Binary Swan

Failure is an integral part of this experience. Perhaps too easily triggered, but worth it for the specific cutscene or in-game animations triggered. It reminds me of more standard adventure games in this way. Part of the enjoyment comes from poking at the boundaries that the designer laid out and seeing where you can hit a wall.

- shanehinton

As much as I like the visual presentation, though, it’s tough to stay interested when the game is so exceedingly frustrating. Right from the start it wasn’t clear when I was in control- the game starts you off sinking in a monster filled pool of water right after a pretty long cutscene (long enough to get comfortable with not being in control, anyway), and doesn’t give any indication that you’re actually supposed to step in at this point.

- mkapolka

But the economy of expression, the simplicity of the perfect streamlined stroke, the pictorial punch of a well-composed mise en scene – I mean just look at the opening scene of Another World punctuated by that Ferrari skidding to a stop and turning off its lights. Fabulous. The game is full of such carefully composed, yet utterly simple visual moments.

-brainygamer

Chahi’s style seems to bear the rough edges of a painter’s brush, rather than the perfectly angular, carpentered, product of a renderer. So if it’s minimalistic – it’s the “economy of expression” (I love that phrase by the way) inherent to Chahi’s style that remains thoroughly painterly for me.

-artfulgamer

I think the difficulty, by requiring repeated attempts at each semi-self sufficient setpiece adds to the cinematic quality of the game, but in a somewhat backwards way; it makes me feel like I am making the movie while I am watching it. In a sense the player is an actor playing the role of a successful escapee.  Each failure (and there are plenty) is an imperfect attempt at that role, except instead of yelling cut, the director/game kills you.

-sqlasheen

While Another World, in contrast, has a more spare and lonely feel (I argued against the term ‘minimalist’ in another thread, but I agree with loneliness, in that you’re on a strange world with one companion that you can’t communicate directly with and fork paths quickly on); I was trying to figure out what to do to survive, but there wasn’t the same actively antagonistic feel making me resent the difficulty of the puzzles.

each segment is its own self-contained challenge, and the branching nature means that the separate segments fit together into a sort of puzzle box, adding an extra layer of richness instead of an extra layer of annoyance.

-davidcarlton

All fragments are taken from the discussions surrounding the Vintage Game Club playthrough of  Another World.

To read more: The Vintage Game Club: Another World forum

To get involved: Another World on Good Old Games

To try a different path: Official site for Another World

I was a child with a vivid imagination. I spent many hours in my backyard tree, defending my kingdom from invading nasties. My custom-built Lego spaceship took me far into the galaxy and back again, always with many stories to tell of battles with aliens and treasures uncovered. These fantastical adventures spawned from a special place inside my head, a place of joy and comfort but also a place where I was the winner. I controlled the fantasy and thus I knew that no matter how dire the circumstances, I would come out on top. I would win the day. I do not believe that such an experience is uncommon during our lost childhood years and I think this is why many videogames take a certain form.

Playing as Faith I will save my sister.

Playing as Mario I will defeat Bowser.

Playing as Darsil, the stealthy Dunmer mage I will fulfill the prophecies and defeat Dagoth Ur to save all of Morrowind from his cult-like Sixth House.

Or maybe I won’t but that is because I have made my own quest, that will be fulfilled on the streets of Liberty City.

There are so many points when we play videogames that we know we will win. They exist to make us feel good, to get lost in a world like our childhood fantasies. To end in victory. If games are an extension of our imagination then they will carry that assumption of success unless deliberately exorcised by conscious thought. It is because of this that I feel the game industry as yet cannot bring itself to make a good piece of horror gaming. The escapism that so many gamers find is equivalent to the catharsis provided by classic moments of horror cinema where the audience might just scream out loud. We have no need to be cast adrift like the audience after Psycho’s shower scene no matter how many times Infinity Ward designed AI kills your floating gun portal to it’s world. We will be back in that world, connected and fighting on to eventual victory. There might be some twist, we might even die. But we will not lose.

Horror is about feeling out of control, accepting that the world might be a place where you cannot win and where you might not be able to escape. By referencing the many audio and visual artifacts of the cinematic traditions games can create unnerving moment after unnerving moment, repeated over and over. But this ends with your escape, alive and successful, no less empowered than the triumphant return of Abe to Rapture Farms to liberate his fellow Mudokan. We need to source another segment of our conscious experience in order to create true pieces of horror gaming. If games come from our imagination where we are in control then maybe we need to search our experience for something altogether different. Maybe we need to remember our nightmares and what it means to have one. Those moments of our dreams we are out of control and yet still on an amazing journey.

For better or worse the material possessions that surround me contribute to how I construct my identity. They tell the story of the type of person I am, the type I person I have been and hint at the paths I may one day walk down. Books wedged up against videogame cases meet clothing strewn across my futon bed and the university degrees hanging next to an old 3 hour parking sign are all contained in my bedroom but are themselves containers of a different sort. They hold the undefinable elements of my personality, they are vessels of memories. Looking at Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in my hands I conjure up not only the story it tells, but the time I spent reading this book, two lazy afternoons at work, and how that has influenced my thoughts on counter culture, a certain moment in history and the writing of fiction. This one item holds with it an experience from my life but also the means in which I define my future experiences, how I construct and internalize my personal narrative.

If someone every told me that they play Torchlight for the authored narrative I would probably end the conversation. However I will immediately follow up that statement by saying that narrative is what has kept me going back to the game over and over again. This narrative I speak of does not involve chasing down Alric or the fate of the town of Torchlight, it is about the adventurer alchemist known as Ytill. If Runic Games diverted resources away from building a compelling narrative for their dungeon crawler it most definitely went towards the loot system and as a result it creates a means by which I as the player can create a story for Ytill much in the way I create my own story, through the items that he obtains, uses and keeps.

The story of Ytill for ten levels was linked to the weapon pictured above, an unassuming sword that outclassed any other I would find for hours to come. My growth as a character was linked to this item as my slightly melee focused Alchemist became a hand to hand combat machine because of this sword. This item, real in the gameworld, held not only the gaming moments of victory over hordes of “evilplacespawn” but also the ways that Ytill grew and changed and how I internalised the rules and systems of Torchlight. In the same way that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not just a simple book, this sword was not just an awesome weapon. Many a time I would find new weapons, half hoping to find something better but secretly wishing for the opposite. So much of my narrative thus far was contained in this sword and thus when I found the Dismantling Sparkling Staff of the Bear with it’s higher damage per second, it was a moment of sadness. It was time to move on.

Much in the way my room tells a story of who I am, the items that Ytill uses and wears define my narrative in Torchlight. They are touchstones, memory markers and a means by which we as players can construct narratives through games like Torchlight, Borderlands and obviously Diablo. It is an active process different from other cultural forms. But this is not the end of the story of the sword, it now sits in the ingenious communal storage chest in the town of Torchlight, accessible to any character I chose to create. It waits for the time when Shaggy the level 2 Destroyer is ready, the time when I can once again be reminded of what my narrative in Torchlight, and what the future might hold.

The iPhone game space has been something of a revelation for me in 2009. It represents a healthy sized market for developers and a new economic model to be solved. The relatively lower risks also means that it is a great space to fearlessly explore new and interesting gameplay concepts and unlike games on other platforms there seems to be no collective consciousness surrounding it. There are no iPhone ‘classics’ to tell me what to expect.

When I load up a disc on my Xbox 360 I will know very quickly if a game meets the standards I hold for my home console experience. When I load a new App to play on my iPhone I do not know what to expect. This completely changes how I judge the games I play. I have enjoyed Spider because it was a perfect harmony of controls, visuals and storytelling quite literally in the palm of my hand. I have enjoyed Canabalt, Drop 7 and geoSpark for the simple mechanics that are infinitely replayable and supportive of a habit of listening to videogame podcasts. I have enjoyed re-releases like Passage, Beneath a Steel Sky and Dragon’s Lair because they show that good games are evergreen.

When I first purchased my Xbox 360 all I expected was games at a level above my Playstation 2 experience, an incremental improvement. In the iPhone’s case all I knew was I would be gaming much more. I could not compare the experience to anything else previous because almost everything about it feels so completely new. It is by no means the only portable gaming platform but it is the first in a long time that does not have the burden of expectation. I am not saying that it is the new holy grail of videogames either but I am glad that this new space has opened up. I am now more than ever, a gamer everywhere and I love the idea that my next treasured gaming memory might only be one less cup of coffee away.