Not so long after my outing with S:S&S EP I planned to have a day with Journey. It was a lazy and quiet Saturday morning, my girlfriend was at work, my cup of tea was still hot, the sun was shining (behind closed curtains of course) and my surround sound system was cranked up and ready to go. I might still have been in my pajamas.
The beginning is probably a good place to start.
Earlier in the year, I managed to find some time to play through Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP (in May), Journey (in June) and Dear Esther (in July). I’d heard nothing but exceptionally good things about them so, naturally, I was incredibly excited to finally be able to play them. S:S&S EP had until then been a tablet exclusive (and I didn’t have a tablet), Journey was something I’d sampled only briefly at the EG Expo 2011 and I had been aware of the original Dear Esther mod for Half-Life 2 for years but hadn’t gotten round to playing it, in which time, the astonishingly beautiful remake was on the horizon.
Anyway, recently in the staff forums where we talk about our readers in secret, I mentioned in the Journey thread that I found it ‘underwhelming’, and lumped it with S:S&S EP and Dear Esther. Understandably a few brows were furrowed. I’d only ever discussed why I didn’t get on with these games in a few comments and emails here and there, so rather than continue that trend I thought it was high time I spilled the proverbial beans.
Whether it’s worth your money is something only you can answer… and you’ll probably only be able to say for sure after you’ve paid, and played, to whatever degree you “play” Dear Esther. In the end all I can say is that it’s something important.
Lewis Denby has written an interesting piece for his column over at GameSetWatch about the way in which we engage with games and more specifically the nature of embodying player characters. The article came about after he attended and contributed to a discussion on video game narrative held by Kieron Gillen at GameCamp in London a few weeks ago. Lewis spoke of how he tried to explore ‘context as narrative’ in his two Half-Life 2 …
Intrigued by yesterday’s Rock, Paper, Shotgun writeup of two highly unique mods for Half-Life 2, I scampered over to ModDB to get them for myself. The first, Dear Esther, didn’t work correctly on my computer, so I set it aside until I have time for troubleshooting. The second, Korsakovia, it worked fine. I kinda wish it hadn’t, because despite the fact that 30 minutes with this mod had me gelatinized with fear, I have a …