Games As Art: The Most Visually Distinctive Video Games

MadWorld is not a complicated game. In fact, as beat 'em ups go, it's fairly conventional. The art style, on the other hand, is anything but conventional. Playing MadWorld feels like discovering the bloodiest pulp comic in the store. The fact that it is one the most adult titles on the Wii adds to the pleasure. The art design is an exercise in contrast between black and white, slashed with saturating splats of red for blood. MadWorld conjures the feel of a grimy graphic novel brought to life in a 3D environment. Deep, glossy blacks are contrasted with pure whites, hard lines and back-dropped by richly detailed cityscapes. Playing MadWorld was dizzying, almost disorienting, much in the way as watching Sin City and then walking outside was. A flat, 2D art-style (comic-book black and white noir) manipulated and re-envisioned to create a 3D visual-experience, often to visually lush results.

Side-scrolling beat 'em ups are nothing new. From River City Ransom to Streets of Rage, these early video games were left in time by the big publishers in search of a more realistic and technically more advanced gaming experience. Thankfully, companies like Behemoth exist to create exuberant cartoon titles, such as Castle Crashers. Taking their cues from earlier games and under the direction of Dan Paladin, Castle Crashers lead with the artist's pen. Quirky character designs, bright colors and the hard lines defining the characters all combine to make a lighthearted and totally unique experience. Castle Crashers is a testament to the creative freedom you can find in the relative confines of a prescribed form.

Simply put, Jet Set Radio was the most popular cel-shaded game of its time. The list of cel-shaded games is long but most came after Jet Set Radio delighted Dreamcast fans around the world. Cel-shading is a rendering technique that gives the distinctive lines around a character in a 3D environment an almost blockish shading. Notice how the shadows stop abruptly with straight lines in the pic. This is characteristic of cel-shading (Bambi, anyone?) in both animation and games. Hence why the effect is called "cartoon-like." If you're interested in reading more about this now common technique games, here's a technical explanation of the method.

What separates art from a commodity is the intention behind the creation. That is to say, was something made expressly to make money? Or was the intention something else? Or, say, did  the designers' desire to elicit an emotional response from people spur the project? Obviously, this is narrow view of art in video games, let alone art itself, but Flower certainly eschewed the basic economic tenants of video game production for creation of a unique and satisfying experience. No voice-over work, no dialogue, no Skinner Boxes, no scratching the male power fantasy itch. You are, simply, a flower petal blowing in the wind, sometimes collecting more petals and surfing updrafts together. The colors are bright and soft and vibrant like swimming across a watercolor. The effect is enlivening, light, and, most of all, relaxing.

Till now, we've attempted to highlight the intersection of story and visual design. Most video games are hybrids of these. Rez HD, however, is very light on story. Instead, Rez HD focuses on the interplay of the visual experience and the auditory. Known as synesthetic art, derived from the perceptual condition synethesia, it is the multi-sensory experience of simultaneous stimuli. In plainer English, it's the colors coordinated with sounds in Rez HD. The game itself is inspired in part by the work of Kandinsky, himself a synesthete, and takes a very narrow game formula, a rail-shooter, to an unexpected and artistically inventive new place.

Limbo is an exploration of minimalism. Relying primarily on shadow and light, Playdead created an unshakable mood and style for the game using the tonal palate of greys, blacks and whites. While thin on plot, the visual experience of Limbo is completely unique and individual in games, not to mention beautiful. Comparisions to film noir and German Expressionism are certainly legitimate as tone is most definitely the focus for Playdead in Limbo.

Where do we start with Braid? Developed by Jonathan Blow in conjunction with webcomic artist David Hellman, Braid is a celebration and criticism of a medium. Elements of post-modern meta-fiction infuse the narrative, boards have specific mechanics, and backgrounds are seamlessly integrated in the experience of the game, and frustration abounds. For the story, Blow purposely chose a familiar one, namely saving a princess, but little else is typical of video games. The title is as much an exploration of potential as it is an examination of stagnancy and video game cliché. Braid is conceptual and multi-faceted, aiming at critical engagement with its own medium. I don't know many other games conceived in the same vein.

Fans instantly embraced Okami. What jumps out first is the combination of brush and wash style painting, know as sumi-e in Japanese, and cel-shading. Okami feels like a living scroll, as if ancient texts are coming to life while you play. Capcom responded to praise from the community by launching Art of Okami, which has over 300 original drawings and numerous fan-submitted pieces as well.

A list that includes the terms "art" and "video games" has to include Shadow of the Colossus. Few games match the interplay of visual aesthetic, mood and action to elicit the sort of emotional response that SotC does. Again, simplicity opens up possibility for the player to experience more than the average game. The landscape is stark, gray and often unearthly. The story is rudimentary: a man must save a woman. In this case, the Wander has to defeat the 16 colossi to resurrect Mono. Each colossus, all somewhere between mechanical and biological , comes with an associated landscape. The whole experience is one of single-minded determination amidst constant challenge and difficulty. You're always one man on one horse galloping across vast and empty landscapes, fighting impossibly enormous monsters. Stark and existential, Shadow of the Colossus narrows in on themes of perseverance and loneliness; universally recognizable themes that engage a player's empathy (paging Ebert) and, for some, create the opportunity to apply that empathy and emotional experience to their daily lives.