Resident Evil 4

Capcom - 2005 - Gamecube/PS2/PS3/Wii/X360/PC

In order to help commemorate the release of the “Ultimate HD Edition” of Resident Evil 4 on Steam this week, I figured I’d post about how awesome this game is. It's actually difficult for me to put my finger on why I like this game so much. On paper, it seems like a game I would absolutely hate. The story is pretty much ridiculous. The puzzles feel tacked on and unnecessary. There's instant death quick time events in cutscenes. All things I hate. Plus it's a shooter, and I'm not usually enthralled with action/shooters. But somehow this game really won me over and became one of my favorites.

Resident Evil 4 marked a huge shift in the franchise's gameplay. RE 1-3 were really more pure survival horror games. Ammo was scarce. Enemies were scarce, which made it more intense when you encountered one. Aiming was kind of awkward which gave a real sense of vulnerability. The emphasis was on atmosphere and trying to creep the player out. I liked these games, especially the first Resident Evil. RE4 is a very different kind of game. There's enemies all over the place, the controls are tight, and the emphasis is on the shooting and action. It's a different kind of fun. It still does atmosphere sort of well through the first half of the game, but kind of abandons it through the second half in my opinion.

What I think this game does very well is variety. Variety in enemies, variety in weapons, variety in locations and so on. While I think RE4 does some sections of the game better than others, at least you never get the sense that you're doing the same thing over and over which I frequently get while playing shooters. There's the atmospheric lonely feeling of the village in the beginning of the game, the creepy cultists in the castle, the unnerving bizarre science experiments in the laboratory and the over the top action sequences near the end of the game.

There are lots of unique and memorable experiences in RE4. There's everything from being trapped in a cabin with legions of zombies trying to break in to running from an invisible monster through dimly lit sewers. There's even epic gigantic boss fights and a few vehicle sections as well. It's not as nerve-wrackingly scary as the first RE games, but there are a few jump scares scattered throughout RE4. There's a sort of fun metagame of deciding which weapons and items you'll take with you with limited inventory space. And deciding which guns to upgrade and which upgrades to purchase is fun too.

Summary:
It's just good old zombie killing fun. Check it out

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Intelligent Systems (Nintendo) - 2004 - Gamecube

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

One of my all-time favorite games. I’m madly in love with this game and I’ve replayed it more times than I can remember now. This game somehow gets overlooked and forgotten quite a bit despite the fact that it’s a Mario game. Probably because hardly anyone owned a Gamecube and even fewer of those people were into RPGs. They unfortunately missed out on a fantastic game.

The story seems kind of formulaic at first. The game begins, predictably, with Princess Peach being kidnapped, but not by Bowser. You find out shortly that she was kidnapped by a group of people who call themselves the x-nauts. The x-nauts’ leader, Grodus, kidnapped Peach because he believes there is a connection between her and opening the titular Thousand Year Door. Legends tell of a great treasure hidden behind the Thousand Year Door that Grodus becomes obsessed with finding.

The story and writing strikes a perfect balance between being light hearted and fun but also not being too childish or silly. I think the writing might be one of my favorite things about the game, I think it’s one of the best-written games I've ever played. Which sounds ridiculous considering it’s a Mario game aimed at kids, but the writing is really quite humorous and charming. It’s very self aware and often breaks the fourth wall to communicate directly to the player. The characters are well defined and are brought to life through excellent writing and exaggerated cartoony animations. Even though I've played through the game a bunch of times, I still crack a smile at some of the silly jokes and running gags.

The gameplay is typical turn based JRPG combat, but with an additional skill-based “action/timing” mechanic that can boost your attack power or defense if executed correctly. For instance, pressing the A button just before Mario is hit by an enemy will decrease the damage he takes. Or if you’re feeling bold, you can try to press the B button before an enemy attack to counter and inflict damage on the enemy, but the required timing for pressing the B button is more precise. Mario can be assisted in battle by several companions that he encounters throughout the story. Each companion has their own stats and skill set and can also be upgraded by finding hidden items throughout the game. Each time Mario levels up, you can either increase his HP (Heart Points), FP (Flower Points, required for special attacks) or BP (Badge Points). Badge points are probably the most interesting to upgrade because they allow Mario to equip badges that grant him extra abilities. For example, you could equip the Double Dip badge which allows Mario to use 2 items per turn, providing that you've already found the Double Dip badge and have enough BP to equip it.

The BP system keeps the battles interesting because you’ll constantly be experimenting with new badge setups in battle and the “action/timing” mechanic keeps you engaged trying to learn how to defend each enemies’ attack timings.The pacing is also excellent, you’ll never feel like you’re doing the same thing twice. One chapter has you entering into a wrestling tournament, while another has you solving a series of mysteries while riding a train.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Video Review

Summary:
The only drawbacks I can think of with this game are with the difficulty. It’s pretty easy. It’s more of an intro to RPGs, so if you’re used to playing these kinds of games, you’ll probably breeze through it. Also the game starts a bit slow. The first two chapters, compared to the rest, are kind of bland. But stick with it, the game gets better the father into it you get. I think it’s worth tracking down a Gamecube and a copy of this game to play it. Or if you know me personally, ask me and I’ll let you borrow my copy. If you only take one of my recommendations seriously, let it be this game

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Naughty Dog - 2009 - PS3

A copy of The Last of Us has literally been sitting, unplayed, on my TV shelf for the last 3 months because of Uncharted 2. Not because I've been busy playing Uncharted 2, but because I finished Uncharted 2 a couple years ago and it had to be one of the most overhyped and uninteresting games I think I've ever played. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Uncharted 2 is a bad game, but I don’t quite understand how it won over so many critics and sold so many copies.

The platforming sections are slow and unremarkable. The puzzle solving sections are too simple and usually just involve opening Drake’s notebook to the proper page to find the solution. The cover based shooting is just… cover based shooting. There’s nothing new here, this game retreads ground that many other games have already tread. By the way, I really hope you like cover based shooting because there’s A LOT of it here. Granted, I played Uncharted 2 immediately after finished the first Uncharted, so I might have burned myself out on Uncharted.

But I think the issue is deeper than that for me. I think I’m burned out on shooters. If the 90s were the era of the platformer, the 00s are definitely the era of shooters. I think I’m just bored and ready for something else. Modern shooters have to do something else interesting in order to hold my attention. Tell an interesting story. Layer an interesting mechanic on top of the shooting. I don’t think I can handle any more pure shooters though. Not that Uncharted is a pure shooter, but it feels close enough. The story feels like a script to a typical Hollywood action movie, it’s kind of forgettable and bland. I never felt invested in the story at all or any of the characters in it for that matter. Nathan Drake comes across as very smug and cocky to me which really started to rub me the wrong way after a while. I feel like the player should never be put off by the character he’s controlling unless it’s intentionally comedic or something.

Summary:
There’s really nothing about this game that I found warranted the praise and acclaim that it got at its release. I guess it does look really graphically impressive, but that usually never matters me especially if the game itself isn't that fun. I’m hoping none of the things I've just described are true about The Last of Us, but I've yet to work up the nerve to try and play through that game.

Final Fantasy V

Squaresoft - 1992 - SNES/PS1/GBA/iOS/Android

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

(Author's note: This review was initially posted on 2/17/2014 and was rewritten on 9/25/2015. You can read the initial review below as a comment)

I have somewhat of a soft spot for old school turn-based JRPGS, and this is one of my favorites. FFV tragically gets overlooked quite a bit because it didn't have an official U.S. release/translation until 1999, seven years after it came out. This is really a shame because I think FFV outshines the other SNES era Final Fantasy games in a lot of ways. I'm sure this is a controversial opinion as debating which games in the Final Fantasy series always tends to get heated, but if you don't believe me and you haven't played this game, you really should.

FFV's story is kind of... ehhh. It's pretty standard template "heroes save the world" writing. Story is not where this game shines, but pretty early in the game, you’ll unlock FFV’s job system. FFV's job system is what sets this game apart from other Final Fantasy titles, for better or for worse. The various jobs are slowly unlocked at key story points as you progress through the game. You initially unlock knight, monk, thief, white mage, black mage and blue mage but will eventually unlock all 21 jobs (25 in the enhanced remake). You can assign any of your 4 party members any job and can reassign them at any time. Changing jobs will affect your character’s stats and what items they're able to equip as well as grant them different abilities to use in battle. Once you master a job’s ability you can carry it over to use with other jobs. This, to me, is where FFV is at its best. Trying to figure out which combinations of jobs and abilities were powerful and which were useless was really fun and rewarding. For instance, combining the Ninja job's "dual wield" ability with the knight class' high innate defense and ability to equip high damage longswords was pretty good if my memory serves. FFV is paced pretty well such that you'll unlock more jobs just as you were mastering previous ones so you always have new combinations and tricks to try out and experiment with. The ending of the game comes right about the time you've mastered enough jobs to be dangerous. Unleashing all of your ridiculous tricks and crazy combinations on the final boss feels like an adequate final exam of your mastery of the job system.

I think FFV is one of Nobuo Uematsu’s first really excellent soundtracks . Not that any that came before were inferior, but FFV really showcases Uematsu's musical range and his ability to create timeless and catchy tunes one right after the other, over and over again. “To the North Mountain”, “Home, Sweet Home" and "Clash on the Big Bridge" are some of my favorite tracks.

Summary:
If you enjoy old school RPGs or are a FF fan who missed out on this game the first time around, you should check this game out. If you don't mind the slower pacing of the turn-based combat, I've found experimenting with FFV's job system while listening to the genius of Uematsu to be a really enjoyable experience

Elite Beat Agents

iNiS - 2006 - DS

Oh man, this game. Elite Beat Agents is a music/rhythm game for the Nintendo DS. Gameplay in EBA consists of tapping and sliding the DS stylus on the screen when the game prompts you in time with the music. It’s kind of like Guitar Hero but without the guitar. That may sound easy to you, but on faster songs with a lot of beats, the screen can fill up with a lot of beats and it becomes hard to hit them all in the correct order and with the proper timing. I found myself doing better on songs I had heard before so I could sort of use the rhythm as a guide. Nearly all of the songs in the game are pop songs, but I really don’t listen to much popular music.

The gameplay in EBA is fun in the same sort of way Guitar Hero is fun, but the real draw of EBA is the absolute lunacy of the games’ “story”. Now I looked this next part up on Wikipedia, cause the game doesn't really straight up tell you what’s going on, but the “story” of EBA is that there is a government agency that dispatches special elite dance agents to help people when they’re in trouble. The agents don’t actually directly assist people with their issues, but rather they dance to motivate and inspire people to overcome their problems. Each song in EBA is accompanied by a humorous short story about a person or people in peril that apparently need dance inspiration to overcome issues. It’s really goofy and silly in a very bizarre way. The closest thing I can draw a comparison to is the humor in the WarioWare games.

Summary:
If you like rhythm games or games with a really wacky sense of humor, check this out. It’s short and I’m not sure how much replay value it has, but it could be an interesting way to kill some time on the go.

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.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Starbreeze Studios - 2013 - PC/PS3/X360

I saw this game come up several times on various “best games of 2013” lists across the internet, so I figured I needed to check this one out. Brothers is a short indie game where you guide the title characters on a quest to save their dying father by collecting an antidote from a far away place. It’s kind of got a dark European fairytale thing going on too, if that does anything for you.

Brothers is one of those games that kind of defies genre classification. It’s kind of story driven, it’s kind of a platformer and it’s also got some basic puzzles in it, but I didn’t think it did any of those things particularly well. You’ll control the two brothers simultaneously: the older brother with the left joystick and the younger brother with the right joystick. Oh by the way, this game requires you to play with a controller. I thought this game may do some interesting things with puzzles by requiring the player to move the two characters asynchronously or something like that, but not really. One of the most difficult things in this game is just trying to navigate the brothers down the path when your thumbs wont coordinate with each other.

Summary:
The one thing I did like about Brothers is that it did an excellent job of storytelling and conveying emotion without a single line of dialogue. I love when games do that well. Brothers is not a bad game par se, but it’s certainly wouldn’t be on my “best games of 2013” list. Brothers actually reminded me quite a bit of Journey in that most of the gameplay is simply navigating through the environment and just kind of watching things happen. Also both of those games implement storytelling without dialogue. Also I didn’t care much for either of those games. Their stories, while well delivered, just aren’t that interesting to me. And their gameplay is, well, just not that much fun. But I have a feeling that the same people who loved Journey will be the same people who will enjoy this game. It’s just not my thing, I guess

Spelunky

Derek Yu - 2009 - PC/X360/PS3/Vita

Spelunky is an extremely difficult indie Roguelike platformer. It’s Roguelike in that all of the levels, terrain and enemies in the game are randomly generated, which helps keep the game fresh and interesting. It reminded me quite a bit of Rogue Legacy with its excellent design and brutal difficulty.

The object of each level in Spelunky is to get to the exit, but you’ll have to navigate through lots of traps and other enemies in a randomly generated level. Your character will start with a limited supply of bombs and ropes to help you navigate the level. Bombs can be used to destroy terrain and dig deeper while ropes can be used to help you climb back up. You don’t always want to just race to the exit when you find it either, you’ll want to explore the level and gather as much gold and upgrades as you can find before leaving. But if you spend too long in any given level, a giant ghost that can kill you instantly appears to chase you out of the level. There’s also a maiden hidden in each level. If you bring her to the exit, she will restore one point of your health, so you’ll want to try to find and rescue her in each level. You’ll find shops hidden in each level where you can spend your gold to replenish your bombs/ropes, and buy weapons and upgrades. Spelunky also features local co-op which is pretty fun, but still just as hard.

Summary:
It’s a very difficult game, but if you don’t get frustrated it’s a very addictive game as well. I've actually yet to make it past the third level in this game, but I've gotten close a few times. Check it out if you enjoy difficult platformers

Super Smash Bros: Project M

PMDT - 2013 - Wii

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

(Author's note: I originally reviewed this game at the end of 2013 when Project M 3.0 first launched. The review contained some outdated information and I wasn't too happy with what I wrote begin with, so I rewrote it as of 9/21/2015. You can read the original review as a comment below)

What is Super Smash Bros: Project M? No, Nintendo didn't sneak in a fifth Smash title without you noticing, Project M is a fan-made mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii to make it play more like Super Smash bros. Melee for the Gamecube, hence the M in Project M. But this isn't to be confused with Nintendo's most recent Smash title, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U which fans have just taken to calling Smash 4 because the former is a mouthful. Confused yet? Let me start over from the beginning. In 1999, developer HAL labratory and Nintendo launched Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. It featured all of the most well known Nintendo mascots in a fighting party game where emphasis was on knocking the opponent off of the stage. There were no health bars in the game; there was only a damage counter. The more damage you dealt, the farther your target will fly the next time they're hit. Super Smash Bros, henceforth referred to by fans as Smash 64 to avoid obvious confusion with other Smash titles, was a critical and commercial success. It was intended to be a fun party game, but some people (myself included) enjoyed playing it with friends competitively with its wacky items turned off.

Then in 2001, Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube was released. It was amazing. It was more full featured, faster and had more depth than Smash 64. But more importantly, its game engine better facilitated the competitive playstyle that I enjoyed from the previous game. 15 years later, Melee still retains a large competitive audience and the Melee tournament scene is still active and growing. There's an excellent documentary on YouTube if you'd like to learn more about Melee and its top players, but we're here to talk about Project M - and I'm almost there. In 2008, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released for the Nintendo Wii. It featured, by far, the largest playable roster of fighters, more stages and more items and a more fleshed out single player mode. It was a fine party game, but most fans of competitive melee didn't care for Brawl. The Brawl physics engine didn't allow for the fast-paced, combo heavy gameplay of Melee. Furthermore the perceived balance of Brawl's roster was so lopsided that one character, Meta Knight, started to be banned from use in some tournaments.

So now enter Project M. It was designed by a collective of Brawl modders now known as the Project M Development Team (PMDT) to be a complete overhaul of Brawl to make it play more like Melee, changing everything from the physics engine to character balance and movesets. Fighters from Melee were mostly reverted or approximated to their Melee counterparts while Brawl newcomers were reimagined in the Melee engine and in most cases given new animations, movesets and playstyles. New gameplay modes and features, new characters, and new stages were added as well. I think there's more that sets Project M apart from Brawl and the PMDT have made so many changes that in my eyes, Project M really is its own game and not just a mod of Brawl. It's relative ease of installation is also a huge plus, only requiring its users to have a copy of Brawl and an SD card with custom files (which you can find here for free) loaded onto the Wii. No other permanent modifications need to be made to the system or the game.

In addition to approximating the physics engine of Melee, Project M has several other features that benefit competitive play like built-in stage striking and debug mode with hitbox displays and a frame advance feature. So now some of you may be thinking "That's cool and all, but I have no interest in competitive play. Should I still check out Project M?" Yes. There's lots of really cool and unique new features in Project M that make it worth checking out on its own. Ever want to play a different character on every single stock? Project M's all-star vs. mode has you covered. Ever wanted to play Smash like a traditional fighting game with hit points and death boundaries turned off? You can do that too. If you really want to get ridiculous, check out Project M's turbo mode which allows any move you do to be on hit canceled into any other move.

The attention to detail is another thing that's really nice about this game. When character's movesets were being reimagined and tweaked to fit competitive gameplay, homages to the various series each fighter is from were worked in. For instance, Snake can now use his tranquilizer gun and survival knife from Metal Gear Solid, Lucas can use "Offense Up" from Mother 3, and Samus can switch between ice beam and fire beam, like in Metroid Prime. Brand new stages have also been created with a high level of fidelity and detail. Some even include cool easter eggs and other visual secrets. A brand new announcer was added to the game along with new music tracks and imported sound effects from Melee. Actually, if you're a little more technically inclined, it's not too hard to figure out how to replace the music files for the game yourself and create your own tracklist for this game.

Super Smash Bros. Project M Video Review

Summary
I really enjoy Project M. It's my personal favorite Smash game to play due to all of its competitive-friendly features and roster balance which the PMDT maintains through semi-frequent patches. I know Project M has been struggling to stay in the spotlight recently, due to the release and popularity of Smash 4 in conjunction with Nintendo sponsoring Twitch streams of Smash tournaments and obviously not having an interest in promoting a game that's not their own. But I hope the audience for this game will continue to grow cause I really enjoy playing it with other people. I'd say it's worth finding a copy of Brawl and dusting off your Wii if this looks interesting to you. It's a blast to play whether you're a competitive or casual player, newcomer or Smash veteran.

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.

Batman: Arkham Origins

Warner Brothers Games Montreal - 2013 - PC/X360/PS3/WiiU

I think Batman needs to just give up on Gotham and find a city worth protecting. It seems like 99% of everyone you run into in Gotham is a criminal. I mean it made sense in the first game where Batman was in the asylum and all of the inmates had gotten loose. And I guess it made sense in the second game too, when all of Arkham’s residents had gotten loose again and taken over the city. But now in this game, aside from the fact that it’s Christmas Eve, it’s a normal day in Gotham city and the streets are still covered with criminals. Literally every single person you see on the street is either a criminal or a member of the SWAT team. Where are the normal citizens? Exactly who is Batman protecting here?

Anyway, Batman: Arhkham Origins is, as the title suggests, part of Batman’s origin story and takes place in the early years of Bruce Wayne’s career in crime fighting. It tells of Batman’s first encounters with characters like Killer Croc, James Gordon and, of course, The Joker. The game begins with the criminal organization leader known as Black Mask placing a 50 million dollar bounty on Batman’s head. Several B-list Batman villains, most of which I had never heard of before, show up in Gotham to try to take down Batman and collect the bounty. But then of course The Joker shows up and upstages all of the other villains. Sounds like a typical Christmas Eve for Batman.

This game was actually not made by Rocksteady, the studio that did the last two games, but by WB Montreal. If you don’t count the WiiU port of Arkham City (who does?), this is actually WB Montreal’s very first game, which made me a bit nervous to try it. You’d never know it though, the quality and polish of Arkham Origins is pretty high, so I suspect there were a lot of veteran developers brought on to the WB Montreal team. Actually, if I hadn't known the series had switched developers, I doubt I would've noticed at all; Origins is so similar to the other two games, especially Arkham City. A lot of the animations, game mechanics and even the models and assets from City seem to be copy/pasted into Origins, so I guess Rocksteady gave WB Montreal access to their source material.

There’s really not much new introduced in this game either, which I guess is a bit disappointing, but I had been meaning to replay Arkham City anyway and this was a nice way to do it - with a different narrative layered over the pre-existing gameplay. Actually, just about the only noticeable difference between Origins and City is the change in voice actors. I was disappointed to not see the actors from the animated series and the other games return to reprise their roles, but the new actors do a fine job. The new Batman actor does a younger and angrier emulation of Kevin Conroy’s Batman and the new Joker’s portrayal is a bit more edgy and dangerous feeling than Mark Hamill’s Joker. Different, but still good.

Summary:
This game is quite similar to Arkham City and what you thought of City will likely be the same thing you think about Origins. I had fun with this game, so check it out if you were a City fan.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Nintendo - 2013 - 3DS

See also my Top 10 Zelda Games list

There’s really only two video game franchises I’m a diehard fan of. I've played pretty much every Final Fantasy (except the MMOs) and I've played pretty much every Legend of Zelda game (except the DS ones). As mentioned in my Pokemon review, I have handheld-phobia which is why I haven’t bothered to play Spirit Tracks or Phantom Hourglass yet, but after finishing Pokemon X, I had confidence enough to try A link Between Worlds. My favorite entries in the Zelda franchise have been the 3d ones (Ocarina, Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker), but A Link to the Past is the only other game I've bothered to play through multiple times. So I was excited to play a direct sequel to that game. By the way, as long as Nintendo is doing direct sequels to games in their franchises, can we get a Majora's Mask sequel? Or at least another Zelda game with a weird and dark tone like that game had?

Love that game… Anyway, if you’re a Link to the Past fan, this game is going to feel very familiar. Music, sound effects, locations. Actually, about 5 minutes into the game, I realized they had copy/pasted the world map from the original game. I haven’t gone back to A Link to the Past to see if it was totally 100% copy/pasted but it’s pretty darn close. Your house, Kakariko Village, Hyrule Castle and everything else is right where it was on the SNES. Actually, some of the boss fights are completely copy/pasted from A Link to The Past, which I’m actually okay with. It’s usually not rocket science to take down a Zelda boss. Just stab whatever’s glowing, and if that doesn't work, cycle through all the items in your inventory till you find something that does. So I don’t think it really spoils anything when this game pays homage to the classic game’s bosses. If you've never played A Link to the Past, I still think you’ll get a lot out of this game, but you just won’t get all of the cool references to its predecessor.

What makes this game differ from other Zelda games is that you can rent every piece of equipment from nearly the beginning of the game. But if you die, you lose all of your equipment you had. That is, unless you purchase it, but purchasing equipment is way more expensive that renting it. Also the dungeons in the game can be explored and taken in any order since there’s not a linear progression of obtaining items. This was an interesting change and they definitely pulled it off, but I’m not sure if I personally liked it or not. It’s just different.

Where this game really excels is in the puzzle design in the dungeons. The solutions to the puzzles are almost always “AH HA!” than “What? Really??”. Whereas I felt the opposite to be true in some of the recent entries in the Zelda franchise. Actually, I think this is some of the best puzzle design in any of the Zelda games. The 2d/3d wall painting thing works really well as a puzzle solving mechanic and there are a lot of really good design choices made on all of the mechanics and puzzles found in the game.

Summary:
Overall, I found A Link Between Worlds to be a very solid Zelda game and although I haven’t played Spirit Tracks or Phantom Hourglass, it’s my favorite Zelda since Wind Waker.

Papers, Please

Lucas Pope - 2013 - PC

This may have been the most unique game I played this year. In Papers, Please, you play a immigration clerk screening immigrants for potential entry into the fictitious country of Arstotzka. Immigrants give you their paperwork and it’s up to you to process and find any discrepancies in their papers.

At the end of the day you’ll have to choose how to spend your very small paycheck - on feeding your family, paying the heat bill, or providing your children their medicine. And you probably won’t have enough money for all of it. You’ll want to process as many immigrants as you can as quickly as possible, because you’re paid by how many you process per day. But you don’t want to go too fast or you may miss a discrepancy in their paperwork and have to pay a fine. It’s kind of a nerve wracking and depressing game to play. But I don’t mean that as a negative criticism of the game, it was clearly designed to invoke those kinds of emotions. You really get the feeling of what it’s like to be a desk clerk doing a menial but stressful job and getting paid next to nothing for it.

Summary:
It’s an interesting and unique indie game. It’s not my favorite, but it’s certainly different, which is always good.

To The Moon

Freebird Games - 2011 - PC

So in the distant future, we apparently have the technology to alter people’s memories. To The Moon focuses on Dr. Neil Watts and Dr. Eva Rosalene, two memory traversal scientists who work for a company that uses memory altering technology to grant dying clients their last wish. Watts and Rosalene are hired by Johnny Wyles, an old man on his deathbed whose dying wish is to go to the moon.

You alternate control between Watts and Rosalene as you travel through Mr. Wyles entire life’s memories while you try to implant a memory of him going to the moon. If you hadn't guessed by the description so far, this is another narrative focused game. Actually the gameplay is somewhat analogous to Gone Home where advancing to the next scene in To The Moon requires examining different objects in the scene to determine if they’re relevant to the story or not. There’s also a few very simple puzzle solving bits in To The Moon, which I felt weren't really that fun and ultimately didn't add much to the game.

But man, the writing in this game was tight. This is a game that really “worked” for me in contrast to Gone Home. I found the characters relatable, interesting and very well defined, and once you get a feel for who all the characters are, the game keeps you interested by teasing you with the mystery of why Mr. Wyles dying wish is to go to the moon. This game conveys emotion with storytelling and music as well as any other game I've played, and it’s use of humor and comedic timing got me to laugh out loud a few times. The game’s tone alternates between humor, mystery and tragedy and touches on the themes of love, life and death. It borders on being overly sappy sometimes, but I found this game to be a pretty interesting commentary on life and human interactions told through a unique perspective of two people viewing a stranger’s life’s memories. I hear the creators are working on a sequel now that should be out soon, which I can’t wait to play.

Summary:
Again, there’s not much “game” to be had here, but if you want an excellent interactive story, check this out. It’s good stuff.

Tactics Ogre

Quest - 1995 - SNES/Sega Saturn/PS1/PSP

One of the coolest SNES games you've probably never heard of, Tactics Ogre was first released on the SNES in Japan in 1995. Actually, it was never officially released in the U.S. until it was ported to the PSP a few years ago. But your best bet to play this game is probably a SNES emulator with one of the fan-translated ROMs, because no one I know actually owns a PSP.

Tactics Ogre was made by largely the exact same team of people that worked on Final Fantasy Tactics. Same director, same story writer, same composer and (some of) the same artists. This game will feel very familiar if you've ever played FF Tactics. I realize now that some of the battle scenarios and story scenarios for FF Tactics were lifted straight out of this game. If you've never played FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre is a turn based strategy game kind of like XCOM: Enemy Unknown. One of the cool differences in this game is that there are decision-based branching story points. I’m not sure why they went away from that for FF Tactics.

I really want to like Tactics Ogre more, but there are a few gameplay issues present in this game that weren't fixed until FF Tactics that make this game pretty annoying. Firstly, this game is hard. Like stupid hard. Like evil hard. Which isn't bad, but when you combine that with a permadeath mechanic where your units instantly die, it feels unfair. In FF Tactics when a unit’s HP hits zero, it begins a 3 turn timer where that unit is bleeding out and can be revived. They only will die when the timer hits 0. In Tactics Ogre when a unit’s HP hits zero, they’re dead instantly. So many ragequits. So many battles restarted. You’ll eventually get a class that can bring back units who have died in a battle, but it’s not until way late in the game.

This game is also way more grindy than FF Tactics. There were a few battles where I realized I wasn't even close to winning and had to level up my units for a bit before retrying. And like most RPGs, grinding in Tactics Ogre is not that much fun.

Summary:
If you want to try an obscure tactical RPG with some old school difficulty, you could do worse than Tactics Ogre.

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.

Pokemon X/Y

Game Freak - 2013 - 3DS

This was the first Pokemon game I had really gotten into since Gold/Silver, so a lot of the gameplay mechanics were new to me. I actually played a bit of Black/White earlier in the year, and it didn't click with me, so I was a bit nervous about playing X/Y. I was also a bit nervous to play this because I just don’t like playing on a handheld system. I don’t like being hunched over staring at a tiny little screen when I could just as easily lay back on my couch and watch a giant TV. I don’t have a need or desire to carry around a 3DS with me and play games on the go, so the entire concept of handheld gaming is a bit off putting to me, so I really had to make a focused effort to play this game despite its hardware. It was actually the first handheld game I had completed probably since I was a kid, and I actually found it kind of nice to play this while watching a football game on TV and battle between commercials and what not. Anyway, back to talking about the actual game.

If you've ever played a Pokemon game before, it’s really the same basic cake, only with a lot more icing on top. If you didn't like the cake to begin with, you probably aren't going to like it now. But for people who do like the original Red/Blue cake, the X/Y icing tastes pretty good. And if you've never played a Pokemon game before, X/Y probably isn't a bad place to start. They've streamlined the battling and made it way less grindy. In terms of gaining experience, it no longer really matters who the lead Pokemon is in a battle since all Pokemon in your active party will gain experience. I found this to be a really nice change that makes the game more about strategy and less about grinding. They've also added a lot of extra layers on top of the basic rock-paper-scissors battle system. There are passive abilities, equippable items, mega evolutions and more. I know some of that stuff was added in previous generations, but it was all new to me.

They've also finally successfully integrated the internet into a Pokemon game in the year 2013, which is really nice. You can trade/battle with friends or strangers pretty easily now. They've even added a kind of Pokemon auction house, where you can ask for certain pokemon of a specific level or with specific properties or you can post your own Pokemon up for trade. I think my favorite new system was “wonder trade” where you trade pokemon with a complete stranger without knowing what you’ll get in return. It could be a pidgey or it could be a gyarados. It’s probably going to be a pidgey though.

My main gripe against this game would have to be the difficulty. I know this game is marketed for kids, but man this game was easy. I breezed through most of it without really having to think too much. I don’t remember Red/Blue being quite this easy, so I think they could have easily dialed up the difficulty a few notches. I think what could really make an amazing Pokemon game is if they actually spent a few seconds constructing a decent narrative. It’s still pretty much just go out and battle Pokemon because… because Pokemon.

Summary:
Still a pretty solid game though, and battling with 3d Pokemon models rather than 2d sprites was pretty nice.

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

Grand Theft Auto V

Rockstar North - 2013 - PS3/X360

Just from a sheer technological standpoint, I found this game quite impressive. To have an open world as large as GTA V did and with the amount of detail in the environments that this game had is pretty mind blowing. You can wander out in the middle of nowhere and look around and the environments will appear just as detailed and vibrant as they do in the heavy traffic city areas. Add on top of that the complex physics simulations and game systems, realistic character animations and large open world and this is probably the most technically impressive video game I've ever played. Especially when you consider that the game is running on 8 year old hardware.

Gameplay wise, it’s pretty much your standard GTA game. Drive around, blow stuff and cause chaos. What’s different about GTA V is that you can switch between one of three characters at nearly any time. The characters all have different personalities and missions as well as stats and abilities. One of the characters can do bullet time driving while one of the other characters can do bullet time…bullets.

The characters in GTA V all have distinct personalities and are incredibly well defined and well written. Especially when compared to other GTA games where I found all of the characters to be more or less forgettable. While I found the characters to be well written, I found a lot of the parts of the overall story to be hit and miss. Mostly miss. There were a lot of the parts of the story where the characters had no conceivable motivation to be doing what they were doing. Because the characters were so well written and defined, they sometimes felt out of place in story situations that were over the top. There’s a part in the story where one of the characters meets a total random stranger, flies up in a plane with him, rides an ATV out of the back of the plane and opens the parachute at the last possible second just for fun. Okay, but why? Why would my character decide to do this? Maybe I’m not supposed to take the story as seriously as I did, but the game seems to want me to. At least sometimes. GTA V seems to randomly decide to take the story quite seriously whenever it wants to and the tone oscillates between serious and ridiculous which is kind of jarring. The game will have you jumping ATVs out of planes one second, but then want you to care about these characters and their well being the next. Which didn't quite work for me.

But the fun of a GTA game is driving around and causing chaos, which this game does as well or better than any other GTA title. The missions were fun, no driving people around and having to call and chat with them constantly like GTA IV. There were only a small handful of missions in GTA V that I found to be boring or tedious. And there’s a frequent checkpointing system in the game so you’ll rarely need to replay a certain section of the mission over and over again if you fail. I've pretty much ignored the online portion of this game. I don’t know why, it just doesn't appeal to me.

Summary:
Overall, I found GTA V to be a pretty solid game, it’s my favorite in the series and I doubt fans of other GTA games will be dissapointed.

Persona 3

Atlus - 2006 - PS2

Yeah, this was a weird one. I had never played any of the other Persona games or any of the Shin Megami Tensei games for that matter, so I had no expectations here. Persona 3 is a very Japanese role playing game - keyword Japanese - about a teenager balancing high school life by day and dungeon crawling by night.

At the beginning of the game, the protagonist discovers he has the ability to stay awake during the “dark hour”, a hidden hour that takes place during midnight between days where monsters come out and attack sleeping civilians. He joins a group of vigilantes who combat these monsters and who also have the ability to stay awake during the dark hour. The group teaches him how to summon his “personas” which are summon monsters that can be used during combat. Most of the members of this vigilante group also happen to be students at his local high school as well.

So half of the game is spent at the high school, learning and making friends with students which somehow magically affects your battle stats somehow… I don’t know. And the other half of the game is spent dungeon crawling during the dark hour. The battle system is very slow, repetitive and grindy which was annoying to me. The high school sections were… interesting, I guess, to put it nicely. I don’t think this game was quite my cup of tea. Its writing is very Japanese, if you know what I mean, and a lot of it is… just… weird and off putting. There’s a boss fight in the game where you literally battle against a monster who is just a model of a painted naked woman with her legs open. I’m not kidding! Who decided to put this in the game? It’s weird and creepy.

Summary:
The battle system was too grindy and repetitive to hold my interest, but I could see how hardcore fans may find this game interesting, I guess. I just don’t think it’s for me.

Divekick

One True Game Studios/Iron Galaxy Studios - 2013 - PS3/Vita/PC

Divekick is a two button fighting game. Just two buttons. No joystick, no d-pad, no other buttons, just two. One for jump and one for kick. Each hit in Divekick is a one-hit-Knockout, so games go pretty quick. The game has a roster of 13 characters which all play surprisingly differently. At least I was surprised how much character variety can be had with a two button game.

Because there’s only two buttons, Divekick is also very accessible; there’s no memorizing combos or movesets, so anyone can jump right in and start playing. The game also has a very ridiculous sense of humor. There’s lots of poking fun at other fighting games, pop-culture references and internet humor references. There’s a character in the game who just quotes Will Smith lines from all of his movies. It’s quite silly.

Summary:
Overall though, I’d say there’s probably not a whole lot of depth or replayability with Divekick. It’s a fun novelty to have in your game collection, but it’s probably not going to hold anyone’s attention for very long.

Rogue Legacy

Cellar Door Games - 2013 - PC

Another game oozing with really smart game design, Rogue Legacy is probably what you’d get if you crossed Castlevania with a “bullet hell” game like Ghouls N’ Ghosts. Like Castlevania, the main objective of Rogue Legacy is to explore a castle and defeat several bosses within it.

But what sets Rogue Legacy apart and makes it really fun and interesting is that, when you die - and you will die a lot - you get to choose between 1 of 3 children of the character you were just playing to avenge their parent and explore the castle. Each child may have genetic abnormalities or traits that make the game play differently each time. Some will directly affect gameplay, while others are just for flavor. For example, you may have a child who’s a midget. They’ll have a smaller hitbox and be able to go through small openings, but they may also take more knockback. Or you might have a child who’s colorblind. Then the game is played in black and white until you die again. And each time you die, the layout of the castle is randomly rearranged, so it’s kind of like playing a brand new game each time. You’re also free to swap out skills and equipment to experiment with different playstyles if you’re stuck on a boss. Really cool stuff. On top of that, you’ll inherit your items from your parent when they die, but the game makes you spend the money you inherit on upgrading new items or skills before you reenter the castle. So each time you die, there’s a kind of moment where you think “Crap I died…But now I get to choose a new character and upgrade their items and skills!” A neat mechanic because it makes you never feel overly frustrated when you die. Which is good, because this game is hard. And you’ll die. A lot.

Summary:
I can’t really think of too many negative criticisms of this game, it’s very solid and well designed. Again, not too pretty to look at, but that doesn't matter to me for a game like this. Maybe the soundtrack was a bit unremarkable, but that’s nitpicking. Check out Rogue Legacy if you can handle a challenge.

FTL

Subset Games - 2012 - PC

I think FTL is probably my favorite new game I played this year, I absolutely loved this game. FTL is pretty much Star Trek: The videogame, but without the license. You manage the crew and systems of a starship while exploring the galaxy and fighting aliens. The gameplay sessions of FTL are typically short, you play until you die. So depending on your luck, skill, and familiarity with the game, a session can last between 15 minutes to maybe 2 hours.

What kept me playing this game again and again is that everything in a play session is randomized: The layout of the galaxy is different each time, the encounters you’ll experience are different each time, and the weapons and upgrades you’ll get are different each time. Each upgrade you get will likely change your battle strategy and tactics too, so it never feels like you’re doing the same thing over again. Plus completing certain achievements or sidequests in the game can unlock other starships you can use on your next playthrough that have totally different weapons and playstyles, so it kept me coming back for more. It really has some pretty brilliant game design.

FTL is also a fairly difficult game overall. There are currently only two difficulty settings: “easy” and “normal”. I probably would have labeled them “normal” and “hard”, but whatever. My only real knock on this game is that success in FTL can be dependent on which encounters you get, which is somewhat luck based. A few unlucky encounters in a row can be crippling, especially on normal(hard) difficulty. It’s also not that pretty of a game to look at either, but for an indie game made by a team of only two people, that’s to be expected. If you go and watch gameplay footage of FTL on YouTube, you’ll see what I mean.

Summary:
Don’t let its looks scare you off, I found FTL to be an excellent game. I think most gamers can enjoy this game, but I’d highly recommend it to fans of challenging strategy games or fans of Star Trek who’d like to see an actual good Star Trek game. I also hear the creators are releasing a free expansion pack with new weapons, ships and scenarios in the near future, so I’m pumped to play more FTL when that comes out.

Heavy Rain

Quantic Dream - 2010 - PS3

I had been meaning to play this game ever since I got a PS3 and I finally got around to it this year. Heavy Rain is really more of an interactive story than a game. You rotate control between a cast of four characters, all of which are trying to determine the identity of the mysterious “origami killer”, a serial killer who kidnaps young children, drowns them in rainwater, and leaves behind a small origami animal as a memento of each kill.

The gameplay of Heavy Rain consists mostly of watching cutscenes and waiting for “Quick Time Event” button prompts to appear on the screen. I’m normally not a fan of QTEs in video games, they seem like a lazy and outmoded design mechanic in most games to me. So I was a little afraid I wouldn't like Heavy Rain since the gameplay is so QTE dependent. But I quickly found out there’s really no fail state in Heavy Rain if you mess up a QTE. It’s not to say that the QTEs in Heavy Rain are meaningless, it’s just that there’s never a “Game Over” screen if, for example, you miss a QTE in a fight scene to block a kick. The kick hits your character and the story goes on, maybe a little differently than if you had successfully blocked the kick, but there’s never a “you lose the game” scenario.

Depending on QTEs and some decisions you’ll make in the game, the story will branch in different directions resulting in different endings or outcomes at the end of the game. I spoke to a friend who had played the game shortly after I had finished it, and although we had both defeated the origami killer and rescued the hostage, the details of our stories were wildly different, which was pretty cool.

This game is definitely not for everyone and does have its flaws though. There’s a lot of scenes where your character will just make breakfast or take a shower or get dressed or something mundane like that and it’ll depend on whether this works for you in terms of setting the mood and atmosphere, or if you’ll just find these events tedious and boring. There’s also a few scenes in this game which I thought didn't contribute to the overall story or progress the plot in any way, and also for a game that leans so strongly on it, the voice acting and animation are “meh”.

Summary:
If an interactive story sounds like your thing, I’d recommend Heavy Rain. I enjoyed it quite a bit and am looking forward to playing Beyond: Two Souls, Quantic Dream’s latest game.