I feel kind of stupid every time I say I’m passionate about video games.
There are so many negative connotations with liking video games. If someone says “I’m interested in film” or “I’m interested in music,” the next logical thought is not “Oh god he must’ve seen Transformers II like five times,” or “Who the fuck would listen to Justin Bieber,” but public opinion of people who like games is based almost exclusively off of perceptions of the mainstream. If you’re a gamer, you like ultra-violent trash.
I like how movement feels in Ikaruga, and I like the patterns of enemies. I like how Killer7’s plot was just a tangled ball of loose ends, making you feel like any effect you’ve had in the game world was completely futile. I like Metroid Prime using a visual scanner as the only storytelling method, like you’re some kind of interstellar detective. I think the arcade version of Defender is simply beautiful, even those giant washes of white noise.
I know everything’s art if you look hard enough, but there’s a lot of strange and wonderful things out here, things that, by nature, cannot be better stated in another medium.
