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Kotaku had recently posted an article concerning spoof article on the most scary enemies of video games, which resulted in a very interesting debate in comments, in which I have also taken part in. This in turn has stimulated me to write some more about scary moments in computer games I played, but since it began to become really a huge post (not to mention me falling behind my schedule), I have decided to split it in parts in chronological order.


The very first game that really scared me was Wolfenstein 3D. It may seem funny nowadays, but at the time it was the very first game with full 3D view I played. The immersion was further strengthened by the fact I was playing it alone in a dark room of an empty building after the night has fallen. It took place during students conference, where my mother was a lecturer and I was more or less twelve back then, which also explains a lot.

The most scary element of this experience as far as I can recall was the sound of steel doors slamming shut somewhere in the distance, because that meant something out there was prowling through the level searching for me. I also knew that if "it" attacks me from behind, I will not turn around in time (turning around was a long process in Wolfenstein). What added to the sense of incoming danger was that the enemies were actually quite scary: from Gestapo officers with machine guns, shouting "Gestapo!" when they saw player to deadly zombies with machine guns sticking out of their corpse. Suffice to say this game made me jump more than once.

On a side note, epic fight with Hitler in his bunker was also quite a showdown, requiring running from the fight in order to replenish disappearing health and ammo, with Adolf H. in his exoskeleton armour chasing the player. The sense of satisfaction coming from seeing his bowels spill out from the exploding armour was immense, even more so since the fight was so intense. In these politically correct times this would not pass quality assurance or Sony / Nintendo acceptance process (vide Manhunt 2 case).


While its successor, Doom, was more sophisticated graphical-wise and contained more suspense moments, including some "Bam! Lights go out and thousand imps descends upon you!" thrills, it never really scared me as much as the original Wolfenstein. But then again, I played it with my lights on and I was quite a bit older. I remember my friend ducking in front of my PC when imps hurled fireballs at him, so I guess it was quite suggestive nevertheless. Also, I can recall a story of a student who played Doom all night in his dorm and when leaving his room next morning he saw a cleaning lady, screamed and run away - he was later explaining that seeing her in her brown clothes at the end of dark corridor caused him to believe she was an imp. I guess the fact that he hasn't slept at all justifies him a little - the perception is a little different in such a state.

Honorable mention includes The Legacy, the old DOS game heavily based on Lovecraftian mythology. If player's character didn't have enough willpower, they would scream seeing zombies, their hair would rise, they would drop the objects they were holding (usually a weapon, which made fighting zombies kind of hard) or even freeze in shock. As I tend to play magical characters in RPGs, this would not be a common annoyance for me (high values of strong will), but there were some monsters which would melt even occultist's mind (green tentacled thing for example). I actually thought it was a very original approach to creating a horror atmosphere, even though it wouldn't scare me too much - but I have played it as an adult, because it wouldn't run on my DOS era PC.


Next in line comes X-Com: UFO Defense, also known as UFO: Enemy Unknown. How a strategy game (sic!) presented in mere 320x200 resolution could make player twitch is beyond my comprehension, but it really did. One of the reasons might be that there was a good amount of unpredictability, both in terms of enemy AI during missions and in terms of the game rules that kept changing during the game. Atmospheric music also helped.

At first rules were clear - it's us humans versus little gray men. We use weapons to kill each other, mano a mano, when we shoot down their vessels. But then the aliens would then terrorize the cities and bring deadly Cyberdisks with them! Fighting with numerous alien foes was a tough cookie, but we would learn how to do it with only minimum civilian casualties. And that's when a new race appeared - all of a sudden I had to battle a different kind of enemy, the one that could fly (Floaters), at night, keeping an eye on civilians. The in-game darkness became much more threatening now that I wasn't sure what was hiding in darkness anymore. Couple of in-game days after that fight, aliens retaliated and attacked me in my own base, my soldiers scattered randomly in different rooms, aliens roaming free through the corridors of our own hideout! Still, it was all but a prelude.

The first real horror was another mission to counter alien terror in one of the Earth cities. New alien type, the Snakemen, brought a deadly pet - the Chryssalid. Breeding in a manner of H.R.Geiger's Alien, infecting both civilians and my soldiers, who would in turn into Chryssalids and start devouring next victims - this enemy was terror incarnated. On first encounter my battle-hardened squad was torn to pieces in just a couple of turns.

At this point I must say that during many missions I have actually grown attached to my soldiers, recognizing their individual skills and remembering their names. Seeing them die one by one was a really shaking experience. As a result, I would replay the mission adapting the approach of US Army in Iraq - upon seeing anything suspicious move inside a house, I would bombard it with explosives. Civilians? Oh well, bad luck. My men come first. Still, even this tactic wouldn't spare me some nasty encounters - and Chryssalids were very quick beasts. Researching Plasma weapons and flying armours alleviated the fear of the Chryssalid a little, but these monsters were still dangerous.

Just when I got used to changing conditions and new alien types the game would throw at me, I thought that things couldn't get worse - and I was once again proven wrong. With arrival of Ethereals, the master race behind all the alien invasion, the Psi combat was introduced and it quickly turned the rules upside down. The toughest of my soldiers would panic, shoot their comrades in berserk frenzies, drop armed grenades or even totally succumb under alien control. I remember one particular mission where the only thing I could do after saving in a particularly bad moment was the damage control - after many failed attempts, I managed to save half of my man, most of them wounded. Spooky music, night missions and unseen enemy unknown decimating my teammates - that was the very definition of the word "scary".


Then Diablo came and rocked my world. The thick atmosphere of something evil boiling underneath a cathedral in a small village of Tristram was incredibly dense. The stories told with excellent voice acting were adding to it. One recurring motive was that of a cruel demon called The Butcher. Crippled kid who lost his leg to it, old drunkard telling the story of how it slaughtered his brothers-in-arms and breaking to cry, dying soldier at the cathedral entrance - player could feel that there was a savage beast out there, waiting for his next prey. This introduction alone was enough to feel chill. When the beast rushed towards me snorting "Argh, fresh meat!", I almost had to change the armchair cover. And trousers. There were many other monsters in Diablo, including the main evil boss in hell, there were many other spooky moments as well, but nothing compared to that moment of opening the door to bloody hideout of a blood-thirsty demon.

To be continued...

As I have written last year, I am studying Japanese. Since I am a lazy and my memory is not perfect, I have managed to fail JLPT Level 4 if only by extremely narrow margin. Nevertheless, I am a stubborn bastard and I am continuing my study this year.

On my way, I have managed to find some new tools. And since good part of traffic volume on my blog resulted from people coming to read the post on little programs useful for studying Japanese (thanks to Demencia who put it on StumbleUpon!), I have decided to share them with you here.

The programs that I will present in this post all serve to memorise Kanji (I assume that if you are reading this, you already know what Kanji is). They all apply same approach, namely "spaced repetition" in order to maximise learning curve. In short, a program using it is throwing at a user more often the questions to which they don't remember the responses well, while the questions that are dealt with well occur less frequently. The purpose is to strenghten weak memory associations by increasing the number of repetitions and maintain strong ones by only occasional reminders.


The programs in question are Anki, Mnemosyne and SuperMemo. Out of the three, I've only heard earlier about SuperMemo - my brother used it to great effect when he was studying French. However it's poor user interface design reminding me of Windows 95 times was putting me off from using it. I know it's irrational, but something looking so primitively is for me less credible.

I actually started with Anki, the program with most features. I've found it thanks to my friend Guillaume, who is living happily in Nippon (you can read his blog here) and has contributed to Anki's development by creating custom JLPT-oriented sentences and vocabulary. The problem was, I somehow didn't fall in love with Anki. One or two annoying glitches spoiled the fun for me, I got lost with its many options and strange terminology and I stopped using it.


I started looking for some more user-friendly alternative and I have stumbled upon this great discussion and comparison of all three programs available at Nihon-go Pera Pera. I am not going to rewrite it here, just follow the link in question, but I have finally found what I was searching for. The answer was: Mnemosyne.


While more advanced users might need more options that Anki provides and some retro-maniacs will have a ton of fun using SuperMemo, for me Mnemosyne is the golden middle: useful, not overly complicated with simple interface. Okay, the plain UI might be prettier, but it's still nowhere near as fugly as SuperMemo. Plus it has a cool Greek name.

Your opinion may be different , so please read the article in question and make your own decision - I just wanted to point out the existence of these tools to you and provide the link to the very informative discussion of all three of them.

Now, the question remains if I will have enough willpower to use Mnemosyne regularly...

The flood of PSP titles has recently diminished to a trickling stream and now is reaching drought status. This is going to be my excuse for describing two incoming PSP titles that I am itching to check: Ikkitousen Eloquent Fist and Moe Moe Niji Taisen Deluxe.


The first one looks like a simple scrolling beat'em up game with added RPG elements and "pantsu flashing". The game's name contains a pun, since in Engrish "eloquent" becomes "ero-quent" (check here why this is funny to some). Still, graphics are cool even if somewhat NSFW. I think I'm going to give it a try, if only to check whether the actual game part is worth anything (and train my Japanese, of course).



The second one is a mixture of strategy game, World War II and breasts. As much as I don't think Nazi references should meet with some extreme retaliation unless the context suggests they are being used in their real evil meaning (Nazi propaganda), I also feel a little uneasy about the game with cute little Nazi girls.


I personally can't forget visiting Japanese izakaya where Iron Cross was hanging on the wall in a central place, right above the little altar. Not that I was angry or anything, but it seemed a little, hmm, tasteless to have Nazi decoration out there. So this game is a little on the risky side for me - but I do not condemn it, it's only somewhat tasteless entertainment after all.


Nevertheless, now you know what PSP games I am waiting for, having already finished God of War and being stuck in Crisis Core. And I've brought it to your attention in order to just signal certain cultural differences in approach to digital entertainment.

Just a reminder that today we have Firefox 3 Download Day - please help break Guiness record of downloads:


I have to say that I am conscious of Firefox limitations and annoyances - yes, 2.0 was quite sluggish, it would sometimes crash and there are other small quirks, but all in all I have tried all major web browsers and failed to find any that I would like better. Hence it is Firefox for me, please.


Also, does any web browser have cuter logo? Not to mention this foxy mascot?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there lived a girl who was a reporter and lived in a lighthouse. Her name was Jade - very fitting, since she had green hair and used green lipstick. Since the planet she lived on has been struck by war and the girl had good heart underneath tough street-smart tomboy skin, she was running a shelter for war orphans of all races. It didn't matter whether a kid had horns or blue skin - she tried to help them all. Unfortunately, her job was not always allowing her to pay all the expenses, so one time electricity was cut off, just when evil DomZ attacked, leaving her and kids without a shield. Lots of trouble resulted, including new job, joining resistance, taking part in illegal races, assembling a spaceship, flying out in space and taking lots of photographs...

This is a premise of Beyond Good and Evil, a very good but underappreciated game. To give you the taste of it, I suggest you watch this very atmospheric trailer:


You might also want to see the excellent fan-made trailer and game beginning, as well as Jeff Gerstmann's videoreview.

It has gained a cult status quite some time after it has been published, because even though it was really fresh and with captivating story, it didn't really sell well. Unfortunately, we, who loved the story and stylish execution of it, were left with story that begged for continuation, as BGaE was only a first part in what was planned to be the trilogy.


It is therefore with great joy that both me and many others have welcomed the news that after long time Ubisoft has decided to allow the original game's creator, Michel Ancel, to continue the story in a sequel.


Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado let me present to you the first teaser of the second part to this beautiful and touching story:


Yes, the art style has changed to a more gritty and serious look, yes, this is some desert setting suggesting that "we are not on Hyllis anymore, Toto", yes, I have a ton of doubts and fears concerning the sequel, but nevertheless it's Beyond good and Evil 2 and Michel Ancel is behind it! Just how cool is that!

Roomba is an automated vacuum cleaner. Pac-man is a game from eighties where little yellow thing is eating dots. Combine the two together and you get... this?


I brought it to the attention of folks at Kotaku, my tip got accepted and they've put it on their webpage. It feels good to contribute something to one of my favourite gaming sites.

PS. Speaking of combining Pac-man with strange things, check this out: samurai Pac (sic!).

There was once a very bad, although visually spectacular, movie called 300 with extremely cool trailer including Nine Inch Nails music. There also was a very good game called Unreal Tournament 2004 featuring memorably deep commentator's voice. Then there was Youtube, where folks with too much free time on their hands can find this kind of mash-up, combining the two:



Of course somebody anal extremely overanalysing had to point out that announcements are not in proper order, so there also exists a second version for those who care - the one above is way cooler, though.

Personally, I finding it strangely fitting. They should have thought about it in the first place and added UT announcer in 300 from the start.

Okay, there are days when others' creativity leaves me speechless for a moment. I have to admit I didn't see that coming. If you're a gamer, then you surely must know Team Fortress 2, right?


The artist that goes under the nickname ghostfire reimagined the female version of the game's roster. With, ahem, attributes. I mean one can clearly see that these are girls. Of course I like Team Fortress 2 and of course I like... but this?


Now let's wait for the Rule 34 to take over and... I think I need to lie down.

Accidentally, I have stumbled upon this Pontiac commercial:



For the convenience of younger viewers who might not get the reference, please find the movie below:



Yes, that was a real computer and arcade game - Spy Hunter. I am writing this for those of you who are less than thirty years old.


For me it has a special place in my heart, because it was one of my first ZX Spectrum games. I actually have totally different memory of how it looked, but it was due to ZX Spectrum version limitations - click here if you want to see the version I played as a kid. Also, if you remember Blues Brothers, there is C-64 version with some familiar music in the background.

And if you feel like trying your luck with it, you can play it here (courtesy of World of Spectrum).

As a true geek I have set out on a journey to make my iPhone speak to me in GladOS voice and I am glad to report that this is easier than one might think - it is enough to combine this excellent article on creating custom GladOS speech with this free program, (there are convoluted tutorials on making iPhone ringtones available on the web, but I'd go for the simple appraoch) and your phone will now be a testimonial to your geekiness. This is how my phone is now addressing me when someone calls me:

Now I know why everybody over the tubes have been raving about it: in short, because it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Other than interesting game mechanics, which actually didn't get to me that much, it has a great narrative and one of the best villains ever- GladOS.

In a nutshell, player becomes a young woman caught in an experiment facility, who has to perform different tests using Aperture Science device creating portals. As a test subject, the girl is guided by the omni-present AI (GladOS) with wonderfully distorted female voice and an attitude that could be best described as somewhat deranged. She is both a narrator to some extent, as well as both enemy and companion, it gives player orders, sets rules, tells the story, mocks and teases, promises and deceives - in short, it sets the atmosphere of the game.

There are three pillars to Portal's success, each spectacularly executed: audio, story and gameplay. The first one is composed of the best AI voice ever together with one of the most wicked ending song up to date (not to mention other excellent sounds). The second is one of the greatest narratives I have seen in a computer game during last couple of years. The third is the game mechanics - mind-bending portal puzzles in hazardous 3D space.

Penny Arcade summed it up perfectly in this comic strip:


No wonder even Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation reviews loves it. The sheer brilliance of this game has resulted in fan-arts, some darn funny, some touching, some kinda risky, some including crossover and some a bit obnoxious.

The best part for me (and I assume many others) was the voice of omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent deity - GladOS. Just like in Manhunt, where main hero is led by a voice of snuff movie maker, who switches between being roles of compassionate guide and cruel torturer, who taunts, teases and comments protagonist's actions, so does GladOS put Chell into harder and harder tests, gives information ("In dangerous testing environments, the Enrichment Center promises to always provide useful advice. For instance, the floor here will kill you. Try to avoid it."), which is sometimes warped, mocks her actions later in the game. The writing of GladOS lines is nothing short of brilliant - you can read it on Wikiquote, but without the context it is somewhat similar to reading a movie script.

After trying to kill Chell at some point, this strange relation becomes much more threatening and climaxes during the game's finale, where two female minds engage in a fight. Delightfully surreal scene is further amplified by GladOS torrent of deranged speech ("killing you and giving you good advice aren't mutually exclusive"), which she sputters like a being possessed by a demon, altering between smooth sweet voice and spitting threats. You can watch the scene here, but be aware that there are spoilers and the effect is not as powerful without knowing the whole story that has led to that point.


Speaking of the story and ambiance, the narrative is led in a great way, leading some people to overanalyse it. What's actually interesting is that the story, GladOS and sinister atmosphere of the abandoned experimental facility run by deranged AI was something that resulted from time constraints and actually was not a part of initial design - you can read more about it here.

The icing on this delightful cake (pun intended) is the ending song, "Still Alive". Unfortunately, it's not funny at all without first completing the game (duh). There exist many weird renditions of the song and I heartily recommend having a look at them, because some are really hilarious.

In short - if by any chance you have missed this game and you dare call yourself a gamer, you simply must buy it and play it. The sheer amount of songs, jokes, images and cake references this game introduced to the general public is a testament to its greatness. I didn't expect it when I first started playing Portal, but this is one of these games.

Valve, I take my hat off to you.

It seems like Shao Kahn wants more from the tournament than just blood of the contestants:


I couldn't help but smile at "uhh... sexuality!" and "I'm not mad" lines. This probably means I am a pervert, but oh well, I am already long past the denial phase. Enjoy!

The new version of the world's best free 3D graphics creation software has just seen the light of day (obligatory release notes). While Blender still remains a little behind the features of professional juggernauts such as Maya or 3DStudio MAX, it can be used to create really stunning effects. Don't believe me?


Check this free short animated feature Big Buck Bunny, have a look at these Polish commercials, watch this tsunami simulation (and this one too). It's all been done with the use of Blender.

Personally, what scares me a little is that what I new about creating 3D graphics has aged so much since I was making my animations as a student. There are new concepts in the 3D field that I not only don't know, but can't even imagine what purpose they serve. This must be how my father feels when I try to explain to him the details of my job.