1st April 2007 - April Fools!
OK, you guys are probably going to completely KILL me for that. Oh well. I was bored, and couldn't think of anything better. Sorry. :DThe last day of holidays. Wow. Long time. Easter soon. Should be fun.
I've been playing Deus Ex recently. I've got to France. Now to hunt down Nicolette duClare. Everyone who's played this gem will know what I'm doing. Right now, I've just left the Silhouette bunker, and am in the sewers, about to come up for air/headshots. I have EMP grenades, LAMs and tonnes of gas grenades. I have a few 30.06 rounds left, and ten rounds of 20mm HE. My Rifle and Pistol skills are Advanced. Time for fun.
In Planescape, I was told to man a rooftop. I elfed it instead. Heh. I was told to watch the entrance to the Mortuary, which is where our undead gent comes from. Then, in the square behind me, a portal opened in a statue. And an enormous tentacle emerged, grabbed someone, then slowly started retreating.
Needless to say, we all attacked it. We managed to make it let go. The portal was then closed. Everyone then went to bed, except Drakol, who went patrolling, and myself, who decided to make some... PURCHASES...
Later, when everyone was awake, I left, on my own errands. Meanwhile, the rest went out again. The met an NPC called Mother Xero, who took them to see a person in the Mortuary called Lord Madrigore. They went in, and met Lord Madrigore, the vampire we'd been hunting.
He apologised, gave them compensation for Glory, the jinkskirt he'd assaulted... then asked Ophy why his face was blue. Turns out that paint I'd put in the bowl of water he splashed his face in was rather slow-acting. Needless to say, I'd gone to a different rooftop.
The following afternoon, myself, Drakol and Demus went to visit Deadwick, a lich, while Ophy tried to get the blue paint off. He asked us to pay for a scrying spell, since he didn't care about ordinary people and thus refused to do it for the good of others. The spell should be complete by the next session. And then we bumped into some Xaosmen dressed in Dustman robes. Some cutters to wigwag with.
In CoC, we were leaving the city for Maine, in an effort to escape the cult we'd irritated. Several miles from anywhere, the leading car (mine) ran a man down. The car careened off the road, and crashed into a tree. I took some damage, and Demus took less (he was in the back). The car BEHIND, however, also hit him, also careened off the road, and hit the back of our car. Luckily, us in the front weren't any worse off.
The only place to go with the dying man was a glow about ten minutes away, which turned out to be coming from a small hunting lodge. It appeared to be where the man was from. Before arriving there, however, I made a valiant attempt to break the plot, by wanting to go to either of the towns, which were 12 hours away by foot. I failed. Oh well.
On arriving, we found a car like the two we'd crashed, and myself and Munch made another fruitless attempt to hijack the plot. Oh well. After going in, I noticed an attic in the hall. We continued on into the living room, where some of us started having halucinations. Mine was blood leaking from the chimney. Since I lost no san from witnessing it, I started yelling at the ghost, ghoul or poultergeist to clean up. On looking away, then looking back, I expressed gratitude that it had. And then picked up an occult book on legends and myths, reading about a thing called the Spirit of Past Summer, or something of that ilk.
We soon found out that the man we had run over had come from here (told you), and had gone quite quietly mad. He wrote of his wife killing his son, and him pushing his wife down the stairs into the cellar. After reading this, there were a few seconds pause, and then, as one, we decided to barricade the living room. Then, while kauthon's NPCed character maintained a vigil over the man, we ventured into the next room: the kitchen.
We found the entrance into the cellar, being held closed, rather ominously, by the rather heavy kitchen table. The larder contained some supplies, but not much else. We continued on, to a corridor, and some bedrooms. At some point, the NPC called out that the man had died. So, Demus went back and created a ward around the body. Once he returned, we continued into the rest of the bedrooms.
In the middle one, we found the body of the boy lying as if asleep in bed, but with his throat slit. After Munch's character performed the Last Rites on him, we went into the last room, and found a skull in a scarf, which I grabbed. We then went into the attic, and found a bone flute and book in a chest. The book described how a prejudiced idiot built his house on what local Indians called the home of a bad spirit. Oh great. An Indian burial ground. At which point, Demus left.
A few moments later, before we could finish, we heard a scream from the living room. We all ran back, and found, to our horror, that the boy had been possessed and had attacked Demus and the NPC, who was unconscious, and that the other body hadn't been properly contained. It had also attacked. However, Demus had... let's see now, five pistols, one Winchester, one shotgun and a hunting rifle. In short, he was our tank. And he had taken them all out. And was covered in blood.
At this point, Munch and myself went outside to get the spirit to talk to us. Nothing. Then Drakol ran out, saying that the Major (Demus) was possessed. We ran back in, and tried to go in through the door in the hall. It had been barricaded. We had to go the long way through the house. And the kitchen door was also barricaded. We rammed the door open, just in time to see Demus leaping down into the cellar with the NPC. We gave chase, with me in the middle.
At the bottom, Demus slit the NPCs throat, killing him and awakening eldritch powers that man shouldn't what ought to have. Munch was tripped by the wife hiding under the stairs, and crashed into Demus. Drakol came in brandishing a syringe filled with twice the normal dose of morphine ("It's the Major! Of COURSE I'll use twice the dose!"), tripped, and nearly broke the syringe several times. Eventually, Demus got anaesthetised, and we had the other zombie to deal with.
I had tried throw a silver bowl at Demus, to no effect. I then tried to throw some other stuff at the second zombie, to no effect. And then failed to shoot it (highs when I didn't need them. Woo.). Finally, we dug up the skeleton that had been buried here. We recapitated it, and the spirit appeared, and mimed playing the flute. Drakol did, and his teeth were all blown out. Munch completed the melody, and banished the evil spirit. We were given tonnes of SAN back, and told to buy the property and restore it, ie tear down the cabin and put the stones originally used to contain the evil back in their proper places. And we would regain more SAN over time whenever we visit it. As a result, I'm back on 91 SAN!
We also played a brief Planar Chaos draft tournament. I won once, against Ophy. In fact, Ophy lost every round, and Demus won every round. My deck was found wanting in some cases. Now to mod my Dimir deck and my Selesnya deck.
I've also heavily modified my Rogues deck. It's now 95 cards (10 more than before), and is focussed entirely on one thing: control. I've got four Scrags, three Face in the Crowds, no Ferrous Ferrets (they were deflecting my Scrags and Snake Eyes), no Tremor Engines (I'm saving them for a Rogue/Banker deck, where I can steal what Tremor engine puts in my opponent's graveyard, and raise what it put in mine). It should operate better now.
Now, to Psychonauts.
In this game, you have to wander through various people's consciousnesses, removing Mental Cobwebs, clearing up Emotional Baggage by finding the luggage tags and bringing them to the associated bags, i.e. duffel bag tag to duffel bag, finding repressed emotions, collecting figments of the person's imagination, and fighting mental enemies, including Censors, who censor thoughts that are unacceptable to society and all foreign object, e.g. you, and inner demons, that explode when close/killed.
The game is both incredibly funny and darkly disturbing. In one level, you have to deal with Censors in the well-ordered mind of a supreme Psychonauts. Unfortunately, you mess up. The Modernist black-and-white cube of his mind starts to fragment, and become objects related to his childhood. It's fun to kill infinite amounts of Censors on a giant bed... till you come to the first memory, that of the agent's mother dying when he was in nappies. And the landscape suddenly takes on a macabre element, suggesting that this man repressed all of this, and it's now breaking through.
What REALLY makes Psychonauts, though, is the powers.
First, you have a Psy-punch, which occurs when you attack. Then, you get Pyrokinesis. The Pyrokinesis lesson ends with "And what have you learned?" "Burning stuff is FUN." "That it is, m'boy!" Then comes Telekinesis. And with it, a whole new way to kill enemies. Instead of hitting them till the explode, now you can throw them into trees, buildings, each other, or the sea! Then is Invisibility. I don't think I need to tell you how much fun THAT is.
Those ones you get by increasing ranks. After them, your powers start upgrading.
Somewhere in there, you also learn others from other people. You gain Psi-Blast, which is one of two powers that uses ammo. It's like a small gun, which uses ammo called Little Balls Of Hate. You also learn Levitation, which allows you to create a small ball out of your thought bubble (yes), Aang-style, which allows you to go faster and jump higher. And, even if the power isn't active, it allows you to grab your thought bubble (I'm serious) and float with it. Like an umbrella. Or a ribbon chute from MDK. You also gain Shield, which protects you from damage (duh), and Clairvoyance, which allows you to see the world through the target's eyes. Later, you also get Confusion, which also uses ammo, and causes enemies to go the wrong way and miss. When used on you, your keys are switched and flipped, and your powers are shuffled.
Overall, a great game. Niggles? Collisions detection is hit-and-miss. And the menu is weird to navigate. And the map is useless on the mental battlefield. However, it's still a brilliant game, made by Tim Schafer, writer of Monkey Island games and designer of Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango and Full Throttle, and his team at Double Fine. Get it. You won't regret it. I promise.
Well, I think that's all. Sorry to all who were genuinely worried about the continued existance of this place.
-KB.
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