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Denver, 10:31 AM
Thu Dec 17
66 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/29/08
Overall I feel the artist failed at expressing the message they wanted, mostly due to the constraints that making an interactive experience carry with it.
Visually, they did an admirable making a relatively beautiful scene with an older engine, but the fact of the matter is, every background element in that entire level could have been pre-rendered video that simply plays as the character changes in position.
I simply couldn't take the visuals seriously; it would be like trying to paint the Mona Lisa on a piece of cardboard. Unless the point you were trying to make has something to do with the medium used, there is no excuse for making a visually inferior product.
The controls, they simply break the experience. The first thing I did was try to walk down the path to the right. At which point the camera stopped following me, I couldn't see my character in order to turn around, my frustration was rising and my suspension of disbelief was fading. The experience was short and linear, how hard would it have been to ensure that things like that wouldn't happen.
In context of an interactive environment I don't think the concept is particularly strong either. Why do you need to be in control of this old woman to empathize with her? Would a short film not have been a stronger medium? It's not as if player choice has any impact on the outcome of the piece.
Well, I guess it all boils down to me wanting to like this piece because the idea of interactive art (not in the cheesy 1970s kind of way) has always interested me. Unfortunetly the artists failed in so many ways that I can't find much redeeming about the piece, whether it's reviewed against it's equivalents in the fine arts world, or against video games.
11/29/08
"I simply couldn't take the visuals seriously; it would be like trying to paint the Mona Lisa on a piece of cardboard."
I'm sure it may have been painted on some hi-art cardboard if they had that sort of thing during the renaissance. Instead, it's painted on a plank of wood.
11/29/08
I have to wonder why this is, perhaps people don't consider it a game, more of an "interactive" painting; or maybe people feel special playing a "game" that focuses so heavily on a meaningful message, and they want to justify their special, intellectual feeling.
Essentially, What I"m asking is how someone can berate a game (MGS4) for something, and then turn around to applaud and defend another game for the exact same thing.
11/29/08
If they see something that no one else does, it makes them feel "superior" to the lowly ones that don't see it.
11/29/08
Calling people who defend something you find boring snobs is kind of cliche.
You may as well accuse them of wearing monocles and smoking jackets, laughing at FPS-playing plebeians from their 12-bedroom marble-accented mansions while sipping champagne, listening to Vivaldi and discussing Manet.
11/29/08
11/29/08
Games should be fun, bottom line. To imply that a gamer who expects fun out of a game is at the bottom rung of "civilisation" (good job with spelling, by the way) is outrageous.
If they honestly thought this would be successful, they were delusional.
11/29/08
Speak for yourself. I enjoyed it quite a bit, GAME or not.
A game doesn't have to be enjoyable based on graphics. Text Adventures proved that. A game doesn't have to be enjoyable based on gameplay. The shitty games we played in the NES days proved that. A game doesn't have to be enjoyable because of story. Look at the current trend.
But a game, to be enjoyable, just has to entertain thoughts in your head. For some, this does. Therefore, fun.
And Im fucking 100 percent positive that Van Gogh and Einstein and Socrates and so on and so on set out to be 'successful' to a major audience. Im fairly sure they did it because they wanted to, and believed in it.
Besides.
"Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible."
Now sit down and go back to using ****'s for your swearing, making dbz references and continuing to enlighten the internet with your close minded opinion.
11/29/08
11/29/08
"To imply that a gamer who expects fun out of a game is at the bottom rung of "civilisation" (good job with spelling, by the way) is outrageous."
Oh, the irony.
11/29/08
That's always the way it's been. That's why movies like Transformers (which I love, btw) makes over 708 million dollars worldwide but There Will Be Blood only made about a tenth of that. Very rarely does entertainment come along that blends the two so flawlessly like The Dark Knight, or Bioshock in gaming. I've never heard of this game, but now I am completely intrigued.