Recently received the Boss Wars series of books that read the library. This is a set of six very interesting books, each featuring a single well-known game (World of Warcraft, Earth Adventure 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Dragon Quest, Colossus Roar), and invited veteran players of all identities to write. Curious, I flipped through each book and wanted to pick one to read. I ended up with Colossus Roar because its content—or the game—had something different about me.
As a half-writer, I have read a lot of books about games. But I'm not too cold about the way I write quoting data, nouns, or drawing conclusions about why games are fun and popular from various disciplines such as sociology and psychology. In other words, from a personal point of view, I don't like to look at technical analysis, but rather look at something else. For example, when talking about a game, there are objective and subjective parts in the discussion, there are parts that have business purposes and private feelings, and I will be more interested in the latter. Today, I find a lot of these things in this Colossus Roar.
Before I opened it, I was thinking, what exactly is written in a novel of more than 100,000 words for the experience of playing a single game? I knew it wasn't, and shouldn't be, a super-long review, but something very personal: what a person sees and hears while holding the handle, and therefore has some associations about it—the book is roughly like that, with some interactive experiences and feelings moving from the author's head to paper.
The book has a "flow" similar to the game itself, and its chapters are the progress of the game itself. The reader follows the author's perspective and witnesses the process of his defeat of one colossus after another. The main interest of reading is also reflected here: in a way, the author thinks of himself as Wanda, substituting himself into the virtual world.
For example, he describes himself witnessing "the rolling hills and cliffs carved by the wind, stretching from my eyes to the distance", hearing "the roar of the earth shaking in the valley"; for example, he feels the shock of "the giant elephant passes by me, its legs like a mossy tree"; or for example, he never says "horse", but must shout "Agro" (a word I hear directly back in the game), and use "she" instead of "it". You see, this way, he enters the game world, rather than simply feeling the experience and difficulty in front of the screen.
Frankly, when I saw these descriptions, my first reaction was childishness — isn't it childish, playing a game and writing these things. But I think about it, how did I play this game in the first place? Or is it the same as the "me" who calls out to Agro? At this time, I realized that these imaginative elements did not exist in the "current me", but in the me of more than ten years.
When I experienced such a game at that age when I was staring out the window, I must have thought that I was the hero of that virtual world, galloping on horseback on the endless plains, climbing on the colossus, and listening to the roar. At least then, I could take on the role of being wrapped up in imagination and at the same time have some revelatory feelings about myself. From another point of view, this is probably also the benefit of playing games.
What is particularly interesting is that one detail mentioned by the author further evokes my memories. He said that because the colossus were not officially named in the game, he named them in his own way. This reminds me that when I was playing games, I couldn't understand Japanese (at that time, console games basically had nothing to Chinese), didn't know what dialogue meant, and had to make up for it myself. Who and who said what, which option means, I even rely on such a "fool's" to figure out all the characters in Fantasy Water Margin 2. It's also an interesting imagination-based "way of playing", isn't it? Of course not now.
Because the entire process follows the progress of the adventure in the game, and later on, the description based on pure adventure inevitably appears to be insufficient, so it is fair to say that the book still has a sense of flowing account. The element that tries to neutralize this feeling is the "digression" that the author sets in each chapter. For example, sometimes talk about the process of knowing yourself and this game, sometimes interspersed with some travel feelings, sometimes talk about movies and friends' beards, and sometimes introduce some development secrets. In general, these digressions can be boiled down to two kinds: one is one's own experience, and the other is cold knowledge.
I prefer the former. For example, after playing a colossus, he jumped out of reality and recounted his experience working in a retail store. He tells customers how much fun the game is and how he struggles to beat every boss. This example is very good because it earns my trust and lets me know that the author is a person who loves games, thus bringing his enthusiasm to me. I have also experienced this powerful appeal. For example, last year I went to Universal Studios to play, there was a big fat man in the Harry Potter area who took the initiative to show me the way and introduce how to have fun with a certain project, I didn't think it was funny, but he said that he was dancing, and I later queued for 1 hour for this. The reason I remember him is that I knew he was a staff member, but it didn't give me a dogmatic feeling, more gracious than the guys with doll heads. Similarly, when the author of the book enthusiastically introduced strangers to his adventures riding Agro at that retail store, he had this intimacy, like a friend.
In addition, the development of secrets and cold knowledge is also a fixed element interspersed with books. You don't have to get these things entirely from this book. But if you don't understand it, it's worth seeing. For example, why the overseas version outside of Japan was renamed "Colossus Roar" - it was indeed a ghost made by the Americans, who thought the name "Wanda and Colossus" was too abstract, so they took the name of the third battle (this time it is concrete); or Ueda Fumito originally planned to make 48 Colossus, and his understanding of the last orchard of Sanzhoumu , the latter I didn't know before, the orchard will reduce the HP ceiling, Ueda explained: " The fruit below can make you more like a monster, and the fruit here can make you look like a human. "How funny, one sentence makes people have to look at the game from a different perspective. There are many cold facts like this, and if you're interested, they'll also be your reason to read this book.
Ultimately, for me personally, the reason I like this book is because it has "childish" content that makes me reminisce and associate. In the early years, these things were often seen in forums, but now they are almost non-existent. For example, if you go and say "a mountain carved by the wind" now, someone will at best tell you that this place is near a teleportation point. There's no such atmosphere.
As this author put it: he has his opinion. I don't know much about his basics, but I think he and I most likely have one thing in common: playing the best games at the best age. Even if I don't feel so fanatical today, I still think back to the excitement of that time.
Then again, why does the author agree that Colossus Roar is the best game in his mind? I have to say — he doesn't point this outright in the book, but I think the big thing about Colossus Roar or ICO being a classic is that it knows how to leave blank. There are no lines, no rhetoric, no complicated descriptions, but more imaginative blanks that are also part of the game and cannot be ignored.