Chris Cornell - Thank you for saving me

Looking through my Facebook feed this morning I saw an article which said 

"SOUNDGARDEN SINGER DIES AGED 52"

I thought to myself  "I fucking hate these clickbait things that trick you" and moved on past.
Then I saw one from The Guardian, The Huffington Post and more and more places.  I can't describe the weird feeling of emptiness that I felt as I realised that this was for real.  I can only remember the feeling when I heard that Kurt Cobain had died when i was 13 and the memories came flooding back.

Now I can tell you all about what Chris Cornell did in his career with Soundgarden and Audioslave, but you can read that anywhere.  I am just going to tell you about how Chris Cornell and Soundgarden helped me when I was a depressed teenager, with no outlet or help for the bullying or the beatings i was taking on a daily basis.

School was shit, really shit.  I don't mean that in a melodramatic way but it really was.  Having long hair and being different in the early to mid nineties wasn't fun or easy.  There was me and 3 others in my year who liked this music, and we didn't really like each other that much.  It was a friendship forged through necessity and based solely on music.  We were the stereotypical Grunge kids and were obviously singled out by the East 17 loving popular kids of the time.  Beatings, being spat on and having our possessions destroyed were regular occurrences and I needed to escape from this reality.

I found this escapism through locking myself in my room with books, comics and music.  Having copies of all the Grunge breakout albums e.g. Nevermind, Core, Dirt and Superunkown, I started delving into back catalogues.  This is when i discovered the Soundgarden that would help  me through the dark times. 

After the opening of Outshined I was transfixed on the music and the lyrics. The first verse just jumped out at me and I can't explain why but it felt like it was being sung at me.....

I got up feeling so down

I got off being sold out

I've kept the movie rolling

But the story's getting old now, oh yeah

I just looked in the mirror

And things aren't looking so good

I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota.

Now I know that sounds like a cliche, but this was a Teen-aged me, struggling in life and trying my best to be anonymous,whilst trying to be myself.  I couldn't tell you what I thought they meant to me now, but at that time they were the lyrics wrote for me.  I spent weeks and weeks listening to the lyrics of Soundgarden and applying them to situations i faced, and this made me feel like I could carry on regardless.  I still retreated into my own world, a safer place where people liked me and I could talk to them, but when faced with reality I always carried my Walkman and a mix tape of my favourite songs to escape to.

Seeing Soundgarden live in 1996 was a brilliant experience and one that will live with me forever, but today's news has hit me hard.  I think its because you don't expect your idols to be as human as you, they are indestructible and cant be effected by the same things as we can.  As the lyrics from Blow Up the Outside World say.....

Nothing seems to kill me no matter how hard I try

Nothing is closing my eyes

Nothing can beat me down for your pain or delight

And nothing seems to break me

No matter how hard I fall nothing can break me at all

Not one for giving up though not invincible I know

As of writing this they have not determined the cause of death, but regardless of what it is Chris Cornell will always be a hero of mine for saving me when I needed it.  He didn't know he did but I am sure mine is just one of the many similar stories from people all around the world.  

Thank you Chris for everything you did without knowing.

Netflix Starts Production on Witcher TV Series

Netflix has announced that production has started on The Witcher series, which will be based on the stories of Witcher creator Andrzej Sapkowski. 

The series will have nothing to do with CD Projekt Red’s highly successful video games of the same name, which Sapkowski had no input into.  However, Netflix have taken on Sapkowski as a creative consultant for the series.

"I'm thrilled that Netflix will be doing an adaptation of my stories," Sapkowski said in a press release quote, "staying true to the source material and themes that I have spent over 30 years writing. I'm excited about our efforts together as well as the team assembled to shepherd these characters to life."

Producers Sean Daniel (The Mummy, Ben Hur and The Expanse) and Jason Brown (The Expanse) have been brought in on the project along with the Polish Animation and Film Studio Platige, with Platige’s Tomek Baginski, who directed the opening cinematics on all three video games involved as one of the Directors.

"There is a moral and intellectual depth in these books that goes beyond genre” said Baginski and his Platige colleague Jarek Sawko. “It is a story about today and today's challenges, hidden under a fantasy cover. It is a story about us, about the monster and the hero inside all of our hearts."

As of yet there is no word on any actors being cast, but as you can imagine they will come under intense scrutiny.  However based on Netflix’s past record of their shows, fans shouldn’t be too worried.  Who do you think should be cast in the main roles?  Let me know by commenting below and sharing with your friends.

Emily Wants To Play

Some indie survival horrors promise a lot, but miss the mark when it comes to the actual game.  With Emily Wants to Play this, thankfully was not the case.  Having coming across it hidden away in the PlayStation Easter sale for £2.49 I couldn't really argue, but I was surprised at just how good the game was.  

The game was originally released for Windows OS X on December 10th 2015, it was then released on the PlayStation Store on August 9th 2016 and on Xbox One on September 9th 2016.

The premise is that your are a Pizza Delivery Guy who has a delivery at a house.  Once inside the door locks and the fun begins, as Emily, a young girl who clearly has issues and her 3 dolls Kiki, a Wednesday Addams lookalike porcelain doll, Mr Tatters a scary ass clown and Chester a Ventriloquist dummy that reminds me of Slappy from Goosebumps decide to use you as their own personal plaything in a game that requires nerves of steel and dark coloured underwear.  

Walking through house when you arrive you find notes showing you the controls etc, but also ones that add narrative to the game such as pictures Emily has drawn of her and her "friends" in the basement, and also tapes that her mum has made to cope with her depression.  These tapes reveal that Emily has been kicked out of school for hurting another child and now has to stay at home.  These tapes expand on the story and help give the game an expansive back story which wouldn't be out of place in a modern horror film. 

The game reveals its characters during one hour in game intervals, first introducing us to Kiki at midnight.  There is a board in the Kitchen which says "Don't look at her" which I quickly found out was a trick.  At first you hear a little girls laugh, then she appears (being that I am scared of little girl ghosts this added to the game for me) then the fun begins. When I turned away, she quickly caught me with a jump scare which genuinely made me swear out loud while jumping off my seat.  After learning to look at her after what seems an age she disappears in a puff of smoke.  

Sometimes you will hear her laugh and look around in a panic trying to find her before she pounces and makes you question wearing white underwear that day,  Other times you will turn around in just enough time to see her inches away, reaching out with a face that I have been told looks like a Weeping Angel from Dr Who ( I hate Dr Who so i wouldn't know, it's a long story).  As the first "person" you meet in the game Kiki really does set the tone for the rest of the night.



At 1am it's the turn of Mr Tatters to enter the fray.  Obviously designed with people's fear of clowns in mind, Mr Tatters doesn't disappoint.  Announcing his presence with a sinister clown laugh and some mumbled words. Cue another jump scare worthy of making you crap yourself and we go again.

Now I wont go into what game Mr Tatters wants to play, as I don't want to give out all the spoilers.  But after the hours pass and you welcome Chester the freaky dummy and eventually Emily herself is when the game comes into its own.

Trying to go from room to room uncovering the secret to escaping is tense when you are expecting to hear a noise at anytime, and then frantically trying to survive before they jump out on you. At one point I heard Kiki and Mr Tatters in the same room, I just accepted I was dead and waited for the inevitable fright and the shouting at the screen that followed.  

The game is enjoyable and is well presented and the developer Shaun Hitchcock deserves all the credit for making this an immersive and frightening experience.  The game controls on console are a little clumsy sometimes, for example when try to turn lights on or off, but this slight annoyance is in most First Person games I play (probably my own failings really, I was never part of the PC master race).  It also has a release on Oculus Rift which no sane person could want to play, unless you want to test out the limits of your heart.

For the price and it being a one man indie game, Emily wants to Play delivers where many mainstream titles fail.  It is genuinely scary and immersive and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys Survival Horror games.  

This game will go down as one of the best purchases I have made from the store, and will stay on my PS4 for a long time.