Braided Winterbottoms

Hello, you gleaming blogosphere you. Thought it was about time I popped my head in just to see what was happening. OH! and I also take um-bridge to Roger Eberts' claim that video games aren't art and decided to haphazardly, and round about-ly, debate this point in the form of a near stream of consciousness from the quiet solitude of the Shady Cave.

You see, recently I have developed a taste for those strangest of beings within the interweb, the indie game. To me, indie games used to be that smelly goth kid in the corner with those contacts that made pagan words move around their iris in an unnatural fashion. Interesting from afar, but not something I wanted to get into bed with. Now I find myself picking up every other indie whore I click by on the web in such a fervour I've become like some crazed, caffeine entranced nymphomaniac, eager for more of that innovative game-play. Half of them aren't even good, but I guess it's better for them to be sucking up my time than being jerked off by another machismo, homo-erotic First-Person Shooter set in a dystopian future (excluding Half-Life 2 of course).

Anyway, two games in particular have taken the metaphorical cake. Braid, if you had by now NOT heard of what has become the indie messiah for games, is a time manipulating platformer which basically takes the best parts of Super Mario, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and an acid trip. The artwork is fantastic, obviously a labour of love, with clever set design, scripting and animation. The score is also brilliant, I left the experience still humming phrases in my head. Although admittedly the story is too complex and abstract for possibly even the most accomplished of minds to fathom, it leaves you intrigued to the very end, with a compelling and down right cool ending sequence like none I've ever seen.

My question here, (I assume my) adoring public, how do this many creative minds come together to form a shining pinnacle in entertainment, with no monetary goals in mind, and not form art?

The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom was another game I recently entered into, and thought was pretty cool. You control a rather portly, yet unjustifiably quick, pie-thief who has the power to record his movements and play them back as clones of himself. It's set in a very victorian-steampunk background, with clever scripting (done in puns and rhymes in a silent movie style) and is obviously satirical of many elements present in those most sacred of ancient art forms. The concept art is brilliant, and the music and sounds accompanying ol' Winterbritches along is characteristically pompous yet fun. It really makes you want to enjoy the brain busting puzzles it sets you, and honestly it succeeds.

One last game takes some sort of comparative cupcake, to keep up the metaphor used in a previous paragraph, because, while it is good, it is quite short and just a bit infuriating at times. Today I Die by Daniel Benmergui is a game where you control a small area of 8-bit style world, with the phrase "dead world full of shades today I die" at the top. This is poetry, but the way the game is fulfilled is by switching words found in the game space through only using the mouse within that phrase, and it as that phrase changes so does the world around you. The soundtrack to it is emotional, as is the game itself despite it's very simple art direction. However, the objectives are incredibly easy to understand and just a bit predictable. Sometimes just by clicking on something it'd practically give you the instruction on what to do. It's like giving a colonoscopy with a butt-scratcher, sure you've got the right idea, but it just goes that bit too far.

Nevertheless, this game shows honest creative intent and each of the above set out to prove points about society as a whole. Each conveys emotion, opinions and thoughtfulness. How could this not be art? Braid questions what we as a person want; is it love, or just acceptance, or to be unique? PB Winterbottom is a comedic take, more like pop-art in this context, but it makes a sterling effort and it is a great finished work. Today I Die questions whether we could easily alter the world we perceive through changing our simplest outlooks on how we wish to interact with it. Yet Ebert maintains this is not art. Personally, I disagree like a Jew posed with the idea of a pork ribs wrapped in bacon and marinated in a whole ham. And possibly cooked by a catholic.

Anywho, sorry about the short post guys
See you round, Folks. This has been Shady.