Shonen Otaku's Diary of Frank West: Day 1 Part 2

It turned out the ducts led to the mall’s barren rooftop with not a zombie in sight.  Immediately after I got up there, I found a couple of old married fatsos looking for help.  After punting a soccer ball into the old lady’s gut for whining at me, I led the two of them over to the giant vent just a few feet away they apparently didn’t see.  Otis did tell me to try and rescue other survivors if I could; for emergency rations, I’m sure.

Unfortunately, the old jerks had trouble keeping up thanks to their cardio issues and I accidentally left them behind.  Naturally I went back to show them where the only human-sized vent on the rooftop was.

When I did, I saw that the two were somehow injured even though there wasn’t a single zombie on the rooftop!  I checked!  In the five seconds it took me to go back for them, a zombie attacked them, they killed it, and then ate it and lapped up the blood!  They aren’t just fat because of a bad diet!  They’re monsters!  I asked Otis to let them fight with me in the mall, but he told me they might get a heart attack.  As if eating a whole zombie wouldn’t do that!  If they won’t get off their ass and help me fight, they’ll at least make for good food themselves.  Those two should last us a month.

I'd be cautious about going to giant eating establishments if I ate a whole corpse too.  If she starts acting weird, I'm going to cap her.

With that little errand out of the way, I finally started to get into the meat of things.  The elevator on the rooftop led to a warehouse full of TVs, mannequins, buckets, and other equipment.  I think I heard the mannequin say something to me.  “Kill Otis,” they said.  To that I say no.  I like Otis.

Before I could get much further, I heard something in the exit hallway.  At first I thought it was a zombie, but then I remembered there wasn’t a single one on the way there.  I could hear a distinct clacking sound in the footsteps, and the only person I knew was wearing heels was Jessie.  Given her involvement with “Brad”, I knew she had to have some kind of firearm on her I could use to shoot the old shit I saw earlier.  I was ready to sneak attack her around the corner and bash her skull in with a nearby fire extinguisher, but I got spooked when I saw she had her gun out.  Luckily she was startled too and hurt her ankle anyway, making it the perfect time to get the gun.

She told me that Brad was under attack and she was going to go back him up.  Under the guise of helping him, I convinced Jessie to give me her gun.  She was reluctant at first, but I cleverly informed her of the fact that I had covered wars and she immediately trusted me.

I could have told her that all I meant was I wrote a plot synopsis of an episode of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series, but details weren’t important.  If I hadn’t wasted enough time already, I would have told her more interesting tidbits about my life.

I’ve opened doors, my skin has pores, I’ve slept with whores, I’ve wrestled boars, I hate Pauly Shore, I’ve done chores and I’ve eaten s’mores.

Maybe later.

I know how to use that gun, of course.  All you have to do is point it at bad people and they go away.  With my new toy in hand, I set off into the heart of the Willamette mall, already been completely overrun with the undead.  I could have gone to help out Brad in the food court across the park, but I’m pretty sure Nick Fury can handle himself.

Besides, he would have gotten in the way of the fun.  When there’s no living person around to see it, there’s only one thing you can do in a mall: loot!  And my first target just had to be the toy store nearby, where I seized some new duds only slightly smaller than my size, and a new friend: a giant bear I christened “Teddie,” named after that funny blue guy I keep seeing in my TV.

Teddie and I were ready for hours of fun, but tragedy struck prematurely when a couple of zombies wandered into the store and started to attack me!  I was able to keep them away using Teddie for a while, but then it happened.

Teddie broke.

He sacrificed himself to protect me, and those zombies killed him!  My best friend had just been murdered!  I was so upset I couldn’t control myself and wailed on their heads until there was nothing left but liquid stains all over the store.  I tried to pick up Teddie for one final burial, but his body had already ascended to the heavens.

Goodbye Teddie.  I will never forget you.

Five minutes of sobbing and zombie-smashing later, I started getting hungry.  After all, I hadn’t eaten anything for hours, and my Twinkies are still in the parking lot, locked safely away in my briefcase where the zombies can’t get them.  Luckily for me, the food court wasn’t very far, according to the handy dandy map Otis gave me.  Zombies must be pretty picky about what they eat, because I found three entire custard pies ripe for the eating and wolfed one down without a second thought like it was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!

It’s at that point I noticed something about the food in this mall.  When I took the last bite of that pie, the gashes and bite wounds all over my body disappeared!  In fact, that has happened whenever I eat anything!  All the food here has magical healing properties!  This mall is apparently so glorious and heavenly, it’s blessed by the power of Christ himself and has an enchantment placed that gives its food the power of healing!  Or, considering Jesus isn’t one for materialism, this may actually be the work of Santa Christ.

But I could do more than just eat entire pies in just three chomps!  The food court conveniently has blenders to make use of.  Some people just put fruit or smoothie mix in a blender for a nice treat, but that’s for people who aren’t hardcore!  I shoved a pie and some coffee creamer in there and made a hardcore, white super drink.  I should probably alert the nearest technician about the mixer though, because it rather violently spat the container out.

I then also added an apple into the mixture for a taste of flavor.  If I can find some gasoline somewhere, I can put that in with some coffee mix and really fuel myself up!

I didn’t realize at the time that while I was goofing around with the mixer, it was starting to get dark.  Hours had passed and forgot to back up Brad at the other food court across the park!

Not wanting to have Brad throw the F word at me, I made a B-line straight for his location, hoping to make it in time.  However, seconds after I stepped into the enormous Leisure Park, Otis informed me of another journalist taking photos right where I just was.

I knew the guy who handled a plane full of snakes could handle himself for a while longer.

I immediately U-turned right back into Paradise Plaza to look for this other journalist, whom I found in the food court taking pictures.  Luckily it seemed he didn’t lay a hand on any of the pies, meaning he had permission to live.

His name was Kent Swanson, a younger lad with more equipment for capturing photographs than I had, but I don’t need anything but my fine leather jacket.  At first I was suspicious of Kent’s twitchy movements, cackling laughter, irrational joy out of hurting zombies, and tendency to insult me, but he had spiky hair and a goatee.  In my experience, you can always trust anyone with spiky hair and a goatee.

Kent had a challenge for me, either as a way to train me to be as great a photographer as him or to feel good about someone taking photos of his handsome, goatee’d face.  I couldn’t argue with either reason, really.

All I had to do was take pictures of the guy doing various poses, first alone and then with zombies around.  I got poses like him performing his physics-defying flying jump kick, him taking a photo himself, and a shot of him doing his fist pumping gesture (which isn’t nearly as awesome as Ralf Jones’).

Rockin'. 

There’d be no challenge in it if he just did the damn poses when I told him to, as you do when you set up any other photo shoot.  He just went off and minded his own business, posing when he felt like it and calling me an old sack of crap when I missed it.  That Kent is one tough coach, but I’m older than him, so what do I know about how young people act today.

Once I had proven myself to be at least a competent journalist, I got an even harder challenge.  All I have to do is take pictures better than his most dramatic, sexy, and violent shots, which should be easy because the ones he had were so inferior I had to swat the camera away out of disgust when he showed them to me.

I could just use the timer on my camera to photograph me performing Hamlet with a zombie’s skull, stripping and sawing my own arm off, but that’d be too easy.

At the time of this writing, I believe I have a better dramatic and brutal shot, but I’ll have to try hard to get something that looks sexy when almost everyone in the mall is dead.

I thought I might be able to get my sexy shot by taking a picture of Brad, but just as the idea came into my head, I remembered I had to go back him up!  I wasted no time in rushing across the park to the North Plaza.  I got distracted again.

I couldn’t help it!  Otis told me there was a cutlery store there!  Or rather, he told me eventually.  I kept dropping the transceiver because of the zombies attacking me, to which Otis kept telling me that it was rude for me to cut him off.

I understand it when someone gets peeved at poor manners, but I feel he forgot just what I’m doing while he’s chilling in the security room.

The North Plaza was absolutely flooding with the things!  It was by and large the most zombie-packed area I’ve yet seen in the mall.  It’s a good thing the place is still partially under construction so I could travel on the scaffolding, because otherwise I’d have to plow through enough zombie guts to fill a swimming pool (one I would very much enjoy swimming in; I need to write that down).  I did try to see if the zombies might carry me across the place, but it turns out they aren’t very good at mosh pits.

Once I learned the zombies’ inability to mosh pit, and after I subsequently chugged my three gallons of Santa Christ orange juice, I found the cutlery store, just as Otis had told me!  They had some nice hunting knives, but to my squealing delight, they had Japanese katanas as well!  Obviously the first thing to come into my head was to put three of them between my fingers, jump from the scaffolding, and shout “phantom dive!”  Alas, it turns out putting Katanas between your fingers is harder than it looks.  Maybe with enough practice I will someday be able to do it like the masters of old.

While I was there, I also used the knives to shave my head.  With some sunglasses I swiped earlier, I look just like Vin Diesel, or the Engineer.  Or Brad.

It took me just as long to get to the bathroom as it did to get to the cutlery shop, and it was when I was headed back that I noticed that time has halted!  Literally, my watch has stopped moving and the sun is no longer going down!  Something in this mall seems to be causing some sort of temporal disruption that has trapped everyone in it in a stasis or purgatory of some sort!  Could it be we are all trapped in a certain period of time like in Stephen King’s The Langoliers?  Are we all doomed to be eaten by saw-toothed meatballs?

Not if I have anything to say about it!  I’m going to do some heavy investigating, but I can’t do it alone, so I’ll have to go get Brad.  But first, I still need to piss out all the Messiah Juice I’ve been chugging.

Sometimes it's nice to be alone.

Shonen Otaku's Diary of Frank West: Day 1 Part 1

September 19

I met Kakashi at our local McDonalds this morning to discuss my brilliant story idea.  Thankfully he wore sunglasses this time, so I didn’t sustain any injuries.  After avoiding the fee by beating him in Sausage McGriddle chugging contest, we immediately took the chopper to the Willamette Parkview Mall.  I don’t think anyone in the parking lot minded the noise, but if they did, they aren’t there if we can’t hear them.

As we approached the city by air, I noticed groups of military men camping out on the roads leading into the city, even going so far as to set up their own little forts in case a snowball fight broke out.  Why would the military have campouts on the road?  Don’t they know they’ll back up traffic?

That wasn’t a concern to us in the air, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the people who have to rely on cars.  Somewhere a man is trying to get to work, and I don’t think government road campouts are a valid tardiness excuse.

That’s not the only reason I felt sorry for them.  During the flight to the mall I looked down to get some pictures overhead and saw some very interesting photo ops.  There was a man on the top of his car and three other people climbing up trying to get him.  The guy was swatting at them trying to get them away from them like a bunch of bees.  It's a picture I've taken plenty of times.  There must be a Brony convention in town and that poor bastard let it slip that he didn’t watch My Little Pony.  He should know better.

Beware the Bronies.

It got better.  I also saw a gas station explode in a spectacular display of fire and shrapnel.  I always thought gas stations had safety valves to make sure such an event never happens, but there must’ve been one incredibly persistent smoker down there.  I almost asked Kakashi to lower the chopper so we could rescue the injured, but gas is expensive and it wasn't like there was a place to get some anymore.

My camera scoping had to be cut short when military helicopters arrived.  At first I couldn’t imagine why the military would want us, but it didn’t take me long to realize that we had something they wanted: my Twinkies!

I wasn’t about to give up their creamy baked goodness to the likes of the feds!  In an act of flippant defiance, I dropped my suitcase with the Twinkies overboard into the mall’s parking lot.  Try to get them now!

Now I'll just have to get the hell out of here and recover them later.

With little time left, I had Kakashi get as close as he could to the mall and told him to come back and pick me up in exactly three days, assuming he wasn’t gunned down minutes later or beaten to death in interrogation for my Twinkies.  20 feet in the air, I jumped out of the chopper and landed on my feet like Rambo!

Didn’t feel a thing.

The roof was eerily quiet, but there was another man hanging out on the roof, so it’s not like everyone was dead.  We chatted it up, I told him about my job, and he kindly informed me that the mall was actually hell, but he must have been mistaken.  I have yet to see a single Ubisoft game or Hannah Montana DVD.

Before I left to go shoot for the story, the man told me he was looking forward to some great pictures.  What a nice guy.  From that moment onward, we wer Best Friends Forever.  I forgot to ask for his name, but such trivial details are not needed among BFFs.

"This, my friend... Is hell."

Coming in from the rooftop I found myself in a security room of some sort, but nobody was around.  At first I thought I could use the intercom and say obscene poopy words, but then I realized nobody was there because they were probably off saving money on those big deals!

I really had to book it, but something caught my eye on the way out.  I glanced at the security monitors and saw, to my horror, what may be one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen: Three hungry-looking citizens forcing a woman out of her car… And eating the flesh right off her body… Raw!  Uncooked!

That’s just not right!  Meat should be medium well when you eat it!  Any other way is just wrong!

The reception on this TV sucks!

Averting my eyes from the horrific spectacle, I walked my way to the mall’s primary entrance, where a bunch of guys were piling furniture as a barricade for a horde of creatures outside.  At first I just thought they were trying to keep out a bunch of really hungry hobos that were informed of the big event, but the man in charge assured me that they were actually zombies, which was a relief.  Zombies I can handle.  Hobos are something else.

I know there were other things to be alert about, but I was completely captivated by the giant bee mascot on display there.  It’s a majestic, towering work of art as big as the e-mail had told me.  I could tell just by looking at its bright, happy face that this was going to be a mall trip of fun.

But then something else caught my eye.  Right behind a really hot chick was a poster for Tyke Tots!  My all-time favorite clothes store in the entire U.S.A.!  But before I could get a closer look, that old fart jumped in front of me, implied that I was checking out the chick, and barked orders to help with the barricade.

I think he could stare directly into my soul, and I into his.  His was full of evil.

Nobody interrupts my poster time!  He had to be taught a lesson.  A lesson in pain!  So I hatched a plan.

An old lady nearby was looking desperately for her missing dog, so I gave her some peace of mind and told her that her dog was outside with the “hobos”, but that she would have to move the furniture out of the way to go get it.

All I had to do then was get as far away from the door as possible and wait for the shit to hit the fan.  As I was waiting by the grated-off area on the opposite end of the plaza, I saw another old fart behind it.  I thought he might feel more important if I took some pictures of him without his consent, but when I did, he tried to attack me through the grate with his walking cane and yelled at me!  I managed to get some pictures of the incident for evidence of his assault, after which he backed off.

I hope he realizes just what he’s done.  I won’t forget this old man!  I will never forget!  I will never forgive!  Nobody attacks Frank West with a cane and lives unless it's a candy cane, in which case I can eat it!

Before I could rip the grating apart and shove the old man’s cane down his throat, the stupid old lady moved the barricade and opened the door in order to get her precious doggie, just as I had planned.  It turns out the doggie really was out there, but it didn’t make a difference anymore.  The zombies started to pour in through the doors and killed several people, including the horrible man that blocked my vision.  That’s one victory for me.

Not only had I delivered justice, but the front door was now wide open, which means I could go outside and get my briefcase full of Twinkies!  There were zombies coming out of the front, but I’d go through a fire to get my baked snacks!

As I was about to start running, a screaming man on the second floor distracted me, but it was no ordinary man.  I was in the same mall as Samuel L. Jackson himself!  Samuel screamed at everyone downstairs to go up the stairs near the entrance the zombies were coming from.  It seemed kind of crazy at the time, but I would never question Master Windu.

"Get your ass up here!"

As it turns out, zombies are smart and fast.  After looking at Samuel for just a few seconds, I looked back down and saw that everyone on the first floor was already surrounded by them!

It shouldn’t have been a problem for me though.  I’ve been trained by the very best martial artists from around the world: Wade Wilson, Geese Howard, Kenshiro, and even the great Wimp Lo!  I could have plowed through every single one of them and cleared out the plaza in a few minutes, but something was wrong.

I attempted to unleash master Kenshiro’s Hundred Crack Fist, but all I could do was flail my arms like a kid just learning how to box!  I couldn’t remember how to do it!  I couldn’t remember how to do anything!  Apparently when I jumped out of the helicopter, the impact of the fall made the tendons in my legs shoot up into my skull and wipe my memories of how to fight!  Why does science have to be so mean?!

With my combat skills tendonized, I had no choice but to improvise.  I picked up a nearby baseball bat and started to whack through those flesh-eating monsters like the umpire’s head in a baseball game.

Being the saint with clear regard for human life that I am, I tried to rescue some of the other people around.  I couldn’t save them all, but I thought I could at least save a few… If they cooperated.

I was able to clear the nearby area of the zombies and swathed a path for the two innocents that managed to survive, but even with safe passage, the stupid cunts wouldn’t move!  It’s as if their brains were completely shut down!  They just stood there, waiting to be eaten!  Almost as if they were…. Stoned.

This could only mean the pot smugglers have reached even the small city of Willamette!  Now they’re costing even more lives in a whole new way!  I will not stop until every one of those monsters pay!  On the bright side, the stoners make for good bait.

I made my way to the front of the mall, naturally while being bitten and clawed at the closer I got, but it would have been worth it just to know my Twinkies were safe!  It would be, but the doors were locked.

Then how did the zombies get in?!

I tried breaking the glass on the doors, but they must be made from some kind of bulletproof glass, because I couldn’t even make a crack in them!  Frustrated, I made my way to the stairs like Samuel said and took even more injuries on the way.  Luckily it didn’t ruin my spiffy jacket.

When I got upstairs, I retreated back to the security room, where Samuel and a couple of his friends were hiding.  One was a blonde-haired woman in very feminine attire named Jessie, while the other was Danny Glover!  Danny welded the doors shut as soon as I came in, apparently because Samuel thought we’d best not use the door so long as those “things” are in the mall.  Since I’ve yet to see any zombie open any door with a knob on it, I assume he was referring to any other survivors.  Don’t want them crowding the hallway.

Instead, we’re using an air duct to go in and out of the mall’s rooftop.  People in Willamette must have some kind of nasty sinus condition, because these are the biggest air ducts I have ever seen!  They’re big enough to be a hallway!  It’s as if they were made to be passages for guys our size!

Then again, what if it is?  What if they’re used to smuggle marijuana into the mall?  That would have to mean the architectural engineer is in on it!  There are so many questions that have yet to be answered.

After Samuel left to explore the mall, I showed off my badass picture album to Jessie, who told me that the badass black dude’s name is Brad.  I then saw Danny’s name tag: “Otis.”  Brad and Otis must be some kind of aliases Samuel Jackson and Danny Glover are using for a top-secret mission here.  I don’t want to blow their cover, so I’m playing along.

Looking at my camera, Jessie seemed particularly interested in the picture of the old man.  She denied the guy having done anything, but I know that look she made.  That is the face of a woman who has been violated.  Now I have two reasons to kill that sonbitch.

I could have waited out the whole thing until Kakashi got back with his helicopter, but there was so much I had yet to understand.  I may have lost my moves, but I can just as easily learn some new tricks.  I have an entire mall filled with murderous monsters in almost every area, a map of the whole place and a transceiver Otis gave me (that will come in handy).

It’s go time.

Shonen Otaku's Diary of Frank West: Prologue

[You’ve played the game, but was it the truth?  The story of Frank West’s adventure at the Willamette Parkview Mall was once one of the most sensational in history.  Or so we thought.  As it turns out, the government ended up removing certain points of the incident and downplaying others leading to a similar story, but in an entirely different light on it.  The posts you are about to read are a diary of the events of the Willamette incident Frank West kept.  The true events, as recalled by Mr. West himself, and not fabricated by me.  Through this we will learn what really happened, and what was going through my Frank’s head as the horror unfolded.]

September 18

I thought it was going to be just another day for photojournalist extraordinaire Frank West.  When a publication needs pictures, I’ve got the best around.  But today was different, and not because I was transported to another dimension and beat up costumed superheroes.  Today, I accepted what may be the ultimate challenge for any photographer.

It was an ordinary afternoon at first.  I went to the warehouse I found out about yesterday and took the same pictures I usually did during my crime fighting/photographing: exploded heads, burnt bodies, fire-breathing hell hounds and a nice shot of me shoulder slamming the organs out of some poor sap’s gut.

After I made sure nothing in the place was moving, I opened the boxes and, to my disappointment, didn’t find any marijuana, but instead several crates of Hostess Twinkies.  And no, none of them had marijuana where the cream filling was.

That’s the third time this week I’ve hit the wrong place, but I can’t let myself be discouraged.  Those smugglers are still out there and I’m so close I can just smell the smoke!  On the bright side, I got some free Twinkies.  Heavenly, delicious Twinkies.

The ultimate challenge came after I finished organizing my photos.  I was checking my e-mail and came across one with a most peculiar subject title: “BIG BIG BIG DEALS!”

It told me that “everything here at the Willamette Parkview Mall is going big!”  There’s going to be big deals, big stuffed animals, big savings, a big park for big people to relax in, and not to mention all the tools I could need for finally building that mech suit I’ve been planning on.

They’ve got allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters, trash compactors, juice extractors, shower rods and water meters, walkie-talkies, copper wires, safety goggles, radial tires, BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers, picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters, paint removers, window louvers, masking tape and plastic gutters, kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables, hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles, pesticides for fumigation, high-performance lubrication, metal roofing, water proofing, multi-purpose insulation, air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors, tire gauges, hamster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors, trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumsizers, tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers, soffit panels, circuit breakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers, calculators generat

Sorry about the previous paragraph.  I couldn’t get that song out of my head and I can’t erase pen.

This is going to be the story of the century!  It has to be!  Sure, the e-mail was in the spam folder, but something with a subject header in all capital letters has to be good to warrant such size!  I had to get there, and soon.

Without hesitation I immediately set up a flight with Kakashi for tomorrow.  To prepare, I’ve read a few news articles about the mall.  Apparently the area is being quarantined by the government at the moment.  They’re trying to keep me from covering the story, just like when they put the neighbors under witness protection!  They should know that’s never worked before and it isn’t going to work now!  My magnum opus starts tomorrow!

A Brief Look Back at Extreme Ghostbusters

When you're asked what your favorite movie about ghosts is, I'm willing to bet at least a quarter the U.S. population would say the 1984 action comedy masterpiece Ghostbusters.

And for good reason.  Ghostbusters had the perfect mix of scares, thrills, and funny moments.  The story about a company that goes out to snare and trap ghosts with their fancy equipment has all kinds of action-packed possibilities, and with comedy legends like Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd in the leading roles, it all came together for a timeless classic that anyone can enjoy.  Its sequel, Ghostbusters 2, had a more mixed reaction, but I love it just as much as the first movie.

Though arguably not as popular as the movie, there was a TV show made in the 80s using the characters from the movie called The Real Ghostbusters.

Essentially The Real Ghostbusters was a series about what working for the Ghostbusters was like, which was mainly only shown as a montage in the movie.  The series followed the basic premise and had the same characters, but was not canon from the movie, which might have been for the better.

From what I understand, it was quite a hit with the kids in the 80s, even having its own toy line.  It has a similar lighthearted tone (and animation quality) to the old 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon; definitely a product of the era.

It pretty much followed a monster-of-the-week formula, which works well enough when it's about their day to day lives.  For the most part, it seems all the writers had to do was come up with a ghost for them to fight each episode and then write the conflict around that.

There was comedy, cheesy one-liners, and a sidekick in the form of Slimer, from the first movie, if you can believe that.  While it doesn't hold up to my standards today, I can see why The Real Ghostbusters was a hit in its heyday.  Especially considering it had the Ghostbusters fighting Cthulu!

Pictured: me not making this up.

But I am not a child of the 80s, I am a child of the 90s, and in 1997, we got a new team of Ghostbusters with a series that to this day I still love.



At first you might roll your eyes at the "Extreme" adjective in the title and heavier, darker tone, but Extreme Ghostbusters is actually far better than The Real Ghostbusters, in my opinion.

The series follows a new team of college kids led by Egon.  At the start of the series, all the ghosts in Manhattan are already captured by The Real Ghostbusters, who since disbanded, but after some construction workers hit some kind of seal, a whole new gang of super-ghosts burst out, prompting Egon to have the students in his college class on the paranormal take it to them.

They call them "ghosts", but it would be much more fitting to call the things demons of varying sorts.  Not all of them came out of the place the show initially showed them being sealed in either.  Some of the demons came from other sources, like a giant weather-controlling winged monster conjured by a scepter or an evil Leprechaun that got out of a broken magic circle.

Like the original Ghostbusters movie, the characters are well-established, the dialogue is excellent (the director has worked on Animaniacs) and, though about as silly as the original team, each character is believable.  They really act like people in their early 20s.  Obviously that excludes any talk of risque subjects and cursing, but even then they reference the threat of death very often.  Remember when kid's shows were allowed to do that?

It helps that each character is perfectly acted, especially Maurice LaMarche returning as Egon and Jason Marsden as the wheelchair-bound Garrett.  Jason Marsden has really been around western animated series, but I think Garret is his best role because it sounds so much more natural than the goofy characters he usually voices.
There's also Slimer, the team pet, who's rather impressively voiced by voice acting legend Billy West.  There's something about the flying slimeball's semi-coherent speech that's really fun to listen to.

Extreme Ghostbusters follows the forumula of having a different ghost/demon each episode, but it's the way they have to outsmart each of them that keeps it interesting.  That usually means spending some time looking them up in folklore (even if it's sometimes inaccurate to the actual folklore), discussing what they observed, or having Egon analyze something about them fr a lead.  Just going up to them and zapping them like any other ghost almost never works like it seems to in the movies, and if it does, it's never that easy.

And these demons are genuinely disturbing.  Extreme Ghostbusters has a similar tone to the Batman animated series and Gargoyles, both of which are also classics.  People are eaten whole, trapped in mystical objects and turned into evil goblin-like monsters.  I remember a few of them being a little too scary for my 7-year-old self.  They really outdid themselves with some of these designs.

Freakin' clowns, man.  It's always gotta be clowns.

But that's what made Ghostbusters so fun in the first place.  Extreme Ghostbusters has all the scares, action and casual wise-cracking that made the original so great, and on Halloween, it seems like the perfect time to do so.  To my knowledge, the series has never been released on DVD in America, but you can find episodes on Youtube.  If you have the time, see a few for yourself, and have a great Halloween.

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones Review

I’ve never been one for real-time strategy games, and not just because I prefer to charge in singlehandedly and mow down hundreds of enemies like a game of Madworld.  While I can enjoy a session of Starcraft or Warcraft, I’m never able to devise a good strategy as fast as my opponent (including the AI) and micromanagement tends to get overwhelming (though game design has certainly improved on that aspect).

No, if I’m going to be commanding around little men armed with machine guns and tanks, I need to have time to consider my options, which is why I’ve always been more enamored with games that have players taking turns, like Project X Zone or Civilization.

This sums it up.

One of the turn-based strategy games that have stood out to me over the years came from Nintendo with Advance Wars: Dual Strike on the Nintendo DS.  While I hadn’t played the first two Advance Wars games on the GBA, I was still able to enjoy the strategy, the story, the outlandish units (mega tank!), the stylization and the slew of bonus content, including its varied characters with different abilities not unlike the variety seen in fighting games.

CO of choice.

Even though I got into Nintendo’s big strategy franchise for a time, I rarely paid mind to what may be their even bigger turn-based strategy game franchise, Fire Emblem.  I’m not entirely sure why I brushed Fire Emblem off for all these years.  Maybe the idea of units dying and never coming back made it sound too hard.  Maybe nobody sold me on the stories they told, or maybe copies of several of them are just way too hard to find (Radiant Dawn and Path of Radiance come to mind).

The time for me to play a Fire Emblem game came when Nintendo released its GBA Ambassador games for people who bought a 3DS before its original price drop (even though I actually bought it a day beforehand, where a store dropped the price early).  In addition to other classic GBA titles like Metroid Fusion and Zelda: The Minish Cap, I got a digital copy of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, one of the only standalone Fire Emblem games.

I had some prior experience with the game before.  My friend had owned it way back when it originally came out.  I found it to be very interesting for a while, but I quickly moved on, probably because my young mind only had one-track strategies.  The Ambassador program gave me the perfect chance to see what I missed and, in the process, what I had been missing for as long as the franchise has been around.

As somewhat cliché as it is, The Sacred Stones’ story is well-told and action-packed, just the way I like it.  It takes place on a fantasy continent called Magvel, where the five nations that make it up have lived in peace for several years.

That peace ends when the nation of Grado attacks.  Its emperor, Vigarde, suddenly acts extremely out of character and has his army invade the other nations, hurt innocent civilians, and destroy the sacred stones each nation holds.  The importance of the sacred stones is explained later on, but needless to say, they need to be kept intact.

What’s more, Vigarde brings in three very questionable generals to fight alongside the virtuous and loyal ones he has had for years.  Said generals are a deserter of another one of the nations, a knight that was exiled from Grado for being unjustly cruel, and a sorcerer who looks like he was trained by the Sith.

They are not nice people.

After their kingdom of Renais is attacked by Vigarde and its king is killed, Princess Eirika and Prince Ephraim both travel the continent to rally allies across each nation and stop the Grado army.

The plot is mostly traditional with a few twists and added elements, but it’s the characters that make it work.  Each of the few dozen characters have their own personalities and backstories, which the game is able to convey very well by integrating it into the gameplay with moderate success.

It all starts with recruitment.  While some of the more plot-important characters will inevitably join you, most of them won’t join your alliance until a certain character talks to them (you can identify most recruitable people by their distinguished faces).  Sometimes that requires a strategy to let such a character get close without killing the one you want to recruit or getting one of your own units killed by the recruit (when they’re on the enemy’s side).

It’s crucial to recruit and protect as many characters as you can, because you only get one of each of them.  You might have the same unit class, but you only get one of each character, and if they die, it’s for good, which makes each one feel more individualized instead of faceless support like in Advance Wars.

Each time you recruit someone on the field, you get a special conversation depending on the character you choose to recruit them with, but there are also several more conversations to witness afterwards.  In addition to the main story detailed as you proceed through the game, where characters that are alive can have extra conversations, they can also start conversations with each other mid-battle after spending several turns next to each other.  With each support conversation, they also give one another a boost when next to each other.

Disappointingly, the number of turns they need to be standing next to each other is so large, and the characters that can have a conversation together are so specific, you practically have to go out of your way to do this.

It’s easy enough to have units stand next to each other while passing turns when the enemy doesn’t, or can’t, move, but I don’t think I should have to exploit a loophole to see something that should blend into the narrative.  It may not even be a loophole though, because the game puts a limit on how many support conversations each character can have, which I can see no reason for other than to stop people from exploiting the waiting game.  I haven’t played the other Fire Emblem games, but I hope they implement character interaction better.  If you take your time and focus on keeping the party members next to each other, it can make for a much better story, but I am not one for patience.

It’s best to describe The Sacred Stones, and the other Fire Emblem games, as a turn-based strategy RPG.  Each character has statistics, such as speed, strength, and luck.  Characters with speed can move farther in one turn, ones with more strength do more physical damage, those with luck have a better chance of dodging attacks, ect.

They also each have their own classes, which determine their statistics and what weapons they’re able to use.  For example, mages and clerics have low defense, but strong magic, and horse-riding units like paladins and cavaliers can move several squares in one turn on most terrain.  Clerics can use staves, and paladins can use lances and swords.

Most characters can change classes at least once after they reach level 10, usually through the use of very valuable items specifically made for doing so.  Characters are generally given a choice between two classes for them to change into, and once changed, they change their appearance and get a major stat boost.

It perfectly encapsulates what makes leveling up so meaningful.  Not only does it make characters more useful, but it can also give you new units to work with you can’t get any other way.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of depth to this game.

But as much as the character management is full of depth, the weapons each character uses is probably the biggest part of how the game plays, believe it or not.  Each weapon has its own range, power, accuracy, and limited number of uses.  Lances, swords, and axes are used when a unit is next to an enemy, unless they’re weaker ones made for throwing, in which case it can be used at close range or a distance.  For such axes, magic, javelins, bows and weapons like them, a character can attack diagonally and one space away vertically or horizontally.  But even that’s excluding certain tomes and longbows.

The weapons are given further depth with their rock paper scissors advantage system.  Spears work better against swords, swords work better against axes, and axes work better against lances.  Magic has a somewhat more complicated advantage system to consider too.

Then there are even more statistics entering a battle.  When you’re about to choose your target, the game tells you the chance you have of hitting them, the damage the attack will do if it does hit, and the chance of a triple-damage critical hit.  Those stats can get an even bigger boost if you use weapons specialized for fighting specific units or weapons, like armorslayers or lancereavers.

It might seem like a very complicated game, but once you get into the mentality of it, it’s only about as complicated as a JRPG like Final Fantasy, just in a different way.  The limited number of characters you’re allowed to take into each battle (usually 11 at the most) prevents annoying micromanaging.  All of The Sacred Stones’ variety and rules make for a very flexible game system that gives many different ways to approach a situation.

“Do I use the super powerful weapon on this relatively weak enemy even though the weapon has limited uses?  What if I let my powerful unit weaken the enemy and then have a weaker one finish it off for more experience?  Do I retreat this unit to save him or finish this annoying monster off now?”

Granted, a strategy that you can usually fall back on is to simply throw Seth at whatever the problem is.  Seriously, Seth, the paladin you start out with, is the single most powerful and invincible mega-unit in the entire game.  When an army of horseback knights headed in the direction of my units, Seth went back and killed them all.  When there was a boss that could one-shot a unit, Seth one-shot him first.  When my valuable units kept dying, I rethought my strategy and just sent Seth and a couple of other cavaliers so that Seth could take the brunt of the onslaught…. And live.  He’s like the Ralf Jones of Fire Emblem!  The only reason you’d ever not want to use Seth is so that you can let your weaker units kill enemies instead and level up.

I never did this.  Seth is my backup nuke.

But having an easy option to reduce frustration is always appreciated, especially in a game like Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones.  I’ve heard it’s one of the easier games in the Fire Emblem franchise, but if that’s the case, I’m now scared of the other games.  The Sacred Stones is one of the hardest games I’ve ever played.  It could be because I’m not a strategy buff, but I think it’s more because of the unbelievably spiteful AI!

Where did Grado get these brain-dead crack whores?  Every enemy unit only has one strategy somewhere along the lines of “fuck you player!”  They do not fight against the characters that are trying to stop them, they fight against you, whether itmakes any logical sense or not.

They will always attack your lord (Ephraim or Eirika) if they can.  If they can’t, they’ll attack your healer.  If there’s no healer within their range, then they’ll pick on your weakest unit and only your weakest unit on the off-chance they might be able to kill it in one turn.  They don’t care if they go around your front line and into the heart of your team where they’ll immediately be killed in the next turn!  They just want to at least damage your healer as much as they possibly can!  They don’t care if attacking your lord has a 3% chance of hitting!  They might get lucky and damage him/her by one point!  They go strictly out of their way just the piss the player off, which works when you have to restart the entire mission all over again just because they got one lucky shot on a valuable unit!

It’s practically inevitable that you’re going to lose units.  It’s almost impossible not to.  In fact, playing through Fire Emblem without losing a single unit was nominated for Nintendo Power’s “Harder Than College” award (it lost to The Pit of 100 Trials in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door).  There are enough recruitable units in the game to make losing a handful of them not too big a deal, but if you don’t have at least two characters that can use healing staves on hand, you’re screwed!

I understand that the game should be challenging, but in The Sacred Stones, if you make one wrong move, you’ve probably lost, and that comes off as punishing, which is never a good thing.  I would at least like a get-out-of-screw-up-free card that would let me go back in time a couple of turns at least once.

Regardless, the game was much easier my second time around, and it may not be the last.  There are several factors that will keep you coming back for more.  Most prominently is a fork in the game’s story, where Ephraim and Eirika go their separate ways and you have to choose which of the two to follow.  Not only are there plot points not shown in the other’s story, but the story afterwards also changes depending on which one you chose.

You can’t forget the strategic choices you’re given either.  There are many different ways the story can play out.  If you lost someone in your first playthrough, try to make it a point to keep them alive in the second, and if you upgraded someone to one class the first time, try the other class.

It’s also motivational to go back and try to see more support conversations.  Once you beat the game, you unlock a gallery of every support conversation between characters you’ve seen.  Since it’s impossible to get them all in one run due to the limit on them, playing through the game again gives you another goal to achieve on the side.

On top of that, there are more Easter eggs here and there you may miss initially, like conversations between characters right before they fight to give it more meaning.

That’s not even going into the other extra mode you unlock at completion, in which you can take on even greater challenges and recruit some of the bosses into your party.

And I will play through it again someday.  Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, while frustrating at times, was memorable and fresh change from the games I usually play.  I would love to experience more epic fantasy tales like this from the rest of the Fire Emblem games.  The first step though, is finding copies, and that may be even more difficult than the games themselves.

I give Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones a solid 7 out of 10.