Rime

This month's free PS Plus game was 'Rime'  - a 2017 game from Tequila Works. I'd just come out of 'Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice', so I was in the mood for something a little more colourful, and maybe a little less full of misery and death.

Colourful it certainly is. Bright and vibrant, the game has a sort of Disney aesthetic which at first put me off. It seemed like it might be insubstantial, and that's not generally my thing. But I was wrong. It's good, and fun, and - crucially - quite short.

You play a small child in a cape, running about a beautiful island populated only by pigs, birds and a little red fox thing that acts as a guide. Crumbling architecture hints at previous inhabitants, but there is no human life to be found.

Gameplay is simple, but develops a number of enjoyable and interesting mechanics as you get further in. There is no combat to speak of. Genre wise I guess it's a kind of 3D puzzle/platformer, if that makes any sense.

It reminded me of a few other games. The island full of puzzles which must be unlocked to explore further brought to mind The Witness (though Rime is more about art than intellect). The way the mechanics build and progress through the game felt a little like Portal at times. And the climby-jumpy environment navigation was a lot like Uncharted, though without the wisecracks and murder. Oh, and it's a little bit like Monument Valley here and there, which can't be a bad thing.

Narratively, the whole thing is carried by environment. Which I like, so hurrah for that. There's no language at all: our protagonist does not speak, unless you count going "Laaaa!" when employing the game's singing mechanic. A lot is communicated through imagery, sound and body language. This makes the game a very immersive aesthetic experience.

There is story, but I'm not going to go into that too much here. Safe to say, though, it's a refreshing change from conventional game narrative - free of gunfire, revenge or treasure hoarding. You can safely add this to the list of games which are gently pushing the industry into new and interesting narrative directions.

I finished the game in about seven hours or so, which is pretty good for me, as I'm one of those gamers who likes to wander about cluelessly, wondering what I'm meant to be doing and enjoying the scenery. It was a gentle, absorbing experience - satisfying on a gameplay level while also being very emotionally engaging.

One of the things I like about games in general, and Rime in particular, is how encouraging they can be. Each chamber in Rime has a series of mechanics for you to play with. Glowing orbs, lenses, levers, giant stone blocks that you can move about - that kind of thing. Each of them has a function. And everything is there for a reason.  You stand and observe the elements in the room, knowing that somehow these things will combine to help you escape.

There's something wonderful about looking at a seemingly impossible situation, where everything seems stacked against your chances of success, and yet knowing that there is a way out. That if you can just be creative with the things at your disposal, there'll be a moment when you get it right. Everything will click into place. Gears will turn, levers will heave into motion, and the shape of the world will change around you.

It's not often like that in real life, is it? And maybe it's a little daft to assume that there's always a way out. Sometimes that's not the case. But I think there's something to be said for a game that looks at a hopeless situation and says, "This might not be the only way to be." It's a message that sits at the heart of Rime's narrative experience, and that theme is reflected in its excellent gameplay.

A beautiful little game, well worth your time.

Fragments of Him

I recently played a couple of hours of the 2016 game Fragments of Him. Well, I say 'played'. I'm not sure that's the right word. I sat at my PC and prodded my mouse every now and then, and things happened on the screen in response. If that's playing, then that's what I did. But that could also describe updating my accounts in Microsoft Excel, so I'm not so sure.

Fragments of Him is one of those arty, story kind of games that I theoretically love. I like the idea that games are growing beyond simple definitions and opening up new worlds of experience for those playing. I like that these games are challenging the very notions of 'play' and 'game' and forging new paths. It's interesting and it's clever. One day we'll probably look back and see these games as the first stumbling steps along vital new paths.

So. I theoretically love it. But it's also true to say that I theoretically hate it and think it's stupid and was bored out of my mind.

Here's how the game works. You are in a 3D environment. A kitchen, maybe. A college dorm. The street. You can move around this place, like a slow moving ghost. Sometimes you can see your character, who stands, frozen in time. If you click on your character, they fade out of existence and reappear a little further along their path. You can sometimes click on objects too. Each click pushes the story on a little further, but it's not a story you can in any way control. You are not there. You are merely observing things that happened.

Do you want to click on the chair? Or the sofa? Thrill to the interactive power.

The voices of the characters come out of nowhere, narrating this story, as if remembering it. I think the idea is that a bunch of people are remembering the life of the main guy - the 'Him' of the title. And you are seeing these memories. It's basically a story that you can wander around in. Occasionally you can click on a thing - like a cup - and it will disappear. This is extent of the thrills the game has to offer.

It's a good story, though. It's about grief, and loss, and about the way we remember people once they die. That's a noble aspiration for a game and I can see why they didn't try to make it a first person shooter. Fun as shooting games are, they don't really lend themselves to an examination of the complexities of  the grieving process. Anyone remember this, from Call of Duty?

Yeah... thanks, Call of Duty. Incredibly moving.

I found the stories in Fragments of Him believable and sad. They explore emotions and situations that don't often find expression in games. And there is something quite hypnotic and beautiful about the stillness of the scenes. The aesthetic works with the theme and creates a definite mood, which I'm guessing is the intention.

But as a game, it is boring. There is literally nothing to do. Clicking on things triggers the next bit of the story, and that's it. That's not good enough, in my eyes. I admire the ambition to take games beyond basic themes of conflict and conquest. But I wonder - where is the ambition to find game play to match these concepts?

Why does a move away from basic emotions also mean a move away from game mechanics? Are the two so inextricably linked? If the Devil has all the best tunes, does it also hold that FPS games have all the best mechanics?

I don't think so. I think there must be mechanics that would articulate a more subtle, nuanced side of the human experience. Things that address complexity without sacrificing 'play'. Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest is an interesting example of how to express depressive behaviour through a simple mechanic. Check it out - it's free, here. But there's a long way to go. 

Speaking of depression...

One little side note, before I go. As I was playing Fragments... I was also dipping in and out of Assassins's Creed: Black Flag. Readers of my last blog may remember that I wasn't getting on with the game very well, and was calling it all manner of names. 

Well. I have only become more angry. Having played Fragments of Him one afternoon, I moved onto the console to cheer myself up. "This will be better," I thought, "I'll blow some ships out of the water." For all its faults, Black Flag does offer some very gratifying ship-to-ship combat. A perfect, kinetic antidote to all the stillness and grief.

But it was not to be. I hit one of those points in the game where you are suddenly not a pirate any more. You are a regular guy, in an office, in the future. And so I had to endure a long period of gameplay where I shuffled around office carpets, heading for little glowing beacons as the game dictated. I don't know why. There was a voice burbling away in my ear, explaining some kind of plot. But I was angry that I wasn't being a pirate, so I ignored it. Stupid voice.

It didn't matter, as it turned out. All I had to do was shuffle from point to point. Once I reached the glowy marker, some tedious dialogue happened. I didn't listen to it, and it didn't matter.  When the dialogue finished, another marker appeared, somewhere else, for me to get to. 

I realised that this was no different from what I'd been doing in Fragments of Him. OK, the graphics were loads better, and I was actually moving my character about. But the essential 'play' was identical. I was following a series of prompts,with no freedom to deviate, so that their story could play out. And it wasn't even a good story this time.

I'm not sure what the moral of this is. There probably isn't one. But games need to sort their act out with this sort of thing. I'm here to play. I'm all for you trying to tell a story. But you better start working out how to make that story something I can do, rather than something I have to endure.

The Walking Dead: Season One

I have finally finished playing through Season One of Telltale's excellent 'Walking Dead' series. It's taken ages.

I started playing it on PC, but I found the control interface really fiddly and irritating. Also, it had a bug where the woman I saved in Episode One was suddenly mysteriously dead in Episode Two. "You saved this other guy!" claimed the game, confidently yet incorrectly. "No I didn't!" I growled. I had liked the woman. She had nice hair. The guy was a jerk. I had deliberately let him die.

So I stopped playing the PC version, which I like to think taught it an important lesson in respecting my choices as an individual.

See? She's got much nicer hair than him. Die, Doug! Die!

Because choice is what this series is all about. Every now and then the game will thrust a dilemma in your path and you have to choose what to do, usually against a ticking clock. It's not always about life or death choices. Sometimes it's about being diplomatic or aggressive. Revealing truths or playing cards close to your chest. Siding with one person or another.

It's a good mechanic and it works well in the world of the game. Which is, of course, the post-apocalypse, zombies-everywhere, oh-no-arg-help-I'm-being-eaten world of The Walking Dead. It's a world created in comic book form by writer Robert Kirkman in 2003 which has found incredible success on television and now in a series of also-pretty-impressive video games.

The premise of the world is simple but elegant. Zombies happen. Civilisation collapses. People try to survive and, in doing so, establish various forms of community. Stripped of the civilising influence of law and social convention, people reveal themselves to be selfish, cruel and easily corrupted. Or sometimes heroic. That's where we come in, making our choices.

This isn't a new idea, of course. The idea of zombies destroying society goes back to the 1960s, with George Romero's Night of the Living Dead,  and has found many iterations since. But the genius of Kirkman's take on the zombie genre is that he sticks around for a long time after the initial breakout. He's interested in the long term consequences. What power structures will humans form? What does it mean to be a leader? Who do we become when the lights are off for more than a few days?

I started the game again on my X-Box 360, a couple of years ago. I was much happier with the controls and romped through the first couple of chapters. It was a great experience. I'm not sure how much actual control I had over events, but I sure felt responsible. People died in front of me, quite a lot of the time. And every time, I felt guilty. There must have been another way.

The truth is, there probably wasn't anything I could have done. The game is sneaky like that. The choices it offers don't meaningfully affect the flow of the overall story. They can't, really. The narrative would branch off in too many directions for any game to keep track of. And a well told story needs shape and structure. You can't completely abandon that and let the player decide. Players are idiots. They'd just sit around eating crisps. That's not a story.

But the choice is important for a different reason. When we make choices, we feel attached to the outcome, in a way that we wouldn't if things just happened beyond our control. There's a psychological investment in the way a story unfolds, once we believe ourselves to be responsible for that unfolding. It's clever, and it works.

Anyway. Before I could get onto chapter three, I got a PS4 and I'm afraid the poor old X-Box 360 went from being an awesome game machine I worshipped to being a heap of white junk that I hated. I'm fickle like that.

And I kept thinking, "Oh, I should really play the rest of that game." And I'd stare at the 360, gathering dust under a shelf, and it would stare back at me full of bitterness and resentment. And the desire to finish the game would collapse against the - much stronger - desire to not have to plug it all it again and get dust in my face.

But then, to my delight, just before Christmas, the game was really cheap on the PS4. And so I bought it - yet again - and played through the first two chapters - yet again. And then I kept going and I kept going and finally, finally, finished the thing.

It's very good.

He's cutting her hair. Not stabbing her in the head with scissors. Just to be clear.

The characters are well drawn, thanks to an excellent script and strong vocal performances from the cast. It looks great - keeping to the aesthetic of the comic books, with extra points for how gross the zombies look. The plot is inventive and keeps moving along, using the restrictions of the game format to its advantage. Each chapter focuses on a couple of locations and gives the player chance to explore them, developing characters and narrative through a series of exciting game events. The changes in pace and location keeps things fresh, while the story develops believably towards a strong, moving climax.

I have a few criticisms. Firstly, the illusion of choice, though sometimes done well, is often tedious and transparent. Progress through a level tends to depend on the player jumping through a series of hoops - go here, pick up the thing, go there, put the thing in the place, go there, tell the person that you put the thing in the place.

There's little room for spontaneity and improvisation and it often feels like you're just doing stuff just so that the game can pat you on the head and say, "See? You did all that stuff! You certainly are demonstrating your ability to make meaningful choices!" But there wasn't any choice, really. The game was just waiting for you to go through the right sequence of things so it could unlock the next bit.

There's also an attempt to add world detail which can be quite frustrating. There are lots of cupboards to open, bits of junk to pick up, doors to open etc. Once in a while these will yield something of interest. But if they don't, your character's internal voice appears to mock you. "I don't have time for that!" he'll snort, as if you are a complete idiot for even thinking of opening a drawer.

"If you're going to be so precious about it, why put the option there?" I shouted, on more than one occasion.

Overall, though, the game is a beautiful and engaging thing and I'm glad I got round to finishing Season One. There's real emotion in the relationships between the characters and a sense of profound loss when they fall into a horde of the undead, never to be seen again.

There are a whole bunch more Telltale games, a few of which are also based on The Walking Dead. I have started Season Two, but - true to form - I've become distracted by Dishonored 2. Maybe I'll get round to it by the next console generation.

In the meantime. If you haven't played this excellent game, I massively recommend it. A major step forward in narrative game design.

Bound

I just finished playing Bound - a beautiful, soulful, peculiar game by a company I've not come across before: Plastic. A word of warning. If you Google 'Bound Plastic game', some of the hits will not be what you want. Or maybe they will, I suppose.

Anyway. It's a lovely game and I recommend it. It's very much in the indie, alternative mould, which means you aren't likely to be doing a lot of killing, side missions or levelling up. This is the sort of game that is currently seen as kind of 'experimental' but which will, hopefully, eventually, be seen as just one more brilliant type of experience that games can offer us.


Gameplay

You start off as a pregnant woman, on a beach, near a kind of wooden house. This is peculiar, as all the promotional stuff is like the image above - dancing in a weird, outlandish world of unreal polygons. Why am I on this quite realistic beach, shuffling about in the sand?

The woman has a book of doodles. You can leaf through the pages, choose one and sort of drift into it. It's a little like the central hub of Unravel, where you explore different aspects of a story through photographs of the past. And like Unravel, each level appears to be a specific memory, ready for us to explore and understand.

The core gameplay happens in these levels. The game is more or less a 3D platformer. You control an elfin, masked dancer through a world of impossible, fractured landscapes. You must navigate a path through the shifting, chaotic world, coping all the time with the whimsical nature of gravity which, as in Monument Valley, seems to have a capricious and unstable relationship with reality.

Also causing you trouble are strange, demonic flocks of... something. Swirls of creatures rise up to entangle and distress you along the way. You shake these creatures off by dancing. As you dance, ribbons of light extend from your arms, like you are some kind of carnival version of Wolverine. The demony things do not like the dancing, and fly away, shrieking.

It's a mesmerising and transcendent experience. Colour, light and movement dominate the game experience and there's a real sense of possibility. Much as I love my shooters and RPGs, there's something inevitable and limiting about their conventions. Here, we are in a world where the rules of gameplay do not quite apply as normal. We dance rather than fight. Remember rather than kill. Explore the past rather than shaping the future. One beautiful feature places us in the midst of fragmented memories, shattered tableaux that reform slowly as we move through them, revealing... well, you need to play the game. But it's very moving.

It's not an entirely original concept, of course. Bound is part of a slowly forming movement of games, as surely as First Person Shooters once were. There are strong traces in here of thatgamecompany's output: games like Journey and Flower.  Structurally, as I mentioned, there are echoes of games like Unravel and maybe a little of Firewatch. A move away from acting upon the world, and towards enjoying the experience of being in the world.

This movement of games is coming together - like those shattered memories - from disparate, apparently unconnected fragments, to form a picture of what games might become. What they might be for.

This is starting to feel like a type of game, rather than a startling exception to what 'game' is. Only a few years ago a release like Gone Home ruffled feathers by daring to avoid the common tropes of action based game-play. Now it feels like we're getting more and more chances to experience things like this: unusual, emotional journeys that push at the edges of what's considered normal.

I liked this game a lot. If you get the chance, give it a go. If you tend to play more conventional games, you might find it weird how much control you have to give up. But that's a good thing, I think.

If you tend not to play games much, then this is an excellent place to go, to see the potential games have. There's something new here, and it's fascinating.

Dance. Remember. Explore.

And, occasionally, like I did, go shoot some stuff in the head in Borderlands 2. You can't live by bread alone.

Volume

I'm pretty close to the end of 'Volume' - a cool little stealth and strategy game from Mike Bithell. That's the guy who made 'Thomas Was Alone', a super cool and funny platformer from 2012.

Thomas Was Alone is great, and you should definitely play it. It's a masterclass in efficient characteristation and storytelling. It pulls off that rare trick of merging gameplay with narrative, using brilliantly written narration to give quirky life to its characters.

Who you calling quirky?

Volume doesn't have quite the elegant simplicity of its predecessor. Thomas was a side on 2D platformer which made ingenious use of its characters - all of whom had different 'skills' - to navigate through simple but challenging mazes.

The same principle sort of applies with Volume. This time the mazes are 3 dimensional, and rather than jumping and fitting through spaces, the challenge lays in avoiding the patrolling robot guard things.

At first I felt a little let down by the game. It seemed cluttered, after the hypnotic lo-fi aesthetic of Thomas. I played through a few levels and though I was enjoying the mechanics, there seemed to be something missing.


The Sound of his Voice

After a while I realised that what I was missing was the character of the game. The narration on Thomas succeeded in making me really care about the characters, even though they were simple little blocks of colour. Robert - the protagonist in Volume - is much less engaging. He speaks in a fey, whiny voice which I find hard to love, and pontificates endlessly about his mission.

And what is his mission? I know he has one, and it seems to have something to do with stealing things. There's a definite Robin Hood vibe going on. But a lot of the story seems to be communicated through rolls of tiny text between missions. And after a while of trying to read it, I got bored and started to skip through.

Now you'd be within your rights if you now said "Well that's why you're not as engaged, then - you're not paying attention."

But I am engaged. I'm very engaged indeed.



Just Can't Stop

The thing is, the story in Volume doesn't matter at all. Once I stopped trying to follow it, and resolved to ignore the dialogue, I had an amazing time.

The level design is tremendous. Each level - and there are dozens of them - is playable in a few minutes. Or longer if, like me, you are mostly rubbish at avoiding the guards. Each level is basically a puzzle. How do you navigate this collection of rooms and corridors, avoiding guard patrols, to collect the little white diamond things that probably represent something important if I read the story?

The levels progress in complexity, teaching you as you go along. Guards increase in number and change up their behaviour patterns. Environmental features such as force-fields and keys are introduced. Cool toys appear, for use against the enemy - invisibility cloaks, sound projectors to distract the guards. One fantastic device sends a ghostly image of your character running across a room, luring the guards in pursuit.

Overall, then, a wonderful game. It has one of the most engaging sets of mechanics I've come across, and that's because everything is pointing in the same direction. The gameplay focus never changes: get the diamond things, avoid the guards, escape the level. The mechanics all facilitate interesting play along these lines, combining in ingenious and enthralling ways.

I've lost count of the number of times I've finished a level and said to myself "I'll just do one more..."

Which is the highest praise I can think of. I just don't think it needed the story. It's good enough without.

Beyond: Two Souls

I finally got round to finishing Beyond: Two Souls. It's been sitting in my library for months like the last few crisps in a screwed up bag. I didn't really want to finish it, but somehow I felt like I should.

Sometimes you just stop playing a game because something else comes along. That happens to me a lot, because I am easily distracted. My games library is littered with half completed games that fell foul of a new, shiny release.

That wasn't the case here.


It's Not Me, It's You

Beyond: Two Souls,  you have many good features. You look great. Your designers clearly had a big sign up in the office that said 'More Cinematic!', which they glanced at every few seconds.  You have real Proper Actors in it, who do Good Acting. Your plot is complex and epic, with loads of interesting themes.

But your gameplay. Oh dear, Beyond: Two Souls. Your gameplay drove me out of my mind. .

Let's start with your obsession with me swinging the controller about. It's not necessary. It's got thumbsticks on it. If I want to climb up, I can press 'up'. Why do you insist that I rhythmically jerk the controller up and down, like... well never mind what like. Needless to say, I feel foolish doing it, and I think you only want me to do it so you can feel innovative.

And why do you need my input on so many flipping things in the first place? I've no idea how long I spent staring at the screen, assuming I was in a cutscene, only to realise that you were waiting for me to tilt the thumbstick towards a door so it would open.

Which wouldn't matter if there was an option to do anything else. But there isn't. Literally nothing else I do has any effect. I can hammer all the buttons I want, but Ellen Page will just sit there, staring into space, until I press the exact thing you want.

So what's the bloody point? Why not do it yourself, if I don't have any actual choice? You're like someone who says "Oh I don't mind what we watch - you choose", and then turns down every suggestion I make until it's the one you want.


Hit Me One More Time

Very occasionally the controls feel intuitive. Which is, I expect, the idea. Tilting towards a little circular 'action' point makes me feel closer to Ellen Page, as her movements echo mine. But most of the time this laudable attempt to bridge the gap between me and my character simply doesn't work.

Worst of all is combat. You've decided that, when someone attacks me, time will slow down and I should attempt to dodge. And I dodge by pushing the thumbstick in the direction I want to dodge. Which should feel really immersive and kinetic.

But the problem is, the camera angle on my character keeps changing. So what am I dodging in relation to? The direction as I see it, on the screen? Or the direction as my character perceives it, which is not the same?

It is very unclear. And it makes no sense. Which leads to poor Ellen Page being smacked upside the head all the time, while I twich the controller about, swearing and cursing your stupid control system.

Your Ever Changing Moods


But none of that is what really made me stop playing. These were just inconveniences. What really got to me was how bloody inconsistent you were.

Your main mechanic is that I have a kind of magic demon thing attached to me, called Aiden, who helps me out. If I press triangle, my perspective shifts and I lift above Ellen Page, inhabiting the character of Aiden.

And Aiden can do all manner of cool stuff. He can zip through walls and strangle people who are in my way. He can knock things over, causing distractions that allow me to sneak past guards. He can even possess people, allowing me to control them. I like that one. Nothing delights me more than a possessed guard suddenly turning his gun on his surprised friends.

These are great game mechanics and could form the root of an interesting, emergent experience. Like in Metal Gear Solid 5, where Snake's various tactics can combine against guards in surprising and innovative ways.

But you throw it all away, don't you? Because Aiden's magic powers are only available sometimes, when you decide they are. Sometimes I can possess everyone in my way. But then I'll round a corner and, oh no. You've decided that possession doesn't work on these guys. Because you want me to do a distracty, sneaky thing in this level.

It's maddening, and it infects the whole game. Mechanics work sporadically, depending on how you want me to proceed.  And that's at the heart of everything that's wrong with you, and why I stopped playing.


It's All About You

You, Beyond: Two Souls, are obsessed with your story. You are so, so proud of it that you won't let go of it. So nothing I do will have any effect on it. I am an actor, playing my part, and you are a controlling, hysterical writer/director. Not only must I do the right things, but I must do them in the right way. There's a solution to each level, and nothing but the right solution will do.

What's weird is, you are trying so hard to make it look like I do have a choice. Options crop up all the time. At the end of each level you tell me how my choices compared to other people who've played. You look, for all the world, as if you are totally letting me do my thing.

But the real choices in games come not through tiny narrative branches, but rather through how you play, moment to moment. I didn't mind The Last of Us pushing me relentlessly towards a conclusion, because the way I played the game was mine. It allowed me to use all the mechanics at my disposal, exactly as I chose. And it was loads better because of it.

Finished

So. I finally got round to finishing you. Not because I really wanted to, but because I thought I should. And how do I feel? Like I wandered through a very interesting story, but not a very interesting game. I'm sorry. I know you tried.

Maybe you'll do better, in Beyond: Three Souls.

A Burrito For Adam Jensen

I really liked Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It consumed me in a way that few games do, with its exciting world of side quests and mysteries and its cool cyberpunk aesthetic. So I was very, very excited about it's sequel - Mankind Divided.

I bought the game the second it came out and finished it last week. It's been an enjoyable experience, if not quite as absorbing as its predecessor. Storywise it is nowhere near as coherent - I finished the game without being 100% sure exactly how the world was different now I'd killed a bunch of cybernetic bad guys. But I did enjoy killing them. So I suppose that's a success of sorts.

Hacked

My absolute favourite thing to do was to hack security terminals and turn turrets and robots against their own masters. I found this hilarious and did it as often as possible. I don't think the game AI allowed them to respond any differently that they would to a regular attack, but my imagination added a layer of surprise, betrayal and indignation to the faces of the guards as their previously trusted robotic friends started to blast away at them.

So it's been a good experience. But I found the world slightly less involving, for some reason. A lot of work has gone into making future Prague feel real. The NPC dialogue is pretty good and gives a flavour of how it must be to live a normal life in the world that I charge excitedly through. The computers, all of which I hack into, are full of interesting, world building stories.

But there's something missing, and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's that part of me knows that all these details - all these wine shops and carefully decorated apartments -  are just a pleasing aesthetic veneer over the real stuff of the game. I want to hack door locks, find secret passages, disable security cameras and - crucially - fight guards. That's where the game play is.

No hard feelings

No-one is ever going to ask me if I care about the woman in apartment 23 whose husband got artificial augments against her wishes. It's not really going to feed into the story proper, except at a vague, thematic level. It's not gameplay, so part of me discards it. A sniper rifle, on the other hand, fills me with joy.

I don't always feel like this with games, so I'm not sure what it is.

Today I stood outside a burrito shop, in real life, waiting for it to open. I watched the people passing by. A big guy in a hoodie. Five young lads, probably in college. A bunch of University students. A shuffling guy, likely homeless, searching empty bags on benches. All people with stories and lives and agendas of their own. All of whom would react in different, astonishing ways if I so much as spoke to them.

Meanwhile the inhabitants of future Prague brush me off whenever I click a contextual prompt in an attempt to interact. They say their pre-programmed phrase, and turn away, to stare at the same thing they were staring at before. If I start to throw grenades about, they will cower and cry, but only for a while. Then they'll go back to their staring, motionless lives. I saw one man weeing into a urinal for the entire time I was knocking out guards behind his back. He never stopped, and he never will.

Salsa, cheese and sour cream

I wonder if there can be a game where Adam Jensen can buy a burrito. Where it can be as meaningful as my experience, choosing the salsa, the guacamole, the sour cream - not because it will inflate my health bar, but because I want it for its own sake. Because it's nice. Could a game make me do things for genuine pleasure, rather than through mechanics? There are some that come close, maybe.

I'm going to eat my burrito now. The matter will convert into energy to keep me going. The taste will activate pleasure centres in my brain, raising my mood. I also got another point on my loyalty card when I bought it.

But it's different. Isn't it?