Over on WeeklyGeekShow, they put a top 5 list together to help support video games as art. We all know that video games has a lucrative market following it in the entertainment business world, and yeah, they help our hand eye coordination, but so does eating a popsicle. So Frodo (here's his tattoo) and the rest decided to make their own top 5 lists for most artistic video games. Here's their picks:
Frodo:
- 5. Animal Crossing
- 4. The Sims (series)
- 3. Shadow of the Colossus
- 2. Phoenix Wright
- 1. Electroplankton
The Geek:
- 5. Metroid Prime
- 4. Super Mario Bros.
- 3. Final Fantasy Tactics
- 2. Katamari Damacy
- 1. Shadow of the Colossus
Caspian:
- 5. Okami
- 4. Katamari Damacy
- 3. Grand Theft Auto 3
- 2. Paper Mario
- 1. Final Fantasy XII
And what about my top 5? Here ya go:
5. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. It's true that Jet Grind Radio was doing the whole cell shaded thing a long time before Link was, but Wind Waker added just enough oomph to the game's art to make things more aesthetically pleasing than any of us expected. We were all hoping for Twilight Princess and were outraged at the first screenshots of this game, but whether it was just days or entire months later, we almost all warmed up to this game. Whenever I see smoke, Wind Waker is usually the first thing that still comes to mind. Then it's "get the fuck out of the building."
4. Shadow of the Colossus. Art's all about emotion and this game was just 15 damn enemies and some asshole with a sword. In text on paper this game looks like an awful idea to pursue, but luckily Fumito Ueda knew better and gave us all the epic action adventure game that we'll never forget. With its blur and blooming light effects this game's art allowed it to impact us all in different ways - it's not rare that I hear of other gamers' parents even sitting down with their sons and daughters just to watch this game, or even boldly asking if they can ride the horse in between battles. TheLastBoss is proud of so many of the boss designs in that game that it would be hard to pick just one as a favorite.
3. Riven. Or any other Myst game, but I think Riven represents the series the best. Some people like puzzle games, but a lot of people don't. But when Windows 95 came out and this swet looking 3D game was sitting on the shelf a lot of people randomly picked it up, making the Cyan creators very rich to reward their artistic efforts at making their artsy puzzles memorable for life. You know a game's worth trying when its box art is as simple, yet emotionally expressive as Riven's cover of the hive prison sphere. The art was so phenomenal in this game that it even meshed together an entire fabricated culture that isn't even present throughout most of the game. There's hardly any english audio or text in the whole series compared to other games in the industry, but the roman numeral V still makes me think of a culture that doesn't even exist.
2. Katamari Damacy. WTF is a good way to describe the series and its art. But with music just as detrimental as its graphical art, Katamari was able to sit on store shelves for a good year without being bought by more than a few random people. Those few random people insisted the game was amazing, but their insistance combined with good game reviews just wasn't enough to make it do any better than that weird Japanese Mosquito game next to it on the shelf collecting dust. But then one day, much like a Precambrain explosion of change, Katamari had instantly found its way into all of our gaming lives. Things were great, sales were up, and an even better sequel was on the way, and the sky wasn't even the limit in this beastly game. Nothing says art like 1000s of random objects rolled into a ball with a metrosexual King of the Cosmo's looking down on a trippy prince while recovering from a hangover. If Dickens had discovered plots that amazing back in the day, Tale of Two Cities would be called Red Pandas and Origami and be twice as epic in half the pages.
1. Okami. When the whole game is meant to be art, it's no surprise to see it on the top of a list. But having the player actually draw on the screen to paint ancient Asian realities into existence is beyond the DS's wildest picto fantasies and in a league of its own. Okami managed to take adventure games to a whole new level of exploration as players interacted with things in new ways. Some would say it was just meaningless repetitive squiggles, but when you combine everything together, it's just as much a masterpiece as Starry Night's collaboration of rushing and exciting paint strokes.
I know there are a ton of other games that could easily be on the list: Toonstruck, Grim Fandango, Chrono Trigger, The Longest Journey, Paper Mario, Ragnarok Online, and even Alien Hominid and plenty more, but these are the 5 that were the strongest art games in my mind. Feel free to comment on games you feel belong on a top 5 game art list of your own. Maybe I'll even find a sweet video game I've never even heard of.
