Cool Ghosts 4

January 27, 2024 9:42 AM

After a very long hiatus, in “Cool Ghosts 4” [25:08] Matt Lees reviews Frost Punk, The Outer Wilds, and The Shrouded Isle and explores the meaning of, "You did what had to be done," death and reloading, and pragmatism and hypocrisy in video games. Also, Virtual Steven finds out about virtual reality games the hard way.
posted by ob1quixote (8 comments total)

This was a real little treat to find in my feed, I hope this means Matt is able to be coming back to do more things. And then a bonus Hogarty?? Wonderful.

I agree with what they had to say about Frostpunk and I'm curious to see if I can identify it in other games - it feels instinctively true but I'll be keeping an eye out.
posted by Audreynachrome at 1:44 PM on January 27

That narrative that keeps happening wherein grappling with ethics and difficult introspection is replaced by "you're a good person (even though you do/did awful things) because it had to be done (murder usually or warcrime) in order to macguffin" is one of my top ten reasons why American media is such a slog. "The character is being ruthless and cruel, but it's NEEDFUL, so it's FINE, it's GOOD ACTUALLY." It feels like permission towards fascist thinking and yet it's everywhere these days, not just in games, but in TV and films, too. It's been a personal peeve for awhile, it's nice to see someone else bothered by it, too.
posted by foxtongue at 1:57 PM on January 27 [9 favorites]

I will link SUSD for anybody not familiar with that. The Bärenpark video is one of my favorites from here. I personally prefer the pod though, the relentless stream of jokes in the videos is a bit too much for me.
posted by donio at 3:21 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

The Outer Wilds is the finest video game I've ever played. It's one of my favorite works of science fiction in any media. Other video games that have been at the top of my list (Subnautica, The Witness, The Talos Principle, Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild, Minecraft) have faded over time. I had wonderful times with them, they were brilliant, but I'm done with them.

But thinking back about The Outer Wilds, listening to the soundtrack, watching a video about it, it still feels powerful. The place, the people, the story (what I thought it was about, what it actually was), the astonishing and terrifying adventures I had discovering them, it all still feels vivid and amazing. A generous heap of the mind-blowing ideas and concepts I love best about science fiction, but not just seeing or reading about them—encountering them, being confused and thwarted by them, and then using them.

It's common to hear players wish they could forget everything and experience The Outer Wilds again for the first time (the Echoes of the Eye DLC offers a taste of that, seamlessly adding an equally-amazing new piece to a puzzle that had seemed complete with no room for expansion or sequel). But there's no other game I find as satisfying to simply remember.
posted by straight at 11:43 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

Outer Wilds. All I hear is gushing praise about it, and I do not doubt any of it! I just could not get the hang of flying the zero-G spacecraft. And I have played many 'difficult' type games (Souls games, for instance) and may kinds of flying games for decades.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:34 AM on January 28

I haven’t finished the Outer Wilds yet, so I need to be careful with this.

My main gaming friend agrees that it is an amazing game but can’t tell me more, so I just need to make sure I pull it from the backlog and finish it.
posted by teece303 at 8:02 AM on January 28 [1 favorite]

Outer Wilds. All I hear is gushing praise about it, and I do not doubt any of it! I just could not get the hang of flying the zero-G spacecraft.

this; I really want to play it but could not get through the tutorial, just rotating horribly in space trying to click on the thing the game wanted me to click on
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:47 AM on January 28

Yes. It's a demanding game. Not everyone can play it, which is a shame. I played it with my daughters—doing almost all of the "driving" myself—but I think they enjoyed the discoveries and discussing the puzzles and mysteries and strategies for navigating them and all the scary tense parts as much as I did, so maybe if you have a friend who is better with a controller (or mouse/keyboard) than you are?
posted by straight at 2:21 PM on January 28