You know, the one with "New Roman Empire Style Long Hair Link!" shown in stained glass in Minish Cap? I'd like to see that holy blade, as well as it's original name, likely Four Sword, but maybe not they don't really need to stick with that. From the way the Minish seem so weak and from how they seem to not be able to create light force on their own, I suspect that the Minish actually served as just the "delivery boys" of some great deity or deities. Also, what's with all the other gods in that world anyway? The world was pretty much void before the 3 goddesses showed up, so I imagine they actually created creatures like the two wind brother gods, meaning they aren't so much gods as... well I guess they are kinda like angels or something, though I guess the fairies would be most likely to fit that role...
Eh, anyway... So, when do we play as hatless Link? Oh, he won't be hatless. They shall defy that stained glass window and give him a hat for the whole game :D, but like, maybe when he is offered the sword for the first time he is told to remove the hat out of respect (you know he wouldn't do it unless told to, he's kinda a social idiot, running around raiding people's houses WHILE THEY ARE IN THEM and all, but give him a dungeon puzzle...). Anyway, they should add some old man in that game that calls Link a hippy and tells him to get a haircut.
Oh and, Four Swords Adventures, which first refered to this game, before it existed, as the event where Vaati first got imprisoned in the Four Sword, seems to be a little wrong... Seems as though Vaati didn't kidnap even ONE maiden, as opposed to how he supposededly "kidnapped many maidens". I mean, he barely kidnapped Zelda. He turned her to stone and eventually took over the castle, which TECHNICALLY did the job, but it's hardly the massive number FSA desribes...
Oh dear... I do believe Minish Cap, where the Four Sword first defeats Vaati, isn't the one that was refering to. I do believe yet a FORTH part of the Vaati saga awaits us, between Minish Cap and Four Swords (original Four Swords). They sure left room for it anyway. Wow, this is getting about like Castlevania in the sheer number of totally forgotten encounters with the ultimate evil.
<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/01/25/rollingstone.bible.ap/index.html">CNN: Rolling Stone decides to accept Bible ad</a>
Quote:After first rejecting the advertisement, Rolling Stone sent Zondervan a contract for a half-page ad in the rock magazine's February 24 issue, said Doug Lockhart, executive vice president of marketing at the nation's largest Bible publisher.
Lisa Dallos, a spokeswoman for Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media LLC, said Tuesday that the company had "addressed the internal miscommunications that led to the previous misstatement of company policy and apologize for any confusion it may have caused."
Grand Rapids-based Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, had bought space in the magazine months ago as part of an ad campaign for a new Bible translation aimed at young people, called Today's New International Version.
But about two weeks ago, Zondervan said it was told that Rolling Stone's policy was not to accept advertisements for religious materials.
Lockhart said the contract sent to Zondervan does not require any changes to the ad, which features a contemplative-looking young man and says the new Bible is "written in today's language, for today's times -- and it makes more sense than ever."
"We're thrilled," Lockhart said.
Other media outlets that agreed to carry the ad include <b>Modern Bride, The Onion, MTV.com and AOL</b>, Lockhart said.
I think it's fantastic to see Zondervan making a point of advertising the Bible to people who would probably otherwise never give it a second thought. I also appreciate that they are not selling out or watering down with a bold slogan like "Timeless truth; Today's language". Using the word "truth" is apparently what originally caused Rolling Stone to ban the ad, but it's cool to see the change of mind.
I am excited because most people are searching for spiritual truth yet they have never gone to the source and found out the truth for themselves. It would be foolish to dislike Ocarina of Time because your friend's big brother's cousin played it at a kiosk and thought it was stupid because Link is a kid in the beginning. You'd miss out on the best game ever made. Don't make a mistake by believing what somebody else told you about God or Jesus, not even what a prof says or your friends say or your parents say or what I say. Read the Bible and find out what God says about himself.
Yes, that's right it's the end of an era. As soon as tomorrow I say goodbye to the moldy, old narrowband connection I've been forced to contend with and say hello to a sparklling, new broadband connection. Yep, 56k is going out the door and I'm going to be hooking up to some ADSL, not quite sure how that differs from reqular DSL, but it can only be better than what I have. *beings singing "Moving On Up"*
I thought this might be worthwhile. But for those too damn lazy to click the link, hereeeeeeeeeee ya go!
Quote:Oughtta Stay Out of Pictures
Why video games shouldn't be like the movies.
By Clive Thompson
Posted Thursday, Jan. 27, 2005, at 3:13 PM PT
... but first, a message from our plotline
... but first, a message from our plotline
Critics have called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas a blood-soaked crime simulator that valorizes the worst gangsta stereotypes. What they haven't noticed, though, is that everyone's favorite shoot-'em-up is also a family drama. Early on in the game, my character discovers his brother and sister fighting over her decision to date a South Side Hispanic man. I don't need this racism, she says, from "a no-good, narrow-minded, hypocrite gangbanger."
These minimovies, called "cut-scenes," are part of a longtime trend in gaming to create more nuanced characters and more story-based play. Whether a cut scene explains your next mission or just sets a mood, the basic idea is to make a game seem cinematic—more like Citizen Kane than Pac-Man. For many designers, crafting bravura cut scenes has become the best way to transform a mere game into a genre-smashing event. When Halo 2 shipped, for example, the game's creators bragged that they had created nearly a feature film's worth of scripted scenes.
These Hollywood flourishes are good for dazzling mainstream journalists and pundits. That's because there's still a weird anxiety about adults playing games. Most people still think that video games are sophomoric kid stuff; the ones that have a narrative and emulate the movies seem more serious and, well, mature. In fact, I think the truth is almost the opposite. The more video games become like movies, the worse they are as games.
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Playing a game, any kind of game, is inherently open-ended and interactive. Whether you're playing chess, Go, or Super Mario Bros., you don't really know how things will wind up or what will happen along the way. Narrative, on the other hand, is neither open-ended nor interactive. When you're watching a story, you surrender masochistically to the storyteller. The fun is in not having control, in sitting still and going "Yeah? And then what happened? And then?"
That's why cut scenes are such a massive pain in the neck—they enforce passivity. There's nothing more annoying than going on a shooting spree, then having to break the rhythm of play by putting your game pad down for minutes at a time. Before my character embarks on a home invasion in GTA: San Andreas, a quick cut scene shows the layout of the house. As I'm sitting there, waiting to start mashing buttons again, I can't help but think that this is kind of lazy design. Isn't there a better way to do this inside the game itself? Why ask the player to stop playing?
There are rare instances where cut scenes are truly wonderful: Final Fantasy X and last year's Ninja Gaiden include several tiny masterpieces of kung-fu melodrama (you can see them online here). And for all my bitching, I'll admit that some cut-scenes in GTA: San Andreas have dialogue funnier than Tarantino. But the fact remains that storytelling halts game play, and thus removes the central thing that makes games gamelike.
Today's games are strongest not when they're slavishly emulating cinema, but when they borrow from disciplines like urban design and architecture. Few of my friends got particularly jazzed about the story in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. But everyone raves about the open-ended environment—the hundreds of buildings you can enter, the dozens of souped-up cars you can jack, the fact that you can ignore the missions and just perform sick BMX stunts for a few hours. As a story, GTA is no Boyz n the Hood. But as a theme park? It's better than Disneyland.
Halo and Halo 2 succeeded for the same reason. Both games had forgettable storylines—pure alien-invasion boilerplate—that were redeemed by the game's superrealistic physics. Long after I finished the game, I used Halo 2 as a playpen for physics experiments, tossing grenades beneath vehicles or bodies to see how high I could blow them in the air. (Some players took that to an amusing extreme.) That same mojo has fueled the enduring appeal of The Sims. No purple-prose narrative there—just an open-ended game so terrific that 25 million people wanted to explore it.
In my more cynical moments, I think this whole pursuit of narrative is the industry's sneaky way of forcing gamers to buy more products. When a game has a story that "ends" after 40 hours of play, you have to throw it away—and go spend another $50 on the next title. That's movie-industry logic, not game logic. Chess doesn't "end." Neither do hockey, bridge, football, Go, playing with dolls, or even Tetris. Worse, by selling "narratives," game publishers can cover up the fact that they rarely create truly new forms of play. In any given year, I'll play a dozen first-person shooters with different stories—Save the world from Martian devils! Penetrate an island full of genetic freaks!— that are all, at heart, exactly the same game.
Only a few designers are talented enough to create new, durable forms of game play. But every once in a while, someone proves that it's possible. One recent example is Katamari Damacy, a daffy little Japanese import in which you roll a sticky ball around and "pick up" objects that you encounter. Like a snowball, it gets bigger and bigger—while you start off picking up tiny objects on a desk, pretty soon you're rolling across cities and picking up street signs and people. The first time I started up Katamari Damacy, I played for hours, racing against the clock and making sure my ball didn't get too uneven when it rolled over cars. There are no nuanced characters, no reams of dialogue, no bloated plotline—just one simple premise and an insane amount of fun.
Clive Thompson writes about gaming and technology for Slate.
Image from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas courtesy of Rock Star Games.
