Developer: Plastic

Publisher: SCEA

Release Date: Oct. 9, 2008

System: PS3

ESRB Rating: E

Official Web site

0:00 While cleaning out my email I stumbled upon a months-old download code for this piece of self-described "interactive art." It might be unfair to expect a whole hour of interesting content from something like this, but they are charging money for it, so I don't think it's that much to ask.

0:01 The title screen appears after a decently long bit of loading, only there's no title, just a close-up of some sort of stone robot with undulating wires flitting about. Reminds me a bit of Shadow of the Colossus. I love the deeply resonant string music in the background.

0:02 My menu choices are "Linger," "Watch" and "Linger in Shadows and demoscene." Er, let's try Linger, I guess.

0:03 We start with a shot of an orange sky, which slowly pans down to fluffy white clouds. As the camera falls through a hole in the clouds we see painted images of what I assume is the development team, along with their names in stylized text. The ethereal music helps set the mood.

0:04 Once we get through the clouds, everything fades to black. Then the scene quickly rewinds, complete with VHS-style sounds and image distortion, back to a scene with a picture of a woman and some silver orbs hovering around a shiny cylinder. Leaning the controller to one side or the other rotates the orbs around their cylindrical axis. Shaking the controller, meanwhile, distorts the entire scene and threatens to undo reality itself. It looks like something's trying to break out of the TV!

0:06 After enough shaking we see an endless field of grey orbs and then another fade to black. The words "Linger in Shadows" appear one-by-one as a graffiti-style white message on a stark black background. The controller is shaking horribly. Industro-goth music plays as the camera keep jumping to new close-ups of the sinewy workings of this undulating machine connecting and moving. I can pause things with the X button, but otherwise I seem to have no control.

0:08 We rewind again, back to "2:10:961" of the "6:50:00" video, according to the on-screen progress bar. I can now use L2 and R2 to rewind and fast-forward. After doing this briefly, we quick-cut to a set of three columns on a mountain steppe, then an aerial view of a skyscraper-filled city. A black smoke monster flies out of a window and floats down to a wilting flower on a hovering mound of dirt. Floating pieces of trash surround it. Ugh ... is this going to be an environmental message? Because I already played Flower.

0:11 I love the stirring string music. As the black smoke continues its snaking around the air, past wrecked construction cranes, eventually reaching those white marble columns on the steppe. The scene rewinds again back to the floating flower, which I can rotate with the controller. Jump-cut to another view of the three columns, which surround a statue of a woman with her hands raised toward heaven. Cut to a slowly panning close-up of a sleepy basset hound on a rooftop, for no apparent reason. A cat looks on from afar as the hound leaps and doggie-paddles through the air towards the columns, his tongue waggling all the while. That is one happy-looking puppy ... until the black smoke comes. Just as the smoke threatens to engulf him ... more rewinding. My head hurts.

0:13 The camera is back behind the cat. Pressing triangle lets me tilt it a bit with the controller, but only a bit. More rewinding, and now we're staring deep into the cat's eye. Pressing O cuts to a zoom-in on the statue, which has a helix of shiny cubes rotating towards it now. Now I'm watching the dog get engulfed again, but this time I can tilt the camera. The dog becomes a petrified stone statue, still floating in midair. Cut back to the skyscrapers, where we finally see that mechanical beast from afar. It's a giant mask with thick, wire dreadlock-tentacles trailing behind as it flies about the city, knocking down scaffolding and bumping into the walls of skyscrapers as it does. It comes to the hovering hound statue just in time for a rewind...

0:18 Backing through the last sequence, I find I can turn on the lights as the mask-machine is coming out of its dark tunnel. I can also rotate the hound statue by tilting the controller. Who needs gameplay when you can ROTATE A STATUE! YEAH!

0:19 Shaking the remote transitions us to another shot of the columns, this time with blackness falling like thick rain about it. We rewind a bit and see the dreadlocked mask-machine uses its tentacles to crumble the dog statue. The smoke monster reappears here, forming into a hissing, angry face. Lightning crashes in the background. The mask floats toward the columns as the smoke monster pursues. As the mask picks up a portion of the columns, his "shoulders" are engulfed in smoke. He drops the column, causing lots of destruction as the screen fades to ... the credits. Wow. What just happened?

0:22 Apparently I got Trophies for unlocking the Sigils of Time, Motion, Chaos, Nature, Creation and Light. I also got something called "Greetings to Madwizards." Don't ask me HOW I did any of this ... I just work here.

0:23 This time I just choose to "Watch" and let the whole experience watch over me. Catch you in seven minutes or so.

0:29 And we're done. The whole thing holds together slightly better without the frequent rewinding, but I do mean "slightly." I noticed a few more interactive touches this time around, like the ability to rotate the trash surrounding the hover-flower. I think this would work well playing in an endless loop at some snooty gallery opening with wine and cheese and such, or on the wall of a hipster bar, or at a rave where everyone is stoned out of their minds and could appreciate it better. Experiencing it bored, alone and sober in my living room just feels wrong. It's beautiful, but incomprehensible if you have to pay attention.

0:30 I actually watched through the credits this time. They end with an image of a panda reclining on the round entrance of a cave. How random ... just like everything else in this piece of "interactive art."

0:31 The third and final menu options, "Linger in Shadows and demoscene," explains the project a bit: "Linger in Shadows is an experiment into the realm of Interactive Digital Art. It is not meant to be a game. Sometimes this gets confused because it is on the PLAYSTATION 3 and it goes well outside the norm of games." You can say that again! One question: If it isn't a game, why does it have Trophies? Just so people will download it?

0:32 The on-screen text goes on to explain that the demoscene is "the underground digital art culture that evolved in the late eighties." Interesting history, but nothing you can't find on Wikipedia, I bet.

0:36 I've got nearly a half hour left, so I guess it's back to "Linger" to explore around a bit. This time I plan to pause more and search for interesting things to do, if they're out there. Also, maybe I'll take some pictures to my hard drive, because why not?

0:39 Interesting ... in scenes with the black smoke I can press up and down on the d-pad buttons to make the smoke vibrate a bit. And when I say "interesting," I really mean "barely interesting."

0:42 I have a bit of fun spinning the smoke/trash in time with the string music. It would be almost trivial to turn this into a simple rhythm game. It'd be like the art school version of Space Channel 5.

0:43 Holy crap, I can control the undulating wave of silver cubes with the analog sticks. Well, maybe control is too strong a term. "Make it do weird shit" might be more appropriate.

0:45 Damn, that cat's gaze is PIERCING. I need a picture of that.

0:48 I can control where the mask-machine's face looks, but only when he's emerging from the dark cave entrance. Lame!

0:51 Stopping and looking for good pictures make me realize the beauty and care that went into all this random-ass imagery. I compose an excellent shot with the mask-machine looking down at the smoke monsters through the columns, a flash of lightning piercing the background. Incredible.

0:55 OK, I think I've exhausted everything I care to do with this non-game. Still, I've only gotten 57 percent of the Trophies. Makes me wonder what the hell else there is out there...

Would I play this game for more than an hour? No.


Why? I might bring it out to show friends who want to see what the PS3 can do, but overall I don't feel like there's much more I can get out of this six-and-a-half-minute interactive video.

This column is based on a downloadable copy of the game provided by the publisher.



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