Video Games as Art: 3 New Games for Playstation3

While I always approach a game looking for exciting and interesting gameplay, I have a background in the visual arts and my eye can't help but be drawn to the visually inspired. Roger Ebert has famously said that video games can't be art. Sony has three new games that prove him wrong.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MY1QLs-ypQ[/youtube]

I recently had a chance to get my hands on some of these new games at a Sony Playstation event. The first game to catch my eye was Puppeteer. With a real flavor for the theatrical, Puppeteer has layer upon layer of set pieces that spring into place. You play as a young boy who has been transformed into a wooden puppet, and you find different heads throughout the journey as you go on a quest to find your own. The characters and game assets all have a look of being lovingly handcrafted, and the lighting adds real drama.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hqna7-4tu0[/youtube]

As with previous iterations of LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet Karting lets you create your own art. The game itself, lovely as ever, has a Mario Kart vibe about it as you race around a wide variety of tracks, with tasks that include more than just winning a race. The real magic is when you create your own, or start tinkering with the existing tracks in the game. The developers who were demoing the game showed my some of the things that people working on the game did with the DIY portion. Artists created beautiful spaces with little interactivity. One of the programmers created a multi-level Plinko game. With the editing tools, you can create your own serene landscape perfect for a Sunday afternoon kart drive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFfteZaAXq4[/youtube]

Working from the dictionary definition of art which defines it as, "the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power," Roger Ebert postulates that, "This might exclude video games on a technicality (are they works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power?)." I'm not particularly a fan of first-person shooters, so I'd say that I'd play the gorgeous new game, The Unfinished Swan, purely for its beauty and inventiveness. The game begins like a storybook, and a boy whose mother loved to paint, but she never quite finished anything. Then (naturally) she died, leaving things truly unfinished, including her favorite painting, The Unfinished Swan. Suddenly the boy notices a door that wasn't there before and the footprints of the swan to lead him through an uncharted world.

When the gameplay begins, you're looking at nothing more than a white screen. With a couple splotches of black paint, you realize that you're in a world that you can begin to navigate. Walls and benches come into view. Your paint balls ripple on the surface of water that you need to find a way to cross. Find staircases to climb to new heights. I actually gasped at one point when I had climbed up a staircase and looked back at where I'd been–it was a beautiful scene, and I had created it. If you've ever read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, where there characters navigate a space of pure darkness, this game is its opposite.

LittleBigPlanet Karting is available on November 6, Puppeteer will be out around New Year's, and The Unfinished Swan does not yet have a release date. I'm looking forward to playing all of them.