Tacoma and Gone Home are two different linear narrative games that go through two different stories of a group of characters. These were made from the developers of Fullbright, a game company that published their own game. For this section of “What makes a Good Game?” I wanted to talk about both games that are in my opinion, good. Since not only are they made by the same game developers but they are the same genre. I would really recommend the game to people if they want something quick to play with storytelling aspects to it. Both are visually appealing games because of the way their art is.
Tacoma has a bit more of a sci-fi influence within it as it takes place in a spaceship. Your character explores through the spaceship and begins to piece together what happened. Though the visual interaction with the world is something very creative and would make a bit of sense considering the technology. As the whole ship mostly does things in an AR like environment for interacting with the ship. But the game does a very good job in getting the players to explore different story marks by getting the character to access previous information from the crew members. While also looking around the areas to find codes to open certain doors. But considering that the whole ship works in AR the memory stored within the section does have interesting ways of showing players how to open certain places. When reviewing one memory or scene in the game the player is able to follow the character that is accessing a locked area. If the player remembers the interaction on the keypad they are able to access that room thanks to the character typing in their password. The player also explores many different places since the character has to find a certain object within the ship.
Now Gone Home tells a story of Katie Greenbriar’s sister and what had happened in the house. Katie had gone to visit her family after coming from college to arrive at the house, empty. So at first you try to find the spare key to get in and once you get in you are met with an eerie feeling of emptiness. Considering what type of game and the story it tells it becomes something a bit odd. That feeling of visiting an abandoned house and waiting on something to come at you to scare you. But there really isn’t anything to scare you it is just the fact that everyone is not at home. But you begin to find the notebook that Katie’s sister writes in while Katie herself begins to imagine the voice of Samantha speaking while reading the book. The player looks around and reads more about the house and how it became the family’s living quarters. But they also find out what happens with the house and why it feels so eerily silent because of the family not being there to greet Katie. This game does well in playing with the senses of the player by having them feel like they are visiting some abandoned house.
Destiny 2 is a game that I have been playing and enjoying a lot. Considering it is a first person shooter game there are a lot of opinions on what’s good and bad to these games. Though the way the game makes you feel a lot more powerful does get people more engaged or enraged depending on the activities they do in the game. But each class has its own way of making the player feel powerful. With the warlock class both visually and in game have the player feel like they’re someone powerful. Considering that warlocks are the logical beings that know of raw power and how to harness such force. Titans are as their names describe them big hunks of monsters that physically power through anything. Their subclasses do just as much power as any class with a lot of it pertaining to their physical physique. Like the arc subclass that depends on the character either physically punching someone or sending themselves across the map to land and create a big explosion of lightning. While the hunter class may deal with both sneaking and speed they have their own way of being just as powerful. With their golden gun that deals massive amounts of damage to weakening the enemies with their void bows so they can execute their enemies faster. Now going into the lore and story that would take a while considering the creators have added so much lore. They even used said lore to sooner or later tell of future expansions. They do get into detail in the background about the world and some characters and how important they are independently. But the main games story is sometimes as good as the lore and explains more about the current events in the solar systems. Now Destiny isn’t always just shooting and completing story quests. They even have sections where they go and fight one another making it a PvP game on one end. Then an interesting game of Player versus environment versus player. Gambit which is a game mode done inside of the game has players fight against in game enemies to try and summon their respective boss. While also having people invade each other's sections and try to slow them down from actually summoning the boss to kill it and win. Collecting motes will also summon other enemies that slow down the other’s progress in summoning a creature. But that is how Gambit works with it’s interesting way of having people play a pvp like game mode.
The Long Dark is a very interesting game to play and continue to play. But as a survival game it does pretty well in trying to convey how a person could be able to survive in the wilderness with certain supplies. While also rummaging around abandoned homes to gather any type of supplies to take with them on their journey. The mechanics in the game make it feel like it is a bit real but also makes it a bit more difficult for people to survive for so long. The crafting system within the game grows on the amount of knowledge the character learns from books around the area. They also have to repair their clothing so they can survive the cold outside. Sooner or later you learn how to survive in a very cold area by taking shelter within homes and trying to warm yourself up. With surviving the wilderness there are also chances that the player themselves will sooner or later die. From either the wild life that roams about the area or because of the blistering cold of snow. Now this survival game does contain a story about the areas you are put in and why wild life was as agitated as it is. With also answering the main question of why there are so many abandoned houses.
Another game that I would like to add in is Hades. A very well known indie game that relies on its action like mechanics. You play as Zagreus the son of Hades as you traverse and fight your way through the different levels of the underworld with the help of the olympian gods. The balance and difficulty of each level are in my opinion pretty good. With bosses at the end of the level being very difficult for people if they don’t know how to combat them. But the player will traverse each room and gain more abilities from the god or upgrading their weapons within the dungeons to make each room easier. Then once you reach the boss room that is when you either have to be a bit more powerful or strategic with the powers you gain from the gods. But even from then each time you get to another level it becomes more difficult and you start to see a lot more unique enemies. With each enemy there are certain ways to avoid them from damaging you. But if you lose at any section of the dungeon you are prompted to start from the beginning. But you are also able to upgrade both your weapon and Zagreus so he can get through the underworld faster or easier. But the progression of the game does a pretty good job in trying to make it difficult as you get closer to the finish line. Story wise it does seem to have a good story. I personally haven’t gone through it all yet but I have experienced the mechanics as I continue to play it.
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