by Jed Pressgrove
Fez
This ballyhooed platformer combines Nintendo nostalgia and esoterica to make us go “Wow.” We’re supposed to do the talking because Phil Fish’s pixel art has next to nothing to say. The game has cute dialogue and plenty of places to see, but the perspective changing and puzzles make for rigid and tedious exercises, as opposed to the revelations uncovered with practice and experimentation in the cryptic masterpiece Solomon’s Key. Don’t buy into the bullshit about Fez’s ode to relaxation. Fish called his work “a ‘stop and smell the flowers’ kind of game.” No, that was 2009’s vastly superior Flower.
Snot City
James Earl Cox III is a more accomplished artist than Phil Fish. Snot City won’t win any awards for maturity or sensitivity, but the game’s subversion of clean-cut problem solving in games is unpretentious and original. Snot City establishes itself as a race against time in which you have to find new abilities to unlock paths and save the day. Although it’s tempting to stand still and take in the unusual environment, message prompts and fidgety animation reinforce the urgency to move. One could criticize Snot City as an inside joke on game design, but Cox’s conclusion is an unforgettable sensation.
Glitchhikers
This game from Silverstring Media captures the suspense of normal human life through an appeal to the senses. Simulating a late-night drive on the highway, Glitchhikers awakens the universal fear of running off the road with every blink of an eye and every look out the side window. The game wrecks when it starts talking. Although sure to garner comparisons to filmmaker David Lynch, the heavy-handed dialogue between imaginary hitchhikers and the driver overlooks ordinary, relatable concerns (work, family, etc.) of people who drive tired at night. By primarily appealing to dark, surface-level philosophy, Glitchhikers proves that commoners don’t matter when you’re up your own ass.
Love Worker
Earlier this year, Vaida shared Talks with My Mom, a modest story that surpassed Gone Home’s nonsensical and irrelevant portrait of gay identity and family. Vaida’s Love Worker is more of a minor achievement yet registers as genuine escapism. You move left and right hurling bombs in the middle of an industrial area full of walking suits. Rather than kill, the bombs add color. Not as naive as it might seem, Love Worker refashions the robot, a symbol of compulsory work, into a songwriter: “As a machine/I can’t compete/With what humans do.” This combination of song and game isn’t new, but few independent shorts concentrate on joy like Love Worker.
Every time I read your reviews of games, I am glad I manage to avoid hype for most indie games, because I seem to enjoy them much more, without disappointment.
I’m glad to hear that. It’s good to have personal reactions to games rather than collectively mandated ones.
I clapped when I read your summation of Fez. Fuck that derivative, pretentious, unengaging piece of pixelated tripe.
Sad to say I never heard about the other three you mentioned. Looked at their sites – Snot City seems crude but creative. Glitchhikers definitely has an eerie brilliance to it (I will be picking that up to tide me over until the final chapter of Kentucky Route Zero is out.) Played some of Love Worker. Reminds me of the music video for Howard Jones’ “New Song” – you know the one, where he convinces people to throw off their mental chains and enjoy life rather than conform to society’s norms.
Haha, you might be pleased to find out that I will be writing a longer critique of Fez in the near future for a big project …
Definitely give James Earl Cox III (Snot City dev) a close look. He’s even done of a couple of book-to-game adaptations. The World the Children Made is his latest in that vein (to my knowledge), and it’s a damn fine story.
Christ, you rate snot-city over Fez. That’s some serious delusion there.