#the holding hands from the video from the scene that killed me in Matrix and my drawing when I was 15 y/o

[polarisbibliotheque]

Can You Hear The Rumble? - Vergil x Reader

Music Inspired Fics (Devil May Music) - Cirice, by Ghost

Pairing: Vergil x Reader

Summary: Everyone knew the kind of demon a hunter should be wary about is the one who plays with their victim's minds. You and Vergil were very proud on the outside - but how would it be when having to save each other on the inside for the first time?

TRIGGER WARNING: A lot of blood, cuts, bruises, scars and suffering on both Vergil and the reader's sides. The reader also struggles with perfection and self-loathing - in a "I'm never going to be a good person" kind of way, because I needed to get more intimate on the reader's part as well - and there are scenes with the reader covered in cuts and bleeding, though not self-imposed, it could be read like that. Those scenes are the reader's and Vergil's internal images of themselves. Reader and Vergil meet each other on their imperfections and the darkest parts of their souls, so BE WARNED. This might not be everyone's cup of tea and there are lots of potential triggers.

Author's Note: @tokkis-shelf asked me if Vergil's part of the Halloween special was inspired by Cirice, and here we are now. It is what kickstarted the song-fic requests! As with a lot of people, I think, Cirice is pretty personal to me.

In the video, it was so comforting to me seeing the black sheep being represented hahahaha and I guess that's why people love it so much. The part where they hold hands? I died, I'd never let go, I cry my soul out upon watching. (I did a very similar drawing to that scene when I was in school around 15 years ago, so it drop-kicked me out of my body xD)

Now, when writing this, I kept in mind that this song has a double meaning and can be quite comforting and quite manipulative at the same time - hence why I use the "can't you see that you're lost without me?" in two different situations, 'cause I think Cirice can be interpreted in so many ways and each person takes what they need from this song. I hope you guys like it!!

Plus, the song the reader and Dante sing at the end is The Power of Love, by Huey Lewis and The News

Cirice, by Ghost

“Can’t you see that you’re lost…?”

It happened every time Vergil walked in the darkness.

That voice in the back of his head, silently taunting him, the hiss of a quiet viper in the hopes of taking him back to the darkest parts of his soul. Quiet, lurking, whispering… Mundus always there, somewhere in the folds of his consciousness, guiding him back into the void – luring Vergil back into his shackles.

“Can’t you see that you’re lost without me?”

As if Vergil couldn’t belong anywhere else, as if his place was in Hell. After all he had been through, after all the sins he perpetrated, he believed wholeheartedly there was no hope for him at all – only a fool’s hope; only a glimmer of a wish he wasn’t as tainted as he was… A desire to not be such a monster as he was.

Pacing quietly through the empty cathedral, Vergil had already learned not to give in to those thoughts – to keep them at bay, as only a whisper in the darkness, of trickster voices that would always remind him of how inhuman he was.

It was times like this Vergil longed for the faint glimmer of the moon, or the warm ghostly light of a candle. It was easy to get lost in the dark, but a single ray of light could help through the direst of situations. That night, though, it seemed like the moon had fallen asleep behind the curtains of the clouds – Selene hiding her tears for her earthly lover in his eternal sleep.

None of you knew what that night entailed – you weren’t even certain what you were dealing with. That was the reason why Lady strutted in the Devil May Cry, not too fond of taking a job she didn’t know if it was up to her abilities.

“Well, looks like I have a new one for you to pay your debt, big guy!” Her singsong voice interrupted the ambience of the jukebox; Lady entering the shop with Kalina Ann and all.

“Eh, I’m never gonna be free of my debt, Lady, let’s be honest.” Dante sighed, putting his feet down and throwing his magazine across the table, shooting her a serious glare. “But things have been borin’ lately, so one of your odd jobs’ not gonna hurt. Whaddya have for me?”

“You talk as if I never help you enough to maintain this place.” She lifted one eyebrow, approaching the big desk at the middle of the shop.

“Gotta give the woman credit, Dante. Last month’s bills were on her.” You shrugged as you had finally come out of your shower, happy to see Lady around, still drying your hair with the towel as you went down the stairs.

“See? Someone who has a bit of common sense.” Her smile was nothing short of devilish as she gestured towards you.

“You know where you are, Lady. ‘Common sense’ isn’t much of a thing in this household.” You greeted her by quickly blowing her a kiss while passing by, making your way towards the couch where Vergil was quietly reading.

“Ey, you’re hurtin’ my feelings like that.” Dante put one of his hands over his heart, laughing alongside you as you kept on your way. “But fine. I’ll give ya that, Lady. So, what’s up? What job do you wanna throw at me this time?”

“I am not throwing it at you.” And there it was: you could always see when Dante stroke a nerve when Lady got defensive and with that fiery stare on her multicolored eyes. “If you wanna do it, great, if you don’t, I can deal with it myself just fine. I’m here to be a good friend since you can barely afford all that pizza you keep stuffing yourself with!”

As you sat by Vergil’s side, you both exchanged a telling glare. Just like you, Vergil was used to observing people. Granted, he didn’t know Lady as much as Dante or even you, but he did know her since he was very young. That fiery, easy-to-anger personality had been there since they first met at the Temen-ni-gru – and Vergil argued it was one of Lady’s traits that would never change.

Something he was quite pleased with, if he had to be honest with himself. It was a good trait for a human demon hunter like her. Dante always praised human’s hearts and particularly their love and empathy – Vergil praised their burning anger that made them unconquerable in the direst of circumstances.

“Jeez, alright, alright, don’t shoot me!” Dante raised his hands as if he was at gunpoint, making you wheeze quietly. Vergil side-eyed you for a while – half judging, half holding his own laugh. “It’s not like I have much of a choice, do I?”

“Humpf.” Lady rolled her eyes and took a slice of pizza from the box resting on the desk, pointing at Dante with it right after. “You know I wouldn’t bring you something if it wasn’t important.”

“Actually, you would.” With those words, Dante rested his arms crossed on the table – all the while, you and Vergil watched it all as if it was a show. Who needed a TV when you had those two? “But you’re bein’ too dodgy ‘bout it, babe. What’s goin’ on?”

“I got a call from a priest in a city nearby.” Lady’s answer was uncharacteristically quiet, followed by a bite from the pizza while she seemed pensive and in any hurry to chew it. “I’ve done some jobs there, know the guy, he’s nice. All the times he called me, it was always a quick, good-paying job. He said some weird things have been happening at the cathedral for the last couple of weeks.”

“Not to sound mean, but there’s always somethin’ strange happenin’ at churches.” Dante’s eyes carried a bit of skepticism: ‘weird things’ didn’t always entail a job for the Devil May Cry – and it usually ended with all of you hunting a rogue raccoon or something.

“I know. But this guy, he doesn’t get scared easy, ok? He’s one of those types of priests who’ll try to shoot down a couple of demons with a shotgun and, if that doesn’t work, he gives me a call.” Those words, though, made you and the Spardas raise your eyebrows. Indeed, it was a rare type of priest, but a good one to keep as acquaintance. “He said the cathedral is increasingly quiet, even from noises outside, with occasional distant noises that are not done by any of those who live there. After it all started, the other priests reported having weird nightmares, of being chased by something in the dark, inside the cathedral – this thing whispering things they can’t understand. Alright if it happened to one or two, but soon all of them started waking up in the middle of the night with similar nightmares – and, catch this, the higher ups of the clergy didn’t tell the common priests about it, but they all reported the very same dream.” Those words caught everyone’s attention. Vergil finally closed his book and leaned forward, paying attention to Lady’s retelling of the priest’s misfortunes. “The priest has been trying to figure out what’s going on, but some old books appear to go missing from the library, only to re-appear as if nothing has happened. Some books are missing pages, something that never happened before. He also said the inside of the cathedral has been getting darker and darker as the weeks go by. As if something is approaching – his words, not mine.”

Vergil immediately furrowed his brows and seemed to turn into an ice sculpture right by your side. You risked a glance, finding him with his usual dark aura – pensive, somber and quiet; hunter’s eyes showing themselves in a matter of seconds.

“Rare are the creatures in Hell in search for knowledge…” He muttered loud enough for his brother and Lady to turn their attention to him. “But those who do, are usually among the worst. Haunting noises, torn books, nightmares, dead silence and total darkness…”

“What? You think those Hell Piranhas came out of their pit?” Dante’s question had a bit of fun in the words, but his eyes were serious and he didn’t allow his lips to smile.

“Could be. Could also be a demon trying to mimic them to hide something else.”

“Hell Piranhas?” You and Lady didn’t need a cue to ask at the very same time. Neither of you had ever heard of that – and both of you had heard of a lot.

“This is not their name, but it is how Dante calls them since we were kids.” Vergil almost sighed in response.

“How we both called ‘em. Mister smart-pants over here isn’t that much better than lil’ ol’ me.” Dante winked at both of you, making you giggle quietly in return. “They’re kinda like illusion demons, but they like stayin’ in the darkness and gatherin’ knowledge. Usually work for someone bigger, though.”

“And even if they don’t, they swallow up all their knowledge and that is dangerous in itself. Afterwards, they feed from the victims they have been toying for so long.” Vergil continued Dante’s thought, ignoring his brother’s previous words. The more you didn’t think about what Dante had said about him, the better – for Vergil couldn’t deny it. “They hunt in packs, and the more victims, the more powerful they become. Some call them the Pit Deceivers, others call them the Lie Weavers…”

“You call them Hell Piranhas.” You concluded bluntly, making Vergil stare at the horizon with emptiness in his eyes – he could say all he wanted, flex all his demonic knowledge, you heard the Piranhas and now you’d never forget it.

“I never heard of them.” Lady had her eyebrows furrowed, searching her memory for some story like that.

“They either don’t leave the pit that much or not many humans survive to tell the story. That’s why.” Dante pointed at a great, old book Vergil had left on one of the tables a long time ago and now it was its official resting place. “You can find it only in the likes of the Codex Daemonica.”

“So either we have them around, or it’s something else. Something bigger. Right?” As you asked, Vergil only agreed with his head as the attentions turned to you. “Or something mimicking the Piranhas.” And Vergil had to sigh at your addition. He would never have peace again. “The mimic or the master, what kind of demon would the Piranhas answer to? If they are that obscure, I take it their existence is more of a niche knowledge in Hell rather than a common information.”

“On that, you are correct…” Vergil murmured in response, falling back into his pensive demeanor. You knew he would be lost for a while.

“See? Good thing I brought this for you, then.” Lady waved dismissively at Dante, but you could sense a little edge in her playful voice. Dealing with big things was fine, same as dealing with cruel demons and the ones that played the big-scary-one persona. Unknown demons were another kind of monster – one only Dante and Vergil used to deal with. “Plus, they always pay well.”

“Eh, I won’t be seein’ much of that money, if I know ya well.” Dante scoffed, having a small smile hidden in the corner of his lips; his tone and demeanor, though, were quite somber and you knew the red devil was taking it seriously.

“If you don’t mind, Dante, I would like to take over this one.” Vergil finally declared while getting up from the couch. “I know some of the hellish creatures who might make use of the Weavers or mimic them.”

“Fine for me, I’m needin’ some time to rest.” Dante sighed, but looked right back at you while Vergil rested his book on the big Devil May Cry desk. “But I’m gonna feel a lot better with someone around to keep an eye on ‘im, pretty thing.”

“Well, I didn’t intend on letting you guys deal with this all by yourselves anyway.” You got up from the couch, immediately receiving a glare from Vergil. “I’m going, blue devil, whether you want it or not. I want to get acquainted with these Piranhas.”

Vergil only closed his eyes, letting out the longest and most regretful sigh you ever heard in your life.

And there you were – although Vergil lost track of you quite a while ago. He knew the stirrings rippling through his heart when you were in danger; and being the fierce human you were, Vergil wasn’t worried about having you search for the demons in the cathedral.

There was, though, a slight uneasiness. That voice echoing in the darkest parts of his soul, it always came as an omen – causing nothing but destruction, inside or outside of himself. Vergil never could really say which one would be, but both were devastating.

“Veeeeergil…”

His steps came to a dry halt in the middle of the cathedral. The night outside the colorful stained-glass windows was pitch black, robbing the colors of their warmth and light – the fire on the candles, long dead in that cold night. The whisper that crept to his ears, like stark chalk on a chalkboard, dragged itself through the marble floor and took a hold of his soul in its clutches.

It was a different kind of sound – different from the ones inside himself, calling him to the darkness. It was from the outside… The Lie Weavers. Slowly coming up, finding him as their next victim. He was close to one of the places they were certainly lurking in the shadows, patiently waiting for someone they could consume.

Vergil never feared the darkness. Tightening his grip around Yamato, his steps resumed his way, approaching the places in the cathedral the faint light of the night could barely touch. Those demons should have known their end was near, and he was the harbinger of their demise – he expected all kinds of trickery, of resistance, of fight from them.

He did not expect to hear a familiar voice, filled with uncertainty.

“Vergil…?”

Halting his steps once more, this time his silvery eyes lost their predatorial gaze as his heart jumped in his chest – even if for a slight second.

“Mother?”

His answer was but a whisper before he was swallowed by darkness.

*

When engaging with illusion demons, one should be aware of not falling into their element: when engulfed by it, those demons were more powerful than expected, able to subdue even the strongest of foes. Breaking from their control required mental and emotional discipline rather than brute force.

It was a slight second – a foolish slip from his human soul, disarmed by the trickery of Eva’s voice – and Vergil was surrounded by a sea of darkness and turmoil. His heart stirred with anger towards himself for being such a child, a vulnerable stupid child, tricked by a puppet of something his heart missed so much.

Eva was long dead. There was no demon able to bring her back. And he would never see her again. All that logic was tossed aside in a spark of a second by his stupid human heart, trembling upon hearing her speak his name again. Granted, Vergil only heard his mother in his dreams, barely remembering how her voice sounded in reality, and this time he heard outside himself – but he should have seen it coming. Illusion demons, trickster demons, cruel demons… They all relied on the barely closed scars inside his damned human soul.

Vergil could always count on them to re-open those wounds, making him bleed as much as he did on the floor of that cursed cemetery so many years ago – and he was a fool to fall for it after he had been through so much.

“Vergil… Can you hear me…?”

“I can, you damned deceiver. You can stop these theatrics – mimicking my dead mother will not affect me.” His voice cut through the dark like the sharpest of ice, his predatorial gaze back into his silver eyes.

“I… Don’t understand you, son. I cannot find you.” Her voice had a tinge of sorrow and desperation – but it was exactly like Eva’s voice. Vergil remembered it with a tinge of gold, probably a result of the haze of nostalgia, but today it was grounded and melancholic – perhaps, that was how Eva had always sounded… He just didn’t remember it. “I can’t find you. You aren’t home.”

“I haven’t been home for a long while.” Vergil didn’t even try to hide the growl that raised from his chest as he argued with that creature. He was used to having a puppet of his mother parading in front of him to hurt his human soul even more, but that was already getting on his nerves. Taunting him about the fact his mother ran to find him that fateful night wasn’t part of the usual games those filthy demons played – and to say they were honing his wrath was an understatement. “And I will never be back.”

“I… I cannot see you, Vergil. Where are you…? Why…?” He could hear the weeping in her voice, faint sobbing while the desperation made her words tremble. Vergil raised his head in the darkness, holding his own heart not to quiver: she wasn’t real and it was all a gimmick to affect him. He would not be affected. He was stronger than that. “Why couldn’t I save you? Those demons they… They hurt you, didn’t they? Oh, my child! My son! They hurt you and I could do nothing! I couldn’t be your mother!”

“Enough with this, filthy, hellish creature!” His voice finally exploded from his chest, roaring in the dark and echoing through the void, finding only silence. “You have no right to desecrate my mother’s memory like this! Shut your putrid mouth and stop with your rancid lies!”

The glint of the Yamato being unsheathed made the darkness recoil for a split second, only to envelop the Dark Slayer once more. His grip was tight, his eyes fiercely looking for his first opponent to direct a very well-placed judgement cut that could end all those creatures with just one swing of his hand. Vergil had enough and all the patience he carried in his being wouldn’t be enough to stop him from overkilling those demons – he just had to know where to direct his wrath.

“Don’t say those words, Vergil… You are not… Not like this.” Her voice still trembled, and his hand was still certain around Yamato. Vergil knew quite well at that state he was a weapon of mass destruction, he just had to find his opponent. His soul was screaming for him to do that, to put a stop to all that mockery. “You are good… You are my son.”

Vergil would have sliced that demon into a thousand million pieces without flinching, even if it took the form of his mother – but his eyes widened as a soft, warm hand touched his face. In all those years being taunted by demons, being tricked and mocked, seeing so many puppets of Eva, Sparda and Dante, none of them had touched him… And none of them genuinely felt like them.

It had been so many lost years he hadn’t felt his mother’s touch – last time, she could cup his entire face, thumb lovingly caressing his innocent eyebrows, but now her thumb could only reach his cheekbones. Nevertheless, it felt like her: not like a golden, nostalgic lost memory of how she felt, but exactly like Eva’s hands, even with the slight roughness of her continuous gardening.

“It took me so long to find you… I am so sorry.”

“You are not my mother.”

“Don’t say that.” Her answer was a sorrowful whisper, her thumb now carefully caressing his sharp cheekbone. Vergil closed his eyes, unable to move, convincing himself all of that wasn’t real and not allowing his heart to sway – forcing his arms to remain frozen by his side, fighting the urge to embrace her. Reminding himself: his mother was dead, killed while trying to save him, a long time ago, and nothing could bring her back. “Your heart hasn’t hardened as much as not to recognize me. You…” Her voice once more became soft, as if trying to do the same with his soul. “You are not a monster… You are my son, my Vergil.”

With those words, Eva’s hand was finally met with a tear – melting the ice from those silvery eyes.

*

There was an impending storm rumbling inside your chest.

Whenever that turmoil took ahold of your heart, you knew Vergil was in trouble. You had just finished checking your side of the cathedral, finding some things out of the ordinary but no demons, when the waves became aggressive in your chest. Your steps were already taking you to meet him, but you found yourself walking even hastier – the sound, though, eaten by the shadows that seemed to only grow around you.

Neither of you had calm seas of feelings: they usually raged like a maelstrom of emotions you could barely get through without some destruction – be it internal or external. But there was a certain note of melancholy and desperation in your heart at that moment that made you know Vergil was hurting – and that hurting, you knew quite well.

It was almost ironic how you apparently despised each other at the beginning, but after a while you came to understand; that aversion was there because you, in a certain way, were a mirror of each other. You could see in him the traits in your soul you disliked the most, and Vergil did see in you the same thing – those traits, however, were the same ones that brought you together, and made both you and Vergil feel seen and understood for the first time in your lives.

He didn’t judge your sins, as you didn’t judge his. To your eyes, he was never a monster, and to his, you could never be as crooked as you thought you were. You found each other in imperfection and, in that, you managed to talk and feel on the same level – after that, every feeling of admiration, care and love was easy to blossom.

You understood that storm, that thunder rumbling inside your chest at that very moment. You could feel it exactly the way he felt – and you knew Vergil needed help… Even if he would never say so himself.

You couldn’t hear or see him, though. You found yourself exactly at his area of patrol in the cathedral, but there was no clue as where your blue devil had gone – and for him to completely disappear, imposing presence and all, was quite an achievement in itself. The air was stiff, heavy as if the windows had never been opened, eating up any sound from the inside and the outside. The darkness was heavier than the one you had previously patrolled, shadows allowing only a few glimpses of the opulent decoration and the path in front of you – although, you couldn’t see more than a few meters beyond your feet.

If you couldn’t trust your sight or your hearing to find him, you could trust your heart: the storm would guide you. Closing your eyes, you allowed your feelings to take over, following with your footsteps in the direction you could hear his soul calling.

Those shadow creatures wouldn’t be able to hide him from you: no matter what happened or where you found yourselves, you would always be able to feel Vergil’s presence and find him in the darkest of hours.

And as the thunder in your chest cracked violently, your feet came to a halt and you opened your eyes.

Right in front of you, there was only darkness. Not like in the shadows that took the cathedral little by little, but pitch-black darkness, that no light could cast aside. To enter it would mean to be completely bare: vulnerable, lost, without guidance, naked – but the screaming in your soul made it very clear Vergil was in there.

Contrary to your lover, you were afraid of the dark. You always preferred to have a little light by your side, for you never knew what could be lurking alongside you, ready to pounce and drag you to certain suffering and death. You protected yourself by being forever vigilant, as you always did – a trait that exhausted you, yes, but luckily, in the last few years, you had Vergil around to keep a light by you when your body started giving out.

For that reason, you would never fear entering the darkness for him.

And with a deep breath, your bold steps took you inside the dark.

*

Your feet were cold, bare, stumbling over a sticky floor. Even if your eyes could see only darkness, you felt the freezing air of that night slicing your skin: you were shirtless and something was hurting… Oozing. The cold wind mixed with a faint warmness that leaked from the open wounds on your skin.

Blood. You were bleeding.

Your arms immediately wrapped around you – those scars, they were showing. They never showed before.

Running your hands quickly over your body, you could feel the warm blood slipping through your fingers; some wounds barely holding themselves closed while others still poured as in the day they were created.

That was the version of yourself you used to fiercely hide. None of those wounds were physical, none of them could be seen… But whenever you looked in the mirror, you saw them there, under your skin, under your soul, quietly resting until you couldn’t hide them anymore.

“You are lost…”

It was always the same voice, of something dark, something inside you that could break your soul if you didn’t shove it back into the darkness like you always did. That was why you were afraid; that was why Vergil always kept a faint glow by your side whenever you couldn’t hold yourself together. The dark was dangerous to you – to both of you.

“You are lost without me…”

“I can survive quite well without you…!” You growled to the darkness, keeping that part of yourself at bay. The part that gave in to the pain, that bathed in the blood and didn’t want to get up… And the part that would bathe and rise in rage, making you survive at great cost to those around you.

You were past that. And you didn’t need that to survive. You didn’t have to survive, you could live.

“Can’t you see that you’re lost…?”

“Vergil!” Your scream was a roar in the dark, looking for the one you plunged into the darkness to find. You wouldn’t give in to the trickery of those Piranhas – and you would get Vergil out of there.

They would learn they shouldn’t fear only the son of Sparda: they should also fear you.

“You think you can find him…?” After the mischievous ethereal voice questioned, you heard a giggle rippling around your feet as you stumbled on the sticky floor to find your lover. “You think you are that good? You think you aren’t a monster?”

You furrowed your brows, doing your best to ignore the voices. You knew it was that part inside of you that always taunted how broken you were, how imperfect your soul was. For the longest time you believed there was nothing good in you, nothing to save you from a life of loneliness, until you crossed paths with Vergil.

He was broken too – and he would never judge the things you did to survive your lethal wounds.

“Vergil! Can you hear me?! I’m here to find you!”

“How chivalrous, how heroic! What are you trying to accomplish?” The giggles pooled around your feet, threatening to drag you inside that pool of viscous darkness. “Trying to prove yourself? You’re never going to be perfect. You’re a black sheep, an outcast, remember? The likes of you aren’t heroes.”

“Oh, I’m no hero…” You growled back, fighting against the things trying to pull you back; fighting against the pain of the freezing cold and warmness of blood. “I’m a fucking fighter. You’re messing with the wrong kind of monster, fucking Hell Piranhas.”

“Piranhas…?” A faint whisper in the dark broke whatever control those things were trying to have over your body, starting at your feet. It was Vergil’s whisper – followed by a louder speaking tone. “Y/n! I can feel you, where are you?!”

“Trying to find you!” You screamed back, immediately dragging your feet towards Vergil. You couldn’t see him, but you could feel where he was – and there was nothing those demons could do against that.

The darkness seemed to shift for a couple of seconds. You couldn’t understand what was happening, but you saw a faint, ghostly pale glow in the dark – almost imperceptible, but your heart knew, you could finally see Vergil.

And, in return, he could see you. Moving his feet, Vergil dragged heavy shackles through the floor, screeching in a horrid, soul scratching sound as he willed his body to move towards you. You could hear him grunting with the effort, another set of chains being dragged as Vergil moved his arms – slowly, but surely, wearing all of his strength to get to you.

You felt the viscous ripples of the floor creeping up your legs, almost on your knees, doing their best to pull you away – back into the darkness, back to the taunting voices, to the doubt, the hurt, the self-loathing.

“Vergil! Let me hear your voice! You’re still there, right?!”

“Yes. I am always here.” His answer came with grunts of effort, barely above the noise of the chains screeching around him.

The darkness shifted again, and his form became even more visible, as yours did to him – followed by a scream that rumbled in his chest, Vergil managed to get even closer. That made something spark inside yourself, that thundering storm breaking in your soul cracking in a scream that broke the insidious tentacles holding you back and making you lunge forward.

Once again, the glow you diffused only to each other seemed to get stronger as the darkness wavered.

“Y/n…” He growled once more, the shackles screaming on the floor as he reached out to you.

“Vergil…!” You reached out in return, barely making out the form of his fingers in the dark.

As you were almost touching each other’s hands, the heavy, muffling darkness faltered once more. You could finally see one another, as you were in that godforsaken place.

Vergil was shirtless, his body covered in wounds – new and old – bleeding profusely. His silvery eyes were red, sunken in deep shadow, surrounded by a deep purple mist on his dry skin. You could see his bones under his pale skin covered in so many lacerations you wouldn’t even know where to start healing him. His knuckles were battered, showing the flesh underneath, as well as his wrists covered by heavy iron shackles – wounds from fighting against them for so long. His hands were still long and elegant, but bony and covered in bruises.

You had never seen Vergil so hurt, so broken, so… Vulnerable.

In return, his eyes took in shock the vision of you: as shirtless as him, as battered and wounded as he was. Even if not locked in the shackles he wore for so long in Hell, you walked barefoot leaving a trail of blood behind you. Those scars, those wounds, those bruises… He knew they were there, but he had never seen those. You looked weak and tired, bloodshot eyes under dry skin, as if you hadn’t slept in ages… And those things you fought so much to conceal, now crystal clear in front of him.

Those were the scars you carried inside yourselves. The wounds you had to fight against every day – that you had to try to heal, even if sometimes it seemed impossible. The things you would never show, but, somehow, you managed to sense it in each other… Now you could see it, clear as a bright night.

And, even if you wouldn’t admit to yourselves, those were the very same breaking thunders that would keep you moving – fiercely fighting, fiercely surviving.

As you took in each other’s internal selves, Vergil’s silvery eyes finally found yours.

A loud thundering noise shook the floor underneath your feet twice, as your hearts rumbled alongside the devastating sound. You lunged forward, holding Vergil’s hand as if your life depended on it. Never breaking your eye contact, Vergil held your hand with the strength you would expect of the legendary Dark Slayer. You made each other stronger, and there was nothing that could come between you now.

His shackles immediately screeched back, pulling Vergil violently away from you. At the same time, you were grabbed by the viscous darkness – your knees, your legs, your abdomen, your arms. It pulled you back with vicious strength, doing its best to drag you away from him – back into the darkness.

“Don’t let me go!” You screamed back, tightening your grip around his bony hand.

“I will never let go!” He growled, doing the same, trying to drag his body forward – failing to notice you willed yourself towards him as he pulled you into his arms. Those silvery eyes never moved away from yours.

“You are lost…! Lost…!”

The voices chanted and screeched around you, doing their best to drag you apart. For a moment, your hand slipped and you let out a desperate scream, hurting your lungs as you were almost pulled back into the void. Vergil’s cry resembled a roar as he willed his body to move and tightened his grip in a way he didn’t hold even Yamato.

He hadn’t held his brother’s hand once. This time he wouldn’t make the same mistake. This time, he would hold you even if that damned the both of you to the darkest pits of Hell.

“Can’t you see…? Can’t you see that…?”

“I am lost…!” You barked back to the voices, still staring into Vergil’s eyes, trying to catch your breath while your lungs stung as if you were inhaling a thousand knives.

As Vergil looked into your eyes, though, he knew exactly what you were going to say – and he could safely say it was the very same thing he struggled to find the words to.

“Without you.” His answer came in a dark tone, ragged from the effort he too made to be able to hold your hand.

The thunder rumbled twice again – the voices shrieked and you suddenly found yourselves being launched into each other’s arms as the forces that bind you broke into a million pieces.

Vergil’s arms wrapped around you, one of his hands holding your head close to his chest, as you wrapped yours around his waist, keeping him as close as you could. His head rested on top of yours, and you kept your eyes closed – washing away the blood above his heart with the tears that streamed down your face.

“Don’t ever hide from me.” Vergil’s voice was uncharacteristically shaky, somber but reassuring. You had never been so vulnerable in front of him – and even upon seeing you like that, his reaction was to take you in his arms, to welcome you. “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“And I’m not afraid of your darkness.” You tightened your arms around his cold, bony body as you felt tears running through your hair. “I can see beyond your glimmer, and I’m not afraid of what’s in the dark.” Your voice shook as you took a deep breath and Vergil’s arms held you even closer – his body shaking with the tears falling from his eyes. “It’s you. And I’m never afraid of you.”

“Neither am I of you.”

His answer was but a whisper – a whisper enough to break the darkness into a memory to be kept away in the deepest pits of Hell.

I can feel the thunder that’s breaking in your heart I can see through the scars inside you

*

*

*

*

“You killed the Piranhas from Hell with the power of love?”

Vergil wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. Or die. Or both.

Probably both.

The whole crew was there as you and Vergil never came back from the job as quickly as expected – and when you did, it looked like you hadn’t slept in days.

The priest was more than happy with the result of your work – even though you never discovered why the Weavers decided to come out of hiding nor what they wanted. The congregation was just happy they were gone and the whole reason behind it would be a long-term thing for the Devil May Cry to work on – or to keep an eye on; maybe something bigger was approaching.

You and Vergil didn’t feel like going back to the shop, though. When you were hurt physically, things were very much ok to deal with, but when the wounds were emotional… You needed time for yourselves.

Unlike his brother, Vergil was a little more responsible with his money – and you, a lot more than the two. You managed to find somewhere to spend a few nights… Which involved the both of you talking out everything you felt and saw. It was harrowing at first, something neither of you were versed in and honestly were terrified of, but it eventually brought you even closer together.

So, to say you had defeated the Lie Weavers with the power of love was something that killed Vergil inside.

And you could almost see his internal self, glaring at you with a ‘really, after all of this you say this kind of foolishness’ look in his sad, silvery eyes, as Lady stared at both of you and made the question everyone was thinking.

“Yep. Power of love, it’s a curious thing.” You shrugged, making Vergil physically groan by your side while Dante slapped his table with a huge grin on his face.

“Make a one man weep, make another man sing! Hell yeah, Back To The Future, babe!” He winked back at you as you smiled in response.

“Of all the people you could end up dating, Vergil…” Trish sat on Dante’s desk, crossing her long legs while sporting a devilish smile on her rosy lips. It was interesting how her voice could never really sound like Eva’s. “It had to be someone who references the same songs as your brother.”

“Alas, fate plays many games…” Vergil rolled his eyes, but as they rested on you, there was a vulnerability you saw only once in that pitch black darkness. “But it is kind enough to give us what we need.”

No one ever really understood what he meant, but Dante was the only one who managed to see something inside his brother’s silvery eyes that could only reflect in yours – and that made him genuinely smile.

Indeed, you would never be the romance of a fairy tale book or a romantic comedy – but you could see what lied beyond each other’s scars; taking a glimpse at the worst of each other without fear and finding whatever light was left inside. You could understand – and that was much more than most lovers in the world would ever have.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 239 “Discharge”

So… well, Noda continues with a chapter whose sense of humor makes me feel what Kikuta is feeling.

Yeah, really, sorry, but this is not my sort of thing.

The cover is…

… well, it’s apparently based on this video from the movie “She Hate me” by Spike Lee. I warn you, watch at your own risk.

So we go back on the story that see Usami and our wannabe ‘Jack’ that after just a moment of standoff… pardon, jack-off attack each other with the ‘weapons they have at hands’ (I’m sure you can figure what I’m talking about without having me to spell it out), Usami yelling to a shocked and grossed out Kikuta that guy is the killer before… well, ‘firing’. In a “Matrix” like scene ‘Jack’ avoids and fires back only for Usami to avoid in a beyond spectacular manner.

Jack then runs away, only for Kikuta to pull out a more conventional weapon, one of his many Nagant M1895 and fire at him multiple times before chasing him with Usami, the two going to two separate ways to try to encircle ‘Jack’.

Too bad that Jack as a horse and, with it, slams against Usami, sending him flying.

Kikuta manages to hit both him...

and his hat, which falls.

If the image we’re shown is reliable Jack has short hair. Kikuta then tosses his now completely discharged beloved Nagant away (his eyes aren’t shown to better deliver how this pains him... will he managed to recover her later?)...

...and runs to ‘Jack’, managing to grab on him and climb on his horse. He then grabs another of his Nagant (honestly, if this was another manga I’ll expect Kikuta to have a hammerspace filled with them but more ‘realistically’ he has just more than one holster under his coat) and point it to Jack’s head.

Unluckily for him ‘Jack’ still has a good hold on his ‘very personal peculiar weapon of choice’ and is reading it to fire.

Kikuta, who might face an army of Russians trained to kill him but not THIS (and I don’t blame him that’s a job solely for people like Usami though I think Ushiyama might do good as well) starts sweating and, instead than blasting our convict’s head away, tries protecting himself with poor results.

In fact ‘Jack’ gets him in the eyes and causes him to fall off the horse (I guess congratulation are in order to ‘jack’ for his ability to accurately aim behind himself while riding on a horse with such weapon).

Usami reaches Kikuta, whcih complains ‘Jack’ managed to get his eyes (trust me Kikuta, you aren’t the only one who was screaming ‘my eyes!’ through this chapter), then the two resume running after ‘Jack’ but they’re neither Koito nor the Tsukinator and so ‘Jack’ on his horse, can easily distance them. They hear a woman screaming but get there too late, only to find her dead.

Kikuta wonders if he did this while in the middle of running from them. The scene switches to a running and panting ‘Jack’ who evidently has discharged the horse and, with his already bloody knife attacks another prostitute, murdering her as well.

I wonder if he’s panting also due to the shoot he got from Kikuta. He doesn’t seem to be blending though. On a sidenote our ‘Jack’ confirms himself to be left-handed. The first time he killed he used his left, he took care to… ‘charge his gun’ with his left and now he’s stabbing again this woman with his left.

It’s worth to point out that Japan at the time wasn’t a left-handed people friendly environment, with people being discriminated and people were afraid they wouldn’t get married if they were left handed and only from 1989 the percentage of children undergoing correction steadily began to drop -- although still around 60%... and it’s also worth to remember Japan isn’t the sole country which had bias against left-handed people.

I’ll quote Wikipedia on this just to give you a general idea as I find meaningful they even have a page devoted to this:

‘In many religions, including Christianity, the right hand of God is the favored hand. For example, Jesus sits at God's right side. God's left hand, however, is the hand of judgement. The Archangel Gabriel is sometimes called "God's left hand" and sits at God's left side. Those who fall from favor with God are sent to left, as described in Matthew 25: 32–33, in which sheep represent the righteous and goats represent the fallen: "And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left." In 19th-century Europe, homosexuals were referred to as "left-handed". In Protestant-majority parts of the United Kingdom, Catholics were called "left-footers", and vice versa in Catholic-majority parts of Ireland and Irish America. Black magic is sometimes referred to as the "left-hand path", which is strongly associated with Satanism.’ [Wikipedia: Bias against left-handed people]

… so, if ‘Jack’ is from another country there’s a huge chance he moved from an unfriendly environment to another.

It’s worth to mention that the original ‘Jack the Ripper’ was originally assumed to be left-handed when they speculated he would kill his victims standing in front of them. Later they figured out he first would render his victims unconscious by strangling them and then kill them while they were on the ground, likely positioning himself behind them so that blood wouldn’t fall on him.

So either our ‘Jack’ isn’t the original ‘Jack’ or Noda is constructing him according to earlier theories on his modus operandi (he doesn’t strangle, he kills the victim as she’s standing in front of himself, he uses his left hand).

Now, back to the story… I got the impression Kikuta managed to hit ‘Jack’ when he shoot him… but ‘Jack’ doesn’t seem to be leaving a trail of blood as he walks so it’s hard to say if he’s panting and running that way due to a wound whose bleeding he managed to stop or just due to fatigue.

It’s the day after.

Takuboku Ishikawa, our journalist working for Hijikata, is on one of the crime scenes,

still pesteringon details about the murder the weird policeman we met in chap 239 (remember him?)...

...while the latter is ignoring him. The policeman has the hat lowered on his eyes.

There’s another known face and it’s the photographer.

(Remember? He was there too and lol, in the exact some pose it looks as if Noda has copypasted him there.)

He doesn’t seem to be left-handed but since left-handed people were corrected, in everyday life ‘Jack’ probably can’t use his left hand so it might be useless to search for a left-handed guy using his left hand in a normal situation.

Everyone else among the bystanders seems to be a new guy... okay, maybe the old and partially bald guy might be the same in both pictures but I’m not sure. In this chapter he seems curious but, who knows, he might be a different character just drawn for background. Besides his hair seems too long to be ‘Jack’s’.

Well, to be honest there’s another guy who’s not a new guy but we’ll get to this in a moment.

Kikuta comments ‘Jack’ this time killed two women and wonders if he was just trying to create chaos to escape or was merely doing it to taunt them. According to ‘sperm detective Usami’ it can be just something he decided in advance.

It’s worth to mention the canonical victims of the original ripper were:

Mary Ann Nichols, found on the 31th of August 1888

Annie Chapman, found on the 8th of September 1888

Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, both found on the 30th of September

Mary Jane Kelly, found on the 9th of November 1888

So yes, on his third murdering attempt Jack killed two women so we can speculate this is a copycat or, if he’s meant to be the real Jack, his backstory would include a reason to murder 2 women at his third attempt (in the real Jack’s case it was speculated he murdered 2 because he was interrupted during the murder of the first woman so it wasn’t planned).

Anyway Kikuta wonders if Jack will come back and how it’ll be troublesome for them to track him now that he has 4 ‘sacred places’.

However Kikuta now tells us something relevant. He managed to get a look at the side of his face… and at his dick. I hope he doesn’t plan to go demand people to show them to him so he could identify ‘Jack’…

Usami suggests they’ll go check the other crime scene so that Kikuta might try to spot him. Kikuta though, has spotted something else so he tells Usami to go ahead that that he’ll join him later.

What Kikuta has spotted is the ‘fail master of disguise’ Private First Class Ariko Rikimatsu, which starts sweating as hell as Kikuta speaks to him and who tells him not to turn around and that basically he could recognize the sexy bulky build of Ariko’s body everywhere.

Okay, Kikuta didn’t exactly said that but really, there are PLENTY of men with a bulky build so, unless Kikuta is a bulky build bodies expert, his words sounds a bit… unbelievable unless it’s Ariko’s bulky build body itself who’s special to him.

And anyway, really Ariko, don’t get so nervous. You fail at deceiving people it seems.

Kikuta says he never heard Tsurumi talking about Ariko being there so he asks him if he came there with Hijikata.

We don’t get to hear Ariko’s reply but it’s likely he confirmed it. Still it’s interesting it was cut as well as the fact Kikuta wanted to speak with Ariko away from Usami’s ears.

Did Kikuta want clarifications on why Ariko betrayed him? Or just make sure Usami won’t attack him again? Or has Kikuta his own plan?

We’ll see.

And is Ogata overlooking that meeting from somewhere? I bet he knows Ariko isn’t trustworthy so can it be he’s keeping tabs on him? Or is Hijikata who’s doing so? Or both?

Anyway the scene switches to the coast of the sea of Okhotsk…

and I find this interesting because we see that there’s a city there… but we aren’t given its name. As long as they weren’t Ainu villages Noda had always given us the names of the places in which the characters were from big cities to minor spots like, for example, the village of Fukagawa, regardless of them spending a lot of time on the place or just a chapter, like the coal mining town of Utashinai.

When this first happen in chap 225

I though it was because Tsurumi was on the move, from coastal city to another, although it really didn’t persuade me… and maybe it could also be Noda for some reason didn’t have material on that part of Hokkaido so the whole thing would be edited in the volume version with the name of the place. However quite a while has gone from chap 225 and we still don’t have an EXACT idea of where he is, not even through a map.

There are big cities on that coastal area, from Wakkanai, the city ship on which Asirpa rode was supposed to reach, to Okoppe to the well known Abashiri… but also various small cities.

They could have said he’s still in the Wakkanai area instead…

Is there a reason to leave us in the dark even when Tsurumi clearly is in Japanese cities?

Is it a Watsonian reason or a Doylist one?

Anyway Tsurumi informs his men he received a telegram from Kikuta (who therefore knew in which city he was and this means either Tsurumi warned him where to find him day by day or he’s not exactly moving around a lot).

He doesn’t tell us what Kikuta said but that he’ll only leave two men behind to continue searching for Asirpa (meaning he hadn’t figured she has long moved from the coastal area) and the rest will go with Tsurumi to Sapporo.

The final page shows both Tsurumi and Hijikata (who’s apparently outside the city looking at something… Ogata practicing with the rifle? Ariko secretly meeting with Kikuta? Sugimoto’s group ALSO coming to Sapporo?).

The implication seems to be that Ariko has tattled out Hijikata’s presence in Sapporo and Kikuta has relied the information to Tsurumi therefore Tsurumi plans to go there and have a faceoff with Hijikata.

Tsurumi didn’t see the need to move for just a convict but if it’s Hijikata, who might have the remaining tattooed skins as well as info... well, the thing becomes much more interesting.

So with everyone being or going to Sapporo, I wonder if Sofia (currently in Hokkaido), the candy seller convict (last time seen in Utashinai) and the still missing convict (whereabouts unknown) will also go there.

Only 3 more chapters are needed to end volume 24 but I wouldn’t dislike it if, before the end, Hijikata and Ogata were to have a chat. This volume showed us some of Sugimoto’s past.

More on Ogata’s past would also be appreciated but, if I’ve to be honest, I’m also looking forward to more info about Kikuta and about Kadokura.

When Hijikata finds the room in which Inudo kept all the material he had collected about him in his fangirlish obsession to get Hijikata, we can see on the wall a list of all the convicts that had been cellmates with Hijikata but also Kadokura’s name.

Or better ‘Kadokura Tanuki’ (門倉タヌキ), Tanuki being the nick Inudou gave to Kadokura.

Let’s start with this.

A Tanuki (狸 or タヌキ) is a Japanese folklore animal, commonly associated with the Japanese raccoon dog,  which in folktales often played the part of foolish animal, often with really big testicles (that’s why Inudou said he pictured him as pathetic Tanuki with big balls in chap 118)… however if we compare it to the Kitsune (fox), which are the epitome of shape-changing animals, one saying is "the fox has seven disguises, the tanuki has eight (狐七化け、狸八化け)". The tanuki is thus superior to the fox in its disguises, but unlike the fox, which changes its form for the sake of tempting people, tanuki do so to fool people and make them seem stupid. Note that 8 is a lucky number, which might tied to how Kadokura is actually lucky. However it’s also worth to mention the kanji used to write Tanuki (prior to the linguistic reform of 1947) was "貍", and referred to all the middle sized mammals, especially to wild cats.

So… why all this rambling?

Well, not only Inudo didn’t write down Kadokura’s name, just the surname plus his nick but near Kadokura’s name there’s also written ‘real father’ and then what look like 4 kanji, none of them similar to the kanji used to write Kadokura’s surname.

So basically not only we don’t know Kadokura’s name but also Kadokura’s surname and we’re facing someone who, for association, is compared to an animal much more expert at disguising than the fox (Inkamart).

Now I wouldn’t question Kadokura’s loyalty to Hijikata. In vol 18 he was willing to die to save him. He also seems confident he’s unlucky… and he might have been forced to change surname because his father was on the losing side of the Boshin and therefore carrying his father’s surname would have been bad for him.

The point is if not even his surname is… well, his surname, Kadokura is a men shrouded in mystery, about whom we know nothing except he moved to Abashiri 7 years ago, with Sugimoto commenting he’d been looking over Nopperabou by 7 years… meaning he moved there when Nopperabou moved there (note that Asirpa said the gold incident happened 5 years before but then everyone when with the 7 year thing so maybe there was a retcon).

In short maybe this is all for fun and the truth behind Kadokura is nothing special… but it can also be there’s much more to him it looks like. We’ll see.

[hobby-board-gaming-101]

Introduction to Board Games

alIf you’ve just learned that a friend is into “board games” and you’re trying to figure out if that means they play Monopoly every day, this is the post to start at.

There’s really no better introduction that this video, by Shut Up and Sit Down, a group that reviews board games. The auto-generated captions are all right, but I’ve also transcribed the video below the cut.

Now that you’ve watched that video, you should understand why some people play board games. Do you want to maybe be one of them? If so, keep reading this post.

Here’s another way to explain what hobby board gaming is like (credit to Reddit user Russell_Ruffino): an analogy to beer. The board games everyone’s heard of, like Monopoly, Clue (a.k.a. Cluedo), Sorry!, and Uno, are like those mass-produced lagers you can buy in the supermarket. But “if someone … had only ever tried mass produced lagers bought from supermarkets,” they’d be “missing out on a whole world … [of] craft beers that you sometimes have to buy straight from the brewery.” Like craft beer fanatics, board gamers have lots of games we love that you’ve probably never heard of.

I love this analogy even though I know nothing about beer because it can be extended to lots of subtleties. Those supermarket lager games are called “mass-market games,” because they’re advertised to a wide audience and lots of people know about them. The craft beer games, meanwhile, are called “hobby,” “designer” (because the designer is listed on the box, like a book author or movie director), or “modern” (because most though not all were designed after The Settlers of Catan in 1996) board games. These designer games “can be an acquired taste, [and] there’s nothing wrong with someone just drinking the supermarket lagers, but once you've started getting into the limited run stuff it’s hard to go back to only drinking the lager.” (Here’s an article that goes in-depth on the differences between these two categories of games.)

Now, I don’t know if you’re interested in maybe becoming a real serious hobby board gamer, or if you just want to play good games more casually. If you think the latter is the case, check out Casual Game Revolution. This article gives a very good overview of what they think casual gaming is, or if you want a shorter read, try their about page. Their website will be a wonderful resource for you if you want to be a casual gamer, and my blog might be a bit unnecessarily esoteric. But if you don’t want all your games to be “relatively quick games that are easy to learn and teach” and want more than “light strategy,” Casual Game Revolution might be a little limiting for you. You are my target audience for this blog.

(I tried to write that a couple different ways and I feel like it still might sound a little condescending towards casual gamers. I promise that was not my intention, and casual gaming is amazing.)

I think that’s just about all I need by way of introduction to this blog. I would strongly suggest using the table of contents linked at the top of the site (next to my About page) to get around. Welcome!

Transcript of Shut Up and Sit Down’s video below the cut:

Oh, hi there. So, you’re here because a friend or significant other or colleague, a member of your family, church, or dogging community has told you they’re into board games: they’re a board gamer. And that’s got to make you nervous because surely anybody will be done with Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders after being a kid.

What if I were to tell you a secret: that these days, board games and card games are actually amazing. And you're going to find that hard to believe because you’ve got three preconceptions starting with this one: aren’t there like, six board games? There’s Risk, there’s Monopoly, there’s KerPlunk, Connect Four, and the one where the mustard man kills people with a fire poker. No! Actually, new board games come out every single week from countries as far-flung as Germany Japan, and yeah, America and the UK, and some of these board games are for families, some are rubbish, but lots aren’t. In fact, lots are absolutely fantastic!

Let’s look a preconception number two which is the board games are BORING! And actually, they’re just not. Let’s look at a game that came out just a few months ago, alright, this is Ladies and Gentlemen: a French game; a team game where half the players play baffled Victorian gentleman trying to make money at a pretend kiddie stock market, in real time, and the other half of the table play their wives, trying to use that money to assemble the best outfit. It even has additional rules for “maid’s gossip,” and a player who is a single lady! Now, see, this this game might sound mad to you. It might sound like a cross between bridge and OK Magazine, but it probably doesn’t sound boring. And that’s the truth of it, alright, the fact is that the table, as a medium, can be used for anything. You just pick the board games out there that entertain you! Let’s not forget that poker is a board/card/table game type thing, and no one would say that’s boring!

Which brings us on to point number three: board games are for kids. And they’re just not! Labyrinth: The War on Terror is a simulation where one person runs the American War on Terror as of 2001, and another plays militant Islamic fundamentalist movements. Probably not for kids… unless you’re actually Dick Cheney. K2 is a very simple, incredibly competitive game about racing to the top of K2, a.k.a. Savage Mountain, a.k.a. the mountain with the highest fatality to summit rate in the world. A game where, when I lost a mountaineer who froze to death in his tent in a blizzard, I felt like crying. And I'm 26! Probably not for kids (unless your kids are tougher than me, which wouldn’t be hard, to be honest). Archipelago is a game where players are European colonists trying to scratch out a profit from a South Pacific island chain; simultaneously working alone to develop the island, and working together to make sure they’re not killed in a violent uprising. Probably not for kids… unless you’re actually Queen Victoria (which I really hope you’re not… ‘cause that would be… weird).

Very quickly, board games start to look like a much more reasonable thing to do with your time. Whether you’re invested in heavy, chess-like strategy that’ll let you best your friends; whether you want to have fun without drinking; or whether you want to have much more fun while drinking, there is a game out there for everybody, and that includes you. Here are a couple of pretty much perfect games that you could probably have an incredible time with no matter who you are:

The Resistance is a game that pitches you and your friends as an underground resistance cell, with no taking turns, no dice, not even a board. You and your friends just have to decide which of you will go on missions, with the twist that secretly around the table is a team of spies. The spies know who one another are, but the good guys don’t know who anybody is. And as teams start coming back with the news that someone anonymously sabotaged the plan, you’ll start distrusting your closest friends. It’s just 45 minutes of your friends accusing, lying, theorizing, I trust him I don’t trust her, sometimes getting little powers like one player must show one other player what side they’re on, until the end one team wins or loses, and all hell breaks loose as you find out your girlfriend was lying to your face the whole time. Or did I get you wrong? Maybe your idea of a good time isn’t lying to your friends faces; maybe you're not the confrontational type. In which case, say hello to Tales of the Arabian Nights. [Middle Eastern musical chord.] Tales of the Arabian Nights is a storytelling game, where you and your… this is probably racist, isn’t it? Where you and your friends will just be telling stories together. Do remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books you had as a kid? This is like the mother of all of those. Using an incredibly clever system of cards, and this ludicrous book, and matrixes, you will have… [Reference Pear falls off table and thuds]. You will have stories which are different every single time, from rescuing princess, to being lost and befuddled by genies in the European seas, to fighting to- getting your way out of problems with luck and guile. You have no idea what’s going to happen when you start Arabian Nights, but you and your friends will have an unbelievable time, just, telling stories together. And yeah, while it’s possible to win… that doesn’t matter, like so many board games these days.

[Quinns] Ahhhh… [to wife] I don’t think it’s coming out! [Wife] A little dab of olive oil on a cotton ball will help. [Quinns] Ol- Olive oil? What is wrong with women! [this is actually funny and not just weird in the video, trust me]

As a kicker, in an age where books, movies, video games — where ownership is becoming digital — board games give us something real to play with: something you can just hold, and collect. Because to be honest, holding a hand of cards feels, just, really good.

This is the scene your friend is part of. It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it’s growing! Sales have been going up for the last ten years. Now, because board gamers are generally a pretty awesome lot, if you’re at all interested in this stuff, you should definitely talk to your friend about getting involved in a game. Alternatively you could visit our site, Shut Up and Sit Down, for news, videos, reviews, and plenty of footage of grown men dressed as wizards… for some reason. What’s wrong with us? Uh… BYEEEEE!!! [outro music]

[catherinexlinton]

I’ve been walking around listening to yt rants of 8.03 and trying to heal my broken hopes, and i can say it right now : it was some ol bullshit. The world I invested my time and heart in, my skills rping those f characters around here on tumblr, the show I was comming back to when all of my life was going downhill, it was all bullshit. 

And if you’re trying to find some meaning in this bullshit, then I am sorry, but I judge you, I do, feel free to unfollow : Im not sure if Ill be around tumblr anyways.

What was Jon for ? Why bring him back? He did nothing. He wasn’t the prince who was promised. His parenthood reveal goes to shit. There is no reason for him being targaryen other than for him to sit on the iron throne ( no “his is the song of ice & fire, azor ahai will come from targaryens” prohpecy stuff ) and at this point : who even gives a fuck about this chair anyways ? 

White walkers were the ultimate darkness and evil. To show the readers/watchers that politics, conflicts, revange, betrayal, religions our minor poblems are NOT IMPORTANT compared to the greater enemy to be defeated : be it climate change, or death itself, or insert any theory here. 

How am I suppose to care about politics and thrones rn ? After the greatest enemy has been defeated? 

It’s as if Voldemord was killed in the middle of the series, and now Draco Malfoy is the big bad to be defeated. 

As if Sauron was defeated in the middle of Two Towers and now Aragorn’s claim to gondor is all we have to care about. I CALL BULLSHIT ON THAT.

What was Bran for? His almost decade adventure beyond the wall, his ability to CHANGE MADAFUCKIN TIME, his knowledge of everything? To throw some bullshit one liners “chaos is the ledder” or “the things we do for love”? What was he here for? To throw refrencess to better seasons? 

Some of the scenes which were VISIBLE, like the dragons flying on clear sky above clouds ( FUCKING MATRIX RIP OFF, OKAY ? ) or lighting the trenches were okay, but what looks good doesn’t make something GOOD, okay ? A person who’s pretty & dum is still dumb? A nicely taken photo of a shit with filters on is still PHOTO OF A SHIT ???!!???  

I’m not an expert on the fucking art of war so I’ll leave it out, but one thing : the fuckin dorthraki rode into the open field? WHAT FOR? Oh i know what for, to get that cool shot of their swords dissapearing into darkness, it was PRETTY but it was DUMB!

The fuck jamie lannister, a guy who has one had, managed to fight all night ??? He should be dead. They all should be dead. Alle the people in the crypts should be dead, with sansa, varys, tyrion, gilli&her stupid non-aging baby, all DEAD. They are all just shells of who they were, so it’s a mercy killing at this point.

Fucking Sansa don’t even get me started.... What’s with “once im queen i will make them love me” ? She walks into crypts, doesnt even care about the scared people and children, doesn’t bring them comfort, anything. At least Cersei have some wine for her women during Blackwater battle.

And Arya.... how much I hate her character... after Arya sailed to Bravos she’s as good as dead to me, really. I can’t stand how non-george-martin-overpowered-tomboy she’s become and I don’t get anyone who sees her as “badass”. The line Mel gave her about shutting “brown,blue,green” eyes wasn’t prophecy about killing Night King, it was a probhecy about her becoming a MURDER ASSASIN, bc that’s what her story is about : revange, and becoming a dark shell of a human because the need for revange overcame her = it’s better to let things go sometimes. 

They gave her the night king kill bc FEMINISM, YAY, KWEEN SLAY, and if THAT’S how women are empowered right now - by female characters in plot armour killing logic and stripping other characters (Jon/Bran/Dany?) of their purpose in the story - then I am ASHAMED to be a woman.

They should have died... brienne, jamie, podric, tormund, grey worm, missandei, sansa, tyrion, varys, sam, gilly, little sam, + those who were actually killed this episode. At least their deaths would be meaningfull - heroes fighting for humanity against the death, the foe bigger than any of us - I bet now they will get killed for mad!kween d@ny on the battlefield, fighting for a chair.

Or even worse : if they all gonna get happy ending... j0nerys with their incest babies, grey warm&missandei holding hands on the beach somewhere, jamie pushing bran’s wheelchair, while brienne brushes their daughter’s hair and sings jenny’s song.... that will be the ultimate bitchslap for all of us.

I would say to you : fuck the d&d, fuck hbbo, go read books, wait for the REAL ending. But tbh... I don’t even know if we will ever get Winds of Winter. Forget about Dream of Spring! GrrM is 70&doesn’t look healthy enough to live next three decades (don’t want to fatshame or anything, cersei would love me cuz I look like an elephant myself) and mind you.... he hasn’t wrote a good book in like 19 last years? The two last books in asoiaf series weren’t that amazing, Dance of Dragons was HORRIBLE in my opinion actually, heard various reviews about his other work. 

Maybe this world, this saga really IS too big for one man... maybe we will never get the ending we were promised, just like the prince that was promised was actually a bravos ninja.... maybe we shouldn’t hate on d&d alone bc george martin is guilty of the same thing they are : pride. He was sure he will be better than Tolkien, with his rian-johnsony’s subverting expectations that he cought himself in a web of plots he can’t solve.... ? 

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe next episode we will see Bran waking up from the coma and the whole last 8 seasons will be just a dream. Hate me all you want, I dare you, but you can’t change the truth :  All those hours of rping, video making, art making, listening to asoiaf/got theories an my bus to school, then university, or as I was falling asleep, crying over beloved characters ......

it was all

bullshit.

[allowed2bloud]

A reaction post to this piece of trash 1. You felt great bc you just drank a junkie 2. The voice over is pissing me off, almost as much as pink haired girl fake southern accent 3.johnathan Davis should be ashamed his voice is coming out of that douchecanoe 4. He really looks like kiera knightly 5. His fake pale skin looks worse than Rosalie from twlight 6. The costume designer had to be about 15 and had an unhealthy obsession with hot topic, and had never been to a rock concert before 7. Why is it dawn and he's outside? 8. Hello. They are witches... didn't the screenwriters read the books??? 9. This David should be older.. like who cast this 10. The fucking voice over again.. I seriously hate Townsend voice 11. Again who the fuck cast these people.. 12. Ok I know I read this book when I was like 14.. so like 22 years ago, but I remember lestats creation story happening way differently... 13. Why does living lestat look like a drunk Joaquin Phoenix playing johnny cash.. 14. And why the hell is his fangs ALWAYS out... 15. Oh look.. let's take something that was a key plot point in why lestats so fucked up... except the violin player isn't a female.. uggg. Read the book 16. Oh wait... lestat doesn't play the violin... that would have been his lover 17. Why can't we stick with one color pallet for dead lestats skin? 18. Bc hiding the switch to the secret room in the wall under a trunk isn't obvious at all 19. And obviously who ever cast Townsend didn't remember that lestats is french... that accent is not French 20. I honestly think lestat has on more eyeshadow than I do 21. Awkward bdsm scene where murius says we have the same mother. 22. And murius gets jealous bc mommy didn't pick him 23. Why does Townsend accent keep changing? 24. That time Jessie was all of us, falling in love with a fictional character 25. Wtf why does Jessie get her own voice over 26. Given the sound track, why are we playing the song from ghostbusters.. 27. And then lestat looks like the genie head from pee wees playhouses 28. Well now we know where twilight stole that weird fast movement effect.. And why do vampires moving sound like snake rattles and skidding noises 29. Blending... omg his,face isn't the same shade as his neck... or his hands... 30. Again, 22 years later.. I'm pretty sure he couldn't fly until after he wakes akasha 31. And still not some gypsys violin. 32. Why is he listening to his own music? I mean yea he's a narassistic bastard 33. Why are they whispering... no one else is there. I'm seriously over changing the volume to watch this.. I'm having flash backs to 94 when I snuck out of bed to watch interview with the vampire in the middle of the night 34. His eye bruising is really bugging me.. like put some cucumbers on your eyes man. Maurius is older.. And his designer bags arent near as heavy 35. Why do the vampires all look like 90s euro trash? I mean yea they are in London so they are technically euro trash.. but it's like really bad euro trash 36. Akasha has eye teeth fangs... no one else does... why???? 37. Seriously forgot how much I love this album.. I should have just skipped this train wreck and listened to this cd.. 38. Not gonna lie kind wish i could set people on fire with the flick of my wrist.. 39. Oh johnathan Davis... you are a horrible scalper, nice cameo though, I mean it's the least they could do 40. Why do all these groupies keep volunteering to be killed.. And what happened to that girls face 41. A London goth... aka Jessie looks like a 13 year old MySpace scene girl trying to do her eye liner 42. Who the hell was the mua.. Seriously pick a foundation 43. Again.. lestat is not super man... he can't fly like that 44. Omg omg omg.. I just realized Townsend was the basis for Kristen Stewart's Bella swan.. emotionless and moody 45. Only thing the make up ppl can do continuously is make sure Jessie scratch is still there. 46. ANd seriously, disturbed would never settle for opening for this douchebag.. 47. So much manic panic 48. Townsend is not good at lip synching. Didn't he just spend a whole night listening to his own songs in his coffin? 49. Why do all the other vampires have cavemen foreheads? 50. Like were the speed movement effects done by the same people that did the matrix? 51. Hey akasha that's some pretty spiffy high school drama club stage entrance you got there. 52. Why does she sound like she's talking into a fan? 53. I know that akasha is Egyptian... but she's been a statue with out blood for how long? She really shouldn't be that tan. 54. Oh wait.. it's that one deftones song that is on everyone's bdsm dungeon play list... I loath that about this song 55. Can we please read a book.. in tale of the body thief lestats becomes human and has sex for the first time in hundreds of years... vampires don't have sex.. they are basically like the angels in dogma 56. Hey Jessie took the voice over microphone back.. 57. Why does maharets eyes glow.. she's a fucking witch... uggggg 58. Fire the make up artist... day walker lestat should not be that pink 59. Kingdom of corpses would be a great band name 60. Oh wait did lestat just realize the crazy vampire bitch is crazy and that's why she's been a statue for all these years... 61. I forget.. is that blonde baby faced thing supposed to be louis.. Bc no.. 62. Again.. 22 years ago.. is one of these chicks supposed to be Pandora or lestats mom.. is one of the guys supposed to be Armand... what was the point of having random vamps in the movie and never naming them. And if that grey haired guy or the blonde one are Armand or louis seriously read a fucking book 63. Everyone else gets bit on the neck.. Jessie why you trying to be sexy letting him bit your breasts.. 64. Townsends face looks like bad cgi. Like his eyes are black holes 65. Where the hell is maharets twin sister.. 66. Akasha has some serious ab muscles to be holding that arched back pose for so long damn girl. 67. Can we remake this and let Giles from Buffy be david.. 68. Yes bc when you become a vampire you automatically get bruises around your eyes... Seriously Jessie looks like she rubbed her eyes and forgot she had on make up 69. Maurius just seems like that creepy pedo dude.. 70. Oh and then the ending scene is totally stolen from that spice girls music video. Seriously I'm going to have to get my books and re read them all.. Bc I don't know why I wasted an hour on that piece of shit. 15 years clearly wasn't long enough.

[lorrainecparker]

VR, AR and More at SIGGRAPH 2017

The beginning of August saw the 44 year old ​SIGGRAPH ​conference​ (​S​pecial ​I​nterest ​G​roup on Computer ​GRAPH​ics and Interactive Techniques) return to Los Angeles for the 11th time, and this year the topic was almost exclusively VR. As this is ProVideo Coalition and not VirtualReality Coalition, I’ll be taking a more filmmaker-centric approach to this recap. That being said, the word of the week was “immersion”, and at this point I’m confident we’re on our way to ​The Matrix ​within the next 5 years.

The Exhibition Hall

The TL;DR of SIGGRAPH this year was that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are here, and there are plenty of companies developing tools for it, mostly surrounding the ​interactivity of the technology​. That includes tracking in various forms, eye strain and fidelity solutions, and feedback simulation. The feedback tools can utilize simple things from ​inflatable bags worn about your person​, all the way up to more complex things such as a large drum you would, I suppose, hang in your garage to ​simulates heat, wind, and frosty wind​. Or an HMD that reads your mind.

VR is in an interesting spot, as there is plenty of potential but not a lot for the consumer to do with it right now. There’s a handful of games and even less in the way of passive entertainment, but that brings up an interesting dilemma. People keep hand-waving VR gaming as the obvious but not the end-game (pun not intended), and that there’s a ton more on the horizon. What makes one’s head tilt is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much else to do with it (HP, in their press event, said 76% of VR content is gaming) but the companies recently diving in seem to believe there’s a whole heap of new experiences on the horizon that aren’t “silly games”, mostly in the commercial sector. Consumers care about experiences, commercial folks care about transforming workflows: lower cost, optimized investments in training and simulations, and shorter dev cycles. To that end, it’s up to individual companies to decide what (likely proprietary) programs best fit their needs.

The problem with the aforementioned poo-pooing of VR “games” comes down to the definition: what is an interactive experience if not a game? Games are becoming more and more cinematic, with franchises like ​Metal Gear Solid ​really pushing the boundaries of acceptable cut-scene length at an hour a pop in G​uns of the Patriots,​ and turning ​MGS:V​ into a sort-of hybrid television show/open world game. More recently, ​Fallout 4​ eschewed much its personal choice-driven roots in favor of a more linear, film-like experience. A perhaps-woefully small push towards interactive cinema, as seen by the ​Summer Camp ​demo​ in the VR Village, exemplified this strange blurry line.

User Playing Summer Camp

In ​Summer Camp, ​you’re a kid in a barn with another kid, getting into some mischief, and your buddy discovers a mystical ball with magic powers and some semblance of intelligence. I won’t ruin the demo since it’s pretty short, but some fun things happen and you’re instructed to complete various simple tasks to advance the story. It’s things like “hide behind those hay bales” or “turn on the faucet”, for example. In gaming, we call this being “on rails”, as opposed to an “open world” experience. Just like in most current games that utilize this mechanic, the main portion of ​Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-Ality , if you ignore the requests made of you, the characters will implore you using different voice lines and tactics. The difference here is that the entire experience is on rails. It’s billed as a VR film that ​you​ experience, but does that make it an “interactive movie” or a game? What’s the difference?

The big thing the conference showed us is that the future of this new medium is limited only by the human imagination, and perhaps a few more years of display tech advancements. That said, it feels as if everyone’s waiting for the next shoe to drop in terms of someone coming out with “the next big thing” in VR. We see this in more filmmaker-centric conferences in the form of “our camera enables creatives to be creative by giving them the power of 20K sensors and smaller form-factors”. Filmmaking is at a point now where the only thing stopping anyone from putting together a compelling movie is a compelling script. In my estimation, we’re already there in the VR space as so many of the computer-based technologies that empower traditional filmmakers are shared by VR creators. So let’s dive in to the nuts and bolts of what got us there.

First off, the PC. It’s got to be powerful and usually that means building your own, often in a big case, or spending a lot of money on a pre-build. Then there’s the giant cable-tail you’ve got following you around, jumping under your feet when you least expect it which at best ruins immersion, and at worst rips the HMD straight off your head and snaps your neck in the process.

HP has developed a backpack-mounted high performance PC specifically designed for VR use and development, called the ​HP Z VR Backpack​. At $3295, the 10lb computer is kitted with a nVidia P5200​ graphics card with 16GB of memory, an ​Intel i7 vPro​ processor, and is HMD-agnostic. In other words, it’s “just” a fast PC you wear on your back. It’s also got two slots for 75mAh battery packs that are mounted by your hips to complement the internal 50mAh battery that are hot-swappable and together will last about an hour. With consistent swapping and charging, 4 batteries will last you about 8 hours. You can also detach the computer and dock it, allowing you to use it as a standard PC. Wearing it is a pleasure, feeling more like a full Camelback than a PC riding around on you. In regards to the “portability” of VR, this is definitely the next step. Beyond that? Full body tracking.

HP Z VR Backpack Harness

HP Z VR Backpack Dock and 2 charging batteries

Companies like ​Motion Reality​, ​Realis​, O​ptitrack​ and ​Vicon​ had full body tracking demos on display, and all but two, Vicon and Realis, were rifle-based. Vicon, coupled with ​Manus VR​’s hand tracking technology, was able to demo an incredibly immersive neon-samurai game in which you can move every joint in your body and see a 1-to-1 translation of those moves in-game. Looking down and seeing your legs, holding out your hands and articulating your fingers, is honestly incredible. It’s the difference between playing a game and being transported into another world. It’s almost impossible to describe the feeling when the tracking is perfect beyond “putting on a costume”. You genuinely feel like you were wearing the samurai armor, aided by the elastic bands holding the tracking points on your arms and legs putting pressure on your limbs, mimicking the armor in a physical sense. An unintentional but welcome side-effect.

Vicon wireframe display, user getting suited up.

Motion Reality, powered by HP’s aforementioned Z VR Backpack, were running a great demo featuring the ​Dauntless combat simulator​ in which you and a partner could either shoot at each other as big avatars in a city (think Godzilla) or together walking through a “kill house” type simulation shooting at wooden targets that pop up. Once hand tracking, which needs its own system, reaches a consumer-level price point and power draw we’ll be in a whole new world. It’s incredible how little things like finger articulation without a controller can drive that immersion home. Once you can move every inch of your body and see those motions translated in the digital world in your HMD you really do feel differently about the experience. That’s going to be the ​next ​next big thing.

HP Reps talking, Dauntless players behind standing by.

Then there’s ​Neurable​, the company that decided attaching a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) to an HTC Vive wasn’t terrifying. It uses EEG technology combined with “proprietary algorithms” to detect what the user is thinking, such as making specific choices when prompted, and uses that information to make selections in the program/game/etc. This demo had a line out the proverbial door, so I was unable to try it myself, but people seemed to think it was impressive. It ultimately might have more applications in the healthcare sector than entertainment, but it’s still pretty new.

Neurable headset

On the software side, there were companies like Boris FX and Blackmagic touting the 360 Video or VR-centric updates to ​Mocha​ and F​usion 9​, respectively. It seems that at this point, most brands have a VR editing mode bundled in their packages. Boris also has a new plug-in version for Premiere, AE, Avid, Nuke, and OFX which is a welcome change from having to throw things into the standalone program for planar tracking (think using large texture selections as tracking points instead of high-contrast dots) and the like. The object removal module is really, really impressive. About as simple as “circle the thing you don’t want, that’s gone now”. As a filmmaker, that alone made me pause and consider dropping the $700 Boris wants for their current iteration of the Mocha plugin.

Fusion 9 station

From MAXON we saw a rather substantial update to ​Cinema4D​ in the form of the ​R19 release​, both “under the hood” and in regards to simple usability. The new viewport is leaps ahead of the old one, they’ve got a new media core, native MP4 support, a new sound effector, new easy-to-use fracturing features and more. There is also, of course, a spherical camera feature and near-realtime rendering of lights and PBR materials so you can see what your final look will be as you go as well as a new motion tracking features for filmmakers to quickly and easily place 3D assets in pre-recorded plates. As Paul Babb, CEO, said “it’s the age of rendering” now, so your product has to be fast. It seems as though C4D is holding a full house in that regard.

C4D Booth

Overall the week gave the impression that we’ve hit the critical point between “it’s just not there yet” and “what do we do with this?” You might also say it was the year of optimization. Tracking is better, interfaces are better, forecasting is possible, and the consumer is much more aware of what’s available. At the same time, it seems like we’re still in the deep end paddling for some edge we can’t see.

Sure, there’s plenty of interesting tools and applications, but creativity is novelty plus utility. Pixel perfect tracking? Useful, but obviously needed. High performance computing power in small, wearable form factors? Same. A wakeboard or stair simulator? ​Definitely novel…

Even for the medical applications, it’s not the VR tech that makes it useful but peripheral technologies in scanning and design that makes something like high resolution scalable models of real patients possible. The VR space just allows for easy interaction and manipulation of that scan. This is where I think AR will leapfrog VR in terms of usefulness, and VR will remain more an entertainment outlet. But who knows?

At the beginning of the conference, animation legend ​Floyd Norman​ was interviewed and hammered home the importance of story over flash. Mr. Norman was the first African-American animator to work for Disney, working directly under Walt for the first time on ​The Jungle Book​. Throughout his talk he reinforced the concepts given to him by Walt, which he summarized as, “don’t watch the movie, watch the audience”. Walt meant that if the audience doesn’t buy it, your film doesn’t work. You can have all the tech in the world, but if they don’t serve the story they have no real purpose. Immersion comes from getting entrapped in the story, not necessarily in the realism of your environment.

What we have here, today, is a new tool. Like digital cameras, smaller lights, faster film stocks, and VFX before it. This conference showed us that we’ve recently surpassed the novelty portion of VR which means it’s going to falls on us, the creators, to bring the necessary utility and emotional experience to draw people in, create empathy in the viewer and yes, immerse them in new worlds.

[As a total side-note, ​Unreal 4​ was the secret winner of the whole conference. ​Everything seemed to be powered by Unreal. If you’re looking to get into the 3D industry, in any form, you might want to download U4 and start learning it now.]

  The post VR, AR and More at SIGGRAPH 2017 appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

First Found At: VR, AR and More at SIGGRAPH 2017

[jvzooproductsclub]

Video Matrix Review and Bonuses

Video Matrix Review and Bonuses

Learn more here: http://mattmartin.club/index.php/2017/06/13/video-matrix-review-bonuses/

God loves, hype kills. Marketing departments everywhere are doing such a thorough job that it seems every other day, a new entertainment property emerges that is heralded as the be-all, end-all experience ever to grace a movieplex, television screen or concert stage. Usually, the “new best thing” cannot stand up under the weight of expectation.

If the universal hype machine had never been fired up, perhaps folks would just sit back and enjoy their movies, games and music. But as it stands, everyone is expecting the most mind-blowing, orgasmic experience of their lives every time they sit in a theater or pop a game in their console or PC. The second Matrix film, The Matrix Reloaded has been playing to mixed reviews, partially due to the rampant hype that has been unleashed by the creators, media and fans. As the tagline states, no matter where you are “The Matrix Has You.”

Enter Enter the Matrix. Developed by Shiny and published by Atari, it’s the first game ever to exploit the uber-lucrative Matrix license. It’s impossible to know what kind of game would have to be shipped in order to avoid disappointment, but it’s easy to see that Enter the Matrix is not that game.

Hype aside, what it is, is an above-average action game that incorporates cool elements of the film with a decent engine to provide an experience that is similar to Dead to Rights and Max Payne. What’s more, the movie’s creators went the extra mile to ensure that the game isn’t a rehash of what played out onscreen in The Matrix Reloaded. Instead, the movie follows the side-story of Niobe and Ghost, and their missions within the Matrix to help the A Team (Neo, Morpheus and Trinity) succeed. There is tons of exclusive content that was shot at the same time as the film that is inter-cut with the story. That alone is probably worth at least a rental from hardcore Matrix fans, and there are a lot of them in the world. Enter the Matrix Head-to-Head! Now that you know how the game stacks up, why not find out which version is best? IGN Insiders have full access to our highly detailed comparison, including side-by-side screenshots, load time comparisons, and more! It’s also complemented by a detailed Video Head-to-Head!

Text Comparison | Video Comparison

Enter the Matrix is neither as bad or as good as everyone was predicting. It’s good enough to hold your attention, and the fighting and bullet-time elements are very cool, but the game is also deeply flawed. Chalk it up to a development cycle that absolutely needed to put the game in stores by the release of the movie, but do chalk it up. Enter the Matrix is not all that it could be, but it is worth a look as is.

Gameplay  When determining what absolutely needed to be included in a Matrix game, Shiny and Atari got about 70% of the stuff they should have. The acrobatic fight scenes and cool bullet-time effects are here in spades. These two elements account for a lot of what made the films cool. Slow-motion kung fu and bad-ass weapons lay the foundation for the action in both the films and the game, and it’s as solid a foundation as any. The designers know a thing or two about their audience, and they knew that the fighting had to be great in order to sell this product. In terms of fun, it definitely is. The fighting system allows for a lot of context-sensitive action, meaning you can use your environment to create attacks and movements seen in the movie.

The focus system, which is the basis for all of these maneuvers, allows you to enter “bullet-time” (provided you have enough juice in your meter) and see your enemies in a sort of slowed-down reality. This effect is not new to video games. Max Payne, GTA III and Vice City, Dead to Rights and Perfect Dark have all used this sort of battle technique. But in those games (with the exception of Max Payne), it was often more of a gimmick than anything.

Graphics

Early in the development cycle, there were concerns that Enter the Matrixwouldn’t get anywhere close to the slick feel of the film. While the gap narrowed between then and now, it never fully came together. Throughout the game, the color pallette is a dull, almost sickly green, with a few muted grays thrown in for spice. That would be fine (as the films’ pallettes are not that much broader) if the textures throughout were good. They’re not. They vary from polished (the marble in some of the larger indoor sequences) to pretty bad (some of the rock and concrete effects outside).

Sound

One of the handiest things about having a great movie license like The Matrixis that the game music can be lifted directly from the film. Too often, however, game designers get lazy and don’t use music correctly. That isn’t the case with Enter the Matrix. All of the dramatic fight music is employed here, and it’s almost always applied well. There’s something satisfying about kicking ass in slow-motion as the awesome score from the film punctuates the action. The blending of one passage of music to another is handled fairly well throughout as well ,although there are a couple of moments where the music simply stops, then resumes.

The aural goodness doesn’t end at the score, however. This is a sonically rich game, especially if you have the setup to appreciate it. The sound effects from the film are brilliantly captured here, including the agent-morphing effect, and the Matrix-drizzle effect (for lack of a better term).

Special attention has also been paid to getting the gunfire and explosions sounding extra-delicious. There are definite differences between the cadences of the guns. Beyond that, the echoes and ambient noise surrounding the hail of gunfire (bodies being hit, tiles exploding, etc.) sound absolutely amazing.Also quite magnificent is the difference between real-time sound and focus-time sound. The “underwater” sound of focus is similar to the sound of bullet-time in the film, and it is a glorious sensation, indeed. The transition between real and focus time is also quite keen. Don’t believe me? Then your TV isn’t loud enough.

The Verdict

This is the most difficult kind of game to make and review, simply because everyone in the world has preconceived notions of what a Matrix game should be, and can be very disappointed if the game doesn’t live up to their lofty or idiosyncratic expectations. Enter the Matrix is a decent game. It’s not as good as Dead to Rights, and not as fun as Max Payne. But people want to play it (including me), because it is a game based on the films.

The fundamental flaw with this game is that it looks and feels slightly unfinished, from the unpolished textures to the bad camera and sparse level design. The fact that the game had to ship at the same time the film was in theaters was an economic decision, and unfortunately, that compromised some of the quality. It happens all the time. But no one wants it to happen to the game based on movies they love.

That said, it’s worth a play to see the extra footage and experience the bullet-time and focused hand-to-hand combat. At times the game makes you completely forget its flaws and hone in on the joy of creative carnage. The first time you pull off a spinning kick off the wall, don’t be surprised if a smile creases your lips. If only the whole game was able to capture the fun inherent in the fight sequences, it would be a true masterpiece.

If you buy through my affiliate link (just click on any link on this page) you get these bonuses below: СНЕСK ІТ NОW

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