One Good Deed

Aside

Thursday.
Another hazy Thursday.
I hate Thursdays. Just feels like it’s filler, like it’s only there to space Friday from Wednesday.
As I leave my apartment, I look down at my phone, hoping she’ll ring.
She won’t, hasn’t all week. I screwed up and she doesn’t want to speak to me.
I sigh as I wander the streets, hoping to get lost in the crowd.
But it seems even the crowds are avoiding me. No-one walks within arms distance as I wait at the kerb, lazily looking for traffic before I continue.
One step.
Two steps.
A horn.
Screeching Tyres.
I am lifted from my feet.
A hand heaves me from the road before the car can touch me.
It takes me a few seconds to process what happened as I sit on the pavement.
I search around for my saviour, but they’ve already gone, disappeared into the unfazed crowd.
My brush with death has left me disoriented, I need to sit down.
There’s a park nearby.

How have I never noticed that before?
As I watch the various people go about their lives, I see something you wouldn’t expect to see.
A number. Well, it more looks like a broken clock.
All of them, maxed out.
I muse over the numbers before I spot something more curious.
A jogger passes me. Her number is not a nine, instead 00:05:32.
Interest piqued, I follow her.

The numbers are a counter. Counting down to what, I don’t know.
Lost in her own world, she doesn’t notice me a few paces behind.
We pass a tall office block in her workout. The counter is almost empty.
I wonder what happens, I guess I’ll find out in…
3
2
1
THUD!
A bucket smashes into her head and she drops to the floor.
The blood splatter causes someone to shriek.
In a panic, I pull out my phone.
It takes too long for the ambulance to get here, people are freaking out.
The window cleaner who dropped the bucket even came down before he broke down on his knees.
The paramedics came with police who disperse the lookers.
I take the opportunity to ask about the counters.
All they say is that I’m in shock and should go and lie down.
Maybe they’re right. My near death experience might’ve messed with my head.
I start to head home.

The man turns red as I reach the crossing. I watch the crowds cross.
A man drops out of the mass to pick up some dropped papers.
His counter turns me white.
He has 7 seconds.
Checking my lane of traffic, I can hear a car going too fast.
It’s now or never, I charge.
He doesn’t even lift his head as he stands back up.
3
I hear the car skidding
2
I tackle him, hard. My momentum knocks us clean onto the pavement.
The car whizzes past, his fate averted.
He hugs me tight, thanking me.
His hug doesn’t last long, when he realises that his papers are strewn all over the road.
As he despairs, I vanish into the crowd, not wanting to cause any more of a commotion.
I thank my luck for getting away with just a few bruises when I stop.
The numbers have gone. Vanished. Not one person has them any more.
As I register this, the sun peeks through the clouds and my phone rings.
It’s my girl.
Maybe I should believe in karma after all…

Inspired by:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JQiEs32SqQ

If the pen is mightier than the sword, where does that leave the bow and the ruler?

So, 2012
11 months until the world ends according to the Mayan calendar…

Yeah right

Anyway, blog post!

…I’ve done it again, I really need to plan what to write in these things

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hmm…

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Ooh! That’s right!

http://parsonator64.deviantart.com/

I have a DA account now

It turns out that during last summer, I found that I have some small speck of artistic talent, so now I have artistic materials and I’m gonna milk this thing for all it’s worth. Expect all lot of fanart, particularly of games I’ll be playing over the coming months. Specifically Kirby’s Adventure Wii and Sonic Generations.

At the moment, I’m just practising with what skill I have, getting used to sketching shading etc, so a lot of my art will be more or less copies of other artwork until I have a firm enough grasp with what I’m doing and how things should look/be done to start deviating.

Until then folks. (If you want a pic to go with this post, they’re on the other side of that link 😛 )

 

(Yea, I know the title is more about words than art, but I liked what I did with it so I’m sticking to it)

He may be 2D, but he can kick ass as well as any 3D

Been playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door recently (as well as Osu!)
Mostly been finishing off side quests and I did the Pit of 100 Trials
To be honest, I had mixed thoughts about doing it: on one hand, it was the last challenge I had left from the game (aside from finding every star piece). On the other hand, I didn’t feel that I was anywhere near prepared for this.

70 floors in, and I wondered what I was worrying about.
Seriously, at Level 31, I had managed to equip myself well enough to tackle most of the floors without difficulty. Sure, a few floors gave me trouble, but that was more to me not being sensible and wasting my flower points.
After that, it got… harder…

For the previous floors, I had been shooting through them, now it felt like a fight for my life. I suppose it was supposed to at this point, but now I was feeling what I had been worrying about. But it was 2 in the morning and I was determined to reach the bottom before I went to bed.
And a note for anyone trying it: Charlieton rips you off BAD. Pack coins and equip the MoneyMoney badge, you’ll need the cash in the later levels

You *******

 

I had about  5 Life Shrooms when I started and by the time I reached Bonetail, I had two.
That’s right, I was at the strongest boss in the game, and I only had two revives (as it were), and considering how many attempts it took for me to defeat the Shadow Queen, I was not feeling confident.
But I managed it, spamming Shell Shield whenever Mario was on low health until he could heal.
Through sheer perseverance, I won.
I had beaten the hardest boss, not in the best state to do so, but I managed.
And my reward?
A badge that would be useless to me as I had nothing left worth using it on and 1 Star Point. ONE! I get more from the Rawk Hawk!
I felt incredibly disappointed at that, especially considering the fact that the game REPEATEDLY HYPES UP THIS DUNGEON.
Cruel joke, Nintendo, cruel joke

Why aren't you worth more?!

 

It’s-a Party Time!

I’ve recently been playing the Mario Party games with some friends and I’ve decided to rate them based on my experiences in these recent games

Mario Party (N64)

The game that started the series

Overall one of my favourites due to the originality of the games, you could tell this game was stepping into unknown territory and it did well despite the lack of try-and-tested formulae for this area of electronic gaming. (As far as I am aware, all there was before this was digital versions of Monopoly)
However, in our 4 player brawl, it didn’t stand up as well as hoped
The board felt small, and Toad sat himself in a corner that was awkward to reach due to the board’s layout and gimmick. Also, it felt half of the board was under-travelled, though this may have been due to our desperate attempts to nab the trapped star rather than by board design.
This game also has a great minigame selection, with a lot of them being very memorable and fun as well as original. However, there is the problem this game is famous for: the “Rotate the control-stick” minigames. On current consoles, I reckon this might not be such an issue due to modern control-sticks being more comfortable, but on the N64, these minigames can easily cause blisters, especially when having to be repeated.
Also, I liked the idea that you chose what items you wanted activated from the start and they randomly appeared during the game, it shall be missed

Rating: 3/5 Stars (Yes, I’ll be making that joke)

Mario Party 2 (N64)

The game starts as it means to go on...

I’d been looking forward to playing this game, though it does have one of the the most broken gimmicks out of the series: Hidden blocks containing Stars. I played a game against 3 computers and the winning computer won with half its stars gained through this method.
This game does feel less adventurous than the first one, keeping a number of minigames from the previous game
In our battle, though, it felt… lacking. Stars were “traded” least out of the games played and the board did feel very small. It also felt like the prices were mixed up as a board event cost 20 coins to pull everyone to the previous space, yet Mini Bowser only took 5 coins . It didn’t feel right
As mentioned earlier, this game re-uses some minigames from the previous game, and because of this it did feel that the selection was poor and lacking originality at times, though the battle minigames were most welcome.
The items were a welcome addition, but they seemed few and infrequent

Rating: 2/5 Stars

Mario Party 4 (Gamecube)

All I can think of is "awesome"

Another favourite and possibly the easiest, a good starting point for anyone new to the series. This game was the first (I believe) to actually use the party idea the series had been named for, with every game beforehand being a contest to find the Superstar.
In our rampage, this game had held the most surprises in my opinion, suddenly changing the players positions very close to the end. Unfortunately, this did sort of feel that events were out of our control during this point…
The board did feel a reasonable size and had plenty going on to keep things interesting.
The mingames were colourful and had creative premises and twists to them, the 3-1 ufo springing to mind. However, as always, there were some that let us down, but they were very minor nits compared to the whole experience
The addition of a random change in the last 5 turns is brilliant, I like it very much

Rating 4/5 Stars

Mario Party 5 (Gamecube)

This is just how jam-packed the game is

While this is a favourite of the series, I don’t think so highly of it. I didn’t like the lack of choice when it came to what capsules you got, you couldn’t really come up with a strategy or tactic if you couldn’t choose what you had to use.
In the multiplayer mayhem, it did feel like there was a lot more player interaction: just because you were half way across the board from everyone else did not make you any more safe or ignored.
The board itself was certainly sizeable, but I feel this worked against it as it did feel empty and character-less a lot of the time, despite there being a number of events available.
The minigames, again, were colourful and creative, but they feel that they had lost the spark from the original game and were just a “do this to win”. The context felt irrelevant in a fair few of them (not actually what I mean, but my brain is refusing to word what I want to say at this point, bed after this methinks)
It should be pointed out that stars and coins swapped hands very frequently, which is always a plus as it means that no-one really gets left behind

Rating 3/5 Stars

And there you go…
I might proof-read it at some point, but not tonight

Happy Belated 25th Birthday Baycon!

Here’s an update, seeing as I’ve sorta stopped posting (again, I promise, I’ll get into the habit of it eventually)
Things have been busy for me as I’ve gone home for a fortnight for Easter and things haven’t really been quiet.
First off, I dragged Nicktendo back with me, kicking and screaming, for the first week-end
During that week-end, my parents decided, on a whim, to buy a PS3 as a gloried DVD/Blu-ray player (the old DVD player has decided that it doesn’t have to listen to what we tell it anymore)
This has still amazed me as I have been trying to get my parents into gaming (well, video gaming), and so far, it’s only been Mario Kart, Guitar Hero and Singstar, so I think this may be a step in the right direction

On the Monday (22nd), I managed to become an admin of a Facebook page and the forum that goes with it
http://www.facebook.com/ho.kago.tea.time.htt
That’s right, its a K-ON! fan page (ONE day, I am going to update without a single mention or reference to K-ON!)
Check it out, we’re always happy to welcome new fans and to introduce people to the series that haven’t seen it yet

Following that, I visited my cousins for the later part of the week, mainly for gaming 😀

Sunday Lunch was also fairly interesting as my Grandma came down to visit me and Dad thought my other Grandparents were coming (Dad does the food shopping, oops), suffice to say, we had a good amount of left-overs for the following week: during which I got most the stuff for my cosplay, as well as The World Ends with You, and we went to Baycon

For those of you who don’t know, (and I’m guessing that is a good number of you) Baycon is a boardgames convention held at the Exeter Court Hotel and this year is its 25th year. Baycon is usually held during the last week-end of easter, lasting from Thursday to Sunday, though this year, it took advantage of the bank holiday monday.

Baycon is great fun and I recommend going to anyone who has an interest in playing boardgames or if you need testers for new games

I played many games during the looong week-end and I believe the time was thoroughly enjoyed by all. I managed to come third in a 7 Wonders tournament, just 2 points behind my brother, which was a nice surprise.

And I’ve managed to lose my momentum with this update (I was gonna talk about Baycon more) but I’ll end it here

See you around

This is not a joke

Wow, I’m really bad at this
This is late because… I broke my computer then revision started (yay(!)), but I’m doing it now

Anyway, I went to see Alice in Wonderland… Sunday before last. It is brilliant –  GO WATCH IT NOW!

I won’t spoil any of it but it is well worth it. You can watch it in 3D but in my opinion it doesn’t add anything to it, so yeah, your choice.

Quick update as well, I’ve recorded the trading side-quest, I’ll get those up when I can. Other than that, I’m not gonna have too much time to be recording because of revision so I’m gonna wait until after

Well, I think that’ll be all

See ya

Spoon!

Sorry

Sorry

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There’s no getting away from it, I messed up my own schedule. My excuse: February got busy fast and I ended up forgetting, sorry it’s bound to happen again.

As for update…
um…
Let me think of something