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The Void – “Unrequited Love”

“The Void” has us enthralled at first sight. An eerie melancholic soundscape fills the background, a strong feminine voice entangles itself in a haunting poem [adapted from our very own Luís Vaz de Camões, it seems], the screen swerves through the air, gently flying by a colorless cityscape, waltzing near an old withered tree, only to then plunge slowly into a pit of nothingness… death. It all starts with death. That is how you enter “The Void”, a purgatory realm of ether somewhere between life and true death. It’s not named void by accident, it’s an oppressively dark and empty space, a vast sea of absence and non-existence, punctuated with small shimmers of light… beacons of color. These islets of comatose life serve as surreal habitats for the strange denizens of this no-life: the sisters and the brothers. The former are romantic and charismatic interpretations of beauty and emotion incarnate, and the latter are grotesque, crude nightmares born out of melting flesh with mechanical weapons. All are portrayed with a pendant for aesthetic virtuosity that cannot be overstated, demanding immediate comparison with Tale of Tales’ own projects. Like the Belgian studio, Ice-pick lodge indulged in sipping inspiration from the fine arts, bringing centuries of haunting beauty into the barren 3D medium. That both their games’ landscapes can be read as breathtaking spatial paintings is telling of this aspiration to “art”.  But similarities between the two studios productions end thus, as in terms of formal structure, these could not be more disparate. Whilst Tale of Tales insists in valiantly swinging its art/not-game banner with both ingenuity and admirable perseverance, Ice-Pick lodge clearly upholds and cherishes the conflicting logic of games.

Which brings us to the strange nature of “The Void” as a video game, a sinuous hybrid: half strategic board game, half art-house horror adventure. You actually play “The Void” as an economic management game not unlike “Monopoly” – you plant color, wait for it to mature, collect it, and then employ it to defend your territory and repeat the cycle – , but you also spatially explore the void, delighting in its glorious vistas whilst occasionally confronting yourself with its menacing creatures. All these elements compete for your attention in equally strenuous ways. One must juggle the cognitive burden of pondering every move in the over-world board, managing color in the most efficient way, whilst keeping in mind the hectic, nerve-wracking combat and the heavy, obscure rules which the game forces upon players without explanation. All this, whilst still trying to derive pleasure from the symbolic journey through the void’s bizarre milieu, attempting to decode its metaphors and allegories, as well as its rules on a purely semantic level. It is by far the most puzzling of its eccentricities that it can be so cleanly split into these conflicting halves, as they are not only aesthetically incompatible – inviting antithetical subjective experiences – , as they appeal to different audiences.

Nikolay Dybowskiy’s blind, gluttonous virtuosity may be to blame. In attempting to complexify game design and imbue it with meaning – a western game design axiom, if we ever saw one – he must have lost track of what was most important: player’s relationship with the game. For this, “The Void” ends up being a good example of video-games not being art; there’s a lot of art in it, surely – in the ethereal soundtrack by Vasiliy Kashnikov or the moody 3D landscapes by Peter Potapov – but it plays just like a game, barring any possibility of pure aesthetic appreciation and that vital sense of transcendent beauty which defines art. There’s just no space for the experience to breathe, as you will find yourself frantically competing with the game. Which is not to say Ice Pick Lodge does not deserve praise; they do, by all means. They’ve created a singular video game with some of the best art and character design we’ve seen in the past years, and backed by a proper budget, which is no mean feat by itself. It’s just that we wanted to love “The Void”. Heartily, with passion and idolatry. In fact, we might have loved it at some point. At the very least, we love its potential to be something more than it is. But it just never loved us back. And quite frankly, we couldn’t guess who it loves… like its beautiful mistresses, “The Void” is a demanding diva that forces you to masochistically labor for its sympathy, only to keep you ever frustrated and desolate no matter how much sweat you sacrifice for it. It possesses the lyrical beauty of a mesmerizing poem, but beneath it lies the cold embrace of a punishing game, one so powerful that when you see through its gorgeous exterior, it will feel as barren and desolate as the void itself… because that’s how games feel.

“The dream of future you see dissolves
And with time so does the apprehension
The world under sun is no exception
And all you see around you evolves

New traits in things familiar can be sensed
But futile is hope without fruition
The grief you knew begets no vision
The happiness you felt becomes regret

Winter fades and takes it cold and storm
Spring revives the world with loving and warmth
But still the law: all things decay and age.

Vanity itself won’t dry your tears
And so you fear as your time draws near
The word will turn but never change.”

2010
04/27
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Echo Night Beyond – “Space Exploration”

For quite some time now, video games have become a thrilling new means of conveying the aesthetics of subjective experiences. Nevermind video games as narrative, video games as games or video games as rules – video games adept at simulating presence in three-dimensional worlds. These dream-machines are capable of eluding senses into immersion by representation of sight and sound and interaction, conjuring the fantastical and the mundane alike. That such reality is so often forgot is the only explanation why such a long-time primordial dream of mankind and the human ego has been so mistreated in the medium. Amidst rows and rows of shooters and strategy games set in space, one would find a great deal of difficulty in chosing a game that could accurately represent the sense of being a space astronaut. Powerful and inspirational memories of the past, such as Kennedy’s famous speech or the iconic 1969 broadcast of Apollo 11 seem to have been utterly forgotten due to game designers’ strangling myopia. Herein lies “Echo Night Beyond’s” accomplishment, as more than serving as decent sequel to the horror-themed first person adventure “Echo Night”, it establishes a faint, yet palpable realization of what it would feel like to be in outer space.

Sadly, its legacy does come into place. As background scenario there’s an occult ghost-story set in space, which serves as narrative bridge to previous iterations, not to mention that the structural design follows closely on its predecessors, with exploration guided with means of quests attributed by wandering ghosts. Eventually, these awkward trappings become fully digestible because “Beyond” follows that golden rule of Japanese design which places all elements as functional complements to the establishment of an aesthetic experience. Indeed, the clichéd esoteric storyline and adventure template prove mere video game macguffins that justify players’ need to embark on a journey through an abandoned space station. The alpha and omega of the game is the voyage itself, as you wander through the cold metallic halls of an eerie, ghost-infected mining facility, encrusted somewhere on the face of the moon. And it is, as all survival horror games should aspire to be, a distressful, profoundly unsettling psychological journey.

You explore the game in first person view, with a claustrophobic helmet crushing your sight’s field of view, and a bulky space suit slowing your every move. The silence, in almost as dreadful manner as in Kubrick’s masterpiece, is ever present, with the howling trot of the space suit being your ears’ only companion for the majority of the time. Sluggishly plodding about the atmospheric surroundings, a small torch tenuously lighting the way through the darkness, you’ll feel just like a space explorer should feel: alone. The occasional metallic ringing of shutting doors and industrial machines will be the only presence you will encounter apart from the sinister (albeit somewhat lost in translation) encounters with ghosts. As they guide you through the adventure, you’ll even explore the exterior of the space station, thrust into the moon’s harsh surface, beneath the menacing black void of outer space, crawling ever so slowly, nigh standing still, or simply jumping as Neil Armstrong did, in a lethargic space twirl, flying across wide areas of white dusty terrain, only to find oneself perpetually trapped in the most desolate of landscapes.

Like its “King’s Field” brethren, “Echo Night Beyond” reminds us of how simplicity in the game design meanders and scarcity of resources are no barriers for devising superlative forms of player experience. Its technical excellence in audio-visual design make it an extremely immersive and moody game, and allow it to be a pioneer in capturing the imagination of all those who’ve always wanted to be a little bit closer to that vast dark mantle of unknown that covers the sky.

score: 4/5

2010
03/25
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Heavy Rain – “Brooding Emotions”

Tempestuous weather, “Heavy Rain’s” leitmotif, serves not only as the perfect mood setter for the crime novel Cage is telling, but also as a fitting metaphor for how his game was envisioned and created: a whirling storm of conflicts and clashing ambitions. Remember “Fahrenheit“? Well, “Heavy Rain” is not all that different from its messy predecessor: they share similar narrative themes, plot scenes and even structural skeleton. The only new element lies in the contextual button presses, which metaphorically relate player’s input with character’s on-screen actions, in essence making your physical and psychological interactions with the game as similar as possible with character’s own experiences. David Cage intended to suck players in as far as possible into the diegetic realm of his story, and this clever (if somewhat limited) device, fulfills its function beautifully, going well beyond the gimmicky nature it could acquire in the hands of a less devoted auteur.

However, one must question what is this that Cage is trying us to relate to? A gamey blockbuster-like sci-fi epic, as “Fahrenheit”? The answer is, rather surprisingly, no. Somehow he actually learned his lesson and understood that the fabric of good narratives does not lie in fantastical plots or teenager power fantasies or heart-pumping action chases, but in the subtle characterizations of human beings: their feelings and livelihoods and emotions and thoughts and, well, in one word, life. This is “Heavy Rain’s” finest, this simple realization, so absent in the video game medium, that all media is about people, just… people. The initial scenes are perfect in this sense, presenting some of the finest non-ludic segments in the history of video games, as you play out the simple joys of life: watching the subtle facial expressions of your face in the mirror while you shave, noticing your body relaxing as you take a hot shower, gently sipping the morning coffee as you see your neighbors passing through the window, or simply standing in your backyard, beneath a tree’s shade, on a bright sunny morning, doing nothing as you wait for your dear family to return home.  These are subjects which so many games avoid like the plague – because they are not action-packed or ‘fun’ or cool – and  yet “Heavy Rain” addresses them whole heartedly, with a naive ingenuity that reminds us of silent film.

This is not to say that “Heavy Rain” is the perfect accomplishment of a dramatic video game. As the story develops, with the stormy weather ever-looming and you enter the dark, brooding, decrepit halls of the neo-noir, all the fissures that interactive narratives live by crack open. Sadly, even the emotional bonding scenes eventually pave way for the menial tasks of unfolding conflict according to game design cannon, with an over-indulgence in Q.T.E.-ladden action sequences, even in cases where there are known game-play templates that would fit these better. And Cage’s ever-recurring lack of aesthetic sensibility occasionally shows its true face, as he blindly cites the oddest things – C.S.I., Johnny Mnemonic, Minority Report, etc. – and in doing so severely breaks the game’s moody Fincher-esque atmosphere… Yet somehow, none of this really matters, for these are mere trifles which in other cases we wouldn’t even notice, but in a work so ambitious and bold and provoking we can’t help but lament, such is its ideal. But what you will fondly remember is that rare genuine character expression you’d never seen in a video-game, your own real smile as you joyfully play with children, the panic you’ll feel when you play the father who loses his own son, or the empathy towards the sad lives of some of the more miserable characters. Genuine glimpses of emotion: what game does that to you?

Cage is aware of why video games are bad and emotionally shallow and redundant. He knows film is not. And so, he tries to use cinema as inspiration… we would argue it is not the best of ways to get there, but Cage doesn’t seem to mind that at all. Let’s be frontal, he’s the only mainstream designer that is, at least, trying to go in the right direction, perhaps for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways, but he’s trying. And though he pushes and pushes,  absurdly, with such folly and impetuousness, you can’t help but sympathize and even admire his foolishness.  So the origami killer asks: “How far would you go to save someone you love?”. Well, one thing is for sure, Cage is willing to sacrifice everything to save video games as a form of mature media, so maybe we should lend him an ear and listen to what he’s trying to say.

score: 5/5

[Much is left to say about “Heavy Rain” that this already excessively large review could never cover. I may return to this subject in the near future. Cheers!]

2010
03/08
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Silent Hill: Shattered Memories – “Gimmick Hill”

If “Homecoming” was a desperate attempt at winning over the “Resident Evil” crowd, “Shattered Memories” at first, seems the logic step backwards: try to win back “Silent Hill” adepts. Climax did choose to re-imagine the first “Silent Hill” in a clear sign of reverence for the past of the series. They also appealed to the adventure crowd by removing combat from the game, and focusing it on exploration, as well as shifting core narrative themes from the dreary occult to the realm of the human psyche. Climax knew what every “Silent Hill” fan desired – a mature storyline in a survival horror focused on ambiance – and aimed at pleasing. But, whilst the marketing angle was perfect, everything else was not. But blame what we will, and we will blame many things, let us assure you, it’s undeniable that their purpose seems well-intentioned, perhaps even moved by a genuine love for the original Team Silent creations. Nonetheless, in the cruel world of the arts, such good intentions do not a work make… let alone a good “Silent Hill”. Back in the now distant days of “0rigins” you could already perceive Climax’s limitations. Their simple-minded and to the point interpretation of narrative ambiguities, surreal aesthetics and symbolic undertones, their utter lack of creative spark in the visual art department and their greatest sin: the inability to understand that “Silent Hill” had always been an authorial work inconceivable of franchise treatment. These claustrophobic maladies of the heart are now increased tenfold by greater authorial control of the Climax team, now seemingly liberated of any weight the Konami staff  ensured during the transition period from east to west… and hell is it painful to watch the end-result.

In “Shattered Memories”, the series is, using popular video game journalism terminology, re-booted, which means that no “Silent Hill” cannon is reprised. Now, even “Homecoming”, and may god punish us for speaking on a positive tone of such an ill-begotten bastard, had an occasional semblance of a “Silent Hill” atmosphere, with its dreary fog and eerie vacant streets and hellish red-rusted otherworld. But despite this being a remake, Climax thought, in a momentary lapse of arrogant folly, that they were capable of coming up with something fresh to replace what defined its predecessors. One look at the early artwork of the game was enough to understand how unprepared Climax was for this task. And so, they came up with a new aesthetic theme to “Silent Hill” – a blizzard stricken town, rendered in dark blacks (it’s dark and scary), vibrant blue ice (apparently it’s the colour of ice in Brittain) and covered in a whitish snow blanket (well, snow is white). The resulting artistic direction is bland, lacking character, detail and meaning, so woefully uninspired and understated in a video game that used to be known precisely for its emotional impact.

And what could Climax possibly add to compensate for such an outrageous aesthetic? In a nutshell, a modern, gimmick oriented style of gameplay. There are the mini-game-like puzzles with that familiar shallowness that the Wii has accustomed us to, a labirynth-like running game to replace combat that feels like a stripped down, trial and error version of “Clock Tower”, and a useless “GTA IV” cell-phone that delivers back-story in SMS or voice-chat format – it’s the twitter angle on narrative. Now, all these could be sufferable, had the aesthetic any flash of creativity that would allow for the surreal ambiance to shine. But there’s not. Even the plot, while decent and interesting, has its delivery falling flat. Characters and events from the original “Silent Hill” have lost all the details that made them unique, reduced, as is common in game-to-film adaptations, to mere names and archetypes in a sprawled out synopsis that bears no relationship with the source material. Gone are the surreal elements, the bizarrerie, the allegoric and metaphoric… In the end, nothing is left that could possibly stick out in your memory – a character, a dialogue line, an image, a sound (even Yamaoka seems unusually melodic and uncharacteristic), a place, an object,  an ambiance… an idea. “Shattered Memories”, like its environments, feels vacant and soul-less, an empty puppet stand-in lying in the place of a once great masterpiece.

score: 0/5

2010
02/18
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Cryostasis – “From Russia with Cold”

As western game development grows thick in its arrogance and nigh religious faith in the formulaic, and the far eastern dwindles in its inability to appeal to the new found world masses in any way but the mimicking of the western ways, only those left in the middle can still make a stand. Russia and other eastern countries’ economical limbo has given rise to a number of small independent studios that the far reaching arm of the industry still hasn’t a complete clutch over. This small harbor of creative freedom is showing signs of  being able to protagonize a cold wave of video games, as interesting titles such as “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” and “Metro 2033” creep in the commercial mainstream, and the bizarre ventures of Ice-Pick Lodge, “Pathologic” and “The Void”, show that an auteur approach is still possible in the medium. “Cryostasis” lies somewhere in between these two approaches, but despite its compromise, is unequivocally another eastern promise.

Something in these eastern countries… something about the weather there has a powerful effect on the region’s cultural legacy. Something which explains that fatalist tendency for the dark and violent, that weighty existentialist anxiety, the ever-present gloom and cold and frigid, the icy and slow, the rugged and gauntly. This artistic propension is ever clear in “Cryostasis”. As an explorer stuck in an abandoned nuclear ice-breaker somewhere in the northern pole, you set out in search of answers about the ship’s predicament. You dive into that icy purgatory’s bowels, as you slowly pave way through a labyrinth of dark, rusted metal corridors, covered in crisp ice crystals and snow and clear stalactites, overrun by a dreaded silence that is only muffled by the cruel howls of the blizzard that runs amok in the white-clad exterior. “Cryostasis” is precisely about how humans can survive in face of harsh environments, posing its key themes not only through the core exploration of the ship, but also through narrative exposition, via a re-telling of Maxim Gorky’s tale “Old Izergil” and re-living of the ship’s defunct crew memories, in a series of bizarre flashbacks. Revelations are slow to come, but subtle and profound, and the authors’ propension for the extraordinary and the strange and cryptic make the game altogether more captivating for those who like a good narrative conundrum.

There’s a bit of the old survival horror cannon here as well, as the ice-breaker holds some of its former crew hidden and mutated into ghastly creatures. Though far from being the game’s highlight, combat with these monsters is particularly intense, thanks to a great use of sound effects, and the game’s unrelentingly slow rhythm. In the end, this is what makes “Cryostasis” a valid entry into its genre, as despite its first person perspective and shooting interactions, its pacing and exploratory moods utterly distantiate it from the military action aesthetic which pervasively corrodes the survival horror genre. Indeed, “Cryostasis” only failure lies in its authors not recognizing that they should not compete with the likes of these games. In what seems to have been an urge to stick to standard mainstream games’ length, the experience ends up sprawling for far too many hours, with little variation in both aesthetic content and narrative development. But, even so, after a depressing number of these nautious action-horror hybrids, such as “Dead Space“, “Resident Evil 5” and “Silent Hill Homecoming“, it is great to, once again, be able to experience a true survival horror game that lives and breathes atmosphere.

score: 3/5

2010
02/11
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