double bills

name two or more games that resonate productively when placed side by side, not only to compare for similarities and differences but to develop a new perspective on each. alternatively, name two or more games that “feel” linked in your mind for some ineffable reason; here’s a place to talk about what those are and why that is.

for example, i’m halfway through ico right now and it is has very similar aims, formally/mechanically/aesthetically/circumstantially, to resident evil remake. the two were released only half a year apart (and the complete pal/jp release of ico came out on the same day as REmake), and both are next-gen redos of games developed for the psx (though ico’s original iteration was never released).

they are both roughly the same length (6-10 hours), with a similar dynamic shape over the course of that period, though obviously with varying degrees of intensity. they are both concerned with carefully and ritualistically routing the player through defined circuits of their environments by means of simple puzzles that are more about rhythmically articulating and unfolding the architectural structure of the space than brain teasing in the conventional sense. enemies works similarly - in resident evil, zombie placements are as much environmental puzzles to navigate as they are opportunities for combat (especially given the limited ammo), and ico’s shadows are a big part of the puzzlebox unfolding sequential rhythm of one-thing-after-another in defining progression through each area and its relationship to others around it.

while the original resident evil 1 obviously made use of nearly identical design strategies, its remake aligns with ico in its use of sound, light and color grading as aesthetic definitions of space to complement its design construction. it’s a horror game that takes place either at night or underground, so there’s less tonal variance in light than in ico, but the way it uses chiaroscuro for glinting silver in pillowy blackness, rain slick on foliage in the dark, stark shadows cast by imposing sculptures, etc., and especially the meticulously organized fragments of space de/recomposed by the stylized fixed camera angles are completely baroque in a way analogous to ico’s overexposure and other visual hallmarks. in ico, each new area has a distinct color and temperature grading from the way the light (sun or fire) interacts with the materials (stone, wood, grass, water) and environment (indoor, outdoor, underground, open and shadowed) and these patterns of light and color value resonate and interact from space to space. both games’ save themes are punctuation marks that partition “runs” and mark the pulse of their respective games, since they are location-specific and so always signify either progression, or, in the case of resident evil, possibly a retreat, ink ribbons dwindling…

their twin successes also reflect on the (imo) relative artistic failures of their immediate successors (resident evil 0 and shadow of the colossus), but that’s probably another argument

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I got this little 4 game square representing the development of cinematic action games that starts with ninja gaiden and strider on the one end and then metal gear solid and half life on the other end a decade later, where ninja gaiden and MGS represent one strand of design and strider and half life the other. it gets complicated, i’m lazy.

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can you say more? i would love to hear what makes up the underlying link for each strand

Strider and Half Life make sense to me, assuming we’re talking about the arcade version, because they’re both a series of setpieces. I don’t see the ninja Gaiden to mgs connection as clearly – cutscenes?

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Bringing in it up in the Crysis talk reminded me of how I get some same vibes from Far Cry 1 and MGSV, as playing the latter it clicked how much my tactics aligned with both in terms of waging a one man guerilla war, lots of shoot and move and misdirection being my staples.

Though MGSV allows for much more options in part due to the greater stealth focus and larger and more persistent world with more things going on. Though maybe what really made me associate is when I realized both had me staring in my binoculars all the time marking dudes to track their positions and listening in on conversations.

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Nocturne and any big po-faced aaa game that tries to make you feel bad for killing things, just to see how much better and more easily they did it in that game using a few lines of dialogue

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Zelda 2 and Metroid 2 as the sequels that never got their own sequels. I like to think about an alternate universe where Zelda 2 and Metroid 2 became the canon version of the games that always get imitated rather than their SNES counterparts.

I think playing both side-by-side is a really interesting study in how experimental Nintendo used to be with their own IP, and also really drills down on how unexperimental they were essentially from the SNES to the end of the Gamecube era.

Actually this is kind of a trilogy - Wario Land is the Weird Mario Sequel, but they actually ran with that for 4 games instead of just dumping most of the ideas. The main difference being that it didn’t star the actual star of the previous games, so it could have its own little branch without interfering with the rest of the series.

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Also, having never completed either (and only barely touching on one of the games) is anyone willing to compare Mother 3 and Pathologic as “games inspired by stage plays?” I feel like there’s gotta be some sort of rich vein there, but I’m not versed enough in the games OR plays to do it myself.

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Kentucky Route Zero is explicitly inspired by stage productions and would be a great game to play right after Mother 3 imo

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xUjOYrs (3)

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Look they got a dude who did Neo Devilman and monster girl hentai to be the character designer on the best Pokémon game they did some wild shit in the GameCube days

HE MADE THIS. AND THEY MADE HIM THE CHARACTER DESIGNER ON POKÉMON COLLOSEUM. A GAME FOR CHILDREN.

Cw: light guro? Maybe? Iunno there’s nudity and light gore I haven’t actually read this one

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Oh and the one I’m always going on about is Zelda 2 -> Dark Souls (and probably Demon’s Souls but whatever). I feel like playing Zelda 2 and going directly to Dark Souls is super interesting. It kinda feels like jumping directly to Ocarina of Time, except all the intervening games were sequels to Zelda 2. Specifically the emphasis on back-and-forth shield/dodge-heavy combat, labyrinthine dungeon layouts, very (very) odd enemies, and lots of little troll-y jokes at the player’s expense.

Plus the fact that player progression relies deeply on both leveling up and gaining intimate knowledge of the space.

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well shit i didn’t know that. i kinda put that in there hoping someone would call me out and prove me wrong and looks like that was a good idea

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Glad to be of service! I’m always here to defend Pokémon Colosseum to the death

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Shadow the Hedgehog and Nier Automata

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Ratchet and Clank 3 and Timesplitters (3) Future Perfect fit the (double) bill. They were released within 6 months of each other and have a lot interesting resonance points that serve as a revealing snapshot of latter PS2-era design sensibilities.

They’re both the third part of a trilogy and are most obviously connected by the ‘What-if ness’ of the approach to weapons of both series. While many shooters are concerned with a balanced or realistically accurate arsenal these games opted for loadouts that pursued the quest for ‘what if’. Similar to the design principle behind a lot of Devil May Cry weaponry, weapons usually followed a train of thought of ‘what if the gun fires other guns?’, ‘what if the gun fires a miniature black hole?’, ‘what if the gun is an assault rifle with 64 bullets and fires them all in a single second?’, ‘what if the Minority Report stungun was a gun?’, ‘What if you just threw a brick?’, ‘what if a gun sprayed liquid nitrogen?’ etc. Neither game’s weapons were particularly well-balanced, they were just fun to mix together and use. Timesplitters 3 even had a rudimentary gravity gun (singleplayer only) which was likely inspired by Half-life 2, 6 months prior.

They both fell in a period where comedy (or at least a humorous tone) was still generally acceptable for a high profile console release. They’re both ostensibly about a goofy villain scientist trying to bring about genocide but its treated with a schlocky mix of humour and heroism. The games aren’t laugh out loud funny, their mirth is characterised by light parody of pulp fiction, corporate culture, and superhero narratives. Timesplitters 3 skews irreverently rompy and Ratchet 3 is more Saturday morning which may have something to do with the games being British and American respectively. They aren’t ‘comedy games’ but comedy is present.

In some ways they’re developmentally inverse. Timesplitters spent a lot of time shoring up its multiplayer features while Ratchet was previously exclusively singleplayer. In these two trilogy-capstones they both extend further into what they lacked in previous instalments. Ratchet 3’s multiplayer feels like a prototype as its too grindy and doesn’t support enough players to make it interesting. Timesplitters 3 was probably one of the only console shooters to rival Halo in multiplayer offerings but it was always more of a party game. The co-op was extremely solid though and the singleplayer leaned heavily into a cutscene-laden time-travel plot. Both games introduce vehicles into the flow of gameplay for the first time in their series but in both cases they feel prototypical and last-minute. I have a theory that the second entry of game trilogies is usually the ‘purest’ since it solves all the usability shortcomings of the first game but avoids the feature bloat of the third.

TS3 and RnC3 differ in their futures despite taking similar paths. The next IP from Insomniac and Free Radical were both grim and gritty shooters (Resistance and Haze), devoid of character but still featuring a few ‘what-ifs’. Insomniac stuck with interesting weapon design but Haze went all in on super-serious drug soldier overdose mechanics and playing dead. Haze wasn’t bad idea-wise but it was clearly plagued by development troubles. Why the dawn of HD consoles led to so many darker IP is another story. TS3 and RnC3 were probably some of the last ‘best’ games of their respective series but in Timesplitters’ case this is because of studio death whereas Ratchet died multiple creative deaths (the reboot and Tools of Destruction). Deadlocked/Gladiator, Nexus and Crack in Time were OK though.

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Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 and don’t @ me to explain this.

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Puzzle Bobble and Chrono Trigger.
Bub and Bob are clearly game show hosts on mystic TV. They both have cute designs, pumped up energy and the gears in the bubble machine make me think of a clock. These don’t really compliment each other so much as they belong on the same dessert plate.


Granturismo 4 and Neo Turf Masters
Peak chill office man vibes with enthusiast flavors. Sports played in huge arenas by specialists and amateurs alike. Games where only the calm survive and everyone else, they end up out in the weeds. Can you make it to the top? You need to read the terrain, make you choice and stay cool when it goes wide.

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Katamari Damacy and Crazy Climber

Your sticks are arms.

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Ape Out and SuperHot barehands mode
Close quarters murder with accidental or situational friendly fire you can use(it has 66.6 of what I like about DOOM basically)

Mars Matrix and Devil Daggers
The less you press the more it can do for you.

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