Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Freeman's Mind

Freeman's Mind is specific type of webshow known as "machinima".  It is essentially using a video game's control and displays along side a scripted dialogue to act out a story or music video.  Some games are more suited for this type of animation - mostly, games that give you enough freedom on your playable character to act out a story line that's not in the game essentially.  First person shooters such as Half-Life are perfect since there is not a lot of cutscenes and a lot of non player character interaction is done through the intelligent AI of the Valve's Half-Life engine.  Characters aren't scripted to interact with you but will interact with you when the opportunity arises (like being with in the immediate vicinity of them or toggling them for dialogue).

Freeman's Mind could more or less be a walk through of Valve's award winning game, Half-Life; however, the effort put into coordinating some entertaining monologues along side playing Half-Life itself is quite hilarious and (in my books) classify this as a machinima well worth watching all its 28 episodes (so far).  Each episode go for about 10 minutes and is suppose to be the mind of the playable character Gordon Freeman as he tears through the labyrinth of the Black Mesa complex and its collection of dimensional aliens and military operatives sent to eliminate indiscriminately the alien infestation as well as the Black Mesa researchers (including Freeman himself).  Contrary to the Freeman who is heroically performing this super-human task of surviving his way out of the Black Mesa complex the monologue plays Freeman to an obtuse, self serving asshole, put into this survival situation by his oppressive employers and incompetent work mates.  To the actor's (or script writer's) credit the dialogue seems totally ad-lib but believable and never once through all 28 episodes does the actor break character except for one, episode 27, where the actor decided to perform the whole 10 minute dialogue as a plundering pirate.

Freeman's Mind is quite entertaining and puts a humorous spin to the story behind Half-Life for any one who has or has not played Half-Life.  You can check out all 28 episodes at www.acursedfarms.com or on YouTube searching for "Freeman's Mind".