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I’ve lived the past 2 years [at least a large portion of said years] in Moscow, and I have observed a very prominent trend, a sign to fit in, a need to be recognized, a cry for help, a small step taken to fit with the in-crowd, per se. I am indeed, talking about the mass converting of religion taking place, among students, in my Hostel.

Now, allow me to explain the situation. Back home, I am not exposed to such a strong group or lets just say movement of [as they call themselves, Followers of Christ], so I was rather intrigued when I saw this here. Please take into consideration, this is by no way a derogatory post, or one meant to create dispute, or foul among the group involved, but merely an observation of the author, and the author would have written up a different report, if, he noticed a similar trend of people converting into perhaps Judah-ism, Buddhism, Hinduism or what have you. If you’re easily offended, or a cretin, stop reading, because anyone without an open mind, or the ability to read and analyze what I wrote, before making a conclusion, would definitely make the wrong decision.

EVERYBODY AROUND ME IS CONVERTING! WTF?

Right with that out of my system, what the hell is happening, a drive to collect believers, or something like that. Let me enumerate my experience with this church-system.

I’ve been to this church a few times. It’s full of great friendly gay people. They’re always joyous and happily singing about preaching the word of God. Nothing wrong there, it’s perfectly fine. But, with all the singing, and with your spirits all lifted, that’s when the attack begins. The pastor calls upon everyone who has said the last ‘prayer’ for the first time to come meet with him, by enticing them with cookies and tea/coffee. Naturally when it was my first time, I just sat down quietly, but a few went up to him. It was rather simple what was happening, people had endorphins gushing down their throats, and God knows with the soulful music what else went haywire. Everytime they come out, a few end up converting into Christianity!

Some of them claim to have seen the light, some even went as far as getting baptized. Will someone explain to me what’s going on?

And to stay on topic :

Pseudo-Atheist,

HypoG

P.S. I decided not to shoot my views into this as it would most obviously hurt some in the cojones, which has made this article relatively short!

So it has become apparent that I’ve been away for a while, keeping myself occupied with something nothing short of challenging and interesting (Some may snicker at this very thought).

Recently, I was talking to a friend about some classic gaming fun from the past, and a few games came up, most of which I had completed in the past, and those of which I have yet to finish. Two interesting topics of discussion were actually;

– Final Fantasy IX (That’s 9 for those who are not inclined towards Roman Numerals)

– Star Ocean 2 (II in case you got excited by the earlier usage of Roman Numerals)

Both games are of the RPG(Role-Playing) genre, lets start with Star Ocean 2 since it’s much shorter (2 cd’s).

SO2 was released in 1998, and I recall playing it, reaching all the way to the last boss, and not be able to win him no matter how many times I tried. Naturally this pissed me off back then when I was yet to develop those skillz that oh so wonderfully killz. I quit the game and moved on to greener pastures. So now, upon refreshing my memory on the game, I fired up a PS Emulator and gave the game a go.

From the moment the game started all the way to the end, it was a nostalgic feel through my gaming-hood. Usually, If I was to try to play an old game now, it would be an arduous task partly because I’ve been spoilt by all the latest development in games (Presentation, mostly) and partly because I already know what’s going to happen. Then, something comes around being so epic, you just gotta play it all over again. This is one example of the latter.

I don’t feel like doing a review, so I just made a video of me trashing the Final Boss. I removed the background music because I played the version without voice overs, basically everything in the battle is in Japanese. That, and my capture system sucked monkey balls. I replaced the music with something more suitable. Enjoy!

Briefly, there are 2 versions of this boss. One with his limiter ON, which limits his HP below 300,000 or so, and another with his Limiter OFF, at around 800,000 hp or so. This is with the limiter ON, I have a save file with a limiter OFF, but I’ve yet to find time to mess with that. Naturally it requires more leveling up, so that can wait.

Moving on to Final Fantasy IX (FFIX). I’ve played this game a few times and I’ve won it with both endings. However, as with the final fantasy tradition, the final boss is hardly ever the hardest boss in the game, on the contrary it’s usually an arbitrary optional boss located at some obscure location. Now in the case of FFIX, this boss is called Ozma. It is quite the feat to defeat Ozma at average levels, and I remember my trial run, back in 2000/2001, I defeated Ozma at around level 71. While breaking all the way to Level 99 may not indicate a confirmed victory, it does, significantly ease the battle.

Anyways, the whole Idea behind power leveling and killing Ozma did not entice me, considering I once did it at level 71. I read about online of a challenge where you try to defeat Ozma at level 1. This is made possible by fleeing from random battles, and petrifying enemies as to not gain EXP (experience points). Bosses in FFIX do not contribute to your EXP pool. Fair enough, I decided to give it a try. Ozma could be found on Disc 3, right after acquiring the airship Hilda III, which subsequently reveals missing pieces to evolve into a Gold chocobo.

On to the video :

Playing these games has eaten a significant portion of my time, so much so that I rarely have a chance to leave my room. Purchasing a gamepad for the PC to play these games did nothing whatsoever to help me play these games less. That, and add to the fact I just had to finish Command and Conquer 3 : Tiberium Wars, and avidly conquering Spellforce 2 : Dragon Storm. Nonetheless, with the completion of these two ancient PS1 games, perhaps I’d have more time for fornication, and acquaintances, and swiftly finish up part 2 of the previous entry.

King of Game and Anime Porn,

-HypoG