The Binding of Isaac

Isaac's descent begins in a basement. This floor and all subsequent floors are divided into single, connecting rooms that contain monsters or items. A boss chamber lies at the end of the maze and houses a gruesome fiend that Isaac must overcome before descending to the next floor. Isaac's initial attack is weaponized crying--meaning he can strike foes from afar by blinking out crocodile-sized tears in four directions. Keys, bombs, and other items become available as you progress, but no matter how strong you become, death remains a constant companion during this challenging journey. Bite the dust and you'll have to start the whole game over again.

The randomized structure of each floor means no two play sessions are exactly alike. Although the path may be different, there are still a few familiar stops along the way. Most common are the enemies. If you're lucky, flies and lava will be the most of your troubles, but most likely, your move-and-shoot abilities will be tested by flaming, headless torsos or blood-vomiting gluttons. As you progress these enemies will evolve and learn new tricks to maintain the challenge. If you have a few keys handy, then you can access the item shops and special item rooms located on each floor. In lieu of gaining levels, Isaac's power increases by collecting items, which can increase his stats or confer special abilities.

The dozens of objects you encounter aren't your typical "+1 Sword of Hitting" or "Giant Golden Pauldrons." Instead, most items apply supernatural properties to everyday objects. Donning your mother's underwear increases your range, while drinking chocolate milk lets you charge up your chocolate projectiles. Items also change your character's appearance, though it's usually for the worse. The growth hormones you just picked up might make Isaac stronger, but they also turn his face into a lumpy mess. Chances are that by the end of the game, you won't even recognize Isaac. Discovering new items and experimenting with different item combinations are the most appealing aspects of the game.

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To the Moon

In To the Moon, you take control of two doctors: Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts. The game is not about them, however; it's about Johnny, an elderly man drawing his last few breaths. Eva and Neil have been hired to give Johnny one last chance to fulfill his dream of flying to the moon. To do so, they must enter Johnny's mind and manipulate his memories with a special machine devised for this very purpose. The doctors may not be able to change Johnny's actual past, but they can alter the past as he has remembered it, triggering events that allow his dream to come to fruition.

From this science-fiction premise evolves one of the most authentic and human stories told in a game in some time. And even this premise starts with a provocative and universal quandary: "How would my life have been altered if I'd taken a different path?" From there, Eva and Neil worm their way into Johnny's past, starting with the recent past and moving backward. With each leap, Johnny's life and personality come more clearly into focus, even as several mysteries complicate the doctors' progress and threaten to potentially derail their success. The mysteries begin with a simple conundrum: Johnny doesn't know why he wants to visit the moon. He just does. From this one riddle arise many others. Many of them revolve around Johnny's wife, River, whose unusual obsessions and emotional distance became increasingly difficult to cope with and understand.

The story is successful for many reasons, one of which is the convincing dialogue. The conflicts you witness feel real, not contrived. When a friend accuses Johnny of being selfish, he lashes back in his heartbreak and insists that he's earned the right to his selfishness. Eva and Neil frequently butt heads, and Neil's casual aloofness is sometimes more than the empathetic Eva can bear. But their witty banter is often laugh-out-loud funny and prevents the poignant main tale from lapsing into sappiness. Another important factor is the story's structure. By leading you through Johnny's life in reverse, To the Moon impresses upon you the idea that some of the most relevant moments of our lives are the earliest. The game's tender finale might leave you in tears, but it isn't manipulative. By drawing you through a single man's life and reminding us that ordinary people can have extraordinary effects on each other, the game earns every tear you shed.

How amazing that effusive emotion pours from a game with such unassuming production values. When you first boot up the game, you might temporarily think you're playing a Super Nintendo role-playing game, due to the 16-bit art style, simple character sprites, and synthesized orchestral score. But any misgivings you have about the dated visuals should quickly melt away once the story moves into high gear. The soundtrack deserves much of this credit. A simple piano theme serves as River's motif; its repetitive undercurrent evokes that character's compulsive tendencies. Another track's few simple notes effectively communicate tension and danger. And one poignant sequence is given more resonance by the softly sung ballad that accompanies it. To the Moon doesn't feature any voice acting, but the written dialogue effectively uses dramatic punctuation and capitalization to communicate excitement and fear.

To the Moon's purpose is to tell a stirring story, not to deliver a compelling gameplay experience. Though it plays much like a point-and-click adventure, there are very few puzzles standing between you and the narrative. Between leaps in Johnny's memory, you solve a hidden-picture puzzle of sorts that has you clicking on a row of tiles to flip them over. But these puzzles are easy, and while you can try to complete them in the minimum number of moves possible, there's no reward for demonstrating such cleverness. You move from area to area by clicking on your destination or using the arrow keys. The controls can be a bit quirky; clicking on an interactive object may not have the expected results if you aren't standing in the right place, for example. A similar lack of responsiveness intrudes in a few other areas, as in an odd shoot-'em-up minigame near the conclusion.

On several occasions, however, To the Moon effectively uses gameplay to serve the story. In one sequence, the game toys with your expectations, pretending to become a turn-based RPG and then subverting the notion with a heavy dose of charm and humor. A visit to a horse farm has you galloping about on horseback while your hapless partner acts like a witless fool. A simple puzzle in which you rotate objects to match them isn't challenging, but it's an appropriate complement to the otherworldly environment in which it takes place. To the Moon is largely a work of interactive fiction, even more so than the traditional PC adventure game. But the interactive elements are nevertheless part of its power, as demonstrated by these and other events. And because these events are so different from each other, they retain an element of surprise.

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Terraria

Your adventure begins in a colorful land populated by towering trees, glistening lakes, and flowering pastures as far as the eye can see. After creating a character and choosing which size randomly generated world you want to start in (small, medium, or large), you're thrust into the game with nary a hint to help you understand what you're supposed to do. A guide wanders nearby, and he doles out advice when you click on him, but it's a poor way of introducing you to the basics. His tips aren't descriptive enough to get you started, and persistent enemy slimes have a knack for distracting you while he's dishing out his vague advice. Terraria is a game about discovery and exploration, and the thrill of happening upon something completely unexpected is a huge part of the draw, but this is still a poor tutorial. You're better off glancing at online guides to get your bearings in the early going than blindly trying to figure out what you're supposed to do.

With a little research or experimentation, you figure out that your first order of business is to build a shelter. You begin the game with a copper pickaxe and axe, and you use these to chop down trees and gather resources. A clever crafting system gives you the power to construct almost anything you might need on your journey. All you need to do is enter your inventory screen, and every item you can currently create is listed in a sidebar. Once you cut down a few trees, you can build a workbench, and from there a world of possibilities opens up. A workbench lets you build more-complex items, such as a hammer and sword, and you use these items to venture out into the dangerous unknown. Eventually, you can craft guns, explosives, and even magical items, but you have to put in a lot of work to get to that level. In the early going, your focus is to find materials to construct basic weapons and armor. Your wooden sword works well enough against docile slimes, but if you want to take on ruthless skeletons, you should forge a weapon made of gold.

Terraria is an open-ended game that never sets clear goals. You decide how you want to play, and there's always a new territory for intrepid explorers to venture off to. The controls handle like a traditional platformer, allowing you to easily jump around the expansive environments. Melee weapons have a wide range, so you don't have to be precise with your swinging, and you aim your long-range attacks with your mouse for quick shots. But you're not going to make much progress if you just hang out on the surface. The worlds are gigantic (even the small maps), and most of that space is underground. That's where the most valuable minerals are located, and also the scariest monsters. You use your pickaxe to dig through underground mines, gather resources to forge better equipment, and then use your new tools to get deeper with each visit. It's a tantalizing reward system that continually pushes you along to see what else you can find. Small pleasures carry you through much of this adventure. You may find yourself chipping away at useless rock and dirt for minutes at a time, desperate to find something of value. And then, out of the corner of your eye, you see a sparkle amid the gloom and point your pickaxe in that direction. A small cache of silver awaits. It may not sound like much, but you need it to build the next set of tools, and the feeling of joy when you find such a treasure is hard to contain.

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Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues

Old World Blues announces its wit with a hysterical opening dialogue, and doesn't let up until the final frame of the epilogue that concludes it. That dialogue occurs between you and Dr. Klein, a self-important scientist who is not human, but rather a brain attached to a trio of monitors that shiver, glare, and scrutinize with exaggerated motions that communicate more emotion than any of Fallout: New Vegas' wooden character models. Dr. Klein and his robot cronies--an egghead having an identity crisis and a vixen with a disturbing fixation on human reproduction among them--have removed your brain. Oh, and your heart and your spine too. This may seem a cruel experiment, yet here you are, lobotomized and trying to reason with a robot scientist with the voice of an old-timey radio announcer. As it happens, you want your brain back (go figure), yet your curious captors are no longer in possession of it. Their academic nemesis, the "evil" Dr. Mobius, has whisked it away to his lab. It seems that if you want to be whole again, you must confront Mobius--and do a few favors for Klein and company in the meanwhile.
As in most role-playing games, Old World Blues' missions involve collecting objects for your quest-givers and returning to them to continue forward. But great context can turn a simple fetch quest into a phenomenon, and every action you take has a humorous edge that keeps you pushing forward with a grin. Much of this humor comes from the uproarious dialogue. On the subject of human emotions: "Glands. They come from glands." On the subject of the tongue: "It's like having a dexterous slug lolling and flopping about in one's mouthal cavity." On the subject of the DLC's new explorable area: "The crater helps keep everyone inside. Because it's bowl shaped!" The wit carries into almost every feature in one way or another. One weapon you might earn is the K9000 Cyberdog, a heavy machine gun that lets out a heartbreaking whine when you unequip it. Your new stealth armor applies stimpaks automatically when needed and provides occasional hints in a soothing female voice--but feels guilty for doing so.

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Frozen Synapse

 

Success in Frozen Synapse depends on careful tactical planning (and, sometimes, a nearly supernatural sense of intuition), but it is also very easy to learn and play. First off, there are just five unit types. The roles of the machine gunner, shotgunner, and sniper are pretty self-explanatory; the grenadier lobs grenades and can angle them off obstacles; the rocket launcher blows up walls, which turns anything nearby into a fine red mist. You control each unit's basic movements by right clicking to set waypoints on the map, and it's equally easy to add more detailed instructions. For instance, you can direct a soldier to aim in a specific direction as he moves, order him to wait a couple of seconds before moving out, make him crouch, have him engage any enemies he bumps into, or, alternatively, tell him to ignore enemies to expedite a mad dash for cover. At the same time that you plan your own moves, you can also plot out possible moves for visible enemies and watch how these encounters play out in real time. This ingenious feature puts all of the next turn's possible permutations at your fingertips. Once you're happy with how things look, it's time to end your turn and tensely wait to see the results of your decisions. Only when you and your opponent have both submitted your orders do you find out whether your shotgunner flanked the enemy sniper, your machine gunner had adequate cover, or if the enemy anticipated your every move and has picked off your forces one by one.
Multiplayer is where Frozen Synapse really shines, thanks to the natural tension that comes from matching wits with a human being. There are five diverse game types, each of which can be played with or without a fog of war. Extermination, which is basically a deathmatch, is by far the most popular mode, due to the simple fun of hunting down and destroying your enemy. However, there are four other modes that, while less popular, are still worth checking out. In Secure, opposing players bid to defend swaths of the map, and if you bid to defend the larger area then you must keep your opponent from getting a unit into that zone. Charge also uses a bid system where you pick how far toward the enemy's side of the map you can advance while surviving through the end of the match. Disputed is like Extermination but with the addition of glowing red boxes. There must be something important in them because the score is based on who can escape the map with the most boxes. If box collection isn't your thing, you could just kill off the other team, which also counts as a victory. Finally, there is a Hostage Rescue mode.
Regardless of the mode you pick, the map, your starting units, and their positions are randomly generated, with the exception of a couple of modes that let you determine where your forces start. This randomness can lead to some frustration, especially when coupled with a matchmaking system that nonchalantly pits total newbies against battle-hardened veterans. On the whole, however, it keeps the game lively, and you can always challenge a specific person or go into the advanced setup to create a scenario more to your liking. Technically, Frozen Synapse is a play-by-email game, but you receive notifications in the multiplayer menu whenever you need to take a turn in a game, so the only time you'll receive any clutter in your inbox is when you're actually logged out of the game.
Frozen Synapse's long single-player campaign serves as an excellent trainer for multiplayer, as well as an explanation for why the little green men have to kill the little red men. Most of the missions have objectives similar to the multiplayer modes: You escort VIPs, pick up keys, defend areas from enemy infiltrators, storm enemy strongholds, or just wipe out every enemy on the map. The difficulty in the campaign comes from the fact that you are often significantly outnumbered. As for the plot, it is fairly standard cyberpunk fare: A corporation has taken over all aspects of life, and its CEO is the land's biggest celebrity, as well as its head of government. Unfortunately for him, a group of radicals take issue with his rule and launch a rebellion. Your mission is to command little green rebels against the vicious red stooges who serve this wisecracking despot. Every so often, you get a chance to read dossiers about the world and its factions or talk with some of your compatriots (it's a one-way conversation as they just pour their hearts out to you). The writing is occasionally clever, which is an added bonus.

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