bluemechaoxide

After typing out this tl;dr post, my own comment would be: too many parentheses.

Ninja Gaiden for the XBox 360. The original Ninja Gaiden. The dam level in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles. Battletoads. What do they have in common?

They’ve been popularly regarded as hard or mind-numbingly difficult to beat. Downright impossible, even.

I’ve seen so many rants about how difficult these and other games are. How they’re too focused on getting every single detail right just to continue, how they’re too hardcore for the midcore gamer, how high on weed/acid/sugar the people who made the level must’ve been when they made the level. Once you’ve died for the one hundredth time it almost becomes acceptable for you to chuck your controller at the floor/into the TV, swear loudly or to destroy the CD/cartridge with a hammer (kids, don’t try this at home). It’s enough to make you think whether these games were meant to be finished at all, or whether they’re just sadistic pieces of entertainment for the the creators, made to frustrate you to no end. It’s enough to make you feel that the whole universe is conspiring against you.

Some people actually feel this way. And as one who’s tried all four examples stated above, let me tell you: they are hard. They literally give no quarter; they give no mercy.

Ninja Gaiden on the 360 from what I’ve played of it required pinpoint-precision timing to advance. You had to strike at the exact moment of your enemies’ weakness to really deal a significant amount of damage to them, and this window of opportunity seemed to be very, very small indeed.

Ninja Gaiden for the NES required a mastery of the layout of the level and the enemies as well as their patterns, because otherwise birds just conveniently passing by at the exact time of your jump would stop you dead in the air, and consequently make you fall to one of your 3 (by default) deaths.

The dam level in the original TMNT game was a real bitch. A big, hairy, monstrous, electric and explosive bitch. If I remember correctly, you had two minutes to defuse a number of bombs placed underwater by Bebop, Rocksteady, Shredder or Krang (not sure - but it had to be one of them, or at least the dozens and dozens of unnamed Foot Soldiers they had). Things were complicated by electric barriers (underwater! I wonder why you never died just diving into the water), killer seaweeds (i.e., one touch = dead turtle) and unforgiving swimming mechanics.

Just the sight of this picture brings back horrid memories.

As for Battletoads, the first two levels would lull you into a false sense of domination over this game, only to have it ripped from your calloused hands later by the speeder level. That stage was the end of the line for me.

Regardless, what most people seem to forget is how similarly difficult it is to make a difficult game. Think about it: developers have to have some sort of high-level plan to all this frustating gameplay, or else it’d just end up as unplayable crap without any real justifiable point to it. They can’t just crank up the number of baddies, lengthen the gaps between platforms and/or decrease player reaction time windows for the sake of increasing challenge or replay value and call it a day. A game’s difficulty has to be measured and it has to be tested or else no one would buy it (unless of course, you don’t blurt this fact out to the media before selling your game). There has to be an army of quality assurance people chained to consoles somewhere mashing away at buttons and joysticks just to make sure that the game is hard, but is possible to finish eventually. Someone has to have had successfully completed it without resorting to cheats or save state hacking before it gets released. Or at least, that’s what my common sense was tingling for.

And that’s hard. If you’re a person with only two eyes, two ears, two hands and ten fingers (no offense to our comrades with lesser faculties) and you found it hard, then a person testing it, even with his or her increased level of experience playing hard games undoubtedly will also (or at least, it’ll prove to be somewhat challenging). And they have a deadline for finishing this. The Doomsday clock called a project milestone schedule hangs ominously above their heads.

So, game testers, we salute you. For playing games all the time until you puke; for braving the hazards of cataracts, carpal tunnel syndrome, nintendonitis, and being overweight due to a massive intake of Cheetos and cola while sitting down all day; for making sure that we’re not wasting our time playing these curiously hard curiousities; for making sure that at least someone will be able to reach the goddamned end of Battletoads, and in record time no less. No, seriously.

I guess what most people don’t like about really difficult games is that they seem impossible, that they appear to hold no rewards for players’ efforts.

In that case, I guess the only real advice is to stop sucking so much, or don’t play at all. Or just bitch about it into your personal webspace or something. No one’s forcing you to finish that speeder level dude, you’re bringing that suffering upon yourself.

Of course, if you’re talking about the feeling of accomplishment… wait, what accomplishment? That cake is a lie!

I’ve recently been playing Crush, a PSP game centered around the fact that you can crush (aha) the playing field from three dimensions to two. Yes, again, it’s like Fez, although many would say that the latter actually got the idea from this game. Also, again similar to Echochrome in terms of dynamic playing field changes which are initiated by the player.

The plot is pretty cool, you play as this insomniac out in search of a cure for his problem. But what’s more interesting to note is the kind of world-shaping ability the game gives you. It lends it (and consequently, games in general) a lot of possibilities, wouldn’t you say so? It’s certainly an intriguing idea, and one that’s proven to be successful over time through a myriad of first-person shooters and the level editors they come with.

Also, the music is awesome.

Update: Apparently, they really planned to have a level editor with the game but didn’t have enough time to include it in the package. Maybe in the sequel.

Sorry, couldn’t help the title. In any case, prepare for a wall of text.

What can I say about this movie? It rocked, obviously - $66.4 million dollars on its opening day, to be exact. But you know this already.

I think that this is one of the best movies of all time, but only in the same way that movies made in the 1920s were the best movies of all time, and then were later surpassed as time moved on. But I digress.

I’m not saying it’ll stand forever as a beacon of how films should be made, but it does right now. And that’s plenty good enough.

In opposition to Iron Man which was about the blockbuster facet of a superhero movie, this Batman series is about the superhero psychology. It’s like my Psych class in first year college all over again, only this time it’s down a darker path, it’s much more enjoyable and I’m eating popcorn. There’s a reason for the title of Dark Knight, the movie really is on almost all of its elements - plot and setting, cinematography, dialogue, characters.

Christian Bale was solid, just like he was in the first film. Always brooding, weary with responsibilities, yet a starkly different person when going out as Bruce Wayne. I realized the raspy voice which I didn’t like in the beginning was a necessary part of the Batman character, since this version banked heavily on the fact that he could intimidate anyone greatly. This Batman had to be scary. He had to bark at his opponents, and when needed, bite.

But as everyone says, this was Heath Ledger’s movie. Of course his recent death increased the publicity of this whole thing on a massive scale, but even if he was still alive now I would say that this was one of his best performances ever. In fact, I would go on to say that this was the best Joker, ever. This character was the reason why some people are afraid of clowns. You could imagine that he could exist in real life alongside all of us, and that’s scary for the audience. Everything about him was there, and it all backed his presence up to a frightening degree - the disheveled hair, the running makeup, the scars, the mismatched clothes, the tongue mannerisms, the pinched voice, the insane laughter, and the real conclusions about the world as we know it.

I don’t get why some people say Jack Nicholson would have done a great job - to me his Joker was just not twisted enough for this film. While Nicholson was all comic-booky in the original Batman, Heath Ledger’s Joker was real. With Nicholson’s Joker, it was a spectacle. With Ledger’s Joker, it was… how would I put it? An experience. He pulled it off so, so, so well. He was that good. Just, wow. I have no more words.

From reading just up until here people might think I’m just giving so much praise to this guy because of the whole media buzz thing, but by going on further you’ll realize I’m really affected by how well they’ve handled this series. As a guilty fanboy of Batman, I want everything surrounding the character to be great - even his Hollywood movies.

What I think was overshadowed by the giant mystery of the above actor’s death was Aaron Eckhart’s performance. He was really good as Harvey Dent, and you could feel the transition from himself to Two-Face even before the physical transformation took place. The anger was there, it was building up. I liked how they managed to make him a sort of unwilling hero even with all of his anti-crime conviction (I believe in Harvey Dent!), right up until the point where he became the villain. Genius.

This movie, like my former teacher said, had the layers which all successful movies have. There was so much meat to the story, so many themes that were explored - justice, duty, the almighty gray area in morality - and I think each one was given enough exposition without it being too contrived. Definitely a well-done script.

The score was fantastic too. It really heightened the tension even more, especially in the scenes where a character was about to make a particularly big decision.

With Heath Ledger’s recent immortalization by the movie and his subsequent death, will there be any actor brave enough to take on this performance of a lifetime? That actor would have a LOT of people to convince. Also, I don’t see lots possibilities to go on from here story-wise; with Nolan’s tendency to focus on things that could happen, that could be reality (meaning no super/subhumans or overly-sci fi stuff), you wave goodbye to the likes of Penguin and Clayface. Bane’s always a possibility, but I like Zsasz more as a villain myself, he’ll seem to fit better with the overall direction and tone of the series. But then you can argue those aren’t mainstream characters, and it might not make sense for a big production studio to do, blah blah blah…

I really find it hard to think of any way in which Christopher Nolan can outdo himself with another one. Actually, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind if this did turn out to be the last Nolan Batman film - it’s shaping up to be so legendary, waaaay beyond the levels of other movies like 300 and Iron Man, what with the events surrounding it as well as its own merits, that anything following it could greatly pale in comparison.

Superb film. It not only outdid its precursor but itself as well. Watch it, period.

One of my friends, the manager of the Ateneo Rowing Team, showed this to me. It brought back a lot of good memories.

If you’re interested in signing up, feel free to contact the current captain through the details presented. The Ateneo Rowing Team takes anyone from any level, from beginner to experienced.