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Comments
And then the world blows up. The end.
Spent from 3 PM to 10 PM driving my sister to her religious retreat. A grand total of 236 miles according to my car's gauge.
Urgh.
Should've charged her by the hour :P
I might be unemployed but it can't be said I don't work. >_>
Tonight was bizarre. I don't think I've ever felt this mix of depressed, content and angry in my life.
whatever, i think i'll sleep it off.
Hope you feel... er... unambiguous tomorrow, Juan.
And then, with the end of episode 8, it's all wrapped up fairly neatly. What the hell is the deal with the entire situation is ambiguous, but the entire plot was actually really neatly done.
@INUH's Link - The guy DOES realize that part of the issue is that evolution is a slow process, which gives pollution a chance to kill off life before it can adapt, right?
Mind you, with the extremophiles out there, I highly doubt all life would ever be eradicated, but I'm pretty sure we want to avoid a situation where only single celled organisms thrive
Fucking hate this speech. The time I could have spent on other subjects by now, so close to half-yearly exams, is just ridiculous. And I'm still not done since I have to cut it down until I can read it in 5 minutes 30 seconds. I think, depending on my results, I might look hard at dropping English extension.
My body is not liking anything greasy anymore =/ I guess I should be thankful for that as it makes it easier to cut junk out of my diet, but still annoying
I miss playing the Zelda series.
Birthday celebration today. Got up reasonably early, have yet to:
a)Fetch cake
b)Clean apartment
c)Nuke browser history when playing music from laptop
Have no idea how many guests will show up, but none of them are the rowdy type so neighbours don't really have an excuse to complain.
Well, I feel unambiguous. Just not in a good way.
The lesson is, kids: Don't eat an argentinian sandwich with everything there is to eat, especially if you've been feeling bad the whole day.
@article: I'm not all too familiar with biology beyond high school (though anyone can fake familiarty in the Wikipedia age), but it still tips off bullshit detectors. The reason why species are going extinct is because humans are changing the environment faster than those species can adapt, just as non-native species take over because the ecosystem doesn't have as much built-in opposition. And seriously, Chernobyl? A disaster that could have been prevented if the plant wasn't run so shoddily? The Dodo being extinct from natural selection?
Also, this does remind me that I should read The World Without Us at some point.
Chernobyl did cause a preserve of sorts.
Well, humans being kept out has something to do with it.
IJBM: Every indie game is Minecraft.
Things that should not be lists at Wikipedia: List of JRPGs with cute animesque female characters.
@MadassAlex > When it comes to genre, I think we should describe games by the experiences they aim to produce. While Zelda games certainly have Metroidvania elements, they're very different in other respects. Metroidvanias are often about feeling claustrophobic, limited and against the world, flirting at times with horror.
I disagree. I enjoy metroidvania games for their sense of exploration, discovery, and interconnectedness. So the "intention" of playing a metroidvania differs from person to person.
> Metroidvanias also tend to have consistent, lonely worlds with very few allies, and these environments also tend to be very "local". They're seldom complete areas like Hyrule and more often represent a more literally limited area. Zelda games, on the other hand, have "sandbox" worlds.
I'll admit I never thought of the genre like this. That said, I think that the gameplay mechanics define the genre and what you're talking about is actually the setting.
That said, I never got a "sandbox" feeling from the Zelda games. I've only played Link to the Past, granted. The newer games might have a more wide-open feeling from places like Hyrule Field which are quite literally wide open, and in that sense I guess the game's environments are less designed around rooms and more designed around a map with geographical points of interest and certain chokepoints to restrict access.
Perhaps the Zelda series is a slightly different subspecies of the metroidvania. Maybe we can call them "zeldavanias"?
Zelda games don't really go for a sandbox feel -- they just, incidentally, happen to have some of those mechanics and much of that freedom. They're much more focused than normal sandboxes, essentially being action-adventures with sandbox and Metroidvania elements.
What kind of "sandbox elements" do the Zelda games have?
The capacity to go where you please when you please in a wide, open world. It's less rigid than a Metroidvania, where you must open a path via backtracking and moving around a labyrinthine map. The sandbox design is more of a hub-style thing (think Hyrule field) and where the limitations are less area-based. For instance, in Ocarina of Time, you can enter most areas after leaving Kokiri Forest; only Gerudo Valley has to be unlocked apart from dungeons.
In fact, a Metroidvania is pretty much a consistent dungeon.
That said, Zelda games aren't versatile enough to be actual sandboxes. But when it comes to the design of their worlds and obstacles, they follow sandbox designs moreso than Metroidvania ones.
Grey Delisle's Twitter is .... weird
https://twitter.com/#!/stephanieclient
That seems to be what I was talking about with noting that the Zelda games' environments are designed around a map rather than a dungeon layout. In a way, you have two levels of "metroidvanianess"--the dungeons themselves, and the map that connects them. In another way, you can say that the map is like a very complex hub.
I'd agree that that's "wide-open", but I would not call it a "sandbox". The latter term implies that the world is customizable, which it is definitely not in Zelda games.
Few games with sandbox worlds have customisable environments, but in any case Zelda isn't a sandbox. It bears a heavier resemblance to that design philosophy than Metroidvanias, though.
...then what do you mean by a sandbox world, if not one that can be sculpted to the player's desires to some appreciable extent?
I don't think any sandbox game has ever fullfilled this requirement, Glenn
So, Ashes To Ashes has finally managed to be better than Life On Mars to me. I like that.
ETA: OK, that might be a bit of exaggeration, but I think the flagship sandbox titles (Such as GTA) do not fullfill that requirement.
^^ More like a playground, with lots of content that can be accessed at will.
"Things that should not be lists at Wikipedia: List of JRPGs with cute animesque female characters."
Cross out cute and animesque and replace characters with protagonists and you'd actually have a useful reference.
...well, for sandbox games, the first things I thought of are Terraria and Minecraft, which are...very clearly customizable by the player. Crayon Physics has sandbox elements on a smaller scale. I haven't played any of the GTA games, but from what I know of San Andreas, you can go around causing chaos--becoming wanted by and fighting against the police and the military--at will pretty much, and you can also acquire a collection of your own personal vehicles, as well as hijack those of anyone else if you can get them. Not as pure of a sandbox as, say, Terraria, but a sandbox to the extent you can play around with whatever whenever.
How is this the case in the Zelda games?
^ that's because i'm currently trying to find a jrpg with a cute animesque female lead character right now