Wolf’s Wicked Words: Franken-Gaming

I came home from the cinema today; resulting in a rather compelling train of thought. Now, before you all laugh and dismiss my argument, please, hear me out. “Why would I laugh?”, I hear you asking the monitor in front of you with the voice in your head. Perhaps you’re also wondering about the voice in your head. Perhaps you may wonder about the voice and how it sounds. Does it sound like your own voice? Does it sound like anything recognizable at all? Will you ever know if your thoughts indeed have the capabilities to form a sound other than you speaking your mind? Is everything you’ve ever experienced a cheap and misbegotten lie?

Please excuse my dwindling ADD-riddled mind having me running away from the topic at hand. I’ve come to realize that belly-buttons can be rather enticing…

Seriously, I came home today from the cinema after having watched Frankenweenie. This is where the laugh-aspect came in earlier. It’s not an erotic-infused horror with uncalled for humour or anything of the sort.

It is indeed an animated Tim Burton film. “Why do you want to talk about a movie in an opinion piece for a gaming website?”, I hear the voices asking again. Yes, you’re thinking about it again, start worrying!

It makes use of stop-motion animation and is indeed shot in black and white at that. The stop-motion technique is not used that much nowadays. We’ve become accustomed to the sleek and smooth CGI animation type.

It’s a rather dark and somewhat unsettling movie bearing the Disney logo. To summarize: it’s about a young boy named Victor and his dog; Sparky. Sparky gets run over by a car. The bizarrely designed science teacher inspires Victor to bring his dog back to life. Victor succeeds and all things start to go haywire. This description may sound very vague, but it’s vague on purpose. I’m not here to talk about the movie, but the movie started a gaming-related train of thought.

Like I mentioned before; it had a rather dark and freakish vibe to it. Sure, we have a lot of dark and freaky games to choose from, but the main aspect that got me thinking about having this vibe coming from a game, is about the totally unique vibe I got while watching it. It’s directed and written by Tim Burton and that should be answer enough for the strange character designs and morbid setting. If it’s sounding like I don’t fancy the dark and twisted setting; do not fret, I admire it.

I’m a sucker for games with a unique vibe encircling them. That’s why titles such as BioShock and Dishonored tickle my fancy. I wish we had more games with settings that don’t follow the traditional way of portraying the world. But, also, by wishing that there are more of them in the gaming market; I also get yanked back with the choke-chain of reality, bringing my train of thought to a halt, reminding me that if there’s a lot of these unique and tantalizing games; it won’t be special any more.

A good example of this is something like the Assassin’s Creed series. When it first came out, everyone was flabbergasted by this unique way of exterminating a bunch of medieval blokes. Take that same formula, improve it, bring an Assassin’s Creed title out annually, and people are bitching about it not innovating as much or the time taken between games are too short. As soon as you’re getting used to an idea or situation, it’s like devaluation reaching the peak. (Of course, you also get the guys / girls, like myself, that get excited about anything even remotely having a hidden blade somewhere. Assassin’s Creed III. Yay!)

We’ve had some big-shots trying their hands at video games, and while not all of them succeeded as we / they would’ve hoped, I cannot shake the idea of a Tim Burton game. If it’s got that same freaky and dark vibe going, I’m pretty sure I’ll be cuing up. One must also factor in the thought about his methods only working on film.

It’s something to think about and who knows? Maybe we’ll walk away one day; totally blown away and struggling to stand on two shakily surprised legs.