November 16
Hello! Welcome back to our regular section where we write a little about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we cheer ourselves up by reliving old point-and-click adventures, get scared at a game of Lego, of all things, and try, and try again, to succumb to the charms of Horizon, but it just won't happen.
Catch up on previous editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.
Lego Dark Space
It's probably not Lego that comes to mind when you think of franchises ripe for first-person horror, but you can find just about anything in Fortnite, and this new experience comes courtesy of Lego's own digital designers.
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Dark Space is the centerpiece of Lego's latest set of Fortnite minigames, which have previously seen you rebuild Tilted Towers, tycoon style, while paying homage to Lego Island, and chasing cats and fighting ninjas. Each subsequent experience has slowly grown in quality and presentation, which brings us clearly to Dark Space: a pretty fun horror minigame with shades of Alien Isolation and Among Us.
The idea is simple: complete mini-games to progress around an abandoned space station and ensure your escape, while avoiding various wandering monsters. Along the way, you'll read the log entries of the ship's former crew, which are kept light-hearted enough for Lego's broader audience, and you can also bring along your friends to help you (or to quickly catch you and lose lives).
Completing Lego Dark Space while entering a code (which you can easily find online) will also unlock a Lego digital accessory pack that you can use in Lego Fortnite's main mode, which is a first for this type of experience and, I admit, why I went to try it. Overall though, it was a nice, spooky way to spend half an hour as the nights grew closer and closer.
-Tom P.
Horizon Forbidden West, PS5 Pro
Watch on YouTube
This must be at least the fourth time I've tried to get into a Horizon game. First came Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4, then that enhanced game on PS4 Pro; then came the move to PS5 with Forbidden West, and now that game again on PS5 Pro (and a bit of the original remastered on PS5 Pro to boot!). I'm not happy to say that I think I might finally be on the verge of giving up completely.
This should be a series I enjoy. It's got vast areas to explore, it looks incredible (Zero Dawn and Forbidden West really pop on the PS5 Pro), there are cool mechanical creatures, neat gameplay mechanics, top-notch voice work, and what sounds like an intriguing story. And yet I find it a real struggle to invest in it. In Forbidden West I finally made it past the intro (which took over two hours) and started on the main quest, but then a wave of indifference hit me. I didn't feel like moving forward. I felt stuck in first gear, so I hit the brake.
I know people who love the Horizon games and, to give them their due, they would absolutely shine in a PS5 showroom, but sometimes things just don't add up. I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed this a lot more when I was younger, but nowadays I clearly need a different kind of fuel to keep going.
Oh, and where are all the cars?
-Took.
Crazy Motive, PC
I had forgotten the charms of a good point-and-click adventure. It's easy to look at them and label them as quaint, I think, like they're something you pulled out of the attic 20 years ago and “don't you remember when we used to play games like that?” But Loco Motive has highlighted just how powerful the charms of these games can be.
Right in front of those charms is his enthusiasm, his relentless optimism, the kind we don't see often in games anymore. They are so nervous now, so misunderstood. But there's never a moment when Loco Motive isn't brave. Yes, you're investigating a murder on a train, that's the general setup, but it's never presented as anything sinister or serious. In fact, he is ridiculed quite often. Come to think of it, there's not much of the game that's taken seriously: everything is treated with a smile as big as that of the character you play, lawyer Arthur Ackerman. And it's contagious.
Combine this with a bright presentation of primary colors and an underlying determination to make you laugh. willpower make you laugh, me willpower they make you laugh, and generate a kindly voluntary helplessness on your part when you eventually give in to it. And you know what? It feels good. I feel encouraged after playing and there aren't enough games I can say that about.
(By the way, a demo of Loco Motive is still available on Steam.)
-Bertie