Prototype
It all begins with an idea.
You can tell how disturbed he is by the leather jacket and hoodie.
Xbox 360
A secret government experiment goes awry and a virus is released in Penn Station...whatever. Really the point of this game is that you can fall hundreds of feet and crater in the top of a cab, grab whoever happens to be standing next to you, and carry them up to the top of your favorite Manhattan landmark, showing them the nicely-rendered view while eating them as they scream. The main character, a 20-something emo-core kid who, presumably, was already obnoxious before he got superpowers, has somehow manipulated the game’s pseudo-science so that he can morph into pretty much anything he wants. He can grow a giant sword as an arm, or giant muscles, or “consume” someone and assume their appearance. So if you want to eat a middle-aged woman and then chop-socky people in high-heeled shoes and a very prim skirt, then congratulations, you are doing exactly what I did for the first fifteen minutes I played. Which makes me wonder: why aren’t there any games about ass-kicking grandmas? That sounds awesome to me. Oh - and you can fly, sort of, apparently by just holding out your hands and wishing. I’m not sure I get the science behind that one.
Of course, there are flaws - the cliché-ridden story and characters, for one, or the fact that all of the side missions consist of eating slightly different people than those you eat in the main missions, which gets a little dull after a while. And, like many games in which you purchase upgrades, a whole lot of what you can buy is pretty pointless. In the end my combat strategy consisted of dodging and tentacle-whipping over and over again, because while I could have used the “Hammerfist Smackdown,” I preferred to just win. Let’s be honest - nobody’s going to be impressed by the numerous ways I can manipulate my pixel-man. Still it’s completely worth playing just for the running-and-jumping-and-flying-through-the-air bits.
Published by: Activision
Developed by: Radical Entertainment
Genre: Action/Sandbox
Number of Players: 1
Release Date:
US: June 9, 2009
Europe: June 12, 2009
Australia: June 10, 2009
ESRB: M BBFC: 18 OFLC: MA15+ PEGI: 18+
Also Available On: PS3, PC
Team Ico remastering their old masterpieces?
It all begins with an idea.
Rumor has it that Team Ico will be remastering their video game classics Ico and Shadow of the Colossus in HD for the PS3. One can see how I’ve drooled over Shadow of the Colossus in past reviews, but what really excites me is the chance to acquire Ico - a game which nobody has played but everyone says is great.
The most exciting part of the upcoming video game season for me, though? That would be The Last Guardian, Team Ico’s latest installment. The trailer, which can be found here, seems to demonstrate all of the beauty and wistfulness of the developers’ previous installment.
Between the giant bird-dog, the little toga-wearing boy, and the Mayan-ruin feel of the landscape, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. But that’s the thing about Team Ico - they’re so good, they don’t have to make sense. Their development process, called “subtracting design,” is to take away every aspect of the game which detracts from the reality of it - which is the primary reason Shadow of the Colossus felt so different, and so lonely. The story, the landscape, and even the heads-up display was so bare, but so evocative, that it emotionally grabbed me more than any game I’ve played since.
If you’re a thinking gamer with a poetic sensibility, who wants to see the pinnacle of modern video gaming’s forays into aesthetic perfection, rather than macho Gears-of-War style dick-measuring, I can’t recommend this developer more.
Roger Ebert tells video gamers to get off his lawn
It all begins with an idea.
I’m a little late on the ball here - two months and ten days late, to be precise - but I have recently had my attention called to an article Roger Ebert wrote for his Chicago Sun-Times blog in which he says, quoth:
“No video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.”
A little elitist, no? Ebert already demonstrated long ago that he was losing it when he gave the first Harry Potter movie a four-star review.
But this is too much. This isn’t just losing it. This is the equivalent of an old man standing on his lawn with a shotgun, yelling at passersby to stay off the grass.
Even in response to the most explicitly arty video games, Ebert sees absolutely no merit. Sayeth Ebert, of the game Braid:
“You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game.”
Braid is a game which is trying to make an artistic statement. “Time” is clearly a theme interwoven throughout, and it comments heavily on its affects on memories, relationships, and people in general. The fact that the game has a mechanic which allows you to go back in time or “take back a move” is exactly why it’s art. It’s a great example of a game using its interactivity as another element of storytelling - using its own mechanics to reinforce its themes. It’s not just “taking back a move,” it’s adding another layer - it allows the player to interact with a created world, and it uses the methods of that player’s interaction as a way to express itself.
And it’s my opinion that that’s f###ing brilliant. That’s as incredibly innovative as moving pictures was 100 years ago. That’s not just changing an existing art form: it’s adding an entire level of experience that never existed. Ebert’s comment comparing video games to chess is bafflingly ignorant and, besides, totally unrelated to the point. Sure you can’t take back a move in chess, but that’s like saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to punch someone in a boxing match because punching is unacceptable in soccer. It’s a totally different game, and the two have nothing to do with each other.
On top of that Ebert’s missing so much of what video games do that physical games don’t - which is that video games create an entire world, including visual, aural, story, and dialogue aesthetics, all of which - at least in good games - work together to create a dramatically and intellectually effective experience. Denying the legitimacy of all of that simply because it incorporates a level of interaction completely ignores the beauty of intelligent game design.
It’s sad, really. I used to love Roger Ebert. Growing up, my family would buy every year’s edition of his Movie Yearbook and I would read every review in it, and then go back and read all of the interviews, essays, and glossary definitions. He was a smart man who loved movies and who had enough of a sense of humor to know not to take them too seriously: he loved comedies as much as dramas, and while he thought Citizen Kane was the greatest movie of all time, he was also capable of realizing that fluff like The Goonies should still be respected as a decent film. He could be both funny and thoughtful, cutting and respectful. He was a great critic.
Though at the end of the day I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been argued about before, and I’m not saying anything more eloquent then Yahtzee already said here. Most of all, though, I agree with this guy: who cares? Why does it matter? If a person has a dramatic experience through a video game, nobody can take that away, regardless of their semantic opinion on the definition of “art.” Art is what you want it to be. Well, to a degree. I just saw the musical American Idiot, and I have to say, if you like that, there’s something wrong with you.