Yi Zhong/Staff

Violence and conflict have always been fundamental in video games. As video games became defined by win and loss states, violence and death followed suit. Twenty years ago, early ultra-violent titles such as “Doom” and “Wolfenstein 3D” took a heavy share of the market. Even classic nonshooter games such as “Super Mario Brothers” had central mechanics of killing and avoiding death. And just as in any other entertainment medium, tensions rise when the stakes are high, and what could be higher than life or death?

While more recent games have expanded upon exploring deeper, more profound themes, gunplay and conflict remain at their core. In fact, the three most critically acclaimed games released this year are games in which your interaction with the world is done mainly with your gun. “The Last of Us” attempts to explore the idea of self, family and community in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. “Grand Theft Auto V” attempts to satirize the American Dream in a world of excess and luxury. “Bioshock Infinite” attempts to explore the idea of fate as contrasted with American exceptionalism and political dichotomies. These themes are explored only through expository cutscenes; for the other 90 percent of the game, the virtual worlds are viewed by looking down the barrel of a gun.

Yet one of the largest controversies surrounding the release of “Grand Theft Auto V” two weeks ago was based not on the mindless murder of innocent civilians or the casual violence throughout the game but on a player-controlled torture scene during one of the missions. It’s one of the most brutal and uncomfortable segments I’ve ever played in a game. But in contrast to the use of excessive violence and gore in the rest of the medium, the violence in this scene opposes and satirizes the use of torture, even if its message isn’t entirely original.

To provide some context, almost every character within the universe of “Grand Theft Auto V” is an awful human being — calling the protagonists “antiheroes” would be a stretch. Playing as Trevor, the eccentric lunatic of the three protagonists, you’re forced by crooked federal agents to torture the clearly innocent electrician of an assassination target. The torture provides little information, just enough to provide a vague outline of a target who most likely was innocent. But this scene makes the player confront this man begging for mercy and freely choose which torture methods to use.

Aside from antagonizing the federal agents you’re forced to work for in the context of the game, this scene confronts the uselessness and horrors of torture. It’s a message that has certainly been expressed in more complex ways in other media, but being placed in the role of the torturer, mixed with the game’s satirical dark humor, adds a certain weight to the game’s message. In a medium in which violence is within the norm, it’s saddening that media outlets are criticizing the scene that actually is attempting to say something about violence and the horrific acts we, as players, are willing to commit.

If anything, criticism and concern should be directed toward games that sanitize violence, such as “Call of Duty,” which equates warfare to a sport in which killing others becomes reduced to increasing numbers and statistics in its metagame. Even if “Grand Theft Auto V’s” torture scene is a bit excessive, this surplus of violence confronts the player with the question of how far he or she is willing to go.

As video games grow to provide deeper, introspective experiences, chastising them for depicting graphic, disturbing scenes that attempt to make a statement only sets the medium back. If anything, we should be more disturbed by games that are willing to permit the player to evade any serious critical reflection in order to provide a mindless, more “fun” experience.

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Rockstar Games/Courtesy

The first trailer released for this game came out in November 2011, and since that time, the Internet has exploded into a frenzy of Grand Theft Auto V news. Various YouTube channels and entire websites have developed as a result of the massive hype and high expectations of this game. Now that the game is finally here, it is safe to say that not only were these expectations met, but they were surpassed. GTA V is the staple of open-world games and a great example of a worthwhile sequel to a franchise that has already received massive critical acclaim. Through its story, world and gameplay, GTA V proves to be a strong contender for game of the year.

The story of GTA V is consistently entertaining. For the first time in the Grand Theft Auto series, there are three playable characters who all add something new to the narrative table.

Michael is a wealthy, middle-aged “retired” criminal who is miserable due to the terrible relationship he has with his dysfunctional family.  Franklin is a young gang member trying to get out of the hood and gangbanger lifestyle in order to be a part of the 1 percent. Trevor, the third new character, is a middle-aged psychopath who is trying to control the drug and weapons trafficking businesses in Blaine County. Each character has his own motives and personality, and the way they interact and develop their relationships with one another contributes to the engagement players will have in the plot.

The map of GTA V is huge — almost 50 square miles to traverse. However, not only is the map colossal, but it is also very diverse, with a variety of environments such as tall mountains, beaches, strip malls, urban environments and upscale neighborhoods. Moreover, all of these environments are different not only through their aesthetics but also through the personality of the NPCs. These aspects produce the feeling that this is a living world, with living people, who are living out their lives.

Each part of the map has its own flavor and aura around it — downtown Los Santos feels like the financial district of Los Angeles, Rockford Hills encompasses all of the glam that people would feel in Beverly Hills and Sandy Shores trailer park feels like a real redneck haven.

The shooting, driving and mission structure in the game have significantly improved, giving the player more control over his or her actions and giving the impression that no two missions are the same. To illustrate, there are certain missions in the game in which all characters are present, and players are able to switch between them to progress in a different way. There are also a number of side missions to get involved in and random events to encounter. Additionally, some of these events can correlate to main missions.

For instance, while playing as Michael, I picked up a woman who had just gotten out of a car accident due to a robbery gone wrong. Later on, I was actually able to hire this woman to act as a driver in one of the heists. This shows that the game has so much depth that no one player has the same experience as another.
With an engaging story, a massive living world and improved mechanics, GTA V gives the player a gaming experience unlike any other. This game represents not only a revolution in the GTA franchise but a revolution in the entire industry. This game is a must-buy, making the wait for the Oct. 1 release of Grand Theft Auto Online — the multiplayer component — that much harder.

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Fighting games have notoriously hard learning curves. Unless you and a friend are willing to spend time learning complicated systems, mastering perfectly-timed button combinations and constantly practicing against  one another for weeks, most fighting game matches devolve into button-mashing and hoping that cool moves happen randomly. But “Divekick” removes all the excessively time-consuming elements of fighting games to create a seemingly simple yet surprisingly complex game that  captures the tension-filled play of high-level fighting games.

At first impression, the premise of “Divekick” seems like a joke. The game is controlled by only two buttons: dive and kick. The dive button makes your character jump while the kick button initiates a diagonal kick.

One kick is enough to knock out your opponent and end the round. This means quick fights that are tense, exciting and goofy as you and your opponent fly through the air, attempting to dive-kick each other.

The game features single-player stories, split-screen local multiplayer and online multiplayer modes, but the crazy, intense nature of the game is well-suited for local matchups.

But the layers of complexity built upon this two-button system make high-level play, usually reserved for those who have dedicated themselves to fighting games, immediately accessible.

Both the dive and kick actions are contextually different, depending on whether your character is in the air or not. Landing your dive-kick on your opponent’s head also stuns him or her momentarily into the next round, giving you the opportunity to make a quick offensive. You also gain points on a “Kick Factor” meter throughout the match, which you can use for special moves by hitting both buttons simultaneously.

The game features 13 characters, and each character has unique jumps, kicking angles and special moves. But at its core, the fight is based on psyching out your opponent and predicting his or her movements to land the perfect dive-kick.

Despite the game’s simplicity, the aesthetic surrounding “Divekick” is filled with references and inside jokes that only devotees of the fighting game community will know.

Originally a Kickstarter project that was canceled and picked up by Iron Galaxy Studios, “Divekick” is a tongue-in-cheek take on fighting games. Character designs and names are clear knock-offs of characters from games such as “Street Fighter,” “Mortal Kombat” and “Marvel vs. Capcom,” while others are based on prominent real-life figures in the fighting game community. The game will mock you for not winning a single round in a match or choking in a final round.

For a project that originally started out as an inside joke within the fighting game community, “Divekick” offers an intense, satisfying experience that is so much more than mashing two buttons. The game streamlines the experience of learning fighting games and allows you to start mastering the game right away. Every fight is exciting and engaging because every dive and kick can determine the match.

If you can look past the joke-y nature of the game and purposefully awful art design, “Divekick” distills the hardcore fighting game experience into an intense yet light-hearted fighting game that welcomes all players alike.

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Four installments in, “Saints Row” has come far from its roots as a “Grand Theft Auto” clone. Initially a “gang-warfare,” open-world third-person shooter, the franchise developed and embraced its lunacy, avoiding the path of providing “cinematic” experiences in favor of dumb, fun mayhem paired with hilarious writing and clever game-play gags. But by further developing its iconic elements, “Saints Row IV” is a cultural achievement in ridiculousness and smartly-designed dumb fun. But most importantly, “Saints Row IV” is a video game that knows very well that it’s a video game.

How ludicrous is “Saints Row IV”? As the boss of the titular gang turned mega-corporation, the first mission involves you stopping a nuclear warhead midair and then skydiving right into the Oval Office. Also, you are the president of the United States. Then, right after choosing, as president, whether you want to end world hunger or cure cancer, aliens attack the White House and abduct you and your cabinet members, placing you in a “Matrix”-like virtual simulation of the world, where you eventually obtain superpowers.

Everything is as fantastic as you would expect, but there are also plenty of clever, subtle gags sprinkled throughout the absurdness, such as a well-timed song in the first mission that fans of ’90s asteroid films or Bruce Willis will enjoy. “Saints Row IV” handles every moment with the perfect balance of humor and fun, embracing and indulging the dumb, explosive moments most modern video games provide but also acknowledging and expecting the audience to understand the more subtle moments.

Playing “Saints Row IV” is complete joy. When not completing the main-story missions, you spend most of your time in the open world, doing side activities such as destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of property in allotted amounts of time or racing through the streets of the city with your superhuman abilities.

Within the first hour, you obtain the ability to run super fast and jump super high, which mostly replaces the need for cars and makes traversal through the world quick and enjoyable. Similar to the 2007 game “Crackdown,” data clusters, which are used to upgrade your superpowers, are placed throughout the world on rooftops and hidden areas, incentivizing superpower-driven exploration and collection. While the game is relatively short for its genre — taking approximately 15 to 20 hours to explore nearly all of the game’s content — there’s never a time when you are doing nothing or waiting for something to happen.

But many avenues of the game’s design, such as customization, are congruous in the stupid-yet-smart and diverse design aesthetic. Want to make your president a 300-pound black woman who speaks with a male voice and a British accent? That’s possible. Want to romance every crew member aboard your ship, no matter what gender your character is? That’s possible too. Nearly every element of your character is customizable, from his or her physical traits to his or her clothing. And, all of this can be changed even midway through the game.

Want to change that 300-pound black woman to a sickly, skinny Caucasian man that speaks with a Russian woman’s accent? All you have to do is hit up a plastic surgery station in the game. And unlike some games that try and fail to incorporate your customization elements, “Saints Row IV” doesn’t really care how you look, because more importantly, you’re the president of the United States, and none of your crew members will dare to doubt your decision to get a sex change halfway through saving the world.

“Saints Row IV” is the perfect example of intelligently designed, crazy fun. It’s the type of game that will have you shoot dudes with gun emitting deadly dubstep tones (which, of course, also makes your enemies dance) right after a “Leave it to Beaver” gag as rapper-extraordinaire Riff Raff provides the soundtrack to your mayhem.

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Micah Fry/Staff

The “backlog,” in the context of video games, is the stack of games you’d like to play but just haven’t gotten around to yet. Because playing and beating games is a huge time commitment, backlogs tend to pile on and grow year after year, and having the time to catch up on old games is difficult. However, with a lack of new game releases during the summer, August is the perfect time to catch up your backlog; the next three months will be filled with a heap of new games, like “Watch Dogs,” “Battlefield 4” and “Killzone: Shadow Fall” as well as two new consoles. With the recent Steam summer sale — during which game prices are reduced by ridiculous amounts on Valve’s Steam platform — I managed to buy too many games I’ll never end up playing, but I also actually played and beat a few of them.

The first game I played through was Klei Entertainment’s “Mark of the Ninja,” which is a huge step up from the developer’s previous work. In fact, I found it to be one of the best 2-D stealth games I have ever played, and it vastly improves upon the genre’s weakest elements, such as movement. The plot is not intriguing — all you need to know is that you are a ninja — but the systems and user interface are designed incredibly well; the game conveys the perfect amount of information to allow you to be a complete badass while still making you work hard enough to actually be one. For anyone interested in action or stealth games, “Mark of the Ninja” is definitely a worth the time, and I’m grateful I didn’t leave it in my backlog.

I then picked up and played through the 2013 reboot of “Tomb Raider,” which was critically acclaimed, though I’m not a huge fan of the series. I found “Tomb Raider” to be a mostly satisfying action-adventure game despite the fact that it is derivative of Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted” series and that the game’s plot doesn’t make much sense. While the first hour gives off a weird “torture-porn” horror vibe, the plot quickly becomes pretty ridiculous and forgettable. However, the platforming and cover-based combat are crafted well. Fighting and hunting enemies with a bow, your main weapon, is always fun — as is scaling ridiculous cliffs and walls. Definitely more “fun” than “good,” “Tomb Raider” is an enjoyable experience and worth a mindless playthrough.

Breaking away from playing blockbuster games, I tried out Edmund McMillen’s and Florian Himsl’s “The Binding of Isaac,” which is an isometric 2-D survival-shooter that is also brutally hard. Utilizing an oppressive, grotesque aesthetic that still looks great since its release two years ago, you play as Isaac, a child running through a dungeon of monsters as he escapes from his delirious mother attempting to sacrifice him. “The Binding of Isaac” implements the idea of permanent death, meaning you have to start the game over from scratch every time you die, and levels are randomized in each playthrough. The game is fair, rewarding patience, skill and strategy. Well-made but harsh, “The Binding of Isaac” is worthy of a couple hours of your time, but its masochistic nature eventually became too much for me.

The rest of my summer backlog time was spent with “Borderlands 2.” Not straying far from the original, Gearbox Software’s sequel to “Borderlands” is more of the same from the first entry in the series. Expect to shoot a bunch of mindless enemies while collecting loot and leveling up. While the story is still boring and the world is still lifeless, four-player cooperative play is exceptionally fun, and the game’s recent sale on Steam, where the price was lowered to a measly $10, hopefully means you’ll have a decent number of friends to play with. “Borderlands 2” only marginally improves the formula of the series, but I still had fun shooting things and collecting loot with friends.

As the world will soon embrace the Xbox One and the PS4, it’s time to enjoy these games, which will soon become obsolete on the new consoles. But the summer proves that even during times when there is a dearth of new games, there is always something interesting to play that you may have overlooked.

Contact Art Siriwatt at asiriwatt@dailycal.org. Check him out on Twitter at @artsiriwatt.

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Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC/Courtesy

If there’s one problem with “The Last of Us,” it’s the game’s linearity. Once you’ve made your way through one section of the game — and witnessed the inevitable cinematic cutscene that bolsters the narrative between gameplay chapters — there’s no going back. The loot you missed is gone, the small plot details lost to you. But even though you’re essentially a rat in developer Naughty Dog’s narrative maze, the linear structure doesn’t feel restrictive. You’re hardly aware of it at all — you’re making your way through a masterpiece.

It sounds familiar: A pandemic wipes out human society, and the infected humans become mindless, aggressive and deadly. “The Last of Us,” like many similar apocalypse stories, begins with the outbreak. The game immediately sets the player up for emotional turmoil; the protagonist, Joel, loses his teenage daughter, Sarah, when the soldier that should have been protecting them from the infected shoots her. The game then fasts-forward 20 years in the future, and Joel has become a smuggler in the government-controlled Boston quarantine zone. He’s asked by a counter-government group, The Fireflies, to escort Ellie — a 14-year-old girl who had been bitten but never “turned” — because they suspect that her supposed immunity is the key to a vaccine.

The game’s plot begins robustly and only continues to get better, as “The Last of Us” does storytelling the way it should be done — by showing, not telling. None of the information is spoon-fed, no one mentions the word “zombies,” and the fact that society has collapsed isn’t overstated. Joel is obviously not over the death of his daughter, but she isn’t mentioned directly. Ellie is around Sarah’s age, but, again, the comparison isn’t explicitly drawn. Instead, the game trusts the player to observe the environment and characters and infer the rest, which makes for an incredibly compelling and haunting world that’s much different from similar games in the genre.

The beauty of this brand of storytelling is that it paces the game naturally rather than forcing the player through heavy-handed, overly explanatory cutscenes. Clues, plot points and side stories are littered everywhere, waiting for the player to discover them; the tales of the long-since dead or infected are found in graffiti on the walls, notes in deserted rooms and the occasional tape recorder. The cutscenes add to the plot as well, of course, but much of the added detail that makes “The Last of Us” special is hidden, and it gives the game an element of calm in what could otherwise be an endlessly violent and chaotic experience.

The violence, however, is still prevalent and brutal, and “The Last of Us” does not spare the player any gruesome detail of the world in the wake of a societal collapse. While the infected — “runners” who attack on sight and the blind but dangerous “clickers” who navigate using echolocation — are threatening and appropriately terrifying, Joel can usually sneak past them without killing them all. By contrast, in almost every encounter with humans — soldiers and poachers, typically — Joel must eliminate all of them before proceeding. The player has no choice, and it becomes clear that “The Last of Us” isn’t about the player’s interaction with the world; it’s about Joel’s, and Joel’s character has been decided before the player ever takes control of him.

Saying anything else would spoil what is sure to be one of the best games of the year. It’s the perfect example of where the video game medium is headed. It’s a narrative that is meant to be experienced, and, most importantly, it’s a game that is meant to be played. “The Last of Us” masterfully navigates moral conundrums, the father-daughter dynamic between Joel and Ellie and the reality of the post-apocalyptic world while remaining an intensely satisfying gameplay experience, a balance that most games with strong narratives have a hard time finding.

Kallie Plagge is the assistant arts editor. Contact her at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on Twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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Graham Haught/Staff

In survival video games, there’s always a home base — a place to store your loot, heal your wounds and save your progress before venturing out into the darkness again. It’s somewhere to go, and it’s somewhere to be. It’s safe.

Surviving in the gaming community isn’t as easy. Gaming is stereotyped as a particularly sexist industry, a place where women have to work tirelessly to feel safe. The rampant cissexism and heteronormativity that afflict the industry, however, are overlooked, ignored because there simply aren’t any voices to be heard. Queer gamers don’t just have a hard time finding a safe space — their safe spaces don’t even exist.

For Samantha Allen, an out transgender writer, visibility is the first step toward finding a safe house. In “An Open Letter to Games Media,” Allen implored the editors in chief of several prominent gaming news outlets — including IGN, Kotaku and GameSpot — to actively create safe spaces for “marginalized groups” rather than remain “complacent … while allowing the most vulnerable members of the community to shoulder the responsibility for change.”

Allen related an instance of blatant cissexism that she encountered on Kotaku after writing a guest editorial about BDSM sex and its relation to masochism in gaming. Her byline, she said, specifically states that she is a transgender woman as a “display of solidarity” and visibility for other trans* people in the gaming community.

“When I finally made the mistake of looking at the comments on my Kotaku article, I wanted to throw up,” Allen wrote. “One of the first comments that appeared was: ‘I like my videogames like I like my women. Without a penis.’ Many comments were about my byline and not about the article itself. On The Border House (where I write regularly), the commenter who made the ‘penis’ comment would be excluded from the site. To this day, he remains one of Kotaku’s most prolific commenters.”

Allen cited the incident as one of many stories of cissexist comments directed at her and other transgender women in her profession, comments that make the gaming community a hostile, harsh place for trans* gamers. GameSpot writer and trans* woman Carolyn Petit, for example, endures a lot of personal attacks because of her gender identity, but she, too, chooses to remain visible.

“With the tragic wave of bullying and suicides of LGBT teens, I don’t think this is any time for any member of the community to hide in the shadows, and I add my voice to the chorus of voices that are saying to young LGBT people in pain, ‘It gets better,’” Petit wrote in 2010.

In the gaming community, however, those voices are drowned out by hateful and ignorant comments. Allen argues that change must start from the top, and she asks gaming sites to prominently display and enforce a commenting policy in order to change the culture of games discussion.

“You need to stop hurtful comments before they appear, not after,” Allen wrote. “Use (your sites’ resources) to change the kinds of words that appear on your websites. Take responsibility for those words.”

Kotaku’s Editor in Chief Stephen Totilo published a response to Allen Wednesday evening in which he clarified his site’s stance on commenting and how he’d like the community on the site to improve.

“Kotaku is a site for any and all gamers and even people who don’t play games but are curious about them,” Totilo explained in his post. “Actually, all absolutes invite exceptions, so let me be clear about who we are not for: intolerant gamers and creeps, gamers who would prefer to insult or attack rather than empathize or argue intelligently. … Kotaku is a site where I would like gamers of any type to feel welcome.”

Allen and her allies are still waiting for more responses, but there is hope that safe spaces for queer gamers will begin to open up within the gaming community. It’s progress — and in gaming, progress is everything.

Kallie Plagge is the assistant arts editor. Contact her at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on Twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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Kallie Plagge/Staff

“Next-gen” means a lot of different things to gamers — and nothing at all, probably, to the uninitiated. It literally refers to the new “generation” of gaming consoles, but it also means growth and expansion in an industry marred by “sequelitis” and negative stereotypes. Next-gen was the unofficial theme of this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the Los Angeles Convention Center buzzed with speculation as attendees queued up to enter the show floor.

The stereotype that gamers are all young, horny and male is fading, and even the cosplayers — people hired to dress in character costumes — at E3 represented a wider variety of gaming characters rather than only busty females. The infamous “booth babes” — scantily clad women paid to entice convention-goers to exhibits — of previous years were largely absent from E3 2013, replaced by knowledgeable men and women with a passion for the games they were presenting. Presenters didn’t resort to cheap tricks to entice people to see their games; the games spoke for themselves.

“Watch Dogs,” which was announced at last year’s E3, is about a hacker with access to a city’s computer-powered infrastructure, and it garnered so much attention that the line for the extended gameplay demonstration exceeded three hours. Contrary to the belief that gamers love violence, killing is optional in the game, and the gameplay revolves around cleverly manipulating your environment rather than on combat alone.

One line at the Nintendo Co. booth was estimated to be a four-hour wait. Nintendo’s games have never been seen as impressive graphically — mostly because Nintendo has a particularly cute aesthetic — but they were the most fun demos on the show floor by far, and they attracted a sizeable crowd to Nintendo’s booth. “The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds,” a sequel to the beloved “A Link to the Past,” even utilized the often-ignored 3D feature of Nintendo’s 3DS handheld, an exciting step for an already strong system.

The hardware improvements are integral to new gameplay features. In the case of Nintendo’s Wii U, which was released late last year, the new controller — the touch-screen GamePad — promises to expand gaming possibilities, though its launch was rough and its library skeletal. The newly announced PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, on the other hand, sport eight gigabytes of RAM, a huge step up from the half-gig of their predecessors. This allows for vastly expansive worlds far beyond anything gamers have experienced before because the new hardware can handle more complicated software. “The Witcher 3,” for example, features a world several times larger than its already extensive predecessor, allowing for boundless exploration.

Microsoft Corp. seemed to make a lot of gamers angry with its hardware, though. Its Kinect motion sensor is touted to be “always on,” raising privacy concerns, and the used game restrictions seemed invasive to many convention-goers. Still, Microsoft’s Xbox One booth was extremely crowded, and its controller tech demo would have been promising had the features been used in any of the games on display.

On top of the hardware and gaming improvements, E3 2013 was exciting enough to reinvigorate even the most disillusioned gamer’s passion for the medium. The industry has shown signs of maturing, and the promise and potential of next-gen gaming — in whatever form it takes — makes this year an especially thrilling time to be a gamer. Games deserve to be taken seriously as culturally relevant entertainment medium, and next-gen means growing up to fill that role.

Kallie Plagge is the assistant arts editor. Contact her at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on Twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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Facepalm Games/Courtesy

The first time you do it, you’re not really thinking. You’re in game mode, trying to get from point A to point B, still adjusting to the unfamiliar controls. You don’t blink as your old body — the one you so carelessly swapped for that of a clone — crumples against the metal; you hardly hear it when the air in your old space suit hisses out in a final death rattle. But then you start to think about it, and very soon, you wish that you didn’t have to think anymore.

“The Swapper,” a new two-dimensional puzzle-platformer for PC from indie developer Facepalm Games, is all about thought. From the challenging puzzle gameplay to the sinister story line, “The Swapper” keeps you thinking when you’d rather not. Even the sentient space rocks around you have cryptic things to say about the mind — “Why does the other mind scream inside?” one says, supposedly telepathically — and the whole experience is strongly reminiscent of the iconic puzzle game “Portal.”

In “Portal,” you use a single piece of technology — a gun that shoots “portals,” or pairs of gateways — to move your character through the game. “The Swapper” is along a similar vein, utilizing a single gun that also allows for character movement. However, in the latter, the gun shoots up to four clones with which the character can “swap” consciousnesses, which is the core puzzle-solving mechanic and namesake of the game. The implications of using the swapping device are subtle, yet they contribute immensely to the sinister atmosphere of the game.

Sometimes you’ll find yourself falling from a ledge, and the only way for you to save your consciousness and maintain control in-game is to quickly create a clone close to the ground and swap into it. Your old body takes falling damage and crumples, but you, as far as your W-A-S-D keys are concerned, are still alive. At first, you feel a sense of accomplishment for having solved this step of the puzzle. But then you begin to think. You were just controlling that corpse — it had your “soul” in it, according to a disembodied voice in the annals of the space station. When you sacrifice it to save your own consciousness, are you committing murder? Or is it suicide?

Making the empty space station even creepier is the presence of the telepathic space rocks, which the now-missing crew dubbed “the Watchers.” As you walk past them, text flashes on-screen with a message from a Watcher, and it’s always something dark and enigmatic. Combined with the eerily peaceful music, the Watchers’ comments provide the player with both hints about the story as well as a growing uneasiness about the environment. Similar to GLaDOS in “Portal,” the Watchers seem to know quite a bit that the player has yet to discover.

“The Swapper” integrates the story into the gameplay brilliantly, combining the player’s general trepidation with a questionable (and experimental) piece of technology to ultimately create a subtly malevolent world. It’s simultaneously haunting and compelling and brings the two-dimensional world to life.

However, while a quality game and a worthwhile experience, “The Swapper” does not surpass the likes of “Portal,” which will always take the cake — pun very much intended — as one of the most compelling games of the last decade. Though it might not be fair to compare the two, “The Swapper” employs a lot of the core elements of “Portal” and makes drawing comparisons inevitable.

Still, “The Swapper” is a great experience. At only $15, it provides the same feeling of infallible intelligence upon puzzle completion that “Portal” did — and that’s what makes puzzle games worth playing.

Kallie Plagge is the assistant arts editor. Contact her at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on Twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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Full Bore
“Full Bore” is an exploratory puzzle-adventure game that’s as adorable as it is enormous. You play as a boar who discovers an underground complex and a possibly sinister company that is staffed by various other animals and runs a colossal digging operation. Movement is grid-based — meaning traversal through the world requires more puzzle skills than platforming skills. From the start, everything is explorable, and every part of the map is accessible. Instead of gaining abilities as you play through the game, you learn more about how the world and different tiles and matter work. As a result, every place you think you can’t access leads to a moment of revelation and exhilaration. Paired with a sharp pixelated aesthetic, cute character animations and a fantastic blues-chiptune soundtrack, expect to be charmed when “Full Bore” comes out later this summer.

The Novelist
“The Novelist” has you playing as a ghost trying to fix the lives of a struggling writer, his artist wife and their son. As a ghost, you have to remain hidden from them as you explore their house and try to find out more about their lives. Stealth, however, is not a main mechanic. Instead, there is a larger emphasis on ambient storytelling and world-building. Each family member has his or her own insecurities and failures, and your role is to understand specific problems and solve individual issues. However, at the end of every chapter, you are limited to helping only one of the three family members, creating a dilemma about who you think it is most important to help. Still in its early stages, there is plenty that might change between now and the game’s final release, but “The Novelist” has plenty of promise for hope and heartbreak.

7 Grand Steps
“7 Grand Steps” is a game about family, culture, lineage and legacy played in a board game-like structure. Each session, estimated to be around 10 to 15 hours long, takes place on a single screen as you guide your family through the board game to create your lineage and legacy. While each individual game-play mechanic seems simple, there’s a complex and addictive tone in the game similar to aspects of “Sid Meier’s Civilization,” where the urge to play one more turn will quickly overcome any urge to satisfy necessary bodily needs, such as sleeping or eating. “7 Grand Steps” is coming out next month and is priced at $15.

Retrobooster
Cave shooters, akin to the arcade classic “Asteroids,” are a dying breed, but “Retrobooster” remains faithful to the genre while adding some modern updates. The game has you flying through isometric 2-D levels with the same basic abilities seen in cave shooters: You can shoot, activate shields, thrust forward and backward as well as rotate your ship. “Retrobooster” has a steep learning curve; new players will most likely end up constantly crashing into walls. But for those looking for hectic fun, “Retrobooster” will also sport a four-player split-screen mode, which is perfect for more casual players.

The Swapper
Though “The Swapper” boasts playful mechanics at the surface, it seems to be much more sinister at its core. You play a stranded astronaut who wields a device that can place clones of himself anywhere in his line of sight, and you can swap control between each of the clones. You always control a “main” version of yourself, but your movement is mirrored by your clones. While in the demo, this gameplay mechanic was used to solve basic puzzles and traverse the environment, the thought of constantly cloning oneself without thinking of the consequences is unnerving. All of the art in the game was constructed using clay models and environments, and as a result, the visual aesthetic fits the playful yet distressing tone. Set to release this week for PC, “The Swapper” seems to be more than just a set of interesting mechanics, and it should be worth trying out.

Gorogoa
For “Gorogoa,” what you see is what you control. The screen is cut into four pieces to create four or fewer distinct environments or scenes. These scenes can then interact with each other to create different scenes or solve puzzles. For example, one puzzle might require you to remove a door “layer” and add it to another panel so that a character can use that door to enter an abstract new environment. Made entirely by one person, “Gorogoa” is impressive both visually — everything is hand-illustrated — and as a feat of programming. A demo is available online, but expect the full experience later this year.

Contact Art Siriwatt at asiriwatt@dailycal.org. Check him out on twitter at @artsiriwatt.

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