This has sometimes been to great outside video game experiences, with games like That Dragon Cancer, Passage and Jesus Run, at the Greenbelt arts festival. Over the years Andy Robertson has worked to cross this line, brining video games to be a central part of aspects of culture usually reserved for more weighty or serious things. But we don't expect to find them in arts festivals, church services or park gatherings. We expect to find them in bedrooms, living rooms, the chip shop and the motorway services. Video games are not often used in mature cultural spaces. But to stay in the Adventure genre, the arc of the quest needs to be the main focus rather than play in arenas or rounds.Īdventure games that double down on the Narrative of the characters and world expand the experience to include wider reflection, consequences and tensions as you would find in a novel. Some adventure games also include Fighting, Role Playing and Strategy. Some combine the two with a campaign mode adventure and online pure shooting modes. While Shooting games offer exuberance and adrenaline, they focus on the mechanics of the fight rather than the narrative of the journey. This is the hero's journey where you play a protagonist who must take on daring deeds to reclaim a precious item, get to the top of the mountain or go there and back again and survive the ordeal. In this entry we are looking at Adventure games.Īdventure video games invite you to attempt dangerous or mountainous experiences. This is designed for people new to gaming, and aims to identify games with the least barriers. In this series, we are learning how different aspects of video games work by playing games that offer an easy introduction to this one concept. In video games, we step into other bodies so we can better understand our own and those of the people around us.
In travel, as Andrew Soloman says, we go somewhere else to see properly the place where we have come from. More specifically, to use body therapy language, games offer us a chance to discover the inviolability of our bodies, personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination. Whether this is into the awkward teenage years of Mord and Ben in Wide Ocean Big Jacket, the grandparent-escaping Tiger and Bee in Kissy Kissy, the fractured heartbroken body in Gris or the haphazard movement of Octodad we have a chance to reassess our own physicality and how we respond to and treat other people's physicality. Stepping into the shoes of a vulnerable, small or endangered character can help us understand for a short while some of what it is like to be someone else.
This is not only an enjoyable way to escape the reality of daily life but a chance to reflect on and understand ourselves, and our bodies, better. Whether we step into the powerful frame of a trained marksman or brave adventurer, while we play we have a different sense of our physicality. Just like Journey did.Video games offer an opportunity to inhabit another body. The colorful and jaw-dropping vistas and experiences in ABZU will stick with you for a long time.
Abzu background full#
If exploring an underwater paradise and uncovering a fantastic story appeals to you, then give this stunning little gem a go.īeautiful and full of surprises. The underwater controls are sublime, the soundtrack by Austin Wintory is perfect choral swells and orchestral build-ups, a real sense of place and spirituality.