8 Video Games That Only Work Once

WhatCulture

08/03/2024

A surprise is only surprising the first time around.

Transcript

00:00 You ever wished you could play a game again for the first time, re-experience a twist,

00:04 a really cool level, character reveal, gameplay unlockable or whatever else fresh?

00:08 Same.

00:09 Whilst it's true that in art across the board, experiencing it multiple times can

00:13 really make you appreciate what a team of creators have put together, sometimes part

00:17 of the intent is geared towards first exposure.

00:20 I'm Scott from Wockulture.com and these are 8 Video Games That Only Work Once.

00:24 Number 8, The Last Guardian.

00:26 Following Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian's prolonged development and release

00:29 had gamers hoping it would strike with that same whimsical Team Ico brand of magic we'd

00:34 come to love.

00:35 To an extent, it did.

00:37 I personally adore this game and think it has one of the best representations of that

00:41 real world bond that we form with animals and pets in video game form.

00:46 Scaling towers, fleeing an unknown sense of evil, reaching those literal heights of the

00:49 prison you and creature Trico are trapped in to escape are all such memorable moments,

00:54 once it's done you'll breathe one hell of a sigh of relief and be immortally glad

00:58 that you went on the journey.

01:00 Outside of that being a reason to not play again, if you do want more, The Last Guardian

01:04 sadly doesn't have many secrets.

01:06 Likely down to how much of a struggle it was to get this over the finish line across a

01:10 very lengthy development, things like Shadow of the Colossus' secret garden area just

01:15 aren't here.

01:16 Number 7, Any David Cage Game.

01:18 As one of the early pioneers of branching path storytelling and immersive character

01:22 writing, to a point, David Cage has been quoted multiple times as encouraging people to only

01:26 play his games once.

01:28 Whatever choices you make, whichever characters live or die and the actions you see, they

01:32 are yours.

01:33 Your Ethan Mars opened the fridge for some orange juice or spent his time sketching architectural

01:38 plans before the story really kicked in in heavy rain, that was your Ethan Mars' morning

01:43 and no one else's.

01:45 Go back to Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy and you have one of the coolest opening levels

01:49 in gaming history.

01:50 A possessed man who we watch murder someone in cold blood, then put under our control

01:55 to ask the question of what would you do, if faced with a dead body and zero real context

02:00 on what just happened.

02:01 David Cage is a notably divisive figure with more misses than hits, but his commitment

02:06 to weighty decisions and asking that you live with the consequences is second to none.

02:10 Number 6, Superliminal.

02:12 Games like Portal revolutionised first person puzzlers, kickstarting a trend of titles that

02:16 do really awesome memorable things with a first person perspective.

02:20 One of the absolute coolest that nails the French optical illusion technique of Trompe

02:24 l'oeil is Superliminal.

02:26 Messing with distance and physical space, you can enlarge items the closer they are

02:30 to you while holding, or just grab something from the background to instantly bring it

02:34 into the foreground, maintaining its size until you start moving closer again.

02:38 All of this kinda breaks your mind as it contradicts everything we know about space, physics and

02:44 everything else.

02:45 Once you've recalibrated your brain to experience Superliminal though, there's a profound

02:49 sense of knowing you'll never feel this brain-expanding sensory overload ever again.

02:53 Kinda like going through Portal again.

02:56 Potentially the curse of all puzzle-based games or completing puzzles in general, Superliminal

03:00 is an immaculate ride, but one you can't really take more than once.

03:04 Number 5, Second Sight.

03:06 Back in 2004, psychic games were at the centre of a hot debate.

03:10 Second Sight or PsyOps the Mindgate Conspiracy.

03:13 The former a brilliant title with an unexpected ending, the latter an action-focused shooter

03:17 with some of the most fun psychic physics powers ever.

03:20 Second Sight puts you in the amnesiac shoes of one John Vaddick, a man once part of a

03:24 research team that ends up granted psychic powers.

03:27 Something's not right, things have gone wrong and we don't know why.

03:31 For the most part, players will be trying to unravel what happened to Vaddick, why the

03:34 mission was a failure and why people keep dying all around him.

03:38 The big twist however is that any of this isn't what has happened, but what will happen.

03:43 Full on spoilers, but the present we're playing is actually a premonition.

03:47 A potential future of what could be.

03:49 Instead of playing the past, it's the present interspersed with visions of the future.

03:53 Once you know, it's such a cool narrative framing device that all the mystery and power

03:57 of that reveal can never land in the same way again.

04:00 Second Sight becomes one of those incredible narratives you can only be in awe of from

04:04 then on out.

04:05 Number 4, Alien Noir.

04:07 The rise and fall of a fallible man Cole Phelps, the seedy side of Los Angeles, Alien Noir

04:12 tells a great story against the backdrop of post-war drug trading and limited support

04:16 for veterans.

04:17 The caveat to such a vast narrative on that first run through though is that you're enthralled

04:21 with the idea that this particular tale could go anywhere.

04:24 Cole's personal rise and fall sits alongside solving various murders and visiting crime

04:29 scenes, interrogating witnesses with what feels like scores of outcomes as you nail

04:33 lines of questioning or fail to extract every piece of information.

04:36 Somewhat sadly then, and this did happen with the illusion of choice we had in Telltale's

04:41 Walking Dead games too, once you know most outcomes play out the same way regardless

04:45 of anything, it just isn't the same.

04:47 Alien Noir is certainly divisive, with its sporadically programmed responses to certain

04:51 questions and prompts, but as a uniquely ambitious detective game, it's arguably never been

04:56 beat.

04:57 Number 3, Sayonara Wild Hearts.

04:59 All video games, some more than others, are artful expressions of creativity, but some

05:03 majorly prioritise visual punch.

05:05 Sayonara Wild Hearts is an absolute knockout, a playable album of quick-time events and

05:10 timing-based boss battles set to a gorgeous electro-pop soundtrack by pop maestro Dan

05:15 Olsen.

05:16 Sitting nicely in the genre of games you'll pretty much play with your eyeballs, the likes

05:20 of Rez, Journey, Thumper, The Artful Escape, Grease and more prove there's something

05:24 to this approach that really works.

05:26 For Wild Hearts' story, it's an interpretational tale about heartbreak and losing your muse.

05:31 Seeing your character go up against a range of unique bosses in essentially one giant

05:35 scripted sequence, replete with martial arts fights, motorbike stunts, superpowers, giant

05:39 wolves and everything in between.

05:41 Beating the game unlocks album mode, stringing together every level into one extended music

05:46 video, though there's no repeating what it feels like to experience developer Samogo's

05:50 ideas for each level first time.

05:52 Number 2, Soma.

05:54 Frictional games make very intense first-person horror games, first with Penumbra, then striking

05:59 gold with the Amnesia series before the sci-fi-focused Soma in 2015.

06:03 A trip into the future of sorts, the nature of the soul, existentialism and the power

06:08 of memories, Soma adds great twists on established narratives that Frictional take to the next

06:12 level in game form.

06:14 Whilst I'll steer away from spoilers because Soma is just so painfully overlooked and underplayed,

06:19 the game has memorable spooky moments, indestructible monsters and a really claustrophobic underwater

06:24 setting that makes it genuinely terrifying.

06:26 It goes without saying that atmosphere, tone and immersion are prioritising factors in

06:31 why you should plug yourself into Soma.

06:33 In the lights and just see it through.

06:35 Emerging on the other side, you'll know why.

06:38 Soma is a tight linear game with a real focus.

06:40 There aren't any alternate endings to explore and no changing where everything goes.

06:45 Play it once, savour the ending and know you just beat one of the finest, most cerebral

06:49 horrors there is.

06:50 And number 1, Death Stranding.

06:52 The game that inspired this whole list, there's something about Death Stranding's unique

06:56 rollout of game mechanics, balmy story beats, creative characters and overall knitting together

07:00 of the Strand genre that was the most consistent fun I had with a game across the 8th generation.

07:06 Why?

07:07 Because it's just so different.

07:08 The appeal is so uniquely tied to pure gameplay.

07:11 The setup of go-deliver stuff sounds banal and pointless on paper, but with the tactility

07:16 of exploration and the fact you're overcoming a 3D space alongside thousands of other players

07:20 sharing items and pathways alike, there's just nothing else like it.

07:24 Also as I record this, Death Stranding 2 just got confirmed by Norman Reedus.

07:28 So praise to this strange AAA indie project of an idea that Hideo Kojima is somehow continuing

07:34 to explore.

07:35 The point with all of this though is that Death Stranding keeps delivering new mechanics

07:38 and revelations across its 50+ hour runtime.

07:41 Side quests net you new gameplay boosting equipment, players expanding highways or building

07:46 zip lines in their respective time zones might encourage you to explore in a whole new direction.

07:51 I will say the story barely lands and trophy data on PS4 shows less than 30% of people

07:56 saw it through to its balmy conclusion anyway, but it almost doesn't matter.

08:00 For those of us who did stick with Death Stranding all the way through, felt that weird set of

08:04 gameplay systems coalesce and trudge through snowy mountain regions to find a character

08:09 called Heartman who has a cardiac arrest every two minutes, that was a journey we can never

08:14 duplicate.

08:15 Roll on, Death Stranding 2.

08:17 And those are my picks for 8 video games that only work once.

08:20 Let me know your favourites down in the comments below and please subscribe to the WhatCulture

08:23 Gaming Podcast.

08:24 For now, I've been Scott from whatculture.com and I'll catch you soon.

8 Video Games That Only Work Once

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