So between teaching, tutoring, podcasting and publishing a book, you haven’t heard from me in a while. Some of you might even be grateful for that. To you I give a hearty pffffbbbt. To the rest, I want to talk about some games. Nothing recent, because I’m pretty sure you’ve seen all the Black Ops and Halo stuff that you want to for a while, and Hitman is happily being vivisected by a few dozen critics in efforts to determine if it’s a ‘real’ Hitman game. All that’s well and good, but I want to talk about the stuff you want to hear about. Particularly right now.
What to buy during the holiday sales.
Steam, Amazon, Good Old Games, Gamestop, and pretty much any major purveyor of pixellated goodies are all offering up a number of products for very little money beginning this week. This practice will continue until Christmas. So let’s talk about some gems that you may not have seen that you should definitely snatch up on the cheap. These aren’t necessarily new releases, and many of them are a year or more old, but they’re all worth playing and will go easy on your wallet in the coming weeks.
Here’s a few of my favorites to keep an eye out for, in no particular order.
Shin Megami Tensei, Devil Survivor series:
Atlus’ swan song for the DS might be Devil Survivor 2, and that’s not a bad thing. Both games (available on the regular DS, although the “director’s cut” version of the first is a 3DS cart) are effectively the Final Fantasy Tactics of the Persona/SMT universe. It’s half turn-based strategy and half dating sim, as your character uses a variety of monsters and up to three companions to make teams and take down a huge army of demons. In both games, your characters are stuck in the midst of a disaster affecting thousands and must make a variety of tough decisions. Neither game goes quite as far in that direction as one might hope, and the plots definitely tend towards standard anime tropes, but the games themselves are perfect for the DS in the way Advance Wars was made for a handheld. These games are undoubtedly worth your time.
Games from prior consoles:
Let’s talk about Wii games. Here’s a few that’ll be showing up on buy 1, get 1 free sales or discounted in some fashion or other. If you haven’t heard of these make with the amazing search. You won’t be sorry.
-A Boy and His Blob: So you’ve got a Wii, because they pretty much exist in every household at this point. Not nearly enough of those households have a copy of A Boy and His Blob. It’s a super basic puzzle platformer, but charming as hell. It’s worth playing.
-Muramasa: The Demon Blade: Part metroid-vania, part Shinobi, beautifully crafted, and the story is utterly baffling. Beyond that the game is one of the tightest-controlling experiences on the platform, next to…
-No More Heroes 2: Probably the best-feeling, weirdest, and legitimately funniest game on the entire console, or of this last generation. This is about eight bucks at the moment and bound to be cheaper depending on what discount code you find. Play it. Seriously.
-Silent Hill: Shattered Memories: If you want an actual Silent Hill game that provides the same sense of weirdness, dread, and mystery that hallmarked the early games in the series, this guy is your best bet. Does some interesting things with the controller, and totally worth a late night.
So I heard you like adventure games:
The Walking Dead has done a lot to get people interested in point and click adventure games, on top of Telltale’s multi-year revival of the franchise. While you should undoubtedly play all five chapters in that there are a number of indie adventure games out there that are equally impressive.
-Unmechanical: You’re a tiny robot with a propellor on its head trapped underground. Lots of physics puzzles, beautiful art design and lighting effects (Unreal Engine, yo), and a lot of weird metaphysical story that’s left open to VAST interpretation. This has already shown up on gog.com for $2 and will again. Beyond the physics puzzles and the lightning this game tells a short but bittersweet story that gets absurdly deep for a puzzle game starring a goofy little robot.
-Botanicula: Pretty, goofy, and has some fantastic “what??” moments. Also what you want from an adventure game. Great art style in the same vein as Machinarium (same dudes). The game itself isn’t necessarily much, but the game’s worth playing just for the art and the series of absurd things that happen with each mouse click.
-Gemini Rue and Resonance: pixel art point and click adventure. I don’t know what else to say about those. You should be playing more point and click adventures. These two are both fantastic.
Free things are free!
Lastly, here’s some stuff you should go check out when all is said and done and you don’t want to spend money anymore.
-Planetside 2: Yeah, this isn’t really a new independent thing, but Planetside 2 is really good. It has the calculated mayhem of Battlefield with bigger environments, lots of vehicles, and a whole bunch of guns that feel real good. The game’s great about letting you drop into a shootout right away, or set up a thousand meters away to snipe some dudes. It feels like a full-featured Battlefield-style game, and it’s free. That’s at least worth trying out.
-Cry of Fear: It’s sad that the best Silent Hill game that’s been made in the last few years has nothing to do with Konami and is available as a free Half-Life mod. But at the same time that makes this about the best thing you can do with Half-Life today. Cry of Fear has some rough spots, but it’s great at eliciting that sense of utter dread that Silent Hill did so well at its peak. It’s also good for a few dozen jump scares, as some of you might notice on my TwitchTV channel.
So there. Almost a dozen games to go scoop up in your mad holiday rush. Gift them to the person who has everything. Keep them and savor the awesome. Go forth, game and be merry.
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