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I sometimes break down my experience of a piece art into two parts: the feelings I have when I interact with it, and the thoughts I have when I think about it later. The same is true for video games. My favorite games are both enjoyable to interact with, and interesting to think about.
Spoilers below.
Loved
- RimWorld Build a compound by indirectly controlling simulated people. It's like The Sims but with deeper and more interesting systems. Lauren and I play it together. She says it feels like nesting.
- Universal Paperclips Fascinating. See my write-up: Universal paperclips
- Mario Kart 8. I don't play it much on my own, but with my family, it's joyous. Having it on the Switch means I can take it back home and play it with my niece and nephew, with my brother and sisters and wife. It's the one game that almost anyone in the family will have a go at and enjoy. This Christmas, even my step-dad.
- Into the Breach An incredibly satisfying video game that feels like a minimalist board game, but has a wonderfully rich setting. Coming up with a good move really gets my brain excited. Also, an ingenious UI that I wrote about here: Designing Into the Breach was a UI problem
- Spelunky. I wrote an essay about Spelunky, but here are some extra thoughts. Love the emergence of the shared properties of objects. Love the balance of risk and reward. It’s a stroke of genius that the first level of each run, despite being “easier” and more familiar, is just as interesting as the last level of the run.
- The Last of Us. I loved the scrappyness of the fights and the weight of the bullet and body hits. I found the relationship between Joel and Ellie very meaningful. But I think that what stays with me from great games is a mood, rather than a set of feelings or thoughts. That mood intertwines with the life you’re living during the period you’re playing it. And The Last of Us has an incredible mood.
- Nuclear Throne. Wonderful game feel. It feels satisfying to get better at playing.
- Uncharted 3. It really took me along for the movie ride. I found the relationship between Nate and Sully touching. The truck chase through the desert and the fight through the pirate ship yard were exhilharating and supported player expression.
- [Her Story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_Story_(video_game)) The way the story forms as a patchwork in your mind is a feeling I haven’t felt before. I played it with my wife, so it feels extra special.
- SpyParty. As a piece of game design, I find it endlessly fascinating.
- Mark of the Ninja. Stealth that makes you feel like a badass. Very interesting to think about the game design. The story and art are awful.
- Grant Theft Auto 4. It’s fun to drive and it’s fun to shoot.
- The Last of Us Part II. Because this is a game, you can play as Abby, which produces a magical version of empathy that not only makes you fully side with someone you started out hating, but shows you what a powerful effect point of view has, and how arbitrary it is to think one person's experience is more righteous than another's.
- [GoldenEye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldenEye_007_(1997_video_game)) It starts as a very cool shooter. There's a sound and objects react when they're hit by bullets. You can shoot distant enemies with the sniper rifle. You have a silenced pistol. You can dual wield weapons. Then it becomes a sandbox game. "Can I get out of jail, get the silenced pistols, then kill everyone without raising the alarm?" Then it becomes an extremely fun multiplayer game. My brother and I used to stick bits of cardboard on the TV screen to cover the mini-maps.
- [Mafia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(video_game)) The story was really great. I felt genuinely motivated by the things that happened to Tommy: saving the woman and the accountant, being betrayed and betraying in turn. The shooting was pretty fun, too.
Liked
- Splatoon 2. See my write-up: Splatoon 2
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild The climbing is magnificent. The mounting pressure as you lose grip strength. The adventure as you climb upwards, not quite knowing how you're going to reach the top. The desperate leap when you're near the top and about to fall. I also like the emergence in the world. I most enjoyed journeying around the world, trying out the systems. I didn't like the story, the puzzles, or the bosses.
- Far Cry 2 The clangs and grinds as you drive around make things extremely immersive. The chaos that happens in battles is wonderful. So many stories - the time your gun jammed and you ducked behind a car and a stray bullet hit a can of petrol which blew up and set the brush on fire, killing all the enemies etc. I wrote about the mood of the game here: Dawn in Far Cry 2
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain For a game I only liked, I played this a lot. It's my favourite let-you-loose-in-a-landscape game that I've played. The game gave me a real sense of immersion as I drove around in a Jeep, waiting to see what I found, waiting to come across a vehicle to ambush, or encampment to infiltrate.
- [Overwatch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwatch_(video_game))
- Invisible, Inc.. I adore the feeling of pressure the game puts on you. Having an agent get incapacitated and then getting them out alive is as tense and fun as a good scene in a James Bond film.
- [The Witness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witness_(2016_video_game)). Like SpyParty, I adore this as a piece of game design to think about.
- Towerfall Ascension. There’s something fun about the constant flip-flop between making brilliant shots with your bow and frenziedly trying to recover from your ineptitude.
- Gone Home. I found it moving.
- Super Meat Boy. Incredible movement feel.
- Metal Gear Solid 5. The best “you’re in the wilderness and you have to capture these outposts” game I’ve played. Couldn’t stand the story.
- PixelJunk Shooter 2. Loved the richness of the interactions between the rock, lava, water and guns.
- Sportsfriends. A set of serious attempts to make fun games that don’t copy existing forms of sport. I've never laughed so much as when I played Super Pole Riders with my friend, Zach.
- Halo 3 They really nailed the battle loop: taking cover, advancing, flanking, all in open environments. They also kept on kept on ramping up the spectacle and adding new tools to use: wraiths, jeeps, bikes. Though this game doesn't mean much to me, it was a lot of fun to play.
- Katana Zero. I love the vibe of the backgrounds: dusty sun, pastel and disco. The gameplay has a very good ker-thunk feel to it. The animation was much more powerful than the story. The whip in the way the main character abruptly wakes and sits bolt upright was far more expressive than the shouty enemy guy. Katana Zero.
- Outer Wilds. There is something very special about feeling part of a single world. Where the space you’re in now is continuous with the other spaces around you. Outer Wilds, when you walk from the ground up into a spaceship that is it’s own room on the planet, then blast into space seamlessly into a place that is continuous with the planet, then descend from space down onto another planet. Magic.
- Diddy Kong Racing. It was very cool that you could drive a plane, hovercraft or car. My brother and I used to play this. He always flew and plan and always beat me, but there was one watery level with some caves where I could beat him in the hovercraft.
- Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far. An RTS where firepower superiority and flanking mattered, and where soldiers would break from the stress and stop following orders. An interesting feeling of needing to dominate, and if you didn't, your power would just leak away to leave you in an inert heap, every action limp and dead.
Disliked
- Super Mario Odyssey The levels felt barren and the tasks felt boring.
- Bloodborne. Couldn’t get to the first campfire.
- Grand Theft Auto 5. Too much busywork to get to the underwhelming heist missions.
- [The Binding of Issac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Binding_of_Isaac_(video_game)). Gross. Didn’t enjoy the feel of the shooting.
- Uncharted 4. Shooting segments weren’t sandboxy enough. Story didn’t pull me in.
- Firewatch. Beautiful. The “wilderness” felt like a walled garden.
- Minecraft. Couldn’t get over the disillusionment of building things that don’t exist.
- Hyper Light Drifter. Exploration games aren’t really my cup of tea.
- Don’t Starve. Grindy. I didn't want to put time into building the knowledge required to improve. Probably because I didn't find the knowledge required very interesting. My feelings here are a perfect counterpoint to my feelings about Spelunky, where I was fascinated by the knowledge required to improve.
- Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture . Felt barren.
- Rogue Legacy. Advancing relies more on improving your character than improving your skill.
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