It was this or the naked one. I chose this. After my waffle about Cloud and why he was nowhere near as bad a character that people have been lead to believe, I began thinking about the other most loathed character in gaming. Raiden. Thinking back to when i first played MGS2, I don't remember hating Raiden. He was just the new character that Kojima introduced instead of Snake. I honestly didn't even think about it...I just played the damn game and enjoyed it immensely at the time. I'm going to do something rather controversial..so cover you eyes if you are of a nervous disposition..but I'm going to say that Kojima did Bioshock better than Bioshock did. *cue mass confusion and possibly screamed obscenities* Let me clarify, elucidate and most likely dig myself into a virtual hole: As I understand the story of Bioshock, (SPOILERS) it involves an artificially created character (the player's avatar) who is controlled by someone calling themselves Atlas via radio using the phrase 'would you kindly' as a trigger. Naturally as a game player we have been conditioned to follow the instructions provided to us by said game. We never question it. Why would we? It would be like questioning the now defunct instruction manual. Press B to evade; died. Bioshock created a world where morality was circumspect, no one was to be trusted and everything you thought you knew was a lie. It was lauded as a storytelling marvel and won a multitude of awards (and in many cases rightly so. Don't get me wrong, Bioshock was a great game) Thing is, Kojima did it 5 years earlier in MGS2. It may have passed many people by due to the method it was told, and some of it may have been lost in translation..but it was there. Lets start at the beginning: Leading up to the release of MGS2, Raiden was never mentioned or even seen. Scenes were shown of Snake during what would later be revealed to be Raiden's part of the game. Kojima later expressed this as his desire to confuse the player, to place them on the same foot as Raiden and Snake during the game. It's all linked to the fact that the Patriots are revealed as the 'power behind the throne' and have been controlling Snake and Raiden for years. We now know that Big Boss and Co are the good guys, but at the time it was shocking to see even just a part of the conspiracy, and this leads us to Raiden. Much like the character in Bioshock, Raiden is a nobody. He has no personality of his own at the beginning of the game. When he arrives he's pretending to be Snake. Through the overly long codec conversations we find out that he is in a relationship with Rose, yet Rose knows very little about Raiden. Or perhaps she knows everything there is to know about him? His living quarters are made up solely of a bed and chair, there are no picture or books. Raiden's character itself is totally homogenous. He looks as if CLAMP designed him while working on a Ghost in the Shell show. I believe that to have been Kojima's point. Throughout the game, Raiden spends his time collecting Dog Tags from the soldiers of the Big Shell, enamoured with the idea of a concrete identity. At the very end of the game we take a look at Raiden's on Dog Tags and they only show the player's name that they entered earlier. Until that point in the game, Raiden is a nobody, a puppet of both the player and the Patriots. Even nearing the end, beginning to see the illusions that the 'Colonel' has weaved around him, he still follows the plan and kills Solidus. He has no choice in the matter. Like the main character in Bioshock, Raiden has no free will, and as with Bioshock's ending there is a great emphasis placed upon legacy in MGS2. Do you choose to kill the girls or let them live? Will you forever be known as a pawn or will you become your own man? In Bioshock, you could make that decision youself...but it made very little difference overall. In MGS2 you have no choice in the matter. What happens to Raiden is down to Kojima and his team at Konami alone. Personally I find that more satisfying given the overall tone of the game itself.
Kojima has said in interviews that he was disappointed by the reaction to Raiden. To be honest, you could say that Kojima was trying a bit too hard to be clever in relation to Raiden's place in the MGS universe. However, you can't knock him for not taking it on board, nor having a lack of a sense of humour. MGS3 turned Raiden into the homosexual plaything of a electrical mad Russian, and MGS4 turned him into the cyborg ninja. Personally i see both of these moves as a general 'fuck you' to the audience. 'So you don't like Raiden, how about if i make him gay? Like him now? No? okay lets make him a cyborg ninja..everyone likes cyborg ninjas (rolling of eyes)'
No, he's not Snake. He was never supposed to be. He was supposed to be an empty vessel for the gamer to experience the story Kojima was attempting to weave.
On the game itself:
After the release of MGS4, i went back to MGS2 and gave up once I got into the Big Shell section. Why? Well it has nothing to do with the character. I like Raiden, always have. I understand why Kojima placed him in the game and what his purpose was. Its just, after the focused, and wonderful, tanker section..by modern standards the Big Shell section takes a massive nosedive. I think its the structure of the big shell itself that was its undoing. All those gangways and single lines of sight. Once is great, but every time you cross to another section you have to do the same damn thing as the last. I also have a problem with the room structures, in that it became more like Pacman, ie running away from patrolling enemies, and less like MGS where hiding was everything. The characters in MGS2 also pale in comparison to the first. Everyone one knows Psycho Mantis; Ey mon, ITS PURE PSYCHO MANTIS EY? as Rab from Videogaiden would say. but if i said Fortune, or Fatman..people would moan and roll their eyes. Vamp being the only real exception to this rule. The one thing i will forever love this game for though is the tranqs. Being given the option to play the whole game through without killing people is a godsend. Every MGS game since I have gone out of my way not to kill a single person. I hate 'going loud'. To me it ruins the atmosphere of the game. It's a fucking sneaking mission not Die Hard 5: Snake Maclean: Everyone said you were dead edition. I reckon every game should have the option of either knocking people out of pulling a COD. Well not games like Bayonetta..that'd be silly, but you get my point.
In other news: I'm back on the Resonance of Fate train. Trying to finish it either before Demon's Souls (REALLY should be Demons' Souls, or Demon's Soul. Not a mixture of both) or my course starts in a week and a bit. Act 11. Here we go.
2 Comments
The Chaste Monk continues a pace...as it were. Anyway I've been having a renaissance, if you will, with my psp. I've had my psp for 3 years, and beyond maxing out my valkyries in Ultimate Frontier or Super Robot Taisen MX...I haven't done much with it
Kuuun Kuuun, Kuun, Kuuun..SHUT IT MINMAY
Anywho this wasn't really the point of my post. I'm going to give you a brief discourse on how it feels to go back to FFVII after, oooooo, 12 years or so. (Playing it on my psp..thus the intro)
Critics were surprised by the A-Team movie's choice of animation. The love-hate relationship the general gaming public has with FFVII never ceases to amaze me. (yes i am that boring) Rose tinted glasses aside, FFVII was one of those game that changed how i looked at games. Now after 12 years of either meeting expectation (FFVIII-FFX were okay games) to serious disappointment (FFXII) I've returned to the game that jump started my JRPG obsession. Playing it again after all this time, I can only think that the arguments everyone throws at FFVII stem either from personal taste, or over saturation of the brand. I love this game, even now. Sure the random encounters are as annoying as hell, but the charm of the game, the political intrigue and..well Tifa, make it all worth while. Sure Barrett is more stereotyped than Bendis' first attempts to use Luke Cage in Alias. Sure Aerith/Aeris is annoying as hell most of the time, and sure Cloud is Heero Yui is Squall/Leon (what the hell are we supposed to call that dude anyway?) is Emo Student. Personally I think most of people's problems with Cloud (or Drake as i named him..cause I mean..Cloud? Really?and yes I changed Aeris back to Aerith..told you i was boring) stem from his other appearances. Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts added much more 'emo' to his character than necessary. I seem to remember 'watchimicalli core' on the psp gave Cloud back his not so emo personality. Come on, the dude dresses up as a girl to get into a sleezy business tycoon's house to rescue Tifa. Not something I think a typically emo guy would agree to...unless he was a crossdresser. Now that I can see being levelled at Cloud. I'd also argue that there's a lot to be said for the graphical style they chose. I'm not much of a 'graphics whore', considering some of my favourite games have SRW in their titles, so going back to this simple, yet dynamically animated style didn't cause me any problems. In fact i think it adds an extra level of charm to the game. They may all like Bobbleheads, but somehow their personalities shine though in ways that modern characters lack. There are a couple of problems though: After living off SMT games for the past however many years, the ATB system, or as i like to call it 'waiting to the bar fills up' system takes a bit of getting used to again. Naturally random encounters are a pain in the proverbial Also, naturally, playing it on the psp does pose some control issues (will i be able to use the L1R1 trick for making my chocobo faster?) but they can be worked around. The emulation on the whole is excellent. Playing this game again, I asked myself the question; do I want a ps3 version of this with HD graphical doodads and awful intro songs by Celine Dion. Short answer; mmmmm maybe? Long answer, depends how they do it. Why break something that don't need fixin..bub. As Logan would say, or is it James these days? I'm not much up on what Wolverine is doing... apart from appearing in nearly every marvel comic, and possibly hanging out with Mickey and Donald. Anyway, I digress. As much as I would love to see Cloud and Co in full stereotropic 3d hd 4d 2200 gigwatts, I think quite possibly a lot would be lost in translation. I'm also rather worried that if we start down the remake road for seriously massive games like FFVII or MGS, we'll end up with absolutely no new ideas. Like Hollywood, repackaged and recycled stuff that we loved once, and now is beginning to wear a wee bit thin. Cloud and his emo ways being a case in point.
1 Comments
So I was kinda off on my playstation day. It was today, and i picked up:
GRRR I'm only worth £9.99 bub. and
Ninjas must look behind that at any time..especially when we are worth £14.99 and not forgetting from monday:
I'm a small picture..at £9.99 who would blame me. By the way..my arm hurts So i think thats more than enough for the month. For the price of one game here in Spain (70€) I managed to procure Dark Void, Blood on the sand, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Wolverine, Dissida and..well Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce takes me up to about 80€. For the price that Sonic Unleashed is still going for in Alcampo..you can't knock it.
On another tack, hailing originally from England I grew up with ye olde magazine Computer and Videogames. (CVG for short) Hop on over to www.computerandvideogames.com to have a look at their website. I'm beginning to loathe this website. They don't seem to employ proper copy editors on the web team, and they mostly write like 10 year olds. They also seem to have the humour of 10 year olds..which can really grate after a while. But thats not really the problem. The problem is what they report on. Giantbomb isn't a perfect website..though its not far off tbh....but how many stories have you seen recently on here about Crysis 2? Not many i reckon..at least i may have missed them all..but still. Since last week on CVG there have been about 7. All of the based around one or other press officer talking trash about Halo or Gears or..well whatever, and then they wind up everyone into a console bashing exercise (which has become the web version of the English penchant for talking about the weather. 'Nice to meet you old chap...shame that you play a 360, Heavy Rain ownz you suxxors' 'Indeed Old Boy, but can you have sex with an alien on your Foreman Grill? I think not. lol lol lol' ) Its shoddy news reporting. Shit 90% of it isn't even news, just what David Jaffe tweeted last night after having cheese before going to bed. Nobody needs to know this shit. All we need is informed comment, not a story about some slapper who fell of here balance board and suddenly decided she was a nympho.
Value GB dear reader. The team do a great job in creating an environment where the farcical is treated as such, while that which matters (relatively speaking) is either explained or argued about. Informed comment with a dash of cynicism is the order of the day. Value it dear reader (as Bronte was want to say)
For while it can be juvenile at times, we shall always have Francis York Morgan and his coffee, or Chie and her steak.
17 Comments
Update on Blood on the Sand: I have hit at least one ramp and seen one chopper. Not killed one yet though. You can't really knock 50 Cent. It does what it says on the tin and it's so outrageous it might just work.
Dark Void: I finally got to fly. Again, the vertical bits in this game are fantastic. They add an extra depth to the gameplay which hasn't really been exploited this way before. Unfortunately I'm still having problems with the control scheme. Granted I'm having to reprogram my brain into realising that the right analogue is no longer the camera when flying, but everything else is just seriously clunky. They also don't really give you enough ammo for the guns you can hold.
My main problem with this game, and many other games since Halo is the lack of a health bar. I've said it once and it bears repeating now... I FUCKING hate games without health bars. Let me see how much health i have so i can make tactical choices. Stop regenerating health, or only allow a little regen. Resistance 1 is a fantastic example in my mind of how to do health bars right. You have 4? sections in your health bar, and once you lose a section you can't regen it. Health pickups negate take up the slack. As far as I'm concerned if you're playing a game..why pretend to be doing anything else. Immersion? So everyone is Wolverine and can spontaneously regen? Dark Void is how to do it badly. How much health have i got? Well..the screen is kinda swirly..25%? Ooo its gone kinda sepia..15%? I have no ability to be able to make tactical decisions in relation to it...which is needed when you have such a, i suppose at least., tiny health bar and 8 bullet proof wanna be geth attacking you.
I've been toying around with an idea, which in part owes a lot to Fear Factor on the psx...which i played yeeeeaaars ago. Instead of a health bar, why not have something like a..well a 'Luck' bar. In essence, you can only dodge so many bullets until your luck wears out and you die. It would force you to be more careful with your life. Other incidents during the game (press B to evade: Died) can lower or boost your luck level. I'm not gonna say this is more realistic, cause we are still playing a videogame here, but it would, at least to me, make more sense in the context of an FPS or Adventure game. Kojima used Psyche and Stress gauges in MGS4 to show how different stimuli on the protagonist would affect his shooting ability etc. Deadly Premonition has Sleep and hunger bars. Why can't we push the envelope a bit? Or is the the concept of 'health' so ingrained in gaming that it would be impossible to remove?
In other news; this weeks bargain bin purchase was Bionic Commando £8.99. I also happened to get MGS Acid in the post this morning...and FFVII finally (sic) finised downloading onto my psp..so it's a trip down memory lane..
So I had a go on Blood on the Sand and Dark Void while the impressionable young minds were away. It was that or watch Icarly...something I would not subject even Barry Manilow to. Anywho, and please understand this is a 30 min play test type deal. 50 Cent Blood on the Sand:
HIT DAT RAMP FIDDY From the moment i saw that Fiddy brought grenades to his gigs, I knew that things were gonna go to hell. First question, why the hell does that random middle eastern dude (who is bound to betray you) keep skull encrusted diamonds...wait thats not right, diamond encrusted skulls in his safe?Does he have a stash in there? and does he drink vodka out of it? I like the fact that there was this whole backstory to the skull being some gorgeous woman's skull that her husband just HAD to turn into the latest in fashion accessories. Second question, who the hell would pay Fiddy and his crew $10 million to perform a single gig? I mean, isn't that a touch....Big headed of Fiddy to even demand that amount of money? and taking a diamond encrusted female skull as collateral was rather silly in hindsight now wasn't it? On to the mechanics themselves, and to be honest, they kind of surprised me. I haven't played Gears in a long time (my 360 melted..twice) but its not far off what I remember. Sure the weight of the character isn't there, and the cover mechanic isn't as...'wham' i just hit this bit of cover' like. But it does it's job. I found the aiming to be a little slow, but after warming up I got into the swing of things. Special mention should be given to the counter kill system. Its a cool 'In you face' melee system that replaces elbows in the face with a little QTE. Odd that you lose health if you fluff it, but...well it's a game isn't it. Add in the combo system that makes you try and string as many kills together as possible in the shortest amount of time and you've got yourself Blood on the Sand. I've yet to play The Club, but i imagine a similar system is in effect there. It's a shame this game has all the posturing of a 9 year old who thinks he's a gangsta. I think you can sum up everything thats annoying about this game with the first cutscene
(Thanks to CrezPlays video) 2:26mins onwards. Posturing bullshit not needed in a game...and seriously people call him Fifty? Not Curtis? Or Mr..erm..whatever his last name is. Did everyone call Notorious BIG, Notorious? Its too much for a White Boy from Kent to understand..word. To quote Kevin Smith 'I grew up on A street..not so much on THE streets.'
Dark Void: I played the demo a while ago, and I remember enjoying it..but woomph. You start with a..erm...'tutorial' of how to fly the rocket pack set a week before the actually start of the game. So we invert the inversion controls and enjoy just flying around like the Rocketeer. (Great popcorn movie by the way) Then some YOUFOOOs come out of nowhere and start tearing shit up like it was a Fiddy gig. So you gotta shoot em down...next question, how the hell am i supposed to do that? Where's the lockon button (where's a Haro when you need one?) How do i turn this thing? What about all those cool moves i did in the demo? ANYTHING? oh press R1 to shoot out ahead..thats helpful in a dog fight. So anyway after fiddling around, i find that L2 has a kind of lockon thing, but that makes it even more difficult. So I ended up just trying to shoot them for a while. end scene. Next thing I know. Air Strip. Dude who sounds suspiciously like Drake/Desmond/Vashyron pops up..and so does a British Elena. All so 'standard Nolan North.' What I'd like to know is why they didn't start with this, use the plane as a surrogate jet pack and teach you the controls in that context. That would have been 100x better. But anyway... Cut to crash on weird floaty island from Avatar being chased by the Geth cause..well, why not? First problem. CLUNKY controls. I may need to change the sensitivity, but aiming and shooting are a chore. Jumping makes me think gravity is not really relevant in this void. Borderlands jumping was kinda crazy, but 3rd person makes it more apparent. 2nd Problem, I know these Geth things are made of metal or whatever, but they take waay to long to go down. Half a clip is too much for the first enemy in the game. 3rd Problem; Not liking the art style that much. Reminds me of Brutal Legend (with added umlaut) which didn't really do much for me. Potential bargain bin purchase in the future? Anywho, I liked the vertical cover system..a lot actually...It kinda turns the whole game into an upside down Space Invaders type game, dodging bullets and trying to get to the bottom by climbing down. I also think that the flying, once i actually get the hang of it, will open the game up and make it more enjoyable. Either way it's got Tesla in it.
(Credit To ShadowZack for the Video) I'll be playing them some more over the coming week, as long as my long lost copy of Demon's Souls hasn't arrived, or I break down and go back to playing Resonance of Fate (possibly my favourite game of all time). I've got some other games on their way, but due to the ash, god knows when I'll see them. Anyway Dissida and DW Strikeforce are on their way for my beloved psp (both around £10 new).
1 Comments
I've started a nasty habit. Bargain Bin gaming. Let me elucidate for you. (I feel like I'm writing a Haiku) There's a lesser known website, based in the UK, that does great deals on games every week (thehut.com if you're interested). Tuesdays is Playstation day, thus i tend to take a look around what they're offering. It also helps that postage to outside the UK is better than Amazon, but whatever. Last week I found Dark Void and 50 Cent Blood on the Sand for £9.99. I liked the Dark Void demo and..well...I've been meaning to give 50 Cent a go, cause I hate Helicopters and love Big Ass Ramps. Usually takes a week for stuff to arrive, so i got it today. (Not bad considering the ash and I live in Spain). Anyway I'll update at some point what i think of both games.
Odd note looking back to July 2008 i said i was gonna play Socom on the psp. Well I only just put that game in my psp yesterday. Funny how things end up. I would discuss the ins and outs of moral choices in videogaming..but people have done it much better than little old I on the site so..I'll just say that it's a massive waste of time in 99% of the games it's shoehorned into. However i would like to single out the Witcher for particular praise in this regard. Your actions in the Witcher, such as deciding whether to help someone or not, or go one way or another have a direct impact on future scenes in the game.. 'So far so ordinary' i hear you cry. Well unlike the much vaunted Infamous or Fallout 3 where you had a choice of 'Good' or 'Bad' actions or responses, in the Witcher it often comes down to the lesser of two evils. Do I help the witch, or watch her get burned in order to placate the towns folk? What if the witch actually did cause all the deaths? How will it affect my standing in the community and will i get the answers i'm looking for? Personally I found both Fallout and Infamous really annoying in this regard. 'Feed the people or don't' well..thats not much of a choice is it? It would have been better if it hadn't been so binary. Give food good, take food bad, tick evil box. Personally i think this kind of morality has no place in games. It over simplifies moral choices. Blow up a town or not. You either get a penthouse or a town house and some bad karma. Seriously..WTF? Prototype didn't even bother, and in that regard i much prefer Prototype. You're a dude, you have to survive, you kill what gets in your war. Simple. Overcomplicating something just so you can put in your reviews and on the box 'Now with 200% more morality, play through the game twice just because we couldn't be bothered to write a decent story' is stupid.
Another thing that has bothered me of late (apart from volcanic eruptions stopping flight traffic, and who the hell IS Zack?) is the argument people throw out in favour of getting rid of HUD elements and health bars. 'It adds to Immersion, we are trying to make you forget its just a game.' Bullshit. Health bars are more important to me than nearly anything else in a game. I love Resistance 1, but the second Resistance annoys me due to the lack of the health bar. Pathetic? Probably, but I depend upon information i get from the HUD. Shove floating damage numbers into a game and I'm more than likely to buy it. I can't play Monster Hunter because I can't see how close/far away from death the monsters are. Add that and then I'm interested. I'm all for information overload. This movement towards sparse screens and flashing health annoys the hell out of me. I'm playing a game...I have no interest in forgetting the fact. So give me the option to either remove the information or leave it there. Best of both worlds.
I was looking forward to the psn update as i wont be able to see my ps3 till mid december as im off back to uni tomorrow. Alas we didnt even get the Soul Caliber IV stuff like the US and JPN. I know its a common question, but what on earth are SCEE doing? Its like they just dont care. XBL gets Braid and we get...erm an addon pack to Civ Rev. Nice but no thanks.
Sidenote R6V2 is the laggiest piece of crap online ever..single player is awesome, but Ubi really need to get theyre act together. I play online with the sound off so i dont have to listen to the infinite bullet glitch EVERY TIME I PLAY!!
And to round out the bitching, conquest on BFBC sucks. Team work is out the window once again. You capture a flag and stay around to defend it, and nobody else bothers to help. Also it seems that people are very adept at switching sides these days.
Enough moaning eh? No not yet. SOCOM 3 seems to have been lost somewhere for the EU. US get it Oct 13, once again sony really doesnt give a shit about us.
Soul Caliber IV is an awesome game. If the Apprentice fights half as well as he does in the Force Unleashed as he does in SC then i'm sold. Slight problem, i cant get online to save my soul. Everytime all the servers are full. People complain about MGO but ive always been able to get a game when the servers are up. SC is a different kettle of fish. Hopefully they will sort out the problem or i'll work out what the problem my side is.
Other trade in purchase of the day. Rainbow Six Vegas 2. I enjoyed the first one on the 360, even got the headset ordering thing going on. Problem Ive got at the moment is im finding the plantronics 360 ive got as a bluetooth headset doesnt seem to be able to do the job. You can scream 'MOVE' as loud as you want, and its not happening. (yes it's recognised and paired with the ps3, yes the volume is down and mic senstivity is up) so, i suppose ill have to wait for Socom.
Pixeljunk eden is like spiderman in a garden on a mission to pollonate. Madness ensues.
Log in to comment