I wasted about 2 years of my life playing this game, and so I felt like i’d try playing it again to see what i’d get. I was just 4 seconds away from tying the record, 5 from beating it. Oh well. Video below.

keytag — sadv2-hc

Yeah, can’t say I didn’t expect it, but hey. All the more reason MGS4 is going to kick ass.

Keytag: mgs4-40

I need not say any more than that, folks.  Well, maybe I’ll add a bit in.  The smoothest way to install is obviously the twilight hack and the compatibility is quite good.

Keytag: wii-hbcpb7re

You don’t need to know much from the first novel to understand this one, though, so don’t worry. Legacy of Darkness is one of my contributions, written entirely by me. Two others in the series that I plan to write are Symphony and Eve of Annihilation. My co-author, Rabid Biscuit, writes the other parts of the storyline and currently, a few of them lack names. He’s a bit busy with his own series called Caelus right now.

My co-author: Rabid Biscuit Productions

EDIT: Okay, bare with me, even though the first chapter of LoD managed to format correctly when ported here, WordPress unfortunately just does NOT want me to have spaces in between lines for chapter two. I don’t know why, but nothing I do can fix it. Gildy if you can tell me anything, do so, because it’s fairly murder on the eyes and looks like a giant clump. >_>

Now, without further ado, click “more” for the second chapter of Legacy of Darkness.

-

Two

-

It was easy to set up a deal in Sapphire City. However, it was hard to set up a deal without everyone and their mothers finding out about it. Sapphire City was essentially governed by the UNAF, and as a result, their eyes watched over every inch of their city carefully and very dutifully. Because of this, they had been quickly alerted by the fact an entire block went dead silent.

Sirocco should have realized this before he ordered the area to be clear, but his greed undermined his common sense. As he heard the gunfight suddenly break out downstairs, his grip on the M1911A1 tightened. He knew his was it – the greatest drug ring to grace the continent of Aleta, taken down in one fell swoop due to his own foolish mistake.

Screams erupted below; his men, his friends, even. He’d gotten too cocky – no one tried to perform successful operations in Sapphire City anymore, but Mezniach wanted to break that tradition. To his dismay, it would cost him dearly.

The canine drug lord had rushed into this room without knowing what it was. Now that he had time to kill, Mezniach Sirocco glanced around, observing his surroundings. Aside from his bodyguards, the only other person in the room was a gold and white cat, sitting on a couch, appearing to not have noticed his entrance.

The room itself was packed with boxes; a direct contrast to the expensive-looking furniture sparsely placed around the area. ‘At least I’ll go out with some style.’ He thought bitterly. A few minutes passed as he sat, listening to the gunshots and screams below. It was then that a realization came over Sirocco – something he would regret not noticing earlier as the sound of metal unsheathing resounded in his ears.

He did not know of, or had ever seen before, a gold and white cat in this warehouse.

—

Although the GHOST Captains weren’t sure as to how many people were in the building, it didn’t exactly hamper their forceful advance. Three handguns exploded in every direction, catching some unexpected men and women in their shoulders, arms, or legs.

Non-lethal shots took priority over killing blows. Even though the elite forces of GHOST were trained to kill on sight, basic rules still applied; always aim for incapacitation first.

“With all due respect, Z…” Zack began, ducking behind a nearby crate to avoid the blast from a shotgun. “Maybe we should’ve been a little quieter.”

Zera took aim with one of her Punishers and fired. The canine with the shotgun yelped as he clutched his bleeding paw, slumping against the wall of the building. The wolf jumped behind her own crate. “I suppose,” she muttered, firing a few blind shots over her shoulder. “But we’ve got Sirocco cornered now. If we snuck around for awhile, he might’ve escaped.”

More gunfire grazed the edged of Zack’s hiding spot. “I just prefer to keep my head intact, is all!” he yelled, exiting cover briefly to take out yet another assailant.

“You wanted action anyway. Get over it.”

There were only a few opponents left, to Zera’s amazement. Either they were working the room faster than she had planned, or Sirocco really did not expect a crackdown. She assumed both of her assumptions were correct; Zack did say she always had a knack for ‘overestimating the competition.’ Better safe than sorry.

Another rain of bullets smashed into the crates and walls behind the two captains, bringing Zera back to reality. Zack scoffed, leaping out to fire more shots. The silver wolf heard a few more screams, then finally, silence.

Zack frowned, ejecting a blank clip from the SIG Sauer. “That…was a bit too easy.” he remarked, looking inside his trench coat for another clip. Zera checked her own guns; given the customized nature of the Punishers, the magnums had larger clips to accommodate their size, and thus, there were plenty bullets left. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to waste entire clips tonight.

“Don’t think he really figured to be broken down tonight.” she muttered, running her right thumb around a small, inconspicuous button near the handle of one of the Punishers.

“Could’ve fooled me.” The golden cat replied, slamming a new clip into his gun. “What kind of dumbass clears a whole block of Sapphire City and doesn’t expect everyone, their mothers, and the entire fleet of UNAF bombers to be on their asses?”

Zera holstered one of her Punishers. “Our kind.” The silver wolf pressed the button she was thumbing previously, and in the blink of an eye, the gun seemed to transform.

Zack had seen it before, so he wasn’t surprised at the fact the gun was now a blade. No, what kept him wondering was how, exactly, the gun did it. To him, it looked like the entire middle of the magnum shot forward and morphed into a wicked, curved blade. The top and bottom of the barrel bent to go along with the blade; all in all, the whole thing reminded the golden cat of liquid metal, and no matter how many times he would ask, Zera would never tell him.

The wolf in question began to stride over to one of the writhing bodies on the floor, clutching one bloodied leg with an equally bloody hand. Zera’s ears flattened as she got closer, trying to drown out the number of obscenities that were being thrown out his mouth. The black blade of the Punisher against his throat shut him up pretty well, however.

“Where is he?” Zera asked calmly.

The wounded, a cat apparently from the tail she now noticed thrashing about, stared at her with brown eyes. “F-Fuck you!”

The blade pressed harder against the cat’s white fur, touching skin. With a yelp, the cat’s tail instantly froze. “I’ll ask again,” Zera muttered, her pupils gazing at him with both irritation and intimidation. “Where is he?”

“T-top floor! Stairs are around the corner! D-don’t kill me, p-please!”

Zera slammed the handle of the Punisher on his forehead, knocking him out cold. “Thanks much.” The blade morphed back into the gun with the press of the button once more, and she turned to Zack with a grin. “Coming?”

“Of course.” Zack replied, a grin equally as amused as Zera’s plastered on his face. An interesting woman, indeed.

—

He didn’t know who his assassin was, why she was here, or why she was going to kill him. It really stopped mattering once this yellow cat clad in black, orange, and green knocked out both of his bodyguards and now had a knife to his throat. Now all he wanted to know was if he was going to live through this or not.

“We can do this a few different ways, Sirocco.” came the assassin’s voice from behind him. It was definitely female, if her display of power earlier wasn’t an indication of that already. The girl was Aletan, and from what he could tell, from the northern parts of the continent. Being in this business as long as he had, it was easy to tell where someone was from just by looking or hearing them.

“Provided you don’t try and crack any blond jokes, or refuse to help me, I won’t have to kill you this evening.” she continued. The knife was cutting into his throat slowly, but efficiently. Any harder, and he wouldn’t be alive to be jailed.

“What…pray tell…do you want me to do?” the dog asked, attempting his hardest to stay calm. As strange as the situation may seem, it wasn’t that hard.

The grip on his throat was suddenly relieved, allowing him to exhale a great amount of stored air. As the yellow cat moved into his line of view, he took careful observations. She was wearing a strapless and sleeveless black shirt, stopping just below the midriff but not enough to cover it entirely. Black cargo pants adorned her legs, with orange straps near the sides hanging and swaying with her movement. She wore boots that were mostly black, with a white tip and the ankles colored green.

Her hair apparently reached down to her shoulders, but it was tied into a short ponytail near the back. Her bangs fell into her eyes, which, currently, were closed. She was most likely contemplating on her next move. In her gloved hand was the very knife she planted on his throat, a tiny ounce of blood dripping down it. She seemed to be playing with the knife, twirling it and quickly slashing the air with her wrists.

Finally, the cat turned to face him, Sirocco noticing how utterly blue her eyes were as they stared at him in an icy glare. “Ultima.” Sirocco twitched at the mention of the word; he’d hoped to forget he was ever involved with this again. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“Indeed…” Sirocco said almost immediately. He interlaced his hands and he rested his head upon the index fingers. “Why do you wish to know about someone such as him?”

“I don’t think that’s really any of your business.”

“You sneak into my deal, knock out my guards, put me in a chokehold, and then threaten me…and you’re telling me this isn’t my business?”

“Damn straight.”

Sirocco, unfortunately, was unarmed now. She’d taken any sort of weapon from his guards and himself when she took the room, therefore, he was to believe it would be unwise to try and prove he’s the one in charge. “…Very well.” he muttered. He sighed heavily, furrowing his brow. “I’ll tell you all I know.”

—

“Why are they always so goddamn persistent?!” Zack yelled over the noise of gunfire. The two captains had reached the top floor without much of an issue. Once they stepped onto the floor, however, they were instantly greeted by a welcoming party of five, all armed with submachine guns. The golden cat fired a few blind shots around the corner. They couldn’t tell if they hit by sight, but someone did curse and there seemed to be less gunfire afterwards.

“They think it makes them smarter!” Zera yelled back, peeking out and firing a single shot to one of their hands, making one of the men misfire and catch another in the chest. Another shot to the first man’s kneecap made sure he wouldn’t have much to get back up for, while the second simply slammed into the wall, his head smacking a pipe, and therefore knocked unconscious.

By now, the last two were panicking. If one couldn’t tell by their faces, they could tell by the fact their aim suddenly got very, very bad. Both captains leaped out in synchronous order, blasting both of them down, ending the brief firefight.

“Up the stairs and around the corner…” Zack mused, checking his clip. “He forgot to tell us about the ambush.”

“Loyal to the end.” Zera replied. “It’ll cost him.”

The two cautiously moved down the hall, watching every door as they came upon them expectantly. Eventually, they reached a turn in the architecture, and as they turned, they took notice of only one, single, closed door. “Well, that’s conveniently placed. No one would expect the single, lone door.” Zack remarked sarcastically as they pressed up against opposite sides of the door.

Ignoring him, Zera pressed her ear against the door. There were definitely people behind this door; she couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the tone of the male voice was definitely Sirocco. She turned to Zack. “He’s behind here. He’s most likely got a few guards.” She paused, checking her ammo supply. ‘It’s enough…’ she thought, and returned her gaze to Zack. “Flash and clear.”

“One searingly blinding ‘nade on its way.”

—

“…That’s it. That’s all I know.”

The cat frowned, much to Mezniach’s chagrin. She sheathed her knife, and began to walk towards his desk. “I appreciate your kind gesture. Shame it’s just more of the same bullshit I’ve been hearing everywhere I go.”

“My apologies.” replied Sirocco curtly.

“A deal is a deal, however.” she muttered. Sirocco sighed in relief as the cat began to walk past him, apparently towards the only window in the room, placed behind a few boxes and next to the same couch she had been sitting on earlier. She paused, and her ears seemed to twitch ever so slightly.

“A problem?” Sirocco asked, irritated. With a grin, the cat reached into one of her pockets and pulled out what appeared to be sunglasses. “…Sunglasses at night? Going karaoke after attempted murder, or something?”

The cat’s grin simply widened as she slid them onto her face. “Have fun in jail, Mezniach Sirocco. I’ll be seeing you.”

It took a bit of time to realize what she meant. Unfortunately, it was not before the door to the room flew open, and Siroccowas blinded by the brightest light he’d ever seen.

—

End Chapter Two.

The keytag for this post is: 0-ex-lod

Hold your horses a minute, folks, and read this: The IGN Article

Yeah, that’s right. The creator of Resident Evil, designer of Devil May Cry, and the director of Okami and Viewtiful Joe are making four games for different platforms, and from what I’ve seen of Mad World and Bayonetta, methinks this will be friggin’ awesome. Links to the actual games are in that article, but if you’re too lazy…

Mad World (Wii)

Bayonetta (Xbox 360/PS3)

Infinite Line (DS)

Their fourth game is currently unknown, but it is being worked on by the man behind Resident Evil.

The keytag for this post is: gam-nwz1

The topic of this post:  Music Recommendations!  I’m trying to chain this one, since we haven’t had much in the way of real threads yet.  So the objective, which is done in turns:  Recommend a band of your choice you think others should hear.  Title, some basic info, genre, ideally a link to some audio.  And try n think outta the mainstream, it gets more fun that way.

Replies can be comments or whole new posts, if you’re enthusiastic enough.  So lemme kick this off:

Artist: Motorpsycho
Genre: Experimental Alt Rock
Example Songs: Vortex Surfer , The Slow Phaseout , Hey Jane ( a better quality audio-only stream is on their last.fm page, full track) , Serpentine
Other Recommendations (Songs): Psychonaut , Ozone
Info:  Motorpsycho is a band from Norway (they sing in English, dun worry).  They’ve been around for quite a while, and while I list em as Alt Rock in reality they’re a bit closer to Psychedelic rock in most cases.  They should probably be considered from both angles, as a lot of their stuff sounds Altrockish but when you move into their experimental stuff like Ozone or Psychonaut you really hear the psychedelic influence.  Psychonaut even has a hint of Kyuss’ esque stoner rock in there, just the style of the riffs, and it really suits them either way.

So let’s start the chain of recommendations!

The keytag for this post is: mus-recmnd01

http://theslip.nin.com

REQUIRED READING, KIDS!

“thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me” - trent

The keytag for this post is:  nin-theslipannou

First off, interesting news regarding Blizzard. They acquired ownership of the domain “Diablo3.com” and even iterations up to “Diablo7.com”, aaaand country-related domains such as “Diablo3.fr.”

Full article here.

Anyway, for everything else, click “More.”

An avatar I use on forums currently, featuring Zero, and a handful of…whatever those are from The World Ends With You. Yeah. That HUD up there was also made by me, inspired by Devil May Cry 4. Rejoice!

A forum sig I made of Brawl using renders from The Spriter’s Resource. It’s fairly sexy if i do say so myself. Brawl’s awesome btw.

Also, just for the hell of it, here’s my desktop. Because I want that game so god damn badly.

THE KEYTAG FOR THIS POST IS: 0-rndm

got a new mastering suite, testing it out, probably gonna buy it

the song started out as a 20 second comparison and i showed it to vice, and he was like “OMG MAKE IT INTO A SOOOONG” and so i did.

[description]

meh, not much to say; tested out another hoover design, messed around with some resampling for the choir and some other sounds… love the jungle drums I did, i’ve been really hot to do somethin like that lately. really satisfied with how expansive the airplane effect came out. it slices through your ears. the new mastering made all the difference, it’s warmer, thicker, fuller, and more professional sounding… i never want to make music again without it :U

[technicals]

uh… synth 1 for the hoover lead, prosounds ultimatesoundbank for the choir, electric piano, bassline, some drum loops I axed and stuff for the rhythms.

[download]

You can view it on my SA page, direct link _here_ .

i also encourage you to check out my sheezyart page if you wanna see more music… i got alot :3

enjoy!

Copyright: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES is anyone allowed to use this music for ANY PURPOSE without MY EXPLICIT permission. I put too much work into my skills to have them maimed by people who don’t care.

– the keytag for this post is wave-msc

Kcaz, your dreams are significantly different from mine, but the attributes you listed are somewhat similar.  At least, depends.  Some are completely different, some are identical. 

• Consciousness when OOC
• Color
• Awareness of the Dream on a subconscious level
• Thoughts affecting the dream (circumstances)

It should probably be noted that of 3 things you listed there, 2 were the same thing and 1 somehow contradicts them.  Awareness of the dream, and your consciousness affecting it, are both signs of lucid dreaming.  On the other hand, not being aware of abnormal things also means the lucidity of the dream isn’t full, you’ve just got some degree of control over it. 

When it comes to what you said about no ambient lighting, temperature, etc, I differ there.  My dreams have had things in that vein a lot, especially fog in one of them, which disappeared when it was no longer necessary, but was in the beginning of the dream.  I also allow my dreams to flow until they reach a point, so the no surprises thing is pretty different in my book.  By the near-end of the dream, I have something formulated, but in the beginning, it’s like watchign a movie you’ve never seen.  I keep the reigns of control off the dream until then just for that reason.  As a kid, I used to have lucid dreams where I’d allow my mind to create puzzles to make my way out of.  It didn’t work too often, but every now and then I’d manage to forget the puzzle I’d thought up in the dream, and have the opportunity to try and solve it.  I don’t really get the fuzziness, or the moving in water feeling.  Perhaps that’s because I don’t dream often at all.  I always get sound.  In fact, in many cases I’ll start a dream normally, and it’ll be a sound that triggers my subconscious awake.  Flash lights or light switches do make a change in the lighting to me, but not as much as they would in real life.  Shadows are small, and there is no real such thing as ‘pitch black’ when in the dark in my dreams, with the exception of a few specifics.

Allow me to provide an example of something I dreamed a long time ago, which I’m STILL trying to recreate in real life through drawing.  I was on some older docks on a harbor, at night, a power plant sorta overshadowing other buildings on the coastline in the distance, it’s lights flickering like they do.  Strangely, this group of friends I was with wasn’t the normal gang.  All of them were except the last.  As we’d walked there, it’d been lightly snowing, a few of my friends smoking as we walked, all of us talking and laughing on occasion.  By the time we got to those docks, a sort of paved ledge alongside the harbor with several shipping crates scattered on it, the weather was clear, save for a thin fog.  It was thin enough that we could mostly see pretty clear, but many of the buildings in the distance were completely overshadowed by it.  There was just that power plant’s smokestack out there somewhere, and another small air light for something else, a huge shadow in the water, as if it were on an island.  We all heard a sound..it’s a sound from a song by hexstatic, that sounds like a siren (and in the dream, that’s what it was, a buzzing sorta siren).  This triggered my subconscious awake, but I let the dream keep playing.  When we heard that sound, we stopped in our tracks and looked out to that shadowy structure.  For a second, I could see it.  A huge cement bowl, cut in half, like a dam but a little bit concave and I couldnt’ see the back of it, if it was actually holding some other part of the structure that was rectangular or something.  Then I saw the other part:  There were small tunnels between the bottom of the thing and the water, rectangular concrete tunnels that were dark and unkept within, a turning axel made of wood with some metal spikes in each one, or two in a few of them…and the water filled the tunnels from halfway to full, rapidly rushing out like a rapid.  I could once again see me and my friends.  My friend Cutter shouted “get to higher ground!” and we bolted for a rusty looking ship on one of the docks.  We heard the waves getting fiercer and fiercer, and this is the point where the view changed to first person, from me.  We ran into a metal niche between two doors, and we all heard a little girl screaming.  My friend Conner (the one who I didn’t expect to be in the group, in retrospect) immediately ran toward that area of the deck, me in pursuit but I saw the wave rushing forward and jumped into the niche again as it crashed into the side of the ship, and the water flooded the deck a few inches moving quickly.  The last part of the dream, before an interention by the subconscious:  i saw conner and a lil kid hiding under a slightly elevated shipping crate, both alive.  Now here’s where my subconscious kicked in, knowing it was the end of the dream and having enjoyed it…. i rewound the dream, and it had a different ending.  It played onward from the siren again, only that time I followed Conner without running back, climbing a ladder and jumping along a higher part of the deck to catch up.  I managed to reach both of em as the wave hit and we all made it back to that metal niche, clinging onto one piece of metal at a time as the ship churned.

So, like I said, my dreams so make use of stuff like lighting and sound a lot, maybe because I have them so rarely in the first place.  They’re slowly changing in style lately, too.  They used to have no references at all to other things, other than interconnecting themselves rarely.  Now they also bring other stuff in too.