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Gav played: Stories Untold

The game: Stories Untold by No Code.

Score: Do not recommend, did not finish.

This is a horror game, boo! Was it too scary? No, I just didn't like the gameplay! I only played the first two of four stories. The first simply wasn't my thing, because it was a typing adventure. Purely a matter of taste, the story was fine, about investigating a scary house! But the next, about investigating an alien autopsy, was full of difficult to parse and control machinery, and I eventually simply couldn't figure out how to advance, and had become to frustrated to want to try.

{A computer with text on it, on a lamp with a desk, keyboard, mug, photos, and telephone.}

Try it if you like: Vintage and retro gameplay designs, horror that blurs lines of whether it's "really" happening.

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Gav played: Dishonored series

The games: Dishonored, Dishonored 2, and Death of the Outsider by Arkane Studios.

Score: I love them

That might be understating it a little. Dishonored is my very favorite game, and I like the sequels as much. I've put off reviewing them just because I like them so much I thought it would be a lot of work to explain why.

{More than 14 unconscious guards and civilians tucked in for a nap in a palace antechamber in DH2. Emily's hands are visible, one with a sword in it.}

These are fabulous games where you play a royal bodyguard, or, in DLCs and sequels, assassin acquaintances or a young empress. In each story, the player is given an enormous amount of choice in their approach. Stealth is usually safer, but not required. Exciting combat options (lethal and non-lethal) and magic powers give flexible solutions to fight or evade. Targets can be disposed of by murder or creative, unmerciful alternatives.

Every level is jam-packed with interesting things to find, conversations to eavesdrop on for flavor or clues, multiple routes, secrets, traps, nesting and interlocking optional stories. The games reward experimentation, making every playthrough feel fresh.

I think they're really beautiful, using an oil painting-inspired graphic style instead of dating themselves with hyper-realism, and set in elegant Victorian & Edwardian retrofuturistic cities under duress from plague or depression. They're grim but not cynical, and in the main entries (Dishonored and Dishonored 2), there's a delicious device called the Chaos system, which means that your actions as a player make the city more or less tumultuous, changing the obstacles and story beats you encounter.

And there's time travel! And a mechanical house with reconfigurable rooms! Buildings returned to after significant changes, an outsider god, witches, poisonings, a haunted heart that tells you secrets, flying whales, rats, beautiful sunsets, father-daughter stories...

I really love this series.

Hearing disorder corner: The subtitles are usually very good. I think their pacing and appearance are clear, and I appreciate them engaging to show me overheard dialogue sometimes too soft for me to hear. My only criticism is that sometimes, if spoken dialogue is engaged at the same time a voice recording is being played, the competing subtitles are hard to follow. This is a rare occurrence, though!

Try it if you like: Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan books, the Fallen London world, Geralt & Ciri & Din & Gorgug, oh my god he was their bodyguard..., Queen's Thief, sea shanties, the ominous slice-of-life dollhouse level design of Hitman.

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Gav played: Kentucky Route Zero

The game: Kentucky Route Zero by Cardboard Computer.

Score: I liked it.

This one has something of a cult following. There's nothing else quite like this, for good and bad. It's a visually distinctive spooky game about modern art and rural inertia.

{An ethereal concert in a dive bar, with its ceiling floating away.}

Half of the gameplay chapters fun, strange point-and-click adventure segments where you play a variety of characters traveling through rural Kentucky highways, mostly by way of stops along Route Zero, a hidden highway that may not be in our world. There are aliens and ghosts and lots of commentary about death and people feeling stuck in their home, work, or bodies. The story will most resonate with players interested in art, addiction, and labor movements (especially miners) in the American South. It does it well, if somewhat opaquely, and there are moments that are truly haunting.

The other chapters are...largely tedious. These are the interludes, most of which have minimal interactive elements, meaning that in most of them, the player has to sit back and pay attention to a fairly long conversation with little additional stimulation. The writers clearly have an interest in the artistic value of "mundane" scenes, which I unfortunately find more pretentious than meaningful.

But you still liked it! Yeah, it's interesting! If you're willing to be a little patient, the game is rewarding.

Try it if you like: Twin Peaks's small town spookiness under a microscope, the aliens in Rocky Horror, Old Gods of Appalachia, text-heavy games, analog technology, experimental sculpture.

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Gav played: Serial Cleaner

The game: Serial Cleaner by Draw Distance.

Score: It's a game!, did not finish.

"It's a game" covers a lot of gray territory, what is it here? It's a well-made game that I got stuck on too quickly to have a strong opinion on! You play a mustachioed criminal trying to clean crime scenes without getting caught by the cops. The art is great, I enjoy the 70s aesthetic and references to thriller movies, and I like that there's some variety in the goals for each level--and that when the player gets caught, things shift around a little.

But? I just struggled so much with getting caught over and over that I only played the first few levels. I like stealth games, but I do much better with titles like Untitled Goose Game or the Assassin's Creed series, where getting caught simply means I can do something else and try again. I couldn't stick with this one, and it's not the game's fault.

{An elaborate Monty Python and the Holy Grail-inspired crime scene, with multiple bodies and big splashes of blood.}

Hearing disorder corner: All information is provided by on-screen text, and I did not notice any audio-only cues.

Try it if you like: Pulp! Gritty crime fiction, illustration-style art, fun music, stealth games that aren't about killing people...yourself...

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Gav played: Genshin Impact

(...Well, a little bit of it, anyway.)

The game: Genshin Impact by Mihoyo.

Score: It's a game!, did not finish

Only a little bit of it? I played at least 10 hours of it, and gather there's a lot more. My interest fizzled out because I didn't feel like the story had advanced, the quests and combat felt repetitive, and when an update came that was frankly massive (isn't this game popular on mobile too? How does anyone have the space?), I just...wasn't excited enough to bother.

But it didn't land in Do Not Recommend. No, because the art is very pretty, and it's repetitive in the sort of soothing, bouncy way that would have kept me with it if the file sizes had been smaller.

{Pretty pretty dragon.}

Any other comments? It's a gacha game oh no. I actually tend to like gachas if the balance is good and they're not pay to win; I didn't play this one long enough to be sure, but it seemed...ok. Really, everything except the character art and lore cutscenes was just "ok."

Hearing disorder corner: There are subtitles that are, you guessed it, just ok.

Try it if you like: 3D Anime, janky party mechanics, forgetting what quest you're doing because you're picking flowers now babyyy.

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Gav played: Close to the Sun

The game: Close to the Sun by Storm in a Teacup.

Score: I liked it.

Horror doesn't show up a ton on Add to Inventory! No, because I'm a weenie. The immersion of video games means they frighten me easily, and I'm particular about horror tropes. This one has some problems I'll get into, but I enjoyed it and even think it does things that are cool and special!

Love that! In Close to the Sun, you play Rose Archer, a Nellie Bly-like journalist responding to a letter supposedly from her little sister Ada, begging for her to come help her deal with an emergency on the Helios, a huge seaborne scientists' colony organized by Nikola Tesla. It's a lightly Steampunk setting with fantastical machinery and lush Victorian design.

{Like this elaborate theater lobby! Subtitle reads "Aubrey: I'll check in with you later, alright?"}

{Or this greenhouse exterior! Subtitle says "Tesla: But her research holds the keys to everything."}

I lingered to take screenshots of these spaces because I found them really beautiful, but all of the environmental design in this game slaps. It's probably my favorite thing about Close to the Sun, as you control Rose in first-person view through a wonderful mix of public, private, and utility spaces, with varying moods from dark and tense to bright and safe. They're fun to explore and left me feeling like I was exploring a real place that could actually support the population we're told is aboard.

Because the premise is that the Helios contains hundreds of the world's top scientists, and they have made a grave error that killed most of them. To rescue Ada and her research, Rose has to get around scenes of massacre, damage to the ship, monsters, embittered killers, and puzzling devices.

Did you say puzzles? I did! Most of them are on the simple side, a matter of finding the right code to punch in. There's one I like a lot in Ada's apartment, requiring some interpretation. I'd never call this A Puzzle Game, but I like seeing puzzles in a horror adventure to break up the gameplay.

What's the majority of the gameplay? It's a walking simulator! I like those, personally, and this one does a good job of rewarding exploration without making me feel like I would miss out if I didn't find everything. The story is linear, and paths are well laid out, making the single available route forward feel natural and not claustrophobic.

There is no combat in this game at all, which I think is good and fun; I like seeing more games that don't revolve around weapons, and it feels true to the character! Instead, she has to outsmart and outrun threats. Ducking, climbing, throwing switches, and other actions are done by clicking when a cue is centered on the screen, and my first significant criticism is that engaging these is a bit too finicky. I often found that even though the cue was displaying, I actually had Rose standing a little too far or too close to actually trigger the animation, which contributed to a lot of chase-sequence deaths. There are about six chases in the game. Most of these took me a handful of attempts to find the safe route and get through it fast enough, but one at about the 85% has such a small margin for error that I took about thirty tries to make it safely through the door.

Oof! Where else does it miss the mark? With the exception of idle animations of Rose's lower body and hands, characters appear kind of wooden. Sometimes the extent of gore shown became so prevalent that it felt like set-dressing, which disturbs me in a way not intended by the story. Some of the story beats are predictable, one in a way that I think invited a more direct comparison to Bioshock than was to this game's advantage. There's one subplot I never caught a satisfactory explanation of. And oh my god, there are two points where Rose has to crawl through a vent and for some reason in these she truly moves slower than molasses in January.

That doesn't seem too bad! Yeah, it's a solid game! And more than that--I think it looks, sounds, and feels sometimes scary and sometimes delightful, and chose to give its player character believable, appropriate emotional reactions and an approach to heroism unusual in its genre.

Hearing disorder corner: The subtitles are a bit small, but they're accurate and identify the speaker. As in a lot of games, my first sense that I was in danger was often an audio cue, and these are not always accompanied by a visual one.

Try it if you like: No-combat adventures, cool monsters, weird science, the Tesla-Edison rivalry, central sibling relationships, the idea of Tacoma as a horror game, getting distracted by neat posters on the walls.

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Gav played: Figment

The game: Figment by Bedtime

Score: It's a game!, did not finish

Translation, it wasn't for you, right? Yup! This is a game for children, which is great! Children should have well-made games! Sometimes I enjoy media aimed at children or teens, but in this case I wasn't engaged enough to want to finish the game.

There are three main points that led to this. The first is that the gameplay involves a lot of backtracking. In particular, I got tired of discovering that a choice of branching paths wasn't really a sign that I could explore them in any order, but that I instead had to reverse a partially solved puzzle so I could return to the start point and go through the paths to work out the winning order. The second is that cutesy tips and "the villains attack with boogers and farts" humor grated on me. And the third is that this is a game set in the mind, and I know way too much about brains.

This last one isn't at all a fault of Bedtime's creative choices. I just found the references to structures and chemicals of the brain distractingly unaligned with my academic knowledge. I can easily see it delighting an elementary or middle school kid with an interest in science, just don't buy it for them assuming it's An Educational Game TM.

You play as Dusty, a courageous little guy who's retrieving memories and fighting foes such as Nightmares and Plague in the mind of someone recovering from a car crash.

{Dusty and his bird friend Piper stand on a sky-island with whimsical plants and musical horns sprouting from it. A small house sits on it, and a waterfall cascades over the side.}

It's a pretty simple mix of collecting useful items like "synapse" batteries and using them in the right places, and a little bit of fighting and puzzle-solving. I was genuinely sad when I grew frustrated with the backtracking I went over earlier, because it reminded me of a less puzzle-heavy Zoombinis, which I had loved as a kid.

You said it's for kids, do you think kids would actually like it?

Probably, but since I didn't finish it, I can't say how intense the themes of fear, trauma, aging, and injury become, nor how they are resolved. It could easily veer into the same territory "improving" literature does, being overly poignant in an effort to teach children about real life. I also noted a couple jokes that are definitely there for adults who might be playing along--a reference to HP Lovecraft's Cthulu and a hastily cut-off song lyric that was clearly about to say "shit." This sort of mixed-target writing is common in children's media, but I found these examples a bit clunky.

Hearing disorder corner: The subtitles for dialogue are solid without being special. There is at least one puzzle where you have to adjust the positions of three instruments until their sounds blend, and I found the visual clues insufficient. I got there in the end, but it was in the neighborhood of brute force.

Try it if you like: Ozzy and Drix, environments with I Spy-like use of everyday objects, children's games emphasizing both creative and logical thinking, puns.

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Gav played: Everything

The game: Everything by David OReilly.

Score: I liked it

Everything? You played all the games?

Yeah I called games and they said they're fresh out, thanks for coming to my blog, it's been fun!

...Aaaaand scene! Okay, talk about the game now.

Everything is a very unusual game where you as the player just...inhabit objects and move them around and switch to different ones, with the goal of having controlled everything in the game.

{Camels, rocks, and plants in a desert.}

So in this screenshot the player is (I think) controlling the camels, but can easily target literally anything else nearby and slip into it instead. The rocks, the plants, the planet itself. You're limited by the things near you and by the relative size of the object you're controlling, so there is some strategy involved in hopping from bacteria up to dust to acorns to beetles to small animals...all the way to galaxies and from there to polygons, which make up an interspace between massive and miniscule.

And you just...keep hopping around and trying out natural things and manmade things (buildings! toothbrushes!) and different environments, until you're sated. It's a lot of fun, but I can't imagine reaching 100%, it's just too overwhelming a prospect.

Hearing disorder corner: Everything contains selections from lectures by the philosopher Alan Watts, and I don't remember ever struggling with subtitles.

Try it if you like: Playing with little animals and dollhouse furniture, thinking too hard about the scale of the cosmos, low-goal play.

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Gav played: My Time at Portia

The game: My Time at Portia by Team17.

Score: It's a game!, did not finish.

This one didn't grab you, huh?

I made a real effort to try a variety of things before giving up, but I just...never really found the fun. I don't think it's a bad game, just not for me.

It's a crafting/farming management game in the small post-post-apocalyptic seaside town of Portia.

{A player character chops a tree with an axe. Several buildings with a fairytale feel are in the background.}

Are there some specific things that turned you off?

A few, but in particular I grew frustrated quickly with the small inventory and repetitiousness of tasks--both of which I know are common in management games while you're getting your feet under you. Unfortunately it didn't hold my attention long enough to see whether it opened up. The npc townsfolk have extremely limited dialogue and personality, the art design isn't exciting enough for my taste, and some small but important quality of life quibbles (no ampersand in my shop name, no ability to skip dialogue already heard) left me feeling more dated than nostalgic.

Hearing disorder corner: The dialogue is paced kind of oddly with the speed of text, but I didn't notice any newsworthy shortcomings.

Try it if you like: Other cheerful management games and want a new setting in your rotation, Ghibli and steampunk inspired elements, a relaxed storyline.

[veeranger]

Save 100% on Quiplash on Steam

For 3-8 Players and an Audience of thousands! Your phones or tablets are your controllers! The gut-busting, say-anything, no-rules party game!

quiplash is literally free on steam until the 26th theres no reason not to get this

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Gav played: A Case of Distrust

The game: A Case of Distrust by Ben Wander

Score: I liked it

Another mystery game! I played Her Story in between runs of A Case of Distrust, and I would choose the unusual gameplay of Her Story if I had to pick just one--but I’m very glad I didn’t have to!

The setting and play of A Case of Distrust are both pretty familiar territory. This is a noir game made by a dev who clearly loves noir and peppered it with fun tropes and references. You play as Phyllis Malone, ex-cop and private eye, working her way through a case of bootlegging, threats, and infidelity in 1924 San Francisco. I’ll be honest that this might land in “it’s a game!” territory if the art wasn’t absolutely gorgeous. You investigate spaces and interview suspects and allies in striking monochrome silhouette illustrations.

{Screenshot: a gambling room in shades of green. Text: “I continued up the stairs to find a similar scene as the day before, only Tiny Paul had been replaced by a young woman, idly playing with a deck of cards scattered across the billiards table.”}

So where does it fall flat? It doesn’t, really, except that its simplicity makes some problems really stand out. The case is, in my opinion, solid and interesting if not groundbreaking. I did not guess the murderer until late in the game, in a way that speaks more to skilled writing than to being blindsided. My three complaints are that the characters are on the predictable side, the historical context is incorporated in a somewhat clunky way, and that characters weren’t programmed to react in a natural way to some major clues.

Two examples in particular that stand out are a character who only reacts to one of two interchangeable pieces of evidence showing the relationship between two characters; and a damning clue about opportunity which I had no reason to think needed to be elaborated on to demonstrate to the suspect that they had been caught. When I first brought it up to them, they responded that they had no idea what I was talking about, and subsequently became angry with me--I was, after all, mid-accusation and had nothing to refute their claimed ignorance. When I later found the additional detail and repeated the accusation, they reacted calmly, as if they had not been asked about it before and had no idea it was incriminating. I’d expect that kind of mismatch from an unforeseen line of inquiry, but such a tidily contained game should have anticipated I would ask exactly those questions.

The game ends on a teaser to set up a sequel, which I’d be interested in playing. The overall fun factor is good by me, as is the quality of the mystery!

{Screenshot: Phyllis Malone in a scene composed of shades of grey. Text: “I grabbed the lapels and pulled them tight.”}

Hearing disorder corner: Negligible, the only sounds are music and click-confirmation noises. Conversations are purely text-based.

Try A Case of Distrust if you like: Juno Steel, Sam Spade, other noir. Detective fiction more generally, illustrationy art, you’re interested in the 1920s and haven’t already learned an excessive amount about the period, trusting nobody.

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Fallen London series

The games:

Fallen London (browser)

Sunless Sea 

Sunless Skies

Skyfarer (tabletop) (Note: this one I have not played!)

Overall score: I love them

On the setting & story: The Fallen London world is Steampunk, gothic, intricate, and bizarre. It’s an alternate history where Queen Victoria made shadowy deals with unfathomable entities, displacing London below the earth, and later into the sky. It invites you to roleplay endless archetypes and pursue beautiful and horrifying stories. Fallen London is a sprawl of (mostly) city-based activities, while Sunless Sea makes you the captain of a ship, and in Sunless Skies you pilot a locomotive engine through space. Yes, really.

Can I be gay? You can be any orientation and gender you want in all the games of the series! Fallen London legalized gay marriage in the 1880s, and each entry features romanceable npcs unbound by the gender of your character. Many npcs in general are lgbtq+, with Sunless Skies even hiring trans writers specifically to work on the storylines of trans crew members. FL allows players to be “of mysterious and indistinct gender,” and the Sunless games never ask you to commit to a gender at all, only a title of address.

Okay, gameplay: Fallen London is a turn-based browser game combining elements of text adventures, rpgs, and card-drawing. You play one character per account, but can take that character in infinite and inconsistent directions.

Sunless Sea was Failbetter Games’ first video game^tm title. It’s a roguelike rpg in which you steer your ship to various ports (with dlc, these include underwater locations). Your adventures in-port take place through the same text-based choose-your-own-adventure mechanic from Fallen London. I like Sunless Sea a lot, but because nearly everything resets when your captain dies, I am unlikely to ever attempt many of the more planning-intensive quests–I just don’t have that kind of skill or patience!

Sunless Skies is, in my opinion, the best entry in the series. The gameplay from Sea was hugely refined, with navigation, combat, storage, planning, and captain deaths improved to be more engaging and less intimidating. I like dying in Sunless Skies, because it gives me a chance to roleplay from a fresh angle without turning the clock back to day one. This is easily one of my favorite games, of any series or kind. I’ve put in 130 hours, and there’s still loads to explore and try out!

On the art: It’s lovely, with every character portrait filled with personality and implied history. My favorite art is the layered cosmos of Sunless Skies (image from Failbetter Games).

On the music: The Sunless games both have some of my favorite video game scores, with each region of the maps given its own moody, evocative pieces. I get a very genuine clutch of fear when I hear the music cues from near The House of Rods and Chains, and relief from the tune that plays in the home waters of London.

Best game to start with: Either Sunless Skies for active gameplay, or Fallen London for a free introduction to the setting! If you bought the Itch bundle for Racial Justice, Skyfarer is included; my first impression is positive, it’s broadly a tabletop spin on Sunless Skies.

Try it if you like: 19th & early 20th century literature with modern values, Blades in the Dark, fabulism, Penny Dreadful, pirates, chthonic gods, slow-burn storytelling.

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Sunless Sea is free on Epic Games Feb 25-Mar 04! It’s a challenging and flavorful rogue like, and the series remains one of my favorites. If it sounds up your alley, grab it while it’s hot!

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Gav played: Her Story

The game: Her Story by Sam Barlow

Score: I loved it

Oh that one’s famous! It’s an extremely distinctive indie game, in which you play as a police detective searching through an archaic video database to find enough relevant clips to draw a conclusion about a murder suspect in an investigation conducted in 1994. The gameplay is mostly created through the technology’s frustrating limitations. Since it’s a carefully designed work of fiction, design “flaws” in the interface mostly serve as as storytelling strengths, which I find very cool.

{Screenshot: the suspect, played by Viva Seifert, tilts her head and half-smiles, not looking at the camera. The subtitle reads “And all these stories we’ve been telling each other...” The video quality is dated, and has multiple notes of room and date.}

So what’s the story? Hard to talk about without spoiling it! The suspect may have killed a man. There isn’t a definitive answer, and you’re not going to be told whether you’re right. You also do not have to make a choice about whether to believe her or not, it’s just a matter of going until you feel satisfied.

Talk more about the ~experience~ then! You are given five short clips to start with, and then you must choose keywords to search for in the database to find new clips to watch. Eventually, you will have seen all the ones considered essential, and have the opportunity to tell an npc that you’re ready for a drink. You will not have seen all the clips at that point, and you will be given new admin codes to make it easier to complete the archive. (Some I think are not accessible without the random clip code, since they are simply “yes” and “no” answers from a lie detector test.) Any word you choose will bring up a maximum of 5, and later 15, clips out of all that may contain the word. They are always presented in chronological order, meaning you will find it easier to complete the early interviews than the later ones, as a control on the pace.

You only hear Seifert’s character speak, but the questions put to her are pretty obvious. Her performance is masterful and natural, with lots of fun body language and inflection subtleties to factor into your impression of the suspect. There are two overall interpretations that make sound sense to me, and both are the sort of gradual escalation from “ordinary people” to “what the HELL did she just say???” I truly love in detective fiction.

Hearing disorder corner: I never literally wondered what the hell she’d just said, because subtitles are on by default, and flawless.

Complaints? One of the achievements was really hard for me, and not related to the main gameplay, but the reversi game on the same computer your character is using. It’s completely optional, but if you’re a completionist, potentially irritating.

Will you be playing Telling Lies, its successor? Nope! It’s about government surveillance and ecoterrorism, neither of which interest me.

Trigger warnings? I think it does need some, but I don’t think there’s a good list quickly coming up in a search. Some tropes that you may be on the lookout for if you have a crime fiction or childhood trauma-related trigger, in rot13: Zheqre, oybbq qvfphffvba, rzrgbcubovn, fpnel gjva fghagf, puvyq nohfr, xvqanccvat, bar vaprfghbhf fhttrfgvba. 

Try Her Story if you like: Taking notes while you play (but not really having to), detective fiction, blurring of female archetypes in murder stories, lo-fi tech, experimenting based on your own interests and logic.

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Gav played: Gorogoa

The game: Gorogoa by Buried Signal

Score: I loved it

That name feels fun in the mouth. Yeah, it’s something to roll around like a hard candy! Gorogoa...

This is a mechanically unique puzzle game developed as a passion project. You are given a four-paneled workspace, each square containing a unique scene. Your goal is to reposition the panels, and zoom in and out, to progress through the life story of a boy fascinated with a monster called Gorogoa. In some cases, panels need to be juxtaposed so they will blend seamlessly into each other.

{Screenshot: Like this. A bird perched on a branch is in the upper left, an apple hangs from the same branch on the upper right, and a bowl waits in the lower left.}

In this example, you’d slide the bowl panel to the lower right to prompt the bird to take flight, dislodging the apple into the bowl. In other puzzles, you might manipulate other objects more distantly, as when a magnet and a compass needle must be placed in the right positions to move the needle to the desired position. One of the most fun elements is when a panel separates into two layers, one with “holes” or transparent spaces, so it can be layered with a different image. It’s fun and novel, with a romanticized, elegant feel. I never felt it was too easy, as I needed to think carefully about repeated decorations and follow clues. However, I never got stuck, and I never had to take notes on paper. All I needed was to be patient and observant to progress.

Is it more puzzle or story? Somewhat more puzzle. The story imbues every step, and it is clear that the puzzles sprang from the story, rather than it being an afterthought, but it is a slightly vague story without a concrete ending. The game communicates completely without language, and reminds me of the outstanding books Zoom and Re-zoom by Istvan Banyai.

Hearing disorder corner The music and sound effects are pleasing, so I don’t wish to call it an “extraneous” soundscape, but there is no dialogue and no audio prompts, so d/Deaf and HoH players will not be frustrated.

This is a short review! If you like puzzles, I can promise this is worth your time! It’s clever and beautiful, and I want to let it surprise you.

Try it if you like: Istvan Banyai’s books, Byzantine architecture, intricate objects, physically shifting your perspective, dragons, rebuilding life after war, non-linear stories, bright colors.

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Gav played: Watch_Dogs 2

The game: Watch_Dogs 2 by Ubisoft

Score: I liked it

An improvement over the first installment, then! I was pretty critical of the narrative direction of Watch_Dogs when I reviewed it in November. I’m delighted to say that the second entry in the series made huge improvements in creative and gameplay elements, and was much more fulfilling to play as a result. Let’s break it down.

In the first game, you loathed the protagonist. And this time around I love him! You play as Marcus Holloway, a young member of the hacktivist collective DedSec, which shared an underutilized rivalry with Aiden Pierce the first game. It’s a smart choice to shift the series’ focus to DedSec, as this game (and, in my impression, Legion after it) has a better structure for Marcus’s motivation and resources. It’s also clear very quickly that this installment put more thought into who is most endangered by the surveillance state, and by the human biases that go into algorithms’ creation. Marcus is--repeatedly--flagged as a threat for being a black 20-something, and many plotlines are propelled by the team’s desire to protect people of color, neurodivergent people, trans people, the integrity of elections, the privacy of children...

It’s a big step up from Aiden, who sometimes hacked into people’s devices to spy on them having sex.

How does the treatment of death compare? I will say that I think a major black character is killed off simply to make the player hurt, and it’s a simple fact that the black community and people who love them have suffered an excessive amount of media which fixates on the murder of black characters, and I was disappointed.

In the bigger picture, this game gave me many more options to non-lethally complete missions, better writing for characters of color, and a sense of community and kinship between Marcus and his friends and mentors. Their goals are predicated on interpersonal justice, not violence for its own sake.

One thing you already liked was the gameplay. Yeah! WD2 expanded hacking puzzles in an appealing way, spreading interactive “wiring” tiles across physical spaces, and broadened strategic options by introducing robots, both a wheeled “jumper” and a drone. The puzzles were less varied, but the settings were more so, and less grimdark--more focused on infiltrating corrupt tech corporations. It’s not clear to me whether Legion reintroduces more puzzle types, but I know the parkour and urban exploration returned.

They also did away with a couple of silly limitations from the first game that didn’t really reflect how hacking works. Most notably, you no longer have to be able to see a camera to hack into it.

Any other comments on the direction of this game? It has far more personality than the first game, with fun supporting characters and neat zine- and meme-inspired art.

{Marcus stands in front of a mural of a hot pink mummy.}

The main cast includes an autistic man and a character implied to be bisexual. I wish they’d pushed representation further, especially in a game set among San Francisco activists, but a range of identities are included, and the crew treats each other with enormous affection and respect. I was especially moved by a mission focused on retrieving a stolen object that helps a main manage his anxiety.

Hearing disorder corner: Although I would still like to see the series identify speakers in subtitles, there was less need for it; characters in phone calls are more clearly and consistently identified. They also mostly fixed the problem of dialogue appearing out of order, and made audio prompts easier to notice.

Anything they did worse than the first game? As I said, this installment lost a little variety in puzzle types. Escaping pursuers is much more difficult, and I was never fully sure how the system to lose a police tail worked. There was less driving overall (probably because they were no longer trying to directly compete with Grand Theft Auto), and vehicles were easier to control but with fewer useful hacking opportunities integrated. I also struggled with the AI of npcs at times, because they regularly moved towards a dangerous situation (like a moving vehicle) instead of away. I more than once killed a civilian because they ran into me, and had to deal with sometimes unnatural reactions from onlookers.

Also, I really hated a mission where I hacked into atms and sometimes??? Gave more money to rich people while taking away from poorer users? It was out of character and not very constructive.

Interested in Legion now? Yes, but I’m not enough reconciled to the series to want to pay full price.

Try it if you like: A nerdy, progressive, charming protagonist, robots, graffiti, bright colors, cop-critical games (though it’s not acab, which I am), saying “I’ve accessed the mainframe” to yourself, soundtracks filled with absolute bops, the sort of lush urban environment Assassin’s Creed does well, but modern.

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Gav played: Hitman (2016)

The game: Hitman by IO Interactive

Score: I liked it rescored after further play: I loved it

With stealth games I always feel the need to say “well it’s not Dishonored.” It sure isn’t, but so few games are of that caliber.

You play as Agent 47, an assassin fulfilling contracts in a wide range of intricate settings. Most of them are glamorous, and the overall tone is very James Bond. Like, “my favorite mission involves taking down leaders of a spy ring at a Parisian fashion show” kind of glamor.

{Screenshot: or taking revenge on a rock star who got away with murder at an extravagant Bangkok hotel.}

The game’s biggest strength is that it is rich with possibilities. You can, if you like, follow through any of several suggested plans (called Opportunities), which are often themed and creative, or find your own lowercase-o opportunities to complete the mission. There are boring weapons, but also exploding golf balls! You can throw a crystal ball at an evil banker’s head, or serve expired tomato sauce in the lunch of a bioweapon designer so you can get him alone in a bathroom! Disguise yourself as a waiter, or soldier, or the yoga instructor slowly shifting a lesson to the edge of the deck so you can push a lawyer who specializes in acquitting gang members off the mountain!

There are lots of things to experiment with hidden around, and a very extensive in-game achievements system to both provide clues to and unlock more options to play with. It’s been several weeks since I technically finished the storyline, and I’m still having fun trying new things. I was disappointed to realize that the one thing I knew about this game before starting it (’you can assassinate people dressed in a plush flamingo costume”) is actually in Hitman 2, but oh well, there’s still plenty of clever surprises.

I prefer the depth of story in other games in the assassin subgenre, like the Dishonored and Assassin’s Creed series. Hitman still scores well with me: it has a funny and stylish approach, and I enjoy the amount of thought put into each mission. I do want to play 2 & 3 in the future!

What’s the game’s biggest weakness? I think I can sum it up by saying it caters too much to dudebros. Obviously a lot of video games do, especially swaggery adventure games, but I’m still going to criticize it because I have standards here at Add to Inventory. Agent 47 does not have a personality. Just…none. He is a blank mystery. Considering that the connective tissue between missions is a plot about his background, I really think I should have some sense of the character I’m spending hours controlling. Instead, there are a lot of empty signifiers of “coolness” and heterosexual appeal. 47′s handler, Diana Burnwood–who I have a clear liking of, with her humor-tinted voice regularly popping up–has a crush on him, and women npcs regularly remark that he looks good. Men among 47′s adversaries sometimes make threatening sexual remarks, and that’s homophobia, baby! I have no interest in whether it might be realistic, this is an over-the-top action movie of a game, and more people like those than homophobes.

Also, my least favorite map (an apricot farm being used as a militia base in Colorado) made me listen to two guys arguing about Donald Trump.

Hearing disorder corner: The subtitles are smooth and helpful, letting me latch on to overheard details as well as foreground dialogue. They don’t identify the speaker, which would be better for d/Deaf players. (I can hear and recognize voices most of the time, and followed along with no trouble.) The text is slightly smaller than I prefer, but an overall good experience.

Try it if you like: James Bond, you really want the modern parts of Assassin’s Creed to slap as hard as the historical parts, the invisibility afforded by wearing a uniform, morally disinterested protagonists, high replay value, extremely interactable and influenceable environments, being empowered to and rewarded for experimenting.

Update: After more replaying of missions, my enjoyment of this game has grown, and I’ve bumped it up to “I love it.” There’s just…a lot more texture, humor, and inventiveness to discover than I had realized when I first reviewed the game, and I find the developers’ dedication to making each map a fully realized and alive world, with mini stories playing out and surprises smartly integrated. I really want to play the sequels now!

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Gav is playing: Hades

The game: Hades by Supergiant Games

Score: I love it.

Why “is playing” and not “played”? There’s a lot of game, and it isn’t really designed to “end” in the conventional sense!

It’s not surprising that this one’s a hit with you. Lol I do love a Supergiant! Hades has been a huge hit for the studio, richly deserved. I like it as much as or possibly more than my previous favorite from the studio, Transistor. It’s gotten lots of good press and even more glowing word-of-mouth recommendations, so you really...don’t need me to tell you this game is good.

But you’re going to anyway! It’s wildly engaging, with the studio’s special talent for designing mechanical incentives to continuously switch up your strategy by offering a range of weapons and randomized offers of augmentations from the Olympian gods. The game is gorgeous, smart, and funny, with a cleverly-done dialogue system that gives you conversations with npcs that feel time-sensitive or important before more casual interactions--unlike a lot of games that queue or randomize possibilities and can feel out of synch with the player’s emotional state.

{Screenshot: Patroclus, a black man in armor and a laurel crown, gently roasts the player for engaging in the fishing minigame.}

Want to tease some other fun things? This game has: A strictly no-crunch developer A bi protagonist Romance options that don’t require the player to choose just one A range of interesting friendships and family bonds Fun, well-timed reveals of new options A satisfying difficulty adjustment mechanic (”God Mode”) Delicious variety Jokes for days

{Screenshot: Theseus, a tanned, blond warrior with a smug smile and a champion’s belt, taunts: “And I, too, shall oblige! That is, oblige my trusty spear, which yearns to penetrate your soft and vulnerable, altogether pallid flesh! Now, die!” Oh boy.} Hearing disorder corner: All dialogue is clearly displayed via text box or subtitle along with voiceover. I sometimes have a little trouble with audio cues at the end of a fight, which prompt the player to look around the room for a opportunity (such as fishing or a timed trial to get a larger reward.) These have visual signifiers as well, but in larger chambers players who cannot rely on the audio cue must take an extra step of zipping through the space to be sure they’re not overlooking anything. A good job, but not cutting-edge!

Drawbacks? Literally the only reason I don’t think you’d like this game is if you don’t like the genres. If you’ve been thinking you might like it...I think you should buy it.

Try it if you like Greek myths, swinging a sword as big as your little dude, bi rights, funky music, hot characters, family conflicts, experimenting with your approach to play.

{Screenshot: Aphrodite, a woman with pink hair, teases Zagreus about his relationship with a romance option, Megaera.}