So we just finished the book Frankenstein by Mary Kelley and it was better than I expected. In the last blog, I talked about Frankenstein's creation and how he was relate-able to Adam as a Biblical reference. Well for this one, I'll be focusing more on Victor Frankenstein.
There are many adjectives that could be used to describe Victor, but one of the adjectives that I feel that fits him the best is...Curious. All of his thirst for knowledge stemmed from his curiosity and his feeling of wanting more. His curiosity lead him to great heights in science and eventually to the recreation of human life. One of the games that reminded me of this curious man was a game called, Curiosity - What's Inside the Cube?
This game was rather strange to me at first, but after a few minutes, it was extremely good. Basically, you play as this character who is stuck inside this giant white cube. The cube is made up of smaller cubes as well as different layers. you basically just hit the smaller cubes to make money and buy utensils to break into the next layer. It sounds fairly simple and boring, but it's actually quite the opposite. Each layer has it's own vivid design and the layers have different clues that hint at what's inside the cube. However, it's much easier to play rather than to explain. Anyways, the player in What's Inside the Cube(I'll abbreviate name to WItC since the original name is too long to type every time) is similar to Victor in that they both possess a strong sense of curiosity. The cube in WItC is similar to the creation of the monster in that Victor had to go through many trials and experimentation, just like going through the layers. Each layer is decorated completely different from the others which could represent Victor's knowledge. As he passed through more trials and experiments, his curiosity and knowledge began to expand just like the change in vivid colors deeper inside the cube. The final product of Victor's experiments represent the inside of the cube in that they're both acquired through journeys of hard work and different experiences.
So we've just begun reading Frankenstein after a long month of reading Wuthering Heights.
It's like a breath of fresh air since Wuthering Heights occupied most of every English class. The first reading of Frankenstein was decent. I was hoping for something more interesting, but it's been much better than Wuthering Heights so far. The first few chapters helped establish some characteristics and back story to Frankenstein and I'll admit. I always thought that Frankenstein was the name of the creature and not the creator. But anyways, I wasn't really going to relate this to a game because I haven't finished the book nor is there any obvious game reference that came to mind. At first I was going to try and relate this to Wuthering Heights because...you know, there's an obsession and whatever, but there wasn't really anything else to go off of other than that. So instead, i'll try to provide some of my thoughts on the book. so Frankenstein named his creature Adam, and the first thing i thought of was that this was a religious symbol. Frankenstein represented the creator of man(Adam) and the beginning quote also helped establish this, stating that man was molded out of clay. Frankenstein basically spent years his of his life trying to create a creature, kind of like the creation of man, however all the work was for naught since it all ended in disappointment. I don't know if Shelly was naming the creature Adam on purpose, but i wouldn't be surprised if it was. If i remember correctly, Frankenstein later makes a wife for Adam, which may have represented eve because they were both made of the same material. Although the comparisons are a bit strange, they're there, and it was the first thing i thought of when i read the passage.
Well, it's been a while since I've last talked about a retro game, so i'll start it up again. So right now, we're watching Freedom Writers.
I've actually never watched this movie before and the movie so far has been really good. It's about this teacher that tries to change the hearts of the kids in her class by being a good teacher and one that will listen and get things straightened out. Tying this into a game was rather hard, but the one thing that came to mind was Space Invaders.
At first this sounds really stupid and I agree, it does. However, Space Invaders could be taken out of context and be related to this serious movie. In Space Invaders, you play as this ship that shoots a bunch of alien looking things and basically has no story or plot. The objective is to just not die. Well, if we take out the ship and replace it with the teacher, we can see some correspondence. The teacher is fighting off the worries and problems that are plaguing her students. The aliens could represent all the hate that her students feel. And the weapons that the ship uses would be like the lessons and teachings that she does. in order to progress to the next 'level' the teacher must first defeat all the worries in the current level and the boss could represent the lessons in a real life situation. Basically, I guess it would be how the children take what they learned inside and apply it to the outside world. The teacher must avoid the obstacles as well as destroy the bad environment( the invaders). From what I saw in the movie, the moral was that people can always change and a lot of the times, it starts with something small, but affects many people. We could apply this to real life and say that no matter how small of an action that we perform in our everyday life, someone will be impacted by it. Thus all the things we say and do are important and we should always keep that in mind.
Sadly, this will be yet another post that does not include an 8-bit game. Finding a retro game for everything is rather hard, but I'll try my best to accommodate for this later. So we've recently finished a book called Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
It was a rather interesting read to say the least. It wasn't necessarily the best book I've read nor is it the worst. However, many of the things in the book had deep messages that could be applicable to the world that we see today. One of the main events of Wuthering Heights is the change in personality in Heathcliff. Heathcliff was bullied and abused by the adults around him as a child and the environment that he lived in most likely traumatized him. As he grew up, those events were embedded into his mind and he could never forgive the adults, thus causing an urge for revenge on the adults themselves or their children. I feel as though throughout the book, Heathcliff's undying revenge clouded his judgement and in turn damaged the people around him. Heathcliff's personality as well as thought-process reminded me of Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed 2.
Not only were they alike in character such as their aggressive nature, short temper, and jealous characteristics, they were affected the same by revenge. Although Ezio's revenge didn't stem from a poor childhood, his actions after the change were parallel with those of Heathcliff. Ezio's revenge was planted into his mind when his father and brothers were betrayed and convicted of a coup d'état. This left him without much a family and he later discovered his family's secret-their allegiance with the Assassins. The death of Ezio's family could be compared to the loss of Heathcliff's childhood innocence, where the family represents the innocence. Ezio's revenge clouded his judgement as an assassin and thus injured the people around him. When Heathcliff changed, his personality repelled those around him and his aggressive nature caused mental and physical wounds to the the environment surround him. They both strived to execute this revenge, however, they realized in the end that the feeling at the end was not worth the journey. This could be a message that is geared toward the human population in that we shouldn't let revenge be the sole purpose of our goals because if it does, it won't be worth it.
So there's basically nothing I can tie into video games from English class, so it's time to go off topic. During the beginning of the year, our class read a short story called Birthday Party by Katharine Brush. It was basically portraying how marriages don't always have happy endings and that people drift apart over time. By giving the characters a very vague mien, people are easily able to relate this shorty story to real life. I didn't relate this story to marriage of any sort per se, but rather, I took in a different context and switched marriage to the topic of marching band. I connected Marching Band Competitions( State Marching Band Championships in particular) to be the husband while the people who make up the different marching bands are the wife. The people who march all give in countless amounts of dedication as well as hard work in order to potentially win first place at the State Championship.
Just like the wife in the story, we try to please the significant other(in my case, the judges of the State Championships) in that we present them a product and hope for the best. This thought didn't really click for me until yesterday. Yesterday was the State Championships for Kentucky and the marching band I felt as though we played that we could have that night. We've worked hard everyday, doing intense work outs as well as going through strenuous weather conditions. Our journey represents the trek that couples go through and the vain attempts in order to please each other. However, the endings to both stories are different this year, or at least, in my perspective they are. In Birthday Party, the wife is left depressed and ashamed with a hint of being shunned by her husband. Although we may have gotten third in the competition, we were not left in some sorry state. I believe that we performed to the best of our abilities and that it doesn't really matter what those judges think. Thus the correlation between both stories end here...However, next year's competition may speak a different story.
Before I get into this post, i'll have to admit that this game won't be 8-bit or retro, so sorry about that. There hasn't really been much to go off of in English class so far because we've just finished watching a movie called Jane Eyre and have started reading Wuthering Heights.
None of these subjects are really relateable to video games, so I'll try my best. Jane Eyre closer to my topic than Wuthering Heights so I'll just roll with that. The main character in Jane Eyre was sort of "abandoned" at the beginning. Her parents had recently died so she moved in with her aunt and they basically treated her like trash. She later runs away to find her own freedom and it;s basically just this long journey. She was sort of relateable to the main character of Bastion who is nameless throughout the story.
Bastion was a video game created by Supergiant Games for the Xbox, iOS, and computer. The story takes place after a giant calamity and player wakes up in a totally vacant place where just about everyone is reduced to ash. These people would be comparable to the love Jane Eyre received and the Calamity in the game represented the death of Jane Eyre's parents.After the Calamity, the people around the player died and when Jane's parents died, all the love she was suppose to be receiving disappeared. Jane's run-away journey is basically the same as the player's journey in Bastion: they were both looking for someone or something to complete them. The different levels in Bastion represented the journeys that Jane had to go through throughout her life such as the experience with her Aunt, Edward, and St. John. Jane Eyre's experience with the Edward Rochester is also like the Player's adventure in getting crystals to save restore the world. Although it didn't happen at first, Jane later became fixated on Edward, but had to go through rough experiences such as a deceived marriage as well as jealousy with the other marriage candidates. The player had to fight monsters that guarded certain crystals which were essential to restoring the world and that became fixated on that goal. I feel as though both Bastion and Jane Eyre contain a character that is relateable to the average person in that even when times are tough, we should stay headstrong and focus on what's important to us.
Alright so before I get into anything, I'll admit that the game that i'm about to tie in isn't retro. It's not even in 8-bit, but I figured that the story and interpretations of the game would make up for it. So I had some independent reading for class and the book I picked was The Plot Against America, written by Philip Roth.
It was about a Jewish family living in America when Lindbergh was president and how the community around them was basically anti-Jewish. That doesn't really matter right now, but what does matter is that the main character in the book, Philip Roth, starts off as a dependent child and later loses his childhood innocence(I interpreted his stamp collection to be his childhood innocence) as he matures into an independent man later in the book. Finding a book about this topic was extremely hard and I couldn't think of any other English assignment that I've done so far that could be related to games. I finally found one after basically years of thinking and the video game of this week's blog goes to Limbo, developed by Playdead and Double Eleven and is available on the PS3, Xbox 360, Windows, and iOS.
Limbo is a a 2D puzzle game where the player controls a nameless boy that has recently woken up in a forest and tries to find his sister while avoiding traps. This sounds like the average cliché puzzle game, but what makes it stand out from the others is that it's in black and white and there's no dialogue or narration. The interpretation of the game is left to the players and what they want to believe in. Philip Roth from The Plot Against America and the character from Limbo are very similar in that my interpretation of Limbo and the mental journey Philip endures travel parallel. In the beginning of Limbo, the player wakes up in a forest and the trees surrounding him make him look like an ant in comparison.
This setting represented insignificance which is what Philip felt like in the beginning of the book. Philip relied on everyone else's opinion in order to make his own decisions and judgments. The sister at the end of Limbo is what the player strives for which could represent Philip and his strive for independent thinking after being accustomed to his father's biased political views. The traps throughout the game may could also be interpreted as the obstacles Philip Roth faced during his journey through maturity such as the political views of his other siblings and relatives which attempted to sway him to one side or the other. There's also this giant spider in Limbo which is comparable to the Nazi visions that have been plaguing Philips mind at the beginning of the book.
At the end of Limbo, the player finds his sister, but the scene cuts off there and the credits roll. I compared this to the event in The Plot Against America where Philip is kicked in the face by a horse during his running-away-from-home-attempt and loses his stamp collection. The player in Limbo finds his goal, his truth, his freedom while the Philip loses his childhood innocence and begins to mature and become independent. I'd recommend the game to anyone because the artwork is phenomenal and it provides a very unique type of gameplay. The game is like a mix of creepy and depressing artwork, but it's something most people wouldn't expect and that's what made this game stand out to me.
