Pheonix- Final Attempt Pt 1

Here's the first half of my homework story. It's a bit out there and crazy and it's pretty long too so for those that can be arsed to read it, thanks :D


By the Ocean there is a bar… They called it Hannah’s Roadhouse once… I don’t know what they call it anymore. I just knew that she’d come and bring that thing with her. That thing that to me, was so precious, so deeply moving that just looking at it would blind me. But I had to have it and I knew that I couldn’t have it if she didn’t show up today…

There she was red hair with a slight orange fleck in the ocean’s sunrise. She wasn’t old; in fact, she was new, as if reborn. She didn’t notice me as she opened the door to the bar. I let her walk, I had no plans. She bought two drinks and sat at the bar…
I sat there, frozen by her beauty. There she was, the forbidden fruit sitting metres away from me. We were so close I could smell her, the heightened sense of smell probably contributed to this but either way, the scent of fire and sickly sweet perfume mingled together in the air around her. I downed the last shot of vodka and stared, cautious. I felt the legs of the stool tremble beneath me as it began to slide across the floor, taking me with it, getting closer to the red headed conjurer.
“I didn’t buy both these drinks for me Logan.” She turned facing me as the stool stopped inches from her. Her eyes glowed a mighty green and her lips a brilliant red, flashing a smile that was powerful enough to knock ten men flying. That was what I was after, her smile, it’s been so long since I was last in its presence.
“Jeannie…”
I looked at her, observing every inch, every detail of her slender yet startlingly sharp face. I absorbed everything in front of me, letting every part of her pour into my skin and mind, as this could very well be the last time I see her again.
“I’ve missed you Logan.”
She flung her arms around me, pulling me into a deep embrace. I’ve never been a touchy-feely type of person but with Jean it was different. I could let myself go with her, she can melt me with one glance, penetrate my tough exterior with the right words. Jean was my reason for living and in 2 hours, we will both be dead.
I pulled myself away from her, gazing intently into her smouldering stare. I didn’t know what to say, for once in my life I was actually scared of the future. Not for my future, but for Jean’s. “We can still run Jean, the Avengers have offered us the Quinjet. We can take it and get the hell out of this hell hole of a situation we’re in.”
She just smiled. Unbelievable. She took my hand in hers, I could feel the warmth flowing between us.
“Logan this is something I have to do, the phoenix force has been looking for me for years and it won’t stop. Especially now it knows where I am.” She took a swig of her drink and gazed out of the window. I can’t imagine how it must feel knowing that the next hour or two will be the last ones of your life. I guess I have it even harder, knowing that I will outlive all of my friends and loved ones but I’m not the type to sit and mope over it.
“Jean. You know we ain’t going down without a fight.” I clenched my fists, anger flooding my body, rage boiling away underneath my skin. “I’ll be there by your side. When this son of a bitch comes to take you, it’ll have to take you over my cold dead body.”
Fear flashed across her face and her body trembled. I’ve never seen Jean like this before.
“No Logan. I have to do this on my own. I’m not letting anymore friends get hurt because of me.” Tears welled up in her eyes, like tiny gems. “I don’t deserve to live.”
She stood up, glancing at the door.
“I need to go Logan, I need to see Scott before it finds me, while there’s still time.”
I shot up of the stool knocking drinks flying. All eyes swooped onto us. “Don’t you dare Jean. I ain’t gonna let you go.”
Jean gave a watery smile, a smile filled with pain and sorrow. “I’m so sorry Logan.”
I tried to grab her as she lifted off the floor but I was too late. She flew out of the door in a blast of wind, causing chaos in the bar. I could only stand and stare as tables, glasses and people were thrown into the air with the force of her power. I walked through the debris, and out into daylight. She was gone.

To be concluded in Pt2!

Some X-MEN knowledge.

Being as I seem to be the only one of us geeky enough to be spending ridiculous amounts of money on a lot of comics every month, I've been appointed as the person to go to for info on the X-MEN and writing for graphic novels and the lark.

So I thought I'll post some info on here for the ones that can't be arsed to ask for it !

Gambit (Remy LeBeau):

Gambit grew up in the cajun culture of Louisiana, raised by The LeBeau thieves guild clan he grew up to be a master-thief.

He was involved in the slaughter of a group of mutants, before he met the x-men, called the Morlocks. This history has plagued him with guilt and is a reason why he remains such a wild card in terms of which side of the law he walks on.

When he joined the x-men after meeting a young Storm he wasn't trusted within their ranks as they didn't know a great deal about him.

Gambit has had an on/off relationship with Rogue (Anna Marie) which has helped him settle down into a more stable and trustworthy role within the team. Gambit considers himself to be a ladies man and often gets the girl he wants so the lack of sexual contact between himself and Rogue because of her dangerous power puts a lot of strain on their relationship.

Gambit has left the x-men various times and joined other teams or just gone off on his own. Being a loner that flits from job to job, bed to bed, kill to kill is what Gambit used to be and a part of that remains.

His power is the ability to charge up kinetic (moving) energy and channel the energy into objects. His most famous move would be charging a deck of cards with energy and throwing them to explode on impact. He also uses a staff for combat.

Jean Grey:

This one's a toughie to summarize because she's such a complicated character.

Jean was in the original class of x-men as a telepathic mutant. She was a loving and caring person that looked after everyone in the x-men and genuinely cared about the human race. Her powers grew to "omega level" yet she still dealt with it very rarely unleashing her full power.

Jean has lived with the x-men since she was a very young girl and eventually built a family there. She fell in love with Scott Summers (Cyclops) and married him, she had Charles Xavier who was like a father to her, a daughter from an alternate reality called Rachel Summers. Wolverine and her became extremely strong friends and often became closer than that when Logan fell in love with her.

Unfortunately Jean was possessed by an extremely powerful alien life-form called the "Pheonix Force" which gave her more power yet ultimately began to take over her and become a threat. Jean killed herself to stop the Pheonix killing everything. But as the name suggests the Pheonix and Jean Grey rose again rejoining the x-men. She fought to have a normal life with Scott and her friends (as normal as things get being part of a mutant super team) but has since been killed yet again and not yet been resurrected.

When writing a story based on an existing franchise like the X-men we need to stay true to the characters and world they live in so hopefully these bios will help you to understand them more.

Feel free to message me any questions you have about the x-men and such :)

The Mile-high Club

My fists clenched the arms of the chair as the wind battered the plane from the outside. We were plunged into darkness as the plane dived into a beastly black cloud. Everybody sat up in their seats, alert as the plane shuddered and banged. My eyes snapped onto an extremely stressed airhostess as she ran down the aisle and practically dived into her seat as the plane gave another gut wrenching lurch. My lips were dry and my heart pounded as I sat paralyzed in my chair. The plane let out a deafening groan and suddenly plummeted from the air. I drew in a long sharp breath as everyone around me screamed in terror. The plane lunged forward, trying to rise above the cloud but to no avail. We plunged again, leaving my stomach behind. In that one moment, I knew I was going to die. A wave of relief and calm swept over me and I let go of all emotion. I couldn’t move an inch. It was as if life had stopped and this was just a movie playing in front of me. The plane sharply rose generating huge amounts of G-force. We levelled out, it was over.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This actually happened to me and is the reason why I hate, hate, hate flying. The feeling that you're going to die within the next few moments is one I can't explain all too well. It's like you lose all hope and all emotion. You don't feel scared believe it or not, it's almost like relief. It's a horrible feeling and one that I've only experienced during this incident three years ago.

Turns out we had hit an air-pocket which made the plane drop a whopping 10,000ft! Worse than any roller-coaster I've ever been on.

Tom Goodchild should be proud.

Ok, so here's Gametrailers video review for Monumental Games MotoGP 09/10:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-motogp-09-10/64091

Watched it?

Good.

It got a reasonably average score of 6.2 and on Metacritic it's achieved an average of 72.

My opinion of it all is that Tom Goodchild and his team at Monumental have done brilliantly in using what limited resources and options for game design to create a decent game.

Lets face it. After listening to Tom's speech during Industry Week it was apparent that they were extremely restricted in terms of how much they can put into the game creativity-wise because of the strict guidelines from Capcom and the MotoGP big-wigs. Yet Tom seems to have worked some magic here and created a solid game with decent replay incentives too.

It's interesting to hear GT's view on the audio after listening to Tom about the struggles they had with it as it is apparent in the game. I'll be honest and say the audio is pretty poor. The bikes sound monotone and there is no audio for the AI bikes (why?). One thing I noticed is when viewing behind the bike during a race all sound (apart from the background music) cut off entirely. Pretty weird and something they could have fixed.

Apart from that I'm pleased for Tom and his team. He seemed extremely nervous about the incoming reviews and I'm glad to see them kinda pay off.

It's obvious they'll be making the next instalment and now they have the new engine and foundations laid out I'm sure Monumental and Tom can crack down and improve on an already solid game.

Good on them!

Kesa may wanna take a look at this...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/8570398.stm

A BBC news report :

A man who assaulted a female police officer with his penis has been fined.

Marium Varinauskas, 28, tried to strike the officer on the head with his penis when she was called out to his flat, but she got out of the way.

Lithuanian Varinauskas admitted a charge of assault at Aberdeen Sheriff Court and was fined £600

SO is this a common Lithuanian defence move Kesa? Lulz.

Review for Gamenoob

Hai douches.

I wrote my review of Bioshock 2 today and it's now up on Gamenoob here: http://www.gamenoob.co.uk/index.php/2010/02/26/bioshock-2-review/

I'm now officially on the Gamenoob team as one of their reviewers (There's three in the review team now).

Very happy cause it'll help get mah name out there and it's something to put on my CV.

Be sure to check out the website. It's fairly new but it's already picking up quite a bit of traffic. Oh and comment on my review, I need some opinions and it helps the reputation of the site.

Thanks a lot guyz.

Concept idea- FPS.

Now as most who read this know we have an assignment to do the pre-production of our own game followed by the making of it's box and manual and then pitching it to Ubisoft (scary stuff).

(Thats just a summary for the people outside of college who read mah blog)

So you've probably seen the title of this post and maybe sighed a little, done a little old roll of the eyes and thought to yourself as you blast another terrorist on modern warfare 2 "yeah, yeah. FPS I gettit, been there done that."

Well my version of an FPS means something slightly different.

F- First

P- Person

S-Simulation.

So the idea might have been done before, I dono but it's different than the standard genres of games.

So I was thinking what makes a good game? Who would play my game? and most importantly WHY would they play my game?

I love games that are chock full of atmosphere so thick it practically chokes you. Games like Bioshock, resident Evil 4, Dead Space, Batman Arkham Asylum etc. You'll notice these games have either alot or parts of horror in them usually to scare the player.

I love games that scare me and alot of people are with me on this one.

So there I had the basic premise of my game: "To scare" It's that simple.

After all the attention Paranormal Activity got for being so gosh darn shit yourself scary I wanted to replicate that atmosphere and sense of terror in my own game.

So here's the concept:

Your in the shoes of a boy or a girl (you choose). The game is set in the first person and staged in one single environment; a house. This is a fairly big americanised style house where everything in that environment is simulated perfectly. Every book has weight to it and apsects of it's own such as the ability to rip/catch fire/get wet and so on.

Every item in the house would be interactive. The player needs to feel they are in that environment and be fully immersed in the game. This is where the simulation part comes in as the level of detail is beyond that of most games.

The game itself is set at night in this haunted house. yes I'm going for the overly cliched haunted house thing here but hey-ho.

SO. The game will revolve around a string of randomly chosen events or "hauntings" which can feature anything from bulbs smashing to full on fucked up white japanese kids crawling out from underneath beds and sofas. These "hauntings' are levelled in how scary they are so the game engine would run the small scares (messages on walls, TV turning on, screams) first then escalate to pure horror madness (Bleeding corpses pinned to walls, windows smashing, walls bleeding, axed killer and so on).

The aim of the game is purely not to die. There are various ways to die such as freak accidents occurring in the house (each object is fully simulated remember so knives obviously will kill.) or getting caught by a killer to being thrown down the stairs by a ghost.

The game is hardly game I realise but more as if your in the movie. It would be a great game to play with mates at night with the surround sound cranked up and the lights off...

It's a game where people can enjoy watching instead of being a solo experience.

Every play of the game is different as the engine chooses a mix of over thousands of "hauntings" which can each effect the house and the player in different ways and open up new play mechanics such as putting out fires, needing to fix the lightswitch in the cellar after the circuits broke)

It's a full simulation of a haunting.

I've been thinking and I've come to the conclusion that the game definitely needs a structure to it with a definite ending as these "hauntings" could go on forever only to just fizzle out (which would suck)

So one possible structure is this:

Initiation stage:

Normal house, something bad happens, a sign for the player that the "hauntings are about to commence"

The Haunting Stage:

The main chunk of the game where the player needs to survive by any means necessary. They could hide under beds, in wardrobes and so on but the game engine will recognise this and lure them out for example; putting a hanging corpse in the wardrobe that slowly catches fire.

Certain key events will display in the bottom right hand side of the screen to let the player know whats happened as they can't be in all rooms at once eg; the gas being turned on, on the stove. Something crawling out the TV. It'll be up to the player if they turn the stove off and risk going near there (something might be waiting) or risk the chance of a huge explosion killing the player and resulting in game ovah.

The Escape Stage:

A linear fast paced stage where the player escapes from the house. Each escape has multiple routes with a few escape sequences already planned. An example of this is a car scene still in the 1st person. The player must drive away from the house and a chasing enemy in a huge action set piece stage.

Another idea was to have an actual slasher movie style killer enter the house and the player must outwit the AI of this character and either call the police and wait or run through a linear street segment away from the killer although there would be obstacles in the way such as locked doors and such.

It's a start on the premise anyway. This blog doesn't really give it justice as there would be so many branching paths for the player to take as well as many events happening in the "haunting" stage that could not be seen through one playthrough.

It's basically taking the best scenes from the old style horror movies, mashing them all together and putting the player in a fully simulated environment right in the middle of all these.

I think being as the player would feel as though they are in the game given the amount of detail gone into the environment and actions it would only heighten the tension and horror. Plus the thought of an instant death around the corner is also something that gives many gamers nightmares.

I have shit loads of ideas for this concept and more on the story possibilities but I'm aware of the length of this beast of a blog post.

So, ideas? D'you think this could open up to a whole host of audiences who just want to be terrified outta their wits? D'you think that it's a poor idea that would be boring? D'you just wanna stop reading now ? Most importantly will it work??

Let me know what you think in the comment box !