I have a game recommendation for you dear reader. I know it might be hard to drag yourself away from your game of Left 4 Call of Assassin’s Age: Origins 2, trust me I am thankful that you even have the time to read these first couple of sentences. If you will indulge me further then take this piece of advice: give Devil’s Tuning Fork, the 30 minute play through it deserves. This free independent PC title reminds me of my experience with Mirror’s Edge because of two key similarities.
- Devil’s Tuning Fork is a first person game that does not need weapons to achieve it’s aim. It leverages the potential for engagement that a first person perspective holds without the explosions.
- The visual style of the game is intimately tied to the player’s engagement with the world.
In Devil’s Tuning Fork you are a child who is exploring his/her own coma state which you fall into at the outset. You must explore this space using a Tuning Fork to send out sound waves which move across all surfaces illuminating their moving textures briefly. It is a simple mechanic that creates some amazing visual set pieces all as a result of the your own actions. The sound waves have a functional purpose in lighting the path you must walk, highlighting false floors that cause you to fall and activating chimes that engage moving platforms allowing progress. Each soundwave reveals a dynamic moving world as if you are trying to kickstart your brain, to shake off the darkness of the coma. The moving walls when briefly illuminated are sometimes disorienting, giving a false sense of movement, the jarring moments as you try to force your way out of this mental prison.
The story elements are thin on the ground which combined with the visual effects provide a nice frame to fill in the gaps and make of this world what you wish. The crescendo of effects in a game such as Left 4 Call of Assassin’s Age: Origins 2 might result in a complex and visceral experience begging to be analyzed and thought about but I feel, dear reader, that a simple game with simple ideas can be a memorable one as well. Devil’s Tuning Fork is one such game, and it is not something I feel I will forget soon.
Take the time to explore Devil’s Tuning Fork, I am sure that there will always be time for Left 4 Call of Assassin’s Age: Origins 2.
Things have been a bit quiet on this project since the initial flurry of activity after my announcement. I was encouraged by people’s replies and looked forward to getting down to work once I started receiving submissions. However at this point submissions have been thin on the ground so I have been working away at whatever I can on my end. Once more submissions start coming in I will be able to dive into converting them into commentary tracks very quickly. I have recorded and set up my introductory track which will be positioned just outside Vault 101. It contains some basic information about the project and how the player might wish to engage with it. Obviously this information may change once more commentary tracks are included. I’m also constantly trying out new designs for the “commentary nodes”. I am trying to make them distinctive enough to draw attention to themselves as there would be little point having some great commentary in the world if it could not be found. Here are some examples.
The balloons seem like a good way to draw attention to the nodes during daytime with lighting effects serving a similar function in darker conditions. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions please feel free to contact me via email or in the comments section.
I am still very enthusiastic about this project and hope to be given the opportunity to work harder on it very soon. If you are interested in making a commentary track for the game all the information can be found on the Wasteland Commentaries page of this site.
I approached the release of Modern Warfare 2 with no intention of picking up the game. I have not played a game in the series since CoD2 including the first Modern Warfare. I had no investment, nothing to gain or lose by continuing my avoidance of what could one day be considered a touchstone in the development of the FPS genre. But then a weird thing happend. Yesterday I was at a store, paying for my copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to be part of the ‘in’ crowd, to know what the fuss was about. I think upon reflection I wanted to play “The Level” as it has been dubbed in many a tweet these last couple of days. I wanted to be able to account for the experience it provided, to defend it in my own little microcosm of the world against those who would use it to decry one of the most important parts of my life. I did not care if it was heartless, opportunistic or careless in it’s execution or inclusion, I figured as a seasoned gamer that would not affect me much. I wanted to be informed so that I could comment.
The result: as the first shot rang out from my ‘teammates’ I paused the game. I got up and walked around the house for a bit. I sat down and started playing for a bit longer. I fired some bullets to shatter a glass roof, to ‘pretend’ I was involved in the mission. I could not be the type of warrior I had pretended to be in levels just passed. I had to take it. The feeling in my stomach was reminiscent of the time I read through Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. I would finish chapters, stop and decide to stop reading, not because I did not have the opportunity to, but because I simply did not feel like it. That this game could affect me so meant that it was worth personal reflection.
As a linear narrative based shooter Modern Warfare 2 is akin to a blockbuster film in so many ways. But where it differs provides a powerful example of what makes games such an important medium for me. It challenges my expectations through it’s unique property, interactivity. Expectations are tested in cinema through narrative devices. This game does so with a challenge to my ability to take action and have a feeling of agency set up in the opening levels of the game. Modern Warfare 2 through “the level” is saying to me
“You must uncover this experience differently because it is different, accounting for the violence of the world in the game is not just about being a walking empowered gun”
Maybe I will be a action hero in this game when I laugh out loud at the spectacle of the final snow buggy jump, but I am not an action hero when playing that level.
Zombies are the new World War II of gaming. You have the juggernaut that is Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2, indie titles such as Zombie Apocalypse among others, re-releases, and even DLC for other titles that have little or no reason to include zombies in their game world. I could go on but suffice to say there is alot on offer for fans of the walking dead. Amongst all these titles there are definitely some great games worthy of attention, but thus far there has not been a good zombie game. Across all these titles the zombies merely serve as the AI opponent, the antagonistic force to be overcome, they hint at the horror of the cinematic source material only through the blood splatters and flying limbs. Zombie games draw heavily from film but do so without ever replicating what it is that makes the movies horrific.
Anyone well versed in this particular film subgenre would be aware that it is not the zombies that are the greatest horror. Zombies may produce the most ’shocking’ moments, but it is the degenerative humanity in the survivors that is most horrific. Sure, there are moments of cooperation but invariably it is the selfishness or inhumanity of a survivor that leads to the groups eventual downfall. I cannot recall any game in recent years that has successfully replicated this. The Survivors in all these games are players or npc’s that are alligned with the you from the start, they never betray you to save their own skin.
As gamers we are not exposed to what makes Zombie films so interesting. The Boss Battles in Dead Rising show that people can abandon humanity in the event of a zombie apocalypse but it doesn’t go far enough. The ‘bosses’ are always antagonistic, there is never a suggestion that they might work with the player. Left 4 Dead is designed carefully to reward cooperation and survival, it wants the players to win and to feel like a team. If you have seen George A. Romero’s “…of the Dead” films then you might be aware that Cooperation and Survival are themes presented alongside Selfishness and Heartlessness. I would love to see betrayal as a realistic option for particular moments in Left 4 Dead games but that is not the direction Valve is going.
These titles can be great action games, but they represent a missed opportunity. Zombies have become the World War II of gaming because they are the thematic filter that allows for the action genre to advance in mechanics and design. All I can do is hope that game designers recognize the full range of experiences possible in the material they are using.