Gish
Chronic Logic
Price: $19.95 download & $25.95 CD (free demo online)
Pros: Unique gameplay, beautiful environments, and humorous pop-culture references.
Cons: Demanding coordination and dark atmosphere limits audience and steep system requirements.
by Gerrit Dalman
Lately many critics have been noting the entertainment industries lack of originality. It's not just movies - games too are surfing a long wave of sequels, ports, and cheap rehashes of existing titles. The result is countless store shelves stocked with only a handful of truly unique game types. Few stand out and little is really "new."
Chronic Logic's new title, Gish is - without a doubt - different.
In principle, Gish is a simple side-scrolling action game like those that have been thriving ever since the Nintendo Entertainment System was released. But it takes the concept in an entirely new direction. You still get to navigate all sorts of perils by running and jumping (you can even defeat enemies by jumping on their heads ala-Mario) but in a very unique way. And it doesn't stop there!
You see, the title character, Gish, "isn't your average hero, in fact he's not your average anything... See Gish is a ball of tar." That's right, you play an undulating blob that is subject to all the forces of a very realistic physics model. You evade spikes that wait to pop you, lava that will burn you, and evil rag dolls that threaten to pull you apart, but instead of moving with legs, you roll, bounce, stick, and slide through the levels while using momentum, gravity, and density to your advantage. Isaac Newton would be impressed.
Though the learning curve is steep, rising to the challenge of getting around by leveraging your elasticity and inertia is very fun. In addition to simply sliding left and right, you can compress and then stretch yourself out to jump or even throw enemies against walls! You can make yourself denser to sink deeper into pools or crush an opponent under you. You can even take advantage of your stickiness to crawl along ceilings and shift your weight from side to side to swing yourself across a chasm below.
Such a unique approach to controlling your character is reason enough to check this game out, but the skilled designers didn't just throw that into a pre-existing world. Every level is full of novel implementations of their realistic physics. You are often required to throw yourself at bricks hard enough to break them, shift your weight on a platform to get it rocking in the right direction, or hang from a lever to pull it down and open a door. The bottom line is that both the bad guys and the tunnels you navigate are designed to take maximum advantage of the games unique characteristics to challenge and entertain you.
The ingenious game play makes Gish a winner, but it doesn't stand on it's own. The realistic physics and attention to detail were applied to the guts of the game were also applied to the aesthetics. Light sources swing and cast eerie moving shadows while high-quality visuals adorn all the surfaces. Meanwhile a varied soundtrack plays behind a thorough set of sound effects.
All of that comes at a cost, however, as the system requirements for this game are a little high for a title that isn't fully 3D. Part of that probably comes from the fact that it's development spans three operating systems (Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux), but it still means that to get the smoothest animations and best visuals, you're going to need a reasonably equipped system.
Fortunately the plot is lighter than the requirements. Even the menus are fun - full of clever art that pokes fun at a variety of famous movie posters. Gish is a blast to play and packs a lot of levels to work through as well as a puzzle and multiplayer mode! The difficulty can even be adjusted, making the physics a little more forgiving for inexperienced players.
There is no doubt that Gish is well worth the twenty dollars for anyone who wants something a little less involved than Halo now and then. Though it's not well known, it demonstrates that new and different things can still be done in video games. Let the major game houses take note of innovation! This game definitely belongs on the Mac.
System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.1 or later
* 1GHz G3 or better
* 256 MB RAM
* 32 MB or better video card