Drupal.org Offline

I found it amusing to see even http://drupal.org goes offline occasionally due to the huge number of connection requests made to the MySQL website.

Is drupal framework tailored to handle heavy loads?

The Art of Story Telling

In my days I have seen movies, read books, listen to stories and even played video games to escape from reality, to free myself from the worries around me. And in this process no one else has been more successful at keeping me at the edge of the seat than "Hideo Kojima"

In one sentence, the guy has got unmeasurable talent especially in the "Art of story telling."

There are many great story tellers throughout the history of mankind, be it Homer the blind guy who wrote Epics like "The Odessey" or "The Illiad" to modern day story tellers in the form of Comics writers like "Stan Lee", to tell story in an interactive media like a video game and bring it to life is a totally different ball game.

The traditional art of story telling does not allow the person who experiences the story to be a part of story or control the characters in the story. But we play the role of the silent spectator. Video games brought a whole new perspective to this by bringing in the person who is getting to know the story also be a part of it even to some extend control it.

Kojima was pretty much an unknown character to me until 1999, that is when I got my Playstation and out of the many random games I selected from the guy who was selling me the games was "Metal Gear Solid" not much of a name to me back then, I tried to play the game couple of times and gave up trying because I just couldn't get past the guards in the initial stage. It was another year later I decided to give the game another try, since I had no other game to play with and got stuck with this one. Once I got hooked into the game, it was more like watching a movie and not a game. Long cut scenes complex story lines. All this was good but what really freaked me off was one of the boss fights in the game between "Snake" the Protagonist of the series taking on a guy named "Psycho Mantis". Now Psycho Mantis is a character that possesses telekinetic and telepathic powers makes it impossible to hit him with any weapon you got, I got frustrated after 3 consecutive defeats and later on was hinted in-game via the radio that I have to switch the controller port from Port-1 to Port-2, the logic being Psycho Mantis cannot track your movements anymore since you switched the controller port, it a bit of breaking the fourth wall, but you just gotta give it to Kojima to think of something innovative like that, a very brilliant way of using the second controller port of a video game console other than using it for a 2nd player support for the game.

The characters he introduce in the game makes an everlasting impression one of my Favorite characters being "Gray Fox", hence I adopted my nick Fox to honor the character. A very inspiring character to me.

And that game was just first in the series, it took some time for me to get into the game but after that I have been a die hard fan of the Metal Gear Series. I went to the extend of downloading and playing the original Metal Gear (1984) and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1992) and played them via an emulator in my computer.

Following Metal Gear Solid (1998) in 2001 he released Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and everytime he released a new game in the series the surprises did not end, the twist here was you play as a new character "Raiden" and get to watch "Snake" in action and not play as "Snake" himself. In the third installment Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004) the whole game changes you are taken back to the chronological beginning of the story line where it all began. I even played a sniper battle that lasted for 3 hours (yup sat through the whole night).

I got myself a Playstation Portable and now a Playstation 3 to continue playing the rest of the Metal Gear series.

What makes these games, worth just more than an action flick are themes that are covered and the presentation of themes.

• War and Peace
• Nuclear Disarmament and Deterrence
  
• Genetics
• Social Memes
• Scenes

The characters are pretty complex and spans across multiple series within the game. The concept of "Soldiers without Borders", in a broader sense of speaking does symbolize a world without borders or differences.

Even though, I want to go through the details of each of the games, I would not do justice to Kojima's presentation within the game. You have to be a part of it, play it, feel it.

I hope to meet Mr.Kojima in person one day. May be even get a copy of my Metal Gear Sold 4, autographed by him.