My 2021 Year In Games – part 1
Told you this was going to be a regular thing! đ
Hello again, and first of all my apologies for hardly any posts this year. Itâs mainly because I am now in full-time employment and, for the middle of the year at least, was commuting three days a week. I was also busy working on my game prototype Demon Detective for most of my spare time, which didnât leave much time for doing anything else.
It also didnât leave much time for playing games, which is why this yearsâ list is much shorter than 2020 – I only played 13 games compared to 22. However, I did play some stonkers, so letâs get on with the mini-reviewsâŚ
Here’s links to the other parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN
After having disappeared many years before, the merchant ship Obra Dinn mysteriously reappears near a London harbour, all crew dead or missing. You play an insurance adjuster sent on board to figure out what happened to everyone. Which admittedly doesnât sound particularly thrilling, until I tell you that you also have a special watch that allows you go back to the moment of a personâs death, frozen in time. In this snippet of the past, you can move around the scene, examine items and people, all of which is used to help you identify each crew member and passenger from a list, and to log how and where they died.
And boy are there many dramatic deaths, from a voyage-ending mutiny (which Iâm not spoilering for you, itâs the first set of killings you investigate) to an attack by a huge sea creature, as well as various murders and accidents on board. Even though the game is presented as a series of grainy, monochrome dioramas of death, the visuals convincingly convey an air of horror and despair throughout.
AMID EVIL
While this first-person shooter game was released in 2019, the aesthetic and design harks back to the late 1990s, and the likes of DOOM, Hexen, Heretic and others. Which, for those who donât know, means much faster-paced gameplay, an abundance of pickups and secrets, and a collection of increasingly strange monsters and weapons. And itâs great!
A special mention has to go out to the level design, which is fantastically inventive. Luckily the magical-fantasy scenario means the game doesnât have to bend itself around realistic settings, which clearly allowed the designers to go mad and make some amazing locations, which go from a bridge inside a tunnel which keeps moving and reshaping itself as you explore the area, to some truly wild dream-like levels towards the end of the game.
If you miss that era of gaming, then youâre as old as me, and this is definitely one for you!
NECROBARISTA
I had heard many good things about the story in this visual novel, and while I donât play many of them, I was intrigued by the setting – a hipster coffee house in Melbourne, where the newly dead visit for one final night to be around the living. And it also fits in necromancy (the magic of bringing the dead back to life) and daft little AI robots that help around the place, all rendered in a gorgeous 3D anime style.
Now, Iâll start off being positive – most visual novels are 2D only, or might feature static 3D backgrounds with hand-drawn characters overlaid, and this has worked well for years and is perfectly fine. Necrobarista on the other hand is completely 3D, and has been set up to feel more like an interactive film, with unique camera angles used to great effect as you advance through the story.
Now, to be more negative – most visual novels have some kind of branching story structure, where there are moment where the player makes decisions either about what they say, or what they do, which has ramifications for the rest of the game. Necrobarista doesnât have this. The story is pre-written and you have no impact on it at all, which means you are simply hitting a key/button to advance the dialogue. Yes, you can unlock some optional short stories by clicking on certain words that appear as you âplayâ, but you are essentially watching a film thatâs pausing all the time.
I could have overlooked this design if the story had grabbed me, but it was a little too trite and soap-opera for my tastes. In the end I stopped âplayingâ about halfway through, and was ultimately glad I got it in a sale.
THE SEXY BRUTALE
Yes, a very odd name, which put me off this title for a very long time, and I think put many others off too as it appears it didnât sell too well, which is a shame. The Sexy Brutale is actually the name of a casino mansion, where an extravagant masquerade ball is being held, but – oh dear – all the guests are murdered over the course of the night by the staff! Then, at midnight, time rewinds itself, and the night plays out exactly as it did before. Unless, that is, your character can figure out a way to save each of the guests before the night is up.
For a start, this game is gorgeous, and I played it because I was making a prototype of a murder-mystery set in a mansion, so was part of my âresearchâ. It is also superbly inventive, with many bizarre deaths and scenarios, a gradually increasing selection of masks to wear (which grant you different abilities) and a bouncy electro-swing soundtrack which I would happily listen to on its own.
