DECEMBER 2020 PCWorld 998.give me sweaty palms and aching thumbs.
That’s the surface level. Then there’s the
subtext, but again, it’s not that complicated or
even that hidden. As I wrote when we
bequeathed Celeste our Game of the Year
prize in 2018 (go.pcworld.com/18gm):
“Celeste Mountain is a metaphor—for
depression, for anxiety, for self-loathing, for
all the various demons people fight day-to-
day, often behind the scenes. That’s the
‘reveal.’ It’s not particularly subtle or
unique, the mountain-as-metaphor-for-
struggle, but Celeste perfectly weds its
mechanics with its themes. Celeste believes
in your ability to keep fighting, to keep
trying even when the world seems arrayed
against you or when you fall down further
than you’ve ever been before. Celeste
believes in you.”
Simple, and thus hard to convey why it’s
so special in words. Celeste resonated with
me though (go.pcworld.com/csrv). It was
the perfect game for me at the perfect time,
releasing when I was struggling with my own
mental health. Celeste said keep going,
don’t worry, you can make it up the
mountain—and it did so while repeatedly
kicking my ass with some of the best
platforming this decade.- N I E R: AUTO M ATA
Nier: Automata asks a lot of its players—but
mostly patience. The talk of Nier: Automata
(go.pcworld.com/nier) having “five endings”