P
erhaps the thing I love most
about Gray Matter is that in this
world, a sign exists somewhere in
England that has ‘Oxford’ in one
direction and ‘London’ in the other.
No distances. No other info Just that.
And this sign being rotated by bad
weather is a silly premise for an
otherwise nicely grown up adventure
game. It’s the sort of setting that feels
like it should be a show from the
mid-90s: ex-goth, magician, and con
artist Sam ends up accidentally
working as an assistant for acclaimed
but damaged neurobiologist David
Styles. It’s unpretentious and cosy,
from the gentle puzzling, wonderful
music, and elegant writing, the
point-and-click equivalent of
an ill-fitting old jumper on a
frosty day.
GRAY MATTER
73
O
ne thing games so often seem to
struggle with is the balance of
bastardry. It’s always easier to be nice
than nasty, with bad behaviour
usually netting short-term gain but
missing out on long-term rewards.
Right from the start, Vampyr offers a
different choice: the more people you
kill, the more directly powerful you
become. The problem is you’re
playing a doctor, and apparently the
hippocratic oath doesn’t end with
undeath. More excruciatingly, in
order to lure people into the shadows
and drink them like milkshakes,
you have to get to know them first.
Lumpen combat gets in the way of an
otherwise distinguished bloodsucking
sim, but Vampyr deserves
credit for making me
reconsider playing nice.VAMPYR
70
T
he subject matter and middling
scores should inform you that
this month’s theme was intended to
be ‘England’. But it ended up being
‘London’, so The Occupation is here
for anyone who’s ever travelled
further north than Milton Keynes.
It’s a sharp immersive sim that has
you unravelling a mystery over a
fixed time. You interview people, rifle
through bins, go places you shouldn’t- Dishonored with pondering, not
stabbing. I’m glad this game exists,
even if the constraints and
trespass anxiety bring me out
in a damp sweat.
THE OCCUPATION
71
59
THEY’RE BACK
EXPECT TO PAY
£45
DEVELOPER
Compulsion GamesPUBLISHER
Gearbox PublishingNEED TO KNOW
N
ow here’s a premise to
chill the blood. A game
built not just on the British
predisposition towards abject
misery, but the idea that it’s
grown so intolerable that we’re
forced to self-medicate.We Happy Few crafts a great alternate
reality, set in a post-war Britain
where Germany won then stole all
the children. It’s a place painted with
the counter-cultural weirdness and
threatening surrealism of the likes of
The Prisoner and A Clockwork
Orange. But then? Then it makes me
fight bees in randomly generated
fields. It’s almost like We Happy Few
is willing me to have a hateful time,
like some kind of clever and utterly
misguided metacommentary. I search
around in endless bins to find the
necessary equipment to keep my
blood sugar up. I fail to navigatepoorly-explained societal structures
by wearing the wrong outfits. If We
Happy Few was a simpler, less
cerebral game I’d expect it to feel this
punitive; but it’s just clever enough
that everything I do feels like a
personal failure. And when fights
happen, the game seems upset at me
that I’m bludgeoning my assailants to
death, as if the slipshod stealth and
tangled systems left me any other
choice. The result is like playing an
anxiety attack: a waking stress dream
where you’re having breakfast with
Gillian Anderson at Claridge’s but
your cutlery has turned into your
feet. So close to being special, yet so
far. And despite this, the setting and
story are compelling enough that
some part of me still wants to keep
playing. And if that’s not
the most British concept
imaginable, I’m not sure
what is.JOY DIVISION
Few things are more British than WE HAPPY FEW
BELOW: (^) Is there anything more depressing than a single child’s shoe?
Looking at
watches in games:
stressful.