Hearthstone (ABIT EARLY ARE WE?)

Introduction

            Welcome to this week’s dose of gaming reviews. As more and more good games begin to appear on the horizon of the year 2014, all I can think about is my ever-thinning (it was thin in the first place) wallet. However, if there’s one thing that has been on-the-rise over the past few years, it is the appearance of free-to-play games, games that save your wallet, and mine, from thinning out to the point of non-existence.

Free-to-play games have been spanning multiple genres since they have appeared in the early 21^st century. Games like Maplestory and Cabal have started to define the free-to-play games, starting them off as MMORPGs. In the recent years, however, free-to-play games have started to spread to other genres such as the FPS and free-roam games, just to name a few. A new free-to-play game has also been recently released worldwide by Blizzard, and this game is Hearthstone.

Papers, Please

Introduction

            In this tenth game review of this blog, we shall be looking at a game praised for its utter simplicity and superb gameplay, for its price. This game is called: Papers, Please.

 

            Papers, Please is an indie adventure game that tells the story of a immigration officer who has recently been appointed to his post by a state-sponsored lottery of a fictional country known as Artstotzka. The player is then put into his shoes, approving or denying access of foreigners and natives alike from going into the country of Arstotzka during his working shift from 6am to 6pm of in-game time (of course), this is done in the game by checking their passports and relevant documents, and if these documents are in check, allow him/her access, if not, deny him/her access. Although this task may seem like a boring and droll task, this is just the base gameplay of Papers, Please.

 

A normal day in Artstotzka

            What Papers, Please does fantastically well is how it constantly challenges the player’s moral conscience by making the player struggle to think whether what they’re doing is right or wrong, and oftentimes these decisions differ from all players, meaning each outcome is different for every individual, resulting in a part of the story being the work of the player and their morals, which definitely helps makes this game stand out from the other indie games. Although the story is pretty short, it does have certain branched out sections that allow for a unique (although slightly lacking) story experience. There are also 20 different endings for this game, and experiencing each would mean racking up many hours of gameplay whilst struggling to wonder if the guy in front of you should be allowed or denied access.

 

To approve, or to deny.