Papers, Please
Papers, Please is a simple, pixel-styled game that takes place in a fictional country which parallels the Soviet Union. You play as someone assigned at a boarder checkpoint who admits foreign travelers into the country. It starts out very simple, but quickly becomes complex.
The story is one of the biggest draws to this game. It is a compelling yet simple story in which you make judgments over people's lives and decide whether to help them and get punished, or follow along with your job. There are times that you must act out of your own self-interests, and times where you must help those who are corrupt and evil in order to save yourself and your family.
This is the screen where most of the game takes place. You look through passports and judge their validity to decide whether or not you let someone in. As the game goes on, there are more requirements to who is admitted and who is not. More papers are added and some are taken away or modified, and it becomes a toss up of trying to admit more people to make money and risk letting in an unqualified person, and taking your time on each one and not be capable of getting through many people.
As you go, there are often people in difficult situations that need help in one capacity or another. Some people are escaping their countries with their families, and often their paperwork is incorrect. It ends up being a moral dilemma on your part as to whether to do your job and remain loyal to your country, or to help people in situations just as desperate as your own.
I mention the story a lot because that's what really drives what goes on. What occurs in the story can affect the mechanics, such as denying suspected terrorists from certain countries or having to shoot at them in order to save a guard you befriend. Some people, like Jorji, return multiple times and how you treated them in the past can change their reactions and ultimately the outcome of the game. This intricate story with so many possibilities and stories of both these people and yourself makes it worthwhile to play through it multiple times to me, even with how difficult it can get later on to process the papers.
Onto the interface.
As I said before, most of the game takes place on the first of these two screens. At times, the desk can become cluttered and difficult to work things around with, but this is a purposeful challenge to make you slow down in your process and check through all the details. You also have to navigate through a book and end up memorizing some aspects such as the cities in the countries that issue the passports and what legitimate seals look like versus forged ones. This increase in challenge is partly what prevents me from continuing, though, because of how long it's been since I last played it. I feel a bit incapable of remembering and working well.
The second part of the game involves your family, which you never directly see. You can only see their statuses and you have to make decisions about your finances and whether you can afford food, heat, or medicine. Members of the family can die, and you can also adopt one of your nieces. Everything has a consequence, though, and if you can't afford rent next week due to failure to manage money, you will lose. Consequences are high and the challenges are difficult, but it feels very rewarding to be able to get your family through it all.
On a final note, I'll mention the art style. I personally love pixel-styled things because it creates a lot of simplicity and allows the player to get a feel for the environment. It helps to create a very specific atmosphere, and the dull colors and limited pallet of this game adds to the oppressive feeling you get from the dialogue and interactions. The green and red stamp colors are the only things that stand out from the rest of it, and it puts a lot of emphasis on the main decider of the game. Ultimately, what happens depends on those stamps about who is let through and who is denied entry. It's an artistic emphasis on the biggest influence to the game.
All in all, gorgeous and intriguing game. Perhaps one of my favorites. I'll know when I finally manage to play through it to the end.
Not so Hot Stuff:
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
This is probably the closest to a bad game that I've played. I enjoyed it, but it definitely wasn't as fun or interesting as the other games in the series. Still enjoyable, but there are a few things that could have been vastly improved.
For starters, the mechanics of the game are a bit unusual. Nintendo had a trend for awhile of trying to create new and unique ways to interact with the games they created. One such thing was the motion controls of the Wii. They added onto those to be more sensitive and exact and implemented it into this game. You control the sword by swinging as usual, but you also control the direction you hit in. Specific enemies block in certain ways for you to use these different attacks, but it tends to be annoying and tedious rather than a fun and interesting challenge.
There is also a stamina bar, which, in theory, is a good way to get players to strategize about how to battle an enemy. Mostly, though, it ends up being an annoyance as you try to get around the world. Tasks take a long time without being able to quickly move about, and the most noticeable times when there is a matter of having depleted stamina, it's outside of combat, as in combat I never found much need to monitor my stamina. It was just frustrating as you went about completing simple tasks.
The interface is also a bit strange. The inventory system doesn't pause the game when opened, from what I remember, and it is awkward to select as you try and get the right object as the cursor often selects imprecisely around where you're trying to aim. You're also restricted to carry a certain number of items, which can be inconvenient when you need to prepare for a temple or a fight.
The environment also hits and misses a lot of places. On the surface world, everything is fairly nice and looks vibrant and interesting for the most part. There are some areas where the design isn't fully there, though, and it looks fairly boring and uninteresting, like the desert.
Granted, deserts tend to be barren and uninteresting to look at for the most part, but it's fairly flat in colors and doesn't seem wholly enjoyable. You do make parts of the desert fill with life again, but wandering around before then is a bit boring and makes it hard to navigate sometimes since everything does look fairly similar.
The sky you fly around in is also pretty uninteresting. There isn't much for large portions of the sky you do fly around in, and one of the major mechanics of the game is to fly from place to place. It is very fun to actually fly around and the motion sensitive controls do work really well for this part, but adding a more dynamic atmosphere with a better appearance than tan clouds would have made it that much more enjoyable.
There are also dialogue choices in the game, but they don't add much to the experience since they change a few lines of what's said and that's the extend of the impact. It's also strange to have a Link that is actively speaking and responding when he's mostly silent in the other games he's portrayed in. Another person that struggles a bit with dialogue is Link's companion, Fi. Fi is the living component of Link's sword, and she talks like a robot. It is intentional, but it becomes annoying to read her long, unnecessary explanations of things that could have been simplified. It doesn't quite fit to have this magical being speak like an android, since they're two very juxtaposed things. She also serves very little in the actual story line and is mostly there to just tell Link what to do next, not unlike Navi. Her design is very nice, though, so props on that.
The last big issue I really have is the cut-off nature of the areas. You fly to get to each place, and there's not much to do or explore in between. Traveling between it all becomes inconvenient and takes up unnecessary time, as you have to go back and forth and nothing is conveniently placed. There's only one main shop area, and with the limited inventory you have, once you do run out of items (which can happen pretty quickly), you have to leave the area you're in and return to Skyloft to replenish things, such as your shield which deteriorates during battles.
Despite these aspects, though, I did enjoy playing it. The story wasn't very great, but the ending was intense and epic, and it would have been great to have the rest of the game match up to it and the gorgeous battles that lead to the conclusion and ultimate explanation of what caused these reincarnations of Links and Zeldas in the other games. It was an important game, and one that I wish was better done than it had been.
