That I haven’t played Big Walk, I should say, isn’t entirely for my own fault. The biggest thing that limits Big Walk’s adoption is the fact that you must have at least two players on-hand to play it, at all. There is no solo mode, and it’d largely miss the point of the game to try it. Beyond that it’s an even better experience with more people: Big Walk supports up to 12. Most of my friends don’t usually play video games together, and the one that usually does play with others is a FPS enthusiast, and not too into a game fundamentally about communication, and getting lost in a wilderness. Throw in the fact that it’s a game starring weird gourd people, and I imagine he might actually get ill if he tried playing it.

Matthw Haughey, founder of Metafilter and owner of the newsletter and blog A Whole Lotta Nothing, has a typically fine piece about the joys of Big Walk. He mentions that the greatest challenge of the game is simply starting it, finding a number of friends who are motivated to try such a quirky experience and can all schedule time to play it together. Fortunately it doesn’t all have to be finished in one session.

I’m itching to try it, maybe some time soon. I’ll be at DragonCon in a week. If any of you are there, maybe we could meet up somewhere and go for a Big Walk?

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In the past I’ve done brief takes on every game in a Direct, but I feel like this time I’d be reduced to either saying the same thing about many of them that I’ve said before, or else be forced to resort to the same kinds of loathsome cliches most game enthusiast sites use. No thanks.

Oh look! Yet another grandiose and pretentious anime-themed combo-based melee combat RPG, how original. Is there an omininously Latinish-named evil force? Are we destroying God again? Are there Disney characters in this one?

Most game players, it’s true, are either kids or recently-kids, and I remind you that I haven’t been either of those for a long time. Think of me what you want for saying this, but these base and juvenile depictions of coolness are things I outgrew long ago. But I suspect at least some of you think that way too, so here then are the few games that I’m genuinely interested in from the recent Direct.

Rhythm Heaven Groove

This is the big one, the game from the show I’m most likely to actually get when it’s released. All the Rhythm Heaven games are big gooey piles of joy and this’ll be the first new entry in an age. (Example from a prior game: Packing Pests.) The footage we saw yesterday only confirms my anticipation. A day one purchase for me.

Big Walk (cross platform) *

The first game from House House since Untitled Goose Game looks very interesting, basically just an excuse to wander around a big island wilderness with friends. Big Walk purposely eschews most of the concessions most games make when exploring large spaces, like fast travel, and the ones made when communicating with other players in large spaces, like being able to talk to people wherever they are. It doesn’t just this for realism’s sake though, many of its puzzles rely on overcoming communication difficulty. It’s wildly experimental, and my only real qualm with it is most of my friends aren’t the kind to explore such a game with me. For those who have them though, this is something to watch for.

Deltarune Chapter 5

I loved Undertale and Deltarune Chapter 1, but then fell away from playing the series myself. But I love watching other people play through them, so soon there’ll be another quirky and fun, yet entirely vicarious experience for me to watch.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort

This is essentially the Switch version of Wii Sports Resort, the followup to the Wii pack-in Wii Sports released way back in 2006. I still have many fond memories of playing Wii Sports with friends back then, a perfect pack-in game if there ever was one, but each successive game was more complex, and that much harder to get friends interested in. The simplicity, perhaps even more than cheapness, of Wii Sports was what made it accessible to so many people. I’m sure when we reach the inevitable age of nursing home Wii Sports parties that the appeal of its simplicity will become even more important.

Final Fantasy Resonance

Not only is it the first Final Fantasy game to get the HD2D treatment, but the first (somewhat) new one to get it too. The brief glimpses we got of it show us a game that seems to take after the old-school 16-bit era battle systems that recent entries, and I find that more appealing than anything else about it. It’s not that I’m nostalgic for the way it was done, but there the quality of the experimentation seemed greater, there was less change for its own sake, and there were still attempts, even if just nominal ones, at simulating adventure above just throwing systems at the wall. But I’m old and grumpy about these things. Just give me five minutes and I’ll probably fall asleep in my rocking chair. Oof, here I go now… Zzzzzz…

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