IC Forum Archive

Karoshi · Posts: 968

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8731861/
Who's that guy in Soul Calibur that freezes people?

Ataru · Posts: 295

why does that article constantly describe the game as blood splattering, etc.

isn't Soul Calibur relatively bloodless?

Dark Age Iron Savior · Posts: 3148

Ataru wrote:

why does that article constantly describe the game as blood splattering, etc.

isn't Soul Calibur relatively bloodless?

even if you are not serious I am very much wincing over here

Karoshi · Posts: 968

Ataru wrote:

why does that article constantly describe the game as blood splattering, etc.

isn't Soul Calibur relatively bloodless?

As you can see in the photograph, he's playing Mortal Kombat: Something.

I could make a joke about how he probably doesn't know that but that'd be mean.

DaleNixon · Posts: 766

Also in that pic he's playing as Scorpion and he almost got his ass kicked! Look at that health bar!

DaleNixon · Posts: 766

Someone else could make a tasteless joke about a blind guy owning a DLP television. That would lack a lot of class though.

another god · Posts: 1629

Isn't there a blind character in the two new Mortal Kombat games? I TOTALLY BET THOSE ARE HIS FLAVOURITE!

DonMarco · Posts: 565

Playing Space Invades blind makes sense to me.

Sometimes as I played Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, I turned off my TV and contiued to play the game. Or was that Halo 2?

EndlessChris · Posts: 431

:roll: You know he just button mashes. There's no way he can play well without knowing what his opponent is doing. You can't counter or block or whatever doing that.

This is such a pointless article - blind kid can press buttons! Put him up against a real Soul Calibur player and see how he does.

Dark Age Iron Savior · Posts: 3148

EndlessChris wrote:

:roll: You know he just button mashes. There's no way he can play well without knowing what his opponent is doing. You can't counter or block or whatever doing that.

This is such a pointless article - blind kid can press buttons! Put him up against a real Soul Calibur player and see how he does.

jesus fuck, shut up.

Mister Toups · Posts: 4943

This says more about modern videogame design than this kid's talents.

Well, at least about Soul Calibur.

DonMarco · Posts: 565

Dark Age Iron Savior wrote:

EndlessChris wrote:

You know he just button mashes. There's no way he can play well without knowing what his opponent is doing. You can't counter or block or whatever doing that.

This is such a pointless article - blind kid can press buttons! Put him up against a real Soul Calibur player and see how he does.

jesus fuck, shut up.

You have never played against a 16-year old in Tekken 3 at a mall arcade, have you?

Amakusa · Posts: 28

EndlessChris wrote:

This is such a pointless article - blind kid can press buttons! Put him up against a real Soul Calibur player and see how he does.

You'd be surprised.

I beat the crap out of experienced Tekken Tag players with KUNIMITSU. And I barely play Tekken at all.

BalbanesBeoulve · Posts: 2126

Don't attacks make noises? If you listen you'd be able to tell when someone is attacking, and jumping usually has a noise associated with it. Most actions do. He probably just listens, is all.

Sawtooth · Posts: 2350

didn't egm have an article about this guy? Yeah... that's how he does it. He listens to the game. Wouldn't he have troubles with proximity, though? What if another player is halfway across the ring, throwing punches into the air just to get him to mistime his guards?

dark steve · Posts: 3002

Who the hell is going to try to take advantage of the blind kid? What is the point? Is he gonna tell the guys at school "Hey man, I totally whupped the blind kid at Mortal Kombat!"

Don't think so.

Karoshi · Posts: 968

dark steve wrote:

Who the hell is going to try to take advantage of the blind kid? What is the point? Is he gonna tell the guys at school "Hey man, I totally whupped the blind kid at Mortal Kombat!"

Don't think so.

Yeah we never see kids put themselves over those that are retarded, fat, those of different race, of lesser athletic ability, lower income, or just flat out different to hide thier own insecurities.

Never.

On a related note, during my junior year of college my neighbor knew a few maps of Quake so well he could literally play them blindfolded. By listening to the sounds of item pickups, teleport spawns, and the grunts from jumping/falling he'd know exactly where everyone was on a map. It was disgusting.

Ukyo · Posts: 99

If he's playing Mortal Kombat and winning I can see some very clear reasons: when have you ever seen a modern-day hardcore mortal combat player? Most of them are just kids that want to throw down in what they think looks "cool" or, what past experiences with the game have showed him, is an easy button mashing game to make themselves look cool. This guy might indeed be beating them, much like how you could get through the old Mortal Combat games (and unschooled rivals) with one or two combos and a special or two.

Soul Calibur, is really dependant on the opponent, and so I can't vouch for anything then...

It seems implausible to me that he could beat an experienced person at one of these games, I mean, the closest thing I've done to beating someone is playing with one hand or playing with an upside-down controller...Also, this IS MSNBC...not exactly the source of my videogame media.

But kudos to the kid for having fun with games, if he is having fun. Isn't that the whole point of them? (If he's doing it to be a complete douche, I don't know, maybe that's still okay, some people need a nice kick in the groin.)

EndlessChris · Posts: 431

Well he's being a total prick about it. It's one thing to be like "Hey look, I'm overcoming my handicap" it's another to be like "Haha, you're getting beat by a blind kid - watch me play backwards."

Its like when my grandfather challenges me to a game of pool and then chastises me for losing to an old man. It's just the wrong way to go about things.

Sawtooth · Posts: 2350

dark steve wrote:

Who the hell is going to try to take advantage of the blind kid? What is the point? Is he gonna tell the guys at school "Hey man, I totally whupped the blind kid at Mortal Kombat!"

You over(under?)estimate children.

ed · Posts: 2

Sawtooth wrote:

didn't egm have an article about this guy? Yeah... that's how he does it. He listens to the game. Wouldn't he have troubles with proximity, though? What if another player is halfway across the ring, throwing punches into the air just to get him to mistime his guards?

You can probably turtle to overcome that. If you can distinguish between the sounds a low and a high attack make, you can wait for an attack to actually get blocked to be sure you're in distance and then start counterattacking.

Of course, I guess you could also button-mash and hope for the best too.

st1nky187 · Posts: 181

EndlessChris wrote:

Its like when my grandfather challenges me to a game of pool and then chastises me for losing to an old man. It's just the wrong way to go about things.

You're too sensitive.

I like how they mention that his father is at a loss to explain his son's abilities to (allegedly) kick ass at Soul Calibur. Is he a blind marksman or something?

BalbanesBeoulve · Posts: 2126

st1nky187 wrote:

EndlessChris wrote:

Its like when my grandfather challenges me to a game of pool and then chastises me for losing to an old man. It's just the wrong way to go about things.

You're a pussy who sucks at pool

Fixed.

Kazu · Posts: 894

BalbanesBeoulve wrote:

st1nky187 wrote:

EndlessChris wrote:

Its like when my grandfather challenges me to a game of pool and then chastises me for losing to an old man. It's just the wrong way to go about things.

You're a pussy who sucks at pool

Fixed.

you can do so much more things than to learn how to play pool. really.

BalbanesBeoulve · Posts: 2126

Yes, but learning to play pool opens up a whole world of career possibilities. Such as hustling, and competitive pool playing.

Kazu · Posts: 894

point taken.

but wouldn't be cricket much better? ... see, since you could ... well, play cricket and maybe meet famous people like arthur dent and stuff?

DaleNixon · Posts: 766

BalbanesBeoulve wrote:

Don't attacks make noises? If you listen you'd be able to tell when someone is attacking, and jumping usually has a noise associated with it. Most actions do. He probably just listens, is all.

I'm sure you'd notice even more if you played with a blindfold on. Street Fighter II's Q Sound (or whatever the hell it's called) is interesting because you can tell which SIDE you are facing without looking at the screen.

Some day some arcade manager is going to pull a stereo reverse on this kid.

108 · Posts: 2600

I saw this shit somewhere else. It depressed the fuck out of me. I mean, aren't these . . . videogames? The real question of this article doesn't concern button-mashing, it concerns . . . how much does this kid enjoy these games? I mean, how can you, really? 99% of the point in Soul Calibur II isn't pressing the buttons, or even listening to the sounds, it's seeing the people moving and attacking the way you want them to, they way you are making them move and attack. Without the visual element, the effect of the game is lost.

Now, there are blind musicians, and they have every right to call music their pride, their joy, their life. There used to be blind swordsmen in old Japan, and I believe they had the right to be proud and joyous of their technique and the long hard days they spent honing it. To merely hold a samurai sword is a visceral experience. To swing it is even better. To fight a battle against another man with a sword is akin to reaching a higher plane of existence. There are things about the world, and living in it, that make fighting an opponent to the death without the gift of sight no less ethereal than fighting an opponent and being able to see him.

Videogames, however, are constructs, and the laws of nature do not apply to them.

In other words: playing videogames blind is a waste of time. Unless, I don't know, you're dealing with interactive fiction, or a sound novel, or a graphic adventure, in which case you you're going to need someone you trust to sit there and read menu choices to you.

Though I wonder -- and this is a subject I'm thinking about a lot lately -- how much could a graphic adventure appeal to someone who's been blind since birth? He has no context for what makes a girl platonically pretty. If he's had a sexual experience before, he has some context on what feels good when touched with the hands or the penis; though in terms of the innocent love of, say, Tokimeki Memorial, being played by a blind virgin teenager -- are hormonal urges enough to give him the context needed to properly enjoy the story?

Can love bloom on a battlefield?

If you were blind and deaf for the first twenty-seven years of your life, and suddenly you could see again, yet all of the people you had ever known were gone, how would you know if you'd ever loved anyone?

Where babies come from is hardly important -- where do memories come from?

Can love bloom, on a battlefield?

Also, the mainstream-y journalistic syndrome is quite lumpy here. Soul CalibEr, "Asteroid"? Hmm.

Also, the big TV must belong to the community center where he plays the games.

And . . . I had something else to say. I forgot.

I'm going to play Wild Arms 4 some more. Don't know why I'm suddenly playing it again.

Hate to see a blind person try to play this.

Ukyo · Posts: 99

Wild Arms 4, to me is an impossible game to get back into. It has something about it that leaves very very fond memories, but when I load it up it just isn't the same. The loading cutscene was godly to me when I used to play it, but now, nothing.

Back on topic...It seems like all he is experiencing is a bleep that comes from pressing another button, which can in some variation be turned into a different bleep, and that bleep can cause a reaction to make a different bleep instead bloop.

There is no feel to these games, even at home, the control may rumble, but it just rumbles hard or soft.

He lives in a world of bleeps and bloops. But as stated, this is all he's known. Maybe it's beautiful to him, that he can control cause and effect, make bleeps bloop instead, maybe he's a complete douche, who knows? It seems to me that he games to win, and I've never really been about that. I enjoy completing things, I'm sure most of us do, but the experience getting there is just as important. I played FFX not so I could beat an FF game, but because I was having fun playing through, and leveling my guys up to ungodly proportions.

Being a blind musician is much different, all you have to appreciate are sounds and touch, unless you become some type of smell/taste aficionado, but I highly doubt you'd take this over say, being able to create music.

The problem is the sounds he hears from one game is all he has to judge the differences in games. He had 8-bit sound for his "asteroids" game and when he moved the joystick around there were only those sounds. When he plays Soul Calibur there is just a different set of sounds for a different set of combinations of buttons. There is still an enemy, but he is just another guy frantically making a false character make sounds to counter-act this blind kid's sounds.

And yeah, I'm beating a dead horse by restating this but what do the sounds come to to him? Is he just making sounds, or is he making music? There is a difference, you may notice, when a musician plays notes, and when he plays music, so too, is this child playing a game, or is he gaming?

108 · Posts: 2600

The blind samurai himself speaks!

Yeah, you're right about Wild Arms 4. I stopped at 23 hours, just because. And now I'm just . . . stuck in some town. I can't leave because Jude says we have to discuss our next objective, and I don't remember where the save point is so I can't do a little party meeting. Fuck. I just bought new weapons, too!!

I think his "JUMP!" voice sample is the best voice sample in games in years. I take back what I said about the blind boy; he could sit here and press the X button over and over again, just waiting for that one random time he says "jump" out of approximately every fifty jumps. Feeling the controller vibrate all along.

For the uninitiated, it's more like a quick, breathless, "ji-ANpu!!"

It's fucking golden.

Mister Toups · Posts: 4943

108 wrote:

If you were blind and deaf for the first twenty-seven years of your life, and suddenly you could see again, yet all of the people you had ever known were gone, how would you know if you'd ever loved anyone?

Someone should make a game about that.

...

108 · Posts: 2600

Mister Toups wrote:

108 wrote:

If you were blind and deaf for the first twenty-seven years of your life, and suddenly you could see again, yet all of the people you had ever known were gone, how would you know if you'd ever loved anyone?

Someone should make a game about that.

...

I don't know if it's possible -- it would have to be too fucking brilliant.

. . .

!!!

extralife · Posts: 3316

Or someone could just write a damn novel about it. Honestly, you can't turn everything into a video game.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

but we can try.

professor_scissors · Posts: 1033

extralife wrote:

Or someone could just write a damn novel about it. Honestly, you can't turn everything into a video game.

Should we make a video game about making everything into a video game?

Kazu · Posts: 894

professor_scissors wrote:

extralife wrote:

Or someone could just write a damn novel about it. Honestly, you can't turn everything into a video game.

Should we make a video game about making everything into a video game?

inst't that what's that Segagaga-Game is all about?

anyway,

Ukyo wrote:

And yeah, I'm beating a dead horse by restating this but what do the sounds come to to him? Is he just making sounds, or is he making music? There is a difference, you may notice, when a musician plays notes, and when he plays music, so too, is this child playing a game, or is he gaming?

Well, if you think of REZ, i'm playing that often just to make "music" - it's wonderful to have the possibility to clear the game and making some stuff while you're on your way to the last level.
Concerning your question, if he's just out for beating some kids by turning backwards, he is playing a game.

the blueberry hill · Posts: 458

Valkyrie wrote:

Well, if you think of REZ, i'm playing that often just to make "music" - it's wonderful to have the possibility to clear the game and making some stuff while you're on your way to the last level.

Do you actually feel like you are making music when you play Rez? That's not what I get from it at all. I'm getting closer to that feeling playing Aquanauts Holiday.

Persona-sama · Posts: 1145

Valkyrie wrote:

professor_scissors wrote:

extralife wrote:

Or someone could just write a damn novel about it. Honestly, you can't turn everything into a video game.

Should we make a video game about making everything into a video game?

inst't that what's that Segagaga-Game is all about?

It's actually more of an RPG for Sega otaku.

I wonder why MSNBC is putting up an article like this; I thought variety nonsense was reserved for the last ten minutes of the televised news. Unless this is a transcription of a variety news segment...

Kazu · Posts: 894

the blueberry hill wrote:

Do you actually feel like you are making music when you play Rez? That's not what I get from it at all. I'm getting closer to that feeling playing Aquanauts Holiday.

playing the first level i always get that feeling, yes.
instead of adding up to eight enemies with one "cursor", i trigger to make a certain beat... i don't know when i started to do so, but i find myself doing it all over again all the time i start a run. Playing Level 2 i stop doing so, i don't know why if i think about it now ...

regarding Aquanauts Holiday, never heard of that game, i'm going to look that one up.

regarding Segagaga, i saw it once for a very short time, what's that game all about, managing SEGA?

Kappuru · Posts: 492

SEGAGAGA is about turning SEGA into a profitable company, by hiring programmers, overseeing your factory, and making sure akiba has a lot more sega signs than the psuedo-sony ones.

Lestrade · Posts: 817

Ukyo wrote:

If he's playing Mortal Kombat and winning I can see some very clear reasons: when have you ever seen a modern-day hardcore mortal combat player?

I could beat his blind ass at Mortal Kombat.

*points to everyone*

I COULD BEAT ALL YOUR ASSES IN MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAAT!

FortNinety · Posts: 4591

Kappuru wrote:

SEGAGAGA is about turning SEGA into a profitable company, by hiring programmers, overseeing your factory, and making sure akiba has a lot more sega signs than the psuedo-sony ones.

If there was ever a perfect "last game" from a company, Segagaga is it.