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Each Month, we invite élite art critic Braithwaite Merriweather to appraise the box art of the latest game releases. In between his time spent wandering the corridors of culture, Merriweather writes on a freelance basis for various publications, including Snitters and Nuneaton à la Carte. If you are unaware of his prowess, rest assured; he’s on a crusade to educate the unwashed. Put simply, he’s a man that needs no introduction.
Just Cause 4
Another figure with their back to us, another landscape besieged, carnage spread high like cream cheese on a bagel. I describe not Mrs May, nor the current state of the state – nor even yours truly, stood against the backdrop of the Chelsea Arts Show – but of the tropes, as common as muck, that dominate most video game covers. But there’s something different about this one. That I should falter and swoon at the sight of Just Cause 4 may well give you cause to wonder about the strength of my moral constitution. I would remind you, then, of the credo of the critic. One must always be on the lookout for – in the immortal words of Virginia Woolf – the diamonds of the dust heap.
A cooly entreating tint of blue is slipped over the entire affair like a naughty contact lens. Our attention is dragged from the lone figure to a force of nature. A tornado: a sinewy stanchion of loaded, pregnant blue twisting down and fusing cloud with earth. It’s Van Gogh! Merciful Christ it’s Van Gogh! God bless those bastards down at Square Enix; they’ve pulled off a heist! It’s an inversion of Starry Night, with its cypress tree, like a lick of green flame, snaking up to the sky.
But why? What purpose would they have to channel this beauteous imagery? Perhaps they mean to explore the madness that consumed Van Gogh. Many have wondered what could possibly constitute just cause for the severing of one’s own ear. Perhaps this lone soldier, with his wrist-mounted grappling hook, holds the answer. Or perhaps he sees this tropical vista as his canvas, with a grenade launcher for a paint brush. I’ve thought similar things while wandering the dull streets of Tower Hamlets – unfortunately, the slobbish community support workers in the area can’t differentiate between vandalism and cultural enlightenment.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
If, like me, you’re used to a degree of disorder in life (certainly, my local council’s recent failure to assist me financially, despite the numerous public services I provide, has ensured that mine has stayed chaotic), then there may be some pleasure for you in the art that accompanies Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. A cacophony of colour, one must exert considerable force on one’s eyes merely to get from the bottom to the top. When you do – much like my ex-partner’s solicitor’s dog – you’ll be none the wiser to what’s been dropped on you.
What are these lifeforms? The pink spongiform blob; the girl, who appears to have merged mammal with mollusc; the bulbous reptile, with his lollygagging tongue; the dragons and angels that float in the firmament above. It’s a clear re-staging of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, and I applaud its pluck. Unlike Just Cause 4, however, this channeling of Dutch afflatus doesn’t deliver me to ecstacy; sadly, it barely numbs the retinal pain of having to look upon the work. What it does do, though, and what we must all cherish in this month of taking stock and looking forwards, and back, is that the old masters still hold sway in this age of the Day-Glo and the discontent.
PUBG (PS4)
And then, of course, there’s PUBG: the very definition of discontent. It’s lazy, cynical pap, and a work not only unfit for consumption, but unfit to exist at all. If this front cover were locked in a vault and poured over with cement, it is highly likely that we would all still feel the headache of its radiation above ground. A man stands wearing jeans, a white shirt, open at the neck, a black tie, a backpack, and what looks like a welding helmet – though we need it more than he does.
What is there to say, really? It’s rare that a single object is the culmination of everything one loathes. (My mother managed the feat not long ago, when she informed me that I wouldn’t be included in the inheritance in order to give my sister the support she needs to pursue a degree in law.) The cover to PUBG suggests that in the absence of thought, there must be explosions, and that, in actual fact, they can fill in for the absence of a background as well. This man has a machine gun strapped to his back like a guitar, as if he might bring us bullets like folk songs from the front line. His face – much like my ex-partner’s solicitor’s address – is concealed from public view.
The main problem here is inbreeding. This work looks neither forwards nor backwards but inwards to its own kin, vomiting up facsimiles of a million games with nothing of its own to say. It’s only breath of release comes by way of the gentle sky blue at the top, above the flames. It looks as if it’s been assembled with the heartless emphasis on demographic, like a roomful of lawyers composed in a photoshop battle royale. (Perhaps I should get in touch with my sister and ask if she was involved.)
