What we've been playing - oil rigs, court cases, and great adaptations
A few of the things that have us hooked this week.
26th July 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week we enjoy poking around spooky oil rigs, we object in dramatic court cases, and we discover what we love about a game series through a TV adaptation of it.
What have you been playing?
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, PS4
I first played Ace Attorney when it was released on the DS in the noughties, using the handheld's touchscreen to flick through evidence and the microphone to shout "Objection!" during the court scenes. I loved it, but I never managed to complete it, so I was thrilled when Capcom released a shiny remaster of the first three games for modern consoles which - thanks to my never-ending backlog - I've only just started.
The games have a rinse-and-repeat format: collect enough evidence to build your case and then head to court for the witness cross-examination. Once you’ve cleared your client's name, it's case closed - until the next mystery starts. But no matter how many times you repeat it, it never stops being a thrill - furiously combing through the evidence in court, trying to find the flaws in a seemingly airtight testimony, and then throwing it all back in some villain's face.
I've got many more cases ahead of me and I can't wait to delve into them. It'll help keep me busy until the much-demanded Ace Attorney Investigations remaster drops later this year.
-Dion
Still Wakes the Deep, Xbox Series X
More horror games should be set on oil rigs. I discussed Still Wakes the Deep's 1970s North Sea setting with creative director John McCormack last year, and I remember him reeling off an array of phobias that oil rigs check off: vertigo, drowning, claustrophobia, isolation... The list goes on.
Yet after finishing Still Wakes the Deep, I wish I'd been able to spend longer sinking my teeth into its perilous world. Not in terms of game length - I think the six-or-so hour running-time is perfect - but in terms of how suddenly you're thrust into peril, and how little time you have to soak in your surroundings before that happens.
There are glimpses in the game's opening 20 minutes of its intriguing 1970s time period, where you can poke around crewmates' cabins and see mentions of worker unrest and the social issues of the time. But too quickly, the game's main threat was introduced and this world fell away - before the stakes of saving it and your fellow crewmates had been properly established.
With only a couple of exceptions, Still Wakes the Deep chooses to keep its cast at arms' length. Even main character Caz McLeary, a Glaswegian electrician, is kept relatively vague. It's a horror trope where you spend the first third of a story building up to what's to come, but with so few stories featuring working class heroes, and such a potentially interesting time period as a backdrop, I had hoped for more. It makes me want more games set on oil rigs, please.
-Tom
The Fallout TV show, Prime Video
For some reason, I'm only just watching the Fallout TV show and I know, it's not a game, but it's close enough that I'm going to allow myself to include it here. I'm about half-way through it, and like many others, I'm really enjoying it. I love how it captures the games' farcical tone, and I'm really impressed by the attention to detail and the many small nods to the games. I yelp every time I see one. It's a seriously impressive production - great acting, great set-pieces, great sets. But what's really come through, for me, is a feeling the TV show showcases Fallout better than the games ever have.
Disclaimer: I have played a chunk of Fallout 3 but I didn't finish it, and I didn't play much of Fallout 4 beyond the introductory sequence. I haven't played the old Fallout games and I haven't touched Fallout 76, so my knowledge of the series is patchy. It's fair to say there's a lot about it I don't understand. But this is where the TV series comes in. It's helping me understand what's so special about Fallout.
Bethesda and the showrunners have had to inhale all of Fallout and then exhale it in a way everyone can immediately enjoy. They aren't able to rely on the long-length of a game campaign to entice you in - they have to get you hooked early on. This process has done wonders for people like me. I had no idea the Brotherhood was so interesting, for example. I didn't know they referred to each other as knights and had weird customs around that, and I love it. I didn't know about all the shady stuff surrounding the Vaults either, and it's really intriguing. I've absorbed so much more about the set-up of the world and its potential for great stories from the TV show. It's given me a much deeper appreciation of why people love Fallout.
-Bertie