![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Welcome to the Late News
Jan. 17th, 2009 11:45 pmWhat an odd game Portal is - I can certainly see why it captivated so many people. I've never before seen a game with so much charm to it that's simultaneously so... wrong. The manic AI plot has been done to death so much that it's a cliche at this point, but they managed to give it so much personality that it was something unique again.
Despite being unseen throughout most of the game, a lot of this personality comes from the computer GLaDOS, who seems to believe that she's doing what's best for you while trying to kill you at every turn. The spheres that you knock off her during the final fight seem to represent her multiple neuroses, and I hadn't realized what she was meant to resemble until I found that second picture (you'll never be able to unsee it once you compare them, either). That puts a whole new dimension on to her - we had just thought it was an abstract collection of computer pieces, or at the most, an electronic heart.
Rather than any sort of ending sequence you're awarded with a song at the end, Still Alive, which is an unusual reward but completes the game's sense of humour perfectly, having the same outward happiness and underlying sort of helpless tragedy. I was immediately compelled to look up how to play it on the guitar, which should get me into practicing chords again.
We didn't progress much in MGS4 during our stay over Christmas, but it's beginning to become clear that for every game, you have to throw out your old tactics and relearn them all again. In this one, it often seems that just sneaking through is a wasted effort, and the real way to do it is to just cause as much chaos as possible and then creep through in the general confusion once you've got everyone fighting each other.
We did get to the first boss, though, who's one of the more frightening ones in that she can morph like the T-1000 and camouflage herself against walls, among debris and so on. Like every Metal Gear boss she takes about ten minutes to die and then you get to hear her life story, but has the additional feature of a further section after that where she'll just drift around after you undeadly. But I soon sorted her out with a rocket launcher.
I had been wondering why I hadn't yet heard the famous Metal Gear Solid theme in the game, and I just found out that there had been... a difficulty with it in that Hideo Kojima found out that TAPPY the original composer had slightly stolen it from "The Snowstorm" by a Russian composer called Sviridov (ironically, given the setting of the third game). So he decided to ditch one of the most recognizable pieces of game music of the last decade out of respect. Strange how these things work out.
Despite being unseen throughout most of the game, a lot of this personality comes from the computer GLaDOS, who seems to believe that she's doing what's best for you while trying to kill you at every turn. The spheres that you knock off her during the final fight seem to represent her multiple neuroses, and I hadn't realized what she was meant to resemble until I found that second picture (you'll never be able to unsee it once you compare them, either). That puts a whole new dimension on to her - we had just thought it was an abstract collection of computer pieces, or at the most, an electronic heart.
Rather than any sort of ending sequence you're awarded with a song at the end, Still Alive, which is an unusual reward but completes the game's sense of humour perfectly, having the same outward happiness and underlying sort of helpless tragedy. I was immediately compelled to look up how to play it on the guitar, which should get me into practicing chords again.
We didn't progress much in MGS4 during our stay over Christmas, but it's beginning to become clear that for every game, you have to throw out your old tactics and relearn them all again. In this one, it often seems that just sneaking through is a wasted effort, and the real way to do it is to just cause as much chaos as possible and then creep through in the general confusion once you've got everyone fighting each other.
We did get to the first boss, though, who's one of the more frightening ones in that she can morph like the T-1000 and camouflage herself against walls, among debris and so on. Like every Metal Gear boss she takes about ten minutes to die and then you get to hear her life story, but has the additional feature of a further section after that where she'll just drift around after you undeadly. But I soon sorted her out with a rocket launcher.
I had been wondering why I hadn't yet heard the famous Metal Gear Solid theme in the game, and I just found out that there had been... a difficulty with it in that Hideo Kojima found out that TAPPY the original composer had slightly stolen it from "The Snowstorm" by a Russian composer called Sviridov (ironically, given the setting of the third game). So he decided to ditch one of the most recognizable pieces of game music of the last decade out of respect. Strange how these things work out.
