Arivall’s and Departures

June 12th is so close, yet so far away. I keep telling myself, “Three more weeks. Three long, arduous weeks.”

Metal Gear Solid 4 releases exactly three weeks from today. I’m sure I’ve dwelled on this before, but it’s a little insane to think that a decade has passed since first playing Metal Gear Solid. Technically, more than half of my life has been spent following and waiting for the next entry in mindfuck that is MGS. And it’s finally going to end, or at least Solid Snake’s involvement in it will.

It’s really bittersweet. On one hand, it’s hard to imagine not having Snake around past his apearance in MGS4. And on the other, it’s great to have some form of finality and closure that so rarely ever occurs in a long-standing series. Early reviews and specifically EGM’s Shane Bettenhausen have stated that it ties up virtually ALL loose ends and satisfactorily explains all of its impossibilities.

Let’s assume that all the series’ mindfucks are indeed explained within this finale. If that comes to fruition, I am forced to say that this method and delivery of storytelling is disappointingly unique. It needs to happen more often.

If I really think about it, I don’t think that there is a stronger character in the medium. In MGS, Hideo Kojima created a universe in which I almost believe that a grafted arm can instill two characters in one body. I’m sure that it’s mostly caused by my love for the series, but I find it spectacularly easy for me to suspend my disbelief.

I don’t know if you can tell. But I’m really excited for Metal Gear Solid 4. And I’m really glad I can hide it, or else I’d be consistently making fool out of myself by ranting and raving about it all.

To keep my mind off the awfully imminent release of MGS4, I’ve been digging into The World Ends With You and Persona 3. Although, I don’t think I’m ready to dig too deep into them just yet as I’m still very early in both games.

But, wow.

I don’t even know where to start. I draw striking similarities from both, with very obvious and distinct differences.

Having just recently played and given up on Lost Odyssey, I was looking to find some other JRPG’s. The 360 lacking, I went waaaay back to the impeccable PS2 library and after hearing great things about Persona 3, I decided to pick up Persona 3 FES. FES is a re-relase of Persona 3 that features tweaks and a really sweet epilogue, that from what I hear provides pretty decent closure. Man, it’s all about the closure this week, but that’s beside the point.

The point is that 4 hours in, I’ve barely scratched the surface. And I’m scared. I’m scared that I’m going to love it and it will do terrible, terrible things to my life. Those first four hours were all in a single session and my only indication that I’d been playing for as long as I had been was the change from light to dark.

I’m just really glad to be enjoying JRPG’s again, as well as having something to play over the next three weeks. I’m gonna go and get back to that life-sucking demon I was referring to earlier. Later!

I received my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV a day late, this Wednesday. But hey, that’s a fair price to pay when Gamefly is the most financially sound option. Especially, in the era where games retail for $60. Thus, my not writing about it after my first session — I was already anxious enough as it was, so I just went on to the whole actually playing the game part. And now, I’m kinda glad I didn’t instantly write it up after my bit of time with the game. Had I done that, it’s more than likely that I’d have ended up glossing over it’s unbelievably dense and believable open-world nature and phenomenal writing, among other things just as every other review has, instead of the unique moment I just had.

And before you ask, it didn’t involve auto theft, homicide, nor hooker runs. No, this moment completely blindsided me and more than likely won’t mean anything to anyone else as it was unique to me and my life.

Early on, you meet this girl, Michelle, she immediately takes a liking to Niko (a fresh off the boat immigrant from Eastern Europe), at the end of the mission you drop her off at home and the two of you exchange numbers. Pretty standard stuff so far. Not long after, you find yourself on your first in-game date with her.

It’s a mandatory mission and serves as a tutorial for the dating and hanging-out-with-buds element that’s interwoven throughout the game. Niko and Michelle go bowling, throughout the night they got to know each other a little better. At the end of the night Niko drives her home and that was the end of the mission as well as, for me, the end of seeing Michelle.

Throughout the game, calls are made to and from various characters, I found myself blowing them off because I was much more interested in advancing the story than going bowling or playing darts with some fool. But this particular call was different as it had an almost unbelievable amount of congruency as to what is going on in my life at this particular point and time.

10 hours into the game Niko receives a call from Michelle and she says something to the effect of, “Hey Niko, remember me? It’s Michelle, the idiot you’ve been ignoring for a weeks.”

It hit me hard. Harder than I ever thought a game, or even any form of entertainment would ever be capable of. I’m aware that it was incredibly circumstantial, but that doesn’t negate its occurance. But man, if my heart didn’t sink a little at that comment. Exactly what I’d just done to this blotch of pixels and splatter of polygons is exactly what another person had been doing to me.

I know that this moment was extremely circumstantial and of inconceivable specificity, but damn if it didn’t have a substantial impact.

On a broader note, I am really enjoying GTA IV and the re-imagined Liberty City. It’s really fun, and isn’t that all that matters?