Pathing, Walking Simulators and Architectural Theory

With the advent of games such as Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable and Gone Home amongst others the discussion of the medium of ‘video games’ has gone onto have some great (not so great) debates to whether these fringe cases can be considered games and to what extent do they portray an experience.  Although the term ‘Walking Simulator’ has negative connotations, I am in the school of thought that does believe that the term does have use and it should be used until we can come up with  better one.  I see it similar to the term ‘Moba’ that I personally don’t feel fits the genre of games such as Dota and LoL but do see that nothing suitable has come up yet. 

I have written a couple versions of this outlaying my thoughts on the subject and it’s been a difficult task to finish due to the nature of the above term creating some heated debates, but I feel that after a couple attempts I’ve got as close to my thoughts on the matter as I can.  Overall, I’m looking for it to be expanded upon greatly, but here’s some detail regarding this hypothesis. 

When I first experienced this genre it was one of intrigue; seeing an alternative means of engaging the audience in an experience that avoids the traditional method of creating conflict (whether that be with a direct battle or a task to accomplish).  I strolled through their environments, listened to their stories and felt a great deal of overlap with the essays on architectural theory I was reading at the time that focused on the fluidity of architectural form (something that if you’ve read this blog before will understand that’s one of my fundamentals from the medium).  Reading about the Heidegger Lodge or the re-purposed version of the Lake District made a game like Dear Esther play the theory out on my screen while theorists like Leech and his critical analysis of the above theory presented a nice counter point.  Finding ways to interact with a space in a virtual world is a key point for many people who play games because of the exploration factor (more on that here) and having something which focuses on that has the potential to open games up to lots of new people who may be put off by the traditional image of games being a competition or similarly ranked challenge.  The thing is thou, this original feeling was 5 or so years ago and I feel some significant things have happened in that time that caused me to develop my thoughts on the genre.

Over the past couple years, I’ve played three games that I believe are brilliant in presenting a narrative while marrying it with a number of other factors of game design to further improve the experience.  These titles (Thomas was Alone, The Stanley Parable and Transistor) present story through the actions of the player which has become a sticking point for many of the ‘walking simulator’ games that today look to grab my attention.  As I have experienced others say it was a new way of thinking 5 years ago but now it’s established and needs its next step.  

Thomas was Alone gives character to squares and rectangles by their dimensions making the regular red square (Thomas) an everyman to the smaller minded orange block or welcoming, larger blue block against the backdrop of a simple, but enjoyable puzzle-platformer.  

The Stanley Parable puts the player at the forefront of decisions as the narrative flex’s and bends to your will whether the narrator agrees with you or not.  Its ability to recognise the exploring player’s desire to search every cranny with a section like ‘the broom cupboard’ is brilliant by design and hilarious upon discovery.  

Transistor creates a world where everything adds to the narrative with the player’s use of the mechanics only reinforcing this feeling.  Learning more about characters through playing with different ability setups as the world changes throughout the playtime subtly but inevitably means a lot even if I don’t personally feel fully knowledgeable on the finer details of the story.  

Stanley is of course a game that would fit the ‘walking’ genre, but it’s so much more than where we started; not even taking into consideration how traditional games have found ways to tell a story.  They all take that earlier theory of the ‘map’ and ‘path’ which I originally felt with the genre and makes it all the more relevant as a player plots their path and takes note of personal experiences they had along the way.  The earlier titles have a certain feeling of the vernacular to them which is where we bring us to the newest title from the Chinese Room called ‘Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’. 

Last week I got to play some of Rapture and over a couple hours I would say that my time on this game was somewhat lacking.  Yes, the title look great and it had snippets of an interesting story, but with my above experiences in games I just felt like it was missing something to give it character.  For those of you unaware of the game, Rapture takes place in a quiet English village where the aforementioned rapture has happened and we as the player are tasked with exploring the landscape and piecing the story together.  Although this game has received positive praise, others have commented on the ‘dead-ends’ and movement mechanics (a run function wasn’t fully discovered until after the game was released) alongside a story with not particularly likeable characters who take part in the story.  All that being said however, I feel that the subject of ‘paths and maps’ in theory could have given it more character to enhance the story and potentially make the overall package a greater experience. 

So what do I mean by this?  Well, the game’s environment of a quaint English village is lovingly crafted that is understandable, but when I look at the finer details it has a certain feeling of the everyday / vernacular.  If they were going for a rather typical village outline then yeah sure the game has accomplished its goal of that look, but I feel that it could of played with the interiors a bit more, akin to a modern day village with its planning permissions.  With this concept, I refer to the means of which places like villages tend to have a designated look to make sure dwellings fit into the overall aesthetic of the place, but this doesn’t stop augmentation of interior features and personal touches which allows home owners the ability to make their home special.  To take this back to my earlier point of ‘paths and maps’ this practice is there in Rapture but only in a simple format in that I’m taking a path that doesn’t feel mine.  I may be asking too much from this game to look to consider this idea of player mapping through architecture, but I hope it’s something they may consider in future titles they work on. 

As I said at the start of this piece, I have generally positive thoughts for the ‘walking simulator’ genre of game but it has shown that from its humble beginnings the way in which we present a narrative has evolved over time to where you can’t just move through a space and tell a story.  Through playing with the environment, diverting the player’s impression of what will happen and making them an integral part of the story rather than a camera; all games have the potential to create an interesting narrative however they classify themselves.  Whether you like walking simulators or dismiss their nature, we’re all getting better ways to tell stories that I hope continue into the future.  

PoE Awakening: initial thoughts

Path of Exile’s first expansion has been in development for a while now with access to the beta to those who wished to do so, but its retail release has just come up prompting me to go in and see what’s what.  Over the past couple years, PoE has been a game that has garnered a lot of enjoyment from me and being able to experience new maps, bosses and skills allows me to continue to find fresh pieces of content that keep me interested in the game’s overall lifespan.  Today I want to talk about my experiences; first as a player and secondly from a design perspective. 

Playtime Experience

To get the most out of this I decided to make a new character in the soft-core “Warbands” league which features randomly generated enemy groups designed via a particular element e.g. a flame war band using flame/ searing totems, fireballs and other similar skills.  I made a Scion with the old spectral throw with elemental damage (somewhat similar to buzzsaw to those playing) with some room for new gems to experiment with and quickly got back into playing a class that I enjoy right behind the Templar.  Right from act1, I was able to experience the great additions that were on offer as Nessa (the potion and misc vendor) has a second page that features a nice range of low-level skill / passive gems at a price that a newly made character can easily acquire.  Moving into the act itself, I very much appreciate the changes to the waypoints as I have found myself doing less of the ‘running around finding it’ this time around which in turn has speed up my interim gameplay and made my playtime feel much more streamlined.

When talking about the experience being streamlined, one cannot talk about it without mentioning the shift of maps as a whole through the acts.  Each act has had a map removed (Coves, Forest and connecting Sewer) where they didn’t suit any purpose but to get the player to an ‘active’ map (inactive meaning no quests or significant event) as well as significantly changing Act 2 in regards to Bandits / Vaal.  In this version, you can clear the bandit quest before you interact with the Vaal vessel as the Vaal ruins that featured before the Wetlands now go after it.  To me it feels a lot better to get the bandit quest done and then focus on the Vaal because sometimes I would get to the Wetlands and feel like I’m going backwards and forwards to achieve my goal.  In Act 3 not much has changed but having 1 less floor in the Lunaris temple makes it feel a lot better as floor 2 could drag a bit. 

The flaming lava-falls of Kaom's realm fit alongside the monsters that follow a similar characteristic.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

Act 4 is of course the new act and as of writing I am at the Harvest collecting the organs to meet the game’s new end-boss; Malachai, The Nightmare and hopefully succeed in a relativity short amount of time as I’m only on normal with this new Scion.  Leading up to this moment, act 4 has been very enjoyable as the enemies have made me more aware of my positioning and take more time to move out of the way of attacks and telegraphs.  Even in the first map (Aqueduct) the named ‘boss’ of the area is a large bird-like creature that body slams after a short period of flight constantly so it requires you to move around to use the available space to your advantage.  As you continue to progress through the acts, the bosses ramp this up with enemies like Kaom and Corrupted Piety engulfing large amounts of the ground in negative space (such as flames / poison / etc) giving me the feeling of being back in wow raiding with things such as the famous Helgen Dance in Naxx.  Throughout all of this I’ve had one death due to my own mistake but overall I feel like the difficultly is appropriate for the content and I look forward to trying these fights on the higher difficultly. 

The Aesthetics / Design

The corridors between arenas balance the frantic battles against its small stature.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

Act 4 has a brilliant mix of map design and monster design that are able to do a lot with spaces that on their own aren’t too interesting.  I say this because a number of the maps (Dried Lake, Daresso’s Dream, etc) are a collection of channels and arenas but are able to instill life into the space within the context of its setting (see this post for my thoughts on the subject).  The Dried Lake may not be much to look at, but the mix of enemies’ present give the narrative of a battlefield of time long passed all the more presence with a somewhat washed-out, grey beach alongside a couple huts.  The large monsters that are a collection of many skeletal archers are particularly great as you can see individual archers acting on their own to attack you, while being a part of a larger monster that is intent on killing you.  On top of this, the way it splinters when you kill it offloading a couple of the archers to act on their own is a nice little touch which turns an enemy that fits a basic ranged combat role into something with a bit more detail.

The Darkness of the mines hide a mass of monsters awaiting your arrival.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

 

On the subject of enemies, there are some great interactions throughout the act which make the maps feel more alive and combative.  To give an example, the stone men in the mines throw pieces of themselves at the player with the potential to be stunned / knocked back in a darkened environment that can make it difficult to distinguish type add to the aesthetic of a mine that has sealed to the world for a long time where corruption has taken its time to manifest in the inhabitants.  Another example can be found in Kaom’s realm, where a number of enemies attack underneath the ground through lava channels leaving a burning path for the player to either dodge or experience the effect of burning.  It fits into the background of lava flowing like water as well as getting the player ready for the later battle with Kaom which requires a lot of dodging lava fields and fireballs to get through alive.  Although these are great examples, what I feel encapsulates great design is through Daresso’s dream and the two maps that feature within it. 

Daresso's Dream and the pits make a small square space into something special.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

Daresso’s story of being this young lad brought into the world of battle is setup in a great way through these two maps because of the way the character narrates while you progress.  Daresso talks about his time becoming a fighter, entering the fighting pits and making his way up to the gladiatorial arenas while you progress through the same areas has allowed me to learn about his story where previously I may of quickly skipped it through dialogue.  His story is one that feels the most prominent in my mind when it comes to Path of Exile because I was able to play it and when a story can marry itself to gameplay in such a way I believe they can truly work wonders together.  The maps themselves maybe a couple arenas with connecting paths, but the arenas have character that makes it a great place to interact with.  The ‘dream’ map has these small, muddied pits that have wooden-spiked gates that trickle enemies into the space giving me the impression of a skirmish/ brawl whereas the gladiatorial arena has crowds, side entrances and trapdoors that all throw enemies into the battle as you make a name for yourself.  There are a few pillars dotted around to punctuate the arena floor, but that’s all it needs because the fight does all the talking.  Even with all this going on, the final battle with Daresso fits into his own battle for the King of Swords; having a much more intimate space as two combatants wait to see the first show doubt and strike hard. 

The gladiatorial arena is just a larger square but does a lot with the space provided.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015 

Overall, the Awakening expansion for Path of Exile has been a great deal of fun to play which has allowed me to interact with parts of the game that I haven’t done so in the past.  The overall flow of the game feels better and the new act 4 has a great mixture of monsters, maps and boss fights to keep many a player interested up to the end credits and beyond.  I hope you give it a try and see how much is going on beyond the genre title of an Action RPG that is free without you feeling like you’re missing out if you choose not to purchase its micro transactions. 

Couple more weeks and I may try hardcore again….

‘Starchitect’ Theory and Thoughts Towards Video Games

Over the past few days I’ve been considering what to write about for this week’s entry.  Recently I have found myself not being 100% what to write about or needing to know a lot more about a topic to give it a proper assessment (North African Kasbahs being one of them).  However, like those odd ideas that you have at 2am this one came across while thinking about something somewhat unrelated; the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain. 

The Guggenheim is an iconic structure from 1997 that has been heralded as a moment for architecture, culture and society to coexist within the context of a super-modern aesthetic.  Its flowing structure is rather striking and personally makes me think of a modern, modernism (reinterpretation of 1920s Modernism) if one could be allowed to say such things.  Personally, I’ve not been too informed on the piece because as with my history, I’m pretty much a ‘bottom-up’ theorist and find a lot of my interest in things like housing projects and the sorts, but a term used to describe the Guggenheim did get me thinking. 

You see, I had originally looked at the Guggenheim recently due to a couple job postings for museum staff and I was interested what level of involvement they entailed.  As with all my job hunting, I look to do research into the site and its archives through a varied mixture of the official press and opinion pieces, but an interesting discussion appeared on the subject of ‘Stararchitects’ which naturally has some crossover with other forms of art.  For those of you not aware of the term, ‘Stararchitects’ describes pieces of Architecture (or Architects themselves) that get risen to the status of fame and celebratory note, where people can align themselves with a fan mentality.  During my studies of architecture, the general census from my fellow students was that of Corbusier and his greatness (which of course the guy is very influential), but aligning with my previous viewpoint I found interest in his housing concepts and how I could discuss it alongside theorists.  I can very much remember visiting Villa Savoye in France during my 1^st year field trip and upon being asked what I felt about it I gave a response of respect, but of a reserved nature to which my tutor replied with, what I felt, was a combination of dislike and surprise.  Since then, I’ve kind of built a bit more respect for the piece but for me the human side through interaction has always grasped my interest which I hope to present here in some fashion. 

(Anyway, towards games)  If you take this concept you could probably attach it to any form of media, but I feel games have a unique way to show this through the combination of multiple factors which I hope to discuss here. 

Originally I felt there were three rough ways that games present high-regard in today’s world: the individual, the presenter and the genre.  The individual is what I would call the auteur designers or influential people making games for a particular studio.  To give a couple examples we can say David Cage or Roberta Williams.  These people attain significant recognition for the work they do for a specific area which they become known for.  For these examples, their genres of cinematic/narrative/action and point-and-click/80-90s adventure games define them where it may seem odd to discuss them outside of these genres.  Lastly, their companies of Quantic Dream and Sierra are known for these people and for these types of games and that’s what gives them high regard and status as a piece of the history of video game culture. 

In today’s world, there are examples that follow this and add to the extent that we can create both positive and negative connotations of the ‘Starchitect’ theory.  One of which is Ubisoft where the name has become ubiquitous with yearly open-world franchises that follow a ‘theme-park’ selection of mini-games and collectables to engage the player.  Another can be Bioware, with fantasy RPG’s with a strong narrative base, mature elements and recognised voice actors like Jennifer Hale.  On the complete opposite of this, Activision publish the Call of Duty series that has defined a multiplayer generation even beyond its FPS construction bring quasi-mmo progression into the larger public eye (of course, mmo-style progression was done before this in titles like battlefield 2 but CoD is the big one). 

When I look at other forms of media like film, I may see directors with specific genres or production companies with very specific stories, but I don’t necessarily feel that they all come together as often as in the earlier days of cinematography.  If I were to think of an example I would probably say Hammer Horror but if you are more versed in film media please feel free to comment as I would like to discuss this concept. 

To bring this to a conclusion, it’s in our nature to recognise trends in a number of fashions, but I believe that games have been able to find their own little way of showcasing this topic and continue to reinvent its meaning.  Recent years has seen the YouTube personality come into the fray as our method of consuming content has significantly changed with the advent of higher speed internet and I will be interested to see how the grow culturally along with the media of video games.  

“Keep running up that hill” Player Interaction and Accomplishment

A couple weeks ago I discussed my thoughts behind how man-made mountains of architecture can have a connection to game design.  Today I want to take a piece of that theory and see how it’s been used to show challenge and accomplishment in games throughout my time enjoying this medium. 

I’ve recently been helping a couple people in my local museum on the subject of architecture in New-Town Britain (post war 1950s+) in which we’ve talked primarily about the large amount of experimentation that was going on.  One of these examples was Bishopsfield in the 1960s; a residential area of flats, maisonettes and open-plan living spaces that featured an interesting street layout.  The Core block, which featured flats and the majority of the communal space, sat high on the landscape while the channels of homes splintered into narrow streets on a gentle slope to the surrounding landscape.  Although this piece is somewhat modelled on a North-African / Moroccan setting, is does have a polarising view from residents and architects alike.  For me, I find it interesting because it reminds me of a prison bloc in that you have the central guard tower high up against the rows of cell-blocks cowering underneath it forever under its watchful eye.  With all these views taken into account it did make me think about vistas, viewpoints and the use of height in architecture, which naturally brought me to the man-made mountain theory and finally to here. 

So for a game, what does a hill do?  Gives height to an area for the purpose of a vista; a defendable position that needs to be held from an encroaching horde; a natural border to the landscape to push the player to another objective; or an objective itself to overcome in a varied numbered of ways.  When I looked through my time playing games, I considered a mixture of these views, but what commonly came up were that of the antagonist and that sense of overcoming an obstacle which has been presented to us.  Here are a couple examples of what I’ve experienced over my time in gaming:

MediEvil (PSX) – Level 3 Cemetery Hill

Rocks slow your progress as you climb the hill to complete the level (Image from Medievil Wiki)

MediEvil is one of the games on the PlayStation that I loved playing many times throughout my childhood; being a mix of combat, plat-forming and mild RPG mechanics that many games of the time used.  I have never owned a Nintendo console, so I never got to play games like Mario, Banjo Kazooie, or the Legend of Zelda so MediEvil holds that feeling that these games may have for you.  In regards to hills, MediEvil has an early level called Cemetery Hill that tasks the player (Sir Daniel Fortesque) go after the antagonist (Zarok) up a steep hill upon which sits an asylum.  Zarok turns to animate nearby stone gargoyles that start chucking boulders down the hill’s path to impede the player in their progress.  The player then must use a combination of movement, safe-spots and attacks with a club to get around these obstacles and reach the end-point at the entrance of the asylum which features the game’s first boss.  The hill in this case has a visual representation as something to climb up to achieve a goal and overcome a challenge to which physical obstacles are placed much like a feudal encampment with its raised sections, wooden walls and elevated keep. 

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – SafeHouse and Heat

Heat and the hill featuring both going down the hill and up it while the chaos ensues  (Image from google search) 

I did originally put down my experiences of earlier war games charging up the beaches in Normandy, but I feel like that example is a bit too similar to the MediEvil one.  With CoD however, I feel it still has that feeling of the charge and a challenge to overcome with the physical representation behind a bit more subtle.  I understand CoD and subtlety aren’t usually connected with its Hollywood-esc action scenes but in this context I feel it does it well.  The first mission (SafeHouse) is a stealthy approach up the hill at night to find one of the antagonists of the game hiding in Azerbaijan.  The movements are slow and the gradient change has a similar feeling going through the set pieces.  The players have a similar experience next with the brilliantly designed “All Ghilled Up” but upon returning to the present timeline we’re met with a frantic reimagining of “Safehouse” called “Heat”.  This mission deals with the player having to take on enemy reinforcements coming up the hill to clear a suitable area for extraction by helicopter.  At this point, going up the hill has been replaced by the notion of getting down the hill while dealing with the presented challenge via a couple of different means (guns blazing, stealth, etc).  Being at the top, one could imagine we have the sight advantage, but much like the earlier MediEvil example, those enemies have things to hide behind and fortify giving us a kind of a role-reversal situation where this hill that we achieved has been turned against us.  When playing this game, I played it on its hardest difficulty setting (if I remember correctly that was veteran) so the mass of enemies combined with the limited health-pool was met with a challenging experience that took me a decent number of tries to accomplish. 

Dear Esther – The Tower

The Tower and its glow an ever present hill to climb (Image from steam screenshot library)

I have mentioned Dear Esther in my previous man-made monuments piece but it has some bleed over to this.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to play “Journey” on the PS3 as I haven’t owned a console since the PS2 but if you have you will probably see some similarities.  The Tower is an ever-noticeable symbol in this game in that it represents an objective to attain at a foreseeable future to the player.  It is this game’s hill (beyond its natural hills that are present throughout the time of play) in that the visual representation is something to overcome while the story narration builds –up to an event like a peak. 

With all this being said, I come back to my post-war residential block of Bishopsfield and think ‘where do you fit in all this?’  To be honest I’m not sure where to place it, but if I had to it would probably align itself with a stealthy piece of gameplay like Metal Gear Solid.  That being said, I may be thinking too literal with the guard tower design theory I mentioned earlier.  Hills are challenges that can manifest themselves as both physical and physiological items and I task you to think about it next time find yourself interacting with such a space both in-game and in the world we live in.  

Concluding 2014: My Experience in the World of Gaming

As many of you experience during this festive time of year, it can get rather busy roaming around the land visiting family and friends to exchange gifts, eat a lot and have a hangover.  Naturally, this has affected my ability to put time aside for writing which I’m getting around to fixing while trying to figure out what’s happening for the upcoming New Year’s celebrations and watch the Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2014 (I know, a glamorous life I must live…)

That being said, I can’t put it all down to extenuating circumstances as I have had the last couple days available to write; with the intention of creating a small piece on man-made mountains and their appearance as antagonists in games coinciding with previous posts on a similar fashion.  As it is the end of the year one can find themselves in the mind-set of ‘I’ll wait until January to start anew’ alongside the range of resolutions many people make, so to give the above topic a proper post alongside actually writing something, I’m going to write about some games I liked playing this year.  This isn't going to be a quantified list as I don’t think that this will be more of a streaming conscious than anything, but I hope you find the explanations interesting at least.  I should also say that these games aren't all releases of 2014 but more of a retrospective on my time spent gaming over the past 12 months. 

 *Images are from a collection of screenshots I've taken over the last 12 months*

Path of Exile

I had briefly played this game through a number of betas, but with its entry onto Steam and Torchlight 2 elite hardcore mode getting a bit annoying to achieve I saw a chance to return to the title.  I played roughly during the months of January-May and got a great deal of enjoyment from the mechanics of the game from start to finish.  The skill gem system was a totally new experience for me, as I naturally built up an array of spells, abilities and auras to use across my cohort of exiles in a number of different ways.  This was further expanded through links and augments that mutated said skills to explode, split, fear, stun and more to the point where a skill could look considerably different on use.  The bartering system was enjoyable to partake in as well, as I didn't look up guides for it and naturally experimented with items to see what would come of them.  If I was to level a complaint, I’d say that the armour sets felt a little bit too samey during my playtime (which could be down to the aesthetic choice of the exile environment) but regardless it was a really enjoyable free to play game that doesn't look to nickel-and-dime you to have an enjoyable experience. 

 Firefall

One of my first posts was about this title and since then I haven’t gone back to it.  Now I've had time to look back on it I can say I still hold the idea that it’s an enjoyable game and would be great if it wasn't so repetitive in the gameplay through the mission board system.  The big events grabbed me alongside the smaller ones that scattered the landscape and if it focused more on these akin to something like Guild Wars 2 I feel like it would have kept my interest for much longer.  That being said, it was a game that was developed for a very long time and maybe it was never going to truly work as they had envisaged.  To end on a good point thou, getting around the environment was really fun especially the glider / kite system. 

Wolf Among Us

This game came out in October 2013 but I didn't pick it up until the Summer sale of this year which by then was in its finished state with all episodes available of season one.  I had briefly played Telltale’s The Walking Dead on my phone in the spring and liked my first try of a visual text-adventure (I’m not 100% of its genre but that’s a close approximation) so as it was cheap I thought I’d give this one a go.  I instantly played through episode one and loved the gameplay, playing through the rest of it over a period of a week in the late evenings so that I wouldn't be disturbed.  I wanted to figure out where each fable came from and what sort of life they were living, alongside the possible outcomes of my actions as Bigby Wolf.  I tried to answer dialog options how I think I would act in the situations presented alongside remembering to use the ‘silence is an option’ mechanic from time to time.  Alongside the gameplay, I really love the aesthetics of the Wolf Among Us particularly in the options menu and title/credits of each episode.  The running title of Bibgy walking through the streets of New York with its purples blues and blacks looks brilliant and a particular frame of this became my pc wallpaper from July to October of this year.  This game may not have the direct human connection of the previous Walking Dead for some, but for me the Wolf Among Us was a greatly enjoyable experience for me that have me more open to narrative games in the future. 

Game of the Year 420 BLAZE IT

This year I’ve looked to try new games whenever possible to try and broaden my horizons in the medium.  Sometimes I end up in some weird places and this is one of them.  I won’t put an image up, but just download it and embrace the crazy that this is. 

Civilization V: Brave New World

I originally bought Civ V on release and got a lot of enjoyment from it; harking back to the series’ second installment I use to play on the PlayStation as a much younger self.  That being said, picking up Brave New World during the summer sale filled me with renewed interest in the game.  The addition of trade routes, religion (I skipped Gods and Kings), spies, ideologies and the revamped cultural victory added so much depth for my play style as I prefer to go for non-combatant victory conditions.  Recently, I’ve got more and more interested in the finer details as I attempt to play on the higher difficulties of immortal / deity and I’m not being put off by the losses.  There are 4x’s that are much more in-depth, but Civ (like many others) has that personal connection and I hope that this series continues to remain strong into the future.

The Stanley Parable

Very few games have made me genuinely laugh in my life, but the Stanley Parable’s standalone release this year was brilliant in being mundane on the surface but hilarious underneath.  I played the earlier source mod for this during my time at university thanks to it being featured on Extra Credits “games you may not have tried” many times, but the recent release added a bunch of new possible ‘endings’ to the parable.  To those who aren’t aware, it’s a first-person narrative-driven game where a narrator takes you through a story.  What that story maybe, is pretty much up to you and I hope more people get to experience this fascinating and enjoyable experience. 

Warframe

I've played this for around two years and this year it’s clocked up a sizeable amount of my time gaming, but somehow Warframe remains to be a game I enjoy playing nearly every day.  Being involved in the game for this length of time, it’s great to see how far they've come from when I started playing; from around 6 game modes to 20 with improvements to the former as a means to continue to make the experience varied.  Alongside being my most played game this year, it is also a free to play title that allows the player to decide what level of investment they want to take.  Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, as its free give it a try and you may enjoy what you see. 

Transistor 

Although I did dismiss the list idea at the beginning of this post, if I was to quantify the games I played this year Transistor would probably take the top spot.  This has been the only game since Skyrim that I’ve bought on release and I completed it in two short bursts of playtime; but the time I had with this game was both an aesthetically wonderful game and narratively fascinating experience.  On the surface, Transistor follows Super Giant Games previous title (Bastion) in terms of the narrative progression of an isometric combat game where a smooth-voiced narrator takes you through the world.  Upon playing Transistor, you can see how the combat has some more dynamic rpg-like mechanics and through this get a greater understanding to people who exist in this world.  Even thou I’ll admit I’m not 100% sure on the story; the journey itself was interesting enough to keep me wanting to find out more with some particular sections of the game getting a genuine response from me.  With all that being said, it is backed up by an amazing soundtrack which features a mixture of slow beats, calming melodies, high-octane melees and chilling songs; in particular The Spine and Smoke Signals somewhat fall into this last category in my opinion.  I’m looking to play through the game again next month and I know it’ll draw me back in.

To bring this all to a somewhat conclusion, I think that 2014 has been a year for me where narrative driven games have raised higher up on my interest level.  I briefly talked about my shift of gaming habits in the ‘monogaming vs. polygaming’ post but my general media habits have changed quite a bit.  These days I watch very little TV or films because I don’t feel invested in the story or potential plot.  What these narrative games have given me is a way to enjoy stories in a medium which I feel has the potential to go further than is conceived generally.  I hope that going into 2015, I get to enjoy a larger mix of narratives in games and in turn find some interesting connections to architecture that I can write about.  Other than that, have a great New Year’s and amazing 2015.