I mean these games are not new Quadratic Dream has been making these “movie” games for quite some time now. And when you break down the mechanics of there’s, Papers Please, and Telltale Games these day, they are all fundamentally the stupidest games ever made in the sense that any kid in visual basic could have programmed them.

But thats what makes them so interesting. There is nothing there. When it comes down to t your just making arbitrary choices that don’t necessarily effect the outcome of the game and with little to no challenge in preforming the task (just drag and drop documents and hit the bell, or select a dialog from the dialog tree). But yet some how Telltale has risen to the tippy top on this truly minimalistic indie formula with Walking Dead being a bestseller and game of the year in many cases.

The reason people like you and me fight with these games I think is because the nature of being video game critiques. We don’t playthrough once making decisions once to see our own personality play out in the game. We want to dissect them and see all the endings and what our decisions actually do and effect only to have our adult minds disappointed by the fact the the games play themselves. But thats what we are missing here.

There is a truly unique experience to be had here especially for an adult in the sense these games for once laugh at our video game expectancies and stop asking the code to tell you weather you got high score or not. For once a game is asking you to play pretend like when you were a kid with a cardboard box.

It’s trying to say, “hey man there is no high score or end boss pattern. The puzzle will solve itself this time around. All I want from you is to imagine your here. Imagine a family starving from poverty and now tell me you can make the choice to kill them just because you don’t care to do your job fast enough”.

Papers Please, Wolf Among Us, and Heavy Rain are games that demand only one thing get your mind of the screen and back in your head. Stop thinking about the game and play some pretend. Have an emotional response from a pixelated pimp figure pretend he’s not 8bit pretend he’s someone you know.

While its not the most creative way to demand an emotional response (because you and I know Journey is the king of that). I think these games make great statements about the digital era and peoples discomfort with the separation of humanity through technology. And when you learn to play them less like a game and more like pretend where you don’t shy from feeling scared or sad for a fictional character then there is hope.

Jesus should just copy and paste for my Wolf review lol.
Fun times. I don’t proofread cus I lazy so sorry if it doesn’t make sense.