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"

Inside

Playdead - 2016 - XboxOne/PC/PS4

Inside is the follow up to Playdead studio's 2010 critical success Limbo. Playing Inside will feel very familiar if you've played Limbo previously. Even though their gameplay is nearly identical, the two game's universes are not related in any way that is expressed explicitly by the game and you don't need to have played Limbo before Inside or anything like that. Inside begins, like its predecessor, with no narrative or explanation as you control a boy in a highly stylized world who runs to the right and tries to avoid the many dangers along the path of right-running. Inside never really deviates from the formula laid out by Limbo. Instead, Inside seems more interested in being the most highly polished version of what Limbo was.

Immediately noticeable is Inside's distinct art style. It's not strictly the same style as Limbo's, but I had the same response to gorgeous and striking visuals as I did when playing Playdead's first title. Not only is the art style highly polished, but the animations are noticeably very smooth. Every animation seamlessly flows into the next in a way that is both very impressive and also makes me wonder exactly how much time it took the animators and programmers to accomplish what they did.

If you haven't played Limbo, Inside is a puzzle platformer at its core. Most puzzles involve manipulating background physics objects or buttons or switches in such a way that will open a blocked path and allow you to progress. There is death in the game, but your character immediately respawns in nearly the same location you were before, except maybe the puzzle room is reset. Dying is included in the game for the most part to just serve the functional purpose of informing the player that they got the solution to the puzzle wrong. It's more about puzzles than platforming and I'd even say, especially in the case of Inside, it's more about experiencing the strange game world and the story than it is about solving puzzles

It's a little difficult to talk about the story and themes of Inside without spoiling anything, but there is absolutely no dialogue and no cutscenes. All of the story is communicated through the gameplay, the background elements and artwork and also through environmental storytelling. This is something I really appreciate since it's so much more difficult to tell an interesting story in a non-traditional fashion such as this one.

Summary

Just like Limbo, Inside is a short-ish puzzle platformer in a visually striking world. Your opinion of Inside will likely be the same as Limbo, but if you've never experienced a Playdead game before, I'd recommend giving Inside a shot. It's a dark and beautiful game world that's worth checking out

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

Chime - 2016 - Vita/3DS/PC

At last we finally have the conclusion to the Zero Escape series after it appeared for a couple years that this game wouldn't get funding due to relative poor sales of the previous two games in the series. Although I'd have to admit all games in the series are pretty flawed in one way or another, I'd still recommend giving these a look if you're down for a pretty well written mystery/thriller with an unmistakably Japanese flavor. So before we go any further, know that THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN LIGHT SPOILERS FOR 999 AND VIRTUE'S LAST REWARD because I have no idea how to discuss this series' convoluted plot otherwise

Zero Time Dilemma begins in December of 2028 at the Dcom facility in Nevada and takes place after the events of 999, but before the events of Virtue's Last Reward. Sigma and Phi have traveled back in time and joined what is known as "The Dcom experiment" in order to prevent the outbreak of the Radical-6 virus which has killed most of Earth's population in the future. They are joined by Junpei and Akane from 999 who have been tracking the movements of a terrorist organization known as "Free the Soul" whose objectives also include destroying humanity. They are joined by heroic firefighter Carlos, sad sack Eric, seductive Mira, a somehow familiar looking girl named Diana, and a young boy boy has no memory and wears a strange capsule on his head. As part of the Dcom experiment, the group of them are (of course) locked in a facility and forced to play a deadly "decision game". The group is forced to split into 3 teams and told that at any point if 6 people are dead, the remaining survivors will be allowed to escape. Additionally, every 90 minutes a drug from the participants bracelets is injected which puts them to sleep and wipes their short term memories. Pretty crazy stuff

The story of Zero Time Dilemma is told in 90 minute "fragments" where you choose what team you'd like to follow and watch what events play out over the next 90 minutes. Only you initially have no idea where those 90 minutes fit into the grand timeline of the game. Sometimes you'll start a fragment and half of the group will be already dead and you'll have no idea why. I actually found this approach to storytelling a little annoying and hard to follow as I never knew where in the timeline I was and near the end I couldn't keep track of all the reveals of who was dead and who was alive and why.

After 999's static images and fixed camera, Virtue's Last Reward introduced voice acting and full 3d models with moderately successful results. Zero Time Dilemma takes it even farther with a much more distinctly cinematic approach to portraying its story. Zero Time Dilemma uses much more camera panning and animations during cutscenes. This is a slightly less successful transition unfortunately. It was pretty clear that the animation team was either rushed or not very experienced. Animations are jerky and forced and the lip sync is pretty questionable. It personally didn't bother me too much, but it was certainly notable and I know a lot of people will find the stiff animations a distracting drawback

I thought the puzzles in Zero Time Dilemma were some of the best of the series. They were varied, interesting and had me pulling out actual pen and paper to work through problems. Depending on the order of the fragments you play, the pacing of the puzzle rooms can be a little weird though. In my experience, I had tons of puzzle rooms in the beginning and middle of the game, but almost none near the end which made playing through the end of the game more like watching a movie. Speaking of the end... it was kind of a let down. Without discussing any spoilers, the ending was sort of plain and disappointing which was a surprise in of itself since 999 and Virtue's Last Reward had such huge reveals and shocking twists. Ahh well, it was still nice to finally have some sort of closure for this series.

Summary

Regardless of what the marketing of this game wants you to believe, you can't play it without playing the first two games first. Or at least you shouldn't. Start there first or else you'll likely be massively confused. For veterans of the series, this game will offer some closure for the story, albeit a slightly disappointing one. I still must admit I enjoyed this game a lot as it features some of the strongest puzzle rooms in the series. The Zero Time Dilemma journey is much more enjoyable than the destination, and the journey is worth it.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Nintendo - 2002 - GameCube/WiiU

See also my Top 10 Zelda Games

Happy new year! I hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday break. If you haven't done so already, you can check out my best games I played in 2015 list right here. You may also be interested in my top 10 Zelda games list or my top 10 Star Wars games lists as well. Anyway, on with the review

When replaying The Wind Waker recently, it really struck me how well this game has aged. I think this game could literally come out tomorrow and it would have an amazing reception, despite the fact that this game is nearly 15 years old. Now I wasn't playing the HD remake on WiiU either, I'm talking about the original on GameCube. The cell shaded graphics which had a mixed reception on release now blend right in with the modern "toon" style graphics popularized by recent indie titles. This graphic style also allows for what I believe is the most expressive and emotive iteration of Link in any Zelda title. I love seeing the suspicion or anger or happiness that was so clearly readable on Link's face.

The Wind Waker finds Link exploring the open seas on a small sailboat in a very vast and open game world. The Wind Waker especially excels at the same thing a lot of the other Zelda titles do well which is immersive world building. The Wind Waker's world feels immersive and real because the characters and events in the world are well written enough to make it feel that way. There's a part of the game not too far into Wind Waker where Link needs to crawl through a maze of tunnels underneath Windfall Island. There's nothing in the main storyline of the game that will specifically or directly prompt you to crawl through these tunnels, this is just a hidden optional side quest. Once you reach the end of the tunnels, you'll find a treasure chest with a pictograph box which is an item that kicks off several more sidequests, but what struck me about the pictograph quest was the inclusion of some readable text next to the treasure chest where you find the pictograph box. The text explains that there was a thief who was imprisoned presumably for stealing the pictograph box, and who dug a series of tunnels below Windfall Island in an attempt to find a way to escape the prison cell. This was pretty cool to me, and a neat example of the high quality of writing and world building on display in the Wind Waker. The game could have just made you crawl through a maze and then simply given you the pictograph box, but the fact that they included this little story behind it that justifies the level design in a believable way adds some realism and fidelity to the world in the Wind Waker

Wind Waker Video Review

Summary
The game is also not without its faults. I think the stealth section that occurs near the beginning of the game is really tedious, too long and one of the weakest points of the game. I can remember having a poor first impression of this game and thinking on my first playthrough how dull this stealth part of the game was. And then right after introducing stealth to you, the game promptly drops it and never revisits it for the rest of the game. Plus there's a few too many mandatory fetch quests with a repetitive and boring sailing sections near the end of the game (which was I think partially remedied in the HD WiiU version). But even with its faults, the Wind Waker is one of the strongest Zelda titles out there, and a perfect place to start if you've never played a game in this series before.

Contradiction - Spot the Liar!

Baggy Cat - 2015 - PC/iOS

If you've been reading these reviews for a while now, you've likely realized that I'm a bit of a video game music nerd. I stumbled across this game when I learned that one of my all-time favorite composers, Tim Follin, had returned to the video games industry since "retiring" from it in 2005 after his amazing talents had been wasted on mostly unknown or poorly received games. It was quite to my surprise that Follin was returning to the industry to work on a game not only as a composer, but as a designer and writer as well. So how does a game made by someone with no design experience who's been absent from the industry for 10 years play? It plays about how you'd expect, for better or for worse. It's not all bad though, Contradiction is charming in a unique way that I think can only be accomplished by a first-time designer who, as far as I can tell, has been isolated from the popular design trends, progressions and philosophies that have developed in the last decade or two.

Contradiction is a full FMV murder mystery game straight out of the 90s which I admit would have been way more eye-rolling if I hadn't just played the excellent "Her Story". You play as Fredrick Jenks, a British detective who is tasked with investigating a murder in a small fictional village. All locations in the village are essentially still frames, even though some are animated, and you can move between the frames by clicking on UI arrows displayed on the screen which always triggers a short movie of Jenks strolling to where you guided him. While interviewing suspects, Jenks has a list of topics he can ask about which when selected, loads an an FMV scene where Jenks grills the suspect about whatever you selected which often then reveals more topics to ask about. The main gameplay mechanic in Contradiction is to find pieces of the suspect's story that don't quite add up or are downright contradictions, hence the title. Most of the contradictions are pretty logical, but some are a little more of a stretch or are otherwise debatable. Thankfully, this game is pretty generous with hints and gives them to you in a way that doesn't make you feel stupid or like you're cheating. Jenks can go to the phone booth and call his chief who will generally point you in the correct direction to progress the game or also may hint at contradictions suspects have made.

Follin, whose composing career work dates all the way back to the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum days, also composed the music in Contradiction. It's not quite as in-your-face as some of my other favorites of his like this or this or this. It's more appropriately subtle and blends in perfectly as Jenks traverses the village looking for clues and interviewing suspects. Aside from the music, the extremely cheesy acting is another standout in Contradiction, especially with the actor portraying Jenks who loves to smirk at his suspects with his trademark goofy deductive grin. In fact, Jenks is so excitably overanimated and the acting in general is so cheesy that it makes me wonder if it was an intentional directorial choice or if Follin actually thought his actors were delivering believable performances. In any case, I'm happy about it. The delightfully cheesy acting seems to fit the style of this game perfectly as does the music.

But in addition to the cheesy acting, there are several other strange design choices and signs of low budget production you should be at least aware of before playing this game, especially if that sort of thing bothers you. I've heard this game was riddled with UI problems at launch that have since been corrected, but one holdover is the strange combination of topics Jenks can ask about with the physical items he's carrying into one functional grouping. Your items and your topics appear together, but you can't use a topic like an item and most items you can't bring up in conversation, making this a puzzling design choice. I've also encountered a bug a few times where none of the suspect's answers were selectable as contradictions and I had to leave and re-enter the scene in order to fix it. (Minor spoilers ahead). The budgetary constraints this game was made were apparent in the poor sound quality in the FMV scenes but especially obvious in the ending to this game. The latter half of the game really seems as though its building up to something as the plot starts sprinkling in elements of the occult and mysticism. But it's all thrown away at the last second when the murderer is revealed and the game just ends quickly and unceremoniously - but not before strangely setting itself up for a sequel. I later read that this abrupt ending was apparently due to financial constraints and a sequel would only be possible with enough support of the first game

Summary
It has design problems, bugs, obvious budget problems and wonderfully cheesy acting but I really enjoyed Contradiction in spite of itself. It was a flashback to the old puzzle games I played as a kid. All things considered, Contradiction is a pretty good first attempt at making a game for someone who has no experience doing this sort of thing. At the very least, I'm glad Follin is back doing things in the games industry and I hope he gets the funding and support to make a sequel so we can see what lessons were learned and what improvements can be made

The Talos Principle

Croteam - 2014 - PC

Not to be confused with one of the Gods of Skyrim, The Talos Principle is a philosophically themed puzzle game and has nothing to do with any of the Elder Scrolls games. Released late last year (2014), The Talos Principle was made by a small European development studio based in Croatia whose only previous notable works are the Serious Sam games. Being a puzzle game, The Talos Principle is a huge departure from the FPS style of the Serious Sam games so I was expecting this title to maybe be a little rough around the edges and maybe expose the inexperience of the development team making a game in a new style, but this was not the case at all. The Talos Principle is air tight, and features some of the best puzzle design and well executed narrative I have ever experienced in a video game.

The game begins as your player character wakes up in a seemingly abandoned garden. Between the lines of computer text scrolling across the screen or the occasional glimpse of your own metallic fingers, you'll quickly realize that your player character is a robot. Your unnamed character soon begins to hear a voice in his head. The voice refers to himself as Elohim (Hebrew for God) and starts referring to you as "my child". But not really in the typical motherly/fatherly parental way; the voice refers to you as "my child" the same way a God would address his creation. The voice then guides you around the garden and asks you to solve various puzzles to obtain "sigils", which will unlock more areas of the garden which will allow you to collect more sigils

The structure of the game is broken down into solving puzzles, obtaining sigils, reading pieces of story text and then repeating the process. This structure and repetitive pacing of The Talos Principle might be the only complaint someone could have against it, unless you don't care for difficult puzzles, which this game definitely has. I've often criticized games for being too repetitive and not offering enough variety of gameplay, but I never really got that feeling from this game. Even though it was a very lengthy (about 40 hours) puzzle game, I never felt like it outstayed its welcome. There was enough variety in the puzzle rooms and with the methods used to solve the puzzles that I never got the sense that I was doing the same thing over and over. The Talos Principle felt like a longer version of Braid, but 3D and with different puzzle mechanics. It's what I'd imagine The Witness would play like, if it ever gets released. I really can't stress enough the brilliance of in the design of the puzzle rooms here. The Talos Principle introduces puzzle elements, makes sure you understand how they work, then slowly increases the difficulty and complexity of the puzzles. Some of the later puzzles required me to just stop and stare at the screen and think. I love when games can get me to do that.

The Talos Principle Video Review

Summary

I know we're still very early in 2015 and also this game came out in December 2014, but The Talos Principle will more than likely be my 2015 game of the year. I was totally blown away by the superb puzzle design and the amazing presentation of the story. There's so much about the story I didn't want to reveal here for fear of spoilers, but exploring the island and finally uncovering its secrets felt really rewarding. The Talos Principle is everything I want in a video game. I would highly recommend it to fans of puzzle games or people who enjoy excellent game design

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Nintendo - 1998 - N64/3DS

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

See also my Top 10 Zelda Games list

I was having a discussion with a friend about which Zelda game a newcomer to the franchise should play first. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were brought up, but Ocarina of Time wasn't even mentioned. And I wasn't really opposed to that. This game is a difficult sell to someone who has never played a Zelda title before. It's not so much that subsequent games have made massive improvements on the formula that OoT established or anything like that. But I realize that the reason I love this game is that I have SO MUCH NOSTALGIA tied up in this game. It was the first Zelda game where I got to explore the sprawling fields of Hyrule, the first Zelda game that really hooked me on its story and got me interested in its locations and characters and it was the first Zelda game I replayed over and over again obsessively. And the music! Oh man, the music. It always brings back so many memories. So either you read the last few sentences and knew exactly what I was talking about or you haven't played OoT. While I don't necessarily believe that subsequent Zeldas are "better" games, it's hard to come up with a sell for this game over other Zelda titles that isn't childhood nostalgia. But it's important to note how hugely important and impactful this game was when it came out.

This game was made in the era where 3D games were starting to come into their own. The first 3D game I played that really blew my mind was Mario 64. Those Mario worlds were fun to play and run around in, but what set the 3D worlds of OoT apart from Mario 64 were that OoT's 3D world felt "real" and lived in. It was a joy to explore. Especially with all of the detail put into the world; it made you want to explore each nook and cranny to make sure you didn't miss a hidden secret. I can distinctly remember being totally blown away by this the first time I played the game. I remember just walking around some of the villages and using the first person camera to admire all of the details.

The gameplay of OoT was revolutionary at the time and set a lot of precedents for how the rest of the 3D Zelda games would play. It sounds kind of silly now, but a lot of what we take for granted gameplay and systems wise not only in Zelda games, but 3D games in general had to be invented from scratch here. Everything from the way the puzzles worked to how the combat would function had to be converted from a 2D world to a 3D world. One of the most notable of these new 3D game systems was OoT's "Z targeting" system which governed how the camera would function in combat. By facing an enemy and pressing the Z button, the player could focus the camera on just one enemy until either the focus is switched by pressing the Z button again or the enemy is defeated. The developers did a fantastic job bringing this franchise into a 3D world

The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time Video Review

Summary:
OoT is sort of a difficult sell for someone who has never played a Zelda game before, because I'd only be selling them on nostalgia. My personal recommendation is to play Wind Waker if you've never tried this franchise before. I understand the WiiU version, which contains some graphical enhancements and gameplay tweaks, is the definitive version of the Wind Waker. But for "game connoisseurs" and people who have somehow otherwise missed out on playing OoT and are interested, it is one of my all time favorite games. I actually haven't played the 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time, so I can't speak for its quality, but I hear good things. I'm not really interested in playing OoT on a handheld and while the enhanced graphics look beautiful, they also clash with all of the great memories I have of playing the original version. And while I admit there's a great amount of nostalgia tied to my Ocarina of Time love, I am still confident in saying it is one of the greatest video games ever made.

Portal

Valve - 2007 - PC/PS3/X360

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

Continuing my little list of favorite games, this week I want to write about portal. I'm quite aware that most everyone who is reading this is probably already quite aware of the brilliance of Portal, but if there is by some chance some soul out there that is reading this and hasn't played this game, YOU NEED TO PLAY IT. Portal gets an emphatic and universal recommendation for me no matter what gaming preferences are or what genres you usually gravitate towards. It is that important of a game. 

Back in 2007, Valve released "The Orange Box" in retail stores. It was a combo pack of Half Life 2, both Half Life 2 episodes, Team fortress 2, and a little game called Portal. I bought the Orange Box mostly for Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 as these were titles I was already familiar with. Portal was pushed to the side for a while while I played the other games. HL2 and TF2 were fantastic games, but when I finally started Portal, my mind was totally blown. I don't use that term lightly either. I can count on one hand the number of games whose mechanics have blown my mind. The original Pokemon blew my mind. Mario 64 blew my mind. Ocarina of Time blew my mind. And Portal blew my freaking mind. 

So for those who are reading this and are unaware, the main gameplay mechanic in Portal is the titular portal gun. The gun allows the shooter to create two separate spatial rifts on flat surfaces that connect one place to another. For instance, if I placed one portal on my floor and one on my ceiling, I could jump down through my floor and come out of the ceiling. Or if I placed one portal in my kitchen and one in my bedroom, I could have an easy shortcut for getting midnight snacks. You can start to imagine the gameplay and puzzle possibilities with this mechanic. The spatial reasoning puzzles were absolutely mind bending and I loved it. Even the momentum based platforming challenges were a blast. The gameplay varied from puzzles to platforming to bullet dodging and sometimes blended all three. The entire game felt fresh and each room was a new challenge to conquer

From a game design, balancing and difficulty curve perspective, this game is as close to perfection as I think I'll ever see a game come. It's a game that knows its mechanics are difficult to grasp for first time players, so it starts out slow to make sure the player understands the basics before things get more complicated. It first introduces the basics of how portals work before it even gives you the gun. Then once you get the gun, it only shoots one end of a portal at a time while the other connecting portal remains stationary to help minimize unwanted confusion while players are adjusting to the mechanics of the game. Then once all of the mechanics are introduced, the game starts slowly ramping up the difficulty of the puzzles and platforming at a perfect pace to match the player's understanding and comfortability with the game. Once you master one mechanic, the next room throws a different one at you. Or sometimes even layers several mechanics from previous rooms all together to make sure you understand them all. Another important thing Portal does is that it never outstays its welcome. Right when it's done throwing all of its layers of tricky game mechanics at you, the game winds down. It winds down particularly well with a satisfying and hilarious boss fight too, but my point is that there is nothing that feels stretched out or tacked on with Portal. Every part of that game feels very necessary and deliberate. It's totally brilliantly constructed and Portal is my gold standard for excellent game design

Also not to be forgotten about is Portal's excellent sense of humor. There's really only two characters in Portal, yourself and the intelligent computer system guiding you through the maze of rooms who is known as GLaDOS. Since your player character is silent, all of the humor in the game is delivered through GLaDOS. It's a subtle type of humor. The game initially wants you to trust GLaDOS as she is the voice who is instructing and coaching you through the test chambers. But then every once in a while, GLaDOS will utter a line of dialogue that makes you think "wait, what?" "did the computer just say what I think it said?". A lot of these lines are intentionally humorous and the game uses this subtle humor to eventually break down the trust that you place in GLaDOS in the beginning of the game as it slowly becomes obvious that GLaDOS is trying to kill you. The game brilliantly uses its subtle brand of humor throughout the course of the game and it has become famous for well known memes based around "the weighted companion cube" and "The cake is a lie".

Portal video review:

Summary:

Portal is an experience that every gamer should have. The puzzles are mind-bendingly brilliant, the platforming is fun and challenging, and the subtle humor keeps the game interesting throughout its duration. Portal 2 was a great game as well, but it didn't really add anything THAT new or mind blowing other than the multiplayer. The game's humor was still really funny, but it was more of an "in your face" comedy than the subtle "what did she say?" style. In any case, you absolutely must play Portal if you haven't already. It's my favorite video game in the last 15 years. 

Off

Mortis Ghost - 2008 - PC

I stumbled across this game while searching for new stuff to play and looking really deep into the internet for recommendations. I often like to try lesser known games that are passionately appreciated by a very small group of people. I saw that Off was a game that was getting this kind of love and decided I wanted to check it out. Off is a French indie game released on the PC in 2008 which was eventually translated into English in 2011. It is a weird, weird, trippy game. I think I would pitch it as: "What if Earthbound was a horror game? And then it was given an extra dose of weirdness"

In Off, you play as "The Batter" (possible Earthbound reference?) who is tasked with "purifying" various zones of the in-game world that have become infested with ghostly specters. The Batter is guided through the game world by a well-spoken and eternally smiling feline known as "The Judge" whose in-game artwork looks like it was likely influenced by Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat. The Judge provides The Batter with knowledge and background story about the in-game world and often provides hints for the puzzle solving sections. The Batter is also assisted by a masked merchant named Zacharie who sells The Batter equipment, items and upgrades. He always greets The Batter with a signature creepy chuckle and will occasionally wear a cat mask to impersonate the Judge for some bizarre reason. Most of the characters in the game, especially The Judge and Zacharie, are quite aware that they are characters in a video game and will sometimes directly address the player as though you were a character in the game. In most games, this sort of 4th wall break is done for comedic effect, but that's not the case with Off. Here, it's used as a story element which helps construct the creepy, surreal atmosphere. This is my favorite type of horror game. Off mixes its dark and disturbing subject matter with bizarre, surreal imagery to mess with the player's mind. It uses atmosphere and storytelling to deliver its chills in lieu of jump scares.

I was initially not very taken with Off's art style. It looked cheap, minimalistic and low quality. But as I played the game, the artwork really grew on me and I think it helps to give this game a sense of style. Some of the monster designs are really horrifying too. The soundtrack also helps to create the unique and wacky feel of the game. Just give a listen to "Pepper Steak", Off's battle theme. It's a remix of an old jazz song set to a Cajun beat. It sounds completely insane and a little horrifying, which fits in perfectly with the game thematically. The one complaint I will level against the sound design is that Off repeats some basic sound effects much too often. And I'm not sure if it was just my copy of the game, but the music was very poorly looped. Minor complaints, but these are little things that can be easily cleaned up to give a game more polish.

I found the storytelling to simultaneously be a strength and weakness in Off. The dialogue is very well written, but the story is often ambiguous at times. For a good portion of the game, I felt like I wasn't sure what I was doing or why I was doing it. There are also a lot of events that take place in the game that are a little vague about what's happening, especially near the end. While narrative ambiguity is a definite problem with the game, I still felt interested to explore the world and learn about all of the characters which speaks to how strong and engaging the writing still is. The actual gameplay for Off is where the game falls flat on its face. The RPG combat is very basic and extremely repetitive. Without any interesting battle mechanics, Off's combat system started to stale very quickly. I found I could just use the same attacks and strategy regardless of which enemies I was facing. The game's designers chose to include an "auto-battle" system as well, but I feel this is actually a detriment to Off. It's never good when a game can play itself. The player always needs to feel engaged. The puzzles in this game were almost equally as disappointing as the combat. A lot of the puzzles weren't very well communicated and even the ones what were weren't very clever or interesting. There were times when I wasn't even sure if what looking at was even intended to be a puzzle or not. It's a shame because a little more polish, thought and depth on the gameplay would have done a lot to improve the playability of this game.

Summary:
If you play Off, you're doing it for the story, not the gameplay. The puzzles are weak and the combat is mind-numbingly repetitive. To its credit, Off still manages to create a very unique and bizarre world through strong writing and stylistically appropriate artwork and music. The story lost me at times, but it was still an interesting and engaging ride. Off is certainly not for everyone though and it will likely be doomed by its faults to continue to only be appreciated only by a small group of hardcore horror game fans. If you do decide to try it though, don't say I didn't warn you about that combat system.

EDIT: You can download Off completely free here if you're interested in giving it a shot

Riven

Cyan - 1997 - PC/Saturn/PS1/Mobile

Anyone else remember this game? Riven was the sequel to the massively popular game Myst which launched in 1993. It was famously one of the first games to be released on a CD and helped to popularize the CD-ROM drive. I can't even believe Myst is more than 20 years old now. I can still remember playing Myst on Windows 3.1 and how frustratingly often it used to crash. Then Riven was released in 1997 and came on 5 CDs. You had to annoyingly keep swapping the CDs out as you explored different parts of the island. There's a lot of stuff like this about Riven that requires the player to have a lot of patience. Patience that I had as a kid, but has long since left me as an adult. It's kind of a shame because I'm pretty sure that if I played a game like Riven today, I'd push it aside after 15 minutes or so and move on to something else. While there are some technical limitations and some game mechanics in Riven that have not aged well over the years, there's also a lot this game does really smartly. It's a "slow burn" type of game. If you give Riven your time and patience, it will reward you with some amazingly clever puzzles and an unusual and immersive fantasy story. 

For those not familiar with the Myst games, they are point & click style adventure games. But not quite in the same way as the old King's Quest or Monkey Island games. They're no puzzles that involve combining items together through some absurd logic that allows you to progress further or whatever. In Riven, you're gated only by how much you've explored and how deep your understanding is about the island and its inhabitants. It's a game that does a beautiful job of communicating a complex story with few words and minimal cutscenes. The only cutscene you're given for quite a while is the game's initial opening cutscene, which really gives you more questions than answers. During this cryptic scene, a man teleports you to an island called Riven after giving you nothing but two books. You arrive in a jail cell on Riven where one of the books you were given is promptly stolen by a man who does not speak your language. The thief is then quickly killed by another mysterious person who sets you free, but not before taking the stolen book for himself. You're then free to explore the island and unravel the mystery of Riven. An intriguing open, no? What's in that book that's worth killing for? And who are these people who are so desperate to get it?

Riven's story is told through exploring the island, discovering its secrets and understanding the meaning and purpose behind them. Riven doesn't tell its story through dialogue or cutscenes as in most games. When you do watch a cutscene in the game, it usually only serves to confirm what you've figured out about the island already. It's never directly or clearly communicated to you what any of the character's motivations are or even why you were sent to the island in the first place. It's really up to the player to discover and understand the deep story in Riven for themselves, and this may have been the most satisfying part of the game for me. I think the best way to go about doing this is to always ask the question "Why?" when something doesn't make sense. A lot of the fun in this game is trying to form the answers to all of the questions the game gives based on what you know about the island so far. The developers did a fantastic job of being very deliberate with their world design. Nothing is there by accident or coincidence, nearly every object or structure in the game is meant to communicate something important to you. As you explore Riven, you'll encounter many mysterious machines and contraptions. Ask "What do they do?". "Who would have put them here?". If you think on these questions, eventually the details of the story will come in to focus.

The puzzles in Riven are given to you in a similar fashion as the story. The objective or elements of the puzzle aren't given to you explicitly, but rather communicated to you subtly through the environment and world design. It's definitely a game where you have to keep a sheet or two of handwritten notes while you're playing, which is something not many games do anymore. Some of the puzzles in Riven are downright brilliant. There's one amazing puzzle in particular where I can remember feeling so impressed with myself after I had figured it out. The solutions to these puzzles are really so satisfying when you finally figure them out. I'd challenge you to play through this game without looking any of them up.

Riven is not without its faults though and some of them are unfortunately due to this game's age. The game is first person, but it's not full 3D. It's essentially a bunch of still images that have been linked together. This, to me, really makes the game feel aged. A full 3D engine would do this game a lot of good. The game's pace is also incredibly slow and it can be very frustrating to be stuck in one place for a while and feel like you're not progressing. This will likely happen a lot in Riven which can be discouraging to players if they don't have a deep well of patience. There are certain puzzles in the game where Riven may have been to clever for its own good. The puzzle solutions are fair, but they're hidden so deeply in the game's world that they're not easily discovered without a very keen eye and extremely sharp mind.

Summary:
If you've got the time and patience and love puzzle games, mysteries or unusual stories, Riven would probably be a good fit for you. Just keep in mind that this game will probably show its age and you may also get stuck frequently while playing it. If you've never played a game in the Myst series and are curious, Riven is a great place to start. It's a refinement and improvement on everything that the first game was. While subsequent games in the series improved their audiovisual fidelity, they never quite recaptured the sublime story or brilliant puzzles that made Riven a great game. Also steer clear of Myst 5. That game is terrible. Rand Miller, one of the lead creative minds behind Myst and Riven recently launched a successful kickstarter for his new game, Obduction. It sounds like Obduction will play similarly to Riven and I'd love to try another game like this to see if I still have the patience for it. I'll be interested to monitor the development of Obduction and hopefully play it soon.

Ether One

White Paper Games - 2014 - PC

The premise alone for Ether One probably would have been enough to get me interested in playing this game, not to mention that it had mostly positive(ish) reviews upon its launch earlier this year. Gameplay wise, it's kind of one is one part interactive story and one part puzzle game. It's like if Gone Home had a baby with the old school adventure/puzzle games like Myst. In Ether One, you'll be playing the role of "The Restorer". You're contracted to help a medical researcher treat a patient with dementia by entering the patient's mind Inception style and then finding and restoring the patient's lost or broken memories. Really interesting premise, right? Unfortunately, most of what's typed below are a lot of the faults I found with the game. There's a lot of good stuff to be found with Ether One too, but I chose to focus mostly on the things I thought could be improved to make a more complete experience. I want to submit some constructive criticism because I know that Ether One is the type of game that I usually like, but there were a few problems in the way of making my experience truly awesome

Like Gone Home before it, the story of Ether One is told via voiceovers that occasionally kick in and give you narrative details when you're standing near or looking at something of importance. You'll be exploring a deserted island as it exists in your patient's memory and discovering your patient's life history by exploring this small island. The primary voice you hear is that of the lead researcher of the project you're assigned to. She chimes in now and again to give you your objectives and bark out orders on how you're to carry them out. Her character reminded me a little bit of GLaDOS from Portal. She serves to guide the player and move the game along, but her motivations seem questionable. You don't feel like you can completely trust her. The game seemed content to keep this character sort of ambivalent all the way up until the end of the story. Actually, I found a lot of the story's details to be a little vague and I'm not sure if this was intentional or poor narrative execution.

Adding to the confusion and the vagueness of this story is the other female character's voiceover who just starts talking to you out of nowhere. For the longest time, I thought I had missed some important cutscene where the game delivered a bunch of narrative exposition and this other voice was introduced, but nope. For most of the game, you're not sure who this voice is supposed to be or what the relevance is of the details she provides are. To me, this sort of ambiguity wasn't even interestingly vague or mysteriously vague. It was more confusingly and annoyingly vague. A lot of what either of the two voices talk about seemed incohesive and irrelevant to the rest of the story. Because of these problems, it took Ether One quite a while to grab me and for the game to really click with me. There's some really well executed scenes about halfway through the game that pulled me in and there's also an interesting twist at the end, but unfortunately you'll have to tough it out while the game stumbles through the confusing introduction of the setting and characters.

The focus of the gameplay in Ether One is on exploration. You need to find a certain number of red ribbons in each area before being allowed to proceed to the next one. The game also includes some puzzles, but interestingly, nearly all of the puzzle sections in Ether One are completely optional. Since they're not required, solving these puzzles serves only to give you an extra bit of narrative about whichever area you're in. I think it's fortunate that the designers made these optional, because the puzzles I attempted to solve were so frustratingly poorly communicated. I had absolutely no idea what the game wanted me to do with some of these puzzles. Sometimes I wasn't even sure if what I was looking at was supposed to be a puzzle at all. I happened to accidentally solve one of the puzzles, and I wasn't even really sure what I had done to complete it. A lot of them involve placing the correct items gathered from various places around the island, but you can only carry one item at a time for some odd reason. It felt like the game designers were hacking around the game engine rather than coding a decent inventory system. It was a pretty unintuitive mess. Mercifully, these are indeed optional. Aside from the puzzles, the rest of the gameplay was sort of unremarkable and uninteresting. If you're playing Ether One, you're doing it for the story, nothing else. But just like its story, I felt that there was something missing from Ether One's gameplay that could have really made this game special

Summary:
Despite all of my ranting above, I still liked Ether One. I wanted to like this game more than I actually did, but there was some bungled narrative and some really poor execution in gameplay that I just couldn't get over. It's also another pretty short game. That is, unless you try to figure out some of those crazy puzzles. That might pad the game a bit, but I'd advise against it. Skipping nearly all of the puzzles, I was able to knock this game out in about 3 hours. The subject matter in this game is really interesting to me and there are a few short sequences in where Ether One really shines. However most of the rest of the game is unfortunately kind of dull, incoherent or overly vague. Artsy folks who like the "open to interpretation" kind of story may dig this, but I found too many details were missing and my interest wasn't adequately captured at the game's opening. I really still did enjoy playing through this game though. Just not as much as I hoped I would.

Device 6

Simogo - 2013 - Mobile

As of this writing, Device 6 is only available as an iOS download, which is a shame. Now I know most phone games, and most deservedly so, have a stigma attached to them for not being "real" games. I find most phone games to be mindless time-wasters, but Device 6 is certinaly an exception. It's too bad that the only method to download Device 6 is an app store that's cluttered with a bunch of other throwaway games, but the real shame that Device 6 is iOS-only is that I have no Apple devices to play it on! I've wanted to play this game ever since its release last year when it got boatloads of positive buzz. I finally got a chance to play it this week after borrowing a family member's iPad, and let me tell you, the hype is real.

In Device 6, you control a girl named Anna, who wakes up alone in a castle on an island with no memory of why or how she got there. As you guide Anna through the castle, you'll discover lots of the castle's weird and creepy secrets. The narrative was very self-aware and sometimes humorous. There were parts that reminded me of The Stanley Parable. But it was also often creepy and abstract. I admit there were a few elements of the story that seemed to be over my head. I couldn't tell if it was just me that wasn't following the story well enough, or if the narrative wasn't doing that great of a job getting its points across. Either way, I think Device 6 is well written, it's just kinda... out there. Which isn't to say that it's bad, it's just very different.

In an industry that has far too many clones, copycats and sequels, Device 6 is proof that there is still a very deep well of creative narrative and fresh new ideas that modern games are just beginning to drill into. From a presentation standpoint, Device 6 is completely unlike anything I've ever played before. The narrative is presented to the player as text on a screen that the player scrolls across using finger swiping motions. The text will sometimes change it's positional location or rotation based on what's happening in the story. For instance if Anna walks down a flight of stairs, the text will slope diagonally downward. And if Anna has a decision on which way to go, the text will branch off in opposite directions, allowing the player to choose which way Anna will go by swiping their finger in the desired direction. While you swipe your finger to move the text, the sound of footsteps can be heard. If Anna arrives at a door, a door opening sound effect is played while the text scrolls. Occasionally pictures are shown alongside the text when Anna sees something of importance. These pictures frequently contain clues to puzzles and often employ a very cool looking parallax scrolling effect. The audiovisual presentation of this game is so unique and gives the game a very distinct style

Device 6 has excellent puzzle design, but it's different from the puzzles in a game like Braid. In Braid, all of the puzzles had to do with manipulating objects or locations in the game engine. Device 6 presents you mysteries and then offers you clues in the narrative or in the pictures included with the narrative. It's just as brilliant, but in a different way. It reminded me of old school adventure games like Myst which I used to love as a kid. Just like in Myst, I had a pen and paper out to take notes with the entire time I was playing Device 6. Not a lot of games are designed that way anymore. The only thing slightly negative I can say about Device 6 is its length. It's pretty short. I knocked it out in about 3-4 hours. Usually I'm a fan of shorter game experiences, as long as they're priced right (Device 6 is currently $3.99). But I enjoyed my time with Device 6 so much that I was left wanting more when the ending came. I guess that could also be a good thing though, depending on how you look at it.

Summary:

If you like puzzle games, unusual stories, or games that are completely unlike anything you've ever played before, you must play Device 6. It's just so unique and different and oozes creativity and style. That alone should be reason enough to play it. Just be aware that it's pretty short and pretty weird. I hope its developer, Simogo, will eventually port Device 6 to platforms other than iOS so more people get a chance to play this. In any case, Simogo is now on my "cool developers" list and I'll be looking forward to their next project.

Braid

Jonathan Blow - 2008 - PC/PS3/X360

Braid is my gold standard for puzzle design in video games. It introduces a simple concept - most of the puzzles in Braid revolve around time manipulation. You have control of a character and also control over of the flow of time in that character's world. It throws a few puzzles at you that require understanding of these concepts. It starts simple and then elaborates. Each stage tests your understanding of the previous stage's mechanics and also adds in a new layer of complexity. As an avid gamer, as a programmer, and especially as a fan of puzzle games, I'm usually able to learn and understand game systems very quickly. In most puzzle games, it's usually fairly easy for me to figure out where the game wants me to go, what it wants me to do and how I'm supposed to do it. There were a few puzzles in Braid where I just stared at the TV screen for minutes, just trying to comprehend the complex game systems that were being layered to create Braid's sublime puzzles. Braid's puzzles are completely mind bending, but in the best way. It feels great when a solution clicks and you finally figure out what you're supposed to do. And it boggles my mind even more to think how the developer came up with these puzzles.

Braid's levels are divided up into 5 short worlds. Each world introduces and elaborates on a new puzzle solving mechanic. For instance the first world, which is labeled world 2 for some reason, simply introduces character movement and the rewind time mechanic. You can move left and right on a 2d plane and jump just like a platformer. Then it teaches you that you can rewind time to undo your actions Prince of Persia style. This can of course be used to cheat death and undo platforming mistakes you make. You'll need to collect all of the puzzle pieces in each world to unlock final world in Braid. Puzzle pieces are always obviously placed, but difficult to obtain. They are frequently placed behind locked doors or put up high in the air and its up to the player to figure out how to obtain them, which requires a good understanding of the game's time mechanics. A heads up though - the first world is home to my least favorite puzzle in the game. Anyone who has played Braid before knows the one I'm talking about. The solution is kind of ridiculous and out of place with the rest of Braid's excellent puzzle design. You're not wrong for looking up the solution for how to get all of the first world's puzzle pieces.

The second world introduces objects that have a green glow on their outline. With these objects, their physical position and movement is completely unaffected by the flow of time. This concept can be trickier than you would think. In the third world, the flow of time is directly tied to your character's physical position. As you move forward, time advances. As you walk backward, time rewinds. This idea is then combined with the second world's mechanics to create some really mind bending puzzles. The fourth and fifth worlds are similar, both introducing new mechanics and combining them with concepts from previous worlds. The fifth world especially is home to some really excellent and difficult problems.

Where Braid falters a bit is with its story. It's presented by reading short bits of text that are found before each level. The narrative feels very abstract and artsy. There's not a clear sense of who the main character is or what he's struggling with. There's something about the main character and a princess he's in love with or used to be in love with or something, I don't know. It's so unclear and "open to interpretation". I still can't decide if the ending to this game makes any sense or not. I kind of don't think it does. It feels like the developer may have had some message or theme he wanted to communicate to the player, but Braid failed to connect with me on a narrative level.

Summary:
Overall, Braid is a good demonstration of excellent game and puzzle design. Aside from that one stupid puzzle in the first world, I've never been so impressed by creative ideas mixed with well thought out design. It's a bit short and the story is kind of nonsense, but Braid more than makes up for that with its sublime puzzles. If you like these types of problem solving games, Braid is absolutely a must play. The Witness, Jonathan Blow's next game, should be out in the coming months. It's definitely my most anticipated game of 2014 and I'm hopeful it'll be as well made as Braid. Expect a post on it later this year.

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

Chunsoft - 2012 - Vita/3DS

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is the sequel to 999, which I played for the first time last year. If you're not familiar with these games, just imagine the Japanese anime interpretation of the movie Saw made into a graphic novel/videogame. And then sprinkle some puzzles on top. Basically 9 people wake up together locked in a room with no memory of how they got there and are forced to play a game riddled with deathtraps in order to find a way out.

Despite my grievances with 999's game design, the quality of the writing enticed me enough to play its sequel. Thankfully, VLR corrects most of the frustrating game design from predecessor. Like 999, VLR has a non-linear story with branching decision points and multiple different endings are required in order to get the "true" ending. VLR implements a much needed "time travel flowchart" where you can skip to any decision point or puzzle you've already encountered in the game, so you don't have to completely restart the game every time you get an ending. Honestly, if 999 had this feature, I could and would have forgiven a lot of that game's faults.

There are numerous UI enhancements to VLR as well. In 999, if you needed to consult your notes when solving a puzzle, you had to flip back and forth between menu screens. I can remember sarcastically thinking "If only the DS had two screens and I could look at both of these things at the same time...". Thankfully, the developers have now taken advantage of the DS' hardware and corrected this annoyance.  There's also now a built in note taking feature which allows you to doodle or jot down quick things that you think may be important later in the game. All puzzle solving sections are now fully three dimensional rooms with a rotating camera rather than a 2D screen, which allowed me to get a better sense of the rooms I was in. Nearly all of the text in the story sections has been supplemented with voice acting. When I first heard this, I was kind of nervous because I've found that bad voice acting can take me out of a game really easily. But I found that the voicework in VLR to be pretty good quality. It really enhanced the game and added more flavor to the characters. I kind of wish 999 was voice acted after playing this.

Where this game stumbles a bit is with the puzzles. They're not really bad puzzles, but they don't give the profound "Ah Ha!" moments like puzzles in games like Portal or Braid. Some of the logic behind the puzzles isn't communicated that well and you kind of have to trial and error your way into what the game wants you to do. Solutions to some other puzzles seem random or ambiguous or arbitrary. It almost reminded me a bit of To The Moon. I loved the writing in that game, but the puzzles didn't mesh with the narrative. They feel like an afterthought, as though some video game police would come by and arrest this game for not being "gamey" enough. The puzzles' only purpose seem to be to ruin the excellent pace set by the narrative. The game seems to grind to a halt at each puzzle section, and I felt like I couldn't get past the poorly integrated puzzles fast enough and get back to the story.

Where 999 made the terrible mistake of forcing the player to repeat puzzle sections, VLR makes the mistake of blasting the user with the same dialogue they've already heard a bunch of times before. If you're going to make a game with 24 endings or whatever it is, at least make each of them different from another. So many of the "false" endings feel like copies of the same thing and a lot of them repeat dialogue verbatim. I think I may have the dialogue telling how the main character initially gets captured committed to my memory for the rest of my life. It's told to you exactly the same way 8 or 9 times verbatim. Whyyyy??? Would it be that hard to write it slightly differently each time in order to keep the player engaged? Or drop slight little tidbits of knowledge or tell the player interesting details or facts not found in the other sections where the same story is told?

If I were to be able to give the director of this game some feedback/advice, it would be to redesign or eliminate the puzzles, don't repeat dialogue and cut back on some of the false endings. There's just too many. More is not always better. This game is really too long, it's significantly longer than 999 and I was ready for this game to be over long before it actually was. But man, the director, Kotaro Uchikoshi, really has a talent for writing compelling sci-fi murder mysteries. The ending to VLR is even more mind blowing and well executed than 999's ending. It's really top notch suspenseful writing. My only criticism is that the game's attempts at humor often miss the mark. But maybe that's a Japanese to English translation thing. Also why must all of the female characters in this game be hyper-sexualized? It's out of place in a murder mystery and doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the writing. It's just seems juvenile and sophomoric. It's a bit hard to buy that the main character would really be thinking about undressing one of the other girls moments after witnessing someone else die, which happens frequently throughout the game.

Summary:
Despite this game's flaws, I still enjoyed it a lot. I think even more than 999. But if this series or this type of game interests you, I would start with 999 first. It's a bit shorter and there's several very important references to 999 in VLR that you won't get if you don't play it first. I recently read that Uchikoshi said he's having trouble securing funding to make a third game in the series due to poor sales of the first two. I hope somehow, someway another game like these gets made. Uchikoshi is an excellent writer and if the kinks in his game design get worked out, Zero Escape 3 would be an instant buy for me

Silent Hill 2

Konami - 2001 - PS2/PS3/Xbox/X360/PC

I was thinking a bit about how I railed against Journey and Brothers for having gameplay that isn't “fun”. The strength of those games lies in their unique storytelling methods. Then I realized one of my favorite games kind of falls into that same boat. Silent Hill 2 is a classic survival horror game and one of my all time favorite games. Don’t worry about playing Silent Hill 1 before 2 or anything like that. 2 has very little to do with 1 other than the setting of the game being the same.

Silent Hill 2 a psychological horror game, not an action horror game like most modern horror games. Think Amnesia as opposed to Left 4 Dead. In Silent Hill 2, you’ll play as James Sunderland who has just received a cryptic letter from his wife telling him to meet her in the town of Silent Hill. The only thing is that James’ wife has been dead for 3 years. So you’ll explore the town looking for clues as to why you received a letter from a dead person.

This game is not fun to play. It’s really not, at least not for me. The game rarely gives you ammo for your weapons, so you’ll spend most of the time running away from monsters and stressing about ammo conservation than shooting them. And being lost in the town, which will probably happen a few times to you, is kind of frustrating. But these two mechanics are included by design and are how the player is supposed to feel. At least I believe that’s what the designers intended for the players to feel.

A lot of this game’s design and story elements may seem random and coincidental at first, but after finishing the game, I looked back and realized quite the opposite. The story is very tight, and even some of the smallest details I first thought to be random turned out to have strong meaning and relevance. It’s one of those games that I kept thinking about days after I had finished it, just mulling over the story and realizing how every little detail fell into place to make a complete narrative. This game does a masterful job of communicating narrative elements through gameplay, through symbolism and through level design. It’s an experience that’s completely unique to the medium of video games, and I've never really played anything that communicated ideas like that before or since.

Summary:
My main knock against this game is that some of the puzzles feel kind of tacked on and out of place and why dear god why is there not a mini-map..? But if you can handle the frustrations of a slower paced game and are a fan of psychological horror, Silent Hill 2 is a memorable game to experience. It also has an excellent soundtrack if you’re into ambient music

The Swapper

Facepalm Games - 2013 - PC

Where was this on everybody’s “2013 game of the year” list?? As of this writing, it’s January 2014, so all of the major game websites have put out their “best games of 2013 list”. I've checked most of the major gaming websites, and this game has appeared on precisely none of the “best game” lists, whereas games like Brothers and Bioshock Infinite - both of which I found to be less than favorable - appear all over the place. I don’t understand. Anyway, The Swapper is an indie puzzle game which has taken quite a bit of influence in its art direction from the Metroid games. Actually, this game threw me quite a bit at first. After seeing all of the visual and stylistic references to Metroid, I was expecting a Metroidvania game. The Swapper is very much just a puzzle game and nothing more, but it’s a very good puzzle game.

The main puzzle solving mechanic in the game is the title device, The Swapper. It allows the user to make clones of themselves that will mimic the user’s actions one to one. It also allows the user to transfer their consciousness not only between their clones, but between any living being, which makes for some interesting storytelling. Armed with The Swapper, you’ll explore a derelict space station that has been seemingly mysteriously abandoned. You’ll solve puzzles and read crew logs to try to piece together what happened to the station.

Summary:
The puzzle design in this game was pretty excellent, on par with games like Portal or Braid, where I would just stare at the screen for minutes at a time and try to think through what I needed to do to complete the puzzle. Light plays an important role in this game’s puzzles. Blue light will block The Swapper’s cloning feature where red light will block the “swapping” feature. Purple light will block both. The game’s mechanics are a bit difficult to illustrate verbally, so you may want to check out some gameplay videos to get the idea and see if this interests you. Don’t be thrown by the Metroid references, this isn't that kind of game. But if you enjoy puzzle games, The Swapper is a must-play.

999: 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors

Chunsoft - 2009 - DS

Yet another interactive story game feeding my newfound love of games like this.. After playing Heavy Rain and To The Moon, I wanted more games like this and 999 delivers. 999 is probably what you’d get if you made the Saw movies into a Japanese Anime. And then made that into a video game.

In 999, your character wakes up locked in a room with no memory of how or why he’s trapped there. You’ll eventually escape the room to find that you’re one of 9 people trapped on an old cruise ship. You learn that you've been imprisoned by someone named “Zero” who wants the 9 of you to play survival game that involves solving puzzles to find a sequence of 9 hidden doors somewhere on the ship that supposedly lead to your freedom. The problem is that your party only has 9 hours to find the doors before you’ll all be dead, hence the title 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors. Sounds like something Jigsaw would cook up in one of the Saw movies except this game was made in Japan, so all of the characters are very anime looking and have ridiculous goofy looking colored hair.

The writing in this game is pretty strong. The characters are distinct and well developed and the story seems pretty well thought out. There are a few times where this game’s attempts at humor will fall flat, but it does a masterful job of creating and maintaining suspense throughout the story. It’s one of those games that will keep you thinking about the story even when you’re not playing it. The game is mostly just reading text and making dialogue choices, but there are a few puzzle solving sections as well. The puzzles usually involve searching a room for items or solving some simple math based problems. If you don’t figure out the puzzles on your first few tries, the game will automatically start providing hints until you understand what the game wants you to do, so you probably won’t ever be stuck on a puzzle in this game for very long.

I was really all set to love this game and start singing its praises - until I finished it. Based on some of the decisions and dialogue choices you make in the game, you will get one of several different possible endings when you finish the game. What broke my heart about this game is that you’re guaranteed to get a “bad ending” on your first playthrough. In order to get the “true ending”, you have to play through the game several times. Screw that. This is a narrative based game! That would be like reading through a book several times before you’re allowed to see what the “real ending” is. And it’s not just that there are “bad endings”, it’s that the bad endings leave so many loose ends and unanswered questions that are only given in the “true ending”. But I don’t want to re-solve puzzles I've already solved, nor do I want to re-read text I've already read. Ugh. I was so disgusted by the design choice here that I just looked the true ending up on the internet.

Summary:
What a shame, I would have really liked this game… Apparently there’s a sequel for this on 3DS, but I need to make sure they don’t repeat this forced bad ending crap before I check it out. If you can overlook this game’s flaws, it does tell a compelling story. Just expect to be disappointed at the end.