Spooky – Page 24

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: October 2014

I really didn’t think that I’d play many games in October, what with the Smash Bros and all, but I did! Less than usual, perhaps, but I’ve still got a respectable list here.

I didn’t do a very good job of playing anything terribly Halloweeny. I didn’t even buy Alien: Isolation or The Evil Within. A few of the games on this list are of a spooky-ish nature, but nothing overtly horror-themed. And Monster Manor doesn’t count, because I play a little bit of it every month.

~ Now Playing ~

Super Smash Bros (3DS) – Yeah, this version of Smash doesn’t play on a TV, but it’s so good. It’ll probably be the death of my 3DS. It’s great to have Smash on the go anyway.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS3) – Dark Arisen is an expansion pack for the original DragDog. It was not released as $15 DLC, but rather a reissue of the whole game plus the new content for $40. I wanted it badly (DragDog is one of my favourite games), but not at that price. When it went on sale for $7 in September, I nearly exploded with excitement. However, I only played up until the point where I was able to leave Cassardis.

Hyrule Warriors (Wii U) – I may have plugged almost as many hours into this as I have Smash so far. Currently I’m trying to clear off as much of the Adventure Map as I can. I’d say I’m three-fifths done. Maybe?

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: October 2014

Creepier than the average uncle

I suppose I probably should clarify a stance or something, but I’ve been trying to avoid any GamerGate-related talk on here because the only thing that’s good for is bringing people down, and I want my blog to be a more positive place. If I’m going to type anything depressing, it’ll be personal woes, not about people being horrible to other people.

For the record, I don’t think that social politics should be part of video games, so I don’t want to get involved. But I do believe that video games should be enjoyable for everyone. Men, women, everyone in-between. They’re not for an exclusive club of socially-challenged nerds. All my life I’ve been waiting for the stigma against gamers to go away, waiting for the day when I could play my 3DS on the bus and not have to feel like I’m being judged. GamerGate is just making it worse. It has nothing to do with journalistic integrity and everything to do with hatemongering. So yeah, I want GamerGate and all their stupid crap to go away.

But that’s just sort of a preamble for what I really want to write about today, because I honestly can’t say much about it: The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo. It’s a text adventure, which might immediately disinterest a few, but keep in mind that it’s short and you can probably reach the final ending within about 20 minutes.

The game starts out all cute and nostalgic, but quickly gets creepy and uncomfortable. It’s probably the most enjoyable Twine game I’ve played, which isn’t playing much, since I’ve only played like three. There are a handful of endings to earn, and the game does a very nice job of hinting towards ones you haven’t yet found. It also provides a very nice option to restart at the point in the game where your decisions start to matter, cutting out all the setup on replays.

I’d like to say more about it, but I don’t really want to spoil anything. The one thing I do want to mention is that if you make certain choices, the game does go down a very GamerGate-relevant path. Yeah, it gets a wee bit preachy, but it doesn’t detract from the overall experience.

I absolutely recommend checking out UWWFN long enough to find your way to the real ending. A good way to kill half an hour, if nothing else. And it’s a browser game, so you’ve got no good excuse not to. Just make sure you do it on a real computer and not your phone or tablet, because the audio component is pretty important.

Oh, and if you’re a big fraidy-cat like me, maybe play in the afternoon. It gets pretty spooky.

On Mushroom Men and Checkpoints

I played The Last Of Us last month. I noted in the Monthend Wrap-Up that I wasn’t overly fond of it. That’s really only half the story though. Or maybe about a third of it. Because there’s a lot to like about the game! It’s just that the parts I didn’t like were so aggravating that it soured my opinion of the entire experience, which is completely opposite of how I usually roll.

Normally I’m able to overlook rough patches in games or movies or what-have-you and come out enjoying the product on the whole. I think it’s a good philosophy, as it lets me enjoy more things, and I spent less time sounding like a douchey nerd, complaining about stupid little things in an otherwise likeable product.

Like I said before, there are plenty of things about The Last Of Us that I liked. The story, for instance. At first glance, it’s just another stupid zombie game. But then you notice that the more dangerous zombies have mushrooms growing out of their heads. That’s… unusual? Because they are not affected by some silly man-made chemical or evil space-dust. These zombies are people who have been parasitized by cordyceps fungus. Which is a real Goddamn thing. Only in real life it doesn’t affect humans. Just bugs and possibly plants. I don’t know, I didn’t research it enough. But it’s spooky because it’s real and not totally outside the spectrum of plausibility. This is possibly the finest excuse for zombies that anyone has ever come up with.

The characters are also quite likeable. Joel, maybe not so much. He’s a gruff badass who eventually learns to open his heart, which is the stockingest character there is. Ellie, on the other hand, is his 14-year-old companion, and she is effing great. Yes, she’s an obnoxious teenager, but she’s a lovable kind of obnoxious teenager. Not the most original character either, but she’s written very well, and it’s a shame any time the two get split up. The only reason that I didn’t write off Joel completely is because they play off each other perfectly. A lot of the secondary characters are great too, even though they only stick around for a couple hours each.

The Last Of Us features some very nice stealth-based gameplay. Many encounters can be won by sneaking around all quiet-like and dispatching your enemies (with a good old fashioned choke) one by one. Sometimes you can even sneak your way through an area without killing anyone. And there are plenty of options for when you do want to kill people. You can throw trash around to distract them, or bonk them on the head with a bottle to stun them while you rush up to finish them off. Maybe you just want to lay down a home-made bomb as a trap, or toss a smoke bomb to cover your escape. It’s all quite wonderful, and if the entire game was just these stealth sections, I’d be over the moon.

But it’s not. Every once in a while, the game forces you into a shootout. If you mess up at being sneaky, you’re going to have to reset or finish the encounter with bullets. Sometimes you’ll just be automatically thrust into a firefight with bandits, or the zombies will just inexplicably know that you’re there and rush you all at once. Even worse, is when you meticulously clear out an area with stealth kills, and then trip an invisible event trigger that spawns a dozen enemies in that exact same area that you then have to fight with guns and fists. Those ones are the absolute worst, and they very nearly ruined the entire game for me.

In the early game at least, you have two options when you’re forced to fight zombies. You can try to melee them. This is a waste of time, because while you’re wailing away on one zombie (who will take 4-5 punches to kill), his six or seven friends are tearing you a new one. There are melee weapons laying about here and there, but they’re only a little more effective than your fists, and even then they’re only good for a handful of attacks before they break. Eventually you’ll have home-made bombs, too, but they’re much more useful to lay as traps while you’re in a stealth combat sequence.

Guns are a bit of a wash, too. Not only is it incredibly hard to aim (you can upgrade your aim wiggle, but it costs a small fortune in upgrade pills), but the zombies are brilliant at dodging about as they race towards you. They can’t tell the difference between your flashlight and natural light, but they’re incredibly adept at juking around to dodge your bullets. Yeah, sure. That’s a bit of a stretch there, guys. You don’t get very many bullets either, but that’s a feature that I can live with, and even sort of appreciate, having spent so much of my teen years with Resident Evil games.

There’s apparently a DLC pack for the game that includes the “Grounded” difficulty, which not only makes enemies stronger, but removes the HUD and your ability to sense nearby enemies, and slims the amount of scavengable resources down to the bare minimum. I won’t pay for this mode, but I have to assume that it’s literally impossible. A lack of bullets will be worse than ever since trying to shoot anything in this game is already a major pain, and melee combat is almost completely useless on the normal difficulty. I can imagine that you’ll play up until the first time you come upon a forced zombie fight, and then the game is over because there’s no way to win. It’s a terrible joke from the developers, and you have to pay them to suffer it.

So I guess that what I’m getting at is that I’d like for The Last Of Us to be more like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. In fact, it’s already an awful lot like Shattered Memories, but I’d love it to pieces if it traded in all the shooty sections for running away and stealth times. It would flip my opinion of the game right around, and I’d start to understand why it’s been almost universally praised. As it is though, it’s just another humdrum third-person shooter with a really great story and occasionally a really fun gameplay sequence.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: August 2014

Hey so summertime is drawing to a close, not that that means anything for adults. I guess if you’re a teacher, it’s good times, but for the rest of us it just means that you’re covered in sweat after your commutes to and from work. Hooray.

I had another vacation week in August, so I put it to good use and cleared off a few half-finished games from my backlog. But then I started up a whole new series of games, so it’s all been moot. It’s not like I had anything else worth doing. I got my yard work done too, at least.

~ Now Playing~

Saints Row: The Third (PC) – I don’t know what to say about this yet. I’ve only completed the intro missions, and I’ve mostly been driving around the city at random, collecting stuff and doing assassination missions. I’ve done a few story missions, and unlocked a sweet penthouse base. Also an unlimited supply of fighter planes!? This is absolutely the most fun I’ve had with an open-world game of this style. But somehow it’s missing fast travel. Lame. I hate having to hoof it all the way back to base when my aircraft inevitably explodes.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: August 2014

Year of N64 – June – DOOM 64

My frame of reference for the DOOM series (I’m just going to capitalize the D from now on) exists in a time somewhere between 1994 and 2000. Doom II was one of the few full-version computer games we had back then that I was keenly interested in, and I played it was the only one. Of course, at some point, my taste for Doom and similar games (Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem 3D, etc) waned and I moved on to newer, fancier computer games.

Doom 64 doesn’t have the greatest reputation. It’s not particularly hated or anything, but the internet’s collective opinion is that the original games are better. In the interest of finding out for sure, I made sure to play through the entirety of the Xbox port of Doom so that I could have more than faded memories to make a comparison to.

The original Doom is fantastic. It’s a simplistic game that doesn’t even let you look along the vertical axis, but it felt much more satisfying to play than most modern first-person shooters. The first two chapters are breezy fun, the third dials it up to push your abilities, and the fourth (an add-on scenario) is simply there to beat you into the ground. What’s most remarkable is that Doom feels really great to play with a controller, as opposed to the keyboard controls (sans-mouse) that I was shackled to in my youth.

Having completed the entirety of Doom for the very first time, and having enjoyed roughly 95% of it (there are some really cheap traps later on), I was riding high and expecting Doom 64 to be a similar experience.

But then it turns out that Doom 64 is poop from a butt.

My very first mistake was playing on a difficulty level that was too much for me. I had chosen “Hurt Me Plenty” on Doom, which is the default setting and equates to what the “Normal” setting would be in other games. Doom 64 phrases it differently, where the equivalent is “I Own Doom.” Sure, it’s the default difficulty, and also a statement of fact. Why would I choose any other setting?

Assuming that it is, in fact, the average difficulty setting, Doom 64 is a brutal game. I was killed twice before I was able to finish the first stage. Secret doors containing monsters open silently behind you. The Average Joe Zombie has a very accurate shot. Rooms are filled with up to eight monsters.

None of this is helped by that fact that playing similar games on an Xbox 360 controller and then an N64 controller is like going from a fork to chopsticks. I figured that all my N64 playing over the last few months would have eased me into the controller, but it turned out to be a massive source of woes for me. I blame it entirely no having used the vastly superior 360 controller immediately beforehand, and it really shows how difficult it can be to adapt to different controllers.

I need to make it very clear though, that Doom 64 lets you customize your controls any damn way you like. Every function is remappable, and you can make changes to your control scheme at any point. It’s a really handy feature, as the default control setup is kinda weird. The only downside is that custom setups aren’t saved, and you have to remap all your buttons each time you power on.

The next big gripe about Doom 64 is the general atmosphere. the graphics, for one, are much darker and more bland than in the PC games. This is to accommodate a generally more horror-focused aesthetic. Doom has always been “scary” in that it incorporates monsters and gore, but the first two PC games were more about stright-up action than trying to frighten you. Doom 64 has this all backwards. The PC games have interesting, colourful visuals, while Doom 64 is awash in browns and grays.

I do appreciate that the team tried to make the graphics more detailed (which they are!), but they killed a lot of the character in the sprites by removing most of their colours.

The sound design has also gone entirely to pot. Doom’s characteristic heavy metal MIDIs have been replaced with subdues, spooky ambiance tracks. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More importantly though, the monsters barely make any sounds unless they’re attacking you. Being able to hear monsters lurking about was a very important part of Doom; you would usually know when a monster was lurking about by the hisses and growls echoing through the halls. Now, pretty much every encounter is a surprise, and monsters will be able to sneak up behind you with no problem at all.

So after having painfully made my way through one and a half stages, I quit, took a week-long breather, and started up again on the next rung down the difficulty ladder, “Bring It On!”

Let me also take an aside here to mention that Doom 64 does not save your game. It uses passwords, which is kinda bonkers. The nice thing is that the passwords save your state (health, armor, guns/ammo) as well as which level you’re on, which is nice. If they only saved your level, it would be a massive pain in the hiney to tackle later levels with only a pistol. No saving is still a big pain though, as mid-stage saves saved me a lot of time when going through the original game. Having to restart a level from the beginning after each death is a little disheartening. I hate sounding like a spoiled brat, but that’s what I am.

Not everything about Doom 64 is bad, though. I really like a lot of the level designs, they feel a lot bigger and more ambitious than in the older games. I suppose that stands to reason though. It’s not like a lot of games get smaller and humbler with each sequel. It’s really just too bad that the designers didn’t seem to have many good ideas for traps. It seems like they decided early on that having enemies appear out of thin air behind you was going to be their bread and butter. Still, the actual architecture of the stages is usually impressive, and I enjoyed navigating and solving them.

Doom 64 features the usual Doom weaponry, including Doom II’s super (double-barreled) shotgun and the totally sweet double chainsaw. It also has a new weapon that’s unique to only this game: the Unmaker. It’s an alien-tech laser gun, which doesn’t seem all that impressive at first. However, if you take the trouble to find the secret stages, each one contains a collectible artifact that adds to the Unmaker’s power. The first one speeds up its fire rate, and the second and third give it double and triple beams respectively. Even if you only find the one artifact, the sped-up Unmaker is a pretty awesome gun, burning through even Barons of Hell like a hot knife through butter. It’s pretty great.

The monsters in Doom 64 may at fist appear to be new, but really, they’re mostly your old favourites with fancy makeovers. Some are pretty familiar, like the standard zombies and the pinkies, but you probably won’t recognize Doom 64’s imp as an imp until you’re already choking down fireballs. Cacodemons and pain elementals have likewise gotten new sprites that barely resemble their older incarnations. The one new monster is barely new at all. Nightmare imps are just translucent blue imps, with purple fireballs that fly quite a bit faster than the standard imp’s. Doom 64 does have a unique final boss, the Mother Demon. She’s ugly and can tear you apart in record time (that also works the other way around with a powered-up Unmaker), but she looks pretty dumb. Kinda like a big, fleshy bug, if you ask me.

In the end, Doom 64 is caught in a weird place. On one hand, I really like a lot of the levels. On the other hand, pretty much everything else is different in a bad way. It’s reminiscent of Doom, but it doesn’t really feel like Doom, if that makes any sense at all. There really isn’t any reason to play Doom 64. Regardless of whether you’re looking to play a Doom game or an N64 shooter, there are a handful of better choices out there. Even if you’re intent on playing through the entire Doom canon, you might be better off trying one of the fan-made PC ports. Poor Doom 64 just isn’t quite the game it should be.

Festivus in June

I briefly mentioned once that last year, I participated in Talking Time’s yearly Festivus gift exchange. It’s essentially an internet Secret Santa (here dubbed Ninja Santa), with each forum member who signs up given the mission of sending out a gift to an assigned recipient.

I have very little confidence in my ability to pick out gifts for people, and I was panicking pretty hard to get my gift done and sent before Christmas, but I did it. I spent a little more than I’d hoped to, but my “victim” was happy, and so was I. Then all that was left to do was to wait for my gift to arrive.

I waited, and then I waited some more.

By the time March rolled around, I’d accepted my giftless fate, and figured that I’d just have to be content in knowing that I’d done my part. “More important to give” and all that jazz.

Then last week this showed up.

I was not particularly shocked, as the fella who organized the whole affair had said that he’d be sending out consolation gifts to everyone whose Ninja Santa had flaked. Apparently the flake rate was really high this year, and Nich was paying for these consolation gifts out of his own pocket, so to say that he’s a pretty good dude would be a serious understatement.

Let’s take a look at what’s inside, shall we?

A big book of ghost stories! Mammoth, even, if the cover is to be believed. I’m so very happy to have received this book, as I’ve been crazy about ghost stories since I was a wee lad. In my adult life, I’ve not read a single one, so this fills a long-neglected niche.

It’s worth mentioning that I am also legitimately terrified of ghosts, regardless of whether they’re real or not, so this book will probably contribute to more than a few sleepless nights. I can’t wait!

Also a collection of old horror comics! This is exactly the kind of thing that I would spend my own dollars on if I had some to spare, so I’m also really happy with this.

For whatever reason, I have a deep appreciation for Golden Age comics. I don’t have a clue where it comes from, but I look at this book and I think that it’s exactly the kind of thing that I want to be reading.

I’m not very familiar with EC Comics on the whole, but I’ve had a life-long fascination with Tales From the Crypt, so a publication of a similar theme should be right up my alley, yes? Only time will tell for sure, but I can’t imagine any reality in which I end up disappointed after reading through this volume.

So that’s my Festivus haul. I’d say that it goes above and beyond being a simple “consolation gift.” I know that if I had to shell out to supply gifts to all the folks who didn’t get, I’d probably have just sent out the same generic tchotchkes to everyone, rather than hand-picking personalized gifts. So it’s a good thing that I don’t ever plan to run Festivus.

Dark Souls: Killer Forest

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan explored a cavern filled with skeletons and whatnot, and discovered a very important item.

I climbed out from the twisting caverns of the Catacombs and shielded my eyes from the sunlight. It had been a while since I’d been above ground, and the brightness was a little distracting while I was fighting the skeletons between the cave’s mouth and Firelink Shrine’s bonfire.

At this point, I was rocking a pretty significant surplus of souls, so I sauntered back to Andre’s forge in the Undead Parish. I had the blacksmith upgrade a bit of my gear, and then purchased the outrageously expensive Crest of Artorias from him. I had no idea what horrors that crest kept locked away, but I felt like whatever it was couldn’t be any worse than Anor Londo.

Heading back to the massive set of doors in Darkroot Garden, I slotted the crest into the circular indentation in the middle. The crest shone brightly and the doors opened on their own, revealing a vast forested area. I stepped in cautiously, and before I made it very far, I was accosted by ghostly wizard. He wasn’t like the malicious invaders that I had fought earlier, but he was no less fierce in his onslaught, tossing magical bolts at me like there was no tomorrow.

I defeated the wizard, at a great cost to my health, but as his figure faded from the world, another apparition jumped out from the trees. I had no choice but to run, and I quickly hobbled up the stairway and through the garden’s doors. I hung a quick right and hid in the shadow of the nearby wall, hoping to elude the spectre. But when I leaned against the wall, to my surprise, it simply vanished! Hiding behind this false wall was a most welcome bonfire. Now that I had a nearby rest stop, the woods ahead seemed that much less daunting.

Refreshing at the bonfire, I headed back to the forest. Straight ahead is where the ghosts lurked, and to the left was a cliff that dropped off into nothingness. I decided to see what was over to the right, hugging the wall to avoid and ghostly encounters. Unfortunately, that side of the forest is literally covered with weed-monsters. These guys are harmless if you’re fighting them one-on-one, but in a group of seven or more? Yeah, you’re boned. You Died.

I decided to take my chances with the ghosts again. I figured that at least I’d be able to take them on one at a time. I was wrong. I guess I walked a little too far into the trees, and two of the spooks flanked me on either side. I ran back to the doorway, and hid behind the staircase, hoping that they would lose track of me and go back to whatever they were doing before I showed up.

To my great surprise, both ghosts ran up the staircase and lept off the top, over my head, and into the abyss below. I stood there, dumbfounded, looking into the fog. After a few seconds, their souls floated up and added to my wallet.

That was a freebie.

There were a few more ghosts in the forest, and I decided that despite it being terribly unlikely, I’d try to have them run off the cliff again. And they did. Each and every one of them. I suppose that all of these guys died of massive head wounds.

Moving on, I came to the remains of a small tower that bridged a gorge between the two halves of the forest. Inside the rubble was a large cat-like monster. It noticed me before I walked in, but didn’t attack me. Instead, the creature talked to me. She warned me that the depths of the forest were a sacred place, and that I should turn around and leave. I stated that I had no intention of doing so, which made her quite cross with me. From that point onward, she refused to speak even a word to me.

At least she wasn’t trying to eat my flesh, I suppose.

The far side of the forest was comparatively peaceful. There were no ghosts, or weed monsters, or murderous statues or anything. There were a bunch of little mushroom-looking creatures running about in circles, but they didn’t appear to have any interest in me. I was cautious around them at first, but one came up behind me and simply brushed past me without so much as turning to look at me. Sure, why not?

But there was a darker side to these mushroom folk. In the center of this area was a small pond. In that pond were two much larger mushroom people. They were at least three times the size of the waist-high munchkins that toddled around endlessly. The big ones didn’t move at all. They simply stood watch over a treasure chest seated right in the middle of the pond. Obviously I went for the treasure, and even more obviously, the big mushroom guys didn’t like that much.

One mushroom-man stayed to protect their cache while the other began lumbering towards me. It slowly raised a fist, and I raised my shield to absorb the blow. When it connected, I was launched back several feet, and I’d taken a massive blow to my health. These mushroom-men were not fooling around. I got up and carefully engaged the mushroom. I swiftly evaded his next punch, but when I went to counterattack, he surprised me with a follow-up swing. You Died.

Tune in next week for Part 25: Throw Me a Frickin’ Bone

Filler time: Articles for grown-ups

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me: I’m a child living an adult’s life. I appreciate a lot of things that people my age aren’t supposed to, if advertising and demographics have anything to say about it. Marketing is all a big load of crap, anyway.

I guess the point is that I don’t have any ideas in my head at the moment, and I don’t have the gumption to type up the weekly Dark Souls entry. Wait, no, that’s what I wasn’t supposed to say. I’m supposed to make it seem like I’m doing something inspired.

Anyway, I type about a lot of goofy things that are emblematic of childhood. Cartoons, Nintendo games, candy. If you scroll up from the bottom of the article list, you’ll see that it takes a long time to get to anything very grown-uppy. Or at least, that’s my interpretation of it. So that’s why today, I’m going to link you to a small selection of old articles that stand out as somewhat more mature among the sea of childish crap that I’ve written.

28 Days Later (2003) – The first movie I ever reviewed, and it’s a scaaary one. Probably because it’s one of the first (if not the actual first) movies with fast zombies. So it turns a kind of slow, tense staple into something much more fierce and immediately frightening. Please note that I have not watched this movie since then.

Catherine (2011) – Undoubtedly a truly mature game, as it deals with many very grown-up themes. Also there are boobies and monsters, but the heart of the game is literally about growing up, accepting responsibility, and figuring out what you want to do with your life.

Chicken Wings (2005) – Chicken wings are undoubtedly a fun finger food, which is pretty child-like, However, wings are most prominent where? Bars, that’s where. Kids don’t go to bars. They’re also one of the staple foods of sports-watching, or so I’ve been told, and sports-watching is a pretty grown-up kind of thing.

Mate1.com Hates You (2006) – To date, still the most popular thing I’ve ever published, if fan e-mails are anything to go by. Mate1.com, if you’re not already aware, is an online dating website. Those are most definitely not for children. It’s not really for anybody, as far as this article is concerned.

Remembering the Cottage (2007) – Yeah, it’s an article entirely about childhood memories, but that in and of itself makes it kinda grown-up, right? I mean, kids don’t reminisce. You have to be old and at least a little world-weary before you really understand nostalgia. Some might say that I’m not old enough to say something like that, but I respectfully have no comment.

True Crime: Streets of LA (2003) – The first video game that I wrote about that earned an M rating from the ESRB. I guess that’s all I really have to say about that. I haven’t written about a lot of games that feature non-laser guns.

Dark Souls: Spooky

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan descended into the Catacombs, where necromancers and traps aplenty waited for her. Also a titanite demon ruined her day over and over again.

I made my way back down from the Catacombs’ bonfire to the mausoleum where the titanite demon lurked. Ignoring the statuesque monster, I made a quick right turn into the small room revealed by a broken wall. Upon stepping into the empty room, though, the weak floor collapsed and I fell into another dark room below.

Before I realized what had happened, I felt the sting of a blade tearing across my back. I was thrown forward by the blow, and summoning up what little strength I had left, I turned to face my attacker. A black knight towered above me, and between the impact of the fall and his first strike, I was too weak to do anything as he brought down his weapon to finish the job. You Died.

The second time in the room with the crumbly floor, I took things a little slower. I couldn’t find anything interesting, so I peered into the hole I’d made previously to see if I could get the drop on the black knight. I couldn’t see him, so I carefully hopped down into the room below. This time, it was curiously empty. I kept my guard up.

Given the time to assess my situation, I was able to notice this time that one of the walls in this room was missing, leading into the bottom of the giant chasm that made up the central feature of the Catacombs. It was covered in bones and gore from one end to the other, with a shallow stream running down the middle. I could make out a bunch of weird creatures moving about in the distance. I let an arrow loose in their direction, which got their attention pretty handily.

The odd monsters turned out to be skeleton wheels. They were much like normal skeletons, but with a massive, spiked, wooden wheel fused to them. The skeletons rode around on these wheels at an alarming speed, so I stood on the edge of the room and lobbed fireballs at them when they got close until they were all dead.

Exploring the chasm floor slowly and quietly, I found a fog wall on the opposite end, which I elected to ignore for the moment. On a nearby ledge, I could see a corpse dangling just out of reach, with the telltale glimmer of an item to be pilfered. It didn’t look like there was any way up there, so I’d have to have a look around at the higher levels to see if maybe there was a way down.

As I bumbled around in the mess of bones, I could hear a faint “tink tink tink” coming from somewhere nearby, but I wasn’t able to locate the source of the noise. Whether that was for better or for worse, I had no idea.

I rounded a corner that led into a narrow passage, and out of nowhere came that black knight who accosted me before. I fought with all my courage and strength, but the black knights are tough customers. It certainly didn’t help that he got an easy free strike by surprising me. You Died.

Heading back to the bottom, I decided this time to just clear out the skeleton wheels the normal way – with my axe. That didn’t go so well. You might not imagine that a pile of bones attached to an oversized wagon wheel would be so dangerous, but they are! They’re fast and hit like a truck. You Died.

Before entering the titanite demon’s mausoleum, I peered down into the chasm. It was too dark to make out anything from than height, but I could barely make out a small ledge quite a ways below me. I wasn’t going to try making such a long leap, but one of those damned exploding skulls had somehow avoided my blade, and spooked me from behind, sending me tumbling down into the darkness.

I landed on the ledge below with a sickening thud. Getting up slowly and having a look around, I saw that the small ledge with the corpse that I’d spied earlier was just a short hop down from the ledge I’d landed on. I climbed down and gathered a mace and some equipment that would better fit a priest. A summoning sign also made its home on this ledge, so I made use of it and called up a phantom named Paladin Leeroy.

Leeroy immediately jumped down and started tearing apart the skeletons wheels. With such a capable ally, I figured now would be a good time to see what was on the other side of that fog wall.

We passed through and jumped down into a small chamber than looked like some sort of experimentation room. It was covered in skeletons, and at the far end was a robe-covered figure hunched over an altar of some sort. The figure turned around, revealing a collection of three masks where its face should have been. Six lanterns on sticks sprouted from its back like spindly arms. The monster cast a spell and suddenly two copies of it appeared from out of thin air.

Leeroy ran at the monster with a fierce battle cry, while I desperately tried to fend off one of the copies. All at once though, the copies vanished and I turned to watch the monster wail in defeat and crumple to the ground. Leeroy looked proud of himself for besting it so quickly as he disappeared in a flash of light, as phantoms do.

I investigated the now lonely room and found a small tome on the altar called the “Rite of Kindling.” In it, I learned that I could kindle a bonfire up to three times, which would fill my Estus Flask with 20 charges as opposed to the basic 5. This would be my most valuable discovery yet.

Tune in next week for Part 24: Killer Forest

Dark Souls: Creepshow

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan ran away from Anor Londo because it as too hard, and met a giant snake monster that told her about her destiny.

I meandered around the Firelink Shrine graveyard, busting skeletons to pieces as they came, until I was fairly sure that I’d found any noteworthy bits of equipment and items that I’d missed during my previous expedition here. The skeletons were still fearsome foes, but my skills with a sword -as well as the sword itself- had improved since last time.

Unfortunately, my sword wasn’t going to be of much use where I was going. I needed the Divine Battle Axe that I’d had forged so long a go. A little birdie told me that divine weapons could put down the regenerating skeletons in the Catacombs for good, so I was going to have to learn how to use something other than my beloved Drake Sword.

The axe was unwieldy, but powerful. It was slow to swing, but a strong hit could temporarily shatter the top half of a skeleton to bits, leaving its lower half defenseless and open to attack for a few seconds. It took a bit of practice with the weapon before I felt confident taking it down with me into the depths of the Catacombs, but I had to press forward, and the only other option I knew of at the time was Anor Londo.

I was not going back to Anor Londo.

Creeping down the shadowy staircase, I kept my guard up, knowing that a skeleton and the screeching explody things were waiting in the darkness ahead. The first skeleton came at me, as if out of nowhere. I parried its attack and countered with a mighty blow from my shimmering axe. The divine weapon sent bones flying in every direction. I waited, keeping my shield at the ready. The bones didn’t move. I waited a little longer, nothing happened, and I moved on.

Inside the entrance to the Catacombs, I saw the faint lights floating around above the bottomless hole. They seemed a bit father than usual, which was a boon because they didn’t appear to notice me from that distance. I was curious to find out exactly what they were, but decided not to risk it. I continued down around the edge of the pit and busted up the skeleton that was waiting to ambush me at the bottom.

When I had come down here the first time, I was beset by immortal skeletons and inexplicable explosions, so I didn’t really have time to notice that the cliff at the end of the path did not lead to yet another bottomless pit. No, there was a floor below, maybe a ten-foot drop down. It was hard to see in the darkness, no wonder I’d missed it before.

I hopped down and was immediately attacked by a troop of skeletons, commanded by an undead man who confidently whipped fireballs at me from afar while his minions engaged me in close combat. I rolled away from the skeletons, and went after the necromancer. He ran, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. I struck him down, hoping his death would extinguish the force animating his bony buddies, but they continued to charge me.

I came out of the darkness of the crypt into a valley bathed in sunlight and prowling with skeletons and necromancers. The Catacombs were a massive, winding mess of tunnels, shafts, and catwalks. It was also full of statues, some of which would fire out spikes if someone stepped too close. Finding a bonfire in this place was a welcome reprieve, and getting to the bottom wasn’t nearly as difficult as surviving at the bottom was.

At the end of the main path was a long, narrow mausoleum build into the side of the valley. Waiting at the far end of this mausoleum was another titanite demon. This fight was much tougher than the first one, as the narrow hall made it difficult to get around to the back of the demon where it was relatively save. The big guy softened me up with a few blows of his staff, and then skewered me with a diving strike. You Died.

I worked my way back to the titanite demon, this time attempting to defeat it with a mix of fireballs and arrows. The strategy seemed airtight, until he reminded me that he could fling lightning bolts at me from his staff. Also, he has a pretty amazing range on that jumping attack. You Died.

A flat-out assault didn’t really work either. You Died.

Annoyed, my next plan for dealing with the titanite demon was to simply run past him. It worked like a charm, except that behind him was just a dead end. Oh sure, I found a few Eyes of Death back there, but those were absolutely useless to me. The demon wasn’t too happy about me taking its baubles, so it killed me again. You Died.

A couple attempts later, I was running away from an encounter with the demon that went bad very quickly, and as I dove to avoid a lightning bolt, I discovered another path off to the side, well out of the demon’s initial field of vision. I stopped to lament how stupid I’d been for not noticing it earlier, and that was just enough time for the demon to catch up with me. You Died.

Tune in next week for Part 23: Spooky