DrBloodmoney's Super Scientific Ranking of Games!

[realm722]

On 1/20/2022 at 4:41 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

Journey
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
L.A. Noire
Outer Wilds
The Forgotten City

 

With a minimum of 1 Bonus games this round, including:

Sayonara Wild Hearts

 

I am VERY excited about this next batch of games, 3 of the 6 are games I very much greatly enjoyed or even loved.

 

I also realized that somehow, someway, I haven't posted here directly in your thread before... whoops. I did a brief search on your posts to ensure my request hasn't already been done / not eligible (or else I'd recommend you The Banner Saga :P). Is there any chance we can get "The Messenger" into the laboratory? 

[DrBloodmoney]

34 minutes ago, realm722 said:

 

I am VERY excited about this next batch of games, 3 of the 6 are games I very much greatly enjoyed or even loved.

 

if it's the same 3 I'm thinking of, I suspect we shall be in lock-step on them, because there's some bangers on there as far as i'm concerned too!

 

Quote

I also realized that somehow, someway, I haven't posted here directly in your thread before... whoops. I did a brief search on your posts to ensure my request hasn't already been done / not eligible (or else I'd recommend you The Banner Saga :P). Is there any chance we can get "The Messenger" into the laboratory? 

 

So... the thing with the Priority Rankings is, I keep those to only games that already qualify - i.e. ones I already have the S-Rank for... for a specific reason.

 

It might sound silly, but while I'm a guy who likes a lot of different genres, and I have pretty eclectic tastes, my actual decisions over what to play next at any given time is very much "gut-feel" - I never want to tie myself down to feeling like I "have" to play a certain game (or to finish any game I start, for that matter.)

As such, I totally welcome recommendations of games (I actually keep a pretty exhaustive notepad list of who recommends me different games, so I can thank them... or blame them, I suppose, but that's rare for me! ?)...

...but I don't ever like to take a Priority Assignment for a game I haven't played yet, because I'm a bit superstitious about upsetting the weird, cosmic accord I've struck with the universe, with regards to starting games ?

I like to make sure my own play is driving this thread, and not the other way around, if that makes sense?

 

Really, I just don't want to be disappointing people, by promising to get to a game, but not getting there quick enough - I'm bad enough with getting around to the reviews of the ones I've already played! ?

 

With that said though...

...I do actually own The Messenger! ?

 

I bought it in a sale not that long ago, and have it waiting in the wings for when I fancy that kind of game, and when I play a pixel-art metroidvania style game, I do tend to consume them, so I'd expect that when I do get to it, it will be added as a Bonus Game to whatever Batch is on the go then, as I fully expect to get the S-Rank when I do - and I'll try to remember this message, and stick you in as a requester when it happens... I just can't promise when it'll be!

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[Cleggworth]

I'm getting closer and closer to being up to date with your analysis and today I find myself at the batch containing Deathloop. Despite my brief frustration with trophies not popping as they should i really enjoyed it. I agree with you though, it is simply not as good as Dishonored, Prey and Deus Ex.

 

I'd liken Deathloop to an action movie. It was a blast from start to finish, its short and sweet, I enjoyed it but its over with and I probably won't think about it again until a sequel comes out. Well probably not now considering Bethesda went green.... ?

 

Dishonored's gameplay loop of "how on earth am I getting in that room, with no powers? Knocking the target out and getting him back to the boat without being spotted? All without killing anybody" ? I'd liken it to a dialogue heavy TV show, its slow and methodical and you spend more time using your brain than just having something to point your eyes at. The best part is, you stop after 2 hours and you do it all over again tomorrow. That is just my jam.

 

Deathloop is explosions and machine gun fire, literally. Damn good explosions though ?

 

Special mention for Colt and Julianna, the Julianna invasions were the best bit and their verbal sparring was sublime. In fact it'd make a damned good series, Colt and Julianna just chatting shit at each other ?

 

[Neef-GT5]

@DrBloodmoney - I’m afraid I’m about to grow your priority list an extra bit thicker by adding Control :-) Happy Sunday ?

 

[DrBloodmoney]

1 hour ago, Neef-GT5 said:

@DrBloodmoney - I’m afraid I’m about to grow your priority list an extra bit thicker by adding Control :-) Happy Sunday

 

 

No probs man, flagged with your name. ?

I've been toying around with the idea of replaying that one on PS5 actually, so i'll see how it shakes out - if I do decide to pull the trigger soon, I might leave that one until afterwards, since that'll be a good refresher!

[Neef-GT5]

18 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

I might leave that one until afterwards, since that'll be a good refresher!

Sure! ?

Your thread, your call ?

 

[DrBloodmoney]

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

 

Hello Science-Friends and Science-Frenemies, as promised (and in some cases (finally!) requested), here are the latest results of our great scientific endeavour!

 

 

Journey

 

Summary: 

The third game from Jenova Chen's Thatgamecompany, 2012's Journey occupies a pretty rarified space in terms of the Playstation indie scene. Unlike some more artistic, less narratively prescient entries such as Flower, for example, Journey is pretty widely lauded across the gaming spectrum - capturing the imagination of not only indie-game aficionados, but bridging the gap, and appealing further, to those with less indie-leaning tastes - and for good reason.

 

Thatgamecompanies previous efforts - 2006's unusual, semi-interactive screensaver Fl0w - was a curious and interesting plaything, and their follow-up - 2009's Flower - was a much lauded entry in the "Games as Art" genre (though one that I personally never quite stood in lock step with the common adulation for.) My issue with Flower was really that while it was interesting and often beautiful, it didn't really have much to say beyond "Nature is nice". That is fine, if a little frivolous as an artistic endeavour, however, where it injected more 'gamified' aspects, I found them to be largely a detriment to he experience, rather than a benefit.

Journey, on the other hand, is much more of a quote-unquote "Game", however, in every aspect in which Flower failed to connect with me, Journey hit the nail squarely on the head. The gamified aspects are more prevalent, but in this case, they work like a charm, and the game functions as a completely sound art-puzzler, filled with interesting curiosities to be explored across it's myriad plains, and interesting, conceptually solid puzzle elements to be solved. The more ethereal aspects too - it's message and its emotional hooks, are not only so far beyond those on show in Flower as to humble that previous game, but manage to ascend further, to outclass almost every game attempting similarly allegorical and emotive elements both before, and since... with one major exception - to be reviewed later in this batch!

 

The player takes the role of an unnamed mystic of indeterminate species and origin, clad in a robe and flowing scarf, who - for reasons we are never fully privy to - is on a journey. More than a journey in fact - a pilgrimage. 
The game begins in a vast, beautiful desert, surrounded by ruins of some ancient civilisation. The game provides little guidance, but far in the distance, a unique, split-peaked mountain provides the only real marker, and so human curiosity takes over, and they set out to reach it. Thought that journey, the robed creature will explore the curious and strange landscape, solve unique, interesting puzzles scattered amid the ruins, using their only real interaction with the word - a 'pinging' song they can sing that resonates with certain tribal markings - and crucially, happen across other pilgrims on their own journeys (other players) who will drift in and out of their own sphere of consciousness with ephemeral ease.

 

The general gameplay - the puzzles and the exploration - are not the most unique or interesting ever committed to games, but they are fun, varied, interesting, and have a diagetic feeling with the narrative (as vague and ethereal as it might be.) While the pilgrim is wandering a world we son't understand - and we are not really sure if he/she does either - the ruins and their placement, and the flow of the journey from desert, to underground, to snowy mountains and beyond, has a ring of truth to it, while still feeling quite strange - like a well realised and vivid dream, as opposed to a facsimile of any true physical place.
That the game is not overly long - a full playthrough running around the 3-4 hour mark - means that the game never feels tired or bogged down by filler, (indeed, most areas have one distinct puzzle, along with a small handful of optional collectibles, the finding of which increases the length of the pilgrim's flowing scarf,) but because there is a smooth, rolling transition of environmental biome, it also never feels segmented or stunted. There are distinct areas, (level's if we want to be "game-y",) but they transition fairly seamlessly, and so the game has a feeling of being one long "whole" as opposed to a sum of "parts."

 

Journey is an art-forward game, so let's talk visuals. They are fucking stunning. Journey is not a game that traffics in bleeding edge graphics or technical prowess - it wasn't even in 2012. The game is not pushing the edges of the technical side of the medium, and the visual work is based in the kind of polygonal pastel-shaded motifs that have graced other games - Rime or Hob, for example. It's an art style that is heavily stylised - nowhere more so than in the design of the pilgrim him /herself - however, it looks magnificent. There is a deft touch involved in making the whole world feel both open and vast and awesome, yet somehow still cohesive and tailored in detail. While there isn't a technical pushing of the boundaries, that doesn't mean the visuals are unimpressive either - some sections, in particular a middle-game section in which the journeyman finds himself 'surfing' down long dunes of glistening, shimmering sands in a glittering, sparkling sunset is incredible - there are lighting effects and a fidelity of movement that are incredibly evocative and breathtaking to see. 

What Journey does with its art style, in a way few games manage with quite this level of skill, is evoke a feeling of smallness. Of being a tiny, fragile being in great vast world - and where simple traversal and survival in a great, uncaring landscape feels noble, and against the odds. Given that the game has no survival mechanics, and that difficulty or dying are not really gameplay elements in the game, that feeling is something achieved purely through the artistry of the visuals - and, of course, the audio.

The game is accompanied by one of the best original orchestral soundtracks committed to a videogame to date. The score - by Austin Wintory - is a majestic and sweeping, soaring affair that accompanies the pace of the journey with aplomb, and elevates sections like that 'sand-surfing' section to a level that could melt the heart of the most craven of gamers. It has been completely unsurprising to me that I have heard sections of the score for Journey played on UK Radio Station Classic FM - the score is easily able to hold up against filmic scores and orchestral pieces from other media.

 

The real masterstroke of Journey is not so much the visual or auditory grandeur though, as superlative and these aspects are, but rather in the curious relationship the game crafts between different players embarking upon it. 
The multiplayer that the game features is a singular experience, one that very few games approach and fewer even have managed to capture. The individual players are on their own journeys - slowly working towards the distant peak that acts as beacon and destination, and that journey is a personal one. However, because the journey is a linear one, and because the game allows a seamless ebb and flow in visibility of other players embarking on the same personal journey, providing only the most rudimentary ability to communicate, there is a very real and unusual sense of communal kinship fostered between these anonymous players.

 

In many ways, Journey manages to capture a very specific type of relationship, that mimics a real-life one - the fleeting yet tight bond afforded to people on journey's themselves. 
If you have ever undertaken a long, multi-day journey (in Scotland, our most notable version would be walking the West Highland Way - a 154km country trek from Glasgow to Fort William,) or to go further afield, say, the El Camino de Santiago from Leon to Santiago de Compostela (as shown in the decidedly underrated Martin Sheen film The Way,) you will know - there is a specific type of relationship such an endeavour fosters between fellow walkers. Each individual is walking at their own pace, and for their own reasons, but since everyone is undertaking the same task at the same time, each persons own journey becomes a thread in larger, interweaving tapestry. They become single streams within something larger than their own personal journeys, and it results in a fleeting yet often powerful closeness to those other threads in closest proximity. 
One might drift closer to another person as their paces align, and conversations spring from that. There may be nothing on the surface that ties these people together - their walks of life may be entirely different, their personalities and their backgrounds and their outlooks on life totally dissimilar - indeed, there might be nothing that would foster a relationship between them under more pedestrian circumstances - but a common goal and shared effort and shared purpose can solidify a friendship that, while fleeting, is meaningful, and often burns deeper and brighter for its intangibility. Because of the touristic nature of the endeavour, there may even be language barriers, or even cultural ones, that make standard communication less than obvious, but the task itself provides a commonality. Unshackled from the barriers 'real-life' erects, people are left open to more intense relationships with one another. There is - after all - a reason vacation romances are the least tangible, but often the most intense. The romance itself might not outlast the vacation, but the memory often lingers for a lifetime, because the circumstances provided kindling, and the removal of quelling forces of regular routine act as accelerant for the fire.

 

That is what Journey does. The individual player will be having their own signature experience - traversing the unusual terrains, solving their own problems and cutting their own path, but when they encounter a fellow pilgrim, on their own expedition and seeking to climb the same distant peak, there is an immediate and palpable solidarity. They might simply 'ping' a greeting and move on, or they might observe the other player without active connection, but more often than not, they will do more. Their paces will being to synchronise, and the journey will drift from a solo venture to a parallel one. That other journeyman may not know your name, and you may not know his - he might speak a different language, or be of a different gender, or faith, or outlook or age - but none of that is obvious and none of it matters. What matters is that both of you are travelling, and both of you are heading the same way. Your questions might be different, but you are seeking a common answer.

 

When I played, it was fairly early in the game that i came across another wanderer. I knew nothing of them - I didn't even know their PSNID, as such pedestrian elements are kept behind the game's cloak - but we journeyed much of the game together, and my experience of Journey was made in that curious relationship with that stranger. We played together, we greeted one another and communicated through our rudimentary language of pings and hops, and we sought to find that mountain peak together. We surfed the sands together, dancing through the twinkling sand like two ballerinas, criss-crossing each other's paths with an eerie familiarity antithetical to our strange nature to one another. 
When, near the end of the game, the environmental obstacles pushed us further apart, I sought that other person out, and when I was unable to find them, there was a real sense of sadness and loss. I'd have to climb this last section without them, and after all we had been through together, that felt melancholic and wistful. 

In reality, that player was simply doing the same as I was - their mountain was the same as my mountain, and their game had continued just as mine had, but that didn't change the fact that I felt guilty going on without them. I like to think they felt the same about my disappearance - that they too mourned the loss of their anonymous little friend, and felt the same solemnity to their final push for the summit.

 

That experience is something wholly unique to Journey. It's something that could only have happened that way because of smart design choices made by Thatgamecompany, and is something that could never really be recaptured. It's the principle reason why I have not replayed Journey in any of its re-released forms, in fact. Not because I think the game would be lesser, but because the experience might be. I wouldn't be able to necessarily recapture that feeling of solidarity with a stranger, and it was such an integral part of the original experience, that playing the game again - even experiencing all the best aspects of it visually and auditorially. might feel hollow by comparison.

 

Journey is a game that is well designed in terms of the standard elements of game design - it looks great, it feels good to control, its music is among the best of its class in the gaming sphere, and the puzzles are esoteric and interesting and strange. All those parts only carry it most of the way up the mountain, though. What drives it up that last section, and further - into the clouds and beyond - is not the way the game is crafted, but the way the experience is. 
The experience is what elevates it beyond the medium, and into a loftier plane - and there, Journey sits, forever in my mind.

 

 

The Ranking:

A difficult one to find comparison points, Journey is a game where the actual mechanical elements are all very good, but it is elevated by something more. As such, one game that does stand out for comparison is Little Nightmares.

 

Now, Little Nightmares is also a game with somewhat similar style puzzles, and it's own unique, not technology advancing, but still lovely visuals, but it is also elevated by something less specific than them - in it's case, the sense of child-like macabre and nightmarish glee. 

I think in terms of visuals, Little Nightmares probably does just manage to edge out Journey. Gameplay-wise, Little Nightmares also has the edge when looking at pure mechanics, however, Journey takes the win handily on audio, and on originality of aesthetic.
That creates something of a stale-mate, and so it comes down to the less definable elements - Journey's unique multiplayer experience and the effect it has on the game, vs. Little Nightmare's tone and tenor. While Little Nightmares does nail it's intentions - and those are not easy ones to achieve - I do think the unique element of Journey's multiplayer has to win here. It's a little tough, as Journey is a game where some players might be unlucky, and simply not experience that side of the game, whereas in Little Nightmares, every player is guaranteed the same experience, however, Journey's elements did get me, and that feeling it instilled is rarer, and more haunting than even Little Nightmares was.

 

That puts Journey above Little Nightmares, but it was close, and so we need to look at other indie games in the immediate vicinity. The closest one is Supergiant powerhouse Pyre, and in that case, I think Journey has a harder time. While Journey's unique, best elements are more difficult to capture, and more emotionally effecting probably, than anything Pyre does, Pyre is an equally original and interesting game, and has a huge number of factors in which it outpaces Journey. It looks better, it plays more interestingly, and actually, it competes on one of Journey's strongest elements too -  the audio. With all that in mind, and given that Pyre is also a textbook lesson in repeatability, in a way Journey is absolutely a one-and-done kind of experience, I think Pyre still retains its place.

Given that, I think it's only right that Journey falls just below Pyre!

 

 

 

 

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

 

Summary: 

An action platformer from first-time developer Ember Lab, Kena: Bridge of Spirits follows young Spirit Guide Kena - a roving, spiritual mystic who is able to see and communicate with the dead, and is tasked with guiding them to the Spirit World. Early in the game she comes across a remote village in in the mountains, abandoned and destroyed, and taken over by the malevolent forces of ruin. Guided by a village Elder, she seeks to discover the history of the village and surrounding territory, and help those spirits still lingering in the physical world to make peace, and to move on.

 

The game operates as a semi-open metroidvania, with Kena's abilities all wrapped around and contingent upon her relationship with The Rot - a curious collective of adorable little black creatures who occupy the world, and have the power to heal and salve the dark-black roots and vines that have ensnared the forrest - the physical manifestation of lingering regret and malfeasance that the lingering spirits have invited. Much of the game involves the collection of these Rot, allowing a slow unlocking of a set skill-tree of powers, and opening up new paths outwards to the game's various areas, which spoke outwards from the village, which severs as the game's hub. New abilities allow Kena access to find each of the main three spirits, learn their stories and the personal tragedies that have consumed their souls, and heal them, freeing their spirits from the lingering pain and their malign connection to the corporeal world.

 

The narrative in Kena: Bridge of Spirits is relatively simple - and actually, a little more gamified than one might expect. The game is, structurally, incredibly simple. There are 3 main 'chapters', each dealing with a single wayward spirit. Each of these spirits requires finding 3 'artefacts', the quests for which reveal aspects of the spirit's backstory, followed by a fight against the spirit itself, during which that narrative is concluded, the spirit is guided to peace, and that area of the forrest restored. 
There is, in fact, rather little given in the way of real context to these quests - it is never really explained why each character needs 3 (not 2, not 4, but 3) artefacts to be found, and never made explicit as to why Kena knows this to be the case, but setting that aside, the actual beat-by-beat storytelling is fairly well done within that rather rote framework. 

 

Visually, the game is really something else. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is an indie game in nature - and functionally, it occupies that curious range of the gamings spectrum that has been largely overlooked the past decade or so - the action B-Game - but aesthetically, Kena: Bridge of Spirits very much appears tantamount to 'Triple A'. Ember Lab are a new studio but they have talent honed in commercial and feature animation, and it very much shows. The general visual look of Kena is adjacent to Pixar or Disney Animation Studios - both stylistically and qualitatively - and while the particular design aesthetic (the closest feature, I would argue, is Disney Animation Studio's Big Hero 6,) is a matter of taste, appreciation of the level of fidelity and the animation quality is simply not up for debate. There is a level of animation quality on show in cut-scenes, (and in regular gameplay,) that is not just unusual in games, it eclipses the majority of feature animated films. Characters emote and move with a masterful level of fidelity, and animations in the world - in particular the 'cleansing' of forrest areas from barren and infected and diseased, to bursting with green, vivid life - are gorgeous to see, every single time.

The actual design style falls somewhere between Japanese and Tribal - care appears to have been taken to avoid any specific, one-to-one correlation to any real-life mythos or culture - however the overall effect is cohesive within the context it sets itself, and there is a basic, but broad world-lore that works well, while never being terrible complicated.

 

Audio is pretty good - the voice work is done well, and while none of it really stood out as remarkable, it certainly never falters, or took me out of the game. I think the writing of the game is quite good, given what is there, though I do think the game might have benefitted from a little more of it to explain the world a little better. 
The score, on the other hand, is remarkable. It is both very good, and quite unusual. The general music in the forest is an unusual, mystic-tribal mishmash of percussive drums and pan-flute melodies, and sets a light, disarming tone to the proceedings. It's not music that is to my personal taste at all times - I won't be adding Kena: Bridge of Spirits to my Spotify playlists any time soon - but within the game, I found it pleasant and jaunty. During boss fights, where it swells to more bombastic, soaring highs, it is very good, and often very effective in terms of accenting and building the tension.

 

Speaking of combat, that is an area that certainly warrants discussion, as it is atypical for the genre the rest of the game plays in. There's an unusual flow to combat in Kena: Bridge of Spirits, particularly prevalent in boss fights. While standard attacks - heavy and light swings, and firing arrows will do some "chip damage" to bigger enemies and bosses, the real purpose of these 'standard' attacks is in the building up of "courage". This courage takes the form of a sort of 'super-meter' - segments in the UI that are filled slowly by regular attacks - which can then be used for a variety of Rot-enabled super-moves. These might take the form of a powerful over-head slam that can do significant damage, or a rot-infused arrow that can penetrate multiple enemies, or a rot-infused bomb, which slows enemies within it's area of effect.
Because healing mid-fight is also tied to this same "courage" meter, (a finite number of plants will be in each fighting arena a single rot use on which can restore a small portion of health,) and because (on higher difficulties,) taking a hit also reduces courage built up, means there is a constant "courage-management" aspect in play. 
Is it more viable to use the single courage 'blip' you have built up to restore some health, knowing that you will need to chip-damage for a while to build up the next one, or would it be more useful to use that for an attack, knowing there is only one health plant left?

This kind of push-pull adds a significant meta-level to a fighting system already made quite complicated by the array of attacks and moves available, and means that boss fights in the latter half of the game - all of which are quite complicated and much more difficult than one might expect, given the visual style - can be extremely technical affairs, and much more tricky (and satisfying to beat) than in most games of similar genre and visual style. 

Indeed, when viewing Kena: Bridge of Spirits in the PS Store, I had an expectation of the type of game I was getting into, and in some cases I was correct - the general level structure as combat platformer with a light metroidvania element and loose, Zelda-inspired environmental puzzle solving was exactly what I wanted and expected - however, the level of finesse required in combat, and the focus on skilled dissection of boss attack-patterns and move-learning is of a level not usually seen in mainstream 3D Platformers, and in some late-game bosses cases, would not feel out of place in a Souls-like game. That was decidedly unexpected, though not unwelcome. 
I do think there will be a contingent of players who approach Kena: Bridge of Spirits based on the visuals - who are drawn in by the stylistic tone, and the cutesy, Pixar-adjacent feeling The Rot suggest - and assume a level of difficulty comparable to something like a Ratchet and Clank or a Sly Cooper, but those players are in for a rough time! While I have never (and will never) hold my own game-playing prowess up as anything more than "competent at best" (and frankly, it rarely reaches that modest hight!) even  on "Normal" difficulty, I found myself repeating some later boss fights 5 or 10 times before managing to scrape through them. On Master Difficulty (a requirement for the platinum,) some of these battles can be brutally unforgiving, and require a level of mastery that very few game with this kind of visuals and narrative ask of their players. 

 

The general gameplay is very good - for the most part simple, but a wealth of collectibles within the game provide the additional length that the basic narrative doesn't, and finding these collectibles is both genuinely rewarding in a gameplay sense, well implemented, and fun. Some collectibles - meditation spots for example, provide real tangible benefits - in that case, increased health. The Rot, who can be found in a variety of ways, also have immediate and tangible gameplay benefits, in the sense that finding them increased the amount of "Courage" that can be collected, and allowing new and more powerful moves to be performed, and at greater frequency. 

There are also a myriad of different collectibles that provide currency and purely aesthetic embellishments - hats for your Rot to wear, for example. These are not gameplay critical, however, because the little army of Rot you have build up around you follow you everywhere, whether walking along behind you, or popping up onto shelves and rocks and ledges in the scenery - and sometimes indicating the presence of further collectibles - they are a fun aside.
 Signifiant props should be given to Ember Labs also, for making the finding of all these collectibles genuinely fun. There is no single way in which these can be found - they are all over the place, and exploring an area, trying to figure out all the little nooks and crannies and ways to reach more difficult spots is fun in-and-of-itself, and persistence and smart thinking are almost always rewarded with something of either gameplay or aesthetic value.

Overall, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a great little game - it looks fantastic, sounds good, and the gameplay is a welcome cross between a solid, well put-together combat platformer, and an almost Souls-like, satisfying combat model with varied and interesting boss fights.  

While I do wish there was a little more meat to the narrative, and a slightly better job had been done to 'disguise' the more obviously "video-game" elements, the overall effect is still a very satisfying and pleasant experience that is a joy to explore, a fun ride to go on, and a curiously tricky challenge.

 

 

The Ranking:

Because Kena: Bridge of Spirits operates within the B-Game sphere, but on the new-gem consoles, and because the genre is primarily as a 3D Action Platformer with family-friendly narrative, the first games that jump to mind for comparison are the 3D Action platformers of the PS2 and PS3 era - most notably the mascot platformers. 

There are a fair few on the current list, and the first one for comparison is Beyond Good and Evil. While Kena: Bridge of Spirits obviously looks a country mile better than BG&E, simply by virtue of the era, it immediately wins on that front (though I would argue that even allowing for "graphical inflation" it would still win - Kena: Bridge of Spirits looks better in a 2021 landscape than BG&E did, even in 2003.)
On combat, Kena: Bridge of Spirits also takes a victory against BG&E, with its atypically complex and challenging fights, however, in most other aspects, BG&E takes the win. BG&E has the audio and the narrative sown up, and the thematic and emotional aspects also work better. Overall, while Kena: Bridge of Spirits has some elements in its favour, it's still a fairly resounding victory for Beyond Good and Evil.

 

A little further down, we have Tomb Raider Legend. That's one where the visual fight is not quite as wide, but Kena: Bridge of Spirits still handily takes it - again, even allowing for the differences in release dates. Audio is more evenly matched though, and while I think Tomb Raider manages the win, it's a marginal one. In terms of gameplay, I think both have their strengths, with Tomb Raider certainly taking it on variety of environments and gameplay, while Kena: Bridge of Spirits wins on raw combat. 

 

This one ended up being a much closer fight than I thought it would. In the end, I think Tomb Raider manages to retain its spot, however, the victory is surprisingly close. 

A few spots lower, we have Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and while that game has many fun and cool aspects, I actually think Kena: Bridge of Spirits takes the edge overall. That is, admittedly, partly owing to The Sands of Time just not having aged quite as well as some of its peers (particularly than it's sequel, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones,) but raw gameplay does play a part - in particular combat. 

As such, I think the most appropriate spot for Kena: Bridge of Spirits is one spot above Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time!

 

 

 

 

LA Noire

 

Summary: 

A curious amalgam of Adventure game and Open World Crime Sim, 2011's LA Noire, the sole game developed by Team Bondi and published by acclaimed GTA developer Rockstar, took what was - at the time - industry-leading facial mapping software, capable of capturing expression and performance at a level previously unseen, and used it to create a new kind of detective adventure gameplay, focussing on identification of lies, half-truths and human 'tells' in an interrogation and crime-solving setting.

 

The player takes the role of Cole Phelps - a beat-cop (at the outset,) in late 1940's post-war LA - as he solves individual cases and crimes, moves up within the ranks of the LA Police department, hopping from division to division, and becomes embroiled in an over-arching plot by shady land-developers to take advantage of the booming, expansionist flood of cash flowing into the town via the Entertainment industry and the post-war commercial revolution.

 

LA Noire is an unusual game in many ways. It's messy and unfocussed in many of its mechanical elements, yet suffers for these elements far less than many similarly afflicted games might, managing to lean on the strength of the elements it absolutely nails. Those aspects are done so well, they tend to paper over the cracks left open elsewhere.

 

Of these excellent elements, none are more worthy of praise, than the plot and the tone. They are really something special here. 
There have been a number of games over the years that strike a Noire tone - indeed, detective games have been dabbling in Noire tropes since almost the inception of the genre, via games like Gabriel Knight - however, even looking from a 2021 stand-point, I would be hard pushed to find a single video-game out there that more perfectly captures the specific 'New-Hollywood Film Noire' tone than this one. 

The plot - convoluted and winding, and the aesthetic palette are not simply inspired by classics such as Polanski's Chinatown - they manage to be genuinely evocative of it, without ever needing to make direct reference - and that is not something that can be easily achieved. 

There is a dry, claustrophobic heat to this rendition of Los Angeles, a maudlin, dyspeptic edge to Phelps and his cadre of police partners, and a thematic resonance to the eclectic rogues-gallery of unusual and broken characters Cole encounters that is absolutely critical and key to evoking the best of Raymond Chandler-style Hollywood Noire's. 

The Film Noire tropes actually serve duel purpose here too, in the sense that the particular stylistic genre actually forgives some of the more "Gamified" aspects of LA Noire. For example, the fact that Cole is able to still advance through the plot of the game, regardless of his performance in individual cases might feel jarring in many games and feel like a gameplay-forward contrivance, however, because of the tropes of Film Noire - wherein the lead character is generally not the driving force successfully negotiating the scheme they uncover, but instead, a loose cog, caught up in its wake, being pulled this way and that by forces larger than himself - and is generally unsuccessful in his pursuits, simply surviving and doggedly refusing to quit despite set-backs, until the full plot is revealed to him, works to justify these elements of gameplay contrivance in a way few genres can.
Even the ending, which makes use of a particularly Deus-Ex-Machina reveal fits perfectly. I have heard complaints that the ending to LA Noire is 'overly convenient' or silly, but those complaints always felt hollow to me, as they betray a lack of understanding of the filmic tropes the game is aping. The late-film, rather convenient summation of the overarching conspiracy via an 'exposition-dump' reveal, is an integral and established trope within Film Noire. Whether that is to the individual's tastes is up for debate, but it's inclusion in a game deliberately stylising itself after those established filmic tropes is not. It does to LA Noire, what the same reveals do in the best Chandler novels, and the best Bogart films do. 

 

Speaking of style, the visuals of LA Noire are quite something. In 2021, there is certainly a level of 'uncanny valley' that creeps into the facial mapping elements of the game - the characters are close enough to life-like to be able to easily identify the specific actors used in scenes, yet the fact that the technology has been surpassed now, 10 years later, means there is something a little 'off' with the models that can be a little off-putting. However, given the era the game released in, it's remarkable how well this element still works - far more so than most games of its immediate era-lineage.
The cast of actors assembled for the game is no joke - Cole is played by Aaron Stanton (of Mad Men fame,) who does an excellent job, but he is supported by a huge Television and Hollywood cast of supreme talent. (I suspect Aaron Stanton was a real coo for Team Bondi, as he seems to have been able to pull in a glut of other actors from Mad Men, filling out a large portion of the supporting cast. Mad Men, by the way, was and remains my favourite television show of all time, so this very much fit my particular tastes and wheelhouse!)
Because the game takes place over a large number of individual cases, there are hundreds of characters on show, and each one has been filled with character actors and bit-part players of the highest order, Playing "Hey I know that guy!" in LA Noire is half the fun of the game - and between John Noble, Andrew Connolly, Randy Oglesby, Rich Sommer, Ned Vaughn, William O'Leary and a cavalcade of others, I think there is a genuine argument to be made that LA Noire represents the finest, and certainly largest, collection of acting talent in a video-game. (A word of warning - don't try playing a drinking game with identification of actors. If you took a shot every time you recognised someone in the game, you'd be paralytic by half-way through the third case!)

 

Where this does fall down a little though, is in the acting. Now - let's be clear - these are SERIOUS actors, capable of routinely delivering pitch-perfect performances in TV and film. I do not for ONE SECOND believe ANY of the issues the game has with performance stem from them. Instead, I believe there seems to have been a lack of confidence on Team Bondi's part, with regards to how accurate their (at the time, untested,) technology would be able to be. 
Because the game is predicated on identification of human 'tells', the actors have clearly been instructed to rather exaggerate these giveaways in their performances. In many cases, the level to which characters will flick their eyes up, or squirm, or shuffle around after telling a lie borders on pantomime, and can be rather unintentionally comedic. It never completely breaks the immersion of the performances - indeed, there is a reason Team Bondi cast such a high level of talent, they are able to gloss over some of these aspects with excellent performances outwith those moments - however, it does come close to derailing it at times. One or two of the most over tells, if left to run without making a conversational 'decision' are laughably ridiculous, as they constantly loop a cartoonish discomfort or almost grotesque malevolence.

 

There is also something of a problem with the game fundamentals in these interrogation scenes (in its original PS3 form), owing (apparently) to a last minute change in the actual input mechanics on Cole's part. In most instances, Cole has the option to respond to most lines with ether a "Truth", "Doubt" or "Lie" system - identifying whether the character is telling the truth, hiding something, or straight up lying. "Truth" is generally fine, however, the semantic difference between "Doubting" and calling out a straight up "Lie" is often curiously arbitrary, and never obviously intuitive or well reasoned. These aspects were, in fact, changed from the original intended response options of "Good Cop" / "Bad Cop" / "Accuse" - and those options make much more sense. 
In fairness, the Remastered version of the game for PS4 these options are changed back - and it is a smart decision. This more accurately reflects the intended tone of these responses, and tends to make more sense in specific contexts.

 

These character captures are the most notable and stand-out part of the game still though - and certainly give the game it's signature hook, however, there are serious visual positives in other areas too. The stylish UI and world design are perfect in their evocation of the Los Angeles of Noire Film and the 1:1 recreation of LA is really pretty remarkable. I have never visited LA, but I am something of an aficionado of this era of film and television, and I was constantly surprised by how many landmarks I saw that were perfectly recreated and how tonally correct the world felt. Indeed, even knowing LA only via filmic rendition, I was often able to roughly orientate myself with regards to its layout simply by identification of landmarks, rather than the provided mini-map.

This excellent design of the era-appropriate open world does bring up probably the biggest, most glaring issue with the game, however. As great as 1940s/1950's LA looks, and as much joy is to be found in simply driving around in it... the game gives very, VERY little reason for doing so. 

This is almost assuredly an issue born out of the uneasy combination of Team Bondi and Rockstar - two companies who clearly had different ideas of what makes a good final product, and of what LA Noire should be. 
Team Bondi crafted what is essentially a lavish, unusual and modern take on the detective Adventure game - one where narrative and plot is king, and where the gameplay focus is on conversational dialogue, clue finding in small crime scenes, and identification of lies and tells in interrogation. These remain the most interesting elements of the game - the most prominent, and the signature, and while there are some issues in these sections (the aforementioned over-the-top performance flourishes, and the issues the game has with a sometimes rather arbitrary difference between "doubt" and "Lie" mechanics,) they work very well generally.

Rockstar, on the other hand, were not in the Adventure Game business. They were in the Open-World Crime Sim business, and were And remain) the kings of making money on that front. As such, their influence added an entire other layer to the game - a massive open world, and a significant number of car chases and shoot-outs - all of which look and feel great, (benefitting from Rockstar's signature finesse and almost fetishistic attention to detail,) but none of which feel really necessary to the game. 
In fact, there is so little reason to engage with the open world, that all those sections can, in fact, be skipped within the game via a button push - and very little is really lost in doing so. The result, is that LA Noire suffers from some of the issues Mafia II suffered from - there is a magnificently crafted, beautiful and well-realised work out there... which is barren, lifeless, and almost entirely superfluous to the game, aside form adding stylistic flavour. (And from Rockstar's rather unfortunate habit of peppering their open-worlds with a glut of non-game-critical collectibles, required to be found in pursuit of the platinum, but serving little purpose beyond padding the games length.)

 

Audio-wise, LA Noire nails its intentions completely though - harder than in any other aspect. There are no weak points in the game from a sound point of view. The vocal work is excellent across the board (as one might expect, given the talent,) but in terms of foley and music, it is pitch-fucking-perfect. Gunshots sound great, tyre-screeches sound not only visceral, but era-appropriately visceral, which is not something that is easy to do. The score is absolutely fantastic, perfectly evoking Hollywood Noire, and it would not sound out of place in a Big Sleep / Maltese Falcon / Chinatown style movie. 

 

Overall, LA Noire is an interesting case, as its a game that is something of a mechanical hodgepodge, but the areas in which it excels, excel so far beyond the mere pedestrian, that they tends to make up for the areas in which it feels flabby, overwrought or misguided.

Is everything perfect in the game? 
Far from it - in fact, even within some of the best elements, there are significant sticking points - however, the overall effect remains a wildly entertaining narrative with interesting, original mechanical hooks and an artistic and auditory style that is 100% pure Noire perfection. 
The net effect is that where the game does things well, it does them VERY well - it is winning, charming and very compelling. Where it stumbles, it merely veers into "that's odd" territory, rather than even straying as far as "that's bad."

 

 

The Ranking:

With regards to ranking, there are a couple of elements to consider - the open world crime game, and the adventure game.

 

In terms of crime open-worlds, LA Noire is a curious one, as while it's open-world credentials are a little misguided, and not really the focus here, it is still lavishly produced, and gorgeously detailed. Even though there is little mechanical substance to it, I still find being in that world and driving around to be more compelling than in GTAIV, or indeed, Mafia II. Couple that with the much more compelling narrative, and the simple fact that LA Noire wins on visuals, tone, audio and originality, it handily lands above both those games.

 

In terms of unique takes on adventure games, and on detective gameplay, however, despite a lot of great elements, it does fail to really capitalise on it's central premise, due to the often messy "Truth" / "Doubt" / "Lie" (or latterly, "Good Cop" / "Bad Cop" / "Accuse") mechanics. These can feel antithetical to the nuance the game strives for in other areas, and undercut the base premise. As such, other games that modernise the Adventure game in their own way - Observation for example - do elevate above LA Noire.

 

That leaves us in a state with quite a few games in-between, none of which are directly playing in the same genre. One that stands out for comparison is open-world, narrative-heavy and genre-based 70's driving game Driver San Francisco. While that game does great stuff with its own filmic tropes, and is a far better game than it often gets credit for, I still think the sum of LA Noire's parts easily surpass it.

 

that leaves only 15 or so games to work with, and within that gulf, it comes down to the old "is the sum of LA Noire's parts better than the sum of this other game's parts?"
Working up from Driver San Francisco, the first game for which I think the answer is "No" is Superhot - a completely different type of game in virtually every way, but that's immaterial - in the end, I would rather replay Superhot than LA Noire, so it has to rank higher, and as such, LA Noire finds its spot!

 

 

 

 

 

Outer Wilds

 

Summary: 

A space exploration mystery game from new developer Mobius Digital, Outer Wilds, (released in 2019,) is a game that absolutely defies both explanation, and expectations. 

 

It's worth noting, right here at the outset - this is liable to be a very sparse write-up in terms of narrative elements. I will be talking about the game, but in terms of specific narrative elements, I am going to be more careful than usual to avoid any kind of spoilers. There is a good reason for this... actually two reasons.

 

Firstly, Outer Wilds is a game utterly and completely predicated on uncovering narrative. The game's entire raison d'être is to impart the singular and powerful feeling of discovering and uncovering the truth of the lore and backstory of the presented universe. Discovery of narrative elements IS the game, and because the player has the complete freedom to uncover elements of the grand mystery in any order, and piecing these fragments of the puzzle together in the grand tapestry of it's lore is the joy of the game, literally any narrative element could be considered a game-critical spoiler.

 

Secondly, because Outer Wilds is so good. It is a game that so successfully achieves the goals it sets for itself - goals so complicated and difficult to implement that most games do not even approach them - that I would consider myself an asshole of the highest order if I so much as accidentally spoiled any part of that for someone. Games doing what Outer Wilds does are so few and far between as to be statistically insignificant, and Outer Wilds is one of - if not THE - best on that class. I will, as a necessary result,  be walking on rhetorical eggshells this whole time. Apologies if that makes for a vague review - but that's the way it goes I'm afraid. 

In terms of basic premise, that much we can discuss. The player takes the role of an unnamed member of a species called the Hearthians - native to a planet called Timber Hearth. Akin to a national park, Timber hearth is a green and lovely planet, and the Hearthians, while somewhat scientifically advanced and curious, are very amiable and earthy creatures - green, four-eyed, campfire loving, toasted-marshmallow and sap-wine-enjoying, musically inclined adventurers, who are fascinated with the stars and the mysteries of the universe, which they explore in their wood-and-bric-a-brac spacecrafts.
Upon awakening by a campfire next to a locked launchpad, the player is guided through Timber Hearth seeking the launch-codes, eventually being tunnelled to the Timber Hearth Observatory and Museum. Here, there are given their first glimpse of some of the secrets out there in the solar system, and a few of the questions that will form the initial clues for explorational elements, as well as basic guidance on controls and, of course, the launch codes. 

That is about the only section of the game in which the player's hand is held, as - upon leaving the Observatory - something interesting happens. A Statue of a 'Nomai' - a long dead progenitor race with whom the Hearthians are fascinated, and who's race appear to be integrally wrapped up in many of the solar-system's mysteries - turns to the player, and connects with them on some intangible, psychic level. The exact nature of this connection is unknown at the time, but becomes apparent fairly quickly... 22 minutes after the game began, in fact. 

The reason? 
Because 22 minutes after the game begins, the universe ends.
Yes, you read that right.
22 minutes after the game begins, it ends. As does everything else, in a fiery heat-death.

When this happens for the first time, the player awakes at the bonfire again. This time, armed with the launch codes they learned before, a newfound freedom from the shackles of the game, and a metric-fuck-ton of unanswered questions.

This is where Outer Wilds really begins - because now the player is on their own, in a vast, unknown solar system. What they choose to do is up to them, but only three things are clear:
1. Every time they awake, they have only 22 minutes to explore, or fly, or talk, or do anything, before the heat-death of everything around them.
2. No one else seems to remember the events of previous excursions, aside from them.
3. This game has more mysteries and complexities to be uncovered in each loop than most games (or, frankly, books, films or television shows,) manage across their entire canon. 
No, I'm not exaggerating.

 

The sheer amount of fascinating lore to be uncovered in Outer Wilds is STAGGERING.

While the solar system available for exploration may seem small on paper - certainly as compared to many space-and-planet-exploration games out there (No Man's Sky being the obvious counter-balance comparison, but also games like Mass Effect, for example,) there has likely never been a more appropriate use of the phrase "as wide as a puddle, as deep as an ocean." 
Where a game like No Man's Sky is vast to the point of hyperbole, with a near infinite amount of explorable space, the actual individual planets and spaces are simplistic and unimportant. There is little substance to specific parts - nuance is sacrificed in favour of scope.

With Outer Wilds, the opposite is true. There are only 8 or nine planets, however, everyone one is unique, fascinating, beholden to its own set of mechanics and eccentricities, and filled with pieces of evidence and clues as to the history of the solar system and the universe, that are well-thought-out, cleverly integrated, and fit together so seamlessly that they make lesser games feel positively rudimentary by comparison.

 

Because the grand mystery is so well thought through - so clearly defined, yet complex and with so many different tangential and inter-woven elements - Outer Wilds is a game that utterly and completely rewards the player for thinking. This is not simply a case of wandering around, finding ancient text or artefacts, and having them fill in a list of objectives, with the game filling in the gaps, and piecing them together for the player. That will get you somewhere - indeed, if completely stuck, or lost, simply exploring a new area can often set the player on some new tangent, and shunt them towards some of the leaps of logic they must make, however, that is only the first step. While a "mind-map" style documentation of found clues will fill out in the spaceship terminal as new information is found, allowing some guidance as far as note-taking, this does not act as the goal, but simply as a tool. It is up to the player to decipher the meaning behind these clues - to reason out which items relate to others, and which feel out of place, and what to them try to do with that information, in order to progress their own understanding.

The ways in which the game hints at different areas of exploration, and encourages the player to make the connections they must make are varied and interesting, and never rote or simplistic. There is a reliance here on genuine logical reasoning - to a level that can often benefit from lengthly and detailed discussion of clues with another person. I played a large amount of Outer Wilds with Ms Bloodmoney by my side, and while she never once touched the controller during that time, I think I can safely confirm, she would describe herself as having "Played" the game. The reason is simple - the actual mechanical controlling of the game is a necessary, but not integral part of the experience. The real meat of Outer Wilds is in solving the grand mysteries. 

 

What happened to the Nomai? 
What is causing the end of the Universe? 
Is is avoidable? 
Is there anything that can be done? 
Who were these individual Nomai, and what, if any, effect did they have on the cataclysm being encountered? 

 

The answers to these mysteries are there to be found, with enough thought and patience and work, and are fascinating, smart and often emotional, but can only be reached by considered and careful piecing together of game elements.

Everything in Outer Wilds can matter - when exploring a planet, one not only must consider what they find, but consider it in context. 

 

Does it feel native to this planet, or not? 
Is this the thing that was alluded to in the Nomai writing on another planet? 
If so, how did they know about it, and how did it get here? 
Did this other Nomai know about it? Did it affect them? Was it an experiment? 
Did it work?

 

Speaking of the Nomai - the way information about them is doled out is fascinating too. While the Nomai are long gone, their complicated history having played out already, they were an upbeat, scientifically curious and winning people. Their history is not recorded as simple documentation of facts - indeed, the nature of the Nomai pretty much precludes such dry historical records, as they are too excitable and effervescent a people to simply spend time writing down their past. 
Instead, almost all Nomai history is discovered through their own internal communications. This lends these long dead people - with whom the player never has any direct dialogue - a genuine felling of personality. Over the course of the game, the player comes to know the Nomai not as 'a race', but rather, as individuals. Their communications are filled with lore, but also with their own individual personalities - with jokes, and brags, and individual curiosities and fascinations. This is not simply flavour ether - because of the complexities of the history, it can only really be understood by having a wholistic understanding not only of WHAT is being said, but of which individual Nomai is SAYING it. It is only by finding these writings, and noting which specific Nomai wrote it, and for whom, that the paths travelled by individual Nomai and Nomai groups can be charted, which then in turn reveals crucial elements of the overall mystery, and clues as to where to explore next in pursuit of them.

 

On the time loop elements, Outer Wilds is something of an outlier. While time-loops in games are a popular conceit (even more so now than ever, I would argue - see Deathloop, The Forgotten City, Returnal, 12 Minutes for some examples last year alone,) - in Outer Wilds, the actual gameplay reason for the existence of the time-loop is slightly different than in most games. 
Where in most other games, the mechanical benefit of the time-loop is in allowing player behaviour to operate on a cyclical level - the player comes to understand the consequences of actions, and can then compound these actions across multiple loops to achieve different outcomes - in Outer Wilds, that particular angle is not really of significance. In Outer Wilds, instead, the reason the time-loop exists narratively is part of the grand mystery, but mechanically, what it does is add a fourth dimension to the exploratory elements. Rather than simply exploring and uncovering clues in a 3D environment, in Outer Wilds, the world is 4-dimensional, as time-within-the-loop is also a factor. 

 

This manifests in different ways depending on the planet.To cite just one (of many) examples, take the Hourglass Twins.
Binary Planets, orbiting each other, the Hourglass Twins are two planets so close to one another that their gravity affects one another. They share common terrain - in a literals sense. There is a constant pillar of sand connecting the two, and over the course of the 22 minute cycle, the sand pours from one to the other. The net effect on the player being - one planet is explorable underground for the first half of the loop, but slowly becomes inaccessible (and very dangerous,) as the sand fills up these underground passages. The other planet is only accessible in the surface at first, but slowly becomes accessible over the course of the 22 minute cycle. This adds a compounding element of time management to the exploration, allowing much deeper secrets to be hidden within, without the player simply being able to find everything in a single excursion.

 

I could keep going on and on about the overall elements of Outer Wilds, (this is a game where discussion in long form internet articles and videos reaches a level almost unique to it- and with good reason!) but I fear my affection for the game may start to stray into spoiler territory, and we do need to talk about some of the more specific elements, before I run out of words!

 

Mechanically, the game can - it must be stated - feel a tad awkward at first. Flying the spacecraft is odd and unsettlingly difficult at the outset, and there are some unusually unforgiving elements to the game. For example, the player has to remember - each and every time - to PUT ON THEIR SPACE SUIT! I cannot count how many times I got in my ship, set my co-ordinates, landed where I wanted to be, stepped out of the airlock... and immediately suffocated to death! 
There is also certain elements of the game - 'ghost matter', for example (a crystalline 'infection' that has spread throughout the solar system, proximity to which kills the player very quickly,) - which can at first feel rather punishing. However, over the course of the game, there are narrative and mechanical reasons for each of these decisions, and by the middle point in the game, nothing about these elements felt like mistakes. They are deliberate choice - and actually, very good ones - it is simply the nature of the un-tutorialised and free-form exploration side of the game that can make the discovery of these aspects feel punishing. You need to fail a few times to learn the rules. That can feel overly strict in the 2021 gaming landscape - an age of over-tutorialising and hand-holding - but playing Outer Wilds is simply different. The game is unusual in all aspects of gaming, and these are no different. In the end, this is a game that requires a wholly different approach and mentality - one less to do with skilful 'doing' than with thoughtful 'discovering' - and the uniqueness of that is worth a thousand little punishing elements to me.

 

Visually, Outer Wilds is wonderful. It is not a graphically intensive game, however, it is lovely to look at, with a really distinct visual flavour overall, and a real sense of individuality to each planet, race, and each strand of mystery. 
Because visual cues are often a source of clues - identifying that something feels aesthetically out-of-place  as compared to the surrounding environment - that necessitates a level of aesthetic cohesion that Outer Wilds absolutely achieves. It is a game about mystery, and in a lot of ways, a very sad game, but the visuals would never let that bog them down. Timber Hearth feels like a warm and lovely place - homey and welcoming. The Dark Bramble feels dark and foreboding and scary, Brittle Hollow feels majestic and sad and desolate. Each area feels it's own version of mysterious, and yet the elements that are specific to races, or to connected parts of the history have a distinct and identifiable flavour to them, which lends the narrative an aesthetic help that works a treat.

 

Audio is mesmerisingly good. (I can barely believe I'm this far into the review, and haven't touched on the music yet!)
There is no voice-work (all dialogue is written text, and there is no general score -the silence of the vastness of space is as much a character in Outer Wilds as any animate being,) but that really highlights where music is used.
The Hearthians are am musical people, and music is used in fascinating ways among them. Prior to the player setting out on their space adventure, they are aware of several other Hearthians explorers who have ventured out into the solar system, and each one can be tracked using the ship's tracker, using the sound of their particular instrument. Feldspar plays a harmonica, Eskar loves to whistle, Reibeck plays the banjo, Chert loves to drum. Each of these characters can be found while scanning, and their musical instrument sound followed, with the player being able to find them sitting at their respective campfires, for a discussion, and a toasted-marshmallow. 

The audio aspects of this are fascinating too though - as each is playing a single section of the same song. If the player is to fly far enough out of the known system, then turn back, being so distant that all the signals can converge, and be tracked from the same position, they hear a single song being played across all the different elements - one so haunting and warm and hopeful as to bring tears to the eyes of the loneliest of explorers. 

This aspect is also used - by the way - in the games finale. I will say nothing about that finale, except this: I wept like a child. 
Not sniffles, not "a little something in my eye", not "is it misty in here?"... real tears. Big ones. 
The ending of Outer Wilds is something utterly special in gaming, and in media generally. Simultaneously sad, euphoric, hopeful and cathartic, it is an abject lesson in how to reward the player emotionally, while also rewarding them narratively. I truly believe that the ending of Outer Wilds is the best ending to any videogame I have ever played. It beats even other such emotionally heartfelt endings as Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, The Witness, or even Mass Effect 2. It is - quite simply - perfect... and the music lends that cathartic crescendo its emotional heft.

This is usually where I would wrap up a review, however, in the case of Outer Wilds, there is an additional element that warrants it's own specific discussion - it's DLC.

 

The DLC for Outer Wilds - called Echoes of the Eye - released last year, and adds a huge amount of additional content to the game. While on paper, it might feel small - a single location to fly to, adding only one more area to the 8 or 9 already there, might seem a small boon, but this couldn't be further from the truth when actually playing it. In fact, the new area - The Stranger - is without doubt the deepest and richest of all the single areas in the game - a quantum, stealth disguised ring-world, operated by an entirely different race than is found anywhere else in the game, and featuring some brand new, equally fascinating lore and mechanics to be explored. 

 

The race of beings the Echoes of the Eyes concerns were also affected by (and fascinated by) the same outside forces that consumed the Nomai formally, (and the Hearthians latterly,) however, their reaction to the knowledge they discovered was quite different. While the Nomai and the hearthians are curious and fascinated by what they find, this race were consumed by fear and despair, and so their subsequent decisions were markedly different. Discovering these mysteries, and the ways in which they tried to deal with the coming calamity is fascinating, and can actually take almost as long to negotiate as the entirety of the base game. 

 

Narratively, Echoes of the Eye manages to thread an incredibly difficult needle - because it integrates into the base game, and can be played at any time throughout the story, it has been expertly honed to answer some of the lingering questions of the base game (one big one in particular,) and to have its own narrative denouement that is unusual, strange, desperately sad, yet glimmering with hope - just like the tone of the main ending. However, it also does not spoil or lessen the impact of the main game's narrative if finished first. 
While I played the game after having completed the main game, (and found it great as a coda,) it clearly would work as an integral cog in the overall machinations too - and that is hard to do. 
In fact, having completed the Echoes of the Eye DLC, I then re-completed the original game, and found that elements of the DLC were folded into the ending of the base game, in a way so perfect and seamless and tonally correct, that it almost feels like it was always intended - despite my knowledge (from the developers themselves,) that that was not the case!

 

I thought Echoes of the Eye was an absolutely wonderful addition to the base game - however - I would be remiss if I did not mention one thing about it - it has a mechanic never present in the base game: Instant Fail Stealth. 
Now, I do understand why this addition was considered - Echoes of the Eye is tonally a little darker than the majority of the game, using light-and-dark mechanics as its jumping off point, and because the narrative is around a society more rooted in fear and anxiety than the Nomai, it makes some mechanical sense for fear-based gameplay to feature. However, I do not think instant-fail-stealth was a good addition. In a game where exploration is key, and where simply understanding the world is already complex and nuanced, and where the 22-minute time loop already places a significant time-limited element to that exploration, having such "hiding and running" mechanics was not at all conducive to my enjoyment. I wanted to explore the place, and uncover its secrets, as they were myriad and fascinating. Having to constantly watch out for enemies that could interrupt that, and who cannot be dealt with in any other way than to run, made that section of the game feel overly punishing and difficult, and tended to discourage the very exploration that I so love about the game.
In fairness, this comprises only a part of the DLC - perhaps 15% overall, however, I do think it was a mistake - and for what it's worth, I have heard that the developers feel somewhat the same. Apparently, there is currently work being done to lessen the punish nature of these sections via a patch, as they never intended for them to interrupt the flow so pointedly. If they manage to do that, I think it will be to the game's marked benefit.

Overall, Outer Wilds is, quite simply, one of the best games of the generation.

It is an enormous, exploratory puzzle, wherein every single element works in service of the whole, and where the world, and the lore are so expertly crafted - so endlessly fascinating, so masterfully implemented, and so astoundingly deep, complex and nuanced - as to dwarf virtually all other gaming forays into complex Sci-Fi. The feeling of uncovering clues and piecing together elements in Outer Wilds is tantamount to the feeling of genuine scientific discovery, or genuine mapping of uncharted territory - and the game makes the player feel like they are both the first one to do it, and a genius for managing so.

The lore is perfectly created, the visuals and audio are astoundingly well realised and utterly additive to the overall game, and the tone that is struck - simultaneously tragic, hopeful, sad and cathartic - is one that is almost wholly unique in gaming, and pulled off with a level of mastery virtually unparalleled in the medium.

 

There is simply no person in existence whom I would not recommend Outer Wilds to - the game doesn't simply make you feel good, or bad, or smart, or dumb - it makes you feel fragile, and human, and a part of something grand and beautiful.

An utterly powerful, truly astonishing achievement.

 

 

The Ranking:

Let's cut to brass tacks here - Outer Wilds is placing high.

I mean HIGH.

 

It's a curiously difficult game to define in terms of genre when one considers the beat-by-beat gameplay, falling somewhere between adventure game and exploratory walking sim, but it's far less difficult to define when taking a step back, and considering the whole. The fact is, Outer Wilds is actually a Puzzle Game - it just happens to be a puzzle game where every individual puzzle is free-form, and feeds into a single, overall puzzle.

That form does exist in one other place on this list - in wonderfully realised 1-bit puzzle mystery The Return of the Obra Dinn - and that game is no slouch on the rankings - but the fact of the matter is that as compared to Outer Wilds, even a game of the calibre of Obra Dinn feels positively rudimentary.

 

Indeed, the only real comparison point as far as puzzling gameplay goes, is current No.3 ranked game: The Witness.

 

Now, The Witness - as any regular reader of this thread knows - is a game that I not only think is wonderfully put together, but is also genuinely important in the industry, and had an effect on my that was profound. Indeed, I would make a strong argument that the skill-set honed in playing The Witness directly affected my ability to solve Outer Wilds.
The Witness is a game I came out the other side of feeling more intelligent, and more able to deal with elements of life, both in games, and beyond. Outer Wilds, on the other hand, is not a game concerned with teaching those kind of lateral thinking and problem-solving elements - but rather in using the culmination of them to elevate emotional gaming on top of intellectual superiority. It is a game that rewards having learned those concepts already, and shows the level to which such learnings can be purposed, into crafting an emotional experience on top of the intellectual one, that surpasses virtually all other attempts at emotional connection to gaming media.

I loved The Witness - so much that I still think of it daily - but I didn't get tears in my eyes. Outer Wilds? That shit made me feel smart, yes, but it also made me weep. There is an emotional layer on top of the intellectual one that worked so well, that I can confidently state that I will NEVER forget the experience.

 

As such, I believe Outer Wilds has to rank higher than The Witness - and any regular Science Chum will know - that means something!

 

The only two games currently ranked higher than The Witness do so for reasons that are entirely dissimilar to it. Both Hitman 3, and Invisible Inc. earn their lofty places due to incredible variety and mechanical soundness, and so there is no direct comparison in terms of gameplay. They have to be considered on pure feeling - on impact alone.

 

I mulled on this one for a VERY long time, but in the end, I feel like the result is: Hitman 3 retains it's spot at the top, but Outer Wilds does manage to (just) outpace Invisible Inc. The reason is simply one of scale and size. Hitman 3 is - without hyperbole -  one of the biggest games ever, as well as one of the most mechanically sound, endlessly fun and blisteringly good. 

 

Invisible Inc has almost all of the same elements going for it, but it's smaller scope and scale means that while it is mechanically sublime, it does have more trouble when compared with an emotionally resonant experience like Outer Wilds, when that emotional experience is coupled with such fascinating lore and deep, complex and finely-honed puzzle elements. that created a virtual deadlock in my mind. This match up nearly shattered my feeble brain!...but the clincher is in Invisible Inc's memory leak issue. While it is easily dealt with, the fact is Invisible Inc isn't quite the game on console that it is on PC. The memory leak problem does persist. It isn't a dealbreaker, but it is a minor blemish on an otherwise perfect game, and as such, I feel like Outer Wilds has to squeak past it.

 

In the end, we are in such rarified territory that the differences are virtually semantic - saying Invisible Inc is 'only' the third best trophy-enabled game I have ranked so far is still a hell of a claim, after all! - however, Outer Wilds is now the 2nd best trophy-enabled game!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Forgotten City

 

Summary: 

The Forgotten City began as a narrative mod for Skyrim, created over 4 years by hobbyist Nick Pierce, who had never made a game before, but was an avid history buff. It released in 2015 to much critical acclaim - so much, in fact, that, building upon that success, the entire game was remade and reworked for a new setting, to operate as a full-scale product in its own right, releasing in 2021 to immediate and near unanimous critical acclaim in its own right.

 

Waking in a forrest on the banks of the Tiber river after having been rescued from its currents by a mysterious woman named Karen, the player sets out to look for another missing person - Al Worth - whom they are informed had been in Karen's company until recently, when they ventured into a nearby set of Roman ruins. Stepping through the overgrown ruins of an ancient Roman structure, and past a number of curious and forbidding golden statues of Roman citizens, the player comes across the body of an old man hung from a noose, with an apparent suicide note carved in stone beneath his feet. The note confirms this is Al, and alludes to his having been trapped - seemingly for decades - in some kind of inescapable prison. As they explore, looking for further clues, the player steps into a shrine, and is transported to a similar shrine - this one not a ruin, but in full glory - on the outskirts of a vast and beautiful Roman-era city, populated with living, breathing Roman people. 
Well, some Roman people.
23 of them, to be exact.

 

This is where the game begins proper, and the conceit - fascinating and complex, yet notably well constructed - is made clear. The city is a prison of sorts. All the citizens have come to find themselves here by some happenstance, and none are able to leave. That is partly due to mere physical impediment - the city lies in a secluded valley, surrounded by high cliffs and impossible to traverse, but also due to the mysterious deity that rules over the place.
There is a God in charge, and he has rules. One rule, in fact - the Golden Rule. 

The entire city operates under a divine edict - if any person within the city sins, then all citizens are to die. This includes the player. 
Within the first cycle, the player is introduced to the current ruler of the city - Sentius, the magistrate - who explains the dogmatic edict under which the citizenry lives, as well as alluding to the manner in which the games signature time-loop exists.

 

This time loop is the crux of the game. The player arrives in the same shrine at the same time of the same day, each cycle, and the city operates on a continual ticking clock. The same day is repeated over and over - resetting each time that the Golden Rule is broken, and the player is tasked with discovering how to break the loop, or how to avoid the Golden Rule being broken - as it always has on this day, for millennia of repetitions.

 

While the player's actions are subject to the same rules as the citizenry - if you steal an item, for example, or harm someone physically, the calamity occurs, and the golden statues around the city coming to life, killing all within. At this point, the player has to run to the shrine to restart the loop before they are killed. However, the player is not the one wild-card. Regardless of player action, there is a clockwork world running all the while. Depending on the actions they have taken - someone else will surely break the Golden Rule too... it's only a matter of time and circumstance.

The actual beat-by-beat of the game operates as somewhere between a detective story (as the player endeavours to identify which citizen is going to break the Golden Rule,) and as an exploratory mystery, as the player then slowly turns their attention to deciphering the mysteries of the city itself, and the reasons for the existence of the Golden Rule. 

 

There are elements of action - depending on a choice early on, the player may have a limited-use modern firearm available to them, and an early narrative tract sees them acquire one of the golden bows used by the statues during each calamity - however, these aspects are relatively minimal, and take a back-seat to the primary gameplay mechanics: those of dialogue choices, clue-gathering, mystery solving and detective work. 

Where Skyrim operated an extensive upgrade system, and balanced it's narrative elements against considerable levelling of action elements, here the player character never gets stronger or faster or sturdier - yet the feeling of 'levelling up' still remains, despite not existing in the game statistically or mechanically. The reason is simple - The Forgotten City is a game that uses Social Engineering and conversational manipulation as its primary focus, and as such, the more the player knows, the more 'powerful' they become. 
If the player has discovered 'X', conversation options involving 'X' will start to crop up in different areas, which can lead to clues to 'Y', or 'Z'. Building upon these clues, and using them effectively keeps shifting the power balance of the City, as the player gains more and more ways to socially engineer different outcomes, slowly allowing the player to feel they are 'levelling up' - from ignorant outsider, to knowledgable deviant, to Phil-Conners-level omnipotent force!

 

It's a formula that works incredibly well, primarily due to the careful consideration on the developers part of land-area, scale, and the size of the population. The city is not enormous - it's certainly large enough to have a stately grandeur, and has enough nooks and crannies to support significant exploration over the length of the game, but is not so large that the player feels lost after thier first few loops. They can come to know the space and the inhabitants intimately, and in doing so can come to know the world implicitly - both understand the routines of the citizens throughout the day, and to identify where changes in those routines have resulted from their actions, as well as what those changes might be in advance of them. 
The citizens are very well realised, and of a small enough number that none feel superfluous or unimportant. While it might take several loops for the player to come to meet every one, each is well written and with their own distinct outlook, personality and backstory, and so there is a real sense that the player can come not only to inhabit the city, but to understand it - its landscape, its internal political and social machinations, and where its secrets lie.

 

Where the game really revels is in two areas: historical lessons, and philosophical discourse.
In terms of the historical information, there is a wealth here. Nick Pierce clearly knows his stuff, and there are significant nuggets of fascinating historical information here presented in a uniquely fun-to-learn form. Indeed, I found myself - more than once - stopping the game, and simply reading wikipedia articles on aspects of the Roman Empire, or Egyptian Lore, or Greek Mythology, as the game has a habit of piquing interest and whetting appetite for knowledge in a way few others do. 

Philosophically, there is real meat to be found in the game's mining of its own unique premise for nuggets of moral debate. The basic premise of The Golden Rule is clear right from the outset, but the game revels in the grey areas that premise invokes. Being a Roman Empire-era city, there are both Christians and those who hold to the Roman Gods. There is a Greek, who still holds to his Greek Gods, and other moralistic and dogmatic principles at play too - not to mention the fact that it is unclear to the player, (and to the citizens themselves,) what affiliation the mysterious deity who controls the Golden Rule has. 
The exact nature of what constitutes a "sin" is unknown. 
Stealing and murder are fairly obvious, however, when the player comes across a man driven by indentured servitude and lost love to suicide, and is tasked with talking him down from the ledge, for example, there are interesting moral quandaries brought up that add extra tension to the proceedings. 
Is suicide considered a sin? 
Will his killing himself doom everyone else? 
Should that matter to him? 
Is saving him against his will morally acceptable, given that ambiguity?
These are the kind of philosophical slants the game enjoys the most, and the richest source of its best writing.

 

Speaking of that writing - it is uniformly excellent here. The game is very clearly based in the Skyrim model - everything from the visuals, to the movement, to the action and general feel of the game are very much analogous to Bethesda's open-world model, and that includes the dialogue trees and the feel of conversations in the game - however, I can comfortably state that The Forgotten City's writing is a cut above anything on show in even the best narrative arcs of any Elder Scrolls game. That is, of course, expected to some extent - Skyrim provides hundreds of hours of gaming across a massive world full of hundreds of missions, while The Forgotten City contains itself in one area, with far fewer lines of dialogue and individual missions - however, the extent to which The Forgotten City outdoes even the best of Skyrim on a narrative front is jarring, even allowing for that. Every character feels rounded and well drawn - distinct and individual - and within the first 10 hours, I really felt like I had come to know each one of them much more closely and more intimately than I ever did with any character in any Elder Scrolls game, or any Fallout game for that matter. 

There is a level to which individual strands of missions and stories compound on top of one another that is largely absent in Elder Scrolls games - because there are so few characters, each is integrated into multiple facets of the overall story, and features in multiple individual arcs. Because there is no requirement to deal with these piecemeal, all missions tend to blend together into one overall story, which could feel messy and haphazard in some hands, but in this game, feels natural and gives the whole game a cohesive-yet-flexible feeling and flowing overall narrative.

 

It is worth noting - The Forgotten City is a game that has been made before - and it shows. Because the game is a remade version of what was at one point a full-fledged narrative mod, there is an extent to which that mod served as the biggest, longest Beta-Test ever afforded to an Indie Game. The small design team have clearly had a chance to evaluate exactly what worked, what didn't, and where streamlining and finessing is required to keep the experience tight, informationally dense, and fun to play. 
While some of these might not feel immediately apparent, as the player pushes further into the game, the sheer number of quality-of-life aspects that have been included is remarkable, and more than that - the way these aspects are then folded back into the narrative elements, is downright impressive. They feel less like merely the gameplay flourishes they are, but also like integral parts of a narrative and the effect is a game that feels as tight as a mermaid's butthole.

 

To give an example (without getting too spoiler-adjacent,) let's look at the role of one character: Galerius.   

Galerius is the first character the player encounters, immediately talking to them as they step out of the shrine. 
In the first loop, he acts as guide to city - a gameplay-necessary task for first-time players.
In the second and third loops, there is dialogue options added to his conversation that both helps to explain the 'rules' of the loop, and provide some required humour and levity to the proceedings. That's a good idea, of course, and in a lesser game, this might be the sum total of what Galerius does in the game, but here, this is but a first step.

Once the player has completed a few loops, and progressed some individual storylines through to their conclusions (say, saving a character's life, or finding medicine for another,) the game design reaches a cross-road. There is an internal problem with time-loop games: Because the world 'resets', the game should, by rights, require them to repeat these actions every time they want to benefit from the results. 

That would be rather dull and repetitive however, and so most games employ some kind of "cheat".
In The Forgotten City, at that point Galerius becomes the "short-cut" - the player can immediately tell him specific snippets of information right at the start of the loop, and dispatch him to complete these actions. 
"So-and-so needs this medicine!" 
"Tell so-and-so that this will help!" 
"Pay this money to this guy, to free that guy!" 
etc. 

This allows the player to feel a sense of continual forward progress, despite the nature of the game as cyclical and unchanging.

 

That already feels like a smart idea, however, the game isn't happy to simply let him feel like a narrative device in this regard. 
Later, once the player has got to the point where they are using Galerius as their "shortcut" to help multiple different characters each loop, this action then feeds back into another storyline, wherein Galerius can be proposed as a candidate in the city election (which happens at the end of each day, the particular looping day happening to have fallen on an election day.) 
Because Galerius has been helping so many people (at the behest of the player,) he is, by logical conclusion, made popular with those characters. That in turn affects his chances in a free election - the player using him as their proxy, means his relationship with other NPCs is changed, and improved. 

 

That is the kind of smart combination of quality-of-life gameplay mechanics, and narrative coherence that we - as players - are rarely afforded. Indeed, for the sake of gameplay mechanical fluidity, we are accustomed to looking past narrative dissonance in certain areas - we know there is a reason for them that is tied to our own enjoyment of the game as an entertainment product, and so we forgive them.
There is really no expectation on our part for the game to find ways to re-fold those contrivances back into narrative elements again - to make lemonade from the mechanical lemons - we are usually happy to accept the contrivances. However, when a game like The Forgotten City does find a way to benefit narratively from mechanical 'tricks', it really stands out, and should be endlessly applauded. Making a game that affords the player ease-of-play, and not only doesn't break it's own immersion in pursuit of it - it actually strengthens its narrative by way of them - is laudable, and that philosophy is all over The Forgotten City.

 

It's this kind of finessing that has clearly sprung for the unique path this game took to release. By getting to make the game a second time over, this time without the constraints that the original had, but with all of the benefits, the developers have been able to craft something tight and smart, without padding or fluff, and where every aspect feels knitted together in a way few games manage, and Skyrim-style games NEVER do.

 

Visually, the game looks very good. There is a very clear lineage to Skyrim here - while it is not running on the Bethesda engine, it is clearly aping it, and movement and feel are remarkably close to Skyrim. Visually through, The Forgotten City really benefits from having a much smaller land-mass to deal with. The city looks really nice - the architecture are beautifully designed and have an aesthetic coherence, and lighting is a cut above anything seen in an Elder Scrolls game. Graphically, it is not mind-blowing - it is unmistakably Sykrim-esque - however, it is a cut above that game, and while mechanically it might feel a little older than a 2021 game, it still looks much more modern than 2012's Skyrim did.

Character models are detailed and distinct. The actual mechanics of conversation are still in the 'front-facing', direct-to-camera-style of Bethesda games, though there is a bit more in the way of emotive expression than Bethesda games manage. Actual NPC animations in walking around or doing motions are still somewhat stilted in the same clockwork Bethesda style, though these are harder to take issue with in The Forgotten City, given that there is less action across the board. For the most part, the game is about simply talking to these characters, rather than seeing them partake in long animated sections.

 

Audio is good in the game - there is a strong, if not intensely memorable score, however, the real audio-work is in the acting and voiceover, and that is of across-the-board high quality. There are a lot of lines of dialogue, and they are well read, and character personalities and loyalties are evident in their performances. There can be the occasional hard-swings in tone that are somewhat unavoidable in dialogue-tree games (and particularly in The Forgotten City, where many characters will have multiple story-narratives that affect them, and can be addressed all within the same conversation,) but never enough to really feel jarring.

 

Overall The Forgotten City is a hell of a game - and a really outstanding achievement. 
It would be the easiest thing in the world to state that "The Forgotten City is amazing, considering it come from such a small team" - and it is - but that really undersells what is, I think, a remarkable achievement regardless of which developer put it out. 

 

We have seen other games which use the Bethesda-style model and apply it to smaller, less janky overall products - The Outer Worlds, for example - however, I have never seen that medal re-applied to something as small and tight as The Forgotten City before, and the effect is really something.

Rather than an impressively vast, but rickety and stitched-together feeling world, here, we have a solid, smart, well crafted small one, with a labyrinthine narrative of interconnected and well-crafted missions and narrative, strong, bold characters, an arc that works really well - in all possible endings - and a game that feels lean, clever, fun, and just a joy to play.

 

 

 

The Ranking:

The Forgotten City started as a mod for Skyrim, and so there is a completely obvious first comparison point... that's right you guessed it: Little Big Planet! 
...No, just kidding! Obviously Skyrim has to be our jumping off point.

 

Comparison to Skyrim is a tricky thing though. While I would argue - actually, I would categorically state - that the writing in The Forgotten City runs rings around any equivalent number of Skyrim missions and story arcs, there is the economy of scale to consider. Skyrim is huge and vast and near endless. The Forgotten City is minuscule by comparison - in terms of population and landmass. It goes for depth, where Skyrim goes for breadth. 
While those comparisons are made tricky as a result, the simply fact is that in an age of Open-World fatigue, (I am less afflicted than most by that syndrome, but not entirely immune,) and where quality is more important than quantity, I do have trouble using size as a factor. Yes, there is nothing in The Forgotten City that gives an equivalent feeling to that of setting out in the vast unknown, ready to encounter something unknown, the fact is, Skyrim rarely really delivered on that front. What was out there in the unknown was... always a daedric artefact, a ruin, or a village. It was never a genuinely clever, interesting discussion or a fascinating time loop style mechanic.

In the end, The Forgotten City is playing with the same toys, at a much smaller scale, but with much more imagination. If Skyrim is No Man's Sky, then The Forgotten City is Outer Wilds, if you will.

As such, personal tastes, industry fatigue and simple mathematics dictate, quality trumps quantity, and The Forgotten City comes out on top.

 

Above Skyrim, we have another Bethesda open world - that of Fallout 4. in Fallout 4's case, virtually all aspects of the same argument remain. I think Fallout is more narratively interesting than Skyrim ever was, and it was plagued with (slightly) fewer glitches and bugs (The Forgotten City, by the way, had none,) and Fallout benefits form better music and more varied missions, however, again, nothing it has comes close to The Forgotten City in terms of narrative interest, historical, political or philosophical debate, or just connection to any place or set of characters. As such, The Forgotten City prevails here too.

 

Working up the list, there are few comparison points, however, one that does jump out is Life is Strange. That is also a game about time-travel in some sense, and with a small setting with a limited cast of characters. While Life is Strange never gets as intellectually stimulating or clever as The Forgotten City, I do think it does emotionally what The Forgotten City does intellectually. That is a side The Forgotten City does lack to some extent. Because the player comes to know every character, and their looping mechanic sets them 'outside' thier concerns emotionally. With Life is Strange, despite Max Caulfield's powers, she still feels emotionally invested in the proceedings, and that emotional investment extends to the player also - in a way it doesn't with The Forgotten City.

 

That, I think, is a harder thing to get right, and so I think combining that with Life is Strange's superior audio (in voice work, and in soundtrack,) gives Life is Strange the edge. It's close though. Emotional connection might beat out intellectual curiosity, but The Forgotten City is doing intellectual so well, that it gives Life is Strange a run for its money. 

 

It's close enough, in fact, that I feel comfortable placing The Forgotten City just one rung below!

 

 

 

 

BONUS GAMES

1 Additional eligible S-Ranks earned this round!:

 

 

 

Sayonara Wild Hearts

 

(Thanks to @Cruscah for the recommend!)

 

Summary: 

A curious amalgam of rhythm game and speed-racer, Sayonara Wild Hearts, from Simogo, takes some of the elements of traditional 'note-track' rhythm games, but eschews the more technical, button-specific mechanics, and instead reworks the format to create a more intuitive, free-flowing and narrative based art game, concerned with three things: stylistically vibrant visuals, catchy, satisfying synth-pop music, and an incredible, often dizzying sense of speed!

 

Narrated by Queen Latifah, the story is an esoteric and unusual one - a young woman is transported from her modern-day bedroom to an alternate universe ruled over by divine arcana of the Tarot (the High Priestess, the Hierophant and  the Empress.) She is tasked with retrieving the "Harmony" - stolen by Death and her Teddy-Girl inspired, motorcycle-riding minions. The young woman, via a series of elaborate - and beautiful looking - levels, travels and chases these minions (in the form of biker gangs) on her hoverboard, (and on motorcycles / 50's muscle-cars / boats/ or straight-up flight, depending on the level or section of level,) collecting pieces of the Harmony in the form of shining hearts, fighting the minions, and eventually retrieving the Harmony from little Death.

 

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a rhythm game, and so it feels right to first talk about the audio - specifically the music. It is fantastic. A variable and catchy synth-pop extravaganza, the pace and tone of the music ebbs and flows over the course of what ends up being around a 45 minute full-run of the game, switching up the pace as often as the game can muster, and working as both individual songs, and as a whole-album piece. 
It's worth noting here, while I am a fan of really all musical genres, Synth-pop is not necessarily a genre I gravitate towards, but throughout the game I was consistently impressed both with how much I liked the music in its gameplay specific use... and divorced from it. The Sayonara Wild Hearts soundtrack album has received much play in my Spotify rotation since beginning the game, and has remained, after I got the platinum and filed the game away.

 

While some rhythm games tend to favour the use of a mix of individual songs not original to the game itself - tapping external sources for music that fits to the genre mould of the game being created - Sayonara Wild Hearts is clearly one where the music was specifically crafted with gameplay in mind. The songs work independent of the game, but there is much more of a sense of a coherent audio-scape and natural progression of the music along with the gameplay than is traditionally found in games that tap external audio sources. Indeed, it is telling that individual levels have such variety in terms of length - some songs run at less than 90 seconds, others last a full 5 or 6 minutes - that gives the soundscape a variety that few rhythm games manage, and makes it clear the game drove the music, rather than the other way around.

 

The visual side of the game is really something too. A cell-shaded, low-poly look is overlaid on a hi-res, well polished gaming model, and the result is a striking, always interesting aesthetic that is both cohesive across the game, and feels tailored and specific to the particular mood of the song in question. 

The sense of speed in the game is almost dizzying - there is barely a moment to breath across the entire length of the game, but visually, it keeps up completely. For a game moving at the speed it does, it is remarkable that I never once felt any hitching or frame rate issues or slowdown - everything works perfectly to the beat of the music - and indeed, it has to, as the pace is fo frenetic and frenzied, that often the player movements are less about what they see, and more about intuition and feeling - following the beat and rhythm of the music drive the player more than reaction to immediate visual cues.

 

The gameplay is relatively simple here. Most of the time, the player's motions are on the analogue stick only, as they whip left and right, avoiding obstacles, and collecting the hearts in a level. Level Score increases based on an unseen combo-meter, mounting with every heart, and resetting at each failure. Failure in the game never resets a level - if the player crashes or falls, or is otherwise wrong-footed, the game simply resets them back a second or two with a record scratch, however, achieving the best scores in a level ("Gold Rank!", as Queen Latifah exclaims,) does not require perfection. Some hearts can be missed - but a high score does generally require at least an absence of outright failures. 

This movement is occasionally interspersed or added to with on-the-beat button hits, taking the form of QTE style prompts.These can be hit with any face button, and so are purely about rhythm, rather than technical precision. This is smart, as the game is one that is primarily about feeling - being lost in a zen fugue state of music and visuals - something made easier by not having to concentrate attention on these button prompts themselves. While the player needs to be aware they are happening, they do not need to identify a specific button to hit, and because they are rhythmically tied to the BPM of the song, they don't really need to divert their attention form the onscreen visuals to hit them perfectly.

 

The trophy list isn't something I often spend time discussing in these reviews, but here, it warrants some attention. Unlike most games, Sayonara Wild Hearts does an interesting thing with these, as they are both entirely based on optional action, and have their own 'mini-game' involved with them, in the form or riddles. It is perfectly possible to both complete Sayonara Wild Hearts, to achieve the best rank in every song, and to collect most of the optional collectibles, without ever receiving a single trophy. In order to unlock these, the player needs instead, to solve a series of riddles based on the Zodiac wheel. These clues give indications of the trophy requirements, and the player then must perform those specific actions in the level required to unlock them.
This is an area I think is interesting, though truth-be-told, I do think the riddles are pitched a little too high in some cases.

While I was able to decipher the meaning of a fair number on my own, I did end up referring to a guide to work out what was meant by some of the clues, and without any additional in-game hints, I'm not sure I would have ever solved the meaning of some of them! 
I do think the concept is interesting - and particularly suited to game like Sayonara Wild Hearts, which is already quite abstracted from reality, and in which repetition of individual levels is both easy and fun, and a baked in part of the game anyway. However, it is a bit of difficult thing to really follow through on in an age of Trophy Guides and internet game help - really, these riddles don't do an awful lot for the game, as anyone is able to very easily go online, and find the actual trophy requirements at the drop of a hat.

 

Overall, Sayonara Wild Hearts is an interesting, great looking and sounding, and genuinely fun game. The music and the visuals are both great, but more than that, the symbiosis between them is incredibly satisfying and lends itself well to the kind of repetition that rhythm games require of the player. 

While it's not a game that will likely have the kind of longevity of some rhythm games out there - there isn't really room here for DLC, or additional songs, and once the ones that are there are mastered, there isn't a huge amount of repeatability - that is made up for by how much fun it is to play the first time round. 

An audio-visual treat, with solid gameplay, blistering speed, and a really satisfying game feel!

 

 

The Ranking:

There are previous few rhythm games on the ranking currently, but of those that are there, the split is fairly clear - Sayonara Wild Hearts is a better, more interesting and more original experience than Invector, and than Persona 4: Dancing All Night, but it isn't getting close to the current front-runner, in Lumines Remastered.

 

That doesn't narrow things terribly far, however, and so we need to look at other fast-paced, visually interesting indie games for some guidance. In terms of musically-themed or at least musically-affected indie games, one that jumps out is DoubleFine's interesting, 70's Disco-inspired Metroidvania Headlander.

 

Headlander is certainly more of a traditional 'gamer's game', and has more variety to it, but all that interesting mechanical complexity has double stacking up against the wild, incredibly exciting thrill-ride of Sayonara Wild Hearts. I also think the visuals of Sayonara Wild Hearts beat out Headlander, and the odd, off-the-wall aspects of the art-style and narrative probably outpace Headlander too. As such, Sayonara Wild Hearts climbs above it.

 

Another musically-affected game is the indie Archanoid-inspired action arcade game Shatter. While I would argue the Sayonara Wild Hearts soundtrack beats out Shatter's Electronica-flavoured one, and the visuals of Sayonara Wild Hearts are superior, the actual mechanical gameplay in Shatter remains ahead. That makes it tight, but pound-for-pound, I think Shatter has to take it - it's got a longevity that outpaces that of Sayonara Wild Hearts, and has a bit more meat to it overall.

 

It really comes down to feeling in between those, as there's nothing directly comparable, and so it comes down to the old "would I rather replay Sayonara Wild Hearts in it's entirety than this?"

Working up from Headlander, the first game for which the answer is "No" is Telltale's The Walking Dead, and so, it find's it's spot!

 

 

 

 

 

So there we have it folks - a big one this time, with some serious bangers on it!

 

Thanks to @Neef-GT5 & @grayhammmer for putting in requests!

 

 

 Hitman 3 remains as 'Current Most Awesome Game', though it encounters its closest call yet!

LA Cops stays as the worst-of-the-worst, with the title of  'Least Awesome Game'

 

 

What games will be coming along next time to challenge for the top spot... or the bottom rung?

That's up to randomness, me.... and YOU!

 

Remember:

 

SPECIAL NOTE

 

If there are any specific games anyone wants to see get ranked sooner rather than later - drop a message, and I'll mark them for 'Priority Ranking'! 

 

The only stipulation is that they must be on my profile, at 100% (S-Rank)....

 and aren't already on the Rankings! 

 

 

 

Catch y'all later my Scientific Brothers and Sisters! 

[Neef-GT5]

Another great batch, thanks ? ?

 

Outer Wilds was in my why-not-play-it-someday list; I’m afraid you just moved it to my must-play-someday list. Well done ? 

 

[DrBloodmoney]

28 minutes ago, Neef-GT5 said:

Another great batch, thanks

 

Outer Wilds was in my why-not-play-it-someday list; I’m afraid you just moved it to my must-play-someday list. Well done  

 

 

That alone makes this one feel worthwhile mate!

 

Anyone whom I can encourage to check out Outer Wilds is victory for me - that game is such a singular, unusual experience, that I think it behoves every gamer to check it out - if only to see how far the medium can be pushed in that particular direction!

 

If I may, I absolutely recommend avoiding any kind of spoiler territory - including even looking at trophy lists ahead of time.

 

It's not a game you would even need to look at trophies ahead of time anyways (the benefit of the 22 minute gameplay loop, means there is no trophy that cannot be achieved later on in less than 22 minutes!), so there's nothing anyone needs to know in advance in terms of "missable" or anything like that. As such, simply experiencing the game completely untethered from outside sources is totally viable, and absolutely the way to go - and it's even better if you have someone to act as co-pilot on the couch, to bounce ideas off!

 

There is really nothing like finding one of the major clues, and putting it together yourself, to make you feel both as big as a giant, and as tiny as a speck of space-dust! ?

Edited January 25, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[Cleggworth]

The Outer Wilds sounds utterly fascinating... it completely passed me by other than the outer worlds/outer wilds thing that went on when they came out. I shall definitely have to correct that

 

Also I just finished Berlin in Hitman 3, great twist on the formula and yes, the best level in the series. So far anyway. Imagine that level with Deathloop's Julianna style invasions from other players ?

 

Oh and Forgotten City is such a special game, I hope one day it comes to plus so more people will play it. I do wonder about what they do next though. It's Genesis as a Skyrim Mod means they were wrapped up in this one game for years and years. Can they replicate this success in a new project? One they haven't lived and loved for all that time. I hope so and I'm excited to find out

Edited January 25, 2022 by Cleggworth

[DrBloodmoney]

12 minutes ago, Cleggworth said:

The Outer Wilds sounds utterly fascinating... it completely passed me by other than the outer worlds/outer wilds thing that went on when they came out. I shall definitely have to correct that

 

dude... I made that mistake! 

I heard about Outer Wilds on a podcast... and rushed out and bought Outer Worlds ?

 

Not that Outer Worlds was a bad buy, of course - it was fine... but I know on which side of that coin flip my bread is buttered!

 

12 minutes ago, Cleggworth said:

Also I just finished Berlin in Hitman 3, great twist on the formula and yes, the best level in the series. So far anyway. Imagine that level with Deathloop's Julianna style invasions from other players

 

Word!

 

12 minutes ago, Cleggworth said:

Oh and Forgotten City is such a special game, I hope one day it comes to plus so more people will play it. I do wonder about what they do next though. It's Genesis as a Skyrim Mod means they were wrapped up in this one game for years and years. Can they replicate this success in a new project? One they haven't lived and loved for all that time. I hope so and I'm excited to find out

 

Yeah, it's gonna be an odd act to follow - I wonder if they will maybe try going hard in a different direction, rather than do something in the same kind of Bethesda-adjacent style... feels risky to try the same thing again... though I wouldn't necessarily sniff at it either way!

[Copanele]

OH man, this new scientific paper outlined 3 games - one that I've played and 2 others that I am now aiming to get.

 

Kena: Bridge of Spirits - Initially I was "it looks like a cute adventure-platformer game where you bop monsters with a cute girl and do cute stuff". However seeing those threads with "Master Difficulty ruined my childhood" and also seeing how you've thoroughly enjoyed it, I will definitely aim to grab that game at a discount. I am quite intrigued by it now  

 

LA Noire - I had a similar experience, I loved the game (and felt that the ending FIT the narrative and the theme - yeah maybe the final missions weren't as crazy as the Crime Desk, but it was Noir Film alright). However I DID play the PS3 version and...yeah Truth, Doubt and Lie were SO confusing to use  I had to use a guide in some places.

I bet everyone who played the game remembers this line  Imagine it was "LIE" for me as an option

 

 

The Forgotten City - I saw someone streaming this game for 5 minutes and...my god it felt like one of the best narrative HORROR games out there  did not know it's also for Playstation, up into the wishlist it goes!

 

Again, my wallet will suffer due to your reviews ?

[DrBloodmoney]

23 minutes ago, Copanele said:

OH man, this new scientific paper outlined 3 games - one that I've played and 2 others that I am now aiming to get.

 

Kena: Bridge of Spirits - Initially I was "it looks like a cute adventure-platformer game where you bop monsters with a cute girl and do cute stuff". However seeing those threads with "Master Difficulty ruined my childhood" and also seeing how you've thoroughly enjoyed it, I will definitely aim to grab that game at a discount. I am quite intrigued by it now  

 

Yeah, definitely a game that really underplays it's true nature with it's marketing and visuals - I don't like playing the "rarity guessing game" often (partly because those arguments often get asinine, but mostly because I'm terrible at it!) - but I suspect that if the game hadn't had a very simple exploit in the early versions to allow people to unlock that master difficulty trophy from an "easy" playthrough, I suspect the rarity of the plat would be sitting around the 5-8% range, rather than the 20-odd% it is currently.

 

Not one I'd necessarily die on a hill for, but certainly worth having a closer look at than the initial impression would suggest!

 

 

Quote

LA Noire - I had a similar experience, I loved the game (and felt that the ending FIT the narrative and the theme - yeah maybe the final missions weren't as crazy as the Crime Desk, but it was Noir Film alright). However I DID play the PS3 version and...yeah Truth, Doubt and Lie were SO confusing to use  I had to use a guide in some places.

I bet everyone who played the game remembers this line  Imagine it was "LIE" for me as an option

 

Dude - don't you "doubt" every time someone "Lies"? 

Isn't that kind of... the whole point?

 

Yeah, what a bizarre decision that was - definitely one that makes a huge difference once it's corrected in the remaster!

 

Quote

The Forgotten City - I saw someone streaming this game for 5 minutes and...my god it felt like one of the best narrative HORROR games out there  did not know it's also for Playstation, up into the wishlist it goes!

 

Again, my wallet will suffer due to your reviews 

 

Dude - it's just such a well put together thing! 

It feels odd making the biggest selling point of a game be just... man, they clearly thought about this game so much - because that's a tough thing to articulate correctly, but it really is the case here - there's such a tightness and carefulness to the way the game has been mechanically constructed, that it lets you just sink into the experience, and feel like you are free to just do whatever you want, and know the game will 'keep up'. 

It's the kind of thing you usually only notice by it's absence, but here, it's so notably well done, that you actually notice it in a positive way - and that's something!

Edited January 26, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[DrBloodmoney]

 

So, with 284 games on the list now, out of a total that has grown to 567 eligible games, we have finally passed the half-way point of the great scientific endeavour! 

 

With that in mind, it's time for another little Mid-Point, Scientific Analysis of the Scientific Analysis 

 

 

 

The Basics

Current Top Game: (No.1) 

Hitman 3

 

Current most 'in-the-middle' Game (No.142)

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

 

Current Bottom Game (No.284)

LA Cops

 

 

 

Current Top 20 Breakdown & Info

 

 

Most represented Genre:

 

1. Immersive Sim (6 Games - Hitman 3, Hitman 2, Prey,  Dishonoured,  Dishonoured II,  Bioshock) 
2. RPG (4 Games  - Persona 5 Royal, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy VII, Persona 4 Golden)
3. Strategy (3 Games - Invisible Inc., Transistor, This War of Mine: The Little Ones)

 

 

Most Represented Developers:

 

1. Arkane - 3 Games
2. (3-way tie) Atlas - 2 Games / FROM Software - 2 Games / IO Interactive - 2 Games

3. All other developers tied with 1 each!

 

 

Most Represented Console:

 

1. PS4 - 12 Games

2. PS3 - 6 Games

3. (Tie) PS1 - 1 Game / PSVita - 1 Game

 

 

By Year:

 

Oldest games: 1997 (1 Game - Final Fantasy VII)

Newest Games: 2021 (1 Games - Hitman 3)

Most represented Year: 2016 (4 Games -This War of Mine, Dishonoured 2, Invisible Inc., The Witness)

 

 

 

 

 

Biggest new personal surprises on the list

 

 

 

1. How recent some of the top games are!

With 2021 game Hitman 3 currently riding the top spot, (given its size, and quality, setting an incredibly high bar for other games,) 2019 game Outer Wilds right behind it, 2020's Persona 5 Royal right up there, and 3 2018 games right up there, I think that more than confirms the level to which my eyes roll when I head the old "Games were better in my day" arguments get trotted out by the usual cadre of curmudgeonly stick-in-the-muds!

 

Games have, in fact, never been better, nor more diverse.... and I've got Science to prove it, God-dammit! ?

 

2. Outer Wilds beating The Witness

Prior to really drilling down and thinking about it analytically, I would likely have casually mused that The Witness was my favourite Puzzle Game of all time... but the more I thought about it, the more two things came to light - Outer Wilds is, in fact, a Puzzle Game at its core... and it's combination of life-affirming motive content, and intellectual stimulation actually surpassed the The Witness.

While I would still argue The Witness directly affected my enjoyment of Outer Wilds - I really do believe that The Witness provided the lessons, that were used to solve Outer Wilds - that to me just proves that games, in many aspects, are still on a forward journey.

Great games lead to ideas, which lead to even greater games, which lead to new ideas... and the melting pot of ideas continues to mature and to grow across the whole gaming sphere!

 

3. Dark Souls II being pushed out of the Top 5

I love Souls Games. I absolutely adore the genre, and - probably more than any other genre - FROM have a monopoly on it. I can't think of any genre out there where the original instigator of it still maintains such a high level of quality within it, and consistently remains the top dog. Dark Souls II is still my favourite FROM Souls Game (which makes it, by default, by favourite Souls-like, period,) and so it was surprising to me to see it slip out of the top 5 on the list already. 

That is, of course, not a slight on Dark Souls II - after all, No.8 out of 284 is still a hard-as-fuck 5-star endorsement! - however, casual listing of my favourite games of all time would always include Dark Souls II... and so it shocked me a little to see it surpassed by 7 others. 

I guess that's just a testament to how great those games are too!

 

4. LA Cops' enduring ability to suck

That a game trying so hard to mimic a game as good as Hotline Miami managed to not only fail, but fail so hard that it resulted in a game worse - worse! - than poopsicle Space Overlords is a feat of stunning ineptitude. If a developer had specifically set out to make a game in that genre, and fail as consistently and spectacularly as LA Cops does, they wouldn't manage!  That it managed to fall through such a fecund genre, yet never once brush against goodness - or even acceptability - is like managing to spear a javelin through 50 people in a row, without hitting a single vital organ. Improbable, unlikely, and thoroughly against the odds!

I don't like to prejudice the list ahead of time, but I think I can safely say - I will be SHOCKED if any game manages to sink lower than LA Cops!

 

5. The unfortunate accidental 'slighting' of small games

This is one I think needs to be addressed somewhere, so where better than here?

There are a smattering of very small-scope games - You Are Being Followed, for example, or Shape of the World - where the games are far from perfect, but not actually terrible, but where their drawbacks have combined with thier much smaller, more limited scope than a lot of other games, to result in very low placement on the list that feels almost mean. 

There are also games I think are actually pretty good, but in limited or repetitive small-scope genres where low placement is inevitable, but that low placement doesn't' necessarily reflect my actual enjoyment of the games - none more so than Artifex Mundi picture hunt / puzzle games.

 

While I stand by the rankings, and think that reading the specific reviews and ranking write-ups will explain exactly why this result happens, I do slightly mourn the initial impression this casts on these games. There is no real way around it - the nature of an absolutist ranking like this one is that some good games fall further down the list than one might like - but that is the nature of the beast.

 

This, if anything, is why I really hope anyone using this thread as a reference does read the write-ups, and not just take the rankings alone as a 'review'. It's surprising how many games get a relatively good write-up, with a lot of positive things to say, and then place in 'middling' spots, and that is as much to do with scope, and it is with quality. Very small games can place higher than big games, but  they need to do even more - be even more outstanding than their bigger, more lavish peers - but those simply of similar quality are destined to place lower by simple economies of scale.

 

I certainly hope the text of the reviews have more impact than the actual rankings in this thread. A game hitting a top-spot means something for sure, and hitting a bottom-spot means something too - but for the games riding the centre section? Those need to be considered individually, and based on people's own tastes!

 

 

 

 

Anyways, that's all I got for now - who knows - by the time we get around to doing this update again, at around the 75% complete mark, we might have a whole new crop in the top 20!

I doubt that, as a lot of the biggest bangers are on there already (courtesy of the power of the requests, and Priority Assignments from you fine Science Chums!), but there are still a few outstanding game on the list that I know are in for very high marks... and there are great new games coming out all the time!

 

There's never been a better time to love videogames!

 

 

Laters Y'all 

Edited January 28, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[Arcesius]

35 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

1. How recent some of the top games are!

With 2021 game Hitman 3 currently riding the top spot, and (given its size, and quality, setting an incredibly high bar for other games,) 2019 game Outer Wilds right behind it, 2020's Persan 5 Royal right up there, and 3 2018 games right up there, I think that more than confirms the level to which my eyes roll when I head the old "Games were better in my day" arguments get trotted out by the usual cadre of curmudgeonly stick-in-the-muds!

 

Games have, in fact, never been better, nor more diverse.... and I've got Science to prove it, God-dammit! 

 

??? this is absolutely somethng that has made me roll my eyes as well recently and not so recently. It's just not a true statement. There are so many, so incredibly creative NEW games, games for everyone regardless of preferences... It's a fanastic time to be gaming, that much is certain! 

 

 

35 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

2. Outer Wilds beating The Witness

Prior to really drilling down and thinking about it analytically, I would likely have casually mused that The Witness was my favourite Puzzle Game of all time... but the more I thought about it, the more two things came to light - Outer Wilds is, in fact, a Puzzle Game at its core... and it's combination of life-affirming motive content, and intellectual stimulation actually surpassed the The Witness.

While I would still argue The Witness directly affected my enjoyment of Outer Wilds - I really do believe that The Witness provided the lessons, that were used to solve Outer Wilds - that to me just proves that games, in many aspects, are still on a forward journey.

Great games lead to ideas, which lead to even greater games, which lead to new ideas... and the melting pot of ideas continues to mature and to grow across the whole gaming sphere!

 

I didn't respond to your review (because... dude I'm just happy I find the time to respond to this post, ok? ?), but while I wasn't surprised to see Outer Wilds ranking highly, it was indeed an unexpected placement! I have heard so many great things about this game... It is not necessarily a genre that draws me too much (exploration games in general, I mean), but I will definitely keep this one on my radar! 

 

Also, I really didn't know much about Annapurna until I learned that they were the ones publishing Solar Ash... Now that I've had a look at their previous published games, they definitely seem to have great taste!   

 

 

35 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

3. Dark Souls II being pushed out of the Top 5

I love Souls Games. I absolutely adore the genre, and - probably more than any other genre - FROM have a monopoly on it. I can't think of any genre out there where the original instigator of it still maintains such a high level of quality within it, and consistently remains the top dog. Dark Souls II is still my favourite FROM Souls Game (which makes it, by default, by favourite Souls-like, period,) and so it was surprising to me to see it slip out of the top 5 on the list already. 

That is, of course, not a slight on Dark Souls II - after all, No.8 out of 284 is still a hard-as-fuck 5-star endorsement! - however, casual listing of my favourite games of all time would always include Dark Souls II... and so it shocked me a little to see it surpassed by 7 others. 

I guess that's just a testament to how great those games are too!

 

You know, I think one thing is certain: All FromSoft games (in the Souls-Series...) are of exceptionally high quality. They all deliver in terms of gameplay and atmosphere, and they are responsible for the influx of copycats releasing soulslikes left and right. 

 

However, as much as I love those games (with Nioh / Bloodborne being the ones that I would rank highest), I think neither would show up in my top-5 list. They would have a couple of years ago, but not after having played so many incredible games filled with creativity, and having been developed with love and passion (and it shows). 

 

 

35 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

5. The unfortunate accidental 'slighting' of small games

This is one I think needs to be addressed somewhere, so where better than here?

There are a smattering of very small-scope games - You Are Being Followed, for example, or Shape of the World - where the games are far from perfect, but not actually terrible, but where their drawbacks have combined with tier much smaller, more limited scope than a lot of other games, to result in very low placement on the list that feels almost mean. 

There are also games I think are actually pretty good, but in limited or repetitive small-scope genres where low placement is inevitable, but that low placement doesn't' necessarily reflect my actual enjoyment of the games - none more so than Artifex Mundi picture hunt / puzzle games.

 

While I stand by the rankings, and think that reading the specific reviews and ranking write-ups will explain exactly why this result happens, I do slightly mourn the initial impression this casts on these games. There is no real way around it - the nature of an absolutist ranking like this one is that some good games fall further down the list than one might like - but that is the nature of the beast.

 

I understand where you are coming from, but I think you have - maybe unknowingly - implemented the perfect way of mitigating this problem... 

 

Personally, I would be hopeless if I had to put all of my games on a ranked list...and I have only played a fraction of the number of games you have under your belt ? And it's not the review itself that helps here... It's your explanation AFTER the review where you compare the "to-be-ranked" game to games already on the list of similar genres, and write about the strenghts and weaknesses of the reviewed game when compared to similar games on the list. It is this explanation that really helps the reader understand WHY a game - be it a huge AAA-title or a small game no one has heard about - ranks as it does. And it is also this explanation that somewhat relativizes the hard, cold ranking itself.  

[DrBloodmoney]

1 minute ago, Arcesius said:

I didn't respond to your review (because... dude I'm just happy I find the time to respond to this post, ok? ), but while I wasn't surprised to see Outer Wilds ranking highly, it was indeed an unexpected placement! I have heard so many great things about this game... It is not necessarily a genre that draws me too much (exploration games in general, I mean), but I will definitely keep this one on my radar! 

 

Also, I really didn't know much about Annapurna until I learned that they were the ones publishing Solar Ash... Now that I've had a look at their previous published games, they definitely seem to have great taste!   

 

You know - I was thinking about this recently, and while I have a fair few developers whom I think have earned the "Shut up and take my money!" status in my mind, where I'll buy anything they make sight-unseen (Arkane, Klei, DoubleFine, Supergiant etc.) - there's only one publisher that comes close to that status - and that's Annapurna!

 

You look at some of the stuff they've put out:

What Remains of Edith Finch
Flower
Gorogoa
Donut County
Gone Home
Outer Wilds
Journey    
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Wattam
Kentucky Route Zero
The Unfinished Swan
The Pathless
Maquette
Twelve Minutes    

 

and while I haven't played every one, that's a pretty amazing hit-rate, and every one is at lest interesting, even if not exactly to my tastes.

 

They really are establishing themselves as THE publisher for the "best of indie" in the last decade!

I actually just yesterday bought The Artful Escape, and all I know about it is that Annapurna published it - and that's enough for me to pay full price for it!

 

 

1 minute ago, Arcesius said:

 

I understand where you are coming from, but I think you have - maybe unknowingly - implemented the perfect way of mitigating this problem... 

 

Personally, I would be hopeless if I had to put all of my games on a ranked list...and I have only played a fraction of the number of games you have under your belt  And it's not the review itself that helps here... It's your explanation AFTER the review where you compare the "to-be-ranked" game to games already on the list of similar genres, and write about the strenghts and weaknesses of the reviewed game when compared to similar games on the list. It is this explanation that really helps the reader understand WHY a game - be it a huge AAA-title or a small game no one has heard about - ranks as it does. And it is also this explanation that somewhat relativizes the hard, cold ranking itself.  

 

I'm really glad to hear that's working man, that's certainly the hope, and really happy folks are seeing through the raw numbers, to the meat of the games within!

[YaManSmevz]

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

Bloodmoney!

 

I expected to be nudged closer to Journey and Outer Wilds, but the latter surprisingly so! Guess I'd better get crackin on that one...

 

I knew Journey was no slouch with the visuals or score, but I can't say no to a vacation romance!

 

Wife: Oh wow, candles and rose petals? Oh honey, you're so roma-... wait, what are you doing?

 

Me: Playing Journey.

 

Wife: Wait, are you wearing my lingerie???

 

Me: Okay you're killin the mood here, I'ma have to ask you to leave.

 

Outstanding L.A. Noire review!

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

LA Noire is an unusual game in many ways. It's messy and unfocussed in many of its mechanical elements, yet suffers for these elements far less than many similarly afflicted games might, managing to lean on the strength of the elements it absolutely nails. Those aspects are done so well, they tend to paper over the cracks left open elsewhere.

 

Well put. I always love when a game does certain things so well that it renders its shortcomings negligible, and this game is a superb example of that!

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

Even the ending, which makes use of a particularly Deus-Ex-Machina reveal fits perfectly. I have heard complaints that the ending to LA Noire is 'overly convenient' or silly, but those complaints always felt hollow to me, as they betray a lack of understanding of the filmic tropes the game is aping. The late-film, rather convenient summation of the overarching conspiracy via an 'exposition-dump' reveal, is an integral and established trope within Film Noire. Whether that is to the individual's tastes is up for debate, but it's inclusion in a game deliberately stylising itself after those established filmic tropes is not. It does to LA Noire, what the same reveals do in the best Chandler novels, and the best Bogart films do. 

 

I actually rather liked this with the ending, and the confusion in the second half (wait, my protagonist did what? Who's this guy?) but the one thing I could take or leave was the overturning of previous cases. Whereas the ending used the "what had happened was..." trope rather well (and fittingly, as you pointed out), the cases thing just felt a bit rushed and unexplained to me.

 

Not all of course - the case with the pedo and the husband was made for something like that - but some of the dudes you charge just had waaaaayy too many things incriminating them, least of all their behavior in the interrogation rooms. McCaffrey's roar of "SHE GOT WHAT WAS COMING TO HER" is a specific example that comes to mind?

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

These character captures are the most notable and stand-out part of the game still though - and certainly give the game it's signature hook, however, there are serious visual positives in other areas too. The stylish UI and world design are perfect in their evocation of the Los Angeles of Noire Film and the 1:1 recreation of LA is really pretty remarkable. I have never visited LA, but I am something of an aficionado of this era of film and television, and I was constantly surprised by how many landmarks I saw that were perfectly recreated and how tonally correct the world felt. Indeed, even knowing LA only via filmic rendition, I was often able to roughly orientate myself with regards to its layout simply by identification of landmarks, rather than the provided mini-map.

 

As someone who knows L.A. firsthand, albeit only in the modern era, I heartily agree with every word here! Unfortunately...

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

This excellent design of the era-appropriate open world does bring up probably the biggest, most glaring issue with the game, however. As great as 1940s/1950's LA looks, and as much joy is to be found in simply driving around in it... the game gives very, VERY little reason for doing so. 

 

I agree 100% with this as well.

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

This is almost assuredly an issue born out of the uneasy combination of Team Bondi and Rockstar - two companies who clearly had different ideas of what makes a good final product, and of what LA Noire should be. 
Team Bondi crafted what is essentially a lavish, unusual and modern take on the detective Adventure game - one where narrative and plot is king, and where the gameplay focus is on conversational dialogue, clue finding in small crime scenes, and identification of lies and tells in interrogation. These remain the most interesting elements of the game - the most prominent, and the signature, and while there are some issues in these sections (the aforementioned over-the-top performance flourishes, and the issues the game has with a sometimes rather arbitrary difference between "doubt" and "Lie" mechanics,) they work very well generally.

Rockstar, on the other hand, were not in the Adventure Game business. They were in the Open-World Crime Sim business, and were And remain) the kings of making money on that front. As such, their influence added an entire other layer to the game - a massive open world, and a significant number of car chases and shoot-outs - all of which look and feel great, (benefitting from Rockstar's signature finesse and almost fetishistic attention to detail,) but none of which feel really necessary to the game. 
In fact, there is so little reason to engage with the open world, that all those sections can, in fact, be skipped within the game via a button push - and very little is really lost in doing so. The result, is that LA Noire suffers from some of the issues Mafia II suffered from - there is a magnificently crafted, beautiful and well-realised work out there... which is barren, lifeless, and almost entirely superfluous to the game, aside form adding stylistic flavour. (And from Rockstar's rather unfortunate habit of peppering their open-worlds with a glut of non-game-critical collectibles, required to be found in pursuit of the platinum, but serving little purpose beyond padding the games length.)

 

On point. It would have been much better to show the drive as the detectives talk, passing monuments here and there, and just observing the amazing rendition of the city in that period. In fact, it very much seems the intention! I'd much prefer that and wishing I could explore it than having the city to explore, but needing to scour it for collectibles!

 

Also the story is so lavish and has such an expert flow to it that even without the nuisance of collectibles, the open world feels more like an interruption than anything.

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

Audio-wise, LA Noire nails its intentions completely though - harder than in any other aspect. There are no weak points in the game from a sound point of view. The vocal work is excellent across the board (as one might expect, given the talent,) but in terms of foley and music, it is pitch-fucking-perfect. Gunshots sound great, tyre-screeches sound not only visceral, but era-appropriately visceral, which is not something that is easy to do. The score is absolutely fantastic, perfectly evoking Hollywood Noire, and it would not sound out of place in a Big Sleep / Maltese Falcon / Chinatown style movie. 

 

All of this??

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

I loved The Witness - so much that I still think of it daily - but I didn't get tears in my eyes. Outer Wilds? That shit made me feel smart, yes, but it also made me weep. There is an emotional layer on top of the intellectual one that worked so well, that I can confidently state that I will NEVER forget the experience.

 

As such, I believe Outer Wilds has to rank higher than The Witness - and any regular Science Chum will know - that means something!

 

Literally all I needed to hear!

 

I hope you've cut a deal with some of these developers man, you're far more persuasive than any advertising they could possibly muster!

 

On 1/25/2022 at 3:25 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

 

 

 

 

 

Both you and realm really knocked it out of the park with your write-ups on this one - I actually have to go back and finish his once I'm done with the game, as I'm in the middle of it now and am avoiding spoilers like the plague (he kindly gave warning of course). It's a fucking phenomenal game. As was this write-up! Good job as always, man!

[DrBloodmoney]

16 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

 

Bloodmoney!

 

I expected to be nudged closer to Journey and Outer Wilds, but the latter surprisingly so! Guess I'd better get crackin on that one...

 

I knew Journey was no slouch with the visuals or score, but I can't say no to a vacation romance!

 

Wife: Oh wow, candles and rose petals? Oh honey, you're so roma-... wait, what are you doing?

 

Me: Playing Journey.

 

Wife: Wait, are you wearing my lingerie???

 

Me: Okay you're killin the mood here, I'ma have to ask you to leave.

? I did wax on a bit about that side of the game - but that’s the funny thing about doing the reviews for the games I played a while ago - it’s very specific parts that really stick in my mind, and that odd feeling of brotherhood with a complete stranger, who I never could talk to, or even who’s name I never knew was the thing that never left me about that one!

 

It’s a really unusual thing for a game - I can’t really recall any game that did the same thing before or since!

 

Quote

Outstanding L.A. Noire review!

 

 

Well put. I always love when a game does certain things so well that it renders its shortcomings negligible, and this game is a superb example of that!

 

 

I actually rather liked this with the ending, and the confusion in the second half (wait, my protagonist did what? Who's this guy?) but the one thing I could take or leave was the overturning of previous cases. Whereas the ending used the "what had happened was..." trope rather well (and fittingly, as you pointed out), the cases thing just felt a bit rushed and unexplained to me.

 

Not all of course - the case with the pedo and the husband was made for something like that - but some of the dudes you charge just had waaaaayy too many things incriminating them, least of all their behavior in the interrogation rooms. McCaffrey's roar of "SHE GOT WHAT WAS COMING TO HER" is a specific example that comes to mind

 

You know - that is a good point. It’s one of those things that I bet works much better the first time through the game, if you go guide-less, and aren’t replaying cases and trying to five-star everything - if you actually did fail a case or two along the way, it makes that moment feel more plausible.

If (like most trophy hunters) you meticulously got perfect on every case, the overturned verdicts are a bit improbable, given the airtight cases you had made already! 

 

Quote

On point. It would have been much better to show the drive as the detectives talk, passing monuments here and there, and just observing the amazing rendition of the city in that period. In fact, it very much seems the intention! I'd much prefer that and wishing I could explore it than having the city to explore, but needing to scour it for collectibles!

 

Absolutely - do it like the ‘cab’ option in GTAIV, that would feel much less ‘two-games-jammed-together’ than the driving sections, and less ‘smash-cut’ than the skip option. 
It could also have let you peruse the case notes etc within the car, and not have Cole standing (presumably) motionless in front of witnesses and suspects at the crime scenes as he reads his own notes ?

 

Quote

 

Literally all I needed to hear!

 

I hope you've cut a deal with some of these developers man, you're far more persuasive than any advertising they could possibly muster!

 

Man, I’ll go to bat for Mobius Digital for free, any time I can - they’ve earned it from me already!

 

Quote

 

Both you and realm really knocked it out of the park with your write-ups on this one - I actually have to go back and finish his once I'm done with the game, as I'm in the middle of it now and am avoiding spoilers like the plague (he kindly gave warning of course). It's a fucking phenomenal game. As was this write-up! Good job as always, man!

 Thanks man - and glad to hear you’re enjoying The Forgotten City too!

I gotta hear some thoughts when you get to the ‘last’ ending - no spoilers, but I thought it was really well executed - in a few different ways!

Edited January 29, 2022 by DrBloodmoney

[DrBloodmoney]

 

!!SCIENCE UPDATE!!

 

 

The next 5 (somewhat) randomly selected games to be submitted for scientific analysis shall be:

 

Dandara 
Eventide 3: Legacy of Legends
Final Fantasy XIII-2
Stick It To the Man 
Super Time Force Ultra

 

With a minimum of 3(!) Bonus games this round, including:

The Artful Escape
Curse of the Dead Gods
Moons of Madness

 

 

 

Subject(s) in RED marked for PRIORITY ASSIGNEMENT

[Care of @GonzoWARgasm , @The_Kopite & @grayhammmer]

 

 

 

Already 3 Bonus games on here, so I think any more games that get S-Ranked before this batch will be spilled over to the next one - this one is already going to be pushing the post-word-count-limit to breaking point! ??

 

 

Can 'Current Most Awesome' game, Hitman 3, maintain the title again?

 

Is gaming skid-mark LA Cops going to be scraped off, and finally lose the title of the title of 'Least Awesome Game'?

 

 

Let's find out, Science Chums!

[Cleggworth]

Moons of madness looks good, tad too expensive at its current sale price for me but.... if it reviews well, maybe

[DrBloodmoney]

Just now, Cleggworth said:

Moons of madness looks good, tad too expensive at its current sale price for me but.... if it reviews well, maybe

 

Hate to say it, and appear to prejudice the science... 

...but it won't.

 

I thought it looked really cool too.

I was, unfortunately... not correct. ?

[Cleggworth]

Just now, DrBloodmoney said:

 

Hate to say it, and appear to prejudice the science... 

...but it won't.

 

I thought it looked really cool too.

I was, unfortunately... not correct. 

 

I was hoping for something akin to SOMA but I guess not ? i await the review regardless

[DrBloodmoney]

3 minutes ago, Cleggworth said:

 

I was hoping for something akin to SOMA but I guess not ? i await the review regardless

 

Oh, it certainly has some SOMA vibes - that is a very clear inspiration, and SOMA is going to be referenced quite a bit in the review - but unfortunately, that comparison does Moons of Madness no favours at all. The similarities only ever make you wish you were replaying SOMA, rather than playing Moons of Madness!

[The_Kopite]

Woooo, another FF game up for review. Looking forward to it!

[Shrooba]

On 25/01/2022 at 9:55 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Ember Lab are a new studio but they have talent honed in commercial and feature animation, and it very much shows. The general visual look of Kena is adjacent to Pixar or Disney Animation Studios - both stylistically and qualitatively - and while the particular design aesthetic (the closest feature, I would argue, is Disney Animation Studio's Big Hero 6,) is a matter of taste, appreciation of the level of fidelity and the animation quality is simply not up for debate.

Yep, Ember Lab are great at making things look pretty! Funny how you mention that the gameplay is Zelda inspired, because not sure if you know, but they did a fan animation of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and it looks absolutely stunning, alongside great sound design as well.
It's neat how you compare it to Big Hero 6... Now that I look at it, I actually do see the similarities! ? It's always interesting to see people draw different parallels from games; every work of art is subconsciously always inspired by something else, and we the viewers/readers/players can interpret these things in different ways. I for one never considered it similar to Big Hero 6 but upon comparison it really DOES look similar. I wonder what'll inspire Ember Labs next?

And 8 games for the next batch? Phew, I respect the work doc! ? When I write stuff I usually procrastinate, so I can tell you've got great work ethic to set a goal and stick to it. There's many more many games to go, but you'll get through 'em all!

Edited February 1, 2022 by Shrooba