Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Innovative"

I've heard a lot about Rez ever since it first came out years ago on the Saturn and PlayStation. I was always curious about this entirely orignal take on not only the on-rails shooter but the whole mission statement of video gaming in general.

Rez is about art, not just shooting the impersonal polygons coming at you. Rez is a re-creation of the synasthesia suffered by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky (synasthesia being the transposition of sensations usually experienced in one sense into another: e.g., feeling an object through seeing). These are just two of the contentions made about Rez.

Firstly, Rez is indeed a game based on an approach to visual and sound design which places the emphasis on style and a game world which slowly builds in shape and auditory complexity. The game's love of polygons, grid patterns and psychedlic colours is in line with contemporary trailblazers in the world of design. The pulsing sound that your character's lasers make indeed adds to the participatory element in the game: in fact, the music -and especially the throbbing input of these lasers- recalls seminal British IDM group Autechre, and as such reperesents another claim to Rez's status as "art".

And this is where the reputation of the game is a bit overblown. Yes, the initial concept of Rez is fantastic: a 2001-style trip down psychotropic corridors. The contention about synasthasia is simply misplaced, seeing as you really only use sight and sound to experience the game. The gameplay itself is in fact fairly straightforward, and the game itself is very short-lived for anyone looking for an old-school shooting challenge. The game itself is basically an on-rails shooter that leads to a set endpoint.

Rez often seems more like a demonstration of what consoles could do in the past (and now, thanks to the ultra-crisp HD portion of the game that comes with the Live download). In short, Rez is a beautiful but slightly overrated experience. It is worth the cost of the download, but feels like an unexplored route for what games should have become in an unrealised future.