9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors

When I was first debating whether or not to buy Corpse Party (back in November), I checked the GameFAQs messageboards to see whether or not the game was actually worth it. While I was there, I saw a lot of people comparing it to 999 (9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors), a game which I had never heard of before. Probably because it's on the DS and I never bother to use my DS. I decided to play Corpse Party and fell in love with it, so the other day I bought 999.

999 isn't so much a visual novel as it is a point and click adventure game (literally, if you use the stylus on your DS). If you know me, you know I love point and clicks, like Shivers and Scratches. 999 is about a group of people put on a ship identical to the Titanic, and told they have nine hours to escape before the ship sinks. They can't just walk right out onto the deck though. They have to go through a series of doors, labeled 1 through 9. Their captor explains to them that only 3 to 5 people can go through a door and their numbered bracelets (1 through 9, of course) must have a digital root adding up to the door's number. (Example, to go through door 6, people with bracelets 8, 4 and 3 would be able to walk through together because 8+4+3 = 15 and 1+5 = 6. That is a digital root.) They are told that once they activate a door, they have 9 seconds to enter it and 81 seconds before their bracelets detonate and they are killed if they don't activate the deactivation device on the other side of the door. If they don't all walk through the door together in those first 9 seconds, they won't be able to deactivate the door and whoever is trapped inside will be killed.

 

There is more to the story than that. I tried using my brilliant crime solving skills I acquired from reading so many Hammett novels to figure out who was behind this setup, but after playing through all the endings, I realized my attempts were in vain. You will never figure it out, especially on a first playthrough. You will need to play through the game at least two times to get the important details of the story. The game is really interesting to start off with. It's not scary at all, but it is suspenseful. As you get further into it though, the plot becomes convoluted and leans a bit more sci fi than anything else. You really have to pay attention to what you're reading in order to fully grasp the ideas in 999.

 

Clearly, numbers play a large role in this game. You'll be solving various number puzzles along with some other puzzles. Most of them are simple enough, you'll rarely come across anything that is frustratingly difficult as long as you take the time to thoroughly examine your surroundings. Investigate everything. You never know which items may be helpful.

 

There were a couple things about this game that disappointed me. Nothing major enough to ruin it for me, but still. I was not pleased with only having one save file. I've discussed this before. I like having multiple saves just in case I reach a point where I've screwed the game up so much that I can't possibly fix it. I'll save you the stress of worrying about it though, you can't do that in this game. Yes, you can get bad endings, but that's quite different than getting to a section in a game that you're unable to complete for one reason or another. If it ends, that's fine with me. At least, technically, it has been completed.

 

I was also disappointed that the timer wasn't in real time. I always think it would be cool in games like this if there really was a time limit. Like when Zero (your captor) tells you that you only have nine hours to escape, you REALLY only have nine hours to play the game and if you're not done by then, the game is over. You lose. It would help immerse you in the game if you feel that added pressure.

 

999's audio is surprisingly good for a DS game. There's no voiceacting, but that's to be expected. Instead, each character "speaks" with a series of beeps that vary in tone. The girls have higher tones while the boys have lower tones. It's a minor detail, but I liked it. The soundtrack also fits in well with the setting of the game.

 

You are required to play through 999 at least two times to achieve the "true ending," which may sound daunting once you see how much dialogue is involved. Thankfully, you're able to fast forward through any dialogue you have already read on subsequent playthroughs, which saves you a lot of time.

 

Overall, 999 is a very enjoyable game. I didn't like it as much as Corpse Party, but to be fair, I don't really understand the comparisons between the two games to begin with. They differ greatly and as I've already said, 999 is more sci fi than horror. If you're looking for a game with a lot of weapons and action, this isn't for you. However, if you like story-driven games, you should definitely give this one a chance.

No one is looking out for you

This morning, I glanced over at my desk and the eyeshadow palettes on top of it. I mentally went over what is in each of them. I got to the palette containing the Mineralista Skittles Collection and decided that this was a topic that deserved its own post.

The Skittles Collection

The first time I ever heard of this collection (and also Lime Crime, while we're at it) was when I still watched xsparkage's videos on YouTube a few years ago. Leesha posted swatches on her blog from both Mineralista and Lime Crime, and the colors were really bright and appealing. I loved playing around with color back then, so I was very interested in the Skittles Collection. I had to have it, so I immediately went on my merry way to the Mineralista website and ordered the pigments.

 

Only recently did I find out, while doing a search for Mineralista to see if they had released anything else, that these pigments were actually repackaged TKB micas. And they were being sold at a huge markup. I thought, "Here we go again. Another Lime Crime."

 

If you don't already know about Lime Crime's drama, allow me to direct you here:

 

http://www.lipsticksandlightsabers.com/2010/01/lime-crime-beneath-glitter.html

 

It was not lost on me that I discovered both of these companies through Leesha's blog and videos. I'm not going to place all the blame on her. In retrospect, I should have looked into Mineralista before purchasing anything from them. And I have learned my lesson since then. That being said...

 

As a YouTube "guru," you have a responsibility to your viewers to research the products you are promoting. These girls have a lot of younger viewers and it may not occur to them to research these companies. They will blindly trust the people they're watching. I see it all the time when it comes to another "guru" (bonus points if you can guess which one it is). You owe it to the impressionable younger girls who watch you to let them know exactly what it is they are purchasing.

 

I no longer watch beauty videos on YouTube. As YouTube has become more of a business, the quality of the content seems to have gone down. Not only that, but a lot of these girls are getting greedy and trying to pull things over on their subscribers. They're being less than honest.

 

A small disclaimer posted somewhere in the middle of your video's description is a bit deceitful. There is a reason you are expected to tell your subscribers when a video is sponsored, because your opinion may be swayed by the free products given to you. The least you can do is be upfront about it.

 

Also, that entitled attitude won't get you anywhere. Receiving a commission by working retail and receiving money off of your order with websites like HauteLook and Ideeli because you posted an affiliate link and told your subscribers to click it...Those are two different things. You're not catering to them in a store, so using that excuse is tacky. It would be less irritating if you were honest about it from the start.

 

I'm less than impressed with YouTube's beauty community these days. That is why I'm making this post.

 

Before you listen to a self-proclaimed makeup artist (if you don't see proof that they are a practicing makeup artist and not just someone who applies makeup in videos, there's probably a reason for it), do your research. It takes seconds to do a search on Google. The "gurus" aren't looking out for your best interest, so you need to make sure you are.

Take this information and use it to improve your games

I've been told before that I'm "mean" to video games and I tend to agree with that. Well, not so much that I'm mean, but I am hard on them. I expect a lot because games like Bioshock, Demon's Souls and Uncharted have really raised the bar this gen.

 

As much as I expect though, there are a lot of things that I'm willing to let slide. Like companies releasing DLC (sometimes as much as $100 worth) when games already cost $60 to begin with. Or the slowdown that tends to plague games such as Dark Souls and Silent Hill Downpour. It's frustrating at first, but after a half hour I'm so used to it that it doesn't even phase me anymore...Which really isn't a good thing, you shouldn't have to get used to slowdown, the developers should fix that issue before releasing their game. But it still doesn't bother me.

 

Some issues, however, are unforgivable. Here are my top five most hated things about video games.

 

5. Button prompts

 

There's no skill involved here, unless you count response time as a skill. There are games that sometimes substitute button mashing for combat (Resident Evil 4's first fight against Krauser was entirely dependant on pressing the right buttons), or require you to press a button in order to prevent yourself from falling off a cliff and if you aren't fast enough, you plummet to your death. It's pointless. I would rather have a boss I can actually fight than one where I'm required to hit a combination of square and x to defeat it. And as for hitting R2 to prevent myself from falling, there are better ways to implement climbing in a game. Have you played the Uncharted series? Take a note from Naughty Dog. Button prompts are not entertaining, it's more fun to be able to work these things out yourself.

 

4. Poor control schemes

 

I have an entire post dedicated to this on here already. Games rarely have perfect controls mapped out for you. And they change game to game, which is confusing if you switch back and forth between multiple titles. Even switching between Dead Space and Dead Space 2 takes some time because the controls were changed. This issue could be solved if we were given the option to fully customize controls for console games. Video games have been around for decades, I cannot understand why the ability for us to customize controls still doesn't exist.

 

3. Autosave

 

If you're like me, you probably like to make multiple saves while playing a game, just in case something goes wrong. Maybe you used too many health drinks during an earlier section of the game and now you have to fight a really tough enemy, but you have nothing left to heal yourself with. Or you've run out of ammo. Just reload the game from an earlier save and conserve your items better, right? Autosave takes that option away and in some cases, it saves at the most inopportune times. At the very least, we should be able to manually save our games as well, don't make autosave the only thing we have to fall back on.

 

2. Multiplayer trophies

 

Of course you don't play games just to get trophies, but in some cases, trophies can add an extra challenge to a game and give it replayability that it might not have had otherwise. It's satisfying to complete the most difficult tasks a game can throw at you and earn a platinum trophy for it. Then games like Bioshock 2 come along and require you to complete several multiplayer trophies in order to earn a platinum, and some of them are level-up trophies which isn't fun, it's just tedious.

 

Aside from the fact that leveling up just isn't enjoyable, there are some people who I am sure do not have a decent enough internet connection to play online. Requiring them to achieve these trophies is unfair. If you want to add them on as optional trophies, that's fine. But they should not count towards the platinum trophy.

 

1. Unskippable cutscenes

 

Have you ever played a game multiple times and been forced to watch the same cutscenes repeatedly? Even if it's a game you love (like Silent Hill Downpour), this becomes annoying. And it's especially frustrating when the opening cutscene is ten minutes long, such as the one in Dead Space 2. I had to watch that cutscene three or four times on my Hardcore playthrough and it almost made me want to give up. Developers, regardless of how great your game is, trust me, people do not want to be forced to watch your cutscenes after their first playthrough. The sooner you figure this out, the happier we'll all be.