Polymetis: Historical Rhymes Galore

Friday, June 22, 2012

Historical Rhymes Galore

In two days, I'll be packing up and heading back to the mind-numbing quiet of my hometown, South Bend, Indiana. The last time I did this, I had just finished my last year at Purdue University, but there was largely one thing on my mind:

I had imported the latest Hooverphonic album, and there was a chance it wasn't going to arrive at campus before my final day there. As it happened, it arrived at the last possible moment. I picked it up from the mail room before leaving campus for the final time. I then forced my parents to listen to it for the entire ride home, and it was awesome. For me, anyway.

As someone (who may have not actually been Mark Twain) once said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes," and I hit the rhyme in stride with this upcoming move. Two years ago, Hooverphonic put out a new album--The Night Before--that came packaged with a new lead singer that never made it stateside. Having found it at an unbelievable-for-an-import price of $7.50, I ordered it and very nearly didn't get it prior to my actual move.

But it came in today, and it's got some of their best work since No More Sweet Music. Since I got the album in time to add it to my phone, I'll be able to listen to it privately for this trip back to South Bend, but I can't help but enjoy the coincidence. For your listening pleasure, here's my current favorite track:

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Editorial Note: Game Reviews

You can review a game in countless ways. By now, we’re likely all familiar with scores ranging from 70-100 or some number of stars out of the seemingly ever-present five. Sometimes, we see a game given a grade, as if he’s in elementary school and struggling to master his multiplication tables (but we have to remember that we wouldn’t want anyone to feel like they aren’t succeeding, so make sure never to give an actual F!). Other reviews tend to eschew scoring mechanisms entirely, and these are the types of reviews I hope to emulate. I don’t recall ever reading that someone gave the Iliad an 84 out of 100 (because of “repetitive word usage”). If games can be art (and they can be), we should talk about them like they are and refrain from reducing them to mere letters, numbers, or stars.

I will, in general, stay away from examining games on a graphical level, as game graphics are so entrenched in the available technology of the time. Panning or praising a game for its graphics strikes me as similar to doing the same for a book over the publisher’s choice of typeface. The analogy isn’t perfect (as no doubt everyone understands that printing “The Raven” in size 72 might have adverse effects), but ultimately I think the three pillars of gameplay, systems (though arguably a subset of gameplay), and narrative are far more crucial to video games than graphics could ever be. There are reasons classic video games like Chrono Trigger or Super Mario 64 are timeless classics, and I personally don’t think their graphics top any list of those reasons.