Execution / Game

[Cuyir]

@Bridge: I didn't say it was the perfect game. I did say it had the ''gameplay galleries'' i've mentioned for all the games so far. I just said it was the only game I could think of that married gameplay with its other elements without being too clunky. Games at their core will always be clunky to me. The fact that with all the videogames i've played in my life only one of them I can single out and go ''yeah, that one balanced the elements pretty well'' is basically why I can't consider gaming the highest art form.

And nothing against you personally, but I really don't consider watching lets plays the full experience at all. The only lets plays I watch are funny ones, not the ones where people are playing games seriously for ''the experience''. But then again, I loathe lets play culture for the most part (''THIS GAME IS THE BEST GAME EVER BUT I DIDN'T PLAY IT, I ONLY WATCHED A LETS PLAY!!!1111''). When I watch lets plays I don't get the experience, I get a really limited experience with some guy/gal talking over the game and making me wish I would be doing something else...like playing a game; but that's with the serious lets plays i've attempted to watch in order to understand the fascination. Games are about interaction, removing that by watching a lets play is counterproductive.

As for MGS, i'm not the biggest fan of Kojima and his overwritten style and Hollywood wanking melodramatic focus...but I do enjoy the games i've played. Remember, my experience of MGS4 post credits was dragged down by the silliness of throwing multiple walls of cutscenes of exposition at the player only to say ''NOPE'' and start over. I was enjoying it beforehand. So those words are used because i've finished it and my experience suffered because of it. If I had been asked what I thought about the game before they had started pulling that silliness I would have told you something like ''oh it's interesting stuff'' or whatever. I loved MGS3 (one of my favorite games ever), never cared to finish MGS2 (eh...) never had the opportunity to play MGS1 and MGS4 was a game that did so many things well...only to then annoy me at the end. Even still it was a damned good experience, save the silliness of exposition and overwriting dreck at some point in the game. I think I laughed out loud at one of the scenes where they trod all over the timeline saying ''NO, THAT WAS NOT IT, IT WAS THIS!''.

As for Morrowind (and games as art overall): games do have artistic merits, mostly in their individual elements (visual design, music, voice acting, etc.). There are games whose gameplay and experience are married damn well and some people call those art. Sometimes the marriage of those elements isn't as cohesive (example: the core game is surrounded by everything else but not as connected) but because the GAMEPLAY experience is special some people consider them art. Morrowind was clunky but I consider it a masterpiece and a poor example to gaming being ''the highest form of art''. Too many moving pieces bring games down to just being games (which i've already said).

Personally I don't bother classifying games as art. I don't care if people call them just games. I don't care if journalists say this or that. All I care about is my personal experience for the most part. It being or not being art in anyone's mind doesn't affect me. Do I consider TLOU art (seeing how it's the single game at the top of my head at the moment for marrying the elements so well)? Hrrrrrrrmmmmm no. I approached this discussion in a ''gaming can't be the highest/high art because...'' and brought up TLOU because it uses all the elements well enough to make it slightly less clunky than usual. It's an example as to why games aren't high art and how even the ones that manage to do it so well still suffer from the gameplay limitations which makes games ''just games and game-y feeling''. But I guess it depends on someone's definition of art. Problem is i've never really cared lol.

What do I think about TLOU? A lot of things. It made me feel a lot of feelings and I could write a castle of text worth of my opinion on TLOU but I won't lol. Just a great game that surprised me in all the right ways. I've been told before that my opinions on some games (Dishonored, Dead Space, TLOU, Metroid series and more) are basically me seeing the games i'm most passionate about in the same way people view art. But i've never really cared and never categorized a single game as art (consciously).