Month: August 2006 (Page 3 of 3)

It’s Staring at Me, Mommy! Make the Oculus Stop!

August 3, 2006 / Michelle Senderhauf

The last time we looked in on Ocular Effect there wasn’t much more to report on than a mysterious countdown and possible connection to an ABC Family movie. Since then the countdown has ended and what looks to be an ARG has appeared in its place.

When the countdown ran to zero, an strange coded sphere called the Oculus appeared. When opened, the Oculus now redirects to the website of Miss Vix’s tattoo parlor in Seattle, WA. Miss Vix was lucky enough to stumble upon and hire a young artist named Faith Arella. Faith has become the hottest new thing to hit the Seattle tattoo scene with her own style of tattoos which seem to give their recipients good fortune.

The all knowing Oculus also reveals a school for gifted children called the Bethlehem Conservatory which privately recruits its students, assuredly for some yet-to-be-determined nefarious purposes. Listed on their site are several missing alumni, one of which we’ve seen before, Faith Arella the tattoo artist. Although yet to be directly proven, it is heavily speculated that Faith could be a Nephilim, or half angel/half human, like the main character of the Fallen movie, Aaron.

If you haven’t yet checked out Ocular Effect you can easily catch up by reading through the many resources for the game including the ingame recap, the discussion forums on UnFiction, the official OE forums and the extensive player-created OE wiki.

Check your local listings for the next showing of Fallen or watch the movie online at the ABC Family website.

Lost at Comic-Con

August 2, 2006 / Carie Ward

The Lost Experience got quite a lot of publicity during the San Diego Comic-Con this year. During the Question & Answer section at the Lost panel, a mysterious woman, who identified herself as Rachel Blake, started questioning the panel members on the Hanso Foundation. Despite the writers claims that it was just something they made up, Ms. Blake was adamant that both the films and The Hanso Foundation are real. She questioned them on Joop, fires in Iceland, organ harvesting and deaths of Hugh McIntyre and Darla Taft. Before she was escorted away by security, she screamed that the Lost writers had blood on their hands and that if the audience wanted the truth they should visit hansoexposed.com.

Once at the hansoexposed.com site, visitors need to register and start hunting down glyphs that contain codes that unlock segments of a video. These glyphs can be found just about anywhere: on websites, podcasts, magazines, and on cast members themselves. Once a new segment is unlocked, it then needs to be positioned correctly within the other segments to create a coherent video. So far, 21 of the 70 fragments have been unlocked. Although there is a leader board set up to track those who find the codes first, the codes themselves are spread across the globe, so cooperation is needed to find all 70 codes to expose the Hanso Foundation and tear it apart.

It’s still not too late to get involved with the quest to expose the Hanso Foundation. You don’t need to know everything that has come before to participate in the hunt for the glyphs. But if you are curious, Unfiction has several Quick Reference Guides to lead you through the three acts of the game. Rachel Blake also has her own version of what has occurred so far. Only by working together can the secrets that the Hanso Foundation are keeping secret be exposed.

A Tangled Sort of Web

August 2, 2006 / Yulia Mostovoy

Lo and behold, a strange website has been spotted! The site, Landalan.org, popped up on Digg.com, where it was described, in the space of two sentences, as “odd,” “strange,” and “weird.” Sound ARGy? You betcha.

The site has since offered up a mesh of exciting and varied puzzles, although it has provided only sparse hints by way of storyline. Here’s what we do know: the game seems to be centered around a plot to destroy the internet (no!). Also, somebody is trapped somewhere, and it all has to do with the United Nations and long-dead Tunisian sultans. References to the web abound – one puzzle focuses on internet service providers – and it’s all delightfully geeky, so if you enjoy that sort of thing, you might want to go peek in on this one. The Unfiction discussion thread is located hereabouts.

The Devil Wears MySpace

August 1, 2006 / Larry Eisner

Continuing my streak of pre/reviewing games that seem to stall (Seriously, ARGods! What’s up?), I bring you “Angelo Beckett”, the game about a man who knows too little.

It started out as many grassroots games (sadly) tend to do, with a cryptic AIM conversation. A member of the Unfiction forums got a message, asking for help, from a man known only by his AIM handle, “Angelo Beckett”. However, in this case, the person in need of help was not being cryptic for drama’s sake as much as a total case of amnesia. The person woke up, in London, with a bag containing Â£20,000 and a note with: the email address from which the person was messaging, as well as the initials B.A.B., a phone number (currently determined to be a mobile phone number in the United Kingdom somewhere), and the ominous message, “Do anything. Get any help. You’ll need it.”

And with that, players were sucked into another GAIM… or was it?

One player called the phone number, and got the address for the MySpace page of Lucien, a nefarious puppetmaster with a love of things evil. (I mean, Bedazzled? OMGZORZ!!! Pure. Evil.) Anyway, Lucien was obviously the mastermind behind the sad state of Angelo Beckett’s condition, as he promised to give one piece of this amnesiac’s life back for every puzzle solved. Some puzzles were straightforward code, and others were riddles such as one requiring pictures taken of London landmarks with a teddy bear in the shot.

Also continuing the grand tradition of all too many grassroots efforts, the game hasn’t been updated in over two weeks, after having had generally daily updates, making most players (especially the one who had to lug a teddy bear to a famous London theatre-front, one would assume) quite irate and feeling certain that the game is crashing.

The premise, while not entirely original, was interesting, and had managed to gather a sizable following of players in its initial days. Here’s to hoping that this one continues, and comes up with a rather good (in-game) explanation of the disappearance.

Month: August 2006 (Page 3 of 3)

It’s Staring at Me, Mommy! Make the Oculus Stop!

Lost at Comic-Con

A Tangled Sort of Web

The Devil Wears MySpace

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