Tag Archives: Night In The Woods

Blog: Storied Stories – 08/11/21

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One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is how it’s become harder and harder for me to dedicate the time and attention to story-focused games. There was a period of time throughout the last decade where you’d get games like The Walking Dead that told a great story, but didn’t really do anything interesting from a gameplay perspective. But despite not being anything special on the gameplay front, The Walking Dead‘s story and writing were so good that none of its shortcomings outweighed its strengths. I also don’t want to imply that it’s a one-or-the-other kind of situation where story-focused games can’t have good gameplay or vice versa, because there are plenty of games that have delivered on both elements. Regardless, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite story-focused games that I’ve played over the past few years that I think are well worth your time, if you, unlike myself, can actually dedicate time to these kinds of games anymore.

WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH

What Remains of Edith Finch tells the story of the Finch family through the exploration of their Seussian-styled home that housed several branches of the Finch family tree. It’s a story told through narration and playable vignettes that explain the mentality of various family members while adding to the grander mystery of the Finch family curse. Without going too deep into it, you are the last remaining Finch, and you’re going back home to understand the secrets of your fallen family members by exploring this comically constructed home that’s rife with secret passageways and impressive craftsmanship.

The game itself is only about 2 to 3 hours long, which is more than enough time for you to understand the wild set of circumstances that led the protagonist, Edith Finch, to explore and unpack her complicated family history. You’ll make your way into the rooms of these family members, and play through a vignette that has its own unique gameplay mechanics and/or art style, while hearing a cryptic story that feeds into the mystique of the Finch family curse. What I really enjoyed about What Remains of Edith Finch was not only how well the story was told, but how the gameplay segments never lingered too long or slowed down the pacing of the story itself. What Remains of Edith Finch is well worth your time and inevitable tears.

FIREWATCH

Firewatch is one of the few games on this list that I don’t know if I actually want to play again because of how emotionally taxing it actually was. You play as Henry, a man whose life has experienced some, let’s just say turbulence, that leads him to take a job as a fire lookout in the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. His only contact with other humans comes in the form of another fire lookout on the other end of his walkie-talkie, Delilah. Delilah and Henry will interact exclusively through these radios, which means you as the player have conversational choices to make in what you ask or divulge to Delilah as you traipse around the woods during your daily rounds.

The story of Firewatch is truly a triumph. The story of Henry, Delilah and their lives before meeting one another is engaging and impressive on its own, but then there are also some other mysteries about the Shoshone National Forest that you’ll uncover that are just as intriguing as anything else in the game. Also, as if if wasn’t preposterous enough for a game to tell several spectacular stories at once and do it well, Firewatch has the audacity to have an incredible art style too. Like, Firewatch in game looks incredible, but also the artwork for the game has been the background image on my computer for years now. Do yourselves a favor and get emotionally wrapped up in Firewatch.

THOMAS WAS ALONE

Would you like to become emotionally attached to a bunch of geometric shapes while playing a fairly straightforward puzzle-platformer while a soothing British voice narrates the machinations of said shapes? Well my friend, I’ve got just the game for that oddly specific request and it’s called Thomas Was Alone. For real, this is a narrative puzzle-platformer where you inhabit various shapes that control differently in order to complete puzzles and move forward. For instance, you’ll need your rectangle buddy to make themselves into a bridge for the other shapes to traverse across. It’s nothing exceptional there, but it isn’t about the gameplay.

Thomas Was Alone is a game that will actually get you to have emotional connections with differently colored shapes. It’s absolutely wild to think that such a thing would even be possible, but it is and you can play it. While I don’t necessarily want to get too into the story, I can say that as the title would imply, the story is about these feelings of isolation and exclusion told through the lens of a small red square and their growing retinue of geometric buddies. Seriously, Thomas Was Alone is a great story layered upon a decent enough game that I think is well worth your time.

NIGHT IN THE WOODS

You’ve caught me. This entire list was just an excuse to talk about Night in the Woods once more. For those who don’t know my history with this game, I considered it my Game of the Year back in 2017 and still stand by that decision. But for those of you that don’t know, Night in the Woods is a story about expectations and reality, set to the backdrop of a dying Rust Belt town. Also everyone is an anthropomorphic animal, with you being a cat named Mae who hangs out with her friends who are a bear, a fox, and an alligator who smokes cigarettes.

There are a couple of competing plot threads that range from exceptional to okay, with the former being about Mae returning home from college to try and rekindle the life and lifestyle she left behind, and some vaguely paranormal stuff that involves a series of murders. One of the things I’ve come to recognize since first playing Night in the Woods however, is that my unbridled love for this game is directly linked to the fact that I was able to relate to so many of the characters in the game cause I’ve gone through and in some cases am still going through exactly what’s on screen. I truly cannot sing the praises of Night in the Woods enough, and you really should play it.

There are way more games that deserve to be talked about in this list, but I wanted to touch on some of my favorites without making this a full blown feature. Games like Celeste, Limbo, Spiritfairer, Papers, Please, A Short Hike and so many more deserve your attention, but I only have so much typing in me. Go play these games and get sad!

Review: Adios

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I don’t know if I’ve ever actually experienced anything quite like what I did when I played through Adios. I don’t mean to imply that I was awestruck by it by any means, because I genuinely found it to be an incredibly underwhelming game to play. Yet despite its numerous mechanical shortcomings, this narrative-focused, first-person adventure game delivered a really impactful story that left me feeling pretty raw emotionally.

It’s hard to talk about Adios without wandering directly into spoiler territory because the game is only about an hour or so long, so I’m just going to talk about the first 5 minutes of the game to avoid anything too spoilery. The store page for Adios reads, “A pig farmer decides he no longer wants to dispose of bodies for the mob. What follows is a discussion between him and his would-be killer,” which was a pretty interesting concept that was the catalyst for me playing it at all.

The first thing you do in Adios is check your journal while sitting on your porch. Inside, the lone entry essentially says to “tell him that you’re done.” A white van pulls up and you’re thrust into the next scene where you’re taking wrapped bloody packages out of the back of said van, and chucking them into the pig pen alongside your would-be killer. What follows is a series of conversations and interactive vignettes with you and your would-be killer about their lives and experiences. It turns out that both of these characters have been doing this for so long that they’ve become close friends, a fact that looms over every conversation you have together throughout the day.

Your would-be killer is trying to convince your character to not stop doing what they’ve been doing for so long because the consequences are admittedly pretty bad. He spends the entire day with you trying to remind you of all of these reasons to stay and stick it out without explicitly ever saying that it’s the worst and final decision that you’ll ever make. Throughout the game you’ll learn more about both characters and their personal lives, while they both try to walk a delicate line between work and pleasure. It’s one of the few games that’s really emotionally impacted me, with the last one being The Bonus World’s very first Game of the Year back in 2017, Night in the Woods.

What made Night in the Woods great was a multitude of elements coming together in a well-rounded experience that had an incredible narrative woven throughout it. Adios on the other hand, is done a gigantic disservice by even being a video game. For how good the story, writing and acting can feel at times, they’re all unfortunately wrapped up in something that can barely be called a game, let alone a fun one. The structure of Adios is that you have a few locations of interest on your farm that trigger a scene for you to experience. In that scene you might need to do a mindless and mechanically uninteresting task like give a horse an apple while the two characters reminisce about the past. You finish listening to the conversation and move to the next scene. Most of these conversations are really well done, providing insight into the characters while uncovering their motivations, desires and general outlook on life. These are really the star of the show, so if listening to people talk isn’t your thing, then Adios has very little else to offer.

But these little vignettes you experience might not have anything for you to do in them at all. Sometimes you can just put the controller down as dialogue happens, only to occasionally pick a “dialogue choice,” all of which either don’t change anything about the story, or are grayed out for some reason. My guess is that there isn’t actually a way to pick those dialogue options, because they usually are things you’d rather say but your character can’t bring themselves to actually do. In this case, I thought that was very effective, but it doesn’t change the fact that most of these vignettes have you do a lot of sitting and listening.

When I bought Adios I thought it would be this little life-simulation kind of game with a heavy emphasis on the story. I wasn’t expecting anything revolutionary mechanically, but it cannot be overstated just how bad playing the game itself is at times. The first issue has to do with the presentation of Adios in general. From far away, the sweeping vistas of houses and farms in the distance have this painterly quality to them that I can appreciate. Up close however, things look a lot muddier. Look, I’m not one of those people who needs great graphics for everything especially if you’re very clearly trying to tell a compelling story over having dazzling visuals, but if that’s truly the case, maybe the character models should animate a touch better, or at the very least have any form of lip-syncing going on. Instead you’ve just got these weird caricatures that flap their gums at you while saying some heavy shit.

I don’t know what resources were available to the development team so I don’t want to sound too harsh, but it was truly disheartening to find this really engaging story completely mired by uninteresting game mechanics and iffy visuals. The worst part was that there were moments where I’d start to zone out while the characters were having these really intense conversations. I think Adios would be infinitely better if it were a short film or animated feature, because being a game doesn’t really enhance the story in any way, and in most cases detracts from an otherwise excellent experience.

But all of these issues with the gameplay were never enough to stop me from seeing Adios through to the end, and I’m happy I pushed forward. The ending of the game and the events directly leading into it were particularly gut-wrenching and left me feeling a bit teary-eyed when it was all over. Of course it wont affect everyone the same way it did me, but that should be a result of the story not resonating with them, not the uninspired and boring gameplay they have to endure.

Despite all of my criticisms, I do think Adios is worth experiencing. I don’t know that I’d suggest you run out and pay $20 bucks for an hour long story, but if you have the desire and ability, I say go for it. Otherwise, I’d say you should wait for a sale to play Adios, but either way, you should play Adios at some point.

My Favorite 15 Games of the Decade

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Alright, it seems like everyone is doing one of these lists right now, so why shouldn’t I do the same?  As we round the corner and leave this decade in the dust, I’d like to take a look back at just a handful of my favorite games from the past 10 years.  These are in release order, and don’t indicate how much I enjoyed one over the other.  Also, I didn’t want to write this article forever, so I limited it to 15.  Don’t worry, I liked other games too, but these ones jumped out at me immediately when crafting this list.

 

MASS EFFECT 2 – (January 26, 2010)

When Mass Effect 2 arrived at the beginning of the decade, I was instantly taken with it.  Having never really enjoyed the first one, thanks to its cumbersome mechanics, Mass Effect 2 provided a more streamlined an accessible approach to the action-RPG.  With its tight combat and extremely well crafted story and world, there was very little to take umbrage with upon its release.  It had its fair share of missteps to be fair, but those complaints drifted into the background pretty quickly.  Mass Effect 2 is still a colossal experience to this day, and it also had some phenomenal pieces of downloadable content to provide new and interesting stories in this world I came to love so much.

 

ROCK BAND 3 – (October 26, 2010)

Rock Band 3 was the pinnacle of the plastic instrument craze that dominated the mid and late 2000’s, providing not only an amazing and diverse set list, but offering people the chance to live out their most rockin’ piano fantasies in the form of a plastic key-tar.  It isn’t hard to see why the franchise and its competitors were so popular, but the Rock Band franchise is especially dear to me because without those games, I would’ve have never started playing the actual drums.  While plastic guitars don’t really translate to real world musical talent, the fake drums actually taught me a lot about timing and limb independence.  That and it had both At The Drive In and Metric on the base set list.

 

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 1 – (October 31, 2010)

When the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead concluded, I was devastated.  Through its highs and lows, it managed to tell a beautifully morose story that left me teary eyed.  It also reinvigorated and reinvented the stagnate adventure game, making it not only a viable genre again, but proving that these kinds of games could tell amazing stories while not requiring you to solve obscure puzzles which had been a staple for so long.

 

PORTAL 2 – (April 18, 2011)

Do I really need to explain why Portal 2 is on this list?  It’s one of the best puzzle games out there to this day, providing an excellent learning curve, intriguing story, and for being genuinely hilarious.  For years people have been clamoring for Half-Life 3 and Left 4 Dead 3, but the correct answer is making Portal 3.  I can safely say that I haven’t enjoyed a puzzle game as thoroughly as Portal 2 since its release.

 

JOURNEY – (March 13, 2012)

The way Journey handled not only its story and world, but its multiplayer component, was a revelation to me at the time.  There was this constant feeling of isolation that would encompass everything around you, until a mysterious figure would show up in the distance, beckoning you to come over.  They had no name, they couldn’t speak, but they were another player, and they were waiting for me.  And it was an incredible feeling to know that while we once thought we were both alone, we were both wrong.  Without saying a word, you and your buddy would trek through the entire game together where Journey would finally reveal the name of the player or players that you spent a few hours with.  Journey was a beautiful game on all fronts, and everyone should play it.

 

SLEEPING DOGS – (August 14, 2012)

It’s a shame that Sleeping Dogs never saw a sequel, because it’s a fantastic game.  It’s like if Grand Theft Auto had a better story and didn’t rely on shooting everything in sight to progress.  It combined all of the fun aspects of GTA, the open world, the vehicles, and the side activities, and paired them with a really good hand to hand combat system in the vein of Batman Arkham Asylum.  It was a joy to play, with the least interesting parts of it ironically being the bits where you had to shoot things.  Also, Emma Stone was in it and I don’t understand why.

 

MARK OF THE NINJA – (September 7, 2012)

Okay, so here’s a reference that maybe like 7 people will get, but does anyone remember those old Splinter Cell games that they put out on flip phones like the Motorolla RAZR?  They were these 2D stealth games that were way better than they had any right to be.  Why did I bring that up?  Because Mark of the Ninja scratched that itch for me in the best way possible.  It was this 2D stealth action game where you were unsurprisingly, a ninja, who would sneak around and slice fools up.  Not only did it play great, but it looked phenomenal.  I wholeheartedly recommend Mark of the Ninja to anyone that wants to play a stealth game that isn’t overly complex.

 

THE LAST OF US – (June 14, 2013)

There’s like 5 or six moments in The Last of Us that still stick with me to this day, and I’m willing to bet anyone who’s played the game can guess what they are.  From a gut-wrenching story to tense combat and stealth situations, The Last of Us was a triumph of a game.  Ironically enough, my least favorite part about it were the zombies, but I still really loved this game despite their presence.  Also, The Last of Us had a really amazing multiplayer aspect to it that I feel was under appreciated.

 

SUPER MARIO MAKER – (September 10, 2015)

I’ve never been a huge fan of level building games or modes, but Super Mario Maker was so brilliant in its design, using the language of Mario games that I understood so well to empower me to stretch my level building muscles.  It was so cleverly designed in a way that made logical sense through the lens of Mario games.  If I wanted a large goomba, I’d feed him a mushroom.  Want a flying Bowser?  Slap some wings on that fool.  It took the pieces of Mario we all understand, and made them work in the context of a level editor.

 

FIREWATCH – (February 9, 2016)

There aren’t too many games that I could say “made me feel things,” but Firewatch was definitely one of them.  From the jump you’re thrown into a tragic situation that’s the impotence for the rest of the game.  It’s this constant, nagging feeling in the back of your head that reminds you that you shouldn’t be here.  “Here” of course being in the middle of the woods working as a forest ranger in a fire watch station.  You spend all of your time exploring the wilderness and talking to the voice of another fire watcher who is guiding and directing you while asking you increasingly more personal questions.  You’re not only learning about each other, but you’re learning about a mystery lurking in the very woods you’re wandering through.  It’s amazing and I can’t say enough good things about it.  Play Firewatch.

 

TITANFALL 2 – (October 28, 2016)

It’s such a shame that when Titanfall 2 was released, it was wedged between a Call of Duty and a Battlefield game, essentially killing any moment it could gather before it had a chance.  Like I said, it’s a real shame considering that Titanfall 2 is one of the best first person shooters of the last decade.  From toe to tip, everything in Titanfall 2 is crafted with care and attention to detail.  The campaign, while not the most interesting story, is incredible from a design standpoint, with each level boasting a new mechanic or idea that dramatically changed how you played.  The multiplayer was no slouch either, building upon the chaotic fun that the original Titanfall introduced back in 2014.  Titanfall 2 is still worth your time even if you don’t plan on engaging with the multiplayer aspect of it.  In fact, I might even recommend just getting it for the campaign at this point.

 

NIGHT IN THE WOODS – (January 10, 2017)

Night in the Woods is hands down my favorite game of the decade.  I wrote a review that goes into my feelings on it in detail, but I’ll quickly summarize what I can here.

Night in the Woods struck a real chord with me and even managed to make me genuinely reconsider things in my own life.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but the themes, the interactions, the setting, everything about it just rang so true and hit me hard.  It’s a hard game to recommend because when I start out by saying, “you play as an anthropomorphic cat,” people tend to tune out immediately afterwards.  But for such a visually adorable game, it gets really dark and intense.  Adventure games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I really can’t say enough good things about Night in the Woods.

 

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD – (March 3, 2017)

I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Legend of Zelda series, enjoying some of them but never really feeling any affinity or passion for the series, but holy hell did Breath of the Wild change all of that.  You’re plopped onto this massive and sprawling land mass, given all the abilities you’d need to conquer any and all obstacles along the way.  Breath of the Wild isn’t a game about getting stronger, it’s a game about getting smarter by using your skills and the tools you find along the way.  By incorporating a system that rewards exploration and puzzle solving in order to maximize your HP or stamina, you were always encouraged to explore the world as opposed to just charging towards the finish line.  The only thing that I absolutely hated about Breath of the Wild was its system of weapon degradation.  I felt like it didn’t add anything to the game itself, and made me hoard more things that I normally would in games.  But that’s barely an issue when stacked up to every other triumph in Breath of the Wild.

 

MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN – (September 7, 2018)

Let’s get this out of the way, Marvel’s Spider-Man is repetitive in spots and doesn’t offer a tremendous amount of variety in what you actually do in it.  That being said, I’ve never had more fun with a superhero game than this one, and coincidentally it stars my favorite one.  Marvel’s Spider-Man, by my own admission, is just a good game.  It isn’t great and probably doesn’t stack up to several other games on this list, but it was easily one of my favorite and most memorable experiences with a game in recent memory.  It’s one of the only games I’ve felt the need to 100%, despite the repetitive chores I had to complete to accomplish that.  Marvel’s Spider-Man just feels good to play, providing a satisfying swinging mechanic mixed with some great (yet repetitive) combat.  It’s rough around the edges in spots, but I still love it so dearly.

 

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 – (October 26, 2018)

I’m willing to bet that a good percentage of the posts on this site are about Red Dead Redemption 2 in some way.  That’s with good reason though.  You can read my review, but Red Dead Redemption 2 is such a triumph of a game in terms of story, atmosphere and world building, that I can’t even fathom a game that’s done it better.

Every piece of Red Dead Redemption 2 is crafted in a way to reinforce the Wild West setting, while still providing interesting and engaging story beats.  Like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it does a great job at encouraging exploration.  Almost every cottage, structure or cave you stumble upon has something there for you experience or find.  The amount of random events in the world that crop up do a great job of breaking up what would be the tedium of riding your horse from mission to mission, while also being pretty interesting for the most part.

I could go on forever about how much I like Red Dead Redemption 2, but I have a review to do that for me.  And if you haven’t played it yet, my one bit of advice is that the game is slow.  You have to be okay with going at its pace or else you’ll have a miserable time.

 

The 2010’s have been really great for video games as a product.  Less so for the business end of things… more specifically the “being an employee at a game company” part of it.  I know we’re going to get some great games in the coming decade, but we need to see real change in the way game companies are run.  Here’s hoping for some progress in 2020.

Blog: Cover Letter – 04/18/18

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What you’re about to read was something a potential employer asked of its applicants.  The prompt was simple and straightforward.  I liked what I wrote a lot and figured it was worth sharing.  So here it is:

“Please include your resume and a cover letter telling us what excites you about video games.”

These were the words used when asking for applicants for the [redacted] position you have available. From virtual reality, to the emergence of the battle royale genre, to tiny versions of classic consoles, there are dozens of things that are exciting me about games right now. But just like motion controls, these things rise and fall in the social consciousness and ultimately only make up one side of what is exciting about the games industry.

To me there is no other medium around that can deliver the kinds of experiences that games can. It can be as obvious as a fully realized world to explore, dense with the tiniest details that flesh out the setting you’re in. Or maybe it’s nailing that tangible feeling of wielding a weapon as you battle your way through another power fantasy. While I love these aspects of games there is something that is so much more rare, that when it happens it’s almost like a revelation.

Last year a game was released call Night in The Woods. On its surface, it was an adventure game that had a unique art style and featured anthropomorphic animals. I did not expect this game to be the one that would make me tear up and leave me emotionally exhausted. It was a game about trying to recapture the memories you had when you were younger and ultimately realizing that it isn’t possible. It’s about growing up and moving on, leaving the old behind and forging ahead into the unknown no matter how terrifying it seems because there is no other option. It’s a game about loss, acceptance and harsh realizations about yourself as well as the world around you.

Or maybe it’s just a game about some animals in their early twenties whining and complaining about their problems and being annoying.

But it can be both of those things, because games can be a million different things to a million different people. This game made me feel something that no book, movie or album ever did and resonated with me in a way that I hadn’t felt before. That is what’s most exciting to me about games. They are versatile and everyone is going to walk away from them with a different experience that is uniquely theirs.

 

Ari’s Game of the Year List [2017]

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Video games, lets talk about em.  The year has come to end and it’s about time for me to share my thoughts on the ones I played.  2017 has been a hell of a year, so lets dive right in.

Ari CGIU

Personally, the game that has endured through 2017 and has been a calming respite remains to be Cities: Skylines. There’s something nice and relaxing about building a new city from the ground up and swearing that this time, there will be no traffic jams. With the addition of some great mods and add-ons that allow me to get more granular than before, I’m continuing to find joy in watching my little hamlet transform into the next Times Square, even if I never play it right.

Alongside of Cities: Skylines, I’ve also been able to return to Astroneer from time to time and see it progressing quite nicely. There’s been noticeable performance enhancements and new feature drops that have made it a delight to return to. As well as that, my favorite game of last year, Hitman, continues to be as fun as ever especially since giving me the ability to attempt the Elusive Targets I’d missed, once more.

Swing and a Miss

Ari SAM

It’s probably obvious, but one of the biggest flops of the year in my eyes had to be Mass Effect Andromeda. Right from when EA and Bioware pitched the premise of the game I recall feeling the slightest tinge of skepticism. A story that ran parallel to the events of the original trilogy but also made sure to remove the possibility of ever seeing any familiar characters was enough of a bummer until the game came out. It was so boring and uneventful. Every aspect of Andromeda seemed to be an artists interpenetration of what made Mass Effect great without ever understanding the reasons behind its success. “We gave them aliens to bone, put that shitty car back in, and let them explore the planets that have nothing interesting on them. What more could they want?!” Mass Effect Andromeda was such a damn bummer.

I Think Something is Wrong With Me

SIWWM

I feel so strange. Even now if you were to tell me that I could fight robot-dinosaurs in a post apocalyptic setting with a bunch of science-fictiony intrigue sprinkled on there for good measure, I’d justifiably lose my mind. So then why didn’t Horizon Zero Dawn do anything for me? Everything about that game was wonderful. It looked amazing, it was fun to play and also there were freaking robot-dinosaurs to kill. Many would attribute bouncing off of Horizon due to The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of The Wild releasing 3 days later. But even before that, from the moment they let me loose in the open world, I just had no desire to explore or learn about these characters. I think I wanted to learn more about the fall of modern civilization and where the robots came from a lot sooner than the game wanted to tell me about it. I still don’t know how that game wraps up. Maybe I’ll give it a go in 2018, but who knows.

Along those lines, the game people kept telling me about was NieR: Automata. I was so intrigued by what I had heard about this game that I was desperate to try it. I was told that I needed to beat it a third time to really some crazy shit. But after the first time around I had no interest in forcing my way through it several more times. Another game that I really wanted to like was Absolver. I wrote a piece about my feelings about the difficulty and how it failed to resonate with me, but the quick and dirty version is that I never felt like I was getting better, I only felt like I got lucky.

Bring Your Friends

Ari BYF

Some people are an army of one, others like myself are very much not. That’s why the only way I’ve played PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds has been with my friends. We’ve even streamed a whole bunch of it because we play it that much. From defeating another squad who thought they were alone, to flipping just about every vehicle we ever touched, and of course getting that chicken dinner together, PUBG is packed with reasons why it’s the best game I’ve played with friends all year.

But where PUBG is very tactical and requires a ton of coordination, sometimes you just need pure chaos to have fun. Stick Fight and Gang Beasts are two games that released this year that exemplify that mentality. They’re both janky and glitchy enough to where the physics themselves become a new character you’ll have to contend with. But it’s all fun and lighthearted which makes them a blast to play when you’ve got a couple of friends around.

Game of the Year

Ari GOTY.jpg

This year, before most of the biggest titles came out, a little game called Night in the Woods released on the PC and PS4. Night in the Woods is a game that resonated with me on a fundamental level and mirrored a lot of my experiences in life. It told a story that struck me on an emotional level while also having an awesome sense of humor and painfully charming aesthetic. I still have trouble expressing every reason why Night in the Woods was so wonderful in my eyes. Sometimes a game just hits you the right way, and that’s what happened here. It’s the game I’ve thought about most this year and have replayed twice already. Night in the Woods is easily one of my favorite games. Click here for a more complete version of my thoughts.

A close second this year, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is perhaps the most unsurprising entry in this list. I won’t beat a dead horse here, we all know why Breath of the Wild is on so many GOTY lists. It’s an achievement in a systems-driven, open world game. It’s the epitome of “you see that? You can go there.” But the best part about that, is there’s always something to do when you get “there.” It’s truly a phenomenal game and what’s even more impressive is that it made me love a Zelda game the way no other entry in the franchise has.

Where Night in the Woods and Zelda were locked in for a long time, this third entry took me a lot of time to decide on.  While I have plenty of great things to say about PUBG and why it’s one of my favorite games this year, I have to give the edge to Super Mario Odyssey.  Mario Odyssey isn’t a perfect game, but it’s just so damn charming.  In a year where you could look around and have found plenty of reasons to be scared upset or angry, Odyssey was just this beacon of color and positivity that I needed.

Lastly, I’d like to just add one more thing.

2017 has, for lack of a better term, been an interesting year.  The games were (mostly) good while a lot of things outside of the industry maybe weren’t as great.  With that in mind I’d like to thank everyone for watching our videos and reading the occasional features we put up.  You have no idea how much your support means to us.

I hope that 2018 is a better year…  like, in general.  So Happy New Year everyone. Be good to each other.

 

 

Review: Night In The Woods

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I didn’t expect Night in the Woods to hit me as hard as it did.  What on the surface seemed like a simple, charming and beautiful adventure game, turned out to be an extremely emotional journey which resonated with me on an almost too personal level.

In Night in the Woods, you’ll play as Mae, an anthropomorphic 20 year-old cat who is returning to her small hometown of Possum Springs after dropping out of college.  Hoping to find solace in a familiar setting, she sets out to reconnect with her old life, seeking out the friends she grew up with.

For most of the game, the reason for her dropping out is a mystery to you and everyone she interacts with.  The real reason for her return is obscured by her laissez-faire attitude towards life.  Mae, along with all of her friends seem like incredibly shallow archetypes when you first meet them.  That coupled with the fact that the story is fairly vague for the first few hours, doesn’t help their cause.  But as you progress you’ll begin to find that everything in Night in the Woods has so much depth to it.

Unfortunately for Mae, a lot in Possum Springs has changed. Economic stress is readily apparent as she walks past the skeletons of former businesses on the main road, along with the general gloom and depression that lingers over the town that can be found not only in the locale, but in the people themselves. As you interact with them more, your friends and family will open up to you about their dreams, stresses and sacrifices. As someone from a small town, I can’t express enough how real of a scenario this all is.

But all of that gloom and mundanity doesn’t preclude Night in The Woods from having some really exciting and tense moments. As you scroll through your dialogue options, you’ll find that Mae doesn’t really know how to deal with the general exasperation that the people feel. A lot of her dialogue usually ends up having her accidentally cross some boundaries or touch on sore subjects and generally put her foot in her mouth. Because of this, not only does she grow as a character, but so do her friends. By the end of the game I found myself identifying with certain characters, and seeing my friends in others.

That’s what I loved about Night in the Woods so much.  Despite having some of the most beautiful art and sound design I’ve seen in a game (and anthropomorphic animals), it manages to tell a genuinely real story about small-town life which I’m sure many people can relate to. Without spoiling anything, I will say that some people may not be super excited with where the story goes.  There’s a whole “murder-mystery, other-worldly” thing that happens halfway through the game that may rub people the wrong the way, but it’s done pretty well for what it is.

Night in the Woods isn’t a game without faults however.  There are some story beats that never really payoff, and I’m not entirely convinced that a lot of my dialogue choices actually made a difference. But these are minor complaints in a game that sincerely could not stop thinking about until I finished it’s 10 hour campaign.

Maybe Night in the Woods works for me because I can relate to its version of small town suburbia so well.  Or maybe it has to do with the stellar characters and the real issues they face. Or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s pretty as hell and has a cool soundtrack and sweet Guitar Hero mini-game.  Whatever it is, I loved it, and I think it’s well worth your time.