PSP Game Review: Patapon

I swear, five minutes of playing Patapon, or being in the same room will having you humming "PATA PATA PATA PON" all day long.

A lot of people have spoken about the gameplay of this PSP game (here, and here, and here), and it is revolutionary, but I'm not going to spend time on it here. What I really want to discuss is the game's aesthetic.

(I must give some credit to fellow blogger K. Adam White, as he wrote on this very same topic not long ago, and introduced me to the game.)

The visual style is credited to a French artist named Rolito (his blog). Simply put, his style is about objects in the foreground having their detail obscured in total black silhouette (with a little white for accent), while the background is awash in a highly saturated color or two with patterns done in subtle variations on those colors. It is a captivating style, and will keep your eyes glued to the glossy PSP screen for hours. In fact, for me at least, it's not just the nifty rhythms that keep me playing; it's also the juicy colors and boldly black and white Patapons that are like delicious candy for the eyes.

Since the foreground is so sparse with detail, your eye is draw to the bright colors of the background - but since the background is nothing specific, or at least nothing that you need to focus on, it becomes more of an experience, rather than a depiction. In a way, it resembles JMW Turner's paintings - colors used to convey experience and emotion or just plain ambiance rather than specific objects or people.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that my own pet artistic style at the moment is something akin to Rolito's, though less cartoonish and more realistic. Some photos I have taken, like the one to the right, are in the same spirit as Rolito's drawings, though not as "playful".

In fact, to evangelize my own variety of Rolito's style, I've started a new blog: Now Silhouette. A few times a week, I will take a commonplace thing - an apple, an advertisement, google's front page, a Michelangelo, whatever - and redo it in my own style. It should be a fascinating experiment!

In the mean time, three cheers to Rolito and Patapon!