SOL #1

Blame myself, fault I cannot comply

Feelings of damage undertaken within palpitations in my mind, fault, mine to bear. The mentality of
oneself is quite unmistakeable, feelings below the heart surround the heart and butterflies quivering
in acid. I, myself, and I cannot fathom how the body may shudder, try as I try, I presume what the
sensation is like.

Should I blame myself? My mothers ache has returned. The desolation within her soul risen anew, I
am lost, I cannot save her, why must we be tormented within our minds of such trivialities, why can
we not be strong.

I am in a pool infested with sharks, my mother looks at me, and I at her, she turns to the forest, I
scream for her, she does not hesitate, the forest has consumed her, I cannot move from fear of
myself, I am held back by these carnivores for if I lament against the waves they will surely stir. I
want to help, though I am stuck, with these feelings, with this pity, unable to comprehend, although
I try, and I must. Only they can step through the darkness, into the light of the morning star. I can
never put myself in the place they stand, I hope I never can, for I am afraid that I too will be
consumed by the forest.

Restrain my emotions, become one with the desert, I will sink. Distancing myself from myself till I am
nothing but sand, and I can no longer see from right and wrong, all will be calm. I cannot comply, for
I care too much, I must stand firm in my purpose, for I am the only one who can and I must support
the foundations of those that I hold dear, even if it means my own destruction.

Blame myself, fault I cannot comply.

My experience with Alien Rage: Unlimited

Most people would probably look at the title of this article…rant…I don’t know what to call this, and say what in the blue blazes of fried Digimon is Alien Rage: Unlimited. Well, I don’t blame you.

ARU (Alien Rage: Unlimited – you think I’m going to keep typing out the games title in this, you’ve got another thing coming) is a 2013 first-person shooter developed by CI Games, in it you play as some hardcore marine type of bloke who loves killing aliens whenever the opportunity presents the ability to do so. Your mission is to kill aliens because they be stealing resources and can’t share like adults, I don’t know, it’s something like that, the story takes a backseat throughout the majority of the game. The intro is really the only place where the story is dumped on you, after that you can further your lore cravings with audio logs…yes…audio logs, one of the most laziest ways to pass on information to the player and they don’t even travel with the player like in BioShock or something, once you find one you have to stay where the audio log is and listen to it there and then, because if you move away from it, it’ll stop, why couldn’t they allow me to listen to it while on the move, who knows. I won’t spoil the ending, there isn’t much of one to be honest as I always hate spoiling things, I’ll always try to avoid spoiling the game for people if I can.

Gameplay is as you’d expect, you go from room to room, corridor to corridor shooting aliens…it works, it’s the strongest element of the game but still it does get very boring at times as the game is unnecessarily difficult, the lowest difficultly setting is called ‘challenging’, not ‘easy’…’challenging’…and the variety of aliens is limited, not unlimted as the title would suggest, the levels geometry is very bland too. Look, I’m not trying to just excrete all over this game, but it doesn’t have many positive points to list. There’s a good amount of weapons you can use and you can take the aliens weapons too, the bosses are fairly different…umm…umm…you can unlock perks to power up your character, there’s these really annoying TRIPLE KILL, HEADSHOT, EXPLOSIVE notifications that come up during gameplay when you happen to kill an alien in a certain way like it’s an arcade game or something, it also shouts them out like the dude narrating trailers does. It’s funny at first but after a few hours becomes really annoying. Thank alien Jesus that the game is like 5-6 hours, I couldn’t imagine a 10-hour campaign with those stupid TRIPLE KILL notifications going off every time you decimate three aliens in a row. The game also likes to throw at you some unwelcome variations in gameplay like a turret section (gotta have one of those right?), controlling mech section, etc. which I wouldn’t mind as much if they weren’t terrible to play and just shows the games inner jank.

Visually speaking the game is okay, you get some nice environmental set pieces now and then but most of the game is inside the alien facility, that’s all I have to say there. From looking at the games Wikipedia page most people’s main point of negitivity was the games lack of originality, which of course it was. This developer literally said, “let’s get together to make a bog-standard alien shooter”, they weren’t trying to make the next Halo or whatever, they made the conscious decision to make the blandest alien shooter they could muster. No originality, no heart, no substance. What a disappointment, why did they even bother, I’ve played Euro-Jank that has more innovation than this, I’ve played simple series games with a better story than this, I’ve played shovelware with better gameplay than this.

 

If you’ve given up, you’ve given up.

My experience with ArcaniA: Gothic 4

So, from the title of these mad ravings, you can gather that I will be raving about what a lot of people refer to as the ‘black sheep’ of the Gothic series, ArcaniA. I ended up picking this game up forcheap back in the day on Steam, I can’t remember what I paid for it, but I think it must have been 80-90% off it’s original price, I also picked up Fall of Setarrif, ArcaniA’s only expansion, but I won’t be talking about that, and you’ll know why soon enough. When I started the game, I honestly thought I’d be dropping it soon after as the UI, gameplay and visuals were in the lacking department, but I gave the visuals some leniency due to the game being from 2010. What kept me playing were the character interactions, I love the main character, seriously the dudes a bro. He has such a no-nonsense approach to conversation, and I love it, later in the game he even outright asks characters if they are going to be sending him on pointless fetch quests, which of course they still do, but it’s these interactions between the main character and the NPCs that really make the game for me and kept me playing.

I might as well go over the usual slop that people go over regarding any piece of media. The visuals were quite good for the time but unfortunately the game is quite old now and you might experience some graphical glitches here and there while playing on more modern systems, like I did, besides that though visually the game is fine. I think there is some mods kicking about that can fix these issues, but I couldn’t be bothered to fix them as the graphical glitches didn’t bother me too much, just the lighting was strange at times. 

 

Gameplay is very basic, like…super basic. Again, I wouldn’t know as this is my first experience with the Gothic series but a lot of Gothic fans state that the previous games had a lot more to the combat than this game. There’s a combo system which kind of works, you also have spells but the only useful one is the fire ball spell, in my opinion, the ice and lightning spells are more for freezing and stunning enemies as the final upgrade to the fire ball spell is a fire ball that once hits causes AOE fire damage to whoever was in its range and sets enemies on fire for a short time, which is why it’s the best. You can dodge roll which is useful, and you can guard with a shield, but you can’t have a shield with a two-handed weapon, which was my preferred choice of weapon, so I didn’t really use it. Two- handed weapons did more damage overall and some later enemies can drop some very decent ones. Enemies are stupid, they have a telegraphed attacks and once you learn them, which is very easy, you will not have any issue with dealing with them. Only issues arise from when you are fighting multiple enemies but then you pick them off one at a time until they are all gone, keeping an eye on your surroundings. Forgot to mention the bow, best weapon in the game, you and cause sneak damage to enemies and if there’s a group, at the right distance, pick off one or two enemies before they even get to you. There’s a crafting system for potions and weapons, that’s all I have to say with that, it works.

 

The quests vary, most of them are bog standard go here kill this type of affair, or go here collect this, or go here talk to this NPC, etc, etc. I won’t speak on the story as I hate all forms of spoilers regarding stuff like that, I personally find the story to be okay, nothing special just okay. Again, it’s the dialogue and interactions you have with NPCs that make this game for me and sometimes you also fall in love with the jank, this game is definitely not for everyone though. Toward the end of the game, I avoided most enemies though as it feels that once you reach the monastery the quality of the game takes a nose-dive, maybe they ran out of budget or time or something. But after the monastery all but a few of the side-quests disappear, the number of monsters increase and your level of care for the game will be waning. Doesn’t help that they throw a long af cave of monsters at you before the last boss, making you want to stop playing even more. I only fought what I needed to towards the end of the game. Also, they replace the FMV CGI cutscenes with power point presentations shortly after the monastery, it really is like that was the turning point of the game in terms of quality and budget.

Okay I’ll stop moaning now, in the end I enjoyed my experience with the game for the most part, up until the monastery, did I mention that was the turning point of the game, oh I did, well I thought I’d better mention it again, just to be safe. Fall of Setarrif…well my enjoyment of the base game went from pleasant buzz to tolerable to I just want to be done with it, so do you think after beating the game I’d be willing to give the expansion a go, not a chance, have you seen the reviews on Steam? The base game sits at mixed while the expansion sits at mostly negative, can you blame me for giving it a hard pass.

My experience with Vampire Hunter D

Introduction – I first found this series when I picked up the anime OVA from Virgin before all of them disappeared and became HMVs. I think they were called Virgin Media Stores, had all the same purchasable media that HMV does now. I found the OVA to be pretty decent, but my expectations were exactly as I found them, not surprising considering it’s literally called Vampire Hunter D, so I figured it would be about some dude hunting vampires called D before even reading the blurb on the back of the DVD case. Its been a good number of years since I’ve seen the OVA, should really give it another look at considering I remember pretty much nothing from it besides that fact that the animation was really nice, and the character models were very aesthetically pleasing. It wasn’t until later that I learned that the artist for Vampire Hunter D is the same as it is for Final Fantasy, Yoshitaka Amano. I hear the dude is doing his own anime at the moment for Netflix, will definitely give that a watch.

Then I watched the Bloodlust movie and was like woah…I didn’t watch that until some years after and picked it up for cheap from CEX but seriously woah…the animation from that movie was god-like for the time it came out in like 2000 or something. Another movie I need to give a rewatch, because like the OVA, the animation is all I remember about it.

Next on the chopping block was the video game, yes there is a Vampire Hunter D video game, for PlayStation 1 no doubt. I played a little bit of it for the channel and found it to be a bit too clunky for my liking, it plays like Resident Evil with tank controls and the whole shebang. Difference is you don’t have guns like RE does, instead you have a sword among other things at your disposal and don’t think the world of Vampire Hunter D doesn’t have guns, it does, it’s just that D don’t use them. D don’t need no sticking guns when he has cold…hard…steel. I’ll put the video below so you can gauge
for yourself.

My YouTube video on the PS1 game - Vampire Hunter D for PS1

Now we get onto the main subject, the books. I find the books to be a bit on the expensive side for me considering they’re from Japan. The first book is like 200 odd pages and they want £12 for it. Maybe it’s just me but I pick up all my books for as cheap as possible, main reason I frequent charity shops here in the UK, you can pick a book up for as little as 10 pence in some of them. So to my surprise as I was having a gander on Humble Bundle of all places, I found they were doing a e-book bundle for Vampire Hunter D. Managed to pick up 28 or 29 volumes for like £20. What a steal. So earlier this year I started the first book and here’s how that went.

Vampire Hunter D – The first book is by far the worst written of the 3 that I’ve currently read and I know that’s not a great start to my experience with it but I thought it should be front and centre. You will possibly find issue with how the book is written but considering it could be the translation not necessarily its author – Hideyuki Kikuchi – it’s hard to know who’s to blame. Now why do I say what I say, well it’s because at times it feels the author is waffling on about describing something to such a descriptive degree that I find the describing of said object or scenery so descriptive that it leaves nothing to the imagination (see what I did there, I waffled on), but this actually dies down with books 2 and 3. Book 1 is more of an introduction to Ds character and the world of the Frontier, going with a more by the books story of a vampire, or noble as they are referred to here, kidnapping a human girl and the valiant D saving her while battling monsters and human adversaries. How humans behave in this world reminds me of the dynamic of good and evil that’s on display in Fist of the North Star, you have the poor village people and the bad mercenary type characters that live in the wilds of the Frontier. What I’m trying to say is the world is interesting but at the same time how it’s described can be a little too inflated for my liking. I haven’t actually got much else to say about the book as it’s been almost a year since I’ve read it and my biggest takeaway from it was the way it was written and that the story was a bit too by the books, no wonder a few online have mixed feelings about it if they’ve only read the first book.

Raiser of Gales – Book 2 is by far much better than the first but not by a large margin but still by a hefty amount, book 2 from what I remember is about a bunch of children going missing from a village for a good number of years then suddenly a decade later miraculously returning to the village as adults. D is there because I don’t really remember but I think it was because he was hired to find the one child who didn’t return to the village or something. Also there is this big hill with ruins on top of it that is hard to reach due to some mystical energy that surrounds the hill…or something…I know I’m not describing the story all too well but I’m going off of memory here and it was like 6 months ago that I read the book, my memory is a brittle thing. All you need to know is that the second book is quite the improvement of the first and it only gets better with the third book.

Demon Deathchase – Book 3 I have just finished, so I should be able to give an accurate account of the events of the book, at least I hope so. Forbidden love has sprouted between a noble and a human and they are trying to run away to a safe place, all the while they are being hunted by the man called D, forgot to mention the dudes a dhampir which is a cross between a human and a vampire/noble, as well as a family of hunters known as the Marcus family. This time D has to contend with not only the vampire he’s hunting but also other hunters trying to get in on the gig. All of the Marcus family are interesting characters and the whole forbidden love thing is an interesting angle, as you think to yourself during the novel will D strike this noble down like the rest even if their love is real and not have a change of heart from learning their intentions. It’s a good read and by far the most well written and interesting of the three novels I’ve read so far. I was going to stop here and drop the D series but seeing as I have 28-29 of the books digitally and I quite enjoyed this third book I think I will continue reading Vampire Hunter D, at least for now…

Introduction

 Blame it on me…

So you happened to stumble into here by accident, not surprised. I imagine anyone coming here is only here by accident, on this occasion you can just blame it on me that your here, whether you want to be here or not. I'll cut to the chase, I'm here to blame everything, you just happened to be here as I am blaming. This isn't a place for correct or incorrect opinions, it's a place to blame. Rant, scream and vent to your hearts content about anything you so desire. I'll listen, just as you will unfortunately have to listen to me. What's that? Your leaving...well...can't say I blame you...

To cut a bad paragraph into slices and serve it to you with utmost relentless cavil, you'll get drivel like that quite often by the way. I will blame mostly gaming and talk about my experience with various games, developers, publishers among others. I have a YouTube channel, three to be exact, which I will put on display here at times. Mainly to help my points in my pointless rants and to also advertise my stuff because this is my blog and I can do whatever I want mom...

If you're still here I guess that means that you've become a willing participant in my mad ravings, very good, very nice.