Nerd Mentality

Ramblings of a disappointed hockey fan

Posted November 19th 2006 by Jordan Mammo.

The Red Wings just lost, so I am making a blog post.

It's been a while, hasn‘t it? I hear some new consoles are being released soon. Still no sign of any Wii kiosks around here (which I find shocking), but the local Target had it's Playstation 3 display up. The employee in the electronics department seemed to be very excited about it, or maybe just crazy, as he'd unlock the display case and pressure anyone he saw looking around to lift the system. "It's like ten pounds!" he said to me as I watched my friend play the MotorStorm demo (which, by the way, looked pretty nice), then continued by saying "You've gotta lift it" until I wiped the perplexed look off of my face.

I lifted it. It's pretty heavy.

Meanwhile, the Wii is causing a ruckus on the internet thanks to a little game called Twilight Princess. Apparently, IGN only gave it a 9.5 and some guy at GameSpot trashed it with an 8.8. What a tool, right?

I'm still not sure what to expect from Twilight Princess myself. All I know is that I won't have to deal with those new-fangled Wii controls. Sure, there are some titles coming out for the Wii that I'd like to play, but nothing really leaps out at me except Zelda, and that's coming out for the GameCube anyway. I'm glad to hear the new controls seem to work pretty well, but paying fifty bucks for Twilight Princess is a whole hell of a lot cheaper than paying three hundred.

Plus I don't have three hundred bucks to spend on the system anyway, so I guess none of that other stuff really matters.

In the meantime, I've been playing through the original Legend of Zelda and Contact for the Nintendo DS. Here's something about each that I feel like mentioning:

Zelda: It makes you feel awesome, then kicks you in the junk.

This game is brutal. It's almost hard to imagine how modern adventure games turned into Okami after they started out with this. I've put twenty hours into Okami, have never died, and have been rewarded every step of the way for the tiniest of achievements with "treasures" such as items like Holy Bone S, furniture, tons of money, wooden bears, beads, more items, praise, and other things that I never even use, much less treasure. Do I really need to be given some kind of trinket for every step of exploration I take? Shouldn't I want to run around and bring the world back to life because it feels good and looks nice, not because I'm going to earn something I don't even care about?

With Zelda, I've made it through five dungeons and have died about forty times so far, lost forty rupees at once at least three times, and have been slammed with door repair charges way more than I'd like to be. I'm not saying games need to be like this; I just think it's an interesting difference. It's very hard to find secrets and new areas in Zelda, and when I do I feel awesome. Yet sometimes this game teases you so badly when you finally blow open that wall, feel cool about finding something hidden away, and go inside just to find a stupid old man grinning about the door you just blew open needing to be repaired, taking all your money, and running the hell away, never to return. And it's not like rupees are totally worthless in this game; they're hard to come by, not to mention that they also act as your arrows. I can't imagine many games today taking worthwhile things away from you when you go exploring.

I kind of like it, though.

Contact: It's a wild world!

So I've put a few hours into Contact, and it's pretty good. My roommate says it's "only" like 15-20 hours long. If so, I can easily see this game being up there with Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga when it comes to RPG's I've actually enjoyed playing through to the end. I really hate the idea that RPG's need to be at least 40 hours or some crazy-high number like that, and I hate whichever title that started this trend. Just as bad is the notion that you've got to play twenty hours or so before the game picks up or before you decide it's not worth your time. That's total bullshit. These games have neither the gameplay nor the character development to justify the sorts of lengths we‘re seeing. I wish more of them would just do what they want to do and get it over with. They'd be much better off for it, in my opinion.

Anyway, all I really wanted to say was that I thought it was cool how enemies in the wilderness would attack other animals, and vice-versa. I was running through the forest in one area when I heard the sound of someone getting hit. Obviously I wasn't getting hurt, so it had to be something else. And that's when I noticed a blob enemy trying to kill a wild goat. I leaped into action and killed the blob. Then I killed the goat.

As you can see, Terry himself can attack and kill a lot of things. Enemies (of course), innocent animals, even innocent villagers! He can walk by wildlife, slaughter ‘em, and take their meat so he can cook it and stock up on recovery items. When I discovered this I went on a rampage, stocking up on wild game and various meats and cooking food. Then later on in this area, I was attacked by a man with a gun. I was starting to get low on health too, when, suddenly, a cow ran towards me and actually started helping me attack this enemy! I was shocked!

Eventually, we defeated this gun-toting maniac. Then I killed the cow and took its innards for sustenance.

Steven wasn't kidding when he said this was a lonely game.

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