|
Post by ECM on Jul 19, 2011 13:31:39 GMT -5
...here's games as art taken to the absurd and beyond. Warning: this is actually far worse than Metroid Prime as Citizen Kane--you've been warned, Zig! (And for the record: The Road is vastly, vastly overrated both as literature *and*, as the author likes to go on about, its (alleged) adherence to logically thinking through the results of his fictional universe.) h/t: Fei, whom I really wish hadn't sent me this and reminds me--again!--why I don't read gaming sites (e.g. IGN/Destructoid/Kotaku/Joystiq/etc.) anymore.
|
|
|
Post by elchevalier on Jul 19, 2011 15:40:01 GMT -5
Couldn't pass from the title of the article.
|
|
|
Post by feilong80 on Jul 19, 2011 17:31:58 GMT -5
I guess I don't get karma for that. I can't believe I'm sitting at just 2. I'll bet jbob007 will get bombed with good karma if he ever posts, while I have to sit here being treated like I just joined the board yesterday! ARGH!
|
|
|
Post by kog3100edw on Jul 19, 2011 17:35:05 GMT -5
Retarded.
I found The Road (movie and film both) to be good, though not life-changing. If I had a PS3 maybe I'd like Resistance.
It wasn't the games as art thing that even bothered me so much as the basic writerly flaw of making a comparison with your title and opening paragraph and then fatallying sabotaging your own comparison. Other than 'it is dark and fatalistic' the majority of the articles is bent on explaining how Reisistance is supposedly different and superior to The Road.
How irritating that to the writer, The Road was some piece of lit that opened his eyes to 'real writing' but falls down at almost every individual point compared to a video game. With the scant points given TONS of games I've played could be compared to The Road. Hell, Epic Mickey has dark, apocalyptic, bleak, alternate history aspects to it. So what?
|
|
|
Post by kog3100edw on Jul 19, 2011 17:40:17 GMT -5
My point more specifically should probably be:
Okay, so you've got this PS3 game that is unpredictable, dark and nihilistic, as many books are but in a way most games are not. The Road seems to have been chosen as a way to add some cachet to the article as opposed to being a particularly good fit to basically say, 'I like dark doom-laden games. Why can't there be more?'.
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 19, 2011 17:48:53 GMT -5
*Gives fei some pity karma* (I should smite you for sending me it at all!)
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 19, 2011 17:51:31 GMT -5
My point more specifically should probably be: Okay, so you've got this PS3 game that is unpredictable, dark and nihilistic, as many books are but in a way most games are not. The Road seems to have been chosen as a way to add some cachet to the article as opposed to being a particularly good fit to basically say, 'I like dark doom-laden games. Why can't there be more?'. Right, thus the "games are art" gooberism: he's basically trying to conflate what many (himself included) consider literary art w/ Resistance 3, an endeavor that is hopeless as it is pathetic since the only thing they actually share are very, very broad-based thematic elements...if that. (It's really of a piece w/ Metroid Prime is Citizen Kane, which is every bit as ridiculous as this.)
|
|
|
Post by elchevalier on Jul 19, 2011 19:32:50 GMT -5
We could create a topic dedicted to hack writting in the vg press. It will be constantly updated for sure.
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 19, 2011 19:35:22 GMT -5
Are you volunteering to read it all XD
|
|
|
Post by feilong80 on Jul 19, 2011 23:19:20 GMT -5
I think what is going on here (and this is why I'm very glad this is a closed forum now!) is that they want to obscure the simple fact that this is a very typical FPS. The Resistance series has had some cool things, like interesting weapons, but it plays very much like any other corridor shooter from the past 5-7 years. It has a big budget and goes boom pretty nice, but:
1. No matter how they slice it, their mythos just isn't that interesting. Why? The chimera are basically headcrab Half Life 2 zombies. They aren't particularly unique. I don't find myself giving much of a care to their origin/motivations.
2. Placing it in a sort of WWII context makes it seem oddly familiar with pre-Modern warfare CoD, despite it being sci-fi. If you do sci-fi, give us ray guns and space ships and... *color*, not just browns, human guns, etc. Plus, to my knowledge, they never give a face or name to the villians here; it's just a faceless, nameless alien virus thingie. No Darth Vader, no Salazar to give me a character to focus on.
3. Nobody is playing the multiplayer, at least not as much as the current king of the genre. So why bother? At least Killzone gives you an interesting mythos with some fun writing. At least Halo gives you the stuff that Halo gives you (which I like, and ECM hates with the passion of a thousand burning suns).
So what you are left with is a high quality (in the sense of production values) but ultimately unoriginal shooter trilogy, and the literary allusions are just a mask for that. I'm sure it has helped Sony to have an exclusive shooter like this, but nobody's going to be fondly remembering Resistance as a series once it is done.
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 20, 2011 9:33:30 GMT -5
As I've said to fei a half-dozen times: Insomniac's games are flat-out generic. Full stop. The *only* reason they are lauded as they are is that they are Sony exclusives so that fanbase chats them up out of blind, fanboy, loyalty.
|
|
AllenSmithee
Stripling
Compulsive Pedant
dead men don't have dog days
Posts: 92
|
Post by AllenSmithee on Jul 20, 2011 15:20:13 GMT -5
I don't think it really could be on the level of anything like The Road considering the super FPS violence and such. But!
Uh, I like Insomniacs games -- at least the ones with Ratchet and/or Clank in the title.
And nihilistic darkness WITH commentaries on arbitrary Uncharted levels of violence in the form of a great game is Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days -- Although it isn't post-apocalyptic.
|
|
|
Post by ECM on Jul 20, 2011 15:58:47 GMT -5
So you're telling me you buy each and every outing of R&C? That they haven't become entirely generic? Really?
|
|
|
Post by elchevalier on Jul 20, 2011 16:20:30 GMT -5
At the end of the day, nobody will ever remember the Resistance series in years to come. If this made you throw up ECM just wait until their upcoming article "Uncharted 3 is the sistine chapel of video games"
|
|
|
Post by kog3100edw on Jul 20, 2011 18:33:23 GMT -5
If video games ARE (officially undeclared) art, then they should stand on their own, with their own standards and forms. The greatest examples probably won't be the ones with the most boxes checked off in the 'cinematic' column.
When film got recognised as an artform how much of the forms/mechanics/methodology were acquired from static 'art'. Almost nothing. Only photography holds much of anything in common and that's at the most mechanical level of lighting, composition and developing the film itself. Not much more than paintings take from music.
As we move through the ages it is natural that later artforms have dependence on earlier ones, ie graphic novels/comics dependence on earlier static art AND cinema, but there was not the attempted 'forcing' of the earlier forms-- shoehorning them in just to get more of an 'art' experience out of them. Will Eisner may be the greatest contributor to comics as art, but he did what he did to tell the best, most immersive stories. Not ride cinema's coattails to have comics officially accepted as art.
Comics had their 'its art its art!' screamy contingent, but ironically it wasn't really any of the movers and shakers in the industry trying to get it there. The Woods, and Kirbys, and Millers, and Gulacys were all just trying to tell the best stories they could in the coolest way they knew how.
|
|