After some unfortunate tornado business a few months ago, I've finally managed to get settled in a special place. I remodeled this place just for me. I am no longer above ground, so tornadoes can't reach me, and I have all my gaming stuff set up once again.



Here's my new entertainment center, with new High Def TV. Xbox 360 replaced (yep, it didn't survive for more than a week as originally thought,) PS3 checked out, and Nintendo Wii is invincible.

Speaking of the Wii:



Decals! Yea, my Wii got a retro makeover. It's less glaringly WII on my shelf now, the grey toned it down enough.

This is my up-close set-up, yes, I do have all 3 systems...and a DVD player.



And my collection, per request:





Since myself, and at least one other was concerned about the condition of my gaming chair:



It's a bit tattered, but it survived the storm over-all. So far, no splintered glass in places where glass doesn't belong due to sitting in my golden throne, including my kitties.



Oh, and I have a desk now.



And I even have a view from my desk/office area:



I can play video games while I surf the net (which will be more important when I have a desktop PC,) or watch movies while doing homework.

Next up on the Shadokat agenda; I will be posting the PAX paper I wrote for my English class, just have to add some profanity or something first. Cheers!

Image compliments of BAPengin at Co-optimus.com - it makes me laugh, a lot.

Recently I've noticed a disturbing trend in the gaming market. It is the addition of game-altering exclusives with nearly every pre-order on the market, primarily at Gamestop. Yes, this is a bit of self-whoring, but I am pretty sure this subject effects the community here, as much as where I originally posted it (sorry, can't copy paste from there, it's against the rules.)

Over at www.co-optimus.com I delved into this trend a bit to spark some debate; does game-altering exclusive content available by pre-order only effect the way you feel about games, developers, or publishers - or are we just overreacting when we say we don't get the "full experience" if a piece of the game is cut out for everyone else?

This is where you chime in. Head over to co-optimus.com and throw a few verbal tomatoes.

(Is Exclusive Content Bad For Gaming?)

How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole story." - Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart.



I gently slide the lantern hatch open until a sliver of light cuts the thick black of the room. The light arouses the old man from his sleep - his dreaded eye is open, peering into my very soul! The pounding of his heart fills my ears, I must put a stop to it. I hastily take his life, and carefully dismember the body to be hidden far from prying eyes. "There was nothing to wash out - no stain of any kind - no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all - Ha! Ha!" I proclaim to myself after carefully bagging the pieces. I swiftly carry the limb-filled bags to the old mans own room. I pry the floor boards free and carefully deposit the bags. It's done! It isn't until that sound - the throbbing heart fills my head, and I expose my crime to the officers who came loudly rapping at my door. "It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

Some time ago, my parents were keen on giving gifts with educational value. They indulged me with many educational video games over the years - games that were often left ignored or rarely used. Much to their surprise and delight, the gift of The Dark Eye, pushing the literature of Edgar Allen Poe at me through video game form, was one of the most appreciated gifts of 1995. By leaving out the words "educational" when handing over my present, I was none the wiser in my endeavor to fully explore the many twisted tales held within the Edgar Allen Poe PC game. I was Montressor, I was Fortunato - I was murdered, I was a murderer. Creepy claymation characters unfolded the stories for my young mind. I played with the lights off, I explored the many rooms of this game to uncover the tales within the tale - The Tell-Tale Heart hidden in a fish head, The Cask of Amontillado in my reflection from a wine glass.



Much of the game allowed me to explore the tales held within as either the victim, or the murderer - other tales were read to me with stunning visuals and an eerie narrator. Anabell Lee was given a whole new meaning when the characters were composed of wire hangers and paper mache. The Masque of the Red Death made a wonderful Halloween project for a literature class to watch on my antiquated laptop. Then there was the integration; time to figure out how to trigger the next part of well known stories. "Did I check the pot on the stove?" I'd ask, "What about the drawings in the study? Perhaps it's there." I glide my cursor over every inch of the room until another dialog of Poe's famous stories starts up once more.

Halloween comes around, and I dust off the old box, reinstall The Dark Eye and sit down to have my nerves rattled once more - it's been 14 years of this. I personally attribute my favoritism toward Survival Horror to that first fateful encounter, at the impressionable age of 10, playing The Dark Eye. Now I savor the unusual, covet the bizarre, and play any survival horror game time permits.



Sadly for this game,

the action was obscure,

no grenades to lob away,

no gold to gather here.

Though, The Dark Eye did have me,

many gamers've never seen,

The erudite side of fear

that was inSCAPES twisted dream.

Leaving The Dark Eye here,

a forgotten dream within a dream.

Oh - and the Bells, bells, bells....bells.

The Dark Eye had received a Premature Burial, never getting the chance to claw its way into the hearts and homes of many literary gamers. You can quoth this raven, "Nevermore."

Gamestop has always been a bit questionable to gamers in their retail tactics. First, they give you crummy trade-in value for your games at a fraction of what you originally paid. Then, they have exclusive deals that say "buy with us, or miss out on something great that will make your game sub-par." Now, they've crossed the line by lying to a gamer that just wanted to play as Sgt. Johnson and be a part of the Halo Reach Beta.

Here's the situation. First, I have been covering Halo 3: ODST's release on a website called Co-optimus.com. We focus on co-op gaming, so the Sgt. Johnson release for the Firefight mode was a big deal to us. However, as a bit of a book-nerd, I was more looking forward to playing the Halo: Reach beta, which requires the ODST game disc to play.

When I went to Gamestop inquiring about Halo 3:ODST's in-game exclusives, the guy behind the counter told me something that I knew wasn't true - but I took his word for it, since he worked at the company and I didn't. He told me that Halo 3: ODST was going to have Reach beta codes with it, but only with a very limited supply. This was absolutely not true - all you need is the Halo 3: ODST disc in approximately a year when the Halo: Reach beta goes live.

This blatant lie was a violation of my personal being for a number of reasons.

1. He made me question myself ...and I fell for it.
2. He made me feel taken advantage of when I double checked what I already knew, and found out he flat-out lied.

I actually feel can blame the corporation on this one, not just the skeeze that got a (canceled) pre-order out of me. While that guy was still at fault for lying in the first place, Gamestop puts so much pressure on their staff to make pre-order quotas that they'll do almost anything to keep their jobs. Apparently that means lying, though hopefully when I speak with the manager of that store, it's less condoned (and I get a Sgt. Johnson code anyway.) Gamestop is one of my biggest pet peeves in the gaming industry right now.

I used to shop with them for their relatively cheap used-game selection simply because I am poor - Now, I won't even be doing that any longer. Their exclusive pre-order incentives that are rarely (if ever) made available to gamers that don't pre-order with them was the first straw, but when they lie about those incentives I'm not going to make another attempt to pre-order again.



Toys R Us FTW!

Many people who follow me on twitter, or have any idea about my Facebook may have noticed a series of strange blurbs about a tornado that rampaged through parts of Colorado recently - most specifically, my apartment complex. Convincing myself I'm a writer, I thought I'd put down the ordeal in a written account. (Also, a few pictures to curb boredom.)

It all started on a rather quiet evening. I was finishing up an evening of playing one of the most interesting arcade games I've played in quite some time with the developers of said game. I gave them my impressions, and went on my way to writing the review at about 10:15pm. Not two minutes after signing off of Xbox LIVE did the power begin to flicker. No rain, no wind, just flickering power for about a minute.

"That's weird," I thought, praising myself for the pretend forethought to turn off my (7th) Xbox 360 before surges ruined it. I proceeded to unplug my Mac for the same reason, and was half-way through a second review sentence when the thunder started cracking close to the apartments accompanied by hail and rain in a flash. It was the wind that did it, really - drive me to the bathroom, that is. Don't worry, no britches were soiled. I didn't have time for that.

Hail the size of golf balls came at a sideways angle toward the North side of the building, shredding glass, trees, cars, and some homes in the process. My pathetic single-paned glass was no match, and it didn't take long for the hail to rip through my apartment. The noise was unbelievable! I was shouting for the cats at the top of my lungs, and I could not hear anything aside from thunder and breaking glass. The best way to describe it would be gunfire at a slow, powerful rate.

As I wrangled the cats to the bathroom, expensive laptop in hand - the young kitty became far too spooked for sensible judgement. Silly Dax ran toward the breaking glass, and bullet-like hail. Since common sense in a situation like that is rare, I went into the shredding livingroom after the frightened cat! Somehow, my tank-top and jeans provided enough protection to avoid any serious injury - though, I could've sworn I was hit repeatedly with glass in the shoulders and back.

After wrangling the second kitty, we 3 huddled in the bathroom (the only room without windows) for about 10-20 minutes before things calmed enough to venture out. Two cats who normally barely get along, were huddled together in the safety of a bathtub, while I was taking a mental inventory of things that needed to be dried off immediately. Ah, family.

"What the Hell was that?" I repeated, while fumbling in my toolbox for a flashlight (after I'd picked up my Xbox for drying - priorities.) I flicked on the dim emergency bulb to survey the damage, and this is what I saw:


(Not the gaming chair!)





It took maybe 5 minutes to actually realize: I've been hit by a tornado, and made very poor decisions in the process.

While trying to figure out what to do next, I sent a few shocked text messages and called my mom warning her that it might be headed that way. I also spoke with my neighbor and multiple other friends who all had a similar "did that just happen?" reaction. I paced on the phone with my boyfriend for a while, mildly freaked out, when I realized I wouldn't be able to sleep in my own bed until the ice and shards of glass were removed. I was already dealing with slivers of glass in my shoes, pants, and shirt - just brushing my skin enough to irritate and itch like razor splinters.

It was time to decide what to do next. I packed up a few overnight things, and called my sister for a camera to document (partially for insurance, partially for my own recollection) the damage. Since things occur to a shocked mind in stages, it was also time to worry about my material posessions after all creatures were accounted for. Three wide-open windows, a nice new PS3 or Xbox 360, some movies, and loads of pawnable video games prompted me to grab boxes and start packing up.

At about Midnight, my sister showed up with the camera, and we wandered around taking pictures of anything and everything. I convinced her to hold on to a few boxes of irreplacible/out of print comic books, and the aforementioned material goods at her apartment - since my car would be full of kitties, and things like clean clothes.

While we were putting things in her car, my neighbor called to warn me that the gas main near our apartment was leaking - it was time to go. I picked up the following items and prepared to drive my illegal car (spider-webbed windshields are not street legal to drive):

1 litter box
1 kitty food container (with kitty food, and cat-nip inside)
1 laundry basket full of clean clothes, shredded blinds, and glass
1 Dax
1 Kovu
1 Xbox 360
1 Macbook

I settled into my mothers house at 2am, in time to get about 3 hours of sleep before my first final of the semester. What? Did I forget to mention that? Yes, this is finals week. I did a paw-check for broken glass, and crawled into bed with my head in a bizarre state of unrest in spite of being completely exhausted.

The next morning, I drove back to my apartment to pick up a few more things, and get daylight photos of the whole mess before class. Trees were down in the streets and on top of cars, power line poles were cracked like toothpicks, street lights were bent, many of the 50,000 homes without power were still without power. I've now got a new windshield on the way, boarded windows, a functional Xbox 360, and a warm bed to sleep in with my fuzzy monsters.

The more I think back on it, the worse that whole thing should have turned out.

Reasons this was weird:

It was a TORNADO! Actually, to be more precise, it was a flash tornado - with no siren, or even weather warnings whatsoever. I know I'm not in a high-class area, but I don't even have wheels on my home! (And now, I don't have windows, either!)

My 55 gallon fish tank on the wall opposite the largest window in the apartment was hit repeatedly with ice and/or glass. There are nicks in the glass throughout the front - yet, somehow, it was still standing, full of it's own water and fish.

My xbox, which was all but on the floor in front of the broken window, has turned on and connected to Xbox live without trouble. After practically dancing through 6 other xboxes before it, I was sure this one was a goner.

I have met all of my neighbors, most of whom I didn't even exchange greetings with on a regular basis.

My car suffered extreme hail damage which looked like I parked at a golf driving range and a severely cracked windshield. Yet my motorcycle that was parked on the north side of my car, suffered no damage whatsoever.



I really, honestly, should have been shredded by that hair brained cat-rescue. Actually - the cat should've been shredded as well, but I'm more than grateful we weren't.

I am still going to PAX. No Tornado could ever stop that!

Also, apologies for not being around much! I miss D-toid!

One of the most ongoing epidemics in video games for generations has been the Missing Princess Syndrome. Your princess has been abducted by a rather unsavory character, and you're on a mission to rescue her from an uncertain fate, thus proving your chivalrous adventuring attitude. Only, your princess doesn't stay saved. She's always in another castle, kidnapped by the evil sorcerer, or simply eluding your manly touch.

Let us now find the long lost princess, or condemn her to a fate with a giant snapping turtle. To those Princesses about to die...

She's in another castle...

Abducted by monkeys, and giant snapping turtles is the very royal Damsel in Distress, Princess Peach. She has been destined to be rescued by our favorite plumber on repeat for over two decades. She even gets two different abductors, to add a bit of variety to the rescue missions.



Before he became a good croc-stomping-monkey guy, Donkey Kong had "King Kong" syndrome, instilling a strange desire to steal a girl, and throw barrels at her plumbing rescuer. Once Mario reaches the top of a vertical maze, his generic princess (currently "Pauline") will be rescued, then stolen many times in a single sitting. Thus, making me wish the monkey would just get it over with already!

In Mario specific titles, the Princess now dubbed "Peach" lives in a far away castle, guarded by a single toadstool henchman - which makes her constant abduction by mutant snapping turtle Bowser, and his army of Koopa turtles, a certainty. Bowser's goal is the same as any other mutant snapping turtle, except maybe Tokka, he aims to kidnap the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom to steal her throne.

It's never completely clear what Bowsers intentions post-kidnapping are, presumably marriage since that's how that whole Monarchy thing works. I'd almost call Princess Peaches story one of vanity, where the big ugly turtle gets denied because of his looks. But, the hero is Mario, so that theory doesn't really hold water.



Thus is born the Princess in Peril stereotype.

She's not that interested...

Of course, as games began to demand variety and political correctness, the focus went from "Save the Princess" to "Save the Kingdom, there may be a Princess in it for you."



She can use telepathy, yet is still completely helpless.

Which brings us to the most notorious princess, holding the game franchise name, rather than her pretty-boy knight in not-so-shining armor, Princess Zelda. The palaces Royal Sorcerer, Gannon/Gannondorf/Agahnim will stop at nothing to steal the throne, either using a powerful spell that requires Princess Zelda to be sacrificed, or by kidnapping a usually-under-aged girl as a bride. Princess Zelda will always play a part in Gannons plot, and somehow the commoner boy in green, Link, is always roped into rescuing her.

By the end of each game, after rescuing said princess, she gives you her thanks and maybe a piece of the mythical Tri-Force - yet somehow, Link has yet to officially be made a prince. Simply restoring a Monarchy that frowns on the poor fairy-folk seems like such a gyp. Once again, wishing ill on the princess that won't properly reward her rescuer, or at least stay out of danger!



She wore her hair down to there...

Now let us fast forward in time to the present, with arcade games taking center stage in the gaming market. The cryptically named arcade game Braid has an elusive princess for the main character, dubbed Tom to alter time to find. Unwinding the story of how his princess with braided hair, left him, and he has to quest to find her again.



Where have we heard this before. Oh, right.

I think this brings us full circle with time travel and Princesses. Now, wake me up when my knight in shining overalls shows up just in the nick of time.

How many princesses have to almost-die before we give this tradition a rest?