Boys don't cry. Or so they say.
These days, it is no longer embarrassing for men to admit that we cry too. Nobody can stop the tide of raw emotions from spilling over when the dam bursts. Crying is just what makes us who we are.
I'm sure we have all seen our fair share of movies where we cried. And by crying, I'm just saying it can be in any form, be it just a stifled sob and a slight difficulty in breathing, or a single trickle of tears flowing down your cheeks, or a ferocious and noisy wail of uncontrollable grief and despair, though I must admit, that last one, I would feel pretty awkward sitting next to such a person while watching a movie. :P
But the bottom-line is, most of us must have at least shed a tear or two while watching a sad emotional movie. Tell me you cried too while watching "A Walk to Remember". Tell me you cried too during that sad opening montage of "Up". Tell me you cried too watching Simba trying to revive his father. Yep, we all did. How about that moment in "Last of the
Another movie that always made me cry no matter how many times I watched it again is "Hotel Rwanda", especially that scene when the foreigners were just about to leave with the special task force and suddenly, survivors escorted by missionaries arrived shouting "Wait!" and the soldier told the priest, "No Rwandans, foreign nationals only, sorry Father, those were the orders", while the song "million voices" played in the background... Ni ryari izuba rizagaruka hejuru yacu? Ni nde uzaricyeza?
What an overwhelming tear-jerking scene indeed…
Likewise, books can make us cry too. I confess it was tough trying to hold back a tear while reading "The Fault in Our Stars" (funnily though, I haven't watched the movie till now). "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini and "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are two other favorite books of mine that transported me to a new abode of teary eyes. And of course, clichéd as it might sound, "PS I Love You". Love means never having to say you're sorry. At that moment, you just put the book down, utter "dayymm" as you wipe your eyes, but you know, in a very macho and manly way… :D
You don't even have to watch such movies or read novels to get "the feels". Just go to YouTube, search for "Emotional Thai commercials" and watch those short 3-minutes ads that are guaranteed to take you aboard the Feels train.
And so, those are the effects books and films can have on us.
I never expected a game to have such an effect on me!
So lately, as some of you may know, I've been playing a lot of games on Steam. Steam is a gaming platform that you can install on your PC, and through it, you can buy and play thousands of games while interacting with other gamers. Now one of the advantages of Steam is that, it has an achievement system, where people can unlock various achievements for different games. Since I currently own almost 300 games on Steam, my average completion rate is extremely pathetic, at just 28%. And so, in order to push my stats up a bit, I decided to play games with easy 100% achievement.
As I looked at the list of games that were easy to score 100% achievement in a short time, one such game that caught my eye was this 16-bit RPG game called "To The Moon".
I had already bought the game during one of the many Steam sales but never tried playing it. The only two reasons why I bought the game was because it was on sale (duh!) and that it had an "overwhelmingly positive" review, though I had no idea what the game was about. That fact that it had a very positive rating was enough for me to buy it.
To get a 100% achievement on "To The Moon", the only thing players had to do was to complete the game. And so I decided to play it...
Man oh man oh man...
What an effing game! Screw the 100% achievement; "To The Moon" was totally something I didn't expect at all.
I spent 4 and a half hours to complete the game, and I did get the achievement after I reached the end, but by then, that was the last thing on my mind. I really didn't care about the achievement. All I cared about was the game story. What an absolutely lovely and awesome game!
As a gamer and formerly a copywriter for 5 years in an ad agency, one of the things I had always found lacking in most games, is the narration.
"To The Moon" had of the best game narrations I had ever seen. The conversations were simple, funny and easy to remember, and you could easily identify with the main protagonists. But more than that was the story-line.
I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but the main crux of the game was about two "memory doctors" who tried to fulfil a client's dying wish of obtaining a particular memory. And so they traversed back in time through his memories trying to build that artificial memory. Dayyymm the things they went through and discovered...
Kudos to the amazing soundtrack as well that supplemented the emotions in every scenario. Now every time I listen to the game theme, I still get the chills.
As one reviewer aptly said, "This is not just a game, it is an experience you must feel". Amen to that. I rarely do this, but this is one game you MUST buy and play, especially if you are a sucker for emotional movies and novels.
Game link: Steam: To The Moon.
Currently, the game is available on Steam for 369 bucks INR. Like I mentioned earlier, I bought the game on sale for just Rs. 79, but trust me, it is totally worth the full price. However, if you still think the price is too much, then just "wishlist" the game on Steam and you will be notified the next time it is on sale, and when that happens, I really advice you to buy it.
I swear, you will not regret such an experience as this!
Damn, this game hit me right in the feels. But I'll stop talking about it now, lest I give away any spoilers, and that is something I definitely do not want to do. Just get your hands on this game and I bet you, you will cry your ass out. And don't go to Google or YouTube looking for this game's gameplay or walkthroughs. It will not be the same experience.
So cheers then until you play this game and we meet again :)
"Because one day... I'm going to befriend one of them."
1 comment:
Kima, Thanks for introducing this narrative game.
Completed the game/story in 7 hours time. After finishing Score Hero, I was looking for a small game which had good story line. Glad that I came to your blog.
Was expecting the story to be more of (entrepreneurship/road not taken kind of) as none of the game reviews I read, gave out the story. Turns out it's way different.
Hope to read more narrative game reviews and recommendations :)
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