Sorry for just supplying a couple trailers for Beyond earlier. I couldn't find the actual review of the game I was looking for, so that was my fallback. Like I mentioned before, game critics were polarized in their opinions of Beyond, so I really wanted to find one that articulated a view similar to my own. I finally the one I was looking for though, so here's the Game Spot review:
Anyway, here's my third recommendation:
GONE HOME (2013)
If you've followed my posts on this forum for very long, you've probably noticed that sandbox style adventures don't tend to be my favorite kinds. That's because the freedom that these games offer the player makes it qualitatively more difficult for developers to provide a compelling story, so they usually wind up focusing instead on serving up a bevy of distractions. I don't hate games that have weak or non-existent stories as such, but I do tend to view them as less serious. Anyway, Gone Home is a rare free-roaming exploration title that solves the aforementioned problem. How? By eliminating all distractions. Gone Home has no action elements, no puzzles to solve, and no mini-games to play. This leaves the player with nothing to explore but the story, which is revealed in the form of notes strewn throughout a large house that the player moves freely around in. You are fundamentally tasked with piecing the story together by finding all these notes. One's enjoyment of the game derives from the thrill of discovery. That might sound dull to you, but trust me, it actually works quite well, given the degree of authenticity and the type of atmosphere that Gone Home provides.
You see, the story is not actually about your character, Kaitlin, but rather about the backstory of her sister Samantha and Samantha's friend Yolanda (a.k.a. Lonnie). Set in 1995, the game serves up all manner of nostalgia for that era that people like myself who grew up in and around that time frame can appreciate (VHS tapes, primitive computers, all that sort of thing), but also speaks to the shortcomings of the popular mindset of the time. To divulge certain points of the aforementioned backstory you're tasked with unearthing, it revolves around Samantha and Lonnie meeting and later falling in love. Yes that kind of love. But all manner of problems emerge: you learn of their struggles to navigate disapproving parents who insist that they just haven't met the right boy yet, forcible separation, etc. Only the most callous can walk away from this game unfazed by the depth of their affection for each other, coupled with the sadly believable sort of challenges they face in trying to remain together. It's all brought home with highly convincing voice acting, background music, and the just generally realistic portrayal of the way that era felt. In many ways, the delivery is what makes this a compelling, if unusual, game.
Continuing my theme of fancying that games should move more away from being all about feeling powerful and instead become more about cultivating empathy in the player, this is the kind of thing I think that first-person shooters should generally evolve into. The game uses the same play mechanics as a first-person shooter, after all. BioShock Infinite may have a compelling and dare I say even touching storyline, but frankly I think we've all noticed that the degree of brutality and bloodshed therein kind of takes away from its impact rather than adding to it. Gone Home supplies no such distractions and thus constitutes the more artistically advanced application of the play mechanics, IMO. It is fully driven by its story and atmosphere.
Here's the Game Spot review for Gone Home:
(Yep, by Carolyn Petit, for those who remember that name from another recent thread.)
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