Dec 9
After Dinner Snack
I really wanted to include these things in this past week’s Carnival of Gamers, but I couldn’t get an agreement from the right people in time. I finally did hear back from them, so consider this an after-dinner stomach-settler.
Keieron Gillen’s Workblog is a regular read of mine, and on Tuesday he posted up an article on the Shiny game Sacrifice. It was part tribute, part lamentation, and I loved every word of it. Myself and a couple friends at that weird little game up when it was released, and a buddy of mine – to this day – has it installed on his machine for the occasional play-through. It’s a great tribute to a game that never got its due.
Perversely, as the console-generation clock ticks around, a full six years after its release it – at its best – feels more next generation than the majority of new games. The maximum level magic powers remain overwhelmingly impressive. A full active volcano erupting beneath you, ground swelling up like a boil of tectonic flesh before cracking open and a hot steam of lava shoots defiantly into the air, all and sundry running … Compared to this poetry of annihilation, a world where a G36 is the height of violence wrought is a little depressing. Seeing glass explode when they could use the same technology to rend mountainsides asunder… put simply, I haven’t seen anything on the X360 which is even a fraction as impressive.
Additionally, I really wanted to point out the interview Bonnie Ruberg did with Elan Lee for Gamasutra. Lee is the VP of 42 Entertainment, the Alternate Reality Game folks who did I Love Bees, among other things. It’s a fascinating look at what goes on in the minds of those people. I finally nailed down why I find ARGs so compelling with this paragraph:
2 commentsGS: Yesterday, during your talk, you also mentioned the Michael Douglas movie The Game as an inspiration. Where does that fit in?
EL: That movie completely twisted my mind. I have this terrible lack of ability to predict the end of any movie. I sit there, completely gullible and taken in by the movie makers. Anyway, I got to the end of that movie, and I was blown away, because I didn’t see it coming, at all. And I thought, there’s something magical here in the ability to take someone’s life and transform it into an entertainment platform. The movie got really scary and creepy; we wouldn’t actually want to do that, but on a much smaller scale there are some really fun things there. What if you’re walking down the street and a payphone rings?
2 Comments so far
Is it me or is “The Game” a really bad example of inspiration? That movie can’t be watched more than one time by most people. Its premise becomes completely undone once you’ve seen the end. The improbable nature of the plot twists and story make most people want to forget they ever wasted their time.
I, personally, love that movie. I’ve probably watched it a dozen times now, and while I can’t say it ’surprises’ me anymore, it does a great job of teaching me something every time.
I will admit it: I’m not one of those guys who sees the end coming. Sixth Sense totally got me, as have all of M. Night’s movies. The Game, similarly, had me snowed right up until the end as to what was going on. (I figured it out right at the end when he jumped, betting on the odds we weren’t about to see a pointless suicide.)
The Game is paced very, very well. The whole time you’re watching, you’re always left with a sliver of a doubt (no matter how small) as to what exactly is going on at any given time. Every action has a double meaning, every puzzle an interesting result.
Even if the twists are improbable, I still find that I enjoy them: as a DM and a player, that’s one hell of a way to run a game.