Die Hard Trilogy on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn was able to give the players a 3D skyscraper, airport and basic city to blast around and have explosive action adventures in. The games were perhaps less effective at exploring the appeal of John McClane .
Russian Doll is not the first TV show or movie to contemplate our overall purpose in the universe, or lack thereof, whilst trapped in a time loop.
However, the show offers some insightful perspective about the power of playing out the same experiences over and over again – whether in a real world or a videogame.
Lara Croft’s most recent adventures are clearly inspired by more modern, cinematic action games such as uncharted and The Last of Us. However, as a videogame character, she now more clearly resembles the all-conquering macho heroes of 80s American cinema.
A 2020 remake of Trials of Mana seeks to graft the game’s setting and structure onto a 3D Map, while adding new gameplay mechanics to help spruce in combat for the Dark Souls era. However, does the addition of more modern, generic mechanics and current gen graphical flair to the same story and characters improve and enhance something intended for gamers over a quarter of a century ago?
With gamers all over the world now finally able to play 1995’s Trials of Mana via the Nintendo Switch console – how exactly does the sequel live up to decades of anticipation and longing?
Just as videogames have evolved to allow for more experimental ‘emergent’ forms of gameplay and interactive storytelling, animation powerhouse Pixar used a similar approach to storytelling in its critically acclaimed 2008 animated sci-fi movie WALL-E
Amidst a range of recent titles seeking to update the classic videogame brawler, Squareblind.co.uk looks at how the simple mechanics of kicks, punches, parries and special moves that are essential to the genre are being subverted to incorporate more nuanced narrative themes and concepts such as unreliable narrators.
Whether you call it a roly-poly, a forward role or a diving dodge, this evasive manoeuvre is now as much of a staple of modern videogaming as shooting and jumping – perhaps there is no better example of this than in Enter the Gungeon
Were you to strip Shadow of War of its Tolkien-inspired setting and story, what you would have is a fully functioning, highly entertaining spite simulator.
If conscience does make cowards of us all; two different 2D shooters take a very different approach to conveying violence with very different consequences for living out our inner action hero.
squareblind 