Fanboys Anonymous - December 14th, 20001 - Arpad Korossy
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. I'm a rocker. I rock out. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Another day, another late update. By this point I've basically realized that no matter what I think my schedule is going to look like, I inevitably won't get to start on the column for the day until around 1 AM. Lucky for you though, it's the weekend, so after today rather than my incessent excuses and tardiness you'll get Drew's razor wit and timely updates back, and then Erin's back on Monday. I hope you at least found my columns to be a worthy diversion, as we are no longer able to provide refunds on lost time.
Not too many letters today, so I'm printing essentially everything I got. That also means printing some more Metal Gear Solid 2 letters, as otherwise we'd have an extremely short column.
So, let's get down to business then, shall we?
| Final Fantasy IV just isn't hardcore enough |
|
"I find it somewhat ironic that despite the old school reputation Final
Fantasy IV has built up for itself, the elements that seem to still stick out
are in fact the cinematic ones."
Absolutely. FFIV's cinematic elements were always the main reason it stood
out. (Seeing such an involved plot in a '91 video game was unheard of.)
That used to be my argument in the once-endless old-skewlers/newbie debates.
Ever felt like you were watching a movie instead of playing a game? Sounds
like FFIV, the only game in the FF series in which your party is
pre-determined at all times for the sake of the story, and the only FF game
to give the player no control whatsoever over the characters' development and
abilities. Holding up FFIV as an example of gameplay-over-cinematics is as
ridiculous as heradling Chrono Trigger as an untainted classic from before
the invasion of painstakingly-drawn flashy graphics, three-character parties,
and total lack of difficulty.
-Toma Levine
|
To me, this is just another indication of how nostalgia tends to warp people's perceptions of what a game was really like. Sakaguchi's goals with Final Fantasy IV really weren't that different from his goals with VII or VIII; he's always tried to tell stories in a cinematic fashion, and pushing a system's hardware to it's graphical limits has always been a characteristic of the series from the beginning. Unfortunately people remember games more for how they made them feel when they first played them rather than for their objective quality, so you have a lot of people cheating themselves out of enjoying very worthy games. Not very unlike those who won't allow themselves to enjoy certain games because they're made by "the enemy."
| Nintendo fanboys are bad |
|
When FF7 was officially announced as a PSX title I was incredibly angry. So much so that I was biased towards Square, I had just completed FF3 on the SNES at the time and thought of it as one of the best things since sliced bread. The fact that the (seemingly) most powerful upcoming gaming console wasn't going to be able to play the next game in the series was a huge letdown for my then incredibly biased heart. I thought , fine then PSX can have the crappy looking FF7 for all I care. My nintendo console will get a port anyway won't it? I wasn't just biased at the time but also stupid. I was very defensive of the cartridge format that my savior Nintendo had chosen as it wouldn't have load times. This all changed of course by april of 1997 as my N64 was allready collecting dust and pics of the japanese FF7 started leaking into the gaming magazines. I bought a PSX in the 3rd week of September to play FF7. I wasn't dissapointed.
Lesson learned? Bias is stupid.
|
Final Fantasy VII probably did more than any other game to destroy people's sense of system loyalty. I, too, was a Nintendo fanboy once, and I openly scoffed at the Saturn and PlayStation, much preferring my Nintendo 64. After all, I had hardly seen anything nearly as compelling as Mario 64 on any other system. Until Final Fanasy VII. Of course, that just sent me on a long, dark spiral into Final Fantasy fanboy-ism, but that's a story for another day.
| Sega fanboys are bad too |
|
I have plenty of stupid gaming choices in my past, most of which have to do
with an early-90's devotion to SEGA:
1) I spent way too much time at the weird neighbor-kid's house because he
had Sega Channel and a Sega CD.
2) I played Sewer Shark for hours on end until I finally beat the damn
thing.
3) I rented and played Night Trap. For more than 10 minutes.
4) I refused to even look at an SNES for fear of making my Genesis jealous.
This led to...
5) I didn't play FFII, FFIII, Chrono Trigger, any of the Marios, or Super
Metroid until long after the SNES retired.
6) I bought one of those Menacer things. I ended up returning it, but
still...
7) I had a 32-X, and pretended to like several of its games.
Since, I have become an open-minded Sony-whore who, if money allowed, would
own every system and every game for each...you could say I learned my
lesson, unless you count waking up at 5am to walk an hour to the nearest EB
to wait in a three-person line and be first in a podunk county in Central
New York to have a PS2 on launch day stupid...
Cheers ~ Pikafoo, pre-deleting signatures for your reading pleasure
|
As much as I feel sorry for Nintendo fanboys, having been one myself, I have to pity Sega fanatics even more. Sure, we missed out on Phantasy Star, Shining Force, and Sonic, but compared to playing Sewer Shark over Final Fantasy VI, that's really not a huge tragedy. Luckily, Sony's game library seems to have been too much for even the most die hard system loyalists to resist, and once you've been unfaithful once it's so easy to do it again.
| Threatening the lives of people's children gets results, apparently |
|
Arpad -
While I don't have an obsession with a company per se, I do have one with
Lunar SSSC.
SO I sent an email threatening all of the firstborn of WD unless they would
port it over to GBA.
2 weeks later Game Arts decided to do the job alone. SO I guess my one stupid
game moment is wasted....damn...
Peace,
Ray Stryker, feels so unloved....
|
You never know, maybe your threat so affected the Working Designs staff that they put the extra pressure on GameArts to bring it over. Threats of violence never seem to work so well for me, though. Last time I tried that I got a court order forbidding me from coming within ten miles of any Electronics Boutiques. That certainly makes commuting quite a hassle, let me tell you.
| Actually I don't even know what he's talking about |
|
I gave my soul to Rockstar. Does that count?
-Eightball, wasn't using it anyway
|
No.
| Time to push the "I believe" button *Metal Gear Solid 2 spoilers* |
|
That's actually a pretty good question about the
president. I don't remember him telling Raiden that (I
usually skip that scene now, lol). My guess would be
that maybe he was aware of the S3 project and knew he
simply didn't have the time to go into that. Maybe
that's why Ocelot came in to kill him, before he had a
chance to tell Raiden everything else he knew.
What I'd really like to know is why they put Liquid's
entire arm on Ocelot when he had only lost his hand in
MGS. And how Liquid could have "picked" Ocelot as a
host when he was dead when they took his arm to put it
on Ocelot to begin with.
And, about Meryl, yes, she is still alive but I don't
think that she and Snake are still together for
whatever reason. There is a codec conversation you can
have between Snake and Otacon where Snake mentions
that he's had enough of tomboys or something close to
that. Doesn't sound too lovey to me. That and the fact
that we can overhear Snake thinking about asking Emma
out later on.
Hey, I just wanted to tell you about why Ocelot has his arm like that.
OK, when he lost his arm in the Shadow Moses place, he needed a fresh arm, and Liquid had just died, so he took his arm, and he needed his flesh to be fresh too, so he just transplanted the whole arm instead of the hand. Here's where Liquid's control comes in....
Liquid nanomachines in his arm take over Ocelot's nervous system from time to time. So, I guess you could say it's Ocelot's little curse....
-Dark Vision
|
While the nanomachine theory is fairly interesting, and somewhat plausible, I find it rather doubful for a number of reasons. One, nanomachines eventually run out of power and die, as Snake mentions at the end of Metal Gear Solid, and two, there's no reason Liquid's nanomachines would contain his consciousness. I think it far more likely that it has to do with Liquid's geneticaly engineered DNA asserting itself over Ocelot's. As to how Liquid could have picked his host, or even expected his arm to get translpanted at all, your guess is as good as mine. Honestly though, I think when you're talking about someone else's limb trying to take control of your body (and even changing your vocal cords!), you've already crossed the line into complete fantasy anyhow. I really wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
| Solidus continues to gain bipartisan support *Metal Gear Solid 2 spoilers* |
|
I think I must be the only person in America who thought that Raiden was a
good idea. I mean, sure, he started off like a peon, but he was a great foil
for Snake - as has been pointed out - and, as you learn more of his
backstory, his (as it turns out, forced) wussiness becomes understandable,
and thus tolerable. And he honestly was't that wussy. I mean, the man takes
out half a dozen Metal Gear Rays singlehandedly! I really got to like him
over the course of the game. And all the crud he and "Rose" traded back and
forth throughout the game was obviously pure setup for those last few
conversations... you know "Jack, be-LIE-ve me..." that kind of creepy stuff.
My only regret regarding MGS2 is as follows: upon reaching the final battle,
my comrade, who was doing the playing, said "There's got to be a REASON for
the 'block' button." We were hoping that there'd be some way to NOT kill
Solidus, because a) Solidus was a badass and was sort of on the right side
at that point, and b) Raiden being able to reconcile his past with Solidus
without killing him would have been a clear victory over the Patriots and
their vile machinations. And I wanted Raiden to win. And he didn't. Oh well.
|
I agree, Raiden definitely did become more and more respectable as the game dragged on, and I think that was somewhat intentional. After all, he starts off as a totally green roookie with nothing but VR training to back him up, and has to learn on the job from perhaps the greatest soldier who ever lived. And while I can't say I want him back for the next game, he's certainly more than tolerable.
As for Solidus, I sympathized with him as well, but in a sense he was being manipulated into the final confrontation with Raiden by the Patriots as well. Given the meticulous level of planning the Patriots put into the whole test, I think that they knew Solidus would want to fight Raiden in the end. The battle was also cathartic for Raiden as it finally gave him a chance to confront his past and the person who had made him into what he thought he was, and give him a chance to truly start a new life with Rose.
Closing comments:
Well, today's column was a little more than underwhelming, but I have to work with what I get. I suppose I'll have to work on my topic selection; several polls and a number of focus groups assured me that today's would be a winner, but I guess not. Not that I mind exceedingly much, it means I get to go to bed earlier.
Drew will be back to do DA tomorrow, so make sure you bury him in letters. Drew just finished playing Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland, so let him know what you thought of it if you've played it, or tell him your thoughts on the rest of the series or where you want it to go from here. And try not to send him any Metal Gear Solid 2 spoilers, as I don't think he's finished it yet.
- Arpad Korossy, really sleepy.
|
|
|
|
