This week we’re giving away a copy of Stay Dead: the new motion picture video game from BRUCEfilm!
The movie and video games industries have been trying to get together and do something interesting for the last decade or more. Many ideas have been tried, and many have failed. Notably, movies from Uwe Boll tend to make most gamers that have watched them cringe in terror as their favorite franchises are ripped apart and rebuilt in horrific ways that share nothing with the original IP.
So, you’ll understand when I say that I was very interested in trying out this new game when I heard about it. When Alice asked me to review it, I honestly had to do a double take at the concept of Stay Dead by BRUCEfilm. I went into it with almost no preconceptions and more curiosity than anything else. The concept on their page is of a motion picture video game, and in the concept trailer below, the game’s designer, Fabrizio Digiovinazzo puts it like this:
Think about two people sitting on a couch, one is playing a game and one is watching a movie. The point is, they’re enjoying the same product.
I was genuinely pleased by what the game showed off. As far as I know, this has not been done before. It very much is a new concept in gaming – and that’s rare. The controls reminded me of the old console games, where you had your arrow keys and a few buttons, and it was very simple to get into and to start playing after doing the tutorial, which showed how exactly, the controls functioned. The graphics are just as you see in the trailers, they are not pre-rendered and the quality is actually very high when it comes to execution of meshing the game with the video.
I very much enjoyed this game, and can see myself playing it quite a bit to relax and relieve stress. Like I said in my article, “The Zerg Mind Isn’t Blameless”, the gaming genre will stagnate unless we encourage game designers to take risks like this and try something new. In this case, they’ve shown that there is most certainly something new out there to try. I hope that this game succeeds and that they can make another, hopefully with more polish and content.
This is a new type of video game, and one that has huge potential to take off into its own thing. It’s hard for me to point out anything truly wrong with it. I find that the flaws inherent in it exist almost entirely because technology has not caught up in allowing photorealistic 3D rendering, or panoramic film capture, in a way that would be possible to incorporate into a game. Hopefully, in the next few years, technology will catch up, allowing something like this to become big. I was left wanting more, however if I had to make a criticism, it would be that although there was a hint, a suggestion of a wider plot, it could have been further expanded on and I would have liked to have seen greater depth.
There are multiple directions this could spin off into, including console games and multi-player fights. The controls, being so simple, would make this easy, theoretically at least.
In summary
Graphical Quality: High
Control Scheme: Difficult to get used to, but easy to understand
Story: Has potential, but I would like to have seen more
Nearest Competition: Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat
Replay Value: High (every day when I’m frustrated after work)
Fighting Style: Cinematic
I had the opportunity to ask the game designer, Fabrizio Digiovinazzo, a few questions regarding the game itself, and to get some insight into the concept of it. I would like to thank him for being so approachable and open about the game. It was fun to play through, and I can’t wait to see where this goes. So, once again thank you Fabrizio!
What made you decide to use live actors, over say typical 3D graphics?
When i was 14 (now I’m 36) I saw on Zzap! magazine an image of a baseball video game compared to a baseball tv show and, since then, I started to figure out a way to play the latter. Generally speaking I never like 3D real-time graphics in a videogame: today it is still too poor to be compared to pre-rendered graphics. If you compare the movie Avatar with the game Avatar, the gap is still too huge to let me immedesimate (identify) with the videogame character. Of course, there are plenty of great games out there in 3D, but I always thought that the real life footage can work in the interactive field as well. But the ’80s, with its unplayable interactive movies, buried the possibility to even start thinking about something cool. So the idea was abandoned in the mind of game designers, but not in mine.
What were the most challenging, and likewise, most enjoyable aspects of this project?
Multi-layered direction (as I call it), without a shadow of a doubt. Here the task was very hard: the final effect of a motion picture game MUST be a believable movie, not a jigsaw of little chunks of shots one after the other. Movies with poor montages or (sigh) interactive movies of ’80 were only a collection of shots, not a real edited movie. You can immediately see the difference. My vision is different – I really want someone to think they are watching a movie when seeing someone else playing a motion picture game. The challenge is: I have to make believable cuts but in real time, without knowing the player moves in advance. So I shot and edited back and forth for more than four years (not every day!) before writing down the new grammar rules that I needed in order to shoot a sequence that can be cut as a normal movie sequence, but with real time montage decisions.
What gave you this idea, and where do you see this new genre of gaming going?
The idea of a motion picture game came from Zzap!. The idea of Stay Dead came from the budget. In my mind my first motion picture game had to be unique in somehow. My idea never was ‘graphics adventure’ or ‘interactive movie’. my idea was: I want to watch The Matrix and being able to move Neo in real time inside ‘the hall scene’. A real mind-blowing experience. Then came the time to make a budget…. ok, let’s start with something that doesn’t necessarily include the demolition of a skycraper. Here the solution: a round beat’em up. Read: a lot of action without a lot of money.
Why did you pick Dukerg as a Nazi Demon, yet censor the symbol? It seems a little bit counterproductive – just wondering what the motivation behind that was.
Germany is a very big PC market so we wanted to include that country in our selling territory, but there you can’t by law show a Nazi symbol anywhere. Anywhere EXCEPT in movies. Here’s the tricky part: we are shooting video hence we can use Nazi symbols. Here the German law: you can use Nazi symbols in a movie because movies are considered art, but a game, however you made it, is not (yet) art in Germany (and in any country of the world). Actually we could make a special localized version for Germany only (as some other war games do) but in the end we decided to go censor worldwide and to have a funny story to tell.
What is next on the horizon for this game, and for the genre?
When the 3D graphics became photorealistic, the use of the real footage in a game will end like the dinosaurs after the Ice Age. but until then I hope that my concept can develop further and became a genre by itself. After all, the very new thing here, and the thing I’m more proud of, is not the use of real footage inside a game. The real very new concept is that I took away the main character from the centre of the screen, and still you can play the game in real time. I can literally put the camera everywhere I want in order to obtain the most beautiful shot, without caring about the main character, and still you can play the game. I think that this concept can survive the Ice Age and can contribute to creating very cool games.
Want to try out this new genre and play Stay Dead for yourself? Good news, we have a digital copy (PC version) to give away! To enter, all you need to do is answer the following two questions:
If you could interact in this way with any movie ever made, which one would you choose, and why?
Where are the Demons in the movie trying to get to? Hint – the answer is in the trailer!
