Veggie Tales 3D

This game is my favourite game, I don't play many games and the games I do play I usually find insulting for bizarre reasons. I hate when you are rewarded for violence (i.e. Team Fortress) I hate when I'm told explicitly what to do (i.e. most AAA games post 1996) I even hate when I know what a game is (i.e. platformer etc but thankfully these lines are getting blurred). This game is the anachronistic, badly-raised, middle-child-syndrome of games, taking the chimney instead of the front door. Punk is a word.

You venture into a scribbled diorama of horrible things that brings to mind Beavis and Butthead in a vague way. All the characters, for want, are vile and serve either no purpose or their only purpose is to be affronting or they are game-play tools. Nothing is in bad taste in my book; there is no attack on race or gender just truly horrid text. All this really begs the question, "why should I play this?". And, as the question is asked it is answered.

There seem to be layers of depth here, either intended or not (doesn't matter really if the developer didn't intend them, he/she/they only made the game - I played it). On one hand there is a functioning, normative game here; in that one can find things to progress to the next area - tickets allow you access to a concert for example. On the other hand, nothing is really spelt out in terms of goals and the player is left somewhat unaided in their quest with suggested notions of stray dogs and police barriers, bumbling aimlessly into various aggressive dialogues. And in the third hand lies the games beauty; it's belligerent attack on the post-modern, infantile, increasingly irony driven Y-generation of gormless acceptance. The 3d is painful, at once a boast but at the same time a bane, the medium which we have come to accept as a playful place has itself become abrasive and the developer tests her/his audience.

Without any rational logic events take place that effect the world map, for want of a better. We aren't talking about anything besides pure, unbridled creativity here. This isn't a world of, "I'll make something aesthetic out of pine cones" or "There is a place I want you to see, full of magical things" it is a horrible, ugly, colourless world with little sense. Something I can readily relate to. I have tried to be objective here. Where the writing that describes the game seems to take poetic license, it doesn't - there are stray dogs e.t.c. However, I like this game a lot. It perhaps isn't for everyone, but what is?

If you haven't already, have a peruse at this (catmitts) developers' stuff. I found it truly inspiring and I owe much of my own game making to this inspiration.