"See, told ya so."

One of the things that kept me in gaming as I grew older was the way gaming allowed me to virtually experience things that I wouldn't get to otherwise experience. Medal of Honor: Frontline(the PS2 version of Allied Assault) is a game that made me appreciate WWII veterans more. While I have seen Saving Private Ryan, the movie didn't allow me to actually experience the battle as MoH did. That is a main point that I fully agree with James Gee on. Games in my opinion, can help people know what it's like to be in another person's shoes without having the major negative impacts that many critics claim they have.

"Who ARE these People?

One of the great things about the internet to me is the community. People with all sorts of interests and whatnot can get together regardless of location and be able to communicate. MUDs are only one of those methods. There are also online message boards, chatrooms, and video games. However, one of the problems of this is that quite often, people tend to get caught up in their online personas and tend to lose themselves. Most of the time, when people lose themselves, it is socially harmless. Occasionally, though, there are those who like to break the rules when they lose themselves. Mainly, it's the medium's rules, but when there aren't any written rules, it is the unwritten rules that are broken.

I believe that the only reason a lot of these personas seem to come out in video games is because gaming is one of the few mediums that allows you to actually become a different person.

"Next up on the news...

In Prince of Persia, I have found the secret copy of the original PoP shareware game, so I decided to give it a go since the last time I played it(over 10yrs ago). I forgot how aggravating that game was. The movement was incredibly sluggish and laking, which was the main thing I remembered that annoyed me about it.

On the other hand, just to prove my last point more, I reached a bridge on the top of the maharajah's castle only to get taken on a trip down memory lane when I played ICO a few years ago. Here are a few photos for comparison.


Outdoors
ICO:

PoP:

Indoors
ICO:
PoP:

"I'm the KING!!"

One thing I noticed after a while of playing Prince of Persia - it reminds me a lot of Tomb Raider & ICO with a touch of Dark Cloud/Sonic the Hedgehog & The Matrix. ICO in that the plot seems to be somewhat vague and the setting also seems to be in one very large main venue. Tomb Raider in that the puzzles are somewhat similar...however, ICO's puzzles are just as tricky. The narration style is also like that of the Tomb Raider series. In terms of wht that hero is doing, however, that's where the other games come in. In Dark Cloud, the hero is trying to save the world from a wizard who basically tries to empty the world of all life - not necessarily kill everyone, just make the planet devoid of it. In Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic is saving his friends from being turned into robots. To me, it almost seems like if you combine those together, and replace "robots" with "Sand-of-Time Zombies," and then give the hero the acrobatics of Neo in Path of Neo, and it seems like the basic premise. I'm not complaining, though - since PoP has that ICO sense of complete continuity(there are save points, but no true "levels/stages") it makes it very hard to put down the controller.

"It's bout Bloody Time...What Do They Plan On Doing?"

I've just picked up Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for PS2. Late, I know, but late is truly better than never. I do actually have Final Fantasy VII that I still haven't finished, but I'm really not interested in finishing it anytime soon. I've only played a little bit of Sands of Time before, but not much of it. I still remember Prince of Persia when it was PC shareware on 2.5" floppies. Prince of Persia, from what I remember, seemed to be pretty fun, but it was just one of those titles that I never seemed to get around to buying along with a lot of other titles, like God of War, Psychonauts, DESTROY ALL HUMANS!, Devil May Cry, plus a lot of other classic games including about 80% of the Final Fantasy series. As I was reading the manual, one of the things that I seemed to remember was that (as far as I know,) this series was one of the first (of platformers at least) mainstream games that allowed the player to remove the concept of "Game Over" as we knew it. Well, I'm no game maker, but because of that I may be able to provide some insight simply from the perspective that only a hardxcore game fanatic can give.

One of the nice things, however, is that once I finish playing this, I'll have a decent amount of games to talk about since I have been gaming all semester.

"I'd hit it with the Power Glove"

Video games are still a new medium. That is one thing that bothers me whenever people look for a new scapegoat to blame for the degradation of society. All living things have a penchant for violence, no matter what it is - whether it's humans, animals, or even plants, violence is a way of life and there is no way to completely shield people from it. What makes a rational human being is being able to differentiate between worlds....and i've lost my train of thought. crap.

"...I'll take The Rapist for $200, Alex."

Online gaming is something that is somewhat interesting to me. While I don't play MMORPGs(they're too pricey for me), I do play games like Star Wars: Battlefront & Tony Hawk's American Wasteland or even the occasional Yahoo! game. To me, it seems almost like a chat room or forums with interactivity. Since I have been frequenting forums and chat rooms for about 10 years, it's very common to see people very similar to Mr. Bungle/Dr. Jest. My personal interpretation of people like them is that they are most likely people who either view their own lives as incredibly boring and see doing things like that as making their lives more interesting or people who feel that they have been so screwed over in life that they feel like they need to share their bitterness.

Not everyone takes it to that level of violence, though. Usually, the kind of violence that is seen in games such as Star Wars: Battlefront is reflected through the destruction of one's own teammates, which is usually rewarded with booting by said teammates.