Tweet
Who do you want to be? A pilot gadding about in a giant mech? A magical lady in a complex, zip-heavy outfit? An abstract claw racing around the edges of a bright, vectorish grid? How about a goat? This is your choice if you like video games and you've been looking at Eurogamer this week. It covers Titanfall, Final Fantasy, TxK and Goat Simulator - and that's a selection that fills me with all kinds of happiness. Cast your gaze only a little further back and you get Octodad, in which you play as a clumsy cephalopod trying to blend in with humans, and Catlateral Damage, which pretty much speaks for itself.
So, yes: who do you want to be? It's a question that mainstream gaming has often struggled to ask players over the last few hardware cycles. Or rather, it's struggled to provide more than a handful of answers. It's become a truism that big budget designers have a hard time stepping away from tried and tested ideas like the man-with-a-gun set-up, but as with many truisms, it's often - y'know - true. A couple of years back, I remember working on an issue of a mag that had four different games on the cover. Four men and, inevitably, four guns. Space Marine Syndrome - nestled in beside Wizard Syndrome, Lady-with-Sword Syndrome, Fatigues-and-M16 Syndrome: it all felt so natural at the time, so hopelessly ingrained. It felt like this was never ever going to change. Look at some of the games we've been talking about over the last few months, though. It has changed. What's happened? And is it going to last?
Read more…
More...