OrangeXMS wrote:I mostly agree on Gris, except I didn't particularly like the gamefeel of swimming - or more accurately the transition to and from it, especially when jumping out of the water. The mechanics never clicked with me, it never really felt satisfying in the way breaching should.
deathofcows wrote:I will never play a walking/narrative-based game again, I don't think. They are simply not for me.
Play The Stanley Parable to change your mind!I've not played Edith Finch, but the impression of it I have is that it falls very much on the "serious, emotional, environmental storytelling" side of the genre. While I've enjoyed games like that it's normally been because they do something else alongside it (
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture for its too perfect capturing of an idealised English village,
Sagebrush for its lo-fi retro aesthetic - which also deliberately uses the uncanny feeling of the genre to lend an almost horror-like atmosphere to the cult compound).
The "walking sims" I prefer have been less sobering.
The Stanley Parable has genuinely funny narration, is very self-aware and deconstructs itself as a videogame with only the illusion of choice.
Proteus isn't really narrative-based at all, being procedurally generated, and is more of an obvious game-like art-scape to explore - especially in its dynamic audio reflecting the movement of the player.
Which is to say, I think the genre has more to offer than just the subset of more serious entries. (I think in general games still suffer from thinking that "art is sad" when it doesn't need to be the case)
Good shout! I love The Stanley Parable. I suppose I don't group it alongside the others as - like you said - it's not in the specific genre of 'Self-serious, portentous, self-consciously Deep and Worthy walking simulator overburdened by trite affectations of music, and bizarre animations that are meant to be immersive but have no actual relation to the lived, internal first-person experience of everyday being'. A surprisingly well-represented genre!*
TSP is genuinely funny and surprising and light enough to worm its way under your skin in a way you don't expect, as it comes off so off-hand and irreverent.
Also, I wonder if there's something absorbingly
consistent [/i,]in the way its animations and movements are so game-y, smooth and friction-free.
It's truer to Games being what they are - odd [i]absractions of things we know, like movement and dialogue and navigation. Digital vehicles of ideas and concepts and play. But not actual
simulations of how we engage with the world.
In a similar way I really liked this EG piece about Skyrim:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-11-26-games-of-the-decade-the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-is-anything-but-overrated - and about how its cruder rules and physics are more real and convincing than other, more 'advanced' games.
*Subjective stance. I realise others find worth in them. I also don't care for reading Logs and Lore to add some kind of 'Richness' or 'Storytelling' to my worlds. And I can't stand messages scrawled across walls BECAUSE SURELY NO ONE EVER ACTUALLY DOES THIS IN REAL LIFE? But anyway.