Watch Morgan Webb Totally Degrade Video Games on the Tyra Banks Show
April 1st, 2008
Up for something totally degrading? I thought not but you’ll wanna watch this anyways.
Below is video from the Tyra Banks show (you know Tyra Banks, that popular super model? Yeah I’d never heard of this show before either), the segment is as she puts it about “decoding your man”. The subject matter is a man “obsessed” with video games, fortunately our video game heroine Morgan Webb was there to save the day. Watch what I am talking about and read below for my analysis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdIZuu6IaQoIf you couldn’t tell by the tone of my language in the introduction I was not impressed by this video. This is a typical situation that perfectly highlights the perception problems that our industry continually faces among such audiences. Over the past few articles I have been edging towards this topic so I want to do a little analysis of the situation and break down what the underlying problem is.
Analysis
The first thing you should be aware of is the use of the word “obsessed”. Obsessed has a negative connotation and much like the word ‘addiction’ is commonly used by the media to typecast us gamers.
The real problem though is the lack of understanding by the female companion (isn’t it always a lack of understanding?). She does not know why her husband plays so much video games, it is incomprehensible to her hence she is on the show to find the answers to this. She announces her lack of understanding with “and I just don’t understand it”.
As you’ve seen, even though the segment is about solving the problems that women have (“decoding your man”, ie. How to understand why your man behaves as he does) the show instead concentrates around the man’s supposive problems (his obsession to video games) and throughout the video the language and choice of questions all fall back onto the him as the problem source. This itself contradicts the point of the segment but nevermind.
When Tyra asks the wife “how often does he play these games?” she answers inspecifically, stressing the length of play time instead of just answering the question. The unspecific nature of this answer doesn’t paint a realistic picture, so she manages to avoid substantiating her claim that he is obsessed and doublely she showcases a possible uncertainty of just how long. I also like how Tyra refers to games as “these games”.
Read the rest of this entry »
MGS4 TGS Trailer Analysis
November 24th, 2007
Yeah, I know what your thinking, the Metal Gear Solid 4 Tokyo Game Show trailer came out ages ago. But I also know that chances are you’re bursting at the seams with anticipation for this game, so much so that even if I try to squeeze a tiny bit of juice out of this trailer it’d be worth reading.
This tiny bit of juice won’t be enough to quench your thirst though, so what I’ll be doing is backing this article up with several more analysis based articles right up to the release of this game. In the last 2 months I’ve finished almost every Metal Gear title (except for Portable Ops) and have been compiling data on everything that we need answers for. So to kick it off, lets turn back the clock to the TGS.
Now if your not sure what I am talking about then check out the trailer here. Also I suggest watching the E3 2007 trailer as well.
In the E3 trailer we learn that Liquid needs to discover more about FoxDie in order to understand how the nanomachines communicate with each other (and once he knew this he could obtain “total battlefield control”). Que for Naomi Hunter’s returning role in this series. At the start of the trailer she explains what I just said and sends out a help message for Snake to rescue her.
The first thing that you’ll probably notice is that her skin colour is much more tanned than the original MGS. The reason being that she should have always looked more tanned (due to her South African origin). Her skin tone in the original MGS was far to light IMO, so they have corrected themselves here.
The crux of this trailer really is about setting characters into their roles, the story finds uses for Naomi as well as other returning characters and introduces a new character. The scenes with Fox Hound don’t give away too much information other than:
- Praying Mantis is one of the PMCs(a part of Outer Haven?)
- FROGS are ‘Liquid’s private army’
- Each member of Fox Hound can work together due to the nanomachines and SOP
In the next scene we are introduced to Drebin, a gun launderer with a strange monkey dressed in underwear.
What I am going to do now is skip everything else in the trailer, focus on one point for a second and then piece the rest of the trailer into a convenient, flowing storyline. After the TGS at the consumer expo E for All Ryan Payton(one of the game’s producer) revealed that there were going to be a total of five environments for MGS4. He only revealed three of them, being; the Middle East, South Africa and somewhere in Europe. Now this trailer actually reveals one more or so it seems; Solid Snake’s location of retirement; Alaska. Near the end of the trailer we see Snake and Liquid prepare for a battle between Metal Gear Rex and Metal Gear Ray(the same one from MGS2?). Now some may argue but this scene has all the constructs of Alaska.
Okay, now lets piece together the rest of this trailer starting from the end with Johnny Sasaki whom has is a been featured in every MGS game in some form or another(read more here). We see Snake disarm him and get him on the floor. Now although the trailer doesn’t suggest this I think that after this incident Snake would meet(be reunited?) with Meryl as Johnny Sasaki is a member of the Fox Hound(which Meryl leads). We can see that this is the result because Snake is with Fox Hound at the start of the trailer.
So Snake teams up with Fox Hound, now before or after this(most likely before), Snake meets up with Drebin whom then helps Snake and Otacon ambush Liquid’s chopper, rescue Naomi and make a run for it. How do I know this? A fine eye my friend.
The chopper(well the convoy plane thing) holding Naomi was also seen in the E3 2005 clip. If you noticed the text on the tank in the scene with Drebin(Eyes on You) this is the same as the tank in the ambush scene as well as the chase scene (where Snake asks “Who the hell are these Patriots?”).
In the ambush scene right after the MGS4 calligraphy text we see Drebin’s tank burst through some gates and onto a landing pad where Snake and Drebin wipe out a few Metal Gears and soldiers. Later on in the montage part we see the plane take off (Otacon piloting) in this quick snippet we see Naomi being dropped into Drebin’s tank (his monkey friend also sits atop of the tank during these scenes).
So off the tank goes, through the middle eastern streets with Snake and Otacon following in the chopper above. Metal Gears drop into the area as they are trying to escape.
There are two interesting characters that jump in and out of these scenes, Raiden and Vamp. We see Vamp at the launching pad (with a large bullet shot wound to the head) and also on the streets throwing off his cape. Raiden is in the same sort of area. So what happens next? Cut and paste the awesome fight scene between in the E3 trailer. If you watch both trailers you can see how this then pieces together.
What I suspect Konami will do in thi part of the game is one of the awesome chase sequences. Much like in the escape sequences in MGS1 and MGS3. Which would be followed by the battle with Vamp. Although its a bit tricky to pinpoint how this will unfold exactly. Do you play as Snake in the plane or Drebin in the tank? If you fight Vamp that means that you’ll Raiden will be a playable character. I think that its likely that you’ll be able to control the tank, I’m basing this on what Ryan Payton said about the game featuring some gameplay elements from different genres.(Read more here).
Originally due to the trees in the landing pad area I thought that this might be the South African locale but because the trailer flow like it does this is obviously not the case. Also another point in question, why is Vamp trying to stop Snake get to Naomi? He’d be working for Liquid/The Patriots then.
After that juicy segment, we see Snake and Naomi by the tank, they begin to escape on foot. Naomi tears her clothes, I guess this is to make it look as though she had been kidnapped rather than saved. Otacon then starts talking about Sunny whom is obviously Olga’s daughter. This is confirmed at the end of the trailer. What I don’t understand is where she came from, was she on the chopper?
Meryl then introduces her squad, saying that they are there to investigate PMC (private military company) activity. This is followed by Snake holding a weakened (from the battle with Vamp?) Raiden in the chopper. He then takes Raiden to a cathedral where he meets Eva from MGS3. Shock horror. She’s about 70 years old and is a good guy(confirmed by Hideo, in his podcast..If I remember corretly). Why is she calling Snake, CQC Snake?
Conclusion
Well thats all I’ve got for this one trailer. I’m interested to know where the start of the E3 trailer fits in with what I have just been talking about. Next up I’ll start highlighting the questions that MGS4 should answer for us. Starting with Big Boss, I have a strong argument brewing as to why I think he is still alive and why he is going to be in MGS4. There is already some proof out there that he’ll be in this game, so as a pop quiz, can you find me some proof to his existence in MGS4? Let me know via the Contact Form and I’ll share what I have later on.
Resident Evil 5 PS3 Conference Trailer Breakdown
July 18th, 2007
After hearing that some footage of RE5 was at the Sony E3 Press conference I assumed that Capcom wouldn’t be generous enough to give us a new trailer different to the MS Conference trailer. Well it turns out that they did and finally separate video has surfaced of just the RE5 part of the conference.
So if you haven’t seen the clip then check it out without delay:
Now I am going to refer to many points made in my breakdown of the 360 conference video. So I suggest reading that before you delve into this post. This video is much shorter than the previous one and many points have already been covered. So there isn’t a whole lot to break down.
To begin with this trailer repeats a number of scenes from the previous trailer, including:
- the stage scene
- angry crowd scene
- the brief snippit of the claws growing
- the scene with the strange man being restrained
- the repeated scenes of the strange man’s eye’s turning red
- scene of strange man’s fingers growing
After the first 2 repeated scenes we see an almost top down view of the initial scenes in the 360 trailer. Being at the start of both trailers it seems that this must be one of the first areas in the village.
This time though Chris walks past the announcer from the previous trailer. Although it appears that he is wearing shorts this time. We also see him a few times throughout this trailer. There is also the two females from the previous trailer. After this scene a mob of villagers group up. So it appears that this guy may be the ring leader.
We see a brief scene where Chris is being attacked and then a shot of a group of villagers running out of a shed with weapons. This is the group of people whom pursue him. Later we see one of the villagers trying to break Chris’ arm, this pans out into a scene from the previous trailer.
What I realised here was that the crowd scenes from the previous trailer must be seperate from this incident that is going on. So perhaps those shots where part of the back story as when Chris came to the town the strange man had his bloodshot eyes and yet before this he was in the crowd.
There is also another scene with the flyswat man from the last trailer. He must be some sort of boss. We see him swinging his devastatingly large flyswat around. It also should be noted that the strange man couldn’t be the flyswat guy as they where both in the same scene at the start of the trailer.
This trailer finally reveals whom is restraining the strange man, it is the two villagers at the start. You can tell because of the clothing. Although you can hardly see the announcer(that is if the announcer is the villager at the start of the trailers in the green shirt) we can spot a patch of his pants which match up. We can also see that the lighting matches the scenes.
This also scene matches up these different shots, once again the lighting:
There is also a repeated glimpse of the strange man’s hands evolving. Another scene proves this as he feels a jolt in his fingers.
The most important part of the clip is the part where we see the scene of the strange man continue. Blood starts to weep from his eyes. This and the hand part must be effects of this new virus.
Dot Points
A few quick points, as I previously mentioned the villagers use that strange hook thing. Perhaps another weapon for climbing into buildings In that scene we see a quick peek at a different area.
One of the villagers tries to break Chris’ arm which might be another new gameplay mechanic. Did you also spot the other shot with Chris’ headset I’ll leave that one for you guys.
I hope these features have opened up the trailer a little bit for you. 🙂
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