Saturday, 16 July 2011

A Riddle

All credit goes to L, the Admin of the L (Death Note) page.

Colin, my friend! On my Quest I met a man. None of you will be able to solve my riddle, he said. George tried to solve it and thought the answer was "Milk". Robert tried to solve it and thought the answer was "Cheese". Although we tried hard none of us was able to solve the riddle. To you it might seem easy but believe me it's not. Unlike so many other riddles there are, he said, this one has only one answer. Yoghurt, Steak and even Cattle, I swear we guessed it all. Albert tried even his own name as an answer. There we were, totally stumped. I had no idea what to say anymore, I thought I was smart. On a scale of one to ten he said, this riddle was 1. None of you will be able to solve my riddle, he said. See if any can solve if you repeat what I told you, he said, as it is impossible to solve this riddle if you get even a single fact wrong.

This is the whole riddle.

Thursday, 7 July 2011

Faith in Humanity

I'm going to look at this only from a gaming point of view. We have all these people who play XBL 24/7 on CoD:BO. Just making sure you know that.

Right, this is it.

I own quite a few games for the X360 (CoD4-7, Halo 3, ODST, Wars, Reach, Viva Piñata...) and I know why I can complete them so easily.

I played the basics.

Play Final Fantasy VII, sure, the graphics suck and the combat system isn't the best but for a game released in 1997, you find that the FMV sequences are awesome and the storyline is fun and interesting. It may be good for you to note that the game is a Free-World RPG game for the PS1. Don't have a PS1? Comment.


Right, the game start off by playing the tutorial. It is fun to play the game and the system is not actually that bad. You will find the game confusing at first but you will get the hang of it. Seriously.

Anyway, the games you should know:
Pokémon Gen1. Red, Blue and Yellow. Play them. Forget Black, play Red.
Pokémon Gen2. Gold, Silver and Crystal. I've owned two Golds and Crystal in the past. Trust me, it is worth your time.
Any Crash Bandicoot Game for the PS1/2.
Mario Kart.
Super Mario 64. May possibly be the best game for the console. It has months of gameplay.
Yu-Gi-Oh. Any. I know, it's odd but it is a fun game to play.
Halo... 1.
CoD4.
FFXII.
FFXIII.

The list is endless.

But what makes a game good? Well, a storyline is good and I quite like the ability to do whatever you want (FFXII and Fable 2... Love them.) but most people on Live haven't even played the storyline of CoD:BO. Only multiplayer.
Seriously.
I liked the storyline, it was like playing an interactive movie. Good graphics but linear. A better game in both sense (Graphics and being linear) is FFXIII. Yes, I went there. No multiplayer but a much better storyline and everything. There are some faults, yes. Like post-game where you realize that you have to grand to get experience.
The music scores and storyline is more than enough reason to play the game (The very end may be a little confusing though) it is a game I would recommend for anyone.


However,

All people want to play nowdays are not the storyline only games, they want to play XBL and shoot their friends. That is barely breaking the skin of gaming. Mindless shooting? Hah! I went 15 years without XBL and I am a better gamer for it. I played the storyline on the hardest difficulty and decimated all the AI. Halo Wars? Fun. Really fun to play.
Seriously, get off Black Ops and put in FFXIII. Play the whole game. It's a game worth playing by any and all. You don't need a machine gun to win (In fact, the only guns in the game that can be used are the weapons used by the two characters in the first battle (Gunblade and Twin Pistols)) trust me, the game is fun.


But no, you don't want to play it do you? Why? You can't shoot everything. You have to use skill. You have a decent plot. Seriously. Pokémon games are good (Black was alright. Awesome until you beat the league... Yeah, they should've thought about the game in the long run and not the short game.) Final Fantasy will warm your heart and maybe you'll learn to buy the games with the best storyline, not the most bullets.

tl;dr, Play Final Fantasy games. Probably the best series out there for storyline.

Sunday, 3 July 2011

A Pokémon Creepypasta

[Finally my set-up seems suitable for the situation.]

You've all heard the Lavender Town Syndrome. This is worse. Much worse. LTS was an accident. This was intentional.

A few months ago I got a new game for my DS. I have played Pokémon for years and I really wanted to keep it that way. I have owned practically every Pokémon game for the Gameboy, the Advance and the DS. I got myself Pokémon Black. A good game. Strange storyline and for some reason, the people I know didn't like N.





Anyway, I played it for a bit and I realized that some of my friends had also got similar games. I told them to bring in their DS(s?) for a battle at lunchtime the next school-day (It was Friday). We all used nicknames. I was called Katsu, my 13-year old friend was called Vikki (Despite being a boy), my 12yo friend was called Kalin and the 16yo in my form who was a few days younger than me called himself Shadow.

If only he named himself differently.

Were it not for me being too busy playing Black Ops, I may have noticed the Facebook update.

I missed the bus on the way to school and came in a few minutes late. I missed registration and so had to go straight to my first lesson. None of my friends were in that lesson. But time continued and at lunchtime, I went to the room. It was crowded but the wireless system meant that we could all play. 

Me, Kalin and Vikki were all sitting near eachother. We couldn't see Shadow anywhere. We waited for him to join the 2v2 battle match. We were about to use an AI in his place when 'Shadow' joined the match. We still couldn't see him but we continued anyway.

It was me and Shadow vs Vikki and Kalin. We were all around the same level so it seemed fair. Well, we were all around the same level when we checked on the Friday.

The match started a little weird. I sent out Dragonite and Vikki and Kalin sent out Venasaur and Golem respectively. Shadow didn't send out anything. I found that odd by I thought it was a glitch. I chose my first move, (Fly on Venasaur) and waited for the battle to start.

The screen went weird. No text appeared and I seemed to suffer a headache. The loud room sudden became completely silent. Not only that, but the room went dark. I looked around, the only light in the room was my DS. Somehow, I couldn't see the people next to me. Looking back at the screen, I saw that all the Pokémon had fainted but the text at the bottom read only a :).

I called out to the room and I heard my echo. That was too weird. I should have turned the game off. I didn't. Why? Maybe I was wondering about what happened. I should have sent out another Pokémon. The game wouldn't change it. 0HP. All Pokémon were at 0HP. The attack option appeared on screen. I selected it. 

The screen listed not my attacks but instead it listed four options: Apologize, Regret, Suffer, Taunt. Only one of those was a move that could be used. I selected it. Taunt. I shouldn't have.

The screen turned black. I was scared. The room was completely dark for a few second but then, a blue light flickered in front of me. That was too weird. It was not even a light, it was like a ball of fire. I dared not move. I began to feel the hairs all over me tingle and then I felt a bony finger brush against my face. I tried to brush it off but touched nothing. An echo laughed at me. It laughed at me. It told me that fear would forever take over. I threw down my DS and tried to run as far away from the voice as possible.


I ran for ages. Five-Ten minutes without stopping. I eventually stopped to catch my breath and as soon as I did, the DS appeared in front of me. Floating. I grabbed it. I saw that it told me to choose an option. Fight or Run. I chose run. The DS showed a video of me, my actual person, running. A message came up below. It was all scrambled at first but the pixels eventually formed three words: You already did.


I panicked. This thing was watching me. I knew what I had to do. I pressed fight. I told Dragonite to Apologize. The laughter happened again. The room began to come back to me as I pressed it. I woke up.


I was apparently unconscious for over 30 minutes. Me, Kalin and Vikki all were unconscious. The teacher told us that the game flashed and we all fainted at the same time. Not the character in the game, but us. The room was deserted. Our DS's were on the floor next to us. The screen was off.


I ignored the Teacher and grabbed mine. I had an L on the back of it so I could identify it. I opened the Ds. I rebooted it and started to play the game again. I was curious about what it was that happened. I loaded the game and...


...I was in the middle of a battle. It wasn't even a scene beforehand. I loaded a battle. That was impossible. It was against a Pokémon named Shadow, supposedly in the wild. I had no Pokémon out. Just the fight option. There was no sprite on the screen. The room went dark again but then flashed. A man in a dark cloak was in front of me. I couldn't move at all, just my hand. There were the four options from before except Taunt was replaced with Courage.


I selected it.


I moved in a way unexpected, my body moved by itself and I got in a fight with this man. He disappeared when I hit him. The room turned red and then I...


I woke up in hospital a few days later. Thursday. I had a room all to myself except from someone in the bed a few over. I looked around. I was in the Coma ward. That was odd. To my left, I saw a few get well soon cards. They were from my classmates.

I grabbed the DS on the side by the Cards. I was about to turn it on when the man appeared in front of me. Not a doctor. A man in a dark cloak. He was real. I couldn't see his face but he congratulated me. He told me I won.


I turned on the DS. Everything was as it was before I started the battle with my friends. The game acted like there was a connection fault during the match. I checked everything about the game. All was normal. There was a weird flashing in the top left corner on the top screen. It flashed black and white continuously. It still does whenever I play the game.


I stood up. The man had disappeared. I went over to the other bed to see that the person had died five minutes ago, just before I woke up. It said so on the heartbeat machine. I stumbled or was tripped. I don't know. It looked like I stumbled but I knew that the man had tripped me. The DS hit the Heatbeat sensor machine. It broke it.


The person on the bed woke up. It was Shadow, my friend. I wondered how he got there. So did he. He told me that the last thing he could remember was playing Pokémon.


Kalin came in the room. He was going to visit us earlier but had tripped over. He told me that his game had just unfroze and that all had returned to normal. Apparently Shadow was on Facebook on Sunday and decided to play some Pokémon. He collapsed and had been in a coma ever since. His mum told all his friends that he was in a coma.


The man handed me a piece of paper. He walked through Kalin to hand it to me. On the piece of paper were a bunch of names. I gasped when I read it.


It was a table. 25 rows with no title. The first column was just a number, the second was a list of four names, the third all read success and the fourth was some kind of notes. The bottom list showed our real names, Me, Kalin, Shadow and Vikki. The success read failure.

I read all the notes. Apparently, all people had committed suicide after playing the game. None left a note. When it came to the bottom, notes read:
"Took place of [Shadow] and Taunted. [Katsu] beat my challenge. All four shall live."


I turned the page. I found out the true story.


I'm just glad that I'm not a quitter.


The true story on what happened, as said on the back of the page, is this:


"I was working on a part of the game that helped people to play together. I coded a new scene but it didn't work. I fell into a coma.
When I awoke, the game was released without my scene. I recoded it to do something different. I wanted revenged and so I began to distribute it to people.
Anyone who accessed the code at any point felt a ringing in their ears and fainted. The game then was programmed to find the people on the friends list of the person and challenge them to a 2v2. The 2v2 was just a way of spreading it.
The game would flash an image of my face before turning off and emitting a high pitch sound. This snapped a tendon in the brain and caused the player to fall into a coma. The process would then repeat.
However, my friend changed the coding to simulate a battle. Unfortunately for him, I found him and stabbed him with a knife. It was too late for me though, as the code was changed. He changed it so that the sound would only occur if the player loses a battle. I tried to erase the battle but I couldn't. I would always be a LV100 Mewtwo vs a LV2 Ratata where the Mewtwo only knows Aura Sphere. He made it so I couldn't change that.

I changed the battle so that the Ratata used Endevour (As it had 1HP) and then Tackle. I also changed the moves of Mewtwo. It listed then moves as something different and added 3 Tail Whip moves. but changed the names of all of the moves and randomly shuffled them. It was a game of Russian Roulette inside Pokémon."

The creepiest part about the letter is that it was written in blood. The man in black faded away. He must have been my imagination.

But should you ever get in a battle with someone named Shadow, turn off the game as soon as you see the name.