- Thump
Golden hair and red eyes.
Her clothes are white as if they are a symbol of herself
- Thump
My pulse races.
My veins and arteries spring into action.
My nerves split, one after the other. My spinal cord goes berserk, as if it is about to leap out of my back.
- Thump.
The girl walking in the crowd is just... beautiful.
"------"
The distant dizziness comes back to me.
My consciousness swims, falling.
- Thump.
I- I can't breathe.
My fingertips tremble. The blood isn't reaching them.
My whole body feels cold, like I'm freezing to death.
- THUMP.
My heart beats in a rush, urging me to hurry up.
"Ah- ah!"
I can stand it no longer and unintelligible words escape my mouth.
- I can't think.
My brain tells me only one word.
- TH-U-MP.
Just one word repeating in my brain.
Her.
That girl.
I'm going to-.
*wheeze**wheeze**wheeze*
I feel sick.
I can't breathe.
It hurts to breathe.
For some reason, I can't remember how to breathe properly.
*wheeze**wheeze**wheeze*
My throat is burning.
My eyes are about to burst.
My palms are soaked.
I feel so cold- but I'm drenched in sweat.
*pant**pant**pant
... I have to follow her.
I have to follow that girl.
Chase her, chase after her and talk to her.
My frozen feet begin to move.
My breathing is ragged, like that of a beast.
I chase after the girl in white.
*pant**pant**pant*
The girl walks slowly.
She doesn't realize I'm following her.
"Ha- ah."
If I run after her now, I can talk to her.
Talk to her, and ask her name...
"Ha- ahah, ha."
-Ask her name?
Who am I kidding?
I know very well that's not what I want to do.
..... I know, but I don't know.
It looks like I want to do something else.
But I can't precisely put "what I want to do" in words.
The inside of my head is misted over, like a rain cloud.
"------"
My throat is... hot."
I can't breathe.
But so what?
It's only natural, right? I've just seen that great woman... it would be impolite not to get excited, wouldn't it?
Stop her and ask her name?
Hah! Give me a break. I'm not a kid after all.
I don't fully understand it, but there is only one thing I must do.
I walk with my hands in my pocket.
My fingers feel steel.
"Ku----huhh. Hehe."
How fortunate.
The tools are all here.
... She walks.
I leave plenty of room between us.
So she won't notice. So the other people around us won't suspect.
She and I are complete strangers.
That's why I have to do my best to make following her look natural.
... She walks into an apartment building.
I don't go in yet, but instead watch from the outside.
She takes the elevator up.
The elevator stops at the sixth floor.
I check the common mailbox on the first floor.
There are five mailboxes for the sixth floor. I touch one of them and feel a sharp sensation.
I smell it.
There's no mistake.
Her room is the third one on the sixth floor.
I enter the elevator and press six.
I'm excited.
I grip the knife in my pocket tightly while in the small elevator.
She's very close by.
Just a little more and I can her
Ah, just thinking about it makes me feel ecstatic--
My whole body feels like a sexual organ just before climax.
I get off the elevator.
The sixth floor corridor is empty.
This is good.
Quickly- quickly! I want to do it.
----I arrive in front of Room Three.
I don't know myself.
What I'm trying to do.
Why I'm trying to do this.
What does - what to do with that girl?
I don't know.
Still not knowing, I push the doorbell.
"Yes--- ?"
I hear the voice behind the door, and the door opens a crack.
In that instant- I slip through it.
"Eh- "
The girl says.
No, she tries to say.
She will never get to finish what she tried to say.
Because I cut her apart before she could.
In that instant, I slip through the door.
Not taking even a second, I draw the knife across the lines running throughout the girl's body.
Stabbing.
Slashing.
Piercing.
Driving.
Splitting into pieces.
Completely and utterly, I "kill" her.
The black lines that divide her into seventeen pieces.
Through the neck, back of the head, from the right eye to the lips, upper right arm, lower right arm, right ring finger, left elbow, left thumb, left middle finger, left breast, from the rib to the heart, from the stomach to the abdomen in two places, left groin, left thigh, left leg, left toe, all of them.
As I pass by her,
not even taking a second.
Truly, in an instant, entirely.
I "dismantle" her into seventeen pieces of meat.
-------------------------
The above is an excerpt from the truly excellent Tsukihime, which is mostly a romance tale. Check it out if you have the time and aren't one of those people who mindlessly hates anything foreign. In fact, I think you need to give it approximately an hour for it to get good (just like you would a good novel), but it's not a bad thing as there's around 30 hours of gameplay to be had.
I find one of the greatest factors often missed by people is the idea of not knowing what you're getting into. It applies heavily for games like Dwarf Fortress and the one I'm referencing to right now.
This is one of those games which is best experienced by not knowing ANYTHING about it at all before engaging in it. Trust me. If you ruin it even but once, you'll never experience the sheer excitement and thrill the rest of us got forever.
Just like how if you read about finding HFS or sieges earlier, you'll never know the exhilaration of seeing the notifications without any prior knowledge.
I'll just tell you that there's a translation available at http://mirrormoon.org/ and it isn't aimed at children.
Edit: Or murder fantasizing guro fetishists who are also extremely awkward around girls? (Again, please pardon the massive redundancy of this sentence)
[ April 13, 2008: Message edited by: subject name here ]
In this case, it's redundant. If that's what I was interested in I'd re-read American Psycho, and I doubt any gameplay will change that.
quote:
Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG>Check it out if you have the time and aren't one of those people who mindlessly hates anything foreign.</STRONG>
It's not a case of mindlessly hating foreign things. It's a case of thinking the subject matter is stupid. It's an erotic game about destroying people by tracing imaginary lines.
Well not so much 'moral' reasons as the recognition: Images and actions stick in your head. I don't WANT these ones.
And I agree, I'm not going to play this game, for moral reasons, perhaps if I were traveling at near the speed of light, moral relativity would allow me to play, but not at a standstill.
... something which is really rare in Japanese novel games which mostly focuses on sex, the act of getting the poontang, and toilet humour.
edit: so no, it's not murder and corpse rape.
[ April 13, 2008: Message edited by: umiman ]
Furthermore, the value is heavily determined by the host and that alone is another strangely complicated matter. Generally speaking, the higher the value of the host, the higher the value of its poontang.
The weirdest thing is that all this is entirely relative. So while a poontang that is generally considered valueless by someone, it can be priceless for another. If possible, you should try all varieties of poontang as to get a good idea of what you like without any bias.
Obtaining poontang is generally considered difficult, but with a considerable median payoff. Since the dawn of man, there have been many tried and true techniques to the obtaining of poontang, but as to which is more productive, it is hard to say. Again, I would recommend you just do what you can and learn from experience.
So this is a no go for me.
[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: yamo ]
God this takes too long to read don't bother
E: Also, I think posting bizarre spoilers was the worst way you could have possibly introduced the game here, since the horrible depicted act is not the focus of the story and is out-of-character for the protagonist. Some pretty funny replies here though, keep it up.
[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: Red Jackard ]
"Whether you win or lose, you still get sex. And you get to lay like, 20000 chicks and they all come to life and serve you in real life and it's all leet awesome scheweet!"
and the people who go,
"Wow, I'm going to check it out now dude!"
But they actually won't and probably forget about it in 30 seconds. The ones who actually do check it out are usually those that won't say anything and are lurking around in the shadows. I figure by shocking the subject with an obscure text that won't leave their mind soon, the higher the probability they will actually check it out. And the way this world works, the more negative the reception of a product, the higher the chance people will learn more about it just in the hope of building a better argument to dis it with.
And as we can see, it already worked. ;)
And besides, this scene is to this game as the nuclear aftermath scene is to Call of Duty 4. Well... in a romancey, lovey lovey sorta way.
[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: umiman ]
quote:*snort*
*OP actually defending the worst possible introduction someone could make for this game*
[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: Red Jackard ]
I personally thought that it was a very nice scene, and just wanted to spread the word in my own way. It doesn't matter to me if no one gives a shit, because heck, who cares? So long as at least some new attention is brought to the game, it's better than me not doing anything and not changing the status quo.
I recall somewhere an argument about how people criticize Bill Gates, Bono, and the like for having ulterior motivations for their humanitarian work; about how people forget that regardless of their motivations, they actually do something to help others and in the end, that's all that matters.
Well, it's not like I'm on that level anyway, but still.
So, regardless of what Red Jackard thinks to be the right way to spread the word of stuff, I still highly recommend everyone to check out this game. If you really, really want more information, then just do a Google search for Tsukihime. It has quite the popular cult following, so no doubt you'd find something regardless of legality.
Your text-chunk gives no indication whether that's the game is focused on or not, so most are going to assume that it's mainly eroticised serial murder. Since that attracts a limited audience, most won't bother researching it further.
Why not just trust us and post something that tells us what the game is about and how it's played, with a link that lets us find out more? It might attract interest or it might not, but at least it won't actively drive people away.
And the second statement wouldn't really matter regardless of what I said before that since the two ideals are quite independent. It's not impossible to have someone to have no faith in the general person to hold both concepts.
ergo:
1. All people who are close minded won't try this
2. It wouldn't matter what I say because whether or not people care is determined from themselves in the start.
Ahhh! But why are we arguing over how I present something!? I don't want to to get into a fight over something as stupid as this. I'm just saying the game is awesome and you should look it up. (and actually, the above text does illustrate what the game is about. But like Obi Wan said: "many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view". In this sense, look past the act of murder and see what lengths the author took to make us feel the part.)
In other words, if I relate this to something more familiar, I would basically be writing only about adventurer mode. I would be a simple guy, whose words will have maybe zero effect, saying Dwarf Fortress is awesome, ESPECIALLY this part where I get to strangle this elf kid with my underwear.
So, to summarize: I personally found the above snippet to be awesome and I thought I should share it and then recommend that people look it up. Seems some of you don't have the same tastes as I do, that's cool, but really, you shouldn't insult someone for liking something in his own way and promoting it... in his own way.
tl/dr: I don't care what you think about me. Try the game. It's friggin' awesome. No, I'm not being paid.
edit: I already said why I didn't say more about the game didn't I? Truth be told, I don't actually know how to summarize it. How would you summarize Dwarf Fortress in three sentences or less? It's hard, and wouldn't do it justice. It's a Japanese visual novel. It's aimed at adults. The story is awesome but I can't really say anything without spoiling it. The above snippet doesn't spoil anything in the same way me telling you about what class of rock holds hematite in Dwarf Fortress before you even hear of the game. You play as a dude... err... you go to school... you wear glasses? I don't know, man! It'll be faster if you just tried it!
[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: umiman ]
quote:
Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG> the more negative the reception of a product, the higher the chance people will learn more about it just in the hope of building a better argument to dis it with.[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: umiman ]</STRONG>
*Cough cough* Golden Compass *Cough*
I wonder how many Christians saw that movie just to see what happened. I only got partway through the third book, and I didn't stop because they were going to kill God, I stopped because around the beginning of the third book, it suddenly seemed boring and dumb(Subconscious resistance to the message!?!?)
From Wikipedia, The Otaku Encyclopedia!
Tsukihime (月姫, lit. Moon Princess?) is a Japanese eroge dōjin visual novel game created by Type-Moon, which was originally released in December 2000. It was adapted in 2003 into an anime series, Shingetsutan Tsukihime, produced by J.C. Staff and Geneon, and a manga series, which has been serialized since 2004 in MediaWorks' seinen magazine Dengeki Daioh, with seven bound volumes having been released so far.
Tsukihime's official subtitle states: "Blue Blue Glass Moon, Under The Crimson Air". Its fame and renown is often attributed to its comprehensive and expansive storyline and its writer Kinoko Nasu's unique style of storytelling. As well as its anime and manga adaptations, it has also spawned numerous merchandising and memorabilia franchises.
Type-Moon released Tsukihime Plus-Disc in January 2001, a light-hearted addition to Tsukihime that featured three side-stories and assorted multimedia. In August 2001, Type-Moon produced and published a sequel to Tsukihime, Kagetsu Tohya (歌月十夜, Kagetsu Tohya?). In April 2003, Type-Moon released Tsuki-Bako (月箱, Tsuki-Bako? lit. Lunar Box), a specially packaged three-disc set that included Tsukihime, Plus-Disc (in an expanded version) and Kagetsu Tohya, a remixed soundtrack and other assorted multimedia.
Tsukihime chronicles the story and life of a teenage boy named Shiki Tohno. As a young boy, Shiki suffered a life-threatening injury. As a result of this injury, Shiki became able to see "death lines" on objects and people; if Shiki traces these lines with a sharp object, the person or object that they belong to will be cleanly and easily cut. Soon after discovering this power, he is given a special pair of glasses by a mysterious woman. While wearing these glasses, Shiki cannot see the lines, and can thus live life as normal. Later, Shiki discovers that he can also see a place where the lines meet known as "points" on objects and people; these act as more immediate and powerful versions of the "lines." Eventually, it is revealed that Shiki is not merely killing a person or destroying an object when he cuts its lines or stabs its points, but is instead annihilating the victim/object's existence, therefore killing the victim/object as a side effect.
The game plot begins during Shiki's second year of high school. After spending eight years away from the Tohno household, which he was banished from after his injury, he moves back home following the death of the head of the Tohno family, Shiki's father. Shiki's sister, Akiha, assumes the responsibility of being the new head, and decides to let Shiki come back. As the story progresses, Shiki gradually discovers his mysterious past, and becomes implicated into strange adventures.
td;dr: Nothing worth the walls of text that're being tossed at us
There, I've never played the game and I've told you more about it then the guy who made the topic.
Weeaboo's are funny.
[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: subject name here ]
quote:
Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG>So, to summarize: I personally found the above snippet to be awesome and I thought I should share it and then recommend that people look it up. Seems some of you don't have the same tastes as I do, that's cool, but really, you shouldn't insult someone for liking something in his own way and promoting it... in his own way.</STRONG>
Hey, don't take it personally. I haven't said anything that relates to you or your choice of recreation, and if I were you I'd ignore anyone who does. And 'paranoid' was not intended as a personal jibe either, you just come across as confrontational and that tends to put people off from the get-go.
All I'm saying is that a little context goes a long way. If that text is the only thing one has to judge the game by, it's really easy to jump to the wrong conclusion, and given the nature of the conclusion in this case, it's unsurprising that people would not pursue it further. This isn't closed-mindedness, it's Grice's conversational maxims in action. Usually in trying to promote something, people assume (correctly or otherwise) that it is an accurate depiction of what the promoted thing is about. So if this is what you choose to present us with, on its own we're going to assume that this is the yardstick by which we should measure the game. If that's not an so, you need to supply us with further details. Even as little as "It's an adventure game about x, it's adult orientated but not just death or pron, I like it because y, check it out at <A HREF="http://www.z.com"" TARGET=_blank>www.z.com" would be something.
In sum: not trying to criticize, just some friendly advice.
Perhaps I should enlighten:
1. I discovered a bootleg of this game inside a discount copy of Act of War that I bought for $9 at superstore. Apparently someone didn't take it out. It even had the translation files inside, so I just gave it a shot without knowing what the hell it was (could've been a virus for all I know).
2. Awe and shock as the surprise makes me go "OMGFUKINAWESOME!!!" since the plot twists really, really surprised me.
3. I hope I can make some other people feel that way. The only other way you can get that way is to not know anything about what you're getting into, but still try it anyway. That's hard to do in this day and age. Thus, my best bet is to shock you entirely into getting into it.
Does that help? There's no way I can explain that entire thought process up above without alienating everyone. Hence, my only-slightly-less-alienating method.
In any case though, the response prior just confirmed everything I earlier claimed, though I wish he didn't spoil a good portion of the story.
Dwarf meets wall.
Dwarf loses wall.
Dwarf gets wall back again.
From what I've read so far, there is no fully completed translation. The ones in progress seem to be by fans.
Here's the direct link: http://mirrormoon.org/projects/tsukihime
EDIT: Ah, of course. I actually need the original game. This is merely a translation. No thanks then.
[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: Gaulgath ]
It's a visual novel revolving around vampires and some other supernatural stuff. That means you read a lot, vampires kill some people, some vampires get killed in return, and you occasionally get the chance to choose between several different options that influence how the story will unfold.
So, basically the 'gameplay' offered is little more than a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book, with some choices leading to good ends, some bad, others instant doom. The artwork isn't the greatest by any stretch of the imagination, and whatever sound/music involved wasn't worth me remembering. As a result, that 'Lets Play' link mentioned earlier is actually a great alternative to actually downloading, installing, and playing the game (Which takes about 15 or so hours to see all the endings, by my guess).
As exciting as that sounds.. Tsukihime is actually one of the better visual novel games released, as it offers a pretty good story filled with some interesting characters, especially compared to other adult oriented games in the visual novel genre which are generally little more than sex romps.
If I remember correctly, the translation patch (Which is fan made, but is easily professional quality) actually has the option to remove all of the sexually explicit scenes (There's only a handful of them) from the game, which just goes to show that there is an actual story in there that some people consider to be worth reading on it's own.. In fact, the game has actually expanded out into other games, manga, and an animated tv series.
The violence as I recall isn't terribly graphic.. I actually don't remember any horribly violent images in the game (I think there's a scene with a few dead bodies and some blood.. Barely R-rated gore, if that), and the OP's text is easily the most graphic scene in the game, and it's SUPPOSED to be that way. I don't want to throw spoilers into it, but that scene is really supposed to come across as being a horribly violent, barbaric, savage, and cruel. It's supposed to be an uncomfortable scene. It really wouldn't work any other way.
All in all.. Is it a mind shattering, award-worthy tale? Not really.. But it's worth a look. I recommend it if you're interested, provided you're old enough to handle adult content and can muster up the strength to stomach a few drawings of naked ladies. It's hardly the 'butcher people while they're still alive while having sex with nuns atop a pile of rotting corpses' game that some people seem to think it is.
Hell, I think some of the Conan books are more graphic than this game..
quote:
Originally posted by McDoomhammer:
<STRONG>Okay, so definitely NOT on the level of American psycho *shudder*</STRONG>
I ate a handfull of sand....I killed a small dog. :eek:
All in that bland, blank tone.