Pretty Chill Saturday
Feb. 28th, 2026 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWell, not exactly weather-wise -- while we still have tons of snow outside, the temperature today got up into the 50s, so we had a nice little taste of warmth that melted a bit of the snow. You can see a bit of one of our garden gnomes in front of their gnome-sized moongate in the backyard again! A shame tomorrow is going to be chilly with snow showers, and Monday below freezing. *sigh* I do not like. Especially since March starts tomorrow -- come on, weather, spring's on its way, cut us a break here!
*shakehead* Anyway -- can't say I accomplished THAT much today, but I got all the things that I really wanted to get done today, done, so that's good:
Cleaning & Laundry: Welp, as usual, keeping my room clean and doing my laundry took up most of my Saturday – at least now I’ve come to expect that state of affairs, so I wasn’t too annoyed when it happened. Here’s the breakdown if you are at all interested:
A) Started the whole process a little after 10:30 AM, putting on a livestream of Jon playing Fallout 76 and talking about how he wants to do another video essay on the game and what he and Claire thought about Season 2 of the Fallout TV series to listen to – fun fact, Claire does not seem to know the plot of Fallout: New Vegas despite it being Jon’s favorite game! There may be an April Fool’s video this year where he forces her to play it XD
B) Brought my laundry (sheets, blankets, bathrobe – my pajamas got washed more recently, so they were good) down around 11:45 AM, throwing my sheets into the washer with Mom and Dad’s to start THAT process
C) Got through most of my dusting by the time we broke for lunch around 1 PM
D) Went downstairs, got the clothes Mom did earlier out of the dryer, moved the sheets into the dryer, and threw my blankets and bathrobe into the washer a little before 1:45 PM
E) Resumed dusting around 2 PM after helping dry some lunch dishes
F) Finished dusting, Swiffering, and vacuuming a little after 3 PM; promptly went downstairs, got sheets out of the dryer, and moved my blankets and bathrobe into the dryer
G) Finally got blankets and bathrobe out of dryer around 4:10 PM, right before starting Little Corners (I’d actually gone and checked on them after updating the game and saw that they were almost ready, so I waited on starting the game until I could collect them)
Yeaaaah – it’s pretty much an all-day project at this point. At least listening to Jon is fun...we’ll see if next time I can somehow convince myself to spend a little less time on the dusting, though, given my room never DOES get all that dusty. Fingers crossed!
Little Corners: As stated above, I did finally get back to this game today – and today’s foray into the virtual sticker book saw me tackling the “Ruins” corner! How’d that go? Pretty well, I’d say:
A) After folding up my blankets, I started by looking through all the stickers, then placing the broken window sticker on the right-hand wall of the ruins, and a big empty doorway surrounded by a few extra bits of crumbling masonry over on the left-hand wall. Always good to establish where the entrance to a room is early!
B) I then checked out the list of “hidden stickers” (which you have to unlock by combining two other stickers together – with the new update I downloaded today, there are now five per corner, up from three), then pulled out the skeleton sticker and dressed them in the set of rusted armor sticker next to him – this unlocked the “Fallen Hero’s Sword” sticker and achievement. I then put the skeleton by the door to the right, dressed them in their armor and matching helmet, leaned their shield and newly-acquired sword up against the walls in the corner next to them, and dropped a dead campfire next to them. I wanted it to feel like this was the last camp the knight ever made before they passed away, and it’s all just been rotting and rusting ever since. Don’t know how well I succeeded just yet, but it’s a start.
C) To add a little interest to the “outside” area seen in the doorway sticker, I put a little tuft of grass and a little growing plant on the bit of grassy ground visible there. I thought it added to the feel of the place having been abandoned for a while.
D) After spending a little time pondering which water feature I wanted in the room – the tiered fountain, the wall fountain with rusty spout (both dry and with standing water), or the big old well – I decided to go with the tiered fountain, putting it front and center at the outer point of the corner and adding “water spilling over” stickers to both tiers to indicate water flowing between the various basins. Dunno why this fountain still works in this abandoned to nature ruin, but I like the look, so it does. :p
E) With that sorted, I moved on to unlocking a couple more hidden stickers for later inclusion in my scene! Because I always like adding as many of those as I can to my scenes. “Baby Birds” was easy enough to figure out – grab the nest of eggs sticker, plop lying down bird sticker atop it, receive sticker of a parent bird feeding a bunch of hungry baby birds in the nest – but the “Sir Squeeks” sticker was a little trickier. Eventually I got it, though – the hint says “Prepare the squirrel for battle,” and you do that by putting the rusted helmet sticker atop the red squirrel sticker. Yielding an adorable little squirrel in rusty armor with a tiny sword sticker. :D So very cute!
F) New stickers unlocked, I went back to decorating, adding:
I. A huge clump of vines and various creeping greenery to the right-hand wall, partially overlapping the window (I wasn’t sure if I liked it when I initially tried the look, but adjusting it so it didn’t cover the WHOLE window made me think “yeah, I think this works”)
II. Three stickers depicting old paving stones or the like with moss and dirt between them to the floor – one in the front outer point, beneath the tiered fountain (as it looked like that’s where it fit best); one against the left-hand wall, running along the open side (as that’s where that looked like it fit best); and the final random clump just under the knight’s campsite (not under as in “the knight was sitting on them,” under as in “lower down from the knight’s camp”)
III. A tree stump at the very end of the right wall, where it was starting to crumble, as a platform for Sir Squeeks to stand upon
IV. And another, smaller clump of hanging vines and greenery stretching over the top of the left-hand wall and the top of the door, to sell the “abandoned to nature” vibes a little bit more. Plus, if the windows had vines over it, I felt the door should too, even if they were less.
*nods* It was all slowly but surely coming together –
G) Aaand then cue everything screeching to a halt for a while as I tried to figure out how to unlock the sticker with the hint “busy little workers at their favorite flower” (or something similar, I don’t quite remember). On the face of it, it was obvious – the game had flower stickers; the game had tiny little bee stickers; put bees on flower sticker; job done. The problem was, the game had a lot of different flower stickers for this area –
And to unlock the sticker, I had to put the bees on a specific one. Cue me going through pretty much every flower sticker available, putting at least one bee on each, trying to get the darn sticker to pop. Eventually the darn thing unlocked once I put a little bee sticker on some conical purple flowers, granting me the “Bee Hive” sticker and achievement. Whew – tiny bit frustrating, that one! How was I supposed to know conical purple flowers are a bee’s favorite?
H) Having taken out all the flower stickers, I figured I might as well use them in the scene, and started arranging them appropriately. Most of them went around the fountain near the front, since I figured the plants would be most likely to grow near a ready water source, but the big sunflowers I put in front of the window (to catch the sun, natch), the dandelions near the doorway, and the violets and strawberries near Sir Squeeks’s stump. I also put the beehive sticker I’d just unlocked in the back corner of the room, above the campsite, and located all the tiny bee stickers to put around it – I was a tiny bit worried that three of them had gone walkabout for a second (as that CAN be an issue with this game, if you remember what happened the last time I played this game), but no, they hadn’t disappeared under the layers to another corner, they’d just been hidden by some flower stickers. Whew! Didn’t feel like dealing with THAT bug again.
I) With the flowers placed, I was free to continue adding more detail to my corner – such as putting the “normal” red squirrel at the base of Sir Squeek’s stump by the flowers, along with some purple mushrooms and a brown mushroom growing on the other side, and adding another, woodier curling vine to the left-hand wall to curl into the corner and provide an anchor point for the beehive to hang from (as it looked kind of weird just floating in the corner). I also adjusted the position of the bees, keeping two flying near the hive (in opposite directions) and putting the other two on flowers – one on a big red flower by the fountain, the other on the little white flower in the strawberries. Felt appropriate! Satisfied with my progress (and noticing I’d been playing for about an hour), I was about ready to take a screenshot and call it quits for the day –
When I noticed the nest full of bird eggs sticker, mama bird sticker, and baby birds in the nest sticker just floating out in space around the corner. Reminding me that I’d wanted to figure out a way to put them in the scene. I thus began considering which of my remaining stickers would make good spots for a bird to build a nest. After a bit of pondering, I finally settled on the following:
I. Putting a short flat-topped pillar at the far end of the left-hand wall, atop the flagstones there, and sticking the “Baby Birds” sticker I’d unlocked atop it – I’m not sure I’m ENTIRELY on board with how it looks, but it was a convenient place to leave the babies for now
II. And putting a little “notch in the wall” sticker above the dead knight’s campsite and putting the nest of eggs and mama bird in there – I originally had it on the right-hand wall, next to the window, but I decided I didn’t like how that looked and moved it to the left-hand wall next to and slightly above the head of the knight. For some reason it looked a little more natural there! Meant I had to reposition the rusty sword and shield so both were leaning up against the left-hand wall, but I felt it was worth it.
And with that, I took a screenshot, saved, and quit! Behold my progress below:
I think it’s coming along pretty nicely, all things considered. :) Hopefully the stickers on this one don’t glitch out the next time I play… Oh, and fun fact – currently, only 0.1% of players have the “Bee Hive” and “Baby Birds” achievements! I’m guessing that this is probably because they’re the newest hidden stickers, but still – nice to be among the first to unlock them! :) Especially that “Bee Hive” sticker, since that took some doing…
FreeTube: I wanted to clear a few more videos out of my Subs over here, and I’m happy to say that I succeeded, watching the two OXBoxtra videos that I most wanted to catch up on this evening –
A) “We Played this Resident Evil Rip-Off So You Don't Have To” by OXBox – Mike playing terrible Resident Evil clone Outbreak: Shades Of Horror with Andy watching on, offering moral support and snark! Why did they put themselves through this? Because Mike saw that the Outbreak series kept releasing super-expensive compilations (noting that the total for the latest was like $145 American dollars), and he decided he had to part with some of his precious money and see what they were all about. Because if the collection cost that much, that meant it had to be good, right? < /sarcasm > Anyway, the game was very much NOT good, and featured:
I. An opening menu which was actually the protagonist – Discount Claire Redfield; she even had the iconic red jacket and a knife that Andy later said looked like someone had sellotaped it to her back – wandering around a strange family fun center, with various explanatory signs telling her where to go to, you know, actually play the game. Apparently the arcade machines offered minigames, the “raid mode” was in the restrooms (Mike was like “why there?!), and the game itself accessible through movie posters? It was confusing enough that I think Mike entered the multiplayer mode by accident while trying to navigate – at the very least, the posters he poked all had an additional subtitle, “Chromatic Split,” on them, and I am reasonably certain one of the explanatory signs said that was the multiplayer version...but as Mike said, you were never going to find a friend to play this with you, so… XD
II. An “Act I” that immediately dumped Discount Claire Redfield in everyone’s favorite gaming environment – a sewer level – with a rapidly-increasing infection level, and featured such nonsense as “green sprouts” (Legally Distinct from “green herbs”) for healing; a UI that randomly faded out every so often (Mike was like “I don’t know what I did!” the first time he noticed it), and was otherwise so cluttered you couldn’t see all the text on the screen; big old crocodile men for some reason; poorly animated asset pack zombies that jittered along, twisted at the waist in very unnatural ways, and went down in one hit so long as you got a headshot (and were worth DEPRESSINGLY little XP – 2 per kill!); flares that, as per the boys, looked like someone stuck a little rocket engine on a thermos (and had a very goofy “use” animation); a flashlight that you used by pressing in the right stick (Mike was very “???” about that); and a ghoul attack animation that seriously looked like a “you have just died” animation (there was a fade to black and everything!), but nope, it was just a regular attack. Mike and Andy were very much not impressed, and chose to quit and move onto Act II when Discount Claire was killed by a ghoul and Mike was forced to “interact to give up” (very helpful, game).
III. An “Act II” that immediately dumped Discount Claire into an underground factory (Mike was immediately like “this is no different from a sewer level, come on”) and featured such nonsense as a cop zombie walking up the stairs that Discount Claire had just come down, completely ignoring her (and going up the second set of stairs backwards) while a cheerleader zombie (yes, those were a thing in this game) came down and ALSO completely ignored her (Andy joked that the first zombie was clocking out for a break and that this was a “shift change”); a bunch of zombies managing to attack Discount Claire through CLOSED AND LOCKED DOORS thanks to their character models partially glitching through them (on the plus side, this meant that Discount Claire could target and kill them as well); Discount Claire getting attacked by a Discount Tyrant that breathed fire for no discernible reason (Mike exclusively shot him in the crotch just for fun – it took quite a lot of crotch shots to bring him down); the boys discovering that you could shoot individual limbs off zombies and turn them into wriggling zombie “snakes,” which was probably the one thing they honestly liked about this game (admitting they’d love to see Capcom implement something like this in RE proper); and another zombie trying to walk directly into a closed door head-first on a different level (Mike and Andy immediately compared it to that famous Gary Larson cartoon featuring the kid going to Midvale School For The Gifted pushing on a door that said “Pull”). Their time in this act came to a close when Mike found a key that could be used to open one of the many locked doors they’d encountered and used it on the door the Midvale Zombie had been walking into – only to discover it was only a safe room of sorts. And didn’t have any other keys inside. Meaning there was no way for them to progress. *shakehead* Great work, game.
IV. An “Act III” that immediately dumped Discount Claire into “Arthur’s Lair” (Mike and Andy: “Who’s Arthur??” I think you might have learned if you had managed to complete the earlier acts, guys!), which was also underground (looked like an old subway tunnel, in fact) and featured such nonsense as the reveal that, when Discount Claire is stealthing, she cannot interact with objects in the world (like a note next to the corpse of the person she was supposed to be meeting down here) or shoot enemies (like the Discount Tyrant trying to murder her); so much ivy growing around a big arena where Discount Claire was expected to fight loads of enemies that it kept getting in the way of the camera as Mike tried to navigate and shoot; Mike attempting to keep a dismembered cheerleader zombie as a “pet snake” for a bit, only to realize it wasn’t really feasible with how many enemies kept coming after him in the arena; Discount Claire dying again, but this time being allowed to come back to life via “attacking” to use the green sprout in her inventory (again, very helpful game); the croc-man enemy coming for Discount Claire using the world’s stupidest walk cycle (Mike and Andy said he walked like a Donkey Kong character, with Mike providing a silly “do do do do!” soundtrack for it); Discount Claire failing to kill a cop zombie with multiple body shots during a later trek through the tunnels, and the cop zombie choosing to just loom over her shoulder rather than attack her (he must have also been on break); a zombie in what looked like a hazmat suit just exiting the game entirely by clipping through a nearby wall when Discount Claire approached (Mike and Andy had a good laugh over that); Mike running out of ammo while fighting zombies in the tunnels and having to use the knife, which didn’t have a proper attack animation, just a big blast of light each time it hit (Mike joked it had to be doing radiant damage, while Andy suggested it was opening stargates); and a Discount Tyrant deeper in the tunnels that was just staring blankly at some pipes when Discount Claire arrived on the scene (Andy promptly began RPing him as a pipe inspector being murdered by some unknown woman XD). Their time in this act ended when Discount Claire was killed by a hillbilly zombie and they decided they didn’t need to see the rest of the lair.
V. And a “Main Street Retro” minigame, available in the Arcade, that wasn’t “retro” in the slightest – it just plonked Discount Claire down on a street and had her go around mowing down hordes of enemies while the local NPCs ran around in a panic, died to the monsters, or – occasionally – picked up a gun and helped. On the plus side, Mike got a rifle that helped him obliterate more Discount Tyrant crotches; on the minus side, rats began raining from the sky at one point near the end of the level. And then everything ended with the game straight-up crashing. Mike and Andy considered this a rather fitting end to things. :P
So, uh, yeah. Mike and Andy cannot recommend anyone spend $145 US on these games. XD Save your cash and get Resident Evil Requiem when it comes out – at least then you’re only spending $75!
B) And “Return to Silent Hill is Really, Really Bad” by OXtra – Ellen, Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about Return To Silent Hill, which is a new movie based on Silent Hill 2 that came out recently, and how it’s – well, see the title. XD Yeah, the four absolutely hated the movie (perhaps more than the Borderlands movie, but I don’t know that for sure), and their half-hour-long bitch session included:
I. Andy forcing everyone to say one nice thing about the movie before they started trashing it – his was “I liked how the lead actor, Jeremy Irvine, looked like a bedraggled Jensen Ackles” (which confused Ellen and Jane, as they had no idea who that guy was – for reference, his most famous role is probably Dean Winchester on Supernatural. Me, I was confused because, after seeing Jeremy as James Sunderland, I was like “...hang on, he looks way more like SAM Winchester” (aka Jared Padelecki)); Jane’s was “This movie made me appreciate the original Silent Hill movie from 2006 more, as it was so much better at being scary and capturing the actual atmosphere of the game;” Ellen’s was “it was under two hours long” (harsh but fair), and Mike’s was “They gave James a cool Ford Mustang muscle car instead of the boring car from the actual game, and made the final shot him doing a sick burnout in said car.” XD (After watching their video and the clips they compiled, my one nice thing is that the shot of James screaming in pain and slamming a hand onto the ground in one location, only for Silent Hill’s iconic meat moss to start growing around it and up the walls, was actually kinda cool. I’m sure it was less cool in the movie, but I liked the brief clip. :P)
II. Much complaining from all parties about how the film more or less completely ruined the plot of the original game in its adaptation – the key changes being:
a. In the original game, all the shit that happens to James in Silent Hill is because he murdered his terminally-ill wife Mary – and while he framed it as a mercy killing, deep down he couldn’t help but be relieved to be done with trying to take care of her (didn’t help that he was feeling very lustful toward the hospital staff); in the movie, Mary openly asks him to kill her and basically forces him to do it, immediately absolving him of that guilt
b. In the original game, Mary had a perfectly ordinary terminal illness; in the movie, she’d been poisoned her entire life by her father, who was a member of the big old Silent Hill cult (which is NOT a thing in James’s game, btw), forcing her body to weep blood so they could drink it (???)
Yeah, you can see why people who like the original game, like Andy (who called the original storyline one of the best in horror games) would not be impressed by the fact that the filmmakers managed to do a perfect shot-for-shot remake of the iconic opening where James looks into the mirror at the rest stop bathroom and touches his face before exiting into the parking lot to look at Silent Hill below! As per Jane, Mike immediately after watching the film was like “it’s faithful in a lot of superficial ways, but strays from the original work in a lot of important, meaningful ways,” and – yeah, it certainly sounds like it does! Even ELLEN could tell stuff was wrong, and she’s NEVER played the games due to her distaste for horror!
III. Much complaining from all parties, but especially Jane, about how the movie just wasn’t that scary – Jane specifically compared Pyramid Head cornering James in a closet and just standing over him menacingly to a situation you might come across in a walkthrough of a haunted house (with Ellen backing her up and saying it’s what would happen if an actor accidentally got too close to you). There was also much bitching about monster design – with Mike saying that a lot of the monsters look like assets that were borrowed directly from the 2024 remake of the game, and they just do NOT look good on a movie screen – and some of the new monsters in the film – like a giant spider that Ellen thinks was added in to replace the monsters that were two sets of legs joined waist-to-waist (symbolizing James’s sexual desires and seeing women sometimes as just a way to get off), and a big old Moth Mary monster that apparently was created in response to James seeing a big moth in the hospital. Basically, the movie was a mess of badly-done CGI – though Andy at least had a reason for why that was: the movie was apparently made with a budget of just $23 million (even the original 2006 Silent Hill had a bigger budget than that – adjusted for inflation, that one cost $50 million to make!)
IV. Much complaining about what an asshole James is in the movie, despite the film going out of its way to remove the main reason people would think he’s an asshole – basically, movie!James is a painter who makes terrible art (and drives around with his paintings in the back seat of his car for some reason); meets Mary when he drives over one of her suitcases while she’s trying to catch a bus to get OUT of Silent Hill (to his credit, he is apologetic, but Ellen was baffled both by Mary’s refusal to continue trying to catch the bus AND her willingness to get in the car with this weirdo); and, after discovering that Maria (Mary’s Silent Hill-conjured “sexier duplicate) isn’t actually a real person, cruelly dismisses her before more or less summoning Pyramid Head to kill her! Cripes, James – I think I prefer your game self!
V. Much complaining about how the movie was paced, with Andy saying that “people who love Silent Hill 2 will hate what was done to the story; people who don’t will not get why this structured like a video game;” Mike admitting that he always thought that critics complaining something was structured like a video game was rude – and then he saw this movie and he realized how much it didn’t work here specifically; Ellen calling the movie an “and then” movie, since the characters are just driven from place to place by monster attacks and such – they don’t really make conscious decisions to go places, it’s just “and then they were at the hospital” or “and then they were at the apartment buildings;” and Jane declaring that the problem is that movies have to be (relatively) short while games are generally long, and this is why games do better when adapted as TV shows.
VI. And much complaining about the ending (which was spoiled very early on, so don’t watch this review if you actually want to see it) – which is the one from the game where James, unable to live with the guilt, plunges his car into the local lake (“In Water,” appropriately enough)...except that, right afterward, the movie essentially starts over again with James meeting Mary. Apparently with the hope of making things ambiguous, ooooh~ None of the group were impressed – though they were all deeply amused by the final scene, where Mary gets into the car and asks James what he paints – only for him to stare at her before driving off and nearly fishtailing into a tree. XD
So yeah – end result, they do NOT recommend you see this movie if you can avoid it! Which, uh, is very easy for me, as I didn’t even know the movie existed until they brought it up in this video. XD And we can expect plenty more movie reviews from them as time goes on, as apparently we’re getting movies based on Street Fighter (which, according to Mike and Andy, looks like good campy fun), Mortal Kombat 2 (which will probably be VERY bloody), and Resident Evil (which Andy has high hopes for because apparently it’s attached to a talented director) this year! I will keep my fingers crossed that not all of them are as terrible as this film. :P
Yeah, I suppose I'm happy with that -- I really wanted to watch those videos and play my game, and the cleaning does need to get done, so...right now, though, I really have to go to bed, as it is much too late for me to be up again. ^^; Goals for tomorrow include doing SOMETHING with my tumblr drafts; working some more on Chapter 6 of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland;" playing some Portal 2; and getting in a workout, preferably to the next F:NV YOLO Remastered episode. Hopefully these are all achievable goals. *nods* Night all!
*shakehead* Anyway -- can't say I accomplished THAT much today, but I got all the things that I really wanted to get done today, done, so that's good:
Cleaning & Laundry: Welp, as usual, keeping my room clean and doing my laundry took up most of my Saturday – at least now I’ve come to expect that state of affairs, so I wasn’t too annoyed when it happened. Here’s the breakdown if you are at all interested:
A) Started the whole process a little after 10:30 AM, putting on a livestream of Jon playing Fallout 76 and talking about how he wants to do another video essay on the game and what he and Claire thought about Season 2 of the Fallout TV series to listen to – fun fact, Claire does not seem to know the plot of Fallout: New Vegas despite it being Jon’s favorite game! There may be an April Fool’s video this year where he forces her to play it XD
B) Brought my laundry (sheets, blankets, bathrobe – my pajamas got washed more recently, so they were good) down around 11:45 AM, throwing my sheets into the washer with Mom and Dad’s to start THAT process
C) Got through most of my dusting by the time we broke for lunch around 1 PM
D) Went downstairs, got the clothes Mom did earlier out of the dryer, moved the sheets into the dryer, and threw my blankets and bathrobe into the washer a little before 1:45 PM
E) Resumed dusting around 2 PM after helping dry some lunch dishes
F) Finished dusting, Swiffering, and vacuuming a little after 3 PM; promptly went downstairs, got sheets out of the dryer, and moved my blankets and bathrobe into the dryer
G) Finally got blankets and bathrobe out of dryer around 4:10 PM, right before starting Little Corners (I’d actually gone and checked on them after updating the game and saw that they were almost ready, so I waited on starting the game until I could collect them)
Yeaaaah – it’s pretty much an all-day project at this point. At least listening to Jon is fun...we’ll see if next time I can somehow convince myself to spend a little less time on the dusting, though, given my room never DOES get all that dusty. Fingers crossed!
Little Corners: As stated above, I did finally get back to this game today – and today’s foray into the virtual sticker book saw me tackling the “Ruins” corner! How’d that go? Pretty well, I’d say:
A) After folding up my blankets, I started by looking through all the stickers, then placing the broken window sticker on the right-hand wall of the ruins, and a big empty doorway surrounded by a few extra bits of crumbling masonry over on the left-hand wall. Always good to establish where the entrance to a room is early!
B) I then checked out the list of “hidden stickers” (which you have to unlock by combining two other stickers together – with the new update I downloaded today, there are now five per corner, up from three), then pulled out the skeleton sticker and dressed them in the set of rusted armor sticker next to him – this unlocked the “Fallen Hero’s Sword” sticker and achievement. I then put the skeleton by the door to the right, dressed them in their armor and matching helmet, leaned their shield and newly-acquired sword up against the walls in the corner next to them, and dropped a dead campfire next to them. I wanted it to feel like this was the last camp the knight ever made before they passed away, and it’s all just been rotting and rusting ever since. Don’t know how well I succeeded just yet, but it’s a start.
C) To add a little interest to the “outside” area seen in the doorway sticker, I put a little tuft of grass and a little growing plant on the bit of grassy ground visible there. I thought it added to the feel of the place having been abandoned for a while.
D) After spending a little time pondering which water feature I wanted in the room – the tiered fountain, the wall fountain with rusty spout (both dry and with standing water), or the big old well – I decided to go with the tiered fountain, putting it front and center at the outer point of the corner and adding “water spilling over” stickers to both tiers to indicate water flowing between the various basins. Dunno why this fountain still works in this abandoned to nature ruin, but I like the look, so it does. :p
E) With that sorted, I moved on to unlocking a couple more hidden stickers for later inclusion in my scene! Because I always like adding as many of those as I can to my scenes. “Baby Birds” was easy enough to figure out – grab the nest of eggs sticker, plop lying down bird sticker atop it, receive sticker of a parent bird feeding a bunch of hungry baby birds in the nest – but the “Sir Squeeks” sticker was a little trickier. Eventually I got it, though – the hint says “Prepare the squirrel for battle,” and you do that by putting the rusted helmet sticker atop the red squirrel sticker. Yielding an adorable little squirrel in rusty armor with a tiny sword sticker. :D So very cute!
F) New stickers unlocked, I went back to decorating, adding:
I. A huge clump of vines and various creeping greenery to the right-hand wall, partially overlapping the window (I wasn’t sure if I liked it when I initially tried the look, but adjusting it so it didn’t cover the WHOLE window made me think “yeah, I think this works”)
II. Three stickers depicting old paving stones or the like with moss and dirt between them to the floor – one in the front outer point, beneath the tiered fountain (as it looked like that’s where it fit best); one against the left-hand wall, running along the open side (as that’s where that looked like it fit best); and the final random clump just under the knight’s campsite (not under as in “the knight was sitting on them,” under as in “lower down from the knight’s camp”)
III. A tree stump at the very end of the right wall, where it was starting to crumble, as a platform for Sir Squeeks to stand upon
IV. And another, smaller clump of hanging vines and greenery stretching over the top of the left-hand wall and the top of the door, to sell the “abandoned to nature” vibes a little bit more. Plus, if the windows had vines over it, I felt the door should too, even if they were less.
*nods* It was all slowly but surely coming together –
G) Aaand then cue everything screeching to a halt for a while as I tried to figure out how to unlock the sticker with the hint “busy little workers at their favorite flower” (or something similar, I don’t quite remember). On the face of it, it was obvious – the game had flower stickers; the game had tiny little bee stickers; put bees on flower sticker; job done. The problem was, the game had a lot of different flower stickers for this area –
And to unlock the sticker, I had to put the bees on a specific one. Cue me going through pretty much every flower sticker available, putting at least one bee on each, trying to get the darn sticker to pop. Eventually the darn thing unlocked once I put a little bee sticker on some conical purple flowers, granting me the “Bee Hive” sticker and achievement. Whew – tiny bit frustrating, that one! How was I supposed to know conical purple flowers are a bee’s favorite?
H) Having taken out all the flower stickers, I figured I might as well use them in the scene, and started arranging them appropriately. Most of them went around the fountain near the front, since I figured the plants would be most likely to grow near a ready water source, but the big sunflowers I put in front of the window (to catch the sun, natch), the dandelions near the doorway, and the violets and strawberries near Sir Squeeks’s stump. I also put the beehive sticker I’d just unlocked in the back corner of the room, above the campsite, and located all the tiny bee stickers to put around it – I was a tiny bit worried that three of them had gone walkabout for a second (as that CAN be an issue with this game, if you remember what happened the last time I played this game), but no, they hadn’t disappeared under the layers to another corner, they’d just been hidden by some flower stickers. Whew! Didn’t feel like dealing with THAT bug again.
I) With the flowers placed, I was free to continue adding more detail to my corner – such as putting the “normal” red squirrel at the base of Sir Squeek’s stump by the flowers, along with some purple mushrooms and a brown mushroom growing on the other side, and adding another, woodier curling vine to the left-hand wall to curl into the corner and provide an anchor point for the beehive to hang from (as it looked kind of weird just floating in the corner). I also adjusted the position of the bees, keeping two flying near the hive (in opposite directions) and putting the other two on flowers – one on a big red flower by the fountain, the other on the little white flower in the strawberries. Felt appropriate! Satisfied with my progress (and noticing I’d been playing for about an hour), I was about ready to take a screenshot and call it quits for the day –
When I noticed the nest full of bird eggs sticker, mama bird sticker, and baby birds in the nest sticker just floating out in space around the corner. Reminding me that I’d wanted to figure out a way to put them in the scene. I thus began considering which of my remaining stickers would make good spots for a bird to build a nest. After a bit of pondering, I finally settled on the following:
I. Putting a short flat-topped pillar at the far end of the left-hand wall, atop the flagstones there, and sticking the “Baby Birds” sticker I’d unlocked atop it – I’m not sure I’m ENTIRELY on board with how it looks, but it was a convenient place to leave the babies for now
II. And putting a little “notch in the wall” sticker above the dead knight’s campsite and putting the nest of eggs and mama bird in there – I originally had it on the right-hand wall, next to the window, but I decided I didn’t like how that looked and moved it to the left-hand wall next to and slightly above the head of the knight. For some reason it looked a little more natural there! Meant I had to reposition the rusty sword and shield so both were leaning up against the left-hand wall, but I felt it was worth it.
And with that, I took a screenshot, saved, and quit! Behold my progress below:
I think it’s coming along pretty nicely, all things considered. :) Hopefully the stickers on this one don’t glitch out the next time I play… Oh, and fun fact – currently, only 0.1% of players have the “Bee Hive” and “Baby Birds” achievements! I’m guessing that this is probably because they’re the newest hidden stickers, but still – nice to be among the first to unlock them! :) Especially that “Bee Hive” sticker, since that took some doing…
FreeTube: I wanted to clear a few more videos out of my Subs over here, and I’m happy to say that I succeeded, watching the two OXBoxtra videos that I most wanted to catch up on this evening –
A) “We Played this Resident Evil Rip-Off So You Don't Have To” by OXBox – Mike playing terrible Resident Evil clone Outbreak: Shades Of Horror with Andy watching on, offering moral support and snark! Why did they put themselves through this? Because Mike saw that the Outbreak series kept releasing super-expensive compilations (noting that the total for the latest was like $145 American dollars), and he decided he had to part with some of his precious money and see what they were all about. Because if the collection cost that much, that meant it had to be good, right? < /sarcasm > Anyway, the game was very much NOT good, and featured:
I. An opening menu which was actually the protagonist – Discount Claire Redfield; she even had the iconic red jacket and a knife that Andy later said looked like someone had sellotaped it to her back – wandering around a strange family fun center, with various explanatory signs telling her where to go to, you know, actually play the game. Apparently the arcade machines offered minigames, the “raid mode” was in the restrooms (Mike was like “why there?!), and the game itself accessible through movie posters? It was confusing enough that I think Mike entered the multiplayer mode by accident while trying to navigate – at the very least, the posters he poked all had an additional subtitle, “Chromatic Split,” on them, and I am reasonably certain one of the explanatory signs said that was the multiplayer version...but as Mike said, you were never going to find a friend to play this with you, so… XD
II. An “Act I” that immediately dumped Discount Claire Redfield in everyone’s favorite gaming environment – a sewer level – with a rapidly-increasing infection level, and featured such nonsense as “green sprouts” (Legally Distinct from “green herbs”) for healing; a UI that randomly faded out every so often (Mike was like “I don’t know what I did!” the first time he noticed it), and was otherwise so cluttered you couldn’t see all the text on the screen; big old crocodile men for some reason; poorly animated asset pack zombies that jittered along, twisted at the waist in very unnatural ways, and went down in one hit so long as you got a headshot (and were worth DEPRESSINGLY little XP – 2 per kill!); flares that, as per the boys, looked like someone stuck a little rocket engine on a thermos (and had a very goofy “use” animation); a flashlight that you used by pressing in the right stick (Mike was very “???” about that); and a ghoul attack animation that seriously looked like a “you have just died” animation (there was a fade to black and everything!), but nope, it was just a regular attack. Mike and Andy were very much not impressed, and chose to quit and move onto Act II when Discount Claire was killed by a ghoul and Mike was forced to “interact to give up” (very helpful, game).
III. An “Act II” that immediately dumped Discount Claire into an underground factory (Mike was immediately like “this is no different from a sewer level, come on”) and featured such nonsense as a cop zombie walking up the stairs that Discount Claire had just come down, completely ignoring her (and going up the second set of stairs backwards) while a cheerleader zombie (yes, those were a thing in this game) came down and ALSO completely ignored her (Andy joked that the first zombie was clocking out for a break and that this was a “shift change”); a bunch of zombies managing to attack Discount Claire through CLOSED AND LOCKED DOORS thanks to their character models partially glitching through them (on the plus side, this meant that Discount Claire could target and kill them as well); Discount Claire getting attacked by a Discount Tyrant that breathed fire for no discernible reason (Mike exclusively shot him in the crotch just for fun – it took quite a lot of crotch shots to bring him down); the boys discovering that you could shoot individual limbs off zombies and turn them into wriggling zombie “snakes,” which was probably the one thing they honestly liked about this game (admitting they’d love to see Capcom implement something like this in RE proper); and another zombie trying to walk directly into a closed door head-first on a different level (Mike and Andy immediately compared it to that famous Gary Larson cartoon featuring the kid going to Midvale School For The Gifted pushing on a door that said “Pull”). Their time in this act came to a close when Mike found a key that could be used to open one of the many locked doors they’d encountered and used it on the door the Midvale Zombie had been walking into – only to discover it was only a safe room of sorts. And didn’t have any other keys inside. Meaning there was no way for them to progress. *shakehead* Great work, game.
IV. An “Act III” that immediately dumped Discount Claire into “Arthur’s Lair” (Mike and Andy: “Who’s Arthur??” I think you might have learned if you had managed to complete the earlier acts, guys!), which was also underground (looked like an old subway tunnel, in fact) and featured such nonsense as the reveal that, when Discount Claire is stealthing, she cannot interact with objects in the world (like a note next to the corpse of the person she was supposed to be meeting down here) or shoot enemies (like the Discount Tyrant trying to murder her); so much ivy growing around a big arena where Discount Claire was expected to fight loads of enemies that it kept getting in the way of the camera as Mike tried to navigate and shoot; Mike attempting to keep a dismembered cheerleader zombie as a “pet snake” for a bit, only to realize it wasn’t really feasible with how many enemies kept coming after him in the arena; Discount Claire dying again, but this time being allowed to come back to life via “attacking” to use the green sprout in her inventory (again, very helpful game); the croc-man enemy coming for Discount Claire using the world’s stupidest walk cycle (Mike and Andy said he walked like a Donkey Kong character, with Mike providing a silly “do do do do!” soundtrack for it); Discount Claire failing to kill a cop zombie with multiple body shots during a later trek through the tunnels, and the cop zombie choosing to just loom over her shoulder rather than attack her (he must have also been on break); a zombie in what looked like a hazmat suit just exiting the game entirely by clipping through a nearby wall when Discount Claire approached (Mike and Andy had a good laugh over that); Mike running out of ammo while fighting zombies in the tunnels and having to use the knife, which didn’t have a proper attack animation, just a big blast of light each time it hit (Mike joked it had to be doing radiant damage, while Andy suggested it was opening stargates); and a Discount Tyrant deeper in the tunnels that was just staring blankly at some pipes when Discount Claire arrived on the scene (Andy promptly began RPing him as a pipe inspector being murdered by some unknown woman XD). Their time in this act ended when Discount Claire was killed by a hillbilly zombie and they decided they didn’t need to see the rest of the lair.
V. And a “Main Street Retro” minigame, available in the Arcade, that wasn’t “retro” in the slightest – it just plonked Discount Claire down on a street and had her go around mowing down hordes of enemies while the local NPCs ran around in a panic, died to the monsters, or – occasionally – picked up a gun and helped. On the plus side, Mike got a rifle that helped him obliterate more Discount Tyrant crotches; on the minus side, rats began raining from the sky at one point near the end of the level. And then everything ended with the game straight-up crashing. Mike and Andy considered this a rather fitting end to things. :P
So, uh, yeah. Mike and Andy cannot recommend anyone spend $145 US on these games. XD Save your cash and get Resident Evil Requiem when it comes out – at least then you’re only spending $75!
B) And “Return to Silent Hill is Really, Really Bad” by OXtra – Ellen, Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about Return To Silent Hill, which is a new movie based on Silent Hill 2 that came out recently, and how it’s – well, see the title. XD Yeah, the four absolutely hated the movie (perhaps more than the Borderlands movie, but I don’t know that for sure), and their half-hour-long bitch session included:
I. Andy forcing everyone to say one nice thing about the movie before they started trashing it – his was “I liked how the lead actor, Jeremy Irvine, looked like a bedraggled Jensen Ackles” (which confused Ellen and Jane, as they had no idea who that guy was – for reference, his most famous role is probably Dean Winchester on Supernatural. Me, I was confused because, after seeing Jeremy as James Sunderland, I was like “...hang on, he looks way more like SAM Winchester” (aka Jared Padelecki)); Jane’s was “This movie made me appreciate the original Silent Hill movie from 2006 more, as it was so much better at being scary and capturing the actual atmosphere of the game;” Ellen’s was “it was under two hours long” (harsh but fair), and Mike’s was “They gave James a cool Ford Mustang muscle car instead of the boring car from the actual game, and made the final shot him doing a sick burnout in said car.” XD (After watching their video and the clips they compiled, my one nice thing is that the shot of James screaming in pain and slamming a hand onto the ground in one location, only for Silent Hill’s iconic meat moss to start growing around it and up the walls, was actually kinda cool. I’m sure it was less cool in the movie, but I liked the brief clip. :P)
II. Much complaining from all parties about how the film more or less completely ruined the plot of the original game in its adaptation – the key changes being:
a. In the original game, all the shit that happens to James in Silent Hill is because he murdered his terminally-ill wife Mary – and while he framed it as a mercy killing, deep down he couldn’t help but be relieved to be done with trying to take care of her (didn’t help that he was feeling very lustful toward the hospital staff); in the movie, Mary openly asks him to kill her and basically forces him to do it, immediately absolving him of that guilt
b. In the original game, Mary had a perfectly ordinary terminal illness; in the movie, she’d been poisoned her entire life by her father, who was a member of the big old Silent Hill cult (which is NOT a thing in James’s game, btw), forcing her body to weep blood so they could drink it (???)
Yeah, you can see why people who like the original game, like Andy (who called the original storyline one of the best in horror games) would not be impressed by the fact that the filmmakers managed to do a perfect shot-for-shot remake of the iconic opening where James looks into the mirror at the rest stop bathroom and touches his face before exiting into the parking lot to look at Silent Hill below! As per Jane, Mike immediately after watching the film was like “it’s faithful in a lot of superficial ways, but strays from the original work in a lot of important, meaningful ways,” and – yeah, it certainly sounds like it does! Even ELLEN could tell stuff was wrong, and she’s NEVER played the games due to her distaste for horror!
III. Much complaining from all parties, but especially Jane, about how the movie just wasn’t that scary – Jane specifically compared Pyramid Head cornering James in a closet and just standing over him menacingly to a situation you might come across in a walkthrough of a haunted house (with Ellen backing her up and saying it’s what would happen if an actor accidentally got too close to you). There was also much bitching about monster design – with Mike saying that a lot of the monsters look like assets that were borrowed directly from the 2024 remake of the game, and they just do NOT look good on a movie screen – and some of the new monsters in the film – like a giant spider that Ellen thinks was added in to replace the monsters that were two sets of legs joined waist-to-waist (symbolizing James’s sexual desires and seeing women sometimes as just a way to get off), and a big old Moth Mary monster that apparently was created in response to James seeing a big moth in the hospital. Basically, the movie was a mess of badly-done CGI – though Andy at least had a reason for why that was: the movie was apparently made with a budget of just $23 million (even the original 2006 Silent Hill had a bigger budget than that – adjusted for inflation, that one cost $50 million to make!)
IV. Much complaining about what an asshole James is in the movie, despite the film going out of its way to remove the main reason people would think he’s an asshole – basically, movie!James is a painter who makes terrible art (and drives around with his paintings in the back seat of his car for some reason); meets Mary when he drives over one of her suitcases while she’s trying to catch a bus to get OUT of Silent Hill (to his credit, he is apologetic, but Ellen was baffled both by Mary’s refusal to continue trying to catch the bus AND her willingness to get in the car with this weirdo); and, after discovering that Maria (Mary’s Silent Hill-conjured “sexier duplicate) isn’t actually a real person, cruelly dismisses her before more or less summoning Pyramid Head to kill her! Cripes, James – I think I prefer your game self!
V. Much complaining about how the movie was paced, with Andy saying that “people who love Silent Hill 2 will hate what was done to the story; people who don’t will not get why this structured like a video game;” Mike admitting that he always thought that critics complaining something was structured like a video game was rude – and then he saw this movie and he realized how much it didn’t work here specifically; Ellen calling the movie an “and then” movie, since the characters are just driven from place to place by monster attacks and such – they don’t really make conscious decisions to go places, it’s just “and then they were at the hospital” or “and then they were at the apartment buildings;” and Jane declaring that the problem is that movies have to be (relatively) short while games are generally long, and this is why games do better when adapted as TV shows.
VI. And much complaining about the ending (which was spoiled very early on, so don’t watch this review if you actually want to see it) – which is the one from the game where James, unable to live with the guilt, plunges his car into the local lake (“In Water,” appropriately enough)...except that, right afterward, the movie essentially starts over again with James meeting Mary. Apparently with the hope of making things ambiguous, ooooh~ None of the group were impressed – though they were all deeply amused by the final scene, where Mary gets into the car and asks James what he paints – only for him to stare at her before driving off and nearly fishtailing into a tree. XD
So yeah – end result, they do NOT recommend you see this movie if you can avoid it! Which, uh, is very easy for me, as I didn’t even know the movie existed until they brought it up in this video. XD And we can expect plenty more movie reviews from them as time goes on, as apparently we’re getting movies based on Street Fighter (which, according to Mike and Andy, looks like good campy fun), Mortal Kombat 2 (which will probably be VERY bloody), and Resident Evil (which Andy has high hopes for because apparently it’s attached to a talented director) this year! I will keep my fingers crossed that not all of them are as terrible as this film. :P
Yeah, I suppose I'm happy with that -- I really wanted to watch those videos and play my game, and the cleaning does need to get done, so...right now, though, I really have to go to bed, as it is much too late for me to be up again. ^^; Goals for tomorrow include doing SOMETHING with my tumblr drafts; working some more on Chapter 6 of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland;" playing some Portal 2; and getting in a workout, preferably to the next F:NV YOLO Remastered episode. Hopefully these are all achievable goals. *nods* Night all!
