So I finally got back into playing Okami on the Wii. It's really a surprising game. I find the combat to be repetitive and the dialogue to be a bit questionable. A lot of the items and weapons are useless. Even the graphical quality could've been improved just a bit for the Wii. With all of this riding against it, it's still an amazing game.
It's like that supposed new "category" of game created by a Sony exec, the Zen game. It's not about being innovative in game play, blowing your mind with its storyline, or even really challenging the player in any specific way. You are only expected to marvel at its beauty.
The shifting landscape, bright colors, and the bringing to life of classical Japanese scroll art all propel me along, more so than anything else. It's like Wind Waker, when little Link is just sailing around this astonishing ocean, I enjoyed exploration for the mere experience of traversing this amazing world. I still am not a fan of Zelda games, but that's another story altogether. I liked Wind Waker, because it dared to be colorful with no regrets.
If you want to look like a painting, like Okami, every aspect of the game must reflect that aesthetic. Not unlike Jet Grind Radio, which embraced the punk, funk, and speedy game play, it takes the graffiti lifestyle and puts it to motion. The music, the level intros, and the anti-authority theme. It blares beats.
Instead of being overly forgiving like Okami, Jet Grind Radio may have been one of the hardest games to perfect. Some of the jumps and stringing together of many grinds were frustrating so much so I took month long breaks from the game after many fits of rage. I overcame its steep learning curve and grew to love the soundtrack more than anything else.
Side note: When Jet Set Radio Future came to the X-box, I was very excited to try it out. Then I did, and found it to be a watered down, less fun and exciting version of the original.
Another strange game that I like its artistic direction more than the actual interaction with it is Battalion Wars. A friend of mine even expressed a positive regard for the cartoon-ish quality of this war game. Never mind its sometimes clunky unit control, which frustrates me about 30% of the time when a unit dies needlessly because I couldn't rescind an order. The bouncy, high-pitched voice soldiers and overly constructed super tanks put a strange spin on the war genre as a whole.
Framing war as a Saturday morning cartoon is a strange artistic turn. The different nations are all caricatures of modern super powers. They're all horrible clichés and the entire world is bumbling about swinging its weapons about aimlessly looking for the next major conflict, while the real enemy sits their lurking in the shadows. It's all very expressive, open, and blunt. It's political commentary, not inept design and some might think. This outlandish world was made to reflect our own.
Whether the world is brought to life by wacky generals or the stroke of a brush. The creators of these wonderful games are exposing their audience to absurd worlds, astonishing beauty, and even social and political commentary. Why, look at Okami once more. It's about reviving nature. You run through a wasteland filled with poisoned waters, desolated trees, and even some pieces of land that are so scorched that they harm the main character to even step foot upon.
You want to know what I think this game might be an allegory for? Post-war Japan. The bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They irradiated the land. Fouled the beauty that is mainland Japan. Poisoned the waters. It's a wish of a painter to return the world they live in to a one of the past with magnificent landscapes that fills scroll art from centuries past. I think it's a statement worthy of a game so beautiful. Whoever said a video game can not be a piece of art must be a soulless mass of flesh living in a dark unimaginative world.
I don't think it's a deal about balancing out, it is all full choice.
Sometimes I want a smooth vanilla ice cream, though other days I want chunky chocolate, the same is with games, it is all in the mood of your taste. Sometimes I want some challenging action so I put Super Mario World, other times I feel like something musical so I put Rhythm Heaven, other days I want to put my strategic efficiency in practice so I put Ages of Empire II, etc.
Oh no, there's nothing bad about specializing games like that. I only meant to take games with very striking art design that suffer in the game play department a bit. I am all for switching it up, but this is just something I've been thinking about for a while.
Not every game is required to make your jaw drop and blow your mind with a magnificently well-crafted world. It's just the idea that a game can't cause one to reflect or cannot contain some kind of deeper meaning within itself is annoying to hear people say.
I've been working for the Kresge Art Museum this past year as their Webmaster. I've mentioned to my coworkers the concept of video game art and I don't get laughed at, but I certainly detect a significant amount of pretension about the idea. I'm just another soldier for the vanguard of the "a video game is an art" that will conquer over the dead and out moded elders.
I have this for the Wii. It's sitting somewhere in my epic 'to play' pile.
Might move it up a few slots.
I think Flower, the Pixeljunk series and Flow do this extremely well, and like you said, are Zen games. I just wish more games like these, Okami, Ico/SotC/TLG and PoP were made.
Good article :]
@ZIPPYDUDA
Thanks.
@TAVENDALE
Yeah, that "to play" pile tends to burn a hole into my brain.
Ah I see