The Horror

Starting the first of October it will be "Horror Month," soon to be Halloween the most spookiest day of the year. I thought it would be great to have a video game horror theme everything from what makes a good horror, different types of horror and so forth.

On October 31st, I will hopefully have completed a game that I set out to conquer. I decided to make the game Cold Fear, the first horror game I was actually looking forward to playing when I first saw trailers of it. I never managed to defeat it, due to not being good at Third-Person shooters at the time. Hopefully this year I will complete it.

Gamers Block

After playing Bullet Witch, I decided to take a small break from gaming. I want to catch up on my reading and other various activities. Including working on my very neglected LiveJournal that my friend has been pestering me about.

Gamer At Heart: 1 Year Later

It's already been a year since I made this blog, of coarse I kept changing the name of it because nothing really satisfied me. Hopefully I will keep Caffeine Addicted Gamer. It is not only the year since I created my blog. But with a lot of pinching and fast postings, I managed to make this post my 100th post.

It all started a year ago when a personal blog of mine accidentally got deleted when I was trying to save the settings. I was thinking about abandoning Blogger because of this, but due to hard times that were happening in my personal life. I decided to make another blog dedicated to mostly my interest, video games to help me keep my mind off certain things. I didn't know how long this blog would last and it wasn't till recently that I started taking it more seriously and gave it a new remodeled layout.

One of my favorite blogs out there that inspired me to do my own blog is American McGee's blog. I think he is an really intelligent person with his observation and strong feelings from stories, folklore, and video games.
I also like Girls Don't Game mostly for their articles I can relate to. They talk about games in old and new, which I wish more blogs would be like. Because reviewing new released games are over rated.

I also find videos from The Angry Video Game Nerd to be some of the best. But in all comparisons, I would have to say I like That Guy With The Glasses a.k.a. Nostalgia Critic. Mostly because I too dwell in the past, missing the good old days of movies and games.
My favorite Nostalgia Critic episodes are The Wizard, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie, The Top 11 Naughtiest Moments in Animaniacs, and Captain Planet.

Why do I play video games? I've been playing games back since I can remember, earliest game that I loved and still do is Mario Bros. 3. Back then I was nothing more then a casual gamer, and due to past events it eventually led up to what I am right now. I don't know where I am, I'm not hardcore but I'm not casual either.

I also have a special thanks going to Peter Chen, his blog helped so much with my own.

EDF! EDF! EDF!

Just defeated one of the most difficult games I have played in a long time, The Earth Defense Force 2017. It's a long running series in Japan that started on the Super Nintendo, and has build up into multiple games. Unfortunately most of the games never came to North America, but one of them The Earth Defense Force 2 was released in Europe for the Playstation 2.

What I played seemed to be a simple third-person shooter, with hardly storyline except that giant bugs and robots have attacked the world. The nameless hero who is part of the E.D.F. (Earth Defense Force) is stationed in Japan, among a lot of very weird comrades. These guys get hyped over everything, and some of their conversations and out bursts of speeches are all laughable. With that I post some of my favorites:

"Those damn aliens making holes in my backyard!"

"Tiny is dead!"
(That one was yelled a lot, how many Tinys are there?)

"I feel like a mole or something."

"I can kill these things with my eyes closed!"
(Maybe you should open them so you can stop shooting at me!)

"Fight with honor and don't die, got it!?"
Everyone: "Sir, yes sir!"

And of coarse the well known war cry of all: "EDF, EDF, EDF!"

The graphics are probably one of the best things about the game, colourful with good graphic buildings and houses. The spiders look grossly real, and the robots are very shiny and bright.

Without mentioning the difficulty part of the game, the only thing I have issues with is the vehicles section, mostly with the helicopters. I know that helicopters are probably very hard to learn and steer in real life, but why make it that realistic in the game? A lot of the missions that I done probably would have been a lot easier if the helicopter was used. But steering and moving the damn thing is a new difficulty itself, let alone trying to attack something.

The only thing I wish they would explain was who was attacking? Who was the mastermind behind this attack? Was it the ants, robots, spiders, or the Godzilla ripoff?

Other then that this game is pretty fun in a love to hate sort of way, as long as you are not looking for something with an in depth storyline. Earth Defense Force is one of those games that are fun to play till your hair is pulled out from the frustration. I just wish that I had a Player 2, unfortunately I played solo. Congrats to anyone who actually played the game with the difficultly Inferno.

Siren, Forever And Eternity

Spoilers

Siren: Curse Blood is a game that is as confusing as the first one. If you don't find all the archives, it becomes very hard to understand the game itself. After reading a forum about the game, I manage to understand the timeline and story of the it.

Despite it being a good game, it is one I am unable to even think about writing something of my own. That's why I applaud Siren-Hill for being able to tell and reveal certain misunderstandings and confusion in detail.

Here's basically the gist of of it:

-Everyone goes to Japan
-Sam stumbles on ritual
-Sirens start to roar
-Everyone is stuck in a time loop
-If Bella and Howard die the time loop restarts
-Bellas mom dies
-Sam discovers the secret of the town
-The Dr. finds a ancient artifact thingy to fight the god
-Amana preforms the ritual and kills Miyako
-Howard fights the god
-Bella, Sam, and the god get sent to different time periods
-Bella eats the dead god, and is cursed with immortality
-Sam being a selfish asshole, waits to send Howard a letter telling him to go to the town so Howard can kill the god again and again and again so Bella can live forever
-With that everyone are forever in a time loop that will never cease all because of Sam

Ending video

Review

My Supernatural Game

I am probably one of the biggest fans of Supernatural. I have all their magazines, comics, DVD's, and I am even planning on ordering from the magazines T-shirts, posters, and novels of Supernatural.

What is Supernatural?
It's a television series, that is launching it's forth season today. It's about two brothers Sam and Dean who set off hunting anything paranormal. It's a mixture between X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, and here's why. The first half an hour or so it's investigations, the duo investigates what they are hunting, they look for clues and hints to find out what they are dealing with. The last half an hour they do some ass kicking, as they hunt down and kill whatever is plaguing the world, whether it's a vampire, demons, ghosts, or something else.

Then there is the folklore involved, and unlike Buffy which has folklore on common monsters such as vampires, werewolves, and demons. Supernatural has some monsters that are forgotten legends, myths, gods, or folklore, that not many people heard of, such as one of my favorite a Tulpa. I was really excited as they hunted down something I thought not many people knew about.

With all this hype that is shown towards this show, especially at Comic-Con, why not make a game out of it?

After all there is tons of games about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and some about X-Files like my favorite "Resist or Serve." It has the styles of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but also has it's own uniqueness as well. Or do something like they did with 24 The Game, where the story timeline takes place between season 2 and 3.

So why not make a Supernatural game with the same concept as a third-person shooter, having to investigate certain areas. Have driving playthroughs with Deans car, and some classic 80's music to go with it? It can be a horror game starting off with small things like a house filled with ghosts, and work the way up to a fight with a demon or some sort of god. Then to make the fans scream have all the actors lend their voices to the game. I am sure anyone who is or isn't fan of Supernatural will buy a game like that. I am not the only person who feels like this either with these links of forums.

Link1

Link2

Link3

Hopefully sometime in the future it will be.

Back In The Hole

With the small article I did on Rainy Woods, I thought I would talk about the infamous game, Spy Fiction. This was the first game I played by Sammy Studios, with only two games I know about from them, Spy Fiction and Seven Samurai 20XX. Spy Fiction really stood out from the two for me. Like an under budget stealth game, it is still good with a lot of heart.

The game is based around a small group of agents called S.E.A. who are sent out to stop a bunch mad men from releasing a deadly virus called Lahder. The group is made up of Billy Bishop and Sheila Crawford the two main protagonists, and Billy's best friend and lone wolf of the group, Nicklaus Nightwood.

Unlike a lot of stealth games, where the main point is to hide and be stealthy about it, this game allows you to mix into the crowed and even allowed to stand out. As long as you're in disguise, which can be obtained by using a special camera. With this camera and the closes locker, bathroom stall, or garbage bin, you can transform into the person you took a picture of. The only problem with this camera is, you have to make sure you get the face and the body. At times this can be difficult, especially when you don't want to be noticed by the "model".

Sheila is the only one who can be disguised as males or females, while Billy must stick to the male gender. At times though, it is mandatory that Sheila is disguised as certain women to obtain information.

There is other objects that are quite fancy, such as "suction cups" that allow you to stick the walls, and Billy and Sheila's suits that allow them to be camouflaged in a wall as long as they don't move. Think of it as an prototype model of the Octocamo in MGS4. A long with some other spy gadgets like a razor that is actually a high voltage tasser, or a poker card that is used as a shuriken.

A lot of this game is ripped offs of Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, James Bond, and Mission Impossiable. But it's still pretty fun if you can look past it and play it just for fun. At the beginning I suggest playing as Sheila then go with Billy for ending purposes. I did Billy first and the ending just looked wrong from it. The game can be pretty lazy with the linear storylines that both Sheila and Billy do with no real changes between them. But none the less it's a pretty fun game I picked up for about ten dollars.

Shouldn't Be Hated

All last night I've been playing Vampire Rain, a game that has been getting no love from gamers in North America. When I first purchased this game, I thought it was going to be a shoot those bad guys. But instead there is hardly any shooting involved at the moment, the game is primarily stealth.

It is pretty much a "Game Over" if you are spotted by a vampire, known in this game as Nightwalkers. With only one or two hits a Nightwalker can take down any person in it's path, namely you. The whole point of the game, is to not get caught and if you need to take down one. Make sure to get enough distance between the protagonist and the Nightwalker, before you start shooting it in the head. It will take a whole cartage of ammo to take it down (if you're lucky.)

The story is about a team who is sent out to deal with the over populated Nightwalkers, the teams goal is to kill the main honcho of a large clan, doing so would to stop the Nightwalkers of that area. Further in the story they find their advanced unit dead in very horrid ways. Leaving everything up to them to stop the Nightwalkers.

I do admit there is some lacked emotions in this game, a lot of the time the conversations sounds too well rehearsed with no feelings or emotions. I also have beef with some of the controls, such as A is to crawl and Y is to jump. I am so use to the bottom button to always be the button to jump, and any other button to crawl. Because of this a lot of times in a panic situation, I press A hoping for a large forward jump in the air, only to get a face to the ground.

The way the game is set I wouldn't be surprised if there will be another game, mostly because they said that it will take around roughly 3 years for the Vampire population to dominate the human population. I still haven't gotten that far in the game, but the main point is as much as I've played, it's not a game that I can say I hate or felt I got screwed over on.

Rainy Woods

I stumbled across a game in the making called Rainy Woods, this is one of the games that seem to be getting no real coverage on the game. The makers of the game are Access Games, the developers also once known as Sammy Studio who made Spy Fiction. Hopefully the developers have grown since this game.

From what I know, the story is about a FBI agent named David Young Hennings, who has a split personality that the player can play at certain points of the game. The game takes place in Rainy Woods, a fictional town somewhere in America. The investigation of the small town seems to be from mysterious deaths and paranormal happenings.

The game is going to have more character interactions with the environment around them, with a day and night system and weather changing amongst the game timeline.

I wish that there were more clues to what this game is about, is this a shooter, puzzle, adventure, or something like the styles of Indigo Prophecy? The game itself is suppose to be released late 2008 to early 2009, even though some rumors seem to be pointing at 2010 for release.

8 Bit Games

I was browsing through websites, and I stumbled across pictures of games that are turned into 2D side scrolling fun. I was just playing Golden Eye, and it's pretty fun shooting game, I never played the original so I cannot compare the two. As far as I can find, Golden Eye is the only game one that can be downloaded. The rest are pictures, that I wish I can play mostly Ico, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Resident Evil 4.

Download Golden Eye

Forum

Video Game Organization

Well I have to say I am very disorganized when it comes to my video game collection, they just lay on the floor and might fall victim to being stepped on. I tried quite a few times to organize them, but regrettably I am not good at alphabetical order, I even tried doing it by genre with no success in that either. Recently I did some research and found some interesting things along my quest to find the best way to organize games. The first website I came across is a step by step of simple organization skills.

But it was this software that I was most impressed with, not only will it organize your games from genre or names, but it will also organize it by the date you purchased it. It also has a rating system so you can catalog your favorite games to least favorite by the score you give it as well as descriptions of the games. You can even upload pictures of every game box so it would be easier to recognize. There is a trial version that is for download, but besides the time limit, there is also a limit of how many games can be inputted into the program. I personally love this program, I wish I had a credit card so I can purchase this program fully.

Main Website

Radiata Stories

Seriously this game could have done so much better for itself, the storyline wasn't bad. But it was the long periods of waiting after a certain point that got me. The game focuses around Jack, son of a famous knight who took down a dragon, but ended up dying shortly afterward. His dream is to follow in his fathers footsteps and become a knight as well, in order to become a knight he had to fight in a battle arena.
If he manages to defeat his opponent he will become a knight, unfortunately for him the knight he faces is a girl, by the name of Ridley. Without breaking a sweat she kicks his ass and wins the battle, Jack feeling like his dream has been crushed, he is still administrated into the knighthood when they found out who his father was. He then joins a small group of knights consisting of Captain Ganz and his former opponent Ridley who turns out to be of high status in the kingdom.

After a few missions and a basic storyline missions, Ridley becomes injured in a battle due to Jacks incompetence. With that Captain Ganz and Jack are removed from the knighthood and asked to leave the castle. Jack then becomes a mercenary for hire, while Ganz joins a gang of thieves, this is when the storyline slows down to a mere crawl. Living each day doing so many sub missions and quests to the point your head hurts, and it isn't even fun.

The city is fairly large and you can recruit members to join your group, so there is extra soldiers when needed. Some will even pay you to let them join, others you have to do small quests or find to get them to join. But here is where the real kick to the teeth comes in, despite how many soldiers and comrades you have in your group. When the storyline starts to pick up again, you will be given an option, depending on which you choose you can either keep all your comrades or loose them. In my eyes it's a loose, loose situation for the ending you achieve with this decision.

At times it felt like they were trying to put humor into the game, with typical Japanese motions that is over played in a lot of animes.

Some of the armor that is given will made me cringe, some of them are really awful looking and will show in cut scenes. The worse one I remember is this tight red one piece jump suit. When he walks he moves his ass side to side as he shimmies across the floor, I had to equipped with with lower defense, because seeing a sixteen-year-old dressed in something like that will burn into your memory forever. The only thing I liked about the armor was Fayt's armor that can be required along with a blue wig to make Jack resembles Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Fayt.

I really don't enjoy waiting around for the story to pick up or constant run around missions that aren't really necessary for leveling. The only thing I really enjoyed is the battle system, with Jack as a leader, you are able to call out orders to your comrades, and can even learn new commands from books and scrolls you can buy or find. Your army can consist of humans or of mythical creatures such as Elves, and Goblins. Out of all the characters my favorite would have to be the Light Elf Gil, who is not only shiny, but he is very powerful and a useful ally.

I seriously wouldn't recommend playing this game, unless you are a heavy fan of JRPGs which I am not anymore. If they tweaked the game even a little more it could be good enough for a sequel, but instead we got this game that has no real value.

Tales Favorites

With the new Tales of Vesperia that just came out and me regrettably unable to get it at the moment. I figured to ease my broken soul I would talk about my three favorite Tales games.
Number 3:

Tales of Eternia

Tales of Eternia is the original name to the English dubbed Tales of Destiny II, it was the first game I bought from a pawnshop, as well as the first Tales game I played. The story starts of pretty basic, Reed and his best friend Farah stumble upon an alien girl who speaks a weird language. After the village gets attacked due to the girls sudden appearance Reid, Farah, and the girl soon to be known as Meredy get banished from the village. They set out on a quest picking up their good childhood friend Keele, in search to find someone who can speak to Meredy. Soon it all leads to a great catastrophe known as the Great Fall will happen, as both the world Reid from and Meredy world is soon going to be destroyed by it.

This game has a lot of charm to it, each character has their own personal traits and humor every so often. There is a lot of side quests and hidden summonings such as Maxwell, and Shadow. The combat is fairly good, the only problem is using the special powers of Reid. It requires pressing all the buttons at the same time in order for it to work. It is much needed during the final battle in order to live and defeat the final boss. It took me quite some time to learn how to do it but once I did it was well worth the ending.
There is love story between Keel and Meredy, but Keel being too much of a nerdy coward was unable to tell Meredy how he feels.

The game was so good and well played that they ported it to PSP in Japan and even made an MMORPG based around it, which is regrettably canceled now.

My favorite part is when you go to this one hotel (the one with the fighting arena in the town) and while Reid and company stays there. Reid hears a rumor about a ghost that will ask "Where is my feet?" If you have your feet sticking out the ghost will take their feet for their own. The first night staying there they sleep on the 2nd floor, and sure enough Reid wakes up in the middle of the night as a strange voice is asking for his feet. Reid being too scared to move didn't get much sleep, second night you will stay on the third floor and sure enough Reid hears the voice again this time louder. He runs over to Keeles bed trying to wake him. Only to get a nerd sleep talking reply, and Reid is once again too scared to sleep. Third night you stay on the forth floor, and in the middle of the night Reid once again hears the voice and it was really loud. Freaking out the ghost would take his feet he makes a run only to fall over something in the middle of the floor. Waking everyone up, the lights turn on and there is a cat that Reid tripped over. The house maid comes in and explains that she taught a cat to say "Where is my feet?" as some kind of humor and to keep people from finding the cat and throwing it out. It's so stupid it's funny.

Number 2:

Tales of the Abyss

This game deserves the praise it got from so many, the game itself will leave a warm tingling feeling when you complete it. The game is based on two themes, existence and destiny, the game revolves around Luke a spunky smart-ass, who got handed everything to him on a silver platter. He comes from a wealthy family with close relations to the royal family in the city he lives in. At a young age Luke was kidnapped and later found with no recollection up to that point. With those events that happened, Luke was unable to leave the mansion for his family feared it would happen again. One day an assassin came to kill his teacher the master of sword fighting Van. Luke tries to protect Van by interfering with the killers attack only to be teleported to another place with the assassin. From there the story starts to move as Luke and Tear make new aquantices and learn about different threats that inhabit the world that they try to put a stop to. This game has a lot of plot twists and stuff that will bring tears to your eyes.

The character growth in it is something I really admire, such as Guy's fear with females and how he come to terms with it. As well as Luke's selfish attitude, as he turns into someone you can rely on as he learns his through past mistakes.
The combat has improved a lot, you can modify your magic to fit your style or not even be a magic user at all, like I did. It has a lot of side quests that are fun, there are costumes you can obtain with each character. It is also the only Tales game I know of besides Tales of the Worlds that doesn't use summonings.

The only thing I didn't like about this game was the loading, it takes 2 mins for it to loard the next area and even some fights.

The game is such a big hit that in October of this year this is going to be an anime based on it. Including the Japanese opening of the game, Karma. But to tell the truth I prefer the English guitar solo, compared to the Japanese singing.

Number 1:

Tales of Symphonia

This game has gained so much popularity through and through, so much that there is a sequel coming out for the Wii fairly soon. The game as well has a theme of Racism, mostly amongst the Elves and half Elves. Half Elves are considered be lower then dirt and are very discrimated amongst everyone. So much that a lot of the characters you meet have to hide the fact that they are half Elves and claim to be just Elves. But that's not the only trouble there is also The Ranches. A place where human slavery occurs, and a certain amount of humans are forced to work by the Desians. But wait that's not all, the world is getting depleted by Mana the source of life, due to the world dying "The Chosen One" has to become an angel and die for the world in order to restore Mana to the world.

Yes, this world is deeply troubled by so many disasters that it's very much troubling especially to a sword weilder Lloyd who always seeks justice. Raised by a dwarf after his monther died when he was a child, Lloyd lived with his best friend Genis, his sister Raine and the Chosen One Collet. After the departing of Collet and Raine as well as a mysterious man named Kratos, Collet and company seek out certain towers she must climb to become an angel. Lloyd and Genis were left behind but got into some trouble when they visisted a human ranch. When the Desians found out they attacked the village hurting a lot of people, due to this Lloyd and Genis were exiled from the village and set forth to catch up to Collet's party. The story is full of twists and turns as Lloyd learns more about his past, and about the future of the world.

The battle system is pretty decent for Gamecube, and the cut scenes are perfect with the close ups of characters facial expressions, which I happen to love a lot in games. There is a lot of costumes, side quests, and a lot of humor too boot. The only thing I didn't like about this game and it's very small is the dim witted Collet, she is probably the most sorriest character ever and I mean that literly. She doesn't ever stop apologising, she even apologisies because she aplologiesed. It gets really annoying really fast luckily at one part of the game she looses her voice for a large chunk of the game.

There is an anime and a manga released because of the fan ratings for this game. I am a sheep from this game at times I wish I could hate it but in all truths I love it. The storyline, cutscenes, characters personalities, and side quests all got to me.

The Origami Killer

Quantic Dreams had recently released a new trailer for Heavy Rain, the decided to get rid of the first woman that was presented in "The Casting" with one who seems to be more then just a robotic deformed face. I am glad the design of the game has modified a lot from the previous trailer.

Not much is known about the game only that the story will be like Indigo Prophecy without the supernatural element (that pretty much ruined the game experience for so many.) I noticed in the trailer they no longer use the Red, Green, Blue, Yellow symbols to do the quick time performances it's buttons instead. Hopefully more would be know about this game, despite Indigo Prophecy's flaws I still find it a pretty good game. Hopefully this one will be just as good.

What's with Quantic Dreams and dead animals, do they like Taxidermy or something? I remembered a lot of stuffed critters in Agetha's house from Indigo Prophecy and now this house in Heavy Rain.