Video Games

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bothwell

Years and years ago, I wrote a feature for the Official PlayStation magazine, where I posed as a young game designer and sent out a series of offbeat, idiosyncratic game design proposals to a number of major publishers. One of them was called Country Life and it just involved wandering a lusciously detailed natural landscape, taking photos of wildlife, stopping at little pubs and inns for refreshment, swapping notes with other walkers and just taking in the peace and beauty of the world.

I would play the fuck out of that! Get on it, game devs.

I played Firewatch earlier this year after putting it off for ages because I couldn't understand from any of the reviews what it was, but it's easily one of the best games I've ever played. Dear Esther is great as well. Spent so much time just staring at scenery mumbling happy noises to myself.

My only regret is that they're so short, but the narrative of most shootybang games is lean too, and they're just bulked out by having to pop hordes of mooks in the face for hours.

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branwen in reply to @bothwell

I was incredibly annoyed by the spoilers time-skips in firewatch. I'd entirely expected/wanted it to be an entire summer of not much happening.

Also for the tiny venn-diagram intersection of people who liked Firewatch and haven't read it, I would recommend Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. It's a bit heavier on the proto-Buddhist stylings than On The Road, but it also really captures the whole summer incredibly well

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