Things I played: Majora's Mask

Me and Majora’s Mask have a fraught history. 

I first played it as a teenager via a ROM emulator and promptly broke the game by cheating my way into places I clearly wasn’t meant to be. I tried again in 2017 on the Wii U during my master’s degree and gave up somewhere around Snowhead. Playing — and finally finishing — it on Switch last week, I think I now understand why it took me so long.

It’s a game of dazzling highs and deeply frustrating lows.

If you’ve somehow missed the last 15 years, Majora’s Mask is the direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, developed in just over a year by Nintendo’s EAD studio. Link is pulled into the strange land of Termina, trapped in a repeating three-day cycle as a mysterious mask threatens to crash the moon into the world.

That cycle defines everything, mostly for the better. Progress is built around rewinding time, meaning dungeons and quests unfold over multiple loops rather than one clean run. Key items persist, money doesn’t, and planning becomes essential. The masks feed beautifully into this, giving side quests real weight and purpose.

What I love most is how singular it feels. There’s no other Zelda like this. It’s dark, melancholic and often unsettling, with the moon hanging over Clock Town like a quiet threat. The music, characters and time mechanic combine into something genuinely strange and memorable.

But it’s also cryptic and, at times, stressful. Certain progression chains feel opaque enough to demand a guide, and waiting for specific days can turn tension into irritation. The main plot is surprisingly slight too: only four dungeons, with Stone Tower arriving far too late to carry the whole thing.

So Majora’s Mask sits firmly in my middle tier of Zelda games. I admired it, often enjoyed it, and occasionally had to push myself not to stop. Still — I beat it. And that feels oddly fitting.

Onto Mario Galaxy next.

Things I Played: Donut County

In gaming circles there often emerges a furious debate about what games should be about. 

A certain party says gameplay. The other, equally vocal, party offers a counterpoint—story. This debate often reaches boiling point, to the extent where it seems like one group is about to enact a bloody revenge on the other. Humour tends to be cast aside, which is probably why neither group says games should be about comedy...

Truth be told, comedy games are a rarity. Good humour is after all, subjective. Off the time of my head I can name only a few of them—Jazzpunk, Dr Langeskov, The Stanley Parable and maybe Project Rub. Step aside though because there's a new entrant into the ring... Donut County, a whimsical comedy-cum-novelty game that's almost worth the £11 entrance fee I paid to play it.

Donut County is a puzzle game from one-man-team, LA based gamemaker Ben Esposito. It's described as a physics-based-puzzler but that doesn't do it justice. The gameplay only consists of moving a cursor about the screen to drop objects into a 'donut-shaped' hole. 

As you drop smaller objects, the hole enlarges so that you're able to drop bigger objects (think brick to car). It's trivial but the real quality of the game is the humour—an eccentric, joke-laden, easy-going style, featuring a cast of silly anthropomorphic animals, including a salty raccoon called 'Trash King'.

Like all comedy, how much you'll enjoy Donut County relies on how funny you find it. I personally love absurdist humour so got a lot of mileage from it. It has a brilliant riff on Wikipedia called Trashpedia which offers a silly description of each object you drop. I chortled heartily a few times, like when it described snakes as 'moving spaghetti'. 

I do wish the gameplay was more challenging, but another part of me realises that it works excellently with the game's simple intentions.

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E3 Reaction: 12 Minutes Looks Dope

E3 started on Sunday so I've been gleefully glued to my laptop these past two nights partaking in viewership of what is the most extravagant sales pitch in videogame history. Unfortunately not much has grabbed my eye so far. Bethesda continue to disappoint in all ways possible. The big exception is 12 Minutes - an intriguing thriller about time loops.

Not much is known about the game so far except that it's being designed by Luis Antonio, the art director behind The Witness, a game I've been meaning play for the past three years now...

Naturally though the art direction is amazing. I love the top-down style and I hope it stays true to its name by giving us twelve minutes to figure out whatever the fuck is happening. The Shining reference could go either way, pointless or purposeful. I particularly love the idea of playing as some regular old dude caught up in circumstances that go well beyond his control. Violence, mystery and a tiny flat. It's just like my life.

And was that Agent 47? Waddafuck?!

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Things I Watched: Nintendo's Super Mario Maker 2 Direct - It Looks Great

I was a late adopter of the Wii U so I never caught the original Mario Maker craze. At the time it seemed a little beyond my interest. I didn’t have a strong care for design; I also didn’t really like platformers. Like the direction of a passing breeze though, such things change, which is why I’m fully on the hype train for Super Mario Maker 2.

If you’re at all interested then I’d consider sitting through the video above. I really like Nintendo’s direct-to-customer approach in the way they handle these things. I feel it helps their marketing brand tremendously. Sony recently adopted a similar style but they’re clearly still ironing out the kinks - they only offer choice moments whereas Nintendo load up their offerings like a giant slab of gaming pie.

The game comes out at the end of next month, June 28th to be precise.

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Things I Played: Final Fantasy VII is Fun and Fun is Good

Unfortunately I don’t have much to report this week. 

Usually I’d try and churn out a review of a book/movie/game but I’ve been nursing a cold which has affected my ability to do anything other than sit quietly hoping it’ll eventually go away. The only thing I've been doing is playing Final Fantasy VII which came out on the Switch at the tail-end of last month. I've happily been playing the game as a virtual antidote to my physical ailments.

It's an old game so it's obviously come out on a few platforms before. This version is a port of the iOS game, which differs from the original only PSOne game because it has nicer graphics and features ‘cheats’ such as the ability to speed up time and avoid random encounters. 

I seldom use these but they’re fan-fucking-tastic if you forget to save, die and don’t want to relive an hour of the same bits all over again. Yeah that happened.

All in all, it’s very fun. IThe Switch is a perfect console for JRPGs because I can play it on the TV or in bed dependent on my mood. It suits the turn-based gameplay massively, alongside the fact it makes for an excellent game to play whilst listening to HARDtalk.

The only issue I've had so far are the controls in-battle owing to the Switch’s extremely sensitive thumbsticks. No, I didn't mean to change the battle formation for fuck’s sake!

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Things I Played: Super Mario Odyssey's Post-game is Better than its Pre-Game

A few months ago I waltzed into Sainsburys and noticed that they were selling Nintendo Switch plus a copy of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for £310. Well, I thought, how opportune.

But £310.

Could I spare £310?

It's a lot of money to a broke dude like me.

But hell, let's do it! #YOLO #SWAG #MOTHERFUCKER

This turned out to be a great idea too because the store clerk accidentally got the price mixed up and only charged me £270 - the cost of the Switch alone. I haven't seen him since and presume he got fired for the blunder... SCORE!

With my new found wealth, I decided to pick up a copy of Super Mario Odyssey, a game I completed it sometime last month. I wasn't enamoured with it the first time round but after picking it up again a week ago, I realised there's a lot more to it than the main story.

I don't have much to say but I'm really enjoying it. It's amazing how much detail was put into the post-game content. It's much better than the base game, which is still a bit ehhhhhh.

If you have a Switch, you should definitely buy it. That's my afternoon advice.

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Things I Played: Shenmue HD - Methodical Detective Work and Kung Fu

I never played the original Shenmue back in the day so it's been interesting going through the remastered version in crisp, clean high definition. Of course I turned on the Japanese VA and put it in 4:3 mode straight away because momma didn't raise no fool.

It's interesting to see how open-world games were envisaged back in the early 2000s; it's nothing like today's perfectly designed adventures that keep the player entertained within an inch of their lives. Shenmue is more of a cross between Animal Crossing in its rigorous appreciation of the mundane qualities of everyday life, and Yakuza in its bloodthirsty Virtua Fighter-inspired combat. 

It's full of tension, excitement and fear and that's not just when you're waiting to see which gatcha capsule you've won. 

Like any good lover it has plenty of infuriating moments. The harbour part towards the end is tremendously boring. It's basically five days of moving boxes in warehouses where the game grinds the game to a complete halt. The romance between the game's main character Ryo and Nozomi didn't work for me either, but  I did shed a tear at the thought of hotdog vendor Tom leaving to go back to America. 

Don't worry hot-dog bro, we'll always have Yokosuka.

All in all, Shenmue is a decent game that strikes up a strong nostalgia trip. It's a lot like remembering what it used to be trying to find a payphone. Remember those? I do. BT boxes everywhere.

I'm already looking forward to the second game.

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Things I Played: Digital: A Love Story - Romance and Mystery in Cyberspace

History of the internet is something I find fascinating. I took a class on it earlier this year which cemented my belief that it's important for everyone to know how we got to today's world of top-quality communications. Thankfully I'm not the only one it seems because last night I finished a game called Digital: A Love Story - an anachronistic mystery/romance about that sprightly world before the internet.

In its own words, the game is a visual novel set 'a minute into the future of 1988'. This was a time before Google; before Windows; hell, even before Netscape. Graphical user interfaces were made up of ASCII text - basically command line interfaces with some pretty graphics, as you can see above.

The plot is set in motion when you meet Emilia, a strange but endearing girl who professes a fondness for you. She disappears one day leading to strange occurrences involving your favourite online haunts and searching for answers brings you face-to-face with a virus threatening to wipe out data as we know. Naturally it's up to you to save the world, which consists of traversing through bulletin board systems, an early progenitor of internet forums. You punch in numbers to access boards, read messages posted by users and type things back to them. It gives a strong impression that you're an online sleuth seeking out important cryptic information.

All in all the game is heartfelt and cool, which is a wicked combination. It was made by Christine Love who's made some great Twine games in the past including Even Cowgirls Bleed. I've been meaning to check out more of her work for a while. The music is great too, especially this track.

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Things I Played: Xenogears - A Bold, Ambitious and Almost-Finished JRPG

I wrote a feature for Metro recently where I mentioned that I’d finished Xenogears. This was a lie because I’d actually almost finished Xenogears. I’d gotten to the final dungeon but died a few times so put the game down. I finally picked it back up last night where, low and behold, I did it. I saved the world, got the girl, and killed God in the process. Woo hoo!

Xenogears is a JRPG first released for the PSone in 1998. It was produced by Squaresoft, who were still known as that at the time. It was directed by Tetsuya Takahashi with writing credits going to Masato Kato (Chrono Trigger), and Soraya Saga (FF VI). Soraya and Tetsuya were actually married at the time, which I think is just the most lovely thing really.

The game is about a dude named Fei Fong Wong who is mysteriously carried to the village of Lahan. With no memory beyond the last three years, he spends his time idly painting when one day he's caught up in a fire fight between troops from warring states. In order to save the village, he enters an mecha unit known as a ‘gear’ which sets up a plot that develops into an ambitious take on the origins of their planet; their past lives; the recurring fate of their personalities; and the future of all humanity.

Unfortunately I can’t sum up the game because it's complicated as all hell. It touches on the inner workings of characters with themes involving Jungian and Freudian psychoanalysis. It also boasts some genuinely compelling - although hard to take seriously - ideas involving Gnostic symbolism. I can't think of any other game that compares to what Xenogears does and that's good enough for me.

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Things I Played: Hollow Knight - The Dark Souls of Metroidvania Games

Very infrequently a game comes around that I find hard to put down. Should I watch a movie tonight? Nope, I need to work my way towards the next boss. Should I read a book? No way, I need to upgrade my weaponry. Sleep? An inviting suggestion Sir but I'll have to take a rain-check. Needless to say, I think Hollow Knight is very, very good.

For those who haven’t played it, Hollow Knight is a metroidvania-style platformer. It was developed by Australian studio Team Cherry, who've been supporting the game with free DLC ever since it was first released last year. Those young rascals also released the game for the fresh sum of £11.99, which is ludicrous value all things considered.

In my opinion, Hollow Knight excels for a few reasons. First, the atmosphere is brilliant. Second, the game balances challenge and difficulty extremely well. Third, it rewards risk and exploration. Fourth,  it's supported by a fantastic score from young, Aussie composer Christopher Larkin.

There are downsides sure but I'd be nitpicking so I won't go there. Hollow Knight is a simply great game. I put 25 hours into it in the space of two weeks. Time well spent despite the fact I should have been writing up the research results of my dissertation project instead.

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Things I Played: Cibele – A Game About a Girl With Pink Hair, MMOs, and Macross.

In years to come I wonder if Cibele will be remembered as the game with the promo shots where a girl with bright pink hair lies on her bed half naked. No ,don’t go imagining any of those weird Japanese games just yet. It’s not like that. It’s quite tasteful really given that it expresses the sexual desire of the game's main character.

Another, perhaps better, way of summing up Cibele is that it's an autobiographical game. It was designed by Nina Freeman (now of Fullbright) who plays herself in a digitalised memoir of a period in her life when she fell deeply, madly, truly in love with a boy she met on the net. The game is essentially the cathartic result of those months. It’s about her and Blake: a duo of nerdy teenagers who find solace in one each other through a fictitious MMORPG.

I won't spoil the story but it leaves a bittersweet message about indecision, angst and growing up. This means that Cibele is very much like watching somebody else's personal experience. As such we're expected to observe it rather than interact with it. It's a tad twee but it does well at representing the fragility of the teenage ego.

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Things I Played: Chrono Trigger – A riproaring ride through time and space

You’ll have to excuse the lateness of this post. I actually finished Chrono Trigger something like two months ago but I’ve been impressively busy of late. You might have noticed my last post was in January, which is probably the last point I had any free time in truth.

For those that don't already know, Chrono Trigger is an RPG first released for the SNES. This is a system I neither had nor wanted as I was very content with my Megadrive at the time. This turned out to be great fortune really because the damn game never released in Europe. It wasn’t until 2009 that it finally saw the light of day here, this time on the Nintendo DS.

The story begins in a world not dissimilar to Earth where a character named Chrono (yes he of title game) is enjoying the festivities of the Millennial Fair. Things soon go awry when a  demonstration of a teleportation machine sends another of the game's characters 400 years into the past. To save the day, our feisty blue-haired hero emerges, setting events in motion for a time-travelling bonanza across several epochs to save the world from an extra-terrestrial parasitic lifeform known affectionately as Lavos.

All joking aside, Chrono Trigger is a neat adventure. For me it's like the videogame equivalent of a Saturday morning cartoon. Its light, breezy and uses all of its charming cast of characters to good effect. It also boasts a very impressive soundtrack - I’m currently listening to this rather lovely orchestral composition of its main score and I think you should too.

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Things I Played: The Sexy Brutale – A Twisted Game About Rewinding Time

The Sexy Brutale isn’t a game I’d heard much about before I bought it last week. This is the fate of many indies game which don't have tens of millions of dollars into the marketing budget so I guess it's not surprising. However, I feel like doing Tequila Games a favour: their game is awesome and you should absolutely, completely, definitely play it. 

To describe The Sexy Brutale briefly, I'd say it's like a cross between Cluedo and Groundhog Day. To describe it in longer detail, I'd say it's puzzle game where you use time travel mechanics to save people from gruesome deaths and that it's set in a swanky casino which you're invited to attend by a mysterious host who may or may not have a hidden agenda and that it's up to you to use the power of a trusty pocket watch to reverse time so that the others guests don't succumb to their mortal fate. 

Like most puzzle games there's a problem and it's namely this: you can’t be seen by any of the guests that you're supposed to save. They wear masks that contain hidden powers. Powers that attack you should you be seen by any of them. It means can't simply yell 'Watch out!' or anything smart like that. Instead you have to find ingenious solutions such as hiding in wardrobes, peeking through key holes, and spying through CCTV. All in the name of figuring out their patterns so that you can save them.

It's complicated by the fact you only have twelve hours of time to save each guest, roughly about 15 minutes in game time. When the clock strikes midnight, the hotel goes kaboom and if the puzzle isn't solved you have to rewind time to the beginning of the day. This means that it's imperative to play through each day multiple times. You build up knowledge of solutions bit by bit, a lot like some Day of the Dead-inspired detective novel. 

While there was at least one occasion when I found myself solving a puzzle completely by accident, I found The Sexy Brutale to be a delightful experience overall. It has a fairly heartfelt story underpinned by themes like tragedy and remorse. Most of the deaths are bone-ticklingly gruesome in some way. The art-style is also really, really cool. It's like a combination of gothic aesthetics and film noir.

Play it!

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Things I Played: Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 20 Hours in Hyrule

A controversial opinion I have about games is that there only two or three good ones released every year. I'm sure many will disagree but these days I get far less enjoyment from keeping up with the latest titles. Thankfully Breath of the Wild is one that's been worth doing so for.

It’s a game I’ve now spent about twenty hours playing since it came out just over a week ago and an experience I've really enjoyed immensely despite flip-flopping on the Zelda series as a whole. For that I’m thankful but so far I've only managed to complete one of the games' dungeons. I’ve spent the rest of my time exploring - taking in the sights and sounds of the game's absolutely humongous open-world.

If you've played a Zelda game before then it's a similar experience. There's a story which as usual has something to do with Zelda and Ganon and an ancient evil being awoken. What does differ though, is that this one is set in an open-world, punctuated by numerous sprawling vistas, hundreds of puzzle shrines, and about a billion different weapons.

It's been lovely wandering around trying to find hidden shrines and climbing all the way up to the top of imposing mountain ranges. It's helped all the while because the art direction is absolutely gorgeous. Breathtaking, if you'll pardon the really obvious pun. I really liked the chilled, serene music too.

Breath of the Wild is now gearing up to be one of my favourite games of the year. It's gotten some great reviews already. It looks like one of those rare occasions where you can and should actually believe the hype.

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Things I Played: Quadrilateral Cowboy - A Whimsical Hackathon

When somebody mentions programming to me, the first thing that springs to mind is the image of an quirky start-up. I’m sure you can picture the scene: girls in colourful dresses, guys with black t-shirts, a pungent smell of coffee lingering in the air, and even the odd ping-pong table for those quieter moments. It’s official, programming is now cool (I think) but it wasn’t always this way. Wargames and Hackers once tried hard to portray hacking with an air of youth rebellion because until recently it was way more likely to be considered a strange bedroom hobby than a trendy career option.

Quadrilateral Cowboy, the new game from one-man game programming machine Blendo Games aka Brendon Chung, reminds me of this. It’s a retro-futuristic hacking-fest about raiding stock exchanges, stealing safes, but most importantly, about having fun with friends. Set in 1979, it harks back to a world filled with technological clunkiness; a time when phones didn’t fit in our pockets and laptops didn’t have all the elegant contours of an Apple Macbook Pro X 7. It revels in retro-computing, offering a curious mix of influences from cool cyberpunk, to new wave cinema, through to sexy spy fiction.

The game revolves around your deck. This is a weighty portable computer that's able to be plonked down and used to connect to things inside the network. It has an MS-Dos style interface which can be used to hack into things with the overall purpose being to manipulate the environment into a series of Ocean’s Eleven-esque heists. To do this, you parse through coding instructions. An example includes “door1.open(3)”, which translates into getting Door 1 to open for 3 seconds. Another is “connect nell video1”, which hooks a little robot dog up to your CCTV system. Eventually you start stringing a lot these codes together with the intention being to get in and get out without alerting the security system as to your whereabouts.

Repeat after me. In. And. Out.

Anybody familiar with Blendo Games’ previous titles’ such as Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving will already know Chung’s signature style well. It's unique here too with bright and colourful aesthetics that exude a sort of comic book tone. The plot plays out a lot like this too. Rather than a cohesive whole, it’s told through vignettes, rather like individual panels. Moments of exposition are broken by jump-cuts with atypical opera music and other assorted quirky moments. These elements are mix together to tell a story that’s charming but simply: about three female hackers, who arise each morning, throw on their cutesy outfits and get down to work by stealing money in virtual conquests.

Fortunately, a mastery in coding isn’t required to tackle Quadrilateral Cowboy as it does a great job of introducing mechanics systematically. Alongside your deck, you’re introduced each mission to a series curious gadgets including a robotic dog called Nell, a rifle hidden in a suitcase, and a launcher similar to the much-coveted launch-pad in Quake 3. When it all gets going, it works remarkably well, so much that even as somebody with almost no computing talents, I was able to feel like a master hacker in less than an hour.  Scratch that. A bad-ass hacker, in fact.

Leaving my computer brought me back down to reality a bit but I felt Quadrilateral Cowboy proved to be an incredible joy overall. Aside from the occasional bug, all of the levels prove astoundingly well-designed, with the penultimate mission - a wonderfully constructed raid on a stock exchange set aboard a mechanised zeppelin - being the best of all. This type of situation sums the game up well. It revels in eccentricity, telling stories in moments like polaroid photography. It’s lean but strips back all the fat and presents a game free from the typical baggage of AAA titles. Risky. Creative. Fun.

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Things I Played: Inside - A New Type Of Dystopia

I don't often feel the need to buy games at launch but I made an exception this week for INSIDE, a game I’ve been hugely excited about ever since it was announced back at E3 2014. I'm sure that gives an indication of how long its been in development but I feel it's worth mentioning for anyone who's not aware. Its taken the developers Playdead a MASSIVE six years to finish it. Bloody hell guys.

If you played (or saw somebody else playing) their previous game LIMBO then I rest easy making comparisons between them. They're both puzzle-platformers. They both rely on a minimalist style. And they both subject the player to violent gameplay provoking subtle elements of fear, shock and horror. In other words, Inside is a type of spiritual successor. Oh yeah, and they both have capitalised titles, for a reason I'm yet to figure out.

Unlike LIMBO though, INSIDE is set in a grizzly dystopian world. It's a story-driven game that tells a simple tale about a young boy trying to escape. Unfortunately, this is complicated by the fact everything is out to kill him; not just guards and dogs, but also robotic security cameras and strange fish-person things.

The gameplay is tight with plenty of platforming goodness but it's the experience of INSIDE that makes it most interesting of all. It has a unique atmosphere that conjures up a sense of eerie dread. The level-design moves deeper and deeper into the maze-like facility. This is perfectly rendered by shadows of grey and blue give it an impressionistic quality. The grinding soundtrack also provides a weighty feeling of oppression throughout.

This all lends expertly to the mystery. M,ake no mistake this game is very ambiguous. I was often asking questions like: Who are we? Where are we? What's going on? Who's in charge here? Is the world still right? And the ending... bloody hell that's weird. Without mentioning anything specific, there's a lot of Inception-esque layers going on. I'm yet to figure it all out.

That's all for now but I do want to mention that I really, really, really enjoyed it. While it's a surreal game that probably won't appeal to everyone but there's very little like it. It's the gaming equivalent of a Lars Von Trier movie (lazy Danish comparison).

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Things I Played: Lightyear - A Twine Game About Living Alone In Outer Space

Have you ever considered what it's like to be an astronaut floating around in outer space? I admit I haven't thought about it much but that's because I'm a filthy ground person. Or, maybe I should say I hadn't because after playing a little Twine game called Lightyear I'm starting to reassess things.

Lightyear is a game about living alone in outer space. It's also about nostalgia for home, chronic loneliness and a mysterious signal coming from the further reaches of the galaxy. Suffice to say, I'd rather not explain what the game is about because it's only fifteen minutes long, but for a text-game it's hugely atmosphere. So much so that it bagged its designer, Jim Bruges, a BAFTA nomination.

Though I'm still new to Twine games, it's definitely one of the better ones I've played. I'd recommend it if you've got any interest in either astronauts or interactive fiction. Now excuse me while I head back to my home planet.

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Things I Thought: Firewatch's Story Is Too Short and That's Not Cool

One thing I try to avoid doing too much is going against general consensus. Over the years, I've learned that disagreeing with the popular voice tends to lead to the impression of being an edgy dude and while it might be true, it's not really a description I'd like to stick with me. With Santo Campo's latest game Firewatch, however, I'm afraid I'll have to straddle the line. This is because while the game received a lot of good reviews, I found the game's story to be too short to make the impact it felt it wanted to. While it deserves credit for telling a mature story, the major issue is that it tries to tell too deep a story in too short a space of time. The experience leaves a weakened taste, a lot like a teabag not left to embroil in balmy water for long enough.

If you haven't played Firewatch, then let's recap. The game tells the story of Henry and Delilah: two volunteer fire lookouts operating in the Wyoming wilderness during the heat of one lazy, hazy summer. With no fires on the horizon, the two have little else to do but converse with each other via the game's emblematic walkie-talkie device. They tell each other everything, like schoolkids keeping secrets, and in turn reveal their tumultuous pasts to us, the player, eager and voyeuristic as ever. For instance, we learn that Henry became a lookout to forget about a troubled relationship with his wife, Julia, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. And Delilah? Well she's just as troubled, prone to alcoholism, harbouring serious guilt about a missing kid, and unable to hold down a serious relationship to boot.

It's these types of situations that highlight the game's willingness to tackle mature themes, relevant to so many things that I'm sure they're bound to resonate on one level or another. Naturally, a combination of them all provides the framework for the story to develop and the result is a realistic account of two characters caught in what I'll kindly describe as arrested development. It's quite a refreshing turn of pace from most games and there are both serious and humorous moments to be found, like when Henry's mumbles over the word 'panties', or when Delilah nearly suffers a nervous breakdown from fear the two will be blamed for the disappearance of two sulky teenage girls.

One of the problems, though, is that while the game embarks on a quest to make us see how their vainglorious and foolish actions have only led them toward solitude it only haphazardly provides moments for self-reflection. Instead of being able to witness Henry and Delilah come to an understanding of their personal problems on a daily basis, we're offered very little insight unless they're conversing directly. Revelations come and go, often feeling as if a light bulb went off somewhere in the off-screen, prompting us to wonder exactly what each character might have been thinking. At one point, the game skips forward from Day 3 to Day 50, suggesting that while the developers wanted to tell a much longer story, they weren't willing to write the dialogue needed for it.

While the game clearly wants to stay brief, the elliptical design inevitably means that the game's emotional qualities get watered down. Final attempts to wrap-up the story by having both characters receive epiphanic moments about their action only serves to reinforce the point that it often feels like we're being told what Henry and Delilah are thinking, not being able to see it for ourselves. While the game could let us rarely afforded much time to investigate them as people from our own perspective, it doesn't. This means that there's too little to take from what is essentially a game that relies on us forming a close connection with them.

Personally, this disappointed me because while Henry and Delilah always felt as if they could be great characters, it never felt as if they actually were. While I was happy to experience their story, I didn’t find that there was much more to take from it other from it than a broad message about not running away from your problems. While I can appreciate that, it was spoiled a bit by the fact I'd just played the exceptional Everybody's Gone To The Rapture a week before. While not a long game either, it feels like a veritable season compared with Firewatch’s two-part pilot. Its characters are deeper but, crucially, it allows players to see characters change in real-time. While I’m sure many will appreciate Firewatch’s short two-hour duration, I invariably left the Wyoming woods wondering if it would have been better by being slightly longer.

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Things I Played: Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - An Apocalyptic Game About The Triviality of Life

Have you thought about what you'll do when you go to the rapture? I admit I hadn't before I played Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - the latest Walking Simulator from the good folks at The Chinese Room - but now I'm left wondering. The Chinese Room's third game, released in August last year, is great but with so much praise shifted onto it already I'm struggling to find something to add to the story. It is, as stated by so many others before me, a mature and sombre game. One that leaves traces of emotion like little specks of liquid light. Actually let's leave it there because I won't find a better alliterative phrase than that.

Briefly then, Everybody's Dog and Their Rapture is set in the aftermath of an apocalypse. A quick look on Google doesn't reveal much about what kind of game it is. Even a short video doesn't say much at all. To tell you the truth, I didn't have much of an idea about what the game was really about until the last thirty minutes. Put simply and without spoilers, there's been an apocalypse, something about an infection in a small local village. It was quarantined but everybody died and we suddenly emerged afterwards. But there's nobody around. Just spectral light and audio recordings that reveal fragmented pieces of time and space in and out of order. Memories, relationships, feelings, thoughts. The expanse of fraught personalities laid bare. And cows too. A dozen of them at least.

To use an over-used comparison, the game is a lot like The Archers: At The End of The World. The small villages of Yaughton and Tipworth where the game is set, typifies a quintessential, even cliched, Englishness. We're caught in arguably the most exciting thing that's ever happened there but it only serves to reflect the lives of people who lived there before the catastrophe. This means we get to eavesdrop on past events of bishops afraid of losing control of their parishioners, nattering housewives caught up in pointless gossip, unfaithful husbands worried about getting caught, and even scientists trying to fix things to the bitter end. You know; ordinary folk dilemmas.

This means that unlike most media, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture gets its kicks from favouring banality. Filmmaker Chris Marker has a brilliant quote about this type of thing that reads 'I've been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me'. The experience EGttR offers is like a soulful sojourn to the supermarket; like time spent getting dressed in the morning; attempts at deicing your car in the middle of Winter. None of this happens int he game but it's no different to the simply drama of Stephen meeting with Lizzie for a pint, Frank crying about his cows, or Howard making sure the train signs are put up correctly. It's tender to the point of revealing how most games are fucking terrified of being so.

While the religious elements might not float everybody's boat it's hard to deny the designers have done a pretty damn good job emphasising the point that not everybody turns into John Cusack or Tom Cruise when threatened by the end of the world.

I mean, I would but not most people.

Pros:

- A wonderful setting? Never been to Shropshire but I reckon so.
- Exceptional music and voice-acting
- Respects the player's intelligence and/or attention-space

Cons:

- Too slow for some? Probably is.
- Emotional events can be a tad hit and miss.
- I saw some scaffolding go through a chair. And grass doesn't grow on roads, I think.

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Things I Played: The Talos Principle - A Game Where An Android Ponders The Meaning of Life

I once read a quote by one of the writers of The Talos Principle which said something about how video games are a great medium for tackling philosophical topics. While I've never been able to find the quote every time I've looked for it, I do remember the reason being something about games and philosophy requiring the same type of thinking. Obviously, that isn't always true; some games are simply about blowing things up for fun, but not all of them deal in the vicarious thrill of destruction. One example being said writer's game, The Talos Principle which works both as a puzzler and a rumination on the self-sustaining nature of technology.

The core experience of The Talos Principle is a puzzle game. It plays a bit like Portal or Antichamber but rather than charming anti-heroes or eclectic aesthetics, the game offers more by way of philosophical conundrums. In the beginning, there are words and these words come from Elohim, the game's central Deity figure who presides over a kingdom for which you are the only inhabitant. He's convincing speaker and wants us to solve puzzles to prove ourselves worthy. But do we abide by His plans? Or do we defy him to strike an essence of free will? And if we do does that mean our actions are the result of our desire or that of pre-determined Universe? Oh, and why is life so hard?

Okay, I added that last one in because life is hard but The Talos Principle is all about these types of rhetorical questions. Aside from a cacophony of puzzles involving electrical jammers, light refractors, and time-travel, it also engages on subjects involving knowledge, reason, and self-doubt. Topics range as far and wide as the ethics of artificial intelligence, Ancient Egyptian concepts of soul-body dualism, and twentieth-century neuroscience and the story provides a non-self-effacing yet non-pretentious look at the manner in which we can feasibly say to know our reality. It also features a snarky, critical piece of AI named the Milton Library Assistant, named after one of the game's chief influencers, John Milton, whose letters crop up a fair bit throughout.

While I admit I became a bit bored of the puzzles towards the end, preferring instead to ponder over the thrilling text logs, the majority of the game proved overwhelmingly positive. It's easily one of the best I've played in the past few years and it's convinced me that video games and philosophy can indeed go hand in glove. I noted too that it required a strong scientific approach to solving puzzles - hypothesise; take action; etc - and thus, in its own way, provides a way for science and philosophy to co-exist peacefully. Of course, we shouldn't tell the internet about that but it's largely the addition of Tom Jubert's and Jonas Kryatzes' writing that gives The Talos Principle its edge and proves Kryatzes' point that video games can indeed be used to do a spot of philosophy from time to time.

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