FAR FROM NOISE

Not the most perfect choice for a New Year's post , but certainly an important moment in gaming history. I was about to write something about this game yesterday when I heard that one of my 16 year-old ESL students took his own life by jumping off a balcony of his family apartment. A great kid who was far superior to me at everything he undertook and  was gracious and kind.

The game starts with all the questions a living human faces - fear, doubt, transience of one's physical existence, reality and fabrication in one's life, one's place in the grand scheme of things, the lack of purpose, the loneliness etc The idea for a game is unique - an old car with a young woman inside is balancing on a cliff overlooking the vast  ocean. Aware of the predicament she got herself in, she tries to make sense of it all and reflect on her own life, first on her own and later in a company of a wise deer.The  author gravitates heavily towards and builds the girl's character around his own philosophical views, namely those of naturalism and transcedentalism. The girl came to a place she used to visit as a kid, and you can almost see the storm that goes through her mind as she reflects on her failures and inadequacies. It takes a deer talking nature and natural phenomena such as rain and lightning and thunder to bring her round to a different understanding of life and Universe.

A high level of interaction is successfully achieved solely by using dialogue and  life story building around the main character which is close to impossible to achieve in  textual adventures. Animations liven up the  pace, every details serves the narrative.The game could do without additional intermezzos of poetry, but unlike those recorded lectures in EVERYTHING they are not that demanding and don't grab your attention that forcefully. The conscious decision to not include voice acting and limit the game to texts and background music and ambience is another brilliant way to keep the emphasis on Nature and its grandeur. The intellectual clash between the deer and the girl is reflected in their different use of language, but the rift seems to be growing smaller as the story unfolds. Or not?

Despite this being a game changing title for me, I feel the author is trying to impose his views on us and grin derisively at the world and I think it would be even more ground-breaking if he developed several different characters adhering to different philosophies the player could choose from. This way we only get to see the author's views as the story unravels and him toying with a young mind who might have had  enough. Free will, yes, but moral responsibility first and foremost.

CASHFLOW

This inventive board game by Robert Kiyosaki , a successful entrepreneur  and business lecturer, was built around  his own views on success in business, and he did it so successfully that even if you don't necessarily subscribe to his point of view  you still end up being partially converted after a few runs. True, the first few spins on "how money works" will probably awaken  the deep and long-supressed frustration about not achieving success and financial stability before 40 (or 30) and the remorse about taking up Humanities instead of  Maths and Accountancy, but then you start having fun and learning about cashflow and assets and liabilities, about the fact that a bigger car or house you buy is not necessarily an asset, and that being a good employee climbing the corporate ladder isn't going to make you rich in the long run. Absolutely hated it when I first tried it. Only after reading Robert's book entitled "Rich Dad Poor Dad" did I give the game a second chance, Everything Robert wholeheartedly believes in is perfectly integrated into this game. The "rat race" track of losers/employees and the "fast lane" of intelligent people/ business owners, the situations that force you to recognise assets and liabilities, dealing with taxes and financial problems , saving money, opening and managing accounts etc. The video game version just transfers the perfect playing experience from the board to the screen.

A true business simulation classic if there ever was one.

FLOOR KIDS

 Game music pioneers made some poor games big by making incredible tunes for them. In order to make this game great, developers had to find a music maker that could give real substance to a breakdance game. Kid Koala was no doubt a perfect pick for the soundtrack, paying homage to both the craft and the culture behind it, and the developers were both such great music fans and were so extremely musical themselves to be able to integrate the music with movements and programming of the characters. Lots of love and sweat was put into Floor Kids.
The game isn't about nostalgia and the roots of a famed urban culture that flourished in the 80s, but about celebrating a global and embracing cultural phenomenon that has beaten time in its own right. Everything about the mechanics and the dancing is superfun: the rhythm-based sections, tapping as fast as you can at some beaks, the freezes , the combos, the five  features essential to excelling at breakdancing (funk, flavour, flow, fire, flyness)... It's playable, fun, unique and has great replay value . Akthough more seasoned generations could say they performed all these stunts in the streets and that nothing beat the real thing, this game might just be an excellent introduction to a future breakdancer and DJ.

HUMAN RESOURCE MACHINE

Finally - a game dealing with the most hated and the most excruciatingly painful  position in the global workforce! Not only did they do a splendid job at making you feel like a puppet master toying with destinies of the employees at the company, but you also get to do it total-surveillance style and program people by means of basic algorithmic thinking. So not only do you get to control everything and everyone making a system that would automate things. but you also  get to boost your own self-esteem in the process.Even a complete ignoramus like myself won't get scared of the algorithmic nature of a limited number of commands at your disposal. Run your programmes and revel in success.

PARAPPA THE RAPPER

This lively game with care-free animation and simple mechanics was a total game-changer that cemented its position of a true gaming classic introducing an entire genre of games to come. Besides being  one of the first rhythm-based games , PARAPPA THE RAPPER went way beyond that, helping disseminate hip hop  culture among young (and especially non-English-speaking) populations across the world. Sure, one could argue against diluting and approapriation of a culture and its essence, and the characters might be interpreted as racial stereotypes to a certain extent by some, but this game is about something else - it's about growing up, righting the wrongs, helping others, building empathy, and looking cute while doing it. The on-screen prompts the gameplay is largely consisted of  help you with your learning as you rap through your life lessons. As far as the language of the raps go, it's invaluable for any ESL learner hoping to come closer to understanding the flow and accentuation of English utterances. But again, you can still have fun with this awesome game even if  English be your mother tongue - it's fun, easy to play, it won't take too much of your time and you'll enjoy playing it.

MINI METRO

The other day I watched an episode of The Orville  which dealt with discovering a 2-dimensional civilization and thought the colourful lines of movements of its beings and objects  were remindful of old metro scheme designs and vehicle pathways of Tron and that it would great if such designs were used more frequently in gaming. Minutes into my on-line quasi-research and I come upon Mini Metro.What a great example of an exciting real-life job simulation carved into a slick game! Subway and train outlines have been part of gaming since its infancy, but this title gives you an actual opportunity to see the results of your construction engineering efforts seconds after you've built, reinvented, upgraded or altered the lines. The city (one in 10 actual cities you can pick) and its population gets bigger and so does the number of stations  you need to connect with subway lines and thus keep make things run as smoothly as possible,

Mini Metro is visually pleasing and fun and easy to play and has a decent replay value and cute music. It also has that Je ne sais quoi  quality about it that makes it both charming and ground-breaking at the same time. Could it be the compelling nature of fighting entropy on any scale and within any given system the thing that makes Mini Metro a great game? Or is it simply the combination of casual gameplay and deep tactics? Try this instant classic, you won't be disappointed.