Gaming – Song of the Phoenix

Phasmophobia Early Access.

I don’t generally like playing spooky scary, horror games. Mainly due to me having an overactive imagination and thinking that there’s some shadows in every corner of my room when I try to sleep, or end up having nightmares because the imagery is still fresh in my mind. I do tend to like watching other people play horror games to see their reactions and I wonder to myself if I would react that way. I most certainly do and will react the same way if they get all freaked out. Cause I freak out a lot. Lately because I’ve been playing Phasmophobia the past week or two.

I bought it and had to wait a bit to play because I wanted to be like a fresh run on my first playthrough with a scheduled group play with Bennyfits, Marc (Kaoiji) and Team Louie. This was set up October 9th 2020. Throughout the first gaming session I just keep freaking out over nothing. Well most of the time I freaked out of seeing shadows in the dark and the ghosts popping up randomly in front of me and then hearing breathing in my ear. Then getting hunted by the ghost and getting killed because I panicked.

After a several more games played I kind of gotten used to it, but I was still freaking out cause while I was still expecting things to breathe in my ear and the ghost killing me, I still get freaked out. I keep telling myself I should stop playing this game but I keep going back to it.

I will say this that the game is still buggy. You have to guess what type of ghost is haunting a particular place. The map is randomly generated and the difficulty of the mission is randomized from Amateur, Intermediate and Professional. There really is no change in difficulty of how to play just how quickly the ghost will start hunting you and your party members. Amateur gives you 5 minutes to get your gear ready to find out what the ghost is before it hunts and kills you. Intermediate gives you 2 minutes and Professional doesn’t give you any time to set up. The difficulty also changes what you get for insurance if you die.

Insurance is given to you when you die IF you contributed gear to the mission. Amateur will allow you to get back 50% of the cost of the gear you put in, Intermediate 25% and Professional you get no insurance. So if you choose to play a professional map choose wisely what you want to contribute to your mission and play carefully, otherwise you will lose everything and not get any money in return.

The bugs so far are not being able to see ghost orbs in when placing video cameras to scout if there is any evidence of it. Sometimes the ghost won’t write in the ghost book, and sometimes they won’t give you cold temperatures. Most of which are require to get a definite idea of what type of ghost it was. When one of these evidence bugs out you left guessing what type of ghost it is. Most of these bugs have been fixed in the third update patch at the time of writing this.

Phasmophobia is a fun ghost hunting game still in early access still with bugs and still has potential to grow. Great game to play with friends that love the idea of hunting ghost and still be scared.

BlizzCon 2014

It was announced that BlizzCon 2014 will be November 7-8. This means I can’t do FANDom Con in Destin. Sad but well BlizzCon has always been priority to other conventions considering it’s the one time of the year that we (my husband and I) can be on “vacation.” It’s alright though, I love BlizzCon and nothing would stop me from going again. Well not getting tickets would mean we can’t go. They are doing a different ticketing system this year. It’s not going to be done through the Blizzard Store this year for some reason, they’re using Eventbrite. Which I am very worried about because can the Eventbrite server handle the many pings it’s going to receive the moment those tickets go on sale? Will it be a catastrophe like 2008 ticket sales where the server goes down every 2 minutes trying to process the amount of requests for tickets orders it’s going to get? I’m not sure how Eventbrite’s server is going to handle these ticket sales and there is no queue time on Eventbrite, I don’t think. So if you don’t get it withing the first 30 seconds the moment the tickets go on sale you don’t get it at all.

This is going to be a bit nerve wrecking. We shall see when the time comes for ticket sales. So it’s not written in stone yet that we will be going to BlizzCon. Though I have made preparations on hotel rooms just in case.

Sleepless nights because of the Slender Man

Last week, my husband was watching some YouTube reaction videos to the game Slender. To those that know what Slender is, good for you, to those that don’t, CLICK HERE, HERE and HERE learn more about it. Also the birthplace of Slender Man is here at Something Awful. So after watching the reaction videos he got into watching the MarbleHornets videos which is the series based off SlenderMan, and well I couldn’t sleep well last week because of watching those videos with my husband (and some by myself) so well I was freaked out. At one more my husband had goosebumps watching the videos.

I know the whole Slender Man is all fiction that came out of someone’s imaginative mind but well the though of “what ifs” tends to linger after watching things like that. Then it ends up being funny because of one video, and that is the video where someone unlocks “20 Dollar” mode in Slender. Because of that video I’ve been spontaneously singing “Gimme 20 dollars” last week as well.

After watching some reaction video to gameplays of Slender I decided I’m going to try. My husband got all excited and when he saw that I downloaded the game and was getting ready to play it he turned off all the lights and the tv because he wanted me to have the “experience.” Regardless the first time playing it I only got 2 or 3 pages and I didn’t see Slender Man but I did get static across the screen and I made the character run like hell away from Slender. Then like 10 mins of playing my flashlight didn’t work, even though I was told you never run out of batteries in the game but there was no light source after a while. Also 10 mins of running around in circles only to have 2-3 pages I gave up on the first try. Slender didn’t get me but I was still freaked out.

Second gameplay through with the lights on and people in the room, this includes my daughter, went well ok. I tried to record the reaction video but the gameplay video didn’t get recorded, so I just popped in the system audio into my recorded webcam video. Here it is:

I can’t say this is much of a review or not because I didn’t finish the game nor don’t know if I ever will. Even playing the game in the day time I still get freaked out, and it’s because of how this game was made. It’s terribly good at making sure you are looking over your shoulder. What is worse is that the first time playing this game at night about 3-4 hours later when I’m trying to sleep there was a major thunderstorm. Woke me up scared the crap out of me and I looked around in the dark at all corners of my bedroom making sure there wasn’t any suspicious shadows.

I’m starting to kick myself in the ass for even watching the videos and playing the game, but I want to know what happens in the videos and want to unlock the other modes in the game. So glutton for punishment it is.

Kingdom Hearts 3D

So after getting paid the beginning of this month my husband got this game for me because I kept nagging him about how it was the reason why I got the 3DS. Well one of the reasons at least.

The game continues from Kingdom Hearts II, and after getting past the tutorial parts of the game I got into it, then it came to the spirit pets part of the game. After getting throught THAT tutorial and playing a day through the games getting past three stages I have come to the conclusion that the game is a glorified pokemon game. Not that there’s anything wrong with Pokemon, just saying that it’s pretty much Pokemon coated in bright colors and sprinkled with fairy dust.

I do like the game play and the added features, although I feel that I spend over and hour leveling up the spirit pets and getting their abilities from their spell tiers. Often times I go back to previous stages and fight monsters in order to get munny and materials to make new spirit pets and also trying to get 100% treasures in each stage.

I’m not sure how far I am into the game yet but I got seven stages done so far, and I’m playing in the hardest mode available for a fresh newly bought game (proud mode.) I have played the other games in the series, and I do love the series, but it seems to have strayed far from the story and it feels like Square and Disney just decided to put random story arcs in to make it make sense to how the Keyblades and Keymasters came to existence. As much as I love this game series sometimes I feel that story arcs aren’t necessary, it makes it more confusing to explain to someone that has never played the series through.

Anyway game play in the KH3D game is pretty much the same mechanics as the first two, 367 Days and RE:Coded. However added elements are in the game such as Flowmotion, Spirit Linking and Dream Dropping (hence Dream Drop Distance title, obviously.) Since Sora and Riku are actually in a dream for their trial to become the Keyblade Master, only you can play with either Sora or Riku at a time. You start the game playing Sora so once Sora falls asleep Riku wakes up and comes into play.

I’m not sure how to explain the Dropping very well and I don’t think I’m going to try. I did like the Flowmotion Element in the game which gives and extra ability to fight your enemies or use the environment around you to defeat your enemies. It seems hard for me to get to the pole Flowmotion where as getting the Blow Off Flowmotion with hughe enemies and pushing off the wall Flowmotion seem much easier. I tend to forget about getting the Mario ground slam Flowmotion alot as well.

There is the Spirit link element in the game which is like the Trinity ability in the KH and KH2, however the Spirit Link ability are different for Sora and Riku. Sora’s Spirit Link abilities tend to have the Trinity Effect, Riku’s Spirit Link is him merging with the spirits gain strength, and this is only for a limited of time. The spirit link abilities combination are dependent on the type of spirits you are using at the time and what special attack those spirit will have (benefit for Riku.)

Another thing about the Spirit pets is that you can train them with the items, Balloon and Water Barrel. There Treasure Goggle items help you find treasure with the spirits which utilitize the 3DS camera. You can feed them with food you find or pick up from drops or buy in stores, as well as customize the spirits with a paint gun.

So far I’m seven stages in and continuing to get through this game by getting all the Spirits and training them on every tier they have. Maybe there will be an update when I have completed the game. =D

#Games – Diablo 3

So when Diablo 3 was released I was one of the first that tried to get into the Diablo 3 servers at 2 AM Central time. My husband wanted to stay up, but work takes precedence. Considering that we opted in for the 1 year subscription of WoW to get Diablo 3 for free digitally, we still went and purchased a collectors edition for the game. Because I like Collectors Edition. So far the Collectors Edition were sold out everywhere here and fortunately for us, my husband was able to buy it off Amazon or ebay… one of the two, and my friend of 10 years didn’t feel like he really wanted his CE so we bought it off him.

Backtracking to the launching of the game I get ready to log on and boom… I get in I create a character and then it’s trying to create the character and then I get this error that states I can’t create the character or something. I try again six or seven times and it takes five to ten minutes each creation before I get the error. So of course twitter feeds are blowing up with the error codes starting to trend on the worldwide trending list. After twenty minutes of trying to get into the game I just gave up and went to bed. Didn’t touch Diablo 3 for about two or three weeks I guess, but did watch my husband finish Diablo 3 in a few days of him playing it when he had the time.

All the while I was too busy trying to finish Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 for the second time around on the 360. Well I then got to playing Diablo 3 and when I got to my character screen, I saw 6 Demon Hunters that I created the day I started on the list ready to go. All the same name. This was just funny to me cause I didn’t realize I made that many. Deleted all but one and started to play.

Got my Demon Hunter to 60 in about two weeks of playing it I think, probably more than two weeks, I didn’t keep track so now I am on Infernal mode and doing my best to get through this mode with the gear I have. Of course I died at the Butcher trying to kill him all by myself only got him down to like 45% health. I am now going back through Hellmode to get some more gold so I can purchase some better equipment off the Auction House.

As much as I can say about the game it’s a beautifully rendered game, although with the recent updates the gamma seems to be very low and I barely can see any monsters coming at me when I am in dark caves and the fog particles are so thick. I even tried to fixed the graphic options to what I had before and it still doesn’t seem to take. I don’t know why but I suppose I have to deal with it.

I’m also not the fan of the point click move type game but this is that type of game and if I want to get through it I must get use to it. Which I probably did because I kept trying to click point move in WoW when I went back to that game for the first time in three months. =/