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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Play places

11:07 / 09.02.07

I have a big interest in 3-D videogame environments. Maybe because every single element of them is designed, from the grass you walk on to the winding medieval street plans of the city you're exploring.

I guess they're an extreme form of architecture. They don't suffer from the same constraints of budget, physics and planning restrictions that real-world architecture does - just the ability of the computer to render them.

Yet game environments have a complex set of functions they must fulfil: at once they must guide movement, facilitate play, convey narrative and define a visual style.

Peaks of the art for me are the Gormenghast-like castle of Ico for its emptiness and solitude, the urban sprawl and countryside of San Andreas for its rich satire of west coast America, and the destroyed city of Gears of War for the way its tech-Gothic style tells you so much about the society that built it.

What places you've played in have haunted you, excited you, inspired you the most?

Janean Patience

13:35 / 09.02.07

Dear Dad,

Things haven't gone so great since my last letter. Remember I said that Mars was a dump, that my new roommate was a pig and I was putting in for a transfer? Well, I guess I got a transfer. Cut a long story short I'm in Hell. My roommate got torn apart by a cyberdemon and I got his shotgun. I'm pretty much killing demons 24-7 so there probably won't be much chance to write. Weather is hot. Hi to Mom.

Love, Doom Guy

PS Saw grandpa down here. He says he's sorry he did those things to you. Killed him with a chainsaw.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

14:38 / 09.02.07

The Kokiri village where you start in Ocarina of Time was pretty stunning. The fairies floating through the air and the use of rendering "fog" as actual mist made it look like a real, magical place. Doesn't hold up nine years later, of course, but at the time, it was jaw-dropping.

Also, pretty much anywhere in Oblivion is gorgeous. Despite the enforced mediocrity of the gameplay, the game's world is painstakingly detailed, and it has a palpable sense of massive scale. The fact that each city has it's own architecture and is immediately recognizable is great.

21:22 / 09.02.07

Just last night I downloaded Mario 64 on the Wii Virtual Console. I have it on the N64, but the Wii version has a good bit sharper and allows you to play with the superior Gamecube analogue stick.

Though the castle grounds was the perfect introduction to the game and analogue control in general, it's the first level, Bob-omb Battlefield that really shines. Unlike most of the other levels, the Battlefield offers big wide expanses of ground to run and jump around, with a good number of enemies to tackle and plenty of stuff to interact with. Having totally licked the game when I first had it, and now coming back to it after not playing it for so long I was surprised at how fun it was and how good it looks flinging Mario to all four corners of the level, spinning, backflipping and stomping. It really shows off how responsive, fluid and balletic the whole game can be, and, by comparison, how much of a clunky, gimmicky step backward Super Mario Sunshine was.

My other (probably absolute) favourite is Hyrule from A Link to the Past. So much to do and see in both the Dark and Light worlds seperately, never mind what happens when you put them together. Might get back to this in more detail. I've purposefully not played this in a good few years now but it's going to happen within the next few weeks, whether I VC it or hook the Snes back up.

11:26 / 10.02.07

Yes, agreed on Oblivion - I love the way each city has a very distinct architectural character, like the Mediterranean villas in Anvil, the on-stilts wooden houses in Bravil and the northern French style in Chorrol.

And I too love the Kokiri village in Octarina of Time. It provides such an homely oasis as the world around it falls apart. That little touch of the monster graffiti on Link's tree home - presumably done by Link himself - is wonderful.

Mario 64: I love working my way up Whomp's Fortress. Few games get that feeling of exploration and resulting mastery over an environment - knowing every facet and turn to cut corners and speed progress.

Halo 2's multiplayer levels are a different example - I'm sure E Randy will wax lyrical about the fun to be had trying to 'break' them - finding spots where it's possible to walk outside of the areas you're supposed to be.

22:47 / 12.02.07

Yeah, that's a special kind of experience and one of those things that you can honestly *only* get from videogames, that thing of being able to peek behind the world and see its workings. And, of course, it's always unintentional - even undesirable - as far as the creators of those worlds are concerned.

Halo 2's the best example, because its online nature means that you can explore with other people and also come up with new ways of breaking through the barriers using co-operation. In fact, the best bits of game-breaking exploration all require more than one person in order to pull them off.

Coincidentally, I was going to mention the ring world from the first Halo here. It's the setting that's clever - the design of the world allowed the artists to constantly reinforce its reality by having the rest of the ring visible in the sky whenever you were at an outdoor location. Which is also one of the reasons why I hated the campaign in the sequel - that consistent sense of place was lost.

Also, Halo's landscape is pretty glorious as these things go - the illusion of freedom is solid and compelling, the entire world feels natural instead of sculpted. Similar props to the best of Halo 2's multiplayer levels.

Jake: Also, pretty much anywhere in Oblivion is gorgeous.

I'd have to qualify that with a "sometimes". It largely depends on how the light is playing across the scenery - which is, more often than not, a matter of chance - and exactly how far into the distance you can see - the low level of texture detail in the mid to long distance when outdoors is something that always pulls me straight out of the world.

15:31 / 13.02.07

Right now, pretty much everywhere in Okami needs a postcard sending from it. At times it's a bit spartan, but the style those locations are rendered in is wonderful.

Similarly: parts of Wind Waker and Metroid Prime always feel special to me. The latter, especially - everywhere's so vivid and memorable.

20:48 / 13.02.07

E Randy - And, of course, it's always unintentional - even undesirable - as far as the creators of those worlds are concerned.

Yep - the disjoint between the intended and what people actually do in games is the most interesting thing about them.

Oblivion's beauty is in the light, but the geometry is pretty good too. Once you get over the initial shock of the lush openness of the countryside, it's actually the cities and ancient tomb things that have the most visual impact for me.

Interesting what you say about the importance of environmental continuity in Halo. I've only played a little of the original, and finished Halo 2. 2 is certainly fragmented, and I had little idea of what I was meant to be doing/where I was meant to be going - other than forward - throughout. And that is a problem, but the fun in individual battles was enough for me to enjoy it all.

Gears of War has a similar problem, in that you wander through a city apparently aimlessly - you fight street by street until suddenly you're at your destination. In this sense, GoW's city design doesn't really work, because there's no foreshadowing of what landmarks you're heading to.

Parts of Call of Duty 2 are much more successful - the D-Day level particularly. You push onto the beach, up the cliff, through the German defences, into the fields behind and then into a farm - and then get pushed back again by a counterattack. It worked so well because you implicitly know where you are, where you're going, and why you're going there.

I love the way Okami looks, too. I've been playing it since Saturday, and decided to finally finish off Zelda Twilight Princess yesterday. I did it with some apprehension - I thought that Okami might show Zelda as visually bland in comparison. But it wasn't to be. Actually, it demonstrated that Twilight Princess' various environments have a lot more subtle character than Okami's do - the ones I've seen so far, anyway. Okami's visual style is so strong that nuance is kind of steamrollered over - relatively, anyway.

Cor - long post. I wondered if we could talk about the great game cities. I've been trying to come up with a list and almost all of them are in very recent games. It led me to think - have games only recently been able to properly represent cities?

17:20 / 15.02.07

Lately I've been playing FFXII and I love its ancient, baroque cities. The large drawing scale and old-looking architecture helps to sell how vast they are.

The wildernesses are fun to explore as well. There's no single mountain, forest or coast-land mapping. There are three or four different forest areas, about six or seven plainlands, three deserts, etc...and each one of them is visually distinct from the other. I makes me actually excited about what I'll see when I open up new areas.

The Thief series was another game that had that lovely, persistent, "the city has been here forever" feel. The levels were so well-put together, with nooks and everyday clutter and little notes the inhabitants left to each other for you to pour over. ("Life Of the Party", AKA the rooftop level, is still one of my favorite levels of all time not the least because of its little mini-discoveries, like the zombie in the necromancer's tower or the pet spider in the greenhouse)

And Silent Hill, especially 2 and 3 where they could really show off the 'quaint griminess' of the series. I don't know that I'd want to send a postcard from there but I love how there are all these sudden alcoves and empty rooms and weird corners that go nowhere in the otherworld. I can never help but think that they have SOME sort of purpose, just one that the player and character isn't privy to.