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| Home from Animal Crossing: New Leaf |
In one of the moving boxes around my home are my gaming systems, surely one of the nondescript ones at the bottom of a box mountain. While I try to maneuver through the moving process, we thought now would be a good time to discuss homes and the stuff we put in them. Join Scott and I this week as we chat about,
Skyrim,
Fallout, and haunted houses. As always, share with us your home-away-from-home games in the comments below!
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Show notes:
What? Crono dies! I just started playing Crono Trigger on my DS :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised by how few of your old game consoles you guys have kept. I still have all my "original" consoles - and apart from that I have acquired quite a few old consoles to play with. Doing a quick count in my head I think I have 14 consoles (all plugged in) not counting the hand held ones. I guess I am a hoarder ;-)
I just recently had my attention drawn to the Myst series again. Which are games entirely about nosing around people's homes. Their weird steampunk homes filled with ingenious machinery.
ReplyDeleteEvery single game was a archeological mystery where the final puzzle was a judge of character for the guy whose home you'd just been nosing around.
The series graduated slowly from snooping around bedrooms, to snooping around an evil dictator's crumbling island, and finally to snooping around the remains of a dead civilization that spanned worlds.
If you've never played or completed a game in this series, I found them highly rewarding after returning to them in adulthood.
Some other games worth mentioning when it comes to homes in games: OctoDad, Grandia, the Natsume games (like Harvest Moon), Shenmue
ReplyDeleteand also some horror games like Silent Hill The Room, or Indie Games like Home and Paranormal.
Silent Hill The Room is a very special case here, because of the apartment being a prison and a refuge at the same time.
How do you deal with the difficulty level? I love the Myst series for its settings and contemplative, un-hurried nature, but starting with Riven I was stuck from the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteOh man. Chrono Trigger is so good! I'm jealous.
ReplyDeleteAs for keeping my old consoles, I wish I had. Although all plugged in? Holy cow, you should open a museum!
I hopped into a myst game a few years ago and it didn't feel like it aged well, but I should probably try again. They still carry so much cultural weight, it'd be interesting to revisit.
ReplyDeleteI haven't played many of those listed, but you're right re: Home. The fact your decisions affect how you interpret the feeling of coming home, whether its a frightening space or one you dominate, so cool.
ReplyDeleteRiven sticks you in a hard spot from the beginning. It's hard to gauge if you're really making progress. There are essentially two big puzzles in that game, everything else is just the small puzzles that impede normal exploration. The revelation that one of these big puzzles is even a goal to overcome is a huge step in figuring the game out.
ReplyDeleteRiven is basically the odd duck of the series, the rest are much better about giving you long term goals to achieve. It's definitely the hardest of the series.
These games basically revolve around exploring gorgeous environments and solving puzzles based on environmental and textual clues. Unfortunately, their graphics are not timeless.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the relevancy of the series to gaming at large has diminished, I think it's still important for gaming historians. Because some of their achievements are still unchallenged. So maybe read about the gameplay on wikipedia before revisiting? It'll help cushion the blow.
There's an odd shaped gem in there.