Real World Implifications: Shadows Of The Colossus

I know I often come on this blog smilin' and laughin' but it's not always like that.  And as you get older, it becomes apparent that you have to struggle (to varying degrees) to get what you want.  Hey, look no further than the Bible and the crucifixion of Jesus--life is NOT EASY and if you think you have it bad, oh it could be worse.  The things you want the most are always the hardest to get.  And video games prove this.  What does this have to do with Sega racers?  I'll get to that in a sec...

Most EVERY video game requires the protagonist to go on some sort of "epic" journey to accomplish something great.  This usually means killing bad guys and going through copious amounts of pain.  This ranges from the docile (in Mario/Sonic, you touch a bad guy and fly off the screen) to the mundane (Zelda/Half-Life with the beeping when you're about to die) to even worse (just about any M-rated game with blood and guts).  But a lot of games seem to obligate protagonists into action because of the whole "save the world" scenario--if they don't do something, then life as we know it is "over."

But to see someone act on their own for some personal thing or reward, something that you may not see worthwhile, something very unlikely or ridiculous to achieve, is much more commendable.  I'd like to talk about two games here to make a point.  I haven't played any of these and please don't get on here and say "oh man, you ought to play these" or any of that nonsense cause I'm not going to take it.

The first of the games is Shadows of the Colossus (2005).  Oh geez, I can't believe I'm talking about the game.  PLEASE NOTE this is not a review of the game.  ere's the summary: You're this dude with no name ("Wander," I guess) and there's Sleeping Beauty who needs to be woken up.  Since you're no Prince Charming, you make a deal with the gods that by killing 16 humongous monstrosity beats (the "Colossi"), he'll promise to revive your girlfriend.  And off you go.  That's it, no real backstory, you save a girl.

This is the most beautiful game ever made...or not.

You only get three things--a sword, a bow & arrow, and a horse.  Kill the 16 Colossi in the world by climbing on them and stabbing them in the face with your sword.  There's no other bad guys to kill in the game.  Colossi on the ground, in the air, and under water.

Four problems with this pic: 1. Too much brown.  2. Enough with the G-D swords in games.  3. That huge ass monster is pissing me off.  4. There's no cars in it.  5. It's not a Sega game.

And that's all I can really talk about in terms of gameplay.  TBQH, I have little to no interest in playing the game and I know I'll receive tons of hate mail for this game.  I know about the game--it's puzzle-based combat and has great cinematics but that's all I really see.  The idea of playing as this raggedly-little punk who's able to slay giant beasts really puts me to shame.  Seriously--I'm tired of playing as characters who are much more able-bodied than I am because it makes me feel like a wimp.

NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

...but the gameplay is not the point.  There's one thing about the game that I find interesting and it drives home the point I'm trying to get to.  Over the process of the game, as you kill more Colossi, you'll start to notice a change in Wander.  He looks dirtier, his clothes are torn, his skin is pale, his hair is black.  This captures the essence of a programmer's work life in progress: he shows up to work all stoked to work on the game.  Then over time, his eyes get beady, his hair grows long, he turns pale from lack of sunlight, he doesn't bathe, he gets fat from lack of physical activity.  All the meanwhile, the producers & artists are yucking it up with jokes and food from Popeye's and Subway.

Surprisingly, your girlfriend starts to come to life in the process (looks healthier).  So the running theme here is that you're basically sacrificing yourself for a girl.  Oh, how romantic.  But we see this crap all the time in the real world...people getting beating up for a cause they are passionate about.

Then what happens at the end of the game.  Well, your horse falls into a chasm then Wander turns into a zombie with horns and is shot with an arrow and killed on the spot.  Game over man.  But it turns out alright in the end--the girl wakes up, the horse somehow lives, and Wander is reincarnated as a baby.  BEST GAME EVER MADE.

I'll tell you what though--the month-long sprint to finish Super Sprint (ha) for school was as close to grueling as it got.  My game exceeded the instructor's expectations but I kept going.  So after I was done, I simply collapsed.  Oh boy, expect this to happen many, many more times in my career.  That's the breaks.

Let's have some fun shall we?  Between school, paying bills, being ping-ponged around EA for years and years while waiting for Sega to start hiring again, and answering my mom's calls every 30 minutes, the goal to make Daytona USA 3...err, just for fun, let's say Shenmue 3.  Yeah!  So Sega ain't buyin' it.  But you can go on a second quest--the video game gods ask you to slay the video game giants (Colossi) on behalf of Sega!!  And then, and only then, with Shenmue 3 live.  Here's what you got (EDIT: NOW WITH DLC BOSSES, IT'S AWESOME BABY!!!):

1. Atari - A giant 5200 console.  Really, it's that easy...

2. Tecmo - I don't know...a giant pair of boobs, it can be anything.

3. Zynga - A large farm.  I'm not kidding--a farm.

4. Konami - Metal Gear.

5. Rockstar - The Unstoppable Trolley of Doom from San Andreas.
DLC BOSS: Midway - Lizzy from Rampage: World Tour.

6. Namco-Bandai - Giant Pac-Man ghosts.
DLC BOSS: Lucas-Arts - The giant baby from Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

7. Square-Enix - Insert any generic RPG villain here.

8. Valve - Climb to the top of the Citadel (using portals) and fight Gabe Newell wielding a heavy machine gun.

9. Game Freak - Ho-Oh, Lugia, Entei, one of those legendary Pokemon guys, you pick.
DLC BOSS: Bethesda - A giant dragon.  No surprise there.

10. Activision - Giant Bobby Kotick with LASER EYES!!!
DLC BOSS: Bungie - The Flood Overmind.

11. Blizzard - A Protoss Carrier.  No, not Diablo or the Lich King, that's garbage.

12. Capcom - Giant green Zangief.

13. Electronic Arts - A giant John Madden shooting turduken and Tough-Actin Tinactin at you.

14. Sony - Giant Enemy Crab.

15. Microsoft - Attack of the little kids on Xbox Live!  Now Super-Sized!!!

16. Nintendo - A daunting Bowser/Ganon fusion on top of a scary castle.  What else did you expect.

Then after you kill them all, Sega gets taken out with a sniper rifle and then Shenmue 3 is revived but you've left a trail of death & destruction (Sega included) all for your sordid dreams.  The Internet hates your fanboyism.  Life is great.

It is finished.

CONTINUE TO PART 2.

How To Train Your Dragon Game AND MW3 Madness

Well, I've begun working on my fourth team game at FIEA.  Like the guys I'm working with--they seem competent, a turnaround from the debacle that was my previous project.  We have to work with existing non-video game intellectual properties.  To our surprise, the instructors allowed us to use any IP that we wanted which was a huge relief.  Didn't want to get stuck with some demeted violent action/horror flick.

So our team debated a lot on what we should do.  I threw in a few racing games but thought it would be too cop-outish as this stage of the game.  A NASCAR game wasn't dead-on-arrival by my teammates but none of us were willing to craft a racing sim (or whatever style we wanted) in two weeks.  Ultimately, we decided on one thing we all liked and that was...a How To Train Your Dragon "flight simulator."  Yeah, technically Toothless the dragon counts as a "vehicle" (a plane to be exact) so that's a win for our side?  Plus everyone loves dragons!

Oh, and the silver lining on the whole thing?  You play this game using the Microsoft Kinect.

But no, this game will be good.  Should be free-roam and fast-paced.  But you can't "die" or anything (though you will slow down if you crash).  Still stoked about this.  Get the flying part down and we should be doing great.  EDIT: Day two of development and we've radically changed this.  No longer is it "free-roam" but it's some on-rails experience with limited control.  I'm dismayed by this but I'm not a producer so I can't argue... :( :( :(

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Ok, so let's talk about Modern Warfare 3.  So they're going to introduce new modes to the game.  One mode involves collecting dog tags from killed enemies to score points.  Just like in OutTrigger, huh?  And the other mode involves possessing a flag and holding it longer than the other team.  Just like The Living Daylights from Goldeneye N64...except on teams and you can shoot with the flag.



First Gun Game in Black Ops, now these two modes in MW3.  Call of Duty = a bunch of plagiarists--it is undeniable.  YUO GAIZ SECK LOLEOLOL!!

But I can't help but liken Call of Duty to a big, greasy hamburger.  Yeah, it's not good for you but still...it looks damn good.  Everyone else is having it.  Come on, try it out.  And then you buy MW3 and Bobby Kotick profits.  Game over, everybody loses.

I'm not going to say that Modern Warfare 2 or 3 is bad here.  I mean, there's gotta be something good about Call of Duty...I played to 4th prestige in MW2 and 15th prestige in Black Ops (oh God).  Soooo...hate on it all you want because Activision keeps producing them but until you guys can come up with a better FPS then shove it.  For the record, I'm not for buying MW3 but I'm not going to say "it sucks ass lololol" ad nauseum.

As a matter of fact, I don't want to hear any of this Battlefield 3 crap.  Okay, so the game is good.  Really good.  But let's not pretend that EA is goody two-shoes and Activision is pure evil.  Cause EA is in some ways as messed up as a company.  Battlefield 3 is their money maker.  Origin sucks.  People having nightmare stories about installing the game on Reddit Gaming.  Particularly this story.  Deal with it.  Because Bobby Kotick is the poster child for "manipulative game executive" doesn't mean no such people exist on EA's side.  So you like BF3.  Okay, I'm not here to debate that.  Be a fanboy and just go away.

Now you can download a plugin that bypasses Origin's internal spyware.  We'll see how long this lasts before EA cracks down on it.

See...?  Both games are full of it.  So stop picking "good guys" here.  BTW, I didn't make this picture.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I don't plan on buying either of these.  But I've said that a few times already.

End of post.

Fans Versus Fanboys? Nintendo Versus Sega?

I notice that the word "fanboy" gets thrown out a lot about pretty much anything.  If you like something very much, you're considered a fanboy now.  But what does that mean?  It really doesn't mean anything since it's all semantics--just a blanket statement that means, to some extent, "you suck."  But really, the definition of a fanboy tends to differ per person and it can get confusing at times.

The way I see it, there are "fans" and there are "fanboys."  A fan is basically someone who likes something to a certain extent.  (Ex. He is a fan of the Green Bay Packers and roots for them every game.)  A fanboy, on the other hand, is someone who seems so blinded by his infatuation with something that he rejects any alternatives either by ignorance or faulty logic.  He often acts in a snarky, imposing matter to the point he can no longer be rationalized with.  (Ex. He's an Apple fanboy.  He thinks Macs look the best and that PC's are buggy pieces of crap.  He loves his iPhone and criticizes anyone who doesn't use it.  He says anyone who doesn't use Apple products are stupid.  He idolizes Steve Jobs.  Etc.)

I bring this up on the fly because it seems to be a big f'n deal nowadays.  One reason is because the title of my blog is "Musings of a Sega Racing Fan."  Not fanboy.  Well, you might think from looking at this blog that I'm a huge Sega fanboy--Burnout sucks, FnF sucks, Gran Turismo sucks, Forza sucks, etc.  Look, I'd like to say I've done my research.  I do like other racing games as well as games from other genres such as FPS, rhythm, and strategy.  But for the games I don't like, I do express my reasoning behind them.  What else should I do?  I try.

Besides, if I'm a Sega fanboy, how come I criticize Sega so much?  Cause I call it like I see it, that's why.  Do not doubt me.  I've also expressed things I don't like about Daytona USA 2 and Daytona USA 2001 so it's not like I treat these things like they're perfect.  I do believe they're close to perfection though, that doesn't change.

Sometimes, it really does come down to preference, such as whether you prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream (I like chocolate more...I can't explain it, it just taste better).  So I guess being a fanboy means using your obsession to make an ass out of yourself.  But you do have to take some of what I say as satire because games like Burnout, Nintendo, World of Warcraft...everyone pisses themselves over these things so I'm just trying to have fun with these guys.  Sometimes I'm joking, but sometimes I'm not..it depends on if they REALLY suck.

 I'm Sean Connery and you are all Alex Trebek.

So the definition of a fanboy can differ people person.  Like you may have a similar definition as mine, but much more tempered--a fanboy is anyone who likes something a lot.  So I guess you can say I'm a fanboy, maybe, but I'll respect people's opinions if they respect mine.  Try to avoid using the term "fanboy" from now on.

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Anyway, speaking of fanboys, here's a glazing example of a "fanboy."  But I'll get to that in a sec.

As an aside, during my early years in Internet surfing, I spent time looking up cheats and walkthroughs for N64 games as well as some Mario fansites.  Hey, check out this funny Nintendo site; my God it still exists.  Very damn funny/stupid site with things like "Create your own game ending," and "Bad Nintendo stories."  Click on "Fun Stuff" to see them.  Here's a few excerpts:

Bad Nintendo Experience:

Sent in by Paul Floco

After 2 hours of non-stop of playing 1942, all the ending was was
"Congratulations" It made me so mad that I beat the game in the 
front door of my house with a baseball bat.

You mad? 

Alternate Goldeneye Ending:

Sent in by Simon Mamane

You would see James Bond and Natalya Simonova will begin to be 
enemies and they will shoot each other with Moonraker Lasers then 
Oddjob, Baron Samadi, Jaws, and Mayday will come out and shoot 
James Bond. But James Bond will not die. He will take out a Golden 
Gun and shoot Oddjob, Baron Samadi, and Natalya Simonova. But 
not Jaws because James Bond will be partners with Jaws.

 Play multiplayer, you can do it there.

Super Mario 64 Changes: 

Sent in by Chris Zinn

There should be a 4 player mode with Luigi, Mario, Yoshi, Peach, Wario,
Donkey Kong, Toad, or Bowser. The mushroom makes you big, the 
fire flower would make you able to shoot fireballs, the Tanooki Suit 
would make you immune to fire and able to turn into a statue, the Frog 
Suit makes you swim very fast, and the Hammer Suit makes you able to 
throw hammers. The starman makes you invincible. The game would 
come with a multitap so you can have 8 player battles. 

My God, give this guy a job at Nintendo, he's a genius!!!

 
Another Bad Nintendo Experience:

Sent in by Anders Messermith

I went to Nintendo's headquarters in Redmond and the security guards 
escorted me out because I was snooping around. 

Damn, should've gone to Sega HQ instead; they'd let you go hog-wild there.

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But anyway, I wanted to learn more about video games in general and what people had to say about them.  So I stumbled upon this Nintendo fansite that detailed a bit of the history of Nintendo.  You mean the mafia connections and love hotels?  NO, we mean the actual games.  So there was a bias towards Nintendo, of course.  When he got to Sony, he replied "Those f***ers!!" in response to the Playstation being the bastard child of Nintendo.  But then things went way overboard when he got to "fan fiction."  Remember that this was back in 2000 when Sega was still in the console business and the two companies hated each others guts.

This is a Mario vs. Sonic fanfiction.  Now this is like my Seong Mina GameFAQs contest in that I remember it but don't have any proof so take my word for it.  The two fought in an arena with half the seats being occupied by Nintendo characters and the other half by Sega characters.  I don't know how it went down, but I know that Sonic struck down Mario and was about to "Finish him!" Mortal Kombat-style.  But before Sonic could kill Mario, Luigi came to Mario's aid and said, "If you're going to kill him, you have to get through me first."  So then Link got up, then Samus, then Fox, then every damn Nintendo character came to Mario's aid versus Sonic.  As for the Sega characters, did they help Sonic?  Heh...they all ran away in fear, leaving Sonic to die.  The end.

In order to counter Mr. Nintendo's wonderful fan fiction, I'll produce my own in response...:

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It's the year 20XX.  Nintendo and Sega have been fighting for decades.  Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. but Sega had BLAST PROCESSING so it was an evenly-matched competition for years.  But the two sides came to an agreement that rather than lead millions more soldiers AKA gamers to their doom, they decided to settle this with a one-on-one match between the best each company has to offer.  The winner's company would enslave the loser's company (this is like David & Goliath from the Bible, duh).

So who did Nintendo pick?  Well, they went with Mario because he's so damn sexy and because he's the King of Nintendo.  Who did Sega pick?



So that's what Segata Sanshiro did to Mario.  Mario incinerated into a fireball while yelling his trademark "Waaaahhhh!!" But rather than accept defeat, Link jumped up to defend Mario but Segata impaled him with his Master Sword.  Samus shot her little laser ball thing and Segata deflected it off his chest back at her.  Captain Falcon showed up and Segata did a judo flip on him and showed him his moves.  Then Segata proceeded to kill every single Nintendo character and then Sega went on to be the greatest game company of all time.  The end.

EDIT: This is sarcasm.