VIDEO GAME: Abzu (2016)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Abzû Year: 2016 Rating: E Time Played: ~2 hours After years of obtaining the free game from the Epic Games store, I'm finally working my way through many of them. I'm not doing them in any particular order, but I saw Abzû and thought it looked relaxing. Once I got into it, I found that it was basically an underwater version of Journey. While I loved the narrative nature of Journey, I felt Abzû had less of an emotional impact by the time its short playthrough concluded. While Abzû is incredibly derivative of Journey, I do have to admit that the visuals were quite stunning. Everything was rich and colorful—even in some of the darker levels. There was a lot of care given to the underwater environments and it was clear that the game developers had done their research to recreate these beautiful underwater environments. Unfortunately, the underwater gameplay is also something I struggled with in this game. I constantly found myself struggling with the...
Read More

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...
Read More

VIDEO GAME: Gris (2018)

by benmweilertNo Comments
GrisYear: 2018Rating: ETime Played: 3+ hours Much like Journey, Gris is an incredible fusion of art and video game. Taking a watercolor aesthetic and hauntingly beautiful music in stride to tell a subtle story of loss and recovery, Gris ended up being a relaxing trot through its geometric world for me. Unfortunately, much like Journey, the amount of effort that goes into making this game look beautiful was also probably why it ended up being so short. Even if I broke up the platforming gameplay into a few hour-long sessions, I could easily complete it in a long evening. In the end, the platforming of the game is relatively simple. There’s a couple of puzzles that took me a moment to figure out, and I still haven’t found all the hidden items, so I might come back and do a second play-through to complete it fully. The fact that I wanted to play it again shortly after reaching the end credits is...
Read More

VIDEO GAME: Journey (2012)

by benmweilertNo Comments
JourneyYear: 2012Rating: ETime Played: ~2 hours As someone who enjoys movies and video games, I appreciate how cinematic video games have become over the last decade. Additionally, since many films can be “artsy,” there’s no reason why video games can’t follow the same style. Journey definitely fits this definition, and I’d almost go so far to say that it’s interactive and collaborative art. The story is pretty simple, but the execution of it gave me shivers as I finished and watched the end credits. The visuals and music add to the ambiance that engulfed me for the short time I spent playing this game. Perhaps my only qualm with Journey is the same qualm I have with any artistic video game: its length. I would have loved to spend more time in this world, but as it stands, I can easily complete it in a single sitting. Which I suppose is how it should be when you consider that the “partners” along...
Read More