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This year marks the 15th birthday of Jet Set/Grind Radio, a game about Olympic-grade rollerbladers who bear their eccentric souls through colorful street art (when they aren't busy grinding across skyscrapers). One of the first titles to incorporate graffiti as a game mechanic, Jet Set's still one of the best a decade and a half later, when using graffiti as nothing more than a post-apocalyptic flavor enhancer has become a tired trend.
The Last of Us makes it look real
We can't all be Banksy. For every fine artist that graces the mean streets with their aerosol masterpieces, there's 1000 taggers who focus on ten-second spray jobs that are either incomprehensible or pretty damn dull. Most games don't tend to showcase that part of graffiti culture, preferring their nameless citizens to be articulate and ominous in their frantic wall-scribbling. The Last of Us, however, makes a point of including some more everyday graffiti, from messy tagging to deliberate notes that get their message across in the most functional way possible.
Dead Space gives you an important tip
Most 'graffiti' written in blood is hard to take seriously. That's especially the case when the message is vague and enigmatic, because you'd think when you're dying of massive blood loss you'd get to the point a lot faster. This once unique shortcut to creepy has been trod so often it's basically a five-lane highway, and now blood-based messaging almost always looks cheap. Almost, because Dead Space gets a special exemption. The first time you see CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS fingerpainted across the wall, it actually looks incredibly disturbing and gives you critical information.
She's always watching in Dishonored
While Dishonored does commit some of the standard game-graffiti sins ("Rats are eating our babies" was scary the first time, but less so the ten times after that), it's not all the same vague declarations of misery that make every post-apocalyptic reality look exactly alike. In addition to giving you information about Dunwall that's more specific than 'here be generic unrest', it's also tailored to Corvo and what in particular would catch his eye.
Get creative in Infamous: Second Son
Most games stick exclusively to graffiti as a controlled, atmospheric component, which is kind of ironic when you think about it. Infamous apparently decided it's had enough of the man's version of graffiti, and decided to put the spray can in your hands. Through a series of mini-games that require you to turn your controller on its side and shake it around (and you'll do it regardless of looking dumb because it's fun as heck), you choose between various 'good' and 'bad' stencil designs that you can paint across Seattle. You'll also get good or evil karma depending on if you paint something uniting or inflaming, so maybe stick to giant rubber ducks if you want to stay benevolent.
Something's not right in Portal
In the Aperture Science Labs, where everything at first seems so purposefully and perfectly arranged, it's the small inconsistencies that make you realize something's amiss. Like, say, a wall panel that's propped open a little too far. Get close enough to crawl inside, and the wall of manic scribbling that greets you removes any misguided feelings of safety you might have had.
Silent Hill 2 raises creepy questions
Silent Hill knows that less is more, especially when it comes to street visibility and safe places to hide. The series is known for using a visual or trick only once, making the most of the one moment when it would be scary and then not falling back on it again. But enough about that one damn bathroom jump scare (*shivers*), because Silent Hill 2 does something similar with graffiti. There are only two notable pieces in the whole game, but they're used to such chilling effect that I remember them to this day. And not by choice.
Left 4 Dead feels so familiar
Few games like to take the 'metro station bathroom stall' route with their graffiti, but sometimes that's just the most natural, embarrassingly human way to go. The safehouses in Left 4 Dead are littered with graffiti from survivors who've gone before, with messages varying from poetic notes to helpful information to mocking the guy who wrote the poem because oh wow, that was terrible. Special ridicule is reserved for the kind of eerie messages common to other games, and you can expect a note like "We are the real monsters" to be annotated with "You are the real moron" in response.
