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Saturday, 1:32 pm in Archive

It sort of annoys me that of the 20 people at Uncreative, only 2 have updated their ring code (not including me and the guy who joined after I started using sk.ring). People are so lazy. I’ve removed everyone from the RingSurf members list though (effectivley breaking all RingSurf code), so hopefully people should get the message.

Well my holidays are nearing a close. They haven’t been nearly long enough, in my humble opinion. I went to see a lot of movies; Yu-Gi-Oh was hillariously silly, everyone involved with making Dodgeball should do us a favour and put themselves out of their misery, and AvP was cool but had too much ‘…boo!’ and not nearly enough kung-fu AvP action. I saw psuedoskribe and necromage and we played Mortal Kombat: deadly Alliance on the XBox I definatley don’t have. I also spent over $200 buying books and comics; but it’s not my fault the new World of Darkness stuff is out! They kinda gimped Vampires, though; they’re way not as cool as they used to be. I guess when we get another ten years of suppliments they’ll retain their former glory, however. I also picked up volume 3 of Gloom Cookie, volume 2 of Hellboy and the Silent Hill: Dying Inside TPB. I have to say the SH comic was… not bad, but also not particularly SH. I guess Westerners are just crap at doing Japanese-style psychological horror.

Speaking of Silent Hill, I’ve been playing The Room a bit; just got back from Forest World for the first time. I have to say, unlike SH3 which scared the shit out of me the first time I encountered a bathroom, SH4 has been pretty disappointing. I just don’t find the monsters particularly scary. Victims are just annoying (since you can’t kill them), but floating zombies that habitually go “Murgh!” don’t really inspire me with terror. The dog design is also a bit bleh; nothing like the split-heads of SH3. And the whole removal of the radio and flashlight has totally gimped the two scariest things about SH (not being able to see what’s coming, but knowing that it is). Well, I get doubleheads soon, and they scared me in the trailer, plus after Hospital we get the apartment hauntings, so hopefully the scary factor should pick up. But, honestly, I just think the ‘big nasty’ in SH4 is kinda lame. I mean, in SH2 you had Pyramid Head, who is still largely thought of as one of the single scariest dudes of all time, and SH3 had Vitael (or whatever the knob-turning guy was called) who was pretty creepy-looking, but what is SH4 reduced to… The Man With a Coat. Oh no, not Anorak Guy! Though, for a serial murderer-cultist, Walter is pretty hot (he’s the longhaired guy in the promo renders)… which I suppose doesn’t increase his creepy factor any. I still reckon you should have turned out to be Walter somehow. There just doesn’t seem to be much involvement for Henry (whom I still call James!) other than the arbitrary “I moved into this apartment”, which is kind of weak for SH. Though the slash factor is kind of funny seeing as how your love interest chick is possessed by Walter and all. So, yeah. I’m going to have to find the ‘Giant Head’ room in Hospital (and wasn’t I annoyed to find this has no point in the story other than looking creepy) and just stand there and freak myself out for a while. Ooh no, not the scary wheelchair monster!

The whole “enemies you can’t kill” idea is pretty lame, though, since it basically means you just run straight past any ghosts you encounter without dwelling on their scaryness. Same with Walter. Being chased occasionally by an unkillable dude with a giant knife and a pyramid on his head is scary. Being constantly bothered by an unkillable dude in an anorak who shoots you with guns isn’t scary, it’s a pain in the ass. Dunno about the boss ghosts, though. Skank woman (the chick from Subway World, whatever her name is) looks kinda scary as a ghost – since she reminds me of Sadako – but that’s in stills, and thus far still-scary hasn’t been translating into game-scary, so… So yeah, the sleeping-bag zombies for SH2 these are not. Oh no, dead floating dudes. Yawn. Ignore. The animation for them coming through the walls is kind of cool, but not nearly exploited enough (it’s much scarier in the stills than in the actual game).

So yeah, SH4, not so good so far. Ah well, maybe thing’s’ll hot up later. Hopefully.

Anyway, ~Mat [h] has just announced we’re going back to Wollongong soon (boo), so I better get packed. Wollongong means work. I don’t like this. Roll on Christmas holidays; I am so ready for you. This year has been utter ass.

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