Immsersive worlds of 3D and 2D games

I’ve spent too much time of late on blogs and forums where gamers have talked about “deep” games, with too often the dark, moody games getting most of the acclaim and recognition. I’ve been enjoying Batman – Arkham Asylum, but I was a bit tired of it one night and went back to playing LostWinds, a simply marvelous game. And then I couldn’t resist a good deal on Muramasa.

It’s quite interesting to juxtapose these games, especially one that has the acclaimed depth of Arkham Asylum. The reason is that they all have game worlds that you can immediately identify and jump into. I find Lostwinds and Muramasa no less engrossing and immersive than Arkham Asylum. Yes, it helps that they have distinctive art styles, but LostWinds and Muramasa are 2D platformers. Partly, as familiar as I with the world of Batman, it’s not as new to me, especially as it’s based on a graphic novel and atmosphere from 20 years ago. What’s engrossing about Arkham Asylum is the ability to feel like the Batman, from the fights to the detecting to the gadgets.

You could say the difference is immersion through the character or the world. So far, Muramasa has two characters that you can play as, but in my initial choice of Kisuke, the ninja who has lost his memory. Besides being generic, gamers run through several stages in one level before getting anything resembling a story and character information, all told through exposition. In contrast, Arkham Asylum tells several stories in different ways–expository diaries, recreated memories as cut scenes, dialogues.

Yet, I find Muramasa no less compelling of a game world because of the rendering and the obvious folklore that it invokes. Unlike Arkham Asylum, I’m traveling through many different settings–woods, cities, fields. In Arkham Asylum, as with many Batman stories, I feel that I’m in an externalized world of the Batman’s psyche–it’s dark and brooding, with dangers around all corners. Arkham Asylum and even Gotham by extension are what you imagine a man obsessed with having witnessed the criminal murder of his parents.  [It's a Batman story I've long wanted to write--how Batman sees a much different world than the rest of us.]

In Muramasa, even though dangers lurk around, it’s in a beautiful world. The world is not the scary extended worldview of the character but of a much different view, one of wonder and even delight. Supposedly the game is placed during the ‘golden’ Edo era in Japanese history, in contrast to many games set in the Sengoku era, a time of civil war. This contrast of beauty and fighting creates its own tension, in a much different way that the reflective environment of Batman.  [I don't pretend to know Japanese history, outside of my paltry readings and work in oriental art class.]

In LostWinds, we have another fictional setting rooted in windy cultures of Tibet, Inca, and Maya. In LostWinds, gamers play two characters simultaneously–Toku with the nunchuk primary and Enril the wind spirit with the Wiimote. Like Murasama, the characterization is not deep, but as we know from good stories, characterization doesn’t have to be deep to be interesting or captivating. As in Ico, gamers play a bonding relationship in which Enril can do some pretty neat things.  At times, Toku seems like he’s merely along for the ride, yet he’s essential to Enril.

Lostwinds‘ world is beautiful–many times, I enjoy drawing the wind through the trees to see the blossoms flutter. Between the art and the music, Toku and Enril wend their way through the world, allowing the player to interact with it to solve puzzles. While the  puzzles might not be terribly innovative, they are nonetheless satisfying.

I think that, like Arkham Asylum, Toku’s world is something of a reflection of the character’s view. For the most part, it’s happy and bright, but it has its darker aspects, with the caves and mines. The over and under world is a staple of fairy tales and children’s stories. So, the structure is familiar while the presentation is fresh.

Yet, the 2D vs 3D and standard vs high def resolution has no real bearing on these games’ ability to pull players in. An interesting world is far more important than these aspects that we spend far too much bandwidth discussing.