7 Best Games That Take Advantage Of The Medium

Video games are a pretty unique entertainment medium, especially for storytelling. They allow a level of interactivity not commonly afforded to other methods of storytelling. Even the least interactive video game narratives ultimately require the player to act in some small way.

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We’ve come a long way from the beeps and boops of our video game progenitors, telling some truly impressive stories since. Though there are plenty of examples in the medium’s relatively short life, these titles stand out for their ability to tell their stories in a way that only video games can.

7 Until Dawn

A Gaming Night At The Movies

Though cinematic games go way back into video game history, Until Dawn is arguably the best example of the genre before or since. It’s basically a horror movie where you direct the actions of the principal actors, leading to wildly divergent results.

While, for the most part, it’s a movie where you occasionally make decisions, it also ensures that you're present by throwing in simple tasks or QTEs that can have profound and sometimes lethal consequences in the story. There are even segments that throw the player-game relationship into question, seemingly addressing you directly, only to lead to a wild twist later on.

6 Metal Gear Solid

A Classic At Messing With You

The Metal Gear Solid games are no stranger to playing with the fourth wall, from leaning on it to outright breaking it and, for the most part, maintaining a straight face while doing so.

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The most famous example is the infamous Psycho Mantis fight in the first Metal Gear Solid, where you know you have something special when you have to resort to some…unorthodox methods to emerge victorious. This is after Mantis tells you all about your other saved games. Not to mention that throughout the fight, all sorts of effects make you think that something is going on with your real-life TV and PlayStation.

This is just one example of these mind-bending fourth wall breaks in the MGS games, and they are as glorious as they are disorienting.

5 OMORI

A Deeply Detailed And Emotional Odyssey

OMORI is a lot. It’s a game about grief, guilt, escapism, and a million little things that make being human as painful as it is sublime. A major part of that vibe is how many layers there are to every little detail in the game.

Something as seemingly bog-standard as RPG status effects inform you of each character’s reaction to the death of a loved one. Choosing to stay in the infinitely more fun dream world versus the real world. Hollow escapism that ultimately harms everyone around you. There are volumes of stories told in little gameplay details we normally take for granted everywhere in OMORI, something that a movie or even the densest novel would have difficulty matching.

4 Undertale

A new classic RPG about RPGs

One good way to take advantage of the medium? Have the medium play an important part in the story. Such is the case with Undertale, the story of a lost child trying to get back home that becomes so much more.

The game examines your relationship with various RPG mechanics that we normally take for granted, be it combat, dialogue, or even something as ubiquitous as saving. Such common elements become important to the plot and world, expanding the narrative while showing you a mirror to how you play. Of course, this is on top of having one of the most lovable casts in gaming history.

3 Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core

Breaks Your Heart In Real Time

Crisis Core pulls an interesting trick on you, something of a long con that the game introduces early on but doesn’t pay off in a major way until the end of the game. This is the Digital Mind Wave system, basically his Limit Breaks on slots.

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Your Limit Breaks on the DMW are tied to characters you meet in the story, with effects colored by Zack’s memories of them, accompanied by their portrait. Sometimes, you even get a cutscene of Zack interacting with the character.

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This is used to devastating effect at the end of the game when Zack faces off against the Shinra army. As the damage wears him down, the reels on the DMW actually shatter, reflecting how, even empowered by his friends, it’s not enough. By the time he’s down to his last connection, his romantic interest Aerith, he’s holding on by a thread. Even knowing how it inevitably ends can’t rob the moment of its emotion.

2 Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

A Masterclass At Messing With You

Though MGS might have pioneered messing with you by blurring the lines between reality and the game, Eternal Darkness took the concept and ran with it in spectacular fashion. With sanity as a main theme, the game actually tracked your character’s descent to madness and deployed some dirty tricks to screw with you should you let their sanity meter dip too far.

There are plenty of horror scares among these: blood, gore, a dutch angle or two, but the truly terrifying stuff hits you directly. These effects ranged from making it look like your TV turned off, your Gamecube got disconnected, or even that your file got deleted!

1 Silent Hill 2

You're Being Observed...and Judged

Most outcomes in video games are determined by binary choices. They decide what your character does, who they spare, who they screw over, etc. You know, standard options that earn you the “Choices Matter” tag on Steam. Silent Hill 2 is a different breed, whose narrative is determined not by choices on a dialogue screen but by your behavior. The ending you get is determined by what you do and how you act in the game.

Do you stay topped up or run around with low health? Check on a letter from your dead wife? Look at that bloodstained knife too often? All these and more can affect James Sunderland’s fate, and chances are, on your first playthrough, you won’t even know it’s happening.

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