Flashed!
Today, in terms of days, was pretty bunk. Good days and bad days in Hollywood. Ah well. You just have to get your mourning out of the way and press on. For tomorrow is indeed a new day.
Just before I totter off to bed here I felt it necessary to share with you all something I just found (you may know of it already) that I thought was just amazing. Can we take a second here to just give it up for Flash games? Most of them are shitty rip-offs of one another but occasionally you get a total gem. Something original, embracing the medium, and completely inspired. The game I just finished playing was this:
http://www.recordtripping.com/
Anyway, that game is just so cool. It reminds me of the game Braid (which if you haven’t played it, shame on you ONE THOUSAND AND FIFTY TIMES), whereas it’s not so much about the game, but about what it means. Braid has a little more going for it, in that the actual game part is shockingly entertaining, challenging, though-provoking, and 100% original, yet it manages to do it’s fair share of nods to retro gaming. Anyway, Record Tripping is just plain old neat. It’s impossible to not finish it, as even if you fail to complete the chapters in time you still move on, but…well…just play it.
It’s just refreshing to see game developers out there who want to make art. I’m one of the few people who believe video games ARE a form of artistic expression. I don’t see how movies can be considered art where in the same medium you have shit storms like GI JOE and Last Action Hero. In video games, you have your Modern Warfare 2s and your God of Wars, but then you have your BioShocks, your Braids, your Flowers, and your Record Trippings.
I think the video-games-as-art subject is fit for an entirely different post, but to any nay-sayers out there I would just ask you to define art before you state your argument. To me, artistic expression is completely subjective, relative, and dependent on it’s surrounding elements. A mound of shit on a white washboard could be considered art in the traditional sense whereas I see a mound of shit on a washboard. It depends on intention, process, and reaction. To say one thing is and one thing isn’t, to me, is putting confinements that by their very presence destroy any concept of expression. How can expression be measured and quantified? Isn’t that what art is supposed to be? Expression of an individual, team, group, etc., manifested in one way or another?
Again, I’m getting WAY off topic. I’ll open this one up on another post.
FLASH GAMING…
And now that we’re back on the topic of Flash gaming, here are a few other games I’ve managed to play that I’ve really enjoyed. They are by no means ultimate expressions of art, just cool games.
http://armorgames.com/play/4071/warfare-1944
http://armorgames.com/play/2267/warfare-1917
http://armorgames.com/play/2919/sin-mark
The above three are made by the same guy.
http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/
http://armorgames.com/play/5020/infectonator
http://armorgames.com/play/2153/aether
^^^ Super weird.
http://www.fastgames.com/littlewheel.html
^^^ Two fun robot-themed games. The first one is a demo.
http://www.pencilkids.com/the-vault/bowja-the-ninja-2-in-bigmans-compound-flash-game/
There are a TON of good Flash games out there. If you want more, Kotaku has a great list of keepers. I got a lot of my list from there. Just search for flash games in their search and you’ll get it.
Feel free to post some links to games you’ve enjoyed in the comments section, or if somehow I ignited something in you that forces you to express yourself, do so. I’m tired and need some dreamy dreams to enter my brainy brains.
Ew. I hate what I just wrote. To bed!
