Artsygamer
4 those who see(k) the art in games
Zero Punctuation: God of War: Chains of Olympus
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Me I’m kinda looking forward to this game: I do fear the gameplay oriented combat, but the other games in the series had some impressive visual artworks & surprisingly good stories. (yes, i am waiting for that officially denied ps2 port).
GTA 4 has arived
0
I must say I’m surprised: i didn’t expect it to live up to so many expectations and yet everybody who’s seen it seems to give it the thumbs up. But while that means a lot of people like the gameplay what does this mean for the artwork? Well, I have yet to play it, but from research so far this is what my intuition has to say: GTA 4 may not end up being one of my sweethearts, but I can certanly respect it.
"Why not"s:
- it has a urban ordinary environment, it doesn’t stimulate my creativity or imagination with original settings or unique society (i’m talking things like some surprising races, giving rise to interesting phylosophical questions through their varied ways of thinking)
- cars. and cars again. and vehicles. and then gadgets which are basically vehicles… well, not only am I not a big vehicle fan but it is a very repeatin structure
- drive, kill, drive, kill… minigame, drive, kill
- it seems to have done some sacrifices for the censors
but wait, I’m actually not here to criticise the game, because like I was saying, though I don’t see it as an absolute artsy game I do think it has some great values and a lot of stuff that inspires my respect. So, onto "Why yes"s:
+ a lot of content, a lot of value, a great polish
+ music! a ton of it! great radio stations! that’s artwork, that is. It may not be music I like (90% probably), but that doesn’t matter, what matters is that that is content. True content. Not generated, not recycled, not replayed, a fresh experience! And that will give a large group of people a large dose of satisfaction. 10% for each of us means a lot of niches covered… which is AMAZING!
+ sure, the world may be unoriginal, but you can do a lot of stuff in it. And because of it’s openness you can get creative and "make your own story", at least in little personal ways
+ things sound really good from the story point of view. It gives me great hope to hear that the story stands up to movies…
+ though I’m not very multiplayer-ish the idea of playing a "deathmatch" in which a whole city could be the weapon… well, that’s a dream come true. Well, actually for it to be that it would have to be a game in which you could actually end up playing a political strategy game influencing territory wars or reputation hits until you get to your enemy… but hey, even just the thought of running away from your friend in a 3 wheeled car only to set up an ambush for him where 20 cars fall on him sounds surprisingly exciting (i liked the touch in the vid where the fall of a guy triggered an alarm. shows attention to detail).
+ a lot of content but with easy difficulty. No useless dying. Easy… awesome!!! Even so, what to others is easy may prove hard to me or some… but I’m hoping… there’s hope… In a sea of games that "challenge" with impossible difficulty, repetition and frustration this would be sooo great
The 1UP Show: Episode 04/18/08
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Unfortunatelly no great news: seems to me like everybody is into either gameplay or social stuff… which from my warped point of view is bad news for artwork. I mean sure, I really like the fact that Team Fortress 2 has such a different aesthetic… but the game is not about artwork, but gameplay+multiplayer. Similarly I’m curious about the Persona story… but there’s level grinding, aka gameplay focus if you’re willing ot endure a lot of repetition (for small reward from my point of view in terms of artwork) and even though the game is singleplayer it’s about social life (if my dream was about going to highschool and meeting people I wouldn’t be nuts about world changing stories…). Not that I’m saying that there’s anything wrong with that, that’s just my personal taste and I can of course respect social people, but what I am against is a lot of repetition/grinding with little reward (dialogue should be spoken, themes should be deeper… for it to peak my interest). Wishing for more artwork & self expression games…. seeing bad times from that point of view in that everything seems to be about gameplay & multiplayer… but that don’t stops me from hoping. I guess I’ll put my gaming on kind of a pause for now, waiting for the artwork… the great music, the great stories, the great visuals…
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…
Zero Punctuation: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Now by now you probably have realized that I’m not a big fan of the Wii (lots of gameplay… where’s the obscure artwork?), but hey, that’s okay, I’m just a different, smaller demographic (like the niche of gamers into art?)… but I do wonder if Yahtzee is saying something true in that I wonder if people will ever get tired of Mario… but wait, we live in a world of sequels, and I can understand that (people like to know what they’re getting into), so I guess so. Btw: I still do believe that the Wii isn’t as big as everybody thinks it is in that I expect it’s sales curve will fall sharply by 2010 (this is my opinion in response to people saying it’s the new ps2). Just thought i’d jot this down now for future reference :D My attempt at playing with time: i wonder what future me/you will say about this one. To quote a voice i can’t forget from I believe the Red Allert intro "time vill tell".
Zero Punctuation: Condemned 2: Bloodshot
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
You know what? I think i might like this game. The things he’s pointing out to be bad sound quite interesting to me: I liked the Fahrenheit way of things. I would have been bored if the game continued forever with everyday things. I like the variety, i like the concept of easy boss fights… in short… Yahtzee hasn’t managed to make me think less of this game, only more. I may still end up not loving the game the game when i do eventually play it, but it won’t be for the reasons he cited, but probably for those he liked: fighting mechanics.
PS: I’d like to believe and someday try to create mistery that also features the satisfaction of answers, not just eternal questions. It’s a far greater thing, i believe, to be able to also create answers to misterious questions, and to have those answers interesting enough that they keep you fascinated and wanting to learn more.
Top 20 SNES Games (10-1)
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Exciting to see such excitement! Looking forward to such lists on the ps2 :P
Zero Punctuation: No More Heroes
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Repetition… grrrr. Grinding through hordes of identical enemies. Grrrrrr!! Bosses. GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!
(obvious) PS: I would normally link to the recent article with my thoughts on repetition and identical monsters… but since it’s just below I’ll spare myself the trouble and instead write this super long line.
The games we/they didn’t finish…
03 years ago
by Void
in Game Design
It’s a tragedy, I tell you, tragedy! I really reaaaally hate having unfinished games/books/movie… and yet I do. Why? Well, two great reasons:
1) repetition / lack of content
2) frustration / difficulty
Unfinished games are bad for:
a) players: not only do you lose satisfaction, but you also may feel like you’ve partly wasted many hours of your life because you never got the payoff
b) developers: not only does the audience miss out on a part of their vision & work but they also go away frustrated customers, and less likely to get their next game
So, I think we can say they’re an all round bad thing. First let’s search the root of the problem:
For 1) : unfortunatelly games often tend to be more about engine/gameplay than what I think they should be about: content/story. Players quickly realize this and become bored. It’s obvious why things have come to be this way: it would involve a lot more work (thus investment in time/money) from the developers to make more content.
For 2): well, i think this one is just plain design usually, which i just can’t find a justification for, but also there’s a bit of cheating on the developers’ part: they create a great game, put a lot of effort into it, and then they’re afraid people won’t value it as much as them so they artificially lenghten their games with either higher difficulty (usually grinding work which keeps the player busy more for the same rewards) or content reuse.
So do I propose any solutions? Well, I won’t say unrealistic stuff like I hear players journalists usually ask for: you can’t expect the company to double their manpower, double their work and produce in the same timeframe just more content at the same price, so I only see these guidelines:
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.