What's the one thing that will get you shunned? Gay, Straight, Black, White, Male, Female, Fat, Thin? No. You can be any of those and somewhere, there's a group that will accept you. The only crime that is truly considered a sin is being different. No one wants to be different. That's a lesson ingrained into you from childhood. Sometimes beaten into you. You can be a lot of things, but different isn't one of them. It's confusing at first, because we're lied to with claims of "celebrating our differences", "be yourself!", etc etc. You're allowed to be different as long as you're the same as those around you.

It's confusing and frustrating. Each and every one of us is different from the other. The uniqueness of our existence is burned into our genes. But as soon as we gather, we begin to mark our similarities. No matter how much a group preaches acceptance, they all preach conformity even louder. Dress like us. Listen to the same music as we do. Play the same games. Drive the same car. Use the same drugs. Follow the same teams. Whenever a group starts, the first thing they do is decide how to identify those that are different.


That part is human nature. What I hate is how people change so that they will be accepted. How they give up a part of themselves so that others will smile when they arrive. They quickly discard something they love because it would mark them as different. Oh, you'll tell yourself, "My friends are different, we all accept each other as we are," or "I'm completely honest about who I am." That's simply not true. You know that there is something you hold back. Something you keep secret. You lie to make sure you stay in the group's good graces. It might be something small, like declaring that you hate Pepsi, all the while having a six pack waiting for you in the fridge. Maybe its something bigger, like when you join on in the gay jokes your buddies toss out during sessions of Halo. There's always something.


The fear of being different follows us into every aspect of our lives; from our acquaintances, to the cars we drive, to even the games we play. Vehicles from the major car manufacturers are nearly indistinguishable from one another. Now that computers have the power to display millions of colors and create untold abstract worlds, we push to see how closely they can mimic reality. When someone or something breaks the mold and ventures out of the norm, its a crap shoot whether praise or ridicule will follow. Too often we're too afraid to even attempt something that's not the same as what has come before.


More often than not, I find myself longing for the simplicity of acceptance. There's something enticing about conforming, even it it costs you a piece of yourself. But even a small piece is too high a price. Maybe thats why I like Gridrunner Revolution as much as I do. It doesn't make any concessions for the sake of conformity. It's not a perfect game. In fact, it revels in what other games would call flaws. Its pace starts out so slow that you wonder if it's supposed to be a game at all or just a rainbow-tinged light show. While other games painstakingly render the player in minute detail, here, your character is crudely drawn with such large pixels that you may think your screen resolution is set to double digits. The sound effects are so mismatched that the only similarity they share is that they are all equally out of place. Its lack of a network leader board is baffling for a game that puts so much emphasis on points. Everything about it says, "I'm different!" Screams it. It's unabashed in its lack of similarity to everything else


I wish I could be as uncompromisingly confident in my differences as Gridrunner Revolution is. I wish we all could.

Score 8/10