Gris grabs you right from the outset, and demands that you trudge on through its' masterfully crafted world. Not because anyone is telling you (in-game or out), not because there are waypoints or HUD objectives telling you, but simply because it invokes a curiosity in the player. A wonder not captured in many other games is on display here. The vivid art style, the harmonizing mechanics and the loose storytelling all lend themselves to a sense of awe that you'll be hard pressed to find in other games, let alone other media. It utilizes all that makes storytelling in games unique, and reaches breathtaking heights with it. Cutscenes are sparse and obtrusive handholding/jarring elements are thrown to the wayside to really capture the vision Gris set out for itself. Refreshingly, the game also recontextualizes failure states from the standard "death, retry" system, and instead focuses more so on setbacks. If you miss a jump in this game, the only punishment is having to walk back to where you began it to once try again. Even when you think the game might be running on fumes with a newly introduced mechanic in one section, it reinvents itself entirely in another with varied gameplay elements and challenges that are appropriately introduced and structured and are a blast to complete. The description is right in that it is a truly frustration-free experience, and one that I believe anyone who boots up the game can complete. Definitely a sleeper hit just when everyone thought the year was winding down, but a hit that smacks harder than any to have come before it. Serene, captivating and mesmerizing while still managaing to be strong in the only way games as a medium can. Not gonna say anymore as this one is a must in my books, just thank you to Nomada Studios for such an astonishing experience!
Tacoma was not what I was expecting. This game gives you a simple task of exploring a space station for a mission your character is assigned, but that is all I'll give away and that's all the game will give away as well since it's entirely up to you how you want to uncover the story behind the abandoned station. In each area your only goal is to download files from the mainframe until it reaches 100%, but this process takes a long time so the game incentivizes you to roam around the other rooms and figure out just what happened before your arrival. The game's "ARdware" system allows you to rewatch previous events stored into the system and piece together a story that is otherwise non-sequential. The beautiful part about all of this is how it respects your intelligence as a player, trusting you with figuring out how each of these well-developed characters fit into the story, even letting you experience what you want as all the scenes are in real time without breaking the flow of gameplay. This structuring of the game's story and how it fits into the gameplay is what makes Tacoma shine in my view. I adore how it lets you follow the characters you want to know more about or even discover things personal to them in each of their workstations or bedrooms. There are codes that allow you to unlock rooms and lockers belonging to the characters which flesh them out beyond your original understanding such as if it was for a quick goof relating to their interests or a deep confliction haunting them from their past prior to boarding the station. Overall Tacoma is a deep character study focusing on human interaction and emotion when faced with certain circumstances. Gameplay is always king in my book so it comes as no surprise that the marriage between story development and gameplay works so incredibly well in my eyes with no compromise for one or the other. Can I recommend Tacoma?: I say absolutely yes if anything above sounds appealing, but beware a semi-short length.
