Photography opens up a complex world that contains timely and timeless narratives.
Plan ahead, or just join in? Umurangi Generation is a game about taking pictures. At the beginning of each level, if you want, you can check a list of specific objects that you are required to take. These are the bounties you want to pay. Two disposable cameras. skateboard. Two cats, but shot with a telephoto lens. Mortars and shotguns-hey wait, what?
So you can proceed in an orderly manner. You can limit yourself to the 10-minute time limit, which is always ticking, and if you complete the work within the prescribed range, this will give you a reward. You can think “skateboard. Two cats. Two cats. Cats!” into this world. It’s interesting. Where are those damn cats? Where is my telephoto lens?
Or you can just jump in. I often jump in. I took a few photos and I tried a few shots.I am familiar with the trembling, mechanical, and complicated things of my handheld camera, its moving parts and tight entanglement of grasshoppers somehow make myself known through my Switch Actually maintain. Perhaps it is through the magic of touch, or the absolute hint of the brain. I took some photos, maybe I’m lucky-oh, that On the list, isn’t it? (Every item on the list is accompanied by a musical wind chime effect, which always sounds exciting.) Then I encountered something. In the middle of a level, I will see the wall. Huge walls. The wall printed as United Nations property is fined for any damage it causes. Hey wait, what?
Umurangi Generation is a game that has many things besides taking pictures-I have to be selective here. One thing it involves is the point where two worlds intersect. The place where you fell to take a photo is Tauranga in Aotearoa, in a great crisis. Crisis is a science fiction thing, I will not destroy it, because many games revolve around combing it. But I would say that, like many science fiction novels, it conveys very real and very popular things there. Tauranga itself is seen from the perspective of young punk and skaters-a friendly and artistic family scrabble game consisting of markers and spray cans, ramps and tape decks, and intricate graffiti designs.
The most important thing is-it does feel like something imposed on the existing landscape, not something that exists in harmony-the United Nations has begun to “repair” these things-it is too late, and the idea It’s totally wrong. But they brought the wall! There are also shotguns. So you will see tape decks, skating ramps, markers and graffiti next to the walls and shotguns. I think this is an aid mission—it looks more and more like an invasion in itself. Look at it: The United Nations goes hand in hand with companies and inefficient and distraught governments.
This is a message with important and inevitable anger, from a generation and a group of people who feel invisible and inaudible, and those in power ignore the obvious dangers and have stupid priorities-forget about the climate collapse, the economy What? -And can only respond to the disaster in a confused, arrogant, and selfish way, it’s too late.
However, this is how it is. Although this is an outrageous game-designer Naphtali Faulkner is a member of Ngāi Te Rangi iwi, originally inspired by the Australian government’s poor response to the 2020 bushfires and Covid-it was too thoughtful and cleverly addressed Interested.
This is a generous game that uses the camera it puts in your hands to draw you into a narrative and provide you with the freedom and tools to decide what all this means to you. For an outsider like me who knows nothing about Maori culture, history and experience, this feels like a kind of supreme generosity. Get along with people, understand the details and start to understand them: especially on Switch, Umuragi Generation is almost a magic. Of course, you can now do some new things, such as using motion control to arrange your shots, (of course, the frame rate can suddenly appear in some places) but on a deeper level, I swear that some parts of me disappear in that glow On the screen of, it will only appear after I have finished playing.
The way it works is simple-you can move around in the 3D model, select the picture, and capture the objects required in each level before continuing. It turns out that this is the ideal way to understand the story, by observing the world and the things in it, how they are laid out, and hinting at one’s relationship. But more importantly, it enriches everything else in the story in the game.
This is an exploration game where you can explore things and try to understand what is happening. This is a crossing game-yes, a slightly elbow crossing game, it has some obstacles-in which you jump and double jump, and finally you can jump quickly on the skates to get the perfect shooting angle. This is a photography game where you can get the photos you want, but always do it the way you want-the game will tell you what you are looking for, but you can compose and process the image as you wish, without People will judge you strictly because of this. What matters is your sense of expression-what is the purpose of your shooting and whether you get it the way you want. This encourages rather than prevents patching and experimentation.
This is a beautiful thing. With the soundtrack of the mobile editing of ThorHighHeels music as the background, with the horizontal loading of the announcement of the broadcast static clips, we can see the world from the perspective of a group of young friends who are almost ignored by the government and money. People and the upcoming United Nations, they use high walls. , Guns, and solutions are busy around them. Each level feels like its own universe. Underground-are we underground? -The scenery is observed through pixelated particles, and alternate forms of bicycles and poisonous trees disappear in the purple mist. The graffiti glows with messages of anger and disappointment, and candles emit bright little lights on the temporary shrine.
Elsewhere, on a rooftop skating rink above the city, paint cans and breeze blocks are clear focal points, while nearby skyscrapers are outlined, overlooking the uneven United Nations wall, trying to block the sea itself. Lawyers and Bill posters of bad science fiction movies compete with an artefact that has become the world of a bad science fiction movie. There is a paradise for gamers, VR bars, electronic girls dancing on the table. There are tents in the sewers and temporary bars in the shipping crates. All of these are bright fluffy edge textures, expansive blues and pinks and daiquiri yellows, and cover the MS Paint details.
It’s very special to come into this world with a camera-arrange the shots, understand which items in the target list are actually a perspective challenge, a puzzle to frame all of this, get involved in optional bonus items, but also need to be slow Slowly understand the role of having a camera. After a while, you belong to this world, but you are also outside the world. The camera is a piece of glass between you and what is happening. Until -!
Most importantly, you saw some people. The pointed triangle nose and facial details are accentuated with brisk brushstrokes and dots, but in the pose, countless people can be seen watching. People are cleverly captured by hanging down against the wall, or shaking their heads to distant music. The way people gather around candy-colored cars, downlights illuminate the road under the chassis. On the train, a soldier leaned back on a dining car chair that was not designed to lean back, put his hands awkwardly behind his head, showing off his ease in times of chaos. On the battlefield, the real panic of on-site medical work is tangled hands and feet, not knowing where someone ends and where others start, and you hover the camera nearby.
The subject appears. The United Nations does not seem to really see the people around them; these two groups coexist with each other, but they are separate and ghostly, and the latter part of the campaign is to remind people that the United Nations first chooses to ignore how much in their work. They understand There are few, and how much will be cleaned up when they inevitably leave.
On the battlefield, the real panic of on-site medical work is tangled hands and feet, not knowing where someone ends and where others start, and you hover the camera nearby.
As the game progresses, the location becomes more complex-and more vivid. Mission goals are constantly related to size, geopolitics and individuals, peace and crisis. You move between the rooftop party and the rooftop shooting range-you will find spray cans and disposable cameras, and a mortar device with a face drawn on the barrel. In the higher-level underground United Nations facility (the Switch version also includes the four levels of the game Brilliant Macro DLC), you need to drive a Gatling gun and a huge plane to find a half-heart locket hung on a golden chain. This is a hidden object game, just like “Arnofini Portrait” is a hidden object game-it understands that there is a wonderful gossip about the things implied on the surface of the world, and the things that people have and live around have the ability to move we.
For players like me who know little about the world, the whole thing drives me to try and understand more things. I played Umurangi Generation on PC for the first time last year, and since then I have read Seaman, Christina Thompson, and the most recent research on the Polynesian Triangle. In it, I read a series of islands unfortunately on the route used by the Spanish conquerors, which means that the fate of these islanders was repeatedly “discovered” by the Europeans, and once again forced and once again in others about their own heroes. -And completely wrong-the role of submission in the story. Reading such things, it’s hard not to see “The Umurangi Generation” partly as the end of a situation that has taken place for centuries. Well, this is a generous and exciting game. Timely, but also eternal, like a perfect Polaroid snapshot.
