Perfectly Peculiar Pixels [#19]

By now, it is a secret to nobody that limitation breeds creativity. In the age of multimedia opulence, limitations are a conscious choice you have to make. Whether it is limiting your play style, limiting your colour palette, or in the case of today’s examples, limiting your perspective.

The isometric view was supposedly first introduced by Zaxxon, back in 1982. It was the first time a character, or in that case, a vehicle, could move in 3 dimensions. Not rotate and move 360×360 degrees of freedom, but move up/down, left/right and forward/back. The game was very much still 2D, and it took a great deal of computational wizardry and creativity to get it interact inside this illusion. The following games have a seemingly infinite amount of processing power at their disposal compared to Zaxxon. But the devs decided to focus their efforts under a (somewhat) fixed perspective.

Camera placement emulating both isometric perspectives of old, and feeling like a security footage. Combining Hotline Miami weapon throws, and combat clearly evolved and inspired by the Arkham series. Metro stations, subway carts and moving levels. The gameplay inexplicably reminds of the early Max Payne (1) levels in the subway, if only Max was a brawler. The art direction of this game is much simpler than the following examples, but that is to its credit - making the player and enemy movements clean, readable, and ripe for reacting to.

American Fugitive takes the formula of the original top-down GTA, tips the camera down a bit, and force feeds us a story. It doesn’t live up to GTA in terms of the simplicity and accessibility of the familiar, easily escalated chaos. It is however, an interesting thing of its own, with a dynamic camera, interesting for its very helicopter footage feel, while you’re appropriately, running away from the law. It’s a relatively short game, so, naturally it would receive praise from me. Overall, it is a little undercooked, but for what it was, so was GTA(1), compared to its first sequel…

…Conveniently, the developer stayed in the same play style for The Precinct. In what I think is an industry first, they followed up their criminal centred first game, with one where you play a cop. The game is fresh out the door, and you’ll have to look elsewhere for a informed full review, but why am I then even writing about it? Because it has one of those redeeming qualities from the old times: a demo version you can download and try for free. It is very keen on conveying the tediousness of everyday police work, in ways not explored since the days of Police Quest. Despite what the media might have lead you believe however, you will, naturally, run into a lot more shoot-outs and high speed chases than any average police officer, and it won’t be in a well tuned street racer.

One of Epic’s three free games this week, which inspired this issue, is Deliver At All Costs. It checks all the right boxes for me. It’s a pleasant enough art style, set in a 1960s aesthetic, playing 1960s music while you progress through the most restrained slapstick I’ve seen lately. Every morning when you drive to work and break through the ramp, without any other context around it, it evokes the likes of Mr. Bean or Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez. Between the protagonist’s secret past that is slowly getting revealed, and hauling increasingly ridiculous cargo, like a live giant marlin fish you need to feed on the way so it doesn’t wiggle your truck off the road, or the mayor’s new statue which a flock of incredibly militant seagulls are heavily inclined to defecate all over before you reach your destination, there is enough there to keep one entertained. And they didn’t even have to use all of the potential of all the available dimensions.

Desperado Times, Desperado Measures