The Evil Teams of Pokemon

Originally, this was supposed to be a top 10 list of the best evil organizations. But, frankly, I couldn't find that many. The only thing that came up when I looked up the most popular baddie teams was the evil Pokemon groups. And then I thought, "Why don't I just rate the Pokemon teams?" And here we are.

I'll be judging the teams on the grounds of

1. Effectiveness (How good the team was at their purpose, even if all of the teams were defeated by a kid)
2. Complexity (How interesting the group was)
3. Fun (Simply how awesome the team was, in design, in purpose, in mannerisms, etc.)

(Also keep in mind the teams I am talking about are the ones from the games, not the anime/manga)

Team Rocket

Let's start with the what's probably the most recognizable of the Pokemon teams. Team Rocket was the original organization that was trying to take over the world in the games. Why? Well...why not? Team Rocket doesn't really have the more complex motives of the other teams, and in my opinion, it's a welcome...pre-change. There's no "good intentions but extreme methods" here. Their motto is literally "Steal Pokémon for profit. Exploit Pokémon for profit. All Pokémon exist for the glory of Team Rocket." They operated in plain sight, using the Game Corner to bring in legal profits while running their illegal operations right under everyone's noses.

... Admittedly, hiding a button under a poster is a pretty idiotic way to control the entrance to your secret base, but it was still pretty awesome.

But what really makes this team stand out is their leader. I'll say it now, Giovanni is my favorite Pokemon team leader by far.

Not only is he the leader of a huge organization that operates inhumane tests on Pokemon, cuts off the tails of Slowpokes, and just plain breaks into people's houses, but he's also the 8th gym leader. Why is he the 8th gym leader?

...good question. 

Team Rocket would be nearly impossible to keep together without Gio's leadership. Once TR hears that their leader has disappeared, they shut down. Three years later, the executives of TR actually try to get him to come back to them. And he would have, if not for a...weird...time travel...thingy. 

Oh, and he has a son, who is your rival in H/G/C, so Team Plasma totally copied from Team Rocket.

Effectiveness: 10/10

Complexity: 4/10

Fun: 8/10

Team Magma/Aqua

A stark change from Team Rocket, Team Aqua and Team Magma were the the first teams to have sort of a anti-heroish role (which, again, Team Plasma would copy). Both teams seek to help both humans and Pokemon, so it's not as if they're seeking personal gain.

Now what I will admit that they are is extremely stupid. Their "master plan" is to enlarge their respective regions (land and water) using legendary Pokemon.

...First of all, they do not realize the ecological ramifications of changing the whole friggin' geology of Earth, and second of all, they have no idea how they're going to control said legendary Pokemon. I blame the leadership.

Also, I hate Team Aqua for not stopping me when I left their base without the Master Ball (as the base CAVED IN a while later), therefore forcing me to capture Kyogre with a crap load of Ultra Bulls.

Effectiveness: 7/10

Complexity: 8/10

Fun: 7/10

Team Galactic

Not much to say about this team; they're Team Rocket, but without the style, the charm, the sneakiness, or the iconic mastermind. What they do have is a very stupid collection of haircuts, and that alone makes them my least favorite team on this list. The only thing that makes them remarkable is that their plan is pretty huge; it's not just the world they're dealing with, they want to destroy and rebuild the entire universe.

Effectiveness: 8/10

Complexity: 3/10

Fun: 1/10

Team Plasma

Take the weird costumes of Galactic, the anti-heroic personalities of Aqua and Magma, and the father-son weirdness of Rocket, and you got Plasma. So it flops in the creativity department (as well as the costumes category), but they aren't that bad. I find it amusing how they flat out build a stadium to get people to release their Pokemon. Of course, the leader's just a power-hungry manipulator, which kind of irks me (can't we just have one freaky as heck leader in a video game who's actually a semi-good guy?). But seriously, if there's one good thing about Team Plasma, it's N.

And that's all.

Effectiveness: 9/10

Complexity: 8/10

Fun: 5/10

500 Character Review: Don't Starve (Steam/Google Chrome)

Don't Starve is a great game, with a light scare. It's a sandbox game, but actually quite unique. You can build forts and befriend pigs. Resources have to be The map isn't endless, but it is pretty big. It's semi-hardcore; you can be resurrected, but it's difficult. Keep in mind that there's no tutorial. The art and music are great, sort of the style of A Series of Unfortunate Events. This is a fairly new game, but new updates are coming about every two weeks.

Rating: 9/10
Character Count: 464

(Note: As of this blog post, there is a sale going on. Buy the game in the next 17 hours at a reduced price, and you'll get an extra key code free! And it's only $11.99.)

Alan Wake (360) Review

Did I mention that it's an Xbox exclusive? Ha! Take that, Heavy Rain!

Every now and then you might stumble upon a unknown gem, a game that is so friggin' awesome, but yet you never hear of. Alan Wake is...kind of like that. I say that because it is actually very well received, most websites rating it almost 5 stars. For some reason though, I never hear about anyone talking about it. You hear about Halo 4, or The Last of Us, and heck, even Fire Emblem: Awakening. But only recently did I even  know that this game existed. My friend and I were wearing a hole in the floor of our local Gamestop, when he stumbled upon Alan Wake. He excitedly begged me to try this game out, and I finally gave in. I'm not really a fan of any type of horror game (see my Ellie review), but I decided to give this game a shot. And boy, did it deliver. 

Premise

Think Mario with shadow zombies and guns.

Here it is: Alan Wake, a famous writer with writer's block, goes to Bright Falls, Washington for a vacation with his wife. His wife gets captured by a mysterious dark force, and Alan must use literal light to save her. Along the way he encounters the Taken, people whose minds and bodies are being controlled by the darkness. He finds pages of a manuscript seemingly foretelling the future, and finds evidence of another writer from the past.

Yeah, kind of sounds more like a bad sci-fi movie, doesn't it? Actually, it's executed quite well. You can walk around while characters are talking, and the atmosphere is very convincing, but more on that later. I will admit, I did need to use Wikipedia more than once to figure out what was going on, but for the most part it was pretty clear. The ending was very open ended, leaving room for a sequel (not the DLC, which I haven't played. An actual sequel is in the making), and it left me wanting more. I will admit, it is kind of short, with no kind of multiplayer implemented, but with a huge amount of collectibles, you'll have your hands full. It is also kind of weird when you're killing all of these Taken and yet no one notices that fifty or so people have disappeared in one night.

GamePlay

ALAN! BATTERIES IN FLASHLIGHT! NOW!

(WARNING! WALL OF TEXT AHEAD)

Alan Wake is a third-person shooter game...with flashlights. Wait, wait, come back, it's not as idiotic as it sounds. Actually, the light system is fantastic. The Taken have a protective covering of darkness around them, which can only be broken by a light source. Once the darkness is gone, feel free to shoot away. Let's go over the types of guns. You have your standard six-shot revolver, of course, and you have your heavy weapons, the double barreled shotgun, the pump action shotgun, and the hunting rifle. The hunting rifle is the second best gun in the game, next to the flare gun. Hunting rifle ammo is hard to find, so use it sparingly (I won't even question the amount of unlocked emergency boxes with loaded guns in them. I thought this game took place in Texas). Also keep in mind that you can only hold one heavy weapon at any one time. Finally, we have the most powerful gun in the game: the flare gun. It can only hold one shot, and when you find one, you know that you're about to get swarmed. It's pretty much a rocket launcher in pistol form. Next we have the light sources. There's the flashlight, the heavy-duty flashlight, the lantern, yadda yadda. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, but the point is, you need batteries. Why? Because you'll be holding down LT throughout the entire game. The left trigger turns on the boost (I have no idea how you can "boost" a flashlight, but...), which burns away the darkness faster. Without the boost, the Taken will almost always reach you before the darkness burns away, so you'll be using it a lot. The boost recharges on its own,  though slowly, so you'll need a healthy supply of batteries, which are about as common as pistol ammo, it seems. Batteries instantly fill up the boost meter somewhat, and when you run out of them, you start panicking. There are also some other light sources, like generators, spotlights, and the such, which help you out, if you can keep them on. Also in the game are two kinds of light-based weapons. The flare, which can help you hold the Taken at bay while you either hold it and walk or drop it, and the flashbang grenade (again, don't ask me how the these are realistically find-able , which is pretty much a flare gun without the distance or accuracy. My personal favorite weapon is the car. From time to time you'll be able to drive a car. It's just a heck of a lot of fun boosting the headlights and ramming into Taken. As for the Taken, you have the normal Taken, the big Taken, the super speedy Taken, etc. There's also the poltergeists, which are a big pain to fight, since you're constantly getting hammered with barrels. Oh, and the ravens that swarm you are pretty hard to hit, so you'll have a good amount of difficulty (I haven't even tried Nightmare mode). And for all of you collectible junkies, you'll have your hand full in this game. You collect coffee thermoses scattered around the game, as well as manuscript pages, which give you a bit of insight into the story (and some can only be found in Nightmare mode). There are also TVs and radios, which provide a bit of info about Bright Fall. All in all, the gameplay is excellent.

 Presentation

THE CLEARANCE SECTION?! ARE YOU MAD?!

I'll say it now: Alan Wake is not really that scary. Is it exciting? Yes. Will you grip the controller when the camera swipes behind you to a Taken rushing at you with an axe? All the time. But it's not really Slender scary. Which is good, because I probably wouldn't be able to finish it if it was. No, this game is more along of the lines of "threateningly creepy". At it does that very well. The lighting is appropriately off-putting, the graphics are pretty good, the voice acting is decent, and there's always a threatening feel to the game. This game takes heavy influence from Stephen King and his works, and it pays off. Every time you find a working streetlight you have a brief repose from the fight in the darkness, but you always know that you have to go back in. There are some daytime sequences, in which you don't actually fight, but they're mostly just used as a way to move the story forward, and the light never lasts for long. I can't say much about the music, because I don't really remember much about it (I was too busy sprinting for my life). You can kind of shake or push over objects by walking into them, which has absolutely no purpose than for pure cheap thrills. Heck, they have stacked cans at some places that you can shoot. I have no idea why it's in there, I'm just glad it is. I suppose the only gripe I have with the presentation is that the face models don't move very well;they seem very unnatural. But that's just a small thing.

Final Score (out of 30)

Pros:

• Story is interesting (+7)
• Graphics are attractive (+5)
• Overall gameplay is excellent (+10)
• Little bits like manuscript pages and push-able items are great (+6)
• Atmosphere matches the tone of the game (+6)
• Difficulty is great, and can be adjusted (+4)
• Pretty cheap for such a well-received game (+7)

Cons:

• Story can be kind of confusing, especially near the end (-3)
• Short length (-6)
• No multiplayer (-3)
• Music is unremarkable (-3)
• Not very frighting (-2)

Tally: 

28/30

0-500 Character Review of Super Scribblenauts (DS)

Ok, this is kind of a new thing I want to try: I'm going to try to write a 500-character or less review of Super Scribblenauts for the DS. Why? Because I have nothing better to write about. Oh, and to tell you guys that I now have a facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Coldhardcashstudios/360765254032200#!/pages/Coldhardcashstudios/360765254032200
Long link for the win. Alright, let's get to the review:

A great expansion to the previous game, Super Scribblenauts keeps the essence of Scribblenauts while adding a new adjective system. Now you can make a blue, invincible cat, or use a giant potion on a holy SMG. It allows for a lot more creativity and fun, especially if you play on the playground mode. The amount of main levels, however, is kind of disappointing, and they try to force “adjective levels”, which really aren’t that fun. All in all, I’m giving this game a rating of 7/10.

(Character Count: 486)

My Minecraft Server!

Hello, folks! Banndx, Fancynipples, and I have made a minecraft server of our own! It's a simple faction pvp server, but we're adding new things all the time! Show some support and check it out!

IP: 192.69.196.155:25565

(PS: When you first go to the server, tell or /mail me (Kaito) that you got here from the blog. I might just give you a shout out on the next post!)

Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS) Half-review

That's right, it's half-review time again! So what's on the list of games I haven't finished yet?
Well, first, Fire Emblem, and then...Alan Wake for the Xbox, but that's for another post.

It's a shame that the Fire Emblem series hasn't gotten more attention, because it's up there with games like Final Fantasy (except in this case, FE's getting better). Think of it kind of like FF Tatics, except...a lot better. Good music, amazing characters, great storyline, deep gameplay, incredible graphics, I could just go on and on about this game.

And you know what? I will. Prepare yourselves.

So what's the story? Well...if you've played one FE game before, you know the beginning: Royalty, prophesies, a travelling group, multiple countries, yeah, yeah, it's easy to dismiss. But this game actually takes quite a bit more turns and twists than the other games. Yeah, it's kind of similar, but that's not really a bad thing. You never really know where the story's going to go. But really, the story's the least of the awesome things in this game. I feel sorry for those who got a Vita instead of a 3DS.

Now the crowning aspect of the Fire Emblem games is the permadeath. Once a character dies, that's it. Their storyline is done. You never see them again, and you can't use them in battle. The only exceptions are the characters that are important to the story. If either your avatar (I'll get to that in a bit), and Chrom, the royal blood character of the game, die, the game ends and you go back to your last savepoint, AKA, the beginning of the battle. Some other characters need to appear in cutscenes, so when they "die", they just can't appear in battle anymore, being wounded. This might not seem like much, but focus on the fact that battle is the main way to get support points (again, more on that later). The permadeath can actually be turned off in this game, noted by the "casual mode". I've found most people choose to go with the "classic mode", and so did I, as it does make the game feel much more intense, as you could lose a unit at any moment. The permadeath is made much more potent by the fact that each character has a sort of history and traits. They're not just nameless chess pieces, these are fleshed-out relatable people. I've found myself restarting the battle multiple times just to keep a unit from dying. As of now, I've lost one unit, and...yeah. I have about a dozen units, but it still hurts to lose that one unit. The only reason I didn't restart the battle is because I wasn't sure if I could win without having to sacrifice a unit. The fleshed out characters and the permadeath alone are worth it to buy this game. But what's the difference between this $40 game and a five-buck GBA Fire Emblem? That part lies in the gameplay.

I forgot to mention this, but Awakening is the best rated FE game in the series, and I believe that's because the game designers knew exactly what to keep, what new things to implement, and exactly what we all hated playing the older games. The game runs on strategy. One wrong move, one switch of the wrong weapon, and you've just lost your favorite character. I won't go too much into the general gameplay, because you either know how to play it, and if you don't the tutorial is very concise, and very informative. So what's changed from other FE games? Well, I'm not sure if this was in other games, but there's an "optimize" option for inventories. Basically, the computer puts the items it thinks will do the best with certain characters' into their inventories. I use it all the time, though some people might enjoy doing it manually. Another new feature is the ability to put two characters together. Basically, one character adds his or her stats to another character's, and the two can switch places (one adds his/her stats, while the other fights). This replaces the "rescue" feature of other FE games, and frankly, I team up characters every chance I get. At the beginning of the game, you get to make your own character. True to Japanese style, there's about a dozen choices for hair color and three whole choices for body. You get to name your character, choose his/her top strength and weakness, the birthdate, you can even choose the voice! That's right, there's voices in this game. They rarely match what the words on the screen (mostly the voices are exclamations, like Eek!, but they are a great touch during battle), but it's still pretty fun. The only thing is, at least for the male character, you get three voices...which all sound mostly the same. And it turns out my character looks just like Chrom (I should have chosen a different color of hair), so it's really hard for me to tell who's who. There's also side quests, in which if you reach a certain requirement, you can get a new character (with support conversations), a new weapon, etc.

Another key feature of any FE game is the support system. Now, most of the previous support systems were actually very difficult. You had to have two character together for a certain amount of turns, and then they had to "talk" during battle! Yeah. It was very annoying, and the difficulty of raising support between troops was raised by the fact that you could only do this five times for each character in the entire game. Guess what? This game gets it right: There's no limit to support sessions, you actually accumulate points by having character either team up, be in spaces next to each other, or talk in the barracks in the map menu (you can also find items in the barracks). Once two character get enough point, you actually can trigger the conversations on the map menu, instead of having to continually put two characters together during battle like rabbits. Speaking of which, the support conversations are great too! Whether they be romantic or bromantic, they're always entertaining. Some of them are so hilarious that I don't even want to spoil them for you. I've heard once two characters get a high enough support rating (and are compatible), they can even get married and have kids, who can eventually join the team. Don't ask me how that's possible, since the events of the game are one after another, but it sounds interesting enough to check out.

You may be asking yourself by this point, "Oh, great and mighty Kaito, may your money flow out of your gold-engraved pockets, is there anything negative you can say about this game?"
Um...uh...kind of? You see...there's DLC...
That might be a good idea or a bad idea, though I haven't seen much coming from it. There was a limited time when the first DLC was free, and...well, you're pitted against some...card-spirits-characters from other FE games...yeah, it's kind of weird. The battles are pretty fun, but I've heard that each pack of three battles only has one map where you fight. I don't know, I wasn't very interested. If you win the battle, one of the characters from the other games joins your team, but there's no support conversations for them, so I almost never use them. There is, however, a feature where you can get free special weapons simply by connecting to the Internet. Think of it as a free giveout. You can also summon past FE characters onto the map, where you can buy items from them, fight their team (if you win, the captain joins your team, so the paid DLC's pretty much useless...), or hire their captain. Overall, it's a very minor nitpick, as it doesn't get in the way of the main game at all.
What does, though, is the overuse of switching gender roles.
I'm fine with women being captains or warriors or whatever (YES, FINAL FANTASY XIII-2, WE GET IT! NOW LET ME PLAY AS NOEL!), but this one is...really overdone. I mean, I think by now switching gender roles is kind of cliched, isn't it? I mean, Disney's Mulan came out, what, fifteen years ago? And that was a movie adaption! Pretty much every other character in this game has a switched gender roll. Not that there aren't some "princess-y" characters, but still, sometimes it's for no apparent reason. I can think of four friggin' female characters who are either captains, swear (yeah, that's pretty much what earned the T rating. Great job, one character who swears, and it's the female character), or are near-barbaric rulers (again, great job.) There's even an actual Mulan character. I won't give her identity away, because, frankly, it's not really that well hidden. A central character pretends to be a boy because...I really have no idea. I'm hoping that the story will explain it. At least she's in some CGI cutscenes.

Speaking of which, the graphics are amazing. The art for the FE games has always been good, but this game takes full advantage of the 3DS graphic capability. The fights and some of the cutscenes have 3D models (you can even see the fight in first-person mode!), and the overall look of the game is spectacular. Every once in a while the player is treated to a awesome short CGI cutscene. Kind of like the cutscenes in Professor Layton, except...with more slicing and dicing (and no blood, evidently). Most of them are quite short, so it's a great small treat for all your hard tactical work.

So overall, how does this game hold up?
Buy it.
Now.
It's even better than Kingdom Hearts 3D.
True, I haven't finished the game, but...
Yeah, get it.
And for those of you who got a Vita?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Adventures on the Minecraft Server 3

Ok, now I might be getting into some of the more...serious stuff here. It's not like the last story where I was mowing down attackers. No, I'm going to be talking about an ongoing battle which I have little hope to win. The thing is, this battle effects everyone on the server.

First off, you remember how I was demoted? Well, due to a recent demotion of another Admin (the Co-Owner actually was there, as was my friend and I), I was promoted back to Admin. Awesome! No more hours of enchanting books to use on my armor and swords (PS: If you PvP me, I have my "lesser" items on me, meaning I'm not using my best armor, so you might win)! And as always, I've tried to keep the server safe, enforcing the rules (No overuse of lang or caps, no advertising other servers without permission, no PvP logging, etc). And this is the major problem. For the past weeks, I have been clashing hard with other staff. Why? Because most of them feel like they can do whatever they want. Now, there are some exceptions (Bannx, you're fine, congrats on your promotion, Kayla, even though you're not on much, you do good work, Green, you try very hard), which actually means there's on particular staff member that has done things that others have been demoted for early on in the server. And I shall name him: Addy (Short version of minecraft name). Addy swears quite a bit, which really irks me, because he's a higher rank than me, and I can't do anything to enforce the rules that he is breaking. He set in a "Rap time" where he can swear within reason after 10 pm Mountain Time. I do not have much of a problem with that, except that he doesn't know the meaning of reason. He goes way overboard. Furthermore, a few days ago, he used the /kill command on Banndx, who was just a donor at that time. He lost a lot of his heavily enchanted items, and it was overall unfair and wrong. I reimbursed Banndxstudios, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Addy abuses his powers. Thinking about it, I can not remember one thing that Addy has done to try to keep this server clean. Now this is the big one for me, of course: he pushes me around constantly. He has this sort of warped idea that he's the ruler of everyone under him. He swears, because he knows he's not going to get punished (We'll get to that in a bit), he makes fun of me (about as much as Mainville, WHO GOT BANNED, BY THE WAY), and pretty much overall rejoices in his power. Now by this time you should be thinking, "why the heck is he still a head-admin?" I'll tell you why: The only thing that matters when staff is chosen is if the leaders think that you're fun. That's the solemn truth. Mrsosick, the co-owner, gladly punishes me for...I don't know, pointing out the obvious truth, while Addy can say whatever the heck he wants, despite my actual SCREENSHOTS of proof. Sosick does nothing, because he's Addy friend and that's all that matters when it comes to staff. You know what happened when I set up these accusations on the server? When I mockingly said that all you needed to do to become successful is swear and laugh with the higher-ups? I got banned for a day. All the while, Addy is laughing, swearing, and...pretty much being the prime example of a bully. Because they're not really looking for people to help the server. I'm one of the few ones to enforce the rules. Sure, some of the others do that, but the other half of the time they're laughing at the profanities that are being spewed. Why even have a chat rule at all? If the staff can ignore the rules, why should any of the normal players follow them? I don't want to seem like the goody-two-shoes, but I have been on the server long before any of the present staff (With the exception of Green and Mads). I have seen people who clearly can't handle their power get promoted above me. I'm fine with people getting promoted, as long as they don't abuse it. I don't want to be co-owner. I'm fine with being Admin. I don't want power. I want the staff to either stop looking the other way, or just make it an anarchy server, which pretty much means there's no reason for any staff. Heck, I even pointed out that the Co-owner swore, and I got punished for that. Why? I'm just doing my job, heck of a lot more than others are doing. And yet I have to be bullied and mocked nearly every day when I log on? And why do I keep going? Because I want to watch this server grow, and it will not grow as long as this abuse of power continues. Mads isn't innocent either. She looks the other way every single time Addy breaks a rule. She'll lay down the law on normal players, of course, but she'll just laugh whenever Addy makes a crude or offensive joke. Now the obvious question is: Where is the owner in all of this? He's been gone on personal stuff for a while, which is perfectly understandable, but he's been back for two days.
And nothing has changed. The guy who was demoted so I could become admin? He has a rank of his own. Ok, seems like nothing. Addy still kicks me around. Mrsosick still does little to defuse the situation (he belives that the best way to stop the arguing is demoting. Demoting me, anyway). I'm still admin, but heck with it, the biggest offender is a staff a higher rank than me. You know, if the rest of the staff is going to hold a philosophy of "might makes right", why shouldn't I do the same? I probably would get punished for it, despite the fact that the other staff are doing the same thing. This server isn't going to get bigger with staff like this. If there's a better person to take my spot, sure, give it to him/her. It'd hurt, but I'd understand. He/she'd probably get bullied too. All the other staff thinks I'm a boring stick in the mud, when their version of fun is pushing people around.

But I guess that's life, right? The leaders will do whatever they want, and the people who are trying to better their domain get knocked down. I guess I'll just have to get back up.

Adventures on the Minecraft Server 2

Ok, so I'm having trouble coming up with ideas about what to write in this...episode? Chapter? I mean, a lot of things have happened, but they're mostly minor stuff, and the major stuff is...sensitive. Oh, by the way, a guy named MrSoSick on the server was promoted to co-owner. Congrats! Even though I'm still head-mod...not sure why....
Oh, and there's a new survival games map, FWI.
And chests are now unlocked, unless they're in a faction zone, of course, so it's like any other faction server, which is not a complaint.

So....Ok, I'll tell ya one of my older stories. I was...admin at the time, I think. Maybe mod. Either way, I had pretty good armor and weapons. So here's the story: There's this guy who's screename I'm actually going to name: Footballdude. He's a huge PvP-logger, and that's REALLY annoying. Now we have an official rule against it, so don't do it. Anyway, I challenge him to a fight, 1v1, which of course he's not going to do fairly. So he and about 5 other players are at the edge of safezone, while I'm a few blocks into the wilderness. Most everyone's telling him to man up and fight me. And he does what he always does: Run forward, attack, and run back into safezone. It wouldn't annoy me as much if he would just say he wasn't going to fight, but no, he does this for about fifteen minutes. In the meantime, these two other players are rushing me over and over. They have weak armor and swords, so I take them down in a few hits. Maybe there was more weak players attacking me, but in any case, they were only an annoyance. So the players (not football, who's still acting like a wimp) are attacking me with their bare fists, and I'm just slashing them to pieces over and over. It was one of the most epic feelings I have ever felt in minecraft. I felt like I was in a zombie apocalypse or something. You'll get your turn, readers. There will be a day when you get to be the survivor. The only problem is that even though they weren't hurting me, it was wearing down on my armor. So football's friend...who might have been MrSoSick (I don't remember, but I think it was) joins in. And he has great armor and a great sword, so he's a threat. We don't attack for a while, but we eventually go at it. And...I win. Yeah. It was pretty awesome. Now the other players are still rushing me, to the point where I have to go back to my base to get more armor. Some players are still calling for football to fight like a man. I did get some hits off him, but he always regenerates in the safezone. And if he did just go all out and tried to kill me, I would win, just from my armor and sword. So after what feels like an hour of this (I'm not the only one who's taking hits at football at this point), I hit him with my fire aspect sword, and he rushes for water. The only thing is, the water just happened to be a few blocks short of the safezone. All of the other players (I think even mrsosick) rush for him like hungry piranhas. The funny thing is, this guy who had no weapons delivered the killing blow. And I will not lie, when I saw (the guy's name, I forget) slayed Footballdude, I cheered. We all did. It didn't really bother me that I wasn't the one to kill him, it was just the sheer awesomeness of us finally killing him. I gave foot's armor to the guy who killed him (even though we couldn't find it all. *shrug*), because that's not I wanted. I just wanted him to lose. You may not understand my mindset, but you will one day, once you meet a PvP-safezone-logger. And if you do understand, cheer with me, will you? Foot was fine with his death, so there was no raging. And if there was, it would be overshadowed by the amount of "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"s and "YES!"s.

So yeah, a short-ish, maybe minor story, with shady details from it being a while ago, but for me, it's still one of my memorable moments on the server.

Ellie: Help me...please (iOS) Review

("Ellie - Help me out...please?" is owned by Ateam inc.)

Ok, so here's how I found this app: I went to the App Store, typed in "mystery" (feeling a craving for clue-hunting), scrolled down a bit, and found a free little app called Ellie - Help me out....please?. Tapping on it, I quickly found that it was a horror game. So that and other things quickly came to mind, which I have decided to put in a list format. Aren't I nice?

Pros:
The only other Ellie I have heard of is the Ellie in the upcoming game The Last of Us (which I am very hyped to see, even though I don't have a PS3). So that got me tapping on the app.

The discription said that it had multiple endings, which I love (even though it drives me insane when I'm trying to find all the endings).

It was apparently a point-and-click (or tap in this case) escape the room type game. And even though I almost always use a walkthrough on these types of games, I do indeed enjoy one from time to time.

Cons:
It's a horror game. And I scare easily. Oh, the nights after I researched Slenderman and every pokemon creepypasta I could find...

Um....that's really about it....

Oh, and I just found out today that when an app says "iPhone 3G or newer required", the iPod touch 2G counts. Sweet!

So yeah, I was hooked, and I downloaded the game.
At night.
Apparently the same people who made this game made another game called Murder Room, which I have yet to play. For the same reason I was hesitant to play this game. I just wanted to say that real quickly.
So, I looked at the home screen, which was already pretty creepy (a lot of blood, and as we all know, blood is scary. ...at least for me). There's a small options page, where you can change the text from English to Japanese, and vice versa, as well as turn off the voice that Ellie has (I had my sound off the entire time, because the music was kind of unnerving as well, so that doesn't really matter). There's also a wallpapers page, where you can unlock wallpapers depending on what ending you get (good ending and bad ending, plus the other too endings on the add-on to the game)
I went through the opening, which is made up by a bunch of pictures, and found out the story: You ducked in a run-down abandoned building when your car broke down because of an earthquake...Ok, the story already is a little weird, since you went into a building that might collapse because of the earthquake, you freaking moron. You go in a bit more and find a TV screen, where a...young-ish, possible teenage, maybe in her 20s girl? Sorry, I can never tell with the game's Japanese art, which isn't that bad, BTW. Nothing like Juniper's Knot (I'm going to have to review that sooner or later too), but OK.
You meet Ellie (I forget her last name) and she pleads with you to help her, since she's been kidnapped and held for ransom. Her kidnapper was knocked out by some rubble during the earthquake, and you need to hurry before he wakes up.
Now, about this time I thought, "Y'know what? Why the heck am I playing this at night? Screw it, I'm waiting until morning." And so I did. Unfortunately, I had some errands to do and didn't get the chance to play too much of it until that night.
I know. *facepalm*
Now, like an idiot I was too sucked in by what little I played to wait until the NEXT morning, so I started playing. And....
Yeah, I was bad at it. I looked up a walkthrough a bunch of times. I actually used a walkthrough for the entire game. So sue me. I was still having fun, and some of the puzzles have a random answer, though it has the same formula.
So I played it for about half an hour to an hour (it's quite short, but trust me, it has some lasting impact.), and...yeah, I was flipping freaked out. I won't tell you why, but you'll find out.
...the eyes...why would you draw them?
Anyway, I spent the night with earbuds in my ear, listening to youtube videos.
The weird thing is, this game doesn't really have a whole lot to scare you. I mean, if you think about it, there's very little blood in the actual game, there's not any zombies or vampires...
But DANG, those eyes. Add in a flash of thunder and BOOM, instant sleepless night.
So, how's the game itself?
Well, if you're the kind of person who likes a quick scare, this game is certainly for you. It's not a huge scare (for normal people, AKA, not me), but it's pretty flipping freaky. For all you point-and-click type people, consider trying this game out. The puzzles are pretty clever, the small story is pretty good (there's not much story, but you'll see what I mean). But if you scare easily, stay far away. If you still want to see the story, try to find a walkthrough without pictures.
Oh, and for those of you wondering about the second room, I haven't tried it out yet. I'm still recovering. I played the game literally last night. I'm probably going to play it sooner or later, but probably not for a good week. Oh, I haven't tried Murder Room yet. Thinking about it, maybe, maybe not.

...Ok. That's all. Bye!

Server IP and website

 

Adventures on the Minecraft Server part 1

Ok, so about a month or so ago I started going on this server (here's the IP: 198.12.123.54). It's a smaller server (max of 24 people), a pretty simple fac/pvp server. Except for the little fact that raiding chests is nigh impossible. Yeah. It ticked me off too. Anyway, I hung with the owner, Green for short, for a while and found myself promoted to moderator after he changed the staff! Yup. It was pretty freaking sweet. A while later, I was promoted to Admin. And then, thanks to the lie of some ex-banned players, I was demoted to head-mod (which REALLY made me mad, but I'm hoping to get promoted again sometime soon). I'm on this server nearly every day (my username is in fact Kaito9049), so if you get on the server from this blog, give me a shout out. So basically what I'm going to write about is the many adventures that I've had on this server. I may not go according to chronological order, so keep that in mind. But I'll give you the most recent major event: My demotion. Put on your seat belts, 'cause this is going to be a flipping bumpy ride!

So before I can tell you the real story, I have to give you some backstory. There's these two guys who go on the server. Mainville and Runtress, or something like that. Several weeks ago they were part of a faction that were pretty much full of bullies. That's the only word I can think of. They lied, they killed defenseless players, they swore like nuts (Main and Runt still do), they degraded others any chance they got...so yeah, they weren't very popular. Eventually Green, the owner, banned Main, who was the main guy in the fac. So the server was fairly happy for several more weeks, until Main and Runt came back. I was an admin at this point (I wasn't before, obviously), so if they messed up too many times, they were out of there again. From what I can tell, one of the other mods is friends with them and got them unbanned. Huge mistake in my opinion. Now, I'm fairly liked on the server. I mean, I'm not the favorite or anything of course, but I have my fair share of server friends, I give free things out, I used to throw speed and invisibility splash potions at people (I can't do that anymore, but that's OK). But I'm not afraid to lay down the law. I've muted, I've jailed, heck, I've even banned a guy. But those two guys hate my guts.

So minecraftian life goes without too much incident (they get a few warnings for using language and such, but nothing really major), until one day the server has only about 5 or 6 people online, including Main, Runt, the mod (not naming names) that got them unbanned, and me. I like to teleport to people, just to see how they're doing. A little more history here. Now, Green has warned me before about PVPing (that's fighting for you noobs), because he wants staff to show an example, which I can understand. But here's the thing: I'm a fighter. I like to mine, I like to raid, I like to farm, I don't like to build that much, I admit, but I freaking LOVE to fight. Except when I lose. Anyways, I don't kill the defenseless. Unless they attack me. That's my main rule most of the time: Don't attack the weak unless they attack you first, then all bets are off. I've gone against the friggin' co-owner, for crying out loud (that's another story). But I do like fair fights. I don't enchant my armor TOO much.

But here's what happened: I teleported to the mod, and saw Main and Runt taking the lapis blocks from her mansion. Naturally, I thought they're stealing from a mod, which is a no-no. The mod was there, but I thought she just didn't know what to do. I hit Main with my fist, just to get attention, and he replies with his flame sword. Ok, I kind of panicked, I admit, but as I said: Don't attack unless they attack you first. And I had super gold apples, and I still almost died! There was two of them, of course, and I killed one, but it was still close. I don't remember if I gave their items back (I'm pretty sure I did), but they were still evidently ticked. So the next day I logged back in, and I'm head mod, which has WAY less power than a admin. The only thing a head mod has over a mod is that, well, you can jail and mute mods (I think. I've never had to try). I asked Green about it and he told me some people said that I was the one who griefed another admin's house. I didn't, by the way. Grief the admin's house. And I told Green so. Of course, he didn't believe me. He left, and Main and Runt start to taunt me, which meant that of course they lied about me griefing the house (they said something about a sign that presumably I put with my name on it). So Green didn't really take the smart route, with listening to a guy who got banned and all. He says I can get my ranking back eventually, but as of now no change has happened.

The night continued with Main and Runt putting signs on their base making fun of me and even changing their faction tag to "How many types of autism does Kaito have? INFINITE!" We made them take down the signs and an admin forcefully changed the tag. And then two admins and I kept watch over the two. I had to mute both of them. So they're not really too popular with any staff except the one mod. So yeah, I am really ticked. But what can you do? There's an admin+ rank now, which I probably would have gotten if not for those....You get the idea.

Alright, that's all I have for now. Check out the server and give me a shout out. Cya!