Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (2020)
Platforms: Windows/Playstation/Xbox
Developer: Edelweiss
Publisher: Marvelous
This one might be for sickos, I’m not sure. I love it all the same. A game that is one half janky repetitive platformer and one half beautiful extremely deep rice harvesting simulator. It starts with a very anime tone and simplistic characters but relaxes into one of the most memorable games of the generation.
The game lasts for many years and each year you learn a bit more about all the steps it takes to get Rice. 20 hours in you can finally trade for sugar. I played the game two years ago and still every time I eat rice I consider the immense effort just to bring a single grain to my table.
That flows out into better considering how much effort all my food, all my daily use items take. That even the worst connivence store pastry took a monumental effort to arrive when I take two bites and throw it in the garbage. Sakuna between it’s anime story, garbage bag action system, and rice management made me a better more informed person.
It has captures the changing of the seasons in a way few games have. A crisp winter morning feels like a crisp winter morning. The fall rain feels cold and yet too hot in your clothes.
Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1 (2023)
Platforms: Windows/Playstation/Xbox/Switch
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Look this isn’t even out as I write this, but one of the last things Hinge Problems did as a video game podcast was me playing through Metal Gear Solid games. I think about the giant amount of themes in the game constantly. I think about Hideo Kojimas hideous inappropriate idea of sexuality and women.
They are also great games full of genius little game things. An idiot super-spy has to take down some comic super villians and have a trash-chute of pop-science dumped on him. You get tons of misatributed quotes as you fight a cloaked ninja and try to rescue the president and stop World War 3.
Metal Gear Solid games are about Nuclear Proliferation and Information Control and How a Soldier is used by his country. It’s also horny jokes and a giant screaming battle mech. Then there are melting ice cubes and a intense menu based self-surgery system.
I played these games once, I played them again. I’ll play them again too. In the versions I already have. But you can enjoy the collection.
Need For Speed (2015)
Platforms: Windows/Playstation/Xbox
Developer: Ghost Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
This is Need For Speed (2016) . That is the name. There are many Need For Speed games I have only liked this one and I liked it alot. You race along the rain-slicked twilight cities of a large American city. The cutscenes are all bizarre real actors talking to you, the camera. They feel like they are seconds from telling you about Religion or Drugs. There is strange passive multiplayer where other players exist in the same world as you. You can join and drop friends at will in a baffling confusing menu system. This is one of the more intensely video games on the list. I think about it how much fun I had taking the Music Slider to zero and putting on my own music and just driving around in a Subaru WRX STi a car I owned at the time. I love recommending it because every time the other person says, “Which One?” It is constantly on sale for less than 5 dollars.
Immortality (2022)
Platforms: Windows/Xbox/Playstation/Your Phone
Developer: Sam Barlow
Publisher: Half-Mermaid Productions
I’ve already written about this game a lot and why I recommend it. A year later I still find it impossibly remarkable. An actress appeared in 3 movies and then disappeared. You are tasked to just look over the incomplete mixed footage of the movies. You click on things on screen to be transported to a different scene from any of the 3 movies. You hone what object or person to click. The whole time you make judgements about what is happening.
I was shocked how often my judgement was subverted or proven wrong. There is no game over to the game. You are just reviewing and selecting footage. You can fast-forward and rewind. Your opinion changes. That is incredible. There is also the studio’s previous game Her Story, about reviewing interrogation footage of a single woman. Both are incredible works about your judgement being the game. That you have to really think about how to navigate the world. Both are Games for Adults.
Shenmue 1 and 2 (1999)
Platforms: Windows/Playstation/Xbox
Developer: Sega AM2
Publisher: Sega
I am really only focusing on the first game here, but if you are going to play it you are buying it as a combo. Shenmue 1 is about a dumb teenager trying to find his father’s Kung Fu murderer. You are in Yokosuka, Japan in 1986. Each day you will get your allowance from your house keeper you do not appreciate, and are free to wonder the world until it is time to go home until you go to bed. You can talk to anyone in town.
You’ll have to follow a string of clues to find the right person to lead you to the next story beat. You are free to take the story at your own pace. The world passes without your involvement. There is a kitten, who was orphaned the same day as you were that you can choose to feed. You can play arcade games or practice karate to pass the time.
Your girlfriend is concerned about you. Your friends and neighbors don’t know how to process your father’s death. There is a time gap between the opening and when you start playing. This covered the funeral. I figured out after playing this game for years, that your character covered up the murder. The world thinks your father died suddenly of natural causes and you are just taking the grief hard.
The game is softly about not wanting to go on a Karate Filled Revenge Suicide, as the main character is consumed by the need to go on a Karate Filled Revenge Suicide. You never go to school in the game, despite you having a few months before graduation. You weren’t a good student to begin with, clearly.
The sequels are much more video games than the original. The original Shenmue is one of the best video games ever made.
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