Brown Blog Films

Video games have been around for more than 30+ years now. What started out as a cheap, basic, monotone medium is now worth more than the movie industry at 40 billion. Not too shabby for a few ‘blip blips’ eh?!

Pong

Even though videogames are worth more money now than any other media, gaming is still considered a niche market. I still get funny looks from people when I say I play video games. Some think I need to grow up, others think I’m going to blow something up, while others think it’s just a phase.

I have been playing games since the Commodore 64 days back in the 80’s (insert cassette and wait for what felt like hours to load!) The embarrassingly basic screens were filled with a couple of colours and the occasional ‘ding’ and ‘bop’ sounds. Soon after it was the Megadrive, the SNES, Playstation etc, but it was in 1995 while playing Resident Evil that I realised that someday video games would look as good as movies. That day is not exactly here just yet, but fourteen years since killing those pesky zombies, we have games like Uncharted, Modern Warfare and Assassin’s Creed which all play brilliantly and look amazing.

Assassins Creed 2

Metal Gear Solid

I could prattle on all day about how great Metal Gear Solid is, or how any Legend of Zelda game is a masterpiece (except 2, obviously!) how Street Fighter is still the best fighting series or how there no longer is a competition between Mario and Sonic (Sonic has well and truly had his day!) Instead, I’ll tell you about Shadow of the Colossus on PS2. A game that surely proves that video games are without doubt a work of art.

In the game you play a guy called Wanda (not the best start is it?!). At the beginning a God called Dormin asks Wanda to slay giant beasts that litter the land around you. If successful, Dormin will return your dead partner to life. So the point of this game is simple: slay the colossus and you and your other half are back together again. Easy. You set off with your horse, a sword and bow and arrow. There is no coin/ring/cute animal collecting here; you just find a giant creature and kill it. This will be a walk in the park!

You traverse the giant’s fur, hides and bones to get to their ‘weak spot’, and after slaying 12 of them their souls return to the God Dormin…The thing is, after killing all of these colossus/colossi(?!) there is always this niggling feeling at the back of your mind that doing so wasn’t right. After all, they were just walking around doing their thing before you come barging up; then their legs/fingers/eyelashes are slashed away until they’re a giant mess on the ground.

I won’t spoil the ending but what a tragic and original story! This to me is art. Not only in the images of a huge moving mass with tiny birds flying overhead or watching the pitiful giants fall to the ground in a heap of defeat, but in the story of what happened, is happening and will happen due to your direct influence as a gamer. I’ve never felt so wrong for killing some polygons on screen as I did in this game! Like any great movie, it stays with you long after the credits have rolled and you think about the actions your character (you!) have taken to get to their goal/their end.

Resident Evil

You could argue that some games make a better narrative than movies as you are the one making decisions for the character on screen, whereas a movie has a character that has a ‘pre-set journey; but, this isn’t the case normally. If you don’t kill the bad guy in the game you don’t progress so your game is pretty much over! Where some games have an advantage over movies in this regard is in the horror genre. Here you have a character who will do pretty much the usual things: talk, run, shoot, etc. But the difference between the two mediums is you are in control of one of them. The fear of walking through a door in a game such as Resident Evil and not knowing what’s on the other side is much more terrifying than watching a movie. In a movie just close your eyes for a few seconds. In a game close your eyes and you’ll be sliced in half. After you’ve been killed. Its making split-second decisions while in danger that really up the adrenaline and the horror and fear is much more of a threat!

I am a self confessed video game junkie, but they will never replace movies, we all know that: it’s not the point. The case of movies being art is never argued but videogames have surely come along in leaps and bounds and yet are sometimes frowned upon as anything but. I wonder when we will be at the stage when games are finally and readily accepted as art? Are we there now or will it be another decade or two?! Either way, I’ll be playing the next instalments of series X and Y and wondering what lays ahead in the narrative of video games.