Derrick
ლ(ಠ_ಠ )ლ
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
- Messages
- 5,085
- Reaction score
- 5
Recently I cought sight of myself in the mirror – very much like Jack surprises the baddies – and realised I’ve grown up somewhere along the way. This assumption is based mostly on the fact that I haven’t played Warcraft in about 5 months.Even worse, I haven’t played Counterstrike in years, and I never even got round to Hitman 2. and on what version of Halflife are we now? Do those games even exist anymore? Hell yeah, Playstation free? Oh, you mean three.
However, I’ve been a gamer for years (and always will be in my idle heart) and the world-view of a gamer is part of me. I don’t mean the ‘eat pizza only when it’s safe to take one hand off the keyboard’ world-view.
I’m talking about the world-view along the lines of ‘that creak I just heard down the hallway is probably a sniper waiting for me to go to the bathroom, so if I lean left around this door I might be able to frag him mwha!’
And then your 3 year-old enters rubbing her eyes and asking for ‘dada’.
Now, like a well written game’s plot I’ll tie it all in with Jack Bauer. And that’s exactly my point: convergence.
The luxury of owning the series on DVD means we can watch more than one episode at a time – sometimes my wife and I treat it like a movie and watch three or four 40-minute episodes in a row.
The first series, also watched in this manner, was gripping and exciting from the word go. It felt like a long, stretched out movie, even though there were several plot twists and you were kept on the edge of your seat all along. Good old linear plot build up.
However, the second series had a completely different feel to it.
It started off much slower, with a lot of scene-setting and character exploration. I read a lot (currently Samuel Johnson’ biography) and it didn’t feel like a book plot. I used to be the university newspaper’s film critic, and 24 season two also didn’t hit me as a movie plot.
The second season was written like a game.
Apart from the fact that all the big, cliffhanger moments all happen precisely on the hour, all the plot stimuli feels exactly like in a video game. I was constantly reminded of great story driven games like Hitman, Driver or Halflife.
Did any other gamers recognise the video game-like feel to the plot of 24?
There are some sequences that were textbook shoot-em-up game scenarios. Other scenes felt like the tasks set for the hero in a video game. The character moments between action sequences reminded me of so much cut-scenes from wonderfull action games.
Perhaps I’m wrong, and there are no game themes written into 24. Perhaps games and TV have converged so much that I can’t distinguish the two? Are games imitating TV, or has TV producers recognised the powerful presentation of games?
However, I’ve been a gamer for years (and always will be in my idle heart) and the world-view of a gamer is part of me. I don’t mean the ‘eat pizza only when it’s safe to take one hand off the keyboard’ world-view.
I’m talking about the world-view along the lines of ‘that creak I just heard down the hallway is probably a sniper waiting for me to go to the bathroom, so if I lean left around this door I might be able to frag him mwha!’
And then your 3 year-old enters rubbing her eyes and asking for ‘dada’.
Now, like a well written game’s plot I’ll tie it all in with Jack Bauer. And that’s exactly my point: convergence.
The luxury of owning the series on DVD means we can watch more than one episode at a time – sometimes my wife and I treat it like a movie and watch three or four 40-minute episodes in a row.
The first series, also watched in this manner, was gripping and exciting from the word go. It felt like a long, stretched out movie, even though there were several plot twists and you were kept on the edge of your seat all along. Good old linear plot build up.
However, the second series had a completely different feel to it.
It started off much slower, with a lot of scene-setting and character exploration. I read a lot (currently Samuel Johnson’ biography) and it didn’t feel like a book plot. I used to be the university newspaper’s film critic, and 24 season two also didn’t hit me as a movie plot.
The second season was written like a game.
Apart from the fact that all the big, cliffhanger moments all happen precisely on the hour, all the plot stimuli feels exactly like in a video game. I was constantly reminded of great story driven games like Hitman, Driver or Halflife.
Did any other gamers recognise the video game-like feel to the plot of 24?
There are some sequences that were textbook shoot-em-up game scenarios. Other scenes felt like the tasks set for the hero in a video game. The character moments between action sequences reminded me of so much cut-scenes from wonderfull action games.
Perhaps I’m wrong, and there are no game themes written into 24. Perhaps games and TV have converged so much that I can’t distinguish the two? Are games imitating TV, or has TV producers recognised the powerful presentation of games?