Top 5 Games I'm Looking Forward to in 2016

Take a look at the Top 5 Games I'm looking forward to in 2016, including titles such as No Man's Sky and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

Full Review Here

Life Is Strange Episode 1 Review

For Max Caulfield, a photography student at the prestigious Blackwell Academy, life certainly is strange as she discovers that she has the ability to rewind time. In a game in which you are constantly faced with choices, from the menial to the fatal, this ability might be thought to undermine the meaning of the choices. If whenever you make a choice with a bad outcome you can just rewind time and pick the other option, then why even bother including choices in the first place, right? Well this game avoids it very nicely, with a limit on how far back in time you can travel, giving you the scope to take back the last 2 decisions you made. While most games including plot changing choices give you the consequences immediately, this game delays them so that your choices still come back to haunt you later on. Relatively early on, you can tell the Principal that someone had a gun in school, however the consequence to this action is not until right at the end of the episode. Furthermore, the episodic nature of the game leads you to wonder whether a seemingly insignificant choice at the time will turn into a key moment in the development of your story in the game.


Clearly, another benefit of the choices is replayability. Having finished Episode 1 within 4 hours, I find myself wanting to go back and see what happens if you make different choices, and what choices I failed to even see. This last point is another really interesting aspect of the game. Once you complete the episode, a screen shows displaying what other people chose in the situations you are faced with. These not only provide an intruiging perspective on how other people played the game, but it also reveals possibly hidden choices. For example, at one point Max was meant to hide from someone, and upon inspection there seemed to be nowhere, however when viewing the final screen and seeing that X% of people hid in that situation, it makes you want to work out how to do it.

The game focuses heavily on exploration for context, and you spend plenty of time walking around empty classrooms or garages snooping for pieces of information. In a way this is positive in that your exploration gives you more information on characters without the game forcing it down your throat with dialogue sequences literally telling you about people. Furthermore, the game does punish you for being too unsubtle - while in the room of another student you have the option to take the student's pregnancy test to look at it, and if you do so, she comes up to you and asks you to leave, chastising you for your nosiness. Another example of this is when in your friend Chloe's room, you can look in a box under the bed, and she will also accuse you of nosiness. However other times, you can literally stand at the back of a classroom for an hour and no one will bat an eyelid. While this is not exactly uncommon in games where scripted events only trigger within a certain range of a character, or upon approaching them, it would have been nice to see this implemented to aid the immersion.

The game also looks great. The way the art style of the game and the setting of it mesh together is fantastic. It is no coincedence that a game focused on a prestigious art academy looks so good, with some beautiful environments, and plenty of colour in every respect. You encounter blue hair dye, lush green clearings, sunlight streaming through a forest and (while the symbolism is probably a little tired now) a gorgeous blue butterfly. It's also interesting how although Max is a photography student, there is not a single 'real' photograph in the game, with drawings instead. This gives the impression that the game is not just hiding poor facial quality and a lack of textures behind its art style, but that it is intentionally designed in this way.

Overall then, a fantastic experience. Having not played a single Telltale game I cannot compare it to the genre which it seems to be most similar to, but this certainly makes me think I should give more games like this a shot - after I've played the other 4 episodes of Life is Strange that is!

'Medium Specific Content'

Recently, having played Her Story and Gone Home within a couple of days of each other, I've been thinking about why I liked Her Story and didn't like Gone Home anywhere near as much. While at a glance they may not strike you as particularly similar, I think that they do share a lot of aspects, which is why my preference surprised me:

-Firstly, they are both games that a lot of people like to say aren't even games, preferring the term 'interactive movie' or similar phrases, usually in a seeming attempt to justify them not liking them. They review games like these, saying things like 

"This is not a game. It is an interactive movie trying to sell itself as a game. It is a gimmick to sell to people who don't play video games or don't know what a video game is.' - frumps, Metacritic

"Another non game artsie project, this doesn't actually have any type of game play mechanics, this is more like a DVD porno with interactive features. If you want something like this thats way more interesting rent a porno with multiple selectable endings and viewing angles." - coustoe, Metacritic

as if it 'not being a game' means it fails to deliver an enjoyable experience. Not liking experimental games like Her Story and Gone Home is fine, but trying to claim they aren't games and so are by default bad is just ludicrous. It is no coincedence that the very same people who say these 'aren't even games' also are the ones with the most negative reviews.

-Her Story and Gone Home also both have to rely heavily on their stories for player enagagement, as with a lack of real gameplay features other than clicking on things to watch/read them, the gameplay itself is not going to provide any more appeal than answering blank emails.

However, the main difference between the two games (and the reason I much preferred Her Story) is that one is a good example of 'medium specific content' and another isn't. 

Correct! You guessed it - Her Story is and Gone Home isn't. 

What I mean by 'medium specific content' is content that cannot be transferred across entertainment mediums (or 'media' if we're being fancy with our correct plurals). So let's say we have a piece of content, a story perhaps. This is not 'medium specific content' since the story could be in book form, it could be a film, a game etc.

Her Story is 'medium specific content' as it can only be portrayed in a game. If you made a film of the story of Her Story, you would completely miss the point. If you go and watch the 'movie' version of Her Story, with all 7 of the featured police interviews in chronological order, it's still an interesting story, but it completely loses the essence of what makes it so good. The game's story is unravelled in a random order by the player according to their decisions, and so having it spill out in order ruins the experience. 

Some games, however, are clearly not 'medium specific content', and the recent trend in film adaptations of games displays this perfectly. Currently, there are blockbuster films being make of the World of Warcraft universe, The Last of Us, in addition to the Unchartered and the Assassin's Creed franchises just to name a few. Sure, these films will most likely be terrible, but they could in theory be good, and would successfully transfer the content to a different medium. Gone Home falls into this category as it doesn't have the elements above that can't be translated. A telling criticism of 'walking simulator' games like this is that you can get the same experience from watching a video of someone playing it. The story and gameplay of Gone Home also could be transferred over to an atmospheric horror movie with the camera from a 1st person perspective.

Now that we've established what 'medium specific content' is, here's why it's important to me. I feel that to produce 'medium specific content' shows a lot about a game. Firstly, it shows that a lot of thought has gone into how to make said game. Rather than just having a good story and making a game around it, it shows that there is a focus on how the game works mechanically. While you may say that there are no mechanics in a game like Her Story, in my opinion it is a hugely mechanically driven game - mechanics are not the same as gameplay. Her Story is so good because it is a game which limits you to 5 clips per search term, forcing you to keep trying different words to find crucial clips, piecing together a puzzle.

So that's it - 'medium specific content'. Not sure it's the best label, but it's something I look for and appreciate when I see it.

Her Story Review

Putting aside whether this is a game or not (I think it is and I don't care what you say), this is an experience like nothing I've ever seen. The player is put in front of a 90s computer, with full 4:3 resolution (*gasps*), ancient desktop icons and that immersive glare (*oohs and aahs*). 

You progress through the game by searching keywords from short clips of a series of 7 police interviews with a woman regarding the murder of a man named Simon. For each search term, the first 5 video clips in chronological order are displayed, and from these you pick up new possible keywords to try. The 7 interviews in full only span 1hr30, but they are split up into short 15 second(ish) clips and so the game provides a few hours of entertainment, with plently of time spent mulling over possible clues.

Firstly, the story: clearly, in a game like this the story has to be complex and interesting, as it is the sole motivator for continuing, since the gameplay itself consists of just typing words and clicking, and in this respect Her Story is a success. The story is well-crafted, with the kind of devastating revelations required to keep it engaging, and there are enough leads and red herrings to keep the story from being a matter of typing in important words without thinking, over and over again. That said, in a game where the way in which the story unfolds in entirely dependent on the user, there is always the possibility that you might accidentally stumble across some highly revealing clips early on and have it all worked out within 30 minutes through no fault of your own - imagine if the final few cutscenes of The Last of Us had a 10% chance of playing whenever you reached certain points early on in the game. However, the game does prevent this well. The limiation of your search results to the first 5 in chronological order means that it is very difficult to get the final few important clips accidentally at the start.

Furthermore, once you 'have it worked out', there's still more to do. While I understood what had happened within 150 clips or so (a couple of hours of gameplay), I continued to search until I had found every single clip of the over 350. The fact that the story was so interesting that I felt compelled to understand every single moment of the interviews says a lot. In fact, continuing to play after you know what happened is effectively replaying the game. You notice all of the little references and bits of foreshadowing you would when reading a book or playing a game for the second time. The game also has tools to aid the completionist, as you can increase the amount of clips displayed to 15, and view a random clip at any time in order to complete your database.

The feel of the game is excellent too. With suitable sound effects and music, an immersive interface, and the poor video quality and subtitle font that perfectly emulate that of a 90s videotape, this game really keeps you encapsulated. The acting of Viva Seifert is also good as she portrays a diverse and wide range of emotions without seeming like she's overacting or spelling it out too much, and the fact that the videos are of police interviews helps this, as she needs to be thorough and describe everything in enough detail, so the game doesn't feel like it is giving you the answers too easily, retaining that immersion.

Overall, my favourite thing about this game was that it could only be a game. Some have said that this game could just be watched on Youtube to get the full experience, but I disagree. This is not a game that stops when you step away from your computer. You continue questioning, reasoning and deducing, even when you've completed the game, trying to fully get to the bottom of the characters' motivations and stories. Having literally watched a movie version of this game, with all of the 7 interviews run together and in order, I can safely say that this is not something that would be 'better as a movie'. You can imagine many fantastic film adaptations of videogame stories, but this would not be one of them. Linear games with the same story however you play would make good films, but this game is different for everyone who plays. Your road to finding out what happened is entirely based upon what you find important in clips, and with so many no two people will do it alike. The fact that they can only be portrayed in this form is something not a lot of games do, and it's something I think is a real hallmark of success.

The only negative I can think of associated with this game is that there could have been more than just videos. At some points, it would have been nice to have a picture related to the case from which you could extrapolate relevant search terms. However this is a minor qualm, and I think this game is a must-play for people who enjoy these 'experimental' games, especially at its relatively inexpensive price, though it's maybe not for those accusing it of being 'Polygon-bait' or 'not even a game anyway'.

A Belated Look At... Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons

Today we look at Brothers - A Tale of Two sons, an indie story-driven puzzle-platformer from Starbreeze Studios. With a Steam user score of 10/10 and a 90 Metacritic score, will it live up to the hype?

Full Review Here (Youtube)

A Belated Look At... The Witcher

 

I look at CD Projekt Red's initial claim to fame - The Witcher. With the series concluded recently with the critically acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I give the first game in the series (from 2007!) a shot.

Full Review Here (Youtube)