Though I often appreciate them, I don’t typically play horror games. ECHO isn’t exactly a horror game, but it’s easily the most terrifying game I played this year. Developed by a small team of alums from IO Interactive (the studio behind the highly-regarded Hitman series), ECHO delivers a brilliant stealth experience that leverages the full…
Backlog #2. Pathlogic 2
Pathologic 2 (2019) is an ambitious remake of 2005’s Pathologic. Reconstructed by Ice-Pick Lodge, the same studio that created the original, it’s a gorgeous and haunting survival game about confronting a dire plague in a rural town in the Russian Steppe. It’s bizarre, dramatic, and unsettling, relentlessly punishing the players’ every small mistake to drive…
Backlog #3. Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium is a noire RPG in the style of classic computer RPGs, developed by Estonian studio ZA/UM. It takes place in Martinaise, a dreary, industrial district of the occupied city of Revachol. It’s a strange, gloomy detective story about class and politics, filled with both dark humor and unexpected sincerity. I struggled to find…
Backlog #4. Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
I’m not usually drawn to games that wallow in frustration or hopelessness. The “it’s miserable, and that’s the point” kind of games like Papers, Please sort of miss the mark for me. For me, a frustrating game needs to provide a certain tonal balance to be worth the effort that it’s asking of me. Diaries…
Backlog #5. Dragon’s Dogma
It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to get invested in an open world action RPG. In the past few years, I’ve learned that their structure just doesn’t work with my play style and attention span. So I tried to play Dragon’s Dogma a couple of times this year, and I kept bouncing…