Some Games that Matter

I suppose they'd matter a lot more if you actually cared about video games, but since these are all free on-line you can afford to.

You Have to Burn the Rope

What it Is: You Have to Burn the Rope wears the guise of a classic 8-bit platformer, with its axe-tossing bebowlered pink blob of a protagonist and the terrific chiptunes that play in the background, but it’s a lot more than that, or really, it’s a lot less. YHtBtR plays perfectly like the genre it apes but it clocks in at something under two minutes of gameplay- like the title says, all you really have to do is burn the rope.

Why it Matters: YHtBtR’s minimal approach to its genre is shrugged off (“we didn’t feel like making a longer game” the end credits cheerily report) but it’s a brilliant post-modern* satire of modern gaming, a pointed jab at the moody seriousness and over-complication that’s become the cliché of games today, much as coins and kidnapped women were the standby of days since past. They even give delightful instructions as you pass through the opening tunnel, as though the title weren’t enough already. Even if you could care less about satire, the games ending credits (stills of your epic adventure and a quirky song) are worth the trip, brief though it may be.

Ben There, Dan That

What it Is: Ben There, Dan That is a amusing and generally well-written send-up of the point and click adventure game, and it follows the exploits of its creators, Dan Marshall and Ben Ward, two lay-abouts who just want to watch television. For those of you unfamiliar with adventure games, allow me to enlighten: these games generally drop you in some sort of situation (helpful, I know), and then leave you to puzzle it out. Objects will be examined, picked up, combined, and used, often in a frustratingly unintuitive way. BTDT manages to sidestep the frustration however, and is weird without being annoying, and most of the puzzles are on the easy to medium side, usually with a minimum of illogical puzzlecraft. The graphics are simple and fun, and though the right-click-to-cycle-actions thing is annoying, the dialogue is clever and entertaining (barring the relatively dull alien conspiracy plotline).

Why it Matters: Truth be told, BTDT doesn’t really matter. It’s an ode to a genre that’s long been dead, and despite a few half-hearted efforts to revive it (i.e. Zach and Wiki for the Wii) it doesn’t really seem like the point and click gaming that gave us Sam and Max and the Monkey Island series is ever going to make a mainstream comeback. But that’s also sort of the point. BTDT is the perfect sort of parody, much like Edgar Wright’s Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (I’ll jump mediums when I damn well please)- though relentless in its spoofing, it’s also a completely valid work of the genre it targets. With plenty of direct and indirect references to its progenitors, BTDT matters every joke and jab is made with love, and it makes a valiant though largely unheard call back to the days when writing wasn’t an afterthought, and games about goofy pirates and animal detectives weren’t just allowed- they were lauded.

Façade

What it Is: Everything seems like its fine when your slightly awkward friend Trip calls you over for drinks with him and his wife, Grace, but by the time you’ve gotten out of the elevator and knocked on the door, it already seems clear that their perfect marriage has more than its share of problems. Façade is the most unique and bizarre game I’ve ever played- it’s a first-person drinks-and-marriage-counseling simulator, where your only weapon is your voice. That’s it. That’s what you do. Stop looking at me like that.

Why it Matters: Façade doesn’t sound that special, well maybe it does, but at first glance it seems more weird and unique than significant. It starts to hit you after you’ve spent a bit of time making small talk with these people, and I say people very pointedly. You know that your making tense conversation with two computer controlled players but it’s eerily difficult to identify them as such. Their manner, their voices, the looks on their faces and responses to what you say (Façade uses a pretty slick text parser to read your typings)- it’s uncannily human. They respond to your actions, and you guide the argument to some sort of conclusion, whether it be Trip guiding you out of the apartment, or Grace confessing to an affair or both of them deciding to work on their relationship. Only after your third or fourth time through do the limits of the conversation become apparent, but those first few run-throughs are a spookily convincing player guided story, something that the gaming industry has been trying to make for decades. This isn’t to say it’s perfect (the text parser sometimes seems to get the exact opposite of what you said; some dialogue lines get retread with annoying frequency; where the story actually ends up can seem frustratingly unrelated to your prodding questions) but it’s the most significant step that’s ever been taken in this direction. Color me excited for The Party, the sequel that’s the same technology upgraded and applied to a whole crowd of chatty uncanny-valleyers.

That was... longer than expected. Go and download them. Now.

yours,
Noah J.

*I know what post-modern means, and am allowed to use it. Quit your scoffing.