The way that games are designed, you can't have a replayable experience if the game forces you to be analytical. A fun, replayable game, is wild, absurd, and empty of any respectability. A novel-esque game is concerned with getting a point across. And you can't get a point across with a controller without it becoming a movie. The two inherently oppose one another.
Sure, there are games like Bioshock, which have novel-worthy stories ad pretty fun gameplay. But here, the issue of replayability comes across hard. How many people actually want to replay Bioshock? It was a great game the first time around, but why go back to it?
A game has two elements: a controller and a screen. To make the controller part relevant, you need something spontaneous that caters to our wild side. And the screen will have to project something that naturally follows that. So how do you make a novel out of spontaneity?
I saw this comment on Kotaku and now feel it's worth a longer response than no, you're wrong, multiplayer gives you the replay value, single player gets you the story.
But then again, there's games like Chrono Trigger or Oblivion, or any game where more story or space opens up after the main story is completed.
Bioshock is used as an example of a game that doesn't have replay value, but it's got a great story. Still, with Bioshock, there's two ways of going through the game, there's the "good" way and the "bad" way. (Ie: Don't kill 12 year old girls and killing 12 year old girls.) While the story doesn't change, the experience does, so we're led to believe. It might be a little bit harder, it might be a little bit easier, depending on what upgrades you get.
Chrono Cross (which people seem to loathe for reasons that don't hold water with me) is another great example of a game that has replay value even if the story sticks with you, even years afterwards. There are characters that when you go in one direction unlock, and by choosing that path, you lock up other characters. Also, with the new game+ feature, you can go back and see the different endings you can view at different points in the game.
You can't get a point across in a game without it being a movie.
Half-Life, the sequel, and the episodic content based on Half-Life 2 beg to differ. (Also Portal, so I hear.)
Haze, the new shooter from the people that made Time Splitters, has at least a good shot of putting together ideas without using cut scenes, though we'll see how if that works in practice.
I suppose I simply have trouble believing that because there aren't a lot of shining examples of narrative in gameplay means that it's impossible. To quote Henry Rollins, I just can't forget what I know.
My work has been elsewhere, and after a Heidegger induced hiatus about art and it's place and so on and so forth, I return with one of the most liberating exchanges I have ever witnessed.
It is between MTV's Gideon Yago and Cliffy B of Epic Games.
Mr. Yago says something to the effect of "well, if you put a kid behind a guitar, he looks cool. If you put a kid behind a turntable, he looks cool. But if you put a controller in that kid's hand, not so much."
Cliffy B's response? "Does it have to look cool"?
It is that spirit that I want to send to everyone in my social group, everyone in high school who plays video games and is ostracized for it. That fuck you spirit. We're going to do what we do regardless of how it looks.
It is part of a larger conversation, well, well worth your time below, at MTV's Overdrive.
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1532074&vid=87591
That last video is one of the things that speaks about the future of video games, and I can't (as David Jaffe would say) fucking wait to see it.
It is unclear to me why "The Reasons" was not an mp3 from the Weakerthans' Reconstruction Site. If you can explain to me how in the fuck "Plea From a Cat Named Virtue" is better than "the Reasons", it would be enlightening. Thanks.
It seems like Jimmy Stadt is reading my mind. First it's "it's a long, wet road to love and freedom" and now it's "damnit, all that I used to have burned out in a jar like a lightning bug".
His band, POLAR BEAR CLUB, may in fact, be the best new punk band this year.
Dear major labels:
If you want my money, meet or beat digital prices in physical stores. Please. I want to buy CDs. I want to support artists. I care about album art, I really do. I want to see that producers and mixers and people at the plant get paid, and I still spend more on music than 95% of the U.S. population.
But insulting me with $13 releases, especially during the first couple weeks the CD is out just earns my ire and rancor, which, in the end, costs you money.
Sincerely,
a fan of music.
I think so long as I hear pick slides and cymbal hits to the tune of "Black Masks And Gasoline" I can handle whatever life throws at me.
Mountain Dew and Halo 3 have teamed up. This is a match made in hell.
Most of the time, when I hear songs, I don't thrash around. I don't jump around, play air guitar and scream back at an invisible singer "I never met a traitor I didn't like".
But most songs are not Hot Cross' Turncoat Revolution and they don't have eloquently screamed lyrics like "obsessively stabbing Achilles to kill it all".
Guitars are as noodly as anything you'd hear from the Fall Of Troy, and the voice is less fashionable and far more urgent. Sadly, the band broke up this summer, but if you read this before the end of August you can still catch them on tour.
BioWare is doing a Sonic the Hedgehog RPG for the Nintendo DS. Seeing as this is a developer that knows the genre inside and out, this Sonic game might not suck.
I recently purchased the sunnO)))/BORIS collaboration on exquisite/bordering-on-decadant 3-disc vinyl with crazy artwork for $15. Truth is, the package is so amazing I'm afraid to listen to it. (Southern Lord, if you read this, could you hook me up with a review copy of the CD?) I also picked up the INTERNATIONAL NOISE CONSPIRACY'S Live at Oslo Jazz Festival, which is just as danceable as HEAD AUTOMATICA's Decadance, and has me shaking my posterior for weeks to come. Also, a quick purchase of AMERICAN FOOTBALL's EP rounded out the heist from the decaying corpse of the Virgin Megastore downtown. Because all you need in life is symphonic doom metal, ass shaking, jazz reinvisioned live cuts and a quick fix of sad bastard emo...
With "the Guns of Brixton" blasting at unsafe volume levels.
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