Gone Home, where happiness doesn’t have just one address

It’s been a few years since I first played Gone Home. This was back in 2014, when my life was wavering, changing into something new and different. I was, at that time, drawing small, teeny-tiny comics for each game I completed instead of my now much more popular standard of haikus, and the one I did for The Fullbright Company’s first-person adventure exploration debut remains one of my more popular pieces on the photo-sharing site Tumblr. Which I have always found interesting because all I did was use Sam Greenbriar’s words about her girlfriend with a few crude illustrations to accompany them. Art is odd.

A quick Gone Home plot summary for those that don’t remember what is going on here: 21-year-old Katie Greenbriar returns home in 1995 from being overseas to her family in Oregon only to discover the house is completely empty of life. As she begins to explore the house, she’ll discover clues and notes left behind that explains where everyone went. It’s a story about love and loyalty, abuse, friendship, religion, dedication, confidence, neglect, connections, mental health, and more things than I can list out here. The easy joke to make would be that this is one full house. I’m not going to re-hash what I previously wrote some years back, so please click here for a deeper dive into the game’s narrative and theme, among other topics.

Right. For the console version of Gone Home, not much has changed in terms of gameplay, though I do enjoy using a controller to navigate and examine neon-colored highlighters more this time. Also, there’s Achievements, and this is where I found new life in the rummaging simulator. A couple of them, specifically “Homerunner” and “Speedreader,” are all about completing the game quickly with next to no room for error. Another has you going through the Greenbriar house slowly, methodically, pausing with curiosity and searching every nook and cranny for the chance to learn more. I loved both plans of attack and want to talk about them individually below.

It’s official–Gone Home is the first game I’ve spedrun. Speed-runned? I’ve done a speedrun of? Ugh. There’s really no graceful way of saying it, I guess. Look, I beat Gone Home in under a minute. I never even knew this was possible. The “Homerunner” Achievement asks that the player complete the game in less than 1 minute with no modifiers enabled. That might sound crazy difficult until you realize that you can access the secret room by the front staircase at any point when playing to grab the attic key. After that, it’s all about cutting corners and navigating down a dark hallway to click on Sam’s diary. It took me a few tries, but I eventually did it, and that felt pretty cool. The next game I plan to speedrun is Animal Crossing: New Leaf, 100% catalog, all fossils, fish, and bugs. Just kiddin’.

For the “Speedrunner” Achievement, you need to complete the game having found all 24 journal entries, without any modifiers turned on, in less than 10 minutes. Hmm. Again, it sounds tough, and there is little room for wasting time, but once you know the best path to take and make a b-line for every audio journal trigger, it’s not too bad. I didn’t personally time myself, but the Achievement popped on my first go after thinking about where everything was for a moment, so it was obviously under ten minutes. Now, before I did this one, I also learned about the secret journal entry you get by bringing a tiny ball from the garage up to Sam’s room and dunking it in the basketball hoop, which I never did initially. The reveal is purrfect. So that was another fun treat to learn about, as well as the task of bringing Christmas duck to its rightful abode in the attic.

Lastly, there’s the “Behind the Scenes” Achievement, which wants you to find all the commentary nodes in the house after turning them on via a modifier at the start of a new game. Commentary in games, much like on DVDs, is something I find neat and cool from afar, but rarely digest. I don’t know why that is. Certainly, when it comes to a movie or TV show, I’d rather just watch the original material and read an interview with the director or actors later. However, games can be more interactive than this, which gives new life to the idea of re-exploring these environments. I enjoyed it in Blackwell Deception and Even the Ocean, and I greatly enjoyed it here, though some nodes offer more stories and details than others. The truth is, as an Idle Thumbs fan, I could listen to Chris Remo go on for days about composing music. Still, I learned a lot about hidden secrets and design choice from Steve Gaynor, Karla Zimonja, Kate Craig, and Emily Carroll, as well as got Sarah Grayson’s take on her character Sam, who drives the game forward with her painfully heartfelt narration. Finding each one was rewarding, and I refused to leave the area I was in until the recording was done playing.

Basically, in the last week or so, I ended up beating Gone Home several more times, all via different types of playthroughs, and I still think this is one of the more important games of the last decade. Play it, please. I suspect I’ll return to it again down the future road; until then, I really need to check out Tacoma.

If Salvador Dalí ever made a videogame, it’d be Off-Peak

There’s nothing to be ashamed about here, but I love the so-called “walking simulators,” a sub-genre dubbed during the Gone Home debates of 2013 over whether such-and-such was worthy of being called a videogame. I get that these more methodical, gun-less experiences are not every gamer’s cup of button-pushing tea. I can understand that, but for me, plopping me down in some new and untouched world and asking me to simply walk around it, slowly, and see how it ticks is one of the greatest joys videogames can give me. Heck, for most of my many early hours in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, I just walked from town to town via the king’s road, scouring houses and bookshelves and talking to citizens, avoiding fights at all cost. I didn’t actually want to be a wizard or warrior, simply a man or woman (or cat being) with plenty of curiosity and the means to travel the world.

That said, not all walking simulators are equal, as I found Dear Esther beautiful but boring. Seems like I need either a lot of things to examine in close detail as in Gone Home or something zany to happen every three footsteps like in Jazzpunk to keep me actively engaged. Off-Peak from Archie Pelago cellist Cosmo D is more of the former than the latter of that previous statement, but the stuff you are examining is so bizarre and jarring that you can’t help but walk around in a daze–eyes wide, mouth agape, brain nearly breaking. It instantly reminded me of the first time, as a wee boy, I got my hands on a book of paintings by Salvador Dalí, the Spanish artist and Surrealist movement leader best known for his depictions of melting clocks. I was young, a dedicated reader to all things cute, cuddly, and in the comics section of the Sunday newspaper, and then suddenly I was slept away into a foreign land, where the common quickly became uncommon.

Off-Peak is a short first-person adventure game, centered around a train station. You, whoever you are, must gather up pieces of a torn train ticket and move on with your life; as you search this giant area and its subsequent nooks, crannies, and hidden passageways, you’ll run into a number of colorful characters, as well as witness equally as colorful art, whether in statue, painting, or graffiti form. What’s really nice is that this world is yours to explore at your own speed, in any direction–the ticket pieces can be collected in any order. Quickly, you’ll discover that things in Off-Peak are a bit…off (peak), a world where the fate of musicians and artists is unclear, but their tools are highly praised and desired. Meanwhile, the sprawling train station provides a handful of food and entertainment spots for every kind of commuter to help pass the time between rides. Naturally, someone is reaping the benefits of such a money-making hub, and you’ll end up crossing paths with this element before the end.

I did not understand the story, nor the dressings around it, but it all remained fascinating nonetheless. The board game room, the ramen noodle shop, the Chinese garden filled with strange shapes and statues…I couldn’t help but drink it all in. Even the part where you climb a set of stairs for seemingly forever with nothing much to see, only a smooth electronica jazz soundtrack to pepper your footsteps. Considering the game was made by a musician, music plays a vital part to both the narrative and exploration, and I found nothing to dislike.

Undoubtedly, Off-Peak is not for everyone. It is a collage of sights and sounds, with nothing traditional to it, unless you believe walking around a space to be a standard classic of the industry. Um, which I do. The game’s conclusion didn’t satisfy me from a story perspective, but again, that wasn’t what I was digging for here from step one. However, if any of what I’ve written about has got you all tingly on the inside, then do yourself a favor, grab a copy of the game over at itch.io, and lose yourself in another realm for an hour or so. Wall art will never be the same afterwards.

Journey’s an expedition unlike any other

It seems like January 2014 has been the month when I finally play all those frequently talked-about indie games, like Gone Home. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons as well, but I’ve not gotten to write about that somber story yet. And now Journey, which I bought last summer, but immediately put aside, as I had these visions of grandeur where I was going to find the perfect slice of time in my life where nothing else would distract me and I could devote every ounce of my being to the thatgamecompany’s impactful title, as I constantly heard it was best played in a single gulp. Well, after too much waiting for that dreamlike moment to pop up, I eventually just booted up the game the other weekend and devoured it happily in only a couple of hours.

Journey‘s story is interpretive. I see it as a spiritual sojourn, but others might think differently. You control a nondescript figure garbed in what might be ceremonious robes, alone in the desert, your only guiding light being a literal beam of light far off in the distance, emitting into the sky from a massively tall mountain. As you travel closer to it, you’ll acquire a scarf and the ability to jump in the air and glide for a short period of time. Eventually, you’ll leave the sandy desert for some other visually unique areas, but your goal remains the same, to get to that light. There’s no narration or spoken dialogue in the game–all story beats are visual–so you have to assume that you want to get to that light; either way, it is very enticing and seems to pull you towards it without you even knowing why.

To reach that light, you’ll run, jump, hover, slide, and solve some environmental and platformy puzzles to reach new areas and continue the *ahem* journey. How high you can jump and how far you can float is dictated by the length of your robed being’s scarf, which grows over time via…collectibles. I think. Wait, now I don’t even remember. Maybe it just got longer the further you played? Hmm. You can also interact with other scraps of fabric on the ground or in the air by holding in a big chirp and letting it loose near them; sometimes this would gather a bunch of scraps to you, and other times it would set them free to build a bridge down yonder. And that’s kind of it. There’s a surprisingly small amount of game mechanics to mess with, but they are more than enough to explore a world that is as large and wide as the sky overhead.

The reality is that Journey is two different experiences: a single-player excursion to that great big beam of light and a co-op struggle of two robed souls, unable to verbally communicate, but by each other’s sides the whole way through. Or as long as they can make it, seeing as I eventually teamed up with three separate players during my climb to the sky. You can only communicate with these other players by chirping, and you can strangely get a lot of mileage out of this mechanic. When excited by a big jump or epic sand slide, I mashed that chirp button like a maniac, shouting gleefully at my fellow scarf-dweller. When it was time to be sneaky and slow, I would only let out a single chirp to indicate it was time to move forward. In truth, the chirping became its own kind of meta game–and I loved every ounce of it. Once you complete the game, you gain access to who you played with, in case you want to add them to your Friends list, but based on some of their usernames–one was pretty offensive–I don’t think that will happen. And that’s awesome. I played a non-violent game with a bunch of nameless strangers, and that really helped make the experience something special rather than teaming up with BearKiller69 or whatever.

I suspect I’ll go through Journey again…at some point. Heck, there’s a Trophy I want that demands you return to the game after waiting at least a week. It was a very relaxing, very pleasing time that captured me in a bubble. It’d be really cool if it had couch co-op, but I understand why–and how–it couldn’t. It’s a beautiful  adventure of epic proportions and shows that a videogame can have a fantastic sense of style, soaring music, staggeringly creative visuals, and absolutely no reason to shoot anything in the face. You should play it for the synergy between gameplay and music alone, but you should also just play it because it’s a very important tickmark in the industry, one that raises the bar for storytelling and is a ton of fun to boot.

Gone Home to mysteries, answers, and everything 1990s

Breaking news: I’ve decided to do away with my gaming haikus, at least for 2014. Chin up, Mr. Sadface. It’s going to be okay. Really. I had a lot of fun writing them, but after two consecutive years of dipping my toes in Japanese poetry–well, if you can call 104 haikus a dip–I’m ready to try something else. Gotta keep things fresh. If you’ve been keeping up with Grinding Down over the weekend, then you’ll know what the long and short of it all is: comics. Yes, yes. Actual comics about the games I’ve played, and I really don’t know why it took me so long to combine these two passions of mine together.

Anyways, Gone Home gets the special honor of being my first completed game for 2014. Compare that with Yoshi’s Island from last year. That’s right. Go on. I dare you to compare the two. One looks like a drawing, and the other has you occasionally looking at drawings. Hmm. If you’ll recall, Gone Home was also my number one pick for the top 10 videogames I missed out on in 2013, but thanks to a recently good deal via the Humble Bundle store I was able to pick up The Fullbright Company’s debut for a sweet price, one that wouldn’t make me terribly irate if I discovered that the game didn’t work on my ASUS laptop. The good news is that, obviously, it ran just fine, even though it defaulted to the lowest of settings to do so and some of the textures looked a wee flat. Small quibbles aside, I absolutely loved it.

Gone Home‘s plot itself is pretty straightforward: it is June 1995, and Kaitlin Greenbriar is returning home to her parents’ new house in the Pacific Northwest after traveling abroad. She gets in very late on a rainy, thunder-laden night only to discover the house is completely empty, with a strange note on the front door from her sister, urging Kaitlin to not go digging around for clues as to what happened. Naturally, though, that’s exactly what you do, and the whole game is built around exploration and piecing together where Sam and Kaitlin’s parents went to. If I’m being honest and a little spoilery, that’s not at all what the plot is really about; in truth, this is actually Sam’s story, not Kaitlin’s, and there’s stuff about her parents to unravel, as well as what went wrong with the previous owners of the house to have it now deemed the Psycho House by other students at Sam’s school. Kaitlin is just a means to see all this unfold, and she is mostly non-reactive, save for a few text-only comments when finding items related to her parents’ sex life.

The game itself takes around two to three hours to complete, depending how thorough you search each and every room in the larger-than-life mansion-like new Greenbriar home. That said, Gone Home never wastes a single second though or pads out rooms with nothing that isn’t vital or important to the story-telling, and so you are constantly advancing, learning more and more. I found all this beyond exhilarating and couldn’t wait to see what was behind that closed door over there or what hid in the third drawer from the top, but only after I clicked open the first two drawers. You move with WASD, and zoom in for a closer look and pick up items using the mouse. Oh, and you can also fully twirl items around in your hand, to check out all sides, and you’d think there would have been more puzzles built around this mechanic, but Gone Home is actually not about puzzles–save for the few combination locks–and this mechanic exists more so to keep you in the world, prove that these rolls of tissue paper and printed books are real, that everything has a front and back and can be examined properly.

Anyone that actually grew up in the 1990s is clearly going to sink into Gone Home a bit deeper than those that didn’t. The game oozes with the era, from magazines wreathed in pop culture icons to board games and mounds of VHS tapes of your favorite Saturday afternoon couch-flicks, like Blade Runner and just about every episode of The X-Files. In fact, Super Nintendo plays a wee part in the events that transpire in Sam’s young, blossoming life, and you can find various fictional cartridges around the house, some goofier than others. Regardless, the attention to detail is astounding and appreciated, especially for a game that’s all about looking and listening. I couldn’t listen to too many of Lonnie’s musical recordings though, sorry.

Many have complained about the bait-and-switch trick in Gone Home. It’s initially set up to seem like your typical ghost story: girl comes home on a rainy night to find her house completely empty of life. For most of the early rooms, you expect something spooky to happen. The TV to randomly flip on? A door to slowly creak open itself? The sound of footsteps overhead? But no, nothing like that happens ever, save for a single moment of pure genius that is logically explained so long as you found the correct paperwork earlier in the house. This is not a ghost story. This is a human story, and it is remarkable in its dedication to remain rooted in reality, one I think many can relate to on some level, whether it is with teenage romance, a failed marriage, not being good enough for your father, and so on.

I think Gone Home is both a great game and a very important one. If you haven’t played it yet, I highly recommend you do so as soon as possible. Videogame story-telling has a new measuring stick.

2014 Game Completed Comics, #1 – Gone Home

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Every videogame that I complete in 2014 will now get its very own wee comic here on Grinding Down. It’s about time I fused my art with my unprofessional games journalism. I can’t guarantee that these comics will be funny or even attempt to be funny. Or look the same from one to another. Some might even attempt to be thoughtful. Comics are a versatile form, so expect the unexpected.

The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2013

Well, I’m not gonna deny it–this year went fast. Except for June through July, but that always seems to drag by due to non-gaming reasons I won’t get into, but otherwise, the months really did seem to slip by. This was extremely noticeable once I began to actually work at my “five games I want to beat in 2013” checklist, and it seems like I was only able to polish off three out of five: Chrono Cross, Silent Hill 2, and Primal. I’m pretty proud of that, but I probably should have started much earlier than the summer. However, I did complete a good number of games over the past three hundred and sixty-five days, and one might consider some of them big AAA titles that are probably going to be on everyone’s final praise list, such as BioShock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V, though they absolutely won’t make mine. Sorry, Animal Crossing: New Leaf is my game of the year; just deal with it.

Once more, here’s what I didn’t get to play last year, the year before that, and the year before that:

• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2012
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2011
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2010

Also, do not worry: I have plenty of sad puppy photos to do this kind of post for many more years, so long as videogames keep coming out and I keep not playing ’em. That sounded more threatening than I originally wanted. But enough behind-the-scenes talk. Let’s get into the meat of this yearly post, shall we? The meaty meat, I mean.

10. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Sounds like this is a return to form, though the last Assassin’s Creed game I played was Brotherhood, so hopefully people are meaning that game. I’ve kept my distance from the franchise since then for good reasoning, as the later games have seemed repetitive, clunky, and sub-par, but I do enjoy pirates and the ship-based combat looks kind of neat. I wonder if the multiplayer is still there, as that is surprisingly an enjoyable slice of cat-and-mouse. This could be a really perfect summer time-sink for 2014, though I still also have an untouched copy of Assassin’s Creed II in my backlog to get to as well. Hmm.

9. Saints Row IV

Originally, the Saints Row series was just another take on Grand Theft Auto, if a bit more ambitious and zany. I never got into it until Saints Row: The Third, and that was only after hearing the Giant Bomb staff praise and praise and praise it. I’m glad I finally listened to them, as I absolutely loved my role as the leader of the purple-clad gang on the rise, but I haven’t made the jump to Saints Row IV yet, as this year I gave my time and money to Grand Theft Auto V instead. I probably choose poorly. In this one, you can literally jump up to rooftops, thanks to alien superpowers. However, the console versions don’t sound up to par to the PC, but I don’t have a great gaming computer so I might just let this one slip by entirely.

8. Tomb Raider

Here’s a little known fact about me: I’ve only played the original Tomb Raider. That’s right. Just the first one, and I remember it fondly, despite it probably aging terribly. My copy sits proudly next to Suikoden and Suikoden II. The sense of exploration was fully realized–for the time–and I loved how the game slowly revealed its supernatural hand with each level. Like Indiana Jones, a perfect mix of serious and silly. This 2013 reboot looks gritty and grimy and throws Lara in one terrible situation after the next, but sounds well done. Plus, she can use a bow for stealth kills. Mmm. Stealthy. Rhianna Pratchett wrote the script, which gives me hope that Lara, as a person, is more fleshed out here as well.

7. Rogue Legacy

I enjoy rogue-likes because, for me, they don’t ask for much. You can do a run, and if things end terribly, then that’s it. Try again. Conversely, if you’re on a hot streak, every action, jump, and sword swing becomes stressfully vital. This is why I continue to poke at The Binding of Isaac, in hopes of hitting a lucky note and making it to Mom easily, brimming with powers and extra hearts. Alas, that’s not happened yet–but it totally could one day. Rogue Legacy seems to share a lot of that, with the neat mechanic of playing as the children of whatever character you just got killed. These kids acquire different traits–such as colorblindness and vertigo–which affects how you move through the main castle. It’ll probably end up in a Humble Bundle some time in 2014.

6. The Last of Us

Look, I barely got through Silent Hill 2 this year. Horror-themed games are very difficult for me to keep my cool in, and it sounds like the majority of the combat scenarios have you creeping around enemies, trying not to make a sound. That sounds fine to me, actually, but the monster designs and sounds they make are very unnerving, and I just don’t think I could ever get through The Last of Us, which is a dang shame, as it certainly sounds like an amazing–if depressing–experience.

5. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

The last Mario-based RPG I played, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I remained skeptic when a new one came out, even though it lives in an entirely different franchise. However, according to some reviews, it sounded like this one was maybe too hand-holdy, which is funny because Sticker Star couldn’t lift a finger to help you out. When I bought Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time and Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, I also grabbed a used copy of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story on the Nintendo DS for free. I suspect I’ll give that one a go and if I love the mechanics and all that jazz will move on to the newer iteration.

4. Super Mario 3D World

Super Mario 3D Land is one of the rare 3DS titles that I continue to pop back into the handheld and fart around in for a few minutes, always with the hope of earning a couple more stars. See, I’m in the post-completion content, but only halfway through it, so there’s still plenty more to see. And it sounds like Super Mario 3D World is all that and more…and on a console, which is where I’d truly rather be playing my plumber-based platformers. Throw in a silly cat theme, and I’m salivating from the mouth. Alas, no Wii U in this house, and still no interest in getting one any time soon unless there’s a big price drop or more interesting games in the pipeline. Sorry, I have no interest in the Smashing Bros.

3. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes

Love me my LEGO videogames, and I haven’t played one since LEGO Lord of the Rings, which means Tara and I are severely overdue for some co-op funtimes. Any will do, really, but I’d rather side with Iron Man and Wolverine over Batman and Superman. That’s right. I’ve always been a Marvel fan before a DC one. The formula doesn’t look to have changed one block–hub world, individual levels, a billion things to collect and unlock–but that’s okay, because at least I know what I’m getting here.

2. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

The subject matter of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, two siblings on a mission to save their deathly ill father, hits a little too close to home for me, and so I doubt I’ll ever get around to playing it. It’s not a direct parallel to my life, but there are enough elements present to put more weight on my shoulders, push me closer to the ground. Yes, I suffer from depression and would rather avoid mediums that enhance my feelings of hopelessness. I do love the idea of controlling two separate players with both analog sticks, but ibb and obb showed me just how difficult this could be for my brain to wrap its mind around. Also, Ni no Kuni did it first. I suspect the Giant Bomb podcasts will end up spoiling the story’s key moments and ending.

1. Gone Home

Sigh. My gaming laptop is really great for playing indie Flash games or point-and-click adventure games that don’t require too much in terms of software. In the past, I’ve been able to play bigger productions, like Red Faction: Armageddon, but only if I turned down every setting, and even then it’s a bit rubbish. Same goes for Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim; there is no draw distance because I can only see a few inches in front of my character. All of that is to say that I don’t think I can run Gone Home at the required settings to do it justice. Evidently, the game is loaded with high resolution posters, pictures, notes, and so on, and a big part is exploring the house and looking at stuff up close. I have no other way to play Gone Home, so hopefully it’ll come to consoles at some point, but I kind of doubt it.

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Well, there you go. Or rather, there I go, not playing all these games. Of course, there’s more that didn’t make the list, such as Papers, Please and The Stanley Parable, but I had to draw a line somewhere. Given that I still haven’t played a few games from the previous lists yet–hello, Portal 2!–I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting to see me get to all of these next year. Maybe one or two. Plus a ton of older games. Can’t forget about the PS1 and PS2.

Anyways, what games did you miss out on this year? Shout ’em out in despair in the comments section below.