"There has been a new "NU" trend in the video game scene – The Pseudo-Art Game… and I'm here to dicapitate it." – Abraham Lincoln Pseudo-Art Game Hunter
Once upon a time in 2001 a glorious game was released called Grand Theft Auto III. Rumor went about that the gameplay consisted of running aroung like a manaic in a large free open city and for the most part you could commit as much violence and chaos on the environment as your little heart wished, with very little consequence. Being how I never played such a game before I did the most mature thing you could do and ran to Toys-R-Us and purchased GTA3. Oh my god, you should of seen me for the next few weeks. My and my friends were just killing shit (in the game). It was so much fun! Wow, how I would just go at it in the game with an AK-47 just… killing shit …??? I creatively went on a grenade spree to see how many cars could blow up at a crowded intersection during rush hour traffic. It was so much fun!! When I got ahold of the baseball bat I bashed in the first person I came across til' his head looked like a bowl of salsa. I just bashed him right in! Once I was even walking down the street and a pedestrian said something or other that was so funny, so off the wall, I ended up rewarding him by setting him on fire. IT – WAS – SO – MUCH – FUN!!!!!!!!!!!! I won't even go into the mischief I commited when I learned how to do drive by shootings.
Now fast forward to 2008 and I'm hearing about this indie game called Braid. All over the interwebs I was hearing it was like the second coming of Picasso. I was like, "WTF!? Really, the second coming of Picasso!?" So I just had to turn on my Xbox 360 and download the indie darling. OMG, the game was beautiful – the majestic music, the vibrant colorful art style, the poetic story; only the game played like total shit. I was confused??? The game felt like the second coming of Shitasso to me personally. The puzzle platforming with a gimicky rewinding aspect to undue bad moves before long got so involved it felt more like work than a game I would actually have fun with. Other games of the genre in the past like Donkey Kong '94 did what Braid did in a far more entertaining fashion. I just didn't get it… Now lets move on to the year 2011 when Limbo was released. Again I was hearing about the strong "artistic" mertics of a particular video game so I had to give it a chance. If there was one thing Limbo had going for itself it was atmosphere. Creepiness permeated everything and the dark look was quite unique, but again I found the gameplay less than steller for a platformer. The slow trial and error fashion of solving the puzzles, where you main character repeatedly often got killed, got really tired not far into the game. I couldn't help feel Limbo was more an exercise in style over substance. I was perplexed at the love for Limbo.
There have been a bunch of these what I call "Pseudo-Art" video game titles recently that have found popularity. Ico and Flower are other games that come to mind that want to stress I suppose a certain beauty to their approach. It's cool that the designers are trying things reasonably new, still it seems their playability come nerfed compared to other fare. I've never come close to completing any of these more artsy games due to boredom eventually setting in. The gameplay frankly has never been strong enough. And when you say you don't like these often pretentious games you come off as a low life who can't appreciate quality game design. As if the presentation is more important than gameplay. If you were to ask me I would say a casual game like Angry Birds is far superior in terms of being a fun experience than any of these pseudo-art titles gamers and journalists are often lauding. It's kind of ridiculous. Video Games are "Games" and should stress fun amongst all else. If this superficial artsy gleam come after, great, but the gameplay and fun should come first. There are other creative mediums like film, music, and painting that are far superior when it comes to aesthetics. Maybe the interactivity of gaming makes it hard to strike that artistic balance?
You can call Grand Theft Auto a low brow entertaining piece of trash with it's often raucous violence, and maybe game designers should try harder to tone down the explictness of games these days, at least it's a blast to play and was doing new fun things with it's play mechachanics. I know it's all subjective and it could be I just didn't "catch" what these pseudo-art game makers are trying to say. Whatever, Video Games as Fun is all I want. To over glorify these artsy games to "legitimize" the industry as something more than a mass form of entertainment is just lame and delusional. If you want to enjoy something truly artful, go to a museum, watch a Terrence Malick film, read Tolstoy. Leave the fun factor in gaming. But that's just my opinion. I'm out of here. Bye bye folks…