Sleepless nights because of the Slender Man

Last  week, my husband was watching some YouTube reaction videos to the game Slender. To those that know what  Slender is, good for you, to those that don’t, CLICK HEREHERE and HERE  learn more about it. Also the birthplace of  Slender Man is here at Something Awful. So after watching the reaction videos he got into watching the MarbleHornets videos which is the series based off SlenderMan, and well I couldn’t sleep well last week because of watching those videos with my husband (and some by myself) so well I was freaked out. At one more my husband had goosebumps watching the videos.

I know the whole Slender Man is all fiction that came out of someone’s imaginative mind but well the though of “what ifs” tends to linger after watching things like that. Then it ends  up being funny because of one video, and that is the video where someone unlocks “20 Dollar” mode in Slender. Because of  that video I’ve been spontaneously singing “Gimme 20 dollars” last week as well. 

After watching some reaction video to gameplays of Slender I decided I’m going to try. My husband got all excited and when he saw that I downloaded the game and was getting ready to play it he turned off all the lights and the tv because he wanted me to have the “experience.” Regardless the first time playing it I only got 2 or 3 pages and I didn’t see Slender Man but I did get static across the screen and I made  the character run like hell away from Slender. Then like 10  mins of playing my flashlight didn’t work, even though I was told  you never run out of batteries in the game but there was no light source after a while. Also 10 mins of running around in circles only to have 2-3 pages I gave up on the first  try. Slender didn’t get me but I was still freaked out.

Second gameplay through with the lights on and people in the room, this includes my daughter, went well ok. I tried to record the reaction video but the gameplay video didn’t get recorded, so I just popped in the system audio into my recorded webcam video. Here it is:

I can’t say this  is much of a review or not because I didn’t finish the game nor don’t know if I ever will. Even playing the game in the day time I still get freaked out, and it’s because of how this game was made. It’s terribly good at making sure you are  looking over your shoulder. What is worse is that the first time playing this game at night about 3-4 hours later when I’m trying to sleep there was a major thunderstorm. Woke me up scared  the crap out of me and I looked around in the dark at all corners of my bedroom making sure there wasn’t any suspicious shadows. 

I’m starting to kick myself in the ass for even watching the videos and playing the game, but I want to know what happens in the videos and want to unlock the other modes in the game. So glutton for punishment it is.

Kingdom Hearts 3D

So after getting paid the beginning of this month my husband got this game for me because I kept nagging him about how it was the reason why I got the 3DS. Well one of the reasons at least. 

The game continues from Kingdom Hearts II, and after getting past the tutorial parts of the game I got into it, then it came to the spirit pets part of the game. After getting throught THAT tutorial and playing a day through the games getting past three stages I have come to the conclusion that the game is a glorified pokemon game. Not that there’s anything wrong with Pokemon, just saying that it’s pretty much Pokemon coated in bright colors and sprinkled with fairy dust. 

I do like the game play and the added features, although I feel that I spend over and hour leveling up the spirit pets and getting their abilities from their spell tiers. Often times I go back to previous stages and fight monsters in order to get munny and materials to make new spirit pets and also trying to get 100% treasures in each stage.

I’m not sure how far I am into the game yet but I got seven stages done so far, and I’m playing in the hardest mode available for a fresh newly bought game (proud mode.) I have played the other games in the series, and I do love the series, but it seems to have strayed far from the story and it feels like Square and Disney just decided to put random story arcs in to make it make sense to how the Keyblades and Keymasters came to existence. As much as I love this game series sometimes I feel that story arcs aren’t necessary, it makes it more confusing to explain to someone that has never played the series through. 

Anyway game play in the KH3D game is pretty much the same mechanics as the first two, 367 Days and RE:Coded. However added elements are in the game such as Flowmotion, Spirit Linking and Dream Dropping (hence Dream Drop Distance title, obviously.) Since Sora and Riku are actually in a dream for their trial to become the Keyblade Master, only you can play with either Sora or Riku at a time. You start the game playing Sora so once Sora falls asleep Riku wakes up and comes into play. 

I’m not sure how to explain the Dropping very well and I don’t think I’m going to try. I did like the Flowmotion Element in the game which gives and extra ability to fight your enemies or use the environment around you to defeat your enemies. It seems hard for me to get to the pole Flowmotion where as getting the Blow Off Flowmotion with hughe enemies and pushing off the wall Flowmotion seem much easier. I tend to forget about getting the Mario ground slam Flowmotion alot as well.

There is the Spirit link element in the game which is like the Trinity ability in the KH and KH2, however the Spirit Link ability are different for Sora and Riku. Sora’s Spirit Link abilities tend to have the Trinity Effect, Riku’s Spirit Link is him merging with the spirits gain strength, and this is only for a limited of time. The spirit link abilities combination are dependent on the type of spirits you are using at the time and what special attack those spirit will have (benefit for Riku.)

Another thing about the Spirit pets is that you can train them with the items, Balloon and Water Barrel. There Treasure Goggle items help you find treasure with the spirits which utilitize the 3DS camera. You can feed them with food you find or pick up from drops or buy in stores, as well as customize the spirits with a paint gun.

So far I’m seven stages in and continuing to get through this game by getting all the Spirits and training them on every tier they have. Maybe there will be an update when I have completed the game. =D

#Games – Diablo 3

So when Diablo 3 was released I was one of the first that tried to get into the Diablo 3 servers at 2 AM Central time. My husband wanted to stay up, but work takes precedence. Considering that we opted in for the 1 year subscription of WoW to get Diablo 3 for free digitally, we still went and purchased a collectors edition for the game. Because I like Collectors Edition. So far the Collectors Edition were sold out everywhere here and fortunately for us, my husband was able to buy it off Amazon or ebay… one of the two, and my friend of 10 years didn’t feel like he really wanted his CE so we bought it off him. 

Backtracking to the launching of the game I get ready to log on and boom… I get in I create a character and then it’s trying to create the character and then I get this error that states I can’t create the character or something. I try again six or seven times and it takes five to ten minutes each creation before I get the error. So of course twitter feeds are blowing up with the error codes starting to trend on the worldwide trending list. After twenty minutes of trying to get into the game I just gave up and went to bed. Didn’t touch Diablo 3 for about two or three weeks I guess, but did watch my husband finish Diablo 3 in a few days of him playing it when he had the time. 

All the while I was too busy trying to finish Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 for the second time around on the 360. Well I then got to playing Diablo 3 and when I got to my character screen, I saw 6 Demon Hunters that I created the day I started on the list ready to go. All the same name. This was just funny to me cause I didn’t realize I made that many. Deleted all but one and started to play. 

Got my Demon Hunter to 60 in about two weeks of playing it I think, probably more than two weeks, I didn’t keep track so now I am on Infernal mode and doing my best to get through this mode with the gear I have. Of course I died at the Butcher trying to kill him all by myself only got him down to like 45% health. I am now going back through Hellmode to get some more gold so I can purchase some better equipment off the Auction House.

As much as I can say about the game it’s a beautifully rendered game, although with the recent updates the gamma seems to be very low and I barely can see any monsters coming at me when I am in dark caves and the fog particles are so thick.  I even tried to fixed the graphic options to what I had before and it still doesn’t seem to take. I don’t know why but I suppose I have to deal with it. 

I’m also not the fan of the point click move type game but this is that type of game and if I want to get through it I must get use to it. Which I probably did because I kept trying to click  point move in WoW when I went back to that game for the first time in three months. =/

Resident Evil: THe Mercenaries 3D

So the past few weeks I’ve been playing Resident Evil the Mercenaries on my 3DS, which is probably one of the cause of my procrastination on projects I’ve been trying to work on. I’ve gotten the 3DS about a couple of months ago and have to say it’s probably my favorite handheld system I’ve owned now. The only thing that I dislike about it is that the 3DS price drop that’s happening in a couple of weeks. This kinda makes me mad but then again we can afford to buy my daughter her own 3DS when it comes time to that. All the other DS has been foiled by her little hands. The place where you insert the game cartridges don’t work anymore due to pins being bent out of shape so it doesn’t connect with the cards conductor fields. Those DS have seen a good long life span though and has worked for all the time we’ve owned it until a few weeks ago. She has been careful with our 3DS lately so maybe we’ll consider getting one for her at a later time.

Anyway, my view on Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D is this, quite different than normal Resident Evil games. Although I haven’t played any of the newer Resident Evil since after Code Veronica X, but I do try to follow the series as much as possible. If I’m a fan I should keep up on the series info right? Although after playing this I have been debating on getting the other RE games to just play. So if I read right (from the review sources and wikis) RETM3D is like mercernary mode in RE5, which I’ve not played so can’t take my word on that. The thing that irked me about this game is that after you finish a level it doesn’t automatically takes you to the next level after you clear it. No, you have to go to the level’s list and choose the level you want to do. VERY ANNOYING. Honestly I can understand that if you’ve not cleared a level you stay on that level until you clear but if you have cleared it you have to go into the level menu and choose the level you want to move on to next. I didn’t like that, but I dealt with it.

You get three default characters which are Jill Valentine, HUNK, and Chris Redfield. I’ve played with Chris most of the time (Redfield fangirl) and the other characters are unlockable Claire being the easiest or one of the first to be unlocked. In order to clear a mission you have to get B rank or higher. Ranks goes in order form highest to lowest. SS, S, A, B, C, D. The ranks SS, S, A and B, will give you a star in your map level showing that you’ve cleared this level and can move on to the next level or unlock hidden levels. You fail a mission if you run out of time before you kill a major boss, or if you die. You gain points by the amount time you have left after a major boss level, or you get high combo points. I think my highest combo points was 150. I’m sure there’s higher but that was my highest I believe to have gotten.

Once you unlock characters and have completed all 5 mission levels you are able to use each characters weapons. At least that’s what I’ve read. I’ve cheated and unlocked the characters weapon swap with play coins. I guess it’s cheating but is it really if you’re allowed to do that? Yeah, I learned about unlocking the character weapon swap when I was stuck on 3-5 trying to kill the B.O.W and failing miserably. That’s when I learn of the magic play coins! So for the past few weeks Chris has been running around with Jills or Rebecca’s weapons config. I wish that we were able to custom pick our favorite weapon into the weapon slot though. That would be great. Machine gun, magnum, and shotguns! Haha.

There is DUO mode where you can play with other players to complete very difficult stages you couldn’t possibly think of doing yourself. This is how I finished my first round in the game to get the end credits and unlock the EX level. The EX level just gave me a headache at times but I enjoyed running around like a headless chicken trying to get familiarized with the maps. The characters have two sets of outfits. Their default outfits which you play with from the start and the alternate outfits which may give more stat boost or less stat boost depending on the character and their outfits. These outfits are unlocked by getting certain ranks on level maps or getting medals.

Medals are like achievements, and some are hard to get than others. There’s 50 medals to get and some medals unlock skills that can be used to customize your characters ability to survive in the game. Skills have enhancements on what your character can do. Some skills can be equipped to boost abilities of herbs to heal your character some boost your weapon’s attack damage or handling abilities. Some skills if level up to it’s max will have hidden abilities that helps out the character, and then may unlock other skills that can be used. The skills have 3 levels and you get skill points after finishing a level map. If you die during a level map mission you get no skills. Sucks yeah, but that is how the game works.

The game play you can choose it to be OTS (over the shoulder) or FPS (First Person Shooter) mode. I prefer the OTS mode cause I’m not a big fan of the FPS mode thing. Unless it’s CoD. I’ve played this game a few hours on end and mostly in my bed during the nights where I can’t sleep, like probably tonight after I post this up I will open up my 3Ds and play the game again. I’ve played most of the game up until level 4-4 solo, and then learned about Duo mode can help you unlock levels as well so I played the rest of the levels in DUO mode, some repeating the old levels just to get a higher score. It took a while to do considering that I have to go through over 50 DUO modes to unlock the EX level.

The EX level were a bit challenging considering I got paired up with people that stupidly walk in front of executioners, garradors and crazy maijni’s with chain saws, but there were players that wanted to try to get the clear so they can move on to the next level and that was a pleasurable experience. The only downfall with the DUO mode is that there’s barely no way you can communicate with your partner except with the in-game emotes like whistling and the occasional “thank you” for saving their asses when they’re in a pickle. There has been a couple of times that I was paired up with some people that liked to grief you in the game. They equip their characters with the rocket launcher or the grenade launcher and try to seek you out and kill you purposely. Obviously I think this is the flaw in the game, cause you can’t take damage by your partner’s bullets but you can take damage by their launchers. It’s a very terrible thing but I guess the developers wanted it to be that way. I’m sure the people that does the “griefing” thinks that it’s funny and have nothing else to do with their gaming time but ruin some people’s fun. Things like that makes the game less enjoyable, but here is hoping there’s less of these assholes out there and more gamers that like to see a level get completed.

My experience with this game I enjoyed it very much, I have continuously played this game almost day in and day out and my goal is to get all skill and all medals. So far I’ve got 13 medals to get and about 10 more skills to unlock. It’s a stress reliever to me so when I’m stress out, it’s most likely once everyday, I’ll turn on my 3DS and kill zombies.

Kingdom Hearts: Recoded Review

Starts off with Jiminey Cricket finding a mysterious message in his journal that he use to keep log of the journey and adventures that occured during the Kingdom Heart series. Then you are controlling the Sora inside the journal, because apparently journals are digital and contains ones and zeroes and some sixes and twos. Well Mickey and friends actually created a computer to analyze the journals data and entered the journal universe. They come to find that the journal is infected with bugs. The same type of bugs that would impede you progress on your computer only they come in the form of blox (blocks). Suffice to say that the opening to the story’s game was getting a bit, well not the usual story telling you would expect from Disney.

After a week of playing this game pushed 30 hours playtime into the story. I’ve tweeted that I would be disappointed if I finish this game in under 50 hours playtime and I was, but I played through the game without going back to do any side quests or extras. The only extras I’ve done is getting the world cards in Castle Oblivion and even that stage of the game it was just quite boring.

I love the Kingdom Hearts series, I do. I’ve played the first one, Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II, 358/2 Days. I haven’t gotten my hands on Birth by Sleep yet but eventually I will. KH:Recoded was a birthday present and I was psyched to get it. I started playing and it had all the basic elements that I expected from the KH series. Then I came upon the side scrolling battle of Traverse Town. I wasn’t so keen on this feature, and it didn’t seem to fit with the game in all honesty. I feel that this game could’ve done without the side scrolling battle. Same feeling goes for the Wonderland’s shooting battle, and the emulation of turn based system at the Olympic Colosseum. I don’t particularly like how these was added into the game.

Leveling up isn’t that bad, although you can alter your stats by using the Stat Matrix, where you use “Chips” (in which you get by leveling or can buy with SP from System Sector zones.) This reminded me of Final Fantasy X where you have to use the grid map to go down a tree or try to fill it all up to better improve your character. Not a bad feature although you can unlock extra CPU boards and connect the two CPU to double any stats in those chip slots. I’ve just used them to double up my levels and HP and any stat chips that are +3 and up.

System Sectors zones are backdoor zones that are infected with viruses or more bugs and heartless. During the beginning stages they’re easy to overcome until somewhere in the middle of the Wonderland zone you have to complete challenges depending on the number of floors in the sector. Most of the challenges are easy while the hardest ones I’ve found are the zones (after finishing the game, saving and reloading) are the ones that require level 50-70. I guess the System Sector is the only thing I was pleased with about the game. Kept me playing when I got bored.

The Castle Oblivion stage was revisiting Chains of Memories, however it’s buggy as well. This is where I spent some time trying to get all the World Cards to get the extra ending sequence. Hallow Bastion is basically kicking my ass right now so after one hour of trying to get all three cards I just settled with one and finished the game. The boss fight in CO is almost like a joke, and I was doing this at level 50.

Again 30 hours playtime just going through the storyline, doesn’t seem satisfying to me. I’ve played other button mashing RPG games that the storyline would get me over 50 hours playtime. I can add more hours to the playtime and go back and do the extras. It’s something to do on downtimes and while I wait for my daughter’s school bus to arrive at the bus stop.