Current location:	85381
Current mood:	pensive
Current music:	玲々テノヒラ (Ballad Ver) - ルルティア

Game over.
Like a lot of you on my friends list, I grew up gaming. I shot ducks in duck hunt, headbutted coin blocks in the Mario games, fought aliens in Contra, and got mauled by Mike Tyson in Super Punch Out. These are some of the fondest memories from my youth.

...That said however, video games were always a luxury while I was growing up. I wasn't home for most of the year, and when I was, my gaming habits were strictly controlled - two hours a week was average allowance. That was always okay, though. While I loved to game, I also loved to read, and there were few limits on what I read, or where I did it. You see, while I always loved the fact that video games were wonderful distractions, I loved books because they were, simply put, more immersive. I loved the fact that I was able to better connect with the characters I met in books - they just seemed more human and something that I could relate to more than I could to, say, a hedgehog that could run faster than the speed of sound. Heh.

Despite loving games though, I wasn't very good at a lot of them. I've never beaten a Mario game (except for a fairly easy GB one), a Mega Man game, a Sonic game, or even Duck Hunt. To top it off, my aiming and driving is worse in the virtual world than it is in real life, so in addition to sucking at platformers and action games, I derived very little pleasure out of racing games and shooters (which is fine, because I can't really say that I like guns to begin with).

Because I, uh, failed at video games, I began to play almost two types of games exclusively - fighters and RPGs. Fighters were wonderful because I could beat them within my two hour allotment every week. RPGs were wonderful because their pacing was more deliberate, and they weren't as hectic and demanding (reflex-wise, anyway) as a lot of the other games out there.

Fighters continued to be my favorite until 1997, when Final Fantasy VII first came out. Final Fantasy VII was my first actual Final Fantasy game. While I might have dabbled in the other games before this was the first game in the series that I played to completion - the experience was wonderful, and the story (what little of it wasn't ruined for me by a horrible, horrible, strategy guide) was well-written, and the entire package was wondrous. As much as I loved it though, Final Fantasy VII, was, in the end, just another game.

Little did I realize however, that there was a game on the horizon that would change the way I looked at games forever.

I'd first seen Xenogears when I casually flipped through Final Fantasy VII's booklet for the first time. Upon first seeing it though, I dismissed it as "just another robot game" (what can I say? I don't care much for robots), and moved on with my life. Xenogears however, wasn't quite done with me. Three years later, it wormed its way into my meager collection, and insisted that I was going to play it, whether I wanted to or not. The experience blew my mind.

The game's story was unlike anything I'd ever encountered before. It was rich, complex, full of amazing twists, and epic in every sense of the word - every plot twist, every death, and every revelation had me at the edge of my seat. The story left to stone unturned. It tackled everything - organized religion, child abuse, reincarnation, racism, big government, love, morality, war, and even the very nature of God. At fifteen, it was simply too much. As overwhelmed as I felt though, I was captivated. Despite the fact that I didn't understand all of it, I knew that I'd stumbled onto something special.

Where the story was grand, the characters were complex. Where FFVII had seen me empathize with characters, Xenogears saw me connect with them. Protagonist or antagonist, it didn't matter. I loved them all. Like I said before, Xenogears changed the way I looked at games forever. While I still played games for primarily escapist and cathartic reasons, a good story became important too.

I've since played dozens and dozens of games, and I've seen many a good story. Few however, have managed to captivate me the same way Xenogears' did. Until recently.

The Metal Gear Solid series is huge. Most of my friends that game regularly have played at least one of the games in the series. I however, never did. I'd played a demo of the game back in the PS1 era, and the gameplay just didn't click with me. While I'd found what I'd heard of the story compelling, I'd never bothered, because unlike a few people I know (*coughdaemonxcough*) I'm not capable of playing a game for the story alone. The gameplay has to click. MGS1 simply didn't click with me.

I was left alone in my blissful ignorance until the_n_channel, seemingly out of the blue, decided that I needed to be reintroduced to the series. I was initially less than excited about the prospect, but the promise of finally getting to know the series' story just proved to be too tempting to resist. Well, than, and I didn't really have a choice.

I tried the game again, and it still didn't click with me. It took me THIRTY MINUTES to get out of the first room. I kid you not. Finally giving up on me, Nick decided to play the game in my stead, and I was only more than happy to watch the story unfold in front of me. Needless to say, everything I'd heard about the story was true - it was amazing, captivating, complex, and I found myself thoroughly engrossed to the point where I was almost bothered every time another section of gameplay popped up.

Since Nick was nice enough to buy me MGS4 for my birthday (er, at least I think it was for me), I dove right in. I didn't have the patience to wait for him to come back, so I quickly downloaded a supplementary MGS database that Konami had put up online, and familiarized myself with enough of the story to enjoy the game. A lot of reviewers have complained that the game is too cutscene-heavy and cares more about telling its story than delivering a consistent gameplay experience.

This isn't entirely false. While I found the gameplay a lot more engrossing than it's forefathers', I was amazed by how often (and how long) I put the controller down to watch one of the game's many, many, many, cut-scenes. I didn't care, though. The story was the sole reason I was playing the game, and it delivered. I don't think that I've ever had a story (in a game, movie, book, or whatever) tug at my heartstrings like this for a long, long time. After playing this game, I'd definitely have to rank Hideo Kojima, the mastermind behind both the series and its story as one of the most gifted scribes across any form of media.

*smiles*

I'd like to finish this up by asking all of you a question. Tell me something about a story that has touched or changed you - it can be a book, a movie, a game, or just about anything else. I'm curious!