4 those who see(k) the art in games
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The Curse of Monkey Island
0Even after all these years this game remains one of my favorites. It’s dry, deliciously insane, reference filled humor just cracks me up. Take for example this intro vid: the wishing scene :)) the polite rejection of a romantic affair :))))))) (all the great lines from "i’m washing my hair" to "(you’re an evil, foul smelling codependant villain, and that’s just not what i’m looking for in a romantic relationship, right now"). Brilliant. Awesomely enough the game is full of handdrawn animations (you have to try obsessively clicking the "enable 3d" button :)) ). Many brilliant scenes, the return of Lemmon head, a delightful "dying" scene making fun of the non-death principle of olden adventure games… goood stuffs. Though the opening cinematic of Monkey Island 4 is also very funny they lost me a bit with the 3d work so i had to post this one. Don’t be afraid to use a walkthrough! Just experiencing this great story & jokes are totally worth it :))
PS: oh, and how ever could i forget the evil talking head’s futilre empty demonic threats: it’s so hard to forget his "Bhahahahhahaaha" :))
Planescape Torment
2I can’t not mention this game. I don’t know if in the almost ten years since it’s launch I have yet seen another game with this much focus on story & plot… though believe me I have searche and searched. Though not quite as branching and freedong giving like my beloved Fallout 2 it’s got a much more lyrical flow to it: you play the story of an immortal cursed to never die, or actually die many deaths, always losing himself more and more. I was particularly fascinated by the experiences with your past selves. I’m not talking about the above clip, but the experience as you move through the world and you encounter the actions of those that were you, but are you no more, as they may even strongly oppose you and be your biggest enemies, like your paranoid past self who in his (justified imho) selfishness does not want future selves. The game is full of heartfelt moments, touchign on love, destiny, self… and a lot on relationships, even though for that i can tell you less because the game was powerful enough to let me play a lot of it even by myself. How many other games can you think of with this much story and dialogue? And if you still don’t believe me: check out the brilliant novelization done by Rhyss Hess based on the brilliant writing of Chris Avellone and Colin McComb. And this is NOT like other game novelizations (caugh caugh … i’m not even going to name names… caugh) where the novel has little to do with the game: the game is just about killing stuff while the book actually contains the depth that the game should have had, this is I think 99% plain old copy-paste out of the game. 227 pages worth. And I seem to recall i once saw 2x that, one book for the good path and another for the evil one (yes, there are actually meaningful choices!). I bow my head in admiration of this amazing masterpiece!
PS: the concept of the sensory stones is still one of the most brilliant i have ever found in my extensive searches, as is the city of doors with the keys being anything from a feeling to a tune…
Undying
2I figure this game deserves a post because of it’s great artwork in terms of original and varied level design (the autumn prehistoric level or the one floating with bits of stone forming under your feet come to mind) and quite intereting story… actually the tying story isn’t as strong in my opinion, but loved the bits you find out through scrying, and the ones told (again) through the level designs. Also it manages to have a lot of variety & interest making for one of the better gothic/horror theme games I’ve played. If you can look past the now aged graphics you’ll see in it some trully photo worthy moments (the chapel at sunset or the stairs of the mansion come to mind).
PS: almost forgot to mention the trully memborable Abbey ruins, the moving moment of seeing the monks commiting suicide in a vision, and of course the mirracle of travelign to the past after seeing the sun burned ruins to see a snowy winter with it’s glory days. Oh, and superb attention to detail: loved the moment when the rats all flee in a line from the sewer type tunnel castle place…
Psychonauts
1What can I say other than that I totally recomend this game for a quite special experience. Traveling inside the many different minds, the pleasant differences, art styles, the variety from the torreador mind with the painting of dogs playing cards and the bull, the fascinating Napoleon experience, the mind of the monster which turns out to be the most civilized and in which you are the scary monster, and of course how could i not mention the 60s disco mind the teacher has! brilliant! Oh, and the love story is very cool & funny too! And the milkman conspiracy, of course!!!
PS: the movie qualities do not do this game justice. Even I have a tough time seeing them and while playing it i don’t remember having such problems.
Room of an angel [silent hill 4]
0I’ve mentioned Akira Yamaoka’s “Room of Angel” before… but this video is just so powerful i have to post it on it’s own. To those who have played the game… well, at least to me, this video takes me on a heard moving emotional journey: the visuals are brilliantly chosen, great editing, even some sync-ing… concepts and … well… amazing vid. Coupled with the superb song it’s so powerful I’m even afraid of putting this vid out there in case it’s viewed by people who’s depth is not counterbalanced by joy for life. Life’s a wonderful thing. I think even those who don’t know the game could get an emotional rush from this. Or is it just my memories while playing it spinning in my heart? Still, I think anybody who says games can’t be/contain art might have a second thought after viewing this… all the lives across the globe it’s touched/moved to sensibilities of the heart and mind…
PS: the concept & illustration on Walter Sullivan shown here really moves me to his tragedy… his dream and suffering is I find very relatable, the orphan who … okay, i won’t spoil it for you…
Unreal Soundtrack
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I simply have no words enough or powerful enough to describe the impact this soundtrack (the original Unreal game soundtrack) has made on my life. I find it imensely powerful, and mixed with the moments when it appears in the game it simply makes my heart shiver. First time you get out of the opressive wreck fearing for your life and you see the alien sun, the openness, the discovery, seeing the Spire climbing to the sky, walking through the cloud city large streets, traversing caverns with shimmering crystals… all are fixed strongly in my mind due to the powerful emotions expressed through this music. For years afterwards i listened to it day and night, for many lights i’d leave it on while i sleep hoping that somehow it would burn into my brain and I would be able to myself create a fraction of the beauty that the guys at Straylight Productions put in there.
Later on I realized that several other soundtracks that I liked were made by the same people (Crusader, Jazz the Jackrabbit, Unreal Tournament…). Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, Andrew Sega (Necros) and Dan Gardopée will forever remain my musical heroes, to me more precious than most of the big band/singer names which everybody has heard of. I wish I could tell everybody at the top of my lungs of them and see the recognition in their eyes like they do for some well known bands.
I was all the more impressed by their magic after Marius showed me how they were actually modules, how they had managed to create such amazing music, trully high quality, and yet put it in a restrictive format that managed to have a low CPU footprint and with songs taking a fraction of even compressed audio like mp3. Mindblowing. Seeing all the channels that they used to create panning shifts or echoes & reverbs, loops and audio gradients… aaaamazing!
I have just discovered you can actually listen to (part of?) the soundtracks online… trully amazing! Meeting any of these guys even through a email or message board is a lifelong dream of mine… maybe someday…
As I’m writing this the music is running and even after so many years and so many hundreds of listenings I’m amazed how my eyes tremble on the virge of tears of joy and how my mind is alive with visual imagery & emotional snapshots of the moments they described in the games… WOW! And the way they can so seamlessly transition from meditational and contemplative to the adrenaline that makes one feel so alive with the need to respond urgently… WOOOOW.
Some of my favorite songs (though it’s so hard to name) would have to be “All hallows sunset”, “Chizra”, “Dusk Horizon”, “Surfacing”, “Isotoxin”, “Vortex rikers”… sorry… i may find myself naming them all. The Unreal Tournament soundtrack I also found very fit for the adrenaline gameplay, though I can’t say it moved me quite so much. Still, it had some songs like “Razorback” which really rock my world and made me feel amazingly alive, and they were all pretty much what kept you going when you had reached the repetition and familiarity…
Big biiiig shout out for Straylight Productions and all their friends!!!
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Bioforge
0Now obviously this may look very bad by the standards of 2008… but this is not a website about technology, it’s one about artwork: and for me this game was aaaamazing! I was impressed by it’s strong mood (feelings like solitude, injustice, search, desire for freedom…) and superb storytelling. I spent many hours just reading and re-reading some of it’s incredible in game backstories told via journals & logs. Even the puzzles felt shockingly original and almost “realistic” in their variety (which didn’t make them easier). Big thumbs up for this game! In my opinion it could easily rival some of the best sci fi novels in it’s story… or at least short stories: hough the backstory is really deep you might argue that the character interaction is weaker – but it’s also something that may be one of the ingredients of the game’s eerie-spoooky “alone in a corner of the universe” horror-ish feel. Looking forward to a modern game to fill this niche better… though none will be able to replace it completelly: that’s what (good) artwork is like.
PS: the item interactions in the game were not only pioneering in my opinion but also really awesome: remotes controls, devices… but most importantly what I loved was using the flute at which point the character played these heart tearing sad tunes after which he mused about them in the journal wondering what they could be telling him about the life he lost/forgot…
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The rise and fall of my vanilla love
0Vanillaware… what a glorious company name! I wanted to say something about two of their games: GrimGrimoire & Odin Sphere… both unique pieces of art, one that made me fall in love and the other that made me fall out… even though they both had quite good artwork.
First I would like to say that YES, i do see what you see: anime look + children main characters… and yes that does seriously put me off: I am looking for more serious stories. Doesn’t mean I don’t like animes as a style, in fact they can be very deep even with that means of expression (eg. Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Ghost in the Shell…) but I do find something wrong when there are no mature characters, and characters who look like they’re all 14 play roles of mature stories… That being said though you’re in for a great surprise. At least I was. GrimGrimoire blew me away with a mature story, of time paradoxes, characters, demons and angels, love and manipulation… that coupled with finding a way to go through the game at an easy level enderead itself to me. It helped that all the artwork was delightfully well done while keeping with it’s internal style. Which is why I started Odin Sphere too… but while i had like a few hours of excitement like I only get from great masterpieces they were later erased by many more hours of the great big flaws i see in games:
- a LOT of repetition, level grinding, stoping story progression because you have to go back and get some new powers, items… even worse, through places you’ve already been
- bosses & hard fights
well, they’re basically the same, or at least related… but that’s how they (again) ruined some great art for me.
Now obviously there’s something really great with these games: otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about them (I don’t see anything constructive in just compaining!). I’m talking about great graphics, superb story, interesting characters & music. Even in terms of game mechanics there are some fascinating stuffs: I got totally hooked to the recipe gathering in Odin Sphere and Grim Grimoire has a brilliantly fresh approach to strategy that actually works with a gamepad!
But my true love are still the superb stories. They have some very rare ingredients: touching on subjects of time, choice & destiniy, stories told from multiple points of view with no overbearing sense of morality (you actually get to see/feel how different characters all have their own agendas which each could be somehow considered valid even though put together they are conflicting). So what I’m trying to say is: I’m recomending these for a try, you might find they’re just as anime-ish as you thought and you don’t like that, or on the contrary you might find that hidden behind the presentation is something quite different and surprising. Few other games go into such subjects as being trapped in a time loop of failure, a daughter’s desperate attempts to gain the love of her father, forced love turning into true love, devil’s who might find themselves doing good, the curse of being different and losing your old life…
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The Neverhood
2[note: looking back at the article i've discovered that the game trailer is missing so i'm replacing the video... if you find it anywhere online pleaze buzz us to change it]
I’ve chosen the trailer here because it’s a presentation… not a presentation I like though: it focuses so much on marketing as an “adventure game” and not very much on the reason I believe this game is worthy of being pulled out from “game prehistoric times”, over a decade ago, right into the spotlight of a artsy gamer feature: this game is a trully unique piece. A game focusing on content, and a fascinating means of presentation. I mean it kinda makes sense: it’s made by a team of people who are all about the content: they didn’t rely on great hardware, they didn’t invent some amazing technology through programming, they focused on creating stuff! Not that it’s a bad thing to create digitally, on the contrary I think it’s an awesome environment, just that it’s great to get a guarantee that it’s about creating, not about the technology.
In short: The Neverhood is trully amazing:
- amazing animations
- amazing fresh look
- amazingly fresh story
- amazingly engaging and funny music
- amazing voices
- amazingly low hardware requirements for a full experience (yep, i’m talking for those times even)
- amazing story on the wall… like WOW amazing. I totally wasn’t expecting something so deep & big…
Soul Reaver – Legacy of Kain
0It takes a lot of courage for me to even start this subject as I feel it’s very hard for me to do any kind of justice to this series. It’s funny that it has to hide behind a thick layer of the fighting that I so hate but from the start I could tell these games are so much more about the artwork. With each game in the series that I played I was amazed by the architectural & decorative styles, the concepts, even though they were hidden behind the limitations of their respective technology barriers I saw them for the brilliant concepts they are. Wikipedia has an excitingly good article of some of the concepts in the games. A unfairly short summary on my part would be this: the series is told through two very different points of view, to the point that each game could be considered defining and yet the others complete it. When playing the Soul Reaver games I totally felt Raziel’s outrage and desire for revenge and justice, his blaming of his cruel master both for his fate and that of the world, while when playing the Kain games you saw the other side of the coin, the trials and difficulties of one who wishes to combine self preservation with doing good for all, at any price, willing to work centuries in the amazingly idealistic hope that he will hit the "edge of the coin" situation, the improbable situation in the stream of time and fate in which he could reconcile the two mutually exclusive "bad" outcomes. Besides the many seductive themes for me I was thrilled to be faced with some mind twistingly delightful time paradox/solutions, all managing to form a story bigger than the pieces. I was blown away by how even though instead of playing the 5 games in the order they were made I played them like 2, 1, 5, 4, 3 and STILL shockingly enough the story was amazingly coherent and each fragment of memory that I could remember made all the others shine all the brighter. I warmly recomend the wikipedia article (don’t forget the amazingly deep links at the end of the article), from which I’ll just quote a bit I particularly cared about:
An underlying element of the story is heavily concerned with destiny and throughout the series fatalism is a strong theme. The idea that a person’s destiny can be foreseen and thus altered is presented to the player. Much of the final game Defiance is devoted to discovering whether this hypothesis is true. Some characters try to use this facet to their advantage by attempting to manipulate other characters’ (notably Raziel’s) destiny.
Free will is also challenged during the story and a great number of the in-game characters believe that no one truly possesses free will, except maybe Raziel. Therefore these characters believe that Raziel is the key to altering destiny. Manipulation also plays a major point in the progression of the story since nearly every character, at some point in the story, is manipulated by another.
I deeply cared for these themes, ones so very rarely treated. It feels like such a grand attempt for one to try to battle the immortal streams of time, to fight for one’s fate even in the face of it being foretold and locked… even when everybody tells you it’s impossible.