The Next Penelope could have so easily been great simply iterating on its most rudimentary levels rather than trying to reinvent itself with each stage.
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Read Only Memories is adorable and cheesy and holds itself together with an acute awareness of tone and by subverting a genre it clearly loves to death. It might be fluffy and lack a satisfying payoff, but Read Only Memories tries so hard and has such an enormous amount of heart that I’d sooner embrace it than write it off for such comparatively meaningless qualms.
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These games are weird, and awkward, sometimes completely beyond categorization, and represent some of the coolest games I had the chance to play this year.
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I have been in love with Cut the Rope since I got my first touch device so many years ago. It was the first game I played on a smartphone and the one that forever sold me on the merits of touch based game design, but where that game represented the peak of a then emerging platform, Magic is little more than another entry in a series I haven’t heard discussed in a very long time.
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I might feel worse about the depths of Imagine Me’s failure if it didn’t seem so apathetic toward aspiring to even moderate quality (or functionality). Everything feels empty and tedious, leading you in circles until either the game breaks or you stop playing. Imagine Me is sloppy and dysfunctional, but I couldn’t say it seems to actually care.
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Lifeline is such a great template that I almost feel compelled to recommend it solely to show off the genius of its interface and delivery system.
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The most interesting thing about NekoChan Hero Collection are the parts which don’t work quite right; the parts that try something weird and unique but are abandoned before they become anything more than unfinished tangents.
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Playing Life is Strange, it felt like I was looking at a hazy photograph of myself. It follows Max, a nervous, geeky teenager with a love of photography and obscure alternative bands, with big plans for her life but no idea how to achieve them in a world that feels simultaneously overwhelming and incredibly small in her remote hometown. She’s her highschool’s weirdo, tumbling through life trying to do her best and avoid the asshats that seem to wait around every corner. She is, so much that it almost felt creepy, a digital recreation of the person I was and in a lot of ways still am (though certainly a cuter one). This is the most I’ve ever felt like my character in a game was “me”, and that makes for a powerful tool for sparking empathy in a story as personal and scarily relatable as Max’s.
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The Stanley Parable without a doubt knows what it’s doing. The script is tight, the pacing smooth, and the overall concept worthy of praise. And yet I found myself despising every moment I spent with the game.
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A City Sleeps may tend to favor its least impressive elements, but while it runs short, in its most accessible state it is also its most ingenious.
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I still have trouble getting past the necessary distillation of humanity that always happens with films like this, but it’s countered with the overwhelming authenticity found in its dialogue and the vulnerability of its characters. Movies about the emotions of teenage girls aren’t something we see often (I’m struggling to think of a single other film that could be thrown together with this), which makes Inside Out relevant for the simple fact of daring to form its plot around something that so often gets swept under the rug (to the emotional turmoil of too many young girls).
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By the end of Submerged I had stopped trying. I’d given up finding something that was being intentionally withheld from me, allowing the game to point me where to go and sooner allow me to leave. This was not a voyage but an entrapment; a siren’s call to a dead end and a meandering crawl back out. The game Submerged could have, and by all accounts wanted to be is still hidden here somewhere, but that hardly matters when it so fervently refuses to let you see it.
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There are a lot of easy things to praise Ori and the Blind Forest for, but it really is in how it comes together that makes it such a rich and enjoyable experience.
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It never really mattered if Jurassic World was any good, people were going to see it anyway, but this predetermined success stings so much worse when it’s given to a film that so completely illustrates the collective creative bankruptcy remakes are often accused of being the result of.
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I say it every time it seems as if I’m heavily criticizing an Artifex Mundi game, but it’s worth noting again that whatever my disappointment with a specific game may be, I’ve still yet to actually dislike anything they’ve put out. I can certainly point to my favorites, but unless you’re predisposed to dislike HOGs you really can’t go wrong with any of their games, Grim Legends included.
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I’d have recommended picking up The Hole Story for the sake of supporting a great program alone, but I’m ecstatic to be able to wholeheartedly endorse it as just a super fun and charming game in its own right. It’s cheerful and refreshingly and is sure to have more cheese related puns than anything else you’ll play this (or any) year. What could possibly be better?!
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