VIDEO GAME: What the Bat? (2022)

by benmweilertNo Comments
What the Bat?Year: 2022Rating: ETime Played: ~4 hours Having played through the ridiculously funny game, What the Golf?, their VR game, What the Bat?, intrigued me. Where What the Golf? deconstructed what it means to be a golf game (or even a video game in general), What the Bat? used VR to demonstrate just how difficult it would be to live with two bats for hands. Luckily, there are buttons and other devices that help you achieve each level's objective. That still doesn't make it any easier to control. It's odd how there's almost too much content for this game. Each level only takes a few minutes (if you're used to your bat arms, that is), but there are just so many levels that it took me quite a few sessions to play through them all. And because it's easy to just keep going, I found myself worn out from VR sessions that were probably too long as I tried to finish...
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VIDEO GAME: Flower (2009)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Flower Year: 2009 Rating: E Time Played: 2 hours Video games are truly a unique form of interactive art. While many of the medium’s detractors will point to the excessive violence present in many triple-A titles, many counter-examples show how peaceful the medium can be. Take indie developer, Thatgamecompany, for instance. The beautiful narrative format they used in Journey had me in tears by the end, and the only things I could do in that game were move, jump, and make a sound with my character. One of their previous works, Flower, goes so far as to remove jumping and interacting from the equation. In Flower, you play as a single flower petal that activates other flowers that add additional flower petals to the player’s entourage. A level system breaks up the narrative a little and allows me to see if there were secret areas I had not yet found in each portion of the game. These standard video game conventions—along with defeating the “big...
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