake of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly in Japan and Europe. The European localization featured an English translation and English voice acting, yet still wasn’t brought to North America.

Still, maybe it’s better this way. There’s definitely something about playing the game with its original language voices that the localized Fatal Frames simply aren’t able to recreate. The game is so text heavy, anyway, that reading subtitles for the parts that are spoken is not much of a task, all things considered. Then of course comes the trick of actually playing the game. The original patch was intended to be used only with retail discs running on soft-modded Wii systems. Given that this game is never going to see an official release outside of Japan, checking out other alternatives that are available might be worth a look as well. Despite the hassle, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is absolutely worth it. In many ways it’s a simpler game. Its combat mechanics are more streamlined and easier to understand, it provides a lot more direction on where to go at any given time by pointing things out on maps directly. Despite its lower default difficulty, it marks a clear shift for the series and dared to break out of and expand upon the conventions that had made it one of the pillars of the survival horror genre. When I think of playing a Fatal Frame game, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is the game that comes to mind first.

#fatal frame #koei tecmo #wii #survival horror #project zero

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