Uncharted 2 – “Hail the King of Thieves”
“Uncharted 2’s” introductory moments are an absolute marvel. Most importantly, they represent a clear break from traditional game design logic, showing off exciting new possibilities in terms what a video game can (should?) be. Interested? Read on. The game starts, as you may already know, with Drake, half-bleeding to death inside a cliff-hanging train (the game opens with a cliff hanger, one can only enjoy the irony). Drake soon realizes, verbalizing it in his signature “oh God…”, that the train isn’t about to hold on much longer, and will soon plunge deep into the gorge. Debris suddenly fall over, plummeting Drake nearer to the precipice, as he desperately clings to a rusty bent hand-rail that stands centimeters away from nothingness. Up to this point it’s cut-scene territory, extraordinarily directed as in the previous game, and perhaps even more so. That warm sense of witful charm is reprised, once again heralding back to the terrain of summer blockbuster movies, of Spielberg and Lucas fame. But what was missing in the first “Uncharted”, soon becomes reality in the second: the embodiment of that same spirit during actual game-play sequences.
As Drake dwindles in the rail, the game kicks in, and you’re in charge. Climbing the train is simple and intuitive for anyone who has ever played a Tomb Raider-esque action-adventure game. But, despite it being absurdly simple to avoid Drake’s death while climbing, it retains a sense of tension and dramatic peril that video-games seldom impose without resorting to actual game-over screens. The trick Naughty Dog employed is devilishly clever: they enunciate danger through pre-scripted events but… it isn’t really there. For instance, the moment Drake nears the end of the hand-rail he’s clinging to, it bends unexpectedly. As you climb, objects keep falling down… a bit too near Drake for his own sake. Later, the second Drake jumps away from another rail, it suddenly breaks and falls. This sequence is simply riddled with these small nerve-cringing incidents give you the illusion of danger [as you can see for yourself here], without it ever truly existing, as you can’t really die because of them. The whole level, in fact, is nearly impossible to fail, shifting “Uncharted 2″ away from a pure game, and into somewhat of an interactive, yet highly cinematic experience. The game becomes much more tense because of this, as you never have to repeat the sequence, thus maintaining its initial emotional impact intact. It represents as pure a translation as there has been of the concept of a film-like experience into video game terms; it’s all a matter of deception and misguidance, and the powerless witnessing of danger, as opposed to its confrontation, as is common for games. Something tells me that Spielberg would approve.
From then on, the game continues this strategy to impose tension, throwing unexpected events at the player in any given situation. Trains explode, buildings crumble, bridges fall – the sense of playing a roller-coaster film is pervasive. This engagement improves significantly because of all the work and thought that was noticeably invested in understanding and replicating the cinematic language – from the outstanding set design of each exotic location, to the delicious voice and facial animation, notwithstanding the superlative use of camera directing (especially in-game). Cut-scene and game mesh in such natural and emotional ways, it almost begs the question of why didn’t anyone do this before. Nevertheless, not all is rendered with the manipulating edge of the first few moments of the game. As “Uncharted 2″ moves on, it becomes an actual game, with the expected challenges and trial and error sequences. For the most part, it remains an expertly crafted work, exhilarating as few can be, despite the continuous interruption of death scenarios. There’s also the overuse of the by now blasé “Gears of War” combat, that insists on outstaying its presence, but no amount of slow crawling, tedious and repetitive cover combat can impair “Uncharted’s” sense of style and amusement, let alone its humor, both in and outside cut-scenes. It’s just a shame that such “military” influences are not toned down, as the action in “Tomb Raider”, as a way to punctuate the scale, instead of dominating every beat.
“Uncharted 2″ could have easily been one of the most important mainstream games in recent history, had Amy Hennig and the team at Naughty Dog had the courage to forfeit genre conventions and the ridiculous tick boxes which modern action games are governed and reviewed by, like multiplayer and co-op modes. Had that wasted energy been invested in further exploration of the subtle new grounds of action adventure experience which “Uncharted 2″ skims by, and it might have been a shining new example of a new genre. As is, it’s still the best of its kind – as unoriginal in its game-play as others before it, though designed with a finesse, care to detail and artistry that its competitors are sorely lacking.
score: 4/5
Shadow Complex – “G.I. Joe Complex”
More than a modern take on “Metroid” (as were the “Prime” entries), “Shadow Complex” is a faithful homage to what is one of the most beloved videogames ever made [in all fairness, I am not a big fan]. Like so many players out there, Donald Mustard is mad in love with “Metroid” and so, everything that made “Metroid” “Metroid”, is recovered almost religiously into his game – the pure 2-D platforming, the non-linear maps, and their never-ending backtracking… pardon me, “exploration”, the armor and weapon upgrades, the environmental puzzles, the wall-crawling enemies, etc, etc, etc. In “Shadow Complex” every motion, space and action, evokes a memory of “Metroid”. And Mustard plays well with that memory, rewriting it subtly to fit with the new century design standards players have developed. More tense and action packed, “Shadow Complex” is an entertaining video-game that doesn’t rely solely on nostalgia to be fun.
Sadly enough, Mustard’s fond remembrance of “Metroid” is imperfect, dare I say, naive and superficial. One of the greater aspects in “Metroid” was its ambiance: the sense of vacant space mirrored perfectly the part of being alone in an alien landscape. Despite the minimalist details, the dark caves and somber music were essential in establishing that science fiction reality (“Alien”, of course, comes to mind). Mustard did not use a similar background, therefore losing his capability to truly evoke the memory of “Metroid”, but perhaps rightfully so, for who is he to remake “Metroid”? The issue here is that the artistic frame he chose to substitute “Metroid’s” stinks of the most basic consumer-pleasing piece of trash. In other words, he wrapped the “Metroid” gameplay in a first-person shooter aesthetic (something which even the “Prime” series tried to avoid).
Explosions and explosions and more explosions and lots of shooting and shooting and firefights and kung-fu fist-fights and epic battles with giant-mecha and even more explosions – that’s what Mustard substituted the sci-fi environment with. Even though the script is based on the work of Orson Scott Card (namely his novel “Empire”), it comes off as the sort of preposterous teenager military fantasy about an evil scientist/general who wants to take over the world (or just the U.S.A., doesn’t seem to matter). The B-movie tone can be funny (Nolan North as the leading voice certainly helps), but the narrative often seems to want seriousness and sentimentality, which ultimately ruins any chance of redemption for the whole affair. Character designs only add to the whole comic-book vibe, being so bad that can even paint the supposedly menacing army as an outlandish brand of villains.
The new framing is, in one word, horrible. It’s like an even worse copy of Epic’s own games, featuring extensive technical value but less than competent artistic one. It’s not that it was obligatory to evoke an ambiance as powerful as that of “Metroid”, but anything other than “G.I. Joe” in Unreal Engine’s dull and insipid color palettes would have been preferable. Appealing to the “Gears” crowd just seems irreflected for someone who is trying to recapture the feel of a work that is consensually viewed as a masterpiece. Thus, “Shadow Complex” ends up being somewhat of a half-breed between a modern action packed shooter and the pondered exploration of “Metroid”. You can’t commend its innovation, because there is none, but it’s extremely well designed and balanced, and if it’s mindless fun you’re looking for, you’ll get your kicks. However, as the self-proclaimed love-letter to “Metroid”, it’s as much of an insult as it is a compliment to Yoshio Sakamoto’s masterpiece.
[My Xbox 360 just died this mornin' (thanks Microsoft!), so I won't be able to complete the game, hence why there is only an Impressions article. Still, I played the game enough to give it a fair review.]
D – “Deranged”
Let’s be honest, “D” isn’t the type of game that will entertain you the way video-games usually do. It’s slow paced and introspective, and it simply isn’t meant to be fun in any way; it’s the sort of game that tries trying to engage players in a specific state of mind that doesn’t rely on actual pleasure, but in actual discomfort. In other words, it’s a true horror game.
You play as Laura, the daughter of a renown doctor who, out of the blue, starts murdering innocent people in an L.A. hospital. The police ask her to investigate why he’s gone mad, but once she enters the hospital she comes upon a strange portal. Like Laura, once you step through that portal, the comfortable, familiar reality you live in will suddenly crack open, and you’ll plunge into a nightmarish world concocted by her fathers’ mind. At first it seems you’ve only entered an old manor, but you’ll immediately notice that something about it feels distorted. It’s eerie and oppressive in every way, from the austere, claustrophobic design of the manor itself, built in weighty slab stones, to its dark baroque furniture and somber decoration patterns. As you slowly trot about, step after step after step, the sounds of footsteps echoing through the deserted halls, your eyes examining your surroundings, you come to understand that, like the dreamy fabric of your mind’s thoughts, the old house pays little heed to the enclosing limitations of physical reality. Its architecture and design is odd and impossible to replicate in the real world, not to mention that it’s filled with strange contraptions and deadly traps filled with corpses. And, like a typical haunted house, there’s always something odd and disconcerting waiting to jump out when you slowly turn the next corner.
Exploring that strange realm is handled like in “Myst“: a lonely adventure game in which you go about solving puzzles to find out more about the story that has passed. But whereas “Myst” strived on players’ sense of discovery and awe when faced with its aesthetic beauty and hidden secrets, “D” prefers to instill an eerie atmosphere of anticipation and dread face its hidden revelations. Inside that dark-stricken world, the atmosphere is cut-throat, with the slow tempo of the electronic soundtrack building up tension and giving emotional density to the limited detail of the pre-rendered visuals. But when there’s a new narrative revelation, you can see Laura’s face exploding with emotion (such boldness in an 1995 video-game!), and the game shifts into a barrage of super-fast, surreal imagery, which, like the memories of an amnesiac, are completely fragmented, only adding to the insanity and madness that surrounds you. The aesthetic and emotional contrast between those two moments is overwhelming, as you go from a vacant world of dead grays and quiet loneliness to a torrent of violent, blood-stricken images accompanied by a pounding soundtrack. This is Kenji Eno’s work at its best, crafting specific moods for the player to sink in, so that the game plays the player as if he were a piano: gently pacing him with a melancholic tune, quieting him until he settles in, only to then have him instantly revived with a powerful new crescendo that takes him to an emotional climax. It’s almost as if Eno, who sports an extensive musical background [of which you can read more about in Dieubussy's profile and interview, here], crafted the game as you’d compose music, trying to convey strong emotional impressions and abstract rationales, instead of devising something that could be deconstructed literally.
That is what ultimately elevates “D” to a horror masterpiece, the fact that its authors understood that the fundamental pillar of a horror piece lies in a sense of unknown and illogical, that can put players in an uncomfortable mindset which eventually leads to fear and foreboding. Even when the game comes into a conclusion, its mysteries are never fully revealed; what is unhooded serves only to add a whole new layer of interpretation – a frightening allegory over man’s transformation into monster – but its revelations never change the amorphous, bizarre and surreal nature of the tale. Nothing ever makes much sense in “D”, and the game is all the better because of it. At the very least, one must acknowledge “D’s” impact in its genre, with its tentaclous influences reaching the very best of the genre, from “Resident Evil” (the wonderful first person perspective doorway opening and stair-climbing sequences) to “Silent Hill” (in terms of the surreal ambiance). But “D” is a masterpiece by its own merit, a game that accomplishes that which so oft eludes video-games: the capability to provoke strong emotional reactions in players. And “D” can invoke in you such a host of visceral, sub-dermal and subconscious responses, that it will give you a whole new appreciation for horror video-games.
score: 5/5
Snatcher – “Childish Fiction”
Back in the 80’s, games couldn’t stand further from cinema; while film had already achieved its pinnacle as an art form, the state of the art for the video-game realm was embodied in the likes of Miyamoto’s “Legend of Zelda” or “Super Mario Bros.”. Good games not withstanding, these works were meant for young kids and teenagers, their cultural and artistic value being relatively small, if at all existent. It was then expected that video-game developers would turn, sooner or later, to cinema as a way of finding inspiration for video-games. The first steps in that direction were given in the late 80’s; amongst those early visionaries was Hideo Kojima.
“Metal Gear” (1987) was Kojima’s first video-game, an ode to Hollywood pop references of the 80’s, with “Rambo” serving as a major inspiration, but also borrowing elements from “Escape from New York” or “Terminator”. “Snatcher” was its followup, but then, Kojima chose to pay an hômage to one of the greatest movies of all times – “Blade Runner“. It’s impossible not to think too much about it, as every element in “Snatcher” seems to derive at some level, from Ridley Scott’s masterpiece: from the dark cyber-punk depiction of the future, to the ever-looming menace of a race of killer cyborgs (though in “Snatcher” they resemble more closely Cameron’s “Terminators” than the actual replicants), down to main characters’ personalities and visual characterization.
As an unofficial interactive translation to “Blade Runner”, “Snatcher” is a success. The player embarks on a noir mystery, searching for clues regarding the main character’s past, while simultaneously hunting down killer robots that mask themselves as humans. Despite the game being incredibly linear, there seems to have been a great effort in making players feel like a true Private Investigator, by making them solve clever criminal puzzles, through the discovery of each piece of evidence and its consequent interpretation. And though, in essence, the game plays like a simple text adventure game, it makes excellent use of its sparse aesthetic elements, using simple animations as a form of emulating film, and upping the tempo with well placed sound effects and music, which can heighten the sense of discovery of a particular clue or anticipate a nearby plot-twist. There are also a few shooting sequences to punctuate the investigation; these add a much needed surprise factor to whenever a cyborg is found, further enhancing tension while the player is investigating clues.
It is obvious that “Snatcher” goes as far as the medium could go at the time it was designed. Kojima creates his own devious world filled with his trademark post modern humor, and all these little references to Hollywood cinematography, but he never ceases to impregnate it with a consistency and level of detail that simply doesn’t exist in most games today, let alone those from twenty years ago. He also does a thorough background search on the scientific, social and political themes that he then molds and solidifies into an arresting thriller, filled with intrigue and drama. Like all of Kojima’s games, “Snatcher” elevates the writing quality of the means, in a search for the narrative depth that we grew accustomed to in cinema.
And yet, one can only get a bitter taste when Kojima so often invites a comparison between his video-games and the 7th art; a comparison to which all his games fall on the short end of. “Snatcher’s” aesthetic, while clearly inspired by the noir-ish ambiance of the movie, features warm color palettes [more prevalent in the later versions than in the less detailed, yet more consistent, MSX original] and an upbeat electro-jazz soundtrack, which clash severely with the gloomy dystopian mood. Kojima’s writing, though light-years ahead of his peers, is polluted with Anime tropes and immature sexual jokes that can only be seen as childish, especially when compared to the somber nature of “Blade Runner’s” drama. Not to mention that the most important story layer of “Blade Runner” – Philip K. Dick’s own existential dilemmas – is completely absent from the video-game; in exchange, we get a story about an egomaniacal soviet scientist who wants to take over the world. In film, we get a powerful existentialist science fiction drama, but in the video-game version, we get a Saturday morning Japanese cartoon… sadly, it’s the story of our means.
score: 4/5
Myst – “Journeying Through Ages Past”
When I first laid my eyes on the Miller brothers’ “Myst”, I knew it was something different. I couldn’t quite grasp what it was at the time – I was only twelve you see – but it was powerful enough to stay lurking in the back of my brain for all these years. My father, a man who appreciates cinema and classical music, but thoroughly belittles video-games, looked at “Myst” and sensed the same thing I now do: amazement. He couldn’t understand it, just as I couldn’t have, but he perceived enough to know it was special. And special “Myst” is, of that there is no doubt. It is as special as only a handful of video-games have ever been.
Like the player, the game’s main character is literally thrown into an island covered in mist, surrounded by an endlessly sprawling sea. Left entirely alone, the player is invited to embark on a voyage of discovery through a strange world, in hopes of deciphering its origins, and the reasons behind its emptiness and desolation. Faced with the ceaseless solitude, you can hear the gentle sound of the waves hitting shore, the sea breeze blowing softly, even bird’s chanting at times; your mind gently enters a state of calm and introspection. As you explore the scenery, lulled by its soothing ambiance, you encounter a dreamy realm, filled with breathtakingly beautiful natural scenery, but also an eerie mix of human constructions, from an impressive dome of classical architecture, to a sunken ship made of stone, not to mention a Jules Vernesque flying rocket. These remnants of the island’s inhabitants are the narrators of the story, as each building holds inside its history, either literally inscribed in it, in the writings of lost journals, or present in more subtle ways: imbued in its architecture, decoration or secret puzzles.
The puzzles thereby serve as the perfect metaphor for the unveiling of the hidden mysteries of the land. Solving them is a delight, not only because the game’s simple interface and elegant design makes them brilliant exercises of deductive reasoning, but also because they blend beautifully in the landscape, becoming a seamless part of that world. Simply put, every image, sound and object in “Myst” is a clue, making the aesthetic itself a part of the puzzle, a physical materialization of the secrets of the realms of “Myst”. The haunting atmosphere also becomes the embodiment of that story of ages past, with its atmospheric soundtrack (Robyn Miller) and realistic sound effects (Chris Brandkamp) serving as a natural complement to the surreal imagery.
“Myst” is a spatial painting that players are invited to explore with their senses, but also an enigma which they must decipher with their minds. A hypnotizing interactive museum built in a world of utopia, where players are enticed to unveil the shrouding mystery that covers its past. More than anything, it’s a journey through many different, fantastic universes, a mesh of places where magic and technology merge into physical marvels that one can only observe in wonder; places where the most idyllic dreams of men have become a reality… All of this, condensed into an arresting piece of interactive entertainment and art. In other words, a Masterpiece.
