Clearing Out My Backlog

If you spend a decent amount of time playing PC games, you’ve likely heard of statistics like these; that somewhere around 37% of all registered Steam purchases have never been played by the people who bought them. When I first heard numbers like this years ago, I thought it was unfathomable that so many people would go on impulse shopping sprees and never even play the games they bought, because at the time I only ever bought a game when I knew I was going to play it immediately. But as I got o

lder and had more immediate access to money that could easily be put into Steam, I began buying up games much more often, whether there was a sale or not. Because of this, I’ve developed a backlog of games I really did want to get around to playing, but I never could find the time or motivation to get into them. So in June of 2023, I set aside a large group of games in my Steam library as well as some others that I owned outside of Steam as games that I wanted to play to completion for the first

time, and I decided that I would try to get through as many as I could between now and the end of the year. So now, I’d like to go over every single one, because many of them were very interesting. So let’s get into that. I’d like to start by talking about two games that I should’ve gotten to years ago because of their status as classic indies – Bastion and Transistor. Rather than play the Supergiant Games lineup in order of their release, I actually ended up going backwards. I started with Had

es a couple years ago since it was a newer release that was getting a lot of praise, which I do think was a bit overblown. The game is obviously very high quality in practically every aspect, but I didn’t feel any particular urge to play past my first successful run even though you’re supposed to go through multiple runs in order to finish the story. I just didn’t connect with the gameplay style very much, and I’m also decently picky when it comes to roguelikes that feel like they could be bette

r as traditionally designed games, which is probably why I put off trying the rest of the Supergiant catalog for so long. That being said, I did realize that I’ve been missing out on two widely revered classics in the leadup to the summer starting, so I bought both Bastion and Transistor. I played Transistor first, so I’ll start with that one. In typical fashion for Supergiant’s lineup, the game’s presentation is impeccable. Every corner of the world is vividly presented in this hand-painted sty

le that is consistently beautiful across the entire game. The story is mostly kept in the background as something extra for those who take a liking to the minimalist world building the game does, but it’s all backed up by the main voice actor for the titular transistor, who gives a very unique performance delivered in this husky whisper that’s always pleasant on the ears. “Hey Red. We’re not gonna get away with this, are we?” The music is also very fitting, especially since it matches the flow o

f the gameplay as the combat tracks switch out for the sounds of quiet contemplative humming while you plan out your next move. And it’s that flow of strategic planning sessions interspersed with real time gameplay in the signature Supergiant style that makes Transistor unique next to Bastion and Hades. You can run around in real time just like in the other games, but at the press of a button you can use the turn function that allows you to plan out a sequence of actions and execute them far fas

ter than you could in real time. I’m typically not one for strategy games or even mechanics that slow the pace of gameplay like bullet time, but the turn function in Transistor feels like a very deliberate part of the pacing of combat, which makes it much more palatable to me than the slow crawl of complex strategy games or the bullet time mechanics seen in games that feel like afterthoughts. For one’s first playthrough of the game your strategies don’t need to be extremely optimized to get thro

ugh the combat encounters, and you can get away with just unloading every ability you have into the enemies during your “turn” which helped to make the game not so overly slow. Transistor is also an RPG of sorts, in that you gain experience from combat which lets you specialize into a build. This other sort of planning that occurs between combat encounters is something I enjoyed much more than the planning that happens in combat, which is helped by the sheer variety of builds that can be made in

a deceptively short game. Every unique ability you unlock can be used as one of four activated attacks, but they can also be placed in passive slots OR as modifiers on your main abilities. Every single ability has a unique synergy with every single other ability when used as a modifier, making for an incredible amount of build variety. Toying around with different combinations was another part of the gameplay that kept things engaging, and finding powerful combinations capable of breaking the g

ame’s balance seems to be part of the fun by the end. By the last hour of the game, I had found a setup that allowed me to clear the late game encounters without using the turn mechanic at all. This was concerning at the time since I was worried the final encounter would be anticlimactic because of this, but that turned out to not be an issue, as the final boss delivered an incredible twist on the gameplay that turned out to be the most challenging and memorable part of the game for me. This is

capped off by a simple yet satisfying ending to a short and sweet game, and while I’m usually not the one to complain about games being too short, my only real complaint about Transistor is that the gameplay could’ve easily stayed engaging for twice the game’s four hour runtime, assuming there was enough story to back it up. You can continue through to new game plus after the game ends and play until you reach the level cap, but I didn’t plan on playing past the end of the story for the time bei

ng. Regardless of that, Transistor was still a great game that I can recommend if you’ve been neglecting to try it like I had been for so long. Immediately after finishing Transistor, I played through Bastion. Under modern scrutiny this game feels a bit dated, even next to other early indies of this era. It has aged by far the worst from a technical standpoint, as the game consistently crashes given an hour or two of playtime on the PC version, or it did on my computer at least. The game’s visua

ls are just as stylized as Transistor and Hades, but it mixes this with basic linear motion for moving objects that doesn’t mesh well with the hand painted style. The game also seems to have issues with fullscreen resolution scaling, though to be fair, other indies of the XBLA era like Spelunky HD also suffer from this. The music ranges from songs that flawlessly complement the game’s narrative to others that just work fine as a backdrop for the combat. One combat song that plays in a lot of gam

eplay sections has a stock stinger sound effect that I found distracting, though that’s a very minor nitpick that I found more so funny than anything else. This gameplay style is also something that was in its infancy here, and only really got the polish it deserved years later in Hades. The progression systems in Bastion are not nearly as interesting as those seen in Transistor, with currency being handed out very liberally and weapon upgrades being very basic stat increases which, although the

y offer a choice of two upgrades, basically boil down to two paths in order to get the most synergy out of them. The tonics don’t do much to increase build variety either, and building your own loadout of two weapons also doesn’t do much since weapons can’t be used directly in conjunction with each other. The various weapon challenges that are progressively unlocked over the game are mostly tough but fair, aside from two standouts that were very frustrating. The shield challenge takes a ton of t

ime to get going after restarting and encourages slow, passive play that doesn’t mesh well with the fast-paced combat seen in the rest of the game, and the dueling pistols challenge demands precise reactions and very fast mashing that made my wrists ache by the end of each attempt. While I just went through a lot of negatives there, the core combat of hitting/shooting enemies until they die feels great, even if it is a bit simplistic. In some ways it’s the opposite of Transistor, where I had mor

e fun putting together my build than I did actually playing the game, whereas in Bastion I had much more fun in combat compared to the relatively shallow progression systems. But I would say that Bastion’s greatest selling point is its story. It’s much more straightforwardly told compared to Transistor, and I think that works in the game’s favor. The omnipresent narrator is voiced by the same actor I mentioned in Transistor, and although the constant narration can occasionally become grating, th

e excellent voice performance helps soften the edges of the weaker areas of the script. But while the script on the micro level can be underwhelming at times, the macro level narrative told by the game has a timeless quality to it that I felt despite this being my first playthrough. The backstory of this world is delivered piece by piece by finding items throughout the levels and completing optional dream sequences, and by the end it turns out to be a morally grey story of warring civilizations

that intertwines with more personal conflicts between individuals. It’s not like other stories of war told through games where the player is beaten down by a sense of guilt over their actions, but it still manages to make you consider who could possibly be in the right in a situation like this. The “final moral choice” trope is one I usually dislike in these sorts of linear stories where the player isn’t given much choice in the narrative up to the ending, but I think it actually fits in very we

ll within this story. It feels like the game lets you soak in the backstory of this world, the precarious nature of the conflict between the two major parties, and the events that happen directly to the protagonist, and then it simply asks you what you think of it all in the end, which feels much more seamless than how this trope is usually handled. So I’m glad to have gotten around to both of these games, as they definitely lived up to the reasonable hype and expectations I had going in compare

d to how I felt about Hades, and I can recommend them both if you somehow haven’t played them by now. Another game I played is ULTRAKILL. This game has been sitting in my library for a few years, though I did try the game once before stopping at the end of the prologue. I’m not sure why I didn’t continue back then, but on this second attempt to get into the game I was happy to continue past that point. ULTRAKILL is a boomer shooter, though it definitely feels more modern in its design than other

games of this kind. Movement is very much streamlined and designed for consistency, while still allowing for a good amount of speed to be built up with just a few simple mechanics like the slide and dash. The weapons feel like classic FPS staples that have been over-tuned to an absurd degree, as well as being very versatile thanks to side-grades that the game essentially gives you for free. The coin pistol is an obvious standout example of a very unique concept for a weapon that actually change

s what you aim for rather than just doing more damage. The other weapon variations are not nearly as interesting as that one, but they still allow for the comically exaggerated, satisfyingly gory kills that are incentivized by a ranking system for each level, further promoting replayability for these levels that are full of secrets to discover. All that stuff is great, and on top of that it’s very clear how this game found its success from its clean graphical style and its sense of style and ton

e all around. Visually the game is very blocky and low-fidelity, but never in a way that gets in the way of the mood of these levels by maintaining a solid balance between the nostalgic feel of the simplistic visuals and more modern lighting and shading effects that allow the darker tones of the game to carry through. Those visuals also work out very well for the story, as it helps take the edge off the very verbose and grim text passages found in the levels. For every line of self-serious prose

in the game’s writing, there’s an over-the-top music track or ridiculous combat sequence with insane amounts of gore that keeps the game feeling very much self-aware. This dichotomy is also perfectly represented by the character of Gabriel, as he spits out these serious biblical condemnations of the player character while also sounding like a whiny sore loser in the process. His voice acting dives into the territory of self-aware camp that keeps the light story content in the game incredibly en

tertaining by providing comedic breaks at key moments. As much as that sense of style and some satisfying movement make this game worth playing, I can’t say it’s perfect. Particularly, I take issue with many of the boss fights in the game. Both fights against Gabriel are probably best-case scenario bosses for a game like this, but all the other unique boss encounters range from mediocre to very frustrating. The giant bosses are nice spectacles, but they offer little in terms of gameplay and are

very simple to fight once you figure out all their tricks. What’s worse are the two fights against V2, which is a concept that I think just doesn’t work in an FPS game like this. It’s clear that these fights are supposed to be against an equal – another machine sent down that has the same equipment and skills as you. This obviously breaks when you consider its massive health bar compared to the player’s, but that’s standard when it comes to any of these boss fights in any game that’s against a s

upposed “equal.” The problem is more so that V2 is a tiny target that moves just as fast as your own character, which makes it frustratingly difficult to hit your shots compared to other enemies. This fight also exposes a flaw in the game’s healing system, which appears to not be based on collecting physical showers of blood like the saying “BLOOD IS FUEL” would imply, but you instead have to be close to an enemy when that shower comes out. It’s more consistent this way, but it’s also more consi

stently dangerous to get up close to enemies, which isn’t a problem with most enemies since they have clear tells for when it’s safe to get up close and heal. I can’t say the same for V2, and if it does have any tells it was difficult to see because of how small of a target the boss is, making healing off any damage you may take during the fight feel like a game of luck. But aside from those two low points, ULTRAKILL stays at a very engaging level for the rest of its runtime, while also reaching

great highs during the fights against Gabriel. ULTRAKILL is probably a game you’ve already played if you’re interested in boomer shooters, but if you’ve happened to avoid it for whatever reason, it’s definitely worth the asking price even despite the game not being complete at the time of writing, and I’m very much looking forward to playing the rest of the game when it finally releases. Another game I played is Strayed Lights. I was made aware of this game because I had previously bought the J

ourney soundtrack on Bandcamp, and I got an email from Bandcamp saying that Austin Wintory had released a new soundtrack. The Sekiro-like combat system that was advertised made me interested in the game itself, so despite the relatively low Steam reviews I decided to buy the game. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this game, because the experience overall was very forgettable and many aspects felt unfinished. Combat during boss fights was enjoyable enough to carry the game through its runtim

e, but everything in-between those fights is very messy. The game is an action RPG paired down to its base essentials, which I can appreciate if it is meant to streamline and condense the experience into a tightly and deliberately paced package, but there’s a good amount of filler in-between the bosses that does nothing to expand upon the game’s simple combat system. There isn’t any sort of level design since every area is a dressed-up hallway with brief stops for gank fights. There was never an

y point where the terrain that combat is fought on mattered, nor were there any significant branching paths or secrets aside from the occasional extra skill point. The bosses are mostly very well presented and offer a fun challenge, though there are a couple blemishes on this part of the game as well. In-particular, the ape fight in the jungle area had noticeably lower-quality animation work than anything else in the rest of the game, which to be fair is a high bar since the other bosses have so

me excellent attack animations. It's because of odd bits like that as well as many aspects of the game’s presentation that makes Strayed Lights feel incomplete. The environments are beautifully realized and do very well to dress the corridors between bosses in some great eye candy, and I just wish the character models and animations during story scenes looked less cartoonish. This was probably deemed necessary because they needed to show clear emotion without any sort of voice acting, but it did

n’t help the tone the game was clearly trying to go for. I see the game’s soundtrack as a microcosm of Strayed Lights as a whole. It’s obviously very well composed and produced as is to be expected from the composer for Journey, but it’s also somewhat forgettable despite its strengths because it’s drowned out by the sound effects and often-times lacks a memorable melody to latch onto, in the same way that the enjoyable parts of gameplay like the bosses are diluted by lots of filler. So I enjoyed

some of my time with the game, but I can’t give a particularly strong recommendation. It may be better if you haven’t played Sekiro before since that may have made the game too easy for me, but I obviously can’t know what that experience is like, so keep that in mind if you decide to try this one. Another game I played was Mundaun. I bought this game on a whim a while ago, figuring it looked interesting and that I would get to it eventually. Conveniently, in the time I spent putting that off, t

he game was picked up by Annapurna and given a sort of director’s cut update, and because of this I decided it was the perfect time to try it out. The first thing you’ll notice about this game is how it looks. The style it goes for may feel confused at first, until you realize that every single texture is hand-drawn in plain pencil, though much of the time the word “scribbled” is more accurate than “drawn.” There’s a trick that some pieces of horror media employ where there’s something weird abo

ut the story’s world that is shown but not acknowledged as being weird compared to the real world. It’s the kind of subtle horror that is epitomized by series like The Twilight Zone, though it could be something as simple and maybe even unintentional like awkward, stilted acting and odd translation work as seen in early Japanese horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Mundaun’s analogous trick is its art style, and it works quite well to complement the strange, paranormal rules of this

rural village and its eccentric inhabitants. Another aspect that adds to this is the modeling work on the human characters, particularly the lip-syncing that looks like Half-Life or Morrowind, which I mean in the best possible way since it adds to the uncanny feeling of this environment. On the flipside of this, Mundaun’s gameplay is quite familiar and simplistic when it comes to first-person exploration-driven games. It comes with some light survival horror elements, since you’ll have to manage

resources while strategically killing or avoiding enemies which have vague rules to be discerned over the course of the game. While the combat is just serviceable at best, the exploration is much more fleshed out and interesting, though that may be a matter of personal preference. Regardless, the game kept a good pace between these two parts of the gameplay loop which managed to keep my attention even separate from the game’s narrative. It was good that the visuals and exploration kept my atten

tion, because the story leaves something to be desired. Since I’ll be discussing story here, there are minor spoilers ahead that reveal the plot’s general outline, so skip ahead if you want to play this game. The best I can say is that it’s just serviceable and does a good enough job setting up intrigue early on to help engage the player, but by the time it’s over, it ends up being just a simple story of a deal with the devil that feels lacking in emotion. I also felt the voice acting was out of

place at some points, especially the player character who seems to only be capable of one relatively calm tone of voice most of the time, which is particularly distracting during the game’s climax. What’s worse than this is the “final moral choice” trope that I briefly mentioned before in talking about Bastion, which Mundaun indulges in multiple times in its third act. Up until the end of the game, Mundaun is a very linear story that is masked somewhat with non-linear player driven exploration.

But in the game’s last hour, it suddenly throws two binary moral choices at you that felt very out of place to me. I think the game’s story would’ve likely worked better if it was written to lead up to one specific ending and thus keep a consistent narrative style throughout, but this will probably bother other people much less than me. Despite my issues with its narrative, Mundaun was an enjoyable, tightly paced treat that kept me consistently engaged, which is a very strong quality that I’ve

felt has gotten more and more rare in my time playing games. Though for me, that’s about where it ends, as there’s a lack of further depth to the game that makes it interesting or particularly memorable past a first playthrough. So while I can still recommend Mundaun, I find that it sadly falls just short of greatness. In keeping with discussing horror games, another game I played was SIGNALIS. I don’t think I’m the perfect target audience for this game, both because I’m not too drawn to the ani

me-inspired character designs, nor do I have any sort of sentimental attachment to the classic survival horror gameplay the game clearly models itself after, which has become something of a dying art ever since the Resident Evil games switched to a modern third-person control scheme. But despite these two factors, I greatly enjoyed this game to a point where I would put it above many of the other games I discuss in this video. To start with those visuals, once I got past every character having a

n anime face, there’s clearly a ton of love and an incredible amount of depth to how the game presents itself. This particularly comes out in the cutscenes, which despite being incomprehensible from a narrative perspective without going frame-by-frame with Google Translate on another monitor, still effectively set up a clear tone for the confusing and multi-layered metaphorical horror that you can uncover if you dig deep enough. That story is one I won’t be commenting on since I haven’t done tha

t deep dive myself, though I will say that I don’t think I connected to the characters on an emotional level to the same extent that many others did according to Steam reviews. It may be that all these reviews are jokes, it may be that the anime-inspired character designs connected with others more, or it may be that the simple inclusion of a lesbian romance makes a vocal subset of an audience care about two characters regardless of how well fleshed out the characters are, but I just didn’t get

it. I think part of this comes down to the fact that the romance plot exists so far in the background for hours of gameplay under several layers of metaphorical abstraction, and it’s really only explicitly shown to the player at the tail-end of the game’s second act. Whatever the reason, it still seems to work much better for most others, so it’s probably just a matter of preference for me. But SIGNALIS clearly isn’t a game that can rely on its story to drive all of its engagement, so it’s a goo

d thing that the game has a very solid core gameplay loop. It’s not particularly original, in fact it’s actually very derivative of classic survival horror, but that classic survival horror is a genre that gets so little love in the current era that it actually feels very fresh with the modern design choices the game makes. It pulls the maze-like, looping level design, the strict inventory management with a magic teleporting storage box, the limited resources for dealing with threats where every

expedition will cost you precious ammo or healing items, and even more specific mechanics like burning corpses so that enemies stay dead from the traditional survival horror formula, while bringing in a modern control scheme that doesn’t compromise on the slower pace of combat that tank controls necessitated. The puzzles strewn around these mazes are also great. Most of them are straight-forward and just require you to have the right items and solve simple riddles with simple codes, but there a

re standout examples of puzzles that break this mold like the butterfly puzzle in the final area that require more careful assessment of the environment and clues. SIGNALIS is very effective modernized survival horror that does very little to compromise on the strengths of the genre’s antiquated roots, which is an incredible feat of game design seeing as how revered the classic survival horror titles are from a design perspective despite their flaws. I only wish that its narrative could’ve been

better and more directly tied to what you’re actually doing during gameplay, but when every single other aspect of the game is so exceptional, I can’t be too mad at that missed opportunity. I highly recommend you play this game, and I expect I’ll come back to it again someday to play on higher difficulties for an even more intense experience. Now let’s go from a game I mostly have praise for to a game I’m more critical of, because another game I played was Cyber Hook. I bought this game because

I mentioned it in another one of my videos, and I realized while editing that I should probably get my own footage even if I was only going to show a few seconds. I had it on my wishlist for a while, so it was a perfect excuse to finally get to around to playing it. I’ll start off with the thing that makes this game worth playing despite all its flaws, which is its movement. Cyber Hook is a game built for speedrunning, with a replay system and built-in automatic leaderboards for frictionless com

petition with other players, and because of this there was clearly a lot of thought put into the game's movement mechanics. The best way I can describe it is that it feels incredibly natural and intuitive, which is a great quality to have for the new player experience. The grappling hook feels really good when building speed and eventually flying into a huge jump across the level, and the mid-air control you have during those huge jumps is simple but very effective in conjunction with the grappl

ing hook’s similar simplicity. I don’t know how well this all works for the depth of high-level play, but from the perspective of a totally new player, these movement mechanics are probably as close to a best-case scenario as you can get in terms of how intuitive they are. The rest of my thoughts on this game are going to be a loose list of complaints, because I unfortunately find every other part of this game either flawed or entirely pointless. For instance, the game has a story that serves ab

solutely no purpose, and if anything gets in the way of the game’s pace. The structure is basically that this computer guy gives you a exposition dump that’s totally removed from the game itself every time you unlock a new set of levels, with a few jokes sprinkled in that didn’t really land for me. It’s not a big enough deal to even knock points off a hypothetical review score for me, but I think the game would still be better with the story completely removed. What’s more important are the aspe

cts of visuals and gameplay that make this game feel very rushed past how polished the movement mechanics are. The most glaring example of this is that in the base game there is exactly one visual style for these levels and exactly one music track that plays for every level. It’s good that the one visual style looks nice and that one music track is not totally grating to listen to on repeat, but the game would have absolutely benefited from a new visual style for each set of levels. There is a s

econd style for the levels in the DLC, but I would say that’s still too little too late. But the huge, glaring flaw in Cyber Hook that keeps it from reaching into greatness is its level design. Now this next thing I’ll say might sound like it links back to the game’s lack of visual variety, and while that definitely exacerbates this issue, even if every single level looked completely different, I would still say this – Cyber Hook’s levels feel like they were generated rather than designed. There

are maybe four or five levels out of 100 in the base game that are in any way memorable, while all the others feel like they melt together even just when you finish them and move onto the next completely same-y obstacles. On this point, I think there’s an argument to be made that this is to some extent a result of the grappling hook mechanic, which doesn’t lend itself to highly structured levels where every player movement can be directed by the designer, and this is why these levels feel like

they could have been generated by an AI. If that is the case, I would say it’s something that should be embraced rather than ignored. I can imagine finding some way to procedurally generate obstacles in a game with these movement mechanics could be something really incredible by inducing a sort of flow state where the obstacles never end and you can build up momentum forever. The best idea I have is to design a sort of endless runner that requires you to gain and maintain speed using the grappli

ng hook, and if anyone wants to steal that idea and make it into a game you have my full permission and support because it's something I probably won’t get to myself. While I may have spent most of this section picking apart the game, it’s worth reiterating that Cyber Hook is a game worth playing for those movement mechanics alone, and the same-y-ness of the level design will probably be less of an issue for many people if Steam reviews are to be believed. I find that it falls short of its poten

tial, but what’s here is a remarkably good foundation even if what’s built on top of it feels rushed. So I can still recommend this game, even if it doesn’t have a lot of staying power in my opinion. Another game I played was LIMBO. Before talking about this game at all, I’d like to say that I don’t typically like these sorts of puzzle platformers all that much. I received Inside while it was free on the Epic launcher, and I was thoroughly bored at around the halfway mark. Being that LIMBO was t

he first game from Playdead, I wasn’t expecting to really click with it, but of this genre of story-driven puzzle platformers, LIMBO is probably the best one I’ve played so far. I think my boredom with Inside came with how slow many actions are and how that makes the puzzles so tedious, which is particularly bad with the trial and error segments that are a chore every time you inevitably die. LIMBO suffers from some of these issues, but at a far lesser level. Common actions like dragging crates

and pulling levers aren’t tied to long animations due to the physics-based movement, tedious puzzles are kept to a minimum, and trial and error segments are helped by how quickly the game restarts after a death, which all made LIMBO much more approachable for me. Playdead is known today for how well they can build tone through striking visual styles and ambience, and LIMBO is the game that started it all. The totally greyscale silhouette style with a soundscape made up of ambient wind and footst

ep sounds devoid of any music is very simple, but so incredibly effective when it comes to setting in that feeling of creeping dread and suspense for what you’ll find next. This is helped by scripted moments like the giant spider encounters, as well as totally emergent moments created by the mechanics like the gruesome deaths your player character is subjected to that likely catch new players by surprise their first time, as it did for me. Unfortunately, I found that the game takes a turn for th

e worse in this aspect around the halfway point of the game, where the game transitions from that eerie, nearly empty forest to a more sterile factory setting in service of making more elaborate puzzles. This wouldn’t be so much of a drag if those late-game puzzles were fun, but some of them do fall into that tedious puzzle trap I mentioned earlier. The most pressing issue in my eyes is the persistence of red herrings that distract from the true solutions, with the worst offender being this puzz

le right at the end of the game where a second box is hidden off-screen in the corner of the map that was difficult to tell was accessible. This initially led me to believe I would only need the one box to get past the ending area, which was just a waste of time that could have been avoided with better signposting. I had to use a guide for multiple puzzles, and when I saw the solution it was consistently a feeling of “how was I meant to figure that out?” LIMBO was worth playing for me just for t

he game’s first half, which is paced to a tee and had a commanding tone throughout, but the slog that is the game’s second half really pulls it down. While it could be in part down to my issues with this genre, I do think the game is flawed completely separate from my own personal preference. Others will probably enjoy those parts more than I did judging by LIMBO’s position in the pantheon of indie classics, and I can absolutely see why it's held to that acclaim from that first half alone. So I’

m still going to recommend LIMBO, just keep in mind that you may find it just as flawed as I did. Another game I played was Cocoon. This game released as I was working on this script, and it caught my eye because it’s a new game designed by the lead designer of LIMBO and Inside, but it isn’t a platformer in the same vein as the Playdead games. It’s instead a more traditional mechanically-driven puzzle game with a top-down perspective, and I hoped that this would alleviate some of the issues I ha

d with those previous games. It absolutely did to some extent, because I can definitely say that it was more enjoyable than the Playdead games, though it does inherit some of LIMBO and Inside’s flaws that hold it down a bit. In fitting with those previous games, Cocoon is a visually beautiful game, and probably one of the most aesthetically pleasing games that I’ll discuss here. The visual design of the different worlds you explore are all distinctive and very unique, with vivid color palettes b

rought to life by modern lighting techniques. Though what really brings these environments to life are the alien lifeforms you come across and sometimes come up against, and the impeccable animation work that increases how impressive these visuals are exponentially. Not only are the aliens beautifully animated, but animation when it comes to camera work also isn’t ignored, as throughout the game you get these great cinematic shots that take full advantage of the environment design to deliver som

e really awe-inspiring moments. But most importantly, these intricate visuals manage to never get in the way of clearly showing the relevant objects in puzzles, which makes this aspect of the game as close to flawless as I could imagine it getting. But to get more into those puzzles, Cocoon’s gameplay hook is the ability to jump between different worlds using these orbs that you can carry around while outside that world. Aside from how impressive it is technically that this is achieved without a

single loading screen, the breadth of puzzles that this gimmick allows for perfectly fills out the game’s 3-4 hour runtime. These puzzles are much more consistently mechanically driven than the Playdead games, which makes it feel much more like a series of logic puzzles than those previous games. I think this works out great for the game, but that’s also just my personal preference in puzzle games. Another similarity with the Playdead games that Cocoon benefits from greatly is how its narrative

is told completely silently, and how that intertwines with the puzzle mechanics. This is something I’ll talk about with a game near the end of this video, but a rare and very interesting narrative trick that video games can pull is for the game mechanics to silently and subtly get the player thinking about the narrative implications of those mechanics. While Cocoon doesn’t do this as well as that game I’ll get to near the end, the way that you can jump into all these different worlds inside of

worlds invokes feelings reminiscent of the philosophical questions raised by stories like The Matrix. This is particularly strong when it comes to a particular moment that marks the end of the game’s second act, which while being a twist that I predicted would happen within my first hour with the game, it was still a very strong moment that strengthens that silent narrative style that the game employs. Though as I alluded to before, Cocoon inherits some of the issues with the Playdead titles and

their puzzles. The game actually made a strong first impression when I saw how fast the player character’s top speed is, and while that helps with how tedious the puzzles are, the multitude of objects you have to juggle as the game goes on makes for some moments where you have to guess what orb to bring to what location, which results in needless backtracking. There were definitely moments where I figured out the solution long before the game let me continue to the next puzzle, and if you get t

o that point with a puzzle it ceases to be engaging and the player just needs to go through the motions without any sort of intellectual stimulation. The final puzzle is also very obtuse, which was the only point where I had to use a guide just to figure out what the game was asking me to do. To be fair, this puts it ahead of the vast majority of puzzle games for me in terms of its difficulty curve, but it was so close to being flawless that this last puzzle unfortunately sticks out like a sore

thumb. But even with those flaws, Cocoon was worth playing for how technically and visually impressive the design of its world is, and it provides enough puzzles that reach into greatness that I can recommend it regardless of its relatively minor flaws. Another game I played was Planet of Lana. This is another new release that got a good amount of advertising for an indie, with trailers shown at events like The Game Awards in the leadup to its release. What I saw in those trailers was interestin

g enough for me to wishlist the game and buy it on release. It’s no secret why the game looked so good to me in those trailers, and to be redundant, it’s obviously how it looked. It’s clear that there’s a lot of love put into these environments, as even the dull metallic interiors and empty open deserts feel like they still have personality thanks to meticulous modeling work that seamlessly blends alien structures with natural features of the environment. The real highlights visually are the lus

h forest that the game’s first act takes place in, as well as the interlude in the dense swamp area. The visuals are rounded out by a beautiful orchestral score whose emotional moments are punctuated by a memorable and well-used leitmotif that intertwines with the game’s simple narrative. Planet of Lana feels like yet another game that’s the brainchild of a team full of very talented artists, which results in a beautiful game to look at, but unfortunately that beauty is only surface deep. Every

other aspect of this game past its presentation ranges from just serviceable to very flawed, and that unfortunately makes it quite a shallow experience that’s doomed to mediocrity in my opinion. The game’s narrative is a simple story of aliens invading a peaceful planet, told with very minimal dialogue whose intelligible bits only consist of characters calling each other’s names. It’s totally fine and inoffensive for 99% of the game, though the ending is so bland and patronizing that it sours th

e rest of the experience. I don’t want to give specific spoilers here, but I’ll just say that the big issue is that the game seems to commit too hard to a flawlessly happy ending, which made any sort of stakes or suspense built up throughout the game feel completely pointless by the end. Compared to the colorful expressiveness of the game’s presentation, its narrative feels emotionally muted and rushed by the time it comes to a close. From a gameplay perspective, Planet of Lana is another game j

ust like LIMBO and Inside, a puzzle platformer with puzzles built around visuals and general intuition rather than cold hard mechanics. These puzzles have the same issues I had with the puzzles from Inside and to a lesser extent LIMBO, which can be boiled down to tedium. This tedium comes in one form from the stealth puzzles with the hostile robots, all of which have one strict path the game forces you to take. Several of these puzzles had red herrings, or paths that look potentially viable but

will always result in a fail state regardless of how quickly and optimally you can move. That and general strict timings make some stealth sections quite easy to fail, and retrying them over and over again with the same waiting sections is not engaging at all. Because of some slow animations and the design of particular puzzles, Planet of Lana also suffers from the issue where the player is able to totally figure out the puzzle in their head long before the game acknowledges them solving it. If

that time period between finding the solution and moving on from the puzzle is too long, the player can be stuck going through the uninteresting motions without being intellectually engaged, which is simply tedious. My thoughts on Planet of Lana can be summed up by discussing this moment, an intermission between what can be considered the second and third acts and a transition from the lush green environments present up to this point to the desolate expansive desert. All you have to do is hold r

ight and watch the sunrise. For all intents and purposes this is a cutscene, showing the beautiful landscape with probably the single best piece of music in the game to accentuate its impact. This is probably my favorite moment from the game, but that’s only so unfortunate because it’s one of the few fleeting moments where the game solely relies on its presentation. It’s 2-3 minutes where you can just relax and enjoy the game’s true strengths surrounded by 4 hours of what feels like filler compa

red to this moment. It’s rough that I don’t want to recommend this game despite how flawless its presentation is, but I just can’t. Though to be fair, many people seem to connect with this genre much more than I do, so if you really enjoy games like Inside, Planet of Lana will probably scratch that itch for you. In all likelihood, it just isn’t for me. Another game I played was Stars of Providence. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this game, since it’s just a very simple but fun roguelike

. You just aim and shoot at enemies while finding upgrades and disposable weapons to stay above the curve of enemy power. The game clearly takes heavily after The Binding of Isaac with the layout of its levels, the structure of shops, and even to some extent the generic upgrades found on every floor, but I actually like Stars of Providence better as a roguelike compared to Isaac because of its modernized aspects. Isaac feels very dated as a roguelike because a lot of the time it feels more like

a slot machine than a game, where if you get the right set of items right at the very start of the game they can carry you through the entire run. The structure of things like item drops for clearing rooms makes pure luck the biggest determining factor for successful runs, whereas more modernized roguelikes use their random aspects to force interesting and varied decisions. This especially seems to be the focus of Stars of Providence, where the generic upgrade chambers, weapon rooms, and boss re

wards all create interesting choices despite their randomness. A typical modernized choice like this is choosing between health and damage, where damage is a permanent increase and health can be lost but can directly save you from death. It’s a simple but effective risk-reward decision where taking a damage increase is often riskier, but more consistently helpful since you can’t lose it. This is the exact structure of the boss rewards in this game, which is so much more interesting than Isaac’s

hundreds of random items that range from completely game breaking to actively damaging to your survivability. One more point the game has over Isaac is how consistent and interesting the game’s tough encounters are, particularly due to how few player attributes the game changes compared to Isaac. Constant values like hitbox size, movement speed, and dash distance allow bosses to be designed around these values rather than needing to be fair for every possible combination of these values. Isaac c

hanges every single player attribute it can, and it makes enemy encounters range from brutally difficult to trivially simple. Stars of Providence uses its more consistent gameplay to make the later bosses really tough, with screens that seem to have more space taken up by bullets than safe empty areas. While they’re quite difficult, it’s still fair since all damage can be avoided with enough skill, and it can only do that because it keeps so many player attributes static. I’m not really as big a

roguelike fan as many others, but Stars of Providence is one of the better ones I’ve played, and I’d put it at the same level as games like Downwell and maybe even Nuclear Throne. It’s a game I’m sure I’ll come back to in the future for some simple yet challenging fun, and for that alone it’s easy to recommend. Another game I played was Risk of Rain Returns. As a preface to talking about this game, I have about 370 hours in Risk of Rain 2 and about 25 hours in the original Risk of Rain, and I’v

e done at least a few complete runs of the first game in that time. That’s important to note because Risk of Rain Returns is a remake of the first game, which is a game that has not aged very well over the years. I would call it the game that comes the closest to being “so bad that it’s good” through gameplay because, while the game has a very clumsy control scheme and brutal, borderline unfair difficulty, when you get that run that overcomes that difficulty curve, it essentially becomes a spect

acle fighter that is made all the more satisfying by the knowledge that you worked your way up to this godlike status from nothing. Risk of Rain 2 refined the balance of the game’s item-stacking gimmick and combines it with a much more fluid control scheme to create one of the best roguelikes of all time, though that leaves the original game as a forgotten relic next to its much more polished successor. But that’s why Risk of Rain Returns now exists, to bring that classic experience up to more m

odern standards. The most instantly noticeable difference is that every single asset was remade from scratch, which brings the simplistic but still iconic art of the original up to an excellent new standard. There’s also some new music tracks, and if you’re familiar with the music of this series then you’ll know that this is obviously a big plus. But this isn’t just a remaster – it’s a full remake with many elements of the gameplay changed. Many arbitrary hard scaling caps that item stacks like

the Hermit’s Scarf had in the original have been removed with the help of more mathematically complex scaling functions, which allows these items to scale forever. Every character with a ranged primary can move while shooting now, which is a good improvement even if it’s not the one many people wanted to see, but I’ll get to that later. A big negative for the original Risk of Rain is that you have to tediously clear the entire map after the teleporter event in order to go to the next level, whic

h thankfully is an option which is off by default in this remake. There are also all new items introduced, some of which are backported from Risk of Rain 2, and I find that the item balance in this game is surprisingly better than that of the sequel. Aside from a few dud items like Headstompers and Voltaic Mitt, every item in Risk of Rain Returns feels at least somewhat impactful to your general power level, as opposed to Risk of Rain 2 where almost every lunar item is terrible to pick up and ma

ny normal items are duds that are better scrapped and turned into something else later on. Even some backported items that were duds in the sequel are much better with this game’s 2D perspective, like the Warbanner which is now a legitimately useful item especially since it triggers at the start of the final boss. The other major additions are the three new survivors and the Providence Trials, both of which I’m a bit mixed on at the moment. While the new alternate abilities for survivors are a g

reat aspect of Risk of Rain 2 that got backported to this game, the all-new survivors are a very mixed bag. Pilot is probably my favorite character in the game, especially once I unlocked the alternate abilities that turn him into a commando with more mobility, a piercing ability, and the option to challenge threats that aren’t directly in front of him. In contrast to this, Artificer feels like an afterthought with a totally dysfunctional kit, though this has been addressed somewhat by patches.

The Providence Trials are the other big selling point of this remake, and they range wildly in difficulty and just fun in general. There are some very inventive and fun challenges in here that are put next to frustratingly difficult combat challenges that feel like a chore to grind at, but there were enough good ones that I liked them overall. But what’s really divisive about this remake is not what they changed about the original – it’s more so about what they didn’t. The major thing that makes

the original game so archaic is its control scheme and movement system, and while improvements like allowing slowed movement while firing any ranged primary are good, this doesn’t fix the common complaint of the game lacking full 360 degree freedom when firing. It’s entirely possible that this would break the game’s balance if implemented, though I have to wonder what the effects really would be if this change was tested. I think it’s worth at least experimenting with, and maybe someone will be

able to mod it into the game since the developers seem committed to not implementing it themselves. Though what’s less acceptable for me is the way that ability canceling is handled, in that the game doesn’t allow it at all. Risk of Rain 2 allows the canceling of primary attacks by using another ability, which is a great system that improves the intuitive flow of combat while also raising the skill ceiling by allowing you to attack faster by canceling animations as early as possible. This would

have been a perfect thing to backport in this remake, but it’s strangely absent. I really hope this gets added in a patch in the future, but the slightly awkward control scheme is something you can get used to given enough time so it doesn’t totally break the game. Risk of Rain Returns is about what I expected, which is a decently improved version of an antiquated classic that brings it into the modern age in an acceptable manner. It could have been a better transition, but it also could have b

een a lot worse, especially if no changes were made past the visuals. I expect I’ll be coming back for more over the coming years, because while it’s not better than Risk of Rain 2, Risk of Rain Returns sets itself apart from every other roguelike on the market with its unique gameplay elements and very simple controls that make it easy to pick up and play without putting in 100% effort like you would need to for other roguelikes. The original Risk of Rain filled that niche, but this remake now

just fills it better, and on those grounds alone I can recommend you try it in this new polished version. Another game I played was What Remains of Edith Finch. Even though I knew this game was a highly praised story-driven game that seems like something I would greatly enjoy, I put off playing it for a long time because I was spoiled for it. It was an unfortunate game to be spoiled for, because I probably would have enjoyed it even more had I played it blind. But I can still see its incredible

strengths as a very strong story with some moments that leverage the interactive medium in innovative and emotionally powerful ways that haven’t been replicated since. The game is immediately appealing solely on its surface-level aspects, as there was clearly a lot of thought put into the visuals and especially the environment design. It’s somewhat similar to Gone Home when it comes to much of that environment design, but while that game stays much more grounded in its story and visuals, the pla

yable vignette structure of What Remains of Edith Finch makes way for a level of magical realism and allows for a disregard for the feasibility of this massive house and its incredibly eccentric family. It ventures just far enough into the absurd for those elements to not conflict too heavily with the mundane that it also evokes so well visually and narratively, and it makes for a very nostalgic feeling that fits with the monologue narration from Edith, who reminisces on growing up in this giant

house full of secrets in a similar way to what many people who lived in a single house for most of their life could do. But this game is clearly most impressive when it comes to its story, which is told through those aforementioned vignettes which recount the deaths of the members of the Finch family, all laced with huge amounts of tragic irony. They start out oddly whimsical despite the morbid subject matter, before getting into the more darkly toned and depressive moments. While most of these

do come with cute twists on the gameplay or visual style to better evoke the characters in question for that particular vignette, there are two that stand out above the rest when it comes to both of these aspects. You may have heard of the cannery even if you haven’t played the game, since that particular scene made a big splash for people who talk about and analyze game design, and particularly how that design can intertwine with narratives. I don’t have much to add on that topic since so much

has already been said, so I’ll be brief and just say that this game released in 2017, and I’ve still never seen anything like the cannery in any game released before or since. The narrative content of this scene isn’t just delivered in a unique, very relatable way, it’s made incredibly strong by its commitment to interactivity and involving the player through the interactive medium. It’s a sort of interactivity that isn’t necessarily challenging in the way that most games use player control, an

d it rather serves to put the player in the character’s shoes in the most elegant possible way. As one of those people who does love to think about game design and narrative design in games, the cannery was worth this game’s asking price on its own. Though the most emotionally powerful scene in the game was the death of Gregory, who was an infant when he tragically drowned in a bathtub while his mother was occupied with a phone call. This scene stacks very effective traditional narrative techniq

ues to establish an intensely conflicting tone, where the death of this infant is shown with bright colorful visuals and a very powerful use of a classical orchestral piece, juxtaposed against the perfectly delivered narration and thoroughly depressing subject matter. But it also uses player interactivity through a classic design where the player is forced to act and cause the death, which is a minor instance of ludonarrative dissonance which emotionally connects the player to the events further

and adds to that emotional conflict, and it makes this scene one of the most viscerally emotional moments I’ve seen in any story. The overarching story present in the game also happens to be quite interesting, about the supposedly cursed Finch family whose members are all destined to die in the most tragically ironic ways. It says a lot about superstition, generational trauma, and death in general simply through its premise, and it was a very smart decision to leave things ambiguous as to wheth

er or not there really is a curse or if that superstition was enough to manifest the family’s deaths. Aside from the two aforementioned vignettes, the ending was definitely the highlight of the game that wrapped things up intelligently and succinctly. Before sitting down to fully articulate my thoughts on this game, I didn’t think of it among my favorite games as highly as I should have. What Remains of Edith Finch is at worst a uniquely presented semi-cinematic story that is beautiful in its mo

st depressing and somber moments, and at best it’s an exemplary work of how interactivity can be woven together with stories in games to create something emotionally touching and truly unforgettable. These are the kinds of games that I continue to play games in search of, and I truly regret allowing myself to get spoiled since I probably would have loved it even more if I hadn’t. If you appreciate the unique storytelling possibilities of games as a medium, or if you just enjoy a good story at al

l, I very highly recommend What Remains of Edith Finch. Another game I played was The Witness. I kind of feel bad writing about this game, because I did not experience it in its intended form. I was spoiled, and if you’ve played this game, you’ll know that spoilers for key moments will take away much of that intended experience. That doesn’t mean that there was no reason to play the game, though that was my thought process for a long time, which is why it’s taken me so long to bother picking up

the game. Even though I think I’m quite good at enjoying things that I’ve been spoiled on despite those spoilers, I did feel like I was missing something even though the game’s strengths were still readily apparent to me. I just implore you to play this game for yourself if you haven’t been spoiled, because there’s nothing else quite like it out there, and I will be going into those spoilers. So keep all that in mind when I say that The Witness was as beautiful and intellectually stimulating as

it was frustrating and pretentious. And I don’t use that last descriptor lightly as someone who you could probably consider pretentious as well. There’s one aspect of The Witness that is uncontroversially excellent, which is its world. The Witness’s island is an exemplary piece of compact open world design, up there with and probably even surpassing games like A Short Hike. While minor gates locked by puzzles exist around the world, the majority of it is entirely explorable right from the start

of the game, and aside from seeking out those puzzles and progressing to the end of the game, exploration is made exponentially more interesting due to how stunning these visuals are. The Witness is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games I’ve played in my life, a sentiment which extends beneath its surface level visuals with the incredibly inventive perception-based easter eggs which are a joy to stumble upon. I couldn’t possibly sing enough praises for this aspect of the game, as it reall

y is an incredible piece of design that is consistently surprising even when returning to areas you feel like you’ve already scoured, and just for that the game was absolutely worth playing for me. But The Witness is also a puzzle game, and I’m mostly positive on this aspect of the game. I’m not a huge puzzle game fan, though that’s specifically referring to hardcore puzzlers with puzzles that are heavily mechanically driven, a category which The Witness falls squarely into. With these types of

games, there’s always a chance that the player will just happen to miss solutions that others think are obvious, and this is especially the case for this game since so many puzzles require you to look at the puzzles from a specific perspective to find the solution. As is typical with most puzzlers like this, I found that the explosive, satisfying “A-Ha!” moments that engagement rides on often-times don’t balance out the frustrating minutes spent staring in disbelief at certain puzzles wondering

how anyone is meant to figure them out. The Witness was better at this than other puzzlers of this kind in my opinion, but that’s probably down to what I was spoiled for. Though that’s not taking into consideration puzzles that feel intentionally designed to be as obtuse as possible like the puzzle in the shipwreck, which feels like an ARG-esque puzzle that a community is meant to work on together, even though the game already has other puzzles like this that are clearly separated from the stand

ard puzzle panels. But to reiterate, I’m positive on these puzzles as a whole, and many of them did end up being very satisfying to figure out. What’s left to talk about in The Witness are its narrative elements, which I can’t in good conscious call a story. That’s not an issue in itself, but it feels like the powerful and subtle ways that the game explores its themes of perspective mechanically and visually are done a disservice by how they’re explored textually. The environmental puzzles are n

ot just incredible moments of discovery that shift your perspective of the entire game world, they also establish and expand upon the central theme of perspective solely through gameplay, which is a remarkable achievement in game design among many in this game. But what sours this are the audio logs and unlockable videos that give contradictory, often times platitudinous perspectives on broad philosophical topics. I typically love when games dip into topics of philosophy, but The Witness just ta

kes a jumbled mess of existing writings and haphazardly scatters them across its world without any regard for cohesion. While the intention was likely to include examples of various clashing intellectual perspectives to complement the more physical sense of perspective that the world evokes, I end up wondering why it was even necessary to include this complement, and if the game would be any worse and potentially even better if the audio logs were completely removed, because the world design is

absolutely capable of standing on its own. The last thing I have to say about The Witness is that by the end I found that I didn’t have any desire to go back and fully complete the game. I could see myself coming back to it in the future, but since the game wipes your save once you reach the ending and some of the puzzles required to activate the lasers had me completely stumped on this first playthrough, I didn’t want to continue playing past the secret ending. Another contributing issue here i

s that this game is full of very long animations of platforms moving or boats rising out off the water that you’re forced to sit through, and while these often exist for the purpose of hiding environmental puzzles, it definitely doesn’t help my lack of interest in returning so soon. So it was good that I finally got to play this game, but I don’t think it left as massive an impression as it seems to have done for many others, and while that’s partially my fault for getting spoiled, the game is s

till flawed regardless of that. Another game I played was Doom Eternal. Somehow, even though I bought this game around its release, I still hadn’t played past the first mission before picking it up again for this video. I don’t entirely remember what my first impressions with the game were back then, but I bought the game because I really enjoyed Doom 2016 and it seemed like Eternal was just more of the same. In a lot of ways that’s absolutely the case, but it also feels like the game takes step

s back in a few areas, to the point where I actually like 2016 better in most respects. There are a lot of additions to the combat that are unambiguously positives over 2016. For one, the balance of weapon upgrades is much more consistent, unlike the previous game which had a very clear meta pick for each weapon that completely invalidates the other and makes choosing upgrades quite boring. Even the weapons that don’t have choices in upgrades like the super shotgun have been rebalanced, and whil

e I’m kind of sad that the double super shotgun is removed and the gauss cannon is nerfed, I do have to admit that these two did break 2016’s balance a lot and Eternal is definitely better off with these changes. The dash is a movement option that feels great to use in combat for dodging, though the way the game handles recharging the dash can make platforming finicky. The dash was definitely the part of Eternal I missed the most when I went back to 2016, though I also noticed that glory kills w

ere a lot safer in Eternal, helping to incentivize their use even at higher difficulties. Another interesting change that the game makes is that your ammo caps are reduced, and the chainsaw is made an option that is more consistently available since it will refill one charge when empty. Ammo is more scarce in general, making ammo management and choosing good times to use the chainsaw a more important skill, which I think is a positive change even if only because you get to use the chainsaw more.

But one thing I expected to be changed more compared to 2016 was how challenges are handled, which is the biggest issue I have with the gameplay of both these games. The challenges that these games give every mission actively work against the combat systems, as instead of allowing the player to get into a flow state that the combat system seems to be built for, it encourages you to consciously think about these really silly challenges that break any possibility of reaching that flow state. The

mastery challenges that unlock the final upgrade of each weapon attachment are worse due to how oddly grindy they are for a linear game like this on top of the issue with the other challenges. Eternal adds these mastery tokens that let you skip the mastery challenges, though you only start getting these near the end of the game when you’ve already completed some of them, so they end up being a fairly pointless addition. I think both types of challenges would be better off completely removed, but

it’s something I can put up with for how great the combat in these games is when it lets you achieve that flow state. What I would say is a notable downgrade from 2016 is how the game is paced, though not all the pacing is bad. In terms of gameplay and how combat encounter difficulty scales with player power level, the pacing and overall difficulty curve is better than 2016 due to the aforementioned balance changes, but there’s a more subtle pacing issue that I found in Eternal. In Doom 2016 th

ere was an additional curve that went along side the difficulty curve, which is what you could call an intensity curve that mixes gameplay and aesthetics. The first two levels in the game only pit the player against basic humanoid demons with relatively low health values compared to other enemies, which adds a feeling of rising tension when the game starts upping the intensity with the Hell Knight, Mancubus, Cacodemon, and later even the bosses like the Cyberdemon. Their relative strength compar

ed to the previous enemies is communicated both mechanically through their large health pools, as well as aesthetically through their size and overall visual design. This is something that I found missing in Eternal, where you’re put up against Cacodemons and new giant spider demons in the first level that are bullet sponges for the basic shotgun, which doesn’t set up for a satisfying progression in overall intensity. It may seem like a nitpick, but I genuinely think this is a big positive that

Doom 2016’s campaign has over Doom Eternal. On top of that sort of pacing, narrative pacing also feels off in Eternal, and I know it feels kind of silly to critique this story that is clearly used as an excuse to arbitrarily move between missions, but there are things here that are so clearly missing that I feel the need to point out. First of all, there’s no satisfying answer to what happened to the Doom Guy after the ending of Doom 2016 even though that game ended on something of a cliffhanger

. Having the game start in hell with Doom Guy fighting hordes of demons for fun would make so much sense considering what was set up in the last game’s ending, but instead we start right in the middle of an unexplained demonic invasion of Earth. But what’s more disappointing to me is how woefully underwritten Samuel Hayden is in this game. In 2016 he was characterized quite well as a mirror of Olivia Pierce, as they’re both enamored by the power they can gain by risking a demonic invasion. At th

e end of the game, he takes the Crucible and vows to continue the dangerous work that brought about the invasion of Mars, sending Doom Guy to hell so he doesn’t get in his way. I was excited to meet Dr. Hayden again considering the history between these two characters, but when he was finally able to speak, his very first line wasn’t a satisfyingly reluctant greeting or a snide insult, and he instead just went directly into bland exposition on where the last Hell Priest is. I would have even bee

n satisfied with a simple monologue where he realizes and admits his mistakes that caused the full-scale invasion of Earth, even though this arguably breaks his previously defined character, but there’s nothing. I also began to suspect that he would betray Doom Guy and try to join forces with the Khan Makyr, which would have helped with my gripes with the boring narrative somewhat, but again there’s just nothing. Doom Eternal is kind of frustrating to me, because while some good changes are made

to combat that help to improve on the foundations that Doom 2016 laid, nearly every other aspect that forms the overall experience of the campaign feels like a step down compared to Doom 2016. So while I enjoyed playing Doom Eternal, I still find Doom 2016 to be a superior game overall. Eternal is still worth playing, but if I get a craving to play Doom again, I’ll probably be returning to its predecessor before thinking of Eternal, despite what it does right. Before getting into the most inter

esting games I’ve saved for last, I played three big long RPGs for this video, the first of which is Starfield. Now, while I said that I’ve played every game I’ll talk about in this video to completion, this is one of two games that I didn’t end up finishing. In fact, I didn’t even touch the main questline of Starfield after reaching the first major city, and I instead went off on my own adventures. That’s my first grievance with this game, because while I can’t comment on the main quest, I can

comment on how rushed and totally uninspired its intro sequence is. It seems to me like Bethesda really wanted to avoid the criticisms and memes that Skyrim’s bloated intro created, so they went in the complete opposite direction. It’s great that the intro is short and you’re let out into the open world with minimal time investment, but it also causes the narrative hook of the artifact you discover in the mine to be rushed past. There’s no setpiece like the attack on Helgen by a dragon, and ther

e’s not even anything like the elegance of New Vegas’s hook of “Hunt down the guy who shot you.” There’s absolutely zero sense of narrative urgency to get the artifact to New Atlantis and discover what it really is, which greatly contributed to my decision to completely ignore the main quest for my time with the game. Once I was let free and I started going to random planets across the galaxy, I started enjoying myself a little more because of the gameplay and general technical stability of the

game. Starfield is a landmark release for Bethesda because it is far and away their most stable release to date. Bugs were very minimal from my experience, at worst there would be a funny ragdoll here and there which is probably the best-case scenario for the archaic Creation Engine. From a gameplay perspective, this is easily the most enjoyable combat in any Bethesda game. The extra movement options added by the jetpacks are such a simple addition, but they make such a difference for how much f

un it is to click on enemies until they die when you have more freeing movement options. Gunplay is also better than Fallout 4, even if only just slightly. It’s funny how Bethesda consistently lives up to that meme that every game is just the last game with incremental improvements, which isn’t something to be praised, but when you keep your expectations in check it’s not too bad and you can still have a lot of fun with the game. The only gripe I have for the technical aspects is that the game’s

performance is not good, and I had to install a custom graphics preset and the DLSS injector mod to get up to a consistent 60. But once I had the right setup, the game looked quite good, even though it’s clear some graphical corners were cut in some places. What I also came to enjoy is the ship building, which feels like a natural extension of the settlement building that Bethesda has been shoving into their games since Fallout 4. Unlike a settlement that is completely stationary and has little

impact on the core gameplay loop of explore -> fight -> loot repeat, your ship is something you can build that directly assists you in exploration, which encouraged me to actually interact with the system. It ends up just being a simple but fun minigame of how much stuff you can fit on your ship, as well as a general way to buy upgrades as well, which is all I really expected it to be. I wish space combat was more interesting, but it happens so infrequently it’s not a big deal. But let’s get on

to my gripes, which encompasses the rest of the game that I interacted with. I obviously can’t say anything about the main quest past the intro or the settlement building system, but what I can speak on is the core Bethesda gameplay loop: Explore -> Fight -> Loot -> Repeat. I’ve already said that combat is the best it’s ever been in these games, and looting is pretty much identical to Fallout 4, just with more frequent legendary enemies. Exploration, however, definitely leaves something to be d

esired. Just like how Starfield lives up to the meme that it’s just Fallout 4 in space in the same way that Fallout 4 was Skyrim with guns, it also lives up to the classic line that people have been criticizing Bethesda games with for years – “Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.” In fact, there’s no Bethesda game – and possibly no other game period – that exemplifies that critique more than Starfield. To be clear, I’m fine with the way you travel around space almost solely through fast traveling

and cutscenes. It’s not good that it’s the way you travel, but I kept my expectations in check by reading the thoughts of early access players which kept my disappointment here to a minimum. What I’m not fine with is what happens when you land on a planet. With how many planets are in the game, they couldn’t all be handcrafted. Instead, they’re all completely randomly generated. I actually think this is a natural extension of the Bethesda formula, and if the random generation was good enough, I

could have been saying here that Starfield was the best instance of the Bethesda gameplay loop. Unfortunately, the random generation is only surface deep like everything else in the game. Locations of landmarks are random, but the landmarks themselves are not. If you find an abandoned mining facility, it will have the exact same layout as the other one you found on a planet several star systems over, with the same generic spacer and pirate enemies. This is what destroyed the thrill of space exp

loration for me; that once you know the layouts of locations, there is no suspense or sense of discovery when exploring new locations on planets. The random locations on planets absolutely need at least some variation in layout for exploration to be anywhere as good as that seen in previous Bethesda RPGs. There were sparks of that Bethesda exploration magic at points in my playthrough, though it was consistently at the points when I came across hand-crafted content. One standout instance of this

was when I came across an orbital station that was once an opulent casino. This location stood out to me not just because it was the first area I found that took place in zero gravity, and not just because it was the most visually unique location I had found up to that point, but it was mostly because it was the location that most felt like a real “dungeon” in the RPG sense, with accompanying computer logs for some extra environmental storytelling and even a simple puzzle that gives more reward

s to those who take the time to actually parse those computer logs. The only other location that wasn’t tied to a quest that came close to this was another orbital station that was constantly switching between artificial and zero gravity that actually used that gimmick as a way to make exploration more interesting. There are these brief moments where Starfield feels like a game that was designed for exploration to be engaging like the previous Bethesda RPGs rather than dull and same-y, but this

was about 10-20 minutes out of my 20 hours of playtime. The last thing I’d like to talk about are the few side quests I did during my time with the game, and if the others are anything like the quality of those I did find, they’re actually even worse than Fallout 4 somehow and they demonstrate how far downhill the writing in Bethesda games has gone since Oblivion. To illustrate with an example, after landing at the corporate headquarters on this planet, I was given a quest by this captain to hel

p with a bounty hunter that’s after her under false pretenses. Now just based on that simple premise alone, consider how you would write this quest and what choices you would give the player. You can obviously have a path where you help deal with the bounty hunter peacefully or otherwise, or another where you side with the bounty hunter and kill the captain for a cut of the bounty. That would be fairly standard for an RPG like this, but you can go a step further. What if the captain’s bounty is

actually legitimate, and she initially lied to you in order to evade her bounty without blatantly escalating things from the party she wronged? Just like that, a simple binary choice of good and evil becomes a compelling moral dilemma about how you can bring about justice in this situation. I honestly didn’t expect Bethesda to put that much effort into this little side quest considering that they’ve hardly done so in any of their other games up to this point, but what I equally didn’t expect is

the reality of this quest, which is that you can’t even side with the bounty hunter at all. If you try in any way to rat out the captain, he instantly turns hostile. This isn’t just bad because of how bafflingly lazy the design of the quest is, it’s also indicative of Bethesda’s unwillingness to let you play an evil character, or even just a character that will do whatever it takes to squeeze the most money out of a situation. Say what you will about Fallout 3’s quality of writing, but at least

it gave you evil choices, even if those choices were cartoonishly evil with no shade of nuance. Starfield is just another step towards what I can only imagine Bethesda’s goal to be; To bring the quality of the hand-designed side quests down to the same quality as the radiant quests so that they blend together. I say that jokingly, but that’s the only possible way you could explain the quality of Bethesda’s writing with anything short of incompetence, and I don’t know which would be worse. So I’v

e had my fun with Starfield by running around to random locations and mindlessly killing enemies until progression slowed to the point of diminishing returns. If you want to play this game, that’s how I would recommend you go about it, because from all I’ve seen of Bethesda’s hand-designed content in this game, it’s not worth your time. Though the real reason to buy this game is as an investment into its future, because Starfield and all of Bethesda’s RPGs are games that improve every day even p

ast their prime of developer support. And whether those improvements come from Bethesda or just from the modders as usual, I’m sure I’ll pick up the game again once it becomes the game it should have been on release. Another RPG I played was Cyberpunk 2077 and its new story expansion, Phantom Liberty. I first played Cyberpunk in the fall of 2022, and because of how many patches the game had gone through at that point, I enjoyed myself enough that I played it all the way through again after upgra

ding to an RTX card. When I saw on its release day that the reviews for Phantom Liberty were very positive, I decided another playthrough was in order so I could fully enjoy the new expansion. Coming back to Cyberpunk after playing Starfield was refreshing, where every movement of every character feels deliberately choreographed and the quests and writing in general are the true draw of the game. It’s really incredible how far behind Bethesda is in so many aspects where Cyberpunk shines, but I’l

l stop poking fun at Starfield and Bethesda now and get onto the game I’m actually talking about. The place where Cyberpunk shines brightest is quite fittingly its visuals, but more generally how deeply it cares about immersion. It’s no secret that this is one of if not the most visually realistic game ever created, but it goes even deeper than that with how dialogue sequences are designed. The game takes up the Half-Life 2 philosophy of keeping the player in control of their character during na

rrative scenes as much as possible in order to enhance player immersion, and with the highly detailed graphical style and fully motion captured movements of characters, Cyberpunk takes this so many steps further than Valve could in 2004. Even tiny details like characters pausing their dialogue while they take a drink or light a cigarette are taken into account where other games would take shortcuts, all in the name of fully immersing the player in this world. The RPG elements in Cyberpunk have c

ome a long way even since my first playthrough, let alone since the infamous state of its release. The perk system that was in the game during my first two playthroughs was just serviceable, with a lot of boring stat increases that felt negligible next to the dramatic power bumps you can get by installing new implants. But with the 2.0 update that released alongside the expansion, every issue with the perk system was fixed. There’s a new tree structure to the perks that allows progression to be

much more structured, and these perks now feel so much more impactful when it comes to player power level. My next playthrough was always going to be a Sandevistan Samurai that uses katanas, and in the reflexes tree there were new perks that added entirely new options in and out of combat like flashy and brutal combat finishers, the ability to leap at enemies from a distance by using a strong attack, or a dash function that borders on game breaking with how fast it lets you move on foot. The pla

yer progression mechanics have gone from just serviceable to quite exceptional with this update, and I’m excited to try out more builds like netrunning in the future. Despite the lengthy series of updates, there are still nitpicks to make here. Minor bugs still exist, especially ones where enemies will continue to walk around after their death, though it’s obviously not nearly as bad as the situation was at launch. What’s more annoying for me is the lack of key quality of life features and missi

ng technical features. For instance, I couldn’t find any way to disable mouse acceleration in menus, which is something that even Starfield got right despite Bethesda’s poor track record for that sort of thing. This issue isn’t one that should be fixed by entering some Steam launch command you have to research, it should be the default setting. When it comes to quality of life, the most obnoxious aspect of the game for me was disassembling looted guns and clothing. This is the most efficient way

to get tier 5 crafting parts by the end of the game, and you have to go into the backpack menu and manually disassemble each item. Streamlining this part of the game is as simple as adding a disassemble option to items directly from the ground, similar to how there’s an option to eat food directly from the ground. Now I’d like to get into spoilers for both the story of the base game and the expansion, starting with the base game. The short version is that this game’s story is great, and Phantom

Liberty adds even more story content of equal if not better quality compared to the base game. Skip to the next section or the timestamp on screen if you haven’t played this game, I promise it’s much better when you’re unsure of what plot revelation will be revealed in any given mission, and the suspense of what will happen by the end of the game drives a lot of engagement. The first surprise that Cyberpunk hit me with is how elaborate its scripted missions are, and these missions were my favor

ite part of my first playthrough. The big blowup heist that acts as a climax for the game’s first act was incredibly fun to go through with all the twists and turns the plot takes. Saburo’s death was an incredibly tense and engaging scene that is elevated by the excellent voice acting and the game’s aforementioned commitment to immersion. The fakeout ending also flowed into the introduction to Johnny Silverhand very effectively, even if Keanu Reeves’ voice acting is very one-note and monotone. I

n the second act, there’s missions like capturing Hellman with Panam and the Japantown float parade that continue to provide intricate and exciting action and narrative set pieces. Though to some extent, this is also to Cyberpunk’s detriment, as it lacks the dynamic choices in narrative that other RPGs exemplify. I don’t think this is a matter of strictly good and strictly bad, it’s just a different choice for how this narrative is designed. It allows so much more love to be put into these dialo

gue sequences from a visual standpoint, but it also sacrifices the replayability that those multiple overarching story paths provide. There are a few moments where these choices arise, like the option to remove the virus from Militech’s bugged credit chip when retrieving the Flathead in Act 1, or being able to save Takemura after the float parade from Arasaka’s troops, but these small instances are not impactful enough to make a significant shift in the narrative’s general path. I’m not saying t

his as a piece of criticism necessarily, it’s just that this is going to be a matter of personal preference. Cyberpunk’s replayability is carried by its build variety and the enjoyment of becoming more powerful with every new level, while the design of its narrative unfortunately pushes against this once you know how each quest resolves by the end. There’s also a little issue that unfortunately infringes on the game’s immersion somewhat, which arises from the narrative hook at the end of Act 1.

V’s life is saved by the relic, but it begins to overwrite their consciousness, which is the narrative thrust behind the main quest. There’s a lot of trickery the game plays with how the relic is shown to be slowly killing V, which is mostly done through the totally scripted brief malfunctions that show the relic’s effects in painful detail. The issue is that Cyberpunk also has to be an RPG where players have the choice to completely ignore the main quest and do whatever they want without restri

ction, and during all that side content V is completely fine to run around and kill hundreds of people without breaking a sweat. This is especially noticeable during the game’s ending sequences, where through the writing, voicework, and animation, it really feels like V has a matter of days or even hours to get help. But when the ending’s over, and you reload your save from before going up the elevator to Embers, V is completely fine for an indefinite amount of time. The relic only malfunctions

at narratively convenient times where the game needs to create a feeling of desperation, and while that feeling of desperation is quite convincing just looking at how it’s presented, it unfortunately creates a case of ludonarrative dissonance that’s tough to solve. This probably could have been alleviated somewhat by making the relic malfunction at random points when V is just walking around outside of combat, though it doesn’t fix the core issue that this narrative hook is to some extent simply

incompatible with an RPG like this. But for now, let’s get on to Phantom Liberty. What I was hoping for in this expansion was exactly what the base game provided; an engaging, well presented winding narrative with bombastic set piece quests and exciting twists, and in this regard Phantom Liberty opens flawlessly. The first 1-2 hours of the expansion is one big action-packed set piece with explosive aircraft crashes and tense stealthy escapes, finishing off with a climactic boss fight against a

walking tank. Just this intro was an exciting, well-structured story in itself, and with the narrative hooks set up by Songbird’s mysterious disappearance, I was excited to continue the main quest. From there, the game mellows out a bit and introduces the internal politics of intelligence agencies though the character of Solomon Reed and his relationship with both Songbird and another agent named Alex. As a quick note here, Idris Elba as Solomon Reed falls into some of the same trappings as Kean

u Reeves’ voicework in that he doesn’t have a lot of range, but in this case it actually works for the cool, collected, experienced agent who’s totally unphased by whatever could possibly happen in this line of work. Phantom Liberty takes clear inspiration from spy thrillers for its story, though in fitting with the base game’s themes exploring the power of corporations, the expansion explores the power of governments through the iron grip they have on both V as their new recruit and their sleep

er agents who are bound by duty, and it does so in a way that’s much deeper and more interesting than any generic Hollywood spy thriller. It does still indulge in the best tropes of its genre though, with the conversation with the two French netrunners and the later use of their stolen identities to intercept a deal with Hansen being two examples of wonderfully tense, nerve-racking conversations where you need to subtly mine for information or keep composure and maintain cover. There probably is

n’t any legitimate tension or risk of failing quests riding on these conversations, but they’re so well written and captivating to me that I could look past that fact. Side content in the new Dogtown area is also a cut above the base game, which is saying something since the base game was already quite good at this. This mostly shows in the side gigs, which have been upgraded from glorified police scanners in the base game to fully realized missions with choices, fully voiced characters, and cho

reographed cutscenes in Phantom Liberty. Even the “real” side missions feel quite elaborate, like this one where you play through scripted combat encounters as Colonel Hansen which is a lot like the sections where you play through Silverhand’s memories during the main quest, but it’s made all the more impressive that this amount of effort was put into the totally optional side content. Finally, the emergent combat encounters added with the random supply drops round out Phantom Liberty’s excellen

t side content. The last thing I’ll mention here with regards to Phantom Liberty is the all-new ending to the base game it added. Past all the political and social commentary lathered across the digital billboards and graffiti covered walls of Night City, Cyberpunk is a game about legends, or figures that have become legendary in status to where years and decades after their death they’re still talked about. Regardless of what life path you pick for V, they become a merc looking to reach that le

gendary status at the end of the prologue. This is of course sidelined when V steals the relic and becomes inexorably attached to it. That’s an important thing to note here, which is a philosophy that the game’s writers clearly had in mind in writing both the base story and the expansion: V cannot be allowed to truly escape from the relic. Throughout the course of the main quest V becomes a living legend, and by the end either throws it all away by selling out to Arasaka in order to have the bes

t shot at safely removing the relic, or truly comes into their own as a legend by blazing an uncertain path forward. But no matter what happens, V cannot live on, as the relic catches up regardless of what path you choose. This is why I think the new ending added by Phantom Liberty is so smart, because it rounds out the selection of endings from the base game without infringing on that philosophy of never letting V escape from the relic. Put simply, V is able to have the relic safely removed, bu

t it comes at the cost of a 2 year coma and the ability to use any significant cybernetic implants, effectively ending V’s career as a mercenary. The game intelligently and subtly ties the hours you spend building up money to buy the best available implants and gear, and even the time and effort you’ve put in towards building V’s social status and throws it all away. V’s new feeble nature is rendered in detail when they can’t stand up to a couple nameless thugs in an alleyway, which adds to the

incredible melancholic tone set by the conversations with Viktor and Misty. V’s life ends in one way or another no matter what ending you choose, but it ends in the most emotionally conflicting way here because they live on despite losing nearly everything. In the final scene we see V flash a little smile coming to terms with their new life, and they disappear into the crowd to start that new life. It’s a tough ending, but it also feels like a hopeful one in a way, and that conflict is why it wo

rks so well. Personally, I think this is the best ending in the game both from a writing perspective as well as from the perspective of deciding what’s best for V, though where Cyberpunk’s multiple endings work so well is that the question of “what is the best ending” is totally up to interpretation. Phantom Liberty’s new ending just adds another totally unique perspective to the game’s lineup of endings that fits seamlessly, and that’s why I love this new ending. So Phantom Liberty in most ways

surpasses the quality of content seen in the base game of Cyberpunk, and it was absolutely worth the purchase for me. This game has come a long way, and I’m very happy to say that it’s come into its own as one of my favorite RPGs, though that isn’t saying much for me since I’m not that deep into RPGs as a whole. The way it mixes classic RPG stat building with modern AAA graphical technology and a more streamlined, linear story is not only unique, but also done well to deliver a great game. If y

ou haven’t played Cyberpunk because of that stigma surrounding its disastrous launch, now is the absolute best time to try it, I highly recommend this game. The last RPG I played was Underrail. This is the second and final game in this video that I haven’t played to completion, though it wasn’t for a lack of trying. In Underrail’s case, despite being a game made by a very small team, it’s a very long and involved RPG that is made even longer by two expansions and the sheer difficulty of its comb

at encounters. A lot of aspects of Underrail were primed for me to not like it, as I’m not a fan of overly long games, nor am I a fan of deeply involved strategy games. But I honestly fell in love with this game, and I only stopped playing it because I needed to get to more games for this video. When it comes to strategy games, I’ve never been able to get into the type where you have so many different party members or units to keep track of at all times, but I have been able to get into games li

ke Fallout 1 where strategy in combat is simple, but strategy in character building is much more complex. The classic Fallouts were flawed in this sense because of overpowered traits like Gifted and obvious dump stats like charisma, which makes building optimal characters very simple. Underrail feels like a classic Fallout game with the complexity and depth of character building turned up to 11, and the harsh brutality of its world being turned up to 11 as well. This is an intensely compelling c

ombination for me, as character building and leveling has always been my favorite part of RPGs, and Underrail forces you to build an optimal character or risk constant frustration and death. The level of challenge that this game provides is not for everyone, and when you build a suboptimal character you’ll likely be constantly dying and retrying combat encounters until you get perfect dice rolls. Surprisingly, this was yet another plus for me, and I actually enjoyed brute forcing encounters that

obviously far out-leveled me and experimenting with all my options in combat. On top of this is the strategic aspect of picking your fights in RPGs, which helps round out the simple strategy in combat and complex strategy in character building. I’m not sure what it is about this type of gameplay, because even though it feels like it should be flawed from a purely intellectual perspective, I couldn’t help but feel drawn in by the brutal nature of it all and the eventual satisfaction of overcomin

g nearly impossible odds. The character building systems are made even stronger by an alternate leveling system called oddities, where you gain experience by finding these specific items out in the world. While it changes the game’s skill balancing somewhat since lockpicking and hacking are made more valuable to get oddities in locked containers, it’s a great system for getting that dopamine hit from rolling a random drop, as well as for how it ties leveling to exploration rather than just to ki

lling enemies and doing quests. It’s a really smart addition to the CRPG formula that I hope gets picked up by more games in the future. I initially started my first character and played up to the game’s second act, at which point many combat encounters began to feel legitimately impossible. In my around 75 hours of playtime I’ve lost track of how many characters I’ve started, but this allowed me to appreciate another aspect of Underrail that you won’t notice in just one playthrough. The game ac

tually has very light roguelike elements, where every new game can have certain locations swapped around or changed. On my second character I came across this small area with a drop down and a couple hostile human enemies that wasn’t there for my first character, which gave that character’s story a slightly more unique feeling. It feels like a natural extension of the random map encounters in the classic Fallouts, but made unique to every individual character, which I find to be a good bonus for

replayability in the game’s favor. I only find two real issues with Underrail’s gameplay, one of which is probably just me unfortunately running into a bug, as on the character I played up to the game’s third act with I discovered that the main quest was bugged. Apparently there was a cutscene that was supposed to play that just never triggered, so I couldn’t continue to finish the game. This wasn’t as damning an issue as it sounds though, because Underrail is one of those RPGs that you end up

wanting to start over with a new build when you get halfway into a playthrough, and I was happy to go back and play around with some more optimal builds made by veterans. What I find to be a greater issue is navigating cities. Not only does the biggest city in the game have no map of sublocations to help with its maze-like structure, the standard walk speed is too slow for a game where navigation simply involves clicking on your destination and waiting for your character to walk there. In the bi

gger, more complicated sublocations in cities it can take nearly a minute to walk from one area transition to the next, which is made longer if you get stopped by an NPC randomly walking into your path, and this all makes walking around safe zones very boring. The only aspect I find almost entirely lacking in this game is its story and writing, and unfortunately that’s a big deal. Despite taking after the classic Fallouts mechanically, it doesn’t really take after them from a tonal perspective,

and because of that it lacks both the charm of Fallout’s wackiness as well as the difficult moral dilemmas in the vein of Necropolis from Fallout 1. I think if Underrail nailed this aspect as well, it would probably be the greatest RPG I’ve ever played, but it seems like there wasn’t much effort put into writing truly engaging quests. Unless the final main quests that I couldn’t play hide all the interesting choices, Underrail is quite underwhelming in its quest design and writing overall. The r

eality is that Underrail is a game that’s much more about building your character mechanically rather than intellectually. I love this game for how strong its stat building systems are and how it demands good choices on the player’s part if they want to survive in this world, but it’s significantly lacking from a narrative perspective. There may be a day when there exists a game with the narrative depth of New Vegas and the mechanical depth of Underrail, but until that day comes, Underrail scrat

ches that mechanical RPG itch better than any other game I’ve ever played. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if it’s for you, it’s one you can’t afford to miss out on. So I’ve saved the best games I played for this video for last, which are all well-regarded classics that I’ve finally gotten around to trying. I’d first like to go over one of the most well-regarded series of games in history, because I finally played through the Metal Gear Solid trilogy. Before getting into this, I need to no

te that I played through these games on emulator so that I could collect footage without putting down money for a capture card. I have 100% legal physical copies of all three games, and they were perfectly playable with 99% consistent framerates on Duckstation for PS1 and PCSX2 for PS2, but if you notice any graphical oddities that’s likely the fault of the emulator. Any differences caused by the emulator had a very negligible impact on my enjoyment and now my judgement of these games. I’m also

going to be talking about spoilers for all three of these games, so you should probably not make my mistake and play them for yourself if you haven’t, because I probably would have liked them even more if I had played them completely blind. But regardless, let’s start by talking about the first game. It's easy to see how Metal Gear Solid was a very important game at the time of its release, as no game up to this point had reached its level of cinematic quality. It was made at a point where graph

ical technology had advanced just enough to where characters can look close enough to what they’re meant to be, so a baseline level of immersion is achievable since the player doesn’t have to suspend their disbelief that abstract clumps of pixels are meant to represent things in the real world. While actors in cutscenes are not fully hand-animated at all times, every single line of dialogue and each individual camera movement are carefully directed much like a film, which makes for one of the mo

st technically impressive games of its time. What makes it so unique for its time is that its innovation was made in service of telling the game’s story, rather than other advancements in video game technology which were often in service of advancing graphical fidelity above anything else. For this reason alone, MGS1 was worth playing for me even if it was only to appreciate how it changed narratives in games going forward. But past how impressive this game is in the context of its release, the

writing and voice acting here is so full of charm that it’s hard not to enjoy watching these cutscenes despite their length. It’s a bizarre mix of science-fiction political spy thriller that takes much of its content seriously, and a self-aware cartoon where characters tell you out loud in explicit terms what buttons on your controller make Snake do what things, and the villains stay alive just long enough after beating them in their video game-y boss fights to explain their sympathetic backstor

ies. Dialogue sequences vary wildly in tone, where one minute you’ll be receiving an exposition dump about how to deal with the terrorist threat Snake is sent to take care of, and the next you’ll have Otacon pissing himself and explaining in detail what an otaku is, and just after that it turns on the Gaelic opera in order to deliver a sincere heartfelt moment. The glue that holds this bipolar tone together is a playful self-awareness that makes these conversations a lot of fun to listen to whil

e not infringing on its totally sincere moments. Another important note is that MGS1 was a pioneer of the video game metanarrative, which is particularly important for me personally. There are two important moments in the game where the player is asked to interact with parts of the game outside of the software itself, first when you’re told to find a codec frequency on the back of the physical CD case the game came in, and the famous example of the Psycho Mantis boss fight where you have to plug

your controller into the second controller port in order to damage the boss. This is punctuated by the aforementioned conversations where characters explicitly explain controls past Snake and directly to the player, along with the very much game-y rules the gameplay is designed with, where serious depictions of real firearms are found as abstract floating pickups. It’s very similar to how the game’s traditional storytelling techniques make way for comedic and serious tones to melt together, bec

ause while these fourth wall breaking elements can be dismissed as neat gimmicks in the moment, it makes these scenes by the end of the game all the more powerful, where characters look directly at the camera - and by extension at the player - and tell you that you enjoy all the killing you’ve done up to this point. “You enjoy all the killing, that’s why.” “What!” “Are you denying it? Haven’t you already killed most of my comrades?” When you’re watching Metal Gear Solid, there’s no question as t

o why the game was so impactful at its release, but unfortunately it’s weighed down today by the heavily antiquated design of its gameplay. MGS1 is actually the least stealth-heavy of the three games, and just based on that I would have figured it would be my favorite gameplay wise, but the archaic qualities of the general combat make these boss fights frustrating. Even on normal mode, every boss takes a lot of damage with only so many opportunities available to even deal damage, which makes rep

laying the fight after your inevitable deaths a very tedious experience. Particularly the fight with Grey Fox early in the game and the penultimate boss against the Metal Gear are both stupidly difficult and often times feel like a game of retrying until Snake decides to listen to your inputs. Outside of boss fights, there are actually very few sections that strictly require stealth, and when they do, the dominant strategy is to simply wait for the patrol to move. What’s worse than that is this

tower where the game strictly forces you out of stealth due to these indestructible cameras, and you have to mow your way through waves of guards while going up this repetitive staircase. It’s very easy to get stuck here if you didn’t bring any rations to heal with, which makes this section feel unfinished. Moments like this make MGS1 feel much more confused gameplay wise than its comparatively sharp narrative would have you believe. But what’s even worse than that is the moment where a gameplay

section actively infringes on the story, when Snake’s love interest Meryl gets shot and is bleeding out on the ground, and the Colonel tells Snake to backtrack through the entire facility to find a sniper rifle so he can fight back. Not only is this part of the game a boring backtracking section of blatantly obvious filler, it completely removes any urgency from this scene where an important character is in imminent danger, and you’re essentially told to go on a 20 minute sidequest. This is ser

iously damaging to this story beat that is otherwise sold very well by the voice acting and visuals. But regardless of the game’s flaws we can clearly see today, MGS1 remains a nearly consistently entertaining game despite its age. It seamlessly mixes so many seemingly contradictory elements – antiquated and cutting-edge design, modern and archaic storytelling techniques, and silly and serious tones – that surprisingly all blend together to make a story with a lot of depth. Unfortunately, the ga

meplay lacks that depth, and if you’re playing this game today, you’ll likely enjoy it a lot more if you can play it with save states or even just on easy difficulty. I can strongly recommend this game on the merits of its story alone, but you should do what you can to make your enjoyment of that story as frictionless as possible. I would say it’s even worth playing for more than just the sum of its parts, because then you can play Metal Gear Solid 2, and Metal Gear Solid 2 is in some ways an ev

en more important game than the first. This game’s narrative is so incredibly far ahead of its time that it feels like something that was written in the last 5 years rather than over 20 years ago now. But before I go over that, MGS2 is a game that is first and foremost about deception, targeted at both the characters and the player themselves. This is common ground for all three of these games, but MGS2 focuses in on it and makes it the most integral theme. Because of this, I’m going to re-itera

te my spoiler warning. Don’t make the same mistake as me, and play this game blind. MGS2 opens exactly how you would expect the sequel to go, following Snake getting started on a new mission to stop a new metal gear. Common sense improvements are made to the gameplay, like firing weapons in first person and allowing alert and danger phases to carry over between loading screens. Additional features like the room raids and more heavily armored guards make stealth so much more important in this gam

e compared to the first, and it’s great for this first chapter. But the first piece of deception reveals itself when Snake dies an hour into the game, and you’re instead given control of Raiden, a VR rookie with an obnoxious voice tasked with saving the president and stopping the metal gear that Snake failed to stop. Everything about the game’s presentation and narrative changes at this point, most obviously with the new, much less interesting main character that entirely lacks Snake’s charm, an

d this bait-and-switch is done so nonchalantly as if this is all totally normal. The music that once called back to the iconic leitmotifs of the first game’s soundtrack suddenly loses that personality, and becomes much more electronic in instrumentation in contrast to the more cinematic orchestral compositions heard during the tanker. Codec calls become much more frequent and explain concepts at excessive length that you undoubtedly understand if you made it through the tanker, and even the game

over screen is changed from the iconic animation from the first game, which all makes for a tone that was completely unique at the time. A couple years ago I made a video discussing games and moments from games that feel “haunting”, and had I played MGS2 before writing that video, it would have undoubtedly come up in that discussion, because the way this unsettling tone is established and carried throughout the game is immaculate. But let’s go back to deception, because it’s a very important th

eme for this series that is especially important to MGS2. The series’ narratives are written for these big important twists where the characters are revealed to have been misled alongside the player. The true purpose of Snake’s mission at Shadow Moses in the first game is revealed as a plot to transmit a deadly virus to the terrorist leaders, and he’s also tricked into arming the Metal Gear all by himself by Liquid disguised as his mentor figure. Later in the series in MGS3, an important theme i

s how soldiers who give their life for their countries are deceived and made to take the fall both because of and in spite of their devotion. But where this part of MGS2 differs from both its predecessor and successor is how this deception is solely for the player, while the game itself and its characters continue on as if nothing happened. You can see Raiden as a reflection of the player placed into this world, a soldier trained on video games who idolizes Snake’s legendary status. But by the e

nd of the game even that is revealed as another piece of deception, as his true backstory is revealed as a ruthlessly effective child soldier whose apparent relationship with Rose is a complete lie. Eventually, after Raiden symbolically rejects the player’s control by throwing away your dogtags in order to end the game, the game asks you to take a final step back that only you as the player can take, to look at yourself sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons on a controller. This medium i

tself is a powerful tool of deception. But this theme is also expressed in a more traditional narratively focused way through the Patriots. In this version of the US, the president and the entire apparatus of government are nothing but puppets for the will of a shadowy group of conspirators called the Patriots, who only seek to expand their influence and control over the population. Just based on what’s shown in this game, the Patriots seem like an unsolvable mystery, an intent which Snake seems

to directly confirm when he calls them an “ongoing fiction” during his speech at the end of the game, and which is made impossibly convoluted by the post-credits scene’s revelation that they’ve all been dead for 100 years. What matters about the Patriots isn’t who they are, it’s what they represent – a will to control not just human evolution, but human culture as well. MGS2 is so greatly ahead of its time not just because of how it makes the player a participant in its story, but also because

of this codec conversation with the Patriots’ AI before the final boss. In the MGS universe, the human genome was fully mapped out and technological advancements allowed life itself to be digitized, but that isn’t all that’s passed down by humans between generations. Human culture is passed down as well, which is somewhat analogous to genes if you think in terms of Richard Dawkins’ conception of “memes.” Just like how genetic engineering allowed for the cloning of Big Boss and the creation of th

e genome soldiers from the first game, the Patriots created this AI in order to control what information and culture is passed between generations as well. Keep in mind that this game released in 2002, a decent chunk of time before widespread adoption of the internet, which makes it all the more powerful and shocking today when the AI begins to talk about how a sort of “information overload” occurs in what we now call the information age. It warns that the internet allows people to develop their

own realities unconsciously through confirmation bias, by naturally creating communities who selectively leak bits of their preferred truth into larger forums. In a world such as this, who can be tasked with deciding what is “truth?” The previously discussed layers of deception are used here to show that neither Raiden nor the player are able to decide what is truth, but the AI believes it can. This scene has only become more relevant with discussions of how to curb the spread of misinformation

on social media, as well as the growing prevalence of AI in the real world. One might be able to imagine a totally unbiased AI cast as the arbiter of truth in order to keep misinformation contained, which is what the AI in this scene claims to be. The S3 plan is revealed stand for “Selection for Societal Sanity,” where the AI is able to “create context” for the flurry of information released by humans into the so-called “cesspool of society at large.” The game makes a scarily compelling case fo

r instituting this mechanism of control, though it’s not airtight. The AI denies that this is a plan of censorship, but given that this is part of a plan by the shadowy conspirators of this universe who want to control the world population, and now given the real life context of political bias in Large Language Models, the idea that there could possibly be a truly unbiased arbiter of truth is made to seem like a far-fetched concept. But without that arbiter, the philosophical issues with testimo

nial knowledge are exacerbated by technological advancements like the internet, leading to absolute truth being even more elusive than it was before. Then, after the final boss, Snake appears to give Raiden – and by extension the player – some guidance after this disturbing revelation that no one is really able to objectively come to the truth. In opposition to the philosophy that someone must be in control provided by the Patriots’ existence, Snake provides a much more optimistic outlook on thi

s state of affairs. “There’s no such thing in the world as absolute reality. Most of what they call real is actually fiction.” “We can tell people about having faith, what we had faith in. What we found important enough to fight for. It’s not whether you were right or wrong, but how much faith you were willing to have, that decides the future.” Snake’s point is that, while it’s unfortunate that this is what technology has led us to, there’s no going back at this point. Technology and its amplifi

cation of human flaws won’t stop the flow of ideas and culture down to future generations, and the reality is that humans were never all that good at deciding what is true. The AI highlights the juxtapositions of morality in the modern day, as if to say that these disparities are somehow unique to contemporary life, though it’s hopefully clear to see that this is totally mistaken based on human history. The way culture is passed along has never been about truth, it’s always been about belief, an

d those beliefs are filtered through mechanisms of collective scrutiny until they’re accepted as good. While this process is flawed, its decentralized nature is presented here as preferable to the centralized biased arbiter of truth. MGS2 ends on a very optimistic note, a sort of call to action for the player to take part in leaving behind our artifacts for future generations to marvel at, and more importantly, to learn from. “… but we still have the responsibility to leave behind what traces of

life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing.” I’ve always been enthralled by games and stories in general that explore a philosophical dilemma, and Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of the best examples of this type of narrative in the history of games as a medium. It incredibly manages to become more and more relevant to modern day issues as time goes on, and whether that was down to sheer luck or a keen eye for the trajectory of technological advancement, it

’s still an incredible achievement. While I’ll note here that it suffers from some of the same issues as its predecessor when it comes to annoying boss fights, that’s something that has a minimal effect on the story’s themes, and the game is still worth playing on the merits of those themes and the design of its narrative alone. So I’m very happy to have finally experienced Metal Gear Solid 2, and even though I couldn’t fully experience it, both because I was spoiled and because I wasn’t able to

play the game at its release, it was still very much worth playing today. In contrast to the second game, Metal Gear Solid 3 feels like a continuation of the tone of the first game, rather than how MGS2 mostly just continues the themes of the first. While that focus on themes is what I gravitate to most, I can’t deny that MGS3 is a thoroughly entertaining game because of how it expands and refines the already entertaining tone and dialogue from the first game. The heaps of baggage from the insa

ne mess of inconsistencies that are the Patriots are completely dropped in the third game, because it’s actually a prequel about the origins of Big Boss. What comes out of this is a game that doesn’t worry itself with the depth and complexity of themes that MGS2 exemplifies, and rather delivers a straightforward spy thriller that could easily stand with the greats of this genre from the movie world. Before talking about that story, it’s important to note that MGS3 is easily the gameplay peak of

this trilogy. For the first time in the trilogy, this game feels ahead of its time when it comes to the design of its gameplay. The stealth feels a lot better than the previous games thanks to the fully controllable third person camera combined with the option to switch to the overhead camera for certain situations where it can provide better visibility. This new control scheme allows for new level design possibilities, which the game uses to make these wide-open stealth sandboxes that promote a

great deal of player expression. Not only are there a multitude of routes through these areas, there’s also an incredible number of tools at the player’s disposal that allow for even more weird and comedic situations. As a new player the interface and the sheer number of options you have can be overwhelming, but finding your own path through these levels using your own strategies is very satisfying. But what feels most ahead of its time about the gameplay here are the light survival mechanics t

he game employs. Every action you take drains some kind of resource, whether that be items like grenades or ammo, electronic equipment using batteries, durability on weapon silencers, and even just walking around will drain a new stamina meter that you need to fill by hunting for animals and eating food. It’s an interesting mix of a very much linear path through the narrative with very few optional branches, and the survival sandbox games that would begin to pick up steam with the indie market a

round 2010. The UI is bloated and the healing system has a lot of unnecessary fluff, but the survival sandbox mechanics work very well alongside the stealth sandbox level design to make for an incredibly freeing gameplay experience, which surprisingly fits quite seamlessly with the linear narrative. But sadly I do have to complain about boss fights briefly here, as it seems to be a common thread in this trilogy that the bosses have a tendency to be frustrating. MGS3 has some of the best fights o

ut of the three games like Ocelot, The Pain, and The End, but it also has a couple of the worst offenders for the two big flaws in the series’ bosses. The one-on-one fight with Volgin was very confusing to me, and even by the time I beat him I didn’t really understand how I managed to do it, which is exemplary for the issue of obtuse puzzle bosses. Though what’s worse is that the final boss against The Boss is incredibly close to being the best fight in the series, if it wasn’t for how the camer

a was handled. I’m fine with this fight being difficult, as it fits with how The Boss is presented as completely overpowering in cutscenes, and this fight is also the aesthetic peak of the game and probably even the trilogy when it comes to both visuals and audio. But for some reason, the game doesn’t let you manually control the camera at all during this fight. A lot of the time these camera angles can be very claustrophobic, hiding The Boss from view through no fault of the player. It feels li

ke this fight was made artificially difficult through this decision, which is so unfortunate since everything about this fight and its context in the story is so perfect and ends the game off with a strong final note, and it could have been flawless if this one simple issue was fixed. But let’s quickly talk about that story, which is of course where the MGS games shine. In contrast to MGS2 keeping Snake away from the spotlight for most of the game, MGS3 indulges in Snake’s character as it was se

t up in the first game, even though this technically isn’t the same character from the first game. The codec calls with the supporting cast are highly entertaining, whether it be the goofy conversations with Paramedic or the calls with Sigint who’s a sort of straight-man character to contrast Snake’s awkward charm. But what’s better are these cutscenes, which while long are all full of carefully choreographed action, brief moments of crucial interactivity, and lots of fun characters that are a j

oy to see interact. Snake and Eva’s dynamic in-particular make their one-on-one interactions hilarious, especially the scenes with Snake awkwardly staring at Eva crawling around half-naked while pretending to remain stoic. It’s a tease that slowly boils the tension over the game before eventually reaching the payoff at the very end, and the excellent execution of the comedy and the infectious romantic chemistry makes Eva’s betrayal and the revelation of The Boss’s noble sacrifice all the more po

werful on an emotional level. So even though I like MGS2 more on an intellectual level, MGS3 was by far the most consistently entertaining in the trilogy because it manages to be consistently engaging through its gameplay as well as its story. It’s not only the most enjoyable gameplay wise, as it’s also the best that the series has ever done a straight-forward spy thriller narrative, since that entertainment value isn’t held back by a need to have an explicit metanarrative about the player and t

he world outside the game. The MGS trilogy was very much worth playing through, and I’m glad to have finally gotten to experience these classics for myself. I highly recommend that you play through all three of these games, but you might consider lowering the difficulty to soften the edges of the more archaic design choices so you can fully enjoy the excellent stories they tell. Now before getting to the last few games, I did start playing Death Stranding after finishing the MGS trilogy, though

I only played for a few hours before realizing that my time was better spent getting to more games for this video. That doesn’t mean I think the game is bad, and I’m sure I’ll continue playing in the future, but I thought I would give some quick thoughts here since this game is really interesting even in its first few hours. What I immediately noticed coming off the MGS games was the difference in writing, particularly in how much logistical mystery the game allows to flourish in the first few h

ours. The dialogue in the MGS games – especially during the codec calls – are full of exposition dumps explaining histories between characters or some esoteric sci-fi concepts, while Death Stranding seems to be much more comfortable leaving the history of its world ambiguous at the beginning of the game. There are no info dumps about the logistics of the time-accelerating rain, why babies in artificial wombs can detect invisible monsters, or what the titular death stranding even was, and this wo

rks really well for this dystopian setting full of mysterious imagery. And speaking of that imagery, these cutscenes are shot incredibly well, and the open world is consistently rendered in beautiful detail. But aside from the story and visuals, I was also having a surprising amount of fun playing the game during the first few introductory missions. The micro-management skills of maintaining balance and using the various tools at your disposal to take more efficient routes made what seems like t

he most simple and boring gameplay of walking from point A to point B an engaging exercise in careful planning and execution. One of the first real missions where you have to carry a body for cremation was made so much more enjoyable by the game’s excellent soundtrack, but I couldn’t find an option to freely play music during the later missions, which I think would have helped a lot with the mission I stopped on where I would have to backtrack to the starting city. I understand why this wasn’t i

ncluded in the game, as the developers likely wanted full control over the audio during missions and wanted to avoid unfitting music playing during stealth segments, though that fix is as easy as having the radio experience interference when there are enemies around. Including this option in the game would make side missions so much more enjoyable, and it was that combined with the realization that I would have to backtrack all the way back to where I started the game proper that discouraged me

from continuing. Again, I’m sure I’ll come back to play further into the game, and the first impressions were pretty good, so I’m excited to continue once I have the time. Another classic I played for the first time was Bioshock. I’ll start here by saying that I haven’t taken a full dive into immersive sims as of yet, though it’s no surprise to me as to why this genre is so revered by those who pick apart game design. I have some experience with the most modernized titles like Prey and Deus Ex:

Mankind Divided, both of which I’ve played multiple times and thoroughly enjoy. Having played those very modern iterations of the formula, it’s easy to see the influence that Bioshock has had, as it was similarly a game that brought the immersive sim into a new modern era back when it released in 2007. Compared to the awkward mechanics and cluttered interfaces in the original Deus Ex and System Shock games, Bioshock is far more user friendly even if it’s begun to show its age in recent times, an

d this is exactly what allows this game to remain palatable even as we approach the 20th anniversary of its release. Even if there are elements in Bioshock that haven’t aged so gracefully, there are also so many that have a very strong timeless quality, which starts with the iconic introduction to the iconic setting of Rapture. While it helps that I’m playing the remastered version of the game, even without the updated graphics this scene is still so visually beautiful thanks to the art directio

n and the faithful realization of that direction. Similarly to the FromSoftware games, Bioshock makes up for a lack of graphical fidelity by having a strong sense of visual style, as the setting of Rapture really feels like what would happen if you somehow built an underwater city in the 1940s inspired by the architectural trends of the era. Once you get into exploring the city yourself, it also genuinely feels like a place that was once populated by an elite class of wealthy business owners, as

you can see so many different logos and advertisements plastered around the walls of the decaying city. That environment also feeds into the design of the gameplay and story, as Rapture is a prime example of the ideal setting for an immersive sim like this. Through audio recordings and other pieces of environmental storytelling, the game gestures at a detailed history to this engrossing setting that you can uncover given some effort to explore each area thoroughly and piece every narrative clue

together. That exploration is what mixes storytelling with gameplay to make that strong immersive sim narrative style, as while you explore the levels to scavenge for ammo and currency, you’re also absorbing bits of the narrative even if just through osmosis. Even if you were exploring solely for items the game would be satisfying from a gameplay perspective, but that addition of exploration-driven storytelling pushes the game from just great to thoroughly immersive and engaging. Bioshock also

comes with some RPG elements that form another aspect of the immersive sim, which is player agency in how they want to deal with threats. You get the choice of 7 different weapons with 3 different ammo types for each gun, various plasmids which act as a magic system, and the ability to hack into turrets and security drones to turn them to your side, and are put up against a set of enemies each with their own sets of weaknesses to your own abilities which are up to you to discern and exploit. It

sets up a good survival horror bent to the game’s introductory sections before becoming a game of specializing into and optimizing a build by the end, and it does a shockingly good job at keeping one strategy from being dominant against all enemies. The wrench does unfortunately become the best strategy against most enemies, but you’ll at least need to improvise a bit to fight the Big Daddies since getting within melee range is completely unviable, which helps break up the monotony of circle str

afing around splicers and mashing left click until they die. That very choice-driven gameplay once again ties back into the game’s narrative, as Bioshock tells a story all about choice and free will. This comes through in the backstory of Rapture, a city built as a Randian objectivist libertarian utopia where free will and individualism reigns over the determinism of gods or the tyranny of kings. Despite this, Andrew Ryan – the city’s founder – still runs propaganda to control his citizens, and

the fall of the city down to the crumbling state we find it in during the game may very well have been inevitable, ironically due to the very ideal of free will it was built upon. On top of that more political sense of free will, there’s also a more individualistic sense of free will the game explores through one of the most infamous narrative twists in the history of video games, which I won’t spoil here since I didn’t give a spoiler warning previously. The important thing is that the way these

themes of free will and determinism are explored with the help of the game design and a very memorable twist was revolutionary for a game from 2007, and it’s no surprise why Bioshock’s story is remembered so fondly because of it. But hopefully it’s not too controversial to say that the game starts to fall apart near the end. This starts with a boring, but thankfully brief escort sequence which is made even longer than it should be since you need to escort a child who takes periodic stops for re

asons which are totally unrelated to your own objectives. There’s none of the game’s enthralling exploration in this penultimate level, just several corridors to do an overly simplistic escort mission through. The final level is unfortunately an anticlimactic bullet sponge boss fight. I played on the hardest difficulty and I still got through this fight on my first attempt, which means the Big Daddies found throughout the game were much more threatening, and this only added to the disappointment

of this finale. Boss fights in immersive sims just never seem to work, as they always seem to fall under the category of trivially easy or frustratingly difficult. The rather abrupt ending following this prevents the ending of Bioshock from living up to its excellent first and second acts, much like many other classic PC games of its kind. Despite the lackluster ending and despite its age, Bioshock was a treat to play through for the first time. Immersive sims have the potential to tell very co

mpelling stories, and in that respect Bioshock may still be the peak of the genre. There are games like Prey that have come close to matching the strength of Bioshock’s story while surpassing it in terms of gameplay and breadth of player expression, but Bioshock is still worth playing because it’s still the best in its class at certain things. I expect I’ll be playing more immersive sims in the future so that assessment may change, but Bioshock is still a fantastic experience that is absolutely

worth your time. There are two more console-specific classics I have to go over before getting to the last two games I played, so let’s talk about ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Once again, I had to use an emulator to play and record footage of these two games, but I have a legally ripped copy of the PS3 HD collection, which ran surprisingly flawlessly on RPCS3. I had heard for years that Shadow of the Colossus, and to a lesser extent ICO as well, were not just great games, but also very histor

ically important for video games as a medium. Now that I’ve played them, I can say that even this far out from their initial release, it’s still clear to see how heavily these two games have influenced not just many of my favorite games, but games as a whole as well. While Shadow of the Colossus is the much more influential release of these two games generally, ICO has had a more subtle but still important legacy through its embrace of a significantly smaller overall scope and accompanying minim

alism. In fact, if there were a word to describe ICO it would be just that – minimalist. Remember that this game was initially released in 2001 for the PS2, at a time before any real presence of independent developers whose smaller teams would necessitate simpler design. At this time, game development was done by large teams with what could be considered an ”additive” design philosophy where adding more features and content was the goal of the development cycle. This context is what made ICO sub

versive compared to the output of AAA studios at the time. Rather than the goal of development being to create more and more on top of the existing structure, complicating the gameplay and weakening the immersive tie between the player and the game world, ICO instead removes as much as it can in order to greatly focus in on creating a particular tone, as well as to strengthen that immersive factor. The game has no HUD past the necessary save and pause screens, no music during gameplay outside of

combat encounters, and no dialogue outside of the rare cutscene. When you adopt minimalism like this to tell your story, you’re probably looking to focus intensely on one story and tailor every other part of the game to that story, and that’s exactly what ICO does so well. The game follows a boy and a girl – Ico and Yorda - trapped together in a castle looking for a way out, and every single part of the gameplay is focused on silently but powerfully building these two characters’ connection to

each other, as well as the player’s investment in their plight. ICO has three main gameplay styles – puzzle solving, platforming, and combat – that all feed into building this bond. The combat has an interesting twist that I’ve never seen in any other game, in that Ico cannot be directly killed by enemies, and the enemies’ goal is instead to drag Yorda into one of these shadowy pits they spawn from. This makes staying near and directly protecting Yorda the most effective tactic in combat, subtly

and silently casting Ico and the player as Yorda’s guardian solely through game mechanics. Platforming and generally exploring the castle forces you to lead Yorda around, and more crucially, help her make jumps she can’t or pull her up to higher ledges once you’ve found a way forward. While tedious at points, it undeniably strengthens the bond between these two characters through its sheer physicality. Puzzle solving is the part of the game that least involves Yorda and most involves convention

al mechanics for this type of game, but you always need to bring her forward in order to open these gates with her powers, casting the relationship as at least somewhat symbiotic. ICO is also a game whose entire preceding runtime leads up to one pivotal moment, which comes very close to the end of the game. After opening the front gate of the castle, our two protagonists run across the bridge to the outside world, but the bridge begins to move apart, separating Ico from Yorda. The game switches

to gameplay here, and allows you to physically attempt the jump back across the widening hole in the bridge, with Yorda catching Ico’s hand in a reversal of their roles over the game’s runtime. This moment is presented without cheesy emotional music and even without any understandable dialogue, which is why it’s so incredible that it works so well solely on the merits of its buildup and how the game establishes this relationship through the player’s own interactions with the game. ICO is one of

the most influential games of all time, but as is the case with many trailblazing works, it’s not without flaws considering how many firsts it goes for. In the modern day, the game is dated visually. Even when playing the most up-to-date release on the PS3, the game is full of blurry textures and disjointed animations when leading Yorda around, since they clearly just took the original PS2 game and put it at a higher resolution. The extreme amounts of bloom used will also not be to some people’s

liking, though I found that it gave the game a unique visual flair. As for the gameplay, the big misstep here is the game’s puzzle design. In some ways it was the precursor to the Playdead puzzle style, as it’s all about determining what part of the environment can be used to continue rather than being purely mechanical. The problem with ICO’s puzzles is that there are so many red herrings that appear to be part of the solution, but they usually become relevant later after backtracking, which p

sychologically obscures other parts of the puzzle that you need to do first. In-particular, the puzzle in this courtyard area is very dysfunctional, with a push block in the window acting as a red herring which distracts from a very unclear solution of simply pulling Yorda up from this sewer. This wasn’t clear to me at all since unlike every other part where you need to pull Yorda up to you, you can’t see her from up above. While ICO has these clear issues that show its age today, I’ll reiterate

that the cutting edge narrative design still holds up next to modern story-driven experiences. It was worth playing even if it was just to appreciate its uncompromising simplicity and the quiet influence it’s had on the history of games as a medium. ICO’s release, while not necessarily financially successful, laid the groundwork for this dev team’s next game, and what is considered one of the most ground-breaking, innovative, and influential games of all time: Shadow of the Colossus. If you’re

at all familiar with the history of video games more so as an art form than as simple entertainment, you almost certainly know of this game’s legacy. Shadow of the Colossus pioneered so many silent ludonarratively driven narrative techniques that the spectacle of seeing all those techniques come together with the context of its release is just as grand as the visual spectacle of the battles against its titular massive colossi. I’ll start here with that surface level spectacle, as it’s another pa

rt that’s made more impressive with the context of this game initially releasing on the PS2. There are two distinct parts to the gameplay loop; Exploration, which mostly consists of riding your horse across a massive, barren open world to the next colossus, and the fights with the colossi themselves. In the open world, the camera will zoom out to frame your actions in a cinematic rule of thirds, which makes for some beautifully bleak shots that highlight the emptiness of this setting using class

ic cinematic techniques. The colossus fights are made a wonderful spectacle due to the incredible animation work which was clearly far ahead of its time technically. The way you grip the shoulder buttons on your controller to have your character desperately cling onto these massive moving creatures adds a suprisingly immersive factor, and the animations and sound design really add to the tense moments where your character is wildly flung around and nearly slips. The final piece to these fights i

s the iconic orchestral score which flawlessly sells the sheer scale and scope of these battles. Shadow of the Colossus is consistently exciting in terms of gameplay, but while that gameplay is going on, the climax of this simple narrative is silently being built up to solely through the mechanics and visuals. Most of the straightforward narrative elements are frontloaded at the beginning of the game, which sets up our protagonist Wander’s motivation to hunt down and kill the colossi, as the dei

ty Dormin has promised to bring his partner back to life if he performs this dangerous task. The colossi are terrifyingly large imposing figures that make for satisfying opponents to take down, but when fighting they simply behave like animals defending their staked-out territory, and some of them don’t make any attempt to fight Wander at all. This location has been almost entirely reclaimed by nature at this point, but now Wander is here to disrupt the balance for his own selfish motivations. S

hadow of the Colossus is a pioneer in using this sort of ludonarrative dissonance intentionally in its narrative, as in terms of gameplay these fights are incredibly satisfying spectacles, but narratively, Wander is carving a path of destruction which drives him to his eventual fate. Shadow of the Colossus ends with the reveal that Dormin has been using Wander’s devotion to his partner to eventually break free from his prison, taking Wander’s body as a vessel. The shaman Lord Emon and his group

followed Wander to this land, and now wielding the ancient sword Wander stole, Lord Emon creates a vortex to seal Dormin away again. But before that, just like in ICO when the player is allowed to jump and grab Yorda’s hand when the bridge comes apart, Shadow of the Colossus allows the player to struggle for as long as they want against Wander’s fate. It may look silly the way you mash jump to try and reach the altar at the front of the temple, but this actually strengthens this moment from a ce

rtain point of view, as it to some extent feels like you’re trying to break the game in order to reach a happy ending in a very video game-y way that juxtaposes itself against the rest of the game’s immersive feel. It’s a silent acknowledgement of the player’s role in this story, and this subtle trick among all the subtle tricks this game plays makes this ending easily one of the greatest in the history of this medium, bringing a perfect end to one of the most important games ever made. If you w

atched through my thoughts on these two games without having played them, I still greatly recommend you try them for yourself, as both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are among the most important and tightly designed games of all time, and I’m very happy to have finally played them for myself. But before getting onto the last and best game I played for this video, I saved this penultimate game to discuss alongside that last game due to their similarities in narrative, and the first of these two I

would like to talk about is The Swapper. This game is a bit conflicting to me, as it’s one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of narrative themes being communicated through mechanics, but by the end of the game I was just waiting for it to end, as by that point the puzzles had become either too simple or too frustrating to be engaging. But let me start with that narrative, as it’s easily the biggest selling point of this game that makes it worth playing regardless of how you feel about the gam

eplay. The Swapper is a sci-fi story centering around a gun which can create clones of its user, and these clones mimic the exact movements of their creator. This mechanic is used to create the game’s puzzles, but the real genius behind it is the narrative and philosophical implications of these mechanics. A pivotal moment early in the game is when the player is first forced to or accidentally ends up killing one of their clones. I was instinctively trying to avoid this for as long as I could, b

ut as much as that first instance felt wrong, it eventually became banal as the game went on, which in retrospect is a brilliant piece of subtle, silent storytelling. The other very interesting puzzle mechanic is the titular swapping mechanic, where you can swap which character you have full control over with one of your clones. This is another similarly silent narrative event, because eventually the original body you started the game with unceremoniously dies and you’re allowed to continue on w

ithout it in the body of a clone, which of course raises some very troubling questions about what constitutes who a person truly is. And incredibly, this is all done without any dialogue, and only through fully emergent moments arising from the game’s mechanics. The design of this narrative is absolutely masterful, and the game was worth playing on those grounds alone. Unfortunately, The Swapper is dragged down by those parts of its gameplay that don’t feed into its story. In-particular, the maj

or misstep here that made the difficulty curve fall apart in the last hour of the game was that it forces you to finish every puzzle in order to reach the ending. The Swapper’s world design is oddly MetroidVania-ish, though rather than unlocking new movement options you just complete puzzles to make a number go up, which unlocks gates in the world that lead to more puzzles. This world design is necessary to hide some secrets in obscure locations, but it doesn’t do anything interesting for these

basic walled-off puzzle rooms. It would make some amount of sense if you were allowed to skip some of the puzzles, which is what I assumed would happen until I found that the final escape pod at the end of the game required every puzzle to be completed. This is a design decision that fails on multiple levels; It significantly reduces replayability, which is made worse by the ending that wipes your save, and it can also easily lead to frustration if the puzzles get difficult enough, which did hap

pen with some of the later puzzles, on top of convoluting the difficulty curve since you’ll likely be going back to easier puzzles that you missed at the end of the game. The design of the puzzles themselves is perfectly fine, and it definitely had a solid difficulty curve prior to the forced backtracking, but the outliers in terms of difficulty are made a lot worse by that forced backtracking, and the final hour of the game is made much worse because of it. The Swapper has some incredibly stron

g elements, with those elements maybe even reaching new heights for this medium, but it also contains some bewildering design decisions that take away from otherwise fun puzzles and an exceptionally well-done narrative. If you love puzzle games like this, The Swapper is an easy sell, but if you’re like me as someone who’s very much neutral on puzzle games, it’s not so easy. Witnessing the fascinating way this story is told made the game worth it for me despite the issues with the puzzle and worl

d design, but I expect I won’t be coming back in the near future to find all those secrets. I find it to be a very flawed game, but it's also a very important one, so I’m happy to have played through it. So now we’ve come to the last game I played for this video, and I’ve saved what I found was the best for last. In preparation for this video, I extended the fleshed out list of my top 10 favorite games into a top 50, and while games like What Remains of Edith Finch, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus,

and MGS2 from earlier in this video made it onto that list, this last game made it the highest at 19. This game is SOMA. I’d like to preface my discussion of this game by saying that I don’t typically like or even bother playing horror games like this, which I’ll call “Indie Horror” since this sub-genre came to prevalence due to the work of indie studios such as Frictional Games, who themselves made SOMA. The point at which indie horror diverges from other horror game sub-genres like survival ho

rror is an emphasis on very narratively-focused horror. These games often take on simple first-person control schemes with minimal mechanical depth past that, and carefully design their scares in a way that often times pulls more from cinematic techniques more so than evoking tense horror through mechanics, which, for instance, is why the Frictional horror games punish you for looking directly at the monsters for too long. Indie horror has developed a bad reputation over the years due to the eme

rgence of kid-friendly mascot horror and a reliance on jump scares to achieve their horror, which is part of why I don’t bother with most modern horror games. I’m in the unfortunate position where jump scares work on me in the short term (in that I’m startled easily) but not in the long term, which is the perfect combination for these scares to be something I want to avoid while not having much long-term value for establishing tone on its own, and this results in me just not playing horror games

in general. Luckily for me, SOMA is not a very traditionally scary indie horror game. There aren’t really any major unprompted, unavoidable jump scares that jump out from complete silence, as there’s more emphasis put on the horror of the disgusting monster designs and the very unsettling sound design, as well as the horror evoked by the game’s narrative. It puts you on edge well enough without feeling the need to give a “payoff” with a final scare, which I personally find preferable to the alt

ernative. While this gameplay style is quite simplistic and can feel like filler compared to the narrative scenes at times, it does what it needs to do to support this narrative well enough. If you know anything about SOMA, you’ll know that this narrative is the game’s chief focus, and it’s easily among the greatest stories ever told through video games. From here I’m going to get into pretty much all the spoilers for this game, though even if you get spoiled for this game it’s still absolutely

worth playing, which I know since I was spoiled and still found it to be exceptionally strong. When talking about both The Witness and MGS2 earlier in this video, I mentioned that I love when games tackle and explore tough philosophical questions, and SOMA may just be the best I’ve ever seen this done in a game. Through the game’s science fiction setting and concepts, SOMA explores one of the most broad philosophical dilemmas you could think of: “What is human?” It does this through two separate

sci-fi narrative devices, the first and most straight-forward of which is the WAU. SOMA takes place in a research facility at the bottom of the ocean, on an Earth whose surface has been made uninhabitable by a direct collision with a comet. In this underwater facility, the last of humanity continued to live in order to hopefully create a plan for the survival of the species. The researchers installed the WAU as a way to ensure the survival of humanity, as its only directive is to keep humans al

ive through any means necessary. But the WAU seems to have a very warped conception of what humans are, in that it treats anything that was at least once a human with active signs of life as something worth saving at seemingly any cost. This combined with the method it uses to keep humans alive – this black goop called structure gel that can seemingly repair and heal anything – is what creates the monsters the game uses for its stealth challenges. All of the monsters seen throughout the game wer

e at one point human, but are they still human in this grotesque form? This is a classic question brought by this type of body horror; how much can you physically mangle and twist the human form until it stops being truly human? There’s no one right answer, but SOMA explores this question without putting much spotlight on it in some subtle ways, like how the grotesque monsters gradually take on more of a human form as the game goes on. The WAU provides a good backdrop to the main aspect of “huma

n” the game concerns itself with, which is the aspect of consciousness. Most people don’t think that a person is defined by their body, as we prefer to think of ourselves as whatever comprises our mind and consciousness generally, and the way that SOMA explores this question is deep, yet incredibly approachable. The game opens in a very banal urban setting compared to the horrific location most of the game takes place in, with our player character Simon being called into an appointment to get hi

s brain scanned. The initial transition from the doctor’s office in Toronto to the grimy hallways of an abandoned high-tech facility makes for a lot of intrigue early in the game, but the later plot revelation is that the first scan of Simon at the doctor’s office was the beginning of a massive program of creating brain scans which can be taken and copied into computers. On its own, this is already a very compelling concept because these people’s brain scans can be copied and used long after the

ir death, or maybe even more startlingly, even while the original person is still alive. The copies seem to have memories of their original self, and at this point, is the scan of you implanted into the computer also you? Or more foundationally, do they even qualify as human? There are two pivotal moments for this part of the game, the first of which happens when Simon and his fully digitized human companion Catherine need to disable security measures to reach a deep-sea vehicle. They find that

they have the brain scan of a security officer who knew the passcode, so they repeatedly load his scan into a simulation in order to extract the codes. What’s even more sickening than how they manipulate him in the simulation in order to extract the information they need, is how they’re essentially bringing a human consciousness into being and shortly after killing it in this trial and error puzzle sequence. It’s one of two stand-out examples from this game where narrative and interactivity mix

in an incredibly meaningful way to push these themes forward. But the most important moment for this part of the story occurs when Simon needs to get into a new body that can withstand the pressure of the deepest recesses of the ocean. With Catherine’s help, every necessary part is collected and Simon sits down for another brain scan to move his consciousness to the new body, but it doesn’t go the way he expects it to. Simon’s scan now exists in two different bodies, and the game gives you the o

ption to kill off the old body immediately since it’s of no practical use anymore. But who is the “real” Simon? Is there even a real Simon after the original flesh-and-blood human Simon died a hundred years ago? Could these robots with implanted brain scans possibly be considered human? But what’s particularly insidious about this moment and the entire game is the character of Catherine. Before being moved into the robotic body you find her in during the game’s first act, Catherine was a researc

her who came up with the best chance of survival for humanity. She was going to launch a solar-powered computer simulation called the ARK into space, which would contain every possible brain scan she can get, thus keeping these people alive indefinitely. This is Simon and Catherine’s overarching goal for the rest of the game, and by the end they manage to get their scans into the ARK and launch it. But at this moment, Simon and the player are hit with the realization that the version of Simon th

ey’ve been controlling doesn’t make it. But to go back a bit, after Simon gets in his new body and takes the elevator down to the abyss, he ruminates over what he’s just done to himself, and comes to the conclusion that he won a “coin toss” between which body he would wake up in. It’s similar to how early members of the ARK project took their own lives just as they were scanned, as they put faith into the idea that they had a better shot of living forever on the ARK by ending their current consc

ious experience as it’s being copied. Catherine also calls back to this “coin toss” just before the credits as an explanation for why they both didn’t make it onto the ARK. “You know why we’re here, you were copied onto the ARK, you just didn’t carry over. You lost the coin toss. We both did. Just like Simon at Omicron, just like the man who died in Toronto a hundred years ago.” But if you really think about it, it’s very much unlikely that this coin toss is actually an inherent law of the unive

rse. SOMA is a game played with a first-person control scheme, which among other things is a very intimate point of view to be experiencing a story from, and the game uses this to silently cast the Simon that you control as the “real” Simon. In reality, the game is just arbitrarily jumping between perspectives in order to show the complete story, which is practically confirmed by the post-credits scene which shows the version of Simon that made it onto the ARK just after our previous Simon is le

ft on Earth. On top of this, Simon is a layman, a person who lived long before any of this wild technology was thought remotely possible, a simple man working at a bookstore in Toronto, whereas Catherine was part of a research team of highly proficient scientists. So why didn’t Catherine say anything to Simon when he came up with the concept of the coin toss, when she ostensibly knew it was untenable? Catherine is the main character of SOMA. Not only was it her idea and sole purpose in life to l

aunch the ARK after the comet wiped out the rest of the population, she also makes every decision for Simon throughout the entire game. She tells Simon that they can both get into the ARK when they launch it, but she omits that it won’t be the versions of themselves that get on since they can only be moved through copying and pasting the scans. When Simon switches bodies, you can hear Catherine confused as to why something isn’t working, which very well may be her trying to kill off the old body

before the Simon in the new body realizes what’s happened. “What was that?” “No, I… it’s just…” “Why was it still talking?” Then in the elevator to the abyss, Simon reveals his total lack of understanding of what’s happened so far and the extent of his ego, so Catherine deliberately keeps him in the dark while soothing him with a story which hardly addresses the heart of Simon’s worries over their actions. Catherine takes advantage of Simon the clueless layman, stringing him along and lying the

whole way through the game to achieve her ultimate goal of launching the ARK. But even with this seemingly heavy condemnation of Catherine’s moral compass, are her actions justified? To Catherine, launching the ARK is tantamount to saving humanity, which is clearly her underlying motivation. Wouldn’t you have the same goal in this situation, to save humanity no matter the cost? And to go further, is Simon actually the one in the wrong here? He’s clearly driven by his own selfish motives of gett

ing himself on the ARK, which is why he freaks out on Catherine when he realizes that goal is impossible. “No, no, no, fuck this! Fuck! Fuck this, fuck you! Fuck you, Catherine. You lied. And I believed in you, I trusted you. You said we’re getting on the fucking ARK!” Is Simon himself worthy of condemnation for this despite Catherine’s manipulation? But you might also think that the ARK is pointless, that the brain scans kept “alive” in an artificial environment aren’t anything of moral value,

which is the side that the game itself seems to come down on with the final cutscene after the credits, showing the physical ARK in the satellite drifting into the vast emptiness of space. So is anything of worth saved by launching the ARK? And extending from that by putting all these complex factors together, was it actually morally righteous for Catherine to do this to Simon? SOMA is so special as a game because it doesn’t just present a tricky philosophical dilemma like “what is human,” as it

also brings that dilemma down to the terrifyingly personal pragmatics of what our morality would guide us to do in this dire situation. There are games that invoke low-level philosophical dilemmas in its narrative, and there are games that present tough moral problems which beg to be thought over deeply by the player, but what SOMA does so well is that it marries these two narrative techniques in a way that’s still manages to be so approachable for a general audience. There’s hardly anything to

be construed as “pretentious” anywhere in the game, and no characters who speak in heady prose or pointless references to real world writings in philosophy. It’s a story that anyone can understand with characters that anyone can understand, but it still manages to be incredibly deep and intricate beneath the surface. Because of this, and in spite of its simplistic gameplay and occasionally cheesy voice acting, SOMA shines as one of the greatest games of all time, and it’s easily the best game I

’ve played in the past 2 years. While I’m finished talking about all the games now, I like to have a greater point to build to when writing videos like these, so I’ll just end with this. When I really started to appreciate and think deeply about these games I played, I began to worry that I would become cynical and overly critical of anything I would play for the first time past that point. I think this has unfortunately happened to some degree, but if the wide array of good, great, and even exc

eptional games I played for the first time for this video is any indication, there are still a lot of great games – and probably a few masterpieces – still left to be played. Thanks to everyone who’s supported my work over the last three years, because with that support I hope to continue doing this for as long as I can.