Computer Fixing and a Bit of FEAR

Well, to start off, I finally got my computer fixed after a year of constant crashes, bluescreens and general douchebaggery. Got the new motherboard and tower from UPS after a week, took five hours to put it all together and got on all giddy and happy that, at long last, I could play F.E.A.R. 2 on maximum settings quite nicely. And now, my experiences with the game... *SPOILER ALERT*
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Also, take a look at the trailer I linked to. It has some of these scenes.

Well, the start of the game, when I first went through it, actually made me jump a bit. Watching the little girl version of Alma look at me, turn and walk away wasn't very scary, nor was chasing her through an apocalyptic version of the city. After that, though, having her get all up in my business after I "woke up" is what got me. Thus, I'm in an APC with the rest of my special forces squad, out to grab Mrs. Aristide from her giant freakin' apartment.

Next, I get to the tower she's in. Nice scenery, rain gets on my special shades that show my HUD, etc. I go through a side entrance because someone in their infinite wisdom decided, oh hey, I'm going to pile a bunch of crap in front of the main doors because that will save me from anything. Yeah, I don't think it worked, considering I found him with the rest of my team facedesked in a pool of his own blood and a big gaping gunshot wound in the back of his head.

After that, I take an elevator toward the top of the tower. One of my squadmates gets shot all to hell, so it's just me and the squad's intel chick. We eventually split up after fighting a little ways into the tower, leaving me to do all the dirty work. But, that's all the boring stuff; The real fun happens when I reach the pool area. Alma, the psychotic pissed off ghost from FEAR 1, is scurrying about here. She crawls along the floor as you enter the pool area and disappears. The whole area is covered in unnatural red light and the only way through is through the pool, which you just [i]know[/i] isn't going to end well. I jumped in and was greeted by a scene where little Alma is swinging on her tree and I walk slowly up to her. I actually really like the music, I found it... Eerily beautiful to hear her singing with the ghostly chimes.

Well, I reach her, she turns around and says something, and I'm forcibly thrust back up out of the pool to see Alma standing out of the pool just in front of me for a second. I then exit the pool to another couple of encounters with her in Aristide's apartment itself, most notably when she runs along the halls and up to Aristide's bedroom to open her favorite music box, which happens to play the same music she was singing to.

This opened a secret door which Aristide was in, and I was greeted by a bunch of monitors showing one of the end scenes of FEAR 1 where Alma's father releases her, promptly gets liquefied and begins the freakin' Apocalypse. At this point, my vision goes in acid trip mode where everything is in slow-mo as I run back through Aristide's apartment, following little Alma as she leads me to the glass windows of the apartment. She transforms then into her teen self, looking out the windows at where she was released, looking back at me mischievously.

The facility then gets nuked.

After getting thrown onto my back and losing consciousness, Aristide drags my sorry hide to an underground facility disguised as a hospital for "treatment', which is actually her testing facility for Harbringer candidates. Harbringer is the program where they turn people with high psychic ability into psychic commanders to control their army of replica soldiers, which are clones. She runs all sorts of tests and experiments on Beckett, unlocking his psychic ability which he uses to enhance his reflexes to the point where everything around him slows down.

Well, the hospital is attacked by the same dudes I was fighting in the chick's apartment. They're trying to cover up Armacham's involvement with all this stuff, which includes this testing facility. So now I need to escape the place before they blow it up with lots and lots of high grade explosive. Of course, I get to meet Alma a few more times, but oddly enough she seemed to have been helping me survive while trying to keep me from escaping. She's very bipolar, it looks like.

So after getting jumped on by some freakish "Specimens" that crawl along ceilings, walls and floors at rates so fast the game almost can't keep up, I eventually make my way to the top of the facility where I need to fight a power suit packing miniguns for arms with nothing but a couple grenades and a SMG.

After dropping that, I raise myself out of the facility as it's coming down around my ears using a lift. I pop up in a destroyed warehouse (The city was nuked after all.) and start making my way out of it. I walked across a catwalk just to have everything go slow-mo again as a flaming 747 crashes about a hundred yards in front of me. I actually liked that part, it was pretty neat.

I got my butt out of the warehouse to see what's left of the city. Dead people stuck in place and turned to ash statues that poof when you walk into them, rubble and fire everywhere, the occasional pissed-off spirit... And the Revenant, an undead person doomed to relive the last moments of their lives forever. Until I fire a rocket down their throat of course. This guy runs around reviving dead soldiers around you which promptly start shooting at you. They tried hard to make it scary, but it didn't phase me; I guess I'm used to that stuff.

Well, if I keep going on like this, I'll just end up describing the whole game in minute detail. That's no fun to read, so I'll just detail my favorite parts:

The beginning, where Alma is singing on her swing. It sets the mood; Sad, dreary and haunting.

The middle-ish portion where I'm in an elementary school Alma's family owned. At some point in there you get to the scariest part of the game, in my opinion. The lights flicker on and off randomly in a hall covered in blood, gore and corpses, and when they're off, it's pitch black in there. You run in and all you see is blood and death flickering in and out of sight, and then Alma starts screwing with you by causing ghosts to appear around you. You can see them easily enough in the dark, but it's when Alma pops up [i]right in your face[/i] when the lights flicker that caused my tenseness toward the situation. Eventually you make it out of there and to a door going crazy, rattling very fast until you reach it and it just [i]stops[/i].

The end, I enjoyed it. I did have an annoyance with it though; Stokes shouldn't have died. She's a special forces soldier within melee range of an armed scientist. I mean, come on, she should know at least how to disarm the chick. Instead she gets shot in the body armor from a pansy pistol and dies. Made no sense to me, and I liked Stokes. Other than that, it was a great ending. Beckett gets raped by Alma, Alma gets pregnant, and after listening to her moan in your ear throughout the entire final fight with a crazy Keegan, you get sent to what I assume is hell somehow. Alma is there, and she walks over to you with a very pregnant belly and puts your hand on it. Last thing you hear is some whispering I still can't make out. Then the game ends after it zooms into her smiling at you all weird.

Lots of fun, beat it twice. Really like the gunfights, though the cover detection should be better. Those soldiers are pretty good shots.

First Thoughts

I went out to see Inception with a bunch of friends today. The movie was okay, got more action packed toward the end which was really nice. We invaded and took over Target for about half an hour, causing mass chaos and destruction, leaving such terror in our wake that Hell itself cowered in fear.

But, that's not really what this post is about. See, I got a random idea talking to Larry on Facebook afterwards about writing a story or two about our little group. Things are rather boring; no explosions or car chases in our daily lives, after all.

So these things need to be added.

Indeed, I was contemplating creating a parody of our lives. Where normally we'd just be driving down the road, in my stories we'd end up rear-ended by another car, causing Larry to play getaway driver while the three of us in back lean out of windows and start taking potshots at the car taking potshots at us. I know, genius right?

Maybe I'll add some relatively impossible things, too; After all, it's entirely plausible (And extremely likely, considering I will be taking many different martial art classes when I finally get that mythical job thing everyone is talking about) that our group could be able to unleash the fury on some random guy shooting an assault rifle out of a car window at us. Now, for the relatively impossible thing? Maybe I'll stand at an intersection and deflect the car with Agustin my forearm and fling it into a lake. Crazy stuff.

Personally I think it'd make one hilarious story.

In other news, I need to start writing my actual story I've been thinking up for the past few months. Now, I did get most of Chapter 1 done, but I think I'll just go about rewriting it again. It's a sci-fi steampunk fantasy type of thing. Here's the basic plot I thought up to get me started on writing it. Eventually it'll get more complex...

Basically, there are three races settling a new planet: Selarnians, Kya'tul and Humans. Selarnians are humanoid felines; Panthers, cats, tigers, etcetera. Kya'tul are... Well, werewolves; White, black and grey for the different types of wolves. Humans are self explanatory, though somewhat different than we know humans as.

These three races try to settle on a planet called Morhaven, which also happens to be the name of the story. They will meet resistance by some of the creatures already living on the planet; The Koluna and the Sero. Koluna are a race of humanoid insects with a hive mind retaliating against the encroachment of their territory. The Sero are a race of giant carnivorous plants that have a human-like intelligence who are fighting simply to kill for food.

The story's main character is a young Selarnian woman named Rasiara, a meek panther with very sharp claws that she won't hesitate to use if cornered. She won't be the typical defenseless chick the main male character saves all the time that nobody likes for whatever reason, but I won't spoil that. She starts off in her home city on Morhaven, Namyria, where she meets a Kya'tul captain named Rakith. He recruits her as a mechanic on his ship to the complete annoyance of his entire crew, save for his sister.

Rakith is a black-furred Kya'tul shipcaptain with bad experiences with Selarnians, leaving him racist against their kind. He's got a mean streak, though he has a soft spot he rarely shows to anyone but his sister, who happens to be the doctor on his ship. He's ruthless, but has good intentions.

Now, on to the more interesting stuff: During their flight to the Kya'tul village of Dorlea, they get attacked by Kolunan ships and barely manage to evade death, but taking a lot of damage to the ship, which grounds them in Dorlea. This causes more problems since most Kya'tul are racist toward Selarnians. Which means Rasiara will have some trouble.

While they're in Dorlea, something happens and causes the two to travel all over Morhaven, trying to stop the Koluna and Sero from killing everyone. On the way they meet new people to join their little group from the other races and eventually get to the heart of the little problem and fix it.

Yep, vague ending description. Yes, I know, there are furries in this. I really don't care; they make for interesting story elements. Who wants to write about boring old humans anyway? I have to be one of those all day. Anyway, I think it'll be great.
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Now, for a rant. My computer crashed three times while I was trying to write this post. Yep, three. After the third one I felt my sanity slip away just a little bit more. Heck, anyone would go a bit more insane doing things on a computer that crashes every 5 minutes for a year. Why is it doing this, you ask? Well, see, the genius that is HP decided it would be a Good Idea (TM) to put a crappy low quality PSU into my computer. The stupid thing died and took the motherboard with it. The computer still works, it just crashes very frequently and can only support half the memory it used to, if that. It randomly decides when to and when not to work. It could go a whole week or two working fine with no hitches and then, suddenly, I get the big F U from the thing and can't do anything, not even typing in Notepad, without the thing crashing from the strain.

Thanks HP, you're a real help. I'm sure my sanity is much better off being lost in the countryside somewhere. Maybe it'll hitchhike back home, but I suspect it'll only get stabbed and dumped into a river. Oh well.

Good news, though: I'm getting a new motherboard. Hopefully that fixes all of my problems and I can stop ripping my hair out and smashing my face into my desk as hard as possible until the pain goes away. The thing cost $70, so it better damn well work or me and mistress luck are going to have some big problems. The big man in the sky will have to have a pair of motherboards surgically removed from his divine rectum.

It's also coming with a new tower, so my computer will look a bit different. Well, one step toward my $5,000 dream computer I've got planned sometime in the future.