This started as a top X video games post, like I used to do when I played video games regularly. I like to do these write-ups regardless of how much I have to say about new releases. It’s tradition at this point, sure, but mainly I find it valuable to organize my thoughts about video games and my evolving relationship to them. Video games used to be my life. This year, according to my Backloggd, the number of games I played eligible for this list barely broke double digits.
In other words, I didn’t put away enough this year to justify ranking them. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to squeeze as much artistic fulfillment from video games as I now get from films. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a decently enjoyable time waster, but I can’t shake the feeling timewaster is all it is. I’m never going to think about it again.
But I do still think about Outer Wilds regularly. And Sayonara Wild Hearts, and the Persona series, and Death Stranding in its own weird way. It’s not that there’s no artistic gratification in games, it’s that I am failing to find them. (Maybe I should get into the interactive fiction scene. They seem like they’re having a good time.)
So when there is a game, even one game, that completely reinvigorates my interest in interactive storytelling, that alone justifies publishing thist list. Here are the games that have been on my mind the most this year. For all six I explain why they’re worth your time. For five, in case you’re as busy as me, I give you an excuse to skip them.
The Runners-Up
In alphabetical order
A Memoir Blue
Why you have to play it:
Not many games think in images the way this one does. Usually when we talk about imagery in video games it’s practical (framing objects, communicating information) or technical (visual realism, art style). A Memoir Blue operates in a more symbolic realm. Objects and locations bleed into one another like in a dream. Over just about an hour it achieves something poetic.
Why you can skip it:
Surreal images and desultory puzzles don’t quite add up to a video game. I can’t shake the feeling it would have been at least as effective as, say, an animated short film.
Return to Monkey Island
Why you have to play it:
Adventure games live! Or they’re at least undead. Return to Monkey Island is something of an existential crisis of a game. The writing pays a lot of attention to the why and how and haven’t-we-done-this-before of its own creation, which matches that classic Monkey Island sense of meta-humor. That and a spiffy new art style make it an amusing blend of old and new.
Why you can skip it:
The game revels in its own history so much because there wouldn’t be much else there otherwise. I can say from experience you won’t be missing much if you’ve only played the first two games, but less than that and I’m not sure I can recommend it. Return feels more like an addendum to the Monkey Island series than a game of its own.
Splatoon 3
Why you have to play it:
Splatoon 3 is probably the most purely fun game I’ve sunk time into this year. The core of the game, the 3 minutes of hectic intensity, is as addictive as ever, while story mode adopts the best elements of the Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion. It is, if nothing else, the definitive Splatoon experience—until Splatoon 4.
Why you can skip it:
I kind of ran out of nice things to say after “It’s like the other ones!” Neither of the sequels have managed to put me under the same spell as the original game. I keep thinking “Inkopolis was so much more interesting than Chaos City” and “These dweebs got nothing on the Squid Sisters.”
Stray
Why you have to play it:
You play as a cat.
… oh, we need more? Alright. You play as an impressively detailed cat, one who clearly had a lot of love and attention from the animators. You play as a creature who lives in a differently sized world than us, where steep walls hide tunnels and haphazardly placed objects create secret stairwells. And although the game takes place in the post-post-apocalypse, don’t worry: the mechanical citizens of the future think cats are just as cute as we do.
Why you can skip it:
Video game writing is an underappreciated art, and Stray’s writing is a reminder of what I said in the thesis about the medium compared to film. Know I feel a little bad about saying this: It’s just… not very well written. When you see all the characters speak with the same voice, you also see the charm start to erode.
Tunic
Why you have to play it:
Zelda Like A Fox! Tunic is such an impressive construction. Every element of the game down to the musicality of the sound effects is a secret, or easter egg, or something for fans to pour over and solve. You could tell me the pattern on the texture of the tree trunks contains some secret foreshadowing and I’d believe you. I will always fall for any game that reminds me of the Witness in any amount.
Why you can skip it:
Secrets are one thing; story is another. The ending of the game, or at least the ending that I interpreted as the good ending, provides zero resolution to the plot and just doesn’t match the tone of the hours leading up to it at all.
My Game of the Year
Immortality
I’ve been banging the Sam Barlow drum for a while. Her Story and Telling Lies both blew me away as ways to tell stories while taking advantage of interactivity, and as realizations of FMV gameplay that aren’t awkward as heck. But neither could really wrap a bow on that interactivity. Both essentially end by asking the player if they’re done yet.
Immortality is an immense step up in every way. The move from text searching to image matching takes the gameplay experience to a new level and perfectly suits the narrative. This story could not be told in any other way.
And here’s the kicker: I think I deeply, fundamentally disagree with the message of the story. My reading, that the path of an artist is inherently self-destructive, does not align with my experience. Art is life-giving, not life-taking. But I am just so, so enamored with the way Immortality tells its story that I must recommend it as essential.
It’s not a coincidence that the majority of these games are available on Xbox Game Pass. I love Game Pass as a way to get games, especially shorter, story-driven games, on the hard drives of people who would otherwise not give them a second thought. And also on the hard drive of me, who feels that the already limited amount of time I have for video games is continually shrinking.
At the same time, looking at what’s happening with the movie subscription services right now should raise concerns about the long-term viability of Game Pass. Is this the future of the industry? Or will Microsoft eventually decide it’s too expensive for its other divisions to subsidize?
Well, I’m just a $9.99/month cog in this machine. My job is to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.
