A Tale Of 3 Games

So here's something I don't do very often but should and that's talk about video games. As I've said before, I'm an extremely limited gamer and as such I don't play video games very often, unless they're wrestling games (the last one I purchased was "WWE2K14" and I have no intentions of playing "2K15" as I have no plan to purchase a PS4) and while I have played and GREATLY enjoyed "The Last Of Us", it's really not my style of gaming. But despite my limitations, I do consider myself a gamer, although not a hardcore, you'll never see me having Wolf Blitzer sessions over the latest patches and graphics of the new releases on PS4, but I do appreciate a good game. A few years back a decided to dip my finger in the recently booming indie gaming market due to my increasing curiosity of Steam and a particular game that caught my interest. I've wanted to write about this game for awhile but now finally premits me the opportunity to do so. I'm going to talk about 3 games actually, and while these games are EXTREMELY similar in style, execution and limited mechanics, only one of them excels at it while the other two utterly fail. Those games are as followed, "Dear Esther", "Gone Home" & "The Stanley Parable".

Before I discuss the games proper, let me say that by all conventional standards these are not games. There's no reward system (winning or losing), there are no levels to be beat, no bosses to battle and no series of objectives to be completed. There essentially is no way to fail at playing these games unless the key to move forward is broken. These games basically amount to Walking Simulators, where your interaction with the world in the games are limited to, picking up objects and putting them down, pressing a button, turning on and off a flashlight and simply walking forward. All 3 of these games are done in first person. These games don't take any real cognitive effort to complete and offer no challenge to anyone who would consider themselves a hardcore gamer. However, despite having the same limitations and a similar set up, "The Stanley Parable" manages to be not only incredibly fun and hilarious but it manages to do what "Dear Esther" and "Gone Home" could not do. So what's so great about "The Stanely Parable" ? Before I answer that, let me explain what's so bad about "Dear Esther" and "Gone Home". FYI:

SPOILERS FOR THESE GAMES ABOUND! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

My Thoughts On "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens"

So in my absence (or rather, not having the internet where I currently am, having moved out and all) I'm going to be considerably late on some movie news (the recent casting of the hopefully not unfortunate but let's face it, it'll more than likely suck raw ass "Suicide Squad" movie not withstanding) but in this case with only a teaser trailer released and enough images and things to get some questions out, I think it's high time I addressed the upcoming new "Star Wars" trilogy being manned by "Star Trek" reboot director J.J. Abrams (clearly, someone has managed to get ahold of The Reality Gem...wait a second, I'm mixing Geekdoms). The cast of the new "Star Wars" movie now subtitled "The Force Awakens" has been announced, and along with the return of Mark Hamil, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Peter Mayhew, and few newbies have been added to the cast and featured in the teaser trailer.