It’s been 50 years since the release of Pong in November of 1972—a simple table-tennis arcade video game. Pong sold thousands of arcade machines, launching forward the golden age of arcade video games, spreading the idea that video games could be a worthwhile and lucrative business. Throughout the years, the evolution of graphics, gameplay, and the importance of a narrative have transformed the video game industry, as well as its developers and consumers.
It was about time to delve into the video game area and talk about some of the best speculative fiction video games out there. In no order whatsoever, just the order that they popped up into my head, here are a few video game franchises that everyone interested should play one day.
DOOM
The first DOOM game came out in December of 1993, having a resurgence in recent years with DOOM (2016) and DOOM: Eternal. The game follows Doom Guy—or Doom Slayer in the more recent iterations—a space marine that fights the hordes of hell that were released into Mars and Earth after humans tried to harness the energies of the abyss for their own purposes.
A classic first-person shooter and one of the most well-known video games ever, DOOM drops the player into a barrage of chaotic but agile and fast-paced battles, providing them with an arsenal of weapons at their disposal to help with the purpose of the Doom Slayer: to rip and tear and kill all the abominations from hell, once and for all.
Resident Evil
The most popular zombie-genre video game in history, the first Resident Evil came out in March of 1992, but it has kept itself going strong with its most recent iteration: Resident Evil Village: Shadow of Rose, the DLC of the latest incarnation of the game, as well as the remasters of the earliest versions of the game, with Resident Evil 4 coming next.
Each game follows a different main character, or different selection of main characters, with the most recognized ones being Leon S. Kennedy, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Chris Redfield, Ethan Winters, among others. The player is tasked with defeating the different bioweapons, products of the Virus-T that roam around the world raising chaos and endangering humanity. While Resident Evil started as a survival horror game, it shifted towards action horror as it went on, with the latest games being a mixture of the different gameplay mechanics and narrative devices of its predecessors.
BioShock
A retro-futuristic vision of technology, BioShock asks questions about free will and makes the player wonder about how much agency an individual truly has. Released in 2007, with its two sequels: BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite, the BioShock franchise appeals to anyone who’s interested in compelling gameplay elements and mechanics mixed with an interesting and unique narrative.
Truly an aspect worthy of recognition in every BioShock game is its world building. The underwater city of Rapture in the first and second game and the flying city of Columbia in the third one–as well as its engaging perspective on the banes and boons of society, politics, and technology–provide for a fascinating franchise.
Dishonored
Released in October of 2012, Dishonored and Dishonored 2 follow a convoluted fantastical story that provides the player with the agency to decide how the story will shape itself depending on their interactions with the world. While non-linear stories are more and more commonplace in the video game industry, Dishonored still manages to put its own twist on this concept. The way the story and the world of Dishonored changes is directly connected to the way the player decides to play the game. Stealthy or loud, murderer or not, Dishonored changes according to the player’s moral compass, rewarding patience and craftiness for a heroic ending, and punishing sloppiness and evilness with a darker one.
This is not to say that playing Dishonored as a crazy murderer is bad (that’s how I played it, ahem—) but rather, that each player can decide the way they want to play and interact with the story. The games provide a number of weapons and supernatural abilities, perfect for each player to craft their own version of Corvo (the protagonist) in whichever way they might find the most entertaining to play.
The Witcher
While The Witcher released in October of 2007, the franchise didn’t harness as much critical acclaim and fame until 2015 with the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Based on the book series of the same name by Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher follows Geralt of Rivia in the fantastical world of the Continent as he traverses the land as a Witcher—a mutated human with excellent weapon and magical prowess—hired by different figures to eradicate the monsters that haunt them, finding himself involved in different moral and political conflicts on the way.
Focusing more extensively on The Witcher 3, the game provides an expansive, open world deserving of praise for its beautiful graphics, engaging cities, forests and ruins, and the way the player gets to interact with them while slowly traversing the lands with Roach, Geralt’s horse companion. The Witcher 3’s RPG gameplay mechanics let each player interact with Geralt and the world around him in any way they desire. With the possibility to change their armour and weapons, as well as a skill tree that focuses on physical combat, signs (“magic”) and alchemy abilities, and an overarching story that changes with the player’s decisions.
Papers Please
Definitely the smallest release in this entire list, but still as important as the others. Papers Please, released in August of 2013 is a small puzzle video game set in the dystopian country of Arstotzka. The story follows an unnamed character that wins the labour lottery and is assigned as a border-crossing immigration officer. The player is then tasked with following certain guidelines in order to grant or deny entrance for the different number of characters. As the days go by, the guidelines change in relation to the current political climate of the game, increasing each day in difficulty.
Throughout the game, the player is encountered with three options to escape the precarious situation in which they have been put in: they can either grant aid to the revolution so they can overthrow the government, follow the status quo so the government can continue the way they’ve been, or escape from Arstotzka to one of the different countries in the game. While simple, Papers Please does not disappoint in its interesting and engaging execution of sociopolitical issues and conflicts.
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