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 On 02/04/2020 at 11:31 PM by Matt Snee See More From This User » |
Back in summer of 2001, I visited my friends in New York (I lived in San Francisco at the time). Hanging out in their apartment in Manhattan, I watched them play Rez on their PS2. It was a trippy sort of rhythm game inspired by William Gibson's novel Neuromancer, and featured a hacker breaching cyberspace to defeat an evil artificial intelligence.
I didn't get a chance to play it myself until it came out as RezHD on the Xbox360 close to ten years later. But when I did play it, I loved it - the techno soundtrack and trippy graphics along with the fun but simple gameplay that synced with the soundtrack filled me with wonder. Looking back at the time this game came out at the turn of the century, it brings back memories of that sort of transcendant futurism that could be found in America before 9/11 and the past hellish twenty years before technology ripped the world asunder.
But back then, the internet stood for hope for the future.
I played Rez again when I got the Playstation VR headset. The game of course translates to VR so well, you'd think it was originally designed for it. The graphics were improved, and you could turn your head around and gaze across the endless vistas of cyberspace. Once again, I was impressed with the beauty of the game but also the glorious future we thought was inevitable.
I'm sure I'll continue playing this game here and there as the years go by, on new systems, in new ways. But it will always remind me of a world that was, and a future that will never will be.
Sheesh. Thinking about this game, Neuromancer, and VR makes me want to get into VR.
I remember distinctly when I was buying up cheap PS2 games at Gamestop years ago. I'd always see Rez there and not getting it because it was like way more expensive than anything else I was looking at. Like you, though, I played it on 360 later on when it was cheaper.
Yeah, the ps2 version was a cult classic and they probably didn't make a lot of them, so it's no wonder it was rare and pricey.
Ikaruga was another one I always saw and wanted but it was too expensive. It also appeared on Xbox later for a more reasonable price.
I bought Ikaruga on 360. Too tough for me.
Yeah, crazy brutal but lovely to watch. Sometimes I just load up a game at home and just let it run through it's demo video. It's great audio and video wallpaper for the room.
I have Rez on my PS2. It's neat, but I was never very good at it.
Oh cool! Original copies are not common.
Man hearing Rez takes me back to how difficult it was to find in the wild. I didn't get into finding a bunch of PS2 games until later so by then it was impossible to find, and if you did find one it was super expensive. Such a cool and different game.
Yeah, one of my favorites.
I remember being optimistic about the Internet. That was before people ruined it with their peopling.
That optimism is long gone!
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