Month's End Update: January!

Haven’t made as much progress as I did at the start of the month, but I still made some! Haven’t been busier, just didn’t really feel like playing as many games this time around. I’ve beaten 4 games in the past couple weeks (all walking sims it seems) and am almost done with another ABC Challenge game, but I’m having a bit of trouble finishing it (in that it really bores me but I’m almost done with it and I’ve already used all of my swaps). Anyway, if you have any questions, please leave a comment or even shoot me a friend request (as I always have time to talk about video games)!

• What Remains of Edith Finch
  

  10 hours playtime

  5 of 9 achievements

• Caligo
  

  6 hours playtime

  2 of 3 achievements

• Thing-in-Itself
  

  45 minutes playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

• Virginia
  

  15 hours playtime

  8 of 17 achievements

What Remains of Edith Finch

This game was phenomenal and probably one of my favorite games ever! The graphics are bright and beautiful and the game runs fairly well. The world feels real enough but still has that air of impossibility and mystery that makes a game like this work. It just makes looking at the environment entertaining and makes you want to explore each new area thoroughly, not necessarily because there are collectibles to find, but because of how the environments improve the story and build upon the characters. The story is another thing that just makes you want to continue on, each new part usually brings some sort of different type of gameplay with it and is very emotional and weird and fun all when it needs to be. Now not everything in the story makes perfect sense, but rather than feeling poorly written or lazy, it feels like it’s not supposed to because of who the characters are and what is implied to be going on. Everything in this game just fits together perfectly to make a very compelling game that I personally think everyone should play.

Caligo

I find it very hard to talk about Caligo without spoiling anything. It’s a pure walking simulator with collectibles that give some context as to what is going on in each area. The graphics look nice enough, but the game runs very choppily even on the lower settings. The story is mostly comprised of thinly veiled allegories about what the world is and what it’s like to live on it, mostly told by the visuals with some explaining by the characters (though I can’t quite remember just how much they explain). I’d say check it out if you like walking sims, otherwise maybe get it during a sale if it sounds interesting to you.

Thing-in-Itself

Another walking sim, but as with any short story-based game there just isn’t much to say. The game describes itself as an interactive short story, which it most definitely is, though the choices it gives you aren’t really choices and don’t change anything. Really the only reason to replay the game is to get all of the achievements. The art style is definitely different from most games, most of the assets are flat images rather than 3D models. It’s oddly appealing, but I haven’t been able to decide if they’re like that because of artistic reasons or because it was easier to do it that way (maybe both). The story didn’t quite feel like it got the point it was trying to make across (though you can get a sense of what they were trying to do), I feel like if the game were longer or made it so you could see what was going on from the other side of things then it would have been a lot better (at least story-wise). But the game really isn’t expensive and has been bundled a few times, at the very least it was an interesting experiment.

Virginia

Virginia is an experimental, cinematic walking sim that I really didn’t like at first, but when I thought more about the story and what was going on (and got used to the jarring jump cuts) I began to enjoy it a lot more. I feel like most of the negativity it’s gotten is fair in that the game is fairly confusing and the lack of voice acting to help explain what is going on or give context to some of the scenes contributes to that. Though I also think that most of the negativity comes from people that wanted a clear-cut story-driven game that they didn’t have to think too much about (or were expecting a completely different game, which is fair as I feel the store page misrepresented the game to some extent). Really the best way to explain this game is that it’s a game that tries to play out like a movie (from a first person perspective) that kind of does and doesn’t work, but the “doesn’t work” part is mostly due to the creative and story decisions that they made rather than the way the game was visually presented.