Baba is You for PC; Image Credit: Pocket Gamer
Baba Is You (2019)
Kelley’s go-to phrase for Baba Is You is “brain-melty,” usually after multi-hour battles of wit with the titular sheep left us mentally exhausted. We’ve tried to explain the game to several people, and I never quite do it justice: initially Baba has to push around rocks to get to a flag. So far, so good. The twist is that the words defining the rules (e.g. “Rock Is Push,” “Flag Is Win,” and of course “Baba Is You”) can also be pushed around and thus rearranged into new rules. Early puzzles require you to make “Rock Is Win” or even “Flag Is You.” As you play, the vocabulary expands, the possibilities explode, and the difficulty skyrockets. You start to rewire your thinking in a way that is confounding, exhilarating, and sometimes… brain-melty. The intellectual thrill when the penny finally drops is perpetually rewarding.
The level quality is defined by precision, creativity, and elegance. The level quantity is astoundingly generous, yet without getting repetitive or lazy. Finnish creator Hempuli is brilliant at switching between introducing new ideas, letting you explore variants, and then flipping your world upside down again. There’s also secrets within secrets, so you’ll want to revisit areas.
The art style, conversely, looks like a child’s refrigerator drawing. That isn’t a knock. It’s cute and clean; no unnecessary complexity (there is plenty already).
Puzzle games are my favorite genre and I play a lot of them so take heed when I say this might be the best!
Score: 10 / 10
–Brian
Brain-melting, but amazing. The best puzzle game I’ve played.
Score: 10 / 10
–Kelley
Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009)
As alluded to in my Spider-Man review, I have been a fan of superheroes for as long as I can remember. Near the top of my list of favorites is that surly, but somehow still lovable, Caped Crusader.
I missed the boat on playing any of the Arkham games when they were released, so I decided to begin with the first in the series – Asylum. I had started the game two years ago before getting stuck at a challenging stealth/bad-guy-takedown section. I didn’t remember any of the story or the controls, so I overwrote my old file. Turns out, I had gotten about three-quarters of the way through in my partial playthrough, so my decision to start over ended up being particularly painful and definitely colored my overall rating.
You are Batman. You are at Arkham Asylum to see that Joker is properly incarcerated after his latest escapade. You suspect that he allowed himself to be captured and your spidey-sense (*ahem* bat-sense) is tingling. Rightfully so! Joker has come up with a dastardly scheme that frees the prisoners of Arkham Asylum and those from Blackgate Prison who are temporarily being held there. You are trapped, with only your wits, your cool bat-toys, and your flurry of punches to see you through to safety. Oh, and Jim Gordon is also in trouble, because of course.
Being Batman is fun. While there are things about the game that I found repetitive and annoying, I enjoyed running around and confronting the villains I remember from watching cartoons as a kid. I felt a sense of accomplishment defeating Bane – not because Bane was particularly difficult, but because he was Bane.
To me, the combat system of chaining hits to get bigger bonuses became tedious and a bit button-mash-y. I found the reliance of the game on fighting token henchmen, in skirmishes, or even big-name baddies to be repetitive. Some difficulty and strategy did change when the bad guys got guns or cattle prods, but it was a lot of the same over and over again.
While I generally didn’t mind the stealth sections, there was one that got me closer to throwing my controller than I ever have before. In this area, you have to take out a bunch of armed henchmen one-by-one without using explosive-rigged gargoyles for cover. I spent hours in a cycle of trying to figure out the right strategy, dying, and getting taunted by Joker on the reload screen. (Shout out to Mark Hamil for getting under my skin with his amazing vocal performance.) Incidentally, it was this exact section that made me quit the game the first time around so I was not going to let it defeat me again. I felt a great sense of relief when I finally got past this area and into new parts of the game. I began to remember that being Batman is fun.
Score: 7 / 10
–Kelley
Three Fourths Home (2015)
The lightning flashes and illuminates a ghostly phalanx of corn stalks. The windshield wipers flick back and forth. You still have a lot of driving left. Three Fourths Home feels like a 2-hour black-and-white slice-of-life film, and I mean that in a good way.
You play as Kelly (no relation to Kelley), a 20-something returning home to Nebraska after a series of disappointments. You are driving through a Midwestern-style thunderstorm and talking on the phone with your family. You unfold, and to some extent control, your backstory through this conversation. Whichever answers you give, a few deft lines of dialog later and you feel like you know her mother, father, and brother. They inquire, but don’t push. They want to comfort, but don’t know how. They worry about you. In arguably the climax, your younger brother, an intelligent but difficult kid somewhere on the autistic spectrum, tells you a long story he wrote. And post-game, there is an epilogue which fills in a few gaps and provides closure.
As a piece of writing and even as a series of minimalist visual scenes, Three Fourths Homes is pretty good. As interactive fiction, I’m on the fence. The driving mechanic involves holding down a single key for about two hours. This is, I suppose, a way to communicate the tedium and discomfort of a long drive. I’d have preferred either no driving mechanic or something more fully-fledged. Contending with traffic might not be in the right spirit, but perhaps the occasional curve or a few stops (a gas station, a flat tire, a diner, etc.).
Score: 5 / 10
–Brian
For more in this series see 2019 Trios.
Significant Gamers 