LogFAQs > #977400656

64. Broken Age
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjJAMM1MyTA

Another Tim Schafer game! It kind of felt like Broken Age was going to be the game that put Double Fine back into the spotlight for the first time since Brutal Legend (which, as I think I mentioned in the Psychonauts write-up, I left off the list since it was basically the only Double Fine game I'd call a AAA game). Broken Age was a massive Kickstarter success, but then I felt like nobody really talked about it after it came out. Did it have the Kentucky Route Zero effect, where releasing as multiple acts over a year apart made people lose interest? It had Elijah Wood! The game follows two stories only connected but similar themes of teenage rebellion; one is an old, ritualistic fantasy village, and the other takes place on a futuristic AI-controlled spaceship. Then Act 1 ends on a big cliffhanger where it turns out these weren't the past/future, they were both happening simultaneously, the big monster the village was sacrificing to was, in fact, the spaceship kidnapping people for DNA experimentation, and at the end of the act the player characters accidentally swap places. Definitely one of my favorite point-and-click adventures.

63. Hotline Miami
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg5s5Dq50Rg

Hotline Miami is an extremely addicting gameplay loop of violently killing entire rooms of enemies (usually in one hit) and dying just as easily. It's not a time loop game, but it might as well be, as that's largely what it feels like, as every death gives you the chance to memorize more of the map and how to kill enemies before they get the drop on you. It's super fun, and gets very difficult as it goes along -- difficult enough that I may have ended up dropping it if the weirdly psychadelic mystery story behind it all didn't keep me so hooked. It's extremely 80s to the point of parody in a Far Cry Blood Dragon kind of a way (which, while I've loved it in serveral games/shows/etc. in the past, I think the 80s-style nostalgia parodies have gotten a little played out now, in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty three).