In attendance: the greatest lyrical acrobat of all time!

 

   When I was in my troubled 14's, over in the back-hill, upside down city of Athens, that seems to be stuck in the past and even though the people that live there have the impression they're the center of the entire world, stubbornly refusing to wake up to the fact that no one really cares about what goes on in their little capital, I began to take notice of a brand new artist. His name was Eminem, though introduced himself to the world as Slim Shady, an alias that I had no idea what it meant. 
   I was never really into rap, the only songs I ever listened to up till that point were Greek and English pop songs (Westlife, anyone?) that were either uplifting and cheerful or would be downright sad cause I would be depressed over some dumb girl that wouldn't wanna go out with me. But then Slim came along.
   I never even considered rap as an alternative because quite frankly, I didn't like the anger and cursing that was in those lyrics. I found it alienating. Okay, I might have listened to the occasional 'Gangsta's Paradise', but who hadn't? What I'm trying to say is, rap wasn't my thing. I couldn't connect to it. Growing up in a home where cursing was not allowed and hardly even practiced, to the point where I found it as something pointless and unnecessary (something that I thank my family for, true values are hard to come by these days), rap was a completely foreign element to me.
   And then this funny little white guy shows up on MTV and starts making rap look like something amusing and funny even, through tracks like 'My Name Is...' or 'The Real Slim Shady' or 'Ass Like That'. The things he said seemed completely forbidden, not because he was cursing just for the sake of cursing and to "break them rulz", like most other rappers, but because he was actually taking on the entire Hollywood system that reeked of hypocrisy. Eminem stirred the waters like no other was willing to and just watching all those other 'celebrities' take offense to his lyrical masterpieces (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Carston Dailey, Fred Durst, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, just to name a few) was so entertaining. And every new headline was just another punch in the gut of that whole intolerable system that kept spewing out more Barbies and Kens, subconsciously enforcing a shameful body image onto an entire generation.

   Apart from his entertaining side though, what really struck me about Eminem was that, even though he was a rap artist, his songs had a deeper meaning. He never shied away from talking about his own life. 'The Way I Am' is still one of the greatest songs ever sung (or rapped, if you prefer) because it really confers the struggles that Eminem or any other artist goes through as a superstar. After all, he is still only human. And it is through these songs and these lyrics that I (and I imagine hundreds of thousands of other people) was able to connect with him.
   People go through a wide arrange of emotions and Eminem was never afraid of talking about any of them in his songs. 'Kim' was one of the most emotionally powerful pieces I have ever heard and it is absolutely devastating to be able to relate to it; to feel the level of loss and betrayal that he must've felt when he came up with it.
   But at the end of the day, what saved Eminem from his drug problem that came very close to ending his life, what gave him an outlet when things got worse for him (apart from his love for his family I assume) was this passion for rapping, this uncanny ability to be able to confer these feelings into lyrics and then perform them in a way that is unique only to him. So he is living proof that even when we are feeling the lowest, we need to look towards the things we do good in order to be able to move forward and keep ourselves afloat. If it worked for Eminem, who was one day simply discovered by Dr. Dre, it can work for anyone else, so long as they hold that one thing they're really good at close to their heart and keep practicing at it.
   In closing this post, I'd just like to point out that last night (24 February) I was given the opportunity that that 14-year-old boy from Athens I mentioned in the beginning never thought he would get: I attended an Eminem concert. The wait was long, the weather was hot, the lines were endless, but it was all worth it. The Rap God himself descended upon us and for two straight hours I was lost within his lyrical acrobatics that took me back all those years, all those laughs, all those struggles, all those good and bad times... Each and every song, whether it's well-known, such as 'Stan', or well-written, like 'Cinderella Man', holds a significant importance to me personally since I would listen to it fanatically at some point in my life. From the first 'Slim Shady LP' all the way to 'Kamikaze', it's been one hell of a ride and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. 

On the subjects of love and Valentine's Day

   What a great feeling... Love. And how heartwarming, riveting and inspiring it can be to feel that acceptance and that connection to another person. It's enough to make us do great things, things we could never see ourselves doing on our own. Love is enough to make a person cross half a world, change their appearance, take on challenges that seemed daunting at first, all with the thought of that special other in mind. Trust me, this is experience talking.
   And yet, what is love? I mean, if you really strip it down (no pun intended) and take a good look at it. It would be the need of one person to make an attachment to another. After all, we are social beings and we do have the instinct to procreate and lead to the evolution of our race. So it is these bare instincts that lead us to seek out other people through whatever manner possible in order to create our successors. 
   But those are just the basics. I mean, even animals and bugs do that. What is so different about us that we actually separate an individual, seek them out, make them appear special in our eyes and even go to extreme lengths for them? And I think the answer to that question might be different for each individual. There are those who seem to think appearance alone is enough and focus only on that. They are closest to the animal instinct that we discussed earlier and just seek to "have fun" without getting into too much hassle or worrying about what comes before or after. The act of mating can still be about casual fun and that's absolutely fine.
   Others seem to think more deeply in regards to this issue and give it more significance. They seek out people with whom they can grow an attachment to, people that remind them of others in their close environment (possibly parental figures) that provide them with a form of safety. And this is the true core of love. The more similar experiences one has had with another, the stronger the connection grows between the two and the more powerful this bond becomes. This love might not even be limited to romance, it could be a friendship that lasts for years, but it is still strong as both people feel a sense of comfort around one another that is not easily found in the presence of anyone else.
   And yet, this incapability that we humans have to be alone, this necessity to live with others, these instincts to procreate and this constant struggle to prove ourselves to the ones our minds have distinguished from the rest of the crowd, due to a few circumstances based merely on chance and nothing further, have brought nothing but distress to hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions.
   Think about it for a second: how many people are actually happy within their relationship? How many are dissatisfied with the attention that they get from their partner? How many are, as they say, "heartbroken" (if your heart was ruptured, you would instantly die, but anyway) that they are deprived of the company of a person that their mind keeps telling them is 'special'? How many couples get married and then end up getting a divorce just a few short months or years later?
   It's all a matter of weakness. Humans are social beings and that is why they constantly look for validation of their existence within others. Whatever they do, no matter how great it is, if no one is there to acknowledge it, then it loses all meaning. You don't have to go far, just take a look at the self-approving machine that is the President of the USA, Donald Trump and you'll find the perfect example.
   Trump is the ideal case of someone shouting out "I need people to confirm my existence" in whatever form that may be. He reminds me of someone that didn't really get any acknowledgement from the people around him, growing up in a harsh environment, and has now decided to take on the whole world just to get back at the ones that didn't provide him with the right amount of attention. Just to get the vindication that he feels he deserves. I feel he never found a single person to talk to heart-to-heart and to confide in and that's what turned him into what he is today: a spiteful person full or resentment and lack of understanding towards anything foreign to him. 
   That's what can happen when you don't have anyone around you giving you that support. And yet, sometimes even being a Trump might be better than growing too much of an attachment to this sense of validation, to the point that you constantly seek it out and become needy and obsessive. Love stems from a need we people have, and just like overeating, or drinking too much or any other abuse, we can go overboard to the point of becoming possessive with people. Once we establish a connection with another person, we might feel that they will always be there no matter how we decide to act towards them. That originates from the fact that they possibly remind us of our own family and those specific bonds are the types that will never break. A mother won't give up her child for any reason in the world. But it's not the same for two friends, as good as they may be.
   There seems to be a complete misconception around this issue. Love is not 'joy'. Love is not 'sugar and rainbows'. Love is not 'holding hands and heading into the sunset'. Hundreds of people are suffering from depression due to (what their mind is telling them is) a need to be with the one that they alone (and maybe one or two others) consider to be 'special'. What is known as 'love' is nothing more than a silent form of battle; a constant negotiation between one person and another on their daily habits, their personal space, their likes and dislikes and how much of that they are willing to sacrifice.
   How much of a person is usually lost or consumed in their attempt to maintain their relationship with another? How many of their favorite hobbies do they drop? How many of their friends do they just stop seeing? How much do they stop showing up at their regular hangout spots? Do they even change what they wear and how they behave? And do they look back at it one day thinking that they regret it? Or even worse, dropping the blame on the other person?
   I find myself disgusted at the many, unnatural ways scientists have come up with so that people can procreate. And yet, as I take a closer look at our social lives, where no one is truly happy, everyone has to give up something to gain another or we just end up settling so that we won't be alone forever (as if there's something criminally wrong with that), I reconsider the whole topic. Maybe we should just be legally obligated to procreate inside some sort of tube once we reach our 30's, just so our species can carry on. We've become too focused on appearances to see what's truly important.
   People have become weak. People have become sad. People can never be satisfied. We don't openly want to admit what we are. We always need to look for something else, something to keep us going. No one person can truly be completed with what they have, we simply weren't made that way. And that constant need is what leads us to be miserable, unhappy and subsequently depressed.
   We've lost touch with who we are. Yet our relationships with one another are quite fundamental, we take what we want from others then eventually get tired of having them around. And that's human nature. Be it friends, parents, lovers, or even children. To be human means to consume everything around you in order to satisfy your own needs, even if that is the simple presence of other people. And once you're done, you move on. But we like to sugarcoat that with niceties within our 'societies' and that's where things become confusing. After all, we're not animals, are we..?

Kingdom Hearts 3: Review

  

  

  I know I'm probably late on this, given I already finished the game last Monday and it is now Sunday, but I wanted to properly digest what I had seen and give myself a chance to go over it again. After all, this is a massive game and I want to give it justice. No, unfortunately it does not provide the out-of-this-world experiences that God Of War did, nor is it the cinematic, western-film that was Red Dead Redemption 2. It can't even be compared to the likes of Horizon: Zero Dawn. But it doesn't have to. Kingdom Hearts 3 sets out to do its own thing and I believe it accomplishes that magnificently.

   I believe that when series director Tetsuya Nomura and his associates first thought of creating a Final Fantasy-meets-Disney kind of game, this is the end result they had in mind. Each and every world looks gorgeous, like you're diving into one of those movies. At this point there's almost no difference between the in-game visuals and the movies themselves. Even to those of real-life quality such as the Pirates of the Caribbean. It's astonishing how far we've come. Donald Duck looks more like a live person than Orlando Bloom a video game character.

   Yet the contribution of the main characters and villains in these worlds feels rather small and insignificant. It's even irrelevant to the general plot. I never actually understood it. In one case they were looking for the black box (don't get me started), in another they wanted the seven "pure lights" to have as back up just in case the original seven lights don't show up and in another they were trying to find a way that hearts interact with one another... The presence of the Organization XIII members in the Disney/Pixar worlds was almost entirely bereft of meaning and it made it seem like these worlds themselves were there purely for cosmetic reasons. Because Disney.

   Sora's journey through them was no different. Although sometimes he would interact with those world's characters in ways that would bring him closer to the answers he had been seeking ("the power of waking"), it all kinda felt dry and empty. I was enjoying the Disney/Pixar worlds on the one hand but on the other, the way they were handled made them feel like a necessary evil to get to the real meat of the game. The part that all fans had been anticipating ever since the release of, um... was it Birth By Sleep or Dream Drop Distance? I forget.

   Thank goodness, it all paid off. I'm not ashamed to admit that even me, a 32-year-old man was brought to tears (more than once) after seeing the end of the journey of these characters. The thing that hits the hardest is that, even though you know they're coming back, it's the way that they do (which is ok, it's not what you would call a Deus Ex Machina) but also the year-long journey that we've had with them. Some of them hit harder than others, but seeing them all together is like being reunited with old friends. And that's where this game really shines.

   This game has some good moments in the beginning, some really enjoyable moments inside each and every world but, if you're a fan of the series, then by far the best is saved for last. Everything you've been waiting for comes to pass, and then some. This is fan-service at its maximum and I believe the ones that waited for all those years won't have much to complain about.

   I enjoyed the uniqueness of each world too. They were carefully constructed so that there isn't just a separate story within them (mainly focused on the Disney/Pixar characters and not so much Sora and the Organization) but also a bunch of mini-games that make you want to return to them. For example, in the Pirates of the Caribbean world (by far one of the best) you have your own pirate ship with which you can do some island-hopping and do battle with other ships. And I gotta say, even though the map was a lot smaller smaller to that of the Greek islands, it played better and much smoother than even Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Or in Arendelle where you get to snowboard on Goofy's shield, in a game that gave me intense flashbacks of going down Mt. Gaia as Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII.

https://twitter.com/alex_kid7/status/1091510204439490560

  The battle system is, of course, as Kingdom Hearts as it can get (though, thankfully as far from Chain Of Memories as possible, that one was a nightmare). You just beat up on Heartless and Nobodies until a prompt for a better skill pops up, depending on your Keyblade, then you use it to whack them some more. Although I was never made aware if these temporary upgrades actually did more damage or if they were purely for show. Plus, if you stand close to Goofy, Donald or that world's guest character (Woody, Jack Sparrow, etc.) you might get to do combo attacks with them. But due to the total randomness of the whole thing, there was absolutely no room for strategy. For example, if you want to do a combo attack with Donald but a prompt to upgrade your Keyblade has become available first, you need to go through the whole process of that before being able to do the combo. And don't get me started on the parade attacks. Flashy as they may be, they lost their usefulness after the 100th time that I used them. Of course, there are always the options of using Magic, Items and Link (Summoning) attacks at any time, and you can assign four commands as shortcuts to make your life a little easier. This always helps with the healing magic. The combat system was fun at the beginning, but it wasn't practical. It lost its glamour after a while.

   The music and the visuals were absolutely stunning. The snowy fields of Arendelle, the colorful and vibrant ball pits of Galaxy Toys, the lush green fields of Corona, the technologically advanced city of San Fransokyo, all of it. And the sounds adapted to it in a great way, like only Yoko Shimomura could make possible. Also I need to say that even though I initially didn't like "Don't Think Twice" as the opening theme, it grew on me and now I love it, while "Face My Fears" has to be one of the absolute finest tracks I have heard in a game for a long time.

   Kingdom Hearts 3 is not a 10/10 game, and it never could be. It's audience is limited to either those who have followed it from a very young age or those who are very young themselves. I think we need to face the fact that it is hard for someone that is in his late 20's or early 30's to suddenly pick up this game and say "oh cool, Donald and Mickey, I can get behind this!" But for those that this game was catered for, I think it was everything it could be and more. They got closure, tons of fun and a promise for even more adventures in the future. In closing, I just have one question...

   WHAT'S IN THE BOX????

Kingdom Hearts 3: First Impressions

   By God! Never in my life did I need something so much and did I not know it! I was patiently waiting to pick up my order of Kingdom Hearts 3 (KH3) from the game shop that's about 20 minutes from my house by bus. However, it was a little bit out of my way to go there after work but I did so anyway because, let's face it, it's freaking KH3 and some of us have been waiting on this for over a decade now. So even though certain events transpired and I hadn't slept on Monday night, leading me to go to work like a zombie, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of getting this sweet game in my hands.
   But alas, it was not meant to be. After work, I got on the train and went as fast as I could to the mall inside of which the game store is located, only to realize all the stores were shut. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays shops close at five and I did not know that. So I had to wait another extra couple of days while everyone was posting stuff on Twitter about how they got their copies and already finished the game (like, what?)
   Long story short, we get to today (Thursday) when I finally was able to get it into my hands. After finally holding it, each minute till I got back home seemed like a century. To add insult to injury, I got off at the wrong bus stop on my way back, which made me get lost. But, after a walk that lasted (what appeared to be) at least 20 years, I finally made it to my room.
   I took my time opening the box. Everything was so carefully placed inside. There was a steelbook, a small pin and an artbook, along with the game itself of course. Everything was accompanied by that fresh game smell that is just irreplaceable. I don't care what anyone says, no digital edition can ever hope to emulate the feeling of holding a game in your hands for the first time, opening the box and putting the disc in your console.
   Thankfully there weren't many updates to be made. Less than ten minutes actually, along with installation time. That is pretty impressive, considering I had to wait half an hour to play Final Fantasy XV after first inserting the disc in my PS4 (how awful!)
   What an experience those openings were! Oh my God, the feels! One awesome scene after another. I now realize the reason why all the previous titlesof the series were remade in HD: so their cut scenes could be used in the KH3 opening. And it was totally worth it. Not one, but three opening sequences later (the "Face My Fears" clip was by far my favorite, it stands out by a mile), I finally got a taste of the game play with the first world which I won't mention here for spoiler reasons.
   This isn't a game, it's a freakin' celebration. It's so vibrant, so jumpy, it offers such variety of attack and combination, yet at the same time it's so simple to approach: just press "X" to attack. That's it. It makes you wonder, how do those combos pop up? What is it that makes each individual combination appear? All I did was hit the bad guys over and over.
   I don't know which was my favorite attack by I have to say, that one where they all jump in the little car and you just get to start blasting everyone really saved me against the final boss of the first world. And just when I was about to get KO'd too. I still haven't though.
   I'm gonna spoil a little bit here (so stop reading if you don't wanna be spoiled), but I got to play as Riku as well. The difference between him and main character Sora is apparent, they've made him overpowered. He's almost like Aqua was in KH 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage. I hope I get to play more as him.
   A number of characters have already popped up on the screen already and, after playing for almost 3 hours and completing a whole world, I realized I was just in the prologue, the space between KH 2.9 and KH3. I have boarder the Gummi Ship for the first time but even though I was excited to drive it, I thought I would leave it for tomorrow.
   In general, it's been an awesome experience so far, I wanna say well worth the wait, but 12 years is a little abysmal. I just hope we don't have to wait that long for the release of the FF VII remake cause I'm starting to get a little old now. I can't go freaking 40 to play a game, you know! Anyway, we're still here, at 33 and loving our games!