"You Are There": Verisimilitude in Gaming
I've been playing SMT: Devil Survivor 2 lately. I enjoy the Devil Survivor sub-series in part because the city of Tokyo is a character in the game. The maps are based on real Tokyo neighborhoods. The games have a very strong sense of place. This is less true in Devil Survivor 2 because that game takes place in several Japanese cities. But it's still there, to a lesser degree.
I enjoy games that pay attention to verisimilitude. Put simply, I like games that have a really strong sense of place. Shenmue is my favorite example of this. I've never been to Yokosuka but after playing the game, I really feel like I know the place (or at least the Shenmue-ified version of it).
The Grand Theft Auto games (after III) are also good at this. They're fictional cities, but they're populated with realistic-looking buildings and landmarks. You might even argue that IV was a little too good at this, the way it included a freeway system linking all the Liberty City buroughs together.
Jet Set Radio is another great example. Come to think of it, a lot of Dreamcast-era Sega games had a wonderful sense of place: JSR, Skies of Arcadia, Shenmue 1 & 2, even Crazy Taxi.
Sometimes a game can actually turn me off if it doesn't have a good sense of verisimilitude. Usually this happens when a game is based on a real city or place, yet doesn't stay true to that setting. A great example is The Saboteur. It's set in Paris, but the Paris in that game bears no real relationship to the real city. Which is too bad, because a game set in WWII-occupation-era Paris with real verisimilitude would be awesome.
Assassin's Creed III supposedly really gets colonial-era Boston right. I'm not interested in the game at all, but for the fact that it gets this representation right.
What are your favorite "verisimiltude" games? Games that really nail that sense of place? Games that faithfully replicate an actual place? Or games that have disappointingly bad verisimilitude?
Last edited by sleeve; 06 Feb 2013 at 05:53 PM.
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is always right. -Learned Hand
"Jesus christ you are still THE WORST." -FirstBlood
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