Heavy Rain

Jason.

Source // MobyGames

As technology progressed, video games started to look more and more like movies, not just in the graphics department, but in the storytelling, too. They're both visual mediums, and the language of film and television can easily be brought over and used in cutscenes. But what happens with the gameplay? Can gameplay be cinematic, or is it jarring to watch a scripted scene and then be dumped back into a first-person shooter, for example?

Again, technological progress can allow your gameplay to look identical to your cutscenes to help blend the two together, but can we do better than that? Can we create the ultimate interactive movie and truly blur the lines between cinema and gaming?

Well, David Cage has already tried it with Fahrenheit, and the next attempt is with Heavy Rain, which follows the case of the Origami Killer. Will he be caught before he kills again? Who is he anyway? What other horrors must our heroes face? Popcorn optional.

Façade

Uh, ha, yeah...

Games can simulate a lot of things. The physics of a race car, the communication between alien species, the horrors that lurk in the night. They're not always perfect simulations, sure, but they don't always need to be.

Case in point, social interaction and awkward conversation simulator, Façade, a three-person one-act play of an evening with Trip and Grace. On the surface, you would be forgiven for passing this one by. A play? Talking? About marital arguments? No, thanks. But this isn't any old game. This is more of an experiment in Artificial Intelligence. One we really need to see first hand.

Fahrenheit

a.k.a. Indigo Prophecy

Video games. Interactive Movies. You might know of the arguments that follow on from there. What is a video game? Is a game still a game if we're just interacting with a bunch of cinematics? Are Dragon's Lair or Another World games or movies? Does it matter?

These days, you'll perhaps know of Heavy Rain or Detroit: Become Human, two big titles that raise these kinds of questions. Before both of them, however, there was Fahrenheit, an interactive story of supernatural murder, and the investigations into uncovering just what on Earth is going on.

I've actually watched this, a long time ago, and have thankfully forgotten the story, and can relive it all over again - this time at the controls.

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

When the point and click fans go marching in...

Do you think I'm the kind of person to know of the Grabriel Knight series of point and click adventure games? I'm not the kind of person to know that Gabriel Knight is a name that is even associated with video games, let alone that it's the name of the lead character in a bunch of point and click adventure games.

If I don't know that, then there's no chance in Hell that I'd know that The Beast Within, the second game in the series, went down the full motion video, interactive movie route, putting blue-screened actors inside digital photos where, somewhere, there exists the thing you need to click on to progress the plot.

After reading that it was indeed a point and click with real people, I was interested in playing it. The introduction movie gives me no ideas as to what's going on, but what's new there? It's got fire and German folks in it, that's about all I gathered before being introduced to Gabriel Knight himself.

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

What are you, my Mother?

"Hey, Cavil"
"Yes, 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die?"
"You know how I've chucked a few flight sims your way recently, allowing you to experience the joy of dogfighting in space from the comfort of your office chair, with the sweetly calibrated refurbished flight stick you got because it was cheap?"
"Yeah, those games are great!"
"Weeeellll, how about another one, with film quality full motion video starring Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowel, John Rhys-Davis..."
"I've heard of those people!"
"Then let me introduce to you Wing Commander IV"

Were the 1001 list to be anthropomorphized, that might have been the conversation we had about the next game on the list, the fourth - I would imagine - in the Wing Commander series, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.

Following on from the plot, or at least the canon of the earlier games in the series, this high budget space combat simulator sees you play as Mark Hamill, reprising his role as Colonel Christopher 'Maverick' Blair, hero of the... plot... I have no idea.

There doesn't appear to any kind of start menu here, so I've no choice but to sit back and pay attention to this wonderful mix of CGI and live action actual human beings in my video game.

I know it's not the first time we've seen people in video games, but cut me some slack eh. Even Kane doesn't compare to these guys. Sorry, Kane.