61 Frames Per Second : soul bubbles

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

Watcha Playing: Soul Bubbles Again

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

I get upset when I play a game that is really good, and really tanked on the market. I hate playing a game that some development team really believed in, to the point of setting it up for a sequel, only to know too few people bought it to keep the budding series alive. It angers me to see a game design that goes off the beaten path, bring to life a fun concept, only to have the consumer public ignore it in favor of the games plodding down the well worn trench of safe design.

Why do good games fail? Poor to nonexistent advertising is one reason, being too original is another. Consumers are timid creatures, easily frightened by things that are different. Being sold exclusively at Toys R Us is also a reason for a good game to fail.

Okay, technically, Soul Bubbles is not sold exclusively at TRU (even though the box says it is). I know this because I bought my copy from a non TRU vendor on Amazon. Regardless of where it's sold, you should buy it because Soul Bubbles really is very fun. It's one of those ingenious little titles born of a simple concept, brought to artistically lovely (and very polished) life. It's a relaxing game that still manages to keep you on your toes as you use the DS stylus to direct your bubble to safety.

Buy this game. Seriously, I hear plenty of people talk the talk of supporting good games and original ideas, but how many of you walk the walk? I understand picking up an unknown is a risk. I've taken chances and ended up with junk a few times, but far more often than not I haven't regretted taking the occasional gamble. Such leaps into the unknown have netted me treasures like Katamari Damacy, Zack and Wiki, World of Goo, and most recently: Soul Bubbles.

Related Links:

Whatcha Playing: Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles!!!

Watcha Playing: Lost Winds

Watcha Playing: Secret of Evermore

Whatcha Playing: Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles!!!

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It's always a curious thing when games are sold exclusively at one chain of stores. I can understand if, hypothetically, Big Box Store shells out big bucks to have the exclusive sales of Frat House FPS Sequel. The built-in fanbase will want the game and rush to the nearest Big Box Store, that store makes enough money to profit from their initial investment, and the publisher still got their game out there to the masses and made some extra cash while they were doing it. What bothers me is when smaller, somewhat unknown or niche games are exclusive to one store, making it harder to find and less likely that curious gamers unfamiliar with the property will give it a chance. I was worried when this happened last year with the long-awaited Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol which found its way exclusively to Wal-Mart shelves, but thankfully that game turned out wonderfully. And so now, some three months after its release exclusively to Toys R Us, I have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Soul Bubbles for the Nintendo DS. I can't say whether it was worth the added trouble of having to go find it, but I can say that so far it is one of the most enjoyable DS titles I've played in months.

First off, check out this beautiful opening screen that welcomes you when you start the game.

I already like this third-party developer.

The gameplay itself so far feels like a wonderful mix of LostWinds and Locoroco. Transport a bubble or series of bubbles containing spirits around an obstacle-filled labyrinth using the incredible lung capacity of a floating mostly naked kid (he wears a scarf). The controls really utilize the DS hardware remarkably well. I keep imagining playing Soul Bubbles with dual analog sticks and, while certainly possible, its just not as fun or intuitive. The art direction is downright impressive, with lush landscapes and beautiful particle effects. As demonstrated in LostWinds, when a game's play mechanic is based around wind and blowing, it is imperative that every element in the environment react naturally with the breeze or the fourth wall is broken, and in this regard Soul Bubbles is an astounding achievement. The farther along I venture into this world, the more it seems every individual element has been carefully considered. Much like in Boom Blox, I am often miffed when something doesn't move the way I want it to, but accept that hey, that's realistic physics and I just kind of suck.

I'm only about halfway through the game right now, having cleared the fourth of eight worlds, and only recently has the game really started to demonstrate its nefarious environmental challenges. Slime is sticking my bubbles to walls as angry bees attack or wind tunnels are shooting my bubbles wildly into mazes of sharp thorns and puffer fish. I was particularly smitten with one recent puzzling section where it was required to capture lake water in a bubble, run it along a path and into a thorned vine, releasing the water below onto a rock that split the water into two streams to put out two fires, and later another lake that was closed off by vines, so I had to pop the bubble and then quickly form a new bubble to catch the water that fell through the vines. Despite the steady increase in difficulty, though, there is never a sense of urgency or of real imminent danger, which is much appreciated in a portable game. The levels so far have ranged from two to twelve minute playthroughs on the first try, perfect for on-the-go adventuring, and every stage has a healthy smattering of hidden objects to collect.

Completing a stage presents you with how many souls were safely delivered, how much hidden stuff you gathered, and your time, meaning Soul Bubbles should have a healthy chunk of replay value to collect everything, especially for speedrunners. Rapidly devouring all of my DS playing time, Soul Bubbles is easily the most casually hardcore game I've played since Eden.

Previously on Whatcha Playing:

The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say
Cleaning House, Finding Roots
How Does Your Garden Grow?
The New Adventures of the Nintendo DS
Fallout (Metaphorically Speaking)
Loving/Hating Mario Kart Wii