Black and White

By Kokoro-chan

What IS fear, actually?
Is it the unease caused by darkness that eclipses the optic nerves and causes the others to become hyper-sensitive? The shock-reflexes of the brain on sudden encounters with 'out-of-place' objects/people? The sight of blood and gore, the process of watching a person calmly cut open another? Or is it simply the idea of death, one that everyone knows will come eventually but despises anyway for all the things it takes away?

Fear can have so many faces, like every other emotion in this world, and it can be expressed in so many ways- gory Hollywood movies being the least impressive of the list. You don't need blood-curdling shrieks, flamboyant kitchen-knife-wielding killers in Grim Reaper masks, ugly dolls possessed by hell or bloody organs strewn across every place to give you the coldest of chills. In fact, the fields of terror and unease can surprisingly comprise of only two simple colours that have been considered ironically complementary of one another since the birth of time-Black and White.

It is this writer's pleasure to welcome you into the world of manga: a couple of disturbing ones for this special season.

Death Note:
What is more frightening: a terrifying demon who bares his fangs and boasts, “I kill”, or a beautiful angel who gazes with innocent eyes and smiles, “I believe in changing the world for the Greater Good. Therefore I kill” ? The transformation of a 'supposed' angel into a merciless god of death simply due to 'boredom', can be quite intriguing. In fact, so much that it can leave the actual demons gaping open-mouthed in horror. Evil without pretence is understandable. The alternate, however, is disturbing.

Death Note the manga, at first glance, offers no hint to these subtle details whatsoever. The frames are done rather matter-of-factly, applying the greater focus on the intricate twists and turns of the storyline. But that doesn't necessarily make one miss out the spine-chilling absurdities that are always there: the insane glints in Yagami Light's almost slit-like eyes as he formulates plans to eliminate his adversaries, the frightening speed at which he keeps murdering his victims, and the method of the murders itself: the casual act of delivering death by simply writing a person's name in a notebook. The cleanest possible way to dispose of 'rotten' human beings. Clean, cold-blooded…dangerous. And the manga, with its seemingly-mundane quadrilateral boxes of indifferent black and white, illustrates all this tension and violence while maintaining quite the rhetorical 'poker-face' the whole time. Quite similarly in character with its calculating protagonist who calmly kills out of boredom, one may wonder.

Goth:
What is often uniquely the case with manga: storylines, even if they have distinguishable inconsistencies, can be masterfully overshadowed by the sheer raw intensity of the artist's powerful brush strokes. Plot-threads, characters and all other details can go to hell as long as that particular artistic force is present and staring you in the face. It is astonishing how a manga artist can transform his/her brushes to paint complicated emotions like fear and love through modes of only black and white. While, to some, the intentionally left less-detailed frames may seem derogatory, the precise haphazard assortment of half-shadowed faces, dangerously-gleaming eyes and chilling Cheshire grins meshed with the wild play of light and dark can essentially incorporate a rather intoxicating magnetism to the whole thing.

For the blood+gore lovers, this short-lived 5 chapter manga has enough in store to both creep and gross you out. That, complete with disconcerting psychologically-'glitch'ed protagonists longing to murder and butcher up the girl they're attracted to, school teachers making collectibles out of human hands in their refrigerator and café-owners turning fresh corpses into artistic masterpieces…yep, quite the treat for Halloween.

Most people say anime or manga seldom succeed in scaring them because the characters seem too 'cute' for the record. A suggestion here would be: try replacing those characters with some of the unlikely people around you and think again. The scenarios may appear quite different this time.

 

 

By S. S. Emil

Fable was one awesome game. Really cool. It's what I'd call a 'bright' RPG with really fun gameplay and awesome character building mechanism. And then Fable 2 was announced. I kind of shamelessly went ga ga over it, not because it was anything like the greatest game on earth or something. It wasn't. It was just fun- oh so fun- which was the beauty of Fable.

Being a PC gamer for the most part, though, has deprived me of the chance to play the second instalment of the series, and much saddened was I.

I've always heard or seen something about the Gothic series, but tales of bad bugs and glitches warded me off from trying the game out. Gothic's developer Piranha Bytes announced Risen, and I checked out the trailer and gameplay videos. I was interested. Why not?

And so began my investing countless hours of gameplay to this game.

The game starts with you, as the protagonist and your companion Sara as stowaways in a ship. Caught in an unnatural storm guided by some sort of entity, the Inquisitor aboard the ship teleports to safety leaving the ship to its fatal fate.

Not so fatal for you and your companion, though, as you've survived and have washed ashore a mysterious volcanic Island known as Faranga.

Though at first I was sceptical that it'd be much fun to be stuck in a single island for the duration of the game, but I was proven wrong as I found myself enjoying the game quite enough despite the location constraints, with but only one annoyance- trekking through what always seems like miles and miles of grass or swamps or even mountains. Don't worry, though. Travelling from one point to another becomes easier once you start obtaining teleportation stones.

The gameplay is over the shoulders third person perspective allowing for a certain degree of zooming in and out. One of the major aspects of the game is of course combat. It's possible to become skilled in swords, bows and crossbows, staffs and magic. Note though, all options may not be open to you depending on what path you take as you progress through the game. Using mechanics of blocking, parrying and dodging, combat can be challenging if you decide to rush your opponents head-on as you'll realize such tactics rarely work. Patience and timing can win you the battles even if your opponent is significantly stronger.

As you defeat opponents and finish quests, experience points accumulate until you level up. Trainers are scattered around the map, and you spend your 'learning points' on these people along with some gold to increase your prowess in battle or other abilities such as alchemy. All fun and games.

Enemies scattered around the place, be they wild animals or quest villains, none of them will ever be scaled to match your level, but rather if you find yourself unable to defeat the them, the correct course of action is to leave them be for the moment and come back later for some sweet revenge served cold. Cold steel, that is.

There are two primary factions in the game, the Bandits and the Order. Not really as black and white as it may first seem to be, there seems to be some sort of conspiracy going on and it's hard to say who's in on it and who's not. Depending on whose side you take the game plays out vastly different, thus giving it a significantly good replay value. More or less.

Exploration is another aspect of the game, one which CAN be annoying thanks to the lack of a 'fast travel' system, until you get the teleport stones, which of course you have to find and collect.

Though not really heavily choice-intensive as games like Mass Effect and Neverwinter Nights, Risen aimed for something in between veering very much towards the Action-RPG Hack-and-slash genre. And it was a success. You'll find yourself toiling around Faranga for hours and hours on end, despite the voice at the back of your mind saying that it's quite enough for the day and won't you please leave it off for now?

The graphics are quite visually pleasing except for one quite insistently annoying factor and that is every other character that you run into would remind you of some other bloke you met a while back in another area. Absence of unique character models would have made it a bit lacklustre, but you hardly notice it, really. At least, I didn't. Also, enemies may sometimes be pushed back into walls, and be unable to move. Not really a con as it lets you deal some heavy duty damage on an otherwise really tough son of a gun. It's not really cheating, right? Taking advantage of the system, that is.

All characters and NPCs have voices, and the voice actors are at the very least above the mediocre range, which is a good thing. There's been too many a game where the experience was somewhat skewered through the sensors thanks to appalling voice actors.

This might be a spoiler, but what the heck. If you're interested in using magic, you might prefer to steer away from the Bandits. I suffer for my sins, but I have a Sharp Obsidian Bastard Sword, so I'm content for now.

Risen is a much darker reality and game than Fable, but that's quite alright. A solid game, one that gamers should give a chance. If you've survived the apparent glitchy horror story that is Gothic 3, then this is the apparent redemption of Piranha Bytes. And that's for you to judge.

Once again, word of advice. The bandit faction, as far as I can see, does not offer you much in the way of magic. As far as I saw. But, hey. I have my Sharp Obsidian Bastard Sword…

Thumbs up. Definitely worth a try!