Monday, June 27, 2011


Now that we've come to this, I had to say, Resident evil and Silent hill deals with monsters and man monsters. But this one, you gotta look out for because you cannot fight the enemies with bats, rods, guns, or crow bars. You only got one weapon: and it's a freakin' camera.






In the past, we've decided to buy this new game called "Fatal Frame III: The tormented" that's out in the local video stores. Before we bought the CD, we had history on this game because we already tried playing Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly when I was younger. So we really had an idea what this game is about.


Next, playing it on when the lights are all out and the doors are all shut.


Me, my older sis and bro tried to make a new game before the video clip of the main character's side story played off. The thing is, we entered this "Old Japanese Mansion" through her dreams (finally knew where the permanent setting of the game would take place) and it was just plain creepy.


The graphics are meant to be a little blurry but good enough to see the hallways and stairs. The sound effects were as crazy as hell. Trust me, if you muted it, it will be less horrifying. Although the first scene in the game, where you control Rei Kurosawa (the game's sexy main character), made us jump in front of the television. There was a ghost with a knife or something in his hands and he was chasing over us!
THE ANNOYING thing is: The ghost runs 1 meter per second and Rei runs like she was in labor.
Even how many times we tried to mutilate the analog stick to make her go faster, she was just plain sissy.


But if it was in real life I think I would've froze to death in the middle of the manor, shaking and praying.
At some point in time in the game, after the "dream mansion" ghost adventure, you could wake up by exiting on the Mansion gate. Every time she wakes up, she gets this snakes and holly tattoos on her back.
Here's a picture of a fight scene where a woman's ghost is seen trying to attack Rei.
The game's ultimate weapon to exterminate the ghosts is the "Camera Obscura", an object from a very old japanese folklore that was said to carry supernatural abilities to see ghosts. It's quite simple, you capture the ghost in the camera screen, make sure the inner circle of the camera turns red for it to take a hit, and press x to attack.


Now this is kinda tricky, sometimes a ghost would just float from a far and just comes near to you. That's easy to fight. But if the ghost is teleporting from room to room, then you must stay more focus than ever. That means that you cannot just stand there and move your camera east to west, but you have to run and avoid the ghost. There's also a situation where the ghost dives in front of you, or worse, there are two or more ghosts for you to fight. Another thrilling fight scene is the woman whose limbs were stretched so severely that she looks like she was wearing really long sleeves. She can stretch her arms to you and shake your life bar off like a jingle bell in Christmas.


At a very unfortunate situation, we have encountered the boss, Reika Kuze, walking (more like dragging herself) unto the halls and moaning. Saying stuff like, "No one will survive" or "I'll kill them all" or in the bonus round we thought she said, "Sushi but no tomatoes." [Oh come on, that is not discrimination. I love the Japanese. Peace!]


Here's us raiding the manor when this woman suddenly appeared
opposite our wall. The camera views are a thrill. 
We also encountered several ghosts in the mansion (Not to mention that there were also ghosts that haunts Rei's real life house and increases in number while the story progresses). The first was the guy with a butcher knife chasing our tails, then the mother and daughter (their video clip was pretty shocking), a ghost with a number of arms and hands that can stretch itself to double its length, a woman crawling under a vent (it was hard to capture her because she was faster than any ghosts we've met so far), and a group of little creepy girls called the "impalers" or whatever. Their job is to assist a priestess and drive a stake through her hands and feet. Shinto Rituals are pretty scary and twisted, eh?


There was also a woman with her hair ripped off and pinned against the wall (They say she was waiting for this guy who found her while she was brushing her hair in front of her mirror. She fell in love with him and waited for him to come back but he never did. They say she just kept brushing her hair in front of her mirror so when the guy visits again, he'll find her in the same way he left her. Well her story went awfully wrong and ended up in chaos).


A lot of ghosts have taken their horrible pasts with them, and the most horrible of them all is the story of this young woman who was heart broken, her name is Reika Kuze. They say that she belonged to this Kuze family who practices dark shinto rituals. The family tried to close the hellish abyss (Just imagine it's the gates of hell) by sacrificing women who suffered pain, any sorts of pain. They do it in the mansion and guess what, men are strictly not allowed to come in the mansion except if they need more daughters. It says that if the child is a male, they will kill it. If it is a female, it will serve the Kuze family as a hand maiden.


When the ritual is successful, the family had prevented the hellish abyss to devour them or that's what I thought they were scared of happening. But after Reika Kuze's lover was killed by the head of the Kuze family, the ritual became unsuccessful and the hellish abyss killed everyone in the mansion. They say that Reika's lover was butchered in front of her eyes. At that time, she had snakes and holly tattoos that already spread all over her body like a colorful wrapping paper. Because of ultimate rage, she was the only priestess who let the tattoos reach her eyes.


In the end, we had to fight the boss. Reika Kuze is one of the few ghosts that can drain your life bar IMMEDIATELY after touching you or getting in contact with you. The nerve wrecking thing is, your television will be in a complete darkness with only Rei with a spot light following her. Nothing else.


Your mission is to RUN. Because Reika Kuze will be chasing over you and once she appears in the darkness and stretches her arms to you, you'll die automatically.
The scariest boss fight ever. Imagine it if your controller accidentally breaks and your analog stick won't work. Rei is a sitting duck.


Anyway, after a horrifying mess and lots of hand sweats that almost destroyed our controller, we finally finished the game. You could say we were freaks, but how about real ghosts in video games? Alright, fine, Stay Alive sequels aborted.
Post a comment about your scariest experience in this game or if you haven't tried it yet, the game is available in your local video store or in the mall. Maybe you'd get an alternate ending. Enjoy this game and it is better to play it when you fully understand the story. What can I say? It's a dream. Well...isn't it?


If this scene is in real life, I could've fainted and get a
coma for a month.


For your Critic of the Hour, I'd give this game a
4.79/ 5. You can rate it in your comments, too!
Have luck and prepare for a scream which works way better if played with a group of people.

















Tuesday, April 19, 2011

"INCEPTION"

A sci-fi action film directed by Christopher Nolan that swept the viewers out of the their feet and into the internet to search for its mysterious ending scene. The movie was so outstanding we wanted to test it out in real life. Then this is what happened....
Alright, I have to admit, Inception is one of the coolest films I've encountered this year. But enough with the easily-impressed comments, time for the readers to know what I'm really talking about. 
Here's a picture of the cover of "Inception".  The cover is not yet giving the people any idea of the characters and the seriously disturbed environment they're in.

If the picture is not appearing, try opening the image at a new tab.

The movie is all about this guy named, "Dom Cobb" (Leo DiCaprio) and his team doing a "not-so-legal" information extraction. Now, when they say extraction, based on my understanding it means that they are going to steal information from the subconscious part of a human being for commercial and business purposes.
Basically, when the target is sleeping, they will enter the target's dream with some sort of sedative and machines to go with it and sort through the target's thoughts. 

For example, if I hid a jar with the most delicious cookies known throughout the galaxy in it, of course, I am the only one who knows where it's hidden. But Cobb knew a way to extract this information without using real life violence. He doesn't have to enter my house for a search because the cookies are well hidden, instead, he will enter a place when my guard is completely off: My mind. 

Through your dreams, he explained how the human brain stores the information on several corners of the mind. It became more exciting when the story described the brain storage rooms to be like a maze; A maze inside a dream. 
By that way, I know that I stored the cookies under my bed. If Cobb finds that thought (in my dreams, he could see me hiding the cookies under the bed), he can easily steal the best cookies in the galaxy in real life without even talking to me or looking at me.

Okay, this is the dangerous part. The dream rules:

1.) Normally, in dreams when you die inside of it, you automatically wake up in the real world. In the movie, it is a fast way to end the dream and wake up.
2.) An hour or two in the dream world is like 5 minutes in the real world. In the main mission, Cobb made a layer of 3 dreams. A dream within a dream within a dream, causing time to be a lot longer for every layer.
3.) A dream is constructed by a person in Cobb's team called the "Architect" who deceives the target making it look like it is the real world. He or she creates the labyrinth dream world.
4.) For a target to fall asleep and have dreams, Cobb injects some kind of sedative into the target and to his team for them to enter each other's dreams.
5.) THE TOTEM. A totem is a small material each extractor (like Cobb) keeps. It's purpose is to determine if they are in another person's dreams and are being deceived or if they are in the real world.
How the hell do they know that? Okay, in this specific material, only the owner knows how it is going to move. It's actions are very unpredictable. 

For example, I have a lighter. I would put water in it and click it. Of course it will not fire. But if I tried to open it again some time later and it made fire, then I am not in the real world, an architect made this lighter for me and he or she failed to deceive me because he/she thought my lighter has gas in it, but just water. This means I am in someone's dream or i am asleep. Just like Cobb's totem: A spinning top. Only he knows the balance of the spinning top. It reveals that if the spinning top just kept spinning, he's being deceived. But if it looses its balance, he is in the real world. 

Those are the things an extractor is aware of. But this time, Cobb was assigned with an another dream mission that is not "extraction" of information, but is to plant information into the target's mind (which is triple the difficulty of extraction) . Here's a scene where
Cobb deceives Robert Fischer (The main target) of thinking that Cobb is his personal security agent of subconscious protection even though he is the enemy who tries to sabotage his decisions. 

But as the story progresses, Cobb found out that the new chemist he hired to make a sedative powerful enough to make a dream within a dream within a dream (3 layers of dreams) increases the risk of going to "Limbo". What the heck is a Limbo?

Limbo- a place in the subconscious where your ass would be stuck for 50 years in dream-time until your  brain would be scrambled eggs. It is a place of infinite loop. Even if it's 50 years, it would be like a couple of hours in the real world. 

Now that we know Limbo, the consequence of a 3 layered dream state is..YOU CANNOT DIE. If you die, you will be stuck in Limbo. Again, if you die you will not wake up to the real world. Since one of them got shot and is slowly getting unconscious, they had to be faster and enter another dream. 
How the hell are they supposed to wake up or to escape the dream since killing yourself is not an option anymore? Alright, this is the cool part. They call it, a "Kick". What is a kick?

A Kick - a kick is an act of falling. If a person felt the sensation of falling, any type of falling, he or she would be alert enough to repel that falling sensation and gets up instead, thus, waking up.

In the movie, there was a scene where Cobb explain a kick. Arthur, his right-hand man, was sitting and balancing himself in a chair with only the two back legs touching the floor, making a diagonal pose. Eames secretly slightly pulls the chair back and Arthur (oblivious of the action) surprised, pushes himself forward because the sensation of falling made him more alert. 

That is another way to wake up. In other words, if they start another layer of dream, someone has to be left behind to organize a "kick" that will wake them all up. I'm sure you've dreamed of something like that. Like falling into a tall building or being kicked by Leonidas on a deep pit with human guts?

<--This is a scene where Arthur is the one who was left behind in the dream to organize a kick with his team who all entered another layer of a dream.
 When you watch the movie, you will be more impressed with the character's struggle to wake up, to plant the idea in the target's mind, and the "unexpected objects" in the target's subconscious. The act of knowing which one is reality and which one is not would blow you off your seats. Especially when Cobb finally spins his totem in the end, finishes the mission and finds his long lost kids running to his arms in their humble home. The scene will show how the totem will react. Off balanced or still spinning?!

Welp, the whole thought came out and I hope you have the same reaction with this mind blowing labyrinth film. If dreams were only that cool I wouldn't mind sleeping in front of my boss. Or If inception was real, I would've made live ninjas to protect the best cookies in the galaxy. Tell me what you think of the movie and what would you do if you're in this kind of situation?
As the critic of the hour, I will rate this film 4.72/5. Good job, Christoper Nolan!





Sunday, April 17, 2011

Critic of the hour: Fatal Frame III: Brave enough to play?: "Now that we've come to this, I had to say, Resident evil and Silent hill deals with monsters and man monsters. But this one, you gotta look..."

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Hello, world of Writers.

If you think you want to write a story just like how the script writers did it in your favorite movie you'd be thingking like, "Oh yeah. I could do it. I have a lot of ideas."
I tried this at first, then I started opening microsoft word or notepad for starters. I blinked twice. Scratched my chin. Gettin' into the comfortable zone. After a few hours, my story was so great it went like this:

JOHNNY FETCH A PAIL OF WATER.

There were blood stains in my computer. Blood stains of pure failure. I was like "what the hell..". I wasted typing nonsense for two hours. It was even better to shave my grandpa's back all day than to think of words that'll look golden on a crappy piece of paper. My dog's poop looks even better than it.There goes inspiration.

Not only writers get to write you know. Well, most of the time they do. But the interesting part here is that you don't write because you just wanted to tell an all girl-yakuza with violent boobs action(So much for sucker punch.) but you write because you wanted to tell a story. A really great story. The only problem is that sometimes, we just don't know how to put it in words. I don't have control over my senses. I get distracted too much. 
At one scene I imagine the story like a real Hollywood film would look like, there were batallions, assassins, samurai, and then there were flying cars and wooden puppies. It's pretty unique though looking at Gerard Butler on his "300" Leonidas costume riding on a flying car petting his wooden puppy on the front seat. Xerxes would've been jealous. He would've made a puppy out of gold.

Like I say, I don't have full control over my senses. Have you ever experienced someone warning you not to think about it and you actually think about it. Like the last time my friend told me not to think about that new vocaloid "Hatsune Miku" soundtrack (I think it was Ievan Polka) because the song pisses her off (Sorry Yamaha corporation.), then after three days, I was like " Ara tsa tsa ya biridabbiriri" singing that gibberish synthesized song from a synthesized singer-robot-bimbo. It was so addicting. 

Authors from books aren't the only supernatural creatures who can make a good sentence and earn millions of dollars from it. There are also the cartoonists, magazine chicks, scriptwriters, mangakas(anime comic writers), commercial dudes and bloggers.

Maybe the only way I could earn a million dollars is if I...
A.) become a drug lord,
B.) rob three banks
C.) Kidnap a rich kid
D.) Invent a microwavable estrogen-packed silicon butt scratchers 

So they're not entirely realistic. The things I can do that's close to these three things is...nothing.
So my imagination has more capacity in the subconscious part of my well-being...it's a good start for writing right?

Study. That's the last thing that would've crossed my mind but if you really want to get that story out of your dream world and into the real world, no matter how crazy it's gonna be, STUDY first how to get it out in an organized manner. Do research and read the works of others and learn from it. Try not to copy their exact work but instead, allocate them in to one of your inspiration boxes unless you're already a supernatural creature who makes a hundred bucks an hour for one freakin' sentence. 

But always always put in mind that writing is no funny hobby, writing is serious and you need a lot of passion to get it all the way through or else you'd just find yourself sitting in a couch writing one sentence about a boy named Johnny and what he does with a pail. Or you'd make a habit of not finishing your works. Face the challenge! Make your day more interesting by sharpening your observation skills, and if you're not good in English or Spanish or Atlantish or whatever language you want your story to be told that is not your native tongue then try thinking in your desired language until you get that habit to easily write what you think.(What the hell.)

Do your best and have an emblem of motivation to keep that writing experience blooming. Have faith in yourself and remember, good writers gained good writing from experience, and experience is gained through bad writing. Don't lose hope and enjoy the world of writing!

Friday, December 31, 2010

I am disguise

She walked in quickly but a bit cautious on gum sticking in her shoes. Days before Christmas had never been busier than last year. The Toy convention was handling holiday activities for anime lovers. Never before had she participated in an organization like this one. Even though a lot of people were wearing burlesque clothing or rather fancy skirts and facial aesthetics, she knew she was one of them, one of them like a city built just for them. 


You do not know who these people are, but you very much know what they appear to be. Some were holding man-sized cardboard swords and others overgrown, colorful wigs hanging in their heads like assorted fruits on tarts.

Eventually, everybody knew her, too. She was no stranger to that place. Some women called her, and she turned. They want to take pictures, and she stood still. Children pointed their fingers and she waved. You won't believe how many people knew her and how many wanted to shake hands with her. They offered her smiles and greetings together with warm embraces and photographs. Everybody wanted her to be with everybody. She was shining better than the floor lights below her feet. Her clothes were thick and sweat ran down her neck, but everyone wanted to hug her anyway.

A night for once she shone like fire on sand. Glitters spread on her pink cheeks, and her hair was admired by everyone because of its brilliance and tint. A resemblance of blue roses on a cold mountain top hidden in mist. Her eyes were tinted amber, joyous from the bliss of excellence. 
For one day, she rose up. She waved goodbye, ate in the best restaurant in the city with other people, and after that she left the organization when no one can see her, went home, and washed everything down to the last bit of the azure in her body.

She said to herself, 'I am disguise. I am complete.'

Her true self is the unknown. Nobody will ever see her again even though she walks the same path her other self walks through every single day. No one even wanted to take a picture of her true self. It was a part of her no one knew. It was her disguise.



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