The Art of Video Games

[Naner]

So I read on The Game Overthinker's blog about this Art of Video Games thing. I checked it out. The idea sounded good, but it was executed terribly.

First, the site itself doesn't work right. I couldn't click any link when I accessed it with Chrome, and even with Firefox it demonstrates some bad glitches.

Second, choose between three games of each genre on each system? OK, I can do that. Wait, four genres? Action, Adventure, Target and Strategy? Is Target even a genre? I guess shoot 'em ups were popular back in the days, but what about now? And remember, three games from each genres. So you have to choose between Mega Man 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Metroid on NES-Action. Seriously. Not to mention Final Fantasy against The Legend of Zelda on NES-Adventure.

Then there are some cases on which you don't even need to think. On Atari-Adventure, they put E.T. against Pitfall.

No Super Metroid on SNES-Action.

Echoes on GameCube-Action, not Prime. And then the whole Trilogy appears on Wii-Action. Against Super Mario Galaxy 2 (ok) and Disney's Epic Mickey (what!? Not Donkey Kong or Kirby or Metroid or everything else in the world which is better than Mickey?).

Call of Duty: Black Ops against LittleBigPlanet in PlayStation 3-Action.

Flower in Playstation 3-Target.

And I can go on all day.

[Labrynian Rebel]

Just refresh, wait about 5 minutes rinse and repeat and eventually you'll get to vote (yeah the website is that terrible)
The choices arn't the greatest but you may as well vote for the best ones they have.

Also is Super Metroid really the most "artsy" SNES game? I love Alttp and Super Metroid but I don't consider them very artsy. Earthbound on the other hand was one of the first games to have stylized graphics instead of going for realism, has a wonderful soundtrack, unique sense of humorand philosophical acid trips. I mean we're talking about the game in which [spoiler]the final boss is defeated because the player themself wants it to die,[/spoiler] that's powerful. Vote for whatever 80 games you guys want, but I have chosen my winner.

With all of it's faults and shortcomings this is still a poll which will have actual results, so you might as well "Go for it!"

[Infinity's End]

The fact Super Metroid's not on there instantly makes me want to avoid this horrible thing.
Also, the fact that the decisions are due to "votes" makes it INSTANTLY turn into a popularity contest; the "Character Battles" over at GameFAQs are a perfect example of how THOSE go...

Even there are games that definitely deserve it (Chrono Trigger, Earthbound) Super Metroid, Final Fantasy VI, and plenty of others not listed should be in there (c'mon, GRADIUS III????). Why is shit like this always mishandled so poorly?

[ph00tbag]

Here's the Smithsonian's thought process here:

Guy1: So everyone's talking about video games as art and it's all controversial and stuff. You know what would be really edgy? Make a video games art exhibit!
GuyA: That sounds like it would really spark a good discussion of what it really means to be art, and I think the artistic community would benefit from this event. Let's do it.
GuyI: I agree. Let's get some video games together and make an exhibit.

Later...

GuyA: So, uh... guys... I don't actually know anything about video games. What should we even put in our exhibit.
Guy1: I thought you guys knew. Didn't you used to have that NES?
GuyI: I played it for Duck Hunt! I didn't even like that game, but it was all I had. My parents sold it when I was ten.
Guy1: Well, I certainly don't know anything about video games.
GuyA: Wait, I've got an idea. We don't know anything about video games, but video gamers do! Let's just make a poll!
GuyI: Great idea! After all, it works for GameFAQs!
Guy1: I'll set the poll up!

Later...

Guy1: Hey guys... how do I do HTML?

[Varia]

Here are the results if anyone is curious.

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/a ... ggames.pdf

[kronoridley]

Sucks like I thought it would.

[Infinity's End]

Cool that MP2 won but comparing SM64 to Banjo-Kazooie, just in terms of sheer graphics, there IS NO COMPARISON. B-K is leaps and bounds better than SM64 in every single way. And that goes for music, gameplay, and level design, too. It's just a popularity contest.

[kronoridley]

Good to see that my favorite game of all time (Metroid Prime) wasn't even nominated.

It's just a popularity contest.

After seeing SMG2 beat Prime Trilogy, I have to agree. (Seriously? Even the people on the Nintendo channel aren't that stupid! And these are the same people who thought Black Ops was amazing!)

EDIT: They nominated E.T on Atari. Nuff f*cking said.

[Naner]

I knew for sure the organizers were video game-numb when so many AVGN titles were nominated.

"You know what would be a good nominee for Atari? ET. It's based on an Oscar-winning movie, so it can't be bad. People talk about it all the time on the Internet, too. Also, it appeared in the last Angry Video Game Nerd. It's perfect!"

[CapCom]

In defense of the exhibition, I think the games they chose were based on artistic design in each category. If you watch the video, he explains some of his reasoning behind each of the choices and explains how each game should be treated as a work of art (particularly when he starts talking about Attack of the Mutant Camels). So the selection wasn't 'which game has the best graphics' but rather 'which game has the more solid artistic vision'? Of course because it was user votes, popularity would certainly skew the selections, but ultimately the 'art' isn't just the music or the graphics; it's the entire package.

Under this logic, E.T. was on there despite being one of the worst games of all time because of the constraints it was made under (Howard Scott Warshaw had about one month to build it, and nobody else had the balls/ego to take on the project) and the fact that instead of doing a Pac Man clone or something like that he created something entirely original. One of the most interesting things behind this game was that the world is a giant cube. To remind you, the Atari was designed to play two games: Pong and Combat. That is, games with two paddles, two projectiles, and one ball. That's it. The fact that somebody was able to make stuff like Pitfall and ET is pretty amazing given those constraints. You can imagine what he could have done with this game if he was given six months (HSW was also the guy who made Yar's Revenge).

So I think this same logic applies to Metroid Prime 2 as well. Level design isn't very good. Artistic design and the solidity with which they constructed the world, however, is. It's got strong atmosphere, strong character design, and they really pushed the texture maps (I think they're about twice the resolution as the original). Trouble is, the paths through the world are basically long loops and you have to backtrack the loops, especially at the end. I suppose multiple paths through the world makes it more interesting...

The other thing is an exhibit can't really be exhaustive. The only way they could have really done that would have been if the exhibit was focused on a single console, but then you'd lose the historical narrative.

[yodanut]

Cap, what is this "level design isn't very good" spiel? The level design for Prime 2 is every bit as good as any of the Prime games, perhaps better than the other two in fact. Integrating two worlds in a manner that is logical to navigate is no easy task, particularly when you want to retain that crucial bit of exploratory freedom that gives the Metroid games their sense of reward, and Echoes succeeded admirably, with each section dovetailing into the next without feeling like directions were being force-fed to you. What's more, the environments featured far more complexity in their designs while remaining manageable, rooms were often clever puzzles unto themselves in unique ways, morph ball sections were a giant leap beyond what they were in the past, and the hub-based construction of the gameworld meant everything related to each other more logically than in the original Prime. The fact that the art direction was skewed towards environments that are even more unique and appropriately atmospheric than in Prime is just icing on the cake.

The backtracking complaint is valid, I suppose, insofar as the fetch quest is involved, but really, is it any different in the other Prime fetch quests? Perhaps on second playthroughs when you know what you're looking for the problem is ameliorated, but backtracking through any of the games once you've collected all upgrades is something of a tedious affair. I say Echoes is an improvement over Prime, with the last suit giving you an ability to skip huge chunks of the map.

If Echoes has a truly glaring flaw it's one imposed by technology rather than design, namely that transitioning between worlds took so long that it introduced tedium when used too frequently (as occurred in later sections of the game). That in itself does not make the levels badly designed, nor does the fact that some were put off by dark world, whose sole intent was to create an inherently oppressive and hostile environment (i.e. it wasn't supposed to be contemplative or cheery "fun").

Echoes is the Prime trilogy's standout game and a surprisingly fitting choice to represent the Gamecube's best.

[Naner]

I think Super Metroid out-arts A Link to the Past. And, if the objective of the exhibit was to point out the more "artsy" games, I don't think a public poll was the path to follow.

[Infinity's End]

I think Super Metroid out-arts A Link to the Past. And, if the objective of the exhibit was to point out the more "artsy" games, I don't think a public poll was the path to follow.

If only the Smithsonian dude realized that...

[kronoridley]

Speaking of which, where the f*ck is World of Goo?

[CapCom]

@yodanut

Yeah, Prime 2 has great integration of connections between worlds. Kensuke Tanabe was the designer on Link to the Past, so his experience served the team well.

And yes, I did enjoy playing Prime 2 a lot my first time through, but when I went and played it again on the Trilogy, it was nowhere near as fun as I'd remembered. And again, I felt a lot of this has to do with the design.

Basically, with the levels, there's really only one way to go through them. The level is structured as one giant loop, which means it ends up feeling linear. This is a problem because the game is supposed to feel like an open world. Open worlds are made by providing multiple paths through a space. What makes this doubly important is because that exploration makes up a significant part of the game. Not all the game is like this, but there are plenty of places that just feel like long linear loops.

Then there's the spacing of save points, especially before the Boost Ball Guardian. The 'die and walk five miles to get to the boss' is a little old. Glad they fixed this with Prime 3. They also tried to fix it in Prime 2 by increasing the number of health drops (it's more frequent to get a 50 energy drop when you're in the red).

I'll also say some of the items they added had limited use. The Echo visor, while I think being one of the neater ideas in the game, had limited functionality - basically only serving to solve two or three puzzles and used to fight two bosses (ok, you can also use it on the commandos to make your job easier). But it didn't work as well as the infrared visor in Prime where there were large areas of the game in near-darkness and the X-Ray scope which was useful for finding invisible enemies and hidden platforms and items.