Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

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quence that compresses in a few notes the es- sence of life. Waiting for tomorrow, for the end of school year, for the reply from your lover, for a better occasion, for a happy event. Waiting for time to crunch away the days of our lives, focusing on what tomorrow may give us, while today is spent contemplating trivial matters. On Standby. Then, after entering a whole alien world and its majestic symphony, the pilgrimage begins. Rayforce, as I have written so many times across the chaotic ocean of the internet, is a simple but elegant game. It’s basically Xevious on steroids; you have to lock-on to enemies on the plane below yours and shoot them with lasers, while using the main gun for the enemies on the same plane as you. The more enemies you can destroy with one row of lasers (up to eight), the more points you get. Basically, the value is: Value of enemy*2^n-1 (for 1 ≤ n ≤ 6), value of enemy*2^n (for n = 7,8) With n being the number of enemies 116 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #3 locked-on and destroyed with a single volley of lasers. It’s easy to figure out that yes, the game is pretty simple and all you have to do most of the time is learn how to get eight lock-ons at once. Power-ups and peculiar techniques to destroy bosses complete the score-based aspects. But I’m omitting some important par- ticulars: first and foremost, the entire game is based on the ability for the F3 hardware to easily handle scaling effects. This means that all objects that are located below you can actually move up to your plane. As if this wasn’t cool enough, the plot is perfectly integrated with this simple design trick. What you must do is penetrate the Earth’s defenses and enter the planet’s core in order to make your enemy implode. Wait, who is fighting whom? Let’s go to 2003. Actually, Raycrisis was published in 1998, but I only bought it in 2003. I had – for years – the OST and, like the other two OSTs, I can spend entire days listening to it. Raycrisis is somewhat disappointing gameplay- wise, but this is another issue. This jump into the future is to explain Rayforce’s past. The plot is simple. In a distant future, the Con-human, a vast artificial network, is created to easily handle all of the data floating around cyber-space. The problem about the birth of Con-human is its awareness, and it begins en- croaching all of the man-made objects in space and remapping them as part of its cognitive system – its body. In Rayforce, the last survivors of humankind live in a base on the dark side of the moon, because the Con-human was successful in ab- sorbing the whole planet as its body, and started exterminating human beings or enslaving them and cloning individuals for feeding purposes – human psychic energy being the best for the Con-human’s purposes. The project Meteorite is then launched: an attack to the core of the planet, to the glandula pinealis of Con-human – the centre of the now hollow Earth. Since you have to penetrate the Earth’s core, all of the stages are designed in such a way to tell this story – First you penetrate the
external defenses, then enter Earth’s atmosphere, then the first underground city, then the centre of the planet, and finally to the Con-human itself for the final battle. This means that there are marvelous effects like your ship gliding into the higher strata of atmosphere, or battling the fourth boss on a rift that will take you to the first underground city. Let’s skip to 1996. It’s summer and I was almost 18. Tempus fugit [1], eh? When it’s summer and you’re in love when you’re 18, well, it seems like nothing’s more important than love, right? And then I got a sequel to Rayforce. How could it be? The world ended with a bang in the first chapter, and now they were doing a second chapter? Ah well, it seems like they’d just exploit their previous ending as a story mechanism, but for some reason this plot is unrelated to Rayforce. Two empires are at war. One, Secilia, was an ex-colony of Earth, which broke free of Earth’s rule and decided to go against their for- mer rulers. Since they’re going up against Earth, they may as well have become new tyrants. Earth decides that it’s time to strike back. It’s time to send the elite forces to Secilia and destroy the whole planet by blowing up the Judas system. Seven billion people will die because there is no room for more than one empire in the Galaxy. Seven billion people will die because, well, humankind, no matter how far it stretches its presence on space, still has the fundamental urge to exterminate itself. Factions, religions, ethnic groups; it’s all about intolerance. Origin. Again, it’s just one intro screen. A simple, hypnotic loop of pure musical delight, a few notes of piano repeated forever and ever. But, this time, there is a different flavor, or perhaps something else, that defines the game. Raystorm, regardless of the even more dramatic plot, has a lighter atmosphere. I [1] Latin for “Time Flies” don’t how exactly what it is, but maybe it feels less brooding. After all, who wouldn’t be happy to exterminate seven billion people? But maybe there is something about this ultimate clash that goes beyond the simple, dark sense of destiny, and reaches the level of the old epics. Maybe it’s the basic idea of intolerance and the supreme sense of peril. That only one empire can survive after this war. What it is that defines human nature, in this instance, is one thing. Intolerance. And even if the game has such a tragic and epic setting, it’s set to music by a lovely soundtrack that exists as a promise of summer and magnificent evenings spent dissecting the game. Let’s see: Raystorm is 3D, or better, it’s played from a slightly inclined perspective (20°) and uses polygonal graphics. In case you wonder, it is still one of the most beautiful 3D shooters around, albeit some of the latest Naomi titles are even better looking. It has a better visual design than Rayforce, an enterprise that is nothing short of a miracle. Not only that, but it also has some of the most brilliant gameplay ever, provided that you can deal with the peculiar perspective. If so, you can’t avoid enjoying the pure genius behind the gaming engine. The premise is like Rayforce, however this time you can lock-on to enemies that are on your plane as well. This seemingly minor change is extremely important for scoring purposes. There is also a new R-Gray ship, which works Raystorm and Its Legacy 117
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Why Game? 1
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Table Of Contents 4 - How Nippon Ic
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Editor In Chief: Managing Editor: A
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acter turn took less time, without
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what goes into a video game is not
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America have any plans to procure t
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to approach them. We have a great w
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desperately sought after collectabl
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that. Innit?” I sighed before inh
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company of the Fiddich family I let
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into the Electronics Boutique where
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much more consistent, possibly even
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Half-Life 2 - PC M. O’Connor The
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very inappropriate phrase. It’s n
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Anamoly Discrimination Force S^2 -
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time-strategy title set in outer sp
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of destroying a bunch of other tiny
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than one-hundred percent on tests t
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So, where are we now? Starcraft’s
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I Like to Watch Ancil Anthropy When
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ourselves.” When games left the a
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in response. There were many images
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Part 5: The True Quest for Secrets
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Guilty Pleasures XXX 51
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An Exercise in Creativity by The Ga
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possible suicides. Pressing Start w
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them to be precise, and for each, t
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e kind of like a puzzle game where
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minutes to complete this dungeon, w
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huge, but there’s no save game op
Page 67 and 68: friends with Dachshunds. I was usin
Page 69 and 70: ack down on the ground. I picked ba
Page 71 and 72: petting her, she gives a little gro
Page 73 and 74: of that for me. Regardless, I still
Page 75 and 76: staples. That magazine contained an
Page 77 and 78: us we had to wake up early the next
Page 79 and 80: I’m pretty good at SMB3. I can be
Page 81 and 82: Age twenty-five... where was I? I
Page 83 and 84: a planetarium. We enjoyed the atmos
Page 85 and 86: My birthday drew near without cerem
Page 87 and 88: through whatever means necessary. G
Page 89 and 90: tenaciously, though maybe not execu
Page 91 and 92: guitar. He had a wife (who time lat
Page 93 and 94: Killer 7 Crossword 91
Page 95 and 96: Actually, Bubble Bobble is from the
Page 97 and 98: task. When we became friends when I
Page 99 and 100: Wesson’s guns, but I couldn’t a
Page 101 and 102: the island? Earlier, I spent a good
Page 103 and 104: character is incidental to the abov
Page 105 and 106: This high quality is a sign of the
Page 107 and 108: chain-combo, the game slows down sl
Page 109 and 110: Concluded on Page 124... Guilty Ple
Page 111 and 112: gazillion copies, barring some unfo
Page 113 and 114: Anything but Shredder. Shortly ther
Page 115 and 116: together through each person’s de
Page 117: still haunt my life, but that’s b
Page 121 and 122: an entire stage long. Surprised? Yo
Page 123 and 124: Morality and Emulation on the PSP B
Page 125 and 126: tion and - as a final nail in the c
Page 127 and 128: Guilty Pleasures XXX 125
Page 129 and 130: Guilty Pleasures XXX 127
Page 131 and 132: Back Cover 129
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