I’m still searching for the one true game, but I haven’t found it. Instead, I’ve found a flock of games that I’m playing in rotation right now, which is not like me at all. Normally, I play one game at a time (and BOI:R as the relaxer every day), and then call it a day. In the past, when I wasn’t obsessed by a new game, I’d be playing a Dark Souls game as my main. Now, however, I’m in a unique situation that has me somewhat flummoxed.
I’m playing…one, two, three, four games at the moment (and, yes, one of them is a Dark Souls game) in addition to BOI:R. Five games! That’s unfathomable. I also tried the demo for a game called Death and Taxes by Placeholder Gameworks because it was touted as a game similar to Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope, which was an incredible game. I’m still sad I can’t play his follow-up, Return of the Obra Dinn because of motion sickness. I had seen NL play Death and Taxes, and I thought it looked interesting enough to give it a try.
I wanted to love it as much as I loved Papers, Please, and it had a lot going for it. The artwork is great. It has a jaunty tone to it that I really grooved on. There’s a cute cat in it! And the comic book style presentation slaps. But, the gameplay itself, is…lacking. You’re the Grim Reaper, called up by Fate, and you have to decide who lives and who dies from your desk in…wherever you are. Fate gives you the dossiers of a group of people, and then tells you how many have to die. There are conditions to be met, such as, “Save all the scientists”, which is how the game pushes you to make hard choices.
The problem is that the jaunty tone, while appreciated, does not fit the purpose of the game–if the purpose is to wring pathos at making hard choices. That was the purpose of Papers, Please, and that game did it brilliantly. This demo is only the first seven days, so maybe that’s not the purpose of this game. At any rate, I didn’t find it very difficult to meet the requirements, and I didn’t care at all about the humans save one. Who I had to kill.
The other issue is that they don’t use gender or ethnicity for the people, but they still physically ascribe gender and race characteristics. I can see why they did it that way, but it rubs me the wrong way. It’s a small gripe in the grand scheme of things, but I could see it getting more annoying over time.
I feel bad for saying I didn’t gel with the game, but that’s the truth. It’s not a bad game by far, but it just didn’t hold my interest. I still have it on my wishlist, and maybe I’ll grab it when it’s a few bucks. For now, though, I have plenty on my plate.