Environment of Scaling

I Wumbo. You Wumbo. He, she, me Wumbo.

Telling a story through a digital medium really opens up the range of possibility for what you can achieve in comparison to traditional media. There is only so much you can create with camera tricks and sets in terms of transporting the viewer, and that is part of the reason that I love animation and video games. One manner in which this is apparent is the way in which you can skewer the perspective of a viewer to have them be as small or a big as you want, making for some great storytelling potential.

Who remembers the Lego Movie? That film was shot with clever CG tricks in order to emulate stop-frame animation so perfectly that many are still convinced that was how the entire movie was made. (If you are still one of those people just think, how does the camera get so close without distorting the image?) When your viewer can be as small as a a flower or as tall as a mountain, perspective becomes another storytelling tool. To demonstrate this, I want to go over a few games that pull this off to great effect.

One of the more surreal and stylistic experience that utilize this technique is a little trip through weird called Little Nightmares. Now, usually I would go through the plot of the game in order to catch everyone up to speed, but part of this game's appeal is learning that story for yourself (Or, at least, trying to.) So I'll go over the premise instead. This game follows the player taking control of a child-sized raincoat wearing mute dubbed Six as she travels through a titanic-era ship called the Maw on a quest to survive. Or liberate. One of the two.

What makes Little Nightmares so memorable is it's beautiful grotesque enemy design and the way in which the game takes advantage of the protagonist's reduced stature (Which is just under that of a normal child's) and uses it heighten the scares. Area props will tower over you in an intimidating fashion as you are pursued by the ravenous flesh eaters aboard the Maw. The 3D platforming perspective allows for the player to clearly see how much bigger everyone is compared to Six and maybe even begin to sympathise with their tiny underdog even whilst she starts to do very morally questionable things. (Which I shall not detail here, they're much more effective when you aren't expecting them.)

Among the Sleep takes a frightfully simple, yet underutilized, premise that everyone can relate to in order to frame it's scares. Developer Krillbite decided to put the player in the walking mittens of a 2 year old and have you walk around your home whilst encountering all the scariness that an underdeveloped mind can concoct. This means a whole lot of forced perspective moments from the eyes of a baby as well as surreal moments of dream like childish wonder. Oh, and scares. A few of those too. environment

The thing that 'Among the Sleep' does so well is capture that feeling of being a little person in a big world. Rather than be a platformer, this game puts you right in the child's head, so you get to experience the warped perspective of everyday household objects up close. Later in the game this also extends to the way that you see familiar objects, like your Mother. If Krillbite's interpretation of childhood is accurate, then that is one house of horrors that I'm glad to be clear from.

Just last month there was a new release that played around with perspective a bit. From the makers of the inexplicably popular: Bendy and the Ink Machine, comes Showdown Bandit; a delightful tale about sentient puppets. Or, not so sentient puppets, as their stings do appear to go somewhere. Okay, once again Kindly Beast have put out a game that appears to be more style than substance, but I must say that this time around the visual direction does tickle me a little.

The game puts you in the shoes of the eponymous puppet as it attempts to defend it's stings from the scissors wielded by the 'stringless'. (Losing those strings means death.) Showdown Bandit is laid out as though it is an active puppet show, with the player moving through sets that are being actively constructed whilst a stage light shines down on them. Additionally, the camera is set at an almost isometric angle, mimicking the view of a puppeteer looking down at their work. (Now if only Kindly Beast would do something with that cool idea, we'd have an actual game on our hands.)

Going back to my own personal history with gaming, there is one classic that is a brilliant example of this type of design choice. I am, of course, talking about the Army Men franchise. The basic premise of Army Men is world in which those little plastic soldiers that you played with as a child were alive and carrying out their wars by themselves. This means that the plastic green army would fight against the plastic Tan army in a variety of different genres spanning everything from top down shooters, helicopter games, RTS' and first person shooters.

3DO went to the nth degree with this concept is every possible way. That means that there are levels in which you fight across a plastic world and ones in which you battle in the real world. Some of my favourite levels include battling over the dinner table, a perilous charge up a fridge's contents and a climatic final siege which tasks you with hiding from a weaponized poodle. Army Men has done it all and it is such a shame that the franchise hasn't been heard of for nearly 10 years now. Many other companies could learn how to take a novel concept and go beyond it to create great games.

Once before I have bought up this one obscure PS1 title I had, but I think it bears repeating. Micro Manics was a game in which you took control of hideous lab experiments and raced them across office spaces and workstations. The catch is two fold, firstly the characters are tiny (hence 'micro') and secondly, none of them have vehicles, so they all have to pump their tiny legs.

Micro Maniacs went for the Army Men route of setting levels across real world locales and having race obstacles be comically large pieces of stationary. Expect some pencils and erasers to get in your way. I remember being charmed out of my socks when I used to play this game as a kid, I just couldn't get enough of it. (Which is surprising when looking back and realizing that the characters are genuinely Quake-levels of horrific.)

It is funny how the simple act of shrinking things down can open up a world of opportunity from an adventure standpoint. Marvel even pulled it off with that final fight in Antman, and video games have been doing it for a while now. As long as developers continue to get new tools at their disposal we'll continue to see similarly fresh and innovative ideas that take something that we think we know well and turn it on it's head. I just can't wait to see how that goes.

Gotta go fast!

"Ka-Chow!"- A sentient demon car

Today I decided to focus on something outside of my traditional wheelhouse; the ever-so-humble racing game. I'm usually a player who likes to take their time, as indicated by my favourite genre being; Stealth games, so you'd imagine that a game which tasks me with speeding about a course would the absolute opposite of fun to me. Not so, it would seem, as I always come back to the noble sport of racing now and then. Not that I'm good at it, oh no, but I always give it a shot whenever I get the opportunity. (Maybe it's the masochist in me.)

Games that simulate racing go back a long way in video gaming mythos, all the way to the original home console: Atari. (Discounting all those portable Pong machines that were developed.) Who remembers 1982's 'Pole Position'? It was an F1 racing game with some of the best graphics that the system had to offer, you can genuinely make out what the game is. I'm not even being facetious here, compare what this game had to offer to the original Mario Bros, the difference is night and day. (It seems that visual fidelity has always been a hallmark of racing games.)

I have always held a huge amount of respect for racing in videogames, when done right they can be some of the most creative games on the market. I suppose it comes from the need to differentiate oneself in amidst a library of seemingly identical games; You either become the best at making racing games, or pick one heck of a gimmick that people won't soon forget. I harbour love for both of these choices as even the roughest racing games can have some little charming glint that manages to touch my stoney heart.

Unlike modern sports games, the leaders in the racing market seem to actually dedicate passion behind their craft to amaze audiences with either ingenuity or fidelity. I suppose that is what attracts me to games like these without being a huge car nut myself; I'm just drawn in by the undeniable talent under the hood. Somehow, despite never definitively learning what it means to 'drive stick', I have developed a history with racing games throughout my gaming life, and therefore I have just enough incidental knowledge to take you through a few of my favourites from over the years.

When I mention having 'pride in your craft' I think that few games personify this as perfectly as the Forza franchise. Ever since 2005, Turn 10 Studios have been creating newer renditions of Forza Motorsport to wow the public. Each game, alongside all the the racing game industry leaders, manages to exploit the latest in tech to be one of the most beautiful games of their time, much in the same way that you find in system launch titles. The difference comes from the fact that system launch titles are generally more of a tech test, whilst Forza Motorsport never skimps out on the gameplay either, despite how tempting it must be to do so in the modern age. Nowadays, Forza games play like a more accessible racing Sim, with all the complexity and fidelity of a dedicated simulator mixed with the fantastic controls and handicap tools that one would expect from a pick up and play game.

Turn 10 have also spent their time working on the Forza Horizon spin off series since 2012. This is a game that is all about revelling in the beauty that comes from racing cars in some of the most visually arresting locations in the world (Like England! but mostly France, Australia and Colorado.) Horizon is certainly more of a game for hardcore car enthusiasts who want to spend their time taking screenshots of their favourite supercar plowing through a cornfield as the light hits in the perfect angle, but that core Forza codebase makes the game a blast to play for anyone. I have my own grips about the subtly insidious nature of the story behind the Horizon festival, (I'm not joking, but I'll get into in a dedicated blog.) but none of that takes away from the blind fun of a dedicated racing game.

Earlier I said how I like racing "Whenever I got the chance". Well, that isn't just in reference to my available play-time but to indicate that I will race whenever the game offers it. Many open world games have tried their hands at providing racing mini games, even when their driving mechanics may not be as solid as dedicated efforts. Grand Theft Auto has displayed some degree of racing in it, for years, ever since the original. (Although in that game you were racing against a time limit.) San Andreas was the first game to turn this into a fleshed out mode, however, even instituting a mini tournament in one city.

Other open world games have jumped into the mix since then. Sleeping Dogs has some great driving mechanics that work towards a street racing mini game for players to do when they're bored of slamming Triad members into fish tanks, Far Cry 3 and 4 (and probably 5, I haven't played it.) have some clock racing minigames that force you to dash around the map under some thinly veiled pretense of story; and Watch Dogs 2 manages to spice things up with go kart racing (Because apparently that's a thing in San Fransisco) and yatch racing, which certainly takes some patience to get to grips with.

Wait a minute, did I just mention go-karts? Well there is only one logical place to go from here, and that's to the world of Nintendo for their storied competitive racing game Mario Kart. Since 1992 Mario and his friends have been at the forefront of online racing games through their unique blend of fun imaginative map design and power-up based gameplay that has the potential to shift the balance of any race. Fans come back to this series time and time again for it's accessibility and timeless Mario style that is forever immune to the rest of the industry's death march towards fidelity.

And now I get to pull my wild card. On behalf of those wackier racing games that I mentioned earlier, as well as to pull a gaming deep cut, I direct you to one of my favourite PS1 games from back in the day; Micro Maniacs. In this game you played as one of several distinct racers (who, in hindsight, look somewhat horrific) that appear to be pintsized test tube monstrosities cooked up in some evil genius' lab. (I never followed the story.) In the vein of that premise that I may or may not have made up, the player is then tasked with racing across little 'mouse maze'-esque courses that have been built over table tops and work surfaces. This means that you'll spend your time dodging pencils and erasers as you hoard boasters and fire powerups to get ahead. My favourite element of all this, however, is the fact that the racers come without vehicles, the manics must run with their little spindly legs and a satisfying momentum mechanic to win out at the end of the day.

Racing games are one of those staples of gaming that's been around forever, and when you look at the games that the genre has produced, you can see why. Unlike some other genres' (Sport) racing games have never started to relent on quality and the pursuit of improvement. Although, that has meant that we have fewer wacky titles, (No more Split/Second or Burnout) it does mean that racing game fans are rarely without a high quality effort to sink their teeth into. I may not be the die hard racing fan that some others are, but I remain interested enough to follow with curiosity and a little bit of passion. Now, if you excuse me, I've just noticed that Red Dead Online has horse racing...