Because it has been so long since this site has seen any significant updates, and no other writers have been able to join me in my endeavors here to allow the site to reach its originally envisioned potential, I’ve decided to merge this with my personal blog.
School this past year, combined with my efforts to make my way into the industry as a professional, leave me with little time to work on articles, and since both sites were being maintained by myself – for my own writing – splitting up my thoughts for two different audiences seems a little redundant. This merge will hopefully help to streamline the presentation of my ideas. I’ll be doing my best to maintain all of GAA’s content in a easy-to-navigate format over there, so those who enjoyed what I published here over the last two years can still find any articles they liked.
I look forward to continuing our discussions about the gaming world over at www.isaac-frankel.com!
A blog post on Destructoid.com by user wrenchfarm draws a fascinating parallel between the onset of Alzheimers in the elderly and the Undead curse from video game Dark Souls. In his post, he takes a very personal approach to the various characters that the player can find wandering the surreal landscape of Lordran, comparing them to his experiences with a grandmother who slowly succumbed to her affliction, in a sense following the same path as the Undead on their decay to become Hollow.
Even for those who haven’t played Dark Souls, this is a fascinating look into how video games can provide different experiences for each person.
“Realism” seems to have been the key word at this year’s E3 press conference. Many of the revealed titles seemed to be making the push to subscribe more to a reality we know and are familiar with than to any sort of fantasy-world: where cause and effect is simple and brutal, and where vulnerability is the key word. Does this indicate a new trend in the gaming industry, that we as gamers and game developers are more willing to veer away from the norm, and are finally beginning to breach some of the more mature topics faced by our day-to-day existence? Only time will tell. But for now, the following titles each present their own unique twist on the perils and reality of life in a quasi-reality:
Tomb Raider:
The new direction for Lara Croft intentionally rejects everything that the previous installments in this franchise stood for. Instead, the new Tomb Raider dares to ask some more serious questions regarding the role of overly-sexualized female action heroes in media, while building off of the tropes of the survival genre. Unique sequences involving learning to hunt, avoiding environmental hazards, locating other survivors, opposing sexual assault, and standing up for those who cannot help themselves aim to bring about a more realistic approach to this new interpretation of a well-worn character A brilliant experiment in realizing the emotional truth behind the stylized heroines we as a culture gravitate towards, this game aims to tackle some important issues utilizing one of the fictional figures which sparked such debates in the first place.
Halo 4:
Building off of the success of Bungie’s storyline within their own Halo universe, 343 Industries aims to provide a much more realistic approach to telling the story of the Master Chief, a figure whose past is steeped in terrifying manipulation and horrifying trauma. By updating their approach to storytelling within the game 343 Industries hopes to express through improved dialogue, updated motion capture and graphics, a new user interface, and a much deeper and more emotional story just how human this previously blank slate super-solider really is. While it may not look very realistic when compared with the other games on this list, Halo fans know that this is a significant step for the series in the same direction.
Assassin’s Creed III:
Building off of the basic formula established in the Prince of Persia series, Assassin’s Creed was initially a more realistic take on some of the same gameplay tropes, setting its story in the historic past of our own real world while implementing more realistic combat and obstacle navigation. This latest entry in the series pushes the gameplay even further into the realm of believability, with updated graphics and world building, realistic terrain and weather dynamics (where moving through deeper snow slows your movement significantly), and an improved combat system lending even more believability to this talented assassin’s skill. While it may not be a huge step for the industry, it’s a great approach for Assassin’s Creed. Although, as always, the horses look terrible.
Additionally the game has some of the most impressive water and boat dynamics seen to date in a game, and may even showcase more impressive gameplay than the core experience.
Dishonored:
Dishonored is still somewhat of an unknown factor. Much like Bioshock, it has based its advertising around an interesting mixture of great art and over-excessive violence. However if it, like Bioshock, can come out the other end to prove that it is actually exploring morality and a deeper philosophy, this may end up being one of the more interesting games of 2012. Given the satirical nature of the tagline: “Revenge solves everything”, it’s very likely that this may be the case.
Watch_Dogs:
Games like Grand Theft Auto and Spiderman 2 have long been known for their accurate portrayal of real-life cities such as New York, but this demo for the previously unheard of game Watch_Dogs, takes realistic representation of real world cities to another level. Chicago is portrayed in this game with a level of detail that is simply mind-blowing. To top it off, it is broaching an interesting topic that shares many similarities with the medium on which it is portrayed, and yet which has never been attempted on this level before.
The Last of Us:
The Last of Us displays, quite simply, the most impressively realistic gunplay ever before seen from a game. While the majority of the demo was no doubt heavily scripted, it was still created to showcase how gameplay scenarios will actually unfold in-game. Enemies react believably to the threat of being shot, friendly AI interacts with the player character realistically given their relationship, and the moral ambiguity of killing in self defense is apparent to a very intentional degree.
Star Wars 1313:
While Star Wars would be the last franchise you might imagine exploring the realms of believability, 1313 aims to provide a more visceral, brutal, and grounded experience. But quite frankly, all we could notice was the amazing graphics. This is, quite simply, some of the most graphically impressive in-game footage to date.
Released for the first time on March 13th, Journey is a game from the creators of Flow and Flower, both praised for their simplistically unique gameplay and artistic visuals. Journey is no different. As the player sets out on a trek to reach a mountain peak, seen clearly from the earliest moments of the game, they encounter a land full of history; a story of past failure and a society seeking spiritual redemption. If this makes little sense at the current time, trust us that it becomes clear in a very interesting and symbolic way over the course of playing through the game, which takes little more than an hour. By the time the player reaches the end, they will have completed a visually striking and emotionally powerful experience which manages to immerse the player into a fictional struggle against the elements in spite of the game’s overly simplistic gameplay and visuals. If you have any interest in gaming as a medium capable of telling captivating and emotionally powerful stories, then this one is a must play.
MANY Mass Effect spoilers (in case you didn’t guess).
Firstly I would like to say that, although I have not read the books or enjoyed every bit of the expanded fiction (as much as I would still like to), I do consider myself a very devoted Mass Effect fan. My emotional involvement in the series is higher than can be said for any other game, and while Halo is the series which I am most familiar with from a fictional, developmental, and online community-oriented standpoint – its well-aged walls a familiar site which I feel privileged to be able to call “home” – Mass Effect presents another scenario entirely. It more closely reminds me of the feeling I had when I was first introduced to science fiction, all those years ago, and began my epic quest into the wonderfully rich universe established by Frank Herbert in his Dune novels.
In that series an intricate weave of characters, plots, worlds and histories was fleshed out so delicately and with such an extreme attention to detail, presented in a manner which fully captivated my attention for years as I read through each subsequent addition to the saga. I was immediately sucked in and immersed in the amazing worlds that Herbert had created, thrown into a galaxy in political and existential turmoil. I felt as if the places I was reading about were real, the events occurring in real time as I read, as if with each turn of the page I myself was propelling these character’s very real journey.
Mass Effect took this notion and – as video games tend to do as an interactive medium – blew it completely out of the water. Instead of a cosmic hand propelling the pacing of the story, I was fully involved in it. I was allowed to play out all of the actions performed by Commander Shepard as he journeyed through the galaxy encountering alien races, learning to properly relate to them, developing relationships, sharing personal victories and defeats, and eventually revealing a secret apocalyptic cycle the galaxy plays host to stretching back millions of years into the history of the Milky Way galaxy.
The plot was intense, the galaxy which Bioware had established involving and very, very real. Every character had more life within them than any other video games characters I had seen to date, and in interacting with them I no longer felt as if I were making conversation with a computer. These were real people and real alien species.
Immediately, dialogue and conversations with my crew and people on various planets and stations took priority over the thrill of combat, the usual draw for a game such as this. When the first game released, I was amazed to find that I was not only spending more time conversing with the denizens of the galaxy than killing them, but that I was actually enjoying it more than any other experience a game company has ever shaped for me.
While not necessarily game content, this seven minute animated science fiction short – rendered completely within an engine existing on the Playstation 3 – is certainly game related and worth every bit of your attention.
One of the most recent indie games to receive a lot of attention is called “Dear Esther”.
In it, the player character wanders an island, discovering its past and how it connects to the story being told by the narrator. To say anything more would be to venture into the realm of speculation or spoiler territory (potentially), so we simply recommend that you give this game your time. It doesn’t take long to complete (it can be done in one short sitting of about an hour or less, depending on how much you explore) and exhibits some absolutely beautiful level design, complemented by a wonderfully fitting soundtrack.
Download this game, play it, and when you get to the end let us know what you thought.
In 2005, the small art venue “iam8bit” opened in Hollywood, CA. It was not expected to have a large reception… perhaps a couple hundred people at most, a few paintings sold. But what it received in terms of attendance was absolutely staggering. People came from all over L.A., the lines stretched out the building and around the corner. The show’s founder, Jon Gibson, realized he was on to something big. Now, Iam8bit is a marketing and promotions firm, as well as a popular art show that exhibits regularly. After a three year hiatus to work on the company and garner some hype, they are back to exhibiting, promising their biggest show yet.
The most interesting part of the company? Their one rule in regards to what kind of art can be submitted: it must all be inspired by or contain content from the 8- and 16-bit era of gaming, which means limited graphics and highly pixelated visuals. The reason?
“It’s the artists filling in the gaps with their imagination. Twenty year later, they look back at things they played as kids, and they take their memories and put it down on canvas as art. It comes out completely different and beautiful.”
-Nick Ahrens, iam8bit staff member and former Game Informer editor
For more information on “iam8bit”, its history, and where it stands today, be sure to grab a copy of the latest Game Informer and read the excellent article by Matt Helgeson
