Category Archives: Reviews

Video Games as Art

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During a particularly anxious morning, I find myself using my known good chillout remedy: Hot tea, rainymood.com, and the soundtrack to the video game Journey.

Journey holds a special place in my heart. For those of you who haven’t played it, it’s an incredibly simple game that’s exclusive to the PS4. There are no words. No instructions. No fight mechanics. You walk, jump, glide and chirp. That’s it. Yet there is still a story to the game which is slowly uncovered as you move from area to area through images and hieroglyphs. By the end you’ve seen the ups and downs of a civilization, seen despair, and finally in the end beautifully executed hope. And while the game itself is incredible in it’s ability to convey so much with so little, what really stuck with me is the multiplayer.

During your journey other players can pop in and out of your game. It’s not required, you aren’t prompted. You have no idea who this other human being is with no gamer tag and no method of communication outside of a simple “chirp” which also serves to refill each other’s ability to jump and glide. My first time playing this game I met one such soul at the very beginning. Wandering around, I see this person in the distance. He chirped, I chirped back. We started following each other around, and if we found a secret area, or an item increase our ability to glide, we’d sit there and chirp like mad until the other person got it too. If one of us paused, the other waited. And as we played, and gained longer glide abilities, we were so able to time our chirping to each other so perfectly that we no longer had to walk, we flew through every level together.

I remember getting to the very end, and for a moment, I’d lost him. I had no idea where he’d gone and I worried. There was no way I was finishing this without him and I was steps away from the game’s final moments. And I remember the relief when he appeared again. In that beautifully done finale of the game, the two of us soared together and I just remember thinking “how on earth is it that this simple non-verbal game could make me feel a bond with a complete stranger like this?”. And as the final credits finish, it shows you the gamertag of the people you met on your journey, and for me there was only 1. That’s when we got a ping through the playstation network, from that person, just saying “Thanks for the journey :)”.

I play a pretty wide spread of games, but one common thread among my favorites list are games that can make you feel something. And I don’t mean just good feelings either. I believe in experiencing the whole gambit life has to offer. I’ve played games that make me terrified. Games that made me reevaluate my views on topics, sometimes by challenging my beliefs in ways that may not be comfortable. Games that have made me feel a connection to completely fictional characters, and even some that have brought my close to tears.  It is a medium that drives home emotion in ways that no other method ever has managed for me. No movie or book has ever managed to make me scared, thoughtful, accomplished, happy or invested the way a well executed video game can. It’s in this ability to invoke emotion that makes me label video games “Art”.

Journey reminds me that you can have a meaningful connection with a complete stranger, and that hopefully even if it’s simple, brief and in passing, that it can make all the difference in someone’s day. For me the memory of that interaction brings me a smile, even on what would otherwise be a crumby morning.

What do you expect from your DLC? Why I believe Bioshock got it right.

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When you see downloadable content for a video game, how much are you expecting to be added to the game’s base price? People have had a love/hate relationship with the idea of DLC since it was introduced; it’s not uncommon to hear criticisms about launch day DLC. Many say it should have been part of the game already, and often you feel like you’re being told to pay extra for things that should have been included in the first place. We’ve all heard the complaints.

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So is there a way of doing DLC right? I think the answer is yes, but it comes down to a matter of value versus cost. What really sealed this idea for me was Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea.

Burial at Sea is a two-part DLC for Bioshock Infinite, currently running either $14.99 per episode or $19.99 for the season pass that contains both episodes, as well as a weapon pack and the combat focused DLC “Clash in the Clouds”. A lot of DLC we see these days, often a lot cheaper than this, is just a few minor additions or modifications to the game. The major mentality seems to fall under the microtransaction concept that’s been sweeping the industry. Even I’m guilty of the occasional $0.99 skin pack purchase, or $2.99 for extra Borderlands 2 missions. The question is, what does Burial at Sea bring to the table to be worth $20 that couldn’t be included in the original game?

Finishing both episodes took us about seven hours in total, and that was without too much exploration and sidetracking. Both of the episodes take place in Rapture, but not as we’ve seen it before: this is Rapture from the its glory years and it looks fantastic on Infinite’s Unreal 3 engine while really bringing you back to the Bioshock you know and love.

In the first episode you play once again as Booker DeWitt with Elizabeth once again aiding you on your adventures. The gameplay is very similar to that of Bioshock Infinite, with the reintroductions of classic elements like Plasmids. Having access to both game’s best combat features makes for a good time, but the first episode feels all too short. I would have loved to spend more time running around Rapture jumping around and blasting people, but it all quickly comes to a pretty abrupt halt.

In the second episode you actually play as Elizabeth, which transitions you into a more stealth-focused method of gameplay that really changes the pacing of the game. The new primary method of working your way through the hordes of Splicers is to quietly approach (or run up while invisible), and to use your one-hit, non-lethal K.O hit that will take care of just about anyone not wearing a helmet. A meter to determine how aware your enemies are of you now appears overhead to assist, which I was surprised didn’t fill faster, if I accidentally came across an enemy considering the noise Elizabeth makes wearing her heels when running.

If this gameplay style was mixed with the fast paced swinging and pouncing of Infinite it would be enough to give you whiplash, but it feels right at home in the DLC, considering Elizabeth’s inability to take a hit. They also introduce new non-lethal options for weapons to compliment Elizabeth’s style, such as knock-out bolts and gas attacks launched from a crossbow.

This new stealthy Bioshock comes with it’s ups and downs; It’s nice to see it mixed up from the usual pouncing from the sky upon the heads of your enemies and killing them in one hit, but the use of the invisibility-granting Peeping Tom plasmid makes it feel like you’re almost cheating. A group of enemies can completely surround you, but with one quick cast of a plasmid your apparently very dim-witted aggressors suddenly have no idea where on earth you could be. Then, it’s just a whack of your one-hit K.O stealth attack, back into invisibility, rinse and repeat until all your enemies lie in a heap at your feet.

The real icing on the cake for me is the story. Irrational Games did a great job of creating a story and environment you can really sink your teeth into with Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. Burial at Sea not only expands the existing story but actually fills in characters we had met previously by giving us views into their motives and expanding their histories. We learn more about the universe, and it does a great job at tying the worlds of Rapture and Columbia together, wrapping up loose ends in a way that will leave story junkies like myself with the kind of satisfied feeling you get after a good meal.

All in all, for $20 you get new gameplay, new weapons, at least 7 hours of content, the chance to once again explore Rapture, and a story elements that don’t fit in the main games but are too good not to be told. This, ladies and gentleman, is an example of DLC done right.