Can I, too, kill the giant and burrow through his eye?
September 2, 2011 8:41 PM   Subscribe

So, I'm reading Ender's Game to my son (per his request), agreeing with him how cool it might be to play the video game where he kills the giant, and naturally begin to wonder if anyone has made a playable version. I will assume that there exists a game out there which includes a stage with the giant scene in it. Has anyone taken a whack at making the entire game as we read about it in the book? Are there other examples of games that were originally suggested in books, now available to play?
posted by klausman to Media & Arts (6 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Shadow of the Colossus (for PlayStation 2, with a remake coming out soon for PS3) is exactly this. The entire game is a series of sixteen boss battles where your puny sword- and bow-toting character has to clamber up the sides of lumbering giants and strike their weak points until they fall dead. The colossi vary wildly in size and shape and require unique strategies to defeat. The battles are broken up by long, quiet horseback rides between distant locations on the huge open-world map, and the whole thing is both epic and strangely serene.

It's an incredibly fun and innovative game overall, artful and melancholy, and widely regarded as one of the very best video games in the last decade or so.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:17 PM on September 2, 2011 [6 favorites]


This is a trope - Colossus Climb (under Video Games section is a list). Shadow of the Colossus is excellent. If you have or can get your hands on a PS2 I really recommend it!

At least, if I understood the question/context correctly - I have not read Ender's Game, but I know video games.
posted by subject_verb_remainder at 10:43 PM on September 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


I don't think the question is "games that are like or based on books," but "games that are or are based on a game suggested in a book."

(I haven't read Ender's Game in ages--like, 20 years--but my distant memory of those books suggests that playing the game and killing the giant would be more disturbing than cool.)
posted by wintersweet at 10:51 PM on September 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Wintersweet, you're right about my question, and I think you're right...that scene would be pretty disturbing to play, but that was just the most often mentioned part. I think there was a lot of cool stuff going on in the game he played, like facing the children/wolves and reaching the end of the world with it's vivid scenery. It would be interesting if nobody ever at least considered making the game from the book, given the diehard fan base.

I'd still play it, disturbing or not. Probably not with my son though.
posted by klausman at 11:55 PM on September 2, 2011


In order to be truly creepy like the video game, it would have to access your files and steal photos, information etc from it - remember how Peter's face is shown in the mirror and it freaks Ender out so much he stops playing for some time.

Then of course, the Easter Egg of the game would be that it would do your tax returns for you and get you back a bigger return than you expected.
posted by b33j at 3:11 AM on September 3, 2011


The game in Enders Game (well, the fantasy one, not the titular game) is a sort of MMO/procedurally generated content thing with STRONG psychological analysis underpinnings. I cant come up with any games where there is the specific 'no win' scenario... but surely someones done it, right? Currently, no games are going to be as evolving as the fantasy game is portrayed.. There a lot of MMO's that have a lot of content and keep getting updates, but from what I recall the fantasy game was pretty special. AI and such.
posted by Jacen at 10:49 AM on September 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


« Older Making a Mountain out of a Molehill?   |   How to pwn a friend. Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.