TEAM FORTRESS 2

This was the hardest choice by far, because generally I don’t like multiplayer much, and yet I knew that this horrible niche needed dealing with, sort of like firing somebody or putting down a beloved family pet. The interaction between man and world via broadband is as fascinating as it is demoralising. You can’t truly say you know humanity until you’ve heard a nine year-old brat shriek obscenities at you through your headset, or seen the word “faggot” come up so often you’ll think you’re stuck in a revolving door in a British butcher’s shop.

Multiplayer is also an odd duck, because you can’t really recommend a game if it doesn’t still have a viable community that plays it. Many online games flourish in their first few months, but as they become more repetitive, people drift away, and suddenly there’s nobody playing it anymore. And then it’s useless, you might as well use the disc as a frisbee, or delete it from your hard drive to make more space for Facebook pokes, or pornography, or videos of people getting injured in terrible camera phone quality, whatever you kids are into these days.

Speaking of, I did consider the quality of the community that plays each game before I made any firm decisions, so don’t get hopeful for anything in the Call Of Duty franchise or GTA V. They all fell before the first hurdle, and to that I can only say “Good riddance,” and that I hope they get trodden on while they’re down there. Perhaps there’s something about games that are joylessly obsessed with leaderboards or creepy weapon fantasies that causes absolute wankers to congregate on them. In all the games above, I had most of my attempts to play them ruined by people who seem to have no other ambition but to act their worst. At least, I hope they’re acting their worst, because I can’t think of any way to be more loathsome, except perhaps for wearing Osama Bin Laden’s face as a Halloween mask.

It really makes you despair for the human race, this behaviour. Of course, what you do then is look for something that makes you happy. Very happy. And thus, in comes Team Fortress 2, also known as TF2, also known as the best thing since somebody had the sense to take sliced bread and put an enormous piece of grilled meat inside it. Yes, TF2 is the steak sandwich of online gaming. There can be no higher praise.

I realise I’ve come full circle here, with the first game and last games I picked for this list both being part of the Orange Box collection, released by Valve in 2007, but that’s the weird thing about Valve. They’re always reliable creators of excellent games, but they hardly ever make any, just fiddle about with the already-excellent online Steam store interface. It’s rather like if people went to Van Gogh and said “Wow, you do really good paintings. I hope you keep doing them, they’re unmatched artistically.” And Vincent stroked his bearded chin, ignoring the pain in the side of his head, and said thoughtfully, “Well, I suppose so, but you know what’s interesting me at the moment? These picture frames I’ve been seeing. They’re excellent, I really like them as a medium for holding artwork. I think from now on I’m just going to ditch this painting rubbish and focus on making these frames, for ever and ever.”

Cue awkward silence.

Anyway, back to Team Fortress 2, the online first-person shooter. Immediately it scores two major points in my book, one for having one of the most memorable and enjoyable advertising campaigns I’ve ever seen, featuring the kind of trailers that would be made if a Pixar animator had a bad Vietnam flashback. And secondly, it’s free! Completely free! No payment, no subscriptions fees, no online service costs. It’s free now, and free forever.

Well, sort of.

It’s hard to explain this to somebody who isn’t aware of it. Originally it did cost money to buy TF2, until Valve decided to change that and make it free to download. Fair enough, it had been around for a while, they probably weren’t making that many sales this long after release. Except that now there’s a new element that wasn’t around when it started: Unlockable hats and weapons.

Whenever you die in TF2, you have a very small chance to get a random gun or a customisable piece of clothing to change how your characters look and fight. I admit, it takes the sting off death when a box pops up afterwards, telling you that for the incredible achievement of having been shot in the neck twelve times, you have been rewarded with a rather natty fez, or a gun that shoots urine.

Except that you can buy these bits of gear if you want to speed up the process, and it’s surprisingly hard to fight the urge to do so. More playstyles unlock with different weapons, so it just makes sense to want those, but the need to buy hats is harder to put your finger on. I think it’s that players want to have their own identity within the game. All the classes are identical until they’re altered with equipment, and those who are using stock characters are always recognised as newbies and inexperienced members of the community.

So putting a Roman Legionnaire’s helmet on your soldier and giving him a rocket launcher that shoots lasers or kittens – that’s just your way of announcing your individuality. It’s a lot like having a face piercing. In that and many other respects.

But how does the actual gameplay hold up? Pretty damn well, I should say. To start off, there are nine diverse classes, all nicely balanced, but with wildly different methods of play. The heavy has more health than god and a minigun not yet seen detached from the wing of a harrier jet. The spy can become invisible and disguise himself as members of the other team. The scout makes Usain Bolt look slow and unwieldy, and can jump a distance equivalent to the average marathon. Even the engineer can build turrets, teleporters and ammo dispensers, just to keep things interesting. There really is something for everybody, and then there’s even sub-categories of gaming style. Sure, the pyro is all about getting in close to burn people with the flamethrower. But shuffle around your loot a bit, and suddenly you have a build that’s all about melee damage, setting them alight with your primary weapon before quickly swapping out for the axe that does huge damage on burning targets.

Every class is like this, having more options open up as you collect more gear, but I also like that the game loves keeping up a fast pace, rather than having you plod from one side of the battlefield to the other. Remove chest high-walls from your mind, you’re going to have to keep moving if you want to survive here.

That said, even the flimsiest characters tend to have a fair bit of health, so it means that if you’re attacked you usually have time to react before you’re killed by the next burst of gunfire, and I like that. There’s no satisfaction in just being shot in the back and immediately going down, it feels cheap and boring, another problem I always had with the Call Of Duty series. But TF2 prides itself on manic battles and emphasises huge, chaotic fights, in which bullets fly like raindrops and explosions are the local currency. Valve knows that the only way to make this sort of thing last is to give everybody enough health to actually get involved, rather than getting blown to high-heaven before the fight has even begun. Not only that, but the maps tend to be small and compact, and respawn times are negligible, making this buoyant, violent lunacy as common as possible.

There’s also a co-operative mode which I like. You and half a dozen johnnies have to work together to fight off huge waves of robots that mimic the appearances of your characters to an uncomfortable degree. It escalates well and there’s a fair few maps, and unlike the normal multiplayer you can acquire upgrades for yourself mid-game as you kill more bots and find more money. It’s a good way of elevating the gameplay as you progress, though bear in mind that some of the later co-op missions can be quite unforgiving.

But I think the thing I like most about TF2 is that it just looks bloody brilliant. I didn’t use that earlier comparison to Pixar lightly, Valve put great work into the visual design of their characters, giving them exaggerated features and emotive faces, and there’s lots of clever things about them that aren’t immediately obvious.

For example, all the different classes have vastly distinctive figures and frames, meaning that the second you look at a person, you can tell what his job is. A slim silhouette with long limbs? It’s a spy. An shorter, angular body that’s leaning forward? It’s a scout. A straight-standing figure with a large backpack? Sir, you see a medic. It makes fighting less trail-and-error than other games, in which the only way you can tell if an enemy has heavy ordinance is to start shooting at him and hope he doesn’t fire a nuclear missile back.

But there’s more to the graphical style than just helping the player mechanically, the imagery is what gives it such charm. The cartoon visuals and heightened reality help the whole thing stay jovial, stop it from getting grim and depressing. Yes, you’ve been blown to pieces by a grenade launcher, too bad. But your killer was a man with a comically strange Scottish accent who ran past holding up his kilt and wooping, his green wig bobbing merrily in the breeze. That’s worthy of a smile, surely?

And TF2 does make me smile. It makes me grin from ear to ear. The chaos, the madness, the disarmingly surreal atmosphere. Not to mention the fact that Valve clearly has great love for both the game and the characters, as regular updates add more content and maps each time. There’s even a well-written webcomic that comes out for no cost on their site, and as a lover of graphic novels that suits me to a tee.

So strap on your pink crash helmet, join me in the dusty outback, and let’s while away the hours racking up a higher body count than Burger King and Hannibal Lecter combined. Team Fortress 2, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

If you have the stomach to deal with the rest of the world online, there are good games to do it through. Halo 3 is an old favourite of mine, an excellent shooter with a vast array of customisable maps and game settings. Elite: Dangerous is a recent space-fairing MMO, set in a vast recreation of the Milky Way that offers a rather pleasing amount of freedom. Or what about Payday 2 and Valve’s other recent creation, Left 4 Dead, both of which tend towards an emphasis on co-operation with other players?

Thanks for following over these first seven days! Articles won’t be every day from this point, but expect at least a couple every week. Remember, if there’s a topic or game you’re interested in, post a comment and we might just oblige.

X-COM: ENEMY UNKNOWN

Well, we can’t give this one points for originality, I suppose. Killing aliens in video games is about as innovative an idea as “Zombie apocalypse” or “Press X to start.” But sometimes the old ideas can surprise you, and I am very glad that this one did.

The history of this series is a slightly confusing one. In 1994 a game came out that was called UFO: Enemy Unknown. Except for when it was in the USA, where it was named X-COM: UFO Defense. Jesus, there’s only been one game and they’re already trying to bewilder us. Out of both of these titles, X-COM was the one that stuck, and a whole litter of turn-based strategy sequels were spawned, up until 2001 with the less than popular shooter title: X-COM: Alliance.

Everybody thought that was it for the veteran series. It faded into history, until, suddenly, another entry was announced in 2010! Another XCOM game! Oh, wait. It’s not the highly celebrated turn-based mechanics that everybody loves, it’s another bloody shooter. You know, just like the terrible X-COM game that everybody would rather just pretend didn’t happen, like the Star Wars prequels or paedophile priests.

The overall response from the public to this news was a considered and surprisingly tame: “Fuck off.” Considering that the worst game of the series so far had been a poorly-made shooter, nobody was feeling too excited about what seemed to be a terrible attempt to jump on an already-overstuffed bandwagon. Perhaps it was this that caused Firaxis Games to bristle and create X-COM: Enemy Unknown, albeit two years later. It was a loyal recreation of the original game, but with a much more intuitive design, a fascinating combination of base and resource management mixed with tactical turn-based combat, and a constant motivation to keep playing, in order to learn more about a mysterious antagonistic force. An enemy that is unknown, if you will.

You still not sure? OK, think about this. The very first thing that happens in the game is a quotation from Arthur C. Clarke. I mean, this thing couldn’t be any more smart science-fiction unless downloading it would cause my laptop to get up and walk down the hallway.

The premise of the game is this – you are the head of an international (but pointedly not interplanetary) organisation known as X-COM, put together when bobble-headed aliens start to show up and liquidise anyone who wanders past them. Funded by the countries of the world and tasked to repel the little plasma-wielding sods, you must oversee technological breakthroughs, consider smart investments, and advise the useless squad of girl scout recruits you were given with on how best to deflect laser beams with their faces.

Yes, there is one obvious critique of X-COM, and we’re brushing against it now – the game is bloody unforgiving. Newly hired soldiers have stats equivalent to that of battery hens, and training them, whilst effective, still takes a while and can only be done through successful missions. You will growl like a lion seeing his girlfriend getting chatted up by a gazelle, after watching a useless newbie turn into a hard-bitten killer of xenomorphs, only to let him make a wrong turn in a flying saucer, get hit by a E.T.’s super missile and turned into raspberry jam.

And because the game ramps up the difficulty with no thought for how well you’re doing, a bit of unlucky gameplay means you could have all your good marines squashed in a single firefight, and then you’ll have to send in the useless, untrained rookies to deal with the psychic hyper-aliens and triple-armoured beserkers. And good luck squire, because you’ve about as much chance of winning then as you do of winning Eurovision with a ball gag.

To be fair on X-COM, this isn’t always the case. Most of the campaign is randomly generated, producing different maps, enemies and challenges at different times. This makes it enormously replayable, because every person’s experience is different. No person ever goes through the same thing when playing it through, and I like that a lot. Also, there are a ton of tactics and ways to go about playing, but they’re all deceptively intuitive and come across very organically. As you direct your squad around the city streets or alien bases, you’ll notice that you’re making decisions that you weren’t even aware you were considering, such as sending in your assault troops first whenever you go into unknown territory, or working to protect the medic in the group.

And the tactics apply even out of missions. OK, you’ve just finished a bit of research on a Jawa’s propulsion technology and now you have a jetpack. Awesome. But building them is expensive, so who gets the only one you can afford? Your sniper, allowing him to pick off enemies from the skies and render their cover useless? Your heavy, giving him good angles to drop grenades and rockets, like he’s a man pretending to be a Dambuster? Or the psychic guy, because, um… He thinks more clearly when he’s got fresh air? Alright, not the psychic then.

And what are you going to research now that you’ve got the lab free? New weapons? Armour? Aircraft? The weaknesses and biological traits of our foes? Wait! No time for that now, that satellite you started building last week is done! What country are you going to position it over? China’s offering the most money for it, but you haven’t got any over South America, and Brazil is considering withdrawing from the project and needs placating. Well, whilst you’re umming and erring, a spaceship the size of Andre The Giant’s big brother has started heading for Berlin, so pick a couple of customised fighter jets and let’s try to stop it, preferably before it turns Germany into a crater and starts putting probes in peoples frankfurters.

This might sound like an intimidating amount of information to be crammed into one game, but I assure you it’s not. It builds on the basic rules slowly and gradually over time, developing before our eyes and evolving into a glorious network of supporting mechanics and ideas that fit together like nothing you’ve seen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the Sectopod robot just got reinforcements in, and the mutons are approaching from the east. I may be gone for some time.

Of course sir, turn-based strategy is gameplay for the distinguished gentlemen. Perhaps now you’re done with your starter, you might enjoy the complex flavours of Shadowrun: Dragonfall, the assorted platter of Civilisation V, or the rather spicy dish that is FTL: Faster Than Light. And for dessert, the venerable Pokemon series and some of the older Final Fantasy games. Bon appetit.

TOMORROW: AT THE END, WE COME FULL CIRCLE.

MINECRAFT

Alright, this one is here to fulfil a couple of niches that I felt needed addressing, because they shouldn’t be ignored and this game amply killed two birds with one stone. Think of it like this – did you like Lego as a kid? Of course you did, Lego is awesome. If I were doing a list of the best non-electronic games, then Lego would be number one, and numbers two through ten would simply state “See number one.” Well, Minecraft is like Lego, but with monsters, TNT, and the power of flight added in. And that’s an upgrade not to be sniffed at.

Minecraft satisfies two criteria I wanted to talk about, namely survival games and creativity games, and also proves a pet theory of mine – that you don’t need good graphics to sell. The whole thing looks like it’s made out of a mixture of cardboard, Playmobil, and kiddie’s wooden blocks, but comes together quite well, giving it has a sort of unfinished charm in its appearance. And that’s kind of cool on its own.

As you start a new game you’re provided with two choices – either creative or survival mode, and this is really going to impact what kind of game you play. It’s not like picking a difficulty setting or whether you want subtitles, this will change everything until you start a new game.

Creative mode makes you immortal, allows you to spawn any item you want, and gives you the power of flight just to top it off. It encourages you to build statues, structures, massive and awe-inspiring projects. Perhaps you’ve seen the life-size Starship Enterprise that hangs in the air in the exact way a continent does not, or the fully functional digital clock that somebody made with the few redstone assets that the game gives you. I myself have made a castle the size of a large city, and also a city the size of a large castle. Just because I could, and it was very satisfying. The large dimensions of the individual blocks and pieces mean that structures go up fast, but there’s a diversity to these assets that means that the constructs never look rough or weird-looking, at least once you’re building creations above a certain size.

On the other hand, survival mode limits you to the ground, forces you to mine for resources and hunt for any materials you want, gives you an empty stomach that needs constant refilling, and finally throws in the occasional monster hoard for you to bat away with a stick. There is an end to the game, sort of, which involves dropping into a couple of other dimensions to beat a surprised-looking dragon to death, but it’s not an obvious one and you wouldn’t know it was there without the wiki to hand.

Speaking of, you are going to have to alt-tab out of the game a lot to check the internet, in order to know what’s what and how it helps. Crafting is a big part of this game (of course it is, it’s in the title), but the game doesn’t tell you how to craft anything unless you’re playing the console version, and some of the more elaborate objects can be completely obscure. Perhaps watch a couple of the eighty-bajillion “let’s play” videos out there before you start, so you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, things might get ugly when hissing green death comes to your door.

But once you do know what you’re doing, you’ll recognise two important things. Firstly, that there is nothing more annoying than collecting enough rare metals and gemstones to embarrass a professional rapper, before plummeting head-first into lava and losing it all like a subterranean brother of the Three Stooges. And secondly, that it has been seven hours since you started playing.

It’s hard to explain to somebody who hasn’t experienced it. Time does weird things when Minecraft is turned on, so you’ll probably make the startling realisation that you’ve unintentionally pulled an all-nighter more than once.

Oh, it’ll start subtly. “I’ll just build a small house for me to put all my equipment in, then I’ll go to bed and get some shut-eye. Actually, I’m going to want some windows whilst I’m making that, so I’ll pop down to the beach and grab some sand. That shouldn’t take long. Ooh! A bit of iron in an exposed cliffside! I’ll just chip that out for later. Except damn, I left my pickaxe back home, so I’ll just head to the forest to get the wood for one, so I can get at that those resources. Hold on, a village! I wonder what I can find there? Emeralds, eh? Those seem useful, I’ll put those in a chest so that I can trade them later, only I can see a herd of cows over there, and I need to grab some meat so I can – Wait, why is my alarm ringing?”

Minecraft is a one of those curiously addictive games that combines limitless ideas with some very simple objectives. Have at ’em, my friends, and tell the creepers that I said “Hi.”

If you liked Minecraft, you’ll probably like Terraria, because it’s essentially a 2-D adaptation. Or why not give Don’t Starve a go?

TOMORROW: TURN BASED-ALIEN INVASION!

BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY

God, this was a hard one. I knew I needed a “Sandbox” game in here somewhere, something big and expansive, ripe for exploring. I knew I needed something that would give the player a sense of total freedom, and a bunch of titles went through my mind before I could even blink.

The first one was Dark Souls, but I crushed that urge before it could grow legs and make its escape. I love that game more than my own family, but even I know that it’s an acquired taste, mainly because it’s about as friendly to newcomers as a land mine. No, Dark Souls appeals to a niche market, and that’s not what this is about. Other sandbox games occurred to me, GTA V, Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, Elite Dangerous, The Fallout Series, Spider-Man 2, even the baffling chaos of Just Cause 2 and Saint’s Row 4 were tempting me, with their open worlds and strange movement systems, the cheeky little harlots.

I knew that the game I picked needed to have one of two things. Either a method of travel that was fun and engaging (hence Just Cause 2) or a game world in which you couldn’t walk for five minutes without getting caught up in something interesting (hence Skyrim).

But then, why not both?

The Batman: Arkham series is one of those things that nobody expected to do as phenomenally well as it did, a bit like Portal. The first game, Arkham Asylum, introduced a fantastical, yet dark and twisted tone that fit the core theme perfectly, a reflection of the madness that so dominated the plot. It had one of the most revolutionary systems for melee combat devised in the last decade, it had stealth mechanics that worked wonderfully and made you feel like the monster in somebody else’s horror game, and it was topped off nicely by a strong plot with an excellent rendition of the Joker by Mark Hamill. It was sixes across the board.

And the second game, Arkham City? Well, it took all of those things, and put them in a section of city filled with a bunch of angry men who were all very hungry, and the only thing that would satisfy them was a knuckle sandwich. Go get ’em, bats.

In all seriousness, the first game is probably slightly stronger (though only just), but the second game really took the “sandbox” idea to heart and flourished because of it. Ziplining out of an alley in a heartbeat, launching yourself above the skyline and opening your cape to glide ominously above the city, like some badly-dressed bird of prey – that was an awesome thing. You could go from street level to a hundred feet in the air and back down again in seconds, all flowing naturally together and without seeming disconnected or confusing. In fact, everything in this game flows like water. The movement, the combat, the stealth. The only flaw I can think of is that the plot stumbles a little in the mid to late periods, but you’ll be so enamoured with their Joker that you won’t really care that much. I know I didn’t.

Oh, and the game actually came close to presenting Robin as cool. When you can do that, you can do anything.

Infinitely huge worlds are always a laff. Drop in to any of the above, they’re all worth your time, but my preferred contenders are Dark Souls, Red Dead Redemption, and Fallout: New Vegas.

TOMORROW: IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE…

SUPER MARIO WORLD

Some games age badly. We know this, and interestingly, it seems to be those that overreach themselves when they’re released. Any game that started by selling itself on cutting-edge graphics and new technology tend to be those that are hardest to go back to, as the graphics and tech soon become the norm, then the old, and then the comparatively awful. I suspect this is one of several reasons that World Of Warcraft has lasted as long as it has.

Games with a cartooney aesthetic tend to age quite well, because what looks chirpy and fun at one point still looks chirpy and fun ten years later. Or, to put it more precisely, twenty-five years later, and now I feel really old, because this game and myself aren’t aged too far apart and it’s still doing better than I am when it comes to the ageing process.

Super Mario World, then. Originally for the SNES as a launch title, the classic platforming pioneer found more love from the public than an unregistered assault rifle does from a republican redneck, and the weird thing is that this hasn’t changed. The thing is just gorgeous in its every aspect, it really is the apex of what a 2-D platformer could be. Bright and colourful, endlessly imaginative, with a memorable eight-bit music score that will have you humming along with it long after it’s over, and a bizarre amount of exploration for something that was having to make do without the luxury of a z-axis. Sure, you could ride bareback on that big-nosed dinosaur to the regular exit, if you’re boring and square. All the really hip cats take the flying cape express up to that pipe and on to Star Road. Wait, you don’t know Star Road? Or Special World? Or any of the other dozens of beautifully designed levels that remain hidden long after you’ve completed the game, making it endlessly replayable? Well, guess you’ve got something to occupy your time from now until doomsday.

I realise now it was a little unfair of me to say that games that push the technological boundaries of the time tend to age poorly. Let me be clear, it’s bad news for those that only rely on their swanky graphics and physics engines. Super Mario World was pushing the boundaries of the SNES as far as it could at at the time, and Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario himself, was making as much use of the expanded memory as possible. Yoshi, so iconic to the series for being that loyal and steadfast steed that you would drop like a hot potato if you thought you weren’t going to make that jump, would have been in earlier games if not for the limitations of consoles at the time. But the creation of the SNES allowed Miyamoto to add all the ideas he’d never had room for, and you can see it in the way it plays. Big, bold, beautiful. It could only have been more progressive if it had been marching down a gay pride parade.

Mario as a franchise now comes across as dry and dessicated, all the interesting parts removed to keep it safe and risk-free, meaning other platformers and most games in general have long since surpassed it. But Super Mario World is a joyful reminder of when that fat little plumber earned those stars he’s so famous for, back when he was king and nobody would dare dethrone him. If Nintendo can make a game half as revolutionary and charming as that now, I dare say he could reign again.

Like jumping around 2-D worlds like there’s a jetpack up your arse? Why not give Rayman Legends or Battleblock Theatre a try?

TOMORROW: SANDBOXES AND SUPERHEROES

SPEC-OPS: THE LINE

Bloody hell, I can’t believe I thought I knew what horror was before this game. Strong titles like Amnesia or Alien: Isolation had led me to believe that the definition of horror was wandering around semi-linear environments, hiding from whatever hideous aberration wanted to eat my skin and wear the flayed corpse like a Duchess’s stole. But boy, was I wrong. Horror is not avoiding a creepy monster with moments to spare as you listen for the footsteps to go away. True horror is looking in the mirror, and thinking “YOU are the monster.”

Spec-Ops: The Line is the game I go to when people ask me to provide a game with a truly phenomenal story. Hell, I’ll say it – Spec-Ops is nothing less than a true work of art, because those writing it clearly understood that gaming is a medium in a unique position – one where they can immerse the player more than any other, and make them feel responsible for whatever decisions have to be made. You can’t do that with a book or movie, those events are always happening to somebody else, and we are only observing. But in Spec-Ops, YOU are the one at fault. Don’t kid yourself with this one, you are coming out of this story with blood on your hands.

A bit of context is useful here, I think. The game was released back in mid-2012, a point when the brain-dead, meathead shooter was riding high and mighty. We’d had Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 the year before, and no end to either series in sight, when both titles were long past their prime and getting dull. But Spec-Ops actually had a story that mattered, and reminded us of two very important things. First, that when you pull the trigger that there is a human being as complicated, and as flawed as you are at the other end of the barrel. And second, that ethics are something you may have to give up on if you want to get through this. They are the first casualty of war. In fact, Spec-Ops does a good job of deceiving you at the start, making you think that it’s going to be like all the others. You’re an elite group of commandos, you the experienced leader, with a pair of jovial squadmates behind you, cracking off one-liners and gunfire alternatively

But it’s not long before you’re in a true hell, navigating death and terror as your mind and morals break away. You want to live? OK then. Let’s see what you’re willing to do to stay alive.

Bear in mind that I am recommending this game only for the story, mind you. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the gameplay, but there’s not much inherently right either. It’s a very standard form of third-person, cover-based shooting, that does its job alright and there’s not much more to say on it, quite frankly. If you want a kick-ass shooter when it comes to mechanics, go to Team Fortress 2. But if you want a game that will challenge you morally, intellectually, and emotionally, Spec-Ops: The Line can kick you in the balls like no other. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Love being dropped into immersive narratives and fascinating worlds? Once you’re done with this one, give Star Wars; Knights Of The Old Republic and The Wolf Among Us a look-see, or even the Bioshock series, as long as you ignore the second one. Seriously, that just isn’t worth it.

TOMORROW: THE ULTIMATE CLASSIC

As I subjected myself to the bright and bewildering mess that was Naruto Shippudden; Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, Full Burst Extreme Flavour Resurrection VS Capcom, or whatever mess of adjectives came out of the lottery that week, I was asked by a friend how the thing rated. Well, I thought, I don’t like it. In fact, after I’d pushed my eyes back in and managed to quench my gag reflex, I decided that I didn’t like it much at all. Which led me to a question – why the hell was I playing the thing?

The industry is bloody saturated at this point, with games getting put out every other week that are apparently the biggest thing in any franchise ever, no seriously, we mean it this time. It comes across as disingenuous, or to put it more accurately, AS GREAT BIG PORKIE-PIE FIBS. A lie that’s getting spouted yet again with the trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, and nothing could have made me more thoughtful about the content. Questions, questions, people – does the protagonist look like more of a tool when he’s wearing the silly top hat, or when he’s thrown it away to be replaced by the stupid beak-shaped hood that now slightly taints the series image in the way that the asteroid slightly tainted the Cretaceous period?

For these reasons and others I suspect that anybody who goes near this industry with little experience of gaming culture would turn and run. Probably smart at this point. But for those who are willing to stomach pre-order culture, day one patches, villainously manipulative corporations and Pewdiepie, I offer what should be the bedrock of any good gaming knowledge – my personal list of “Must Play” Games. Bear in mind that these are not necessarily my favourite games, nor what I consider to be the objectively best games, if such a concept actually exists.

No, these are more of a hearty buffet, the ones that should give a new player the best, most rounded experience so that they can understand what each genre can offer them, then go as they please. Alright, then. Let’s start with an uncomplicated one.

PORTAL

Yes, the first one. Yes, the original. No, there’s nothing wrong with Portal 2, as a matter of fact it’s bloody great, but the first one is what I consider a necessity for the purity of the experience. Portal 2 blended story and puzzles, but leant more heavily on the first one and was a touch over-long, and whilst it was a good story and the game is always worth your time, that’s not what I’m drawing upon here – my “Story game” comes later.

You see, Portal 1 was a magnificent creation for those who wanted simply to tax their brains with the kind of bizarre physics not seen outside of the negative zone. Originally a small side-gift to go with the less than efficient release of Half-Life 2; Episode 1, Portal has almost dwarfed its running mate for popularity at this point, and with good fucking reason. The fascinatingly simple and yet deceptively complex core mechanic that was the portal gun immediately took the imagination by the reins and charged off into the sunset. I still can’t think of a better mechanic that based simply around travel, except maybe Spider-Man 2’s webslinging, a game that almost made this list.

The premise of Portal is appealingly simple – you are a silent protagonist in fabulous boots who has been locked up in a lab with a computer named GlaDos, who is more obsessed with science than Stephen Hawking and Dr. Frankenstein combined. Unfortunately she has the processing power of the former and the morals of the latter, and decides to throw you into a series of behavioural tests based around the aforementioned portal gun. You have to navigate these challenges, all the while looking for a way out as Hal 9000’s creepy sister grades you, taunts you, and even goes so far as to insult your weight in order to keep you moving (or waddling, as she would put it),

Yes, this was what made Portal from a good game into a great one, it was one of the few games that actually went about humour with a sense of wit, whereas most games, trying to appeal to the broadest audience, tend to give them no credit whatsoever and fall back on slapstick comedy or just self-referential eye-rolling. But the only source of laughs in this game is GlaDos herself. The rest of the labs are empty but for the occasional childish murmur of the turrets or the dull stare of the companion cube. Because of this, Valve understood that the dialogue had to sparkle if it wanted to be consistently funny, or run the risk of being about as amusing as bollock torture. Or even worse, like Sacred 3.

Like puzzle games? Move on to other gems, like the Talos Principle, or try a more story-orientated variation like the Monkey Island Games.

TOMORROW: NARRATIVE, MORAL COMPLEXITY, AND A GAME THAT GAVE ME PTSD.