Often, I find myself trying to describe a certain game to a colleague to try and explain what it is and what it’s all about. Sometimes this discussion ends up putting them off of the game in question completely, when my intention was to sell it to them. Despite my best efforts, whenever I explained what it technically was that you had to do, the chance that my colleague would actually play the game decreased and decreased. This is a shame as it meant that they missed out on playing a great game.
Here are 5 such games: games that sound terrible on paper, but once gamers get their hands on them, they immediately fall in love – presented in no particular order.
Resident Evil 4
What it technically is: Mostly an escort mission, with tank controls, an inability to move and shoot at the same time, and tons of QTE’s.
Why we love it: Resident Evil 4 overcomes what we would consider problems through the sheer quality of its moment-to moment pacing and its consistently engaging and varied level design. Yes, we have to save Ashley and yes, it is annoying to hear shout “Leon, help!” time and time again, but these moments are rare enough that we find ourselves willing to forgive them. It also helps that Ashley is not made of glass and has a little bit more self-preservation instinct than you would think. And if you really can’t stand her, you can throw her in a bin.
“Got some good things on sale, strange-ah.”
However, screw the part where you have to cover her while she pulls levers.
As for QTE’s, RE4 is often forgiven for their inclusion, and once you see how they are implemented, it’s easy to see why. While it can be annoying to be watching a cutscene only to have a prompt you couldn’t possibly have seen coming pop and kill you minutes in, RE4’s QTE’s happen during gameplay as well as cut-scenes. In one segment, the player must dodge a creature’s surprise ceiling-attacks by pressing two buttons at once. The prompt is the same each time; so suddenly this button combination becomes the dodge button, which players will instinctively reach to when Leon needs to dodge something again. It means that you’re reacting to the events in the game rather than the mini-game on screen.
RE4 is also the only one of the modern Resi’s that is actually scary, with plenty of well-executed moments in there, made even more impactful by the fact that it is exclusively single-player.
Rock Band
What it technically is: A karaoke machine featuring colourful plastic toys that can in no way teach you the guitar.
Why we love it: Alcohol.
Ok I’m not going to leave it with a one-word verdict but I’m sure there are a lot of you out there that never owned Rock Band or any of the million-plus Guitar Hero games, but played it at great length due to knowing someone who did. The fact is, coming together as a unit to form something greater than the sum of its parts is a truly special experience, and one that Rock Band outputs brilliantly (assuming your vocalist isn’t tone deaf, and/or one or more of the party is drunk) – however silly you look while playing it.
How many times did you get through John Lennon’s “Imagine” in one night?
And even with its party-game feel, the game more than provided the hours upon hours of gameplay that hardcore fans wanted if you put the time into it. Being able to 100% expert Dream Theatre may sound like a waste of time to some, but to others, it was just another video game challenge accepted (as well as a lucrative Youtube partnership).
Shadow of the Colossus
What it technically is: A vast open-world action game with basically nothing in the vast open world except the bosses. And triangle is Jump.
Why we love it: In spite of Shadow of the Colossus’s empty landscape – or probably because of it –the game has garnered the sort of respect from fans (and its cult following) that you would expect to see associated with gaming’s Golden Geese; it occupies the same place in gamers’ hearts as Metal Gear Solid or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
And deservedly so. The Forbbiden Land is a huge place, but it is filled with wonder and mystery. Who lived here? When was it forbidden, and why? These are the questions you ask yourself when playing, and the emptiness only serves to intensify the feeling of distance and isolation.
Part of the game’s genius is that simply defeating all 16 Colossi doesn’t take you through every explorable area.
Making an action game where the only combat in the whole game is versus sixteen boss fights is a bold move, but each boss fight should be taken as a puzzle, each with a clever solution (or solutions), that provides the perfect “a-ha” moment every time you figure it out. The empty open world makes the boss fights that much more amazing, and in today’s conventions of game design whereby the player is simply put through one action-packed set-piece after another, the Forbidden Land in Shadow of the Colossus reminds us of the beauty of quiet moments.
Ico
What it technically is: 90% escort mission where the escort in question is so helpless they have to be physically dragged from one point to another, lest they get taken away by hordes of enemies you can do very little about (armed only with a wooden stick, no less).
Why we love it: Ico’s use of Yorda, the princess that the player must guide through the game, is more of a puzzle design tool and only becomes anything like a hindrance when she is dragged offscreen by flying shadow creatures. But putting that aside, Ico is a beloved classic not just for its emphasis on the relationship between Ico and Yorda and their escape together, but for its interesting level design and puzzles, which mostly hinge around getting Yorda from A to B through clever use of physics, elements and levers. And if you get stuck long enough, the princess might actually get up off her arse and point you in the right direction (literally).
The 3rd-person climbing and jumping set the groundwork for the future of the genre.
The gameplay also saw Ico clamber around environments in such a way as to provide the DNA for many modern action-platformers like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time right the way up to Uncharted and Tomb Raider. It’s worth playing the HD edition of this game as it is probably more influential than you may realise.
Mirror’s Edge
What it technically is: A platformer in its purest sense: attempt jump, die, and repeat until skilled enough to be successful. It just so happens that it’s also exclusively first person.
Why we love it: A game based on 1st-person platforming was never attempted before or really since Mirror’s Edge. Platforming works because players are able to see the character’s feet at all times and are aware at any given moment of the player’s position in relation to the world around them. Many 1st-person shooters in the late 90s (I’m looking at you, Turok) often included some type of jumping puzzle, and having to run so far off an edge so that it moves off the bottom of the screen before hitting jump can cause all sort of problems, chiefly running off edges. This was something that DICE obviously realised, as this occurs very little if at all in Mirror’s Edge.
Moments such as these work well regardless of perspective.
Mirror’s probably had some rough spots, and players were often frustrated by being repeatedly gunned down while trying to navigate some sort of ledge, but when the game hit its stride, the 1st-person free-flowing parkour truly gave a sense of speed and traversal, to the point where many cried out for a sequel (which EA is now happily providing).
Honourable Mention: Dark Souls
“OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD!”
What it technically is: It’s an ultra-difficult and masochistic descent into gaming hell and back.
Why we love it: It’s an ultra-difficult and masochistic descent into gaming hell and back, with giant spiders.
So there you have it. It just goes to show that to ably appreciate what a video game is and whether or not it’s good, you simply have to get your hands on it and play it, experience what the creators intended, and decide based upon the medium’s intended outlet as opposed to videos, trailers, screenshots or sometimes even a description.