A Gaming Guide for the Non-Gamer in Your Life
For the last year, I’ve been attempting to share some of my gaming life with my significant other. It’s been a bit hit and miss and she largely believes that she’s better off in the “real” world. However, there are a few games that have connected and a few that could help ease the non-gamer in your life into the vibrant, shiny virtual world. The breakthrough came in the moment she tried the VR she (begrudgingly) bought me for Christmas, but more on that later.
Initially, it’s worth thinking about what might be stopping people from delving in to the world of games. To me, it seems as though the primary issues are the stereotype of both games and gamers, but also their inaccessibility to players who may not have much experience with the control schemes familiar to us.
So here it is, my guide to some games that might persuade the non-gamer in your life to pick up a controller (or mouse and keyboard). I’ve tried to consider games that break the stereotypes of complex, impenetrable RPGs or the annual christmas bestseller Call of Duty by offering serious narrative, deeper immersion or enjoyment in an unconventional manner. I’m a big fan of the “games-as-art” movement, so I’ve tried to incorporate a few games that can be enjoyed for their artistic merits too. As such, I shall begin with…
Limbo
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One of my all-time favourite games that I’ve replayed countless times, Limbo is PlayDead Games’ masterpiece. Although their more recent Inside was amazing, I still feel more fondly towards Limbo and it’s subtle but powerful narrative progression. To describe the power of its narrative would necessitate spoilers, but the ending is beautiful and perfect and has to be experienced.
The game offers a simple control scheme that is easily mastered and develops over a smooth learning curve that progresses to some genuinely challenging sections in later parts of the game. It’s ideal for first timers as it is really a case of left/right/jump/interact in a 2D environment, but the game offers a huge amount for it’s simplistic design.
The black and white visuals offer a classy interface that will appeal to fans of emotionally involving horror/neo-noir. It’s definitely a dark game that has been rated between BBFC 12 and PEGI 18 over its release history, now settled as a PEGI 16 / ESRB T. The first time you encounter just the leg of that spider, you’ll realise just how intense such a simple game can be.
Emotionally involving, surprisingly deep and simple to control, this is a great title to show off what games can offer. No multiplayer, so they’ll have to go this one alone (although that suits the solitude of the protagonist perfectly).
Portal 2
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Although an older title, this is one that can be picked up fairly cheaply on disc now. The puzzle design and largely non-combative gameplay makes this appealing to those seeking gameplay that’s technical and modern, but not about scoring goals competitively or shooting as many undead in as violent a way as possible. It may be last-gen, but Portal 2 still looks great and the interface is highly accessible after a short period of acclimatisation.
The single player campaign is fun and, like Limbo, has a perfect learning curve before firing portals all over the place whilst falling at great speed. However, the real reason I’m including this one is for the multiplayer element. A rarity these days, Portal 2 offers a fun co-op mode with likeable characters in the robots Atlas and P-Body. Rather than trying to help your non-gamer out by snatching the controller and just doing everything for them, with Portal 2, you can assist in-game and the whole experience becomes much more sociable. The multiplayer is even better with two screens and the game allows for cross-platform play, so you can boot up a copy on your laptop whilst your co op partner has their own screen on console for example.
A brilliant sense of humour and a progressive sense of challenge make this another accessible title where you can both play together co-operatively and enjoy the silliness that is a welcome part of Valve’s shared Portal/Half Life universe. And there’s cake*
*The cake may be a lie.
Flower
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Flower is probably the least “game” of the games on this list, but it’s beautiful & addictive and it’s completely relaxing. If you remember those terrible Zen games that came out on the Nintendo DS years ago, accompanied with hyperbolic statements about improving your state of mind and promoting deep relaxation, then this is nothing like those, but is entirely likely to fulfil those criteria.
Their second title for Sony, Flower is ThatGameCompany’s middle game between the equally well-regarded Fl0w and Journey. Similar to Fl0w, but slightly more immersive, polished and colourful, Flower is my favourite of the 3 titles they have released so far. Journey was a masterpiece, but the somewhat confusing level designs and occasional lapses make Flower my ideal choice for introducing to non-gamers.
The premise is simple. You are a petal. You float about collecting more petals and generally brightening the world up. Then you become a plant. You get 5 plants and your house is all lovely and relaxed and the outside world is a bit cheerier. OK, that sounds dreadful when put like that, so I must apologise to ThatGameCompany because Flower is so very much more than that. It’s an experience, and like all beautiful experiences, the experience is worth more than the reward. This is not a game for trophy hunters (although there are trophies and it is fun collecting them), but for relaxing and recognising the simple beauty in the world around us. The fantastic soundtrack (available on gorgeously presented vinyl from iam8bit, incidentally) is soothing and the simple sixaxis motion controls are so immersive that you can’t help but feel chilled out. This is all about experience, all about artistry. This is the absolute antithesis to Doom and quashes any stereotypes of gaming being hyper-violent, macho brutalism (or Fifa…). Of course, Doom is excellent, too, but you get my point.
Beautiful, relaxing, soothing and completely unique, Flower is definitely one to show to your non-gamer. …And I recommend you try it too; perfect wind down after a long session on Battlefield 1.
I have added the original PS3 trailer below, but note that the soundtrack is not indicative of that in-game. However, you do get a real sense of the game play, so it’s well worth a watch if you’re on the fence about a purchase:
Heavy Rain
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Another of my all-time favourite games, Heavy Rain is probably one of the finest narrative driven games/interactive movies (depending on your outlook) to date. I’ve been a fan of Quantic Dream since Omikron: The Nomad Soul on the Dreamcast and their improvement on that that came in the form of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy (depending on where you live). However, it was Heavy Rain that really took what made the PS2/XBox’s Fahrenheit successful and built on it, utilising the significantly more powerful PS3 console (now upgraded for the PS4). Although graphically bettered by Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain is undeniably the better game. Finally unshackled from the ridiculous US censorship that dogged Indigo Prophecy (It was given an ESRB AO on initial, uncensored release for a mild, but interactive sex scene, before being subsequently cut to gain an M whereas it was released without any issues in full with a BBFC 15 in the UK), Heavy Rain provided a mature game experience that caused significant emotional responses from the majority of its players. The opening scenes, although tedious, build to an unexpectedly bleak climax that sets the tone for the game experience as a whole. We veer from the loss of a pet, to a child and far beyond over the hours of gameplay, each element realistically treated and handled sensitively and in depth (aside from a brief moment of OTT torture porn late in the game which, although not graphically shocking, is unexpected and not quite in keeping with the remainder of the game).
Immediately, a game that has the player experience an attempted rape, mutilation, sex and infant mortality may seem like an odd choice for this list, but it all depends on how you view it. This isn’t gratuitous on any level; the game feels cinematic and developed and it elicits genuine emotion from the player. Heavy Rain offers an experience rarely found in games; it treats the player as an adult who is seeking narrative and characterisation and refuses to shy away from elements of reality that are often unexplored in games. PEGI and the ESRB may have rated it 18 and M respectively, but this is genuinely an adult game, for mature players; it’s maturity is the very thing that makes Heavy Rain not only one of the best games of all time, but a vital part of this list.
On the subject of mature games and emotional attachment, the next item is the only game that genuinely made me cry my eyes out at its resolution…
The Walking Dead: Season One
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First up, this game is nasty. It’s gory and vicious and forces you to make horrible, horrible choices. Seasons 2 and 3, although still great, lack the gameplay and depth that Season One had, hence my decision to focus on that initial batch of episodes. If the non-gamer you have in mind isn’t comfortable with guiding a young girl through a zombie apocalypse whilst fending off evil people, vicious zombies and a lot of really quite sweary friends, just give up now. Move on. However, if they can stomach the nastiness in this game (on a par with the comics rather than the watered down TV series – and yes I did see the Negan eye episode; it wasn’t that bad, just wait for Carl’s creepy eye-licking sex scene if they dare show it in a few season’s time…), the emotional depth and characterisation on offer will show just what video games can offer.
In any other medium, this would be a good story, but little else. By being INVOLVED with the characters and deciding their fates, my choices changing my relationships, I felt connected and responsible. By the end, I genuinely felt paternal towards Clementine. That final scene in episode 5 (no spoilers) had me bawling. I don’t cry at much, but I was so much a part of a fictional character’s life that I just couldn’t cope with what was happening. I’ve never felt how this game made me feel from reading any book or watching any film; this game series gave me an experience utterly unique to the interactive media form and really deserves to be experienced by anyone who would claim that video games can’t replicate the intensity of well-crafted written fiction.
Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series is rarely perfect, but it gets the emotional depth required to make you genuinely feel for its characters. This is a series that is perfect for showing off exactly what interactive media can offer over other forms of fiction.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
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The common denominator between a lot of the games on this list is pacing. For the non-gamer, overtly fast-paced games can be frustrating and intimidating. Imagine if the first time you ever drove a car, your driving instructor took you out on the freeway, headed in to the fast lane and then said, “right, off you go, then.” Picking up an intense action shooter where you die in the first few seconds of fumbling to find which button has an x on it isn’t fun, so naturally this list is, for the most part, comprised of slower games. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is no exception; it’s about calm exploration of a gentle rural English setting (based on a real town, although still exactly how Americans like to view us Brits, complete with thatched cottages and quaint churches that date back further than American history) following an incident that has left all characters in a spectral form, slowly revealing to the player what has happened.
Again, the game is mature in both senses of the word. These are realistic characters; they sleep together and swear and lead complex lives, but they remain believable and relatable. Their stories belong in the adult world; to the stereotypical teenage gamer, the narrative would be dull and lacking in excitement, but for someone seeking depth, this game has it in spades. This is easily more on a par with classic British literature than the canon of Steven Segal movies, but that’s why it’s on this list.
As with everything they’ve made before it, The Chinese Room fully understand genuinely mature content from their earliest work in the serious horror Half Life 2 mod, Korsakovia, which attempted to realistically depict the reality of suffering with Korsakovia syndrome to the deeply profound and more widely known Dear Esther. Like Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture has been described as a walking simulator, a term which I hate. However, that terminology does reveal what is on offer here. Gently exploring a rural village and coming to know the characters and their relationships is the majority of what’s on offer. For some, that is everything they need, but it will not suit every player’s needs.
I must conclude my appraisal of this game with a nod to the impeccable soundtrack which is composed by Jessica Curry, who also scored Dear Esther. She is an incredible young talent and deserves recognition for her beautiful soundtrack work. The soundtrack is available on Sony Classical on physical & digital formats and is well worth picking up if you like classical music/scores. It’s easily her finest and most accomplished work to date and can be experienced in the trailer below.
The moment that my partner first actively wanted to play a game, however, came from her first experiences of VR. I suppose the sense of immersion combined with the effortless motion control from natural head movements made the interaction more accessible and more grounded in reality, even though her favourite experience so far has been the ridiculously unrealistic…
Surgeon Simulator ER Edition
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So far, from my experiences of VR, Surgeon Simulator has been one of my favourite experiences. Batman: Arkham VR looks stunning and is meticulously well made and the Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour and Kitchen demos have utterly terrified me, but Surgeon Simulator is such ridiculously good fun, that it has to be on this list. It’s cartoonish presentation makes it fairly safe to play with only the most sensitive players at risk of offence and the Move controls make what is famously a broken game completely playable. The level of interactivity in Nigel’s office alone is incredible and, due to the heightened levels of immersion offered by VR, I’ve fallen off my sofa twice now after trying to lean on his desk in order to get a better shot at his bin (there are two trophies attached to this, I’m not just chucking bits of office around for a giggle).
This game is just FUN. I defy anyone not to grin with glee as they hammer Bob’s rib cage to bits with shocking accuracy provided by the excellent implementation of VR technology. I’ve loved watching people who never play games pick up my Move controllers and hammer away in to thin air (in real life) and want to experience more. I even managed to persuade my sister-in-law to play Resident Evil‘s Kitchen demo on the back of her positive experience, but that resulted in her panicking and removing the headset for good. Hence that game not being on this list…
A final nod has to go to Playstation VR Worlds (PSVR exclusive) for it’s immersive experiences which are all absolutely perfect introductions to what the PSVR can do. I’m fairly settled that VR is going to be the future and that it will bring a lot of new people in to gaming.
Hopefully this guide has given you a few ideas of games to try out on some non-gamers and the uninitiated. It’d be good to see your thoughts in the comments and in our forums; what games do you recommend for first-timers or the reluctant? Maybe you’ve only just got in to games? What do you love?
