Sins of Our Fathers
by Zen
Posted on Friday, October 9, 2009Fortunately, Japanese publishers started to catch on that not everyone in the US is a drooling moron around the time the original PlayStation came out. Instead of dumbing down hard games and not even releasing games that were too complicated, Japan discovered that gamers in the US were thirsty for true works of art. For me, the turning point was a game called Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and after the opening scene I knew things would never be the same again.
What follows is an annotation, a sort of recreation of my own thoughts as I relive these precious moments today. You are encouraged to click this YouTube link first, so that you can appreciate these lines as I first did all those years ago.
Richter: "Die, monster! You don't belong in this world!"
Dracula: "It is not by my hand that I am once again given flesh. I was called here by... humans who wish to pay me tribute."
Richter: "'Tribute'?! You steal men's souls, and make them your slaves!"
Dracula: "Perhaps the same could be said of all religions..."
Richter: "Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!"
Dracula: "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... have at you!"
What childhood could a man like this possibly provide? Is it even so different from the plight of any father quaking in the face of the insurmountable responsibility of parenthood? The roles of faith, love, fatherhood, and family legacy all collide here. In this brief encounter with Richter we seem to learn so little of Dracula, and yet one can see his entire person (dare one even suggest a soul?) laid bare in these few lines. It is only fitting that Richter sit the game out, having done his duty: the stage is set for Alucard (Is he his father's opposite? He goes in the other direction, but is made of the same stuff...) to discover his father, and himself. By the end of the game we see not only the purest of good, not only the most dastardly of evil, but the gentle, terrified man who sits precisely between them. And we see the horizon by which to judge him: the balance of all things.
Fall Games of 2008: sequels, rehashes and some innovation.
by alzabo
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2008Most Game publishers want to ship least one title between October and Christmas to capitalize on holiday shopping, this year there are more than 500 SKU's scheduled to be released. Because of this, game journalism is vital to the individual who wants to play several games and not waste his time and money on something thrown together to cash in on the seasonal shopping.
Unfortunately, game reviews can be hard to come by for games lately, either because of review embargos due to poor game quality or simple review backlog due to the sheer amount of new titles arriving this holiday season. Even if reviews are available, it's hard to discern their worth due to generally poor journalistic ethics in the field of games journalism. I'm not even going to touch on "New Games Journalism," I have enough problems with those people to write a 3 part article that must be written in phases to prevent my spite gland from going into shock.
So what is a gamer to do? Buy what the neck-beard clerk at Gamestop tells them to? Listen to some hipster web pundit's "well researched" opinion and get the "genre breaking(or defining) game of this console generation" that'll quickly be forgotten next year by the game's inevitable sequal?
No, you should do whatever the hell you want and buy the games that look interesting to you. But just in case you are bereft of an opinion or taste here are my choices for the fall.
Fallout 3: Be warned, this game is not perfect. No one is 100% happy with it and will describe their problems at great length, these probelms include: Poor voice acting, poor sound, game crashes, bad AI, graphical glitches, xbox live problems, DRM & install issues, et cetera.
None of these matter, if you ask them to describe 3 things they liked about the game and hold back no spoiler they invariably sprout a look of child-like glee and describe to you a wholly unique game experience rife with adventure, grim comedy and hyper-violence that truly lives up to the fallout brand. If you don't own this game already, you should drive to the store and buy it right now.
Valkyria Chronicles: Remember when Sega made RPGs? I don't, because I was too busy playing shooters and platformers. By the time I was into RPGs I had completely missed the boat on 8 and 16bit RPGs that were not made by Squaresoft.
This game was initially described to me as a mixture of FPS and Final Fantasy Tactics with a visual style akin to a pencil and watercolor painting. This excited me to no end, because I am pretty sick of Nomura's zippers and angst and how they've infected nearly the whole Japanese RPG genre.
I've yet to play more than a few minutes of this game due to a busy schedule, but it's going to get played next week after I finish moving.
Chrono Trigger DS: If you haven't played Chrono Trigger, you should go play it. That's all there is to say.
Persona 4: This is possibly the last good non-shovelware PS2 game that we'll see in the US. It contains all the excellent interface and localization of Last year's Persona 3, but has more than 1 song in it's dungeons (which are no longer randomized) and the plot is a murder mystery that is so engaging that you should avoid spoilers until you finish playing the game. Avoiding spoilers may be hard, as the damn game comes with an art book. Article Permalink
Enix's atrophied appendage twitchs once more
by alzabo
Posted on Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Chrono Trigger for Nintendo DS. I guess this is the sign we've been waiting for.
Back when Enix and Square merged many invisioned a future where both RPG power-houses would colaborate and create a slave army of basement dwelling teenagers that would be wholely incapable of doing anything more menacing than making people around them feel uncomfortable any time they open their maws to emit a horrible mixture of internet memes and feminine Japanese.
While the above nightmare has come to pass, it is not by Enix's hand. They actually merged with Square to endlessly rehash all of Square's old properties until they are completely unprofitable. While Enix's wish to grind Square into dust may seem cruel, at least they have found a way to keep Tetsuya Nomura's emaciated, zipper clad, emo charecter designs from infecting other games.
With Chrono Trigger on the horizon I suppose a wireless multiplayer version of Secret of Mana isn't far behind.
The only reasons I would consider replaying Chrono Trigger again is to name everyone in my party Lavos. Article Permalink
The End of Time
by Zen
Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007Bear in mind that I chose these to be approachable and watchable as much as impressive or interesting. There are some really fine runs out there of RPGs and such that I didn't list, but watching an hour of leveling up kind of offsets however interesting the planning is.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 43:51, Single-Segment
A game as winding and nonlinear as SotN has obvious potential for sequence breaking, but it took many a year before the glitches in this video were properly exploited. This run isn't the most spectacular, but the game gets dissected in some very cool ways.
Chrono Trigger in 3:34, 33 segments
The first run I saw of this game was around five and a half hours long, and very impressive. This beastly run on the Japanese version clocks in about two hours faster, and actually fights Lavos with the bucket way earlier than anyone thought possible.
Contra III Hard Mode in 17:00, Single-Segment
Maybe not the most interesting run, but in terms of sheer execution this is one of the most impressive.
Devil May Cry Dante Must Die! mode 100% in 1:35:34, 15 segments
The Devil May Cry games have been the subjects of some very fine speed runs, but this one is probably my favorite. Not only is it on the highest difficulty setting getting the highest rankings, but it was all done from a scratch save file and got enough orbs to get 100% along the way. This really wasn't intended by the developers, and if you check the comments you'll find out just how tight the timing was to accomplish it.
Mega Man X low% in 34:09, Single-Segment
Some speed runs are the clear product of a youth spent obsessing over a game, and in a way there could be no more poignant love letter to Mega Man X than this run. When I saw the first published run by Mike Uyama, I felt like the routes through the levels were so precise and practiced that you could almost picture him as a child playing through it over and over again. Subsequent competition and some cross-pollination with the TAS community has resulted in a much lower time and an extremely good run.
Mega Man X 100% in 39:41, Single-Segment
Not necessarily more impressive than the above run, but if you ever tried to get the Hadouken in this game it's wild and crazy to see it done in the context of a speed run, and the results are fun to watch, if a tad anticlimactic.
Metroid Prime any% in 1:03, 16 segments
SDA started out as a Quake speed run site way back in the day, and was somehow affiliated with PlanetQuake in ways I don't completely recall. The guy who ran the site was a Metroid buff, and decided to show his appreciation for the series by posting his speed run of Metroid Prime. I think the time was 1:37, and it went up with insanely detailed comments that clearly demonstrated the eye for lost seconds and possible improvements a good speed runner needs to have. That run was the seed for the entire site as it exists today, and this run is 34 minutes faster and impressive as fuck.
Metroid Prime 100% in 1:28, 21 segments
Was the any% run over too quick? Well, that's what 100% runs are for. Now you get to see how much of the game you can skip while still getting everything.
Metroid Prime low% in 1:18, 18 segments
And if you want to see the most insane sequence breaking there is, low% runs are your thing. If you've watched all these and you still aren't satisfied, I recommend watching their PAL equivalents. Several of the speed tricks used in these runs were made impossible in the PAL and Players' Choice versions of the game, but the low% is just as low and all the runs are almost as fast thanks to the ingenuity of everyone involved. This means completely new and more audacious tricks for us to watch.
Pikmin 9 days/50 pikmin, 8 segments
Some people liked to run Pikmin with the fewest Pikmin possible. Some people liked to finish it in as few in-game days as possible. It turned out that it was possible to do both in the same run. If you think that sounds like this speed run is carefully planned, tightly executed, and thoroughly refined, then you're absolutely correct.
Super Mario 64 70-star in 1:01:32, Single-Segment
I can remember the anticipation for this run approaching insanity. People love their Mario 64, and it happens to be a brilliant game to speed run. If you dig around you'll notice three different categories for the game, one of them being a much faster 16-star run. That run is mostly just about executing a particular glitch to cheat through the game, which is impressive in its own right but not nearly as entertaining as this stunningly-executed run on the game's intended path. This run's route planning, speed tricks, and sheer reckless abandon displayed in the final moments are the stuff of legend, and many people on the SDA forums consider this their favorite speed run ever.
Super Mario World 100% in 1:31:45, Single-Segment
SDA has very strict submission rules and a thorough verification process performed by some extremely talented people, so you can rest assured that any runs on the site were performed on a console without cheating. Even so, after watching this video people will head to the forums and insist that this run is a tool-assisted video that slipped through the cracks. This means you need to watch it.
Yoshi's Island 100% individual level runs see table
The first speed runs I saw of this game were fairly by-the-numbers, and I despaired at ever seeing truly clever runs full of speed tricks and daring maneuvers. Fortunately, trihex went absolutely fucking loco on this game's ass one level at a time, and then did it again. I hope he's not done, but there haven't been any new ones up in some time so it's safe to say the definitive runs are up right now. Downloading them all from the table is a bit unwieldy, but absolutely recommended. This is one of the absolute best experiences on SDA right now, in my opinion.
Super Metroid in 0:32, Single-Segment
Despite Super Metroid's primacy in the speed run field, its page was stagnant for a long time. Smokey had a run up that was I think around five segments, and clocked in somewhere around 35 or 36 minutes (depending on whether he used the then-controversial Murder Beam). Not too long ago this fine Japanese fellow completely ravaged that time, and in one segment. A lot of people say this run's overhyped, since it just applied modern speed run standards to an obsolete record, but any world-record run of this game deserves your attention.
Super Metroid 100% in 0:55, 7 segments
This is it: my favorite speed run of all time. It showcases numerous glitches in the game in ways that are intuitive and attractive, it bypasses major areas (and even one boss) while still getting 100%, and careful planning went into the navigation of each room. I own this on DVD. It may be one of the oldest runs on the site, but it's an absolute work of art.
A runner goes by the name TSA (The Silent Assassin) fancied himself God's gift to Zelda speed runs a while back and vowed to take every single Zelda record on the site. His credential was that he had the then-world record for Ocarina of Time, which I'll go into more below. He was basically well meaning, but his hubris was gargantuan and it started to spill over into some genuine lack of respect for existing runs. He was convinced he could take this record easily, but it ended up being a big project. To his enormous credit, he stuck with it and produced a very fine, very precise single-segment run. This is a really difficult game to run, but the results are great to watch.
Zelda: a Link to the Past in 1:39:47, Single-Segment
Back when most games were getting pretty straightforward treatments on SDA I remember being shocked to see a damage boost to bypass a small part of one of the dungeons in this game. By now things have progressed to full-on sequence breaks, and this remarkably... perfect game gets the thorough and loving thrashing it deserves.
Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 2:26:56, 25 segments
So the aforementioned TSA was the cock of the walk with his five-and-a-half-hour single-segment run of this game, and then he managed to break five hours. It was long the irritating banner raised by single-segment zealots who thought breaking a run up into segments was categorically and incontrovertibly inferior to the purity and intensity of the single-segment experience. The only pieces of evidence you need against this idiocy are the single-segment no-death 100% run of Super Mario Sunshine, which is totally impressive in theory but an absolute chore to watch, and this run which basically cuts TSA's record the fuck in half, bitch. It uses some save-warping, but the main time-saver is all the really precise tricks that no human being can perform when doing the whole game in one go. It's way, way, way more interesting to watch than any of TSA's runs of the game, and a must for anyone who wants to see the fruits of the most rabid persistence and ingenuity the speed running community has to offer.