What have you been playing this week?
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, Kelsey discovers the joys and stresses of managing border control in Papers, Please; Tom holds off his Kojima dislike and plays Death Stranding; Victoria looks for anyone she can to talk to about Dispatch; Ed can’t stop thinking about balls; Connor finds himself back in Guild Wars 2; and Bertie finds himself back in Dungeons & Dragons, getting everyone in trouble again.
What have you been playing?
I had some time off work last week and plans that had fallen through, so I’ve been using that time to clear some indie games out of my backlog. The one I’ve spent the most time with so far and can see myself returning to regularly is Papers Please, the dystopian document thriller that tasks you with working as an immigration officer in the 80s. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to play it.
The game unsurprisingly features a lot of paperwork to sift through and check. I first thought it was a nightmare. There are far too many things to remember at once. But as you become used to your in-game nine-to-five, Papers Please slowly grants you more freedom and you begin to realise you don’t necessarily have to play by the rules. That’s when the ‘thriller’ aspect of this game comes in and suddenly grips you, and your empathy and feelings towards the cast of characters that you’ll meet plays more of a part in things than the job you’ve actually been assigned to do.
-Kelsey
It’s finally happening. Me, the infamous Kojima-game-disliker, is playing Death Stranding. My immediate feeling is that you really don’t get many games that go all out to achieve an artistic vision like this does. It’s striking how unconventional the whole thing is. Where most modern games tend to follow conventional wisdom for a lot of the general gameplay systems, Kojima creates games like he has either never played another game before or simply believes his way is better. It’s refreshing.
