Hey, long time no see. As if I'd see anyone around here anyway. I really should be doing other things right now, but I rambled this out a few days ago and felt like procrastinating, so it's going here.
~
I frequently use the description that a show/book/game ((from here on I'll reference a "show")) "knows [exactly] what it is." It's a quality that's difficult to define as the it involves first, the circular notion that something "is what it is." But it is pretty recognizable in my book, with a little training. Generally, this kind of show holds a quality of being cliche and/or shameless, but does so in just the right way. It's cliches then become a reason-- if not the main reason-- for liking it. It also may exhibit some genre-savvy and, in more comedic moments, even reference itself as such in a 4th-wall breaking way. This kind of show was created, not to be profound or original or push boundaries, but to be very good at "what it is." It ends up excelling at being a confident genre piece and tends to leave a bit of room for thought by the time it's finished. In a sense, if the show were personified, it would have very high, but modest, self-confidence and would strut the world being itself for all it's worth-- and possibly more.
More often than not, this statement has more to do with characters and writing than production quality, but it shows all the more if the production is good, too. Generally if a show "knows what it is," it's a sign that the production staff knows "what it is" and have consequently put forth the effort to make it the best "what it is" that the show can be.
I think it was first used in my circle ((I think I got the description from one of my friends)) to describe Devil May Cry (game/anime/manga/novel/etc., 2001-present) and Star Driver (anime, 2010). It applies to things like Highlander (movie/TV/anime, 1986-2007), Firefly (TV, 2002-2003), and Slayers (anime, 1995-2009). I've most recently used it on Bloody Monday (J-Drama, 2008, 2010). I think it can also apply to Mackerel Run (K-Drama, 2007) on the writing and production end, but from the politics surrounding the show and some signs that it may have been prematurely cut, it seems that the marketing and producers themselves weren't quite sure what they were dealing with. Mackerel Run is also an example that something doesn't have to be flashy or expensive to show it's colors.
Faith (a.k.a. "신의" [Shinui] or "The Great Doctor," K-Drama, 2012) could almost be described this way, however, as a bit of a counter example. Sometimes it knew, and sometimes it didn't. Overall, it either didn't really know that it was "what it was" or didn't want to be "what it was," and lost steam. "What it was," was a video game/anime-like piece of period fantasy; what it wanted to be, was a time traveling love story. One of the reviews on MyDramaList.com states, rather accurately, that Faith "doesn't seem to know how good it is." It could have been an awesome, super-powered fantasy with political intrigue. It didn't quite seem to have the courage for that. In other words, the show didn't want to be itself. Don't get me wrong; it was still pretty good. But often the most disappointing things are those that were good enough that you know they could have been better. I loved it anyway; if not for what it was, what it could have been... and Choi Young.
In my book, a show "knowing what it is" is a good-- nay, EXCELLENT quality. It is a point of high praise. However, these pieces tend to have cult followings, and may be very prone to developing anti-fans, probably most often because of their genre specificity and cliche-ness. I understand this type of show is not for everyone, but more often than not, it's what I look for these days.
Showing posts with label gaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gaming. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Kratos ga Taosenai... Just kidding, We kicked his a--
about the title: "Kratos ga Taosenai" is "I can't beat Kratos" in Japanese. It's a reference to a song called "Airman ga Taosenai" meaning, similarly, "I can't beat Airman," which is lamenting about a particularly difficult boss in the Megaman series. There is also an English rendition called "I can't Defeat Air-Man."
Kratos Aurion. Possibly one of the most EPIC characters in video game history. I mean that both literally and figuratively. He is both awesome, and belongs to a class of character highly consistent with those in epic stories. But then, when the official tagline of the game is "The epic battle for survival" you SHOULD follow an epic structure; Tales of Symphonia has NO problem with this.
Those familiar with the game, aka, having played it, you will be able to understand the significance of this post's title instantly. For those who are less familiar or have no clue what I'm talking about, yes Kratos is a party member*. No, that does not mean you won't have multiple opportunities to fight him. As an older, more experienced adventurer, he quickly becomes a mentor figure, and perhaps even more depending on how you play and how you interpret his character. At the same time, as a mercenary and the only other swordsman the main character has met, he is easily identified as a possible rival.
At multiple points in the game, you have the option, and often obligation, to fight him. Very few of these fights are you expected, or even REQUIRED to win. That's how bada__ this character is as a boss. Strong melee fighter, ridiculously fast at casting spells, and nearly impossible to interrupt. Generally your best tactic is to split up the party so he doesn't kill you all in one go, and try to hang on for dear life long enough to see some of his cooler moves before he slaughters you.
One of his more threatening moves, the bane of my existence, is a spell called "grave" (an earth spell summoning forth spikes of rocky death, not unlike FMA). It was a particular favorite of the AI that one day I had to fight him, like, six times. Go into overlimit so I can't interrupt him, cast "grave," knock me down with said "grave," and start casting "grave" again while I struggle to get up. I HATE grave. Plus, it makes me sick to think that he's using it to kill me before I can use it to kill things playing AS him.
However, as difficult as it is, Kratos IS beatable EVERY time you fight him. Last night my friend and I, on a FIRST playthrough might I add, actually defeated him. It wasn't the first time we fought that battle, but we went back a few times. Once or twice because we didn't think we'd put up a good enough fight, and once for some serious sidequesting. By the the time we got back from tracking down long lost parents, visiting graves (real graves, not the spell), helping children find their mothers, and saving princesses, we finally settled down to fight this guy, well and prepared.
We decided our goal was to get off one good Unison Attack, one which we'd built to use an attack we usually used him for (Cross Thrust, for those who know the game), and my own goal was to get off as many GRAVES as possible with our other characters capable of the spell. If we were gonna get our a__es handed to us, we were going to put up the most ironic fight ever. After all, our most commonly used characters are Lloyd (mostly her character) and Zelos (mostly mine), and my friend is a role-player (she actually went to an in-game amusement park simply to "cheer up" one of our characters she felt was depressed by recent events). Lloyd would go down fighting and Zelos only fights in style, so that's how we were gonna do it.
Being the SPEED DEMON on the field he is, Lloyd managed to reach Kratos and perform our first Unison Attack fast enough to cut off Kratos's most powerful spell in the middle. It turns out, the AI opens this battle with that spell and only uses it once. This is a good thing because that spell would have taken half our hit points within, literally the first 5 seconds of the battle. After a bit of walloping on Lloyd's part, I got off Zelos's grave spell; we were pretty happy. Though we kept taking a beating, we continued to do well.
After a bit we started using items and even life bottles (the equivalent of phoenix down). As I went to the item menu one more time, I asked her, "how much are we trying to win this?" It was then that we decided we had used too many items to not go all the way, so I pulled out our secret weapon, "all-divide."
All-divide is a classic Tales boss item. You only get about 2 or 3 a game, so use them well. They cut damage done to anything on the field in half, friend or foe. Why would you do that? Healing isn't halved, only damage. This version of Boss Kratos doesn't heal himself, but we can. We have four damage-dealing characters and he has one. Essentially, if you're going to be whittling away at his 20,000+ hit points, make sure you can survive long enough to do it.
Before long, we were doing well enough to use a magic lens and see he had about 2500 HP left. This fight was in the bag. Over all, we got off about 3 Unison Attacks and a fair number of graves. Oh yeah, and kicked his a__.
The four-and-a-half minute boss fight yielded, literally, over 9000 EXP (XP, experience points), a few choice items, including a level 4 ExSphere, and +2.72 grade. Three of the four party members on the field leveled up. Oh, and Kratos's data in our bestiary. Again, for those unfamiliar with the game, those are good spoils. Plus, the bragging rights of having defeated Kratos as relatively inexperienced gamers on a first playthrough**, that is, no "new game plus" where most people pull these kind of stunts.
No, the fight isn't as hard as your first one with him, or some other battles, but we still feel pretty good about it. And, since my friend in a writer and a RP gamer, she even decided our defeat of Kratos filled in a few subsequent plot holes. Overall, not a bad night.
~singing~I can't defeat… Kra-atos. No matter how I try to dodge of his lightning he just graves me again. Every time. Somehow, every time I lose. ~hums "I Can't Defeat Air-Man"~
*For those even less familiar with video games, that means he is a playable character. He's in your party. You get to play as him. From a literary standpoint, "party members" would be considered a protagonists or allies.
**I say "a first playthrough" rather than "our first playthrough" because I have played the game before, but I don't have the data, so i don't have "new game plus" for it.
Kratos Aurion. Possibly one of the most EPIC characters in video game history. I mean that both literally and figuratively. He is both awesome, and belongs to a class of character highly consistent with those in epic stories. But then, when the official tagline of the game is "The epic battle for survival" you SHOULD follow an epic structure; Tales of Symphonia has NO problem with this.
Those familiar with the game, aka, having played it, you will be able to understand the significance of this post's title instantly. For those who are less familiar or have no clue what I'm talking about, yes Kratos is a party member*. No, that does not mean you won't have multiple opportunities to fight him. As an older, more experienced adventurer, he quickly becomes a mentor figure, and perhaps even more depending on how you play and how you interpret his character. At the same time, as a mercenary and the only other swordsman the main character has met, he is easily identified as a possible rival.
At multiple points in the game, you have the option, and often obligation, to fight him. Very few of these fights are you expected, or even REQUIRED to win. That's how bada__ this character is as a boss. Strong melee fighter, ridiculously fast at casting spells, and nearly impossible to interrupt. Generally your best tactic is to split up the party so he doesn't kill you all in one go, and try to hang on for dear life long enough to see some of his cooler moves before he slaughters you.
One of his more threatening moves, the bane of my existence, is a spell called "grave" (an earth spell summoning forth spikes of rocky death, not unlike FMA). It was a particular favorite of the AI that one day I had to fight him, like, six times. Go into overlimit so I can't interrupt him, cast "grave," knock me down with said "grave," and start casting "grave" again while I struggle to get up. I HATE grave. Plus, it makes me sick to think that he's using it to kill me before I can use it to kill things playing AS him.
However, as difficult as it is, Kratos IS beatable EVERY time you fight him. Last night my friend and I, on a FIRST playthrough might I add, actually defeated him. It wasn't the first time we fought that battle, but we went back a few times. Once or twice because we didn't think we'd put up a good enough fight, and once for some serious sidequesting. By the the time we got back from tracking down long lost parents, visiting graves (real graves, not the spell), helping children find their mothers, and saving princesses, we finally settled down to fight this guy, well and prepared.
We decided our goal was to get off one good Unison Attack, one which we'd built to use an attack we usually used him for (Cross Thrust, for those who know the game), and my own goal was to get off as many GRAVES as possible with our other characters capable of the spell. If we were gonna get our a__es handed to us, we were going to put up the most ironic fight ever. After all, our most commonly used characters are Lloyd (mostly her character) and Zelos (mostly mine), and my friend is a role-player (she actually went to an in-game amusement park simply to "cheer up" one of our characters she felt was depressed by recent events). Lloyd would go down fighting and Zelos only fights in style, so that's how we were gonna do it.
Being the SPEED DEMON on the field he is, Lloyd managed to reach Kratos and perform our first Unison Attack fast enough to cut off Kratos's most powerful spell in the middle. It turns out, the AI opens this battle with that spell and only uses it once. This is a good thing because that spell would have taken half our hit points within, literally the first 5 seconds of the battle. After a bit of walloping on Lloyd's part, I got off Zelos's grave spell; we were pretty happy. Though we kept taking a beating, we continued to do well.
After a bit we started using items and even life bottles (the equivalent of phoenix down). As I went to the item menu one more time, I asked her, "how much are we trying to win this?" It was then that we decided we had used too many items to not go all the way, so I pulled out our secret weapon, "all-divide."
All-divide is a classic Tales boss item. You only get about 2 or 3 a game, so use them well. They cut damage done to anything on the field in half, friend or foe. Why would you do that? Healing isn't halved, only damage. This version of Boss Kratos doesn't heal himself, but we can. We have four damage-dealing characters and he has one. Essentially, if you're going to be whittling away at his 20,000+ hit points, make sure you can survive long enough to do it.
Before long, we were doing well enough to use a magic lens and see he had about 2500 HP left. This fight was in the bag. Over all, we got off about 3 Unison Attacks and a fair number of graves. Oh yeah, and kicked his a__.
The four-and-a-half minute boss fight yielded, literally, over 9000 EXP (XP, experience points), a few choice items, including a level 4 ExSphere, and +2.72 grade. Three of the four party members on the field leveled up. Oh, and Kratos's data in our bestiary. Again, for those unfamiliar with the game, those are good spoils. Plus, the bragging rights of having defeated Kratos as relatively inexperienced gamers on a first playthrough**, that is, no "new game plus" where most people pull these kind of stunts.
No, the fight isn't as hard as your first one with him, or some other battles, but we still feel pretty good about it. And, since my friend in a writer and a RP gamer, she even decided our defeat of Kratos filled in a few subsequent plot holes. Overall, not a bad night.
~singing~I can't defeat… Kra-atos. No matter how I try to dodge of his lightning he just graves me again. Every time. Somehow, every time I lose. ~hums "I Can't Defeat Air-Man"~
*For those even less familiar with video games, that means he is a playable character. He's in your party. You get to play as him. From a literary standpoint, "party members" would be considered a protagonists or allies.
**I say "a first playthrough" rather than "our first playthrough" because I have played the game before, but I don't have the data, so i don't have "new game plus" for it.
Monday, November 8, 2010
"I cast Magic Missile!"
11/8/2010
Just got back from Nano Con a small game con run by South Dakota State University's game club. My friend's dad runs the game club, so of course is responsible for the con. That's why all this is coming up late. I might just be drabbling for a while, but I WILL stay on top of my "one per day" thing.
I was introduced to D&D 4th ed. Previously, I'd only played a little 3.5. I really took to 4th though. It was fun. I have this piddly little regenerated Eladrin Wizard that I feel kicked some serious a--. I've found that I don't really like building characters (yet anyway, takes too long if you don't know what you're doing), but I can definitely have fun with a random character or a pregenerated one. I especially like picking up the Character Builder, entering class and race, and hitting "generate character."
Wizards (well, magical (or "arcane, if you prefer) classes in general) used to be really hard to play, but it seems the new system has made fighters (martial classes) more like wizards to play and wizards more like fighters in usefulness.
I enjoyed it immensely, but I refuse to ever use the words "magic missile" again; I'm coming up with a much cooler name for that attack if it's the last thing I do. Can't we just change a wizard's "unarmed attack" to the effect of magic missile. 'Cause that's basically what I did. But i also learned some intricacies of the character's other abilities and that's when it really started to get fun. But I learned that even a simple strategy can be really effective.
It was a good weekend.
Just got back from Nano Con a small game con run by South Dakota State University's game club. My friend's dad runs the game club, so of course is responsible for the con. That's why all this is coming up late. I might just be drabbling for a while, but I WILL stay on top of my "one per day" thing.
I was introduced to D&D 4th ed. Previously, I'd only played a little 3.5. I really took to 4th though. It was fun. I have this piddly little regenerated Eladrin Wizard that I feel kicked some serious a--. I've found that I don't really like building characters (yet anyway, takes too long if you don't know what you're doing), but I can definitely have fun with a random character or a pregenerated one. I especially like picking up the Character Builder, entering class and race, and hitting "generate character."
Wizards (well, magical (or "arcane, if you prefer) classes in general) used to be really hard to play, but it seems the new system has made fighters (martial classes) more like wizards to play and wizards more like fighters in usefulness.
I enjoyed it immensely, but I refuse to ever use the words "magic missile" again; I'm coming up with a much cooler name for that attack if it's the last thing I do. Can't we just change a wizard's "unarmed attack" to the effect of magic missile. 'Cause that's basically what I did. But i also learned some intricacies of the character's other abilities and that's when it really started to get fun. But I learned that even a simple strategy can be really effective.
It was a good weekend.
Friday, November 5, 2010
F---ing Flux!
11/5/2010
posted 11/8/2010
My friends took me to Nano Con, a small game con in South Dakota. The first night, they pulled out Flux, possibly one of the most frustrating card games on the face of the planet. The entire game is dedicated to systematically changing the rules and messing with your hand. I'd never played before, and I quickly realized there was no call for strategy; it simply does no good. Like many people at the table seemed to already know, the game is much more enjoyable when you just give up on trying to win and simply attempt to f--- with the rules in the most ridiculous and/or mutually frustrating way possible. A little masochism and a LOT of schadenfreude-- that's what takes to make this game some of the most companionable misery one can find.
posted 11/8/2010
My friends took me to Nano Con, a small game con in South Dakota. The first night, they pulled out Flux, possibly one of the most frustrating card games on the face of the planet. The entire game is dedicated to systematically changing the rules and messing with your hand. I'd never played before, and I quickly realized there was no call for strategy; it simply does no good. Like many people at the table seemed to already know, the game is much more enjoyable when you just give up on trying to win and simply attempt to f--- with the rules in the most ridiculous and/or mutually frustrating way possible. A little masochism and a LOT of schadenfreude-- that's what takes to make this game some of the most companionable misery one can find.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
