Hawky Super Star
Coming in a mess, going out in style
Recently, with my new custom-build Dell Optiplex PC in hand, I've been on a kick of playing older games that I either haven't touched in a long time, or never gotten to play at all. It's safe to say that this last month or so is the most I've indulged in my passion for gaming in years. With it, I'm also getting to rekindle my love for the medium, and now take stock of what I enjoy seeing the most in it.
What does that mean? It means that I'm in the mood to completely nerd out and rave about games, by writing a thread about my favorites of them. To that end, below, I've decided to list my top three games, and talk about them in the form of mini-reviews contained in the spoiler tabs. Enjoy!
I say "comparative", because four years later, Portal 2 took everything else that made the first game great, and made it bigger and better. The basic mechanics are the same, but so many new variables and styles of level design were added to the test chambers, making the experience even more fresh than the original. The story this time around isn't as tonally locked down as the first, but is still fantastic, and works together with the level design to expand on the lore of Aperture in a genuinely fun way. The most important addition in 2 by far, though, is its introduction of co-op multiplayer, which puts you and a second player into a whole separate testing track that requires both of you to work together like a well-oiled machine (and it's even meant in-story to be all about team building!).
Just like with #1 on this list, your ability to beat Portal 2 is all about how well you can read the room, analyze, and strategize to solve puzzles. If that sounds like an enjoyable time to you, then I highly recommend heading over to Steam and picking it up right now - for only $10!
Super Hexagon is about as mechanically simple of a game as you can get. Your only controls are left and right, as you move a tiny triangle around the main hexagon in the center of each stage. As patterns of obstacles start flying at you from the edge of the screen, your goal is to survive each stage - there's six of them, each harder than the last - for at least 60 seconds. The longer you last, the harder it gets, until you finally advance all the way to the notoriously brutal Final Hexagon.
A sign of just how hard this game really is: while the main goal is to last for 60 seconds in each stage, it took me over a week to get good enough to consistently beat the easiest level. I then spent the next month or so grinding my way up to finally beating the hardest stage, Hyper Hexagonest. Only a few other times have I felt an endorphin rush in gaming as when I finally conquered Hyper Hexagonest, after so many hours of play.
And yet, even though Super Hexagon is so brutally difficult, it's also completely fair. The rules are always consistent, so the challenge is purely down to developing both reflexes and muscle memory strong enough to maneuver through every single pattern with the necessary speed. It's a bit like Geometry Dash, simple to learn, but very hard to master. It also helps that the game features a killer three-song chiptune soundtrack by Chipzel, which has kept me playing even at my most enraged.
I would go as far as to call Super Hexagon a perfect game, in that I legitimately can't think of any flaws in it. It knows what it wants to do, and does it with complete efficiency. If you happen to have $3 to spare, and enjoy reflex-based games like Geometry Dash, this one is right up your alley.
Full disclosure: I only just started playing this game yesterday, and have only gotten about a quarter of the way through so far. Think about what that means: this game is so good that I've decided it's my all-time favorite before even completing half of it. Holy. Crap.
When I was a kid back in 2012, my mom and I were rifling through the cheap DVDs bin at Walmart, looking for something we could watch together later that day. We eventually decided to get a movie neither of us had seen before, a 2007 flick called Reign Over Me. It's one of Adam Sandler's few dramas (I'd say one of his best movies overall), and he stars in it as Charlie, a complete wreck of a man who's been struggling to cope and move on ever since his family was killed in one of the planes on 9/11. There's a lot of movies out there that play into the "Pac-Man Fever" trope, showcasing games in them as throwaway tidbits of characterization, but Reign Over Me is the sole exception that I always come back to. Why? Because, throughout several scenes in the movie, we see Charlie playing one specific game, and eventually getting protagonist Alan (played by Don Cheadle) into it as well. That game in question is what many call the crown jewel of the whole PS2 library: Shadow of the Colossus.
As you'll see in a second, given the plot of the movie, this is an absolutely perfect piece of symbolism for Charlie's character.
(As a side tangent: if I had a nickel for every time I saw and enjoyed a movie with a horribly broken, sympathetic man named Charlie as a main character, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but between Reign Over Me and Flowers for Algernon, it's weird that it's happened twice.)
Shadow of the Colossus has you playing as Wander, who's traveled into a no man's land in order to try and bring his girlfriend Mono back from the dead. The god Dormin tells him that it can be done... but only if Wander first ventures out into the world and slays sixteen massive beasts known as the Colossi. All Wander has to help him in this seemingly impossible quest is his loyal horse, Agro, a bow, and a sword that also acts as a navigational aid. It's up to you to not only find your way across the land to each colossus, but to figure out exactly how to defeat each one with what few tools you have at your disposal.
Even though I've only finished the first quarter of the game as of time of writing, I've instantly fallen in love. The tone, the emotional weight, and the sheer atmosphere of this game make it insanely immersive to an extent that I've never seen before in any medium. The map you explore is huge, and loaded with secrets you have to search out for yourself. If you're not feeling like hunting down one of the colossi, you can simply lose yourself in wandering (heh, heh) the Forbidden Lands for hours on end. In other words, it's one of those rare "mood" games that's best to play in the dark, and especially with some good headphones.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, SOTC succeeds in striking the absolute perfect balance of difficulty, making every part of the game sufficiently challenging to the player, but not to the point where it becomes unfair or terribly cryptic. Usually, I tend to find these "high fantasy" type of games too hard for me to get into, but that's mainly because so many of them are RPGs like Skyrim or Baldur's Gate, meaning you have to keep up with so many factors of gameplay, inventories and such, to be able to play them well. SOTC keeps things mechanically simple by supplying Wander with only a sword and bow, which leaves mastering the game entirely up to your skill as a player. The same goes for figuring out the strategies needed to take down each colossus; they all have their own unique designs, and each one requires a different approach to defeat, meaning that every fight will have you spending time analyzing their bodies and movements to build an attack plan. It's a style of play that you really have to see for yourself to understand.
And yet, every time you defeat a colossi, it doesn't feel how you'd expect. Sure, you get the rush of pure satisfaction that comes with successfully vanquishing a giant, but it's always tempered by a countercurrent of sadness. After all, you can't help but think... the colossi are completely gentle souls. They didn't do anything to hurt you until you came to kill them first. Is it worth it, to destroy these innocent creatures, sacrificing pieces of your own soul each time in doing so, just to try and interfere with the kingdom of the dead? Is that a price you're willing to pay for love? And just as importantly, can you even trust Dormin to give you what you want when it's all over? These are all questions that every SOTC player will inevitably find themselves asking, myself included.
On a more surface level, everything about SOTC's technical creation is a work of art. The graphics are absolutely mindblowing for a PS2 game (and made even better by the enhancements I've added to it through PCSX2), even if that means pushing the console's hardware to its absolute limits. They may not be that high of fidelity by modern standards, but they combine to create an unmatched overall visual experience. Coupled with the amazing sound design, the end result is a game so fully engrossing that you almost can't help but wish it was real. The only drawback is the controls, which are a bit unintuitive and slightly awkward, but are ultimately a minor issue.
(This is why, even though I've known of this game for more than a decade, I've never played it until now. I wanted to wait until I could run it on PCSX2, and get the added advantages of running it with enhancements on PC hardware, as well as headphone audio.)
I could go on and on, but to put it short, SOTC is one of those games that really changes how you see the entire medium, being just as much an artistic masterpiece as it is an interactive experience. Like with Super Hexagon above, it's one of the very, very few that I would call genuinely perfect, and even with my currently limited playtime, I can't recommend it enough.
(Also: the devs who made SOTC, Team Ico, are also behind ICO and The Last Guardian. Beautiful minimalism seems to be their specialty.)
What are y'all's favorite games? Maybe you don't feel like going full review mode to answer, but I'd like to hear some others from the rest of you!
What does that mean? It means that I'm in the mood to completely nerd out and rave about games, by writing a thread about my favorites of them. To that end, below, I've decided to list my top three games, and talk about them in the form of mini-reviews contained in the spoiler tabs. Enjoy!
#3 - PORTAL 2
GENRE: Puzzle-platformer
PLATFORMS: Windows, Mac, Linux, PS3, Xbox 360, Switch
IN A NUTSHELL: Navigating rooms of puzzles by thinking with portals
One of the first games I installed on my first laptop back in 2011 was the original Portal, the Valve classic about working through Aperture Science's series of test chambers with a portal gun. In one sense, Portal had something in common with #1 on my list, in that its tone was both perfect and fully consistent. You spent much of the game wondering if you were the only living human in this eerie, desolate, sterile labyrinth of black and white panel walls, discounting the disembodied robot voice of GLaDOS beaming through the facility's speakers. For that alone, I also could've put the first Portal on this list, but it was held back mainly by its shorter length and comparative lack of gameplay variety.GENRE: Puzzle-platformer
PLATFORMS: Windows, Mac, Linux, PS3, Xbox 360, Switch
IN A NUTSHELL: Navigating rooms of puzzles by thinking with portals
I say "comparative", because four years later, Portal 2 took everything else that made the first game great, and made it bigger and better. The basic mechanics are the same, but so many new variables and styles of level design were added to the test chambers, making the experience even more fresh than the original. The story this time around isn't as tonally locked down as the first, but is still fantastic, and works together with the level design to expand on the lore of Aperture in a genuinely fun way. The most important addition in 2 by far, though, is its introduction of co-op multiplayer, which puts you and a second player into a whole separate testing track that requires both of you to work together like a well-oiled machine (and it's even meant in-story to be all about team building!).
Just like with #1 on this list, your ability to beat Portal 2 is all about how well you can read the room, analyze, and strategize to solve puzzles. If that sounds like an enjoyable time to you, then I highly recommend heading over to Steam and picking it up right now - for only $10!
#2 - SUPER HEXAGON
GENRE: Arcade, twitch
PLATFORMS: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS
IN A NUTSHELL: Dodge obstacles for as long as you can
Out of the three games on this list, this is the one I was introduced to the most recently, having seen it in an old NerdCubed video back in 2015. Those of you who responded to my thread about the hardest games you've played will probably remember me mentioning this one specifically, and for good reason.GENRE: Arcade, twitch
PLATFORMS: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS
IN A NUTSHELL: Dodge obstacles for as long as you can
Super Hexagon is about as mechanically simple of a game as you can get. Your only controls are left and right, as you move a tiny triangle around the main hexagon in the center of each stage. As patterns of obstacles start flying at you from the edge of the screen, your goal is to survive each stage - there's six of them, each harder than the last - for at least 60 seconds. The longer you last, the harder it gets, until you finally advance all the way to the notoriously brutal Final Hexagon.
A sign of just how hard this game really is: while the main goal is to last for 60 seconds in each stage, it took me over a week to get good enough to consistently beat the easiest level. I then spent the next month or so grinding my way up to finally beating the hardest stage, Hyper Hexagonest. Only a few other times have I felt an endorphin rush in gaming as when I finally conquered Hyper Hexagonest, after so many hours of play.
And yet, even though Super Hexagon is so brutally difficult, it's also completely fair. The rules are always consistent, so the challenge is purely down to developing both reflexes and muscle memory strong enough to maneuver through every single pattern with the necessary speed. It's a bit like Geometry Dash, simple to learn, but very hard to master. It also helps that the game features a killer three-song chiptune soundtrack by Chipzel, which has kept me playing even at my most enraged.
I would go as far as to call Super Hexagon a perfect game, in that I legitimately can't think of any flaws in it. It knows what it wants to do, and does it with complete efficiency. If you happen to have $3 to spare, and enjoy reflex-based games like Geometry Dash, this one is right up your alley.
#1 - SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS
(my screenshot, taken in PCSX2)
GENRE: Action-adventure, puzzle-platformer
PLATFORMS: PS2, PS3 (re-release)
IN A NUTSHELL: Fight and slay enormous beasts, with only your wits at your disposal
(my screenshot, taken in PCSX2)
GENRE: Action-adventure, puzzle-platformer
PLATFORMS: PS2, PS3 (re-release)
IN A NUTSHELL: Fight and slay enormous beasts, with only your wits at your disposal
Full disclosure: I only just started playing this game yesterday, and have only gotten about a quarter of the way through so far. Think about what that means: this game is so good that I've decided it's my all-time favorite before even completing half of it. Holy. Crap.
When I was a kid back in 2012, my mom and I were rifling through the cheap DVDs bin at Walmart, looking for something we could watch together later that day. We eventually decided to get a movie neither of us had seen before, a 2007 flick called Reign Over Me. It's one of Adam Sandler's few dramas (I'd say one of his best movies overall), and he stars in it as Charlie, a complete wreck of a man who's been struggling to cope and move on ever since his family was killed in one of the planes on 9/11. There's a lot of movies out there that play into the "Pac-Man Fever" trope, showcasing games in them as throwaway tidbits of characterization, but Reign Over Me is the sole exception that I always come back to. Why? Because, throughout several scenes in the movie, we see Charlie playing one specific game, and eventually getting protagonist Alan (played by Don Cheadle) into it as well. That game in question is what many call the crown jewel of the whole PS2 library: Shadow of the Colossus.
As you'll see in a second, given the plot of the movie, this is an absolutely perfect piece of symbolism for Charlie's character.
(As a side tangent: if I had a nickel for every time I saw and enjoyed a movie with a horribly broken, sympathetic man named Charlie as a main character, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but between Reign Over Me and Flowers for Algernon, it's weird that it's happened twice.)
Shadow of the Colossus has you playing as Wander, who's traveled into a no man's land in order to try and bring his girlfriend Mono back from the dead. The god Dormin tells him that it can be done... but only if Wander first ventures out into the world and slays sixteen massive beasts known as the Colossi. All Wander has to help him in this seemingly impossible quest is his loyal horse, Agro, a bow, and a sword that also acts as a navigational aid. It's up to you to not only find your way across the land to each colossus, but to figure out exactly how to defeat each one with what few tools you have at your disposal.
Even though I've only finished the first quarter of the game as of time of writing, I've instantly fallen in love. The tone, the emotional weight, and the sheer atmosphere of this game make it insanely immersive to an extent that I've never seen before in any medium. The map you explore is huge, and loaded with secrets you have to search out for yourself. If you're not feeling like hunting down one of the colossi, you can simply lose yourself in wandering (heh, heh) the Forbidden Lands for hours on end. In other words, it's one of those rare "mood" games that's best to play in the dark, and especially with some good headphones.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, SOTC succeeds in striking the absolute perfect balance of difficulty, making every part of the game sufficiently challenging to the player, but not to the point where it becomes unfair or terribly cryptic. Usually, I tend to find these "high fantasy" type of games too hard for me to get into, but that's mainly because so many of them are RPGs like Skyrim or Baldur's Gate, meaning you have to keep up with so many factors of gameplay, inventories and such, to be able to play them well. SOTC keeps things mechanically simple by supplying Wander with only a sword and bow, which leaves mastering the game entirely up to your skill as a player. The same goes for figuring out the strategies needed to take down each colossus; they all have their own unique designs, and each one requires a different approach to defeat, meaning that every fight will have you spending time analyzing their bodies and movements to build an attack plan. It's a style of play that you really have to see for yourself to understand.
And yet, every time you defeat a colossi, it doesn't feel how you'd expect. Sure, you get the rush of pure satisfaction that comes with successfully vanquishing a giant, but it's always tempered by a countercurrent of sadness. After all, you can't help but think... the colossi are completely gentle souls. They didn't do anything to hurt you until you came to kill them first. Is it worth it, to destroy these innocent creatures, sacrificing pieces of your own soul each time in doing so, just to try and interfere with the kingdom of the dead? Is that a price you're willing to pay for love? And just as importantly, can you even trust Dormin to give you what you want when it's all over? These are all questions that every SOTC player will inevitably find themselves asking, myself included.
On a more surface level, everything about SOTC's technical creation is a work of art. The graphics are absolutely mindblowing for a PS2 game (and made even better by the enhancements I've added to it through PCSX2), even if that means pushing the console's hardware to its absolute limits. They may not be that high of fidelity by modern standards, but they combine to create an unmatched overall visual experience. Coupled with the amazing sound design, the end result is a game so fully engrossing that you almost can't help but wish it was real. The only drawback is the controls, which are a bit unintuitive and slightly awkward, but are ultimately a minor issue.
(This is why, even though I've known of this game for more than a decade, I've never played it until now. I wanted to wait until I could run it on PCSX2, and get the added advantages of running it with enhancements on PC hardware, as well as headphone audio.)
I could go on and on, but to put it short, SOTC is one of those games that really changes how you see the entire medium, being just as much an artistic masterpiece as it is an interactive experience. Like with Super Hexagon above, it's one of the very, very few that I would call genuinely perfect, and even with my currently limited playtime, I can't recommend it enough.
(Also: the devs who made SOTC, Team Ico, are also behind ICO and The Last Guardian. Beautiful minimalism seems to be their specialty.)
What are y'all's favorite games? Maybe you don't feel like going full review mode to answer, but I'd like to hear some others from the rest of you!
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