Month: April 2008

there are days

There are days…

There is beauty in everything. There is an aura, akin to a faint light but not quite. I see it in the pine trees lined along the walk next to the east building. Someone planted those trees; someone cares for those trees. The children play underneath those trees as they laugh and giggle, holding hands as they are sheparded towards the playground next to the volleyball area over in that corner of the campus. The parents watch proudly as they walk away from their beloved little innocent angels, and I swear on some mornings I see tears in some of their eyes. I fear I, too, would shed tears if I had children. It would be the first time I would shed tears of joy, but there’s a first time for everything. This beauty permeates the people, the trees, the richly worn wooden bench that looks like it would be a tranquil place on which to contemplate the meaning of life (or at the very least read a book). In the sky are clouds piled high, mountains of fluff above and beyond it all and I wish, how I wish, I could be up there to see the beauty up close. I don’t wish for much, because really who am I, and who are you, to wish for anything? I just want to fly.

Inside is not like outside, not even close, not at all, but we always have to go inside. Maria is always there. Beautiful Maria. Cinnamon-tan Maria. Her wrinkles and lovingly round body are so warm. Her beauty shines, as does all beauty at this point. A tall blonde in tall boots and tall pants smiles as I approach the counter and my heart and my mind are ready to bust loose and take her along for the ride. If I reach.

“Hola, Maria. Que linda te ves esta manana.”

“Ay, tu. No seas loco y dime lo que quieres.” She blushes and tries not to smile. Ay, Maria, how she tries.

Hatred washes over me. The hatred for the fat man sitting at the cafe table, his food piled high and cheeks jiggling in a sickening display of cellulose and fat. His tiny little spectacles squeezed around the fat along his temples and above his ears. Fat head.

It’s one of those days.

there are days

There are days…

There is beauty in everything. There is an aura, akin to a faint light but not quite. I see it in the pine trees lined along the walk next to the east building. Someone planted those trees; someone cares for those trees. The children play underneath those trees as they laugh and giggle, holding hands as they are sheparded towards the playground next to the volleyball area over in that corner of the campus. The parents watch proudly as they walk away from their beloved little innocent angels, and I swear on some mornings I see tears in some of their eyes. I fear I, too, would shed tears if I had children. It would be the first time I would shed tears of joy, but there’s a first time for everything. This beauty permeates the people, the trees, the richly worn wooden bench that looks like it would be a tranquil place on which to contemplate the meaning of life (or at the very least read a book). In the sky are clouds piled high, mountains of fluff above and beyond it all and I wish, how I wish, I could be up there to see the beauty up close. I don’t wish for much, because really who am I, and who are you, to wish for anything? I just want to fly.

Inside is not like outside, not even close, not at all, but we always have to go inside. Maria is always there. Beautiful Maria. Cinnamon-tan Maria. Her wrinkles and lovingly round body are so warm. Her beauty shines, as does all beauty at this point. A tall blonde in tall boots and tall pants smiles as I approach the counter and my heart and my mind are ready to bust loose and take her along for the ride. If I reach.

“Hola, Maria. Que linda te ves esta manana.”

“Ay, tu. No seas loco y dime lo que quieres.” She blushes and tries not to smile. Ay, Maria, how she tries.

Hatred washes over me. The hatred for the fat man sitting at the cafe table, his food piled high and cheeks jiggling in a sickening display of cellulose and fat. His tiny little spectacles squeezed around the fat along his temples and above his ears. Fat head.

It’s one of those days.

A Clerk and a Traveler Make the Tough Choices

There
are moments in life when we as rational human beings must make
choices.  The choices we make are sometimes small: the type of milk
to buy, or which film to watch at the movie theater.  If we are
fortunate, we must make more important choices; choices that require
deliberation and careful thought.  But it is the simple act of
choosing that is perhaps the most important aspect.  It is not the
end result, beneficial or otherwise, that matters.  In John Updike’s
short story “A & P” and Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not
Taken,” we see that it is the choice itself that makes all the
difference.

Facing
a choice means facing more than one possibility and considering those
possibilities, applying thought and knowledge obtained from past
experience.  In “A & P” the protagonist, Sammy, faces a
choice when he decides to quit his job as a grocery store clerk after
his manager Lengel publicly humiliates several girls for wearing what
he believed were inappropriate outfits.  Initially, it appears that
Sammy decides to quit in order to get the girls’ attention; a vain
attempt at gaining their favor.  However, after questioning himself
on whether or not it was a wise decision, he decides it is and sticks
to it.  As he says it is “fatal” not to follow through on such a
gesture (Updike 62), which demonstrates that Sammy considered the
decision and the possible outcomes and ultimately decided that the
choice to quit would ultimately be the better choice if only to
retain his self-respect.  Likewise in “The Road Not Taken,” the
traveler is faced with two possible paths which he can take.  He
observes one path before choosing the other, or as the traveler
states, “…long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could.”
He stood and weighed the option to travel down one path versus the
traveling down the other, once again demonstrating that when we are
faced with more than one choice we must deliberate on and think
carefully about the possibilities before choosing one or the other.

It
is a sign of character when a person stands for a belief or decision
even when it seems as if the choice will lead to a difficult road
ahead.  Sammy ultimately stands for what he believed was a just
decision in quitting to protest the unfair treatment of the girls in
the store. The girls were just customers, after all, who were there
to make a purchase and nothing else.  He could have very easily
changed his mind and chosen to remain at his clerk position when
Lengel told him, “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom
and Dad,” or, “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life”
(Updike 62), which may have encouraged a person of weak character to
remain or turn back on the initial choice, but Sammy stands by his
decision.  The traveler in “The Road Not Taken” speaks of taking
“… the one less traveled by” (Frost), indicating that the path
he took was an unpopular one, but follows up by saying “And that
has made all the difference.”  The traveler in the poem makes a
literal choice of one path versus the other and displays character by
choosing a path that was not as well-traveled as the other, at least
in his mind.  Frost clearly intended for the traveler to be a
metaphor for the state of mind where a person must make a difficult
decision and in his poem he seems to advocate that making the choice
builds one’s character.

Maturity,
that is to say emotional and mental maturity, is merely the means by
which we gain experience and use that experience as a base for our
decision-making process.  It is often a sign of maturity, then, when
a choice is not made randomly but with deliberate consideration.
Moreover, the choices made help us mature as well.  Sammy’s choice
is a clear one: stand by his perhaps ill-conceived decision to quit
in protest of the unfair treatment towards the girls, or back out of
his choice and resume his work as a clerk at the register.  At that
point in Updike’s “A & P” we have read Sammy’s rather
unpleasant view of working at the A & P, with the “witches”
(Updike 58), “house slaves” (Updike 59), and “sheep” (Updike
62) being regular players in his dreary existence in a small town
grocery store, and as such we as the readers can see that Sammy has
experienced working there and has learned it is not a pleasant job to
him.  Additionally his background, told by him throughout the story,
indicates that he is still in the “maturing” phase of
adolescence.  He lives with his parents, his mother does his laundry,
and he even says he is nearly nineteen years old.  So, when Sammy
chooses to take a stand he is taking a vital step in his emotional
and mental maturity, adding to his mental cache of experience.  The
traveler in Frost’s poem speaks of age and maturity when he says,
“I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages
hence.” (Frost).  He knows that, as he grows older, he will look
back on the moment of his choice and be the wiser for having made the
choice.  Both authors, through the characters in their respective
works, show that making such difficult choices is an important part
of maturing, despite the consequences that may come about as a
result.

It
is then vital to remember that each choice (that is, a scenario where
a person must decide between more than one option), comes with one or
more consequences.  The direst aspect of making a choice, then, is
the consequence of said choice.   There are some choices, such as,
say, which movies to watch, which have no particular consequence
other than a bad and quickly forgotten film experience.  It is not
such choices and consequences that I speak of.  I refer to those same
important choices that encourage careful thought, demonstrate
character, and that we use to build upon our maturity.  These choices
are the ones that get us to think about the consequences.  Take, for
example, when Sammy reflects on his decision to quit his job at the
grocery store:  “… my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the
world was going to be to me hereafter.” (Updike 62).  He says this
after stepping out of the store, and at that moment he realizes that
the choice he made would have serious consequences, and perhaps leads
to a difficult path in life.  The traveler in Frost’s poem, on the
other hand, is very considerate of the possible consequences of his
choice as he ponders which path to take.  He stands for a long while,
peers down both paths, and even takes in minute details such as the
amount of wear on each path.  This traveler carefully considers his
path, and therefore the consequences of taking one path over the
other, before making his choice, even if in reflection he realizes
that both paths were, “about the same” (Frost).

So
while some choices have immediate consequences or are more beneficial
than other possible choices, others have consequences and benefits
not foreseen.  There is no consistency to the act of making these
choices as, like life, it is impossible to foresee what we will have
to face.  We must simply stand before the manager, or the paths, or
even the sign displaying the movies showing tonight, and make the
choice–come what may.

Works Cited

Frost, Robert.  “The Road Not Taken.”
Living Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.  Ed.
John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1062.

Updike, John.  “A & P.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  58-62.

A Clerk and a Traveler Make the Tough Choices

There
are moments in life when we as rational human beings must make
choices.  The choices we make are sometimes small: the type of milk
to buy, or which film to watch at the movie theater.  If we are
fortunate, we must make more important choices; choices that require
deliberation and careful thought.  But it is the simple act of
choosing that is perhaps the most important aspect.  It is not the
end result, beneficial or otherwise, that matters.  In John Updike’s
short story “A & P” and Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not
Taken,” we see that it is the choice itself that makes all the
difference.

Facing
a choice means facing more than one possibility and considering those
possibilities, applying thought and knowledge obtained from past
experience.  In “A & P” the protagonist, Sammy, faces a
choice when he decides to quit his job as a grocery store clerk after
his manager Lengel publicly humiliates several girls for wearing what
he believed were inappropriate outfits.  Initially, it appears that
Sammy decides to quit in order to get the girls’ attention; a vain
attempt at gaining their favor.  However, after questioning himself
on whether or not it was a wise decision, he decides it is and sticks
to it.  As he says it is “fatal” not to follow through on such a
gesture (Updike 62), which demonstrates that Sammy considered the
decision and the possible outcomes and ultimately decided that the
choice to quit would ultimately be the better choice if only to
retain his self-respect.  Likewise in “The Road Not Taken,” the
traveler is faced with two possible paths which he can take.  He
observes one path before choosing the other, or as the traveler
states, “…long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could.”
He stood and weighed the option to travel down one path versus the
traveling down the other, once again demonstrating that when we are
faced with more than one choice we must deliberate on and think
carefully about the possibilities before choosing one or the other.

It
is a sign of character when a person stands for a belief or decision
even when it seems as if the choice will lead to a difficult road
ahead.  Sammy ultimately stands for what he believed was a just
decision in quitting to protest the unfair treatment of the girls in
the store. The girls were just customers, after all, who were there
to make a purchase and nothing else.  He could have very easily
changed his mind and chosen to remain at his clerk position when
Lengel told him, “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom
and Dad,” or, “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life”
(Updike 62), which may have encouraged a person of weak character to
remain or turn back on the initial choice, but Sammy stands by his
decision.  The traveler in “The Road Not Taken” speaks of taking
“… the one less traveled by” (Frost), indicating that the path
he took was an unpopular one, but follows up by saying “And that
has made all the difference.”  The traveler in the poem makes a
literal choice of one path versus the other and displays character by
choosing a path that was not as well-traveled as the other, at least
in his mind.  Frost clearly intended for the traveler to be a
metaphor for the state of mind where a person must make a difficult
decision and in his poem he seems to advocate that making the choice
builds one’s character.

Maturity,
that is to say emotional and mental maturity, is merely the means by
which we gain experience and use that experience as a base for our
decision-making process.  It is often a sign of maturity, then, when
a choice is not made randomly but with deliberate consideration.
Moreover, the choices made help us mature as well.  Sammy’s choice
is a clear one: stand by his perhaps ill-conceived decision to quit
in protest of the unfair treatment towards the girls, or back out of
his choice and resume his work as a clerk at the register.  At that
point in Updike’s “A & P” we have read Sammy’s rather
unpleasant view of working at the A & P, with the “witches”
(Updike 58), “house slaves” (Updike 59), and “sheep” (Updike
62) being regular players in his dreary existence in a small town
grocery store, and as such we as the readers can see that Sammy has
experienced working there and has learned it is not a pleasant job to
him.  Additionally his background, told by him throughout the story,
indicates that he is still in the “maturing” phase of
adolescence.  He lives with his parents, his mother does his laundry,
and he even says he is nearly nineteen years old.  So, when Sammy
chooses to take a stand he is taking a vital step in his emotional
and mental maturity, adding to his mental cache of experience.  The
traveler in Frost’s poem speaks of age and maturity when he says,
“I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages
hence.” (Frost).  He knows that, as he grows older, he will look
back on the moment of his choice and be the wiser for having made the
choice.  Both authors, through the characters in their respective
works, show that making such difficult choices is an important part
of maturing, despite the consequences that may come about as a
result.

It
is then vital to remember that each choice (that is, a scenario where
a person must decide between more than one option), comes with one or
more consequences.  The direst aspect of making a choice, then, is
the consequence of said choice.   There are some choices, such as,
say, which movies to watch, which have no particular consequence
other than a bad and quickly forgotten film experience.  It is not
such choices and consequences that I speak of.  I refer to those same
important choices that encourage careful thought, demonstrate
character, and that we use to build upon our maturity.  These choices
are the ones that get us to think about the consequences.  Take, for
example, when Sammy reflects on his decision to quit his job at the
grocery store:  “… my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the
world was going to be to me hereafter.” (Updike 62).  He says this
after stepping out of the store, and at that moment he realizes that
the choice he made would have serious consequences, and perhaps leads
to a difficult path in life.  The traveler in Frost’s poem, on the
other hand, is very considerate of the possible consequences of his
choice as he ponders which path to take.  He stands for a long while,
peers down both paths, and even takes in minute details such as the
amount of wear on each path.  This traveler carefully considers his
path, and therefore the consequences of taking one path over the
other, before making his choice, even if in reflection he realizes
that both paths were, “about the same” (Frost).

So
while some choices have immediate consequences or are more beneficial
than other possible choices, others have consequences and benefits
not foreseen.  There is no consistency to the act of making these
choices as, like life, it is impossible to foresee what we will have
to face.  We must simply stand before the manager, or the paths, or
even the sign displaying the movies showing tonight, and make the
choice–come what may.

Works Cited

Frost, Robert.  “The Road Not Taken.”
Living Literature: An Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.  Ed.
John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1062.

Updike, John.  “A & P.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  58-62.

Heart of Darkness

“Beware of shadows…”

There is a darkness that dwells in the imagination. It is the sense of foreboding; a fear of the unknown world behind every wall and around every corner. A place in the mind that cannot be illuminated. As we age we learn to quell these fears, ignoring the fantastic and unimaginable horrors that the imagination flings upon us. The pit of darkness is buried, hidden away, repressed and depressed down to the farthest recesses of the mind. But such was not always the case. The young at heart, you see, face the black void and do not simply rationalize it away. There is a need to face the darkness and overcome it, for where there is a darkness there is always a brightness to provide the universal balance. The child faces the darkness of his or her imagination and feeds into it. It is the imagined peril of an innocent mind.

Eric Chahi and the team at Amazing Studio, creators of the renowned science fiction hit Another World (developed under the Delphine Software  label), kept the same dark artistic design and eerie landscape from that game but strayed from the role of the adult adventurer in order to provide a visually stunning experience in the dark corners of a child’s imagination. They created a world in which we are driven to face the…

Heart of Darkness
Developed by Amazing Studio
Published by Interplay Productions in North America, Infogrames and Ocean Software in Europe
Released in 1998 for the PC and PlayStation platforms
Rated E for Everyone

Heart of Darkness tells the tale of Andy, a good-natured if slightly mischievous kid who dreams of lying on the grass and watching the clouds along with his spotted dog, Whiskey. It begins, as these stories tend to begin, with every fictional child’s most dreaded nightmare: elementary school. The teacher’s lecture foreshadows the events about to unfold for Andy and his poor innocent pooch: “Many believe that these black holes are, in reality, doors which open to parallel worlds. Unknown, fascinating… perhaps even terrifying!” The teacher, a man of ill temperament and even more unpleasant appearance, forces Andy into a cupboard as punishment for sleeping during class, and provides the premise for the adventure ahead in Andy’s apparent fear of the dark. Andy is (literally) saved by the bell and escapes to spend quality lounging time in the great outdoors. As Andy and Whiskey lie out on the grass a solar eclipse occurs (darkness), during which Whiskey is dognapped by a mysterious shadow (more darkness). This sets Andy on a path to his tree house where a yellow flying machine of his own design transports him to a desolate world inhabited by minions of one who is called the Dark Master, as well as other creatures that are both friendly and unfriendly. Thus the side-scrolling platform adventure begins.

True, the plot is simple, but like all things it is simple when one merely looks at the surface. Beneath the veneer there is a tale of a child facing the darkest recesses of his imagination, and to discover the truth behind the disappearance of Andy’s dog is to discover a story stemming from the oldest tales of the child lost in the woods, facing darkness that no man or woman would wish upon a child. We see the story through Andy’s eyes, and his bravery in the face of great danger is perhaps foolish but nonetheless inspirational. While on his quest Andy meets many foes, as well as friends in the form of the pudgy Amigos, a race of beings with pink flesh, wings, and big googly eyes atop their triangular heads. They serve as the suppressed minority in the story, attacked by minions of the Dark Master and helping Andy to fight him in the latter portions of the game. Andy ultimately faces the darkness alone and perseveres, of course, but like any good story the journey makes or breaks the tale.

So, the player is tasked with guiding Andy through the perilous Dark Kingdom where shadow creatures dwell in canyons, caverns, jungles, and even across the sky and beneath the sea. Andy is limited to the standard platforming set: walking, running, jumping, climbing, and occasionally swimming, and while there are some environmental action elements to engage the player’s reflexes they are few and far between. Instead, the gameplay design relies heavily on solving puzzles to clear obstacles from the path or to create a new path that will permit further progression. An example of such a puzzle is a rock formation early in the first level when the player uses Andy’s plasma cannon to shoot the rocks and bring down the wall blocking the path, albeit simultaneously ripping a hole in the cliff that allows several shadow creatures to emerge. There we arrive at the bulk of the action in the game: fighting off hordes of encroaching shadow creatures with nothing but a plasma cannon or mysterious powers from a hidden meteor. The plasma cannon is used through a portion of the first level as the player is introduced to the combat system. Eventually, however, the plasma cannon is lost (for a time) and Andy is left defenseless until obtaining what the game manual coins as the “normal” and “special” powers. These powers allow the player to kill enemies as well as manipulate mobile plant seeds to create ladders and reach previously inaccessible areas in a level. All of this weaponry is required, along with keen use of the intuitive if somewhat rigid control system, to traverse the dangerous Dark Kingdom and reach the Dark Master’s lair.

Topmost among the game’s many achievements is the art design. Although the pre-rendered 3D backgrounds and hand drawn environments were considered outdated by the time the game released in 1998 (in the midst of the real-time 3D boom), that does not change that the game’s environments are simply stunning. It is one thing when a game can present candy for the eye as the player traipses through the environments; it is another matter when the game presents a rich, enticing world that seemingly asks the player, “stop, won’t you, if only for a moment?” Stop and enjoy the scenery; smell the overgrown roses in the steamy jungles; allow the glow of phosphorescent fungi to cast eerie shadows across cave walls; stand and look out over a vast landscape beyond the edge of a cliff beyond the edge of a lush and dark jungle, beyond the skyscape of the horizon of gray clouds. And, eventually, stare down the darkness of an evil lair where light from above casts faint traces of itself across piles of long-dead creatures and twisted formations of stone. As I said, stunning.

Having said that, when I say that the game’s background and level art are not the most impressive aspect of the art design then you may grasp what it means when I say that it is in fact the animation that is the visual highlight of the game. It is that which that took hold of my sight from the moment I first loaded that disc, so many years ago. Chahi and co.’s dedication to richly detailed animation was apparent in their previous work on Another World and in Heart of Darkness they not only met those same standards but far surpassed them. They created that stunning world and then filled it with such brilliant movement in the characters and ambient level details that one can see part of the reason why the game took over four years to develop. It begins with Andy, our guide through this fluid world. His movement as he walks along is greatly detailed. He walks, jumps, ducks, runs, swims, crawls, hangs, and climbs; his clothes sway and ripple with every movement, his hat flys off and is quickly caught as he floats through the air after a jump or runs away from strange black creatures. But we’ve seen good character animation before and since, so why, then, is the animation so important? In this case it’s a case of quality and quantity, or variety to be exact. There are many types of movement in the game, and as morbid as it may seem the most varied type of movement is death. This poor kid dies in more ways than I’ve seen any other video game.Falling from a variety of high places into bottomless pits, drowning, burning alive, crushed by rocks, bones, suffering a broken neck, and being eaten by anything with a mouth are just some examples of the many ways you can allow Andy to perish. On the flip side, Andy can dish out the deaths just as well as he can take them. With the aid of his plasma cannon, meteor powers, or even sunlight, Andy can cause enemies to burst into brilliant puffs of charred, glowing smoke, ranging from orange to green to blue, and all animated in such a way that you feel the heat and sizzle of their rapidly evaporating corpses. It could be said that these are all beautiful deaths. The ambient animation of swaying grass, falling rocks from the decaying stone beneath Andy’s feet, and smaller creatures such as butterflies and lizards all serve as further examples of the shear beauty of all that surrounds Andy.

The in-game action is complemented by the occasional cinematic featuring notably dated 3D animation. The cinematics are, however, well-directed and they serve to provide dialogue and scenes that further the story along. The only folly in the game’s visuals is that there can be noticeable drops in the framerate when there happens to be too much of the aforementioned animation on screen at one time, and the framerate for the cinematics is also noticeably lackluster. Additionally, players who try both versions of the game will notice that some of the cinematics in the PC version are missing from the PlayStation version, but these are only action scenes placed in during transitions from one area to the next. The key story scenes all remain.

As any film director or game designer can tell you, sound plays a significant part in the experience that the observer or end user draws from a work. Heart of Darkness makes excellent use of sound effects for all animation in the game, from something as common as Andy’s footsteps to a screech hinting at a creature that has not yet appeared. All creatures in the game emanate eerily realistic noises as they either rush Andy or lie in wait to feed on him, and the sounds of creatures or environmental ambience serve as more than background noise, often providing clues or warnings. The game’s soundtrack – composed, conducted, and produced by Emmy award-winning TV and film composer Bruce Broughton – was the first game soundtrack to be recorded by a live orchestra. The subtleties of what appears on-screen are enhanced by the swell and fall of a rousing score, and the more dramatic moments in the game’s cutscenes are all the more effective after the music kicks in to amplify the emotional impact.

In the end… well, I won’t be talking about the end as that it something the player must experience, but I will say that in the end the game is a shining example of the possibilities of the side-scrolling platformer genre that was introduced over a decade before the game released (with bits of adventure and puzzle that appeared in more financially successful games such as Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee). In the unfortunate end of Amazing Studio we received a game that ends much too quickly but will forever be remembered as an entertaining and fun experience. In the end, this is a story about a boy, his dog, and the limitless possibilities of the imagination to frighten and at the same time challenge us to face that which we fear, to face the darkness and overcome it.

Sources:
Game manual for the PlayStation version of Heart of Darkness

http://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation/heart-of-darkness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness_%28game%29

http://www.gamefaqs.com

Recommended Playing:
American McGee’s Alice
Ico
Psychonauts

Thanks to:
panamaus and Time Bandits
Space Cat and Shadow of the Colossus
Timeshredder and El Laberinto del Fauno
kovidomi and http://www.youtube.com

Heart of Darkness

“Beware of shadows…”

There is a darkness that dwells in the imagination. It is the sense of foreboding; a fear of the unknown world behind every wall and around every corner. A place in the mind that cannot be illuminated. As we age we learn to quell these fears, ignoring the fantastic and unimaginable horrors that the imagination flings upon us. The pit of darkness is buried, hidden away, repressed and depressed down to the farthest recesses of the mind. But such was not always the case. The young at heart, you see, face the black void and do not simply rationalize it away. There is a need to face the darkness and overcome it, for where there is a darkness there is always a brightness to provide the universal balance. The child faces the darkness of his or her imagination and feeds into it. It is the imagined peril of an innocent mind.

Eric Chahi and the team at Amazing Studio, creators of the renowned science fiction hit Another World (developed under the Delphine Software  label), kept the same dark artistic design and eerie landscape from that game but strayed from the role of the adult adventurer in order to provide a visually stunning experience in the dark corners of a child’s imagination. They created a world in which we are driven to face the…

Heart of Darkness
Developed by Amazing Studio
Published by Interplay Productions in North America, Infogrames and Ocean Software in Europe
Released in 1998 for the PC and PlayStation platforms
Rated E for Everyone

Heart of Darkness tells the tale of Andy, a good-natured if slightly mischievous kid who dreams of lying on the grass and watching the clouds along with his spotted dog, Whiskey. It begins, as these stories tend to begin, with every fictional child’s most dreaded nightmare: elementary school. The teacher’s lecture foreshadows the events about to unfold for Andy and his poor innocent pooch: “Many believe that these black holes are, in reality, doors which open to parallel worlds. Unknown, fascinating… perhaps even terrifying!” The teacher, a man of ill temperament and even more unpleasant appearance, forces Andy into a cupboard as punishment for sleeping during class, and provides the premise for the adventure ahead in Andy’s apparent fear of the dark. Andy is (literally) saved by the bell and escapes to spend quality lounging time in the great outdoors. As Andy and Whiskey lie out on the grass a solar eclipse occurs (darkness), during which Whiskey is dognapped by a mysterious shadow (more darkness). This sets Andy on a path to his tree house where a yellow flying machine of his own design transports him to a desolate world inhabited by minions of one who is called the Dark Master, as well as other creatures that are both friendly and unfriendly. Thus the side-scrolling platform adventure begins.

True, the plot is simple, but like all things it is simple when one merely looks at the surface. Beneath the veneer there is a tale of a child facing the darkest recesses of his imagination, and to discover the truth behind the disappearance of Andy’s dog is to discover a story stemming from the oldest tales of the child lost in the woods, facing darkness that no man or woman would wish upon a child. We see the story through Andy’s eyes, and his bravery in the face of great danger is perhaps foolish but nonetheless inspirational. While on his quest Andy meets many foes, as well as friends in the form of the pudgy Amigos, a race of beings with pink flesh, wings, and big googly eyes atop their triangular heads. They serve as the suppressed minority in the story, attacked by minions of the Dark Master and helping Andy to fight him in the latter portions of the game. Andy ultimately faces the darkness alone and perseveres, of course, but like any good story the journey makes or breaks the tale.

So, the player is tasked with guiding Andy through the perilous Dark Kingdom where shadow creatures dwell in canyons, caverns, jungles, and even across the sky and beneath the sea. Andy is limited to the standard platforming set: walking, running, jumping, climbing, and occasionally swimming, and while there are some environmental action elements to engage the player’s reflexes they are few and far between. Instead, the gameplay design relies heavily on solving puzzles to clear obstacles from the path or to create a new path that will permit further progression. An example of such a puzzle is a rock formation early in the first level when the player uses Andy’s plasma cannon to shoot the rocks and bring down the wall blocking the path, albeit simultaneously ripping a hole in the cliff that allows several shadow creatures to emerge. There we arrive at the bulk of the action in the game: fighting off hordes of encroaching shadow creatures with nothing but a plasma cannon or mysterious powers from a hidden meteor. The plasma cannon is used through a portion of the first level as the player is introduced to the combat system. Eventually, however, the plasma cannon is lost (for a time) and Andy is left defenseless until obtaining what the game manual coins as the “normal” and “special” powers. These powers allow the player to kill enemies as well as manipulate mobile plant seeds to create ladders and reach previously inaccessible areas in a level. All of this weaponry is required, along with keen use of the intuitive if somewhat rigid control system, to traverse the dangerous Dark Kingdom and reach the Dark Master’s lair.

Topmost among the game’s many achievements is the art design. Although the pre-rendered 3D backgrounds and hand drawn environments were considered outdated by the time the game released in 1998 (in the midst of the real-time 3D boom), that does not change that the game’s environments are simply stunning. It is one thing when a game can present candy for the eye as the player traipses through the environments; it is another matter when the game presents a rich, enticing world that seemingly asks the player, “stop, won’t you, if only for a moment?” Stop and enjoy the scenery; smell the overgrown roses in the steamy jungles; allow the glow of phosphorescent fungi to cast eerie shadows across cave walls; stand and look out over a vast landscape beyond the edge of a cliff beyond the edge of a lush and dark jungle, beyond the skyscape of the horizon of gray clouds. And, eventually, stare down the darkness of an evil lair where light from above casts faint traces of itself across piles of long-dead creatures and twisted formations of stone. As I said, stunning.

Having said that, when I say that the game’s background and level art are not the most impressive aspect of the art design then you may grasp what it means when I say that it is in fact the animation that is the visual highlight of the game. It is that which that took hold of my sight from the moment I first loaded that disc, so many years ago. Chahi and co.’s dedication to richly detailed animation was apparent in their previous work on Another World and in Heart of Darkness they not only met those same standards but far surpassed them. They created that stunning world and then filled it with such brilliant movement in the characters and ambient level details that one can see part of the reason why the game took over four years to develop. It begins with Andy, our guide through this fluid world. His movement as he walks along is greatly detailed. He walks, jumps, ducks, runs, swims, crawls, hangs, and climbs; his clothes sway and ripple with every movement, his hat flys off and is quickly caught as he floats through the air after a jump or runs away from strange black creatures. But we’ve seen good character animation before and since, so why, then, is the animation so important? In this case it’s a case of quality and quantity, or variety to be exact. There are many types of movement in the game, and as morbid as it may seem the most varied type of movement is death. This poor kid dies in more ways than I’ve seen any other video game.Falling from a variety of high places into bottomless pits, drowning, burning alive, crushed by rocks, bones, suffering a broken neck, and being eaten by anything with a mouth are just some examples of the many ways you can allow Andy to perish. On the flip side, Andy can dish out the deaths just as well as he can take them. With the aid of his plasma cannon, meteor powers, or even sunlight, Andy can cause enemies to burst into brilliant puffs of charred, glowing smoke, ranging from orange to green to blue, and all animated in such a way that you feel the heat and sizzle of their rapidly evaporating corpses. It could be said that these are all beautiful deaths. The ambient animation of swaying grass, falling rocks from the decaying stone beneath Andy’s feet, and smaller creatures such as butterflies and lizards all serve as further examples of the shear beauty of all that surrounds Andy.

The in-game action is complemented by the occasional cinematic featuring notably dated 3D animation. The cinematics are, however, well-directed and they serve to provide dialogue and scenes that further the story along. The only folly in the game’s visuals is that there can be noticeable drops in the framerate when there happens to be too much of the aforementioned animation on screen at one time, and the framerate for the cinematics is also noticeably lackluster. Additionally, players who try both versions of the game will notice that some of the cinematics in the PC version are missing from the PlayStation version, but these are only action scenes placed in during transitions from one area to the next. The key story scenes all remain.

As any film director or game designer can tell you, sound plays a significant part in the experience that the observer or end user draws from a work. Heart of Darkness makes excellent use of sound effects for all animation in the game, from something as common as Andy’s footsteps to a screech hinting at a creature that has not yet appeared. All creatures in the game emanate eerily realistic noises as they either rush Andy or lie in wait to feed on him, and the sounds of creatures or environmental ambience serve as more than background noise, often providing clues or warnings. The game’s soundtrack – composed, conducted, and produced by Emmy award-winning TV and film composer Bruce Broughton – was the first game soundtrack to be recorded by a live orchestra. The subtleties of what appears on-screen are enhanced by the swell and fall of a rousing score, and the more dramatic moments in the game’s cutscenes are all the more effective after the music kicks in to amplify the emotional impact.

In the end… well, I won’t be talking about the end as that it something the player must experience, but I will say that in the end the game is a shining example of the possibilities of the side-scrolling platformer genre that was introduced over a decade before the game released (with bits of adventure and puzzle that appeared in more financially successful games such as Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee). In the unfortunate end of Amazing Studio we received a game that ends much too quickly but will forever be remembered as an entertaining and fun experience. In the end, this is a story about a boy, his dog, and the limitless possibilities of the imagination to frighten and at the same time challenge us to face that which we fear, to face the darkness and overcome it.

Sources:
Game manual for the PlayStation version of Heart of Darkness

http://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation/heart-of-darkness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness_%28game%29

http://www.gamefaqs.com

Recommended Playing:
American McGee’s Alice
Ico
Psychonauts

Thanks to:
panamaus and Time Bandits
Space Cat and Shadow of the Colossus
Timeshredder and El Laberinto del Fauno
kovidomi and http://www.youtube.com