Halftime.
Today, I finish the first half of the 50 games on my backlog. These are the ones that are left.
(if you’re somehow confused and have no idea that I stream videogames now, this should help).

At the time of this writing, we’re 21 weeks into full-time streaming, and today we finish game #25, The Last Guardian. At the end of every game, I put up a poll where people like you vote for the next game that we’re playing, then we do, then we poll, rinse repeat. To celebrate us being 50% of the way through, I decided to do a quick write-up on the games that are still standing to help clue people in on why I chose them (or in many cases, what they even are).
Going off of today’s poll here, we’ll go in order from least-popular to most.

i. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is very highly rated just about everywhere. I’ve had colleagues tell me to play it, then walk off to talk about it together. It doesn’t cost very much money, it isn’t very long, and screenshots paint it as a very beautiful crawl through a paranormal missing-persons search for the titular Ethan.
Beyond that, I know nothing about this game. And that excites me.
In cases of certain games (looking at you, Bloodborne), knowing a little about them can enhance your experience by giving you a sense of what it’s about, and then triple-backflipping on those expectations and dunking you into a sea of cold water. But as-is, Ethan’s scarce info combine with soaring reviews to evoke the beginnings of a summer’s night out: I have no idea where it will lead, but we can only be better off for diving into the unknown.

ii. Quadrilateral Cowboy. I have voted for this game in almost every poll we’ve had so far. Like Ethan Carter above, Cowboy’s got glowing reviews and a decent bit of mystery, but it’s also super weird. It’s about hacking, I think — no word on actual cowboys. Indie games with cute styles or novel ideas aren’t a dime a dozen, but they are standard fare among those who desire to stand out. Rarest among these are games that not only pass muster for neat ideas, but leave so many veteran reviewers and developers glowing (sometimes for months), longing to relive the experience again. Quadrilateral Cowboy is that game. Here’s a trailer for y’all who aren’t intrigued yet.

iii. Her Story is such a cool concept I was shocked I hadn’t seen anything like it before. Playing a detective in a missing persons case, you sort through hours and hours of live-recorded interview footage with a suspect. That’s the entire game, as far as I’m aware. You have the database’s search engine, your intuition, and a mountain of amazing performances by the clearly-talented Viva Seifert. As far as I’m aware, it’s not very long — but I’m already imagining the chat reacting to each bit of new information as the plot thickens and I can’t wait to piece together the puzzle as a team.

iv. Torment: Tides of Numenara is a spiritual successor to a little game called Planescape: Torment — or as I’ve heard it described, ‘the best book I’ve ever played’. Torment is an isometric roleplaying game with a tons of choices, dialogue, and one of the coolest premises I’ve heard for an adventure. You can find the story trailer here. If you don’t want to watch it, it goes like this:
A scientist of some sort achieves immortality by creating new bodies and transferring consciousness into them, becoming known as The Changing God. Then, nearing death, they simply escape into a fresh new body. The catch? As the changing god leaves, a previous unborn soul and consciousness inhabits the body they leave behind— often to a short and grisly end. The act of constantly cheating death has summoned an entropic force from deep within the universe that seeks to end the Changing God and all their offspring. Our journey begins as one of these dumped bodies — known as ‘Castoffs’ — as we seek to escape a fate we never asked for. If you don’t think that’s cool, go complain about Game of Thrones or something.

v. After just writing about Torment’s body-snatching concept, it’s really funny that the next game on the list is The Swapper. This is a puzzle-platformer that centers around creating clones & swapping into them to unravel the mystery of an abandoned space station. As you’d expect, there’s lots of spook and ethical dilemmas to consider: are we playing God? Are we murderers? Hell, are we even the same character we started as? Likely a 2-day stream game, the Swapper promises a lot of the atmosphere of stream-favorites such as Alien: Isolation, but instead of Xenomorphs chasing you, it’s guilt. Also, you’re the monster. Probably.

vi. The Flame in the Flood is, without a doubt, the most speculative game included on my backlog. Here’s what I know about it:
- It’s a survival/’roguelite’ game, and I didn’t really have any of that genre represented.
- It’s got a really great visual style — think Firewatch & Kentucky Route Zero.
- You travel with a good dog named Aesop who I will protect at all costs.
- The soundtrack is really good and helps evoke its wilderness vibe.
- The setting is post-societal america, but instead of taking place in ruined cities and stuff you’re in the backwoods and it reminds me of home.
It’s not super long, so I’m not worried if it doesn’t turn out to be great — but it looks like a challenging game with a different tone and personality to many on the list, and that’s more than enough for me.

vii. Lone Survivor is a game I got in a humble bundle, booted up once ever, made it about 20 minutes in, screamed in fear and then quit immediately. I don’t really have anything else to write here. It’s probably just as scary as it was then, and the only thing that’s different is that y’all get to watch. What else do you need?

viii. Watch Dogs was a wholly unremarkable game that was as boring as its protagonist. Watch Dogs 2 looked like an improvement, but a game I wasn’t excited about. Then I read this article, which changed my entire opinion of the game. Does that scene make the game good? I don’t know. I’ll find out when I play it. But as someone who’s worked in games/tech for 5 years and witnessed these moments first hand (and of course a miniscule fraction of the marginalized folk who experience it every day), it’s worth my money to take a look.

ix. Guacamelee is a game that’s like Metroid, but if instead of being a space bounty hunter on a lone planet or space station, you were a fun-loving luchador. I don’t want to make it seem like I’m running out of steam here with these descriptions, but that’s just it. We get to learn how to wrestle gods and chickens alike while we try and save our village from the dead. Everyone wears cool outfits and there is a ton of spontaneous guitar riffs and trumpets. God bless whoever made this idea a reality.

x. I don’t enjoy many Telltale games. Batman: The Telltale series, however, has my interest. One of my favorite games of the last few years was Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us, based in part off of the amazing comic series Fables. The choices that Telltale’s games have you make are often weighty, but rarely too different from the core narrative — someone doesn’t show up in a cutscene lane, someone says a different line, etc. It’s possible I’m being disingenuous, but in general I think it’s not really the company’s strong suit. Having a narrative that’s captivating despite from the choices you make and letting them enhance that story is why Wolf got my money, and Batman — which promises to be more of a Bruce Wayne game than a Batman title — seems to be built from the same mold.

xi. Uncharted is a series that’s wrapped around the heart of many a playstation owner over the last few years. Sadly, many of them released when I didn’t really have consoles, let alone belongings period. Uncharted Collection, as the name suggests, contains the first 3 games in 1. Considering neither game is extremely long by itself, this seems like a steal. Known for its quippy over-the-top writing, gorgeous setpieces and a real sense of adventure, this seems like the best way to experience the series as a newcomer. I don’t want to give the games too much credit here — I’ve literally never touched them — but if a lot of people I like seem to enjoy them, it’s definitely worth a shot.

xii. I’m going to level with you here. I don’t know the first thing about this series and I picked Shantae: Risky’s Revenge as the highest rated representative sample. What I -do- know is that Shantae is Phoenix Wright/Professor Layton tier for ‘character that is absolutely beloved by the niche audience it appeals to’, and as a fan of both of those & 2d platformers I felt I owed it to myself to check it out. You’re a genie. Someone named Risky is looking for revenge, presumably. To the few of you who vote for Shantae every single poll frothing at the mouth for the day we play it, carry on and god bless you.

xiii. Fuck this game. Resident Evil 7: biohazard was my very first VR experience, and that should tell you enough about my feelings on the subject. Fuuuuck that. Fuck its believable southern villains and setting, fuck its ceremonious return to slow-build tension and terror, and especially fuck that intro sequence. All of these things make Resident Evil 7 a very good game, don’t get me wrong. Enough that many people lauded it as a phoenix rising from the ashes of what had become an over-the-top faux-horror action series with plots worse than Matrix: Revelations. I’ll play it. But I won’t like it, and I won’t like you. Do not welcome me to the family, and do not vote for this game.
Ugh.

xiv. Owlboy looks really cute. If you’ve watched me stream The Last Guardian, Ori and the Blind Forest, or Breath of the Wild, y’all know I LOVE cute games. Here’s the deal: you’re an owlboy (shocker) that can’t fight. You’re dragging along a mailman (maybe? maybe owlboy’s the mailman) that takes care of baddies while you soar through the level. It was made by a few people and a lot of love and I eat that shit up. Even if this game has flaws, I already know I’m going to excuse a lot of them because of the bond we share with our mailman. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll all find the mailmen inside of us.

xv. Mark of the Ninja kicks ass. It’s the best stealth game I’ve ever played, and I loved every minute I played of it — right before I’d end my gaming session, get tied up in literally anything else and never return. God, how many times have I started this game only to unintentionally quit hours later? At -least- five times. Anyway, this game’s like Dishonored and Samurai Jack made a beautiful ninja baby and it looks and plays like a dream. If you somehow don’t own it and are reading this, buy it and play it. Then vote for it, so you can watch -me- play it.

xvi. Grim Fandango Remastered is another game from LucasArts (much like Day of the Tentacle, which we also streamed) that was remastered early 2015. I knew very little about this game for my entire life. I’ll admit, ashamedly, that I once confused it for the PSX era game Skullmonkeys and never looked back. How was I to know?! They’re all skull people!! One of my favorite colleagues during my time at Riot, the ever-pleasant Marty Quinn would sing this game’s praises years on end. The premise is neat, too — you play an undead detective trying to figure out who’s murdering the other undead citizens by ‘sprouting’ them, which is a death-within-death that causes them to give life to plants. The puzzles are going to be hard, but if you want to take Dick Tracy esque adventure to the eighth circle of the underworld, vote for this game. This one’s for you, Marty.

xvii. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a remastered version of my favorite Final Fantasy game. It’s not clear that it’s a very good game mind you — many of the quirks that pushed audiences away almost 12 years ago are still found within the game. However, lots of improvements have certainly made Zodiac worth revisiting for folks who missed it the first time around. It came out recently, so you’ve probably played it — but if you haven’t, I hope you’ll join me in making fun of Fran’s terrible dialogue, staring at Balthier (IN HD!!) and losing ourselves in the amazing completely rerecorded orchestral sounds of the overworld while we AFK and let our gambits play the entire game for us. All logic and analaysis is going out the window on this one, team. I’m going to defend Zodiac until the day that I die, forever containing with me the dark knowledge of its flaws carefully repressed behind my iron willful ignorance.

xviii. What the hell, exactly, is Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines. Can anyone tell me? Does anyone know? It’s like a weird sex thing, right? I have zero idea. My roommate got this for me on a steam sale the week I joined Riot and I have literally never booted it up. It’s just sat there, in my steam library, like a cursed bauble inherited from a relative I’ve heard of. The world is filled with two people — those who have played Vampire, with their dim knowing eyes as they gaze at a world around them that no longer feels like home, and the rest of us. Once people who have played Vampire know it’s on this list, it’s all they want to talk about. They give me this look like they know my deepest shame and say they can’t wait. What the fuck is it? I have never in my life experienced the intersection of cult game and actual occult like I have with this title. This game released when I was 13. 13 years later, I’m going to stream it. Spooky.

xix. Titanfall 2 is a game I can’t blame anyone for missing their first or second time around, but holy shit am I excited about it. Titanfall was a game about giant robots that were sentient, but let you climb inside them? They were controlled by corporations and the whole plot was like Russia vs Mcdonalds or some shit. Titanfall -2- however is a whiplash tone shift that can only be rivaled by Magic Mike’s sad boring drug movie to Magic Mike XXL’s Tengen Toppa Male Stripper Best Friends Breakdance Adventure. (Magic Mike XXL is one of the best movies of all time, in case you were wondering). Instead of its weird ‘companies are bad’ thing, Titanfall 2 is like a buddy cop movie if instead of riding around with a wisecracking Eddy Murphy in the 80’s, you’re in the future and Eddy Murphy’s still your partner and also the car you’re riding in. I rest my case.

xx. I bought Grand Theft Auto V the same day I impulse bought my PS4. The download took forever, so I stopped to play Dark Souls 3, which I also stopped after about a few hours of being way too high for Dark Souls. I then bought Fallout 4, installed it, took it to my friend Evan’s house so he could play Fallout 4, then forgot about my PS4 for an entire year.
Months afte retrieving it, I finished GTAV’s download in a fit of boredom. I played through a very amazing intro sequence, stole a car, crashed it, flew out of the windshield into oncoming traffic, dying instantly. I laughed until I cried and unplugged my PS4 out of shame and awe.
I can’t tell you anything about GTAV that you don’t already know. The best that I can do is promise that I will do some extremely dumb shit and it’ll be a good time.

xxi. I played a ton of Batman: Arkham Knight over a friendsgiving break where a house of my charitable good friends let me live on their couch for the holiday while my apartment was empty. In return, I played this in their living room and lots of people watched and we all sort of were in awe of how good it was? The punching is good. The car’s good (if a little overused). The voices are good. Then shit got real, fast, and after that the break was over and I left my PS4 there again for the aforementioned year. I won’t spoil what happens, but Arkham Knight took my love of its predecessor, Arkham City, and beat me senseless with it (in a good way). I’m so excited to return and figure out just what the hell happens, but anyone who watches is in for a good time.

xxii. My Yooka-Laylee story isn’t unique. It’s a story many of us share — we all loved Banjo Kazooie, and when we heard many of the same developers were in on a new project we blindly kickstarted that shit faster than Jaden Smith’s parents and his failed acting career. Yooka and Laylee are cute as hell. Trowser, the snake version of Bottles, is cute as well. My favorite thing about Yooka, though, is that no one agrees on if the game is good. Critics were all over the place. Fans were all over the place. I don’t know how we’ll enjoy it, and I like that. Many of the games on this massive list were blind playthroughs of a game that was universally loved, and Yooka does not even have that luxury. As a critic, designer, analyst, and consumer, the ability to experience a game in this way really excites me. Also, Grant Kirkhope music, so come on.

xxiii. Tomb Raider, as a franchise, is a lot like Sonic the Hedgehog. A generation of gamers know Lara Croft, but they don’t really know why. Lara’s had as many bad outings across films and games as Sonic has, and even as someone whose friends played the original Tomb Raiders I couldn’t tell you anything about them. If today’s Sonic Mania was the blue blur’s glorious return to form, reports say the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider did just that for Lara. This game was bought for me by my good friend Rhea for 10 dollars one night after we’d stayed up all night arguing about LoL’s seasonal vision changes (which she hated). I vowed I’d play it, and as you can tell, I never did. Excited to leave the polygons behind and get a fresh start with a franchise that never felt ‘real’ to me. Thanks Rhea!!

xxiv. I’m literally just playing Ducktales Remastered so I can hear the remix of The Moon. If you think I’m joking, you’ve never heard what a cute/good song that is. Enjoy.

xxv. What do I even need to tell you about Dragon Age: Inquisition? It’s currently leading on the poll by a rather overwhelming amount, and it’s very possible by the time you’re reading this that you’ve already voted for it — or that we’re already playing it. It’s good. It won like a billion awards. The only thing you need to know is that Iron Bull can be romanced, and we’re going to climb that mountain if it’s the last thing I do.
Hopefully, this was decent insight into some games you didn’t know about — or at least cleared up why they’re on this list. Follow/Subscribe to me on www.twitch.tv/scarizardplays where I stream every weekday from 12–6PST.

