Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

PictureIn this instalment in the Castlevania series you take control of Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin as they explore Dracula’s castle, which is now inhabited by a new evil vampire named Brauner.

While it is only a 2D game, Dracula’s castle is huge and you’ll spend a long time exploring it. The castle has all the usual things you’d expect: creepy old corridors full of skeletons, dungeons full of monsters and ghosts, waterways full of mermen, but as well as all that there’re paintings which are portals to other worlds. The painting worlds include an Ancient Egypt-type desert, a giant creepy circus, an abandoned village and other interesting places to visit too, all of which are also pretty big (but not as big as Dracula’s castle itself).

The fact that you can be both Jonathan and Charlotte is something I quite liked. Jonathan is more of a power type character, while Charlotte mainly uses magic, so you can switch between them at any point in the game and use the one that you think best suits whatever it is that you’re doing. You can also choose between having just one on screen at a time, or having the other character controlled by the computer: an option which can come in very handy during some boss fights.

Outside of the main game, there are a few other things you can do. For example, you can open up an online shop and sell several of the various items you’ve found throughout the game (and there are literally hundreds of things to collect). I thought this was a lovely little feature, as it made everything feel kind of connected, but the downside is that customers barely ever came, which did reduce my motivation to maintain it. There’s also a mode where you have to fight through loads of enemies in as short a space as time as you can in order to win items which you can use in the main story. You can also play this mode with a friend, which is a nice addition, but one that you probably won’t get to experience because both players need both a DS and a copy of the game.

On the whole, this game presents an excellent adventure which wonderfully uses some classic horror tropes, is packed with references to classical mythology and literature and, at the same time, is very fun.

Rating: 8.5/10

Buy it here.

(It’s Friday, so, don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

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How to Design Pokémon

Everybody loves the Pokémon series, there are hundreds of those cool creatures to catch now and we all spend hours trying to ‘catch ’em all’. I’m sure a lot of you have wondered how exactly it is that the people down at Game Freak come up with all of these ideas, so today I’m going to share the secret with you. With my method you’ll be able have bundles of fun designing your own Pokémon! Here’re the instructions:

1) Pick any random object.

2) Add eyes.

I know, it all seems so simple, right? But it really works. The object you choose can literally be anything too, even a pile of garbage. But, to give you some proof that my method works, here are some, frankly, amazing Pokémon designs I created using this method.

To keep things topical, I made one that fits the new Fairy Type that will be introduced in the next instalment.

This cute little fella is Normal Type.

As you can see, you can even make evolution families using this method!

Who knows? Maybe this Water Type family will be a starter in Generation 7?

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Top 10 Creepiest Characters/Creatures in Video Games (with Rhino Water)

As you my remember, my good friend Rhino Water contributed a countdown to this blog during my week of entries by others. So this gave me the idea that it could be quite fun if the pair of us made our own version of a countdown and then posted them together to see there similarities, and that is exactly what today’s entry is! I must admit, I found it very difficult to make this list, when I thought about it, there weren’t that many creepy things I’d seen in games. I really wanted to include Slender Man (who’s really me, by the way) since he is very creepy in the Slender game, but since he’s really a game character, I didn’t include him. Anyway, without furthur ado, here is our countdown:

Rhino Water: Number 10 is from Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon. It’s the third boss: Scorch. Yeah he was creepy when I first saw him. He was a monster to end all monsters… he failed. But he was creepy and he can make baby monsters with his mouth. He throws it out and, boom, an egg comes out creating monsters. Still no match for the awesome dragon Spyro though. He no longer haunts me, but the next nine, they do.

Adam: For me, Number 10 comes from the Pokémon series. My choice is Missingno. I guess this may be a bit of an odd choice, since Missingno is a glitch, rather than something which came about after the game designers sat down and thought “Let’s make something creepy!” But that doesn’t change the fact that Missingno is a creepy creature that exists in a game. Basically, after fulfilling a very strange set of requirements, a battle will start and the wild Pokémon will be a glitched set of pixels called Missingno. You can catch it and it’s extremely powerful, but doing so makes the whole world become very glitchy. All of this is good reason, I think, for this reality warping abomination to be tenth.

Rhino Water: Number 9 is from a Donkey Kong game: Donkey Kong: Jungle Climber. It is the ghost. The ghost is creepy:
1) You can’t kill them.
2) To not get hurt you have to not move.
3) If they do hit you they go right up to the screen and scream.
Yeah, that made me jump and it does not help the fact that creepy music is in the background.

Adam: My Number 9 is one that people might not think of as creepy at all. From the Super Smash Bros. series, I chose Giga Bowser. Why, you ask? Well, we all know Bowser; he’s that loveable villain from the Super Mario Bros. series. He’s nice, safe and predictable. But then in Super Smash Bros. Melee, all of a sudden he transforms into a horrifying beast with disproportionate body parts. I found that very creepy and unexpected.

Rhino Water: Number 8 is… Hey, Crash Bandicoot! I like Crash but I don’t like Fake Crash. I mean, Evil Crash from Crash Twinsanity is cool but Fake Crash, no. I get scared of him.
1) He looks stupid.
2) He appears in some random levels.
3) His eye brows are spooky.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Oh no, this is only Number 8, it is only going to get more creepy…

Adam: Funnily enough, my Number 8 is kind of an evil copy of somebody too. I chose the SA-X from the game Metroid Fusion. Now, looking at the picture, you’ll see that it is basically just another Samus, and that’s true, but that’s not why it’s creepy. In the story Samus gets some kind of infection and needs to have her suit removed, but it can’t all come off or she’ll die, so they just take off all of the most powerful parts… Which then become possessed and come after you! You’ll be going through an area, then suddenly a wall will explode because an extremely powerful, invincible version of you has knocked it down, and is now heading your way… All you can do is run.

Rhino Water: Number 7 is from Pokémon, and no it is not a Pokémon, it is a Pokémon trainer. From Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, it is Greevil. Yeah, if you see his eyes, you will be creeped out. Man, his eyes are creepy! And he is just spooky in a spooky way. Yeah, I don’t like people who are spooky in a spooky way and who have creepy eyes.

Adam: My Number 7 comes from Super Paper Mario. I’m sure anybody who’s played the game will know that I’m going to pick Mimi. Now, for those who don’t know, Mimi starts out looking like a regular little girl (or, as regular as people can look in a cartoony series) but then at one point her neck suddenly breaks, giant spider legs come out of her head, and she starts chasing you around a haunted house… That place is huge too, so you spend quite some time running away from this monster.

Rhino Water: Number 6 is… Hey, Rayman. This next creepy person is, well, creepy in a creepy place and his name is Jano. He sends Rayman to the Cave of Bad Dreams and that place is spooky. But it gets worse once Jano has found Rayman; he comes from the ground like a zombie and says in a creepy voice says “uhhhhhhh, your trip ends here.” Then Rayman runs away and your screen shows the view from behind his jaws as he is trying to eat Rayman. But once you are away from him he battles you and he fires fire balls at you. Okay, not scary. But then he throws skulls at you. Yes, creepy again! Jano is very creepy, but he just missed out on the top five…

Adam: I’m picking another Pokémon for Number 6, but this one is creepy through design, rather than just being a glitch. My choice is Confagrigus. As you can see from the picture, it’s a coffin with four arms, and when you play it’s just moving erratically all over the place with its arms grabbing in each and every direction. His cry is pretty creepy to. But the best thing is, I can just capture one and then use it whenever I like!

Rhino Water: Number 5 is… Hey, a horror game: Castlevania: Judgement. No, it is not Death. But what is worse than Death or Dracula? Well, something that looks like them both combined. Yes it is the Time Reaper. The Time Reaper is very hard, I mean creepy hard, like “Ahhh, this is hard!” and also it made me jump when I first saw him. But, hey, I beat him. Well, that was creepy too. I mean, once you beat him all that is left is his skull and then it crumbles then it’s just his glowing eyes and then the Time Reaper is dead. Yay a creepy thing is dead!

Adam: My Number 5, is my friend’s Number 6, so, I guess I don’t have to say much, or I’d just be repeating him!

Rhino Water: Number 4 is… Hey, Mario is not scary. I mean, King Boo is not… Well, except in Luigi’s Mansion. King boo is actually scary. Ahh! Just by looking at it, it’s scary. Ahh! Let’s go onto the next one before I get too scared.

Adam: Number 4… This comes from The Legend of Zelda series, specifically Ocarina of Time. I chose the ReDeads. Now, every other thing on this list is something I think is kinda creepy, but this is the first that actually scared me. I’ll admit that I’m no longer scared of ReDeads, but when I was first playing the game I was terrified of them. They make this really creepy groaning noise, paralyse Link with fear and then jump on his back and start eating him once they get close enough…

Rhino Water: Number 3 is… Hey, who plays Bust a Move 4? What an awesome game. The villain is Dreg, but his robot is creepy. Madame Luna. It may not look scary, but it is a love maniac and ahhhh it scared me! I mean, if you were a kid you would get scared of it. If Madame Luna wins, well, she goes right up to the screen and kisses it. Yeah, I try to beat her because she is scary. Don’t kiss me.

Adam: I also picked one from the Donkey Kong series. My Number 3, Kackle, comes from my favourite game ever: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. In one level you get onto some kind of rollercoaster ride in a haunted house, and then Kackle starts chasing you. There is a timer that appears on screen, and when it reaches zero, he catches you. It might be because I played it when very young, but this is another that actually scared me at one point in my life.

Rhino Water: Number 2 is… Hey, Kingdom Hearts! Hey, who likes the heartless? Well, the heartless are cool but what about a ghost heartless? Just like King Boo this thing is creepy. I mean, his eyes have popped out. And, ahhh, it’s scary battling it too. But, wait, something is creepier then this thing? Oh no.

Adam: Number 2 comes from the Metal Gear series. This is actually the only thing on this list from an ‘adult’ game series, which I guess gives a good impression of what kinds of games we like to play! But anyway, my choice is The Sorrow. In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater you find yourself wandering through a river in the fog, while The Sorrow flies around just ahead of you, beckoning you onward. It’s a boss fight, but, right from the start The Sorrow’s health gauge is empty. As you walk further and further down the river, the tormented souls of all the people you’ve killed come walking by too… An excellently creepy and atmospheric moment.

Rhino Water: Number 1 is… WARNING: this next character is scary and if you get scared easily do not look this up on Google images. This one is from the Sonic series. Hey Tails, how are you? Tails is awesome. I wonder what he would look like if he was a doll. Huh. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Scary. Yes, Number 1 is the Tails Doll. You won’t last a second of looking at the Tails Doll. It’s creepy. Just saying its name is creepy. In fact, it’s so scary that it can make adults cry. I mean, I love Tails. I never thought Tails could be scary. But the Tails Doll is so scary, even just to think about. Why Sega, why did you come up with this Tails Doll? The Tails Doll is in my nightmares. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Yes, the Tails Doll is the creepiest thing I have ever seen in games, and not just games either, but in movies too. The Tails Doll, go away! In fact I am stopping this countdown now. THE END

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH TAILS DOLL

(there is a picture of the Tails Doll below, so, I guess you might like to stop scrolling)

Adam: My Number 1 is another from The Legend of Zelda series, specifically Majora’s Mask, which may well be the creepiest Zelda game. In this game, you can visit a ranch and there’s a little girl on the ranch who acts very strangely.  You also know that something bad has happened there, but you don’t quite know what. Eventually, you can go back in time and see for yourself what happened there, and it was aliens. Referred to only as Them, they come from a strange light in the sky and head towards the ranch all night long, and if you don’t stop Them, they take all the cows and the little girl too, who screams as she’s sucked into the sky… Plus, the music is pretty darn scary too. As of yet, I’ve not seen anything in a game I could call scarier than this.

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Some Changes Around Here

For a while now, Friday has been the day when I post a Finger Puppet Show comic strip, but now I’ve given the Finger Puppet Show its own site. The reason for this, is that Weebly struggles to show strips at the original size at times, and sometimes makes them hard to read, whereas this new site is actually designed for webcomics and has no such problem. So, strips will now be posted exclusively there and every Friday will be a regular entry just like any other day. Having said that, I’ll post links at the bottom of the Friday entries, just to be sure nobody misses the new strips. But, yes, no major change, but I thought I’d write this to avoid confusing anybody! Also, a link to the new Finger Puppet Show site will always be available from here: simply click ‘Finger Puppet Show’ under the blog’s banner. Thanks for reading 🙂
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Oh Dear

So there’s nobody left!

Jeb was created both by me, and a good friend of mine.

Today’s strip features David Tubb.

Finger puppets can be bought here.

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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

PictureThis is the second Harry Potter novel and it starts where the first one left off, with Harry home for the summer following his first year at Hogwarts. One day he gets a visit from a house elf named Dobby, who warns him that some very bad things will happen to him if he returns for his second year. Once Harry does get back, he begins to discover that there is indeed something strange going on at Hogwarts, once again!

I think this book is better than the first, in part due to the addition of several excellent characters. First, there’s Ron’s younger sister Ginny who has a little bit of a crush on Harry. While she isn’t in all that many scenes, it’s always lovely when she is, because she’s so nice and sweet. Second, there’s the school’s new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher: Gilderoy Lockhart. He’s a very over the top man and he has quite a high opinion of himself too. All the main characters (other than Hermione) find him very annoying, but I found him to be hilarious and loveable. Finally, there’s Dobby. Dobby is a house elf which means that he is a slave to a certain family and he worries constantly about doing things that will upset them. Like Ginny, he’s not in many scenes, but he’s still an adorable addition to the story.

Another upside of this story is that it gives you a bit of a look at the history of Hogwarts. I don’t want to spoil any crucial part, but there’s a flashback to the school fifty years in the past which was a very good bit. As well as that, characters also discuss the original founders of Hogwarts who lived thousands of years ago, which works well to make the magical world feel more developed.

On the whole, this does all the good things the first book does and adds several more good things too! I found that this one was much funnier at times, that it had a lot more emotional depths than the first and that it was even slightly creepy too.

Rating: 8.5/10

Buy it here.

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Balloon Fight

PictureBalloon Fight is a game where you take control of a man who is attached to a couple of balloons which he uses to fly, and then fight birds who are also flying around on balloons. It’s pretty basic, but nice and fun. There are three different game modes.

The first is the one player game. In this you find yourself in one of several stages. These stages all take up the space of a single screen and you can only move left, right, up or down, they are not three dimensional. Every level will have a certain amount of enemy birds to fight and to defeat them you have to fly over them and pop their balloons, which will cause them to fall to the ground, and then you have to bump into them again, which will knock them into the water at the bottom of the stage. As well as the birds, you also have to dodge bolts of lightning (which will kill you instantly) and a large fish which jumps out of the water in order to try and eat you. These levels go on forever and you are just playing to get a high score, rather than towards any goal. I find it pretty enjoyable.

The second mode is the two player game. This is identical to the one player game, except a second player takes control over a second balloon fighter. Unlike a lot of NES games, when you play multiplayer, both of you are playing simultaneously, rather than alternately, which makes things even more fun. The multiplayer mode adds more variety; you can choose to help one another defeat the birds, or you can choose to treat each other as another enemy and fight each other while fighting the birds. This is definitely my favourite of all the modes.

Finally, there is a mode called Balloon Trip. Here you are put in an infinitely long side-scrolling level where you have to dodge hundreds of little sparks (which will kill you instantly) and the goal is basically just to see how far you can get. This mode is both very frustrating and very addictive. You can be doing really, really well but then one slip and you’re dead, so you’ll try again and again always trying to outdo yourself.

On the whole, the game is good for what it is, but what it is isn’t much, if that makes sense? It’s more enjoyable than a lot of other early NES games.

Rating: 6.9/10

Buy it here for NES.

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Hiding

I’m a bit disappointed with how this strip turned out. The last four panels are not supposed to be larger than the first eight (they are actually the same size) it’s just something Weebly does when you post multiple images. It’s a shame really, because it makes it hard to have a strip which is over eight panels long: either I try and post it all as one image and it comes out almost too small to read (like this) or I have to divide the strip and most two images and they are very obviously separate (like this) which is what happened here too. I had a choice between it all being tiny or the bottom part being massive. Oh well….

Finger puppets can be bought here.

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A Case of Miscaken Intentions

Back when I was in the Corsham School Sixth Form I would often make cakes for my friends for various reasons (I’ve mentioned this before). So, when it was my friend Laura’s birthday, I decided to bake a tasty chocolate cake for her. I met her in the Sixth Form common room in the morning, wished her a happy birthday and handed over the cake. Once that was done, I found myself a seat, sat down and started reading a book while she chatted away with her other friends.
    About an hour later she had to leave in order to go to a lesson. I was able to stay and continue reading though, since I had another free period. But when she left, I couldn’t help but notice that she put the cake (still in its bag) under the sofa. This seemed strange to me; what about all of the hungry students in the room? They might want to steal it! Besides, if she liked it, why was she just dumping it under a sofa? I stayed in the same spot reading my book and keeping an eye on the cake under the sofa, just to make sure it wasn’t stolen. After another hour or so it was time for me to head down to my own lesson and so off I went.
    The day went by and before long it was 3 p.m.: time to go home. But before I headed off, I wanted to check on the cake under the sofa. If it really had been unwanted and discarded, I may as well take it and put it to better use. To my unhappy surprise, I found the cake still under the sofa and so I took it. On my way home, I decided to pop by at my good friend Rory’s house.
    “Good afternoon, Rory,” I said when he answered the door. “I shan’t stay long, I just thought I’d pop by a delicious cake for you. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it!”
    “Isn’t that the birthday cake you made for Laura?” he asked.
    “Well, yes, it is. But she left it behind under a sofa, so, I guess she didn’t want it. You, on the other hand, will probably enjoy it a lot more, so I thought I may as well give it to you!”
    “I’m not sure. You better keep hold of it. It could well be a misunderstanding. Maybe bring it in tomorrow, give it to her again and say you realise she’s forgotten it and so wanted to give it back?” he suggested wisely.
    So I took the cake home with me, and then back into school the next day. It didn’t actually see Laura that day, but I did bump into my friend Sarah who told me that she had been talking to Laura and she had said that the birthday cake was a very nice gift… So I then brought the cake in a third time the next day and on that day I did see Laura.
    “I couldn’t help but notice,” I said, “that you accidentally left the cake I made under the sofa on your birthday…”
    “Yeah, I always leave my stuff there for safe keeping, nobody looks there and it saves me having to carry it around!”
    “Oh, I see,” I said. “Well, I ‘rescued’ it from under the sofa the other day, so, here it is again.”
    And so the cake was finally properly delivered two days later at which point it would have been a lot less fresh.
    I suppose the moral of this story is that you should always assume good will even when it may seem that somebody may not be very pleased with your actions, most of the time it will probably just be paranoia and things are rarely as bad as they seem.
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The Simpsons Vs Family Guy

It was announced the other day that The Simpsons and Family Guy would crossover in a Family Guy episode called ‘The Simpsons Guy’ so I decided I would write about the two series and, in particular, which one I prefer more. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you now that I much prefer The Simpsons, but I’m going to explain why I find it better than Family Guy. Also, I must post a small disclaimer; I haven’t seen all of either series. There are about ten seasons of The Simpsons I’ve not seen and at least three of Family Guy I’ve not seen, so, things that happen in those seasons may contradict some points I make.
    First, no matter how silly The Simpsons may ever be, Family Guy is always sillier. I like fiction to have a certain degree of seriousness or else I won’t have the emotional investment needed to value it highly. For example, while an episode of The Simpsons may be about the family sleeping through church, waking up to find that it is Judgement Day and then heading down into Hell, an episode of Family Guy may have a character say in the rain on the street “Could this day get any worse?” only to have somebody run over and stab them. Now, I won’t deny, I laughed at that, I thought it was a very funny joke, but the thing is, in the next scene they were fine with no mention of being stabbed. It was just utterly meaningless; only there to make the audience laugh. Obviously, with The Simpsons example the family aren’t trapped in Hell from then on, and that’s never mentioned again either, but I see quite a difference here. The Hell ending does more than just making the audience laugh: it’s quite unsettling too and makes the ending quite disturbing. Also, the episode had been about the family dreaming while in church, all of them dreaming about themselves living the lives of various characters from The Bible. The episode based on Bible stories ends with Judgement Day much as The Bible itself does, which is probably intentional. Furthermore, it’s not too hard to reconcile that ending with other episodes; each of them had been having dreams throughout the episode, and that ending could easily be another dream. But the stabbing example cannot even be reconciled with the episode it’s a part of.
    Another good example is to look at how each series has handled crossovers in the past. The Simpsons did an episode which was a cross over with The Prisoner and Family Guy has done an episode which crossed over with House. The Simpsons/Prisoner episode didn’t do anything drastic to the character of Number 6 and he was generally portrayed much as he was in his original series, if you wanted to, you could fit that somewhere into the story of The Prisoner. Meanwhile, when Gregory House appears in Family Guy he is pretty much a parody of himself: somebody says ‘if you’re a doctor, you’ll need this’ and hands him ‘The Rule Book’ which makes House really angry and so he throws the book out of the window and later you find out that House was actually a criminal who dressed as a monster to terrorise people and, at the same time was an English man doing a fake American accent…

   Both Family Guy and The Simpsons are series with a floating timeline. Basically, this means that, while the series goes on for years and years, the characters stay the exact same age and not very much changes in the world around them. Having a floating timeline is definitely one of the things which have allowed each series to last so long, but at the same time it does bring up the problem of why they never get older despite the large passing of time which seems to have occured. The Simpsons will occasionally make a vague reference to this, with Homer saying something like “I remember when I was growing up in the fifties… or the sixties… it may even have been the seventies!” whereas Family Guy, in my opinion, takes it too far by, for example, having a pregnant woman give birth and somebody saying to her “Haven’t you been pregnant for about four years?”
    Which brings me to my next point: Family Guy does seem to use meta-fictional humour an awful lot. Somebody will say something and somebody will reply “Wow, I thought we had a clip for that!” or, say, introduce a live action singer to play them out, as if it were some kind of live variety show. I don’t mind meta-humour, and sometimes I even enjoy it, but being constantly reminded that these are just characters takes you right out of the world and reduces integrity. It also makes me care much less about any of the characters: if they know they’re fictional and can be stabbed one scene and completely fine the next, then why should I worry about them? If something bad happens, none of them should care, they’ll have no reason to worry since they know it’s always fine. A ‘Treehouse of Horror’ episode  of The Simpsons often makes me a bit uncomfortable because these loveable characters are being murdered or going through horrible events, but anytime there’s a threat or something similar in Family Guy, I simply don’t care about them.
    Now, I don’t want to sound too critical, I often laugh at the jokes in Family Guy, but, to me, that’s all it is, something to laugh at. The Simpsons, on the other hand is a show about a family with interesting stories, loveable characters and lots of good jokes too. I do like Family Guy, but it will never be a favourite of mine (like The Simpsons is) simply because it is so silly, and if it can’t take itself at all seriously, why should I?
(I do not own the copyright of any of these images.)
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