Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Heavy Rain

Jason!  Jason!.... Jason?

Heavy rain is one of the few games recently that hits every mark.  Not just every mark for a gamer, but even if your not a gamer, it will hit a mark of somesort, pro or con.

First, from a gamer perspective, Heavy rain does a LOT of things differently.  The game starts out in a suesy homemaker home.  Before the game even gets rolling you have to get out of bed, take a shower ( with a full naked ass shot, but thats nothing ) get dressed and head on down stairs.  While your in route, you can feed the bird as well as relieve yourself if your feeling a little "heavy" on the rain.  Your wife comes home and your instructed to help set the table, play outside with your two boys and have a nice dialogue about how other people are stupid in mundane life.  Additionally Heavy rain boosts a unique control system that requires specific rotations of the thumb pads in correlation to the activity your currently acting upon.  Sounds like another remake of the SIMs?  Well not quiet.

From here, still within a locked in narrative, your wifey and the two tots go to a store where one son, buys a balloon.  A red one to be exact... and then suddenly vanishes...   Chasing the red orb, you call out for your boy and almost catch him when *WAM* hes hit by a car as you try and pull him out of the way.

Finally roll the intro credits to Heavy Rain...  Your wife has left you, You've lost your son, and your remaining child is completely distant and could careless if he is in a foster care or your rundown house, as long as theres a TV to occupy his time.... and NOW its time to play...

Heavy Rain explores the narrative of a serial killer called the Oragami killer.  He prays on children, leaving them to drown, hence the title "heavy rain".   Its a good thing you still have one child right?  Well when ol dad takes little timmy down to the park, suddenly HE VANISHES TOO!  You sure are turning out to be dad of the year and lucky your wife doesn't circumcise you for killing TWO of her babies...  Atleast theres a consolation prize, and thats your new found buddy, the Origami killer..  who could infact be you...

One of the biggest and dicies parts of heavy rain is the fact that the father whom would do anything to save his remaining son, actually must, do anything to save his son.  This includes, cut off his own finger, drive 5 miles into oncoming traffic in the rain and a multitude of other feats.

BUT WAIT THERES MORE!  Not only do you get to play this insane father who thinks hes actually the killer, but also a overweight PI and a Special Fed who is addicted to super drugs that allow him to access a nano-type crime fighting interface that makes you think of Time Cop.  Pretty damn cool...

So what makes this not only a twister of mind and dexterity?  Well Heavy Rain works akin to a choose your own adventure book.  If you botch a particular part of th game, the story completely changes...  I experienced this first hand when I picked up my fiance's game ( because who really has time to play games when your a game major..   its much easier to watch your girl play while you coach her through eh hard parts..)  I really hadn't had the time to get use to the controls and was deep into a mission when i started to play and instead of escaping as she did, I was apprehended by the police....  My game instantly took a different narrative then I had watched and I had no idea that this game held so much depth.   And thats my point.  Games have come to hte point where they are the ultimate narrative entity.   I mean why watch a movie or re-read a book if you know the ending?  Well i can tell you for certain if the ending changed each time based on the choices you made, you would certainly give it a GO on round 2.  As we delve into media that has the ability to change as the reader/viewer/player chances, so do their experiences...

Still feel like watering your duck on the farm?

Friday, April 8, 2011

Asterious Polyp

First off id like to say, im not very into graphic novels.  Although I find it extremely pretty, i find that my most enjoyable consumption of media to be either through audio or visual ( video ).  Thats not to say that i dont like to read, quiet the contrary.  But when you have two kids, a fiance, work a job and am in the guinnepig game art major, and have never practiced art till 5 years ago, its safe to say that some sacrifices have to be made to just "keep up".  I did enjoy Mazzuchelli's play at both saturation and negitive and positive space within the piece.  I felt that each character and situation was a world to its own due to how it was portrayed on the page.  The greek influence within the novel is very prevent.  Instead of a standard hero's journey archtype, line, weight and color influence your opinion of the characters and dictate the emotional and situation.   Although the reading was rushed and skimmed towards the end, I did enjoy it.

Pattern Recognition

Pattern Recognition by Gibson is a modernest look into our interest into trends.  The story follows Cayce Pollard the "cool hunter" as she investigates the trends in a series of internet videos and tries to find out who created them ( or a way for her boss to capitalize on the  mass market )   This book is very different from Neuromancer which I read by Gibson a long time ago.  Although I find the plot interesting,  the fact that all these modern idols are so commonplace today, it leaves the imagination a bit dry.  Neuromancer in the 80s was completely revolutionary in its predictions of the future.  Pattern Recognition on the other hand feels less molded in the what could be, commenting on the what already is post 9-11.  With all the travel, it has a touch of James Bond-esc feel as Cayce travels  and the Scifi-esc inserts from the EVP kept me interested through the story.  However Gibsons use of language creates a bit of a blockage, requiring constant internet searches or dictionary lookups to understand his context.  Unusual as it is, this book questions more to how we look cynically at our past, where as Gibson is best known as the creator of "cyberspace" and predicting the future.

As far as "blogs" the influence my daily life, I frequent www.polycount.com  Digital artists however usually dont spend as much time in blogs as they do in Forums where a plethora of users post and discuss.  This can be akin to Cayce's use of chatrooms or the mass exchange of information in the late 90s during the big boom of chat.  Nowadays people tend to meet and exchange through social media sites such as facebook, however in the late 90s, pre-myspace, the experience of the chat soley based on who was online.  I feel that we are moving today into a archived world where the moment isn't exactly necessary and conversations, information and exchange happen not only at a pace that doesn't have to live in the instantaneousness, but will be displayed for all others to read long after the conversation has closed.

McLuhan's Media Theory

Boogie Nights - Screenplay

For this assignment I read the screenplay of Boogie Nights by Tomas Anderson.   I hadn't seen this movie since the late 90s so even though I had a familiar memory of the movie.  While reading the script the first thing that came to mind was how much depth was to each character.  Each character has a social taboo that both strengthens and limits their lives and lifestyles.   The mother who looses her child, Frank the porno director who acts as a threshold guardian for both his family and peers, or works in porno, yet is obsessed with the fact that his wife is acting.

Each character has the goal of obtaining something, whether drugs, sex or even their own identity.   We take this and identify with each character in a deep sense, which is something you dont generally connect to in a movie about porn and drugs.

Frank feels like a father figure to his porno family and is the threshold guardian to Dirk.   Its an interesting concept to think of a porno director whose main focus is to put story ( something completely not required for the completion of the final product)  to porno.  He films his family in intercourse, which of course would be taboo, but leads Dirk whom left a shattered family to join frank, is actually a boon to growth.

As far as changing the screenplay, honestly I feel it was a masterpiece of written drama and comedy.  I completely related to all the characters and feel that their development was exotically executed .