Chris

Idle Thumbs 179: Shadow of Something

Recommended Posts

Super Smash Brothers Conflict

Super Smash Brothers Battle

Super Smash Brothers Modern Warfare

Super Smash Brothers Operation Enduring Freedom

Super Smash Brothers Noise Ordnance Violation

Super Smash Brothers Riot

Super Smash Brothers Clash (shortened to SmashClash or possibly Super Clash Brothers)

Super Smash Brothers Bulletstorm

Super Smash Brothers Dark Blood Rising

 

 

Super Smash Brothers Kerfuffle

Super Smash Brothers Quarrel

Super Smash Brothers Scrap

Super Smash Brothers Quibble

Super Smash Brothers Squabble

Super Smash Brothers Argument (Super Smash Brothers Row for European English localization)

Super Smash Brothers Combat Evolved

Super Smash Brothers Rumble (introducing Officer Krupke!)

Super Smash Brothers Donnybrook

Super Smash Brothers Fisticuffs

Super Smash Brothers Skirmish

Super Smash Brothers Disagreement

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I initially thought the TM thing was how it showed up your Steam library. For example, Sleeping Dogs shows up like this for me and it drives me nuts.

 

Also, the only chrome plugin that changes text I have installed is Jailbreak the Patriarchy which is a kind of silly thing that simply swaps gendered words with the opposite gender. I mostly leave it off, but it's fun to turn on if someone else is using my computer to CONVERT THEM TO FEMINISTS. Also, pretty depressing a lot of the time.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Team 17 Games list

qty 16 - 2D

qty 4 - 3D

qty 5 - spinoffs

 

there was also a facebook game, i doubt that ever gained traction

 

 

Anyone ever play the 3d version? it was terrible to control and not very memorable, I imagine if it was played now would be just awful.

 

Achievement Hunter has some videos of them playing it. It didn't seem bad, just unremarkable in every way. Also really hard to figure out where the enemies are.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I said this in the Shadow of Mordor thread, but the story reminds me a lot of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  Its a weird side story that maybe seems like its supposed to fit into the canon but has a lot of crazy events that feel like they're taken out of a fan fiction.

 

Ending spoilers for both games

The Force Unleashed 2 ends with you defeating and actually arresting Darth Vader.  The end of Shadow of Mordor has you defeat Sauron and seek to make a new ring.  Both of those things are ridiculous if they're supposed to fit in their respective stories without disturbing 'canon' events.

 

Did I completely misinterpret this? I was not under the impression that you have any contact with him at the end of the game.

 

Gormongous basically has it spot on. Orcs were bred by evil forces and are essentially "evil" in the throughlines of the main stories. They're bred to hate humans, so they're adversary whether they're evil or not.

 

I disagree with two points you brought up, Chris. One, I don't agree that Talion is presented nobly. He and the wraith are both presented as seeking revenge, and his moments of "humanity" are shown by using trickery, deceit, and stealth rather that brute force to slaughter orcs. Even if their goal is defeating the forces of Mordor and Sauron, neither character is good. It's mentioned by the freed slaves that Talion was hunting THEM before the Orcs overran wherever he was stationed.

 

The next point isn't yours so much as Carolyn's, as you haven't finished the game yet. It's unfortunate that the plot is undercut for the sake of sequelitis, because Celebrimbor is not a good person. He is clearly corrupting Talion. If they could have just ended the game, I can see a fall of those characters like you suggest the corrupting power implies in LoTR. Talion should have died. Celebrimbor should be released or doomed to eternal torment. Instead they have the Middle Earth equivalent of a ghost-dead guy high five to keep kicking ass. It's a damn shame because it was so close.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Anyone ever play the 3d version? it was terrible to control and not very memorable, I imagine if it was played now would be just awful.

 

I remember downloading it to try it out, faffing about for maybe 15 minutes and deciding that it was garbage and completely unnecessary given that Worms 2 (the best of all Worms) already existed. 

 

Edited to add: Just did some reading on Worms: Armageddon.  I had no idea that it has continued to receive support, including a patch as recently as last year.  Apparently Team 17 have let a pair of fan programmers continue to patch and expand it all these years.  The only reason I favored 2 over WA was that there were some options that WA was missing on release, but it sounds like it's the unquestionable best version now. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think most of the interpreted racist undertones of Lord of the Rings are unintentional, and sometimes inherited.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien's_influences


I don't believe he's racist, and find it hard to read into his stories some hidden meaning.  He seems completely uninterested in allegory, and focused on telling interesting stories and building a world. And when you see the scope of that world in his other writings, a lot of the symbolism people assert from the movies or books (like where enemies are geographically located) seem more incidental than anything.

http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works

 

I don't know, it's been a long time since I read through LOTR.  But my general impressions have always been that Tolkien's work is worth evaluating on it's own.  While I love the movies, I strongly think that people should read the books before making assumptions of tone or intent.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think unintended racism is absolutely a part of Tolkien's actual work. I don't think he wanted to make a race that were the bad guys as an allegory for real life. But he does put forward a story in which different races are strongly typified as having integral traits to their vary person. Elves are attractive, intelligent people. Dwarves are short, greedy and rash. The Hobbits are cheeky little farmer people that mess about and enjoy their insular life.

 

The very concept of strongly defined races is problematic in that it asserts that most people within a group share a personality even if a couple of them defy classification (like Frodo and Bilbo). Which is the basic concept of racism after all.

 

Even aside from that, creating an Us versus Them type of conflict is also overly simplistic and again can only come from a prejudiced viewpoint. Whoever 'Them' is, must be a class of people that differs from how you identify your own group. You'd be hard pressed to say these are choices unique to Tolkien but I don't think it's unfair to say he did make racist choices in his world building.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess I find "racism" a strange label when talking about completely different species, especially in a fantasy world.  Even if it's common to refer to them as races.

 

It gets weird when more than one species is considered sentient.  Would you consider Star Trek racist?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also re: us vs them.  I think it's a lot easier to sympathize with when you think of the life and time of the author.  He fought at The Somme in WW1.  I don't think that's an excuse for bigotry (which i don't believe exists).  But I think it's understandable to write about pure evil from a place that isn't rooted in ethnic hatred.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I was actually most of the way through making a Giant Bomb soundbank for Worms Reloaded before my group of friends stopped playing and I sort of gave up on it. I was so looking forward to killing someone and hearing Jeff say "you can see their panties."

 

Also, clearly the best Worms game is actually Liero.

 

Liero is amazing, but me and my friends would always play it without weapon cooldowns, so you could shoot 10+ spikeballs per second for as long as you wanted. It doesn't have the crazy causal chains that Worms does, but its breed of madness is just as fun. I mean, half the time you die from impact damage because the recoil of your weapon made you fly.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess I find "racism" a strange label when talking about completely different species, especially in a fantasy world.  Even if it's common to refer to them as races.

 

It gets weird when more than one species is considered sentient.  Would you consider Star Trek racist?

 

Indeed I would, likewise Mass Effect and most scifi that features aliens, really. Because even though they're not humans, they are so humanoid and feature so much humanity that it is more like a race than another species. In Mass Effect, there are several species of alien that are all human shaped (even if ones like the Krogans are a distinct body type) and can communicate quite well with humans. They're really just other flavours of races, with some extra cosmetic flair on top.

 

(I can't specify with Star Trek, I've never watched it)

 

Also re: us vs them.  I think it's a lot easier to sympathize with when you think of the life and time of the author.  He fought at The Somme in WW1.  I don't think that's an excuse for bigotry (which i don't believe exists).  But I think it's understandable to write about pure evil from a place that isn't rooted in ethnic hatred.

 

Oh I wasn't trying to villify Tolkien for the racism in the books. It's been too long since I've read them to know the nature and I don't know enough about his life to say. That detail probably does go a long way to speak to the creation of Orcs and Uruk-hai. Plus, it would make sense to then regret this choice later on (as someone earlier mentioned he did).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Would you consider Star Trek racist?

Yes, at least at times. The Ferengi are the worst, simply being caricatures of Space Jews. And while the Federation is a celebration of diversity, the rest of the universe is mostly made up of species who are defined by a few traits, from which they are rarely allowed to deviate. It's the same problem that SBM described with LOTR, making an entire group share the same stereotyped traits and personalities.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Star Trek thing is weird. There really was a core ideal in the early goings that involved using the wacky aliens in an almost allegorical way to promote understanding, but it gets very muddied. Likewise, the push to have prominent women and people of color on the bridge (including Majel Barrett as the first officer in the first pilot) was constantly undercut by insanely sexist shit left and right.

 

It was a product of many collaborators and of course of its time, but holy cow. If you marathon Star Trek, you'll get whiplash from how quickly it swings between presenting a progressive message and leaning on the worst shorthand.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I initially thought the TM thing was how it showed up your Steam library. For example, Sleeping Dogs shows up like this for me and it drives me nuts.

 

Yep, that's weird.  Also, Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon are listed as "Far Cry® 3" and "Far Cry® 3 Blood Dragon".  Always looks so weird, especially because Far Cry 2 doesn't have the ® in it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yep, that's weird.  Also, Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon are listed as "Far Cry® 3" and "Far Cry® 3 Blood Dragon".  Always looks so weird, especially because Far Cry 2 doesn't have the ® in it.

 

I recently purchased ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ on Steam. Do the title and subtitle both really need trademark icons?

 

TRADEMARCEPTION

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also re: us vs them.  I think it's a lot easier to sympathize with when you think of the life and time of the author.  He fought at The Somme in WW1.  I don't think that's an excuse for bigotry (which i don't believe exists).  But I think it's understandable to write about pure evil from a place that isn't rooted in ethnic hatred.

 

I don't think Tolkien was being intentionally racist. Like you said, he was supremely uninterested in allegory, beyond sundry criticisms of industrialization, and instead wanted to write a new (or restored) mythology for Anglo-Saxon culture. But he was still a middle-class British academic, with all the assumptions and biases that such an identity entailed, and more so because of similar assumptions and biases in his sources. So yeah, the bad guys come from the east and south, they're all brown people, and orcs, which are irredeemably evil by nature, have a lot of black and lower-class traits, although not nearly so many as in the movies. It's not intentionally racist, but it is racist, which is why it's so interesting to me that Tolkien's Catholicism (and, now that I'm doing some reading, his early and deep dislike of National Socialism) led him late in his life to recognize and start to revise some of the elements. I know of very few writers with a similar depth of conviction to undertake such a massive reevaluation of their own work.

 

God, speaking of, I forgot about Tolkien's letter to a German publisher who wanted to translate and publish his book contingent on proof of Aryan descent. He spends paragraphs demolishing the idea of an "Aryan" ethnicity, then regrets to say he is not of Jewish but of German origin, which has increasingly become an embarrassment to him. He really was the consummate Oxford don, first and foremost.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Whereas you watch Peter Jackson's King Kong, or try to spot many people of color on his crew in the twenty million hours of Lord of the Rings special features, and you get the idea that he is actually just racist.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I recently purchased ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ on Steam. Do the title and subtitle both really need trademark icons?

 

TRADEMARCEPTION

My best guess is that it is because Enslaved was originally planned as a series of games, or at least just a sequel. Game sales weren't very good and they moved on to the Devil May Cry license to save the company.

 

However, I don't see any box art or titles screens with the ™ after Odyssey to the West so perhaps that is just a typo by whoever put it up on Steam? I don't remember how it appeared in game though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

re: Mordor 

 

Anyone read The Brief, Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao?  

 

There's one particular passage this episode reminded me of:

He read The Lord of the Rings for what I’m estimating the millionth time, one of his greatest loves and comforts since he’d first discovered it, back when he was nine and lost and lonely and his favourite librarian had said, Here try this, and with one suggestion changed his life. Got through almost the whole trilogy, but then the line “and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls” and he had to stop, his head and his heart hurting too much.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think Tolkien was being intentionally racist. Like you said, he was supremely uninterested in allegory, beyond sundry criticisms of industrialization, and instead wanted to write a new (or restored) mythology for Anglo-Saxon culture. But he was still a middle-class British academic, with all the assumptions and biases that such an identity entailed, and more so because of similar assumptions and biases in his sources. So yeah, the bad guys come from the east and south, they're all brown people, and orcs, which are irredeemably evil by nature, have a lot of black and lower-class traits, although not nearly so many as in the movies. It's not intentionally racist, but it is racist, which is why it's so interesting to me that Tolkien's Catholicism (and, now that I'm doing some reading, his early and deep dislike of National Socialism) led him late in his life to recognize and start to revise some of the elements. I know of very few writers with a similar depth of conviction to undertake such a massive reevaluation of their own work.

 

God, speaking of, I forgot about Tolkien's letter to a German publisher who wanted to translate and publish his book contingent on proof of Aryan descent. He spends paragraphs demolishing the idea of an "Aryan" ethnicity, then regrets to say he is not of Jewish but of German origin, which has increasingly become an embarrassment to him. He really was the consummate Oxford don, first and foremost.

Borges was like that to an extent: more attacking the "Aryan" ethnicity and the rampant anti-Semitism that was running amok--an still is to an extent--in Argentina. Borges too wished he was of Jewish decent and praised the Jews and attacked the Nazis.  

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Brief, Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao? is definitely on my list of things to read. Junot Diaz seems like a pretty rad dude in the interviews with him I've read.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I recently purchased ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ on Steam. Do the title and subtitle both really need trademark icons?

 

TRADEMARCEPTION

 

If it was Trademarception, the trademark would need a trademark that had the title and subtitle with trademarks. 

 

ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™™ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now