Lost in the Nightmare

I’m kind of a horror game slut so when I found this game on the internet I thought, why the hell not? Lost in the Nightmare isn’t exactly a well known title. The circle of people that have actually played it might be able to cram into a phone booth together. The game was made in Turkey I guess. That would explain why the game is in Turkish. Well… it’s translated into English to an intelligible degree for the most part. There are times where you get phrases that obviously don’t translate to English too well.

The game isn’t survival horror , (which is probably the most popular sub genre.) It’s in first person and it’s more like a point and click adventure game with horror elements. The plot is that you’re a detective that came to the small rural town of Karabalta to investigate the disappearance of some kids that went camping a while ago. While investigating you get mixed up in this story about a supposed murderer in town that got acquitted and a legend about some occult guy who made some ritualistic killings. Anyway, you play as this guy…

Burak Guney, who bares a striking resemblance to Harry Mason from Silent Hill. In fact lets gestate on waking up from nightmares in strange places for a minute.

Huh, that’s weird… Did I mention that Burak’s “nightmare” took place in an alternate reality, much like Harry’s?

To help facilitate my anger better I thought it would be fun to include quotes from another review, antithetical of mine.

“The game is very story-driven. It uses a kind of a 'point and click' system, and has a similar feel to Silent Hill.”

No it doesn’t, unless you’re talking about the first person parts in Silent Hill 4 where you’re lighting candles in your apartment to exorcize demons from the wall. Silent Hill being story-driven is kind of an overstatement. The “story” usually goes along the lines of, some bad shit happens and then you ultimately have to get the one thing you want (your wife, your kid) and escape. Again, Silent Hill 4 is the only example of something with story. If anything, Lost in the Nightmare has *more* story.

“The graphics are just lovely.”

Yeah, they‘re perfect for the visually impaired. In fact they're so terrible that it’s extremely difficult to not see the above quote as pure sarcasm. Was “lovely graphics” the first thing that crossed your mind after viewing my couple of screenshots? Be honest now. The thing about this game is that not only does everything look like this but virtually nothing is animated and when it is it’s animated at an astonishingly choppy one frame per second, usually with only two frames that it cycles between in a loop. It’s important to know when a game was made before you go bashing it’s graphics. Now when does this look like it came out? 90? 91? Try 2005. Actually now that I think about it, it reminds me of the old Windows 3D Maze screensaver.

Man that thing kicked ass. I always wanted it to be a video game. It was always thrilling when the rat appeared on screen too. And when you got all surfaces in the maze to be the psychedelic pattern it was like a crazy acid trip. Hmm, maybe I should just review the screensaver.

“The author has done an excellent job. The music is excellent.”

This is actually true. The music *is* excellent. Though it becomes slightly less impressive once you realize that they just fucking ripped music straight from the Silent Hill and Resident Evil OSTs and stuck them in the game. I half expect “You’re Not Here” to start playing at the end credits.

“The replayability in this game is excellent.”

I never actually finished the game but I’m going to go ahead and say no it isn’t. The very nature of adventure games is that they have the lowest replay value of any genre. They’re as linear is it gets and once you solve all the puzzles, that’s it. You already know all the solutions and thus there are no more challenges. As for me not finishing the game, it wasn’t because I couldn’t take it anymore. The game actually had a glitch where it wouldn’t let me select anything from my inventory. Needless to say there was some critical shit that I needed to use to progress but couldn’t. Theoretically it might have been fixed if I had installed a patch before hand. But I was like “Patch? Pfffffff… Who needs that?” Speaking of interface problems, there seemed to be some screens that once you got to them there was no way to backtrack to where you just were. I kept walking down to the lake and then having to ride in the boat to leave the area because it was the only thing the stupid game would let me do.

“This is one SCARY game.”

Well I guess it has it’s moments. I think the fact that it’s in first person is a large part of it. I also played it at night with headphones too, and that always adds to any horror game. I have to say though that the crowning achievement of scary in the game was something that was probably never meant to be scary.
Imagine you come out of your room at the small two story hotel in some archaic backwards town in the middle of nowhere. You want to go get some ice from the lobby ice machine so you hop in the elevator and press L. You go down, the doors open, and you see this…

This is going to sound stupid but I think I jolted back in my chair the first time it happened. But seriously, this guy is standing motionless, alone in a dark room, apparently just *waiting* for you. When he was behind the desk and I first came to the hotel I was creeped out by him. Then he feels the need to pull this on me. There’s no amount of light that can make this guy look anything less than a murderous psychopath/child molester. But all the fucking lights are off in the lobby. What reasonable explanation is there that doesn’t involve him being dressed like his dead mother and perforating my chest with a butcher knife the second the elevator doors open?

Deus Ex FAQ

1. Am I the weakest cyborg in the world?
2. Why does is take five hours to reload a weapon?
3. Why am I endlessly bombarded by key codes and passwords?
4. Can I just climb down the fucking ladder without falling to my death?
5. Aren’t tranquilizer darts supposed to tranquilize things, not enrage them?
6. Are these maps and satellite images a joke?
7. Where the fuck do I go?
8. Why does every person take like 10 rounds to kill regardless of the type of gun I‘m using?
9. Why does my handgun only hold six rounds?
10. Why do they send me on missions equipped with practically nothing except what I *buy* from them?
11. Why does every air duct, crawlspace, and ladder end directly in front of a soldier, security camera, or security bot?
12. Why is that helicopter talking to me?
13. And how did it fly from New York to Paris?
14. Why is sneaking around so boring, time consuming, impossible, and unrewarding?
15. Why is this game called “Deus Ex” and not “Lets Set Off the Alarm 500 Times?”
16. Why am I always presented with a quick and simple solution right after I do it the shitty hard way?
17. Is there actually a point to hiding bodies?
18. How are these one foot tall mutants so damn dangerous and hard to kill?
19. Why’s it next to impossible to get out of the water?
20. Why does everyone insist on talking to me while I’m being shot at?
21. How is this game still so awesome?

The End

Ladies and gentlemen; the zombie apocalypse is upon us…

Avon is Umbrella Corp. Board up your windows and grab your shotguns. The future is uncertain.

Avon Commercial

Final Fantasy 12

When you first start FF 12 it takes a while before you really realize anything’s wrong. It start’s out fine. You get a streamlined battle system, a generic evil empire, (probably stealing magic crystals or some shit), and a lead character with ambiguous sexual orientation. The basic plot is you’re… umm…. Actually, I don’t really know. The plot is extremely political and I have ADD. They start talking legalese and I just sort of zone out. It’s like watching Gundam Wing. Well what I gathered is that this kingdom has been taken over via a coup d'état and king assassination. And the daughter of that king is trying to reclaim the thrown, (don’t quote me on this.)

The first thing you’ll notice is the new battle system. It’s more or less real time, but not in the fucking shitty Final Fantasy 8 way. In a sense there aren’t really any random battles anymore. No more running through a completely vacant field and being suddenly thrown into a battle. In this game you approach the enemies or you can even bypass them. This allows you to pick your fights but still has a random element since enemies can still attack you first if you’re close enough and there’s also the possibility of random nearby enemies joining the battle. When in battle three from your team fight at once and are able to walk around freely instead of just being in a stationary flank. You can pick actions from anyone’s menu at any time and they’ll perform that action whenever they’re able to. The whole process is greatly sped up. There’s no loading the battle screen, pressing attack 10 times, playing the victory ditty, watching the items, experience and gil gained screen, and lastly loading the “real world” screen again to finally be on your way. And the best thing is that while scrolling through your battle menu, THE GAME IS PAUSED. It only took them how long to catch on to this?

Every Final Fantasy game has a battle gimmick and this one is “Gambits.” It’s basically the ability to program your character’s to do different things automatically in battle, like heal allies under 40% health or cast whatever on flying enemies. You can buy or find various gambit abilities around. I though this was interesting for a little bit but quickly lost interest when I realized that my human intuition trumps any precognizant automated actions. I can’t rely on the programmed character to heal when they don’t have any magic left, and I don’t want two identically programmed characters to do the same thing at the same time to the same person. They can’t know what needs to be prioritized or what the enemy will do next. Only the player can do that which is why it’s easier to just not use gambits.

The main problem in the game is that there’s too much grinding. Actually, first lets talk about the skill grid. It sucks. It’s simple enough, with it’s squares in a grid. You start out around the middle of the board. Each square is a skill or license of some kind that costs X amount of skill points which you get from defeating enemies. Each time you learn one, the bordering skills around the newly learned skill will become unlocked and available to learn. Before that though, you have no idea what they are until you‘re right next to them. It’s like playing Battleship. What’s stupid is that you can’t use something like a helmet or sword unless you attain the “license” for it off of the grid. Now what it means by license I have no idea. Is it like a driver’s license where you have to learn how to operate your feathered hat or bracelet in a safe manor? Or is it more like a concealed weapons permit where you have to be of a certain status and face a thorough background check before you can own and wear a black belt? What would happen if I tried to use something without the correct license? Would I get arrested and fined? Just for wearing a fuzzy mitre? Also, sometimes You’ll get some kick-ass sword or something but you don’t have the license for it. Not only that, but you don’t even know where the hell the license is located on the grid so you can’t even begin to work towards being able to use it. You have to just sort of eventually stumble upon it later and by that time whatever it is probably isn’t that kick-ass anymore.

There are also things like magic abilities and techniques on the grid. Not only do you have to learn them but you also have to buy the ability from a store. I don’t know if it’s a license or what but it’s extremely frustrating. It’s basically like having to learn it twice. You’ll be constantly learning abilities that you can’t even use because you have to go spend a ton of money at a store to be able to. And there’s no guarantee that it’ll be at the first place you visit either. Depending on how powerful the ability is you’ll probably have to search for it. If it was a normal game you’d just learn the ability and it wouldn’t really matter if you ever used it or didn‘t, but in this game all you see is a giant price tag and a budget to be spent on more crucial things.

The map screen isn’t that great but it’s kind of hard to explain why it’s bad without actually using it. Lets just say you need to have a very vivid imagination. I have to say though that there is one awesome thing about it and that is that when you go to it there’s a summary of what you’re doing and where you’re supposed to go at the bottom of the screen. That just totally blows my mind. It’s like the antithesis of what Final Fantasy is about. I always thought the whole point was to be given vague ass-backwards directions if any at all. Then you get stuck and wander around aimlessly for 20 hours and then toss the game in the garbage because you want to actually play something fun. At least that’s what it was like before internet walkthroughs.

The boss battles in the game are way too dependent on the shit that you have equipped. You fight something fire based and you have to get something to protect you from fire or you’re dead in 30 seconds. So wherever the hell you are, (probably the furthest reaches beyond an unsettled barren desert or in some god-forsaken rice pattie surrounded by Charlie), you need to backtrack and travel to a store that hopefully has something useful to you. Not this town. Not that town. Oh here’s something, a flame shield. It’s only 4500 gil. you have 1266 gil and need at least three shields. So you go out and kill small animals for an hour and sell their loot to get enough to buy the three shields. Now you can go beat that boss… Oh wait, no one on your team has a license for this shield, also you don‘t know where the license is. So you go out and kill things for another hour to accumulate enough skill points to hopefully find the license. Then you make as many moves as you can on one character’s grid around where you think the license might be. If you run out of points and still don’t find it you go to the next character’s grid and go a different path. Repeat this as many times as necessary until the desired license is found. Once it’s found, restart the game. Now that you have all of your skill points back and know where you’re going on the grid, you can get the license and beat the boss... Oh wait, you have enough points to reach and unlock the license but not enough to learn it. Go back out and kill things to get enough skill points to acquire the license to equip the shield to beat one fucking boss and ultimately piss away 2-4 hours with repeatedly killing the same wolf respawn and staring at a chart. Wasn’t that fun? Don’t worry, you only have to do it for about 90% of the bosses. I think boss fights in Final Fantasy 13 should be just like this, only instead of selling loot you should have to fill out job applications to get a job and make money. Also you go to job interviews and answer questions. Then if you manage to get a job you have to work. I’m surprised FF8 wasn’t all over that one.

Safety First

Make a sign.

Painkiller: Overdose

Painkiller Overdose is of course the expansion to the first person shooter Painkiller. In Overdose you play as a half demon, half angel, (you do the math) bent on revenge against the demon dog Cerberus for ripping off his wings and imprisoning him in hell.

Right off the bat you'll notice that it's harder than Painkiller. In fact it's a lot harder since it keeps freezing and lagging. Logically I'd assume this is due to my computer. But this is a middle of the road FPS. It's not like it's Oblivion or something. I can play Doom 3 just fine and that has better graphics so what the hell? So I turn down the graphics until it looks like Quake II. The menu screens have this weird glitchy MissingNo. shit plastered all over them. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it's my computer or incorrect directX or something but I'm not willing to look the other way with the load times. These are the longest fricking loading times for any game I've ever played in my life. Longer than any RPG. Even longer than any Splinter Cell game. It's roughly a 3-4 minute wait from the time you press go to the time that you can move around in a level. It's one hell of an incentive to not die, cause if you do it's another 3-4 minutes before you get another whack at it. Even if my computer *is* a bit dated it shouldn't take anywhere near that long. It's really great when you get to a difficult part that you can't figure out. You spend more time loading the game than actually playing it. The load time for the first boss was three times longer than the time it took me to beat the boss.

The biggest problem in the game would have to be the weapons. Your arsenal is full if bizarre and depraved-looking weapons. In any other game, you have guns and the guns all shoot bullets/explosives or if it's really fancy some kind of laser or plasma. In Overdose it takes you five minutes just to accept the fact that the severed head you're holding is a weapon and that screaming noise that it makes it what you use to kill things with. It's hard to get used to. Also in the first half of the game you're always out of ammo. It's not because the enemies are strong or it's difficult to aim. It's because every gun shoots like twenty rounds at once and wastes your ammunition either on overkilling an enemy or more likely just making pock marks in the wall. Often you find yourself running around while being attacked and scrolling through all of your weapons to find something you can shoot. Does this have ammo? No. Does this have ammo? No. If and when you find something useable you're probably already dead.

Razor Cube: This is the hand to hand weapon that doesn't take ammo to use so get familiar with it cause you don't have ammo. It spins around in your hand and chops up enemies. It reminds me of that cube in the movie Hypercube that spun around and chopped up that guy... or did it? I have no idea what was going on in that movie.
Bone Gun: It's basically a shotgun but it shoots bones. Left click shoots one bone (out of two barrels.) Right click shoots some weird black shit that temporarily freezes enemies.

Chain Gun: The only gun that looks half way normal. Left click it fires bullets like a machine gun for as long as you hold down the button. Right click is a quasi rocket launcher that fires three rounds in a triangular formation per discharge. It seems to go through or around enemies sometimes and for a rocket launcher it's pretty weak. It doesn't have a very large blast radius so you have to have it explode practically on the enemy to do any damage at all. Although I seem to have no problem injuring myself with it.

Eggs: For some reason these reptile eggs are explosive. Not only that but you can remotely detonate them with a... is that a lizard? It doesn't make any sense to have remote mines in this game. It's never possible to sneak up on enemies and use them. The only time I really need them is when I don't have ammo or a chance in hell with the razor cube and in that scenario I don't want something that I have to detonate one second after I throw it. I want something that I throw and it explodes AKA a grenade.


Nuclear gun: It harnesses the power of nuclear waste. Left click fires these canisters of radioactive sludge which kill on impact, making me wonder why they need to be filled with ooze at all. It's not like the enemy's around long enough to die from radiation poisoning. Actually the canisters stay around for a while, emitting green gas which does seem to have an effect on really close enemies. But really they'd be just as lethal filled with rocks or even candy corn. Right click just shoots a stream of that same green gas directly at an enemy. In reality this would be extremely inconvenient because really how far can you spray gas? And what if it's windy out? What If it's blowing at you? You'd at least need a mask.

Head: This is the first thing you ever see when you start Overdose. (Welcome to Overdose; here's an unbelievably hideous severed demon head with a distended spine hanging out the bottom.) It's your first real "weapon." Left click shoots a laser. I have no Idea why. I guess it's coming out of it's eyes but it only shoots one beam. Which eye is it coming from? If it's coming from both there should be two beams dammit. Right click makes the head scream and project some barely visible... gas cloud? Again I don't know what the hell's going on. When it hits an enemy and takes effect they start convulsing and basically drop dead. The little icon by your ammo is a picture of a heart. That typically indicates what type of ammo the weapon requires. So I guess what it's saying is that in order to make the screaming head project a cloud you need to power it with hearts, five hearts to be exact.

Crossbow: Left click fires/wastes three bolts. Right click fires/wastes six shrunken heads. the heads bounce around and explode. Two of them might hit enemies. The other four will either hit nothing or hit you.

Sword: Left click shoots three giggling skulls in a horizontal line. They sort of hone in on enemies and injure them. They also sort of fly past the enemies and do nothing. Right click makes the sword fly around like a boomerang. I never really got the hang of this. It seems like you have to have a ton of crystals to even get it to start. Once it's flying around you can drag your crosshairs on to an enemy and if you can manage to hold it on them long enough, the sword will fly over and chop them in half.

With all that said I've decided to make my own Painkiller Overdose weapon. It's a chair gun that shoots brains. You can't shoot it until it's full of 500 brains and then it shoots them all at once killing one or two enemies... unless you miss. This is just a rough concept but the finished one will be made of polka-dot intestines that are on fire. Also, right click makes an aurora borealis occur but only if you have at least 17 shampoo bottles.

The other most annoying thing in the game is the gas. There's gas everywhere and it hurts you badly. Enemies throw gas balls at you. Gas comes out of their chests. There are tear gas cans. Spray paint cans. It comes out of plants. Nuclear gas. Gas in the water. Gas from the floor. Gas from pitchforks. There's so much gas and usually you don't even see it until it's killing you.

Everything moronic aside, the level designs are great despite the anachronisms and even though all of them are completely random and unrelated.

I don’t think they used ballistas in the American Civil War.

You thought you were safe from angler fish in the desert? You were wrong bitch!

The enemies are all interesting and incidentally have a tendency to look like characters from various movies and videogames. I don’t know if any of them were intentional but I’m pretty sure that the level names “Animal Farm” and “Village of the Damned” were direct references.


Second from the right, same hair.


Team Fortress 2

Silent Hill: The movie actually illustrates it better than the video game.

Diablo II Expansion

The obvious good things about the Diablo II Expansion Pack are; the bigger stash, the two new characters, and a whole new act taking place in a snowy mountainous region worthy of being chronicled in it’s very own Wintersun song. The extra level also allows you more time to level up and learn all of your skills before the game actually ends.

Technically the game ends at the end of Act IV when you kill Diablo. By now you’ve killed all of the other prime evils except for Baal who escapes at the end, (a pretty shitty ending.) Then, if you like wasting money, you can get the expansion and continue your pursuit of Baal.

After you beat Diablo and start act V you begin in the under siege Barbarian fort on Mt. Aareat. Your first order of business is to stop the immediate threat of the encroaching demon army and catapults outside the gates. The problems start the minute you exit the fort. Hope you like ugly earthworks with trenches, mounds, ,footbridges and bombed-out towns ‘cause that‘s what you‘ll be seeing for the next two hours. All of this fugly garbage in your way makes a sort of labyrinth that you have to zig-zag through. And while you’re doing this you have to fight about 500 trillion of the most bland enemy, over and over. Twenty minutes later nothing has changed and you start wondering, is this going to stop at some point? Please tell me there’s more than earthworks and spiny mole-men. The monotonous and seemingly endless onslaught is punctuated with you getting hit by a stupid catapult with unknown whereabouts. Almost all of the level is linear. With the exception of the hundreds of obstructions that you have to walk around, you walk from right to left. Any time you’re not in an ice cave, you’re walking in one direction like a sidescroller. Eventually you get past the front lines and are introduced to what is the most annoying enemy in the entire game. Prior to the expansion pack, the little fetish tiki men were by a wide margin the most aggravating enemy. But after that they lost the title to…

...Imps. They shoot fireballs and teleport. But that’s not all. They’re actually the most versatile enemy. They can climb up and attack you from siege towers as well as from atop these big things that look like Wargreymon. Often you can’t get within striking distance before they teleport off screen. Then they’ll teleport back on screen just to shoot fire at you again right before they leave once more. Sometimes they just teleport like five times in a row. You’ll be dealing with about 3-8 of them at a time. It’s too much of a pain in the ass to chase them all down individually because it just takes too long. Just accept the fact that you’ll be traveling with them and be getting hit with fireballs constantly throughout this area unless you have some kind of silver bullet spell to deal with them.

Speaking of spells there are some things about the new Druids spells that really suck. The three different types of spells he has are elemental, summoning, and shape shifting. In shape shifting you can turn into a werebear and a werewolf and also get subsequent spells to perform while in either form. The problem is that you lose the ability to use all of your other spells while you’re in that form. You soon realize that there’s really no advantage to changing forms. In fact it’s more disadvantageous because you can’t use your best offensive spells. So that’s a third of your spells that you’re not even going to use because there‘s no benefit to you. In the summoning spells there are various animals and other life forms you can bring forth to fight or heal you as you play. There are three different types of vines that do different things but you can only have one summoned at a time. That makes sense I guess since a necromancer can only have a single golem at a time too. The druid can also summon a wolf/wolves depending on how many times the spell is leveled up. Then later you learn to summon dire wolves which are different. When I first learned this I thought it was good because it meant that I could have a dire wolf summoned in addition to my two regular wolves, but no. You can either have dire wolves or regular wolves out, not both at the same time which is bullshit. If you’re a necromancer you get to have skeletons AND skeleton mages out. How is that any different? Then later you learn how to summon a bear. And I thought surely I could have a bear and wolves. I mean, abear is totally different right? Again it was no. You either get the bear or wolves. And what makes it worse is that you can only ever summon a single bear. Leveling it up only makes the bear stronger. This leaves you to ponder which is better to have, one supercharged bear or an army of wolves? Well I’m certainly never going to need regular wolves again. In fact all of the early spells for all of the characters are pretty much useless after you reach about level eighteen. They’re so weak in comparison to the later spells that it would take 10 level-ups for one to emulate the damage of the first level of a later spell. It’s annoying because you spend points leveling up spells that you’re basically going to throw away and never use again.

Another thing I don’t understand about the expansion is the inclusion of ethereal clothes and weapons. The only difference between ethereal things and non-ethereal things is that ethereal things can not be repaired and consequently break and become useless at some point. Also they technically have lower requirements to use than their non-ethereal counterparts but that’s just a shroud to hide the fact that they’re pointless.

At the end of act V you get to fight Baal, the Lord of Destruction. If I remember correctly Baal is the pagan god of rain. In the Bible the Jews and pagans were having a deity-off to see who’s god was more powerful. The challenge was making a bonfire. Whichever god made a fire first was the winner. Despite all of the dancing and self mutilation performed by the pagans, Baal didn’t respond. (I guess he was sleeping.) Then the Jews completely dowsed their pile of wood with gallons of water and adding insult to injury it exploded into flames. The pagans were at a huge disadvantage though. What made them think they could get fire from a rain god?

So now that Baal is the new boss of the game doesn’t that mean that he’s tougher to beat than Diablo? The answer is yes, a hell of a lot harder. Well it differs from character to character. If you’re an assassin you can just surround him with flame traps and then hide behind a rock and wait. When you first find Baal, he's sitting on his throne and you can't hurt him. He summons five waves of the most annoying enemies from each of the acts. It's really easy to be instantly surrounded and die before even getting to lay a hand on Baal. You end up having to run back through the labyrinth until the enemies are thoroughly separated and then hunt them down one by one. After the fifth wave of enemies Baal escapes through a portal. You follow him and then the real fight begins. His main attack seems to be a flame wake that is not only devastating to your health but impossible to dodge. And it pushes you far away making it really hard to get close to him. If you have any summoned creatures they should be immediately vaporized. Ultimately in order to hit him you have to take a hit. Needless to say you’ll be taking dozens of trips back to town for more health potions. Baal can also duplicate himself so that there are two of him. If you manage to kill his replicant it’s of no consequence to him. He doesn’t get hurt from it and he’ll just make another one. One hundred trips to town later the boss of Diablo II is dead. But does it really matter?

Teaser