Up All Night: Blackthorne

John Constantine — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Blizzard doesn’t need to make games in a timely manner. They finish games when they’re finished. This is because Blizzard are masters of their craft. They are unimpeachable purveyors of the best the medium has to offer. Got something bad to say about the Warcraft trilogy? Best keep your trap shut, pal. Think World of Warcraft is a cunning way of enslaving free minds? Keep it to yourself. And heaven forfend if you question the merit of Starcraft, Diablo, or either of those series’ impending sequels. Indeed, Blizzard are new gods for the 21st century.

But this was not always the case. Once upon a time, Blizzard made trash. Fun trash to be sure, but trash nonetheless. That is to say, once upon a time, Blizzard stayed up all night.

Of the multiple Up All Night candidates from Blizzard’s catalog – and believe me, The Death and Return of Superman and Justice League Task Force are prime subjects – none are so deserving as Blackthorne. Blackthorne is raw 1990s, distilled into a collection of pixels, and preserved for all of time. The plot is a tangle of violent sci-fi fantasy tropes, so if you’re curious about the nitty-gritty of Blackthorne’s story, please consult this handy synopsis on Wikipedia. All you really need to know is that you play as a longhaired dude named Kyle Vlaros, aka The Blackthorne. Kyle does not wear a shirt. Kyle wears jeans, a tanktop, sunglasses, and a shotgun. The jeans are for comfort, the sunglasses are for looking cool, and the shotgun is for shooting everybody. This goes for the monstrous aliens who serve the evil ruler of Tuul, Sarlac, as well as the peaceful subjects Sarlac has enslaved. I found it to be pretty shocking the first time I accidentally shotgunned a helpless prisoner in the head way back when. But when I realized I could shotgun them over the shoulder – I’m pretty sure blind shooting, recently popularized by Gears of War, originated in Blackthorne – I couldn’t help but be manically amused.

Joking aside, Blackthorne is a good game, albeit a remarkably cheesy one. If you’re a fan of platformers in the vein of Flashback, Out of This World, and the early Oddworld games, track it down. Of course, if you’re a Blizzard devotee, you probably already have.

Previously on Up All Night:

Doritos Dash of Destruction
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe
Cannon Spike
Parasite Eve
Trojan
Dark Sector
Ex-Mutants
Nightmare Creatures
Bad Dudes
P.N. 03

F**k Your Future: Mirror’s Edge, Blade Runner, and the Future City

John Constantine — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The image above is a little bit of Deus Ex 3 concept art from Eidos Montreal, the crack design team who broadened our sexual horizons with Fear Effect and taught us that controlling sociopathic murders is boring as sin with Kane & Lynch. I can imagine the dialogue between the artists and producers when this image was submitted for approval:

"What do you got for us today, concept artists?"

"Check dis!"

"This isn't Deus Ex! This is just a screencap from Blade Runner with the guy from Deus Ex 1 smoking in front of it!"

"I'm fired aren't I?"

"No! It's perfect! That’s all these nerds want anyway."

I kid. There is no Deus Ex without Blade Runner, after all. While its influence isn’t quite on the level of Aliens, Blade Runner’s vision of a nightmare cityscape in the far-flung-but-familiar future is a close second. Its towering super-skyscrapers and dank alleyways are the aesthetic meat of beloved games like Shadowrun and Snatcher, but you can also see them in mid-period Contra, Flashback, Abe’s Odyssey/Exodus, and even recent blockbusters like Mass Effect. Then again, it’s not just games. Syd Mead’s Los Angeles has been the template for depicting the urban landscape of the future in all media for close to twenty-five years.

I’ve been curious for awhile now as to what the next popular conception of the cityscape is going to be. The Blade Runner type came on the heels of the ultra-slick Logan’s Run-style, cities of spires all white and sterile that typified science fiction from its 1950s heyday through the 1970s. This may not be the most academic logic in the world, but since sci-fi literature gave us our Future City model post-WWII, and sci-fi film bore its successor, I’m looking to videogames to create the next archetype.

If you’ve been reading 61FPS regularly, you probably won’t be surprised to hear me say that I think Mirror’s Edge features the most likely model for tomorrow’s City of Tomorrow. Edge’s nameless city has the same whitewashed sterility that was the hallmark of the 60s/70s future city but twists the model by coating it in streaks of primary color and keeping the architecture familiar. The buildings, subway stations, and shopping centers recall today’s Montreal but with a consistent modernist bent. Edge’s dystopia is also a recent institution. The story constantly reminds the player that the totalitarian government responsible for the city’s current shape hasn’t been in power long, and so the omnipresence of architecture-as-construction-site provides a fine narrative metaphor: you play behind the future city’s façade of perfection. Whether or not this model fully captures the zeitgeist of 2008 and beyond remains to be seen, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing Edge’s city more often then Blade Runner’s, especially in games, going forward.

Note: Forgive my hate against Eidos Montreal. Yeah, Fear Effect and Kane & Lynch suck, but they made Soul Bubbles. They’re alright.

(Link: Gamereactor via Kotaku)

Related links:

The Three Stigmata of The Halcyon Company: Philip K. Dick Comes to Games
Mirror’s Edge: Everything You’ve Heard Is True
Trailer Review: Mirror’s Edge
The Eternal Question: Why Is Super Mario Bros. Fun?
Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming

61 Frames Per Second : flashback

Up All Night: Blackthorne

F**k Your Future: Mirror’s Edge, Blade Runner, and the Future City