Gensou and Cyber in: The Haunted House (KKGS HALLOWEEN NOT-SO-SPECTACULAR)

nothing is certain except for death, taxes, and getting back into Neopets again even though you've sworn to stay off that site for the rest of your life.

i've heard of Neopets since 2003, but i can't say i've been on the site since that long. to clarify, i've never stuck with one single account; i've made multiple accounts over the years since i felt that the 4-pet limit was kind of... well, limiting (that, and the fact that i've transitioned between way too many aliases over the last ten years). despite my grievances with how the site's gotten nowadays, i have and still do like the pet designs, as well as the worlds, stories, and art direction. even the flash and html games are still pretty good.

but of course, the current neopets site is a shadow of its former self. the customization and NeoCash stuff are some of the things that people are mixed on, but what killed the site for me is the lack of updating older content and how awful the economy has gotten. and of course, yet again i've found myself suckered into this stupid website again. a fourth because of this playthrough, the other three-fourths because i've finally gotten a krawk after a decade thanks to a supreme bout of luck at Anchor Management when i made my new account. my ten-year-old self is swimming in tears right now.

anyhow, with Halloween coming up fast and since i'm still working on the Disgaea manga readthrough, let's do something simple and spooky. there's nothing that says "halloween" more than a shitty choose-your-own-adventure flash game from the early 2000s.

'course, i won't be going in alone. with the wonders of skype, i'll be braving this place with my bud Cyber.

Don't worry mate! We'll get through the specters and spooks. Not sure what to expect but whatever comes our way we'll be prepared. I've never played the haunted house so everything will be a surprise for us! What adventure awaits beyond the doors?

i've played this like... YEARS ago. dunno how my memory holds up, but we'll just happen through it as it goes.

also, heads up, any of my commentary will be in green, Cyber's will be in orange. [also, there is a fair bit of crude language in this playthrough; this game was not kind to us.]

let's do this.

>STORY START

gen recs - Conker's Bad Fur Day

been meaning to do an actual game recommendation for a while. it'd kind of be a stretch to say these are reviews; i find it hard to rate things on a 1-5 scale, so i just say things from my own experiences and say whether i like it or not. whether you want to check these things out is up to you.

quite a lot of video games have been described as an "experience"; to me, an "experience" is something you never really forget, whether in real life or video games. for video games, what people view as an experience really depends on who you ask; people fondly look upon platformers like Spyro and Banjo-Kazooie for their colorful worlds and cast, adventure/RPGs like Final Fantasy 7 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time for their epic scale and story, and games like Doom and Mortal Kombat for being those types of games that you played when your parents weren't around to scold you for playing violent stuff like that (or if you were particularly unlucky, you got scolded for playing them anyway).

well, it'd probably be a stretch to call Conker's Bad Fur Day as epic a story as FF7, but it's definitely got some colorful characters that also tend to use equally-as-colorful language. alongside some other things that parents would probably yell at their kids for seeing/hearing. and yet said kids still played it anyway because it had a cartoony squirrel as a playable character. also bathroom jokes. how they managed to get ahold of copies of the game is a mystery, though probably not one that's too lost to time if we have 12-year-olds playing Call of Duty and GTA and all that.

so while i work on the next segment of my Disgaea 1 manga readthrough, why don't we give this game a bit of a look-at? though keep in mind, this game is M-rated for a reason, and the warnings on both the ESRB rating and the box itself will remind you of that (front cover/back cover ; images courtesy of DKvine).

so yeah, unless cursing, cartoony bloody violence, sexual themes, and poop jokes are your bag, steer clear for the now.

blargh

i know i really should stop making posts like these, but i apologize for how slow the current article stuff i'm working on is going. Conker rec i'm still working on (set a deadline for it so hopefully i get more motivated to get it done), as is the Disgaea 1 manga readthrough and a little halloween bonus.

it's sort of half laziness, but mostly since i rarely ever get the motivation to do written stuff, even if it's about things i like. i'm more of a visual/hands-on person, so this kind of stuff takes time for me to get the motivation for.

i may open up a Patreon at some point as a bit of personal incentive to do more with this blog, but i'm not 100% sure on that yet. we'll see, though.

bless any of you bloglurkers who are patient enough to put up with the slow updates though. ;w;


oh uh, also put up a steam status section if you guys wanna check that out.