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- Price: $1.99 (get it)
- Version: 1.1
- Official Site: Hi, How Are You
Looking back, it’s kind of hard to fathom that it’s been five years since on a sunny December day in a Edinburgh flat I was given The Late Great Daniel Johnston by my still-new girlfriend for my birthday. On receiving it, I remember a rush of surprise with a hint of confusion, not just at getting a nice and unexpected gift, but that I had no idea who this “Daniel Johnston” fellow was — and yet many of the musical acts that I respected, such as Beck and Eels, had banded together to record a tribute album for him.
It only really got more confusing when I put on the first disc, Daniel Johnston’s own music, and was confronted with scrappy recordings of what sounded like a squeaky voiced teen tunelessly whining about his need for love.
Johnston’s music is utterly strange when you have no idea what to expect. but quickly his music — charming and affecting in its honesty — became a sweet reminder of those odd rushes of emotion that you feel when you’re early in a relationship and still feeling things out; getting to know each other, the new highs, the pain of being apart. All those raw, untameable emotions that you don’t know what to do with.
So that’s what Johnston’s music represents to me, and so it’s kind of crazy to think it’s been five years and I’m still with that wonderful person who gave me that CD, and that his music still gives me that electric feeling I had on a sunny December day in an Edinburgh flat.
Since then, of course, lots of time has passed, and Johnston has risen slowly in prominence, perhaps mostly thanks to The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a film that covers his life and which I saw at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. It’s a moving film — both for fans of his music and those new to it — and in fact, though at the time I received that CD I maybe felt a little embarrassed at not knowing who he was, now I’m practically proud to have been introduced to him so early! (Thanks, Kate.)
I guess it’s in result to this prominence and the fact that there’s a definite captive market of Johnston fans out there that it makes, er, a kind of sense to create a Daniel Johnston iPhone/iPod touch game. There’s a guaranteed audience, which is more than you can say for most games on the App Store.
Named after Johnston’s famous “unfinished” album (the cover of which is the image on the oft-quoted Kurt Cobain t-shirt, most recently seen in Guitar Hero 5) I can’t help but find Hi, How Are You utterly bizarre. Johnston’s songs and art may be simplistic, but they’re absolutely full of ideas, as odd and conflicting as they may be; ideas relating to love, fame, depression, meaning. All the big concepts that we all struggle with. While it’s probably asking a bit much to expect a game that deals with all of that, I’d like to think it’s acceptable to expect more than a puzzle game.
But let’s get out there with what it gets right. The 3D art does a wonderful job of being faithful to Johnston’s drawings, far more than I could ever have expected. It’s a shame, actually, that the actual Daniel Johnston art used is relegated to little animations that wouldn’t pass muster on a flash website.
The gameplay is perfectly serviceable. You play one of Johnston’s characters, Jeramiah, as he goes through various transformations on his quest for true love (in the face of Satan’s opposition) and you do this by walking Jeremiah around to colour in mazes. It’s your basic maze game (think, er, Make Trax/Crush Roller, if that’s not too obscure) that just happens to be in 3D, have a coat of Daniel Johnston paint and a dash of sliding block puzzle.
But it’s playable, the controls are fine (well, I tend to stick to the virtual control stick, but you might like tilting better) and it’s certainly not a terrible example of a $1.99 game on the iPhone/iPod touch.
But is that really enough? Games based on musical artists are legendary for not really getting to the core of what makes a band or musician great or special, be it Journey (which does benefit from a sweet version of Don’t Stop Believin’) or Revolution X (though, admittedly, there’s nothing great or special about Aerosmith). And while we’re on the subject, isn’t The Beatles: Rock Band is another example of lazy “let’s just stick this band into an existing genre” no matter what extra gubbins they put in? (Do you remember the original conference call, where it was going to be really special, and they wouldn’t even discuss the idea it could just be a re-skinned version of Rock Band?)
It might seem like I’m digressing as I’m talking about a game that costs a couple of bucks, but consider this. If you had no idea who Daniel Johnston was, like I once did, and picked this game up because it costs the same as buying a couple of Johnston tracks but seems to offer more value, you really wouldn’t end up with any concept of Johnston’s music at all. Most of the levels are over before you’ve even really heard the Johnston that soundtracks them, and for someone who is very much popular because of his music, that makes the game feel rather redundant.
Shouldn’t the game really have been built around his music? Or at least in tandem with showing off his art? Right now it feels like an afterthought, and that Daniel Johnston is a “skin” for an otherwise unremarkable if competent puzzle game.
I feel lucky to know Daniel Johnston’s music, and that I was introduced to it in such a wonderful way that means it will always be special to me. So perhaps it’s for this reason that I find it sad that his music and art is being used for a something that isn’t special or unique at all, and it reminds me that gaming may be a wonderful new art form, but developers so rarely get what it can offer, especially in tandem with great music and art. Hi, How Are You really could offer thoughts on love, fame, depression, meaning; it could be another sweet reminder of the emotions of an early relationship.
Instead, it’s a maze game with a dash of sliding block puzzle.
What a terrible article.
This is not an objective review then. I kinda respect that you share part of yourself in this, although I think you forgot that you guys use an objective system of “5 out of 5 stars.” You can’t let personal bias interfere with what the game is all about.
There is no such thing as an objective review.
I was kind of waiting for a review like this that thinks about what it means to make a game about somebody’s art and life. Other reviews I’ve seen seem to have no qualms about the game being just a “quirky platformer/puzzle game” with a Daniel Johnston skin, as if that’s the best a game can do with such a potentially interesting license.
Matt: Can you tell us “what the game is all about”? I think the reviewer has a pretty good grasp of what the game is, and isn’t.