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Jun. 4th, 2008 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goldenmeanThis post is dedicated to the lowly henchman in all of his multifarious forms, from goblin, to blue slime, to red shirt, to koopa, to stormtrooper to every beastly fido in every MUD I ever played. I am so very, very, very sorry. I realize that my work ethic is, much like the easter bunny or santa claus, a pleasant fiction whose existence I have long since realized is entirely illusory, but I believe that even much better employees than I would be hard-pressed to properly fill a good pair of henching shoes. It takes a certain terminal form of optimism to gaze upon the gore drenched demigod who has just turned a dozen of your coworkers into an oleaginous spackle on the walls and is in the process of removing his emphatically glowing ancestral sword from a pile of neatly stacked limbs that moments ago was Ted from your carpool and instead of thinking "The hell with Ganon and his lousy 401k plan, I'm getting the hell out of here", instead viewing the avatar of death bearing down on you as a ketchup bottle that has now been sufficiently loosened for you to deliver the coup de grace. I salute you in all your infinite stupidity and thank you for instilling in me a belief that if I looked left and right and noticed that everyone around looked more or less just like me that I was probably well and truly screwed. What little individuality I have, I owe to your sacrifice.
The previous paragraph is brought to you by the fact that I've been playing Ninja Gaiden 2 since getting home, which is a game that can best be described by the protologism "Decapitastic". I sort of want to get back to it, so instead of thinking up something new to say about it, I'm just going to copy and paste my running IRC commentary from when I first booted it up.
> My god. I think I could assemble a small village worth of people out of the
+limbs I've severed in just five minutes of Ninja Gaiden 2
> What makes it especially horrifying is it's not just an instant kill move
> So in a reasonably decent sized group of ninja minions by the time you've
+killed one, you've probably taken the arms off a couple of others
> They may be cannon fodder, but I've got to hand it to them. If some
+lunatic freak with a sword had just taken my arm, I'd be rethinking henching
+as a career
> Sadly I don't think you can take both arms off and re-enact that monty
+python bit
> This is really quite ridiculous
> I just executed a series of attacks I can only describe as a double spine
+thrust followed by a 3/4 boxing helena
> I think this game would really benefit from descriptions like that flashing
+on screen in the style of the tony hawk games
> Dear god... I am now wielding a staff and yet still removing limbs. The
+sound effects lead me to believe that they are not so much being severed any
+more as just dissolving into constituent atoms under the force of my blows
> I have replaced my staff with a pair of metallic talons. This can't
+possibly end well
> I am not quite sure why my character insists on dramatically plunging his
+death tipped fist entirely through the enemies stomach when he has already
+removed every limb they have, but it sure looks uncomfortable
I generally find gore for gores sake in videogames a little juvenile and tiresome, but you've sort of got to appreciate subject material that takes anything to such a ridiculous level that it becomes self-parodying (See also: Dead Alive or 300). When equipped with the aforementioned talons of doom, your character becomes what can only be described as a sirocco of dismemberment, the patron god of limblessness, an archetypal, blood drenched vision of terror worshipped in hidden rituals by Weeble and Mr. Potato Head alike. It's a sight to behold.
Instead of ruining a perfectly pointless entry by telling you anything about what my non-fictional life is like, I'll leave you with my amusingly schizoid itunes playlist that's been running in a loop while I've been updating this: Serge Gainsbourg and Bridget Bardot's Bonnie & Clyde, Elliot Smith's Needle in the Hay (though the Sad Kermit version is worth a watch also), Grendel's One Eight Zero (Life Cried Remix) and The Flight of the Conchords Prince of Parties.
Can you believe they used to pay me to play music for people? Neither can I.
The previous paragraph is brought to you by the fact that I've been playing Ninja Gaiden 2 since getting home, which is a game that can best be described by the protologism "Decapitastic". I sort of want to get back to it, so instead of thinking up something new to say about it, I'm just going to copy and paste my running IRC commentary from when I first booted it up.
> My god. I think I could assemble a small village worth of people out of the
+limbs I've severed in just five minutes of Ninja Gaiden 2
> What makes it especially horrifying is it's not just an instant kill move
> So in a reasonably decent sized group of ninja minions by the time you've
+killed one, you've probably taken the arms off a couple of others
> They may be cannon fodder, but I've got to hand it to them. If some
+lunatic freak with a sword had just taken my arm, I'd be rethinking henching
+as a career
> Sadly I don't think you can take both arms off and re-enact that monty
+python bit
> This is really quite ridiculous
> I just executed a series of attacks I can only describe as a double spine
+thrust followed by a 3/4 boxing helena
> I think this game would really benefit from descriptions like that flashing
+on screen in the style of the tony hawk games
> Dear god... I am now wielding a staff and yet still removing limbs. The
+sound effects lead me to believe that they are not so much being severed any
+more as just dissolving into constituent atoms under the force of my blows
> I have replaced my staff with a pair of metallic talons. This can't
+possibly end well
> I am not quite sure why my character insists on dramatically plunging his
+death tipped fist entirely through the enemies stomach when he has already
+removed every limb they have, but it sure looks uncomfortable
I generally find gore for gores sake in videogames a little juvenile and tiresome, but you've sort of got to appreciate subject material that takes anything to such a ridiculous level that it becomes self-parodying (See also: Dead Alive or 300). When equipped with the aforementioned talons of doom, your character becomes what can only be described as a sirocco of dismemberment, the patron god of limblessness, an archetypal, blood drenched vision of terror worshipped in hidden rituals by Weeble and Mr. Potato Head alike. It's a sight to behold.
Instead of ruining a perfectly pointless entry by telling you anything about what my non-fictional life is like, I'll leave you with my amusingly schizoid itunes playlist that's been running in a loop while I've been updating this: Serge Gainsbourg and Bridget Bardot's Bonnie & Clyde, Elliot Smith's Needle in the Hay (though the Sad Kermit version is worth a watch also), Grendel's One Eight Zero (Life Cried Remix) and The Flight of the Conchords Prince of Parties.
Can you believe they used to pay me to play music for people? Neither can I.
