Recent reviews by snivelak

Rimworld is an ambitious and compelling colony building/survival simulation game wherein almost anything is possible. Its simplistic approach to aesthetic design enables it to serve as a digital dungeon master, constantly teasing and hypercharging the player's imagination about its fantastical world with every random event and ridiculous new character that it spits out. After my initial burnout late last year, I thought I would struggle to reattain suspended disbelief, but this was wrong, my second wind has now overtaken the first in game hours.

Mods are this game's blood and guts - do not be afraid to tweak it beyond recognition. It will only reward you more and more. As you expand the palette of events, entities and interactions, the possibility for gripping stories increases exponentially. The community is absolutely amazing at catering to this, too. I wholeheartedly recommend the enormous "Vanilla Expanded" series of mods which are truly inspired and of the same caliber as (if not higher than) the base game.

I will say that it can take a long while to find your "perfect run" by which I mean a savefile that feels compelling enough to stick with indefinitely. With my current modlist, I believe that I have found it, and my current colonists have been able to embark on my most dramatic and detail-rich adventure so far. As much as I would love to tell you to stick with your first colony no matter what, I really do recommend getting as many appealing mods as possible beforehand so that the story and gameplay feel unwaveringly convincing and dynamic. Because if you can reach a point where you don't jump for the "load game" button after a broken raid or the death of your favourite colonist then that is when the game starts to really shine. Allowing your characters to experience tragedy can genuinely humanize them, and will make you want to see their complex journeys through.

Or don't, and you might have just as great a time. That's the true achievement of Rimworld. The often espoused concept of player expression through gameplay is absolutely BLOOMING in this game. Few other singleplayer games pair so much interactivity with so much tangible consequence.

i thought the stanley parable was the logical conclusion to games about games, but this opens up a whole different perspective. a nice little properly emotive arty thing, far more unhinged than most other games, and never funny like the stanley parable. has a lot to say about the creative process across any medium. though i would like to see davey wreden try his hand at something that doesn't rely on being totally meta to get its message across. that said, for someone who's done it twice now he manages to do it about as well as you could hope.

there isn't a single memorable characteristic about this game other than that it's literally "telltale doing game of thrones". they don't put in any more effort than that, it's so cynically just a sad slice of 2015 capitalism, if you are thinking about buying this game i would implore you to go take a walk in the wilderness for the day instead, it will be infinitely more compelling. every single scene in this game is your player character getting exploited or injured or bested in some way. no time is spent developing any characters, let alone their status quo, so any time another "important" one dies for the fifteenth time it doesn't feel any less hollow than the first time. which was very hollow. it never does anything to bait you to keep playing. your choices don't just mean nothing, they literally do nothing. anytime a choice comes up that looks like it might have serious diverging ramifications the game LITERALLY rewinds and tells you you're wrong. pointless.

When I finished Gone Home, I was, initially, massively underwhelmed. So as to avoid spoilers, I can't tell you specifically why, but in hindsight it's come over me that this feeling was not only entirely my own fault, but part of the game's message. The nature of games as a medium to provide cheap thrills and fireworks has taught us to expect the unreal; something far removed from our own lives. Characters in games are largely abstracted silhouettic stereotypes, and even when they aren't, you're hard-pressed to find one that isn't involved with killing, or some kind of supernatural phenomena. People in real life don't shoot aliens, or open time portals. They don't even cook blue meth. Real people ask other people to watch their scotch. They have conflicts with their parents. They question their life and sexuality then get a driver's license. That Gone Home is this first breakthrough game to tell an unashamedly human story is both a tragic and monumental thing for gaming.

In ten years, recent innovative games like Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last of Us, Dear Esther, Bioshock and The Stanley Parable will be commemorated for their demonstration that games can truly be an artistic and meaningful medium. All of these games are absolutely fantastic, but Gone Home will be standing in its own league. It doesn't simply provide meaningful commentary in an innovative way, it does so without gimmick, without abstraction from the really real human condition. Gone Home won't tear out your heart with a twist, it won't horrify you with some hidden monster, nor will it tease gaming conventions by breaking the fourth wall. But it will sure as hell make you feel something for some expertly crafted characters who exist within the context of the really real world, in a way that's never been done before. This is the most important game of 2013.

A flawlessly executed analysis of gaming conventions, spoken and unspoken. Like its contemporary fellow experience-a-thons Gone Home and Dear Esther, it's a bold innovation in storytelling. Also like Gone Home and Dear Esther, it's a far better experience the less you know about it beforehand. If you like great writing, acting, presentation and something meaningful to take away, and you haven't played The Stanley Parable, you're missing out.