Tag: video game

What Remains of Edith Finch dev. Giant Sparrow (2017)

I told someone that this game is “great” and then realized that isn’t the word for a video game like this, because this isn’t fun or joyous in the way video games are held up to be, even though it is an artistic achievement for sure. But then, some parts are fun, and some parts are joyous, and should I feel guilt for feeling that when the overall work evokes sadness, tragedy, elation, catharsis? (I reckon art is a complicated conjuring in the mind of the audience.) It is a melange of words in many senses. An affirmation of life and its myriad roads to the same destination. A heck of a video game.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Fallen dev. The Collective (2000)

A story retold from a different point of view three times, even if the tellings are 75% identical. The first time is fresh and interesting, the second is about finding the similarities, and the third is acceptance of the inevitable trodding down the same ol’ path. It’s a third-person shooter of its era that kept reminding me of other contemporaries like American McGee’s Alice and Grand Theft Auto III. It’s probably the most successful in marrying the source material of Deep Space Nine to a mass market video game.

Bone Tomahawk dir. S. Craig Zahler (2015)

The scene, holy mackerel. Everything leading up to it is just a rad character study and dialogue gliding around on the wind. I don’t know what the state of the modern Western movie is per the critics but I’m sure this falls into some kind of deconstructive category, breaking the genre down into its elements and amping up two of the five or something. It builds the way short fiction builds, the feeling that something is going to happen, it’s going somewhere, and while some such works are content to let it float down to a gentle landing, this movie slams it down on the table.

What Remains of Edith Finch dev. Giant Sparrow (2017)

I told someone that this game is “great” and then realized that isn’t the word for a video game like this, because this isn’t fun or joyous in the way video games are held up to be, even though it is an artistic achievement for sure. But then, some parts are fun, and some parts are joyous, and should I feel guilt for feeling that when the overall work evokes sadness, tragedy, elation, catharsis? (I reckon art is a complicated conjuring in the mind of the audience.) It is a melange of words in many senses. An affirmation of life and its myriad roads to the same destination. A heck of a video game.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Fallen dev. The Collective (2000)

A story retold from a different point of view three times, even if the tellings are 75% identical. The first time is fresh and interesting, the second is about finding the similarities, and the third is acceptance of the inevitable trodding down the same ol’ path. It’s a third-person shooter of its era that kept reminding me of other contemporaries like American McGee’s Alice and Grand Theft Auto III. It’s probably the most successful in marrying the source material of Deep Space Nine to a mass market video game.

Bone Tomahawk dir. S. Craig Zahler (2015)

The scene, holy mackerel. Everything leading up to it is just a rad character study and dialogue gliding around on the wind. I don’t know what the state of the modern Western movie is per the critics but I’m sure this falls into some kind of deconstructive category, breaking the genre down into its elements and amping up two of the five or something. It builds the way short fiction builds, the feeling that something is going to happen, it’s going somewhere, and while some such works are content to let it float down to a gentle landing, this movie slams it down on the table.