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Saturday, May 6, 2017 by LotBlind

There's a semi-clever pun in here somewhere that's not in my hand

The Teen provides versatility as a video game character: there isn't much a teenager couldn't conceivably effect in the world of material objects and their interactions – as an adventure game – yet possessing the better (worse?) half of his naivete so as to lend a subject to silly slapstick and floundering failure. You'll recall Ron Gilliam's Threepwood was one at a more-or-less canonical 17 years of age. There's typically a contradictory relationship between the teen and his environment, those ingrained into their social functions or hierarchic standings, which results in an easy conjuration of motives as the teen strives to establish himself and his rightfulness in a more or less direct mimicry of the natural scenario. Yet nothing bars a teen from pursuing romantic interests instead, as is the case with "Guy.brush". The teen is even fully capable of provocative double-entendre and plain audacious amorality (Simon the Sorcerer springs to mind), leaving a window open for this aspect of comedic writing.

...or so I have been told. With this introductory note in the limitless vacancy of our pockets, we may recognize much of the same in the voyage of Mark Hopper, the "Teenagent", through the straits and narrows of immaculate object allocation, spotless spotting of clues, and communication efficient enough to please the office 4G router. The development team, Metropolis Software, cut this 0:11:09 some 20 minutes shorter just by throwing at prospective runners, the Trilby-and-Final-Fight guy 'Soulless' for one, the succulent tibia of "make everything about five times faster". Well, evidently that's just three times so if maths are to be relied on, but when are they ever? If you wanted to be so meta as to slow it down again by a factor of one-and-a-half, you'd have the essence of a Let's Play but with a mellower soundtrack, and I think you'd appreciate the Polish humor this thing is bathed in. There's a scene where Mark cooks a hunk of meat by placing a burning piece of paper inside a refrigerator. Because it's a GAS FRIDGE! Or then I give up.

Mega Man X has often been lauded for its design. The first level I've seen brought up as the perfect tutorial, seamlessly integrating story, establishing characters, and plying its tutoring trade without fungi-post-precipitation text boxes. Like with Super Mario 64, the players had more abilities to gain mastery of, making movement a treat. There's even this Satchbag's Goods comparison between those very games despite varying dimentionality – indeed it attempts to encapsulate what went wrong with 3D Mega Man later down the line. But hey, I'm not just idly musing on the topic: we've been fired an extra-powerful dash'd bullet at and I don't know what kind of job we've done in catching it. 0:31:12 only makes this the bleedin' WR, which no-one bothered to point out in verification. Shows how jaded we've become to record-setting running apparently. Playing X1, runners like 'Akiteru' are not quite safe from the gusts and squalls of RNG... but count your blessings I suppose. That's the way I feel about having any commentary to accompany this 1:45 improvement. Speaks for itself?

The notion of the passing of memories, by one of multiple definitions, from generations past to generations future has had some wind blown in its sails in recent times. There are two forms of memory-relaying given the psychological interpretation: non-specific and subconscious, and specific memories that can under some circumstances be recalled by the conscious mind. While the former has (based on a very brief review of some Wikipedia articles) some credence seeing as e.g. traumatic events can produce a similar response in one's offspring by epigenetic means (i.e. not inherited through genes), the latter holds no broad purchase in modern science. It has been toyed with in some works of fiction though, and popularized by the Assassin's Creed series that saw daylight in 2007. In it, the main character straps themselves into the Animus: an amplifier of some sort that facilitates the review of lifelike memories (like VR really) of the occupant's direct ancestry. In a tapestry of Dan Brown -esque blown-up myths and conspiracies, along with many strains from historically accurate Renaissance Italy, Assassin's Creed II delivered a to-date unparallelled simulation of the life of a (fictional) assassin, Ezio, concerned with things like upholding family honor and vying against the power-hungry Knights Templar.

Runs for the open-worlded titles of the franchise are lengthy, even without the total synchronization of memories – the game's version of the 100%. François 'Fed981' Federspiel, known for engrossing in these far-reaching reveries across four different AC games for the PC, finds 41:47 worth of additional short-cuts in leading the story to its incomplete completion at the 5:10:31 mark. That's using the not entirely accurate in-game timing but seeing how much of the game is cutscenes, it's a pretty healthy amount! Fed has left a 5-minute showreel of his works right at the portico-nestled front doors of his YouTube channel complete with an obnoxious Euro-trance soundtrack that probably constitutes an unacceptably major desync in in-game terms (read: he's clearly godmoding it).

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