Luigi's Mansion

Nintendo - 2001 - Gamecube

Man Luigi's Mansion is a weird game. On paper, this game shouldn't even be good. Luigi explores a haunted mansion and vacuums ghosts? It's a type of game that's really easy to make wrong or design in a way that isn't fun for the player. It's really the type of game that only a developer like Nintendo could make

This was my first time playing Luigi's mansion since it launched back in 2001 which is fifteen years now. Crazy. Man I had forgotten how short this game is. A friend and I sat down to play through it one afternoon and we finished it in one sitting. If you don't dawdle around too much, you can finish this game in about 5 hours. Which is fine but unusually short for other Nintendo games of this era. The game still holds up pretty well, especially graphically considering the game is 15 years old now. The relative small size and scope of the mansion allowed the artists, modelers and animators to pour in a lot of detail into each of the rooms of the mansion which is still impressive today, especially considering this was a launch title.

Just about every encounter with a ghost boils down to trying to expose their weakness so that they can be vacuumed into Luigi's ghost capturing machine. Even 15 years later, this still feels like a unique idea. The closest elements in common with any other game are the light use of puzzle solving elements when trying to figure out how to expose the ghost's weakness. Even though the game still feels fresh it isn't without faults. I wouldn't criticize it for being too short, but I will criticize it for obvious attempts to pad out its length. Near the end of the game, Luigi is forced to trek back and forth from the roof of the mansion to the basement which takes roughly 5 minutes one way and there isn't anything new or interesting presented to you along the way. Now as an adult I can recognize when a game is stretching for time and I'm not sure why developers feel this is necessary. To me, artificially stretching a game's length in a boring or repetitive way is always way more egregious of a sin than just actually being short

Summary

Luigi's Mansion is a short but fun foray into a haunted house that's more about the atmosphere and elements of scariness than actually being scary, which I can appreciate. I've yet to play the Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon which is a 3DS exclusive sequel released in 2013 as part of Nintendo's "Year of Luigi" promotional event. I've heard good things about this game and I may need to check it out soon. As the popular internet saying goes: "The Year of Luigi never ends"

Firewatch

Campo Santo - 2016 - PC/PS4

Firewatch is a game made, in part, by some of the awesome folks over at the Idle Thumbs network who host a bunch of gaming podcasts that I frequently listen to. So being somewhat familiar with some of the folks who made this game had be very excited to see this game released. Director Jake Rodkin and writer Sean Vanaman previously worked at Telltale on The Walking Dead game, so that's the kind of high caliber writing I was expecting from Firewatch. And it delivers - kind of. Firewatch is a narrative heavy exploration game where you the player character take a summer job as a park ranger to escape and diconnect from your own life for a while.

For most intents and purposes, Firewatch is another Walking Simulator, except for when choosing dialogue responses when talking to Deliliah, a fellow park ranger who keeps in contact with you via radio. The dialogue interactions between Henry, the player character, and Delilah are very well written, charming and geniuine in a way that sells the evolution of the relationship between two middle aged people who don't know each other and whose relationship grows only through conversations over a radio. Picking up or looking at certain objects in the game will sometimes generate a prompt to question Delilah about what you're looking at which can be informative or humorous or reveal aspects of Henry or Delilah's characters. Firewatch can hit a range of emotions from quiet and metitative to tense and suspenseful. It's a game that has you pondering events of the plot, or mulling over things Deliliah is saying all while exploring the wilderness.

The excellent characters and writing had me hooked and this seemed like it would be a game I would fall in love with up until I got to the ending. The ending to the game comes rather abruptly and leaves a lot of plot threads unaddressed or explained unsatisfactorily. It appears as though Campo Santo ran out of time during development and possibly weren't able to include some of the content that would have neatly wrapped up these story threads. But as it stands, these threads don't end up connecting or leading anywhere and the ending of the game feels abrupt and unsatisfying. Still, the first two thirds of the game are engaging and well written, so if you're up for a walk in the woods that you know won't take you anywhere, check out Firewatch

Dear Esther

The Chinese Room - 2012 (2008 Original) - PC

I've played a few of the games that are sometimes referred to dismissively as "walking simulators" by some. Journey and Proteus totally didn't connect with me while Gone Home came close. I thought The Stanley Parable was absolutely brilliant. Dear Esther, which probably can be credited with popularizing this genre, is no Stanley Parable but it did resonate more strongly with me than most of the other similar games I've played that fall into this grouping.

Dear Esther is a game about exploration. You explore an island by yourself and are occasionally accompanied by voiceover dialogue that elaborates on bits of the story. The story that is presented in the voiceovers is somewhat vague, and I'm pretty sure that was an intentional design decision. I later found out that on subsequent replays of Dear Ester, the bits of dialogue that play are actually randomly chosen, so you might hear one voiceover on one given playthough, but not on the next. Or vice versa. I'm okay with this decision to deliberately obfuscate the story, because I think you can piece together enough information from whatever dialogue is randomly chosen and combine that with the knowledge you gain by observing and exploring to come up with the gist of the story, even if some of its details are fuzzy. It's a game I found narratively similar to Dark Souls, of all games. While there may or may not be an absolute truth to Dear Esther's story, I found myself filling in the deliberate vagaries of the story with my own imagination, similar to what I had done in Dark Souls.

Dear Esther got its start in 2008 as a Half Life 2 mod, and was later re-released as a standalone game in 2012. I played the 2012 remake and found the audiovisuals to be top notch. Both hearing and seeing the wind rustling through the grass and the waves crashing on the shore really helped immerse me in this world in a way that none of the other "walking simulators" had done previously. I let my mind wander with the strange details of the story and tried to piece it together while simultaneously drinking in the high fidelity audiovisual presentation

Dear Esther Video Review

Summary
"Walking Simulators" are a pretty niche appeal. I think this game does it right though. High quality graphics and an interesting story were enough to keep me engaged throughout the experience, though I can definitely see those not used to this sort of thing finding it boring, or the vagueness of its story frustrating. It's definitely not one of my favorite games ever, but it's a neat experience if you're up for something different

Proteus

Ed Key, David Kanaga - 2013 - PC/PS3/Vita

This week, I played through Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and also the XCOM expansion, Enemy Within. Both are fantastic games, and I'd highly recommend either of them, but Aria of Sorrow is great for the exact same reason Symphony of the Night is great and Enemy within is great for the exact same reason XCOM: Enemy Unknown is great. I considered writing a more fleshed out review for XCOM since I did that one so long ago, but Enemy Within is essentially the same game as Enemy Unknown and I don't want to review the same game twice. Also Aria of Sorrow is pretty much the exact same game as Symphony of the Night, they just changed some of the character names and the castle is laid out differently. Just know that these games are totally fantastic and worth checking out. However this week, I think I'd like to talk about a little indie game I picked up for free on PlayStation Plus called Proteus.

I'm actually not even sure if I should be writing about Proteus on this blog, only because I'm not sure if Proteus qualifies as a game. This really raised the question of "What is a game?" for me even more than Journey did. At least with Journey, there was a definite end to the game. While the goal of the game wasn't directly stated, it was implied that you were progressing towards something by the various scenes and events in Journey. But Proteus has no end, no goals, no progress, no events or story of any kind. Now I'm not sure how you exactly define what a game is, or even if it matters whether or not Proteus is one, but for the sake of not being misleading, you might want to consider Proteus as an "audiovisual experience" rather than a game.

Proteus was created by just two dudes, Ed Key and David Kanaga. Development started in 2008 when David had the vision of making a unconventional and completely non-violent video game. Proteus was finally released last year and David certainly realized his vision. It's a very unusual game and there's certainly no violence. You begin the game standing offshore while staring at a very pixelated island. As you move toward the island, you'll realize that nearly everything on the island makes some sort of unusual synthesized sounds that all sort of meld together to make the game's soundtrack. The game will sound different depending on where you are on the island and what you're standing next to. For instance, in a forest, you'll hear the electronic purrs of all of the pixelated trees. Or on top of a tall mountain, the soundtrack may dim a bit and you'll hear only the quiet sound of the wind blowing. It's another game that you can just watch a YouTube video of and probably get the gist of it. Everything is procedurally generated, so the island is different each time, and everything is very pixelated and musical. It kind of feels like something that would belong at one of those "games of tomorrow" places at Disney World.

I hate to sound like I'm picking on the little guys, but Proteus is totally not my kind of game. The two things I love to look for in games are either a strong gameplay hook or excellent narrative. Most of my favorite games combine both of these elements to make a fun game that also tells an interesting story. Proteus has neither of these elements. There's absolutely no story, and there's really no gameplay either, at least not in the traditional sense of that word. I really did try to give Proteus a chance though, I tried to explore the island with no expectations and just enjoy the whimsical electronic music. But I just couldn't get into it. Sorry, Proteus.

Summary:
Proteus offers a very unusual and non-violent audiovisual experience. If that sentence sounded interesting to you, maybe Proteus will be your game. It certainly wasn't mine, but that's okay. If you're like me and you know that Proteus won't be your thing, Aria of Sorrow and/or XCOM: Enemy Unknown are excellently designed games that are boatloads of fun. Both are worth a look if you like Metroidvania style games or turn based strategy games.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Bethesda - 2011 - PC/PS3/X360

Watching season 4 of Game of Thrones got me in the mood for a little high fantasy. Normally that kind of setting is not my thing, but I think Game of Thrones has gotten me to appreciate it more, so I went back and replayed Skyrim. I played it initially when it came out in 2011 and got too distracted by exploring and all of the crazy sidequests and never finished the main storyline. This time around, I stayed focused on the main quest long enough to finish the game and realized that Skyrim actually isn't that long of a game if you can manage not to get distracted. That's the key though. Managing not to get distracted. The game world is so vast, immersive, beautiful and interesting... and at the same time so buggy, repetitive and in some cases downright broken. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game. For as many things as I can think of that I love about this game, I can think of just as many that I absolutely hate. It's a very Jekyll and Hyde game to me.

First off, the things I hate about this game... Really Bethesda? You had a huge budget to make a massive sprawling universe like Skyrim, but could only afford 3 voice actors? And then you had them repeat the exact same lines over and over again every single time I walk just a little too close to them? It really breaks immersion when I hear the "Some may call this junk..." line by the same voice actor for the billionth time. And stop dropping loot for me to carry if I can only carry like three things. The carry weight restriction is really annoying, especially when this game loves to constantly unload buckets of treasure in front of you after each enemy you slay. I know Skyrim is notoriously buggy, but just two hours in to my playthrough, I encountered an enemy NPC who was literally invincible. I had to give up on one questline because I couldn't kill him. I nearly gave up on my playthrough as well. How has stuff like this still not been patched three years later? But honestly I think I could forgive all those issues if it weren't for this next thing, so listen up Skyrim developers: You CAN NOT repeat the SAME EXACT PUZZLE multiple times throughout your game. The dragon claw puzzle thing only works once, Bethesda. The tenth time I see that puzzle copy/pasted, it comes across as lazy, game-padding filler. It's poor design, it breaks immersion, and it's definitely not clever. That goes for the stupid rotating stone animal tablet things too. And also the combat in this game is kind of "meh". Yeah.

Now on to the good stuff. This game is gorgeous. I'm not an "Ooo look at the awesome graphics" guy either. Even three years later, Skrim still looks graphically impressive, especially with the outdoor scenery. It really does help with immersion and I felt more engaged with in the impressive visuals than I do with most games. I mentioned this before, but it's quite impressive how big of a world Skyrim is. The vast world and scenery is a joy to explore and it seems like there's so many varied and interesting things to do and see. It makes you want to explore every corner of every cave, talk to every NPC and complete every quest just to make sure you don't miss anything cool. While the game systems and AI don't always work the way they should, Skyrim still does a lot of technically impressive things with the game engine. Skyrim does open world sandbox exploration as well or better than any other game I've played.

Summary:
Skyrim is definitely a game whose reach exceeds its grasp in a few places. The exploration is done well, but the puzzles, combat and glitches are black marks on an otherwise excellent open world adventure game. I have a bit of a love/hate thing going on with Skyrim, but there are probably more reasons to play this game than not to. I'd say check it out if you think you might like Skyrim. Just be wary of its lack of polish in certain areas.

Minecraft

Mojang - 2011 - PC/X360/XboxOne/PS3/PS4/Mobile/Vita

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

Wooo 50 reviews! Wooo!! When selecting which games I'll write about each week, I give priority to the more obscure games that people may not have heard of. I think it's important to shine a spotlight on the smaller indie titles that may have slipped through the cracks. Games like To the Moon, The Swapper and The Stanley Parable all offer amazing unique experiences and are deserving of attention and discussion, but tend to run under the radar because they're not behind big publishers. I was thinking for my 50th review maybe I would review one of my all-time favorite video games. A game that I really love, like Ocarina of Time or Final Fantasy VII. But nah, people already know about those games. So I'm here this week to shine a spotlight on a game you may not have heard of. It's a little indie game I discovered called Minecraft.

If you didn't pick up on the heavy sarcasm at the end of that last paragraph and/or are otherwise oblivious to the video game world, Minecraft is hugely popular. Like HUGE. To date, it's sold nearly 50 million copies across all platforms making it one of the best selling video games of all time, according to Wikipedia. That's more than the original Super Mario Bros. A public beta of Minecraft was released in 2009 and it spread like wildfire across the internet, solely through word of mouth. It was officially released in 2011 and has now made it's creator, Markus Persson (a.ka. Notch), like 97 trillion dollars from sales and merchandise. Don't look that last number up, but it's probably true.

So what makes Minecraft so popular? First of all, it's mind blowing. The first time I played Pokemon Red/Blue? Mind blown. First time I played Ocarina of Time? Mind blown. If you've never had your mind blown by a video game, I don't really know how to quantify that for you. The first week I owned Minecraft, I played it obsessively. And when I wasn't playing it, I was thinking about playing it. It's a completely absorbing experience. The other reason I think Minecraft is so popular is that there are just so many ways you can play the game. You can play it like a survival game where you forage for resources and see how long you can stay alive. You can play it like an exploration game, just traversing the vast landscapes and seeing what you'll discover. You can play it like a traditional single player game where you upgrade your weapons and equipment and eventually get strong enough to take down the final boss. You can play it like a creative game because the game engine literally allows you to construct whatever you can dream up, as long as you have the materials. Or you can play with friends and blow each other's stuff up. And the best part is that none of these playstyles are mutually exclusive.

I was a huge fan of LEGOs as a kid. And I guess I still am as an adult. So the creative building block element of Minecraft is really appealing to me. The entire world of Minecraft is randomly and procedurally generated each time you start a new game or explore a new area. The terrain that is generated is essentially just made up of little blocks that the game engine will allow you to remove and replace however you see fit. There's quite a bit possible with just that game mechanic alone. But then you add in the fact that there are rare blocks that are generated like the gold ore block or the diamond ore block that can be used to make more complex objects or tools in the game... this really makes the exploration aspect of the game addicting and satisfying. Then there's the redstone ore. Oh man the redstone. Minecraft's redstone actually allows the player to create complex circuitry with logic gates in the game of Minecraft. People have made calculators and functioning CPUs in the game of Minecraft. That's CRAZY. I hope that helps you understand what a powerful creative tool the engine of Minecraft is. Then there's the people that have recreated famous structures or landmarks in Minecraft. There's the Minecraft Enterprise, the world of Game of Thrones in Minecraft, and Pharrell Williams' "Happy" recreated in game through the engine of Minecraft. That's just awesome.

Summary:
If you want to learn more about Minecraft, its developers, and the impact it's had on the games industry, check out this pretty cool documentary on youtube. If you somehow haven't played this game, you really should give it a try. If you know me personally and want to play on my server, give me a shout. And if you're one of those people who've stayed clear of this game because "eww the graphics are bad", I'm gonna come smack you. You're missing out on one of the most important and unique video game experiences ever created.

Shadow of the Colossus

Team ICO - 2005 - PS2/PS3

Shadow of the Colossus is another one of those artsy games that I know is probably just not meant for me. I don’t exactly know who this game is meant for though; I think nearly everyone I've asked about this game has either never played it or found it unremarkable. Yet I frequently see this game on lists of the “best games of all-time” and lists of “games as art”. Games as art? Yeah, I could see that. One of the best games of all time? Ehhhhh I don’t know about that.

In Shadow of the Colossus, you play a nameless hero who has traveled via horse to a faraway temple to bring back the life of some other nameless dead chick whose body you brought with you. The game doesn't tell you how she died or why it’s important to you to bring her back, which seem like kind of fundamental storytelling details to me, but whatever. Some mystical disembodied voice in the temple tells you that if you kill the 16 giant creatures known as colossi that inhabit the surrounding land, that it will somehow magically bring the dead chick back to life.

So the gameplay in Shadow of the Colossus consists of traveling to the various colossus lairs and trying to figure out how to take them down. For each one, you’ll need to figure out where their weak point is and then figure out how to climb up on the colossus and strike it. This usually involves knocking the colossus down or using the environment to climb up on it or something like that. It’s kind of like 16 boss fights from a Zelda game all strung together in a row. If you’re like me, you’ll get a really strong sense of repetition playing this game, which was kind of a turn-off. Plus the colossus fights are usually quite long, which I guess gives a feeling of epicness to the battle when it’s finally over. But if you die or fall off of the colossus while climbing it, you’ll probably get frustrated with the slow pace of the battles like I did.

Summary:
The game does have a few bright spots though - it conveys emotion with very little dialogue which is always cool to me. And figuring out the puzzles on how to defeat the bosses is kind of fun even though executing them can feel kind of tedious. I've seen the soundtrack to this game given a lot of praise across the internet, but the overly epic orchestra sound doesn't typically do a whole lot for me. When new games boast that they have a “fully orchestrated soundtrack!!” my response is usually “well that sucks”. It's not bad I guess, but it's no DKC2

I’m now going to drop some mild spoilers about this game’s ending, so if you’re thinking about actually playing Shadow of the Colossus, you may want to stop reading.

The ending to this game is insanity. Complete insanity. It’s not clear or understandable what happens or why it happened at all. I guess “open to interpretation” is the polite thing to say, but I’m going to stick with “insanity”. It's just so bizarre and abstract and doesn't serve to wrap up the game or conclude the story in any satisfying way. Just weird random crazy things happen to all of the characters. The end. I've heard ICO actually does have a really good ending, but Shadow of the Colossus has kind of scared me away from playing ICO. I still have it on my “games to play” list though, so maybe I’ll finish and review it one of these days, but don't count on it

The Stanley Parable

Galactic Cafe - 2013 - PC

I loved everything about this game. Loved it. If I had to pick a “Game of the Year”, Stanley Parable would probably be it, since FTL technically came out last year. I only wish this game were longer. I want a 20-30 hour version of this game. You’ll probably be done with this game in about 5 hours or so.

This will be another difficult one to talk about without spoiling anything, but The Stanley Parable is kind of a “choose your own adventure” with a narrator that describes all of your choices. You’ll likely keep restarting the game even after you've gotten an ending just to see what the other endings are. The game has a fantastic sense of humor and frequently breaks the 4th wall and pokes fun at video game tropes. The writing is excellent. Some endings will make you laugh, others will make you think. My favorite endings do both.

Summary:
I would recommend this to nearly everyone, just know that it’s unfortunately pretty short.

Gone Home

The Fullbright Company - 2013 - PC

The pitch for Gone Home is that you’re a college aged kid coming home from a long study abroad trip. It’s the early 90s, before cell phones or the internet, so your only recent communication with your family has been mainly letters and postcards. When you arrive home, your house is empty and your family is missing, so you have to explore the house for clues as to where they may be. When I heard this pitch, I was super excited to play the game because it sounded narrative focused, which I always like, and it was also interesting to me to design a game purely around the mechanic of searching a house. Unfortunately, I was a bit dissapointed in the execution of this mechanic after playing the game.

My main disappointment with this game is that, every time you find a clue as to where your family is, the game starts a voice over clip and spells out to you exactly what the game wants you to know after discovering the clue. I think it would have been way more powerful to let the player examine each object and determine for themselves whether the object is relevant to the story and let the player construct the narrative for themselves. I think it would give a sense of discovery and accomplishment that isn't really present in the game as it stands now. You kind of click through each object in each room until you find one that triggers an audio clip, and then just repeat the process for each room. The developers could have still saved the audio clips for the end of the game for a bigger impact. Right now, when the player reaches the end of the game, it just kind of ends unceremoniously and awkwardly.

It’s a bit difficult to talk about this game without spoiling anything, but people who have already played this game should know what I mean. I’m a bit torn on Gone Home because I recognize that it’s a very important and progressive game, but at the same time I feel that there are a lot of execution flaws with this game. Gone Home is starting to get a lot of attention and win some awards, which is all good, but I feel like some of the love this game is getting has to do with the subject matter in the game and not necessarily the game itself. Again, people who have already played this game will know what I mean.

The writing in the game is mostly solid for a video game, but that unfortunately doesn't say much. But there were a few gripes I had with the storytelling. It’s probably pretty hard to write solid and well defined characters around the mechanic of discovering objects in a house, but I found that I never got a really good sense of the player’s parent’s characters. They felt flat and undeveloped. Maybe this was on purpose, but I think it would have helped the overall narrative to flesh out these characters a bit more.

Summary:
As negative as I sound about this game, I would still recommend this to people who like narrative focused games. Just be aware that it’s very short; I finished it in one sitting. It’s also a very personal and intimate game from a storytelling point of view, so don’t expect something light or humorous or action packed. Your enjoyment of this game will probably depend on how much this game “works” for you. I don’t think this game really “worked” for me, but I really hope more games like Gone Home get made soon, if that makes any sense

Journey

ThatGameCompany - 2012 - PS3

Okay, I totally didn't understand this game. At all. This game gets a lot of recognition in the indie game scene for being a case for “games as art” and its won all sorts of awards and what not. I love games with atypical gameplay or games that try to do something completely new or unique. This game definitely does that but… but I don’t get it.

I don’t understand why this game gets the love that it does. Maybe I need to do another playthrough, I feel like I must've missed something. It’s a pretty short game, I finished it in one sitting. You just kind of navigate through the environment really. That’s about it. Sometimes other random players will join your game from online. But they don’t seem to contribute to the gameplay or progress the game in any way that I could tell. I get that the music sets the mood of the game really well, but video games do that all the time.

Summary:
I don’t know; this game was very baffling and disappointing to me

FEZ

Polytron Corporation - 2012 - PC/X360

I was so excited to play this game. I preordered it on Steam and played it for hours the day it came out. FEZ is an indie platformer with puzzle solving elements, a retro feel and an emphasis on art style and music. All stuff that I love. But after about the first hour or two, this game’s charm wore off pretty quickly for me. After completing one “world”, FEZ redirects you to kind of a “hub world” where you can explore new pathways that link to other worlds. The problem is after I explored enough pathways, I had to tread back through worlds I’d already been through in order to try to find new pathways. Which is really not that much fun; to repeat sections of a level you've already done two or three times already.

FEZ’s main puzzle solving mechanic is based on the fact that you’re viewing your character in a 2d plane, but you can rotate the camera 90 degrees around your character to reveal that the world actually exists in 3d space. This mechanic had been done before in Super Paper Mario for the Wii, a game I found to be equally disappointing, but I digress. After solving a handful of FEZ’s perspective puzzles, the novelty wore off and all of the puzzles felt same-y. I found it to be just a matter of rotating the camera around and around until I saw a platform or whatever it was that let me get where I was trying to go.

Summary:
I admit that I didn't finish this game, and I hear there’s some cool stuff it does near the end. I’d like to try to go back and finish it, but it seems more like work than fun to me.