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Post by lemming13 on Aug 22, 2010 16:06:24 GMT
Yes, I'm at it again with the new-fangled techie stuff, but I think people sometimes miss out on a really enjoyable experience because they're afraid to sample it or just have a prejudice against it. Fifteen years ago I regarded computers with the kind of dark suspicion Hammer villagers reserved for the guy who just got off the coach in downtown Carpathia, and now I would gladly have a jackplug inserted into my skull so I can commune with the machine more closely. (oh, hang on - beginning to get a bit creeped out by that now...). Be that as it may, I got into point and click games a while back via the old Playstation and a game called Necronomicon. Unlike most console games, it did not demand fast reflexes and a willingness to suffer tendon synovitis to achieve a move, but it did require a keen puzzle-solving intelligence and a fondness for being utterly creeped out. The plot put you in the persona of a 1920s college graduate, William Stanton, trying to find out why his best friend has gone mad, and what the pyramid-shaped object he handed to Stanton actually is. In the process you explore some delightful locations including a desolate, degenerate New England fishing port, a rotting clapboard house full of nasty old books and demented graffiti, and an underground labyrinth around a huge, ancient structure from before the dawn of time. I loved it, and regretted that there were almost no other console games of that type. Then I moved up to the pc, and my horizons opened out immensely. There are dozens of good horror games, and mysteries too; I've investigated Murder on the Orient Express with Poirot, and hunted Arsene Lupin with Sherlock Holmes. At the moment I'm spending the last hour or so of every night sitting in a darkened room with headphones on, merrily scaring myself with Dark Fall : Lost Souls. What's the appeal? Well, a good point and click gives you the chance to put yourself into the story, and influence the outcome. True, the programme will offer limited choices for what you can and can't do, and most have a Good/Bad ending option, but even the limited ones can be a real thrill ride, and some offer several different possibilities for the outcome. I'll be posting up brief synopses of some favourites of mine, and possibly warning you off some stinkers, in future.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 22, 2010 15:39:04 GMT
While clearing off my son's old bookcase ready for building and loading the new one, I came across a number of books we'd both forgotten (most of which his sister ran off with immediately). Among them were a couple of short paperbacks by Anthony Horowitz, glorious veteran of so many great tv series, and so many excellent books and novelisations. Each contained two or three short horror stories. The Night Bus was his favourite, but he also enjoyed Twist Cottage. Then we realised that he had two more omnibuses, Horowitz Horror volumes 1 and 2, which contained all those stories and more, so sis gets to keep the samplers. Horowitz does write as if for adults, and is not afraid to get gruesome; if it disturbed my son's equilibrium, it's either very unsettling, or about dogs (or possibly My Little Pony). He also recommends the Power of Five series, especially the latest one, Necropolis.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 22, 2010 15:24:46 GMT
Don't be afraid, Demonik, jump on in there, the water's lovely. Though the shelves are overloaded.... And when you're done relishing Ben Templesmith (go on, Wormwood, nowhere else will you find psychopathic transvestite leprechauns and a lapdancing club staffed by supernatural ladies with rather lively tattoos - or indeed a ZZTop lookalike cyborg constantly moaning about his lack of genital apparatus), try Thomas Ligotti's The Nightmare Factory. And John Coulthard's incredibly disturbing Haunter of the Dark, and Alan Moore's Yuggoth Cultures. I'm going to have to stop now and fondle my pretties for a bit, actually. Ah, the glossy feel of the pages, the smell of the inks...
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 20, 2010 20:16:50 GMT
Very much obliged to you, Jojo - successfully posted a video link to Bradford's giant rats, and as an encore here's Haakor's hilarious Fishmen video.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 20, 2010 20:10:22 GMT
I believe these are the original Bradford rats - the Lincoln ones are just the latest ones spotted.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 20, 2010 20:05:35 GMT
True, true - or Buffy, for that matter. And Twilight, I fear, has shifted the age range of the deluded down a decade or more among the vampire fraternity; too many are far too involved in it. But I don't have any issues with anyone having fun in an alternative lifestyle; I'd rather see someone Gothing it up to the nines, fake fangs and all, than some chav with his trackie bottoms tucked into his socks shambling about in a hoody, or his bunny boiler 'lady' with a tacky tattoo peeking over the top of her Primark leggings. Personally I think it's a very sad thing that in an allegedly civilised country people could be persecuted and even murdered for choosing to engage in a little harmless escapism like Goth culture, but then I'm afraid we're outnumbered by the loutish mob. So I'll wear my frilly Victorian corset and Venetian mask behind closed doors.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 20, 2010 19:46:12 GMT
Ooh, spoiled for choice. But I think I'm going to go for Horror Comics, combining my love of pulp fiction with my love of OTT, in-yer-face gruesome imagery.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 18, 2010 14:34:51 GMT
From one of the newest arrivals, a huge happy birthday and thanks for keeping it going.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 18, 2010 14:28:19 GMT
Oh, hell, yes. I never met any British player who actually completely lost touch with reality (though I've met at least five players of MMORGs who don't appear to know they are not their online avatars), but I've met scores who were fairly confused. I tried live action roleplaying only once; the location was actually perfect, a hideous basement room hidden behind a games shop that was in an underpass between our junky-haunted local bus station and a semi-derelict shopping precinct, but most of the players were just such desperately sad people I never went back. They were mostly convinced they were either real vampires or would one day be approached by the blood-drinking ones to become one. Most pen and paper gamers can stay grounded, but I knew a few who in confidence informed me of the 'true' nature - mostly vampires, but at least one witch, a couple of mages, one son of Satan and an unspecified immortal. One told me he had had messages from the Great Old Ones through a ouija board. I just smiled and sidled off, never revealing that I myself am gifted with mystic powers; I can communicate telepathically with fudge, and can make hot coffee go cold. Damn, done it again...
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 18, 2010 14:20:14 GMT
Okay, I see the button for adding a Youtube video to a post, but when I add the embed code it appears I'm going wrong somewhere. How exactly do I do this?
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 18, 2010 14:10:33 GMT
I have to admit, I always found Hot Chocolate rather scary. Today I went into my external drive and rediscovered Garden of Unearthly Delights, by Cathedral; Nine Inch Nails, Year Zero; and Ambrose and His Orchestra (yeah, it isn't all rock and roll, folks) performing Smile, Darn Ya, Smile. My kids are now officially freaked out, which is just the way I like it.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 18, 2010 14:05:28 GMT
Okay, I'm a bit obsessive with the Ben Templesmith, but his work is just so damn good I love to share it. Fell is another series of his, concerning Snowtown, a creepy, decaying urban hellhole, and a detective dumped in it to try and deal with it. Really atmospheric and eerie. He's also been involved with a number of pastiche series such as The Looking Glass Wars, The Irregulars, and graphic versions of Dracula and Robert Bloch's Lori.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 18, 2010 13:57:21 GMT
Haven't read the Crime Comics but the Horror Comics is on my shelf along with the Zombies. I agree, a glossy one would have been really nice, and I'd have gladly paid more to own it, but on the other hand the cheap paper reminded me of the horror comics I used to come across when I was a kid; mostly American, and never bought in by our newspaper shop as a series but only as one-off odds and ends from the clearance warehouse, they were sooo much nicer to read than the Beano or Bunty. And cheaper than Dracula Lives.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 18, 2010 13:51:23 GMT
All the written fiction on this them I can think of is covered (though I do recommend for a factual trip into a mind-blowing reality the book Paris Underground, by Caroline Archer and Alexander Parre), but there are a couple more movies on this theme - Moscow Zero, which 'stars' Val Kilmer for about ten minutes, and After. Both are set in the Moscow metro system and the underworld leading from it, but with different takes on it. Moscow Zero has a doomsday cult living down in the tunnels, guarding the exits from the lower levels to pen in the tribe of feral children (who may or may not be dead) originally taken down there by nuns to evade Stalinist purges; and After features a very unsettling tour of the underworld by American urban spelunkers, passing through radiation contamination, Ivan the Terrible's torture chambers and other interesting spots. Both low budget and largely ignored, but I enjoyed them both.
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Post by lemming13 on Aug 16, 2010 14:21:12 GMT
What? A spectral penis? This I have to read. What's it called?
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