Monthly Archives: July 2004

Soul Calibur 2

I was on gam­ing hia­tus for a few months (my longest yet), but now I’m back into the old swing of things with Soul Calibur 2. I did­n’t play much of it before because I did­n’t know any­one else who played it, but Aaron and Jessie have been addict­ed since the begin­ning of the month. Now I actu­al­ly feel like I can invest some time into train­ing a char­ac­ter and learn­ing their fight­ing dynam­ics. The game is so deep and involved that I can prac­tice for weeks and weeks and still be con­sid­ered a begin­ner. I mean, Virtual Fighter 4 had a pret­ty involved sys­tem, but SC2 extends past the “basic” guard>attack>throw>guard with added sidestep>vertical attack>horizontal attack>sidestep, and mid-guard>high/mid attack and low-guard>low/high attack, not to men­tion the options that open up with soul charg­ing and unblock­ables.

The prob­lem is that SC2 has so many cool char­ac­ters that I want to use. There’s some­thing about using a char­ac­ter that match­es the per­son­al­i­ty. It’s like a pro­jec­tion of the self in a fan­ta­sy world. Whenever I do RPGs, I usu­al­ly cre­ate a char­ac­ter that’s like me (although with height mod­i­fi­er +6 when the option is there). That’s why I nev­er use the “evil” char­ac­ters in fight­ing games.

I start­ed SC2 with Kilik since he had the most rec­og­niz­able tra­di­tion­al Shaolin fight­ing style (my favourite), although Xianghua’s and Yunsung’s moves have fair­ly obvi­ous Chinese roots as well. Kilik end­ed up being too bor­ing for me (no per­son­al­i­ty, pre­dictable moves), so I switched to Yoshimitsu, cause he’s real­ly cool and sneaky, but his moves end­ed up being too awk­ward. I real­ize that this is how Yoshimitsu is sup­posed to be played (with off-tim­ing bal­ance), but the char­ac­ter did­n’t click for me.

Right now I’m using Raphael, who hap­pens to be the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter move-wise, but also the biggest pan­sy out of all of them. He can go in and out of stances eas­i­ly, with sev­er­al attack­ing options in each stance, mak­ing him an offen­sive, but dif­fi­cult-to-mas­ter, char­ac­ter. He has amaz­ing­ly vari­able com­bos, and in between hits, his foil guard-impacts, just like a fencer. He’s unlike any oth­er char­ac­ter in the game, and I have to applaud Namco for com­ing up with the idea and mak­ing him so real­is­tic.

My ner­dy­ness is com­ing back. The same ner­dy­ness that used to say, “Why make out with you when I could be play­ing a game?”.

On a side note, I’m also back into big break­fasts with bacon, sausages, and milk tea on the week­ends. My arter­ies hate them, but I for­give them and love them all the same.

To Not Scratch

What is it about mos­qui­to bites that makes them so damn sat­is­fy­ing to scratch? It’s like a high­er form of itch­ing, which turns into a high­er form of scratch­ing. I’ve always had bad reac­tions to insect bites; when I was young, I had one that was almost the size of my head. It cov­ered up all of my kneecap and I decid­ed to get med­ical help when I could­n’t walk with­out feel­ing like I had an extra 27 lay­ers of skin bunch­ing up on the joint. I know I should­n’t touch them, and I’ve since gained the self-con­trol, but some­thing just makes me want to jab my fin­gers in them and claw them until they bleed.

Heavy

I woke up this morn­ing, and the sun was hid­den behind the dis­mal morn­ing sky, like a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic calm in the atmos­phere. It all felt numb, and I put on a bit­ter­sweet mix, hop­ing to awak­en my tor­pid sens­es. Every song hit me for a few bars, then fad­ed into the back­ground.

Heavy thoughts on a heavy morn­ing. Heavy music for heavy rain.

The Zarathustra Sessions, Part 3: Saint Salieri

I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough to not know hatred and envy. So be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

—Of War and Warriors, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Ah, back into this again. I was­n’t plan­ning on writ­ing this tonight, but some­thing set me off.

I like how Nietzsche believes that two human “flaws”, which some view as sins no less, should be embraced instead of shunned. Most like­ly, he’s attack­ing Christianity, and it’s view of hatred and envy as sins (he goes on to attack oth­er beliefs in sweep­ing sub­ject dances). Personally, I think that he’s point­ing out the fact that humans are, in fact, human, and prone to err. After all, who is good enough to not feel such base emo­tions, even if only once-in-a-while?

It’s made me real­ize that some­times I should­n’t be so hard on myself. I should­n’t blame myself for feel­ing a cer­tain way, or hav­ing a cer­tain flaw. It does­n’t even mat­ter if painful emo­tions don’t gen­er­ate some­thing ben­e­fi­cial, like self-improve­ment.

Of course, if my base assump­tion is wrong, then I’m read­ing too deeply into this. Such things are always a haz­ard of read­ing trans­lat­ed mate­r­i­al, and all that real­ly mat­ters is whether or not it helps.

It’s tak­en me this long to real­ize that the best that one can do is try, not suc­ceed. That does­n’t mean that I’m going to set­tle for a life with­out self-improve­ment, it just means that I should learn to for­give myself before I learn to for­give oth­ers.

Because the for­mer has always been hard­er than the lat­ter.