by Kerreth » Wed Jan 01, 2014 3:01 am
I've been playing a few short and/or casual things, and I have good things to report:
1. Gone Home is actually pretty fantastic. I had gone through Dear Esther a few weeks ago, and that was just absolutely dull. Even turning off my "games are for funs" lens, I just couldn't think of Dear Esther as anything but a pointless walk through nothing (it's The Chinese Room's premiere pressing W simulator) while the narrator talks about people that I have no idea about, and switches up those names a lot just to make it extra confusing. The story went completely over my head, and there was this annoying desync with what the narrator said and what was actually happening in front of you (For example, there's a part where I walked all the way down a tall cliffside, and the narrator said something to the tune of "and I broke my leg as I reached the bottom," but there's no indication of that. You're still walking at the same speed and only the narration is telling you anything).
So that kinda put me off going through Gone Home, since I heard the games are similar in this whole "virtual interactive experience" thing. But Gone Home just drew me in, from the setting in an old family house, to all the 90's stuff (granted I'm a bit too young to get all of it, the youngest character in the game is about 18 in 1995, I was 6), to all of the things I was finding out about the family, to (arguably) the main subject matter of the game (which I don't want to spoil here, but I'm pretty sure that's been spoiled all over the internet by now). The game made me want to find out as much as I could about the family and what happened and where they were, and I just couldn't stop until I was done (in 2 and a half hours). It got me thinking a lot about my own life as it brought up a bunch of subjects I kinda like talking about, and it brought just a few tears to my eyes. I didn't actually find everything (there's a major plot point buried somewhere about the father and great uncle characters, which was still spoilertagged in every thread I looked at, and I can't believe I couldn't find the one thing that would reveal all the things about that), but it was worth it just for the main story. $20 might be a bit much, but if it goes on sale again anywhere, I'd say give it a whirl.
2. Cook, Serve, Delicious! is pretty fun. I quite liked those fast paced "do all these tasks before people get mad" games like Diner Dash, and Cook Serve Delicious is great at doing that. If you're not in the know, CSD has you play the role of apparently the only employee in a new restaurant, and you have to manage the menu and actually cooking, serving, and cleaning. When you're cooking, everyone orders their own personalized special order, which can be as simple as a corn dog with nothing on it, to as complex as a burger with double meat, double cheese, tomatoes, bacon, and pickles, and you have to serve everyone as fast as possible to rake in all that moolah. So it gets pretty stressful, especially during the rush hours where they throw everyone at you. It also has a
3. Just got through the first episode of The Wolf Among Us and it's really interesting, and that's coming from someone who knows nothing about the Fables series. Similarities to The Walking Dead are there, since it uses pretty much the same conversation/QTE system, but the theme is way different, focusing instead on a noir murder mystery rather than survival after an apocalypse, and it's very intriguing. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.
4. I bought Shelter. I haven't played it yet, but I did launch it to make sure the settings were right and the game was working, and I saw that I'm not even colorblind and I can barely read it!
