Saturday, February 11, 2012

Art?

The age old question: Are Video Games Art?  I will answer with a resounding YES as I always do, but I feel that it's about time I backed up my reasoning with examples and such.

There are certain major topics that I consider when looking at a game as a piece of art, only some being: presentation, character development, graphics, music, all the usuals blah blah blah.  But there are certain games that just really stick out to me and have actually had an effect on me physically and mentally as I play them, instead of one big 25 paragraph ramble I just want to list my best of the best.(in no particular order)

Shadow of the Colossus: This one is obvious I think, when has this game not been on a best of the best list?  Shadow of the Colossus is one of those games that I'd always heard about but never played till much later, I knew it was gonna be good, I just didn't realize how good till I first played it.  It's a masterpiece.  The first thing that I noticed that really struck me was the absence of an onscreen HUD during the majority of the gameplay.  When you are fighting you merely have your grip bar, health bar, and weapon selection.  Very simple, yet very effective.  Being thrown into a world with no prior knowledge of your situation or the characters is tough enough but then being told you have to kill every member of an innocent race of colossi so that you MIGHT save this random woman is even worse.  With every boss beaten I felt like I died a little more inside.  These colossi were doing nothing but taking naps in the sun then this random wanderer comes up and shoves a sword in their heads.  Every part of the game becomes you, you are enveloped by the music, the graphics, the characters, the monsters, that eventually you forget you are playing a game.  Although different games, I found very similar instances in the recent release LIMBO.  A wonderful puzzle game that kept me on my toes and fearing what would come next.  It's amazing how something so simple as LIMBO can really get to you. ANYWAY I would definitely put colossus on my list for everything it gives to you the player(and after every time you kill a colossus another creepy ass shadow creature starts staring at you. CREEPY!)


The Neverhood:  This game is not as well known. Released in 1996 by Dreamworks Studios, this is the only game I've ever played where the graphics for the cinematics were exactly the same as the gameplay graphics, and whats more they were amazing!  The Neverhood was made entirely out of clay, with the protagonist the so aptly named Klaymen, having no voice of his own, would express his thoughts and emotions (and pain) through the shifting and working of the clay environment.   The Neverhood is without a doubt one of the hardest games I have played to date, as well as one of the most trying.  I almost gave up as I was walking down that never ending hallway for 10 minutes when I finally reached the end, only to realize that I now had to walk back.  But The Neverhood is to this day my favorite puzzle game of all time and probably the most beautiful.  With live voices for the music (no synthesizer crap) playing weird tunes comprised of a serious of DUH DUH DUH DUH's The Neverhood was art BEFORE it was a video game.  oh and a great story to boot. "Kaymen! Up here!"


The Dig by LucasArts:  Originally conceived as a movie by Steven Spielberg, The Dig is a Sci-Fi puzzle adventure game released in 1995.  With some famous names for the voices such as Robert Patrick (Terminator) and Steven Blum, this game was already off to an amazing start.  The Dig contains the best story I have ever seen used in a video game.  It's portrayal of three humans trying to comprehend this new alien world, and trying to find a way home is simply fantastic as well as highly realistic.  The characters address this magical yet terrifying world with such a natural emotion that we really don't see in video games.  Of course the gameplay itself is also fantastic.  The puzzles are satisfyingly challenging and every little thing you do right is always rewarded to a grand effect.  One thing the game definitely does well is story structure.  The characters never learn more than you do leading you to think that maybe you missed some grand explanation of how something on this alien world works and you'll spend some decent time thinking on your own "what is this place" and "what happened here?"  It is also one of the first games I've played that uses a multiple ending feature based on 1 or 2 actions during gameplay, now of course the ending change is not drastic enough to warrant a 2nd or 3rd or 4th gameplay, the game itself makes you want to do that.  It truly is a remarkable experience and I recommend it to ALL people who consider themselves gamers.
The_Dig_artwork.jpg image by dragonchi

.hack//Infection (series):  The .hack infection series is one of favorite and in my opinion one of the most re-playable game series ever.  Comprised of 4 games(infection, mutation, outbreak, quarantine) The .hack series introduced the idea of the game within the game using the MMORPG "The World" as the setting.  For me, the one simple subject of .hack that makes is so great is the control you are given.  Starting as the character "Kite" in "The World" you immediately feel the emotion of this game when your best friend Orca gets "Data Drained" and the guy behind Orca, your real life friend Yasuhiko goes into a coma and no one knows why.  Even so you go back into "The World" to find the reason behind Orca's coma-stasis.  You are to say the least a complete and total noob, no friends, no weapons, no items, nothing but a simple overview of the game that Orca gave you before he "went away".  None the less of course Kite becomes the hero everyone needs making friends, saving lives, yadda yadda yadda. The main thing behind .hack is the idea that you are indeed still just playing a game. Yes you are Kite the twin blade, but when that little notification flashes on your screen, you log out of the world and go to check your email.  The outside controller has no name presented, leading the idea that it is indeed you behind the mask. You receive emails from your in game friends as you learn about their real lives, news reports from the real world, and you can check board postings on "the worlds" main website.  Besides the whole people going into comas thing, .hack is probably the most realistic game I've ever played just for the fact that you are "playing a computer game" it's all possible because it's all just coding of 1's and 0's! Your job is to find out what is going wrong with the code that gives you these strange powers and is hurting real life people
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Those are the few that really just come to my mind when I am asked this question. I know there are quite a lot more and I'd love to talk about them all, but just for now here are some honorable mentions of mine.

The Monkey Island Series: What series made fun of numerous cultural references better than Monkey Island? I'd go back and play it again just to hear everything Guybrush had to say.  Plus insult sword fighting and Murray the demonic evil skull are the greatest inventions to game kind.

 Psychonauts: M.C. Escher's brain in a video game, seriously folks.


Kingdom Hearts: Touching stories, emotional characters, and the disney edge that hits the little kid inside all of us.

Half Life 2: Headcrabs


Mass Effect Series: You control the fate of your teammates, that is all needs said.
Bioshock Series: Cold, wet, alone....who is Atlas?
Again this is not all of them of course.

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