HomeFeatures
What’s better: going undercover or a really big unreal place?Vote now!
Vote now!
Image credit:IO Interactive
Image credit:IO Interactive
Last time, you decided thata level 1 rat is better than Alone In The Dark’s jacket inventory. The jacket only just won, and frankly I blame myself for gussying up the rat with fiction. That jacket is unique! Ah well. The hunt continues. This week, I’m asking you to pick between being out of place or being in an amazing place. What’s better: going undercover, or a really big unreal place?
Going undercover
Hitman is perhaps the series which goes hardest on going undercover. Picking identities that’ll grant you access to certain areas, choking out someone wearing that identity and yoinking their clothes, trying to act the part, then scrambling to find a new undercover identity after you blow it… it’s good. I’d also like to drop a big note of praise forDishonored’s masquerade ball level, where you can purloin an invitation and everyone seeing your mask will assume you’re some wag dressing up as the infamous murderer—right up until they see you acting weird.
Hitman 3 is a Mostly Great End to the World of Assassination Trilogy | Hitman 3 ReviewWatch on YouTube
Hitman 3 is a Mostly Great End to the World of Assassination Trilogy | Hitman 3 Review
A really big unreal place
Part of why I adore walking simulators (a genre which doesn’t include games like Dear Esther, okay) is that they are free to show me a really, really big unreal place. They don’t have to worry about cover or AI pathing or objectives or even really framerates. They can just go, “Hey isn’t this giant weird place cool?” and I will respond, “Yes, it is, thank you very much, walking simulator.”
Objective-driven games can do this, mind, but they’re often reluctant to for reasons of performance and attention. It can take a lot of hardware power to render a giant weird thing, processor cycles which need to be shared with AI and enemies and weapons and steady framerates. I do feel this is changing in recent years, thankfully; more developers are using modern power to make giant cool things instead of pushing it all into oversized facial pores and individual eyelashes. Destiny in particular has some truly stunning scenes and not just in the background, from the incomprehensible machinery of the secret Whisper mission to the aforementioned cybernetic Garden Of Salvation. God, I love Destiny’s giant weird sci-fi places. And, you know,going into guts and meatis often a really really big unreal place.
I thank my Destiny 2 raid group for their patience every time I held us up admiring architecture
But which is better?
Myself, there is nowhere I would rather be than in a really big unreal place.
