#oh mine and your ps3 graphics ass

[zevzevarainai]

Essence of Remembrance - For some, even the greatest victories weigh eternally on their backs.

[schismusic]

In the shadow of the horns: meditations on Team ICO's works – 1. Shadow of the Colossus

[DISCLAIMER: Since I cannot assume you people are all in the know and have played the game like five times, have gotten every extra item and found every last secret location, got all the achievements on the PS3 and PS4 versions of the game, have taken all seventy-nine steps to enlightenment, and are so obsessed with intersecting points that your bedroom wall looks like a re-enactment of the Pepe Silvia conspiracy theory, I have to tell you that the following article includes HEAVY, HEAVY, OH-SO-HEAVY SPOILERS for Shadow of the Colossus. Reader discretion is warned.]

[DISCLAIMER 2: you can absolutely bask safely in the knowledge that I have not done any of the things listed in the first disclaimer. I mean, I have played the game more than once, the first time on PS4 and the second on PS2. Whatever.]

It has at this point been a good five years or so since I'd last played the Team ICO games, so as I went to dust off my ol' trusty PlayStation 2 Slim I got reminded of how the world is a fucked up place and decay exists as an extant form in life, by way of the PS2 no longer reading discs. I mean, nothing I can't fix with a 1mm x 1mm square of duct tape or some isopropyl alcohol in the best case scenario, but I wonder: for fuck's sake, did it have to be now? At any rate, I decided to bite the bullet and finally download PCSX2 so I can play the games (and I promise, the BIOS and game ISOs are all mine, so no piracy involved this time). Playing these particular games on a PC feels especially weird to me, in that I can see the blocky ass graphics meant to be seen and blend in on a CRT in all of their squared glory, but not even that is immersion-breaking or ruins the aesthetics – which is a testament to the strength of the team's art direction and design philosophy. This is especially true considering I'd only played the PS4 Shadow of the Colossus before.

Since I can already hear the raging crowd under my window, let me clarify before I get drawn and quartered by an angry mob of PS2 purists.

I did, of course, get my first exposure to Shadow of the Colossus when it was but a humble PlayStation 2 technical marvel (and, later, a PS3 remaster of that same PS2 technical marvel). It was, in all likelihood, through an unofficial PlayStation magazine that was published here in Italy – even though the original format was technically bought from a Spanish publisher – by the name of PlayGeneration. I was always one console generation behind the rest of the world around me, so the magazine allowed me to stay in touch with new technological developments and new titles coming out. I ended up remembering the original critical reaction to, I don't know, your Deus Ex: Human Revolution or your Dead Space or even your Yakuza 4 (which was actually my first exposure to the series, about fifteen years before I actually got to play it myself) better than the actual games themselves, in a lot of scenarios. But what this magazine had, especially, was a whole two-page spread in every issue where they re-reviewed a number of PS2 games, usually showcasing relatively hidden gems – one that stuck with me particularly was their review of Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, a game that I went on to never play due to my absolute ineptitude at JRPGs. Every issue also included an archive of their older reviews, which for the longest time would reserve a cute little half-page to PlayStation 2 games, with the editors' definitive scores and one-sentence opinions on them. Among these was Shadow of the Colossus, 92 out of 100. I was fascinated by how, well, plain and effective the title was – a non-descript sequence of words that tells you nothing and, as I would later learn, still tells you everything you need to know about the game.

Symbolism of light and shadow, stories that seem to be coming out of children's books (it's always fascinating and, admittedly, quite funny to recall that the original Japanese title of the game is ワンダと巨像, "Wanda to Kyozou" i.e. "Wander and the Colossus"), a unique capability of striking the player in the teeth with a sense of anemoia welling up from somewhere deep within. A friend of mine who's currently playing ICO for the first time mentioned a great emotional response on his part upon revisiting the prison area of the castle – considering exclusively gameplay time, this is a place you're only shown once, about five hours before you come back to it. To better define this feeling for the purposes of this piece, I decided to replicate the closest thing I could achieve: nostalgia. Specifically, I pulled up some old articles I wrote for a gaming blog I helped run between the years of 2020 and 2022, re-read my old impressions of these games, then realized the more I read those (quite pitiful) articles, the more I was thinking "fuck, why don't I just play these again?", which of course led me to what I was saying at the beginning of this article. Running in circles already, aren't I?

One thing I will say: I still believe some of the points I made in those articles to be valid. Specifically, I like the idea of focusing on what the gameplay means. Story and lore analysis of these games is inherently encouraged by the games themselves and their presentation, and therefore way overdone, but I will recommend Leadhead's recent analysis of ICO as a metaphor for escaping an abusive household and Folding Ideas's classic on Shadow of the Colossus as "a game about letting go", as well as admit a certain fondness for the theory of the shared narrative universe as espoused and exposesd by Max Derrat. None of these things will necessarily be central to my own piece, but it's cool to have them, y'know? My main point will have to do with what the games themselves present as their case study. This means analysing and pointing out game mechanics, in and of themselves, as carriers of meaning and implications. As a consequence, for my own ease, I will borrow quite heavily from the old articles (the originals are in Italian, you can find them compiled here, and they are better read in order of release). Lastly, I had originally meant to make this only one article, but it seems to me like there's already enough material for me to stop yapping about methodology and start getting my hands dirty.

God's a short guy, you know, he started in the mail room and, y'know, worked his way up, invested well.

(Tom Waits, in this commercial for Franks Wild Years, directed by Chris Blum)

You're a short guy, as well: too short for your horse, anyway. You carry a special sword – which you stole – and a bow. There's a dead body bundled up in a big ass heavy blanket and you've got that with you, too. It takes a really long time and some seriously deranged route choices to get there, but what do you know – you're good enough to reach the Forbidden Lands, a land that is, well, forbidden, so you probably shouldn't be there. There's a creature, unseen, shouting orders at you out of a window that physically makes no sense architecturally, in two different voices. You have to destroy the statues on this temple's wall, but you can't do that directly, so you have to repeatedly stab gigantic, half-rock-half-flesh creatures that can and will swat you off their back like a mosquito. Only then you'll be able to bring this girl back to life – despite her cursed fate, and the fact that you're in a place called the fucking FORBIDDEN LANDS, and the fact that it hurts more and more to breathe with every colossus you beat.

Every core mechanic in this game is a display of strength: to hold on, to stab, to eat. As Mono – that is, according to the manual in the PS2 version of the game, the name of the girl whose corpse you brought here – cannot, in all likelihood, want anything anymore, it's safe to assume that all of the actions you, the player, undertake in the game are to be understood as the explicit will of Wander, the protagonist. This is a relevant distinction to make. Wander is not you, you are not Wander: why else would he refuse to jump off cliffs, or hesitate when you push him off of ledges? I've always liked thinking about Team ICO's work as a sort of hyper-stylized version of what games like Another World or the original Prince of Persia for the Apple II (even though Fumito Ueda probably played the Amiga port of the game, all things considered). Seeing it this way, the more evident influence these titles have had on Team ICO's game mechanics lends itself quite well to what I'm trying to say. The Prince and Lester Knight Chaykin are both painstakingly animated, frame by frame, in order to achieve a lifelike quality, but where both Jordan Mechner and Éric Chahi attempted a crude imitation of rotoscoping by frame-advancing VHS recordings of themselves or other models and model figures, Ueda and his team usually turn to hand-animation of their characters (or, in particularly bonkers cases like The Last Guardian, write up an algorithm to calculate feather motion in real time and burn a hole through your PS4). This seems to me like Ueda & Co. might be more interested in lifelike behaviour, as opposed to lifelike movement, and as such may be trying to conjure up a more psychologically driven type of narrative experience. And like all the best character pieces, there's usually very little people to deal with.

Let's look at it, and to do so we have to delve into spoiler territory, so reader's discretion is advised.

Agro, the only conventional living being other than Wander throughout a good 99% of actual game time, is a literal horse. As such, she does right by you, by virtue of you being, for whatever reasons you can think of, crucially important to her. Seriously, somebody else has already pointed it out: why is Agro so much bigger than Wander? Is it perhaps because they just happened to grow together and ended up adapting to one another, in ways more organic than getting a horse assigned to you by height? Judging by literally every single minute of game time, the two of them seem almost telepathically locked into each other's thoughts, and Agro goes so far as to allow herself to get killed (functionally speaking, at least: there's a reason they shot broken-legged horses in Western movies, and that reason is it hurts like a bitch and the horse simply never fully recovers for that, at least not with veterinary techniques from the eighteen-hundreds) in order for Wander to fuck off and turn into Dormin. Speaking of which, Dormin are the only other character who speak to Wander for a good 99% of cutscene time, and their only motivation seems to be coming back to this godforsaken earth to wreak havoc on those who sealed them – Emon and his guards, who also seem to be mostly interested in fucking you up specifically so that Mono does not get resurrected. Then again, who the hell asked Mono what she wants? I'm not exactly in the habit of directly asking questions to the dead.

…okay, I was lying, considering what my last two long-form posts were about. But I guess what I'm saying is: Wander is literally the only person who intentionally refuses to be open about his motives. Sure, he wants to resurrect Mono. But why? Had they ever met before she had to die? Did she openly express to him how she did not want to die? I hate myself for even considering this question, but what if her fate actually is cursed? How did Emon kill her, anyway – actually, did Emon kill her himself? What did Wander even do to steal the sword, since – considering Emon and his men literally rode all the way to a place they themselves have religious prescriptions not to defile – it must have been heavily guarded or kept in a secure area? A good number of the colossi are not aggressive unless provoked, too, so this means Wander intentionally goes out of his way to fuck with extra-planar powers beyond human comprehension. Ultimately: what if, beyond all the ad-catchphrase rhetoric of "how far will you go for love", this guy was just being a self-centered prick?

It's as good a guess as any, really – here's a piece analysing Shadow of the Colossus as a trans allegory, for instance. But since it's as good, it's worth entertaining it. I also don't plan to present it as an inherent stroke of genius: not per se, at least. What I like about considering this game a metaphor about pulling your head out of your own ass is that – in a spectacular demonstration of understanding what the fuck you're talking about, the likes of which are unprecedented (and nigh-unsurpassed, apparently) in the gaming world – the game never hits you with the "YOU SHOULD STOP PLAYING TO WIN" argument. This is Wander's doing, not yours, which is why the guy goes to the Forbidden Lands in the intro cutscene, before you have any agency at all. Now this guy's stuck in this (stunning-looking) pimple in the middle of the planet's buttocks, where a dark supernatural force's physical manifestation has been torn asunder into sixteen rock-and-flesh mechas and it's his ass on the line to give the dark supernatural entity whatever the fuck they want, otherwise the lady won't be reborn and wouldn't that be awful?, but that also means that you are, essentially, just invited to sit in, scream at the screen for a good ten hours or so at this motherfucking idiot climbing moving mountains, and partake in Fumito Ueda and his gang's own study on negative interaction in videogaming.

Negative as opposed to positive, of course – that would be The Last Guardian, which we will be talking about when I can be arsed to open up my PS4, drive the literal soot sprite motherships living amidst its circuitry out of the case, and then play the console-disintegrating performance-tanking game again. I swear I actually like that game, for fuck's sake…

Like I said, the game has mostly actions aimed at offense (admittedly you can, thank fuck, pet Agro both while standing next to her, and when you're on her back and she's standing still, which I think is actually a key mechanic to explain what The Last Guardian would later try to do), and it says a lot about Wander as a character. There is no contextual command near Mono, there is no interaction with any of the other animals in the Forbidden Lands (I think I saw a tortoise in the PS2 version a while back – did I dream it up?) that isn't hurting them or killing them or maiming them for your own personal gain or just as an accident on your journey to the next checkmark on the list or, potentially, just for shits and giggles. Essentially this guy barges in and destroys everything in his wake – including, whether he wants it or not, his sole companion. The immense irony of this is that Agro, essentially, sacrifices herself for some element of affection towards Wander: no special destiny, no sudden understanding of Wander's motives. Literally just the fact that this guy is her favourite human. But the game itself has to be taken to its gory, bloody end, through trials and tribulations, for it to reveal its actual statement on the matter.

Dormin is banished again in violence, the bridge pylons collapse by magic in on themselves as Emon and the guards make a hasty retreat out into civilised land. Wander is now a bawling, screaming horned baby – the first of his kind, some would argue: like a mark of Cain of sorts. But sure enough, the reborn Mono has no problem picking him up and, if we are to give credit to the special illustration in the Japanese PS3 re-release of the game, helping him grow into a healthy, beloved horned kid. And Agro, despite her broken leg, still finds her way back to the shrine of the cult, and climbs to the secret garden on top of the building, finding a fawn. An animal that means rebirth.

[thechrispavon]

Xbox E3 2017 Briefing - Reaction

Xbox One X. Basically PS4 Pro's competitor. 

Just forewarning: I play on PlayStation mainly for nostalgia’s sake. I grew up with the PS1 and PS2. I’m getting used to their online services, mainly because I’m a single-player kind of gamer. That and my PS3 got yellow-lighted. My brother (who was gaming more than me at the time) switched to the X360 when it first released. Now, I have a regular PS4 while my brother has an Xbox One. 

I don't have a PS4 Pro or a 4K TV. I'm rocking the original PS4. My brother has the original Xbox One. Sooo... They'll have to lower the prices on 4K TVs with HDR for me to commit. 

I hear the One X has backwards compatibility. My brother has a lot of Xbox 360 games. 

Forza 7. My brother is a gearhead so he'll love this game. Me? Not so much. 

Oh let's show a new Porsche none of these gamers have the money to actually buy. 

4K @ 60FPS seems to be the keyword that makes these gamers cream themselves. Just saying. 

Do these professional drivers actually play Forza? 

Next title! Oh my, an FPS. Is this a sequel to a newer IP? IDK. The trailer music screams Inception. Oh, those animal monsters look nice. I can tell the visits are going to get annoying. Idk. Nice attention to detail though. Post-apocalyptic? What kind of game is this? That bigger monster reveal was underwhelming. Metro Exodus. Meh. Haven't played the first one. 

4K WORLD PREMIERE OMG Whatever. Uh? 4K Age of Empires? Oh. Another Assassin's Creed game. Whatever. AC: Origins. Apparently it's in Egypt. EPIC GAMING ADVENTURE ™. 

Xbox One X sounds like a redundant name. Like Wii U. 

QUALITY BIRD GRAPHICS ™ Not impressed. 

All of this showcasing reminds me that I need to get a new TV for my PS4 gaming. I have a pretty thick plasma TV. It contains mercury. Not good. So all this resolution talk means nothing if it doesn't fit on my TV with faded colors. I don't want anything fancy. Just 1080p with HDR probably. Nothing too big. 

Anyway, AC: Origins doesn't impress me. 

Hooray, more shooters. Ugh. Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. 

Another exclusive. Shooting and Mining? Bad voice acting. Deep Rock Galactic. 

Ok seriously fuck the guy saying Yehh at everything. 

Exclusive. Post-apocalyptic. Army? Zombies? Really? Yawn. At least be a bit creative. The animation kinda sucks. Not even fluid  So it's a tower defense thing? Cars. Boomer. Yeah, this is utter shit. This fucking trailer is so long. Pretty boring. State of Decay 2. Next. 

Exclusive. Ooh nice design. Uh what the fuck? What? Darwin Project. The Shoutcaster ruined it. 

Minecraft? Again? I thought we were over that. Next. I don't know how you make Minecraft more detailed with bigger resolution.

Japan. Hilarious. Little crazy. Fun. Oh. It's Dragon Ball. Never mind. The layout reminds me of the old DB games. Like Ultimate Battle 22 or something. (Yeah, I’m old.) But you know, updated. Like Guilty Gear or Skullgirls or Marvel vs. Capcom or something. Dragon Ball Fighter Z. Nice. 

Exclusive. Looks beautiful. MMORPG? I'd play this. Not gonna lie. Black Desert. Ok. 

Exclusive. Another post-apocalyptic. That cinematography looks nice. Wait what. Pixel characters. Wow. The Last Night. Yeah, is definitely play that. Very cyberpunk. 

Exclusive. Ok. I like quirky designs like this. Johnson Vendetti. Nice guitar lol. What the fuck is this. Lol. The Artful Escape. (Coming when it's damn ready.) Alright cool. 

Code Vein. Sick. Don't know what it is but it's anime as fuck. Bandai Namco. Oh ok. 

Sea of Thieves. Exclusive. Shared world. Yeah, but I like single player games. I'm not into the pirate scene either. Looks fun though. 

Exclusive. Oohh. Space. Tacoma. 

Exclusive. What. Fox thing. What. FEED ME SEYMOUR. *Exhausted sigh* I don't know anymore. Fart joke from an onion. Fantastic. I'm sure kids will enjoy this. Super Lucky's Tale.

Exclusive. Oh my God is this Cuphead? YES FINALLY. GIMME THIS SHIT. SEPTEMBER 29. FINALLY. I LIVE FOR THIS. 

Exclusive. TERRY CREWS? BEST THING EVER. Is this Crackdown? I liked the other ones so this is good. Crackdown 3. Good. 

ID@Xbox Game Montage Time. Let's see what looks good in about 10 seconds of footage​. Unruly Heroes. Observer. Hello Neighbor, of course. Shift. Eh, not much.  

Next few games. 

Exclusive. Stylistic. Oooh. Wow, these characters have no faces. Light and Darkness themes. This looks really nice. Ashen. 

SQUARE ENIX WORLD PREMIERE. THEY OWN MY ASS ALREADY. WHATCHU GOT, SQUARE? OH SHIT LIFE IS STRANGE 2. FUCK YES FINALLY OMG. GIMME THIS SHIT. WHATS GONNA HAPPEN NOW? BIG APPLAUSE FROM ME. IM IN. IM SOLD. WHAT? BEFORE THE STORM. 3 EPISODES? ONLY 3? FIRST ONE COMES OUT ON AUGUST 31. THAT'S SO SOON. YAAAS SQUARE. GIMME THIS SHIT. 

Middle Earth: Shadow of War. Alright. I don't know what other Middle Earth game I played. I think it was Shadow of Mordor. I loved it. Oh God. So much for being an optimist. Yeah I'd play this. By the way, the acting and facial capture is amazing. Brûz is funny as hell. 

Exclusive. AW SHIT. PIANO GUY. WHAT IS THAT CUTE LEMUR THING? That's a frog... and a giant spider. Nice owl. Ohhh noooooooo. Great music. Ori and the Will-o-the-Wisps. I love it. 

Hey, Sony. Where's your backwards compatibility?! YOU HAVE A GREAT LIBRARY BUT COME ON. I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE TO ANOTHER SERVICE FOR BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY. 

Your last presenter is from EA? Really? New IP. OH. BIOWARE. Anthem. Oh wow. This looks really nice. This looks pretty crazy. So is this basically BioWare's answer to Destiny? But will this have a good story? Lol they think players talk to each other like this. I'd play this. But I'll probably do it single player. 

Right now, I don’t really have an incentive to upgrade to a 4K-ready console like the Xbox One X or the PS4 Pro. Some of the games showcased at Microsoft’s Briefing looks nice. I’d probably borrow my brother’s Xbox to play exclusives like Ori and Cuphead.