I’m starting to look at The Other Place again, though I definitely have to sift to accommodate my narrow-focus on games only - even though I was relatively late to the party, it was 1.0 that hooked me, so I’ve always felt like an AV Club outsider the way everyone else feels like a Kinja outsider...

That special effect does hold up rather well! I enjoyed those cryptic “U R Not <FONT COLOR=”#FF0000">E</FONT>“ and “It’s thinking” taglines back in those days. I remember before the Playstation launched they had this alternate-reality web game that I never did finish. I think if you did, it would enter you in a…

“...I simply must stop being so horrified.”

The Dolphin actually squeaks and clicks when you boost and throttle back...The sound design is so thoughtful, textured, and delightful in that game, even if my wife still thinks it’s a “Friendship Drive”:

My old boss (whom I got to visit over in Oxfordshire a couple months ago) played a round of golf with Nigel Mansell once when they worked together in the BTCC, and he loves to tell people he can out-drive Nigel Mansell...he just doesn’t like to mention it’s from the tee box.

Actually, the one thing I worry about the most is that the conversation here sometimes leans too heavily toward Nintendo, to the point people are discouraged from discussing other games. Mind you, I’ve been all-in on Nintendo, with a dabble in PC games, since the end of the PS2/Dreamcast era, so I can only stand to…

I’m in exactly the same situation: I even looked at it last week, thinking I needed to finish it, but started Beneath A Steel Sky again instead.

I’ve been looking at Detective Pikachu for a while now, and Will’s comments are now making me slightly hesitant to jump in this weekend. I was hoping the challenges would be a little steeper, but when it comes to narrative, I will still keep an eye on it for the near future.

Thanks for this review, Will. This game wasn’t on my “to do” list, but it’s interesting to know that there’s some good narrative there if you just get beyond the eye-rolling parts, which somewhat sounds like a metaphor for the director, Josef Fares - I was reminded about his dubious, possibly drunken comments about…

Exactly! Mind you, they’re everywhere, but if they can nail that, then where’s my Isle of Skye, Madrid, Mumbai, Perth, Halifax, Oslo, Johannesburg, or Quito? I’m likely not making it to any of these places anytime soon (sorry Unexpected Dave), but I want to feel like I have.

I liked 2003's The Getaway, with downtown London mapped to within a reasonable amount. It intentionally eschewed a HUD or map, and I was able to navigate from Piccadilly Circus to King’s Cross/St. Pancras by dead reckoning, from memory, having walked it three years prior.

For the record, I did try to find a copy of Grand Trucker Aniki for the DS when it came out in 2009, but never did get one. It’s $60 used now, which is a little too much for a game I doubt I’ll appreciate as much as I want to, because there’s not enough truck driving and customizing:

You’ve definitely not been to Japan:

I love that the Asp resembles its 8-bit original, but that doesn’t mean I still don’t have a hard time looking at it sometimes.

I think I’d love to be a Fuel Rat on occasion! It seems like a very rewarding way of playing the game outside the conventional framework, and would be something I could manage as a player; I like doing support work.

Yeah, the good news is my access to play the game on a PC is limited in the coming months, so one more push is really all I will be able to manage anyway. I agree completely on your sentiment, but sometimes I get too impatient, what with the depth of my backlog, and the time I feel I can spend, to invest in a game…

That makes sense, and might be like other environmental narratives in that respect, where your story is shaped by the way you interact with the environment - there are a lot of things to “miss”. You can’t really overlook something that’s in a physical format.

I’m in IndyCar Racing; I travel to all of the races and many tests, collecting and analyzing performance data, along with a bunch of other administrative stuff. I’ve been in racing since I graduated from college, so I can’t imagine doing anything else. I met my wife when she joined a group of my former teammates in…

“...the storytelling and aesthetic do fit into my abiding love for early 20th Century American Music,”  

I know there’s no such thing as “I don’t belong here because of my game-playing ability”, but reading everyone’s stories of how many times they’ve completed and dominated the game makes me feel like I don’t know how to play games. I’m quite certain that’s entirely possible, but I also think the “how” is more about…