So we have had the 4 runners up and the winner of this year's PC Game of the Year award, now here's a new category I've never featured before: The Wildcard.
This is for the one game that doesn't really fit in the classifications required for either winner or runner up. Maybe it is a game that was released on another platform in a previous year, or it was DLC, or maybe Early Access?
Well for the first ever NFN Wildcard I present you with D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die.
D4 is an episodic game much like Life is Strange or anything by TellTale Games where you play a detective from Boston who is investigating the murder of his wife. This is done through a unique talent of the characters in how he is able to travel back in time through objects and the time relevant to them.
It is also a total mind-fuck.
Imagine a murder mystery where every character is designed and played by Jean-Paul Gaultier. That is pretty much how D4 plays out even going as far as having one character who I am pretty certain is an actual cat, but for some reason you see her as a human girl.
Then there's the really tall slow talking doctor dude who appears out of no where in order to give you mini games involving snow or 4-leafed clovers or some such nonsense.
The whole game is crazy, but ingenious for the exact same reasons.
Much like Life is Strange; the writing, acting and music is spot on pulling you right into the situation, storyline emotional engagement. Unlike Life is Strange, this game is incomplete.
Advertised as Season 1 the game ends on a huge cliff-hanger with no closure at all. To begin with you want more, you really want to know what happens next, but after a while apathy sets in and you know it's not coming and really it's just annoying.
The final episode ends in such a way that should actually be the gap between penultimate episode and finale, not the last episode, but instead this is the last episode and because of a lack of fore thought (what if this doesn't sell as well as I hope it will) we're left with an incomplete mess.
An incomplete mess that is insanely lovable!
Don't get me wrong, I love this game! It is such an experience I would recommend that everyone buy it, and who knows if they did - maybe we'd see Season 2 produced, but it is incomplete and because of that it is unable to feature in my list outside of the Wildcard listing.
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And so ends my PC Game of the Year for 2015. I hope you enjoyed these and I would welcome thoughts and feelings. Yes there were certain big names that were left out. Trust me; I played them, but I didn't think they were all that great - but this is not about bashing on those games, and instead celebrating the games I loved.
Until next time; stay safe and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
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