Michael Abbot over at The Brainy Gamer has an interesting write up on his thoughts about Afrika, the open-world safari game coming out for the PS3 later this summer.

When I write about games, I usually look for a hook; something about a game that makes it distinctive or meaningful to me. Afrika throws me a curve. I don’t know what the hook is. I love this game – I mean, I truly adore it – but I’m struggling to account for precisely why. I can describe the things I like about it, but none of them quite captures the essence of the experience this game delivers.

Maybe that’s because Afrika relies so much on my imaginative engagement. What I bring to the experience is at least as important as what the game brings me. When I play Afrika, I feel like an explorer with a purpose. My camera is a personal extension of me, and it encourages me to define my own objectives, capture my adventures, and share them with others.

From his description, Afrika seems to be a dynamic mix of Pokemon Snap with a pure open-world environment.  As someone who secretly adores Pokemon Snap, as well as not-so-secretly loving exploration in games, this is suddenly a title worth a little more of my attention.

STEALING EVERY MUG IN THE EMPIRE

In Part I, we left off in the late 90′s as technology began to offer larger worlds. As time went by, the open-world game continued to develop, and each successive iteration brought new elements, improvements, and occasionally, missteps.  The first game I encountered that truly felt like it contained pure exploration for exploration’s sake was The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (let it be noted here that I did not play Daggerfall, the prior installment, until after Morrowind).  Released in 2002, Morrowind put you in the role of a prisoner shipped off to the outskirts of the kingdom of Tamriel.  Once you finish the character creation process, you are given a simple quest and, beyond that, complete freedom to do whatever you wanted.  Vradenfall was a large, open place, with an estimated 6 square miles of terrain to explore.  Within the bounds of the island were plenty of caves, ruins, and points of interest of all types.  On top of that, Morrowind was styled in the Ultima mold, with individual locations being incredibly detailed; searching almost any home would quickly show you that you could pick up most anything (whether they were useful or not), and poke your nose into every nook and cranny that you so pleased (until the home’s residents noticed you…).

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The hillside is rough; bare rock protrudes through the ground between patches of scrubby grass.  Despite this, the trees grow thick here, their roots sunk deep into tilted earth, holding on with all their might.  From below, it looked like finding a safe path upward was impossible, but a thorough search revealed a narrow but well-worn animal trail winding a convoluted path towards the top.  The climb is slow, but the top grows ever closer.

With a final burst of energy, you reach the crown and are taken aback by what lay before you – a lake, as blue as the sky above, stretches from just below you towards the forest on the distant hills.  In the center of the lake stands a lone island, ringed with trees, and in the center of that island stands a shrine of whitest stone, its columns radiant in the noonday sun.  From the road below, you would have had no idea such a place existed, but now it beckons to you from across the calm water.

Looks like it’s time for a swim.

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