Faiths Cleansing



 When I was younger I was bought a PlayStation 1 by my parents I loved the console so much and through it became a massive Sony/PlayStation fan. Years past and in 2006 I pre-ordered my PlayStation 3 I counted the days until one of the greatest days of my life… or so I thought.

 I got the PlayStation 3 on the day it came out waiting in the midnight release queue for more than 4 hours, when I got my console I couldn’t bare it any longer I had to play it, at the time I thought It was a matter of life and death. I got home about 25 minutes later and took the console straight out of the box and plugged it in not noticing the two games that came with it, once I plugged it in and started it up I looked inside of the box while doing the initial set up (you know the time zone and where you live, that sort of thing) I found two games; Tony Hawkes project 8 and Call of duty 3, I inserted Call of duty 3 after setting up my PSN account and began playing.

 I decided to play multiplayer first due to the fact that if I started on release I might get a boost in level and have an edge over everyone else. I had loads of fun on Call of duty 3 but knew that I should try the Tony Hawkes game. I didn’t find this quite as fun but still enjoyed myself.

 2 years later and I had been waiting for the release of Mirrors edge because I have always loved the dice game engine and wanted to see what it would be like in a parkour type of game I got it and played for what felt like weeks, one night I went to bed a bit earlier I was feeling the lack of sleep creeping up on me and couldn’t bare it any longer so I got to the next save point and shut of my PlayStation, the next day I woke up after having a lie in and not going to work. I loaded up Mirrors edge and when I tried to load the save file I said “No data found or data is corrupted.” Right now I was starting to get slightly annoyed at the fact my data was gone after all of my long hours playing the game, the message gave me a circle option so I pushed circle, the game loaded I was slightly confused and didn’t know what was happening I mean it said data corrupted and it still loaded, I couldn’t complain so I waited for the level to load.

 As soon as the game loaded I noticed that Faiths hands were cut and bruised and infected this had never happened before so I looked online, I found nothing this creeped me out but I still played none the less several minutes into the mission I had to jump across a building gap that was no bigger that was 1.5 metres nothing Faith couldn’t handle but she wouldn’t make it I tried over and over but she wouldn’t make it on the 8th time of trying Faith said some dialogue that read “Why? Stop please it hurts… fine” and with that a cut scene started Faith walked up to the edge of the building gap and stepped of, there was a crunch not the kind of sound the game had ever made before, it sounded extremely painful and I heard Faith crying the camera angle changed to face over the gap, Faith was at the bottom of the hole with her right leg torn off and stuck on a poll sticking out of the building blood was dripping onto her face as she tried to stand. She looked up at the camera and said Faiths cleansing is upon you, I was really creeped out so I popped the disk out of the PS3 and put it on the game shelf to gather dust.

 A few weeks later my friend came over so we could do a LAN game of Call of duty Modern warfare he saw mirrors edge of the shelf and promptly said “Hey could I borrow that game I haven’t had enough money to buy it and I really wanted to play it.” I said “Sure” straight after trying to get rid of it as fast as I could.

 2 days later there had been a report of a serial killer on the loose and that he skins the bodies of his victims to kill them. I went over to my friend’s house to find him lying dead on the floor with his skin torn off and the TV still on he had been playing Mirrors edge, I looked at the TV as it had a message on it that read “This is what I mean by cleansing, you will be next I’ll see you real soon.”

 I cried myself to sleep that night but I did have a dream, a dream of Faiths hands and body slowly eroding away to leave nothing but muscle and bone just like the victims of the serial killer when I did wake up from the dream I felt a weight on top of me. I could see a blurry figure and I heard from the figure “Faiths cleansing is at hand.”