Still playing: Dark Souls 3, Thumper
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I can't overstate how much joy Hitman 2016 has brought me over the years. I've been a huge fan since 2002's Silent Assassin, but the series has always been one in which the sky high ambition of a completely open-ended hitman sim had to reckon with the realities of what's possible in a contemporary video game. This meant that, no matter how much I might love past Hitman titles, there's always the caveat that, yes, these are *compromised* experiences. Sometimes the mechanics just don't work like they're supposed to, or they reinforce habits in the player that detract from the design's intent. This is no longer the case. Hitman 2016 is the first holistic Hitman title. Every element of its design, from the conspiratorial narrative, the inherent absurdity of 47's character design, the fragile nature of the player and the often chaotic spaces the player has to explore all work in concert towards a single goal: the perfect assassination sim. Unlike rigidly systemic stealth titles like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid, which rely on mathematical concepts like vision cones and enemy cooldown timers, Hitman captures the *human element* of stealth titles, and in doing so, captures the thrill and risk of the spy game. You aren't planning to sneak through a space so that you remain undiscovered for the exact amount of time you exist in said space - you're planning to eliminate a person with the explicit goal that your presence in a space remains undiscovered *forever*. That means swapping disguises to leave, say, a vial of poison in a trash can so that you can pick it up later, or rigging a piece of equipment to fail at just the right moment, far after you've gone. It also means that, during said planning, some rando might wander into the bathroom you just knocked out a guard in ruining the whole thing, or a civilian might take a smoke break *just as* you're about to make your move. It can make for frustrating moments, but IO has gamified guards and civilians to such an elegant extent that everyone's behavior is *roughly* able to be predicted, but never so much that the world feels robotic. On a smaller scale, it's also exciting to play a Hitman game that not only recognizes but really *encourages* repeat play. Hitman fans play the same maps again and again looking for new solutions or challenges, and the level design in Hitman 2016 is perfect for perpetual re-examination.
Episode IV
Besides the fact that Superhot is fuckin' SICK as HELL, it's also such a uniquely discordant experience. As the plot of the game continues, the theme of mind vs. self is basically exploded. A game about a young man severing his ties to the real world via his psychological addiction to the internet - that was released in 2016 - was maybe more accidentally prescient than anything, but it sure was unsettling to play by the end.
I feel like Oxenfree has attained its own status as a cult classic at this point, and I think that's great. It's a fun, creepy game with excellent writing. Of all the games on this list, I find myself thinking about Oxenfree more than most.
Mafia 3 features some of the best performances I've ever seen in a video game. It's got style, a somewhat comprehensive 'greatest hits of '60s counter culture' soundtrack, a phenomenal protagonist and a gorgeously realized period setting. Yet, it gives you so little to do with all of that! Mafia 3's open world allows you to do two things: break locks to steal porn, and infiltrate locations to shoot dudes. There are no other actions available to the player. Making Mafia 3 an out and out Far Cry-style map takeover game would've been good enough, but even in that regard you start to notice that every single gun fight/stealth sequences plays out identically fast. Which is a bummer, because everything else on the periphery fucking rules! When Mafia 3 hits, it hits hard. It's a bold game. I just wish it had more going on.
The very existence of Firewatch - nevermind its quality or creative ambition - is a sobering reminder of where, exactly, video games are at. There are a lot of games on this list, and yet there is exactly one that is about a realistic person, with familiar problems, who grows, falters, and changes throughout the course of a story. So much of the discourse around Firewatch either marvels at its desire to tell an empathetic, human story, or begrudges it for indulging in genre tropes, especially towards the end. Because of this, every critical response to Firewatch ends up also being a critical response to the quality of storytelling in contemporary video games in total. I sometimes get the sense that certain sects of game critics are unsatisfied by the creative output of the industry, or at least left in anticipation of something, and for a moment in time Firewatch felt like a vessel for these feelings. It's a big weight to carry, and this baggage does nothing but remove focus from what Firewatch actually achieves. It's not as brave as it could be, it *does* overstep on the resolution to its big mystery, and, yes, anyone could have predicted how the core relationship at the heart of the game would pan out. But none of that matters as much as the space Firewatch gives the player to explore the inner life of Henry - who is lonely, traumatized, paranoid and, sometimes, not a particularly good person. Almost all of us know what it means for life to pan out differently than we'd hoped, yet almost none of us see these feelings reflected in the characters we get to play as. Henry is imperfect, but he's imperfect in the way that people are imperfect. That alone is a tremendous quality for a protagonist to have in a medium that is often content to spend more time explore much less.
What an enormous turn after that first game. Literally everything about Watch Dogs 2 on paper sounds like a nightmare, but even it's cast of precocious San Franciscan hacktivists are actually just the fucking best. I loved every minute of this game and would gladly sign on for another. Even the Aiden Pierce cameo wasn't that bad! I love how this game provides you with so many unique tools to solve a problem. You can 3D print like a hundred guns and play this like a GTA game if you want, but I decided early on that was against the spirit of things. Instead, I used my souped up RC car, drone, and HACKED ROBOTS to get shit did. What a good time. And that soundtrack was great too. Man.
I played the entirety of Soda Drinker Pro. All 100 levels. And then there was the other thing. I'm still fucked up thinking about the other thing.
Devil Daggers owns your soul.
Not to spoil the big twist, but in Inside......you wanna go somewhere else....they call it.......Outside