GameCyte

In the sky, a sunlit woman. A beating heart of cloud. In the shadows, a drop of pearlescent liquid surrounded by flowing machinery arms. A black smoke monster made from a hundred thousand ephemeral earwigs. A stuffed teddy bear, a giant stone dog, a curious cat, a robot squid and ultimately, a statue of a woman raising her hands to the heavens. What do these all have in common?

They are the players of Linger in Shadows, an abstract, artistic, interactive and (as you might expect, based on the list above) utterly nonsensical tech demo exactly six minutes and fifty seconds in length… which arrived on PlayStation Network yesterday for a cool $3. Is it worth a look? Oh, absolutely. Is it worth your purchase? That’s a slightly more difficult question.

At a very basic level, you can probably decide whether or not to give Linger in Shadows a chance based entirely on the trailer below. It shows over a minute of game footage, and thereby approximately one-seventh of the full title.

But of course, Linger in Shadows isn’t a video — it’s a real-time 3D experience designed to demonstrate the power of the PlayStation 3 hardware — and as a result, you’ll likely spend a good deal longer than seven minutes exploring the possibilities. You can manipulate several objects with the analog sticks, angle the camera using the Sixaxis controls, take screencaps of the flowing scenery, feel the experience through your Dual Shock 3’s rumble (assuming you have one) and most impressively, fast forward and rewind through the real-time experience in one one-thousandth of a second increments while keeping all that interactivity intact.

To be frank, if you go into Linger in Shadows hoping for a game, you’re probably going to be disappointed. There’s far too little to do to engage a sandbox gamer, and the ridiculous, open-ended “narrative” has little to interest those looking for a story. Collectors might do well to pick up the title for its sixteen hidden trophies, but none requires much effort to find… and while each section of the title’s ‘Linger’ mode requires you to find and do something to unlock the next section, the challenge and subsequent thrill of discovery is somewhat reduced by the fact that the demo tells you what to do via on-screen prompt.

But if you take Linger for what it is — a piece of technically impressive art — it’s hard not to be captivated by the little details. The way a cloud of nuts, bolts and nails gets flung about by each of the robotic squid’s ten tentacles. The pitiful cry of a dog desperately paddling through the air. The sensation of diving through a cat’s eye into a tunnel of identical metal cubes. The subtle camouflage of a stuffed panda bear, invisible and yet in plain sight.

When I finished my first run through Linger in Shadows, I had no idea what the hell it was I had just seen, but I think that’s part of the point. Among other things, Linger is designed as an introduction to the demoscene — a subculture all about computer art — and by piquing gamers’ curiosity like this; by not allowing them to dismiss Linger as a cool video, or a neat game, or even a tech demo, but something different, I wonder if the title’s creators might indeed inspire those who download to figure out what, and check out the demoscene for themselves.

At the risk of sounding pompous, Linger is what you make of it… and so I can’t really recommend its purchase to all. But I will say that if you’re interesting in seeing what your PS3 is capable of — or if you want some quick PSN trophies — $3 is a easy impulse buy.

Related posts

• The Current Generation of Hardware: What the ESRB Ratings Suggest
• The Ascension of the PS3
• Special Edition MGS4 Bundle Gimped
• Sony’s Broken Promises, According to Microsoft
• Sony Says PS3 Trophies Compulsory in 2009