Best Videogames of all time
Submitted by lukeprog on Tue, 07/01/2008 - 12:42
Tags:
- 6.4 Shadow of the Colossus, 2005, Fumito Ueda
- 6.3 Okami, 2006, Hideki Kamiya
- 6.0 Homeworld, 1999, Relic
- 6.0 Façade, 2005, Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern
- Also see The Art of Videogames by Grant Tavinor, one of the first applications of aesthetic philosophy to the videogame medium.
Author Comments:
Considering games as art, not as entertainment products or toys.
Cloned From:
After 50 Premiere Pro crashes, here is my video essay on videogames as art. It's not nearly as good as this one, though.
What program is Premiere Pro (As in the full name) and where can I get hold of it?
The essay was good, you have a knack for this sort of thing. Do you think you would ever make any video essays for movies (for instance, a review)?
Creating this first video took SO much time that I'm dissuaded from doing another.
Google will tell you what Premiere Pro is.
Nice video essay there. As a side-note, it's interesting to hear you talk - having read so many of your posts, it's interesting how the voice I've ascribed to you in my mind and your actual voice differ!
It's interesting to hear my own voice, too. It sounds different in my head.
What did you imagine my voice would sound like, before you heard it? :)
Hm.. deeper, I think, and perhaps less obviously passionate, with less rises/falls in tone.
Ooh, that's great. I am quite disapassionate; if I ever host a podcast I'll have to work on that!
As far as 'games as artistic statements' go, I'd say Rez and Katamari Damacy are definitely good in that regard.
Yup, just not top dogs under my very picky and idiosyncratic criteria. :)
Where's Bioshock?
Looking back, it wasn't quite as impressive as after I had just experienced it.
Facade intrigues me, but I haven't been able to successfully download it from the link you provided. Do you know of anywhere else where a computer-retarded person could download it easily?
Do either of these links work? 1 2
Oh, sorry. I forgot to say "yes" here. Thank you. I played the game and found it very intriguing, but still too limited to be really successful IMHO. The way everything works is pretty linear and the characters give you very obvious clues on manipulate their feelings in ways that actual people don't. They say the game should be played multiple times to see what changes, but the things that stay the same greatly outnumber the things that change. I haven't had much success with telling them that I'm gay, engaged, or dying of cancer, but that's probably beyond the scope of how far a video game can be expected to go; I can't, however, encourage Grace to keep her job without her misunderstanding me and asking, "What? You think I should quit my job?", nor can I type a sentence longer than X number of characters. Hell, I can't even talk about masturbation without being thrown out of the damn apartment. And yet, when I think of what a massive task that game must have been to program, I feel depressed that I don't find it incredibly impressive. It is ridiculously fun to mess with the characters though, as this guy does quite well.
I find that when you mess with them loads, they don't respond directly enough, which is why I found it to be a bit unrealistic in that respect. A fun concept game, but certainly not a refined game of its type.
Have you played Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty?
Yup, maybe my fave of the series.
Portal?
Oh, you've already reviewed Portal. However, don't you think as a concept that it might merit a placement?
One another thing, if you haven't already heard of it: Alan Wake lookes pretty awesome, a psychological thriller about an insomniac writer who loses his wife, made by the people who made Max Payne.
Holy crap Facade, fuck YES.
I am really happy there is another person who treats videogames as some real kind of art; I've heard it suggested (somewhere or another; I can't remember where) that, after film as the leading 20th century art medium, videogames will be the leading 21st century art medium. I like of like the idea because it can sort of make a digital "art installation" so to speak that canb e viewed more than just in a single location and allows for more ambitiousness.
I sort of like how you are being quite critical of the gigantically young medium. Reminds me of looking at Piero Scaruffi's ratings of 1950s rock albums.
I see you're not too fond of Silent Hill 2, eh? I'm kinda curious if Silent Hill 1 would get anything higher. I believe that both do make great strides for videogames-as-art. The ending-scenes in Silent Hill 2, everything that takes place in the hotel, I find extremely emotionally powerful and artistically made. That said, I think Silent Hill 1 works better on a whole.
I've got a few suggestions though; some games that could be put into an art category.
-Pathologic (by Ice Pick Lodge, PC). One of the first company-produced games made not solely for entertainment but for the same intent as , like, Tarkovsky made movies (I've made the dumb crack "It's like 'Stalker' the videogame' Heheh). But the game is a little bit sloppily made and has an atrocious English translation and can be a bit dauntingly difficult (I find), but it is quite ambitious and a retranslation project is sort of in the works. The makers of the game really like Antonin Artaud, Albert Camus, Nicholai Gogol, and such. So despite its problems, I feel that it is a watershed of possibilities for the future. (Hilariously, this game won a Russian-Game-Award that basically amounts to "Weirdest game of the year").
-Chrono Trigger (by Square, SNES). This is the JRPG that people who hate JRPGs even like. I think it might be worth something. One of the first games with multiple endings where your actions effect later portions of the story. If you play through every single aspect of the game (instead of muscling through it) the characters really seem to grow and develop (at least as much as a videogame allows heh).
- Dance Dance Revolution (by Konami, various systems). Solely because it is a videogame THAT IS EXERCISE. Heh, that's gotta be worth something for extending the "scope" of videogames.
-Siren (by Keiichirō Toyama, PS2) Horror game, More convoluted weird-ass plot than Silent Hill, and also one of the most painfully difficult games I've ever played. Gameplay is very tense mostly because the characters you play often are not able to defend themselves, so they must run, hide, and distract the enemies. One of the most frightening parts has you play as a 6-year-old child, defenseless in a place where everyone is a zombie or slowly becoming one. Has an interesting style, worth a look, I'd say.
-Deus Ex (by Warren Spector, PC). This game is one of the most ambitious I've seen, but oftentimes falls flat on its face. Although everyone else loves the hell out of it, so might want to give it a shot.
-Killer 7 (by Suda51, PS2). I haven't actually played this but I've seen it listed as some kind of art-piece deconstruction-of-videogames thing, so... Maybe? I think it certainly does look very interesting though.
I'm rambling , though, great list!
Hey Zach, nice to see you enjoy Silent Hill 2! Probably my favourite game ever, though not without it's short-comings. I'm playing Silent Hill 3 right now and I'm wondering if the symbolism isn't injected far more consistently into the game than in 2. Mind you, 3's story is pretty silly, but I think that the symbolism is just outstanding as it relates to the female psyche. A lot of good psychology going on in parts of that game. I hope to write up some kind of analysis of it, but we'll see if I get that far. I don't see anyone else discussing it on the same level I see for SH2. And personally I think 3 is better.