Legendsofanus

"It wasn't fear anymore, it was madness. And when you're mad, you cease to exist."

The Last of Us, Limbo, Inside, Bioshock: take all these games with amazing stories and you'll find that video game storytelling works hand in hand with superb gameplay design. From Inside's simple 2D platforming forcing you to act like a puppet to Bioshock's main power-up gameplay system showing you memories of residents of Rapture, all of these games have a story that feels satisfying because it ties back to gameplay. I think that sort of storytelling is why some narratives can only be experienced in video games and why those games and more like them are so good. But they're not the only games with a good story.

The Town of Light is a first-person walking simulator game about a mentally unstable girl named Reneé and the journey we go on with her, exploring her past and present through her memories and experiences at a mental asylum. From the beginning it reminded me of Benoit Sokal's Syberia and this "other type" of games with a good story. I mean games that are so focused on their presentation that either their gameplay is too simple (like Syberia) or genuinely simple gameplay designs are not present in them and this makes the whole experience suffer.

Case in point, The Town of Light is a beautiful game and it's one of the best depictions of the on-goings and effects of being held up in a mental asylum in any media I have ever experienced. The game really manages to create an authentic immersive mental asylum in Italy through the various hospital documents, posters of fascist Italy, pictures of Mussolini and through it's dialogues and story accompanied in each of the game's fifteen chapters by an animated sequence of what is going on with Renee. What I adored even more is how the developers actually went to a real life mental asylum and recreated it in-game, highly recommend to check out the live-action trailer after finishing the game.

It seems to be that the whole purpose of this game's existence is to make you realize how fucked up these asylums were in real life and it really commits to that which is awesome. There are even branching chapters that you can get based on multiple choices you can make during the game which seems to really unlock different parts of the story. Unfortunately, while the presentation really gets fully realized, the gameplay and feel of the "game" aspect of it is actually annoying. I don't know how common it is for games like these but having unskippable cutscenes is always lame, the fact that my character can't run is stupid. The game was also very fond of crashing on my system even though it's built on Unity and I expected that would mean it would be pretty stable.

Overrall: The Town of Light is absolutely worth one playthrough atleast if you can look past the gameplay issues I mentioned and it's really a very unique and one of a kind presentation in gaming because of the themes it deals with. 7.5/10

(Read through CloudLibrary)

“Are you happy here?” I said at last.

I felt a little spoiled when I was reading this book, primarily because thrillers are some of my favorite types of books and I have read some that have twists on every page and then here was The Secret History, starting with the death of a main character, telling you who did it and then rewinding the clock and through the whole book showing us why it happened the way it did.

In that context, it seems fairly understandable to think that I should not be comparing this book to the fast and forgotten triumphs of Dan Brown but more meditative, characteristic journey of people who are friends. Normal teenage people just living life really, attending college, falling in love, studying haha

To me that feels like Harry Potter, Tolstoy, it feels like warmth and love. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of tension in this book and the characters are for the most part not likeable because they are rich assholes but compelling because of how truly Donna Tartt embraces her characters and lets them be as they are, she lets them run around in circles doing their own little things and because the writing is so good, you engage with their actions and want to follow them wherever they go.

This is a book built on great pacing and rigid structure, there are only eight chapters and they are really big ones. The shortest is like 19 pages and the big ones are 82. What it allows the book to present to the reader is a story told in stages where each stage is a mood, a haze, a drunken splendor of amazing writing and aesthetics that put shame to anything Instagram can create; each stage being able to stand out distinctly meanwhile living cohesive with the others.

That can sometimes backfire and it does, sometimes you have no idea what happened just twenty pages before, only because most of the text feels like you're in a trance, drunk and moving through the motions of life. That's probably my only complaint about the book aside from Donna Tartt showcasing large sections that read as Islamophobic but not having the gall to use the word Islam instead using the fiction term isram which is just confusing, especially when one of her principle character's whole mythology is built around meeting people that actually existed in real life, like George Orwell!

Overall: I really adored the book, the vibe it brings and just how beautiful the writing is. While I understand it feels like not much happens in the story itself, that does not take away much from the book because it was never going to play that card anyway, from the moment we see Bunny falling down that cliff to it's last sci-fi/afterlife reunion.

I have always thought that graphics don't do as much at making a game beautiful as it's art style. The visual medium that video games employ allow them to show us anything literally so why stick with a realistic render of everyday people when it's so easily forgettable?

Games that have a more realized, distinctive look to them always have more staying power in our hearts, particularly older games.

The game Gris is one such example, it rendered me speechless when I started playing it, made me laugh with amazement at how it's world moved, looked and breathe as though something like a different reality.

There is so much construction in Gris, so many meticulous careful design choices that it's amazing it even plays as smoothly as it does. This is a video game about the exploration of grief, every level and scenario and cutscene is speaking in a intriguing metaphor of death, life and utterness of destruction and loss.

However, Gris never forgets it's video game roots and this is what impresses me the most about it. From the first button you press to the last walk-off moment, every level and puzzle is designed with an expert knowledge of how metroidvania games execute exploration. What I mean by that is that the developers very clearly have thought of how the camera angle affects what path we take, the sound cues to inform you of an action without telling you outright, the visual cues and then the level design itself that is so nonlinear in it layout but still ends up to the exact point from where you continue forward. It never feels like you're going along a straight line, it feels like you're discovering your own path forward, as if the game world is opening itself up to you and maintaining that illusion showcases the thought and effort put into each of Gris's amazing looking levels.

I don't want to talk about the story a whole lot because of how abstract it is, there are no dialogues, not even screen texts beyond explaining the button prompts and new powers. There is a lot to think about and a lot of visuals and music that you experience as you play through it that talking about it feels like diminishing the effects of it.

What I can talk about is that, it is short and of course I really liked the gameplay specially the later stages because of the amount of control you get as you unlock more powers in the game. The puzzles become really alive and though they are never difficult to figure out they still have that satisfying "a-ha!" feeling to them when you figure out what to do. Exploration is always rewarded with collectables and there is an in-game achievements section as well to encourage replayability and a chapter select after the game ends.

Overall, 8.5/10 Gris is a short but memorable experience about death, loss and ultimately acceptance and while it never gets to be dark and harrowing in terms of visuals, it still makes you feel plenty of sadness. Highly highly recommended and it's on Game Pass.

Wow, such a great game and such a different genre too. Essentially an interactive computer interface. I did not really expected to engage with it as much as I did because of how the narrative is about an impartial investigator destroying people's privacy and reading everything about their lives.

But Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You (2016) managed to surprise me, not only was it well written and beautifully playing with Orwellian themes, it also was an engaging gameplay experience. I completed the game in about 8h 25m so it is a short game but the control that I felt I had in my hands to make the story go where I wanted by deciding what piece of information I wanted to submit felt just the right amount of narrative tightness and player freedom.

I can already tell it has so many little variations in it's ending that you could come and play it again after you have moved on and get something completed differently. Also, it manages to talk about privacy and information and data that is perhaps even more relevant than it was back in 2016.

Very similar to Hypnospace Outlaw another game where you are an "online enforcer" but with of course very different themes, this one is a lot serious than Hypnospace Outlaw.

I do have some complaints about the game, the major being that the computer interface and it's very aspects didn't feel as interactive and engaging as to compliment an increasingly complex story. They sort of remain the same static mechanics (you click something, it does the same thing that has happened before regardless of it's thematic value) that they were introduced as. This removes a sense of compelling intrigue in the gameplay itself and really starts to wear down on you if you try to finish it in one sitting.

Overrall, a recommended 7.5/10

Do give this game a try if you're looking at your library for something different and as it requires a lot of reading, be a little patient with it in the beginning. This was given free on epic games before so I assume most gamers already have it